A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Autobiographic Sketches

T >> Thomas de Quincey >> Autobiographic Sketches




The fact is, as Casaubon remarked, upon occasion of a ridiculous blunder
in estimating the largesses of a Roman emperor, that the error on most
questions of Roman policy or institutions tends not, as is usual, in the
direction of excess, but of defect. All things were colossal there; and
the probable, as estimated upon our modern scale, is not unfrequently the
impossible, as regarded Roman habits. Lipsius certainly erred
extravagantly at times, and was a rash speculator on many subjects;
witness his books on the Roman amphitheatres; but not on the magnitude of
Rome, or the amount of its population. I will add, upon this subject,
that the whole political economy of the ancients, if we except Boeckh's
accurate investigation, (_Die Staatshaushaltung der Athener_,) which,
properly speaking, cannot be called political economy, is a mine into
which scarce a single shaft has yet been sunk. But I must also add, that
every thing will depend upon _collation_ of facts, and the bringing of
indirect notices into immediate juxtaposition, so as to throw light on
each other. _Direct_ and positive information there is little on these
topics; and that has been gleaned.

[2] "_Two hours_."--This slow progress must, however, in part be ascribed
to Mr. Gr----'s non-acquaintance with the roads, both town and rural,
along the whole line of our progress from Uxbridge.

[3] Hence it may be said, that nature regulates our position for such
spectacles, without any intermeddling of ours. When, indeed, a mountain
stands, like Snowdon or Great Gavel in Cumberland, at the centre of a
mountainous region, it is not denied that, at some seasons, when the
early beams strike through great vistas in the hills, splendid effects of
light and shade are produced; strange, however, rather than beautiful.
But from an insulated mountain, or one upon the outer ring of the hilly
tract, such as Skiddaw, in Cumberland, the first effect is to translate
the landscape from a _picture_ into a _map_; and the total result, as a
celebrated author once said, is the _infinity of littleness_.

[4] Accession was it, or his proclamation? The case was this: About the
middle of the day, the king came out into the portico of Carlton House;
and addressing himself (addressing his gestures, I mean) to the
assemblage of people in Pall Mall, he bowed repeatedly to the right and
to the left, and then retired. I mean no disrespect to that prince in
recalling those circumstances; no doubt, he acted upon the suggestion of
others, and perhaps, also, under a sincere emotion on witnessing the
enthusiasm of those outside; but _that_ could not cure the original
absurdity of recognizing as a representative audience, clothed with the
national functions of recognizing _himself_, a chance gathering of
passengers through a single street, between whom and any mob from his own
stables and kitchens there could be no essential difference which logic,
or law, or constitutional principle could recognize.

[5] Already monuments had been voted by the House of Commons in this
cathedral, and I am not sure but they were nearly completed, to two
captains who had fallen at the Nile.

