Transcribed from the 1913 Hodder and Stoughton edition by David Price,
email ccx074@pglaf.org
[Picture: Woman in church]
THE REVOLUTION IN
TANNER’S LANE
BY
MARK RUTHERFORD
[Picture: Decorative graphic]
HODDER & STOUGHTON’S
SEVENPENNY LIBRARY
* * * * *
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE WORLD OUTSIDE 9
II. OUTSIDE PIKE STREET 24
III. THE THEATRE 33
IV. A FRIEND OF THE PEOPLE 41
V. THE HORIZON WIDENS 46
VI. TEA À LA MODE 58
VII. JEPHTHAH 66
VIII. UNCONVENTIONAL JUSTICE 75
IX. A STRAIN ON THE CABLE 83
X. DISINTEGRATION BY DEGREES 97
XI. POLITICS AND PAULINE 107
XII. ONE BODY AND ONE SPIRIT 115
XIII. TO THE GREEKS FOOLISHNESS 120
XIV. THE SCHOOL OF ADVERSITY: THE SIXTH FORM 134
THEREOF
XV. END OF THE BEGINNING 148
XVI. COWFOLD 155
XVII. WHEN WILT THOU ARISE OUT OF THY SLEEP? YET A 168
LITTLE SLEEP
XVIII. A RELIGIOUS PICNIC 175
XIX. “THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS LIKE UNTO LEAVEN” 182
XX. THE REVEREND THOMAS BROAD’S EXPOSITION OF 188
ROMANS VIII. 7
XXI. THE WISDOM OF THE SERPENT 195
XXII. THE ORACLE WARNS—AFTER THE EVENT 199
XXIII. FURTHER DEVELOPMENT 208
XXIV. “I CAME NOT TO SEND PEACE, BUT A SWORD” 215
XXV. “AND A MAN’S FOES SHALL BE THEY OF HIS OWN 231
HOUSEHOLD”
XXVI. A PROFESSIONAL CONSULTATION 239
XXVII. MR. BROAD’S LAST CHURCH MEETING—LATIMER CHAPEL 247
“Per various casus, per tot discrimina rerum,
Tendimus in Latium; sedes ubi fata quietas
Ostendunt. Illic fas regna resurgere Trojæ.
Durate, et vosmet rebus servate secundis.”
—_Virgil_.
“By diuers casis, sere parrellis and sufferance
Unto Itaill we ettill (aim) quhare destanye
Has schap (shaped) for vs ane rest and quiet harbrye
Predestinatis thare Troye sall ryse agane.
Be stout on prosper fortoun to remane.”
—_Gwain Douglas’s translation_.
CHAPTER I
THE WORLD OUTSIDE
THE 20th April 1814, an almost cloudless, perfectly sunny day, saw all
London astir. On that day Lewis the Eighteenth was to come from Hartwell
in triumph, summoned by France to the throne of his ancestors. London
had not enjoyed too much gaiety that year. It was the year of the great
frost. Nothing like it had been known in the memory of man. In the West
of England, where snow is rare, roads were impassable and mails could not
be delivered. Four dead men were dug out of a deep drift about ten miles
west of Exeter. Even at Plymouth, close to the soft south-western ocean,
the average depth of the fall was twenty inches, and there was no other
way of getting eastwards than by pack-horses. The Great North Road was
completely blocked, and there was a barricade over it near Godmanchester
of from six to ten feet high. The Oxford coach was buried. Some
passengers inside were rescued with great difficulty, and their lives
were barely saved. The Solway Firth at Workington resembled the Arctic
Sea, and the Thames was so completely frozen over between Blackfriars and
London Bridges that people were able, not only to walk across, but to
erect booths on the ice. Coals, of course, rose to famine prices in
London, as it was then dependent solely upon water-carriage for its
supply. The Father of his people, the Prince Regent, was much moved by
the general distress of “a large and meritorious class of industrious
persons,” as he called them, and issued a circular to all Lords
Lieutenant ordering them to provide all practicable means of removing
obstructions from the highways.
