| | | | The writer who has done most in our time to preach the | gospel of hero-worship has admitted that there is nobody so | weak and mean as not to be made a hero of by somebody or | other, so strong is the necessity for worship and reverence | in the human breast. And it does not require much keenness | of penetration to enable us to discern the truth of this. All | through society we may behold poor creatures, without a | single merit or point of worth, stuck on to lofty pedestals by | creatures sometimes really poorer than themselves, but who | more often only fancy an inferiority that is purely | imaginary. The absurdist of asses may make sure of one | worshipper, if he can only make up his mind to marry | judiciously, and with a view to winning this special | advantage. But domestic hero-worship is not a thing to be | assailed. It is a husband’s prerogative, and as it oils the | sometimes rusty wheels of married life, one ought not to | say a word that would induce a single wife to suspect the | greatness of a stupid husband. To do so would be to rob | them of perhaps the only solace that is left them in the face | of this stupidity. For people who live in the neighbourhood | of a tallow-manufactory it is not a curse, but a blessing, to | be bereft of the sense of smell; and. Considering how many | idiotic men there are in the world with whom good women | have to live, it is a blessing to the good women that they | should not be able to know an idiot when they see one. But | besides this almost legitimate kind of worship, there is | another most absurd kind ~~ the worship, namely, of small | celebrities, puny writers, pigmy fishers for notoriety, by | people who, from their knowledge of the world and human | nature, might reasonably be expected to know better. To | reverence an undeniably big man who has really done | something for mankind in art, in letters, in song, in science, | is the sign of a fine nature. Without the capacity for this, | nobody can be worth very much. We have been taught that | even the silly Boswell must have had some basis of rare | quality, or else he would never have felt any inclination to | seek the society of such a man as Johnson. And this is no | doubt true. Reverence for greatness in other people | redeems almost any quantity of weakness in oneself, and | for the very intelligible reason that it is incompatible with | the most corroding weakness of all ~~ the conviction that | one is the wisest and best person alive. To worship | somebody else very sincerely and heartily is a guarantee | that the universe is not concentred in your own supreme | personality. | But there is all the difference in the world between this | reality and a flippant and simulated respect for people who | are not big in any sense, and who have done nothing worth | speaking of for the | | general good of men in any way. It is no reason why a man | should not be asked out to dinner that he has not invented a | new religion, or the electric telegraph; that he has not | written a great history, or composed an immortal poem. But | if you court a man’s society, and load him with small | attentions, not because he is your brother or your uncle, not | because you particularly value his social qualities, not on | the grounds of ancient and long-standing intimacy, but as | the representative of art or letters, as having done | something remarkable and worthy of admiration, why then | it is manifestly of some concern for your own sake, if not | for his, that the reason which thus exalts him to honour | should be a decently good one. Nothing is more disgusting | than to see some pigmy hero, who has done no more than | write prurient verse or prurient prose, treated as though he | were the very central figure of his time. Mistakes of this | sort are natural among people who nothing about the | comparative merits of different kinds of literature, or of | different men and different styles in any one kind. Such | mistakes are the stamp of this special form of ignorance. | There is something very curious about them, moreover. | That people who despise literature or science should | blunder in estimating merit in their professors would be | highly probable. But the odd thing about these patrons of | small authors is, that they mean not to despise literature. So | far from despising it, they rather affect it. It is considered | just now, among even the most frivolous and irrational | circles, a creditable thing to feign an interest in books and | periodicals. To dip into a history of civilization, to skim | lightly a large treatise on the origin of species or the origin | of evil, to have on the table a heterodox book about the | Bible ~~ all this is nowadays perfectly good ton. | If one comes to think of it, it is one of the most | astounding things that the world has ever seen that so many | people should profess to take an interest in literature, and | yet should all the time be so profoundly incapable of | forming any sort of judgment on any point in it. There is a | mass of articulate-speaking beings, admitting the power of | literature, quite ready to sympathize with the rather windy | glorification of it that is prevalent all over the English | world, and yet remaining in Egyptian darkness as to the | very elements of criticism ~~ in other words, as to the very | elements of the object of their ignorant and silly | admiration. One would suppose, if human nature were the | same in the fashionable and so-called polished world as it is | among people in whom polish has not overlain brains, that | an esteem for literature would lead to its assiduous | cultivation; that it would make people just ever so little | inclined to study the differences between one branch of | literature and another, between a good writer and a bad | writer, between a writer of authority, research, and thought, | and a writer with a very little knowledge and a great deal of | pretence, with no real power but vast impudence. However, | as this extraordinary and unparalleled devotion to literature | in the abstract is accompanied by such an equally | extraordinary ignorance of literature in any particular | aspect or on any particular side, we have no right to be | surprised at the blunders made by people of quality in | choosing their literary pets. A hundred years ago they used | to show the same sort of absurd temper in aesthetics. | Where they now make a fuss about some third-rate literary | man, they used to make a fuss about a grotesque bit of | china. A pagan god, made out of a bit of pottery, was the | predecessor of the literary lion. They used to put the pottery | god on their mantelshelves, and invite their friends to go | into raptures over the creature’s delicious ugliness. They | now put their god of flesh and blood at their tables, and | explode with mirth over his vivacious sullies or vulgar | familiarities. The porcelain deity and the gimcrack author | were alike in another point ~~ their amazing fragility. The | author wakes to find himself famous. With a shock that is | not less startling, he by and by wakes to find himself out in | the cold shade; if not infamous, still dropped. He is | constantly apt to be outrivaled. His fame, resting on | non-secure or just base, either in his own achievements or in | the judgment of his momentary admirers, he seldom lasts | much over one or perhaps a couple of seasons. In | old-fashioned times, the china god became instantly worthless | if there appeared anything more grotesque, and the negro | footboy ran a risk of being kicked out of doors if any other | lady of quality found his superior in ugliness or in the | playfulness of his antics. “And it is the same, alas! with a | pet writer. At any moment he may sink like the proverbial | rocket-stick. Somebody may write a book that outdoes his | own in pruriency or in sprightly wickedness. Who can tell? | Of course there must be limits somewhere to the amount of | pruriency or shallowness which will hit the fashionable | taste. But it is difficult to know when these limits have been | reached without trying. There are authors who seem to | plain people to go pretty nearly as far as it is possible to go | in the way of flagrant indecency in verse, and nasty | suggestiveness in prose, and yet they do not seem to go by | any means too far to meet with approval and a sort of | countenance. This fact, therefore, must cause constant | apprehension to the small lion. How does he know but that | any day somebody may rise up and, by a yet nastier book | than he in his weak modesty ventured upon, swiftly take all | the pleasant wind out of his sails? Or a still worse source of | calamity is possible. The wind might change its quarter. | The frivolous patrons above and beyond all other things cry | for excitement. They like their literary lion because he | excites them. It does not much matter what the particular | note and modulation of his roar may be. He may be | traveler, poet, naturalist, parson, even philosopher. In any | of these or other guises the man who can excite them is | welcome. The excitement is the point, not the accidental | form which his pursuits may have taken, nor the kind of | matter which it has been his business to give to the world. | This being the case, two things are evident ~~ first, that | these poor should need a change of intellectual air pretty | frequently; and second, that the change is likely in a | general way to e as violent a one as possible. After a | prolonged run on pruriency, they are tolerably sure to take | to divinity next, either heterodox or orthodox ~~ the former | more probably, as being a little more exciting. These | periodical vicissitudes are very vexatious and trying to | honest creatures who write books which they mean to be a | bait for invitations to dinner-parties in high places, and | sojourning in great houses. Who knows but when you have | composed your semi-religious tractate, the wind may | change, and a demand arise for a totally different | description of article? Or, when you have written what you | think will be not too nasty to lie on the drawing-room table, | yet nasty enough to just tickle the palates of a parcel of lazy | over-fed people, they may, in an unreasonable moment, | grow uneasy about their souls, and the book which was so | delicately seasoned and daintily spiced with little | naughtinesses is left on your hands. | It is not an agreeable thought, and yet it is not an | impossible thing, that the quest for patrons, which we now | think so disgraceful in the unfortunate men of letters a | hundred years ago, may revive in a new shape. The author | now likes to be patronized, not because it brings him five | guineas sent by my lord’s flunkey, but because it means a | good deal of social festivity, which is not particularly jovial | or genial in itself, yet still enables him to feel triumphant | over the dull rascals who only write good books instead of | tickling books, as well as to dazzle small fry in his own | duck-pond. To a man with any sense of self-respect, excess | of homage from incompetent and superficially sincere ~~ | that is to say, insincere ~~ people ought to be profoundly | distasteful, a thing to be sternly avoided, as the most | unwholesome and demoralizing of all possible influences. | However, authors are not the only persons who weakly | prefer what is pleasant to what is good for them. Perhaps, | after all, they are a shad less despicable than their patrons, | who, because they know an author in the flesh, assume that | this confers a kind of critical diploma upon them. Much | better stick to guns and horses.