Kitabı oku: «Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 386, December, 1847», sayfa 3

In his philosophy, we have seen that Mr Emerson is an idealist, something, too, of a pantheist. In theology, we have heard him described as a Unitarian; but although the Unitarians of America differ move widely from each other, and from the standard of orthodoxy, than the same denomination of men in this country, we presume there is no body of Unitarians with whom our philosopher would fraternise, or who would receive him amongst their ranks. His Christianity appears rather to be of that description which certain of the Germans, one section of the Hegelians for instance, have found reconcilable with their Pantheistic philosophy. It is well for him that he writes in a tolerant age, that he did not make his appearance a generation too soon; the pilgrim fathers would certainly have burnt him at the stake; he would have died the death of Giordano Bruno. And we believe – if the spirit of his writings be any test of the spirit of the man – that he would have suffered as a martyr, rather than have foregone the freedom and the truthfulness of his thought. His essays are replete with passages such as this: – "God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please – you can never have both. Between these, as a pendulum, man oscillates ever. He in whom the love of repose predominates, will accept the first creed, the first philosophy, the first political party he meets, – most likely his father's. He gets rest, commodity, and reputation; but he shuts the door of truth. He in whom the love of truth predominates, will keep himself aloof from all moorings and afloat. He will abstain from dogmatism, and recognise all the opposite negations, between which, as walls, his being is swung. He submits to the inconvenience of suspense and imperfect opinion, but he is a candidate for truth, as the other is not, and he respects the highest law of his being."

We gather from what little has reached us of his biography, that he has in fact sacrificed somewhat of the commodity of this life, to this "higher law of his being." In a work which has just fallen into our hands, entitled "The Prose Writers of America, with a Survey of the Intellectual History, Condition, and Prospects of the Country, by Rufus Wilmot Griswold," we find the following scanty account of Emerson. "He is the son of a Unitarian clergyman of Boston, and in 1821, when about seventeen years of age, was graduated at Harvard University. Having turned his attention to theology, he was ordained minister of one of the congregations of his native city, but, embracing soon after some peculiar views in regard to the forms of worship, he abandoned his profession, and retiring to the quiet village of Concord, after the manner of an Arabian prophet, gave himself up to 'thinking,' preparatory to his appearance as a revelator." Which meagre narrative, not very happily told, leads us to infer that the recluse of Concord has lived up to the high spirit of his own teaching.

It is remarkable that Mr Griswold, in the prefatory essay which he entitles The Intellectual History, Condition, and Prospects of the Country, although he has introduced a host of writers of all grades, some of whom will be heard of in England for the first time, never once mentions the name of Emerson! Yet, up to this moment, America has not given to the world any thing which, in point of original genius, is comparable to his writings. That she has a thousand minds better built up, whose more equal culture, and whose more sober opinions, one might prefer to have, – this is not the question, – but in that highest department of reflective genius, where the power is given to impart new insights into truth, or make old truths look new, he stands hitherto unrivalled in his country; he has no equal and no second.

Very popular he perhaps never may become; but we figure to ourselves that, a century hence, he will be recognised as one of those old favourite writers whom the more thoughtful spirits read, not so much as teachers, but as noble-minded companions and friends, whose aberrations have been long ago conceded and forgiven. Men will read him then, not for his philosophy, – they will not care two straws for his idealism or his pantheism: they will know that they are there, and there they will leave them, – but they will read him for those genuine confessions of one spirit to another, that are often breathed in his writings; for those lofty sentiments to which all hearts respond; for those truths which make their way through all systems, and in all ages.

