And thus, by describing human nature under that term, or by repeating and stating the common opinions as his own, he is enabled to create an opposition which could not exist, so long as they remain unconsciously operative, or infolded in the separate individuality, as a part of its own particular form.
"My errors are sometimes natural and incorrigible," he says; "but the good which virtuous men do to the public in making themselves imitated, _I, perhaps, may do in making my manners avoided_. While I publish and accuse my own imperfections, somebody will learn to be afraid of them. _The parts that I most esteem in myself_, are more honoured in decrying than in commending _my own manners_. Pausanias tells us of an ancient player upon the lyre, who used to make his scholars go to hear one that lived over against him, and played very ill, that they might learn to hate his discords and false measures.
_The present time_ is fitting to reform us _backward_, more by _dissenting_ than _agreeing_; by differing than consenting." That is his application of his previous confession. And it is this _present time_ that he impersonates, holding the mirror up to nature, and provoking opposition and criticism for that which was before buried in the unconsciousness of a common absurdity, or a common wrong.
"Profiting little by good examples, I endeavour to render myself as agreeable as I see others offensive; as constant as I see others fickle; as good as I see others evil."
"There is no fancy so frivolous and extravagant that does not seem to me a suitable product of the human mind. All such whimsies as are in use amongst us, deserve at least to be hearkened to; for my part, they only with me import _inanity_, but they import _that_. Moreover, _vulgar and casual opinions are something more than nothing in nature_.
"If I converse with a man of mind, and no flincher, who presses hard upon me, right and left, his imagination raises up mine. The contradictions of judgments do neither offend nor alter, they only rouse and exercise me. I could suffer myself to be rudely handled by my friends. "Thou art a fool; thou knowest not what thou art talking about." When any one contradicts me, he raises my attention, not my anger. I advance towards him that contradicts, as to one that instructs me. _I embrace and caress truth, in what hand soever I find it, and cheerfully surrender myself, and extend to it my conquered arms_; and take a pleasure in being reproved, and _accommodate myself to my accusers_ [aside] (very often more by reason of _civility_ than amendment); loving to gratify the liberty of admonition, by my facility of submitting to it, at my own expense. Nevertheless, it is hard to bring the men of my time to it. They have not the courage _to correct_, because they have not the courage _to be corrected, and speak always with dissimulation in the presence of one another_. I take so great pleasure in being judged and known, that it is almost indifferent to me in which of THE TWO FORMS I am so. My imagination does so often contradict and condemn itself, that _it is all one to me if another do it_. The study of books is a languishing, feeble motion, that heats not, whereas conversation _teaches_ and _exercises_ at once." But what if a book could be constructed on a new principle, so as to produce the effect of _conference_--of the n.o.blest kind of conference--so as to rouse the stupid, lethargic mind to a truly _human_ activity--so as to bring out the common, human form, in all its latent actuality, from the eccentricities of the individual varieties? Something of that kind appears to be attempted here.
He cannot too often charge the attentive reader, however, that his arguments require examination. "In _conferences_," he says, "it is a rule that every word that _seems_ to be good, is not immediately to be accepted. One must try it on all points, to see _how it is lodged in the author_: [perhaps he is not in earnest] _for_ one must not always _presently yield_ what truth or beauty soever seem to be in the argument." A little delay, and opposition, the necessity of hunting, or fighting, for it, will only make it the more esteemed in the end.
In such a style, "either the author must stoutly oppose it [that is, whatsoever beauty or truth is to be the end of the argument in order to challenge the reader] or draw back, under colour of not understanding it, [and so piquing the reader into a pursuit of it] or, sometimes, perhaps, he may aid the point, and carry it _beyond_ its proper reach [and so forcing the reader to correct him. This whole work is constructed on this principle]. As when I contend with a vigorous man, I please myself with antic.i.p.ating his conclusions; I ease him of the trouble of explaining himself; I strive to prevent his imagination, whilst it is yet springing and imperfect; the order and pertinency of his understanding warns and threatens me afar off. But as to _these_,--and the sequel explains this relative, for it has no antecedent in the text--as to these, I deal quite contrary with them.
