N O T E B O O K

AN ENGLISH DRUM-EATER.

T H OM A S D E QU INCE Y.

amon OF

CONFE S S ION S OF AN E N G L ISH OP IUM -E A T E R,’ E T C

'. E T C.

BO S T O N

T I C K N O R A N D F I E L D S .

M DCCC LV .

Entered weanling tomofCongress, in the year 1855, by

T I CKN O R A N D F I E L D S

In the Clerk’s 01mmof the D istrict; Court ofthe District ofMassachusetts .

CAMBRID G ES T EBE GT YPRD AND PRINTED BY

T EUBS T ON £119 T OM Y.

CO N T E N T S ,

THREE E MORABLE MURDERS.

Amm ro

IT is impossible to concil iate readers of so satumineand gloomy a class, that they cannot enter with genialsympathy into any ga iety whatever, but, least of all,

when the ga iety he spm s a l ittle into the province ofthe extravagant. In such a case, not to sympathize isnot to understand ; and the playfulness , which is not

relished, becomes flat and insip id, or absolutely withoutmeaning. Fortunately, after all suchchurls havewithdrawn frommy audience in high displeasure , thereremains a large majority who are loud in acknowledging the amusement which they have derived from a

former paper of mine, On Murder cons idered as oneof the Fine A rts 5 at the same time proving the sin

cerity of their praise by one hesitating express ion of

censure. Repeatedly they have suggested to me, that

perhaps the extravagance, though clearly intentiona l,and forming one element in the general gaiety of the

See M a ndamus Essays ; p g 17.

2 THREE MEMORA BLE nuance s.

conception , went too far . I amnot myself of thatOp inion ; and I beg to remind these friendly censors ,tha t it is amongst the direct purposes and efi

‘

orts of thisbagatelle to graze the

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brink of horror, and of all thatwould an actual real ization be most repulsrve . T he

very excess of the extravagance, in fact, by suggestingto the reader continua lly the more aerial ity of the

entire speculation, furnishes the surest means of dis

enchanting him from the horror which might e lsegather upon I ns feel ings

!L et me remind such oh

jectors , once for all, of Dean Swift’s preposal forturning to account the supernomerary infants of thethree kingdoms, which, in those days, both at

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D ublin

and atLondon , were provided for in foundling hospitals ,by cooking and eating them. This was an extrava

ganza , though really bolder andmore coarsely practicalthan mine, which did. not provoke any reproaohes even

to a dignitary of the supreme Irish church ; its own

monstrosity was its excuse ; mere extravagance wasfelt to license and accredit the l ittle j og; d

’esp rit,

precisely as the blank imposs ibil ities of Lilliput, ofLaputa, of the Yahoos , 650, had l icensed those. If,therefore , any man thinks it worth his while to tiltagainst somore a foam-bubble of gaiety as this lectureon the aesthetics of murder, I shelter myself for themoment under the T elamonian shield of the Dean.But, in real ity, my own l ittle paper may plead a

privileged excuse for its extravagance, such as is altogether wanting to the Dean’

s. Nobody can pretend,

for a momen t, on behalf of the Dean , that there is anyordinary and natural tendency in human thoughts ,which could ever turn to inhale as articles of diet ;under any conceivable circumstances , this would be

races ann ou nce nuance s. 3

felt as the most aggravated formof“ cannibalism

cann ibal ism applying itself to the mos t defencelesspart of the species. But, on the other hand, the ten

dency to a critical or msthetic valuation of fires and

murders is universal. If you are summoned to theS pectacle of a great fire, undoubtedly the first impulseis— to ass ist in putting it out. But that field of exf

ertion is very limited, and is soon filled by regularprofess iona l people

,tra ined and equipped for the ser

vice. In the case of a fire which is operating upon

p rivate property, pity for a neighbor’s calamity checksus at first in treating the affair as a. scenic spectacle.But perhaps the fire may be confined to public buildings. And

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in any case, after we have paid our tributeof regret to the ad

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air, cons idere d as a calamity, inevitably, and without restraint, we go on to cons ider itas a stage spectacle . Exclamations ofm H ow grand !howmagnificent ! arise in a sort of rapture from thecrowd. For instance , when. Drury Lane was burneddown in the first decenniumof this century, the fallingin of the roofwas s ignalized by a mimic suicide of theprotecting A pollo that surmounted and creste d the

centre of this roof. The god was s tationary with hislyre

, and seemed looking down. upon the fiery ruinsthat were so rapidly approaching him. Suddenly thesupporting timbers below him gave way ; a convulsive

the billowing flames seemed for a moment tostatue ; and then , as if on some impulse of

despair, the presiding deity appeared not to fall , but tothrow himself into the fiery deluge, for he went down

head foremost ; and in all respects, the descent had

the air of a voluntary act. What followed ? From

every one of the bridges over the river, and from other

4 THREE M EMORABLE munns as.

open areas which commanded the spectacle , therearose a sustained uproar of admiration and sympathy.

Some few years before this event, a prodigious fire

occurre d at Liverpool ; the G orec, a vast pile of warshouses close to one of the docks, was burned to theground. The huge edifice , eight or n ine stories high,and laden withmost combustible goods, many thousandbales of cotton , wheat and oats in thousands of quarters , tar, turpentine, rum, gunpowder, &c ., continuedthroughmany hours of darkness to feed this tremendousfire . To aggravate the calamity, it blew a regular galeof wind ; luckily for the shipping, it blew inland , thatis , to . the eas t ; and all the way down to Warrington ,eighteen miles distant to the eastward, the whole air

was i lluminated by flakes of !

cotton , often saturatedw ith rum, and by what seemed absolute worlds of

blazing S parks , that lighted up a ll thei

upper chambersof the air. All the cattle lying abroad in the fieldsthrough a breadth of eighteen miles , were thrown intoterror and

,agitation . Men, of course , read in this

hurrying overhead of scintillating and blazing vortices ,the annunciation of some gigantic calamity going on inLiverpool ; and the lamentation on that account wasuniversal. But that mood of public sympathy did not

at all interfere to suppress or even to check themomentary bursts of rapturous admiration, as thisarrowy sleet of many-colored fire rode on the W ingsof hurricane , alternately through open depths of air, orthrough dark c louds overhead.Prec isely the same treatment is applied to murders .

After the first tribute of sorrow to those who haveper ished, but, at all events , afte r the personal interestshave been tranquill ized by time, inevitably the scenical

rnass mon omers n eurons. 5

features (what msthctically may be called the comparative advantages) of the severa l murders are re

viewed and valued. One murder is compared withanother ; and the circumstances of superiority, as, forexample , in the incidence and edects of surprise, ofmystery, &c., are collated and appra ised. I, therefore , for my extravagance, c la

im an inevitable and

perpetual ground in the S pontaneous tendenc ies of thehuman mind when left. to itself. But no one willpretend that any corresponding plea can be advancedon behalf of Swift.

pr In this important distinction between myself and theDean , l ies one reasonwhich prompted the pre sentwriting. A second purpose of this paper is, to make the

reader acquainted circumstantially with three memorab le cases of murder, which long ago the voice of

amateurs has crowned with laurel , but esPeciallywith the two earl iest of the three , viz., the immortalWilliams’ murders of 18 12. The act and the actorare each separately in the highest degre e interesting ;and, as forty-two yeamhave elapsed since 1812 , it cannot be suppose d that e ither is known circumstantially tothe men of the current generation .

Never, throughout the annals of universal Christendom, has were indeed been any act of one solitaryinsulated individual , armed with power so appall ingover the hearts of men , as that exterminating murder,by which, during the winter of 18 12, John Williams inone hour, smote two houses with emptiness , exterminated all but two entire households , and asserted his own

supremacy above all the children of Ca in . It would be

absolutely imposs ible adequately to describe the frenzy

of feel ings which , throughout the next fortnight, mas

6 rune s mon omers MURDERS.

tered the popular heart ; themere deliriumof indignan thorror in some , the mere del iriumof pan ic in others.For twelve succeeding days , under some groundlessnotion that the unkn own murderer had quitte d London,the panic which had convulsed the mightymetropolisdiffused itself all over the is land. I was myself at thattime nearly three hundre d miles from London ; butthere , and everywhere, the panic was indescribable.One lady,my next neighbor, whompersonally I kn ew,l i ving at the moment, during the absence of her husband, with a few servants in a. very solitary house,never rested until she had placed eighte en doors (so shetold me , and, indeed, satisfied me by ocular proof), eachsecured by ponderous bolts, and bars , and cha ins , between her own bedroomand any intruder of humanbuild. T o reach her, even in her drawing

wroom, was

like going, as a flag of truce, into a beleaguered fortress at every s ixth step one was stopped by a sort ofportcullis . The panic was not confined to the rich ;women in the humblest ranksmore than once died uponthe spot, fromthe shock attending some susp ic ious at:tempts at intrus ion upon the part of vagrants , meditatingprobably nothing worse than a robbery, but whom the

poor women,misled by the London newspapers,had

fancied to be the dreadful London murderer. Meantime, this solitdry artist, that rested in the centre ofLondon, self-supported by his own consc ious grandeur,as a domestic A ttila, or scourge of G od 5

’ this man,that walked in darkness, and relied upon murder (asafterwards transpired) for bread, for clothes , for promotion in l ife,was silently preparing an efl

‘

ectual answer

to the pub lic journals ; and on the twelfth day afte r hisinaugural murder, he advertised his presence in L on e

rune s a ss e s s ors us urious , 7

don , and published to allmen the absurdity‘

of ascribingto himany ruralizing propens ities , by striking a secondblow, and accomplishing a second family extermination .

Somewhat lightened was the p rovincial pan ic by thisproof that the murderer had not condescended to sneakinto the country, or to abandon for a moment, underany motive of caution or fear, the great metropolitanmetro station of gigantic crime, seated for ever on theThames. In fact, the great artist disdained a provincialreputation ; and he ,

musthavefelt, as a c ase of ludicrousdisproportion , the contrast between a country town orvillage

, on the one hand, and, on the other, a work

more lasting thambms E as tman 39e st—a,murder suchin qual ity as anymurder that he would condescend toown fora work turned out fromhis own stadio,

J Coleridge , whom I saw some months after theseterrific murders, told me , that, for his part, though atthe time re sident in London, he had not shared in thepreva iling pan ic ; himthey effected only as a philosopher, and threw himinto a profound reverie upon the

tremendous power which is la id open in amoment toanyman who can reconcile himself to the abjurationof all conscientious restraints, if, at the same time,thoroughly without fear. N ot sharing in the publicpanic

,however, Coleridge did not cons ider that pan ic

at all unreasonable ; for, as he said most truly in thatvastmetropolis there are many thousands ofhouseholds,composed exclusively of women and children ; manyother thousands there are who necessarily confide theirsafety, in the long evenings, to the discretion of a youngservant girl ; and if she suffers herself to be beguiledby the pre tence of a message fromhermother, sister,or sweetheart, into opening the door, there, in one

8 races mon omeric nuance s.

second of time, goes to wreck the security of the house.However, at that time, and formanymonths afterwards,the practice of steadily putting the chain upon the doorbefore itwas opened preva iled generally, and for a longtime served as a record

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of that deep impress ion leftupon London by Mr. Williams. Southey, Imay add,

entered deeply into the public feel ing on this occasion ,and said to me , W ithin a Week or two of the firstmore

der, tha t it Was a private event of that order whichroseto the dignity of a national eventfii But now, havingprepared the reader to appreciate on its true scale thisdreadful tissue ofmurder (whichas a record belongingto an era that is now left forty-two years behind us , not

one person in four of this generation can be expectedto know correctly), let me pass to the circumstantialdetails of the affair.Yet

,first of all, one Word as to the local scene of the

murders. Ratclifl'

e Highway is a publ ic thoroughfare

in amost chaotic quarter of eastern or nautical London ;and at this time (viz , in when no adequatepolice existed except the detective police of Bow Street,admirable for its own peculiar purposes, but utte rly iacommensurate to the general serv ice of the capital , itwas a most dangerous quarter. Every third man at

the leas t might be set down as a foreigner. Lascars,Chinese , Moors , Negroes , were met at every step .

A nd apart fromthe man ifold roman ism, shrouded impenetrably under the mixed hats and turbans of menWhose past was untraoeable to any European eye , it is

it I amnot sure whether Southey held at this time his appointment to the editorship of the EdinburghAnnual M ister ) If

he did, no doubt in the domestic section of that chroniclewill he

found an excellent sm ut of the whole.

mass a s tronaut s manne rs. 9

well known that the navy (especially, in time of war,the commercial navy) of Christendom is the surereceptacle of all the murderers and rumans whosecrimes have given thema motive for withdrawingthemselves for a season from the public eye . It istrue, that few of this class are qualified to act as ableseamen : but at all times , and especially during war,only a small proportion (or nucleus) of each ship’scompany consists of such men : the large majoritybeingmore untutored Iandsmen. John Williams, howover, who had been occas ionally rated as a seamen on

board of various Indiamen, &o., was probably a. veryaccompl ished seamen . Pretty generally, in fact, hewas a ready and adroitman , fertile in resources underall sudden difficulties , and most flexibly adapting himself to all varieties of social l ife. "vW illiams was amanofmiddle stature (five feet seven and a-half, to five feeteight inches high), slenderly built, rather thin, but why ,

tolerably muscular, and clear of all superfluous flesh. )A, lady, who saw himunder examination (l think at theThames Police Office), assured me that his hair wasof the most extraordinary and vivid color, via , brightyellow, something between an orange and lemon colorg

W illiams had been in India ; chiefly in Bengal andMadras : but he had also been upon the Indus . N ow,

it is notorious that, in the Punjaub, horse s of a highcaste are often painted fl orimson , blue , gmn , purpleand it struckme tha t Will iams might, for some casualpurpose of disguise, have taken a hint fromthis practice of S cindc and Lahore, so that the colormight nothave been natural. In other respects , his appearancewas natura l enough ; and, judging by a plaster cas t ofhim, which I purchased in London, I should saymean ,

10 THREE MEMORABLE nuanans.

as regard ed his facial structure . One fact, however,was striking, and fell in with the impression of hisnatural tiger characte r, that his fans were at all timesa bloodless ghastly pallor. ‘You might imagine ,“

sai d my informant, ‘ that in his veins circulated not

red l ife-blood, such as could kindle into the blush ofshame, of wrath , of pity but a green sap that welledfromno human heart.’ His eyes‘ seemed frozen and

glazed, as if their light were all converged upon somevictim lurking in the for background. So far his ap

pearance might have repelled ; but, on the other hand,the concurrent testimony of many Witnesses, and alsothe silent testimony of facts, showed that the oil inessand snaky insinuation of his demeanor counteracted therepuls iveness of his ghastly has , and amongst inex

perienced young women won for hima very favorablereception. In particular, one gentle

mmannered girl ,whomWilliams had undoubtedly des igned to murder,gave in evidenee n —that once , when sitting a lone with

her, he had said, Now, Miss R., supposing that Ishou ld appear about midnight at your bedside, armedwitha carving kn ife ,whatwould you say P

’ T o whichthe confiding girl had repl ied

,oh, M r. Williams , if it

was anybody else, I should be frightened , But, as soonas I heard '

your voice, I should he tranquili t ) Poorgirl ! had this outl ine sketch of Mr. Williams beenfi lled in and real ized, she would have seen somethingin the corpse

a lilce face, and heard something in the

sin ister voice, that would have unsettled her tranquillity

for ever. But nothing short of suchdreadful es periences

could ava il to unmask Mr. John Williams.Into this perilous region it was that, on a Saturday

n ight in December, Mr. W illiams,whomwe suppose to

runes MEMORABLE nuances. 11

have long since made his coup d’cssai , forced his way

through the c rowded streets, bound on business. Tosay, was to do. A nd this n ight he had sa id to himselfsecretly, tha t he would execute a design whichhe hadalready sketched

,and which , when finished, was des

tined on the following day to strike cons ternation intoall thatmighty heart ’ of London , fromcentre to circumference . It was afterwards remembered that hehad qu itted his lodgings on this dark errand abouteleven o’clock P . M . ; not that he meant to begin so

soon : but he needed to reconnoitre. He carr ied histools closely buttoned up under his loose roomy coat.It was in harmony with the general subtlety of hischaracter

, and his polished hatred of brutali ty, that byuniversal agreement his manners were distinguishedfor exquisite suavity : the tiger’s heart was masked bythe most msmuating and snaky refinement. A ll hisacquaintances afte rwards described his dissimulation as

so ready and so perfect, that if, in making his waythroughthe streets , always so crowded on a Saturdayn ight in neighborhoods so poor, he had accidentallyjostled any person , he would (as they were all satisfied)have stopped to offer the most gentlemanly apologies :with his devilish heart brooding over the most hellishof purposes , he . would yet have pause d to express aben ign hepe that the huge mallet, buttoned up underhis elegant surtout, with a View to the l ittle bus inessthat awa ited himabout n inetyminutes further on , had

not inflicte d any pain on' the stranger with whomhe

had come into coll is ion . T itian , l be l ieve , but certa inlyRubens , and perhaps Vandyke ,made it a rule never topractise his art but in full dress -z—point ruffles , bagwig, and diamond-hiked sword ; and Mr. Will iams,

12 mas s MEMORABLE munnsas.

there is reason to believe, when he went out for agrand compound massacre (in another sense, one mighthave appl ied to it the Oxford phrase of going out as

G rand Commander), always assumed black s ilk stockings and pumps ; nor would he on any account havedegraded his position as an artist by wearing a morning gown . In his se cond great performance , it wasparticularly noticed and recorded by the one sole tremblingman , who under killing agon ie

‘s of fear was compelled (as the reader will find) froma secret stand tobecome the solitary spectator of his atrocities, that Mr.Williams wore a long blue frock, of the very finestcloth

, and richly l ined with silk. Amongst the anec

dotes which circulated about him, it was also sa id at

the time , tha t Mr. Williams employed the first of den

tists, and also the first of chiropodists . On no accountwould he patronize any second-rate skill. A nd be

yond a doubt, in that perilous littl e branch of bus iness

whichwas practised by himself, he might be regardedas the most aristocratic and fastidious of artists.

who meantime was the v ictim, to whose abodes hurrying ? For surely he never could be so

indiscreet as to be sailing about on a roving cru ise insearch of some chan ce person to murder ? Oh

,no :

he had suited himself with a. victimsome time before,viz ., an old and very intimate friend .

i

For he seemsto have laid it down as a maxim— that the best persontomurder was a friend ; and, in default of a

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friend,

which is an article one cannot always command, anacquaintance : because , in either case, on first ap

proaching his subject, suspicion would be disarmedwhereas a stranger might take alarm, and find in the

very countenance of his murderer elect a warning

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14 mas s MEMORABLE nuance s.

favor of a woman. The case remains in some degreedoubtful ; but, certainly , the probability is, that Mrs.Marr had been the true cause, the cause retort/rims , ofthe feud between the men. Meantime , the minutes arenumbered , the sands of the hour-glass are running out,that measure the duration of this feud upon earth.This n ight it shall cease. To-m

’

orrow is the day whichinEngland they ca ll Sunday , which in Scotland. theycall by the Juda ic name of ‘ Sabbath .

’ To both has

tions, under different names, the day has the somefunctions ; to both it is a day of rest. For thee also,Marr, it shall be a day of rest ; so is it written ; thou ,too, young Marr, shalt find rest -“ thou, and thy household, and the stranger that is within thy gates. But

that rest must be in the world which lies beyond thegrave. On this side the grave ye have all slept yourfinal sleep .T he n ight was one of exceeding darkness ; and inthis humble quarter of London, whatever the n ighthappened to be , light or dark, qu iet or stormy, all shopswere kept open on Saturday nights unti l twelve o’clock,at the least, andmany for half an hour longer. Therewas no rigorous and pedantic Jewish superstition about

the exact limits of Sunday. A t the very worst, theSunday stretched over fromone o’clock, A. M . of one

day, up to eight o’clock a . M . of the next,making aclear circu it of thirtyo one hours . This, surely, waslong enough. Marr, on this par ticular Saturday night,woul d be content if it were even shorter, provided itwould come more qu ickly, for he has been toilingthrough sixteen hours behind his counter. Marr’sposition in l ife was this : he kept a little hosier’s shop ,and had invested in his stock and the fittings of -his

runes MEM ORABLE tre s p as s. 15

shop about £ 180. Like allmen engaged in trade, hesuffered some anxieties, He was a nevrg

heginner ; but,already, bad debts had alarmed him; and b ills werecoming to maturity that were not l ikely to he met bycommensurate sales. Ye t

,constitutional ly, he was a

sanguine hoper. A t this time he was a Stout, freshcolored young man of twenty-seven ; in some slightdegree uneasy fromhis commerc ial prospects , but stillcheerful

, and anticipating —(how vainly ill—a that forthis n ight, and the next n ight, at least, he will rest his

Wearied head and his cares upon the faithful bosomofhis sweet lovely young wife. The household of Mai r,cons isting of five persons , is as fol lows : First, there ishimse lf

,who

, if he should happen to be ruined, in a

limited commercial sense, has energy enough to jumpup again, l ike a pyramid of fire, and soar highabove

ruinmany times repeated. Yes , poor Marr, so itmightbe

,if thou wort left to thy native energies unmolested ;

but even now there stands on the other s ide of thestreet one born of hell , who puts his peremptory negative on all these flattering proSpeots. Second in thel ist of his household , stands his pre tty and amiablewife

,who is happy afte r the fashion of youthful wives ,

for she is only twenty-two , and anxious ( if at all) onlyon amount of her darling infant. For, thirdly, thereis in a cradle, not quite nine feet helow the street,Vin , in a warm, cosy kitchen , and rocked at intervals lay the young mother, a baby eight months old.

Nineteen months have Mair and herself been married ;and this is their first-born child. Grieve not for thischild, that it must keep the deep rest of Sunday insome other world ; for wherefore should an orphan,steeped to the lips in poverty, when once bereaved

16 mas s mon omers o nene s s .

of father andmother, linger upon an al ien and murderous earth ? Fonrthly, there is a stoutish boy, a n

apprentice , say thirteen years old ; a Devonshire boy,with handsome features, such as most Devonshireyouths have ii

satisfied with his place ; not over

worked ; treated kindly, and aware that he was treatedkindly, by his master and mistress. Fifthly, and lastly,bringing Up the rear of this qu iet household , is a son

vant girl , a grown-up young woman ; and she , be ingparticularly kind-hearted, occupied (as often happens

in fami l ies of humb le pretensions as to rank) a sort of

s isterly place in her relation to her mistress. A greatdemocratic change is at this very time and has

been for twenty years , pass ing over British society.

M oltitudes of persons are becoming ashamed of say.

ing, my master,

’ or my mistress : the termHOW in

the slow process of superseding it is, my employer.’N ew ,

in the Un ited States , such an express ion of

democratic hauteur, though disagreeable as a needlessproclamation of independence which nobody is dis

pnting, leaves , however, no lasting bad effect. For

the domestic helps are pre tty generally in a state oftm sition so sure and so rapid to the headship of

domestic estab lishments belonging to themselves , thatin sheet they are but ignoring, for the presentmoment, a relation which would at any rate dissolveitself in a year or two . But in England, Where no

d An artist toldme in this year , 1812, thathaving accidentallyown a.native D eronshire regiment (either volunteers or militia) ,nine hundsod strong, marching pos t a.station atwhich he had

posted himself, he did not observe a. dozen men that Would not

have been described in common parlance as good looking.’

r une s M EM ORABLE ri p ene s s . 17

such resources exist of everlasting surplus lands , thetendency of the change is pa inful. It carries with ita sullen and a coarse es presion of immun ity froma

yoke which was in any case a light one , and ofte n a

benign one . In some other place I will illustrate mymean ing. Here , apparently, in Mrs . Marr’s service

,

the principle concerned illustrated itself prac tically.Mary, the female servant, felt a s incere and unafi

‘

ected

respect for a mistress whomshe saw so steadily occupied with her domestic duties , and who, though so

young, and invested with some sl ight authority, neverexerted it capriciously, or even showed it at all conspiciously. A ccording to the testimony of all the

ne ighbors , she treated her mistress with a shade ofunobtrusive respect on the one hand, and yet waseager to relieve her, whenever that was poss ible, fromthe weight of her materna l duties , with the cheerfulvoluntary service of a s iste r.T o this young woman it was , that, suddenly, within

t hree or four minutes of midnight,Marr called aloud

fromthe head of the stairs -n - dire cting her to go out

and purchase some oysters for the family supper.U pon what slender accidents hang oftentimes solemnl ifelong results ! Mari“ occupied in the concerns of hisshop , M rs . Marr occupied with some little a ilment andrestlessness of her baby, had both forgotten the affa i rof supper ; the time was now narrowing every moment, as regarded any variety of choice ; and oysterswere perhaps ordered as the likeliest article to he hadat all, after twelve o

’clock should have struck. A nd

yet,upon this trivial c ircumstance depended Mary’s

l ife. H ad she been sent abroad for supper at the

ordinary time of ten or eleven o’c lock , it is almost

2

18 mass a nn ou nce nuanc e s.

certain that she, the sol itarymember of the householdwho escaped fromthe exterminating tragedy, wouldnot have escaped ; too surely she would have sharedthe general fate . It had now become necessary to be

quick. Hasti ly, therefore , receivingmoney fromMarrwith a basket in her hand, but unbonneted, Mary tripped out of the shop. It be came afterwards, on recol

lection , a heart-c hill ing remembrance to herselfthat, precisely as she emerged fromthe shop

wdoor, she

noticed , on the oppos ite s ide of the street, by the lightof the lamps, aman’

s figure ; stationary at the instant,hut in the next instant slowly moving. This wasWilliams ; as a l ittle incident, either just before or justafter (at pre sent it is impossible to say which), suffi~

ciently proved. Now, when one cons iders the iner iteble hurry and trepidation of Mary under the circumstances stated, time barely sud-ic ing for any chance of

executing her errand , it becomes evident that she musthave connected some deep feeling of mysterious uneas iness with the movements of this unknown man ;else, assuredly, she would not have found her attentiondisPosahle for such a case. Thus far, she herselfthrew some little light upon What itmight be that, semicousciously, was then passing through her mind she

sa id, that, notwithstanding the darkness , which wouldnotpermither to trace theman’

s feature s, or to ascerta inthe exact direction of his eyes, it yet struck her, thatfromhis carriage when in motion , and from the apparen t inolination of his person , he must be looking atNo. 29.

T he l ittle incident which I have alluded to as confirming Mary’s belief was, that, at some period not

very far frommidnight, the watchman had specially

rn se e me noasn t s MURD ERS. 19

noticed this stran ger ; he had observed himcontinually peeping into the W indow of Marr’s Shep ; and

had thought this act, connected w iththe man ’s appear

ance, so suspic ious , that he stepped into Morri s chap ,

and communicated What he had soon . This fact he

afterwards stated before the magistrates ; and headded, that subsequently, viz., a. few minutes aftertwelve (eight or ten minutes , probab ly, after the departure of

"

Mary), he (the watchmen), when re -enteringupon his ordinary half-hourly heat, was requested byM an: to assist himin clos ing the shutters. Here theyhad a final communication with each other ; and the

watchman mentioned to Marr that the mysteriousstranger had now appare ntly taken himself ofi

’

for

that ballad not been Vis ible s ince the firs t communication made to Marr by the watchman . There is littl edoubt thatWilliams had obse rved the watchman ’

s visit

to Marr, and had thus had his attention seasonandrawn to the indiscretion of his own demeanor ; sothat the warn ing, given unavailingly to Marr , had been

turned to account by Williams . There can be stillless doubt, that the bloodhound had commenced hiswork within one minute of the watchman’

s ass istingMarr to put up his shutters . An d on the following

consideration —that which prevented Will iams fromcommencing even earl ier, was the exposure of the

shop’s Whole interior to the gaze of street passengers .

It was indispensable that the shutters should be accurately closed before Williams could safely get to work.

But, as soon as ever this prel iminary precaution hadbeen completed , once having secured that concealmentfrom the public eye it then became of still greate rimportance not to lose a moment by delay, than pre

20 mas s mon omers manne r s .

viously it had been not to hazard any thing by precipitance. For all depended upon go ing in before Marr

should have locked the door. On any other mode ofefi

'

ecting an entrance (as , for instance, by waiting forthe re turn of Mary, and making his entrance s imultaneously with her), it w ill be seen that Williams musthave forfeited that particula r

advantage whichmutefac ts, when read into their true construction , will soonshow the reader that he must have employed . W illiamswa ited, of necessity, for the sound of the watchman ’

s

retreating steps ; wa ited, perhaps, for thirty seconds ;but when that danger was past, the next danger was ,lost Marr should look the door ; one turn oi

'

the key,and the murderer would have been locked out. In,

therefore , he bolted , and by a dexterous movement ofhis left hand , no doubt, turned the key, W ithout lettingMarr perceive this fatal stratagem. It is really wonderful and most interesting to pursue the successivesteps of this monster, and to notice the absolute certainty withwhich the s ilent hieroglyphics of the casebetray to us the Whole process and movements of thebloody drama, not less surely and fully than if wehad been ourselves hidden in Marr’s shop , or hadlooked down from the heavens of mercy U pon thishell-kite, that knew not What mercymeant. That hehad concealed fromMarr his trick, secret and rapid,upon the lock , is eviden t ; because else , Marr wouldinstan tly have taken the alarm , e specially after Whatthe watchman had communicated . But it will soonbe seen that Marr had not been alarmed. In real ity,towards the full success ofWilliams , it was important,in the las t degree, to intercept and forestall any yell

or shout of agony fromMarr. Such an outcry, and

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22 mass a s tronaut s M URDERS .

her steps. But this was difiicult ; for she was afraid toask directions fromchance passengers , Whose appearance the darkness prevented her from reeonnoitring.

At length by his lantern she recognized a watchman ;through himshe was guided into the right road ; and inten minutes more , she found herself back at the doorofNo . 29, in Ratclifi

'

e Highway. But by this time shefelt satisfied that shemust have been absent for fifty orsixty minutes ; indeed , she had heard, at a distance ,the cry of p art one o

’clock, which, commencing a few

seconds after one , lasted intermittingly for ten or thirteenminutes.IL In the tumult of agonizing thoughts that very soonsurprised her, naturally it became hard for her to recalldistinctly the Whole succession of doubts, and jealousies ,and shadowy misgivings that soon opened open her.

But, so far as could be collected, she had not i n the

firstmoment of reaching home noticed anything decisively alarming. In very many cities bells are the

main instruments for commun icating between the streetand the interior of houses : but in London knockersprevail. At Marr’s there was both a knocker and abell. Mary rang, and at the same time very gentlyknocked. She had no fear of disturbing hermaster ormistress ; themshe made sure of finding still up. H er

anxiety was for the baby, who being disturbed,mightagain rob hermistress of a n ight’s rest. A nd she wellknew that, with three people all anxiously awa iting herreturn , and by this time, perhaps, seriously uneasy ather delay, the least audible Whisper fromherself wouldin a moment bring one of themto the door. (Yet howis this ? T o her astonishment, but withthe astonishment came creep ing over her an icy horror, no stir nor

mas s M EMORABLE avenue s. 23

murmur was heard ascending fromthe kitchen. Atthis moment came back upon her, with shuddering

anguish, the indistinct image of the stranger in the loosedark coat, whomshe had seen stealing a long under the

shadowy lamp-l ight, and too certainly watching her

master’s motions! : keenly she now reproached herselfthat, under Whatever stress of hurry, she had not ao

quainted Mr. Marr with the suspicious appearances.

Poor girl 10 she did not then know that, i f this common ication coul d have availed to putMarr upon his guard,it had reached himfromanother quarter ; so that her

own omiss ion , which had in reality arisen under herhurry to execute hermaster’s commission, could not becharged with any bad consequences. But all suchreflections this way or that were swallowed up at this

point in overcmastering panic. t T h/at her double summons could have been unnoticed— this solitary fact in

one momentmade a revelation of horror. One person

might have fallen asleep, but two—a but three s -that

was a. mere impossibility. A nd even supposing all

three together with the baby locked in sleep , still howunaccountable was this utter— utter silence ! Mostnaturally at this moment something like hystericalhorror overshadowed the poor girl , and now at last sherang the hellwith the v iolence that belongs to sicken ingterror. This done, she paused : self-comman d enoughshe still reta ined, though fast and fast it was sl ippingaway fromher, to bethink herself that, if any overwhelming accident had compelled both Mars and hisapprentioe

uboy to leave the house in order to summonsurgical aid from opposite quarters—a o thing barelysupposable fi —still, even in that case Mrs . MM ]

?

and herinfant would be left ; and somemurmuring reply, under

24: THREE MEMORABLE nuance s.

any extremity, would be elicited fromthe poormother.To paus e , therefore , to impose stern silence upon hera

self, so as to leave roomfor the possible answer to thisfinal appeal , became a duty of spasmodic od

'

e rt. Listen ,therefore , poor trembling heart ; listen , and for twentyseconds be still as death. Still as deathshe was : andduring that dreadful stillness, when she hushed herbreath that she might listen , occurred an incident ofkilling fear, that to her dying day would never cease torenew its echoes in her car. She, Mary, the poortrembling girl , checking and overruling herself by afinal efib rt, that she might leave full opening for herdear young mistress’s answer to her own last franticappeal

,heard at last andmost distinctly a sound within

the house. Yes, now beyond a doubt there is comingan answer to her summons. What was it ? On the

stairs , not the stairs that led downwards to the kitchen ,but the stairs that led upwards to the single story of

bed-chambers above,was heard a creaking sound. Ncatwas heard most distinctly a footfall : one , two, three ,four, five stairs were slowly and distinctly descended.Then the d readful footste ps were heard advancing alongthe l ittle narrow passage to the door. The steps—5 0h

heavens ! whose steps ? a have paused at the door.

The very breathing can be heard of that dreadful being,who has silenced all breathing except his own in the

house. There is but a door between himand Mary.What is he doing on the other side of the door ? A

cautious step , a stealthy step it was that came down thestairs, then pace d along the l ittle nar row passage fi

narrow as a cofiin -s—till at last the step pauses at thedoor. How hard the fellow breathes ! He, the solitarymurderer, is on one side the door ; Mary is on. the

THREE MEMORABLE moansns . 25

other side . N ow, suppose that he should suddenlyOpen the door, and that inoautiously in the dark Maryshould rushin, and find herself in the arms of the murderer. Thus far the case is a possible one— that to a

certainty, had this little trick been tried . immediatelyupon Mary’

s return, it would have succeeded ; had thedoor been opened suddenly upon her first tingle u tingle ,

headlong she would have tumbled in , and perished.But now Mary is upon her guard. The unknownmurderer and she have both their l ips Upon the door,listen ing, breathing hard ; but luckily they are on

different s ides of the door 5 and open the leas t in dicationof unlocking or unlatching, she would have recoiledinto the asylumof general darkness.

15 What was the murderer’s meantng 1111 coming along

the passage to the front door ? T he meaning was thisseparately, as an individual , Mary was worth nothingat all to him. But, cons idered as amember of a household, she had this value, s in , that she , if caught andmurdered, perfected and roun ded the desolation of the

house. The case being reported, as re ported it wouldbe all over Christendom,

led the imagination captive .The whole covey of victims was thus netted ; the household min was thus full and orb icular ; and In that proportion the tendency of men and Women , flutter as theymight, would he helplessly an d hopelessly to s ink intothe allu oouquering hands of the mightymurderer. Hehad but to say

g -my testimonials are da te d from No.29Ratolifi

’

e Highway, and the poor vanquished imagination sank powerless before the fascinating rattlesnakeeye of the murderer. There is not a doubt that themotive of the murderer for standing on the inner side

8

26 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS.

of Men ’s front-door, whilst Mary stood on the outside,

was -s e a hope that, if he quietly opened the door,whisperingly counterfeiting Mui r’s vo ice, and saying,What made you stay so long ? possibly she might havebeen inveigled. He was wrong ; the time was pastfor that ; Marym new maniacally awake ; she begannow to ring the hell and to ply the knocker with unintermitting violence. And the natural consequence was,that the next door neighbor, who had recently gone tobed and instantly fallen asleep , was roused ; and by theincessan t violence of the ringing and the knocking,which now obeyed a delirious and uncontrollable im~

pulse in Mary, he became sensible that some verydreadful event must be at the root of so G lamorous anuproar. To rise, to throw up the sash , to demandangrily the cause of M s unseasonable tumult, was thework of amoment. T he poor girl remained suffic ientlymistress of hers elf rap idly to expla in the circumstanceof her own absence for an hour ; her belief that Mr.and Mrs. Marr’s family had all beenmurdered in theinterval ; and that at this very moment the murdererwas in the house.The person to whomshe addressed this statement

was a pawnhroker ; and a thoroughly brave man hemust have been ; for it was a perilous undertaking,merely as a trial of phys ical strength , s ingly to face amysterious assas sin , who had apparently signal ized his

prowess by a , tr iumph so comprehens ive. But, again,for the imagination it required an od

’

e rt of selfa conquest

to rush headlong into the presence of one invested with

a cloud of mystery, whose nation , age ,motives, wereall alike unknown . Rare ly on any field of battle has

re us e MEMORABLE nuance s. 27

a soldier been called upon to face so complex a

danger. For if the entire family of his neighbor Marrhad been exterminated, were this indeed true , such ascale of bloodshed would seem to argue that theremust have been two persons as the perpetrators ; orif one s ingly had accomplished such a ruin , in thatcase how colossal musthave been his audacity ! probably, also, his skill and animal power ! Moreover , theunknown enemy (whether single or double) would ,doubtless , be elaborately armed. Yet, under all thesedisadvantages , did this fearless man rush at once to thefield of glitchery in his neighbor

’s house. Waiting

only to draw on his trousers, and to armhimse lf withthe kitchen poker, he went down into his own l ittleback-yard. On this mode of

"

approach , he would havea chance of intercepting the murderer ; whereas fromthe front there would be no such chance ; and therewould also be considerable delay in the process of

breaking Open the door. A brick wall, nine or tenfeet high , divided his own back premises from those ofMarr. Over this he vaulted ; and at the moment when.he was recalling himself to the necess ity of going backfor a candle , he suddenly perceived a feeble ray of

light already glimmering on some part of Marr’spremises. Marr’s back adoor s tood wide Open. Probably the murderer had passed through it one half minutebe fore. Rap idly the brave man passed onwards tothe shop , and there b ehold the carnage of the n ightstretched out on the floor, and the narrow premises sofloated with gore, that it was hardly poss ible to escape

the pollution of blood in picking out a path to the

front-door. In the look of the door still remained the

28 mas s M EMORABLE nuance s .

key which had given to the unknown murderer sofatal an advantage over his victims. By this time, the

heart-shak ing news involved in the outcries of Ma ry

(to whom it occurred that by poss ibil ity some one out

of so many victims might sti ll be within the reach of

medical aid , but that all would depend upon speed)had availed, even at that late hour, to gather a smal l

mob about the house. The pawnbroker threw Open

the door. One or two watchmen headed the crowd ;but the soul-harrowing spectacle checked them , and

impressed sudden s ilence upon their voices, previouslyso loud . The tragic drama read aloud its own history ,and the success ion of its several steps few and

summary. The murderer was as yet altogether nu

known ; not even suspected. But there were reasons

for thinking that he must have been a person familiarlyknown to Marr. He had entered the shop by Open ingthe door after it had been closed by Marr. But it was

justly argued that, after the caution conveyed toMarr by the watchman, the appearance of any strangerin the shop at that hour, and in so dangerous a neighborhood, and entering by so irregular and suspic ious a

course , (i . a , walking in after the door had been

closed, and after the closing of the shutters had cut

Off all Open commun ication with the street), wouldnaturally have roused M arr to an attitude of vigilanceand se lf-de fence . A ny indication , the refore , that Marrhad not been so roused, would argue to a certa intythat something had occurre d to neutralize this alarm,

and fatally to disarm the prudent jealousies of Marr.But this something ’ could only have lain in ones imple fact, viz., that the person of the murdere r wasfamiliar ly known to Marr as that of an ordinary and

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30 racer. M BM QRABLE nuances.

min'derer’s plan and rationale of murde r started syste

matically from this infliction of apoplexy, or at leastof a stunning sufiicient to insure a long loss of con

sciousness. This opening step placed the murderer athis case . But still, as returning sense might constantlyhave led to the fullest exposures , it was his settledpractice, by Way of consummation, to cut the throat.To one invariable type all the murders on this occas ion

conformed : the skull was first shattered ; this stepsecured the murdere r from instant retal iation ; and

then, by way of locking up all into eternal s ilence,

uniformly the throat was cut. The rest of the circumstances, as self-revealed, were these. The fall of

Marr might, probably enough, cause a dull , confusedsound of a scuffle, and the more so, as it could n ot

new be confounded with any street uproar m tho shopdoor being shut. It is more probable, however, that

the signal for the alarm pas s ing down to the kitchen,would arise when the murderer proceeded to out

Muir ’s threat. The very confined s ituation behind the

counter would render it impossible, under the criticalhurry of the case, to expose the throat broadly ; thehorrid scene would proceed by partial and interruptedcuts ; deep groans would arise ; and then would comethe rush up stairs. A gainst this , as the only dangerousstage in the transaction , the murderer would haveS pecially prepared. M rs . Marr and the apprenticeboy, both young and active

,would ma ke

,of course ,

for the street door ; had Mary been at home , and threepersons at once had combined to distract the purposesof the murderer, it is bare ly poss ible that one of themwould have succeeded in reaching the street. But the

dreadful swing of the heavy mallet intercepted both

THRE E MEM ORABLE nronnans . 31

the boy and his mistress before they could reach thedoor. Each of themlay stretched out on the centreof the shop floor ; and the very moment that this disabling was accomplished, the

”

accurse d hound wasdown upon their throats with his razor. T he fact is ,that, in the mere blindness of pity for poor Marr, onhearing his groans , M rs . Marr had lost sight of herobvious pol icy ; she and the boy ought to have madefor the back d oor ; the alarmwould thus have beengiven in the open air ; which, of itse lf, was a greatpoint ; and several means of distracting the murderer’sattention offered upon that course , which the ex

treme limitation of the shop den ied to them upon

the other.

lb Vain would be all attempts to convey the horrorwhich thrilled the gathering spectators of this p iteoustragedy. It was known to the crowd that one personhad, by some accident, escaped the general massacre :but she was now speechless, and probably del irious ; sothat, in compass ion forher p itiable situation , one femaleneighbor had carried her away, and put her to bed.Hence it had happened , for a longer spac e of timethan could else have been poss ible , that no person present was sufficiently acquainted with the Marrs to be

aware of the little infan t ; for the bold pawnbroker hadgone off tomake a communication to the coroner ; andanother neighbor to lodge some ev idence which hethought urgent at a neighboring police-office . S uddemly some person appeared amongst the crowd who wasaware that the murdered parents had a young infant ;this would be found either below-sta irs , or in on e ofthe be drooms above. Immediately a streamof people

poured down into the kitchen, where at once they saw

32 races monomers nuances.

the cradle but with the bedclothes in a state of indescribable confus ion. On disentangling these, pools ofblood become vis ible ; and the next ominous sign was ,that the hood of the cradle had been smashed to pieces.It became evident that the wretch had found himselfdoubly embarrasse d— first, by the arched hood at the

head of the cradle, which, accordingly,he had boat intoa ruin with his mallet, and secondly, by the gather ingof the blankets and pillows about the baby’s head.The free play of his blows had thus been bullied .A nd he had therefore finished the scene by applyinghis razor to the throat of the little innocent ; afterwhich, with no apparent purpose, as though he hadbecome confus ed by the spectacle of his own atrocities, he had busied himself in pil ing the clothes elaborately over the child’s corpse. This incident undeniablygave the character of a vin dictive proceeding to thewhole afi

'

air, and so far confirmed the current rumorthat the quarrel between Williams and Marr hadoriginated in rivalship. One writer, indeed, allegedthat the murderer might have found it necessary forhis own safety to extingu ish the crying of the child ;but it was justly replied, that a child on ly e ightmonthsold coul d not have cried under any sense of the tragedy proceeding, but simply in its ordinary way for theabsence of its mother ; and such a cry, even if audibleat all out of the house,must have been precisely whatthe neighbors were hear ing constantly, so that it couldhave drawn no Special attention, nor suggested any

reasonable alarm to the murderer. No one incident,in deed , throughout the whole tissue of atroc ities , somuch envenomed the popular fury ag hast the un

known ruliian , as this use less butchery of the infant.

