knowledge; and he has thus an enormous advantage over the blind good-nature which constantly irritates and worries where it hoped to confer pleasure, misinterpreting signs which tact reads like print, and creating an atmosphere of disturbance where the other inspires security and repose. No doubt good-nature holds its own in the long run, and we can scarcely disparage its clumsiest, least-discerning exhibitions with impunity; but, in fact, defect of imagination more commonly encourages a form of selfishness even where largeness of heart is not wanting. There are many people constitutionally incapable of believing in feelings unknown to themselves. They want the capacity for doing so. They will not, and seem as if they could not, credit likings and antipathies, pains and pleasures, of which they have no experience. They either set them down as pretence and affectation, or they take no count of them, treating them as empty words devoid of all meaning for those who profess them; or perhaps they override ideas alien to their own tastes as a sort of vermin which it is a duty and a merit to crush. The strong often will not believe in weakness, nor the healthy in sickness, nor the high-spirited in nervousness or depression, nor the methodical in the necessity for variety and change. Old persons of this temper will even forget that they were ever young, and, following the system of their whole life, will regard their present estimate of pleasure and pain as not merely the only reasonable one, but the only one which can seriously be entertained—other notions being simple delusions. "But it must be charming to dive, and feel the water rushing over your head," sighs Andersen's "Ugly Duckling." "Nonsense," says the hen, do you ever see me dive, or the tomcat, or even our old mistress? You do not know what you are talking about." Of course selfishness adopts this strain for its own purposes; but people are not always selfish, morally, who use such arguments, and the charge is often applied unjustly. It is certain, at least, that persons thus constituted have need of a self-restraint, and a mere blind faith in what they cannot understand, for which their friends in their turn would scarcely have fancy enough to give them credit. We see people continually failing in their ends from the same deficiency. They cannot tell how to reach others; they have no selection of arguments; they have no delicate tools, but only such as will wrench and hammer. This is called ignorance of human nature or want of penetration; but, of course, whatever is not seen by the senses | must be seen, if at all, through the imagination. A very strong will disdains this faculty, or dulls it by this disdain; it prefers getting its way through mere force. A sense of power creates a desire to take the most direct way to its end. If there is power enough, it succeeds; but as often a dull or quenched imagination balks a strong will of its desire. There are a hundred things acceptable or repugnant to us according to the method in which they are first presented to our consideration. If we think of critical times in our lives, occasions when a choice or alternative was presented to us, we very likely may find that the mode in which it was brought before us determined us. If the suggestion came with due consideration for our habits of thought, it was received, and its bearings entered into; but, put arbitrarily and defiantly, the idea failed of an entrance, made no way, and was never entertained at all, probably from some kindred inability in ourselves to seize the points of a new situation. The propounder could not or would not picture the mind to which he sought access so as to secure a primary reception. Of course this sort of picture-drawing has to be cultivated like any other talent, and necessity here, as elsewhere, is the great teacher; but whenever it is not possessed, either from incapacity or indifference, there will be a growing discrepancy of tastes and interests, for people cannot live in harmony without it.. How very few persons have the least idea of what goes on behind their backs! It is as well, indeed, that it is so, for the knowledge might be too much for humanity; but the thought comes now and then across us as circumstances show some marked or grotesque example of this blindness. It seems sometimes as though men supposed that the people and things they control by their presence either stood still in their absence, or proceeded like clock-work in the same groove. The life about them is supposed, like the author's story, to wait for its progress and dénouement till he resumes the pen. Experience tells us the exact contrary of this. Every change, departure, absence in a circle, even in the case of its more insignificant members, makes a corresponding change in those who remain behind; something may then be said which would not have been said, or would have been said differently. But who thinks of this? We have heard of an old lady so perspicacious on this point that she preferred asking her young friends in couples, in order that they might laugh at her behind her back, and so never be without entertainment; but how few possess such an illumi nation of insight! Grim overstrictness and formality might indeed learn a lesson could they see the sudden relief from restraint which relaxes tongue, nerve, and limb as they close the door behind them; but it is well for human sensitiveness