

KIDD’S OWN JOURNAL. 


81 

CONDESCENSION. 
An eagle, towering in his pride of place, | 
Was by a mousing owl hawk’d at, and kill’d. 
SHAKSPEARE. 


_ MONGST THE MIGHTY MASSES OF 
Y THE PEOPLE, it is not to be 
wondered at if some few 
adopt “notions ” that may 
justly be termed singular. J 
have a notion that nothing 
can be more singular than 
the idea “‘ some people’ have 
of Condescension. What a patronising term! 
I have heard, Mr. Editor, that when a 
goose passes under an arch, or through a 
door-way, of whatever altitude, it always 
stoops. This, I suppose, is condescension ; 
and, to say truth, wherever I have seen 
an ostentation of condescension, it has re- 
minded me of geese. 
There is a great deal of fun, and some 
little philosophy, in condescension. The fun 
of it is, that the person condescending must 
first lift himself up to his greatest height, in 
order to show how low he can stoop. [like 
to hear of learned men “ condescending ” to 
the capacities of children—just as if learned 
men had forgotten their A BC, and could 
talk nothing but Greek and Hebrew! Why, 
there is not one among them who does not 
understand Cinderella better than he does 
Sophocles. 
I am no leveller; I am a decided believer 
in the beauty and utility of rank. I also 
like courtesy, affability, and politeness; but 
when the word condescension is mentioned, 
I am always inclined to laugh. When Tony 
Lumpkin, as set forth in the pleasant comedy 
“She Stoops to Conquer,” gives the benefit 
and blessing of his company to the swillers 
of swipes at the public-house, he is very 
condescending: yet I quite sympathise with 
Mrs. Hardeastle in her reprobation of such 
unbecoming familiarity. But when you see 
the party assembled, and hear their con- 
versation, you do not think much of the 
condescension of Tony. Moreover, un- 
happily for Tony’s own dignity, he does not 
seem to be aware of it himself. The party 
would willingly pay him homage, but he 
seems hardly inclined to relish it; he 
wishes to be quite at his ease—which a 
condescending person in such circumstances 
never is. 
Condescension, in its true and most ex- 
quisitely ludicrous state, has a kind of noli 
me tangere air about it. It is like oil on 
water—it never amalgamates with the baser 
fluid. ‘The genuine condescender has a kind 
of elasticity about him, by means of which 
he can presently raise himself up again to 
the natural level of his dignity; like those 
monkeys who, with a kind of hook to the 
Vou. IV.—6. 

end of their tails, can presently spring from 
the ground into a tree or on to a perch. 
Tony Lumpkin’s condescension was a 
thorough down-letting of his dignity—a 
total oblivion of his rank. He could not re- 
sume his dignity at a moment’s notice; he 
not only forgot his own superiority, but 
seemed to wish that others should forget it 
too. This, you observe, is different from 
right-earnest condescension, which aims at 
uniting, for the time, the great and the small, 
the high and the low; and which would shud- 
der, and almost die with mortification, should 
its greatness seem for a moment to be for- 
gotten. Tony Lumpkin, in his condescen- 
sion, if we may so call it, did not so much 
enjoy his greatness as he enjoyed getting 
rid of it; but regular condescension is one 
of the highest luxuries of greatness. 
All greatness is apprehended by com- 
parison; we never feel how great we are 
till we bring our greatness into contact 
with another’s littleness. When Gulliver 
dwelt in England previously to his voyage 
to Lilliput, he was not sensible of his 
greatness of body; but when he dwelt 
among the Lilliputians, he felt himself to 
be a marvellously-great man indeed. Thus 
it is with such as condescend; they come 
from such a height to such a depth, that 
they are wholly astounded at once at their 
own greatness and at others’ littleness. 
The pleasure of condescension is so great, 
that many seek for the enjoyment of it 
whom we should not at first sight think 
likely to have opportunity or room for its 
exercise. In Boswell’s Life of Johnson, 
mention is made of a funeral sermon which 
had been preached for the wife or widow of 
some cheesemonger in Tooley-street, or Ber- 
mondsey ; in which, amongst other laudatory 
topics, it was recorded, to the honor of the 
deceased, that she was remarkable for her 
condescension to her inferiors. On which 
Dr. Johnson remarked, that “there might 
be some little difficulty in ascertaining who 
her inferiors were.” ‘The doctor was more 
obtuse of perception than was the cheese- 
monger’s wife, who had no difficulty whatever 
in ascertaining the point. 
Condescension is a luxury, the enjoyment 
of which is happily not confined to any one 
gradation of society. Every goose is tall 
enough to stoop. There is no condition in 
which a man may not have some fear of de- 
gradation and down-letting of his dignity, 
or in which he may not show some gracious 
condescension to his inferiors. And all the 
beauty of his arrangement is owing to what 
some people may think a defect, viz.—the un- 
detinedness of dignity, and that ad libitum 
which suffers so many to place themselves as 
they will or can, aided by the various points 
of comparison; so that though there may 


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