Haas u ruoaaat n nuance s. 33

lb Naturally, on the Sunday morn ing that dawned fouror five hours later, the case was too full of horror notto diti

'

use itself in all directions ; but I have no reasonto think that it crept into any one of the numerousSunday papers. In the regular course, any ordinaryoccurrence, not occurring, or not transpiring unti lfifteen minutes after 1 a . M . on a Sunday morn ing,would first: reach the public car through the Mondayeditions of the Sunday papers , and the regularmorn ingpapers of the Monday. But, if such were the coursepursued on thi s occasion , never can there have beenamore signal oversight. For it is certain

, that to havemet the public demand for details on the Sunday, whichmight so eas ily have been done by cancell ing a coupleof dull columns, and substituting a circumstantial narrative , for which the pawnbrolter and the watchmancould have furnished thematerials, would have made asmall fortune. By proper handbills dispersed throughall quarters of the infin ite metropolis , two hundred andfifty thousand extra copies might have been sold ; thatis , by any journal that should have collected exclusive

materials , meeting the public excitement, everywherestirred to the centre by flying rumors , and everywhereburning for ampler information. On the Sunday

se’ennight (Sunday the actor s from the event), took

place the funeral of the Marrs ; in the first codio was

p laced Marr ; in the second M rs . Marr, and the babyin her arms ; in the third the apprentice boy. Theywere buried side by s ide ; and thirty thousand laboringpeople followed the funeral procession, with horror and

grief written in their countenances.

A s yet no whisper was astir that indicated, even

conjecturally, the hideous author of these ru ins -fi e this

34 rooms MEMORABLE onenes s .

patron’

ol’ grave -diggers. Had as much been known on

this Sunday of the funeral conce rn ing that person asbecame known uniirersally six days later, the peoplewould have gone right fromthe churchyard to theme ndoreri e lodgings, and (hrboking no delay) would havetorn him limb fromlimb. As yet, however, in meredefault of any object on Whomreasonable suspicioncould se ttle, the public wrath was compelled to suspenditself. Else , for indeed fromshowing any tendency tosubs ide, the public emotion strengthened every daynonopiouously, as the reverberation of the shock began

to travel back fromthe provinces to the capital. On

every great road in the kingdom, continual arrests were

made of vagmnts and ‘ trarnpers ,’who could give no

satisfactory account of themselves, or whose appears

once in any respect answered to the imperfect description of Williams furnished by the watchman.

lBWith this mighty tide of“ pity and indignation point

ing backwards to the dreadful past, there mingled alsoin the thoughts of reflecting persons on under-“ currentof fearful es peotation for the immediate future Theearthqnalce ,

’ to quote a fragment froma striking passage in Wordsworth -m

The earthquake is not satisfied at once.’

All perils, Specially malignant, are re current. A

murderer, who is such by pass ion and by a wolfish

craving for bloodshed as a mode of unnatural luxury,cannot relapse into inertia. S ucha men , even morethan the Alpine Chamois hunter, comes to crave thedangers and the hairbreadth escapes of his trade , as acondiment for season ing the insip idmonotonies of da ilylife. But, apart itemthe hellish instincts that might

muss MEMORABLE nuance s. 35

too surely be rel ied on for renewed atrocities, it wasclear that the murderer of the Marrs, wheresoeverlurking,must be a. needyman ; and a needy man ofthat c lass least likely to seek or to find resources in

honorable modes of industry ; for which , equal ly byhaughty disgust and by disuse of the appropriate habits,men of violence are specially disqualified. W ere it,there fore ,merely for a livel ihood, the murderer whomall hearts were yearn ing to decipher,might be expectedtomake his resurrection on some stage of horror, aftera reasonable interval. Even in the Marrmurder, granting that it had been governed chiefly by cruel and

vindictive impulses, it was stil l clear that the ,

desireof booty had cc-Operatcd with such feel ings. Equallyclear it was that this desire must have been disappointed : excepting the trivial sumreserved by M art

for the week’s expenditure , the murderer found , doubtless

,l ittle or nothing that he could turn to account.

T wo guincas , perhaps, would be the outside of whathe had obtained in the way of booty. A week or so

would see the end of that. The conviction, therefore ,of all people was , that in a month or two, when thefever of excitementmight a l ittle have coole d down ,or have been superseded by other topics of fresherinterest, so that the newborn vigilance of household life

would have had time to relax, some new murder,equally appall ing,might be counted upon.

”Such was the public expectation. Let the readerthen figure to himself the pure frenzy of horror whenin this hus h of expectation , looking, indeed , and waitingfor the unknown armto strike once more , but not bel ieving that any audacity could be equal to such an

attempt as yet, whilst all eyes were watching, suddenly ,

36 rune s MEMORABLE nuannns.

on the twelfth n ight fromthe Marr murder, a secondcase of the samemysterious nature , a murder on the

same exterminating plan was perpetrated in the verysame neighborhood. It was on the Thursday next butone succeeding to the Marr murder that this secondatrocity took place ; and many people thought at thetime, that in its dramatic features of thril ling interest,this second case even went beyond the first. T he

family which suffered in this instance was that of a.Mr.Will iamson ; and the house was situated, i f not absolutely in Ratclifl

'

e Highway, at any rate immediatelyround the corner of some secondary street, runn ing atright angles to this publ ic thoroughfare. M r. Williamson was a well-known and re spectableman, long settledin that district ; he was supposed to be rich; andmorewith a view to the employment furn ished by such acalling, than with much anxiety for further accumulations, he kept a sort of tavern ; which, in this respect,might be cons idered on an old patriarchal footing - fi

that, although pe ople of considerable property resorte dto the house in the even ings, no kind of anxious separation Was maintained between themand the other

visitors from the class of artisans or common laborers.Anybody who conducted himself with propriety wasfree to take a. seat, and call for any liquor that hemightprefer. A nd thus the society was prettymiscel laneous ;in part stationary

, but in some proportion fluctuating.

T he household cons isted of the followin g five per»

sons : - 1. Mr. Williamson , its head, who was an old

man above seventy , and was well fitted for his situation ,being civil, and not at all morose

, but, at the sametime , firm in maintaining order ; 2. Mrs. Williamson,his wife, about ten years younger than himself ; 3. a

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38 runes mamonasos nuances.

‘Maobeth,’ who present themselves rocking from the

murder of Banquo, and gleaming dimly, with dreadfulfaces, from the mis ty background , athwart the pompsof the regal banquet.Meantime the clock struck eleven ; the company

broke up ; the door of enha nce was nearly closed ; and

at this moment of general dispers ion the s ituation ofthe five inmates left upon the premises was precise lythis : the three elders, via , Williamson , his wife, andhis female servant, were all occupied on the groundfloor e Williamson himself was drawing ale , porter,a s , for those neighbors , in whose favor the housedoor had been left ajar, until the hour of twelve shouldstrike ; M rs. Williamson and her servant were movingto and fro between the baok~kitchen and a l ittle parlor ;the l ittle grand-daughter, whose sleep ing-roomwas onthefirst floor (which term in Londonmeans always thefloor ra ised by one flight . of stairs above the level of

the street), had been fast as leep s ince nine o’clock ;lastly, the journeyman artisan had retired to rest forsome time. He was a regular ledger in the house ;and his bedroom was on the second floor. For sometime he had been undressed , and had lain down in bed.Being, as a working man, bound to habits of earlyrising , be w e naturally anxious to fall asleep as soonas possible. But, on this particular night, his ancasiness , ar

i

sing from the recentmurders at No. 29, roseto a p aroxysrn of nervous exc itement which kept himawake. It is possible, that from somebody he hadheard of the suSpicious -looking stranger, ormight evenpersona lly observed him slink ing about. But, were it

otherwise, he was aware of several circums tances

dangerously affecting this house ; for instance , the

THRE E MEM ORABLE MU RD ERS. 39

rufiiauismof this whole neighborhood, and the dis

agreeable faot that the Marrs had l ived W ithin a fewdoors of this very house, which again argued that themurderer a lso l ived at no great distance. These werematters of general alarm . But there were otherspecul iar to this house ; in par ticular, the notoriety of

Williamson’s opulence ; the belief, whether well or il l

founded, that he accumulated , in desks and drawers ,the money continually flowing into his hands ; and

lastly, the danger so oste'

fthiously courted by thathabit of leaving the house s door ajar through one entirehour— and that hour loaded with extra danger, by thewell-advertised assurance that no collision need befeared with chance convivial visitors, since all suchpeople were banished at eleven . A regulation, whichhad hitherto Operated beneficially for the character andcomfort of the house , new, on the contrary , under

altere d circumstances, became a positive proclamationof exposure and defencelessness, through one entireperiod of an hour. Williamson himself, it was said

generally, being a large unwieldy man, past se venty,and signally inactive, ought, in prudence , to make thelocking ofhis door coincident with the d ismissal of hisevening pmty.

Upon these and other grounds of alarm (particularlythis , that Mrs . Williamson was reported to possess aconsiderable quantity of plate), the journeyman wasmusing painfully, and the time might be within twenty»e ight or twenty-dve minutes of twelve, when all at

once , with a crash, proclaiming some hand of hideous

violence , the house-door was suddenly shut and locked.Here , then , beyond all doubt, was the diabolioman,clothed in mystery, fromNo. 29 Ratclifl

’

e Highway.

40 rune s non oanoue uuaonas .

Yes, that dreadful being, who for twelve days and

employed all thoughts and all tongues, was now, too

certain ly, in this defens eless house, and would, in a fewminutes , he face to face with every one of its inmates.A question still l ingered in the public mind whetheratMarr’s theremight not have been twomen at work.If so, there would be two at present ; and one of thetwo would he immediately disposable for the tip

-stairswork ; s ince no danger could obviously bemore immediately fatal to such an attack than any alarmgivenfroman upper window to the passengers in the street.Through one half-minute the poor pan ie c strioken mansat up motionless in bed. But then he rose, his firstmovement being towards the door of his room. Not for

any purpose of securing it against intrusion too wellhe knew that there was no fastening of any sort 1

neither lock, nor bolt ; nor was there any suchmove

able furniture in the roomas might have avai led tobarricade the door, even if

“

time could be counted onfor such an attempt. it was no efi

‘

ect of prudence ,merely the fascination of killing fear it was, that drovehimto open the door. One step brought him to thehead of the stairs : he lowered his head over the bolustrade in order to l isten ; and at thatmoment ascended,from the l ittle parlor, this agon izing cry from the

woman a serrant, Lord Jesus Christ ! we shall all bemurdered l What a Medusa ’

s he ad musthave lurkedin those dreadful bloodless features, and those glazedrigid eyes, that seemed rightfully belonging to a

corpse, when one glance at them sufiioed to proclaima death -warrant.Three separate deathr struggles were by this time

over ; and the poor petrified journeyman , qu ite uncon

runes monomers nuance s . 41

seious of what he was doing, in bl ind, passive , selfsurrender to pan ic, absolutely descended bothflights ofstairs. Infinite terror inspired himwith the same impulse asmight have been inspired by headlong courage.In his shirt, and upon old decaying sta irs, that at timescrooked under his feet, he continued to descend, untilhe had reached the lowest step but four. The situationwas tremendous beyond any that

‘

is on record. A.

sneeze, a cough, almost a breathing, and the young

manwould be a corpse, without a chance or a strugglefor his l ife. The murderer was at that time in the

l ittle parlor—s the door of which parlor faced you indescending the stairs ; and this door stood ajar ; indeed,muchmore considerably open than what is understoodby the term ajar.’ Of that quadrant, or 90 degrees,which the door would describe in swinging so for open

as to stand at right angles to the lobby, or to its elf, in a

closed position , 55 degrees at the leastwere exposed.Consequently, two out of three corpses were exposed to

the youngman’s gaze. Where was the third ? And the

murderer m where was be ? As to the murderer, hewas walking rap idly backwards and forwards in the

parlor, audible but not visible at first, being engagedwith something or other in tha t part of the roomwhichthe door still concealed. What the something mightbe

,the sound soon explained ; he was applying keys

tentatively to a cupboard , a closet, and a scrutoire, in

the hidden part of the room. Very soon, however, he

came into View ; but, fortunately for the youngman , atthis criticalmoment, themurderer’s purpose too entirelyabsorbed himto allow of his throwing a glance to the

staircase, on which also the white figure of the jour

neyman , standing in motionless horror, would have4

42 mas s MEMORABLE nuance s .

been detected in one instant, and seasoned for the gravein the second. A s to the third corpse, the miss ingcorpse

,viz ., Mr. Williamson’s , that is in the cellar ;

and‘

how its local position can be accounted for, re

mains a separate question much discussed at the time,but never satisfactorily cleared up . Meantime, thatWilliamson was dead, became evident to the youngman ; since else he would have been heard stirring orgroaning . Three friends , therefore, out of four, whomthe young man had parte d w ith fortyminutes ago , werenow extinguished remained , therefore , 40 per cent; (alarge per centage for Williams to leave) ; rema ined , infact

,himself and his pretty young friend, the l ittle

grand-daughter, whose childish innocence was stillslumbering without fear for herself, or grief for heraged grand-parents . If they are gone for ever, happilyone friend (for suchhe will prove himself, indeed , iffrom such a danger he can Save this child) is prettynear to her. But alas ! he is still nearer to amurderer.At this moment he is unnerved for any exertion whatever ; he has changed into a p illar of ice ; for theobjects before him, separated by just thirteen feet, arethese -T he housemaid had been caught by the murderer on her knees ; she was kneeling before the fire

grate , which she had been polishing with black lead.That part of her task was finished ; and she had passedon to another task, viz., the filling of the grate withwood and coals, not for kindling at thismoment, but soas to have it ready for kindling on the next day. T he

appearances all showed that she must have been en~

gaged in this labor at the very moment when the

murdere r entered ; and perhaps the succession of the

incidents arranged itself as follows - Fromthe awful

THREE man oanat c o nenes s. 43

ejaculation and loud outcry to Christ, as overheard bythe journeyman

, it was clear that than first she hadbe en alarmed ; yet this was at least one and a shalf or

even two‘

minutes after the door-slamming. Conse

quen tly the a larmwhich had so fearfully and seasonahly alarmed the youngman ,mus t, in some unaccountable way, have been misinterpreted by the two women.

It Was said , at the time , that Mrs. Williamson laboredunder some dulness of hearing ; and it was conjeetured that the servant, having her ears filled with thenoise of her own scrubbing, and her head half underthe grate, might have confounded it w ith the streetnoises , or else might have imputed this violen t closureto some mischievous boys. But, howsoever explained ,the fact was evident, that, until the words of appeal toChrist, the servant had noticed nothing suspic ious ,nothing which interrupted her labors .

‘

If so, it followedthat neither had M rs .Williamson noticed anything ; for,in that case , she wou ld have commun icated her ownalarmto the servant, since bothwere in the same smallroom. Apparently the course of things after the morederer had entered the roomwas this zm Mars .Williamsonhad probably not seen him, fromt he acc ident of standing with her back to the door. Her, there fore, beforehe was himself observed at all, he had stunn ed and

prostrated by a shattering blow on the back of herhead ; this blow, inflicted by a crow-bar, had smashedin the hinder part of the skull. She fell ; and by thenoise of her fall (for all was the work of a moment)had first roused the attention of the servant ; who thenuttered the cry which had reached t he youngma n ; butbefore she could repeat it, th e murderer had descendedwith his uplifted instmmcnt upon her head, crushing

dd ro s es man g ane se mentions.

the skull inwards upon the bra in. Both the womenwere irreooverably destroyed, so tlmt fur ther outrageswere needless ; and, moreover, the murderer was comsoious of the imminen t danger fromdelay and yet, in

spite of his hurry, so fully did he appreeiate the fatalconsequences to hims elf, if any ofhis victims should sofar revive into consciousness as tomake circumstan tialdepositions, that, by way ofmaking this imposs ible, hehad proceeded instantly to out the threats of each. A ll

this ta ll ied w ith the appearances as now presenting

themselves. Mrs. Williamson had fallen backwardswithher head tome door ; the servant, fromher kneeling posture , had been incapable of risin g, and had

presented her head passively to blows ; after which , the

miscreant had but to bend her head backwards so as toexpose her throat, and the murder was fin ished.

idIt is remarkable that the young artisan , paralyzedas he had been by fear, and evidently fascinated for atime so as to walk right towards the lion’

9 mouth, yetfound himself able to notice everything important.T he reader must suppose himat this point watchingthe murderer Whilst hanging over the body of Mrs.Williamson , and whilst renewing his search for certa inimportan t keys. Doubtless it was an anxious s ituationfor the murderer ; for, unless he speedily found thekeys wanted, all this hideous tragedy would end in

nothingbut a prodigious increase of the public horror,in tenfold precautions there fore , and redoubled obstacles inte rposed between himself and his future game.N ay, there was even a nearer interest at stake ; hisown immediate safety might, by a probable accident,be compromised. Most of those who came to thehouse for liquor were g iddy girls or children , who, on

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46 runes n ewscas t s nuances.

finest qual ity. One other fact he noticed, which eventos lly became more immediately important than manystronger circ umstances of incrimination ; this was , thatthe shoes of themurderer, apparently new, and bought,probably, with poor Marr

’s money, crooked as hewalks d, harshly and frequently. Withthe new cluste rsof keys , the murderer walked off to the hidden sectionof the parlor. And here , at last, was suggested to thejourneyman the sudden opening for an escape . Someminutes would be lost to a certainty trying all thesekeys ; and subsequently in searc hing the drawers, supposing that the heys answered fi —or in violently forcingthem, suppos ing that they did not. He might thuscount upon a brief interval of leisure, whilst the rat

tl ing of the keys might obscure to the murdere r thecreaking of the stairs under the re s-ascending journeyman. H is plan was now formed : on regain ing hisbedroom, he placed the bed against the door by wayof a tra nsient re tardation to the enemy, thatmight givehima short warn ing, and in the worst extremity,mightgive hima chance for life by mean s of a desperateloop. This change made as quietly as possible, hetore the sheets, pillow-cases , and blankets into broadribbons ; and after plaiting them into ropes, splicedthe difi

'

erent lengths together. But at the very first hedescries this ugly addition to his labors . Where shallhe look for any staple , hook , bar, or other fixture ,fromwhichhis rope, when twisted, may safely depend ?Measured fromthe window-sill s d. a , the lowest partof the window architrave there coun t but twenty-twoor twentywthree feet to the ground. Of this lengthten or twelve feet may be looked upon as cancelled ,because to that extent he might drop without danger.

Te ens MEMORABLE onenes s. 47

S o much being deducted , there would remain, say, adozen feet of rope to prepare. But, unhappily, thereis no stout iron fixture anywhere about his W indow.

The nearest, indeed the sole fixture of that sort, is notnear to the W indow at all ; it is a S pike fixed (for noreason at all that is apparen t) in the bed-tester ; now,the bed being shifted, the spike is shifted ; and its

distance from the window, having been always fourfeet, is now seven. Seven entire feet, therefore,mustbe added to that which would have sufficed if measuredfromthe W indow . But courage ! G od, by the proverbof all nations in Christendom, helps those that helpthemselves. This our youngman thankfully acknowleedges ; he reads already, in the very fact of anyS pike at all being found Where hitherto it has beenuseless , an earnest of providential aid. Were it only

for himself that he worked, he could not feel himselfmeritoriously employed ; but this is not so ; in deeps incerity , he is now agitate d for the poor child

, Whomhe knows and loves , every minute , he feels, bringsru in nearer to her 5 and, as he passed her door, hisfirst t hought had bee n to tak e her out of bed in hisarms , and to carry her Where she might share hischances , But, on consideration , he felt that this sud s

den awaking of her, and the impossibiiity of evenWhispering any eXplanation, would cause her to cryaudibly ; and the inevitable indiscretion of one wouldbe fatal to the two , he the A lp ine avalanches , whensuspended above the traveller’s head, oftentimes (weare told) come down through the stirring of the air bya s imple

,whisper, precisely on such a tenure of a

Whisper was now suspended the murderous mal ice ofthe man below. No ; there is but one way to save

48 runes MEMORABLE neurons.

the child , towards her deliverance , the first step isthrough his own. And he has made an excellentbeginn ing ; for the sp ike, which too fearfully he hadexpected to see torn away by any strain upon the

half-carious wood, stands firmly when tried against thepre ssure of his own weight. He has rapidly fastenedon to it three lengths of his new rope, measuringeleven feet. He plaits it roughly ; so that only threefeet have been lost in the intertwisting ; he has splicedon a second length equal to the first ; so that, al ready,sixteen feet are ready to throw out of the window ;and thus , l et the worst come to the worst, it will not beabsolute ruin to swarmdown the rope so far as it willreach , and then to drop boldly. A ll this has beenaccomplished in about six minutes ; and the hot contest between above and below is steadily but ferventlyproceeding. Murderer is working hard in the parlor ,journeyman is working hard in the be droom. M is

oreant is getting on famous ly down-sta irs ; one batchof bankcnotes he has already bagged ; and is hardupon the scent of a second. He has also S prung a

covey of go lden coins. Sovereigns as yet were not ;but guineas at this period fetched thirty shillingsre place ; and he has worked his Way into a little quarryof these . Murderer is almost joyous ; and if anycreature is still l iving in this house , as shrewdly hesuspects, and very soon means to know,

with thatcreature he would be happy, before cutting the crea

ture’s throat, to drink a. glass of something. Instead

of the glass , might be not make a present to the poorcreature of its throat ? Oh no ! imposs ible ! T hreats

are a sort of thing that he never makes presents ofbusiness m business must be attended to. Real ly the

rattan MEMORABLE nuance s . 49

two men , considered s imply as men of bus iness, arebothmeritorious . Like choru s and semi-chorus

, stan phe

and antistrophe, they work each against the other.Pull journeyman , pull murderer ! Pull baker, pulldcvil l A s regards the journeyman, he is now safe .T o his sixteen feet, of which seven are neutral ized bythe distance of the bed, he has at last added six feetmore , which will be short of reaching the ground byperhaps ten feet a trifle which man or boymay dropwithout injury. A ll is safe, therefore , for him: whichis more than one can be sure of for miscreant in theparlor. Miscreant, however, takes it coolly enoughthe reason being, that, with all his cleverness , for oncein his l ife miscreant has be en over-reached. Thereader and 1 know, but miscrean t does not in the leastsuspect, a little fact of some importance, viz, thatjust now through a space of full three min utes he hasbeen overlooked and studied by one, who (thoughreading in a dreadful book, and suffering undermortalpanic) took accurate notes of so much as his l imitedOpportunities allowed him to see , and will assuredlyreport the creaking shoes and the silk-moun ted. surtoutin quarters where such little facts will tell very little tohis advanmge . But, al though it is true that Mr. W ill iams, unaware of the journeyman’

s having assisted

at the examination of Mrs . Williamson’s pockets , could

not connect any anxiety with that person’s subsequent

proceedings, nor specially, therefore , with his havmgembarked in the rope nweaving l ine, assuredly he knew

of reasons enough for not loi tering. And yet he didloiter. Reading his acts by the light of such mutetraces as he left behind him, the pol ice became awarethat latterly he must have loitered. And the reason

5

50 THRE E MEMORABLE MURDERS.

which gove rned him is striking ; because at once itrecords —thatmurder was not pursued by him simplyas a means to an end, but also as an end for itsel f.Mr. Williams had now been upon the premises forperhaps fifteen or twentyminutes ; and in that space

of time he had dispatched , in a styl e satisfactory to

himself, a cons iderable amount of bus iness . He haddone, in commercial language , a good stroke of basic

ness.’ U pon two floors , viz., the cellar-door and theground-floor, he has accounted for ’ all the population.But there remained at least two floors more ; and. i tnow occurre d to Mr. Will iams that, although the landlord’s somewhat chillingmanner had shut himout from

any familiar knowledge of the household arrange

ments, too probably on one or other of those floorsthere must be some throats . A s to plunder, he hasalready bagged the whole. And it was next to impossible that any arrear the most triv ial should still remainfor a gleaner. But the throats —the throats -m there

it was that arrears and gleanings might perhaps becounted on . A nd thus it appeared that, in his wolfishthirst for blood, Mr. Williams put to hazard the Wholefruits of his night’s work, and his l ife into the bargain .

A t this moment, if the murderer knew all, could hesee the open w indow above stai rs ready for the descentof the journeyman , could he W itness the life-and-deathrap idity w ithwhich that journeyman is working, couldhe guess at the almighty uproar which within ninetyseconds will be maddening the population of this populous district— no picture of a man iac in fl ight ofpan ic or in pursuit of vengeance would adequatelyrepresent the agony of haste with which he wouldhimself be hurrying to the street-door for final evas ion.

THREE mon omers nuance s . 51

That mode of escape was sti ll free. Even at thismoment, there yet rema ined time sufiicient for a suc

cessful flight, and, therefore , for t he following revo lation in the romance of his own abominable l ife. Hehad in his pockets above a hundred pounds of booty ;means, therefore, for a full disguise. This very night,if he will shave of? his yellow hair, and blacken hiseyebrows, buying , whenmorning light returns , a darkcolored wig, and clothes such as may (co-operate inpersonating the charac ter of a grave profess ional man ,hemay elude all suspicions of impertinent pol icemen ;inay sail by any one of a hundred vessels bound forany port along the huge line of sea-board (stretchingthrough twentyu four hundred miles) of the AmericanUnited States ; may enjoy fifty years for leisurely

re pentance ; andmay even die in the odor of sanctity.O n the other hand, if he prefer active life, it is notimpossible that, with his subtlety, hardihood, and

unscrupulousness , in. a land where the s imple processof natural ization converts the al ien at once into a childof the family, he might ris e to the president’s cha ir ;might have a statue at his death ; and afterwards a lifein three volumes quarto, with no hint glancing towardsNo. 29Ratclifle Highway. But all depends on thenext ninety seconds . Within that time there is a sharpturn to be taken ; there is a wrong turn , and a rightturn. Should his better angel guide himto the rightone , all may yet go well as regards this world

’s pros:

perity. But behold ! in two minutes from this pointwe shall see himtake the wrong one : and then Nemesis will be athis heels with ruin perfect and sudden.

Meantime , if the murderer allows himse lf to loiter,the ropemaker overhead does not. Well he knows

52 THREE Mon omers nuance s.

that too poor child’s fate is on the edge of a razor : forall turns upon the alarmbeing raised before the more

derer reaches her beds ide. A nd at this very moment,whilst desperate agitation is nearly paralyzing his

fingers, he hears the sullen stealthy s te p of the munderer creeping up through the darkness. It had beenthe expectation of the journeyman (founded on the

clamorous uproar with which the street-door was slammed) that Williams , when disposable for his tip

-stairswork, would come rac ing at a long jubilant gallop , and.

witha tiger roar ; and perhaps, on his natural instincts,he would have done so. But this mode of approach ,whichwas of dreadful efi

’

ect when applied to a caseof surprise, became dangerous in the case of peoplewho might by this time have been placed fully upontheir guard. The step which he had heard was on thes ta ircase -a but upon which stair ? He fanc ied uponthe lowest : and in amovement so slow and cautious ,even this might make all the difference ; yet might itnot have been the tenth, twelfth, or fourteenth sta irNever, perhaps , in this world did anyman feel his ownrespons ibility so cruelly loaded and strained, as at thismoment did the poor journeyman on behalf of thes lumbering child. Lose but two seconds, throughawkwardness or through the self-counteractions of

panic, and for her the total difi’

erence arose betweenlife and death. Sti ll there is a hope and nothing can

so frightfully expound the hell ishnature of himwhosebaleful shadow, to S peak astrologiually, at this momentdarkens the house of life, than the simple expressionof the ground on which this hope rested. The journey

man felt sure that the murderer would not be satisfiedto kill the poor child whilst unconscious . This would

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54 THREE a nn ounces MURDERS .

But all cons iderations whatever are at this momentsuddenly cut short. A. second step is heard on the

stairs , but still stealthy and cautious ; a. third— and

then the child’s doomseems fixed. But just at thatmoment all is ready. The window is W ide Open ; therope is swinging free ; the journeyman has launchedhimself ; and already he is in the first stage of his descent. Simply bythe weight ofhis person he descended,and by the resistance of his hands he remrded the de s

scent. T he danger was , that the rope should run too

smoothly through his hands , and that by too rapid an

acceleration of pace he should come violently to the

gt‘

ound. Happily he was able to resis t the descendingimpetus : the knots of the spl ic ings furn ished a success ion of retardations. But the rope proved shorter byfour or five feet than he had calculated : ten or elevenfeet fromthe ground he hung suspended in the air ;Speechless for the present, through longs-continuedagitation ; and not daring to dmp boldly on the roughcarriage pavement, lest he should fracture his legs .

But the night was not dark, as it had been on occas ionof the Moremurders . And yet, for purposes of criminalpol ice , it was by accident worse than the darkest n ightthat ever hid a murder or bodied a pursuit. London ,from east to west

,was covered with a deep pail (ris ing

fromthe river) of un iversal fog. Hence it happened,that for twenty or thirty seconds the young man hanging in the air was not observed. H is White shirt at

nothing, heard nothing—was fast asleep , and her door was

closed so that, as a witness against him, he knew that she was

as useless as any one of the three corp ses. And yet he was

making preparations for her murder , when the alarmin the

rune s time lin es s mundane . 55

length attracted notice . Three or four people ran up ;and received himin their arms, all antic i pating somedreadful annunciati on . T o what house did he belong P

Even that was not instantly apparent ; but he pointed

Wi th his finger to Will iamson ’

s door, and said in a

halilchoking Whisperfi M arr

’e murderer , now at

«work I

All explained its elf in amome nt : the silent languageof the fact made its own eloquent revelation. Themysterious exterminator of No. 29Ratclifi

'

e Highway

had visited another house ; and, behold one man onlyhad (escaped through the air, and in his n ight-dress , totell the tale. Superstifiously, there was something tocheck the pursuit o f this unintell i gible criminal . Mor

ally, and in the intere sts of v indictive justice, there

was everything to rouse, quicken, and sustain it.Yes, Marr

’s murderer - s til e man of mystery a g was

again at work ; at this moment perhaps extinguishingsome lump of life , and not at any remote place , buthere -ia the very house which the l isteners to this

dreadful announcement were actually touching. Thechaos and blind uproar of the scene which followed,measured by the crowded reports in the journals of

many subsequent days, and in one feature of that case ;has never to my knowledge had its parallel ; or, if a.

parallel , only in one case—g what followed , I mean , onthe acquittal of the seven bishops at ~Westminster in1688 . A t pre sent there was more than pass ionateenthus iasm. The frenzied movement of mixed horrorand sanitation “ the ululation of vengeance whichascended instantaneous ly fromthe individual street, andthen by a sublime sort of magnetic contagion from all

56 THREE marmos et s nuance s .

the adjacent streets , can he adequately expressed onlyby a rapturous pasmge in Shelley

The transmit of a fierce andmonstrous gladnessSpread throughthemulti tudinous streets , that flying

Upon the wings of fear Fromhis dullmadnessl

‘

he starveling waked, an d died in joy : the dying,Among the corpses in stark agony lying,Justheard the happy tidings , an d in hope

Closed their fain t eyes : fromhouse to house replyingWithloud amlaimthe living shook heaven ’

s cepe,And fill’d the startled earthwithechoes, “

There was something, indeed, half inexplicable in theinstantaneous interpretation of the gathering shoutcording to its true meaning. In fact, the deadly roar

of vengeance , and its sublime unity, could point in thisdistrict on ly to the one demon whose idea had broodedand tyrannized, for twelve days , over the generalheart : every door, every window in the neighborhood ,flew upon as if at a word of command ; multitudes,w ithout wa iting for the regular means of egress , leapeddown at once from the windows on the lower story ;s ickmen rose fromtheir beds ; in one instance, as ifexpressly to verify the image of Shelley (in v. 4, 5 , 6 ,a man whose death had been locked for through somedays , and who actually did die on the following day,rose, armed himself with a sword, and descended inhis shirt in to the street. T he chance was a good one ,and the mob were made aware of i t, for catch ing thewolfishdog in the highnoon and carnival of his bloody

revels -g in the very centre of his own shambles . For

Revolt of Islam,

’cantomi .

THREE nonoanson nuance s . 57

a moment the mob was self-battled by its own numbe rsand its own fury. But even that fury felt the call forself-control. It was eviden t that the messy street-doormust be driven in , s ince there was no longer any l ivingperson to co-operate with the ir efforts fromwithin , excepting only a femal e child. Crowbars dexterouslyapplied in one minute threw the door out of hangings ,and the people entered l ike a torrent. It may beguessed with What fret and irritation to their consumingfury, a signal of pause and absolute silence was madeby a person of local importance. In the hepe of receir iog some useful communication , the mob becames ilent. N ow listen ,

’said the man of authority, and

we shall learn whether he is above~sta irs or below.

’

Immediately a noise was heard as if of some one

forcing W indows , and clearly the sound came froma

bedroomabove. Yes, the fact was apparent that themurderer was even yet in the house : he had been

caught in a trap. N ot having made himse lf familiarwith the details of Williamson’s hous e, to all, appearance he had suddenly become a prisoner in one of theUpper rooms. Towards this the crowd now rushedimpetuously. The door, however, was found to besl ightly fastened ; and, at the moment when this wasforced, a loud crash of the window, both glass and

frame, announced that the wretch had made his escape.He had leaped down ; and severa l persons in the

crowd , who burned with the general fury, leaped afterhim. These persons had not troubled themselves aboutthe nature of the ground ; but now, on making an examination of it with torches , they reported it to be an

inclined plane, or embankment of clay, very wet and

adhes ive. T he prints of the man’s footsteps were

58 TH RE E a s tronaut s moaneas .

deeply impressed upon the clay, and therefore eas ilytraced up to the summit of the embankment ; but it wasperceived at once that pursuit would be use less , fromthe density of the mist. T wo feet ahead of you, amanwas entirely W ithdrawn fromyour power of identifioa~tion ; and, on overtaking him, you could not ventureto challenge himas the same Whomyou had lost s ightof. Never, through the course of a Whole century,could there he a night expected more prop itious to an

escaping crimina l : means of disgu ise Williams nowhad in excess ; and the dens were innumerable in the

neighborhood of the river that could have sheltered himfor years from troublesome inquiries . But favors are

thrown away up on the reckless and the“ thankless .

That n ight,when the turningu

point ofi‘

ered itself for hisWhole future career, W illiams took the wrong turn ;for, out of mere indolence, he took the turn to his oldlodgings— that place which, in all England , he had

the most reason to shun.atime the crowd had thoroughly searched t he

es ofWilliamson. The first inquiry was for theyoung grand-daughter. Williams, it was evident, had

gone into her room: but in this roomapparently it wasthat the sudden uproar in the streets had surprised him;afte r which his undivided attention had been directedto the W indows , s ince through these only any re treathad been left open to him. Bren this retreat he owedonly to the fog and to the hurry of the moment, and tothe difficu lty of approaching the premises by the rear .

The littl e girl was naturally agitated by the influx of

strangers at that hour but otherwise, through the huo

mane precautions of the neighbors , she was preservedfromall knowledge of the dreadful events that had oca

THREE MEMORA BLE nuannas . 59

curred whilst she herself was sleep ing. Her poor oldgrandfather was still missing, until the crowd descendedinto the cellar ; he was then found lying prostrate onthe cellar door : apparently he had been thrown downfrom the tOp of the cellar stairs, and with so much violence , that one leg was broken. Alter he had beenthus disabled, W illiams had gone down to him , and out

his throat. There was much discuss ion at the time, insome of the pub l ic journals, upon the possibility of re s

conciling these incidents with other c ircumstantialitiesof the case, suppos ing that only oneman had been con :

corned in the affair. That there was only one manconcerned, seems to be certain. One only was seenor heard at Marr’s : one only, and beyond all doubt thesame man , was seen by the young journeyman in M rs .

Williamson’s parlor ; and one only was traced by hisfootmarks on the clay embankment. A pparently thecourse which he had pursued was this : he had introdaood himself to W illiamson by ordering some beer .This order would obl ige the old man to go down intothe cellar ; Williams would wai t until he had reachedit, and would then slam ’

and look the street-doormthe violent way described. Will iamson would come upin agitation upon hearing this violence. Themurderer,aware that he would do so ,met him, no doubt, at thehead of the cellar stairs , and threw himdown ; afterwhich he would go down to consummate the murder inhis ordinary way. A ll this would occupy a minute, oraminute and a half and in that way the interval woul dbe accounted for that elapsed between the alarmingsound of the stre et-door as heard by the journeyman ,

and the lamentable outcry of the female servant. It isevident also, that the reason why no cry whatsoever

60 races monument: o nene s s.

had been heard fromthe lips of M rs. W ill iamson, isdue to the pos itions of the parties as I have sketched

them. Coming behind M rs.Will iamson , unseen therefore

, and from her deafness unheard, the murdererwould infl ict entire abol ition of consciousness while shewas yet unaware ofhis presence. But with the servan t,who had unavoidably witnessed the attack upon hermistress , the murderer could not obtain the same fulness of advantage ; and she there fore had time formaking an agonizing ejaculation .

Ithas beenmentioned , that themurderer of the Marrswas not for nearly a fortn ight so much as suspected ;mean ing that, previously to the W i ll iamson murder, novestige of any ground for susprcron in any directionwhatever had occurre d either to t he general public or tothe pol ice . Butmore were two very limiwd exceptionsto this state of absolute ignorance. Some of the magistrates had in their possess ion something which , whenclosely examined, ofi

'

ered a very probable means fortracing the crimina l. But as yet they had not tracedhim. Until the Friday morning next after the destruc»tion of the W ill iamsons, they had not published the important fact, that upon the ship-carpenter’s mallet (withwhich, as regarded the stunning or disab l ing process,the murders had been achieved) were inscribed the letters J. P.

’ This mallet had, by a strange oversighton the part of the murderer, been left behind in Marr

’s

shop ; and i t is an interesting fact, therefore, that, had

the villain been intercepted by the brave pawnbroke r,he would have beenmet virtually disarmed. This public notification wasmade officially on the Friday, via ,

on the thirteenth day afte r the first murde r. And itwas instantly followe d (as will be seen) by a most im

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62 THREE MEMORABLE nuance s .

this house, not two furlongs fromMarr’s Shep, madeawfully evident ; and, as may well be supposed, thesuspicion was commun icated to the other members ofthe dormitory. A ll of them, however, were aware ofthe legal dan ger attaching, under English law, to ins in

uations against a men , even if true, which might notadmit of proof. In real ity, had Williams used themostobvious precautions , had he simply wa lked down to theThames (not a stone

’s~throw distant), and flung two of

his implements into the river, no conclusive proof couldhave been adduced against him. And he might haverealized the scheme of Courvois ier (the murderer of

Lord Will iamRussell) - viz., have sought each sepa~

ratemon th’s support in a separate well-concenedmurder. The party in the dormitory, meantime , weresatisfied themselves, but waited for evidences thatmight satisfy others. No sooner, therefore , had theofficial notice been published as to the in itials J. P. on

themallet, than everyman in the house recogn ized atonce the well-known initials of an honest Norwegianship -carpenter, John Petersen, who had worked in the

English dockyards until the presen t year ; but, havingoccas ion to revisit his native land, had left his box of

tools in '

the gmets of this inn. These garrets werenow se arched. Petersen’

s tool-chest was found, butwanting the mallet ; and, on further examination,another overwhelming discovery wasmade. The sungeon , who examined the corpses at W illiamson’s, hadgiven it as his Opin ion that the threats were not out bymeans of a razor, but of some implement difi

'

erently

shaped. It was now remembered that Williams hadrecently borrowed a large French kn ife of pecul iarconstruction 3 and accordingly, froma heap of old lum

runes usuoaanns nuance s . 63

her and rags, there was soon exnicated a waistcoat,which the whole house could swear to as recently wornby Williams. In this waistcoat, and glued by gore tothe lining of its pockets , was found the French kn ife.Next

,it was matter of notoriety to everybody in the

inn, thatW il liams ordinarily were at pre sent a pair ofcreaking shoes, and a brown surtout lined with silk.Many other presumptions seemed scarcely called for.Williams was immediately apprehended, and brieflyexamined. This was on the Friday. On the Saturdaymorn ing (via , fourteen days fromthe Marrmurders)he was again brought up. The circumstantial evidencewas overwhelming ; W illiams watched its course, butsaid very little. A t the close , he was fully committedfor trial at the next sess ions ; and it is needless to say,that, on his road to prison , he was pursued bymobs sofierc e, that, under ordinary circumstances, there wouldhave been small hepe of escaping summary vengeance.But upon this occasion a powerful escort had been provided ; so that he was safely lodged in jail. In thisparticular jail at this time, the regulation was , that at;five o’clock, P. M . all the pr isoners on the criminal sideshould be finally locked up for the n ight

,and with

out candles. For fourteen hours (that is, until seveno’clock on the nextmorn ing) they were led unvisited ,and in total darkness. Time, therefore , Williams hadfor committing suicide. The means in other respectswere small. O ne iron bar there was ,meant ( if I remember) for the suspension of a lamp ; upon this hehad hanged himself by his braces. A t what hour was

uncertain : some people fancied at midn ight. And in

that case, precisely at the hour when , fourteen daysbefore, he had been sp e eding

-

horror and desolation

64 races MEMORABLE nuance s .

through the qu iet family of poor Marr, now was heforced into drinking of the same cup , presented to hisl ips by the same accursed hands.

