THE LOVE OF IMPRESSING OTHERS.
MRS. HUMPHRY WARD, in the preface to her popular edition of "David Grieve," maintains very rightly and reasonably that novelists may use any kind of interest,— be it theological or speculative, or however indirectly con- nected with the affections and hopes and passions which chiefly determine the destiny of human beings,—which they can so effectually interweave with their story, as to elicit a hearty response from the great majority of their readers. And then she goes on :—" Ah, that response—how dear it is to us! Now, as I am about to launch this second book into that wider public beyond the circulating libraries to which the ultimate appeal lies, as I launched Robert Elsmere ' four years ago, my mind passes back over these years,—over their hopes and emotions and surprises, their delights and their toils. I think of the many thousand persons to whom in that space of time I have become known,—of whom in the pauses of work I inevitably think with alternate yearning and dread. I remember that wave of sympathy which lifted 'Robert Elsmere ; ' I feel it still swelling about me, waiting I trust for this new book, to carry it also into prosperous seas. I should be ungrateful indeed, were I to show much soreness under criticism, however hostile, however, as I think, unjust. For the world to which they were addressed has sent out kind and welcoming hands to these books of mine; I have in my ears the sound of words which may well stir and quicken and encourage; and in my heart, the longing to keep the sympathy gained, and the ambition to deserve it more and more." We entertain considerable doubt whether "David Grieve" will reach the same kind of public as "Robert Elsmere," for its main interests, though quite as strong, perhaps stronger, are not really of the same type as the main interests of "Robert Elsmere," and in the later book, the theological interests are rather artificially and ineffectually grafted upon the story. But, be that as it may, Mrs. Humphry Ward in this frank and wistful conclusion of her new preface, has, we think, put her finger on the passion which for the most part is confounded with the desire for fame. It is not in a great many cases the desire for fame at all,—in other words, it is not the desire for a perpetuated name, and
a name perpetuated by the admiration of the world; it is a desire for evidence that the writer has reached and deeply affected the hearts of others. We believe that this desire would be gratified, and perhaps almost as much grati- fied, if the name of the author remained really unknown, always supposing that he could obtain the same evidence of his success in touching the hearts of a large public, as it is by the achievement of great popular renown. No doubt there is often a positive thirst for personal renown; and when that is so, we suppose Mr. Marion Crawford would be right in naming the passion as simple vanity. But in a very great number of cases it is not so. We are persuaded that Sir Walter Scott profoundly enjoyed the evidence that his stories had stirred the hearts of multitudes long before he was
even by rumour identified with the author of " Waverley," and enjoyed it not at all less,—perhaps even somewhat more,— than he enjoyed- the popularity of his later and confessed
romances. What he enjoyed was, as Mrs. Humphry Ward says, the "response," the moving of the waters under the magic of his spell, not the renown, not the personal weight and popularity. Or to put the case in a different way. Suppose that a writer like Voltaire or Rousseau, who felt that he had the key to the minds or hearts of his countrymen, were offered the choice between writing something which should cause their minds and hearts to follow his, as, in Emerson's phrase, "the heaped waves of the Atlantic follow the moon," and writing something which should be intrinsically nobler, higher, more perfect, than his countrymen could understand or appreciate, and which would therefore be still-born as regards eliciting a "response," though far more worthy to live than anything that could elicit a popular response, is it not almost certain that he would have preferred the lesser achievement to the greater, the calling-out a living passion of gratulation in the hearts of his countrymen, to the barren honour, as he would think it, of failing to do so only because he had conceived what was of a higher order of imaginative power than anything which his country- men could appreciate and enjoy ? To strike a chord which vibrates through a host of living minds, even if those who answer to it cannot recognise the band that struck it, is an intoxicating delight. To strike a chord which fails to vibrate only because the note is too deep or too lofty to achieve this resonance in living minds, would be a feat appealing to the ambition rather of an angel than of a man. It is the sudden echo which falls the man's heart with triumph, not the tone that thins of and dies away in the solitary distance, even though the sweetness and purity of that tone be of a far more exalted character.
