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Table Talk, Essays on Men and Manners

W >> William Hazlitt >> Table Talk, Essays on Men and Manners




Further, what is meant by perfection in mechanical exercises is the
performing certain feats to a uniform nicety, that is, in fact,
undertaking no more than you can perform. You task yourself, the limit
you fix is optional, and no more than human industry and skill can
attain to; but you have no abstract, independent standard of difficulty
or excellence (other than the extent of your own powers). Thus he who
can keep up four brass balls does this _to perfection_; but he cannot
keep up five at the same instant, and would fail every time he attempted
it. That is, the mechanical performer undertakes to emulate himself,
not to equal another.[2] But the artist undertakes to imitate another,
or to do what Nature has done, and this it appears is more difficult,
viz. to copy what she has set before us in the face of nature or 'human
face divine,' entire and without a blemish, than to keep up four brass
balls at the same instant, for the one is done by the power of human
skill and industry, and the other never was nor will be. Upon the
whole, therefore, I have more respect for Reynolds than I have for
Richer; for, happen how it will, there have been more people in the
world who could dance on a rope like the one than who could paint like
Sir Joshua. The latter was but a bungler in his profession to the
other, it is true; but then be had a harder taskmaster to obey, whose
will was more wayward and obscure, and whose instructions it was more
difficult to practise. You can put a child apprentice to a tumbler or
rope-dancer with a comfortable prospect of success, if they are but
sound of wind and limb; but you cannot do the same thing in painting.
The odds are a million to one. You may make indeed as many Haydons and
H----s as you put into that sort of machine, but not one Reynolds
amongst them all, with his grace, his grandeur, his blandness of gusto,
'in tones and gestures hit,' unless you could make the man over again.
To snatch this grace beyond the reach of art is then the height of
art--where fine art begins, and where mechanical skill ends. The soft
suffusion of the soul, the speechless breathing eloquence, the looks
'commercing with the skies,' the ever-shifting forms of an eternal
principle, that which is seen but for a moment, but dwells in the heart
always, and is only seized as it passes by strong and secret sympathy,
must be taught by nature and genius, not by rules or study. It is
suggested by feeling, not by laborious microscopic inspection; in
seeking for it without, we lose the harmonious clue to it within; and in
aiming to grasp the substance, we let the very spirit of art evaporate.
In a word, the objects of fine art are not the objects of sight, but as
these last are the objects of taste and imagination, that is, as they
appeal to the sense of beauty, of pleasure, and of power in the human
breast, and are explained by that finer sense, and revealed in their
inner structure to the eye in return. Nature is also a language.
Objects, like words, have a meaning; and the true artist is the
interpreter of this language, which he can only do by knowing its
application to a thousand other objects in a thousand other situations.
Thus the eye is too blind a guide of itself to distinguish between the
warm or cold tone of a deep-blue sky; but another sense acts as a
monitor to it and does not err. The colour of the leaves in autumn
would be nothing without the feeling that accompanies it; but it is that
feeling that stamps them on the canvas, faded, seared, blighted,
shrinking from the winter's flaw, and makes the sight as true as touch--

And visions, as poetic eyes avow,
Cling to each leaf and hang on every bough.

The more ethereal, evanescent, more refined and sublime part of art is
the seeing nature through the medium of sentiment and passion, as each
object is a symbol of the affections and a link in the chain of our
endless being. But the unravelling this mysterious web of thought and
feeling is alone in the Muse's gift, namely, in the power of that
trembling sensibility which is awake to every change and every
modification of its ever-varying impressions, that

Thrills in each nerve, and lives along the line.


This power is indifferently called genius, imagination, feeling, taste;
but the manner in which it acts upon the mind can neither be defined by
abstract rules, as is the case in science, nor verified by continual,
unvarying experiments, as is the case in mechanical performances. The
mechanical excellence of the Dutch painters in colouring and handling is
that which comes the nearest in fine art to the perfection of certain
manual exhibitions of skill. The truth of the effect and the facility
with which it is produced are equally admirable. Up to a certain point
everything is faultless. The hand and eye have done their part. There
is only a want of taste and genius. It is after we enter upon that
enchanted ground that the human mind begins to droop and flag as in a
strange road, or in a thick mist, benighted and making little way with
many attempts and many failures, and that the best of us only escape
with half a triumph. The undefined and the imaginary are the regions
that we must pass like Satan, difficult and doubtful, 'half flying, half
on foot.' The object in sense is a positive thing, and execution comes
with practice.

