in white cloth, is valued at twenty dollars. Twenty years ago one
dollar would have purchased it. Mr. Austin Dobson's "Proverbs in
Porcelain" is also in demand among the curious. Nay, even I may say
about the first
edition of "Ballades in Blue China" (1880), as
Gibbon said of his "Essay on the Study of Literature:" "The
primitive value of half a crown has risen to the fanciful price of a
guinea or thirty shillings," or even more. I wish I had a copy
myself, for old sake's sake.
Certain modern books, "on large paper," are safe investments. The
"Badminton Library," an English
series of books on sport, is at a
huge
premium already, when on "large paper." But one should never
buy the book unless, as in the case of Dr. John Hill Burton's "Book-
Hunter" (first
edition), it is not only on large paper, and not only
rare (twenty-five copies), but also readable and interesting. {7} A
collector should have the taste to see when a new book is in itself
valuable and
charming, and when its author is likely to succeed, so
that his early attempts (as in the case of Mr. Matthew Arnold, Lord
Tennyson, and a few others of the moderns) are certain to become
things of curious interest.
You can hardly ever get a novel of Jane Austen's in the first
edition. She is rarer than Fielding or Smollett. Some day it may
be the same in Miss Broughton's case. Cling to the fair and witty
Jane, if you get a chance. Beware of illustrated modern books in
which "processes" are employed. Amateurs will never really value
mechanical reproductions, which can be copied to any
extent. The
old French copper-plate
engravings and the best English mezzo-tints
are so
valuable because good impressions are
necessarily so rare.
One more piece of advice. Never (or "hardly ever") buy an imperfect
book. It is a
constant source of regret, an eyesore. Here have I
Lovelace's "Lucasta," 1649, without the
engraving. It is
deplorable, but I never had a chance of another "Lucasta." This is
not a case of invenies aliam. However you fare, you will have the
pleasure of Hope and the
consolation of books quietem inveniendam in
abditis recessibus et libellulis.
ROCHEFOUCAULD
To the Lady Violet Lebas.
Dear Lady Violet,--I am not sure that I agree with you in your
admiration of Rochefoucauld--of the Reflexions, ou Sentences et
Maximes Morales, I mean. At least, I hardly agree when I have read
many of them at a stretch. It is not fair to read them in that way,
of course, for there are more than five hundred pensees, and so much
esprit becomes fatiguing. I doubt if people study them much. Five
or six of them have become known even to writers in the newspapers,
and we all copy them from each other.
Rochefoucauld says that a man may be too dull to be duped by a very
clever person. He himself was so clever that he was often duped,
first by the general honest dulness of mankind, and then by his own
acuteness. He thought he saw more than he did see, and he said even
more than he thought he saw. If the true
motive of all our actions
is self-love, or
vanity, no man is a better proof of the truth than
the great maxim-maker. His self-love took the shape of a brilliancy
that is sometimes false. He is tricked out in paste for diamonds,
now and then, like a vain,
provincial beauty at a ball. "A clever
man would frequently be much at a loss," he says, "in stupid
company." One has seen this
embarrassment of a wit in a company of
dullards. It is Rochefoucauld's own position in this world of men
and women. We are all, in the mass, dullards compared with his
cleverness, and so he fails to understand us, is much at a loss
among us. "People only praise others in hopes of being praised in
turn," he says. Mankind is not such a company of "log-rollers" as
he avers.
There is more truth in a line of Tennyson's about
"The praise of those we love,
Dearer to true young hearts than their own praise."
I
venture to think we need not be young to prefer to hear the praise
of others rather than our own. It is not embarrassing in the first
place, as all praise of ourselves must be. I doubt if any man or
woman can
flatter so discreetly as not to make us uncomfortable.
Besides, if our own performances be lauded, we are
uneasy as to
whether the honour is deserved. An artist has usually his own
doubts about his own
doings, or rather he has his own certainties.
About our friends' work we need have no such misgivings. And our
self-love is more
delicately caressed by the success of our friends
than by our own. It is still self-love, but it is filtered, so to
speak, through our
affection for another.
What are human
motives, according to Rochefoucauld? Temperament,
vanity, fear, indolence, self-love, and a grain of natural
perversity, which somehow delights in evil for itself. He neglects
that other element, a grain of natural worth, which somehow delights
in good for itself. This taste, I think, is quite as innate, and as
active in us, as that other taste for evil which causes there to be
something not
wholly displeasing in the misfortunes of our friends.
There is a story which always appears to me a
touching proof of this
grain of
goodness, as
involuntary, as fatal as its opposite. I do
not remember in what book of travels I found this trait of native
excellence. The black fellows of Australia are very fond of sugar,
and no wonder, if it be true that it has on them an intoxicating
effect. Well, a certain black fellow had a small
parcel of brown
sugar which was pilfered from his lair in the camp. He detected the
thief, who was condemned to be punished according to tribal law;
that is to say, the injured man was allowed to have a whack at his
enemy's head with a waddy, a short club of heavy hard wood. The
whack was duly given, and then the black who had suffered the loss
threw down his club, burst into tears, embraced the thief and
displayed every sign of a
lively regret for his revenge.
That seems to me an example of the human touch that Rochefoucauld
never allows for, the natural
goodness, pity, kindness, which can
assert itself in
contempt of the love of self, and the love of
revenge. This is that true clemency which is a real
virtue, and not
"the child of Vanity, Fear, Indolence, or of all three together."
