Extravagance

“ You, Antiphon, would seem to suggest that happiness consists of luxury and extravagance; ”

“ Elinor made no answer. Her thoughts were silently fixed on the irreparable injury which too early an independence and its consequent habits of idleness, dissipation, and luxury, had made in the mind, the character, the happiness, of a man who, to every advantage of person and talents, united a disposition naturally open and honest, and a feeling, affectionate temper. The world had made him extravagant and vain—Extravagance and vanity had made him cold-hearted and selfish. ”

“ His comedies offer elaborate and subtle—even tender—pictures of human character in its eternal types, lively sketches of social follies and literary extravagances, and broad appeals to the ordinary sources of vulgar merriment. Light and perspicuous in construction, he is master of the delicate play of irony, the penetrating force of wit, and the expansive gaiety of frolicsome fun. ”

“ But the very same extravagances and showy paradoxes, when caught up by inferior spirits, presently lose their garb, not only of beauty, but of decency, and show themselves in the unpleasing bareness of error. ”

“ They were the extravagances and confusions that always attend a revival, whether in art or religion. And by the general public, who can never get but one idea, and never more than one side of that idea, into its head at a time, these extravagances and side-shoots are taken for the very heart of the movement. ”

“ But the humourous, the extravagant, the wildly picturesque,—would these have given a true and complete portrait of the man? Does it make any great difference what kind of clothes he wore, or how many blunders of taste and tact he made, even tragic blunders like his inability to refrain from telling the world all about his domestic unhappiness,—does all this count for much when we look back upon the wonders which his imagination [93] wrought in fiction, and upon the generous fruits which his heart brought forth in life? ”

“ Ah! poor dupe, will you never slip out of the web of the master juggler?—never learn that, as soon as the irrecoverable years have woven their blue glory between to-day and us, these passing hours shall glitter and draw us, as the wildest romance and the homes of beauty and poetry? How difficult to deal erect with them! The events they bring, their trade, entertainments, and gossip, their urgent work, all throw dust in the eyes and distract attention. ”

“ Extricating themselves from the tasks of the world, the world revenges itself by exposing, at every turn, the folly of these incomplete, pedantic, useless, ghostly creatures. The scholar will feel, that the richest romance, — the noblest fiction that was ever woven, — the heart and soul of beauty, — lies enclosed in human life. ”

“ While the ear is charmed with the style, and the fancy riots on the luxuriance of description, which so intimately blend the charms of virtue and the fascinations of vice, they are not readily distinguished by all. ”

“ Ought not the profane intruders to be astonished, stupefied, almost oppressed [191] by all this, while the curious, alluring spectacle was augmenting their wonderment and secret pain?
A curious, most curious, yet alluring spectacle! Not one of the ladies of the "Palace" or of the initiated resembled each other; not one was dressed alike; there was not one whose jewels resembled another's; not one whose beauty was equal to another's; not one whose ugliness was similar to another's ugliness. ”

“ All elegance of mind and manners is banished. A theatrical, bombastic, windy phraseology of heroic virtue, blended and mingled up with a worse dissoluteness, and joined to a murderous and savage ferocity, forms the tone and idiom of their language and their manners. ”

“ From the society of such characters, who seem to consider the noble productions of superior intellect, the fine and vigorous flights of fancy, the brilliant effusions of a sublime imagination, and the refined feelings of the heart, as fancied conceits or wild deliriums, those who examine them by a better standard than that of fashion or common taste, fly with delight. ”

“ But it is sufficient for the serious, unprejudiced observer to come once and look, to return and gaze, in order to recognise that he is before a masterpiece—the effigy of a human being appearing as in life from a flowing garment, symbol of the art of the romancer, the robe of imagination with which he enveloped his analyses. ”

“ But those indulged have always been made to feel that they were secure only as long as their performances excited jaded appetites as a novelty. If dwarfs and monstrosities staled; if dancing girls palled; if gladiators wearied; if there were no new games invented—then bring in a poet or artist—some queer fellow who had discovered something that he called truth or beauty, and let him amuse. ”

“ The attraction of my small charges was a constant joy, leading me to wonder afresh at the vanity of my original fears, the distaste I had begun by entertaining for the probable gray prose of my office. There was to be no gray prose, it appeared, and no long grind; so how could work not be charming that presented itself as daily beauty? ”

“ In the turmoil of real life, with its sordid materialism, there are many men and women who dwell with delight on some noble life clothed round with the glamour of ancient time, and presenting itself to the mind in the garb of gorgeous pomp and splendid pageantry, who, while trying to achieve some great emprise themselves, will dream of the men of old time, who have soared aloft on the pinions of glorious fame. ”

“ There was in him some antique touch of refinement and temperament which, in all his evil days and deeds and moments of shy nobility, could find its way into the souls of men with whom the world had had an awkward hour. ”

“ He paused, first, because it must be owned that his practice was restricted, and a fee gratified the vanity natural to unappreciated talent, and had the charm of novelty, which is sweet to human nature itself. ”

“ They ignore that spiritual turmoil, those eruptions of suppressed feeling which give to style a tragic accent, and that vagabond fancy, those exquisite and sublime reveries which outside of life's vulgarities reveal a new universe. ”

“ In all these changes of character, how much of the real man will be left behind? Will there be one morsel of honest flesh, when all the lacquer of paint is washed off? And was it—oh, was it for this you first adventured out on the wide ocean of life? ”

“ Handling these, and states and situations equally hideous, fantastic, and grotesque, with extraordinary clearness and precision both of thought and of language, considering the often misty nature of the subjects he treats of, and pouring upon the vivid pictures he conjures up the brightness of his wit and the exuberant gaiety and grace of his fancy, he succeeds in creating scenes, situations, and characters which seem verily instinct with real life. ”

