DEPARTURE FROM HORNCASTLE--RECRUITING SERGEANT--KAULOES AND LOLLOES.
Leaving Horncastle I bent my steps in the direction of the east. {311a}
I walked at a brisk rate, and late in the evening reached a large town,
{311b} situate at the entrance of an extensive firth, or arm of the sea,
which prevented my further progress eastward. Sleeping that night in the
suburbs of the town, I departed early next morning in the direction of
the south. A walk of about twenty miles brought me to another large
town, {311c} situated on a river, where I again turned towards the east.
At the end of the town I was accosted by a fiery-faced individual,
somewhat under the middle size, dressed as a recruiting sergeant.
'Young man,' said the recruiting sergeant, 'you are just the kind of
person to serve the Honourable East India Company.'
'I had rather the Honourable Company should serve me,' said I.
'Of course, young man. Well, the Honourable East India Company shall
serve you--that's reasonable. Here, take this shilling; 't is
service-money. The Honourable Company engages to serve you, and you the
Honourable Company; both parties shall be thus served; that's just and
reasonable.'
'And what must I do for the Company?'
'Only go to India; that's all.'
'And what should I do in India?'
'Fight, my brave boy! fight, my youthful hero!'
'What kind of country is India?'
'The finest country in the world! Rivers bigger than the Ouse! Hills
higher than anything near Spalding! Trees--you never saw such trees!
Fruits--you never saw such fruits!'
'And the people--what kind of folk are they?'
'Pah! Kauloes--blacks--a set of rascals not worth regarding.'
'Kauloes!' said I; 'blacks!'
'Yes,' said the recruiting sergeant; 'and they call us lolloes, which in
their beastly gibberish means reds.'
'Lolloes!' said I; 'reds!'
'Yes,' said the recruiting sergeant, 'kauloes and lolloes; and all the
lolloes have to do is to kick and cut down the kauloes, and take from
them their rupees, which mean silver money. Why do you stare so?'
'Why,' said I, 'this is the very language of Mr. Petulengro.'
'Mr. Pet--?'
'Yes,' said I, 'and Tawno Chikno.'
'Tawno Chik--? I say, young fellow, I don't like your way of speaking;
no, nor your way of looking. You are mad, sir; you are mad; and what's
this? Why your hair is grey! You won't do for the Honourable
Company--they like red. I'm glad I didn't give you the shilling. Good
day to you.'
'I shouldn't wonder,' said I, as I proceeded rapidly along a broad
causeway, in the direction of the east, 'if Mr. Petulengro and Tawno
Chikno came originally from India. I think I'll go there.'
APPENDIX {313}
CHAPTER I--A WORD FOR LAVENGRO
Lavengro is the history up to a certain period of one of rather a
peculiar mind and system of nerves, with an exterior shy and cold, under
which lurk much curiosity, especially with regard to what is wild and
extraordinary, a considerable quantity of energy and industry, and an
unconquerable love of independence. It narrates his earliest dreams and
feelings, dwells with minuteness on the ways, words, and characters of
his father, mother, and brother; lingers on the occasional resting-places
of his wandering half military childhood; describes the gradual hardening
of his bodily frame by robust exercises, his successive struggles, after
his family and himself have settled down in a small local capital, to
obtain knowledge of every kind, but more particularly philological lore;
his visits to the tent of the Romany chal and the parlour of the
Anglo-German philosopher; the effect produced upon his character by his
flinging himself into contact with people all widely differing from each
other, but all extraordinary; his reluctance to settle down to the
ordinary pursuits of life; his struggles after moral truth; his glimpses
of God and the obscuration of the Divine Being to his mind's eye; and his
being cast upon the world of London, by the death of his father, at the
age of nineteen. {314a} In the world within a world, the world of
London, it shows him playing his part for some time as he best can in the
capacity of a writer for reviews and magazines, and describes what he saw
and underwent whilst labouring in that capacity; it represents him,
however, as never forgetting that he is the son of a brave but poor
gentleman, and that if he is a hack author, he is likewise a scholar. It
shows him doing no dishonourable jobs, and proves that if he occasionally
associates with low characters, he does so chiefly to gratify the
curiosity of a scholar. In his conversations with the apple-woman of
London Bridge the scholar is ever apparent, so, again, in his
acquaintance with the man of the table, for the book is no raker up of
the uncleanness of London; and if it gives what at first sight appears
refuse, it invariably shows that a pearl of some kind, generally a
philological one, is contained amongst it. It shows its hero always
accompanied by his love of independence, scorning in the greatest poverty
to receive favours from anybody, and describes him finally rescuing
himself from peculiarly miserable circumstances by writing a book, an
original book, within a week, even as Johnson is said to have written his
'Rasselas,' and Beckford his 'Vathek,' and tells how, leaving London, he
betakes himself to the roads and fields.
In the country it shows him leading a life of roving adventure, becoming
tinker, gypsy, postillion, ostler; associating with various kinds of
people, chiefly of the lower classes, whose ways and habits are
described; but, though leading this erratic life, we gather from the book
that his habits are neither vulgar nor vicious, that he still follows to
a certain extent his favourite pursuits--hunting after strange
characters, or analyzing strange words and names. At the conclusion of
the fifth volume, which terminates the first part of the history, it
hints that he is about to quit his native land on a grand philological
expedition.
Those who read this book with attention--and the author begs to observe
that it would be of little utility to read it hurriedly--may derive much
information with respect to matters of philology and literature; it will
be found treating of most of the principal languages from Ireland to
China, and of the literature which they contain; and it is particularly
minute with regard to the ways, manners, and speech of the English
section of the most extraordinary and mysterious clan or tribe of people
to be found in the whole world--the children of Roma. {314b} But it
contains matters of much more importance than anything in connection with
philology, and the literature and manners of nations. Perhaps no work
was ever offered to the public in which the kindness and providence of
God have been set forth by more striking examples, or the machinations of
priestcraft been more truly and lucidly exposed, or the dangers which
result to a nation when it abandons itself to effeminacy, and a rage for
what is novel and fashionable, than the present.
With respect to the kindness and providence of God, are they not
exemplified in the case of the old apple-woman and her son? These are
beings in many points bad, but with warm affections, who, after an
agonizing separation, are restored to each other, but not until the
hearts of both are changed and purified by the influence of affliction.
Are they not exemplified in the case of the rich gentleman, who touches
objects in order to avert the evil chance? This being has great gifts
and many amiable qualities; but does not everybody see that his besetting
sin is selfishness? He fixes his mind on certain objects, and takes
inordinate interest in them because they are his own, and those very
objects, through the providence of God, which is kindness in disguise,
becomes snakes and scorpions to whip him. Tired of various pursuits, he
at last becomes an author, and publishes a book, which is very much
admired, and which he loves with his usual inordinate affection. The
book, consequently, becomes a viper to him, and at last he flings it
aside and begins another. The book, however, is not flung aside by the
world, who are benefited by it, deriving pleasure and knowledge from it;
so the man who merely wrote to gratify self has already done good to
others, and got himself an honourable name. But God will not allow that
man to put that book under his head and use it as a pillow; the book has
become a viper to him, he has banished it, and is about another, which he
finishes and gives to the world. It is a better book than the first, and
everyone is delighted with it, but it proves to the writer a scorpion
because he loves it with inordinate affection; but it was good for the
world that he produced this book, which stung him as a scorpion. Yes,
and good for himself, for the labour of writing it amused him, and
perhaps prevented him from dying of apoplexy. But the book is banished,
and another is begun, and herein, again, is the providence of God
manifested; the man has the power of producing still, and God determines
that he shall give to the world what remains in his brain, which he would
not do had he been satisfied with the second work; he would have gone to
sleep upon that as he would upon the first, for the man is selfish and
lazy. In his account of what he suffered during the composition of this
work, his besetting sin of selfishness is manifest enough; the work on
which he is engaged occupies his every thought--it is his idol, his
deity, it shall be all his own, he won't borrow a thought from anyone
else, and he is so afraid lest, when he publishes it, that it should be
thought that he had borrowed from anyone, that he is continually touching
objects, his nervous system, owing to his extreme selfishness, having
become partly deranged. He is left touching, in order to banish the evil
chance from his book, his deity. No more of his history is given; but
does the reader think that God will permit that man to go to sleep on his
third book, however extraordinary it may be? Assuredly not. God will
not permit that man to rest till He has cured him to a certain extent of
his selfishness, which has, however, hitherto been very useful to the
world.
Then, again in the tale of Peter Williams, is not the hand of Providence
to be seen? This person commits a sin in his childhood--utters words of
blasphemy--the remembrance of which in after life, preying upon his
imagination, unfits him for quiet pursuits, to which he seems to have
been naturally inclined; but for the remembrance of that sin, he would
have been Peter Williams the quiet, respectable Welsh farmer, somewhat
fond of reading the ancient literature of his country in winter evenings
after his work was done. God, however, was aware that there was
something in Peter Williams to entitle him to assume a higher calling; He
therefore permits this sin, which, though a childish affair, was yet a
sin, and committed deliberately, to prey upon his mind till he becomes at
last an instrument in the hand of God, a humble Paul, the great preacher,
Peter Williams, who, though he considers himself a reprobate and a
castaway, instead of having recourse to drinking in mad desperation--at
many do who consider themselves reprobates--goes about Wales and England
preaching the Word of God, dilating on His power and majesty, and
visiting the sick and afflicted, until God sees fit to restore to him his
peace of mind, which He does not do, however, until that mind is in a
proper condition to receive peace--till it has been purified by the pain
of the one idea which has so long been permitted to riot in his brain,
which pain, however, an angel, in the shape of a gentle faithful wife,
had occasionally alleviated; for God is merciful even in the blows which
He bestoweth, and will not permit anyone to be tempted beyond the measure
which he can support. And here it will be as well for the reader to
ponder upon the means by which the Welsh preacher is relieved from his
mental misery; he is not relieved by a text from the Bible, by the words
of consolation and wisdom addressed to him by his angel-minded wife, nor
by the preaching of one yet more eloquent than himself, but by a
quotation made by Lavengro from the life of Mary Flanders, cut-purse and
prostitute, which life Lavengro had been in the habit of reading at the
stall of his old friend the apple-woman, on London Bridge, who had
herself been very much addicted to the perusal of it, though without any
profit whatever. Should the reader be dissatisfied with the manner in
which Peter Williams is made to find relief, the author would wish to
answer, that the Almighty frequently accomplishes His purposes by means
which appear very singular to the eyes of men, and at the same time to
observe that the manner in which that relief is obtained is calculated to
read a lesson to the proud, fanciful, and squeamish, who are ever in a
fidget lest they should be thought to mix in low society, or to bestow a
moment's attention on publications which are not what is called of a
perfectly unobjectionable character. Had not Lavengro formed the
acquaintance of the old apple-woman on London Bridge, he would not have
had an opportunity of reading the life of Mary Flanders, and,
consequently, of storing in a memory which never forgets anything, a
passage which contained a balm for the agonized mind of Peter Williams.
