[THE "Atlantic" obeys the moon, and its LUNIVERSARY has come round again.I have gathered up some hasty notes of my remarks made since the last high tides, which I respectfully submit.Please to remember this is TALK; just as easy and just as formal as I choose to make it.]
- I never saw an author in my life - saving, perhaps, one - that did not purr as audibly as a full-grown domestic cat, (FELIS CATUS, LINN.,) on having his fur smoothed in the right way by a skilful hand.
But let me give you a caution.Be very careful how you tell an author he is DROLL.Ten to one he will hate you; and if he does, be sure he can do you a mischief, and very probably will.Say you CRIED over his romance or his verses, and he will love you and send you a copy.You can laugh over that as much as you like - in private.
- Wonder why authors and actors are ashamed of being funny? - Why, there are obvious reasons, and deep philosophical ones.The clown knows very well that the women are not in love with him, but with Hamlet, the fellow in the black cloak and plumed hat.Passion never laughs.The wit knows that his place is at the tail of a procession.
If you want the deep underlying reason, I must take more time to tell it.There is a perfect consciousness in every form of wit -using that term in its general sense - that its essence consists in a partial and incomplete view of whatever it touches.It throws a single ray, separated from the rest, - red, yellow, blue, or any intermediate shade, - upon an object; never white light; that is the province of wisdom.We get beautiful effects from wit, - all the prismatic colors, - but never the object as it is in fair daylight.A pun, which is a kind if wit, is a different and much shallower trick in mental optics throwing the SHADOWS of two objects so that one overlies the other.Poetry uses the rainbow tints for special effects, but always keeps its essential object in the purest white light of truth.- Will you allow me to pursue this subject a little further?
[They didn't allow me at that time, for somebody happened to scrape the floor with his chair just then; which accidental sound, as all must have noticed, has the instantaneous effect that the cutting of the yellow hair by Iris had upon infelix Dido.It broke the charm, and that breakfast was over.]
- Don't flatter yourselves that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates.On the contrary, the nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become.Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant truths from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them.Good-breeding NEVER forgets that AMOUR-PROPRE is universal.When you read the story of the Archbishop and Gil Blas, you may laugh, if you will, at the poor old man's delusion; but don't forget that the youth was the greater fool of the two, and that his master served such a booby rightly in turning him out of doors.
- You need not get up a rebellion against what I say, if you find everything in my sayings is not exactly new.You can't possibly mistake a man who means to be honest for a literary pickpocket.Ionce read an introductory lecture that looked to me too learned for its latitude.On examination, I found all its erudition was taken ready-made from D'Israeli.If I had been ill-natured, I should have shown up the little great man, who had once belabored me in his feeble way.But one can generally tell these wholesale thieves easily enough, and they are not worth the trouble of putting them in the pillory.I doubt the entire novelty of my remarks just made on telling unpleasant truths, yet I am not conscious of any larceny.
Neither make too much of flaws and occasional overstatements.Some persons seem to think that absolute truth, in the form of rigidly stated propositions, is all that conversation admits.This is precisely as if a musician should insist on having nothing but perfect chords and simple melodies, - no diminished fifths, no flat sevenths, no flourishes, on any account.Now it is fair to say, that, just as music must have all these, so conversation must have its partial truths, its embellished truths, its exaggerated truths.
It is in its higher forms an artistic product, and admits the ideal element as much as pictures or statues.One man who is a little too literal can spoil the talk of a whole tableful of men of ESPRIT.- "Yes," you say, "but who wants to hear fanciful people's nonsense? Put the facts to it, and then see where it is!" -Certainly, if a man is too fond of paradox, - if he is flighty and empty, - if, instead of striking those fifths and sevenths, those harmonious discords, often so much better than the twinned octaves, in the music of thought, - if, instead of striking these, he jangles the chords, stick a fact into him like a stiletto.But remember that talking is one of the fine arts, - the noblest, the most important, and the most difficult, - and that its fluent harmonies may be spoiled by the intrusion of a single harsh note.
Therefore conversation which is suggestive rather than argumentative, which lets out the most of each talker's results of thought, is commonly the pleasantest and the most profitable.It is not easy, at the best, for two persons talking together to make the most of each other's thoughts, there are so many of them.
[The company looked as if they wanted an explanation.]
When John and Thomas, for instance, are talking together, it is natural enough that among the six there should be more or less confusion and misapprehension.
