‘“Glories Of human greatness are but pleasing dreams, And shadows soon decaying. On the stage Of my mortality, my youth has acted Some scenes of vanity, drawn out at length By varied pleasures—sweetened in the mixture, But tragical in issue. Beauty, pomp, With every sensuality our giddiness Doth frame an idol—are inconstant friends When any troubled passion makes us halt On the unguarded castle of the mind.’”
“Your verses,” said I, “are beautiful, even to me, who have no soul for poetry, and never wrote a line in my life. But I love not their philosophy. In all sentiments that are impregnated with melancholy, and instil sadness as a moral, I question the wisdom, and dispute the truth. There is no situation in life which we cannot sweeten, or embitter, at will. If the past is gloomy, I do not see the necessity of dwelling upon it. If the mind can make one vigorous exertion, it can another: the same energy you put forth in acquiring knowledge, would also enable you to baffle misfortune. Determine not to think upon what is painful; resolutely turn away from every thing that recals it; bend all your attention to some new and engrossing object; do this, and you defeat the past. You smile, as if this were impossible; yet it is not an iota more so, than to tear one’s self from a favourite pursuit, and addict one’s self to an object unwelcome to one at first. This the mind does continually through life: so can it also do the other, if you will but make an equal exertion. Nor does it seem to me natural to the human heart to look much to the past; all its plans, its projects, its aspirations, are for the future; it is for the future, and in the future, that we live. Our very passions, when most agitated, are most anticipative. Revenge, avarice, ambition, love, the desire of good and evil, are all fixed and pointed to some distant goal; to look backwards, is like walking backwards—against our proper formation; the mind does not readily adopt the habit, and when once adopted, it will readily return to its natural bias. Oblivion is, therefore, an easier obtained boon than we imagine. Forgetfulness of the past is purchased by increasing our anxiety for the future.”
I paused for a moment, but Glanville did not answer me; and, encouraged by a look from Ellen, I continued—“You remember that, according to an old creed, if we were given memory as a curse, we were also given hope as a blessing. Counteract the one by the other. In my own life, I have committed many weak, many wicked actions; I have chased away their remembrance, though I have transplanted their warning to the future. As the body involuntarily avoids what is hurtful to it, without tracing the association to its first experience, so the mind insensibly shuns what has formerly afflicted it, even without palpably recalling the remembrance of the affliction. The Roman philosopher placed the secret of human happiness in the one maxim—‘not to admire.’ I never could exactly comprehend the sense of the moral: my maxim for the same object would be—‘never to regret.’”
“Alas! my dear friend,” said Glanville—“we are great philosophers to each other, but not to ourselves; the moment we begin to feel sorrow, we cease to reflect on its wisdom. Time is the only comforter; your maxims are very true, but they confirm me in my opinion—that it is in vain for us to lay down fixed precepts for the regulation of the mind, so long as it is dependent upon the body. Happiness and its reverse are constitutional in many persons, and it is then only that they are independent of circumstances. Make the health, the frames of all men alike—make their nerves of the same susceptibility—their memories of the same bluntness, or acuteness—and I will then allow, that you can give rules adapted to all men; till then, your maxim, ‘never to regret,’ is as idle as Horace’s ‘never to admire.’ It may be wise to you—it is impossible to me!”
With these last words, Glanville’s voice faltered, and I felt averse to push the argument further. Ellen’s eye caught mine, and gave me a look so kind, and almost grateful, that I forgot every thing else in the world. A few moments afterwards a friend of Lady Glanville’s was announced, and I left the room.
CHAPTER LV.
Intus et in jecore aegro, Nascuntur domini.—Persius.
The next two or three days I spent in visiting all my male friends in the Lower House, and engaging them to dine with me, preparatory to the great act of voting on—‘s motion. I led them myself to the House of Commons, and not feeling sufficiently interested in the debate to remain, as a stranger, where I ought, in my own opinion, to have acted as a performer, I went to Brookes’s to wait the result. Lord Gravelton, a stout, bluff, six-foot nobleman, with a voice like a Stentor, was “blowing up” the waiters in the coffee-room. Mr.—, the author of T—, was conning the Courier in a corner; and Lord Armadilleros, the haughtiest and most honourable peer in the calendar, was monopolizing the drawing-room, with his right foot on one hob and his left on the other. I sat myself down in silence, and looked over the “crack article” in the Edinburgh. By and by, the room got fuller; every one spoke of the motion before the House, and anticipated the merits of the speeches, and the numbers of the voters.
At last a principal member entered—a crowd gathered round him. “I have heard,” he said, “the most extraordinary speech, for the combination of knowledge and imagination, that I ever recollect to have listened to.”