by Charles Lamb
(Quarterly Review, October 1814)
FROM ESSAYS OF ELIA (1823) AND LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA (1833)
7. The Two Races of Men
The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow, and the men who lend. To these two original diversities may be reduced all those impertinent classifications of Gothic and Celtic tribes, white men, black men, red men. All the dwellers upon earth, ‘Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites,’ flock hither, and do naturally fall in with one or other of these primary distinctions. The infinite superiority of the former, which I choose to designate as the great race, is discernible in their figure, port, and a certain instinctive sovereignty. The latter are born degraded. ‘He shall serve his brethren.’ There is something in the air of one of this cast, lean and suspicious; contrasting with the open, trusting, generous manner of the other.
Observe who have been the greatest borrowers of all ages – Alcibiades – Falstaff – Sir Richard Steele – our late incomparable Brinsley1 – what a family likeness in all four!
What a careless, even deportment hath your borrower! what rosy grills! what a beautiful reliance on Providence doth he manifest, – taking no more thought than lilies! What contempt for money – accounting it (yours and mine especially) no better than dross! What a liberal confounding of those pedantic distinctions of meum and tuum!2 or rather, what a noble simplification of language (beyond Tooke),3 resolving these supposed opposites into one clear, intelligible pronoun adjective! – What near approaches doth he make to the primitive community, – to the extent of one-half of the principle at least! –
He is the true taxer who ‘calleth all the world up to be taxed’; and the distance is as vast between him and one of us, as subsisted betwixt the Augustan Majesty and the poorest obolary4 Jew that paid its tribute-pittance at Jerusalem! – His exactions, too, have such a cheerful, voluntary air! So far removed from your sour parochial or state-gatherers, – those ink-horn varlets, who carry their want of welcome in their faces! He cometh to you with a smile, and troubleth you with no receipt; confining himself to no set season. Every day is his Candlemas, or his Feast of Holy Michael. He applieth the lene tormentum5 of a pleasant look to your purse, – which to that gentle warmth expands her silken leaves, as naturally as the cloak of the traveller, for which sun and wind contended! He is the true Propontic which never ebbeth! The sea which taketh handsomely at each man’s hand. In vain the victim, whom he delighteth to honour, struggles with destiny; he is in the net. Lend therefore cheerfully, O man ordained to lend – that thou lose not in the end, with thy worldly penny, the reversion promised. Combine not preposterously in thine own person the penalties of Lazarus and of Dives! – but, when thou seest the proper authority coming, meet it smilingly, as it were half-way. Come, a handsome sacrifice! See how light he makes of it! Strain not courtesies with a noble enemy.
Reflections like the foregoing were forced upon my mind by the death of my old friend,* Ralph Bigod, Esq., who departed this life on Wednesday evening; dying, as he had lived, without much trouble. He boasted himself a descendant from mighty ancestors of that name, who heretofore held ducal dignities in this realm. In his actions and sentiments he belied not the stock to which he pretended. Early in life he found himself invested with ample revenues; which, with that noble disinterestedness which I have noticed as inherent in men of the great race, he took almost immediate measures entirely to dissipate and bring to nothing: for there is something revolting in the idea of a king holding a private purse; and the thoughts of Bigod were all regal. Thus furnished, by the very act of disfurnishment; getting rid of the cumbersome luggage of riches, more apt (as one sings)
To slacken virtue, and abate her edge,
Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise,
he set forth, like some Alexander, upon his great enterprise, ‘borrowing and to borrow!’
In his periegesis,7 or triumphant progress throughout this island, it has been calculated that he laid a tithe part of the inhabitants under contribution. I reject this estimate as greatly exaggerated: – but having had the honour of accompanying my friend, divers times, in his perambulations about this vast city, I own I was greatly struck at first with the prodigious number of faces we met, who claimed a sort of respectful acquaintance with us. He was one day so obliging as to explain the phenomenon. It seems, these were his tributaries; feeders of his exchequer; gentlemen, his good friends (as he was pleased to express himself), to whom he had occasionally been beholden for a loan. Their multitudes did in no way disconcert him. He rather took a pride in numbering them; and, with Comus, seemed pleased to be ‘stocked with so fair a herd.’
