Books: The Man of Feeling
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Henry Mackenzie >> The Man of Feeling
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9 Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk, from the
1886 Cassell & Company edition.
THE MAN OF FEELING
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
Henry Mackenzie, the son of an Edinburgh physician, was born in
August, 1745. After education in the University of Edinburgh he
went to London in 1765, at the age of twenty, for law studies,
returned to Edinburgh, and became Crown Attorney in the Scottish
Court of Exchequer. When Mackenzie was in London, Sterne's
"Tristram Shandy" was in course of publication. The first two
volumes had appeared in 1759, and the ninth appeared in 1767,
followed in 1768, the year of Sterne's death, by "The Sentimental
Journey." Young Mackenzie had a strong bent towards literature, and
while studying law in London, he read Sterne, and falling in with
the tone of sentiment which Sterne himself caught from the spirit of
the time and the example of Rousseau, he wrote "The Man of Feeling."
This book was published, without author's name, in 1771. It was so
popular that a young clergyman made a copy of it popular with
imagined passages of erasure and correction, on the strength of
which he claimed to be its author, and obliged Henry Mackenzie to
declare himself. In 1773 Mackenzie published a second novel, "The
Man of the World," and in 1777 a third, "Julia de Roubigne." An
essay-reading society in Edinburgh, of which he was a leader,
started in January, 1779, a weekly paper called The Mirror, which he
edited until May, 1780. Its writers afterwards joined in producing
The Lounger, which lasted from February, 1785, to January, 1787.
Henry Mackenzie contributed forty-two papers to The Mirror and
fifty-seven to The Lounger. When the Royal Society of Edinburgh was
founded Henry Mackenzie was active as one of its first members. He
was also one of the founders of the Highland Society.
Although his "Man of Feeling" was a serious reflection of the false
sentiment of the Revolution, Mackenzie joined afterwards in writing
tracts to dissuade the people from faith in the doctrines of the
Revolutionists. Mackenzie wrote also a tragedy, "The Prince of
Tunis," which was acted with success at Edinburgh, and a comedy,
"The White Hypocrite," which was acted once only at Covent garden.
He died at the age of eighty-six, on the 13th June, 1831, having for
many years been regarded as an elder friend of their own craft by
the men of letters who in his days gave dignity to Edinburgh
society, and caused the town to be called the Modern Athens.
A man of refined taste, who caught the tone of the French sentiment
of his time, has, of course, pleased French critics, and has been
translated into French. "The Man of Feeling" begins with imitation
of Sterne, and proceeds in due course through so many tears that it
is hardly to be called a dry book. As guide to persons of a
calculating disposition who may read these pages I append an index
to the Tears shed in "The Man of Feeling."
AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION
My dog had made a point on a piece of fallow-ground, and led the
curate and me two or three hundred yards over that and some stubble
adjoining, in a breathless state of expectation, on a burning first
of September.
It was a false point, and our labour was vain: yet, to do Rover
justice (for he's an excellent dog, though I have lost his
pedigree), the fault was none of his, the birds were gone: the
curate showed me the spot where they had lain basking, at the root
of an old hedge.
I stopped and cried Hem! The curate is fatter than I; he wiped the
sweat from his brow.
There is no state where one is apter to pause and look round one,
than after such a disappointment. It is even so in life. When we
have been hurrying on, impelled by some warm wish or other, looking
neither to the right hand nor to the left--we find of a sudden that
all our gay hopes are flown; and the only slender consolation that
some friend can give us, is to point where they were once to be
found. And lo! if we are not of that combustible race, who will
rather beat their heads in spite, than wipe their brows with the
curate, we look round and say, with the nauseated listlessness of
the king of Israel, "All is vanity and vexation of spirit."
I looked round with some such grave apophthegm in my mind when I
discovered, for the first time, a venerable pile, to which the
enclosure belonged. An air of melancholy hung about it. There was
a languid stillness in the day, and a single crow, that perched on
an old tree by the side of the gate, seemed to delight in the echo
of its own croaking.
I leaned on my gun and looked; but I had not breath enough to ask
the curate a question. I observed carving on the bark of some of
the trees: 'twas indeed the only mark of human art about the place,
except that some branches appeared to have been lopped, to give a
view of the cascade, which was formed by a little rill at some
distance.
