There were more, and more harmful misprints in last ‘Fors’ than usual,
owing to my having driven my printers to despair, after they had made
all the haste they could, by late dubitation concerning the relative
ages of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, which forced me to cut out a sentence
about them, and displace corrected type. But I must submit to all and
sundry such chances of error, for, to prevent them, would involve a
complete final reading of the whole, with one’s eye and mind on the
look-out for letters and stops all along, for which I rarely allow
myself time, and which, had I a month to spare, would yet be a piece of
work ill spent, in merely catching three t’s instead of two in a
“lettter.” The name of the Welsh valley is wrong, too; but I won’t
venture on correction of that, which I feel to be hopeless; the reader
must, however, be kind enough to transfer the ‘and,’ now the sixth word
in the upper line of the note at page 38, and make it the fourth word,
instead; to put a note of interrogation at the end of clause in the
fourth line of page 35, and to insert an s, changing ‘death’ into
‘deaths’ in the third line of page 27;—the death in Sheffield being
that commended to the Episcopic attention of York, and that in London
to the Episcopic attention of London.
And this commendation, the reader will I hope perceive to be made in
sequel to much former talk concerning Bishops, Soldiers, Lawyers, and
Squires;—which, perhaps, he imagined me to have spoken jestingly; or it
may be, in witlessness; or it may be, in voluble incipient insanity.
Admitting myself in no small degree open to such suspicion, I am now
about to re-word some matters which madness would gambol from; and I
beg the reader to observe that any former gambolling on my part,
awkward or untimely as it may have seemed, has been quite as serious,
and intentionally progressive, as Morgiana’s dance round the captain of
the Forty Thieves.
If, then, the reader will look at the analysis of Episcopacy in ‘Sesame
and Lilies,’ the first volume of all my works; next at the chapter on
Episcopacy in ‘Time and Tide;’ and lastly, refer to what he can gather
in the past series of ‘Fors,’ he will find the united gist of all to
be, that Bishops cannot take, much less give, account of men’s souls
unless they first take and give account of their bodies: and that,
therefore, all existing poverty and crime in their dioceses,
discoverable by human observation, must be, when they are Bishops
indeed, clearly known to, and describable by them, or their
subordinates. Of whom the number, and discipline in St. George’s
Company, if by God’s grace it ever take the form I intend, will be
founded on the institution of the same by the first Bishop, or more
correctly Archbishop, whom the Christian church professes to obey. For
what can possibly be the use of printing the Ten Commandments which he
delivered, in gold,—framing them above the cathedral altar,—pronouncing
them in a prelatically sonorous voice,—and arranging the responsive
supplications of the audience to the tune of an organ of the best
manufacture, if the commanding Bishops institute no inquiry whatever
into the physical power of—say this starving shoemaker in Seven
Dials,—to obey such a command as ‘thou shalt not covet’ in the article
of meat; or of his son to honour in any available measure either the
father or mother, of whom the one has departed to seek her separate
living, and the other is lying dead with his head in the fireplace.
Therefore, as I have just said, our Bishops in St. George’s Company
will be constituted in order founded on that appointed by the first
Bishop of Israel, namely, that their Primate, or Supreme Watchman,
shall appoint under him “out of all the people, able men, such as fear
God, men of truth, hating covetousness, and place such over them to be
rulers (or, at the least, observers) of thousands, rulers of hundreds,
rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens;” [13] and that of these
episcopic centurions, captains of fifty, and captains of ten, there
will be required clear account of the individual persons they are set
over;—even a baby being considered as a decimal quantity not to be left
out of their account by the decimal Bishops,—in which episcopacy,
however, it is not improbable that a queenly power may be associated,
with Norman caps for mitres, and for symbol of authority, instead of
the crosier, (or crook, for disentangling lost sheep of souls from
among the brambles,) the broom, for sweeping diligently till they find
lost silver of souls among the dust.
You think I jest, still, do you? Anything but that; only if I took off
the Harlequin’s mask for a moment, you would say I was simply mad. Be
it so, however, for this time.
