to discover perpetual motion, or to square the circle. They are, we may be sure, grossly ignorant, and, in all likelihood, intolerably arrogant. They must be ignorant of other men's work, or blind to the vast improbability that they should be right, and all the great intellects of the world hopelessly wrong. Yet, even in this case, pity as much as scorn may be due to the ignorance; and the arrogance itself is but the ugly side or the exaggerated development of the quality which, more than any other, is necessary for intellectual progress. We have never a sufficient supply of originality and intellectual daring. We always need more men able to cast aside the traditional spectacles, to see for themselves and once more test the dogmas which our indolence tempts us to accept with too easy a faith. Such courage is good, even when misguided. Find men who will dare, and all is possible. Let obedience to authority be installed as the first intellectual virtue, and knowledge will be petrified into Chinese finality. And, if even such eccentricity deserves that contempt should be tempered with mercy, may we not rightfully honor many others who have thrown away their lives, like poor Casaubon in Middlemarch, in labors fruitless because accidentally misdirected? It is a great misfortune, but it is not a vice, to be an anachronism.

But what are we to say to that great army of martyrs, amongst whom poor Haydon is to be reckoned-the epic poets, the rivals of Shakspeare, the wouldbe eclipsers of Raphael or Phidias-the men whose efforts to sing or to paint have supplied the world with mountains of waste-paper, and spoilt acres of good canvas? One of the most pathetic of Balzac's minor stories describes the fate of a poor painter, who had labored for years at a picture destined to create a new era in art. All his hopes in life, his love and his ambition, were involved in its success. No one had been admitted to the room in which he labored with unremitted devotion. At last, the day came when the favored person stood before the curtain which concealed the masterpiece. The painter drew it aside, slowly and solemnly, and revealed a meaningless confusion of chaotic coloring. The artist's mind was of course unhinged; but his melancholy story is a

symbol of the fate of many men still out side Bedlam. Any one who has seen the darker side of the literary and artistic worlds can match Balzac's hero with numerous instances of similar self-delusion. The pictures are not often mere random blotches of color; the poems frequently obey the laws of grammar, and even of metre; but, for all good purposes, the artist might as well have thrown his brush at the canvas, or the author taken his words at random from the dictionary. And what should be our feeling? Contempt or pity or admiration for the devotion, combined with compassion for the error? Should we honor, say, a Chatterton who is a martyr to his ambition, because the poems unrecognised during his life-time turned out really to have something in them (though, after all, not very much!) and despise the numerous Chattertons who have hopelessly failed, because there was nothing in them at all? The moral quality was the same. The difference was that one man judged his powers rightly, whilst the hundreds judge of their powers wrongly. But this is an error to which almost every man is liable. Our squarers of the circle are silly, because they can appeal to a court which is practically infallible. A hundred professors of mathematics are ready not only to tell them that they are wrong, but to explain to them how and why they are wrong. But the poet can appeal to no such court. If he is not appreciated, it may be that he is in advance, not in rear, of his time. A century hence, his work may be winning recognition, and his descendants be ridiculing the blindness of their ancestors. Why, then, should he not persevere, and trust his work to time? Do we not, in any case, owe to him the tribute of admiration for a devotion, of which it is premature to pronounce that it was directed to a mistaken object?

The easiest answer is that a false estimate of our own merits is in fact immoral. Vanity is weakness which we can all condemn unreservedly, because we all feel that we are free from it ourselves, and recognise its existence throughout the rest of the species. The appointed chastisement of vanity is ridicule. Therefore we are right in laughing at the man who thinks himself to be

3 Milton when he is merely a Satan Montgomery. The victim may reply that we are begging the question, and that what we call his vanity will hereafter be called consciousness of genius. And, in truth, the dilemma is in one sense insoluble. Critics are fallible; cliques are fallible. The outside public is so fallible as to be generally wrong; no literary court is infallible except that to which the best minds of all ages are admitted as judges, and in which many of our most dogmatic utterances would look foolish enough. Yet we must take our chance. Judges must sentence prisoners, though now and then they may condemn an innocent person. Critics must laugh at charlatans, though they may now and then mistake a man of genius for a fool. But there is a more fundamental difficulty. Granting that a man's confidence in his own powers really implies vanity, are we therefore justified in condemning him? Is vanity a vice at all? Is it not in any case a vice so universal that none of us have a right to cast the first stone? Nay, if we lay aside the conventional attitude of mind, in which our little cut-and-dried maxims pass for legitimate currency, ought we not rather to call vanity a virtue, or at lowest a desirable quality? Listen to the ordinary moralising of the pulpit and the moral essayist, and we, of course, must condemn vanity, as on the same showing we condemn many of the most essential qualities by which the world is carried on. There is a sense-nobody denies it-in which these commonplaces have a sound, if a rather obvious, meaning. But all maxims that have been much used by preachers-lay or clerical -become so strained and perverted in the process that, like worn-out muskets, they are apt to produce very random shooting. Who that has looked at the world for himself can deny that vanity may be reckoned amongst the most enviable of possessions? It deserves, even more than the original object of the panegyric, the praise which Sancho bestowed upon sleep. Vanity does indeed wrap a man up like a cloak. It bestows its blessings freely upon the poet striving against general misappreciation; it enables the poor loser in the great battle of life to make himself happy with some trifling success; it softens the

