The art of conversation ; and other papers

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THE ART OF CONVERSATION

OTHEE PAPEKS

LY

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PAGE

Letters to a Young Man whose Education has eei-n

Neglected, ..... 9

Letter I

My dear Sir, — When I had the pleasure of meeting you at Ch — , for the second time in my life, I was much concerned to remark the general dejection of your manner. I may now add, that I was also much surprised ; your cousin's visit to me having made it no longer a point of delicacy to suppress that feeling. General report had represented you as in possession of all which enters into the worldly estimate of happiness — great opulence, unclouded reputation, and freedom from unhappy connexions. That you had the priceless blessing of unfluctuating health, I know upon your own authority. And the concurring opinions of your friends, together with my own opportunities for observation, left me no room to doubt that you wanted not the last and mightiest among the sources of happiness — a fortunate constitution of mind, both for moral and intellectual ends. So many blessings as these, meeting in the person of one man, and yet all in some mysterious way defeated and poisoned, presented a problem too interesting, both to the selfish and the generous curiosity of men, to make it at all wonderful that at that time and place you should have been the subject of much discussion. Now and then some solutions of the mystery were hazarded ; in particular, I remember one from a young lady of seventeen, who said, with a positive air, " That Mr. M — 's dejection was well known to arise from an unfortunate attachment in early life," which assurance appeared to have great weight with some other young ladies of sixteen. But, upon the whole, I think that no account of the matter was proposed at that time which satisfied myself, or was likely to satisfy any reflecting person.

At length the visit of your cousin L — , in his road to Th — , has cleared up the mystery in a way more agreeable to myself than I could have ventured to anticipate from any communication short of that which should acquaint me with the entire dispersion of the dejection under which you laboured. I allow myself to call such a disclosure agreeable, partly upon the ground that where the grief or dejection of our friends admits of no important alleviation, it is yet satisfactory to know that it may be traced to causes of adequate dignity ; and, in this particular case, I have not only that assurance, but the prospect of contributing some assistance to your emancipation from these depressing recollections, by co-operating with your own efforts in the way you have pointed out for supplying the defects of your early education.

L — explained to me all that your own letter had left imperfect ; in particular, how it was that you came to be defrauded of the education to which even your earliest and humblest prospects had entitled you ; by what heroic eifforts, but how vainly, you laboured to repair that greatest of losses j what remarkable events concurred to raise you to your present state of prosperity ; and all other circumstances which appeared necessary to put me fully in possession of your present wishes and intentions.

The two questions which you addressed to me through him I have answered below : these were questions which I could answer easily and without meditation ; but for the main subject of our future correspondence, it is so weighty, and demands such close attention (as even / find, who have revolved the principal points almost daily for many years), that I would willingly keep it wholly distinct from the hasty letter which I am now obliged to write ; on which account it is that I shall forbear to enter at present upon the series of letters which I have promised, even if I should find that my time were not exhausted by the answers to your two questions below.

To your first question, — Whether to you, with your purposes and at your age of thirty-two, a residence at either of our English universities, or at any foreign university, can be of much service ? — my answer is, firmly and unhesitatingly, JSTo. The majority of the undergraduates of your own standing, in an academic sense, will be your juniors by twelve or fourteen years j a disparity of age which could not but make your society mutually burthensome. What, then, is it that you would seek in a university ? Lectures 1 These, whether public or private, are surely the very worst modes of acquiring any sort of accurate knowledge ; and are just as much inferior to a good book on the same subject, as that book hastily read aloud, and then immediately withdrawn, would be inferior to the same book left in your possession, and open at any hour, to be consulted, retraced, collated, and in the fullest sense studied. But, besides this, university lectures are naturally adapted, not so much to the general purpose of communicating knowledge, as to the specific purpose of meeting a particular form of examination for degrees, and a particular profession to which the whole course of the education is known to be directed. The two single advantages which lectures can ever acquire, to balance those which they forego, are either, first, the obvious one of a better apparatus for displaying illustrative experiments than most students can command; and the cases where this becomes of importance it cannot be necessary to mention; second, the advantage of a rhetorical delivery, when that is of any use (as in lectures on poetry, &c.) These, however, are advantages more easily commanded in a great capital than in the most splendid university. What, then, remains to a university, except its libraries'? And with regard to those the answer is short : to the greatest of them undergraduates have not free access ; t) the inferior ones (of their own college, &c.) the libraries of the great capitals are often equal or superior; and, for mere purposes of study, your own private library is far preferable to the Bodleian or the Vatican. To you, therefore, a university can oJBfer no attraction except on the assumption that you see cause to adopt a profession ; and, as a degree from some university would in that case be useful (and indispensable except for the bar), your determination on this first question must still be dependent on that which you form upon the second.

