a low green heaven mottled with vanishing bells of white; looking around,
except for the weedy spokes and shafts of the ladder, nothing but a green
gloaming, somewhat opaque but very restful and delicious. Thirty rounds
lower, I stepped off on the _pierres perdues_ of the foundation; a dumb
helmeted figure took me by the hand, and made a gesture (as I read it) of
encouragement; and looking in at the creature's window, I beheld the face
of Bain. There we were, hand to hand and (when it pleased us) eye to
eye; and either might have burst himself with shouting, and not a {173}
whisper come to his companion's hearing. Each, in his own little world
of air, stood incommunicably separate.
Bob had told me ere this a little tale, a five minutes' drama at the
bottom of the sea, which at that moment possibly shot across my mind. He
was down with another, settling a stone of the sea-wall. They had it
well adjusted, Bob gave the signal, the scissors were slipped, the stone
set home; and it was time to turn to something else. But still his
companion remained bowed over the block like a mourner on a tomb, or only
raised himself to make absurd contortions and mysterious signs unknown to
the vocabulary of the diver. There, then, these two stood for a while,
like the dead and the living; till there flashed a fortunate thought into
Bob's mind, and he stooped, peered through the window of that other
world, and beheld the face of its inhabitant wet with streaming tears.
Ah! the man was in pain! And Bob, glancing downward, saw what was the
trouble: the block had been lowered on the foot of that unfortunate--he
was caught alive at the bottom of the sea under fifteen tons of rock.
That two men should handle a stone so heavy, even swinging in the
scissors, may appear strange to the inexpert. These must bear in mind
the great density of the water of the sea, and the surprising results of
transplantation to that medium. To understand a little what these are,
and how a man's weight, so far from being an encumbrance, is the very
ground of his agility, was the chief lesson of my submarine experience.
The knowledge came upon me by degrees. As I began to go forward with the
hand of my estranged companion, a world of tumbled stones {174} was
visible, pillared with the weedy uprights of the staging: overhead, a
flat roof of green: a little in front, the sea-wall, like an unfinished
rampart. And presently in our upward progress, Bob motioned me to leap
upon a stone; I looked to see if he were possibly in earnest, and he only
signed to me the more imperiously. Now the block stood six feet high; it
would have been quite a leap to me unencumbered; with the breast and back
weights, and the twenty pounds upon each foot, and the staggering load of
the helmet, the thing was out of reason. I laughed aloud in my tomb; and
to prove to Bob how far he was astray, I gave a little impulse from my
toes. Up I soared like a bird, my companion soaring at my side. As high
as the stone, and then higher, I pursued my impotent and empty flight.
Even when the strong arm of Bob had checked my shoulders, my heels
continued their ascent; so that I blew out sideways like an autumn leaf,
and must be hauled in, hand over hand, as sailors haul in the slack of a
sail, and propped upon my feet again like an intoxicated sparrow. Yet a
little higher on the foundation, and we began to be affected by the
bottom of the swell, running there like a strong breeze of wind. Or so I
must suppose; for, safe in my cushion of air, I was conscious of no
impact; only swayed idly like a weed, and was now borne helplessly
abroad, and now swiftly--and yet with dreamlike gentleness--impelled
against my guide. So does a child's balloon divagate upon the currents
of the air, and touch and slide off again from every obstacle. So must
have ineffectually swung, so resented their inefficiency, those light
crowds that followed the {175} Star of Hades, and uttered exiguous voices
in the land beyond Cocytus.
There was something strangely exasperating, as well as strangely
wearying, in these uncommanded evolutions. It is bitter to return to
infancy, to be supported, and directed, and perpetually set upon your
feet, by the hand of some one else. The air besides, as it is supplied
to you by the busy millers on the platform, closes the eustachian tubes
and keeps the neophyte perpetually swallowing, till his throat is grown
so dry that he can swallow no longer. And for all these
reasons--although I had a fine, dizzy, muddle-headed joy in my
surroundings, and longed, and tried, and always failed, to lay hands on
the fish that darted here and there about me, swift as humming-birds--yet
I fancy I was rather relieved than otherwise when Bain brought me back to
the ladder and signed to me to mount. And there was one more experience
before me even then. Of a sudden, my ascending head passed into the
trough of a swell. Out of the green, I shot at once into a glory of
rosy, almost of sanguine light--the multitudinous seas incarnadined, the
heaven above a vault of crimson. And then the glory faded into the hard,
ugly daylight of a Caithness autumn, with a low sky, a grey sea, and a
whistling wind.
(_Across the Plains_.)
{178}
NOTES
Page
1 Sir Mordred, left in charge of the kingdom during King Arthur's
absence oversea, treacherously raised a rebellion and made war on the
king when he returned. It was in this war that Arthur presently met
his end.
5 The grants to which the Queen refers are the trade-monopolies
granted by her, which she now proceeded to abolish.