I _must understand and presuppose nothing but by them_.... Now, if you come to explain anything to them and confirm them (these readers), they presently catch at it, and rob you of the advantage of your interpretation. "It was what I was about to say; it was just _my_ thought, _and if I did not express it so_, it was only for want of _language_." Very pretty! Malice itself must be employed to correct this _proud ignorance_--"tis injustice and inhumanity to relieve and set him right who stands in no need of it, and is the worse for it. _I love_ to let him step deeper into the mire,"--[luring him on with his own confessions, and with my a.s.sumptions of his case] "_and so deep that if it be_ possible, they may at least discern their error. FOLLY AND ABSURDITY ARE NOT TO BE CURED BY BARE ADMONITION. What Cyrus answered him who importuned him to harangue his army upon the point of battle, "that men do not become valiant and warlike on a sudden, _by a fine oration_, no more than a man becomes a good musician by hearing a fine song," may properly be said of such an admonition as this;" or, as Lord Bacon has it, "It were a strange speech, which spoken, or _spoken oft_, should reclaim a man from a vice to which he is _by nature_ subject; it is _order, pursuit, sequence_, and _interchange of application_, which is mighty in nature." But the other continues:--"These are apprenticeships that are to be served beforehand by a long continued education. We owe this care and this a.s.siduity of correction and instruction to _our own_, [that is the school,] but to go to preach to the first pa.s.ser-by, and to lord it over the ignorance and folly of the first we meet, is a thing that I abhor. I rarely do it, even in _my own particular conferences_, and rather surrender my cause, than proceed to these _supercilious_ and _magisterial_ instructions." The clue to the reading of his inner book. This is what Lord Bacon also condemns, as the _magisterial_ method,--"My _humour_ is unfit, either to speak or write for _beginners_;" he will not shock or bewilder them by forcing on them prematurely the last conclusions of science; "_but_ as to things that are said in _common discourse_ or _amongst other things_, I never oppose them either by word or sign, how false or absurd soever."
"Let none _even doubt_," says the author of the Novum Organum, who thought it wisest to steer clear _even_ of _doubt_ on such a point, "whether we are anxious to destroy and demolish _the philosophical arts and sciences which are now in use_. On the contrary, we readily cherish their practice, cultivation, and honour; for we by no means interfere to prevent _the prevalent system_ from encouraging discussion, adorning discourses, or being employed _serviceably_ in the chair of the Professor, or the practice of common life, and being taken in short, by general consent, _as current coin_. Nay, we plainly declare that the system we offer will not be very _suitable_ for such purposes, not being easily adapted to _vulgar apprehension, except_ by EFFECTS AND WORKS. To show our _sincerity_ [hear] in professing our regard and friendly disposition towards _the received sciences_, we can refer to the evidence of our published writings, _especially_ our books on--the Advancement--[the _Advancement_] of Learning." And the reader who can afford time for "a second cogitation," the second cogitation which a superficial _and_ interior meaning, of course, requires, with the aid of the key of times, will find much light on that point, here and there, in the works referred to, and especially in those parts of them in which the scientific use of popular terms is treated. "We will not, therefore," he continues, "endeavour to evince it (our sincerity) any further by _words_, but content ourselves with steadily, etc., ... professedly premising that no great _progress_ can be made by the present methods in the _theory_ and contemplation of science, _and_ that they can _not_ be made to produce _any very abundant effects_." This is the proof of his sincerity in professing his regard and friendly disposition towards them, to be taken in connection with his works on the Advancement of Learning, and no doubt it was sincere, and just to that extent to which these statements, and the practice which was connected with them, would seem to indicate; but the careful reader will perceive that it was a regard, and friendliness of disposition, which was naturally qualified by that doubly significant fact last quoted.
But the question of style is still under discussion here, and no wonder that with _such_ views of the value of the "current coin," and with a regard and reverence for the received sciences so deeply qualified; or, as the other has it, with a humour so unfit either to speak or write for _beginners_, a style which admitted of other efficacies than bare _proofs_, should appear to be demanded for popular purposes, or for beginners. And no wonder that with views so similar on this first and so radical point, these two men should have hit upon the same method in _Rhetoric_ exactly, though it _was_ then wholly new. But our Gascon, goes on to describe its freedoms and novelties, its imitations of the living conference, its new vitalities.
"May we not," says the successful experimenter in this very style, "mix with the subject of conversation and communication, the quick and sharp repartees which mirth and familiarity introduce amongst friends pleasantly and _wittingly_ jesting with one another; an exercise for which my natural gaiety renders me fit enough, if it be not so extended and serious as _the other I just spoke of_, "tis no less smart and ingenious, nor of less utility _as Lycurgus thought_."
CHAPTER II.
FURTHER ILl.u.s.tRATION OF "PARTICULAR METHODS OF TRADITION."--EMBARRa.s.sMENTS OF LITERARY STATESMEN.
Here"s neither bush nor shrub to bear off any weather at all, and another storm brewing. I hear it sing in the wind. My, best way is to creep under his gaberdine; there is no other shelter hereabout: Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows. I will here shroud, till the dregs of the storm be past.--_Tempest_.
Here then, in the pa.s.sages already quoted, we find the plan and theory--the premeditated form of a new kind of Socratic performance; and this whole work, as well as some others composed in this age, make the realization of it; an invention which proposes to subst.i.tute for the languishing feeble motion which is involved in the study of _books_--the kind of books which this author found invented when he came--for the pa.s.sive, sluggish receptivity of another"s thought, the living glow of pursuit and discovery, the flash of self-conviction.
