Bound to suffer persecution
And martyrdom with resolution,
T'oppose himself against the hate
And vengeance of the incensed state.--Hudibras.
Born of respectable though not wealthy parents, John Wolfe was one of
those fiery and daring spirits which, previous to some mighty
revolution, Fate seems to scatter over various parts of the earth,
even those removed from the predestined explosion,--heralds of the
events in which they are fitted though not fated to be actors. The
period at which he is presented to the reader was one considerably
prior to that French Revolution so much debated and so little
understood. But some such event, though not foreseen by the common,
had been already foreboded by the more enlightened, eye; and Wolfe,
from a protracted residence in France among the most discontented of
its freer spirits, had brought hope to that burning enthusiasm which
had long made the pervading passion of his existence.
Bold to ferocity, generous in devotion to folly in self-sacrifice,
unflinching in his tenets to a degree which rendered their ardour
ineffectual to all times, because utterly inapplicable to the present,
Wolfe was one of those zealots whose very virtues have the semblance
of vice, and whose very capacities for danger become harmless from the
rashness of their excess.
It was not among the philosophers and reasoners of France that Wolfe
had drawn strength to his opinions: whatever such companions might
have done to his tenets, they would at least have moderated his
actions. The philosopher may aid or expedite a change; but never does
the philosopher in any age or of any sect countenance a crime. But of
philosophers Wolfe knew little, and probably despised them for their
temperance: it was among fanatics--ignorant, but imaginative--that he
had strengthened the love without comprehending the nature of
republicanism. Like Lucian's painter, whose flattery portrayed the
one-eyed prince in profile, he viewed only that side of the question
in which there was no defect, and gave beauty to the whole by
concealing the half. Thus, though on his return to England herding
with the common class of his reforming brethren, Wolfe possessed many
peculiarities and distinctions of character which, in rendering him
strikingly adapted to the purpose of the novelist, must serve as a
caution to the reader not to judge of the class by the individual.
With a class of Republicans in England there was a strong tendency to
support their cause by reasoning. With Wolfe, whose mind was little
wedded to logic, all was the offspring of turbulent feelings, which,
in rejecting argument, substituted declamation for syllogism. This
effected a powerful and irreconcilable distinction between Wolfe and
the better part of his comrades; for the habits of cool reasoning,
whether true or false, are little likely to bias the mind towards
those crimes to which Wolfe's unregulated emotions might possibly urge
him, and give to the characters to which they are a sort of common
denominator something of method and much of similarity. But the
feelings--those orators which allow no calculation and baffle the
tameness of comparison--rendered Wolfe alone, unique, eccentric in
opinion or action, whether of vice or virtue.
Private ties frequently moderate the ardour of our public enthusiasm.
Wolfe had none. His nearest relation was Warner, and it may readily
be supposed that with the pensive and contemplative artist he had very
little in common. He had never married, nor had ever seemed to wander
from his stern and sterile path, in the most transient pursuit of the
pleasures of sense. Inflexibly honest, rigidly austere,--in his moral
character his bitterest enemies could detect no flaw,--poor, even to
indigence, he had invariably refused all overtures of the government;
thrice imprisoned and heavily fined for his doctrines, no fear of a
future, no remembrance of the past punishment could ever silence his
bitter eloquence or moderate the passion of his distempered zeal;
kindly, though rude, his scanty means were ever shared by the less
honest and disinterested followers of his faith; and he had been known
for days to deprive himself of food, and for nights of shelter, for
the purpose of yielding food and shelter to another.
Such was the man doomed to forsake, through a long and wasted life,
every substantial blessing, in pursuit of a shadowy good; with the
warmest benevolence in his heart, to relinquish private affections,
and to brood even to madness over public offences; to sacrifice
everything in a generous though erring devotion for that freedom whose
cause, instead of promoting, he was calculated to retard; and, while
he believed himself the martyr of a high and uncompromising virtue, to
close his career with the greatest of human crimes.