Part 54 (2/2)
Mem.--A good sort of character to seduce into illegal practices; makes a tolerable traitor or a capital smuggler. You yourselves must never commit any illegal offence,--aren't there cat's-paws for the chestnuts? As all laws are oppressions (only necessary and often sacred oppressions, which you need not explain to him), and his character is especially hostile to oppression, you easily seduce the person we describe into braving the laws of his country. Yes! the bold, generous, frank, and affectionate man has only to be born in humble life to be sure of a halter!
V.
The bold, selfish, close, grasping man will in all probability cheat you, my dear friends. For such a character makes the master-rogue, the stuff from which Nature forms a Richard the Third. You had better leave such a man quite alone. He is bad even to serve. He breaks up his tools when he has done with them. No, you can do nothing with him, my good young men!
VI.
The eating, drinking, unthoughtful, sensual, mechanical man,--the ordinary animal. Such a creature has cunning, and is either cowardly or ferocious; seldom in these qualities he preserves a medium. He is not by any means easy to dupe. Nature defends her mental brutes by the thickness of their hide. Win his mistress if possible; she is the best person to manage him. Such creatures are the natural prey of artful women; their very stolidity covers all but sensuality. To the Samson-the Delilah.
VII.
The gay, deceitful, shrewd, polished, able man,--the courtier, the man of the world. In public and stirring life this is the fit antagonist,--often the successful and conquering rival of Character V.
You perceive a man like this varies so greatly in intellect--from the mere b.u.t.terfly talent to the rarest genius, from the person you see at cards to the person you see in Cabinets, from the ----- to the Chesterfield, from the Chesterfield to the Pericles--that it is difficult to give you an exact notion of the weak points of a character so various. But while he dupes his equals and his superiors, I consider him, my attentive pupils, by no means a very difficult character for an inferior to dupe. And in this manner you must go about it. Do not attempt hypocrisy; he will see through it in an instant. Let him think you at once, and at first sight, a rogue. Be candid on that matter yourself; but let him think you a useful rogue. Serve him well and zealously; but own that you do so, because you consider your interest involved in this. This reasoning satisfies him; and as men of this character are usually generous, he will acknowledge its justice by throwing you plenty of sops, and stimulating you with bountiful cordials. Should he not content you herein, appear contented; and profit in betraying him (that is the best way to cheat him), not by his failings, but by opportunity. Watch not his character, but your time.
VIII.
The vain, arrogant, brave, amorous, flashy character. This sort of character we formerly attributed to the French, and it is still more common to the Continent than that beloved island which I shall see no more! A creature of this description is made up of many false virtues; above others, it is always profuse where its selfishness is appealed to, not otherwise. You must find, then, what pleases it, and pander to its tastes. So will ye cheat it,--or ye will cheat it also by affecting the false virtues which it admires itself,--rouge your sentiments highly, and let them strut with a buskined air; thirdly, my good young men, ye will cheat it by profuse flattery, and by calling it in especial ”the mirror of chivalry.”
IX.
The plain, sensible, honest man,--a favourable, but not elevated specimen of our race. This character, my beloved pupils, you may take in once, but never twice. Nor can you take in such a man as a stranger; he must be your friend or relation, or have known intimately some part of your family. A man of this character is always open, though in a moderate and calm degree, to the duties and ties of life. He will always do something to serve his friend, his brother, or the man whose father pulled his father out of the Serpentine. Affect with him no varnish; exert no artifice in attempting to obtain his a.s.sistance. Candidly state your wish for such or such a service, sensibly state your pretensions, modestly hint at your grat.i.tude. So may you deceive him once, then leave him alone forever!
X.