It is a Socratic dialogue, indeed; but it waits for the reader"s eye to open it; he is himself the princ.i.p.al interlocutor in it; there can be nothing done till he comes in. Whatsoever beauty or truth maybe in the argument; whatsoever jokes and repartees; whatsoever infinite audacities of mirth may be hidden under that grave cover, are not going to shine out for any lazy book-worm"s pleasure. He that will not work, neither shall he eat of this food. "Up to the _mountains_," for _this is hunter"s language_, "and he that strikes the venison first shall be lord of this feast." It is an invention whereby the author will remedy for himself the complaint, that life is short, and art is long; whereby he will "outstretch his span," and make over, not his learning only but his _living_ to the future;--it is an instrumentality by which he will still maintain living relations with the minds of men, by which he will put himself into the most intimate relations of sympathy, and confidence, and friendship, with the mind of the few; by which he will reproduce his purposes and his faculties in them, and train them to take up in their turn that thread of knowledges which is to be spun on.
But if this design be buried so deeply, is it not _lost_ then? If all the absurd and contradictory developments--if all the mad inconsistencies--all the many-sided contradictory views, which are possible to human nature on all the questions of human life, which this single personal p.r.o.noun was made to represent, in the profoundly philosophic design of the author, are still culled out by learned critics, and made to serve as the material of a grave, though it is lamented, somewhat egotistical biography, is not all this ingenuity, which has successfully evaded thus far not the careless reader only, but the scrutiny of the scholar, and the sharp eye of the reviewer himself, is it not an ingenuity which serves after all to little purpose, which indeed defeats its own design? No, by no means. That disguise which was at first a necessity, has become the instrument of his power. It is that broad _I_ of his, that _I myself_, with which he still takes all the world; it is that single, many-sided, vivacious, historical impersonation, that ideal impersonation of the individual human nature as it is--not as it should be--with all its "weaved-up follies ravelled out," with all its before unconfessed actualities, its infinite absurdities and contradictions, so boldly p.r.o.nounced and a.s.sumed by one laying claim to an historical existence, it is this historical a.s.sumption and p.r.o.nunciation of all the before unspoken, unspeakable facts of this unexplored department of natural history, it is this apparent confession with which this magician entangles his victims, as he tells us in a pa.s.sage already quoted, and leads them on through that objective representation of their follies in which they may learn to hate them, to that globe mirror--that mirror of the age which he boasts to have hung up here, when he says, "I have done what I designed: all the world knows _me in my book_, and my book in _me_."
Who shall say that it is yet time to strip him of the disguise which he wears so effectively? With all his faults, and all his egotisms, who would not be sorry to see him taken to pieces, after all? And who shall quite a.s.sure us, that it would not still be treachery, even now, for those who have unwound his clues, and traversed his labyrinths to the heart of his mystery,--for those who have penetrated to the chamber of his inner school, to come out and blab a secret with which he still works so potently; insensibly to those on whom he works, perhaps, yet so potently? But there is no harm done. It will still take the right reader to find his way through these new devices in letters; these new and vivacious proofs of learning; for him, and for none other, they lurk there still.
To evade political restrictions, and to meet the popular mind on its own ground, was the double purpose of the disguise; but it is a disguise which will only detect, and not baffle, the mind that is able to identify itself with his, and able to grasp his purposes; it is a disguise which will only detect the mind that knows him, and his purposes already. The enigmatical form of the inculcation is the device whereby that mind will be compelled to follow his track, to think for itself his thoughts again, to possess itself of the inmost secret of his intention; for it is a school in whose enigmatical devices the mind of the future was to be caught, in whose subtle exercises the child of the future was to be trained to an ident.i.ty that should restore the master to his work again, and bring forth anew, in a better hour, his clogged and buried genius.
But, if the fact that a new and more vivid kind of writing, issuing from the heart of the new philosophy of _things_, designed to work new and extraordinary effects by means of literary instrumentalities,-- effects. .h.i.therto reserved for other modes of impression,--if the fact, that a new and infinitely artistic mode of writing, burying the secrets of philosophy in the most careless forms of the vulgar and popular discourse, did, in this instance at least, exist; if this be proved, it will suffice for our present purpose. What else remains to be established concerning points incidentally started here, will be found more pertinent to another stage of this enquiry.
From beginning to end, the whole work might be quoted, page by page, in proof of this; but after the pa.s.sages already produced here, there would seem to be no necessity for acc.u.mulating any further evidence on this point. A pa.s.sage or two more, at least, will suffice to put _that_ beyond question. The extracts which follow, in connection with those already given, will serve, at least, to remove any rational doubt on that point, and on some others, too, perhaps.
"But whatever I deliver myself to be, provided it be such as I really am, I have my end; neither will I make any excuse for committing to paper such mean and frivolous things as these; the meanness of the _subject_ compels me to it."--"_Human reason is a two-edged_ and a _dangerous sword_. Observe, in the hand of _Socrates_, her most intimate and familiar friend, _how many points it has. Thus_, I am good for nothing but to follow, and suffer myself to be easily carried away with the crowd."--"I have this opinion of _these political controversies_: Be on what side you will, you have as fair a game to play as your adversary, provided you do not proceed so far as to jostle _principles that are too manifest to be disputed; and yet, "tis_ my _notion, in public affairs_ [hear], _there is no government_ so ill, _provided it be ancient_, and has been _constant_, that is not better than change and alteration. Our manners are infinitely corrupted, and wonderfully incline to grow worse: of our laws and customs, _there are many that are barbarous and monstrous: nevertheless_, by reason of the difficulty of reformation, and the danger of stirring things, _if I could put something under to stay the wheel_, and keep it where it is, _I would do so with all my heart_. It is very easy to beget in a people a contempt of its ancient observances; _never any man undertook, but he succeeded; but to establish a better regimen in the stead of that a man has overthrown, many who have attempted this have foundered in the attempt_. I very little consult _my prudence_ [philosophic "prudence"] in my conduct. I am willing to let it be guided by _public rule_.
