Would send Mr. Roper to take her away.’
As I have brought Mr. Cobbett in here by the neck and shoulders, I may add that I do not think he belongs properly to the class, either of philosophical speculators, or men of the world. He is a political humourist. He is too much taken up with himself either to attend to right reason, or to judge correctly of what passes around him. He mistakes strength of purpose and passion, not only for truth but for success. Because he can give fifty good reasons for a thing, he thinks it not only ought to be, but must be. Because he is swayed so entirely by his wishes and humours, he believes others will be ready to give up their prejudices, interests, and resentments to oblige him. He persuades himself that he is the fittest person to represent Westminster in parliament, and he considers this point (once proved) tantamount to his return. He knows no more of the disposition or sentiments of the people of Westminster than of the inhabitants of the moon (except from what he himself chooses to say or write of them), and it is this want of sympathy which, as much as anything, prevents his being chosen. The exclusive force and bigotry of his opinions deprives them of half their influence and effect, by allowing no toleration to others, and consequently setting them against him.
Mr. Cobbett seemed disappointed, at one time, at not succeeding in the character of a legacy-hunter. Why, a person to succeed in this character, ought to be a mere skin or bag to hold money, a place to deposit it in, a shadow, a deputy, a trustee who keeps it for the original owner—so that the transfer is barely nominal, and who, if he were to return from the other world, would modestly yield it up—one who has no personal identity of his own, no will to encroach upon or dispose of it otherwise than his patron would wish after his death—not a hair-brained egotist, a dashing adventurer, to squander, hector and flourish away with it in wild schemes and ruinous experiments, every one of them at variance with the opinions of the testator; in new methods of turnip hoeing; in speculations in madder—this would be to tear his soul from his body twice over—
‘His patron’s ghost from Limbo lake the while
Sees this which more damnation doth upon him pile!’
Mr. Cobbett complained, that in his last interview with Baron Mazeres, that gentleman was in his dotage, and that the reverend legatee sat at the bottom of the table, cutting a poor figure, and not contradicting a word the Baron said. No doubt, as he has put this in print in the exuberance of his dissatisfaction, he let both gentlemen see pretty plainly what he thought of them, and fancied that this expression of his contempt, as it gratified him, was the way to ensure the good will of the one to make over his whole estate, or the good word of the other to let him go snacks. This is a new way of being quits with one’s benefactors, and an egregious quid pro quo. If Baron Mazeres had left Mr. Cobbett 200,000l. it must have been not to write his epitaph, or visit him in his last moments!
A gossiping chambermaid who only smiles and assents when her mistress wishes her to talk, or an ignorant country clown who stands with his hat off when he has a favour to ask of the squire, (and if he is wise, at all other times,) knows more of the matter. A knowledge of mankind is little more than the Scotch instinct of bowing, or of ‘never standing upright in the presence of a great man,’ or of that great blockhead, the world. It is not a perception of truth, but a sense of power, and an instant determination of the will to submit to it. It is therefore less an intellectual acquirement than a natural disposition. It is on this account that I think both cunning and wisdom are a sort of original endowments, or attain maturity much earlier than is supposed, from their being moral qualities, and having their seat in the heart rather than the head. The difference depends on the manner of seeing things. The one is a selfish, the other is a disinterested view of nature. The one is the clear open look of integrity, the other is a contracted and blear-eyed obliquity of mental vision. If any one has but the courage and honesty to look at an object as it is in itself, or divested of prejudice, fear, and favour, he will be sure to see it pretty right; as he who regards it through the refractions of opinion and fashion, will be sure to see it distorted and falsified, however the error may rebound to his own advantage. Certainly, he who makes the universe tributary to his convenience, and subjects all his impressions of what is right or wrong, true or false, black or white, round or square, to the standard and maxims of the world, who never utters a proposition but he fancies a patron close at his elbow who overhears him, who is even afraid, in private, to suffer an honest conviction to rise in his mind, lest it should mount to his lips, get wind, and ruin his prospects in life, ought to gain something in exchange for the restraint and force put upon his thoughts and faculties: on the contrary, he who is confined by no such petty and debasing trammels, whose comprehension of mind is ‘in large heart enclosed,’ finds his inquiries and his views expand in a degree commensurate with the universe around him; makes truth welcome wherever he meets her, and receives her cordial embrace in return. To see things divested of passion and interest, is to see them with the eye of history and philosophy. It is easy to judge right, or at least to come to a mutual understanding in matters of history and abstract morality. Why then is it so difficult to arrive at the same calm certainty in actual life? Because the passions and interests are concerned, and it requires so much more candour, love of truth, and independence of spirit to encounter ‘the world and its dread laugh,’ to throw aside every sinister consideration, and grapple with the plain merits of the case. To be wiser than other men is to be honester than they; and strength of mind is only courage to see and speak the truth. Perhaps the courage may be also owing to the strength; but both go together, and are natural, and not acquired. Do we not see in fables the force of the moral principle in detecting the truth? The only effect of fables is, by making inanimate or irrational things actors in the scene, to remove the case completely from our own sphere, to take our self-love off its guard, to simplify the question; and yet the result of this obvious appeal is allowed to be universal and irresistible. Is not this another example that ‘the heart of man is deceitful above all things;’ or, that it is less our incapacity to distinguish what is right, than our secret determination to adhere to what is wrong, that prevents our discriminating one from the other? It is not that great and useful truths are not manifest and discernible in themselves; but little, dirty objects get between them and us, and from being near and gross, hide the lofty and distant! The first business of the patriot and the philanthropist is to overleap this barrier, to rise out of this material dross. Indignation, contempt of the base and grovelling, makes the philosopher no less than the poet; and it is the power of looking beyond self that enables each to inculcate moral truth and nobleness of sentiment, the one by general precepts, the other by individual example.
I have no quarrel with men of the world, mere muck-worms: every one after his fashion, ‘as the flesh and fortune shall serve;’ but I confess I have a little distaste to those, who, having set out as loud and vaunting enthusiasts, have turned aside to ‘tread the primrose path of dalliance,’ and to revile those who did not choose to follow so edifying an example. The candid brow and elastic spring of youth may be exchanged for the wrinkles and crookedness of age; but at least we should retain something of the erectness and openness of our first unbiassed thoughts. I cannot understand how any degree of egotism can dispense with the consciousness of personal identity. As we advance farther in life, we are naturally inclined to revert in imagination to its commencement; but what can those dwell upon there who find only feelings that they despise, and opinions that they have abjured? ‘If thine eye offend thee, pull it out and cast it from thee:’ but the operation is a painful one, and the body remains after it only a mutilated fragment. Generally, those who are cut off from this resource in former recollections, make up for it (as well as they can) by an exaggerated and uxorious fondness for their late-espoused convictions—a thing unsightly and indecent! Why does he, who, at one time, despises ‘the little chapel-bell,’ afterwards write ‘the Book of the Church?’ The one is not an atonement for the other: each shows only a juvenile or a superannuated precocity of judgment. It is uniting Camille-Desmoulins and Camille-Jourdan, (Jourdan of the Chimes) in one character. I should like (not out of malice, but from curiosity) to see Mr. Southey re-write the beautiful poem on ‘his own miniature-picture, when he was two years old,’ and see what he would substitute for the lines—
‘And it was thought,
That thou shouldst tread preferment’s flowery path,