R. L. S.”
I have a number of holograph letters of James, some of which show his pleasant ways and attractive playfulness. They constitute the raison d’ étre of this commentary and so I will not apologize for giving them almost in full. He speaks for himself far better than I can speak for him. He was surely not a Siborne or a Major Dwyer. To my mind these letters reveal the man, and they tell of an honest, genial man who was able to write.
He writes to C. W. H. Ranken, at Bristol, thus:
Rennes, 16 January, 1826.
Rankeno amico carissimo:
That unfortunate Gentleman upon whose back all the evils of this world have been laid from time immemorial, I mean the Devil, has certainly (to give him his due) been tormenting my poor friend and schoolfellow pretty handsomely. What with your cough in the first place and your abscess in the second you have been quite a martyr, but remember the martyrs always reach heaven at last and I doubt not that your sufferings will soon be over and that in the little Paradise you have planned for yourself some five or six miles from London (rather a cockney distance by the by) you will enjoy the happiness of the blest with those you love best. I think I shall make the same compact with you that I have made with Becknell namely that in after years when time has laid his heavy hand upon us all and when you are happy in your children and your children’s children you will still give the crusty old Bachelor a place at your fireside and your Sophia shall furnish me with strong green tea and I will take my pinch of snuff and tell you Graddam’s tales to amuse the little ones or recount the wonderful things I have seen in my travels or growl at the degeneracy of the world and praise the good old days when I was young and gay and did many a wondrous deed for “Ladye love and pride of Chivalrie” and you shall forgive many a cross word and ill tempered remark for old friendship’s sake and say “He was not always so but this world’s sorrows have soured his temper, poor old Man.”
You tell me to continue my history of Bretagne, but in sooth I know not where I left off. Memory, that lazy slut, has forgot to mend her pocket which has had a hole in it for some time and the consequence is that, of all I give her to keep for me, the dross alone remains and the better part is dropped by the wayside. But I am not at all in the mood to give any descriptions. I am philosophical and therefore will tell you a story.
In that mighty empire which exceeds all others as much in wisdom as it does in size—in the time of Fo Whang, who was the six hundredth emperor of the ninety-seventh dynasty which has sat on the throne of Cathay, there lived a philosopher whose doctrine was such that every Chinese from the mandarin who enjoys the light of the celestial presence to the waterman who paddles his Junk in the river of Canton became proselytes.
Every one knows that every Chinese from generation to generation is in manners, customs, dress, and appearance so precisely what his father was before him that a certain Mandarin who had thought proper to fall into a trance for a century or so, waking from his sleep and entering his paternal mansion, found his great grandson, who was at dinner, so strikingly like himself that he was struck dumb with astonishment. There were the same wide thin eye-brows, there were the same beautiful black eyes no bigger than peas, there was the same delicate tea-colored complexion. He wore the same silk his ancestor had worn and the same chopsticks carried his food to his mouth. The Great Grandson instantly recognized his predecessor, but the resuscitated Mandarin, forgetting the lapse of years, mistook his descendant for his own grandfather and each casting themselves on their belly wriggled towards each other with all symptoms of respect. Such being the laudable reverence of this people for all customs sanctified by time, it may be well supposed that that doctrine was magnificent which could take a Chinese by the ear, and such indeed was the doctrine of the Philosopher, namely, that wisdom is folly and folly is wisdom. Which he proved thus: “The end of wisdom” said the Philosopher, “is to be happy. And the fewer are our wants the fewer can be our disappointments and consequently the happier we are. The fool has fewer wants than the wise man and the ignorant less wishes than the learned, and therefore the fool being the happiest is the wisest and the wise man is but a fool.” Now the wise men (even in China) being lamentably in the minority the Philosopher had all the voices for himself. Now there was a young Man named To-hi, who never pretended to be a wise man but was nevertheless not a fool, and going to the Philosopher he said to him—“Father, I cannot help thinking that your doctrine means more than it appears to mean and I think I have found its explication.” “Speak freely, my Son” replied the Philosopher, “and tell me what you suppose it to be.” “I imagine,” said To-hi, “that you wish to inculcate that Men seek for wisdom above their power and destroy their happiness by examining too near the objects which produce it. For I remark that all that is beautiful in nature as well as in life is little better than a delusion which to be enjoyed must be seen from a distance. When I look at the hills of Tartary, they seem from here grand and soft and blue and changing all sorts of colors from the reflection of the Sun, but when I approach them I find nothing but heaps of barren rocks and frightful deserts. If we regard the finest skin with a magnifying glass, it is like coarsest cloth of Surat and the sunset that we admire for its soft splendor to the nations on the edge of the horizon is but the glare of midday. Thus then we ought to enjoy whatever the world offers us without searching for faults and be as happy as we can without seeking to be too wise. Is not this what you meant?” “My Son,” replied the Philosopher “like many other Philosophers I did not well know what I meant and you, like many other commentators, have given an explanation which the author never intended.”
Rennes, first of Feby.