Part 22 (1/2)
[Footnote 3: Frederic the Great, king of Prussia.]
”Well, so much for _man_,” said Sir John, ”but, Charles, you have not told us what you had to say of _woman_, in your observations on society.”
”As to woman,” replied I, ”I declare that I found more propensity to promote subjects of taste and elegant speculation among some of the superior cla.s.s of females, than in many of my own s.e.x. The more prudent, however, are restrained through fear of the illiberal sarcasms of men who, not contented to suppress their own faculties, ridicule all intellectual exertion in woman, though evidently arising from a modest desire of improvement, and not the vanity of hopeless rivalry.”
”Charles is always the Paladin of the reading ladies,” said Sir John. ”I do not deny it,” replied I, ”if they bear their faculties meekly. But I confess that what is sneeringly called a learned lady, is to me far preferable to a scientific one, such as I encountered one evening, who talked of the fulcrum, and the lever, and the statera, which she took care to tell us was the Roman steel-yard, with all the sang-froid of philosophical conceit.”
”Scientific men,” said Sir John, ”are in general admirable for their simplicity, but in a technical woman, I have seldom found a grain of taste or elegance.”
”I own,” replied I, ”I should greatly prefer a fair companion who could modestly discriminate between the beauties of Virgil and Milton, to one who was always dabbling in chemistry, and who came to dinner with dirty hands from the laboratory. And yet I admire chemistry too; I am now only speaking of that knowledge which is desirable in a female companion; for knowledge I must have. But arts, which are of immense value in manufactures, won't make my wife's conversation entertaining to me.
Discoveries which may greatly improve dyeing and bleaching, will add little to the delights of one's summer evening's walk, or winter fire-side.”
The ladies, Lucilla especially, smiled at my warmth. I felt that there was approbation in her smile, and though I thought I had said too much already, it encouraged me to go on. ”I repeat, that next to religion, whatever relates to human manners, is most attracting to human creatures. To turn from conversation to composition. What is it that excites so feeble an interest, in perusing that finely written poem of the Abbe de Lille, '_Les Jardins?_' It is because his garden has no cultivators, no inhabitants, no men and women. What confers that powerful charm on the descriptive parts of Paradise Lost? A fascination, I will venture to affirm, paramount to all the lovely and magnificent scenery which adorns it. Eden itself with all its exquisite landscape, would excite a very inferior pleasure did it exhibit only inanimate beauties. 'Tis the proprietors, 'tis the inhabitants, 'tis the _live stock_, of Eden, which seize upon the affections, and twine about the heart. The gardens, even of Paradise, would be dull without the gardeners. 'Tis mental excellence, 'tis moral beauty which completes the charm. Where this is wanting, landscape poetry, though it be read with pleasure, yet the interest it raises is cold. It is admired, but seldom quoted. It leaves no definite idea on the mind. If general, it is indistinct; if minute, tedious.”
”It must be confessed,” said Sir John, ”that some poets are apt to forget that the finest representation of nature is only the scene, not the object; the canvas, not the portrait. We had indeed some time ago, so much of this gorgeous scene-painting, so much splendid poetical botany, so many amorous flowers, and so many vegetable courts.h.i.+ps; so many wedded plants; roots transformed to nymphs, and dwelling in emerald palaces; that some how or other, truth and probability and nature, and man slipped out of the picture, though it must be allowed that genius held the pencil.”
”In Mason's 'English Garden,'” replied I, ”Alcander's precepts would have been cold, had there been no personification. The introduction of character dramatizes what else would have been frigidly didactic.
Thomson enriches his landscape with here and there a figure, drawn with more correctness than warmth, with more nature than spirit, and exalts it everywhere by moral allusion and religious reference. The scenery of Cowper is perpetually animated with sketches of character, enlivened with portraits from real life, and the exhibition of human manners and pa.s.sions. His most exquisite descriptions owe their vividness to moral ill.u.s.tration. Loyalty, liberty, patriotism, charity, piety, benevolence, every generous feeling, every glowing sentiment, every enn.o.bling pa.s.sion, grows out of his descriptive powers. His matter always bursts into mind. His shrubbery, his forest, his flower-garden, all produce
Fruits worthy of Paradise,
and lead to immortality.”
Mr. Stanley said, adverting again to the subject of conversation, it was an amus.e.m.e.nt to him to observe what impression the first introduction to general society made on a mind conversant with books, but to whom a the world was in a manner new.
”I believe,” said Sir John, ”that an overflowing commerce, and the excessive opulence it has introduced, though favorable to all the splendors of art and mechanic ingenuity, yet have lowered the standard of taste, and debilitated the mental energies. They are advantageous to luxury, but fatal to intellect. It has added to the brilliancy of the drawing-room itself, but deducted from that of the inhabitant. It has given perfection to our mirrors, our candelabras, our gilding, our inlaying, and our sculpture, but it has communicated a torpor to the imagination, and enervated our intellectual vigor.”
”In one way,” said Mr. Stanley, smiling, ”luxury has been favorable to literature. From the unparalleled splendor of our printing, paper, engraving, illuminating and binding, luxury has caused more books to be purchased, while from the growth of time-absorbing dissipation, it causes fewer to be read. I believe we were much more familiar with our native poets in their former plain garb than since they have been attired in the gorgeous dress which now decorates our shelves.”
