Chapter XI: Introduction: , with Complete List of the 'suspiria.' (7)

This monstrous representation that the great war with France (1803-15) had for its object to prevent Napoleon from sitting on the throne of France--which recently, in contempt of all truth and common-sense, I have so repeatedly seen advanced--throws a man profoundly on the question of what _was_ the object of that war. Surely, in so far as we are concerned, the matter was settled at Amiens in the very first year of the century. December, 1799, Napoleon had been suffered by the unsteady public opinion of France--abhorring a master, and yet sensible that for the chief conscious necessity of France, viz., a developer of her latent martial powers, she must look for a master or else have her powers squandered--to mount the consular throne. He lived, he _could_ live, only by victorious war. Most perilous was the prospect for England. In the path which not Napoleon, but France, was now preparing to tread, and which was the path of Napoleon no otherwise than that he was the tool of France, was that servitor who must gratify her grand infirmity or else be rapidly extinguished himself, unhappily for herself, England was the main counter-champion. The course of honour left to England was too fatally the course of resistance. Resistance to what? To Napoleon personally? Not at all; but to Napoleon as pledged by his destiny to the prosecution of a French conquering policy. That personally England had no hostility to Napoleon is settled by the fact that she had at Amiens cheerfully conceded the superior power. Under what title? would have been the most childish of demurs. That by act she never conceded the title of emperor was the mere natural diplomatic result of never having once been at peace with Napoleon under that title. Else it was a point of entire indifference. Granting the consulship, she had granted all that could be asked. And what she opposed was the determined war course of Napoleon and the schemes of ultra-Polish partition to which Napoleon had privately tempted her under circumstances of no such sense as existed and still exist for Russia. This policy, as soon as exposed, and not before bitter insults to herself, England resisted. And therefore it is that at this day we live. But as to Napoleon, as apart from the policy of Napoleon, no childishness can be wilder.

At some unlucky moment when the Crown commanded unusual resources, the De Quinceys met with the fate ascribed, perhaps fabulously, to some small heavenly bodies (asteroids or what, I do not precisely know): on some dark day, by mistake perhaps, they exploded, and scattered their ruins all over the central provinces of England, where chiefly had lain their territorial influence. Especially in the counties of Leicester, Lincoln and Rutland were found fragments of the vast landed estates held by these potentates when Earls of Winchester.

The hatred of truth at first dawning--that instinct which makes you revolt from the pure beams which search the foul depths and abysses of error--is well illustrated by the action of the atmospheric currents, when blowing through an open window upon smoke. What do you see? Sometimes the impression is strong upon your _ocular_ belief that the window is driving the smoke in. You can hardly be convinced of the contrary--scarcely when five or seven minutes has absolutely rarefied the smoke so much that a book-lettering previously invisible has become even legible. And at last, when the fact, the result, the experience, has corrected the contradictory theory of the eye, you begin to suspect, without any aid from science, that there were two currents, one of which comes round in a curve and effects the exit for the other which the window had driven in; just as in the Straits of Gibraltar there is manifestly an upper current setting one way, which you therefore conjecture to argue a lower current setting the other, and thus redressing the equilibrium. Here the smoke corresponds to bits of chip or any loose suspended body in the Gibraltar current. What answers to the current of water is the air, and if the equilibrium _is_ kept up, the re-entrant current balances your retiring current, and the latter carries out the smoke entangled in itself. By the objection, say, of a child, there ought to be a re-entrant column of smoke, which there is not. For the air drives the smoke of the fire up the chimney, and of its own contribution the air has no smoke to give.

Or the Augean stable may image it. Doubtless when the first disturbance took place in the abominable mess, those acting would be apt to question for a moment whether it had not been more advisable to leave it alone.

Moralists say, 'Nobody will attack you, or hate you, or blame you for your virtues.' What falsehood! Not _as_ virtues, it may be in their eyes, but virtues, nevertheless. Connect with Kant the error of supposing _ætas parentum_, etc., to be the doctrine of sin.

Not for what you have done, but for what you are--not because in life you did forsake a wife and children--did endure to eat and drink and lie softly yourself whilst those who should have been as your heart-drops were starving: not because you did that so much is forgiven you, but because you were capable of that, therefore you are incapable of heaven.

_Immodesty._--The greatest mistake occurs to me now (Wednesday, April 17th, '44). A girl who should have been unhappily conscious of voluptuous hours, her you would call modest in case of her passing with downcast looks. But why, then, is she not so? That girl is immodest who reconciles to herself such things, and yet assumes the look of innocence.

_About Women._--A man brings his own idle preconceptions, and fancies that he has learned them from his experience.

Far more to be feared than any depth of serious love, however absorbing and apparently foolish, is that vicious condition in which trifling takes the place of all serious love, when women are viewed only as dolls, and addressed with an odious leer of affected knowingness as 'my dear,' wink, etc. Now to this tends the false condition of women when called 'the ladies.' On the other hand, what an awful elevation arises when each views in the other a creature capable of the same noble duties--she no less than he a creature of lofty aspirations; she by the same right a daughter of God as he a son of God; she bearing her eyes erect to the heavens no less than he!

_Low Degree._--We see often that this takes place very strongly and decidedly with regard to men, notoriously pleasant men and remarkably good-natured, which shows at once in what road the thing travels. And if such a nature should be combined with what Butler thinks virtue, it might be doubtful to which of the two the tribute of kind attentions were paid; but now seeing the true case, we know how to interpret this hypothetical case of Butler's accordingly.

