CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Cornell University Library PR 1363.R42 1908 Representative essays, comprising twelve 3 1924 013 336 650 The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013336650 " The Jirst volume furnishes the most satisfactory history of Eng- lish letters from the beginning, up to but not including Chaucer, that we have." — The Independent. —THE— CAMBRIDGE HISTORY —OF— ENGLISH LITERATURE Edited by A. W. WARD, Litt. D., Master of Peterhouse, and A. R. WALLER, M.A., Peterhouse To be in 14 Volumes, Royal 8vo, of about 600 pages each. Price per volume, $2.50 net.' Subscriptions received for the complete work, at $31.^0 net, payable at the rate of $z.z^ on the notification of the publication of each volume. Now Ready Vol. I. — From the Beginnings to the Cycles of Romance. Vol. II.— The End of the Middle Ages. THE Cambridge History of English Literature will cover the i whole course of English literature from the origins to the close of the Victorian age. Each division will be the work of a writer who has been accepted as an authority on the subject, while the editors will retain the responsibility for the character of the work as a whole. The list of contributors includes American as well as English and Continental scholars. The work will appeal strongly to readers in general, as well as to the literary student. Facts that have Ibeen duly verified, rather than surmises and theories, however interesting, form the foundation of the work. Controversy and partisanship of every kind are scrupulously avoided. It is believed that the work will furnish a comprehensive, strictly accurate, impartial, and impersonal study of the development of the English language and literature. Send for Pull Descriptive Circular G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK LONDON REPRESENTATIVE ESSAYS COMPRISING TWELVE UNABRIDGED 1 ESSAYS BY Hrviiig Xamb 2>e (Sluinces Emerson amoio Tories lowell (laclsle ^acaulas fftouOe jfrceman COMPILED BY (Bladstone GEORGE HAVEN PUTNAM, Lirr. D. J^ G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK & LONDON tibc IRnfcfterbocftec iprees 1908 Copyright, i88s BY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS Zbe fsnicliei'bacliei pcees, nevD Kori; PREFACE. The present volume has been prepared with a view to bringing together representative essays by nineteenth-century masters of the essay form. , It voices the opinions of different schools of thought, and each of its selections may fairly be called a document in English style. The variety a*d charm that characterize Representative Essays will, it is hoped, com- mend it to the good graces of the general reader, while to teachers and students it cannot fail, of itself, to afford an opportunity for the comparative study of the literary methods of a group of the best modern English prose stylists. It should be added that only complete essays are included here, and so the thoughts and arguments of each of the several writers find full expression. G. H. P. Ui CONTENTS. PAGE The Mutability of Literature . . , i By Washington Irving. Imperfect Sympathies . . . . .15 By Charles Lamb. Conversation . . . . . . .26 By Thomas De Quincey. Compensation . . . . . -57 By Ralph Waldo Emerson. Sweetness and Light . . . . .82 By Malt hew Arnold. On Popular Culture . . . . .114 By John Morley. On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners . 145 By yamcs Russell Lowell. VI CONTENTS. On History . . . . . . . 1 76 By Thomas Carlyle. History . . . . . . .192 By Thomas Babington Macaulay. The Science of History . . . . .250 By yames Anthony Frotide. Race and Language . . . . .285 By Edward A. Freeman. Kin Beyond Sea ...... 349 By William Ewart Gladstone, REPRESENTATIVE ESSAYS. THE MUTABILITY OF LITERATURE. A COLLOQUY IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. BY WASHINGTON IRVING. (Born 1783, Died 1859.) I know that all beneath the moon decays, And what by mortals in this world is brought, In time's gieat period shall return to naught. I know that all the muse's heavenly lays, With toil of sprite which are so dearly bought. As idle sounds, of few or none are sought ; That there is nothing lighter than mere praise. Drummond of Hawthornden. HERE are certain half-dreaming moods of mind, in wliich we naturally steal away from noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt, where we may indulge our reveries and build our air-castles undisturbed. In such a mood I was loitering about the old gray cloisters of West- minster Abbey, enjoying that luxury of wandering thought which one is apt to dignify with the name of reflection ; when suddenly an interruption of madcap boys from Westminster School, play- ing at football, broke in upon the monastic stillness of the place, making the vaulted passages and mouldering tombs echo with their merriment. I sought to take refuge from their noise by penetrating still deeper into the solitudes of the pile, and I 2 WASHINGTON IRVING. applied to one of the vergers for admission to the library. He conducted me through a portal rich with the crumbling sculpture of former ages, which opened upon a gloomy passage leading to the chapter-house and the chamber in which dooms- day-book is deposited. Just within the passage is a small door on the left. To this the verger applied a key ; it was double- locked, and opened with some difficulty, as if seldom used. We now ascended a dark, narrow staircase, and, passing through a second door, entered the library. I found myself in a lofty antique hall, the roof supported by massive joists of old English oak. It was soberly lighted by a row of Gothic windows at a considerable height from the floor, and which apparently opened upon the roofs, of the cloisters. An ancient picture of some reverend dignitary of the church in his robes hung over the fireplace. Around the hall and in a small gallery were the books, arranged in carved oaken cases. They consisted principally of old polemical writers, and were much more worn by time than use. In the centre of the library was a solitary table with two or three books on it, an inkstand without ink, and a few pens parched by long disuse. The place seemed fitted for quiet study and profound medita- tion. It was buried deep among the massive walls of the abbey, and shut up from the tumult of the world. I could only hear now and then the shouts of the schoolboys faintly swelling from the cloisters, and the sound of a bell tolling for prayers, echoing soberly along the roofs of the abbey. By degrees the shouts of merriment grew fainter and fainter, and at length died away; the bell ceased to toll, and a profound silence reigned through the dusky hall. THE MUTABILITY OF LITERATURE. 