The case of the M ‘Keans, which has been speciallyalluded to ,merits also a slight rehearsal for the dreadful picturesqueness of some two or three amongst itscircumstances. The scene of this murder was at arustic inn , some fewmiles (I think) fromManchester ;and the advantageous situation of this inn itwas , out

of which arose the two fold temptations of the case.Generally speak ing, an inn argues, of course, a close

cincture of neighbors as the original motive forOpen ing such an establishment. But, in this case, the

house individually was solitary, so that no interruption

was to be looked for fromany persons l iving withinmes h of screams ; and yet, on the other hand , the circumjacent vicinity was eminently populous ; as one

consequence of which, a benefit club had establ ishedits weekly rendezvous in this inn , and left the pecu liaraccumulations in their club-room, under the custody ofthe landlord. This fund arose often to a considerableamount, fifty or seventy pounds, be fore it was transferre d to the hands of a banker. Here , therefore , was

a treasure worth some l ittle risk, and a situation thatpromised next to none. These attractive circumstanceshad, by accident, become accurately known to one or

both of the two M ‘Keans ; and, unfortunately, at amoment of overwhelming misfortune to themselves.They were hawkers ; and, unti l lately, had borne mostrespectable characters but some mercantile crash hadovertaken themwith utter ruin, in which their jointcapital had been swallowed up to the las t shilling.

re us e MEMORABLE s ucce s s . 65

This sudden prostration had made them desperatetheir own little property had been swallowed up in alarge social catastrophe , and society at large theylooked upon as accountable to them for a robbery.In preying, therefore , upon society, they cons ideredthemselves as pursuing a wild natural justice of retali

ation. T he money aimed at did certainly assume thecharacter of public money, being the product ofmanyseparate subscriptions. They forgot, however, that inthe murderous acts , which too certain ly theymeditatedas prel iminaries to the robbery, they could plead no suchimaginary social precedent. In dealing with a familythat seemed almost helpless, if all went smoothly, theyrel ied enti rely upon their own bodily strength. Theywere stout youngmen, twenty-eight to thirty-two yearsOld ; somewhat unders ized as to height ; but square lybuilt, deep-chested, broadfi shouldered, and so beautifully formed , as regarded the symmetry of their l imbsand their articulations, that, afte r their execution , thebodies were privately exhibited by the surgeons of theManchester Infirmary, as objects of statuesque interest.On the other hand , the hous ehold which they proposedto attack consisted of the following four persons fi 1.

the landlord, a stoutish farmer but himthey intendedto disable by a trick then newly introduced amongstrobbers, and termed hocassiug , i . e., clandestinely drugging the liquor of the victimwith laudanum; 2. the

landlord’s wife ; 3. a young servant woman 4. a boy,twelve or fourteen years old. T he danger was, thatout of four persons, scatte red by possibil ity over a

house which had two separate exits, one at leastmightescape, and by better acquaintance with the adjacentpaths,might succeed in giving an ala rmto some of the

66 re ar s M EM ORaBLE muavsas .

houses a furlong distan t. Their final re solutionwas, to begu ided by circumstances as to the mode of conductingthe affa ir ; and yet, as i t s eemed essential to successthat they should assume the air of strangers to eachother, it was necessary that they should preconcertsome general outline of their plan ; s ince it would on

this scheme be impossible, W ithout awaking violent sus

p icions , to make any commun ications under the eyesof the family. This outl ine included, at the least, onemurder : so much was settled ; but, otherwise, theirsubsequent proceedingsmake it evident that they wishedto have as l ittle bloodshed as was consistent withtheirfinal object. On the appointed day, they presentedthemselves separate ly at the rustic inn, and at difl

'

erent

hours. One came as early as four o’clock in the afternoon ; the other not unti l half-past seven. They salutedeach other distantly and shyly ; and, though occasiona lly exchanging a few words in the character ofstrangers , did not seemdisposed to any familiar intercourse . W ith the landlord, however, on his returnabout e ight o’clock fromManchester, one of the brothersentered into a l ively conversation ; invited himto takea tumbler of punch and, at a moment when the landlord’s absence fromthe roomallowed it, poured intothe punch a ' Spoonful of laudanum. Some time afterthis, the clock struck ten ; upon which the elder M

‘Kcan ,professing to be weary, as ked to be shown Up to hisbedroom: for each brother, immediately on arriving,had engaged a bed. On this, the poor servant girl hadpresented herself with a bed-candle to light himup

sta irs. A t this critical moment the family were distributed thus - the landlord , stupefied with the horridnarcotic which he had drunk , had re tired to a private

rune s mon omer s a venue s. 67

roomadjoin ing the public room, for the purpose of re

clining upon a sofa : and he , luckily for his own safety,was looked upon as entirely incapacitated for action.The landlady was occupied with her husband. A nd

thus the younger M ‘Kean was l eft alone in the publicroom. He rose, therefore , softly, and placed himselfat the foot of the stairs which his brother had justascended , so as to be sure of intercepting any fugitivefrom the bed room above. Into that room the elderM ‘Kean was ushered by the servan t, who pointed to twobe ds -e e one of whichwas already half occupied by theboy, and the other empty : in these, she intimate d thatthe two strangers must dispose of themselves for thenight, according to any arrangement that theymightagre e upon . Saying this , she presented himwith thecandle, which he in a moment placed upon the table 3and, intercepting her retreat from the roomthrewhisarmround her nook w ith a gesture as though he meantto kiss her. This was evidently What she herself an .

tioipated, and endeavored to prevent. Her horrormaybe irhagined, when she felt the perfidious hand thatclasped her nook. armed with a razor, and violently cutting her throat. She was hardly able to utter one

scream,before she sank powerless upon the floor. This

dreadful spectacle was witnessed by the boy, who wasnot asleep , buthad presence of mind enough instantly

to close his eyes. The murderer advanced has tily tothe bed, and anxiously examined the es pression of the

boy’s features : satisfied he was not, and he then placedhis hand upon the boy’s heart, in order to judge by itsbeatings whether he were agitated or not. This was a

dreadful trial : and no doubt the counterfeit sleep wouldimmediately have been detected , when suddenly a

68 THREE MEMORABLE MU RD ERS :

dreadful spectacle drew offthe attention of the murderer.

Solemnly, and in ghostly silence, uprose in her dyingdelirium the murdered girl 5 she stood upright, she

walked steadily for a moment or two, she bent her stepstowards the door. Themurderer turned away to pursue her ; and at thatmoment the boy, feeling that hisone solitary chance was to fly while this scene was inprogress, bounded out of bed. On the landing at the

head of the stairs was one murderer, at the foot of thestai rs was the other : who could believe that the boy had

the shadow of“

a chance for escaping ? And yet, in the

most natural way, he surmounted all hindrances. Inthe boy’s horror, he laid his left hand on the bolustrade ,and took a flying leap over it, which landed himat the

bottom of the stairs , without having touched a s inglestair. He had thus effectually passed one of the mundorere z the other

,i t is true , was still to he passed 5

and this would have been impossible but for a suddenacc ident. The landlady had been alarmed by the fa intsoreemof the young woman ; had hurried fromher private roomto the girl’s ass istance ; but at the foot ofthe sta irs had been intercepted by the younger brother,and was at this moment struggl ing with him. Theconfusion of this life ~and-death conflict had allowed theboy to whirl past them. Luckily he took a turn into a.

kitchen , out of which was a hack-door, fastened by a

s ingle belt, that ran freely at a touch 3 and through thisdoor he rushed into the open fields. But at thismomentthe elder brother was set free for pursuit by the deathof we poor girl . There is no doubt, that in her del i

riumthe image movie g through her thoughts was thatof the club, which met once a~week. She fancied itno doubt sitting ; and to this room, for help and for

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'70 THREE unnoaanns nuance s .

intemepting enemies was too strongly upon them and

they fled rapidly by a road which carried themactuallywithin six feet of the lurking boy. That n ight theypassed through Manchester. When daylight returned,they slept in a thicket twentymiles distant from thescene of their guilty attempt. On the se cond and thirdn ights , they pursued theirmarch on foot, resting againduring the day. A bout sunrise On the fourth morn ing,they were entering some village near Kirby Lonsdale,in Westmoreland. They must have designedly qu ittedthe direct line of route for their object was Ayishire ,of which county they were natives ; and the regularroad would have led them through Shep , Penrith ,Carl isle. Probably they were seeking to e lude thepersecution of the stage s coaohes , which, for the lastthirty hours , had been scattering at all the inns androad-side oabarets hande bills describing their personsand dress. It happened (perhaps through design) thaton this fourthmorn ing they had separated, so as to

enter the village ten. minutes apart fromeach other.They were exhausted and footsore. In this conditionit was easy to stop them. A blacksmith had silentlyreconnoitred them, and compared their appearancewith the description of the hand-bills. They were theneas ily overtaken, and separately arre sted. Their trialand condemnation Speedily followed at Lancaster ; andin those days it followed, of course, that they wereexecuted. Otherwise their case fell so far within the

sheltering limits of what would now be regarded as

extenuating circumstances a » that, whilst a murdermore or less was not to repel them from their object,very evidently they were anxious to economize thebloodshed asmuch as possible. Immeasurable, there

runes MEMORABLE nuance s. 7 1

fore , was the interval which divided them from the

monster Williams. They perished on the scafi'

old

Williams , as I have said , by his own hand ; and, inobedience to thedaw as it then stood, he was buried inthe centre of a quadrivium, or confirmof four roads (inthis case four stre ets) , with a stake driven through hisheart. A nd over himdrives for ever the uproar of on »

resting London !

THE TRUE RE LATIONS OF THE BIBLE TO

MERELY HUMAN SCIENCE.

Ir is sometimes said, that a re ligiousmessenger fromG od does not come amongs tmen for the sake of teacha

ing truths in science , or of correcting errors in science.Most justly is this sa id : but often in terms far toofeeble. For generally these terms are such as toimply, that, although no direct and imperative functionof his mission , it was yet Open to him, as a permissiblefunction that, although not pressing with the force

of an obligation upon themissionary, it was yet at hisdiscretion -E d i not to correct other men’s errors , yet

at least in his own person to speak. with scientific pre

cision , I contend that it was not. I contend, that tohave uttered the truths of astronomy, of geology, &c.,

at the era of new-horn Christian ity, was not onlybelow and beside the purposes of a re ligion, but wouldhave been against them. Even upon errors of a farmore important class than e rrors in science can everbe fl superstitions, for instance, that degraded the veryidea of God ; prejudices and false usages, that laidwaste human happ iness (such as slavery, and manyhundreds of other abuses that might be mentioned),the rule evidently acted upon by the Founder of Christianity was this i i Given the purification of the wellhead, once assumed that the fountains of truth are

W2]

run T ans RELATIO N S or run mans , ar e . 73

cleansed, all these derivative currents of ev il wil lcleanse themselves. A s a general rule

, the branchesof error were disregarded , and the roots only attacked.It, then, so lofty a station was taken with regard evento such errors as really had mora l and spiritual relations, how muchmore with re gard to the compara tivetrifles (as in the ultimate relations of human naturethey are ) of merely human science ! But, for mypart, I go further, and assert, that upon three reasonsit was impossible for any messenger fromGod (orofi

’

ering himself in that character) to have descendedinto the commun ication of truth merely scientific, oreconomic, or Worldly. And the three reasons are

thesc z— First, Because such a descent would havedegraded his mission

,by lowering it to the base level

of a collusion with human curiosity, or (in the mostfavorable case) of a collusion with petty and transitoryinterests , S econdly, Because it would have ruined hismission , by disturbing its free agency, andmisdirectingits energies , in two separate modes : first, by destroying the spiritual auctori tuo (the prestige and consideration) of the missionary ; secondly, by vitiating theSpiritual atmosphere of his audience “ that i s

,cor

rupting andmisdirecting the character of their thoughtsand expectations. He that in the early days of Christianity should have proclaimed the true theory of the

solar system, or that by any chance word or allusionshould then , in a condition of man so l ittl e preparedto receive such truths , have asserted or assumed thedai ly motion of the earth on its own axis, or its annua lmotion round the sun , would have foun d himself on

tangled ar once and irretrievably in the followingunmanageable consequences z

u - i -First of all, and in

7

74 run mun RELATION S or T HE BIBLE

stantaneously, he would have been roused to the alarming fact, that, by this dreadful indiscre tiou he himself,the professed dcliverer of a new and sp iritual religion ,had in a moment untuned the spirituality of his aud1ence. He would find that he had awa kened withinthem the pass ion of curiosity the most unsp iritual

of pass ions , and of curiosity in a fierce polemic shape.The very safest step in so deplorable a situation wouldbe

,ins tan tly to recent. A lready by this one may

estimate the evil , when such would be its readiestpalliation. For in what condition would the reputationof the te acher be . left for discretion and wisdomas an

intellectual guide , when his first act must be to recent

—and to recent what to the whole body of his hearerswould wear the character of a lunatic preposition.

Such considerations might poss ibly induce himnot to

recent. But in that case the consequences are far

worse . Having once allowed himself to sanction whathis hearers re gard as the mostmons trous of paradoxes,he has no l iberty of retreat Open to him. He muststand to the promises of his own acts . Uttering thefirst truthof a science , he is pledged to the second ;taking the main stop , he is committed to all whichfollow. He is thrown at once Upon the endless con

troversies which sc ience in every stage provokes , and

in none more than in the earl iest. Starting, besides ,fromthe authority of a divine miss ion , he could not

(as others might) have the privilege of selecting arbi

trarily or partially. If upon one science, then uponall ; if upon science , then upon art ; i f upon art and

science , then upon every branch of social economyhis reformations and advances are equal ly due— due

as to all, if due as to any. T o move in one direction ,

T O MERE LY HUM AN SCIEN CE . 7 5

is constructively to undertake for all. W ithout powerto re treat, he has thus thrown the intellectual inte re stsof his followers into a channel utterly al ien to the

purposes of a spiritual miss ion.T he spiritual miss ion , therefore , the purpose for

which only the rel igious teacher was sent, has new

perished altogether—s overlaid and confounded by themerely sc ientific wrangl ings to which his own inocn

s iderate precipitance has Opened the door. But suppose at this point that the teacher, aware at length ofthe mischief which he has caused

, and seeing that thefatal error of uttering one solitary novel truth upon a

matter of mere science is by inevitable consequenceto throw him upon a road leading altogether awayfromthe proper field of his miss ion, takes the laudablecourse of confessing his error, and of attempting a

return into his proper S piritua l province. This may behis best course ; yet, after all, it w i ll not retr ieve his

lostmound. H e returns with a character confessedlydamaged. H is very excuse rests upon the blindness

and shortsightedness which forbade his anticipating thetrue and natural consequences . Neither will his own

account of the case be generally accepted. He willnot be supposed to retreat fromfurther controversy, asinconsistent with spiritual purposes , but because hefinds himself unequal to the dispute . A nd, in thevery best cas e, he is , by his own. aclmowledgment,tainted with human infirmity. He has been ruined fora servant of inspiration ; and how ? By a. process

, let

it be remembered, of whichall the steps are inevitableunder the same agency : that is, in the case of anyprimitive Christian teacher having attempte d to S peakthe language of scientific truth in deal ing with the

“76 ms Tans commons or can BIBLE

phenomena of astronomy, geology, or of any merelyhuman knowledge.N ow, thirdly and lastly, in order to try the question

in an extreme form, let it be supposed that, a ided bypowers of working miracles, some early apostle of

”

Christian ity shou ld actually have succeeded in carryingthrough the Cepernican system of astronomy , as an

article of blind bel ief, s ixte en centuries before the progress of man ’

s intellect had qual ified him for naturallydeveloping that system. What, in such a cas e, wouldbe the true estimate and valuation of the achievement ?Simply this, that he had thus succeeded in cancellingand counteracting a determinate scheme of divine discipline and train ing for man . Wherefore did G odgive toman the powers for conte nding with scientificdimculties ? Wherefore did he lay a secret train of

continual occasions , that should rise , by relays , throughscores of generations , for provoking and developingthose activities in man’

s intellect, i f, after all, he is tosend a messenger of his own, more than human, tointercept and strangle all thesemeat purposes ? Thisis to mistak e the very mean ing and purposes of a revelation. A. revelation is not made for the purpose ofshowing to indolent men that which, by faculties al

ready given to them, they may show to themselves ;no : but for the purpose of showing that which themoral darkness of man will not, W ithout supernaturall ight, allow himto perceive . W ith disdain, therefore,must every thoughtful person regard the notion , thatG od could w ilfully interfere with his own plans , byaccrediting ambassadors to reveal astronomy, or any

other sc ience, which he has commanded men , byqual ifyingmen , to re veal for themselves .

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“78 one race RELATIO N S or one crane

as pmibflifies, either in their true aS pects or their falseaspects , till modern times. The Scriptures , therefore ,nowhere allude to such sciences , either as taking theshape of histories , appl ied to processes current and inmovement, or as taking the shape of theories appl iedto processes past and accomplished. The Mosaic cosmogony, indeed, gives the succession of natural birthsand probably the general outline of sucha successionwi ll be more and more confirmed as geology ad

vances. But as to the time , the duration , of this succ

cess ive evolution, it is the idlest of notions that the

Scriptures either have , or could have, condescended tohuman curiosity upon so awful a prologue to the

drama of this world . Genesis would no more haveindulged so mean a passion with respect to the mysterious inauguration of the world, than the A pocalypsewith respect to its mysterious close . Yet the six daysof M oses l ’ Days ! But is it possible that humanfolly should go the length of understanding by the

Mosaical day, the mysterious day of that awful agencywhich moulded the heavens and the heavenly host, nomore than the ordinary nychthemcron or cycle oftwenty-four hours ? The period impl ied in a day,

when used in relation to the inaugural man ifestationof creative power in that vast drama which introducesG od to man in the character of a demiurgus or creatorof the world, indicated one stage amongst six ; iavaluing probably many millions of years . T he si lliestof nurses , in her nursery babble, could hardly supposethat the mighty process hogan on a Mondaymorn ing,and ended on Saturday night. If we are seriously to

study the value and scriptural acceptation of scripturalwords and phrases, I presume that our first business

T O MERELY HUM d N S ci E NCE . 7 3

will be to collate the use of these words in one partof Scripture , with their use in other pans , holding thesame spiritual relations . The creation, for instance ,does not belong to the earthly or merely historicalrecords , but to the Sp iritual re cords of the Bible ; tothe same category, therefore , as the prOphetic sectionsof the Bible. N ew, in those, and in the Psalms , howdo we understand the word day ? Is any man so

little versed in biblical language as not to know, that

(except in the merely historical parts of the Jewishrecords) every s ection of time has a secret and separate acceptation in the Scriptures ? Does an c an,

though a Grecian word, bear scripturally (either inDaniel or in S t. John) any sense known to Grecianears ? Do the seventy weeks of the prophet meanweeks in the sense ofhuman calendar s ? A lready thePsalms (s o ), already S t. Peter (2d Warn us

of a peculiar sense attached to the word day in div inecare. A nd who of the innumerable interpreters un

derstands the twelve hundred and sixty days in D aniel, or his two thousand and odd days , to mean , byposs ibility, periods of twenty-four hours ? Surely thetheme of Moses was as mystical , and as much entitledto the benefit of mystica l language , as that of theprophets.T he sumof this matter is thie z—s - God, by a H e

brew prophet, i s sublimely described as the Revealerand, in variation of his own express ion

, the same prophet describes himas the Being that knoweth the

darkness.’ Under no idea can the relations of God to

man be more grandly es pressed. But of what is hethe revealer ? N ot surely of those things whichhe hasenabled man to reveal for himself, but of those things

80 THE rave RE LAT I ON S or me s tat e , are .

which , were it not through special light fromheaven,must eternally rema in sealed up in inaccess ibledarkness. On this principle we should all laughat 3.

revealed cookery. But e ssentially the same ridicule,not more, and not less, appl ies to a revealed astronomy, or a revealed geology . A s a fact, there i s no

such astronomy or geology : as a possibil ity, by thed p riori argument which I have used (viz , that arevelation on such fields would counteract other machinerie s of providence), there can be no such astronomy or geology in the Bible. Consequently there isnone. Consequently there can be no schismor feudupon these subjects between the Bible and the philosophies outside.

SCHLOSSER’

S LITERARY HISTORY OF THE

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

IN the person of this Mr. Schlosser is exemplified acommon abuse, not confined to literatu re . A n artis tfromthe Ital ian Opera of London and Paris ,making aprofessional excurs ion to our provinces , is received

according to the tariff of the metropolis ; no one being

held enoughto dispute decisions coming down fromthecourts above. In that particular case there is seldomany reason to comp lain s ince really out of Germany

and Italy there is no city, if you except Paris and

London, possessing mater ials , in that field of art, for

the composition of an audience large enough to act as

a court of revis ion. It would be pre sumption in theprovinc ial audience, so sl ightly tra ined to good mus ic

and dancing, if it should 8.3t to reverse a judgmentratified in the supreme capital. The result, therefore ,is practical ly just, if the original verdict was just ;what was right from the first cannot be made wrongby iteration . Ye t, even in such a case , there is something not satisfactory to a delicate sens e of equity ; forthe artist returns fromthe tour as if from some new

and independent triumph , whereas , all is but the

reverberation of an old one ; i t seems ,a new access

of sunl ight, whereas it is but a reflex illumination fromsatell ites.

82 semossnn’s L ITERARY ntsros r

In literature the corresponding case is worse . A n

author, pass ing bymeans of tramlation before a foreignpeople, ought dc j ars to find himself before a new

tribunal ; but de facto, he does not. Like the operaartist, but not with the same propriety, he comes beforea court that never interfere s to disturb a judgment, butonly to re -afiirm it. And he returns to his nativecountry, quartering in his armorial bearings these newtrophies, as though won by new trials , when ,

‘

in fact,they are due to servile ratifications of old ones . WhenSue

,or Balzac, Hugo, or George Sand , comes before

an English audience -“ the Opportunity is invariablylost for estimating themat a new angle of sight. A ll

who disl ike themlay themaside -fi —whilst these onlyapply themselves seriously to their study, who are

predisposed to the particular key of feeling, throughwhich originally these authors had prospered . A nd

thus a new set of judges , that might usefully have

modified the narrow views of the old ones , fall bymore iner tia into the humble character of echoesand soun ding-boards to swell the uproar of the ori ginalmob .

In this way is thrown away the opportun ity , not only

of applying corrections to false national tastes, butoftentimes even to the unfair accidents of luck thatbefall books . For it is well known to all who watchliterature with vigilance , that books and authors have

the ir fortunes , which travel upon a far difi'

erent scale

of pro portions from those that measure their merits .

N ot even the caprice or the folly of the reading publ ic

is required to account for this . Very often , indeed ,the whole difi

’

erence between on extens ive c irculation

for one hook, and none at all for another of about

or me E IGHTE ENTH CENTU RY . 83

equal merit, belongs to no particular blindness inmen,but to the s imple fact, that the one has , whilst theother has not, been brought cfihctually under the eyesof the public . By fa r the greater part of books are

lost, not because they are rejected, but because theyare never introduced . In any preper sense of the

word , very few books are pub lished . Techn ically theyare published ; whichmeans , that for six or ten timesthey are advertised , but they are notmade known toattentive ears, or to cars p repared for attention . Andamongst the causes which account for this difference inthe fortune of books , a lthough there are many, wemay reckon , as foremost, p ersonal accidents of pos itionin the authors . For instance , with us in England itwill do a bad book no ultimate service, that it iswritten by a lord , or a bishop , or a privy counsellor, ora. member of Parl iament - n though, undoubtedly, it willdo an instant service— ii will sell an edition or so.

This being the case , it being certain that no rank w illreprieve a bad writer fromfinal condemnation , thesycophantic glorifier of the publ ic fancies his idoljustified ; but not so. A bad book , it is true , will notbe saved by advantages of

"

pos ition in the author ; buta book moderately good will be extravagantly a ided bysuch advantages. Lectures on Chr is tianity, tha t hep~

pened to be re spectably written and del ivered, hadprodigious success in my young days, because, also,they happened to be lectures of a prelate ; three timesthe ability would not have procured themany attentionhad they been the lectures of an obscure curate. Yet

,

on the other hand, it is but justice to say, that, ifwritten withthree times 7633 ability , lawn-sleeves wouldnot have given thembuoyancy, but, on the contrary

84 sonnossea’s mrasaar meroar

they would have sunk the bishop irrecoverably ; Whilstthe curate , favored by obscurity, would have survivedfor another chance . So again, and indeed ,more thanso

, as to poetry. Lord Carl isle , of the last generation ,wrote tolerable verses. They were better than Lord

Roscommon’s , which, for one hundred and fifty years,

the judicious public has allowed the booksellers toincorporate, along with other refuse of the seventeenth

and eighteenth century, into the costly collections ofthe ‘BritishPoets.’ An d really, if you will in sist onodious comparisons , they were not so very muchbelow the verses of an amiable prime min ister knownto us al l. Yet, because they wanted vital stamina, notonly they fell , but, in failing, they caused the earl toreel much more than any commoner would have done.Now, on the other hand, a kinsman of Lord Carlisle ,via , Lord Byron , because he brought real gen ius andpower to the efi

'

ort, found a vast auxiliary advantagein a peerage and a very ancient descent. On thesedouble Wings he soared into a region of public interest,for higher than ever he would have reached by poeticpower alone. Not cull! r all his rubbish— Which in

quantity is great - a s passed for jewels, but also What areincontestably jewels have been , and Will be, valued at

a far higher rate than if they had been raised fromless aristocratic mines. So fatal for mediocrity, sogracious for real power, is any adventitious distinctionfrombirth, station , or circumstances of brilliant notoriety. In reality, the publ ic, our never-i sufi ciently

-to abe-respectedmother, is the most unutterable sycophantthat ever the clouds dropped their rheumupon . She

is always ready for jacobmical scoffs at a man forbeing 3. lord, if he happens to fail ; she is always

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8 6 sonnosssn’s mr s aaar nrsronr

6 Pursue the triumphand partake the 83193

whilst the founders and benefactors of the Minster arepractically forgotten .

These incendiaries , in short, are as well known asEphesus or York ; but not one of us can tell, withou thumming and bowing, who it was that rebuilt theEphesian wonder of the world, or that repaired thetime-honored Minster. Equally in l iterature , not the

weight of service done, or the power exerted, is some :times considered chiefly

—n either of these must bevery conspicuous before it will be cons idered at allbut the splendor, or the notoriety, or the absurdity, oreven the scandalousuess of the circumstances1 sur

rounding the author.Schlossermust have benefitted in some such adven

titious way before he ever could have risen to his Geraman celebrity. What was it tha t ra ised himto hismomentary distinction ? Was it something very wicked that he did, or someming very brilliant that hesaid ? I should rather conjecture that it

.

must havebeen something inoonceivably absurd which he proposed. A ny one of the three achievements standsgood in G ermany for a reputation. But, however itwere that M r. S ehlosser first gained his reputation ,mark what now follows . On the wings of this equivocal reputation he fl ies abroad to Paris and London .

There he thrives, not by any approving es perienoe orknowledge of his works , but through blind faith in hisoriginal German public. And back he flies afterwardsto Germany, as if carrying with himnew and independent testimon ies to hismerit, and fromtwo nationsthat are directly concerned in his violent judgments ;whereas (which is the simple truth) he carries back a

OF TH E EIGHTEEN TH GE N TURY. B7

careless reverberation of his first German character,fromthose who have far toomuch to read for decl iningaid from vicarious critic ismwhen it will spare thatefi

'

ort to themselves. Thus it is that German criticsbecome audacious and libellous. Kohl , Von Reamer,Dr. Ca ms , phys ic ian to the King of Saxony, by meansof introductory letters floating them into c ircles for

above any they had seen in homely Germany, are

qual ified by our own negligence and. indulgence formounting a European tribunal , fromwhich they pronounce mal ic ious edicts against ourselves . Sentinelspresent arms to Von Raumer atWindsor, because herides in a carriage of Queen Adelaide

’s ; and Von

Raumer immediately conce ives himself the Chancellorof all Christendom, keeper of the conscience to uni

versal Europe , upon all questions of art, manners ,pol itics , or any conceivable intellectual relations ofEngland. Schlossermeditates the same career.But have I any right to quote Schlosser’s words

from an English translation ? I do so only becausethis happens to he at hand, and the German not. German books are still rare in this country, thoughmore

(by one thousand to one) than they were thirty yearsago . But I have a full right to rely on the English ofMr. Davison. ‘ I hold in my hand,

’as gentlemen so

often say at publ ic meetings, t a certificate fromHerrSchlosser, that to quote Mr. l avison is to quote him.

’

The English translation is one which Mr. Schlosser

durchgelesen huhundfiir dares genouigkeit and richtigkeit er biirgt [has read through, and for the ac:

curacy and propriety of which he pledges himself].Mr. S chessler was so anxious for the spir itual wel

fare oi'

us poor islande rs , that he not only read it

88 scare sson’s streams mor ons

through, but he has even nufis rsamdarchgcioson i t

[read it through W ide awake] and gep r iifl [and ca re -s

fullyexamined it] nay, he has done all this in com

pany with the translator. 0h ye A thenians ! howhard do I labor to e arn your applause l A nd, as the

result of such herculean labors , a second time hemakes himself surety for its precision ; er diirgt also

daftir uric fiir seine signs arbeit’

[he guarantees itaccordingly as he would his own workmanship]. Wereit not for this un l imited certificate , I should have sentfor the book to Germany. As it is, I need not wait ;and all complaints on this score I defy, above all fromHerr Schlosser.2

In dealing with an author so desultory as Mr.Schlosser, the critic has a right to an cr tmallowance

of desultoriness for his own share ; so excuse me ,reader, for rushing at once onmedias res .

Of Swift, Mr. Schlosser selects for notice threeworks -m ill s Drap ier’s Letters ,

’ Gulliver’s T ravels ,’

and the Tale of a T ub .

’ With respect to the first; asit is a necess ity of Mr. S . to be forever wrong inhis substratumof facts , he adopts the old erroneousaccount of Wood’s contract as to the copper coinage,and of the imaginary among which it inflicted on Ireland. Of all Swift’s villa inies for the sake of popularity, and stil l more for the sake of W ielding thispopularity vindictively, none is so scandalous as this.In any new l ife of Swift the case must be stated donova. Even Sir Wa lter Scott is not impartial ; andfor the same reason as now forces me to blink it, via ,

the difficulty of pre senting the details in a readable

shape. Gull iver’s Travels Schlosser strangely con

s iders ‘spun out to an intolerable eatent.

’ Many evil

on rue exouraanrn CENTURY. 89

things might be said of Gull iver ; but not this. Thecaptain is anything but tedious . A nd, indeed , it becomes a question of mere mensuration , that can besettled in a moment. A year or two s ince I had inmy hands a pocket edition , comprehending all the fourparts of the worthy

!

skipper’s adventure s w ithin a sin

gle volume of 420 pages. Some part of the S pace wasalso wasted on notes , often very idle . N ow the let

part contains two separate voyages (Lilliput and Blefuscu), the 2d, one, the 3d, five, and the 4th, one ; so

that, in all, this active navigator, who has enrichedgeography, I hope, with something of a higher qual itythan your old muti's that thought much of doub l ingCape Horn ,

here gives us nine great discoveries, far

more surprising than the pretended discoveries of S in

bad (which are known to he fabulous), averaging quam

promimé, forty-seven small 1611 10 pages each. Oh youunconsc ionable German, built round in your own

country w ith c ircumvallations of impregnable 4tos,

oftentimes dark and dull as Avernus m that you willhave the face to describe dear excellent CaptainLemuel Gullive r of Bedrid'

, and subsequently of Newark, that darl ing of children andmen ,

’as tedious . It

is exactly because he is not tedious, because he does

not shoot into German foliosity, that Schlosser finds

him ‘ intolerable.’ I have justly transferred to G ull iver’s use the words originally applied by the poet tothe robin-redbreast, for it is remarkable that G ulliverand the A rabian N ights are amongst the few bookswhere children and men find themselves meeting and

jostl ing each other. This was the case from its firstpublication, just one hundred and twenty years s ince.‘ It was received,

’says Dr. Johnson, w ith such

8

90 sonaossan’s mounaur msromr

avidity, that the price of the first edition was raisedbefore the second could be made -a ii was read by thehigh and the low, the learned and the illiterate . Crit

icism was lost in wonder. Now, on the contrary,

Schlosser wonders not at all, but simply criticises ;which we could hear, if the critic ismwere even ia

genious. Whereas, he utterly misunderstands Swift,and is a malicious calumuiator of the captain who ,luck ily, roaming in Sherwood, and thinking, oib n

with a sigh, of his little nurse,3 G lumdalclitch, wouldtrouble himself slightly about what H eidelberg mightsay in the next century. T here is but one example on

our earth of a novel received with such indiscriminate

applause as G ulliver g” and that was ‘D on Q uixote.’

M any have been welcomed joyfully by a class m these

two by a people. N ow, cou ld that have happened hadit been characterized by dulness ? Of all faults, i tcould least have had that. A s to the T ale of a T ub ,’

Schlosser is in such Cimmerian vapors that: nosystem of bellows could blow Open a shaft or tubethrough which he might -gain a glimpse of the E nglishtruth and dayl ight. it is useless talk ing to such a manon such a subject. I consign him to the attentions ofsome patr iotic Irishman .

Schlosse r, however, is right in a graver reflectionwhich he makes upon the prevail ing philosophy of

Swift, viz , that all his views were directed towardswhat was immediately beneficial , which is the characteristic of savages.’ T his is undeniable. T he meanness of Swift’s nature, and his rigid incapacity fordealing with the grandeurs of the human spir it, with

religion, with poetry, or even with sc ience, when itrose above the mercenary practical , is absolutely ape

OF THE EIGHTEEN TH cante ens . 91

polling. H is own yahoo is not a more abominableone usided degradation of human ity, than is he himselfunder this aspect. And, perhaps, it places this inca

pacity of his in its strongest l ight, when we recur to

the fact of his astonishment at a religious princess refus ing to confer a bishopriok upon one that had treatedthe Trinity, and all the profoundestmysteries of Christianity, not with mere scepticism , or casual sneer, butwith set pompous merriment and farcical bufi

'

oonery.

This dignitary of the church , Dean of the most cone

apieuous cathedral in Ireland, had, in full canonica ls ,made himself" into a regular mountebank, for the sakeof giving fuller efi

’

eet, by the force of contras t, to thes illiest of jests directed against all that was mostinali enable fromChristian i ty. Ridiculing suchthings,could he, in any just sense, be thought a ChristianBut, as Schlosser justly remarks, even ridiculing thepecul iarities of Luther and Calv in as he did ridiculethem, Swift could not be thought other than constitu»

tionally incapable of religion. Even a Pagan philosopher, if made to understand the case, would be inca

pable of sending at'

anyform, natural or casual, s impleor distorted, which might be assumed by the mostsolemn of problems probleni s that res t with the .

weight of Worlds upon the human spirit

Ein ’d note, freeawill, fore knowledge absolute.’

the destiny of man, or the relations of man to God.A nger, therefore , Swift might feel , and he felt itag tothe end ofhis most wretched life but What reasonab leground had aman of sense for astonishment—mat a

princess, who (according to her knowledge) was sin

S ee his hitter letters to Lady Sndolk.

92 scunossaR’s LITERARY H I S T ORY

cerely pious , should decline to place such a man Uponan Ep iscopal throne ? This argues, beyond a doubt,that Swift was in that s tate of constitutional irre ligion,irre l igion froma vulgar temperament, which imputesto everybody else its own plebeian feelings . Peoplediffered, he fanc ied , not by more and less religion , butby more and less dissimulations. And, therefore , i tseeme d to him scandalous that a princess , who must,of course, in her heart regard (in common withhimself allmysteries as solemnmosques andmummeries,should pretend in a case of downright serious business,to pump up , out of dry conventional hoaxe s , any sol idobjection to aman ofhis shining merit. The Trinity,

’

for instance , that be viewed as the password , whichthe knowin g ones gave in answer to the cha llenge ofthe sentinel ; but, as soon as ithad obtained admiss ionfor the party w ithin the gates of the camp , it wasrightly dismissed to obl ivion or to laughter. No caseso much illustrates Swift’s essential irreligion ; s ince ,i f he had shared in ordinary human feelings on suchsubjects , not only he could not have been surprised athis own exclusion from the bench of bishops , aftersuch ribaldries , but originally he would have absta inedfrom them as inevitable bars to clerica l promotion,even upon princ iples of public decorum.

A s to the style of Swift, Mr. Schlosser shows himself without sens ibility in his objections , as the oftenhackneycd English reader shows himself without philosophic knowledge of style in his applause. Schlosserthin ks the

'

style of Gu ll iver ‘somewhat dull .’ This

shows Schlosser’s presumption in speaking U pon a

point where he wanted, 1st, original delicacy of tact ;and, 2dly, familiar knowledge of English . Gulliver’s

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94 scnnosssu’s mrsnaar H i eronr

N ew, on the other hand, you, commonc

place reader,that (as an old tradition) bel ieve Swift

’s style to be a

model of excellence , hereafter I shall say a word to

you , drawn fromdeeper principles . A t present I con

tentmyself withthese three prepositions, which everthrow if you can

1 . That the merit, which Justly you as cribe to Swift,is oerrzacular ity he never forgets his mother-tonguein exotic forms ,

“unless we may call Irish exotic ; forHibernicisms he certainly has. This merit, however,is exhib ited—not, as you fancy, in a graceful artless

ness , but in a coarse inartificiality. T o be artless, andto be inartificial, are very different things as differentas being natural and being gross as difi

'

erent as beings imple and being homely.2. That whatever, meantime, be the particular sort

of excellence , or the value of the excellence , in thestyle of Swift, he had it in common with multitudesbes ide of that age . D e

°Foe wrote a style for all the

world the same as to kind and degree of excellence ,only pure fromHibernicisms. So did every honestskipper [Dampier was something more] who had occas ion to record his voyages in this world of storms. Sodidmany a hundred of religious writers . And whatwonder should there be in this , when the main qualification for such a style was plain good sense , naturalfeeling, unpretendingness , some l ittle scholarly practicein putting together the clockwork of sentences , so as toavo id mechan ical awkwardness of construction, butabove all the advantage of a outpost, such in its natureas instinctively to reject ornament, lest it should drawoff attention fromitself ? Such subjects are common ;but grand impass ioned subjects ins ist upon a difi

'

erent

on one EIG HTEENTH source s . 95

treatment ; and there it is that the true difficulties ofstyle commence.3. [Which partly is suggested by the last remark ]

That near ly all the blackheads with whomI have at anytime had the pleasure of convers ing Upon the subject ofstyle (and pardon me for saying thatmen of the mostsense are apt, upon tw o subjects

, via ,poetry and style,

to talkmost like blackheads), have invariably regardedSwift’s style not as if relatively good [22 a. given a.

proper subject], but as if absolutely good—i -a good un

conditionally, uo matter what the subject. N ow, myfriend, suppose the me , that the Dean had been required to write a pendant for S ir Walter Raleigh’s immortal apostmphe to Death , or to many passages that Iwi ll select in Sir Thomas Brown’

s‘Religio Medici

,

’

and his Urn-burial ,’or to Jeremy Taylor’s inaugural

sections of his Holy Living and Dying,’ do you know

What would have happened ? A re you aware What sortof ridiculous figure your poor bald Jonathan would havecut ? A bout the same that would be out by a forlornscallion or waiter froma greasy eating-house at Rotterdam, if suddenly called away in vision to act as seneschal to the festival of Belshazzar the king, before athousand ofhis lords.Schloss er, after saying any thing right and true (and

he really did say the true thing about Swift’s essentialirrel igion), usually becomes exhausted , like a boa-oomstrictor after eating his half-yearly dinner. The boagathers himself up , it is to be hoped for a long fit ofdyspepsy, in which the horns and hoofs that he has

swallowed may chance to avenge the poor goat thatowned them. Schlosser, on the other hand, retire sinto a corner, for the purpose of obstinately talking

96 soanosson’s manner morons

nonsense, until the gong sounds again for a slight re s

feotion of sense. A ccordingly he likens Swift, beforehe has done withhim, to WhomP Imight safely

~allow

the readermree years for guessing, if the greatest ofwagers were depending between us. He likens himtoKotzebue , in the first place . H ow fa ithful the resemblance How exactly Swift reminds you of CountBenyowski in Siberia, and of M rs . H ellermoping hereyes in the Stranger 1’ One really is puzzled to say,

according to the negro’s logic, Whether Mrs. H oller is

more l ike the Dean of St. Patrick’s, or the Dean morel ike Mrs. He ller. Anyhow, the l ikeness is prodigious,if it is not quite reciprocal. The other tomatoe s of thecomparison is Wieland. Now there is some shadow

of a resemblance there. For W ieland had a touchof

the comioo é oynioal in his nature ; and it is notorious

that he was often calledme German Voltaire.whichargues some tigeramonkey grin that traversed his fees

tnres at intervals. Wieland’s mal ice, however, wasfarmore playful and genial than Swift’s ; something ofthis is shown in his romance of Idris ,

’and oftentimes

in his prose. But What the world knows Wieland by ishis Oberon .

” Now in this gay,musical roman ce ofSir Huon and his enchanted horn , with its gleams ofvoluptuousness , is there a possibi lity that any sugges

tion of a scowling face like Swift’s should cross thefoetal scenes ?

From Swift the scene changes to A ddison and

Steele. Steele is of less importance ; for, though aman of greater intellectual activity 4 than A ddison, hehad for less of genius . So I turn himout, as one wouldturn out open a heath a. ramthat had missed his way

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98 sonnosssa’s mrsnanr msr onr

assumption is stead ily taking root. Yet, unhappily, thatugly barrier of lan guages interferes. S chamyl, theCircos sian chief, thoughmuch of a savage, is not sowanting in taste and discernment as to be backward inreading any book of yours or mine. Doubtless heyearns to read it. But then , you see , that in fernal

Tolerance language steps between our book, the darling, and him, the discerning reader. N ow, just such abarrier existe d for the Spectator in the travelling arrangemenmof England. T he very few old heaviesthat had begun to cre ep along thre e or four main roads ,depended so much on Win d and weamer, their chancesof thundering were so uncalculated, their periods ofrevolution were so cometary and uncertain, that nobody of scientific observations had yet been collecte dto warrant a prudentman in risking a heavy bale ofgoods ; and, on the whole, even for York, Norwich, orW inchester, a consignment of Sp ecs was not quite asafe spec. S till, I could have told the Spectator whowas anxious to make money, where he might havebeen sure of a distant sale, though re turns would havebeen slow, via , at Oxford and Cambridge. We knowfromMilton that old Hobson delivered his parcelspretty regularly eighty years before 17 10. A nd, one

generation before that, it is plain , by the intere sting

(thoughsomewhat Jacobin ical) letters 5 of Joseph Mode ,the commenter on the A pocalypse , that news and politics of one kind or other (and scandal of every kind)found out for themselves a sort of contraband lungs tobreathe through between London and Cambridge 5 notqu ite so regular in their systole and diastole as the tidesof ebb and flood, but better than nothing. If you cans igned a packet into the proper hands on the lot of

or on e E ienr snn'rn CENTURY. 99

May,‘as sure as death to speak S cottice) it would be

delivered W ithin sixtymiles of the capital before midsummer. Still there were delays ; and these forced aman into carving his World out of London. Thatexcuses the word town.

Inexcusable , however, weremany other forms of express ion in those days, which argued cowardly feelings. One would like to see a searching investigationinto the state of society in A nne’s days—a lts extremeartificiality, its sheepish reserve upon all the impas s

sioned gran deurs , its shameless outrages upon all the

deeene ies of human nature. Certain it is, that A ddison (because everybody) was in thatmeanest of conditions which blushe s at any express ion of sympathy withthe lovely, the noble, or the impassioned. The wretcheswere as hamed of their own nature , and perhaps withreason ; for in their own denatural ized hearts they readon ly a degraded nature. A ddison, in particular, shran kfromevery bold and every profound express ion as froman ofi

'

enoe aga inst good taste. He durst not for his l ifehave used the word pass ion except in the vulgar senseof an angry paroxysm. He durst as soon have danceda hornpipe on the top of the monument ’ as havetalked of a, rapturous emotion.’ What would he havesaid ? Why, 6

sentiments that were of a nature to proveagreeable after an unusual rate.’ In their odiousverses, the creatures of that age talk of love as something that burns ’

them. You suppose at first thatthey are discours ing of tallow candles, though you cannot imagine by what impertinence they address you,that amno talle st-chandler, upon such pa inful subjects.

