автордың кітабын онлайн тегін оқу  Sartor Resartus

Thomas Carlyle

Book I

I Preliminary

Con­sid­er­ing our present ad­vanced state of cul­ture, and how the Torch of Science has now been bran­dished and borne about, with more or less ef­fect, for five-thou­sand years and up­wards; how, in these times es­pe­cially, not only the Torch still burns, and per­haps more fiercely than ever, but in­nu­mer­able Rush-lights, and Sul­phur-matches, kindled thereat, are also glan­cing in every dir­ec­tion, so that not the smal­lest cranny or dog­hole in Nature or Art can re­main unil­lu­min­ated—it might strike the re­flect­ive mind with some sur­prise that hitherto little or noth­ing of a fun­da­mental char­ac­ter, whether in the way of Philo­sophy or His­tory, has been writ­ten on the sub­ject of Clothes.

Our The­ory of Grav­it­a­tion is as good as per­fect: Lagrange, it is well known, has proved that the Plan­et­ary Sys­tem, on this scheme, will en­dure forever; La­place, still more cun­ningly, even guesses that it could not have been made on any other scheme. Whereby, at least, our naut­ical Lo­g­books can be bet­ter kept; and wa­ter-trans­port of all kinds has grown more com­mo­di­ous. Of Geology and Geognosy we know enough: what with the la­bours of our Wern­ers and Hut­tons, what with the ar­dent genius of their dis­ciples, it has come about that now, to many a Royal So­ci­ety, the Creation of a World is little more mys­ter­i­ous than the cook­ing of a dump­ling; con­cern­ing which last, in­deed, there have been minds to whom the ques­tion, How the apples were got in, presen­ted dif­fi­culties. Why men­tion our dis­quis­i­tions on the So­cial Con­tract, on the Stand­ard of Taste, on the Mi­gra­tions of the Her­ring? Then, have we not a Doc­trine of Rent, a The­ory of Value; Philo­sophies of Lan­guage, of His­tory, of Pot­tery, of Ap­par­i­tions, of In­tox­ic­at­ing Liquors? Man’s whole life and en­vir­on­ment have been laid open and elu­cid­ated; scarcely a frag­ment or fibre of his Soul, Body, and Posses­sions, but has been probed, dis­sec­ted, dis­tilled, de­sic­cated, and sci­en­tific­ally de­com­posed: our spir­itual Fa­culties, of which it ap­pears there are not a few, have their Ste­w­arts, Cous­ins, Royer Col­lards: every cel­lu­lar, vas­cu­lar, mus­cu­lar Tis­sue glor­ies in its Lawrences, Ma­jen­dies, Bichâts.

How, then, comes it, may the re­flect­ive mind re­peat, that the grand Tis­sue of all Tis­sues, the only real Tis­sue, should have been quite over­looked by Science—the ves­tural Tis­sue, namely, of wool­len or other cloth; which Man’s Soul wears as its out­most wrap­page and over­all; wherein his whole other Tis­sues are in­cluded and screened, his whole Fa­culties work, his whole Self lives, moves, and has its be­ing? For if, now and then, some strag­gling, broken-winged thinker has cast an owl’s-glance into this ob­scure re­gion, the most have soared over it al­to­gether heed­less; re­gard­ing Clothes as a prop­erty, not an ac­ci­dent, as quite nat­ural and spon­tan­eous, like the leaves of trees, like the plumage of birds. In all spec­u­la­tions they have ta­citly figured man as a Clothed An­imal; whereas he is by nature a Naked An­imal; and only in cer­tain cir­cum­stances, by pur­pose and device, masks him­self in Clothes. Shakespeare says, we are creatures that look be­fore and after: the more sur­pris­ing that we do not look round a little, and see what is passing un­der our very eyes.

But here, as in so many other cases, Ger­many, learned, in­defatig­able, deep-think­ing Ger­many comes to our aid. It is, after all, a bless­ing that, in these re­volu­tion­ary times, there should be one coun­try where ab­stract Thought can still take shel­ter; that while the din and frenzy of Cath­olic Eman­cip­a­tions, and Rot­ten Bor­oughs, and Re­volts of Paris, deafen every French and every Eng­lish ear, the Ger­man can stand peace­ful on his sci­entific watchtower; and, to the ra­ging, strug­gling mul­ti­tude here and else­where, sol­emnly, from hour to hour, with pre­par­at­ory blast of cowhorn, emit his Höret ihr Her­ren und las­set’s Euch sagen; in other words, tell the Uni­verse, which so of­ten for­gets that fact, what o’clock it really is. Not un­fre­quently the Ger­mans have been blamed for an un­prof­it­able di­li­gence; as if they struck into de­vi­ous courses, where noth­ing was to be had but the toil of a rough jour­ney; as if, for­sak­ing the gold­mines of fin­ance and that polit­ical slaughter of fat oxen whereby a man him­self grows fat, they were apt to run goose-hunt­ing into re­gions of bil­ber­ries and crow­ber­ries, and be swal­lowed up at last in re­mote peat-bogs. Of that un­wise sci­ence, which, as our Hu­mor­ist ex­presses it—

“By geo­met­ric scale
Doth take the size of pots of ale;”

still more, of that al­to­gether mis­dir­ec­ted in­dustry, which is seen vig­or­ously thrash­ing mere straw, there can noth­ing de­fens­ive be said. In so far as the Ger­mans are chargeable with such, let them take the con­sequence. Never­the­less, be it re­marked, that even a Rus­sian steppe has tu­muli and gold or­na­ments; also many a scene that looks desert and rock­bound from the dis­tance, will un­fold it­self, when vis­ited, into rare val­leys. Nay, in any case, would Criti­cism erect not only fin­ger-posts and turn­pikes, but spiked gates and im­pass­able bar­ri­ers, for the mind of man? It is writ­ten, “Many shall run to and fro, and know­ledge shall be in­creased.” Surely the plain rule is, Let each con­sid­er­ate per­son have his way, and see what it will lead to. For not this man and that man, but all men make up man­kind, and their united tasks the task of man­kind. How of­ten have we seen some such ad­ven­tur­ous, and per­haps much-cen­sured wan­derer light on some outly­ing, neg­lected, yet vi­tally-mo­ment­ous province; the hid­den treas­ures of which he first dis­covered, and kept pro­claim­ing till the gen­eral eye and ef­fort were dir­ec­ted thither, and the con­quest was com­pleted;—thereby, in these his seem­ingly so aim­less rambles, plant­ing new stand­ards, found­ing new hab­it­able colon­ies, in the im­meas­ur­able cir­cum­am­bi­ent realm of Noth­ing­ness and Night! Wise man was he who coun­selled that Spec­u­la­tion should have free course, and look fear­lessly to­wards all the thirty-two points of the com­pass, whith­er­so­ever and how­so­ever it lis­ted.

Per­haps it is proof of the stun­ted con­di­tion in which pure Science, es­pe­cially pure moral Science, lan­guishes among us Eng­lish; and how our mer­cant­ile great­ness, and in­valu­able Con­sti­tu­tion, im­press­ing a polit­ical or other im­me­di­ately prac­tical tend­ency on all Eng­lish cul­ture and en­deav­our, cramps the free flight of Thought—that this, not Philo­sophy of Clothes, but re­cog­ni­tion even that we have no such Philo­sophy, stands here for the first time pub­lished in our lan­guage. What Eng­lish in­tel­lect could have chosen such a topic, or by chance stumbled on it? But for that same un­shackled, and even se­questered con­di­tion of the Ger­man Learned, which per­mits and in­duces them to fish in all man­ner of wa­ters, with all man­ner of nets, it seems prob­able enough, this ab­struse In­quiry might, in spite of the res­ults it leads to, have con­tin­ued dormant for in­def­in­ite peri­ods. The Ed­itor of these sheets, though oth­er­wise boast­ing him­self a man of con­firmed spec­u­lat­ive habits, and per­haps dis­curs­ive enough, is free to con­fess, that never, till these last months, did the above very plain con­sid­er­a­tions, on our total want of a Philo­sophy of Clothes, oc­cur to him; and then, by quite for­eign sug­ges­tion. By the ar­rival, namely, of a new Book from Pro­fessor Teufels­dröckh of Weiss­nichtwo; treat­ing ex­pressly of this sub­ject, and in a style which, whether un­der­stood or not, could not even by the blind­est be over­looked. In the present Ed­itor’s way of thought, this re­mark­able Treat­ise, with its Doc­trines, whether as ju­di­cially ac­ceded to, or ju­di­cially denied, has not re­mained without ef­fect.

“Die Kleider, ihr Wer­den und Wirken (Clothes, their Ori­gin and In­flu­ence): von Diog. Teufels­dröckh, JUD etc. Still­sch­wei­gen und Co^gnie. Weiss­nichtwo, 1831.

“Here,” says the Weiss­nichtwo’sche An­zei­ger, “comes a Volume of that ex­tens­ive, close-prin­ted, close-med­it­ated sort, which, be it spoken with pride, is seen only in Ger­many, per­haps only in Weiss­nichtwo. Is­su­ing from the hitherto ir­re­proach­able Firm of Still­sch­wei­gen and Com­pany, with every ex­ternal fur­ther­ance, it is of such in­ternal qual­ity as to set Neg­lect at de­fi­ance. … A work,” con­cludes the well-nigh en­thu­si­astic Reviewer, “in­ter­est­ing alike to the an­ti­quary, the his­tor­ian, and the philo­sophic thinker; a mas­ter­piece of bold­ness, lynx-eyed acute­ness, and rugged in­de­pend­ent Ger­man­ism and Phil­an­thropy (der­ber Kerndeutsch­heit und Menschen­liebe); which will not, as­suredly, pass cur­rent without op­pos­i­tion in high places; but must and will ex­alt the al­most new name of Teufels­dröckh to the first ranks of Philo­sophy, in our Ger­man Temple of Hon­our.”

Mind­ful of old friend­ship, the dis­tin­guished Pro­fessor, in this the first blaze of his fame, which how­ever does not dazzle him, sends hither a Present­a­tion-copy of his Book; with com­pli­ments and en­co­mi­ums which mod­esty for­bids the present Ed­itor to re­hearse; yet without in­dic­ated wish or hope of any kind, ex­cept what may be im­plied in the con­clud­ing phrase: Möchte es (this re­mark­able Treat­ise) auch im Brit­tischen Boden gedei­hen!

II Editorial Difficulties

If for a spec­u­lat­ive man, “whose seed­field,” in the sub­lime words of the Poet, “is Time,” no con­quest is im­port­ant but that of new ideas, then might the ar­rival of Pro­fessor Teufels­dröckh’s Book be marked with chalk in the Ed­itor’s cal­en­dar. It is in­deed an “ex­tens­ive Volume,” of bound­less, al­most form­less con­tents, a very Sea of Thought; neither calm nor clear, if you will; yet wherein the toughest pearl-diver may dive to his ut­most depth, and re­turn not only with sea-wreck but with true ori­ents.

Dir­ectly on the first per­usal, al­most on the first de­lib­er­ate in­spec­tion, it be­came ap­par­ent that here a quite new Branch of Philo­sophy, lead­ing to as yet un­des­cried ul­terior res­ults, was dis­closed; farther, what seemed scarcely less in­ter­est­ing, a quite new hu­man In­di­vidu­al­ity, an al­most un­exampled per­sonal char­ac­ter, that, namely, of Pro­fessor Teufels­dröckh the Dis­closer. Of both which nov­el­ties, as far as might be pos­sible, we re­solved to mas­ter the sig­ni­fic­ance. But as man is em­phat­ic­ally a pros­elyt­ising creature, no sooner was such mas­tery even fairly at­temp­ted, than the new ques­tion arose: How might this ac­quired good be im­par­ted to oth­ers, per­haps in equal need thereof: how could the Philo­sophy of Clothes, and the Author of such Philo­sophy, be brought home, in any meas­ure, to the busi­ness and bos­oms of our own Eng­lish Na­tion? For if new-got gold is said to burn the pock­ets till it be cast forth into cir­cu­la­tion, much more may new truth.

Here, how­ever, dif­fi­culties oc­curred. The first thought nat­ur­ally was to pub­lish Article after Article on this re­mark­able Volume, in such widely-cir­cu­lat­ing Crit­ical Journ­als as the Ed­itor might stand con­nec­ted with, or by money or love pro­cure ac­cess to. But, on the other hand, was it not clear that such mat­ter as must here be re­vealed, and treated of, might en­danger the cir­cu­la­tion of any Journal ex­tant? If, in­deed, all party-di­vi­sions in the State could have been ab­ol­ished, Whig, Tory, and Rad­ical, em­bra­cing in dis­crep­ant union; and all the Journ­als of the Na­tion could have been jumbled into one Journal, and the Philo­sophy of Clothes poured forth in in­cess­ant tor­rents there­from, the at­tempt had seemed pos­sible. But, alas, what vehicle of that sort have we, ex­cept Fraser’s Magazine? A vehicle all strewed (fig­ur­at­ively speak­ing) with the mad­dest Water­loo-Crack­ers, ex­plod­ing dis­tract­ively and de­struct­ively, whereso­ever the mys­ti­fied pas­sen­ger stands or sits; nay, in any case, un­der­stood to be, of late years, a vehicle full to over­flow­ing, and in­ex­or­ably shut! Besides, to state the Philo­sophy of Clothes without the Philo­sopher, the ideas of Teufels­dröckh without some­thing of his per­son­al­ity, was it not to in­sure both of en­tire mis­ap­pre­hen­sion? Now for Bio­graphy, had it been oth­er­wise ad­miss­ible, there were no ad­equate doc­u­ments, no hope of ob­tain­ing such, but rather, ow­ing to cir­cum­stances, a spe­cial des­pair. Thus did the Ed­itor see him­self, for the while, shut out from all pub­lic ut­ter­ance of these ex­traordin­ary Doc­trines, and con­strained to re­volve them, not without dis­quiet­ude, in the dark depths of his own mind.

So had it las­ted for some months; and now the Volume on Clothes, read and again read, was in sev­eral points be­com­ing lu­cid and lu­cent; the per­son­al­ity of its Author more and more sur­pris­ing, but, in spite of all that memory and con­jec­ture could do, more and more en­ig­matic; whereby the old dis­quiet­ude seemed fast set­tling into fixed dis­con­tent—when al­to­gether un­ex­pec­tedly ar­rives a Let­ter from Herr Ho­frath Heuschrecke, our Pro­fessor’s chief friend and as­so­ci­ate in Weiss­nichtwo, with whom we had not pre­vi­ously cor­res­pon­ded. The Ho­frath, after much quite ex­traneous mat­ter, began dilat­ing largely on the “agit­a­tion and at­ten­tion” which the Philo­sophy of Clothes was ex­cit­ing in its own Ger­man Re­pub­lic of Let­ters; on the deep sig­ni­fic­ance and tend­ency of his Friend’s Volume; and then, at length, with great cir­cum­lo­cu­tion, hin­ted at the prac­tic­ab­il­ity of con­vey­ing “some know­ledge of it, and of him, to Eng­land, and through Eng­land to the dis­tant West”: a work on Pro­fessor Teufels­dröckh “were un­doubtedly wel­come to the Fam­ily, the Na­tional, or any other of those pat­ri­otic Librar­ies, at present the glory of Brit­ish Lit­er­at­ure”; might work re­volu­tions in Thought; and so forth;—in con­clu­sion, in­tim­at­ing not ob­scurely, that should the present Ed­itor feel dis­posed to un­der­take a Bio­graphy of Teufels­dröckh, he, Ho­frath Heuschrecke, had it in his power to fur­nish the re­quis­ite Docu­ments.

As in some chem­ical mix­ture, that has stood long evap­or­at­ing, but would not crys­tal­lise, in­stantly when the wire or other fixed sub­stance is in­tro­duced, crys­tal­lisa­tion com­mences, and rap­idly pro­ceeds till the whole is fin­ished, so was it with the Ed­itor’s mind and this of­fer of Heuschrecke’s. Form rose out of void solu­tion and dis­con­tinu­ity; like united it­self with like in def­in­ite ar­range­ment: and soon either in ac­tual vis­ion and pos­ses­sion, or in fixed reas­on­able hope, the im­age of the whole En­ter­prise had shaped it­self, so to speak, into a solid mass. Cau­tiously yet cour­ageously, through the two­penny post, ap­plic­a­tion to the famed re­doubt­able Oliver Yorke was now made: an in­ter­view, in­ter­views with that sin­gu­lar man have taken place; with more of as­sur­ance on our side, with less of satire (at least of open satire) on his, than we an­ti­cip­ated;—for the rest, with such is­sue as is now vis­ible. As to those same “pat­ri­otic Librar­ies,” the Ho­frath’s coun­sel could only be viewed with si­lent amazement; but with his of­fer of Docu­ments we joy­fully and al­most in­stant­an­eously closed. Thus, too, in the sure ex­pect­a­tion of these, we already see our task be­gun; and this our Sar­tor Resartus, which is prop­erly a “Life and Opin­ions of Herr Teufels­dröckh,” hourly ad­van­cing.

Of our fit­ness for the En­ter­prise, to which we have such title and vo­ca­tion, it were per­haps un­in­ter­est­ing to say more. Let the Brit­ish reader study and en­joy, in sim­pli­city of heart, what is here presen­ted him, and with whatever meta­phys­ical acu­men and tal­ent for med­it­a­tion he is pos­sessed of. Let him strive to keep a free, open sense; cleared from the mists of pre­ju­dice, above all from the para­lysis of cant; and dir­ec­ted rather to the Book it­self than to the Ed­itor of the Book. Who or what such Ed­itor may be, must re­main con­jec­tural, and even in­sig­ni­fic­ant:1 it is a voice pub­lish­ing tid­ings of the Philo­sophy of Clothes; un­doubtedly a Spirit ad­dress­ing Spir­its: whoso hath ears, let him hear.

On one other point the Ed­itor thinks it need­ful to give warn­ing: namely, that he is an­im­ated with a true though per­haps a feeble at­tach­ment to the In­sti­tu­tions of our Ancest­ors; and minded to de­fend these, ac­cord­ing to abil­ity, at all haz­ards; nay, it was partly with a view to such de­fence that he en­gaged in this un­der­tak­ing. To stem, or if that be im­possible, prof­it­ably to di­vert the cur­rent of In­nov­a­tion, such a Volume as Teufels­dröckh’s, if cun­ningly planted down, were no despic­able pile, or floodgate, in the lo­gical wear.

For the rest, be it no­wise ap­pre­hen­ded, that any per­sonal con­nex­ion of ours with Teufels­dröckh, Heuschrecke, or this Philo­sophy of Clothes can per­vert our judg­ment, or sway us to ex­ten­u­ate or ex­ag­ger­ate. Power­less, we ven­ture to prom­ise, are those private Com­pli­ments them­selves. Grate­ful they may well be; as gen­er­ous il­lu­sions of friend­ship; as fair memen­tos of by­gone uni­ons, of those nights and sup­pers of the gods, when, lapped in the sym­phon­ies and har­mon­ies of Philo­sophic Elo­quence, though with baser ac­com­pani­ments, the present Ed­itor rev­elled in that feast of reason, never since vouch­safed him in so full meas­ure! But what then? Amicus Plato, ma­gis am­ica ver­itas; Teufels­dröckh is our friend, Truth is our di­vin­ity. In our his­tor­ical and crit­ical ca­pa­city, we hope we are strangers to all the world; have feud or fa­vour with no one—save in­deed the Devil, with whom, as with the Prince of Lies and Dark­ness, we do at all times wage in­terne­cine war. This as­sur­ance, at an epoch when puff­ery and quack­ery have reached a height un­exampled in the an­nals of man­kind, and even Eng­lish Ed­it­ors, like Chinese Shop­keep­ers, must write on their door-lin­tels No cheat­ing here—we thought it good to premise.

III Reminiscences

To the Author’s private circle the ap­pear­ance of this sin­gu­lar Work on Clothes must have oc­ca­sioned little less sur­prise than it has to the rest of the world. For ourselves, at least, few things have been more un­ex­pec­ted. Pro­fessor Teufels­dröckh, at the period of our ac­quaint­ance with him, seemed to lead a quite still and self-con­tained life: a man de­voted to the higher Philo­sophies, in­deed; yet more likely, if he pub­lished at all, to pub­lish a re­fut­a­tion of He­gel and Bardili, both of whom, strangely enough, he in­cluded un­der a com­mon ban; than to des­cend, as he has here done, into the angry noisy Forum, with an Ar­gu­ment that can­not but ex­as­per­ate and di­vide. Not, that we can re­mem­ber, the Philo­sophy of Clothes once touched upon between us. If through the high, si­lent, med­it­at­ive Tran­scend­ent­al­ism of our Friend we de­tec­ted any prac­tical tend­ency whatever, it was at most Polit­ical, and to­wards a cer­tain pro­spect­ive, and for the present quite spec­u­lat­ive, Rad­ic­al­ism; as in­deed some cor­res­pond­ence, on his part, with Herr Oken of Jena was now and then sus­pec­ted; though his spe­cial con­tri­bu­tion to the Isis could never be more than sur­mised at. But, at all events, noth­ing Moral, still less any­thing Di­dactico-Re­li­gious, was looked for from him.

Well do we re­col­lect the last words he spoke in our hear­ing; which in­deed, with the Night they were uttered in, are to be forever re­membered. Lift­ing his huge tum­bler of Gukguk,2 and for a mo­ment lower­ing his to­bacco-pipe, he stood up in full Cof­fee­house (it was Zur Grünen Gans, the largest in Weiss­nichtwo, where all the Vir­tu­os­ity, and nearly all the In­tel­lect of the place as­sembled of an even­ing); and there, with low, soul-stir­ring tone, and the look truly of an an­gel, though whether of a white or of a black one might be du­bi­ous, pro­posed this toast: Die Sache der Ar­men in Gottes und Teufels Na­men (The Cause of the Poor, in Heaven’s name and ———’s)! One full shout, break­ing the leaden si­lence; then a gurgle of in­nu­mer­able empty­ing bump­ers, again fol­lowed by uni­ver­sal cheer­ing, re­turned him loud ac­claim. It was the fi­nale of the night: re­sum­ing their pipes; in the highest en­thu­si­asm, amid volumes of to­bacco-smoke; tri­umphant, cloud-capt without and within, the as­sembly broke up, each to his thought­ful pil­low. Bleibt doch ein echter Spass- und Gal­gen-vo­gel, said sev­eral; mean­ing thereby that, one day, he would prob­ably be hanged for his demo­cratic sen­ti­ments. Wo steckt doch der Schalk? ad­ded they, look­ing round: but Teufels­dröckh had re­tired by private al­leys, and the Com­piler of these pages be­held him no more.

In such scenes has it been our lot to live with this Philo­sopher, such es­tim­ate to form of his pur­poses and powers. And yet, thou brave Teufels­dröckh, who could tell what lurked in thee? Under those thick locks of thine, so long and lank, over­lap­ping roof-wise the gravest face we ever in this world saw, there dwelt a most busy brain. In thy eyes too, deep un­der their shaggy brows, and look­ing out so still and dreamy, have we not no­ticed gleams of an eth­er­eal or else a diabolic fire, and half-fan­cied that their still­ness was but the rest of in­fin­ite mo­tion, the sleep of a spin­ning-top? Thy little fig­ure, there as, in loose, ill-brushed thread­bare ha­bili­ments, thou sat­test, amid lit­ter and lum­ber, whole days, to “think and smoke to­bacco,” held in it a mighty heart. The secrets of man’s Life were laid open to thee; thou saw­est into the mys­tery of the Uni­verse, farther than an­other; thou hadst in petto thy re­mark­able Volume on Clothes. Nay, was there not in that clear lo­gic­ally-foun­ded Tran­scend­ent­al­ism of thine; still more, in thy meek, si­lent, deep-seated Sanscu­lot­tism, com­bined with a true princely Cour­tesy of in­ward nature, the vis­ible rudi­ments of such spec­u­la­tion? But great men are too of­ten un­known, or what is worse, misknown. Already, when we dreamed not of it, the warp of thy re­mark­able Volume lay on the loom; and si­lently, mys­ter­i­ous shuttles were put­ting in the woof!

