Once asking a friend why he did not bring forward an explanation of a circ.u.mstance, in which his conduct had been called in question, he said, "His friends were satisfied on the subject, and he cared very little about the opinion of the world." I made answer that I did not consider this a good ground to rest his defence upon, for that a man"s friends seldom thought better of him than the world did. I see no reason to alter this opinion. Our friends, indeed, are more apt than a mere stranger to join in with, or be silent under any imputation thrown out against us, because they are apprehensive they may be indirectly implicated in it, and they are bound to betray us to save their own credit. To judge of our jealousy, our sensibility, our high notions of responsibility, on this score, only consider if a single individual lets fall a solitary remark implying a doubt of the wit, the sense, the courage of a friend--how it staggers us--how it makes us shake with fear--how it makes us call up all our eloquence and airs of self-consequence in his defence, lest our partiality should be supposed to have blinded our perceptions, and we should be regarded as the dupes of a mistaken admiration. We already begin to meditate an escape from a losing cause, and try to find out some other fault in the character under discussion, to show that we are not behind-hand (if the truth must be spoken) in sagacity, and a sense of the ridiculous. If, then, this is the case with the first flaw, the first doubt, the first speck that dims the sun of friendship, so that we are ready to turn our backs on our sworn attachments and well-known professions the instant we have not all the world with us, what must it be when we have all the world against us; when our friend, instead of a single stain, is covered with mud from head to foot; how shall we expect our feeble voices not to be drowned in the general clamour? how shall we dare to oppose our partial and mis-timed suffrages to the just indignation of the public? Or if it should not amount to this, how shall we answer the silence and contempt with which his name is received. How shall we animate the great ma.s.s of indifference or distrust with our private enthusiasm? how defeat the involuntary smile, or the suppressed sneer, with the burst of generous feeling and the glow of honest conviction? It is a thing not to be thought of, unless we would enter into a crusade against prejudice and malignity, devote ourselves as martyrs to friendship, raise a controversy in every company we go into, quarrel with every person we meet, and after making ourselves and every one else uncomfortable, leave off, not by clearing our friend"s reputation, but by involving our own pretensions to decency and common sense. People will not fail to observe that a man may have his reasons for his faults or vices; but that for another to volunteer a defence of them, is without excuse. It is, in fact, an attempt to deprive them of the great and only benefit they derive from the supposed errors of their neighbours and contemporaries--the pleasure of backbiting and railing at them, which they call _seeing justice done_. It is not a single breath of rumour or opinion; but the whole atmosphere is infected with a sort of aguish taint of anger and suspicion, that relaxes the nerves of fidelity, and makes our most sanguine resolutions sicken and turn pale; and he who is proof against it, must either be armed with a love of truth, or a contempt for mankind, which places him out of the reach of ordinary rules and calculations. For myself, I do not shrink from defending a cause or a friend _under a cloud_; though in neither case will cheap or common efforts suffice. But, in the first, you merely stand up for your own judgment and principles against fashion and prejudice, and thus a.s.sume a sort of manly and heroic att.i.tude of defiance: in the last (which makes it a matter of greater nicety and nervous sensibility), you sneak behind another to throw your gauntlet at the whole world, and it requires a double stock of stoical firmness not to be laughed out of your boasted zeal and independence as a romantic and _amiable weakness_.[6]
There is nothing in which all the world agree but in running down some obnoxious individual. It may be supposed that this is not for nothing, and that they have good reasons for what they do. On the contrary, I will undertake to say, that so far from there being invariably just grounds for such an universal outcry, the universality of the outcry is often the only ground of the opinion; and that it is purposely raised upon this principle, that all other proof or evidence against the person meant to be run down is wanting. Nay, further, it may happen, that while the clamour is at the loudest; while you hear it from all quarters; while it blows a perfect hurricane; while "the world rings with the vain stir"--not one of those who are most eager in hearing and echoing knows what it is about, or is not fully persuaded that the charge is equally false, malicious, and absurd. It is like the wind, that "no man knoweth whence it cometh, or whither it goeth." It is _vox et praeterea nihil_. What, then, is it that gives it its confident circulation and its irresistible force. It is the loudness of the organ with which it is p.r.o.nounced, the stentorian lungs of the mult.i.tude; the number of voices that take it up and repeat it, because others have done so; the rapid flight and the impalpable nature of common fame, that makes it a desperate undertaking for any individual to inquire into