THE COFFEE CLUB.
No. II.
“I wish you saw me half starting out of my chair, with what confidence, as I grasp the elbow of it, I look up, catching the idea, even sometimes before it half-way reaches me.——I believe in my conscience I intercept many a thought, which Heaven intended for another man.”—Tristram Shandy.
“I wish you saw me half starting out of my chair, with what confidence, as I grasp the elbow of it, I look up, catching the idea, even sometimes before it half-way reaches me.
——I believe in my conscience I intercept many a thought, which Heaven intended for another man.”—Tristram Shandy.
Reader;
Lest, from the fact that we have hitherto drawn our mottos from “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy,” the suspicion may be festering in your brain that poor Nescio Quod has confined his reading among the older English writers to this single work, it may not be amiss to adduce such evidence, as shall set at rest so unjust and injurious a surmise.
For instance—had he wished to be sarcastical upon himself, and thus, by a common artifice, predispose his critics to clemency, he might, in reference to the multitudinous array ofshadowyjests—flitting around the brightness of the reader’s fancy, like moths around a candle, to their own destruction—have cited this keen retort of Fuller—“It is good to make a jest, but not to make a trade of jesting.”
Or, in allusion to the somewhat pedantic display of information, varied, but worthless, he might have adopted from the same author a complaint at the frivolous attainments of the idle and riotous student—“Yet,perchance, he may get somealmsof learning, here a snap, there a piece of knowledge, but nothing to purpose.”
Or, in a mood of preeminent self-complacency, he might have imagined that the reader’s feelings towards him, maugre his faults and his prolixity, might be fitly expressed in the language of the Spectator (after Martial.)
“In all thy humors, whether grave or mellow,Thou’rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow,Hast so much wit, and mirth, and spleen about thee,There is no living with thee, nor without thee.”
“In all thy humors, whether grave or mellow,Thou’rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow,Hast so much wit, and mirth, and spleen about thee,There is no living with thee, nor without thee.”
“In all thy humors, whether grave or mellow,Thou’rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow,Hast so much wit, and mirth, and spleen about thee,There is no living with thee, nor without thee.”
“In all thy humors, whether grave or mellow,
Thou’rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow,
Hast so much wit, and mirth, and spleen about thee,
There is no living with thee, nor without thee.”
Or, in defense of his desultory style—half-way between the frisking pirouettes of Harlequin, and the staid pace of the moraliser, he might have borrowed a circumlocutory sentence from the bungling Locke—“I would have him try whether he can keep one unvaried, single idea in his mind without any other, for any considerable length of time.”
Or, having in his mind the stolidity of those, who condescended gravely to condemn so trifling ajeu d’esprit, he might have taken to his aid a sarcasm from Smollett—“Some formidable critics declared that the work was void of humor, character, and sentiment.”
Or, revolving in his thoughts the mystery attending the appearance of the first number, and the pining curiosity excited to unveil its paternity, with flattered pride, he might have quoted a splendid sentence from Count Fathom—“Over and above this important secret, under which he was begotten, other particularities attended his birth, and seemed to mark him out as uncommon among the sons of men.”—These “ancientinstances” will suffice, my reader, if you are in a yielding mood, to convince you that, if Tristram is called upon somewhat often, it is less a matter of necessity, than of choice. I am doubting whether it would not be a most Machiavelian stroke of diplomatic wisdom, to persuade you that I perceive all my failings. Surely your admiration at my frankness would outweigh your anger at the repetition of my sins. I am sometimes affected, and, now and then, I perpetrate averbicide. I like to make new words—I feel for them the affection of a father. I am slightly tinctured with the sin mentioned by Boileau. (L’Art Poetique. Chant Troisieme.)
“Souvent, sans y penser, un écrivain qui s’aime,Forme tous ses héros semblables à soi-meme.”
“Souvent, sans y penser, un écrivain qui s’aime,Forme tous ses héros semblables à soi-meme.”
“Souvent, sans y penser, un écrivain qui s’aime,Forme tous ses héros semblables à soi-meme.”
“Souvent, sans y penser, un écrivain qui s’aime,
Forme tous ses héros semblables à soi-meme.”
