The union, assemblage, or incorporation, if one may so speak, of these involuntary desires, affecting and affected by them all, becomes our universal moral sense or conscience, which in each of its propensities is gratified or mortified, according to our conduct.
X.
Here end my criticisms. They have passed rapidly in review the principal works and events of Sir James Mackintosh’s life;[104] and what have they illustrated? That, which I commenced by observing: that he had made several excellent speeches, that he had taken an active part in politics, that he had written ably upon history, that he had manifested a profound knowledge of philosophy; but that he had not been pre-eminent as an orator, as a politician, as an historian, as a philosopher.[105] It may be doubted whether any speech or book of his will long survive his time; but a very valuable work might be compiled from his writings and speeches. Indeed, there are hardly any books in our language more interesting or more instructive than the two volumes published by his son, and which display in every page the best qualities of an excellent heart and an excellent understanding, set off by the most amiable and remarkable simplicity. His striking, peculiar, and unrivalled merit, however, was that of a conversationalist. Great good-nature, great and yet gentle animation, much learning, and a sound, discriminating, and comprehensive judgment, made him this. He had little of the wit of words—brilliant repartées, caustic sayings, concentrated and epigrammatic turns of expression. But he knew everything and could talk of everything without being tedious. A lady of great wit, intellect, and judgment (Lady William Russell), in describing his soft Scotch voice, said to me—“Mackintosh played on your understanding with a flageolet, Macaulay with a trumpet.” Having lived much by himself and with books, and much also in the world and with men, he had the light anecdote and easy manner of society, and the grave and serious gatherings in of lonely hours. He added also to much knowledge considerable powers of observation; and there are few persons of whom he speaks, even at the dawn of their career, whom he has not judged with discrimination. His agreeableness, moreover, being that of a full mind expressed with facility, was the most translatable of any man’s, and he succeeded with foreigners, and in France, which he visited three times—once at the peace of Amiens, again in 1814, and again in 1824—quite as much as in his own country, and with his own countrymen. Madame de Staël and Benjamin Constant prized him not less than did Lord Dudley or Lord Byron. It was not only in England, then, but also on the Continent, where his early pamphlet and distinguished friendships had made him equally known—that he ever remained the man of promise; until, amidst hopes which his vast and various information, his wonderful memory, his copious elocution, and his transitory fits of energy, still nourished, he died, in the sixty-seventh year of his age, universally admired and regretted, though without a high reputation for any one thing, or the ardent attachment of any particular set of persons. His death, which took place the 30th of May, 1832, was occasioned by a small fragment of chicken-bone, which, having lacerated the trachea, created a wound that ultimately proved fatal. He met his end with calmness and resignation, expressing his belief in the Christian faith, and placing his trust in it.
XI.
No man doing so little ever went through a long life continually creating the belief that he would ultimately do so much. A want of earnestness, a want of passion, a want of genius, prevented him from playing a first-rate part amongst men during his day, and from leaving any of those monuments behind him which command the attention of posterity. A love of knowledge, an acute and capacious intelligence, an early and noble ambition, led him into literary and active life, and furnished him with the materials and at moments with the energy by which success in both is obtained. An amiable disposition, a lively flow of spirits, an extraordinary and varied stock of information made his society agreeable to the most distinguished persons of his age, and induced them, encouraged by some occasional displays of remarkable power, to consider his available abilities to be greater than they really were.
“What have you done,” he relates that a French lady once said to him, “that people should think you so superior?” “I was obliged,” he adds, “as usual, to refer to my projects.” For active life he was too much of the academic school:—believing nearly all great distinctions to be less than they were, and remaining irresolute between small ones. He passed, as he himself said, from Burke to Fox in half an hour, and remained weeks, as we learn from a friend (Lord Nugent), in determining whether he should employ “usefulness” or “utility” in some particular composition. Such is not the stuff out of which great leaders or statesmen are formed. His main error as a writer and as a speaker was his elaborate struggle against that easy idle way of delivering himself, which made the charm of his talk when he did not think of what he was saying. “The great fault of my manner,” he himself observes somewhere, “is that I overload.” And to many of his more finished compositions we might, indeed, apply the old saying of the critic, who on being asked whether he admired a certain tragedy of Dionysius, replied: “I have not seen it; it is obscured with language.” His early compositions had a sharper and terser style than his later ones, the activity of the author’s mind being greater, and his doubts and toils after perfection less; but even these were over-prepared. Can he be considered a failure? No; if you compare him with other men. Yes; if you compare him with the general idea entertained as to himself. The reputation he attained, however vague and uncertain, the writings that he left, though inferior to the prevalent notions as to his powers,—all placed him on a pedestal of conspicuous, though not of gigantic elevation amongst his contemporaries. The results of his life only disappointed when you measured them by the anticipations which his merits had excited—then he became “the man of promise.” Could he have arrived at greater eminence than that which he attained? if so, it must have been by a different road. I cannot repeat too often that no man struggles perpetually and victoriously against his own character; and one of the first principles of success in life, is so to regulate our career as rather to turn our physical constitution and natural inclinations to good account, than to endeavour to counteract the one or oppose the other.
There can be no general comparison between Montaigne and Mackintosh. The first was an original thinker, and the latter a combiner and retailer of the thoughts of others. But I have often pictured to myself the French philosopher lounging away the greatest portion of his life in the old square turret of his château, yielding to his laziness all that it exacted from him, and becoming, almost in spite of himself, the first magistrate of his town, and, though carelessly and discursively, the greatest writer of his time. He gave the rein to the idleness of his nature, and had reason to be satisfied with the employment of his life.
On the other hand, let us look at the accomplished Scotchman, constantly agitated by his aspirations after fame and his inclinations for repose; formed for literary ease, forcing himself into political conflict—dreaming of a long-laboured history, and writing a hasty article in a review; earnest about nothing, because the objects to which he momentarily directed his efforts were not likely to give the permanent distinction for which he pined; and thus, with a doubtful mind and a broken career, achieving little that was worthy of his abilities, or equal to the expectations of his friends. I have said there can be no general comparison between men whose particular faculties were no doubt of a very different order; yet, had the one mixed in contest with the bold and factious spirits of his day, he would have been but a poor “ligueur;” and had the other abstained from politics and renounced long and laborious compositions, merely writing under the stimulus of some accidental inspiration, it is probable that his name would have gone down to posterity as that of the most agreeable and instructive essayist of his remarkable epoch. But at all events that name is graven on the monument which commemorates more Christian manners and more mild legislation: and “Blessed shall he be,” as said our great lawyer, “who layeth the first stone of this building; more blessed he that proceeds in it; most of all he that finisheth it in the glory of God, and the honour of our king and nation.”