The other day one of those convertible1 familiars of the Easy Chair, who
"Change and pass and come again,"
looked in upon it, after some months' absence, with the effect of having aged2 considerably3 in the interval4. But this was only his latest avatar; he was no older, as he was no younger, than before; to support a fresh character, he had to put on an appropriate aspect, and having, at former interviews, been a poet, a novelist, a philosopher, a reformer, a moralist, he was now merely looking the part of a veteran observer, of a psychologist grown gray in divining the character of others from his own consciousness.
"Have you ever noticed," he began, "that the first things we get stiff in, as we advance in life, are our tastes? We suppose that it is our joints6 which feel the premonitions of age; and that because we no longer wish to dance or play ball or sprint7 in college races we are in the earliest stage of that sapless condition when the hinges of the body grind dryly upon one another, and we lose a good inch of our stature8, through shrinkage, though the spine9 still holds us steadfastly10 upright."
"Well, isn't that so?" the Easy Chair asked, tranquilly11.
"It may be so, or it may not be so," the veteran observer replied. "Ultimately, I dare say, it is so. But what I wish to enforce is the fact that before you begin to feel the faintest sense of stiffening13 joints you are allowing yourself to fall into that voluntary senescence which I call getting stiff in the tastes. It is something that I think we ought to guard ourselves against as a sort of mental sclerosis which must end fatally long before we have reached the patriarchal age which that unbelieving believer Metchnikoff says we can attain14 if we fight off physical sclerosis. He can only negatively teach us how to do this, but I maintain we can have each of us in our power the remedy against stiffening tastes."
"I don't see how," the Easy Chair said, more to provoke the sage15 to explanation than to express dissent16.
"I will teach you how," he said, "if you will allow me to make it a personal matter, and use you in illustration."
"Why not use yourself?"
"Because that would be egotistical, and the prime ingredient of my specific against getting stiff in the tastes is that spiritual grace which is the very antidote17, the very antithesis18 of egotism. Up to a certain point, a certain time, we are usefully employed in cultivating our tastes, in refining them, and in defining them. We cannot be too strenuous20 in defining them; and, as long as we are young, the catholicity of youth will preserve us from a bigoted21 narrowness. In ?sthetic matters—and I imagine we both understand that we are dealing22 with these—the youngest youth has no tastes; it has merely appetites. All is fish that comes to its net; if anything, it prefers the gaudier23 of the finny tribes; it is only when it becomes sophisticated that its appetites turn into tastes, and it begins to appreciate the flavor of that diseased but pearl-bearing species of oyster24 which we call genius, because we have no accurate name for it. With the appreciation25 of this flavor comes the overpowering desire for it, the incessant26 and limitless search for it. To the desire for it whole literatures owe their continued existence, since, except for the universal genius-hunger of youth, the classics of almost all languages would have perished long ago. When indiscriminate and omnivorous27 youth has explored those vast and mostly lifeless seas, it has found that the diseased oyster which bears the pearls is the rarest object in nature. But having once formed the taste for it, youth will have no other flavor, and it is at this moment that its danger of hardening into premature28 age begins. The conceit29 of having recognized genius takes the form of a bigoted denial of its existence save in the instances recognized. This conceit does not admit the possibility of error or omission30 in the search, and it does not allow that the diseased oyster can transmit its pearl-bearing qualities and its peculiar31 flavors; so that the attitude of aging youth, in the stiffening of its tastes, is one of rejection32 toward all new bivalves, or, not to be tediously metaphorical33, books."
The veteran observer fell silent at this point, and the Easy Chair seized the occasion to remark: "Yes, there is something in what you say. But this stiffening of the tastes, this sclerosis of the mind, is hardly an infectious disease——"
"Ah, but it is infectious," the veteran observer exclaimed, rousing himself, "infectious as far as the victim can possibly make it so. He wishes nothing so much as to impart his opinions in all their rigidity34 to everybody else. Take your own case, for instance——"
"No, we would rather not," the Easy Chair interposed.