The best medicines are not always found in the finest shops. Suppose,
for example, if, instead of going to London Bridge to read, he had gone
to Albemarle Street, and had received from the proprietors of the
literary establishment in that very fashionable street permission to read
the publications on the tables of the saloons there, does the reader
think he would have met any balm in those publications for the case of
Peter Williams? Does the reader suppose that he would have found Mary
Flanders there? He would certainly have found that highly objectionable
publication, 'Rasselas,' and the 'Spectator,' or 'Lives of Royal and
Illustrious Personages,' but, of a surety, no Mary Flanders. So, when
Lavengro met with Peter Williams, he would have been unprovided with a
balm to cure his ulcerated mind, and have parted from him in a way not
quite so satisfactory as the manner in which he took his leave of him;
for it is certain that he might have read 'Rasselas,' and all the other
unexceptionable works to be found in the library of Albemarle Street,
over and over again, before he would have found any cure in them for the
case of Peter Williams. Therefore the author requests the reader to drop
any squeamish nonsense he may wish to utter about Mary Flanders and the
manner in which Peter Williams was cured.
And now with respect to the old man who knew Chinese, but could not tell
what was o'clock. This individual was a man whose natural powers would
have been utterly buried and lost beneath a mountain of sloth and
laziness had not God determined otherwise. He had in his early years
chalked out for himself a plan of life in which he had his own ease and
self-indulgence solely in view; he had no particular bad passions to
gratify, he only wished to lead an easy quiet life, just as if the
business of this mighty world could be carried on by innocent people fond
of ease and quiet, or that Providence would permit innocent quiet drones
to occupy any portion of the earth and to cumber it. God had, at any
rate, decreed that this man should not cumber it as a drone. He brings a
certain affliction upon him, the agony of which produces that terrible
whirling of the brain which, unless it is stopped in time, produces
madness; he suffers indescribable misery for a period, until one morning
his attention is arrested and his curiosity is aroused by certain Chinese
letters on a teapot; his curiosity increases more and more, and, of
course, in proportion as his curiosity is increased with respect to the
Chinese marks, the misery in his brain produced by his mental affliction
decreases. He sets about learning Chinese, and after the lapse of many
years, during which his mind subsides into a certain state of
tranquillity, he acquires sufficient knowledge of Chinese to be able to
translate with ease the inscriptions to be found on its singular
crockery. Yes, the laziest of human beings, through the providence of
God--a being, too, of rather inferior capacity--acquires the written part
of a language so difficult that, as Lavengro said on a former occasion,
none but the cleverest people in Europe, the French, are able to acquire
it. But God did not intend that man should merely acquire Chinese. He
intended that he should be of use to his species, and, by the
instrumentality of the first Chinese inscription which he translates, the
one which first arrested his curiosity, he is taught the duties of
hospitality; yes, by means of an inscription in the language of a people
who have scarcely an idea of hospitality themselves, God causes the
slothful man to play a useful and beneficent part in the world, relieving
distressed wanderers, and, amongst others, Lavengro himself. But a
striking indication of the man's surprising sloth is still apparent in
what he omits to do; he has learnt Chinese, the most difficult of
languages, and he practises acts of hospitality because he believes
himself enjoined to do so by the Chinese inscription, but he cannot tell
the hour of the day by the clock within his house; he can get on, he
thinks, very well without being able to do so; therefore, from this one
omission, it is easy to come to a conclusion as to what a sluggard's part
the man would have played in life but for the dispensation of Providence;
nothing but extreme agony could have induced such a man to do anything
useful. He still continues, with all he has acquired, with all his
usefulness, and with all his innocence of character, without any proper
sense of religion, though he has attained a rather advanced age. If it
be observed that this want of religion is a great defect in the story,
the author begs leave to observe that he cannot help it. Lavengro
relates the lives of people so far as they were placed before him, but no
further. It was certainly a great defect in so good a man to be without
religion; it was likewise a great defect in so learned a man not to be
able to tell what was o'clock. It is probable that God, in His loving
kindness, will not permit that man to go out of the world without
religion--who knows but some powerful minister of the Church, full of
zeal for the glory of God, will illumine that man's dark mind--perhaps
some clergyman will come to the parish who will visit him and teach him
his duty to his God. Yes, it is very probable that such a man, before he
dies, will have been made to love his God; whether he will ever learn to
know what's o'clock is another matter. It is probable that he will go
out of the world without knowing what's o'clock. It is not so necessary
to be able to tell the time of day by the clock as to know one's God
through His inspired word; a man cannot get to heaven without religion,
but a man can get there very comfortably without knowing what's o'clock.
But, above all, the care and providence of God are manifested in the case
of Lavengro himself by the manner in which he is enabled to make his way
in the world up to a certain period without falling a prey either to vice
or poverty. In his history there is a wonderful illustration of part of
the text, quoted by his mother: 'I have been young, and now am old, yet
never saw I the righteous forsaken or his seed begging bread.' He is the
son of good and honourable parents, but at the critical period of life,
that of entering into the world, he finds himself without any earthly
friend to help him, yet he manages to make his way. He does not become a
captain in the Life Guards, it is true, nor does be get into Parliament,
nor does the last volume conclude in the most satisfactory and
unobjectionable manner by his marrying a dowager countess--as that wise
man Addison did--or by his settling down as a great country gentleman,
perfectly happy and contented, like the very moral Roderick Random or the
equally estimable Peregrine Pickle; he is hack author, gypsy, tinker, and
postillion, yet upon the whole he seems to be quite as happy as the
younger sons of most earls, to have as high feelings of honour; and, when
the reader loses sight of him, he has money in his pocket honestly
acquired to enable him to commence a journey quite as laudable as those
which the younger sons of earls generally undertake. Surely all this is
a manifestation of the kindness and providence of God, and yet he is not
a religious person--up to the time when the reader loses sight of him he
is decidedly not a religious person, he has glimpses, it is true, of that
God who does not forsake him, but he prays very seldom, is not fond of
going to church, and, though he admires Tate and Brady's version of the
Psalms, his admiration is rather caused by the beautiful poetry which
that version contains than the religion; yet his tale is not
finished--like the tale of the gentleman who touched objects, and that of
the old man who knew Chinese without knowing what was o'clock; perhaps,
like them, he is destined to become religious, and to have, instead of
occasional glimpses, frequent and distinct views of his God; yet, though
he may become religious, it is hardly to be expected that he will become
a very precise and straight-laced person; it is probable that he will
retain with his scholarship something of his gypsyism, his predilection
for the hammer and tongs, and perhaps some inclination to put on certain
gloves, not white kid, with any friend who may be inclined for a little
old English diversion, and a readiness to take a glass of ale, with
plenty of malt in it and as little hop as may well be--ale at least two
years old--with the aforesaid friend when the diversion is over; for, as
it is the belief of the writer that a person may get to heaven very
comfortably without knowing what's o'clock, so it is his belief that he
will not be refused admission there because to the last he has been fond
of healthy and invigorating exercises, and felt a willingness to partake
of any of the good things which it pleases the Almighty to put within the
reach of His children during their sojourn upon earth.
CHAPTER II--ON PRIESTCRAFT
The writer will now say a few words about priestcraft and the
machinations of Rome, and will afterwards say something about himself and
his motives for writing against them.
With respect to Rome and her machinations, much valuable information can
be obtained from particular parts of Lavengro and its sequel. Shortly
before the time when the hero of the book is launched into the world the
Popish agitation in England had commenced. The Popish propaganda had
determined to make a grand attempt on England; Popish priests were
scattered over the land, doing the best they could to make converts to
the old superstition. With the plans of Rome, and her hopes, and the
reasons on which those hopes are grounded, the hero of the book becomes
acquainted during an expedition which he makes into the country, from
certain conversations which he holds with a priest in a dingle in which
the hero had taken up his residence; he likewise learns from the same
person much of the secret history of the Roman See and many matters
connected with the origin and progress of the Popish superstition. The
individual with whom he holds these conversations is a learned,
intelligent, but highly unprincipled person, of a character, however,
very common amongst the priests of Rome, who in general are people void
of all religion, and who, notwithstanding they are tied to Rome by a band
which they have neither the power nor wish to break, turn her and her
practices, over their cups with their confidential associates, to a
ridicule only exceeded by that to which they turn those who become the
dupes of their mistress and themselves.
It is now necessary that the writer should say something with respect to
himself and his motives for waging war against Rome. First of all, with
respect to himself, he wishes to state that, to the very last moment of
his life, he will do and say all that in his power may be to hold up to
contempt and execration the priestcraft and practices of Rome; there is,
perhaps, no person better acquainted than himself, not even among the
choicest spirits of the priesthood, with the origin and history of
Popery. From what he saw and heard of Popery in England at a very early
period of his life, his curiosity was aroused, and he spared himself no
trouble, either by travel or study, to make himself well acquainted with
it in all its phases, the result being a hatred of it which he hopes and
trusts he shall retain till the moment when his spirit quits the body.
Popery is the great lie of the world--a source from which more misery and
social degradation have flowed upon the human race than from all the
other sources from which those evils come. It is the oldest of all
superstitions, and, though in Europe it assumes the name of Christianity,
it existed and flourished amidst the Himalayan hills at least two
thousand years before the real Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea--in
a word, it is Buddhism, and let those who may be disposed to doubt this
assertion compare the Popery of Rome and the superstitious practices of
its followers with the doings of the priests who surround the grand Lama,
and the mouthings, bellowing, turnings round, and above all, the penances
of the followers of Buddh with those of Roman devotees. But he is not
going to dwell here on this point; it is dwelt upon at tolerable length
in the text, and has likewise been handled with extraordinary power by
the pen of the gifted but irreligious Volney; moreover, the _elite_ of
the Roman priesthood are perfectly well aware that their system is
nothing but Buddhism under a slight disguise, and the European world in
general has entertained for some time past an inkling of the fact.
And now a few words with respect to the motives of the writer for
expressing a hatred for Rome.
This expressed abhorrence of the author for Rome might be entitled to
little regard, provided it were possible to attribute it to any
self-interested motive. There have been professed enemies of Rome, or of
this or that system; but their professed enmity may frequently be traced
to some cause which does them little credit; but the writer of these
lines has no motive, and can have no motive, for his enmity to Rome, save
the abhorrence of an honest heart for what is false, base, and cruel. A
certain clergyman wrote with much heat against the Papists in the time of
---, {321a} who was known to favour the Papists, but was not expected to
continue long in office, and whose supposed successor, the person,
indeed, who did succeed him, was thought to be hostile to the Papists.
This divine, who obtained a rich benefice from the successor of ---,
{321b} who during ---'s {321c} time had always opposed him in everything
he proposed to do, and who, of course, during that time affected to be
very inimical to Popery--this divine might well be suspected of having a
motive equally creditable for writing against the Papists, as that which
induced him to write for them, as soon as his patron, who eventually did
something more for him, had espoused their cause; but what motive, save
an honest one, can the present writer have, for expressing an abhorrence
of Popery? He is no clergyman, and consequently can expect neither
benefices nor bishoprics, supposing it were the fashion of the present,
or likely to be the fashion of any future administration, to reward
clergymen with benefices or bishoprics, who, in the defence of the
religion of their country write, or shall write, against Popery, and not
to reward those who write, or shall write, in favour of it, and all its
nonsense and abominations.
'But if not a clergyman, he is the servant of a certain society, which
has the overthrow of Popery in view, and therefore,' etc. This
assertion, which has been frequently made, is incorrect, even as those
who have made it probably knew it to be. He is the servant of no society
whatever. He eats his own bread, and is one of the very few men in
England who are independent in every sense of the word.
