With flippant tongue a mercantile cosmopolite, stable in statistics and

learned in the leger, here interposes an erudite suggestion: "Man is a

calculating animal." Surely, so he is, unless he be a spendthrift; but

he still shares his quality with others; for the squirrel hoards his

nuts, the aunt lays in her barley-corns, the moon knoweth her seasons,

and the sun his going down: moreover, Chinese slates, multiplying

rulers, and, as their aggregated wisdom, Babbage's machine, will stoutly

contest so mechanical a fancy. Savoury steams, and those too smelling

strongly of truth, assault the nostrils, as a Vitellite--what a name of

hungry omen for the imperial devourer!--plausibly insinuates man to be

"a cooking animal." Who can gainsay it? and wherewithal, but with

domesticated monkeys, does he share this happy attribute? It is true,

the butcher-bird spits his prey on a thorn, the slow epicurean boa

glazes his mashed antelope, the king of vultures quietly waits for a

gamey taste and the rapid roasting of the tropics: but all this care,

all this caloric, cannot be accounted culinary, and without a question,

the kitchen _is_ a sphere where the lord of creation reigns supreme:

still, thou best of practical philosophers, caterer for daily

dinners--man--MAN, I say, is not altogether a compact of edible

commons, a Falstaff pudding-bag robbed of his seasoning wit, a mere

congeries of food and pickles; moreover, honest Gingel of "fair" fame

hath (or used to have, "in my warm youth, when George the Third was

king,") automatons, [pray, observe, Sosii, I am not pedant or wiseacre

enough to indite _automata_; we conquering Britons stole that word among

many others from poor dead Greece, who couldn't want it; having made it

ours in the singular, why be bashful about the plural! So also of

memorandums, omnibuses, [you remember Farren's _omni_BI!]

necropolises, gymnasiums, eukeirogeneions, and other unlegacied

property of dear departed Rome and Greece. All this, as you see,

is clearly parenthetical;] well, then, Gingel has automatons, that will

serve you up all kinds of delicate viands, pleasant meats, and

choice cates by clock-work, to say nothing of Jones' patent

all-in-a-moment-any-thing-whatsoever cooking apparatus: no mine

Apiciite, Heliogabalite, Sardanapalite, Seftonite, Udite, thou of

extravagant ancestry and indifferent digestion; little, indeed, as you

may credit me, man is not all stomach, nor altogether formed alone for

feeding. Remember Æsop's parable, the belly and the members; and, above

them all, do not overlook the head.

What think you then of "a featherless biped?" gravely suggests a rusty

Plinyite. Absolute sir, and most obsolete Roman, doubtless you never had

the luck to set eyes upon a turkey at Christmas; the poor bare _bipes

implumis_, a forked creature, waiting to be forked supererogatively; ay,

and _risibilis_ to boot, if ever all concomitants of the hearty old

festival were properly provocative of decent mirth. Thus then return we

to our muttons, and time enough, quotha: literary pundit, (whose is the

notable saying?) thy definition is bomb-proof, thy fancy unscaleable,

thy thought too deep for undermining; that notion is at the head of the

poll, a candidate approved of Truth's most open borough; for, in spite

of secretary-birds with pens stuck clerk-like behind their ears (as

useless an emblem of sinecure office as gold keys, silver, and

coronation armour)--in spite of whole flights of geese, capable enough

of saving capitols, but impotent to wield one of their own

all-conquering quills--in spite, also, (keen-eyed categorists, be to my

faults in ratiocination a little blind, for very cheerfulness,) in

spite, I say, of copying presses, manifold inditers, and automaton

artists, MAN IS A WRITING ANIMAL.

Wearily enough, you will think, have we disposed of this one definition:

but recollect, and take me for a son of leisure, an amateur tourist of

Parnassus, an idling gatherer of way-side flowers in the vale of

Thessaly, a careless, unbusied, "contemplative man," recreating himself

by gentle craft on the banks of much-poached Helicon; and if you, my

casual friend, be neither like-minded in fancy nor like-fitted in

leisure, courteously consider that we may not travel well together: at

this station let us stop, freely forgiving each other for mutual

misliking; to your books, to your business, to your fowling, to your

feasting, to your mummery, to your nunnery--go: my track lays away from

the highroad, in and out between yonder hills, among thickets, mossy

rocks, green hollows, high fern, and the tangled hair of hiding

river-gods; I meet not pedlers and bagsmen, but stumble upon fawns just

dropped, and do not scare their doting mothers; I quench not my noonday

thirst with fiery drams from a brazen tap, but, lying over the cold

brook, drink to its musical Naiades; I walk no dusty roads of a

working-day world, but flit upon the pleasant places of one made up of

holidays.