Which lines theIl-literati are to know mean, “A self-complacent writer often inadvertently draws his heroes like himself.” Thus I, forgetting the precise terms of theconversators, (thereoughtto be such a word,) make them parley in a brogue very like my own. I am, moreover, somewhat vain, though less so than Ovid, or Horace, (Vide Metam. lib. 15. in fine. and Hor. 2.20 3.30.) or than that Etrurian Spurinna, whom Valerius Maximus cites as an instance of modesty, though he was rather an example of uncommon self-inflation; since he thought himself sokilling, that he disfigured his face, lest he should unwittingly seduce his fair country-women!
I would that I could affirm with Falstaff in the play, “I am not only witty in myself, but I am likewise the cause that wit is in other men.” But the protasis will, I fear, be doubted by the judicious, and my own observation tells me that the apodosis is false. I am naturally neither contemptuous nor malicious, but when I look around me, and behold so many with but two ideas, “one for superfluity and one for use,” and reflect that I may myself rank among that soulless number, I become almost a misanthrope, and quite a scorner. “Les diseurs des bons mots,” says Pascal, “sont mauvais caractères.” “The perpetrators of witticisms are bad men.” Yet the same author observes, that silence is the severest punishment, and, since novelty is all that can gain one notoriety at the present day, I know not why I should not attempt to be new, at least, if notwitty. I sometimes think I would rather give utterance to a brilliant error than a stupid truth, and, like Tully, espouse falsehood with a Plato, rather than be right with the rabble. “Had the nose of Cleopatra been shorter,” remarks an eminent writer, “the face of the world had been altered.” (Herface would have been, at any rate.) Had I, too, been born at an earlier era, before the fingers of a million had compressed every square inch of this vast globe’s surface, till it is as dry and hopeless as the peel of an eviscerated orange, I, too, might have been at once original and wise. But all truths have of late becometruisms, and to reiterate them would be like praising Shakspeare. Sufficient be it for me, (you will find the thought somewhere in Irving,) if, like a skillful physician, who gives you a pill enveloped in some palate-tickling sauce, I now and then, under the guise of folly, pop down your throat a sound moral, or a wholesome truth. My writings, if less grave in appearance, will be more healthful in effect than Bellamy’s learned computation of the earth’s inhabitants during the millennium, (whom he makes so numerous that they would be compelled to lie instrata,) or the labored inquiry of the ingenious Spaniard, whether it be more certain that acausewill produce aneffect, or that aneffectmust spring from acause. Pardon these patch-work prolegomena—remembering that it is my fashion to place my thoughts inMosaic—and pass on to my compeers of the club.
Apple.“Well, Pulito, time flies, or,” (looking learnedly,) “tempus fugit, as the Latins would say. If Quod and you are coming to the point, I’ll e’en light my cigar, and listen with elongated andpatentears.” (Here, after a series of wicked bantering, Apple was forced to explain thatpatentmeantopen—he then continued pettishly,) “I really thought you could see through a joke sooner—but if you are not about to discuss, I’ll read to Tristo a few chapters of my Psychological Autobiography, in which I have shown by induction thatpunningmay become a second nature, and that in numerous consecutive instances—”
Tristo.“Enough, good Apple; I perceive the plan of your work, and doubt not that it is profoundly amusing, and amusingly profound. But why wish to read it to me, rather than to Nescio, or Pulito?”
Apple.“Because you are melancholy, and something light and trifling might—”
Tristo.“No, Apple, no! When I am sad, which is but too often, I find no relief from the ludicrous, or the gay. I should sooner look for an antidote to melancholy in the deep thought and earnest style of Coleridge, than in the levities of Swift, or the whimsicalities of Sterne. And an evening walk in the solemn starlight would quicker soothe me than a merry ramble among the green hills in the brightness of the morning. When the soul wanders through its airy chambers in solitary sadness, let it not flee for refuge to the comicpage, to laughter, or the song. Let it dwell upon scenes and objects, more wretched than itself, till the sigh of sorrow burst into the tear of pity. The descriptions of Crabbe, so gloomy, so powerful, and so true, bear me away from sadness to solemnity, and the deep conceptions of Foster lift me from solemnity to a high and tender elevation.”
Apple.“Fool as I am, these bright spring mornings always make even me serious.”
