Essays in a series of letters

Front matter

ESSAYS >»

IN A

SERIES OF LETTERS.

Letter I

Affectionate interest with which we revert to our past life. — It deserves a brief record for our own use. — Very few things to be noted of the multitude that have occurred. — Direction and use of such a review as would be required for writing a Memoir. — Importance of our past life considered as the beginning of an endless duration of existence. — General deficiency of self-observation. — Oblivion of the greatest number of our past feelings. — Occasional glimpses of vivid recollection. — Associations with things and places. — The different and unknown associations of different persons with the same places Page 1.

Letter II

All past life an education. — Discipline and influence from — direct instruction — companionship — books — scenes of nature — and the state of society , p. 13

LETTER in.

Very powerful impressions sometimes from particular facts, tending to form discriminated characters. — Yet very few strongly discriminated and individual characters found. — Most persons belong to general classes of character. — Immense number and diversity of impressions, of indefinitely various tendency, which the moral being has undergone in the course of life. — Might be expected that such a confusion of influences would not permit the formation of any settled character. — That such a character is, nevertheless,

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acquired and maintained, is owing to some one leading determination, given by whatever means, to the mind, generally in early life. — Common self-deceptive belief that we have maintained moral rectitude, and the exercise of sound reason, under the impressions that have been forming our characters p. 24

Letter IV

Most of the influences under which the characters of men are forming unfavourable to wisdom, virtue, and happiness. — Proof of this if a number of persons, suppose a hundred, were to give a clear account of the circumstances that have most effected the state of their minds. — A few examples — a misanthropist — a lazy prejudiced thinker — a man fancying himself a genius — a projector — an antiquary in excess — a petty tyrant p. 37

Letter V

An Atheist. — Slight sketch of the process by which a man in the humbler order of abilities and attainments may become one. . p. 45

Letter VI

The influence of Religion counteracted by almost all other influences. — Pensive reflections on the imperfect manifestation of the Supreme Being — on the inefficacy of the belief of such a being — on the strangeness of that inefficacy — and on the debasement and infelicity consequent on it. — Happiness of a devout man p. 55

Letter VII

Self-knowledge being supposed the principal object in writing the memoir, the train of exterior fortunes and actions will claim but a subordinate notice in it. — If it were intended for the amusement of the public, the writer would do well to fill it rather with incident and action. — Yet the mere mental history of some men would be interesting to reflecting readers— of a man, for example, of a speculative disposition, who has passed through many changes of opinion. — Influences that warp opinion. — Effects of time and experience on the notions and feelings cherished in early life. — Feelings of a sensible old man on viewing a picture of his own mind drawn by himself when he was young. — Failure of excellent designs ; disappointment of sanguine hopes. — Degree of explicitness required in the record. — Conscience. — Impudence and canting false pretences of many writers of " confessions." — Rousseau .... p. 66

CONTENTS. Xlll

ESSAY II.

ON DECISION OF CHARACTER.

Letter I

Examples of the distress and humiliation incident to an irresolute mind. — Such a mind cannot be said to belong to itself. — Manner in which a man of decisive spirit deliberates, and passes into action. — Caesar. — Such a spirit prevents the fretting away, in harassing alternations of will, of the animated feelings required for sustaining the vigour of action. — Averts impertinent interference. — Acquires, if free from harshness of manner, an undisputed and beneficial ascendency over associates. — Its last resource inflexible pertinacity. — Instance in a man on a jury p. 89

Letter II

Brief inquiry into the constituents of this commanding quality. — Physical constitution. — Possibility, nevertheless, of a firm mind in a feeble body. — Confidence in a man's own judgment. — This an uncommon distinction. — Picture of a man who wants it. — This confidence distinguished from obstinacy. — Partly founded on experience. — Takes a high tone of independence in devising schemes. — Distressing dilemmas . p. 103

