THE

KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORLD

IN

MEN AND BOOKS.

ROYALTY and its symbols were abolished in France. A showman of wild beasts had (the pride of his flock) an immense Bengal tiger, commonly called the Royal Tiger. What did our showman do? Why, he knew the world, and he changed the name of the beast from the Tigre Royal to the Tigre National! Horace Walpole was particularly charmed with this anecdote, for he knew the world as well as the showman. It is exactly these little things-the happy turn of a phrase—a welltimed pleasantry, that no unobservant man ever thinks of, and that, while seeming humour, are in reality wisdom. There are changes in the veins of wit, as in every thing else. Sir William Temple tells us, that on the return of Charles II. none were more out of fashion than the old Earl of Norwich, who was esteemed the greatest wit of the time of Charles the First. But it is clear that the Earl of Norwich must have wanted knowledge of the world; he did not feel, as by an instinct, like the showman, how to vary an epithet-he stuck to the last to his tigre royal!

This knowledge of the world baffles our calculations; it does not always require experience. Some men take to it intuitively; their first step in life exhibits the same profound mastery over the minds of their contempora

ries-the same subtle consideration-the same felicitous address, as distinguish the close of their career. Congreve had written his comedies at twenty-five; the best anecdotes of the acuteness of Cyrus are those of his boyhood. I should like, above all things, a veracious account of the childhood of Talleyrand. What a world of shrewdness may he have vented in trundling his hoop! Shakspeare has given us the madness of Hamlet the youth, and of Lear the old man-but there is a far deeper wisdom in the young man's thoughts than those of the old man.

Minds early accustomed to solitude usually make the keenest observers of the world, and chiefly for this reason-when few objects are presented to our contemplation, we seize them-we ruminate over them—we think, again and again, upon all the features they present to our examination; and we thus master the knowledge of the great book of Mankind as Eugene Aram mastered that of Learning, by studying five lines at a time, and ceasing not from our labour till those are thoroughly acquired. A boy, whose attention has not been distracted by a multiplicity of objects-who, living greatly alone, is obliged therefore to think, not as a task, but as a diversion, emerges at last into the world—a shy man, but a deep observer. Accustomed to reflection, he is not dazzled by novelty; while it strikes his eye, it occupies his mind. Hence, if he sits down to describe what he sees, he describes it justly at once, and at first; and more vividly, perhaps, than he might in after-life, because it is newer to him. Perhaps, too, the moral eye resembles the physical-by custom familiarizes itself with delusion, and inverts, mechanically, the objects presented to it, till the deceit becomes more natural than Nature itself.

There are men who say they know the world, because they know its vices. So does an officer at Bow-street, or the turnkey at Newgate. This would be a claim to knowledge of the world, if there were but rogues in it. But these are as bad judges of our minds as a physician would be of our bodies, if he had never seen any but those in a diseased state. Such a man would fancy health itself a disease. We generally find, indeed, that men are

governed by their weaknesses, not their vices, and those weaknesses are often the most amiable part about them. The wavering Jaffier betrays his friend through a weakness, which a hardened criminal might equally have felt, and which, in that criminal, might have been the origin of his guilt. It is the knowledge of these weaknesses, as if by a glance, that serves a man better in the understanding and conquest of his species, than a knowledge of the vices to which they lead—it is better to seize the one cause than ponder over the thousand effects. It is the former knowledge which I chiefly call the knowledge of the world. It is this which immortalized Moliere in the drama, and distinguishes Talleyrand in action.

It has been asked whether the same worldly wisdom which we admire in a writer would, had occasion brought him prominently forward, have made him equally successful in action? Certainly not, as a necessary conse quence. Swift was the most sensible writer of his day, and one of the least sensible politicians, in the selfish sense-the only sense in which he knew it-of the word. What knowledge of the world in "Don Juan" and in Byron's "Correspondence;" what seeming want of that knowledge in the great poet's susceptibility to attack, on the one hand, and his wanton trifling with his character on the other! How is this difference between the man and the writer to be accounted for? Because, in the writer, the infirmities of constitution are either concealed or decorated by genius; not so in the man: fretfulness, spleen, morbid sensitiveness, eternally spoil our plans in life, but they often give an interest to our plans on paper. Byron, quarrelling with the world, as Childe Harold, proves his genius; but Byron quarrelling with the world in his own person betrays his folly! To show wisdom in a book, it is but necessary that we should possess the theoretical wisdom; but in life, it requires not only the theoretical wisdom, but the practical ability to act up to it. We may know exactly what we ought to do, but we may not have the fortitude to do it. Now," says the shy man in love, "I ought to go and talk to my mistress-my rival is with her-I ought to

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make myself as agreeable as possible-I ought to throw that fellow in the shade by my bons mots and my compliments." Does he do so? No! he sits in a corner and scowls at the lady. He is in the miserable state described by Persius. He knows what is good and cannot perform it. Yet this man, if an author, from the very circumstance of feeling so bitterly that his constitution is stronger than his reason, would have made his lover in a book all that he could not be himself in reality.

There is a sort of wit peculiar to knowledge of the world, and we usually find that writers, who are supposed to have the most exhibited that knowledge in their books, are also commonly esteemed the wittiest authors of their country-Horace, Plautus, Moliere, Le Sage, Voltaire, Cervantes, Shakspeare, Fielding, Swift;* and this is, because the essence of the most refined species of wit is truth. Even in the solemn and grave Tacitus, we come perpetually to sudden turns-striking points, of sententious brilliancy, which make us smile, from the depth itself of their importance-an aphorism is always on the borders of an epigram.†

It is remarkable that there is scarcely any very popu lar author of great imaginative power, in whose works we do not recognise that common sense which is knowledge of the world, and which is so generally supposed by the superficial to be in direct opposition to the imaginative faculty. When an author does not possess it eminently, he is never eminently popular, whatever be his fame. Compare Scott and Shelley, the two most imaginative authors of their time. The one, in his wildest flights, never loses sight of common sensethere is an affinity between him and his humblest reader;

* Let me mention two political writers of the present day-men equally remarkable for their wit and wisdom-Sidney Smith, and the

Editor of the "Examiner," Mr. Fonblanque; barring, may I say it?

a little affectation of pithiness-the latter writer is one of the greatest masters of that art which makes "words like sharp swords," that our age has produced. And I cannot help adding, in common with many of his admirers, an earnest hope that he may leave the world a more firm and settled monument of his great abilities than the pages of any periodical can afford.

And every one will recollect the sagacious sneer of Gibbon.

nay, the more discursive the flight, the closer that affinity becomes. We are even more wrapt with the author when he is with his spirits of the mountain and fellwith the mighty dead at Melrose, than when he is leading us through the humours of a guard-room, or confiding to us the interview of lovers. But Shelley disdains common sense. Of his "Prince Athanase" we have no early comprehension-with his "Prometheus" we have no human sympathies; and the grander he becomes, the less popular we find him. Writers who do not in theory know their kind, may be admired, but they can never be popular. And when we hear men of unquestionable genius complain of not being appreciated by the herd, it is because they are not themselves skilled in the feelings of the herd. For what is knowledge of mankind, but the knowledge of their feelings, their humours, their caprices, their passions; touch these, and you gain attention-develop these, and you have conquered your audience.

Among writers of an inferior reputation we often discover a sufficient shrewdness and penetration into human foibles to startle us in points, while they cannot carry their knowledge far enough to please us on the whole. They can paint nature by a happy hit, but they violate all the likeness before they have concluded the plot; they charm us with a reflection and revolt us by a character. Sir John Suckling is one of these writers; his correspondence is witty and thoughtful, and his playsbut little known in comparison to his songs--abound with just remarks and false positions, the most natural lines and the most improbable inventions. Two persons in one of these plays are under sentence of execution, and the poet hits off the vanity of the one by a stroke worthy of a much greater dramatist.

"I have something troubles me," says Pellagrin. "What's that?" asks his friend.

"The people," replies Pellagrin, "will say, as we go along, thou art the properer fellow!" "*

*

Suckling's plays abound, also, in passages of singular beauty of diction and elegance of thought. I will quote one which seems to