The man of the world is to the man of science very much what the chamelion is to the armadillo: the one takes its hue from every surrounding object, and is undistinguishable from them; the other is shut up in a formal crust of knowledge, and clad in an armour of proof, from which the shaft of ridicule or the edge of disappointment falls equally pointless. It is no uncommon case to see a person come into a room, which he enters awkwardly enough, and has nothing in his dress or appearance to recommend him, but after the first embarrassments are over, sits down, takes his share in the conversation, in which he acquits himself creditably, shews sense, reading, and shrewdness, expresses himself with point, articulates distinctly, when he blunders on some topic which he might see is disagreeable, but persists in it the more as he finds others shrink from it; mentions a book of which you have not heard, and perhaps do not wish to hear, and he therefore thinks himself bound to favour you with the contents; gets into an argument with one, proses on with another on a subject in which his hearer has no interest; and when he goes away, people remark, ‘What a pity that Mr. —— has not more knowledge of the world, and has so little skill in adapting himself to the tone and manners of society!’ But will time and habit cure him of this defect? Never. He wants a certain tact, he has not a voluntary power over his ideas, but is like a person reading out of a book, or who can only pour out the budget of knowledge with which his brain is crammed in all places and companies alike. If you attempt to divert his attention from the general subject to the persons he is addressing, you puzzle and stop him quite. He is a mere conversing automaton. He has not the sense of personality—the faculty of perceiving the effect (as well as the grounds) of his opinions; and how then should failure or mortification give it him? It must be a painful reflection, and he must be glad to turn from it; or after a few reluctant and unsuccessful efforts to correct his errors, he will try to forget or harden himself in them. Finding that he makes so slow and imperceptible a progress in amending his faults, he will take his swing in the opposite direction, will triumph and revel in his supposed excellences, will launch out into the wide, untrammelled field of abstract speculation, and silence envious sneers and petty cavils by force of argument and dint of importunity. You will find him the same character at sixty that he was at thirty; or should time soften down some of his asperities, and tire him of his absurdities as he has tired others, nothing will transform him into a man of the world, and he will die in a garret, or a paltry second-floor, from not having been able to acquire the art ‘to see ourselves as others see us,’ or to dress his opinions, looks, and actions in the smiles and approbation of the world. On the other hand, take a youth from the same town (perhaps a school-fellow, and the dunce of the neighbourhood); he has ‘no figures, nor no fantasies which busy thought draws in the brains of men,’ no preconceived notions by which he must square his conduct or his conversation, no dogma to maintain in the teeth of opposition, no Shibboleth to which he must force others to subscribe; the progress of science or the good of his fellow-creatures are things about which he has not the remotest conception, or the smallest particle of anxiety—
‘His soul proud science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk, or milky way;’
all that he sees or attends to is the immediate path before him, or what can encourage or lend him a helping hand through it; his mind is a complete blank, on which the world may write its maxims and customs in what characters it pleases; he has only to study its humours, flatter its prejudices, and take advantage of its foibles; while walking the streets he is not taken up with solving an abstruse problem, but with considering his own and the appearance of others; instead of contradicting a patron, assents to all he hears; and in every proposition that comes before him asks himself only what he can get by it, and whether it will make him friends or enemies: such a one is said to possess great penetration and knowledge of the world, understands his place in society, gets on in it, rises from the counter to the counting-house, from the dependant to be a partner, amasses a fortune, gains in size and respectability as his affairs prosper, has his town and country house, and ends with buying up half the estates in his native county!
The great secret of a knowledge of the world, then, consists in a subserviency to the will of others, and the primary motive to this attention is a mechanical and watchful perception of our own interest. It is not an art that requires a long course of study, the difficulty is in putting one’s self apprentice to it. It does not surely imply any very laborious or profound inquiry into the distinctions of truth or falsehood, to be able to assent to whatever one hears; nor any great refinement of moral feeling, to approve of whatever has custom, power, or interest on its side. The only question is, ‘Who is willing to do so?’—and the answer is, those who have no other faculties or pretensions, either to stand in the way of or to assist their progress through life. Those are slow to wear the livery of the world who have any independent resources of their own. It is not that the philosopher or the man of genius does not see and know all this, that he is not constantly and forcibly reminded of it by his own failure or the success of others, but he cannot stoop to practice it. He has a different scale of excellence and mould of ambition, which has nothing in common with current maxims and time-serving calculations. He is a moral and intellectual egotist, not a mere worldly-minded one. In youth, he has sanguine hopes and brilliant dreams, which he cannot sacrifice for sordid realities—as he advances farther in life, habit and pride forbid his turning back. He cannot bring himself to give up his best-grounded convictions to a blockhead, or his conscientious principles to a knave, though he might make his fortune by so doing. The rule holds good here as well as in another sense—‘What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?’ If his convictions and principles had been less strong, they would have yielded long ago to the suggestions of his interest, and he would have relapsed into the man of the world, or rather he would never have had the temptation or capacity to be any thing else. One thing that keeps men honest, as well as that confirms them knaves, is their incapacity to do any better for themselves than nature has done for them. One person can with difficulty speak the truth, as another lies with a very ill grace. After repeated awkward attempts to change characters, they each very properly fall back into their old jog-trot path, as best suited to their genius and habits.
There are individuals who make themselves and every one else uncomfortable by trying to be agreeable, and who are only to be endured in their natural characters of blunt, plain-spoken people. Many a man would have turned rogue if he had known how. Non ex quovis ligno fit Mercurius. The modest man cannot be impudent if he would. The man of sense cannot play the fool to advantage. It is not the mere resolution to act a part that will enable us to do it, without a natural genius and fitness for it. Some men are born to be valets, as others are to be courtiers. There is the climbing genus in man as well as in plants. It is sometimes made a wonder how men of ‘no mark or likelihood’ frequently rise to court-preferment, and make their way against all competition. That is the very reason. They present no tangible point; they offend no feeling of self-importance. They are a perfect unresisting medium of patronage and favour. They aspire through servility; they repose in insignificance. A man of talent or pretension in the same circumstances would be kicked out in a week. A look that implied a doubt, a hint that suggested a difference of opinion, would be fatal. It is of no use, in parleying with absolute power, to dissemble, to suppress: there must be no feelings or opinions to dissemble or suppress. The artifice of the dependant is not a match for the jealousy of the patron: ‘The soul must be subdued to the very quality of its lord.’ Where all is annihilated in the presence of the sovereign, is it astonishing that nothings should succeed? Ciphers are as necessary in courts as eunuchs in seraglios.
THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED
The London Weekly Review.] [December 8, 1827,
I do not think Mr. Cobbett would succeed in an interview with the Prince. Bub Doddington said, ‘he would not justify before his Sovereign,’ even where his own character was at stake. I am afraid we could hardly reckon upon the same forbearance in Mr. Cobbett where his country’s welfare was at stake, and where he had an opportunity of vindicating it. He might have a great deal of reason on his side; but he might forget, or seem to forget, that as the king is above the law, he is also above reason. Reason is but a suppliant at the foot of thrones, and waits for their approval or rebuke. Salus populi suprema lex—may be a truism anywhere else. If reason dares to approach them at all, it must be in the shape of deference and humility, not of headstrong importunity and self-will. Instead of breathless awe, of mild entreaty, of humble remonstrance, it is Mr. Cobbett, who, upon very slight encouragement, would give the law, and the monarch who must kiss the rod. The upstart, the bully, and the dogmatist, would break out, and the King would assert himself. The reformer would be too full of his own opinion to allow an option even to Majesty, and the affair would have the same ending as that of the old ballad—
‘Then the Queen overhearing what Betty did say,