'Visit the sins of the fathers,' etc. This people pretend to think monstrous. Yet what else in effect happens and must happen to Jews inheriting by filial obedience and natural sympathy all that anti-Christian hostility which prevailed in the age succeeding to that of Christ? What evil--of suffering, of penalties now or in reserve may be attached to this spirit of hostility--follows the children through all generations!

Case of Timoleon, whose killing of his brother might afterwards be read into X Y Z or into X a b according to his conduct (either into murder or patriotism), is a good illustration of synthesis.

To illustrate Cicero's argument in 'Pro Cælio' as to the frequency of men wild and dissipated in youth becoming eminent citizens, one might adduce this case from the word _Themistocles_ in the Index to the Græci Rhetorici. But I see or I fancy cause to notice this passage for the following cause: it contains only nine words, four in the first comma, five in the last, and of these nine four are taken up in noting the time [Greek: to prôton to telen]; ergo, five words record the remarkable revolution from one state to another, and the character of each state.

Two cases of young men's dissipation--1. Horace's record of his father's advice: 'Concessa,' etc.; 2. Cicero's 'Pro Cælio.'

_What Crotchets in every Direction!_--1. The Germans, or, let me speak more correctly, some of the Germans (and doubtless full of Hoch beer or strong drink), found out some thirty years ago that there were only three men of genius in the records of our planet. And who were they? (1) Homer; (2) Shakespeare; (3) Goethe. So that absolutely Milton was shut out from the constellation. Even he wanted a ticket, though Master Sorrows-of-Werther had one. The porter, it seems, fancied he had no marriage garment, a mistake which a mob might correct, saying, 'No marriage garment! then, damme, he shall have this fellow's' (viz., Goethe's). The trinity, according to these vagabonds, was complete without Milton, as the Roman pomp was full to the eye of the sycophant without the bust of Brutus.

2. Macaulay fancied there were only two men of genius in the reign of Charles II., viz., Milton and the tinker Bunyan.

3. Coleridge (p. 237, 'Table-Talk') fancied there were only two men of genius in his own generation: W. W. and Sir Humphrey Davy.

Jeremy Taylor having mentioned two religious men, St. Paul the Hermit and Sulpitius, as having atoned for some supposed foolish garrulities, the one by a three years' silence, the other by a lifelong silence, goes on to express his dissatisfaction with a mode of _rabiosa silentia_ so memorable as this.

Yet it is certain in silence there is wisdom, and there may be deep religion. And indeed it is certain, great knowledge, if it be without vanity, is the most severe bridle of the tongue. For so I have heard that all the noises and prating of the pool, the croaking of frogs and toads, is hushed and appeased upon the instant of bringing upon them the light of a candle or torch. Every beam of reason and ray of knowledge checks the dissoluteness of the tongue. 'Ut quisque contemplissimus est, ita solutissimæ linguæ est,' said Seneca.

The silence must be [Greek: kairios], not sullen and ill-natured; 'nam sic etiam tacuisse nocet'?--of all things in the world a prating religion and much talk in holy things does most profane the mysteriousness of it, and dismantles its regard, and makes cheap its reverence and takes off fear and awfulness, and makes it loose and garish, and like the laughters of drunkenness.

_Public Morality._--It ought not to be left to a man's interest merely to protect the animals in his power. Dogs are no longer worked in the way they were, although the change must have arbitrarily robbed many poor men of half bread. But in a case as valuable as that of the horse, it has been known that a man has incurred the total ruin of a series of horses against even his own gain or self-interest. There ought to be a _custos veteranorum_, a keeper and protector of the poor brutes who are brought within the pale of social use and service. The difficulty, you say! Legislation has met and dealt effectively with far more complicated and minute matters than that. For, after all, consider how few of the brute creation on any wide and permanent scale are brought into the scheme of human life. Some birds as food, some fishes as ditto; beeves as food and _sometimes_ as appliers of strength; horses in both characters. These with elephants and camels, mules, asses, goats, dogs, and sheep, cats and rabbits, gold-fishes and singing-birds, really compose the whole of our animal equipage harnessed to the car of human life.

3.--On Words And Style.

There are a number of words which, unlocked from their absurd imprisonment, would become extensively useful. We should say, for instance, 'condign honours,' 'condign treatment' (treatment appropriate to the merits), thus at once realizing two rational purposes, viz., giving a useful function to a word, which at present has none, and also providing an intelligible expression for an idea which otherwise is left without means of uttering itself except through a ponderous circumlocution. Precisely in the same circumstances of idle and absurd sequestration stands the term _polemic_. At present, according to the popular usage, this word has some fantastic inalienable connection with controversial theology. There cannot be a more childish chimera. No doubt there is a polemic side or aspect of theology; but so there is of _all_ knowledge; so there is of _every_ science. The radical and characteristic idea concerned in this term _polemic_ is found in our own Parliamentary distinction of _the good speaker_, as contrasted with _the good debater_. The good speaker is he who unfolds the whole of a question in its affirmative aspects, who presents these aspects in their just proportions, and according to their orderly and symmetrical deductions from each other. But the good debater is he who faces the negative aspects of the question, who meets sudden objections, has an answer for any momentary summons of doubt or difficulty, dissipates seeming inconsistencies, and reconciles the geometrical smoothness of _à priori_ abstractions with the coarse angularities of practical experience. The great work of Ricardo is of necessity, and almost in every page, polemic; whilst very often the particular objections or difficulties, to which it replies, are not indicated at all, being spread through entire systems, and assumed as _precognita_ that are familiar to the learned student.

