No More Learning

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14389
TAHITIAN LITERATURE
The Teva Poets: Notes on a Poetic Family in Tahiti
BY JOHN LA FARGE
N THE Home of the Ogre I pillowed my head;
I followed in safety the Path of the Dead;
With the Sons of the Shark I lived as a guest;
I saw float before me the Isles of the Blest.
T
I have bathed in the sea where the Siren still sleeps;
The Kiss of the Queen is still red on my lips;
My hands touched the Tree with the Branchings of Gold, -
For a season I lived in the Order of Old.
IT IS
a part of the charm of little Tahiti, or Otaheite, whose
double island is not more than a hundred miles about that it has
been the type of the oceanic island in story.
With its discovery begins the interest that awoke Europe by the
apparent realization of man in his earliest life – a life that recalled
the silver if not the golden age. Here men and women made a
beautiful race, living free from the oppression of nature, and at first
sight also free from the cruel and terrib superstitions of many sav-
age tribes. I have known people who could recall the joyous impres-
sion made upon them by these stories of new paradises, only just
opened; and both Wallis's and Bougainville's short and official reports
are bathed in a feeling of admiration, that takes no definite form,
but refers both to the people and the place and the gentleness of
the welcome.
The state of nature had just then been the staple reference in the
polemic literature of the century about to close. The refined and
dry civilization of the few was troubled by the confused sentiments,
the dreams, and the obscure desires of the ignorant and suffering
many. Their inarticulate voice was suddenly phrased by Rousseau.
With that cry came in the literary belief in the natural man, in
the possibility of analyzing the foundations of government and civ-
ilization, in the perfectibility of the human race and its persistent
goodness when freed from the weight of society's blunders and op-
pressions.


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14390
TAHITIAN LITERATURE
Later, Byron :-
«— the happy shores without a law,
Where all partake the earth without dispute,
And bread itself is gathered as a fruit;
Where none contest the fields, the woods, the streams:
The goldless age, where gold disturbs no dreams. )
There is no doubt that at the moment of the discovery our
islanders had reached the full extent of their civilization; that,
numerous, splendid, and untainted in their physical development, they
seemed to live in a facility of existence, in an absence of anxiety
emphasized by their love of pleasure and fondness for society,— by
a simplicity of conscience which found no fault in what we repro-
bate,- in a happiness which is not and could not be our own. The
"pursuit of happiness in which these islanders were engaged, and
in which they seemed successful, is the catchword of the eighteenth
century.
People were far then from the cruel ideas of Hobbes; and the
more amiable views of the nature of man, and of his rights, echo in
the sentimentality of the last century like the sound of the island
surf about Tahiti.
The name recalls so many associations of ideas, so much romance
of reading, so much of the history of thought, that I find it difficult
to disentangle the varying strands of the threads. There are many
boyish recollections behind the charm of Melville's Omoo) and Stod-
dard's Idylls, or even the mixed pleasure of Loti's Marriage. '
I believe too that my feelings are intensified because they are
directed towards an island, a word, a thing of all time marked by
man as something wherein to place the ideal, the supernatural, the
home of the blest, the abode of the dead, the fountain of eternal
youth, as in Heine's song about the island of Bimini:-
« Little birdling Colibri,
Lead us thou to Tahiti! ))
Captain Cook and Bougainville and Wallis first appealed to me
with the name of Otaheite or Tahiti; and I remember the far-away
missionary stories and the pictures of their books, the shores fringed
with palm-trees, the strange, impossible mountain peaks, the half-
classical figures of natives, and the eighteenth-century costumes of
the gallant discoverers. And I remember grewsome pictures in which
figure human sacrifices and deformed idols, and still the skirts of the
uniform of Captain Cook. Long ago there lay, by a Newport wharf,
an old hulk, relic of former days. We were told that this had been
one of the ships of Captain Cook, – the once famous Endeavor. Here


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TAHITIAN LITERATURE
14391
was the end of her romance; now slowly rotted the keel that had
plowed through new seas, and first touched the shores of races dis-
connected from time immemorial.
On that little ship, enormous to her eyes, had been Oberea, the
princess, the Queen of Otaheite, whose name comes up in the stories
of Wallis or of Cook, and early in the first missionary voyages.
Oberea was the tall woman of commanding presence, who, undis-
mayed, with the freedom of a person accustomed to rule, visited Wal-
lis on board of his ship, soon after his first arrival and the attempt
at attacking him (July 1767). She, you may remember too, carried
him, a sick man, in her arms, as easily as if he had been a child.
I remember her in the engraving, stepping towards Wallis, with a
palm branch in her hand, while he stands with gun in hand at the
head of his marines.
And do you remember the parting: how the Queen could not
speak for tears; how she sank inconsolable on the stern of her canoe,
without noticing the presents made her; and how the gallant cap-
tain's eyes filled with tears ? Surely this is no ordinary story,– this
sentimental end of an official record of discovery.
When Wallis arrived in June 1767, Tahiti and its neighboring
island Moorea were under the rule of a chief, Amo or Aamo, as he
is called by Wallis and Cook. He was their great chief,—a word
we have managed to translate as king. It was a moment of general
peace; and the “happy islanders ” enjoyed, in a “terrestrial paradise,»
pleasures of social life, of free intercourse, whose description even at
this day reads with a charm of impossible amenity. The wonderful
island, striking in its shape, so beautiful apparently that each suc-
cessive traveler has described it as the most beautiful of places, was
prepared to offer to the discoverer expecting harsh and savage sights,
a race of noble proportion, of great elegance of form, accustomed to
most courteous demeanor, and speaking one of the softest languages
of man.
Even the greatest defects of the Polynesian helped to make
the exterior picture of amiability and ease of life still more grateful.
The harsher side added to the picture the interest of mystery and
contradiction. Just as Wallis left one side of the island, Bougainville
the Frenchman came up to the other, different in its make, differ-
ent in the first attitude of the natives, but with the same story
of gracious kindness and feminine bounty; so that the Frenchman
called it the New Cytherea, and carried home images of pastoral,
idyllic life in a savage Eden, where all was beautiful, and untainted
by the fierceness and greed imposed upon natural man by artificial
civilization. So strong was the impression produced by what he had
to say, and by the elaborations of Diderot and the encyclopædists,
that the keen and critical analysis of his own mistakes in judgment
(
>>