HOW I CAME TO BE A SLOVEN

A pretty question this, my dear Eusebius, – and that the question comes from you, who at no time of your life were a "Beau Nash," is rather extraordinary. It is after the fashion of most of your movements, however, and so far should not be thought extraordinary in you. For as you do not walk in the track that other men's shoes have made, nor dress your thoughts in other men's draperies; but both walk and think as few other men do, I ought not to wonder that you turn suddenly round upon me, eye me from head to foot, and ask me this curious question, How I came to be a sloven. Now, I can easily imagine your own slovenly attitude and attire when you wrote me this precious letter, and how fantastically conceited you fancied yourself standing before me, ωστε Ζωγραφης – like a painter, as says Hecuba, when she bad her rags and misery be looked at, – and thought to put me out of countenance with your own perfections. Perfections, indeed! Why, your whole wardrobe would not be worth exporting in charity to the land of Ne'erdo-weels – and I doubt not that the loss of a single suit, bad as it may be, would leave you in some small respects as bare as when you came into the world. You have been reading, you tell me, the "Ãsthetics of Dress," as you term them, those very amusing papers in Maga – from which you mean to cull materials for the history of the art, and to write a treatise on "The Philosophy of Tailors," wherein you intend to set forth upon what principles of the "Fitness of things" it is that nine tailors make a man. It is a whimsical notion of yours that the game of nine-pins was set up in honour of these nine worthies – "Knights of the thimble" – signifying how weakly they stand upon their pins, and how they go by the board at the very breath of a ball. You affect to think that the Templars were but the imitators of a more honourable cross-legged company – and that their antiquity is shown prior to the invention of Heraldry, for that the very term, the coat of arms, must have come from them. You say they can show parchments with the oldest companies and families, and cut to shivereens the longest pedigrees, and yet never go beyond their own measure.

What would a parliament be without them? They not only make their man, but seat him. Indeed, man is no man, till he is made one by these Novemviri, and hath been invested by them, as of old, with the toga virilis; and now-a-days (we vulgarise every thing even in the nomenclature) the first advance to manhood is to be "breeched: " – that first step when, with the dignity of newly assumed and duly authorised manhood, the dressed youth puts his best foot foremost, on the first step of the ladder of life, and is not ashamed, while ascending, to turn his back, and show what stuff he is made of.

It is said, that when a man marries he enters into a bond with society for his future good behaviour – but of what consequence is this, in comparison with that previous bottomry bond, to use a mercantile word suitable to these our mercantile days, that every man has entered into and given the surety of nine men besides, without which, whatever bottom he may show in the fight, the greatest hero would be but a sans culotte. Heroes! why, are not tailors the very models after which men should dress themselves? They have made, in all senses, the best regiments. And what a large slice of this globe is governed and commanded by the Board in Threadneedle Street.

Thread and thimble do wonders to make a man – rig him out with the best materials – no devil's dust, disdaining dishonest "thimble-riggery."

The son of Japetus admired not more his man-invention, than does the tailor. The fleshly life which he condescends to stuff into his manufacture, is with him but a secondary consideration; and it must be confessed he is often not very choice in these his human materials. Any thing that way will do to adorn the real "man of shreds and patches." Pegs and lay figures would answer the purpose quite as well as these, pattern-humanities, if they would but walk. Bad, however, as they are, as specimens per se, they are made so much of by the adornments, that their painted effigies and portraits, as they are exhibited in tailors' laboratories, saloons, and establishments, excite the envy and wonder of a gaping population. They are set forth, to show what the worst man may be made – to portray vividly the excellence of the art, and to "give the world assurance of a man," even built and fabricated out of next to nothing but his dress. It is no longer "Ex pede Herculem." The boot-maker has been defeated – Hoby dethroned – you may have a Hercules or an Apollo only according to cloth measure. Then will the proud artificer hold the mirror up to Nature to show her how vastly she is improved, even though it be by the slandered hands of "Nature's journeymen." Then, so various in its powers is the art, that the real professors will at the shortest notice turn the shopman into the esquire, and, if need be, the thief into an archdeacon. They will fit you with any character, fit or unfit: – will send you most genteelly to the court or to the gallows. Vain is the conceit of the scoffing world of fashion that affect to scorn the craft that makes them what they are; – nay, a great deal better, and to look what they are not. Let them try to set up for themselves, what sorry figures they would be – perfectly ridiculous, to be kicked out of Fop's Alley, and whipped by the beadle!! worse clad than Prince Vortigern in that despicable and invisible slip of a vestment,