"But you must make the sacrifice," the veteran observer persisted. "You will allow that you are extremely opinionated?"
"Not at all."
"Well, then, that you are devoutly35 conscientious36 in the tenure37 of your ?sthetic beliefs?"
"Something like that, yes."
"And you cannot deny that in times past you have tried your best to make others think with you?"
"It was our duty."
"Well, let it pass for that. It amounted to an effort to make your mental sclerosis infectious, and it was all the worse because, in you, the stiffening of the tastes had taken the form of aversions rather than preferences. You did not so much wish your readers to like your favorite authors as to hate all the others. At the time when there was a fad38 for making lists of The Hundred Best Authors, I always wondered that you didn't put forth39 some such schedule."
"We had the notion of doing something of the kind," the Easy Chair confessed, "but we could not think of more than ten or a dozen really first-rate authors, and if we had begun to compile a list of the best authors we should have had to leave out most of their works. Nearly all the classics would have gone by the board. What havoc40 we should have made with the British poets! The Elizabethan dramatists would mostly have fallen under the ban of our negation41, to a play, if not to a man. Chaucer, but for a few poems, is impossible; Spenser's poetry is generally duller than the Presidents' messages before Mr. Roosevelt's time; Milton is a trial of the spirit in three-fourths of his verse; Wordsworth is only not so bad as Byron, who thought him so much worse; Shakespeare himself, when he is reverently42 supposed not to be Shakespeare, is reading for martyrs43; Dante's science and politics outweigh44 his poetry a thousandfold, and so on through the whole catalogue. Among the novelists——"
"No, don't begin on the novelists! Every one knows your heresies45 there, and would like to burn you along with the romances which I've no doubt you would still commit to the flames. I see you are the Bourbon of criticism; you have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. But why don't you turn your adamantine immutability46 to some practical account, and give the world a list of The Hundred Worst Books?"
"Because a hundred books out of the worst would be a drop out of the sea; there would remain an immeasurable welter of badness, of which we are now happily ignorant, and from which we are safe, as long as our minds are not turned to it by examples."
"Ah," our visitor said, "I see that you are afraid to confess yourself the popular failure as a critic which you are. You are afraid that if you made a list of The Hundred Worst Books you would send the classes to buying them in the most expensive binding47, and the masses to taking them out of all the public libraries."
"There is something in what you say," the Easy Chair confessed. "Our popular failure as a critic is notorious; it cannot be denied. The stamp of our disapproval48 at one time gave a whole order of fiction a currency that was not less than torrential. The flood of romantic novels which passed over the land, and which is still to be traced in the tatters of the rag-doll heroes and heroines caught in the memories of readers along its course, was undoubtedly49 the effect of our adverse50 criticism. No, we could not in conscience compile and publish a list of The Hundred Worst Books; it would be contrary, for the reasons you give, to public morals."
"And don't you think," the observer said, with a Socratic subtlety51 that betrayed itself in his gleaming eye, in the joyous52 hope of seeing his victim fall into the pit that his own admissions had digged for him, "and don't you think that it would also bring to you the unpleasant consciousness of having stiffened53 in your tastes?"
"It might up to a certain point," we consented. "But we should prefer to call it confirmed in our convictions. Wherever we have liked or disliked in literature it has been upon grounds hardly distinguishable from moral grounds. Bad art is a vice54; untruth to nature is the eighth of the seven deadly sins; a false school in literature is a seminary of crime. We are speaking largely, of course——"
"It certainly sounds rather tall," our friend sarcastically55 noted56, "and it sounds very familiar."
