John Bate

“Judging with rigour every small offence.”—Hayward.

He is a judge passing sentence upon persons and things without justice or charity. Benevolent works in Church or State are failures unless he has been a prominent party in their execution. Personal motives are weighed in the balance and found wanting. Thoughts, ere they are expressed, are even seen and censured. Actions are pronounced false and defective. Appearances are judged as realities, and realities as nonentities. Things straight are seen as crooked, and things beautiful as deformed. Where wiser men perceive order, strength, utility, he perceives confusion, weakness, and uselessness. An enterprise of which the community approve and co-operate in he stands aloof from, and satisfies his unhappy disposition with carping criticisms and ungenerous censures. A neighbour who does not reach his standard of moral excellence in character and action he pronounces lax in principles and delinquent in life. One who does not agree with him in his peculiar views of some disputed doctrine of Christian faith or principle of Church discipline he judges to be little better than a heretic or a heathen.

It seems the instinct of his nature to find fault. He hears no preacher, reads no book, looks upon no work of art, without some expression of disapproval. God, Providence, the Bible, Religion, do not escape his sharp and keen criticisms. His perception is so fine and his taste so exquisite that points of failure which a generous mind would overlook he discerns and speaks of with unfailing fidelity. He would at any time rather rub his nose against a thistle than smell at a flower.

“Mr. Smith is a very excellent man,” said a friend of mine one day in conversation to Mr. Pepper.

“Yes, he may be,” said Pepper in an indifferent way; “but perhaps you don’t know him as well as I do.”

“What a noble gift of Lord Hill to the town of Shenton, that park of one thousand acres!”

“True, it was; but what were his motives in its bestowment? Did he not expect to gain more than its value in certain ways that I need not mention?”

“How sad that the family of Hobson have come into such circumstances.”

“It is only a judgment upon them for the old man’s sins.”

“Have you heard that young Dumas has entered the ministry?”

“Yes, and what for? Only for the loaves and fishes.”“What a kind Providence it was that provided so suitably for widow Bonsor and her family.”

“Providence, indeed! Was it not rather the benevolence of Mr. Lord and his friend Squance?”

“What an admirable picture that is in Mr. Robinson’s window in Bond Street. It is a splendid piece of workmanship. Don’t you think so?”

“A bad sky—very bad! Cold as winter. That trunk of a tree on the right is as stiff and formal as a sign-post. It spoils the whole picture.”

“Then you don’t like it?”

“There are a few good points in it; but it is full of faults.”

“The Rev. Mr. Benson, of Queen’s-road Church, is, in my judgment, an eloquent and powerful preacher. Don’t you think so, Mr. Pepper?”

“Well, as you ask me so pointedly, I am free to say that I think him a very good preacher on the whole. But, you know, he is far from perfect. I have again and again perceived his false logic, his weak metaphors, and his unsound expositions. Still, he is passable, and you may go a long way before you hear a better.”

Thus the censor meets you in every topic which you introduce in conversation.

“All seems infected that the infected spy,
And all seems yellow to the jaundiced eye.”

If you ask reasons for his censures, he cannot give you any, excepting one similar in kind to the following:—

“I do not like you, Doctor Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell;
But I do not like you, Doctor Fell.”

“Canting bigotry and carping criticism,” says Magoon, “are usually the product of obtuse sensibilities and a pusillanimous will. Plutarch tells us of an idle and effeminate Etrurian, who found fault with the manner in which Themistocles had conducted a recent campaign. ‘What,’ said the hero, in reply, ‘have you, too, something to say about war, who are like the fish that has a sword, but no heart?’ He is always the severest censor on the merits of others who has the least worth of his own.”

Again he says, “The Sandwich Islanders murdered Captain Cook, but adored his bones. It is after the same manner that the censorious treat deserving men. They first immolate them in the most savage mode of sacrifice, and then declare the relics of their victims to be sacred. Crabbed members of churches and other societies will quarrel a pastor or leading member away, and with snappish tone will complain of his absence, invidiously comparing him with his successor, and making the change they have caused the occasion of a still keener fight, simply to indulge the unslumbering malice of their unfeeling heart. The rancour with which they would silence one, the envy with which they hurry another into seclusion, and the inexorable bitterness under the corrosion of which a third is brought prematurely to the grave, proves how indiscriminate are their carping comments, and how identical towards all degrees of merit is their infernal hate.”

Pollok speaks of the censor in the following lines:—

“The critics—some, but few,
Were worthy men; and earned renown which had
Immortal roots; but most were weak and vile;
And as a cloudy swarm of summer flies,
With angry hum and slender lance, beset
The sides of some huge animal; so did
They buzz about the illustrious man, and fain
With his immortal honour, down the stream
Of fame would have descended; but alas!
The hand of time drove them away: they were
Indeed a simple race of men, who had
One only art, which taught them still to say,
Whate’er was done might have been better done;
And with this art, not ill to learn, they made
A shift to live; but sometimes, too, beneath
The dust they raised, was worth awhile obscured:
And then did envy prophesy and laugh.
O envy! hide thy bosom! hide it deep:
A thousand snakes, with black, envenomed mouths,
Nest there, and hiss, and feed through all thy heart!”

