Part 26

“My sin, Ismenus, has wrought all this ill: And I beseech thee to be warned by me, And do not lie, if any man should ask thee But how thou dost, or what o’clock ’tis now; Be sure thou do not lie, make no excuse For him that is most near thee; never let The most officious falsehood ’scape thy tongue, For they above (that are entirely Truth) Will make the seed which thou hast sown of lies, Yield miseries a thousand-fold Upon thine head, as they have done on mine.”

_A TIME TO WEEP, AND A TIME TO LAUGH._

ECCLESIASTES iii. 4.

As to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the sun,—for as Shakspeare words it, “How many things by season seasoned are to their right praise and true perfection!”—be sure that the Wise King includes laughter and weeping in the list. “A time to weep, and a time to laugh.” Acquainted with grief, he had also been familiar with merriment. He had said in his heart, Go to, now, I will prove thee with mirth; but the result was that he said of laughter, It is mad; and of mirth, What doeth it?—For all this, he freely recognises a time to laugh, so that one keep to the time. So much depends, here, on the due observance of times and seasons. It is with the frivolous habit of laughing out of season, and at all seasons, that the following notes are concerned.

The laureate’s is a good keynote to begin with:—

“Prythee weep, May Lilian! Gaiety without eclipse Wearieth me, May Lilian.”

So with Barry Cornwall and his Hermione:—

“Something thou dost want, O queen! (As the gold doth ask alloy,) Tears,—amidst thy laughter seen, Pity,—mingling with the joy.”

Such a conjunction as the courtier records of Cordelia in “King Lear”—sunshine and rain at once: “her smiles and tears were like a better day: those happy smiles that played on her ripe lip, seemed not to know what guests were in her eyes:” “in brief, sorrow would be a rarity most beloved, if all could so become it.” Nothing, we often hear it said, is so tedious as uniformity; and under the bright sky of Italy one sometimes sighs for a cloud. “A gay writer, who,” says Horace Walpole, “should only express satisfaction without variety, would soon be nauseous.” Johnson’s Papilius winds up his confession, in the “Rambler,” with a whine on the melancholy necessity of supporting that character by study, which he gained by levity; having learned too late that gaiety must be recommended by higher qualities, and that mirth can never please long but as the efflorescence of a mind loved for its luxuriance, but esteemed for its usefulness. There must be fruitage as well as blossomy “efflorescence;” as Cowper is fain to enforce, when in the closing lines of the “Task,” he records how he once, when called to dress a sofa with the flowers of verse, played awhile with that light task, obedient to the fair:—

... “but soon, to please her more, Whom flowers alone I knew would little please, Let fall the unfinished wreath, and roved for fruit.”

Mark Mrs. Browning’s picture of the Lady Geraldine:—

“In her utmost lightness there is truth—and often she speaks lightly— Has a grace in being gay, which even mournful souls approve, For the root of some grave earnest thought is understruck so rightly As to justify the foliage and the waving flowers above.”

So with Lord Lytton’s Helen Mainwaring, the sunny gladness of whose nature must have vent like a bird’s, though he forbids us to fancy that that gladness speaks the levity which comes from the absence of thought: “it is rather from the depth of thought that it springs, as from the depth of a sea comes its music.” Well and wisely Molière’s Cléonte exclaims, “Veux-tu de ces enjouements épanouis, de ces joies toujours ouvertes? et vois tu rien de plus impertinent que des femmes qui rient à tout propos?” Such a _femme_ as the same author’s Zerbinette, a self-convicted giggler in and out of season, yet whose confession may be twisted into an example the other way, when she says, “J’ai l’humeur enjouée, et sans cesse je ris: mais, tout en riant, je suis sérieuse sur de certains chapitres.”

Among the writings of M. de St. Evremond there is an essay on the Idea of a Woman that never was, nor ever will be found. Emilia he calls this all too perfect, impossible she. And amongst the foremost of Emilia’s fine qualities he reckons the co-existence of seriousness _au fond_ with vivacity of mien. “For we find that the gayest humour doth, at length, become tiresome; ... the most effervescent liveliness either disgusts or wearies you.” In the case of the celebrated Duchesse de Longueville, De Retz notices the exquisite effect of the sudden bursts of gaiety which would at times dispel her habitual but not inexpressive languor. Mdlle. de Scudéry, in her “Clélie,” was painting a well-known, perhaps too well-known, contemporary in the person of Clarice, when, “parmi toute cette disposition qu’elle a pour la joie,” she ascribes to this charmer, _qui rit si aisément_, a facile faculty of tear-shedding: _elle sait pleurer_, whenever occasion justifies weeping. As Lady Eastlake says, in her little treatise on Music, a change of key is the most powerful engine in the hands of a musician: we cannot bear the monotony of one key long, even the most joyful: “Gaiety without eclipse wearieth me, May Lilian.” We long for “a mournful muse, soft pity to infuse.” The Hon. Miss Byron takes the liberty of telling the sister of Sir Charles Grandison that “Your brother has hinted, Charlotte, that he loves you for your vivacity, and should still more, if you consulted time and occasion.” The affections are justly said to be more readily called into play by a mixture of mirth and melancholy; ours being a twofold life, the union of mortal with immortal, we covet happiness, yet turn back anon to the more majestic form of sorrow. There is a form of cheerfulness which, we are assured, nobody can stand:—

“Send me hence a thousand miles From a face that always smiles;”

people ostentatiously and pretentiously cheerful being not unfrequently foolish people: their spirits of a brisk but thin quality—nothing about them in good working order. “For, in truth, the most fortunate existence has cares enough to make gravity our normal condition.” Roland Graeme, in the “Abbot,” earnestly assures his vivacious companion, “Ay, but, fair Catherine, there are moments of deep and true feeling, which are worth ten thousand years of liveliest mirth.” Melancholy Minna is a fine relief by contrast to laughter-loving Brenda; and it is suggestively told us of the old Udaller, their sire, that he liked his graver damsel better in the walk without doors, and his merry maiden better by the fireside; and that if he preferred Brenda after the glass circulated in the evening, he gave the preference to Minna before noon. So with Molly and Cynthia in “Wives and Daughters:” Molly always gentle, but very grave and silent; Cynthia merry, full of pretty mockeries, and hardly ever silent—only this constant brilliancy became a little tiresome in everyday life, being not the sunshiny rest of a placid lake, so much as the “glitter of the pieces of a broken mirror, which confuses and bewilders.” The union of what can be harmonized of the two distinctive characters, is sure to be engaging in no ordinary degree. As in the Beryl of “George Geith.” “You imagine,” says Beryl, on one occasion, “because it is necessary to my existence to laugh at people’s oddities, that I never feel for their woes. You think, because I have a quick sense of the ludicrous, that I have no eyes for grief. And there you do me an injustice.” Such as Beryl will be found to take exception to predominant levity in the masculine gender, after the manner of the fair tenant of Wildfell Hall: “I do wish he would be sometimes serious,” she writes of her endeared Arthur: “I cannot get him to write or speak in real, solid earnest. I don’t mind it now, but if it be always so, what shall I do with the serious part of myself?” Tired out with such companionship, a complainant in one of Lovell Beddoes’ tragedies exclaims,—

“I’m weary of their laughter’s empty din. Methinks, these fellows, with their ready jests, Are like to tedious bells, that ring alike Marriage or death.”

Rather than have her uniformly saccharine and smiling, Ben Jonson’s Curius avowedly would have his mistress “angry sometimes, to sweeten off the rest of her behaviour.”

* * * * *

Sir Walter Scott, in one page of his Diary, noting the break-up of a hilarious group of guests at Abbotsford, adds the avowal, “I am not sorry, being one of those whom too much mirth always inclines to sadness.” Even the bright extremes of joy, as Thomas Hood the elder words it, bring on conclusions of disgust:—

“There is no music in the life That sounds with idiot laughter solely; There’s not a string attuned to mirth But has its chord in melancholy.”

Leigh Hunt tenderly tells one of his grandchildren how, when _he_ was a child, and in excessive spirits, his dear mother would sometimes say to him, “Leigh, come and sit down here by me, and let us try to think a little.” Better that than _riant sans cesse_, even for a child. When I was a child, says the apostle, I thought as a child. Thinking was not out of the question even then, though it might, and by comparison with the man’s it must, be childish thinking. For children as for men, a time to laugh and a time to weep. True, there are differences of gifts and temperaments:—

“To some men God hath given laughter; but tears to some men He hath given: He bade us sow in tears, hereafter to harvest holier smiles in Heaven; And tears and smiles, they are His gift: both good, to smite or to uplift. He knows His sheep: the wind and showers beat not too sharply the shorn lamb: His wisdom is more wise than ours: He knew my nature—what I am: He tempers smiles with tears: both good, to bear in time the Christian mood.”

_DISALLOWED DESIGNS._

PROVERBS xix. 21.

“There are many devices in a man’s heart; nevertheless, the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand.” Even the counsels of the prudent He bringeth to nought. “There is no wisdom, nor understanding, nor counsel, against the Lord,” nor any that prospers without Him. Without Him, where is the wise? where is the scribe? What, after all, is the wisdom of the children of this world, wiser in their generation than the children of light? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise.” Nay; unworldly wisdom, in its forming of plans, and elaboration of schemes, and devising of devices, enjoys no privileged immunity from failure, at the veto of Him who chargeth His angels with folly. “L’homme propose, Dieu dispose.” The Divine disposal of human proposals is ofttimes very summary and entire.

The proverb, “Man proposes, God disposes,” is believed by one learned in such lore to be naturalised in every nation of Europe:—thus the Spanish, “La gente pone, y Dios dispone;” the German, with its corresponding jingle, “Der Mensch denkt’s, Gott lenkt’s,” etc., so deeply upon all men is impressed the sense of Hamlet’s assertion of a Divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will. Molière’s shrewd-spoken Dorine enounces a truism when reminding Damis that,—

“On n’exécute pas tout ce qui se propose; Et le chemin est long du projet à la chose.”

A wise man endeavours, it has been said, by considering all circumstances, to make conjectures and form conclusions: but the smallest accident intervening (and in the course of affairs it is impossible to foresee all) often produces such turns and changes, that at last he is just as much in doubt of events as the most ignorant and inexperienced person. What Shakspeare in his sonnets calls “millioned accidents” creep in between design and result, between plan and performance, between scheme and issue, and “blunt the sharpest intents.” As the old moralising poet, modernised by Dryden, puts it—

“But see how Fortune can confound the wise, And when they least expect it, turn the dice.”

Fortune, or fate, is the popularly recognised agent in these reversals and collapses; and subtile philosophers speculate curiously on the plenipotent character of this agency. One such, for example, predisposed to paradox may-be, yet no heedless or hasty penman, affirms, that if you look closely into the matter, it will be seen that whatever appears most vagrant, and utterly purposeless, turns out, in the end, to have been impelled the most surely on a preordained and unswerving track. Chance and change, he goes on to remark, love to deal with men’s unsettled plans, not with their idle vagaries. So that, as he argues the matter, if we desire unexpected and unimaginable events, we should contrive an iron framework, such as we fancy may compel the future to take one inevitable shape; for then comes in the unexpected, and shatters our design in fragments.

The biographer of Columbus, narrating the story of his shipwreck in 1492, describes him as passing, with his usual excitability, from a state of doubt and anxiety to one of sanguine anticipation, and thus coming to consider his present misfortune as a providential event mysteriously ordained by Heaven to work out the success of his enterprise. At once, therefore, he began to look forward to glorious fruits to be reaped from this seeming evil, and laid his plans accordingly. “Such was the visionary yet generous enthusiasm of Columbus, the moment that prospects of vast wealth broke upon his mind. What in some spirits would have awakened a grasping and sordid avidity to accumulate, immediately filled his imagination with plans of magnificent expenditure. But how vain are our attempts to interpret the inscrutable decrees of Providence! The shipwreck, which Columbus considered the act of Divine favour, to reveal to him the secrets of the land, shackled and limited all his after-discoveries.” For it is shown to have linked his fortunes, for the remainder of his life, to this island, which was doomed to be to him a source of cares and troubles, to involve him in a thousand perplexities, and to becloud his declining years with humiliation and disappointment.

“Le ciel agit sans nous en ces événements, Et ne les régle point dessus nos sentiments.”

It is instructive to note in the memoirs of Gabriel Naudé, that great scholar’s exultant anticipation of the public opening of the library he had mainly helped to form. He must have reckoned on that day as a _beau jour_ for him, the happiest day of his life; and he arranged a fête accordingly, to be celebrated with his most intimate friends. But that very day broke out the public troubles of the Fronde; and barricades in the streets of Paris ill accorded with Gabriel Naudé’s cherished hopes. “Ainsi vont les projets humains sous l’œil d’en haut qui les déjoue.” The Scotch ploughman-poet, eyeing the mouse and its “wee bit housie, too, in ruin,” as turned up by his plough, gave racy utterance to but a trite reflection, when, apostrophising the “wee sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie,” he thus moralised his song:—

“But, mousie, thou art no thy lane, In proving foresight may be vain: The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men Gang aft a-gley, And leave us nought but grief an’ pain, For promised joy.”

As the good friar in Shakspeare has it,—

“A greater power than we can contradict Hath thwarted our intents,”

well laid and discreetly devised as they seemed to be.

And as with the seemingly laudable plans of the prudent, so with the arrogant designs of the self-confident. The enemy said, “I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them; I will draw my sword; my hand shall destroy them.” Thus said the enemy, even Pharaoh’s host, on the shores of the Red Sea. But then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord: “Thou didst blow with Thy wind, the sea covered them; they sank as lead in the mighty waters.” It is but an emphasised reading of the standard text, that the Lord bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought, and maketh the devices of the people of none effect, and casteth out the counsel of princes. Whereas, turning from man proposing to God disposing, “The counsel of the Lord shall endure for ever, and the thoughts of His heart from generation to generation.” The same is He of whom it is written that He turneth wise men backwards, and maketh their knowledge foolish.

Wordsworth, ever a moralist, moralised his song when, at a critical juncture in the legend of the “White Doe of Rylstone,” he interposed this reflection:—

“But quick the turns of chance and change, And knowledge has a narrow range; Whence idle fears, and needless pain, And wishes blind, and efforts vain.”

For a closing variation on the present theme, a worse might be found than this from the play within the play of “Hamlet:”—

“But, orderly to end where I begun,— Our wills, our fates, do so contrary run, That our devices still are overthrown; Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.”

But, with a slight change of title and text, the same theme is pursued, in the section next ensuing, through another fugue-course of variations.

_MAN DEVISING, GOD DIRECTING._

PROVERBS xvi. 9.

“A man’s heart deviseth his way; but the Lord directeth his steps.” Man devises, God directs; man proposes, God disposes. There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, and practicable, plausible, easy of accomplishment, and sure of success. But the counsel of the Lord puts a veto on the scheme; and the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand.

Luther charges it against princes and potentates in his day, that when they take in hand an enterprise, they do not pray before they begin, but set to work calculating: three times three make nine, twice seven are fourteen—so-and-so will do so-and-so—in this manner will the business come to a prosperous issue: “but our Lord God says unto them, For whom then do ye hold me? for a cypher? Do I sit here above in vain, and to no purpose? Ye shall know, that I will twist your accounts about finely, and make them all false reckonings.”

