It seems, to my ear, that there is a sad want of harmony in Lord Byron's
verses. Is it not unnatural to be always connecting very great intellectual
power with utter depravity? Does such a combination often really exist in
rerum naturae?
I always had a great liking--I may say, a sort of nondescript reverence--
for John Kemble. What a quaint creature he was! I remember a party, in
which he was discoursing in his measured manner after dinner, when the
servant announced his carriage. He nodded, and went on. The announcement
took place twice afterwards; Kemble each time nodding his head a little
more impatiently, but still going on. At last, and for the fourth time, the
servant entered, and said,--"Mrs. Kemble says, sir, she has the
rheumat_ise_, and cannot stay." "Add_ism!_" dropped John, in a
parenthesis, and proceeded quietly in his harangue.
* * * * *
Kemble would correct any body, at any time, and in any place. Dear Charles
Mathews--a true genius in his line, in my judgment--told me he was once
performing privately before the King. The King was much pleased with the
imitation of Kemble, and said,--"I liked Kemble very much. He was one of my
earliest friends. I remember once he was talking, and found himself out of
snuff. I offered him my box. He declined taking any--'he, a poor actor,
could not put his fingers into a royal box.' I said, 'Take some, pray; you
will obl_ee_ge me.' Upon which Kemble replied,--'It would become your royal
mouth better to say, obl_i_ge me;' and took a pinch."
* * * * *
It is not easy to put me out of countenance, or interrupt the feeling of
the time by mere external noise or circumstance; yet once I was thoroughly
_done up_, as you would say. I was reciting, at a particular house, the
"Remorse;" and was in the midst of Alhadra's description of the death of
her husband, [1] when a scrubby boy, with a shining face set in dirt, burst
open the door and cried out,--"Please, ma'am, master says, Will you ha'; or
will you _not_ ha', the pin-round?"
[Footnote 1:
"ALHADRA. This night your chieftain arm'd himself,
And hurried from me. But I follow'd him
At distance, till I saw him enter _there_!
NAOMI. The cavern?
ALHADRA. Yes, the mouth of yonder cavern.
After a while I saw the son of Valdez
Rush by with flaring torch: he likewise enter'd.
There was another and a longer pause;
And once, methought, I heard the clash of swords!
And soon the son of Valdez re-appear'd:
He flung his torch towards the moon in sport,
And seem'd as he were mirthful! I stood listening,
Impatient for the footsteps of my husband.
NAOMI. Thou calledst him?
ALHADRA. I crept into the cavern--
'Twas dark and very silent. What saidst thou?
No! No! I did not dare call Isidore,
Lest I should hear no answer! A brief while,
Belike, I lost all thought and memory
Of that for which I came! After that pause,
O Heaven! I heard a groan, and follow'd it;
And yet another groan, which guided me
Into a strange recess--and there was light,
A hideous light! his torch lay on the ground;
Its flame burnt dimly o'er a chasm's brink:
I spake; and whilst I spake, a feeble groan
Came from that chasm! it was his last--his death-groan!
NAOMI. Comfort her, Allah!
ALHADRA. I stood in unimaginable trance
And agony that cannot be remember'd,
Listening with horrid hope to hear a groan!
But I had heard his last;--my husband's death-groan!
NAOMI. Haste! let us onward!
ALHADRA. I look'd far down the pit--
My sight was bounded by a jutting fragment;
And it was stain'd with blood. Then first I shriek'd;
My eyeballs burnt, my brain grew hot as fire,
And all the hanging drops of the wet roof
Turn'd into blood--I saw them turn to blood!
And I was leaping wildly down the chasm,
When on the further brink I saw his sword,
And it said, Vengeance!--Curses on my tongue!
The moon hath moved in heaven, and I am here,
And he hath not had vengeance!--Isidore!
Spirit of Isidore, thy murderer lives!
Away, away!"--Act iv. sc. 3.]
_January_ 1. 1823.
PARLIAMENTARY PRIVILEGE.---PERMANENCY AND PROGRESSION OF NATIONS.--KANT'S
RACES OF MANKIND.
Privilege is a substitution for Law, where, from the nature of the
circumstances, a law cannot act without clashing with greater and more
general principles. The House of Commons must, of course, have the power of
taking cognizance of offences against its own rights. Sir Francis Burdett
might have been properly sent to the Tower for the speech he made in the
House [1]; but when afterwards he published it in Cobbett, and they took
cognizance of it as a breach of privilege, they violated the plain
distinction between privilege and law.