How the Ho­frath Heuschrecke is to fur­nish bio­graph­ical data, in this case, may be a curi­ous ques­tion; the an­swer of which, how­ever, is hap­pily not our con­cern, but his. To us it ap­peared, after re­peated trial, that in Weiss­nichtwo, from the archives or memor­ies of the best-in­formed classes, no Bio­graphy of Teufels­dröckh was to be gathered; not so much as a false one. He was a stranger there, waf­ted thither by what is called the course of cir­cum­stances; con­cern­ing whose par­ent­age, birth­place, pro­spects, or pur­suits, curi­os­ity had in­deed made in­quir­ies, but sat­is­fied her­self with the most in­dis­tinct replies. For him­self, he was a man so still and al­to­gether un­par­ti­cip­at­ing, that to ques­tion him even afar off on such par­tic­u­lars was a thing of more than usual del­ic­acy: be­sides, in his sly way, he had ever some quaint turn, not without its satir­ical edge, where­with to di­vert such in­tru­sions, and de­ter you from the like. Wits spoke of him secretly as if he were a kind of Melch­izedek, without father or mother of any kind; some­times, with ref­er­ence to his great his­toric and stat­istic know­ledge, and the vivid way he had of ex­press­ing him­self like an eye­wit­ness of dis­tant trans­ac­tions and scenes, they called him the Ewige Jude, Ever­last­ing, or as we say, Wan­der­ing Jew.

To the most, in­deed, he had be­come not so much a Man as a Th­ing; which Th­ing doubt­less they were ac­cus­tomed to see, and with sat­is­fac­tion; but no more thought of ac­count­ing for than for the fab­ric­a­tion of their daily Allge­meine Zei­tung, or the do­mestic habits of the Sun. Both were there and wel­come; the world en­joyed what good was in them, and thought no more of the mat­ter. The man Teufels­dröckh passed and re­passed, in his little circle, as one of those ori­gin­als and non­des­cripts, more fre­quent in Ger­man Universit­ies than else­where; of whom, though you see them alive, and feel cer­tain enough that they must have a His­tory, no His­tory seems to be dis­cov­er­able; or only such as men give of moun­tain rocks and antedi­lu­vian ru­ins: That they may have been cre­ated by un­known agen­cies, are in a state of gradual de­cay, and for the present re­flect light and res­ist pres­sure; that is, are vis­ible and tan­gible ob­jects in this phant­asm world, where so much other mys­tery is.

It was to be re­marked that though, by title and dip­loma, Pro­fessor der Aller­ley-Wis­senschaft, or as we should say in Eng­lish, “Pro­fessor of Th­ings in Gen­eral,” he had never de­livered any Course; per­haps never been in­cited thereto by any pub­lic fur­ther­ance or re­quis­i­tion. To all ap­pear­ance, the en­lightened Govern­ment of Weiss­nichtwo, in found­ing their New University, ima­gined they had done enough, if “in times like ours,” as the half-of­fi­cial Pro­gram ex­pressed it, “when all things are, rap­idly or slowly, resolv­ing them­selves into Chaos, a Pro­fess­or­ship of this kind had been es­tab­lished; whereby, as oc­ca­sion called, the task of body­ing some­what forth again from such Chaos might be, even slightly, fa­cil­it­ated.” That ac­tual Lec­tures should be held, and Public Classes for the “Science of Th­ings in Gen­eral,” they doubt­less con­sidered pre­ma­ture; on which ground too they had only es­tab­lished the Pro­fess­or­ship, no­wise en­dowed it; so that Teufels­dröckh, “re­com­men­ded by the highest Names,” had been pro­moted thereby to a Name merely.

Great, among the more en­lightened classes, was the ad­mir­a­tion of this new Pro­fess­or­ship: how an en­lightened Govern­ment had seen into the Want of the Age (Zeit­bedür­fn­iss); how at length, in­stead of Denial and De­struc­tion, we were to have a sci­ence of Af­firm­a­tion and Re­con­struc­tion; and Ger­many and Weiss­nichtwo were where they should be, in the van­guard of the world. Con­sid­er­able also was the won­der at the new Pro­fessor, dropt op­por­tunely enough into the nas­cent University; so able to lec­ture, should oc­ca­sion call; so ready to hold his peace for in­def­in­ite peri­ods, should an en­lightened Govern­ment con­sider that oc­ca­sion did not call. But such ad­mir­a­tion and such won­der, be­ing fol­lowed by no act to keep them liv­ing, could last only nine days; and, long be­fore our visit to that scene, had quite died away. The more cun­ning heads thought it was all an ex­pir­ing clutch at pop­ular­ity, on the part of a Min­is­ter, whom do­mestic em­bar­rass­ments, court in­trigues, old age, and dropsy soon af­ter­wards fi­nally drove from the helm.

As for Teufels­dröckh, ex­cept by his nightly ap­pear­ances at the Grüne Gans, Weiss­nichtwo saw little of him, felt little of him. Here, over his tum­bler of Gukguk, he sat read­ing Journ­als; some­times con­tem­plat­ively look­ing into the clouds of his to­bacco-pipe, without other vis­ible em­ploy­ment: al­ways, from his mild ways, an agree­able phe­nomenon there; more es­pe­cially when he opened his lips for speech; on which oc­ca­sions the whole Cof­fee­house would hush it­self into si­lence, as if sure to hear some­thing note­worthy. Nay, per­haps to hear a whole series and river of the most mem­or­able ut­ter­ances; such as, when once thawed, he would for hours in­dulge in, with fit audi­ence: and the more mem­or­able, as is­su­ing from a head ap­par­ently not more in­ter­ested in them, not more con­scious of them, than is the sculp­tured stone head of some pub­lic foun­tain, which through its brass mouth-tube emits wa­ter to the worthy and the un­worthy; care­less whether it be for cook­ing victu­als or quench­ing con­flag­ra­tions; in­deed, main­tains the same earn­est as­sidu­ous look, whether any wa­ter be flow­ing or not.

To the Ed­itor of these sheets, as to a young en­thu­si­astic Eng­lish­man, how­ever un­worthy, Teufels­dröckh opened him­self per­haps more than to the most. Pity only that we could not then half guess his im­port­ance, and scru­tin­ise him with due power of vis­ion! We en­joyed, what not three men in Weiss­nichtwo could boast of, a cer­tain de­gree of ac­cess to the Pro­fessor’s private dom­i­cile. It was the at­tic floor of the highest house in the Wahngasse; and might truly be called the pin­nacle of Weiss­nichtwo, for it rose sheer up above the con­tigu­ous roofs, them­selves rising from el­ev­ated ground. Moreover, with its win­dows it looked to­wards all the four Orte, or as the Scotch say, and we ought to say, Airts: the sit­ting-room it­self com­manded three; an­other came to view in the Sch­lafgemach (bed­room) at the op­pos­ite end; to say noth­ing of the kit­chen, which offered two, as it were, du­plic­ates, and show­ing noth­ing new. So that it was in fact the spec­u­lum or watchtower of Teufels­dröckh; where­from, sit­ting at ease, he might see the whole life-cir­cu­la­tion of that con­sid­er­able City; the streets and lanes of which, with all their do­ing and driv­ing (Thun und Treiben), were for the most part vis­ible there.

“I look down into all that wasp-nest or bee­hive,” have we heard him say, “and wit­ness their wax-lay­ing and honey-mak­ing, and poison-brew­ing, and chok­ing by sul­phur. From the Palace esplanade, where mu­sic plays while Serene High­ness is pleased to eat his victu­als, down to the low lane, where in her doorsill the aged widow, knit­ting for a thin live­li­hood, sits to feel the af­ter­noon sun, I see it all; for, ex­cept the Schlosskirche weath­er­cock, no biped stands so high. Cour­i­ers ar­rive be­strapped and be­booted, bear­ing Joy and Sor­row bagged-up in pouches of leather: there, top-laden, and with four swift horses, rolls-in the coun­try Baron and his house­hold; here, on tim­ber-leg, the lamed Sol­dier hops pain­fully along, beg­ging alms: a thou­sand car­riages, and wains, and cars, come tum­bling-in with Food, with young Rus­ti­city, and other Raw Pro­duce, in­an­im­ate or an­im­ate, and go tum­bling out again with Pro­duce man­u­fac­tured. That liv­ing flood, pour­ing through these streets, of all qual­it­ies and ages, know­est thou whence it is com­ing, whither it is go­ing? Aus der Ewigkeit, zu der Ewigkeit hin: From Etern­ity, on­wards to Etern­ity! These are Ap­par­i­tions: what else? Are they not Souls rendered vis­ible: in Bod­ies, that took shape and will lose it, melt­ing into air? Their solid Pave­ment is a pic­ture of the Sense; they walk on the bosom of Noth­ing, blank Time is be­hind them and be­fore them. Or fan­ci­est thou, the red and yel­low Clothes-screen yon­der, with spurs on its heels and feather in its crown, is but of Today, without a Yes­ter­day or a To­mor­row; and had not rather its Ancestor alive when Hengst and Horsa over­ran thy Is­land? Friend, thou seest here a liv­ing link in that Tis­sue of His­tory, which in­weaves all Be­ing: watch well, or it will be past thee, and seen no more.”

“Ach, mein Lieber!” said he once, at mid­night, when we had re­turned from the Cof­fee­house in rather earn­est talk, “it is a true sub­lim­ity to dwell here. These fringes of lamp­light, strug­gling up through smoke and thou­sand­fold ex­hal­a­tion, some fathoms into the an­cient reign of Night, what thinks Boötes of them, as he leads his Hunt­ing-Dogs over the Zenith in their leash of sider­eal fire? That stifled hum of Mid­night, when Traffic has lain down to rest; and the chariot-wheels of Van­ity, still rolling here and there through dis­tant streets, are bear­ing her to Halls roofed-in, and lighted to the due pitch for her; and only Vice and Misery, to prowl or to moan like night­birds, are abroad: that hum, I say, like the ster­tor­ous, un­quiet slum­ber of sick Life, is heard in Heaven! Oh, un­der that hideous cove­let of va­pours, and pu­tre­fac­tions, and un­ima­gin­able gases, what a Fer­ment­ing-vat lies sim­mer­ing and hid! The joy­ful and the sor­row­ful are there; men are dy­ing there, men are be­ing born; men are pray­ing—on the other side of a brick par­ti­tion, men are curs­ing; and around them all is the vast, void Night. The proud Grandee still lingers in his per­fumed sa­loons, or re­poses within dam­ask cur­tains; Wretched­ness cowers into truckle-beds, or shivers hun­ger-stricken into its lair of straw: in ob­scure cel­lars, Rouge-et-Noir lan­guidly emits its voice-of-des­tiny to hag­gard hungry Vil­lains; while Coun­cil­lors of State sit plot­ting, and play­ing their high chess-game, whereof the pawns are Men. The Lover whis­pers his mis­tress that the coach is ready; and she, full of hope and fear, glides down, to fly with him over the bor­ders: the Thief, still more si­lently, sets-to his pick­locks and crow­bars, or lurks in wait till the watch­men first snore in their boxes. Gay man­sions, with sup­per-rooms and dan­cing-rooms, are full of light and mu­sic and high-swell­ing hearts; but, in the Con­demned Cells, the pulse of life beats trem­u­lous and faint, and blood­shot eyes look out through the dark­ness, which is around and within, for the light of a stern last morn­ing. Six men are to be hanged on the mor­row: comes no ham­mer­ing from the Raben­stein?—their gal­lows must even now be o’ build­ing. Up­wards of five-hun­dred-thou­sand two-legged an­im­als without feath­ers lie round us, in ho­ri­zontal po­s­i­tions; their heads all in night­caps, and full of the fool­ishest dreams. Riot cries aloud, and stag­gers and swag­gers in his rank dens of shame; and the Mother, with stream­ing hair, kneels over her pal­lid dy­ing in­fant, whose cracked lips only her tears now moisten.—All these heaped and huddled to­gether, with noth­ing but a little car­pentry and ma­sonry between them;—crammed in, like salted fish in their bar­rel;—or wel­ter­ing, shall I say, like an Egyp­tian pitcher of tamed vi­pers, each strug­gling to get its head above the oth­ers: such work goes on un­der that smoke-coun­ter­pane!—But I, mein Wer­ther, sit above it all; I am alone with the Stars.”

