The gordian knot of it he will unloose
Familiar as his garter; when he speaks,
The air, a chartered libertine, is still;
And the mute wonder lurketh in men’s ears
To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences.
Shakespeare.
No character of antiquity is more brilliant and captivating, than that of Alchibiades, the versatile Athenian. Cornelius Nepos, the Roman biographer, has on this occasion, become the very Rubens of character painters, and has happily sketched every flexile feature.—Nature, says he, appears to have exerted her strongest energies in moulding Alchibiades. In the hour of business he was a statesman, a general and an orator. In the hour of revel, the rakes retired from that bagnio at twelve, which the accommodating Alcibiades gladdened at two. Inhabiting a city, studious of magnificence, he surpassed in equipage, the most ostentatious grandees; and, when an exile among the hardy Thebans, he carried heavier burdens than the broadest shouldered porter in Bœtia. At Lacedemon his palate relished the black broth of Sparta; among the dissolute Thracians, those sensual swine of Epicurus’s stye, the greyest veteran of Venus made one sacrifice, less than he; and in all the taverns of Thrace, Bacchus could not recognize a more thirsty toper.
If we deduct from Alchibiades his compliance with vicious customs, no model of conduct, can be mere worthy imitation and praise. Since the æra of Chesterfield, a dissembling nobleman, who possibly pushed the praise of flexibility of manners too far, accommodation has been acrimoniously censured; and the narrow Knox, in his dogmatizing essays has asserted, that the meanest selfishness is the parent of versatility. But, though the Tunbridge teacher, ostentatiously vaunts of his intimacy with the Bible, he forgot that Paul of Tarsus, whose knowledge of the world was as indubitable as his piety, exhorts to “become all things to all men, if by any means we may gain some.” Paul was no less a gentleman than saint; and his knowledge of the world taught him the propriety of varying his means to secure the end, and to become a most accommodating apostle. Hence his compliment to Agrippa, for his skill in the jurisprudence of Judea. Hence his adroitness in persuading the superstitious men of Athens, that the Being they, and he worshipped, were the same. Hence he could charm both the courtly Felix, and the camp-bred centurion.
If the art of pleasing be worth practice in society, then will the praises of versatility be fully justified. He who in conversation, adheres to topics peculiar to himself, or to a profession, is deservedly dubbed pedant; and all unite in frowning upon him, by whom all are equally neglected. Minds of the first energy, may sometimes effect the unyielding quality of the oak, rather than the suppleness of the ozier. A cardinal Ximenes, a chancellor Thurlow, and a secretary Pitt, may be “original and unaccommodating.” But he, whom every circle courts, is that Proteus in demeanour, who can with the same ease that he shifts his shoe, mutilate, or increase his bows, accordingly, as he associates with the cit, or the courrier. The object of our fondest admiration is the man of letters and the man of the world blended, who can sublimely speculate with science in the morning, and agreeably trifle with ladies at night. Of this class is Charles Cameleon. The “omnis homo” of Horace, the “all accomplished” of Pope Charles, when at school, was equally the darling of the scholars, on the first form, and the truants on the lower. He could repeat the five declensions with promptitude, and then drive hoop, or toss balls alertly. With the same facility, could he make correct latin, and high flying kites. Unaided by the “ladder to Parnassus,” he would now ascend to the summit of Virgilian verse, and now grovel in the mire, to win marbles of every sportive schoolfellow. At the university he heard morning prayers with the saddened sedateness of a Pharisee, argued with tutors on personal identity, as if inspired by the very spirit of Locke—and, on syllogistic ground, vanquished every Aristotelean adversary. At noon you might see him sauntering with loungers, and kindling a smile even in vacancy’s face. The declining sun left him deploring, that twilight should snap speculation’s thread; or compel him to leave unfinished the song to Myra; and when the college bell tolled twelve, his convivial club chose Charles president, and the room would echo with,
“Since we’ve tarried all day to drink down the Sun,