Cleverness is a certain _knack_ or aptitude at doing certain things,
which depend more on a particular adroitness and off-hand readiness than
on force or perseverance, such as making puns, making epigrams, making
extempore verses, mimicking the company, mimicking a style, etc.
Cleverness is either liveliness and smartness, or something answering to
_sleight of hand_, like letting a glass fall sideways off a table, or
else a trick, like knowing the secret spring of a watch.
Accomplishments are certain external graces, which are to be learned
from others, and which are easily displayed to the admiration of the
beholder, viz. dancing, riding, fencing, music, and so on. These
ornamental acquirements are only proper to those who are at ease in mind
and fortune. I know an individual who, if he had been born to an estate
of five thousand a year, would have been the most accomplished gentleman
of the age. He would have been the delight and envy of the circle in
which he moved--would have graced by his manners the liberality flowing
from the openness of his heart, would have laughed with the women, have
argued with the men, have said good things and written agreeable ones,
have taken a hand at piquet or the lead at the harpsichord, and have set
and sung his own verses--nugae canorae--with tenderness and spirit; a
Rochester without the vice, a modern Surrey! As it is, all these
capabilities of excellence stand in his way. He is too versatile for a
professional man, not dull enough for a political drudge, too gay to be
happy, too thoughtless to be rich. He wants the enthusiasm of the poet,
the severity of the prose-writer, and the application of the man of
business. Talent differs from genius as voluntary differs from
involuntary power. Ingenuity is genius in trifles; greatness is genius
in undertakings of much pith and moment. A clever or ingenious man is
one who can do anything well, whether it is worth doing or not; a great
man is one who can do that which when done is of the highest importance.
Themistocles said he could not play on the flute, but that he could
make of a small city a great one. This gives one a pretty good idea of
the distinction in question.