3 I had taken down a little thick quarto, curiously bound in parchment, with brass clasps, and seated myself at the table in a venerable elbow-chair. Instead of reading, however, I was b^mled by the solemn monastic air, and lifeless quiet of the place, into a train of musing. As I looked around upon the old volumes in their mouldering covers, thus ranged on the shelves, and apparently never disturbed in their repose, I could not but consider the library a kind of literary catacomb, where authors, like mummies, are piously entombed, and left to blacken and moulder in dusty oblivion. How much, thought I, has each of these volimies, now thrust aside with such indifference, cost some aching head ! how many weaiy days ! how many sleepless nights ! How have theit authors buried themselves in the solitude of ceUs and cloisters ; shut themselves up from the face of man, and the still more blessed face of nature; and devoted themselves to painful research and intense reflection ! And all for what ? to occupy an inch of dusty shelf, — to have the title of their works read now and then in a future age, by some drowsy churchman or casual straggler like myself ; and in another age to be lost, even to remembrance. Such is the amount of this boasted immortality. A mere temporary rumor, a local sound ; like the tone of that bell which has just tolled among these towers, filling the ear for a moment — lingering transiently m echo — and then passing away like a thing that was not ! While I sat half murmuring, half meditating these unprofit- able speculations, with my head resting on my hand, I was thrumming with the other hand upon the quarto, until I acci- dentally loosened the clasps ; when, to my utter astonishment, 4 WASHINGTON IRVING. the little book gave two or three yawns, like one awaking from a deep sleep ; then a husky hem ; and at length began to talk. At first its voice was very hoarse and broken, being much troubled by a cobweb which some studious spider had woven across it; and having probably contracted a cold from long exposure to the chills and damps of the abbey. In a short time, however, it became more distinct, and I soon found it an exceedingly fluent, conversable little tome. Its language, to be sure, was rather quaint and obsolete, and its pronunciation, what, in the present day, would be deemed barbarous; but I shall endeavor, as far as I am able, to render it in modern parlance. It began with railings about the neglect of the world — about merit being suffered to languish in obscurity, and other such commonplace topics of literary repining, and complained bitterly that it had not been opened for more than two centuries. That the dean only looked now and then into the library, sometimes took down a volume or two, trifled with them for a few moments, and then returned them to their shelves. " What a plague do they mean,'' said the little quarto, which I began to perceive was somewhat choleric, — " what a plague do they mean by keeping several thousand volumes of us shut up here, and watched by a set of old vergers, like so many beauties in a harem, merely to be looked at now and then by the dean ? Books were written to give pleasure and to be enjoyed ; and I would have a rule passed that the dean should pay each of us a visit at least once a year; or, if he is not equal to the task, let them once in a while turn loose the whole School of Westminster among us, that at any rate we may now and then have an airing." THE MUTABILITY OF LITERATURE. $ " Softly, my worthy friend," replied I ; " you are not aware how much better you are off than most books of your genera- tion. By being stored away in this ancient library, you are like the treasured remains of those saints and monarchs which lie enshrined in the adjoining chapels ; while the remains of your contemporary mortals, left to the ordinary course of nature, have long since returned to dust." " Sir," said the little tome, ruffling his leaves and looking big, " I was written for all the world, not for the bookworms of an abbey. I was intended to circulate from hand to hand, like other great contemporary works ; but here have I been clasped up for more than two centuries, and might have silently fallen a prey to these worms that are playing the very vengeance with my intestines, if you had not by chance given me an opportunity of uttering a few last words before I go to pieces." " My good friend," rejoined I, " had you been left to the cir- culation of which you speak, you would long ere this have been no more. To judge from your physiognomy, you are now well stricken in years : very few of your contemporaries can be at present in existence ; and those few owe their longevity to being immured like yourself in old libraries ; which, suffer me to add, instead of likening to harems, you might more properly and gratefully have compared to those infirmaries attached to relig- ious establishments, for the benefit of the old and decrepit, and where, by quiet fostering and no employment, they often endure to an amazingly good-for-nothing old age. You talk of your contemporaries as if in circulation, — where do we meet with their works ? What do we hear of Robert Groteste, of Lincoln ? No one could have toiled harder than he for immortality. He 6 WASHINGTON IRVING. is said to have written nearly two hundred volumes. He built, as it were, a pyramid of books to perpetuate his name ; but, alas ! the pyramid has long since fallen, and only a few fragments are scattered in various libraries, where they are scarcely disturbed even by the antiquarian. What do we hear of Giraldus Cam- brensis, the historian, antiquary, philosopher, theologian, and poet ? He declined two bishoprics, that he might shut himself up and write for posterity : but posterity never inquires after his labors. What of Henry of Huntingdon, who, besides a learned history of England, wrote a treatise on the contempt of the world, which the world has revenged by forgetting him ? What is quoted of Joseph of Exeter, styled the miracle of his age in classical composition ? Of his three great heroic poems one is lost forever, excepting a mere fragment ; the others are known only to a few of the curious in literature ; and as to his love- verses and epigrams, they have entirely disappeared. What is in current use of John Wallis, the Franciscan, who acquired the name of the tree of life .' Of William of Malmsbury ; of Simeon of Durham ; of Benedict of Peterborough ; of John Hanvill of St. Albans ; of " " Prithee, friend," cried the quarto, in a testy tone, " how old do you think me ? You are talking of authors that lived long before my time, and wrote either in Latin or French, so that they in a manner expatriated themselves, and deserved to be forgotten^ ; but I, sir, was ushered into the world from the press 1 In Latin and French hath many soueraine wittes had great delyte to endite, and have many noble thinges fulfilde, but certes there ben some that speaken their poisye in French, of which speche the Frenchmen have as good a fantasye as we have in Weary- ing of Frenchmen's Englishe. — Chaucer's Testament of Lmie. THE MUTABILITY OF LITERATURE. 