The fond, silly, credulous man, all impulse and no reflection,--how my heart swells when I contemplate this excellent character! What a Canaan for you does it present! I envy you launching into the world with the sanguine hope of finding all men such! Delightful enthusiasm of youth,--would that the hope could be realized! Here is the very incarnation of gullibility. You have only to make him love you, and no hedgehog ever sucked egg as you can suck him. Never be afraid of his indignation; go to him again and again; only throw yourself on his neck and weep. To gull him once is to gull him always; get his first s.h.i.+lling, and then calculate what you will do with the rest of his fortune. Never desert so good a man for new friends; that would be ungrateful in you! And take with you, by the way, my good young gentlemen, this concluding maxim: Men are like lands; you will get more by lavis.h.i.+ng all your labour again and again upon the easy than by ploughing up new ground in the sterile! Legislators,--wise, good, pious men,--the Tom Thumbs of moral science, who make giants first, and then kill them,--you think the above lessons villanous. I honour your penetration. They are not proofs of my villany, but of your folly! Look over them again, and you will see that they are designed to show that while ye are imprisoning, transporting, and hanging thousands every day, a man with a decent modic.u.m of cunning might practise every one of those lessons which seem to you so heinous, and not one of your laws could touch him!
BRACHYLOGIA;
OR,
ESSAYS, CRITICAL, SENTIMENTAL, MORAL, AND ORIGINAL.
ADDRESSED TO HIS PUPILS
BY AUGUSTUS TOMLINSON.
The irony in the preceding essays is often lost sight of in the present. The illness of this great man, which happened while composing these little gems, made him perhaps more in earnest than when in robust health.--Editor's Note.
ON THE MORALITY TAUGHT BY THE RICH TO THE POOR.
As soon as the urchin pauper can totter out of doors, it is taught to pull off its hat, and pull its hair to the quality. ”A good little boy,”
says the squire; ”there's a ha'penny for you.” The good little boy glows with pride. That ha'penny instils deep the lesson of humility. Now goes our urchin to school. Then comes the Sunday teaching,--before church, which enjoins the poor to be lowly, and to honour every man better off than themselves. A pound of honour to the squire, and an ounce to the beadle. Then the boy grows up; and the Lord of the Manor instructs him thus: ”Be a good boy, Tom, and I'll befriend you. Tread in the steps of your father; he was an excellent man, and a great loss to the parish; he was a very civil, hard-working, well-behaved creature; knew his station;--mind, and do like him!” So perpetual hard labour and plenty of cringing make the ancestral virtues to be perpetuated to peasants till the day of judgment! Another insidious distillation of morality is conveyed through a general praise of the poor. You hear false friends of the people, who call themselves Liberals and Tories, who have an idea of morals half chivalric, half pastoral, agree in lauding the unfortunate creatures whom they keep at work for them. But mark the virtues the poor are always to be praised for,--industry, honesty, and content. The first virtue is extolled to the skies, because industry gives the rich everything they have; the second, because honesty prevents an iota of the said everything being taken away again; and the third, because content is to hinder these poor devils from ever objecting to a lot so comfortable to the persons who profit by it. This, my pupils, is the morality taught by the rich to the poor!
EMULATION.
The great error of emulation is this: we emulate effects without inquiring into causes. When we read of the great actions of a man, we are on fire to perform the same exploits, without endeavouring to ascertain the precise qualities which enabled the man we imitate to commit the actions we admire. Could we discover these, how often might we discover that their origin was a certain temper of body, a certain peculiarity of const.i.tution, and that, wish we for the same success, we should be examining the nature of our bodies rather than sharpening the faculties of our minds,--should use dumbbells, perhaps, instead of books; nay, on the other hand, contract some grievous complaint rather than perfect our moral salubrity. Who should say whether Alexander would have been a hero had his neck been straight; or Boileau a satirist, had he never been pecked by a turkey? It would be pleasant to see you, my beloved pupils, after reading ”Quintus Curtius,” twisting each other's throat; or, fresh from Boileau, hurrying to the poultry-yard in the hope of being mutilated into the performance of a second ”Lutrin.”
CAUTION AGAINST THE SCOFFERS OF ”HUMBUG.”
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