| <The Saturday Review August 29, 1868>
| <Sleeping Dogs>
| <pb n="286">
| There is a capital old proverb, often quoted but not so often 
| acted on, called <p> "Let sleeping dogs lie;" </p> a proverb 
| which, if we were to abide by its injunction, would keep us 
| out of many a mess that we get into now, because we 
| cannot let well alone.  Certainly we fall into trouble 
| sometimes, or rather we drift into it ~~ we allow it to gather 
| round us ~~ for want of a frank explanation to clear off 
| small misunderstandings.  At least novelists say so, and 
| then make a great point of the anguish endured by Henry 
| and Angelina for three mortal volumes, because they were 
| too stupid to ask the reason why the one looked cold the 
| other evening at the duchess's ball, and the other looked shy 
| the next morning in the park.  But then novelists, poor 
| souls, are driven to such extravagant expedients for motives 
| and matter, that we can scarcely take them as rational 
| exponents of real life in any way; though the very meaning 
| and final cause of their profession is to depict human nature 
| as it is, and to show the reflex action of character and 
| circumstance somewhat according to the pattern set out in 
| the actual world.  But, leaving novelists
| <pb n="287">
| People are so wonderfully anxious to stir up the dregs of 
| everything, they can never let things rest.  Take a man or 
| woman who has done something just a little queer ~~ 
| nothing very heinous perhaps ~~ that gets noised abroad, 
| and who is coldly looked on in consequence by those who 
| believe the reports that arise, or worse.  Now the wisest 
| thing undoubtedly is to bear the coldness as the righteous 
| punishment of the folly, and to trust for rehabilitation to the 
| mysterious process called <p> "living it down." </p> If 
| there has been absolutely no sinfulness to speak of, nothing 
| but a little imprudence perhaps, a little precipitancy and a 
| great deal of ill-nature, by all means wake up the sleeping 
| dog and set him howling through the streets.  He may do 
| good, seeing that truth would be your friend.  But if there is 
| a core of ugly fact, even if it is not quite as ugly as the 
| envelope which rumour has put about it, then fall back 
| upon the dignity of living it down, and let the dog lie 
| sleeping and muzzled.  There is another, but an unsavoury 
| saying, which advises against the stirring up of evil odours; 
| but this is just what imprudent, high-spirited people will not 
| understand.  They will take their own way in spite of 
| society and all its laws; they will kick over the traces when 
| it suits them; they will do this and that of which the world 
| says authoritatively <q> </q>, and then, when the day of 
| wrath arrives, and down comes the whip on the offending 
| back, they shriek piteously, and wake up all the dogs in the 
| town in the <p> "investigation of their case."  </p> And a 
| queer kennel enough they turn out sometimes!  They would 
| have done better to have put up with their social thrashing 
| than to have set the bloodhounds of <p> "investigation" 
| </p> on their heels.  Actions for libel often do this kind of 
| thing, as <reg orig="every one"> everyone </reg> may read 
| for himself.  Many a man who gets his farthing damages 
| had better have borne the surly growl of the only 
| half-roused dog, than have retaliated, and so waked him up.  
| The farthing damages, representing, say, a cuff on the head, 
| or a kick in the ribs, or a milder <p> "Lie down, sir!" </p> 
| may be very pleasant to the feelings of the yelped at, as so 
| much revenge exacted ~~ Shylock's pound of flesh, without 
| the blood.  But what about the consequences? what about 
| the disclosure of our secret  follies, and the uncovering of 
| the foundations on which the libel rested?  The foundations 
| remain immoveable to the end of time if the superstructure 
| is disroofed, and the sleeping dog is awakened never to be 
| set at rest again while he has a tooth in his head that can 
| bite.
| One of the arts of peaceful living at home is contained in 
| the power of letting sleeping dogs lie.  Papa is surly ~~ it is 
| a way papas have ~~ or mamma is snappish, as even the 
| best of mammas are at times, when the girls are tiresome 
| and will flirt with ineligible younger brothers, or when the 
| boys, who must marry money, are paying attention to 
| dowerless beauty instead.  Well, the family horizon is 
| overcast, and the black dog keeps the gate of the family 
| mansion.  Better let it lie there asleep, if it will be content 
| to remain so.  It is not pleasant to have it there certainly, 
| but it would be worse to rouse it into activity and a general 
| yelping through the house.  Sometimes, indeed, in a family 
| given to tears and caresses and easily excited feelings, a 
| frank challenge as to reasons why is answered by a 
| temporary storm, followed by a scene of effusion and
| <hi rend="italic"> attendrissement, </hi> and the black dog is 
| not wakened, but banished by the rousing he has got.  This 
| is a method that can be tried when you have perfect 
| knowledge and command of your material; else it is 
| dangerous, and nine times out of ten would be an 
| unsuccessful experiment.  It is nearly always unsuccessful 
| with husbands and wives, who often sulk, but rarely for 
| causes needing explanation.  Angelina knows quite well 
| that she danced too often the other night with that 
| fascinating young Lovelace for whom her Henry has a 
| special, and not quite groundless, aversion.  She may put on 
| as many airs of injured innocence as she likes, and affect to 
| consider herself an ill-used wife suffering grievous things 
| because of her husband's displeasure, and the black dog of 
| sulks accompanying; but she knows as well as her Henry 
| himself where her sin lies, and to kick at the black dog 
| would only be to set him loose upon her, and be well 
| barked at if not worried for her pains.  The wiser course 
| would be to muzzle him by ignoring his presence; and so in 
| almost all cases of domestic dog, however black. 
| 
| A sleeping dog of another kind, which it would be well if 
| women would always leave at rest, is the potential passion 
| of a man who is a cherished friend but an impossible lover.  
| Certain slow-going men are able to maintain for life a 
| strong but strictly platonic attachment for certain women.  
| If any warmer impulse or more powerful feeling gives 
| threatening notice of arising, it is kept in due subjection and 
| a wholesome state of coolness, perhaps by its very 
| hopelessness even if returned, perhaps by the fear or the 
| knowledge that it would be ill received, and that the only 
| passport to the pleasant friendship so delighted in is in this 
| calm and sober Platonism.  This is all very well so long as 
| the woman minds what she is about; for the passionless 
| attachment of a man depends mainly on her desire to keep 
| things in their present place, and on her power of holding to 
| the line to be observed.  If she oversteps this line, if she 
| wakens up that sleeping dog of passion, it is all over with 
| him and Platonism.  What was once a pleasant truth would 
| now be a burning satire, for friendship routed by love can 
| never take service under its old banners again. And yet this 
| is what women are continually doing.  They are always 
| complaining that men are not their friends, and that they are 
| only selfish and self-seeking in their relations with them; 
| yet no sooner do they possess a man friend who is nothing 
| else than they try their utmost to convert him into a lover, 
| and are not too well pleased if they do not succeed; which 
| might by chance sometimes happen, like any other rare 
| occurrence, but not often.  And yet success ruins 
| everything.  It takes away the friend, and does not give an 
| available lover; it destroys the existing good, and 
| substitutes nothing better.  If the woman is of the fishpond 
| type, whose hearts Thackeray wanted to <q> </q>, she 
| simply turns round upon the unhappy victim with one of 
| the <p> "looks that kill;" </p> if she is more weak than 
| vain, and less designing than impulsive, she regrets the 
| momentary infatuation which has lost her her friend; but in 
| any case she has lost him, and that by folly, not misfortune.
| Just as easy is it to rouse the sleeping dogs of hatred, of 
| jealousy, of envy.  You have a tepid well-controlled dislike 
| to <reg orig="some one"> someone </reg> and you know 
| that he knows it   For feelings are eloquent, even when 
| dumb, and express themselves in a thousand ways 
| independent of words.  You do not care much about your 
| dislike ~~ you do not nurse it and feed it in any way, and 
| are rather content than not to let it lie dormant, and so far 
| harmless.  But your unloved friend cannot let well alone.  
| He will be always treading on your corns and touching you 
| on the raw.  That unlucky speculation you made; your play 
| that was damned; the election you lost; the decision that 
| was given against you, with costs ~~ whenever you see him 
| he is sure to introduce some topic that rubs you the wrong 
| way, till at last the sleeping dog gets fairly roused, and 
| what was merely a well-ordered dislike bursts out into a 
| frantic and ungovernable hatred.  It has been his own doing.  
| Just as in the case of the platonic friend transformed into 
| the passionate lover by the woman's wiles, so the dislike 
| that gave you no trouble, become now the hatred that is a 
| real curse to your existence, results from your friend's 
| incessant rousing up of sleeping passions.  Young people 
| are in most girls, and in all boys, that makes teasing a 
| matter of exquisite delight to them.  If they know of any 
| sleeping dog that an elder carries about under his cloak, 
| they are never so happy as when they are rousing it to 
| activity, though their own backs may get bitten in the fray.  
| Let a youngster into the secret of a weakness, a sore, or a 
| passion, and if he can resist the temptation of torturing you 
| as the result of his knowledge he may lay claim to a virtue 
| almost unknown in boyish morals.  But they sometimes pay 
| pretty dearly for their fun.  More than one lifelong dislike, 
| culminating in a disastrous codieil or total omission from 
| the body of the will, has been the return-blow for a course 
| of boyish teazings which a testy old uncle, or huffish 
| maiden aunt has had to undergo.  The punishment may be 
| severe, and most unjust, but then the provocation was there, 
| and revenge is a human, if indefensible, instinct common to 
| all classes.  Fathers and mothers themselves are not always 
| sacred ground, nor are their special dogs suffered to lie 
| sleeping undisturbed; and perhaps the favouritisms and 
| comparative coldness patent in almost every family may be 
| traced back to the propensity for soothing or for rousing 
| those parental beasts.   For even fathers and mothers have 
| human and personal feelings in excess to be put through 
| their paces by the impish vivacity of youth, and made to 
| dance according to the piping of an irreverent lad or saucy 
| girl.  If they have dogs, they don't want their children to pry 
| into their kennels and whip them out at their pleasure, and 
| those who do so most will naturally get worst off in the 
| great division of family love.   <p> "Let sleeping dogs lie," 
| </p> certainly as a rule for private life.  Historically the 
| saying does not hold good.  For if the great leaders of 
| thought and reform give tongue for all after ages to hear, 
| we should be but poorly off at this present time.  Many of 
| our liberties have been got only by diligently prodding up 
| that very sleepy dog, the public, till he has been forced to 
| show his teeth, and every schoolboy's history is full of 
| instances of how much has been done, all the world over 
| and in every age, by the like means.  Sometimes the 
| prodded dog flies at the wrong throat on the other side, as 
| we have had a few notable instances of late; and then it 
| would have been wiser to have left him quietly sleeping in 
| the shade, whether at Mentana or elsewhere; to rouse for 
| rending being a poor amusement at the best, and an 
| eminently unprofitable use of leather.