Читать книгу Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 423 - Various - Страница 2

In an age of many books, there must needs be some, highly worthy of attention, with which the general reading-public will be but imperfectly acquainted. Though probably known to many of our readers, we think it likely that the writings of Mr Helps are yet unknown to many others, who might profit by the study of them, and more or less appreciate their excellence. Under this conviction, it is proposed to notice them in the present pages; and we have little doubt of being able to substantiate their claims to consideration. To readers who require of a book something more than mere amusement, or a passing satisfaction to their curiosity; who have any regard or relish for independent thinking—for an enlarged observation of human life—for the results of study and experience—for practical sense and wisdom, and a general understanding and appreciation of the varied motives, ways, and interests of men and of society—these volumes cannot fail to prove delightful and profitable reading.

All Mr Helps's writings have been published anonymously; and it is only within the last two years that he has become known, out of his own circle, to be the author. His earliest publications were, Essays written in the Intervals of Business, and An Essay on the Duties of the Employers to the Employed, otherwise entitled The Claims of Labour. He has also published a work in two volumes under the title of The Conquerors of the New World and their Bondsmen; a historical narrative of the principal events which led to negro slavery in the West Indies and America. But the books from his pen with which we are best acquainted, and which have obtained the largest measure of public attention, are a series of essays intermixed with dialogues, called Friends in Council, and a supplementary volume, somewhat different in plan, which he calls Companions of my Solitude.1 As the whole of his characteristics as an essayist are displayed with a more perfect effect in these two latter works than in the others, and as they will afford us as much extract as we shall have space for, we propose to confine our remarks to them exclusively. Matter enough, and even more than enough, will be found in them for illustrating whatever we may find to say respecting the author's powers and attainments.

The Friends in Council purports to be edited by a clergyman named Dunsford, who was so obliging and laborious as to set down the conversations in which he, Ellesmere (the great lawyer), and Milverton (the author), had engaged on various occasions, when the last read to his companions a number of short essays which he was writing. We have a page or two of introduction, informing us of this circumstance, and of a few other particulars needful to be mentioned; and then, after a little talk among the friends, an essay is read, followed by the interlocutors' comments, and a discussion of its merits. These conversations form a very agreeable portion of the work, and exhibit a fine mastery of dialogue. They are exactly like the discourse of intelligent and accomplished men, and therefore very much unlike the ordinary run of book-reported talk. A few sentences may be not unfitly quoted, by way of exhibiting their quality. We take the following, on so common a matter as friendship; not because it is the best we might select, but because it seems one of the passages which is most readily extractable:—

'Ellesmere. I suppose all of us have, at one time or other, had a huge longing after friendship. If one could get it, it would be much safer than that other thing.

'Milverton. Well, I wonder whether love—for I imagine you mean love—was ever so described before, "that other thing!"

'Elles. When the world was younger, perhaps there was more of this friendship. David and Jonathan!—How does their friendship begin? I know it is very beautiful; but I have forgotten the words. Dunsford will tell us.

'Dunsford. "And Saul said to him, Whose son art thou, thou young man? And David answered, I am the son of thy servant Jesse the Bethlehemite. And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul."

'Elles. Now that men are more complex, they would require so much. For instance, if I were to have a friend, he must be an uncommunicative man: that limits me to about thirteen or fourteen people in the world. It is only with a man of perfect reticence that you can speak completely without reserve. We talk together far more openly than most people; but there is a skilful fencing even in our talk. We are not inclined to say the whole of what we think.

'Mil.. What I should need in a friend would be a certain breadth of nature: I have no sympathy with people who can disturb themselves about small things; who crave the world's good opinion; are anxious to prove themselves always in the right; can be immersed in personal talk or devoted to self-advancement; who seem to have grown up entirely from the earth, whereas even the plants draw most of their sustenance from the air of heaven.

'Elles. That is a high flight. I am not prepared to say all that. I do not object to a little earthiness. What I should fear in friendship is the comment, and interference, and talebearing, I often see connected with it.

'Mil. That does not particularly belong to friendship, but comes under the general head of injudicious comment on the part of those who live with us. Divines often remind us, that in forming our ideas of the government of Providence, we should recollect that we see only a fragment. The same observation, in its degree, is true too as regards human conduct. We see a little bit here and there, and assume the nature of the whole. Even a very silly man's actions are often more to the purpose than his friend's comments upon them.

'Elles. True! Then I should not like to have a man for a friend who would bind me down to be consistent, who would form a minute theory of me which was not to be contradicted.

'Mil. If he loved you as his own soul, and his soul were knit with yours—to use the words of Scripture—he would not demand this consistency, because each man must know and feel his own immeasurable vacillation and inconsistency; and if he had complete sympathy with another, he would not be greatly surprised or vexed at that other's inconsistencies.

'Duns. There always seems to me a want of tenderness in what are called friendships in the present day. Now, for instance, I don't understand a man ridiculing his friend. The joking of intimates often appears to me coarse and harsh. You will laugh at this in me, and think it rather effeminate, I am afraid.