We looked in his face to see whether, in the ut­ter­ance of such ex­traordin­ary Night-thoughts, no feel­ing might be traced there; but with the light we had, which in­deed was only a single tal­low-light, and far enough from the win­dow, noth­ing save that old calmness and fix­ed­ness was vis­ible.

These were the Pro­fessor’s talk­ing sea­sons: most com­monly he spoke in mere mono­syl­lables, or sat al­to­gether si­lent, and smoked; while the vis­itor had liberty either to say what he lis­ted, re­ceiv­ing for an­swer an oc­ca­sional grunt; or to look round for a space, and then take him­self away. It was a strange apart­ment; full of books and tattered pa­pers, and mis­cel­laneous shreds of all con­ceiv­able sub­stances, “united in a com­mon ele­ment of dust.” Books lay on tables, and be­low tables; here fluttered a sheet of ma­nu­script, there a torn handker­chief, or night­cap hast­ily thrown aside; ink-bottles al­tern­ated with bread-crusts, cof­fee­pots, to­bacco-boxes, Peri­od­ical Lit­er­at­ure, and Blücher Boots. Old Li­es­chen (Lisekin, ’Liza), who was his bed-maker and stove-lighter, his washer and wringer, cook, er­rand-maid, and gen­eral lion’s-pro­vider, and for the rest a very or­derly creature, had no sov­er­eign au­thor­ity in this last cit­adel of Teufels­dröckh; only some once in the month she half-for­cibly made her may thither, with broom and duster, and (Teufels­dröckh hast­ily sav­ing his ma­nu­scripts) ef­fected a par­tial clear­ance, a jail-de­liv­ery of such lum­ber as was not lit­er­ary. These were her Erd­beben (earth­quakes), which Teufels­dröckh dreaded worse than the pes­ti­lence; nev­er­the­less, to such length he had been forced to com­ply. Glad would he have been to sit here philo­soph­ising forever, or till the lit­ter, by ac­cu­mu­la­tion, drove him out of doors: but Li­es­chen was his right-arm, and spoon, and ne­ces­sary of life, and would not be flatly gain­sayed. We can still re­mem­ber the an­cient wo­man; so si­lent that some thought her dumb; deaf also you would of­ten have sup­posed her; for Teufels­dröckh, and Teufels­dröckh only, would she serve or give heed to; and with him she seemed to com­mu­nic­ate chiefly by signs; if it were not rather by some secret divin­a­tion that she guessed all his wants, and sup­plied them. Assidu­ous old dame! she scoured, and sor­ted, and swept, in her kit­chen, with the least pos­sible vi­ol­ence to the ear; yet all was tight and right there: hot and black came the cof­fee ever at the due mo­ment; and the speech­less Li­es­chen her­self looked out on you, from un­der her clean white coif with its lap­pets, through her clean withered face and wrinkles, with a look of help­ful in­tel­li­gence, al­most of be­ne­vol­ence.

Few strangers, as above hin­ted, had ad­mit­tance hither: the only one we ever saw there, ourselves ex­cep­ted, was the Ho­frath Heuschrecke, already known, by name and ex­pect­a­tion, to the read­ers of these pages. To us, at that period, Herr Heuschrecke seemed one of those purse-mouthed, crane-necked, clean-brushed, pa­cific in­di­vidu­als, per­haps suf­fi­ciently dis­tin­guished in so­ci­ety by this fact, that, in dry weather or in wet, “they never ap­pear without their um­brella.” Had we not known with what “little wis­dom” the world is gov­erned; and how, in Ger­many as else­where, the ninety-and-nine Public Men can for most part be but mute train­bear­ers to the hun­dredth, per­haps but stalk­ing-horses and will­ing or un­will­ing dupes—it might have seemed won­der­ful how Herr Heuschrecke should be named a Rath, or Coun­cil­lor, and Coun­sel­lor, even in Weiss­nichtwo. What coun­sel to any man, or to any wo­man, could this par­tic­u­lar Ho­frath give; in whose loose, zig­zag fig­ure; in whose thin vis­age, as it went jerking to and fro, in minute in­cess­ant fluc­tu­ation—you traced rather con­fu­sion worse con­foun­ded; at most, Timid­ity and phys­ical Cold? Some in­deed said withal, he was “the very Spirit of Love em­bod­ied”: blue earn­est eyes, full of sad­ness and kind­ness; purse ever open, and so forth; the whole of which, we shall now hope, for many reas­ons, was not quite ground­less. Never­the­less friend Teufels­dröckh’s out­line, who in­deed handled the burin like few in these cases, was prob­ably the best: Er hat Gemüth und Geist, hat wenig­stens ge­habt, doch ohne Or­gan, ohne Schick­sals-Gunst; ist ge­gen­wärtig aber halb-zer­rüt­tet, halb-er­s­tarrt, “He has heart and tal­ent, at least has had such, yet without fit mode of ut­ter­ance, or fa­vour of For­tune; and so is now half-cracked, half-con­gealed.”—What the Ho­frath shall think of this when he sees it, read­ers may won­der: we, safe in the strong­hold of His­tor­ical Fidel­ity, are care­less.

The main point, doubt­less, for us all, is his love of Teufels­dröckh, which in­deed was also by far the most de­cis­ive fea­ture of Heuschrecke him­self. We are en­abled to as­sert that he hung on the Pro­fessor with the fond­ness of a Boswell for his John­son. And per­haps with the like re­turn; for Teufels­dröckh treated his gaunt ad­mirer with little out­ward re­gard, as some half-ra­tional or al­to­gether ir­ra­tional friend, and at best loved him out of grat­it­ude and by habit. On the other hand, it was curi­ous to ob­serve with what rev­er­ent kind­ness, and a sort of fath­erly pro­tec­tion, our Ho­frath, be­ing the elder, richer, and as he fondly ima­gined far more prac­tic­ally in­flu­en­tial of the two, looked and ten­ded on his little Sage, whom he seemed to con­sider as a liv­ing or­acle. Let but Teufels­dröckh open his mouth, Heuschrecke’s also un­puckered it­self into a free door­way, be­sides his be­ing all eye and all ear, so that noth­ing might be lost: and then, at every pause in the har­angue, he gurgled-out his pursy chuckle of a cough-laugh (for the ma­chinery of laughter took some time to get in mo­tion, and seemed crank and slack), or else his twanging nasal, Bravo! Das glaub’ ich; in either case, by way of hearti­est ap­proval. In short, if Teufels­dröckh was Dalai-Lama, of which, ex­cept per­haps in his self-se­clu­sion, and god­like in­dif­fer­ence, there was no symp­tom, then might Heuschrecke pass for his chief Talapoin, to whom no dough-pill he could knead and pub­lish was other than medi­cinal and sac­red.

In such en­vir­on­ment, so­cial, do­mestic, phys­ical, did Teufels­dröckh, at the time of our ac­quaint­ance, and most likely does he still, live and med­it­ate. Here, perched-up in his high Wahngasse watchtower, and of­ten, in solitude, out­watch­ing the Bear, it was that the in­dom­it­able In­quirer fought all his battles with Dul­ness and Dark­ness; here, in all prob­ab­il­ity, that he wrote this sur­pris­ing Volume on Clothes. Ad­di­tional par­tic­u­lars: of his age, which was of that stand­ing middle sort you could only guess at; of his wide sur­tout; the col­our of his trousers, fash­ion of his broad-brimmed steeple-hat, and so forth, we might re­port, but do not. The Wisest truly is, in these times, the Greatest; so that an en­lightened curi­os­ity, leav­ing Kings and such­like to rest very much on their own basis, turns more and more to the Philo­sophic Class: nev­er­the­less, what reader ex­pects that, with all our writ­ing and re­port­ing, Teufels­dröckh could be brought home to him, till once the Docu­ments ar­rive? His Life, For­tunes, and Bodily Pres­ence, are as yet hid­den from us, or mat­ter only of faint con­jec­ture. But, on the other hand, does not his Soul lie en­closed in this re­mark­able Volume, much more truly than Pedro Gar­cia’s did in the bur­ied Bag of Doub­loons? To the soul of Dio­genes Teufels­dröckh, to his opin­ions, namely, on the “Ori­gin and In­flu­ence of Clothes,” we for the present gladly re­turn.

IV Characteristics

It were a piece of vain flat­tery to pre­tend that this Work on Clothes en­tirely con­tents us; that it is not, like all works of genius, like the very Sun, which, though the highest pub­lished cre­ation, or work of genius, has nev­er­the­less black spots and troubled nebu­los­it­ies amid its ef­ful­gence—a mix­ture of in­sight, in­spir­a­tion, with dul­ness, double-vis­ion, and even ut­ter blind­ness.

Without com­mit­ting ourselves to those en­thu­si­astic praises and proph­esy­ings of the Weiss­nichtwo’sche An­zei­ger, we ad­mit­ted that the Book had in a high de­gree ex­cited us to self-activ­ity, which is the best ef­fect of any book; that it had even op­er­ated changes in our way of thought; nay, that it prom­ised to prove, as it were, the open­ing of a new mineshaft, wherein the whole world of Spec­u­la­tion might hence­forth dig to un­known depths. More es­pe­cially it may now be de­clared that Pro­fessor Teufels­dröckh’s ac­quire­ments, pa­tience of re­search, philo­sophic and even po­etic vigour, are here made in­dis­put­ably mani­fest; and un­hap­pily no less his pro­lix­ity and tor­tu­os­ity and man­i­fold in­eptitude; that, on the whole, as in open­ing new mineshafts is not un­reas­on­able, there is much rub­bish in his Book, though like­wise spe­ci­mens of al­most in­valu­able ore. A para­mount pop­ular­ity in Eng­land we can­not prom­ise him. Apart from the choice of such a topic as Clothes, too of­ten the man­ner of treat­ing it be­tokens in the Author a rus­ti­city and aca­demic se­clu­sion, un­blam­able, in­deed in­ev­it­able in a Ger­man, but fatal to his suc­cess with our pub­lic.

Of good so­ci­ety Teufels­dröckh ap­pears to have seen little, or has mostly for­got­ten what he saw. He speaks-out with a strange plain­ness; calls many things by their mere dic­tion­ary names. To him the Upholsterer is no Pontiff, neither is any Draw­ing-room a Temple, were it never so be­gilt and over­hung: “a whole im­mens­ity of Brus­sels car­pets, and pier-glasses, and or­molu,” as he him­self ex­presses it, “can­not hide from me that such Draw­ing-room is simply a sec­tion of In­fin­ite Space, where so many God-cre­ated Souls do for the time meet to­gether.” To Teufels­dröckh the highest Duchess is re­spect­able, is ven­er­able; but no­wise for her pearl brace­lets and Malines laces: in his eyes, the star of a Lord is little less and little more than the broad but­ton of Birm­ing­ham spel­ter in a Clown’s smock; “each is an im­ple­ment,” he says, “in its kind; a tag for hook­ing-to­gether; and, for the rest, was dug from the earth, and hammered on a smithy be­fore smith’s fin­gers.” Thus does the Pro­fessor look in men’s faces with a strange im­par­ti­al­ity, a strange sci­entific free­dom; like a man un­versed in the higher circles, like a man dropped thither from the Moon. Rightly con­sidered, it is in this pe­cu­li­ar­ity, run­ning through his whole sys­tem of thought, that all these short­com­ings, over-shoot­ings, and mul­ti­form per­versit­ies, take rise: if in­deed they have not a second source, also nat­ural enough, in his Tran­scend­ental Philo­sophies, and hu­mour of look­ing at all Mat­ter and Ma­ter­ial things as Spirit; whereby truly his case were but the more hope­less, the more lam­ent­able.