"Which from a naked Pict his grandsire won

But that can never be to any extent. What man in his senses would enter upon this stage of the world, rushing in like a wild man of the woods, a general wonder, and without the introductory aid of his proper master of the ceremonies; when, too, at a trifling cost, he can take his ticket of admission, and go boldly certificated by the sign-manual of a Doudney or a Moses? No man dares to walk entirely out of rules sartorial, nor utterly to despise the images which it pleaseth the tailors to set up. Not that their laws are like those of the Medes and Persians, which alter not – their very principle is change – and every change is suitable. The seasons change not fast enough for them. Is a man to be married? – even then he is in the tailor's hands – he must have a new suit – nay, he must wait for it, he dare not appear without it. Is he to be hanged? – he must have a new suit; nay, before condemnation he is tried in his best, as if he were to be judged as much by appearance as evidence. The public, the real thinking public, take more notice of his appearance than of his crimes. Every journal is full of accurate detail, not of his doings, but of his looks and of his dress. The Pictorials present the very cut of his coat, and pattern on his waistcoat; and what the graver cannot, they supply in words, so that you may see not only the shape but the colour. Blue is the favourite colour at the altar of Hymen, – a suit of black on the platform of the hangman – but that is a compliment to the clergy – or a malice, that folk may think most who go out of the world that way are of the cloth – and that is what they call giving the culprit "the benefit of clergy."

Really man should be defined "a dressing animal." – Were all the powers of the earth to meet together to consult upon their everlasting interests, the previous question would be, in what are they to appear; and the first announcement of the great congress of the gentlemen of the press would be what they wore, – what they said, would be slurred over as of less importance. Thus, for example, the Roman historian is particular when he describes the great ambassador before the senate of the Carthagenains, making a fold of his robe, as if it alone were worthy to contain the fate and fortunes of empires, asking them which they would have, Peace or War – and so letting it fall loose out of his hand, – just as a modern senator on the opposition side might put his hands into his breeches pockets, make a show of searching, and taking them out with nothing in them, might, with all the dignity of senatorial energy, declare that he could not surmise where the minister would get his supplies.

It is extraordinary man is ashamed of nothing so much as of his own natural figure. It is a mean and low thing to appear to have flesh and blood, excepting in the face and hands, – this remark must, however, apply only to the male sex. The female is allowed a greater latitude. Even a Count D'Orsay would be hooted through the streets, should he dare to appear, on foot or on horseback, without a coat, and with his shirtsleeves tucked up, – such is the obeisance we make to the tailoring craft. And if it be a folly, it is one of an old growth, and is rife among our antipodes as ourselves. Savage and cultivated, civil and uncivil, all have the propensity. The Chinese exquisites felt the skirts of the coats of the members of our embassy, and burst out into immoderate laughter. They quizzed the cut and colour, proud of their own envelopes; and, to their cost, judged us by our clothes. They have since felt our arms. Your tailor is an important personage all the world over, but alas! he is too restricted in his commerce. He is confined to spots and spaces, that is, individually speaking, – universal is the race. It is quite curious to consider what free trade may do for him. The export and the import may quite change the appearances of all, men, women, and children. When navigation laws shall be done away with, and "free bottoms shall carry free goods," then, indeed, may it come to pass that "motley is your only wear." The picturesque will triumph; wondrous will be the variety; in apparel, China and Kamschatka shall meet and shuffle together in every public way. Then "all the world will be a stage," and all the men and women at least look like players. The drab world will be extinct – it is nearly so now. Quakers have been long since ashamed of their Sartorian antipathies, and from growing to be coxcombs in their own particular line, have pretty generally thrown off the dull garb, and plunged with eagerness into the emporium of fashion, and come out so as that their mothers would not know them. The snake throws off his old skin, and when he comes out shining in his new, looks with a sly leer from under the hedge, and seemeth to say, "Thanks, friend, thee hast complimented me by following my example, I am verily proud of thy similitude." Too many of us have a spice in our veins of the snake's venom, – shift skins, and turn coats, – but no more of that, Eusebius, it leads to fearful questioning, and we both eschew politics; and do not let us call up the evil one, whoever may be among the tailors. Yet let me remind you of a whimsical accident that happened the other day to a certain M.P., who, having bought a ready-made paletot, walked boldly into the streets, forgetting that he was thus ticketed on the back, "This neat article to be sold cheap." I dare to say, it was warranted to keep its gloss, and turn as good as new – and that the wearer peeled well in the house.

You would, I see, implicate me in fopperies. If it is not my humour to patronise by personal wear, I at least panegyrise all fraternities of tailors. You may make yourself look ridiculous if you please, and the change may not ill become your vagary-loving mind; but I do not mean to doff my old habit, not having faith in novelties, that I should trust the present easy motion of my limbs to unused ties and compressions. Dress, with such old ones as we are, Eusebius, should have the blessings Sancho bestows upon sleep, and "should wrap us warm like a blanket;" and what reason is there that we should think the worse of ourselves for showing the dates of our thoughts and ways, and bearing upon our coats the figures of a somewhat backward age. We may yet brighten up our countenances, and say out of the book of that dramatist who knew life so well, and may thus depict ours – even for some few years to come, my dear good Eusebius, —

"Though time hath worn us into slovenry,

But, by the mass, our hearts are in the trim."

They that have taken off and put on their clothes as often as you and I have done, may well look upon them as old friends, with their familiar looks, and see in their wear and tear a certain kinship with ourselves, and all our own elbow rubs that the world hath given us, and the thread-bare arguments that we have put upon ourselves, from which we imagined we could raise fine flattering maxims, and substantial truths, which have more deceived us in the wear than in the affection with which they retain us and are still retained.

"When this old cloak was new,"

says the old song, – and how much does it imply – what a world of memory is involved in its every fold. At the shaking of the skirts out fly visions of the past, – familiar faces, endearing converse round the pleasant hearth, – cares that we have wrapped round with them, buried in them, and now come up but as effigies of thoughts that no longer trouble, dreams of life's anxieties, from which the mind takes wholesome food, indulging in the repose of the old envelopment. Would you exchange this, Eusebius, for any new untried thing, forcing its intimacy upon you without claim to your friendship, jerking you and twitting you with impertinent and ill-fitting pressure, with no other association but of the congregational squattings of the nine journeymen who made its existence, redolent of misshapen and snuff-stained thumbs?

I would no more willingly part with the habit that gives me personal ease, and is familiar with all my movements, than I would with that metaphorical habit of mind, of thoughts and feeling, that makes the continuing identity of my being. I say identity, for a man of any character must identify himself with his clothes: by wear they acquire somewhat more than a likeness. No man can ride the same horse daily for five years, but the two animals will in some strange way give out to each other something of their natures – there is sure to be a resemblance. So is it with our clothes. There is an old caricature of Bunbury's, – "The Country Club" – in which this truth is shown. You know you could put every man's hat upon his head, though they are all hung on pegs. And this is surely a most characteristic kind of portraiture. I should as much think of setting up the painted likeness of a deceased friend or dearer relative as a sign to a pot-house for the Saracen's head, as I would give his suit of clothes, at least in the shape in which he left them, to a mumper that should go begging in them. Would it not be an offence, that the noble air of freedom and of sentient responsibility they have acquired, should be doomed to contract in damp and unwholesome decay, the look of degradation and drooping melancholy of a vicious meanness, retaining, at the same time, that something of the departed, which, by its presence, seems to connect him with an abominable deterioration? Let the clothes be buried with the man, lest your friend's very effigies be seen in low haunts and vile places. For you can steep them in no dye of a Lethe that will wash away the remembrances, the likenesses they have acquired. Would you have the apron of sanctity transferred, by ill-advised gift, from a defunct archbishop to the boddice of an indecent figurante? Detestable notions these – that nothing should be lost, and all turned to use! What use of any thing is better than that one which keeps feelings, affections, respect, entire! Were I a modern iconoclast, I would rather burn the petticoats of "our Lady of Loretto," than transfer them to a still lower puppet-show. I had rather say for ever with the Mayor of Garratt, "Stand back, you gentleman without a shirt," than present him with one of my grandfather's wearing. When a boy, I always used to think it a painful sight to see cast clothes hung out on poles or lines, and extending half across a street, blown to and fro with the winds, like ghosts affecting the show and motion of vitality, undergoing their purification in an upper aerial purgatory, preparatory to their metempsychosis, uncertain if they should adopt unto themselves a bodily being of a higher or a lower order. To hang the coat seemed very like hanging the man.