In this second question you call for my opinion upon the eleventh chapter of Mr. Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, as applied to the circumstances in which you yourself are placed. This chapter, to express its substance in the most general terms, is a dissuasion from what Herder, in a passage there quoted, calls " Die Authorschaft ;" or, as Mr. Coleridge expresses it, "the trade of authorship ;" and the amount of the advice is, — that, for the sake, of his own happiness and respectability, every man should adopt some trade or profession, and should make literature a subordinate pursuit. On this advice, I understand you to ask, iiTst^ whether it is naturally to be interpreted, as extending to cases such as yours ; and, second^ if so, what is my judgment on such advice so extended % As to my judgment upon this advice, supposing it addressed to men of your age and situation, you will easily collect, from all which I shall say, that 1 think it as bad as can well be given.

Waiving this, however, and to consider your other question— in what sense, and with what restrictions, the whole chapter is to be interpreted — that is a point which I find it no easy matter to settle. Mr. Coleridge, who does not usually offend by laxity and indecision of purpose, has, in this instance, allowed the very objects of his advice to shift and fluctuate before him ; and, from the beginning to the end, nothing is firmly constructed for the apprehension to grasp, nor are the grounds of judgment steadily maintained. From the title of the chapter (an afi'ectionate exhortation to those who in early life feel themselves disposed to become authors), and, from the express words of Herder, in the passage cited from him as the final words of the chapter^ which words discountenance " authorship" only as *' zu friih Oder unniassig gebraucht" (practised too early, or with too little temperance), it would have been a natural presumption that Mr. Coleridge's counsels regarded chiefly or altogether the case of very youthful authors, and the unfortunate thirst for premature distinction. And if this had been the purpose of the chapter, excepting that the evil involved in such a case is not very great, and is generally intercepted by the difficulties which prevent, and overpunished by the mortifications which attend any such juvenile acts of presumption, there could have been no room for differing with IMr. Coleridge, except upon the propriety of occupying his great powers with topics of such trivial interest.

But this, though from the title it naturally should have been, is not the evil, or any part of it, which Mr. Coleridge is contemplating. What Mr. Coleridge really has in his view are two most difierent objections to literature, as the principal pursuit of life ; which, as I have said, continually alternate with each other as the objects of his arguments, and sometimes become perplexed together, though incapable of blending into any real coalition. The objections urged are : First, To literature considered as a means of livelihood ; as any part of the resources which a man should allow himself to rely on for his current income, or worldly credit and respectability. Here the evils anticipated by Mr. Coleridge are of a high and positive character, and such as tend directly to degrade the character, and indirectly to aggravate some heavy domestic evils. Second, To literature considered as the means of sufficiently occupying the intellect. Here the evil apprehended is an evil of defect ; it is alleged that literature is not adequate to the main end of giving due and regular excitement to the mind and the spirits, unless combined with some other summons to mental exercise of periodical recurrence — determined by ,an overruling cause, acting from ^thout — and not dependent therefore on the accidents of individual will, or the caprices of momentary feeling springing out of temper or bodily health. Upon the last objection, as by far the most important in any case, and the only one at all applicable to yours, I would wish to say a word ; because my thoughts on that matter are from the abundance of my heart, and drawn up from the very depths of my own experience.

If there has ever lived a man who might claim the privilege of speaking with emphasis and autiiority on this great question, — By what means shall a man best support the acti^dty of his own mind in solitude ? — I probably am that man ; and upon this ground, that I have passed more of my life in absolute and unmitigated solitude, voluntarily, and for intellectual purposes, than any person of my age whom I have ever either met with, heard of, or read of. With such pretensions, what is it that I offer as the result of my experience, and how far does it coincide with the doctrine of Mr. Coleridge ? Briefly this : I wholly agree with him that literature, in the proper acceptation of the term, as denoting what is otherwise called Belles Lettres, &c. — that is, the most eminent of the fine arts, and so understood, therefore, as to exclude all science whatsoever — is not, to use a Greek word, avrapKrjs, — not self-sufficing ; no, not even when the mind is so far advanced that it can bring what have hitherto passed for merely literary or (Esthetic questions under the light of philosophic principles ; when problems of " taste" have expanded to problems of human nature. And why 1 Simply for this reason, that our power to exercise the faculties on such subjects is not, as it is on others, in defiance of our own spirits ; the difficulties and resistances to our progress in these investigations are not susceptible of minute and equable partition (as in mathematics) ; and, therefore, the movements of the mind cannot be continuous, but are either of necessity tumultuary and per saltum, or none at all. When, on the contrary, the difficulty is pretty equally dispersed and broken up into, a series of steps, no one of which demands any exertion sensibly more intense than the rest, nothing is required of the student beyond that sort of application and coherent attention which, in a sincere student of any standing, may be presumed as a habit already and inveterately established. The dilemma, therefore, to which a student of pure literature is continually reduced — such a student, suppose, as the