However, on this 20th April the London mob forgot the frost, forgot the
quartern loaf and the national debt, and prepared for a holiday, inspired
thereto, not so much by Lewis the Eighteenth as by the warmth and
brilliant sky. There are two factors in all human bliss—an object and
the subject. The object may be a trifle, but the condition of the
subject is most important. Turn a man out with his digestion in perfect
order, with the spring in the air and in his veins, and he will cheer
anything, any Lewis, Lord Liverpool, dog, cat, or rat who may cross his
path. Not that this is intended as a sufficient explanation of the
Bourbon reception. Far from it; but it does mitigate it a trifle. At
eleven o’clock in the forenoon two troops of the Oxford Blues drew up at
Kilburn turnpike to await the sacred arrival. The Prince Regent himself
went as far as Stanmore to meet his August Brother. When the August
Brother reached the village, the excited inhabitants thereof took the
horses out of the carriage and drew him through the street. The Prince,
standing at the door of the principal inn, was in readiness to salute
him, and this he did by embracing him! There have been some remarkable
embraces in history. Joseph fell on Israel’s neck, and Israel said unto
Joseph, “Now let me die, since I have seen thy face:” Paul, after
preaching at Ephesus, calling the elders of the Church to witness that,
for the space of three years, he ceased not to warn every one night and
day with tears, kneeled down and prayed, so that they all wept sore and
fell on his neck: Romeo took a last embrace of Juliet in the vault, and
sealed the doors of breath with a righteous kiss: Penelope embraced
Ulysses, who was welcome to her as land is welcome to shipwrecked
swimmers escaping from the grey seawater—there have, we say, been some
remarkable embraces on this earth since time began, but none more
remarkable than that on the steps of the Abercorn Arms. The Divine
couple then drove in solemn procession to town. From the park corner for
three-quarters of a mile or so was a line of private carriages, filled
with most fashionable people, the ladies all standing on the seats. The
French Royalist flag waved everywhere. All along the Kilburn Road, then
thinly lined with houses, it was triumphant, and even the trees were
decorated with it. Arriving by way of Cumberland Gate at Piccadilly,
Lewis was escorted, amidst uproarious rejoicing, to Grillon’s Hotel in
Albemarle Street. There, in reply to an address from the Prince, he
“ascribed, under Providence,” to his Royal Highness and the British
people his present blissful condition; and soon afterwards, being
extremely tired, went to bed. This was on a Wednesday. The next day,
Thursday, His Sacred Majesty, or Most Christian Majesty, as he was then
called, was solemnly made a Knight of the Garter, the Bishops of
Salisbury and Winchester assisting. On Friday he received the
corporation of London, and on Saturday the 23rd he prepared to take his
departure. There was a great crowd in the street when he came out of the
hotel and immense applause; the mob crying out, “God bless your Majesty!”
as if they owed him all they had, and even their lives. It was very
touching, people thought at the time, and so it was. Is there anything
more touching than the waste of human loyalty and love? As we read the
history of the Highlands or a story of Jacobite loyalty such as that of
Cooper’s Admiral Bluewater, dear to boys, we sadden that destiny should
decree that in a world in which piety is not too plentiful it should run
so pitifully to waste, and that men and women should weep hot tears and
break their hearts over bran-stuffing and wax.
Amidst the hooraying multitude that Saturday April morning was one man at
least, Zachariah Coleman by name, who did not hooray, and did not lift
his hat even when the Sacred Majesty appeared on the hotel steps. He was
a smallish, thin-faced, lean creature in workman’s clothes; his
complexion was white, blanched by office air, and his hands were black
with printer’s ink.
“Off with your tile, you b—y Corsican!” exclaimed a roaring voice behind
him. Zachariah turned round, and found the request came from a drayman
weighing about eighteen stone; but the tile was not removed. In an
instant it was sent flying to the other side of the road, where it was
trodden on, picked up, and passed forward in the air amidst laughter and
jeers, till it was finally lost.
