Previous Essay |
Index |
Next Essay |
|
|
|
THE TWO RACES OF MEN
The human species, according to the
best theory I can form of is composed of two distinct races, the
men who borrow, and the men who lend. To these two
original diversities may be reduced all those impertinent classifications
of Gothic and Celtic tribes, white men, black men, red men. All
the dwellers upon earth, "Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites,"
flock hither, and do naturally fall in with one or other of these
primary distinctions. The infinite superiority of the former,
which I choose to designate as the great race, is discernible
in their figure, port, and a certain instinctive sovereignty.
The latter are born degraded. "He shall serve his brethren."
There is something in the air of one of this cast, lean and suspicious;
contrasting with the open, trusting, generous manners of the other.
Observe who have been the greatest borrowers
of all ages -- Alcibiades, Falstaff, Sir Richard Steele -- our
late incomparable Brinsley what a family likeness in all four!
What a careless, even deportment hath your borrower! what rosy
gills! what a beautiful reliance on Providence doth he manifest,
-- taking no more thought than lilies! What contempt for money,
-- accounting it (yours and mine especially) no better than dross
What a liberal confounding of those pedantic distinctions of meum
and tuum! or rather, what a noble simplification of language
(beyond Tooke), resolving these supposed opposites into one clear,
intelligible pronoun adjective! What near approaches doth he make
to the primitive community, to the extent of one half of
the principle at least! --
He is the true taxer who "calleth
all the world up to be taxed;" and the distance is as vast
between him and one of us, as subsisted betwixt the Augustan Majesty
and the poorest obolary Jew that paid it tribute-pittance at Jerusalem!
-- His exactions, too, have such a cheerful, voluntary air! So
far removed from your sour parochial or state-gatherers, -- those
ink-horn varlets, who carry their want of welcome in their faces!
He cometh to you with a smile, and troubleth you with no receipt;
confining himself to no set season. Every day is his Candlemas,
or his Feast of Holy Michael. He applieth the lene tormentum
of a pleasant look to your purse,which to that gentle warmth expands
her silken leaves, as naturally as the cloak of the traveller,
for which sun and wind contended! He is the true Propontic which
never ebbeth! The sea which taketh handsomely at each man's hand.
In vain the victim, whom he delighteth to honour, struggles with
destiny; he is in the net. Lend therefore cheerfully, O man ordained
to lend -- that thou lose not in the end, with thy worldly penny,
the reversion promised. Combine not preposterously in thine own
person the penalties of Lazarus and of Dives! -- but, when thou
seest the proper authority coming, meet it smilingly, as it were
half-way. Come, a handsome sacrifice! See how light he
makes of it! Strain not courtesies with a noble enemy.
Reflections like the foregoing were
forced upon my mind by the death of my old friend, Ralph Bigod,
Esq., who departed this life on Wednesday evening; dying, as he
had lived, without much trouble. He boasted himself a descendant
from mighty ancestors of that name, who heretofore held ducal
dignities in this realm. In his actions and sentiments he belied
not the stock to which he pretended. Early in life he found himself
invested with ample revenues; which, with that noble disinterestedness
which I have noticed as inherent in men of the great race, he
took almost immediate measures entirely to dissipate and bring
to nothing: for there is something revolting in the idea of a
king holding a private purse; and the thoughts of Bigod were all
regal. Thus furnished, by the very act of disfurnishment; getting
rid of the cumbersome luggage of riches, more apt (as one sings)
To slacken virtue, and abate her edge,
Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise,
he set forth, like some Alexander, upon
his great enterprise, "borrowing and to borrow!"
In his periegesis, or triumphant progress
throughout this island, it has been calculated that he laid a
tythe part of the inhabitants under contribution. I reject this
estimate as greatly exaggerated: -- but having had the honour
of accompanying my friend, divers times, in his perambulations
about this vast city, I own I was greatly struck at first with
the prodigious number of faces we met, who claimed a sort of respectful
acquaintance with us. He was one day so obliging as to explain
the phenomenon.
It seems, these were his tributaries;
feeders of his exchequer; gentlemen, his good friends (as he was
leased to express himself), to whom he had occasionally been beholden
for a loan. Their multitudes did no way disconcert him. He rather
took a pride in numbering them; and, with Comus, seemed pleased
to be "stocked with so fair a herd."
With such sources, it was a wonder how
he contrived to keep his treasury always empty. He did it by force
of an aphorism, which he had often in his mouth, that "money
kept longer than three days stinks." So he made use of it
while it was fresh. A good part he drank away (for he was an excellent
toss-pot), some he gave away, the rest he threw away, literally
tossing and hurling it violently from him -- as boys do burrs,
or as if it had been infectious, -- into ponds, or ditches, or
deep holes, -- inscrutable cavities of the earth ; -- or he would
bury it (where he would never seek it again) by a river's side
under some hank, which (he would facetiously observe) paid no
interest -- but out away from him it must go peremptorily, as
Hagar's offspring into the wilderness, while it was sweet. He
never missed it. The streams were perennial which fed his fisc.
