Mr. Otway looked benignly at me, saying, "Come, we must not get into a discussion now; you deserve your breakfast, and shall not be interrupted." And a capital breakfast we had.
A beautiful Newfoundland dog lay at his master's feet; a fine tortoise-shell cat purred upon the back of his arm-chair; and the windows were presently assailed by an army of supplicants in the shape of the finest pea-fowls that I ever saw.
"See what it is, Arthur, to be an old batchelor! I am obliged to keep my affections from becoming stagnant, you find, by practising them upon all these birds and beasts which you perceive are my companions as well as pensioners." After feeding the numerous host, we sallied from the breakfast-parlour, and Phil. escorted me to his study, a most comfortable apartment, and well lined with books. He has a beautiful collection of the classics, all the best modern works of science, and a rich assortment of history and Belles Lettres. While I was glancing over this, he pointed to a compartment in the far end of the room, desiring me to examine its contents. "There I keep my novels, reviews, and magazines; for you know, that 'all work and no play would make Jack a dull boy;' and as I suppose that you do not intend to read yourself into a consumption while you stay at Glenalta, I give you a letter of credit on whatever amusement these shelves can supply." In this Poets' Corner I found Scott's works, both in prose and verse; several other modern novels of good name; and all the early poems of Lord Byron. "I perceive," said I, "Mr. Otway, that you have not yet completed your set of Byron's works; you have not got Don Juan, nor—" "Nor never shall, my young friend," answered the sage of Lisfarne. "I cannot prevent people who have money to buy and inclination to peruse, from reading these works; but they shall not find them in my library." "Then, sir, you are, I presume, of opinion that one cannot separate the poison from the poetry, and avoid imbibing the one, while we enjoy the exquisite beauty of the other."
"No, my dear boy; these are idle notions. Wherever vice is an ingredient in any compound so mingled as to seize upon the passions, or delight the imagination, the draught will always be injurious more or less. Even those minds of finer mould than we commonly meet with, will not escape, though they hate the contact, they cannot shun its defilement; and that which is impure, must sully whatever it touches." "Well, I should have supposed that good taste would protect a man of refined education. In fact, such a man rejects whatever is coarse, and simply vicious: he reads Lord Byron, not because of his occasional deviations from religion and morality; but in spite of them he admires the splendid genius who of all modern writers best understands, if I may so express myself, the metaphysics of the human heart, while every man of feeling must lament the shipwreck of such talents. The broad-cast pollution which is necessary to season a mess for vulgar palates, must be pernicious in the highest degree; but I confess I have never felt in the same way of those polished compositions which are only read by people of superior attainment, and who are fortified against evil by knowledge of the world."
"Alas, Howard, these are nice distinctions, and lead but to delusion. Our morals are much like a taper lit at each extremity, they are consuming at both ends. You talk of coarse messes, seasoned to the taste of vulgar appetite: believe me, it is a melancholy fact, that there are cooks who undertake to cater for nicer stomachs, and who know how to insinuate their poisons with such skill as to secure the custom of all who are not proof against their temptation. That number, I fear, is small; and as to the difference between vice well and ill dressed, you will find that it is about the same with that which distinguishes Tilburina stark mad in white satin, from her confidante stark mad in white linen. Amongst the mal-contents of the present day, you hear the complaint continually repeated, that there is one law for the rich, and another for the poor: the charge is unfounded, and, generally speaking, known to be so by the men who bring it forward. It will neither do to have two sets of laws, nor of morals, in any country. The tendency of all ranks in the community is to imitate those who are placed above them; and this aspiring inclination is to be traced from the lowest grade in society, till having reached the throne, you can rise no higher. The self-same rule applies to religion. I was glad to hear you say yesterday at Glenalta that you felt the absolute necessity of its influence in a state for the preservation of order and virtue; and that you considered women as the natural guardians of its altars. This is all right; but you are egregiously mistaken if you suppose that women will, generally speaking, take pains to nurture and cherish what is despised by the other sex. There are a few, and very few, such beings as your aunt, who appear to have dropped into our planet from some happier sphere, and who adjust their principles of action to a model of abstract perfection, with which common-place mortals are unacquainted. Such beings only think of how to please God; but the mass of men and women dress themselves daily in the mirror of each other's approbation, and act reciprocally on each others' characters. Let one sex degenerate, it matters not which, you will find the other follow in the downward course."
