A LUMBER-ROOM.'
Ix his youth the present writer obtained much enjoyment from -the stories of an ancient aunt with a turn for satire and mimicry ; and of one of them he has been continually reminded as he read chapter after chapter of what Mr. J. Hain Friswell calls his thoughts. The story was of a phlegmatic country cousin, to whom the ancient lady had, in earlier days, shown the lions of London, and related how, as each object of interest was passed in review, the stolid female, casting her eyes away from her dejected cicerone with as much of a toss as her somewhat wooden head would per- mit and pressing her wise lips together, opened them for an instant to snap out the sharp and acid comment, "I see nothing at all in it!" Not that there is nothing at all in Mr. Friswell's book, for if there had been, we should not have felt as grieved as we do that we could vouchsafe so little encouragement to the hope implied by Mr. J. Hain Friswell's prayer, on the cover of his book, "Labors et ora." But just as the utilitarian and unimagina- tive female saw nothing in the Tower of London or Greenwich Hospital to repay her for the loss of her valuable time, so we are free to confess to our readers that they will not feel rewarded—say to any adequate extent—by this insight, which by Mr. Friswell's kind permission we are privileged to enjoy, into this valuable "Man's Thoughts." Perhaps the cause of our dissatisfaction is an embarras de richesses. We feel much as a housewife does who stands in the middle of her lumber-room, anxious to turn its miscellaneous contents to account, and determined, at any rate, to sort them and get some idea what all the things are ; but they are so numerous that she knows not where to begin, and there is no space in which to deposit the odds and ends in process of arrangement. She begins, but soon gets hopelessly muddled. Here are innumerable things belonging to friends which she has offered to take care of, or which it would bore them to have returned, and which, nevertheless, she can't -deal with summarily; here, too, are duplicates in abundance of things of her own, old-fashioned articles long since superseded, Tubbish in all directions ; complicated corkscrews, keyless ale-taps, -carpet-bags with holes and without locks, broken-down perambula- tors with disgustingly heavy wheels and no linch-pins, mouldy anti- gropelos with jagged springs rusty and protruding, and a thou- -sand other things which won't burn, and can't be put down gratings, and may not be left in the turn-pike road ; till at last * A Man's Thoughts. By J. Rain FrloweIL London : Sampson Low, Marston, Low, and Searle. a noseless bust of Sir Walter Scott refuses to be classed with any heap, and the housewife rises with a sigh and a stiffness in her back and reluctantly relocks the door, determining rather vaguely that she had better perhaps wait till the days are longer. Oh that we could also wait till the days are longer, but an inexorable editor demands and a confiding public longs for our judgment of the more recent thoughts of the author of A Gentle Life!
By dint of five-and-twenty per cent. of blank pages—two whole and two half between each short chapter—a very pretty little volume of respectable size has been produced ; but as there are twenty-four chapters, and each chapter, though nominally on one subject, covers much ground, as the table of contents will show, it is an obvious result that the treatment of each subject is not exhaustive ; in fact, a page and a fraction seems to be the regula- tion allowance. In the very first essay, on "Egotism," Mr. Fes- well gives us a paragraph or two on the following subject, his own egotism, universal egotism—in which we learn that the publi- can was as egotistic as the Pharisee—the difference of the French and English terms—unaware apparently that we use both " egoism " and " egotism," though they have different significations—D escartes' view, a crotchet of the Port Royalists, the practice with editors of abolishing the first person, and of the oracles. Then we have little illustrations of its universality, beginning, "A certain amount of egotism, that is, belief in self, is natural to all men ;" "self is the centre of every circle," and ending with some inconsistency. "it is so hard to go out of the centre ; we play at puss in the corner with ourselves, and keep to the corner as long as we can." Then we pass to the uses of egotism,—how the egotism of Nelson, Brindley, &c., has made England what it is ; and in the same para- graph, without break, we are told of the conceit and egotism of the satirists, but what good that has done the world is not men- tioned. Then the same quality in actors, artists and musicians is remarked on, with old anecdotes illustrative of it. Next we are told that this egotism saves men from depression, and that without it, that is, without belief in themselves, they could not teach the world. Then we return without a break to remarks on the quality itself, and with courageous indifference to the personal application the reader may make of the passage, Mr. Friswell says, " What is so distasteful to us all, is the egotism of a man who has really done nothing in the world. . . . and who will yet presume upon his two-
