The Path to Rome | Page 4

sturdy boy
at my school who, when the master had carefully explained to us the
nature of metaphor, said that so far as he could see a metaphor was
nothing but a long Greek word for a lie. And certainly men who know
that the mere truth would be distasteful or tedious commonly have
recourse to metaphor, and so do those false men who desire to acquire a
subtle and unjust influence over their fellows, and chief among them,
the Proverb-Maker. For though his name is lost in the great space of
time that has passed since he flourished, yet his character can be very
clearly deduced from the many literary fragments he has left, and that is
found to be the character of a pusillanimous and ill-bred usurer, wholly
lacking in foresight, in generous enterprise, and chivalrous
enthusiasm--in matters of the Faith a prig or a doubter, in matters of
adventure a poltroon, in matters of Science an ignorant Parrot, and in
Letters a wretchedly bad rhymester, with a vice for alliteration; a wilful
liar (as, for instance, '_The longest way round is the shortest way
home_'), a startling miser (as, _'A penny saved is a penny earned'_},
one ignorant of largesse and human charity (as, '_Waste not, want
not_'), and a shocking boor in the point of honour (as, _'Hard words
break no bones'_--he never fought, I see, but with a cudgel).
But he had just that touch of slinking humour which the peasants have,
and there is in all he said that exasperating quality for which we have
no name, which certainly is not accuracy, and which is quite the
opposite of judgement, yet which catches the mind as brambles do our
clothes, causing us continually to pause and swear. For he mixes up

unanswerable things with false conclusions, he is perpetually letting the
cat out of the bag and exposing our tricks, putting a colour to our
actions, disturbing us with our own memory, indecently revealing
corners of the soul. He is like those men who say one unpleasant and
rude thing about a friend, and then take refuge from their disloyal and
false action by pleading that this single accusation is true; and it is
perhaps for this abominable logicality of his and for his malicious
cunning that I chiefly hate him: and since he himself evidently hated
the human race, he must not complain if he is hated in return.
Take, for instance, this phrase that set me writing, _'Ce nest que le
premier pas qui coûte'_. It is false. Much after a beginning is difficult,
as everybody knows who has crossed the sea, and as for the first step a
man never so much as remembers it; if there is difficulty it is in the
whole launching of a thing, in the first ten pages of a book, or the first
half-hour of listening to a sermon, or the first mile of a walk. The first
step is undertaken lightly, pleasantly, and with your soul in the sky; it is
the five-hundredth that counts. But I know, and you know, and he knew
(worse luck) that he was saying a thorny and catching thing when he
made up that phrase. It worries one of set purpose. It is as though one
had a voice inside one saying:
'I know you, you will never begin anything. Look at what you might
have done! Here you are, already twenty-one, and you have not yet
written a dictionary. What will you do for fame? Eh? Nothing: you are
intolerably lazy--and what is worse, it is your fate. Beginnings are
insuperable barriers to you. What about that great work on The
National Debt? What about that little lyric on Winchelsea that you
thought of writing six years ago? Why are the few lines still in your
head and not on paper? Because you can't begin. However, never mind,
you can't help it, it's your one great flaw, and it's fatal. Look at Jones!
Younger than you by half a year, and already on the Evening Yankee
taking bribes from Company Promoters! And where are you?' &c.,
&c.--and so forth.
So this threat about the heavy task of Beginning breeds discouragement,
anger, vexation, irritability, bad style, pomposity and infinitives split
from helm to saddle, and metaphors as mixed as the Carlton. But it is
just true enough to remain fast in the mind, caught, as it were, by one
finger. For all things (you will notice) are very difficult in their origin,

and why, no one can understand. _Omne Trinum_: they are difficult
also in the shock of maturity and in their ending. Take, for instance, the
Life of Man, which is the Difficulty of Birth, the Difficulty of Death,
and the Difficulty of the Grand Climacteric.
LECTOR. What is