or arrest the mischief that, in the deafening buzz or loosened roar of laughter or indignation, renders it impossible for the still small voice of reason to be heard, and leaves no other course to honesty or prudence than to fall flat on the face before it, as before the pestilential blast of the desert, and wait till it has pa.s.sed over. Thus every one joins in a.s.serting, propagating, and in outwardly approving what every one, in his private and unbia.s.sed judgment, believes and knows to be scandalous and untrue. For every one in such circ.u.mstances keeps his own opinion to himself, and only attends to or acts upon that which he conceives to be the opinion of every one but himself. So that public opinion is not seldom a farce, equal to any acted upon the stage. Not only is it spurious and hollow in the way that Mr. Locke points out, by one man"s taking up at second hand the opinion of another, but worse than this, one man takes up what he believes another _will_ think, and which the latter professes only because he believes it held by the first! All, therefore, that is necessary to control public opinion, is to gain possession of some organ loud and lofty enough to make yourself heard, that has power and interest on its side; and then, no sooner do you blow a blast in this trump of _ill-fame_, like the horn hung up on an old castle-wall, than you are answered, echoed, and accredited on all sides: the gates are thrown open to receive you, and you are admitted into the very heart of the fortress of public opinion, and can a.s.sail from the ramparts with every engine of abuse, and with privileged impunity, all those who may come forward to vindicate the truth, or to rescue their good name from the unprincipled keeping of authority, servility, sophistry, and venal falsehood! The only thing wanted is to give an alarm--to excite a panic in the public mind of being left _in the lurch_, and the rabble (whether in the ranks of literature or war) will throw away their arms, and surrender at discretion to any bully or impostor who, for a _consideration_, shall choose to try the experiment upon them!
What I have here described is the effect even upon the candid and well-disposed: what must it be to the malicious and idle, who are eager to believe all the ill they can hear of every one; or to the prejudiced and interested, who are determined to credit all the ill they hear against those who are not of their own side? To these last it is only requisite to be understood that the b.u.t.t of ridicule or slander is of an opposite party, and they presently give you _carte blanche_ to say what you please of him. Do they know that it is true?
No; but they believe what all the world says, till they have evidence to the contrary. Do you prove that it is false? They dare say, that if not that something worse remains behind; and they retain the same opinion as before, for the honour of their party. They hire some one to pelt you with mud, and then affect to avoid you in the street as a dirty fellow. They are told that you have a hump on your back, and then wonder at your a.s.surance or want of complaisance in walking into a room where they are, without it. Instead of apologising for the mistake, and, from finding one aspersion false, doubting all the rest, they are only the more confirmed in the remainder from being deprived of one handle against you, and resent their disappointment, instead of being ashamed of their credulity. People talk of the bigotry of the Catholics, and treat with contempt the absurd claim of the Popes to infallibility--I think with little right to do so. Walk into a church in Paris, you are struck with a number of idle forms and ceremonies, the chanting of the service in Latin, the shifting of the surplices, the sprinkling of holy water, the painted windows "casting a dim religious light," the wax tapers, the pealing organ: the common people seem attentive and devout, and to put entire faith in all this--Why?
Because they imagine others to do so; they see and hear certain signs and supposed evidences of it, and it amuses and fills up the void of the mind, the love of the mysterious and wonderful, to lend their a.s.sent to it. They have a.s.suredly, in general, no better reason--all our Protestant divines will tell you so. Well, step out of the church of St. Roche, and drop into an English reading-room hard by: what are you the better? You see a dozen or score of your countrymen with their faces fixed, and their eyes glued to a newspaper, a magazine, a review--reading, swallowing, profoundly ruminating on the lie, the cant, the sophism of the day! Why? It saves them the trouble of thinking; it gratifies their ill-humour, and keeps off _ennui_! Does a gleam of doubt, an air of ridicule, or a glance of impatience pa.s.s across their features at the shallow and monstrous things they find?
No, it is all pa.s.sive faith and dull security; they cannot take their eyes from the page, they cannot live without it. They believe in their adopted oracle (you see it in their faces) as implicitly as in Sir John Barleycorn, as in a sirloin of beef, as in quarter-day--as they hope to receive their rents, or to see Old England again! Are not the Popes, the Fathers, the Councils, as good as their oracles and champions? They know the paper before them to be a hoax, but do they believe in the ribaldry, the calumny, the less on that account? They believe the more in it, because it is got up solely and expressly to serve a cause that needs such support--and they swear by whatever is devoted to this object.