7 of the renowned Wynkyn de Worde. I was written in my own native tongue, at a time when the language had become fixed ; and, indeed, I was considered a model of pure and elegant English." (I should observe that these remarks were couched in such intolerably antiquated terms, that I have had infinite difficulty in rendering them into modern phraseology.) " I cry your mercy," said I, " for mistaking your age ; but it matters little : almost all the writers of your time have likewise passed into forgetfulness ; and De Worde's publications are mere literary rarities among book-collectors. The purity and stability' of language, too, on which you found your claims to perpetuity, have been the fallacious dependence of authors of every age, even back to the times of the worthy Robert of Glou- cester, who wrote his history in rhymes of mongrel Saxon.'' Even now many talk of Spenser's ' Well of pure English unde- filed ' as if the language ever sprang from a well or fountain- head, and was not rather a mere confluence of various tongues, perpetually subject to changes and intermixtures. It is this which has made English literature so extremely mutable, and the reputation built upon it so fleeting. Unless thought can be committed to something more permanent and unchangeable than such a medium, even thought must share the fate of everything 1 Holinshed, in his Clironicle, observes : " Afterwards, also, by deligent travell of Geffry Chaucer and of John Gowre, in the time of Richard the Second, and after them of John Scogan and John Lydgate, monke of Berrie, our said toong was brought to an excellent passe, notwithstanding that it never came unto the type of perfection until the tune of Queen Elizabeth, wherein John Jewell, Bishop of Sarum, John Fox, and sundrie learned and excellent writers, have fully accomplished the omature of the same, to their great praise and immortal commendation. 8 WASHINGTON IRVING. else, and fall into decay. This should serve as a check upon the vanity and exultation of the most popular writer. He finds the language in which he has embarked his fame gradually alter- ing, and subject to the dilapidations of time and the caprice of fashion. He looks back and beholds the early authors of his country, once the favorites of their day, supplanted by modern writers. A few short ages have covered them with obscurity, and their merits can only be relished by the quaint taste of the bookworm. And such, he anticipates, will be the fate of his own work, which, however it may be admired in its day, and held up as a model of purity, will in the course of years grow anti- quated and obsolete ; until it shall become almost as unintelligi- ble in its native land as an Egyptian obelisk, or one of those Runic inscriptions said to exist in the deserts of Tartary. I declare," added I, with some emotion, " when I contemplate a modern library, filled with new works, in all the bravery of rich gilding and binding, I feel disposed to sit down and weep ; like the good Xerxes, when he surveyed his army, pranked out in all the splendor of military array, and reflected that in one hundred years not one of them would be in existence ! " " Ah," said the little quarto, with a heavy sigh, " I see how it is ; these modern scribblers have superseded all the good old authors. I suppose nothing is read nowadays but Sir Philip Sydney's ' Arcadia,' Sackville's stately plays, and ' Mirror for Magistrates,' or the fine-spun euphuisms of the ' unparalleled John Lyly.' " " There you are again mistaken," said I ; " the writers whom you suppose in vogue, because they happened to be so when you were last in circulation, have long since had their day. Sir THE MUTABILITY OF LITERATURE. 9 Philip Sydney's 'Arcadia,' the immortality of which was so fondly predicted by his admirers,^ and which, in truth, is full of noble thoughts, delicate images, and graceful turns of language, is now scarcely ever mentioned. Sackville has strutted into obscurity ; and even Lyly, though his writings were once the delight of a court, and apparently perpetuated by a proverb, is now scarcely known even by name. A whole crowd of authors who wrote and wrangled at the time, have likewise gone down, with all their writings and their controversies. Wave after wave of succeeding literature has rolled over them, until they are buried so deep, that it is only now and then that some industri- ous diver after fragments of antiquity brings up a specimen for the gratification of the curious. " For my part," I continued, " I consider this mutability of language a wise precaution of Providence for the benefit of the world at large, and of authors in particular. To reason from analogy, we daily behold the varied and beautiful tribes of vege- tables springing up, flourishing, adorning the fields for a short time, and then fading into dust, to make way for their succes- sors. Were not this the case, the fecundity of nature would be a grievance instead of a blessing. The earth would groan with rank and excessive vegetation, and its surface become a tangled wilderness. In like manner the works of genius and learning decline, and make way for subsequent productions. Language 1 Live ever sweete booke ; the simple image of his gentle witt, and the golden-pillar of his noble courage ; and ever notify unto the world that thy writer was the secretary of eloquence, the breath of the muses, the honey-bee of the daintyest flowers of witt and arte, the pith of morale and intellectual virtues, the arme of Bellona in the field, the tonge of Suada in the chamber, the sprite of Practise in esse, and the paragon of excellency in print. — Harvey Piercers Supererogation. lO WASHINGTON IRVING. gradually varies, and with it fade away the writings of authors who have flourished their allotted time ; otherwise, the creative powers of genius would overstock the world, and the mind would be completely bewildered in the endless mazes of litera- ture. Formerly there were some restraints on this excessive multiplication. Works had to be transcribed by hand, which was a slow and laborious operation ; they were written either on parchment, which was expensive, so that one work was often erased to make way for another ; or on papyrus, which was fragile and extremely perishable. Authorship was a limited and unprofitable craft, pursued chiefly by monks in the leisure and solitude of their cloisters. The accumulation of manuscripts was slow and costly, and confined almost entirely to monas- teries. To these circumstances it may, in some measure, be owing that we have not been inundated by the intellect of an- tiquity ; that the fountains of thought have not been broken up, and modern genius drowned in the deluge. But the inventions of paper and the press have put an end to all these restraints. They have made everyone a writer, and enabled every mind to pour itself into print, and diffuse itself over the whole intellec- tual world. The consequences are alarming. The stream of literature has swollen into a torrent — augmented into a river — expanded into a sea. A few centuries since, five or six hundred manuscripts constituted a great library ; but what would you say to libraries such as actually exist, containing three or four hun- dred thousand volumes; legions of authors at the same time busy ; and the press going on with activity, to double and quad- ruple the number. Unless some unforeseen mortality should break out among the progeny of the Muse, now that she has THE MUTABILITY OF LITERA TURE. 1 1 become so prolific, I tremble for posterity. I fear the mere fluctuation of language will not be