A grateful mindBy owing owes not, but still pays, at onceIndebted and discharged.3
A grateful mindBy owing owes not, but still pays, at onceIndebted and discharged.3
That there are some readers who would think themselves beholden, though in far less degree, to me, as I am to the revered subject of these memorials, was an after consideration.
3MILTON.
Sir Egerton Brydges says he never took up a book which he could read without wishing to know the character and history of the author. “But what is it,” he says, “to tell the facts that he was born, married or lived single and died? What is common to all can convey no information. We desire to know an author's feelings, his temper, his disposition, his modes of thinking, his habits; nay even his person, his voice, and his mode of expressing himself, the society in which he has lived, and the images and lessons which attended upon his cradle.” Most of this, Sir Egerton, you can never know otherwise than by guess work. Yet methinks my feelings, my temper, my disposition and my modes of thinking are indicated here, as far as a book can indicate them. You have yourself said; “if it could be proved that what one writes, is no index to what he thinks and feels, then it would be of little value and no interest;” but you are confident that such delusive writers always betray themselves; “Sincerity,” you say, “has always a breath and spirit of its own.” Yes, Sir Egerton, and if there is not that spirit in these volumes, there is no vitality in them; if they have not that breath of life, they must be still-born.
Yet I cannot agree with you in the opinion that those who make a false display of fine feelings whether in prose or verse, always betray themselves. The cant of sentimentalism passes as current with the Reading Public, as cant of a different description with those who call themselves the Religious Public. Among the latter, the proudest and the most uncharitable people in this nation are to be found; and in proof that the most intensely selfish of the human race may be sentimentalists, and super-sentimentalists, it is sufficient to name Rousseau.
Perhaps some benevolent and sagacious Reader may say to me as Randolph said to his friend Owen Feltham,—
Thy book I read, and read it with delight,Resolving so to live as thou dost write;And yet I guess thy life thy book producesAnd but expresses thy peculiar uses.
Thy book I read, and read it with delight,Resolving so to live as thou dost write;And yet I guess thy life thy book producesAnd but expresses thy peculiar uses.
But the Reader who should apply to me and my Opus the French lines,
A l'auteur on connoît l'ouvrage,A l'ouvrage on connoît l'auteur,
A l'auteur on connoît l'ouvrage,A l'ouvrage on connoît l'auteur,
though he may be equally benevolent, would not be equally sagacious. It is not for mere caprice that I remainIgnotusandInnominabilis;not a Great Unknown, anIgnotolemagne, but simply an Unknown,Αγνωστος,l'Inconnu,Sconciuto, theEncubierto, theDesconocido—
This precious secret let me hideI'll tell you every thing beside.4
This precious secret let me hideI'll tell you every thing beside.4
4COTTON.
Critics, we know, affect always to have strange intelligence; but though they should say to me
You mayAs soon tie up the sunbeams in a netAs keep yourself unknown,5
You mayAs soon tie up the sunbeams in a netAs keep yourself unknown,5
I shall still continue in darkness inscrutable. Nor am I to be moved from this determination by the opinion which the Emperor Julian expressed concerning Proteus, when he censured him for changing himself into divers forms, lest men should compel him to manifest his knowledge. For said Julian, “if Proteus were indeed wise, and knew as Homer says many things, I praise him indeed for his knowledge, but I do not commend his disposition; seeing that he performed the part, not of a philanthropist, but rather of an imposter, in concealing himself lest he should be useful to mankind.”
5SHIRLEY.
This was forming a severer opinion of the Ancient of the Deep, the old Prophet of the Sea, than I would pronounce upon Julian himself, though the name of Apostate clings to him. Unhappy as he was in the most important of all concerns, he was at least a true believer in a false religion, and therefore a better man than some of those kings who have borne the title of most Christian or most Catholic. I wish he had kept his beard clean! But our follies and weaknesses, when they are nothing worse, die with us, and are not like unrepented sins to be raised up in judgement. The beard of the imperial Philosopher is not populous now. And in my posthumous travels, if in some extramundane excursion I should meet him in that Limbo which is not a place of punishment but where odd persons as well as odd things are to be found, and in the Public Library of that Limbo we should find a certain Opus conspicuously placed and in high repute, translated, not into the Limbo tongue alone, but into all languages, and the Imperial Philosopher should censure the still incognoscible Author for still continuing in incognoscibility for the same reason that he blamed the Ancient of the Deep, I should remind him of the Eleusinian Mysteries, whisper the Great Decasyllabon in his ear, and ask him whether there are not some secrets which it is neither lawful nor fitting to disclose.
END OF VOL. V.
END OF VOL. V.
LONDON:PRINTED BY W. NICOL, PALL-MALL.
LONDON:PRINTED BY W. NICOL, PALL-MALL.