Tristo.“Fools as weallare, there are times when the cup of pleasure is as nauseous to the soul, as is wine to the sated palate of the morning reveler. Why is it, Apple, why is it that the first gay breath of spring is so saddening in its influence? Nature seems then to burst from her winter’s sleep, like a resurrection from the grave. The jocund earth puts on her brightest robes, as if soon to celebrate her nuptials with heaven. The pulse of existence beats high with new-born vigor, and the warm, bright blood runs riot through the renovated veins. Alike in the open fields, and the crowded city, throughout the glorious works of God, and the petty creations of man, there is a newness of life, which, it would seem,mustfill every heart with bounding ecstacy. And so it may be, for aught I know, with the busy and the riotous. But with the idle and the thoughtful, the approach of spring produces, I am persuaded, far different effects.”
Apple.“Physicians would tell us that the balmy breeze bears on its wings a subtle, penetrating fluid, which dampens the spirits and enfeebles the energies.”
Tristo.“No. While I allow that these early gales of spring, which breathe life and vigor into all the rest of animated nature, unbraceournerves, and through those media of sensation, lower the tone, and lessen the elasticity of the feelings, yet, for the main cause would I look deeper—even in the mind. There are certain periods, as we all know, when we areforced to reflect. Such periods are, every serious change in the world without—the recurrence of a birth-day, or the revisiting of home; and sometimes the sight of a long-neglected volume, through whose pages I have strayed in pleasant intercourse with an absent, or a buried friend, has brought paleness to my lip, and sadness to my heart. And such an occasion, preeminently, are the early days of spring; for spring (as the Germans say) is the cradle-time of the year.”
Apple.“The calendar, though, says otherwise. But go on.”
Tristo.“Then are we summoned to look forward toanotheryear, with hopes less wild and free than they were at the commencement of the last; and we look backward, also, with a longer and a sadder retrospect: and you know, Apple, that the memory of a student is but a shadowy maze, where the forms, which, inprospect, were gilded with glory, and girded with magnificence, to hisbackwardgaze, seem airy nothings, or shapes, palpable, indeed, butunsightly—fiends, mocking at the vanity of his hopes, and the folly of his grief. And thus the bland breath of the reviving year becomes, through the mysterious principle of association, an instrument of keenest anguish to the sensitive mind. This annual birth of nature is a mile-stone, that notches our progress from the cradle to the grave: the figures are surrounded by bloom and greenness, but they are graven by the finger of Death.”
Apple.“I think such brilliant days make us feeltoowell.”
Tristo.“They do. They kindle sensations too delightful for continuance—our systems are too coarse, too frail—it seems as if an electric finger were laid invisibly upon each shrinking nerve—a balm circumfuses and permeates the heart, strange, ecstatic, overpowering. The change, too, is often so abrupt as to cause an unpleasant revulsion—the process (so far as regards the action of the mind) is not unlike that by which we pass from the stern winter of our existence here, to the bright and unending summer of the future life.”
Apple.“Well, Tristo, though I could not succeed in making you merry, you have well nigh rendered me as sad as yourself. And Quod and Pulito have stopped their wrangling to listen to your melancholy.”
Pulito.“Yes, Tristo, you are unwontedly depressed to-night, and Dumpling has scarcely made apunsince we came together. However, the coffee is ready, that will revive you both.”
The first cup sufficed to set Apple on hislegs, (speaking intellectually,) which he evinced by commencing arunningfire of puns and jests, too rapid for transcription; while Tristo, more slowly, but not less surely, owned the mild, exhilarating influence. In the mean time conversation lagged, and finally ceased, while they gave themselves up to the moresensiblepleasures of the palate. After a while, Pulito, who appeared to have been collecting all his energies for the onset, seized a moment, when Apple was poring over his Autobiography, Tristo with a pleased smile was dipping into Little’s poems, and Quod, asmagister morumfor the evening, was resettling the coffee pot on its uneasy bed, and broke forth in a most oratorical tone with the following introduction to the debate.
Pulito.“On whatever principle you may compare the writings of the older novelists with the works of Bulwer and his school, whether as to their effect, in instructing the mind, or improving the heart, quickening the moral sense, or conveying useful information, or even for mere interest, or whiling away the time in rational amusement, (which last is but the lowest commendation of a good novel): in any of these points of comparison, I maintain that the older writers have a decided and manifest superiority. I might appeal, for the support of this position, to the concurrent testimony of literary men, to the fact that they have outlived contemporary criticism, and are still classics in this fastidious age, and furthermore”—
Apple, (looking up from his manuscript.) “What book is that you’re reading out of, Pulito?”
