EGOISM AND EGOTISM.

Egoism and egotism—what a difference! The one a vice, the other a weakness of temperament. The one inspires aversion, for it is always unsocial; the other awakens ridicule, for it is frequently absurd. Egoism is in a great degree referable to modern manners, and it is among the drawbacks on civilization. Egotism is of all ages, and more an affair of structure than of convention. The egotist must be a very vain man, but he may be a gifted, and generally is an amiable one. If he had many serious defects to hide, he would not so frankly give himself up to public inspection. The pains he takes to canvass for public suffrage is a proof that he values opinion; but the worst of it is, that the egotist entrenches on the self-importance of others—that irremissible sin in society, where every man is his own hero, whatever he may be to his valet de chambre.

Egotism, when accompanied by endowments, is infinite in its resources. When it cannot relate, it exhibits; but it must always be before the scene, and occupy the audience. It is seldom found among the heaven-born members of high society; because egoism and not egotism is the inherent, almost organic vice of that class. The egoist is one who, uncalled upon by his necessities for exertions, and led by breeding to resolve all things into self—who, without effort to make, or suffrage to court, feels not the value of public opinion, or, feeling it, believes himself above it. Divested of warm affections, and independent of all sympathy, he is ever on the side of taste; because no predominant impulse leads him to its violation. He breaks no form of conventional propriety, nor shocks a prejudice of time-honoured ignorance. Devoted to self-gratification, he never seeks it by any greater risk, than comports with his habitual ease, and place in society. His gallantry, even when profligate, is passionless, and calculating; it is an air, not an enjoyment—an item in his ostentatious externals—an addition to the sum of his superfluous luxuries.

The school of egoists is of recent date. As an affair of temperament, the vice must in all ages have shewn itself individually, where it dared; but as a ton, as a fashion, the founder of the sect was the Duc de Richelieu. Among the English aristocracy and their humble followers may be found his chief disciples. In France, the revolution “scotch’d the snake,” if it did not “kill it.” For glory and distinction, the motives of action in the latter generation in France, are too demonstrative, for the self-recoiling morgue of concentrated egoism. Napoleon’s gallant marechals were all heroes, and may have been egotists; but egoism belonged not properly to their new blood nor to their arduous habits.⁠[4]⁠

Although the physiological causes of egoism must exist in all ranks and classes, (for selfishness is pretty generally distributed in all,) yet the egoist par excellence must be especially sought amongst the idlers of fashion, who, if not occupied with themselves, have nothing else to be busied about. Egotists exist more among men of stirring lives, who have been forced before the world. Heroes make excellent egotists; they bring their excuse along with them, and render their vanity respectable, by the events on which it is founded. It was the egotism of the Moorish “great captain” which won Desdemona, in spite of his dingy hue; and I remember being once a little grazed myself by an enfilade de batterie of egotistical heroism, directed against my love of the marvellous, by one of the great captains of the present age. Dio buono! how I used to open my eyes and “incline my ear,” while he, like a chevalier of old, or like “Æneas after supper,” related the tale of his own prowess! With what delight, evening after evening, I hung upon his well-recited “feats of broils and battles,—” apart from the egoistical circles, in which the chances of notoriety had associated us, and which, (composed of “half the curled darlings of the nation,”) was as worn out on the subject of my hero and his victories, as on every other; so that I was generally left “sole auditress,” while he

I remember, one evening, while thus occupied, observing a group of exquisites of both sexes looking slily at us, and laughing sous cape. Though then in my noviciate of fashion, I knew enough of the great world, to be aware that a ridicule was worse than a crime; and like all parvenus, fearful of incurring the ban of the empire into which I had been admitted, I planted my hero just as he was planting his victorious standard “on the moslem walls.” Flying to that great legislator of ton, whose word was then the charter of others, as well as mine, in such affairs, I asked “What is the matter? What have I done, Lord A——?”

“Nothing, child; only you are a spoony, that’s all.”

“A spoony! what is a spoony?”

“Something that is easily taken in;—at the gambling table, by a black leg—in society, by a bore?”

“But who is a bore?”

