From a College Window, Arthur Christopher Benson [best novels to read for beginners TXT] 📗

me the requisite bias, the momentous impulse"? We tend to want to do things on too large a scale, to affect great masses of people, to influence numerous hearts. An author should be more than content if he finds he has made a difference to a handful of people, or given innocent pleasure to a small company. Only to those whose heart is high, whose patience is inexhaustible, whose vigour is great, whose emotion is passionate, is it given to make a deep mark upon the age; and there is needed too the magical charm of personality, overflowing in "thoughts that breathe and words that burn." But we can all take a hand in the great game; and if the leading parts are denied us, if we are told off to sit among a row of supers, drinking and whispering on a bench, while the great characters soliloquize, let us be sure that we drain our empty cup with zest, and do our whispering with intentness; not striving to divert attention to ourselves, but contributing with all our might to the naturalness, the effectiveness of the scene.


XI


THE CRITICISM OF OTHERS

I was staying the other day in the house of an old friend, a public man, who is a deeply interesting character, energetic, able, vigorous, with very definite limitations. The only male guest in the house, it so happened, was also an old friend of mine, a serious man. One night, when we were all three in the smoking-room, our host rose, and excused himself, saying that he had some letters to write. When he was gone, I said to my serious friend: "What an interesting fellow our host is! He is almost more interesting because of the qualities that he does not possess, than because of the qualities that he does possess." My companion, who is remarkable for his power of blunt statement, looked at me gravely, and said: "If you propose to discuss our host, you must find some one else to conduct the argument; he is my friend, whom I esteem and love, and I am not in a position to criticise him." I laughed, and said: "Well, he is my friend, too, and _I_ esteem and love him; and that is the very reason why I should like to discuss him. Nothing that either you or I could say would make me love him less; but I wish to understand him. I have a very clear impression of him, and I have no doubt you have a very clear impression too; yet we should probably differ about him in many points, and I should like to see what light you could throw upon his character." My companion said: "No; it is inconsistent with my idea of loyalty to criticise my friends. Besides, you know I am an old-fashioned person, and I disapprove of criticising people altogether. I think it is a violation of the ninth commandment; I do not think we are justified in bearing false witness against our neighbour."

"But you beg the question," I said, "by saying 'FALSE witness.' I quite agree that to discuss people in a malicious spirit, or in a spirit of mockery, with the intention of exaggerating their faults and making a grotesque picture of their foibles, is wrong. But two just persons, such as you and I are, may surely talk over our friends, in what Mr. Chadband called a spirit of love?" My companion shook his head. "No," he said, "I think it is altogether wrong. Our business is to see the good points of our friends, and to be blind to their faults." "Well," I said, "then let us 'praise him soft and low, call him worthiest to be loved,' like the people in 'The Princess.' You shall make a panegyric, and I will say 'Hear, hear!'" "You are making a joke out of it," said my companion, "and I shall stick to my principles--and you won't mind my saying," he went on, "that I think your tendency is to criticise people much too much. You are always discussing people's faults, and I think it ends in your having a lower estimate of human nature than is either kind or necessary. To-night, at dinner, it made me quite melancholy to hear the way in which you spoke of several of our best friends." "Not leaving Lancelot brave nor Galahad pure!" I said; "in fact you think that I behaved like the ingenious demon in the Acts, who always seems to me to have had a strong sense of humour. It was the seven sons of one Sceva, a Jew, was it not, who tried to exorcise an evil spirit? But he 'leapt upon them and overcame them, so that they fled out of the house naked and wounded.' You mean that I use my friends like that, strip off their reputations, belabour them, and leave them without a rag of virtue or honour?" My companion frowned, and said: "Yes; that is more or less what I mean, though I think your illustration is needlessly profane. My idea is that we ought to make the best of people, and try as far as possible to be blind to their faults." "Unless their fault happens to be criticism?" I said. My companion turned to me very solemnly, and said: "I think we ought not to be afraid, if necessary, of telling our friends about their faults; but that is quite a different thing from amusing oneself by discussing their faults with others." "Well" I said, "I believe that one is in a much better position to speak to people about their faults, if one knows them; and personally I think I arrive at a juster view both of my friends' faults and virtues by discussing them with others. I think one takes a much fairer view, by seeing the impression that one's friends make on other people; and I think that I generally arrive at admiring my friends more by seeing them reflected in the mind of another, than I do when they are merely reflected in my own mind. Besides, if one is possessed of critical faculties, it seems to me absurd to rule out one part of life, and that, perhaps, the most important--one's fellow-beings, I mean--and to say that one is not to exercise the faculty of criticism there. You would not think it wrong, for instance, to criticise books?" "No," said my companion, "certainly not. I think that it is not only legitimate, but a duty, to bring one's critical faculties to bear on books; it is one of the most valuable methods of self-education." "And yet books are nothing but an expression of an author's personality," I said. "Would you go so far as to say that one has no business to criticise one's friends' books?" "You are only arguing for the sake of arguing," said my companion. "With books it is quite different; they are a public expression of a man's opinions, and consequently they are submitted to the world for criticism." "I confess," I said, "that I do not think the distinction is a real one. I feel sure one has a right to criticise a man's opinions, delivered in conversation; and I think that much of our lives is nothing but a more or less public expression of ourselves. Your position seems to me no more reasonable than if a man was to say: 'I look upon the whole world, and all that is in it, as the work of God; and I am not in a position to criticise any of the works of God.' If one may not criticise the character of a friend whom one esteems and loves, surely, a fortiori, we ought not to criticise anything in the world at all. The whole of ethics, the whole of religion, is nothing else than bringing our critical faculties to bear upon actions and qualities; and it seems to me that if our critical faculty means anything at all, we are bound to apply it to all the phenomena we see about us." My companion said disdainfully that I was indulging in the merest sophistry, and that he thought that we had better go to bed, which we presently did.