Zachariah was not pugnacious, and could not very well be so in the
presence of his huge antagonist; but he was no coward, and not seeing for
the moment that his hat had hopelessly gone, he turned round savagely,
and laying hold of the drayman, said:
“You ruffian, give it me back; if I am a Corsican, are you an
Englishman?”
“Take that for your b—y beaver,” said the other, and dealt him a blow
with the fist right in his face, which staggered and stupefied him,
covering him with blood.
The bystanders, observing the disparity between the two men, instantly
took Zachariah’s side, and called out “Shame, shame!” Nor did they
confine themselves to ejaculations, for a young fellow of about eight and
twenty, well dressed, with a bottle-green coat of broadcloth, buttoned
close, stepped up to the drayman.
“Knock my tile off, beer-barrel.”
The drayman instantly responded by a clutch at it, but before he could
touch it he had an awful cut across the lips, delivered with such
scientific accuracy from the left shoulder that it was clear it came from
a disciple of Jackson or Tom Cribb. The crowd now became intensely
delighted and excited, and a cry of “A ring, a ring!” was raised. The
drayman, blind with rage, let out with his right arm with force enough to
fell an ox, but the stroke was most artistically parried, and the
response was another fearful gash over the right eye. By this time the
patriot had had enough, and declined to continue the contest. His foe,
too, seemed to have no desire for any further display of his powers, and
retired smilingly, edging his way to the pavement, where he found poor
Zachariah almost helpless.
“Holloa, my republican friend, d—n it, that’s a nasty lick you’ve got,
and from one of the people too; that makes it harder to bear, eh? Never
mind, he’s worse off than you are.”
Zachariah thanked him as well as he could for defending him.
“Not a word; haven’t got a scratch myself. Come along with me;” and he
dragged him along Piccadilly into a public-house in Swallow Street, where
apparently he was well known. Water was called for; Zachariah was
sponged, the wound strapped up, some brandy given him, and the stranger,
ordering a hackney coach, told the driver to take the gentleman home.
“Wait a bit,” he called, as the coach drove off. “You may feel faint;
I’ll go home with you,” and in a moment he was by Zachariah’s side. The
coach found its way slowly through the streets to some lodgings in
Clerkenwell. It was well the stranger did go, for his companion on
arrival was hardly able to crawl upstairs to give a coherent account to
his wife of what had happened.
Zachariah Coleman, working man, printer, was in April 1814 about thirty
years old. He was employed in a jobbing office in the city, where he was
compositor and pressman as well. He had been married in January 1814 to
a woman a year younger than himself, who attended the meeting-house at
Hackney, whither he went on the Sunday. He was a Dissenter in religion,
and a fierce Radical in politics, as many of the Dissenters in that day
were. He was not a ranter or revivalist, but what was called a moderate
Calvinist; that is to say, he held to Calvinism as his undoubted creed,
but when it came to the push in actual practice he modified it. In this
respect he was inconsistent; but who is there who is not? His theology
probably had no more gaps in it than that of the latest and most
enlightened preacher who denies miracles and affirms the Universal
Benevolence. His present biographer, from intimate acquaintance with the
class to which Zachariah belonged, takes this opportunity to protest
against the general assumption that the Calvinists of that day, or of any
day, arrived at their belief by putting out their eyes and accepting
blindly the authority of St. Paul or anybody else. It may be questioned,
indeed, whether any religious body has ever stood so distinctly upon the
understanding and has used its intellect with such rigorous activity, as
the Puritans, from whom Zachariah was a genuine descendant. Even if
Calvinism had been carved on tables of stone and handed down from heaven
by the Almighty Hand, it would not have lived if it had not have found to
agree more or less with the facts, and it was because it was a deduction
from what nobody can help seeing that it was so vital, the Epistle to the
Romans serving as the inspired confirmation of an experience. Zachariah
was a great reader of all kinds of books—a lover especially of Bunyan and
Milton; as logical in his politics as in his religion; and he defended
the execution of Charles the First on the ground that the people had just
as much right to put a king to death as a judge had to order the
execution of any other criminal.
