Representative Men: Seven Lectures
sparkles from them. Beauty, the spirit of joy and hilarity, he sheds
over the universe. Epicurus relates, that poetry hath such charms that
a lover might forsake his mistress to partake of them. And the true
bards have been noted for their firm and cheerful temper. Homer lies
in sunshine; Chaucer is glad and erect; and Saadi says, "It was rumored
abroad that I was penitent; but what had I to do with repentance?" Not
less sovereign and cheerful,--much more sovereign and cheerful is the
tone of Shakspeare. His name suggests joy and emancipation to the heart
of men. If he should appear in any company of human souls, who would
not march in his troop? He touches nothing that does not borrow health
and longevity from his festive style.
And now, how stands the account of man with this bard and benefactor,
when in solitude, shutting our ears to the reverberations of his fame,
we seek to strike the balance? Solitude has austere lessons; it can
teach us to spare both heroes and poets; and it weighs Shakspeare also,
and finds him to share the halfness and imperfections of humanity.
Shakspeare, Homer, Dante, Chaucer, saw the splendor of meaning that
plays over the visible world; knew that a tree had another use than
for apples, and corn another than for meal, and the ball of the earth,
than for tillage and roads: that these things bore a second and finer
harvest to the mind, being emblems of its thoughts, and conveying in
all their natural history a certain mute commentary on human life.
Shakspeare employed them as colors to compose his picture. He rested
in their beauty; and never took the step which seemed inevitable to
such genius, namely, to explore the virtue which resides in these
symbols, and imparts this power,--what is that which they themselves
say? He converted the elements, which waited on his command, into
entertainments. He was master of the revels to mankind. Is it not as
if one should have, through majestic powers of science, the comets
given into his hand, or the planets and their moons, and should draw
them from their orbits to glare with the municipal fireworks on a
holiday night, and advertise in all towns, "very superior pyrotechny
this evening!" Are the agents of nature, and the power to understand
them, worth no more than a street serenade, or the breath of a cigar?
One remembers again the trumpet-text in the Koran--"The heavens and
the earth, and all that is between them, think ye we have created them
in jest?" As long as the question is of talent and mental power, the
world of men has not his equal to show. But when the question is to
life, and its materials, and its auxiliaries, how does he profit me?
What does it signify? It is but a Twelfth Night, or Midsummer-Night's
Dream, or a Winter Evening's Tale: what signifies another picture more
or less? The Egyptian verdict of the Shakspeare Societies comes to
mind, that he was a jovial actor and manager. I cannot marry this fact
to his verse. Other admirable men have led lives in some sort of keeping
with their thought; but this man, in wide contrast. Had he been less,
had he reached only the common measure of great authors, of Bacon,
Milton, Tasso, Cervantes, we might leave the fact in the twilight of
human fate: but, that this man of men, he who gave to the science of
mind a new and larger subject than had ever existed, and planted the
standard of humanity some furlongs forward into Chaos,--that he should
not be wise for himself,--it must even go into the world's history,
that the best poet led an obscure and profane life, using his genius
for the public amusement.
Well, other men, priest and prophet, Israelite, German, and Swede,
beheld the same objects: they also saw through them that which was
contained. And to what purpose? The beauty straightway vanishes; they
read commandments, all-excluding mountainous duty; an obligation, a
sadness, as of piled mountains, fell on them, and life became ghastly,
joyless, a pilgrim's progress, a probation, beleaguered round with
doleful histories of Adam's fall and curse, behind us; with doomsdays
and purgatorial and penal fires before us; and the heart of the seer
and the heart of the listener sank in them. It must be conceded that
these are half-views of half-men. The world still wants its
poet-priest, a reconciler, who shall not trifle with Shakspeare the
player, nor shall grope in graves with Swedenborg the mourner; but who
shall see, speak, and act, with equal inspiration. For knowledge will
brighten the sunshine; right is more beautiful than private affection;
and love is compatible with universal wisdom.
VI. NAPOLEON; OR, THE MAN OF THE WORLD.
Among the eminent persons of the nineteenth century, Bonaparte is far
the best known, and the most powerful; and owes his predominance to
the fidelity with which he expresses the tone of thought and belief,
the aims of the masses of active and cultivated men. It is Swedenborg's
theory, that every organ is made up of homogeneous particles; or, as
it is sometimes expressed, every whole is made of similars; that is,
the lungs are composed of infinitely small lungs; the liver, of
infinitely small livers; the kidney, of little kidneys, etc. Following
this analogy, if any man is found to carry with him the power and
affections of vast numbers, if Napoleon is France, if Napoleon is
Europe, it is because the people whom he sways are little Napoleons.