[6] This place suggests the mention of another crying abuse connected
with this subject. In the year 1811 or 1810 came under parliamentary
notice and revision the law of copyright. In some excellent pamphlets
drawn forth by the occasion, from Mr. Duppa, for instance, and several
others, the whole subject was well probed, and many aspects, little
noticed by the public, were exposed of that extreme injustice attached to
the law as it then stood. The several monopolies connected with books
were noticed a _little_; and _not_ a little notice was taken of the
oppressive privilege with which certain public libraries (at that time, I
think, eleven) were invested, of exacting, severally, a copy of each new
book published. This downright robbery was palliated by some members of
the House in that day, under the notion of its being a sort of exchange,
or _quid pro quo_ in return for the relief obtained by the statute of
Queen Anne--the first which recognized literary property. "For," argued
they, "previously to that statute, supposing your book pirated, at common
law you could obtain redress only for each copy _proved_ to have been
sold by the pirate; and that might not be a thousandth part of the actual
loss. Now, the statute of Queen Anne granting you a general redress, upon
proof that a piracy had been committed, you, the party relieved, were
bound to express your sense of this relief by a return made to the
public; and the public is here represented by the great endowed libraries
of the seven universities, the British Museum," &c., &c. But _prima
facie_, this was that _selling of justice_ which is expressly renounced
in Magna Charta; and why were proprietors of copyright, more than other
proprietors, to make an "acknowledgment" for their rights? But supposing
_that_ just, why, especially, to the given public bodies? Now, for my
part, I think that this admits of an explanation: nine tenths of the
authors in former days lay amongst the class who had received a college
education; and most of these, in their academic life, had benefited
largely by old endowments. Giving up, therefore, a small tribute from
their copyright, there was some color of justice in supposing that they
were making a slight acknowledgment for past benefits received, and
exactly for those benefits which enabled them to appear with any
advantage as authors. So, I am convinced, the "_servitude_" first arose,
and under this construction; which, even for those days, was often a
fiction, but now is generally such. However, be the origin what it may,
the ground upon which the public mind in 1811 (that small part of it, at
least, which the question attracted) reconciled itself to the abuse was
this--for a trivial wrong, they alleged (but it was then shown that the
wrong was not always trivial) one great good is achieved, viz., that all
over the kingdom are dispersed eleven great depositories, in which all
persons interested may, at all times, be sure of finding one copy of
every book published. That _did_ seem a great advantage, and a balance in
point of utility (if none in point of justice) to the wrong upon which it
grew. But now mark the degree in which this balancing advantage is made
available. 1. The eleven bodies are not equally careful to exact their
copies; that can only be done by retaining an agent in London; and this
agent is careless about books of slight money value. 2. Were it
otherwise, of what final avail would a perfect set of the year's
productions prove to a public not admitted freely to the eleven
libraries? 3. But, finally, if they were admitted, to what purpose (as
regards this particular advantage) under the following custom, which, in
some of these eleven libraries, (possibly in all,) _was_, I well knew,
established: annually the principal librarian _weeded_ the annual crop of
all such books as displeased himself; upon which two questions arise: 1.
Upon what principle? 2. With what result? I answer as to the first, that
in this _lustration_ he went upon no principle at all, but his own
caprice, or what he called his own discretion; and accordingly it is a
fact known to many as well as myself, that a book, which some people (and
certainly not the least meditative of this age) have pronounced the most
original work of modern times, was actually amongst the books thus
degraded; it was one of those, as the phrase is, tossed "into the
basket;" and universally this fate is more likely to befall a work of
_original_ merit, which disturbs the previous way of thinking and
feeling, than one of timid compliance with ordinary models. Secondly,
with what result? For the present, the degraded books, having been
consigned to the basket, were forthwith consigned to a damp cellar.
There, at any rate, they were in no condition to be consulted by the
public, being piled up in close bales, and in a place not publicly
accessible. But there can be no doubt that, sooner or later, their
mouldering condition would be made an argument for selling them. And
such, when we trace the operation of this law to its final stage, is the
ultimate result of an infringement upon private rights almost unexampled
in any other part of our civil economy. That sole beneficial result, for
the sake of which some legislators were willing to sanction a wrong
otherwise admitted to be indefensible, is so little protected and secured
to the public, that it is first of all placed at the mercy of an agent in
London, whose negligence or indifference may defeat the provision
altogether, (I know a publisher of a splendid botanical work, who told me
that, by forbearing to attract notice to it within the statutable time,
he saved his eleven copies;) and placed at the mercy of a librarian, who
(or any one of his successors) may, upon a motive of malice to the author
or an impulse of false taste, after all proscribe any part of the books
thus dishonorably acquired.

[7] The words _genius_ and _talent_ are frequently distinguished from
each other by those who evidently misconstrue the true distinction
entirely, and sometimes so grossly as to use them by way of expressions
for a mere difference in _degree_. Thus, "a man of great talent,
absolutely a _genius_" occurs in a very well-written tale at this moment
before me; as if being a man of genius implied only a greater than
ordinary degree of talent.

_Talent_ and _genius_ are in not one point allied to each other, except
generically--that both express modes of intellectual power. But the kinds
of power are not merely different; they are in polar opposition to each
other. _Talent_ is intellectual power of every kind, which acts and
manifests itself by and through the _will_ and the _active_ forces.

_Genius_, as the verbal origin implies, is that much rarer species of
intellectual power which is derived from the _genial_ nature,--from the
spirit of suffering and enjoying,--from the spirit of pleasure and pain,
as organized more or less perfectly; and this is independent of the will.
It is a function of the _passive_ nature. Talent is conversant with the
adaptation of means to ends. But genius is conversant only with ends.
Talent has no sort of connection, not the most remote or shadowy, with
the _moral_ nature or temperament; genius is steeped and saturated with
this moral nature.

