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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

1

Truths and Truisms

3

Beauty and Use

5

What is Soul?

7

The Philosophy of Happiness

9

Cheerfulness a Virtue

10

Intellect and Sympathy

11

Old Letters

12

The Point of Honour

13

Looking up

14

Authors

14

Thought and Theory

15

Impulse and Consideration

16

Principle and Expediency

16

Personality of the Evil Principle

17

The Catholic Spirit

18

Death-beds

19

x

Thoughts on a Sermon

20

Love and Fear of God

22

Social Opinion

23

Balzac

23

Political

24

Celibacy

25

Landor’s Wise Sayings

26

Justice and Generosity

27

Roman Catholic Converts

28

Stealing and Borrowing

28

Good and Bad

29

Italian Proverb. Greek Saying

30

Silent Grief

31

Past and Futur

32

Suicide. Countenance

33

Progress and Progression

34

Happiness in Suffering

35

Life in the Future

36

Strength. Youth

38

Moral Suffering

40

The Secret of Peace

41

Motives and Impulses

42

Principle and Passion

43

Dominant Ideas

44

Absence and Death

45

Sydney Smith. Theodore Hook

46

Werther and Childe Harold

50

Money Obligations

52

Charity. Truth

53

Women. Men

55

Compensation for Sorrow

57

Religion. Avarice

57

Genius. Mind

59

Hieroglyphical Colours

60

xi

Character

61

Value of Words

62

Nature and Art

64

Spirit and Form

67

Penal Retribution. The Church

68

Woman’s Patriotism

70

Doubt. Curiosity

71

Tieck. Coleridge

71

Application of a Bon Mot of Talleyrand

73

Adverse Individualities

75

Conflict in Love

76

French Expressions

77

Practical and Contemplative Life

78

Joanna Baillie. Macaulay’s Ballads

80

Cunning

80

Browning’s Paracelsus

81

Men, Women, and Children

84

Letters

100

Madame de Staël. Dejà

103

Thought too free

105

Good Qualities, not Virtues

106

Sense and Phantasy

107

Use the Present

108

Facts

109

Wise Sayings

111

Pestilence of Falsehood

112

Signs instead of Words. Relations with the World

113

Milton’s Adam and Eve

115

Thoughts, sundry

116

A Revelation of Childhood

117

The Indian Hunter and the Fire; an Allegory

147

Poetical Fragments

152

xii

Theological.

The Hermit and the Minstrel

155

Pandemonium

158

Southey on the Religious Orders

162

Forms in Religion—Image Worship

164

Religious Differences

165

Expansive Christianity

169

Notes from various Sermons:—

A Roman Catholic Sermon

172

Another

176

Church of England Sermon

178

Another

181

Dissenting Sermon

187

Father Taylor of Boston

188

PART II.

Literature and Art.

Notes from Books:—

19

Dr. Arnold

8

22

Niebuhr

0

23

Lord Bacon

0

24

Chateaubriand

0

24

Bishop Cumberland

7

Comte’s Philosophy

25

0

26

Goethe

1

Hazlitt’s “Liber Amoris”

26

3

Francis Horner, “The Nightingale”

26

7

Thackeray’s “English Humourists”

27

1

Notes on Art:—

27

Analogies

6

xiii

27

Definition of Art

9

28

No Patriotic Art

0

28

Verse and Colour

0

28

Dutch Pictures

1

28

Morals in Art

3

28

Physiognomy of Hands

8

28

Mozart and Chopin

9

29

Music

3

29

Rachel, the Actress

4

English and German Actresses

29

8

30

Character of Imogen

3

30

Shakspeare Club

5

“Maria Maddalena”

30

5

30

The Artistic Nature

7

Woman’s Criticism

30

9

31

Artistic Influences

0

31

The Greek Aphrodite

1

31

Love, in the Greek Tragedy

2

Wilkie’s Life and L