“Oh, by Jove! if you have not found out that, you must be left to your fate.”

“But why is —— a bore?”

“Because all egotists are bores. It is really very amusing to see you, like a little gobe-mouche, swallowing with avidity, what has surfeited us all long ago. What a God-send you must be to him! There is nothing like a fresh importation from Ireland.”

I bridled up like a charmer in Richardson’s novels, and replied pertly, “I prefer an egotist with genius, to an egotist without it, at all times.”

“That’s your affair, dear; but now, at least, you are a purchaser with notice.”

“I have not, however, had notice to quit—so I will return to my egotist, and leave you to your egotists;—who has the better bargain?”

“We shall see,” said Lord A——, drily.

He was right. I was obliged to give in, during a fierce combat and a long siege; and so I struck long before the enemy hauled down a single colour.

The egotism of Lord Nelson went far beyond that of any of his “great competitors.” Not that he talked much of his feats, (for “little would he have graced his tale in speaking of himself”;) but he listened with the frankest approbation to the verse or song that celebrated his exploits; assisting at his own apotheosis with as much devotion, as any of the votarists who brought incense to his altar. There was nothing so characteristic, or amusing, as the scenes in which he and Lady Hamilton exhibited together, adoring and adored; during that short epoch of their fashion, which policy or caprice granted them, in spite of the frailty and the vulgarity of the one, and the very obvious intellectual mediocrity of the other. The stage was generally some saloon of supreme bon-ton; the audience, the members of the exclusive circles; and the prima donna, Lady Hamilton, whose ample person seemed to dilate before the piano-forte, while her fine full eyes were turned languidly on the hero of her theme and inspiration, and she sang, at the top of her Poll of Plymouth voice, the adulating ode, or the deifying cavatina. Meantime, the conquering hero “leaned over her, enamoured,” bearing chorus, beating time, and echoing every pæan, raised to his own glory by London lyrists and Neapolitan laureates.

It was said of Napoleon, “c’est la moitié d’un grand homme.”⁠[5] This is more than can be said of every hero: for some there are, not more than a third part.

There are anecdotes extant of that ‘royal’ hero, “Roi, le plus roi, qui onc fut jamais,” Louis XIV. which afford a precedent, if not an excuse for the equally ridiculous vanity and egotism of the immortal Lord Nelson. “Le soir on chanta chez Madame de Maintenon,” says Dangeau, “une ode de l’Abbé Genest ‘à la louange du Roi,’ la musique est de La Lande; et le Roi la trouva si bonne que, quand elle fut finie, il la fit recommencer.”⁠[6]⁠

Lord Erskine was so noted for talking of himself, that he obtained the sobriquet of Counsellor Ego. He could scarcely have chosen a more interesting subject. Actors and actresses are apt to be egotists. They live so much before the public, that they suppose the world to be always engaged with them; and yet live so little in the world, that their sphere of observation is limited to themselves and their profession, and to their successes and their wrongs, before and behind the scenes, et voilà tout.

The highest order of egotism, and by far the most delightful and beneficial to society, is autobiography. Where the life, indeed, of the writer is the mere every day personal adventures of pretending mediocrity, it is an impertinent imposition, and meets its just reward in contempt and oblivion. But the egotism of genius, when mingled with great public events, illustrative of peculiar stages in society, is a debt due to posterity, which should be paid: it will not fail to be received with gratitude and delight. Thus have been received the memoirs of all the great men who have written; and of all the agreeable women who have left behind them those charming pictures of society, as well as of themselves, which women only know how to sketch. They are among the great benefactors of humanity; and the gracious sensations they excite render their works a better course of morals than any prescribed by collegiate discipline, or found in the crude pages of didactic essays. As long as we are occupied and amused, we are seldom vicious; and (to reverse a trite quotation,) “angels are better than men, because they are happier;”—so, down with the Doctors of the Sorbonne; and “one cheer more” for the Doctors De Motteville, La Fayette, De Nemours, De Staël, De Montpensier.

I grieve to be unable to add some fair British writers to this list of sparkling memoirists: but the female authorship of these realms is too serious, perhaps too passionate, for the task. English women can write upon nothing but love and religion; and therefore they write little besides novels—serious or frivolous, sacred or profane. Wit and philosophy are very sparingly conferred upon them.