A truce to this truancy, and method be my maxim: let us for a moment

link our reasonings, and solder one stray rivet; man being a writing

animal, there still remains the question, what is writing? Ah, there's

the rub: a very comfortable definition would it be, if every pen-holder

and pen-wiper could truly claim that kingship of the universe--that

imagery of his Maker--that mystical, marvellous, immortal, intellectual,

abstraction, manhood: but, what then is WRITING? Ye tons of

invoices, groaning shelves of incalculable legers, parchment abhorrences

of rare Charles Lamb, we think not now of you; dreary piles of

unhealthy-looking law-books, hypochondriacal heaps of medical

experiences, plodding folios of industrious polemics, slow elaborations

of learned dullness, we spare your native dust; letters unnumbered, in

all stages of cacography, both physical and metaphysical, alack! most of

you must slip through the meshes of our definition yet unwove; poor

deciduous leaves of the forest, that, at your best, serve only--it is

yet a good purpose--to dress the common soil of human kindness, without

attaining to the praise of wreaths and chaplets ever hanging in the

Muses' temple; flowers withered on the stalk, whose blooming beauty no

lover's hand has dropped upon the sacred waters of Siloa, like the

Hindoo's garland on her Ganges; prolix, vain, ephemeral letters

(especially enveloped penny-posters)--and sparing only some few redolent

of truth, wisdom, and affection--your bulky majority of flippant trash,

staid advices, dunnings, hoaxings, lyings, and slanderings, degrade you

to a lower rank than that we take on us to designate as "writing."

And what, O what--"how poor is he that hath not patience!"--shall we

predicate of the average viscera of circulating libraries?--abominable

viscera!--isn't that the word, my young Hippocrates?--A parley--a

parley! and the terms of truce are these: If this present pastime of

mine (for pastime it is, so spurn not at its logic,) be mercifully

looked on by you, lady novelists and male dittoes--yet truly there are

giants in your ranks, as Scott, and Ward, and Hugo, and Le Sage,

towering above ten thousand pigmies--if I be spared your censures

well-deserved, interchangeably as toward your authorships will I

exercise the charitable wisdom of silence: a white flag or a white

feather is my best alternative in soothing or avoiding so terrible a

host; and verily, to speak kinder of those whose wit, and genius, and

graphic powers have so smoothed this old world's wrinkled face of care,

many brilliant, many clever, many well-intended caterers to public

amusement, throng your ill-ordered ranks: still, there are numbered to

your shame as followers of the fool's-cap standard, the huge corrupting

mass of depraved moralists, meagre trash-inditers, treacherous

scandal-mongers, men about town who immortalize their shame, and the

dull, pernicious school of feather-brained Romancists: and take this

sentence for a true one, a _verum-dictum_. But enough, there are others,

and those not few, even far less veniable; ye priers into family

secrets--fawning, false guests at the great man's open house, eagerly

jotting down with paricidal pen the unguarded conversation of the

hospitable board--shame on your treason, on its wages, and its fame! ye

countless gatherers and disposers of other men's stuff; chiels amang us

takin' notes, an' faith, to prent 'em too, perpetually, without

mitigation or remorse; ye men of paste and scissors, who so often

falsely, feebly, faithlessly, and tastelessly are patching into a

Harlequin whole the _disjecta membra_ of some great hacked-up

reputation; can such as ye are tell me what it is to write? Writing is

the concreted fruit of thinking, the original expression of new

combinations of idea, the fresh chemical product of educational

compounds long simmering in the mind, the possession of a sixth sense,

distinguishing intelligence, and proclaiming it to the four winds;

writing is not labour, but ease; not care, but happiness; not the petty

pilferings of poverty, but the large overflowings of mental affluence;

it begs not on the highway, but gives great largess, like a king; it

preys not on a neighbour's wealth, but enriches him; it may light,

indeed, a lamp, at another's candle, but pays him back with brilliancy;

it may borrow fire from the common stock, but uses it for genial warmth

and noble hospitality.

Remember well, good critic, (for verily bad there be,) my purposes in

this odd volume--this queer, unsophisticate, uncultivated book: to empty

my mind, to clear my brain of cobwebs, to lift off my head a porters's

load of fancy articles; and as in a bottle of bad champaign, the first

glass, leaping out hurryskurry, at a railroad pace boiling a gallop,

carries off with it bits of cork and morsels of rosin, even such is the

first ebullition of my thoughts: take them for what they are worth, and

blame no one but your discontented self that they are no better. Do you

suppose, keen sir, that I am not quite self-conscious of their

shallowness, utter contempt of subordination and selection, their empty

reasoning and pellucid vanity?--There I have saved you the labour of a

sentence, and present you with a killing verdict for myself. After a

little, perhaps, your patience may find me otherwise; of clearer flow,

but flatter flavour: these desultorinesses must first of all be

immolated, for in their Ariel state they vex me, but I bind them down

like slaving Calibans, by the magic of a pen; and glad shall I be to

victimize my monsters, eager to dissipate my musquito-like tormentors;

yea, I would "take up arms against a sea"--["Arms against a sea?"

dearest Shakspeare, would that Theobald, or Johnson's stock-butt, "the

Oxford Editor," had indeed interpolated that unconscionable image! It

has been sapiently remarked by some hornet of criticism, that

"Shakspeare was a clever man;" but cleverer far must that champion

stand forth who wars with any prospect of success upon seas; perhaps

Xerxes might have thought of it--or your Astley's brigand, who

rushes sword in hand on an ocean of green baize. Who shall cure me of

parentheses?]--well, "a sea of troubles, [thoughts trouble us more than

things--I sin again; close it;] and by opposing, end them;" that is, by

setting forth these troublous thoughts opposite, in stately black and

white, I clip their wings, and make them peck among my poultry, and not

swarm about my heaven. But soon must I be more continuous; turn over to

my future title-pages, and spare your objurgation; a little more of this

medley while the fit lasts, and afterward a staid course of better

accustomed messes; a few further variations on this lawless theme of

authorship, and then to try simpler tunes; briefly, and yet to be

grandiloquent, as a last round of this giddy climax, after noisy

clashing Chaos there shall roll out, "perfect, smooth, and round," green

young worldlets, moving in quiet harmony, and moulded with systematic

skill.