“The book of my own intellect, as yet unpublished, Mr. Impertinence,” said Pulito, somewhat disconcerted.
Apple.“Indeed! As I was looking down, I thought from the rapid and mellifluous flow of words, the elegance and profoundness of the thought, that you were reading loud from some one of the British Essayists. No insinuations, however,” and he chuckled at the effect, while the others smiled at the harmlessness of his sarcasm.
Nescio.“Don’t suppose, Pulito, that because I prefer the modern to the ancient school among the English novelists, I therefore deny all merit to the latter. It would be strange, indeed, if men, who were admittedunâ voceto be the wits and geniuses of their age, should not have displayed many, and great, and varied excellencies. But won’t you allow that the incongruous mass, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, has gained its greenest laurels from its outrageous oddity? Its eccentricity is so astounding, so far beyond anomaly itself, that criticism pauses aghast, as at ‘the quills of the fretful porcupine,’ unknowing where to strike. You might as soon trace ‘the path of a serpent on a rock,’ or reduce to rule the movements of the wild ass of the desert. It is a mere chaos—a “rudis indigestaque moles.”
Pulito.“But, my dear fellow, such the author intended to have it.”
Nescio.“Well, and what then? Suppose he had made it dull, (as in fact much of itis, at least, to me,) would it be the more pleasing, that the author had simply fulfilled his intentions? I like a good conceit in my heart, and the more I like it, the more do I hate to see it spoiled.”
Pulito.“Do you assert that Sterne has spoiled his plan? If you do, the world is against you.”
Nescio.“I beg your pardon. Those few are against me, who copy their sentiments from one another, and who, I’ll be sworn, never had the patience to read through what they so extravagantly admire. There are many good judges, who have the taste to perceive the unrivalled beauties of Sterne in particular passages, his fine strokes of humor, his felicitous touches of character, and, therefore, indiscriminately extol the whole.”
Pulito.“Well, and I think they are about right.”
Nescio.“So they are, except in Tristram Shandy. ButthereI maintain, that while uncle Toby, and Yorick, and in fact all the actors, are among the most perfect pictures in the English language, the scenes are yet, many of them,unbearablywearisome. I would rather undertake to thread the labyrinth of Minos.”
Pulito.“Now, in my view, this same rambling style constitutes his great charm.”
Nescio.“Not at all. This attraction consists in the exquisite fidelity of his characters, and the wit that gleams along his zigzag path. His roving, if properly restrained, would be pleasing. But, in the very nature of things, we cannot heartily like an author whom we cannot keep in sight. He seems to have thought thatanything wouldtake, provided only it were irrelevant. If, indeed, thesedisjecta membrawere all brilliant or weighty, it would repay the labor of putting them together. But when you have done this, and find much of it absolute nonsense, you must feel spent, disappointed, and angry.”
Pulito.“Say what you will, and there is some truth in your words, Sterne will always remain inimitable.”
Nescio.“I deny it not, and I hope he may. One such specimen, however beautiful, of utter lawlessness, is quite enough, and the fame of Sterne has already drawn many a weak-winged aspirant from sober truth into erratic nonsense. That style, which, inhim, if affected, was, at least, original, in animitatorwould be stale and intolerable. By the way, have you ever read his Sermons and Letters?”
Pulito.“Yes, and they are beautiful, are they not?”
Nescio.“Surpassingly. But what say you to the older novelists, Fielding, Richardson and Smollett?”
Pulito.“Why, I say that their language is as much stronger and purer, as their thoughts are better, and their characters more natural, than those of Bulwer, and his tawdry tribe.”
Nescio.“Well, I must admire your modesty, to speak thus of a man, whom the spontaneous and infallible voice of a million has applauded, till praise itself grows weary.”
