The noble sister of Poplicola,
The moon of Rome; chaste as the isicle
That’s curdled by the frost from purest snow,
And hangs on Dian’s temple.
Coriolanus, act 5. sc. 3.
Thus it is, that the respect and esteem, which the great, the powerful, the opulent, naturally<69>command, are in some measure communicated to their dress, to their manners, and to all their connections: and it is this communication of properties, which, prevailing even over the natural taste of beauty, helps to give currency to what is called the fashion.
By means of the same easiness of communication, every bad quality in an enemy is spread upon all his connections. The sentence pronounced against Ravaillac16 for the assassination of Henry IV. of France, ordains, that the house in which he was born should be razed to the ground, and that no other building should ever be erected on that spot. Enmity will extend passion to objects still less connected. The Swiss suffer no peacocks to live, because the Duke of Austria, their ancient enemy, wears a peacock’s tail in his crest. A relation more slight and transitory than that of enmity, may have the same effect: thus the bearer of bad tidings becomes an object of aversion:
Fellow, begone; I cannot brook thy sight;
This news hath made thee a most ugly man.
King John, act 3. sc. 1.
Yet the first bringer of unwelcome news
Hath but a losing office: and his tongue
Sounds ever after, as a sullen bell
Remember’d, tolling a departed friend.
Second part, Henry IV. act 1. sc. 3.17<70>
In borrowing thus properties from one object to bestow them on another, it is not any object indifferently that will answer. The object from which properties are borrowed, must be such as to warm the mind and enliven the imagination. Thus the beauty of a mistress, which inflames the imagination, is readily communicated to a glove, as above mentioned; but the greatest beauty a glove is susceptible of, touches the mind so little, as to be entirely dropped in passing from it to the owner. In general it may be observed, that any dress upon a fine woman is becoming; but that ornaments upon one who is homely, must be elegant indeed to have any remarkable effect in mending her appearance.*
The emotions produced as above may properly be termed secondary, being occasioned either by antecedent emotions or antecedent passions, which in that respect may be termed primary. And to complete the present theory, I must add, that a secondary emotion may readily swell into a passion<71> for the accessory object, provided the accessory be a proper object for desire. Thus it happens that one passion is often productive of another: examples are without number; the sole difficulty is a proper choice. I begin with self-love, and the power it hath to generate love to children. Every man, beside making part of a greater system, like a comet, a planet, or satellite only, hath a less system of his own, in the centre of which he represents the sun darting his fire and heat all around; especially upon his nearest connections: the connection between a man and his children, fundamentally that of cause and effect, becomes, by the addition of other circumstances, the completest that can be among individuals; and therefore self-love, the most vigorous of all passions, is readily expanded upon children. The secondary emotion they produce by means of their connection, is sufficiently strong to move desire even from the beginning; and the new passion swells by degrees, till it rival in some measure self-love, the primary passion. To demonstrate the truth of this theory, I urge the following argument. Remorse for betraying a friend, or murdering an enemy in cold blood, makes a man even hate himself: in that state, he is not conscious of affection to his children, but rather of disgust or ill will. What cause can be assigned for that change, other than the hatred he has to himself, which is expanded upon his children? And if<72> so, may we not with equal reason derive from self-love, some part at least of the affection a man generally has to them?
The affection a man bears to his blood-relations, depends partly on the same principle: self-love is also expanded upon them; and the communicated passion is more or less vigorous in proportion to the degree of connection. Nor doth self-love rest here: it is, by the force of connection, communicated even to things inanimate: and hence the affection a man bears to his property, and to every thing he calls his own.
Friendship, less vigorous than self-love, is, for that reason, less apt to communicate itself to the friend’s children, or other relations. Instances however are not wanting of such communicated passion, arising from friendship when it is strong. Friendship may go higher in the matrimonial state than in any other condition; and Otway, in Venice preserv’d, takes advantage of that circumstance: in the scene where Belvidera sues to her father for pardon, she is represented as pleading her mother’s merit, and the resemblance she bore to her mother:
Priuli. My daughter!
Belvidera.
Yes, your daughter, by a mother
Virtuous and noble, faithful to your honour,
Obedient to your will, kind to your wishes,
Dear to your arms. By all the joys she gave you<73>
When in her blooming years she was your treasure,
Look kindly on me; in my face behold
The lineaments of hers y’have kiss’d so often,
Pleading the cause of your poor cast-off child.
And again,
Belvidera.
Lay me, I beg you, lay me
By the dear ashes of my tender mother:
She would have pitied me, had fate yet spar’d her.
Act 5. sc. 1.
This explains why any meritorious action or any illustrious qualification in my son or my friend, is apt to make me overvalue myself: if I value my friend’s wife or son upon account of their connection with him, it is still more natural that I should value myself upon account of my connection with him.
Friendship, or any other social affection, may, by changing the object, produce opposite effects. Pity, by interesting us strongly for the person in distress, must of consequence inflame our resentment against the author of the distress: for, in general, the affection we have for any man, generates in us good-will to his friends, and ill-will to his enemies. Shakespear shows great art in the funeral oration pronounced by Antony over the body of Caesar. He first endeavours to excite grief in the hearers, by dwelling upon the deplorable loss of so great a man: this passion, in-<74>teresting them strongly in Caesar’s fate, could not fail to produce a lively sense of the treachery and cruelty of the conspirators; an infallible method to inflame the resentment of the people beyond all bounds:
Antony. If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.
You all do know this mantle; I remember
The first time ever Caesar put it on,
’Twas on a summer’s evening in his tent,
That day he overcame the Nervii—
Look! in this place ran Cassius’s dagger through;—
See what a rent the envious Casca made.—
Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabb’d;
And as he pluck’d his cursed steel away,
Mark how the blood of Caesar follow’d it!
As rushing out of doors, to be resolv’d,
If Brutus so unkindly knock’d, or no:
For Brutus,