to that species which we call the INTELLECTUAL,--that through them are
analyzed and developed human intellect, in various forms and directions.
So that this History, rightly considered, is a kind of humble familiar
Epic, or, if you prefer it, a long Serio-Comedy, upon the Varieties of
English Life in this our Century, set in movement by the intelligences
most prevalent. And where more ordinary and less refined types of the
species round and complete the survey of our passing generation,
they will often suggest, by contrast, the deficiencies which mere
intellectual culture leaves in the human being. Certainly, I have no
spite against intellect and enlightenment. Heaven forbid I should be
such a Goth! I am only the advocate for common-sense and fair play. I
don't think an able man necessarily an angel; but I think if his heart
match his head, and both proceed in the Great March under the divine
Oriflamine, he goes as near to the angel as humanity will permit: if
not, if he has but a penn'orth of heart to a pound of brains, I
say, "Bon jour, mon ange! I see not the starry upward wings, but the
grovelling cloven-hoof." I 'd rather be obfuscated by the Squire of
Hazeldean than en lightened by Randal Leslie. Every man to his taste.
But intellect itself (not in the philosophical but the ordinary sense of
the term) is rarely, if ever, one completed harmonious agency; it is not
one faculty, but a compound of many, some of which are often at war with
each other, and mar the concord of the whole. Few of us but have
some predominant faculty, in itself a strength; but which, usurping
unseasonably dominion over the rest, shares the lot of all tyranny,
however brilliant, and leaves the empire weak against disaffection
within, and invasion from without. Hence, intellect may be perverted
in a man of evil disposition, and sometimes merely wasted in a man of
excellent impulses, for want of the necessary discipline, or of a strong
ruling motive. I doubt if there be one person in the world who has
obtained a high reputation for talent, who has not met somebody much
cleverer than himself, which said somebody has never obtained any
reputation at all! Men like Audley Egerton are constantly seen in the
great positions of life; while men like Harley L'Estrange, who could
have beaten them hollow in anything equally striven for by both, float
away down the stream, and, unless some sudden stimulant arouse their
dreamy energies, vanish out of sight