Literary Statesmen and Others; Essays on Men Seen from a Distance (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897 Excerpt: ...he is laughable to any one who does not care for the texture of his mind, whatever his expression; for music to him is really only a background for his sensibility. "How can I talk of music without giving the history of my sensations?" This is, doubtless, maudlin to the sturdy masculine mind, this religion of sensibility, this fondling of one's sentimental susceptibilities, and it certainly has no grandeur and no morality. "Sensibility," Coleridge says, "that is, a constitutional quickness of sympathy with pain and pleasure, and a keen sense of the gratifications that accompany social intercourse, mutual endearments, and reciprocal preferences... sensibility is not even a sure pledge of a good heart, though among the most common meanings of that many-meaning and too commonly misapplied expression." It leads, he goes on, to effeminate sensitiveness by making us alive to trifling misfortunes. This is just, with all its severity, and the lover of Stendhal has only to smile, and quote Rousseau, with Beyle himself: "I must admit that I am a great booby; for I get all my pleasure in being sad." Naturally enough, ennui plays a great part in such a nature, thin, intelligent, sensitive, immoral, self-indulgent. It lies behind his art of love and his love of art. "Ennui, this great motive power of intelligent people," he says; and again: "I was much surprised when, studying painting out of pure ennui, I found it a balm for cruel sorrows." He really loves it. "Ennui the god whom I implore, the powerful god who reigns in the hall of the Frangais, the only power in the world that can cause the Laharpes to be thrown into the fire." Hence his love for Madame du Deffand, the great expert in ennui, and f...