generally that fancy is sluggish in this direction. People need not leave their characters in Mrs. Candour's charge to flinch from the tone adopt ed towards them in their absence. It comes with a jar upon the ear of Mr. and Mrs. Johnson simply to find themselves, their clever sons and attractive daughters, summarily disposed of as "the Johnsons," and classed, without discriminating respect, among the Smiths and Thompsons, and other commonplace members of their social circle. A certain self-complacency, necessary perhaps to happiness, distinguishes us to ourselves, till our scale will not tally with that of our friends. To almost all it is a surprise—often something of a shock as well if, in an affair of any delicacy, chance shows them some letter containing mention of themselves not intended for their eyes. Reason tells them that there is nothing to complain of, but their imagination had not helped them to an exact apprehension of the place they occupy in other minds. This is what is meant by the saying that listeners never hear any good of themselves. It must be granted that, wherever the imagination has a strain put upon it, this passive form fails of its full development. Poets and novelists, as far as we know, do not apply their gifts to domestic purposes, and therefore live in as great mistakes and make as many blunders as the most prosaic of their neighbours. Still there are depths from which the faculty, however exercised, will save its possessor. It implants misgivings in the vainest and most selfish. Nobody can play the fool with the same exuberant, sustained, and, we may say, innocent relish as those can whom nature has sent into the world without it. We cannot deny, however, that an entire absence of imagination, where the other faculties are strong, is often beneficial to a man's interests, and helps him to carry out his designs. He overcomes difficulties simply by not seeing them. In this case nobody detects the defficiency; he is supposed simply to have a mastery over his imagination, not to be blind to what is patent to all the world beside. What we are considering, however, is not the advantage or disadvantage of imagination to its possessor, but the debt that social life owes it. Half mankind are afraid of imagination; the best service they give it credit for is the furnishing their leisure with agreeable reading, though they nevertheless | grudge the tasks it imposes by forcing them now and then into uncongenial flights of thought. They never think of looking for imagination in their wives and families and servants. What we say is, let men cultivate imagination in those about them if they would be comfortable, if they would enjoy life, if they would escape the pettiest forms of inconvenience, if they would avoid dull days and worrying hours. How many annoyances would a practiced imagination in those about them avert! Would people be ever tedious if they could picture the minds of their hearers? or would they be bores, if they could take a look out of themselves? Could they be habitually unpunctual and dilatory if their fancy pressed upon them the weariness and anxiety which those dependent on them must suffer? Could there be so many ungoverned tempers if they knew how to read the impressions which their tantrums produce? Could there be so much mere profession and empty protestation in conjunction with the gift of realization? Above all, would there be so much dull talk? - for talk is really duller than it need be, considering the collective capacity of mankind. Few things that must be talked of at all need be uninteresting. There must be gossip, but it need not be such dull gossip-such endless discussion of facts on which nothing hangs, of which nothing can be made, which begins and ends with itself as most of it is. A few grains of imagination transform gossip simple into something suggestive, connect it with human nature, and transmute it into a picture of life which memory may add to its stores, till at length it becomes history. Mere reason and common sense get over the difficulty by discarding it altogether as trifling. Yet there are yellow primroses of the hearth as well as of the river-brim, which it needs a gift to discern. Reason and common sense are too apt to think many pleasant things nonsense, and to confine themselves to the edifying and the useful, to cold science, and to grave moralities. The virtue of imagination is that it can utilize mean materials and dignify trivial ones; and this by no conscious effort, but through its inherent power of assimilation and recognition of kindred qualities. Imagination of the domestic sort needs, indeed, to be unconscious and without design. To eke out a little fancy with a great deal of careful deliberate imitation is the way with most novelists. The effect upon their works is not inspiring, but far less exhilarating are the efforts of would-be fancy upon the social circle. From Bentley's Magazine. ABOUT MISERY MAKING SPORT TO MOCK ITSELF. A CUE FROM SHAKSPEARE. BY FRANCIS JACOX. OLD John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster, puns grimly on his name, when King Richard, in the flippant heydey of careless youth and insolence of power, salutes him by that name, and asks how fares it with aged Gaunt? Old Gaunt, indeed, the moribund ancient discourses the name befits his composition; gaunt in being old; gaunt in fasting, for grief keeps him from