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CHILDHOOD PAST.

405

of the foremost happy conqueror." The hero in question was a fool, if you will, his author agrees; but so, urges the latter, is a sovereign a fool, that will give half a principality for a little crystal as big as a pigeon's egg, and called a diamond; so is a wealthy nobleman a fool, that will face danger or death, and spend half his life and all his tranquility caballing for a blue riband; so is a Dutch merchant a fool, that has been known to pay ten thousand crowns for a tulip. There is some particular prize we all value; whether it be to achieve a great reputation for learning, or to be a man of fashion and the talk of the town, or to consummate a work of art or poetry, and go to immortality that way. "Granted I am a fool," says the hero himself to accomplished St. John himself, "and no better than you; but you are no better than I. You have your folly you labour for; give me the charity of mine." By sports of some sort is every age beguiled; the sports of children satisfy the child. And rather childish sports will satisfy, and at least gratify, a childish man.

Frequent is Horace Walpole's perhaps affected "Alas!" prefixed to some such reflection as, that we are ridiculous animals; folly and gravity equally hunting shadows, and the deepest politician toiling but for a momentary rattle. It matters not, in his philosophy, with what visions or illusions, provided they are innocent, we amuse ourselves; and far from combating, he often loves to entertain them. "When one has outlived one's passions and pursuits, one should become inactive or morose if one's second childhood had not its rattles and fables like the first." This he wrote when past his grand climacteric; and four years later we find him asking Sir Horace Mann, after enumerating some of the curiosities of Strawberry Hill,-"Am I not an old simpleton to be wanting playthings still ? and how like is one's last cradle to one's first!" In another letter: "We must hope and make visions to the last. I am asking for samples of Ginori's porcelain at sixty-eight! Well, what signifies what baubles we pursue? Philosophers make systems, and we simpletons collections; and we are as wise as they-wiser perhaps, for we know that

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406

TOYS FOR ADULT TRIFLERS.

in a few years our rarities will be dispersed at an auction; and they flatter themselves that their reveries will be immortal, which has happened to no system yet. A curiosity may rise in value; a system is exploded." A year later, and our vieux insouciant is not clear but making or solving charades is as wise as anything we can do. "I should pardon professed philosophers if they would allow that their wisdom is only trifling, instead of calling their trifling wisdom." Manifold are the aids and appliances recognized by Crabbe for soothing life in its desponding hours:

"And by a coin, a flower, a verse, a boat,

The stagnant spirits have been set afloat;

They pleased at first, and then the habit grew,
Till the fond heart no higher pleasure knew ;
Till from all cares and other comforts freed,
The important nothing took in life the lead."

Byron is bitter on the common lot of play-making and play-acting, "through each dull, tedious, trifling part, which all regret, yet all rehearse." Mr. Emerson finds men victims of illusion in all parts of life; children, youths, adults, and old men, all are led by one bauble or another. Young complains, as becomes his Complaint, of those who call aloud

"For every bauble, drivelled o'er by sense;

For rattles, and conceits of every cast,

For change of follies, and relays of joys.”

La Bruyère says, that all that is wanting, ofttimes, to soothe
some great grief, and to make less poignant some great loss,
is "un beau cheval, ou un joli chien dont on se trouve le
maître, une tapisserie, une pendule," etc. Persius would have
us note what toys men's senseless lives engage, from playful
childhood up to reverend age,-nucibus non relictis.
A greater
satirist than he bids us—

"Behold the child, by nature's kindly law,
Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw :
Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight,
A little louder, but as empty quite :

GREAT PLAYTHINGS FOR GREAT PRINCES. 407

Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage,
And beads and prayer-books are the toys of age:
Pleased with this bauble still, as that before;

Till tired he sleeps, and Life's poor play is o'er.”

To pursue trifles, says Goldsmith, is the lot of humanity; though, whether we bustle in a pantomime or strut at a coronation, whether we shout at a bonfire or harangue in a senate-house-whatever object we follow, it will at last surely conduct us to futility and disappointment.* But, trivial things, invented and pursued for bread, as Mr. Dickens observes in the case of his Caleb Plummer, the old toymaker, become very serious matters of fact, and, apart from this consideration, his author owns himself not at all prepared to say, that if Caleb had been a Lord Chamberlain, or a Member of Parliament, or a lawyer, or even a great speculator, he would have dealt in toys one whit less whimsical, while he further owns to a very great doubt whether they would have been as harmless. Cowper was in the mood to back such a misgiving, when he wrote,

"Great princes have great playthings. Some have played
At hewing mountains into men, and some

At building human wonders mountains high.

