their losses and their pangs of love, with other incident throes that nature's fragile vessel doth sustain in life's uncertain voyage; and who knows but by relating tales of others' sorrows, however common, one may relieve them from the hardly endurable burden of suppressed grief? for there are many whose personal afflictions seem to dry up the fountain of tears for whatever may affect themselves; and it will be like the specific of a skilful physician to make them cry for the misfortunes of others who would weep not for their own. It was a mistake to say that mankind at large prefer comedy to tragedy. It is the latter, "the most pleasing," as Plato says, "to the vulgar, which is the most soulalluring of all kinds of poetry *." Even men thought constant to lightness are sometimes met on unfrequented ground. They were for mirth; but finding it grew to a noted imperfection in them, for any thing too much is vicious, they come to these disconsolate walks, of purpose, only to dull and take away the edge of it. Let men be ever so happy they may feel pleasure in being rendered pensive though only by reading some " tedious brief scene, very tragical mirth;" for in one sense nature will thus struggle, and in part even so it shall be found here. His story will alternately prove cheerful and tragical; for sorrow is never so intense as where it meets with aptitude for pleasure. Gray's pleasantry, we are told, came to him through his melancholy, assisted by the general delicacy of his perceptions, and his willingness to be pleased. "The violence of either grief or joy Their own enactures with themselves destroy." Hamlet after hearing the Ghost can put an antic disposition on, and lead others to think him merry. He can still feel an interest in the actors in whom he once was wont to take delight. "The sources of tears and smiles lie close to, ay, and help to refine one another." And this it was perhaps which made Socrates at the end of the banquet remark, "that it was the province of the same person to know how to write comedy and tragedy." Let such a writer as we are supposing only remember what a modern author says, that "a man who can be nothing but * Minos. serious, or nothing but merry, is but half a man Let him only, to use the language of a painter, understand light and shadow; let him only have the grace not to belie the school he comes from, and not seek to disguise the facts relating to himself by trying to impart an unnatural tone to the whole of his composition. For parts of it at least he must have a suit of sables"Since sorrow that is couch'd in seeming gladness Is like that mirth fate turns to sudden sadness." "A book," as an old author says, "is like music; if in tune with itself 'tis no matter how high or how low you take it." In this instance you must be prepared for its author saying at times that he comes no more to make you laugh, but that such scenes as draw the eye to flow he must have freedom to disclose "Oh! grief hath chang'd him since you saw him last, And careful hours, with Time's deformed hand, Have written strange defeatures in his face." The passion that must be spoken of, like the death of a dear friend, will go near to make a man look sad, though he be a stranger to it. Think, for example, he will say perhaps, in the beginning of such a work as that of which we have just sketched the plan,―think "ye see the very children of our story as they were living,—think ye see them happy, and followed with the general throng and suite of friends,—then, in a moment, see how soon this vision changes 'Like snow that falls upon a river, A moment white, then gone for ever."" See this sudden change "And if you can be only merry then, I'll say However, as some one says with our poet, "No more of this, go to, no more, lest it be rather thought you affect a sorrow than to have," to whom he may crave permission to reply with Helena "I do affect a sorrow indeed, but I have it too; * Leigh Hunt, "A Book for a Corner." Nature's above art in that respect, Dry sorrow drinks our blood. The grief is fine, full, perfect that I taste," however such a person may seek to qualify or express it. But here an objection may be raised to the design and arrangement of all such works, which it will be well to consider, as no doubt a vague anticipation of it is almost sufficient to reduce one to the state of mind of the Duc de Saint-Simon when he consented to allow some lines of his making to be published during his life only anonymously, and "à la condition qu'on lui en épargnerait le ridicule dans le monde." Examples known only to a small circle, and events which pass in private life, ought not to be displayed before the public, say the critics of literature; but though, for other reasons, it is often best for each of us to endure what may befall him, "plenus constantis silentii," one may claim pardon for expressing a wish to know on what principle this assertion rests. Complaints and lamentings are of course always foolish, but is not personal experience of any kind a good school for an author to have previously studied in? Will not his book be more likely to prove for it what an old author terms "heart-work?" "Is it not in the truth of sentiments," as Villemain says, "that what the French call inspiration ought to be looked for*?" or as Vauvenarges maintains, "Is it not from