Letter III

Energy of feeling as necessary as confidence of opinion. — Conduct* that results from their combination. — Effect and value of a ruling passion. — Great decision of character invests even wicked beings with something which we are tempted to admire. — Satan. — Zanga. — A Spanish assassin. — Remarkable example of this quality in a man who was a prodigal and became poor, but turned miser and became rich. — Howard. — Whitefield. — Christian missionaries M p. 1 14

Letter IV

Courage a chief constituent of the character. — Effect of this in encountering censure and ridicule. — Almagro, Pizarro, and De Luques. — Defiance of danger. — Luther. — Daniel. — Another indispensable requisite to decision is the full agreement of all the powers of the mind. — Lady Macbeth. — Richard III. — Cromwell. — A father who had the opportunity of saving one of two sons from death p. 126

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Letter V

Formidable power of mischief which this high quality gives to bad men. — Care required to prevent its rendering good men uuconciliating and overbearing. — Independence and overruling manner in consultation. — Lord Chatham. — Decision of character not incompatible with sensibility and mild manners. — But probably the majority of the most eminent examples of it deficient in the kinder affections. — King of Prussia. — Situations in which it may be an absolute duty to act in opposition to the promptings of those affections '. p. 138

Letter VI

Circumstances tending to consolidate this Character. — Opposition. — Desertion. — Marius. — Satan. — Charles de Moor. — Success has the same tendency. — Caesar. — Habit of associating with inferiors. — Voluntary means of forming or conforming this character. — The acquisition of perfect knowledge in the department in which we are to act. — The cultivation of a connected and conclusive manner of reasoning. — The resolute commencement of action, in a manner to commit ourselves irretrievably. — Ledyard. — The choice of a dignified order of concerns. — The approbation of conscience. — Yet melancholy to consider how many of the most distinguished possessors of the quality have been wicked .p. 148

ESSAY III.

ON THE APPLICATION OF THE EPITHET ROMANTIC.

Letter I

Great convenience of having a number of words that will answer the purposes of ridicule or reprobation without having any precise meaning. — Puritan — Methodist — Jacobin. — The word Romantic of the greatest service to persons, who, wanting to show their scorn, have not wherewithal in the way of sense or wit. — Whenever this epithet is applied, let the exact meaning be demanded. — Does it attribute, to what it is applied to, the kind of absurdity prevalent in the works called Romances? — That absurdity was from the predominance, in various modes, of imagination over judgment. — Mental character of the early Romance writers. — Opposite character of Cervantes. — Delightful, delusive, and mischievous operation of a predominant imagination. — Yet desirable, for several reasons, that the imagination should have this ascendency in early life . . p. 169

CONTENTS. XV

Letter II

One of the modes of this ascendency justly called Romantic, is, the unfounded persuasion of something peculiar and extraordinary in a person's destiny. — This vain expectation may he relative to great talent and achievement, or to great felicity. — Things ardently anticipated which not only cannot be attained, but would be unadapted to the nature and condition of man if they could. — A person that hoped to out-do rather than imitate Gregory Lopez, the hermit. — Absurd expectations of parents. — Utopian anticipations of philosophers. — Practical absurdity of the age of chivalry. — The extravagant and exclusive passion for what is grand p. 187

Letter III

The epithet applicable to hopes and projects inconsistent with the known relations between ends and means. — Reckoning on happy casualties. — Musing on instances of good luck. — Novels go more than half the length of the older Romance in promoting this pernicious tendency of the mind. — Specimen of what they do in this way. — Fancy magnifies the smallest means into an apparent competence to the greatest ends. — This delusive calculation apt to be admitted in schemes of benevolence. — Projects for civilizing savage nations. — Extravagant expectations of the efficacy of direct instruction, in the lessons of education, and in preaching. — Reformers apt to overrate the power of means. — The fancy about the omnipotence of truth. — Our expectations ought to be limited by what we actually see and know of human nature. — Estimate of that nature. — Prevalence of passion and appetite against conviction p. 200

