And in the
real life of the sentimentalist it is the same. He is under the wretched
necessity of keeping up, at least in public, the character he has
assumed, till he at last reaches that last shift of bankrupt
self-respect, to play the hypocrite with himself. Lamartine, after
passing round the hat in Europe and America, takes to his bed from
wounded pride when the French Senate votes him a subsidy, and sheds tears
of humiliation. Ideally, he resents it; in practical coin, he will accept
the shame without a wry face.
George Sand, speaking of Rousseau's "Confessions," says that an
autobiographer always makes himself the hero of his own novel, and cannot
help idealizing, even if he would. But the weak point of all
sentimentalists is that they always have been, and always continue under
every conceivable circumstance to be, their own ideals, whether they are
writing their own lives or no. Rousseau opens his book with the
statement: "I am not made like any of those I have seen; I venture to
believe myself unlike any that exists. If I am not worth more, at least I
am different." O exquisite cunning of self-flattery! It is this very
imagined difference that makes us worth more in our own foolish sight.
For while all men are apt to think, or to persuade themselves that they
think, all other men their accomplices in vice or weakness, they are not
difficult of belief that they are singular in any quality or talent on
which they hug themselves.
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