"Yes," we went on, "all the ascertained57 veracities58 are immutable59. One holds to them, or, rather, they hold to one, with an indissoluble tenacity60. But convictions are in the region of character and are of remote origin. In their safety one indulges one's self in expectations, in tolerances61, and these rather increase with the lapse62 of time. We should say that your theory of the stiffening tastes is applicable to the earlier rather than the later middle life. We should say that the tastes if they stiffen12 at the one period limber at the other; their forbidding rigidity is succeeded by an acquiescent63 suppleness65. One is aware of an involuntary hospitality toward a good many authors whom one would once have turned destitute66 from the door, or with a dole67 of Organized Charity meal-tickets at the best. But in that maturer time one hesitates, and possibly ends by asking the stranger in, especially if he is young, or even if he is merely new, and setting before him the cold potato of a qualified68 approval. One says to him: 'You know I don't think you are the real thing quite, but taking you on your own ground you are not so bad. Come, you shall have a night's lodging69 at least, and if you improve, if you show a tendency to change in the right direction, there is no telling but you may be allowed to stay the week. But you must not presume; you must not take this frosty welcome for an effect of fire from the hearth70 where we sit with our chosen friends.' Ten to one the stranger does not like this sort of talk, and goes his way—the wrong way. But, at any rate, one has shown an open mind, a liberal spirit; one has proved that one has not stiffened in one's tastes; that one can make hopeful allowances in hopeful cases."
"Such as?" the observer insinuated71.
"Such as do not fit the point exactly. Very likely the case may be that of an old or elderly author. It has been only within a year or two that we have formed the taste for an English writer, no longer living, save in his charming books. James Payn was a favorite with many in the middle Victorian period, but it is proof of the flexibility72 of our tastes that we have only just come to him. After shunning73 Anthony Trollope for fifty years, we came to him, almost as with a rush, long after our half-century was past. Now, James Payn is the solace74 of our autumnal equinox, and Anthony Trollope we read with a constancy and a recurrence75 surpassed only by our devotion to the truth as it is in the fiction of the Divine Jane; and Jane Austen herself was not an idol76 of our first or even our second youth, but became the cult19 of a time when if our tastes had stiffened we could have cared only for the most modern of the naturalists77, and those preferably of the Russian and Spanish schools. A signal proof of their continued suppleness came but the other day when we acquainted ourselves with the work of the English novelist, Mr. Percy White, and it was the more signal because we perceived that he had formed himself upon a method of Thackeray's, which recalled that master, as the occasional aberrations78 of Payn and Trollope recall a manner of him. But it is Thackeray's most artistic79 method which Mr. White recalls in his studies of scamps and snobs80; he allows them, as Thackeray allows Barry Lyndon and the rest, to tell their own stories, and in their unconsciousness of their own natures he finds play for an irony81 as keen and graphic82 as anything in fiction. He deals with the actual English world, and the pleasure he gave us was such as to make us resolve to return to Thackeray's vision of his own contemporaneous English world at the first opportunity. We have not done so yet; but after we have fortified83 ourselves with a course of Scott and Dickens, we are confident of being able to bear up under the heaviest-handed satire84 of Vanity Fair. As for The Luck of Barry Lyndon and The Yellowplush Papers, and such like, they have never ceased to have their prime delight for us. But their proportion is quite large enough to survive from any author for any reader; as we are often saying, it is only in bits that authors survive; their resurrection is not by the whole body, but here and there a perfecter fragment. Most of our present likes and dislikes are of the period when you say people begin to stiffen in their tastes. We could count the authors by the score who have become our favorites in that period, and those we have dropped are almost as many. It is not necessary to say who they all are, but we may remark that we still read, and read, and read again the poetry of Keats, and that we no longer read the poetry of Alexander Smith. But it is through the growth of the truly great upon his mature perception that the aging reader finds novel excellences85 in them. It was only the other day that we picked up Hawthorne's Scarlet86 Letter, and realized in it, from a chance page or two, a sardonic87 quality of insurpassable subtlety and reach. This was something quite new to us in it. We had known the terrible pathos88 of the story, its immeasurable tragedy, but that deadly, quiet, pitiless, freezing irony of a witness holding himself aloof89 from its course, and losing, for that page or two, the moralist in the mere5 observer, was a revelation that had come to that time of life in us when you think the tastes stiffen and one refuses new pleasures because they are new."