Letter IV

Christianity the grand appointed mean of reforming the world. — But though the religion itself be a communication from heaven, the administration of it by human agents is to be considered as a merely human mean, excepting so far as a special divine energy is made to accompany it. — Its comparatively small success proves in what an extremely limited measure that energy, as yet, accompanies it. — Impotence of man to do what it leaves undone. — Irrational to expect from its progressive administration a measure of success indefinitely surpassing the present state of its operations, till we see some signs of a great change in the Divine Government of the world. — Folly of projects to reform mankind which disclaim Religion.— Nothing in human nature to meet and give effect to the schemes and expedients of the moral revolutionist. — Wretched state of that nature. — Sample of the absurd estimates of its condition by the irreligious menders of society . . p. 222

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Letter V

Melancholy reflections. — No consolation amidst the mysterious economy but in an assurance that an infinitely good Being presides, and will at length open out a new moral world. — Yet many moral projectors are solicitous to keep their schemes for the amendment of the world clear of any reference to the Almighty. — Even good men are guilty of placing too much dependence on subordinate powers and agents. — The representations in this Essay not intended to depreciate to nothing the worth and use of the whole stock of means, but to reduce them, and the effects to be expected from them, to a sober estimate. — A humble thing to be a man. — Inculcation of devout submission, and diligence, and prayer. — Sublime quality and indefinite efficacy of this last, as a mean. — Conclusion; briefly marking out a few general characters of sentiment and action to which, though very uncommon, the epithet Romantic is unjustly applied , p. 234

ESSAY IV.

ON SOME OF THE CAUSES BY WHICH EVANGELICAL RELIGION HAS BEEN RENDERED UNACCEPTABLE TO PERSONS OF CUL- TIVATED TASTE.

Letter I

Nature of the displacency with which some of the most peculiar features of Christianity are regarded by many cultivated men, who do not deny or doubt the divine authority of the religion. — Brief notice of the term Evangelical p. 251

Letter II

One of the causes of the displacency is, that Christianity, being the religion of a great number of persons of weak and uncultivated minds, presents its doctrines to the view of men of taste associated with the characteristics of those minds ; and though some parts of the religion instantaneously redeem themselves from that association by their philosophic dignity, other parts may require a considerable effort to detach them from it. — This easily done if the men of taste were powerfully pre-occupied and affected by the religion. — Reflections of one of them in this case, — But the men

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of taste now in question are not in this case. — Several specific causes of injurious impression, from this association of evangelical doctrines and sentiments with the intellectual littleness of the persons entertaining them. — Their deficiency and dislike of all strictly intellectual exercise on religion. — Their reducing the whole of religion to one or two favourite notions, and continually dwelling on them. — The perfect indifference of some of them to general knowledge, even when not destitute of means of acquiring it ; and the consequent voluntary and contented poverty of their religious ideas and language. — Their admiration of things in a literary sense utterly bad. — Their complacency in their deficiencies. — Their injudicious habits and ceremonies. — Their unfortunate metaphors and similes. — Suggestion to religious teachers, that they should not run to its last possible extent the parallel between the pleasures of piety and those of eating and drinking. — Mischief of such practices. — Effect of the ungracious collision between uncultivated seniors and a young person of literary and philosophic taste. — Expostulation with this intellectual young person, on the folly and guilt of suffering his mind to take the impression of evangelical religion from any thing which he knows to be inferior to that religion itself, as exhibited by the New Testament, and by the most elevated of its disciples p. 260

Letter III

Another cause, the Peculiarity of Language adopted in religious discourse and writing. — Classical standard of language. — The theological deviation from it barbarous. — Surprise and perplexity of a sensible heathen foreigner who, having learnt our language according to its best standard alone, should be introduced to hear a public evangelical discourse. — Distinctive characters of this Theological Dialect. — Reasons against employing it. — Competence of our language to express all religious ideas without the aid of this uncouth peculiarity. — Advantages that would attend the use of the language of mere general intelligence, with the addition of an extremely small number of words that may be considered as necessary technical terms in theology ... .p. 292

