Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

‘But shall we have nothing to say,’ interrogated G. J——, ‘to the Legend of Good Women?’—‘Name, name, Mr. J——,’ cried H—— in a boisterous tone of friendly exultation, ‘name as many as you please, without reserve or fear of molestation!’ J—— was perplexed between so many amiable recollections, that the name of the lady of his choice expired in a pensive whiff of his pipe; and B—— impatiently declared for the Duchess of Newcastle. Mrs. Hutchinson was no sooner mentioned, than she carried the day from the Duchess. We were the less solicitous on this subject of filling up the posthumous lists of Good Women, as there was already one in the room as good, as sensible, and in all respects as exemplary, as the best of them could be for their lives! ‘I should like vastly to have seen Ninon de l’Enclos,’ said that incomparable person; and this immediately put us in mind that we had neglected to pay honour due to our friends on the other side of the Channel: Voltaire, the patriarch of levity, and Rousseau, the father of sentiment, Montaigne and Rabelais (great in wisdom and in wit), Moliere and that illustrious group that are collected round him (in the print of that subject) to hear him read his comedy of the Tartuffe at the house of Ninon; Racine, La Fontaine, Rochefoucault, St. Evremont, &c.

‘There is one person,’ said a shrill, querulous voice, ‘I would rather see than all these—Don Quixote!’

‘Come, come!’ said H——; ‘I thought we should have no heroes, real or fabulous. What say you, Mr. B——? Are you for eking out your shadowy list with such names as Alexander, Julius Cæsar, Tamerlane, or Ghengis Khan?’—‘Excuse me,’ said B——, ‘on the subject of characters in active life, plotters and disturbers of the world, I have a crotchet of my own, which I beg leave to reserve.’—‘No, no! come, out with your worthies!’—‘What do you think of Guy Faux and Judas Iscariot?’ H—— turned an eye upon him like a wild Indian, but cordial and full of smothered glee. ‘Your most exquisite reason!’ was echoed on all sides; and A—— thought that B—— had now fairly entangled himself. ‘Why, I cannot but think,’ retorted he of the wistful countenance, ‘that Guy Faux, that poor fluttering annual scare-crow of straw and rags, is an ill-used gentleman. I would give something to see him sitting pale and emaciated, surrounded by his matches and his barrels of gunpowder, and expecting the moment that was to transport him to Paradise for his heroic self-devotion; but if I say any more, there is that fellow G—— will make something of it. And as to Judas Iscariot, my reason is different. I would fain see the face of him, who, having dipped his hand in the same dish with the Son of Man, could afterwards betray him. I have no conception of such a thing; nor have I ever seen any picture (not even Leonardo’s very fine one) that gave me the least idea of it.’—‘You have said enough, Mr. B——, to justify your choice.’

‘Oh! ever right, Menenius,—ever right!’

‘There is only one other person I can ever think of after this,’ continued H——; but without mentioning a name that once put on a semblance of mortality. ‘If Shakspeare was to come into the room, we should all rise up to meet him; but if that person was to come into it, we should all fall down and try to kiss the hem of his garment!’

As a lady present seemed now to get uneasy at the turn the conversation had taken, we rose up to go. The morning broke with that dim, dubious light by which Giotto, Cimabue, and Ghirlandaio must have seen to paint their earliest works; and we parted to meet again and renew similar topics at night, the next night, and the night after that, till that night overspread Europe which saw no dawn. The same event, in truth, broke up our little Congress that broke up the great one. But that was to meet again: our deliberations have never been resumed.

ON THE CONVERSATION OF LORDS

_The New Monthly Magazine._] [_April, 1826._

‘An infinite deal of nothing,’—SHAKSPEARE.

The conversation of Lords is very different from that of authors. Mounted on horseback, they stick at nothing in the chace, and clear every obstacle with flying leaps, while we poor devils have no chance of keeping up with them with our clouten shoes and long hunting-poles. They have all the benefit of education, society, confidence, they read books, purchase pictures, breed horses, learn to ride, dance, and fence, look after their estates, travel abroad:—authors have none of these advantages, or inlets of knowledge, to assist them, except one, reading; and this is still more impoverished and clouded by the painful exercise of their own thoughts. The knowledge of the Great has a character of wealth and property in it, like the stores of the rich merchant or manufacturer, who lays his hands on all within his reach: the understanding of the student is like the workshop of the mechanic, who has nothing but what he himself creates. How difficult is the production, how small the display in the one case compared to the other! Most of Correggio’s designs are contained in one small room at Parma: how different from the extent and variety of some hereditary and princely collections!