Our visitor yawned visibly, audibly. "And what is all this you have been saying? You have made yourself out an extraordinary example of what may be done by guarding against the stiffening of the tastes after the end of second youth. But have you proved that there is no such danger? Or was your idea simply to celebrate yourself? At moments I fancied something like that."
We owned the stroke with an indulgent smile. "No, not exactly that. The truth is we have been very much interested by your notion—if it was yours, which is not altogether probable—and we have been turning its light upon our own experience, in what we should not so much call self-celebration as self-exploitation. One uses one's self as the stuff for knowledge of others, or for the solution of any given problem. There is no other way of getting at the answers to the questions."
"And what is your conclusion as to my notion, if it is mine?" the veteran observer asked, with superiority.
"That there is nothing in it. The fact is that the tastes are never so tolerant, so liberal, so generous, so supple64 as they are at that time of life when they begin, according to your notion, to stiffen, to harden, to contract. We have in this very period formed a new taste—or taken a new lease of an old one—for reading history, which had been dormant90 all through our first and second youth. We expect to see the time when we shall read the Elizabethan dramatists with avidity. We may not improbably find a delight in statistics; there must be a hidden charm in them. We may even form a relish91 for the vagaries92 of pseudo-psychology——"
At this point we perceived the veteran observer had vanished and that we were talking to ourselves.
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1
convertible
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| adj.可改变的，可交换，同意义的；n.有活动摺篷的汽车 | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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5
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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6
joints
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| 接头( joint的名词复数 )； 关节； 公共场所（尤指价格低廉的饮食和娱乐场所） （非正式）； 一块烤肉 （英式英语） | |
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7
sprint
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| n.短距离赛跑；vi. 奋力而跑，冲刺；vt.全速跑过 | |
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8
stature
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| n.（高度）水平，（高度）境界，身高，身材 | |
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spine
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| n.脊柱，脊椎；(动植物的)刺；书脊 | |
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10
steadfastly
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| adv.踏实地，不变地；岿然；坚定不渝 | |
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tranquilly
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| adv. 宁静地 | |
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12
stiffen
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| v.(使)硬，(使)变挺，(使)变僵硬 | |
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13
stiffening
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| n. (使衣服等)变硬的材料, 硬化 动词stiffen的现在分词形式 | |
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14
attain
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| vt.达到，获得，完成 | |
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15
sage
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| n.圣人，哲人；adj.贤明的，明智的 | |
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16
dissent
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| n./v.不同意，持异议 | |
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17
antidote
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| n.解毒药，解毒剂 | |
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18
antithesis
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| n.对立；相对 | |
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19
cult
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| n.异教，邪教；时尚，狂热的崇拜 | |
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20
strenuous
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| adj.奋发的，使劲的；紧张的；热烈的，狂热的 | |
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bigoted
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| adj.固执己见的，心胸狭窄的 | |
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dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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gaudier
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| adj.花哨的，俗气的( gaudy的比较级 ) | |
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24
oyster
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| n.牡蛎；沉默寡言的人 | |
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appreciation
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| n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨 | |
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26
incessant
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| adj.不停的，连续的 | |
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omnivorous
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| adj.杂食的 | |
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premature
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| adj.比预期时间早的；不成熟的，仓促的 | |
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conceit
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| n.自负，自高自大 | |
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omission
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| n.省略，删节；遗漏或省略的事物，冗长 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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rejection
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| n.拒绝，被拒，抛弃，被弃 | |
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metaphorical
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| a.隐喻的，比喻的 | |
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rigidity
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| adj.钢性，坚硬 | |
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devoutly
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| adv.虔诚地，虔敬地，衷心地 | |
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conscientious
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| adj.审慎正直的，认真的，本着良心的 | |
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tenure
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| n.终身职位；任期；(土地)保有权，保有期 | |
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fad
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| n.时尚；一时流行的狂热；一时的爱好 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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havoc
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| n.大破坏，浩劫，大混乱，大杂乱 | |
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41
negation
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| n.否定；否认 | |
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42
reverently
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| adv.虔诚地 | |
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43
martyrs
