Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 129.djvu/257

Rh close observation to discover the affectation. In these instances, and in many others resembling them, we call an action affected because it springs from a deliberate wish to impress another person, instead of from some unreflecting impulse or mechanical habit. With respect to polite behaviour, it may be added that we look for a certain fixed habit of courtesy in people, and do not, for example, call a lady affected who uniformly adopts a gracious manner to her guests. So that what we mean by an affectation of elegance in behaviour is the conscious endeavour to assume something which does not flow easily from the fixed sources of habit. It follows from this that affected behaviour is very frequently a conscious imitation of something foreign to the person, more especially of something a little above his reach. Children's amusing affectations always show themselves as rather too obvious attempts to don the pretty manners of their elders. Imitation passes into affectation as soon as it becomes a conscious process, and this change seems to take place very early in the child's development. Affectation in adults as well as in children owes much of its ludicrousness to a conscious imitation of the words and actions of a superior age or social rank. It is this simple type of affectation which has so often been ridiculed in fable.

Another department of human life which offers a good field for the discovery of affectation is the region of emotional expression. When, for instance, a child or an adult expresses admiration of some spectacle by a long chain of extravagant superlatives and absurd images, we call the language exaggerated and affected. The expression is felt to be out of proportion to the feeding to be expressed. Again, a person may go on urging, so t6 speak, the presence of a certain emotion on his hearer long after the feeling has had time to relieve itself. A lady is expressing her regret at some little inconsiderateness, and, instead of making her apology in a few words, continues to reiterate her assurance of vexation, much to her companion's discomfort. Another common form of this affectation of sentiment is the habit of flowing over into feeling on every possible occasion. Some men and women seem to affect, for instance, an extraordinary degree of risibility, since the least provocative—something quite microscopic perhaps to others—sends them into long fits of explosive laughter. Then there are the young women who- seem to be afflicted with a plethora of aesthetic sentiment, and are for ever breaking forth into gushing rhapsodies over the scenery last visited and the works of art last inspected. Judging by the ordinary standard of human nature, we are unable to believe in these excessive effusions of sentiment. What strikes one as most significant of affectation in these sentimental persons is that they appear to be equally excited by the most powerful and by the most insignificant stimulants. The very funny youth who sees a comical element in all kinds of things laughs just as uproariously and persistently at what seems the merest trifle as at something which others are able to recognize as really ludicrous. In all these instances the affectation lies in a suspected forcing of a feeling beyond its natural bounds by an act of deliberate volition. It is the doing with a conscious purpose a thing which we expect to be done instinctively by the mere force of feeling itself.

A case of affectation in sentiment which at first sight looks very different from those just specified is that of a person who does not so much seek to increase the visible dimensions of a feeling as abstain from checking a feeling within becoming bounds. Thus we are apt to call a lady affected who makes no visible effort to subdue a feeling of trepidation, or of a fastidious aversion at the sight, or even mention, of certain harmless little creatures. So, too, we call a young woman affected who apparently makes no effort to overcome her natural bashfulness in the presence of strangers. Whenever the term is carefully employed in reference to these cases, it seems to connote a positive as well as a negative element of volition. For we invariably suspect that the person would control the feeling but for a lurking wish to display as much sensibility or sentiment as possible. It is this latent intention to appear sensitive which really justifies the use of the epithet in such an instance; for, strictly speaking, we employ it incorrectly if we imply merely a moral weakness of will. And so we find that in these examples also the essence of affectation is the substitution of a conscious purpose for an instinctive process. The sentiment is deliberately nursed, so to speak, by an artificial expansion of its external expression. It is to be observed that there seems to be a well-recognized distinction between affectation and hypocrisy in the expression of sentiment. If the hollow profession of sentiment is likely to deceive, and also to injure by misleading, we scarcely