Just at that instant I saw pass between the trees a young lady with
a book in her hand. I stood upon a stone to observe her; but the
curate sat him down on the grass, and leaning his back where I
stood, told me, "That was the daughter of a neighbouring gentleman
of the name of WALTON, whom he had seen walking there more than
once.
"Some time ago," he said, "one HARLEY lived there, a whimsical sort
of man I am told, but I was not then in the cure; though, if I had a
turn for those things, I might know a good deal of his history, for
the greatest part of it is still in my possession."
"His history!" said I. "Nay, you may call it what you please," said
the curate; for indeed it is no more a history than it is a sermon.
The way I came by it was this: some time ago, a grave, oddish kind
of a man boarded at a farmer's in this parish: the country people
called him The Ghost; and he was known by the slouch in his gait,
and the length of his stride. I was but little acquainted with him,
for he never frequented any of the clubs hereabouts. Yet for all he
used to walk a-nights, he was as gentle as a lamb at times; for I
have seen him playing at teetotum with the children, on the great
stone at the door of our churchyard.
"Soon after I was made curate, he left the parish, and went nobody
knows whither; and in his room was found a bundle of papers, which
was brought to me by his landlord. I began to read them, but I soon
grew weary of the task; for, besides that the hand is intolerably
bad, I could never find the author in one strain for two chapters
together; and I don't believe there's a single syllogism from
beginning to end."
"I should be glad to see this medley," said I. "You shall see it
now," answered the curate, "for I always take it along with me a-
shooting." "How came it so torn?" "'Tis excellent wadding," said
the curate.--This was a plea of expediency I was not in a condition
to answer; for I had actually in my pocket great part of an edition
of one of the German Illustrissimi, for the very same purpose. We
exchanged books; and by that means (for the curate was a strenuous
logician) we probably saved both.
When I returned to town, I had leisure to peruse the acquisition I
had made: I found it a bundle of little episodes, put together
without art, and of no importance on the whole, with something of
nature, and little else in them. I was a good deal affected with
some very trifling passages in it; and had the name of Marmontel, or
a Richardson, been on the title-page--'tis odds that I should have
wept: But
One is ashamed to be pleased with the works of one knows not whom.
CHAPTER XI {16}--ON BASHFULNESS.--A CHARACTER.--HIS OPINION ON THAT
SUBJECT
There is some rust about every man at the beginning; though in some
nations (among the French for instance) the ideas of the
inhabitants, from climate, or what other cause you will, are so
vivacious, so eternally on the wing, that they must, even in small
societies, have a frequent collision; the rust therefore will wear
off sooner: but in Britain it often goes with a man to his grave;
nay, he dares not even pen a hic jacet to speak out for him after
his death.
"Let them rub it off by travel," said the baronet's brother, who was
a striking instance of excellent metal, shamefully rusted. I had
drawn my chair near his. Let me paint the honest old man: 'tis but
one passing sentence to preserve his image in my mind.
He sat in his usual attitude, with his elbow rested on his knee, and
his fingers pressed on his cheek. His face was shaded by his hand;
yet it was a face that might once have been well accounted handsome;
its features were manly and striking, a dignity resided on his
eyebrows, which were the largest I remember to have seen. His
person was tall and well-made; but the indolence of his nature had
now inclined it to corpulency.
His remarks were few, and made only to his familiar friends; but
they were such as the world might have heard with veneration: and
his heart, uncorrupted by its ways, was ever warm in the cause of
virtue and his friends.
He is now forgotten and gone! The last time I was at Silton Hall, I
saw his chair stand in its corner by the fire-side; there was an
additional cushion on it, and it was occupied by my young lady's
favourite lap dog. I drew near unperceived, and pinched its ears in
the bitterness of my soul; the creature howled, and ran to its
mistress. She did not suspect the author of its misfortune, but she
bewailed it in the most pathetic terms; and kissing its lips, laid
it gently on her lap, and covered it with a cambric handkerchief. I
sat in my old friend's seat; I heard the roar of mirth and gaiety
around me: poor Ben Silton! I gave thee a tear then: accept of
one cordial drop that falls to thy memory now.
"They should wear it off by travel."--Why, it is true, said I, that
will go far; but then it will often happen, that in the velocity of
a modern tour, and amidst the materials through which it is commonly
made, the friction is so violent, that not only the rust, but the
metal too, is lost in the progress.
"Give me leave to correct the expression of your metaphor," said Mr.
Silton: "that is not always rust which is acquired by the
inactivity of the body on which it preys; such, perhaps, is the case
with me, though indeed I was never cleared from my youth; but
(taking it in its first stage) it is rather an encrustation, which
nature has given for purposes of the greatest wisdom."
"You are right," I returned; "and sometimes, like certain precious
fossils, there may be hid under it gems of the purest brilliancy."
"Nay, farther," continued Mr. Silton, "there are two distinct sorts
of what we call bashfulness; this, the awkwardness of a booby, which
a few steps into the world will convert into the pertness of a
coxcomb; that, a consciousness, which the most delicate feelings
produce, and the most extensive knowledge cannot always remove."
From the incidents I have already related, I imagine it will be
concluded that Harley was of the latter species of bashful animals;
at least, if Mr. Silton's principle is just, it may be argued on
this side; for the gradation of the first mentioned sort, it is
certain, he never attained. Some part of his external appearance
was modelled from the company of those gentlemen, whom the antiquity
of a family, now possessed of bare 250 pounds a year, entitled its
representative to approach: these indeed were not many; great part
of the property in his neighbourhood being in the hands of
merchants, who had got rich by their lawful calling abroad, and the
sons of stewards, who had got rich by their lawful calling at home:
persons so perfectly versed in the ceremonial of thousands, tens of
thousands, and hundreds of thousands (whose degrees of precedency
are plainly demonstrable from the first page of the Complete
Accomptant, or Young Man's Best Pocket Companion) that a bow at
church from them to such a man as Harley would have made the parson
look back into his sermon for some precept of Christian humility.
CHAPTER XII--OF WORLDLY INTERESTS
There are certain interests which the world supposes every man to
have, and which therefore are properly enough termed worldly; but
the world is apt to make an erroneous estimate: ignorant of the
dispositions which constitute our happiness or misery, they bring to
an undistinguished scale the means of the one, as connected with
power, wealth, or grandeur, and of the other with their contraries.
Philosophers and poets have often protested against this decision;
but their arguments have been despised as declamatory, or ridiculed
as romantic.
There are never wanting to a young man some grave and prudent
friends to set him right in this particular, if he need it; to watch
his ideas as they arise, and point them to those objects which a
wise man should never forget.
Harley did not want for some monitors of this sort. He was
frequently told of men whose fortunes enabled them to command all
the luxuries of life, whose fortunes were of their own acquirement:
his envy was invited by a description of their happiness, and his
emulation by a recital of the means which had procured it.
Harley was apt to hear those lectures with indifference; nay,
sometimes they got the better of his temper; and as the instances
were not always amiable, provoked, on his part, some reflections,
which I am persuaded his good-nature would else have avoided.
Indeed, I have observed one ingredient, somewhat necessary in a
man's composition towards happiness, which people of feeling would
do well to acquire; a certain respect for the follies of mankind:
for there are so many fools whom the opinion of the world entitles
to regard, whom accident has placed in heights of which they are
unworthy, that he who cannot restrain his contempt or indignation at
the sight will be too often quarrelling with the disposal of things
to relish that share which is allotted to himself. I do not mean,
however, to insinuate this to have been the case with Harley; on the
contrary, if we might rely on his own testimony, the conceptions he
had of pomp and grandeur served to endear the state which Providence
had assigned him.
He lost his father, the last surviving of his parents, as I have
already related, when he was a boy. The good man, from a fear of
offending, as well as a regard to his son, had named him a variety
of guardians; one consequence of which was, that they seldom met at
all to consider the affairs of their ward; and when they did meet,
their opinions were so opposite, that the only possible method of
conciliation was the mediatory power of a dinner and a bottle, which
commonly interrupted, not ended, the dispute; and after that
interruption ceased, left the consulting parties in a condition not
very proper for adjusting it. His education therefore had been but
indifferently attended to; and after being taken from a country
school, at which he had been boarded, the young gentleman was
suffered to be his own master in the subsequent branches of
literature, with some assistance from the parson of the parish in
languages and philosophy, and from the exciseman in arithmetic and
book-keeping. One of his guardians, indeed, who, in his youth, had
been an inhabitant of the Temple, set him to read Coke upon
Lyttelton: a book which is very properly put into the hands of
beginners in that science, as its simplicity is accommodated to
their understandings, and its size to their inclination. He
profited but little by the perusal; but it was not without its use
in the family: for his maiden aunt applied it commonly to the
laudable purpose of pressing her rebellious linens to the folds she
had allotted them.
There were particularly two ways of increasing his fortune, which
might have occurred to people of less foresight than the counsellors
we have mentioned. One of these was, the prospect of his succeeding
to an old lady, a distant relation, who was known to be possessed of
a very large sum in the stocks: but in this their hopes were
disappointed; for the young man was so untoward in his disposition,
that, notwithstanding the instructions he daily received, his visits
rather tended to alienate than gain the good-will of his kinswoman.
He sometimes looked grave when the old lady told the jokes of her
youth; he often refused to eat when she pressed him, and was seldom
or never provided with sugar-candy or liquorice when she was seized
with a fit of coughing: nay, he had once the rudeness to fall
asleep while she was describing the composition and virtues of her
favourite cholic-water. In short, be accommodated himself so ill to
her humour, that she died, and did not leave him a farthing.
The other method pointed out to him was an endeavour to get a lease
of some crown-lands, which lay contiguous to his little paternal
estate. This, it was imagined, might be easily procured, as the
crown did not draw so much rent as Harley could afford to give, with
very considerable profit to himself; and the then lessee had
rendered himself so obnoxious to the ministry, by the disposal of
his vote at an election, that he could not expect a renewal. This,
however, needed some interest with the great, which Harley or his
father never possessed.
His neighbour, Mr. Walton, having heard of this affair, generously
offered his assistance to accomplish it. He told him, that though
he had long been a stranger to courtiers, yet he believed there were
some of them who might pay regard to his recommendation; and that,
if he thought it worth the while to take a London journey upon the
business, he would furnish him with a letter of introduction to a
baronet of his acquaintance, who had a great deal to say with the
first lord of the treasury.
When his friends heard of this offer, they pressed him with the
utmost earnestness to accept of it.
They did not fail to enumerate the many advantages which a certain
degree of spirit and assurance gives a man who would make a figure
in the world: they repeated their instances of good fortune in
others, ascribed them all to a happy forwardness of disposition; and
made so copious a recital of the disadvantages which attend the
opposite weakness, that a stranger, who had heard them, would have
been led to imagine, that in the British code there was some
disqualifying statute against any citizen who should be convicted
of--modesty.
Harley, though he had no great relish for the attempt, yet could not
resist the torrent of motives that assaulted him; and as he needed
but little preparation for his journey, a day, not very distant, was
fixed for his departure.
CHAPTER XIII--THE MAN OF FEELING IN LOVE
The day before that on which he set out, he went to take leave of
Mr. Walton.--We would conceal nothing;--there was another person of
the family to whom also the visit was intended, on whose account,
perhaps, there were some tenderer feelings in the bosom of Harley
than his gratitude for the friendly notice of that gentleman (though
he was seldom deficient in that virtue) could inspire. Mr. Walton
had a daughter; and such a daughter! we will attempt some
description of her by and by.
Harley's notions of the ?a???, or beautiful, were not always to be
defined, nor indeed such as the world would always assent to, though
we could define them. A blush, a phrase of affability to an
inferior, a tear at a moving tale, were to him, like the Cestus of
Cytherea, unequalled in conferring beauty. For all these Miss
Walton was remarkable; but as these, like the above-mentioned
Cestus, are perhaps still more powerful when the wearer is possessed
of souse degree of beauty, commonly so called, it happened, that,
from this cause, they had more than usual power in the person of
that young lady.
She was now arrived at that period of life which takes, or is
supposed to take, from the flippancy of girlhood those
sprightlinesses with which some good-natured old maids oblige the
world at three-score. She had been ushered into life (as that word
is used in the dialect of St. James's) at seventeen, her father
being then in parliament, and living in London: at seventeen,
therefore, she had been a universal toast; her health, now she was
four-and-twenty, was only drank by those who knew her face at least.
