OLD-SCHOOL AFFECTATIONS, IN LITERATURE, ART, SCIENCE, RELIGION, POLITICS, AND SOCIAL CUSTOMS, CONCLUDING WITH BONNIE CHRISTIE, A SKETCH. AFFECTATION is that silly amateur-acting which, mistaking every occasion for its stage of display, deceives only itself, while it amuses, if not disgusts, society at its own expense. Always a vain, sometimes a vicious, untruth, it is generally obstructive to a high tone of moral character. Affectation cannot be honest, because its object is to deceive. An affected Christian is a mistake in Christianity, takes a large discount off personal influence, and suggests the suspicion of other unrealities besides those upon the surface. With the most profound reverence, we venture upon an allusion so divine, when we observe, there was once a child "sitting among the doctors, both hearing and asking them questions," who was the loveliest type of a life of artless simplicity, and yet Divine majesty-the model of a character verily human, sculptured, like the tables of stone, by the finger of God. Man is naturally an imitative creature, and his instinct is to choose some model, of course, of some one supposed to be superior to himself. He who made us, knows what is in man, and graciously proposed "the pattern in the Heavenlies-the man Christ Jesus." To cultivate His likeness is not affectation, but devotion. "Be ye imitators of me," said Paul, "as I also am of Christ." The perfection of life and manner is the proportion of true resemblance to Him. The Christian, like Patmore's Honoria, is "Wise in all he ought to know, And ignorant of all beside." Many who abhor the least deception in act, habitually deceive themselves, more than any one else, in manner. The ultra-moustache and broken English may pass a fellowcountryman for a foreigner, but it is an ill compliment to his mother-country to affect another one-unless, indeed, the party felt unworthy of her, as delinquents give a false address at police-courts, "for the sake of their respectable families," as the papers say. No man assumes another's habits unless he is ashamed of his own. The sentiments are insensibly adopted as well as the habits. We may be influenced by others' opinions, without being warped by them-just as I may be bronzed by an African temperature, without becoming a negro. Providence has ordained every man to play his own part better than any other man's. The flying-fish, attempting two things and beaten by every creature content with one, flies worse than any bird, and swims worse than any fish, becoming the prey of enemies in either element, may symbolize the hybrid affectation which assumes another self besides its own, incurring the pains of a double impersonation, with, perhaps, slender means of sustaining either character. The lecturer pretends to no exemption from the faults he is about to criticise. Far from it: no man stands more in need of a liberal indulgence. But, as a wounded surgeon may be all the more alive to the symptoms of his fellow sufferers, a censor, honestly conscious of his own defects, may the more readily identify their duplicates in others. He only entreats his audience to seek round his humble gallery, each for his own moral photograph, and recognizing the personal besetment, to take no offence-at least, not to show it-where the friendliest and most courteous suggestion is alone intended. 1. Among Literary affectations, mark the pseudo new philosophies of human life, bilging up to its surface, after repeated interment—as the Thames steamers churn up the dogs and cats drowned there long ago. These social charlatanisms have not even the equivocal merit of originality. As there is nothing new in moral truth, there can be nothing intrinsically new in error, the counterfeit of truth. There is no original error: every error is the subterfuge of some antecedent truth; and, as there are no new truths, there are no new errors. It is always the Old School, only new pupils. The Robert Owens and Holbachs of one period, are but a reproduction of the Tom Paines and Voltaires of another. The ribald infidelity, masked under liberal systems of social regeneration, spouted on hustings, sputtered in taverns, or more directly sold in low romances and more pretentious poems, are the merest resuscitations of old exploded theories, condemned wherever they were tested in practice, or tried at the bar of common sense. The fancies, in a poetical shape, sometimes take a higher flight, acquire a daintiness which loses the fine in the superfine, and condescends to touch the homely realities of nature only through the disinfectant of a kid glove. Thus "the spasmodic school" of versifiers ignore the manliness or tenderness of an honourable domestic love, setting up in its shrine, to the great damage of youth, an ideal passion, as if we lived in a moonlight world, and were too delicate to bear the robust and vulgar sunshine. |