Schlegels, or any other man who has cultivated no acquaintance with the severer sciences — is this : either he studies literature as a mere man of taste, and perhaps also as a philologer — and in that case his understanding must find a daily want of some masculine exercise to call it out and give it play — or (which is the rarest thing in the world) having begun to study literature as a philosopher, he seeks to renew that elevated walk of study at all opportunities ; but this is often as hopeless an effort as to a great poet it would be to sit down upon any predetermination to compose in his character of poet. Hence, therefore, if (as too often it happens) he has not cultivated those studies (mathematics, e.g.) which present such difficulties as will bend to a resolute effort of the mind, and which have the additional recommendation that they are apt to stimulate and irritate the mind to make that effort, he is often thrown by the very cravings of an unsatisfied intellect, and not- by passion or inclination, upon some vulgar excitement of business or pleasure, which becomes constantly more necessary to him. I should do injustice to myself if I were to say that I owed this view of the case solely to my own experience ; the truth is, I easily foresaw, upon the suggestion almost of an instant, that literature would not suffice for my mind with my purposes. I foresaw this, and I provided for it from the very first ; but how ? N'ot in the way recommended by Mr. Coleridge, but according to a plan which you will collect from the letters I am to write, and which, therefore, I need not here anticipate.

"What, however, you will say (for that is the main inquiry), what has been the success ? Has it warranted me to look back upon my past life, and to pronounce it upon the whole a happy one *? I answer in calmness, and with sincerity of heart, Yes. To you, with your knowledge of life, T need not say that it is a vain thing for any man to hope that he can arrive at my age without many troubles ; every man has his own, and more especially he who has not insulated himself in this world, but has formed attachments and connexions, and has thus multiplied the avenues through which his peace is assailable. But, setting aside these inevitable deductions, I assure you that the great account of my days, if summed up, would present a great overbalance of happiness ; and of happiness during those years which I lived in solitude, of necessity derived exclusively from intellectual sources. Such an evil, indeed, as time hanging heavy on my hands, I never experienced for a moment. On the other hand, to illustrate the benefits of my plan by a picture of the very opposite plan, though pursued under the most splendid advantages, I would direct your eyes to the case of an eminent living Englishman, with talents of the first order, and yet, upon the evidence of all his works, ill-satis?.ed at any time either with himself or those of his own age. This Englishman set out in life, as I conjecture, with a plan of study modelled upon that of Leibnitz ; that is to say, he designed to make himself (as Leibnitz most tndy was) a FolylmtoT^ or Catholic student.

For this reason, and because at a very early age I had become familiar with the writings of Leibnitz, I have been often tempted to draw a parallel between that eminent German and the no lesb eminent Englishman of whom I speak. In many things they agreed ; these I shall notice at some other opportunity ; only in general I will say, that, as both had minds not merely powerful, but distinguished for variety and compass of power, so in both were these fine endowments completed and accomplished for works of Herculean endurance and continuity, by the alliance of a bodily constitution resembling that of horses. They were centaurs \ heroic A 2 iutellects with brutal capacities of body. What partiality in nature ! In general, a man has reason to think himself well off in the great lottery of this life if he draws the prize of a healthy stomach without a mind, or the prize of a fine intellect with a crazy stomach; but that any man should draw both is truly astonishing, and, I suppose, happens only once in a century. Thus far (as indeed much further) they agreed. The points of difference were many, and not less remarkable. Two I shall allege as pertinent to the matter before me. First, I remarked that Leibnitz, however anxious to throw out his mind upon the whole encyclopaedia of human research, yet did not forget to pay the price at which only any right to be thus discursive can be earned. He sacrificed to the austerer muses. Knowing that God geometrizes eternally, he rightly supposed that in the universal temple Mathesis must furnish the master-key which would open most shrines. The Englishman, on the contrary, I remarked to have been too self-indulgent, and almost a voluptuary in his studies ; sparing himself all toil, and thinking, apparently, to evade the necessity of artificial power by an extraordinary exertion of his own native power. Neither as a boy nor as a man had he submitted to any regular study or discipline of thought. His choice of subjects had lain too much amongst those dependent upon politics, or rather fleeting interests ; and, when this had not happened, yet never amongst those which admitted of continuous thinking and study, and which support the spirits by perpetual influxes of pleasure, from the constant sense of success and difiiculty overcome. As to the use of books, the German had been a discursive reader, — the Englishman a desultory reader.