The human mind has a trick (probably a very natural and consoling one) of striking a balance between the favours of wisdom and of fortune, and of making one thing a gratuitous and convenient foil to another. Whether this is owing to envy or to a love of justice, I will not say: but whichever it is owing to, I must own I do not think it well founded. A scholar is without money: therefore (to make the odds even) we argue (not very wisely) that a rich man must be without ideas. This does not follow. ‘The wish is father to that thought;’ and the thought is a spurious one. We might as well pretend, that because a man has the advantage of us in height, he is not strong or in good health; or because a woman is handsome, she is not at the same time young, accomplished and well-bred. Our fastidious self-love or our rustic prejudices may revolt at the accumulation of advantages in others; but we must learn to submit to the mortifying truth, which every day’s experience points out, with what grace we may. There were those who grudged to Lord Byron the name of a poet because he was of noble birth; as he himself could not endure the praises bestowed upon Wordsworth, whom he considered as a clown. He carried this weakness so far, that he even seemed to regard it as a piece of presumption in Shakspeare _to be preferred before him_ as a dramatic author, and contended that Milton’s writing an epic poem and the ‘Answer to Salmasius’ was entirely owing to vanity—so little did he relish the superiority of the old blind schoolmaster. So it is that one party would arrogate every advantage to themselves, while those on the other side would detract from all in their rivals that they do not themselves possess. Some will not have the statue painted: others can see no beauty in the clay-model!

The man of rank and fortune, besides his chance for the common or (now and then) an uncommon share of wit and understanding, has it in his power to avail himself of every thing that is to be taught of art and science; he has tutors and valets at his beck; he may master the dead languages, he _must_ acquire the modern ones; he moves in the highest circles, and may descend to the lowest; the paths of pleasure, of ambition, of knowledge, are open to him; he may devote himself to a particular study, or skim the cream of all; he may read books or men or things, as he finds most convenient or agreeable; he is not forced to confine his attention to some one dry uninteresting pursuit; he has a single _hobby_, or half a dozen; he is not distracted by care, by poverty and want of leisure; he has every opportunity and facility afforded him for acquiring various accomplishments of body or mind, and every encouragement, from confidence and success, for making an imposing display of them; he may laugh with the gay, jest with the witty, argue with the wise; he has been in courts, in colleges, and camps, is familiar with playhouses and taverns, with the riding-house and the dissecting-room, has been present at or taken part in the debates of both Houses of Parliament, was in the O. P. row, and is deep in the Fancy, understands the broadsword exercise, is a connoisseur in regimentals, plays the whole game at whist, is a tolerable proficient at backgammon, drives four in hand, skates, rows, swims, shoots; knows the different sorts of game and modes of agriculture in the different counties of England, the manufactures and commerce of the different towns, the politics of Europe, the campaigns in Spain, has the Gazette, the newspapers, and reviews at his fingers’ ends, has visited the finest scenes of Nature and beheld the choicest works of Art, and is in society where he is continually hearing or talking of all these things; and yet we are surprised to find that a person so circumstanced and qualified has any ideas to communicate or words to express himself, and is not, as by patent and prescription he was bound to be, a mere well-dressed fop of fashion or a booby lord! It would be less remarkable if a poor author, who has none of this giddy range and scope of information, who pores over the page till it fades from his sight, and refines upon his style till the words stick in his throat, should be dull as a beetle and mute as a fish, instead of spontaneously pouring out a volume of wit and wisdom on every subject that can be started.

An author lives out of the world, or mixes chiefly with those of his own class; which renders him pedantic and pragmatical, or gives him a reserved, hesitating, and _interdicted_ manner. A lord or gentleman-commoner goes into the world, and this imparts that fluency, spirit, and freshness to his conversation, which arises from the circulation of ideas and from the greater animation and excitement of unrestrained intercourse. An author’s tongue is tied for want of somebody to speak to: his ideas rust and become obscured, from not being brought out in company and exposed to the gaze of instant admiration. A lord has always some one at hand on whom he can ‘bestow his tediousness,’ and grows voluble, copious, inexhaustible in consequence: his wit is polished, and the flowers of his oratory expanded by his smiling commerce with the world, like the figures in tapestry, that after being thrust into a corner and folded up in closets, are displayed on festival and gala-days. Again, the man of fashion and fortune reduces many of those arts and mysteries to practice, of which the scholar gains all his knowledge from books and vague description. Will not the rules of architecture find a readier reception and sink deeper into the mind of the proprietor of a noble mansion, or of him who means to build one, than of the half-starved occupier of a garret? Will not the political economist’s insight into Mr. Ricardo’s doctrine of Rent, or Mr. Malthus’s theory of Population, be vastly quickened by the circumstance of his possessing a large landed estate and having to pay enormous poor-rates? And in general is it not self-evident that a man’s knowledge of the true interests of the country will be enlarged just in proportion to the _stake_ he has in it? A person may have read accounts of different cities and the customs of different nations: but will this give him the same accurate idea of the situation of celebrated places, of the aspect and manners of the inhabitants, or the same lively impulse and ardour and fund of striking particulars in expatiating upon them, as if he had run over half the countries of Europe, for no other purpose than to satisfy his own curiosity, and excite that of others on his return? I many years ago looked into the Duke of Newcastle’s ‘Treatise on Horsemanship’; all I remember of it is some quaint cuts of the Duke and his riding-master introduced to illustrate the lessons. Had I myself possessed a stud of Arabian coursers, with grooms and a master of the horse to assist me in reducing these precepts to practice, they would have made a stronger impression on my mind; and what interested myself from vanity or habit, I could have made interesting to others. I am sure I could have learnt to _ride the Great Horse_, and do twenty other things, in the time I have employed in endeavouring to make something out of nothing, or in conning the same problem fifty times over, as monks count over their beads! I have occasionally in my life bought a few prints, and hung them up in my room with great satisfaction; but is it to be supposed possible, from this casual circumstance, that I should compete in taste or in the knowledge of _virtù_ with a peer of the realm, who has in his possession the costly designs, or a wealthy commoner, who has spent half his fortune in learning to distinguish copies from originals? ‘A question not to be asked!’ Nor is it likely that the having dipped into the Memoirs of Count Grammont, or of Lady Vane in Peregrine Pickle, should enable any one to sustain a conversation on subjects of love and gallantry with the same ease, grace, brilliancy, and spirit as the having been engaged in a hundred adventures of one’s own, or heard the scandal and tittle-tattle of fashionable life for the last thirty years canvassed a hundred times. Books may be manufactured from other books by some dull, mechanical process: it is conversation and the access to the best society that alone fit us for society; or ‘the act and practic part of life must be the mistress to our theorique,’ before we can hope to shine in mixed company, or bend our previous knowledge to ordinary and familiar uses out of that plaster-cast mould which is as brittle as it is formal!