bitter pangs of disappointment and gives fresh strength for new struggles; it prevents resentment and facilitates the intercourse of society; it can make any man contented with his lot and lets the poor drudge in the kitchen think without envy of the statesman in the parior. Who would not be tempted to frequent irritation if he could enjoy that gift for which the poet so foolishly prayed, the gift of seeing himself as others saw him, and recognise his infinitesimal importance in the eyes of his fellows? It is because of the tender illusions of vanity that a man can accept the petty sphere of his own activity for the wider circle of the world, and shut out the annihilating image of the vast forces beyond. It is the safeguard against a depressing fatalism. Vanity has as many virtues as the vaunted panaceas of medical quackery; and were it not for that softening oil, the wheels of life would grate harsh music too discordant for mortal ears.

Yet in singing the praises of vanity we become aware of a certain vagueness of outline about this Protean goddess. She can take many shapes; and changes so rapidly and completely that we are unable to fix any definite portrait upon our canvas. Sometimes there is a scowl upon her features, and sometimes a complacent smile. She can pass herself off in the likeness of her conventional opposite, humility, or ape the gestures of pride, or be undistinguishable from mere sullen egotism. All our definitions of the passions have this provoking vagueness, because, in truth, we do not know what are the ultimate elements of character. We cannot find chemical formulæ for human nature, or say how many atoms of spiritual oxygen or hydrogen must be combined to form a definite product. Our efforts at analysis break down at every instant. Every new light thrown by new circumstances brings out previously unsuspected aspects of bewildering complexity. Every new character seems to require a new category for its description. There seem to be as many species of men as there are individuals. Our complacent little formulæ may guide our conduct with tolerable accuracy; but, when we confront theory with the infinite variety of facts, we recognise the futility of any claim to scientific accuracy. We class men as good or

bad, humble or vain; and when looking at exceptional cases, or dealing only with large classes and average results, our words have a kind of meaning. The saint and the sinner, St. John and Judas Iscariot, may be distinguished easily enough. But between the extremes we may interpose any number of terms, varying so strangely, in so many directions, and combining so many apparent contradictions, that our lines of demarcation become hopelessly blurred and confused. Our compartments may be most logically subdivided, but no real being will quite fit into any one of them. The inferior classes multiply on our lands; they cross, blend, overlap and confuse each other till we admit them to be useless. We can seldom apply a rule to a dozen cases without finding twelve exceptions. The qualifications to our statements become so numerous that the statements are practically worthless. The poet can create characters; the man of science cannot define them or assign their composition.

Thus the condemnation of vanity collapses when we try to answer the plain question, what is vanity? Try to define accurately the various cognate terms, vanity, conceit, pride, egotism, and their numerous allies, to mark out accurately their points of resemblance and contrast, and then test your conclusions by appropriate examples. Take a few cases at random. Here is Miss Martineau, for example, who says in her autobiography that all the distinguished men of her time were vain and she does not add that the limits of time or sex are a necessary part of the assertion. But was she not vain herself? No, for she formed a singularly modest and sound estimate of her own abilities. But again, yes, for she certainly seems to have considered that to one person at least Miss Martineau was incomparably the most interesting person in the universe, that coming generations would be profoundly interested in the analysis of her character and the genesis of her works; and also that the merits of her contemporaries might be accurately gauged by the extent to which they did or did not sympathise with Harriet Martineau. Is not egotism of this kind mere vanity disguised by a superficial air of impartiality? Take the vanity, again, which is revealed so curiously