To the Thinkers of this na­tion, how­ever, of which class it is firmly be­lieved there are in­di­vidu­als yet ex­tant, we can safely re­com­mend the Work: nay, who knows but among the fash­ion­able ranks too, if it be true, as Teufels­dröckh main­tains, that “within the most starched cravat there passes a wind­pipe and weas­and, and un­der the thick­li­est em­broidered waist­coat beats a heart,”—the force of that rapt earn­est­ness may be felt, and here and there an ar­row of the soul pierce through? In our wild Seer, shaggy, un­kempt, like a Baptist liv­ing on lo­custs and wild honey, there is an un­tutored en­ergy, a si­lent, as it were un­con­scious, strength, which, ex­cept in the higher walks of Lit­er­at­ure, must be rare. Many a deep glance, and of­ten with un­speak­able pre­ci­sion, has he cast into mys­ter­i­ous Nature, and the still more mys­ter­i­ous Life of Man. Won­der­ful it is with what cut­ting words, now and then, he severs asun­der the con­fu­sion; shears down, were it fur­longs deep, into the true centre of the mat­ter; and there not only hits the nail on the head, but with crush­ing force smites it home, and bur­ies it.—On the other hand, let us be free to ad­mit, he is the most un­equal writer breath­ing. Often after some such feat, he will play tru­ant for long pages, and go dawdling and dream­ing, and mum­bling and maun­der­ing the merest com­mon­places, as if he were asleep with eyes open, which in­deed he is.

Of his bound­less Learn­ing, and how all read­ing and lit­er­at­ure in most known tongues, from San­chonia­thon to Dr. Lingard, from your Ori­ental Shasters, and Talmuds, and Kor­ans, with Cassini’s Sia­mese Tables, and La­place’s Méca­nique Céleste, down to Robin­son Cru­soe and the Bel­fast Town and Coun­try Al­man­ack, are fa­mil­iar to him—we shall say noth­ing: for un­exampled as it is with us, to the Ger­mans such uni­ver­sal­ity of study passes without won­der, as a thing com­mend­able, in­deed, but nat­ural, in­dis­pens­able, and there of course. A man that de­votes his life to learn­ing, shall he not be learned?

In re­spect of style our Author mani­fests the same gen­ial cap­ab­il­ity, marred too of­ten by the same rude­ness, in­equal­ity, and ap­par­ent want of in­ter­course with the higher classes. Oc­ca­sion­ally, as above hin­ted, we find con­sum­mate vigour, a true in­spir­a­tion; his burn­ing thoughts step forth in fit burn­ing words, like so many full-formed Min­ervas, is­su­ing amid flame and splend­our from Jove’s head; a rich, idio­matic dic­tion, pic­tur­esque al­lu­sions, fiery po­etic em­phasis, or quaint tricksy turns; all the graces and ter­rors of a wild Ima­gin­a­tion, wed­ded to the clearest In­tel­lect, al­tern­ate in beau­ti­ful vi­cis­situde. Were it not that sheer sleep­ing and sop­or­ific pas­sages; cir­cum­lo­cu­tions, re­pe­ti­tions, touches even of pure dot­ing jar­gon, so of­ten in­ter­vene! On the whole, Pro­fessor Teufels­dröckh is not a cul­tiv­ated writer. Of his sen­tences per­haps not more than nine-tenths stand straight on their legs; the re­mainder are in quite an­gu­lar at­ti­tudes, but­tressed-up by props (of par­en­theses and dashes), and ever with this or the other tagrag hanging from them; a few even sprawl-out help­lessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and dis­membered. Never­the­less, in al­most his very worst moods, there lies in him a sin­gu­lar at­trac­tion. A wild tone per­vades the whole ut­ter­ance of the man, like its key­note and reg­u­lator; now screw­ing it­self aloft as into the Song of Spir­its, or else the shrill mock­ery of Fiends; now sink­ing in ca­dences, not without me­lodi­ous hearti­ness, though some­times ab­rupt enough, into the com­mon pitch, when we hear it only as a mono­ton­ous hum; of which hum the true char­ac­ter is ex­tremely dif­fi­cult to fix. Up to this hour we have never fully sat­is­fied ourselves whether it is a tone and hum of real Hu­mour, which we reckon among the very highest qual­it­ies of genius, or some echo of mere In­san­ity and Inan­ity, which doubt­less ranks be­low the very low­est.

Under a like dif­fi­culty, in spite even of our per­sonal in­ter­course, do we still lie with re­gard to the Pro­fessor’s moral feel­ing. Gleams of an eth­er­eal Love burst forth from him, soft wail­ings of in­fin­ite pity; he could clasp the whole Uni­verse into his bosom, and keep it warm; it seems as if un­der that rude ex­ter­ior there dwelt a very ser­aph. Then again he is so sly and still, so im­per­turb­ably sat­urnine; shows such in­dif­fer­ence, ma­lign cool­ness to­wards all that men strive after; and ever with some half-vis­ible wrinkle of a bit­ter sar­donic hu­mour, if in­deed it be not mere stolid cal­lous­ness—that you look on him al­most with a shud­der, as on some in­carn­ate Mephis­topheles, to whom this great ter­restrial and ce­les­tial Round, after all, were but some huge fool­ish Whir­li­gig, where kings and beg­gars, and an­gels and demons, and stars and street-sweep­ings, were chaot­ic­ally whirled, in which only chil­dren could take in­terest. His look, as we men­tioned, is prob­ably the gravest ever seen: yet it is not of that cast-iron grav­ity fre­quent enough among our own Chan­cery suit­ors; but rather the grav­ity as of some si­lent, high-en­circled moun­tain-pool, per­haps the crater of an ex­tinct vol­cano; into whose black deeps you fear to gaze: those eyes, those lights that sparkle in it, may in­deed be re­flexes of the heav­enly Stars, but per­haps also glances from the re­gion of Nether Fire!

Cer­tainly a most in­volved, self-se­cluded, al­to­gether en­ig­matic nature, this of Teufels­dröckh! Here, how­ever, we gladly re­call to mind that once we saw him laugh; once only, per­haps it was the first and last time in his life; but then such a peal of laughter, enough to have awakened the Seven Sleep­ers! It was of Jean Paul’s do­ing: some single bil­low in that vast World-Mahl­strom of Hu­mour, with its heaven-kiss­ing co­rus­ca­tions, which is now, alas, all con­gealed in the frost of death! The large-bod­ied Poet and the small, both large enough in soul, sat talk­ing mis­cel­laneously to­gether, the present Ed­itor be­ing priv­ileged to listen; and now Paul, in his ser­i­ous way, was giv­ing one of those in­im­it­able “Ex­tra-har­angues”; and, as it chanced, On the Pro­posal for a Cast-metal King: gradu­ally a light kindled in our Pro­fessor’s eyes and face, a beam­ing, mant­ling, love­li­est light; through those murky fea­tures, a ra­di­ant, ever-young Apollo looked; and he burst forth like the neigh­ing of all Tat­tersall’s—tears stream­ing down his cheeks, pipe held aloft, foot clutched into the air—loud, long-con­tinu­ing, un­con­trol­lable; a laugh not of the face and dia­phragm only, but of the whole man from head to heel. The present Ed­itor, who laughed in­deed, yet with meas­ure, began to fear all was not right: how­ever, Teufels­dröckh com­posed him­self, and sank into his old still­ness; on his in­scrut­able coun­ten­ance there was, if any­thing, a slight look of shame; and Richter him­self could not rouse him again. Read­ers who have any tinc­ture of Psy­cho­logy know how much is to be in­ferred from this; and that no man who has once heart­ily and wholly laughed can be al­to­gether ir­re­claim­ably bad. How much lies in Laughter: the cipher-key, where­with we de­cipher the whole man! Some men wear an ever­last­ing bar­ren sim­per; in the smile of oth­ers lies a cold glit­ter as of ice: the few­est are able to laugh, what can be called laugh­ing, but only sniff and tit­ter and snig­ger from the throat out­wards; or at best, pro­duce some whiff­ling husky cach­in­na­tion, as if they were laugh­ing through wool: of none such comes good. The man who can­not laugh is not only fit for treas­ons, stratagems, and spoils; but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem.

Con­sidered as an Author, Herr Teufels­dröckh has one scarcely par­don­able fault, doubt­less his worst: an al­most total want of ar­range­ment. In this re­mark­able Volume, it is true, his ad­her­ence to the mere course of Time pro­duces, through the Nar­rat­ive por­tions, a cer­tain show of out­ward method; but of true lo­gical method and se­quence there is too little. Apart from its mul­ti­far­i­ous sec­tions and sub­di­vi­sions, the Work nat­ur­ally falls into two Parts; a His­tor­ical-De­script­ive, and a Philo­soph­ical-Spec­u­lat­ive: but falls, un­hap­pily, by no firm line of de­marc­a­tion; in that labyrinthic com­bin­a­tion, each Part over­laps, and in­dents, and in­deed runs quite through the other. Many sec­tions are of a de­bat­able rub­ric or even quite non­des­cript and un­name­able; whereby the Book not only loses in ac­cess­ib­il­ity, but too of­ten dis­tresses us like some mad ban­quet, wherein all courses had been con­foun­ded, and fish and flesh, soup and solid, oyster-sauce, lettuces, Rhine-wine and French mus­tard, were hurled into one huge tur­een or trough, and the hungry Public in­vited to help it­self. To bring what or­der we can out of this Chaos shall be part of our en­deav­our.

V The World in Clothes

“As Mont­esquieu wrote a Spirit of Laws,” ob­serves our Pro­fessor, “so could I write a Spirit of Clothes; thus, with an Es­prit des Lois, prop­erly an Es­prit de Cou­tumes, we should have an Es­prit de Cos­tumes. For neither in tail­or­ing nor in le­gis­lat­ing does man pro­ceed by mere Ac­ci­dent, but the hand is ever guided on by mys­ter­i­ous op­er­a­tions of the mind. In all his Modes, and habil­at­ory en­deav­ours, an Ar­chi­tec­tural Idea will be found lurk­ing; his Body and the Cloth are the site and ma­ter­i­als whereon and whereby his beau­ti­fied edi­fice, of a Per­son, is to be built. Whether he flow grace­fully out in fol­ded mantles, based on light san­dals; tower-up in high headgear, from amid peaks, spangles and bell-girdles; swell-out in starched ruffs, buck­ram stuff­ings, and mon­strous tuber­os­it­ies; or girth him­self into sep­ar­ate sec­tions, and front the world an Ag­glom­er­a­tion of four limbs—will de­pend on the nature of such Ar­chi­tec­tural Idea: whether Gre­cian, Gothic, Later-Gothic, or al­to­gether Modern, and Parisian or An­glo-Dan­di­acal. Again, what mean­ing lies in Co­l­our! From the soberest drab to the high-flam­ing scar­let, spir­itual idio­syn­crasies un­fold them­selves in choice of Co­l­our: if the Cut be­token In­tel­lect and Talent, so does the Co­l­our be­token Tem­per and Heart. In all which, among na­tions as among in­di­vidu­als, there is an in­cess­ant, in­dubit­able, though in­fin­itely com­plex work­ing of Cause and Ef­fect: every snip of the Scis­sors has been reg­u­lated and pre­scribed by ever-act­ive In­flu­ences, which doubt­less to In­tel­li­gences of a su­per­ior or­der are neither in­vis­ible nor il­legible.

“For such su­per­ior In­tel­li­gences a Cause-and-Ef­fect Philo­sophy of Clothes, as of Laws, were prob­ably a com­fort­able winter-even­ing en­ter­tain­ment: nev­er­the­less, for in­ferior In­tel­li­gences, like men, such Philo­sophies have al­ways seemed to me un­in­struct­ive enough. Nay, what is your Mont­esquieu him­self but a clever in­fant spelling Let­ters from a hiero­glyph­ical proph­etic Book, the lex­icon of which lies in Etern­ity, in Heaven?—Let any Cause-and-Ef­fect Philo­sopher ex­plain, not why I wear such and such a Gar­ment, obey such and such a Law; but even why I am here, to wear and obey any­thing!—Much, there­fore, if not the whole, of that same Spirit of Clothes I shall sup­press, as hy­po­thet­ical, in­ef­fec­tual, and even im­per­tin­ent: na­ked Facts, and De­duc­tions drawn there­from in quite an­other than that om­ni­scient style, are my hum­bler and proper province.”