"In fine, to return to myself, the only things by which _I_ esteem _myself_ to be something, is _that wherein never any man_ thought himself to be defective. _My recommendation is vulgar and common_; for whoever thought _he_ wanted sense. It would be a _proposition that would imply a contradiction in itself_; [in such subtleties thickly studding this popular work, the clues which link it with other works of this kind are found--the clues to a new _practical human philosophy_.] "Tis a disease that never is where it is discerned; "tis tenacious and strong; _but the first ray of the patient"s sight_ does nevertheless pierce it through and disperse it, as the beams of the sun do a thick mist: to _accuse one"s self_, would be to _excuse one"s self_ in this case; and to _condemn_, to _absolve_. There never was porter, or silly girl, that did not think they had sense enough for their need. The reasons that proceed from the natural arguing of others, we think that if we had turned our thoughts that way, we should ourselves have found it out as well as they. _Knowledge, style_, and such parts as we see in other works, we are readily aware if they excel our own; but for the simple products of the _understanding_, every one thinks he could have found out the like, and is hardly sensible of the weight and difficulty, unless--and then with much ado--in an extreme and incomparable distance; _and whoever should be able clearly to discern_ the height of another"s judgment, would be also able _to raise his own to the same pitch_; so that this is a sort of exercise, from which a man is to expect very little praise, a kind of composition of small repute. _And, besides, for whom do you write_?"--for he is merely meeting this common sense. His object is merely to make his reader confess, "That was just what I was about to say, it was just my thought; and if I did not express it so, it was only for want of language;"--"for whom do you write? _The learned_, to whom the authority appertains of judging books, know no other value but that of learning, and allow of no other process of wit but that of erudition and art. If you have mistaken one of the Scipios for another, what is all the rest you have to say worth? Whoever is ignorant of Aristotle, according to their rule, is in some sort ignorant of himself. _Heavy and vulgar souls_ cannot discern the grace of a high and unfettered style. Now these two sorts of men make the _world_. The _third sort_, into whose hands you fall, of souls that are regular, and strong of themselves, is so rare, that it _justly_ has neither _name nor place amongst us_, and it is pretty well time lost to aspire to it, or to endeavour to please it." He will not content himself with pleasing the few. He wishes to _move_ the world, and its approbation is a secondary question with him.
"He that should record _my_ idle talk, to the prejudice of the most paltry law, opinion, or custom of his parish, would do himself a great deal of wrong, and me too; for, in what I say, I warrant no other certainty, but "tis what I _had then in my thought, a thought tumultuous and wavering_. ["I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet,"
says the offended king. "These words are not mine." _Hamlet_: "Nor mine _now_."] All I say is by way of discourse. _I should not speak so boldly, if it were my due to be believed, and so I told a great man, who complained to me of the tartness and contention of my advice_."
And, indeed, he would not, in this instance, that is very certain;--for he has been speaking on the subject of RELIGIOUS TOLERATION, and among other remarks, somewhat too far in advance of his time, he has let fall, by chance, such pa.s.sages as these, which, of course, he stands ready to recall again in case any one is offended. ("These words are not mine, Hamlet." "Nor mine now.") "To _kill men_, a clear and shining light is required, and our life is too real and essential, to warrant these supernatural and fantastic accidents." "After all "tis setting a _man"s conjectures_ at a very high price to _cause a man to be roasted alive upon them_." He does not look up at all, after making this accidental remark; for he is too much occupied with a very curious story, which happens to come into his head at that moment, of certain men, who being more profoundly asleep than _men usually are_, became, according to certain grave authorities, what in their dreams they fancied they were; and having mentioned one case sufficiently ludicrous to remove any unpleasant sensation or inquiry which his preceding allusion might have occasioned, he resumes, "If _dreams can sometimes so incorporate themselves with effects of life_, I cannot believe that therefore our will should be accountable to justice. _Which I say, as a man_, who am neither _judge nor privy counsellor_, nor think myself, by many degrees, worthy so to be, but a _man of the common sort_, born and vowed to the obedience of the public realm, both in _words_ and _acts_.
"_Thought_ is free;--_thought_ is free."
_Ariel_.
