The connexion between us must have been interesting to an observer; for, though I cannot say with Wordsworth, of old Daniel and his grandson, that there were “ninety good years of fair and foul weather” between us, there were, however, sixty, I imagine, at the least; whilst as a bond of connexion there was nothing at all that I know of beyond a common tendency to reverie, which is a bad link for a social connexion. The little ardour, meantime, with which he had, for many years, participated in the interests of this world, or all that it inherits, was now rapidly departing. Daily and consciously he was loosening all ties which bound him to earlier recollections; and, in particular, I remember — because the instance was connected with my last farewell visit, as it proved — that for some time he was engaged daily in renouncing with solemnity (though often enough in cheerful words) book after book of classical literature in which he had once taken particular delight. Several of these, after taking his final glance at a few passages to which a pencil reference in the margin pointed his eye, he delivered to me as memorials in time to come of himself. The last of the books given to me under these circumstances was a Greek “Odyssey,” in Clarke’s edition. “This,” said he, “is nearly the sole book remaining to me of my classical library — which, for some years, I have been dispersing amongst my friends. Homer I retained to the last, and the ‘Odyssey,’ by preference to the ‘Iliad,’ both in compliance with my own taste, and because this very copy was my chosen companion for evening amusement during my freshman’s term at Trinity College, Cambridge — whither I went early in the spring of 1743. Your own favourite Grecian is Euripides; but still you must value — we must all value — Homer. I, even as old as I am, could still read him with delight; and, as long as any merely human composition ought to occupy my time, I should have made an exception in behalf of this solitary author. But I am a soldier of Christ; the enemy, the last enemy, cannot be far off; sarcinas colligere is, at my age, the watchword for every faithful sentinel, hourly to keep watch and ward, to wait and to be vigilant. This very day I have taken my farewell glance at Homer, for I must no more be found seeking my pleasure amongst the works of man; and, that I may not be tempted to break my resolution, I make over this my last book to you.”
Words to this effect, uttered with his usual solemnity, accompanied his gift; and, at the same time, he added, without any separate comment, a little pocket Virgil — the one edited by Alexander Cunningham, the bitter antagonist of Bentley — with a few annotations placed at the end. The act was in itself a solemn one; something like taking the veil for a nun — a final abjuration of the world’s giddy agitations. And yet to him — already and for so long a time linked so feebly to anything that could be called the world, and living in a seclusion so profound — it was but as if an anchorite should retire from his outer to his inner cell. Me, however, it impressed powerfully in after years; because this act of self-dedication to the next world, and of parting from the intellectual luxuries of this, was also, in fact, though neither of us at the time knew it to be such, the scene of his final parting with myself. Immediately after his solemn speech, on presenting me with the “Odyssey,” he sat down to the organ, sang a hymn or two, then chanted part of the liturgy, and, finally, at my request, performed the anthem so well known in the English Church service — the collect for the seventh Sunday after Trinity — (Lord of all power and might, &c.) It was summer — about half after nine in the evening; the light of day was still lingering, and just strong enough to illuminate the Crucifixion, the Stoning of the Protomartyr, and other grand emblazonries of the Christian faith, which adorned the rich windows of his library. Knowing the early hours of his household, I now received his usual fervent adieus — which, without the words, had the sound and effect of a benediction — felt the warm pressure of his hand, saw dimly the outline of his venerable figure, more dimly his saintly countenance, and quitted that gracious presence, which, in this world, I was destined no more to revisit. The night was one in the first half of July 1802; in the second half of which, or very early in August, I quitted school clandestinely, and consequently the neighbourhood of Mr. Clowes. Some years after, I saw his death announced in all the public journals, as having occurred at Leamington Spa, then in the springtime of its medicinal reputation. Farewell, early friend! holiest of men whom it has been my lot to meet! Yes, I repeat, thirty-five years are past since then, and I have yet seen few men approaching to this venerable clergyman in paternal benignity — none certainly in child-like purity, apostolic holiness, or in perfect alienation of heart from the spirit of this fleshly world.
I have delineated the habits and character of Mr. Clowes at some length, chiefly because a connexion is rare and interesting between parties so widely asunder in point of age — one a schoolboy, and the other almost an octogenarian, to quote a stanza from one of the most spiritual sketches of Wordsworth —
“We talked with open heart and tongue, Affectionate and free — A pair of friends, though I was young, And Matthew seventy-three.”
I have stated a second reason for this record, in the fact that Mr. Clowes was the first of my friends who had any connexion with the press. At one time I have reason to believe that this connexion was pretty extensive, though not publicly avowed, and so far from being lucrative that at first I believe it to have been expensive to him, and whatever profits might afterwards arise were applied, as much of his regular income, to the benefit of others. Here, again, it seems surprising that a spirit so beneficent and, in the amplest sense, charitable, could coalesce in any views with Swedenborg, who, in some senses, was not charitable. Swedenborg had been scandalized by a notion which, it seems, he found prevalent amongst the poor of the Continent — viz., that, if riches were a drag and a negative force on the road to religious perfection, poverty must be positive title per se to the favour of Heaven. Grievously offended with this error, he came almost to hate poverty as a presumptive indication of this offensive heresy; scarcely would he allow it an indirect value, as removing in many cases the occasions or incitements of evil. No: being in itself neutral and indifferent, he argued that it had become erroneously a ground of presumptuous hope; whilst the rich man, aware of his danger, was, in some degree, armed against it by fear and humility. And, in this course of arguing and of corresponding feeling, Mr. Swedenborg had come to hate the very name of a poor candidate for Heaven, as bitterly as a sharking attorney hates the applications of a pauper client. Yet so entirely is it true that “to the pure, all things are pure,” and that perfect charity “thinketh no ill,” but is gifted with a power to transmute all things into its own resemblance — so entirely is all this true, that this most spiritual, and, as it were, disembodied of men, could find delight in the dreams of the very “fleshliest incubus” that has intruded amongst heavenly objects; and, secondly, this benignest of men found his own pure feelings not outraged by one who threw a withering scowl over the far larger half of his fellow-creatures.
Concurrently with this acquaintance, so impressive and so elevating to me, from the unusual sanctity of Mr. Clowes’s character, I formed another with a well-known coterie, more avowedly, and in a more general sense, literary, resident at Liverpool or its neighbourhood. In my sixteenth year I had accompanied my mother and family on a summer’s excursion to Everton, a well-known village upon the heights immediately above Liverpool; though by this time I believe it has thrown out so many fibres of connexion as to have become a mere quarter or suburban “process” (to speak by anatomical phrase) of the great town below it. In those days, however, distant by one third of a century from ours, Everton was still a distinct village (for a mile of ascent is worth three of level ground in the way of effectual separation); it was delightfully refreshed by marine breezes, though raised above the sea so far that its thunders could be heard only under favourable circumstances. There we had a cottage for some months; and the nearest of our neighbours happened to be that Mr. Clarke, the banker, to whom acknowledgments are made in the Lorenzo the Magnificent, for aid in procuring MSS
. and information from Italy. This gentleman called on my mother, merely in the general view of offering neighbourly attentions to a family of strangers. I, as the eldest of my brothers, and already with strong literary propensities, had received a general invitation to his house. Thither I went, indeed, early and late; and there I met Mr. Roscoe, Dr. Currie (who had just at that time published his Life and Edition of Burns), and Mr. Shepherd of Gatacre, the author of some works on Italian literature (particularly a Life of Poggio Bracciolini), and, since then, well known to all England by his Reform politics.