## p. 14392 (#586) ##########################################

14392
TAHITIAN LITERATURE
which Bougainville affixed to his Journal,' was, as he complained,
passed over, because people wished to have their minds made up.
Last of all came Captain Cook, whose name has absorbed all
others. Twice he visited Tahiti, and helped to fix in European minds
the impression of a state nearer to nature, which the thought of the
day insisted upon.
That early figure of Purea (Oberea), the queen for whom Wallis
shed tears in leaving, remains the type of the South Sea woman.
With Cook she is also inseparably associated; and the anger of the
first missionaries with her only serves to complete and certify the
character.
Her residence and that of her husband Amo was at Papara, on the
south shore of Tahiti. Both belonged to a family whose ancestors
were gods; and they lived a ceremonial life recalling, at this extreme
of civilization, the courtesies, the adulation, the flattery, the super-
stitious veneration, of the East.
This family and its allies had reigned in these islands and in the
others for an indefinite period. The names of their ancestors, the
poetry commemorating them, were still sung long after the white
man had helped to destroy their supremacy.
Now Oberea was the great-great-grand-aunt of the old chiefess
Arii Taimai, or Hinarii (Mother of Chiefs), whom I visited in her coun-
try home.
This great lady, the greatest in all the islands, is the
last link of the old and new. With her will go all sorts of traditions
and habits; and both she and her daughter, Queen Marau, were very
affable and entertaining, telling us legends and stories. The mother
of our old chiefess was known by at least thirteen different names,
each of which was a title, each of which conveyed land: so for in-
stance she was Marama in the island of Moorea, and owned almost
all of it; so she was Aromaiterai in Papara. This investiture would
be received by a child, as child to a chief, and it would be carried to
the family temple to be made sacred, as was done in this case,
thirteen different temples having received the child, the mother of
our chiefess. She repeated to us, with curious cadences and intona-
tions unknown to the people here to-day, some of the forms of salu-
tation through which a visitor addressed the honored person that he
visited, or was addressed by him. These words gave names and sur-
names, and references to past history, and made out the proper titles
to descent. They were recited in the form of a lamentation, and
there were pauses, she said, when the speaker was supposed to weep;
and in committing them to memory, she learned also when this
wailing was to come. Once, she said, she had visited the island Rai-
atea with her friend, the famous late queen, Pomare, to call upon the
queen of that island; and Queen Pomare, less versed than herself,


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TAHITIAN LITERATURE
14393
are
ery words
asked her to speak these salutations for her, as they walked along
upon their official visit. “It was difficult,” said the old lady: "I
had to walk just so, and to repeat all this at the same time, with-
out an error, and at the proper places to lament. ” For our hostess
is a lady of the greatest family,- of greater family than Queen
Pomare's, though her affection for her prevents her saying what she
. thinks.
The famous Queen Pomare's name was known to all sea-going
people in that half of the globe. She was the Pomare of Melville's
Omoo' and of Loti's Marriage. ' The Pomares date only from the
time of Cook. They were slowly wresting the power from the Tevas
by war, and by that still more powerful means, marriage. The old
lady Hinaarii is the chiefess representing that great line of the Teva,
alongside of which the Pomares - the kings through the foreigner-
new people. Some years ago King Kalakaua of Hawaii had
wished to obtain the traditions and genealogies of her family; but
the old lady had never been favorable. This, the earliest of the tra-
ditions of the family, was told me at different times by Queen Marau;
so that in many cases what little I shall quote will be the
of our royal historian.
The great ancestress Hototu, from whom come all the Tevas, was
the first queen of Vaieri. She married Temanutunu, the first king of
Punauia. (Temanutunu means Bird that Let Loose the Army. ) This
was at the time when gods and men and animals were not divided
as they are to-day, or when, as in the Greek stories, the gods took
the shapes of men or beasts.
In the course of time this king
left the island, and made an expedition to the far-away Pomotu. It
is said that he went to obtain the precious red feathers that have
always had a mysterious value to South Sea Islanders, and that he
meant them for the maroura or royal red girdle of his son. The
investiture with the girdle, red or white according to circumstances,
had the same value as our form of crowning, and took place in the
ancestral temples. While the king was far away in the pursuit of
these red feathers, to be gathered perhaps one by one, the queen
Hototu traveled into the adjoining country of Papara, and there met
the mysterious personage Paparuiia. This wonderful creature, half
man, half fish, recalls the god of Raratonga, who himself recalled to
the missionaries the god Dagon. With Paparuiia, or Tino-iia as he
was also called, the queen was well pleased; so that from them
was born a son who later was called Teva. But this is anticipating.
While the king was still away, his dog Pihoro returned; and finding
the queen he ran up to her and fawned upon her, to the jealous dis-
gust of Tino-iia, one half of whom said to the other, “She cares for
that dog more than for me. ” Then he arose and departed in anger,
- telling her, however, that she would bear a son whom she should