Letter IV

Answer to the plea, in behalf of the dialect in question, that it is formed from the language of the Bible. — Description of the manner in which it is so formed.— This way of employing biblical language very different from simple quotation. — Grace and utility with which

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brief forms of words, whether sentences or single phrases, may he introduced from the Bible, if they are brought in as pure pieces and particles of the sacred composition, set in our own composition as something distinct from it and foreign to it. — But the biblical phraseology in the Theological Dialect, instead of thus appearing in distinct bright points and gems, is modified and mixed up throughout the whole consistence of the diction, so as at once to lose its own venerable character, and to give a pervading uncouthness, without dignity, to the whole composition. Let the scripture language be quoted often, but not degraded into a barbarous compound phraseology. — Even if it were advisable to construct the language of theological instruction in some kind of resemblance to that of the Bible, it would not follow that it should be constructed in imitation of the phraseology of an antique version.' — License to very old theologians to retain in a great degree this peculiar dialect. — Young ones recommended to learn to employ in religion the language in which cultivated men talk and write on general subjects. — The vast mass of writing in a comprehensive literary sense bad, on the subjects of evangelical theology, one great cause of the distaste felt by men of intellectual refinement. — Several kinds of this bad writing specified p. 319

Letter V

A grand cause of displacency encountered by evangelical religion among men of taste is, that the great school in which that taste is formed, that of polite literature, taken in the widest sense of the phrase, is hostile to that religion. — Modern literature intended principally to be animadverted on. — Brief notice of the ancient. — Heathen theology, metaphysics, and morality. — Harmlessness of the two former ; deceptiveness of the last. — But the chief influence is from so much of the history as may be called Biography, and from the Poetry. — Homer. — Manner in which the interest he excites is hostile to the spirit of the Christian religion. — Virgil p. 340

Letter VI

Lucan. — Influence of the moral sublimity of his heroes. — Plutarch. — The Historians. — Antichristian effect of admiring the moral greatness of the eminent heathens. — Points of essential difference between excellence according to Christian principles, and the most elevated excellence of the Heathens. — An unqualified complacency in the latter produces an alienation of affection and admiration from the former p. 359

CONTENTS. XIX

Letter VII

When a communication, declaring the true theory of both religion and morals, was admitted as coming from heaven, it was reasonable to expect that, from the time of this revelation to the end of the world, all by whom it was so admitted would be religiously careful to maintain, in whatever they taught on subjects within its cognizance, a systematic and punctilious conformity to its principles. — Absurdity, impiety, and pernicious effect, of disregarding this sovereign claim to conformity. — The greatest number of our fine writers have incurred this guilt, and done this mischief. — They are antichristian, in the first place, by omission ; they exclude from their moral sentiments the modifying interference of the christian principles. — Extended illustration of the fact, and of its consequences p. 375

Letter VIII

More specific forms of their contrariety to the principles of Revelation. — Their good man not a Christian — Contrasted with St. Paul. — Their theory of happiness essentially different from the evangelical. — Short statement of both.— In moralizing on life, they do not habitually consider, and they prevent their readers from considering, the present state as introductory to another. — Their consolations for distress, old age, and death, widely different, on the whole, from those which constitute so much of the value of the Gospel. — The grandeur and heroism in death, which they have represented with irresistible eloquence, emphatically and perniciously opposite to the christian doctrine and examples of sublimity and happiness in death. — Examples from tragedy p. 389

Letter IX

The estimate of the depraved moral condition of human nature is quite different in revelation and polite literature. — Consequently, the Redemption by Jesus Christ, which appears with such momentous importance in the one, is, in comparison, a trifle in the other. — Our fine writers employ and justify antichristian motives to action, especially the love of fame. — The morality of this passion argued. — The earnest repression of it shown to be a duty. — Some of the lighter order of our popular writers have aided the counteraction of literature to evangelical religion by careless or malignant ridicule of things associated with it. — Brief notice of the several

XX CONTENTS.

classes of fine writers, as lying under the charge of contributing to alienate men of taste from the doctrines and moral spirit of the New Testament. — Moral philosophers. — Historians. — Essayists — Addison. — Johnson. — The Poets. — Exception in favour of Milton, &c. — Pope. — Antichristian quality of his Essay on Man. — Novels. — Melancholy reflections on the Review. — Conclusion p. 419

ESSAY I

ON A MAN'S WRITING MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF.