Act­ing on which prudent re­stric­tion, Teufels­dröckh has nev­er­the­less con­trived to take-in a well-nigh bound­less ex­tent of field; at least, the bound­ar­ies too of­ten lie quite bey­ond our ho­ri­zon. Selec­tion be­ing in­dis­pens­able, we shall here glance-over his First Part only in the most curs­ory man­ner. This First Part is, no doubt, dis­tin­guished by om­ni­vor­ous learn­ing, and ut­most pa­tience and fair­ness: at the same time, in its res­ults and de­lin­eations, it is much more likely to in­terest the Com­pilers of some Library of Gen­eral, En­ter­tain­ing, Use­ful, or even Use­less Know­ledge than the mis­cel­laneous read­ers of these pages. Was it this Part of the Book which Heuschrecke had in view, when he re­com­men­ded us to that joint-stock vehicle of pub­lic­a­tion, “at present the glory of Brit­ish Lit­er­at­ure”? If so, the Library Ed­it­ors are wel­come to dig in it for their own be­hoof.

To the First Chapter, which turns on Paradise and Fig-leaves, and leads us into in­ter­min­able dis­quis­i­tions of a myth­o­lo­gical, meta­phor­ical, cabal­ist­ico-sar­torial and quite antedi­lu­vian cast, we shall con­tent ourselves with giv­ing an un­con­cerned ap­proval. Still less have we to do with “Lilis, Adam’s first wife, whom, ac­cord­ing to the Talmudists, he had be­fore Eve, and who bore him, in that wed­lock, the whole pro­geny of aer­ial, aquatic, and ter­restrial Devils,”—very need­lessly, we think. On this por­tion of the Work, with its pro­found glances into the Adam-Kad­mon, or Primeval Ele­ment, here strangely brought into re­la­tion with the Nifl and Mus­pel (Dark­ness and Light) of the an­tique North, it may be enough to say, that its cor­rect­ness of de­duc­tion, and depth of Talmudic and Rab­bin­ical lore have filled per­haps not the worst Heb­ra­ist in Bri­tain with some­thing like as­ton­ish­ment.

But, quit­ting this twi­light re­gion, Teufels­dröckh hastens from the Tower of Ba­bel, to fol­low the dis­per­sion of Man­kind over the whole hab­it­able and habil­able globe. Walk­ing by the light of Ori­ental, Pelas­gic, Scand­inavian, Egyp­tian, Ota­heitean, An­cient and Modern re­searches of every con­ceiv­able kind, he strives to give us in com­pressed shape (as the Nürn­ber­gers give an Or­bis Pic­tus) an Or­bis Vestitus; or view of the cos­tumes of all man­kind, in all coun­tries, in all times. It is here that to the Anti­quar­ian, to the His­tor­ian, we can tri­umphantly say: Fall to! Here is learn­ing: an ir­reg­u­lar Treas­ury, if you will; but in­ex­haust­ible as the Hoard of King Ni­be­lung, which twelve wag­ons in twelve days, at the rate of three jour­neys a day, could not carry off. Sheep­skin cloaks and wam­pum belts; phylac­ter­ies, stoles, albs; chlamydes, to­gas, Chinese silks, Afghaun shawls, trunk-hose, leather breeches, Celtic philibegs (though breeches, as the name Gal­lia brac­cata in­dic­ates, are the more an­cient), Hus­sar cloaks, Van­dyke tip­pets, ruffs, fardin­gales, are brought vividly be­fore us—even the Kil­mar­nock night­cap is not for­got­ten. For most part, too, we must ad­mit that the Learn­ing, het­ero­gen­eous as it is, and tumbled-down quite pell-mell, is true con­cen­trated and pur­i­fied Learn­ing, the drossy parts smelted out and thrown aside.

Philo­soph­ical re­flec­tions in­ter­vene, and some­times touch­ing pic­tures of hu­man life. Of this sort the fol­low­ing has sur­prised us. The first pur­pose of Clothes, as our Pro­fessor ima­gines, was not warmth or de­cency, but or­na­ment. “Miser­able in­deed,” says he, “was the con­di­tion of the Ab­ori­ginal Sav­age, glar­ing fiercely from un­der his fleece of hair, which with the beard reached down to his loins, and hung round him like a mat­ted cloak; the rest of his body sheeted in its thick nat­ural fell. He loitered in the sunny glades of the forest, liv­ing on wild-fruits; or, as the an­cient Cale­do­nian, squat­ted him­self in mor­asses, lurk­ing for his bes­tial or hu­man prey; without im­ple­ments, without arms, save the ball of heavy Flint, to which, that his sole pos­ses­sion and de­fence might not be lost, he had at­tached a long cord of plaited thongs; thereby re­cov­er­ing as well as hurl­ing it with deadly un­err­ing skill. Never­the­less, the pains of Hun­ger and Revenge once sat­is­fied, his next care was not Com­fort but Dec­or­a­tion (Putz). Warmth he found in the toils of the chase; or amid dried leaves, in his hol­low tree, in his bark shed, or nat­ural grotto: but for Dec­or­a­tion he must have Clothes. Nay, among wild people we find tat­too­ing and paint­ing even prior to Clothes. The first spir­itual want of a bar­bar­ous man is Dec­or­a­tion, as in­deed we still see among the bar­bar­ous classes in civ­il­ised coun­tries.

“Reader, the heaven-in­spired me­lodi­ous Singer; lofti­est Serene High­ness; nay thy own am­ber-locked, snow-and-rose-bloom Maiden, worthy to glide sylph­like al­most on air, whom thou lovest, wor­shippest as a di­vine Pres­ence, which, in­deed, sym­bol­ic­ally taken, she is—has des­cen­ded, like thy­self, from that same hair-mantled, flint-hurl­ing Ab­ori­ginal An­thro­po­phagus! Out of the eater cometh forth meat; out of the strong cometh forth sweet­ness. What changes are wrought, not by time, yet in Time! For not Man­kind only, but all that Man­kind does or be­holds, is in con­tinual growth, re­gen­esis and self-per­fect­ing vi­tal­ity. Cast forth thy Act, thy Word, into the ever-liv­ing, ever-work­ing Uni­verse: it is a seed-grain that can­not die; un­noticed today (says one), it will be found flour­ish­ing as a Ban­yan-grove (per­haps, alas, as a Hem­lock-forest!) after a thou­sand years.

“He who first shortened the la­bour of Copy­ists by device of Mov­able Types was dis­band­ing hired Armies, and cash­ier­ing most Kings and Sen­ates, and cre­at­ing a whole new Demo­cratic world: he had in­ven­ted the Art of Print­ing. The first ground hand­ful of Nitre, Sul­phur, and Char­coal drove Monk Schwartz’s pestle through the ceil­ing: what will the last do? Achieve the fi­nal un­dis­puted pros­tra­tion of Force un­der Thought, of An­imal cour­age un­der Spir­itual. A simple in­ven­tion it was in the old-world Gra­zier—sick of lug­ging his slow Ox about the coun­try till he got it bartered for corn or oil—to take a piece of Leather, and thereon scratch or stamp the mere Fig­ure of an Ox (or Pe­cus); put it in his pocket, and call it Pe­cunia, Money. Yet hereby did Barter grow Sale, the Leather Money is now Golden and Paper, and all mir­acles have been out-mir­acled: for there are Roth­schilds and Eng­lish Na­tional Debts; and whoso has six­pence is sov­er­eign (to the length of six­pence) over all men; com­mands cooks to feed him, philo­soph­ers to teach him, kings to mount guard over him—to the length of six­pence.—Clothes too, which began in fool­ishest love of Or­na­ment, what have they not be­come! In­creased Se­cur­ity and pleas­ur­able Heat soon fol­lowed: but what of these? Shame, di­vine Shame (Schaam, Modesty), as yet a stranger to the An­thro­po­phag­ous bosom, arose there mys­ter­i­ously un­der Clothes; a mys­tic grove-en­circled shrine for the Holy in man. Clothes gave us in­di­vidu­al­ity, dis­tinc­tions, so­cial polity; Clothes have made Men of us; they are threat­en­ing to make Clothes-screens of us.

“But, on the whole,” con­tin­ues our elo­quent Pro­fessor, “Man is a Tool-us­ing An­imal (Handth­i­er­endes thier). Weak in him­self, and of small stature, he stands on a basis, at most for the flat­test-soled, of some half-square foot, in­sec­urely enough; has to straddle out his legs, lest the very wind sup­plant him. Feeblest of bi­peds! Three quintals are a crush­ing load for him; the steer of the meadow tosses him aloft, like a waste rag. Never­the­less he can use Tools, can de­vise Tools: with these the gran­ite moun­tain melts into light dust be­fore him; he kneads glow­ing iron, as if it were soft paste; seas are his smooth high­way, winds and fire his un­weary­ing steeds. Nowhere do you find him without Tools; without Tools he is noth­ing, with Tools he is all.”

Here may we not, for a mo­ment, in­ter­rupt the stream of Orat­ory with a re­mark, that this Defin­i­tion of the Tool-us­ing An­imal, ap­pears to us, of all that An­imal-sort, con­sid­er­ably the pre­cisest and best? Man is called a Laugh­ing An­imal: but do not the apes also laugh, or at­tempt to do it; and is the man­li­est man the greatest and of­ten­est laugher? Teufels­dröckh him­self, as we said, laughed only once. Still less do we make of that other French Defin­i­tion of the Cook­ing An­imal; which, in­deed, for rig­or­ous sci­entific pur­poses, is as good as use­less. Can a Tar­tar be said to cook, when he only read­ies his steak by rid­ing on it? Again, what Cook­ery does the Green­lander use, bey­ond stow­ing-up his whale-blub­ber, as a mar­mot, in the like case, might do? Or how would Mon­sieur Ude prosper among those Orinocco In­di­ans, who, ac­cord­ing to Hum­boldt, lodge in crow-nests, on the branches of trees; and, for half the year, have no victu­als but pipe-clay, the whole coun­try be­ing un­der wa­ter? But, on the other hand, show us the hu­man be­ing, of any period or cli­mate, without his Tools: those very Cale­do­ni­ans, as we saw, had their Flint-ball, and Thong to it, such as no brute has or can have.

“Man is a Tool-us­ing An­imal,” con­cludes Teufels­dröckh in his ab­rupt way; “of which truth Clothes are but one ex­ample: and surely if we con­sider the in­ter­val between the first wooden Dibble fash­ioned by man, and those Liver­pool Steam-car­riages, or the Brit­ish House of Com­mons, we shall note what pro­gress he has made. He digs up cer­tain black stones from the bosom of the earth, and says to them, Trans­port me and this lug­gage at the rate of five-and-thirty miles an hour; and they do it: he col­lects, ap­par­ently by lot, six-hun­dred and fifty-eight mis­cel­laneous in­di­vidu­als, and says to them, Make this na­tion toil for us, bleed for us, hun­ger and sor­row and sin for us; and they do it.”

VI Aprons

One of the most un­sat­is­fact­ory Sec­tions in the whole Volume is that on Aprons. What though stout old Gao, the Per­sian Black­smith, “whose Apron, now in­deed hid­den un­der jew­els, be­cause raised in re­volt which proved suc­cess­ful, is still the royal stand­ard of that coun­try”; what though John Knox’s Daughter, “who threatened Sover­eign Majesty that she would catch her hus­band’s head in her Apron, rather than he should lie and be a bishop”; what though the Land­grav­ine El­iza­beth, with many other Apron wor­thies—fig­ure here? An idle wire-draw­ing spirit, some­times even a tone of lev­ity, ap­proach­ing to con­ven­tional satire, is too clearly dis­cern­ible. What, for ex­ample, are we to make of such sen­tences as the fol­low­ing?

“Aprons are De­fences; against in­jury to clean­li­ness, to safety, to mod­esty, some­times to roguery. From the thin slip of notched silk (as it were, the Emblem and be­ati­fied Ghost of an Apron), which some highest-bred house­wife, sit­ting at Nürn­berg Work­boxes and Toy­boxes, has grace­fully fastened on; to the thick-tanned hide, girt round him with thongs, wherein the Builder builds, and at even­ing sticks his trowel; or to those jingling sheet-iron Aprons, wherein your oth­er­wise half-na­ked Vul­cans ham­mer and smelt in their smelt-fur­nace—is there not range enough in the fash­ion and uses of this Vest­ment? How much has been con­cealed, how much has been de­fen­ded in Aprons! Nay, rightly con­sidered, what is your whole Mil­it­ary and Po­lice Es­tab­lish­ment, charged at un­cal­cu­lated mil­lions, but a huge scar­let-col­oured, iron-fastened Apron, wherein So­ci­ety works (un­eas­ily enough); guard­ing it­self from some soil and stithy-sparks, in this Devil’s-smithy (Teufelsschmiede) of a world? But of all Aprons the most puzz­ling to me hitherto has been the Epis­copal or Cas­sock. Wherein con­sists the use­ful­ness of this Apron? The Overseer (Epis­copus) of Souls, I no­tice, has tucked-in the corner of it, as if his day’s work were done: what does he shadow forth thereby?” etc. etc.