As an author, meanwhile, let man be most specifically characterized: a

real author, voluntary in his motives, but involuntary as regards his

acts authorial; full of matter, prolific of images and arguments,

teeming, bursting, with something, much, too much, to say, and well

witting how to say it: none of your poor devils compulsory from

poverty--Plutus help them!--whose penury of pocket is (pardon me) too

often equitably balanced by their emptiness of head; and far less one of

the lady's-maid school, who will glory in describing a dish of cutlets

at Calais, or an ill-trimmed bonnet, or the contents of an old maid's

reticule, or of a young gentleman's portmanteau, or those rare occasions

for sentimentality, moonlight, twilight, arbours, and cascades, in the

moderate space of an hour by Shrewsbury clock: but a man who has it

weightily upon his mind to explain himself and others, to insist,

refute, enjoin: a man--frown not, fair helpmates; the controversial pen,

as the controversial sword, be ours; we will leave your flower-beds and

sweeter human nurseries, despotism over cooks and Penelobean penance

upon carpet-work; nay, a trip to Margate prettily described, easy

lessons and gentle hymns in behalf of those dear prattlers, and for the

more coerulean sort, "lyrics to the Lost one," or stanzas on a sickly

geranium, miserably perishing in the mephitic atmosphere of routs--these

we masculine tyrants, we Dionysii of literature, ill-naturedly have

accounted your prerogatives of authorship. But who then are Sévigné and

Somerville, Edgeworth and De Staël, Barbauld and Benger, and Aikin, and

Jameson, Hemans, Landon, and a thousand more, not less learned, less

accomplished, nor less useful? Forgive, great names, my half-repeated

slander: riding with the self-conceited _cortège_ of male critics, my

boasted loyalty was well-nigh guilty of _lèze majesté_: but I repudiate

the thought; my verdict shall have no reproach in it, as my championship

no fear: how much has man to learn from woman! teach us still to look on

humanity in love, on nature in thankfulness, on death without fear, on

heaven without presumption; fairest, forgive those foolish and ungallant

calumnies of my ruder sex, who boast themselves your teachers--making

yet this wise use of the slander: never be so bold in authorship, as to

hazard the loss of your sweet, retiring, modest, amiable, natural

dependence: never stand out as champions on the arena of strife, but if

you will, strew it with posies for the king of the tournament; it ill

becomes you to be wrestlers, though a Lycurgus allowed it, and Atalanta,

another Eve, was tripped up by an apple in the foot-race. So digressing,

return we to our author; to wit, a man, _homo_--a human, as they say in

the west--with news of actual value to communicate, and powers of pen

competent to do so graphically, honestly, kindly, boldly.

Much as we may emulate Homer's wordy braggadocios in boasting ourselves

far better than our fathers, still, great was the wisdom of our

ancestors: and that time-tried wisdom has given us three things that

make a man; he must build a house, have a child, write a book: and of

this triad of needfuls, who perceives not the superior and innate

majesty of the last requisite?--"Build a house?" I humbly conceive, and

steal my notion from the same ancestral source, that, in nine cases out

of ten, fools build houses for wise men to live in; besides, if houses

be made a test of supreme manhood, your modern wholesale runner-up of

lath and plaster tenements, warranted to stand seven years--provided

quadrilles be excluded, and no larger flock of guests _than six_ be

permitted to settle on one spot--such a jackal for surgeons, such a

reprobate provider for accident-wards as this, would be among our

heroes, a prize-man, the flower of the species. "Children" too?--very

happy, beautiful, heart-gladdening creations--God bless them all, and

scatter those who love them not!--but still for a proof of more than

average humanity, somewhat common, somewhat overwhelming: rabbits beat

us here, with all our fecundity, so offensive to Martineau and Malthus.

