Gem
, on the ground that it would "shock all mothers"; and even
this expression, uttered with pardonable irritation, manifests no
solicitude for a narrow and esoteric audience.
"Wit is useful for everything, but sufficient for nothing," says
Amiel, who probably felt he needed some excuse for burying so much of
his Gallic sprightliness in Teutonic gloom; and dulness, it must be
admitted, has the distinct advantage of being useful for everybody
and sufficient for nearly everybody as well. Nothing, we are told, is
more rational than ennui; and Mr. Bagehot, contemplating the "grave
files of speechless men" who have always represented the English
land, exults more openly and energetically even than Carlyle in the
saving dulness, the superb impenetrability, which stamps the
Englishman, as it stamped the Roman, with the sign-manual of patient
strength. Stupidity, he reminds us, is not folly, and moreover it
often insures a valuable consistency. "What I says is this here, as I
was a-saying yesterday, is the average Englishman's notion of
historical eloquence and habitual discretion." But Mr. Bagehot could
well afford to trifle thus coyly with dulness, because he knew it
only theoretically and as a dispassionate observer. His own roof-tree
is free from the blighting presence; his own pages are guiltless of
the leaden touch. It has been well said that an ordinary mortal might
live for a twelvemonth like a gentleman on Hazlitt's ideas; but he
might, if he were clever, shine all his life long with the reflected
splendor of Mr. Bagehot's wit, and be thought to give forth a very
respectable illumination. There is a telling quality in every stroke;
a pitiless dexterity that drives the weapon, like a fairy's arrow,
straight to some vital point. When we read that "of all pursuits ever
invented by man for separating the faculty of argument from the
capacity of belief, the art of debating is probably the most
effective," we feel that an unwelcome statement has been expressed
with Mephistophelian coolness; and remembering that these words were
uttered before Mr. Gladstone had attained his parliamentary
preeminence, we have but another proof of the imperishable accuracy
of wit. Only say a clever thing, and mankind will go on forever
furnishing living illustrations of its truth. It was Thurlow who
originally remarked that, "companies have neither bodies to kick nor
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