The Recreations of A Country Parson | Page 7

away. It is an
unhappy thing, but it is the fact with many men, that if you do not seize

your fancies when they come to you, and preserve them upon the
written page, you lose them altogether. They go away, and never come
back. A little while ago I pulled out a drawer in this table whereon I
write; and I took out of it a sheet of paper, on which there are written
down various subjects for essays. Several are marked with a large cross;
these are the essays which are beyond the reach of fate: they are written
and printed. Several others have no cross; these are the subjects of
essays which are yet to be written. But upon four of those subjects I
look at once with interest and sorrow. I remember when I wrote down
their names, what a vast amount, as I fancied, I had to say about them:
and all experience failed to make me feel that unless those thoughts
were seized and chronicled at once, they would go away and never
come back again. How rich the subjects appeared to me, I well
remember! Now they are lifeless, stupid things, of which it is
impossible to make anything. Before, they were like a hive, buzzing
with millions of bees. Now they are like the empty hive, when the life
and stir and bustle of the bees are gone. O friendly reader, what a loss it
was to you, that the writer did not at once sit down and sketch out his
essays, Concerning Things Slowly Learnt; and Concerning Growing
Old! And two other subjects of even greater value were, Concerning
the Practical Effect of Illogical Reasons, and An Estimate of the
Practical Influence of False Assertions. How the hive was buzzing
when these titles were written down: but now I really hardly remember
anything of what I meant to say, and what I remember appears
wretched stuff. The effervescence has gone from the champagne; it is
flat and dead. Still, it is possible that these subjects may recover their
interest; and the author hereby gives notice that he reserves the right of
producing an essay upon each of them. Let no one else infringe his
vested claims.
There is one respect in which I have often thought that there is a
curious absence of analogy between the moral and the material worlds.
You are in a great excitement about something or other; you are
immensely interested in reaching some aim; you are extremely angry
and ferocious at some piece of conduct; let us suppose. Well, the result
is that you cannot take a sound, clear, temperate view of the
circumstances; you cannot see the case rightly; you actually do see it
very wrongly. You wait till a week or a month passes; till some

distance, in short, intervenes between you and the matter; and then your
excitement, your fever, your wrath, have gone down, as the matter has
lost its freshness; and now you see the case calmly, you see it very
differently indeed from the fashion in which you saw it first; you
conclude that now you see it rightly. One can think temperately now of
the atrocities of the mutineers in India, It does riot now quicken your
pulse to think of them. You have not now the burning desire you once
felt, to take a Sepoy by the throat and cut him to pieces with a
cat-of-nine-tails. The common consent of mankind has decided that you
have now attained the right view. I ask, is it certain that in all cases the
second thought is the best;--is the right thought, as well as the calmest
thought? Would it be just to say (which would be the material analogy)
that you have the best view of some great rocky island when you have
sailed away from it till it has turned to a blue cloud on the horizon;
rather than when its granite and heather are full in view, close at hand?
I am not sure that in every case the calmer thought is the right thought,
the distant view the right view. You have come to think indifferently of
the personal injury, of the act of foul cruelty and falsehood, which once
roused you to flaming indignation. Are you thinking rightly too? Or has
not just such an illusion been practised upon your mental view, as is
played upon your bodily eye when looking over ten miles of sea upon
Staffa? You do not see the basaltic columns now; but that is because
you see wrongly. You do not burn at the remembrance of the wicked lie,
the crafty misrepresentation, the cruel blow; but perhaps you ought to
do so. And now (to speak of less grave matters) when all I