In our society, there is a standing antagonism between the conservative
and the democratic classes; between those who have made their fortunes,
and the young and the poor who have fortunes to make; between the
interests of dead labor,--that is, the labor of hands long ago still
in the grave, which labor is now entombed in money stocks, or in land
and buildings owned by idle capitalists,--and the interests of living
labor, which seeks to possess itself of land, and buildings, and money
stocks. The first class is timid, selfish, illiberal, hating innovation,
and continually losing numbers by death. The second class is selfish
also, encroaching, bold, self-relying, always outnumbering the other,
and recruiting its numbers every hour by births. It desires to keep
open every avenue to the competition of all, and to multiply
avenues;--the class of business men in America, in England, in France,
and throughout Europe; the class of industry and skill. Napoleon is
its representative. The instinct of active, brave, able men, throughout
the middle class everywhere, has pointed out Napoleon as the incarnate
Democrat. He had their virtues, and their vices; above all, he had
their spirit or aim. That tendency is material, pointing at a sensual
success, and employing the richest and most various means to that end;
conversant with mechanical powers, highly intellectual, widely and
accurately learned and skilful, but subordinating all intellectual and
spiritual forces into means to a material success. To be the rich man
is the end. "God has granted" says the Koran, "to every people a prophet
in its own tongue." Paris, and London, and New York, the spirit of
commerce, of money, and material power, were also to have their prophet;
and Bonaparte was qualified and sent.
Every one of the million readers of anecdotes, or memoirs, or lives
of Napoleon, delights in the page, because he studies in it his own
history. Napoleon is thoroughly modern, and, at the highest point of
his fortunes, has the very spirit of the newspapers. He is no saint,--to
use his own word, "no capuchin," and he is no hero, in the high sense.
The man in the street finds in him the qualities and powers of other
men in the street. He finds him, like himself, by birth a citizen,
who, by very intelligible merits, arrived at such a commanding position,
that he could indulge all those tastes which the common man possesses,
but is obliged to conceal and deny; good society, good books, fast
traveling, dress, dinners, servants without number, personal weight,
the execution of his ideas, the standing in the attitude of a benefactor
to all persons about him, the refined enjoyments of pictures, statues,
music, palaces, and conventional honors,--precisely what is agreeable
to the heart of every man in the nineteenth century,--this powerful
man possessed.
It is true that a man of Napoleon's truth of adaptation to the mind
of the masses around him becomes not merely representative, but actually
a monopolizer and usurper of other minds. Thus Mirabeau plagiarized
every good thought, every good word, that was spoken in France. Dumont
relates that he sat in the gallery of the Convention, and heard Mirabeau
make a speech. It struck Dumont that he could fit it with a peroration,
which he wrote in pencil immediately, and showed to Lord Elgin, who
sat by him. Lord Elgin approved it, and Dumont, in the evening, showed
it to Mirabeau. Mirabeau read it, pronounced it admirable, and declared
he would incorporate it into his harangue, to-morrow, to the Assembly.
"It is impossible," said Dumont, "as, unfortunately, I have shown it
to Lord Elgin." "If you have shown it to Lord Elgin, and to fifty
persons beside, I shall still speak it to-morrow:" and he did speak
it, with much effect, at the next day's session. For Mirabeau, with
his overpowering personality, felt that these things, which his presence
inspired, were as much his own, as if he had said them, and that his
adoption of them gave them their weight. Much more absolute and
centralizing was the successor to Mirabeau's popularity, and to much
more than his predominance in France. Indeed, a man of Napoleon's stamp
almost ceases to have a private speech and opinion. He is so largely
receptive, and is so placed, that he comes to be a bureau for all the
intelligence, wit, and power, of the age and country. He gains the
battle; he makes the code; he makes the system of weights and measures;
he levels the Alps; he builds the road. All distinguished engineers,
savants, statists, report to him; so likewise do all good heads in
every kind; he adopts the best measures, sets his stamp on them, and
not these alone, but on every happy and memorable expression. Every
sentence spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves
reading, as it is the sense of France.
Bonaparte was the idol of common men, because he had in transcendent
degree the qualities and powers of common men. There is a certain
satisfaction in coming down to the lowest ground of politics, for we
get rid of cant and hypocrisy. Bonaparte wrought, in common with that
great class he represented, for power and wealth,--but Bonaparte,
specially, without any scruple as to the means. All the sentiments
which embarrass men's pursuit of these objects, he set aside. The
sentiments were for women and children. Fontanes, in 1804, expressed
Napoleon's own sense, when, in behalf of the Senate, he addressed
him,--"Sire, the desire of perfection is the worst disease that ever
afflicted the human mind." The advocates of liberty, and of progress,
are "ideologists;"--a word of contempt often in his mouth;--"Necker
is an ideologist:" "Lafayette is an ideologist."
An Italian proverb, too well known, declares that, "if you would
succeed, you must not be too good." It is an advantage, within certain
limits, to have renounced the dominion of the sentiments of piety,
gratitude, and generosity; since, what was an impassable bar to us,
and still is to others, becomes a convenient weapon for our purposes;
just as the river which was a formidable barrier, winter transforms
into the smoothest of roads.
Napoleon renounced, once for all, sentiments and affections, and would
help himself with his hands and his head. With him is no miracle, and
no magic. He is a worker in brass, in iron, in wood, in earth, in
roads, in buildings, in money, and in troops, and a very consistent