meat. For sleeping England long time has he watched, he pany to keep up his usual air of buoyancy Known only to les misérables are the sub- Says Doctor Dove to Doctor Dense, when the latter, true to his name, is all astonishment at the Doctor's egregious fooling, and begins to suspect him of fooling in earnest, Ay, Doctor! you meet in this world with false mirth as often as with false gravity; the grinning hypocrite is not a more uncommon character than the groaning one." He goes on to say that as much light discourse comes from a heavy heart as from a hollow one, and from a full mind as from an empty head. And he quotes Mr. Danby's remark, that says; and watching breeds leanness, leanness is all gaunt. He taxes royal Richard, his nephew, with having made him gaunt. Gaunt is he for the grave, gaunt as a grave. And so the old man maunders on, chewing the cud of that bitter fancy. It is not unnatural that the king should interpose with a note of interrogation: Can sick men play so nicely with their names? And the querulous sufferer's significant reply is this: "No; misery makes sport to mock itself." * There are moods and tenses when misery does this almost as a matter of course. Many a misérable, in his tumult of griefs, does, or strives to do, for himself what the faithful fool did for Lear, when together they brav-levity is sometimes a refuge from the gloom of seriousness; and that a man may whistle ed the blast on the midnight heath, and the from want of thought, or from having too fool laboured to outjest Lear's heart-struck much of it. injuries. Differing vastly in degree, there is something of the same kind in Desdemona's essay to amuse herself, in Othello's absence, with the cynical humor of honest, honest Lago, professedly nothing if not critical: We are told of Oliver Goldsmith in his latter days, when, from the pecuniary difficulties he had brought upon himself by his errors and extravagances, he came to lose his wonted gayety and good humour, and got to be, at times, peevish and irritable, that, being too proud to ask assistance from his friends, he buried his cares and anxieties in his own bosom, and endeavoured in com *King Richard II., Act II. Sc. 1. King Lear, Act III. Sc. 1. Othello, Act II. Sc. 1. "His Some one observed once to Doctor Johnson, that it seemed strange that he, who so often delighted his company by his lively conversation, should say that he was miserable. “ Alas "I may it is all outside," replied the sage; be cracking my joke, and cursing the sun. 'Sun, how I hate thy beams!"" Boswell appends a foot-note, in which he remarks that beyond doubt a man may appear very gay in company, who is sad at heart. merriment is like the sound of drums and trumpets in a battle, to drown the groans of the wounded and dying."§ It is well known that Cowper was in a morbidly despondent state when he penned "John Gilpin ;" of which delectable ballad, and its congeners, he himself bears record: "Strange as it may the most ludicrous lines I ever wrote have been written in the saddest mood, and but for that saddest mood, perhaps, had never been written at all." || In the height seem, *Life of Goldsmith, ch. xliii. Scott, the Lord of the Isles, canto i. st. 17 See Boswell's Life of Johnson, sub anno 1784. us, But, ne'er the less, I hope it is no crime successive stanzas on the fact that "Death laughs," that is to say, the skeleton's lipless mouth grins without breath: "Mark how it laughs and scorns at all you are!"... of his ill-fortune, in 1826, Sir Walter Scott | In a later canto he harps on the same string : was ever giving vent, in his Diary or elsewhere, to some whimsical outburst or hu- When we know what all are, we must bewail morous sally; and after inditing an extra gay jeu-d'esprit in his journal, just before leaving his dingy Edinburgh lodgings for Abbotsford, he follows it up next day by this bit of self-portraiture: "Anybody would think, from the fal-de-ral conclusion In the ninth canto, again, he lays stress in of my journal of yesterday, that I left town in a very gay humour; cujus contrarium verum est. But nature has given me a kind of buoyancy- I know not what to call it that mingled even with my deepest afflictions and most gloomy hours. I have a secret pride-I fancy it will be so most truly termed which impels me to mix with my distress strange snatches of mirth which have no mirth in them.'"* Finely says Hartley Coleridge, in one of those sonnets he knew so well to round into grace of form, and infuse with tender feeling, Ah me! It is the saddest thing on earth For in such case it may be said with Thomas - inward grief is writhing o'er its task, As heart-sick jesters weep behind the mask.‡ In this way young Werther, by his own account, as recorded in his once compassionated Sorrows, declares of himself, "I affect mirth in my troubles," and "could compose a whole litany of antitheses "§ like that between grief and gayety, mirth and gloom, a weight at the heart and flighty fooling on the lips. In the bitterness of his soul, Byron protested, when that soul was perhaps in its least spiritual, most spirituel mood- - for he was writing Don Juan at the time, 35. And if I laugh at any mortal thing, "Tis that I may not weep. || *Diary of Sir Walter Scott, July 14. 