The Adventures of Hugh Trevor Part 13

So copious was my elocution that in less than four hours I had filled eight pages of paper; two of which at least were Greek and Latin quotations, from Aristotle, Demosthenes, and Cicero. I meant to astonish mankind with my erudition! All shall acknowledge, said I, that a writer of wit, energy, and genius is at last sprung up; one who is profoundly skilled too in cla.s.sical learning. My whole soul was bent on saying strong things, fine things, learned things, pretty things, good things, wise things, and severe things. Never was there more florid railing. My argument was a kind of pitiful Jonas, and my words were the whale in which it was swallowed up.

I was quite enamoured of my performance, and was impatient for twelve o'clock the next day, that his lordship might admire it! In the mean time, to allay my insatiable thirst of praise, I took it to upright Enoch. When the reverend little man heard that I was employed by his lordship to write on affairs of government, he declared it as a thing decided that my fortune was made: but he dropped his under lip when told that I had attacked the minister--Was prodigiously sorry!--That was the wrong side--Ministers paid well for being praised; but they gave nothing, except fine, imprisonment, and pillory, for blame.

I heard him with contempt, but was too eager in my thirst of approbation to make any reply, except by urging him to read. He put on his spectacles and began, but blundered so wretchedly that I was soon out of patience; and taking the paper from him began to read myself.

No one will doubt but that he was the first to be tired. However, he said it was fine; and was quite surprised to hear me read Greek with such sonorous volubility. For his part it was long since he had read such authors: to which I sarcastically yielded my ready a.s.sent. He had partly forgotten them, he said. Indeed! answered I. My tone signified he never knew them--'but you think the composition good do you not?'--'Oh, it is fine! Prodigiously fine!'

Fine was the word, and with fine I was obliged to be satisfied. As for prodigious, it sometimes had meaning and sometimes none: it depended on emphasis and action. I knew indeed that he was no great orator; otherwise I should have expected an eulogium that might have rivaled the French academy, the odes of Boileau, or even my own composition.

I was still hungry: my vanity wanted more food, much more, though I knew not where to seek it. To write down a minister was such a task, and I had begun it in so sublime a style, that rest I could not: though it was with great difficulty, having done with Enoch, that I could escape from Miss and her mamma.

They were dressed to go to a party, and they insisted that I should go with them. It would give their friends such _monstrous_ pleasure, and they should all be so _immense_ happy, that go I must. But their rhetoric was vain. I was upon thorns; there were no hopes that the party would listen to my ma.n.u.script; and as I could not read it to others, I must go home and read it to myself.

As I was going, Miss followed me to the door, called up one of her significant traverse glances, and told me she was sure I was a prodigious rake! But no wonder! All the fine men were rakes!

I returned to my chamber, read again and again, added new flowers, remembered new quotations, and inserted new satire. Enoch had told me it was fine, yet I never could think it was fine enough.

Night came, but with it little inclination in me to sleep: and in the morning I was up and at work, reading, correcting and embellishing my letter before I could well distinguish a word. About nine o'clock, while I was rehearsing aloud in the very heat of oratory, two chairmen knocked at my door and interrupted my revery: they were come to take away the trunk of Turl. The thought struck me and I immediately inquired--'Is the gentleman himself here?' I was answered in the affirmative, and I requested one of the men to go and inform him that an old acquaintance was above, who would be very glad to speak a word with him.

Mr. Turl came, was surprised to see me, and as I received him kindly answered me in the same tone. At college he had acquired the reputation of a scholar, a good critic, and a man of strong powers of mind. The discovery of a diamond mine would not have given me so much pleasure, as the meeting him at this lucky moment! He was the very person I wanted. He was a judge, and I should have praise as much as I could demand! The beauties of my composition would all be as visible to him as they were to myself. They were too numerous, too strong, too striking to escape his notice; they would flash upon him at every line, would create astonishment, inspire rapture, and hold him in one continual state of acclamation and extacy!

I requested him to sit down, apologized, told him I had a favour to ask, took up my ma.n.u.script, smiled, put it in his hand, stroked my chin, and begged him to read and tell me its faults. I had a perfect dependence on his good taste, and n.o.body could be more desirous of hearing the truth and correcting their errors than I was! n.o.body!