But as to "books"--common enough, too, smirks gentle reader: pardon,

courteous sir, most rare--at least in my sense; I speak not of flat

current shillings, but the bold medallions of ancient Syracuse; I heed

not the dull thousands of minted gold and silver, but the choice

coin-sculptures of Larissa and Tarentum. There do indeed flow hourly,

from an ever-welling press, rivers of words; there are indeed shoaling

us up on all sides a throng of well-bound volumes--novels, histories,

poems, plays, memoirs, and so forth--to all appearance, books: but if by

"books" be intended originality of matter, independent arguments, water

turned wine, by the miracle of right-thinking, and not a mere

re-decantering of dregs from other vessels--these many masqueraded

forms, these multiplied images of little-varied likenesses, these

Protean herds, will not stay to be counted, nor abide judgment, nor

brook scrutiny, but will merge and melt by thousands into the one, or

the two, real, original, sterling books. We live in a monopolylogue of

authorship: an idea goes forth to the world's market-place well dressed

from the wardrobe of some master-mind; it greets the public with a

captivating air, and straightway becomes the rage; it seems epidemical;

it comes out simultaneously as a piece of political economy, a

cookery-book, a tragedy, a farce, a novel, a religious experience, an

abstract _ism_, or a concrete _ology_; till the poor worn-out,

dissipated shadow of a thought looks so feeble, thin, fashionably

affected and fashionably infected, that its honest, bluff old father,

for very shame, disowns it. Thus has it come to pass, that one or two

minds, in this golden age of scribbling, have, to speak radically, been

the true originators of a million volumes, which haply shall have sprung

from the seed of some singular book, or of books counted in the dual.

Indignant authors, be not merciless on my candour: I confess too much

whereof I hold you guilty; I am one of yourselves, and I question not

that few of you can beat me in a certain sort of--I will say,

unintended, plagiarism; you are thieves--patience--I thieve from

thieves; Diogenes cannot see me any more than you; you copy phrases, I

am perpetually and unconsciously filching thoughts; my entomological

netted-scissors, wherewith I catch those small fowl on the wing, are

always within reach; you will never find me without well-tenanted

pill-boxes in my pocket, and perhaps a buzzing captive or two stuck in

spinning thraldom on my castor; you are petty larceners, I profess the

like _métier_ of intellectual abstractor; you pilfer among a crowd of

volumes, manuscripts, rare editions, conflicting commentators, and your

success depends upon rëusage of the old materials; whereas I sit alone

and bookless in my dining-parlour, thinking over bygone fancies,

rëconsidering exploded notions, appropriating all I find of lumber in

the warehouse of my memory, and, if need be, without scruple, quietly

digesting, as my special provender, the thoughts of others, originated

ages ago.

Is it necessary to remind you--dropping this lightsome vein for a

precious moment--that I am penning away my "crudites," off-hand, at the

top of my speed? that my set intention is, if possible, to jot down

instanter my heavy brainful, and feel for once light headed?--I stick to

my title, '_An Author's Mind_,' and that with a laudable scorn of

concealment, and an honest purpose not to pretend it better or wiser

than it is; then let no one blame me on the score of my fashion of

speech, or my sarcasms mingled with charity; for consistency with me

were inconsistent.

Neither let me, poor innocent, be accused of giving license to what a

palled public and dyspeptical reviewers will call for the thousandth

time a _cacoethes_; word of cabalistic look, unknown to Dr. Dilworth.

Truly, my masters, though disciple I be of venerable Martinus the

Scribbler; though, for aught I know, himself in progress of

transmigration; still, I submit, my cornucopia is not crammed with

leaves and chopped straw; and if, in utter carelessness, the fruit is

poured out pell-mell after this desultory fashion, yet, I wot, it _is_

fruit, though whether ripe or crude, or rotten, my husbandry takes

little thought: the mixture serves for my cider-press, and, fermentation

over, the product will be clarified. Judge me too, am I not consecutive?

I've shown man to be a writing animal; and writing, what it is and is

not; and meanwhile have been routing recreatively at pen's point whims,

and fancies, and ideas, and images, pulled in manfully by head and

shoulders: and now--after an episode, quite relevant and quite

Herodotean, concerning the consequences of a bit of successful

authorship on a man's scheme of life, to illustrate yet more the

"author's mind"--I shall proceed to tell all men how many books I might,

could, should, or would have written, but for reiterated and legitimated

_buts_, and how near of kin I must esteem myself to the illustrious J.

of nursery rhymes, being, as he is or was, "Mister Joe Jenkins, who

played on the fiddle, and began twenty tunes, but left off in the

middle." Moreover, no one can be ignorant of the close consanguinity

recognised in every age and every dictionary between I and J. But now

for the episode:

If ever a toy were symbolical of life, that toy was a kaleidoscope: the

showy bits of tinsel, coloured glass, silk, beads, and feathers, with

here and there perchance a stray piece of iridescent ore or a pin, each,

in its turn of ideal multiplication, filling successively the field of

vision; the trifling touch that will disenchant the fairest patterns;

the slightest change, as in chemical arithmetic, that will make the

whole mixture a poison or a cordial. A man is vexed, the nerve of his

equanimity thrillingly touched at the tender elbow, and forthwith his

whole wholesome body writhes in pain; while, to speak morally, those

useful reminders of life's frailty, the habitual side-thorns--spurs of

diligence, incentives to better things--are exaggerated into sixfold

spears, and terribly stop the way, like long-lanced Achæans: a careless

fit succeeds to one of spleen, and vanity well spangled, pretty baubles,

stars and trinkets and trifles, fill their cycle, to magnetize with

folly that rolling world the brain: another twist, and love is lord

paramount, a paltry bit of glass, casually rose-coloured, shedding its

warm blush over all the reflective powers: suddenly an overcast, for

that marplot, Disappointment, has obtruded a most vexatiously reiterated

morsel of lamp-black: again Hope's little bit of blue paint makes azure

rainbows all about the firmament of man's own inner world; and at last

an atom of gold-dust specks all the glasses with its lurid yellow, and

haply leaves the old miser to his master-passion. So, ever changing day

by day, every man's life is but a kaleidoscope. Stay; this simile is

somewhat of the longest, but the whim is upon me, and I must have my

way; the fit possesses me to try a sonnet, and I shall look far for a

fairer thesis; he that hates verse--and the Muses now-a-days are too

old-maidish to look many lovers--may skip it, and no harm done; but one

or two may like this stave on

LIFE.