As a speech in the House, the House could alone animadvert upon it,
consistently with the effective preservation of its most necessary
prerogative of freedom of debate; but when that speech became a book, then
the law was to look to it; and there being a law of libel, commensurate
with every possible object of attack in the state, privilege, which acts,
or ought to act, only as a substitute for other laws, could have nothing to
do with it. I have heard that one distinguished individual said,--"That he,
for one, would not shrink from affirming, that if the House of Commons
chose to _burn_ one of their own members in Palace Yard, it had an inherent
power and right by the constitution to do so." This was said, if at all, by
a moderate-minded man; and may show to what atrocious tyranny some persons
may advance in theory, under shadow of this word privilege.
[Footnote 1:
March 12. 1810. Sir Francis Burdett made a motion in the House of
Commons for the discharge of Mr. Gale Jones, who had been committed to
Newgate by a resolution of the House on the 21st of February preceding.
Sir Francis afterwards published, in Cobbett's Political Register, of the
24th of the same month of March, a "Letter to his Constituents, denying
the power of the House of Commons to imprison the people of England,"
and he accompanied the letter with an argument in support of his position.
On the 27th of March a complaint of breach of privilege, founded on this
publication, was made in the House by Mr. (now Sir Thomas) Lethbridge,
and after several long debates, a motion that Sir Francis Burdett should
be committed to the Tower was made on the 5th of April, 1810, by Sir
Robert Salisbury, and carried by a majority of 38.--ED.]
* * * * *
There are two principles in every European and Christian state:
Permanency and Progression.[1]
In the civil wars of the seventeenth century in England, which are as new
and fresh now as they were a hundred and sixty years ago, and will be so
for ever to us, these two principles came to a struggle. It was natural
that the great and the good of the nation should he found in the ranks of
either side. In the Mohammedan states, there is no principle of permanence;
and, therefore, they sink directly. They existed, and could only exist, in
their efforts at progression; when they ceased to conquer, they fell in
pieces. Turkey would long since have fallen, had it not been supported by
the rival and conflicting interests of Christian Europe. The Turks have no
church; religion and state are one; hence there is no counterpoise, no
mutual support. This is the very essence of their Unitarianism. They have
no past; they are not an historical people; they exist only in the present.
China is an instance of a permanency without progression. The Persians are
a superior race: they have a history and a literature; they were always
considered by the Greeks as quite distinct from the other barbarians. The
Afghans are a remarkable people. They have a sort of republic. Europeans
and Orientalists may be well represented by two figures standing back to
back: the latter looking to the east, that is, backwards; the former
looking westward, or forwards.
[Footnote 1:
See this position stated and illustrated in detail in Mr. Coleridge's work,
"On the Constitution of the Church and State, according to the Idea of
each," p. 21. 2d edit. 1830. Well acquainted as I am with the fact f the
comparatively small acceptation which Mr. Coleridge's prose works have ever
found in the literary world, and with the reasons, and, what is more, with
the causes, of it, I still wonder that this particular treatise has not
been more noticed: first, because it is a little book; secondly, because it
is, or at least nineteen-twentieths of it are, written in a popular style;
and thirdly, because it is the only work, that I know or have ever heard
mentioned, that even attempts a solution of the difficulty in which an
ingenious enemy of the church of England may easily involve most of its
modern defenders in Parliament, or through the press, upon their own
principles and admissions. Mr. Coleridge himself prized this little work
highly, although he admitted its incompleteness as a composition:--"But I
don't care a rush about it," he said to me, "as an author. The saving
distinctions are plainly stated in it, and I am sure nothing is wanted to
make them _tell_, but that some kind friend should steal them from their
obscure hiding-place, and just tumble them down before the public as _his
own_."--ED.]
* * * * *
Kant assigns three great races of mankind. If two individuals of distinct
races cross, a third, or _tertium aliquid_, is _invariably_ produced,
different from either, as a white and a negro produce a mulatto. But when
different varieties of the same race cross, the offspring is according to
what we call chance; it is now like one, now like the other parent. Note
this, when you see the children of any couple of distinct European
complexions,--as English and Spanish, German and Italian, Russian and
Portuguese, and so on.
_January_ 3. 1823.