CHAPTER CCIII.

WHETHER A MAN AND HIMSELF BE TWO.—MAXIM OF BAYLE'S.—ADAM LITTLETON'S SERMONS,—A RIGHT HEARTED OLD DIVINE WITH WHOM THE AUTHOR HOPES TO BE BETTER ACQUAINTED IN A BETTER WORLD.—THE READER REFERRED TO HIM FOR EDIFICATION.—WHY THE AUTHOR PURCHASED HIS SERMONS.

_Parolles._ Go to, thou art a witty fool, I have found thee.

_Clown._ Did you find me in yourself, Sir? or were you taught to find me? The search, Sir, was profitable; and much fool may you find in you, even to the world's pleasure and the increase of laughter.

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.

“Whether this author means to make his Doctor more fool or philosopher, is more than I can discover,” says a grave reader, who lays down the open book, and knits his brow while he considers the question.

_Make_ him, good Reader! I, _make_ him!—make “the noblest work of”——But as the Spaniards say, _el creer es cortesia_, and it is at your pleasure either to believe the veracity of these biographical sketches, or to regard them as altogether fictitious. It is at your pleasure, I say; not at your peril: but take heed how you exercise that pleasure in cases which are perilous! The worst that can happen to you for disbelief in this matter is, that I shall give you little credit for courtesy, and less for discrimination; and in Doncaster you will be laughed to scorn. You might as well proclaim at Coventry your disbelief in the history of Lady Godiva and Peeping Tom; or tell the Swiss that their tale of shooting the apple on the child's head was an old story before William Tell was born.

But perhaps you did not mean to express any such groundless incredulity, your doubt may be whether I represent or consider my friend as having in his character a larger portion of folly or of philosophy?

This you might determine, Reader, for yourself, if I could succeed in delineating him to the life,—the inner I mean, not the outward man,

_Et en peu de papier, comme sur un tableau, Vous pourtraire au naïf tout son bon, et son beau._[1]

He was the soul of goodness, And all our praises of him are like streams Drawn from a spring, that still rise full, and leave The part remaining greatest.

But the Duchess of Newcastle hath decided in her philosophy that it is not possible for any one person thoroughly to understand the character of another. In her own words, “if the Mind was not joined and mixed with the sensitive and inanimate parts, and had not interior as well as exterior parts, the whole Mind of one man might perceive the whole Mind of another man; but that being not possible—one whole Mind cannot perceive another whole Mind.” By which observation we may perceive there are no Platonic Lovers in Nature. An odd conclusion of her Grace's, and from odd premises. But she was an odd personage.

[Footnote 1: PASQUIER.]

So far however the beautiful and fanciful as well as fantastic Duchess is right, that the more congenial the disposition of two persons who stand upon the same intellectual level, the better they understand each other. The lower any one is sunk in animal life the less is he capable of apprehending the motives and views of those who have cultivated the better part of their nature.

If I am so unfortunate as to fail in producing the moral likeness which I am endeavouring to pourtray, it will not be owing to any want of sympathy with the subject in some of the most marked features of his character.

It is a maxim of Bayle's _qu'il n'y a point de grand esprit dans le caractère du quel il n'entre un peu de folie._ And he named Diogenes as one proof of this. Think indeed somewhat more than a little upon the words folly and philosophy, and if you can see any way into a mist, or a stone wall, you will perceive that the same radicals are found in both.

This sort of mixt character was never more whimsically described than by Andrew Erskine in one of his letters to Boswell, in which he tells him, “since I saw you I received a letter from Mr. D——; it is filled with encomiums upon you; he says there is a great deal of humility in your vanity, a great deal of tallness in your shortness, and a great deal of whiteness in your black complexion. He says there's a great deal of poetry in your prose, and a great deal of prose in your poetry. He says that as to your late publication, there is a great deal of Ode in your Dedication, and a great deal of Dedication in your Ode. He says there is a great deal of coat in your waistcoat, and a great deal of waistcoat in your coat, that there is a great deal of liveliness in your stupidity, and a great deal of stupidity in your liveliness. But to write you all he says would require rather more fire in my grate than there is at present, and my fingers would undoubtedly be numbed, for there is a great deal of snow in this frost, and a great deal of frost in this snow.”

The Marquis de Custine in a book which in all its parts, wise or foolish, strikingly characterises its author, describes himself thus: _J'ai un mélange de gravitê et de légèreté qui m' empêchera de devenir autre chose qu'un vieil enfant bien triste. Si je suis destiné à éprouver de grands malheurs, j'aurai l'occasion de remercier Dieu de m' avoir fait naitre avec cette disposition à la fois sérieuse et frivole: le sérieux m' aidera à me passer du monde—l'enfantillage à supporter le douleur. C'est à quoi il réussit meux que la raison._

_Un peu de folie_, there certainly was in the _grand esprit_ of my dear master and more than _un peu_ there is in his faithful pupil. But I shall not enter into a discussion whether the gravity of which the Marquis speaks preponderated in his character, or whether it was more than counterpoised by the levity. Enough of the latter, thank Heaven enters into my own composition not only to preserve me from becoming _un vieil enfant bien triste_, but to entitle me in all innocent acceptance of the phrase to the appellation of a merry old boy, that is to say, merry at becoming times, there being a time for all things. I shall not enter into the discussion as it concerns my guide, philosopher and friend, because it would be altogether unnecessary; he carried ballast enough, whatever I may do. The elements were so happily mixed in him that though Nature did not stand up and say to all the world “this is a man,” because such a miracle could neither be in the order of Nature or of Providence;—I have thought it my duty to sit down and say to the public this was a Doctor.

