SCENE--_The Pavilion._ TIME--_after Lunch_.
NORTH--TALBOYS--BULLER--SEWARD.
NORTH.
Claudius, the Uncle-king in Hamlet, is perhaps the most odious
character in all Shakspeare. But he does no unnecessary murders. He has
killed the Father, and will the Son, all in regular order. But Macbeth
plunges himself, like a drunken man, into unnecessary and injurious
cruelties. He throws like a reckless gamester. If I am to own the
truth, I don't know why he is so cruel. I don't think that he takes any
pleasure in mere cruelty, like Nero--
BULLER.
What do we know of Nero? Was he mad?
NORTH.
I don't think that he takes any pleasure in mere cruelty, like Nero;
but he seems to be under some infatuation that drags or drives him
along. To kill is, in every difficulty, the ready resource that occurs
to him--as if to go on murdering were, by some law of the Universe, the
penalty which you must pay for having once murdered.
SEWARD.
I think, Sir, that without contradicting anything we said before Lunch
about his Lordship or his Kingship, we may conceive in the natural
Macbeth considerable force of Moral Intuition.
NORTH.
We may.
SEWARD.
Of Moral Intelligence?
NORTH.
Yes.
SEWARD.
Of Moral Obedience?
NORTH.
No.
SEWARD.
Moral Intuition, and Moral Intelligence breaking out, from time to
time, all through--we understand how there is engendered in him strong
self-dissatisfaction--thence perpetual goadings on--and desperate
attempts to lose conscience in more and more crime.
NORTH.
Ay--Seward--even so. He tells you that he stakes soul and body upon the
throw for a Crown. He has got the Crown--and _paid for it_. He _must_
keep it--else he has bartered soul and body--for nothing! To make his
first crime _good_--he strides gigantically along the road of which it
opened the gate.
TALBOYS.
An almost morbid impressibility of imagination is energetically
stamped, and universally recognised in the Thane, and I think, sir,
that it warrants, to a certain extent, a _sincerity_ of the mental
movements. He really sees a fantastical dagger--he really hears
fantastical voices--perhaps he really sees a fantastical Ghost.
All this in him is Nature--not artifice--and a nature deeply,
terribly, tempestuously commoved by the near contact of a murder
imminent--doing--done. It is more like a murderer a-making than a
murderer made.
SEWARD.
See, sir, how precisely this characteristic is proposed.
BULLER.
By whom?
SEWARD.
By Shakspeare, in that first Soliloquy. The poetry colouring,
throughout, his discourse, is its natural efflorescence.
NORTH.
Talboys, Seward, you have spoken well.
BULLER.
And I have spoken ill?
NORTH.
I have not said so.
BULLER.
We have all Four of us spoken well--we have all Four of us
spoken ill--and we have all Four of us spoken but so-so--now and
heretofore--in this Tent--hang the wind--there's no hearing twelve
words in ten a body says. Honoured sir, I beg permission to say that I
cannot admit the Canon laid down by your Reverence, an hour or two ago,
or a minute or two ago, that Macbeth's extravagant language is designed
by Shakspeare to designate hypocrisy.
NORTH.
Why?
BULLER.
You commended Talboys and Seward for noticing the imaginative--the
poetical character of Macbeth's mind. There we find the reason of his
extravagant language. It may, as you said, be cant and fustian--or it
may not--but why attribute to hypocrisy--as you did--what may have
flowed from his genius? Poets may rant as loud as he, and yet be honest
men. "In a fine frenzy rolling," their eyes may fasten on fustian.
NORTH.
Good--go on. Deduct.
BULLER.
Besides, sir, the Stage had such a language of its own; and I cannot
help thinking that Shakspeare often, and too frankly, gave in to it.
NORTH.
He did.
BULLER.
I would, however, much rather believe that if Shakspeare meant anything
by it in Macbeth's Oratory or Poetry, he intended thereby rather to
impress on us that last noticed constituent of his nature--a vehement
seizure of imagination. I believe, sir, that in the hortatory scene
Lady Macbeth really vanquishes--as the scene ostensibly shows--his
_ir_resolution. And if Shakspeare means _ir_resolution, I do not know
why the _grounds_ thereof which Shakspeare assigns to Macbeth should
not be accepted as the true grounds. The Dramatist would seem to me to
demand too much of me, if, _under_ the grounds which he expresses, he
requires me to discard these, and to discover and express others.