I was surprised to observe that he felt some reluctance, and attempted to excuse himself: but I was too importunate, and the devil of vanity was too strong in me, to be resisted. I pleaded, with great eloquence and much more truth than I myself suspected, how necessary it was in order to attain excellence that men should communicate with each other, should boldly declare their opinions, and patiently listen to reproof.

Thus urged by arguments which he knew to be excellent, and hoping from my zeal that I knew the same, he complied, took out his pencil, and began his task.

He went patiently through it, without any apparent emotion or delay, except frequently to make crosses with his pencil. Never was mortal more amazed than I was at his incomprehensible coldness! 'Has he no feeling?' said I. 'Is he dead? No token of admiration! no laughter! no single pause of rapture!' It was astonishing beyond all belief!

Having ended, he put down the ma.n.u.script, and said not a word!

This was a mortification not to be supported. Speak he must. I endured his silence perhaps half a minute, perhaps a whole one, but it was an age! 'I am afraid, Mr. Turl,' said I, 'you are not very well pleased with what you have read?'

The tone of my voice, the paleness of my lips, and the struggling confusion of my eyes sufficiently declared my state of mind, and he made no answer. My irritability increased. 'What, Sir,' said I, 'is it so contemptible a composition as to be wholly unworthy your notice?'

I communicated much of the torture which I felt, but collecting himself he looked at me with some compa.s.sion and much stedfastness, and answered--'I most sincerely wish, Mr. Trevor, that what I have to say, since you require me to speak, were exactly that which you expected I should say. I confess, it gives me some pain to perceive that you mistook your own motives, when you desired me to read and mark what I might think to be faults. You imagined there were no faults! forgetting that no human effort is without them. The longer you write the less you will be liable to the error of that supposition.'--'Perhaps, Sir, you discover nothing but faults?'--'Far the contrary: I have discovered the first great quality of genius.'

This was a drop of reviving cordial, and I eagerly asked--'What is that?'--'Energy. But, like the courage of Don Quixote, it is ill directed; it runs a tilt at sheep and calls them giants.' 'Go on, Sir,' said I: 'continue your allegory.'--'Its beauties are courtezans, its enchanted castles pitiful hovels, and its Mambrino's helmet is no better than a barber's bason.' 'But pray, Sir, be candid, and point out all its defects!--All!'--'I am sorry to observe, Mr. Trevor, that my candour has already been offensive to your feelings. If we would improve our faculties, we must not seek unmerited praise, but resolutely listen to truth.'--'Why, Sir, should you suppose I seek unmerited praise.'

He made no reply, and I repeated my requisition, that he should point out all the defects of my ma.n.u.script: once more, all, all! 'The defects, Mr. Trevor,' said he, 'are many of them such as are common to young writers; but some of them are peculiar to writers whose imagination is strong, and whose judgment is unformed. Paradoxical as it may seem, it is a disadvantage to your composition that you have the right side of the question. Diffuse and unconnected arguments, a style loaded with epithets and laborious attempts in the writer to display himself, are blemishes that give less offence when employed to defend error than when acc.u.mulated in the cause of truth, which is forgotten and lost under a profusion of ornaments. The difficulties of composition resemble those of geometry: they are the recollection of things so simple and convincing that we imagine we never can forget them; yet they are frequently forgotten at every step, and in every sentence. There is one best and clearest way of stating a proposition, and that alone ought to be chosen: yet how often do we find the same argument repeated and repeated and repeated, with no variety except in the phraseology? In developing any thought, we ought not to enc.u.mber it by trivial circ.u.mstances: we ought to say all that is necessary, and not a word more. We ought likewise to say one thing at once; and that concluded to begin another. We certainly write to be understood, and should therefore never write in a language that is unknown to a majority of our readers. The rule will apply as well to the living languages as to the dead, and its infringement is but in general a display of the author's vanity. Epithets, unless they increase the strength of thought or elucidate the argument, ought not to be admitted. Of similes, metaphors, and figures of every kind the same may be affirmed: whatever does not enlighten confuses. There are two extremes, against which we ought equally to guard: not to give a dry skeleton, bones without flesh; nor an imbecile embryo, flesh without bones.'