Letter I. My Dear Friend

Every one knows with what interest it is natural to retrace the course of our own lives. The past states and periods of a man's being are retained in a connexion with the present by that principle of self-love, which is unwilling to relinquish its hold on what has once been his. Though he cannot but be sensible of how little consequence his life can have been in the creation, compared with many other trains of events, yet he has felt it more important to himself than all other trains together ; and you will very rarely find him tired of narrating again the little history, or at least the favourite parts of the little history, of himself.

To turn this partiality to some account, I recollect having proposed to two or three of my friends, that they should write, each principally however for his own use, memoirs of their own lives, endeavouring not so much to enumerate the mere facts and events of life, as to discriminate the successive states of the mind, and so trace the progress of what may be called the character. In this progress consists the chief importance of life; but even on an inferior account also to this of what the character has become, and regarded merely as supplying a constant series of interests to the affections and passions, we have all accounted our life an inestimable possession which it deserved incessant cares and labours to retain, and which continues in most cases to be still held with anxious attachment. What has been the object of so much partiality, and has been delighted and pained by so many emotions, might claim, even if the highest interest were out of the question, that a short memorial should be retained by him who has possessed it, has seen it all to this moment depart, and can never recall it.

To write memoirs of many years, as twenty, thirty, or forty, seems, at the first glance, a very onerous task. To reap the products of so many acres of earth indeed might, to one person, be an undertaking of mighty toil. But the materials of any value that all past life can supply to a recording pen, would be reduced by a discerning selection to a very small and modest amount. Would as much as one page of moderate size be deemed by any man's self-importance to be due, on an average, to each of the days that he has lived? No man would judge more than one in ten thousand of all his thoughts, sayings, and actions, worthy to be mentioned, if memory were capable of recalling them.* Necessarily a very large portion of what has occupied the successive years of life was of a kind to be utterly useless for a history of it ; being merely for the accommodation of the time. Perhaps in the space of forty or fifty years, millions of sentences are proper to be uttered, and many thousands of affairs requisite to be transacted, or of journeys to be performed, which it would be ridiculous to record. They are a kind of material for the common expenditure and waste of the day. Yet it is often by a detail of this subordinate economy of life, that the works of fiction, the narratives of age, the journals of travellers, and even grave biographical accounts, are made so unreasonably long. As well might a chronicle of the coats that a man has worn, with the colour and date of each, be called his life, for any important uses of relating its history. As well might a man, of whom I inquire the dimensions, the internal divisions, and the use, of some remarkable building, begin to tell me how much wood was employed in the scaffolding, where the mortar was prepared, or how often it rained while the work was proceeding. But, in a deliberate review of all that we can

* An exception may be admitted for the few individuals whose daily deliberations, discourses, and proceedings, affect the interests of mankind on a grand scale.

b2 remember of past life, it will be possible to select a certain proportion which may with the most propriety be regarded as the history of the man. What I am recommending is, to follow the order of time, and reduce your recollections, from the earliest period to the present, into as simple a statement and explanation as you can, of your feelings, opinions, and habits, and of the principal circumstances through each stage that have influenced them, till they have become at last what they now are.

Whatever tendencies nature may justly be deemed to have imparted in the first instance, you would probably find the greater part of the moral constitution of your being composed of the contributions of many years and events, consolidated by degrees into what we call character ; and by investigating the progress of the accumulation, you would be assisted to judge more clearly how far the materials are valuable, the mixture congruous, and the whole conformation worthy to remain unaltered. With respect to any friend who greatly interests us, we have a curiosity to obtain an accurate account of the past train of his life and feelings : and whatever other reasons there may be for such a wish, it partly springs from a consciousness how much this retrospective knowledge would assist to complete our estimate of that friend; but our estimate of ourselves is of more serious consequence.

