Now the figure which we have been discussing, or rather the figure which we ought to have been discussing, is the very essence and quintessence of novelty. It is perpetually bringing before our eyes old scenes in a new form, old friends in a new dress, old recollections in a new imagery: it is the cayenne of life; and from it the dishes, which would without it cloy and disgust, derive a perpetual variety of taste and pungency. It takes from the scenes we so often witness their unpleasing uniformity, and gives to our mortal career an air of romance which is inexpressibly amusing. All ranks of persons may alike derive benefit from it. By its use the charms of the beauty become more irresistible, the exploits of the general more astonishing, the character of the rake more excusable. It gives in an equal degree pleasure to those who behold, and advantage to those who practise it.
How then is it to be practised? The manner and the method are sufficiently obvious. Never wear to-morrow the same character, or the same dress, that you wore to-day. Be, if you can, puncto mobilis horæ. Be red one hour, and pale the next; vary your temper, your appearance, your language, your manners, unceasingly. Let not your studies or your amusements continue the same for a week together. Skim over the surface of everything, and be deep in nothing; you may think a little, read a little, gamble a little: but you must not think deep, read deep, or play deep. In short, be everything and nothing; the butterfly in life, tasting every flower, and tasting only to leave it.
Do you think too much is required? Far from it. Antiquity has handed down to us a character possessed, in a most transcendent degree, of all the qualifications we[Pg 77] have exacted. We always like to get an example or two from antiquity, because it looks learned. Alcibiades then we can safely propose as a model for all juvenile practitioners in the Asyndeton. Was he grave one day? He laughed the next. Was he an orator one day? He was a buffoon the next. Was he a Greek one day? He was a Persian the next. To sum up his character: he was skilled in every profession; an amateur in every fashion; adorned by every virtue; made infamous by every vice. He moralized like a philosopher, jested like a mountebank, fought like a hero, lied like a scoundrel, lived like a knowing one, and died like a fool.
We assert, and we defy the soundest sophist in the world to contradict us, that these mixed characters obtain and preserve a greater portion of the admiration of the world, than more consistent and less interesting personages. We wonder not at the uniformity of the fixed star, but our imagination is actively employed upon the unusual appearance of the comet. Thus the man of firm and unchangeable steadiness of principle receives our esteem, and is forgotten; while the meteoric appearance of inconsistent eccentricity takes instant hold of our admiration, and is decorated with ten thousand indescribable attractions by the proper exercise of the Asyndeton.
But why do we dilate so much upon the authority of Alcibiades? It has been the almost invariable practice of all great men, in all ages, to pay particular attention to the cultivation of this figure. What a prodigy of the Asyndeton was Alexander! His father Philip may have had more science, perhaps more bottom; but the eccentricities of Alexander, the extraordinary rapidity with which he changed the ring for the gin-shop, and laid down the thunder-bolt of Ammon to assume the quart-pot of Hercules, have given, and will preserve to him, the first leaf in the good books of the young and the hasty.
Are we not more delighted by the capricious mutability of Queen Bess than by the moral uniformity of Queen Anne? Is it not a pleasing marvel, and a marvellous pleasure, to look at the last days of Oliver Cromwell, when the usurper, perpetually stretched upon the tenterhooks of conscience, dared not travel the same road[Pg 78] twice, nor sleep two nights following in the same bed? Spirit of mutability, what pranks must thou have played with the Protector!
Since these are the charms of the Asyndeton, it is not surprising that the poets should have so frequently thrown a spice of it into the characters of their heroes. Putting Fingal and Æneas out of the way, we have no hero of any importance who can make pretensions to a consistency in perfection; and even the latter of these trips occasionally into the Asyndeton; especially when he puts off his usual denominations of pius or pater, in order to be simply Dux Trojanus at the court of Queen Dido. As for Achilles, his whole life, magno si quicquam credis Homero, is an Asyndeton. He is equally a warrior and a ballad-singer, a prince and a cook. To-day he cuts up oxen, and to-morrow he cuts up Trojans. In battle he is as stout a glutton as ever peeled at Moulsey Hurst. At supper he is as hungry a glutton as ever sat down to a turtle. Homer has been blamed for the faults of his hero. For our part we think, with his defenders, that the character which aims with success at perfection, aims in vain at interest; and the feats of Achilles appear to us to derive much of their lustre from the Asyndeton which pervades them. Aware of the charm which a character receives from the use of this figure, modern writers have followed, in this point, the example of their great forerunner, and have thrown into the characters of most of their heroes a particle of this fascinating inconsistency. Hence we have the soldier of Flodden Field, something between a freebooter and a knight—
Now forging scrolls, now foremost in the fight,
Not quite a felon, yet but half a knight.
Hence we trace the unconnected wanderings of a noble but ruined spirit in Manfred; and hence we wonder at the mysterious union of virtue and vice in the gloomy Corsair, who
Leaves a name to other times,
Linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes.