'Some of the darkest and most dangerous prejudices ' arise from the most honourable principle of the human 'mind. When prejudices are caught up from bad passions, the worst of men feel intervals of remorse to 'soften and disperse them; but when they arise from a generous though mistaken source, they are hugged 'closer to the bosom, and the kindest and most com'passionate natures feel a pleasure in fostering a blind ' and unjust resentment.' One reason why the middle classes are more enlightened than the higher and the lower, arises out of the circumstance, that they have greater opportunities of becoming acquainted with what are prejudices and what are not. CXXII. CONCORDS and discords are sympathies and antipathies. Apelles and Raphael both excelled in beauty and grace; but Apelles seems to have been master, also, of the sublime; for his Campaspe and his Venus rising from the sea, were not more admirable in one style, than his Alexander in the character of Jupiter Tonans was in the other. Both artists spoke freely of their own merits; both were highly agreeable in conversation; and both were addicted to pleasure; both keeping mistresses, and exceedingly partial to the society of women. There are, however, no counterparts. There is a passage in Lopez de Vega, implying that Nature pleases herself in drawing; but that she does not invent every day. She grows weary, and copies her own productions. Yet as there are no two portions of any meridian exactly alike; and as it is a well-known truth in mechanics, that the ultimate particles of matter never touch, how shall we expect one man to resemble another, in all particulars? There are, in fact, no real counterparts in any thing; and as an example of this, amongst eminent men, we might refer to that fine passage in Longinus, where he draws a comparison between Demosthenes and Hyperides. Sir William Jones presented to the Literary Society of Calcutta a treatise on the gods of Greece, Italy, and India; the design of which was to point out a resemblance between the popular worship of the Greeks and Romans with that of China, Persia, Phoenicia, Syria, and other nations. The subject, if pursued, would lead, naturally, to the harmony that might subsist between those nations in point of character and civilization. But as to counterparts, as we said before, there are none. We all appear to be cast after the same fashion: and so we are; but not in the same mould. Every man's figure and countenance are his own; so, also, is his mind; and so also his various combinations of feeling. Some one has written, that if a second Bacon should ever arise, he must be ignorant of the first. On the present plan of gradations a second Bacon is an impossible circumstance. Men, to each other, are superior or inferior. There are no equalities. From the beginning of the present system of things, equality has ever been unknown. Even in the material world, no two objects, not even two petals of the same flower, are strictly alike in colour, form, measure, or weight. It is, therefore, less likely that there should be any circumstances, cases, or even appearances, strictly consonant. As to men, 'Man differs more from man, than man from beast.' Historians have said of Alexander, that he seemed to have been given by a peculiar dispensation of Providence, being like to none other man in the human kind. This implies too little, or too much. There being no fac-similes, his being unlike any other man is no distinction; and his being given by a peculiar dispensation of Providence is no more than may be said of a flood, of a famine, a conflagration, or a pestilence. What ideas of distant magnitude can he have, whose eye has never traversed a telescope?—of littleness, whose vision has never penetrated a compound microscope?-of a ray of light, who has never beheld its particles divided by a prism?—or of the electric fluid, who has never witnessed the apparent omnipresence of lightning? In the same manner, we can have no true knowledge of any individual till we have seen him in the trials of prosperity, as well as in those of adversity. Those extremes operate not only as telescopes and microscopes, but prisms. They are the grand unmaskers of men for they strip them almost as naked as when they first issued from their mothers' wombs. We are assured *, that between numerous objects, in * Vide Mac Lea: Hora Entomologica. every department of nature, there exist striking coincidences as to external characters; but that these, so far from proving those objects to be related to each other, show, upon a strict investigation, that they cannot even be placed together in the same natural arrangement *. Each individual is individualized; and men are wise, foolish, small, or great, only in comparison with those around them. Monboddo was nearly as great to his friends at Edinburgh, as Johnson was to his in London. The former, indeed, imitated the latter with such solicitude, that Foote called him an Elzevir edition of him. But I am persuaded, as Ganganelli said in a letter to Abbé Lami, 'that the moral world is a copy of 'the natural one; and that there are minds like faces, 'which have no sort of resemblance.' There are men, even, whose vices bear similitude to virtues; and whose virtues, being carried to excess, bear not only resemblance to vices but to crimes. Though exact parallel events are unknown upon the earth, yet in the heavens may be noted continual reproductions of the same phenomena, in the same order, and at equal intervals of time. CXXIII. WHO DRAW THEIR OWN PORTRAITS IN THAT OF THEIR ENEMIES. ROUSSEAU Sketched the character of Diderot, and in that sketch delineated himself. This is the passage : * For instances see Linnæan Transactions, vol. xiv. p. 93. 4to. 'Although born with a good heart and open dispo'sition, he had an unfortunate propensity to misinter'pret the words and actions of his friends; and the 'most ingenuous explanations only supplied his subtle 'imagination with new interpretations against them.' The practice is very common; especially with those who accuse others of thoughts and deeds they are guilty of themselves. CXXIV. WHO FORM THEMSELVES ON MODELS. METASTASIO, before he began to write, always read some of the best passages in the Adonis of Marino*; and Geminiani laid the foundation of his musical studies on madrigals †, which Burney pronounces to have neither design, phraseology, melody, nor system. Likings of authors frequently depend less on judgment than on circumstance; and to this, perhaps, we may refer the preference which Grotius gave to Lucan; Liberty being the watchword of his age. It is fortunate, however, that most men can select the books they wish to read; though all have not the felicity to be able to command the company they may wish to keep. In one important respect authors have an advantage over painters and sculptors. Good books are of easy purchase; but it is not in all men's power to contemplate the master-pieces of Raffaelle or Correggio, of Titian or Michael Angelo. Carlo Cristini, p. 154. |