Paul Clifford — Complete
robust health. His constitution keeps him in spirits, and his spirits
in courage and in benevolence. He is obviously not a hard character, my
good young friends, for you to deceive; for he wants suspicion, and all
his good qualities lay him open to you. But beware his anger when he
finds you out! He is a terrible Othello when his nature is once stung.
Mem.--A good sort of character to seduce into illegal practices; makes
a tolerable traitor or a capital smuggler. You yourselves must never
commit any illegal offence,--aren't there cat's-paws for the
chestnuts? As all laws are oppressions (only necessary and often sacred
oppressions, which you need not explain to him), and his character
is especially hostile to oppression, you easily seduce the person we
describe into braving the laws of his country. Yes! the bold, generous,
frank, and affectionate man has only to be born in humble life to be
sure of a halter!
V.
The bold, selfish, close, grasping man will in all probability cheat
you, my dear friends. For such a character makes the master-rogue, the
stuff from which Nature forms a Richard the Third. You had better leave
such a man quite alone. He is bad even to serve. He breaks up his tools
when he has done with them. No, you can do nothing with him, my good
young men!
VI.
The eating, drinking, unthoughtful, sensual, mechanical man,--the
ordinary animal. Such a creature has cunning, and is either cowardly or
ferocious; seldom in these qualities he preserves a medium. He is not
by any means easy to dupe. Nature defends her mental brutes by the
thickness of their hide. Win his mistress if possible; she is the best
person to manage him. Such creatures are the natural prey of artful
women; their very stolidity covers all but sensuality. To the Samson-the
Delilah.
VII.
The gay, deceitful, shrewd, polished, able man,--the courtier, the
man of the world. In public and stirring life this is the fit
antagonist,--often the successful and conquering rival of Character V.
You perceive a man like this varies so greatly in intellect--from the
mere butterfly talent to the rarest genius, from the person you see
at cards to the person you see in Cabinets, from the ----- to the
Chesterfield, from the Chesterfield to the Pericles--that it is
difficult to give you an exact notion of the weak points of a character
so various. But while he dupes his equals and his superiors, I consider
him, my attentive pupils, by no means a very difficult character for
an inferior to dupe. And in this manner you must go about it. Do not
attempt hypocrisy; he will see through it in an instant. Let him think
you at once, and at first sight, a rogue. Be candid on that matter
yourself; but let him think you a useful rogue. Serve him well and
zealously; but own that you do so, because you consider your interest
involved in this. This reasoning satisfies him; and as men of this
character are usually generous, he will acknowledge its justice
by throwing you plenty of sops, and stimulating you with bountiful
cordials. Should he not content you herein, appear contented; and
profit in betraying him (that is the best way to cheat him), not by his
failings, but by opportunity. Watch not his character, but your time.
VIII.
The vain, arrogant, brave, amorous, flashy character. This sort of
character we formerly attributed to the French, and it is still more
common to the Continent than that beloved island which I shall see no
more! A creature of this description is made up of many false virtues;
above others, it is always profuse where its selfishness is appealed to,
not otherwise. You must find, then, what pleases it, and pander to its
tastes. So will ye cheat it,--or ye will cheat it also by affecting the
false virtues which it admires itself,--rouge your sentiments highly,
and let them strut with a buskined air; thirdly, my good young men, ye
will cheat it by profuse flattery, and by calling it in especial “the
mirror of chivalry.”
IX.
The plain, sensible, honest man,--a favourable, but not elevated
specimen of our race. This character, my beloved pupils, you may take in
once, but never twice. Nor can you take in such a man as a stranger; he
must be your friend or relation, or have known intimately some part
of your family. A man of this character is always open, though in a
moderate and calm degree, to the duties and ties of life. He will always
do something to serve his friend, his brother, or the man whose father
pulled his father out of the Serpentine. Affect with him no varnish;
exert no artifice in attempting to obtain his assistance. Candidly state
your wish for such or such a service, sensibly state your pretensions,
modestly hint at your gratitude. So may you deceive him once, then leave
him alone forever!
X.
The fond, silly, credulous man, all impulse and no reflection,--how my
heart swells when I contemplate this excellent character! What a Canaan
for you does it present! I envy you launching into the world with
the sanguine hope of finding all men such! Delightful enthusiasm
of youth,--would that the hope could be realized! Here is the very
incarnation of gullibility. You have only to make him love you, and no
hedgehog ever sucked egg as you can suck him. Never be afraid of his
indignation; go to him again and again; only throw yourself on his
neck and weep. To gull him once is to gull him always; get his first
shilling, and then calculate what you will do with the rest of his
fortune. Never desert so good a man for new friends; that would
be ungrateful in you! And take with you, by the way, my good young
gentlemen, this concluding maxim: Men are like lands; you will get
more by lavishing all your labour again and again upon the easy than by
ploughing up new ground in the sterile! Legislators,--wise, good, pious
men,--the Tom Thumbs of moral science, who make giants first, and
then kill them,--you think the above lessons villanous. I honour your
penetration. They are not proofs of my villany, but of your folly! Look
over them again, and you will see that they are designed to show that
while ye are imprisoning, transporting, and hanging thousands every day,
a man with a decent modicum of cunning might practise every one of those
lessons which seem to you so heinous, and not one of your laws could
touch him!
BRACHYLOGIA;
OR,
ESSAYS, CRITICAL, SENTIMENTAL, MORAL, AND ORIGINAL.
ADDRESSED TO HIS PUPILS
BY AUGUSTUS TOMLINSON.
The irony in the preceding essays is often lost sight of in the
present. The illness of this great man, which happened while
composing these little gems, made him perhaps more in earnest
than when in robust health.--Editor's Note.
ON THE MORALITY TAUGHT BY THE RICH TO THE POOR.
As soon as the urchin pauper can totter out of doors, it is taught to
pull off its hat, and pull its hair to the quality. “A good little boy,”
says the squire; “there's a ha'penny for you.” The good little boy glows
with pride. That ha'penny instils deep the lesson of humility. Now goes
our urchin to school. Then comes the Sunday teaching,--before church,
which enjoins the poor to be lowly, and to honour every man better off
than themselves. A pound of honour to the squire, and an ounce to the
beadle. Then the boy grows up; and the Lord of the Manor instructs him
thus: “Be a good boy, Tom, and I'll befriend you. Tread in the steps of
your father; he was an excellent man, and a great loss to the parish;
he was a very civil, hard-working, well-behaved creature; knew his
station;--mind, and do like him!” So perpetual hard labour and plenty of
cringing make the ancestral virtues to be perpetuated to peasants till
the day of judgment! Another insidious distillation of morality is
conveyed through a general praise of the poor. You hear false friends of
the people, who call themselves Liberals and Tories, who have an idea of
morals half chivalric, half pastoral, agree in lauding the unfortunate
creatures whom they keep at work for them. But mark the virtues the poor
are always to be praised for,--industry, honesty, and content. The
first virtue is extolled to the skies, because industry gives the rich
everything they have; the second, because honesty prevents an iota
of the said everything being taken away again; and the third, because
content is to hinder these poor devils from ever objecting to a lot so
comfortable to the persons who profit by it. This, my pupils, is the
morality taught by the rich to the poor!
EMULATION.
The great error of emulation is this: we emulate effects without
inquiring into causes. When we read of the great actions of a man,
we are on fire to perform the same exploits, without endeavouring to
ascertain the precise qualities which enabled the man we imitate to
commit the actions we admire. Could we discover these, how often might
we discover that their origin was a certain temper of body, a certain
peculiarity of constitution, and that, wish we for the same success, we
should be examining the nature of our bodies rather than sharpening
the faculties of our minds,--should use dumbbells, perhaps, instead of
books; nay, on the other hand, contract some grievous complaint rather
than perfect our moral salubrity. Who should say whether Alexander would
have been a hero had his neck been straight; or Boileau a satirist, had
he never been pecked by a turkey? It would be pleasant to see you, my
beloved pupils, after reading “Quintus Curtius,” twisting each other's
throat; or, fresh from Boileau, hurrying to the poultry-yard in the hope
of being mutilated into the performance of a second “Lutrin.”
CAUTION AGAINST THE SCOFFERS OF “HUMBUG.”
My beloved pupils, there is a set of persons in the world, daily
increasing, against whom you must be greatly on your guard; there is
a fascination about them. They are people who declare themselves
vehemently opposed to humbug,--fine, liberal fellows, clear-sighted, yet
frank. When these sentiments arise from reflection, well and good,--they
are the best sentiments in the world; but many take them up second hand.
They are very inviting to the indolence of the mob of gentlemen who see
the romance of a noble principle, not its utility. When a man looks
at everything through this dwarfing philosophy, everything has a great
modicum of humbug. You laugh with him when he derides the humbug in
religion, the humbug in politics, the humbug in love, the humbug in the
plausibilities of the world; but you may cry, my dear pupils, when he
derides what is often the safest of all practically to deride,--the
humbug in common honesty! Men are honest from religion, wisdom,
prejudice, habit, fear, and stupidity; but the few only are wise; and
the persons we speak of deride religion, are beyond prejudice, unawed by
habit, too indifferent for fear, and too experienced for stupidity.
POPULAR WRATH AT INDIVIDUAL IMPRUDENCE.
You must know, my dear young friends, that while the appearance of
magnanimity is very becoming to you, and so forth, it will get you
a great deal of ill-will if you attempt to practise it to your own
detriment. Your neighbours are so invariably, though perhaps insensibly,
actuated by self-interest--self-interest--[Mr. Tomlinson is wrong
here; but his ethics were too much narrowed to Utilitarian
principles.--EDITOR.]--is so entirely, though every twaddler denies