It is true he went to Spain with the colours of that society on his
hat--oh! the blood glows in his veins! oh! the marrow awakes in his old
bones when he thinks of what he accomplished in Spain in the cause of
religion and civilization with the colours of that society in his hat,
and its weapon in his hand, even the sword of the word of God; how with
that weapon he hewed left and right, making the priests fly before him,
and run away squeaking: 'Vaya! que demonio es este!' Ay, and when he
thinks of the plenty of bible swords which he left behind him, destined
to prove, and which have already proved, pretty calthrops in the heels of
popery. 'Halloo! Batuschca,' {322} he exclaimed the other night, on
reading an article in a newspaper, 'what do you think of the present
doings in Spain? Your old friend the zingaro, the gitano who rode about
Spain, to say nothing of Galicia, with the Greek Buchini behind him as
his squire, had a hand in bringing them about; there are many brave
Spaniards connected with the present movement who took bibles from his
hands, and read them and profited by them, learning from the inspired
page the duties of one man towards another, and the real value of a
priesthood and their head, who set at nought the word of God, and think
only of their own temporal interests; ay, and who learned Gitano--their
own Gitano--from the lips of the London Caloro, and also songs in the
said Gitano, very fit to dumbfounder your semi-Buddhist priests when they
attempt to bewilder people's minds with their school-logic and
pseudo-ecclesiastical nonsense, songs such as--
'Un Erajai
Sinaba chibando un sermon . . .' {323}
But with that society he has long since ceased to have any connection; he
bade it adieu with feelings of love and admiration more than fourteen
years ago; so, in continuing to assault Popery, no hopes of interest
founded on that society can sway his mind--interest! who, with worldly
interest in view, would ever have anything to do with that society? It
is poor and supported, like its founder Christ, by poor people; and so
far from having political influence, it is in such disfavour, and has
ever been, with the dastardly great, to whom the government of England
has for many years past been confided, that the having borne its colours
only for a month would be sufficient to exclude any man, whatever his
talents, his learning, or his courage may be, from the slightest chance
of being permitted to serve his country either for fee, or without. A
fellow who unites in himself the bankrupt trader, the broken author, or
rather book-maker, and the laughed down single speech spouter of the
House of Commons, may look forward always supposing that at one time he
has been a foaming radical, to the government of an important colony.
Ay, an ancient fox who has lost his tail may, provided he has a score of
radical friends, who will swear that he can bark Chinese, though Chinese
is not barked but sung, be forced upon a Chinese colony, though it is
well known that to have lost one's tail is considered by the Chinese in
general as an irreparable infamy, whilst to have been once connected with
a certain society to which, to its honour be it said, all the radical
party are vehemently hostile, would be quite sufficient to keep any one
not only from a government, but something much less, even though he could
translate the rhymed 'Sessions of Hariri,' and were versed, still
retaining his tail, in the two languages in which Kien-Loung wrote his
Eulogium on Moukden, that piece which, translated by Amyot, the learned
Jesuit, won the applause of the celebrated Voltaire.
No! were the author influenced by hopes of fee or reward, he would,
instead of writing against Popery, write for it; all the trumpery
titled--he will not call them great again--would then be for him, and
their masters the radicals, with their hosts of newspapers, would be for
him, more especially if he would commence maligning the society whose
colours he had once on his hat--a society which, as the priest says in
the text, is one of the very few Protestant institutions for which the
Popish Church entertains any fear, and consequently respect, as it
respects nothing which it does not fear. The writer said that certain
'rulers' would never forgive him for having been connected with that
society; he went perhaps too far in saying 'never.' It is probable that
they would take him into favour on one condition, which is, that he
should turn his pen and his voice against that society; such a mark 'of a
better way of thinking,' would perhaps induce them to give him a
government, nearly as good as that which they gave to a certain ancient
radical fox at the intercession of his radical friends (who were bound to
keep him from the pauper's kennel), after he had promised to foam, bark,
and snarl at corruption no more; he might even entertain hopes of
succeeding, nay of superseding, the ancient creature in his government;
but even were he as badly off as he is well off, he would do no such
thing. He would rather exist on crusts and water; he has often done so,
and been happy; nay, he would rather starve than be a rogue--for even the
feeling of starvation is happiness compared with what he feels who knows
himself to be a rogue, provided he has any feeling at all. What is the
use of a mitre or a knighthood to a man who has betrayed his principles?
What is the use of a gilt collar, nay, even of a pair of scarlet
breeches, to a fox who has lost his tail? Oh! the horror which haunts
the mind of the fox who has lost his tail; and with reason, for his very
mate loathes him, and more especially if, like himself, she has lost her
brush. Oh! the horror which haunts the mind of the two-legged rogue who
has parted with his principles, or those which he professed--for what?
We'll suppose a government. What's the use of a government, if, the next
day after you have received it, you are obliged for very shame to scurry
off to it with the hoot of every honest man sounding in your ears?
'Lightly liar leaped away and ran.'
PIERS PLOWMAN.
But bigotry, it has been said, makes the author write against Popery; and
thorough-going bigotry, indeed, will make a person say or do anything.
But the writer is a very pretty bigot truly! Where will the public find
traces of bigotry in anything he has written? He has written against
Rome with all his heart, with all his mind, with all his soul, and with
all his strength; but as a person may be quite honest, and speak and
write against Rome, in like manner he may speak and write against her,
and be quite free from bigotry; though it is impossible for any one but a
bigot or a bad man to write or speak in her praise, her doctrines,
actions, and machinations being what they are.
Bigotry! The author was born, and has always continued in the wrong
Church for bigotry, the quiet, unpretending Church of England--a Church
which had it been a bigoted Church, and not long suffering almost to a
fault, might with its opportunities, as the priest says in the text, have
stood in a very different position from which it occupies at present.
No! let those who are in search of bigotry, seek for it in a Church very
different from the inoffensive Church of England, which never encourages
cruelty or calumny. Let them seek for it amongst the members of the
Church of Rome, and more especially amongst those who have renegaded to
it. There is nothing, however false and horrible, which a pervert to
Rome will not say for his Church, and which his priests will not
encourage him in saying; and there is nothing, however horrible--the more
horrible indeed and revolting to human nature, the more eager he would be
to do it--which he will not do for it, and which his priests will not
encourage him in doing.
Of the readiness which converts to popery exhibit to sacrifice all the
ties of blood and affection on the shrine of their newly-adopted
religion, there is a curious illustration in the work of Luigi Pulci.
This man, who was born at Florence in the year 1432, and who was deeply
versed in the Bible, composed a poem, called the 'Morgante Maggiore,'
which he recited at the table of Lorenzo de Medici, the great patron of
Italian genius. It is a mock-heroic and religious poem, in which the
legends of knight-errantry, and of the Popish Church, are turned to
unbounded ridicule. The pretended hero of it is a converted giant,
called Morgante; though his adventures do not occupy the twentieth part
of the poem, the principal personages being Charlemagne, Orlando, and his
cousin Rinaldo of Montalban. Morgante has two brothers, both of them
giants, and, in the first canto of the poem, Morgante is represented with
his brothers as carrying on a feud with the abbot and monks of a certain
convent, built upon the confines of heathenesse; the giants being in the
habit of flinging down stones, or rather huge rocks, on the convent.
Orlando, however, who is banished from the court of Charlemagne, arriving
at the convent, undertakes to destroy them, and, accordingly, kills
Passamonte and Alabastro, and converts Morgante, whose mind had been
previously softened by a vision, in which the 'Blessed Virgin' figures.
No sooner is he converted than, as a sign of his penitence, what does he
do but hastens and cuts off the hands of his two brothers, saying--
'Io vo' tagliar le mani a tutti quanti
E porterolle a que' monaci santi.'
And he does cut off the hands of his brethren, and carries them to the
abbot, who blesses him for so doing. Pulci here is holding up to
ridicule and execration the horrid butchery or betrayal of friends by
popish converts, and the encouragement they receive from the priest. No
sooner is a person converted to popery than his principal thought is how
he can bring the hands and feet of his brethren, however harmless they
may be, and different from the giants, to the 'holy priests,' who, if he
manages to do so, never fail to prate him, saying to the miserable
wretch, as the abbot said to Morgante:
'Tu sarai or perfetto e vero amico
A Cristo, quanto tu gli eri nemico.'
Can the English public deny the justice of Pulci's illustration, after
something which it has lately witnessed? {326} Has it not seen
equivalents for the hands and feet of brothers carried by popish perverts
to the 'holy priests'? and has it not seen the manner in which the
offering his been received? Let those who are in quest of bigotry seek
for it amongst the perverts to Rome, and not amongst those who, born in
the pale of the Church of England, have always continued in it.
CHAPTER III--ON FOREIGN NONSENSE
With respect to the third point, various lessons which the book reads to
the nation at large, and which it would be well for the nation to ponder
and profit by.
There are many species of nonsense to which the nation is much addicted,
and of which the perusal of Lavengro ought to give them a wholesome
shame. First of all, with respect to the foreign nonsense so prevalent
now in England. The hero is a scholar, but, though possessed of a great
many tongues, he affects to be neither Frenchman, nor German, nor this or
that foreigner; he is one who loves his country, and the language and
literature of his country, and speaks up for each and all when there is
occasion to do so. Now, what is the case with nine out of ten amongst
those of the English who study foreign languages? No sooner have they
picked up a smattering of this or that speech than they begin to abuse
their own country and everything connected with it, more especially its
language. This is particularly the case with those who call themselves
German students. It is said, and the writer believes with truth, that
when a woman falls in love with a particularly ugly fellow, she squeezes
him with ten times more zest than she would a handsome one if captivated
by him. So it is with these German students; no sooner have they taken
German in hand than there is nothing like German. Oh, the dear
delightful German! How proud I am that it is now my own, and that its
divine literature is within my reach! And all this whilst mumbling the
most uncouth speech, and crunching the most crabbed literature in Europe.
The writer is not an exclusive admirer of everything English; he does not
advise his country people never to go abroad, never to study foreign
languages, and he does not wish to persuade them that there is nothing
beautiful or valuable in foreign literature; he only wishes that they
would not make themselves fools with respect to foreign people, foreign
languages or reading; that if they chance to have been in Spain, and have
picked up a little Spanish, they would not affect the arts of Spaniards;
that, if males they would not make Tom-fools of themselves by sticking
cigars into their mouths, dressing themselves in zamarras, and saying
'Carajo!' {327} and, if females, that they would not make zanies of
themselves by sticking cigars into their mouths, flinging mantillas over
their heads, and by saying, 'Carai,' and perhaps 'Carajo' too; or if they
have been in France or Italy, and have picked up a little French or
Italian, they would not affect to be French or Italians; and
particularly, after having been a month or two in Germany, or picked up a
little German in England, they would not make themselves foolish about
everything German, as the Anglo-German in the book does--a real
character, the founder of the Anglo-German school in England, and the
cleverest Englishman who ever talked or wrote encomiastic nonsense about
Germany and the Germans. Of all infatuations connected with what is
foreign, the infatuation about everything that is German, to a certain
extent prevalent in England, is assuredly the most ridiculous. One can
find something like a palliation for people making themselves somewhat
foolish about particular languages, literatures, and people. The Spanish
certainly is a noble language, and there is something wild and
captivating in the Spanish character, and its literature contains the
grand book of the world. French is a manly language. The French are the
most martial people in the world; and French literature is admirable in
many respects. Italian is a sweet language, and of beautiful simplicity;
its literature, perhaps, the first in the world. The
Italians!--wonderful men have sprung up in Italy. Italy is not merely
famous for painters, poets, musicians, singers, and linguists--the
greatest linguist the world ever saw, the late Cardinal Mezzofanti, was
an Italian; but it is celebrated for men--men emphatically speaking:
Columbus was in Italian, Alexander Farnese was an Italian, so was the
mightiest of the mighty, Napoleon Bonaparte. But the German language,
German literature, and the Germans! The writer has already stated his
opinion with respect to German; he does not speak from ignorance or
prejudice; he has heard German spoken, and many other languages. German
literature! he does not speak from ignorance; he has read that and many a
literature, and he repeats--however, he acknowledges that there is one
fine poem in the German language; that poem is the 'Oberon'--a poem,
by-the-by, ignored by the Germans--a speaking fact--and, of course, by
the Anglo-Germanists. The Germans! he has been amongst them, and amongst
many other nations, and confesses that his opinion of the Germans, as
men, is a very low one. Germany, it is true, has produced one very great
man, the monk who fought the Pope, and nearly knocked him down; but this
man his countrymen--a telling fact--affect to despise, and, of course,
the Anglo-Germanists. The father of Anglo-Germanism was very fond of
inveighing against Luther.