With such sources, it was a wonder how he contrived to keep his treasury always empty. He did it by force of an aphorism, which he had often in his mouth, that ‘money kept longer than three days stinks.’ So he made use of it while it was fresh. A good part he drank away (for he was an excellent toss-pot), some he gave away, the rest he threw away, literally tossing and hurling it violently from him – as boys do burrs, or as if it had been infectious, – into ponds, or ditches, or deep holes, – inscrutable cavities of the earth; – or he would bury it (where he would never seek it again) by a river’s side under some bank, which (he would facetiously observe) paid no interest – but cut away from him it must go peremptorily, as Hagar’s offspring into the wilderness, while it was sweet. He never missed it. The streams were perennial which fed his fisc. When new supplies became necessary, the first person that had the felicity to fall in with him, friend or stranger, was sure to contribute to the deficiency. For Bigod had an undeniable way with him. He had a cheerful, open exterior, a quick jovial eye, a bald forehead, just touched with grey (cana fides).8 He anticipated no excuse, and found none. And, waiving for a while my theory as to the great race, I would put it to the most untheorising reader, who may at times have disposable coin in his pocket, whether it is not more repugnant to the kindliness of his nature to refuse such a one as I am describing, than to say no to a poor petitionary rogue (your bastard borrower), who, by his mumping visnomy,9 tells you, that he expects nothing better; and, therefore, whose preconceived notions and expectations you do in reality so much less shock in the refusal.
When I think of this man; his fiery glow of heart; his swell of feeling; how magnificent, how ideal he was; how great at the midnight hour; and when I compare with him the companions with whom I have associated since, I grudge the saving of a few idle ducats, and think that I am fallen into the society of lenders, and little men.
To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather cased in leather covers than closed in iron coffers, there is a class of alienators more formidable than that which I have touched upon; I mean your borrowers of books – those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes. There is Comberbatch,10 matchless in his depredations!
That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, like a great eye-tooth knocked out – (you are now with me in my little back study in Bloomsbury, reader!) – with the huge Switzer-like tomes on each side (like the Guildhall giants, in their reformed posture, guardant of nothing) once held the tallest of my folios, Opera Bonaventuræ, choice and massy divinity, to which its two supporters (school divinity also, but of a lesser calibre, – Bellarmine, and Holy Thomas), showed but as dwarfs, – itself an Ascapart! – that Comberbatch abstracted upon the faith of a theory he holds, which is more easy, I confess, for me to suffer by than to refute, namely, that ‘the title to property in a book (my Bonaventure, for instance), is in exact ratio to the claimant’s powers of understanding and appreciating the same.’ Should he go on acting upon this theory, which of our shelves is safe?
The slight vacuum in the left hand case – two shelves from the ceiling – scarcely distinguishable but by the quick eye of a loser – was whilom the commodious resting-place of Browne on Urn Burial. C. will hardly allege that he knows more about the treatise than I do, who i
ntroduced it to him, and was indeed the first (of the moderns) to discover its beauties – but so have I known a foolish lover to praise his mistress in the presence of a rival more qualified to carry her off than himself. – Just below, Dodsley’s dramas want their fourth volume, where Vittoria Corombona is! The remainder nine are as distasteful as Priam’s refuse sons, when the Fates borrowed Hector. Here stood the Anatomy of Melancholy, in sober state. – There loitered the Complete Angler; quiet as in life, by some stream side. – In yonder nook, John Buncle, a widower-volume, with ‘eyes closed,’ mourns his ravished mate.
One justice I must do my friend, that if he sometimes, like the sea, sweeps away a treasure, at another time, sea-like, he throws up as rich an equivalent to match it. I have a small under-collection of this nature (my friend’s gatherings in his various calls), picked up, he had forgotten at what odd places, and deposited with as little memory at mine. I take in these orphans, the twice-deserted. These proselytes of the gate are welcome as the true Hebrews. There they stand in conjunction; natives, and naturalized. The latter seemed as little disposed to inquire out their true lineage as I am. – I charge no warehouse-room for these deodands,11 nor shall ever put myself to the ungentlemanly trouble of advertising a sale of them to pay expenses.
To lose a volume to C. carries some sense and meaning in it. You are sure that he will make one hearty meal on your viands, if he can give no account of the platter after it. But what moved thee, wayward, spiteful K.,12 to be so importunate to carry off with thee, in spite of tears and adjurations to thee to forbear, the Letters of that princely woman, the thrice noble Margaret Newcastle? – knowing at the time, and knowing that I knew also, thou most assuredly wouldst never turn over one leaf of the illustrious folio: – what but the mere spirit of contradiction, and childish love of getting the better of thy friend? – Then, worst cut of all! to transport it with thee to the Gallican land –
Unworthy land to harbour such a sweetness,
A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt,
Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her sex’s wonder!
– hadst thou not thy play-books, and books of jests and fancies, about thee, to keep thee merry, even as thou keepest all companies with thy quips and mirthful tales? – Child of the Green-room, it was unkindly done of thee. Thy wife, too, that part-French, better-part-English-woman! – that she could fix upon no other treatise to bear away in kindly token of remembering us, than the works of Fulke Greville, Lord Brook – of which no Frenchman, nor woman of France, Italy, or England, was ever by nature constituted to comprehend a tittle! Was there not Zimmerman on Solitude?
Reader, if haply thou art blessed with a moderate collection, be shy of showing it; or if thy heart overfloweth to lend them, lend thy books; but let it be to such a one as S. T. C. – he will return them (generally anticipating the time appointed) with usury; enriched with annotations, tripling their value.13 I have had experience. Many are these precious MSS. of his – (in matter oftentimes, and almost in quantity not infrequently, vying with the originals) – in no very clerkly hand – legible in my Daniel; in old Burton; in Sir Thomas Browne; and those abstruser cogitations of the Greville, now, alas! wandering in Pagan lands – I counsel thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy library, against S. T. C.
(London Magazine, December 1820)
8. A Quakers’ Meeting
Still-born Silence? thou that art
Flood-gate of the deeper heart!
Offspring of a heavenly kind!
Frost o’ the mouth, and thaw o’ the mind!
Secrecy’s confidant, and he
Who makes religion mystery!
Admiration’s speaking’st tongue!
Leave, thy desert shades among,
Reverend hermits’ hallowed cells,
Where retired devotion dwells!
With thy enthusiasms come,
Seize our tongues, and strike us dumb!*
Reader, would’st thou know what true peace and quiet mean: would’st thou find a refuge from the noises and clamours of the multitude; would’st thou enjoy at once solitude and society; would’st thou possess the depth of thine own spirit in stillness, without being shut out from the consolatory faces of thy species; would’st thou be alone, and yet accompanied; solitary, yet not desolate; singular, yet not without some to keep thee in countenance; – a unit in aggregate; a simple in composite: – come with me into a Quakers’ Meeting.
Dost thou love silence deep as that ‘before the winds were made’? go not out into the wilderness, descend not into the profundities of the earth; shut not up thy casements; nor pour wax into the little cells of thy ears, with little-faith’d self-mistrusting Ulysses. – Retire with me into a Quakers’ Meeting.
For a man to refrain even from good words, and to hold his peace, it is commendable; but for a multitude, it is great mastery.
What is the stillness of the desert, compared with this place? what the uncommunicating muteness of fishes? – here the goddess reigns and revels. – ‘Boreas, and Cesias, and Argestes loud,’1 do not with their inter-confounding uproars more augment the brawl – nor the waves of the blown Baltic with their clubbed sounds – than their opposite (Silence her sacred self) is multiplied and rendered more intense by numbers, and by sympathy. She too hath her deeps, that call unto deeps. Negation itself hath a positive more or less; and closed eyes would seem to obscure the great obscurity of midnight.
There are wounds, which an imperfect solitude cannot heal. By imperfect I mean that which a man enjoyeth by himself. The perfect is that which he can sometimes attain in crowds, but nowhere so absolutely as in a Quakers’ Meeting. – Those first hermits did certainly understand this principle, when they retired into Egyptian solitudes, not singly, but in shoals, to enjoy one another’s want of conversation. The Carthusian is bound to his brethren by this agreeing spirit of incommunicativeness. In secular occasions, what so pleasant as to be reading a book through a long winter evening, with a friend sitting by – say, a wife – he, or she, too (if that be probable), reading another, without interruption, or oral communication? – can there be no sympathy without the gabble of words? – away with this inhuman, shy, single, shade-and-cavern-haunting solitariness. Give me, Master Zimmerman,2 a sympathetic solitude.
To pace alone in the cloisters, or side aisles of some cathedral, time-stricken:
Or under hanging mountains,
Or by the fall of fountains;
is but a vulgar luxury, compared with that which those enjoy, who come together for the purposes of more complete, abstracted solitude. This is the loneliness ‘to be felt.’ – The Abbey Church of Westminster hath nothing so solemn, so spirit-soothing, as the naked walls and benches of a Quakers’ Meeting. Here are no tombs, no inscriptions,
– sands, ignoble things,
Dropt from the ruined sides of kings –
but here is something, which throws Antiquity herself into the fore-ground – SILENCE – eldest of things – language of old Night – primitive Discourser – to which the insolent decays of mouldering grandeur have but arrived by a violent, and, as we may say, unnatural progression.
How reverend is the view of these hushed heads,
Looking tranquillity!
Nothing-plotting, nought-caballing, unmischievous synod! convocation without intrigue! parliament without debate! what a lesson dost thou read to Council, and to consistory! – if my pen treat of you lightly – as haply it will wander – yet my spirit hath gravely felt the wisdom of your custom, when, sitting among you in deepest peace, which some out-welling tears would rather confirm than disturb, I have reverted to the times of your beginnings, and the sowings of the seed by Fox and Dewesbury.3 – I have witnessed that, which brought before my eyes your heroic tranquillity, inflexible to the rude jests and serious violences of the insolent soldiery, republican or royalist, sent to molest you – for ye sate betwixt the fires of two persecutions, the outcast and off-scowering of church and presbytery. – I have seen
the reeling sea-ruffian, who had wandered into your receptacle, with the avowed intention of disturbing your quiet, from the very spirit of the place receive in a moment a new heart, and presently sit among ye as a lamb amidst lambs. And I remembered Penn before his accusers, and Fox in the bail-dock, where he was lifted up in spirit, as he tells us, and ‘the Judge and the Jury became as dead men under his feet.’
Reader, if you are not acquainted with it, I would recommend to you, above all church-narratives, to read Sewel’s History of the Quakers. It is in folio, and is the abstract of the journals of Fox, and the primitive Friends. It is far more edifying and affecting than anything you will read of Wesley and his colleagues. Here is nothing to stagger you, nothing to make you mistrust, no suspicion of alloy, no drop or dreg of the worldly or ambitious spirit. You will here read the true story of that much-injured, ridiculed man (who perhaps hath been a by-word in your mouth) – James Naylor: what dreadful sufferings, with what patience, he endured, even to the boring through of his tongue with red-hot irons, without a murmur; and with what strength of mind, when the delusion he had fallen into, which they stigmatized for blasphemy, had given way to clearer thoughts, he could renounce his error, in a strain of the beautifullest humility, yet keep his first grounds, and be a Quaker still! – so different from the practice of your common converts from enthusiasm, who, when they apostatise, apostatise all, and think they can never get far enough from the society of their former errors, even to the renunciation of some saving truths, with which they had been mingled, not implicated.