There were other members of this society — some, like myself, visitors merely to that neighbourhood; but those I have mentioned were the chief. Here I had an early opportunity of observing the natural character and tendencies of merely literary society — by which society I mean all such as, having no strong distinctions in power of thinking or in native force of character, are yet raised into circles of pretension and mark by the fact of having written a book, or of holding a notorious connexion with some department or other of the periodical press. No society is so vapid and uninteresting in its natural quality, none so cheerless and petrific in its influence upon others. Ordinary people, in such company, are in general repressed from uttering with cordiality the natural expression of their own minds or temperaments, under a vague feeling of some peculiar homage due, or at least customarily paid, to those lions: such people are no longer at their ease, or masters of their own natural motions in their own natural freedom; whilst indemnification of any sort is least of all to be looked for from the literary dons who have diffused this unpleasant atmosphere of constraint. They disable others, and yet do nothing themselves to fill up the void they have created. One and all — unless by accident people of unusual originality, power, and also nerve, so as to be able without trepidation to face the expectations of men — the literary class labour under two opposite disqualifications for a good tone of conversation. From causes visibly explained, they are either spoiled by the vices of reserve, and of over-consciousness directed upon themselves — this is one extreme; or, where manliness of mind has prevented this, beyond others of equal or inferior natural power, they are apt to be desperately commonplace. The first defect is an accident arising out of the rarity of literary pretensions, and would rapidly subside as the proportion became larger of practising literati to the mass of educated people. But the other is an adjunct scarcely separable from the ordinary prosecution of a literary career, and growing in fact out of literature per se, as literature is generally understood. That same day, says Homer, which makes a man a slave robs him of half his value. That same hour which first awakens a child to the consciousness of being observed, and to the sense of admiration, strips it of its freedom and unpremeditated graces of motion. Awkwardness at the least — and too probably, as a consequence of that, affectation and conceit — follow hard upon the consciousness of special notice or admiration. The very attempt to disguise embarrassment too often issues in a secondary and more marked embarrassment.
Another mode of reserve arises with some literary men, who believe themselves to be in possession of novel ideas. Cordiality of communication, or ardour of dispute, might betray them into a revelation of those golden thoughts, sometimes into a necessity of revealing them, since, without such aid, it might be impossible to maintain theirs in the discussion. On this principle it was — a principle of deliberate unsocial reserve — that Adam Smith is said to have governed his conversation; he professed to put a bridle on his words, lest by accident a pearl should drop out of his lips amongst the vigilant bystanders. And in no case would he have allowed himself to be engaged in a disputation, because both the passions of dispute and the necessities of dispute are alike apt to throw men off their guard. A most unamiable reason it certainly is, which places a man in one constant attitude of self-protection against petty larceny. And yet, humiliating as that may be to human nature, the furtive propensities or instincts of petty larceny are diffused most extensively through all ranks — directed, too, upon a sort of property far more tangible and more ignoble, as respects the possible motives of the purloiner, than any property in subjects purely intellectual. Rather more than ten years ago, a literary man of the name of Alton published, some little time before his own death, a very searching essay upon this chapter of human integrity — arraying a large list of common cases (cases of hats, gloves, umbrellas, books, newspapers, &c.) where the claim of ownership, left to itself and unsupported by accidents of shame and exposure, appeared to be weak indeed amongst classes of society prescriptively “respectable.” And yet, for a double reason, literary larceny is even more to be feared; both because it is countenanced by a less ignoble quality of temptation, and because it is far more easy of achievement — so easy, indeed, that it may be practised without any clear accompanying consciousness.
I have myself witnessed or been a party to a case of the following kind: — A new truth — suppose for example, a new doctrine or a new theory — was communicated to a very able man in the course of conversation, not didactically, or directly as a new truth, but polemically, — communicated as an argument in the current of a dispute. What followed? Necessarily it followed that a very able man would not be purely passive in receiving this new truth; that he would co-operate with the communicator in many ways — as by raising objections, by half dissipating his own objections, and in a variety of other co-agencies. In such cases, a very clever man does in effect half-generate the new idea for himself, but then he does this entirely under your leading; you stand ready at each point of possible deviation, to warn him away from the wrong turn — from the turn which leads nowhither or the turn which leads astray. Yet the final result has been that the catechumen, under the full consciousness of self-exertion, has so far confounded his just and true belief of having contributed to the evolution of the doctrine, quoad his own apprehension of it, with the far different case of having evolved the truth itself into light, as to go off with the firm impression that the doctrine had been a product of his own. There is therefore ground enough for the jealousy of Adam Smith, since a robbery may be committed unconsciously; though, by the way, it is not a peril peculiarly applicable to himself, who has not so much succeeded in discovering new truths as in establishing a logical connexion amongst old ones.
