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   A

   COMMONPLACE BOOK

   OF

   Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies.


[Illustration]


   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,--a la francaise!"--MONTAIGNE.

   With Illustrations and Etchings.

   SECOND EDITION, CORRECTED.

   LONDON:
   LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS.
   1855.


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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 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_."

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.


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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

   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 Future                                           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

   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 Stael. Deja                                    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

   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:--

   Dr. Arnold                                               198

   Niebuhr                                                  220

   Lord Bacon                                               230

   Chateaubriand                                            240

   Bishop Cumberland                                        247

   Comte's Philosophy                                       250

   Goethe                                                   261

   Hazlitt's "Liber Amoris"                                 263

   Francis Horner, "The Nightingale"                        267

   Thackeray's "English Humourists"                         271


 NOTES ON ART:--

   Analogies                                                276

   Definition of Art                                        279

   No Patriotic Art                                         280

   Verse and Colour                                         280

   Dutch Pictures                                           281

   Morals in Art                                            283

   Physiognomy of Hands                                     288

   Mozart and Chopin                                        289

   Music                                                    293

   Rachel, the Actress                                      294

   English and German Actresses                             298

   Character of Imogen                                      303

   Shakspeare Club                                          305

   "Maria Maddalena"                                        305