The madness, or rather foolery, of the English for foreign customs,
dresses, and languages, is not an affair of to-day, or yesterday--it is
of very ancient date, and was very properly exposed nearly three
centuries ago by one Andrew Borde, who, under the picture of a 'Naked
man, with a pair of shears in one hand and a roll of cloth in the other,'
{328} inserted the following lines along with others:
'I am an Englishman, and naked I stand here,
Musing in my mind what garment I shall weare;
For now I will weare this, and now I will weare that,
Now I will weare, I cannot tell what.
All new fashions be pleasant to mee,
I will have them, whether I thrive or thee;
What do I care if all the world me fail?
I will have a garment reach to my taille;
Then am I a minion, for I wear the new guise.
The next yeare after I hope to be wise,
Not only in wearing my gorgeous array,
For I will go to learning a whole summer's day;
I will learn Latine, Hebrew, Greek, and French,
And I will learn Dutch, sitting on my bench.
I had no peere if to myself I were true,
Because I am not so, divers times do I rue.
Yet I lacke nothing, I have all things at will
If I were wise and would hold myself still,
And meddle with no matters but to me pertaining,
But ever to be true to God and my king.
But I have such matters rowling in my pate,
That I will and do . . . I cannot tell what,' etc.
CHAPTER IV
ON GENTILITY, NONSENSE--ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENTILITY
What is gentility? People in different stations in England entertain
different ideas of what is genteel, {329} but it must be something
gorgeous, glittering, or tawdry to be considered genteel by any of them.
The beau-ideal of the English aristocracy, of course with some
exceptions, is some young fellow with an imperial title, a military
personage, of course, for what is military is so particularly genteel,
with flaming epaulets, a cocked hat and a plume, a prancing charger, and
a band of fellows called generals and colonels, with flaming epaulets,
cocked hats, and plumes, and prancing chargers vapouring behind him. It
was but lately that the daughter of an English marquis was heard to say
that the sole remaining wish of her heart--she had known misfortunes, and
was not far from fifty--was to be introduced to--whom? The Emperor of
Austria! The sole remaining wish of the heart of one who ought to have
been thinking of the grave and judgment was to be introduced to the
miscreant who had caused the blood of noble Hungarian females to be
whipped out of their shoulders, for no other crime than devotion to their
country and its tall and heroic sons. The middle classes--of course
there are some exceptions--admire the aristocracy, and consider them
pinks, the aristocracy who admire the Emperor of Austria, and adored the
Emperor of Russia till he became old, ugly, and unfortunate, when their
adoration instantly terminated; for what is more ungenteel than age,
ugliness, and misfortune! The beau-ideal with those of the lower
classes, with peasants and mechanics, is some flourishing railroad
contractor--look, for example, how they worship Mr. Flamson. {330} This
person makes his grand debut in the year '39, at a public meeting in the
principal room of a country inn. He has come into the neighbourhood with
the character of a man worth a million pounds who is to make everybody's
fortune; at this time, however, he is not worth a shilling of his own,
though he flashes about dexterously three or four thousand pounds, part
of which sum he has obtained by specious pretences, and part from certain
individuals who are his confederates. But in the year '49 he is really
in possession of the fortune which he and his agents pretended he was
worth ten years before--he is worth a million pounds. By what means has
he come by them? By railroad contracts, for which he takes care to be
paid in hard cash before he attempts to perform them, and to carry out
which he makes use of the sweat and blood of wretches who, since their
organization, have introduced crimes and language into England to which
it was previously almost a stranger--by purchasing, with paper, shares by
hundreds in the schemes to execute which he contracts, and which are of
his own devising; which shares he sells as soon as they are at a high
premium, to which they are speedily forced by means of paragraphs,
inserted by himself and agents, in newspapers devoted to his interest,
utterly reckless of the terrible depreciation to which they are almost
instantly subjected. But he is worth a million pounds, there can be no
doubt of the fact--he has not made people's fortunes, at least, those
whose fortunes it was said he would make; he has made them away, but his
own he has made, emphatically made it--he is worth a million pounds.
Hurrah for the millionaire! The clown who views the pandemonium of red
brick which he has built on the estate which he has purchased in the
neighbourhood of the place of his grand debut, in which every species of
architecture, Greek, Indian, and Chinese, is employed in caricature--who
hears of the grand entertainment he gives at Christmas in the principal
dining-room, the hundred wax candles, the waggon-load of plate, and the
oceans of wine which form parts of it, and above all the two ostrich
poults, one at the head and the other at the foot of the table, exclaims:
'Well, if he a'n't bang up, I don't know who be; why he beats my lord
hollow!' The mechanic of the borough town, who sees him dashing through
the streets in an open landau, drawn by four milk-white horses, amidst
its attendant out-riders; his wife, a monster of a woman, by his side,
stout as the wife of Tamerlane, who weighed twenty stone, and bedizened
out like her whose person shone with the jewels of plundered Persia,
stares with silent wonder, and at last exclaims: 'That's the man for my
vote!' You tell the clown that the man of the mansion has contributed
enormously to corrupt the rural innocence of England; you point to an
incipient branch railroad, from around which the accents of Gomorrah are
sounding, and beg him to listen for a moment and then close his ears.
Hodge scratches his head and says: 'Well, I have nothing to say to that;
all I know is that he is bang up, and I wish I were he'; perhaps he will
add--a Hodge has been known to add--'He has been kind enough to put my
son on that very railroad; 'tis true the company is somewhat queer, and
the work rather killing; but he gets there half-a-crown a day, whereas
from the farmers he would only get eighteenpence.' You remind the
mechanic that the man in the landau has been the ruin of thousands, and
you mention people whom he himself knows, people in various grades of
life, widows and orphans amongst them, whose little all he has
dissipated, and whom he has reduced to beggary by inducing them to become
sharers in his delusive schemes. But the mechanic says: 'Well the more
fools they to let themselves be robbed. But I don't call that kind of
thing robbery, I merely call it out-witting; and everybody in this free
country has a right to outwit others if he can. What a turn-out he has!'
One was once heard to add, 'I never saw a more genteel-looking man in all
my life except one, and that was a gentleman's walley, who was much like
him. It is true he is rather undersized, but then madam, you know, makes
up for all.'
CHAPTER V--SUBJECT OF GENTILITY CONTINUED
In the last chapter have been exhibited specimens of gentility, so
considered by different classes; by one class, power, youth, and epaulets
are considered the _ne plus ultra_ of gentility; by another class, pride,
stateliness, and title; by another, wealth and flaming tawdriness. But
what constitutes a gentleman? It is easy to say at once what constitutes
a gentleman, and there are no distinctions in what is gentlemanly, {331}
as there are in what is genteel. The characteristics of a gentleman are
high feeling, a determination never to take a cowardly advantage of
another, a liberal education, absence of narrow views, generosity and
courage, propriety of behaviour. Now a person may be genteel according
to one or another of the three standards described above, and not possess
one of the characteristics of a gentleman. Is the Emperor a gentleman,
with spatters of blood on his clothes, scourged from the backs of noble
Hungarian women? Are the aristocracy gentlefolks, who admire him? Is
Mr. Flamson a gentleman, although he has a million pounds? No! cowardly
miscreants, admirers of cowardly miscreants, and people who make a
million pounds by means compared with which those employed to make
fortunes by the getters-up of the South Sea Bubble might be called honest
dealing, are decidedly not gentle-folks. Now, as it is clearly
demonstrable that a person may be perfectly genteel according to some
standard or other and yet be no gentleman, so is it demonstrable that a
person may have no pretensions to gentility and yet be a gentleman. For
example there is Lavengro! Would the admirers of the Emperor, or the
admirers of those who admire the Emperor, or the admirers of Mr. Flamson,
call him genteel?--and gentility with them is everything! Assuredly they
would not; and assuredly they would consider him respectively as a being
to be shunned, despised, or hooted. Genteel! Why, at one time he is a
hack author--writes reviewals for eighteenpence a page--edits a Newgate
chronicle. At another he wanders the country with a face grimy from
occasionally mending kettles; and there is no evidence that his clothes
are not seedy and torn, and his shoes down at the heel; but by what
process of reasoning will they prove that he is no gentleman! Is he not
learned? Has he not generosity and courage? Whilst a hack author does
he pawn the books entrusted to him to review? Does he break his word to
his publisher? Does he write begging letters? Does he get clothes or
lodgings without paying for them? Again, whilst a wanderer, does he
insult helpless women on the road with loose proposals or ribald
discourse? Does he take what is not his own from the hedges? Does he
play on the fiddle, or make faces in public-houses, in order to obtain
pence or beer? or does he call for liquor, swallow it, and then say to a
widowed landlady, 'Mistress, I have no brass'? In a word, what vice and
crime does he perpetrate--what low acts does he commit? Therefore, with
his endowments, who will venture to say that he is no gentleman?--unless
it be an admirer of Mr. Flamson--a clown--who will, perhaps, shout: 'I
say he is no gentleman; for who can be a gentleman who keeps no gig?'
{332}
The indifference exhibited by Lavengro for what is merely genteel,
compared with his solicitude never to infringe the strict laws of honour,
should read a salutary lesson. The generality of his countrymen are far
more careful not to transgress the customs of what they call gentility
than to violate the laws of honour or morality. They will shrink from
carrying their own carpet-bag, and from speaking to a person in seedy
raiment, whilst to matters of much higher importance they are shamelessly
indifferent. Not so Lavengro; he will do anything that he deems
convenient, or which strikes his fancy, provided it does not outrage
decency, or is unallied to profligacy; is not ashamed to speak to a
beggar in rags, and will associate with anybody, provided he can gratify
a laudable curiosity. He has no abstract love for what is low, or what
the world calls low. He sees that many things which the world looks down
upon are valuable, so he prizes much which the world contemns; he sees
that many things which the world admires are contemptible, so he despises
much which the world does not; but when the world prizes what is really
excellent, he does not contemn it, because the world regards it. If he
learns Irish, which all the world scoffs at, he likewise learns Italian,
which all the world melts at. If he learns Gypsy, the language of the
tattered tent, he likewise learns Greek, the language of the college
hall. If he learns smithery, he also learns--ah! what does he learn to
set against smithery?--the law? No; he does not learn the law, which, by
the way, is not very genteel. Swimming! Yes, he learns to swim.
Swimming, however, is not genteel; and the world--at least the genteel
part of it--acts very wisely in setting its face against it; for to swim
you must be naked, and how would many a genteel person look without his
clothes? Come, he learns horsemanship; a very genteel accomplishment,
which every genteel person would gladly possess, though not all genteel
people do.
