"Half the day _at least_"--says the editor of the _Athenæum_--"we are _in
fancy_ at the Palace, taking _our turn_ of loyal watch by the cradle of
the heir-apparent; _the rest_ at our own firesides, in that mood of
_cheerful thankfulness_ which makes fun and frolic welcome!" Half the day,
_at least!_
A stroke of fancy--especially to a heavy man--is sometimes as discomposing
as a stroke of paralysis. Our friend of the _Athenæum_ is not to be
carried away by fancy, cost free: his imaginative watch at the Palace--for
who can doubt that for six hours _per diem_ he is in Buckingham
nursery?--has led him into the perpetration of various eccentricities
which, when we reflect upon the fortune he must have hoarded, and the
innate selfishness of our common nature, may possibly end in a commission
of lunacy. As juries are now-a-days brought together (especially as
Chartists abound), excessive loyalty may be returned--confirmed insanity.
It is, however, our duty as good citizens and fellow-journalists to
protest, in advance, against any such verdict; declaring that whatever may
be adduced by the unreflecting persons in daily intercourse with the
editor--that grave and learned scribe is in the enjoyment--of all the
sense originally vouchsafed to him. We know the stories that are in the
most unfeeling manner told to the disadvantage of the learned and
inoffensive gentleman; we know them, and shall not shrink from meeting
them.
It is said that for one hour a day "at least" since the birth of the
Prince the unfortunate gentleman has been invariably occupied folding and
refolding a copy of the _Athenæum_--now airing it and smoothing it
down--now unfolding and now folding it up again. Well, What of this? The
truth is, our poor friend has only been "taking his turn," arranging "in
fancy" the diaper of the royal nursery. That he should have selected a
copy of the _Athenæum_ as a type of the swaddling cloth bespeaks in our
mind the presence of great judgment. It is madness with very considerable
method.
A printer's devil--sent either for copy or a proof--deposes that our
friend seized him, and laying him in his lap, insisted upon feeding him
with his goose-quill, at the same time dipping that noisome instrument in
his ink-bottle. The said devil declares that with all his experience of
the various qualities of various inks used by gentlemen upon town, he
never met with ink at once so muddy and so sour as the ink of the
_Athenæum_. We do not deny the statement of the devil as to what he calls
the assault committed upon him; but the fact is, the editor was not in his
own study, but was "taking his turn" at the pap-spoon of the Duke of
CORNWALL!
Betty, the editor's housemaid, has given warning, declaring that she
cannot live with any gentleman who insists upon taking her in his arms,
and tossing her up and down as if she was no more than a baby; at the same
time making a chirruping noise with his mouth, and calling her "poppet"
and "chickabiddy." Well, we allow all this, and boldly ask, What of it? We
grant the "poppet;" we concede the "chickabiddy;" and then sternly inquire
if an excess of loyalty is to impugn the reason of the most ratiocinative
editor? Does not the thing speak for itself? If BETTY were not a fool, she
would know that her master--good, regular man!--meant nothing more than,
under the auspices of Mrs. LILLY, to dandle the Duke of CORNWALL.
A taxgatherer, calling upon the editor for the Queen's taxes, could get
nothing out of our respected friend, but "Ride a cock-horse to Bamberry
Cross!" If taxgatherers were not at once the most vindictive and the most
stupid of men (it is said Sir ROBERT has ordered them to be very
carnivorous this Christmas), the fellow would never have called in a
broker to alarm our excellent coadjutor, but would at once have seen that
the genius of the _Athenæum_ was taking his turn in Buckingham Palace,
singing a nursery _canzonetta_ to the Duke of CORNWALL!
And is it for these, to us beautiful evidences of an absorbing loyalty--of
a feeling that is true as truth, for if it was a mere conventional flame
we should take no note of it--that the editor of the _Athenæum_, a most
grave, considerate gentleman, should be cited to Gray's-inn Coffee-house,
and by an ignorant and unimaginative mob of jurymen voted incapable of
writing reviews upon his own books, or the books of other people?