Writing to scholastic persons, I should be ashamed to explain, but hoping that I write to many also of the non-scholastic, and even of the unlearned, I rejoice to explain the proper sense of the word _implicit_. As the word _condign_, so capable of an extended sense, is yet constantly restricted to one miserable association, viz., that with the word _punishment_ (for we never say, as we might say, 'condign rewards'), so also the word _implicit_ is in English always associated with the word _faith_. People say that Papists have an _implicit_ faith in their priests. What they mean is this: If a piece of arras, or a carpet, is folded up, then it is _implicit_ according to the original Latin word; if it is unfolded and displayed, then it is _explicit_. Therefore, when a poor illiterate man (suppose a bog-trotter of Mayo or Galway) says to his priest (as in effect always he _does_ say), 'Sir, I cannot comprehend all this doctrine; bless you, I have not the thousandth part of the learning for it, so it is impossible that I should directly believe it. But your reverence believes it, the thing is _wrapt up_ (implicit) in you, and I believe it on that account.' Here the priest believes explicitly: _he_ believes implicitly.

_Modern._--Is it not shameful that to this hour even literary men of credit and repute cannot for the life of them interpret this line from 'As You Like It'--

'Full of wise saws and modern instances'?

A man as well read as Mr. Theodore Hook, and many a hundred beside, have seriously understood it to mean 'Full of old proverbs, the traditionary wisdom of nations, and of illustrative examples drawn from modern experience.' Nonsense! The meaning is, 'Full of old maxims and proverbs, and of trivial attempts at argument.' That is, tediously redundant in rules derived from the treasury of popular proverbs,' and in feeble attempts at connecting these general rules with the special case before him. The superannuated old magistrate sets out with a proverb, as for instance this, that _the mother of mischief is no bigger than a midge's wing_. That proverb forms his major proposition. In his minor proposition he goes on to argue that the trespass charged upon the particular prisoner before him was very little bigger than a midge's wing. And then in his conclusion triumphantly he infers, Ergo, the prisoner at the bar is the mother of mischief. But says the constable, 'Please, your worship, the prisoner is a man, a hulking clodhopper, some six or seven feet high, with a strong black beard.' 'Well, that makes no odds,' rejoins his worship; 'then he's the father of mischief. Clerk, make out his mittimus.'

The word 'instance' (from the scholastic _instantia_) never meant _example_ in Shakespeare's age. The word 'modern' never once in Shakespeare means what it means to _us_ in these days. Even the monkish Latin word 'modernus' fluctuated in meaning, and did not always imply _recens_, _neotericus_; but in Shakespeare never. What _does_ it mean in Shakespeare? Once and for ever it means _trivial_, _inconsiderable_. Dr. Johnson had too much feeling not to perceive that the word 'modern' had this value in Shakespeare's acceptation; practically, he felt that it _availed_ for that sense, but theoretically he could not make out the _why_. It means that, said the Doctor; but feebly and querulously, like one sick of the pip, he added, 'Yet I don't know why.' Don't you? Now, we _do_. The fact is, Dr. Johnson was in a fit of the dismals at that time; he had recently committed a debauch of tea, having exceeded his usual allowance by seventy-five cups, so that naturally he had a 'curmurring' in the stomach. Else he could not have failed to see what we are now going to explain with a wet finger. Everybody is aware that to be _material_ is the very opposite of being trivial. What is 'material' in a chain of evidence, or in an argument, can never be trifling. Now, therefore, if you can find a word that will flatly contradict this word _material_, then you have a capital term for expressing what is trivial. Well, you find in the word _immaterial_ all that you are seeking. 'It is quite immaterial' will suit Mr. Touts's purpose just as well as 'It is really of no consequence, of no consequence in the world.' To say in a law court that the objection is immaterial is otherwise to say that it is trivial. Here, then, is the first step: to contradict the idea of _material_ is effectually to express the idea of _trivial_. Let us now see if we can find any other contradiction to the idea of _material_, for one antithesis to that idea will express as well as any other antithesis the counterpole of the trivial. Now, clearly the substance of a thing, the material out of which it is made, is oftentimes of great importance by comparison with its shape, fashion, or mode. It is of value in your eyes to know whether your family plate is in substance of gold or of silver; but whether such a vessel is round or square, ornamented with a wreath of acanthus or ivy, supported by tigers or by fawns, may be a trivial consideration, or even worse; for the fashion of your plate, after it has once become obsolete, may count against you for so much loss as something that will cost a good deal of money to alter. Here, then, is another contradiction to the material, and therefore another expression for the trivial: matter, as against vacancy or the privation of matter, yields the antithesis of material or immaterial, substantial and unsubstantial; matter, as against form, yields the antithesis of substance and shape, or otherwise of material and modal--what is matter and what is the mere modification of matter, its variation by means of ornament or shape.

The word 'modern' is therefore in Shakespeare uniformly to be pronounced with the long _o_, as in the words m_o_dal, m_o_dish, and never with the short _o_ of m[)o]derate, m[)o]dest, or our present word m[)o]dern. And the law under which Shakespeare uses the word is this: whatsoever is so trivial as to fall into the relation of a mere shape or fleeting mode to a permanent substance, _that_ with Shakespeare is modish, or (according to his form) modern.[29] Thus, a weak, trivial argument (or _instantia_, the scholastic term for an argument not latent merely, or merely having the office of sustaining a truth, but urged as an objection, having the polemic office of contradicting an opponent) is in Shakespeare's idiom, when viewed as against a substantial argument, a _modern_ argument.