Secondly, I remarked that Leibnitz was always cheerful and obliging, most courteous and communicative to his follow-labourers in literature or science ; with a single exception (which rests, I think, as the sole stain upon his memory), just, and even generously just, to the claims ot others ; uncensorious, and yet patient of censure ; willing to teach, and most willing to be taught. Our English contemporary was not, I think, naturally less amiable than Leibnitz ; and therefore I ascribe it to his unfortunate plan of study — ^leaving him, of necessity, too often witli no subjects for intellectual exertion but such as cannot be pursued successfully, unless in a state of genial spirits — that we find him continually in ill-humour, distempered and untuned with uncharitable feelings ; directing too harsh and acrimonious a spirit of criticism always against the age in which he lives, sometimes even against individuals ; querulous*"" under criticism, almost to the extent of believing himself the object of conspiracies and organized persei^.ution ; finally (which to me is far the gloomiest part of the picture), he neither will consent to believe that any man of his own

* That this appears on the very face of his writings, may be inferred from a German work, published about two years ago, by a Hamburg barrister (I think) — Mr. Jacobs. The subject of the book is, the Modern Literature of England, with the lives, etc., of the most popular authors. It is made up in a great measure from English literary journals, but not always ; and in the particular case of the author now alluded to, Mr. Jacobs imputes to him not merely too lively a sensitiveness to censure, but absolutely a '* wasserscheue'"' (hydrophobia) with regard to reviewers and critics. How Mr. Jacobs came to use so strong an expression, or this particular expression, I cannot guess ; unless it were that he had happened to see (which, however, does not appear) in a work of this eloquent Englishman the following picturesque sentence: " By an unconscionable extension of the old adage, ' Noscitur a socio,'' my friends are never under the waterfall of criticism, but I must be wet through with the spray." Spray, indeed ! I wish' some of us know no more of these angry cataract? than their spray.

age (at least of his own country) can teach him anything, — professing all his obligations to those who are dead, or else to some rusty old German ; nor, finally, will he consent to teach others, with the simple-minded magnanimity of a scholar, who should not seek to mystify and perplex his pupil, or to illuminate only with half-lights, nor put himselt on his guard against his reader, as against a person seeking to grow as knowing as himself. On the contrary, who should rejoice to believe — if he could believe it — that all the world knew as much as himself ; and should adopt as his motto (which I make it my pride to have done from my earliest days) the simple grandeur of that line in Chaucer's description of his scholar :

" That gladly would he learn and gladly teach."

Such were the two features of difference which I had occasion perpetually to remark between two great scholars, in many other features so closely resembling each other. In general these two features would be thought to exist independently ; but, with my previous theory of the necessity, in all cases, that, with studies of so uncertain and even morbid an effect upon the spirits as literature, should be combined some analytic exercise of inevitable healthy action, in this respect it was natural that / should connect them in my mind as cause and effect ; and, in that view, they gave a double attestation to Mr. Coleridge's advice where it agrees with mine, and to mine where it differs from his.

Thus far I have considered Mr. Coleridge's advice simply as it respects the student. But the object of his studies is aliso entitled to some consideration. If it were better for the literary body that all should pursue a profession as their Ipyov (or business), and literature as a irapepyov (an accessaiy, or mere by-business), how far is literature itself likely to benefit by such an arrangement 1 Mr. Coleridge insists upon it that it will ; and at page 225 he alleges seven names, to which at page 233 he adds an eighth, of celebrated men, who have " shown the possibility of combining weighty performances in literature with full and independent employment." On various grounds it would be easy, I think, to cut down the list, as a list any way favourable for Mr. Coleridge's purpose, to one name, viz., that of Lord Bacon. But, waiving his examples, let us consider his arguments. The main business, the epyov, after exhausting a man's powers during the day, is supposed to leave three hours at night for the wapepyov, Now, we are to consider that our bright ideal of a literatus may chance to be married, — in fact, Mr. Coleridge agrees to allow him a wife. Let us suppose a wife, therefore ; and the more so, because else he will perhaps take one without our permission. I ask, then, what portion of these three hours is our student to give up to the pleasure of his wife's society ] For, if a man finds pleasure in his wife's company at any time, I take it for granted that he would wish to spend the evening with her.