A nd, when they apostrophize the woman of their heart(for you are to understand that they pretend to such an

100 scnnossnn’s LITERARY HIS TORY

organ), they beseech her to‘ eas e their pa in .

’ Can

humanmeanness descend lower ? A s if the man, beingill frompleurisy, therefore had a right to take a lady forone of the dressers in an hospital, whose duty it would

be to fix a burgundy-p itch plaster between his shoulders.Ah

,the mons ters ! Then to read of their Phillises and

S hephons , and Chloes, and Corydons - names t hat, bytheir very non-real ity amongst names of flesh and blood,procla im the fantasticalness of the life with which theyare poetically connected— it throws me into such convulsions of rage , that I move to the window, and (without thinking what I emabout) throwing it up , call ing,‘P olice l p olice ! What’s that for ? What can the

pol ice do in the business ? Why, certa in ly nothing.What I meant inmy dream was, perhaps [but one foragets what one meant Upon recovering one’s temper],that the police should take Strephon and Corydon intocustody, whomI fancied at the other end of the room .

And really the justifiable fury, that arises upon recallingsuch abominable attempts at bucol ic sentiments in such

abominable language , sometimes transports me into aluxurious vision s inking back through one hundred andthirty years , in which I see A ddison , Phillips , both John

and Ambrose , T ichell, P ickell, Budgell, and Gudgell,withmany others bes ide, all cudgelled in a round rob in ,none cla iming precedency of

“

another, none able toshrink from his own div idend, until a voice seems torecall me to milder thoughts by saying, But surely,my friend , you never could wish to see Addison cudgelled ? L et Strephon and Corydon be cudgelled without end , if t he pol ice can show any warrant for

doingit But A ddison was a man of great gen ius .

’ True ,he was so. I recollect it suddenly, and will back out

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102 scmossun’s mueuammoti on?

from it as froma fearful thing, yet this was When itcombined with forms of life and fleshy realities (asin dramatic works), but not when it combined witholder forms of eternal abstrac tions. Hence, he didnot read , and did not like S haksp

’earc ; the music was

here too rapid and l ife-l ike : but he sympathized profoundly with the solemn cathedral chanting of Milton .

An appeal to his sympathies which exacted quickchanges in those sympathies he could notmeet, but amore stationary key of solemnity he could

”

. Indeed ,this difi

'

erenoe is illustrated daily. A long list can becited of passages in Shakepeare , which have beensolemnly denounced bymany eminent men (all blockheads) as ridiculous : and if a man does find a passagein a tragedy that displeases him, it is sure to seemludicrous : Witness the indecent exposures of themselvesmade by Volta ire , La H arp s , andmany bill ionsbeside of bilious people. Whereas , of all the shamefulpeople (equally billions and not less bil ious) that havepresumed to quarrel with Milton, not one has thoughthimludicrous, hut only dull and somnolent. In Lear ’

and in Hamlet,’ as in a human face agitated bypassion , are many things that tremble on the brinkof the ludicrous to an observer endowed with smallrange of sympathy or inte llect. But no man euor

found the starry heavens ludicrous , thoughmany findthemdull , and prefer a near View of a brandy flask.

So in the solemn Wheelings of the Miltonic movement,A ddison could find a sincere delight. But the sublimities of earthly misery and of human fre nzy werefor hima hook sealed. Beside all which, Milton re

newed the types of Grecian beauty as to form, WhilstShakspeare , W ithout designing at all to contradict these

OF T HE E IGHTEENTH CENTURY.

types,did so, in effect, by his fidel ity to a new nature,

radiating froma Gothic centre .In the midst, however, of much just feeling, which

one could only wisha little deeper, in the A ddison ianpapers on Paradise Lost,

’there are some gross blun

ders of criticism, as there are in Dr.! Johnson , and

fromthe self-same cause - an understanding suddenlypalsied fromdefective passion. A feeble capacity ofpassion must, Upon a question of passion , cons titute afeeble range of intellect. But, after all, the worst

thing uttered by Addison in these papers is , not

against M ilton ,~butmeant to be complimentary. To

wards enhancing the splendor of the great poem, hetells us that it is a Grecian palace as to amplitude,symmetry, and architectural skill : but being in the

English language , it is to be regarded as if built inbrick ; whereas , had it be en so happy as to be writtenin Gre ek, then it would have been a palace built inParian marble . Indeed ! that’s smart that’s handsome , I calculate.’ Yet, before a man undertakes tosell his mother-tongue , as old pewter trucked againstgold , he should be quite sure of his own metallurgicskill ; because else , the gold may happen to be copper,and the pewter to be silver. A re you quite sure ,myAddison , that you have understood the powers of thislanguage which you toss away so l ightly, as an old

tea-kettl e ? Is it a ruled case that you have exhaustedits resources ? Nobody doubts your grace in a certa inl ine of compos ition , but it i s only one line amongmany, and it is far from being amongst the highest.It is dangerous

,without examination , to sell even old

kettles ; misers conceal old stockings fi lled with

guineas in old tea~kettles ; and we all know that

104 scnuossen’s LITERARY HISTORY

Aladdin’s servant, by exchanging an old lamp for anew one , caused an Iliad of calamities : his master’spalace jumped fromBagdad to some place on the road

to A shante e ; M rs . A laddin and the p iccaninies werecarried ed as inside passengers ; and. A laddin himselfonly escaped being lagged , for a rogue and a conjuror,by a flying jump after his palace . N ow, ma rk thefolly ofman . Most of the people I amgoing tomention subscribed, genera lly, to the supreme excellenceof Milton ; but each wished for a l ittle change to be

made— which , and which only was wanted to per

fection. Dr. Johnson, though he pre tended to be

satisfied with the Paradise Lost,’ even in what he re

garded as the undress of blank verse, still secre tlywished it in rhyme. That’s No. 1. Addison , thoughquite content with it in English, sti ll coul d have wishedit in Greek . That’s No. 2. Bentley, thoughadmiringthe blind old poet in the highest degree, stil l observed ,smil ingly, that after all he was blind ; he, therefore,slashing Dick , could have wished that the great manhad always been surrounded by honest people ; but,as that was not to be, he could have wished that hisamanuens is has been hanged ; but, as tha t also hadbecome impossible , he could wishto do executionuponhim in effi gy, by sinking, burn ing, and destroying hishandywork -a—upon which basis of

‘

posthumous justice ,he proceeded to amputate all the finest passages in thepoem. Slashing Dick was No . 3. Payne Knight wasa severerman even than slashing Dick ; he professedto look upon the fi rst book of ‘ Paradise Lost ’

as thefinest thing that earthhad to show ; but, for that veryreason, he could have wished, by your leave, to seethe other eleven hooks sawed e d

“

, and sent overboard ;

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106 scat osssn’s mraanar morons

cedency as the original Paradise Lost,’and to super

sede the very rude performance of Milton , M r.

John .”

Schlossermakes the astounding assertion , that a compliment of Boileau to A ddison , and a pure complimen tof ceremony upon Addison’s early Latin verses

, was

(credits p ostersI) the melting of A ddison in England.Understand , Schlosser, that A ddison

’s Latin verseswere never heard of by England, until long after hisEnglish prose had fixed the public attention upon himhis Latin repu tation was a slight reaction fromhis

Engl ish reputation : and, secondly, understand that

Boileau had at no time any such authority in Englandas tomake anybody’s reputation ; he had first of all tomake his own . A. sure proof of this is, that Boileau

’s

name was first published to London,by Prior’s bur

lesque of what the Frenchman had called an ode.r

This gasconading ode celebrated the pas sage of theRhine in 1672, and the capture of that famous fortre sscalled S kink (

‘ lo famous fort by Louis XIV.,

known to London at the time of Prior’s ”

parody by thename of ‘Louie Baboon.

“ 8 That was not l ikely to

recommend Master Boileau to any of the allies againstthe said Baboon, had it ever been heard of outof France.N or was it likely to make him popular in England,that his name was first mentioned amongs t shouts oflaughter and mockery. It is another argument of theslight notoriety possessed by Boileau in England - a

that no attempt was ever made to translate even hissatires , epistles, or Lutrin ,

’ except by booksellers"

hacks ; and that no such vers ion ever took the slightestroot amongst ourselves, fromA ddison’s day to thisvery summer of 1847 . Boileau was essentially, and

or one smarasmn CENTURY. 107

in two senses , via , bothas tomind and as to influence,on homme borne.Addison’s Blenheim is poor enough; one might

think it a translation from some German original ofthose times. Gottsched’s aunt, or Bodmer’s wet-nurse ,might have written it ; but stil l no fibs even as toBlenheim.

’ His enemies ’ did not say this thingagainst Blenheim’

alond,’nor his friends that thing

against it softly.

’ A nd why ? Because at that time( 1704- 5) he hadmade no particular enemies , nor anyparticular friends ; unless by friends you mean hisWhig patrons , and by enemies his tailor and 00.

A s to ‘ Cato,’ Schlosser, as usual , wanders in the

shadow of ancient night. The English people ,’ it

seems, so extravagantly applauded this wretcheddrama , that you might suppose themto have ‘

alto

gather changed their nature,’and to have forgotten

Shaltspeare . That man must have forgotten Shaka

spears 9 indeed, and fromr amollissement of the brain ,who coul d admire Cato .’ But,

’ says S ohlosser, itwas only a ‘ fashion ;

’and the English soon re

ponted.

’ The English could not repen t of a crimewhich they had never committed. Cato was not popolar for a moment, nor tolerated for a moment, openany l iterary ground, or as a work of art. It was an

apple of temptation and strife thrown by the goddessof faction between two infuriated parties. Cato,

’

coming fromaman W ithout Parl iamentary connections ,would have dropped lifeless to the ground. The Whigshave always affected a special love and favor forpopular counsels : they have never ceased to give

themselves the best of characters as regards public

freedom. The Tories , as contradistingnished to the

108 sonnossea’s LITERARY msroar

Jacobites , knowing that W ithout their aid, the Revolotion coul d not have been carried, most justly coo

tended that the national liberties had been at least asmuch indebted to themselves. When , therefore , theWhigs put forth their man Cato to mouth speechesabout l iberty, as exclusively their pet, and aboutpatriotismand all that sort of thing, saying insultinglyto the Tories, ‘H ow do you like that2

‘

Does that

sting ? ’ ‘Sting, indeed l’replied the Tories ; ‘

not at

all ; it’s quite re freshing to us, that the Whigs have

not utterly disowned such sentiments , which, by theirpublic acts, we really thought they had .

’ And, ac

cordingly, as the popular anecdote tells us, a Toryleader, Lord Bolingbroke , sent for Booth who per»

formed Cato , and presented him (p opulo sp ectame)withfifty guineas for defending so well the cause ofthe peop le against a perpetual dictator.

’ In whichwords, observe , Lord Bolingbroke at once as serted thecause ofhis own party, and launched a sarcasmagainsta great individual opponent, via , Marlborough. N ow,

M r. Schlosser, l have mended your harness : all rightahead ; so drive on once more.But, oh Castor and Pollux, whither -m in What dis

rection is it, that the man is driving us ? Positively,Schlosser, you must step and letme get out. I ’ll gono further with such a drun ken coachman . Manyanother absurd thing I was going to have noticed, suchas his utter perversion of what Mandeville said aboutA ddison (via , by suppressing one Word, and

‘

misapprehending all the rest). Such, again, as his pointblank misstatement of A ddison’s infirmity in hisofficial character, Which was not that he could not

prepare despatches in a good style,’ but diametrically

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110 scanossea’s meand er HISTORY

said (though no doubt falsely) to have describe d himn

self as not properly aman so much as the Divine wrathincarnate. This would be fine in a melodrama, withBengal lights burn ing on the stage. But, if ever hesaid sucha naughty thing, he forgot to tell us What itwas that had made himangry ; by what title did hecome into alliance with the Divine math, whichwasnot l ikely to consult a savage ? An d Why did hiswrath hurry, by forced marches, to the Adriatic ? Nowso much do people differ in Opin ion , that, to us, who

look at him through a telescope froman eminence,fourteen centuries distant, he takes the shape rather of

a Mahratta trooper, painfully gathering about, or acateran levying black -mail, or a decent taxo

gatherer

withan inkhorn at his buttonohole , and supported by 'aselect party of constabulary friends. T he very natural

instinct which A ttila always showed for following thetrail of the wealthiest footsteps, seems to argue amostcommercial coolness in the dispensation of his wrath.

Mr. Schlosse r burns with the wrath of A ttila against allaristocracies , and especially that of England. Hegoverns his fury, also, with an A tilla discretion inmanycases ; but not here. Imagine this H un coming down ,sword in hand, upon Pope and his Rosicmcian light

troops, levying about upon Sir Plume , and fluttering thedove-cot: of the Sylphs. Pope’s duty it was; says thisdemon iac, to scourge the follies of good society,’ andalso to break with the aristocracy.

’ No, surely ?something short of a total rup ture would have satisfiedthe cla ims of duty ? Possibly ; but it would not havesatisfied Schlosser. And Pepe’s guilt consists in havingmade his poeman idol or succession of picture s representing the gayer aspects of society as it really was,

or THE monrasurn cnnruar . 111

and supported by a comic in terest of themock-heroicderived froma playful machinery, instead of converting it into a bloody satire. Pepe , however, did not

shrink froms uchassaults on the aristocracy, if thesemade any part of his duties. Suchassaults he madetwice at least too often for his own peace, and perhapsfor his credit at this day. It is us eless , however, totalk of the poemas a work of art, with one who seesnone of its exquisite graces, and can imagine hiscountryman Z acharia equal to a competition withPope.But this itmay be right to add, that. the ‘Rape of theLock was not borl owed fromthe Lutrin ’ of Boileau.

That was impossible. Neither was it suggested by theLutrin .

’ T he story in Herodotus of the wars betweencranes and pigmies , or the Batraohomyomachia (soabsurdly ascribed to Homer)might have suggested theidea more naturally. Both these, there is proof thatPope had read : there is none that he had read theLutrin ,

’nor did he read Frenchwith ease to himself.

The Lutrin ,’meantime, is as much below the Rape

of the Lock in brilliancy of treatment, as it is dissimilarin plan or the quality of its p ictures .The Essay on Man

’ i s a more thorny subject.W hen aman finds himself attacked and defended fromall quarters , and on all varieties of principle, he 18 bewildered. Friends are as dangerous as enemies. Hemust not defy a bristl ing enemy, if he cares for repose ;hemust not disown a zealous defender, thoughmakingconcessions on his own beha lf not agreeable to himself he must not es plain away ugly phrases in one

direction , or perhaps he is re canting the very word s

of his guide, philosopher, and friend,’who cannot

safely be taxed with having first led himinto tempta

sca nosssn’s L IT E IIARY HISTORY

tion ; he must not explain themaway in another direc»

tion , or he runs full tilt into the wrath of motherChurch—Who will soon bring him to his senses bypenance. Long lento, and no lampreys allowed , wouldsoon canterize the proud flesh of heretical ethics. Pope

did w isely, situated as he was, in a decorous nation ,and closely connected , upon principles of fidelity under

pol itical suffer ing, with the Roman Catholics, to any

l ittle in his own defence. That defence , and any re

versionary cudgelling which it might entail upon theQ u ixote undertaker, he lefts fi -meekly but also slyly,humbly hut cunningly - E - to those Whomhe professed

to regard as greater philosophers than himself. Allparties found their account in the affa ir. Pope slept inpeace ; several pugnactous gentlemen up and downEurope expectorated much fiery wrath in dusting eachother’s jackets ; and Warburton, the attorney, finallyearned his bishoprick in the service of Whitewashing awriter, who was aghast at finding himself firs t trampledon as a deist, and then exalted as a defender of thefaith. Meantime , Mr. Schlossermistakes. Pope’s courtesy , when he supposes his acknowledgments to LordBolingbroke sincere in. their Whole extent.Of Pope’s Homer Schlosser think fit to Say, amongst

other evil things, which it really does deserve (thoughhardly in comparison with the German Homer ’ of thee ar-splitting Voss), that Pope pocketed the subscrip tionof the Odyssey

,

”and left the Work to be done by his

understrappcrs .

’ Don’t tell fibs , Schlosser. Never do

that any more . True it is, and disgraceful enough,that Pope (l ike modern contractors for a ra ilwayor a loan) let all to sub—contractors several portions ofthe undertaking. He was perhaps not i ll iberal in the

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1 14 scncosse a’s L irsnanr ni sros r

author’s trivial and randomTornp lc do G out shows thesuperiority in this spec ies of poetry to have been greatly

on the side of the Frenchman.’ Let’s hear a reason ,though but a Schlosser reason, for this Opinion : know ,

then , allman whomit concerns , that the Engl ishman’s

satire only hit such people as would never have beenknown without his mention of them, whilst Volta ireselected those who were still called great, and their respective schools.’ Pepe’s men, it seems, never hadbeen famous Voltaire’s might cease to be so, but asyet they had not ceased ; as yet they commanded interest. N ow mark how I will put three bullets intothat plank , riddle it so that the leak shall nothe steppedby all the old hats in Heidelberg, and Schlosser willhave to swimfor his l ife. First, he is forgetting that,by his own previous confess ion , Volta ire , not less thanPope, had ‘ immortalized a great many insignificantpersons consequently, had it been any fault to do so,

each al ike was caught in that fault ; and ins ignificantas the peoplemight be, if they could be ‘ immortalized ,’

then we have Schlosser himself confess ing to the poss ibility that poetic splendor should create a secondaryinterest where originally there had been none . Secondly, the question of merit does not arise from the

object of the archer, but from the style of his archery.

N ot the choice of victims , but the execution done iswhat counts. Even for continued failures it wouldplead advan tageously, much more for continued and

brill iant successes , that Pepe fired at an object offeringno sufiicient breadth of mark . Thirdly, it is the

grossest of blunders to sayr that Pope’s objects of satire

were obscure by compar ison w ith Voltaire’s. T in e,the Frenchman ’

s example of a scholar, via ,the French

or run s tee raaurn CEN TURY. 115

S almas ius , was most accompl ished. But so was theEnglishman’

s scholar, via , the English Bentley. Each

was absolutely W ithout a riva l in his own day. But the

day of"Ben tley was the very day of Pepe . Papa

’s man

had not even faded ; Whereas the day of S almasius ,as respected Voltai re had gone by formore than half acentury. A s to D acier, which. D aoier, Bezon ian a”

The husband was a passab le scholar but madamewas a poor snealdug fellow, fit only for the usher of aboarding-school. A ll this , however, argues Schlosser

’s

two-fold ignorance first, ofEnglish authors second ,of the Dunciad E else he would have known that

even Dennis ,mad John Dennis, was a much clevererman thanmost of those alluded to by Voltaire. G ibber,though sl ightly a coxcomb , was born a brill iant man .

A aron Hill was so lustrous , that even Pope’s venom

fell cd’ spontaneously, l ikemin from the plumage of apheasan t, leaving himto mount far upwards W ith theswans of Thanos ’ m and, finally, let it not he forgotten , that Samuel Clarke Burnet, of the Charte rhouse,and Sir Isaac Newton , did not wholly escape tastingthe knout ; if that rather impeaches the equity, andsometimes the judgment of Pepe , at least it contr ibutesto show the gmundlessness of Schlosser

’s objection fi

that the population of the Dunciad, the charac ters thatfilled its stage, were inconsiderable.

FOX AN D BURKE O

It is, or it would be, if Mr. Schlosser were himselfmore interesting, luxurious to pursue his ignorance as

to facts , and the craziness of his judgment as to thevaluation ofminds , throughout his comparison of Burkewith Fox. The force of antithes is brings out into a

1 16 sonnossna’s LITERARY mamonr

feeble l ife of meaning, what, in its own insulation , hadbeen languishing mortally into nonsense . T he darkness ofhis Burke becomes visible darkness under thegl immering that steals upon it fromthe desperate commonplaees of this Fox.

’ Fox is painted exactly ashe would have been painte d fifty yeamago by any petsubaltern of the Whig club , enjoying free pasture inDevonshire House. The practised reader knows wel lWhat is coming. Fox is formed af‘er themodel of theancients «a s Fox is simple «s - Fox is natural ’ Fox

is chas te ’m Fox is ‘ forcible ;

”why yes, in a sense ,

Fox is even forcible but then, to feel that he was

so , you must have heard him; whereas, for forty yearshe has been silent. We of 1847 , that can only readhim, hearing Fox described asforcible, are disposed

‘

to

recollect Shakspeare’s Mr. Feeble amongst Falstaff ’s

recruits , who also is described as forcible, via , as themost forcible Feeble.’ A nd, perhaps, a better de n

scription could not he devised for Fox himself a sofeeble washe inmatte r, so forcible inmanner ; so powere

ful for instant efi'

eet, so impotent for posterity. In the

Pythian fury of his gestures m in his screaming voicein his directness of purpose , Fox would now remindyou of some demon steama engine on e . railroad , someFire a king or S almoneus , that had counterfeited, heeausehe could not steal , Jove

’s thunderbolts ; hissing, hubbling, snorting, fuming ; demoniao gas , you think

gas fromA cheron must feed that dreadful systemofconvu lsions. But pump out the imaginary gas , and,

behold l it is ditch-water. Fox, as M r. S ohlosser rightlythinks, was all of a pieee u simple in his manners,simple in his style, simple in his thoughts . No watersin himturbid withnew crystal izations ; everywhere the

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118 sonLosssn’s L ITERARY msronr

he was the Orpheus that sa i led with the Argonauts ; hewas their seer , seeing more in his visions than he

always understood himself ; he was their watcherthrough the hours of n ight ; he was their astrologicalinterpreter. Who complains of a prophet for being a

l ittle darker of speech than a post-ofiice directory ? or

of himthat reads the stars for being sometimes perplaned ?But, even as to facts , Schlosser is always blundera

ing. Postmoflice directories would be of no use to himnor link~boys ; nor blazing tarabarrels. He wandersma fog such as sits upon the banks of Cocytus. Hefancies that Burke, in his l ifetime, was p op ular . Ofcourse, it is so natural to be popular bymeans of “ wea

s isamo tediousnsss,’ that Schlosser, above all people ,shoul d credit sucha tale . Burke has be en dead justfifty years , come next autumn. I remember the timefrom this acci dent that my own nearest relativestepped on a day of October, 1797 , into that samesuite of rooms at Bath (N orth Parade) fromwhich , sixhours before , the great man had been carried out to

die at Beac onsfield. It is, there fore , you see , fiftyyears. N ow, ever since then , his collective workshave been growing in bulk by the incorporation ofjuvenile essays (such as his European Settlements

,

’

his Essay on the Sublime,’ on Lord Bolingbroke ,’

are ), or (asmore recently) by the posthumous publication of his MSS . ;

9 an d ye t, ever since then , in spiteof growing age and growing bulk, are more in demand.A t this time, hal f a century after his last s igh, Burkeis popular ; a thing, let me tell you , Schlosser, whichnever happened before to a writer steeped to his l ipsin p ersonal politics. What a tilth of intellectua l lava

on THE momsnnre course s . 119

must thatman have interfused amongst the refuse and

sooria of suchmouldering party rubbish, to force up anew verdure and laughing ha rvests, annually increasing for new generations ! Pepular he is now, but

pepular he was not in his own generation , And how

could Schlosser have the face to say that he was ? Didhe never hea r the notorious anecdote, that at one

period Burke obtained the sobr iquet of dinnero bell ? ’

And Why ? Not as one who invited men to a banquetby his gorgeous eloquence, but as one that gave a signal to shoals in the House of Commons

,for seeking

refuge in a literal dinner from the oppress ion of hisphilosophy. This was , perhaps, in part a seed

“

of his

opponents. Yet there must have been some foundation for the soofi

'

, since, at an earlier stage of Burke’scareer, Goldsmith had independently said, that thisgreat orator

went on refining,And thought of convincing, Whilst they thought ofdining, ’

I blame neither party. It ought not to be expected ofanyp opular body that it should be patient of abstrae

tions amongst the intensifies of party-strife, and the

immediate necessities of voting. No del iberative bodywould less have tolerated such philosophic exorbita s

tions frompublic business than the agora of A thens,or the Roman senate. S o far the error was in Burke,not in the House of Commons. Ye t, also, on the

other s ide, it must be remembered, that an intellect

of Burke’s comb ining p ower an d enormous compass ,could not, fromne cessity of nature , abstain fromsuch.

speculations. For aman to reach a remote poste rity,it is sometimes necessary that he should throw his

120 soanossea’s mre nanr H i eronr

voice over to them in a vast alo h a —it must sweepa parabola

m whioli , therefore , rises high above theheads of those next to him, and is heard by the bystanders but indistinctly, l ike bees swarming in the

Upper air before they settle on the spot fit for hir ing.

See, therefore, the immeasurableness of misoon~

s eption . Of all public men, that stan d oonfessedly inthe first real; as to Splendor of intellect, Burke was theleast pepular at the time when our blind friendS ohlosser assumes him to have run off w ith the lion’

s

share of popularity. Fox, on the other hand, as theleader of oppos ition , was at that time a household termof love or reproach, fromone end of the island to theother. T o the very children playing in the streets ,Pitt and Fox, throughout Burke

’s generation , were

pretty nearly as broad distinctions , and as much a

war-cry, as English and French, Roman and Panic .

N ow,however

, all this is altered. A s regards the

relations between the two Whigs whomS ohlosser so

steadfas tly delighteth to misrep resent,

Now is the winter of our discontent

MM e glorious summer

for tha t intellectual potentate, E dmund Burke, themanWhose true mode of power has never yet been trulyinvestigated ; Whilst Charles Fox is known only as an

echo is known , and for any real ej ect of intellect openthis generation , for anything but the Whistling of a

name ,’ the Fox of 1780 1807 sleeps Where thecarols of the larks are sleep ing, that gladdened the

S pringo tides of those years s e s leeps W ith the roses that

glorified the beauty of their summers.”

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122 sonnossna’s LITERARY HISTORY

with , but keys ; he tampered w ith his master’s seals ;

he committe d larcenies ; not, l ike a brave man , risking his l ife on the highway , but petty larcenies - é lar

cenies in a dwelling-house —larcen ies under the op

portunities of a confidential situation m crimes whichformerly, in the days of Junius, our bloody code neverpardoned in vi lla ins of low degree. Junius was in the

s ituation of Lord Byron’s Lara, or, because Lara is aplagiarism ,

of H arriet Le e’s Kraitzrer. But this man ,because he hadmoney, friends , and talents , instead ofgoing to prison , took himself off for a jaunt to the

continent. From the continent, in ful l se curity and inpossess ion of the otiumcumdignitate, he negotiate dw ith the gove rnment, whom he had alarmed by publ iebing the scol ets which he had stolen. He suc

ceeded. He sold himself to great advantage. Boughtand sold he was ; and of course it is understood that,if you buy a knave, and expressly In cons ideration of

his knaver ies , you secretly undertake not to hang him.

Honor bright ! Lord Barrington might certainlyhave indicted Junius at the Old Bailey, and had a rea

son for wishing to do so ; but George III., who was a

party to the negotiation , and all his ministers , wouldhave said , with fits of laughter Oh, come now, my

lord , you must not do that. For,s ince we have bar

gained for a price to send him out as a membe r ofcouncil to Bengal , you see clearly that we could not

possibly hang him before we had fulfilled our bargain.

Then it is true we might hang himafter he comesback. But, s ince the man (being a clever man) has afair chance in the interim of rising to be GovernorGeneral , we put it to your candor, Lord Harrington,whether it would be for the publ ic service to hang his

or run ntonrnnnrn cs nruar . 123

excellency In fact, he might probably have beenG overnora G eneral , had his bad temper not over .

mastered him. Had he not quar relled so viciously

with Mr. Hastings , it is ten to one thatfhe might, byplaying his cards well, have succeeded him . A s it

was , after enjoying an enormous salary, he returned toE ngla nd a n s -not G overnora G eneral, certainly, but still

in no fear of being hanged. Inste ad of hanging him ,

on second thoughts, Government gave him a red rib~

bon. He represente d a borough in Parliament. He

was an authority upon Indian afiaim. He was caressed

by the Whig party. H e sat at good men’s tables. H e

gave for toasts— JosephSurface sentiments at dinner

parties— ‘ The mu that betrays ’

[something orother] the man that sneaks into [other men’

s

portfolios , perhaps]—‘ is ’—s - ay, what is he ? Why

he is, perhaps , a Knight of‘

the Bath , has a sumptuousmansion in S t. James’s S quar e , dies full of years and

honor, has a pompous funeral , and fears only some

such epitaph as this H ere l ies, in a red ribbon , the

man who built a great pmS perity on the bas is of a

great knavery.

’ I complain heavily of Mr. Taylor, thevery able unmasker of Junius, for blinking the wholequestions B and C. He it is that has settled the ques

tion A , so that it will never be re opened by a man

of sense. A. man who doubts, after really reading Mr.Taylor’s work, is not only a blockhead, but an irreclaimable blockhead. It is true that several men ,among themLord Brougham ,

whom S chlosser (thoughhating him ,

and kicking him) cites , still profess scepti~

cism. But the reason is evident : they have not read

the book, they have only heard of it. They are unac

quainted with the strongest arguments, and even with

124 scnnosssn’s LITERARY ms ronr

the nature of the evidence.n Lord Brougham, indeed,is generally reputed to have reviewed M r. Taylor’s

book. That may be : it is probable enough : what Iam denying is

.

not at all that Lord Broughamr evi ewed

Mr. Taylor, but that Lord Brougham read M r. Taylor.

A nd there is not much wonder in that, when we se e

professed writers on the subject— bulky writers

writers of Answers and Refutations , dispens ing with

the whole of M r. Taylor’s book, s ingle paragraphs of

which would have forced themto cance l the ir own .

The possibil ity of sceptic ism , after re ally reading Mr.Taylor’s book , would be the strongest exemplificationUpon record of S ancho’s proverbial reproach , that a

man wanted bette r bread than was made of wheat

would be the old case renewed from the scholastic

grumblers that some men do not know when they areanswered.

’ They have got the ir quietus , and they still

continue to‘maunder ’ on with objections long s ince

disposed of. In fact, it is not too strong a thing to

say n —and Chie f Justice D allas did say something like

it— that if M r. Taylor is not r ight, if S ir Phil ip Francis is not Jun ius , then was noman ove r yet hanged on

sufficient evidence. E ven confess ion is no absoluteproof. E ven confessing to a crime , the man may be

mad. W e ll , but at least seeing is be l ieving : if the

court sees a man commit an assault, will not that

suflice ? N ot at all : ocular de lusions on the largest

scale are common . What ’s a court ? Lawyers have

no better eyes than other people . The ir physics areoften out of repa ir, and who le c ities have been known

to see things that could have no existence. N ow, all

other evidence is held to be short of this blank seeing

or blank confess ing. But I am not at all sure of that.

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126 souuosse a’s L IT ERsRi

’ meme s

mermadness. Hold your absurd tongue,’ would any

of the ministers have said to a friend descanting onJun ius as a powerful artist of style do you dream,

dotard, that this baby’s rattle is the thing that keeps

us from sleeping ? Our eyes are fixed on somethingelse : that follow

, whoever he is , knows What he oughtout to ke ow ; he has had his hand in some of ourpockets : he ’

s a good locksmith, is that Junius ; andbefore he reaches Tyburn , who knows What amountof mischief he may do to self and partners ? ’ Therumor that ministe ie were themselves a larmed (whichwas the naked truth) travelled downwards ; but the

why did not travel ; and the innumerab le b lockheadsof lower c ircles, not understanding the real cause of

fear, sought a false one in the supposed thunderboltsof the rhetoric. Opera-house thunderbolts they wereand strange it is, that grave men should fancy newe

papeis , teeming (as they have always done) with

Publicolas, with Cote s , with A lgernon S ido eys , able

by such trivial smal l shot to gain a moment’s attentionfrom the poteutates of Down ing Stre et. Those whohave despatches to write , counc i ls to attend , and votesof the Commons to manage , thlok l ittle of JuniusBrutus. A. Junius Brutus , that dares not s ign by his

own honest name , is presumably skulking fromhis

creditors . A Timoleon, who hints at assassination ina newspaper, one may take it for granted , is a manufacturer of begging letters . A nd it is a conce ivablecase that a twenty pound note, enclosed to T imoleou’

s

address, through the newspaper office ,might go far tosoothe that great patriot’s feelings , and even to turn

aside his avenging dagger. These sort of people werenot the sort to frighten a British Ministry. Ono laughs

or run ntenrennrn coa r s e r . M W

at the probable conversation between an old huntingsquire coming up to comfort the First Lord of the

Treasury,on the rumor that he was panic

u struok.

What, surely, my dear old friend , you he not afraidof Timoleon ? ’ First Lord. —‘Yes, I am.

’ 0.

G ent. What, afra id of an anonymous fellow in

the papers ? F. L .— ‘Ye s , dreadfully.

’ C. Gent.Why

,I always understood that these people were a

sort of shame m living in Grub Street— or where was

it that Pepe used to tell us they lived ? Surely you’re

not afra id of Timoleon, because some people thinkhe ’

s a patriot ?" F. L — ‘N o , not at all ; but I am

afra id because some people think he ’s a housebreaker l

In that character only could Timoleon become formidable to a Cabinet M inister ; and in some such charactermust our friend, Janine Brutus , have made himselfalarming to G overnment. From the moment that Bis properly explained, it throws l ight upon 0. TheGovernment was alarmed not at such moonshine aspatriotism, or at a soap

~bubble of rhetoric -a but because treachery was lurking amongst their own households : and, if the thing went on

, the consequencesmight be appalling. But this domestic treachery,which accounts for B , accounts at the some time forC. The very same treachery that frightened itsobjects at the time by the consequences it mightbreed, would frighten its author afterwards fromclaiming its l iterary honors by the remembrances itmight awaken . The mysterious disclosures of officialsecrets , which had once roused so much consternationW ithin a l imite d circle, and (like the French afi

'

air of

the diamond necklac e) had sunk into neglect onlywhen all clue seemed lost for p erfectly unravell ing it,

128 scnnossnn’s mrsaaar msronr

would revive in all its interest when a discovery camebefore the public, via , a claim on the part of Francisto have written the famous letters, which must at thesame time point a strong light upon the true origin ofthe treacherous disclosures. Some astonishment hadalways existed as to Francis—how he rose so sud

dea ly into rank and station : some astonishment alwaysexisted as to I onics , how he should so suddenly havefallen asleep as a writer in the journals. The coinci

dence of this sudden and unaccountable silence withthe sudden and unaccountable Indian appointment ofFrancis ; the extraordinary familiarity of Junius, whichhad not altogether escap ed notice, with the secretsof one particular office , viz , the War Office ; the sodden recollection , sure to flash upon all who remembered Francis, if again he should become revived intosusp icion , that he had held a situation of trust in thatparticular War Office ; all these l ittle recollectionswould begin to take up their places in a connected

story : this and that, laid together, would become clearas day l ight ; and to the keen eyes of still survivinge ii emies -e - Horne Tooke

,l ittle Chew ier,

’ Ellis , theFitzroy, Russell , and Murray houses - a tbo Whole progress and catastrOphe of the scoundrelism,

the perfidyand the profits of the perfidy, would soon become as

intelligible as any tale of midnight burglary fromW ithout, in concert w ith a wicked butler W ithin, that

was ever s ifted by judge and jury at the Old

Bailey, or critically reviewed by Mr. John Ketch at

Tyburn .

Francis was the man. Francis was the W ickedbutler W ithin ,

WhomPharaoh ought to have hanged ,but Whom he clothed in royal apparel , and mounted

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130 scanossaa’s Lzr eaaar msroar , are .

t imes more clever really you were. A nd also ,

you are the greatest scoundrel that at this hour rests

in E umpe unhanged l m Francis died, and made no

sign . Peace of mind he had parted with for a pea.cook

’s feather, which feather, l iving or dying, he durst

notmount in the plumage of his cap .

N OTE S .

Nero 1. Page 86.

Even Pope , with all his natural and reasonable interest inaristocratic society, could not shu t his eyes to the fact that a.jestin hismouthbecame twice a jest in a lord ’

s. But still he failed

to perceive What I amhere contending fer , that if the jest happened tomiss fi r

e, throughthe misfortun e of bursting its barrel,the consequences would he far wors e for the lord than the commoner. There is , you see, a.blind sort of empensation .

New 2. Pm88.

M r. Sohlosser , who speaks English, who has read rather too

much English for any good that he has turned it to, and who

ought to have a keen eye for the Englishversion ofhis own book ,

after somuch reading and study oi it, has, however , overlookedseveralmanifest errors. I do notmean to tax M r. D avison withgeneral inaccuracy. On the contrary, he seems wary, and inmost cases smessful as a. dealer with the p eculiari ties of the

Germm But several cases of error I detectwithout needing the

ori ginal : they tell their own story. And one of these I herenotice , not only for its own immrtanoe, but out of love to

S ohlosser , and by way of nailing his guarantee to the counter

not altogether as a.had shilling, but. as a light dne. At p . 5 of

vol. 2, in a fooenote, which is spealnng of Kan t, we read of his

attempt to introduce the notion of negatioe greatness into Phi

losophy. N egatioe greatness ! What stmge b irdmay that be ?Is it the oralthoma clms p aradar as M r . S ohlosser was not

wide awak e there. The reference is eviden tly to Kent’s essayupon the advantages of introducing into philosophy the algebraic

[131]

132 store s.

idea of negative quantities. It. is one of Kent’s grandest gleamsinto hidden truth. Were it only for the merits of this mostmasterly essay in reconstituting the algebraic meaning of a

negating quantity [so generally misunderstood as a negation

of quantity, and which even S ir Isaac Newton miseonstmed as

regarded its metaphysics], great would have been the service

rendered to logic byKent. But there is a greater. Fromthis

little brochure I amsatisfied was derived originally the G ermanregeneration of the Dynamic philosophy, its expansion through

the idea of polarity, inmfi‘

erence, &o. Oh, M r. Sohlosser , you

had not gep roft p . 5 of vol. 2. You shipped the notes.

Nero 3. Page 90.

L ittle ow es - the word G lmndaloliwh, in Brobdingnagian , absolu telymeans little nurse, and nothing else. Itmayem odd that.the captain should call any nurse of Brobdingnag,however kind to him, by such an ep ithet as little ; and the

readermay fancy that Sherwood formhad put it into his head,

where Robin Hood always called his right hand man L ittle

John,’not although, but expressly because John stood seven feet

high in his stockings. But the truth is— that G lumdalolitchwas little ; and literally so ; she was only nine years old, and

(says the captain)‘ little of her age,

’ being barely forty feethigh. She had tin i e to grow certainly, but as she had somuchto do before she could overtake other women , it is probable thatshe would turn out what, in Westmoreland, they call a littleslifi

'

engcr - very little, if at all, higher than a common

N can 4. Page 96.

d amas k - Ii.is some sign of this, as well as of themorethoroughlyEnglishtaste in literature whichdistingin

’

shed S teele ,

that hardly twice throughout the Spectator is BhoksPeare

quoted or alluded to by Addison. Even those quotations he hadfromthe theatre, or the breath of popular talh. G enerally, ifyou see a line fromShahspeare, it is safe to bet largely that thepaper is S teele

’s ; sometimes, indeed , of casual contributors ; but,

almost to a certainty, not a paper of Addison ’s. Anothermark

of Steele’s superiority in vigor of intellect is, thatmuchoftener

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134 NOTES.

W911 known as Rise r Sharpe, fromthe dn sgawoi oyw of his 0011

versation , used to say, that one or both of the oxemtors hadchimed him(the river ) a huge travelling trunk , perhaps an Imperial or a Salisbury boot (equal to the wardrobe of a family) ,filled withBurke’

s M83 , on the simple condition of editing them.

withproper annotations. An Oxfordman , and also the celebratedM r. Christian Curwen , then member for Cumberland, mad e, inmyhearing, the same report. The Oxford man , in par ticular,being questioned as to the probable amount of M S ., deposed , that

he could not speak upon oath to the cubical contents ; but thishe could say, that, having stripped up his coat sleeve, he hadendeavored, by suchpoormachinery as nature had allowed him,

to take the soundings of the trunk, but apparently there werenone withhismiddle finger he could find no bottom; for itwasstopped by a dense stratumof MS . below which, you know,

other stratamight lie ad infinitmn. For anything proved to thecontrary, the trunkm

’

ght be bottomless.

Now 10. Pam120.A.man in Fox ’

s situation is sure , whilst living, to draw after

himtrains of symphonies ; and it is the evil necessity of newspapers themost indep endent, that theymust sw ll the mob ofsycoPhants. The public compels themto emgmte the true

proportions of such people as we see every hour in our own day.

Those who, for themoment,modify, ormaymodifythe national

condition , bemme prepostmus idols in the eyes of the gaping

public ; but with the sad necessity of being too utterly troddenunder foot after they are shelved , unless they live in men ’

s

memory by something better than speeches in Parliament. Hav

ing the usual fate, Fox was complimented, whilst living , on hisknowledge of Homeric G reek, whichwas a jest : he knew neither

more nor less of Homer , than, fortunately,most Englishgentlemen of his rank ; quite enoughthat is to read the ‘ Iliad with

unafi'

ected pleasure, for too little to rooms the tent of any threelines, Withoutmaking himself ridiculous. I bo excessive slender.ness of his general literature, Englishand French,may be seenin the letters published by his S ecretory, Trotter . But hi s frag

ment of a History, published by Lord Holland, at two guiness ,and currently sold for two shillings (not two p ence, or else I

NOTES.

have been defrauded of i s. 10d ) ,mostof all proclaims the tenuityof his knowledge. He looks upon MalcolmLaing as a huge

oracle and, having read even less than Hume, a thing not veryeasy, with great animate, cannot guess where Home picked up

N ew 11. Page 12a

Even in D r. Francis’s Translation of S elect Speeches fromD emosthenes , which Lord Broughamnaturally umd a little in

his own labors on that theme, theremay be traced several peculiarities of diction that startle us in Junius. Sir P.had themfromhismther. And Lord Broughm ought not to have overlookedthem. The same thingmay be seen in the notmto D r. Francis’stran slafion of Horace. These points, thoughnot indep endentlyofmuch importance , become fi r more so in combination withothers. The replymade tome once by

‘

a publisher of some eminence upon this question ,was the beston e to lower Mr. Taylor ’

s

investigation witha strange? to the long history of the dispute.

I feel, ’ he said , the impregnability of the casemade out by M r.

Taylor. But the misfortune is, that I have seen so many pmvious impregnable casesmade out for other claimants. Ay, thatwould be unforhmate. But themis rtune for this reparteewas ,

that I, for whose use itwas intended , not being in the predicament ofa stranger to the depu te, having seen every page of thepleadings, knew all (except M r. Taylor ’

s) to be fi les in their

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138 THE AN TIGONE or some one s .

wears the freshness of morning dew, and is so fresh

and dewy in the beautiful person of Miss Faucit, hadreally begun to look faded on the Athen ian stage , andeven of a certa in age ,

’about the death of Pericles ,

whose meridian year was the year 444 before Christ.Lastly, these modern readers , that are so obstinatelyrebellious to the once Papal authority of Greek

,they—4

No ; on consideration , they are new. Antiquity pro

ducedmany monsters, but none l ike them.