sufficient. Criticism may do much. It increases with the increase of literature, and resembles one of those salutary checks on population spoken of by econo- mists. All possible encouragement, therefore, should be given to the growth of critics, good or bad. But I fear all will be in vain ; let criticism do what it may, writers will write, printers will print, and the world will inevitably be overstocked with good books. It will soon be the employment of a lifetime merely to learn their names. Many a man of passable informa- tion, at the present day, reads scarcely anything but reviews ; and before long a man of erudition will be little better than a mere walking catalogue." "My very good sir," said the little quarto, yawning most drearily in my face, " excuse my interrupting you, but I per- ceive you are rather given to prose. I would ask the fate of an author who was making some noise just as I left the world. His reputation, however, was considered quite temporary. The learned shook their heads at him, for he was a poor, half- educated varlet, that knew little of Latin, and nothing of Greek, and had been obliged to run the country for deer-stealing. I think his name was Shakespeare. I presume he soon sunk into oblivion." "On the contrary," said I, "it is owing to that very man that the literature of his period has experienced a duration beyond the ordinary term of English literature. There rise authors now and then, who seem proof against the mutability of lan- guage, because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature. They are like gigantic trees that 12 WASHINGTON IRVING. we sometimes see on the banks of a stream ; which, by their vast and deep roots, penetrating through the mere surface, and laying hold on the very foundations of the earth, preserve the soil around them from being swept away by the ever-flowing current, and hold up many a neighboring plant, and, perhaps, worthless weed, to perpetuity. Such is the case with Shake- speare, whom we behold defying the encroachments of time, retaining in modern use the language and literature of his day, and giving duration to many an indifferent author, merely from having flourished in his vicinity. But even he, I grieve to say, is gradually assuming the tint of age, and his whole form is overrun by a profusion of commentators, who, like clambering vines and creepers, almost bury the noble plant that upholds them." Here the little quarto began to heave his sides and chuckle, until at length he broke out in a plethoric fit of laughter that had well-nigh choked him, by reason of his excessive corpu- lency. " Mighty well ! " cried he, as soon as he could recover breath ; " mighty well ! and so you would persuade me that the literature of an age is to be perpetuated by a vagabond deer- stealer ! by a man without learning ! by a poet, forsooth — a poet ! " And here he wheezed forth another fit of laughter. I confess that I felt somewhat nettled at this rudeness, which, however, I pardoned on account of his having flourished in a less polished age. I determined, nevertheless, not to give up my point. " Yes," resumed I, positively, " a poet ; for of all writers he has the best chance for immortality. Others may write from the head, but he writes from the heart, and the heart will always THE MUTABILITY OF LITERATURE. 13 understand him. He is the faithful portrayer of nature, whose features are always the same, and always interesting. Prose- writers are voluminous and unwieldy ; their pages are crowded with commonplaces, and their thoughts expanded into tedious- ness. But with the true poet every thing is terse, touching, or brilliant. He gives the choicest thoughts in the choicest lan- guage. He illustrates them by everything that he sees most striking in nature and art. He enriches them by pictures of human life, such as it is passing before him. His writings, therefore, contain the spirit, the aroma, if I may use the phrase, of the age in which he lives. They are caskets which enclose within a small compass the wealth of the language, — its family jewels, which are thus transmitted in a portable form to poster- ity. The setting may occasionally be antiquated, and require now and then to be renewed, as in the case of Chaucer ; but the brilliancy and intrinsic value of the gems continue unaltered. Cast a look back over the long reach of literary history. What vast valleys of dulness, filled with monkish legends and acade- mical controversies ! what bogs of theological speculations ! what dreary wastes of metaphysics ! Here and there only do we behold the heaven-illuminated bards, elevated like beacons on their widely separate heights, to transmit the pure light of poeti- cal intelligence from age to age." * 1 Thorow earth and waters deepe, The pen by skill doth passe ; And featly nyps the worldes abuse, And shoes us in a glasse The vertu and the vice Of every wight alyve: The honey comb that bee doth make Js not so sweet in hyve, 14 WASHING TO/^ IRVING. I was just about to launch forth into eulogiums upon the poets of the day, when the sudden opening of the door caused me to turn my head. It was the verger who came to inform me that it was time to close the library. I sought to have a parting word with the quarto, but the worthy little tome was silent ; the clasps were closed ; and it looked perfectly unconscious of all that had passed. I have been to the library two or three times since, and have endeavored to draw it into further conversation, but in vain ; and whether all this rambling colloquy actually took place, or whether it was another of those odd day-dreams to which I am subject, I have never to this moment been able to discover. As are the golden leves That drop from poet's head ! ^A^lich doth surmount our common talke As farre as dross doth lead. Chtifchyard. IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. BY CHARLES LAMB. (BoHN 1775, Died 1834.) " I am of a constitution so general, tiiat it consorts and sympathizeth with all things ; I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy in anything. Those natural repugnancies do not touch me, nor do I behold with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch." — Religio Medici. HAT the author of the "Religio Medici," mounted upon the airy stilts of abstraction, conversant about IP notional and conjectural essences — in whose cate- gories of Being the possible took the upper hand of the actual — should have overlooked the impertinent individual- ities of 3uch poor concretions as mankind, is not much to be admired. It is rather to be wondered at, that in the genus of animals he should have condescended to distinguish that species at all. For myself — earth-bound and fettered to the scene of my activities — Standing on earth, nor rapt above the sky, I confess that I do feel the differences of mankind, national or individual, to an unhealthy excess. I can look with no indit ferent eye upon things or persons. Whatever is, is to me a matter of taste or distaste ; or when once it becomes indifferent, it begins to be disrelishing. I am, in plainer words, a bundle 1 6 CHARLES LAMB. of prejudices — made up of likings and dislikings — the veriest thrall to sympathies, apathies, antipathies. In a certain sense, I hope it may be said of me that I am a lover of my species. I can feel for all indifferently, but I cannot feel toward all equally. The more purely-English word that expresses sympa- thy, will better explain my meaning. I can be a friend to a worthy man, who upon another account, cannot be my mate or fellow. I cannot like all people alike.