Says old Alice, in “Mary Barton,” “I sometimes think the Lord is against planning. Whene’er I plan over much, He is sure to send and mar all my plans, as if He would ha’ me put the future into His hands. Afore Christmas-time I was as full as full could be of going home for good and all; yo has heard how I’ve wished it this terrible long time.... Many a winter’s night did I lie awake and think that, please God, come summer, I’d go home at last. Little did I think how God Almighty would baulk me for not leaving my days in His hands, who had led me through the wilderness hitherto.” It is very like Rousseau to say, in reference to a fully determined project of his, for the fulfilment of which nothing was wanting but “ce qui ne dépend pas des hommes dans les projets les mieux concertés,”—that “on dirait qu’il n’y a que les noirs complots des méchants qui réussissent; les projets innocents des bons n’ont presque jamais d’accomplissement.” But who can hope for anything like contentment, as Mr. Helps somewhere asks, so long as he continues to attach that ridiculous degree of importance to the events of this life which so many people are inclined to do? Observe, he bids us, the effect which it has upon them: they are most uncomfortable if their little projects do not turn out according to their fancy—nothing is to be angular to them—they regard external things as the only realities; and as they have fixed their abode here, they must have it arranged to their mind. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu assures one of her correspondents that never had she been so little mistress of her own time and actions as since she lived alone; and going on to account for this, she observes, “Mankind is placed in a state of dependency, not only on one another (which all are in some degree), but so many inevitable accidents thwart our designs and limit our best-laid projects.” The poor efforts of our utmost prudence, and political schemes, she fancies must appear in the eyes of some superior beings, like the pecking of a young linnet to break a wire cage, or the climbing of a squirrel in a hoop. If to this bit of morality from the greatest of lady letter-writers in England, a parallel passage may readily be cited from the greatest of lady letter-writers in France, there is a characteristic difference, in the tone of religious feeling, conspicuous generally by its absence in Lady Mary’s case, but a pervading, though underlying, force in that of Madame de Sévigné. The latter describes on one occasion the “cruel derangement” of her family plans, so nicely arranged, and so ripe for completion; then adds, if with a sigh, with a sigh of gentle resignation, “La Providence le veut ainsi. Elle est tellement maitresse de toutes nos actions, que nous n’exécutons rien que sous son bon plaisir, et je tache de ne faire de projets que le moins qu’il m’est possible, afin de n’être pas si souvent trompée; car qui compte sans elle compte deux fois.” How vain, exclaims the author of “Destiny,” are all our schemes for futurity! Human wisdom exhausts itself in devising what a higher Power shows to be vanity. We decide for to-day, and a passing moment scatters our decisions as chaff before the wind. We resolve for to-morrow, to-morrow comes but to root up our resolutions. We scheme for our works to remain monuments of our power and wisdom, and the most minute, the most trivial event is sufficient to overturn all our purposes, and cast down to the dust the thoughts and the labours of a life. Truly, “it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.”

Were the affairs of this world to be guided implicitly by human wisdom, suggests one of Scott’s sententious doctors of divinity, or were they uniformly to fall out according to the conjectures of human foresight, events would no longer be under the domination of that time and chance which happen unto all men; since we should, in the one case, work out our own purposes to a certainty, by our own skill; and, in the other, regulate our conduct according to the views of unerring prescience. “But man is, while in this vale of tears, like an uninstructed bowler, so to speak, who thinks to attain the jack by delivering the bowl straightforward upon it, being ignorant that there is a concealed bias within the spheroid, which will make it, in all probability, swerve away, and lose the cast.” The future, in the words of a later fiction, is not a blank sheet of paper, for us to write any story we please upon, but a wonderful chart, mapped out by a Divine and unerring hand.

Ούδέ τις ἀνθρώπων ἐργάζεται, ἐν φρεσὶν εἰδὼς Ἐς τέλος, εἴτ’ ἀγαθὸν γίγνεται εἴτε κακὸν. Πολλάκι γαρ δοκέων θήσειν κακόν, ἐσθλὸν ἔθηκε, Καί τε δοκῶν θήσειν ἐσθλόν, ἔθηκε κακόν. Ὀυδέ τῳ ἀνθρώπων παραγίγνεται ὅσσ’ ἐθέλησεν.