Her complexion was mellowed into a paleness, which certainly took
from her beauty; but agreed, at least Harley used to say so, with
the pensive softness of her mind. Her eyes were of that gentle
hazel colour which is rather mild than piercing; and, except when
they were lighted up by good-humour, which was frequently the case,
were supposed by the fine gentlemen to want fire. Her air and
manner were elegant in the highest degree, and were as sure of
commanding respect as their mistress was far from demanding it. Her
voice was inexpressibly soft; it was, according to that incomparable
simile of Otway's,
- "like the shepherd's pipe upon the mountains,
When all his little flock's at feed before him."
The effect it had upon Harley, himself used to paint ridiculously
enough; and ascribed it to powers, which few believed, and nobody
cared for.
Her conversation was always cheerful, but rarely witty; and without
the smallest affectation of learning, had as much sentiment in it as
would have puzzled a Turk, upon his principles of female
materialism, to account for. Her beneficence was unbounded; indeed
the natural tenderness of her heart might have been argued, by the
frigidity of a casuist, as detracting from her virtue in this
respect, for her humanity was a feeling, not a principle: but minds
like Harley's are not very apt to make this distinction, and
generally give our virtue credit for all that benevolence which is
instinctive in our nature.
As her father had some years retired to the country, Harley had
frequent opportunities of seeing her. He looked on her for some
time merely with that respect and admiration which her appearance
seemed to demand, and the opinion of others conferred upon her from
this cause, perhaps, and from that extreme sensibility of which we
have taken frequent notice, Harley was remarkably silent in her
presence. He heard her sentiments with peculiar attention,
sometimes with looks very expressive of approbation; but seldom
declared his opinion on the subject, much less made compliments to
the lady on the justness of her remarks.
From this very reason it was that Miss Walton frequently took more
particular notice of him than of other visitors, who, by the laws of
precedency, were better entitled to it: it was a mode of politeness
she had peculiarly studied, to bring to the line of that equality,
which is ever necessary for the ease of our guests, those whose
sensibility had placed them below it.
Harley saw this; for though he was a child in the drama of the
world, yet was it not altogether owing to a want of knowledge on his
part; on the contrary, the most delicate consciousness of propriety
often kindled that blush which marred the performance of it: this
raised his esteem something above what the most sanguine
descriptions of her goodness had been able to do; for certain it is,
that notwithstanding the laboured definitions which very wise men
have given us of the inherent beauty of virtue, we are always
inclined to think her handsomest when she condescends to smile upon
ourselves.
It would be trite to observe the easy gradation from esteem to love:
in the bosom of Harley there scarce needed a transition; for there
were certain seasons when his ideas were flushed to a degree much
above their common complexion. In times not credulous of
inspiration, we should account for this from some natural cause; but
we do not mean to account for it at all; it were sufficient to
describe its effects; but they were sometimes so ludicrous, as might
derogate from the dignity of the sensations which produced them to
describe. They were treated indeed as such by most of Harley's
sober friends, who often laughed very heartily at the awkward
blunders of the real Harley, when the different faculties, which
should have prevented them, were entirely occupied by the ideal. In
some of these paroxysms of fancy, Miss Walton did not fail to be
introduced; and the picture which had been drawn amidst the
surrounding objects of unnoticed levity was now singled out to be
viewed through the medium of romantic imagination: it was improved
of course, and esteem was a word inexpressive of the feelings which
it excited.
CHAPTER XIV--HE SETS OUT ON HIS JOURNEY--THE BEGGAR AND HIS DOG
He had taken leave of his aunt on the eve of his intended departure;
but the good lady's affection for her nephew interrupted her sleep,
and early as it was next morning when Harley came downstairs to set
out, he found her in the parlour with a tear on her cheek, and her
caudle-cup in her hand. She knew enough of physic to prescribe
against going abroad of a morning with an empty stomach. She gave
her blessing with the draught; her instructions she had delivered
the night before. They consisted mostly of negatives, for London,
in her idea, was so replete with temptations that it needed the
whole armour of her friendly cautions to repel their attacks.
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