SEWARD.
I do not know, sir, if that horrible Invocation of _hers_ to the
Spirits of Murder to unsex her, be held by many to imply that she has
no need of their help?
NORTH.
It is held by many to prove that she was not a woman but a fiend. It
proves the reverse. I infer from it that she does need their help--and,
what is more, _that she gets it_. Nothing so dreadful, in the whole
range of Man's Tragic Drama, as that Murder. But I see Seward is
growing pale--we know his infirmity--and for the present shun it.
SEWARD.
Thank you, sir.
NORTH.
I may, however, ask a question about Banquo's Ghost.
SEWARD.
Well--well--do so.
TALBOYS.
You put the question to me, sir? I am inclined to think, sir, that no
real Ghost sits on the Stool--but that Shakspeare meant it as with the
Daggers. On the Stage he appears--that is an abuse.
NORTH.
Not so sure of that, Talboys.
TALBOYS.
Had Macbeth himself continued to believe that the first-seen Ghost was
a real Ghost, he would not, could not have ventured so soon after its
disappearance to say again, "And to our dear friend Banquo." He does
say it--and then again diseased imagination assails him at the rash
words. Lady Macbeth reasons with him again, and he finally is persuaded
that the Ghost, both times, had been but brain-sick creations.
"My strange and self-abuse
Is the initiate fear, that wants hard use:--
I am but young in deed."
BULLER.
That certainly looks as if he did then know he had been deceived. But
perhaps he only censures himself for being too much agitated by a real
ghost.
TALBOYS.
That won't do.
NORTH.
But go back, my dear Talboys, to the first enacting of the Play. What
could the audience have understood to be happening, without other
direction of their thoughts than the terrified Macbeth's bewildered
words? He never mentions Banquo's name--and recollect that nobody
sitting there then knew that Banquo had been murdered. The dagger is
not in point. Then the spectators heard him say, "Is this a dagger that
I see before me?" And if no dagger was there, they could at once see
that 'twas phantasy.
TALBOYS.
Something in that.
BULLER.
A settler.
NORTH.
I entirely separate the two questions--first, how did the Manager of
the Globe Theatre have the King's Seat at the Feast filled; and second,
what does the highest poetical Canon deliver. I speak now, but to the
first. Now, here the rule is--"the audience _must understand, and at
once_, what that which they see and hear means"--that Rule must govern
the art of the drama in the Manager's practice. You allow that, Talboys?
TALBOYS.
I do.
BULLER.
Rash--Talboys--rash: he's getting you into a net.
NORTH.
That is not my way, Buller. Well, then, suppose Macbeth acted for the
first time to an audience, who are to establish it for a stock-play or
to _damn it_. Would the Manager commit the whole power of a scene which
is perhaps the most--singly--effective of the whole Play--
BULLER.
No--no--not the most effective of the whole Play--
NORTH.
The rival, then, of the Murder Scene--the Sleep-Walking stands aloof
and aloft--to the chance of a true divination by the whole Globe
audience? I think not. The argument is of a vulgar tone, I confess, and
extremely literal, but it is after the measure of my poor faculties.
SEWARD.
In confirmation of what you say, sir, it has been lately asserted that
one of the two appearings at least is not Banquo's--but Duncan's. How
is that to be settled but by a real Ghost--or Ghosts?
NORTH.
And I ask, what has Shakspeare himself undeniably done elsewhere? In
Henry VIII., Queen Katherine sleeps and _dreams_. Her Dream enters,
and performs various acts--somewhat expressive--minutely contrived and
prescribed. It is a mute Dream, which she with shut eyes sees--which
you in pit, boxes, and gallery see--which her attendants, watching
about her upon the stage, do _not_ see.
SEWARD.
And in Richard III--He dreams, and so does Richmond. Eight Ghosts rise
in succession and _speak_ to Richard first, and to the Earl next--each
hears, I suppose, what concerns himself--they seem to be present in the
two Tents at once.
NORTH.
In Cymbeline, Posthumus dreams. His Dream enters--Ghosts and even
JUPITER! They act and speak; and this Dream has a reality--for Jupiter
hands or tosses a parchment-roll to one of the Ghosts, who lays it, as
bidden, on the breast of the Dreamer, where he, on awaking, perceives
it! I call all this physically strong, sir, for the representation of
the metaphysically thought.
BULLER.