8 This account of Cleopatra's death (from North's translation of
Plutarch's _Life of Antony_) is closely followed by Shakespeare in
_Antony and Cleopatra_.
11 The basket of figs contained the asp, from the bite of which
Cleopatra died (_Antony and Cleopatra_, act V. scene ii.).
12 _The three first monarchies of the world_: these, according to
Ralegh's account of the world's history, are those of Assyria, Egypt,
and Persia.
13 _The good advice of Cineas_: when Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, was
contemplating the invasion of Italy (B.C. 280) his friend and adviser
Cineas asked him what he would do when he was master of the world.
'Pyrrhus, finding his drift, answered pleasantly, that they would live
merrily: a thing (as Cineas then told him) that they presently might do
without any trouble, if he could be contented with his own' (Ralegh).
_discourse_ here means 'fame.'
16 The two kinds of law which Hooker (as he indicates at the beginning
of this extract) has already dealt with are: the law which binds a
man's private conscience, and the law which regulates his dealings with
the state (or 'politic society') of which he is a member.
_conceits_=conceptions.
18 _But that is a wisdom_: i.e. the wisdom of wise men, who know how
to make a proper use of their studies.
_distilled books_: i.e. books of selections and extracts.
_Abeunt studia, etc_.: 'studies pass into the character.'
_stond_= impediment.
19 _bowling_, i.e. playing bowls.
_schoolmen_: the theological and metaphysical writers of the middle
ages.
_Cymini sectores_: 'splitters of cumin-seed,' i.e. what we should call
'hair-splitters,' the seed of the cumin (a plant something like fennel)
being very minute.
20 _In the universality of the kind, etc_.: i.e. the race endures, the
individual perishes.
24 _Lycosthenes_, a German scholar of the sixteenth century, wrote a
commentary on a book of _Lives of eminent men_, a work attributed to
Pliny the younger (first century A.D.).
26 _The eighth climate_: i.e. England, which lies in the eighth of the
zones (or 'climates') into which the old geographers divided the globe.
_constellated_: i.e. born under a particular 'constellation' or
conjunction of planets (an astrological expression).
_Hydra_: the many-headed monster slain by Hercules.
_in casting account_=in doing sums.
27 _Doradoes_=rich men; a Spanish word, as in the phrase 'El dorado'
('the rich country').
_First, when a city, etc_.: the skeleton of this highly involved
sentence is as follows: 'First, when a city shall be as it were
besieged. . ., that then the people . . . should be disputing. . .,
argues first a singular good will. . ., and from thence derives itself
[i.e. flows on, proceeds] to a gallant bravery. . . .'
28 _as his was who when Rome, etc_.: this story is told by Livy, as an
instance of the undaunted spirit of the Romans during the Punic war.
_mewing_ properly means 'moulting.' Milton apparently uses it in the
sense of 'renewing by the process of moulting.'
29 _engrossers_: wholesale buyers; here used metaphorically of those
who, by curtailing the liberty of book-printing, would 'buy up' the
stock of knowledge and dole it out as they thought fit.
30 _he who takes up arms for coat and conduct_: this refers to Charles
I's exaction of a tax for the clothing and conducting (i.e. conveying)
of troops.
_his four nobles of Danegelt_: a noble was a coin worth 6s. 8d.
Danegelt was originally the land-tax raised by Ethelred the Unready to
buy off the Danes; the word was afterwards used of any unpopular tax,
here of Charles I's imposition of ship-money, resisted by Hampden.
_In this unhappy battle_: the battle of Newbury, Sept. 20, 1643, in
which the advantage was on the whole with the King against the
Roundheads.
33 _vacant_: i.e. open, unclouded.
_addresses to his place_: i.e. to his office. Falkland was Secretary
of State to Charles I.
40 _Phalaris_: a Sicilian tyrant of the sixth century B.C., famous for
his cruelties. The Greek poet Stesichorus was a contemporary of his.
42 Samuel Pepys, from whose diary this extract (slightly abridged) is
taken, wrote solely for his own private amusement, troubling himself
very little about style or grammar. He held a post in the Navy Office,
and his work did not often allow him to take a day in the country, such
as he here describes.
46 Defoe's _Captain Singleton_ is an imaginary account of the
adventures of certain pirates in different parts of the world. In the
extract here given they are lying in Chinese waters. 'William,' one of
their crew, has gone ashore to trade with some Chinese merchants.
47 _thieves' pennyworths_: 'things sold at a robber's price,' i.e.
below their real value.
55 _composures_=compositions.
56 _the Great Mogul_: the Emperor of Hindostan.
_Muscovy_=Russia, of which Moscow was formerly the capital.
57 _the old philosopher_: Socrates; see Hooker's reference to the
anecdote on page 17 of this book.
_degree_: i.e. of latitude and longitude.
