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Page 8
One evening, after the Miss Snaps were retired to rest, the count
thus addressed himself to young Wild: "You cannot, I apprehend,
Mr. Wild, be such a stranger to your own great capacity, as to be
surprised when I tell you I have often viewed, with a mixture of
astonishment and concern, your shining qualities confined to a
sphere where they can never reach the eyes of those who would
introduce them properly into the world, and raise you to an
eminence where you may blaze out to the admiration of all men. I
assure you I am pleased with my captivity, when I reflect I am
likely to owe to it an acquaintance, and I hope friendship, with
the greatest genius of my age; and, what is still more, when I
indulge my vanity with a prospect of drawing from obscurity
(pardon the expression) such talents as were, I believe, never
before like to have been buried in it: for I make no question but,
at my discharge from confinement, which will now soon happen, I
shall be able to introduce you into company, where you may reap
the advantage of your superior parts.
"I will bring you acquainted, sir, with those who, as they are
capable of setting a true value on such qualifications, so they
will have it both in their power and inclination to prefer you for
them. Such an introduction is the only advantage you want, without
which your merit might be your misfortune; for those abilities
which would entitle you to honour and profit in a superior station
may render you only obnoxious to danger and disgrace in a lower."
Mr. Wild answered, "Sir, I am not insensible of my obligations to
you, as well for the over-value you have set on my small
abilities, as for the kindness you express in offering to
introduce me among my superiors. I must own my father hath often
persuaded me to push myself into the company of my betters; but,
to say the truth, I have an aukward pride in my nature, which is
better pleased with being at the head of the lowest class than at
the bottom of the highest. Permit me to say, though the idea may
be somewhat coarse, I had rather stand on the summit of a dunghill
than at the bottom of a hill in Paradise. I have always thought it
signifies little into what rank of life I am thrown, provided I
make a great figure therein, and should be as well satisfied with
exerting my talents well at the head of a small party or gang, as
in the command of a mighty army; for I am far from agreeing with
you, that great parts are often lost in a low situation; on the
contrary, I am convinced it is impossible they should be lost. I
have often persuaded myself that there were not fewer than a
thousand in Alexander's troops capable of performing what
Alexander himself did.
"But, because such spirits were not elected or destined to an
imperial command, are we therefore to imagine they came off
without a booty? or that they contented themselves with the share
in common with their comrades? Surely, no. In civil life,
doubtless, the same genius, the same endowments, have often
composed the statesman and the prig, for so we call what the
vulgar name a thief. The same parts, the same actions, often
promote men to the head of superior societies, which raise them to
the head of lower; and where is the essential difference if the
one ends on Tower-hill and the other at Tyburn? Hath the block any
preference to the gallows, or the ax to the halter, but was given
them by the ill-guided judgment of men? You will pardon me,
therefore, if I am not so hastily inflamed with the common outside
of things, nor join the general opinion in preferring one state to
another. A guinea is as valuable in a leathern as in an
embroidered purse; and a cod's head is a cod's head still, whether
in a pewter or a silver dish."
The count replied as follows: "What you have now said doth not
lessen my idea of your capacity, but confirms my opinion of the
ill effect of bad and low company. Can any man doubt whether it is
better to be a great statesman or a common thief? I have often
heard that the devil used to say, where or to whom I know not,
that it was better to reign in Hell than to be a valet-de-chambre
in Heaven, and perhaps he was in the right; but sure, if he had
had the choice of reigning in either, he would have chosen better.
