It will be seen from these hurried remarks, that there is more truth than perhaps Dr Kitchiner was aware of in his apothegm—"that a clean skin may be regarded as next in efficacy to a clear conscience." But the Doctor had but a very imperfect notion of the meaning of the words "clean skin"—his observation being not even skin-deep. A wash-hand basin, a bit of soap, and a coarse towel, he thought would give a Cockney on Ludgate-hill a clean skin—just as many good people think that a Bible, a prayer-book, and a long sermon, can give a clear conscience to a criminal in Newgate. The cause of the evil, in both cases, lies too deep for tears. Millions of men and women pass through nature to eternity clean-skinned and pious—with slight expense either in soap or sermons; while millions more, with much week-day bodily scrubbing, and much Sabbath spiritual sanctification, are held in bad odour here, while they live, by those who happen to sit near them, and finally go out like the stink of a candle.
Never stir, quoth the Doctor, "without paper, pen, and ink, and a note-book in your pocket. Notes made by pencils are easily obliterated by the motion of travelling. Commit to paper whatever you see, hear, or read, that is remarkable, with your sensations on observing it—do this upon the spot, if possible, at the moment it first strikes you—at all events do not delay it beyond the first convenient opportunity."
Suppose all people behaved in this way—and what an absurd world we should have of it—every man, woman, and child who could write, jotting away at their note-books! This committing to paper of whatever you see, hear, or read, has, among many other bad effects, this one especially—in a few years it reduces you to a state of idiocy. The memory of all men who commit to paper becomes regularly extinct, we have observed, about the age of thirty. Now, although the Memory does not bear a very brilliant reputation among the faculties, a man finds himself very much at a stand who is unprovided with one; for the Imagination, the Judgment, and the Reason walk off in search of the Memory—each in opposite directions; and the Mind, left at home by itself, is in a very awkward predicament—gets comatose—snores loudly, and expires. For our own part, we would much rather lose our Imagination and our Judgment—nay, our very Reason itself—than our Memory—provided we were suffered to retain a little Feeling and a little Fancy. Committers to paper forget that the Memory is a tablet, or they carelessly fling that mysterious tablet away, soft as wax to receive impressions, and harder than adamant to retain, and put their trust in a bit of calf-skin, or a bundle of old rags.
The observer who instantly jots down every object he sees, never, properly speaking, saw an object in his life. There has always been in the creature's mind a feeling alien to that which the object would, of its pure self, have excited. The very preservation of a sort of style in the creature's remarks, costs him an effort which disables him from understanding what is before him, by dividing the small attention of which he might have been capable, between the jotting, the jotter, and the thing jotted. Then your committer to paper of whatever he sees, hears, or reads, forgets or has never known that all real knowledge, either of men or things, must be gathered up by operations which are in their very being spontaneous and free—the mind being even unconscious of them as they are going on—while the edifice has all the time been silently rising up under the unintermitting labours of those silent workers—Thoughts; and is finally seen, not without wonder, by the Mind or Soul itself, which, gentle reader, was all along Architect and Foreman—had not only originally planned, but had even daily superintended the building of the Temple.
Were Dr Kitchiner not dead, we should just put to him this simple question—Could you, Doctor, not recollect all the dishes of the most various dinner at which you ever assisted, down to the obscurest kidney, without committing every item to your note-book? Yes, Doctor, you could. Well, then, all the universe is but one great dinner. Heaven and earth, what a show of dishes! From a sun to a salad—a moon to a mutton chop—a comet to a curry—a planet to a pâté! What gross ingratitude to the Giver of the feast, not to be able, with the memory he has given us, to remember his bounties! It is true, what the Doctor says, that notes made with pencils are easily obliterated by the motion of travelling; but then, Doctor, notes made by the Mind herself, with the Ruby Pen Nature gives all her children who have also discourse of Reason, are with the slightest touch, easilier far than glass by the diamond, traced on the tablets that disease alone seems to deface, death alone to break, but which, ineffaceable, and not to be broken, shall with all their miscellaneous inscriptions endure for ever—yea, even to the great Day of Judgment.
If men will but look and listen, and feel and think—they will never forget anything worth being remembered. Do we forget "our children, that to our eyes are dearer than the sun?" Do we forget our wives—unreasonable and almost downright disagreeable as they sometimes will be? Do we forget our triumphs—our defeats—our ecstasies, our agonies—the face of a dear friend, or "dearest foe"—the ghost-like voice of conscience at midnight arraigning us of crimes—or her seraph hymn, at which the gates of heaven seem to expand for us that we may enter in among the white-robed spirits, and
"Summer high in bliss upon the hills of God?"
What are all the jottings that ever were jotted down on his jot-book, by the most inveterate jotter that ever reached a raven age, in comparison with the Library of Useful Knowledge, that every man—who is a man—carries within the Ratcliffe—the Bodleian of his own breast?
What are you grinning at in the corner there, you little ugly Beelzebub of a Printer's Devil? and have you dropped through a seam in the ceiling? More copy do you want? There, you imp—vanished like a thought!