Again as to associates: if he holds communion when a boy with Murtagh,
the scarecrow of an Irish academy, he associates in after life with
Francis Ardry, a rich and talented young Irish gentleman about town. If
he accepts an invitation from Mr. Petulengro to his tent, he has no
objection to go home with a rich genius to dinner; who then will say that
he prizes a thing or a person because they are ungenteel? That he is not
ready to take up with everything that is ungenteel he gives a proof, when
he refuses, though on the brink of starvation, to become bonnet to the
thimble-man, an office which, though profitable, is positively ungenteel.
Ah! but some sticker-up for gentility will exclaim, 'The hero did not
refuse this office from an insurmountable dislike to its ungentility, but
merely from a feeling of principle.' Well! the writer is not fond of
argument, and he will admit that such was the case; he admits that it was
a love of principle, rather than an over-regard for gentility, which
prevented the hero from accepting, when on the brink of starvation, an
ungenteel though lucrative office, an office which, the writer begs leave
to observe, many a person with a great regard for gentility, and no
particular regard for principle, would in a similar strait have accepted;
for when did a mere love for gentility keep a person from being a dirty
scoundrel, when the alternatives apparently were 'either be a dirty
scoundrel or starve'? One thing, however, is certain, which is, that
Lavengro did not accept the office, which if a love for what is low had
been his ruling passion he certainly would have done; consequently, he
refuses to do one thing which no genteel person would willingly do, even
as he does many things which every genteel person would gladly do, for
example speaks Italian, rides on horseback, associates with a fashionable
young man, dines with a rich genius, et cetera. Yet--and it cannot be
minced--he and gentility with regard to many things are at strange
divergency; he shrinks from many things at which gentility placidly hums
a tune, or approvingly simpers, and does some things at which gentility
positively sinks. He will not run into debt for clothes or lodgings,
which he might do without any scandal to gentility; he will not receive
money from Francis Ardry, and go to Brighton with the sister of Annette
Le Noir, though there is nothing ungenteel in borrowing money from a
friend, even when you never intend to repay him, and something poignantly
genteel in going to a watering-place with a gay young Frenchwoman; but he
has no objection, after raising twenty pounds by the sale of that
extraordinary work 'Joseph Sell,' to set off into the country, mend
kettles under hedgerows, and make pony and donkey shoes in a dingle.
Here, perhaps, some plain, well-meaning person will cry--and with much
apparent justice--how can the writer justify him in this act? What
motive, save a love for what is low, could induce him to do such things?
Would the writer have everybody who is in need of recreation go into the
country, mend kettles under hedges, and make pony shoes in dingles? To
such an observation the writer would answer that Lavengro had an
excellent motive in doing what he did, but that the writer is not so
unreasonable as to wish everybody to do the same. It is not everybody
who can mend kettles. It is not everybody who is in similar
circumstances to those in which Lavengro was. Lavengro flies from London
and hack authorship, and takes to the roads from fear of consumption; it
is expensive to put up at inns, and even at public-houses, and Lavengro
has not much money; so he buys a tinker's cart and apparatus, and sets up
as tinker, and subsequently as blacksmith; a person living in a tent, or
in anything else, must do something or go mad; Lavengro had a mind, as he
himself well knew, with some slight tendency to madness, and had he not
employed himself, he must have gone wild; so to employ himself he drew
upon one of his resources, the only one available at the time.
Authorship had nearly killed him, he was sick of reading, and had besides
no books; but he possessed the rudiments of an art akin to tinkering; he
knew something of smithery, having served a kind of apprenticeship in
Ireland to a fairy smith; so he draws upon his smithery to enable him to
acquire tinkering, and through the help which it affords him, owing to
its connection with tinkering, he speedily acquires that craft, even as
he had speedily acquired Welsh, owing to its connection with Irish, which
language he possessed; and with tinkering he amuses himself until he lays
it aside to resume smithery. A man who has any innocent resource, has
quite as much right to draw upon it in need, as he has upon a banker in
whose hands he has placed a sum; Lavengro turns to advantage, under
particular circumstances, a certain resource which he has, but people who
are not so forlorn as Lavengro, and have not served the same
apprenticeship which he had, are not advised to follow his example.
Surely he was better employed in plying the trades of tinker and smith
than in having recourse to vice, in running after milk-maids for example.
Running after milk-maids is by no means an ungenteel rural diversion; but
let any one ask some respectable casuist (the Bishop of London for
example), whether Lavengro was not far better employed, when in the
country, at tinkering and smithery than he would have been in running
after all the milkmaids in Cheshire, though tinkering is in general
considered a very ungenteel employment, and smithery little better,
notwithstanding that an Orcadian poet, who wrote in Norse about eight
hundred years ago, reckons the latter amongst nine noble arts which he
possessed, naming it along with playing at chess, on the harp, and
ravelling runes, or as the original has it 'treading runes'--that is
compressing them into a small compass by mingling one letter with
another, even as the Turkish caligraphists ravel the Arabic letters, more
especially those who write talismans.
'Nine arts have I, all noble;
I play at chess so free,
At ravelling runes I'm ready,
At books and smithery;
I'm skill'd o'er ice at skimming
On skates, I shoot and row,
And few at harping match me,
Or minstrelsy, I trow.'
But though Lavengro takes up smithery, which, though the Orcadian ranks
it with chess-playing and harping, is certainly somewhat of a grimy art,
there can be no doubt that, had he been wealthy and not so forlorn as he
was, he would have turned to many things, honourable, of course, in
preference. He has no objection to ride a fine horse when he has the
opportunity: he has his day-dream of making a fortune of two hundred
thousand pounds by becoming a merchant and doing business after the
Armenian fashion; and there can be no doubt that he would have been glad
to wear fine clothes, provided he had had sufficient funds to authorize
him in wearing them. For the sake of wandering the country and plying
the hammer and tongs he would not have refused a commission in the
service of that illustrious monarch George the Fourth, provided he had
thought that he could live on his pay, and not be forced to run in debt
to tradesmen, without any hope of paying them, for clothes and luxuries,
as many highly genteel officers in that honourable service were in the
habit of doing. For the sake of tinkering he would certainly not have
refused a secretaryship of an embassy to Persia, in which he might have
turned his acquaintance with Persian, Arabic, and the Lord only knows
what other languages, to account. He took to tinkering and smithery,
because no better employments were at his command. No war is waged in
the book against rank, wealth, fine clothes, or dignified employments; it
is shown, however, that a person may be a gentleman and a scholar without
them. Rank, wealth, fine clothes, and dignified employments, are no
doubt very fine things, but they are merely externals, they do not make a
gentleman, they add external grace and dignity to the gentleman and
scholar, but they make neither; and is it not better to be a gentleman
without them than not a gentleman with them? Is not Lavengro, when he
leaves London on foot with twenty pounds in his pocket, entitled to more
respect than Mr. Flamson flaming in his coach with a million? And is not
even the honest jockey at Horncastle, who offers a fair price to Lavengro
for his horse, entitled to more than the scoundrel lord, who attempts to
cheat him of one-fourth of its value.
Millions, however, seem to think otherwise, by their servile adoration of
people whom, without rank, wealth, and fine clothes, they would consider
infamous; but whom, possessed of rank, wealth, and glittering
habiliments, they seem to admire all the more for their profligacy and
crimes. Does not a blood-spot or a lust-spot on the clothes of a
blooming emperor give a kind of zest to the genteel young god? Do not
the pride, superciliousness, and selfishness of a certain aristocracy
make it all the more regarded by its worshippers? And do not the
clownish and gutter-blood admirers of Mr. Flamson like him all the more
because they are conscious that he is a knave? If such is the case--and,
alas! is it not the case?--they cannot be too frequently told that fine
clothes, wealth, and titles adorn a person in proportion as he adorns
them; that if worn by the magnanimous and good they are ornaments indeed,
but if by the vile and profligate they are merely san benitos, and only
serve to make their infamy doubly apparent; and that a person in seedy
raiment and tattered hat, possessed of courage, kindness, and virtue, is
entitled to more respect from those to whom his virtues are manifested
than any cruel profligate emperor, selfish aristocrat, or knavish
millionaire in the world.
The writer has no intention of saying that all in England are affected
with the absurd mania for gentility; nor is such a statement made in the
book; it is shown therein that individuals of various classes can prize a
gentleman, notwithstanding seedy raiment, dusty shoes, or tattered
hat--for example, the young Irishman, the rich genius, the postillion,
and his employer. Again, when the life of the hero is given to the
world, amidst the howl about its lowness and vulgarity, raised by the
servile crew whom its independence of sentiment has stung, more than one
powerful voice has been heard testifying approbation of its learning and
the purity of its morality. That there is some salt in England--minds
not swayed by mere externals--he is fully convinced; if he were not, he
would spare himself the trouble of writing; but to the fact that the
generality of his countrymen are basely grovelling before the shrine of
what they are pleased to call gentility he cannot shut his eyes.
Oh! what a clever person that Cockney was, who, travelling in the
Aberdeen railroad carriage, after edifying the company with his remarks
on various subjects, gave it as his opinion that Lieutenant P--- {337}
would, in future, be shunned by all respectable society! And what a
simple person that elderly gentleman was, who, abruptly starting, asked,
in rather an authoritative voice, 'And why should Lieutenant P--- be
shunned by respectable society?' and who, after entering into what was
said to be a masterly analysis of the entire evidence of the case,
concluded by stating, 'that having been accustomed to all kinds of
evidence all his life, he had never known a case in which the accused had
obtained a more complete and triumphant justification than Lieutenant
P--- had done in the late trial.'
Now, the Cockney, who is said to have been a very foppish Cockney, was
perfectly right in what he said, and therein manifested a knowledge of
the English mind and character, and likewise of the modern English
language, to which his catechist, who, it seems, was a distinguished
member of the Scottish Bar, could lay no pretensions. The Cockney knew
what the Lord of Session knew not--that the British public is gentility
crazy--and he knew, moreover, that gentility and respectability are
synonymous. No one in England is genteel or respectable that is 'looked
at,' who is the victim of oppression. He may be pitied for a time, but
when did not pity terminate in contempt? A poor, harmless young
officer!--but why enter into the details of the infamous case? They are
but too well known, and if ever, cruelty, pride, and cowardice, and
things much worse than even cruelty, cowardice, and pride, were brought
to light, and at the same time countenanced, they were in that case.
What availed the triumphant justification of the poor victim? There was
at first a roar of indignation against his oppressors, but how long did
it last? He had been turned out of the service, they remained in it with
their red coats and epaulets; he was merely the son of a man who had
rendered good service to his country, they were, for the most part,
highly connected; they were in the extremest degree genteel, he quite the
reverse. So the nation wavered, considered, thought the genteel side was
the safest after all, and then, with the cry of, 'Oh, there is nothing
like gentility,' ratted bodily. Newspaper and public turned against the
victim, scouted him, apologized for the--what should they be called?--who
were not only admitted into the most respectable society, but courted to
come, the spots, not merely of wine, on their military clothes giving
them a kind of poignancy. But there is a God in heaven; the British
glories are tarnished--Providence has never smiled on British arms since
that case--oh, Balaklava! thy name interpreted is net of fishes, and well
dost thou deserve that name. How many a scarlet golden fish has of late
perished in the mud amidst thee, cursing the genteel service and the
genteel leader which brought him to such a doom!