Pulito.“The infallible voice of the million! Phoebus! their wordsareoracular! It has not been a fact, then, has it, since the stars first sang together, that whatever thelionsof the day have done, or written, these infallible judges have followed with their praise? They did not shout ‘te deum’ to Cowley, when that worshipper of the ‘dim obscure’ was the star of a voluptuous court, as vicious in taste as it was depraved in morals? Each spectacled ‘mother in Israel’ was not enraptured by Hervey’s magniloquent meditations among the tombs? The horrors of Walpole, and the mysteries of Radcliffe, the sorrows of Porter, with the bravery of her superhuman Wallace, and the streaming eyes of her immaculate Amanda, have notallbeen worshipped in their day as lords of the ascendant—have notallrisen, and shone, and set, in the April sky of popular applause? Why, Quod, I am astonished that you should for a moment adduce the opinion of the rabble as authority.”
Nescio.“Out, aristocrat! where elsewouldyou look for natural and unbiassed feeling? I tell you, that when the voice of a people bursts forth in simultaneous applause, a workmustbe good.”
Pulito.“And I tell you, that if at this moment our meretricious press should bring forth the Letters of Junius, and the scribblings of Jack Downing, the people, if left to themselves, would choose the latter to reign over them, because the latter is most like themselves. Besides, upon one of these fashionable novels you do not get the free popular voice. Some giant critic, from prejudice, or false taste, sends forth hisimprimatur, and the groundlings catch and repeat the cry,—as a mountain shakes the thunder from its cliffs, and the little bills reverberate its voice.”
Apple.“But the people have no interest to sway their opinion.”
Pulito.“Neither have they any judgment to guide it.”
Apple.“To what, then, shall we resort? For criticism has always shifted with the shifting taste of the age, and it may be shown that the learned, and the polished, have fluctuated in their sentiments as much as the ignorant and the coarse. Did not the voices of the educated prefer Cowley and Dryden to Milton, until Addison took Milton on his wing, and bore him far into the heaven of fame? The critics of every age have followed the prevailing style of the writers of their time; and, indeed, they have constituted a large portion of those writers. Every thirty years has a style peculiar to itself—soft or strong, plain or mystical, brief or diffuse, moralizing or descriptive, simple or turgid; and the critics have set up no barrier, and constituted no law.”
Pulito.“What you have said,wastrue, butisnot. There are now so many perfect specimens from every literary mine, that dross or counterfeit is instantly detected. Criticism has become stable, or, if ever influenced by prejudice, or local feeling, you have only to take the average—cast them together into the alembic, and truth will come forth. And indeed thegeneralandlong-continuedopinion of the multitude on a literary work, is always correct, partly because nature speaks within them, and partly because they have been told what to think by their superiors.”
Nescio.“Don’t suppose I prefer the flimsy modern copyists, to the eloquent Old English prose writers—the thinkers of the seventeenth century. But what says your Criticism to the novelists of the present age, as compared with those of eighty years since?”
Pulito.“I speak not of Scott; for I admit, as must all, that to the rest of story tellers, he is the sun in heaven. I likewise except Edgeworth, and Marryatt, and, perhaps, James and Cooper. But the Bulwerian is the prevailing style; and of him enlightened criticism says, that, with much brilliancy, and some philosophy, there is a great deal that is vicious in style, and false in sentiment, shallow in reasoning, and depraving in tendency. It says that his aphorisms are merely antitheses, striking, but untrue. His characters are too strong contrasts to be natural; they are foils to one another.”
Nescio.“And where will you find a more glaring instance of this, than in Scott’s Quentin Durward, where he introduces tragedy and comedy—the executioners to Lewis, that subtle king?”
Pulito.“I allow it, and always considered the picture overcharged: it is broad farce, and not real life.”
Nescio.“Well, I will tell you whatIthink of Smollett. When he is himself, he is coarse; and when he rises to the tender, he speaks in language, which true lover and true poet never employed. His sentimentality is to me disgusting, and his sketches, though laughable, are many of them caricatures. He had a strong sense of the ludicrous, but no taste for the refined. His sea-characters are admirable; but when, in the History of England, were oaths and exclamations, which I repeat not, so common in the mouths ofrefined ladieseven, as he would represent? When I close a volume of Smollett, I rise with a sense of weariness—there is a something, which I sought, and found not—his characters appear before me in bold prominence, and they are consistent with themselves, but I doubt me whether all of them are consistent with human nature.”