The question that we would here open is one of great and social political
importance. There is an end of personal liberty if the enthusiasm of
loyalty is to be visited as madness. For our part, we have the fullest
belief in the avowal of the poor man of the _Athenæum_, that for half a
day he is--in fancy--watching the little Prince in Buckingham nursery; and
yet we see that men are deprived of enormous fortunes (we tremble for the
copyright of the _Athenæum_) for indulging in stories, with equal
probability on the face of them. For instance, a few days since WEEKS, a
Greenwich pensioner, (being suddenly rich, the reporters call him _Mister_
WEEKS,) was fobbed out of 120,000l. for having boasted (among other
things) that he had had children by Queen ELIZABETH (by the way, the
virginity of Royal BETSY has before been questioned)--that he intended to
marry Queen VICTORIA, and that, in fact, not GEORGE THE THIRD but WEEKS
THE FIRST was the father of Queen CHARLOTTE'S offspring. Now, what is all
this, but loyalty _in excess_? Is it not precisely the same feeling that
takes the editor of the _Athenæum_ half of every day from his family,
spellbinding him at the cradle of the Duke of CORNWALL? Cannot our readers
just as easily believe the pensioner as the editor? We can.
"He told me he was going to marry the Queen" (thus speaks Sir R. DOBSON,
chief medical officer of Greenwich Hospital, of poor WEEKS), "and _I had
him cupped_ and treated as an insane patient!" Can the editor hope to
escape blood-letting and a shaven head? "He told me he was going to dine
to-day at Buckingham Palace." Thus spoke WEEKS. "Half the day at least we
are in fancy at the Palace;" thus boasteth the _Athenæum_. The pensioner
is found "incapable of managing himself or his affairs:" the editor
continues to review books and write articles! "He (WEEKS) also said he had
once horse-whipped a lion until it became afraid of him!" Where is
CARTER--where VAN AMBURGH, if not in Bedlam? Lucky, indeed, is it for the
editor of the _Athenæum_ that his weekly miscellany (wherein he _thinks_
he sometimes horse-whips lions) is not quite worth 120,000l. Otherwise,
certain would be his summons to Gray's-inn.
We have rejoiced, as beseemed us, at the birth of the little Prince; it
now becomes our grave moral duty to read a lesson of forbearance to those
enthusiastic people who--especially if they have money--may by an excess
of the principle of loyalty put in peril their personal freedom. Let them
not take confidence from the safety enjoyed by the _Athenæum_ editor--the
poverty of the press may protect him. If, however, he and other
influential wizards of the broad sheet, succeed in making loyalty not a
rational principle, but a mania--if, day by day, and week by week, they
insist upon deifying poor infirm humanity, exalting themselves in their
own conceit, in their very self-abasement--they may escape an individual
accusation in the general folly. When we are all mad alike--when we all,
with the editor of the _Athenæum_, take our half-day's watch at the little
Prince's cradle--when every man and woman throughout the empire believe
themselves making royal pap and airing royal baby-linen--then, whatever
fortune we may have we may be safe from the fate of poor WEEKS, the
Greenwich pensioner, who, we repeat, is most unjustly confined for his
notions of royalty, seeing that many of our contemporaries are still left
at liberty to write and publish. Poor dear little PRINCE! if fed and
nourished from your cradle upwards upon such stuff as that pressed upon
you since your birth, what deep, what powerful sympathies will be yours
with the natures of your fellow-men--what lofty notions of kingly
usefulness, and kingly duty!
It may be that certain writers think they best oppose the advancing spirit
of the time--questioning as it does the "divinity" that hedges the
throne--by adopting the worse than foolish adulation of a by-gone age. In
a silly flippant book just published--a thing called _Cecil_--the author
speaks of the first appearance of VICTORIA in the House of Lords. He
says--
"An unaccountable feeling _of trust_ rose in my bosom. I speak it not
profanely--[when a writer says this, be sure of it that, as in the present
case, he goes deep as he can in profanation]--when I say _that the idea of
the yet unknown Saviour_, a child among the Doctors of the Temple,
occurred spontaneously to my mind!"
Now this book has been daubed with honey; the writer has been promised "an
European reputation" (Madame LAFFARGE has a reputation equally extensive),
and he is at this moment to be found upon drawing-tables, whose owners
would scream--or affect to scream--as at an adder, at SHELLEY. Nay,
Shelley's publisher is found guilty of blasphemy in the Court of Queen's
Bench; and that within these few months. We should like to know Lord
Denman's opinions of Mr. BOONE. What would he say of Queen Victoria being
compared to the Redeemer--of Lord LONDONDERRY, _et hoc genus omne_, being
"Doctors of the Temple?"
A writer in the _Almanach des Gourmands_ says, in praise of a certain
viand, "this is a dish to be eaten on your knees." There are writers who,
with, goose-quill in hand, never approach royalty, but they--write upon
their knees!