There is another thing which tends to produce the same effect, viz. that lords and gentlemen seldom trouble themselves about the knotty and uninviting parts of a subject: they leave it to ‘the dregs of earth’ to drain the cup or find the bottom. They are attracted by the frothy and sparkling. If a question puzzles them, or is not likely to amuse others, they leave it to its fate, or to those whose business it is to contend with difficulty, and to pursue truth for its own sake. They string together as many available, _off-hand_ topics as they can procure for love or money; and aided by a good person or address, sport them with very considerable effect at the next rout or party they go to. They do not _bore_ you with pedantry, or tease you with sophistry. Their conversation is not made up of _moot-points_ or _choke-pears_. They do not willingly forego ‘the feast of reason or the flow of soul’ to grub up some solitary truth or dig for hid treasure. They are amateurs, not professors; the patrons, not the drudges of knowledge. An author loses half his life, and _stultifies_ his faculties, in hopes to find out something which perhaps neither he nor any one else can ever find out. For this he neglects half a hundred acquirements, half a hundred accomplishments. _Aut Cæsar aut nihil._ He is proud of the discovery or of the fond pursuit of one truth—a lord is vain of a thousand ostentatious common-places. If the latter ever devotes himself to some crabbed study, or sets about finding out the longitude, he is then to be looked upon as a humorist if he fails—a genius if he succeeds—and no longer belongs to the class I have been speaking of.

Perhaps a multiplicity of attainments and pursuits is not very favourable to their selectness; as a local and personal acquaintance with objects of imagination takes away from, instead of adding to, their romantic interest. Familiarity is said to breed contempt; or at any rate, the being brought into contact with places, persons, or things that we have hitherto only heard or read of, removes a certain aerial delicious veil of refinement from them, and strikes at that _ideal_ abstraction, which is the charm and boast of a life conversant chiefly among books. The huddling a number of tastes and studies together tends to degrade and vulgarise each, and to give a crude, unconcocted, dissipated turn to the mind. Instead of stuffing it full of gross, palpable, immediate objects of excitement, a wiser plan would be to leave something in reserve, something hovering in airy space to draw our attention out of ourselves, to excite hope, curiosity, wonder, and never to satisfy it. The great art is not to throw a glare of light upon all objects, or to lay the whole extended landscape bare at one view; but so to manage as to see the more amiable side of things, and through the narrow vistas and loop-holes of retreat,

‘Catch glimpses that may make us less forlorn.’