The elapsed periods of life acquire import-

MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF.

ance too from the prospect of its continuance. The smallest thing rises into consequence when regarded as the commencement of what has advanced, or is advancing into magnificence. The first rude settlement of Romulus would have been an insignificant circumstance, and might justly have sunk into oblivion, if Rome had not at length commanded the world. The little rill near the source of one of the great American rivers, is an interesting object to the traveller, who is apprised, as he steps across it, or walks a few miles along its bank, that this is the stream which runs so far, and which gradually swells into so vast a flood. So, while I anticipate the endless progress of life, and wonder through what unknown scenes it is to take its course, its past years lose that character of vanity which would seem to belong to a train of fleeting, perishing moments, and I see them assuming the dignity of a commencing eternity. In them I have begun to be that conscious existence which I am to be through endless duration ; and I feel a strange emotion of curiosity about this little life, in which I am setting out on such a progress; I cannot be content without an accurate sketch of the windings thus far of a stream which is to bear me on for ever. I try to imagine how it will be to recollect, at a far distant point of my era, what I was when here ; and wish if it were possible to retain, as I advance, some clear trace of the whole course of my existence within the scope of reflection ; to fix in my mind so strong an idea of what I have been in this original period of my time, that I may possess this idea in ages too remote for calculation.

The review becomes still more important, when I learn the influence which this first part of the progress will have on the happiness or misery of the next.

One of the greatest difficulties in the way of executing the proposed task will have been caused by the extreme deficiency of that selfobservation, which is of no common habit either of youth or any later age. Men are content to have no more intimate sense of their existence than what they feel in the exercise of their faculties on extraneous objects. The vital being, with all its agency and emotions, is so blended and absorbed in these its exterior interests, that it is very rarely collected and concentrated in the consciousness of its ow 7 n absolute self, so as to be recognised as a thing internal, apart and alone, for its own inspection and knowledge. Men carry their minds as for the most part they carry their watches, content to be ignorant of the constitution and action within, and attentive only to the little exterior circle of things, to which the passions, like indexes, are pointing. It is surprising to see how little self-knowledge a person not watchfully observant of himself may have gained, in the whole course of an active, or even an inquisitive life. He may have lived almost an age, and traversed a continent, minutely examining its curiosities, and interpreting the half- obliterated characters on its monuments, unconscious the while of a process operating on his own mind, to impress or to erase characteristics of much more importance to him than all the figured brass or marble that Europe contains. After having explored many a cavern or dark ruinous avenue, he may have left undetected a darker recess within where there would be much more striking discoveries. He may have conversed with many people, in different languages, on numberless subjects ; but, having neglected those conversations with himself by which his whole moral being should have been kept continually disclosed to his view, he is better qualified perhaps to describe the intrigues of a foreign court, or the progress of a foreign trade ; to depict the manners of the Italians, or the Turks; to narrate the proceedings of the Jesuits, or the adventures of the gypsies ; than to write the history of his own mind.

If we had practised habitual self- observation, we could not have failed to be made aware of much that it had been well for us to know. There have been thousands of feelings, each of which, if strongly seized upon, and made the subject of reflection, would have shewn us what our character was, and what it was likely to become. There have been numerous incidents, which operated on us as tests, and so fully brought out our prevailing quality, that another person, who should have been discriminatively observing us, would speedily have formed a decided estimate. But unfortunately the mind is generally too much occupied by the feeling or the incident itself, to have the slightest care or consciousness that any thing could be learnt, or is disclosed. In very early youth it is almost inevitable for it to be thus lost to itself even amidst its own feelings, and the external objects of attention ; but it seems a contemptible thing, and certainly is a criminal and dangerous thing, for a man in mature life to allow himself this thoughtless escape from self-examination.