第25章

So, - to return to OUR walk by the ocean, - if all that poetry has dreamed, all that insanity has raved, all that maddening narcotics have driven through the brains of men, or smothered passion nursed in the fancies of women, - if the dreams of colleges and convents and boarding-schools, - if every human feeling that sighs, or smiles, or curses, or shrieks, or groans, should bring all their innumerable images, such as come with every hurried heart-beat, -the epic which held them all, though its letters filled the zodiac, would be but a cupful from the infinite ocean of similitudes and analogies that rolls through the universe.

[The divinity-student honored himself by the way in which he received this.He did not swallow it at once, neither did he reject it; but he took it as a pickerel takes the bait, and carried it off with him to his hole (in the fourth story) to deal with at his leisure.]

- Here is another remark made for his especial benefit.- There is a natural tendency in many persons to run their adjectives together in TRIADS, as I have heard them called, - thus: He was honorable, courteous, and brave; she was graceful, pleasing, and virtuous.

Dr.Johnson is famous for this; I think it was Bulwer who said you could separate a paper in the "Rambler" into three distinct essays.

Many of our writers show the same tendency, - my friend, the Professor, especially.Some think it is in humble imitation of Johnson, - some that it is for the sake of the stately sound only.

I don't think they get to the bottom of it.It is, I suspect, an instinctive and involuntary effort of the mind to present a thought or image with the THREE DIMENSIONS that belong to every solid, - an unconscious handling of an idea as if it had length, breadth, and thickness.It is a great deal easier to say this than to prove it, and a great deal easier to dispute it than to disprove it.But mind this: the more we observe and study, the wider we find the range of the automatic and instinctive principles in body, mind, and morals, and the narrower the limits of the self-determining conscious movement.

- I have often seen piano-forte players and singers make such strange motions over their instruments or song-books that I wanted to laugh at them."Where did our friends pick up all these fine ecstatic airs?" I would say to myself.Then I would remember My Lady in "Marriage a la Mode," and amuse myself with thinking how affectation was the same thing in Hogarth's time and in our own.

But one day I bought me a Canary-bird and hung him up in a cage at my window.By-and-by he found himself at home, and began to pipe his little tunes; and there he was, sure enough, swimming and waving about, with all the droopings and liftings and languishing side-turnings of the head that I had laughed at.And now I should like to ask, WHO taught him all this? - and me, through him, that the foolish head was not the one swinging itself from side to side and bowing and nodding over the music, but that other which was passing its shallow and self-satisfied judgment on a creature made of finer clay than the frame which carried that same head upon its shoulders?

- Do you want an image of the human will, or the self-determining principle, as compared with its prearranged and impassable restrictions? A drop of water, imprisoned in a crystal; you may see such a one in any mineralogical collection.One little fluid particle in the crystalline prism of the solid universe!

- Weaken moral obligations? - No, not weaken, but define them.

When I preach that sermon I spoke of the other day, I shall have to lay down some principles not fully recognized in some of your text-books.

I should have to begin with one most formidable preliminary.You saw an article the other day in one of the journals, perhaps, in which some old Doctor or other said quietly that patients were very apt to be fools and cowards.But a great many of the clergyman's patients are not only fools and cowards, but also liars.

[Immense sensation at the table.- Sudden retirement of the angular female in oxydated bombazine.Movement of adhesion - as they say in the Chamber of Deputies - on the part of the young fellow they call John.Falling of the old-gentleman-opposite's lower jaw -(gravitation is beginning to get the better of him.) Our landlady to Benjamin Franklin, briskly, - Go to school right off, there's a good boy! Schoolmistress curious, - takes a quick glance at divinity-student.Divinity-student slightly flushed draws his shoulders back a little, as if a big falsehood - or truth - had hit him in the forehead.Myself calm.]

- I should not make such a speech as that, you know, without having pretty substantial indorsers to fall back upon, in case my credit should be disputed.Will you run up stairs, Benjamin Franklin, (for B.F.had NOT gone right off, of course,) and bring down a small volume from the left upper corner of the right-hand shelves?

[Look at the precious little black, ribbed backed, clean-typed, vellum-papered 32mo."DESIDERII ERASMI COLLOQUIA.Amstelodami.

Typis Ludovici Elzevirii.1650." Various names written on title-page.Most conspicuous this: Gul.Cookeson E.Coll.Omn.Anim.

1725.Oxon.

- O William Cookeson, of All-Souls College, Oxford, - then writing as I now write, - now in the dust, where I shall lie, - is this line all that remains to thee of earthly remembrance? Thy name is at least once more spoken by living men; - is it a pleasure to thee? Thou shalt share with me my little draught of immortality, -its week, its month, its year, - whatever it may be, - and then we will go together into the solemn archives of Oblivion's Uncatalogued Library!]