^ I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair. They cannot like me — and, in truth, I never knew one of that nation who attempted to do it. There is something more plain and ingenu- ous in their mode of proceeding. We know one another at first sight. There is an order of imperfect intellects (under which 1 I would be understood as confining myself to the subject of imperfect sympathies. To nations or classes of men there can be no direct antipathy. There may be indivi- duals born and constellated so opposite to another individual nature, that the same sphere cannot hold them. I have met with my moral antipodes, and can believe the story of two persons meeting (who never saw one another before in their lives) and instantly fighting. We by proof find there should be 'Twixt man and man such an antipathy, That though he can show no just reason why For any former wrong or injury. Can neither find a blemish in his fame, Nor aught in face or feature justly blame, Can challenge or accuse him of no evil, Yet notwithstanding, hates him as a devil. The lines are from old Heywood's " Hierarchie of Angels," and he subjoins a curious story in confirmation, of a Spaniard who attempted to assassinate a King Ferdinand of Spain, and being put to the rack could give no other reason for the deed but an invet- erate antipathy which he had taken to the first sight of the king. The cause which to that act compelled him Was, he ne'er loved him since he first beheld him. IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. \>f mine must be content to rank) which in its constitution is essen- tially anti-Caledonian. The owners of the sort of faculties I allude to, have minds rather suggestive than comprehensive. They have no pretences to much clearness or precision in their ideas, or in their manner of expressing them. Their intellec- tual wardrobe (to confess fairly) has few whole pieces in it. They are content with fragments and scattered pieces of Truth. She presents no full front to them — a feature of side-face at the most. Hints and glimpses, germs and crude essays at a system, is the utmost they pretend to. They beat up a little game peradventure — and leave it to knottier heads, more robust constitutions, to run it down. The light that lights them is not steady and polar, but mutable and shifting : waxing, and again waning. Their conversation is accordingly. They will throw out a random word in or out of season, and be content to let it pass for what it is worth. They cannot speak always as if they were upon their oath — but must be understood, speaking or writing, with some abatement. They seldom wait to mature a proposition, but e'en bring it to market in the green ear. They delight to impart their defective discoveries as they arise, without waiting for their full development. They are no syste- matizers, and would but err more by attempting it. Their minds, as I said before, are suggestive merely. The brain of a true Caledonian (if I am not mistaken) is constituted upon quite a different plan. His Minerva is born in panoply. You are never admitted to see his ideas in their growth — if, indeed, they do grow, and are not rather put together upon principles of clock-work. You never catch his mind in an undress. He never hints or suggests anything, but unlades his stock of ideas 1 8 CHARLES LAMB. in perfect order and completeness. He brings his total wealth into company, and gravely unpacks it. His riches are always about him. He never stoops to catch a glittering something in your presence to share it with you, before he quite knows whether it be true touch or not. You cannot cry halves to any- thing that he finds. He does not find, but bring. You never witness his first apprehension of a thing. His understanding is always at its meridian — you never see the first dawn, the early streaks. He has no falterings of self-suspicion. Surmises, guesses, misgivings, half-intuitions, semi-consciousnesses, partial illuminations, dim instincts, embryo conceptions, have no place in his brain or vocabulary. The twilight of dubiety never falls upon him. Is he orthodox — he has no doubts. Is he an infi- del — he has none either. Between the affirmative and the neg- ative there is no border-land with him. You cannot hover with him upon the confines of truth, or wander in the maze of a prob- able argument. He always keeps the path. You cannot make excursions with him — for he sets you right. His taste never fluctuates. His morality never abates. He cannot compromise, or understand middle actions. There can be but a right and a wrong. His conversation is as a book. His affirmations have the sanctity of an oath. You must speak upon the square with him. He stops a metaphor like a suspected person in an ene- my's country. " A healthy book ? " said one of his countrymen to me, who had ventured to give that appellation to " John Buncle," — "did I catch rightly what you said? I have heard of a man in health, and of a healthy state of body, but I do not see how that epithet can be properly applied to a book." Above all, you must beware of indirect expressions before a Cale- IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 1 9 donian. Clap an extinguisher upon your irony, if you are un- happily blessed with a vein of it. Remember you are upon your oath. I have a print of a graceful female after Leonardo da Vinci, which I was showing off to Mr. . After he had examined it minutely, I ventured to ask him how he liked my BEAUTY (a foolish name it goes by among my friends) — when he very gravely assured me, that " he had considerable respect for my character and talents " (so he was pleased to say), " but had not given himself much thought about the degree of my per- sonal pretensions." The misconception staggered me, but did not seem much to disconcert him. Persons of this nation are particularly fond of affirming a truth — which nobody doubts. They do not so properly affirm, as annunciate it. They do in- deed appear to have such a love for truth (as if, like virtue, it were valuable for itself) that all truth becomes equally valuable, whether the proposition that contains it be new or old, disputed, or such as is impossible to become a subject of disputation. I was present not long since at a party of North Britons, where a son of Burns was expected ; and happened to drop a silly ex- pression (in my South British way), that I wished it were the father instead of the son — when four of them started up at once to inform me, that " that was impossible, because he was dead." An impracticable wish, it seems, was more than they could conceive. Swift has hit off this part of their character, namely, their love of truth, in his biting way, but with an illi- berality that necessarily confines the passage to the margin.