This was written twenty years ago. Now, (1853,) when revising it, I am
tempted to add three brief annotations:--

1st. It scandalizes me that, in the occasional comments upon this
distinction which have reached my eye, no attention should have been paid
to the profound suggestions as to the radix of what is meant by _genius_
latent in the word _genial_. For instance, in an extract made by "The
Leader," a distinguished literary journal, from a recent work entitled
"Poetics," by Mr. Dallas, there is not the slightest notice taken of this
subtile indication and leading towards the truth. Yet surely _that_ is
hardly philosophic. For could Mr. Dallas suppose that the idea involved
in the word _genial_ had no connection, or none but an accidental one,
with the idea involved in the word _genius_? It is clear that from the
Roman conception (whencesoever emanating) of the natal genius, as the
secret and central representative of what is most characteristic and
individual in the nature of every human being, are derived alike the
notion of the _genial_ and our modern notion of _genius_ as
contradistinguished from _talent_.

2d. As another broad character of distinction between _genius_ and
_talent_, I would observe, that _genius_ differentiates a man from all
other men; whereas _talent_ is the same in one man as in another; that
is, where it exists at all, it is the mere echo and reflex of the same
talent, as seen in thousands of other men, differing only by more and
less, but not at all in quality. In genius, on the contrary, no two men
were ever duplicates of each other.

3d. All talent, in whatsoever class, reveals itself as an effort--as a
counteraction to an opposing difficulty or hinderance; whereas genius
universally moves in headlong sympathy and concurrence with spontaneous
power. Talent works universally by intense resistance to an antagonist
force; whereas genius works under a rapture of necessity and spontaneity.

[8] This word, I am well aware, grew out of the French word _contre
danse_; indicating the regular contraposition of male and female partners
in the first arrangement of the dancers. The word _country dance_ was
therefore originally a corruption; but, having once arisen and taken root
in the language, it is far better to retain it in its colloquial form;
better, I mean, on the general, principle concerned in such cases. For it
is, in fact, by such corruptions, by offsets upon an old stock, arising
through ignorance or mispronunciation originally, that every language is
frequently enriched; and new modifications of thought, unfolding
themselves in the progress of society, generate for themselves
concurrently appropriate expressions. Many words in the Latin can be
pointed out as having passed through this process. It must not be allowed
to weigh against the validity of a word once fairly naturalized by use,
that originally it crept in upon an abuse or a corruption. _Prescription_
is as strong a ground of legitimation in a case of this nature as it is
in law. And the old axiom is applicable--_Fieri non debuit, factum
valet_. Were it otherwise, languages would be robbed of much of their
wealth. And, universally, the class of _purists,_ in matters of language,
are liable to grievous suspicion, as almost constantly proceeding on
_half_ knowledge and on insufficient principles. For example, if I have
read one, I have read twenty letters, addressed to newspapers, denouncing
the name of a great quarter in London, _Mary-le-bone,_ as ludicrously
ungrammatical. The writers had learned (or were learning) French; and
they had thus become aware, that neither the article nor the adjective
was right. True, not right for the current age, but perfectly right for
the age in which the name arose; but, for want of elder French, they did
not know that in our Chaucer's time both were right. _Le_ was then the
article feminine as well as masculine, and _bone_ was then the true form
for the adjective.

[9] And therefore it was with strict propriety that Boyle, anxious to fix
public attention upon some truths of hydrostatics, published them
avowedly as _paradoxes._ According to the false popular notion of what it
is that constitutes a paradox, Boyle should be taken to mean that these
hydrostatic theorems were fallacies. But far from it. Boyle solicits
attention to these propositions--not as seeming to be true and turning
out false, but, reversely, as wearing an air of falsehood and turning out
true.

[10] This Dr. Wilkins was related to marriage to Cromwell, and is better
known to the world, perhaps, by his Essay on the possibility of a passage
(or, as the famous author of the "Pursuits of Literature" said, by way of
an episcopal metaphor, the possibility of a _translation_) to the moon.

[11] One omission occurs to me on reviewing this account of the Ziph,
which is--that I should have directed the accent to be placed on the
intercalated syllable: thus _ship_ becomes _shigip_, with the emphasis on
_gip_; _run_ becomes _rugún_, &c.

