whatsoever science is not consonant to presuppositions must pray in aid Similitudes." "Neither Philosopher nor Historiographer," says Sir Philip Sidney, "could at the first have entered into the gates of popular judgment if they had not taken a great Passport of Poetry," which deals so in Similitudes. "For he " (the poet) "doth not only show the way, but giveth so sweet a prospect into the way as will entice any man to enter into it. Nay, he doth, as if your journey should lie through a fair vineyard, at the very first give you a cluster of grapes, that, full of that taste, you may long to pass further." Who can doubt that Plato wins us to his Wisdom by that skin and body of Poetry in which Sir Philip declares his philosophy is clothed? Not the sententious oracle of one wise man, but evolved dramatically by many like ourselves. The scene opens in Old Athens, which his genius continues for us for ever new; the morning dawns; a breeze from the Ægæan flutters upon our foreheads; the rising sun tips the friezes of the Parthenon, and gradually slants upon the house in whose yet twilight courts gather a company of white-vested, whispering guests, "expecting till that fountain of wisdom," Protagoras, should arise? Carlyle notices, as one of Goethe's chief gifts, "his emblematic intellect, his never-failing tendency to transform into shape, Eastern fables. Birds and beasts are made to reason, instead of representing the passions and affections they really share with men. This also is the vital fault of Dryden's Hind and Panther. into life, the feeling that may dwell in him. Every thing has form, has visual existence; the poet's imagination bodies forth the forms of things unseen, and his pen turns them into shape." The same is, I believe, remarkable, probably too remarkable, in Richter: and is especially characteristic of Carlyle himself, who to a figurative genius, like Goethe's, adds a passion which Goethe either had not or chose to suppress, which brands the truth double-deep. And who can doubt that Bacon, could it possibly have been his own, would have clothed Bentham's bare argument with cloth of gold? He says again, "Reasons plainly delivered, and always after one manner, especially with fine and fastidious minds, enter heavily and dully; whereas, if they be varied, and have more life and vigour put into them by these forms and imaginations, they carry a stronger apprehension, and many times win the mind to a resolution." Which, if it be true in any matter, most of all surely in morals, for the most part so old, so trite, and, in this naughty world, so dull. Are not all minds grown "fine and fastidious" in these matters, apt to close against any but the most musical voice? Which also (to join the snake's head and tail of this rambling overgrown Preface) may account, rightly or wrongly, for my rejection of those essayists aforesaid, (who crippled their native genius by a style which has left them "more of the ballast than the sail,") and my adoption of earlier and later writers. Not, as I said before, in copious draughts of their eloquence and what pages of Bacon and Browne it is far easier to bear than forbear!—but where the writer has gone to the heart of a matter, the centre of the circle, hit the nail on the head and driven it home-Proverb-wise, in fact. For in proportion as any writer tells the truth, and tells it figuratively or poetically, and yet so as to lie in a nutshell, he cuts up sooner or later into proverbs shorter or longer, and gradually gets down into general circulation. Some extracts are from note-books, where the author's name was forgot; some from the conversation of friends that must alike remain anonymous; and some that glance but lightly at the truth are not without purpose inserted to relieve a book of dogmatic morals. "Durum et durum non faciunt murum." And now Mountain opens and discovers POLONIUS: A COLLECTION OF WISE SAWS AND MODERN INSTANCES. Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, QUICKNESS OF WIT. I MAKE no more estimation of repeating a great number of names or words upon once hearing, or the pouring forth of a number of verses or rhymes extempore, or the making of a satirical simile of every thing, or the turning of every thing to a jest, or the falsifying or contradicting of every thing by cavil, or the like, (whereof in the faculties of the mind there is great copia, and such as by device and practice may be brought to an extreme degree of wonder,) than I do of the tricks of tumblers, funambules, baladines— the one being the same in the mind that the other is in the body; matters of strangeness without worthiness. 66 Bacon. Quickness is among the least of the mind's properties, and belongs to her in almost her lowest state; nay, it doth not abandon her when she is driven from her home, when she is wandering and insane. The mad often retain it; the liar has it; the cheat has it; we find it on the race-course and at the card-table: education does not give it; and reflection takes away from it." |