I hate to annihilate air and distance by the perpetual use of an opera-glass, to run every thing into foreground, and to interpose no medium between the thought and the object. The breath of words stirs and plays idly with the gossamer web of fancy: the touch of things destroys it. I have seen a good deal of authors: and I believe that they (as well as I) would quite as lieve that I had not. Places I have seen too, that did not answer my expectation. Pictures (that is, some few of them) are the only things that are the better for our having studied them ‘face to face, not in a glass darkly,’ and that in themselves surpass any description we can give, or any notion we can form of them. But I do not think seriously, after all, that those who possess are the best judges of them. They become furniture, property in their hands. The purchasers look to the price they will fetch, or turn to that which they have cost. They consider not beauty or expression, but the workmanship, the date, the pedigree, the school—something that will figure in the description in a catalogue or in a puff in a newspaper. They are blinded by silly admiration of whatever belongs to themselves, and warped so as to eye ‘with jealous leer malign’ all that is not theirs. Taste is melted down in the crucible of avarice and vanity, and leaves a wretched _caput mortuum_ of pedantry and conceit. As to books, they ‘best can feel them who have read them most,’ and who rely on them for their only support and their only chance of distinction. They most keenly relish the graces of style who have in vain tried to make them their own: they alone understand the value of a thought who have gone through the trouble of thinking. The privation of other advantages is not a clear loss, if it is counterbalanced by a proportionable concentration and unity of interest in what is left. The love of letters is the forlorn hope of the man of letters. His ruling passion is the love of fame. A member of the Roxburgh Club has a certain work (let it be the Decameron of Boccaccio) splendidly bound, and in the old quarto edition, we will say. In this not only his literary taste is gratified, but the pride of property, the love of external elegance and decoration. The poor student has only a paltry and somewhat worn copy of the same work (or perhaps only a translation) which he picked up at a stall, standing out of a shower of rain. What then! has not the Noble Virtuoso doubly the advantage, and a much higher pleasure in the perusal of the work? No; for these are vulgar and mechanical helps to the true enjoyment of letters. From all this mock-display and idle parade of binding and arms and dates, his unthought-of rival is precluded, and sees only the talismanic words, feels only the spirit of the author, and in that author reads ‘with sparkling eyes’

‘His title to a mansion in the skies.’

Oh! divine air of learning, fanned by the undying breath of genius, still let me taste thee, free from all adventitious admixtures,

‘Pure in the last recesses of the soul!’

We are far at present from the style of Swift’s ‘Polite Conversation.’ The fashionable tone has quite changed in this respect, and almost gone into the opposite extreme. At that period, the polite world seems to have been nearly at a stand, in a state of intellectual _abeyance_; or in the interval between the disuse of chivalrous exercises and the introduction of modern philosophy, not to have known how to pass its time and to have sunk into the most common-place formality and unmeaning apathy. But lo! at a signal given, or rather prompted by that most powerful of all calls, the want of something to do, all rush into the lists, having armed themselves anew with the shining panoply of science and of letters, with an eagerness, a perseverance, a dexterity, and a success that are truly astonishing. The higher classes have of late taken the lead almost as much in arts as they formerly did in arms, when the last was the only prescribed mode of distinguishing themselves from the rabble whom they treated as serfs and churls. The prevailing cue at present is to regard mere authors (who are not also of gentle blood) as dull, illiterate, poor creatures, a sort of pretenders to taste and elegance, and adventurers in intellect. The true adepts in black-letter are knights of the shire: the sworn patentees of Parnassus are Peers of the Realm. Not to pass for a literary quack, you must procure a diploma from the College of Heralds. A dandy conceals a bibliomanist: our belles are _bluestockings_. The Press is so entirely monopolised by beauty, birth, or importance in the State, that an author by profession resigns the field to the crowd of well-dressed competitors, out of modesty or pride, is fain to keep out of sight—

‘Or write by stealth and blush to find it fame!’

Lord Byron used to boast that he could bring forward a dozen young men of fashion who could beat all the regular authors at their several weapons of wit or argument; and though I demur to the truth of the assertion, yet there is no saying till the thing is tried. Young gentlemen make _very pretty sparrers_, but are not the ‘ugliest customers’ when they take off the gloves. Lord Byron himself was in his capacity of author an _out-and-outer_; but then it was at the expense of other things, for he could not talk except in short sentences and sarcastic allusions, he had no ready resources; all his ideas moulded themselves into stanzas, and all his ardour was carried off in rhyme. The channel of his pen was worn deep by habit and power; the current of his thoughts flowed strong in it, and nothing remained to supply the neighbouring flats and shallows of miscellaneous conversation, but a few sprinklings of wit or gushes of spleen. An intense purpose concentrated and gave a determined direction to his energies, that ‘held on their way, unslacked of motion.’ The track of his genius was like a volcanic eruption, a torrent of burning lava, full of heat and splendour and headlong fury, that left all dry, cold, hard, and barren behind it! To say nothing of a host of female authors, a bright galaxy above our heads, there is no young lady of fashion in the present day, scarce a boarding-school girl, that is not mistress of as many branches of knowledge as would set up half-a-dozen literary hacks. In lieu of the sampler and the plain-stitch of our grandmothers, they have so many hours for French, so many for Italian, so many for English grammar and composition, so many for geography and the use of the globes, so many for history, so many for botany, so many for painting, music, dancing, riding, &c. One almost wonders how so many studies are crammed into the twenty-four hours; or how such fair and delicate creatures can master them without spoiling the smoothness of their brows, the sweetness of their tempers, or the graceful simplicity of their manners. A girl learns French (not only to read, but to speak it) in a few months, while a boy is as many years in learning to construe Latin. Why so? Chiefly because the one is treated as a _bagatelle_ or agreeable relaxation; the other as a serious task or necessary evil. Education, a very few years back, was looked upon as a hardship, and enforced by menaces and blows, instead of being carried on (as now) as an amusement and under the garb of pleasure, and with the allurements of self-love. It is found that the products of the mind flourish better and shoot up more quickly in the sunshine of good-humour and in the air of freedom, than under the frowns of sullenness, or the shackles of authority. ‘The labour we delight in physics pain.’ The idlest people are not those who have most leisure-time to dispose of as they choose: take away the feeling of compulsion, and you supply a motive for application, by converting a toil into a pleasure. This makes nearly all the difference between the hardest drudgery and the most delightful exercise—not the degree of exertion, but the motive and the accompanying sensation. Learning does not gain proselytes by the austerity or awfulness of its looks. By representing things as so difficult, and as exacting such dreadful sacrifices, and to be acquired under such severe penalties, we not only deter the student from the attempt, but lay a dead-weight upon the imagination, and destroy that cheerfulness and alacrity of spirit which is the spring of thought and action. But to return.—An author by profession reads a few works that he intends to criticise and cut up ‘for a consideration,’—a _bluestocking_ by profession reads all that comes out to pass the time or satisfy her curiosity. The author has something to say about Fielding, Richardson, or even the Scotch novels: but he is soon distanced by the fair critic or overwhelmed with the contents of whole Circulating Libraries poured out upon his head without stint or intermission. He reads for an object and to live; she for the sake of reading or to talk. Be this as it may, the idle reader at present reads twenty times as many books as the learned one. The former skims the surface of knowledge, and carries away the striking points and a variety of amusing details, while the latter reserves himself for great occasions, or perhaps does nothing under the pretence of having so much to do.