'I understand you, Sir. What you have read is an imbecile embryo?'--'Your importunity, Mr. Trevor, and my desire to do you service have extorted an opinion from me. I must not shrink from the truth: in confirmation of what I have already said, I must add, that your composition is strong in language, but weak in argument.'--'Ha!

Much declamation, little thought?'

He was once more silent for a few seconds, and then a.s.suming a less serious tone, endeavoured to turn the conversation by inquiring if I were come to reside in London, and to live with his lordship? I took care to inform him that I considered myself as a visitor in the house; and that I meant to take my degrees, be ordained, and devote myself to the church.

I then attempted to bring him back to the ma.n.u.script; but ineffectually: he seemed determined to say no more. This silence was painful to both of us, and after I had inquired where he lived, and made some professions, which formal civility wrung from me, that I should be glad to see him again, we parted. We were neither of us entirely satisfied with the other; and I certainly much the least.

The lesson however did me infinite service. The film was in part removed from my eyes, in my own despite. I read again, but with a very different spirit: his marks in the margin painfully met my eye, with endless repet.i.tion. The rules he had been delivering were strong in my memory, and I frequently discovered their application. After the clear statement he had given of them, I could but seldom bring myself to doubt of their justice.

The result was, I immediately went to work; and, disgusted with my first performance, began another. In truth, my too much confidence and haste had made me guilty of many mistakes; which I knew to be such, the moment my vanity had been a little sobered into common sense. I had often written before, and perhaps never so ill.

I now arranged my thoughts, omitted my quotations, discarded many of my metaphors, shortened my periods, simplified my style, reduced the letter to one fourth of its former length, and finished the whole by one o'clock. His lordship was not so fastidious a critic as I thought Turl had been; he was delighted with my performance. It is true he made some corrections and additions, in places where I had not been so personal and acrimonious, against the minister, as his feelings required; but, as he accompanied them with praise, I readily submitted; and, thus improved, my first political essay was committed to the press.

CHAPTER VI

_Further efforts of critical improvement: Doubts of a serious kind suggested: More politics and new acquaintance: A dissertation on rakes_

The critical precepts of Turl were still tingling in my ears; and as I meant to shew the bishop some of the sermons that I had written, or in other words as many as he should be willing to read, they underwent an immediate revisal. Though in general they were less faulty than my post-haste political effort, yet I found quite enough to correct; and was so far reconciled to the benefit I had derived from Turl as to wish to meet him again.

In two or three days therefore, after having expunged, interlined, and polished one of my best performances till I was tolerably well satisfied with it, I visited him at his lodgings. I then owned to him, that I had not received the castigation he gave me quite so patiently as I ought to have done: but I had nevertheless profited by it, and was come to request more favours of the same kind; though I could not but acknowledge I had hopes that my present performance was not quite so defective as the former.

He received me kindly, but took the ma.n.u.script I offered him with what I again thought great coldness. He read two or three pages, without as before drawing his pencil upon me, and then paused. 'You have enjoined me a task,' said he, 'Mr. Trevor, which I do not know how to execute to my own satisfaction. You are not aware of the truth, and if I tell it you I shall offend.'--'Nay, Sir; I beg you will not spare me. Speak!'--'You have not explicitly defined to yourself your own motives: you think you are come in search of improvement; in reality, you are come in search of praise.'--'Not unless praise be my due.'--'Which you are convinced it is.'--'You see deeply into the human heart, Mr. Turl.'--'If I do not, I am ill qualified to criticise literary compositions.'--'And you think my divinity no better than my politics?'--'You do not state the question as I could wish. Divinity I must acknowledge is not a favourite subject with me.'--'I have heard as much.'--'I am too sincere a friend to morality to encourage dissention, quarrels, and enmity, concerning things which whoever may pretend to believe no one can prove that he understands. As a composition, from the little I have read, I believe your sermon to be very superior to your letter; but from the exposition of your subject, I perceive it treats on points of faith, a.s.serts church authority, and stigmatises dissent with reprobation. You tell me you are recommended to a bishop: with him it will do you service! to me it is unintelligible.'

His inclination to heresy, or, which is the same thing, his difference with me in opinion, piqued me on this occasion even more than the unsparing sincerity of his remarks. I answered, I was sorry he did not agree with me, on subjects which I was convinced were so momentous; and owned it was for that reason that, while he remained at the university, I had avoided his society.

He replied, he doubted if it were right to avoid the vicious: and the precaution which he himself thought necessary, on all such occasions, was to inquire whether, in accusing another of vice, he were not himself guilty of error. He considered his own opinions as eternally open to revision; and if any man were to tell him that two and two did not make four, he should have no objection to re-examine the facts, with his opponent, on which his own previous conviction had been founded. We ought to be ardent in the defence of truth; but we ought likewise to be patient and benevolent.

I made some attempts to convince him of the impiety of his scepticism; while he remained cool, but unshaken; and I left him with mingled emotions of pity, for his adherence to doctrines so d.a.m.nable; and of admiration, at the amenity and philanthropy with which they were delivered.

Thus catechised in criticism and theology, the ardour of my pursuits would perhaps have found some temporary abatement, had it not been rouzed anew. My letter had appeared, signed Themistocles, his lordship's known political cognomen. It was the first in which he had declared openly against the minister. His sentiments in consequence of this letter were become public, and many of the minority, desirous of fixing in their interest one whom they had before considered rather as their opponent than their friend, came to visit and pay him their compliments.

The resolute manner in which I had purposely and uniformly shewn him that I must be treated as his equal had produced its intended effect: I was dismissed with no haughty nod, but came and went as I pleased, and frequently bore a part in their conversation. I had still an open ear for vanity, which was not a little tickled by the frequent terms of applause and admiration with which Themistocles was quoted. His lordship did me the justice to inform his visitors that the letter was written by me. We had indeed conversed together; they were his thoughts, his principles, and it was true he had made such additions and corrections as were necessary. Then, proceeding to invectives against the minister, he there dropped me, and my share of merit.

The mortification of this was the greater because truth and falsehood were so mingled that, however inclined I might be, I knew not which way to do myself justice. But the praise, which they bestowed wholly on his lordship and which his lordship was willing to receive, I very unequivocally took to myself. It gave me animation; the pen was seldom out of my hand, and the exercise was sanative.

Mean while Enoch and his agreeable family, who knew so well when things were as they should be, were not neglected. I was careful to inform them of my rising fame; and my new friends, for so I accounted all those who paid their court to his lordship and his lordship's favourite, were individually named, characterised, and celebrated.

The family heard me with avidity, each desirous of having a share in a lord, and the friends of a lord. Enoch told me I was in high luck, mamma affirmed I was a fine writer, and Miss was sure I must be a _monstrous favourite_! I was a favourite with every body; and, for her part, she did not wonder at it. 'Not but it is a great pity,' added she, aside, 'that you are such a rake, Mr. Trevor.'

This repeated charge very justly alarmed my morality, and I very seriously began a refutation. But in vain. I might say what I would; she could see very plainly I was a prodigious rake, and nothing could convince her to the contrary. Though she had heard that your greatest rakes make the best husbands. Perhaps it might be true, but she did not think she could be persuaded to make the venture. She did not know what might happen, to be sure; though she really did not think she could. She could not conceive how it was, but some how or another she always found something agreeable about rakes. It was a great pity they should be rakes, but she verily believed the women loved them, and encouraged them in their seducing arts. For her part, she would keep her fingers out of the fire as long as she could: but, if it were her destiny to love a rake, what could she do? n.o.body could help being in love, and it would be very hard indeed to call what one cannot help a crime.

In this key would she continue, without let or delay, whenever she had me to herself, till some accident came to my relief: for the philosophy of Miss Eliza, on the subjects of love and rakishness, was exhaustless; and though it could not always convince, it could puzzle.

I often knew not how to behave, such a warfare did she sometimes kindle between inclination and morality. My resource was in silence; hers in talking. Notwithstanding her very great prudence, I suspect there might have been danger, had I not been guarded by the three fold shield of an unfashionable sense of moral right, strong aspirings after clerical purity, and the unfaded remembrance of the lovely chaste Olivia.

CHAPTER VII

_Enoch made acquainted with more of my perfections, which by his advice are brought to market: A bishop's parlour: The bishop himself, or a true pillar of the church: Heretical times and arduous undertakings_