CONVERSATION THE THIRD. The French worldly philosophers-The first step in wisdom is to learn to THINK, no matter how-Thought corrects itself-Brilliant writers LESS dangerous than dull ones-Why-Faults of certain philosophers-L...., the respectful affection he excites-The heart turns from death-Passage in Bolingbroke-Private life does not afford a vent for all our susceptibilities -A touching thought in Milton's Latin Poems-Remarks on Byron, and the characteristics of a true poet for the present day-Portrait of a hero in the service of truth. I CALLED ON L--— the next day; K——, one of the few persons he admits, was with him; they were talking on those writers who have directed their philosophy towards matters of the world; who have reduced wisdom into epigrams, and given the Goddess of the Grove and the Portico the dress of a lady of fashion. "Never, perhaps," said K-, " did Virtue, despite the assertion of Plato, that we had only to behold in order to adore her, attract so many disciples to wisdom as Wit has done, How many of us have been first incited to reason, have first learned to think, to draw conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life, by some dazzling aphorism from Rochefoucault or La Bruyère! Point, like rhyme, seizes at once the memory and the imagination: for my own part, I own frankly, that I should never have known what it was to reflect I should never have written on Political Economy-I should never have penetrated into the character of my rogue of a guardian, and saved my fortune by a timely act of prudence -I should never have chosen so good a wife-nay, I should never have been L-'s friend, if I had not, one wet day at Versailles, stumbled upon Rochefoucault's Maxims: from that moment I thought, and I thought very erroneously and very superficially for some time, but the habit of thinking, by degrees, cures the faults of its noviciateship; and I often bless Rochefoucault as the means which redeemed me from a life of extravagance and debauchery, from the clutches of a rascal, and made me fond of rational pursuits and respectable society. Yet how little would Rochefoucault's book seem, to the shallow declaimer on the heartlessness of its doctrines, calculated to produce so good an effect. A. Yes, the faults of a brilliant writer are never dangerous on the long run, a thousand people read his work who would read no other; inquiry is directed to each of his doctrines, it is soon discovered what is sound and what is false; the sound become star-lights, and the false beacons. But your dull writer is little conned, little discussed. Debate, that great winnower of the corn from the chaff, is denied him; the student hears of him as an authority, reads him without a guide, imbibes his errors, and retails them as a proof of his learning. In a word, the dull writer does not attract to wisdom those indisposed to follow it and to those who are disposed he bequeaths as good a chance of inheriting a blunder as a truth. : L. I will own to you very frankly that I have one objection to beginning to think, from the thoughts of these worldly inquirers. Notwithstanding Rochefoucault tells us himself, with so honest a gravity, that he had "les sentimens beaux," and that he approved "extrêmement les belles passions," his obvious tendency is not to ennoble; he represents the Tragi-comedy of the Great World, but he does not excite us to fill its grand parts; he tells us some of the real motives of men, but he does not tell us also the better motives with which they are entwined, and by cultivating which they can be purified and raised. This is what I find, not to blame, but to lament, in most of the authors who have very shrewdly, and, with a felicitous and just penetration, unravelled the vices and errors of mankind. I find it in La Bruyère, in Rochefoucault, even in the more weak, and tender Vauvenarges, whose merits have, I think, been so unduly extolled by Dugald Stewart; I find it in Swift, Fielding (admirable moralist as the latter indubitably is in all the lesser branches of morals), and, among the ancients, who so remarkable for the same want as the sarcastic and inimitable Lucian? But let us not judge hastily; this want of nobleness, so to speak, is not necessarily the companion of shrewdness. But mark, where we find the noble and the shrewd united, we acknowledge at once a genius of the very highest order; we acknowledge a Shakspeare, a Tacitus, a Cervantes. A. Another characteristic of the order of writers we refer to is this—they are too apt to disregard books, and to write from their own experience; now an experience, backed upon some wide and comprehensive theory, is of incalculable value to Truth; but, where that theory is wanting, the experience makes us correct in minute points, but contracted, and therefore in error, on the whole; for error is but a view of some facts instead of a survey of all. L. In a word, it is with philosophers as with politicians, the experience that guides the individuals must be no rule for the community. And here I remember a fine and just comparison of the Emperor Julian's speaking of some one who derived knowledge from practice rather than principle, he compares him to an empiric who, by practice, may cure one or two diseases with which he is familiar; but having no system, or theory of art, must necessarily be ignorant of the innumerable complaints which have not fallen under his personal observation. Yet now, when a man ventures to speak of a comprehensive and scientific theory, in opposition to some narrow and cramped practice, he who in reality is the physician," he is exclaimed against as the quack." Shortly after this part of our conversation, K—— went away, and we talked on some matters connected with L――'s private and household affairs. By degrees, while our commune grew more familiar and confidential, and while the shades of these long winter evenings gathered rapidly over us, as we sate alone by the fire, L- - spoke of some incidents in his early history-and I who had always felt a deep interest in even