the heart that great thoughts come?" Are not the simplest facts of common life, which in one sense ought not to be called private, since they are more or less the same in all families, very often more impressive and more instructive, if you think well on them, and look straight at them, than all the fine writing that is approved of as the sole standard of excellence by those learned persons who sometimes keep for awhile the doors of the temple of literary fame, whose worship in it is often, after all, but a commercial speculation, and from whose mockery, if they think it conducive to their interest, or if it feed their craving of the moment, not even "those in the clay are safe?" "I have often thought," says Johnson, "that there has rarely passed a life of which a judicious and faithful narrative would not be useful. For all is common to human kind. It is objected to relations * Choix d'Etudes sur la Littérature contemporaire. of particular lives, that the public cannot take interest in them; that there is nothing striking or wonderful in them; but this notion arises from false measures of excellence and dignity, and it must be eradicated by considering, that in the esteem of uncorrupted reason, what is of most use is of most value. . . There are many invisible circumstances which, whether we read as inquirers after natural or moral knowledge, whether we intend to enlarge our science or increase our virtue, are more important than public occurrences. Yet these are passed over. The incidents which give excellence to biography are of a volatile and evanescent kind, such as soon escape the memory, and are rarely transmitted by tradition, though without mention of these all accounts of particular persons are barren." As Saint-Simon says, "Such things have not the dryness, or authority, or formality which repel and so often render useless the counsels or opinions of those who take upon themselves to offer both." The writer is praised on high authority who, like the father of a family, "profert de thesauro suo nova et vetera*." What then forbids men to produce these new instances, freshly observed, copied on the spot, without a touch added afterwards, in the private histories of their contemporaries however obscure? "He has formed the heart of each of us," says the Psalmist +; on which words commenting, St. Augustin says, "He has formed them in a particular manner for each of us, giving to each something proper to himself, without causing all these hearts to break unity; and each man has an office of his own to discharge ‡." The sorrows of no two men are exactly similar. Each has something to tell of himself that is singular and new, perhaps as strange as it is tragical. If any one ask the cause which compelled the writers of such books to engage in literary composition, there is nothing probably which they can more easily answer; for it was a reunion of moral causes, of accidents, of involuntary impressions; it was a sense of the peculiarity of their afflictions, strengthening from strange to stranger. Some will cry out against them for mentioning such things at all. "We in England," says Johnson, "do not think it reasonable to fill the world with volumes containing * Matt. xiii. † xxxii. In Ps. only narratives of our private affairs, complaints of absence, or of losses, expressions of fondness, or of lamentation." True, it is not very difficult to aggravate trifling misfortunes, and to magnify familiar incidents, as if forsooth a man should fill a book with them and think "That lords and ladies of their lives Can read it for restoratives." "Yet if men may be permitted," as the sage Doctor says, "sometimes to decorate insignificance with a few sallies of innocent gaiety or effusions of honest tenderness," surely they may be allowed to tell of sorrows which involve deepest thoughts, which can awaken us to a sense of the beauty of those affections of which men seem bent on not fully recognizing the dignity till they attain to the future life. Of course there are some ears to which such things, however young, had best be left unrecounted. "I know," says Pliny, "these kind of misfortunes would be estimated by other persons only as common losses, and from such sensations they would conceive themselves great and wise men. I shall not determine either their greatness or their wisdom; but I am certain they have no humanity' homines non sunt.' For it is the part of a man to be affected with grief, to feel sorrow, at the same time that he is to resist it and to admit of comfort *." Picus of Mirandula ascribes his undertaking the vast and admirable work which he wrote against the ancient Gentile philosophy to his own personal calamities, which, after describing in detail, he compares to the sponge dashed by the hand of Apelles upon the mouth of the horse he was painting, of which he had before vainly attempted to represent the foam; and he only remarks this difference between them, that his sponge was not thrown with indignation. 'Quippe," he adds, " quæ Deus perpeti me voluit, ejus ipsius gratia conatus sum æquo animo et patienter ferre +." Still I am aware, that in these times, when, as La Bruyère said, “on est froid sur les conceptions d'autrui," no one who brings forward 66 *Plin. by Lord Orrery. + Exam. var. doct. gentium et verit. christ. disciplinæ, lib. iii. prœem. |