The danger of a book like this, lies in the lure it holds out to egotism. There it is, always ready to receive the perilous confidences of self-love and self-complacency, like an old lady’s humble companion, or the confessor of a voluble devotee. “The reason,” says the always quotable Madame de Sévigné, “why devotees love their confessors, is the pleasure they have in talking of themselves, even when they have nothing good to tell: ‘on aime tant à parler de soi.’”[3] Oh, the terrible truth!

There is something too not less dangerous in the way-laying of such a book for every passing impression. What little sensations, which the world should never know, may there find permanency! What opinions may there be recorded, which to broach, were proscription! What honest indignation may there find vent against the falseness of the professed friend, or the vileness of the successful enemy,—feelings which it is vain to express, and undignified to expose. What mere ebullitions of temperament may there assume the shape of habitual sentiment—though even in the writing, they dissipate with the breaking forth of a sun-beam, or lose their acrimony with the shifting of a north-east wind.

Had I not then better cast away this volume, “white and unwritten still,” ere it bear evidence against me; and leave to “some hand more calm and sage—the leaves to fill,” who haply may make it the nucleus of one of those annuals, never destined to be perennial, or the repertory for some souvenir, soon to be forgotten? Such a book may have its value. It may preserve a sort of proof impression of one’s self, taken at various sittings, and in various aspects; and thus give one portrait more to the gallery of human originals, to illustrate the great mystery of identity,—that volatile subject, which changes as we analyse it. For even the hand which traced the first line of this farrago, is not the same agent of the same volition, with that which will write the last; though the being, in which it resides, is still technically the same. To leave such an auto-transcript behind one, may assist the moral anatomist in his demonstrations, as the bequeathing what is called “our mortal remains” to the dissecting-knife promotes the science of the physiologist. In either case, there is much to pity, and much to wonder at; but what is most marvellous and admirable in both, is the inscrutable mystery by which the complicated machinery is set in motion, independently of the subject in which it works; constructed, perfected, moving, stopping!—the power unknown, the end unguessed! At this point, neither books nor bodies can be further of use. The anatomist drops his knife, the moralist his pen. At this point too I must drop mine: not that I am “weary of conjecture,” for I like the animating and enterprising excursion, even when it proves nothing; but,—I must dress for a ball!

Oh! what a refuge is folly against philosophy; what a shield is pleasure against persecution! How many have been burned at the stake, who never would have paid that terrible penalty had they learned to waltz! How many have been broken on the wheel, who would have escaped its tortures, had they been cut short in their unpardonable search after truth, by the necessity of dressing for a ball!

EGOISM AND EGOTISM.

Egoism and egotism—what a difference! The one a vice, the other a weakness of temperament. The one inspires aversion, for it is always unsocial; the other awakens ridicule, for it is frequently absurd. Egoism is in a great degree referable to modern manners, and it is among the drawbacks on civilization. Egotism is of all ages, and more an affair of structure than of convention. The egotist must be a very vain man, but he may be a gifted, and generally is an amiable one. If he had many serious defects to hide, he would not so frankly give himself up to public inspection. The pains he takes to canvass for public suffrage is a proof that he values opinion; but the worst of it is, that the egotist entrenches on the self-importance of others—that irremissible sin in society, where every man is his own hero, whatever he may be to his valet de chambre.

Egotism, when accompanied by endowments, is infinite in its resources. When it cannot relate, it exhibits; but it must always be before the scene, and occupy the audience. It is seldom found among the heaven-born members of high society; because egoism and not egotism is the inherent, almost organic vice of that class. The egoist is one who, uncalled upon by his necessities for exertions, and led by breeding to resolve all things into self—who, without effort to make, or suffrage to court, feels not the value of public opinion, or, feeling it, believes himself above it. Divested of warm affections, and independent of all sympathy, he is ever on the side of taste; because no predominant impulse leads him to its violation. He breaks no form of conventional propriety, nor shocks a prejudice of time-honoured ignorance. Devoted to self-gratification, he never seeks it by any greater risk, than comports with his habitual ease, and place in society. His gallantry, even when profligate, is passionless, and calculating; it is an air, not an enjoyment—an item in his ostentatious externals—an addition to the sum of his superfluous luxuries.

The school of egoists is of recent date. As an affair of temperament, the vice must in all ages have shewn itself individually, where it dared; but as a ton, as a fashion, the founder of the sect was the Duc de Richelieu. Among the English aristocracy and their humble followers may be found his chief disciples. In France, the revolution “scotch’d the snake,” if it did not “kill it.” For glory and distinction, the motives of action in the latter generation in France, are too demonstrative, for the self-recoiling morgue of concentrated egoism. Napoleon’s gallant marechals were all heroes, and may have been egotists; but egoism belonged not properly to their new blood nor to their arduous habits.[4]

Although the physiological causes of egoism must exist in all ranks and classes, (for selfishness is pretty generally distributed in all,) yet the egoist par excellence must be especially sought amongst the idlers of fashion, who, if not occupied with themselves, have nothing else to be busied about. Egotists exist more among men of stirring lives, who have been forced before the world. Heroes make excellent egotists; they bring their excuse along with them, and render their vanity respectable, by the events on which it is founded. It was the egotism of the Moorish “great captain” which won Desdemona, in spite of his dingy hue; and I remember being once a little grazed myself by an enfilade de batterie of egotistical heroism, directed against my love of the marvellous, by one of the great captains of the present age. Dio buono! how I used to open my eyes and “incline my ear,” while he, like a chevalier of old, or like “Æneas after supper,” related the tale of his own prowess! With what delight, evening after evening, I hung upon his well-recited “feats of broils and battles,—” apart from the egoistical circles, in which the chances of notoriety had associated us, and which, (composed of “half the curled darlings of the nation,”) was as worn out on the subject of my hero and his victories, as on every other; so that I was generally left “sole auditress,” while he

“From year to year, The battles, sieges, fortunes he had passed, Ran through.”

I remember, one evening, while thus occupied, observing a group of exquisites of both sexes looking slily at us, and laughing sous cape. Though then in my noviciate of fashion, I knew enough of the great world, to be aware that a ridicule was worse than a crime; and like all parvenus, fearful of incurring the ban of the empire into which I had been admitted, I planted my hero just as he was planting his victorious standard “on the moslem walls.” Flying to that great legislator of ton, whose word was then the charter of others, as well as mine, in such affairs, I asked “What is the matter? What have I done, Lord A——?”

“Nothing, child; only you are a spoony, that’s all.”

“A spoony! what is a spoony?”

“Something that is easily taken in;—at the gambling table, by a black leg—in society, by a bore?”

“But who is a bore?”

“Oh, by Jove! if you have not found out that, you must be left to your fate.”

“But why is —— a bore?”

“Because all egotists are bores. It is really very amusing to see you, like a little gobe-mouche, swallowing with avidity, what has surfeited us all long ago. What a God-send you must be to him! There is nothing like a fresh importation from Ireland.”

I bridled up like a charmer in Richardson’s novels, and replied pertly, “I prefer an egotist with genius, to an egotist without it, at all times.”

“That’s your affair, dear; but now, at least, you are a purchaser with notice.”

“I have not, however, had notice to quit—so I will return to my egotist, and leave you to your egotists;—who has the better bargain?”

“We shall see,” said Lord A——, drily.