Again, when Cleopatra, defending herself against the perfidy of her steward, wishes to impress upon Octavius that any articles which she may have kept back from the inventory of her personal chattels are but trifles, she expresses this by saying that they are but

'Such as we greet modern friends withal;'

_i.e._, such as we bestow, at welcoming or at parting, upon the slightest acquaintances. The whole stress of the logic lies upon the epithet _modern_--for simply as friends, had they been substantial friends, they might have levied any amount from the royal lady's bounty; kingdoms would have been slight gifts in her eyes, and _that_ would soon have been objected to by her conqueror. But her argument is, that the people to whom such gifts would be commensurate are mere _modish_ friends, persons known to us on terms of bare civility, people with whom we exchange salutations in the street, or occasional calls, what now we call acquaintances, for whom in Shakespeare's time there was no distinguishing expression.

Another case we remember at this moment in 'All's Well that Ends Well.' It occurs in Act II., at the very opening of scene iii.; the particular edition, the only one we can command at the moment, is an obscure one published by Scott, Webster and Geary, Charterhouse Square, 1840, and we mention it thus circumstantially because the passage is falsely punctuated; and we have little doubt that in all other editions, whether with or without the false punctuation, the syntax is generally misapprehended. In reality, the false punctuation has itself grown out of the false apprehension of the syntax, and not _vice versâ_. Thus the words stand _literatim et punctuatim_: 'They say, miracles are past: and we have our philosophical persons to make modern and familiar things, supernatural and causeless.' The comma ought to have been placed after 'familiar,' the sense being this--and we have amongst us sceptical and irreligious people to represent as trivial and of daily occurrence things which in reality are supernatural and causeless (that is, not lying amongst the succession of physical causes and effects, but sent as miracles by the immediate agency of God). According to the true sense, _things supernatural and causeless_ must be understood as the subject, of which _modern and familiar_ is the predicate.

Mr. Grindon fancies that _frog_ is derived from the syllable [Greek: trach (k)] of [Greek: batrachos]. This will cause some people to smile, and recall Menage's pleasantry about Alfana, the man of Orlando; It is true that _frog_ at first sight seems to have no letter in common except the snarling letter (_litera canina_). But this is not so; the _a_ and the _o_, the _s_ and the _k_, are perhaps essentially the same. And even in the case where, positively and literally, not a single letter is identical, it is odd, but undeniable, that the two words may be nearly allied as mother and child. One instance is notorious, but it is worth citing for a purpose of instructive inference. 'Journal,' as a French word, or, if you please, as an English word--whence came that? Unquestionably and demonstrably from the Latin word _dies_, in which, however, visibly there is not one letter the same as any one of the seven that are in journal. Yet mark the rapidity of the transition. _Dies_ (a day) has for its derivative adjective _daily_ the word _diurnus_. Now, the old Roman pronunciation of _diu_ was exactly the same as _gio_, both being pronounced as our English _jorn_. Here, in a moment, we see the whole--_giorno_, a day, was not derived directly from _dies_, but secondarily through _diurnus_. Then followed _giornal_, for a diary, or register of a day, and from that to French, as also, of course, the English _journal_. But the _moral_ is, that when to the eye no letter is the same, may it not be so to the ear? Already the _di_ of _dies_ anticipates and enfolds the _giorno_.

Mr. Grindon justly remarks upon the tendency, in many instances, of the German _ss_ to reappear in English forms as _t_. Thus _heiss_ (hot), _fuss_ (foot), etc. These are Mr. Grindon's own examples, and a striking confirmation occurs in the old English _hight_, used for _he was called_, and again for the participle _called_, and again, in the 'Met. Romanus,' for _I was called_: 'Lorde, he saide, I highth Segramour.' Now, the German is _heissen_ (to be called). And this is a tendency hidden in many long ages: as, for instance, in Greek, every person must remember the transition of [Greek: tt] and [Greek: ss] as in [Greek: thattô], [Greek: thassô].

_On Pronunciation and Spelling._--If we are to surrender the old vernacular sound of the _e_ in certain situations to a ridiculous criticism of the _eye_, and in defiance of the protests rising up clamorously from every quarter of old English scholarship, let us at least know to _what_ we surrender. What letter is to usurp the vacant seat? What letter? retorts the purist--why, an _e_, to be sure. An _e_? And do you call _that_ an _e_? Do you pronounce 'ten' as if it were written 'tun', or 'men' as if written 'mun'? The 'Der' in Derby, supposing it tolerable at all to alter its present legitimate sound, ought, then, to be pronounced as the 'Der' in the Irish name Derry, not as 'Dur'; and the 'Ber' in Berkeley not as 'Bur,' but as the 'Ber' in Beryl. But the whole conceit has its origin in pure ignorance of English archæology, and in the windiest of all vanities, viz., the attempt to harmonize the spelling and the pronunciation of languages.