I have, since this conversation, been reflecting about the whole subject, and I am not inclined to admit that my companion was right. In the first place, if every one were to follow the principle that one had no business to criticise one's friends, it would end in being deplorably dull. Imagine the appalling ponderosity of a conversation in which one felt bound to praise every one who was mentioned. Think of the insensate chorus which would arise. "How tall and stately A---- is! How sturdy and compact B---- is! Then there is dear C----; how wise, judicious, prudent, and sensible! And the excellent D----, what candour, what impulsiveness! E----, how worthy, how business-like! Yes, how true that is! How thankful we should be for the examples of A----, B----, C----, D----, and E----!" A very little of such conversation would go a long way. How it would refresh and invigorate the mind! What a field for humour and subtlety it would open up!

It may be urged that we ought not to regulate our conduct upon the basis of trying to avoid what is dull; but I am myself of opinion that dulness is responsible for a large amount of human error and misery. Readers of The Pilgrim's Progress will no doubt remember the young woman whose name was Dull, and her choice of companions--Simple, Sloth, Presumption, Short-mind, Slow-pace, No-heart, Linger-after-lust, and Sleepy-head. These are the natural associates of Madam Dull. The danger of dulness, whether natural or acquired, is the danger of complacently lingering among stupid and conventional ideas, and losing all the bright interchange of the larger world. The dull people are not, as a rule, the simple people--they are generally provided with a narrow and self-sufficient code; they are often entirely self-satisfied, and apt to disapprove of everything that is lively, romantic, and vigorous. Simplicity, as a rule, is either a natural gift, or else can be attained only by people of strong critical powers, who will, firmly and vigorously, test, examine, and weigh motives, and arrive through experience at a direct and natural method of dealing with men and circumstances. True simplicity is not an inherited poverty of spirit; it is rather like the poverty of one who has deliberately discarded what is hampering, vexatious, and unnecessary, and has learnt that the art of life consists in disentangling the spirit from all conventional claims, in living by trained impulse and fine instinct, rather than by tradition and authority. I do not say that the dull people are not probably, in a way, the happier people; I suppose that anything that leads to self-satisfaction is, in a sense, a cause of happiness; but it is not a species of happiness that people ought to pursue.

Perhaps one ought not to use the word dulness, because it may be misunderstood. The kind of dulness of which I speak is not inconsistent with a high degree, not only of practical, but even of mental, ability. I know several people of very great intellectual power who are models of dulness. Their memories are loaded with what is no doubt very valuable information, and their conclusions are of the weightiest character; but they have no vivid perception, no alertness, they are not open to new ideas, they never say an interesting or a suggestive thing; their presence is a load on the spirits of a lively party, their very facial expression is a rebuke to all light-mindedness and triviality. Sometimes these people are silent, and then to be in their presence is like being in a thick mist; there is no outlook, no enlivening prospect. Sometimes they