I saw a child with a kaleidoscope,

Turning at will the tesselated field;

And straight my mental eye became unseal'd,

I learnt of life, and read its horoscope:

Behold, how fitfully the patterns change!

The scene is azure now with hues of Hope;

Now sobered gray by Disappointment strange;

With Love's own roses blushing, warm and bright;

Black with Hate's heat, or white with Envy's cold;

Made glorious by Religion's purple light;

Or sicklied o'er with yellow lust of Gold;

So, good or evil coming, peace or strife,

Zeal when in youth, and Avarice when old,

In changeful, chanceful phases passeth life.

It is well I was not stopped before my lawful fourteenth rhyme by yonder

prosaic gentleman, humbly listening in front, who asks, with somewhat of

malicious triumph, whereto does all this lead?--Categorically, sir,

[there is no argument in the world equal to a word of six syllables,]

categorically, sir, to this: of all life's turns and twists, few things

produce more change to the daring _debutant_ than successful authorship;

it is as if, applying our simile, a fragment of printed bookishness

among those kaleidoscopic morsels, having worked its way into the field

of vision, had there got stereotyped by a photogenic process: in fact,

it fixes on it a prëdestinated "author's mind."

An author's mind! what a subject for the lights and shadows of

metaphysical portraiture! what a panorama of images! what a whirling

scene of ever-changing incidents! what a store-house for thoughts! what

a land of marvels! what untrodden heights, what unexplored depths of an

ever-undiscovered country! That strange world hath a structure and a

furniture all its own; its chalcedonic rocks are painted with rare

creatures floating in their liquid-seeming hardness; forms of other

spheres lie buried in its lias cliffs; seeds of unknown plants, relics

of unlimnèd reptiles, fragments of an old creation, the ruins of a

fanciful cosmogony, lie hid until the day of their requiral beneath its

fertile soil: and then its lawless botany; flowers of glorious hue hung

upon the trees of its forests; luscious fruits flung liberally among the

mosses of its banks; air-plants sailing in its atmosphere; unanchored

water-lilies dancing in its bright cascades; and this, too, a world, an

inner secret world, peopled with unthought images, specimens of a

peculiar creation; outlandish forms are started from its thickets, the

dragon and the cherub are numbered with its winged inhabitants, and

herds of uncouth shape pasture on its meadows. Who can sound its seas,

deep calling unto deep? who can stand upon the hill-tops, height

beckoning unto height? who can track its labyrinths? who can map its

caverns? A limitless essence, an unfailing spring, an evergreen

fruit-tree, a riddle unsolved, a quaint museum, a hot-bed of inventions,

an over-mantling tankard, a whimsical motley, a bursting volcano, a

full, independent, generous--a poor, fettered, jealous, Anomaly,

such--bear witness--is an author's mind. O, theme of many topics! chaos

of ill-sorted fancies! Let us come now to the jealousies, the real or

imaginary wrongs of authorship: hereafter treat we this at lengthier;

"for the time present"--I quote the facetious Lord Coke, when writing on

that highly exhilerating topic, the common-law--"hereof let this little

taste suffice." Is it not a wrong to be taken for a mere book-merchant,

a mercenary purveyor of learning and invention, of religion and

philosophy, of instruction, or even of amusements, for the sole

consideration of value received, as one would use a stalking-horse for

getting near a stag? this, too, when ten to one some cormorant on the

tree of knowledge, some staid-looking publisher in decent mourning, is

complacently pocketing the profits, and modestly charging you with loss?

and this, moreover and more poignantly, when the flame of responsibility

on some high subject is blazing at your heart, and the young Elihu, even

if he would, cannot keep silence? Is it not a wrong to find pearls

unprized, because many a modern, like his Celtic progenitors, (for I

must not say like swine,) would sooner crush an acorn? to know your

estimation among men ebbs and flows according to the accident of

success, rather than the quality of merit? to be despised as an animal

who must necessarily be living on his wits in some purlieu, answering to

that antiquated reproach, a Grub-street attic; or suspected among

gentler company in this most mercantile age for a pickpocket, a pauper,

a _chevalier d'industrie_? And then those hounds upon the bleeding

flanks of many a hunted author, those open-mouthed inexorable critics,

(I allude to the Pariah class, not to the higher caste brethren,) how

suddenly they rend one, and fear not! Only for others do I speak, and in

no degree on account of having felt their fangs, as many have done, my

betters; gentle and kind, as domesticated spaniels, have reviewers in

general been to your humble confessor, and for such courtesies is he

their debtor. But who can be ignorant how frequently some hapless writer

is impaled alive on the stake of ridicule, that a flagging magazine may

be served up with _sauce piquante_, and pander to the world for its

waning popularity by the malice of a pungent article? who, while as a

rule he may honour the bench of critics for patience, talent, and

impartiality, is not conusant of those exceptions, not seldom of

occurence, where obvious rancour has caused the unkindly condemnation;

