351
(TrabbcLi %(\( ani) 5)outf).
You know my mother now and then argues very notably ; always very warmly
at least. I happen often to differ from her ; and we both think so well of our own
arguments, that we very seldom are so happy as to convince one another. A pretty
common case, I believe, in all vehemeni debatiugs. She says, I am too witty ; An-
gelica, too 'pert ; I, that she is too wise ; that is to say, being likewise put into Eng-
lish, not so young as site has been. — Miss Howe to Miss Harlowe, Clarissa, vol. ii.
Letter xiii.
There is a strong feeling in favour of cowardly and prudential proverbs.
The sentiments of a man while he is full of ardour and hope are to be
received, it is supposed, with some qualification. But when tlie same
jjerson has ignomiuiously failed and begins to eat up his words, he should
be listened to like an oracle. Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived
for the use of mediocre people, to discoiu-age them from ambitious
attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity. And since
mediocre people constitute the bulk of humanity, this is no doubt very
properly so. But it does not follow that the one sort of proposition is
any less true than the otlier, or that Icarus is not to be more praised,
and perhaps more envied, than Mr, Samuel Budgett the Successful
Merchant. The one is dead to be sure, while the other is still in his
counting-house counting out his money ; and doubtless this is a conside-
ration. But we have, on the other hand, some bold and magnanimous
sayings common to high races and natures, which set forth the advantage
of the losing side, and proclaim it better to be a dead lion than a living
dog. It is difficult to fancy how the mediocrities reconcile such sayings
with their proverbs. According to the latter, every lad who goes to sea
is an egregious ass ; never to forget your umbrella through a long life
would seem a higher and wiser flight of achievement than to go smiling
to the stake ; and so long as you are a bit of a coward and inflexible in
money matters, you fulfil the whole duty of man. It is a still more
diflicult consideration for our average men, that whUe all theii- teachers,
from Solomon down to Benjamin Franklin and the infamous Budgett,
have inculcated the same ideal of manners, caution, and respectability,
those characters in history who have most notoriously flown in the face
of such precepts are spoken of in hypei-bolical terms of praise, and
honom-ed with public monuments in the streets of our commercial
centres. This is very bewildering to the moral sense. You have Joan
of Arc, who left a humble but honest and lepu table livelihood under the
eyes of her parents, to go a-colonelling, in the company of rowdy soldierf-,