the smallest matter respecting him, and, despite our intimacy, was unacquainted with many particulars of his life, in which I fancied there must be something not unworthy recital, pressed him earnestly to give me a short and frank memoir of his actual and literary life. Indeed, I was anxious that some portion of the world should know as much as may now be known of one who is of no common clay, and who, though he has not numbered many years, and has passed some of those years in the dissipation and pleasure common to men of his birth and wealth, is now, at least, never mentioned by those who know him without a love bordering on idolatry, and an esteem more like the veneration we feel for some aged and celebrated philosopher, than the familiar attachment generally felt for those of our own years and of no public reputation. "As to my early LIFE," said L--, smiling in answer to my urgent request, "I feel that it is but an echo of an echo. I do not refuse, however, to tell it you, such as it is; for it may give food to some observations from you more valuable than the events which excite them; and, as to some later epochs in my short career, it will comfort me, even while it wounds, to speak of them. Come to me, then, to-morrow, and I will recall in the meanwhile what may best merit repeating in the memoir you so inconsiderately ask for. But do not leave me yet, dear A. Sit down again-let us draw nearer to the fire-How many scenes have we witnessed in common-how many enter prises have we shared! let us talk of these, and to-morrow shall come my solitary history: self, self, the eternal self-let us run away from it one day more. Could you but know how forcibly it appears to me, that as life wanes the affections warm; I have observed this in many instances of early death;-early, for in the decay by years the heart outlives all its ties. As the physical parts stiffen, so harden the moral. But in youth, when all the Affections are green within us, they will not willingly perish; they stretch forth their arms, as it were, from their ruined and falling prison-house-they yearn for expansion and release. Is it,' as that divine, though often sullied nature, at once the luminary and the beacon to English statesmen, has somewhere so touchingly asked, ' is it that we grow more tender as the moment of our great separation approaches, or is it that they who are to live together in another state (for friendship exists not but for the good) begin to feel more strongly that divine sympathy which is to be the great bond of their future society ?'"* I could have answered this remark by an allusion to the change in the physical state; the relaxation of illness; the helplessness we feel when sick, and the sense of dependence, the desire to lean somewhere, that the debility of disease occasions. But I had no wish to chill or lower the imaginative turn of reasoning to which L- was inclined, and after a little pause he continued: "For men who have ardent affections, there seems to me no medium between public life and dissatisfaction. In public life those affections find ample channel; they become benevolence, or patriotism, or the spirit of party-or, finally, attaching themselves to things, not persons, concentrate into ambition. But in private life, who, after the first enthusiasm of passion departs, who, possessed of a fervent and tender soul, is ever contented with the return it meets ? A word, a glance, chills us; we ask for too keen a sympathy; we ourselves grow irritable that we find it not-the irritability offends, that is attributed to the temper which in reality is the weakness of the heart-accusation, dispute, coldness, succeed. We are flung back upon our own breasts, and so comes one good or one evil we grow devout or we grow selfish. Denied vent among our fellows, the affections find a refuge in heaven, or they centre in a peevish and lonely contraction of heart, and self-love becomes literally, as the forgotten LEE has expressed it generally, 'The axletree that darts through all the frame.' This inevitable alternative is more especially to be noted in women; their affections are more acute than ours, so also is their disappointment. It is thus you see the credulous fondness of the devotee, or the fossilized heart of the solitary crone, where, some thirty years back, you would have witnessed a soul running over with love for all things and the yearning to be loved again! Ah! why, why is it that no natures are made wholly alike? why is it that, of all blessings, we long the most for sympathy? and of all blessings it is that which none (or the exceptions are so scanty as not to avail) can say, after the experience of years and the trial of custom, that they have possessed. Milton, whose fate through life was disappointmentdisappointment in his private ties and his public attachmentsMilton, who has descended to an unthinking posterity as possessing a mind, however elevated, at least austere and harsh, has, in one of his early Latin poems, expressed this sentiment with a melancholy and soft pathos, not often found in the golden and Platonic richness of his youthful effusions in his own language 1 'Vix sibi quisque parem de millibus invenit unum; "And who is there that hath not said to himself, if possessed for a short time of one heart, entirely resembling and responding to his own,—who has not said to himself daily and hourly, This cannot last!' Has he not felt a dim, unacknowledged. dread of death ? has he not, for the first time, shrunk from penetrating into the future ? has he not become timorous and uneasy? is he not like the miser who journeys on a road begirt with a thousand perils, and who yet carries with him his all? Alas! there was a world of deep and true feeling in Byron's expression, which, critically examined, is but a conceit. Love hath, indeed, made his best interpreter a sigh.' A. Say what we will of Lord Byron, and thinking men are cooling from the opinion first passed upon him, no poet * Thus prosaically translated: "Scarce one in thousands meets a kindred heart; |