XXXVIII.
It is my purpose in writing these Memoirs to adhere rigidly to truth, at least in its essence. Should I succeed in this, my work will be a very remarkable one, almost unique. But, being a close observer, I have noticed that those who always tell the truth obtain immense credit, no matter how much they say that militates against themselves. The pleasure of speaking the truth at all times is immense. Lying is a very peculiar art: some use it merely as a convenience, and often have not the ability to forge a lie without including in it the contradiction. One takes pity on this class, endowed only with a pauper intellect and a pauper conscience.
Exaggerative liars are of a common class; it is somewhat difficult to reach their motive, because they neither serve themselves nor others. What they chiefly exaggerate is incomes; it must be due to a sanguine temperament.
The decidedly despicable liars are those who lie about themselves; but these have not the shrewdness to see their way safely. A man told me that he had been dining with a distinguished party at a certain club. He had not the knowledge necessary to give his lie substance; he was not aware that the rules of the club he named did not admit of a member entertaining any stranger there.
These are the three sorts of everyday liars; it is astonishing how completely every one knows them as such without their being in the least aware of the fact themselves, for we all pretend to believe liars to their face!
It is like possessing a fortune to be endowed with a love of truth for its own sake, and I doubt if any man was ever truly great without it. The mind of the truly gifted appears to me to lie parallel with nature, so that if an idea comes into being, all other ideas related to it are close at hand, and in a line with it.
The value of this view to the science of criticism is incommensurable: this I will now illustrate. The idea and its relations, which increase its intensity and beauty, may be variously expressed. Say Shakespeare knew a girl who was in love but concealed it, and so, pining, grew hectic and sallow; but bore it with patience. Such would be the prose version of the fact, and is not very emotional. But the poet would look as steadfastly at the sufferer as would a lover, then his sympathy would inflame, and in the developing of his mental vision he would see a rose that must prematurely perish through the cankering worm that gnaws at its heart. That rose is the hectic blush, its damask is reflected on the maiden cheek as she pines. But such an image cannot end here, this image of death in life; and in the next parallel appears a living monument of immortalizing sculpture beyond which the mind cannot rise.
(1) She never told her love—
(2) But let concealment, like a worm in the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek.