COMMONPLACE BOOK
OF
Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies.
A COMMONPLACE BOOK
OF
Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies.
ORIGINAL AND SELECTED.
PART I.—ETHICS AND CHARACTER. PART II.—LITERATURE AND ART.
BY MRS. JAMESON.
“Un peu de chaque chose, et rien du tout,—à la française!”—Montaigne.
With Illustrations and Etchings.
SECOND EDITION, CORRECTED.
LONDON: LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND
LONGMANS. 1855.
v
PREFACE.
I
must be allowed to say a few words in explanation of the contents of
this little volume, which is truly what its name sets forth—a book of
common-places, and nothing more. If I have never, in any work I
have ventured to place before the public, aspired to teach, (being
myself a learner in all things,) at least I have hitherto done my best to
deserve the indulgence I have met with; and it would pain me if it
could be supposed that such indulgence had rendered me
presumptuous or careless.
For many years I have been accustomed to make a memorandum of
any thought which might come across me—(if pen and paper were at
hand), and to mark (and remark) any passage in a book which
excited either a sympathetic or an antagonistic feeling. This collection
of notes accumulated insensibly from day to day. The volumes on
Shakspeare’s Women, on Sacred and Legendary Art, and various
other productions, sprung from seed thus lightly and casually sown,
which, I hardly know how, grew up and expanded into a regular,
readable form, with
vi
a beginning, a middle, and an end. But what was to be done with the
fragments which remained—without beginning, and without end—
links of a hidden or a broken chain? Whether to preserve them or
destroy them became a question, and one I could not answer for
myself. In allowing a portion of them to go forth to the world in their
original form, as unconnected fragments, I have been guided by the
wishes of others, who deemed it not wholly uninteresting or profitless
to trace the path, sometimes devious enough, of an “inquiring spirit,”
even by the little pebbles dropped as vestiges by the way side.
A book so supremely egotistical and subjective can do good only in
one way. It may, like conversation with a friend, open up sources of
sympathy and reflection; excite to argument, agreement, or
disagreement; and, like every spontaneous utterance of thought out
of an earnest mind, suggest far higher and better thoughts than any
to be found here to higher and more productive minds. If I had not the
humble hope of such a possible result, instead of sending these
memoranda to the printer, I should have thrown them into the fire; for
I lack that creative faculty which can work up the teachings of heart-
sorrow and world-experience into attractive forms of fiction or of art;
and having no intention of leaving any such memorials to be
published after my death, they must have gone into the fire as the
only alternative left.
The passages from books are not, strictly speaking, selected; they
are not given here on any principle of choice, but simply because that
by some process of assimilation they became a part of the individual
mind. They “found me,”—to borrow Coleridge’s expression,—“found
me in some depth of my being;” I did not “find them.”
vii
For the rest, all those passages which are marked by inverted
commas must be regarded as borrowed, though I have not always
been able to give my authority. All passages not so marked are, I
dare not say, original or new, but at least the unstudied expression of
a free discursive mind. Fruits, not advisedly plucked, but which the
variable winds have shaken from the tree: some ripe, some “harsh
and crude.”
Wordsworth’s famous poem of “The Happy Warrior” (of which a new
application will be found at page 87.), is supposed by Mr. De Quincey
to have been first suggested by the character of Nelson. It has since
been applied to Sir Charles Napier (the Indian General), as well as to
the Duke of Wellington; all which serves to illustrate my position, that
the lines in question are equally applicable to any man or any woman
whose moral standard is irrespective of selfishness and expediency.
With regard to the fragment on Sculpture, it may be necessary to
state that it was written in 1848. The first three paragraphs were
inserted in the Art Journal for April, 1849. It was intended to enlarge
the whole into a comprehensive essay on “Subjects fitted for Artistic
Treatment;” but this being now impossible, the fragment is given as
originally written; others may think it out, and apply it better than I
shall live to do.
August, 1854.
viii
ix
CONTENTS.
PART I.
Ethics and Character.
Ethical Fragments.
Page
Vanity
Truths and Truisms
Beauty and Use
What is Soul?
The Philosophy of Happiness
Cheerfulness a Virtue
Intellect and Sympathy
Old Letters
The Point of Honour
Looking up
Authors
Thought and Theory
Impulse and Consideration
Principle and Expediency
Personality of the Evil Principle
The Catholic Spirit
Death-beds
x
Thoughts on a Sermon
Love and Fear of God
Social Opinion
Balzac
Political
Celibacy
Landor’s Wise Sayings
Justice and Generosity
Roman Catholic Converts
Stealing and Borrowing
Good and Bad
Italian Proverb. Greek Saying
Silent Grief
Past and Futur
Suicide. Countenance
Progress and Progression
Happiness in Suffering
Life in the Future
Strength. Youth
Moral Suffering
The Secret of Peace
Motives and Impulses
Principle and Passion
Dominant Ideas
Absence and Death
Sydney Smith. Theodore Hook
Werther and Childe Harold
Money Obligations
Charity. Truth
Women. Men
Compensation for Sorrow
Religion. Avarice
Genius. Mind
Hieroglyphical Colours
xi
Character
Value of Words
Nature and Art
Spirit and Form
Penal Retribution. The Church
Woman’s Patriotism
Doubt. Curiosity
Tieck. Coleridge
Application of a Bon Mot of Talleyrand
Adverse Individualities
Conflict in Love
French Expressions
Practical and Contemplative Life
Joanna Baillie. Macaulay’s Ballads
Cunning
Browning’s Paracelsus
Men, Women, and Children
Letters
Madame de Staël. Dejà
Thought too free
Good Qualities, not Virtues
Sense and Phantasy
Use the Present
Facts
Wise Sayings
Pestilence of Falsehood
Signs instead of Words. Relations with the World
Milton’s Adam and Eve
Thoughts, sundry
A Revelation of Childhood
The Indian Hunter and the Fire; an Allegory
Poetical Fragments
xii
Theological.
The Hermit and the Minstrel
Pandemonium
Southey on the Religious Orders
Forms in Religion—Image Worship
Religious Differences
Expansive Christianity
Notes from various Sermons:—
A Roman Catholic Sermon
Another
Church of England Sermon
Another
Dissenting Sermon
Father Taylor of Boston
PART II.
Literature and Art.
Notes from Books:—
Dr. Arnold
Niebuhr
Lord Bacon
Chateaubriand
Bishop Cumberland
Comte’s Philosophy
Goethe
Hazlitt’s “Liber Amoris”
Francis Horner, “The Nightingale”
Thackeray’s “English Humourists”
Notes on Art:—
Analogies
xiii
Definition of Art
No Patriotic Art
Verse and Colour
Dutch Pictures
Morals in Art
Physiognomy of Hands
Mozart and Chopin
Music
Rachel, the Actress
English and German Actresses
8
Character of Imogen
Shakspeare Club
“Maria Maddalena”
The Artistic Nature
Woman’s Criticism
Artistic Influences
The Greek Aphrodite
Love, in the Greek Tragedy
Wilkie’s Life and L