Naturally, it fills one with contempt for these 'Derby' purists to find that their own object, the very purpose they are blindly and unconsciously aiming at, has been so little studied or steadily contemplated by them in anything approaching to its whole extent. Why, upon the principle which they silently and virtually set up, though carrying it out so contradictorily (driving out an _a_ on the plea that it is not an _e_, only to end by substituting, _and without being aware_, the still remoter letter _u_), the consequence must be that the whole language would go to wreck. Nine names out of every ten would need tinkering. 'London,' for instance, no more receives the normal sound of the _o_ in either of its syllables than does the _e_ in 'Derby.' The normal sound of the _o_ is that heard in 'song,' 'romp,' 'homage,' 'drop.' Nevertheless, the sound given to the _o_ in 'London,' 'Cromwell,' etc., which strictly is the short sound of _u_ in 'lubber,' 'butter,' etc., is a secondary sound of _o_ in particular combinations, though not emphatically its proper sound. The very same defence applies to the _e_ in 'Berkeley,' etc. It is the legitimate sound of the English _e_ in that particular combination, viz., when preceding an _r_, though not its normal sound. But think of the wild havoc that would be made of other more complex anomalies, if these purists looked an inch in advance. Glocester or Gloucester, Worcester, Cirencester, Pontefract, etc. What elaborate and monstrous pronunciations would they affix to these names? The whole land would cease to recognise itself. And that the purists should never have contemplated these veritable results, this it is which seals and rivets one's contempt for them.

Now, if such harmony were at all desirable (whereas, on the contrary, we should thus be carrying ruin into the traditions and obliteration into the ethnological links of languages, industriously, in fact, throwing up insuperable obstacles in the path of historical researches), it would be far better, instead of adjusting the pronunciation to the imaginary value of the spelling, inversely to adjust the spelling to the known and established pronunciation, as a certain class of lunatics amongst ourselves, viz., the _phonetic gang_, have for some time been doing systematically.

Here, therefore, I hope is one fixed point. Here there is anchorage. The usage is the rule, at any rate; and the law of analogy takes effect only where _that_ cannot be decisively ascertained.

_The Latin Word 'Felix.'_--The Romans appear to me to have had no term for _happy_, which argues that they had not the idea. _Felix_ is tainted with the idea of success, and is thus palpably referred to life as a competition, which for Romans every distinguished life was. In fact, apart from his city the Roman was nothing. Too poor to have a villa or any mode of retirement, it is clear that the very idea of Roman life supposes for the vast majority a necessity of thick crowded intercourse, without the possibility of solitude. I, for my peculiar constitution of mind, to whom solitude has in all periods of life been more of a necessity almost than air, view with special horror the life of a Roman or Athenian. All the morning he had to attend a factious hustings or a court--assemblies deliberative or judicial. Here only he was somebody, and yet, however, somebody through others. Combining with one leader and many underlings like himself, he also became a power; but in himself and for himself, after all, he was consciously nothing. When Cicero speaks of his _nunquam minus Solus quam cum solus_, he is announcing what he feels to be, and knows will be, accepted as a very extraordinary fact. For even _in rure_ it is evident that friends made it a duty of friendship to seek out and relieve their rusticating friends.

_On the Distinction between 'Rhetorica utens' and 'Rhetorica docens'._--It was a perplexity, familiar to the experience of the Schoolmen, that oftentimes one does not know whether to understand by the term _logic_ the act and process of reasoning involved and latent in any series of connected propositions, or this same act and process formally abstracting itself as an art and system of reasoning. For instance, if you should happen to say, 'Dr. Isaac Watts, the English Nonconformist, was a good man, and a clever man; but alas! for his logic, what can his best friend say for it? The most charitable opinion must pronounce it at the best so, so'--in such a case, what is it that you would be understood to speak of? Would it be the general quality of the Doctor's reasoning, the style and character of his philosophical method, or would it be the particular little book known as 'The Doctor: his _Logic_,' price 5s., bound in calf, and which you might be very shy of touching with a pair of tongs, for fear of dimming their steel polish, so long as your wife's eye was upon your motions? The same ambiguity affects many other cases. For instance, if you heard a man say, 'The _rhetoric_ of Cicero is not fitted to challenge much interest,' you might naturally understand it of the particular style and rhetorical colouring--which was taxed with being florid; nay, Rhodian; nay, even Asiatic--that characterizes that great orator's compositions; or, again, the context might so restrain the word as to _force_ it into meaning the particular system or theory of rhetoric addressed to Herennius, a system which (being traditionally ascribed to Cicero) is usually printed amongst his works. Here, and in scores of similar cases, lies often a trap for the understanding; but the Schoolmen evaded this trap by distinguishing between 'Rhetorica _utens_,' and 'Rhetorica _docens_,' between the rhetoric that laid down or delivered didactically the elements of oratorical persuasion as an art to be learned, and rhetoric, on the other hand, as a creative energy that _wielded_ these elements by the mouth of Pericles in the year 440 B. C., or by the mouth of Demosthenes, 340 B. C.; between rhetoric the scholastic art and rhetoric the heaven-born _power;_ between the rhetoric of Aristotle that illuminated the solitary student, and the rhetoric of Demosthenes that ran along in rolling thunders to the footstool of Artaxerxes' throne. Oh, these dear spindle-shanked Schoolmen! they were people, respected reader, not to be sneezed at. What signifies having spindle-shanks?

_Synonyms._--A representative and a delegate, according to Burke, are identical; but there is the same difference as between a person who on his own results of judgment manages the interests of X, and a person merely reporting the voice of X. Probably there never was a case which so sharply illustrated the liability of goodish practical understanding to miss, to fail in seeing, an object lying right before the eyes; and that is more wonderful in cases where the object is not one of multitude, but exists almost in a state of insulation. At the coroner's inquest on a young woman who died from tight-lacing, acting, it was said, in combination with a very full meal of animal food, to throw the heart out of position, Mr. Wakely pronounced English or British people all distorted in the spine, whereas _Continental_ people were all right. Continental! How unlimited an idea! Why, it meant nothing; it defines nothing, limits nothing, excludes nothing. Who or what is Continental? Apparently it means anyone out of 240 millions not being one of the 27 millions in the Britannides. Every man escapes an insane folly who happens to breathe an air E. (N. E., S. E., N. N. E., S. S. E., etc.) of the Britannides. Vanity, the inevitable wish to improve, or rather to avail, one's self of a natural means offered for deepening and marking out the natural outline of the shape, _i.e._, of the sexual characteristics, has no effect, dies out, the instant that a family is one of those who have the privilege of basking anywhere 2,000 miles E. or 2,000 miles N. and S.!