The courtship between Zachariah and the lady who became his wife had been
short, for there could be no mistake, as they had known one another so
long. She was black-haired, with a perfectly oval face, always dressed
with the most scrupulous neatness, and with a certain plain tightness
which Zachariah admired. She had exquisitely white and perfect teeth, a
pale, clear complexion, and the reputation of being a most sensible
woman. She was not a beauty, but she was good-looking; the weak points
in her face being her eyes, which were mere inexpressive optic organs,
and her mouth, which, when shut, seemed too much shut, just as if it were
compressed by an effort of the will or by a spring. These, however,
Zachariah thought minor matters, if, indeed, he ever noticed them. “The
great thing was, that she was”—sometimes this and sometimes that—and so
it was settled. Unfortunately in marriage it is so difficult to be sure
of what the great thing is, and what the little thing is, the little
thing becoming so frightfully big afterwards! Theologically, Mrs.
Zachariah was as strict as her husband, and more so, as far as outward
observance went, for her strictness was not tempered by those secular
interests which to him were so dear. She read little or nothing—nothing,
indeed, on week-days, and even the _Morning Chronicle_, which Zachariah
occasionally borrowed, was folded up when he had done with it and put
under the tea-caddy till it was returned. On Sundays she took up a book
in the afternoon, but she carefully prepared herself for the operation as
though it were a sacramental service. When the dinner-things were washed
up, when the hearth was swept and the kettle on the fire, having put on
her best Sunday dress, it was her custom to go to the window, always to
the window, never to the fire—where she would open Boston’s _Fourfold
State_ and hold it up in front of her with both hands. This, however,
did not last long, for on the arrival of the milkman the volume was
replaced, and it was necessary to make preparations for tea.
The hackney coach drove up to the house in Rosoman Street where Zachariah
dwelt on the first floor. He was too weak to go upstairs by himself, and
he and his friend therefore walked into the front room together. It was
in complete order, although it was so early in the morning. Everything
was dusted; even the lower fire-bar had not a speck of ashes on it, and
on the hob already was a saucepan in which Mrs. Coleman proposed to cook
the one o’clock dinner. On the walls were portraits of Sir Francis
Burdett, Major Cartwright, and the mezzotint engraving of Sadler’s
Bunyan. Two black silhouettes—one of Zachariah and the other of his
wife—were suspended on each side of the mantelpiece.
Mrs. Coleman was busily engaged in the bedroom, but hearing the
footsteps, she immediately entered. She was slightly taken aback at
seeing Zachariah in such a plight, and uttered a little scream, but the
bottle-green stranger, making her a profound bow, arrested her.
“Pardon me, my dear madam, there is nothing seriously the matter. Your
husband has had the misfortune to be the victim of a most blackguardly
assault; but I am sure that, under your care, he will be all right in a
day or two; and, with your permission, I take my leave.”
Mrs. Coleman was irritated. The first emotion was not sympathy.
Absolutely the first was annoyance at being seen without proper notice by
such a fine-looking gentleman. She had, however, no real cause for
vexation under this head. She had tied a white handkerchief over her
hair, fastening it under her chin, as her manner was when doing her
morning’s work, and she had on her white apron; but she was trim and
faultless, and the white handkerchief did but set off her black hair and
marble complexion. Her second emotion, too, was not sympathy. Zachariah
was at home at the wrong time. Her ordinary household arrangements were
upset. He might possibly be ill, and then there would be a mess and
confusion. The thought of sickness was intolerable to her, because it
“put everything out.” Rising up at the back of these two emotions came,
haltingly, a third when she looked her husband in the face. She could
not help it, and she did really pity him.
“I am sure it is very kind of you,” she replied.
Zachariah had as yet spoken no word, nor had she moved towards him. The
stranger was departing.
“Stop!” cried Zachariah, “you have not told me your name. I am too faint
to say how much I owe you for your protection and kindness.”