The few female auto-biographists who have graced the literature of England, were confined to the stirring times of the commonwealth, when the pressure of circumstances, by acting upon the strongest and finest feelings of woman, developed her intellect, and forced her upon active and even perilous existence. The two most brilliant instances of this charming genre of egotism are to be found in the memoirs of the fantastic Duchess of Newcastle, and in those of the heroic Mrs. Hutchinson;—both admirable illustrations of their respective classes, at the epoch in which they flourished; the one, of the pure, unmixed aristocracy of England; the other of its gentry, or highest grade of middle life.

In the long list of biographical egotism, I know but of two persons who have got out of the scrape handsomely; Cæsar, the tactician in taste as in war, with his third person,——and Bonaparte, who talks of his splendid views, and wondrous combinations, in a manner that makes the individuality of the man disappear before his powerful and personified intellect. I allude to the sketches and scraps dictated by him to Las Casas, &c. at St. Helena. His life was a perfect epic—one great dramatic action. What a subject he would have been for Shakspeare! There is nothing of scenic effect in Richard the Third, or Julius Cæsar, finer than the picturesque situations so carelessly traced by the military pen of Rovigo. For instance—Bonaparte crossing the Red Sea at the head of his legions, precisely where Moses led his Israelites; the peril in which his dauntless daring placed his devoted followers; and his saving them by one of those rapid decisions of mind which characterize the ingenuity, as well as the firmness of genius. In all great exigencies, the man, as well as “the woman, who deliberates, is lost!”

Another scene, still more picturesque, occurred the night before the battle of Austerlitz,—the moon shining at its full upon the field, strewn with legions of the brave, who all, save the watch guards, slept,—how many soon to sleep for ever!—the emperor, in the midst of his army, stretched upon straw, under a rude shed, raised over his head by the tenderness of his soldiers, and sleeping so profoundly that his aid-de-camp was compelled to shake him roughly, when it was necessary that he should be roused to learn some movement of the enemy—his instantly vaulting on his saddled horse—his gallop to the outpost, and perilous survey of the Russian manœuvre—his return to his bivouac—his being recognised by the drowsy troops, whose rest his horse’s tramp had broken,—their cry of vive l’empereur!—the lighting of straw torches, a spontaneous honour to their chief, till the whole field blazed—his return to his couch, and to that deep sleep from which he was to awaken to the crowning victory of his great career, that laid the throne of the western Cæsars at his feet, and placed the destiny of the emperors of the East in his hands!

One picture more, and I have done. The time, the evening before the battle of Jena, when Napoleon found the artillery, which was to open the action, blocked up in a rocky ravine, from which it could neither advance nor retreat. His concentrated rage, his terrible silence, unbroken by one reproach of the unskilful commandant—his instant decision, activity, and remedy of the evil. Resuming his first vocation of a working engineer, he hastily gathers the cannoniers round him, distributing to one a torch, to another a pickaxe. Then placing himself at their head, he clears the brambles, cleaves the rocks, and opens a passage for the guns; and when the first carriage has passed, returns again to those obedient slumbers, which, like all else, then awaited on his powerful will. “J’ai toujours devant les yeux,” says Rovigo, “ce qui se paroît sur les figures de ces canonniers, en voyant l’Empereur éclairer lui-même, un falot à la main, les coups rédoublés dont il frappoit les rochers.”⁠[7]⁠

That the life of such a man should be written from the refuse of the entresols of the Tuileries, and the gossip of London drawing-rooms! None but a soldier should write the life of a soldier, if he has not the egotism to write it himself. I am sure the Duke of Wellington is of my opinion; and I hope he will furnish documents to some of his own gallant aids-de-camp and companions, to write his military memoirs, beyond the reach of national prejudices and sordid self-interest, to falsify and to disfigure his deeds and intentions. Let him not trust to the promises of living adulation. Be the fate of his imperial competitor his beacon and guide. As to his legislative memoirs, they are written in two words:—Catholic Emancipation!