* ' There are some people who think they suffidently acquit themselves, and enter- tain thdr company, with relating facts of no consequence, not at all out of the road of such common incidents as happen every day ; and this I have observed more fre^ 20 CHARLES LAMB. The tediousness of these people is certainly provoking. I won- der if they ever tire one another ? In my early life I had a passionate fondness for the poetry of Burns. I have sometimes foolishly hoped to ingratiate myself with his countrymen by expressing it. But I have always found that a true Scot resents your admiration of his compatriot, even more than he would your contempt of him. The latter he imputes to your " imper- fect acquaintance with many of the words which he uses ; " and the same objection makes it a presumption in you to suppose that you can admire him. Thompson they seem to have forgot- ten. Smollett they have neither forgotten nor forgiven, for his delineation of Rory and his companion, upon their first introduc- tion to our metropolis. Speak of Smollett as a great genius, and they will retort upon you Hume's History compared with hh continuation of it. What if the historian had continued Humph- rey Clinker ? I have, in the abstract, no disrespect for Jews. They are a piece of stubborn antiquity, compared with which Stonehenge is in its nonage. They date beyond the pyramids. But I should not care to be in habits of familiar intercourse with any of that nation. I confess that I have not the nerves to enter their synagogues. Old prejudices cling about me. I cannot shake off the story of Hugh of Lincoln. Centuries of injury, con- tempt, and hate, on the one side, — of cloaked revenge, dissimu- lation, and hate, on the other, between our and their fathers, quently among the Scotch than any other nation, who are very caieful not to omit the minutest circumstances of time or place ; which kind of discourse, if it were not a little relieved by the uncouth terms and phrases, as well as accent and gestures pecu^ liar to that country, would be hardly tolerable. — Hints Toward an Essay on Conver sat ion. IMPERFECT SYMPA THIES. 2 1 must and ought to affect the blood of the children. I cannot believe it can run clear and kindly yet ; or that a few fine words, such as candor, liberality, the light of a nineteenth century, can close up the breaches of so deadly a disunion. A Hebrew is nowhere congenial to me. He is least distasteful on ' Change — for the mercantile spirit levels all distinctions, as all are beauties in the dark. I boldly confess that I do not relish the approximation of Jew and Christian, which has become so fashionable. The reciprocal endearments have, to me, some- thing hypocritical and unnatural in them. I do not like to see the Church and Synagogue kissing and congeeing in awkward postures of an affected civility. If they are converted, why do they not come over to us altogether ? Why keep up a form of separation when the life of it is fled ? If they can sit with us at table, why do they kick at our cookery ? I do not understand these half-convertites. Jews christianizing — Christians judaiz- ing — puzzle me. I like fish or flesh. A moderate Jew is a more confounding piece of anomaly than a wet Quaker. The spirit of the synagogue is essentially separative. B would have been more in keeping if he had abided by the faith of his forefathers. There is a fine scorn in his face which nature meant to be of Christians. The Hebrew spirit is strong in him, in spite of his proselytism. He cannot conquer the shibboleth. How it breaks out when he sings, " The children of Israel passed through the Red Sea ! " The auditors, for the moment, are as Egyptians to him, and he rides over our necks in triumph. There is no mistaking him. B has a strong expression of sense in his countenance, and it is confirmed by t's singing. The foundation of his vocal excellence is sense. 22 CHARLES LAMB. He sings with understanding, as Kemble delivered dialogue. He would sing the Commandments, and give an appropriate character to each prohibition. His nation in general have not over-sensible countenances. How should they .'' — but you seldom see a silly expression among them. Gain, and the pursuit of gain, sharpen a man's visage. I never heard of an idiot being born among them. Some admire the Jewish female physiognomy. I admire it but with trembling. Jael had those full, dark, inscrutable eyes. In the negro countenance you will often meet with strong traits of benignity. I have felt yearnings of tenderness toward some of these faces — or rather masks — that have looked out kindly upon one in casual encounters in the streets and highways. I love what Fuller beautifully calls — these " images of God cut in ebony." But I should not like to associate with them, to share my meals and my good nights with them — because they are black. I love Quaker ways, and Quaker worship. I venerate the Quaker principles. It does me good for the rest of the day when I meet any of their people in my path. When I am ruffled or disturbed by any occurrence, the sight, or quiet voice of a Quaker, acts upon me as a ventilator, lightening the air, and taking off a load from the bosom. But I cannot like the Quakers (as Desdemona would say) "to live with them." I am all over sophisticated — with humors, fancies, craving hourly sympathy. I must have books, pictures, theatres, chit-chat, scandal, jokes, ambiguities, and a thousand whimwhams, which their simpler taste can do without. I should starve at their primitive banquet. My appetites are too high for the salads IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 23 which (according to Evelyn) Eve dressed for the angel; mv gnsto too excited To sit a guest with Daniel at his pulse. The indirect answers which Quakers are often found to return to a question put to them may be explained, I think, without the vulgar assiunption that they are more given to evasion and equivocating than other people. They naturally look to their words more carefully, and are more cautious of committing themselves. They have a peculiar character to keep up on this head. They stand in a manner upon their veracity. A Quaker is by law exempted from- taking an oath. The custom of resort- ing to an oath in extreme cases, sanctified as it is by all religious antiquit}-, is apt (it must be confessed) to introduce into the laxer sort of minds the notion of two kinds of truth, — the one applicable to the solemn affairs of justice, and the other to the common proceedings of daily intercourse. As truth bound upon the conscience by an oath can be but truth, so in the common affirmations of the shop and the market-place a latitude is ex- pected and conceded upon questions wanting this solemn coven- ant Something less than truth satisfies. It is common to hear a person say, " You do not expect me to speak as if I were upon my oath." Hence a great deal of incorrectness and inadvertency, short of falsehood, creeps into ordinary conversation ; and a kind of secondary or laic-truth is tolerated, where clergj'-truth — oath- truth — by the nature of the