There is a strange difference of opinion existing at times between the principals and the spectators of these particular affairs. Few, it has been said, can penetrate the motives of others in matters regarding themselves. Yet most people are wonderfully sharp-sighted where their neighbors are concerned; and the world—as every one of us is apt to call that fraction of society in which we live, and move, and have our associations—though generally not over charitable, is rarely wrong in its conclusions.
He was a keen observer of life who remarked that the rapid changes to which most of human friendships and enmities are liable, could be no matter of surprise to one who took note of the motives from which they generally originate. Poor and unsubstantial enough these doubtless are, in many a case. There have been friendships that owed their growth solely to showers of flattery, and bitter enmities have spontaneously sprung up in the soil of envy. It was said of Goldsmith, that he could never hear a brother poet, or, indeed, any citizen of the world of letters, praised, without entertaining a temporary aversion to that individual, and a similar effect was always produced by the smallest sign of increasing literary consequence. A report that M—— had been taken particular notice of by such a nobleman of those patronizing times, or that his works had been admired in some segment of the fashionable circle, was sufficient to make the author of the "Deserted Village" find all manner of faults with him and his, till time, or his habitual good nature, wiped the circumstance out of Goldsmith's remembrance.
This reminds one of Madame de Montespan, a belle of that order which reigned most triumphantly at the court of Louis XIV., who never could forgive her rival, even when disgraced and dead, because she had once got a ride in the royal carriage. It is curious that the learned and the fair, far as their general pursuits, and visibilities, too, are known to be apart, should, according to common report, approximate so nearly in their motives to enmity or friendship. George Colman used to say, that, if one had any interest in getting up a quarrel between either two fine ladies or two literary men, he had nothing to do but to praise the one energetically to the other, and the higher his enthusiasm rose, the fiercer would be the war.
It was asserted of both the elder and younger Scaliger, that they never applauded any scholar with all their might, but one who was manifestly inferior to themselves; and of Madame de Maintenon, that she never honored any one with her special friendship who was not, in some considerable point, beneath her. There is still a large class of characters, in all whose attachments a something to despise seems the indispensable ingredient. The perpetual triumph of being always "king of the company" has a binding attraction for such minds. It confers a kind of dictatorship to have the advantage of one's friends. Nothing else can explain the amount of patronage and befriending generally lavished on the most worthless members of families or societies; and the half-grudge, half-surveillance, which, under the covert of mere mouth-honor, often surrounds great or successful abilities.
A strange motive to enmity is illustrated in the life of General Loudoun, one of the Scotch Jacobites, who, on the defeat of his party, entered the Austrian service, and rose to the rank of field-marshal in the wars of Maria Theresa. He had taken the town of Seidlitz from the Prussians. It was a great stroke in favor of the empress queen, and might have been rewarded with a coronet, but, in his haste to send her majesty the intelligence, Loudoun transmitted it through her husband, the Emperor Francis, who had a private interest in the matter, having long carried on a speculation of his own in victualling not only his wife's troops, but those of her Prussian enemy. King Maria, as she was styled by her Hungarian subjects, had also some special reasons for allowing him to have neither hand nor voice in her concerns—a fact which the marshal had never learned, or forgotten; and her majesty was so indignant at receiving the news through such a channel, that, though she struck a medal to commemorate the taking of Seidlitz, Loudoun was rewarded only with her peculiar aversion throughout the remaining seventeen years of her reign, for which the good wishes of that imperial speculator in forage and flour afforded but poor consolation.
Of all the important steps of human life, that by which two are made one appears to be taken from the greatest variety of motives. Doubtless, from the beginning it was not so; but manifold and heterogeneous are those which have been alleged for it in the civilized world. Goethe said he married to attain popular respectability. Wilkes, once called the Patriot, when sueing his wife, who chanced to have been an heiress, for the remains of her property, declared that he had wedded at twenty-two, solely to please his friends; and Wycherly the poet, in his very last days, worshipped and endowed with all his worldly goods, as the English service hath it, a girl whom poverty had made unscrupulous, in order to be revenged on his relations.
Princes of old were in the habit of marrying to cement treaties, which were generally broken as soon after as possible; and simple citizens are still addicted to the same method of amending their fortunes and families. There was an original motive to double blessedness set forth in the advice of a veteran sportsman in one of the border counties. His niece was the heiress of broad lands, which happened to adjoin an estate belonging to a younger brother of the turf; and the senior gentleman, when dilating to her on the exploits they had performed together by wood and wold, wound up with the following sage counsel—"Maria, take my advice, and marry young Beechwood, and you'll see this county hunted in style."
The numbers who, by their own account, have wedded to benefit society, in one shape or another, would furnish a strong argument against the accredited selfishness of mankind, could they only be believed. The general good of their country was the standing excuse of classic times, and philosophers have occasionally reproduced it in our own. Most people seem to think some apology necessary, but none are so ingenious in showing cause why they should enter the holy state, as those with whom it is the second experiment. The pleas of the widowed for casting off their weeds are generally prudent, and often singularly commendable. Domestic policy or parental affection supply the greater part of them; and the want of protectors and step-mothers felt by families of all sizes is truly marvellous, considering the usual consequences of their instalment.
It is to be admired, as the speakers of old English would say, for what noble things men will give themselves credit in the way of motives, and how little resemblance their actions bear to them. Montaigne was accustomed to tell of a servant belonging to the Archbishop of Paris, who, being detected in privately selling his master's best wine, insisted that it was done out of pure love to his grace, lest the sight of so large a stock in his cellar might tempt him to drink more than was commendable for a bishop. A guardian care of their neighbors' well-being, somewhat similar, is declared by all the disturbers of our daily paths. Tale-bearers and remarkers, of every variety, have the best interests of their friends at heart; and what troublesome things some people can do from a sense of duty is matter of universal experience. Great public criminals, tyrants, and persecutors in old times, and the abusers of power in all ages, have, especially in the fall of their authority, laid claim to most exalted motives. Patriotism, philanthropy, and religion itself, have been quoted as their inspirers. The ill-famed Judge Jeffries said, his judicial crimes were perpetrated to maintain the majesty of the law. Robespierre affirmed that he had lived in defence of virtue and his country. But perhaps the most charitable interpretation that ever man gave to the motives of another, is to be found in the funeral sermon of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and father of George III. The preacher, after several judicious remarks on the virtues of the royal deceased, concludes, "That in the extreme to which these were carried, they appeared like vices; for so great was his generosity, that he ruined half the tradesmen in London; and so extraordinary his condescension, that he kept all sorts of bad company."
It is strange, that while motives abstractly virtuous have produced large additions to the sum of mortal ills, little of private, and still less of public, good has sprung, even casually, from those that are evil in themselves. "If either the accounts of history, or the daily reports of life, are to be at all credited," said one who had learned and thought much on this subject, "the greatest amount of crime and folly has been committed from motives of religion and love, as men, for the most part, know them; while those of avarice, revenge, and fear, have originated the most extraordinary actions and important events."