If Buller may speak, Buller would observe, that once or twice both
Ariel and Prospero come forward "invisible." And in Spenser, the Dream
of which Morpheus lends the use to Archimago, is--carried.
SEWARD.
We all remember the Dream which Jupiter sends to Agamemnon, and which,
while standing at his bed's-head, puts on the shape of Nestor and
speaks;--the Ghost of Patroclus--the actual Ghost which stands at the
bed's-head of Achilles, and _is_ his Dream.
NORTH.
My friends, Poetry gives a body to the bodiless. The Stage of
Shakspeare was rude, and gross. In my boyhood, I saw the Ghosts appear
to John Kemble in Richard III. Now they may be abolished with Banquo.
So may be Queen Katherine's Angels. But Shakspeare and his Audience
had no difficulty about one person's seeing what another does not--or
one's _not_ seeing, rather, that which another does. Nor had Homer,
when Achilles alone, in the Quarrel Scene, sees Minerva. Shakspeare
and his Audience had no difficulty about the bodily representation of
Thoughts--the inward by the outward. Shakspeare and the Great Old Poets
leave vague, shadowy, mist-shrouded, and indeterminate the boundaries
between the Thought and the Existent--the Real and the Unreal. I am
able to believe with you, Talboys, that Banquo's Ghost was understood
by Shakspeare, the Poet, to be the Phantasm of the murderer's
guilt-and-fear-shaken soul; but was required by Shakspeare, the Manager
of the Globe Theatre, to rise up through a trap-door, mealy-faced and
blood-boultered, and so make "the Table full."
BULLER.
Seward, do bid him speak of Lady Macbeth.
SEWARD.
Oblige me, sir--don't now--after dinner, if you will.
NORTH.
I shall merely allude now, as exceedingly poetical treatment, to the
discretion throughout used in the SHOWING of Lady Macbeth. You might
almost say that she never takes a step on the stage, that does not
_thrill the Theatre_. Not a waste word, gesture, or look. All at the
studied fulness of sublime tragical power--yet all wonderfully tempered
and governed. I doubt if Shakspeare could have given a good account of
everything that he makes Macbeth say--but of all that She says he could.
TALBOYS.
As far as I am able to judge, she but once in the whole Play loses her
perfect self-mastery--when the servant surprises her by announcing the
King's coming. She answers, 'thou'rt mad to say it;' which is a manner
of speaking used by those who cannot, or can hardly believe tidings
that fill them with exceeding joy. It is not the manner of a Lady
to her servant who unexpectedly announces the arrival of a high--of
the highest visitor. She recovers herself instantly. 'Is not thy
master with him, who, wer't so, would have informed for preparation?'
This is a turn colouring her exclamation, and is spoken in the most
self-possessed, argumentative, demonstrative tone. The preceding words
had been torn from her; now she has passed, with inimitable dexterity,
from the dreamed Queen, to the usual mistress of her household--_to the
huswife_.
NORTH.
In the Fourth Act--she is not seen at all. But in the Fifth, lo! and
behold! and at once we know why she had been absent--we see and are
turned to living stone by the revelation of the terrible truth. I
am always inclined to conceive Lady Macbeth's night-walking as the
summit, or topmost peak of all tragic conception and execution--in
Prose, too, the crowning of Poetry! But it must be, because these are
the _ipsissima verba_--yea, the escaping sighs and moans of the bared
soul. There must be nothing, not even the thin and translucent veil
of the verse, betwixt her soul showing itself, and yours beholding.
Words which your "hearing latches" from the threefold abyss of Night,
Sleep, and Conscience! What place for the enchantment of any music
is here? Besides, she speaks in a whisper. The Siddons did--audible
distinctly, throughout the stilled immense theatre. Here music is
not--sound is not--only an anguished soul's faint breathings--gaspings.
And observe that Lady Macbeth carries--a candle--besides washing her
hands--and besides speaking prose--three departures from the severe
and elect method, to bring out that supreme revelation. I have been
told that the great Mrs Pritchard used to touch the palm with the tips
of her fingers, for the washing, keeping candle in hand;--that the
Siddons first set down her candle, that she might come forwards, and
wash her hands in earnest, one over the other, as if she were at her
wash-hand stand, with plenty of water in her basin--that when Sheridan
got intelligence of her design so to do, he ran shrieking to her, and,
with tears in his eyes, besought that she would not, at one stroke,
overthrow Drury Lane--that she persisted, and turned the thousands of
bosoms to marble.