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| n.martyr的复数形式；烈士( martyr的名词复数 )；殉道者；殉教者；乞怜者（向人诉苦以博取同情） | |
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44
outweigh
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| vt.比...更重，...更重要 | |
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heresies
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| n.异端邪说，异教( heresy的名词复数 ) | |
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immutability
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| n.不变(性) | |
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47
binding
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| 有约束力的，有效的，应遵守的 | |
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48
disapproval
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| n.反对，不赞成 | |
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49
undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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50
adverse
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| adj.不利的；有害的；敌对的，不友好的 | |
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51
subtlety
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| n.微妙，敏锐，精巧；微妙之处，细微的区别 | |
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52
joyous
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| adj.充满快乐的；令人高兴的 | |
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53
stiffened
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| 加强的 | |
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54
vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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55
sarcastically
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| adv.挖苦地，讽刺地 | |
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56
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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57
ascertained
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| v.弄清，确定，查明( ascertain的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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58
veracities
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| n.诚实，真实( veracity的名词复数 ) | |
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59
immutable
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| adj.不可改变的，永恒的 | |
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60
tenacity
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| n.坚韧 | |
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61
tolerances
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| n.宽容( tolerance的名词复数 )；容忍；忍耐力；偏差 | |
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62
lapse
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| n.过失，流逝，失效，抛弃信仰，间隔；vi.堕落，停止，失效，流逝；vt.使失效 | |
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63
acquiescent
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| adj.默许的，默认的 | |
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64
supple
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| adj.柔软的，易弯的，逢迎的，顺从的，灵活的；vt.使柔软，使柔顺，使顺从；vi.变柔软，变柔顺 | |
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65
suppleness
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| 柔软； 灵活； 易弯曲； 顺从 | |
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66
destitute
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| adj.缺乏的；穷困的 | |
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67
dole
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| n.救济，（失业）救济金；vt.（out）发放，发给 | |
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68
qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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69
lodging
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| n.寄宿，住所；(大学生的)校外宿舍 | |
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70
hearth
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| n.壁炉炉床，壁炉地面 | |
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71
insinuated
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| v.暗示( insinuate的过去式和过去分词 )；巧妙或迂回地潜入；（使）缓慢进入；慢慢伸入 | |
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flexibility
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| n.柔韧性，弹性，（光的）折射性，灵活性 | |
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73
shunning
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| v.避开，回避，避免( shun的现在分词 ) | |
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74
solace
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| n.安慰；v.使快乐；vt.安慰(物)，缓和 | |
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75
recurrence
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| n.复发，反复，重现 | |
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76
idol
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| n.偶像，红人，宠儿 | |
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77
naturalists
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| n.博物学家( naturalist的名词复数 )；（文学艺术的）自然主义者 | |
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78
aberrations
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| n.偏差( aberration的名词复数 )；差错；脱离常规；心理失常 | |
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79
artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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80
snobs
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| （谄上傲下的）势利小人( snob的名词复数 )； 自高自大者，自命不凡者 | |
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81
irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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82
graphic
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| adj.生动的，形象的，绘画的，文字的，图表的 | |
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83
fortified
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| adj. 加强的 | |
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84
satire
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| n.讽刺，讽刺文学，讽刺作品 | |
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85
excellences
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| n.卓越( excellence的名词复数 )；（只用于所修饰的名词后）杰出的；卓越的；出类拔萃的 | |
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86
scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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87
sardonic
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| adj.嘲笑的，冷笑的，讥讽的 | |
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88
pathos
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| n.哀婉，悲怆 | |
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89
aloof
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| adj.远离的；冷淡的，漠不关心的 | |
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90
dormant
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| adj.暂停活动的；休眠的；潜伏的 | |
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91
relish
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| n.滋味，享受，爱好，调味品；vt.加调味料，享受，品味；vi.有滋味 | |
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92
vagaries
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| n.奇想( vagary的名词复数 )；异想天开；异常行为；难以预测的情况 | |
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