The truthis , that this vastmultiplication of readers ,W ithin the last twenty-five years, has changed theprevai ling character of readers. The minority has

become the overwhelming majority : the quantity hasd isturbed the quality. Formerly, out of every fivereaders , at least four were, in some degree , class icalscholars : or, if that would he saying toomuch , if twoof the four had small Latin and less Greek,

’ theywere generally connected with those who had more , orat the worst, who had much reverence for Latin , andmore reverence for Greek. If they did not all sharein the servic es of the temple, all, at least, shared inthe superstition . But, now-a-days , the readers comechiefly from a class of busy people who care verylittle for ancestra l crazes . Latin they have heard of,and some of themknow it as a good sort of industriouslanguage , that even , in modern times , has turned out

many useful books , astronomical ,medical , philosophical, and (as M rs . Malaprop observes) diabolical ; but,as to Greek , they think of it as of an anc ientmummyyou spend an infin ity of time in unswathing i t fromitsold dusty wrappers , and, when you have come to theend

,what do you find for your pains ? A. woman’

s

face , or a baby’s , that certainly is not the better for

run anr toons or sornoetns . 139

being three thousand years old ; and perhaps a few

ears of wheat, stolen fromPharaoh’s granary ; whichwheat, when sown 1 in Norfolk or Mid-Lothian , reaped ,thrashed, ground , baked , and hunted throughall sortsof tortures , yields a breakfast roll that (as a Scottishbaker observed to me) is ‘

not just that bad.

’ Certainly not : not exactly that bad not worse than theworst of our own ; but still ,much fitter for Pharaoh’sbreakfast-tab le than for ours.

I, for my own part, stand upon an isthmus, conmeeting me , at one terminus , with the rebels aga instGreek

, and, at the other, with those aga inst whom theyare in rebell ion. On the one hand, it seems shocking

to me , who amsteeped to the lips in antique prejudices ,that Greek, in unl imited quantities , should not secure al imited privilege of talking nonsense. Is all reverenceextinct for old, and ivy-mantled, and wormeatenthings ? Sure ly, if your own grandmother lecture s onmorals , which perhaps now and then she does , she wil lcommand that reverence from you , by means of hergrandmotherhood, which by means of he r ethics she

might not. To be a good Grecian , is now to be a

faded poten tate ; a sort of phantomMogul , s itting at

Delhi, w ith an English sepoy bestriding his shoulders .

Matched against the master of ologies , in our days,the most accomplished of Grecians is becoming whatthe ‘master of sentences ’ had become long s ince, incompetition with the political economist. Yet, he

assured , reader, that all the ‘ologies ’ hitherto chris

tened oology, ichthyology, ornithology, eonehology,

palaaodontology, &c .,do not furn ish such mines of

labor as doe s the Greek language when thoroughly

searched. The Mithridates ’of A delung, improved

140 r ue anr toons or someone s .

by the commentaries of Voter and of subsequent euthors, numbers up about four thousand languages and

jargons on our polyglot earth ; not including the

chuckling of poultry, nor caterwauling, nor barking,howling, braying, lowing, nor other respectable and

ancient dialects, that perhaps have their e legant andtheir vulgar varieties , as well as prouder forms of communication. But my impre ssion is, that the Greek,taken by itself, this one exquisite language , consideredas a quarry of intellectual labor, has more work in it,is more truly a p iece do moisturiser, than all the re

main ing three thousand n ine hundred and ninety-nine,with caterwauling thrown in to the barga in. So far Is ide with the Grecian, and think that he ought to behonored with a little genufiexion. Ye t, on the otherhand, the finest sound on this ear th , and which rise sl ike an orchestra above all the uproars of earth , andthe Babels of earthly languages , is truth

— absolutetruth ; and the hatefulest is conscious falsehood. Now,there is falsehood, nay (which seems s trange), ovensycophancy, in the old undistinguishing homage to all

that is called class ical. Yet why should men he syco

phants in cases where they must be disintere stedSycophancy grows out of fear, or out of mercenary

self-interest. But what can there exist of either pointing to an old Gre ek poet ? Cannot a man give hisfre e opinion upon Homer, without fearing to be wayla id by his ghost ? But it is not that which s tartleshimfrompublishing the secret demur whichhis heartprompts, upon hearing false praises of a Greek poet,or pra ises which , if not false, are extravagant. Whathe fears , is the scorn of his contemporaries. Letonce a party have formed itse lf considerable enoughto

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142 one anemone on someone s .

judicious artists. S uch are the works of blind elements , which (poor things !) cannot improve by expe

rience . A s to man who does, the sculpture of theGreeks in their marbles and sometimes in their gems

,

seems the only act of his workmanship which has hitthe bull’s eye in the target at which we are all a iming.N ot so, with permission fromMessrs . Boileau and A ddison, the Greek literature. The faults in this are

often conspicuous ; nor are they likely to be hiddenfor the coming century, as they have been for the

three last. The idolatry will be shaken : as idols,

some of the classic models are destined to totter : and

I foresee , without gifts of prophecy, that many laborerswill soon be in th is field— many idoloclasts, who willexpose the signs of disease, which zealots had intero

pre ted as power ; and of weakness, which is not the

less real because scholars had fanc ied it health , nor theless injurious to the total efl

'

ect because it was inevita

ble under the acc idents of the Grecian position.Meantime, I repeat, that to disparage any thing

Whatever, or to turn the eye Upon blemishes, is no partof my present purpose. Nor could it be : sin ce theone sole section of the Greek literature , as to which Iprofess myself an enthus iast, happens to he the tragicdrama ; and here , only, I myseif am liable to be challenged as an idolate r. A s regards the Antigone in

particular, so profoundly do I feel the impass ionedbeauty of her s ituation in connection with her charac

ter, that long ago, in a work of my own (yet unpub»

lished), having occas ion (by way of overture introduolog one of the sections) to cite be fore the reader

’s

eye the chief pomps of the Grec ian theatre, after

invoking ‘ the magnificent w itch ’ Medea, I call Up

rue someone or sornoons s . 143

A ntigone to this shadowy stage by the apostrophe,

‘Holy heathen , daughter of God , before God wasknown

,3 flower from Paradise after Paradise was

closed ; that quitting all things for which flesh lan

guishes, safety and honor, a palace and a home , didstmake thyself a houseless par iah , lost the poor pariahking

, thy outcast father, should want a hand to leadhim in his darkness , or a voice to Whisper comfort inhis misery ; angel, that hadst depart for ever the

glories of thy own bridal day, lest he that had shared

thy nursery in childhood, should want the honors of a

funeral ; idolatrous , yet Christian Lady, that in the

Spirit of martyrdom trodst alone the yawning billows

of the grave, flying from earthly hopes , lest everlast

ing despair should settle upon the grave of thy brother,’

See . In fact, though all the groupings , and What Iwould call permanent attitudes of the Grecian stage,are majestic, there is none that, to my mind, towers

into such afi'

ecting grandeur, as this final revelation ,through A ntigone herself, and through her own dreadfol death , of the tremendous n o that destiny had sus

pended over her house. If therefore my business had

been chiefly with the indiv idual drama, I should havefound little room for any sentiment but that of pro-3

found admiration. But my present business is did'

or-s

out : it concerns the Greek drama generally , and the

attempt to revive it ; and its object is to elucidate ,rather than to praise or to blame . To explain this

better, I will describe two mings let, The sortof audience that I suppose myself to be addre ss ing ,and, 2dly, A s growing out of that, the particularquality of the explanations whichI Wish to make.1812, A s to the audience : in order to excuse the tone

144 THE A NTIG ONE or sornocnns .

(which occasionally I may be obliged to assume) ofone S peaking as froma station of knowledge, to othershaving no knowledge , I beg it to be understood , that Itake that station del iberate ly, on no conceit of supe

riority to my readers , but as a companion adapting myservices to the wants of those who need them. I amnot address ing those already familiar with the Gre ekdrama, but those who frankly confess , and (accordingto their conjecture] apprec iation of it) who regret theirnon-famil iarity with that drama . It is a thing wellknown to publ ishers , through remarkable results , andis now showing itse lf on a scale continually w iden ing,that a new litetary public has arisen , very differentfrom any which existed at the beginn ing of this cen

tury . The aristocracy of the land have a lways been ,in a moderate degree , l iterary less, however, m con

nection with the current l iterature , than w ith literature

generally - e past as well as present. And this is a

tendency naturally favored and strengthened in them,by the fine collections of books , carried forward throughsuccess ive generations

,which are so often found as a.

sort of hereditary foundation in the country mansions

of our nobility. But a class of readers , prodigiouslymore extens ive , has formed itse lf within the commercial orders of our great cities and manufacturingd istricts . These orders range through a largo scale.

The highest classes amongst themwe re always l iterary.

But the interest of literature has now swept downwards

through a vast compass of descents : and this largebody

, though the bus iest in the nation, yet, by having

under their undisturbed command such leisure time as

they have at all under their command, are eventually

able to read more than those even who seem to have

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146 rue s e rmons OF SOPHOCLES.

for redressing this loss. But they would be glad toavai l themselves of any use ful information not exacting study. These are the persons, this is the c lass , towhich 1 address my remarks on the ‘A ntigone g

land

out of their particular s ituation , suggesting upon all

e levated subjects a corresponding tone of liberal curi

osity, will arise the particular nature and direction ofthese remarks.A ccordingly, I presume, secondly, that this curios i ty

will take the following course z—fi - these persons willnaturally wish to know , at starting, What there isdiferentiolly interesting in a Grecian tragedy, as contrasted with one of Shakspeare

’s or of Schiller’s : in

what respect, and by what agenc ies , a Greek tragedy

afi'

ects us , or is meant to affect us, otherwise than as

they do ; and how far the A ntigone of Sophocles wasjudiciously chosen as the particular medium for conveying to British minds a first impression , and a repro

sentative iinpie ssion, of Greek tragedy. So far , inrelation to the ends proposed , and the means selected.Finally, these persons W ill be curious to know the issueof such an experiment. Let the purposes and the

means have be en bad or good, Wha t was the actualsuccess ? A nd not merely success , in the sense of

ithe momentary acceptance by ha lf a dozen audiences,Whom the more decencies of justice must have compolled to acknowledge the manager’s trouble and

expense on their behalf ; but What was the degree ofsatisfaction felt by students of the A thenian 4 tragedy,in relation to their long-cherished ideal ;! Did the representation succeed in real izing, for a moment, theawful pageant of the A thenian stage ? Did Tragedy,in Milton’s immortal expression ,

ran AN TIGON E or someone s . 147

come swooping by

Or was the whole , thoughsuccessful in relation to t he

thing attempte d, a failure in relation to What ought:to have been attempted ? Such are the questions tobe answered.

The first elementary idea of a Greek tragedy, isto be sought in a serious Ital ian opera. The Greekdialogue is represented by the recitatirc, and the

tumultuous lyrical parts ass igned chiefly,though not

exclusively, to the chorus on the Greek stage, are

represented by the impassioned a irs , duos , tries , choruses , &c. on the Italian . A nd here, at the very outset,occurs a question which l ies at the threshold of a FineA rt, - that is , of any Fine Art : for bad the views ofAddison upon the Ital ian opera had the leas t foundationin truth , there could have been no room or openingfor anymode of imitation except such as belongs to a.

mechanic art.The reason for at all connecting A ddison with this

case is, that he chiefly was the person occupied inassailing the Italian opera ; and this hos til ity arose,probab ly, in his want of sens ibility to good (that is , toIta lian)music. But Whatevermight be his motive forthe hostil ity, the single argument by which he sop

ported it was this, —that a hero ought not to s ingupon the stage , because no hero known to history eversummoned a garrison in a song, or charged a batte ryin a semichorus. In this argument lies an ignoranceof the very first principle concerned in every FineA rt. In all

‘

alilce , more or less directly, the object is

to reproduce in the mind some great effect, through

148 ms AN T IGONE or sornocnus .

the agency of idemin alto. The i dem, the same impress ion, is to be restored ; but in alto , in a difi

’

ercut

materia l , —by means of some different instrument.For instance , on the Roman stage there was an art,

now entirely lost, of narrating, and, in part of dramatically representing an impassioned tale , by means ofdancing, of mus ical accompan iment in the orchestra,and of elaborate p antomime in the performer. S oltam’

t

Hyp ermnestram, he danced (that is , he represen ted bydancing and pantomime the story of) Hypermncstru.

N ow, suppose a man to object, that young ladies,when saving their youthful husbands atmidn ight fromassassination, could not be capable of Waltzing or

quadrilling, how wide is this of the whole problem!This is still seeking for the mechanic imitation , someimitation founded in the very fact ; whereas the objectis to seek the imitation in the sameness of the impression drawn from a difi

'

creut, or even from an

impossible fac t. If a man , taking a hint from the

Roman S altatio ’

(saltavit A ndromacken), should saythat he would whistle Waterloo ,

’that is , by whistling

connected with pantomime, would express the passionand the changes ofWaterloo , it would be monstrous torefuse himhis postulate on the pretence that ‘ peopledid not Whistle at Waterloo .

’ Prec isely so : neitherare most people made of marble , but of a material asdifi

'

erent as can well be imagined , viz . of elastic flesh ,with warmblood cours ing along its tubes ; and yet,for all that, a sculptor wi ll draw tears fromyou, byexhibiting

,in pure statuary marble

, on a scpulchral

monument, two young children w ith their l ittle handson a pillow, s leeping in each other’s arms ; Whereas ,if he had presented them in wax~work , which yet is

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150 THE A NTIG ONE or sornoccs s.

which he presumed to be so prodigiously exalte d be :

yond modern approaches , had gone farther even than

the Opera. A ddison himself, when writing a tragedy,made this v iolation (as he would have said) of nature,made this concess ion (as I should say) to a highernature , that be compelled his characters to talk inmetro. It is true this metre was the common iambic,which (as A ristotle remarks) is the most natural andspontaneous of all metres ; and, for a sufficient reason ,in all languages. Certainly ; but A ristotle nevermeant to say that it was natura l for a gentleman in a

passion to talk threescore and ten iambics soneson

tively a chance line might escape him once and

away ; as we know that Tacitus opened one of his

works by a regular dactylic hexameter in full curl ,without ever discovering it to his dying day (a factwhich is clear fromhis never having corrected it) ;and this being a very artificialmetre , dfor tior i Tacitusmight have sl ipped into a s imple iambic. But thatwas an accident, whilst A ddison had del iberately andun iformlymade his characters talk in ve rse. A ccording to the common and false mean ing [which was hisown meaning] of the word nature , he had as undeniablyviolated the principle of the natural, by this metricaldialogue , as the Ital ian opera bymus ical dialogue. Ifit is hard and trying for men to s ing their emotions ,not less so it must be to deliver themin verse.But, if this were shocking, how much more shockingwould it have seemed to A ddison , had he been introduced to parts which really exist in the Grecian drama ?Even Sophocles, who, of the three tragic poets sur

vir ing from the wrecks of the A thenian s tage, isreputed the supreme artist,

5 if not the most impas

rue s ome one or soruocw s. 15 1

sioned poet, with what horror, he would have overs

whelmed Addison, when read by the l ight of thoseprinc iples which he had himself so scornf

'

ully appl iedto the Opera ! In the very monsoon of his ravingmisery, fromcalamities as sudden as they were irredeemable , a king is introduced, not on ly convers ing,but convers ing inmetre ; not only inmetre , but in themost elaborate of choral metres ; not only under thetorture of those lyric difiiculties , but also chanting ;not only chanting, but also in all probab ility dan cing.What do you think of that, Mr. Addison ?There is, in fact, a scale of graduated ascents inthese artifices for unreal izing the effects of dramatics ituationsI . We may see , even in novels and prose comedies ,

a keen attention paid to the inspir iting and dressing of

the dialogue : it is meant to be life l ike , but still it is al ittle ra ised, pointed, colored, and idealized.2. In comedy of a higher and more poe tic cast, we

find the dialoguemetrical.3. In comedy or in tragedy al ike, which is meant: to

be still further removed fromordinary life, we find thedialogue fettered not only by metre , but by rhyme.We need not go to Dryden , and others, of our own

middle stage , or to the French stage for this : even inShakspeare , as for example, in parts of Romeo and

Jul iet (and for no capricious purpose), we may se e

effects sought from the use of rhyme. There is anotheri llustration of the idealizing shee t to be obtained froma particular treatment of the dialogue , seen in theHamlet of Shakspeare . In that drama there arises a

necess ity for exhibiting a play within a. play. This

interior drama is to be further removed from the

152 one anemone or someone s .

spectator than the principal drama ; it is a deep belowa clasp ; and, to produce that effect, the poet relieschiefly upon the stifiening the dialogue , and removingit still farther, than the general dialogue of the in»

cluding or outside drama, fromthe standard of ordinary life.4. We find, superadded to these artifices for idea l

lzmg the s ituations , even music of an intermittingcharacter, sometimes less, sometimes more impas~sionccl - e a recitatives, airs, choruses. Here we havereached the Ital ian opera.

5 . An d, finally, besides all these resources of art,We find dancing introduced ; but dancing of a solemn ,mystical, and symbolic character. Here, at last, Wehave reached the Gre ek tragedy. Probably the bestexemplification of a Grecian tragedy that ever will begiven to a modern reader is found in the SamsonA gonistes of Milton. Ncw, in the choral or lyric partsof this fine (llama, Samson not only talks, let,metrically (as he does every Where , and in the most levelparts of the scen ic bus iness), but, 2d, in very intricatemetres, and, 3d, occasionally in rhymed metres (thoughthe rhymes are too sparingly and too capricionsly scat~

tered by Milton), and, 4th, s inging or chanting thesemetres (for, as the chorus sang, it was imposs ible thathe could be allowed to talk in his ordinary voice, elsehe would have put themout, and ruined the music).Finally, 5 th, I am satisfied that Milton meant him todance. T he ofiice of the chorus was imperfectly defined upon the Greek stage. They are generally

understood to be the moralizerc of the scene. But thisis l iable to exceptions. Some of them have beenknown to do very bad things on the stage, and to come

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154 rue surrooun or someone s.

méchanceté , causes me to laugh immoderately. N ow

I conceive that any interloper into the G reek chorusmust have danced when they danced, or he would havebeen swept away by their impetus : anions s alons, hemust have rode along with the orchestral charge , hemust have rode on the crest of the choral b illows , orhe would have been rode down by their impassionedsweep. Samson, and ! dipus, and others, must havedanced , it

“

they sang ; and they certa inly did s ing, bynotoriously intermingling in the choral business .

6

But now,

’ says the plain English reader, what was

the object of all these elaborate devices ? And howsome it that the English tragedy, which surely is as

good as the Greek ,”

(and at this point a devil of defiance whispers to him, l ike the quarrelsome servantof the Oapulets or the Montague, ‘ say ‘ thatthe English tragedy contented itself with fewer of theseartful resources than the A thenian ? ’ I rep ly, thatthe object of

“

all these things wus s—a te unrealize thescene. The English drama, by its metrical dress, andby other arts more disguised, unreal ized itself, liberateditself fromthe oppression of life in its ordinary standards, up to a certain height. Why it did not rise stillhigher, and why the Grecian did, I will endeavor toexplain; It was not that the Engl ish tragedy was lessimpass ioned ; on the contrary, i t was far more so ; theGreek be ing awful rather than impass ioned ; but thepassion of each is in a different key. It is not againthat the Greek drama sought a lower object than the

English: it sought a different object. It is not impurity, but disparity, that divides the two magnificenttheatres.S ufi

‘

erms , reader, at this point, to borrow frommy

ms someone or someon e. 155

self, and do not betrayme to the authorities that rule inthis journal , if you happen to kn ow [which is not

likely] that I am taking an idea froma paper whichyears ago I wrote for an eminent l iterary journal AsI have no copy of that paper before me , it is imposs ible that I should save myself any labor of writing.The words at any rate I must invent afresh : and, asto the idea, you never can be such a churl ishman as

,

by insisting on a new one , In effect to insist upon mywriting a false one . In the following paragraph , therefore

,I give the substance of a thought suggested by

myself some years ago.

That kind of feel ing, which broods over the Greciantragedy

, and to court which feeling the tragic poe tsof Greece naturally spread all their canvas, wasmorenearly al lied to the atmosphere of death than that oflife. This expresses rudely the character of awe andre ligious horror investing the Greek theatre. But to

my own feeling the different principle of passion whichgoverns the Grecian conception of tragedy, as compared With the English

,is best conveyed by saying

that the Grecian is a breathing from the world ofsculpture , the English a breathing from the worldof painting. What we read in sculpture is not absolately death, but sti ll less is it the fnlness of l ife. Weread there the abstraction of a life that reposes, thesublimity of a li fe that asp ires, the solemn ity of a l ifethat is thrown to an infin ite distance. This last is thefeature of sculpture which seems mos t characteristicthe form which presides in the most commandinggroups , ‘ is not dead but sleepeth : time , but it is thesleep of a life sequestrated, solemn, l iberated fromthe

bonds of space and time, and (as to both alike) thrown

156 THE AN TIG ON E or someone s.

(I repeat the words) to a distance which is infinite . It

afi'

ects us profoundly , but not by agitation . N ew, on

the other hand, the breathing l ife - m life kindling,trembling, palpitating— that l ife which speaks to us

in painting, this is also the l ife that speaks to us in

Engl ish tragedy. Into an English tragedy even fes

tivals of joy may enter ; marriages , and baptisms, orcommemorations of national trophies : which , or any

thing like which; is incompatible with the very beingof the Greek. In that tragedy what uniformity of

gloom; in the English what light a lternating with

depms of darkness ! The Greek, howmournful ; theEngl ish , how tumultuous ! Even the catastrophes howdifl

'

erent i In the Greek we see a breathless waitingfor a doom that cannot be evaded ; a waiting, as itwere, for the last shock of an earthquake , or the inexaorable rising of a deluge : in the Engl ish it is l ike a

midnight of shipwre ck, fromwhich up to the last andtill the final ruin comes, there still survives the sort ofhope that clings to human energies.Connected with this original awfulnes s of the Greek

tragedy, and possibly in part its cause , or at leas tlending s trength to its cause , we may next remark thegrand dimensions of the ancient theatres. Everycitizen had a right to accommodation. There at once

was a pledge of gran deur. Out of this original standard grew the magnificence of many a future amphi stheatre , circus , hippodrome. H ad the original theatrebeen merely a speculation of private intere st, then ,exactly as demand arose, a corre sponding supply wouldhave provided for it throughits ordinary vulgar channels ; and this supply would have taken place throughrival theatres. But the crushing exaction of ‘

roomfor

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158 rue s e rmons or sornocns s.

grandeur investing the Greek theatre is forgotten.

For, you must consider, that Where a theatre is built

for receiving Upwards of“

thirty thousand spectators, thecurve described by what in modern times you wouldcal l the tiers of boxes ,must be so vast as tomake theordinary scale of human feature s almost ridiculous byd isproportion. Seat yourself at this day in the amphiatheatre at Verona , and judge for yourself. In an

amphitheatre , the stage , or properly the arena, occupying, in fact, the place of our modern pit, was muchnearer than in a scenic theatre to the surroundingspectators. Allow for this, and placing some adult ina station exp ressing the distance of the A thenian stage ,then judge by his appearance if the del icate pencilling

of Gre cian features could have told at the Grecian distance. But even i f it could, then I say that this cin

cumstantiality would have been hostile to the general

tendencies (as already indicated) of the Greciandrama. The sweepingmovement of the Attic tragedyought not to admit of intermption fromdistinct humanfeatures ; the expression of an eye , the loveliness of a

smile, ought to be lost amongst effects so colossal .The mask aggrandized the features : even so far itacted favorably. Then. figure to yourself this maskpresenting an. idealized face of the noblest Grecian

outl ine,moulded by some skillful artis t Phidtacdmenu,so as to have the effect of amarble bust ; this accordedwith the aspiring cothumus ; and the motionless char:acter impressed upon the feature s, the marble tranquillity, would (I contend) su it the solemn processionalcharacter ofA thenian tmedy, far better than the mostexpress ive and flexible coun tenance on its naturalscale. Yes ,

’ you say, on considering the character

ran s e rmons or sornoons s . 159

of the Greek drama, generally it might , in forty,nine cases suppose out of fifty : but what shall be donein the fiftieth, Where some dreadful discovery or anagranor isis (i . e. recogn ition of identity) takes place Withinthe compass of a s ingle l ine or two ; as, for instance ,in the wdipus Tyrannus, at the moment when ( E dipusby a final question of his own , extorts h is first fataldiscovery, viz. that he had been himself unconscious lythe murderer of Laius True, he has no reason as

yet to suspect that Laius was his own father ; which

discovery, when made further on , will draw with itanother still more dreadful , Viz. that by this parricidehe had opened his road to a throne, and to amarriagewith his father’s Widow, who was also his own natural

mother. He does not yet know the worst : and to

have killed an arrogant prince, would not in those dayshave seemed a very deep offence but then he believes

that the pestilence had been sent as a secret vengeance

for this assassination , which is thus invested with a

mysterious character of horror. Jus t at this point,Jocasta, his mother and his W ife, says , 3 on W itnessingthe sudden revuls ion of feeling in his face, ‘ll shudder,ohking, when look ing on thy countenance.’ N ow, in

What way could this pass ing spasmof horror be re con

ciled with the unchanging expression in the marblelooking mask ? This, and simi lar case s to this ,must surely be felt to argue a defect in the scen icapparatus. But I say, no first, Because the generalindistinctivencss fromdistan ce is a benefit that appl iesequally to the fugitive changes of the features and to

their permanent expression. You need not regret theloss through absence, of an appearance that would

equally, though present, have been lost through dis

160 THE numerous or soruocmss.

lance. Secondly, The Greek actor had always theresource , under suchdifficulties , of averting his face ;a resource sanctioned in similar cases by the greatestof the Greek pa inters . Thirdly, T he voluminousdraperies of the scen ic dre sse s , and generally of the

Greek costume , made it an easy thing to mufile the

features altogethe r by a gesture most natural to suddenhorror. Fourthly, We must cons ider that there wereno stage lights : but, on the contrary that the generallight of day was specially mitigated for that particularpart of the theatre ; just as various architectural deviceswere employed to swell the volume of sound. Finally,1 repeat my sincere opin ion, that the general indistinctness of the expression was, on princ iples of taste ,an advantage, as harmonizing with the stately and

sullen monotony of the Greek tragedy. Grandeur inthe attitudes , in the gestures , in the groups , in the process ions— all this was indisPensable : but, on so vast

a scale as the mighty cartoons of the Greek stage , anAttic artist as l ittle regarded the deta ils of phys iognomy,as a great architect would regard , on the frontisp ieceof a temple , the min iature enrichments that might besuitable in a draw ing-room.

With these views upon the Grec ian theatre , and

other views that it might Oppress the reader to dwellupon in this place, suddenly in December last an op

portunity dawned— a golden Opportunity, gleamingfor a moment amongst thick clouds of imposs ibilitythathad gathered through three-and-twenty centuriesfor seeing a Grec ian tragedy presented on a British

stage, and with the nearest approach possible to the

beauty of those A thenian pomps which Sophocles ,which Phidias, which Pericles created , beautified, pro

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162 rue A NT IGON E or soraocns s.

Murray, had a second report proved true, viz. that notthe A ntigone, but a burlesque on the A ntigone , was

what he meditated to introduce. This turned out

false ; 10 the original report was suddenly revived eight

or ten months after. Immediately on the heels of the

promise the execution followed ; and on the last (whichI believe was the seventh) representation of the A h

tigoue , I prepared myself to attend.

It had been generally reported as characteristic of

myself, that in respect to all coaches, steamboats, rai lroads , wedding-parties , baptisms, and so forth, there

was a fatal necess ity of my being a trifle too late.

Some mal icious fairy, not invited to my own baptism,was supposed to have endowed me with this infirmity.It occurred to me that for once in my l ife I would showthe scandalousness of such a belief by being a tr ifle

too soon, say, three minutes . A nd no name morelovely for inaugurating such a change , no memorywith which I could more willingly connect any re

formation , than thine, dear, noble A ntigone l A ccordingly, because a certain man (Whose name is down inmy pocket-book for no good) had told me that thedoors of the theatre Opened at half-past six, Whereas ,in fact, they Opened at seven, there was I, if youplease, freezing in the l ittle colonnade of the theatrepre cisely as itwanted sin-and-auhalfminutes to scram- 53

sin o and-a-half' minutes observe too soon . Upon which

this son of absurdity coolly remarked, that, if he hadnot setme ha lf~an-hour forward , by my own showing,I should have been twentyo three -aud-a-halfminutes toolate. What sophistry ! But thus it happened (namely,throughthe wickedness of this man ), that, upon entering the theatre, I found myself like A lexander Selkirk,

T E E s e rmons on 3093 0015 33. 163

in a frightful sol itude , or l ike a single family of Arabsgathering at sunset about a solitary coffee-pot in theboundless desert. W as there an echo ra ised ? it Was

frommy own steps. D id any body cough ? it wastoo evidentlymyself. I was the audience ; I was thepublic. And, if any acc ident happened to the theatre,such as be ing burned down , Mr. Mone y would cer

tainly lay the blame upon me . My business mean time,as a critic, was— to find out the most malicious seat,i . e. the seat fromwhich all tldngs would take themostunfavorable aspect. I could not suit myself in thisrespect ; however had a situation might seem, I still

fancied some other as promising to be worse. A nd I

was not sorry when an audience, by mastering in

strength through all parts of the house, began to dividemy responsibil ity as to burn ing down the building, and,at the same time, to limit the caprie es ofmy distractedchoice. A t last, and precisely at half-past seven , the

curta in drew up ; a thing not strictly correct on a

Grecian stage. But in theatres, as in other places,one must forget and forgive . Then the music began ,of which in a moment. The overture sl ipped out at

one car, as it entered the other, which, withsubmisswnto M r. Mendelssohn , is a proof that itmust be horriblybad ; for, ii

'

ever there lived a man that in mus ic canneither forget nor forgive , that man is myself. Whatever is very good never parishes frommy remembrance, that is, sounds in my ears by intervals foreven— and for Whatever is bad, I consign the author,in my wrath, to his own consience , and to the torturesof his own discards . T he most vilianous things, however, have one merit ; they are trans itory as the bestthings ; and that was true of the overture : it perished

164 THE car toons or someone s.

Then , suddenly , “ oh, heavens ! what a revelation of

beauty «f a - forth stepped , walking in brightness, themost faultless of Grecian marbles , Miss Helen Pencitas Antigone. What perfection of Athenian sculpture !the noble lovely arms, the fluen t drapery !What an unveiling of the ideal statuesque ! Is it Hebeis it Aurora ? is i t a goddess that moves before us ?

Perfect she is in form; perfect in attitude

L ike a.Indie froma for countrie ’

Here was the redeeming jewel of the performance. It

flattered one’s patr iotic feelings, to see this noble youngcountrywoman real izing so exquisitely, and restor ing

to our imaginations, the noblest of Grecian girls. We

critics , dispersed through the house, in the very teeth

of duty and conscience, all at onemoment unanimouslyfell in love with Miss Faucit. We felt in our remorse ,and did not pretend to deny, that our duty was u —to besavage. But when was the voice of duty l istened toin the firs t uproars of pas sion ? O ne thing I regretted

,

Viz.mat fromthe indistinctness of my sight for distan tfaces , I could not accurately discriminate Miss Fauoit’sfeatures ; but I was told by my next neighbor that theywere as true to the antique as her figure . Miss Poucit’evoice is fine and impassioned, being deep for a femalevoice a but in this organ lay also the only blemishof

her personation. In -her last scene, which is injudicrously managed by the Greek poet,— too long bymuch , and perhaps misconcoived in the modern wayof unders tanding it, -fi her voice grew too husky toexecute the cadences of the intonations : yet, even inthis scene , her fall to the ground, under the burden of

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166 one s e rmons or someones.

cause dancing on the E dinburghstage there was none.H ow came that about ? For the very word, orchestral ,

’

suggests to a Greek ear dancing , as the leading element in the choral functions. Was i t because dancingwith us is never used mystically and symbolically.never used in our religious services ? Still it wouldhave been possible to invent solemn and intricatedances, that might have appeare d abundantly signifi

cant, if expounded by impass ioned music. But thatmusic of M endelssohn l- u l ike it I cannot. S ay not

that Mendelssohn is a great composer. He is so. Buthere he was voluntarily abandoning the resources of

his own gen ius , and the support of his div ine art, in

quest of a chimera : that is, in quest of a thing calledGreek mus ic, whichfor as seems far more irrecoverable than the ‘Greek fire .’ I myself, from an earlydate, was a student of this subject. I read book afterbook open it ; and each successive book sank melower into darkness

,until I had so vastly improved in

ignorance , that I could myself have written a quartoupon it, which all the world should not have found it

p oss ible to understand. It should have taken threemen to construe one sentence. I confess , however, to

not having yet seen the writings Upon this impracticaa

ble theme of Colonel Perrenot Thompson . To write

es perimentalmusic for choruses that are to support thee lse meagre outl ine of a Greek tragedy, w ill not do .

L e t superiments he tried upon worthless subjects ; andif this of Mendelssohn’

s be Greek music, the sooner ittakes itself ofi

‘

the better. Sophocles W ill he del iveredfroman incubus , and we froman afli iction of the audi

tory nerves.It strikes me that 1 see the source of this music.

was s ummons or someone s. 167

We , that were learning German some thirty years ago,must remember the noise made at that time aboutMendelssohn , the Platonic philosopher. A nd Why

Was there any thing particular in Der Phaedon ,’on

the immorta l ity of the soul ? Not at all ; it left usquite as mortal as it found us ; and it has long sincebeen found mortal itself. Its venerable remains are

still to be met with in many worm-eaten trunks, pastedon the lids of which I have myself peruse d a matterof thirty pages , except for a part that had be en tooclosely perused by worms . But the key to all the

popularity of the Platon ic Mendelssohn , is to be soughtin the Whims ical nature of German liberal ity, which,in those days , forced Jews into paying toll at the gate sof cities , under the “ title of swine,

”but caressed their

infidel philosophers . N ow, in this category of Jew

and infidel , stood the author of Phaedon .

’ He wascerta inly liable to toll as a hog ; but, on the otherhand , he was much admired as one who despised thePentateuch. N ow that Mendelssohn, whose learnedlabors l ined our trunks, was the father of this Mendelssohn , Whose Greek mus ic afllicts our ears. N at

urally, then, it strikes me , that as papa ’ Mendelssohnattended the synagogue to save appearances , the filialMendelssohn would also attend it. I l ikewise attendedthe synagogue now and then at Liverpool

, and else :

Where . We all three have been cruis ing in the samelatitudes ; and, trusting to my own remembrances , Ishould pronounce tha t Mendelssohn has stolen his

Greek music fromthe synagogue. There was , in thefirst chorus of the Antigone ,

’one sublime ascent (and

once repeated) that rang to heaven : it might haveentered into the mus ic of Jubal’s lyre , or have glorified

168 rue s ome one or sornocns s.

the timbre] of Miriam. All the rest, tried by the deepstandard of my own feeling, that clamors for the impassioned in mus ic, even as the daughter of the horseleech says , Give , give ,

’ is as much W ithoutmean ing asmost of the Hebrew chan ting that I heard at the Lit era

pool synagogue. I advise Mr. Murray, in the eventof his ever reviving the A ntigone

,

’ tomake the chorussing the Hundredth Psalm, rather than Mendelssohn

’s

mus ic ; or, which would be better still, to import fromLancashire the Handel chorusa singcrs.

But then , again, whatever change in the mus ic weremade, so as to better the condition of the poor audience, something should really be done to better thecondition ’

of the poor chorus . Think of these worthymen , in their white and skyblue l iveries , kept standingthe Whole evening ; no seats allowed, no dancing ; notobacco nothing to console thembutA ntigone’s beautyand all this in our c l imate , latitude fifty-five degrees ,30th of December, and Fahrenheit groping about, Idon’t pretend to know Where , but clearly on his roaddown to the wine cellar. Mr. Murray, 1 am perfectlysure, is too liberal to have grudged the expense, if hecould have found any classic precedent for treating thechorus to a barrel of ale . A le , he may object, isanunclass ical tipple ; but perhaps not. Xenophon , themost A ttic of prose write rs , mentions pointedly in hisA nabasis, that the Ten Thousand, when retreatingthrough snowy mounta ins , and in circumstances verylike our General E lphinstone

’s retreat from Cabal,

came upon a censiderable stock of bottled ale . To besure , the poor ignorant man calls it barley wine,

[swag xpzdwos but the flavor was found so perfectlyclass ical that not one man of the ten thousand, not

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170 T HE auriooun or S OPHOCLES.

surpl ices borrowed fromEpiscopal chapels , or ratherthe ornamented olbes , disc . from any rich RomanCathol ic establishment, would have been more efi

’

eo

live. T he Cosyp li cw s himself seemed, tomy eyes , nobetter than a rai lway laborer, fresh fromtunnelling or

boring, and wearing a blame to hide his working dress.These ills-usedmen ought to strike for better clothes ,in case A ntigone should ag ain revisit the gl impsesof an Edinburgh moon ; and at the same time theymight mutter a hint about the ale . But the great hindrances to a perfect restoration of

“

a Greek tragedy,l ie in peculiarities of our theatres that cannot be re

moved, because bound up W ith their purposes . I

suppose that Sal isbury Plain would seemtoo vast atheatre : but at least a cathedral would be require d indimens ions , York Minster or Cologne. Lamp- lightgives to us some advantages which the anc ients had

not. But much art would be re quired to train and

organize the l ights and the masses of superinoumbentgloom, that shoul d be such as to allow no calculationof the dimens ions overhead. A boriginal night shouldbrood over the scene , and the sweeping movements ofme scen ic groups : bodily expression should be givento the obscure feeling of that dark power which movedin ancient tragedy : and we should be made to knowWhy it is that, with the one exception of the P arse ,

founded on the second Pers ian invas ion ,” in whichE sohylus, the author, was personally a combatant, andtherefore a contemp orary, not one of the thirtyc four

Greek tragedies surviving, but recedes into the duskyshades of the herno, or even fabulous times.A. failure , there . I think the Antigone,

” in relation to an object that for us is unattainable ; but a

TH E ANTIG ONE OF S OPHOCLES.

fa ilure Worthmore than many ordinary successes. Weare

'

all deeply indebted to Mr. Murray’s l iberal ity, in two

senses ; to his liberal interest in the noblest section of

anc ient l iterature , and to his liberal disregard of expense. T o have seen a Grecian play is a greatremembrance. To have seen Miss Helen Fauc iti s

An tigone, were that all, with her bust, or e stuari es! ?

and her upl ifted arm pleading aga inst unjust tribuna ls,

’ is worth what is it worth Worth themoney ? How mean a thought ! To se e H elen , tosee Helen of Greece, was the chief prayer ofMarlow

’s

Dr. Faustus ; the chief gift which he exacted from thefiend. To see Helen of Greece ? Dr. Faustus , Wehave seen her : Mr. Murray is the Mephistopheles thatshowed her to us. It was cheap at the price of ajourney to Siberia , and is the next best thing to having

seen Waterloo at sunset on the 18thof June,

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174; mor e s .

it is past denying that Euripides at times betraysmarks of care

hurry : the original cast of the fable is sometimes nothappy, andthe evolution or disentangling is too precipitate. It is easy to seethat he would have remoulded themin a revised edition , or

diaskeue On the other hand, I remember nothing inthe Greek dramamore worthy of a great artist than parts in hist hiesse. N either is he the efi

’eminately tender, or merely

pathetic poet that some people imagine. H e was able to sweepall the chords of the impassioned Spirit. But the whole of this

Now 6. Page 154.

I see a possible screw loose at this point : if you see it, reader,have the goodness to hold your tongue.

N013 7. Page 157.

‘fi ihemtan Theatre —Many corrections remain to be madeAthens , in her bloom, was about as big as Calcu tta, which con

tained, forty years ago,more than’

half amillion of people or as

Naples, which (being long rated at three hundred thousand) , is

now known to contain at least two hundred thousandmore. The

well known census of D emetrius Phalereus gave twenty-onethousand citizens. Multiply this by 5, or 43 and you have their

families. Add ten thousand,multiplied by 45, for the Inquilim’.Then add four hundred thousand for the slaves : total, about five

hundred and fifty thousand. But upon the fluctuations of the

Athenian population there ismuchroomfor speculation . And ,

queers , was not the population of A then s greater two centuries

before D emetrius, in the days of Pericles ?

NOTE 8. Page 159.

Having no Sophocles at hand, I quote frommemory, not pro

wors e. 17 5

0

News 9. Rage 161.

Whose version, I do not know. But one unaccountable errmwas forced on one

’s notice. Thebes, which by Milton and by

every scholar ismade amonosyllable, is heremade a dissyllable.But T hebes , the dissyllable, is a S yrian city. It is true that

Gausabon deduces froma Syriacwordmeaning acase or enclosure(a these ) , the name of Thebes, whether E le ction or Emtian. It

is probable , ther efore, that Thebes the hundredcgated of UpperEgypt, Thebes the seven—gated of Greece, and Thebes of Syria,had all one origin as rmds the name. But thismatters notit is the E nglishname thatwe are concernedwith.

None 10. Pap 162.

False or rather inaccurate. The burlesque was not on the

Antig ne, but on the Medea of Euripides and very amusing.

N ew 11. Page 170.

But in this instance, perhaps, distance of space , combined withthe unrivalled grandeur of the war , was felt to cquiponderate thedistance of time, S osa, the Persian capital, being fourteen hun

Nonn 12. Pay 171.

E r rors é’mg doctorat es, her bosomas the towns of a statue an

expremion of Euripides, and applied, I think , to Polyxena at themoment of her sacrifice on the tomb ofAchilles , as the bride thatwas beingmarried to 11mat themoment ofhis death.

New 18. Page 171.

Amongst the questions whichoccurred to me as requiring an

answer , in connection withthi s revival, was one withregard tothe comparative fitness of the Antigon e fer giving a representative idea of the Gweh stage. I amof Opinion that it was the

Worst choice which could have been mad e ; and for the veryrowan whichno doubt governed that choice, viz. a because the

austerity of the tragic passion is disfigured by a love episode.

176 more s .

Rousseau in his letter to D ’Alembert upon his article G eneva, inthe FrenchEncyclopedic, asks, Qui est-cc gut dome qua, carwas theatres, lameilleure p iece de S aphocle notmnbdt tout-d-p lat?

’

And his rewon (as collected fromother passages) is—becausc

an interest derived fromthe passion of sexual love can rarely befound on the Greek stage, and yet cannot be dispensed withon

that of Paris. But why was it so rare on the Greek stage ? Not

fromaccident, bu t because it did not harmon ize with the principle of that stage, and its vast overhanging gloom. It is the

great infirmity of the French, and connected constitu tionallywiththe gayety of their temperament, that they cannot sympathizewith this terrificmode of grandeur. We can. And for as the

choice should have b eenmore purely and severely Grecian whilst

the slendcrness of the plot in any G reek tragedy, would require

a far more efi‘

ective support fromtumultuous movement in the

chorus. Even the French are not uniformly insensible to thisGrecian grandeur. I remember that Voltaire , amongst manyjust remarks on the Electra of Sophocles,mixed withothers thatare not just, bitterly condemns this demand for a love fable on

the Frenchstage , and illustrates its extravagance by the Frenchtragedy on the same subject, ofCrebillon . H e (in dcfimlt of anymore su itable resource) has actuallymade E lectra, whose char

acter on the Greek stage is painfully vindictive, in love withan

imaginary son of Algisthus, her father’s murderer . Something

should also have been said of M rs. LeighMan ny’s Ismcnc,which

was very cfi'

ectiye in supporting and in relieving themagnificentimpression of An tigon e. I ought also to have added a note on

the scenic mask , and the common notion (not authorized , I amsatisfied , by the practice in the sup reme era of Pericles) , that itexhibited a Janus face , the windward side expressing grief orhorror , the leeward expressing tranqu illity. Believe it not,

reader . But on this and other poin ts, itwill be better to speakcircumstantially, in a separate paper on the G reek drama, as a

majestic but very exclusive and almost, if onemay say so, bigotedformof the scen ic art.