"Perceiving _you to be ready and prepared on one part_, I propose to you on the other, with all the care I can, to _clear_ your judgment, not to enforce it. Truly, _I_ have not only a great many humours, but _also a great many opinions_ [which I bring forward here, and a.s.sume as mine] that I would _endeavour_ to make _my son dislike_, if I had one. The _truest_, are not always the most commodious to man; he is of too _wild_ a composition. "We speak of all things by precept and resolution," he continues, returning again to this covert question of toleration, and Lord Bacon complains also that that is the method in his meridian. They make me hate things that are _likely_, when they impose them on me for _infallible_. "Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy"--(or, as Lord Bacon expresses it, "wonder is the seed of knowledge")--enquiry the progress--ignorance the end. Ay, but there is a sort of ignorance, _strong and generous_, that yields nothing _in honour and courage to knowledge_, a knowledge, which to conceive, requires _no less knowledge_ than knowledge itself."
"I saw, in my younger days, a report of a process that Corras, a counsellor of Thoulouse, put in print."--[The vain, egotistical, incoherent, rambling old Frenchman, the old Roman Catholic French gentleman, who is understood to be the author of this new experiment in letters, was not far from being a middle-aged man, when the pamphlet which he here alludes to was first published; but his chronology, generally, does not bear a very close examination. Some very extraordinary anachronisms, which the critics are totally at a loss to account for, have somehow slipped into his story. There _was_ a young philosopher in France in those days, of a most precocious, and subtle, and inventive genius--of a most singularly artistic genius, combining speculation and practice, as they had never been combined before, and already busying himself with all sorts of things, and among other things, with curious researches in regard to ciphers, and other questions not less interesting at that time;--there was a youth in France, whose family name was also English, living there with his eyes wide open, a youth who had found occasion to _invent_ a cipher of his own even then, into whose hands that publication might well have fallen on its first appearance, and one on whose mind it might very naturally have made the impression here recorded. But let us return to the story.]--"I saw in my younger days, a report of a process, that Corras, a counsellor of Thoulouse, put in print, of a strange accident of _two men, who presented themselves the one for the other_. I remember, and I hardly remember anything else, that he seemed to have rendered _the imposture of him whom he judged to be guilty, so wonderful, and so far exceeding both our knowledge and his who was the judge, that I thought it a very bold sentence that condemned him to be hanged_. [That is the point.] _Let us take up_ SOME FORM of ARREST, that shall say, THE COURT _understands nothing of the matter_, more freely and ingenuously than the Areopagites did, _who ordered the parties to appear again in a hundred years_." We must not forget that these stories "are not regarded by the author merely for the use he makes of them,--that they carry, besides what he applies them to, the seeds of a richer and bolder matter, and sometimes collaterally a _more delicate sound_, both to the author himself who declines saying anything more about it _in that place_, and to others who shall happen to be of his ear!" One already prepared by previous discovery of the method of communication here indicated, and by voluminous readings in it, to understand that appeal, begs leave to direct the attention of the critical reader to the delicate collateral sounds in the story last quoted.
It is not irrelevant to notice that this story is introduced to the attention of the reader, "who will, perhaps, see farther into it than others," in that chapter on toleration in which it is suggested that considering the fantastic, and unscientific, and unsettled character of the human beliefs and opinions, and that even "the Fathers" have suggested in their speculations on the nature of human life, that what men believed themselves to be, in their dreams, they really became, it is after all setting a man"s conjectures at a very high price to cause a man to be roasted alive on them; the chapter in which it is intimated that considering the natural human liability to error, a little more room for correction of blunders, a little larger chance of arriving at the common truth, a little more chance for growth and advancement in learning, would, perhaps, on the whole, be likely to conduce to the human welfare, instead of sealing up the human advancement for ever, with axe and cord and stake and rack, within the limits of doctrines which may have been, perhaps, the very wisest, the most learned, of which the world was capable, at the time when their form was determined. It is the chapter which he calls fancifully, a chapter "on _cripples_," into which this odd story about the two men who presented themselves, the one for the other, in a manner so remarkable, is introduced, for _lameness_ is always this author"s grievance, wherever we find him, and he is driven to all sorts of devices to overcome it; for he is the person who came prepared to speak well, and who hates that sort of speaking, where a man reads his speech, because he is one who could naturally give it a grace by action, or as another has it, he is one who would suit the action to the word.
But it was not the question of "hanging" only, or "roasting alive,"
that authors had to consider with themselves in these times. For those forms of literary production which an author"s literary taste, or his desire to reach and move and mould the people, might incline him to select--the most approved forms of popular literature, were in effect forbidden to men, bent, as these men were, on taking an active part in the affairs of their time. Any extraordinary reputation for excellence in these departments, would hardly have tended to promote the ambitious views of the young aspirant for honors in that school of statesmanship, in which the "Fairy Queen" had been scornfully dismissed, as "an old song." Even that disposition to the gravest and profoundest forms of philosophical speculation, which one foolish young candidate for advancement was indiscreet enough to exhibit prematurely there, was made use of so successfully to his disadvantage, that for years his practical abilities were held in suspicion on that very account, as he complains. The reputation of a _Philosopher_ in those days was quite as much as this legal pract.i.tioner was willing to undertake for his part. That of a _Poet_ might have proved still more uncomfortable, and more difficult to sustain. His claim to a place in the management of affairs would not have been advanced by it, in the eyes of those old statesmen, whose favour he had to propitiate. However, he was happily relieved from any suspicion of that sort. If those paraphrases of the Psalms for which he chose to make himself responsible,--if those Hebrew melodies of his did not do the business for him, and clear him effectually of any such suspicion in the eyes of that generation, it is difficult to say what would. But whether his devotional feelings were really of a kind to require any such painful expression as that on their own account, may reasonably be doubted by any one acquainted at all with his general habits of thought and sentiment. These lyrics of the philosopher appear on the whole to prove too much; looked at from a literary point of view merely, they remind one forcibly of the attempts of Mr.
