TO THE SAME.
Nov., 1811.
I have been much interested by your Tobit; and, as you desired, have not yet read the original, which I have nearly forgot. This, however, is not a work which would have much chance of pleasing the public; as a Scripture story is a millstone which, I believe, would now sink any poem. Strange it is, and unaccountable. Mr. Sotheby has struggled nobly against this prejudice in his Saul; but scarcely anyone has read this charming poem. In the whole circle of my acquaintance I never met one who had; nor could I ever prevail on any person, even among Mr. Sotheby’s friends and relations, to do so, except my second self; yet it had the advantage of being introduced, in an extract of considerable length, in the Annual Register ten or a dozen years since. I think Johnson did some injury in declaring religious subjects unfit for poetry.
You will have great pleasure in conversing with Lancaster, who is communicative and fluent. He has given a great stimulus to the public mind, and awakened those to a sense of duty who were too long dormant on the great subject of education. That he appears not to have been able to resist that temptation ‘by which angels fell,’ and that he has been so far intoxicated by praise as to claim the entire merit of an invention, which certainly he adopted and published and fostered with more energy and success than the real parent, is to me a matter of regret rather than surprise—perfection and human nature being incompatible. The bitterness of the controversy is indeed to be deplored; it is clear that the controversy itself has already been of use.
The following was written as a contribution to a miscellaneous volume projected by a literary friend. I am ignorant whether the volume was ever published; or, if so, under what name.
THE ENVIOUS MAN:
In Imitation of the Pictures in ‘The Microcosm.’[45]
The next picture is distinguished by the peculiar expression of the countenance. Mark that painful smile. It inflicts on the spectator a slight tincture of the uneasiness it bespeaks. This is an Envious Man—sworn foe to Excellence, Eminence, Enjoyment. United, these form a triple cord, in which he would willingly hang himself; and separate, any one of the three suffices to wring his heart.
The man who rejoices in the success of those who tread the same path to distinction with himself, has conquered some of the strongest foes to happiness and virtue. He who feels a slight difficulty in doing justice to a competitor is touched by human infirmity. But what shall we say of this man, who is Envious in the abstract; to whom all happiness is baneful, all beauty deformity, all music discord, all virtue hypocrisy or weakness? In vain you think yourself safe, because you can never be his competitor; your ages are dissimilar, your pursuits opposite, your situations remote. Mistaken man! In your life ‘if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise,’ there will he cross you, like a basilisk, in your path. Even though you possess no splendid gifts, no social charm, nor riches, nor honours, nor domestic joys,—still, if content be yours, there you sin against his creed, and incur his anathema.
A youth speaks of a lovely woman with admiration. The Original of this portrait points out, as a counterpoise to all her graces, that slight blemish in person or manners, which is but the stamp of humanity. Tell him a witticism, he has heard it before: a splendid act of beneficence, ’tis ostentation: an instance of family affection, ‘Dear Sir, this may be so, but who can peep behind the curtain?’ When the length of a young lady’s raven tresses was pointed out to him as remarkable, he whispered, ‘False, depend on it; I know where they are sold.’ ‘Sir,’ said a friend of the young lady’s, ‘the hair must have grown on some human head, why not where we see it?’ ‘No, no,’ says the sceptic; ‘be assured, hair of such a length never grew from any head whatever. False, false, depend on it.’