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14394
TAHITIAN LITERATURE
-
call Teva: that for this son he had built a temple at Mataua, and
that there he should wear the maro tea, the white or yellow girdle;
his mother the queen, and her husband the king, being the only
ones that had the right to the maroura, the red maro or girdle — for
which, you will remember, the king was hunting. Then he departed,
and was met by Temanutunu, the king, who entreated him to return;
but he refused, saying that his wife was a woman too fond of dogs. .
When I asked if he never came back, the queen told me that
since that day the man-fish had been seen many times.
When I asked about the old divinity of the family, the shark, I
was told that he still frequents — harmless to his friends — the water
inside the reef; changing his size when he comes in or out, because
of the small passage.
The old songs that she orders to be sung to us are not hymns
but himenes, a name now applied to all choral singing. The mode of
singing has not changed for its being church music — it is the South
Sea chant: a buzzing bass brum-brum that sounds almost instrumental,
and upon this ground a brocading of high, shrill cadencing, repeated
indefinitely, and ending always in a long i-é-e-i-é-e,- a sound that
we first heard in Hawaii, and afterwards as an accompaniment to the
paddling of Samoan boats.
I shall transcribe in prose some of the poems that are
into the story of the family.
Some of these form parts of
methods of addresses; that is to say, of the poems or words recited
upon occasions of visiting, or that serve as tribe-cries and slogans.
Such for instance are the verses connected with the name of Tau-
raatua that are handed down. The explanations may confuse it;
but they make it all the more authentic, because all songs handed
down and familiar must receive varying glosses.
Where one sees,
for instance, a love-song, another sees a song of war. The chief,
Tauraatua, of that far-back day was enamored of a fair maiden whose
name was Maraeura, and lived with or near her. This poem, which
is an appeal to him to return to duty or to home, or to wake him
from a dream, is supposed to be the call of the bird messenger and
his answer. The bird messenger (euriri) repeats the places and
names of things most sacred to the chief, — his mount, his cape, his
temple. To which the chief answers that he will look at his mis-
tress's place or person on the shore.
Woven
.
.
«« Tauraatua, living in the house of Roa,”
(Says) the bird that has flown to the rua rua,
« Papara is a land of heavy leaves that drag down the branches.
Go to Teva; at Teva is thy home,
Thy golden land.
The mount that rises yonder
Is thy Mount Tamaiti.


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TAHITIAN LITERATURE
14395
The point that stands on the shore is
Thy Outumanomano.
It is the crowning of a king that makes sacred
Teriitere of Tooarai »
(the chief's name as ruling over Papara).
(Answer. )
«Then let me push away the golden leaves
Of the rua rua,
That I may see the twin buds of Maraeura
On the shore. )
Tati, the brother of Queen Marau, takes another view of the
poem, regarding as frivolous the feminine connection, and giving the
whole a martial character. His version ends with this, which is fine
enough:-
.
(Tauraatua is swifter than the one who carries the fort.
He is gone and he is past before even the morning star was up.
The grass covering the cliff is trampled by Tauraatua. ”
Every point, the proverb says, has a chief. A poem traditional
in the family gives expression to the value of these points — to the
attachment to and desire to be near them again — in the mind of an
exile, Aromaiterai, who had been sent into the neighboring peninsula
and forbidden to make himself known. From his place of exile he
could see across the water the land of Papara with its hills and cape.
The poem which he composed, and which is dear to the Tevas,
revealed his identity :-
LAMENT OF AROMAITERAI
»
From Mataaoe I look to my own land Tianina,
My mount Tearatupu, my valley Temaite,
My “drove of pigs” on the great mountain.
The dews have fallen on the mountain,
And they have spread my cloak.
Rains, clear away that I may look at my home!
Aue! alas! the wall of my dear land.
The two thrones of Mataoa open their arms to me Temarii.
No one will ever know how my heart yearns for my mount of
Tamaiti.
Tiaapuaa (Drove of Pigs) was the name of certain trees growing
along the edge of the mountain Moarahi. The profile against the
sky suggested — and the same trees, or others in the same position
to-day as I looked at them, did make- a procession along the ridge


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14396
TAHITIAN LITERATURE
The cloak” of the family is the rain; the Tevas are the child-
ren of the mist. ” Not so many years ago one of the ladies objected
to some protection from rain for her son who was about to land in
some ceremony: “Let him wear his cloak,” she said.
By the two thrones” I understand two of the hills that edge the
valley.
I have received from Queen Marau three poems: one about a girl
asked to wed an old chief; one in honor of King Pomare. The
third, a song of reproof, cherished by the Teva as a protest against
fate, explains how the dissensions among the different branches of
the eight clans of Teva allowed them to become a prey to the ris-
ing power of the Purionu clans headed by Pomare.
c
no. Catarger
SONG OF REPROOF
AT THE BEGINNING OF THE WARS BETWEEN TEVA AND PURIONU, IN
1768, A YEAR BEFORE THE COMING OF COOK
A
STANDARD is raised at Tooarai,
Like the crash of thunder
And flashes of lightning.
The rays of the midday sun
Surround the standard of the king,
The king of the thousand skies.
Honor the standard
Of the king of the thousand skies!
A standard is raised at Matahihae,
In the presence of Vehiatua.
The rebels Teieie and Tetumanua,
They broke the king's standard,
And Oropaa is troubled.
If your crime had but ended there!
The whole land is laid prostrate.
Thou art guilty, O Vehiatua,
Of the standard of thy king.
Broken by the people of Taiarapu,
By whom we are all destroyed.
Thou bringest the greatest of armies
To the laying of stones
Of the temple of Mahaiatea.


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TAHITIAN LITERATURE
14397
Thou hast sinned, O Purahi,
Thou hast broken the standard of the king.
Taiarapu has caused
The destruction of us all.
The approach of the front rank
Has loosened the decoration.
One murderous hand is stretched,
And another murderous hand:
Two armies in and two out.
If you had but listened
To the command of Amo
Calling to the Oropaa —
“Let us take our army
By canoe and by land!
We have only to fear
Matitaupe and the dry reef of the Purionu.
« There we will die the death
Of Pairi Temaharu and Pahupua. ”
The coming of the great army of Taiarapu
Has swept Papara away,
And drawn its mountains with it.
Thou hast sinned, Purahi,
Thou and Taiarapu.
Thou hast broken the standard of the king,
And hast caused the destruction of us all.
SOLILOQUY OF TEURA, A BEAUTY, ASKED TO WED PUNU, AN
OLD CHIEF
T
THE golden rays of the sky grow wider and wider.
What is this wind, Teura, that makes the shadows fall
upon thee?
Thy heart beats fast, Teura; it takes away thy breath.
I see a rock approaching: it is my lord Punu Teraiatua.
I hurry with fright, I fall paralyzed with fear of his love.
I step and I stop; I should advance, and I hesitate.
I would give myself up to death at the cave Tiare.
In what way can I find death ?
[like the sky
On to die six deaths! I would give a golden leaf glistening
Rather than that his love should come to me Teura.
There are but seven times for love and eight for death.
I am ill, aweary, fretting at the love that is given me.
I would rather die than return it.


## p. 14398 (#592) ##########################################

14398
TAHITIAN LITERATURE
SONG FOR THE CROWNING OF POMARE
THE
he sky flashes like a torch that is thrown.
It is the welcome of the surroundings.
Tahiti trembles.
It is the coming of thy king from Hawiri,
Wearing his girdle of scarlet feathers.
Welcome Pomare,
King of many isles.
Thou hast put down
The elder power of Matue.
Thou goest outside of the reefs of Hitiaa.
At Vaiatis is thy house.
Thou wilt go to the shores of Tautira,
But thou wilt long for the murmurs of the Pare.
Thou wilt go and thou wilt find the little pass at Paite;
It is like the seat of Pomare.
Courage, Paite, it is the crowning!
Courage at the power of Pomare!
Pomare is the king who has been turned to light
With the consent of the god.
Courage, Pare, it is the crowning of thy king!
[The above article with the translations are from the informal note-book of
Mr. La Farge. )


## p. 14399 (#593) ##########################################

14399
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
(1828-1893)
BY FERDINAND BRUNETIÈRE
N
so
EW writers of our time have exercised, not only in France
but outside of France, a greater influence than Taine; and
at first this seems strange, when one considers superficially
the nature of his works. Even though he has written an excellent
(History of English Literature,' and has shown rare powers of mind
in his Origins of Contemporary France,' there are many histories of
the French Revolution, some of which are
based on better information or are no less
eloquent than his; there are some less tedi-
ous to read: and what can we say of Shake-
speare, of Milton, of Dryden, or of Shelley,
that would be new enough, after so much
that others have said, to modify ever
little the thought of a whole generation ?
But let us look a little closer and more
attentively: we ought to join to the His-
tory of English Literature, and Origins of
Contemporary France) a book like “The
Philosophy of Art,' or like the book On
the Intelligence); in these books it is neces- H. A. TAINE
sary to grasp, in the midst of the diversity
of subjects, the points in common. And one then sees how true it
is that more than a treatise on the matter in hand, and over and
above being a history of the French Revolution or an analysis of the
power of comprehension, all these works are applications, examples, or
illustrations,” of a method conceived as universal or universally
applicable, having for its object to separate the principles of critical
judgment from the variations of individual opinion. It is this that
makes the greatness of Taine's work, and it is this that explains his
far-reaching influence. It is this, no less, that is meant by those
who profess to see in him not a “critic," nor a “historian,” but a
philosopher. And finally, it is from this point of view, at once
very general and very particular, that he must be seen to be appre-
ciated at his true worth.



## p. 14400 (#594) ##########################################

14400
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
Taine's life was uneventful. Born at Vouziers, in the Ardennes
mountains, in 1828; entered at the École Normale of Paris in 1848; a
provincial professor, obliged to send in his resignation on account of
his independent spirit and freedom of thought; professor of æsthet-
ics and the history of art at the École des Beaux-Arts; indifferent to
outside affairs and superior to most of the vanities that beset man-
kind, - Taine is of that small number of writers who live solely in
order to think, and who, according to Flaubert's phrase, have seen
in their surroundings, in history, or even in the universe itself, only
“what could contribute to the perfecting personally of their intelli-
gence. ” It is moreover entirely unnecessary, in tracing a portrait of
him that shall resemble him, to linger over useless details, or to re-
publish trivial anecdotes concerning him which contain nothing char-
acteristic, and would not help us to know him better. We should go
directly to the point, and keep in view solely that which, together
with his literary gift, was of unique interest in him, -I mean the
evolution of his thought.
Apparently there was something disconcerting in it, and it is
even a sufficiently curious fact, that in his last years he counted
among his adversaries some of his most ardent admirers of former
times, and on the other hand among his supporters those very ones
against whom his first works were employed somewhat like a machine
of war. Nay more, in his (Origins of Contemporary France,' when,
after showing at the outset — and according to his expression, that
the abuses of the old order of things had made the France of 1789
uninhabitable, he had next assailed with still more violence the
religion of the Revolution and of the Napoleonic idolatry, it may be
said that he would have turned against him the entire thinking
world of France, if two things had not protected him: the brilliance
of his talent and his evident sincerity. It was not he, however, who
had changed! No more was it his adversaries nor his admirers, nor
even the trend of ideas or the spirit of the times.
But in going to
the bottom of his first principles he had himself seen unexpected
results developing from them; and in contact with the better-known
reality, these principles in their turn bending and modifying them-
selves, but not undergoing a fundamental change. What resemblance
is there between the acorn and the oak, between a grain and a stalk
of wheat, between the worm and the chrysalis ? And yet one pro-
ceeds from the other. And can we say that they are not the same?
His first ambition, summed up in a celebrated phrase become
almost proverbial, —“Vice and virtue are products like vitriol and
sugar,"— had been to communicate to the sciences called moral and
political that absolute certainty which, like all the scholars and phi-
losophers of his generation, he was accustomed to attribute to the


## p. 14401 (#595) ##########################################

HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
14401
zun.
physical or natural sciences; and in fact, this is what he tried to do
in his essay on La Fontaine and his Fables' (1855), in his essay on
Titus Livius (1856), in his Historical and Critical Essays (1856-58),
and above all in his History of English Literature (1863). Start-
ing with the principle that Moral things, like physical things, have
appendages and conditions,” he proposed to determine them and to
show (the examples are his own) that between a yoke-elm hedge
of Versailles, a decree of Colbert, and a tragedy of Racine, there are
relations that enable us to recognize in them so many manifestations,
not involuntary but yet unconscious, of the same general state of
mind. To-day nothing seems simpler, or rather more commonplace.
Scarcely less so appears the analysis that he has given of the ele-
ments or factors of that state of mind: the Race, the Environment,
the Moment. We all admit that between the Merry Wives of
Windsor) and (Tartuffe) there is an initial and fundamental differ-
ence; which means that Shakespeare was an Englishman who wrote
for English people, and Molière a Frenchman who wrote for French
people. We are equally able to conceive without the least difficulty
that the court of Louis XIV. did not in all points resemble that
of Elizabeth, and that consequently the pleasures of an Essex and a
Leicester were differently ordered from those of a Guiche and a Lau-
And finally, we have no difficulty in understanding that to all
these differences must be added still another; namely, that of the
moment, or of the change that takes place from one century or from
one generation to another in the general civilization of the world.
It is not possible to reason before and after Descartes in the same
way; and the discoveries or inventions of Newton have fundamentally
modified the very substance of the human intellect. If it happened
that some dilettanti doubted this, still it is precisely what Taine has
demonstrated with an abundance of illustrations, a wealth of knowl-
edge,— literary, historical, philosophical, scientific, - with an incom-
parable vigor and brilliancy of style. If he has invented” nothing,
in the somewhat rough sense in which this word is used elsewhere,
and if the theory of environments for example goes back at least to
Hippocrates, he has set the seal of talent on inventions that had not
yet received it; he has popularized them, made them familiar even
to those who do not understand them; and so mingled them with the
current of ideas that they have become anonymous, and to-day we
must make an effort of history and of justice if we would restore to
him what may be called their literary paternity.
How is it then that in their time they stirred up so much oppo-
sition and from so many sides ? For while recognizing the worth of
the writer, there was about 1860 an almost universal protest against
the philosopher. One reproached him for his pantheism, another for
XXIV-901


