"Happy the man whose constant thought
(Though in the school of hardship taught)
Can send remembrance back to fetch
Treasures from life's earliest stretch;
Who, self-approving, can review
Scenes of past virtues, which shine through
The gloom of age, and cast a ray
To gild the evening of his day!
Not so the guilty wretch confin'd:
No pleasures meet his conscious mind;
No blessings brought from early youth,
But broken faith, and wrested truth;
Talents idle and unus'd,
And every trust of Heaven abus'd,
In seas of sad reflection lost,
From horrors still to horrors toss'd,
Reason the vessel leaves to steer,
And gives the helm to mad Despair."
[Illustration: THE RAKE'S PROGRESS, PLATE VII.]
It is pithily and profitably observed by Mr. Hugh Latimer, or some
other venerable writer of his day, that "the direct path from a
gaming-house is unto a prisonne, for the menne who doe neeste
themselves in these pestiferous hauntes, being either fooles or
cheates, be punished: if fooles, by their own undoing; if cheates, by
the biting lash of the beadle, and the durance of their vile bodies."
In the plate before us this remark is verified. Our improvident
spendthrift is now lodged in that dreary receptacle of human
misery--a prison. His countenance exhibits a picture of despair;
the forlorn state of his mind is displayed in every limb, and his
exhausted finances by the turnkey's demand of prison fees not being
answered, and the boy refusing to leave a tankard of porter unless he
is paid for it.
We learn by a letter upon the table, that a play which he sent for
the manager's inspection "will not doe;"[92] and we see by the
enraged countenance of his wife, that she is violently reproaching
him for having deceived and ruined her. To crown this catalogue
of human tortures, the poor girl whom he deserted is come with
her child,--perhaps to comfort him, to alleviate his sorrows, to
soothe his sufferings: but the agonizing view is too much for her
agitated frame; shocked at the prospect of that misery which she
cannot remove, every object swims before her eyes, a film covers the
sight, the blood forsakes her cheeks, her lips assume a pallid hue,
and she sinks to the floor of the prison in temporary death. What a
heart-rending prospect for him by whom this is occasioned! Should
he in the anguish of his soul inquire, "Who is it that hath caused
this?" that inward monitor, which to him must be a perpetual torment,
would reply in the words that Nathan said unto David, "Thou art the
man!" Such an accumulation of woe must shake reason from her throne.
The thin partitions which divide judgment from distraction are thrown
down, the fine fibres of the brain are overstrained, and in the place
of godlike apprehension,
"Chaos and anarchy assume the sway."
That balm of a wounded mind,--the recollection of connubial love,
parental joys, and all the nameless tender sympathies which calm
the troubled soul,--in his blank and blotted memory find no place.
Remorse and self-abhorrence rankle in his bosom! his groans, heaved
from the heart, pierce the air! he is chained! rages! gnashes his
teeth, and tears his quivering flesh! At this dreadful crisis he
sees, or seems to see,
"A fiend, in evil moments ever nigh,
Death in her hand, and frenzy in her eye!
Her eye all red, and sunk! A robe she wore,
With life's calamities embroidered o'er.
From me (she cries), pale wretch, thy comfort claim,
Born of Despair, and Suicide my name."
He attempts to take away that life which is become hateful to him; is
prevented, and removed to a cell more dreadful than even a prison:
"Where Misery and Madness hold their court."
But let us for a moment return to the present scene. The wretched,
squalid inmate who is assisting the fainting female, bears every mark
of being naturalized to the place: out of his pocket hangs a scroll,
on which is inscribed, "A scheme to pay the national debt, by J. L.,
now a prisoner in the Fleet." So attentive was this poor gentleman to
the debts of the nation, that he totally forgot his own. The cries of
the child, and the good-natured attentions of the two women, heighten
the interest, and realize the scene. Over the group are a large pair
of wings, with which some emulator of Dedalus intended to escape from
his confinement; but finding them inadequate to the execution of his
project, has placed them upon the tester of his bed. They would not
exalt him to the regions of air, but they o'er-canopy him on earth.
A chemist in the background, happy in his views, watching the moment
of projection, is not to be disturbed from his dream by anything less
than the fall of the roof or the bursting of his retort; and if his
dream affords him felicity, why should he be awakened? The bed and
gridiron, those poor remnants of our miserable spendthrift's wrecked
property, are brought here as necessary in his degraded situation; on
one he must try to repose his wearied frame, on the other he is to
dress his scanty meal.
The grated gate, secured with tenfold bars of iron, reminds us of
Milton's
"Infernal doors, that on their hinges grate
Harsh thunder!"
The principal figure is wonderfully delineated. Every muscle is
marked, every nerve is unstrung; we see into his very soul. The poor
prisoner who is assisting the fainting woman is ill drawn; the group
of which she is the principal figure is unskilfully contrived: it
forms a round heavy mass. The opposite group, though better, is not
pleasing.