‘From every work he challenges _essoine_,
For contemplation’s sake.’

The _literati_ of Europe threaten at present to become the Monks of letters, and from having taken up learning as a profession, to live on the reputation of it. As gentlemen have turned authors, authors seem inclined to turn gentlemen; and enjoying the _otium cum dignitate_, to be much too refined and abstracted to condescend to the subordinate or mechanical parts of knowledge. They are too wise in general to be acquainted with anything in particular; and remain in a proud and listless ignorance of all that is within the reach of the vulgar. They are not, as of old, walking libraries or Encyclopædias, but rather certain faculties of the mind personified. They scorn the material and instrumental branches of inquiry, the husk and bran, and affect only the fine flour of literature—they are only to be called in to give the last polish to style, the last refinement to thought. They leave it to their drudges, the Reading Public, to accumulate the facts, to arrange the evidence, to make out the _data_, and like great painters whose pupils have got in the ground-work and the established proportions of a picture, come forward to go over the last thin glazing of the colours, or throw in the finer touches of expression. On my excusing myself to N—— for some blunder in history, by saying, ‘I really had not time to read,’—he said, ‘No, but you have time to write!’ And once a celebrated critic taking me to task as to the subject of my pursuits, and receiving regularly the same answer to his queries, that I knew nothing of chemistry, nothing of astronomy, of botany, of law, of politics, &c. at last exclaimed somewhat impatiently—‘What the devil is it, then, you _do_ know?’ I laughed, and was not very much disconcerted at the reproof, as it was just.

Modern men of letters may be divided into three classes; the mere scholar or _book-worm_, all whose knowledge is taken from books, and who may be passed by as an obsolete character, little inquired after—the literary _hack_ or coffee-house politician, who gets his information mostly from hearsay, and who makes some noise indeed, but the echo of it does not reach beyond his own club or circle—and the man of real or of pretended genius, who aims to draw upon his own resources of thought or feeling, and to throw a new light upon nature and books. This last personage (if he acts up to his supposed character) has too much to do to lend himself to a variety of pursuits, or to lay himself out to please in all companies. He has a task in hand, a vow to perform; and he cannot be diverted from it by incidental or collateral objects. All the time that he does not devote to this paramount duty, he should have to himself, to repose, to lie fallow, to gather strength and recruit himself. A boxer is led into the lists that he may not waste a particle of vigour needlessly; and a leader in Parliament, on the day that he is expected to get up a grand attack or defence, is not to be pestered with the ordinary news of the day. So an author (who is, or would be thought original) has no time for _spare_ accomplishments or ornamental studies. All that he intermeddles with must be marshalled to bear upon his purpose. He must be acquainted with books and the thoughts of others, but only so far as to assist him on his way, and ‘to take progression from them.’ He starts from the point where _they_ left off. All that does not aid him in his new career goes for nothing, is thrown out of the account; or is a useless and splendid incumbrance. Most of his time he passes in brooding over some wayward hint or suggestion of a thought, nor is he bound to give any explanation of what he does with the rest. He tries to melt down truth into essences—to express some fine train of feeling, to solve some difficult problem, to start what is new, or to perfect what is old; in a word, not to do what others can do (which in the division of mental labour he holds to be unnecessary), but to do what they all with their joint efforts cannot do. For this he is in no hurry, and must have the disposal of his leisure and the choice of his subject. The public can wait. He deems with a living poet, who is an example of his own doctrine—

——‘That there are powers
Which of themselves our minds impress;
That we can feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness.’