circumstances, is not required. A Quaker knows none of this distinction. His simple affirmation being received, upon the most sacred occasions, without anj' fur- ther test, stamps a value upon the words which he is to use upon the most indifferent topics of life. He looks to them naturally 24 CHARLES LAMB. with more severity. You can have of him no more than his word. He knows if he is caught tripping in a casual expres- sion, he forfeits, for himself at least, his claim to the invidious exemption. He knows that his syllables are weighed — and how far a consciousness of this particular watchfulness, exerted against a person, has a tendency to produce indirect answers, and a diverting of the question by honest means, might be illus- trated, and the practice justified, by a more sacred example than is proper to be adduced upon this occasion. The admirable pres- ence of mind, which is notorious in Quakers upon all contingen- cies, might be traced to this imposed self-watchfulness — if it did not seem rather an humble and secular scion of that old stock of religious constancy, which never bent or faltered, in the Primi- tive Friends, or gave way to the winds of persecution, to the violence of judge or accuser, under trials and racking examina- tions. "You will never be the wiser, if I sit here answering your questions till midnight," said one of those upright justicers to Penn, who had been putting law cases with a puzzling sub- tlety. " Thereafter as the answers may be," retorted the Quaker. The astonishing composure of this people is sometimes ludi- crously displayed in lighter instances. I was travelling in a stage-coach with three male Quakers, buttoned up in the straitest nonconformity of their sect. We stopped to bait at Andover, where a meal, partly tea apparatus, partly supper, was set before us. My friends confined themselves to the tea-table. I in my way took supper. When the landlady brought in the bill, the eldest of my companions discovered that she had charged for both meals. This was resisted. Mine hostess was very clam- orous and positive. Some mild arguments were used on the IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 25 part of the Quakers, for which the heated mind of the good lady seemed by no means a fit recipient. The guard came in with his usual peremptory notice. The Quakers pulled out their money and formally tendered it — so much for tea — I, in humble imitation, tendering mine — ^for the supper which I had taken. She would not relax in her demand. So they all three quietly put up their silver, as did myself, and marched out of the room, the eldest and gravest going first, with myself closing up the rear, who thought I could not do better than follow the example of such grave and warrantable personages. We got in. The steps went up. The coach drove off. The murmurs of mine hostess, not very indistinctly or ambiguously pronounced, became after a time inaudible — and now my conscience, which the whim- sical scene had for a while suspended, beginning to give some twitches, I waited in the hope that some justification would be offered by these serious persons for the seeming injustice of their conduct. To my great surprise, not a syllable was dropped on the subject. They sat as mute as at a meeting. At length the eldest of them broke silence, by inquiring of his next neigh- bor, " Hast thee heard how indigos go at the India House ? " and the question operated as a soporific on my moral feeling as far as Exeter. CONVERSATION. BV THOMAS DE QUINCEY. (EoRN 1785, Died 1859.) MONGST the arts connected with the elegancies of social life, in a degree which nobody denies, is the art of conversation ; but in a degree which almost everybody denies, if one may judge by their neglect of its simplest rules, this same art is not less connected with the uses of social life. Neither the luxury of conversation, nor the possible benefit of conversation, is to be under that rude admin- istration of it which generally prevails. Without an art, without some simple system of rules, gathered from experience of such contingencies as are most likely to mislead the practice, when left to its own guidance, no act of man nor effort accomplishes its purposes in perfection. The sagacious Greek would not so much as drink a glass of wine amongst a few friends without a systematic art to guide him, and a regular form of polity to control him, which art and which polity (begging Plato's pardon) were better than any of more ambitious aim in his " Republic." Every symposium had its set of rules, and vigor- ous they were ; had its own symposiarch to govern it, and a CONVERSA TION. 27 tyrant he was. Elected democratically, he became, when once installed, an autocrat not less despotic that the king of Persia. Purposes still more slight and fugitive have been organized into arts. Taking soup gracefully, under the difficulties opposed to it by a dinner dress at that time fashionable, was reared into an art about forty-five years ago by a Frenchman, who lectured upon it to ladies in London ; and the most brilliant duchess of that day was amongst his best pupils. Spitting — if the reader will pardon the mention of so gross a fact — was shown to be a very difficult art, and publicly prelected upon about the same time, in the same great capital. The professors in this faculty were the hackney-coachmen ; the pupils were gentlemen who paid a guinea each for three lessons ; the chief problem in this system of hydraulics being to throw the salivating column in a parabolic curve from the centre of Parliament Street, when driving four-in-hand, to the foot pavements, right and left, so as to alarm the consciences of guilty peripatetics on either side. The ultimate problem, which closed the curriculum of study, was held to lie in spitting round a corner ; when that was mastered, the pupil was entitled to his doctor's degree. End- less are the purposes of man, merely festal or merely comic, and aiming but at the momentary life of a cloud, which have earned for themselves the distinction and apparatus of a separate art. Yet for conversation, the great paramount purpose of social meetings, no art exists or has been attempted. That seems strange, but is not really so. A limited process submits readily to the limits of a technical system ; but a process so unlimited as the interchange of thought, seems to reject them. And even, if an art of conversation were less unlimited, 28 THOMAS BE QUINCEY. the means of carrying such an art into practical effect, amongst so vast a variety of minds, seem wanting. Yet again, perhaps, after all, this may rest on a mistake. What we begin by mis- judging is the particular phasis of conversation which brings it under the control of art and discipline. It is not in its relation to the intellect that conversation ever has been improved or will be improved primarily, but in its relation to manners. Has a man ever mixed with what in technical phrase is called "good company," meaning company in the highest degree polished, company which (being or not being aristocratic as respects its composition) is aristocratic as respects the standard of its manners and