Or again, has it of­ten been the lot of our read­ers to read such stuff as we shall now quote?

“I con­sider those prin­ted Paper Aprons, worn by the Parisian Cooks, as a new vent, though a slight one, for Ty­po­graphy; there­fore as an en­cour­age­ment to mod­ern Lit­er­at­ure, and de­serving of ap­proval: nor is it without sat­is­fac­tion that I hear of a cel­eb­rated Lon­don Firm hav­ing in view to in­tro­duce the same fash­ion, with im­port­ant ex­ten­sions, in Eng­land.”—We who are on the spot hear of no such thing; and in­deed have reason to be thank­ful that hitherto there are other vents for our Lit­er­at­ure, ex­uber­ant as it is.—Teufels­dröckh con­tin­ues: “If such sup­ply of prin­ted Paper should rise so far as to choke-up the high­ways and pub­lic thor­ough­fares, new means must of ne­ces­sity be had re­course to. In a world ex­ist­ing by In­dustry, we grudge to em­ploy fire as a des­troy­ing ele­ment, and not as a cre­at­ing one. However, Heaven is om­ni­po­tent, and will find us an out­let. In the mean while, is it not beau­ti­ful to see five-mil­lion quintals of Rags picked an­nu­ally from the Lay­stall; and an­nu­ally, after be­ing ma­cer­ated, hot-pressed, prin­ted-on, and sold—re­turned thither; filling so many hungry mouths by the way? Thus is the Lay­stall, es­pe­cially with its Rags or Clothes-rub­bish, the grand Elec­tric Bat­tery, and Foun­tain-of-mo­tion, from which and to which the So­cial Activ­it­ies (like vit­reous and res­in­ous Elec­tri­cit­ies) cir­cu­late, in lar­ger or smal­ler circles, through the mighty, bil­lowy, storm-tost Chaos of Life, which they keep alive!”—Such pas­sages fill us, who love the man, and partly es­teem him, with a very mixed feel­ing.

Farther down we meet with this: “The Journ­al­ists are now the true Kings and Clergy: hence­forth His­tor­i­ans, un­less they are fools, must write not of Bour­bon Dyn­asties, and Tu­dors and Haps­burgs; but of Stamped Broad­sheet Dyn­asties, and quite new suc­cess­ive Names, ac­cord­ing as this or the other Able Ed­itor, or Com­bin­a­tion of Able Ed­it­ors, gains the world’s ear. Of the Brit­ish Newspa­per Press, per­haps the most im­port­ant of all, and won­der­ful enough in its secret con­sti­tu­tion and pro­ced­ure, a valu­able de­script­ive His­tory already ex­ists, in that lan­guage, un­der the title of Satan’s In­vis­ible World Dis­played; which, how­ever, by search in all the Weiss­nichtwo Librar­ies, I have not yet suc­ceeded in pro­cur­ing (ver­möchte nicht aufzutreiben).”

Thus does the good Homer not only nod, but snore. Thus does Teufels­dröckh, wan­der­ing in re­gions where he had little busi­ness, con­found the old au­then­tic Pres­by­terian Witchfinder with a new, spuri­ous, ima­gin­ary His­tor­ian of the Brit­tische Journ­al­istik; and so stumble on per­haps the most egre­gious blun­der in Modern Lit­er­at­ure!

VII Miscellaneous-Historical

Hap­pier is our Pro­fessor, and more purely sci­entific and his­toric, when he reaches the Middle Ages in Europe, and down to the end of the Seven­teenth Cen­tury; the true era of ex­tra­vag­ance in Cos­tume. It is here that the Anti­quary and Stu­dent of Modes comes upon his richest har­vest. Fant­astic garbs, beg­gar­ing all fancy of a Ten­iers or a Cal­lot, suc­ceed each other, like mon­ster de­vour­ing mon­ster in a Dream. The whole too in brief au­then­tic strokes, and touched not sel­dom with that breath of genius which makes even old raiment live. Indeed, so learned, pre­cise, graph­ical, and every­way in­ter­est­ing have we found these Chapters, that it may be thrown-out as a per­tin­ent ques­tion for parties con­cerned, Whether or not a good Eng­lish Trans­la­tion thereof might hence­forth be prof­it­ably in­cor­por­ated with Mr. Mer­rick’s valu­able Work On An­cient Ar­mour? Take, by way of ex­ample, the fol­low­ing sketch; as au­thor­ity for which Paul­inus’s Zeitkürzende Lust (ii. 678) is, with seem­ing con­fid­ence, re­ferred to:

“Did we be­hold the Ger­man fash­ion­able dress of the Fif­teenth Cen­tury, we might smile; as per­haps those by­gone Ger­mans, were they to rise again, and see our hab­er­dash­ery, would cross them­selves, and in­voke the Vir­gin. But hap­pily no by­gone Ger­man, or man, rises again; thus the Present is not need­lessly tram­melled with the Past; and only grows out of it, like a Tree, whose roots are not in­ter­tangled with its branches, but lie peace­ably un­der­ground. Nay it is very mourn­ful, yet not use­less, to see and know, how the Greatest and Dearest, in a short while, would find his place quite filled-up here, and no room for him; the very Na­po­leon, the very Byron, in some seven years, has be­come ob­sol­ete, and were now a for­eigner to his Europe. Thus is the Law of Pro­gress se­cured; and in Clothes, as in all other ex­ternal things what­so­ever, no fash­ion will con­tinue.

“Of the mil­it­ary classes in those old times, whose buff-belts, com­plic­ated chains and gor­gets, huge churn-boots, and other rid­ing and fight­ing gear have been be­painted in mod­ern Ro­mance, till the whole has ac­quired some­what of a sign­post char­ac­ter—I shall here say noth­ing: the civil and pa­cific classes, less touched upon, are won­der­ful enough for us.

“Rich men, I find, have Teu­sinke” (a per­haps un­trans­late­able art­icle); “also a sil­ver girdle, whereat hang little bells; so that when a man walks, it is with con­tinual jingling. Some few, of mu­sical turn, have a whole chime of bells (Glock­en­spiel) fastened there; which, es­pe­cially in sud­den whirls, and the other ac­ci­dents of walk­ing, has a grate­ful ef­fect. Ob­serve too how fond they are of peaks, and Gothic-arch in­ter­sec­tions. The male world wears peaked caps, an ell long, which hang bob­bing over the side (schief): their shoes are peaked in front, also to the length of an ell, and laced on the side with tags; even the wooden shoes have their ell-long noses: some also clap bells on the peak. Fur­ther, ac­cord­ing to my au­thor­ity, the men have breeches without seat (ohne Gesäss): these they fasten peak­wise to their shirts; and the long round doublet must over­lap them.

“Rich maid­ens, again, flit abroad in gowns scal­loped out be­hind and be­fore, so that back and breast are al­most bare. Wives of qual­ity, on the other hand, have train-gowns four or five ells in length; which trains there are boys to carry. Brave Cleo­pat­ras, sail­ing in their silk-cloth Gal­ley, with a Cu­pid for steers­man! Con­sider their welts, a hand­breadth thick, which waver round them by way of hem; the long flood of sil­ver but­tons, or rather sil­ver shells, from throat to shoe, where­with these same welt-gowns are buttoned. The maid­ens have bound sil­ver snoods about their hair, with gold spangles, and pen­dent flames (Flam­men), that is, spark­ling hair-drops: but of their mother’s headgear who shall speak? Neither in love of grace is com­fort for­got­ten. In winter weather you be­hold the whole fair cre­ation (that can af­ford it) in long mantles, with skirts wide be­low, and, for hem, not one but two suf­fi­cient hand-broad welts; all end­ing atop in a thick well-starched Ruff, some twenty inches broad: these are their Ruff-mantles (Kra­gen­män­tel).

“As yet among the wo­man­kind hoop-pet­ti­coats are not; but the men have doublets of fus­tian, un­der which lie mul­tiple ruffs of cloth, pas­ted to­gether with bat­ter (mit Teig zusam­mengekleistert), which cre­ate pro­tuber­ance enough. Thus do the two sexes vie with each other in the art of Dec­or­a­tion; and as usual the stronger car­ries it.”

Our Pro­fessor, whether he hath hu­mour him­self or not, mani­fests a cer­tain feel­ing of the Ludicrous, a sly ob­serv­ance of it, which, could emo­tion of any kind be con­fid­ently pre­dic­ated of so still a man, we might call a real love. None of those bell-girdles, bushel-breeches, cor­nuted shoes, or other the like phe­nom­ena, of which the His­tory of Dress of­fers so many, es­cape him: more es­pe­cially the mis­chances, or strik­ing ad­ven­tures, in­cid­ent to the wear­ers of such, are no­ticed with due fi­del­ity. Sir Wal­ter Raleigh’s fine mantle, which he spread in the mud un­der Queen El­iza­beth’s feet, ap­pears to pro­voke little en­thu­si­asm in him; he merely asks, Whether at that period the Maiden Queen “was red-painted on the nose, and white-painted on the cheeks, as her tire-wo­men, when from spleen and wrinkles she would no longer look in any glass, were wont to serve her?” We can an­swer that Sir Wal­ter knew well what he was do­ing, and had the Maiden Queen been stuffed parch­ment dyed in ver­di­gris, would have done the same.

Thus too, treat­ing of those enorm­ous ha­bili­ments, that were not only slashed and ga­looned, but ar­ti­fi­cially swollen-out on the broader parts of the body, by in­tro­duc­tion of Bran—our Pro­fessor fails not to com­ment on that luck­less Courtier, who hav­ing seated him­self on a chair with some pro­ject­ing nail on it, and there­from rising, to pay his devoir on the en­trance of Majesty, in­stant­an­eously emit­ted sev­eral pecks of dry wheat-dust: and stood there di­min­ished to a spindle, his ga­loons and slashes dangling sor­row­ful and flabby round him. Whereupon the Pro­fessor pub­lishes this re­flec­tion:

“By what strange chances do we live in His­tory? Erostratus by a torch; Milo by a bul­lock; Henry Darn­ley, an un­fledged booby and bus­tard, by his limbs; most Kings and Queens by be­ing born un­der such and such a bed-tester; Boileau De­spréaux (ac­cord­ing to Hel­ve­tius) by the peck of a tur­key; and this ill-starred in­di­vidual by a rent in his breeches—for no Mem­oir­ist of Kaiser Otto’s Court omits him. Vain was the prayer of Themistocles for a tal­ent of For­get­ting: my Friends, yield cheer­fully to Destiny, and read since it is writ­ten.”—Has Teufels­dröckh to be put in mind that, nearly re­lated to the im­possible tal­ent of For­get­ting, stands that tal­ent of Si­lence, which even trav­el­ling Eng­lish­men mani­fest?

“The simplest cos­tume,” ob­serves our Pro­fessor, “which I any­where find al­luded to in His­tory, is that used as re­gi­mental, by Bolivar’s Cav­alry, in the late Columbian wars. A square Blanket, twelve feet in di­ag­onal, is provided (some were wont to cut off the corners, and make it cir­cu­lar): in the centre a slit is ef­fected eight­een inches long; through this the mother-na­ked Trooper in­tro­duces his head and neck: and so rides shiel­ded from all weather, and in battle from many strokes (for he rolls it about his left arm); and not only dressed, but har­nessed and draper­ied.”

With which pic­ture of a State of Nature, af­fect­ing by its sin­gu­lar­ity, and Old-Ro­man con­tempt of the su­per­flu­ous, we shall quit this part of our sub­ject.

