And earns a place i’ the story.
I said I was struck to see how finely they came in. ‘Oh!’ replied Northcote, ‘if they were Shakspeare’s, they were sure to be fine. What a power there always is in any bit brought in from him or Milton among other things! How it shines like a jewel! I think Milton reads best in this way; he is too fine for a continuance. Don’t you think Shakspeare and the writers of that day had a prodigious advantage in using phrases and combinations of style, which could not be admitted now that the language is reduced to a more precise and uniform standard, but which yet have a peculiar force and felicity when they can be justified by the privilege of age?’ He said, he had been struck with this idea lately, in reading an old translation of Boccacio (about the time of Queen Elizabeth) in which the language, though quaint, had often a beauty that could not well be conveyed in any modern translation.
He spoke of Lord Byron’s notions about Shakspeare. I said I did not care much about his opinions. Northcote replied, they were evidently capricious, and taken up in the spirit of contradiction. I said, not only so (as far as I can judge), but without any better founded ones in his own mind. They appear to me conclusions without premises or any previous process of thought or inquiry. I like old opinions with new reasons, not new opinions without any—not mere ipse dixits. He was too arrogant to assign a reason to others or to need one for himself. It was quite enough that he subscribed to any assertion, to make it clear to the world, as well as binding on his valet!
Northcote said, there were people who could not argue. Fuseli was one of these. He could throw out very brilliant and striking things; but if you at all questioned him, he could no more give an answer than a child of three years old. He had no resources, nor any corps de reserve of argument beyond his first line of battle. That was imposing and glittering enough. Neither was Lord Byron a philosopher, with all his sententiousness and force of expression. Probably one ought not to expect the two things together; for to produce a startling and immediate effect, one must keep pretty much upon the surface; and the search after truth is a very slow and obscure process.
CONVERSATION THE ELEVENTH
As soon as I went in to-day, Northcote asked me if that was my character of Shakspeare, which had been quoted in a newspaper the day before? It was so like what he had thought a thousand times that he could almost swear he had written it himself. I said no; it was from Kendall’s Letters on Ireland; though I believed I had expressed nearly the same idea in print. I had seen the passage myself, and hardly knew at first whether to be pleased or vexed at it. It was provoking to have one’s words taken out of one’s mouth as it were by another; and yet it seemed also an encouragement to reflect, that if one only threw one’s bread upon the waters, one was sure to find it again after many days. The world, if they do not listen to an observation the first time, will listen to it at second-hand from those who have a more agreeable method of insinuating it, or who do not tell them too many truths at once. N— said, he thought the account undoubtedly just, to whomever it belonged.[[95]] The greatest genius (such as that of Shakspeare) implied the greatest power, and this implied the greatest ease and unconsciousness of effort, or of any thing extraordinary effected. As this writer stated—‘He would as soon think of being vain of putting one foot before another, as of writing Macbeth or Hamlet.’ Or as Hudibras has expressed it, poetry was to him
—a thing no more difficile
Than to a blackbird ’tis to whistle.
‘This (said he) is what I have always said of Correggio’s style, that he could not help it: it was his nature. Besides, use familiarizes us to every thing. How could Shakspeare be expected to be astonished at what he did every day? No; he was thinking either merely of the subject before him, or of gaining his bread. It is only upstarts or pretenders, who do not know what to make of their good fortune or undeserved reputation. It comes to the same thing that I have heard my brother remark with respect to my father and old Mr. Tolcher, whose picture you see there. He had a great friendship for my father and a great opinion of his integrity; and whenever he came to see him, always began with saying, “Well, honest Mr. Samuel Northcote, how do you?” This he repeated so often, and they were so used to it, that my brother said they became like words of course, and conveyed no more impression of any thing peculiar than if he had merely said, “Well, good Mr. Northcote, et cetera,” or used any common expression. So Shakspeare was accustomed to write his fine speeches till he ceased to wonder at them himself, and would have been surprised to find that you did.’
The conversation now turned on an answer in a newspaper to Canning’s assertion, that ‘Slavery was not inconsistent with the spirit of Christianity, inasmuch as it was the beauty of Christianity to accommodate itself to all conditions and circumstances.’ Did Canning mean to say, because Christianity accommodated itself to, or made the best of all situations, it did not therefore give the preference to any? Because it recommended mildness and fortitude under sufferings, did it not therefore condemn the infliction of them? Or did it not forbid injustice and cruelty in the strongest terms? This were indeed a daring calumny on its founder: it were an insolent irony. Don Quixote would not have said so. It was like the Italian banditti, who when they have cut off the ears of their victims, make them go down on their knees, and return thanks to an image of the Virgin Mary for the favour they have done them. It was because such things do exist, that Christ came to set his face against them, and to establish the maxim, ‘Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you.’ If Mr. Canning will say that the masters would like to be treated as they treat their slaves, then he may say that slavery is consistent with the spirit of Christianity. No; the meaning of those maxims of forbearance and submission, which the Quakers have taken too literally, is, that you are not to drive out one devil by another; it aims at discouraging a resort to violence and anger, for if the temper it inculcates could become universal, there would be no injuries to resent. It objects against the power of the sword, but it is to substitute a power ten thousand times stronger than the sword—that which subdues and conquers the affections, and strikes at the very root and thought of evil. All that is meant by such sayings, as that if a person ‘smites us on one cheek, we are to turn to him the other,’ is, that we are to keep as clear as possible of a disposition to retaliate and exasperate injuries; or there is a Spanish proverb which explains this, that says, ‘It is he who gives the second blow that begins the quarrel.’