[12] Written twenty years ago.

[13] But see the note on this point at the end of the volume.

[14] Lord Westport's age at that time was the same as my own; that is, we
both wanted a few months of being fifteen. But I had the advantage,
perhaps, in thoughtfulness and observation of life. Being thoroughly
free, however, from opinionativeness, Lord Westport readily came over to
any views of mine for which I could show sufficient grounds. And on this
occasion I found no difficulty in convincing him that honor and fidelity
did not form sufficient guaranties for the custody of secrets. Presence
of mind so as to revive one's obligations in time, tenacity of
recollection, and vigilance over one's own momentary slips of tongue, so
as to keep watch over indirect disclosures, are also requisite. And at
that time I had an instance within my own remembrance where a secret had
been betrayed, by a person of undoubted honor, but most inadvertently
betrayed, and in pure oblivion of his engagement to silence. Indeed,
unless where the secret is of a nature to affect some person's life, I do
not believe that most people would remember beyond a period of two years
the most solemn obligations to secrecy. After a lapse of time, varying of
course with the person, the substance of the secret will remain upon the
mind; but how he came by the secret, or under what circumstances, he will
very probably have forgotten. It is unsafe to rely upon the most
religious or sacramental obligation to secrecy, unless, together with the
secret, you could transfer also a magic ring that should, by a growing
pressure or puncture, _sting_ a man into timely alarm and warning.




CHAPTER VIII.

DUBLIN.


In Sackville Street stood the town house of Lord Altamont; and here,
in the breakfast room, we found the earl seated. Long and intimately
as I had known Lord Westport, it so happened that I had never seen his
father, who had, indeed, of late almost pledged himself to a continued
residence in Ireland by his own patriotic earnestness as an agricultural
improver; whilst for his son, under the difficulties and delays at
that time of all travelling, any residence whatever in England seemed
preferable, but especially a residence with his mother amongst the
relatives of his distinguished English grandfather, and in such close
neighborhood to Eton. Lord Altamont once told me, that the journey
outward and inward between Eton and Westport, taking into account all
the unavoidable deviations from the direct route, in compliance with
the claims of kinship, &c., (a case which in Ireland forced a traveller
often into a perpetual zigzag,) counted up to something more than a
thousand miles. That is, in effect, when valued in loss of time, and
allowance being made for the want of _continuity_ in those parts of
the travelling system that did not accurately dovetail into each other,
not less than one entire fortnight must be annually sunk upon a labor
that yielded no commensurate fruit. Hence the long three-years' interval
which had separated father and son; and hence my own nervous
apprehension, as we were racing through the suburbs of Dublin, that
I should unavoidably lay a freezing restraint upon that reunion to
which, after such a separation, both father and son must have looked
forward with anticipation so anxious. Such cases of unintentional
intrusion are at times inevitable; but, even to the least sensitive,
they are always distressing; most of all they are so to the intruder,
who in fact feels himself in the odd position of a criminal without
a crime. He is in the situation of one who might have happened to be
chased by a Bengal tiger (or, say that the tiger were a sheriff's
officer) into the very centre of the Eleusinian mysteries. Do not tease
me, my reader, by alleging that there were no sheriffs' officers at
Athens or Eleusis. Not many, I admit; but perhaps quite as many as
there were of Bengal tigers. In such a case, under whatever compulsion,
the man has violated a holy seclusion. He has seen that which he ought
_not_ to have seen; and he is viewed with horror by the privileged
spectators. Should he plead that this was his misfortune, and not his
fault, the answer would be, "True; it was your misfortune; we know it;
and it is _our_ misfortune to be under the necessity of hating you for
it." But there was no cause for similar fears at present; so uniformly
considerate in his kindness was Lord Altamont. It is true, that Lord
Westport, as an only child, and a child to be proud of,--for he was
at that time rather handsome, and conciliated general good will by his
engaging manners,--was viewed by his father with an anxiety of love
that sometimes became almost painful to witness. But this natural
self-surrender to a first involuntary emotion Lord Altamont did not
suffer to usurp any such lengthened expression as might too painfully
have reminded me of being "one too many." One solitary half minute
being paid down as a tribute to the sanctities of the case, his next
care was to withdraw me, the stranger, from any oppressive feeling of
strangership. And accordingly, so far from realizing the sense of being
an intruder, in one minute under his courteous welcome I had come to
feel that, as the companion of his one darling upon earth, me also he
comprehended within his paternal regards.