where personal inveteracy aims from behind the Ajax shield of anonymous

reviewing, and shoots, like a cowardly Teucer, the foe fair-exposed

whom he dares not fight with?--But, as will be seen hereafter, I

trespass on a title-page, and here will add no more than this: Is it not

a wrong of double edge, that while the world makes no excuse for the

writhing writer, on the reasonable ground that after all he may be

innocent of what his critics blame him for, the same good-natured world,

on almost every occasion of magazine applause, believes either that the

author has written for himself the favourable notice, or that pecuniary

bribes have made the honest editor his tool? Verily, my public, thou art

not generous here; ay, and thou art grievously deceived, as well as

sordid: for by careless praise, causeless censure, credit given for

corrupt bribery, and no allowance made for unamiable criticisms, poor

maltreated authors speak to many wrongs: and of them more anon.

What moreover shall we say of chilling friendships, near estrangements,

heartless lovers loitering behind, shy acquaintance dropping off?

Verily, there is a mighty sifting: you have dared to stand alone, have

expounded your mind in imperishable print, have manifested wit enough to

outface folly, sufficient moral courage to condemn vice, and more than

is needful of good wisdom to shame the oracles of worldliness: and so

some dread you, some hate, and many shun: the little selfish asterisks

in that small sky fly from your constellatory glories: you are

independent, a satellite of none: you have dared to think, write, print,

in all ways contrary to many; and if wise men and good be loud in their

applause, you arrive at the dignity of manifold hatreds; but if those

and their inferiors condemn, you sink into the bathos of multiplied

contempts. Of other wrongs somewhen and where, hereafter; meanwhile, a

better prospect glows on the kaleidoscopic field--a flattering accession

of new and ardent friends: "Sir," said an old priest to a young author,

"you have made a soft pillow for your head when it comes to be as white

as mine is;" a pretty saying of sweet charity, and such sink deep: as

for the younger and the warmer, being mostly of the softer sex, some

will profess admiring sensations that border not a little on idolatries;

others, gayer, will appear in the dress of careless, unskillful

admiration; not a few, both men and women, go indeed weakly along with

the current stream of popularity, but, to say truth, look happiest when

they find some stinging notice that may mortify the new bold candidate

for glory; while, last and best, a fewer, a very much fewer, do

handsomely the liberal part of friends, commending where they can,

objecting where they must, sincere in sorrow for a fault, rejoicing

without envy for a virtue.

Many like phenomena has authorship: a certain class of otherwise

humanized and well-intentioned people begin to regard your scribe as a

monster--not a so-called "lion" to be sought, but some strange creature

to be dreaded: Perdition! what if he should be cogitating a novel or a

play, and means to make free with our characters? what if that libellous

cöpartnership of Saunders and Ottley is permitted to display our faults

and foibles, flimsily disguised, before a mocking world? Disappointed

maidens that hover on the verge of forty, and can sympathize with

Jephtha's daughter in her lonely mournings, causelessly begin to fear

that a mischievous author may appropriate their portraits; venerable

bachelors, who have striven to earn some little local notoriety by the

diligent use of an odd phrase, a quaint garment, or an eccentric fling

in the peripatetic, dread a satirist's powers of retributive burlesque;

table orators suddenly grow dumb, for they suspect such a caitiff

intends cold-blooded plagiarisms from their eloquence; the twinkling

stars of humble village spheres shun him for an ominous comet, whose

very trail robs them of light, or as paling glow-worms hide away before

some prying lantern; and all who have in one way or another prided

themselves on some harmless peculiarity, avoid his penetrating glance as

the eye of a basilisk. Then, again, those casual encounters of witlings

in the world authorial, so anticipated by a hostess, so

looked-forward-to by guests! In most cases, how forlorn they be! how

dull; constrained, suspicious! like rival traders, with pockets

instinctively buttoned up, and glaring each upon the other with most

uncommunicative aspects; not brothers at a banquet, but combatants and

wrestlers, watching for solecisms in the other's talk, or toiling to

drag in some laboured witticism of their own, after the classical

precedent of Hercules and Cerberus: those feasts of reason, how vapid!

those flows of soul, how icily congealing! those Attic nights, how dim

and dismal! Once more; and, remember me, I speak in a personated

character of the general, and not experimentally; so, flinging self

aside, let me speak what I have seen: grant that the world-without crown

a man with bays, and lead him to his Theban home with tokens of

rejoicing; is the victor there set on high, chapleted, and honoured as

Nemean heroes should be or does he not rather droop instantly again into

the obscure unit among a level mass, only the less welcome for having

stood up, a Saul or a Musæus, with his head above his fellows? Verily,

no man is a proph--Enough, enough! for ours is a prerogative, a glorious

calling, and the crown of barren leaves is costlier than his of Rabbah;

enough, enough! sing we the praises, count we well the pleasures of

fervent, overflowing authorship. There, in perfect shape before the

eyes--there, well born in beauty--there perpetually (so your fondness

hopes) to live--slumbers in her best white robe the mind's own fairest

daughter; the Minerva has sprung in panoply from that parental aching

head, and stands in her immortal independence; an Eve, his own heart's

fruit, welcomes delighted Adam. You have made something, some good work,

bodily; your communion has commenced with those of times to come; your

mind has produced a witness to its individuality; there is a tablet

sacred to its memory standing among men for ever.

