The Atlas] [September 27 and October 4, 1829.
I. There is no flattery so gross or extravagant but it will be acceptable. It leaves some sting of pleasure behind, since its very excess seems to imply that there must be some foundation for it. Tell the ugliest person in the world that he is the handsomest, the greatest fool that he is a wit, and he will believe and thank you. There is a possibility at least that you may be sincere. Even the sycophant’s ironical laugh turns to a smile of self-complacency at our own fancied perfections.
II. There is no abuse so foul or unprovoked but some part of it will stick. Ill words break the charm of good deeds. Call a man names all the year round, and at the end of the year (for no other reason) his best friends will not care to mention his name. It is no pleasant reflection that a man has been accused, however unjustly, of a folly or a crime. We involuntarily associate words with things; and the imagination retains an unfavourable impression long after the understanding is disabused. Or if we repel the charge and resent the injustice, this is making a toil of a pleasure, and our cowardice and indolence soon take part with the malice of mankind. The assailants are always the more courageous party. It degrades a man even to be subjected to undeserved reproach, for it seems as if without some flaw or blemish no one would dare to attack him; so that the viler and more unprincipled the abuse, the lower it sinks, not him who offers, but him who is the object of it, in general estimation. If we see a man covered with mud we avoid him without expressing the cause. The favourites of the public, like Cæsar’s wife, must not be suspected; and it is enough if we admire and bear witness to the superiority of another under the most favourable circumstances—to do this in spite of secret calumny and vulgar clamour is a pitch of generosity which the world has not arrived at.
III. A certain manner makes more conquests than either wit or beauty. Suppose a woman to have a graceful ease of deportment, and a mild self-possession pervading every look and tone of voice; this exercises an immediate influence on a person of an opposite and irritable temperament—it calms and enchants him at once. It is like soft music entering the room—from that time he can only breathe in her presence, and to be torn from her is to be torn from himself for ever.
IV. Fame and popularity are disparate quantities, having no common measure. A poet or painter now living may be as great as any poet or painter that ever did live; and if he be so, he will be so thought of by future ages, but he cannot by the present. Persons of overweening vanity and short-sighted ambition, who would forestall the meed of fame, show themselves unworthy of it, for they reduce it to a level with the reputation they have already earned. They should surely leave something to look forward to. It is weighing dross against gold—comparing a meteor with the polar star. Lord Byron’s narrowness or presumption in this respect was remarkable. What! did he not hope to live two hundred years himself, that he should say it was merely a fashion to admire Milton and Shakspeare as it was the fashion to admire him? Those who compare Sir Walter Scott with Shakspeare do not know what they are doing. They may blunt the feeling with which we regard Shakspeare as an old and tried friend, though they cannot transfer it to Sir Walter Scott, who is, after all, but a new and dazzling acquaintance. To argue that there is no difference in the circumstances is not to put the author of ‘Waverley’ into actual possession of the reversion of fame, but to say that he shall never enjoy it, since it is no better than a chimera and an illusion. It is striking at the foundation of true and lasting renown, and overturning with impatient and thoughtless hands the proud pre-eminence, the golden seats and blest abodes which the predestined heirs of immortality wait for beyond the tomb. The living are merely candidates (more or less successful) for popular applause, the dead are a religion, or they are nothing.
V. Persons who tell an artist that he is equal to Claude, or a writer that he is as great as Bacon, do not add to the satisfaction of their hearers, but pay themselves a left-handed compliment, by supposing that their judgment is equivalent to the suffrage of posterity.
VI. A French artist advised young beginners against being too fond of a variety of colours, which might do very well on a smaller scale, but when they came to paint a large picture they would find they had soon lavished all their resources. So superficial writers may deck out their barren round of common-places in the finest phrases imaginable; but those who are accustomed to work out a subject by dint of study, must not use up their whole stock of eloquence at once, they must bring forward their most appropriate expressions as they approach nearer to the truth, and raise their style with their thoughts. A good general keeps his reserve, the élite of his troops, to charge at the critical moment.
VII. ‘Procrastination is the thief of time.’ It is singular that we are so often loth to begin what gives us great satisfaction in the progress, and what, after we have once begun it, we are as loth to leave off. The reason is, that the imagination is not excited till the first step is taken or the first blow is struck. Before we begin a certain task, we have little notion how we shall set about it, or how we shall proceed: it is like attempting something of which we have no knowledge, and which we feel we are incapable of doing. It is no wonder, therefore, that a strong repugnance accompanies this seeming inaptitude: it is having to make bricks without straw. But after the first effort is over, and we have turned our minds to the subject, one thing suggests another, our ideas pour in faster than we can use them, and we launch into the stream which bears us on with ease and pleasure to ourselves. The painter who did not like to mix his colours or begin on a new canvas in the morning, sees the light close in upon him with unwilling eyes; and the essayist, though gravelled for a thought, or at a loss for words at the outset of his labours, winds up with alacrity and spirit.
VIII. Conversation is like a game at tennis, or any other game of skill. A person shines in one company who makes no figure in another—just as a tolerably good cricketer, who might be an acquisition to a country club, would have his wicket struck down at the first bowl at Lord’s-ground. The same person is frequently dull at one time and brilliant at another: sometimes those who are most silent at the beginning of an entertainment are most loquacious at the end. There is a run in the luck both in cards and conversation. Some people are good speakers but bad hearers: these are put out, unless they have all the talk to themselves. Some are best in a tête-à-tête; others in a mixed company. Some persons talk well on a set subject, who can hardly answer a common question, still less pay a compliment or make a repartee. Conversation may be divided into the personal or the didactic: the one resembles the style of a lecture, the other that of a comedy. There are as many who fail in conversation from aiming at too high a standard of excellence, and wishing only to utter oracles or jeux-d’esprit, as there are who expose themselves from having no standard at all, and saying whatever comes into their heads. Pedants and gossips compose the largest class. Numbers talk on without paying any attention to the effect they produce upon their audience: some few take no part in the discourse but by assenting to everything that is said, and these are not the worst companions in the world. An outcry is sometimes raised against dull people, as if it were any fault of theirs. The most brilliant performers very soon grow dull, and we like people to begin as they end. There is then no disappointment nor false excitement. The great ingredient in society is good-will. He who is pleased with what he himself has to say, and listens in his turn with patience and good-humour, is wise and witty enough for us. We do not covet those parties where one wit dares not go, because another is expected. How delectable must the encounter of such pretenders be to one another! How edifying to the bye-standers!
IX. It was well said by Mr. Coleridge, that people never improve by contradiction, but by agreeing to differ. If you discuss a question amicably you may gain a clear insight into it; if you dispute about it you only throw dust in one another’s eyes. In all angry or violent controversy, your object is not to learn wisdom, but to prove your adversary a fool; and in this respect, it must be admitted, both parties usually succeed.