“Nonsense. My name is Maitland—Major Maitland, 1A Albany. Good-bye.”
He was at the top of the stairs, when he turned round, and looking at
Mrs. Coleman, observed musingly, “I think I’ll send my doctor, and, if
you will permit me, will call in a day or two.”
She thanked him; he took her hand, politely pressed it to his lips, and
rode off in the coach which had been waiting for him.
“What has happened, my dear? Tell me all about it,” she inquired as she
went back into the parlour, with just the least colour on her cheek, and
perceptibly a little happier than she was five minutes before. She did
nothing more than put her hand on his shoulder, but he brightened
immediately. He told her the tale, and when it was over desired to lie
down and to have some tea.
Emotion number two returned to Mrs. Coleman immediately. Tea at that
time, the things having been all cleared away and washed up! She did
not, however, like openly to object, but she did go so far as to suggest
that perhaps cold water would be better, as there might be inflammation.
Zachariah, although he was accustomed to give way, begged for tea; and it
was made ready, but not with water boiled there. She would not again put
the copper kettle on the fire, as it was just cleaned, but she asked to
be allowed to use that which belonged to the neighbour downstairs who
kept the shop. The tea-things were replaced when Zachariah had finished,
and his wife returned to her duties, leaving him sitting in the
straight-backed Windsor-chair, looking into the grate and feeling very
miserable.
In the afternoon Rosoman Street was startled to see a grand carriage stop
at Zachariah’s door, and out stepped the grand doctor, who, after some
little hesitation and inquiry, made his way upstairs. Having examined
our friend, he pronounced him free from all mortal or even serious
injury—it was a case of contusion and shaken nerves, which required a
little alterative medicine, and on the day after to-morrow the patient,
although bruised and sore in the mouth, might go back to work.
The next morning he was better, but nevertheless he was depressed. It
was now three months since his wedding-day, and the pomp and beauty of
the sunrise, gold and scarlet bars with intermediate lakes of softest
blue, had been obscured by leaden clouds, which showed no break and let
loose a cold drizzling rain. How was it? He often asked himself that
question, but could obtain no satisfactory answer. Had anything changed?
Was his wife anything which he did not know her to be three months ago?
Certainly not. He could not accuse her of passing herself off upon him
with false pretences. What she had always represented herself to be she
was now. There she stood precisely as she stood twelve months ago, when
he asked her to become his wife, and he thought when she said “yes” that
no man was more blessed than he. It was, he feared, true he did not love
her, nor she him; but why could not they have found that out before?
What a cruel destiny was this which drew a veil before his eyes and led
him blindfold over the precipice! He at first thought, when his joy
began to ebb in February or March, that it would rise again, and that he
would see matters in a different light; but the spring was here, and the
tide had not turned. It never would turn now, and he became at last
aware of the sad truth—the saddest a man can know—that he had missed the
great delight of existence. His chance had come, and had gone.
Henceforth all that was said and sung about love and home would find no
echo in him. He was paralysed, dead in half of his soul, and would have
to exist with the other half as well he could. He had done no wrong: he
had done his best; he had not sold himself to the flesh or the devil,
and, Calvinist as he was, he was tempted at times to question the justice
of such a punishment. If he put his finger in the fire and got burnt, he
was able to bow to the wisdom which taught him in that plain way that he
was not to put his finger in the fire. But wherein lay the beneficence
of visiting a simple mistake—one which he could not avoid—with a curse
worse than the Jewish curse of excommunication—“the anathema wherewith
Joshua cursed Jericho; the curse which Elisha laid upon the children; all
the curses which are written in the law. Cursed be he by day, and cursed
be he by night: cursed be he in sleeping, and cursed be he in waking:
cursed in going out, and cursed in coming in.” Neither the wretched
victim nor the world at large was any better for such a visitation, for
it was neither remedial nor monitory. Ah, so it is! The murderer is
hung at Newgate, and if he himself is not improved by the process,
perhaps a few wicked people are frightened; but men and women are put to
a worse death every day by slow strangulation which endures for a
lifetime, and, as far as we can see, no lesson is learned by anybody, and
no good is done.