I simply and most utterly mean, that, so far as my best judgment can
reach, the present Bishops of the English Church, (with only one
exception, known to me,—the Bishop of Natal,) have forfeited and fallen
from their Bishoprics by transgression; and betrayal of their Lord,
first by simony, and secondly, and chiefly, by lying for God with one
mouth, and contending for their own personal interests as a
professional body, as if these were the cause of Christ. And that in
the assembly and Church of future England, there must be, (and shall be
so far as this present body of believers in God and His law now called
together in the name of St. Michael and St. George are concerned,) set
up and consecrated other Bishops; and under them, lower ministering
officers and true “Dogs of the Lord,” who, with stricter inquisition
than ever Dominican, shall take knowledge—not of creeds, but of every
man’s way and means of life; and shall be either able to avouch his
conduct as honourable and just, or bound to impeach it as shameful and
iniquitous, and this down to minute details;—above all, or before all,
particulars of revenue, every companion, retainer, or associate in the
Company’s work being bound to keep such accounts that the position of
his affairs may be completely known to the Bishops at any moment: and
all bankruptcies or treacheries in money matters thus rendered
impossible. Not that direct inquisition will be often necessary; for
when the true nature of Theft, with the other particulars of the Moral
Law, are rightly taught in our schools, grown-up men will no more think
of stealing in business than in burglary. It is merely through the
quite bestial ignorance of the Moral Law in which the English Bishops
have contentedly allowed their flocks to be brought up, that any of the
modern English conditions of trade are possible.
Of course, for such work, I must be able to find what Jethro of Midian
assumes could be found at once in Israel, these “men of truth, hating
covetousness,” and all my friends laugh me to scorn for thinking to
find any such.
Naturally, in a Christian country, it will be difficult enough; but I
know there are still that kind of people among Midianites, Caffres, Red
Indians, and the destitute, afflicted, and tormented, in dens and caves
of the earth, where God has kept them safe from missionaries:—and, as I
above said, even out of the rotten mob of money-begotten traitors
calling itself a ‘people’ in England, I do believe I shall be able to
extricate, by slow degrees, some faithful and true persons, hating
covetousness, and fearing God.
And you will please to observe that this hate and fear are flat
opposites one to the other; so that if a man fear or reverence God, he
must hate covetousness; and if he fear or reverence covetousness, he
must hate God; and there is no intermediate way whatsoever. Nor is it
possible for any man, wilfully rich, to be a God-fearing person; but
only for those who are involuntarily rich, and are making all the haste
they prudently and piously can, to be poor; for money is a strange kind
of seed; scattered, it is poison; but set, it is bread: so that a man
whom God has appointed to be a sower must bear as lightly as he may the
burden of gold and of possessions, till he find the proper places to
sow them in. But persons desiring to be rich, and accumulating riches,
always hate God, and never fear Him; the idol they do fear—(for many of
them are sincerely religious) is an imaginary, or mind-sculptured God
of their own making, to their own liking; a God who allows usury,
delights in strife and contention, and is very particular about
everybody’s going to his synagogues on Sunday.
Indeed, when Adam Smith formally, in the name of the philosophers of
Scotland and England, set up this opposite God, on the hill of cursing
against blessing, Ebal against Gerizim; and declared that all men
‘naturally’ desired their neighbours’ goods; and that in the name of
Covetousness, all the nations of the earth should be blessed,—it is
true, that the half-bred and half-witted Scotchman had not gift enough
in him to carve so much as his own calf’s head on a whinstone with his
own hand; much less to produce a well molten and forged piece of gold,
for old Scottish faith to break its tables of ten commandments at sight
of. But, in leaving to every artless and ignorant boor among us the
power of breeding, in imagination, each his own particular calf, and
placidly worshipping that privately fatted animal; or, perhaps,—made
out of the purest fat of it in molten Tallow instead of molten
Gold,—images, which may be in any inventive moment, misshapen anew to
his mind, Economical Theology has granted its disciples more perfect
and fitting privilege.
From all taint or compliance with such idolatry, the Companions of St.
George have vowed to withdraw themselves; writing, and signing their
submission to, the First and great Commandment, so called by
Christ,—and the Second which is like unto it.
And since on these two hang all the Law and the Prophets, in signing
these two promises they virtually vow obedience to all the Law of which
Christ then spoke; and belief of all the Prophets of which Christ then
spoke. What that law is; who those prophets are;—whether they only
prophesied ‘until John,’ or whether St. Paul’s command to all
Christians living, “Follow after charity, and desire spiritual gifts,
but rather that ye may prophesy,”—is an important little commandment
following the two great ones, I cannot tell you in a single letter,
even if I altogether knew myself. Partly I do know;—and can teach you,
if you will work. No one can teach you anything worth learning but
through manual labour; the very bread of life can only be got out of
the chaff of it by “rubbing it in your hands.”