It must have been nine o'clock precisely when we entered the breakfast
room. So much I know by an _a priori_ argument, and could wish,
therefore, that it had been scientifically important to know it--as
important, for instance, as to know the occultation of a star, or the
transit of Venus to a second. For the urn was at that moment placed
on the table; and though Ireland, as a whole, is privileged to be
irregular, yet such was our Sackville Street regularity, that not so
much nine o'clock announced this periodic event, as inversely this
event announced nine o'clock. And I used to affirm, however shocking
it might sound to poor threadbare metaphysicians incapable of
transcendental truths, that not nine o'clock was the cause of revealing
the breakfast urn, but, on the contrary, that the revelation of the
breakfast urn was the true and secret cause of nine o'clock--a
phenomenon which otherwise no candid reader will pretend that he can
satisfactorily account for, often as he has known it to come round.
The urn was already throwing up its column of fuming mist; and the
breakfast table was covered with June flowers sent by a lady on the
chance of Lord Westport's arrival. It was clear, therefore, that we
were expected; but so we had been for three or four days previously;
and it illustrates the enormous uncertainties of travelling at this
closing era of the eighteenth century, that for three or four days
more we should have been expected without the least anxiety in case
any thing had occurred to detain us on the road. In fact, the
possibility of a Holyhead packet being lost had no place in the
catalogue of adverse contingencies--not even when calculated by mothers.
To come by way of Liverpool or Parkgate, was not without grounds of
reasonable fear; I myself had lost acquaintances (schoolboys) on each
of those lines of transit. Neither Bristol nor Milford Haven was
entirely cloudless in reputation. But from Holyhead only one packet
had ever been lost; and that was in the days of Queen Anne, when I
have good reason to think that a villain was on board, who hated the
Duke of Marlborough; so that this one exceptional case, far from being
looked upon as a public calamity, would, of course, be received
thankfully as cleansing the nation from a scamp.

* * * * *

Ireland was still smoking with the embers of rebellion; and Lord
Cornwallis, who had been sent expressly to extinguish it, and had won
the reputation of having fulfilled this mission with energy and success,
was then the lord lieutenant; and at that moment he was regarded with
more interest than any other public man. Accordingly I was not sorry
when, two mornings after our arrival, Lord Altamont said to us at
breakfast, "Now, if you wish to see what I call a great man, go with
me this morning, and you shall see Lord Cornwallis; for that man who
has given peace both to the east and to the west--taming a tiger in
the Mysore that hated England as much as Hannibal hated Rome, and in
Ireland pulling up by the roots a French invasion, combined with an
Irish insurrection--will always for me rank as a great man." We
willingly accompanied the earl to the Phoenix Park, where the lord
lieutenant was then residing, and were privately presented to him. I
had seen an engraving (celebrated, I believe, in its day) of Lord
Cornwallis receiving the young Mysore princes as hostages at
Seringapatam; and I knew the outline of his public services. This gave
me an additional interest in seeing him; but I was disappointed to
find no traces in his manner of the energy and activity I presumed him
to possess; he seemed, on the contrary, slow or even heavy, but
benevolent and considerate in a degree which won the confidence at
once. Him we saw often; for Lord Altamont took us with him wherever
and whenever we wished; and me in particular (to whom the Irish leaders
of society were as yet entirely unknown by sight) it gratified highly
to see persons of historical names--names, I mean, historically
connected with the great events of Elizabeth's or Cromwell's
era--attending at the Phoenix Park. But the persons whom I remember
most distinctly of all whom I was then in the habit of seeing, were
Lord Clare, the chancellor, the late Lord Londonderry, (then
Castlereagh,) at that time the Irish chancellor of the exchequer, and
the speaker of the House of Commons, (Mr. Foster, since, I believe,
created Lord Oriel.) With the speaker, indeed, Lord Altamont had more
intimate grounds of connection than with any other public man; both
being devoted to the encouragement and personal superintendence of
great agricultural improvements. Both were bent on introducing through
models diffused extensively on their own estates, English husbandry,
English improved breeds of cattle, and, where _that_ was possible,
English capital and skill, into the rural economy of Ireland.

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.