62 _whereas the ladies now walk, etc_.; this was written in 1711, when
ladies wore very large 'hoops,' or crinolines.
65 Tom Jones, the hero of Fielding's novel of that name, takes some
friends to see Hamlet, acted by Garrick. Partridge, is a timorous
ex-schoolmaster, without experience of the theatre.
77 _redans_: projecting fortifications.
_the talus of the glacis_: the pitch of the outer slope of an earthwork.
_banquettes_: the raised way running along the inside of a rampart.
78 _chamade_: a signal given by drum, announcing surrender.
79 _a new reign_: George II died on October 25, 1760.
80 _a rag of quality_: Horace Walpole was a younger son of Sir Robert
Walpole (Earl of Orford).
81 _the Duke of Cumberland_: second son of George II.
_a dark brown adonis_: a kind of wig.
_the Duke of Newcastle_: the Prime Minister.
83 Goldsmith's _Citizen of the World_ consists of a series of letters
on European manners and customs, purporting to be written by a Chinaman
who has never before visited England.
86 _whatever accidentally becomes indisposed, etc_.; i.e. whoever
falls out with the authorities.
87 _There never was a period, etc_.: this was written in 1777, during
the American War of Independence.
90 'Puss' was Cowper's tame hare.
92 The initials at the foot of the letter are those of William Cowper
and Mary Unwin, a friend of the poet's.
99 _David Garrick_: the celebrated actor (1717-1779).
100 Frank Osbaldistone, the hero of Scott's novel _Rob Roy_, goes to
Yorkshire on a visit to his uncle, Sir Hildebrand Osbaldistone, whom he
has never seen. As he approaches his destination he falls in with a
young lady on horseback, who turns out to be Diana Vernon, a niece of
Sir Hildebrand's. The period of the story is early in the eighteenth
century.
106 _The 'Festin de pierre'_: Moliere's play, in which the hero, Don
Juan, rashly invites the statue of a man he has murdered to dine with
him. The invitation is unexpectedly accepted.
107 Coleridge, the poet, was an old friend and school-fellow of
Charles Lamb's.
109 An imaginary dialogue between the two philosophers. Plato, born
427 B.C., was some years the older of the two.
111 Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, with whom Plato had lived for a
time, was overthrown and expelled by his subjects, and driven to
support himself as a schoolmaster at Corinth.
_The Demiurgos_: the Creator.
113 Mrs Elton, in Jane Austen's novel _Emma_, is the somewhat
meddlesome wife of the village parson. Mr Knightley is a gentleman
living at Donwell, in the neighbourhood. The rest of the people named
are other neighbours and friends, one of them, Mr Woodhouse, being an
old gentleman of valetudinarian habits.
118 Coleridge, as a young man (he was born in 1772), was for a time in
the habit of preaching in Unitarian chapels.
122 This is an extract from a letter of Keats to a friend, written in
1818.
124 _The Flight to Varennes_: by the middle of 1791 the French
Revolution had gone so far that the king and queen were practically
prisoners in the palace of the Tuileries at Paris. They at last
determined to try to escape, and the arrangements for their flight were
carried out, in all possible secrecy, by Choiseul, an officer of the
French army, and Fersen, a young Swedish count. Carlyle's vivid
account tells how the start was made; but the royal party were stopped
at Varennes, not far from the frontier, and brought back to Paris.
_the Carrousel_, or 'tilting-ground,' was an open space in front of the
Tuileries.
130 _Trial of the Seven Bishops_: James II, in 1687, issued a
'declaration of indulgence,' promising to suspend certain laws against
Roman Catholics. His command that this declaration should be read in
all parish churches was resisted by seven bishops, who were accordingly
brought to trial for sedition. The declaration was very unpopular in
the country, so that the result of the trial was anxiously awaited.
135 _Cimon_ was one of the Athenian commanders in the Persian war. He
died in 449 B.C.
140 The scene of Hawthorne's novel, _The House of the Seven Gables_,
is laid in a small town in New England.
148 Mr Weston was in the plot with the highwayman to rob Dr Barnard.
He had himself tampered with his own pistols (in the stable at
Maidstone) so that they should miss fire. Hence his peevishness with
Denis Duval, for so unexpectedly routing the thief.
153 Jane Eyre is governess to Mr Rochester's daughter, Adèle. She
describes how he cross-questioned her with regard to her
accomplishments.
157 Thoreau lived for two years in a small hut which he built for
himself in a wood near Concord, in New England. This extract is from
the account he wrote of his life there.
171 Stevenson came of a family of engineers, and he himself was
supposed to be preparing for the same profession. But he already
wished to be a writer, and his interest in the harbour-works at Wick,
in Caithness, which he had been sent to study, was romantic rather than
practical.
End of Project Gutenberg's A Book of English Prose, by Percy Lubbock