”Poetry,” replied Mr. Stanley, ”has of late too much degenerated into personal satire, persiflage, and caricature among one cla.s.s of writers, while among another it has exhibited the vagrancies of genius without the inspiration, the exuberance of fancy without the curb of judgment, and the eccentricities of invention without the restrictions of taste.
The image has been strained, while the verse has been slackened. We have had pleonasm without fullness, and facility without force. Redundancy has been mistaken for plenitude, flimsiness for ease, and distortion for energy. An over desire of being natural has made the poet feeble, and the rage for being simple has sometimes made him silly. The sensibility is sickly, and the elevation vertiginous.”
”To Cowper,” said Sir John, ”master of melody as he is, the mischief is partly attributable. Such an original must naturally have a herd of imitators. If they can not attain to his excellences, his faults are always attainable. The resemblance between the master and the scholar is found chiefly in his defects. The determined imitator of an easy writer becomes insipid; of a sublime one, absurd. Cowper's ease appeared his most imitable charm, but ease aggraved is insipidity. His occasional negligences, his disciples adopted uniformly. In Cowper, there might sometimes be carelessness in the verse, but the verse itself was sustained by the vigor of the sentiment. The imitator forgot that his strength lay in the thought; that his buoyant spirit always supported itself; that the figure, though amplified, was never distorted; the image, though bold, was never incongruous; and the ill.u.s.tration, though new, was never false.
”The evil, however,” continued Sir John, ”seems to be correcting itself.
The real genius, which exists in several of this whimsical school, I trust, will at length lead them to prune their excrescences, and reform their youthful eccentricities. Their good sense will teach that the surest road to fame is to condescend to tread in the luminous track of their great precursors in the art. They will see that deviation is not always improvement; that whoever wants to be better than nature will infallibly be worse; that truth in taste is as obvious as in morals, and as certain as in mathematics. In other quarters, both the cla.s.sic and the Gothic muse are emulously soaring, and I hail the restoration of genuine poetry and pure taste.”
”I must not,” said I, ”loquacious as I have already been, dismiss the subject of conversation without remarking that I found there was one topic which seemed as uniformly avoided by common consent as if it had been banished by the interdict of absolute authority, and that some forfeiture, or at least dishonor and disgrace, were to follow it on conviction--I mean religion.”
”Surely, Charles,” said Sir John, ”you would not convert general conversation into a divinity school, and friendly societies into debating clubs.”
”Far from it,” replied I, ”nor do I desire that ladies and gentlemen over their tea and coffee should rehea.r.s.e their articles of faith, or fill the intervals of carving and eating with introducing dogmas, or discussing controversies. I do not wish to erect the social table, which was meant for innocent relaxation, into an arena for theological combatants. I only wish, as people live so much together, that if, when out of the mult.i.tude of topics which arise in conversation, an unlucky wight happens to start a serious thought, I could see a cordial recognition of its importance; I wish I could see a disposition to pursue it, instead of a chilling silence which obliges him to draw in as if he had dropped something dangerous to the state, or inimical to the general cheerfulness, or derogatory to his own understanding. I only desire that as, without any effort on the part of the speaker, but merely from the overflowing fullness of a mind habitually occupied with one leading concern, we easily perceive that one of the company is a lawyer, another a soldier, a third a physician, I only wish that we could oftener discover from the same plenitude, so hard to conceal where it exists, that we were in a company of Christians.”
”We must not expect in our day,” said Mr. Stanley, ”to see revive that animating picture of the prevalence of religious intercourse given by the prophet: 'Then they that feared the Lord, spake often one to another.' And yet one can not but regret that, in select society, men well informed as we know, well principled as we hope, having one common portion of being to fill, having one common faith, one common Father, one common journey to perform, one common termination to that journey, and one common object in view beyond it, should, when together, be so unwilling to advert occasionally to those great points which doubtless often occupy them in secret; that they should on the contrary adopt a sort of inverted hypocrisy, and wish to appear worse than they really are; that they should be so backward to give or to gain information, to lend or to borrow lights, in a matter in which they are all equally interested: which can not be the case in any other possible subject.”
”In all human concerns,” said I, ”we find that those dispositions, tastes, and affections which are brought into exercise, flourish, while others are smothered by concealment.”
”It is certain,” replied Mr. Stanley, ”that knowledge which is never brought forward is apt to decline. Some feelings require to be excited in order to know if they exist. In short, topics of every kind which are kept totally out of sight make a fainter impression on the mind than such as are occasionally introduced. Communication is a great strengthener of any principle. Feelings, as well as ideas, are often elicited by collision. Thoughts that are never to be produced, in time seldom present themselves, while mutual interchange almost creates as well as cultivates them. And as to the social affections, I am persuaded that men would love each other more cordially; good-will and kindness would be inconceivably promoted, were they in the habit of maintaining that sort of intercourse which would keep up a mutual regard for their eternal interests, and lead them more to consider each other as candidates for the same immortality through the same common hope.”