A thinker is seldom great in conversation, and the glib talkers who have

silenced such a one frequently in clamorous argument, founder in his

deep thoughts, blundering, like Stephanos and Trinculos--(let Caliban be

swamped;) such generous revenge is sweet: a writer often unexplained,

because speaking little, and that little foolishly mayhap, and lightly

for the holiday's sake of an unthoughful rest, finds his opportunities

in printing, and gives the self-expounding that he needs; such

heart-emptyings yield heart-ease: an author, who has done his good work

well--for such a one alone we speak--while, privately, he scarce could

have refreshed mankind by petty driblets--in the perpetuity, publicity,

and universal acceptation of his high and honourable calling, does good

by wholesale, irrigates countries, and gladdens largely the large heart

of human society. And are not these unbounded pleasures, spreading over

life, and comforting the struggles of a death-bed? Yes: rising as

Ezekiel's river from ankle to knee, from knee to girdle, from girdle to

the overflowing flood--far beyond those lowest joys, which many wise

have trampled under foot, of praise, and triumph, and profit--the

authorship of good, that has made men better; that has consoled sorrow,

advanced knowledge, humbled arrogance, and blest humanity; that has sent

the guilty to his prayers, and has gladdened the Christian in his

praises--the authorship of good, that has shown God in his loveliness,

and man in his dependence; that has aided the cause of charity, and

shamed the face of sin--this high beneficence, this boundless

good-doing, hath indeed a rich recompense, a glorious reward!

But we must speed on, and sear these hydra-necks, or we shall have as

many heads to our discourse, and as puzzling, as any treatise of the

Puritan divinity. Let us hasten to be practical; let us not so long

forget the promised title-pages; let it at length satisfy to show, more

than theoretically, how authorship stirs up the mind to daily-teeming

projects, and then casts out its half-made progeny; how scraps of paper

come to be covered with the cabala of half-written thoughts,

thenceforward doomed to suffer the dispersion-fate of Sibylline leaves;

how stores of mingled information gravitate into something of order,

each seed herding with its fellows; and how every atom of mixed metal,

educationally held in solution by the mind, is sought out by a keen

precipitating test, gregariously building up in time its own true

crystal.

Hereabouts, therefore, and hereafter, in as frank a fashion as

heretofore, artlessly, too, and, but for crowding fancies, briefly shall

follow a full and free confession of the embryo circulating library now

in the book-case of my brain; only premising, for the last of all last

times, that while I know it to be morally impossible that all should be

pleased herewith, I feel it to be intellectually improbable that any one

mind should equally be satisfied with each of the many parts of a

performance so various, inconsistent, and unusual; premising, also, that

wherein I may have stumbled upon other people's titles, it is

unwittingly and unwillingly; for the age breeds books so quickly, that a

man must read harder than I do to peruse their very names; and premising

this much farther, that I profess to be a sort of dog in the manger,

neither using up my materials myself, nor letting any one else do so;

and that, whether I shall happen or not, at any time future to amplify

and perfect any of these matters, I still proclaim to all bookmakers and

booksellers, STEAL NOT; for so surely as I catch any one thus

behaving--and truly, my masters, the temptation is but small--I will

stick a "_Sic vos, non vobis,_" on his brazen forehead.

Wait! there remaineth yet a moment in which to say out the remnant of my

mind, "an author's mind," its last parting speech, its dying utterances

before extreme unction. I owe all the world apologies; I would pray a

catholic forgiveness. Authors and reviewers, critics, and the

undiscriminating many, fair women, honest men, I cry your pardons

universally! I do confess the learning of my mind to lie, strangely and

Pisa-like, inveterately as at Welsh Caérphilli, out of the perpendicular

of truth; it is my disposition to make the most of all things, for good

or for evil; I write, speak, and think, as if I were but an unhallowed

special pleader; I colour highly, and my outlines are too strong; I am

guilty on all sides of unintentional misstatements, consequent on the

powerful gusts of feeling that burst upon my irritable breast; my heart

is no smooth Dead Sea, but the still vexed Bermoothes: therefore I would

print my penitence; I would publish my confessions; I would not hide my

humbleness; and it pleases me to pour out in sonnet-form my

unconventional

APOLOGY TO ALL.

--For I have sinn'd; oh! grievously and often;

Exaggerated ill, and good denied;

Blacken'd the shadows only born to soften;

And Truth's own light unkindly misapplied:

Alas! for charities unloved, uncherish'd,

When some stern judgment, haply erring wide,

Hath sent my fancy forth, to dream and tell

Other men's deeds all evil! Oh, my heart!

