INTERCHAPTER XIX.
THE AUTHOR DIFFERS IN OPINION FROM SIR EGERTON BRYDGES AND THE EMPEROR JULIAN, SPEAKS CHARITABLY OF THAT EMPEROR, VINDICATES PROTEUS FROM HIS CENSURE, AND TALKS OF POSTHUMOUS TRAVELS AND EXTRA MUNDANE EXCURSIONS, AND THE PUBLIC LIBRARY IN LIMBOLAND.
Petulant. If he says black's black,—if I have a humour to say it is blue—let that pass. All's one's for that. If I have a humour to prove it, it must be granted.
Witwould. Not positively must,—But it may, it may.
Petulant. Yes, it positively must,—upon proof positive.
Witwould. Ay, upon proof positive it must; but upon proof presumptive it only may. That's a logical distinction now.
CONGREVE.
“In the ignotum pro magnifico,” says Umbra “resides a humble individual's best chance of being noticed or attended to at all.” Yet many are the attempts which have been made, and are making, in America too as well in Great Britain by Critics, Critickins and Criticasters, (for there are of all degrees,) to take from me the Ignotum, and force upon me the Magnificum in its stead, to prove that I am not the humble, and happily unknown disciple, friend, and however unworthy, memorialist of Dr. Dove, a nameless individual as regards the public, holding the tenour of my noiseless way contentedly towards that oblivion which sooner or later must be the portion of us all; but that I am what is called a public character, a performer upon the great stage, whom every one is privileged to hiss or to applaud; myself a Doctor, L.L.D. according to the old form, according to the present usage D.C.L.—a Doctor upon whom that triliteral dignity was conferred in full theatre amid thundering peals of applauding hands, and who heard himself addressed that day in Phillimorean voice and fluent latinity by all eulogistic epithets ending in issimus or errimus. I an issimus!—I an errimus! No other issimus than that Ipsissimus ego which by these critics I am denied to be.
These critics will have it that I am among living authors what the ever memorable Countess of Henneberg was among women; that I have more tails to my name than the greatest Bashaw bears among his standards, or the largest cuttle fish to his headless body or bodyless head; that I have executed works more durable than brass, and loftier than the Pyramids, and that I have touched the stars with my sublime forehead,—what could have saved my poor head from being moonstruck if I had.
Believe them not O Reader! I never executed works in any material more durable than brass, I never built any thing like a pyramid, Absurdo de tamaña grandeza no se ha escrito en letras de molde. And as for the alledged proofs which depriving me of my individuality and divesting me even of entity, would consubstantiate me with the most prolific of living writers, no son mas que ayre ó menos que ayre, una sombra ó menos que sombra, pues son nada, y nada es lo que nunca ha tenido ser verdadero. 1 It is in vain, as Mr. Carlyle says when apostrophizing Mirabeau the father upon his persevering endeavours to make his son resemble him in all points of character, and be as it were his second self, it is in vain. He will not be Thou, but must and will be himself, another than Thou. In like manner, It is in vain say I: I am not, and will not and can not be any body but myself; nor is it of any consequence to any human being who or what I am, though perhaps those persons may think otherwise who say that “they delight more in the shadow of something than to converse with a nothing in substance.”2
1NICOLAS PERES.
2 HURLOTHRUMBO.
Lord Shaftesbury has said that “of all the artificial relations formed between mankind, the most capricious and variable is that of Author and Reader.” He may be right in this; but when he says 'tis evident that an Author's art and labour are for his Reader's sake alone, I cannot assent to the position. For though I have a great and proper regard for my readers, and entertain all due respect for them, it is not for their sake alone that my art and labour have been thus employed,—not for their benefit alone, still less for their amusement that this Opus has been edified. Of the parties concerned in it, the Readers, sooth to say, are not those who have been either first or second in my consideration. The first and paramount object was to preserve the Doctor's memory; the second to gratify myself by so doing; for what higher gratification can there be than in the performance of a debt of gratitude, one of those debts truly to be called immense, which
A grateful mind
By owing owes not, but still pays, at once
Indebted and discharged.3
That there are some readers who would think themselves beholden, though in far less degree, to me, as I am to the revered subject of these memorials, was an after consideration.