TALBOYS.
Our dear, dear Master.
NORTH.
You will remember, my friends, her _four rhymed lines_--uttered to
herself in Act Third. They are very remarkable--
"Nought's had, all's spent,
Where our desire is got without content:
'Tis safer to be that which we destroy,
Than, by destruction, dwell in doubtful joy."
They are her only _waking_ acknowledgments of having _mis_taken life!
So--they forebode the Sleep-Walking, and the Death--as an owl, or a
raven, or vulture, or any fowl of obscene wing, might flit between the
sun and a crowned but doomed head--the shadow but of a moment, yet
ominous, for the augur, of an entire fatal catastrophe.
SEWARD.
They do. But to say the truth, I had either forgot them, or never
discovered their significancy. O that William Shakspeare!
TALBOYS.
O that Christopher North!
NORTH.
Speak so, friends--'tis absurd, but I like it.
TALBOYS.
It is sincere.
NORTH.
At last they call him "black Macbeth," and "this dead Butcher." And
with good reason. They also call her "his fiend-like Queen," which last
expression I regard as highly offensive.
BULLER.
And they call her so not without strong reason.
NORTH.
A bold, bad woman--not a Fiend. I ask--Did she, or did she not, "with
violent hand foredo her life?" They mention it as a rumour. The Doctor
desires that all means of self-harm may be kept out of her way. Yet
the impression on us, as the thing proceeds, is, that she dies of pure
remorse--which I believe. She is _visibly dying_. The cry of women,
announcing her death, is rather as of those who stood around the bed
watching, and when the heart at the touch of the invisible finger
stops, shriek--than of one after the other coming in and finding
the self-slain--a confused, informal, perplexing, and perplexed
proceeding--but the Cry of Women is formal, regular for the stated
occasion. You may say, indeed, that she poisoned herself--and so died
in bed--watched. Under the precautions, that is unlikely--too refined.
The manner of Seyton, "The Queen, my Lord, is dead," shows to me that
it was hourly expected. How these few words would _seek_ into you, did
you first read the Play in mature age! She died a natural death--of
remorse. Take my word for it--the rumour to the contrary was natural to
the lip and ear of Hate.
TALBOYS.
A question of primary import is--What is the relation of feeling
between him and her? The natural impression, I think, is, that the
confiding affection--the intimate confidence--is "there"--of a husband
and wife who love one another--to whom all interests are in common,
and are consulted in common. Without this belief, the Magic of the
Tragedy perishes--vanishes to me. "My dearest love, Duncan comes
here to-night." "Be innocent of the knowledge, _dearest Chuck_"--a
marvellous phrase for Melpomene. It is the full union--for ill
purposes--that we know habitually for good purposes--that to me tempers
the Murder Tragedy.
NORTH.
Yet believe me, my dear Talboys--that of all the murders Macbeth may
have committed, she knew beforehand but of ONE--Duncan's. The haunted
somnambulist speaks the truth--the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth.
TALBOYS.
"The Thane of Fife had a Wife." Does not that imply that she was privy
to _that_ Murder?
NORTH.
No. Except that she takes upon herself _all_ the murders that are the
offspring, legitimate or illegitimate, of that First Murder. But we
_know_ that Macbeth, in a sudden fit of fury, ordered the Macduffs to
be massacred when on leaving the Cave Lenox told him of the Thane's
flight.
TALBOYS.
That is decisive.
NORTH.
A woman, she feels for a murdered woman. That is all--a touch of
nature--from Shakspeare's profound and pitiful heart.
TALBOYS.
"The Queen, my lord, is dead." "She should have died hereafter; There
would have been a time for such a word"--Often have I meditated on the
meaning of these words--yet even now I do not fully feel or understand
them.
NORTH.
Nor I. This seems to look from them--"so pressed by outward besiegings,
I have not capacity to entertain the blow as it requires to be
entertained. With a free soul I could have measured it. Now I cannot."
TALBOYS.
Give us, sir, a commentary on the Revelations of the Sleeping Spectre.
NORTH.
I dare not. Let's be cheerful. I ask this--when you see and hear
Kemble-Macbeth--and Siddons-Macbeth--whom do you believe that you see
and hear? I affirm that you at one and the same instant--(or at the
most in two immediately successive instants--yet I believe in one and
the same instant)--_know_ that you see and hear Kemble--or if that
accomplished gentleman and admirable actor--Macready be performing the
part--then Macready;--and yet _believe_ that you see and hear Lord
Macbeth. I aver that you entertain a mixt--confused--self-contradictory
state of mind--that two elements of thought which cannot co-subsist do
co-subsist.
