I once knew a gentleman, not a bore quite, but a very clever man, one of great sensibility and excessive sensitiveness, who could never sit still a quarter of an hour together, never converse with you comfortably, or finish a good story, but evermore broke off in the middle with “I am boring you”—“I must run away or I shall be a bore.” It ended in his becoming that which he most feared to be.
There are a few rare exceptions to all that has been said of the caprices or weaknesses of lions. The greatest of lions known or unknown, the most agreeable as well as the noblest of creatures, is quite free from these infirmities. He neither affects to show himself, nor lies sullen in his den. I have somewhere seen his picture sketched; I should guess by himself at some moment I when the lion turned painter.
“I pique myself upon being one of the best conditioned animals that ever was shown, since the time of him who was in vain I defied by the knight of the woful figure; for I get up at the first touch of the pole, rouse myself, shake my mane, lick my chops, turn round, lie down, and go to sleep again.” It was bad policy in me to let the words “go to sleep” sound upon the reader’s ear, for I have not yet quite done; I have one more class, and though last not least; were I to adopt that enigmatical style which made the fortune of the oracle of Apollo, I might add—and though least, greatest. But this, the oracular sublime, has now gone to the gipsies and the conjurors, and I must write plain English, if I can.
I am come to the crass of the infant bore—the infant reciting bore; seemingly insignificant, but exceedingly tiresome, also exceedingly dangerous, as I shall show. The old of this class we meet wherever we go—in the forum, the temple, the senate, the theatre, the drawing-room, the boudoir, the closet. The young infest our homes, pursue us to our very hearths; our household deities are in league with them; they destroy all our domestic comfort; they become public nuisances, widely destructive to our literature. Their mode of training will explain the nature of the danger. The infant reciting bore is trained much after the manner of a learned pig. Before the quadruped are placed, on certain bits of dirty greasy cards, the letters of the alphabet, or short nonsensical phrases interrogatory with their answers, such as “Who is the greatest rogue in company?” “Which lady or gentleman in company will be married first?” By the alternate use of blows and bribes of such food as pleases the pig, the animal is brought to obey certain signs from his master, and at his bidding to select any letter or phrase required from amongst those set before him, goes to his lessons, seems to read attentively, and to understand; then by a motion of his snout, or a well-timed grunt, designates the right phrase, and answers the expectations of his master and the company. The infant reciter is in similar manner trained by alternate blows and bribes, almonds and raisins, and bumpers of sweet wine. But mark the difference between him and the pig. Instead of greasy letters and old cards, which are used for the learned pig, before the little human animal are cast the finest morsels from our first authors, selections from our poets, didactic, pathetic, and sublime—every creature’s best, sacrificed.
These are to be slowly but surely deprived of spirit, sense, and life, by the deadly deadening power of iteration. Not only are they deprived of life, but mangled by the infant bore—not only mangled, but polluted—left in such a state that no creature of any delicacy, taste, or feeling, can bear them afterwards. And are immortal works, or works which fond man thought and called immortal, thus to perish? Thus are they doomed to destruction, by a Lilliputian race of Vandals.
The curse of Minerva be on the heads of those who train, who incite them to such sacrilegious mischief! The mischief spreads every day wide and more wide. Till of late years, there had appeared bounds to its progress. Nature seemed to have provided against the devastations of the infant reciter. Formerly it seemed, that only those whom she had blessed or cursed with a wonderful memory, could be worth the trouble of training, or by the successful performance of the feats desired, to pay the labour of instruction. But there has arisen in the land, men who set at nought the decrees of nature, who undertake to make artificial memories, not only equal but superior to the best natural memory, and who, at the shortest notice, engage to supply the brainless with brains. By certain technical helps, long passages, whole poems, may now be learnt by heart, as they call it, without any aid, effort, or cognizance of the understanding; and retained and recited, under the same circumstances, by any irrational, as well and better, than by any rational being, if, to recite well, mean to repeat without missing a syllable. How far our literature may in future suffer from these blighting swarms, will best be conceived by a glance at what they have already withered and blasted of the favourite productions of our most popular poets, Gray, Goldsmith, Thomson, Pope, Dryden, Milton, Shakspeare.
Pope’s Man of Ross was doomed to suffer first.
“Rise, honest Muse, and sing the Man of Ross!”
Oh, dreaded words! who is there that does not wish the honest muse should rise no more? Goldsmith came next, and shared the same fate. His country curate, the most amiable of men, we heard of till he grew past endurance.
As to learning any longer from the bee to build, or of the little nautilus to sail, we gave it up long ago. “To be or not to be”—is a question we can no longer bear.