Tuesday 28 May 2013

Rambler 141


I read a Rambler before I go to bed every night and last night I read this one, which is my favourite so far. It's typical Johnson - a few words sent me to the dictionary and a few of the sentences needed a re-read but the pleasure is worth a little work. He is so funny and such an astute observer of people in this piece that I find almost every line quotable and also true.

Reading a good bit of Johnson has a satisfaction that I can compare to nothing so accurate as a satisfying bowel movement, the language being as smooth but as solid as a perfectly formed turd. Not sure what he'd make of that analogy but I think it stands. Here we go then...


No. 141. Tuesday, July 23, 1751.

Hilarisque, tamen cum pondere, virtus. 


Greatness with ease, and gay severity.



TO THE RAMBLER.


SIR,

Politicians have long observed, that the greatest events may be often traced back to slender causes. Petty competition or casual friendship, the prudence of a slave, or the garrulity of a woman, have hindered or promoted the most important schemes, and hastened or retarded the revolutions of empire.

Whoever shall review his life will generally find, that the whole tenour of his conduct has been determined by some accident of no apparent moment, or by a combination of inconsiderable circumstances, acting when his imagination was unoccupied, and his judgment unsettled; and that his principles and actions have taken their colour from some secret infusion, mingled without design in the current of his ideas. The desires that predominate in our hearts, are instilled by imperceptible communications at the time when we look upon the various scenes of the world, and the different employments of men, with the neutrality of inexperience; and we come forth from the nursery or the school, invariably destined to the pursuit of great acquisitions, or petty accomplishments.

Such was the impulse by which I have been kept in motion from my earliest years. I was born to an inheritance which gave my childhood a claim to distinction and caresses, and was accustomed to hear applauses, before they had much influence on my thoughts. The first praise of which I remember myself sensible was that of good-humour, which, whether I deserved it or not when it was bestowed, I have since made it my whole business to propagate and maintain.
When I was sent to school, the gaiety of my look, and the liveliness of my loquacity, soon gained me admission to hearts not yet fortified against affection by artifice or interest. I was entrusted with every stratagem, and associated in every sport; my company gave alacrity to a frolick, and gladness to a holiday. I was indeed so much employed in adjusting or executing schemes of diversion, that I had no leisure for my tasks, but was furnished with exercises, and instructed in my lessons, by some kind patron of the higher classes. My master, not suspecting my deficiency, or unwilling to detect what his kindness would not punish nor his impartiality excuse, allowed me to escape with a slight examination, laughed at the pertness of my ignorance, and the sprightliness of my absurdities, and could not forbear to show that he regarded me with such tenderness, as genius and learning can seldom excite.
From school I was dismissed to the university, where I soon drew upon me the notice of the younger students, and was the constant partner of their morning walks, and evening compotations. I was not indeed much celebrated for literature, but was looked on with indulgence as a man of parts, who wanted nothing but the dulness of a scholar, and might become eminent whenever he should condescend to labour and attention. My tutor a while reproached me with negligence, and repressed my sallies with supercilious gravity; yet, having natural good-humour lurking in his heart, he could not long hold out against the power of hilarity, but after a few months began to relax the muscles of disciplinarian moroseness, received me with smiles after an elopement, and, that he might not betray his trust to his fondness, was content to spare my diligence by increasing his own.

Thus I continued to dissipate the gloom of collegiate austerity, to waste my own life in idleness, and lure others from their studies, till the happy hour arrived, when I was sent to London. I soon discovered the town to be the proper element of youth and gaiety, and was quickly distinguished as a wit by the ladies, a species of beings only heard of at the university, whom I had no sooner the happiness of approaching than I devoted all my faculties to the ambition of pleasing them.

A wit, Mr. Rambler, in the dialect of ladies, is not always a man who, by the action of a vigorous fancy upon comprehensive knowledge, brings distant ideas unexpectedly together, who, by some peculiar acuteness, discovers resemblance in objects dissimilar to common eyes, or, by mixing heterogeneous notions, dazzles the attention with sudden scintillations of conceit. A lady's wit is a man who can make ladies laugh, to which, however easy it may seem, many gifts of nature, and attainments of art, must commonly concur. He that hopes to be received as a wit in female assemblies, should have a form neither so amiable as to strike with admiration, nor so coarse as to raise disgust, with an understanding too feeble to be dreaded, and too forcible to be despised. The other parts of the character are more subject to variation; it was formerly essential to a wit, that half his back should be covered with a snowy fleece, and, at a time yet more remote, no man was a wit without his boots. In the days of the _Spectator_ a snuff-box seems to have been indispensable; but in my time an embroidered coat was sufficient, without any precise regulation of the rest of his dress.

But wigs and boots and snuff-boxes are vain, without a perpetual resolution to be merry, and who can always find supplies of mirth? Juvenal indeed, in his comparison of the two opposite philosophers, wonders only whence an unexhausted fountain of tears could be discharged: but had Juvenal, with all his spirit, undertaken my province, he would have found constant gaiety equally difficult to be supported. Consider, Mr. Rambler, and compassionate the condition of a man, who has taught every company to expect from him a continual feast of laughter, an unintermitted stream of jocularity. The task of every other slave has an end. The rower in time reaches the port; the lexicographer at last finds the conclusion of his alphabet; only the hapless wit has his labour always to begin, the call for novelty is never satisfied, and one jest only raises expectation of another.
I know that among men of learning and asperity the retainers to the female world are not much regarded: yet I cannot but hope that if you knew at how dear a rate our honours are purchased, you would look with some gratulation on our success, and with some pity on our miscarriages. Think on the misery of him who is condemned to cultivate barrenness and ransack vacuity; who is obliged to continue his talk when his meaning is spent, to raise merriment without images, to harass his imagination in quest of thoughts which he cannot start, and his memory in pursuit of narratives which he cannot overtake; observe the effort with which he strains to conceal despondency by a smile, and the distress in which he sits while the eyes of the company are fixed upon him as the last refuge from silence and dejection.
It were endless to recount the shifts to which I have been reduced, or to enumerate the different species of artificial wit. I regularly frequented coffee-houses, and have often lived a week upon an expression, of which he who dropped it did not know the value. When fortune did not favour my erratick industry, I gleaned jests at home from obsolete farces. To collect wit was indeed safe, for I consorted with none that looked much into books, but to disperse it was the difficulty. A seeming negligence was often useful, and I have very successfully made a reply not to what the lady had said, but to what it was convenient for me to hear; for very few were so perverse as to rectify a mistake which had given occasion to a burst of merriment. Sometimes I drew the conversation up by degrees to a proper point, and produced a conceit which I had treasured up, like sportsmen who boast of killing the foxes which they lodge in the covert. Eminence is, however, in some happy moments, gained at less expense; I have delighted a whole circle at one time with a series of quibbles, and made myself good company at another, by scalding my fingers, or mistaking a lady's lap for my own chair.

These are artful deceits and useful expedients; but expedients are at length exhausted, and deceits detected. Time itself, among other injuries, diminishes the power of pleasing, and I now find, in my forty-fifth year, many pranks and pleasantries very coldly received, which had formerly filled a whole room with jollity and acclamation. I am under the melancholy necessity of supporting that character by study, which I gained by levity, having learned too late that gaiety must be recommended by higher qualities, and that mirth can never please long but as the efflorescence of a mind loved for its luxuriance, but esteemed for its usefulness.
I am, &c.
PAPILIUS.

Saturday 25 May 2013

The Problem of Quotes

“A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes” - Mahatma Gandhi.

“Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you” - Thomas Jefferson.



Two seemingly persuasive quotations from two people with a reputation for telling the truth, each one on its own could be easily quoted, agreed with and used to steer thinking in a certain direction. A person could even fully endorse each quote and different times with equal conviction but they directly contradict each other.


I'm a big fan of quotations, I have keeping a commonplace book this last year, full of juicy chunks I've read in various books but I do sometimes feel a little queasy about them. A quote is pulled out of a larger text or speech because it is self-contained, it takes a view and boils it down in a concise and coherent way, its very tightness is convincing. The ease with which a quotation can be plucked out of a text can prevent any real thought about the meaning of the quote, the implications of the idea being espoused and the context where the quote comes from.


Around my clock I have written and laminated the following quotes.




(At 12) 'I may sit down and laugh at the world, and at myself - the most ridiculous object in it.' Oliver Goldsmith


(At 3) 'The only end of writing is to enable readers to better enjoy life or better to endure it.' Samuel Johnson

(At 6) 'I take a simple view of life, it is, keep your eyes open and get on with it.' Laurence Sterne


(At 9) 'The world is but a school of inquiry.' Michel de Montaigne

I use them to remind me of the attitudes I find important much as a Christian Orthodox believer would use an icon to remind them of the right-thinking and doing actions of the saints. The quotes can be taken together or singly to create a basic picture of how I would like to deal with the world; playfully, kindly, straight-fowardly and curiously. I must look at those quotes several times a day, if only in the action of looking at the time and so must in some way be reminded of these quotes every day - but I don't even know where they all come from.


The Goldsmith quote is from one of his letters and comes from a very funny self-pitying epistle where he also says that, 'An ugly and a poor man is society only for himself and such society the world let’s me enjoy in great abundance'. It reminds me to laugh but also to remember that you are as risible as everyone else. 


The Johnson quote is from his review of Soame Jenyns, where he tears into the author for his theory of evil, especially the notion that evil and unpleasantness may be part of some grand tapestry for God to enjoy. I use it to focus my writing but also as a way of assessing my reading.


The Montaigne quote comes from an essay but I can't remember which one, I can't even remember the context. What's worse is that Montaigne never wrote those words, he wrote something like them in French. 


The Sterne one is the most mysterious, I read it on a quotations website but have no idea where it is from. I've read his two novels and can't remember it in there, maybe it is from a letter - maybe it is in one of the novels and I have forgotten it.


Which brings me back to the problem with quotations. Those words on my wall could be from anyone, they could come from any text, so could all the quotations bandied about all over the place. Once wrenched from their own body of text, the words have next to no meaning in themselves, they exist now only to have meaning foisted upon them out of context by the person using the quote. If a text is a dialogue between writer and reader, a quote becomes the reader talking themselves through a hand-puppet dressed up as a writer. It ceases to be the authentic voice of writer communicating.


Will this stop me collecting quotes or cause me to take them from my wall, not at all, because sometimes talking to a hand-puppet is the best way of clearing up your own thinking, because in the end it is neither our thoughts or our actions that define us but the authentic reflection of one on the other.