1826. Hood's Poems, Hero and Leander. Don Juan, canto iv. And thus Death laughs, it is sad merriment, It was in a precursor of his great satire that I fear I have a little turn for satire, And yet methinks the older that one grows Inclines us more to laugh than scold, though laughter Leaves us so doubly serious shortly after. † As usual, he was painting himself, in one of his favourite attitudes-in print at least, and shorter metre-when he wrote of his Giaour, Not oft to smile descendeth he, In his rhyming letter to Mr. Hodgson, written on board ship, dated Falmouth Roads, when he left England in 1809, occur the characteristic lines, But, since life at most a jest is, Sick or well, at sea or shore. § His biographer earnestly contends that Byron's vein of mockery, in the excess to which, at last, he carried it, was but a result of the shock his proud mind had received from those events which cast him off, branded * Ibid., canto vil. Bebbo, st. 7. The Ginour. See Moore's Life of Byron, ch. ix. and heart-stricken, from country and from maxim, and practice too, is to laugh, because home. And quoting his assertion that, if I do not like to cry.” * He could shed a pailful of tears, he protests, over recent family vexations; but to avert any such flood, he will play Democritus. If he cannot laugh outright, at least he will try to smile in the fashion of Mr. Tennyson's cynical lover-to he laughed at any mortal thing (as avowedly he did at all mortal things), 'twas that he might not weep, Moore adds the comment that this laughter, which, in such temperaments, is the near neighbour of tears, served as a diversion to him from more painful vents of bitterness; and that the same philosophical calculation which made the poet of melancholy, Young, declare that he "preferred laughing at the world to being angry at it," led Lord Byron also to settle upon the same conclusion; and to feel, in the misanthropic views he was inclined to take of mankind, that mirth often saved him the pain of hate.* In one of Mr. Dickens's Christmas Stories there is a lawyer whose cue is that you mustn't laugh at life; in juxtaposition with whom, and in contradistinction from whom, Chamfort pictures, in his miscellaneous there is a doctor who is always dilating on character-portraits from real life, a certain life as a farce-the same contradictions M. E., who, says he, "jouit excessivement prevailing in everything: "one must either des ridicules qu'il peut saisir et apercevoir laugh or cry at such stupendous inconsistdans le monde. Il parait même charmé encies; and I prefer to laugh." Coleridge lorsqu'il voit quelque injustice absurde. . . . was wont to say, in terms borrowed from D'abord j'ai cru qu'il était méchant; mais, one of the German philosophers, of whose en le fréquentant davantage, j'ai démêlé à philosophy he made so much, that every.. quel principe appartient cette étrange ma- man is born a Platonist or an Aristotelian. nière de voir: c'est un sentiment honnête, In like manner might it be said, in referune indignation vertueuse qui l'a rendu long-ence to individual temperament, that every temps malheureux, et à laquelle il a substitué une habitude de plaisanterie, qui voudrait n'être que gaie, mais qui, devenant quelquefois amère et sarcasmatique, dénonce la source dont elle part." M. de Tocqueville says, in an unfinished historical work of his the intended sequel to L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution- that the French have a sort of joyous desperation which deceives their rulers: they laugh at their own misery, but they feel it no less. -- It was of their "outrageous folly" during the Reign of Terror that Horace Walpole thus wrote to Hannah More: "You say their outrageous folly tempts you to smile yes, yes: at times I should have laughed too, if I could have dragged my muscles at once from the zenith of horror to the nadir of contempt: but their abominations leave one [query, do not leave one ?] leisure enough to leap from indignation to mirth."§ To laugh that he might not weep, had, however, been a pet maxim and alleged practice of Horace Walpole's, his whole life long. His letters abound with such passages as this in one to Lord Strafford: "The world is an old acquaintance that does not improve upon one's hands; however, one must not give way to the disgust it creates. My man, who thinks at all on what is passing within him and around him, is born of the stock of Heraclitus or of that of Democritus: For some must laugh, and some must weep; As regards Democritus, M. Nourisson, the French historian of the Progress of Human Thought, maintains that, in point of fact, the laughter of this so-called laughing philosopher, usually placed as it is in antithesis to the tears of Heraclitus, the crying one, was little else after all than a dissembled tear- n'était guère aussi qu'un pleur dissimu le. As he gazed on the follies and miseries of mankind, disdain was for ever working in the curves and corners of his lips. After having climbed, as another critic would be excused for saying of Democritus, the highest heaven of invention, there was nothing for it, of course, but to look with a semblance at least of derisive levity upon all the vicissitudes and poor struggles of humanity. It was thus, alleges an expositor of the Atomic Theory, that he won and wore the questionable honours of the Laughing Philosopher. The great majority of his spiritual posterity, it is added, down to the latest generation of Walpole to the Earl of Strafford, Nov. 15, 1773. The Battle of Life, part i. Progrès de la Pensée Humaine, ch. vi. |