Still fought upon his stumps.’
[4]. ‘The gentle and free passage of arms at Ashby’ was, we are told, so called by the Chroniclers of the time, on account of the feats of horsemanship and the quantity of knightly blood that was shed. This last circumstance was perhaps necessary to qualify it with the epithet of ‘gentle,’ in the opinion of some of these historians. I think the reason why the English are the bravest nation on earth is, that the thought of blood or a delight in cruelty is not the chief excitement with them. Where it is, there is necessarily a reaction; for though it may add to our eagerness and savage ferocity in inflicting wounds, it does not enable us to endure them with greater patience. The English are led to the attack or sustain it equally well, because they fight as they box, not out of malice, but to show pluck and manhood. Fair play and old England for ever! This is the only bravery that will stand the test. There is the same determination and spirit shown in resistance as in attack; but not the same pleasure in getting a cut with a sabre as in giving one. There is, therefore, always a certain degree of effeminacy mixed up with any approach to cruelty, since both have their source in the same principle, viz. an over-valuing of pain.[[67]] This was the reason the French (having the best cause and the best general in the world) ran away at Waterloo, because they were inflamed, furious, drunk with the blood of their enemies, but when it came to their turn, wanting the same stimulus, they were panic-struck, and their hearts and their senses failed them all at once.
[5]. The English are fond of change of scene; the French of change of posture; the Italians like to sit still and do nothing.
[6]. Bells are peculiar to England. They jingle them in Italy during the carnival as boys do with us at Shrovetide; but they have no notion of ringing them. The sound of village bells never cheers you in travelling, nor have you the lute or cittern in their stead. The expression of ‘Merry Bells’ is a favourite and not one of the least appropriate in our language.
[7]. The strict formality of French serious writing is resorted to as a foil to the natural levity of their character.
[8]. See Newgate Calendar for 1758.
[9]. B—— at this time occupied chambers in Mitre court, Fleet Street.
[10]. Lord Bacon is not included in this list, nor do I know where he should come in. It is not easy to make room for him and his reputation together. This great and celebrated man in some of his works recommends it to pour a bottle of claret into the ground of a morning, and to stand over it, inhaling the perfumes. So he sometimes enriched the dry and barren soil of speculation with the fine aromatic spirit of his genius. His ‘Essays’ and his ‘Advancement of Learning’ are works of vast depth and scope of observation. The last, though it contains no positive discoveries, is a noble chart of the human intellect, and a guide to all future inquirers.
[11]. As when a person asks you ‘whether you do not find a strong resemblance between Rubens’s pictures and Quarles’s poetry?’—which is owing to the critic’s having lately been at Antwerp and bought an edition of Quarles’s Emblems. Odd combinations must take place where a number of ideas are brought together, with only a thin, hasty partition between them, and without a sufficient quantity of judgment to discriminate. An Englishman, of some apparent consequence passing by the St. Peter Martyr of Titian at Venice, observed ‘It was a copy of the same subject by Domenichino at Bologna.’ This betrayed an absolute ignorance both of Titian and of Domenichino, and of the whole world of art: yet unless I had also seen the St. Peter at Bologna, this connoisseur would have had the advantage of me, two to one, and might have disputed the precedence of the two pictures with me, but that chronology would have come to my aid. Thus persons who travel from place to place, and roam from subject to subject, make up by the extent and discursiveness of their knowledge for the want of truth and refinement in their conception of the objects of it.
[12]. There are few things more contemptible than the conversation of mere men of the town. It is made up of the technicalities and cant of all professions, without the spirit or knowledge of any. It is flashy and vapid, or is like the rinsings of different liquors at a night-cellar instead of a bottle of fine old port. It is without body or clearness, and a heap of affectation. In fact, I am very much of the opinion of that old Scotch gentleman who owned that ‘he preferred the dullest book he had ever read to the most brilliant conversation it had ever fallen to his lot to hear!’