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178 one me anne ss washroom.

Somersetshire, and the second like lea, (a field lying

fallow.) It is plain enough, fromvarious records, thatthe true historical genesis of the name, was preciselythrough that compos ition of words, which here, for themoment, i had imagined merely to illustrate its pronunciation , Lands in the diocese of Bath and Wells,lying by the pleasant river Ferre t, and almost up tothe gates of Bristol , constituted the

: earl iest possess ionsof the De Wellesle ighs. They, seven centuries beforeAssay, and Waterloo, were seised of certain rich Zoos

belonging to Wells. And from these Saxon elementsof the name, some have supposed the W ellesleys aSaxon race . They could not possibly have betterblood : but still the thing does not follow from the

premises. Neither does it follow from the do thatthey were Norman. T he first De Wellesley known to

history, the very tip-mp man of the pedigree, i s A r e

nan t do ‘Nelleslcigh. About a hundred years nearer

to our own times , 1riz. in 1239, came Michael dcWellesleigh; of whomthe important fact is re corded, thathe was the father of Wellerand do Wellesley. A nd

what did young M r. Wellerand performin this Wickedworld , that the proud muse of history should con

descend to notic e his rather singular name ? Reader,he Was h - J killed that is all ; and in company withSir Robert do Percival ; whichagain argues his Somersetshire descent : for the family of Lord Egmont, thehead of all Percivals , ever was , and ever will he , in

Somersetshire. But how was he killed ? The timewhen, viz. 1303, the place where, are known : but the

manner how,is not exac tly stated ; it was in skirmish

w ith rascally Irish kernes,’ follows that (when pre

sented at the font of Christ for baptism) had the ir right

run n aaous ss ws tnusnsr . 179

arms covered up fromthe baptisma l waters, in orderthat, still rema in ing consecra ted to the devil , thosearms might infl ict a devilish blow. Such a blow, withsuch an unbaptized arm, the Irish villain struck ; andthere was an end ofWellerand de W ellesle igh. Strangethat history should make an end of a man , before ithad made a beginn ing of him. These, however, arethefacts ; which , in writing a romance about Sir Welloran ti and Sir Percival , I shall have great pleasure infalsifying. But how, says the too cu rious reader, didthe De Wellesle ighs find themselves amongst Irishheroes ? H ad these scamps the presump tion to invadeSomersetshi re ? Did they dare to intrude into WellsNot at all : but the pugnacious De W ellesleys had

dared to intrude into Irelan d. Some say in the trainof Henry I] . Some say— but nomatter : there theywere : and there they stuck l ike limpets. They soonengrafted themselves into the county of Kildare ; fromwhich , by means of a fortunate marriage, they leapedinto the county of M onth; and in that county, as if torefute the pretended mutability of human things, theyhave roosted ever since . There was once a famouscopy of verses floating about Europe, which asserte dthat, whilst other princes were destined to fight forthrones, Austria -ammo handsome house of H apsburghshould obta in thembymarriage

M anhunt sin : to , felts Austria, nnbe.’

So of the W ellesleys : Sir Wellerand took quite thewrong way : not cudgell ing, but courting, was the cone

rect way for succeeding in Kildare . Two great estates ,by two separate marriages, the D o Wellesleighs oh

tained in Kildare ; and, by a third marnage in a third

180 THE MARQUESS wannasasr .

generation , they obtained in the county of Meath ,Castle Dengan (otherwise Dangan) with lordships as

plentiful as blackberries. Castle Dangan came tothemin the year of our Lord, 141 1, i . a. before A gincourt : and, in Castle Dangan did Field-marshal, theman of Waterloo

,draw his first bre ath, shed his first

tears , and perpetrate his earliest trespasses. That isWhat one might call a pretty long spell for one familyfour hundred and thirty-five years has Castle Danganfurnished a nursery for the Wellesley piccan innies.Amongst the Iordships attached to Castle Dangan wasM omington, which more than three centuries afte r~

wards supplied an earldom for the grandfather ofWaterloo. Any further memorabilia of the CastleD angm family are not recorded , except that in 1485

(which sure was the year of Bosworth fie ld theybegan to omit the de and to write themselves Welles ,

ley tout court. From indolence , I presume : for a

certa in lady Di. Is FL, whom once I knew, a Howardby birth , of the house of Suffolk , toldme as her reasonfor omitting the L e, that it cause d her too much additional trouble.So far the evidence seems in favor ofWellesley and

against Wesley. But, on the other hand, during thelast three centuries the Wellesleys wrote the nameWe sley. They, however, were only the maternal ans

casters of the present W ellesleys. Garret Wellesley,the las tmale heir of the direct l ine , in the year 1745 ,left his whole estate to one of the Cowleys, a Staffordshire family who had emigrated to Ireland in QueenElizabeth’s time, but who were, however, descendedfrom the Wellesleys. This Cowley or G alley

,taking,

in 1745 , the name of Wesley, received from George

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182 TH E MARQUESS W ELLE SLEY.

explained. But if it had been accepted , Southeythinks that then we should have had no storming ofSeringapatam, no Waterloo, and no A rminian Methodists . A ll that is not quite clear. T ippoo was bookedfor a desperate Britishvengeance by his own desperateenmity to our name , thoughno Lord W

'

ellesley hadbeen Governor-General . Napoleon , by the same furyof hatre d to us , was booked for the same fate, thoughthe scene of i tmight not have been Waterloo. And,

as to John Wesley, why should he not have made thesame schismwith the English Church , because hisbrother Charles had become unexpectedly rich ?The Marquess Wellesley was of the same standing,

as to age , or nearly so, as Mr. Pitt ; though he outl ivedPitt by almost forty years . Born in 1760, three orfour months before the accession of George III., hewas sent to Eton , at the age of eleven ; and from Eton,in his eighteenth year, he was sent to Christ Church ,Oxford, where he matriculated as a nobleman . Hethen bore the courtesy title of Viscount W elles ley ; butin 178 1 , when he had reached his twenty-first year , hewas summoned away fromOxford by the death of hisfather, the second Earl of Momington . It is interesting, at this moment, to look back on the family groupof children collected at Dangan Castl e. The youngearl was within a month of his majority : his youngerbrothers and s isters were , William Wellesley Polesmce dead, under the title of Lord Maryborough),then aged eighteen ; A nne , s ince married to Henry,son of L o1d Southampton, aged thirteen , A r thur , aged

twelve ; Gerald Valerian , now in the church , agedten ; Mary Elizabeth (s ince Lady Culling Smith), agednine ; Henry , s ince Lord Cowley , and British ambas~

THE n onsense wanne sner . 183

sador to Spa in, France , &c. aged eight. The new

Lord Morn ington showed his conscientious nature, byassuming his father’s debts , and by superintending theeducation of his brothers . He had distinguished himself at Oxford as a scholar ; but he returned thither nomore, and took no degree. A s Earl of Morn ington ,he sat in the Irish House of Lords ; but not being a

British peer, he was able to sit also in the EnglishHouse of Commons ; and of this opening for a morenational” career, he availed himself at the age of

twentyo four. Except that he favored the

“

cla ims of theIrish Cathol ics, his policy was pretty uniformly thatof Mr. Pitt. He supported that min ister throughoutthe contests on the French Revolution ; and a l ittleearl ier, on the Regency question. This came forwardin 1788 , on occasion of the first insan ity which attackedGeorge III. The reader, who is l ikely to have beenborn since that era , will perhaps not he acquaintedwith the constitutional question then at issue. It was

this : Mr. Fox held that, open any incapacity aris ingin the sovereign, the regency would then settle (ip so

faclo of that incapacity) upon the Prince of Wales ;overlooking altogether the case in which there shouldbe no Prince of Wales, and the case in which such aPrince might be as incapable, from youth, of exercis ing the powers attached to the office, as his fathe rfromdisease. Mr. Pitt den ied that a Prince of Waless imply as such, and apart fromanymoral fitness whichhe might possess , hadmore title to the ofi ce of regent

than any lamp-lighter or scavenger. It Was the province of Parl iament exclus ively to legislate for the paraticular cam. T he practical decis ion of the questionwas not called for, from the accident of the king’s

184 rue me anness wannos t ur .

sudden recovery : but in Ireland , from‘the indepen

dence asserted by the two houses of the Britishcouncils,the question grew still more complex. The LordLieutenan t refused to transmit their addre ssfi

land

Lord Mornington supported him powerfully in hisrefusal.Ten years alter this hot coll ision of parties , LordMornington was appointed G overnon G eneral of India ;and new first he entered upon a stage worthy of his

powers. I cannot myself agree with Mr. Pearce, that“ the w isdomof his pol icy is now un iversally recog~

nized because the same false views of our Indianpos ition, which at that time caused his splendid scr

V ice s to be sl ighted in many quarters, still propenderatcs. A ll administrations alike have been intenselyignorant of Indian politics ; and for the natura l reas on,that the business of home pol itics leaves themno dis

posable energies for afi'

airs so distant, and with whicheach man ’

s chance of any durable connection is so

exceedingly small. What Lord Mornington did wasthis : he looked our preopects in the face. Two greatenemies were then looming upon the horizon , bothignorant of our real resources , and both deluded byour imperfect use of such resources , as , even in a pre

vious wa r

, we had possessed. O ne of these enemieswas Tippe d , the Sultan of Mysore : him, by the crushing energy of his arrangements , Lord Morn ington wasable utterly to destroy, and to distr ibute his dominicnswithequity and moderation, yet so as to prevent any

it Whichadopted neither view for by qfi‘

crieg the regency ofIreland to the Prince of Wales, they negativcd M r. Fox ’

s View,

who held. it to he the Prince’s by inherent right ; and, on the

other hmd, they stillmore openly apposed Mr. Pitt.

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186 ms me anness ta nsLnr .

tration was the worst, as a war admin istration , thatever misapplied, or non -appl ied , the resources of a

mighty empire , it langu ished for eighteen monthspurely throughtheir neglect.In 1805 , having staid about seven years in India,

Lord Mornington was recalled,was created Marquess

ofWellesley, was sent, in 1821, as Viceroy to lre lancl,Where there was little to do ; having previously, in1809, been sent Ambassador to the Spanish Cortes,where there was an affinity to do , but no means ofdoing it. The last great pol itical act of Lord Wellesley, was the smashing of the Pe el min istry in 1834 ;Viz. by the famous resolution (which he personallydrew up) for appropriating to general education inIreland any surplus arising fromthe revenues of theIrish Church. Full of honors, he retired frompublicl ife at the age of seventy-five , and, for seven yearsmore of life , dedicated his time to such literary purc

suits as he had found most interesting in early youth.Mr. Pearce, who is so capable of writing vigorouslyd sagaciously, has too much allowed himself to rely

upon public journals . For example, he reprints the

whole of the attorney-general’s offic ia l informationagainst eleven obscure persons, who , fromthe galleryof the Dublin theatre, clicl ‘wickedly, riotously, and

routously ’ hiss , groan , insult, and assau lt (to say

nothing of their having caused and procured to hehissed, greas ed, t he Marquess Wellesley, LordLieutenant General , and General Governor of Irelan d.This document covers more than n ine pages ; and,

after all, omits the only fact of the least conse quence,viz., that several miss iles were thrown by the riotersinto the vice-regal hos , and amongst thema quart

rus me anne ss wannasns r . 187

bottle , which barely misse d his excellency s temples.Cons idering the impetus acquired by the descent fromthe gallery, there is little doubt that such a weaponwould have killed Lord Wellesley on the spot. In default however, of this weighty fact, the attorney-generalfavors us withmemorializing the very best piece of

doggerel that I remember to have read ; viz. that upondivers , to wit, three thousand papers , the rioters hadwickedly and mal iciously written and printed, besides ,observe , causing to be written and printed, NoPopery,

’as also the following traitorous couplet fi

The Protestants want Talbot,As the Papists have got all but

Mean ing ‘all but ’

that which they got some yearslater bymeans of the Clare election . Yet if

,in some

instances l ike this , Mr. Pearce has too largely drawnupon ofiicial papers , which he should rather have abstracted and condense d, on the other hand , his workhas a spec ific value in bringing forward private documents, to which his opportun ities have gained hima confidential access . Two portraits of Lord Wellesley

,one in middle life , and one in old age , from

a sketch by the Comte d’Orsay, are felicitous ly exe»

outed .Something remains to be said of Lord Wellesley as a

l iterary man ; an d towards such a judgment M r. Pearcehas contr ibuted some very pleasing materials. A s a

public speaker,Lord Welles ley had that degree of

brilliancy and efi’

ectual vigor, which might have beenexpected in a man of great talen ts , possessing muchnative sens ibility to the charms of style , but not led byany p ersonal accidents of l ife into a separate cultivaa

188 THE nannonss WELLE S LEY.

vation of oratory, or into any profound investigationof its duties and its powers on the arena of a British

senate. There is less call for S peaking of Lord Welles

ley in this character, where he did not seek for anyeminent distinction , than in the more general characterof an elegant litterateur , which furn ished to himmuchof his recreation in all s tages of his l ife , andmuch ofhis consolation in the last. It is interesting to se e thisaccompl ished nobleman , in advanced age , when otherresources were one by one decaying, and the lights ofl ife were success ively fading into darkness, still cheering his languid hours by the culture of class ical l iterature

, and in his eighty-second year drawing so lace

fromthose same pursu its which had given grace anddistinction to his twentieth .

One or two remarks I will make upon Lord Wellesley’s verses— Greek as well as Latin . The Latinl ines upon Chantrcy

’s success at Holkham in killing

two woodcocks at the first shot, which subsequently hesculptured in marble and presented to Lord Leicester,are perhaps the most felic itous amongst the whole.Masquerading, in Lord W ellcslcy

’s verses, as Praxi

tc les , who cou ld not well be represented with a Manonhaving a percuss ion lock , Chantrey is armed w ith abow and arrows

En ! trajecit eves una sagitta duas.’

In the Greek translation of Parthenopwus , there are as

few faults as could reasonably be expected. But, first,one word as to the original Latin poem: to whomdoesit belong ? It is traced first to Lord Grenville , whoreceived it fromhis tutor (afterwards Bishop of London), who had taken it as an anonymous poem from

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190 ms me anne ss wanns sns r .

reotly, this clause of the sentence would mean—J “ 1

sorrowfnlly leaving all p laces gracious to the M e na

Zian god : but that is not what Lord We llesley de

s igned ' ‘ I leas ing the woods of Colla rs, and the

enemy summits of Pholoe, p laces that are all of themdear to P ow— that is What was meant : that is to

say, not leaving all p laces dear to P an, far from it ;

but leas ing e fswp laces , every one of whichis clear toP an . In the line beginn ing

Kev id dip’ {l iming

where the mean ing is and if as yet, by reason ofmyimmature age, there is a metrical error ; and ni trate willnot express immaturity of age . I doubt Whether in the

next lin e,M nd

’ als o dou b t yovrao’

w draw ;

yovmow could convey the mean ing W ithout the prepos ition is . A nd in

E n zoxonaa or! animus ; fi rm.

I hasten whither the gods .summon one - 015 is not the

right word. It is, however, almost imposs ible to writeGreek verses which shall be liable to no verbal objections ; and the fluent movement of these verses suf

ficiently argues the ofilhand ease with which LordWellesley mus t have read Greek , writing it so ale s

gently and with so little of apparent constraint.Meantime the most interesting (from its c i rcum

stances) of Lord W ellesley’s verses , is one to which

his own English interpretation of it has done less thanjustice. It is a Latin epitaph on the daughter (an onlychild) of Lord and Lady Brougham. She died

,and

(as was generally known at the time) of an organ icadection disturbing the action of the heart, at the early

rne meanne ss W ELLESLEY. 191

age of eighteen. And the peculiar interest of the casel ies in the suppression by this pious daughter (so far

as itwas possible) of her own bodily anguish , in orderto beguile the mental anguish of her parents. TheLatin epitaph is this :

Blends henna, e onnis hen ! longo exeroitamorbo,Intermaterms hen lachrymasqne patris ,

a s rise Ieniro tno jacuncla solebas,Et ler is , st proprii Vinmerrier ipsamall

I, pets oalestes, obi nulls .est coin , recesse s

El; tibi sit nullomists dolore quies

T he English vers ion is this

D oom’d to long snfiering fromearliest years ,Amidst your parents’ grief and pain alone

Cheerful and. gay, you smiled to soothe their tears ;And in their agonies forgot your own.

Go , gentle spirit and among the blastFromgrief and pain eternal be thy rest

In the Latin, the phrase e cunts does not express

fi omyour cradle upwards. T he second line is faultyin the oppos ition of maternas to p atrols . A nd in thefourth line Zeois conveys a false mean ing : leois mustmean either physically light, i . e. not heavy

,which is

not the sense , or else tainted with las tly, which is stillless the sens e. What Lord Welles ley W ished to say

was light-hearted this he has not said : but neither is

it easy to say it in good Latin.I complain , however, of the Whole as not bringing

out Lord Weslesley’s own feeling s - which feeling is

partly e s pressed in his vers es , and partly in his accompanying prose note on Miss Broughamls mournfuldestiny her l ife was a. continual illness contrastedwith her fortitude , her innocent gaiety, and the piousmotives with which she supported this gaiety to the

192 THE MA RQUESS W ELLESLEY.

last. N ot as a direct version, but as filling up the outl ine of Lord We llesley , sufficiently indicated by himself, I propose this fi

Child, that for thirtefin 3rms hast fought withpain,Prompted by jay and depthof natural love,

Rest now at God ’s command : oh ! not; inmin

His angel ofttimee watab ’a thee, oft, aboveAll pangs, that 9156 had dimm’athy parenta’

eyes,S aw thy young hem-t Victoriously rise.

Rise now far ever , self-forgetting child,Rise to those ehoirs, Where love like thine is blest,

Frompains; of flesh—fromfilialm M fl ’d ,

LovewhiehG od’s hand shall crownwith God’

s own rest

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194 M ILTON e s. secre cy AND LAND OR.

call “ notions? A. part of the cargo it clearly is ; andone is not surprised to hear L ander, whilst assentingto the general plan of attack, suggesting in a whisper,‘ that they should abase their eyes in reverence to so

great a man,without absolutely closing them which

I take tomean s - that, without trusting entirely to theirboarders, or absolute ly closing their ports, they shoulddepress their guns and fire down into the hold, in re

spect of the vessel attacked standin g so high out of thewater. A fter such pla in speaking, nobody can wondermuch at the junior pirate (Lander)muttering, It willbe difiicult for us always to re frain.

" Of course it willrefraining was no part of the business, I should fancy,taught by that same buccaneer

,Johnson. There is

mischief, you see , reader, singing in the air michingmalhecho and it is our bus iness to watch it.But, before coming to the main attack , Imust suffermyself to be deta ined for a fewmoments by what Mr.L. premises upon the moral of any great fable,and the relation which it bears , or should bear, to thesoluti on of such a fable. Philosophic criticism is so

for improved, that, at this day , few people, who havereflected at all upon

’

such subjects, but are agreed asto one point : viz , that in metaphysica l language themoral of an epos or a drama should be immanent, nottransient ; or, otherwise , that it shoul d be vitally distributed throughthe whole organ ization of the tree , notgathered or secreted into a sort of red be rry or r ace

mes, pendent at the end of its boughs. This View M r.

L ander himself takes, as a general view ; but, strangeto say, by some Landorian perverseness, where thereoccurs a memorable exception to this rule (as in theParadise in that case he ins ists Upon the rule

M ILTON as. coars er AN D Lennon. 195

In its rigor - the rule, and nothing but the rule.Where , on the contrary, the rule does really and oh

viously take effect (as in the Iliad’and

there he insists upon an exceptional case. There i sa moral , in his opin ion , hanging like a tassel of goldbullion from the ‘ lliad ;

’ —and Wha t is it ? Something se fan tastic , that I decline to repeat it. As Wel lmight be have said , that the moral of Othello was -fi

Thy Warren’s Blocking There is no moral,

l ittle or big, foul or fa ir, to the Il iad.’ Up to the 17 th

book , the moral might seemdimly to be this—g G en

tiemen , keep the peace : you see What comes of" quara‘reiling.

’ But there this moral ceases ; m thcre is nowa bre ak of gauge : the narrow guage takes place afterthis ; Whilst up to this point, the broad gauge -u r ic ”

the wrath of A chi lles , growing out of his turn oup withA gamemnon fi —had carried us smoothly along W ithoutneed to shift our luggage. There is no more quarrelling after Book 17 , how then can there be anymoremoral fromquarrelling ? If you insist on my telling

you what is the moral of the Il iad,’ I insist upon your

telling me what is the moral of a rattlesnake or the

moral of a. Niagara . I suppose the moral is—s—thatyoumust get out of their way, ifyoumean tomoral izemuch longer. The goingaup (or anabas is) of theGreeks against Troy, was a fact ; and a pretty densefact ; and, by accident, the very first in which all

G reece had a common interest. It was a joint-stools

concern fi a re presentative expedition— Whereas , previously there had been none ; for even the A rgonauticec dition, which is rather of the darkest, implied no

confederation except amongst individuals. H ow couldit? For the Argo is supposed to havemeasure d only

196 MILTON as. SOUTHBY AN D LAN DOR.

twenty-seven tons : how she would have been classed

at Lloyd’s is hard to say, but certainly not as A 1 .

There was no state-cabin ; everybody, demi-gods andall

,pigged in the steerage amongst beans and bacon.

Greece was naturally proud of having crossed the he rring-pond, small as it was, in search of an entrenchedenemy ; proud also of having licked him ‘ into A lmighty smash; ’ this was sufficient ; or if an importinentmoralist sought for something more , doubtless themore] must have lain in the booty. A. peach is themoral of a peach , and moral enough ; but if a manwill have something better—J amoral Within amoral eWhy, there is the peach-stone, and its ke rnel , out of

”

which he may make ratafia , which seems to be theu ltimate moral ity that can be extracte d froma peach.M r. A rchdeacon Will iams, indeed , of the EdinburghAcademy, has published an octave op inion upon thecase , which asserts that the moral of the Trojan warwas (to borrow a phrase fromchildren) tit for tat. Itwas a case of retal iation for crimes against Hellas,committed by Troy in an earlier generation . It maybe so ; Nemesis knows best. But thismoral, if it eone arns the total expedition to the T read, cannot concern

the Iliad ,’ which does not take up matters fromso

early a period, nor go on to the final catastrophe of

Il ium.

N ow, as to the Paradise Lost,’ it happ ens that there

i s m -whether there ought to be or not—s—a pure goldenmoral , distinctly announced, separately contemplated ,and the very weightiest ever uttered by man or realizedby table . It is a mora l rather for the drama of a

world than for a human poem. A nd th is moral ismade the more prominent and memorable by the

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198 moron as . sourus r AN D Latinos .

mitted it myselfP Was it a felony, or a misdomeanor ?— l iable to transportation, or only to fine and

imprisonment ? Neither in the D ecemr iral Tables ,nor in the Code of Justin ian , nor the maritime Codeof Oleron , nor in the Canon Law, nor the Code Napoleon , nor our own Statutes at large , nor in JeremyBentham, had I read of sucha crime as a poss ibil ity.

Undoubtedly the vermin , locally called S quattersfiboth in the wilds of America and A ustralia, who preoccupy othermen’s estates, have latterly illustrated thelogical possibility of such an ofif

’

ence ; but they werequite unknown at the era of Gobir. Even D aliea, whoknew asmuch wickedness as most people, would havestared at this unheard of villany, and have asked, aseagerly as 1 did -g ‘What is it now ? Let’s have ashy at it in Egypt.’ l, indeed , knew a case, butDal ica did not, of shocking over-colonization. It was

the case, which even yet occurs on out-ofu the -

‘

way

roads, where a man, unjustly big,mounts into the ins ide of a stages-coach already sufficiently crowded. In

streets and squares , Where men could give hima wideberth , they had tolerated the injustice of his person ;but now, in a chamber so confined

, the length and

breadth of his wickedness shines revealed to everyeye. A nd if the coach should upset, which it would

5“ S ounders- They are a sort of selflelected mrmin gf pans.

What we in Englandmean by the political term worming-p ans!are men who occupy, by consent, some omotol pines, or Para

Harnentary amt, until the proper claimant is old enoughin law

to assume his rights. When the true man comes to bed, thewarming-span respectfully turns out. But these ultrnsmarinewarnungc pans wouldn

’t turn out. They showed fight, and

Wouldn’thear of the trueman, even as a bed-fellow.

MILTON vs. souras r AND LAN DOR. 199

not be the less l ikely to do for having himon board ,somebody or other (perhaps mysel f) must lie beneaththis monster, l ike Enceladus under Mount Etna, calling Upon Jove to come quickly with a few thunderboltsand destroy both man andmountain , bothsuccubus and

incubus , if no other relief offered. Meantime , the onlycase of over-colon ization notorious to all Europe , isthat which some G erman traveller (Riedesel , I think)has reported so eagerly, in ridicule of our supposedEnglish credulity ; viz . - the case of the foreignswindler, who advertised that he would get into a quartbottle, filled Drury Lane, pocketed the admissionmoney, and decamped , protesting (in his adieus to thespectators) that

‘ it lacerated his heart to disappoint somany noble islan ders ; but that on his next vis it hewould make full reparation by getting into a vinegarcruet.’ Now, here certain ly was a case of overcolonization , not perpetrated, but meditated. Yet

,

when one examines this case, the crime consis ted byno means in doing it, but in not doing it ; by no meansin getting into the bottle, but in not getting into it.T he foreign contractor would have been probably avery unhappy man , had he fulfilled his contract byover-colon izing the bottle, but he woul d have beendecidedly a more Virtuous man. He would haveredeemed his pledge ; and, if he had even died inthe bottle, we should have honored

f

himas a‘m’

r

bonus , cummaid fortund comp oaitus f as a man ofhonormatched in s ingle due] with calamity, and also

as the best of conjurers . Over-colonization, therefore,except in the one case of the stage-coach

,is apparently

no crime ; and the cfi'

ence of King Gebir, in my eyes ,remains amystery to this day.

900 n rnr ou vs . sournnr A N D L'AN DOR.

What next solic its notice is in the nature of a

digression : it is a kind of parenthesis on Wordsworth.

‘L andor.—When it was a matter of Wonder how

Keats, who was ignorant of Greek, could have writtenhis Hyperion ,

” Shelley, whomenvy never touched ,gave as a reason 3

“ because he was a Greek.” Words»

worth , being asked his Opinion of the same poem,

called it, scofiingly, a pretty piece of paganism yet

he himself, in the best verses he ever wrote -fi end

beautiful ones they are E va - reverts to the powerful influence of the pagan creed.

”

Here are nine lines exactly in the original type.N ow, nine tailors are ranked, by great masters ofalgebra, as one man ; such is the received equation ; or, as it is expressed , withmore liveliness, in an

old Englishdrama, by a man who meets and quarrelswith eighteen tailors Come , hang itl ‘I’ll fight youboth.

’ But, whatever he the algebraic ratio of tailorsto men , it is clear that n ine Landorian lines are not

always equal to the delivery of one accurate truth, orto a successful conflict withthree or four signal errors.Firstly - s a Shelley

’s reason , if it ever was assigned, is

irrelevan t as regards any question thatmus t have beenintended. It could not have been mean t to ask

Why was the lEIyperion9so Grecian in its spirit ? for

it is anything but Grecian . We should praise it falselyto ca ll it so ; for the feeble, thoughelegant, mythologyof Greece was incapable of breeding anything so deepas the mysterious portents that, in the Hyperion ,’ runbefore and accompany the passing away of divine irnmemorial dynasties. Nothing can bemore impressivethan the picture of Saturn in his palsy of afiliction, and

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202 M ILTON as . sonrnnr AND naus ea.

tion in a conversation s —what followed, what wont before— that five words dislocated from their context

never would be received as evidence in the Queen’s

Beach The court which, of all others, least strictlyWeighs its rules of evidence , is the female tea-table ;

yet even that tribunal would requ ire the deponent tostrengthen his evi dence , if he had only five detachedwords to produce. Wordsworth is a very proud man ,as he has good reason to be ; and perhaps i t was I,myself, who once said in print of him— that it i s notthe correct way of speaking, to say that Wordsworthis as proud as L ucife i but, inversely, to say of Luciferthat some people have conceived himto be as proudas Wordsworth. But, if p roud, Wordsworth is not

haughty, is not ostentatious, is not anxious for disp lay,is not arrogant

, and, least of all, is he capable of descending to envy. Who or What is it that he should beenvious of Does anybody suppose that Wordsworthwould be jealous of A rchimedes if he now walkedupon earth , or Michael A ngelo, or Milton ? Naturedoes not repeat herself. Be assured she will nevermake a second Wordsworth. Any of us would bejealous of his own duplicate ; and, if I had a clapp ed

ganger , who went about personating me , copying me ,and pirating me , philosopher as I am, I might (it theCourt of Chancery would not grant an injunctionagainst him) be so far carried away by jealousy as toattempt the crime ofmurder upon his carcass ; and nogreat matter as regards am. But it would be a sad

thing forme to find myself hanged ; and for what, Ibeseech you ? for murdering a sham, that was eithernobody at all , or oneself repeated once too often . But

if you Show to Wordsworth aman as great as himself,

MILT ON as. sournsr AND cannon. 203

dopp elganger . If not imp ar (as you say) he will bediap er and why, then, should Wordsworth be jealousofhim, unless he is jealous of the sun , and of Ahd cl

Kader, and of Mr. Weghorn -s - all of whomcarry off agreat deal of any spare admiration which Europe hasto dispose of. But suddenly it strikes me that we areall proud , every man of us ; and I daresay with somereason for it, be the some more or less .

’ For I nevercame to know anyman in my whole file intimately,who could not do something or other better than any

body else. The on lyman amongs t us that is thoroughlyfree frompride, that you may at al l seasons rely on asa pattern of humility , is the p ickpocket. That man isso admirable in his temper, and so used to pocketinganything whatever whichProvidence sends in his way,that he w ill even pocket 3. kicking, or anything in thatl ine of favors which you are pleased to bestow. Thesmallest donations are by him thankfully received,provided only that you , whilst half-bl ind with anger inkicking him round a figure of eight, like a dexterousskater, will but allow him(which is no more than fair)to have a second ‘

shy’at your pretty Indian pocket

handkerchief, so as to convince you, on cooler reflec

tion, that he does not always miss. Thirdly - s M r.

L ander leaves it doubtful what verses those are of

W ordsworth’s which celebrate the power of the Pagan

creed whether that sonnet in which hVordsworth

wishes to exchange for glimpses of human.life, than

and in. those circumstances , forlorn ,’ the sighta n OfProteus coming fromthe see ,And hear old Triton wind his wreathed horn

204 MILTON as. sournar our) LANDOR.

whether this, or the passage on the Greek mythologyin The Excursion.

’ Whichever he means, I amthe

lastman to deny that it is beautiful, and especially if

he means the latter. But i t is no presumption to denyfirmly M r. Lender’s assertion , that these are the bestverses Wordsworth ever wrote.’ Bless the man !

There are a thousand suchelsewhere,As worthy of your Wonder

E lsewhere flmean , in Wordsworth’s poems. In real ityit is imp ossible that these should be the best ; for evenif, in the executive part, they were so, which is not thecase

,the very nature of the thought, of the feeling,

and of the relation , which binds i t to the generaltheme

, and the nature of that theme itself, forbid thepossibility of merits so high. The whole movementof the feeling is fanciful : it neither ”

appeals to What isdeepest in human sensibilities, nor is meant to do so.

The result, indeed, se rves only to Show Mr. Landor’e

slender acquaintance with Wordsworth . And What isworse than be ing slenderly acquainted, he is erroneonely acquainted even with these two short bre athingsfromthe Wordsworthian shell. Hemistakes the logic .Wordsworth does not celebrate any power at all inPagan ism. Old Triton indeed ! he’s l ittle better, inrespect of the terrific, than a mail-coach guard, norhalf as good, if you allow the guard his ofi cial seat, acoal-black n ight, lamps blazing back upon his royalscarlet, and his blunderbuss correctly slung. Tritonwould not stay, I engage, for a second look at the old

Portsmouth mail, as once I knew it. But, alas ! betterthings than ever stood on Tr iton’s pins are now as littleable to stand up for themselves , or to startle the silent

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206 M ILT ON as. sournsr sun LAND OR .

then woul d I reply—a‘ S ir, with submission , you

are ‘What l ’ suppose the Fiend suddenly todemand in thunder ; What anal ? Horribly wrong,

’

you wish exceedingly to say ; but, recollecting thatsome people are cholerio in argument, you confineyourself to the polite answer -ai - G That, withdeference

to his better education , you conceive himto lie f i

that’s a bad word to drop your voice upon in talkingWith a fiend, and you hasten to add g ander a sl ight, avery slight mistake.’ Ay, you might venture on thatopinion with a fiend. But how if an angel shouldundertake the case ? And ange lic was the ear of Mil o

ton. Many are the p r imd facts anomalous l ines inMilton ; many are the suspicious lines , which inmanya book I have seen many a critic peering into, witheyes made up for mischief, yet with a misgiving thatall was not quite safe, very much like an old ravenlooking down a marrow-bone , In fact, such is themetrical skill of the man , and such the perfection of

his metrical sensibil ity, that, on any attempt to takeliberties with a passage of his, you feel as whencoming, in a forest, upon what seems a dead lion ;perhaps he may not be dead, but only sleep ing ; nay,perhaps he may not be sleeping, but only shamming.And you have a jealousy, as to Milton , even in the

most flagrant case of almost palpable error, that, afterall, there may he a plot in i t. You may be put down.

with shame by some man reading the line otherwise,reading it with a different emphas is , a difi

‘

erent cmsura,or perhaps a different suspens ion of the voice, so as tobring out a new and self-justifying client. It must headded, that, in reviewing Milton

’s metre, it is quitenecessary to have such books as Nare

is English

MILTON as. sourns r nun LAND ON. 207

Orthoepy ’

(in a late edition), and others of that class ,lying on the table ; because the accentuation of Milton’s age was, in many words , entirely difierent fromours. And Mr. L ander i s not free from some sus

picion of inattention as to this point. Over and abovethis accentual difference, the practice of our older

dramatists in the resolution of the final tion (whichnow is uniformly pronounced shun), will be found on»

cecdingly important to the appreciation of a writer’sverse . Contribution , which now is necessar ily pronounced as a word of four syllables , would then , inverse, have five, being read into con-tri-bu-cc-on.

Many readers will recollect another word, which foryears brought John Kemble into hot water with the pitof Drury Lan e. It was the plural of the word ache.

This i s generallymade a dissyllable by the Elizabethandramatists ; it occurs in the Tempest.’ Prosperosays

I ’11 fill thy boneswithaohes .

’

What follows, which I do not remember Ziteratim, issuch metrically as to require two syllables for aches .But how, then , was this to be pronounced ? Kemblethought office would soun d ludicrous ; d itches thereforehe called it : and always the pit howled like a furn ishedmmogorie, as they did also when he chose (and beconstantly chose) to pronounce beard l ike bird . Manyof these nineties must be known , before a critic can

ever allow himselfto believe that he is right in obelizing ,or in marking withso much as a any verse whatever

of Milton’s. A nd there are some of these nicotieS , I

amsatisfied, not even yet fully investigated.It is, however, to be borne in mind , after all allows

208 MILTON as. senrusr nun LAN DOR.

noses and provis ional reservations have been made,

that Bentley’s hypothesis (injudioiously as it wasmanaged by that great scholar) has real ly a truth offact to stand Upon. Not only must Milton have composed his three greatest poems, the two ‘Paradisesand the Samson ,’ in a state of blindness— but sub

sequently, in the correction of the proofs , hemust havesuffered still more from this confl ict with darkness ,and, consequently, fromthis dependence upon careless readers. This is Bentley’s case as lawyers say

,

My lord , that is my case.’ It is possible enough towri te correctly in the dark, as lmyself often do, whenlos ing ormissingmy he ifers—which, l ike some elderlucifers , are a lways rebelliously straying into placeswhere they can have no business. But it is qu ite imposs ible to correct a p roof in the dark . A t least, ifthere is such an art, itmust be a section of the blackart. Bentley ga ined fromPope that admirable epithetof sloshing , [32726 ribbolds m fromslashing Bentleydown to p iddling Theobalde,

’ i. e. Tibbolds as it waspronounced] , altogether fromhis edition of the Para»

dise Los t.’ This the doctor founded on his own

hypothesis as to the advantage taken of“

Milton’s bl indness ; and corresponding was the havoc which hemade of the text. In fact, on the really just allegationthat Milton must have used the services of an amanu o

ensi s ; and the plausible one that this amanuensis,being often weary of his task, woul d be likely to neg

lect punotilious accuracy ; and the most improbableallegation that this weary person would also be veryconceited

,and add much rubbishof his own ; Bentley

resigned himself luxuriously, without the whisper of ascruple , to his own sense of what was or was not

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210 mmoN as . soornor AND LAN DOR.

My own opinion , therefore , Upon the l ine , for instance, from Paradise Regained ,

’ which M r. Lander

appears to have indicated for the reader’s amazement, viz.

As Wellmight recommendS uchsolitude before choicest society,

”

io n - that it escaped rev ision fromsome accident cal ling of? the ea

r

of Milton whilst in the act ofhaving theproof read to him. Mr. L ander silently prints it i nital ics , without assigning his objection ; but, of course,that objection must be— that the line has one foot toomuch. It is an A lexandrina, such as Dryden scattered so profusely, Without asking himself Why ; butwhich Milton never tolerates except in we chorusesof the Samson.

N ot difiicolt, if thou M arleen to am—s

is one of the l ines which Mr. Lander thinks that no

authority will reconcile to our ears. I think otherwise. The cmsnra is meant to fall not withthe commaafter d iffi cult, but after than ; and there is a mosteffective and grand suspension intended. It is Satan

who speaks—w S atan in the wilderness ; and he marks,as he W ishes to mark, the tremendous opposition ofattitude between the two parties to the temptation .

Not difi oult if thou

there let the reader pause , as i f pull ing up suddenlyfour horses in harness, and throwing themon their

haunohes - g - not difficult if thou (in some mysterioussense the son of God) ; and then , as with a burst ofthunder, again giving the reins to your quadriga,

6 hearken tome

MILTON vs . sournar AND LANDOR. 211

that is, to me , that amthe Prince of the A ir, and ableto performallmy promises for those that hearken to

my temptations .

Two lines are c ited under the same ban of irrecon

cilability to our ears , but on a very different plea.The first of these lines is

L ouacelot, or Fellias, or P ellinore

The other

Quintius, Fabrici’

us, Carie s, Regulus.’

The reader will readily suppose that bothare objectedto as roll-calls of pr0per names.’ Now, it is verytrue that nothing is more offensive to the mind thanthe practice of mechan ically packing into metricalsuccess ions, as if packing a portmanteau , names

’

with

outmean ing or sign ificance to the feelings. No manever carried that atrocity so far as Boileau , a fact ofwhich Mr. L ande r is well aware ; and sl ight is thesanction or excuse that can be drawn fromhim. But

it must not be forgotten that Vi rgil , so scrupulous infinish of composition , committed this fault. I remember a passage ending

C

but, having no Virgil within reach, I cannot at this

moment quote it accurately. Homer, with more ex

cuse , however, from the rudeness of his age , is adeadly offender in this way. But the cases fromMilton are very difi

'

crent. Milton was incapable of the

H omeric or Virgilian blemish . The objection to such

rolling musketry of names is , that unless interspersedwith epithets , or broken into irregular groups by brief

circumstances of parentage, country , or romantic inci

212 MILTON vs. sourns r s un mnnos .

dent, they stand audaciously parking up their heads

l ike lots in a catalogue, arrow-headed palisades, oryoung [arches in a nursery ground, all occupying the

same space, all drawn up in l ine , all mere iterationsof each other. But in

6 Questio n P otteries, Curiae, Regulas,’

though certainly not a good line when insulated,

(better, however, in its connection with the entire suco

s ession of which it forms part), the apology is, that themessy 1Weight of the separate characters enables themto stand like granite pillars or pyramids , proud of theirself-supporting independency.Mr. Lande r makes one correction by a simple im

provement in the punctuation, which has a very fine

effect. Rarely has so large a result been distributedthrough a sentence by so slight a change . It is in theSamson .

’ Samson says , speaking of himself (aselsewhere) with that profound pathos , which to all

hearts invests Milton’s own situation in the days of his

old age , when he was composing that drama

Ask for this great delirerer now, and find himE yeless in G aza at themill withslooes.’

Thus it is usually printed ; that is , W ithout a comma inthe latter line ; but, says L ander, there ought to becommas after ageless, after G aza, after mill.’ A nd

Why ? because thus ‘ the grief of Samson is aggravatedat everymember of the sentence .’ He (like Milton)Was— 1 . bl ind ; 2. in a city of triumphant enemies ;3. working for daily bread ; 4. herding with slaves ;Samson literally, and Milton with those whompol itically he re garded as such.

Mr. Lander is perfectly wrong, I must take the

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214 mor on as . souranr nun naus ea.

importance to the impassioned text of a great pos t

(for mysteri ous is the life that connects all modesof pass ion with rhythmus), let us suppose t he casualreader to have had enough. A nd now at closing forthe sake of change , let us treat himto a harlequintrick upon another theme. Did the reader ever happento se e a sheriff’s ofiicer arresting an honest gentleman, who was doing no manner of harmto gentle ors imple , and immediately afterwards a second sheriff’sofficer arresting the first— by which means thatsecond ofi‘icer merits for himself a place in history ;for at the same moment he liberates a des ervingcreature (s ince an arrested ofiicer cann ot possibly baghis prisoner), and he also avenges the insult put upon

that worthy man ? Perhaps the reader did not ever

see such a sight ; and, growing personal , he asks me,in return , if I ever saw it. To say the truth, I never

did ; except once, in a too-flattering dream; and

though I applauded so loudly as‘even to woken myself,

and shouted encore,’

yet all went for nothing ; and Iamstill waiting for that splendid exemplification ofretributive justice. But Why ? Why should it be a

spectacle so uncommon ? For surely those olficial

arresters of men must want arresting at times as wellas bette r people. A t leas t, however, on attendant one

may luxuriate in the vis ion of such a thing ; and thereader shall now see such a vision rehearsed. Heshall see Mr. Lander arresting Milton— Milton, of allmen lfl for a flaw in his Roman erudition ; and thenhe shall see me instantly stepping Up , tapping Mr.

L ander on the shoulde r, and saying, Oflicer, cyou’re

wanted whilst to Milton I say, touching my hat,‘Now, sir; be ofi

‘

; run for your l ife, whilst I hold

MILTON 08 . SOUTHEY AN D LAND OR. 215

this man in custody, lest he should fasten on youagam.

’

What Milton had sa id , speaking of the watchfulcherubim ,

’was

Four faces eachH od, like a; double Janus

Upon which Southey— but, of course, Landor, ventriloquizing through Southey-a says , Better left thisto the imagination : double Jaunses are queer figures.’