Whether the rage for gentility is most prevalent amongst the upper,
middle, or lower classes it is difficult to say; the priest, in the text,
seems to think that it is exhibited in the most decided manner in the
middle class; it is the writer's opinion, however, that in no class is it
more strongly developed than in the lower; what they call being well born
goes a great way amongst them, but the possession of money much farther,
whence Mr. Flamson's influence over them. Their rage against, and scorn
for, any person who by his courage and talents has advanced himself in
life, and still remains poor, are indescribable: 'He is no better than
ourselves,' they say; 'why should he be above us?' For they have no
conception that anybody has a right to ascendancy over themselves except
by birth or money. This feeling amongst the vulgar has been, to a
certain extent, the bane of the two services, naval and military. The
writer does not make this assertion rashly; he observed this feeling at
work in the army when a child, and he has good reason for believing that
it was as strongly at work in the navy at the same time, and is still as
prevalent in both. Why are not brave men raised from the ranks? is
frequently the cry; why are not brave sailors promoted? The Lord help
brave soldiers and sailors who are promoted! They have less to undergo
from the high airs of their brother-officers, and those are hard enough
to endure, than from the insolence of the men. Soldiers and sailors
promoted to command are said to be in general tyrants; in nine cases out
of ten, when they are tyrants, they have been obliged to have recourse to
extreme severity in order to protect themselves from the insolence and
mutinous spirit of the men: 'He is no better than ourselves; shoot him,
bayonet him, or fling him overboard!' they say of some obnoxious
individual raised above them by his merit. Soldiers and sailors, in
general, will bear any amount of tyranny from a lordly sot, or the son of
a man who has 'plenty of brass'--their own term--but will mutiny against
the just orders of a skilful and brave officer who 'is no better than
themselves.' There was the affair of the _Bounty_, for example: Bligh
was one of the best seamen that ever trod deck, and one of the bravest of
men; proofs of his seamanship he gave by steering, amidst dreadful
weather, a deeply-laden boat for nearly four thousand miles over an
almost unknown ocean; of his bravery at the fight of Copenhagen, one of
the most desperate ever fought, of which, after Nelson, he was the hero;
he was, moreover, not an unkind man; but the crew of the _Bounty_
mutinied against him, and set him, half-naked, in an open boat, with
certain of his men who remained faithful to him, and ran away with the
ship. Their principal motive for doing so was an idea, whether true or
groundless the writer cannot say, that Bligh was 'no better than
themselves'; he was certainly neither a lord's illegitimate, nor
possessed of twenty thousand pounds. The writer knows what he is writing
about, having been acquainted in his early years with an individual who
was turned adrift with Bligh, and who died about the year '22, a
lieutenant in the navy, in a provincial town in which the writer was
brought up. The ringleaders in the mutiny were two scoundrels, Christian
and Young, who had great influence with the crew, because they were
genteelly connected. Bligh, after leaving the _Bounty_, had considerable
difficulty in managing the men who had shared his fate, because they
considered themselves 'as good men as he,' notwithstanding that to his
conduct and seamanship they had alone to look, under heaven, for
salvation from the ghastly perils that surrounded them. Bligh himself,
in his journal, alludes to this feeling. Once, when he and his
companions landed on a desert island, one of them said, with a mutinous
look, that he considered himself 'as good a man as he'; Bligh, seizing a
cutlass, called upon him to take another and defend himself, whereupon
the man said that Bligh was going to kill him, and made all manner of
concessions. Now, why did this fellow consider himself as good a man as
Bligh? Was he as good a seaman? No, nor a tenth part as good. As brave
a man? No, nor a tenth part as brave; and of these facts he was
perfectly well aware, but bravery and seamanship stood for nothing with
him, as they still stand with thousands of his class. Bligh was not
genteel by birth or money, therefore Bligh was no better than himself.
Had Bligh, before he sailed, got a twenty thousand pound prize in the
lottery, he would have experienced no insolence from this fellow, for
there would have been no mutiny in the _Bounty_. 'He is our betters,'
the crew would have said, 'and it is our duty to obey him.'
The wonderful power of gentility in England is exemplified in nothing
more than in what it is producing amongst Jews, gypsies, and Quakers. It
is breaking up their venerable communities. All the better, someone will
say. Alas! alas! It is making the wealthy Jews forsake the synagogue
for the opera-house, or the gentility chapel, in which a disciple of Mr.
Platitude, in a white surplice, preaches a sermon at noon-day from a
desk, on each side of which is a flaming taper. It is making them
abandon their ancient literature, their 'Mischna,' their 'Gemara,' their
'Zohar,' for gentility novels, 'The Young Duke,' the most unexceptionably
genteel book ever written, being the principal favourite. It makes the
young Jew ashamed of the young Jewess; it makes her ashamed of the young
Jew. The young Jew marries an opera dancer, or if the dancer will not
have him, as is frequently the case, the cast-off Miss of the Honourable
Spencer So-and-so. It makes the young Jewess accept the honourable offer
of a cashiered lieutenant of the Bengal Native Infantry; or if such a
person does not come forward, the dishonourable offer of a cornet of a
regiment of crack hussars. It makes poor Jews, male and female, forsake
the synagogue for the sixpenny theatre or penny hop; the Jew to take up
with an Irish female of loose character, and the Jewess with a musician
of the Guards, or the Tipperary servant of Captain Mulligan. With
respect to the gypsies, it is making the women what they never were
before--harlots; and the men what they never were before--careless
fathers and husbands. It has made the daughter of Ursula the chaste take
up with the base-drummer of a wild-beast show. It makes Gorgiko Brown,
{340} the gypsy man, leave his tent and his old wife of an evening, and
thrust himself into society which could well dispense with him.
'Brother,' said Mr. Petulengro the other day to the Romany Rye, after
telling him many things connected with the decadence of gypsyism, 'there
is one Gorgiko Brown, who, with a face as black as a tea-kettle, wishes
to be mistaken for a Christian tradesman; he goes into the parlour of a
third-rate inn of an evening, calls for rum-and-water, and attempts to
enter into conversation with the company about politics and business.
The company flout him or give him the cold shoulder, or perhaps complain
to the landlord, who comes and asks him what business he has in the
parlour, telling him if he wants to drink to go into the tap-room, and
perhaps collars him and kicks him out, provided he refuses to move.'
With respect to the Quakers, it makes the young people, like the young
Jews, crazy after gentility diversions, worship, marriages, or
connections, and makes old Pease do what it makes Gorgiko Brown
do--thrust himself into society which could well dispense with him, and
out of which he is not kicked, because, unlike the gypsy, he is not poor.
The writer would say much more on these points, but want of room prevents
him; he must therefore request the reader to have patience until he can
lay before the world a pamphlet, which he has been long meditating, to be
entitled 'Remarks on the strikingly similar Effects which a Love for
Gentility has produced, and is producing, amongst Jews, Gypsies, and
Quakers.'
The Priest in the book has much to say on the subject of this gentility
nonsense; no person can possibly despise it more thoroughly than that
very remarkable individual seems to do, yet he hails its prevalence with
pleasure, knowing the benefits which will result from it to the church of
which he is the sneering slave. 'The English are mad after gentility,'
says he; 'well, all the better for us. Their religion for a long time
past has been a plain and simple one, and consequently by no means
genteel; they'll quit it for ours, which is the perfection of what they
admire; with which Templars, Hospitalers, mitred abbots, Gothic abbeys,
long-drawn aisles, golden censers, incense, et cetera, are connected;
nothing, or next to nothing, of Christ, it is true, but weighed in the
balance against gentility, where will Christianity be? why, kicking
against the beam--ho! ho!' And in connection with the gentility nonsense
he expatiates largely, and with much contempt, on a species of literature
by which the interests of his church in England have been very much
advanced--all genuine priests have a thorough contempt for everything
which tends to advance the interests of their church--this literature is
made up of pseudo-Jacobitism, Charlie o'er the waterism, or nonsense
about Charlie o'er the water. And the writer will now take the liberty
of saying a few words about it on his own account.
CHAPTER VI
ON SCOTCH GENTILITY-NONSENSE--CHARLIE O'ER THE WATERISM
Of the literature just alluded to Scott was the inventor. It is founded
on the fortunes and misfortunes of the Stuart family, of which Scott was
the zealous defender and apologist, doing all that in his power lay to
represent the members of it as noble, chivalrous, high-minded,
unfortunate princes; though, perhaps, of all the royal families that ever
existed upon earth, this family was the worst. It was unfortunate
enough, it is true; but it owed its misfortunes entirely to its crimes,
viciousness, bad faith, and cowardice. Nothing will be said of it here
until it made its appearance in England to occupy the English throne.
The first of the family which we have to do with, James, was a dirty,
cowardly miscreant, of whom the less said the better. His son, Charles
I., was a tyrant, exceedingly cruel and revengeful, but weak and
dastardly; he caused a poor fellow to be hanged in London, who was not
his subject, because he had heard that the unfortunate creature had once
bit his own glove at Cadiz, in Spain, at the mention of his name; and he
permitted his own bull-dog, Strafford, to be executed by his own enemies,
though the only crime of Strafford was that he had barked furiously at
those enemies, and had worried two or three of them when Charles shouted,
'Fetch 'em!' He was a bitter, but yet a despicable, enemy, and the
coldest and most worthless of friends; for though he always hoped to be
able some time or other to hang his enemies, he was always ready to curry
favour with them, more especially if he could do so at the expense of his
friends. He was the haughtiest yet meanest of mankind. He once caned a
young nobleman for appearing before him in the drawing-room not dressed
exactly according to the court etiquette; yet he condescended to flatter
and compliment him who, from principle, was his bitterest enemy--namely,
Harrison, when the Republican colonel was conducting him as a prisoner to
London. His bad faith was notorious; it was from abhorrence of the first
public instance which he gave of his bad faith--his breaking his word to
the Infanta of Spain, that the poor Hiberno-Spainard bit his glove at
Cadiz; and it was his notorious bad faith which eventually cost him his
head; for the Republicans would gladly have spared him, provided they
could have put the slightest confidence in any promise, however solemn,
which he might have made to them. Of them it would be difficult to say
whether they most hated or despised him. Religion he had none. One day
he favoured Popery; the next, on hearing certain clamours of the people,
he sent his wife's domestics back packing to France, because they were
Papists. Papists, however, should make him a saint, for he was certainly
the cause of the taking of Rochelle.
His son, Charles the Second, though he passed his youth in the school of
adversity, learned no other lesson from it than the following one--take
care of yourself, and never do an action, either good or bad, which is
likely to bring you into any great difficulty; and this maxim he acted up
to as soon as he came to the throne. He was a Papist, but took especial
care not to acknowledge his religion, at which he frequently scoffed,
till just before his last gasp, when he knew that he could lose nothing,
and hoped to gain everything by it. He was always in want of money, but
took care not to tax the country beyond all endurable bounds, preferring,
to such a bold and dangerous course, to become the secret pensioner of
Louis, to whom, in return for his gold, he sacrificed the honour and
interests of Britain. He was too lazy and sensual to delight in playing
the part of a tyrant himself; but he never checked tyranny in others,
save in one instance. He permitted beastly butchers to commit
unmentionable horrors on the feeble, unarmed, and disunited Covenanters
of Scotland, but checked them when they would fain have endeavoured to
play the same game on the numerous, united, dogged, and warlike
Independents of England. To show his filial piety, he bade the hangman
dishonour the corpses of some of his father's judges, before whom, when
alive, he ran like a screaming hare; but permitted those who had lost
their all in supporting his father's cause, to pine in misery and want.
He would give to a painted harlot a thousand pounds for a loathsome
embrace, and to a player or buffoon a hundred for a trumpery pun, but
would refuse a penny to the widow or orphan of an old Royalist soldier.
