‘Come, come!’ said Hunt; ‘I thought we should have no heroes, real or fabulous. What say you, Mr. Lamb? Are you for eking out your shadowy list with such names as Alexander, Julius Cæsar, Tamerlane, or Ghengis Khan?’—‘Excuse me,’ said Lamb; ‘on the subject of characters in active life, plotters and disturbers of the world, I have a crotchet of my own, which I beg leave to reserve.’—‘No, no! come, out with your worthies!’—‘What do you think of Guy Fawkes and Judas Iscariot?’ Hunt turned an eye upon him like a wild Indian, but cordial and full of smothered glee. ‘Your most exquisite reason!’ was echoed on all sides; and Ayrton thought that Lamb had now fairly entangled himself. ‘Why I cannot but think,’ retorted he of the wistful countenance, ‘that Guy Fawkes, that poor, fluttering annual scarecrow of straw and rags, is an ill-used gentleman. I would give something to see him sitting pale and emaciated, surrounded by his matches and his barrels of gunpowder, and expecting the moment that was to transport him to Paradise for his heroic self-devotion; but if I say any more, there is that fellow Godwin will make something of it. And as to Judas Iscariot, my reason is different. I would fain see the face of him who, having dipped his hand in the same dish with the Son of Man, could afterwards betray him. I have no conception of such a thing; nor have I ever seen any picture (not even Leonardo’s very fine one) that gave me the least idea of it.’—‘You have said enough, Mr. Lamb, to justify your choice.’
‘Oh! ever right, Menenius—ever right!’
‘There is only one other person I can ever think of after this,’ continued Lamb; but without mentioning a name that once put on a semblance of mortality. ‘If Shakspeare was to come into the room, we should all rise up to meet him; but if that person was to come into it, we should all fall down and try to kiss the hem of his garment!’
As a lady present seemed now to get uneasy at the turn the conversation had taken, we rose up to go. The morning broke with that dim, dubious light by which Giotto, Cimabue, and Ghirlandaio must have seen to paint their earliest works; and we parted to meet again and renew similar topics at night, the next night, and the night after that, till that night overspread Europe which saw no dawn. The same event, in truth, broke up our little Congress that broke up the great one. But that was to meet again: our deliberations have never been resumed.
FOOTNOTES
[4] Lamb at this time occupied chambers in Mitre-court, Temple.
[5] 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.
ESSAY III
ON PARTY SPIRIT
Party spirit is one of the profoundnesses of Satan, or, in modern language, one of the dexterous equivoques and contrivances of our self-love, to prove that we, and those who agree with us, combine all that is excellent and praiseworthy in our own persons (as in a ring-fence), and that all the vices and deformity of human nature take refuge with those who differ from us. It is extending and fortifying the principle of the amour-propre, by calling to its aid the esprit de corps, and screening and surrounding our favourite propensities and obstinate caprices in the hollow squares or dense phalanxes of sects and parties. This is a happy mode of pampering our self-complacency, and persuading ourselves that we, and those that side with us, are ‘the salt of the earth’; of giving vent to the morbid humours of our pride, envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, those natural secretions of the human heart, under the pretext of self-defence, the public safety, or a voice from heaven, as it may happen; and of heaping every excellence into one scale, and throwing all the obloquy and contempt into the other, in virtue of a nickname, a watchword of party, a badge, the colour of a ribbon, the cut of a dress. We thus desolate the globe, or tear a country in pieces, to show that we are the only people fit to live in it; and fancy ourselves angels, while we are playing the devil. In this manner the Huron devours the Iroquois, because he is an Iroquois; and the Iroquois the Huron, for a similar reason: neither suspects that he does it because he himself is a savage, and no better than a wild beast; and is convinced in his own breast that the difference of man and tribe makes a total difference in the case. The Papist persecutes the Protestant, the Protestant persecutes the Papist in his turn; and each fancies that he has a plenary right to do so, while he keeps in view only the offensive epithet which ‘cuts the common link of brotherhood between them.’ The Church of England ill-treated the Dissenters, and the Dissenters, when they had the opportunity, did not spare the Church of England. The Whig calls the Tory a knave, the Tory compliments the Whig with the same title, and each thinks the abuse sticks to the party-name, and has nothing to do with himself or the generic name of man. On the contrary, it cuts both ways; but while the Whigs say ‘The Tory is a knave, because he is a Tory,’ this is as much as to say, ‘I cannot be a knave, because I am a Whig’; and by exaggerating the profligacy of his opponent, he imagines he is laying the sure foundation, and raising the lofty superstructure, of his own praises. But if he says, which is the truth, ‘The Tory is not a rascal, because he is a Tory, but because human nature in power, and with the temptation, is a rascal,’ then this would imply that the seeds of depravity are sown in his own bosom, and might shoot out into full growth and luxuriance if he got into place, and this he does not wish to develop till he does get into place.