Nor is it so true that "we have all
fortitude enough to
endure the
misfortunes of others." Everybody has witnessed another's grief
that came as near him as his own.
How much more true, and how greatly
poetical is that famous maxim:
"Death and the Sun are two things not to be looked on with a steady
eye." This
version is from the earliest English
translation of
1698. The Maximes were first published in Paris in 1665. {8} "Our
tardy apish nation" took thirty-three years in
finding them out and
appropriating them. This, too, is good: "If we were
faultless, we
would observe with less pleasure the faults of others." Indeed, to
observe these with pleasure is not the least of our faults. Again,
"We are never so happy, nor so
wretched, as we suppose." It is our
vanity, perhaps, that makes us think ourselves miserrimi.
Do you remember--no, you don't--that meeting in "Candide" of the
unfortunate Cunegonde and the still more
unfortunate old lady who
was the daughter of a Pope? "You
lament your fate," said the old
lady; "alas, you have known no such sorrows as mine!" "What! my
good woman!" says Cunegonde. "Unless you have been maltreated by
two Bulgarians, received two stabs from a knife, had two of your
castles burned over your head, seen two fathers and two mothers
murdered before your eyes, and two of your lovers flogged at two
autos-da-fe, I don't fancy that you can have the
advantage of me.
Besides, I was born a
baroness of seventy-two quarterings, and I
have been a cook." But the daughter of a Pope had, indeed, been
still more
unlucky, as she proved, than Cunegonde; and the old lady
was not a little proud of it.
But can you call this true: "There is nobody but is
ashamed of
having loved when once he loves no longer"? If it be true at all, I
don't think the love was much worth having or giving. If one really
loves once, one can never be
ashamed of it; for we never cease to
love. However, this is the very high water of
sentiment, you will
say; but I blush no more for it than M. le Duc de Rochefoucauld for
his own opinion. Perhaps I am thinking of that kind of love about
which he says: "True love is like ghosts; which everybody talks
about and few have seen." "Many be the thyrsus-bearers, few the
Mystics," as the Greek
proverb runs. "Many are called, few are
chosen."
As to friendship being "a reciprocity of interests," the
saying is
but one of those which Rochefoucauld's
vanity imposed on his wit.
Very witty it is not, and it is
emphaticallyuntrue. "Old men
console themselves by giving good advice for being no longer able to
set bad examples." Capital; but the poor old men are often good
examples of the results of not
taking their own good advice. "Many
an ingrate is less to blame than his benefactor." One might add, at
least I will, "Every man who looks for
gratitude deserves to get
none of it." "To say that one never flirts--is flirting." I rather
like the old translator's
version of "Il y a de bons mariages; mais
il n'y en a point de delicieux"--"Marriage is sometimes convenient,
but never delightful."
How true is this of authors with a brief
popularity: "Il y a des
gens qui ressemblent aux vaudevilles, qu'on ne chante qu'un certain
temps." Again, "to be in haste to repay a kindness is a sort of
in
gratitude," and a rather insulting sort too. "Almost everybody
likes to repay small favours; many people can be
grateful for
favours not too weighty, but for favours truly great there is scarce
anything but in
gratitude." They must have been small favours that
Wordsworth had conferred when "the
gratitude of men had oftener left
him mourning." Indeed, the very pettiness of the aid we can
generally render each other, makes
gratitude the
touching thing it
is. So much is repaid for so little, and few can ever have the
chance of incurring the thanklessness that Rochefoucauld found all
but universal.
"Lovers and ladies never bore each other, because they never speak
of anything but themselves." Do husbands and wives often bore each
other for the same reason? Who said: "To know all is to forgive
all"? It is rather like "On pardonne tant que l'on aime"--"As long
as we love we can forgive," a comfortable
saying, and these are rare
in Rochefoucauld. "Women do not quite know what flirts they are" is
also, let us hope, not
incorrect. The maxim that "There is a love
so
excessive that it kills jealousy" is only a corollary from "as
long as we love, we forgive." You remember the
classical example,
Manon Lescaut and the Chevalier des Grieux; not an honourable
precedent.
"The
accent of our own country dwells in our hearts as well as on
our tongues." Ah! never may I lose the Border
accent! "Love's
Miracle! To cure a coquette." "Most honest women are tired of
their task," says this unbeliever. And the others? Are they never
aweary? The Duke is his own best
critic after all, when he says:
"The greatest fault of a penetrating wit is going beyond the mark."
Beyond the mark he frequently goes, but not when he says that we
come as fresh hands to each new epoch of life, and often want
experience for all our years. How hard it was to begin to be
middle-aged! Shall we find old age easier if ever we come to its
threshold? Perhaps, and Death perhaps the easiest of all. Nor let
me forget, it will be long before you have occasion to remember,
that "vivacity which grows with age is not far from folly."
OF VERS DE SOCIETE
To Mr. Gifted Hopkins.
My Dear Hopkins,--The verses which you have sent me, with a request
"to get published in some magazine," I now return to you. If you
are
anxious that they should be published, send them to an editor
yourself. If he likes them he will accept them from you. If he
does not like them, why should he like them because they are
forwarded by me? His only
motive would be an a
version to
disobliging a confrere, and why should I put him in such an
unpleasant position?
But this is a very boorish way of thanking you for the premiere
representation of your little poem. "To Delia in Girton" you call
it, "recommending her to avoid the Muses, and seek the society of
the Graces and Loves." An
old-fashioned preamble, and of the
lengthiest, and how do you go on? -