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HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
his materialism, a third for his fatalism. The French Academy,
intimidated by he public outcry, dared not crown the “History of
English Literature. ' The saying was now applied to Taine which
is employed in France against all innovators; namely, that what-
ever was true in his doctrine was not new, and whatever was found
to be new in it was false. ) A turbulent and blundering prelate,
Monseigneur Dupanloup, Bishop of Orléans, made himself conspicu-
ous by the violence of his attacks, one might call them invectives.
The last representatives of official ecclesiasticism, whom also Taine
had treated with great severity, several years before, in his book on
“The French Philosophers’ (1857), made up a chorus, so to speak, with
the archbishop. And finally, for nothing more than having wished
to give literary criticism a basis less fragile and above all less fuc-
tuating than individual impression, or because he tried, as we said,
to determine the conditions of objective critical judgment, Taine was
classed in the camp of dangerous spirits” and “freethinkers. ” A
little more and he would have been accused of bringing on the de-
struction of society. What then had he said other or more than what
we have just said, and how had it been understood ?
The truth is that in all times, threatened interests are apt to
deceive themselves in their choice of defensive weapons, - and for-
tunately! for after all, what would become of us if all conquerors
were as able to keep as to capture ? — but they are rarely deceived as
to the bearing of the attacks that are directed against them. And
in truth I do not think that at this epoch Taine had yet pronounced
the enlightening word, nor had he yet perceived all the consequences
of his doctrine - and we shall soon see why: but his adversaries had
perfectly understood that thenceforth his design was to “solder the
moral sciences to the natural sciences,” — or, to use a better word, to
identify them; and if his attitude in the presence of the products
of the human intellect) was not that of a materialist, they did not
err in taking it for that of a naturalist. Let the naturalist study
the tiger or the sheep, he is equally unbiased and feels the same
kind of interest in either case; and the first step in his science is to
forget that man is the tiger's lamb. No more does he change his
habit of mind, still less his method, when instead of the rose or the
violet it is belladonna or digitalis that he studies. In like manner
proceeded the author of the History of English Literature. He
excluded from his research every consideration of an æsthetic or
moral order, retaining only what he saw in it that was natural
or physical. He delivered, properly speaking, no judgment upon
Othello, nor upon (Hamlet,' and still less upon Shakespeare; he
expressed no personal opinion whatever, nor indeed any opinion at
all. In fact, it is not an opinion to believe that two and two make
(
(


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HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
14403
a
four, and that a ruminant and a carnivorous animal have not the
same kind of teeth. He analyzed only; he resolved combinations of
forces into their elements. He classified feelings and ideas, as
series of ethers or alcohols is made. Before a canvas of Rembrandt
or a sculpture of Donatello he made an abstraction of art emotion or
moral sentiment. His intellect alone was occupied with it. And
what was the result of this method, if it did not, as in natural his-
tory, reduce to the same level all the products of the human intel-
lect”? This is the meaning of the phrase, “Vice and virtue are
products like vitriol and sugar. ” Just as sugar and vitriol contain
nothing irreducible by chemical analysis, so neither vice nor virtue
contains anything inaccessible to ideological analysis. This Taine's
adversaries thoroughly understood; and if we would find the reasons
for their exasperation against him, we need only consider what was
the scope of the affirmation.
In fact, since for at least six thousand years the destiny of the
human species has differed profoundly from that of all the other
animal species, what principle would serve as a basis for applying to
the study of mankind the same processes that are applied in that of
the animal creation ? Here is a very simple question to which no
one has yet given a satisfactory answer: “The mistake of all moral-
ists,” Spinoza had said in his “Ethics,' “is to consider man in nature
as an empire within an empire;” and such precisely is the opinion
of Taine, as well as of all those who confound the history of nature
and that of humanity. But they have never proved that they had
the right to confound them; and when they have shown, what is not
difficult to understand, that we form a part of nature, they forget, on
the other hand, that we are excepted from nature by all the charac-
teristics that constitute the normal definition of humanity. To be a
man is precisely not to be a brute; and better still, that which we
call nature in the animal is imperfection, vice, or crime in the man.
« Vitium hominis natura pecoris” (The depravity of man is the nature
of the herd).
This is the first point: now for the second. Suppose we should
succeed in reducing ourselves completely to what is absolutely ani-
mal in us; suppose our industries to be only a prolongation of the
industry of the bee or of the ant, and our very languages a continu-
ation of the beast's cry or the bird's song: our arts and our literatures
would always be human things, uniquely, purely human, and conse-
quently things not to be reasoned about independently and outside
of the emotion that they offer to our sensibility; since that emotion
is not merely their object, but also their excuse for being and their
historical origin. There is no natural architecture or painting:
these are the invention of man,- human in their principle, human in
(