Zachariah, however, did not give way to despair, for he was not a man to
despair. His religion was a part of himself. He had immortality before
him, in which he thanked God there was no marrying nor giving in
marriage. This doctrine, however, did not live in him as the other
dogmas of his creed, for it was not one in which his intellect had such a
share. On the other hand, predestination was dear to him. God knew him
as closely as He knew the angel next His throne, and had marked out his
course with as much concern as that of the seraph. What God’s purposes
were he did not know. He took a sort of sullen pride in not knowing, and
he marched along, footsore and wounded, in obedience to the orders of his
great Chief. Only thirty years old, and only three months a husband, he
had already learned renunciation. There was to be no joy in life? Then
he would be satisfied if it were tolerable, and he strove to dismiss all
his dreams and do his best with what lay before him. Oh my hero!
Perhaps somewhere or other—let us hope it is true—a book is kept in which
human worth is duly appraised, and in that book, if such a volume there
be, we shall find that the divinest heroism is not that of the man who,
holding life cheap, puts his back against a wall, and is shot by
Government soldiers, assured that he will live ever afterwards as a
martyr and saint: a diviner heroism is that of the poor printer, who, in
dingy, smoky Rosoman Street, Clerkenwell, with forty years before him,
determined to live through them, as far as he could, without a murmur,
although there was to be no pleasure in them. A diviner heroism is this,
but divinest of all, is that of him who can in these days do what
Zachariah did, and without Zachariah’s faith.
The next evening, just as Zachariah and his wife were sitting down to
tea, there was a tap at the door, and in walked Major Maitland. He was
now in full afternoon costume, and, if not dandyish, was undeniably well
dressed. Making a profound bow to Mrs. Coleman, he advanced to the
fireplace and instantly shook hands with Zachariah.
“Well, my republican, you are better, although the beery loyalist has
left his mark upon you.”
“Certainly, much better; but where I should have been, sir, if it had not
been for you, I don’t know.”
“Ah, well; it was an absolute pleasure to me to teach the blackguard that
cheering a Bourbon costs something. My God, though, a man must be a fool
who has to be taught that! I wonder what it _has_ cost us. Why, I see
you’ve got my friend, Major Cartwright, up there.”
Zachariah and his wife started a moment at what they considered the
profane introduction of God’s name; but it was not exactly swearing, and
Major Maitland’s relationship to them was remarkable. They were
therefore silent.
“A true friend of the people,” continued Maitland, “is Major Cartwright;
but he does not go quite far enough to please me.”
“As for the people so-called,” quoth Zachariah, “I doubt whether they are
worth saving. Look at the mob we saw the day before yesterday. I think
not of the people. But there is a people, even in these days of Ahab,
whose feet may yet be on the necks of their enemies.”
“Why, you are an aristocrat,” said Maitland, smiling; “only you want to
abolish the present aristocracy and give us another. You must not judge
us by what you saw in Piccadilly, and while you are still smarting from
that smasher on your eye. London, I grant you, is not, and never was, a
fair specimen. But, even in London, you must not be deceived. You don’t
know its real temper; and then, as to not being worth saving—why, the
worse men are the more they want saving. However, we are both agreed
about this—crew, Liverpool, the Prince Regent, and his friends.” A
strong word was about to escape before “crew,” but the Major saw that he
was in a house where it would be out of place. “I wish you’d join our
Friends of the People. We want two or three determined fellows like you.
We are all safe.”
“What are the ‘Friends of the People’?”
“Oh, it’s a club of—a—good fellows who meet twice a week for a little
talk about affairs. Come with me next Friday and see.”
Zachariah hesitated a moment, and then consented.
“All right; I’ll fetch you.” He was going away, and picked up from the
table a book he had brought with him.