He was the personification of selfishness; and as he loved and cared for
no one, so did no one love or care for him. So little had he gained the
respect or affection of those who surrounded him, that after his body had
undergone an after-death examination, parts of it were thrown down the
sinks of the palace, to become eventually the prey of the swine and ducks
of Westminster.
His brother, who succeeded him, James the Second, was a Papist, but
sufficiently honest to acknowledge his Popery, but, upon the whole, he
was a poor creature; though a tyrant, he was cowardly; had he not been a
coward he would never have lost his throne. There were plenty of lovers
of tyranny in England who would have stood by him, provided he would have
stood by them, and would, though not Papists, have encouraged him in his
attempt to bring back England beneath the sway of Rome, and perhaps would
eventually have become Papists themselves; but the nation raising a cry
against him, and his son-in-law, the Prince of Orange, invading the
country, he forsook his friends--of whom he had a host, but for whom he
cared little--left his throne, for which he cared a great deal, and
Popery in England, for which he cared yet more, to their fate, and
escaped to France, from whence, after taking a little heart, he repaired
to Ireland, where he was speedily joined by a gallant army of Papists
whom he basely abandoned at the Boyne, running away in a most lamentable
condition at the time when, by showing a little courage, he might have
enabled them to conquer. This worthy, in his last will, bequeathed his
heart to England, his right arm to Scotland, and his bowels to Ireland.
What the English and Scotch said to their respective bequests is not
known, but it is certain that an old Irish priest, supposed to have been
a great-grand-uncle of the present Reverend Father Murtagh, on hearing of
the bequest to Ireland, fell into a great passion, and, having been
brought up at 'Paris and Salamanca,' expressed his indignation in the
following strain: 'Malditas sean tus tripas! teniamos bastante del olor
de tus tripas al tiempo de tu nuida dela batalla del Boyne!'
His son, generally called the Old Pretender, though born in England, was
carried in his infancy to France, where he was brought up in the
strictest principles of Popery, which principles, however, did not
prevent him becoming (when did they ever prevent anyone?) a worthless and
profligate scoundrel. There are some doubts as to the reality of his
being a son of James, which doubts are probably unfounded, the grand
proof of his legitimacy being the thorough baseness of his character. It
was said of his father that he could speak well, and it may be said of
him that he could write well--the only thing he could do which was worth
doing, always supposing that there is any merit in being able to write.
He was of a mean appearance, and, like his father, pusillanimous to a
degree. The meanness of his appearance disgusted, and his pusillanimity
discouraged the Scotch when he made his appearance amongst them in the
year 1715, some time after the standard of rebellion had been hoisted by
Mar. He only stayed a short time in Scotland, and then, seized with
panic, retreated to France, leaving his friends to shift for themselves
as they best could. He died a pensioner of the Pope.
The son of this man, Charles Edward, of whom so much in latter years has
been said and written, was a worthless, ignorant youth, and a profligate
and illiterate old man. When young, the best that can be said of him is
that he had occasionally springs of courage, invariably at the wrong time
and place, which merely served to lead his friends into inextricable
difficulties. When old, he was loathsome and contemptible to both friend
and foe. His wife loathed him, and for the most terrible of reasons; she
did not pollute his couch, for to do that was impossible--he had made it
so vile; but she betrayed it, inviting to it not only Alfieri the Filthy,
but the coarsest grooms. Doctor King, the warmest and almost last
adherent of his family, said that there was not a vice or crime of which
he was not guilty; as for his foes, they scorned to harm him even when in
their power. In the year 1745 he came down from the Highlands of
Scotland, which had long been a focus of rebellion. He was attended by
certain clans of the Highlands--desperadoes used to freebootery from
their infancy, and consequently to the use of arms, and possessed of a
certain species of discipline. With these he defeated at Prestonpans a
body of men called soldiers, but who were in reality peasants and
artizans, levied about a month before, without discipline or confidence
in each other, and who were miserably massacred by the Highland army. He
subsequently invaded England, nearly destitute of regular soldiers, and
penetrated as far as Derby, from which place he retreated on learning
that regular forces, which had been hastily recalled from Flanders, were
coming against him, with the Duke of Cumberland at their head. He was
pursued, and his rear-guard overtaken and defeated by the dragoons of the
Duke at Clifton, from which place the rebels retreated in great confusion
across the Eden into Scotland, where they commenced dancing Highland
reels and strathspeys on the bank of the river for joy at their escape,
whilst a number of wretched girls, paramours of some of them, were
perishing in the waters of the swollen river in an attempt to follow
them. They themselves passed over by eighties and by hundreds,
arm-in-arm, for mutual safety, without the loss of a man, but they left
the poor paramours to shift for themselves; nor did any of these canny
people, after passing the stream, dash back to rescue a single female
life--no, they were too well employed upon the bank in dancing
strathspeys to the tune of 'Charlie o'er the water.' It was, indeed,
Charlie o'er the water, and canny Highlanders o'er the water, but where
were the poor prostitutes meantime? _In the water_.
The Jacobite farce, or tragedy, was speedily brought to a close by the
Battle of Culloden; there did Charlie wish himself back again o'er the
water, exhibiting the most unmistakable signs of pusillanimity; there
were the clans cut to pieces--at least, those who could be brought to the
charge--and there fell Giles Mac Bean, or, as he was called in Gaelic,
Giliosa Mac Beathan, a kind of giant, six feet four inches and a quarter
high, 'than whom,' as his wife said in a coronach she made upon him, 'no
man who stood at Cuiloitr was taller'--Giles Mac Bean, the Major of the
clan Cattan, a great drinker, a great fisher, a great shooter, and the
champion of the Highland host.
The last of the Stuarts was a cardinal.
Such were the Stuarts, such their miserable history. They were dead and
buried, in every sense of the word, until Scott resuscitated
them--how?--by the power of fine writing, and by calling to his aid that
strange divinity, gentility. He wrote splendid novels about the Stuarts,
in which he represents them as unlike what they really were, as the
graceful and beautiful papillon is unlike the hideous and filthy worm.
In a word, he made them genteel, and that was enough to give them
paramount sway over the minds of the British people. The public became
Stuart-mad, and everybody, especially the women, said: 'What a pity it
was that we hadn't a Stuart to govern.' All parties, Whig, Tory, or
Radical, became Jacobite at heart, and admirers of absolute power. The
Whigs talked about the liberty of the subject, and the Radicals about the
rights of man still; but neither party cared a straw for what it talked
about, and mentally swore that, as soon as by means of such stuff they
could get places, and fill their pockets, they would be as Jacobite as
the Jacobs themselves. As for the Tories, no great change in them was
necessary; everything favouring absolutism and slavery being congenial to
them. So the whole nation--that is, the reading part of the nation, with
some exceptions, for, thank God, there has always been some salt in
England--went over the water to Charlie. But going over to Charlie was
not enough; they must, or at least a considerable part of them, go over
to Rome, too, or have a hankering to do so. As the Priest sarcastically
observes in the text, 'As all the Jacobs were Papists, so the good folks
who, through Scott's novels, admire the Jacobs must be Papists too.' An
idea got about that the religion of such genteel people as the Stuarts
must be the climax of gentility, and that idea was quite sufficient.
Only let a thing, whether temporal or spiritual, be considered genteel in
England, and if it be not followed it is strange indeed; so Scott's
writings not only made the greater part of the nation Jacobite, but
Popish.
Here some people will exclaim--whose opinions remain sound and
uncontaminated--what you say is perhaps true with respect to the Jacobite
nonsense at present so prevalent being derived from Scott's novels, but
the Popish nonsense, which people of the genteeler class are so fond of,
is derived from Oxford. We sent our sons to Oxford nice honest lads,
educated in the principles of the Church of England, and at the end of
the first term they came home puppies, talking Popish nonsense, which
they had learned from the pedants to whose care we had entrusted them;
ay, not only Popery, but Jacobitism, which they hardly carried with them
from home, for we never heard them talking Jacobitism before they had
been at Oxford; but now their conversation is a farrago of Popish and
Jacobite stuff: 'Complines and Claverse.' Now, what these honest folks
say is, to a certain extent, founded on fact; the Popery which has
overflowed the land during the last fourteen or fifteen years has come
immediately from Oxford, and likewise some of the Jacobitism, Popish and
Jacobite nonsense, and little or nothing else, having been taught at
Oxford for about that number of years. But whence did the pedants get
the Popish nonsense with which they have corrupted youth? Why, from the
same quarter from which they got the Jacobite nonsense with which they
have inoculated those lads who were not inoculated with it
before--Scott's novels. Jacobitism and Laudism, a kind of half Popery,
had at one time been very prevalent at Oxford, but both had been long
consigned to oblivion there, and people at Oxford cared as little about
Laud as they did about the Pretender. Both were dead and buried there,
as everywhere else, till Scott called them out of their graves, when the
pedants of Oxford hailed both; ay, and the Pope, too, as soon as Scott
had made the old fellow fascinating, through particular novels, more
especially the 'Monastery' and 'Abbot.' Then the quiet, respectable,
honourable Church of England would no longer do for the pedants of
Oxford; they must belong to a more genteel Church--they were ashamed at
first to be downright Romans--so they would be Lauds. The pale-looking,
but exceedingly genteel, non-juring clergyman in Waverley was a Laud; but
they soon became tired of being Lauds, for Laud's Church, gewgawish and
idolatrous as it was, was not sufficiently tinselly and idolatrous for
them, so they must be Popes, but in a sneaking way, still calling
themselves Church of England men, in order to batten on the bounty of the
Church which they were betraying, and likewise have opportunities of
corrupting such lads as might still resort to Oxford with principles
uncontaminated.
So the respectable people, whose opinions are still sound, are, to a
certain extent, right when they say that the tide of Popery, which has
flowed over the land, has come from Oxford. It did come immediately from
Oxford, but how did it get to Oxford? Why, from Scott's novels. Oh!
that sermon which was the first manifestation of Oxford feeling, preached
at Oxford some time in the year '38 by a divine of a weak and confused
intellect, in which Popery was mixed up with Jacobitism! The present
writer remembers perfectly well, on reading some extracts from it at the
time in a newspaper, on the top of a coach, exclaiming: 'Why, the
simpleton has been pilfering from Walter Scott's novels!'
Oh, Oxford pedants! Oxford pedants! ye whose politics and religion are
both derived from Scott's novels! what a pity it is that some lad of
honest parents, whose mind ye are endeavouring to stultify with your
nonsense about 'Complines and Claverse,' has not the spirit to start up
and cry, 'Confound your gibberish! I'll have none of it. Hurrah for the
Church, and the principles of my _father_!'
CHAPTER VII--SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED
Now what could have induced Scott to write novels tending to make people
Papists and Jacobites, and in love with arbitrary power? Did he think
that Christianity was a gaudy mummery? He did not, he could not, for he
had read the Bible; yet was he fond of gaudy mummeries, fond of talking
about them. Did he believe that the Stuarts were a good family, and fit
to govern a country like Britain? He knew that they were a vicious,
worthless crew, and that Britain was a degraded country as long as they
swayed the sceptre; but for those facts he cared nothing, they governed
in a way which he liked, for he had an abstract love of despotism, and an
abhorrence of everything savouring of freedom and the rights of man in
general. His favourite political picture was a joking, profligate,
careless king, nominally absolute; the heads of great houses paying court
to, but in reality governing, that king, whilst revelling with him on the
plunder of a nation, and a set of crouching, grovelling vassals (the
literal meaning of vassal is a wretch), who, after allowing themselves to
be horsewhipped, would take a bone if flung to them, and be grateful; so
that in love with mummery, though he knew what Christianity was, no
wonder he admired such a Church as that of Rome, and that which Laud set
up; and by nature formed to be the holder of the candle to ancient
worm-eaten and profligate families, no wonder that all his sympathies
were with the Stuarts and their dissipated, insolent party, and all his
hatred directed against those who endeavoured to check them in their
proceedings, and to raise the generality of mankind something above a
state of vassalage that is wretchedness. Those who were born great,
were, if he could have had his will, always to remain great, however
worthless their characters. Those who were born low, were always to
remain so, however great their talents; though if that rule were carried
out, where would he have been himself?