3 MILTON.
Sir Egerton Brydges says he never took up a book which he could read without wishing to know the character and history of the author. “But what is it,” he says, “to tell the facts that he was born, married or lived single and died? What is common to all can convey no information. We desire to know an author's feelings, his temper, his disposition, his modes of thinking, his habits; nay even his person, his voice, and his mode of expressing himself, the society in which he has lived, and the images and lessons which attended upon his cradle.” Most of this, Sir Egerton, you can never know otherwise than by guess work. Yet methinks my feelings, my temper, my disposition and my modes of thinking are indicated here, as far as a book can indicate them. You have yourself said; “if it could be proved that what one writes, is no index to what he thinks and feels, then it would be of little value and no interest;” but you are confident that such delusive writers always betray themselves; “Sincerity,” you say, “has always a breath and spirit of its own.” Yes, Sir Egerton, and if there is not that spirit in these volumes, there is no vitality in them; if they have not that breath of life, they must be still-born.
Yet I cannot agree with you in the opinion that those who make a false display of fine feelings whether in prose or verse, always betray themselves. The cant of sentimentalism passes as current with the Reading Public, as cant of a different description with those who call themselves the Religious Public. Among the latter, the proudest and the most uncharitable people in this nation are to be found; and in proof that the most intensely selfish of the human race may be sentimentalists, and super-sentimentalists, it is sufficient to name Rousseau.
Perhaps some benevolent and sagacious Reader may say to me as Randolph said to his friend Owen Feltham,—
Thy book I read, and read it with delight,
Resolving so to live as thou dost write;
And yet I guess thy life thy book produces
And but expresses thy peculiar uses.
But the Reader who should apply to me and my Opus the French lines,
A l'auteur on connoît l'ouvrage,
A l'ouvrage on connoît l'auteur,
though he may be equally benevolent, would not be equally sagacious. It is not for mere caprice that I remain Ignotus and Innominabilis; not a Great Unknown, an Ignotolemagne, but simply an Unknown, Αγνωστος, l'Inconnu, Sconciuto, the Encubierto, the Desconocido—
This precious secret let me hide
I'll tell you every thing beside.4
4 COTTON.
Critics, we know, affect always to have strange intelligence; but though they should say to me
You may
As soon tie up the sunbeams in a net
As keep yourself unknown,5
I shall still continue in darkness inscrutable. Nor am I to be moved from this determination by the opinion which the Emperor Julian expressed concerning Proteus, when he censured him for changing himself into divers forms, lest men should compel him to manifest his knowledge. For said Julian, “if Proteus were indeed wise, and knew as Homer says many things, I praise him indeed for his knowledge, but I do not commend his disposition; seeing that he performed the part, not of a philanthropist, but rather of an imposter, in concealing himself lest he should be useful to mankind.”
5 SHIRLEY.
This was forming a severer opinion of the Ancient of the Deep, the old Prophet of the Sea, than I would pronounce upon Julian himself, though the name of Apostate clings to him. Unhappy as he was in the most important of all concerns, he was at least a true believer in a false religion, and therefore a better man than some of those kings who have borne the title of most Christian or most Catholic. I wish he had kept his beard clean! But our follies and weaknesses, when they are nothing worse, die with us, and are not like unrepented sins to be raised up in judgement. The beard of the imperial Philosopher is not populous now. And in my posthumous travels, if in some extramundane excursion I should meet him in that Limbo which is not a place of punishment but where odd persons as well as odd things are to be found, and in the Public Library of that Limbo we should find a certain Opus conspicuously placed and in high repute, translated, not into the Limbo tongue alone, but into all languages, and the Imperial Philosopher should censure the still incognoscible Author for still continuing in incognoscibility for the same reason that he blamed the Ancient of the Deep, I should remind him of the Eleusinian Mysteries, whisper the Great Decasyllabon in his ear, and ask him whether there are not some secrets which it is neither lawful nor fitting to disclose.
END OF VOL. V.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY W. NICOL, PALL-MALL.
