THE VANITY OF MEN OF LETTERS.
AMONG the qualities which make the character of Sir Walter Scott peculiarly attractive, and are not, we believe, by any means without influence on his genius, the foremost place must be assigned to his peculiar, we should say, his unique modesty. The opinion expressed by Mr. Palgrave in his introduction to Scott's poetical works, that this quality is "often an attribute of intellectual excellence," seems to us contrary to all we know about men whom every reader may know ; and we can account for it only by a theory which may account for a good many generalisations,—that the phenomenon, when it does occur, takes a strong hold upon the mind, and that it is natural to mistake a deep impression for a wide range of impression. What we cannot forget, we imagine ourselves to have often seen. Nothing becomes intellectual excellence as much as modesty. Nor can any man so well afford to dispense with self-assertion as one whose powers set him on an eminence, and when we do see mental eminence combined with self-effacement, we always feel as if the one quality would ensure the other, as we fancy how liberal we could be if we were rich. And yet, for our own part, we are unable to recall another writer to take a. place by the poet we have mentioned as both great in the world of letters, and eminently free from vanity. We could mention many men of genius of whom we know nothing in this particular, but generally, when the character of a great writer is evident, we should say that this particular grace is missing, and it seems to us worth while to ask what there is, in the nature of things, to occupy a great man's thoughts with himself.
In the first place, we have to ask ourselves what we mean by vanity. The answer is not obvious. Cicero would, we suppose, be accepted by every one as the remarkable man whose vanity • is as remarkable as anything else about him. But is any one prepared to say that Cicero over-estimated his importance in the world's history ? Go to the Reading-room of the British Museum, and notice the three heavy volumes- of the "Folio Catalogue" filled with the titles of his editors and commentators ; there you have a formidable amount of reading occupied with the mere list of works which any one would have to peruse in order to know where to look for even a part of what has been written about him. History has surely accepted his self-estimate as to the space he was worthy to occupy ia general attention, if she has not greatly enlarged it. Unquestionably his contemporaries also assented to the large demand. When he gave as his reason for not undertaking a dangerous embassy that his life was far too important to the State to be put in peril, the only difference between his view and that of his bitterest enemies was that they thought his life too important not to be got rid of. It may be said that the peculiarity here was rather the absence of pride than the presence of vanity, and no doubt the impossibility of such a plea to a modern, measures as much the difference of the ancient and modern ideal of manliness as any individual quality whatever. Still, no one could have said such a thing under any standard unless he were inordinately vain, and the fact that it might very well be true and important all the same forces on us the conviction that whatever else we mean by vanity, we do not mean an intellectual mistake about one's own importance.
It has been even said that the great man is apt to under- estimate his own greatness. "History," says Mr. John Morley, in his studies on the French Revolution, "has not suffered so much from the vanity of greatness, as from the incapacity of great men to understand how great they are." If what has been sug- gested is valid, it is possible for a great man to underrate his own greatness, and yet be vain. It is, indeed, as difficult to conceive of the emotion which we thus name in one who feels his unquestion- able power to delight and instruct his kind throughout all genera- tions, as to imagine it in the surgeon who hastens to the bedside of the wounded man his art may heal. There is something in uncer- tainty which tends irresistibly to occupy the mind with self, but we should have thought the absolute consciousness of greatness would have made it impossible. Nevertheless, this just confid- ence does not always secure its possessor against what we, at least, should call vanity. When Goethe wrote of Byron,—" This singular intellectual poet has taken my 'Faustus' to himself"—in Manfred—"and extracted from it the strongest nourishment for his hypochondriac humour," the fact that this statement seems to us erroneous hardly increases our opinion of its peculiar quality. Possibly it was not altogether erroneous. Of course, Byron knew no German ; it would not be very likely that a man edu- cated at Harrow and Cambridge would read German now, and it was then almost impossible. Goethe might surely have known that the only word intelligible to Byron in his criticism was the epithet " hypochondrisch," which alarmed him a good deal till he got the article translated. However, by an unlikely chance, Byron did know something of "Faust." He had been much im- pressed by a viva voce translation read out to him by " Monk " Lewis, who deserves to be rescued from oblivion for his share in introducing German literature to the polite English world. And though any one who will attempt to make a hearer acquainted with the beauties of a difficult poem through the medium of an extemporised translation, will be sceptical as to the moulding influence of the lecture on. his hearer& mind, and Goethe's admission that Byron "has made use of the impelling principles so that not one of them re- main the same," seems to us to justify such scepticism in this particular case ; still it is possible that, with the insight of genius, Byron did pierce the imperfect medium, and gather nourishment from the rich pasture. We should, however, not the less con- sider it curious that the chief thing one great poet has to tell his countrymen about another is, that he has borrowed successfully from himself. To any man not of first-rate eminence, of course, the conventional dialect of modesty would render the criticism impossible. William Lisle Bowles, a writer only known to this generation by one or two graceful sonnets, and by Coleridge's sonnet to him, really had, as many a second-rate man has on many a first-rate man, an appreciable influence on the poet who thus nobly requited it, yet it would be felt an evidence of gigantic vanity if in criticising Coleridge he had alluded to his own in- fluence upon him. And we cannot see that, in this respect, mental rank makes any difference. Out of all that Goethe might have pointed out in "Manfred" to the German world, his choice of the traces of his own influence seems to us a proof of a strange distortion in what concerns the self to which we know not what other name to give than vanity.