In the book which he called the 'History of Napoleon Bonaparte,' in which
he plays the sycophant to all the legitimate crowned heads in Europe,
whatever their crimes, vices, or miserable imbecilities, he, in his
abhorrence of everything low which by its own vigour makes itself
illustrious, calls Murat of the sabre the son of a pastry-cook, of a
Marseilleise pastry-cook. It is a pity that people who give themselves
hoity-toity airs--and the Scotch in general are wonderfully addicted to
giving themselves hoity-toity airs, and checking people better than
themselves with their birth {348} and their country--it is a great pity
that such people do not look at home--son of a pastry-cook, of a
Marseilleise pastry-cook! Well, and what was Scott himself? Why, son of
a pettifogger, of an Edinburgh pettifogger. 'Oh, but Scott was descended
from the old cow-stealers of Buccleuch, and therefore--' Descended from
old cow-stealers, was he? Well, had he had nothing to boast of beyond
such a pedigree, he would have lived and died the son of a pettifogger
and been forgotten, and deservedly so; but he possessed talents, and by
his talents rose like Murat, and like him will be remembered for his
talents alone, and deservedly so. 'Yes, but Murat was still the son of a
pastry-cook, and though he was certainly good at the sabre, and cut his
way to a throne, still--' Lord! what fools there are in the world; but
as no one can be thought anything of in this world without a pedigree,
the writer will now give a pedigree for Murat, of a very different
character from the cow-stealing one of Scott, but such a one as the
proudest he might not disdain to claim. Scott was descended from the old
cow-stealers of Buccleuch--was he? Good! and Murat was descended from
the old Moors of Spain, from the Abencerages (sons of the saddle) of
Granada. The name Murat is Arabic, and is the same as Murad (Le Desire,
or the wished-for one). Scott, in his genteel life of Bonaparte, says
that 'when Murat was in Egypt the similarity between the name of the
celebrated Mameluke Mourad and that of Bonaparte's Meilleur Sabreur was
remarked, and became the subject of jest amongst the comrades of the
gallant Frenchman.' But the writer of the novel of Bonaparte did not
know that the names were one and the same. Now, which was the best
pedigree, that of the son of the pastry-cook, or that of the son of the
pettifogger? Which was the best blood? Let us observe the workings of
the two bloods. He who had the blood of the 'sons of the saddle' in him
became the wonderful cavalier of the most wonderful host that ever went
forth to conquest, won for himself a crown, and died the death of a
soldier, leaving behind him a son, only inferior to himself in strength,
in prowess, and in horsemanship. The descendant of the cow-stealer
became a poet, a novel writer, the panegyrist of great folks and genteel
people; became insolvent because, though an author, he deemed it
ungenteel to be mixed up with the business part of authorship; died
paralytic and broken-hearted because he could no longer give
entertainments to great folks; leaving behind him, amongst other
children, who were never heard of, a son, who, through his father's
interest, had become lieutenant-colonel in a genteel cavalry regiment. A
son who was ashamed of his father because his father was an author--a son
who--paugh!--why ask which was the best blood?
So, owing to his rage for gentility, Scott must needs become the
apologist of the Stuarts and their party; but God made this man pay
dearly for taking the part of the wicked against the good; for lauding up
to the skies miscreants and robbers, and calumniating the noble spirits
of Britain, the salt of England, and his own country. As God had driven
the Stuarts from their throne, and their followers from their estates,
making them vagabonds and beggars on the face of the earth, taking from
them all they cared for, so did that same God, who knows perfectly well
how and where to strike, deprive the apologist of that wretched crew of
all that rendered life pleasant in his eyes, the lack of which paralyzed
him in body and mind, rendered him pitiable to others, loathsome to
himself--so much so that he once said, 'Where is the beggar who would
change place with me, notwithstanding all my fame?' Ah! God knows
perfectly well how to strike. He permitted him to retain all his
literary fame to the very last--his literary fame for which he cared
nothing; but what became of the sweetnesses of life, his fine house, his
grand company, and his entertainments? The grand house ceased to be his;
he was only permitted to live in it on sufferance, and whatever grandeur
it might still retain to soon became as desolate a looking house as any
misanthrope could wish to see. Where were the grand entertainments and
the grand company? There are no grand entertainments where there is no
money; no lords and ladies where there are no entertainments--and there
lay the poor lodger in the desolate house, groaning on a bed no longer
his, smitten by the hand of God in the part where he was most vulnerable.
Of what use telling such a man to take comfort, for he had written the
'Minstrel' and 'Rob Roy'--telling him to think of his literary fame?
Literary fame, indeed! he wanted back his lost gentility:
'Retain my altar,
I care nothing for it--but oh! touch not my _beard_.'
PORNY'S _War of the Gods_.
He dies, his children die too, and then comes the crowning judgment of
God on what remained of his race, and the house which he had built. He
was not a Papist himself, nor did he wish anyone belonging to him to be
Popish, for he had read enough of the Bible to know that no one can be
saved through Popery, yet had he a sneaking affection for it, and would
at all times, in an underhand manner, give it a good word both in writing
and discourse, because it was a gaudy kind of worship, and ignorance and
vassalage prevailed so long as it flourished; but he certainly did not
wish any of his people to become Papists, nor the house which he had
built to become a Popish house, though the very name he gave it savoured
of Popery. But Popery becomes fashionable through his novels and
poems--the only one that remains of his race, a female grandchild,
marries a person who, following the fashion, becomes a Papist, and makes
her a Papist too. Money abounds with the husband who buys the house, and
then the house becomes the rankest Popish house in Britain. A
superstitious person might almost imagine that one of the old Scottish
Covenanters, whilst the grand house was being built from the profits
resulting from the sale of writings favouring Popery and persecution, and
calumniatory of Scotland's saints and martyrs, had risen from the grave,
and banned Scott, his race, and his house, by reading a certain psalm.
In saying what he has said about Scott the author has not been influenced
by any feeling of malice or ill-will, but simply by a regard for truth,
and a desire to point out to his countrymen the harm which has resulted
from the perusal of his works; he is not one of those who would
depreciate the talents of Scott, he admires his talents, both as a prose
writer and a poet. As a poet especially he admires him, and believes him
to have been by far the greatest, with perhaps the exception of
Mickiewicz, who only wrote for unfortunate Poland, that Europe has given
birth to during the last hundred years. As a prose writer he admires him
less, it is true, but his admiration for him in that capacity is very
high, and he only laments that he prostituted his talents to the cause of
the Stuarts and gentility. What book of fiction of the present century
can you read twice, with the exception of 'Waverley' and 'Rob Roy?'
There is 'Pelham,' it is true, which the writer of these lines has seen a
Jewess reading in the steppe of Debreczin, and which a young Prussian
Baron, a great traveller, whom he met at Constantinople in '44, told him
he always carried in his valise. And in conclusion he will say, in order
to show the opinion which he entertains of the power of Scott as a
writer, that he did for the spectre of the wretched Pretender what all
the kings of Europe could not do for his body--placed it on the throne of
these realms, and for Popery what Popes and Cardinals strove in vain to
do for three centuries--brought back its mummeries and nonsense into the
temples of the British Isles.
Scott during his lifetime had a crowd of imitators, who, whether they
wrote history so called, poetry so called, or novels--nobody would call a
book a novel if he could call it anything else--wrote Charlie o'er the
water nonsense, and now that he has been dead a quarter of a century,
there are others daily springing up who are striving to imitate Scott in
his Charlie o'er the water nonsense--for nonsense it is, even when
flowing from his pen. They, too, must write Jacobite histories, Jacobite
songs, and Jacobite novels, and much the same figure as the scoundrel
menials in the comedy cut when personating their masters, and retailing
their masters' conversation do they cut as Walter Scotts. In their
histories, they too talk about the Prince and Glenfinnan, and the
pibroch; and in their songs about 'Claverse' and 'Bonny Dundee.' But
though they may be Scots, they are not Walter Scotts. But it is perhaps
chiefly in the novel that you see the veritable hog in armour; the time
of the novel is of course the '15 or '45; the hero a Jacobite, and
connected with one or other of the enterprises of those periods; and the
author, to show how unprejudiced he is, and what _original_ views he
takes of subjects, must needs speak up for Popery, whenever he has
occasion to mention it; though, with all his originality, when he brings
his hero and the vagabonds with which he is concerned before a
barricadoed house, belonging to the Whigs, he can make them get into it
by no other method than that which Scott makes his rioters employ to get
into the Tolbooth, _burning down_ the door.
To express the more than utter foolishness of this latter Charlie o'er
the water nonsense, whether in rhyme or prose, there is but one word, and
that word a Scotch word. Scotch, the sorriest of jargons, compared with
which even Roth Welsch is dignified and expressive, has yet one word to
express what would be inexpressible by any word or combination of words
in any language, or in any other jargon in the world; and very properly;
for as the nonsense is properly Scotch, so should the word be Scotch
which expresses it; that word is 'fushionless,' pronounced
_fooshionless_; and when the writer has called the nonsense
fooshionless--and he does call it fooshionless--he has nothing more to
say, but leaves the nonsense to its fate.
CHAPTER VIII--ON CANTING NONSENSE
The writer now wishes to say something on the subject of canting
nonsense, of which there is a great deal in England. There are various
cants in England, amongst which is the religious cant. He is not going
to discuss the subject of religious cant; lest, however, he should be
misunderstood, he begs leave to repeat that he is a sincere member of the
old-fashioned Church of England, in which he believes there is more
religion, and consequently less cant, than in any other church in the
world; nor is he going to discuss many other cants; he shall content
himself with saying something about two--the temperance cant and the
unmanly cant. Temperance canters say that 'it is unlawful to drink a
glass of ale.' Unmanly canters say that 'it is unlawful to use one's
fists.' The writer begs leave to tell both these species of canters that
they do not speak the words of truth.
It is very lawful to take a cup of ale, or wine, for the purpose of
cheering or invigorating yourself when you are faint and down-hearted;
and likewise to give a cup of ale or wine to others when they are in a
similar condition. The Holy Scripture sayeth nothing to the contrary,
but rather encourageth people in so doing by the text, 'Wine maketh glad
the heart of man.' But it is not lawful to intoxicate yourself with
frequent cups of ale or wine, nor to make others intoxicated, nor does
the Holy Scripture say that it is. The Holy Scripture no more says that
it is lawful to intoxicate yourself or others, than it says that it is
unlawful to take a cup of ale or wine yourself, or to give one to others.
Noah is not commended in the Scripture for making himself drunken on the
wine he brewed. Nor is it said that the Saviour, when He supplied the
guests with first-rate wine at the marriage feast, told them to make
themselves drunk upon it. He is said to have supplied them with
first-rate wine, but He doubtless left the quantity which each should
drink to each party's reason and discretion. When you set a good dinner
before your guests, you do not expect that they should gorge themselves
with the victuals you set before them. Wine may be abused, and so may a
leg of mutton.