The greater the profligacy, the effrontery, the servility, the greater the faith. Strange! That the British public, whether at home or abroad, should shake their heads at the Lady of Loretto, and repose deliciously on Mr. Theodore Hook. It may well be thought that the enlightened part of the British public, persons of family and fortunes, who have had a college education, and received the benefit of foreign travel, see through the quackery, which they encourage for a political purpose, without being themselves the dupes of it. This scarcely mends the matter. Suppose an individual, of whom it has been repeatedly a.s.serted that he has warts on his nose, were to enter the reading-room aforesaid, is there a single red-faced country squire who would not be surprised at not finding this story true, would not persuade himself five minutes after that he could not have seen correctly, or that some art had been used to conceal the defects, or would be led to doubt, from this instance, the general candour and veracity of his oracle? He would disbelieve his own senses rather.
Seeing is believing, it is said: lying is believing, I say. We do not even see with our own eyes, but must "wink and shut our apprehension up," that we may be able to agree to the report of others, as a piece of good manners and a point of established etiquette. Besides, the supposed deformity answered his wishes, the abuse fed fat the ancient grudge he owed some presumptuous scribbler, for not agreeing in a number of points with his betters; it gave him a personal advantage over a man he did not like--and who will give up what tends to strengthen his aversion for another? To Tory prejudice, dire as it is--to English imagination, morbid as it is, a nickname, a ludicrous epithet, a malignant falsehood, when it has been once propagated and taken to the bosom as a welcome consolation, becomes a precious property, a vested right; and people would as soon give up a sinecure, or a share in a close borough, as this sort of plenary indulgence to speak and think with contempt of those who would abolish the one, or throw open the other. Party-spirit is the best reason in the world for personal antipathy and vulgar abuse.
"But, do you not think, Sir" (some dialectician may ask), "that belief is involuntary, and that we judge in all cases according to the precise degree of evidence and the positive facts before us?"
No, Sir.
"You believe, then, in the doctrine of philosophical free-will?"
Indeed, Sir, I do not.
"How then, Sir, am I to understand so unaccountable a diversity of opinion from the most approved writers on the philosophy of the human mind?"
May I ask, my dear Sir, did you ever read Mr. Wordsworth"s poem of _Michael_?
"I cannot charge my memory with the fact."
Well, Sir, this Michael is an old shepherd, who has a son who goes to sea, and who turns out a great reprobate, by all the accounts received of him. Before he went, however, the father took the boy with him into a mountain-glen, and made him lay the first stone of a sheep-fold, which was to be a covenant and a remembrance between them if anything ill happened. For years after, the old man used to go and work at the sheep-fold--
"Among the rocks He went, and still look"d up upon the sun, And listen"d to the wind,"
and sat by the half-finished work, expecting the lad"s return, or hoping to hear some better tidings of him. Was this hope founded on reason--or was it not owing to the strength of affection, which in spite of everything could not relinquish its hold of a favourite object, indeed the only one that bound it to existence?
Not being able to make my dialectician answer kindly to interrogatories, I must get on without him. In matters of absolute demonstration and speculative indifferences, I grant, that belief is involuntary, and the proof not to be resisted; but then, in such matters, there is no difference of opinion, or the difference is adjusted amicably and rationally. Hobbes is of opinion, that if their pa.s.sions or interests could be implicated in the question, men would deny stoutly that the three angles of a right-angled triangle are equal to two right ones: and the disputes in religion look something like it. I only contend, however, that in all cases not of this peremptory and determinate cast, and where disputes commonly arise, inclination, habit, and example have a powerful share in throwing in the casting-weight to our opinions, and that he who is only tolerably free from these, and not their regular dupe or slave, is indeed "a man of ten thousand." Take, for instance, the example of a Catholic clergyman in a Popish country: it will generally be found that he lives and dies in the faith in which he was brought up, as the Protestant clergyman does in his--shall we say that the necessity of gaining a livelihood, or the prospect of preferment, that the early bias given to his mind by education and study, the pride of victory, the shame of defeat, the example and encouragement of all about him, the respect and love of his flock, the flattering notice of the great, have no effect in giving consistency to his opinions and carrying them through to the last? Yet, who will suppose that in either case this apparent uniformity is mere hypocrisy, or that the intellects of the two cla.s.ses of divines are naturally adapted to the arguments in favour of the two religions they have occasion to profess? No; but the understanding takes a tincture from outward impulses and circ.u.mstances, and is led to dwell on those suggestions which favour, and to blind itself to the objections which impugn, the side to which it previously and morally inclines. Again, even in those who oppose established opinions, and form the little, firm, formidable phalanx of dissent, have not early instruction, spiritual pride, the love of contradiction, a resistance to usurped authority, as much to do with keeping up the war of sects and schisms as the abstract love of truth or conviction of the understanding? Does not persecution fan the flame in such fiery tempers, and does it not expire, or grow lukewarm, with indulgence and neglect? I have a sneaking kindness for a Popish priest in this country; and to a Catholic peer I would willingly bow in pa.s.sing. What are national antipathies, individual attachments, but so many expressions of the _moral_ principle in forming our opinions?