Greatness is great power, producing great effects. It is not enough
that a man has great power in himself; he must show it to all the world
in a way that cannot be hid or gainsaid. He must fill up a certain idea
in the public mind. I have no other notion of greatness than this
twofold definition, great results springing from great inherent energy.
The great in visible objects has relation to that which extends over
space; the great in mental ones has to do with space and time. No man
is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness
is the page of history. Nothing can be said to be great that has a
distinct limit, or that borders on something evidently greater than
itself. Besides, what is short-lived and pampered into mere notoriety
is of a gross and vulgar quality in itself. A Lord Mayor is hardly a
great man. A city orator or patriot of the day only show, by reaching
the height of their wishes, the distance they are at from any true
ambition. Popularity is neither fame nor greatness. A king (as such)
is not a great man. He has great power, but it is not his own. He
merely wields the lever of the state, which a child, an idiot, or a
madman can do. It is the office, not the man we gaze at. Any one else
in the same situation would be just as much an object of abject
curiosity. We laugh at the country girl who having seen a king
expressed her disappointment by saying, 'Why, he is only a man!' Yet,
knowing this, we run to see a king as if he was something more than a
man.--To display the greatest powers, unless they are applied to great
purposes, makes nothing for the character of greatness. To throw a
barleycorn through the eye of a needle, to multiply nine figures by nine
in the memory, argues definite dexterity of body and capacity of mind,
but nothing comes of either. There is a surprising power at work, but
the effects are not proportionate, or such as take hold of the
imagination. To impress the idea of power on others, they must be made
in some way to feel it. It must be communicated to their understandings
in the shape of an increase of knowledge, or it must subdue and overawe
them by subjecting their wills. Admiration to be solid and lasting must
be founded on proofs from which we have no means of escaping; it is
neither a slight nor a voluntary gift. A mathematician who solves a
profound problem, a poet who creates an image of beauty in the mind that
was not there before, imparts knowledge and power to others, in which
his greatness and his fame consists, and on which it reposes. Jedediah
Buxton will be forgotten; but Napier's bones will live. Lawgivers,
philosophers, founders of religion, conquerors and heroes, inventors and
great geniuses in arts and sciences, are great men, for they are great
public benefactors, or formidable scourges to mankind. Among ourselves,
Shakespear, Newton, Bacon, Milton, Cromwell, were great men, for they
showed great power by acts and thoughts, that have not yet been
consigned to oblivion. They must needs be men of lofty stature, whose
shadows lengthen out to remote posterity. A great farce-writer may be a
great man; for Moliere was but a great farce-writer. In my mind, the
author of _Don Quixote_ was a great man. So have there been many
others. A great chess-player is not a great man, for he leaves the
world as he found it. No act terminating in itself constitutes
greatness. This will apply to all displays of power or trials of skill
which are confined to the momentary, individual effort, and construct no
permanent image or trophy of themselves without them. Is not an actor
then a great man, because 'he dies and leaves the world no copy'? I
must make an exception for Mrs. Siddons, or else give up my definition
of greatness for her sake. A man at the top of his profession is not
therefore a great man. He is great in his way, but that is all, unless
he shows the marks of a great moving intellect, so that we trace the
master-mind, and can sympathise with the springs that urge him on. The
rest is but a craft or _mystery_. John Hunter was a great man--_that_
any one might see without the smallest skill in surgery. His style and
manner showed the man. He would set about cutting up the carcass of a
whale with the same greatness of gusto that Michael Angelo would have
hewn a block of marble. Lord Nelson was a great naval commander; but
for myself, I have not much opinion of a seafaring life. Sir Humphry
Davy is a great chemist, but I am not sure that he is a great man. I am
not a bit the wiser for any of his discoveries, nor I never met with any
one that was. But it is in the nature of greatness to propagate an idea
of itself, as wave impels wave, circle without circle. It is a
contradiction in terms for a coxcomb to be a great man. A really great
man has always an idea of something greater than himself. I have
observed that certain sectaries and polemical writers have no higher
compliment to pay their most shining lights than to say that "Such a one
was a considerable man in his day." Some new elucidation of a text sets
aside the authority of the old interpretation, and a "great scholar's
memory outlives him half a century," at the utmost. A rich man is not a
great man, except to his dependents and his steward. A lord is a great
man in the idea we have of his ancestry, and probably of himself, if we
know nothing of him but his title. I have heard a story of two bishops,
one of whom said (speaking of St. Peter's at Rome) that when he first
entered it, he was rather awe-struck, but that as he walked up it, his
mind seemed to swell and dilate with it, and at last to fill the whole
building: the other said that as he saw more of it, he appeared to
himself to grow less and less every step he took, and in the end to
dwindle into nothing. This was in some respects a striking picture of a
great and little mind; for greatness sympathises with greatness, and
littleness shrinks into itself. The one might have become a Wolsey; the
other was only fit to become a Mendicant Friar--or there might have been
court reasons for making him a bishop. The French have to me a
character of littleness in all about them; but they have produced three
great men that belong to every country, Moliere, Rabelais, and
Montaigne.

To return from this digression, and conclude Essay. A singular instance
of manual dexterity was shown in the person of the late John Cavanaugh,
whom I have several times seen. His death was celebrated at the time in
an article in the _Examiner_ newspaper (Feb. 7, 1819), written
apparently between jest and earnest; but as it is _pat_ to our purpose,
and falls in with my own way of considering such subjects, I shall here
take leave to quote it:--