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HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
14404
their development, human in their object. Let us put it still more
strongly: If some day humanity should disappear altogether, the
material of science would exist exactly as before. The worlds would
continue to roll through space, and the eternal geometry, impossible
to be conceived by us, would continue no less to obey its own laws.
But what would become of art ? and if there is no doubt that the
very notion of it would be blotted out with humanity, what is that
method which, the better to study its dependences and conditions,"
begins by abstracting it, isolating it, and as it were severing it from
the most evident, the straitest and strictest of those dependences ?
This is just what Taine, who was a sincere and loyal spirit, could
scarcely fail sooner or later to perceive. He had just been appointed
professor of Æsthetics and of the History of Art at the École des
Beaux-Arts; and to rise to the height of his task, by completing his
art education, this man who formerly had been fed only on Greek
and Latin had begun by visiting the museums of Italy. This was a
revelation to him; proof of which may be found in the pages, them-
selves so full of color, of his Journey to Italy' (1866). But above
all, his very method had in this way been utterly transformed. He
perceived the impossibility of being ideological in painting, and con-
sequently of treating in the same manner a geological crust and a
masterpiece of art. Behold an impossibility. A poor writer — a writer
who writes badly, incorrectly, tediously, pretentiously, with no feel-
ing either for art or for the genius of his language — can say things
true, things useful, things profound; and we know examples of such
writers. But one does not think in colors; and what sort of a painter
is it who can neither draw nor paint, and what can we say is left of
such a painter ? Natural history and physiology have no hold here,
but talent is indispensable. A critical judgment, then, can only be
delivered by expressing certain preferences; and the history of art is
essentially qualitative. Taine knew this, or rather he succumbed to
it; and from year to year, in the four works which have since been
united under the common title of “The Philosophy of Art,' he was
observed to relinquish the naturalist's impartiality which he had
affected till then, and re-establish against himself the reality of that
æsthetic criterion that he had so energetically denied.
In this regard, the Philosophy of Art,' which is not the best-
known portion of his work, is not the least interesting, nor the least
characteristic. In it he is far from abandoning his theory of the
Race, the Milieu, the Moment; on the contrary, his theory of Greek
architecture and Dutch painting ought to be reckoned among the num-
ber of his most admirable generalizations. No more did he relinquish
the aid of natural history; on the contrary, he has nowhere more
skillfully drawn support from Cuvier, from Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire,


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HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
14405
from Darwin. It was even yet upon the basis of natural history,
upon the principles of the permanence of characteristics and of the
convergence of effects, that he tried to found his classifications. But
after all that, when he reached his conclusion, truth was too strong
for him; and the supreme criterion by which he thought that the
value of a work should be judged, was what he himself called the
«degree of beneficence of its character. ” So much had not been
asked of him: and here it may be observed that none of those French
philosophers whom he had so ridiculed had said more nor as much;
neither Théodore Jouffroy, nor Victor Cousin himself in his famous
book — 'Of the True, of the Beautiful, of the Good. They had
simply arrived at analogous conclusions by wholly different roads.
Have I any need to show that the beneficence of the characteristic is
a human criterion if ever there was one,- purely human,- I should
say almost sociological ? But it is perhaps more important to note
that there was no contradiction in the evolution of Taine's thought.
He had simply and consistently recognized that art, being made for
man and by man, cannot be studied as we study natural objects;
which are not at all our work, and concerning which the Christian,
the spiritualist, in fact everybody, can very well say or believe that
they were made for us — but not the naturalist.
Nevertheless, while the thought of Taine was thus developing
itself, certain of his disciples adhered closely to his Critical and
Historical Essays,' and drew from them the theory of literary nat-
uralism. This is not the place to set it forth, still less to discuss it.
But the important thing to note is, that the disciples were right in
believing that they were applying the principle of the master; and
on his side the master was no more in error than they, when he
protested that those were not his principles. He had gone beyond
them, but he had surely taught them; and just this was the whole
of the misunderstanding. His followers had stopped half-way from
the summit that their master had toiled to reach. They stayed
where they were, while he continued his journey. One last step
remained for him to take; and this he accomplished by devoting his
last years to the Origins of Contemporary France (1875-1894), and
particularly in writing his Old Régime' and the first volume of his
Revolution. '
It is commonly said, apropos of this, that the events of 1870, and
above all those of 1871, were a kind of crisis for Taine, — depriving
him of his former lucidity of impressions, and taking away at the
same stroke his liberty of judgment. This may be: but on the one
hand, nothing is less certain; and on the other, in spite of all that
could be said, there is no more opposition or contradiction between
the author of the Origins of Contemporary France, and that of the


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14406
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
Philosophy of Art,' than between the author of the Philosophy
of Art and that of the History of English Literature. We read-
ily accuse a writer of contradicting himself when we fail to perceive
the reason of the progress of his ideas; and to reproach him for
defective logic, it suffices us that his own has a wider scope than
ours. In fact, the Origins of Contemporary France is clearly the
work of the same systematic and vigorous mind as the “Critical and
Historical Essays. But just as in passing from the history of ideas
to the history of works, Taine had recognized the necessity of an
æsthetic criterion, so also he was obliged to recognize, in passing
from the history of works to the history of deeds, the necessity of a
moral criterion. There lay all the difference: and yet again, to make
sure that there is no contradiction, we have only to recall what was
the principal object of his inquiry; namely, “On what grounds can
a critical judgment be formed ? ” and to extract this certainty from
the variations and caprices of individual opinions.
I am far from sharing, for my part, the opinions of Taine regard-
ing the French Revolution; and I think that on the whole, if he has
ruthlessly and profitably set before us naked, as it were, some of its
worst excesses as well as its most essential characteristics, he has
nevertheless judged it imperfectly. He has taken into consideration
neither the generosity of its first transport, nor the tragic circum-
stances in the midst of which it was forced to develop, nor the
fecundity of some of the ideas that have spread from it through the
world. He has judged Napoleon no better. This is because he was
without what is called in France the “military fibre. ” And finally
I think that he has imperfectly judged contemporary France. For
while he has carefully pointed out some of the faults that are unhap-
pily ours, he has scarcely accounted to the race for other qualities
which are nevertheless also its own,-its endurance, its flexibility, its
spirit of order and economy; I will even say its wisdom, and that
underlying good sense which from age to age, and for so many
years now, have repaired the errors of our governments.
But from the point of view that I have chosen, I have no need
of dwelling upon the particular opinions of Taine; and not having
expressed my own upon his Shakespeare or upon his Rubens, I shall
not express them upon his Napoleon. I merely say that in attempt-
ing history he has been compelled to see that men cannot be treated
like abstractions, and that to speak truth the moral sciences are
decidedly not natural sciences. He has been obliged to admit to
himself that the verities here were constituted after another order,
and could not be reached by the same means. In his endeavor to
explain, in some of the most beautiful pages he ever wrote, the gen-
esis, the slow and successive formation, the laborious formation, of