A whistling to a horse: Poppysme (_vide_ Whistling, Lat. Dict.); but poppysme is a patting, a clapping, on the back, neck, or, doubtless, wherever the animal is sensible of praise.

'Takest away.' This beautiful expression, though exquisitely treated by position--

'That all evil thoughts and aims
Takest away,'

is yet originally borrowed by Mr. W. from the Litany: 'O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world.'

In style to explain the true character of note-writing--how compressed and unrambling and direct it ought to be, and _illustrate_ by the villainous twaddle of many Shakespearian notes.

_Syllogism._--In the _Edin. Advertiser_ for Friday, January 25, 1856, a passage occurs taken from _Le Nord_ (or _Journal du Nord_), or some paper whose accurate title I do not know, understood to be Russian in its leanings, which makes a most absurd and ignorant use of this word. The Allies are represented as addressing an argument to Russia, amounting, I think, to this, viz.: that, in order to test her sincerity, would it not be well for Russia at once to cede such insulated points of territory as were valuable to Russia or suspicious to the Allies simply as furnishing means for invasion of Turkey? And this argument is called a _syllogism_.

'_Laid in wait_ for him.'--This false phrase occurs in some article (a Crimea article, I suppose) in the same _Advertiser_ of January 25. And I much doubt whether any ordinary ear would reconcile itself to _lay in wait_ (as a _past_ tense) even when instructed in its propriety.

Those Scotticisms are worst which are nonsensical, as _e.g._:

'Whenever he died
Fully more.'

_Timeous_ and _dubiety_ are bad, simply as not authorized by any but local usage. A word used only in Provence or amongst the Pyrenees could not be employed by a classical French writer, except under a _caveat_ and for a special purpose.

Plent_y_, used under the absurd misleading of its terminal 'y' as an adjective. _Alongst_, remember _of_; able _for_, the worse _of_ liquor, to call _for, to go the length_ of, as applied to a distance; 'I don't think _it_,' instead of 'I don't think _so_.'

In the _Lady's Newspaper_ for Saturday, May 8, 1852 (No. 280), occurs the very worst case of exaggerated and incredible mixed silliness and vulgarity connected with the use of _assist_ for _help_ at the dinner-table that I have met with. It occurs in the review of a book entitled 'The Illustrated London Cookery Book,' by Frederick Bishop. Mr. Bishop, it seems, had 'enjoyed the office of cuisinier at the Palace, and among some of our first nobility.' He has, by the way, an introductory 'Philosophy of Cookery.' Two cases occur of this matchless absurdity:

1. An ideal carver is described: he, after carving, 'is as cool and collected as ever, and _assists_ the portions he has carved with as much grace as he displayed in carving the fowl.'

2. Further on, when contrasting, not the carvers, but the things _to be_ carved, coming to '_Neck of Veal_,' he says of the carver: 'Should the vertebræ have not been jointed by the butcher, you would find yourself in the position of the ungraceful carver, being compelled to exercise a degree of strength which should never be suffered to appear, very possibly, too, _assisting_ gravy in a manner not contemplated by the person unfortunate enough to receive it.'

_Genteel_ is the vulgarest and most plebeian of all known words. Accordingly (and strange it is that the educated users of this word should not perceive that fact), aristocratic people--people in the most undoubted _élite_ of society as to rank or connections--utterly ignore the word. They are aware of its existence in English dictionaries; they know that it slumbers in those vast repositories; they even apprehend your meaning in a vague way when you employ it as an epithet for assigning the pretensions of an individual or a family. Generally it is understood to imply that the party so described is in a position to make morning calls, to leave cards, to be presentable for anything to the contrary apparent in manners, style of conversation, etc. But these and other suggestions still leave a vast area unmapped of blank charts in which the soundings are still doubtful.

The word 'genteel' is so eminently vulgar apparently for this reason, that it presents a non-vulgar distinction under a gross and vulgar conception of that distinction. The true and central notion, on which the word revolves, is elevating; but, by a false abstraction of its elements, it is degraded. And yet in parts of this island where the progress of refinement is torpid, and the field of vision is both narrow and unchanging in all that regards the _nuances_ of manners, I have remarked that the word 'genteel' maintains its old advantageous acceptation; and as a proof of this, eminent and even revolutionary thinkers born and bred in such provincial twilight, use the word as if untainted and hardly aware that it is flyblown.

Among ourselves it is certain that a peculiar style of gossip, of babble, and of miniature intriguing, invests the atmosphere of little 'townishness,' such as often entangles the more thoughtful and dignified of the residents in troublesome efforts at passive resistance or active counter-action. In dealing with this matter, Mr. Wordsworth instanced Northampton and Nottingham; but a broader difference could hardly be than between these towns. And just as 'genteel' remains the vulgarest of all words, so the words 'simple' and 'simplicity,' amongst all known words, offer the most complex and least simple of ideas.

