44. CHAPTER XLIV.
IN WHICH THE LAST THREE WORDS OF THE LAST CHAPTER ARE MADE
THE TEXT OF DISCOURSE, WHICH WILL BE SURE OF RECEIVING MORE OR LESS ATTENTION
FROM THOSE READERS WHO DO NOT SKIP IT.
"QUITE AN ORIGINAL:" A phrase, we fancy, rather oftener used by the young, or the
unlearned, or the untraveled, than by the old, or the well-read, or the man who
has made the grand tour. Certainly, the sense of originality exists at its
highest in an infant, and probably at its lowest in him who has completed the
circle of the sciences.
As for original characters in fiction, a grateful reader will, on meeting with
one, keep the anniversary of that day. True, we sometimes hear of an author who,
at one creation, produces some two or three score such characters; it may be
possible. But they can hardly be original in the sense that Hamlet is, or Don
Quixote, or Milton's Satan. That is to say, they are not, in a thorough sense,
original at all. They are novel, or singular, or striking, or captivating, or
all four at once.
More likely, they are what are called odd characters; but for that, are no more
original, than what is called
an odd genius, in his way, is. But,
if original, whence came they? Or where did the novelist pick them up?
Where does any novelist pick up any character? For the most part, in town, to be
sure. Every great town is a kind of man-show, where the novelist goes for his
stock, just as the agriculturist goes to the cattle-show for his. But in the one
fair, new species of quadrupeds are hardly more rare, than in the other are new
species of characters—that is, original ones. Their rarity may still
the more appear from this, that, while characters, merely singular, imply but
singular forms so to speak, original ones, truly so, imply original instincts.
In short, a due conception of what is to be held for this sort of personage in
fiction would make him almost as much of a prodigy there, as in real history is
a new law-giver, a revolutionizing philosopher, or the founder of a new
religion.
In nearly all the original characters, loosely accounted such in works of
invention, there is discernible something prevailingly local, or of the age;
which circumstance, of itself, would seem to invalidate the claim, judged by the
principles here suggested.
Furthermore, if we consider, what is popularly held to entitle characters in
fiction to being deemed original, is but something, personal—confined
to itself. The character sheds not its characteristic on its surroundings,
whereas, the original character, essentially such, is like a revolving Drummond
light, raying away from itself
all round it—everything
is lit by it, everything starts up to it (mark how it is with Hamlet), so that,
in certain minds, there follows upon the adequate conception of such a
character, an effect, in its way, akin to that which in Genesis attends upon the
beginning of things.
For much the same reason that there is but one planet to one orbit, so can there
be but one such original character to one work of invention. Two would conflict
to chaos. In this view, to say that there are more than one to a book, is good
presumption there is none at all. But for new, singular, striking, odd,
eccentric, and all sorts of entertaining and instructive characters, a good
fiction may be full of them. To produce such characters, an author, beside other
things, must have seen much, and seen through much: to produce but one original
character, he must have had much luck.
There would seem but one point in common between this sort of phenomenon in
fiction and all other sorts: it cannot be born in the author's
imagination—it being as true in literature as in zoology, that all
life is from the egg.
In the endeavor to show, if possible, the impropriety of the phrase, Quite an
Original, as applied by the barber's friends, we have, at unawares, been led
into a dissertation bordering upon the prosy, perhaps upon the smoky. If so, the
best use the smoke can be turned to, will be, by retiring under cover of it, in
good trim as may be, to the story.