ON "CANT."

Waikato Argus, Volume II, Issue 97, 20 February 1897, Page 1 (Supplement)

ON "CANT."

At a mooting of the London Fife Association, Mr Robert Wallace, M.P., do livercd an address on " cant," of which tho following is a synopsis :—Mr Wallace began by quoting the famous observation of Johnson to Boswell, "Clear your rr.iud of cant." Burns, too, was a denouncer of cant, mote forcible even than Johnson, and in "Holy Willie" bad drawn a more powerful portrait of a canting person than was elsewhere to be found in literature, compared with whom Pecksniff and Tartuffe were nebulous and ineffective apparitions. What, then, was cant? Johnson himself defined it as " a corrupt dialect used by beggars and vagabonds"; and as '"a whining pretension to goodness in fervent and affected terms." A writer in Addison's Spectator associated it in particular with a certain Rev. Andrew Cant, of Aberdeen. But assuredly the word was not derived from that professor of the art, but was identical with " chant." The essence of the tiling was chat it was unreal, false, affected. No one, it was said, could be so solemn as Lord Thurlow looked and none could be so miserable ai the normal mendicant praying one "to spare a copper to n poor boy.'' The chant or song of music was of a very different order, as the illusion was intentional and the art often was actually better than the reality. In morals that was impossible and the aim of cant was really " videri cjuain esse." It was safe to assume an ecclesiastic origin for the term and to ascribe it to the ridicule poured by the Cavaliers on the Roundhead?, But there were nobler elements in Pnrltauistn than these strained expressions of feelings and emotions, based as it were on a genuine enthusiasm, But enthusiasm had more of the gourd of Jouah than of the cedar of Lebanon iu its composition ; and the highly-strung, emotional development led inevitably to the galvanized f-eutiment of a later generation. But in the domain of theology time worked its changes and even brought about its revenges; and the president of an important ecclesiastical congress in England had declared of the late Professor Huxley that he was really a very harmless person who had spent his stnmstu in attacking "abandoned positions." If there were such a thing as clerical emt, were not the laity to some extent to blame ? Supply seldom existed without demand, and what was in demand was too often the traditional rather than the real. Out wis not confined to clerical circles, and in that connection it was highly entertaining to hear the comments on each other of professors of rival cmts. The socialist with his airs of omniscience was too often successful. Nor was the legal profession free from the prevalence of that detestable habit. There was surdi a tiling as forensic cant. Somebody hail said he could believe a eood deal to be Archbishop of Canterbury ; and with a thousand guineas on his brief the great advocate found no difficulty in regarding a great Stock Exchange operator as a slandered saint. And Themis was too apt to turn up the whites of her eyes when looking straight would be better. Was there, too, no such thing as Parliamenttary cant ? Speaking from some years' experience of the House of Commons he feared there was, though they were not perhaps so black as they were painted. But no doubt Parliament men—with two exceptions—sadly needed white-washing. If the mo'ion before the House were that two and two made live there would be a marvellous display of ingenuity ami bluebook erudition and brilliant oratory to support the thesis. A little practice unfortunately made men adepts at tha* kind of thing, and the guileless party Nathanael gradually matured into the deft party Mcphistophclcs, and the party man Friday deaf ?ud dumb to all but his party mastci's will. There was another sphere of cant into which he rather shrunk from entering, as he might be profaning the mysteries of the Bona Dca. But he had been informed that this perversion oF human nature sometimes found its way into feminine circles over cups which frequently neither cheered nor inebriated, and that the cup of tea was not invariably one of kindness ; and when the visitor left the effusive manifestations of affection ivere succeeded by the remark, " Thank goodness, that horrid woman has gone at last." There was the cant of affected humility and insincere self-depre-ciation, of which the source was generally a foolish dread of being though*. conceited. Then there wag the cant of intellectual fashion, springing from the fear of being thought a Philistine and often from the temporary dominance of some overrated book. It was something, though the world should never know, to bo cniscious of membership iu that splendid, if scattered, race of truthful creatures who were the salt t>f the earth and the one force on which everything like genuine human progress ultimately depended.