penny position to dictate to others The vainest of these men have generally the least to recommend them," and then, forgetful of all he has said of the great Egotists who have made England what it is, Mr. Friswell continues, "it is ordinarily found that the really meritorious man is distinguished by a retiring modesty." Next we are told of the contempt of the well-born for the poor and of the self-made for the well-born. Then we learn that satire arose to put down this self-conceit, but that in the public Press "there is a great want of that wholesome ingredient,"—we trust Mr. Friswell will not deal too hardly with our inability to be satirical—whereas in Elizabeth's days it was different, and so on. Next we pass to the boredom of Egotism and how it gets punished, and how Egotists bore each other ; how they go mad, and how a washerwoman, spite of "the hard work of every day, is yet as self-opinioned, ay; and more so, than the grandest duchess in the universe." Next charity and probity are said to be the offspring of self. "Self goes with us to bed ; it rises with us in the morning ; we carry it to our counting-houses; the priest puts it on with his vestments ; it kneels with -the layman at his prayers." A page about Jean Paul's egotism is followed by the advice " yet universal as it is, we are not wise unless we conquer it." Lastly, we are told that we all of us think we "could win the affections of the best, prettiest, and finest girl in the world, if we had a fair chance ;" and that no one believes any one can hate him ; and finally, Mr. Friswell makes a rapid transition, quoting St. Paul, and winding up imposingly, "It may be that the last great judgment of all will be that made possible by true light and knowledge, and will be passed with regard to our- selves upon ourselves."
We have been thus prolix about the first essay because the subjects of all the others are treated in a similar way. Mr. Friswell flits from flower to flower, fancying that the honey is his own manu- facture, while he is but collecting it from elsewhere, and not collecting much, but considerately leaving almost all for future comers. Like a butterfly, too, he goes backwards and forwards know- ing no order in his wanderings, but following his own sweet will, dipping here and there, and apparently forgetting to which blossom he has been, and going back to the same not unfrequently. The same tendency to shallowness, to disorder, to platitudes, to repeti- tion, and to quotation prevails in all the essays, and the same confusion of ideas. In this essay Mr. Friswell has got into a fog about Egotism. With him it stands for philosophical introspection, self-respect, Self-conceit, self-dependence, conscious- ness of power and of weakness and of dependence ; pride, humility, generosity, charity, religion. In fact, Mr. Friswell says over and over again in a variety of ways that a man is himself and has to think and act for himself. In the next chapter he calls "the universal I" conscience, and opens with some affected remarks as to what Hartley Coleridge, or Hazlitt, or Montaigne would have done with the subject, and he tells us a few things that Jeremy Taylor, Dr. South, Dr. Sharp, St. Paul, Origen, Socrates, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Cicero have said about it, in the course of which he makes a remark of his own that "our latest writer on this subject leads us irresistibly to the conclusion that we have a conscience." And again he remarks, "In fact there is not much to be said upon the subject. If you think that any action is wrong, you may rely that it is so.
Although, of course, one can imagine many cases in which an innocent action would be guilty or a guilty action inno- cent," which he then kindly proceeds to explain, and again thinks that our condemnation at the last day may be self-pronounced, and he quotes these lines, which he thinks graphic :-
"He cannot plead, his throat is choked, Sin holds him in her might ; And, self-condemned, be slideth down To an eternal night !
" The ranged angels, great white throne, The whole Almighty quire,
Fade out ; the Father's sapphire gaze Grows molten in its ire."
