THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORLD IN MEN AND BOOKS.

ROYALTY and its symbols were abolished in France. A showman of wild beasts possessed an immense Bengal tiger, (the pride of his flock,) commonly called the Royal Tiger. What did our showman do? — Why, he knew the world, and he changed the name of the beast, from the Tigre Royal to the Tigre National! Horace Walpole was particularly charmed with this anecdote, for he knew the world as well as the showman. It is exactly these little things — the happy turn of a phrase — a well-timed pleasantry, (which no unobservant man ever thinks of) that, while seeming humour, are in reality wisdom. There are changes in the vein of wit, as in every thing else. Sir William Temple tells us, that on the return of Charles II. none were more out of fashion than the old Earl of Norwich, who was esteemed the greatest wit of the time of Charles the First. But it is clear that the Earl of Norwich must have wanted knowledge of the world; he did not feel, as by an instinct, like the showman, how to vary an epithet — he stuck to the last to his tigre royal!

This knowledge of the world baffles our calculations — it does not always require experience. Some men take to it intuitively; their first step in life exhibits the same profound mastery over the minds of their contemporaries — the same subtle consideration — the same felicitous address, as distinguish the close of their career. Congreve had written his comedies at twenty-five; the best anecdotes of the acuteness of Cyrus are those of his boyhood. I should like, above all things, a veracious account of the childhood of Talleyrand. What a world of shrewdness may he have vented in trundling his hoop! Shakspeare has given us the madness of Hamlet the youth, and of Lear the old man — but there is a far deeper wisdom in the young man’s thoughts than those of the old man.

Minds early accustomed to solitude usually make the keenest observers of the world, and chiefly for this reason — when few objects are presented to our contemplation, we seize them — we ruminate over them — we think, again and again, upon all the features they present to our examination; and we thus master the knowledge of the great book of Mankind, as Eugene Aram mastered that of Learning — by studying five lines at a time, and ceasing not from our labour till those are thoroughly acquired. A boy, whose attention has not been distracted by a multiplicity of objects — who, living greatly alone, is obliged therefore to think, not as a task, but as a diversion, emerges at last into the world — a shy man, but a deep observer. Accustomed to reflection, he is not dazzled by novelty; while it strikes his eye, it occupies his mind. Hence, if he sit down to describe what he sees, he describes it justly at once, and at first; and more vividly, perhaps, than he might in after-life, because it is newer to him. Perhaps, too, the moral eye resembles the physical — by custom familiarizes itself with delusion, and inverts, mechanically, the objects presented to it, till the deceit becomes more natural than nature itself. —

There are men who say they know the world, because they know its vices. Could we admit this claim, what sage would rival an officer at Bow-street, or the turnkey at Newgate? This would indeed be knowledge of the world, if the world were inhabited only by rogues. But pretenders of this sort are as bad judges of our minds as a physician would be of our bodies, if he had never seen any but those in a diseased state. Such a man would fancy health itself a disease! We generally find, indeed, that men are governed by their weaknesses, not their vices, and those weaknesses are often the most amiable part about them.

The wavering Jaffier betrays his friend through a weakness, which a hardened criminal might equally have felt, and which, in that criminal, might have been the origin of his guilt. It is the knowledge of these weaknesses, as by a glance, that serves a man better in the understanding and conquest of his species, than a knowledge of the vices to which they lead — it is better to seize the one cause than ponder over the thousand effects. It is the former knowledge which I chiefly call the knowledge of the world. It is this which immortalised Moliere in the drama, and distinguishes Talleyrand in action.

It has been asked whether the same worldly wisdom which we admire in a writer would, had occasion brought him prominently forward, have made him equally successful in action? Certainly not, as a necessary consequence. Swift was the most sensible writer of his day, and one of the least sensible politicians, in the selfish sense — the only sense in which he knew it — of the word. What knowledge of the world in “Don Juan” and in Byron’s “Correspondence.”