TALBOYS.
_De jure_ they cannot--DE FACTO they do.
NORTH.
Just so.
TALBOYS.
They co-subsist fighting, and yet harmonising--there is
half-belief--semi-illusion.
NORTH.
I claim the acknowledgment of such a state--which any one who chooses
may better describe, but which shall come to that effect--for the
lowest substratum of all science and criticism concerning POESY. Will
anybody grant me this, then I will reason with him about Poesy, for we
begin with something in common. Will anybody deny me this, then I will
not argue with him about Poesy, for we set out with nothing in common.
BULLER.
We grant you all you ask--we are all agreed--"our unanimity is
wonderful."
NORTH.
Leave out the great Brother and Sister, and take the Personated alone.
I _know_ that Othello and Desdemona never existed--that an Italian
Novelist began, and an English Dramatist ended them--and there they
are. But do I not _believe_ in their existence, "their loves and woes?"
Yes I do _believe_ in their existence, in their loves and woes--and I
hate Iago accordingly with a vicious, unchristian, personal, active,
malignant hatred.
TALBOYS.
Dr Johnson's celebrated expression, "all the belief that Poetry
claims"----
BULLER.
Celebrated! Where is it?
TALBOYS.
Preface to Shakspeare--is idle, and frivolous, and false?
NORTH.
It is. He belies his own experience. He cannot make up his mind to
admit the _irrational thought_ of belief which you at once reject
and accept. But exactly the half acceptance, and the half rejection,
separates poetry from--prose.
TALBOYS.
That is, sir, the poetical from the prosaic.
NORTH.
Just so. It is the life and soul of all poetry--the lusus--the
make-believe--the glamour and the gramarye. I do not know--gentlemen--I
wish to be told, whether I am now throwing away words upon the setting
up of a pyramid which was built by Cheops, and is only here and there
crumbling a little, or whether the world requires that the position
shall be formally argued and acknowledged. Johnson, as you reminded me,
Talboys, did not admit it.
TALBOYS.
That he tells us in so many words. Has any more versed and
profound master in criticism, before or since, authentically and
authoritatively, luminously, cogently, explicitly, psychologically,
metaphysically, physiologically, psychologically, propounded, reasoned
out, legislated, and enthroned the Dogma?
NORTH.
I know not, Talboys. Do you admit the Dogma?
TALBOYS.
I do.
NORTH.
Impersonation--Apostrophe--of the absent; every poetical motion of
the Soul; the whole pathetic beholding of Nature--involve the secret
existence and necessity of this irrational psychical state for
grounding the Logic of Poesy.
BULLER.
Go on, sir.
NORTH.
I will--but in a new direction. Before everything else, I desire, for
the settlement of this particular question, a foundation for, and some
progress in the science of MURDER TRAGEDIES.
SEWARD.
I know _properly_ two.
BULLER.
Two only? Pray name.
SEWARD.
This of Macbeth and Richard III.
BULLER.
The Agamemnon--the Choephoræ--the Electra--the Medea--
SEWARD.
In the Agamemnon, your regard is drawn to Agamemnon himself and to
Cassandra. However, it is after a measure a prototype. Clytemnestra
has in it a principality. Medea stands eminent--but then she is in the
right.
BULLER.
In the right?
SEWARD.
Jason at least is altogether in the wrong. But we must--for obvious
reasons--discuss the Greek drama by itself; therefore not a word more
about it now.
NORTH.
Richard III., and Macbeth and his wife, are in their Plays the
principal people. You must go along with them to a certain guarded
extent--else the Play is done for. To be kept abhorring and abhorring,
for Five Acts together, you can't stand.
SEWARD.
Oh! that the difference between Poetry and Life were once for all
set down--and not only once for all, but every time that it comes in
question.
BULLER.
My dear sir, do gratify Seward's very reasonable desire, and once for
all set down the difference.
SEWARD.
You bear suicides on the stage, and tyrannicides and other cides--all
simple homicide--much murder. Even Romeo's killing Tybalt in the
street, in reparation for Mercutio's death, you would take rather
differently, if happening to-day in Pall Mall, or Moray Place.
NORTH.