Or I have sometimes thought that the dalliance of the mind with Fancy or with Truth might be described almost in the words of Andrew Marvell’s address ‘To his Coy Mistress:‘—

‘Had we but world enough and time,
This toying, Lady, were no crime;
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk and pass our love’s long day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My contemplative love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart:
For, lady, you deserve this state;
Nor would I love at lower rate!’

The aspiring poet or prose-writer undertakes to do a certain thing; and if he succeeds, it is enough. While he is intent upon that or asleep, others may amuse themselves how they can with any topic that happens to be afloat and all the eloquence they are masters of, so that they do not disturb the champion of truth, or the proclaimer of beauty to the world. The Conversation of Lords, on the contrary, is to this like a newspaper to a book—the latter treats well or ill of one subject, and leads to a conclusion on one point; the other is made up of all sorts of things jumbled together, debates in parliament, law-reports, plays, operas, concerts, routs, levees, fashions, auctions, the last fight, foreign news, deaths, marriages, and _crim-cons_, bankruptcies, and quack medicines; and a large allowance is frequently to be made, besides the natural confusion of the subjects, for _cross-readings_ in the speaker’s mind![11] Or, to take another illustration, fashionable conversation has something theatrical or _melo-dramatic_ in it; it is got up for immediate effect, it is calculated to make a great display, there is a profusion of paint, scenery, and dresses, the music is loud, there are banquets and processions, you have the dancers from the Opera, the horses from Astley’s, and the elephant from Exeter ‘Change, the stage is all life, bustle, noise and glare, the audience brilliant and delighted, and the whole goes off in a blaze of phosphorus; but the dialogue is poor, the story improbable, the critics shake their heads in the pit, and the next day the piece is _damned_!

In short, a man of rank and fortune takes the adventitious and ornamental part of letters, the obvious, popular, fashionable, that serves to amuse at the time, or minister to the cravings of vanity, without laying a very heavy tax on his own understanding, or the patience of his hearers. He furnishes his mind as he does his house, with what is showy, striking, and of the newest pattern: he mounts his _hobby_ as he does his horse, which is brought to his door for an airing, and which (should it prove restive or sluggish) he turns away for another; or like a child at a fair, gets into a round-about of knowledge, till his head becomes giddy, runs from sight to sight, from booth to booth, and like the child, goes home loaded with trinkets, gewgaws, and rattles. He does not pore and pine over an idea (like some poor hypochondriac) till it becomes impracticable, unsociable, incommunicable, absorbed in mysticism, and lost in minuteness: he is not upon oath never to utter anything but oracles, but rattles away in a fine careless hair-brained dashing manner, hit or miss, and succeeds the better for it. Nor does he prose over the same stale round of politics and the state of the nation (with the coffee-house politician), but launches out with freedom and gaiety into whatever has attraction and interest in it, ‘runs the great circle, and is still at home.’ He is inquisitive, garrulous, credulous, sanguine, florid,—neither pedantic nor vulgar. Neither is he intolerant, exclusive, bigoted to one set of opinions or one class of individuals. He clothes an abstract theory with illustrations from his own experience and observation, hates what is dry and dull, and throws in an air of high health, buoyant spirits, fortune and splendid connections to give animation and vividness to what perhaps might otherwise want it. He selects what is palpable without being gross or trivial, lends it colour from the flush of success, and elevation from the distinctions of rank. He runs on and never stops for an answer, rather dictating to others than endeavouring to ascertain their opinions, solving his own questions, improving upon their hints, and bearing down or precluding opposition by a good-natured loquacity or stately dogmatism. All this is perhaps more edifying as a subject of speculation than delightful in itself. Shakspeare somewhere says—‘A man’s mind is parcel of his fortunes,’—and I think the inference will be borne out in the present case. I should guess that in the prevailing tone of fashionable society or aristocratic literature would be found all that variety, splendour, facility, and startling effect which corresponds with external wealth, magnificence of appearance, and a command of opportunity; while there would be wanting whatever depends chiefly on intensity of pursuit, on depth of feeling, and on simplicity and independence of mind joined with straitened fortune. Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it. Accordingly, we find but one really great name (Lord Bacon) in this rank of English society, where superiority is taken for granted, and reflected from outward circumstances. The rest are in the second class. Lord Bolingbroke, whom Pope idolized (and it pains me that all his idols are not mine) was a boastful empty mouther! I never knew till the other day, that Lord Bolingbroke was the model on which Mr. Pitt formed himself. He was his _Magnus Apollo_; and no wonder. The late Minister used to lament it as the great desideratum of English literature, that there was no record anywhere existing of his speeches as they were spoken, and declared that he would give any price for one of them reported as speeches were reported in the newspapers in our time. Being asked which he thought the best of his written productions, he would answer, raising his eyebrows and deepening the tones of his voice to a sonorous bass—‘Why, undoubtedly, Sir, the Letter to Sir William Wyndham is the most masterly of all his writings, and the first composition for wit and eloquence in the English language;‘—and then he would give his reasons at great length and _con amore_, and say that Junius had formed himself entirely upon it. Lord Bolingbroke had, it seems, a house next-door to one belonging to Lord Chatham at Walham-Green; and as the gardens joined, they could hear Lord Bolingbroke walking out with the company that came to see him in his retirement, and elaborately declaiming politics to the old lords and statesmen that were with him, and philosophy to the younger ones. Pitt learned this story from his father when a boy. This account, interesting in itself, was to me the more interesting and extraordinary, as it had always appeared to me that Mr. Pitt was quite an original, _sui generis_,