_Silence_ at a Baccha.n.a.lian song. "I have a reasonable good ear in music," says the unfortunate Pyramus, struggling a little with that cerebral development and uncompromising facial angle which he finds imposed on him. "I have a reasonable good ear in music: let us have the tongs and the bones."
"A man must frame _some probable cause_, why he should not do his best, and why he should dissemble his abilities," says this author, speaking of _colour_, or the covering of defects; and that the prejudice just referred to was not peculiar to the English court, the remarkable piece of dramatic criticism which we are about to produce from this old Gascon philosopher"s pages, may or may not indicate, according as it is interpreted. It serves as an introduction to the pa.s.sage in which the author"s double meaning, and the occasionally double sound of his stories is noted. In the preceding chapter, it should be remarked, however, the author has been discoursing in high strains, upon the vanity of popular applause, or of any applause but that of reason and conscience; sustaining himself with quotations from the Stoics, whose doctrines on this point he a.s.sumes as the precepts of a true and natural philosophy; and among others the following pa.s.sage was quoted:--[Taken from an epistle of Seneca, but including a quotation from a letter of Epicurus, on the same subject.]--"Remember him who being asked why he took so much pains in an art that could come to the knowledge of but few persons, replied, "A few are enough for me. I have enough with one, I have enough with never a one." He said true; yourself and a companion _are_ theatre enough to one another, or _you_ to _yourself_. Let us be to you _the whole people_, and the whole people to you but _one_. You should do like the beasts of chase who _efface the track at the entrance into their den_." But this author"s comprehensive design embraces all the oppositions in human nature; he thinks it of very little use to preach to men from the height of these lofty philosophic flights, unless you first dive down to the platform of their actualities, and by beginning with the secret of what they are, make sure that you take them with you. So then the latent human vanity, must needs be confessed, and instead of taking it all to himself this time, poor Cicero and Pliny are dragged up, the latter very unjustly, as the commentator complains, to stand the brunt of this philosophic shooting.
"But this exceeds all meanness of spirit in _persons of such quality as they were_, to think to derive any glory from babbling and prating, _even to the making use of their private letters to their friends, and so withal that_ though some of them _were never sent, the opportunity being lost_, they nevertheless published them; with this worthy excuse, that they were unwilling to lose their labour, and have their lucubrations thrown away."--Was it not well becoming two consuls of Rome, _sovereign magistrates of the republic, that_ commanded the world, to spend their time in patching up elegant missives, in order to gain the reputation of being well versed _in their own mother tongue_? What could a pitiful schoolmaster have done worse, who got his living by it? If the _acts_ of Xenophon and Caesar had not far transcended their eloquence, I don"t believe they would ever have taken the pains to _write_ them. They made it their business to recommend not their _saying_, but their _doing_. The companions of Demosthenes in the emba.s.sy to Philip, extolling that prince as handsome, eloquent, and a stout drinker, Demosthenes said that those were commendations more proper for a woman, an advocate, or a sponge.
"Tis not _his profession_ to know either how to hunt, or to dance well.
Orabunt causas alii, coelique meatus Describent radio, et fulgentia sidera dicent, Hic regere imperio populos sciat.
Plutarch says, moreover, that to appear so excellent in these less necessary qualities, is to produce witness against a man"s self, that he has spent his time and study ill, which ought to have been employed in the acquisition of more necessary and more useful things. Thus Philip, King of Macedon, having heard _the great Alexander_, his son, _sing at a feast_ to the _wonder and envy of the best musicians_ there. "Art thou not ashamed," he said to him, "to _sing so well_?"
And to the same Philip, a musician with whom he was disputing about something concerning his art, said, "_Heaven forbid, sir, that so great a misfortune should ever befall you as to understand these things better than I_." Perhaps this author might have made a similar reply, had _his_ been subjected to a similar criticism. And Lord Bacon quotes this story too, as he does many others, which this author has _first selected_, and for the same purpose; for, not content with appropriating his philosophy, and pretending to invent his design and his method, he borrows all his most significant stories from him, and brings them in to ill.u.s.trate the same points, and the points are borrowed also: he makes use, indeed, of his common-place book throughout in the most shameless and unconscionable manner. "Rack his style, Madam, _rack his style_?" he said to Queen Elizabeth, as he tells us, when she consulted him--he being then of her counsel learned, in the case of Dr. Hayward, charged with having written "the book of the deposing of Richard the Second, and the _coming in_ of Henry the Fourth," and sent to the Tower for that offence. The queen was eager for a different kind of advice. Racking an author"s book did not appear to her coa.r.s.e sensibilities, perfectly unconscious of the delicacy of an author"s susceptibilities, a process in itself sufficiently murderous to satisfy her revenge. There must be some flesh and blood in the business before ever she could understand it.