Pulito.“There is something in what you say. Smollett fails in some points: but his mind was powerful, and his language is strong, and idiomatically pure. But in regard to poetry, and to love-scenes, the taste of the age was wrong: yet he simply accorded with that taste, and you cannot blame him for drifting with a race that thought Johnson a poet! As for Fielding, though too diffuse in style of remark, he is still immeasurably above Bulwer and his countless spawn. And so is Richardson, maugre his epistolary prolixity; and Goldsmith, with his quiet beauty and truth to nature, transcends them all. But Bulwer, instead of the apotheosis his admirers would bestow, deserves to do penance in purgatory for his literary sins. As obscure as Coleridge, without his deep philosophy, as glittering as Voltaire, without his sparkling wit, as seductive as Byron, without his amazing strength, his wisdom is founded in a few heartless maxims, and his poetry is comprized in a Rhyming Dictionary.”
Tristo.“No! Pulito, you are wrong there. I have heard your discussion with interest, and allow me to draw the line, which, in cooler moments, you would both approve. Bulwer is a scholar, and a genius, and essentially a poet. That he is a scholar, and a ripe one, no one that has read his Ambitious Student, and, above all, his Last Days of Pompeii, can doubt for an instant. When I look at the fact that he has founded a new school in romance; that he has written eight or ten novels, all different, all original, allcreativein their kind; that we follow his characters from their entrance to their exit, with feverish and untiring interest; that in his own path no one approaches him, and that for eight years he has supported his reputation, I see not how he can be denied many of the attributes of genius. And that he is,in heart, a poet, despite his Siamese Twins, is equally evident to me. He is certainly fertile in invention, rich in expression, and powerful in pathos. I know not where to find any thing more poetic, more moving, than the character ofLucy Brandon, and her twilight interview with Clifford at the lattice, the beautifully simple portraiture of Mydia, and, above all, the crossed love, and shattered hopes of the Ambitious Student. I say that hedoespossess wit and humor, and poetry, and talent, and that in large abundance. Yet his power is more in themannerthan thematter; for he is often superficial, and his pictures of the world, though faithful and clear in parts, are false and confused as a whole. Their coloring is too high. He strains for effect. His views in politics, in ethics, and religion, are all shifting. If a brilliant thought occurs, he pauses little upon its truth or consistency with his previous sentiments. Because red and blue arebothbeautiful, he lays them on together. You view his pictures as in a glass, and depart, ‘straitway forgetting what manner of man he is.’ He makes all his heroes think and act splendidly for the moment; but their thoughts and actions are incongruous as a whole—they war among themselves. A man cannot at once be patient and resentful, thoughtful and careless, or learned and an idler. Again—his style is as bad as it is brilliant—it is affected—sometimes tawdry. His novels are bad,verybad, in their tendency. He marries vice and virtue; he joins nobleness to sin; he makes man the puppet of fate or circumstance; around the desperate offender he weaves a spell of enchantment; we follow his heroes with wonder and pity and love, through all their paths of crime and glory, and we close the book with a sigh that ourselves were not born with natures so high, and destinies so splendid, even at the price of all their wretchedness, and all their guilt. Bulwer may talk, and talk of virtue and religion, till his hair is gray—but his principles are poison. And if he be dangerous, his imitators are contemptible. Without a tithe of his power, they are more corrupt. Their works are prolific as the rod of Aaron, and lean as the kine of Pharaoh. In regard to talent, making allowance for the greater freshness of his novels, and that sympathy which we feel for every thing of our own day, and remembering that he had alltheirexcellencies to build upon, and imitate, I should place him far below both Fielding and Smollett in mental power. Those older writers, though freer in language, are far less corrupt and enervate in thought, than these modern profligates. Inthose, there is a style simple, vigorous, and clear, and reflection solid, rational, and just—inthesethere is a continual reaching forth after singularity and power.Thosedraw faithful figures, though larger, perhaps, than life—butthesepresent distortions—wicked daubs—gross flatteries, or else vile libels upon human nature.Thereis thought—here, sentiment—there, rough gold—here, spangled tinsel.Thoseare chalybeate streams, which come tumbling from mountains of iron, with waves dark, but salubrious: whiletheseare rivulets from mercurial mines, that dance swiftly along their shining bed, with waters bright, but destructive.”
Ego.