“ The whole spirit of the scene is noble and unselfish: lands, luxuries, and quiet are forsworn; and a preference, be it only of passion, be it a humor of the times mixed of equal parts of honor and vanity, be it [Pg 129] alloyed with disappointments and galled ambitions, is yet virile enough to stake its own aggrandizement rather than let inglorious caution strangle the chance of supremacy. ”

“ The charm for me—a charm sometimes pleasurable, but sometimes also painful, like the imperious necessity which we sometimes feel to see again and examine, seemingly uselessly, some horrible evil—the charm, I mean the involuntary compulsion of attention, has often been as great in following the vicissitudes of a mere artistic item, like the Carolingian stories or the bucolic element, as it has been in looking on at the dissolution of moral and social elements. ”

“ Then the excitement over the Great Unknown reached fever heat, and the art of the novelist gained its absolute ascendency, an ascendency unbroken in our day, and likely to remain unbroken for many years to come. ”

“ A small number of scriptural and legendary stories lend themselves quite particularly to the development of such beautiful accessory, which soon becomes the paramount interest, and vests the whole with a totally new character: a romantic, childish charm, the charm of the improbable taken for granted, of the freedom to invent whatever one would like to see but cannot, the charm of the fairy story. ”

“ As an imaginative realist, he showed those who were stumbling from one wild eccentricity to another to thrill them, that they themselves were wilder, stranger, far more thrilling than anything in the world—or out of it. ”

“ Some more active gallants made of a finer molde, by devising how to win their Mistrises favours, and how to blaze and blanche their passions, with aeglogues, songs, and sonnets, in pitifull verse or miserable prose, and most for a fashion: is not Love then a wagg, that makes men so wanton? ”

“ But the extravagant, more or less unconventional things of any time are often the best signs of its inner life, since in them we see a few men boldly, if not prudently, stepping over the bounds of custom, and sometimes even of decency, and giving expression to what is actively present, though often suppressed or concealed, in the lives of all. ”

“ And will the gross creature rise and confound us with greater wonders, and fight with her claws to the end? At least for our lessening romance shall be left man's wayward soul and his wicked imaginings. ”

“ There are presumptuous ones, whom the first breath of the zephyr despoils of their plumage and discolours; others, more reserved and less frivolous, keep their glamour and prestige for a much longer time. ”

“ The ecstacies it produces, and which astound the stranger by their vehemence and delicacy—by a frenzy that has rules, and a passion that glows but does not burn, arises from this, that the performance is not witnessed but shared. ”

“ Amid the variety of literary pieces which have in all ages been ushered into the world, few, if any, afford greater satisfaction than those that treat of man. To persons of a speculative nature and elegant taste, whose bosoms glow with benevolence, such disquisitions are peculiarly delightful. ”

“ As might be supposed, his taste in fiction was for forcible delineation and robust humor. The flavor of strong, healthy individuality was what attracted him; for rarities, niceties, and abnormalities of mental organisation he cared nothing. ”

“ It is indeed the primary purpose of the tale to show its little hero, jostled as he is in the miserable crowd, preserved everywhere from the vice of its pollution by an exquisite delicacy of natural sentiment which clings to him under every disadvantage. ”

“ He admired the grand style in living, not so much as a matter of display, because presumably it stood for all sorts of mysterious refinements for which he possessed the yearning without the initiation. ”

“ Had he worn spectacles—large, round, moon-shaped ones as he should have done—he would have seen life steadily and seen it whole, but a kind of rather pathetic vanity—although he was not really vain—prevented him from buying spectacles. ”

“ If the play is not intended to show by degrees how a brave, superstitious, and ambitious man of honourable character can be led astray by occult warnings of the inevitableness of destiny, by the taunts of a contemptuous wife, and by the spurrings of a vaulting ambition, then it was written to small purpose. ”

“ Character, humor, poignant pathos, and the sad grotesque conjunctions of old and new civilizations are expressed through the medium of a style that has distinction and strikes a note of rare personality. ”

“ A few insipid characters in high life, whose internal vacancy leads them to seek amusement in public places, and whose insensibility prevents them from finding it, have probably brought this appearance of a want of all enjoyment into fashion. ”

“ You wish to see me moving in elegant society, joining with youthful vigour in those scenes of amusement and worldly gaiety in which you think I ought to find delight, and attribute my objections to such amusements to a morbid antipathy to the elegancies of life, and an assumption of ascetic rigour ill suited to the character of one who has enjoyed my advantages. ”

“ When a great thought animated her, or some stirring emotion communicated its subtle enthusiam to her features, there was an irresistible charm that insensibly attracted all who came within reach of her influence. ”

“ Gesticulation, mimicry, acting, sensationalism, slang and weepy stories follow, until the ferment of excitement is developed to a high pitch, and droves flock down the sawdust trail to be made over on the instant into sanctified beings. ”

“ "Wherever there is human nature, there is drama. ”

“ Fancy, awakened by the view of the former, instantly gives shape and features to men we have never seen.—We hear them speak, and see them act; the passions are excited, the mind amused; the houses, the rivers, the fields around supplying the absence of the poet and historian, and restoring with new energy the whole scene to the mind. ”

“ There's going to be a reaction from this reign of the bizarre. We've gone long enough to harems and odalisques for our styles and our manners and presently we are going to see the blossoming of old-fashioned beauty. ”

“ They flourished in times full of spirit and lustihood, when men enjoyed life roughly, but heartily and vigorously; times wild and picturesque, which have furnished poetry with its richest materials, and the drama with its most attractive variety of characters and manners. ”

“ The plastic elegance of gesture becomes downright absurdity. She who tripped with such fairy-like lightness, or that other who floated with swan-like dignity, now seems to move without purpose, and, stranger still, without grace. ”