You vow, then, that you will at least strive to keep both of these
commandments—as far as, what some would call the corruption, but what
in honest people is the weakness, of flesh, permits. If you cannot
watch an hour, because you don’t love Christ enough to care about His
agony, that is your weakness; but if you first sell Him, and then kiss
Him, that is your corruption. I don’t know if I can keep either you or
myself awake; but at least we may put a stop to our selling and
kissing. Be sure that you are serving Christ, till you are tired and
can do no more, for that time: and then, even if you have not breath
enough left to say “Master, Master” with,—He will not mind.
Begin therefore ‘to-day,’—(which you may, in passing, note to be your
present leader’s signal-word or watch-word),—to do good work for
Him—whether you live or die,—(see first promise asked of you, Letter
II., page 21, explained in Letter VII., page 19, etc.,)—and see that
every stroke of this work—be it weak or strong, shall therefore be done
in love of God and your neighbour, and in hatred of covetousness. Which
that you may hate accurately, wisely, and well, it is needful that you
should thoroughly know, when you see it, or feel it. What covetousness
is, therefore, let me beg you at once clearly to understand, by
meditating on these following definitions.
Avarice means the desire to collect money, not goods. A ‘miser’ or
‘miserable person’ desires to collect goods only for the sake of
turning them into money. If you can read French or German, read
Molière’s l’Avare, and then get Gotthelf’s ‘Bernese Stories,’ and read
‘Schnitzfritz,’ with great care.
Avarice is a quite natural passion, and, within due limits, healthy.
The addition of coin to coin, and of cipher to cipher, is a quite
proper pleasure of human life, under due rule; the two stories I ask
you to read are examples of its disease; which arises mainly in strong
and stupid minds, when by evil fortune they have never been led to
think or feel.
Frugality. The disposition to save or spare what we have got, without
any desire to gain more. It is constantly, of course, associated with
avarice; but quite as frequently with generosity, and is often merely
an extreme degree of housewifely habit. Study the character of Alison
Wilson in ‘Old Mortality.’
Covetousness. The desire of possessing more than we have, of any good
thing whatsoever of which we have already enough for our uses, (adding
house to house, and field to field). It is much connected with pride;
but more with restlessness of mind and desire of novelty; much seen in
children who tire of their toys and want new ones. The pleasure in
having things ‘for one’s very own’ is a very subtle element in it. When
I gave away my Loire series of Turner drawings to Oxford, I thought I
was rational enough to enjoy them as much in the University gallery as
in my own study. But not at all! I find I can’t bear to look at them in
the gallery, because they are ‘mine’ no more.
Now, you observe, that your creed of St. George says you believe in the
nobleness of human nature—that is to say, that all our natural
instincts are honourable. Only it is not always easy to say which of
them are natural and which not.
For instance, Adam Smith says that it is ‘natural’ for every person to
covet his neighbour’s goods, and want to change his own for them;
wherein is the origin of Trade, and Universal Salvation.
But God says, ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s goods;’ and God,
who made you, does in that written law express to you His knowledge of
your inner heart, and instruct you in the medicine for it. Therefore on
due consideration, you will find assuredly it is quite unnatural in you
to covet your neighbour’s goods.
Consider, first, of the most precious, the wife. It is natural for you
to think your own the best and prettiest of women; not at all to want
to change her for somebody else’s wife. If you like somebody else’s
better than yours, and this somebody else likes yours better than his,
and you both want to change, you are both in a non-natural condition,
and entirely out of the sphere of happy human love.
Again. It is natural for you to think your own house and garden the
nicest house and garden that ever were. If, as should always be, they
were your father’s before you, and he and you have both taken proper
care of them, they are a treasure to you which no money could buy,—the
leaving them is always pain,—the return to them, a new thrill and
wakening to life. They are a home and place of root to you, as if you
were founded on the ground like its walls, or grew into it like its
flowers. You would no more willingly transplant yourself elsewhere than
the espalier pear-tree of your own graffing would pull itself out by
the roots to climb another trellis. That is the natural mind of a man.
“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house.” You are in an entirely
non-natural state if you do, and, properly speaking, never had a house
in your life.
“Nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant.” It is a ‘natural’ thing
for masters to get proud of those who serve them; and a ‘natural’ thing
for servants to get proud of the masters they serve. (You see above how
Bacon connects the love of the master with the love of the country.)
