And Authority, When It Does This Commonly Sets To Work
By One Of These Formulae:
As, in England north of Trent, by the
manifestly false and boastful phrase, 'A thing begun is half ended',
And in the south by 'The Beginning is half the Battle'; but in France
by the words I have attributed to the Proverb-Maker, _'Ce n'est que le
premier pas qui coute'._
By this you may perceive that the Proverb-Maker, like every other
Demagogue, Energumen, and Disturber, dealt largely in metaphor - but
this I need hardly insist upon, for in his vast collection of
published and unpublished works it is amply evident that he took the
silly pride of the half-educated in a constant abuse of metaphor.
There was a sturdy boy at my school who, when the master had carefully
explained to us the nature of metaphor, said that so far as he could
see a metaphor was nothing but a long Greek word for a lie. And
certainly men who know that the mere truth would be distasteful or
tedious commonly have recourse to metaphor, and so do those false men
who desire to acquire a subtle and unjust influence over their
fellows, and chief among them, the Proverb-Maker. For though his name
is lost in the great space of time that has passed since he
flourished, yet his character can be very clearly deduced from the
many literary fragments he has left, and that is found to be the
character of a pusillanimous and ill-bred usurer, wholly lacking in
foresight, in generous enterprise, and chivalrous enthusiasm - in
matters of the Faith a prig or a doubter, in matters of adventure a
poltroon, in matters of Science an ignorant Parrot, and in Letters a
wretchedly bad rhymester, with a vice for alliteration; a wilful liar
(as, for instance, '_The longest way round is the shortest way
home_'), a startling miser (as, _'A penny saved is a penny earned'_),
one ignorant of largesse and human charity (as, '_Waste not, want
not_'), and a shocking boor in the point of honour (as, _'Hard words
break no bones'_ - he never fought, I see, but with a cudgel).
But he had just that touch of slinking humour which the peasants have,
and there is in all he said that exasperating quality for which we
have no name, which certainly is not accuracy, and which is quite the
opposite of judgement, yet which catches the mind as brambles do our
clothes, causing us continually to pause and swear. For he mixes up
unanswerable things with false conclusions, he is perpetually letting
the cat out of the bag and exposing our tricks, putting a colour to
our actions, disturbing us with our own memory, indecently revealing
corners of the soul. He is like those men who say one unpleasant and
rude thing about a friend, and then take refuge from their disloyal
and false action by pleading that this single accusation is true; and
it is perhaps for this abominable logicality of his and for his
malicious cunning that I chiefly hate him: and since he himself
evidently hated the human race, he must not complain if he is hated in
return.
Take, for instance, this phrase that set me writing, _'Ce nest que le
premier pas qui coute'_. It is false. Much after a beginning is
difficult, as everybody knows who has crossed the sea, and as for the
first _step_ a man never so much as remembers it; if there is
difficulty it is in the whole launching of a thing, in the first ten
pages of a book, or the first half-hour of listening to a sermon, or
the first mile of a walk. The first step is undertaken lightly,
pleasantly, and with your soul in the sky; it is the five-hundredth
that counts. But I know, and you know, and he knew (worse luck) that
he was saying a thorny and catching thing when he made up that phrase.
It worries one of set purpose. It is as though one had a voice inside
one saying:
'I know you, you will never begin anything. Look at what you might
have done! Here you are, already twenty-one, and you have not yet
written a dictionary. What will you do for fame? Eh? Nothing: you are
intolerably lazy - and what is worse, it is your fate. Beginnings are
insuperable barriers to you. What about that great work on The
National Debt? What about that little lyric on Winchelsea that you
thought of writing six years ago? Why are the few lines still in your
head and not on paper? Because you can't begin. However, never mind,
you can't help it, it's your one great flaw, and it's fatal. Look at
Jones! Younger than you by half a year, and already on the _Evening
Yankee_ taking bribes from Company Promoters! And where are you?' &c.,
&c. - and so forth.
So this threat about the heavy task of Beginning breeds
discouragement, anger, vexation, irritability, bad style, pomposity
and infinitives split from helm to saddle, and metaphors as mixed as
the Carlton. But it is just true enough to remain fast in the mind,
caught, as it were, by one finger. For all things (you will notice)
are very difficult in their origin, and why, no one can understand.
_Omne Trinum_: they are difficult also in the shock of maturity and in
their ending. Take, for instance, the Life of Man, which is the
Difficulty of Birth, the Difficulty of Death, and the Difficulty of
the Grand Climacteric.
LECTOR. What is the Grand Climacteric?
AUCTOR. I have no time to tell you, for it would lead us into a
discussion on Astrology, and then perhaps to a question of physical
science, and then you would find I was not orthodox, and perhaps
denounce me to the authorities.
I will tell you this much; it is the moment (not the year or the
month, mind you, nor even the hour, but the very second) when a man is
grown up, when he sees things as they are (that is, backwards), and
feels solidly himself.
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