The Works an D Life of Walter Bagehot
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THE WORKS AN D LIFE OF WALTER BAGEHOT VOL. III. THE WORKS AND LIFE OF WALTER BAGEHOT EDItED BY MRS. RUSSELL BARRINGTON THE WORKS J.1'; NI.1';E VOLUME:" THE LIFE IN ONE VOLU~IE VOL. III. OF THE WORKS LON G MAN S, G R E EN, AND C O. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH :"TREET, NEW YORK BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAr" CONTENTS OF VOLUME III. PAOi BERANGER (1857) THE WAVERLEY NOVELS (1858) 37 CHARLES DICKENS (1858) 73 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM (1859) 108 JOHN MILTON (1859) • THE HISTORY OF THE UNREFORMED PARLIAMENT, AND ITS LESSONS (1860) • 222 MR. GLADSTONE (1860) 272 MEMOIR OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE JAMES WILSON (1850) . 302 THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION AT THE PRESENT CRISIS. Causes of the Civil War in America. By j. Lothrop Motley Manwaring (from Na- tIonal Review, October, 1861) 349 v ERRATA. Page 378, line 14,jor eight read eighth 379, " 7,,, member read minister BERANGER.l THE invention of books has at least one great advantage. It has half-abolished one of the worst consequences of the diver- sity of languages. Literature enables nations to understand one another. Ora) intercourse hardly does this. In English, a distinguished foreigner says not what he thinks, but what he can. There is a certain intimate essence of national mean- ing which is as untranslatable as good poetry. Dry thoughts are cosmopolitan; but the delicate associations of language which express character, the traits of speech which mark the man, differ in every tongue, so that there are not even cum- brous circumlocutions that are equivalent in another. National character is a deep thing-a shy thing; you cannot exhibit much of it to people who have a difficulty in understanding your language; you are in strange society, and you feel you will not be understood. "Let an English gentleman," writes Mr. Thackeray, "who has dwelt two, four, or ten years in Paris, say at the end of any given period how much he knows of French society.. how many French houses he has entered, and how many French friends he has made. Intimacy there is none; we see but the outsides of the people. Year by year we live in France, and grow grey and see no more. We play teart! with Monsieur de Trefle every night; but what do we know of the heart of the man-of the inward ways, thoughts, 1 (Euvres completesde C.-]. de Beranger, Nouvelle edt'tion,reuue par l'Auteur, contenant Ies Dix Chansons nou'llelles,le (acsimzle d'une Lettre de Beranger ; illustrie de cinquantc-deux gravures sur acier, d'apris Charlet, D'Aubigny, ]ohannot Grenier, De Lemud, Pauquet, Pen- guilly, Raffet, Sandoz, executeespar les artistes les plus distingucs, et d'un beauportrait d'aprls nature par Sandoz. z vols., 8vo, 1855· VOL. III. I 2 BERANGER and customs of Tretle? We have danced with Countess Flic- flac, Tuesdays and Thursdays, ever since the peace; and how far are we advanced in her acquaintance since we first twirled her round a room? We know her velvet gown and her dia- monds; we know her smiles and her simpers and her rouge; but the real, rougeless, intime Flicflac we know not." 1 Even if our words did not stutter, as they do stutter on our tongue, she would not tell us what she is. Literature has half mended this. Books are exportable; the essence of national character lies flat on a printed page. Men of genius, with the impulses of solitude, produce works of art, whose words can be read and re-read and partially taken in by foreigners to whom they could never be uttered, the very thought of whose unsympathising faces would freeze them on the surface of the mind. Alexander Smith has accused poetical reviewers of beginning as far as possible from their subject. It may seem to some, though it is not so really, that we are exemplifying this saying in com- mencing as we have commenced an article on Beranger. There are two kinds of poetry-which one may call poems of this world, and poems not of this world. We see a certain society on the earth held together by certain relations, per- forming certain acts, exhibiting certain phenomena, calling forth certain emotions. The millions of human beings who compose it have their various thoughts, feelings, and desires. They hate, act, and live. The social bond presses them closely together; and from their proximity new sentiments arise which are half superficial and do not touch the inmost soul, but which nevertheless are unspeakably important in the actual constitution of human nature, and work out their effects for good and for evil on the characters of those who are subjected to their influence. These sentiments of the world, as one may speak, differ from the more primitive impulses and emotions of our inner nature as the superficial phenomena of