Hence I still accept friendly relations with Pepin, for he has much private amiability, and though he probably thinks of me as a man of slender talents, without rapidity of coup d’oeil and with no compensatory penetration, he meets me very cordially, and would not, I am sure, willingly pain me in conversation by crudely declaring his low estimate of my capacity.  Yet I have often known him to insult my betters and contribute (perhaps unreflectingly) to encourage injurious conceptions of them—­but that was done in the course of his professional writing, and the public conscience still leaves such writing nearly on the level of the Merry-Andrew’s dress, which permits an impudent deportment and extraordinary gambols to one who in his ordinary clothing shows himself the decent father of a family.

XV.

DISEASES OF SMALL AUTHORSHIP

Particular callings, it is known, encourage particular diseases.  There is a painter’s colic:  the Sheffield grinder falls a victim to the inhalation of steel dust:  clergymen so often have a certain kind of sore throat that this otherwise secular ailment gets named after them.  And perhaps, if we were to inquire, we should find a similar relation between certain moral ailments and these various occupations, though here in the case of clergymen there would be specific differences:  the poor curate, equally with the rector, is liable to clergyman’s sore throat, but he would probably be found free from the chronic moral ailments encouraged by the possession of glebe and those higher chances of preferment which follow on having a good position already.  On the other hand, the poor curate might have severe attacks of calculating expectancy concerning parishioners’ turkeys, cheeses, and fat geese, or of uneasy rivalry for the donations of clerical charities.

Authors are so miscellaneous a class that their personified diseases, physical and moral, might include the whole procession of human disorders, led by dyspepsia and ending in madness—­the awful Dumb Show of a world-historic tragedy.  Take a large enough area of human life and all comedy melts into tragedy, like the Fool’s part by the side of Lear.  The chief scenes get filled with erring heroes, guileful usurpers, persecuted discoverers, dying deliverers:  everywhere the protagonist has a part pregnant with doom.  The comedy sinks to an accessory, and if there are loud laughs they seem a convulsive transition from sobs; or if the comedy is touched with a gentle lovingness, the panoramic scene is one where

        “Sadness is a kind of mirth
  So mingled as if mirth did make us sad
  And sadness merry."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Two Noble Kinsmen.]