N.—There is a character of a common smith or armourer in it, which, in spite of a number of weaknesses and in the most ludicrous situations, is made quite heroical by the tenderness and humanity it displays. It is his best, but I had not read it when I saw him. No; all that can be said against Sir Walter is, that he has never made a whole. There is an infinite number of delightful incidents and characters, but they are disjointed and scattered. This is one of Fielding’s merits: his novels are regular compositions, with what the ancients called a beginning, a middle, and an end: every circumstance is foreseen and provided for, and the conclusion of the story turns round as it were to meet the beginning. Gil Blas is very clever, but it is only a succession of chapters. Tom Jones is a masterpiece, as far as regards the conduct of the fable.
H.—Do you know the reason? Fielding had a hooked nose, the long chin. It is that introverted physiognomy that binds and concentrates.
N.—But Sir Walter has not a hooked nose, but one that denotes kindness and ingenuity. Mrs. Abington had the pug-nose, who was the perfection of comic archness and vivacity: a hooked nose is my aversion.
CONVERSATION THE SEVENTEENTH
N.—I sometimes get into scrapes that way by contradicting people before I have well considered the subject, and I often wonder how I get out of them so well as I do. I remember once meeting with Sir — —, who was talking about Milton; and as I have a natural aversion to a coxcomb, I differed from what he said, without being at all prepared with any arguments in support of my opinion.
H.—But you had time enough to think of them afterwards.
N.—I got through with it somehow or other. It is the very risk you run in such cases that puts you on the alert and gives you spirit to extricate yourself from it. If you had full leisure to deliberate and to make out your defence beforehand, you perhaps could not do it so well as on the spur of the occasion. The surprise and flutter of the animal spirits gives the alarm to any little wit we possess, and puts it into a state of immediate requisition.
H.—Besides, it is always easiest to defend a paradox or an opinion you don’t care seriously about. I would sooner (as a matter of choice) take the wrong side than the right in any argument. If you have a thorough conviction on any point and good grounds for it, you have studied it long, and the real reasons have sunk into the mind; so that what you can recal of them at a sudden pinch, seems unsatisfactory and disproportionate to the confidence of your belief and to the magisterial tone you are disposed to assume. Even truth is a matter of habit and professorship. Reason and knowledge, when at their height, return into a kind of instinct. We understand the grammar of a foreign language best, though we do not speak it so well. But if you take up an opinion at a venture, then you lay hold of whatever excuse comes within your reach, instead of searching about for and bewildering yourself with the true reasons; and the odds are that the arguments thus got up are as good as those opposed to them. In fact, the more sophistical and superficial an objection to a received or well-considered opinion is, the more we are staggered and teazed by it; and the next thing is to lose our temper, when we become an easy prey to a cool and disingenuous adversary. I would much rather (as the safest side) insist on Milton’s pedantry than on his sublimity, supposing I were not in the company of very good judges. A single stiff or obscure line would outweigh a whole book of solemn grandeur in the mere flippant encounter of the wits, and, in general, the truth and justice of the cause you espouse is rather an incumbrance than an assistance; or it is like heavy armour which few have strength to wield. Any thing short of complete triumph on the right side is defeat: any hole picked or flaw detected in an argument which we are holding earnestly and conscientiously, is sufficient to raise the laugh against us. This is the greatest advantage which folly and knavery have. We are not satisfied to be right, unless we can prove others to be quite wrong; and as all the world would be thought to have some reason on their side, they are glad of any loop-hole or pretext to escape from the dogmatism and tyranny we would set up over them. Absolute submission requires absolute proofs. Without some such drawback, the world might become too wise and too good, at least according to every man’s private prescription. In this sense ridicule is the test of truth; that is, the levity and indifference on one side balances the formality and presumption on the other.
N.—Horne Tooke used to play with his antagonists in the way you speak of. He constantly threw Fuseli into a rage and made him a laughing-stock, by asking him to explain the commonest things, and often what Fuseli understood much better than he did. But in general, I think it is less an indifference to truth than the fear of finding yourself in the wrong, that carries you through when you take up any opinion from caprice or the spirit of contradiction. Danger almost always produces courage and presence of mind. The faculties are called forth with the occasion. You see men of very ordinary characters, placed in extraordinary circumstances, act like men of capacity. The late King of France was thought weak and imbecile, till he was thrown into the most trying situations; and then he shewed sense and even eloquence which no one had ever suspected. Events supplied the want of genius and energy; the external impressions were so strong, that the dullest or most indolent must have been roused by them. Indeed the wise man is perhaps more liable to err in such extreme cases by setting up his own preconceptions and self-will against circumstances, than the common-place character who yields to necessity and is passive under existing exigencies. It is this which makes kings and ministers equal to their situations. They may be very poor creatures in themselves; but the importance of the part they have to act and the magnitude of their responsibility inspire them with a factitious and official elevation of view. Few people are found totally unfit for high station, and it is lucky that it is so. Perhaps men of genius and imagination are the least adapted to get into the state go-cart; Buonaparte, we see, with all his talent, only drove to the devil. When Richard II. was quite a youth, and he went to suppress the rebellion of Wat Tyler in Smithfield, and the latter was killed, his followers drew their bows and were about to take vengeance on the young king, when he stepped forward and said that ‘now as their leader was dead, he would be their leader.’ This instantly disarmed their rage, and they received him with acclamations. He had no other course left; the peril he was in made him see his place of safety. Courage has a wonderful effect: this makes mad people so terrible, that they have no fear. Even wild beasts or a mob (which is much the same thing) will hardly dare to attack you if you show no fear of them. I have heard Lord Exmouth (Sir Edward Pellew) say that once when he was out with his ship at sea and there was a mutiny on board and no chance of escape, he learned (from a spy he had among them) the moment when the ring-leaders were assembled and about to execute their design of putting the captain and all the officers to death, when taking a pistol in each hand, he went down into the cock-pit into the midst of them; and threatening to shoot the first man that stirred, took them every one prisoners. If he had betrayed the least fear or any of them had raised a hand, he must have been instantly sacrificed. But he was bolder than any individual in the group, and by this circumstance had the ascendancy over the whole put together. A similar act of courage is related of Peter the Great, who singly entered the haunt of some conspirators, and striking down the leader with a blow on the face, spread consternation amongst the assassins, who were terrified by his fearlessness.
(A book of prints was brought in, containing Views of Edinburgh.)