the material universe from what we fancy is its real essence. Passing hues, transient changes have their 1 We have been obliged to abndge the above extract, and in so domg have left out the humour of it. (W. Bagehot.) [From the Paris Sketch Book __condensed from the section on some French fashionable novels.] (Forrest Morgan.) BERANGER 3 course before our eyes; a multiplex diorama is for ever dis- played; underneath it all we fancy-such is the inevitable constitution of our thinking faculty-a primitive, immovable essence, which is modified into all the ever-changing pheno- mena we see, which is the grey granite whereon they lie, the primary substance whose debris they all are. ] ust so from the original and primitive emotions of man, society-the evolving capacity of combined action-brings out desires which seem new, in a sense are new, which have no exis- tence out of the society itself, are coloured by its customs at the moment, change with the fashions of the age. Such a principle is what we may call social gaiety: the love of combined amusement which all men feel and variously ex- press, and which is to the higher faculties of the soul what a gay running stream is to the everlasting mountain-a light, altering element which beautifies while it modifies. Poetry does not shrink from expressing such feelings; on the contrary, their renovating cheerfulness blends appropriately with her inspiriting delight. Each age and each form of the stimulating imagination has a fashion of its OW11. Sir Walter sings in his modernised chivalry:- "Waken, lords and ladies gay, On the mountain dawns the day; All the Jolly chase IS here, With hawk and horse and hunting-spear. Hounds are in their couples yelling, Hawks are whistling, horns are knelling. Merrily, mernly, mingle they: Waken, lords and ladles gay. " Louder, louder chant the lay, Waken, lords and ladies gay; Tell them youth and mirth and glee Run a course as well as we. Time, stern huntsman, who can balk? Stanch as hound and fleet as hawk; Think of this, and rise with day, Gentle lords and ladles gay." I J A separate lyTICfirst published In the Edinbut;E;lt Annual Regzster for 1808, and republished In the collected edition of Scott's Poetical Works in 1830, under the title of" Hunting Song," vol. viii. p. 370, J • 4 BERANGER The poet of the people "vilat'n et Ires vilain," sings with the pauper Bohemian :- "Voir, c'est aVOIr. Allons courir ! Vie errante Est chose enivrante. Voir, c'est avoir. Allons courir ! Car tout voir, c'est tout conquerir, " Nous n'avons done, exempts d'orgueil, De lois vaines, De lourdes chaines ; Nous n'avons done, exempts d'orgueil, Ni berceau, ni toit, ni cercueil. " Mais croyez-en notre gaite, Noble ou pretre, Valet ou maitre ; Mais, croyez-en notre gaite, Le bonheur, c'est la liberte. " OUI, croyez-en notre gatte, Noble ou pretre, Valet ou maitre ; Oui, croyez-en notre gaite, Le bonheur, c'est la liberte." 1 The forms of those poems of social amusement are, in truth, as various as the social amusement itself. The variety of the world, singularly various as it everywhere is, is nowhere so various as in that. Men have more ways of amusing them- selves than of doing anything else they do. But the essence -the characteristic-of these poems everywhere is, that they express more or less well the lighter desires of human nature; -those that have least of unspeakable depth, partake most of what is perishable and earthly, and least of the immortal soul. The objects of these desires are social accidents; excellent, perhaps, essential, possibly-so is human nature made-in one form and variety or another, to the well-being of the soul, yet in themselves transitory, fleeting, and in other moods contempt- ible. The old saying was, that to endure solitude a man must either be a beast or a god.2 It is in the lighter play of social 1 Les Bohemtens. 2 Bacon: Essay on "Fnendshlp," quoting from Aristotle's Politica, (Forrest Morgan.) BERANGER 5 action, in that which is neither animal nor divine, which in its half-way character is so natural to man, that these poems of society, which we have called poems of amusement, have their place. This species does not, however, exhaust the whole class. Society gives rise to another sort of poems, differing from this one as contemplation differs from desire. Society may be thought of as an object. The varied scene of men,-their hopes, fears, anxieties, maxims, actions,-presents a sight more interesting to man than any other which has ever existed, or which can exist; and it may be viewed in all moods of mind, and with the change of inward emotion as the external object seems to change: not that it really does so, but that some sentiments are more favourable to clear- sighted ness than others are; and some bring before us one aspect of the subject, and fix our attention upon it, others a different one, and bind our minds to that likewise.