Nay, if the service has been true, if the master has indeed asked for
what was good for himself, and the servant has done what was good for
his master, they cannot choose but like each other; to have a new
servant, or a new master, would be a mere horror to both of them. I
have got two Davids, and a Kate, that I wouldn’t change for anybody
else’s servants in the world; and I believe the only quarrel they have
with me is that I don’t give them enough to do for me:—this very
morning, I must stop writing, presently, to find the stoutest of the
Davids some business, or he will be miserable all day.
“Nor his ox, nor his ass.” If you have petted both of your own,
properly, from calf and foal, neither these, nor anything else of
yours, will you desire to change for “anything that is his.” Do you
really think I would change my pen for your’s, or my inkstand, or my
arm-chair, or my Gainsborough little girl, or my Turner pass of St.
Gothard? I would see you—— very uncomfortable—first. And that is the
natural state of a human being who has taken anything like proper pains
to make himself comfortable in God’s good world, and get some of the
right good, and true wealth of it.
For, you observe farther, the commandment is only that thou shalt not
covet thy neighbour’s goods. It does not say that you are not to covet
any goods. How could you covet your neighbour’s, if both your neighbour
and you were forbidden to have any? Very far the contrary; in the first
piece of genealogic geography I have given you to learn, the first
descriptive sentence of the land of Havilah is,—“where there is gold;”
and it goes on to say, “And the gold of that land is of the best: there
is bdellium, and the onyx stone.” In the Vulgate, ‘dellium’ and ‘lapis
onichinus.’ In the Septuagint, ‘anthrax,’ and the ‘prase-stone.’
Now, my evangelical friends, here is this book which you call “Word of
God,” and idolatrously print for your little children’s reading and
your own, as if your eternal lives depended on every word of it. And
here, of the very beginning of the world—and the beginning of
property—it professes to tell you something. But what? Have you the
smallest idea what ‘dellium’ is? Might it not as well be bellium, or
gellium, or pellium, or mellium, for all you know about it? Or do you
know what an onyx is? or an anthrax? or a prase? Is not the whole verse
pure and absolute gibberish and gabble to you; and do you expect God
will thank you for talking gibberish and gabble to your children, and
telling them—that is His Word? Partly, however, the verse is only
senseless to you, because you have never had the sense to look at the
stones which God has made. But in still greater measure, it is
necessarily senseless, because it is not the word of God, but an
imperfectly written tradition, which, however, being a most venerable
and precious tradition, you do well to make your children read,
provided also you take pains to explain to them so much sense as there
is in it, and yourselves do reverently obey so much law as there is in
it. Towards which intelligence and obedience, we will now take a step
or two farther from the point of pause in last Fors.
Remember that the three sons of Noah are, respectively,
Shem, the father of the Imaginative and Contemplative races.
Japheth, ,, ,, ,, ,, Practical and Constructive.
Ham, ,, ,, ,, ,, Carnal and Destructive.
The sons of Shem are the perceivers of Splendour;—they see what is best
in visible things, and reach forward to the invisible.
The sons of Japheth are the perceivers of Justice and Duty; and deal
securely with all that is under their hand.
The sons of Ham are the perceivers of Evil or Nakedness; and are slaves
therefore for ever—‘servants of servants’: when in power, therefore,
either helpless or tyrannous.
It is best to remember among the nations descending from the three
great sires, the Persians, as the sons of Shem; Greeks, as the sons of
Japheth; Assyrians, as the sons of Ham. The Jewish captivity to the
Assyrian then takes its perfect meaning.
This month, therefore, take the first descendant of Ham—Cush; and learn
the following verses of Gen. x.:—
“And Cush begat Nimrod; he began to be a mighty one in the earth.
“He was a mighty hunter before the Lord.
“And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel in the land of Shinar.
“Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh.”
These verses will become in future a centre of thought to you,
whereupon you may gather, as on one root-germ, what you farther learn
of the influence of hunting on the minds of men; and of the sources of
Assyrian power, and causes of the Assyrian ruin in Birs Nemroud, out of
which you have had those hunting-pieces brought to the narrow passage
in the British Museum.
For further subject of thought, this month, read of Carey’s Dante, the
31st canto of the ‘Inferno,’ with extreme care; and for your current
writing lesson, copy these lines of Italics, which I have printed in as
close resemblance as I can to the Italics of the Aldine edition of
1502.
P ero che come in su la cerchia tonda
Monte reggion di torri si corona,
Cosi la proda che’l pozzo circonda
T orregiavan di mezza la persona
Gli orribili giganti; cui minaccia
Giove del cielo anchora, quando tona.
The putting of the capital letters that begin the stanza, outside, is a
remaining habit of the scribes who wrote for the illuminator, and
indicated the letter to be enlarged with ornament at the side of the
text.
Of these larger capitals, the A given in last Fors, is of a Byzantine
Greek school, in which though there is much quiet grace, there is no
elasticity or force in the lines. They are always languid, and without
spring or evidence of nervous force in the hand. They are not,
therefore, perfect models for English writers, though they are useful
as exercises in tranquillity of line: and I chose for that and many
more reasons, that letter and sentence for our first exercise. But my
letter B is to be given from the Northern Schools; and will have spring
and power in it, which you cannot at once hope to imitate in a complete
letter; and must be prepared for by copying a mere incipient fragment
or flourish of ornamental line.
This line has been drawn for you, very leisurely indeed, by one of the
gentlest of the animals living on our English south downs,—and yet,
quietly done as it is, being the result of wholly consistent energy, it
is a line which a Byzantine Greek would never have produced in writing,
nor even in architecture, except when he was imitating an Ionian one.
You are to draw a horizontal line through the point in the centre of
this figure. Then measure the breadth of the six coils on each side,
counting from the centre backwards and forwards.
Then draw a vertical line through centre, and measure the breadths
above and below. Then draw the complete curve lightly through these
fixed points—alter it to your mind—and then paint over it the
determined line, with any dark colour and a camel’s hair brush.
The difficulty is to draw it so that there shall not be the smallest
portion of it which is not approaching the inner curve, and narrowing
the intermediate space. And you will find no trick of compasses will
draw it. Choose any number of centres you like, and still I defy you to
draw the curve mechanically; it can be done only as I have done it
myself, with the free hand, correcting it and correcting till I got it
right. [14]
When you have succeeded, to any moderate extent, in doing this, your
hand will have begun to receive the power of executing a serene and
dignified flourish instead of a vulgar ‘dash.’ And you may also begin
to understand that the word ‘flourish’ itself, as applied to writing,
means the springing of its lines into floral exuberance,—therefore,
strong procession and growth, which must be in a spiral line, for the
stems of plants are always spirals. (See ‘Proserpina,’ Number IV.); and
that this bursting out into foliage, in calm swiftness, is a totally
different action from the impudent and useless sweeps and loops of
vulgar writing.
Further. As your eyes get accustomed to the freely drawn, unmechanical,
immeasurable line, you will be able, if you care about architecture, to
know a Greek Ionic volute from a vulgar day-labourer’s copy of it—done
with compasses and calculations. And you will know how the volute of
the throne of Lippi’s Madonna, (though that is studied from the concave
side of the shell) shows him to have been Etruscan-bred; and you will
begin to see what his power was; and to laugh at the books of our
miserable modern builders, filled with elaborate devices for drawing
volutes with bits of circles:—the wretches might as well try to draw
the lips of Sir Joshua’s Circe,—or the smile in her cat’s triangular
eyes, in that manner. Only in Eleutheria of soul and body, shall any
human creature draw so much as one rightly bending line.
Any human creature, I say. Little freedom, either of body or soul, had
the poor architect who drew this our first model line for us; and yet
and yet, simple as his life and labours may be, it will take our best
wits to understand them. I find myself, at present, without any
startpoint for attempt to understand them. I found the downs near
Arundel, being out on them in a sunny day just after Christmas,
sprinkled all over with their pretty white shells, (none larger than a
sixpence, my drawing being increased as about seven to one, in line, or
fifty to one, square,) and all empty, unless perchance some spectral
remnant of their dead masters remain inside;—and I can’t answer a
single question I ask myself about them. I see they most of them have
six whirls, or whorls. Had they six when they were young? have they
never more when they are old? Certainly some shells have periodical
passion of progress—and variously decorative stops and rests; but these
little white continuities down to this woful time of their Christmas
emptiness, seem to have deduced their spiral caves in peace.
But it’s of no use to waste time in ‘thinking.’ I shall go and ask some
pupil of my dear old friend Dr. Gray at the British Museum, and rejoice
myself with a glance at the volutes of the Erectheium—fair home of
Athenian thought.