N ot at all. On the contrary, they became so common ,that fina lly there were no other. Rome

,in her days

of childhood , contented herself W ith a two-facedJanus ; but, about the time of the first or secondCe sar, a very ancient statue of Janus was exhumed,which had four faces. Ever afterwards , this sacredresurgent statue be came the model for any poss ibleJanus that could show himself in good company. Thequadmfi ons J anus was now the orthodox Janus ; and

it would have been as much a sacrilege to rob himof

any s ingle face as to rob a king’s statue i" of its horse.One thingmay recall this to Mr. Landor

’e memory. I

think it was Nero , but certainly it was one of the first

six Ce sare, that built, or that finished , a, magnificenttemple to Janus ; and each face was so managed as

to point down an avenue leading to a separate marketplace. N ow, that there were four market-places, I

39fl king’s stoma — Till very lately the etiqu ette of Europe

was, that none but royal persons could have equestrian statues.

Lord Hopetoun , the reader will object, is allowed tohave s hows,

in S t. Andrew’s Square, Edinburgh. True, but observe that he

is not allowed to mount him. The first person , so for as I rememb er, that, not.being royal, has, in our islan d , seated himselfcomfortably in the saddle, is the D uke ofWellington.

216 MILTON as . S’OUTHEY AND LAND OR.

willmake oath before any Justice of the Peace. One

was called the ForumJ alium, one the ForumA ugustum, a third the Forum fi ansitorinm what the

fourth was called is best known to itself, for really liforget. But if anybody says that perhaps it; wascalled the ForumL andor ium, I amnot the man to

object ; for few names have deserved such an honormore , Whether fromthose that then looked forward intofuturity with one face , or fromour poste ri ty that will

look back into the van ishing past with another.

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218 FAL S IFICAT ION or

come to issue with each other in the reign of his son.

O ur constitution was not a birth of a s ingle instant, asthey would represent it, but a gradual growth and

development through a long tract of time . In particular the doctrine of the king’s vicarious w eponsi

bility in the person of his ministers , which first gavea sane and saluta ry mean ing to the doctrine of theking’s personal irresponsibility The king can do no

arose undeniably between 1640 and 1648.

This doctrine is the main pillar of our constitution , andperhaps the finest discovery that was ever made in thetheory of government. Hitherto the doctrine that theKing can do no wrong had been used not to protectthe indisPensable sanctity of the king’s constitutionalcharacter, but to protect the wrong. Used in this way,i t was amax imof Oriental despotism, and fit only fora nation where law had no empire . Many of the

i llustrious patriots of the Great Parliament saw this ;and felt the necess ity bf abolishing a maximso fatal to

the just l iberties of the people . But some of themfellinto the Opposite error of supposing that this abolitioncou ld be effected only by the direct negation of it ;

their maxim accordingly was—‘The king can do

wrong,’o'

. e. is re sponsible in his own person .

‘

In thisgreat error even the illustrious wife of Colonel Hutchinson participated 1 and accordingly she taxes those ofher own party who sc rupled to accede to the new

maxim, and still adhered to the old one, with uncon

scientious dealing. But she misapprehended their

mean ing, and failed to see Where they laid the emphasis : the emphasis was not laid , as i t was by the

royal party, on the words ‘can do no wrong

" but

on T he king :’ that is, wrong may be done ; and in

snemsn morons . 219

the king’s name ; but it cannot be the king who did it[the king cannot constitutionally be supposed the pore

son who did it]. By this exquis ite political refinement,the old tyrannical maximwas disarmed of its sting ;and the entire redress of all wrong, so in dispensable tothe popular l iberty, was brought into perfect reconcil iation withthe entire inviolabil ity of the sovere ign ,which is no less indiSpensable to the popular l iberty.

There is moreover a double wisdomin the new sense

for not only is one object [the redress of wrong]secure d in conjunction withan other object [the king

’s

inviolability] hitherto held irreconcilable , but even

with a View to the first object a lone a muchmoreefi

‘

ectual means is applied, because one which leads tono schismin the state, than could have been appl iedby the blank negation of the max im; i . a. by lodging

the responsibil ity exactly where the executive power

[ergo the power of resisting this responsibility] waslodged. H ere then is one example in illustration ofmy thesis—a - that the Engl ish constitution was in agreat measure gradually evolved in the contest between the did

’

erent parties in the re ign of Charles I.Now, i f this be so, it follows that for constitutionalhistory no period is so important as that : and indeed,though i t is true that the Revolution is the great erafor the constitutional historian , because be there first

finds the constitution fully developed as the brightconsummate flower ,

’and what is equally importan t he

there first finds the principles of our constitutionratified by a competent authority,— yet, to trace theroot and growth of the constitution , the thre e reignsimmediately preceding are sti ll more properly the

objects of his study. In proportion then as the reign

220 mosrrxes rton or

of Charles I. is important to the history of our constitution , in that proportion are those to be taxed withthe most dangerous of all possible falsifications of ourhistory, who have misrepresented either the facts or

the princ iples of those times . N ow I affirm that thec lergy of the Churchof England have been in a perpotos i conspiracy s ince the era of the restoration to

misrepresent both. A s an illustration of what I meanI refer to the common edition of Hudibras by Dr.Grey! for the proof I might refer to somemousandsof books . Dr. Grey’s is a disgusting case : for heswallowed with the most anile credul ity every story,the most extravagant that the mal ice of those timescould inven t aga ins t e ither the Presbyterians or the

Independents : and for this I suppose amongst otherdeformiti es his note s were deservedly ridiculed byWa rburton . But, amongst hundreds of illustrationsmore reopectable than Dr. Grey’s I will refer thereader to a Work of our own days , the EcclesiasticalBiography [in part a re publ ication of Walton’s Lives]edited by the present master of Trinity College, Carnbridge

, who is held in the highest esteemwherever heis known , and is I ampersuaded perfectly consc ientiousand as impartial as in such a case it is possible for a

high churchmen to be. Yet so it is that there is

scarcely one of the notes having any political referenceto the period of 1640-fi - 1660, which is not disfiguredby unjust prejudices : and the amount of the moralwhich the learned editor grounds upon the documentsbefore him— is this , that the young student is tocherish the deepest abhorrenoe and contempt of all

who had any share on the parl iamen tary s ide in the

iconfusions of the period from1640 to 1660 : that is

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222 ransrrrcnrtomor

themselves— and, as happ iness to all great practicalinterests , defin ing themselves through a course offierce and bloody contests : For the kingly rightsare almost inevitably carried too high in ages of imperfect c ivilization : and the wello kii own laws of Henry

the Seventh, by which he either broke or graduallycapped the power of the aristocracy, had still moreextravagantly exalted them. On this account it is justto look. upon democratic or pepular politics as identicalin the 17 th century with patriotic pol itics. In laterperiods , the democrat and the patriot have sometimesbeen in direct opposition to eachother : at that periodthey were in evitably in conjunction . A ll this , however, is in general overlooked by those who eitherwrite English history or comment upon i t. Mostwriters of or up on Englishhistory proceed either uponservile principles, or upon no principles : and a good

Sp ifi t of E nglish H istory, that is , a history whichshould abstract the tendencies and main results [asto laws , mann ers , and constitution] from every age

of English h istory, is a work which I hardly hopeto see executed. For it would require the concurrence of some philosophy, with a great deal ofimpar tial ity. H ow idly do we say, in S peaking of theevents of our own time which afi

’

eot our party feelings , —‘We stand too near to these events for an

impartial estimate : we must leave themto the judgment of posterity l For it is a fact that of the manybooks of mernoirs written by persons who were not

merely contemporary w ith the great c ivil war, but

actors and even leaders in its principal scenes— thereis hardly one whichdoes not exhibit a more impartial

p icture of that great drama than the histories written at

ENG LISH ntsronv. 223

th is day. The historian of Popery does not displayhalf so much zealotry and pass ionate prejudice inspeaking of the {many events which have afi

’

ected the

power and splendor of the Papal See for the last thirtyyears , and under his own eyes , as he does when

speaking of a reformer who l ived three centuriesago of a translator of the Bible into a vernacular

tongue who l ive d nearly five centuries ago- w of an

A nti-pope - cl a Charlemagne or a Gregory the Greatstill further removed from himself. The recent eventshe looks upon as acc idental and unassential : but in

the great enemies, or great founders of the Romishtemporal power, and in the history of their actions andtheir motives , he feels that the whole principle of theRomishcause and its pretens ions are at stake. Prettymuch under the same feel ing have modern writers

written with a rancorous party spirit of the pol iticalstr uggles in the 17 th century : here they fancy that

they can detect the incunabulo of the revolutionary .

spirit : here some have been so sharpsighted as to read

the features of pure jacobin ism: and Others 53 havegone so far as to assert that all the atroc ities of theFrench revolution had their direct parallelisms to actsdone or countenanced by the virtuous and augustSenate of England in 1640 Strange distortion of theunderstanding whichcan thus find a brotherly resem

blance between two great historical events , whichofall that ever were put on record stand off from eachother inmost irreconc ilable enmity : the one originaiing, as Mr. Coleridge has observed, in excess of principle ; the other in the utter de fectof allmoral princ iplewhatever ; and the progress of each being answerableto its origin ! Yet so it is. And not a memoir-writer

224 Fans i rrcarrou or

of that age is reprinted in this, but we have a prefacefromsome red-hot A ntiujacobin warn ing us with muchvapid common-place fromthe mischiefs and eventualanarchy of too ras h a spirit of reformas displayed inthe French revolution—« not by the example of thatFrench revolution , but by that of our own in the age

of’

Charles I. The following passage from the Introduction to Sir Will iam Waller’s Vindication publishedin 1793,may serve as a fair instance : ‘He ’

(Sir W.

Waller) was, indeed, at length sens ible of the miserywhich he had contributed to bring on his country ;

(by the way, it is a suspicious circumstance— that SirW illiam3 first became sens ible that his country wasmiserable , when he became sens ible that he himselfwas not likely to be again employed , and becamefully convinced of it, when his party lost their as

cendancy he was convinced, by fatal experience,that anarchy was a bad ste p towards a perfect government ; that the subvers ion of every establishment wasno safe foundation for a permanent and regular constitution : he found that pretences of reformwere heldup by the designing to dazzle the eyes of the unwary,doc ; he found in short that reformation, by popularinsurrection , must end in the destruction and cannot

tend to the formation of a regular Government.’ A ftera good deal more of this wellnmeaning cant, the Introduction concludes with the following sentence m a thswriter is addressing the reformers of 1793, amongstwhom-E d both leaders and followers ,’ he says, ‘maytogether refieet w—that, upon speculative and visionaryreformers ,’ (i . 6 . those of 1640)

‘ the severest punish

ment which G od in his vengeance over yet indictedwas to curse themwith the complete gratification of

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226 ssnsxrrcar ton or

forms , and in the regular courts of justice. And as to

‘ tyranny,’ which is me ant chiefly of the acts of Crom

well’s government, it should be remembered that theProtectorate lasted not a quarter of the period in

question ( 1640'

a fact which is constantly

forgotten even by very eminent writers, who speak asthough Cromwell had drawn his sword in January ,1649—s—cut oil

” the king’s head -s p hi stantly mounte dhis throne and continued to play the tyrant for the

whole remain ing period of his life (nearly ten years).Secondly, as to the k ind of tyranny which Cromwellexercised , the misconception is ludicrous : continentalWriters have a notion , well justified by the languageof English writers , that Cromwell was a ferocious

savage who built his palace of human skulls and desolated his country. Meantime , he was s imply a strongminded rough-built Englishman, with a characterthoroughly Engl ish , and excee dingly gooda natured.

Gray valued himse lf upon his critical knowledge ofEnglish h istory : yet how thoughtlessly does he exo

press the abstract of Cromwell’s l ife in the line on thevillage Cromwellm ‘ Some Cromwell, guildess of hiscountry’s blood 1 How was Cromwell guilty of his

country’s blood ? What blood did he cause to be shed ?A great deal was shed no doubt in the wars (though less,by the way, than is imagined) but in those Cromwellwas but a servant of the parl iame nt : and no one willallege that he had any band in causing a single war.After be atta ined the sovereign power, no more domostic wars arose : and as to a few persons who wereexecuted for plots and conspiracies aga inst his person,they were condemned U pon evidence Openly given and

by due course of law. W ith respect to the general

EN GLISH HISTORY. 227

character of his government, it is evident that in theunse ttled and revolutionary state of things which fol

lows a civil war some critical cases will arise to demand an occas ional vigor beyond the law suchas

the Roman government allowed of in the dictatorialpower. But in general , Cromwell’s government wasl imited by law : and no reign in that century, prior tothe revolution , furn ishes fewer instances of attempts totamper with the laws—to overrule them— to twistthem to private interpretations— or to dispense withthem. A s to his major-generals of counti es , whofigure in most his tories of England as so many A liPackets that impaled a few prisoners every morningbefore breakfast or rather as somany ogres that ateup good christian men , women and children alive,they were disagreeable people who were disl ikedmuchin the same way as our commiss ioners of the incometax were disl iked in the memory of us all ; and heartilythey would have laughed at the romantic and bloodymasquerade in which they are made to figure in the

English histories. What then was the ‘ tyranny ’ ofCromwell ’s government, which is confessedly complained of even in those days ? The word tyranny

was then appl ied not somuch to the mode in whichhis power was administered (except by the pre

judiced) —as to its origin. However mercifully a{manmay reign, yet, if he have no right to reign atall, we may in one sense call hima tyrant ; his powernot being justly derived , and resting upon an unlawful

(i . e. a mil itary) bas is . As a usurper, and one who

had diverted the current of a grand national movementto selfishand personal objects , Cromwell was and will

be called a tyrant ; but not in the more obvious sense

228 masrrrcmi oa or

of the word. Such are the misleading statementswhichdisfigure the History of England in its most important chapter. Theymislead by more than a simpleerror of fact : those, which I have noticed last, involvea moral anachron ism; for they convey images ofcruelty and barbarismsuch as could not cc -exist withthe nati onal civi lization at that time ; and whosoe verhas not correcte d this false p icture by an acquaintancewith the English literature of that age , must necessarily image to himself a state of society as rude anduncultured as that which prevailed during the wars ofYork and Lancaster a. about two centuries earlier.But those, with which I introduced this article , are

still worse ; because they involve an, erroneous View

of coastimtioaal history, and a most c omprehensiveact of ingratitude : the great men of the Long Parliament paid a heavy price for their efi'

orts to purchw e

for their descendants a barrier to irresponsible power

and security fromthe anarchy of undefined regal prerogative : in these efforts most: of themmade shipwreck of their own tranquillity and peace ; that suchsacrifices were made unavailiugly (as it must haveseemed to themselves), and that few of theml ived tosee the good old cause ’ finally tr iumphant, does notwheel their claims upon our gratitude -m hut ratherstrengthen themby the degree in which it aggravatedthe difficulty of hearing such sacrifices with patience.But whence come these falsificatioas of history ? I

believe, fromtwo causes ; first (as I have already said)fromthe erroneous tone impressed upon the nationalhistory by the irritated spirit of the clergy of the

established church : to the rel igious zealotry of those

times -e s the church was the object of especial attack ;

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230 ceremon i es or

with the regicides of 1649. It was of such urgentimportance to them, for any command over the publ icsupport, that they shou ld acquit themselves of anysentiment of lurking toleration for regicide.with whichtheir enemies never failed to load them, that no modeof abjuring it seemed sufiiciently emphatic to themhence it was that A ddison , with a View to the interes tof his party, thought fit when in Switzerland, to offer

a puny insult to the memory of General Ludlowhence it is that even in our own days, no writers haveinsulte d Milton with so much bitterness and shameless

irreverence '

as the Whigs ; though it is true that somefew Whigs, more however in their l iterary than in

their political character, have stepped forward in hisvindication. A t this moment I recollect a passage inthe writings of a modern Whig bishop— in which, forthe sake of cre ating a : charge of falsehood aga instMilton , the author has gross ly mis tremlated a passagein the D efensio pro P op . A nglicans and, if thatbishop were not dead, I would here take the l ibertyof rapp ing his knucldes m—were it only for breakingPriscian

’s head. To return over to the clerical feud

agaimt the Long Parliament, i t was a passage in

a very pleasing work of th is day (E cclesiastical Biography) which sugge sted to me the Whole of what Ihave now written. Its learned editor, who is incapableof uncandid feel ings except in what concerns the iatercets of his order, has adopted the usual tone inregard to the men of 1640 throughout his otherwisevaluable annotations : and somewhere or other ( in theLife of Hammond,

[

according to my remembrance) hehas made a statement to this efi'

ect—That the customprevalent among children in that age of asking their

EN GLISH ulsrosv. 231

parents’ blessing was probably first brought into disuse

by the Puritans. Is it possible to imagine a perversityof prejudice more unreasonable ? The unamiable sideof the patriotic characte r in the seventeenth centurywas unquestionably its religious bigotry ; which, however, had its ground in a real fervor of religious feel ingand a real strength of religious pri nciple somewhatexceeding the ordinary standard of the 19th century.

But,however palliated, their bigotry is not to be de

n ied ; it was often offens ive from its excess ; and

ludicrous in its direction . Many harmless customs,many ceremonies and rituals that had a high positivevalue , their frantic into lerance quarrelled with : and

formy part I heartily jo in in the sentiment of CharlesIL— applying it as he did, but a good deal more extensively, that their religion

‘was not a religion for a

gentleman : indeed all sectarianism, but e Speciallythat which has a modern origin—a - arising and growingup within our own memories ,

'

unsupported by a grandtraditional history of persecutions —confiicts —and

martyrdoms, lurking moreover in blind alleys , holes ,corners, and tabernacles , must appear spurious and

mean in the eyes of himwho has been bred Up in thegrand classic forms of the Church of Englan d or theChurch of Rome . But, because the bigotry of thePuritans was excess ive and revolting, is that a. reason

for fastening upon themall the stray evils of omiss ionor commission for which no distinct

'

fatbe rs can befound ? The learned editor does not pretend thatthere is any pos itive evidence , or presumption even ,for imputing to the Puritans a dislike to the custom inquestion : but, because he thinks it a good custom, his

inference is that nobody could have abolished it but

232 ransmonr iou on

the Puritans. Now who does not se e that, if this had

be en amongst the usages discountenanced by the Puritene, it would on that account have been the morepertinaciously mainta ined by their enemies in church

and state ? Or,even if this usage were of a nature to

be prohibited by authority, as the public use of the

liturgym organs

— surplices , &c., who does not see

that with. regard to that as well as to other Puritan iealinnovations there would have been a reflux of zeal atthe re storation of the king which would have estab»

lished them in more strength than ever ? But it is

evident to the unprejudieed that the usage in questiongradually went out in submiss ion to the a ltered spiri tof the times . It was one feature of a genera l sys tem

of manners , fitted by its piety and simplicity for apious and s imple age , and which therefore even the

17thcentury had already outgrown. It is not to beinferred that filial af ootion and reverence have de

onyod amongst us, because they no longer expressthemselves in the same way. In an age of imperfectculture , all pass ions and emotions are in a more elementary state—E

‘speak a plainer language —e - and

eXpress themselves externally : in such an age the

frame and constitution of soc iety is more p icturesque ;t he modes of life rest more undisguisedly upon the

bas is of the absolute and original relation of" th ings

the son is considered in his sonship , the father in hisfatherhood : and the manners take an apprnpriate

coloring. Up to the middle of the 17 thcentu ry therewere many famil ies in which the children n ever presumed to sit down in their parents’ presence . But withus , in an age of more complete intellectual culture , athick disguise is spread over the naked foundations of

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234 meets tcarton or

They have been indulged to excess ; they have disfigured the grandest page in English history ; theyhave hid the true descent and tradition of our constitutichal history ; and, by impress ing upon the l iteratureof the country a false conception of the patriotic partyin and out of Parl iament, they have stood in the wayof a great work ,— a work which

,according to my

idea l of it, would be the most useful that could justnow be dedicated to the English public— viz. a phi lo

sophic record of the res olutions of E nglishH istory.

The English Constitution , as proclaimed and ratifiedin 1688 - 9, is in its kind , the noblest work of the

human mind working in conjunction with Time , andwhat in such a case we may allowably call Provimdeuce . Of this chef d

’c uvrc of human wisdomit were

des irable that we shoul d have a proportionable history : for sucha history the great positive qualificationwould be a philosophic mind : the great negativequal ification would be this [which to the establishedclergy may now be recommended as a fit subject fortheir magnan imity] viz. complete conquest over thoseprejudices whichhave hitherto discolored the greatestera of patriotic v irtue by contemplating the great menof that era under their leas t happy aspect - s namely, inrelation to the Established Church.N ow that I amon the subject of English History, Iwill notice one of the thousand unis-statements of

Hume’s which becomes a memorable one from the

stress whichhe has la id upon it, and fromthe mannerand situation in whichhe has introduced it. S tanding

in the current of a narrative , it would have merited a

silent correction in an unpre tending note but it occu

pies a much more assuming station ; for it is intros

cuemen morons . 285

duced in a philos0phical essay ; and being re lied onfor a particular purpose with the most unqualifiedconfidence, and being alleged in opposition to the veryhighest authority [via the authority of an eminentperson contemporary with the fact] it must be lookedon as involving a peremptory defiance to all succeeding critics who might hes itate between the authorityof Mr. H ome at the distance of a. century fromthefacts and Sir WilliamTemple Speaking to them as amatter within his personal recollections . S ir WilliamTemp le

.

had represented himself as urging in a conversation with Charles IL , the hopelessness of any

attempt on the part of an English king to make himself a despotic and absolute monarch , except indeedthrough the afiections of his people.5 This generalthesis he had supported by a variety of arguments ;and, amongst the rest, he had described himself asurging this -fi a that even Cromwell had been unable toestabl ish himself in unl imited power, thoughsupportedby a mil itary force of eighty thousand men. Uponthis Hume calls the reader’s attention to the extremeimprobabil ity which there must beforehand appear tobe in supposing that S ir W . Temple , —spcaking of so

recent a case , withso muchofficial knowledge of thatcase at his command, uncontradicted moreover by theking Whose side in the argument gave himan interestin contradicting Sir William’s statement, and whosemeans of information were paramount to those of allothers ,—a - conld under these circumstances be mis atak

'

on. Doubtless , the reader will reply to Mr. Hume,the improbabil ity is extreme , and scarcely to be in

validated by any poss ible authority—which, at best,must te rminate in leaving an equilibriumof opposing

235 FaL SwIGAT I ON or

evidence. A nd yet, says Mr. Hume, Sir W ill iam wasunquestionably wrong, and grossly wrong : Cromwellnever had an army at all approaching to the numberof

“

eighty thousand. N ew here is a sufficient proofthat Hume had never read Lord Clarendon’s accountof his own l ife : this hook is not so common as his

History of the Rebellion ,"and Hume had either not

met with it, or had neglected it. For , in the earlypart of this work, Lord Clarendon , speaking of the

army whichwas assembled on Blackheath to welcomethe return of Charles IL , says that it amounted to fiftythousand men : and, when it is remembered that thisarmy was exclusive of the troops in garrison —of theforces left by Monk in the North and above all of

the entire army in Ireland , it cannot be doubted thatthe Whole would amount to the numbe r stated by SirWill iamTemple. Indeed Char les H . himself, in theyear 167 8 [i a. about four years after this conversation] as Sir W . Temple elsewhere te lls us

,

‘ in six

weeks’ time raised an army of twenty thousand men ,

the completest— and in all appearance the bravesttroops that could he any Where seen

,and might have

raised many more ; and it was confesse d by all theForeign Ministers that no king in Christendomcouldhave made and completed such a levy as th is ap

peered in such a time.’ Will iam HI. again, aboute leven years afterwards, raised twenty-thre e regimentswith the same ease and in the same space of six

weeks. It may be objected indeed to such cases , asin fact it was objected to the case of W i lliam Ill. by

H ewlett in his sensible Examination of Dr. Price’s

Essay on the Population of England, that, in an age

when manufactures were so l ittle extended, it could

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N O T E S .

N ero 1 . Page 218.

Tms is remarked byher editor and descendant Johns Hatch

inson , who adds some words to this efi'

eet that if the patriotsof that daywere the inventors of themaxim[ T he king can do

nomung] , we are much indebted to them.

’The paniots cera

tainly did not invent themaxim, for they found it already current : but they gave it its newand constitutional sense. I refer tothe hook , however , as I do to almost all books in these notes , frommemory writing most of themin situations Wher e I have no

if; to books. By the tray, Charles L , who used themaximinthemost odious sense , furnished the most eolorable excuse for

his own execution , H e constantly maintained the irresponsi

bility of hisministers : but, if thatwere conceded, itwould thenfollow that the king must b e made responsible in his own

person and that construction led of necessity to his trial and

N OTE 2. Page 228.

Amongst these M r. D ’Israeli in one of the latter volumes ofhis Curiosities of Literature has dedicated a chapter or so to a

formal proof of this proposition . A meter who is familiar withthe history of that age comes to the ohapter witha previous indignation , lmowing What. sort of proof he has to expect. This

indignation is not lik ely to b e mitigated by What he Will therefind. Beoan se some one madman , fool, or Scoundrel. makes amonstrous proposal which dies of itself unsupported , and is inviolent contrast to all the acts and the temper of those tithes,

wors e . 239

this is to sully the character of the parliament and three-fourthsof the people of England. If this proposal had grown out of the

Spirit of the age, that spirit would have produced many moreproposals of the some char acter and acts corresponding to them.

Yet upon this one inlhmous propoml, and. twoor three scandalousanecdotes fromthe lib els of the day, does the whole one s of M r.

D ’Imeeli ’s parallel depend. T antsmne remtamnegligcoter ?

In the general character of an Englishman I have a r ight tocomplain that so heavy an attack upon the honor of England andhermost virtuous patriots in her most virtuous age should be

mde with so much levity : a charge so solemn in its mattershould hare been prosecuted wi th s proportionate solemnity ofmann er. M r. D ’Israeli refers with just applause to the opin ionsof M r. Coleridge : I wish that he would have allowed a little

more weight to the striking passage in which that gentlemancontrasts the Frenchrevolution with the English revolu tion of

1640- 8. However , the general tone ofhonor and upr ight prie s

elple, whichmarks M r. D’Israeli’s work , encourages me and

others to hope that he will cancel the chapter—and not persistin wounding the honor of a great people for the sake of a parallelism, which—even if it were true— is a thousand times tooslight and feebly supported to satisfy the most accommodating

S ir Williamand his cousin S ir HardremWeller , were bothremarkable men. S ir Hardress had no conscience at all ; S ir

William9.very scrupulous one which, however , he was for ever

tampering with—and generally succeeded in. redeeminto

ammplished gentlemen : and as aman of talents worthy of the

Noon 4. Page 229.

Until after the yw 1688, I do not remember ever to havefeund the termWhig applied except to the religious character

240 NOTES.

S ir Williamhad quoted to Charles a saying fromGourville (aFrenchman Whomthe king esteemed, and Whom S ir Williamhimself considered the only foreigner he had ever known thatunderstood England) to this ef fect : ‘ That a, king of Englan d ,who will be the man of his maple, is the greatest king in

the world ; but, if he will be something more, by G he is

nothing at all.’

NOTE 5. Paga 285.

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242 A PERIPAT E T IG rarnosoraaa .

with his abstemious mode of l iving, that though hemus t at that time have been cons iderably above forty,he did not look older than twenty-eight ; at least theface which rema ined upon my recollection for someyears was that of a young man . Nearly ten yearsafterwards I be came acquainted with him. Duringthe interva l I had picked up one of his works inBristol , —viz. his Travels to discover the S ource ofM oralM otion, the second volume of which is entitledThe Ap ocalyp se of N ature. I had been greatly impressed by the sound and original views whichin the

first volume he had taken of the national charactersthroughout E umpe . In particular he was the first,and so far as I know the only writer who had noticedthe profound error of ascribin g a phlegmatic characterto the Englishnation English phlegm is the con

stant es pression of authors when contrasting the Englishwith the French. N ow the truth is , that, beyond that

of al l other nations , it has a substratumof profoundpassion : and

,if we are to recur to the old doctrine of

temperaments, the English character must be classednot under the phlegmatic but under the melancholictemperament ; and the French under the sanguine.

The character of a nation may be judged of in thisparticular by examining its idiomatic language. TheFrench , in Whomthe lower forms of passion are con

stantly bubbling up from the shallow and superficialcharacter of their feelings , have appropriated all the

phrases of passion to the service of trivial and ordi

nary life : and hence they have no language of passion

for the service of poetry or of occas ions really do !

manding it : for it has been already enfeebled bycontinual association with cases of an unimpassioned

A. PERIPAT E T IO rumosorusn. 243

order. But a character of deeper pass ion has a per

petual standard in itself, by whichas by on in stinct ittries all cases , and rejects the language of pass ion asdispmportionate and ludicrous Where it is not fullyjustified. ‘Ah Heavens ! ’ or Oh my God l areexclamations with us so exclusively reserved for casesof profound inte rest,—that on hearing a woman even(i . e. a person of

“

the sea most eas ily excited) uttersuch words, we look round expecting to see her childin some situation of danger. But, in Fran ce , ‘Ciel l ’

and 0hmon D ion 1 are uttered by every woman if amouse does but run across the floor. The ignorantand the thoughtless , however, will continue to class theEngl ishcharacter under the phlegmatic temperament,whilst the philosoPher will perceive that it is the exactpolar antithesis to a phlegmatic character. In thisconclusion , thoughotherwise expressed and il lustrated,Walking Stewart’s View of the English character willbe found to terminate : and his Opin ion is especiallyvaluable a s se t and chiefly, because he was a philosopher ; secondly, because his acqua intance with mancivilized and uncivilized , under all national distinctions,was absolutely unrivalled. Meantime, this and othersof his opinions were expressed in language that ifl iterally construed would often appear insane or absurd .The truth is, his long intercourse with foreign nationshad given something of a hybrid tincture to his diction ;in some of his works , for instance, he uses the Frenchword hélas I uniformly for the English aloe ! and

apparently with no cons ciousness of his mistake. H e

had also this singularity about him-E that he was

everlastingly metaphysicizing againstmetaphysics. T ome , who was buried inmetaphysical rererics frommy

244 A. PERI PATETIC PHILOS OPHER.

earliest days, this was not l ikely to be an attraction !anymore than the vicious structure of his diction wasl ikely to please my scholarlike taste. A ll grounds ofdisgust, however, gave way before my sense of hispowerfu l merits ; and, as l have said, I sought his

acquaintance . Coming Up to London from Oxfordabout 1807 or 1808 I made inqu iries about him; andfound that he usually read the papers at a coffee- roomin Piccadilly : understanding that he was poor, it struck

me that he might not w ish to receive vis its at his

lodgings , and therefore I sought him at the coffeeroom. Here I took the liberty of introducing myselfto him. He received me courteously, and invited meto his rooms -a which at that time were in Shem‘

ard

street, Golden-square a street already memorable tome . I was much struck with the eloquence of his

conversation ; and afterwards I found that Mr. Words

worth, himself the most eloquent of men in conversation , had been equally struck when he had met himat

Paris between the years 1790 and 1792, during thee arly storms of the French revolution. In Shorrard

street I visited himrepeatedly, and took notes of the

conversations I had with him on various subjects.These 1must have somewhere or other ; and I W ish Icould introduce themhere , as they would honoree the

reader. Occas ionally in these conversations, as in his

books , he introduced a few notices of his privateh istory : in particular I remember his telling me thatin the East Indies he had been a prisoner of Ryder’sthat he had escaped with some difficulty ; and that, inthe service of one of the native princes as sec retary orin terpreter, he had accumulated a sma ll fortune. Thismust have been too small , 1 fear, at that time to allow

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246 A PERIPATETI C PH IL OS OPHEB.

prowess which was then universal and at its height,

and which gave way in fact only to the campaigns of18 14 and 18 15 , fell in, as it happened , w ith Mr.Stewart’s pol itical creed in those po ints where at thattime it met w ith most oppos ition . In 1812 it was , Ithink , that I saw him for the last time : and by theway, on the day of my parting w ith him, I had an

amusing proof in my own cXperience of that sort ofubiquity ascribed to him by a witty writer in the

London Magazine : I met himand shook hands with

himunder Somerset-house, telling him that I shouldleave town that evening for Westmoreland . Thence Iwent by the very shortest road (i . 6 . through Moor

street, Soho— for I amlearned in many quarters of

London) towards a point which necessarily led methrough Tottenham-court-road : I stopped nowhere

,

and walked fast : yet so it was that in Tottenhamcourt-road I was not overtaken by (that was compreprehens ible), but overtook, Walking Stewart. Certainly, as the above writer alleges , there must havebeen three Walking Stewarts in London . He seemedno ways surprised at this himself, but explained to methat somewhere or other in the neighborhood of T ottenham-court-road there was a l ittle theatre , at which

there was dancing and occasionally good singing, be

tween which and a neighboring coffee-house he sometimes divided his evenings. Singing, it seems, hecould hear in spite of his deafness. In this street Itook my final leave of him ; it turned out such ; and,anticipating at the time that it would be so, I lookedafter his white hat at the momen t it was disappearing

and excla imed Farewell , thou half-crazy and moste loquent man ! I shall never see thy face again.’ I

A 1315 11 13311 1 3 l'

l U r n rnu 5 0 11 21155 .

did not intend, at that moment, to vis it London againfor some years : as i t happened , I was there for a

short time in 18 14 : and then I heard , to my gre atsatisfaction , that Walking Stewart had recovered a

cons iderable sum(about I believe) from the

East India Company ; and from the abstract given inthe London Magazine of

'

the Memo ir by his relation , Ihave s ince learned that he. applied this money mostwisely to the purchas e of an annuity, and that he‘ persisted in l iving

’ too long for the peace of an

annuity office. S o fare all compan ies East and West,and all annuity offices, that s tand Opposed in interestto philosophers ! In 18 14, however, to my great regret, I did not see him; for I was then taking a greatdeal of Opium, and never could contrive to issue to thelight of day soon enough for a morning ca ll upon a

philosopher of such early hours ; and in the e ven ing Iconcluded that he wou ld be generally abroad , fromwhat he had formerly commun icated to me of his ownhabits . It seems , however, that he afterwards heldconversaziones at his own rooms ; and did not stir outto theatres quite so much . From a brother of mine ,Who at one time occup ied rooms in the same housewith him, I learned that in other respects he did notdeviate mhis prosperity fromthe philosophic tenor ofhis former l ife. He abated nothing of his peripateticexerc ises ; and repaired duly in the morn ing , as hehad done in former years , to S t. James’s Park ,where he sate in contemplative ease amongst thecows , inhal ing their balmy breath and pursuing hisphilosophic reveries . He had also purchased an organ ,or more than one, with which he solaced his solitudean d heguilecl himself of uneasy thoughts if he ever

had any.

248 n Psnlrarnr rc PH ILO S O PH ER.

The works of Walk ing Stewart must be read withsome indulgence ; the titles are generally too lofty andpretending and somewhat extravagan t ; the composition is lax and unprecise , as I have before said ; andthe doctrines are occasionally very bold, incautiouslystated, and too hardy and high-toned for the nervousefi

’

eminacy of many modern moralists . But Walk ingStewart was a man who thought nobly of humannature : he wrote therefore at times in the S p irit andwith the indignation of an ancien t prophet against theOppressors and destroyers of the time. In particular Iremember that in one ormore of ’

the pamphlets whichI re ceived fromhimatGrasmere he expresse d himselfin such terms on the subject of Tyrann icide (distinguishing the cases in which it was and was not

lawful) as seemed to Mr. Wordsworth and myselfevery way worthy of a philosoPher ; but, from the

way in which that subject was treated in the House ofCommons , where it was at that time occas ionally introduced, it was plain that his doctrine was not fitted

for the luxurious and relaxed morals of the ago. Likeall men who think nobly of human nature, WalkingStewart thought of it hopefully. In some respects hishopes were wisely grounded ; in others they rested too

much upon certa in metaphys ical speculations whichare untenable , and which satisfied himse lf only because his researches ln that tmh had been purelyself~originated and self-disciplined . He relied uponhis own native strength of mind ; but in questions,which the wisdomand philosophy of every age building successively upon each other have not been ableto settle, no mind, however strong, is entitled to buildwholly upon itself. In many things he shocked the

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250 A rs axrars rtc rmnosorns n.

merchants : you have no moral d iscernment to distinguishbetween the protective power of England andthe destructive power of France .’ A nd his letter tothe Irishnation opens in t his agre eable and conciliatorymanner z— ‘People of Ireland ! I address you as atrue philosopher of nature, foreseeing the perpetual

misery your irrefiective character and total absenceof moral discernment are preparing for ” fire. The

second sentence begins thus—J You are sacrilegiouslyarresting the armof your parent kingdomfighting thecause of man and nature , when the triumph of thefiend of French police-terror would be your own

instant extirpation And the letter closes thus‘ I see but one awful alternative - that Ireland will bea perpetual moral volcano , threatening the destructionof the world, if the education and instruction of thoughtand sense shall not be able to generate the faculty ofmoral d iscernment among a very numerous class ofthe population , who detest the civic calmas sa ilors thenatural calm— andmake civic rights on which theycannot reason a pretext for feuds which they delightin .

’ A s he spoke freely and boldly to others , so hespoke loftily of himself at: p . 313, of T he Harp ofA pollo,

’on making a comparison of himself with

Socrates (in which he naturally gives the preferenceto himself ) he s tyles ‘The Harp ,

’ &c.‘ this un

paralleled work of human energy.

’ A t p . 315 , hecalls it ‘ this stupendous work ;

’and lower down on

the same page he says I was turned out of schoolat the age of fifteen for a dance or blockhead, becauseI would not stufi

"

into mymemory all the nonsense oferudition and learn ing ; and if future ages should discover the unparalleled energies ot

‘

genius in this work ,

A. PERIPATETIC PH ILOS OPHEB.

it will prove my most important doctrine that thepowers of the human min d must be developed in theeducation of thought and sense in the study of moralOpin ion , not arts and science.” Again , at p.

‘

of

his S ophiometer, he says fl at T he paramoun t thought

that dwells in my mind incessantly is a question I

put to myself a s whether, in the event of my personaldissolution by death , I have communicated all thediscoveries my un ique mind possesses in the greatmasterc science of man and nature .’ In the next pagehe determines that he has, with the exception of onetruth, - viz. the latent energy, physical and moralof human nature as existing in the British people.

But here he was surely accusing himself w ithoutground : for tomy knowledge he has not failed in anyone of his numerous works to insist upon this themeat least a billion of times. A nother instan ce of his

magnificent self-estimation is fi - that in the title pagesof several of his works he announces himself as JohnStewart, the onlyman of nature" that ever appearedin the world?By this time I amafra id the reader begins to suspect

that he was crazy : and certainly, when I' considerevery thing, he must have been crazy when the windwas at NNE ; for who but W alking Stewart everdated his books by a computation drawn s not fromthe creation , not fromthe flood , not fromNahonassar,or ab arbc conditd , not fromthe Hegira—s—hut from

it In Bath he was‘

surnamed the Child of Nature —vvhicharose fromhis contrasting on every occasion the existing manof our present es perience with the ideal or S tewartianman thatmight be enpected to emerge in some myriads of ages towhich

latterman he gave the name of the Child of Nature.

252 A rearrarsr rc Parnosorns n.

themselves, fromtheir own day of publication , as constituting the one great era in the history of man bythe side of which all other eras were frivolous andimpertinent ? Thus, in a work of his given to me in18 12 and probably published in that yoar, l find himincidentally recording of himself that he was at thattime arrived at the age of sixty-three , W ith a firmstate of health acquire d by temperance, and a peaceofmind almost independent of the vices ofmankind a s

becausemy knowledge of l ife has enabledme to placemy happiness beyond the reach or contact of other

men’s foll ies and passrons , by avoiding all family connections, and all ambitious pursuits of profit, fame , orpower? On re ading this passage I was anxious toascertain its date : but this, on taming to the title page ,I found thus mysterious ly expresse d : in the 7000th

year of A stronomical History, and the first day ofIntellectual Life or Moral World, fromthe era of thi swork.’ A nother slight indication of craziness appeare din a notion which obstinately haunted his mind that allthe kings and rulers of the ea rth would confederate inevery age against his works, and would hun t themout

for extermination as keenly as Herod did the innocentsin Bethlehem. On this cons ideration , fearing that theymight be intercepted by the long arms of these wickedprinces before they could reach that remote S tewardanman or his precursor to Whom they were mainly addressed, he recommended to all those who might beimpressed with a sense of their importance to bury a{cepy or copies of each work properly secured fromdamp , 650. at a depthof seven or eight feet below thesurface of the earth ; and on their death-beds to communicate the knowledge of this fact to some con

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254 A rnnxra'

rs rmrnmosornsn.

the continents of our planet, 1 would back the Engli shlang uage against any other on earth.

’ His own per

suas ion however was, that the Latin was destined tosurvive all other languages ; it was to be the e ternalas well as the universal language ; and his desire wasthat I would translate his works, or some part of them,into that languagefi

" This I promised ; and I seriouslydesigned at some leisure hour to translate into Latin 9.

selection of passages which should embodyan abstractof his philosophy. This woul d have been doing a.

service to all those who might wish to see a digest ofhis peculiar Opin ions cleared fromthe perplexities ofhis peculiar diction and brought into a narrow compassfromthe great number of volumes through which theyare at present dispersed. However, likemany anotherplan ofmine, i t went unexecuted.On the whole , if Walking Stewart were at all crazy,

he was so in a way which did not affect his natura lgen ius and eloquence but rather exalted them. T he

I was not aware until the moment of writing this passagethatWalking S tewart had publiclymade this request three yearsaltermaking it tomyself : Opening the Harp of Apollo,

’ I have

just now accidentally stumbled on the following passage, Thisstupendous work is destined, I fear , to meet a worse fate than

the Aloe, whichas soon as it blossoms loses its stalk. This firstblossomof reason is threatened with the loss of both its stalk

and its soil : for, if the revolutionary tyran t should triumph, hewould destroy all the Englishbooks and en ergies of thought. I

conjure my readers to translate this work into Latin, and tobury it in the ground , communicating on their death-beds onlyits place of concealment tomen of nature. ’

Fromthe title page of this work, by the way, I learn thatthe 7000th year of A stronomical History ’ is taken fromthe

Chinese tables , and coincides (as I had supposed) with the year1812 ofour computation .

A. rsmmrsrtc ramosors ss . 255

old maxim, indeed , that Great wife to madness sureare new all ied,

’the maximof

"

Dryden and the popular

maxim,I have heard disputed by M r. Coleridge and

Mr. Wordsworth , who maintain that mad people arethe dullest and most wearisome of all people . As a

body, I believe they are so. But Imust dissent fromthe authority of Messrs. Coleridge and Wordsworth so

far as to distinguish. Where madness is connected,as i t often is, with some miserable derangemen t ofthe stomach, l iver, &c. and attacks the principle of

pleasurable l ife, which is manifestly seated in thecentral organs of the body (i . e. in the stomach and

the apparatus connected with it), there it cannot butlead to perpetual suli

‘

ering and distraction of thought ;and there the patient will he often tedious and ln

coherent. People who have not suffered from anygreat disturbance in these organs are l ittle aware howindispensable to the process of thinking are the momentary infius es of pleasurable feel ing fromthe regulargoings on of l ife in its primary function ; in fact, unti lthe pleasure is withdrawn or obscured , most peopleare not aware that they have any pleasure fromthedue action of the great central machinery of the

system: proceeding in uninterrupted continuance, thepleasure as much escapes the consciousness as the actof resp iration : a child, in the happiest state of itsexistence , does no t know that i t is happy. A nd gen

erally whatsoever is the level state of the hourly feelingis never put down by the unthinking (i . o. by 99 outof 100) to the account of happiness : i t is never putdown with the pos itive sign , as e qual to m; buts imply as 0. And men first become aware that itwas a positive quantity, when they have lost it (i . e.