All our opinions become grounds on which we act, and build our expectations of good or ill; and this good or ill mixed up with them is soon changed into the ruling principle which modifies or violently supersedes the original cool determination of the reason and senses.
The will, when it once gets a footing, turns the sober judgment out of doors. If we form an attachment to any one, are we not slow in giving it up? Or, if our suspicions are once excited, are we not equally rash and violent in believing the worst? Oth.e.l.lo characterises himself as one
----"That loved not wisely, but too well; Of one not easily jealous--but, being wrought, Perplex"d in the extreme."
And this answers to the movements and irregularities of pa.s.sion and opinion which take place in human nature. If we wish a thing we are disposed to believe it: if we have been accustomed to believe it, we are the more obstinate in defending it on that account: if all the world differ from us in any question of moment, we are ashamed to own it; or are hurried by peevishness and irritation into extravagance and paradox. The weight of example presses upon us (whether we feel it or not) like the law of gravitation. He who sustains his opinion by the strength of conviction and evidence alone, unmoved by ridicule, neglect, obloquy, or privation, shows no less resolution than the Hindoo who makes and keeps a vow to hold his right arm in the air till it grows rigid and callous.
To have all the world against us is trying to a man"s temper and philosophy. It unhinges even our opinion of our own motives and intentions. It is like striking the actual world from under our feet: the void that is left, the death-like pause, the chilling suspense, is fearful. The growth of an opinion is like the growth of a limb; it receives its actual support and nourishment from the general body of the opinions, feelings, and practice of the world; without that, it soon withers, festers, and becomes useless. To what purpose write a good book, if it is sure to be p.r.o.nounced a bad one, even before it is read? If our thoughts are to be blown stifling back upon ourselves, why utter them at all? It is only exposing what we love most to contumely and insult, and thus depriving ourselves of our own relish and satisfaction in them. Language is only made to communicate our sentiments, and if we can find no one to receive them, we are reduced to the silence of dumbness, we live but in the solitude of a dungeon.
If we do not vindicate our opinions, we seem poor creatures who have no right to them; if we speak out, we are involved in continual brawls and controversy. If we contemn what others admire, we make ourselves odious; if we admire what they despise, we are equally ridiculous. We have not the applause of the world nor the support of a party; we can neither enjoy the freedom of social intercourse, nor the calm of privacy. With our respect for others, we lose confidence in ourselves: everything seems to be a subject of litigation--to want proof or confirmation; we doubt, by degrees, whether we stand on our head or our heels--whether we know our right hand from our left. If I am a.s.sured that I never wrote a sentence of common English in my life, how can I know that this is not the case? If I am told at one time that my writings are as heavy as lead, and at another, that they are more light and flimsy than the gossamer--what resource have I but to choose between the two? I could say, if this were the place, what those writings are.--"Make it the place, and never stand upon punctilio!"
They are not, then, so properly the works of an author by profession, as the thoughts of a metaphysician expressed by a painter. They are subtle and difficult problems translated into hieroglyphics. I thought for several years on the hardest subjects, on Fate, Free-will, Foreknowledge absolute, without ever making use of words or images at all, and that has made them come in such throngs and confused heaps when I burst from that void of abstraction. In proportion to the tenuity to which my ideas had been drawn, and my abstinence from ornament and sensible objects, was the tenaciousness with which actual circ.u.mstances and picturesque imagery laid hold of my mind, when I turned my attention to them, or had to look round for ill.u.s.trations.