Having made this deprecation on behalf of my own criminality in using such a word as 'genteel,' I go on to say that whilst Northampton was (and _is_, I believe) of all towns the most genteel, Nottingham for more than two centuries has been the most insurrectionary and in a scarlet excess democratic. Nottingham, in fact, has always resembled the Alexandria of ancient days; whilst Northampton could not be other than aristocratic as the centre of a county more thickly gemmed by the ancestral seats of our nobility than any beside in the island. Norwich, again, though a seat of manufacturing industry, has always been modified considerably by a literary body of residents.

'Mein alter Herr' (von Stein) 'pflegte dann wohl scherzend zu sagen: Ich müsse von irgend eine Hexe meinen Altem als ein Wechselbalg in's Nest gelegt seyn; ich gehöre offenbar einem Stamm amerikanischer wilden an, und habe noch die Hühnerhundnase zum Auswittern des verschiedenen Blutes.' Arndt, speaking of his power to detect at sight (when seen at a distance) Russians, English, etc., says that Von Stein replied thus in his surprise. But I have cited the passage as one which amply illustrates the suspensive form of sentence in the German always indicated by a colon (:), thus: 'zu sagen: Ich müsse'--to say that I must have been (p. 164).

The active sense of _fearful_, viz., that which causes and communicates terror--not that which receives terror--was undoubtedly in Shakespeare's age, but especially amongst poets, the preponderant sense. Accordingly I am of opinion that even in neutral cases, such as are open indifferently to either sense, viz., that which affrights, or that which is itself affrighted, the bias in Shakespeare's interpretation of the feeling lay towards the former movement. For instance, in one of his sonnets:

'Oh, fearful meditation! where, alas!'

the true construction I believe to be--not this: Oh, though _deriving_ terror from the circumstances surrounding thee, _suffering_ terror from the _entourage_ of considerations pursuing thee; but this: Oh, thought impressing and creating terror, etc. A 'fearful' agent in Shakespeare's use is not one that shrinks in alarm from the act, but an agent that causes others to shrink; not panic-struck, but panic-striking.

Miss Edgeworth, let me remark, commits trespasses on language that are really past excusing. In one place she says that a man 'had a _contemptible_ opinion' of some other man's understanding. Such a blunder is not of that class which usage sanctions, and an accuracy not much short of pedantry would be argued in noticing: it is at once illiterate and vulgar in the very last degree. I mean that it is common amongst vulgar people, and them only. It ranks, for instance, with the common formula of '_I_ am agreeable, if you prefer it.'

Style is the disentangling of thoughts or ideas reciprocally involved in each other.

4.--THEOLOGICAL AND RELIGIOUS.

Religion under any of its aspects, revealing or consoling--religion in connection with any of its affinities, ethics or metaphysics, when _self_-evoked by a person of earnest nature, not imposed from without by the necessities of monastic life, not caught as a contagion from the example of friends that surround you, argues some 'vast volcanic agency' moving at subterraneous depths below the ordinary working mind of daily life, and entitled by its own intrinsic grandeur to ennoble the curiosity (else a petty passion) which may put questions as to its origin. In any case of religion arising, as a spontaneous birth, in the midst of alien forces, it is inevitable to ask for its _why_ and its _whence_. Religion considered as a sentiment of devotion, as a yearning after some dedication to an immeasurable principle of that noblest temple among all temples--'the upright heart and pure,' or religion, again, as the apprehension of some mighty synthesis amongst truths dimly perceived heretofore amidst separating clouds, but now brought into strict indissoluble connection, proclaims a revolution so great that it is otherwise not to be accounted for than as the breaking out of a germ of the supernatural in man as a seed from a hitherto barren soil.

Sin is that secret word, that dark _aporréton_ of the human race, undiscoverable except by express revelation, which having once been laid in the great things of God as a germinal principle, has since blossomed into a vast growth of sublime ideas known only to those nations who have lived under the moulding of Scriptural truth--and comprehending _all_ functions of the Infinite operatively familiar to man. Yes, I affirm that there is no form through which the Infinite reveals itself in a sense comprehensible by man and adequate to man; that there is no sublime agency which _compresses_ the human mind from infancy so as to mingle with the moments of its growth, positively none but has been in its whole origin--in every part--and exclusively developed out of that tremendous mystery which lurks under the name of sin.

Yes, I affirm that even in its dreams every Christian child is invested by an atmosphere of sublimity unknown to the greatest of Pagan philosophers: that golden rays reach it by two functions of the Infinite; and that these, in common with those emanations of the Infinite that do not settle upon the mind until mature years, are all projections--derivations or counterpositions--from the obscure idea of sin; could not have existed under any previous condition; and for a Pagan mind would not have been intelligible.

_Sin._--It is not only that the Infinite arises as part of the entire system resting on sin, but specifically from sin apart from its counterforces or reactions, viz., from sin as a thing, and the only thing originally shadowy and in a terrific sense mysterious.

_Stench._--I believe that under Burke's commentary, this idea would become a high test of the doctrine of the Infinite. He pronounces it sublime, or sublime in cases of intensity. Now, first of all, the intense state of everything or anything is but a mode of power, that idea or element or moment of greatness under a varied form. Here, then, is nothing _proper_ or separately peculiar to stench: it is not stench _as_ stench, but stench as a mode or form of sensation, capable therefore of intensification. It is but a case under what we may suppose a general Kantian rule--that every sensation runs through all gradations, from the lowest or most obscure and nascent to the highest. Secondly, however, pass over to the contemplation of stench _as_ stench: then I affirm--that as simply expounding the decay, and altering or spoiling tendency or state of all things--simply as a register of imperfection, and of one which does not (as ruins to the eye) ever put on a pleasing transitional aspect, it is merely disagreeable, but also at the same time mean. For the imperfection is merely transitional and fleeting, not absolute. First, midst and last, it is or can be grand when it reverts or comes round upon its mediating point, or point of reaction.