“The manner in which cynical censors of artistic and moral worth proceed is the same in every place and age. In Pope’s time ‘coxcombs’ attempted to ‘vanquish Berkely with a grin,’ and they would fain do the same to-day. ‘Is not this common,’ exclaimed a renowned musician, ‘the least little critic, in reviewing some work of art, will say, pity this and pity that—this should have been attired, that omitted? Yea, with his wiry fiddle-string will he creak out his accursed variations. But let him sit down and compose himself. He sees no improvements in variations then.’”

The fault of which the censorious talker is guilty has been defined as a “compound of many of the worst passions; latent pride, which discovers the mote in a brother’s eye, but hides the beam in our own; malignant envy, which, wounded at the noble talents and superior prosperity of others, transforms them into the objects and food of its malice, if possible obscuring the splendour it is too base to emulate; disguised hatred, which diffuses in its perpetual mutterings the irritable venom of the heart; servile duplicity, which fulsomely praises to the face, and blackens behind the back; shameless levity, which sacrifices the peace and reputation of the absent, merely to give barbarous stings to a jocular conversation: all together forming an aggregate the most desolating on earth, and nearest in character to the malice of hell.”

The censorious talker, with all his criticisms and censures, never does any good, as none heed him but those who do not know him. His criticisms have no influence with the wise and judicious. Though he may swim against the stream of general opinion, he can never turn the stream of general opinion to run with him. Though he may talk contrary to others, he cannot persuade or constrain others to talk as he does. He may dissent in judgment from them, but he cannot bring them over to coincide with him; and it is a good thing for society that it is so. As he talks without wisdom and charity, so he talks to no purpose, excepting to prejudice weak and unwary minds, and degrade himself in the sober judgment of the intelligent and thoughtful.

“Voltaire said that the ‘character of the Frenchman is made up of the tiger and the ape;’ but even such a composition may be turned to some useful account, while the inveterate fault-finder neutralizes, as far as possible, every attempt made by others to do good. To perform any task perfectly to his liking, would be as impossible as to ‘make a portrait of Proteus, or fix the figure of the fleeting air.’ To speak favourably of anybody or anything is a trait of generosity entirely foreign to his nature; from temperament and confirmed habit, he ‘must be cruel only to be kind.’ The only benefit he occasions is achieved contrary to his intent; in his efforts to impede rising merit, he fortifies the energies he would destroy. Said Haydon, ‘Look down upon genius, and he will rise to a giant—attempt to crush him, and he will soar to a god.’”

While the censorious man is most severe in judging others, he is invariably the most ready to repel any animadversions made upon himself; upon the principle well understood in medical circles, that the feeblest bodies are always the most sensitive. No man will so speedily and violently resent a supposed wrong as he who is most accustomed to inflict injuries upon his associates. Not unfrequently is a fool as dangerous to deal with as a knave, and for ever is he more incorrigible.

What an unhappy state of mind is that of the censorious talker! He is always looking with the eyes of jealousy, envy, or malice, to discern something for censure; and something he will discern; true or false, it is of no consequence to him. He proceeds in direct opposition to the Divine injunction, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” “Judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment.” He is like the Pharisees of old, with two bags, one before and the other behind him. In the one before he deposits the faults of other people, and in the one behind he now and then, it may be, deposits the faults of himself. He is devoid of the charity which covereth a multitude of sins, which is the bond of perfectness, which “suffereth long, and is kind, which envieth not, vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, which doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; which beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” This charity has not so much as cast her passing shadow upon the soul of the censor; and did the shadow or body of charity come within the range of his vision, he would not discern either the one or the other, because of the blindness of his heart.

One of the finest expressions in the world is in the seventeenth chapter of Proverbs, “He that covereth a transgression seeketh love; but he that repeateth a matter separateth very friends.” In what a delightful communion with God does that man live who habitually seeketh love! With the same mantle thrown over him from the cross, with the same act of amnesty, by which he hopes to be saved, injuries the most unprovoked, and transgressions the most aggravated are covered in eternal forgetfulness.

On the contrary, the censorious man often separates intimate friends by repeating a matter and digging up forgotten quarrels. The charity which is most divine is that which hides a multitude of faults. It is pure in itself, and labours to promote the peace and happiness of all. If one would be noble, he must be habitual in the cultivation of lofty principle and generous love.

What advantage comes of the uncharitable criticisms and judgments which are passed one upon the other? Is any one the better? Do they not rather result in mutual ill-humour and enmity? Who likes to have his motives called in question? Who can endure with meekness to have himself and his works put through the crucible of a mere mortal, as though that mortal were the Judge of eternal destinies? Let us remember that we are all frail, and as such should exercise towards each other that charity which we hope the Supreme One will exercise towards us.

“Oh what are we,
Frail creatures as we are, that we should sit
In judgment man on man? and what were we,
If the All Merciful should mete to us
With the same rigorous measure wherewithal
Sinner to sinner metes.”