Till I began to paint, or till I became acquainted with the author of _The Ancient Mariner_, I could neither write nor speak. He encouraged me to write a book, which I did according to the original bent of my mind, making it as dry and meagre as I could, so that it fell still-born from the press, and none of those who abuse me for a shallow _catch-penny_ writer have so much as heard of it. Yet, let me say, that work contains an important metaphysical discovery, supported by a continuous and severe train of reasoning, nearly as subtle and original as anything in Hume or Berkeley. I am not accustomed to speak of myself in this manner, but impudence may provoke modesty to justify itself. Finding this method did not answer, I despaired for a time; but some trifle I wrote in the _Morning Chronicle_, meeting the approbation of the editor and the town, I resolved to turn over a new leaf--to take the public at its word, to muster all the tropes and figures I could lay hands on, and, though I am a plain man, never to appear abroad but in an embroidered dress. Still, old habits will prevail; and I hardly ever set about a paragraph or a criticism, but there was an undercurrent of thought, or some generic distinction on which the whole turned. Having got my clue, I had no difficulty in stringing pearls upon it; and the more recondite the point, the more I laboured to bring it out and set it off by a variety of ornaments and allusions. This puzzled the scribes whose business it was to crush me.
They could not see the meaning: they would not see the colouring, for it hurt their eyes. One cried out, it was dull; another, that it was too fine by half: my friends took up this last alternative as the most favourable; and since then it has been agreed that I am a florid writer, somewhat flighty and paradoxical. Yet, when I wished to unburthen my mind in the _Edinburgh_ by an article on English metaphysics, the editor, who echoes this _florid_ charge, said he preferred what I wrote for effect, and was afraid of its being thought heavy! I have accounted for the flowers; the paradoxes may be accounted for in the same way. All abstract reasoning is in extremes, or only takes up one view of a question, or what is called the principle of the thing; and if you want to give this popularity and effect, you are in danger of running into extravagance and hyperbole.
I have had to bring out some obscure distinction, or to combat some strong prejudice, and in doing this with all my might, may have often overshot the mark. It was easy to correct the excess of truth afterwards. I have been accused of inconsistency, for writing an essay, for instance, on the _Advantages of Pedantry_, and another on the _Ignorance of the Learned_, as if ignorance had not its comforts as well as knowledge. The personalities I have fallen into have never been gratuitous. If I have sacrificed my friends, it has always been to a theory. I have been found fault with for repeating myself, and for a narrow range of ideas. To a want of general reading, I plead guilty, and am sorry for it; but perhaps if I had read more, I might have thought less. As to my barrenness of invention, I have at least glanced over a number of subjects--painting, poetry, prose, plays, politics, parliamentary speakers, metaphysical lore, books, men, and things. There is some point, some fancy, some feeling, some taste, shown in treating of these. Which of my conclusions has been reversed?
Is it what I said ten years ago of the Bourbons which raised the war-whoop against me? Surely all the world are of that opinion now. I have, then, given proofs of some talent, and of more honesty: if there is haste or want of method, there is no commonplace, nor a line that licks the dust; and if I do not appear to more advantage, I at least appear such as I am. If the Editor of the _Atlas_ will do me the favour to look over my _Essay on the Principles of Human Action_, will dip into any essay I ever wrote, and will take a sponge and clear the dust from the face of my _Old Woman_, I hope he will, upon second thoughts, acquit me of an absolute dearth of resources and want of versatility in the direction of my studies.
1828.
FOOTNOTE:
[6] The only friends whom we defend with zeal and obstinacy are our relations. They seem part of ourselves. For our other friends we are only answerable, so long as we countenance them; and therefore cut the connection as soon as possible. But who ever willingly gave up the good dispositions of a child or the honour of a parent?
ESSAY VI
ON PERSONAL IDENt.i.tY
"Ha! here"s three of us are sophisticated."--Lear.
"If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes!" said the Macedonian hero; and the cynic might have retorted the compliment upon the prince by saying, that, "were he not Diogenes, he would be Alexander!" This is the universal exception, the invariable reservation that our self-love makes, the utmost point at which our admiration or envy ever arrives--to wish, if we were not ourselves, to be some other individual. No one ever wishes to be another, _instead_ of himself. We may feel a desire to change places with others--to have one man"s fortune--another"s health or strength--his wit or learning, or accomplishments of various kinds--
"Wishing to be like one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, Desiring this man"s art, and that man"s scope";
but we would still be ourselves, to possess and enjoy all these, or we would not give a doit for them. But, on this supposition, what in truth should we be the better for them? It is not we, but another, that would reap the benefit; and what do we care about that other? In that case, the present owner might as well continue to enjoy them.