2567 a PERIPAT ET IG Parnosornaa.

fallen into c s ac). Meantime the genial pleasure fromthe vital processes, though not represented to the consciousness, is immanent in every act—fl impnlsemotion -m Word 3 and thought : and a philosopher sees

that the idiots are in a state of pleasure , though theycannot see it themselves . N OW I say that, Where thisprinciple of pleasure is not attached, madness is oftenl ittle more tlm an enthusiasm highly exalted ; theanimal spirits are exuberant and in excess ; and themadman becomes , if he be otherwise aman of abilityand information , all the better as a compan ion. I havemet with several such madman ; and I appeal to mybrill ian t friend , Professor W who is not aman totolerate dulness in any quarter, and is himself the idealof a delightful compan ion, Whether he ever met a moreamusing person than that madman who took a postcha ise with us from to Carl isle, long years ago,

when he and I were hastening with the speed of fugitive felons to catch the Edinburgh mail. H is fancyand his esna vagance , and his furious attacks on SirIsaac Newton , l ike Plato

’s suppers , refreshed us not

only for that day but Whenever they recurred to us ;

and we were both grieved when we heard some timeafterwards froma Cambridge man that he hadmet ourclever friend in a stage coach under the care of a

brutal keeper. Such a madness, if any, was themadness of Walking Stewart his health was perfect ;his S pirits as light and ebullient as the sp irits of a birdin spring time ; and his mind unagitated by pa infulthoughts , a nd at peace with itself. Hence , if he wasnot an amusing companion, it was because the philosophic direction of his thoughts made him somethingmore. Of anecdotes and matters of fact he was not

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258 A PE RIPA T E T IG Pmnosornna .

to separate the parts, or occupy his mind with details.Hence came the monotony which the frivolous and thedesultory would have found in his conversation . I,however, who am perhaps the person best qualified toSpeak of him,must pronounce himto have been a manof great gen ius ; and,with reference to his conversation ,of great eloquence . That these were not better known

and acknowledged was owing to two disadvan tages ;one grounded in his imperfect education , the other inthe peculiar structure of his mind. The first was this :like the late Mr. Shelley he had a fine vague enthus iasmand lofty aspirations in connection with human naturegenerally and its hopes ; and l ike himhe strove togive steadiness, a un iformdirection , and an intelligiblepurpose to these feelings, by fitting to thema schemeof phi losophica l opinions. But unfortunately the philosophic systemof both was so far fromsupporting theirown views and the c ravings of their own enthusiasm,

that, as in some points it was baseless , incoherent, orun intelligible, so in others it tended to moral results,fromwhich, if they had foreseen them, they wouldhave be en themselves the first to shrink as contradietary to the very purposes in whichtheir systemhadoriginated . Hence , in maintain ing their own systemthey both found themselves painfully entangled attimes with tenets p ernicious and degrading to huma nnature . These were the inevitable consequences of

the marrowme ta; in their speculations ; but were nature

a lly charged upon themby those Who looked carelesslyinto their books as opin ions which not only for thesake of consistency they thought themselves bound toendure, hut to which they gave the full weight of their

sanction and patronage as to so many moving princi

A rnmmrarrc ramosorrma. 259

plea in their system. The other disadvantage underwhich Walking Stewart labored, was this : he was a

man of gen ius , but not a man of talents ; at least hisgen ius was out of all preportion to his talents

, and

wanted an organ as it were for man ifesting i tself ; sothat his most original thoughts were delivered in a

crude state— imperfect, obscure , half developed, andnot produc ible to a popular audience. He was awareof this himself and, though he claims everywhere thefaculty of profound intuiti on into human nature, yetwith equal candor he accuses himself of as inine stu

pidity, dulness, and want of talent. He was a disProportioned intellect, and so far amonster : and he mustbe added to the long list of original-minded men whohave been locked down upon with p ity and contemptby commonplace men of talent, whose powers of

"

mind - o though a thousand times inferio r -a ware yetmore manageable, and ran in channels more suited tocommon uses and common understandings .

ON S U ICID E :

IT is a remarkable proof ofme inaccuracy withwhichmost men read s - that Donne’s Biathanatos hasbeen supposed to countenance Suicide : and those who

reverence his name have thought themselves oblige dto apologize for it by urging, that it was written beforehe entered the church . But Donne’s purpose in thistreatise was a pious one : many authors had chargedthe martyrs of the Christian church with Suicide —onthe principle that if I putmyself in the way of a madbull , knowing that he will kill me - I amas muchchargeable withan act of selfldestruetion as if I fl ing

myself into a river. Several casuists had extendedthis principle even to the case of Jesus Christ : one

instance of which , in a modern author, the reader

may see noticed and condemned by Kant, in his RecZig ion innerhalb die gros ses der blesses Vernuafi ,

s and

another of much earlier date (as far back as the 13th

century, I think), in a commoner book—Voltaire’s

notes on the little treatise of Beccaria, D ei delitti edelle p ens. These statements tended to one of tworesults : either they unsanctified the characters of thosewho founded and nursed the Christian church ; or theysanctified suicide . By way

°

of meeting them, Donnewrote his book : and as the whole argument of his

[2591

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262 on screws .

if we do not say, that it is her duty to do so, that is'

because the moral istmust condescend to the weaknessand infirmities of human nature : mean and ignoblenatures must not be taxed up to the level of nobleones. A ga in , withregard to the other sex, corpoxal

punishmen t i s its pecul iar and sexual degradation ;and i f ever the distinction of Donne can be appliedsafely to any case , it will be to the case of himwhochooses to die rather than to submit to that ignominy.

A t p resent, however, there is but a dimand very confined sense , even amongst enl ightened men (as wemay see by the debates of Parliament), of the injurywhich is done to human nature by giving legal sanction to such brutalizing acts ; and therefore mostmen,in seeking to escape it

,would be merely shrin king

froma p ersonal dishonor. Corporal punishment isusually argued with a single reference to the case ofhimwho sufi

'

ers it ; and so argued , God knows that i tis worthy of all abhorrence : but the weightiest argument aga inst it i s the foul indign ity whichis offeredto our common nature lodged in the person of himon

whom it is inflicted. H is nature is our nature : and,suppos ing it poss ible that he were so far degraded as

to be unsusceptible of any influences but those whichaddress him throughthe brutal part of his nature , yetfor the sake of ou rse lves -fi -No l not merely for our

selves, or for the human race now existing, but for thesake of human nature , which trancends all existingparticipators of that nature we should rememberthat the evil of corporal punishment is not to bemeasured by the poor tra ns itory criminal , Whosememory and ofi

‘

ence are soon to perish : these, inthe sumof things , are as nothing : t he injury which

on smernn. 263

can be done him, and the injury whichme can do, haveso momentary an existence that they may be safelyneglected : but the abiding injury is to the most augustinterest which for the mind of man can have any ex

istence ,— v1z. to his own nature : to raise and dignifywhich , I ampersuaded , is the first -i—last— and holiestcommand ! which the conscience imposes on the philosephic moralist. In countries, Where the travellerhas the pain of seeing human creature s performing thelabors of brutes, i “ surely the sorrow which theSpectacle moves, if a wise sorrow, will not he chieflydirecte d to the poor degraded individual -fi a too deeplydegraded , probably, to be sensible of his own degrada

On which account, I amthe more struck by the ignobleargument of those statesmen who have contended in the Home

of Commons that suchand suchclasses ofmen in this nation are

not mmsible to any loftier influences. Supposing that there

nation only, but on man in gmeral, surely it is the duty oflawgivers not to perpetuate by their institutions the evilwhich

they find, but to prwnrne and gradually to create a better

1‘ Of whichdegradation , let it never be forgotten that France

bu t thirty years ago presented as shocking cases as any country,even Where smvery is tolerated. An eye-WitIM s to the feet, who

hes since published it in print, told me, that in Frame, befiir ethe revolution , he had repeatedly sema woman yoked with an

ass to the plough and the bru tal ploughmnn applying his Whipmaiderently to either. English people, to WhomI here scoop

sionallymentioned this as an exponent of the hollow refinementof mann ers in Re nee , have uniformly exclaimed That is

more than I can beli eve and have taken it for gran ted that Ihad my information fromsome prejudiced Englishman. But

who was my informer ? A Frenchman , reader,—M . S imond,

end thoughnow by adoption an American citizen, yet; stillFrenchin his heart and in all his prejudices.

264 on surcinn.

tion , but to the reflection that man’s nature is thusexhibited in a state ofmiserable abasement ; and, whatis worst of all , abasement proc eeding fromman himse lf. Now,

whenever this View of corporal pun ishment becomes general (as inevitably it will , under theinfluence of advancing civilization), I say, that Donne

’sprinciple will then become app l icable to this case , andit will be the duty of aman to die rather than to sufi

'

er

his own nature to be dishonored in that way. But so

long as aman is not fully sensible of the dishonor, tohim the dishonor, except as a personal one , does notwholly exist. In general , whenever a paramount interest of human nature is at stake, a su icide whichma inta ins that intere st is self-homicide : but, for a personal interest, i t becomes self-murder. And in to this

principle Donne’s may be re solved.

A doubt has been raised—whether brute an imalsever commit suicide : to me i t is obvious that they donot, and cannot. Some years ago, however, therewas a cm reported in all the newspapers of an oldramwho committed suicide (as it was alleged) in thepresence of many witnesses . N ot having any pistolsor razors , he ran for a short d istance , in order to aid

the impetus of his descent, and leaped over a precip ice ,at the foot of which be was dashed to pieces . Hismotive to the ‘ rash act,

’ as the papers called it, wassupposed to be more ra diums ite . But, for my part,I doubted the accuracy of the report. N ot long aftera case occurred in Westmoreland which strengthenedmy doubts. A fine young blood horse, who couldhave no possible reason for making away withhimself, unless it were the high price of cats at that time ,

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266 ON SUICIDE.

thought that under the circumstances of his S ituationhe would have a better chance for success in l ife as atradesmen ; and they took the necessary steps for

placing himas an apprentice at some shopkeeper’s inPenrith. This he looked Upon as an indignity , towhich he was determined in no case to submit. A nd

accordingly, when he had ascertained that all oppos itiou to the choice of his friends was useless, hewalked over to the mountainous district of Keswick

(about s ixteen miles mommy—looked about himinorder to select: his ground— cool)? walked up Lattrig(a dependency of Skiddaw)—made a pillow of soda

laid himself down with his faee looking up to the

sky and in that posture was found dead, with the

appearance of having died tranquilly.

SUPERFICIAL KNOWLEDGE .

[T is asserted that this is the age of Superfic ia lKnowledge ; and amongst the proofs of this assertionwe find E ncyc10peedias and other popular abstracts ofknowledge particularly ins isted on . But in this notionand its alleged proofs there is equal error— where verthere is much diffusion of knowledge, there must be agood deal of superficiality : prodigious extension implies a due preportion of weak intension ; a sea-l ikeexpansion of knowledge will cover large sha llows as

well as large depths . But in that quarter in which itis superficially cultivated the in tellect of this age is

properly opposed in any just comparison to an intellectwithout any culture at all - leaving the deep soils outof the comparison, the shallow ones of the present daywould in any preceding one have been barren wastes.Of this our modern e ncyclopmdias are the best proof.For whom are they des igned , and by whomusedBy those who in a former age would have gone to thefountain heads ? N o , but by those who in any age

preceding the present would have drunk at no watersat all. E ncy010psedias are the growth of the laszhundred years ; not because those who were formerlystudents of higher learn ing have descended, but because those who were below encyCIOpaedias have

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268 suranrrcmr. KNOW LEDG E .

ascended. The greatness of the ascent is marked bythe style in which the more recent encyclopzedias are

executed : at first they were mere abstracts of existingbooks—well or ill executed : at present theycontainmany original articles of great merit. A s in theperiodical l iterature of the age , so in the encyclopeedias

ithas become a matter of ambition withthe publishersto retain the most eminent writers in each several department. A nd hence i t is that our e ncyclopmdiasnew display one characteristic of this age

— the veryoppos ite of superficiality (and which on other groundswe are well assured of) —viz. its tendency in science,no less than in other appl ications of industry , to extreme subdivis ion . In all the employments which aredependent in any degree upon the pol itical economyof nations

,this tendency is too obvious to have been

overlooked. A ccordingly it has long been noticed forcongratulation in manufactures and the useful artsand for censure in the learned profess ions. We havenow, it is alleged, no great and comprehensive lawyerslike Coke : and the study of medic ine is subdividingi tself into a distinct min istry (as it were) not merelyupon the several organs of the body (oculists, aurists ,dentists , che irOpodists , ac .) but almost upon the severaldiseases of the same organ : one man is distinguishedfor the treatment of l iver complaints of one classa second for those of another class ; one man forasthma—another for phthisis ; and so on. A s to the

law, the evil ( if i t be one) l ies in the complex state ofsociety which of necessity makes the laws complex :law itself is become unwieldy and beyond the graS pof one man ’

s te rmof life and poss ible range of expe

rience : and will never aga in come within them .

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270 surnas rcmr.’ KN OW LED G E.

sive than they. is it better to be a profound student,or a comprehens ive one ? In some degree this mustdepend upon the direction of the studies : but generally,I think, i t is better for the interests of knowledge that

the scholar should aimat profundity, and be tter for theinterests of the indiv idual that he should aimat comprehensiveness . A due balance and equilibriumof themind is but preserved by a large and multiformknowledge : but knowledge itself is but served by anexclus ive (or at least paramount) dedication of one

mind to one sc ience. The first propos ition is perhapsunconditionally true : but the second with some limitations . There ar e such people as L e ibnitzes on thisearth ; and their office seems not that of planets— torevolve within the limits of one system, but that ofcomets (according to the theory of some speculators)a te connect difi

'

erent systems together. No doubtthere is much truth in this : a few L e ibnitzes in every

age would be ofmuch use : but neither are many menfitted by nature for the part of Leibnitz ; nor would

the aspect of knowledge be better, if they were. We

should then have a state of Grec ian l ife amongst us inwhich everyman individually would attain in amoderatedegree all the purposes of the sane unders tanding, “

but in which all the pu rposes of the sane understand

ing would be but modera tely attained. What I meanis this zm let all the objects of the understanding incivil l ife or in science be represented by the letters ofthe a lphabet ; in Grecian life each man would sepa

rately go through all the letters in a tolerable way ;whereas at present each letter is served by a distinctbody of men. Consequently the Grec ian individual is

superior to the modern ; but the Gre cian whole is

surnarromr. KN OW LEDG E. 27 1

inferior : for the whole is made Up of the individuals ;and the Grecian individual repeats himself. Whereasin modern l ife the whole derives its superiority fromthe very circumstances which cons ti tute the inferiorityof the parts ; formodern l ife is cast dramatically : andthe difference is as between an army cons isting of sol

diers who should each individually be competent to gothrough the duties of a dragoon— of a hussar— of a

sharp-shooter -a -s of an artillery-man—of a p ioneer,dzc . and an army on its present compos ition, where

the very inferiority of the soldier as an individual

his inferiority in compass and versatil ity of power andknowledge —is the very groun d fromwhich the armyderives its superiority as a whole, viz. because it is

the condition of the possibi lity of a total surrender

of the individual to one exclusive pursu it. In sciencetherefore, and (to speak more generally) in the wholeevolution of the human faculties , no less than in P0litical Economy, the progress of soc iety brings with ita necessity of sacrific ing the ideal of what is excellentfor the individual , to the ideal of what is excellent forthe whole. We need therefore not trouble ourselves

(except as a speculative question) with the comparisonof the two states ; because , as a practical question , itis precluded by the overruling tendencies of the age

which no man could counteract except in his own

s ingle case , i . c. by refus ing to adapt himself as a partto the whole , and thus foregoing the advantages of

either one state or the other. i ‘

The latter part of what is here said coincides , in a waywhich

is rather remarkable , witha. passage in an interesting work of

S chiller ’s which I have since read , (on the E sihetic E ducation

ofM en, in a seri es of letters : via. letter the 6th.) Withus in

272 surnnrlcmr, KN OW LE DGE.

order to obtain the representative word as itwere) of the totalspecies, wemust spell it out by the help of a series of individuals.80 that on a survey of society as it actually exists , one mightsuppose that the faculties of themind do really in actual expericuce show themselves in as separate a form, and in asmuchinsulation , as psychology is forced to exhibit themin its analysis.And thus we see not only individuals, but whole classes ofmen ,unfolding only one part of the germs which are laid in thembythe hand of natur e. In saying this 1: en fully aware of the ad»vantages which the human species of modern ages has , whenconsidered as a unity, over the best of antiquity : bu t the comparison should begin with the individuals : and then letme askWhere is themodern individual thatwould have the presumptionto step forward against the A thenian individual—man to man ,and to contend for the prize of human excellence ? The polypusnature of the G recian republics, in which eve ry individual enjoyed a separate life, and if it were necessary could become awhole , has now given place to an artificial watch-work , wheremany lifeless parts combine to forma mechanic whole. The

state and the church, laws and manners, are now torn asunderlabor is divided fromenjoyment, the means fromthe end, the

exertion fromthe reward. Chained for ever to a little individualfraction of the whole,man himself ismoulded into a fractionand, with the monotonous whirling of the wheel which he turnseverlastingly in his ear , he never develops the harmony of hisbeing and , instead of imaging the totality of human nature , be

comes a bare abstract of his business or the science which hecultivates. The dead letter takes the place of the living understanding ; and a practised memory becomes a surer gu ide thangenius and sensibility.‘ D oubtless the power of genius, as we allknow, will not fetter itself within the limi ts of its occupationbut talents of mediocr ity are all exhausted in the monotony ofthe employment allotted to them and thatman mu st have no

common head who brings wi th himthe geniality of his powersunstr ipped of their freshness by the ungenial labors of life to thecultivation of the genial.’ After insisting at some length on thiswise,

'

Schiller passes to the other side of the contemplation , andproceeds thus It suited my immediate purpose to point outthe injuries of this condition of the Species, without displaying

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ENGLISH D ICTIONARIES .

IT has already, I bel ieve , been said more than oncein print that one condition of a good dictionary would

be to exhibit the history of each word ; that is , to

record the exact success ion of its meanings . But the

philosOphio reason for this has not been given ; which

reason , by the way , settles a question often agitated ,viz. whether the true meaning of a word be best ascer

tained fromits etymology, or fromits present use andaeoeptation. Mr. Coleridge says, i the best es piona

tion of a word is often that which is suggested by its

derivation " (I give the substance of his words from

memory). O thers allege that we have nothing to do

with the primitive meaning of the word ; that the

question is fi a what does it mean now ? and they ap

peal , as the sole authority they acknowledge, to the

received

Usus, pence quemest jns et norms.loquendi.

In what degree each party is right, may be judged

fromthis cons ideration - s wat no word can over deviate fromits firstmeaning p er salmon each success ivestage of meaning must always have been determined

by that which preceded. A nd on this one law dependsthe whole philosophy of the ease : for it thus appears

nncni sn D IGT'

IONARIE S . 275

fi at the original and primitive sense of the Word willcontain virtually all whichcan ever afterwards ariseas in the evolution-theory of generation, the Wholeseries of births is represented as involved in the firstparent. Now

,if the evolution of successive mean ings

has gone on rightly, i . c. by simply Iapsing throughaseries of close aflinities, there can he no reason forrecurring to the primitive meanin g of the word : but,i f it can be shown

’

that the evolution has been faulty,i . e. that the chain of true odinitics has ever heenbroken through ignorance, then we have a. right toreform the word, and to appeal from the usage illinstructed to a usage better-instructe d. Whether we

exercise this right, will depend on it considera4

tion which I will afterwards notice. Meantime I willfirst give a few instances of faulty evolution.

1. Imp licit. This word is now us ed in a mostignorant way ; and fromits misuse it has come to he aword Wholly useless : for it is new never coupled , Ithink , with any other substan tive than these twofaith and confidence : a poor domain indeed to havesunk to from its original wide range of territory.Moreover, when we say, imp licit faith, or imp licitconfidence, we do not thereby indicate any specific

kind of faith and confidence difi‘

ering fromother faithor other confidence : but i t is a vague rhetorical wordwhichexpresses a great degree of faith and confidence ;8 . faith that is un questioning, a confidence that is un

l imited ; 5. c. in fact, a faith that «is a faith, a confidence that is a confidence. Such a use of the wordought to be abandoned to women : doubtl ess , whensitting in a bower in the month of May, it is pleasantto hear froma lovely mouthm ‘l put implicit confi

276 EN GLISH mormmmss.

dance in your honor but, though pretty and becomingto sucha month, it is very unfitting to the mouth of ascholar : and I will be hold to affirmthat noman, whohad ever acquired a scholar’s knowledge of the Englishlanguage , has used the word in that lax and unmean ingway. The history of the word is this. fi fmp ltctt(fromthe Latin imp licitus , involved in , folded up) wasalways used originally, and still is so by scholars, asthe direct antithete of exp licit (fromthe Latin ecp licilus ,evolved, unfolded ) : and the use of bothmay be thusillustrated.

Q. Did Mr. A. ever say that he wouldmarry MissB. i fi ll. No ; not explicitly (i . e. in so manywords) ; but he did implicitly e - by showing great displeasure if she re ceived attentions from any otherman ; by ask ing her repeatedly to select furn iture forhis house ; byconsulting her on his own plans of life.

’

Q. Did Epicurus mainta in any doctrines such asare here as cribed to him —

~ A . Perhaps not ex

plicitly, either in Words or by any other mode of direct.sanction : on the contrary, I believe he denied themand disclaimed themwith vehemence : but he ma intulaed them implicitly : for they are involved in otheracknowledged doctrines of his, and may be deducedfromthemby the fairest andmost i rres istibl e logic.”

Q.‘Why did you complain of the man ? H ad he

expressed any contempt for your opin ion 9h a rd.‘Yes , he had : not expl icit contempt, l admit ; for henever opened his stupid mouth ; but impl ic itly he expressed the utmost that he could : for, when I hadspoken two hours against the old newspaper, and infavor of the new one , he went instantly and put his

name down as a subscriber to the old one .

’

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278 ENGLISH momomaras.

N ow, with regard to the history of its transition intoits present use , it is briefly this ; and i t will appear atonce, that it has arisen through ignorance. When itwas objected to a papist that his church exacte d an.

assent to a great body of traditions and doctrines towhich it was impossible that the great majority couldbe qual ified, either as respected time—n or knowledgee x or culture of the understanding, to give any reas onable assent, the answer was : Yes ; but that sortof assent is not required of a poor uneducated man ;all that he has to do e - is to believe in the churchhe is to have faith in her faith : by that act he adoptsfor his own whatsoever the churchbelieves , though hemay never have heard of it even : his faith is implicit,a 8 . involved and wrapped up in the faith of

'

the

church , which faith be firmly bel ieves to be the truefaith upon the conviction he has that the church ispreserved fromall poss ibility of erring by the spiritof God.“ Now, as this sort of bel ieving by proxy orimpl ic it belief (in which the belief was not immediatein the thing proposed to the bel ief, but in the authorityof another person who bel ieved in that thing and thusmediately in the thing itself) was constantly attackedby the learned assailants of

”

popery,—it naturally

happened that many unlearned readers of these pro

95 Thus Milton , who (in common with his contemporari es)always new the word accurately, Speaks of Ezekiel swallowinghis implicit roll of knowledge t. e. coming to the kn owledgeofmany truths not separately and in detail, but by the act of

arriving at some onemaster truthwhichinvolved all the rest.So again , if anyman or government were to suppress a book ,

thatman or governmentmight justly he reproached as the implicit destroyer of all the wi sdomand virtue that might havebeen the remote products of that book.

anou ss D IGT IONARIE S . 279

instant polemics caught at a phrase which was so muchbandied between the two parties : the spirit of the

context sufficiently explained to themthat it was usedby protesmnts as a termof reproach, and indicated afa ith that was an e rroneous faith by be ing too easytoo submissive - w and too passive : but the particular

mode of this erroneonsness they seldom came tounderstand, as learned writers naturally employed thetermwithout explanation , presuming it to be known tothose Whom they addressed. Hence these ignorantreaders caught at the last result of the phrase ima

plicit fa ith rightly, truly supposing it to imply a

resigned and unquestioning faith ; but theymissed theWhole immediate cause of meaning by which only theword implicit’ could ever have be en entitled to express that result.1 have allowed myself to say so much on this word

‘ implicit,’ because the history of the mode by whiehits true mean ing was l ost applies almost to all otherrrupted words fi mzttatismutandis and the amount

of it may be collected into this formula , —that theresult of the word is apprehended and reta ined, but theschematismus by whichthat result was ever reached islost. This is the brief theory of all corruption of

words. The Word schematismus I have unwillinglyused, because no other expresses my mean ing. Sogreat and extensive a doctrine however lurks in thisword, that I defer the explanation of it to a separatearticle. Meantime a passable sense of the word willoccur to every body who reads Greek . I now go on

to a fewmore instances of words that have forfeitedtheir original meaning through the ignorance of thosewho used them.

280 amu se nrcrwuame s .

‘P tmctuaz.’ This word is now confined to the

meagre denoting of accuracy in respect to timefidelity to the precise moment of an appointment.But origina lly it was just as often , and just as reason :

ably, applied to space as to time “ I cannot punctuallydetermine the origin of the Danube ; but I know ingeneral the district in which it rises , and that itsfountain is near that of the Rhine .’ N ot only, however,was it applied to time and space

, but it had a large

and very elegant figurative use . Thus in the Historyof the Royal Society by Sprat (an author who wasfinioal and n ice in his use of words) - s l remember asentence to this effect : ‘ the Society gave punctualdirections for the conducting of exper iments ; ’ 13. e.

directions which descended to the minutiae and lowestdeta ils. A gain in the once popular romance of Parismus Prince of Bohemia She ’

(I forget who) madea punctual relation of the Whole matter ; ’ i . e. a rela»

tion which was perfectly circumstantial and true tothe minutest features of the case.

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282 DRYDEN ’S H EXASTICH.

trinityfi - the Greek and the Roman nevertheless ,

by some dexterous artifice, a higher praise than the

highest should suddenly unmask itself, and drop , as

it were , l ike a diademfromthe clouds upon the browsof their English competitor. In the kind of expectationra ised, and in the extreme difficulty of adequately

meeting this expectation , there was pretty much the

same challenge od‘

ored to Dryden as was offered ,somewhere about the same time , to a British ambassador when dining with his political antagonists. One

of these m the ambassador of France— had proposedto drink hismas ter, Louis XIV., under the characterof the sun , who diS pensed life and light to the wholepol itical system. T o this there was no objection ;and immediately, by way of in tercepting any furtherdraughts upon ,

the rest of the solar system, the Dutchambassador rose, and preposed the healthof their highmightinesses the Seven Un ited States , as the moon and

six planets , who gave light in the absence of the sun.

T he two foreign ambassadors,Mons ieur and Mynheer,

secretly enjoyed the mortification of their Engl ishbrother, who seemed to be thus le it

‘

in a s tate of

bankruptcy, ‘no funds ’ be ing ava ilable for retaliation,

or so they fancied. But suddenly our British reprosentative toasted hismaster as Joshua, the son of N un ,

that made the sun and moon stand still . A ll had

seemed lost for England, when in an instant of timeboth her antagon ists were Checkmated. Dryden as

sumed something of the same position. He gaveaway the supreme jewels in his exchequer ; apparentlynothing remained be hind ; all was exhausted. To

”5 S ix p lanets Nomore had then been discovered.

D arnau’s HEXA STICH. 283

Homer he gave A , to Virgil he gave 3 ; and, behold !after these were given away, there remain ed nothingat all that would not have been a secondary praise.But, in a moment of time , by giving A. and B toMilton , at one sl ing of his victorious arm he raisedhimabove Homer by the whole extent of’ B, and aboveVirgil by the whole extent of A . This fel icitous evasion of the embarrassment is accompl ished in thesecond coupiet ; and, final ly, the third coopiet windsup with graceful efi

‘

ect, by making a. resumé , or recapitulation of the logic concerned in the distribution of

prizes just announced. Nature, he says , had it not inher power to provide a third prize separate fromthe

first and second ; her resource was, to join the firstand second in combination : To make a third, shejoined the former two.”

Such is the abstract of this famous epigram; and,judged simply by the outline and tendency of thethought, it merits all the vast popularity which it hasearned, But in the mean time, it is radically viciousas regards the filling in of this outl ine ; for the par

ticular quaiity in which Homer is accredited with the

pro-eminence, vita , Zofl inoss of thought, happens to be

a mere variety of expression for that quality, viz.

maj esty, in which the pro-eminence is awarded to

Virgil. Homer excels Virgil in the very point inwhich l ies Virgil’s superiority to Homer ; and thatsynthes is , by means of which a great triumph isreserved to Milton , becomes obviously imposs ible ,when it is perceived that the supposed analytice lements of this synthesis are blank reiterations of

Exceedingly striking It is , that a thought should

28 -4 s creen’s nurs er ies .

have prospered for one hundred and seventy years ,which , on the sl ightest steadiness of examination, turnsout to be no thought at all, but more blank vacuity.There is, however, this justification of the case, thatthe mould , the set of channels, into which the metal ofthe thought is meant to io n, really has the felicitywhich it appears to have : the form is perfect ; and itis merely in the matter, in the accidental fill ing up ofthe mould, that a fault has been committed. Had theVirgilian point of excellence been loneliness instead ofmaj esty, or any word Whatever suggesting the commonantithes is of sublimity and beauty ; or had it beenpower on the one s ide, matched against grace on

the other, the tru e lurking tendency of the thoughtwould have been developed , and the sub -consciouspurpose of the epigramwould have fulfilled itself to

N . B a n -It is not meant that Zoftiaeso of thought

and maj esty are express ions so entirely inte rchangeable , as that no shades of difi

’

erence could be suggested ; it is enough that these shades ’ are not

substantial enough, or broad to support theWeight of opposition which the epigram ass ign s tothem. G race and elegance, for instance, are far frombeing in all relations synonymous ; but they are so tothe full extent of any purposes concerned in thisepigram. Nevertheless, i t is probable enough thatDryden had moving in his thoughts a relation of theWord maj esty, which, if developed , would have donejustice to his mean ing. it was, perhaps, the decorumand sustained dignity of the comp osi tion a - the workmanship apart from the native grandeur of the ina

torials the majestic style of the artistic treatment as

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POPE’S RETORT UPON ADD ISON.

THERE is nothing extraordinary, or that coul d meri ta special notice, in a simple case of oversight, or in ablunder, though emarming fromthe greatest of poets.But such a case challenges and forces our attention ,when we know that the particular passage in which itoccurs was wrought a nd burnished with excessivepa ins ; or (which in this case is also known) whenthat particular passage is pushed into singular prominence as having obta ined a singular success. In no

part of his poetic mission did Pope so fascinate thegaze of his contemporaries as in his functions ofsatirist ; which functions, in his letter years , absorbed

ail other functions. A nd one reason , I believe, whyi t was that the interest about Pope decayed so rap idly

after his death (an acc ident somewhere noticed byWordsworth),must be sought in the fact, that themoststinging of his personal allusions, by which he had

given salt to his later writings , were continually los ingtheir edge, and sometimes their intelligibility , as Papa

’s

own contemporary generation was dying oii’

. Pope

a lleges it as a palliation ofhis satiricmalice , that it hadbeen forced fromhim in the way of

“

retal iation ; forgetting that such a plea wilfully abjures the grandest

justification of a satirist, viz , me deliberate assump[286]

rat-E’s care er UPON ADDISON .

tion of the character as something corresponding tothe prephet

’s mission amongst the Hebrews. It is no

longer the facit indignatio s cream, Pope’s satire,Where even it was most effective , was personal andvindictive, and upon that argument alone could not be

phiIOS Ophic . Foremost in the order of his fulminationsstood, and yet stands , the bloody castigation by which ,according to his own pretence , he warn ed andmenaced(but by which , in simple truth , he executed judgmentupon) his false friend , Addison.

To say tha t this drew vast rounds of applause uponits author, and frightened its object into deep silencefor the rest of his l ife, like the Quos ego of angryNeptune, sufficiently argues that the versesmust haveploughed as deeply as the Russ ian knout. Vitriolcould not scorch more fiercely. A nd yet the wholepassage rests upon a blunder ; and the blunder is sobroad and palpable, that it impl ies instant forgetfulnessboth in the writer and the reader. The idea whichfurnishes the basis of the passage is this : that theconduct ascribed to A ddison is in its own nature so

despicable, as to extort laughter by its primary impulse ; but that this laughter changes into weeping,when we come to understand that the person concernedin this delinquency is Addison . The change , the

transfiguration, in our mood of contemplating theoffence, is charged upon the discovery which we aresupposed to make as to the person of the offender ;that which by its baseness had been simply comicwhen imputed to some con ceponding author, passes

into a tragic coup -dea théatre, when it is suddenly tracedback to a man of original genius. The Whole, therefore, of this effect is made to depend upon the sudden

288 rors’s acros s urou ADDISON .

scenical transition froma supposed petty criminal toone ofhighdistinction . A nd, meantime , no such stageedect had been possible, since the knowledge that aman of genius was the offender had been What westarted with from the beginn ing. O ur laughter ischanged to tears,

’ says Pope , as soon as we discoverthat the base not had a noble author.’ And, behold !the initial feature in the Whole description of the caseis , that the libeller was one Whom true genius fired

Poms to all such! Butwere there onewhosemindTrue genius fires,’ 850.

Before the offence is described,the perpetrator is

already characterized as a man of genius : and, in

sp ite of that knowledge, we laugh . But suddenly our

mood changes, and We weep , but why ? I beseech you.

Simply because we have ascertained the author to beaman of gen ius.

Whowould not laugh, if suchaman there be ?Who would. notweep , ifAtticus were he ?

The sole reason for weeping is something that weknew already before we began to laugh.It would not be right in logic, in fact, it would be a

mic-classification , if I should c ite as at all belonging tothe same group several passages in Milton that comevery near to Irish bulls, by virtue of distorted language.

O ne reason against such a classification would lie pre ~

cisely in that fact— vim, that the assimilation to the

category of bulls lurks in the verbal es pre ssion , and

not (as in Pope’s case) amongst the conditions of the

thought. A nd a second reason would l ie in the strange

circumstance , that Milton had not fallen into this snareof diction through any carelessness or oversight, but

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290 Peru’s amour UP ON ADDISON.

volving itself in the verbal expression. But thefollowing, which l ies rooted in the more facts and

incidents, is certainly the most extraordinary p racticalbull 1 that all literature can furnish. A nd a strangerthing, perhaps, than the oversight itself lies in this

that not any critic throughout Europe, two on ly excaptad, but has failed to detect a blunder so memorable. A ll the rampant audacity of Bentley slashingBentley all the jealousmalign ity of Dr. Johnson -fi

who hated Milton Without disguise as a republican , butsecretly and under a mask would at any rate havehated himfromjealousy of his scholarship -e had not

availed to sharpen these practised and these interestedeyes into the detection of an oversight which argues asudden Lethean forgetfulness on the part of Milton ;and inmany generations of readers, however al ive andawake with malice , a corr esponding forgetfulness notless aston ishing. Two readers only I have ever heardof that escaped this lethargic inattention ; one of whichtwo is myself and I ascribe my

'

success partly to goodluck, but partly to some merit on my own part inhaving cultivated a habit of systematically accuratereading. If I read at all, I make it a duty to readtruly and fa ithfully. I profess allegiance for the timeto the man whomI undertake to study ; and I amas

loyal to all the engagements involved in such a con

tract, as ii’

I had come under a sacrameatummilitare.So it was that, whilst yet a boy , I came to perceive ,with a wonder not yet exhausted, that unaccountableblunder which Milton has committed in the main nar

retive on which the epic fable of the Paradise Lostturns as its hinges. A nd many a year afterwards I

found that Paul Richter, whose vigilance nothing e

rorc’s neronr UPON ADDISON . 291

coped, who carried with himthrough l ife the eye ofthe hawk, and the fire therein,

’ had not failed to makethe same discovery. It is this : T he archangel S atanhas designs upon man ; he meditates his ruin ; and itis known that he does. Specially to counteract thesedesign s, and for no other purpose whatever, a choirof angelic pol ice is stationed at the gate s of Paradise ,having (I repeat) one sole commission , viz ., to keepwatch and word over the threatened safety of thenewly created human pair. Even at the very firstthis duty is neglected so thoroughly, that Satan gainsaccess without challenge or suspicion. That is awfulfor, ask yourself, reader, how a constable or an inspector of police would be received who had beenstationed at No. 6, on a secret information , and spentthe n ight in making love at No. 15 . Through the

regula r surveillance at the gates , Satan passes Withoutobjection ; and he is first of all detected by a purelyaccidental collision during the rounds of the juniorangels. The result of this coll ision, and of the exammation which follows, is What no reader can ever forget— so unspeakable is t he grandeur of that scenebetween the two hostile archangels , when the Flood

(so named at the moment under the fine machineryused by Milton for exalting or depressing the ideas ofhis nature) finally takes his flight as an incarnationof darknes s.

6

Murmuring and withhimfled the shades of night.

The darkness flying with him, naturally we have thefeeling that he is the darkness, and that all darknesshas some essential relation to Satan.

But now, having thus witnesse d his terrific expulsion,

292 POPE’

S RETORT neon w omen.

naturally we ask What was the sequel. Four books ,howeve r, are interposed before we reach the answerto that question . This is the reason that we fail toremark the extraordinary overs ight of M ilton. D is

located'

from its immediate plan in the success ion of

incidents , that sequel eludes our notice, which else and

in its natural place would have shocked us beyondmeasure. The s imple abs tract of the Whole story is ,

that Satan , being ejecte d, and sternly charged under

A lmighty menaces not to in trude upon the youngParadise of G

’

od, rides w ith darlmess ’ for exactly one

week, and, having digested his wrath rather than his

fears on the octave of his solemn banishment, W ithoutdemur

,or doubt, or tremor, back he plunges into the

very.

centre of Eden. On a Friday, suppose, he is

expelled through the main entrance : on the Fridayfollowing he re o enters upon the forbidden premisesthrough a clandestine entrance. The upshot is , thatthe heavenly pol ice suffer, in the first place , the one

sole enemy, who was or could he the object of theirvigilance, to pass W ithout inquest or suspicion ; thus

they inaugurate their task ; secondly, by the mere staccident (no thanks to their fidelity) they detect him,and with awful adjurations sentence him to perpetualban ishment ; but, thirdly, on his immediate return , inutter contempt of their sentence , they ignore himaltogether, and apparently act upon Dogberry’s direction , that, upon meeting a thief, the pol ice maysuspect himto he no true man ; and, with such mannor of men, the less they meddle or make, the moreit will be for their honesty.

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294 s ome ,

ofyour sight. In a glass-house at night illuminated by a sullenfire in one corner , but else dork, you see the darknessmessed inthe rose as e block object. That is the visible dorknoes.’ And

on the other hand, themurky atmosphere between you end the

distant rear is not the objeot, but themedium, throughor athwartWhish you desmy the block masses . The first darkness is sub:

j ectioe darkness that is, e darkness in your mm eye , and

entangled withyour very faculty of vision. The second darkness

is perfectly difi’

erent : it is obj ective darkness ; that is to say,

not; any darkness whishafl‘

oots ormodifies your faculty of seeingeither fer better or worse ; but a derh ess which is the obj ect

solfas a.messy volume of blackness, and projected, possibly, to sovast distance

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SOUTHEY .

REOOLL E OT IONs OF G RA S ME RE .

T H E S ARAOEN ’s H E AD

SOCIE TY OF T H E LAKES .

CHARLES LLOYD .WALKING STEWART .

E DWARD IRV ING.T ALFOURD .

T HE LONDON M AGAZ INE .

JON IUs.CLARE .

CUNN INGHAM .

ATTACK BY A LONDON JOURNAL .

DUELL ING .

VIII. NARRATIVE AND M ISCE LLANEOUSPAPE RS . 2 Vols . 161110.

Contents . T H E H OUS EHOLD WRE OR.

T H E S PAN IS H N UN .

FL IGHT OF A TA RTAR TRIBE .

SYS TEM OR T HE H EAVENs As REVE ALED BY

T H E T E LE S COPE .

M ODERN S UPERSTITION .

COLERIDGE AND OP IUM-E ATING .

T EM PERANOE M OVEMENT .O N W AR.

T HE LAS T DAYS OF IMMANUELKANT .

E SSAYS ON T H E POE T S A N D OT H E R E NGLISH WRIT E RS . 1 Vol. 161110 . 75 cents .

Contents . T H E POETRY OF W ORD SW OR'I’

H .

PE RCY Byssmc S HELLEY .

J OHN KE ATS .

OLIVER G OLDSMITH .

ALEXANDE R POPE .

W ILL IAM G ODW IN .

JOH N FOS TER.

W ILL IAM H A Z L IT ’I‘

.

WALT ER SAVAGE LANDOR.

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XV. LET T E RS TO A. YOUN G MAN , AN D OT H E RPAPE RS . 1 Vol. 161m. 75 cents .

Contents. LE TTERS .

G RRRR T RRG ED Y .

CONVERS AT ION .

LANGUAGE .

FRRNOR AND EN OmSR M ANNERS .

CRL IRORN IR AN D T HE G OLD M AN IA.

PRRS RN OR OF M IND .

XVI. XVII. THE OLOG ICAL E SSAYS AND

OT H ER PAPE RS . Q Vols . 161110.

Contents. ON CRRIRT TRN tT Y Rs RN ORGAN OF POD IT DORR M OVEMENT.PROTES TANT IS M .

ON T RR SUPPOS ED S ORIRT ORRL E XPRESSIONTOR E T RRM T T .

J UDAS IOORRIOT .

ON H UME’S ARGUMENT RORINRT M IRACLES .

CAS U IS TRY .

G RRROE UNDER T H E ROMANS.S EOES S ION FRQM T H E CHURCH OR SCOTLAND .T O IDRT T R OF T HE H EBREW LADY.M ILTON .

ORRRDRM RONR.

M OD ERN G RRROR.

LORD CARM S L E ON POPE .

XVIII. T HE NOTE BOOKOF AN ENGLISH OPIUMEATER . 1 Vol. 16mg . 75 cents.

Contents . T RRRR M RMORRRLR M URDRRS .

T H E TRUE RRDRT ION S OR T H E BIBLETO M ERELY H UMAN S OIRNOR.

S ORLO S SRR’O L ITE RARY H IS TORY OF

T HE E IGHTE ENTH CENTURY.T H E A NT IGONE OR S OPROOLRS .T O R M ARQUE S S WE LLE S LE Y .

M ILTON O3. S OU TRRT A ND LA NDOR.

FAL S IFICA ‘I‘

ION OF E N GM SH H IS TORY .

A. PERIPAT E T IG PHILOSOPHER.

ON S U IG ID E .

S OPRRRIOIRD KNOWLEDGE .

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D RT D RN’O H EXA S T ICH .