When new supplies became necessary, the first person that had
the felicity to fall in with him, friend or stranger, was sure
to contribute to the deficiency. For Bigod had an undeniable
way with him. He had a cheerful, open exterior, a quick, jovial
eye, a bald forehead, just touched with grey (cana fides). He
anticipated no excuse, and found none. And, waiving for a while
my theory as to the great race, I would put it to the most untheorising
reader, who may at times have disposable coin in his pocket, whether
it is not more repugnant to the kindliness of his nature to refuse
such a one as I am describing, than to say no to a poor
petitionary rogue (your bastard borrower), who, by his mumping
visnomy, tells you, that he expects nothing better; and, therefore,
whose preconceived notions and expectations you do in reality
so much less shock in the refusal.
When I think of this man; his fiery
glow of heart: his swell of feeling: how magnificent, how ideal
he was; how great at the midnight hour; and when I compare with
him the companions with whom I have associated since, I grudge
the saving of a few idle ducats, and think that I am fallen into
the society of lenders, and little men.
To one like Elia, whose treasures are
rather cased in leather covers than closed in iron coffers, there
is a class of alienators more formidable than that which I have
touched upon: I mean our borrowers of books--those mutilators
of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators
of odd volumes. There is Comberbatch, matchless in his depredations!
That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, like a great eyetooth
knocked out -- (you are now with me in my little back study in
Bloomsbury, reader!)--with the huge Switzer-like tomes on each
side (like the Guildhall giants, in their reformed posture, guardant
of nothing) once held the tallest of my folios, Opera Bonaventurae,
choice and massy divinity, to which its two supporters (school
divinity also, but of a lesser calibre,-- Bellarmine, and Holy
Thomas), showed but as dwarfs, -- itself an Ascapart! -- that
Comberbatch abstracted upon the faith of a theory he holds, which
is more easy, I confess, for me to suffer by than to refute, namely,
that "the title to property in a book (my Bonaventure, for
instance), is in exact ratio to the claimant's powers of understanding
and appreciating the same." Should he go on acting upon this
theory, which of our shelves is safe?
The slight vacuum in the left-hand case
-- two shelves from the ceiling -- scarcely distinguishable but
by the quick eye of a loser -- was whilom the commodious resting-place
of Brown on Urn Burial. C. will hardly allege that he knows more
about that treatise than I do, who introduced it to him, and was
indeed the first (of the moderns) to discover its beauties --
but so have I known a foolish lover to praise his mistress in
the presence of a rival more qualified to carry her off than himself
-- Just below, Dodsley's dramas want their fourth volume, where
Vittoria Corombona is! The remainder nine are as distasteful as
Priam's refuse sons, when the Fates borrowed Hector. Here stood
the Anatomy of Melancholy, in sober state.There loitered the Complete
Angler; quiet as in life, by some stream side. -- In yonder nook,
John Buncle, a widower-volume, with "eyes closed," mourns
his ravished mate.
One justice I must do my friend, that
if he sometimes, like the sea, sweeps away a treasure, at another
time, sea-like, he throws up as rich an equivalent to match it.
I have a small under-collection of this nature (my friend's gatherings
in his various calls), picked up, he has forgotten at what odd
places, and deposited with as little memory as mine. I take in
these orphans, the twice-deserted. These proselytes of the gate
are welcome as the true Hebrews. There they stand in conjunction;
natives, and naturalised. The latter seem as little disposed to
inquire out their true lineage as I am. -- I charge no warehouse-room
for these deodands, nor shall ever put myself to the ungentlemanly
trouble of advertising a sale of them to pay expenses.
To lose a volume to C. carries some
sense and meaning in it. You are sure that he will make one hearty
meal on your viands, if he can give no account of the platter
after it. But what moved thee, wayward, spiteful K., to be so
importunate to carry off with thee, in spite of tears and adjurations
to thee to forbear, the Letters of that princely woman, the thrice
noble Margaret Newcastle? -- knowing at the time, and knowing
that I knew also, thou most assuredly wouldst never turn over
one leaf of the illustrious folio -- what but the mere spirit
of contradiction, and childish love of getting the better of thy
friend? -- Then, worst cut of all! to transport it with thee to
the Gallican land --
Unworthy land to harbour such a sweetness,
A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt,
Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her sex's wonder!--
hadst thou not thy play-books, and books
of jests and fancies, about thee, to keep thee merry, even as
thou keepest all companies with thy quips and mirthful tales?
-- Child of the Green-room, it was unkindly done of thee. Thy
wife, too, that part-French, better-part Englishwoman! -- that
she could fix upon no other treatise to hear away, in kindly token
of remembering us, than the works of Fulke Greville, Lord Brook
-- of which no Frenchman, nor woman of France, Italy, or England,
was ever by nature constituted to comprehend a tittle! Was there
not Zimmerman on Solitude?
Reader, if haply thou art blessed with a moderate collection, be shy of showing it; or if thy heart overfloweth to lend them, lend thy books; but let it be to such a one as S. T. C. -- he will return them (generally anticipating the time appointed) with usury: enriched with annotations, tripling their value. I have had experience. Many are these precious MSS. of his -- (in matter oftentimes, and almost in quantity not unfrequently, vying with the originals) -- in no very clerkly hand -- legible in my Daniel: in old Burton; in Sir Thomas Browne; and those abstruser cogitations of the Greville, now, alas! wandering in Pagan lands. ---- I counsel thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy library, against S. T. C.
|
|