There is another reason why I shall refrain from any such enquiry; and that reason may be aptly given in the words of a right-hearted old divine, with whom certain congenialities would lead my friend to become acquainted in that world, where I also hope in due season to meet and converse with him.

“People,” says Adam Littleton, “are generally too forward in examining others, and are so taken up with impertinence and things that do not concern them, that they have no time to be acquainted with themselves; like idle travellers, that can tell you a world of stories concerning foreign countries, and are very strangers at home. Study of ourselves is the most useful knowledge, as that without which we can know neither God nor any thing else aright, as we should know them.

“And it highly concerns us to know ourselves well; nor will our ignorance be pardonable, but prove an everlasting reproach, in that we and ourselves are to be inseparable companions in bliss or torment to all eternity: and if we, through neglect of ourselves here, do not in time provide for that eternity, so as to secure for ourselves future happiness, God will at last make us know ourselves, when it will be too late to make any good use of that knowledge, but a remediless repentance that we and ourselves ever met in company; when poor ruined self shall curse negligent sinful self to all ages, and wish direful imprecations upon that day and hour that first joined them together.

“Again, God has given man that advantage above all other creatures, that he can with reflex acts look back and pass judgement upon himself. But seeing examination here supposes two persons, the one to examine, the other to be examined, and yet seems to name but one, a man to examine himself; unless a man and himself be two, and thus every one of us have two selfs in him; let us first examine who 'tis here is to execute the office of examinant, and then who 'tis that is to be the party examined.

“Does the whole man in this action go over himself by parts? Or does the regenerate part call the unregenerate part to account? Or if there be a divided self in every man, does one self examine the other self, as to wit, the spiritual self, the carnal self? Or is it some one faculty in a man, by which a man brings all his other faculties and parts to trial,—such a one as the conscience may be? If so, how then is conscience itself tried, having no Peers to be tried by, as being superior to all other human powers, and calling them all to the barr?”

Here let me interpose a remark. Whether a man and himself be two must be all one in the end; but woe to that house in which the man and his wife are!

The end of love is to have two made one In will, and in affection.[2]

[Footnote 2: BEN JONSON.]

The old Lexicographer answers his own question thus: “Why, yes; I do think 'tis the conscience of a man which examines the man, and every part of him, both spiritual and carnal, as well regenerate as unregenerate, and itself and all. For hence it was called _conscientia_, as being that faculty by which a man becomes conscious to himself, and is made knowing together with himself of all that good and evil that lies working in his nature, and has been brought forth in his actions. And this is not only the Register, and Witness and Judge of all parts of man, and of all that they do, but is so impartial an officer also, that it will give a strict account of all itself at any time does, _accusing_ or _excusing_ even itself in every motion of its own.”

Reader I would proceed with this extract, were it not for its length. The application which immediately follows it, is eloquently and forcibly made, and I exhort thee if ever thou comest into a library where Adam Littleton's Sermons are upon the shelf,

look Not _on_, but _in_ this Thee-concerning book![3]

Take down the goodly tome, and turn to the sermon of Self-Examination, preached before the (Royal) Family at Whitehall, March 3, 1677-8. You will find this passage in the eighty-sixth page of the second paging, and I advice you to proceed with it to the end of the Discourse.

[Footnote 3: SIR WILLIAM DENNY.]

I will tell the reader for what reason I purchased that goodly tome. It was because of my grateful liking for the author, from the end of whose dictionary I, like Daniel in his boyhood, derived more entertainment and information to boot, than from any other book which, in those days, came within the walls of a school. That he was a truly learned man no one who ever used that dictionary could doubt, and if there had not been oddity enough in him to give his learning a zest, he never could have compounded an appellation for the Monument, commemorating in what he calls an heptastic vocable,—which may be interpreted a seven-leagued word,—the seven Lord Mayors of London under whose mayoralities the construction of that lying pillar went on from its commencement to its completion. He called it, the Fordo-Watermanno-Hansono-Hookero-Vinero-Sheldono-Davisian pillar.

I bought the book for the author's sake,—which in the case of a living author is a proper and meritorious motive, and in the case of one who is dead, may generally be presumed to be a wise one. It proved so in this instance. For though there is nothing that bears the stamp of oddity in his sermons, there is much that is sterling. They have a merit of their own, and it is of no mean degree. Their manner is neither Latimerist nor Andrewesian, nor Fullerish, nor Cotton-Matherish, nor Jeremy Taylorish, nor Barrowish, nor Southish, but Littletonian. They are full of learning, of wisdom, of sound doctrine, and of benevolence, and of earnest and persuasive piety. No one who had ears to hear could have slept under them, and few could have listened to them without improvement.