 — what seeming want of that knowledge in the great poet’s susceptibility to attack, on the one hand, and his wanton trifling with his character, on the other! How is this difference between the man and the writer to be accounted for? Because, in the writer, the infirmities of constitution are either concealed or decorated by genius — not so in the man: fretfulness, spleen morbid sensitiveness, eternally spoil our plans in life — but they often give an interest to our plans on paper. Byron, quarrelling with the world, as Childe Harold, proves his genius; but Byron quarrelling with the world in his own person, betrays his folly! To show wisdom in a book, it is but necessary that we should possess the theoretical wisdom; but in life, it requires not only the theoretical wisdom, but the practical ability to act up to it. We may know exactly what we ought to do, but we may not have the fortitude to do it. “Now,” says the shy man in love, “I ought to go and talk to my mistress — my rival is with her — I ought to make myself as agreeable as possible — I ought to throw that fellow in the shade by my bons mots and my compliments.” Does he do so? No! he sits in a corner and scowls at the lady. He is in the miserable state described by Persius. He knows what is good and cannot perform it. Yet this man, if an author, from the very circumstance of feeling so bitterly that his constitution is stronger than his reason, would have made his lover in a book all that he could not be himself in reality.

Hence the best advisers of our conduct are often those who are the least prudent in the regulation of their own. Their sense is clear when exerted for us, but vanity, humour, passion, blind them when they act for themselves.

There is a sort of wit peculiar to knowledge of the world, and we usually find that writers, who are supposed to have the most exhibited that knowledge in their books, are also commonly esteemed the wittiest authors of their country — Horace, Plautus, Moliere, Le Sage, Voltaire, Cervantes, Shakspeare, Fielding, Swift; and this is, because the essence of the most refined species of wit is truth. Even in the solemn and grave Tacitus, we come perpetually to sudden turns — striking points, of sententious brilliancy, which make us smile, from the depth itself of their importance; — an aphorism is always on the borders of an epigram.

It is remarkable that there is scarcely, any very popular author of great imaginative, power, in whose works we do not recognise that common sense which is knowledge of the world, and which is so generally supposed by the superficial to be in direct opposition to the imaginative faculty. When an author does not possess it eminently, he is never eminently popular, whatever be his fame. Compare Scott and Shelley, the two most imaginative authors of their time. The one, in his wildest flights, never loses sight of common sense — there is an affinity between him and his humblest reader; nay, the more discursive the flight, the closer that affinity becomes. We are even more wrapt with the author when he is with his Spirits of the Mountain and Fell — with the mighty dead at Melrose, than when he is leading us through the humours of a guard-room, or confiding to us the interview of lovers. But Shelley disdained common sense. Of his “Prince Athanase,” we have no earthly comprehension — with his “Prometheus” we have no human sympathies; and the grander he becomes, the less popular we find him. Writers who do not, in theory, know their kind, may be admired, but they can never be popular. And when we hear men of unquestionable genius complain of not being appreciated by the herd, it is because they are not themselves skilled in the feelings of the herd. For what is knowledge of mankind, but the knowledge of their feelings, their humours, their caprices, their passions? — touch these, and you gain attention — develope these, and you have conquered your audience.

Among writers of an inferior reputation we often discover a sufficient shrewdness and penetration into human foibles to startle us in details, while they cannot carry their knowledge far enough to please us on the whole. They can paint nature by a happy hit, but they violate all the likeness before they have concluded the plot — they charm us with a reflection and revolt us by a character. Sir John Suckling is one of these writers — his correspondence is witty and thoughtful, and his plays — but little known in comparison to his songs — abound with just remarks and false positions, the most natural lines and the most improbable inventions. Two persons in one of these plays are under sentence of execution, and the poet hits off the vanity of the one by a stroke worthy of a much greater dramatist.

“I have something troubles me,” says Pellagrin.

“What’s that?” asks his friend.

“The people,” replies Pellagrin, “will say, as we go along, ‘thou art the properer fellow!’”

Had the whole character been conceived like that sentence, I should not have forgotten the name of the play, and instead of making a joke, the author would have consummated a creation. Both Madame de Stael and Rousseau appear to me to have possessed this sort of imperfect knowledge. Both are great in aphorisms, and feeble in realizing conceptions of flesh and blood. When Madame de Stael tells us “that great losses, so far from binding men more closely to the advantages they still have left, at once loosen all ties of affection,” she speaks like one versed in the mysteries of the human heart, and expresses exactly what she wishes to convey; but when she draws the character of Corinne’s lover, she not only confounds all the moral qualities into one impossible compound, but she utterly fails in what she evidently attempts to picture.

The proud, sensitive, generous, high-minded Englishman, with a soul at once alive to genius, and fearing its effect — daring as a soldier, timid as a man — the slave of love that tells him to scorn the world, and of opinion that tells him to adore it — this is the new, the delicate, the many-coloured character Madame de Stael conceived, and nothing can be more unlike the heartless and whining pedant she has accomplished.

