XI.

mity to

is more positive, is it heightened by contrast CHAPTER with pain. "We see in needleworks and embroideries," says Bacon, "it is more pleasing to by proxihave a lively work upon a sad and solemn pain. ground, than to have a dark and melancholy work upon a lightsome ground: judge therefore of the pleasure of the heart by the pleasure of the eye." The most dazzling light which a painter can produce on his canvas is not the result of the most dazzling colour. A comparatively dull tint, if duly surrounded and contrasted with darker hues will make a brighter blaze in a picture than it is possible to get from a lavish diffusion of the purest whites, and yellows the most radiant.

sure is pro

the agita

So far, the derivation of pleasure from pain, How pleawhether it be produced by the stoppage of ache duced in or enhanced by its proximity, is a fact of daily occurrence and observation. We are less acquainted with an equally certain fact that pain is oftentimes destroyed in the agitation which attends it. It is notorious, that small ills are worse to bear than great ones. The great ones produce an agitation which is a source at times of positive pleasure. Says Nestor, in the play:

The herd hath more annoyance by the brize

Than by the tiger.

Thus, again, wounds are not felt in the shock of battle, and Livingstone, the African mis

ΧΙ.

Painless

death.

CHAPTER sionary, assures us that when he was being crunched in the jaws of a lion he had no pain. The lion shook him as a terrier does a rat, and broke his bones; but the shake brought on a sort of dreaminess in which there was no sense of pain nor of terror, though the victim remained fully conscious of all that was happening. Thereupon Livingstone speculates a little on the painlessness of death that comes to animals by violence. Sir Benjamin Brodie tells the story of a fox which goes to corroborate Livingstone's idea. The fox was being pursued by the hounds and evidently was near his end, when a rabbit crossed his path. His own trouble was so little felt amid the agitation of the chase, that, forgetting his danger, Reynard turned aside to catch the rabbit, and he was immediately afterwards seized by the hounds with the rabbit in his mouth. Livingstone, however, might have made his speculation more general. It is a wellviolence of ascertained fact that some modes of violent death are not only painless but happy. Sir Benjamin Brodie gives us to understand that hanging and drowning are not unpleasant. Men have been known to hang themselves temporarily for the enjoyment of it; and, absorbed in this dangerous amusement, have been so unfortunate as to kill themselves outright. People who have been recovered from drowning declare that they have been in heaven, and lament their restoration to

The pleaviolence

sure of

even the

death.

XI.

life as a hardship. All violent deaths are not CHAPTER thus painless; neither is the absence of pain in every case a pleasure; but examples such as these of violence quenching the torment we expect it to produce, and even turning it to the opposite sensation, illustrate to some extent the effect of any agitation in yielding pleasure, and may prepare us to find in mere pain the gleams of pleasure.

See the fakeer, as he swings on his iron,

See the thin hermit that starves in the wild;
Think ye no pleasures the penance environ,

And hope the sole bliss by which pain is beguiled?

No! in the kingdoms those spirits are reaching,
Vain are our words the emotions to tell;
Vain the distinctions our senses are teaching,

For pain has its heaven and pleasure its hell.

"Vain are our words," says Lord Houghton, in these vigorous lines;* but despite the contra

*Lady Georgiana Fullerton has in one of her novels, Too Strange not to be True, expressed a similar thought. She makes Madame de Moldau say, "I wonder if suffering softens or hardens the heart." Colonel D'Auban replies, "I suppose that, like the heat of the sun in different substances, it hardens some and softens others. But the more I live, the more clearly I see how difficult it is to talk of suffering and happiness without saying what sounds like nonsense." M. de Moldau: "I do not understand you." Colonel D'Auban :

I

"What I mean is this; that
there is very little happiness or
suffering irrespective of the tem-
per of the mind or the physical
constitution of individuals.
have seen so many instances of
persons miserable in the pos-
session of what would be gene-
rally considered as happiness, and
others so happy in the midst of
acknowledged evils such as
sickness, want, and neglect-
that my ideas have quite changed
since I thought prosperity and
happiness, and adversity and
unhappiness, were synonymous
terms."

The pleasure of martyrdom.

CHAPTER dictions of language, the fact holds good XI. that there are bitter thrills of joy and happy throes of pain in all experience beneath the

A change of

surable.

moon.

It is but a part of the same law that a change pain is plea of pain may be a source of pleasure. A new trouble is not always an increase of trouble: it may be welcome as a distraction and diversion from the old. Animals in their hunger have been known to eat themselves-even animals like the hare, which are not carnivorous, and which thus do a double violence to their nature, first in eating flesh at all, next in eating their own flesh. And men so constantly seek for pleasure, through the encounter of some pain, that a considerable number of critics have determined to define the pleasure which art yields as nothing else than the pleasure of surmounting difficulty, or of seeing it surmounted. It is, of course, impossible to maintain this theory, the logical result of which would be that the greatest artists known to fame are Cornelius Ketel, who painted with the brush between his toes, and Miss Biffin, who painted by means of her mouth. But it is worthy of note as illustrating some of pain in the the modes in which from pain we look for pleasure. Nay, in the height of our joys we sometimes count pain a relief, would fain acidulate the sweetness of our lives, ruffle their calm current with storm, and soften their sunshine

And we

long for

midst of

pleasure.

with shadow.

Massinger, in the Virgin Martyr, CHAPTER

makes Diocletian cry out to the gods in the excess of his happiness :

Queen of Fate!

Imperious Fortune! mix some light disaster

With my so many joys, to season them

And give them sweeter relish. I'm girt round
With true felicity.

And it is excessively difficult to describe the
state of mind which is thus produced. Lord
Houghton speaks of the vanity of our words
when we attempt to describe it; and Lady
Georgiana Fullerton of the nonsense we seem
to be uttering. It is even so. For we know
not how to describe pleasure and pain, except
as opposites one of the other; and yet we
find ourselves on occasion dismissing our joys
as a torment, and reaching to pain as a re-
lief. "For pain has its heaven, and pleasure
its hell."

XI.

familiar

Perhaps the most familiar form of oxymel The most or bitter-sweet is that which is known to us as form of the luxury of grief. We find that

Men who wear grief long

Will get to wear it as a hat, aside,

With a flower stuck in it.

One of our novelists has recently pointed out that, whereas it is recorded of Henry Beauclerc that after the death of his only son he was never again seen to smile, and so he gets the credit of inconsolable affection, it is also recorded of him,

pleasant

pain-the

luxury of

grief.