In what has been said, we have had in contemplation exclu- sively the temptations of the productive mind ; it would be quite false of one easily confused with the productive mind. No one is so little tempted to vanity as the student. The constant endeavour to apprehend the thoughts of other minds is only surpassed as a shelter against any distortion in regard to self by the highest and holiest motives of the spiritual life. Perhaps the memory of the reader supplies him, as the memory of the writer does, with some example of this student-life, making in its combination of profound modesty and profound learning so -distinct and so indelible an impression on the page of memory that it is difficult to pass it by, when he would turn back to allied and distinct records in the same volume. He may re- member some inhabitant of a library loved for its own sake, and not as the workshop for the production of more books, one whose rich stores of knowledge, accessible to the humblest seeker, were bidden from all but the seeker in the shadow of a quiet self-forgetfulness, and whose unsuspected wealth startled an appreciative thinker here and there, as he discovered in the patient and courteous hearer of glib certainties and surface- knowledge one from whom the wisest might learn something. The character here described and remembered is indeed akin to the man of letters, but we should say the two would never be united in the same person. He who studies in order to create, and he who studios in order to know, come into different rela- tions with the objects of their study ; their advantages are -different, their disadvantages still more obviously so. The productive mind is as much tempted to self-occupation as the studious mind is shielded from it.
Perhaps, indeed, it is inevitable for the productive mind. So fatal is the blight cast by discouragement over all production, that we have sometimes fancied an exaggerated estimate of the powers and the work of a literary man by himself almost indis- pensable, unless he stood in the first rank, to carry him over the difficulties and disappointments of literary effort. Could the absolute self-confidence of Mr. Buckle, for instance, have sus- tained him as it did, if he had known that in a few years his book would have sunk to the position it now holds in the literary world ? And would it not have been a loss that it had never been written ? What is ephemeral may be valuable, but clearly discerned as ephemeral, it could hardly be produced at the cost of laborious effort. But it must not be forgotten that the self- occupying tendency of any effort to produce mental work tells on the proudest as well as the humblest sons of literature. Of course it is most apparent when the result seems inadequate to much sacrifice of any kind. "I am but a poor creature, but if I were provided with a little more encouragement, if I were shielded from these exasperating interruptions, if I were made a little more comfortable, I could do my work so much better." "My dear Sir," the world might reply to most of us, "the difference between your work at its best and worst, is really not worth the expense you would put us to in sheltering and pampering you." A man of genius never has the advantage, as we sincerely consider it, of being answered in this way explicitly or implicitly. "Flattery," says Lord Chesterfield—and it is one of the few shrewd sayings in the most disappointing book ever written by a wit—" flattery cannot be too strong for kings." There are many kings in the world of mind of whom we might almost say the same.
The temptation we speak of is common to all eminence, but it is literary eminence which exhibits it in its most striking form. The, great statesman, the great general, is constantly measuring himself against others, and though we have admitted that we do not by vanity mean a wrong estimate of one's own mental stature, yet no one who adequately appreciated the powers of all around him would ever be called vain. The most intense pride is possible in such an atmosphere, but vanity cannot live in it. It may be urged that literature implies a true estimate of other men's work, as much as politics or campaigning ; you do not only measure yourself against people when you are trying to overcome them. We incline to believe, on the other hand, that the opinion held by a thinker of his fellows is not valuable in proportion to his genius. The remark often made that Bacon's writings do not contain a single allusion to Shakespeare seems to us as striking a support of this opinion as any mere negative fact can be. That Bacon should deal in his " Essays " with subjects which Shake- speare's plays were exactly adapted to illustrate and elucidate, and yet show no sign of being acquainted with them, although he was aware that they were the greatest dramatic creations in the world, is indeed possible, but it seems to us far more likely that he thought them not worth attention. His contempt for Copernicus, and Harvey's slighting mention of him, afford us a positive evidence, at all events, that supreme greatness in one line does not quicken the perception of supreme greatness in a different line, even if it be not exceedingly different. And thus the supreme thinker is apt to find himself the most interesting subject of contemplation easily attainable.
We should not, then, let our estimate of the man of letters be lowered by discovering him to be vain, in the same proportion as we cannot help this happening where we meet with vanity in men who are occupied with practical life. Of the two antidotes to vanity—humility and pride—there is no reason why the man of letters should have more than other men, even if he be also a man of genius, and there are weighty reasons why he should be open to the undignified temptation. If be is a small man, his uncertainty about himself tends to make him vain ; and when his intellectual stature precludes this possibility, it opens the way to a universal admiration, which does not cease to be dangerous because it is founded on reason.
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