In Rousseau, every sentence Lord Edouard utters is full of beauty, and sometimes of depth, and yet those sentences give us no conception of the utterer himself The expressions are all soul, and the character is all clay — nothing can be more brilliant than the sentiments, or more heavy than the speaker.

It is a curious fact that the graver writers have not often succeeded in plot and character in proportion to their success in the allurement of reflection, or the graces of style. While Goldsmith makes us acquainted with all the personages of his unrivalled story — while we sit at the threshold in the summer evenings and sympathize with the good vicar in his laudable zeal for monogamy — while ever and anon we steal a look behind through the lattice, and smile at the gay Sophia, who is playing with Dick, or fix our admiration on Olivia, who is practising an air against the young squire comes — while we see the sturdy Burchell crossing the stile, and striding on at his hearty pace with his oak cudgel cutting circles in the air — nay, while we ride with Moses to make his bargains, and prick up our ears when Mr. Jenkinson begins with “Ay, sir! the world is in its dotage — while in recalling the characters of that immortal tale, we are recalling the memory of so many living persons with whom we have dined, and walked, and argued — we behold in the gloomy Rasselas of Goldsmith’s sager cotemporary, a dim succession of shadowy images without life or identity, mere machines for the grinding of morals, and the nice location of sonorous phraseology. Perhaps indeed Humour is an essential requisite in the flesh-and-blood delineation of character; and a quick perception of the Ridiculous is necessary to the accurate insight into the True. We can better ascertain the profundity of Machiavel after we have enjoyed the unrivalled humour of his novel. —

That delightful egotist — half-good-fellow, halfsage, half-rake, half-divine, the pet gossip of philosophy, the — in one word — inimitable and unimitated Montaigne, insists upon it in right earnest, that continual cheerfulness is the most indisputable sign of wisdom, and that her estate, like that of things in the regions above the moon, is always calm, cloudless, and serene. And in the same essay he recites the old story of Demetrius the grammarian, who, finding in the Temple of Delphos a knot of philosophers chatting away in high glee and comfort, said, “I am greatly mistaken, gentlemen, or by your pleasant countenances you are not engaged in any very profound discourse.” Whereon Heracleon answered the grammarian with a “Pshaw, my good friend! it does very well for fellows who live in a perpetual anxiety to know whether the future tense of the verb Ballo should be spelt with one I or two, to knit their brows and look solemn; but we who are engaged in discoursing of true philosophy, are cheerful as a matter of course!” Heracleon the magician, knew what he was about when he resolved to be wise. And yet, after all, it is our constitution and not our learning, that makes us one thing or the other — grave or gay, lively or severe! We may form our philosophy in one school, but our feelings may impel us to another; and while our tenets rejoice with Democritus, our hearts may despond with Heraclitus. And, in fact, it requires not only all that our wisdom can teach us, but perhaps, also, something of a constitution of mind naturally sanguine and elastic, to transmute into golden associations the baser ores of our knowledge of the world. Deceit and Disappointment are but sorry stimulants to the Spirits! “The pleasure of the honey will not pay for the smart of the sting.”

As we know, or fancy that we know, mankind, there is a certain dimness that falls upon the glory of all we see. “The lily is withered, the purple of the violet turned into paleness without growing perhaps more selfish, we contract the circle of our enjoyments. We do not hazard — we do not venture as we once did. The sea that rolls before us proffers to our curiosity no port, that we have not already seen. About this time, too, our ambition changes its character — it becomes more a thing of custom than of ardour. We have begun our career — shame forbids us to leave it; but I question whether any man moderately wise, does not see how small is the reward of pursuit. Nay, ask the oldest, the most hacknied adventurer of the world, and you will find he has some dream at his heart, which is more cherished than all the honours he seeks — some dream perhaps of a happy and serene retirement which has lain at his breast since he was a boy, and which he will never realize. The trader and his retreat at Highgate are but the type of Walpole and his palace at Houghton. The worst feature in our knowledge of the world is, that we are wise to little purpose — we penetrate the hearts of others, but we do not content our own. Every wise man feels that he ought not to be ambitious, nor covetous, nor subject to emotion — yet the wisest go on toiling, and burning to the last. Men who have declaimed most against ambition have been among the most ambitious; so that, at the best, we only become wise for the sake of writing books which the world seldom values till we are dead — or of making laws and speeches, which, when dead, the world hastens to forget. “When all is done, human life is at the greatest and the best but like a froward child, that must be played with and humoured a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over.”