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Some seek diversion in the tented field,

And make the sorrows of mankind their sport.

But war's a game, which, were their subjects wise,

Kings would not play at.

Subjects would do well

To extort their truncheons from the puny hands
Of heroes, whose infirm and baby minds
Are gratified with mischief, and who spoil,
Because men suffer it, their toy the world."

*"The wise bustle and laugh as they walk in the pageant, but fools bustle and are important; and this probably is all the difference between them."-Citizen of the World, letter cxxii.

408

THE INCONSEQUENT CREATURE, MAN.

THE INCONSEQUENT CREATURE, MAN.
ROMANS vii. 15, 19 sq.

POET

OETRY, as well as science, has, by poetical licence, its definitions to offer of Man. And one of these is, "The inconsequent creature, man,-for that's his speciality." Whether St. Paul was discussing man christianized or not, in that problematical seventh chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, he would probably have accepted the definition by way of illustrating his text. "For that which I do I allow

not; for what I would, that do I not: but what I hate, that do The good that I would, I do not: but the evil I find then a law, that,

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I. which I would not, that I do. . when I would do good, evil is present with me," the result being, that he, the man in question, the representative man, with his mind served the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.

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Men define a man,

The creature who stands frontward to the stars,
The creature who looks inward to himself;
The tool-wright laughing creature.

'Tis enough:

We'll say instead, the inconsequent creature, man,-
For that's his speciality. What creature else
Conceives the circle, and then walks the square?

Loves things proved bad, and leaves a thing proved good?”

So various and inconsistent is human nature, says Chesterfield in more than one of his letters,-so strong and so changeable are our passions, so fluctuating are our wills, and so much are our minds influenced by the accidents of our bodies, that every man is more the man of the day, than a regular and "consequential character." Hence, his lordship professes to look with some contempt upon those refining and sagacious historians who ascribe all, even the most common events, to some deep political cause; "whereas mankind is made up of inconsistencies, and no man acts invariably up to his predominant character." Our jarring passions, our variable*

*There are some remarks almost identically the same in David Hume's chapter on Liberty and Necessity.

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ALTER ET IDEM.

409

humours, and the like, "produce such contradictions in our conduct, that I believe those are the oftenest mistaken who ascribe our actions to the most seemingly obvious motives." Again and again he warns his readers against supposing that, because man is a rational animal, he will therefore always act rationally; or, because he has such or such a predominant passion, that he will act invariably and "consequentially" in the pursuit of it. No, we are, on my lord's showing, complicated machines; and though we have one main-spring that gives motion to the whole, we have an infinity of little wheels, which, in their turns, retard, precipitate, and sometimes stop that motion. The characters men draw in books have been well said by a real student of character to hang together in too wonderful a harmony of parts: if we had to deal with them, we should know what we were about, so amazingly consistent are they. We may and do exclaim, "How natural! what a wonderful knowledge of human nature has Scott, or Richardson, or Dickens, or Charlotte Brontè!" But the difficulty in real life, objects a dissertator on the study of character, is, that people are not natural-that they are inconsistent, inconsequent —that their deviations from their proper selves would disgrace a novel and spoil any author's reputation. Take, as he says, some men and compare them one year with another, one day with another, and there is absolutely scarce a trace of the former man. "Hamlet puzzles the commentators because he is not always reconcilable with himself; but, surely, all of us can point out some one or more compared with whom Hamlet is plain sailing." We may always, it is alleged, detect a real character amongst shadows in a novel by his want of harmony.

La Bruyère was alive to this when he penned Les Caractères. "Je me contredis, il est vrai; accusez-en les hommes, dont je ne fais que rapporter les jugemens, je ne dis pas des différens hommes, je dis les mêmes qui jugent si différemment." And still more pointedly, and to the point, he says in another chapter : "Les hommes n'ont point de caractères, ou s'ils en ont, c'est celui de n'en avoir aucun qui soit suivi, qui ne se démente point, et où ils soient reconnoissables." "Ils ont des passions contraires,

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