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
offuscated 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 into silent graves. If Hamlet and Polonius
were living now, Polonius would have a much better chance of being a
Cabinet Minister, though Hamlet would unquestionably be a much more
intellectual character. What would become of Hamlet? Heaven knows!