_We_ should not be gainers by the change. If the meanest beggar who crouches at a palace gate, and looks up with awe and suppliant fear to the proud inmate as he pa.s.ses, could be put in possession of all the finery, the pomp, the luxury, and wealth that he sees and envies, on the sole condition of getting rid, together with his rags and misery, of all recollection that there ever was such a wretch as himself, he would reject the proffered boon with scorn. He might be glad to change situations; but he would insist on keeping his own thoughts, to _compare notes_, and point the transition by the force of contrast. He would not, on any account, forego his self-congratulation on the unexpected accession of good fortune, and his escape from past suffering. All that excites his cupidity, his envy, his repining or despair, is the alternative of some great good to himself; and if, in order to attain that object, he is to part with his own existence to take that of another, he can feel no farther interest in it. This is the language both of pa.s.sion and reason.
Here lies "the rub that makes calamity of so long life": for it is not barely the apprehension of the ills that "in that sleep of death may come," but also our ignorance and indifference to the promised good, that produces our repugnance and backwardness to quit the present scene. No man, if he had his choice, would be the angel Gabriel to-morrow! What is the angel Gabriel to him but a splendid vision? He might as well have an ambition to be turned into a bright cloud, or a particular star. The interpretation of which is, he can have no sympathy with the angel Gabriel. Before he can be transformed into so bright and ethereal an essence, he must necessarily "put off this mortal coil"--be divested of all his old habits, pa.s.sions, thoughts, and feelings--to be endowed with other attributes, lofty and beatific, of which he has no notion; and, therefore, he would rather remain a little longer in this mansion of clay, which, with all its flaws, inconveniences, and perplexities, contains all that he has any real knowledge of, or any affection for. When, indeed, he is about to quit it in spite of himself and has no other chance left to escape the darkness of the tomb he may then have no objection (making a virtue of necessity) to put on angel"s wings, to have radiant locks, to wear a wreath of amaranth, and thus to masquerade it in the skies.
It is an instance of the truthful beauty of the ancient mythology, that the various trans.m.u.tations it recounts are never voluntary, or of favourable omen, but are interposed as a timely release to those who, driven on by fate, and urged to the last extremity of fear or anguish, are turned into a flower, a plant, an animal, a star, a precious stone, or into some object that may inspire pity or mitigate our regret for their misfortunes. Narcissus was transformed into a flower; Daphne into a laurel; Arethusa into a fountain (by the favour of the G.o.ds)--but not till no other remedy was left for their despair. It is a sort of smiling cheat upon death, and graceful compromise with annihilation. It is better to exist by proxy, in some softened type and soothing allegory, than not at all--to breathe in a flower or shine in a constellation, than to be utterly forgot; but no one would change his natural condition (if he could help it) for that of a bird, an insect, a beast, or a fish, however delightful their mode of existence, or however enviable he might deem their lot compared to his own. Their thoughts are not our thoughts--their happiness is not our happiness; nor can we enter into it, except with a pa.s.sing smile of approbation, or as a refinement of fancy. As the poet sings:
"What more felicity can fall to creature Than to enjoy delight with liberty, And to be lord of all the works of nature?
To reign in the air from earth to highest sky; To feed on flowers and weeds of glorious feature; To taste whatever thing doth please the eye?-- Who rests not pleased with such happiness, Well worthy he to taste of wretchedness!"
This is gorgeous description and fine declamation: yet who would be found to act upon it, even in the forming of a wish; or would not rather be the thrall of wretchedness, than launch out (by the aid of some magic spell) into all the delights of such a b.u.t.terfly state of existence? The French (if any people can) may be said to enjoy this airy, heedless gaiety and unalloyed exuberance of satisfaction: yet what Englishman would deliberately change with them? We would sooner be miserable after our own fashion than happy after theirs. It is not happiness, then, in the abstract, which we seek, that can be addressed as
"That something still that prompts th" eternal sigh, For which we wish to live or dare to die,"
but a happiness suited to our tastes and faculties--that has become a part of ourselves, by habit and enjoyment--that is endeared to us by a thousand recollections, privations, and sufferings. No one, then, would willingly change his country or his kind for the most plausible pretences held out to him. The most humiliating punishment inflicted in ancient fable is the change of s.e.x: not that it was any degradation in itself--but that it must occasion a total derangement of the moral economy and confusion of the sense of personal propriety. The thing is said to have happened _au sens contraire_, in our time. The story is to be met with in "very choice Italian"; and Lord D---- tells it in very plain English!