Men talk, and talk truly, of the emptiness of fame, as a bubble which just glitters for a few days or months, and then bursts, leaving nothing behind it but a hungry gaze on
the spot where it disappeared. And no doubt when the " response " is over, when the echo of eager sympathy dies away, there is a sense of living death in the mind of him who had once evoked this thrill of nervous exaltation in others, and can evoke it no longer, a sense which is nearer to the consciousness of death than any other experience of living man. When Sir Walter Scott was writing the two stories in which he detected, by the blank looks of James Ba,llantyne, that his genius had vanished, that the great magician's wand was broken, that genius gave a last flicker as he noted down the melancholy lines in which he bewailed the winter of his discontent. He went, we are told, to the window, and gazing at the heavy sky and thick-falling snow, composed the fine motto for one of the chapters of "Count Robert of Paris "The storm increases,—'tis no sunny shower Fostered in the moist breast of March or April, Or such as parched summer cools his lip with. Heaven's windows are flung wide ; the inmost deeps Call in hoarse greeting one upon another ; On comes the flood in all its foaming horrors, And where's the dike shall stop it P"
There one sees what the feelings of genius are when the chord which used to vibrate so triumphantly is struck and no
resonance, no response, only dead silence, follows. It is not sorrow for departed fame, for probably Scott's fame was never greater than it was after the power to command fame had vanished. Yet we suspect that he would willingly have exchanged all his fame for "one crowded hour of glorious life," such as those of which he had had so ample an experience. It is not, as Mr. Marion Crawford thinks, vanity which pervades
the world of genius, though vanity has its full share of that world. Still, the vanity which delights in homage and notoriety, is nothing when compared with that exalted joy in com- manding the springs of human sympathy which is often quite as vivid where there is no deference, no conscious homage, as where it abounds, and which often fades away in dull despair long before the homage is withdrawn.
And it is not only genius which learns to take an over- powering delight in this sort of "response." Mere beauty, and even the power to fascinate, in a lesser sphere, evince just the same sort of passionate delight in touching the springs of human emotion. The triumphs of beauty and of social charm are, of course, much more nearly related to the passion of vanity, than the triumphs of genius, for in the latter case the power of moving men may be sharply severed from the fame and popularity which that power can bestow ; while in the former case it cannot, and no man or woman who has been accustomed to exercise this power, can distinguish clearly between the delight of controlling the springs of human emotion, and the delight of the personal recognition which results from commanding them. But it is certain that even in the sway which beauty or social charm and vivacity exert over men, there is a joy quite distinct from that of mere delight in homage,—namely, delight in the almost spiritual power to awaken the thrill which brings the homage. It is not the bouquets and the presents and the social competition for their company which delight popular actors, half so much as the consciousness that they can touch springs in the heart of their audience which respond in the wish to overload them with these external signs of gratitude. It is not the consideration which the orator enjoys, half so much as the eager silence which greets his rising, and the sob of relief in which the strained feelings of his hearers ex- press themselves, when he reaches his climax. No doubt, neither actor nor orator could exert his full powers without evidence of this " response ; " for without the evidence of it, he would feel that he had failed, that he had not touched the springs he wished to touch. But it is not the cheering for its own sake that delights him ; it is the certainty of the response. So, too, brilliant and beautiful women, like Madame Recamier, for example, cannot be satisfied without seeing clearly the signs of their power over the hearts of those whom they count amongst their admirers ; for without eliciting these signs of fascination, they would think their social power dead. Still, even in this case it is not at all, we believe, mere vanity which stirs them. It is the delight of exerting a kind of spell which they themselves only half understand, but which conveys to them something of the sense of an almost supernatural sway.
We doubt, however, whether those who wield, and delight in wielding, this wonderful power, fully realise that it is not usually one which appeals solely to the higher elements of human nature. Voltaire could never have moved Paris as he did, if he had not possessed in a much larger proportion than ordinary French genius could boast of, the cynical wit in which Paris so much delighted. Rousseau could never have moved France as he did, had he not embodied the sickly and effeminate senti- mentalism of contemporary French idealism in all his greater works. Victor Hugo could never have moved Europe as he did, if he had not incarnated the hysterical excitability of his age as well as its tender humanity. Byron could never have won his fame, had he not poured much of his selfish egotism into " Childe Harold," and much of his scoffing profligacy into "Don Juan." And though many of our greatest writers have but little or no cause for self-reproach of this kind, yet even the best of them have reason to fear that their fame is partly due to their sympathy not only with the higher, but also with the lower elements in the character of the Zeit- geist. Even the popularity of "Robert Elsmere" was, we think, in part due to the craving of the world for a religion which would stimulate its hopes without subduing its self-will, —a religion which was too vague to fetter its liberty, while vivid enough to raise its pulses and brighten its dreams.
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