## p. 14407 (#601) ##########################################

HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
14407
(
>
.
the ideas of conscience and of honor, he was unable to find either
a physical basis » or an animal origin” for them. He became
equally aware that there were no beautiful crimes nor beautiful
monsters, as he had believed in the days of his youth; and he felt
that to affect, in the presence of the massacres of September or of
the Reign of Terror, the serene indifference of the chemist in his lab-
oratory, was not to serve the cause of science, but to betray that of
humanity. And as he was accused of contradicting himself in this
point, I well know that he yielded to the weakness of recording, in
some sort, his old and his new principles. « This volume, like those
that have preceded it,” he wrote in 1884, in the Preface to the third
volume of his Revolution,' «is written only for the lovers of moral
zoology, for the naturalists of the intellect,
and not for the
public, which has taken its stand and made up its mind concern-
ing the Revolution. ” Only he forgot to tell us what a naturalist of
the intellect” is, and what above all is moral zoology. ” He might
as well have spoken of immaterial physics”! But he deceived him-
self strangely if he did not believe that he had written for the
public,” and with the purpose of changing our preconceived opinion
(parti pris), whatever it was, toward the Revolution, or of trying
to substitute his own for it. Why did he not simply say that the
more closely he studied human acts, the better he saw their dis-
tinguishing and original character; that without abandoning any of
his former principles, he had simply bent their first rigidity to the
exigencies of the successive problems that he had studied; and that
after cruelly ridiculing at the outset the subordination of all ques-
tions to the moral question, he had himself gone over to that side ?
If this was an avowal that cost him little, perhaps, it is neverthe-
less the philosophical significance of his Origins of Contemporary
France,' and it is the last limit of the evolution of his thought.
It is moreover in this way that the unity of his system and the
extent of his influence are explicable. No, I repeat that he did not
contradict himself at all, if his object was to determine what might
be called the concrete conditions of objective knowledge; and such
indeed was his object, or at least, the result of his work. In liter-
ature first, then in art, and finally in history, he wished to set a
foundation for the certainty; and — let us reiterate it - "separate the
reality of things from the fluctuations of individual opinion. ” If all
the world agree in placing Shakespeare above Addison, Coriolanus)
or Julius Cæsar' above Cato,' and all the world prefers the meth-
ods of government of Henry IV. to those of Robespierre, there are
reasons for it which are not merely sentimental, but positive; and
out of the midst of school or party controversy, Taine desired to
draw the evidence of them and an incontestable formula for them.


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HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
And in truth, he himself yielded more than once to the attraction of
the subject he chose at first only as material for experiments. So it
sometimes happens that a naturalist lingers in admiration over an
animal he meant only to dissect. Taine likewise forgot his theories
at times in the presence of Raphael and Michael Angelo, of Rem-
brandt or of Rubens, and he even forgot that he was a theorist. But
neither is his History of English Literature properly speaking, a
history of English literature, nor his Origins of Contemporary France)
a history of the Revolution: they are only a demonstration of the
objectivity of the critical judgment by means of the history of the
Revolution or of English literature.
To feel convinced of this, it is enough to read those of his works
that I have not yet mentioned: his Essay on Titus Livius,' his
Journey to the Pyrenees,' his Thomas Graindorge,' his Notes on
England,' or his Note-Books of Travel. Not only does he never
lose sight in them of his principal object, but in all that he sees or
in all that is told him, he notes or retains only what is in accordance
with his critical preoccupations. A landscape to him is not a land-
scape, but a milieu; and a characteristic custom is not a characteris-
tic custom for him, but a commentary on the race.
In the museums
of Italy as in the streets of London, he sees only permanences of
qualities” or “convergences of effects. ” If it happens that he be-
comes interested in the spectacle of things, he repents of it and
recovers himself. Facts are for him only materials; and they have
value in his eyes only in so far as they enter into the construction
of his edifice. And doubtless this is why not only the English do not
admit the truth of his Notes on England, but the French still less
the truth of those that he set down in his Note-Books of Travel. '
On the other hand, here is the very reason for the range and
depth of his influence, if in all that we have just said of him we
need change only a few words in order to say it of an Auguste
Comte, of a Hegel, or of a Spinoza. These are great names, I am
well aware! But when I consider what before Taine were those ideas
that he has marked with the seal of his literary genius, so hard at
tiines, but so vigorous; when I recall in what a nebulous state, so to
speak, they floated in the mind; and when I see to what degree they
now form the substance of contemporary thought, — their merit, that
cannot be contested, is to have recreated methods; and though there
are other merits in the history of thought, there are none greater.
There lay his honor, and there rests his claim to glory. He has re-
newed the methods of criticism. It is this that the future will not forget.
One can discuss the value of his opinions, literary, æsthetic, historical;
one can refuse to take him for guide, - combat him, refute him per-
haps; and one may prefer to his manner of writing, so powerful and