We may often find ourselves envying the possessions of others, and sometimes inadvertently indulging a wish to change places with them altogether; but our self-love soon discovers some excuse to be off the bargain we were ready to strike, and retracts "vows made in haste, as violent and void." We might make up our minds to the alteration in every other particular; but, when it comes to the point, there is sure to be some trait or feature of character in the object of our admiration to which we cannot reconcile ourselves--some favourite quality or darling foible of our own, with which we can by no means resolve to part. The more enviable the situation of another, the more entirely to our taste, the more reluctant we are to leave any part of ourselves behind that would be so fully capable of appreciating all the exquisiteness of its new situation, or not to enter into the possession of such an imaginary reversion of good fortune with all our previous inclinations and sentiments. The outward circ.u.mstances were fine: they only wanted a _soul_ to enjoy them, and that soul is ours (as the costly ring wants the peerless jewel to perfect and set it off). The humble prayer and pet.i.tion to sneak into visionary felicity by personal adoption, or the surrender of our own personal pretentions, always ends in a daring project of usurpation, and a determination to expel the actual proprietor, and supply his place so much more worthily with our own ident.i.ty--not bating a single jot of it. Thus, in pa.s.sing through a fine collection of pictures, who has not envied the privilege of visiting it every day, and wished to be the owner? But the rising sigh is soon checked, and "the native hue of emulation is sicklied o"er with the pale cast of thought," when we come to ask ourselves, not merely whether the owner has any taste at all for these splendid works, and does not look upon them as so much expensive furniture, like his chairs and tables--but whether he has the same precise (and only true) taste that we have--whether he has the very same favourites that we have--whether he may not be so blind as to prefer a Vand.y.k.e to a t.i.tian, a Ruysdael to a Claude; nay, whether he may not have other pursuits and avocations that draw off his attention from the sole objects of our idolatry, and which seem to us mere impertinences and waste of time? In that case, we at once lose all patience, and exclaim indignantly, "Give us back our taste, and keep your pictures!" It is not we who should envy them the possession of the treasure, but they who should envy us the true and exclusive enjoyment of it. A similar train of feeling seems to have dictated Warton"s spirited _Sonnet on visiting Wilton House_:
"From Pembroke"s princely dome, where mimic art Decks with a magic hand the dazzling bowers, Its living hues where the warm pencil pours, And breathing forms from the rude marble start, How to life"s humbler scene can I depart?
My breast all glowing from those gorgeous towers, In my low cell how cheat the sullen hours?
Vain the complaint! For fancy can impart (To fate superior and to fortune"s power) Whate"er adorns the stately storied-hall: She, "mid the dungeon"s solitary gloom, Can dress the Graces in their attic-pall; Did the green landscape"s vernal beauty bloom; And in bright trophies clothe the twilight wall."
One sometimes pa.s.ses by a gentleman"s park, an old family-seat, with its moss-grown, ruinous paling, its "glades mild-opening to the genial day," or embrowned with forest-trees. Here one would be glad to spend one"s life, "shut up in measureless content," and to grow old beneath ancestral oaks, instead of gaining a precarious, irksome, and despised livelihood, by indulging romantic sentiments, and writing disjointed descriptions of them. The thought has scarcely risen to the lips, when we learn that the owner of so blissful a seclusion is a thoroughbred fox-hunter, a preserver of the game, a brawling electioneerer, a Tory member of parliament, a "No-Popery" man!--"I"d sooner be a dog, and bay the moon!" Who would be Sir Thomas Lethbridge for his t.i.tle and estate? asks one man. But would not almost any one wish to be Sir Francis Burdett, the man of the people, the idol of the electors of Westminster? says another. I can only answer for myself. Respectable and honest as he is, there is something in his white boots, and white breeches, and white coat, and white hair, and white hat, and red face, that I cannot, by any effort of candour, confound my personal ident.i.ty with! If Mr. ---- can prevail on Sir Francis to exchange, let him do so by all means. Perhaps they might contrive to _club_ a soul between them! Could I have had my will, I should have been born a lord: but one would not be a b.o.o.by lord neither. I am haunted by an odd fancy of driving down the Great North Road in a chaise and four, about fifty years ago, and coming to the inn at Ferry-bridge with outriders, white favours, and a coronet on the panels; and then, too, I choose my companion in the coach. Really there is a witchcraft in all this that makes it necessary to turn away from it, lest, in the conflict between imagination and impossibility, I should grow feverish and light-headed! But, on the other hand, if one was a born lord, should one have the same idea (that every one else has) of _a peeress in her own right_? Is not distance, giddy elevation, mysterious awe, an impa.s.sable gulf, necessary to form this idea in the mind, that fine ligament of "ethereal braid, sky-woven," that lets down heaven upon earth, fair as enchantment, soft as Berenice"s hair, bright and garlanded like Ariadne"s crown; and is it not better to have had this idea all through life--to have caught but glimpses of it, to have known it but in a dream--than to have been born a lord ten times over, with twenty pampered menials at one"s beck, and twenty descents to boast of? It is the envy of certain privileges, the sharp privations we have undergone, the cutting neglect we have met with from the want of birth or t.i.tle that gives its zest to the distinction: the thing itself may be indifferent or contemptible enough. It is the _becoming_ a lord that is to be desired; but he who becomes a lord in reality may be an upstart--a mere pretender, without the sterling essence; so that all that is of any worth in this supposed transition is purely imaginary and impossible.[7] Kings are so accustomed to look down on all the rest of the world, that they consider the condition of mortality as vile and intolerable, if stripped of royal state, and cry out in the bitterness of their despair, "Give me a crown, or a tomb!"