On the other hand, it is not by reserve, whether of affectation or of Smithian jealousy, that the majority of literary people offend — at least not by the latter; for, so far from having much novelty to protect against pirates, the most general effect of literary pursuits is to tame down all points of originality to one standard of insipid monotony. I shall not go into the reasons for this. I make my appeal to the matter of fact. Try a Parisian populace, very many of whom are highly cultivated by reading, against a body of illiterate rustics. Mr. Scott of Aberdeen, in his “Second Tour to Paris” (1815), tells us that, on looking over the shoulder of poor stall women selling trifles in the street, he usually found them reading Voltaire, Rousseau, or even (as I think he adds) Montesquieu; but, notwithstanding the polish which such reading both presumes as a previous condition and produces as a natural effect, yet no people could be more lifeless in their minds, or more barren of observing faculties, than they; and so he describes them. Words! words! nothing but words! On the other hand, listen to the conversation of a few scandalous village dames collected at a tea-table. Vulgar as the spirit may be which possesses them, and not seldom malicious, still how full of animation and of keen perception it will generally be found, and of a learned spirit of connoisseurship in human character, by comparison with the fade generalities and barren recollections of mere literati!
All this was partially illustrated in the circle to which I was now presented. Mr. Clarke was not an author, and he was by much the most interesting person of the whole. He had travelled, and, particularly, he had travelled in Italy — then an aristocratic distinction; had a small, but interesting, picture gallery; and, at this time, amused himself by studying Greek, for which purpose he
and myself met at sunrise every morning through the summer, and read Æschylus together. These meetings, at which we sometimes had the company of any stranger who might happen to be an amateur in Greek, were pleasant enough to my schoolboy vanity — placing me in the position of teacher and guide to men old enough to be my grandfathers. But the dinner parties, at which the literati sometimes assembled in force, were far from being equally amusing. Mr. Roscoe was simple and manly in his demeanour; but there was the feebleness of a mere belle-lettrist, a mere man of virtù, in the style of his sentiments on most subjects. Yet he was a politician, and took an ardent interest in politics, and wrote upon politics — all which are facts usually presuming some vigour of mind. And he wrote, moreover, on the popular side, and with a boldness which, in that day, when such politics were absolutely disreputable, seemed undeniably to argue great moral courage. But these were accidents arising out of his connexion with the Whig party, or (to speak more accurately) with the Opposition party in Parliament; by whom he was greatly caressed. Mr. Fox, the Duchess of Devonshire, Mr. Sheridan, and all the powers on that side of the question, showed him the most marked attention in a great variety of forms; and this it was, not any native propensity for such speculations, which drove him into pamphleteering upon political questions. Mr. Fox (himself the very feeblest of party writers) was probably sincere in his admiration of Mr. Roscoe’s pamphlets; and did seriously think him, as I know that he described him in private letters, an antagonist well matched against Burke; and that he afterwards became in form. The rest of the world wondered at his presumption, or at his gross miscalculation of his own peculiar powers. An eminent person, in after years (about 1815), speaking to me of Mr. Roscoe’s political writings, especially those which had connected his name with Burke, declared that he always felt of him in that relation not so much as of a feeble man, but absolutely as of a Sporus (that was his very expression), or a man emasculated. Right or wrong in his views, he showed the most painful defect of good sense and prudence in confronting his own understanding, so plain and homely, with the Machiavelian Briareus of a hundred arms — the Titan whom he found in Burke; all the advantages of a living antagonist over a dead one could not compensate odds so fearful in original power.
Complete Poetical Works of Robert Southey Page 278