in the recently published letters of Balzac. Here it becomes a force which leads a man to reckon himself amongst the four greatest heroes of his age and goes far to make him what he supposes himself to be. It develops a kind of monomania leading to utter absorption in his own affairs, in his literary ambition, and, above all, in calculations as to the number of francs into which his genius can be coined. Was it a strength or a weakness? Contrast it with the vanity-for many people will call it vanity-of his contemporary Doudan. Doudan's letters reveal to us a man of that admirable fineness of intellect so conspicuous in the best French writers, which may be defined as the sublimated essence of common sense. But his exquisite sensibility was pushed to such a point as to destroy his fertility, and but for his letters his name would have been known to his fellows only through a passing allusion of Ste.-Beuve. Shall we say that Balzac's vanity led him to produce the Comédie Humaine, and Doudan's humility made him produce-nothing? Then vanity is so far a good and humility a bad thing. Or shall we say that this excessive sensibility is but vanity disguised?-that a man who trembles before criticism thinks too much of his own importance? The theory is a common one and enables us verbally to condemn vanity in all forms; but it implicitly admits, too, that vanity may produce diametrically opposite results and at times co-operate hand-in-hand with humility.

Infuse vanity into such a man as Goldsmith, and it adds a child-like charm to his character; it gives a tinge of delightful humor to his writing, and enables his friends to love him the more heartily because they have a right also to pay themselves by a little kindly contempt. Make a Byron vain, and half his magnificent force of mind will be wasted by silly efforts to attract the notice of his contemporaries by attacking their best feelings and affecting (a superfluous task!) vices which he does not possess. The vanity of a Wordsworth enables him to treat with profound disdain the sneers of Edinburgh reviewers, and the dull indifference of the mass of readers; but it encourages him also to become a literary sloven, to spoil noble thought by grovelling language, and to subside into supine

obstructiveness. Conversely, the vanity of a Pope makes him suffer unspeakable tortures from the stings of critics compared to whom Jeffrey was a giant, condescend to the meanest artifices to catch the applause of his contemporaries, and hunger and thirst for the food which Wordsworth rejected with contempt. But it also enables him to become within his own limits the most exquisite of artists in words; to increase in skill as he increased in years; and to coin phrases for a distant posterity even out of the most trifling ebullition of passing spite. The vanity of a Milton excites something approaching to awe. The vanity of a Congreve excites our rightful contempt. Vanity seems to be at once the source of the greatest weaknesses, and of the greatest achievements. To write a history of vanity would be to write the history of the greatest men of our race; for soldiers and statesmen have been as vain as poets and artists. Chatham was vain; Wolfe was vain; Nelson was childishly vain; and the great Napoleon was as vain as the vainest. Must not our condemnation of the quality undergo some modification before we can lay it down as an absolute principle?

If, to set aside some ambiguities, we declare that man to be vain, who, for whatever reason, overestimates his own merit or importance in the world, we shall naturally infer that vanity is so far bad as it implies an error. A man is the better for knowing the truth, in this as in all other cases. But we may still ask whether the error is of such a nature as to deserve moral disapproval. We do not blame a man because he gives the wrong answer to one of those problems which have tasked the ingenuity of countless thinkers of the highest ability. The difficulty of discovering the truth about one individual, especially about our own individuality, is as great as the difficulty of discovering the truth about a general problem of philosophy and theology. The moralist who, in this latter case, admits that sincerity is no guarantee against error, orders men to be candid, but cannot order them to arrive at right conclusions. A mistake in judgment is not wicked, precisely because mistakes are the necessary consequence of candid examination by our imperfect reason. Sincerity, not infallibility, is our moral NEW SERIES.-VOL. XXVI., No. 2

duty. Similarly, it is right to judge of ourselves as fairly as we can; but the difficulties which beset the task of at once seating ourselves on the bench and taking our place at the bar are so great, that the least prejudiced of self-critics will often blunder. The sanguine observer will differ from the melancholy; the man of quick sympathies will be more apt to be affected for good or evil by his neighbor's judgment, than the man whose affections may be stronger though less mobile; the excitable man will be led into one extreme or the other more easily than the phlegmatic; a vivid imagination predisposes us to accept a set of tests different from that which would commend themselves to the severe logician; and, moreover, a man's judgment of his own character will vary from day to day, like his judgment of all other matters, according to the state of his liver or his banker's balance. All these-and many other difficulties are so inevitable, that we must look with compassion upon a wrong estimate so long as it is not palpably due to some irrelevant cause. Only when a man is vain for some bad reason-because he has a longer purse or a more uncommon disease than his neighbors-and cases of far more eccentric judgment are not uncommon-he is admitting evidence which he clearly ought to have excluded. The errors of the judge in this case imply not only fallibility but corruption; he has taken a bribe from some of his passions, and he deserves some of the indignation due to such unworthy leanings.