It should seem from this as if all mankind would change with the first crowned head that could propose the alternative, or that it would be only the presumption of the supposition, or a sense of their own unworthiness, that would deter them. Perhaps there is not a single throne that, if it was to be filled by this sort of voluntary metempsychosis, would not remain empty. Many would, no doubt, be glad to "monarchise, be feared, and kill with looks" in their own persons and after their own fashion: but who would be the _double_ of those shadows of a shade--those "tenth transmitters of a foolish face"--Charles X. and Ferdinand VII.? If monarchs have little sympathy with mankind, mankind have even less with monarchs. They are merely to us a sort of state-puppets, or royal wax-work, which we may gaze at with superst.i.tious wonder, but have no wish to become; and he who should meditate such a change must not only feel by antic.i.p.ation an utter contempt for the _slough_ of humanity which he is prepared to cast, but must feel an absolute void and want of attraction in those lofty and incomprehensible sentiments which are to supply its place.
With respect to actual royalty, the spell is in a great measure broken. But, among ancient monarchs, there is no one, I think, who envies Darius or Xerxes. One has a different feeling with respect to Alexander or Pyrrhus; but this is because they were great men as well as great kings, and the soul is up in arms at the mention of their names as at the sound of a trumpet. But as to all the rest--those "in the catalogue who go for kings"--the praying, eating, drinking, dressing monarchs of the earth, in time past or present--one would as soon think of wishing to personate the Golden Calf, or to turn out with Nebuchadnezzar to graze, as to be transformed into one of that "swinish mult.i.tude." There is no point of affinity. The extrinsic circ.u.mstances are imposing; but, within, there is nothing but morbid humours and proud flesh! Some persons might vote for Charlemagne; and there are others who would have no objection to be the modern Charlemagne, with all he inflicted and suffered, even after the necromantic field of Waterloo, and the b.l.o.o.d.y wreath on the vacant brow of the conqueror, and that fell jailer, set over him by a craven foe, that "glared round his soul, and mocked his closing eyelids!"
It has been remarked, that could we at pleasure change our situation in life, more persons would be found anxious to descend than to ascend in the scale of society. One reason may be, that we have it more in our power to do so; and this encourages the thought, and makes it familiar to us. A second is, that we naturally wish to throw off the cares of state, of fortune or business, that oppress us, and to seek repose before we find it in the grave. A third reason is, that, as we descend to common life, the pleasures are simple, natural, such as all can enter into, and therefore excite a general interest, and combine all suffrages. Of the different occupations of life, none is beheld with a more pleasing emotion, or less aversion to a change for our own, than that of a shepherd tending his flock: the pastoral ages have been the envy and the theme of all succeeding ones; and a beggar with his crutch is more closely allied than the monarch and his crown to the a.s.sociations of mirth and heart"s-ease. On the other hand, it must be admitted that our pride is too apt to prefer grandeur to happiness; and that our pa.s.sions make us envy great vices oftener than great virtues.
The world show their sense in nothing more than in a distrust and aversion to those changes of situation which only tend to make the successful candidates ridiculous, and which do not carry along with them a mind adequate to the circ.u.mstances. The common people, in this respect, are more shrewd and judicious than their superiors, from feeling their own awkwardness and incapacity, and often decline, with an instinctive modesty, the troublesome honours intended for them.