VIII The World Out of Clothes

If in the De­script­ive-His­tor­ical por­tion of this Volume, Teufels­dröckh, dis­cuss­ing merely the Wer­den (Ori­gin and suc­cess­ive Im­prove­ment) of Clothes, has as­ton­ished many a reader, much more will he in the Spec­u­lat­ive-Philo­soph­ical por­tion, which treats of their Wirken, or In­flu­ences. It is here that the present Ed­itor first feels the pres­sure of his task; for here prop­erly the higher and new Philo­sophy of Clothes com­mences: an un­tried, al­most in­con­ceiv­able re­gion, or chaos; in ven­tur­ing upon which, how dif­fi­cult, yet how un­speak­ably im­port­ant is it to know what course, of sur­vey and con­quest, is the true one; where the foot­ing is firm sub­stance and will bear us, where it is hol­low, or mere cloud, and may en­gulf us! Teufels­dröckh un­der­takes no less than to ex­pound the moral, polit­ical, even re­li­gious In­flu­ences of Clothes; he un­der­takes to make mani­fest, in its thou­sand­fold bear­ings, this grand Pro­pos­i­tion, that Man’s earthly in­terests “are all hooked and buttoned to­gether, and held up, by Clothes.” He says in so many words, “So­ci­ety is foun­ded upon Cloth”; and again, “So­ci­ety sails through the In­finitude on Cloth, as on a Faust’s Mantle, or rather like the Sheet of clean and un­clean beasts in the Apostle’s Dream; and without such Sheet or Mantle, would sink to end­less depths, or mount to in­ane limboes, and in either case be no more.”

By what chains, or in­deed in­fin­itely com­plec­ted tis­sues, of Med­it­a­tion this grand The­orem is here un­fol­ded, and in­nu­mer­able prac­tical Corol­lar­ies are drawn there­from, it were per­haps a mad am­bi­tion to at­tempt ex­hib­it­ing. Our Pro­fessor’s method is not, in any case, that of com­mon school Lo­gic, where the truths all stand in a row, each hold­ing by the skirts of the other; but at best that of prac­tical Reason, pro­ceed­ing by large In­tu­ition over whole sys­tem­atic groups and king­doms; whereby, we might say, a noble com­plex­ity, al­most like that of Nature, reigns in his Philo­sophy, or spir­itual Pic­ture of Nature: a mighty maze, yet, as faith whis­pers, not without a plan. Nay we com­plained above, that a cer­tain ig­noble com­plex­ity, what we must call mere con­fu­sion, was also dis­cern­ible. Often, also, we have to ex­claim: Would to Heaven those same Bio­graph­ical Docu­ments were come! For it seems as if the demon­stra­tion lay much in the Author’s in­di­vidu­al­ity; as if it were not Ar­gu­ment that had taught him, but Ex­per­i­ence. At present it is only in local glimpses, and by sig­ni­fic­ant frag­ments, picked of­ten at wide-enough in­ter­vals from the ori­ginal Volume, and care­fully col­lated, that we can hope to im­part some out­line or fore­shadow of this Doc­trine. Read­ers of any in­tel­li­gence are once more in­vited to fa­vour us with their most con­cen­trated at­ten­tion: let these, after in­tense con­sid­er­a­tion, and not till then, pro­nounce, Whether on the ut­most verge of our ac­tual ho­ri­zon there is not a loom­ing as of Land; a prom­ise of new For­tunate Is­lands, per­haps whole un­dis­covered Amer­icas, for such as have can­vas to sail thither?—As ex­or­dium to the whole, stand here the fol­low­ing long cita­tion:

“With men of a spec­u­lat­ive turn,” writes Teufels­dröckh, “there come sea­sons, med­it­at­ive, sweet, yet aw­ful hours, when in won­der and fear you ask your­self that un­answer­able ques­tion: Who am I; the thing that can say ‘I’ (das Wesen das sich Ich nennt)? The world, with its loud traf­fick­ing, re­tires into the dis­tance; and, through the pa­per-hangings, and stone walls, and thick-plied tis­sues of Com­merce and Polity, and all the liv­ing and life­less in­teg­u­ments (of So­ci­ety and a Body), where­with your Ex­ist­ence sits sur­roun­ded—the sight reaches forth into the void Deep, and you are alone with the Uni­verse, and si­lently com­mune with it, as one mys­ter­i­ous Pres­ence with an­other.

“Who am I; what is this Me? A Voice, a Mo­tion, an Ap­pear­ance;—some em­bod­ied, visu­al­ised Idea in the Eternal Mind? Co­gito, ergo sum. Alas, poor Co­git­ator, this takes us but a little way. Sure enough, I am; and lately was not: but Whence? How? Whereto? The an­swer lies around, writ­ten in all col­ours and mo­tions, uttered in all tones of ju­bilee and wail, in thou­sand-figured, thou­sand-voiced, har­mo­ni­ous Nature: but where is the cun­ning eye and ear to whom that God-writ­ten Apo­ca­lypse will yield ar­tic­u­late mean­ing? We sit as in a bound­less Phant­asmagoria and Dream-grotto; bound­less, for the faintest star, the re­motest cen­tury, lies not even nearer the verge thereof: sounds and many-col­oured vis­ions flit round our sense; but Him, the Unslum­ber­ing, whose work both Dream and Dreamer are, we see not; ex­cept in rare half-wak­ing mo­ments, sus­pect not. Creation, says one, lies be­fore us, like a glor­i­ous Rain­bow; but the Sun that made it lies be­hind us, hid­den from us. Then, in that strange Dream, how we clutch at shad­ows as if they were sub­stances; and sleep deep­est while fancy­ing ourselves most awake! Which of your Philo­soph­ical Sys­tems is other than a dream-the­orem; a net quo­tient, con­fid­ently given out, where di­visor and di­vidend are both un­known? What are all your na­tional Wars, with their Mo­scow Retreats, and san­guin­ary hate-filled Re­volu­tions, but the Somn­am­bu­lism of un­easy Sleep­ers? This Dream­ing, this Somn­am­bu­lism is what we on Earth call Life; wherein the most in­deed un­doubt­ingly wander, as if they knew right hand from left; yet they only are wise who know that they know noth­ing.

“Pity that all Meta­phys­ics had hitherto proved so in­ex­press­ibly un­pro­duct­ive! The secret of Man’s Be­ing is still like the Sph­inx’s secret: a riddle that he can­not rede; and for ig­nor­ance of which he suf­fers death, the worst death, a spir­itual. What are your Ax­ioms, and Cat­egor­ies, and Sys­tems, and Aphor­isms? Words, words. High Air-castles are cun­ningly built of Words, the Words well bed­ded also in good Lo­gic-mor­tar, wherein, how­ever, no Know­ledge will come to lodge. The whole is greater than the part: how ex­ceed­ingly true! Nature ab­hors a va­cuum: how ex­ceed­ingly false and calum­ni­ous! Again, Noth­ing can act but where it is: with all my heart; only, where is it? Be not the slave of Words: is not the Distant, the Dead, while I love it, and long for it, and mourn for it, Here, in the genu­ine sense, as truly as the floor I stand on? But that same Where, with its brother When, are from the first the mas­ter-col­ours of our Dream-grotto; say rather, the Can­vas (the warp and woof thereof) whereon all our Dreams and Life-vis­ions are painted! Never­the­less, has not a deeper med­it­a­tion taught cer­tain of every cli­mate and age, that the Where and When, so mys­ter­i­ously in­sep­ar­able from all our thoughts, are but su­per­fi­cial ter­restrial ad­he­sions to thought; that the Seer may dis­cern them where they mount up out of the ce­les­tial Every­where and Forever: have not all na­tions con­ceived their God as Om­ni­present and Eternal; as ex­ist­ing in a uni­ver­sal Here, an ever­last­ing Now? Think well, thou too wilt find that Space is but a mode of our hu­man Sense, so like­wise Time; there is no Space and no Time: We are—we know not what;—light-sparkles float­ing in the æther of Deity!

“So that this so solid-seem­ing World, after all, were but an air-im­age, our Me the only real­ity: and Nature, with its thou­sand­fold pro­duc­tion and de­struc­tion, but the re­flex of our own in­ward Force, the ‘phant­asy of our Dream’; or what the Earth-Spirit in Faust names it, the liv­ing vis­ible Gar­ment of God:

“ ‘In Be­ing’s floods, in Ac­tion’s storm,
I walk and work, above, be­neath,
Work and weave in end­less mo­tion!
Birth and Death,
An in­fin­ite ocean;
A seiz­ing and giv­ing
The fire of Liv­ing:
’Tis thus at the roar­ing Loom of Time I ply,
And weave for God the Gar­ment thou seest Him by.’

“Of twenty mil­lions that have read and spouted this thun­der-speech of the Erdgeist, are there yet twenty units of us that have learned the mean­ing thereof?

“It was in some such mood, when wear­ied and for­done with these high spec­u­la­tions, that I first came upon the ques­tion of Clothes. Strange enough, it strikes me, is this same fact of there be­ing Tail­ors and Tailored. The Horse I ride has his own whole fell: strip him of the girths and flaps and ex­traneous tags I have fastened round him, and the noble creature is his own semp­ster and weaver and spin­ner; nay his own boot­maker, jew­eller, and man-mil­liner; he bounds free through the val­leys, with a per­en­nial rain­proof court-suit on his body; wherein warmth and eas­i­ness of fit have reached per­fec­tion; nay, the graces also have been con­sidered, and frills and fringes, with gay vari­ety of col­our, featly ap­pen­ded, and ever in the right place, are not want­ing. While I—good Heaven!—have thatched my­self over with the dead fleeces of sheep, the bark of ve­get­ables, the en­trails of worms, the hides of oxen or seals, the felt of furred beasts; and walk abroad a mov­ing Rag-screen, over­heaped with shreds and tat­ters raked from the Char­nel-house of Nature, where they would have rot­ted, to rot on me more slowly! Day after day, I must thatch my­self anew; day after day, this despic­able thatch must lose some film of its thick­ness; some film of it, frayed away by tear and wear, must be brushed-off into the Ash­pit, into the Lay­stall; till by de­grees the whole has been brushed thither, and I, the dust-mak­ing, pat­ent Rag-grinder, get new ma­ter­ial to grind down. O sub­ter-bru­tish! vile! most vile! For have not I too a com­pact all-en­clos­ing Skin, whiter or din­gier? Am I a botched mass of tail­ors’ and cob­blers’ shreds, then; or a tightly-ar­tic­u­lated, ho­mo­gen­eous little Fig­ure, auto­matic, nay alive?

“Strange enough how creatures of the hu­man­kind shut their eyes to plain­est facts; and by the mere in­er­tia of Obli­vion and Stu­pid­ity, live at ease in the midst of Won­ders and Ter­rors. But in­deed man is, and was al­ways, a block­head and dullard; much read­ier to feel and di­gest, than to think and con­sider. Pre­ju­dice, which he pre­tends to hate, is his ab­so­lute law­giver; mere use-and-wont every­where leads him by the nose; thus let but a Rising of the Sun, let but a Creation of the World hap­pen twice, and it ceases to be mar­vel­lous, to be note­worthy, or no­tice­able. Per­haps not once in a life­time does it oc­cur to your or­din­ary biped, of any coun­try or gen­er­a­tion, be he gold-mantled Prince or rus­set-jerkined Peas­ant, that his Vest­ments and his Self are not one and in­di­vis­ible; that he is na­ked, without vest­ments, till he buy or steal such, and by fore­thought sew and but­ton them.

“For my own part, these con­sid­er­a­tions, of our Clothes-thatch, and how, reach­ing in­wards even to our heart of hearts, it tail­or­ises and de­mor­al­ises us, fill me with a cer­tain hor­ror at my­self and man­kind; al­most as one feels at those Dutch Cows, which, dur­ing the wet sea­son, you see graz­ing de­lib­er­ately with jack­ets and pet­ti­coats (of striped sack­ing), in the mead­ows of Gouda. Never­the­less there is some­thing great in the mo­ment when a man first strips him­self of ad­ven­ti­tious wrap­pages; and sees in­deed that he is na­ked, and, as Swift has it, ‘a forked strad­dling an­imal with bandy legs’; yet also a Spirit, and un­ut­ter­able Mys­tery of Mys­ter­ies.”