'Died at his house in Burbage Street, St. Giles's, John Cavanagh, the
famous hand fives-player. When a person dies who does any one thing
better than any one else in the world, which so many others are trying
to do well, it leaves a gap in society. It is not likely that any one
will now see the game of fives played in its perfection for many years
to come--for Cavanagh is dead, and has not left his peer behind him. It
may be said that there are things of more importance than striking a
ball against a wall--there are things, indeed, that make more noise and
do as little good, such as making war and peace, making speeches and
answering them, making verses and blotting them, making money and
throwing it away. But the game of fives is what no one despises who has
ever played at it. It is the finest exercise for the body, and the best
relaxation for the mind. The Roman poet said that "Care mounted behind
the horseman and stuck to his skirts." But this remark would not have
applied to the fives-player. He who takes to playing at fives is twice
young. He feels neither the past nor future "in the instant." Debts,
taxes, "domestic treason, foreign levy, nothing can touch him further."
He has no other wish, no other thought, from the moment the game begins,
but that of striking the ball, of placing it, of _making_ it! This
Cavanagh was sure to do. Whenever he touched the ball there was an end
of the chase. His eye was certain, his hand fatal, his presence of mind
complete. He could do what he pleased, and he always knew exactly what
to do. He saw the whole game, and played it; took instant advantage of
his adversary's weakness, and recovered balls, as if by a miracle and
from sudden thought, that every one gave for lost. He had equal power
and skill, quickness and judgment. He could either outwit his
antagonist by finesse, or beat him by main strength. Sometimes, when he
seemed preparing to send the ball with the full swing of his arm, he
would by a slight turn of his wrist drop it within an inch of the line.
In general, the ball came from his hand, as if from a racket, in a
straight, horizontal line; so that it was in vain to attempt to overtake
or stop it. As it was said of a great orator that he never was at a
loss for a word, and for the properest word, so Cavanagh always could
tell the degree of force necessary to be given to a ball, and the
precise direction in which it should be sent. He did his work with the
greatest ease; never took more pains than was necessary; and while
others were fagging themselves to death, was as cool and collected as if
he had just entered the court. His style of play was as remarkable as
his power of execution. He had no affectation, no trifling. He did not
throw away the game to show off an attitude or try an experiment. He
was a fine, sensible, manly player, who did what he could, but that was
more than any one else could even affect to do. His blows were not
undecided and ineffectual--lumbering like Mr. Wordsworth's epic poetry,
nor wavering like Mr. Coleridge's lyric prose, nor short of the mark
like Mr. Brougham's speeches, nor wide of it like Mr. Canning's wit, nor
foul like the _Quarterly_, nor _let_ balls like the _Edinburgh Review_.
Cobbett and Junius together would have made a Cavanagh. He was the best
_up-hill_ player in the world; even when his adversary was fourteen, he
would play on the same or better, and as he never flung away the game
through carelessness and conceit, he never gave it through laziness or
want of heart. The only peculiarity of his play was that he never
_volleyed_, but let the balls hop; but if they rose an inch from the
ground he never missed having them. There was not only nobody equal,
but nobody second to him. It is supposed that he could give any other
player half the game, or beat him with his left hand. His service was
tremendous. He once played Woodward and Meredith together (two of the
best players in England) in the Fives-court, St. Martin's street, and
made seven and twenty aces following by services alone--a thing unheard
of. He another time played Peru, who was considered a first-rate
fives-player, a match of the best out of five games, and in the three
first games, which of course decided the match, Peru got only one ace.
Cavanagh was an Irishman by birth, and a house-painter by profession.
He had once laid aside his working-dress, and walked up, in his smartest
clothes, to the Rosemary Branch to have an afternoon's pleasure. A
person accosted him, and asked him if he would have a game. So they
agreed to play for half a crown a game and a bottle of cider. The first
game began--it was seven, eight, ten, thirteen, fourteen, all. Cavanagh
won it. The next was the same. They played on, and each game was
hardly contested. "There," said the unconscious fives-player, "there
was a stroke that Cavanagh could not take: I never played better in my
life, and yet I can't win a game. I don't know how it is!" However,
they played on, Cavanagh winning every game, and the bystanders drinking
the cider and laughing all the time. In the twelfth game, when Cavanagh
was only four, and the stranger thirteen, a person came in and said,
"What! are you here, Cavanagh?" The words were no sooner pronounced
than the astonished player let the hall drop from his hand, and saying,
"What! have I been breaking my heart all this time to beat Cavanagh?"
refused to make another effort. "And yet, I give you my word," said
Cavanagh, telling the story with some triumph, "I played all the while
with my clenched fist."--He used frequently to ploy matches at
Copenhagen House for wagers and dinners. The wall against which they
play is the same that supports the kitchen-chimney, and when the wall
resounded louder than usual, the cooks exclaimed, "Those are the
Irishman's balls," and the joints trembled on the spit!--Goldsmith
consoled himself that there were places where he too was admired: and
Cavanagh was the admiration of all the fives-courts where he ever
played. Mr. Powell, when he played matches in the Court in St.
Martin's Street, used to fill his gallery at half a crown a head with
amateurs and admirers of talent in whatever department it is shown. He
could not have shown himself in any ground in England but he would have
been immediately surrounded with inquisitive gazers, trying to find out
in what part of his frame his unrivalled skill lay, as politicians
wonder to see the balance of Europe suspended in Lord Castlereagh's
face, and admire the trophies of the British Navy lurking under Mr.
Croker's hanging brow. Now Cavanagh was as good-looking a man as the
Noble Lord, and much better looking than the Right Hon. Secretary. He
had a clear, open countenance, and did not look sideways or down, like
Mr. Murray the bookseller. He was a young fellow of sense, humour, and
courage. He once had a quarrel with a waterman at Hungerford Stairs,
and, they say, served him out in great style. In a word, there are
hundreds at this day who cannot mention his name without admiration, as
the best fives-player that perhaps ever lived (the greatest excellence
of which they have any notion); and the noisy shout of the ring happily
stood him in stead of the unheard voice of posterity!--The only person
who seems to have excelled as much in another way as Cavanagh did in his
was the late John Davies, the racket-player. It was remarked of him
that he did not seem to follow the ball, but the ball seemed to follow
him. Give him a foot of wall, and he was sure to make the ball. The
four best racket-players of that day were Jack Spines, Jem Harding,
Armitage, and Church. Davies could give any one of these two hands a
time, that is, half the game, and each of these, at their best, could
give the best player now in London the same odds. Such are the
gradations in all exertions of human skill and art. He once played four
capital players together, and beat them. He was also a first-rate
tennis-player and an excellent fives-player. In the Fleet or King's
Bench he would have stood against Powell, who was reckoned the best
open-ground player of his time. This last-mentioned player is at
present the keeper of the Fives-court, and we might recommend to him for
a motto over his door, "Who enters here, forgets himself, his country,
and his friends." And the best of it is, that by the calculation of the
odds, none of the three are worth remembering!--Cavanagh died from the
bursting of a blood-vessel, which prevented him from playing for the
last two or three years. This, he was often heard to say, he thought
hard upon him. He was fast recovering, however, when he was suddenly
carried off, to the regret of all who knew him. As Mr. Peel made it a
qualification of the present Speaker, Mr. Manners Sutton, that he was an
excellent moral character, so Jack Cavanagh was a zealous Catholic, and
could not be persuaded to eat meat on a Friday, the day on which he
died. We have paid this willing tribute to his memory.