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HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
14409
manner
C
so telling, often charged with too many colors, and generally too
emphatic, the
of such-and-such of his contemporaries, –
the treacherous charm of Sainte-Beuve, the fleeting grace of Renan:
but no one more than he is certain of having made an epoch”; and
to grasp the full meaning of this phrase, it suffices to reckon, in the
history of the literatures, how many there are to whom it can be
applied!
f. forunching
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ENGLISH MIND
From Notes on England)
THE
HE interior of an English head may not unaptly be likened
to one of Murray's Handbooks, which contains many facts
and few ideas; a quantity of useful and precise informa-
tion, short statistical abridgments, numerous figures, correct and
detailed maps, brief and dry historical notices, moral and profit-
able counsels in the guise of a preface, - no view of the subject
as a whole, none of the literary graces, - a simple collection of
well-authenticated documents, a convenient memorandum for per-
sonal guidance during a journey. A Frenchman requires that
everything and every piece of writing should be cast in a pleas.
ing form; an Englishman is satisfied if the substance be useful.
A Frenchman loves ideas in and for themselves; an Englishman
employs them as instruments of mnemonics or of prevision. . . .
The impression produced is the same if we consider in turn
the journals, the reviews, and the oratory of the two nations.
The special correspondent of an English journal is a sort of
photographer who forwards proofs taken on the spot; these are
published untouched. Sometimes indeed there are discrepancies
between the arguments in the leading articles and the statements
in the letter. The latter are always extremely lengthy and de-
tailed: a Frenchman would abridge and lighten them; they leave
on him a feeling of weariness: the whole is a jumble; it is a
badly hewn and unwieldy block. The editor of a French journal
is bound to help his correspondent, to select from his materials
what is essential, to pick out from the heap the three or four


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14410
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
notable anecdotes, and to sum up the whole in a clear idea,
embodied in a telling phrase. Nor is the difference less percepti-
ble if their great quarterlies and our reviews are contrasted. An
article in ours, even an article on science or political economy,
must possess an exordium, a peroration, a plan; every one in
the Revue des Deux Mondes commences with an exposition of
general ideas. With them, facts, figures, and technical details
predominate: their articles are exceedingly heavy, excepting in
the hands of a Macaulay; they are excellent quarries filled with
solid but unshapen stones, requiring additional workmanship in
order to fit them for general use. Moreover, in Parliament and
public meetings, English eloquence is hampered by documents,
while French eloquence evaporates in theories.
English education tends to produce this result. . . . Recently,
however, new discoveries and Continental methods of education
have gained entrance: still, even at this day, the system of edu-
cation is better fitted for strengthening than for expanding the
mind; graduates leave the universities as they leave a course of
gymnastics, bringing away with them no conception whatever of
man or the world. Besides, there is one ready-made, and very
acceptable, which a young man has no difficulty in adopting:
In France no fixed limit bounds his thoughts: the Constitution,
ten times altered, has no authority; the religion is that of the
Middle Ages; the old forms are in discredit, the new are merely
chalked out. From the age of sixteen he is assailed by doubt;
he oscillates: if he has any brains, his inost pressing need is to
construct for himself a body of convictions, or at least of opin-
ions. In England the mold is prepared; the religion is almost
rational, and the Constitution excellent; awakening intelligence
there finds the broad lines of future beliefs already traced. The
necessity for erecting a complete habitation is not felt; the
utmost that appears wanting relates to the enlargement of a
Gothic window, the cleansing of a cellar, the repair of a stair-
case. English intellect, being less unsettled, less excited, is less
active, because it has not skepticism for a spur.
Through all channels, open from infancy to the close of life,
exact information flows into an English head as into a reservoir.
But the proximity of these waters does not yet suffice to explain
their abundance: there is a slope which invites them, an innate
disposition peculiar to the race, - to wit, the liking for facts, the
love of experiment, the instinct of induction, the longing for cer-
titude. Whoever has studied their literature and their philosophy,


## p. 14411 (#605) ##########################################

HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
14411
from Shakespeare and Bacon to the present day, knows that this
inclination is hereditary, and appertains to the very character of
their minds; that it is bound up with their manner of compre-
hending truth. According to them the tree must be judged by
its fruit, and speculation proved by practice; they do not value
a truth unless it evokes useful applications. Beyond practical
truths lie only vain chimeras. Such is man's condition: a re-
stricted sphere, capable of enlargement, but always walled in; a
sphere within which knowledge must be acquired, not for its own
sake, but in order to act,— science itself being valuable only to
the office which verifies it and for the purpose which it serves.
That being granted, it appears to me that the ordinary fur-
nishing of an English head becomes discernible. As well as I
can judge, an educated Englishman possesses a stock of facts
three or four times in excess of that possessed by a Frenchman
of corresponding position,- at least in all that relates to language,
geography, political and economical truths, and the personal im-
pressions gained in foreign parts by contact with men and living
objects. On the other hand, it frequently happens that the Eng-
lishman turns his big trunk to less account than the Frenchman
does his little bag. This is perceptible in many books and
reviews; the English writer, though very well informed, being
limited in his range.
Nothing is rarer among them than free
and full play of the soaring and expanding intellect. Determined
to be prudent, they drag their car along the ground over the
beaten track; with two or three exceptions, not one now makes
readers think. More than once, when in England, after having
conversed with a man, I was surprised at his store of knowledge,
alike varied and sound, and also to find him so deficient in ideas.
At this moment I can recall five or six who were so largely
endowed as to be entitled to take general views. They paused,
however, half-way, arriving at no definite conclusion. They did
not even experience a desire to co-ordinate their knowledge in a
sort of system: they possessed only partial and isolated ideas;
they did not feel either the inclination or the power to connect
them together under a philosophical conception. Their language
bears the best witness to this, it being extremely difficult to
translate somewhat lofty abstractions into English. Compared
with French, and above all with German, it is what Latin is to
Greek.
Their library of words is wanting in an entire
row of compartments, — namely, the upper ones; they have no
ideas wherewith to fill them.


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HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
TYPICAL ENGLISH MEN AND WOMEN
From Notes on England
Since my
A
.
T BOTTOM the essential thing in a country is man.
arrival I have made a collection of types, and I class them
with those I had collected last year.
Arranged in
groups, the following are those which have struck me most:
First, the robust individual, largely and solidly built, the fine
colossus, at times six feet high and broad in proportion. This is
very common among soldiers, notably among the Life Guards, a
select body of men. Their countenance is fresh and blooming,
their flesh magnificent; it might be supposed they had been
chosen for an exhibition of human products, like picked prize
beets and cauliflowers. They have a fund of good-humor, some-
times of good-nature, generally of awkwardness.
In point
of mass they are monuments; but there may be too much of
a good thing, and movement is so essential to matter! Other
monuments, rather less tall, but even fresher and more varnished,
are the servants of a great house. They wear white cravats
with large faultless bows, scarlet or canary-colored knee-breeches;
they are magnificent in shape and amplitude — their calves espe-
cially are enormous. .