Now it seems to me that in this perpetual chatter about other people, which we all hasten to denounce, but which gives all of us pleasure at some time or other, our delight springs, broadly speaking, from two main sources, one of which is good and the other bad. And according to which predominates gossip may be described as profitable or hurtful to those people concerned in it.
The good side of gossip arises out of that eager, seemingly insatiable curiosity which distinguishes men from the brutes and civilised men from savages. Much of our idlest chatter is secretly leavened by this curiosity, which is in its purest form a noble thing. For what is the pursuit of knowledge but the play of a splendid but entirely irrational inquisitiveness? Most of the higher branches of knowledge, metaphysics, pure mathematics, and so on, serve no practical purpose; sober philosophers and studious mathematicians are in reality the wildest of fellows, for ever pursuing a laborious quest into the absolute Unknown. A great deal of this fine curiosity goes to the making of gossip, which is something more than a casual exchange of news. When we talk over the Smiths and the Browns, not only do we record events, but we examine motives and estimate character, and in a roundabout way we exchange ideas. The greatest historian can do little more; his subject is of more importance, that is all. The difference between Mrs. Jones giving the real reason why the Johnsons left the town so suddenly, and Professor Jones, writing the _Life and Times of Cardinal Richelieu_, is one of degree only; both are undertaking the same kind of work, and probably both are stirred by the same motives. We are all historians without knowing it.
Our gossip and scandal is a grub, which in a hundred years’ time, with the advent of the historian, will become a chrysalis; and in four or five hundred years’ time, the hard shell will be burst open, and there will be seen the winged splendour of epic poetry or romantic drama. Have not all the subjects of history and epic poetry once been nothing more than eager talk in the court or the kitchen? ‘Have you heard the latest?’--the cry went: then followed the pretty little scandal of Helen, wife of Menelaus, and the Troy affair; or perhaps a full account of that queer business of Prince Hamlet at the Court of Denmark; or the whole story of those strange doings at Verona, in which Montague’s son, young Romeo, cut such a figure. The names and stories that were whispered in ante-rooms and bawled out in taverns, centuries ago, will yet provoke future historians, fire poets and romancers yet unborn, and will yet move unknown generations to wild laughter and tears, to anger and pity. How many noble studies have arisen out of this eternal curiosity of men! How many lovely things have flowered from this common soil of Gossip!