Let no rude hand deface it,
And his forlorn "_Hic Jacet_."'



NOTES to ESSAY IX


[1] The celebrated Peter Pindar (Dr. Wolcot) first discovered and
brought out the talents of the late Mr. Opie the painter. He was a poor
Cornish boy, and was out at work in the fields when the poet went in
search of him. 'Well, my lad, can you go and bring me your very best
picture?' The other flew like lightning, and soon came back with what
he considered as his masterpiece. The stranger looked at it, and the
young artist, after waiting for some time without his giving any
opinion, at length exclaimed eagerly, 'Well, what do you think of it?'
'Think of it?' said Wolcot; 'Why, I think you ought to be ashamed of
it--that you, who might do so well, do no better!' The same answer
would have applied to this artist's latest performances, that had been
suggested by one of his earliest efforts.

[2] If two persons play against each other at any game, one of them
necessarily fails.



ESSAY X


ON LIVING TO ONE'S-SELF[1]


Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,
Or by the lazy Scheldt or wandering Po.

I never was in a better place or humour than I am at present for writing
on this subject. I have a partridge getting ready for my supper, my
fire is blazing on the hearth, the air is mild for the season of the
year, I have had but a slight fit of indigestion to-day (the only thing
that makes me abhor myself), I have three hours good before me, and
therefore I will attempt it. It is as well to do it at once as to have
it to do for a week to come.

If the writing on this subject is no easy task, the thing itself is a
harder one. It asks a troublesome effort to ensure the admiration of
others: it is a still greater one to be satisfied with one's own
thoughts. As I look from the window at the wide bare heath before me,
and through the misty moonlight air see the woods that wave over the top
of Winterslow,

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