‘As if a man were author of himself,
And own’d no other kin’—

that so far from having a model or idol that he looked up to and grounded himself upon, he had neither admiration nor consciousness of any thing existing out of himself, and that he lived solely in the sound of his own voice and revolved in the circle of his own hollow and artificial periods. I have it from the same authority that he thought Cobbett the best writer and Horne Tooke the cleverest man of the day. His hatred of Wyndham was excessive and mutual.—Perhaps it may be said that Lord Chatham was a first-rate man in his way, and I incline to think it; but he was a self-made man, bred in a camp, not in a court, and his rank was owing to his talents.[12]

ON A SUN-DIAL

_The New Monthly Magazine._] [_October, 1827._

‘To carve out dials quaintly, point by point.’
SHAKESPEARE.

_Horas non numero nisi serenas_—is the motto of a sun-dial near Venice. There is a softness and a harmony in the words and in the thought unparalleled. Of all conceits it is surely the most classical. ‘I count only the hours that are serene.’ What a bland and care-dispelling feeling! How the shadows seem to fade on the dial-plate as the sky lours, and time presents only a blank unless as its progress is marked by what is joyous, and all that is not happy sinks into oblivion! What a fine lesson is conveyed to the mind—to take no note of time but by its benefits, to watch only for the smiles and neglect the frowns of fate, to compose our lives of bright and gentle moments, turning always to the sunny side of things, and letting the rest slip from our imaginations, unheeded or forgotten! How different from the common art of self-tormenting! For myself, as I rode along the Brenta, while the sun shone hot upon its sluggish, slimy waves, my sensations were far from comfortable; but the reading this inscription on the side of a glaring wall in an instant restored me to myself; and still, whenever I think of or repeat it, it has the power of wafting me into the region of pure and blissful abstraction. I cannot help fancying it to be a legend of Popish superstition. Some monk of the dark ages must have invented and bequeathed it to us, who, loitering in trim gardens and watching the silent march of time, as his fruits ripened in the sun or his flowers scented the balmy air, felt a mild languor pervade his senses, and having little to do or to care for, determined (in imitation of his sun-dial) to efface that little from his thoughts or draw a veil over it, making of his life one long dream of quiet! _Horas non numero nisi serenas_—he might repeat, when the heavens were overcast and the gathering storm scattered the falling leaves, and turn to his books and wrap himself in his golden studies! Out of some such mood of mind, indolent, elegant, thoughtful, this exquisite device (speaking volumes) must have originated.