She wanted to have "the question" put to that gentleman as to his meaning in the obscure pa.s.sages in that work under the most impressive circ.u.mstances; and Mr. Bacon, _himself_ an author, being of her counsel learned, was requested to make out a case of treason for her; and wishes from such a source were understood to be commands in those days. Now it happened that one of the managers and actors at the Globe Theatre, who was at that time sustaining, as it would seem, the most extraordinary relations of intimacy and friendship with the friends and patrons of this same person, then figuring as the queen"s adviser, had recently composed a tragedy on this very subject; though that gentleman, more cautious than Dr. Hayward, and having, perhaps, some learned counsel also, had taken the precaution to keep back the scene of the deposing of royalty during the life-time of this sharp-witted queen, reserving its publication for the reign of her erudite successor; and the learned counsel in this case being aware of the fact, may have felt some sympathy with this misguided author. "No, madam," he replied to her inquiry, thinking to take off her bitterness with a merry conceit, as he says, "for treason I can _not_ deliver opinion that there is any, but very much felony." The queen apprehending it gladly, asked, "How?" and "wherein?" Mr. Bacon answered, "Because he had stolen many of his sentences and conceits out of Cornelius Tacitus." It would do one good to see, perhaps, how many felonious appropriations of sentences, and quotations, and ideas, the application he recommends would bring to light in this case.
But the instances already quoted are not the only ones which this free spoken foreign writer, this Elizabethan genius abroad, ventures to adduce in support of this position of his, that statesmen--men who aspire to the administration of republics or other forms of government--if they cannot consent on that account to relinquish altogether the company of the Muses, must at least so far respect the prevailing opinion on that point, as to be able to sacrifice to it the proudest literary honours. Will the reader be pleased to notice, not merely the extraordinary character of the example in this instance, but _the grounds_ of the a.s.sumption which the critic makes with so much coolness.
"And could the perfection of eloquence have added any l.u.s.tre proportionable to the merit of a great person, certainly Scipio and Laelius had never resigned the honour of their comedies, with all the _luxuriancies and delicacies of the Latin tongue_, to an African slave, for that the work was THEIRS _its beauty and excellency_ SUFFICIENTLY PROVE." [This is from a book in which the supposed autograph of Shakspere is found; a work from which he quotes incessantly, and from which he appears, indeed, to have taken the whole hint of his learning.] "Besides Terence himself confesses as much, and I should take it ill in any one that would _dispossess me_ of that _belief_." For, as he says in another place, in a certain deeply disguised dedication which he makes of the work of a friend, a poet, whose early death he greatly lamented, and whom he is "determined," as he says, "to revive and raise again to life if he can:" "As we often judge of the greater by the less, and _as the very pastimes_ of great men give an honourable idea to the clear-sighted _of the source_ from which they spring, I hope you will, by this work of his, rise to the knowledge of himself, and by consequence love and embrace his memory. In so doing, you will accomplish what he exceedingly longed for whilst he lived." But here he continues thus, "I have, indeed, in my time known some, who, by a knack of writing, have got both t.i.tle and fortune, yet disown their apprenticeship, _purposely corrupt their style,_ and affect ignorance of so vulgar a quality (which _also our nation observes_, rarely to be seen _in very learned hands_), carefully seeking a reputation by better qualities."
I once did hold it, as our statists do, a baseness to write fair: but now it did me yeoman"s service.--_Hamlet_.
And it is in the next paragraph to _this_, that he takes occasion to mention that his stories and allegations do not always serve simply for example, authority, or ornament; that they are not limited in their application to the use he ostensibly makes of them, but that they carry, for those who are in his secret, other meanings, bolder and richer meanings, and sometimes collaterally a more delicate sound.