The truth therefore is, that by low conversation we contract a
greater awe for high things than they deserve. We decline great
pursuits not from contempt but despair. The man who prefers the
high road to a more reputable way of making his fortune doth it
because he imagines the one easier than the other; but you
yourself have asserted, and with undoubted truth, that the same
abilities qualify you for undertaking, and the same means will
bring you to your end in both journeys--as in music it is the same
tune, whether you play it in a higher or a lower key. To instance
in some particulars: is it not the same qualification which
enables this man to hire himself as a servant, and to get into the
confidence and secrets of his master in order to rob him, and that
to undertake trusts of the highest nature with a design to break
and betray them? Is it less difficult by false tokens to deceive a
shopkeeper into the delivery of his goods, which you afterwards
run away with, than to impose upon him by outward splendour and
the appearance of fortune into a credit by which you gain and he
loses twenty times as much? Doth it not require more dexterity in
the fingers to draw out a man's purse from his pocket, or to take
a lady's watch from her side, without being perceived of any (an
excellence in which, without flattery, I am persuaded you have no
superior), than to cog a die or to shuffle a pack of cards? Is not
as much art, as many excellent qualities, required to make a
pimping porter at a common bawdy-house as would enable a man to
prostitute his own or his friend's wife or child? Doth it not ask
as good a memory, as nimble an invention, as steady a countenance,
to forswear yourself in Westminster-hall as would furnish out a
complete tool of state, or perhaps a statesman himself? It is
needless to particularize every instance; in all we shall find
that there is a nearer connexion between high and low life than is
generally imagined, and that a highwayman is entitled to more
favour with the great than he usually meets with. If, therefore,
as I think I have proved, the same parts which qualify a man for
eminence in a low sphere, qualify him likewise for eminence in a
higher, sure it can be no doubt in which he would chuse to exert
them. Ambition, without which no one can be a great man, will
immediately instruct him, in your own phrase, to prefer a hill in
Paradise to a dunghill; nay, even fear, a passion the most
repugnant to greatness, will shew him how much more safely he may
indulge himself in the free and full exertion of his mighty
abilities in the higher than in the lower rank; since experience
teaches him that there is a crowd oftener in one year at Tyburn
than on Tower-hill in a century." Mr. Wild with much solemnity
rejoined, "That the same capacity which qualifies a mill-
ken,[Footnote: A housebreaker.] a bridle-cull,[Footnote: A
highwayman.] or a buttock-and-file, [Footnote: A shoplifter. Terms
used in the Cant Dictionary.] to arrive at any degree of eminence
in his profession, would likewise raise a man in what the world
esteem a more honourable calling, I do not deny; nay, in many of
your instances it is evident that more ingenuity, more art, are
necessary to the lower than the higher proficients. If, therefore,
you had only contended that every prig might be a statesman if he
pleased, I had readily agreed to it; but when you conclude that it
is his interest to be so, that ambition would bid him take that
alternative, in a word, that a statesman is greater or happier
than a prig, I must deny my assent. But, in comparing these two
together, we must carefully avoid being misled by the vulgar
erroneous estimation of things, for mankind err in disquisitions
of this nature as physicians do who in considering the operations
of a disease have not a due regard to the age and complexion of
the patient. The same degree of heat which is common in this
constitution may be a fever in that; in the same manner that which
may be riches or honour to me may be poverty or disgrace to
another: for all these things are to be estimated by relation to
the person who possesses them. A booty of L10 looks as great in
the eye of a bridle-cull, and gives as much real happiness to his
fancy, as that of as many thousands to the statesman; and doth not
the former lay out his acquisitions in whores and fiddles with
much greater joy and mirth than the latter in palaces and
pictures? What are the flattery, the false compliments of his gang
to the statesman, when he himself must condemn his own blunders,
and is obliged against his will to give fortune the whole honour
of success? What is the pride resulting from such sham applause,
compared to the secret satisfaction which a prig enjoys in his
mind in reflecting on a well-contrived and well-executed scheme?
Perhaps, indeed, the greater danger is on the prig's side; but
then you must remember that the greater honour is so too. When I
mention honour, I mean that which is paid them by their gang; for
that weak part of the world which is vulgarly called THE WISE see
both in a disadvantageous and disgraceful light; and as the prig
enjoys (and merits too) the greater degree of honour from his
gang, so doth he suffer the less disgrace from the world, who
think his misdeeds, as they call them, sufficiently at last
punished with a halter, which at once puts an end to his pain and
infamy; whereas the other is not only hated in power, but detested
and contemned at the scaffold; and future ages vent their malice
on his fame, while the other sleeps quiet and forgotten. Besides,
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