I am, you say, capable of being a great poet; my talents shall not be lost to the world; I will brave poverty, anxiety, contempt; my fellow creatures may repent their indifference, and render a tardy homage over my grave or to my declining years. Brave words! but words as easy to the fool, the knave, and the charlatan as to the neglected martyr of the race. Is your first judgment beyond all suspicion-not only of error but of sincerity? Are you not biassed by some baser motive, when you pronounce yourself to be one of the elect? If you really hold that your wretched dribble of mechanical metre is equal to the mighty harmony of a Milton, you must be wanting in ear for the music of verse; if you take your tinsel-decked platitudes for the

II

passionate utterance of a great intellect, stirred to its depth by the sadness of the world's tragedies, you are probably deficient in philosophical insight; if you cannot see the difference between your conception of the world as a gigantic pot-house, or a magnified stock-exchange, and that which represents in their full force the purifying and ennobling passions, it is probable that there is a gap or two in your morality. Making all allowances for the difficulty of self-judgment, there remains a strong presumption that the man who takes a daub-even a daub of his own manufacture-for a true masterpiece, is deficient in the power of sharing, as well as in the power of uttering, the loftiest thoughts. You cannot put colors on canvas because you cannot see them in nature. Your artistic standard is low because you are incapable of the high emotions which it is the true function of the best art to express, and the full utterance of which is the one true test of artistic excellence. You appeal to vulgar tastes because you are wanting in innate refinement. It is due to other bad qualities if you take size for sublimity, contortion for force, intricacy for subtlety; if brutality appears to you to be strength of feeling, and sensuality to be masculine vigor. If you succeed, you are a charlatan; and if you fail, your failure is deserved. Your vanity is the index, not of the inevitable illusion of self-contemplation, but of a mean, or narrow, or degraded nature.

Such a verdict would be inevitable, if the power of representing, were always proportioned to the power of feeling, emotions; if productivity and receptivity were but opposite forms of the same power. Notoriously this is not the case. Silence may sometimes indicate a defect of the organs of speech, not an absence of thought. Many a man enjoys nature heartily, who cannot put together two lines of description; and yet he may fancy himself to be eloquent, because he naturally infers that the clumsy phrases which express his own sentiment must express the sentiments of others. Molière's old woman is a typical case. Thousands can enjoy for one who can create, or even assign intelligible reasons for his judgment. Unluckily, many such old women fancy that their appreciation of their Molière entitles them to

Sin

write comedies. The weakness is an amiable one. We ought to pity those poor dumb poets who have music in their souls, and strive in vain to embody it in artistic shape. So long as they do not insist upon our reading their verses, we will tolerate and even love them. cere devotion to art is perhaps most touching in those to whom art never makes any return of praise and success. But it is the more necessary to distinguish clearly between these victims of an innocent delusion and those whose delusion implies incapacity, not only to produce but to enjoy. One class worships at the true shrine, though its offerings are poor; the other grovels before an ugly idol, because it is dead to the true instinct of veneration, and admires the reflection of its own base passions.

How shall we tell whether the vanity of an artist be of the noxious or innocent kind? The most applicable test is perhaps to be found in the nature of the alleged motive. When a man says or insinuates that his primary object is the good of the world, we may reasonably set him down as a humbug. The transparency of the pretext is too obvious; and the implied belief that his final suc cess is really a result in which the world at large can be seriously interested, indicates a vanity too gigantic to be quite innocent. In truth, there are two and only two excuses which can be accepted as a sufficient justification for adding to the masses of existing literature. Öne is that you want money; the other that you cannot help it. Johnson went so far as to say that any man must be a fool who wrote for anything but money. The statement is a little too sweeping; but we must admit-when it is genuine

the plea of necessity. Writing, at all events, is an honest trade provided that the author does not lie or flatter base passions. It is rather difficult for a professional author to comply with that proviso; but, so long as he supplies good wholesome food, sells his wares for what they are worth, and pretends to no higher motive, he is an innocent and even useful member of society. He may rank with other honest tradesmen, and is at least as well employed in selling his literary talents to publishers as a lawyer in selling his rhetorical powers to attorneys.