Well, if you think so (says Mr. Coleridge, in effect, who had at first supposed the learned man to "retire into his study"), in fact he need not retire. How then 1 Why, he is to study, not in his study, but in his drawing-room, whilst " the social silence, or undisturbing voices of a wife or sister, will be like a restorative atmosphere." Silence, by the way, is a strange mode of social pleasure. I know not what Mr. Coleridge does when he sits with a young woman ; for my part, I do " mon possible" to entertain her, both with my wit and my wisdom ; and am happy to hear her talk, even though she should chance to be my own wife ; and never think of tolerating silence for one instant. But, not to quarrel about tastes, what is this " sister" that so pleasantly intrudes herself into the party 1 The wife, I understand ; but, in the north of England, or any place where I have lived, wives do not commonly present men with sisters, but with children. Suppose, then, our student's wife should give him a son ; or, what is noisier, a daughter ; or, what is noisier than either, both ^ What 's to be done then *? Here's a worshipful audience for a philosopher! — here's a promising company for " undisturbing voices," and *' social silence 1" I admire Mr. Coleridge's way of blinking this question, of masking this youthful battery with " a sister." Children, however, are incidents that do and will occur in this life, and must not be blinked. I have seen the case again and again ; and I say it, and say it with pain, that there is no more respect for philosophy amongst that lively part of society than Mr.

Coleridge and I have for French philosophy. They may, however, be banished to their nursery. True ; but if they are ever admitted to the drawing-room, in houses where not so much company is kept, I observe that this visit is most interesting to all parties in the evening ; and if they would otherwise be admitted, no good-natured student would wish to have their expulsion charged upon his books. After all, however, it is clear that Mr. Coleridge's voice is for the " retiring" system ; and he gives lis pretty plainly to understand (p. 230) that it is far better for men to be separated from their wives throughout the day. But, in " saying this, he forgets that, in the case under consideration, the question is not so properly whether they are ever to be separated, as whether they are ever to meet. Indeed, taking what Mr. Coleridge says on the subject as addressed to literary men especially, I know not why they should be supposed likely to make unhappy marriages more than other men. They are not called upon to pass more of their time with their wives than country gentlemen, or men generally without a profession. On the other hand, if we are to understand the words of Mr. Coleridge as of universal application, I hope that he gives us a very unfair view of the average tenor of life in this important particular. Yet, if it be settled that men will quarrel, and must quarrel with their wives, or their wives with them, unless separated, would not a large screen meet the emergency 1 Or, might not the learned man, as soon as breakfast is ended, bow to his wife and withdraw to his library, where he might study or be sulky according to his taste, leaving her for the rest of the day to amuse or to employ herself in the way most agreeable to her sex, rank, and previous education *? But, in whatever way this difficulty may be disposed of, one point is clear to my judgment : that literature must decay unless we have a class wholly dedicated to that service, — not pursuing it as an amusement only, with wearied and pre-occupied minds. The reproach of being a " nation houtiqui^rej" now so eminently inapplicable to the English, would become indeed just, and in the most unfortunate sense just, if, from all our overstocked trades and professions, we could not spare men enough to compose a garrison on permanent duty for the service of the highest purposes which grace and dignify our nature.

You will not infer from all this any abatement in my old respect for Mr. Coleridge's great and various powers ; no man admires them more. But there is no treason, I hope, in starting a little game now and then from the thickets of llie Friend, the Biographia Liter aria, or even from Mr. Coleridge's Sermons , considering that they are Lay ones. Young men must have some exercise this frosty weather. Hereafter I sliall have occasion to break a lance with Mr. Coleridge on more difficult questions ; and veryhappy I shall be if the amusement which I shall make it my business to strike out, by my hammering, from the flinty rock of his metaphysics, should either tempt any one to look into his valuable writings, or should tempt Mr. Coleridge to sally out of his hiding-place into a philosophic passion, and to attack me with the same freedom. Such an exhibition must be amusing to the public. I conceive