usages ? If he really has, and does not deceive himself from vanity or from pure inacquaintance with the world, in that case he must have remarked the large effect impressed upon the grace and upon the freedom of conversation by a few simple instincts of real good-breeding. Good-breeding -^ what is it ? There is no need in this place to answer that question comprehensively; it is sufficient to say, that it is made up chiefly of negative elements ; that it shows itself far less in what it prescribes, than in what it forbids. Now, even under this limitation of the idea, the truth is, that more will be done for the benefit of conversation by the simple magic of good-manners (that is, chiefly by a system of forbearances), applied to the besetting vices of social intercourse, than ever was or can be done by all varieties of intellectual power assembled upon the same arena. Intellectual graces of the highest order may perish and confound each other when exercised in a spirit of ill-temper, or under the license of bad manners : whereas, very humble powers, when allowed to expand themselves colloquially CONVERSA TION. 29 in that genial freedom which is possible only under the most absolute confidence in the self-restraint of your collocutors, accomplish their purpose to a certainty, if it be the ordinary purpose of liberal amusement, and have a chance of accom- plishing it even when this purpose is the more ambitous one of communicating knowledge, or exchanging new views upon truth. In my own early years, having been formed by nature too ex- clusively and morbidly for solitary thinking, I observed nothing. Seeming to have eyes, in reality I saw nothing. But it is a mat- ter of no very uncommon experience, that, whilst the mere ob- servers never become meditators, the mere meditators, on the other hand, may finally ripen into close observers. Strength of thinking, through long years, upon innumerable themes, will have the effect of disclosing a vast variety of questions, to which it soon becomes apparent that answers are lurking up and down the whole field of daily experience ; and thus an external experience which was slighted in youth, because it was a dark cipher that could be read into no meaning, a key that answered to no lock, gradually becomes interesting as it is found to yield one solution after another to problems that have independently matured in the mind. Thus, for instance, upon the special functions of conversation, upon its powers, its laws, its ordinary diseases, and their appropriate remedies, in youth I never be- stowed a thought or a care. I viewed it, not as one amongst the gay ornamental arts of the intellect, but as one amongst the dull necessities of business. Loving solitude too much, I understood too little the capacities of colloquial intercourse. And thus it is, though not for my reason, that most people 30 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. estimate the intellectual relations of conversation. Let these, however, be what they may, one thing seemed undeniable — that this world talked a great deal too much. It would be better for all parties, if nine in every ten of the winged words flying about in this world (Homer's epea pteroentd) had their feathers clipped amongst men, or even amongst women, who have a right to a larger allowance of words. Yet, as it was quite out of my power to persuade the world into any such self-denying reformation, it seemed equally out of the line of my duties to nourish any moral anxiety in that direction. To talk seemed then in the same category as to sleep; not an accomplishment, but a base physical infirmity. As a moralist, I really was culpably careless upon the whole subject. I cared as little what absurdities men practised in their vast tennis- courts of conversation, where the ball is flying backward and forward to no purpose forever, as what tricks Englishmen might play with their monstrous national debt. Yet at length what I disregarded on any principle of moral usefulness, I came to make an object of the profoundest interest on principles of art. Betting, in like manner, and wagering, which apparently had no moral value, and for that reason had been always slighted as inconsiderable arts (though, by the way, they always had one valuable use, namely, that of evading quarrels, since a bet summarily intercepts an altercation), rose suddenly into a philo- sophic rank, when successively Huyghens, the Bernoullis, and De Moivre, were led, by the suggestion of these trivial practices amongst men, to throw the light of a high mathematical analysis upon the whole doctrine of chances. Lord Bacon had been led to remark the capacities of conversation as an organ for sharp- CONVERSA TION. 3 1 ening one particular mode of intellectual power. Circumstances, on the other hand, led me into remarking the special capacities of conversation, as an organ for absolutely creating another mode of power. Let a man have read, thought, studied, as much as he may, rarely will he reach his possible advantages as a ready man, unless he has exercised his powers much in conver- sation — that was Lord Bacon's idea. Now, this wise and useful remark points in a direction not objective, but subjective — that is, it does not promise any absolute extension to truth itself, but only some greater facilities to the man who expounds or diffuses the truth. Nothing will be done for truth objectively that would not at any rate be done, but subjectively it will be done with more fluency, and at less cost of exertion to the doer. On the contrary, my own growing reveries on the latent powers of con- versation (which, though a thing that then I hated, yet challen- ged at times unavoidably my attention) pointed to an absolute birth of new insight into the truth itself, as inseparable from the finer and more scientific exercise of the talking art. It would not be the brilliancy, the ease, or the adroitness of the expoun- der that would benefit, but the absolute interests of the thing expounded. A feeling dawned on me of a secret magic lurking in the peculiar life, velocities, and contagious ardor of conver- sation, quite separate from any which belonged to books ; arming a man with new forces, and not merely with a new dexterity in wielding the old ones. I felt, and in this I could not be mis-^ taken, as too certainly it was a fact of my own experience, that in the electric kindling of life between two minds, and far less from the kindling natural to conflict (though that also is some- thing) than from the kindling through sympathy with the object 32 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. discussed, in its momentary coruscation of shifting phases, there sometimes arise glimpses and shy revelations of affinity, sugges- tion, relation, analogy, that could not have been approached through any avenues of methodical study. Great organists find the same effect of inspiration, the same result of power creative and revealing, in the mere movement and velocity of their own voluntaries, like the heavenly wheels of Milton, throwing off fiery flakes and bickering flames ; these impromptu torrents of music create rapturous^/: