Quod me non movet æstimatione:
Verum est μνημόστυνον mei sodalis.
CATULL. xii.
(_Translation_.)—It interests not by any conceit of its value; but it
is a remembrance of my honoured friend.
THE philosophic ruler, who secured the favours of fortune by seeking
wisdom and knowledge in preference to them, has pathetically
observed—“The heart knoweth its own bitterness; and there is a joy in
which the stranger intermeddleth not.” A simple question founded on a
trite proverb, with a discursive answer to it, would scarcely suggest to
an indifferent person any other notion than that of a mind at ease,
amusing itself with its own activity. Once before (I believe about this
time last year), I had taken up the old memorandum book, from which I
transcribed the preceding essay, and they had then attracted my notice by
the name of the illustrious chemist mentioned in the last illustration.
Exasperated by the base and cowardly attempt that had been made to
detract from the honours due to his astonishing genius, I had slightly
altered the concluding sentences, substituting the more recent for his
earlier discoveries; and without the most distant intention of publishing
what I then wrote, I had expressed my own convictions for the
gratification of my own feelings, and finished by tranquilly paraphrasing
into a chemical allegory the Homeric adventure of Menelaus with Proteus.
Oh! with what different feelings, with what a sharp and sudden emotion
did I re-peruse the same question yester-morning, having by accident
opened the book at the page upon which it was written. I was moved; for
it was Admiral Sir Alexander Ball who first proposed the question to me,
and the particular satisfaction which he expressed had occasioned me to
note down the substance of my reply. I was moved; because to this
conversation I was indebted for the friendship and confidence with which
he afterwards honoured me, and because it recalled the memory of one of
the most delightful mornings I ever passed; when, as we were riding
together, the same person related to me the principal events of his own
life, and introduced them by adverting to this conversation. It recalled
too the deep impression left on my mind by that narrative—the impression
that I had never known any analogous instance, in which a man so
successful had been so little indebted to fortune, or lucky accidents, or
so exclusively both the architect and builder of his own success. The
sum of his history may be comprised in this one sentence—_Hæc_, _sab
numine_, _nobismet fecimas_, _sapientia duce_, _fortune permittente_.
(_i.e._ These things under God, we have done for ourselves, through the
guidance of wisdom, and with the permission of fortune.) Luck gave him
nothing: in her most generous moods, she only worked with him as with a
friend, not for him as for a fondling; but more often she simply stood
neuter, and suffered him to work for himself. Ah! how could I be
otherwise than affected by whatever reminded me of that daily and
familiar intercourse with him, which made the fifteen months from May,
1804, to October, 1805, in many respects the most memorable and
instructive period of my life? Ah! how could I be otherwise than most
deeply affected, when there was still lying on my table the paper which
the day before had conveyed to me the unexpected and most awful tidings
of this man’s death? his death in the fulness of all his powers, in the
rich autumn of ripe yet undecaying manhood! I once knew a lady who,
after the loss of a lovely child, continued for several days in a state
of seeming indifference, the weather at the same time, as if in unison
with her, being calm, though gloomy; till one morning a burst of sunshine
breaking in upon her, and suddenly lighting up the room where she was
sitting, she dissolved at once into tears, and wept passionately. In no
very dissimilar manner did the sudden gleam of recollection at the sight
of this memorandum act on myself. I had been stunned by the
intelligence, as by an outward blow, till this trifling incident startled
and disentranced me; the sudden pang shivered through my whole frame; and
if I repressed the outward shows of sorrow, it was by force that I
repressed them, and because it is not by tears that I ought to mourn for
the loss of Sir Alexander Ball.
He was a man above his age; but for that very reason the age has the more
need to have the master-features of his character portrayed and
preserved. This I feel it my duty to attempt, and this alone; for having
received neither instructions nor permission from the family of the
deceased, I cannot think myself allowed to enter into the particulars of
his private history, strikingly as many of them would illustrate the
elements and composition of his mind. For he was indeed a living
confutation of the assertion attributed to the Prince of Condé, that no
man appeared great to his _valet de chambre_—a saying which, I suspect,
owes its currency less to its truth than to the envy of mankind, and the
misapplication of the word great, to actions unconnected with reason and
free will. It will be sufficient for my purpose to observe that the
purity and strict propriety of his conduct, which precluded rather than
silenced calumny, the evenness of his temper, and his attentive and
affectionate manners in private life, greatly aided and increased his
public utility; and, if it should please Providence that a portion of his
spirit should descend with his mantle, the virtues of Sir Alexander Ball,
as a master, a husband, and a parent, will form a no less remarkable
epoch in the moral history of the Maltese than his wisdom, as a governor,
has made in that of their outward circumstances. That the private and
personal qualities of a first magistrate should have political effects
will appear strange to no reflecting Englishman, who has attended to the
workings of men’s minds during the first ferment of revolutionary
principles, and must therefore have witnessed the influence of our own
sovereign’s domestic character in counteracting them. But in Malta there
were circumstances which rendered such an example peculiarly requisite
and beneficent. The very existence for so many generations of an order
of lay celibates in that island, who abandoned even the outward shows of
an adherence to their vow of chastity, must have had pernicious effects
on the morals of the inhabitants. But when it is considered too that the
Knights of Malta had been for the last fifty years or more a set of
useless idlers, generally illiterate, for they thought literature no part
of a soldier’s excellence; and yet effeminate, for they were soldiers in
name only; when it is considered that they were, moreover, all of them
aliens, who looked upon themselves not merely as of a superior rank to
the native nobles, but as beings of a different race (I had almost said
species) from the Maltese collectively; and finally, that these men
possessed exclusively the government of the island; it may be safely
concluded that they were little better than a perpetual influenza,
relaxing and diseasing the hearts of all the families within their sphere
of influence. Hence the peasantry, who fortunately were below their
reach, notwithstanding the more than childish ignorance in which they
were kept by their priests, yet compared with the middle and higher
classes, were both in mind and body as ordinary men compared with dwarfs.
Every respectable family had some one knight for their patron, as a
matter of course; and to him the honour of a sister or a daughter was
sacrificed, equally as a matter of course. But why should I thus
disguise the truth? Alas! in nine instances out of ten, this patron was
the common paramour of every female in the family. Were I composing a
state memorial I should abstain from all allusion to moral good or evil,
as not having now first to learn, that with diplomatists and with
practical statesmen of every denomination, it would preclude all
attention to its other contents, and have no result but that of securing
for its author’s name the official private mark of exclusion or
dismission, as a weak or suspicions person. But among those for whom I
am now writing, there are, I trust, many who will think it not the
feeblest reason for rejoicing in our possession of Malta, and not the
least worthy motive for wishing its retention, that one source of human
misery and corruption has been dried up. Such persons will hear the name
of Sir Alexander Ball with additional reverence, as of one who has made
the protection of Great Britain a double blessing to the Maltese, and
broken “_the bonds of iniquity_” as well as unlocked the fetters of
political oppression.
When we are praising the departed by our own firesides, we dwell most
fondly on those qualities which had won our personal affection, and which
sharpen our individual regrets. But when impelled by a loftier and more
meditative sorrow, we would raise a public monument to their memory, we
praise them appropriately when we relate their actions faithfully; and
thus preserving their example for the imitation of the living alleviate
the loss, while we demonstrate its magnitude. My funeral eulogy of Sir
Alexander Ball must therefore he a narrative of his life; and this friend
of mankind will be defrauded of honour in proportion as that narrative is
deficient and fragmentary. It shall, however, be as complete as my
information enables, and as prudence and a proper respect for the
feelings of the living permit me to render it. His fame (I adopt the
words of our elder writers) is so great throughout the world that he
stands in no need of an encomium; and yet his worth is much greater these
his fame. It is impossible not to speak great things of him, and yet it
will be very difficult to speak what he deserves. But custom requires
that something should be said; it is a duty and a debt which we owe to
ourselves and to mankind, not less than to his memory; and I hope his
great soul, if it hath any knowledge of what is done here below, will not
be offended at the smallness even of my offering.
Ah, how little, when among the subjects of The Friend I promised
“Characters met with in Real Life,” did I anticipate the sad event, which
compels one to weave on a cypress branch those sprays of laurel which I
had destined for his bust, not his monument! He lived as we should all
live; and, I doubt not, left the world as we should all wish to leave it.
Such is the power of dispensing blessings, which Providence has attached
to the truly great and good, that they cannot even die without advantage
to their fellow-creatures; for death consecrates their example, and the
wisdom, which might have been slighted at the council-table, becomes
oracular from the shrine. Those rare excellences, which make our grief
poignant, make it likewise profitable; and the tears which wise men shed
for the departure of the wise, are among those that are preserved in
heaven. It is the fervent aspiration of my spirit, that I may so perform
the task which private gratitude and public duty impose on me, that “as
God hath cut this tree of paradise down from its seat of earth, the dead
trunk may yet support a part of the declining temple, or at least serve
to kindle the fire on the altar.”