SMARTNESS.
MR. MALLOCK has been eulogising the quality of " smartness," in the North American Review. " Smart- ness," he sap, " whatever people may say to the contrary, requires personal qualities of by no means a common order. Mere wealth is not enough. There must be the knowledge of how to use it. A fastidious taste is desirable. A certain amount of taste is essential. Grace, beauty, bonhomie, wit and humour, and the indefinable art of giving bright- ness to the passing moment, —all these qualities go to the production of smartness, and a set in which they are wanting could never be called smart, no matter how exalted might be the position of its leader. Smartness, in fact, represents the perfection of superficial living, and it has a natural, one may, indeed, say a legitimate, influence over persons of a certain temperament in all ranks." This use of the word seems to us to involve a misapplication both of its etymological and of its popular meaning. The last quality we should ever have thought of imputing to " smart" people, would be a fastidious taste. Surely if ever there were a " smart " character in this world, it was Sam Weller's, and yet no one would think of describing Dickens's incomparable cockney as a person of fastidious taste. Charles Dickens himself was one of the smartest of human beings, but no good judge would ever have dreamt of ascribing to Charles Dickens a fastidious taste. Moreover, the etymology of the word is quite against any such use of it. Its primary meaning is found in that use of it in which we speak of " a smart blow " or " a smart pain." It is the adjective applied originally to that which smarts, and secondarily to that which causes smarting. It is derived from the German word for pain (Schmerz), though it is now more frequently applied to the causation of pain than to pain itself. That " rapid succession of sharp sounds resembling applause," which, as Dickens tells us, was followed by the noise of " weeping bitterly and loudly lamenting," was evidently due to a succession of "smart" slaps, and the derivative sense in which the man is called " smart " who can administer mental discipline of this kind, expresses his promptitude and efficiency in inflicting penalties, not his sensitiveness to the penalties inflicted by others. The smart man is not the man who smarts, but the man who can make others smart when he will, just as the shrewd (or shrewed) woman is not the woman or shrew who cries out (though shrew is from the German schreien), but the woman who has the knack of scolding so that others cry out. Yet both these words have lost their original ill-temperedness of meaning. A shrewd guess does not mean a more or less malicious guess, as it once did,—the guess of a shrew,—but only a clever guess,—a curious testimony to the keenness of dis- cernment which was attributed to the cynic; and a "smart" man no longer means a man who is disposed to make his opponents smart for differing from him, but merely one who is acute enough to see what the occasion requires, whether that be praise or blame, satire or sympathy, and who strikes the right note at the right moment. The words which originally ex- pressed the power to wound or to scold, have come to signify simply the power to do or say the opportune thing for a man's purpose, whatever the opportune thing may be ; so much more difficult does it appear to have been originally, to be effective in distributing penalty than in distributing reward, in vitu- peration than in eulogy. It is now just as " smart " to turn an effective compliment, as to inflict a painful and irritating wound,—to guess a creditable secret, as to expose a dis- creditable purpose.
But though " smartness " has lost its originally aggressive meaning,—its 'special appreciativeness of the faculty for inflicting blows,—it has certainly not gained any special appreciativeness of sympathetic insight. Mr. Mallock mis- reads the meaning of the word altogether when he reads into it any special flavour of fastidious taste, grace, beauty, and bonhomie. Anything may be said to be "smart " that shows readiness in gaining the doer's or sayer's own ends, whether that is by the administration of a smart rap or by the administration of smart flattery. But taste, grace, beauty, bonhomie, have become no more specially characteristic of smart people, than abruptness, sharpness, or skill in giving pain. On the contrary, we should say that smartness usually implies, when properly used, more or less of vulgarity at the bottom, if not on the surface. It expresses presence of mind certainly, but presence of mind wide awake to the interests rather of self than of anybody else. Of course that presence of mind may show itself in the skilful veiling of one's purpose; but on the whole, those who are intrinsically modest, self-forgetful, and disinterested, are seldom described as smart. Smartness still suggests a certain predominance of that somewhat commonplace keenness of instinct as to the claims of number one, which gave it its original meaning of the power to fight for one's own hand. Though smartness consists in the tact of opportune flattery, as much as in the tactics which take effect in a sudden onset, yet the most characteristic element in smartness is its wideawakeness to personal interests. Smart people seldom forget themselves. For instance, select the " smartest " speakers in the last House of Commons, and amongst the leaders you would fix at once on Sir William Harcourt and Mr. Chamberlain ; or, to pass to leas important figures, on Mr. Labouchere, Lord Elcho, Sir Wilfrid Lawson, Mr. T. P. O'Connor,—all jocular speakers of the same type. The smartest men in the House were men who could make the House laugh at their opponents' expense. There is no fastidious taste, no superfluity of bonhomie, no abundance of grace or beauty in any of their speeches ; though we are very far from implying that there is any predominance of any super- fluity of naughtiness. Smartness has a predominant flavour of the egotism of the nineteenth century in it ; it is, as the Yankees say, always " spry," always on the sharp look-out for the opportunity of winning an advantage over a rival. In society we should have held smartness to be at almost the opposite pole from fastidiousness. A man whose sense of beauty or modesty, or even of the fitness of things, holds him silent when a clever repartee is on his lips, is not smart. He may be, and generally is, a man of the type that sweetens society, raises its delicacy of feeling, its refinement of sympathy, its sensitiveness to jarring tones ; but he is not " smart ;" he is not in the van of his age ; he is not distinguished by his position in the " fore- most files of time." The higher social fastidiousness shows itself best in self-effacement. Smartness never shows itself in self-effacement, but rather in the happy emphasis it is able to lay on its own claim to appreciation.
Perhaps the most delightfully smart book of travel ever written was "Eiithen." There is such a subtlety and alacrity in the accent of egotism which runs through it, that it is imp possible to be disgusted with it ; but then, that accent is unmistakable, though all the more attractive for not being too glaring, too prominent. Another extremely smart and brilliantly smart book was Mr. Mallock's own " New Re- public ;" but no one would ever have thought of attributing to that book any high fastidiousness of taste or modesty of temper. The characteristic accent of the book is an exalted self-confidence, an elation of satirical penetration. In a. still more emphatic sense, Gibbon's writing is all smart, though, of course, it is much more than smart. Carlyle's "Reminiscences " are smart, though the great genius in them almost overshadows their smartness. Still, the predominant egotism in them, the accent of self-assertion, is never absent. And Mrs. Carlyle's letters are smart, very smart, though ex- tremely fascinating in their way ;—indeed, we do not wonder, when we notice the predominating though subtle egotism in both Carlyle and his wife, that there was not a little of jarring between natures so much alike in the one characteristic which needs supplementing and abhors rivalry. We should say that while smartness may be combined with high genius and great fascination, it cannot be combined with those qualities which are of the very essence of high-bred society,—reticence, modesty, fastidious taste. Self-forget- fulness and smartness are irreconcileable qualities, and self-forgetfulness is essential to the highest breeding. And smartness, when it is not joined with great genius, soon satiates, nay, even nauseates. It is all very well in public life, because all public life is intermittent. But in private society, smartness wearies and overwhelms. Mr. Disraeli was smart, and in his youth oppressively smart. When he took Gibraltar by storm by changing his cane at the evening gun, he was smartness in. excelsis ; but if we were compelled to choose between smartness in excelsis and Sunday-school teacherism in excelsis, we are disposed to think that of the two great evils, we should choose the latter. Dullness can be endured, bat glare,—and smartness in excelsis is full of glare,—soon becomes intolerable.
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