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high cap of the most dazzling blonde. She had been one of the earliest emigrants, and had stayed for many months with my mother, whom she professed to rank amongst her dearest friends. The duchesse possessed to perfection that singular melange of ostentation and ignorance which was so peculiar to the ante-revolutionists. She would talk of the last tragedy with the emphatic tone of a connoisseur, in the same breath that she would ask, with Marie Antoinette, why the poor people were so clamorous for bread when they might buy such nice cakes for two-pence a-piece? “To give you an idea of the Irish,” said she one day to an inquisitive marquess, “know that they prefer potatoes to mutton!”
Her soirees were among the most agreeable at Paris—she united all the rank and talent to be found in the ultra party, for she professed to be quite a female Maecenas; and whether it was a mathematician or a romance-writer, a naturalist or a poet, she held open house for all, and conversed with each with equal fluency and self-satisfaction.
A new play had just been acted, and the conversation, after a few preliminary hoverings, settled upon it.
“You see,” said the duchesse, “that we have actors, you authors; of what avail is it that you boast of a Shakspeare, since your Liseton, great as he is, cannot be compared with our Talma?”
“And yet,” said I, preserving my gravity with a pertinacity, which nearly made Vincent and the rest of our compatriots assembled lose their’s “Madame must allow, that there is a striking resemblance in their persons, and the sublimity of their acting?”
“Pour ca, j’en conviens,” replied this ‘critique de l’Ecole des Femmes.’ “Mais cependant Liseton n’a pas la Nature! l’ame! la grandeur de Talma!”
“And will you then allow us no actors of merit?” asked Vincent.
“Mais oui!—dans le genre comique, par exemple, votre buffo Kean met dix fois plus d’esprit et de drollerie dans ses roles que La Porte.”
“The impartial and profound judgment of Madame admits of no further discussion on this point,” said I. “What does she think of the present state of our dramatic literature?”
“Why,” replied Madame, “you have many great poets, but when they write for the stage they lose themselves entirely; your Valter Scote’s play of Robe Roi is very inferior to his novel of the same name.”
“It is a great pity,” said I, “that Byron did not turn his Childe Harold into a tragedy—it has so much energy—action—variety!”
“Very true,” said Madame, with a sigh; “but the tragedy is, after all, only suited to our nation—we alone carry it to perfection.”
“Yet,” said I, “Goldoni wrote a few fine tragedies.”
“Eh bien!” said Madame, “one rose does not constitute a garden!”
And satisfied with this remark, la femme savante turned to a celebrated traveller to discuss with him the chance of discovering the North Pole.
There were one or two clever Englishmen present; Vincent and I joined them.
“Have you met the Persian prince yet?” said Sir George Lynton to me; “he is a man of much talent, and great desire of knowledge. He intends to publish his observations on Paris, and I suppose we shall have an admirable supplement to Montesquieu’s Lettres Persannes!”
“I wish we had,” said Vincent: “there are few better satires on a civilized country than the observations of visitors less polished; while on the contrary the civilized traveller, in describing the manners of the American barbarian, instead of conveying ridicule upon the visited, points the sarcasm on the visitor; and Tacitus could not have thought of a finer or nobler satire on the Roman luxuries than that insinuated by his treatise on the German simplicity.”
“What,” said Monsieur D’E—(an intelligent ci-devant emigre), “what political writer is generally esteemed as your best?”
“It is difficult to say,” replied Vincent, “since with so many parties we have many idols; but I think I might venture to name Bolingbroke as among the most popular. Perhaps, indeed, it would be difficult to select a name more frequently quoted and discussed than his; and yet his political works are the least valuable part of his remains; and though they contain many lofty sentiments, and many beautiful yet scattered truths, they were written when legislation, most debated, was least understood, and ought to be admired rather as excellent for the day than estimable in themselves. The life of Bolingbroke would convey a juster moral than all his writings: and the author who gives us a full and impartial memoir of that extraordinary man, will have afforded both to the philosophical and political literature of England one of its greatest desideratums.”
“It seems to me,” said Monsieur D’E—, “that your national literature is peculiarly deficient in biography—am I right in my opinion?”
“Indubitably!” said Vincent; “we have not a single work that can be considered a model in biography, (excepting, perhaps, Middleton’s Life of Cicero.) This brings on a remark I have often made in distinguishing your philosophy from ours. It seems to me that you who excel so admirably in biography, memoirs, comedy, satirical observation on peculiar classes, and pointed aphorisms, are fonder of considering man in his relation to society and the active commerce of the world, than in the more abstracted and metaphysical operations of the mind. Our writers, on the contrary, love to indulge rather in abstruse speculations on their species—to regard man in an abstract and isolated point of view, and to see him think alone in his chamber, while you prefer beholding him act with the multitude in the world.”
“It must be allowed,” said Monsieur D’E——t, “that if this be true, our philosophy is the most useful, though yours may be the most profound.”
Vincent did not reply.
“Yet,” said Sir George Lynton, “there will be a disadvantage attending your writings of this description, which, by diminishing their general applicability, diminish their general utility. Works which treat upon man in his relation to society, can only be strictly applicable so long as that relation to society treated upon continues. For instance, the play which satirizes a particular class, however deep its reflections and accurate its knowledge upon the subject satirized, must necessarily be obsolete when the class itself has become so. The political pamphlet, admirable for one state, may be absurd in another; the novel which exactly delineates the present age may seem strange and unfamiliar to the next; and thus works which treat of men relatively, and not man in se, must often confine their popularity to the age and even the country in which they were written. While on the other hand, the work which treats of man himself, which seizes, discovers, analyzes the human mind, as it is, whether in the ancient or the modern, the savage or the European, must evidently be applicable, and consequently useful, to all times and all nations. He who discovers the circulation of the blood, or the origin of ideas, must be a philosopher to every people who have veins or ideas; but he who even most successfully delineates the manners of one country, or the actions of one individual, is only the philosopher of a single country, or a single age. If, Monsieur D’E—t, you will condescend to consider this, you will see perhaps that the philosophy which treats of man in his relations is not so useful, because neither so permanent nor so invariable, as that which treats of man in himself.” [Note: Yet Hume holds the contrary opinion to this, and considers a good comedy more durable than a system of philosophy. Hume is right, if by a system of philosophy is understood—a pile of guesses, false but plausible, set up by one age to be destroyed by the next. Ingenuity cannot rescue error from oblivion; but the moment Wisdom has discovered Truth, she has obtained immortality.]
I was now somewhat weary of this conversation, and though it was not yet twelve, I seized upon my appointment as an excuse to depart—accordingly I rose for that purpose. “I suppose,” said I to Vincent, “that you will not leave your discussion.”
“Pardon me,” said he, “amusement is quite as profitable to a man of sense as metaphysics. Allons.”
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