Pythagoras was the first man, says history, that wore breeches. When he hung up the shield of Euphorbus in the temple of Juno, to show that he had been Euphorbus, did he suspend his breeches also? He probably did, disliking any meaner transmigration for them; for we are told his fashion was not followed until some generations had passed. The modern Pythagorean would send them to the pawnbrokers.

The fine idea of Lucian, that our shadows will be our accusers, might very properly be transferred to coats and inexpressibles; for, besides that they might witness of our whereabouts and of our doings, they might witness of our ingratitude in casting them off, – wearing our old friends thread-bare, and then throwing them off when they have most singularly accommodated themselves to all our strange ways, – of sending them, as the unfeeling do the high-mettled racer to the cart, to other service to which they are but ill-fitted. The wearer of another man's coat is guilty of a kind of larceny; he does more than steal from the person, he in one sense steals the person itself! At least, he should be held responsible for all that has been done in the coat, and that on the principle of taxation, as the law comes not on the tenant gone off, but upon the land. Better that a man should make a museum of his apparel, than part with it out of the family of which it so properly forms a part.

A gallery of suspended braces might represent one's ancestors, equally with the be-wigged portraits that seem to lay their hands upon their hearts, and say from their frames, "Posterity, I begot you." A breeches-gallery might with much less expense serve the same purpose; for if these articles have not fittingly belonged to posterity, it is notorious that they have most fittingly belonged to something very like it. Do you not think, Eusebius, that these suspension breeches, the idea of which is worthy the Shandean philosophy, would be very expressive of family character, and nicely distinguish unseemly interpolation; and that a genealogical wardrobe-gallery would become an object of pride, and most proper appendage to the family seat? It could no more be doubted to what race and blood apparel would justly belong, than to what shoulders certain heads must belong – which illustration reminds me of that saying of Bishop Bonner's to Henry VIII. who threatened to cut off the head of every Frenchman in his power, should Francis I. take the life of the bishop? "True, sire," said he with a smile, "but I question, if any of their heads would fit my shoulders as well as that I have on." So would the family-fit be no bad test of the true character and vitality in the genealogical tree.

I suppose that, by your question – How I came to be a sloven – you would have me throw off my old habits, and put on new – and perhaps, in your satirical innuendo, attack more than apparel, which we abuse by metaphor, when we term ill manners "bad habits!" Did I tell you how ingeniously our gay and jocund friend and poetical satirist defended himself in encounter of wit with a bantering opponent? "How do we know," said he, "but that our vices may be our persecuted virtues." "Slovenry," Eusebius, is a persecuted virtue. It is a tone and virtue that unbends, loosens the stiffness of the social body, liberates it from the strict tie of an awkward formality, and is to the whole of society what variety is in the dress in an individual – a happy relief, without which there would be too much monotony. The philosopher who made his bow to the jewelled and richly dressed man, and thanked him for the sight, and the trouble he took in putting on and bearing such a costly suit, should have been thanked, in his turn, for acting the foil, the contrast, which made the finery so conspicuous. If we were all dressed up kings and queens – were all the world to wear a lord mayor's livery, there would be no show to see. It is the intermixture, the great variety, that makes the exhibition, which is only then complete when it has a little dash of slovenry. What a sorry picture it would be that should have all bright colours! the finest carnation is best set off with a little adjacent umber. You would no more wish to see people in the streets all dressed alike, than you would wish to see the streets all alike, and every house like another. Nature dresses not after this one millinery. In the richest corn field, it is not every blade, and ear, and stalk, that is equally broad, full, and straight. Some have a kind of slovenly lying off from others, a grace, the very purposed gift of Nature, to entice the eye to a more curious and nice selection, whereby to discover the infinite degrees of beauty, that all united make the whole perfection. The precision of the tall and upright stalk is the more strongly marked in its strength, by the decoration of its neighbour – and how beautifully do a few clustered together plume off their individual irregularity into a graceful shape! Has not the tangled hedge its own beauty even when it "putteth forth disordered twigs?" You would not bear all pruned to one smooth fashion. The finery of Nature's robes makes but a small part of her wardrobe; she hath her ordinary wear, and even when she putteth on her mantle of the richest green, she trims it sparingly – and that for the most part with a loose lacery of unobtrusive jasmine and vine-weed. And the nature that bids all the garniture of earth thus grow variously in richness, in moderation, and in a sweet and humble disorder, putteth it into man's mind; for he is doomed to dress himself, so as to follow her law; – and thus it is, that in any given number of persons you shall see some few endowed with this natural gift and grace of slovenry. And that careless, modest, unassuming part in the arabesque ornament of life, you and I, Eusebius, are intended to perform. One character for the harlequin, another for the clown, and we must have the lean and slippered pantaloon – and there must be some one besides, my good friend, to play the fool too, or the stage will not be well filled, nor the comedy of life well performed, nor the spectators well pleased.

Take, Eusebius, which part you please, – you will ultimately fall into your natural character, and however you may shift a little with age, you will ever have a hankering after "one more last appearance" in motley. I doubt if the daily moving scene would be perfect without the beggar's rags. Their loose uncared for freedom, the independence of an escape beyond the limits of poverty, which, says the satirist, makes men ridiculous, floating in the wind or drooping in the rain, alike defying and disregarding the better or the worse of fortune, have their moral as well as pictorial use and dignity too in the panorama. The beggar's negligence is the running commentary on the rich man's anxieties. All is right in its place; you have only to look and admire the show. The grandest cathedrals, with their ornamented towers or spires seeking heaven as their own, are not always the worse for a contiguous poverty of humble dwellings, which they do but seem to take under their sacred protection; and thus the low elevates still more the great. You and I may be well content, by the lowness of our apparel, to magnify the magnificent; only, I confess that when I find myself standing as a foil to one of our rough-haired, be-whiskered and bearded fops, I do sometimes feel inclined to throw a nut in his way to see if he be a monkey or a man. One would not wish to be showman to the brute. The contempt of the fop is of little moment; and here I cannot but think Anacharsis was wrong, when he proposed to himself to leave Greece on account of the derision cast upon him for his dress.

I admire your offering the example of Aristippus, as an inducement to quit the character of the sloven. You say he accepted a rich robe; but you must remember that the wiser Plato refused it. Besides, it was in the philosophy of Aristippus to take either part, and to appear fop or sloven as his humour pleased him, or convenience led him. "Omnis Aristippum decuit color," says Horace; and let me suggest that color must have meant, not color vitæ, (or if it so be, it is a metaphor from the thing,) but the colour of his cloth – black, perhaps, turned brown – seedy. He was certainly one to "cut his coat according to his cloth." Diogenes in his rags and his tub was a coxcomb – one would not be like him; he tricked up his poverty, to be observed, and looked at, and admired, quite as much as any other coxcomb would trick out his fashion for the eye. When he desired Alexander to step aside, not to interpose his person between him and the sun, it was but a self-magnifying vanity, that his filthy rags might be the more conspicuous and set off in the splendour of a new light, as conceited religionist sects have done, calling aloud for the finger of scorn to point at the filthy rags of their own flesh and blood; vilifying their bodily man, that their unfleshed and spiritual selves might be seen by that glass through which they bid you look, to rise above and shine in the new light of their own glorification – an idea which they have borrowed from those picture-cherubs, who, only heads and wings, seem altogether to have dropped their bodies and enveloped themselves in a smoky and cloudy vapour peculiarly their own. And truly, Eusebius, I am apt to agree with you, when we see these congregated saints of the New Calendar, and to join in their personal vilification, and to think that merely heads and wings might offer a more salutary odour of sanctity than that which you say you have ever found too pungent in the "Rag Fair" of their New-Paradise Row.