Of the several modes of counting time, that by the sun-dial is perhaps the most apposite and striking, if not the most convenient or comprehensive. It does not obtrude its observations, though it ‘morals on the time,’ and, by its stationary character, forms a contrast to the most fleeting of all essences. It stands _sub dio_—under the marble air, and there is some connexion between the image of infinity and eternity. I should also like to have a sunflower growing near it with bees fluttering round.[13] It should be of iron to denote duration, and have a dull, leaden look. I hate a sun-dial made of wood, which is rather calculated to show the variations of the seasons, than the progress of time, slow, silent, imperceptible, chequered with light and shade. If our hours were all serene, we might probably take almost as little note of them, as the dial does of those that are clouded. It is the shadow thrown across, that gives us warning of their flight. Otherwise, our impressions would take the same undistinguishable hue; we should scarce be conscious of our existence. Those who have had none of the cares of this life to harass and disturb them, have been obliged to have recourse to the hopes and fears of the next to enliven the prospect before them. Most of the methods for measuring the lapse of time have, I believe, been the contrivance of monks and religious recluses, who, finding time hang heavy on their hands, were at some pains to see how they got rid of it. The hour-glass is, I suspect, an older invention; and it is certainly the most defective of all. Its creeping sands are not indeed an unapt emblem of the minute, countless portions of our existence; and the manner in which they gradually slide through the hollow glass and diminish in number till not a single one is left, also illustrates the way in which our years slip from us by stealth: but as a mechanical invention, it is rather a hindrance than a help, for it requires to have the time, of which it pretends to count the precious moments, taken up in attention to itself, and in seeing that when one end of the glass is empty, we turn it round, in order that it may go on again, or else all our labour is lost, and we must wait for some other mode of ascertaining the time before we can recover our reckoning and proceed as before. The philosopher in his cell, the cottager at her spinning-wheel must, however, find an invaluable acquisition in this ‘companion of the lonely hour,’ as it has been called,[14] which not only serves to tell how the time goes, but to fill up its vacancies. What a treasure must not the little box seem to hold, as if it were a sacred deposit of the very grains and fleeting sands of life! What a business, in lieu of other more important avocations, to see it out to the last sand, and then to renew the process again on the instant, that there may not be the least flaw or error in the account! What a strong sense must be brought home to the mind of the value and irrecoverable nature of the time that is fled; what a thrilling, incessant consciousness of the slippery tenure by which we hold what remains of it! Our very existence must seem crumbling to atoms, and running down (without a miraculous reprieve) to the last fragment. ‘Dust to dust and ashes to ashes’ is a text that might be fairly inscribed on an hour-glass: it is ordinarily associated with the scythe of Time and a Death’s head, as a _Memento mori_; and has, no doubt, furnished many a tacit hint to the apprehensive and visionary enthusiast in favour of a resurrection to another life!

The French give a different turn to things, less _sombre_ and less edifying. A common and also a very pleasing ornament to a clock, in Paris, is a figure of Time seated in a boat which Cupid is rowing along, with the motto, _L’Amour fait passer le Tems_—which the wits again have travestied into _Le Tems fait passer L’Amour_. All this is ingenious and well; but it wants sentiment. I like a people who have something that they love and something that they hate, and with whom every thing is not alike a matter of indifference or _pour passer le tems_. The French attach no importance to any thing, except for the moment; they are only thinking how they shall get rid of one sensation for another; all their ideas are _in transitu_. Every thing is detached, nothing is accumulated. It would be a million of years before a Frenchman would think of the _Horas non numero nisi serenas_. Its impassioned repose and _ideal_ voluptuousness are as far from their breasts as the poetry of that line in Shakspeare—‘How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon that bank!’ They never arrive at the classical—or the romantic. They blow the bubbles of vanity, fashion, and pleasure; but they do not expand their perceptions into refinement, or strengthen them into solidity. Where there is nothing fine in the ground-work of the imagination, nothing fine in the superstructure can be produced. They are light, airy, fanciful (to give them their due)—but when they attempt to be serious (beyond mere good sense) they are either dull or extravagant. When the volatile salt has flown off, nothing but a _caput mortuum_ remains. They have infinite crotchets and caprices with their clocks and watches, which seem made for any thing but to tell the hour—gold-repeaters, watches with metal covers, clocks with hands to count the seconds. There is no escaping from quackery and impertinence, even in our attempts to calculate the waste of time. The years gallop fast enough for me, without remarking every moment as it flies; and farther, I must say I dislike a watch (whether of French or English manufacture) that comes to me like a footpad with its face muffled, and does not present its clear, open aspect like a friend, and point with its finger to the time of day. All this opening and shutting of dull, heavy cases (under pretence that the glass-lid is liable to be broken, or lets in the dust or air and obstructs the movement of the watch), is not to husband time, but to give trouble. It is mere pomposity and self-importance, like consulting a mysterious oracle that one carries about with one in one’s pocket, instead of asking a common question of an acquaintance or companion. There are two clocks which strike the hour in the room where I am. This I do not like. In the first place, I do not want to be reminded twice how the time goes (it is like the second tap of a saucy servant at your door when perhaps you have no wish to get up): in the next place, it is starting a difference of opinion on the subject, and I am averse to every appearance of wrangling and disputation. Time moves on the same, whatever disparity there may be in our mode of keeping count of it, like true fame in spite of the cavils and contradictions of the critics. I am no friend to repeating watches. The only pleasant association I have with them is the account given by Rousseau of some French lady, who sat up reading the _New Heloise_ when it first came out, and ordering her maid to sound the repeater, found it was too late to go to bed, and continued reading on till morning. Yet how different is the interest excited by this story from the account which Rousseau somewhere else gives of his sitting up with his father reading romances, when a boy, till they were startled by the swallows twittering in their nests at day-break, and the father cried out, half angry and ashamed—‘_Allons, mon fils; je suis plus enfant que toi!_’ In general, I have heard repeating watches sounded in stage-coaches at night, when some fellow-traveller suddenly awaking and wondering what was the hour, another has very deliberately taken out his watch, and pressing the spring, it has counted out the time; each petty stroke acting like a sharp puncture on the ear, and informing me of the dreary hours I had already passed, and of the more dreary ones I had to wait till morning.