And having interrupted the consideration upon Cicero and Pliny, and their vanity and pitiful desire for honour in future ages, with this criticism on the limited sphere of statesmen in general, and the devices to which _Laelius and Scipio_ were compelled to resort, in order to get _their_ plays published without diminishing the l.u.s.tre of their personal renown, and having stopped to insert that most extraordinary avowal in regard to his two-fold meanings in his allegations and stories, he returns to the subject of this correspondence again, for there is more in this also than meets the ear; and it is not _Pliny_, and _Cicero_ only, whose supposed vanity, and regard for posthumous fame, as men of letters, is under consideration. "But returning to the _speaking virtue_;" he says, "I find _no great choice_ between not knowing to speak _anything but ill_, and not knowing anything but _speaking well_. The sages tell us, that as to what concerns _knowledge_ there is nothing but _philosophy_, and as to what concerns _effects_ nothing but _virtue_, that is generally proper to all degrees and orders. There is something like _this in these two other_ philosophers, for _they also promise_ ETERNITY to the letters they write to their friends, but "tis _after another manner_, and by accommodating themselves _for a good end_ to the vanity of _another_; for they write to them that if the concern of making themselves known to future ages, and the thirst of glory, do yet _detain_ them in the management of public affairs, and make them fear the solitude and retirement to which they would persuade them; let them never trouble themselves more about it, forasmuch as they shall have credit enough with posterity to a.s.sure them that, were there nothing else but the _letters_ thus writ to them, those letters will render their names as known and famous as their _own public actions_ themselves could do. [And that--_that_ is the key to the correspondence between _two other_ philosophers enigmatically alluded to here.] And besides this difference," for it is "these two other philosophers," and not Pliny and Cicero, and not Seneca and Epicurus alone, that we talk of here, "and besides _this difference, these_ are not _idle_ and _empty_ letters, that contain nothing but a fine jingle of well chosen words, and fine couched phrases; but replete and _abounding with grave and learned discourses_, by which a man may render himself--not more eloquent but more _wise_, and that instruct us not to _speak_ but _to do well_"; for that is the rhetorical theory that was adopted by the scholars and statesmen then alive, whose methods of making themselves known to future ages he is indicating, even in these references to the ancients. "_Away_ with that _eloquence_ which so enchants us with its _harmony_ that we should more study it than _things_"; for this is the place where the quotation with which our investigation of this theory commenced is inserted in the text, and here it is, in the light of these preceding collections of hints that he puts in the story first quoted, wherein he says, the nature of the orator will be much more manifestly laid open to us, than in that seeming care for his fame, or in that care of his style, for its own sake. It is the story of Eros, the slave, who brought the speaker word that the audience was _deferred_, when in composing a speech that he was to make in public, "he found himself straitened in _time_, to fit his words to his mouth as he had a mind to do."
CHAPTER III.
THE POSSIBILITY OF GREAT ANONYMOUS WORKS,--OR WORKS PUBLISHED UNDER AN a.s.sUMED NAME,--CONVEYING, UNDER RHETORICAL DISGUISES, THE PRINc.i.p.aL SCIENCES,--RE-SUGGESTED, AND ILl.u.s.tRATED.
_Is the storm overblown? I hid me under the dead moon-calf"s gaberdine for fear of the storm.--Tempest_.
BUT as to this love of glory which the stoics, whom this philosopher quotes so approvingly, have measured at its true worth; as to this love of literary fame, this hankering after an earthly immortality, which he treats so scornfully in the Roman statesman, let us hear him again in another chapter, and see if we can find any thing whereby _his_ nature and designs will more manifestly be laid open to us. "Of all the foolish dreams in the world," he says, that which is most universally received, is the solicitude of reputation and glory, which we are fond of to that degree as to abandon riches, peace, life, and health, which are effectual and substantial good, to pursue this vain phantom. And of all the irrational humours of men, it should seem that the philosophers themselves have the most ado, and do the least disengage themselves from this the most restive and obstinate of all the follies. There is not any one view of which _reason_ does so clearly accuse the vanity, as that; but it is _so deeply rooted in us_, that I doubt whether any one ever clearly freed himself from it, or no. _After you have said all, and believed all_ that has been said to its prejudice, it creates so intestine an inclination _in opposition to your best arguments_, that you have little power and firmness to resist it; _for_ (_as Cicero says_) even those who controvert it, would yet that _the books they write_ should appear before the world with _their names in the t.i.tle page_, and seek to derive glory from seeming to despise it. All other things are communicable and fall into commerce; we lend our goods--
[It irks me not that men my garments wear.]
and stake our lives for the necessities and service of our friends; but to communicate one"s honour, _and to robe another with one"s own glory_, is very rarely seen. And yet we have some examples of that kind. Catulus Luctatius, in the Cymbrian war, having done all that in him lay to make his flying soldiers face about upon the enemy, _ran himself at last away with the rest, and counterfeited the coward_, to the end that his men might rather seem to follow their captain, than to fly from the enemy; and after several anecdotes full of that inner significance of which he speaks elsewhere, in which he appears, but only appears, to lose sight of this question of literary honour, for they relate to _military_ conflicts, he ventures to approach, somewhat cautiously and delicately, the latent point of his essay again, by adducing the example of persons, _not_ connected with the military profession, who have found themselves called upon in various ways, and by means of various weapons, to take part in these wars; who have yet, in consequence of certain "_subtleties of conscience_," _relinquished_ the _honour_ of their successes; and though there is no instance adduced of that particular kind of disinterestedness, in which an author relinquishes to another the honour of his t.i.tle page, as the beginning might have led one to antic.i.p.ate; on the whole, the not indiligent reader of this author"s performances here and elsewhere, will feel that the subject which is announced as the subject of this chapter, "Not to communicate a man"s honour or glory," has been, considering the circ.u.mstance, sufficiently ill.u.s.trated.