“By the way, you will not be at work till to-morrow. I’ll leave you this
to amuse you. It has not been out long. Thirteen thousand copies were
sold the first day. It is the _Corsair_—Byron’s _Corsair_. My God, it
_is_ poetry and no mistake! Not exactly, perhaps, in your line; but you
are a man of sense, and if that doesn’t make your heart leap in you I’m
much mistaken. Lord Byron is a neighbour of mine in the Albany. I know
him by sight. I’ve waited a whole livelong morning at my window to see
him go out. So much the more fool you, you’ll say. Ah, well, wait till
you have read the _Corsair_.”
The Major shook hands. Mrs. Coleman, who had been totally silent during
the interview, excepting when she asked him if he would join in a cup of
tea—an offer most gracefully declined—followed him to the top of the
stairs. As before, he kissed her hand, made her a profound bow, and was
off. When she came back into the room the faint flush on the cheek was
repeated, and there was the same unusual little rippling overflow of
kindness to her husband.
In the evening Zachariah took up the book. Byron was not, indeed, in his
line. He took no interest in him, although, like every other Englishman,
he had heard much about him. He had passed on his way to Albemarle
Street the entrance to the Albany. Byron was lying there asleep, but
Zachariah, although he knew he was within fifty yards of him, felt no
emotion whatever. This was remarkable, for Byron’s influence, even in
1814, was singular, beyond that of all predecessors and successors, in
the wideness of its range. He was read by everybody. Men and women who
were accessible to no other poetry were accessible to his, and old
sea-captains, merchants, tradesmen, clerks, tailors, milliners, as well
as the best judges in the land repeated his verses by the page.
Mrs. Coleman, having cleared away the tea-things, sat knitting till
half-past six. It was prayer-meeting night, and she never missed going.
Zachariah generally accompanied her, but he was not quite presentable,
and stayed at home. He went on with the _Corsair_, and as he read his
heart warmed, and he unconsciously found himself declaiming several of
the most glowing and eloquent lines aloud. He was by nature a poet;
essentially so, for he loved everything which lifted him above what is
commonplace. Isaiah, Milton, a storm, a revolution, a great passion—with
these he was at home; and his education, mainly on the Old Testament,
contributed greatly to the development both of the strength and weakness
of his character. For such as he are weak as well as strong; weak in the
absence of the innumerable little sympathies and worldlinesses which make
life delightful, and but too apt to despise and tread upon those gentle
flowers which are as really here as the sun and the stars, and are nearer
to us. Zachariah found in the _Corsair_ exactly what answered to his own
inmost self, down to its very depths. The lofty style, the scorn of what
is mean and base, the courage—root of all virtue—that dares and evermore
dares in the very last extremity, the love of the illimitable, of
freedom, and the cadences like the fall of waves on a sea-shore were
attractive to him beyond measure. More than this, there was Love. His
own love was a failure, and yet it was impossible for him to indulge for
a moment his imagination elsewhere. The difference between him and his
wife might have risen to absolute aversion, and yet no wandering fancy
would ever have been encouraged towards any woman living. But when he
came to Medora’s song:
“Deep in my soul that tender secret dwells,
Lonely and lost to light for evermore,
Save when to thine my heart responsive swells,
Then trembles into silence as before.”
and more particularly the second verse:
“There, in its centre, a sepulchral lamp
Burns the slow flame, eternal—but unseen;
Which not the darkness of despair can damp,
Though vain its ray as it had never been.”
love again asserted itself. It was not love for a person; perhaps it was
hardly love so much as the capacity for love. Whatever it may be,
henceforth this is what love will be in him, and it will be fully
maintained, though it knows no actual object. It will manifest itself in
suppressed force, seeking for exit in a thousand directions; sometimes
grotesque perhaps, but always force. It will give energy to expression,
vitality to his admiration of the beautiful, devotion to his worship,
enthusiasm to his zeal for freedom. More than this, it will _not_ make
his private life unbearable by contrast; rather the reverse. The vision
of Medora will not intensify the shadow over Rosoman Street, Clerkenwell,
but will soften it.