The arrangement of my Infinite must be thus: After having expounded the idea of holiness which I must show to be now potent, proceed to show that the Pagan Gods did not realize and did not meet this idea; that then came the exposure of the Pagan Gods and the conscious presence of a new force among mankind, which opened up the idea of the Infinite, through the awakening perception of holiness.

I believe that in every mode of existence, which probably is always by an incarnation, the system of flesh is made to yield the organs that express the alliance of man with the Infinite. Thus the idea of mystery, [Greek: aporrêta], finds its organ of expression in the sensualities of the human race. Again, the crime, whatever it were, and the eternal pollution is expressed in these same organs. Also, the prolongation of the race so as to find another system is secured by the same organs.

Generally, that is, for a million against a unit, the awful mystery by which the fearful powers of death, and sorrow, and pain, and sin are locked into parts of a whole; so as, in fact, to be repetitions, reaffirmations of each other under a different phase--this is nothing, does not exist. Death sinks to a mere collective term--a category--a word of convenience for purposes of arrangement. You depress your hands, and, behold! the system disappears; you raise them, it reappears. This is nothing--a cipher, a shadow. Clap your hands like an Arabian girl, and all comes back. Unstop your ears, and a roar as of St. Lawrence enters: stop your ears, and it is muffled. To and fro; it is and it is not--is not and is. Ah, mighty heaven, that such a mockery should cover the whole vision of life! It is and it is not; and on to the day of your death you will still have to learn what is the truth.

The eternal now through the dreadful loom is the overflowing future poured back into the capacious reservoir of the past. All the active element lies in that infinitesimal _now_. The future is not except by relation; the past is not at all, and the present but a sign of a nexus between the two.

God's words require periods, so His counsels. He cannot precipitate them any more than a man in a state of happiness _can_ commit suicide. Doubtless it is undeniable that a man may arm his hand with a sword: and that his flesh will be found penetrable to the sword, happy or not. But this apparent physical power has no existence, no value for a creature having a double nature: the moral nature not only indisposes him to use his power, but really creates a far greater antagonist power.

This God--too great to be contemplated steadily by the loftiest of human eyes; too approachable and condescending to be shunned by the meanest in affliction: realizing thus in another form that reconcilement of extremes, which St. Paul observed: far from all created beings, yet also very near.

'A conviction that they needed a Saviour was growing amongst men.' How? In what sense? Saviour from what? You can't be saved from nothing. There must be a danger, an evil threatening, before even in fancy you can think of a deliverer. Now, what evil was there existing to a Pagan? Sin? Monstrous! No such idea ever dawned upon the Pagan intellect. Death? Yes; but that was inalienable from his nature. Pain and disease? Yes; but these were perhaps inalienable also. Mitigated they might be, but it must be by human science, and the progress of knowledge. Grief? Yes; but this was inalienable from life. Mitigated it might be, but by superior philosophy. From what, then, was a Saviour to save? If nothing to save from, how any Saviour? But here arises as the awful of awfuls to me, the deep, deep exposure of the insufficient knowledge and sense of what is peculiar to Christianity. To imagine some sense of impurity, etc., leading to a wish for a Saviour in a Pagan, is to defraud Christianity of all its grandeur. If Paganism could develop the want, it is not at all clear that Paganism did not develop the remedy. Heavens! how deplorable a blindness! But did not a Pagan lady feel the insufficiency of earthly things for happiness? No; because any feeling tending in that direction would be to her, as to all around her, simply a diseased feeling, whether from dyspepsia or hypochondria, and one, whether diseased or not, worthless for practical purposes. It would have to be a Christian lady, if something far beyond, something infinite, were not connected with it, depending on it. But if this were by you ascribed to the Pagan lady, then _that_ is in other words to make her a Christian lady already.

_Exhibition of a Roman Dialogue on Sin._--What! says the ignorant and unreflecting modern Christian. Do you mean to tell me that a Roman, however buried in worldly objects, would not be startled at hearing of a Saviour? Now, hearken.

ROMAN. Saviour! What do you mean? Saviour for what? In good faith, my friend, you labour under some misconception. I am used to rely on myself for all the saving that I need. And, generally speaking, if you except the sea, and those cursed north-east winds, I know of no particular danger.

CHRISTIAN. Oh, my friend, you totally mistake the matter. I mean saving from sin.

ROMAN. Saving from a fault, that is--well, what sort of a fault? Or, how should a man, that you say is no longer on earth, save me from any fault? Is it a book to warn me of faults that He has left?

CHRISTIAN. Why, yes. Not that He wrote Himself; but He talked, and His followers have recorded His views. But still you are quite in the dark. Not faults, but the fountain of all faults, that is what He will save you from.

ROMAN. But how? I can understand that by illuminating my judgment in general He might succeed in making me more prudent.

CHRISTIAN. 'Judgment,' 'prudent'--these words show how wide by a whole hemisphere you are of the truth. It is your will that He applies His correction to.

ROMAN. 'Will!' why I've none but peaceable and lawful designs, I assure you. Oh! I begin to see. You think me a partner with those pirates that we just spoke to.

CHRISTIAN. Not at all, my friend. I speak not of designs or intentions. What I mean is, the source of all desires--what I would call your wills, your whole moral nature.