"But, my dear sir, these authors whom you decry, do not create vice, they only exhibit it; and though I do not advocate the practice, yet after all it would seem that men need not be much worse for reading, than for hearing and seeing what is exceptionable. If infidelity and immorality were only propagated by books, your argument against such writers as Lord Byron would be unanswerable. But allow me to say, that the Bible itself, in the strongest terms, insists on the depravity of the human species, and offers the most flagrant illustrations in proof of human delinquency. The hardness of heart, and unbelief of man, are frequently held up to view in Holy Writ; and what does a Rochefaucauld in prose, or a Byron in verse, do more than represent things as they are?"
"If you consider the matter for a moment," replied my opponent, "I fancy that you will be at no loss to discover some striking differences which will sufficiently answer your question. The evil tendency of such writers as Rochefaucauld, and all the class of satirists, who represent man as a debased and hypocritical animal, does not proceed from the truth of the picture, but from the manner of the painter. The scriptures indulge us in no 'lying vanities;' they speak of the human race as born in sin and the children of wrath; and Conscience, when we attend to her voice, confirms the humiliating charge, with uncompromising fidelity. But while the Bible, and those who preach its doctrines, point out the disease, they likewise present the antidote. If they proclaim the deformity of the natural man, it is to shew how the crooked may be made straight; if they expose his weakness, it is to impart strength; if they display his corruption, it is but to invite him to wash in those waters which cleanse from all impurity. But such moralists as you support, if moralists they can be called without absurdity, would seem intent on excusing vice. The effect of their books is, as it were to legalize iniquity, by representing it as invincible, and to destroy all sense of shame by laying bare its concealments. Whatever produces this result by means of a pungent and sententious brevity, is doubly injurious; for the authority of a maxim is thus combined with the stimulus of evil: the form is thus rendered portable and adhesive; and truths conveyed in an epigrammatic shape at once flattering to our sagacity in an appeal to its accuteness, and soothing to our faults by pronouncing them to be universal, are not likely to be viewed as subjects for serious lamentation; and the danger is, that the generality of men will contemplate the moral sketches with feelings similar to those commonly inspired by a spirited cariacature; namely, a desire that the object of ridicule may continue to exist, rather than not be so strikingly pourtrayed. As to Lord Byron, who stands pre-eminent, like Milton's Satan, at the head of all the mischief-workers of the present time, his poison is of another kind: slow and penetrating, it is inhaled in the breeze, and absorbed into the circulation; its effects are of the morbid class; it seduces, it insinuates, and, like opium too freely used, destroys every healthful function of the mind, and substitutes the distempered energy of an over-wrought imagination for the wholesome exercise of reason and the sweet charities of the heart. His beautiful poetry, and an inexhaustible source of talents, rare as they were brilliant, operate as cords which draw all mankind after him in bonds of submission. Descriptions of nature or character, external to ourselves, however happy in their delineation, interest but feebly in comparison with what you justly call the 'metaphysics' of sentiment. This is the most fascinating of all possible studies; it requires no labour, it asks no preparation; and all people, whatever their pretensions in other respects, conceive themselves qualified for the school of mental analysis which Byron has instituted and endowed. A bad husband, a bad son, a bad father, has but to retire to some 'rose-leaf couch, where, nursing his dainty loves and slothful sympathies,' he may find, in a volume of this too-attractive bard, an apology for every sin of temper, every violation of duty; nay, so contagious is the influence of this Byron-mania, that our young men cultivate the failings of their chief, and seem to fancy that in becoming imitators of Childe Harold's eccentricities, they may slide into his unrivalled genius. Selfishness and egotism are to be found in the fallows of many a mind; but where are our youth to learn Lord Byron's recipe for compounding them?"
Though not convinced, I was excited, and ventured again into the field, by asking Mr. Otway whether good does not grow out of evil? "Surely," said I, "Truth, like a lazy corporation, would rely upon its charter, and have nothing to do but fatten on its revenues, were it not for opposition.
'Si Lyra non lyrasset, Lutherus non Saltasset.'
"The publication of wrong principles stirs up our slumbering virtue; and besides, is it not useful to see exactly what we should avoid, that we may have no doubts regarding what we ought to follow? If I had not been the advocate of Lord Byron as a poet, I should not have had the pleasure of hearing your excellent remarks." "No, no, young man; a specious sophistry is not sound argument. I cannot allow you to misapply a scripture rule. Though Providence has decreed that all things should work together for good, it offers us no latitude to do evil that good may come of it. Our duty is defined; we must perform our part as well as we can, and keep ourselves unspotted from the world, leaving events in which we have no power given us of interference to the wisdom of Him whose ways are not as our ways. We learn much better from positive than from negative precepts: do you remember the pretty little French song—