To Thomas Archer Hirst   Friday night 29th Dec. 1855

Friday night 29^th Dec. 1855

My dear Tom

Your letter¹ reached me on Wednesday morning after my return from a hunt after lodgings,² and caused me to forget, during its perusal, the drizzle and the mud which had made my journey miserable. I mean to rest my head tonight, and while so doing to sing for my own amusement a lark-song in response to the noble organ tone of your letter. I am a miserable sinner Tom, I know; and deserved damnation in some form or other long ago. Those people who call me vain, conceited, and pretentious are quite right – and their tongues would refuse to utter an adjective base enough to depict me truly. I am proud, false, parsimonious, selfish, and I covet me neighbour’s wife when she is handsome. There is no bit of rascality of which I am not capable; and now, as in all similar cases, when I have become a little exalted in life, my vices shew themselves in magnified proportions. The world will gradually become disgusted with me, and before long you will find me an object of general abhorrence. I thought of getting married this year, but the fact is my reputation stinks to such a degree that no girl will take me. I once thought there was some power for good within me, and indeed there is, but the love of evil is so predominant in my constitution as not only to neutralize the good to the last unit, but also to leave a clean balance of scoundrelhood which cannot fail to gladden the heart of Mephisopholes³ when he makes it the subject of his infernal contemplation. It is not weakness merely that afflicts me; that feebleness of character which cannot save even good men’s heads from becoming giddy upon sudden exaltation. It is a root of positive badness which sprouts into baneful luxuriance, and renders my every deed unwholesome. ‘Conceited – vain, pretentious!’ Little do the sweet lips know which uttered these simple adjectives the depth of the infernal within me. It is like calling Niagara⁴ neat – John Haas courteous – or Helen of Troy⁵ pretty – all which adjectives require to be multiplied by ∞ to give the correct mathematical expression of the fact. Now, there is a general confession for you – but not the confession of a smitten penitent, who from his scarred and humble marrow-bones asks God’s pardon, but the confession of a reprobate who rejoices in his sin, and is far too much of a devil to entertain the slightest aspiration for the godlike and the good.

Why are these people who undertake to give me a character lenient to me? Partly, doubtless, because they have not seen enough of me of late years. I will venture to say that those who made use of the aforesaid adjectives have had only casual intercourse with me; for if they had waited to fathom my depths of depravity their sense of truth must have overcome even their tenderness, and prevented them from dealing in such descriptive sugar plums as ‘conceited, vain, pretentious.’ Nay I doubt not if they cast their glance back a little they will call to mind the partial exhibition of these fulsome qualities in days long gone by. I remember being once virtually charged by a Queenwood man⁶ of warm imagination with a betrayal of confidence, with deliberately yielding of secrets confided to me in private correspondence. My reply, God pardon me, was that of Scipio,⁷ who, when accused, tore the documents which would have cleared him; and this at a time when some pounds I had borrowed from you was the only plank between me and pecuniary perdition. Three days after I came to Queenwood from Germany⁸ I had the pleasure of hearing my manner pronounced ‘effusive’ in a tone which caused me to smell like a dunghill in my own nostrils. I have been accused of crimes against the laws of honour, and religion, at the moment when my accuser was anxious to take the guilty one to his heart. I have been simply called impertinent and presumptuous, when, in reality, I deserved kicking for my impertinence and presumption. The fact is, Tom, you are not aware of half the folly that I have been guilty of in my day; nor do you know a tenth part of that forbearing love with which my delinquencies have been interpreted by my friends at Queenwood. Their hypotheses change concerning me as my position changes; but they are always marked with the same gentleness. At present the most reasonable and tender hypothesis is that I am puffed up – my sins being thus gently accounted for by persons who are far too noble to deny that were they in my position they would probably incur a slight danger in this direction.

I have been lately reading the life of Goethe.⁹ That was the greatest scoundrel that ever lived, he beats me hollow Tom; though I, as aforesaid, am a rascal of no mean order. The following proportion holds good also: –

Wolfgang : John : : Weimar : Queenwood.¹⁰ The leniency of the last term to me is only to be paralleled by the kindness of the third term towards Goethe. They only called him a conceited upstart – a parvenu¹¹ – a fop – and in after years, imperious and unmannerly. In these gentle terms did they express themselves regarding this most diabolical villain. Really Tom, as our friend Emerson says, there is more sweetness in the world¹² than we give it credit for; a truth which receives its most brilliant illustration, on different scales, at Queenwood and in Weimar.

And now Tom a sweet good night: it is near 12 o clock and I grow sleepy. I will weigh your hints upon my paper and adopt them when I can. The paper sent to the Royal Society¹³ is of a totally different character, and it was the idea that the one I sent to you was not of sufficient importance to be sent to the R. S. which suggested to me the thought of sending it to the Phil. Mag.¹⁴ – again good night Tom. Good night to my censors – sweet be their dreams and may the lap of fate be filled with Christmas puddings through long coming years for their especial jollification

As ever | John.

RI MS JT/1/T/615