But Mr. Friswell especially shines in clear statements of opinions which ill-natured people might call platitudes. We will illustrate our opinion by a few extracts. "The wisest way in the conduct of life is and to know what man is, to endea- vour to improve ourselves by the lesson." "Self-restraint will make every kind of enjoyment lawful in its proper time and place, will induce good health and satisfaction in life ; will make our work a pleasure, our exercise delightful, our rest and sleep refreshing." "From self-culture and self- restraint springs self-respect." "it is well for a man in reading, sleeping, walking, eating, and drinking sometimes to limit him- self, sometimes to indulge ; to take care that he at no time becomes a slave to one passion or to one habit." "When our habits are our slaves we can respect ourselves ; when we are slaves to our habits no one will respect us. -In this category of habits let us place indulgence in certain feelings and actions." "Evil must be conquered, crushed, and supplanted by good." "If we shut our eyes, depend upon it we shall always be in the dark." "True philosophy has taught us to try to understand the ways of the Almighty, and to distinguish between good and evil." "Happily, the truth lives, —that cannot die. Above the petty Little-Pedlington class interests at this largely critical period, when Tom wants to govern and Lord Noodle protests that Toni does not know how during all this time truth lives, and must at last conquer," &c. But enough of this. Mr. Friswell rises nearly to the epigrammatic about our habits being our slaves, and about being in the dark if we shut our eyes ; —indeed we can see that he has been a student of Mr. Carlyle, and of Mr. Thackeray also, and it is rather unkind to his master in satire to say that it seems to him that his power as a satirist is inferior to that of Dickens. Our author writes so much about satire, and its nature and office, that we wonder at this opinion. But Mr. Friswell knows about satire. He speaks elsewhere of the satiric genius of Douglas Jerrold, "whose heavy and intense articles threw such a lurid light upon the firat and middle pages of his weekly newspaper." In fact, next to his power of platitude comes Mr. Friswell's power of quotation. He is great in classics, in the works of divines, poets, novelists, essayists ; and not unfre- quently expounds them, for our benefit doubtless, but not always to our advantage or to the clearness of his own mind. For instance, in chapter xiv. he introduces us with kind condescension to Mr. Matthew Arnold,—" a singular son of averyremarkable father, one who is in some measure a leader of modern thought Matthew Arnold, the son of Dr. Arnold of Rugby," &c., and after inquiry, Mr. Friswell says, in perfect good faith, that he thinks he (Mr. Arnold) was "truly inspired when he endeavoured to affix on his countrymen a name disgraceful and abhorrent to all the noble and pure-minded," the name of Philistine. He ex- plains Mr. Arnold's meaning to us, and asks us, with a thought- ful desire to clear our apprehension, "Have we made quite clear what he means by a British Philistine ?" Whether Mr. Arnold would endorse the explanation of his patron may be somewhat doubtful.
A little want of clearness and good English is another trait of Mr. Frisweil's authorship. We have parenthetical sentences with- out the ones on which they depend ; the subject is forgotten in the parenthesis, and the " although " and " however " precede and follow nothing. Here is an instance in the sentence about Douglas Jerrold : —
"Now, although English literature may be presumed to have reached that state indicated by the Roman poet when he said' that it was diffi- cult not to write satire,' for literature is, after all, but a reflex of society, and surely society demands a purge, and requires an occasional satire, as sharp and pungent as it can be made. We have, however, passed, long ago, that early stage of satiric genius which produced such rude and raw exponents of the art as Donne and Oldham, who may, in literature, stand as parallel examples, as in the newspaper press the 'Age' and ' Argus,' the 'Censor' and the Satirist,' or, more lately still, those heavy and intense articles which, from the pen of Mr. Douglas Jerrold, threw such a lurid light upon the first and middle pages of his weekly newspaper."
A little trick of contradicting what he has said is another defect. We have given one instance of this in the passage on the hv.mility of truly great men, after showing that the greatest men owed their greatness to their perfect egotism. And here is another. He concludes a chapter, in which he endeavours to point out how universal is the habit of exaggeration, "but in real life we may be sure that no scholar or gentleman will willingly exaggerate or speak beyond the truth." The truth of Mr. Friswell seems to be that he must speak on all matters, and dabble in quasi-philoso- phical disquisition on every social and literary subject, but that his tastes are too various for his opinions to be profound or accurate. He will take two opposite views of a case without perceiving their inconsistency, or being able to reconcile their apparent contradic- tions. He reads much, and is caught with acute remarks, which he then enlarges on, producing watery dilutions of no strength or power. He makes mild slaps at everything, from a weak woman up to a strong government, and has far too high an opinion of him- self to imagine for a moment that he is only laying his shortcomings of power and knowledge open to the good-natured smile of amusement, or impatient shrug of indignation, of better men. In the lumber-room of his brain are valuables and trifles and rubbish, of his own or of others, but they are too ill arranged, and on the whole too like what can be got anywhere else, to warrant him in presenting the key to the public, and asking it to look round at his treasures ; they will yawn, and beg to lay it aside till the days are longer and themselves in dire need of occupation.
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