We have assuredly for the Stage a qualified scheme of
sentiment--grounded no doubt on our modern or every-day morality--but
specifically modified by Imagination--by Poetry--for the use of the
dramatist. Till we have set down what we _do_ bear, and why, we are not
prepared for distinguishing what we won't bear, and why.
BULLER.
Oracular!
SEWARD.
Suggestive.
NORTH.
And if so, sufficient for the nonce. Hamlet's uncle, Claudius, seems
to me to be the most that can be borne of one purely abhorrible. He
is made disgusting besides--drunken and foul. Able he is--for he won
the Queen by "witchcraft of his wit;" but he is made endurable by his
diminished proportion in the Play--many others overpowering and hiding
him.
BULLER.
Pardon me, sir, but I have occasionally felt, in course of this
conversation, that you were seeking--in opposition to Payne Knight--to
reduce Macbeth to a species of Claudius. I agree with you in thinking
that Shakspeare would not give a Claudius so large a proportion of his
drama. The pain would be predominant and insupportable.
NORTH.
I would fain hope you have misunderstood me, Buller.
BULLER.
Sometimes, sir, it is not easy for a plain man to know what you would
be at.
NORTH.
I?
BULLER.
Yea--you.
NORTH.
Richard III. _is_ a hypocrite--a hard, cold murderer from of old--and
yet you bear him. I suppose, friends, chiefly from his pre-eminent
Intellectual Faculties, and his perfectly courageous and self-possessed
Will. You do support your conscience--or traffic with it--by saying
all along--we are only conducting him to the retribution of Bosworth
Field. But, friends, if these motions in Macbeth, which look like
revealings and breathings of some better elements, are sheer and vile
hypocrisy--if it is merely his manhood that quails, which his wife
has to virilify--a dastard and a hypocrite, and no more--I cannot
abide him--there is too much of a bad business, and then I must think
Shakspeare has committed an egregious error in Poetry. Richard III. is
a bold, heroic hypocrite. He knows he is one. He lies to Man--never to
his own Conscience, or to Heaven.
TALBOYS.
What?
NORTH.
Never. There he is clear-sighted, and stands, like Satan, in open and
impious rebellion.
BULLER.
But your Macbeth, sir, would be a shuffling Puritan--a mixture of Holy
Willie and Greenacre. Forgive me----
SEWARD.
Order--order--order.
TALBOYS.
Chair--chair--chair.
BULLER.
Swing--Swing--Swing.
NORTH.
My dear Buller--you have misunderstood me--I assure you you have. Some
of my expressions may have been too strong--not sufficiently qualified.
BULLER.
I accept the explanation. But be more guarded in future, my dear sir.
NORTH.
I will.
BULLER.
On that assurance I ask you, sir, how is the Tragedy of Macbeth morally
saved? That is, how does the degree of complacency with which we
consider the two murderers not morally taint ourselves--not leave us
predisposed murderers?
NORTH.
That is a question of infinite compass and fathom--answered then only
when the whole Theory of Poesy has been expounded.
BULLER.
Whew!
NORTH.
The difference established between our contemplation of the Stage and
of Life.
BULLER.
I hardly expect that to be done this Summer in this Tent.
NORTH.
Friends! Utilitarians and Religionists shudder and shun. They consider
the Stage and Life as of one and the same kind--look on both through
one glass.
BULLER.
Eh?
NORTH.
The Utilitarian will settle the whole question of Life upon half its
data--the lowest half. He accepts Agriculture, which he understands
logically--but rejects Imagination, which he does not understand at
all--because, if you sow it in the track of his plough, no wheat
springs. Assuredly not; a different plough must furrow a different soil
for that seed and that harvest.
BULLER.
Now, my dear sir, you speak like yourself. You always do so--the
rashness was all on my side.
SEWARD.
Nobody cares--hold your tongue.
NORTH.
The Religionist errs from the opposite quarter. He brings measures
from Heaven to measure things of the Earth. He weighs Clay in the
balance of Spirit. I call him a Religionist who overruns with religious
rules and conceptions things that do not come under them--completely
distinct from the native simplicity and sovereignty of Religion in a
piously religious heart. Both of them are confounders of the sciences
which investigate the Facts and the Laws of Nature, visible and
invisible--subduing inquiry under preconception.
BULLER.
Was that the Gong--or but thunder?
NORTH.
The Gong.
TALBOYS.
I smell sea-trout.