'Mil. If he loved you as his own soul, and his soul were knit with yours—to use the words of Scripture—he would not demand this consistency, because each man must know and feel his own immeasurable vacillation and inconsistency; and if he had complete sympathy with another, he would not be greatly surprised or vexed at that other's inconsistencies.
'Duns. There always seems to me a want of tenderness in what are called friendships in the present day. Now, for instance, I don't understand a man ridiculing his friend. The joking of intimates often appears to me coarse and harsh. You will laugh at this in me, and think it rather effeminate, I am afraid.
'Mil. No; I do not. I think a great deal of jocose raillery may pass between intimates without the requisite tenderness being infringed upon. If any friend had been in a painful and ludicrous position (such as when Cardinal Balue in full dress is run away with on horseback, which Scott comments upon as one of a class of situations combining "pain, peril, and absurdity"), I would not remind him of it. Why should I bring back a disagreeable impression to his mind? Besides, it would be more painful than ludicrous to me. I should enter into his feelings rather than into those of the ordinary spectator.
'Duns. I am glad we are of the same mind in this.
'Mil. I have also a notion that, even in the common friendships of the world, we should be very stanch defenders of our absent friends. Supposing that our friend's character or conduct is justly attacked in our hearing upon some point, we should be careful to let the light and worth of the rest of his character in upon the company, so that they should go away with something of the impression that we have of him; instead of suffering them to dwell only upon this fault or foible that was commented upon, which was as nothing against him in our hearts—mere fringe to the character, which we were accustomed to, and rather liked than otherwise, if the truth must be told.
'Elles. I declare we have made out amongst us an essay on friendship, without the fuss of writing one. I always told you our talk was better than your writing, Milverton. Now, we only want a beginning and ending to this peripatetic essay. What would you say to this as a beginning?—it is to be a stately, pompous plunge into the subject, after the Milverton fashion:—"Friendship and the Phoenix, taking into due account the fire-office of that name, have been found upon the earth in not unsimilar abundance." I flatter myself that "not unsimilar abundance" is eminently Milvertonian.
'Mil. Now observe, Dunsford, you were speaking sometime ago about the joking of intimates being frequently unkind. This is just an instance to the contrary. Ellesmere, who is not a bad fellow—at least not so bad as he seems—knows that he can say anything he pleases about my style of writing without much annoying me. I am not very vulnerable on these points; but all the while there is a titillating pleasure to him in being all but impertinent and vexatious to a friend. And he enjoys that. So do I.'
This certainly reads like free and natural conversation, besides being noteworthy for the suggestions it contains.
Mr Helps is strictly an original writer, in the sense of thinking for himself; but at the same time, one of his excellences consists in an adroit and novel use of commonplaces. There is, indeed, as much originality in putting a new face upon old verities, as in producing new ones from the mint of one's invention. As Emerson has remarked, valuable originality does not consist in mere novelty or unlikeness to other men, but in range and extent of grasp and insight. This is a fact, too, which Mr Helps has noted. 'A suggestion,' says he, 'may be ever so old; but it is not exhausted until it is acted upon, or rejected on sufficient reason.' He has, therefore, no fastidious dread of saying anything which has been said before, but readily welcomes wise thoughts from all directions, often reproducing them with such felicity of expression, as to give them new effect. Thus, in all the elements of a profitable originality, he is rich and generous; and from few books of modern times could so large a store of aphorisms, fine sayings, and admirable observations be selected. We have marked a great many more than can be incorporated in the present paper; but some few may be, nevertheless, presented. Here, for instance, is a fine remark on time—next to love, the most hackneyed subject in the world:—'Men seldom feel as if they were bounded as to time: they think they can afford to throw away a great deal of that commodity; thus shewing unconsciously in their trifling the sense that they have of their immortality.' On another familiar topic—human progress—he writes thus:—'The progress of mankind is like the incoming of the tide, which, from any given moment, is almost as much of a retreat as an advance, but still the tide moves on.' Emerson has used the same figure, but in a passage which ought not to be regarded as impairing our author's originality.
On the vexed and perplexing question of Evil, Mr Helps has said many acute and consolatory things, from among which we have culled the following sentences:—'The man who is satisfied with any given state of things that we are likely to see on earth, must have a creeping imagination: on the other hand, he who is oppressed by the evils around him so as to stand gaping at them in horror, has a feeble will and a want of practical power, and allows his fancy to come in, like too much wavering light upon his work, so that he does not see to go on with it. A man of sagacity, while he apprehends a great deal of the evil around him, resolves what part of it he will be blind to for the present, in order to deal best with what he has in hand; and as to men of any genius, they are not imprisoned or rendered partial even by their own experience of evil, much less are their attacks upon it paralysed by their full consciousness of its large presence.' Here, in the next place, is an aphorism worth pondering and remembrance:—'Vague injurious reports are no men's lies, but all men's carelessness.' And by the side of it we may place a pleasant sarcasm attributed to Ellesmere, and apparently intended as a reminder for stump-orators: 'How exactly proportioned to a man's ignorance of the subject is the noise he makes about it at a public meeting.' Not altogether out of connection here may be this brief sentence:—'Next to the folly of doing a bad thing, is that of fearing to undo it.' In the following, we have a brief sufficient argument against the indulgence of unavailing sorrow or anxiety:—'It has always appeared to me, that there is so much to be done in this world, that all self-inflicted suffering which cannot be turned to good account for others, is a loss—a loss, if you may so express it, to the spiritual world.' There is plain truth, too, in the next, though it is not likely to be much remembered by those who are most in need of it:—'An ill-tempered man often has everything his own way, and seems very triumphant; but the demon he cherishes, tears him as well as awes other people.' In another place, and from another point of view, he indicates the admirable benefits of human, sympathy. 'Often,' says he, 'all that a man wants in order to accomplish something that is good for him to do, is the encouragement of another man's sympathy. What Bacon says the voice of the man is to the dog—the encouragement of a higher nature—each man can in a lesser degree afford his neighbour; for a man receives the suggestions of another mind with somewhat of the respect and courtesy with which he would greet a higher nature.' Speaking with reference to the pursuits of men of literary and artistic genius, it is written: 'Almost any worldly state in which a man can be placed is a hinderance to him, if he have other than mere worldly things to do. Poverty, wealth, many duties, or many affairs, distract and confuse him.' One sentence more is all that can be added here; and if it seems to be suggested by an aphorism of Bacon, it is equal to it in pith and penetration:—'Every felicity, as well as wife and children, is a hostage to fortune.'