Luther also was thought by some to be a mere compound of violence and ruggedness. But, as in the case of Knox, the times in which he lived were rude and violent; and the work he had to do could scarcely have been accomplished with gentleness and suavity. To rouse Europe from its lethargy, he had to speak and to write with force, and even vehemence. Yet Luther's vehemence was only in words. His apparently rude exterior covered a warm heart. In private life he was gentle, loving, and affectionate. He was simple and homely, even to commonness. Fond of all common pleasures and enjoyments, he was anything but an austere man, or a bigot; for he was hearty, genial, and even "jolly." Luther was the common people's hero in his lifetime, and he remains so in Germany to this day.
Samuel Johnson was rude and often gruff in manner. But he had been brought up in a rough school. Poverty in early life had made him acquainted with strange companions. He had wandered in the streets with Savage for nights together, unable between them to raise money enough to pay for a bed. When his indomitable courage and industry at length secured for him a footing in society, he still bore upon him the scars of his early sorrows and struggles. He was by nature strong and robust, and his experience made him unaccommodating and self-asserting. When he was once asked why he was not invited to dine out as Garrick was, he answered, "Because great lords and ladies did not like to have their mouths stopped;" and Johnson was a notorious mouth-stopper, though what he said was always worth listening to.
Johnson's companions spoke of him as "Ursa Major;" but, as Goldsmith generously said of him, "No man alive has a more tender heart; he has nothing of the bear about him but his skin." The kindliness of Johnson's nature was shown on one occasion by the manner in which he assisted a supposed lady in crossing Fleet Street. He gave her his arm, and led her across, not observing that she was in liquor at the time. But the spirit of the act was not the less kind on that account. On the other hand, the conduct of the bookseller on whom Johnson once called to solicit employment, and who, regarding his athletic but uncouth person, told him he had better "go buy a porter's knot and carry trunks," in howsoever bland tones the advice might have been communicated, was simply brutal.
While captiousness of manner, and the habit of disputing and contradicting everything said, is chilling and repulsive, the opposite habit of assenting to, and sympathising with, every statement made, or emotion expressed, is almost equally disagreeable. It is unmanly, and is felt to be dishonest. "It may seem difficult," says Richard Sharp, "to steer always between bluntness and plain-dealing, between giving merited praise and lavishing indiscriminate flattery; but it is very easy—good-humour, kindheartedness, and perfect simplicity, being all that are requisite to do what is right in the right way." [183]
At the same time, many are unpolite—not because they mean to be so, but because they are awkward, and perhaps know no better. Thus, when Gibbon had published the second and third volumes of his 'Decline and Fall,' the Duke of Cumberland met him one day, and accosted him with, "How do you do, Mr. Gibbon? I see you are always AT IT in the old way—SCRIBBLE, SCRIBBLE, SCRIBBLE!" The Duke probably intended to pay the author a compliment, but did not know how better to do it, than in this blunt and apparently rude way.
Again, many persons are thought to be stiff, reserved, and proud, when they are only shy. Shyness is characteristic of most people of Teutonic race. It has been styled "the English mania," but it pervades, to a greater or less degree, all the Northern nations. The ordinary Englishman, when he travels abroad, carries his shyness with him. He is stiff, awkward, ungraceful, undemonstrative, and apparently unsympathetic; and though he may assume a brusqueness of manner, the shyness is there, and cannot be wholly concealed. The naturally graceful and intensely social French cannot understand such a character; and the Englishman is their standing joke—the subject of their most ludicrous caricatures. George Sand attributes the rigidity of the natives of Albion to a stock of FLUIDE BRITANNIQUE which they carry about with them, that renders them impassive under all circumstances, and "as impervious to the atmosphere of the regions they traverse as a mouse in the centre of an exhausted receiver." [184]
The average Frenchman or Irishman excels the average Englishman, German, or American in courtesy and ease of manner, simply because it is his nature. They are more social and less self-dependent than men of Teutonic origin, more demonstrative and less reticent; they are more communicative, conversational, and freer in their intercourse with each other in all respects; whilst men of German race are comparatively stiff, reserved, shy, and awkward. At the same time, a people may exhibit ease, gaiety, and sprightliness of character, and yet possess no deeper qualities calculated to inspire respect. They may have every grace of manner, and yet be heartless, frivolous, selfish. The character may be on the surface only, and without any solid qualities for a foundation.
There can be no doubt as to which of the two sorts of people—the easy and graceful, or the stiff and awkward—it is most agreeable to meet, either in business, in society, or in the casual intercourse of life. Which make the fastest friends, the truest men of their word, the most conscientious performers of their duty, is an entirely different matter.
The dry GAUCHE Englishman—to use the French phrase, L'ANGLAIS EMPETRE—is certainly a somewhat disagreeable person to meet at first. He looks as if he had swallowed a poker. He is shy himself, and the cause of shyness in others. He is stiff, not because he is proud, but because he is shy; and he cannot shake it off, even if he would. Indeed, we should not be surprised to find that even the clever writer who describes the English Philistine in all his enormity of awkward manner and absence of grace, were himself as shy as a bat.
When two shy men meet, they seem like a couple of icicles. They sidle away and turn their backs on each other in a room, or when travelling creep into the opposite corners of a railway-carriage. When shy Englishmen are about to start on a journey by railway, they walk along the train, to discover an empty compartment in which to bestow themselves; and when once ensconced, they inwardly hate the next man who comes in. So; on entering the dining-room of their club, each shy man looks out for an unoccupied table, until sometimes—all the tables in the room are occupied by single diners. All this apparent unsociableness is merely shyness—the national characteristic of the Englishman.