Renew once more thy generous youth, half perish'd;

Be wiser, kindlier, better than thou art!

And first, in fitting meekness, offer well

All earnest, candid prayers, to be forgiven

For worldly, harsh, unjust, unlovable

Thoughts and suspicions against man and Heaven!

Friends all, let this be my best amendment: bear with the candour,

homely though it may be, of your author's mind; and suffer its further

revelations of unborn manuscript with charitable listening; for they

would come forth in real order of time, the first having priority, and

not the best, ungarnished, unweeded, uncared-for, humbly, and without

any further flourish of trumpets.

* * * * *

Serjeant Ion--I beg his pardon, Talfourd--somewhere gives it as his

opinion, that most people, in any way troubled with a mind, have at some

time or other meditated a tragedy. Truly, too, it _is_ a fine vehicle

for poetical solemnities, a stout-built vessel for an author's graver

thoughts; and the bare possibility of seeing one's own heart-stirring

creation visually set before a crowded theatre, the preclusive echoes

of anticipated thundering applause, the expected grilling silence

attendant on a pet scene or sentiment, all the tangible, accessories of

painting and music, clever acting and effective situation, and beyond

and beside these the certain glories of the property-wardrobe, make most

young minds press forward to the little-likely prize of successful

tragedy. That at one weak period I was bitten, my honesty would scorn to

deny; but fortunately for my peace of mind, "Melpomene looked upon me

with an aspect of little favour," and sturdy truth-telling Tacitus made

me at last but lightly regardful of my subject. Moreover, my Pegasus was

visited with a very abrupt pull-up from other causes; it has been my

fatality more than once or twice, as you will ere long see, to drop upon

other people's topics--for who can find any thing new under the

sun?--and I had already been mentally delivered of divers fag-ends of

speeches, stinging dialogues, and choice tit-bits of scenes, (all of

which I will mercifully spare you,) when a chance peep into Johnson's

'_Lives of the Poets_' showed me mine own fine subject as the work of

some long-forgotten bard! This moral earthquake demolished in a moment

my goodly aërial fabric; the fair plot burst like a meteor; and an

after-recollection of a certain French tragedy-queen, Agrippina, showed

me that the ground was still further preoccupied. But it is high time to

tell the destined name of my abortive play; in four letters, then,

NERO;

A CLASSICAL TRAGEDY:

IN SEVEN SCENES.

And now, in pity to an afflicted parent, hear for a while his

offspring's Roscian capabilities. First of all, however, (and you know

how I rejoice in all things preliminary,) let me clear my road by

explanations: we must pioneer away a titular objection, "in seven

scenes," and an assumed merit, in the term "classical." I abhor

scene-shifters; at least, their province lies more among pantomimes,

farces, and comedies, than in the region of the solemn tragic muse; her

incidents should rather partake of the sculpture-like dignity of

_tableaux_. My unfashionable taste approves not of a serious story being

cut up into a vast number of separate and shuffled sections; and the

whistle and sliding panels detract still more from the completeness of

illusion: I incline as much as is possible to the Classic unities of

time, place, and circumstances, wishing, moreover, every act to be a

scene, and every scene an act; with a comfortable green curtain, that

cool resting-place for the haggard eye, to be the grass-like drop,

mildly alternating with splendid crime and miserable innocence: away

with those gaudy intermediates, and, still worse, some intruded ballet;

bring back Garrick's baize, and crush the dynasty of head-aches.

But onward: let me further extenuate the term, seven scenes; the

utterance seven "acts" would sound horrific, full of extremities of

weariness; but my meaning actually is none other than seven acts of one

scene each: for the number seven, there always have been decent reasons,

and ours may best appear as we proceed, less than a brief seven seeming

insufficient, and more, superfluous; again, so mystical a number has a

staid propriety, and a due double climax of rise and fall. Now, as to

our adjective "classical:" Why not, in heroic drama, have something

a-kin to the old Greek chorus, with its running comment upon motives and

moralities, somewhat as the mighty-master has set forth in his truly

patriotic '_Henry the Fifth?_'--However, taking other grounds, the

epithet is justified, both by the subject and the proposed unmodern

method of its treatment: but of all this enough, for, on second

thoughts, perhaps we may do without the chorus.

It is obvious that no historical play can strictly preserve the true

unity of time; cause and effect move slower in the actual machinery of

life, than the space of some three hours can allow for: we must

unavoidably clump them closer; and so long as a circumstance might as

well have happened at one time as at another, I consider that the poet

is justified in crowding prior events as near as he may please towards

the goal of their catastrophe. If then any slight inaccuracy as to dates

arrests your critical ken, believe that it is not ignorantly careless,

but learnedly needful. One other objection, and I have done. No man is

an utter inexcusable, irremediable villain; there is a spot of light,

however hidden, somewhere; and, notwithstanding the historian's picture,

it may charitably be doubted whether we have made due allowance for his

most reasonable prejudice even in Nero's case. Human nature has produced

many monsters; but, amongst a thousand crimes, there has proverbially

lingered in each some one seedling of a virtue; and when we consider the

corruption of manners in old Rome, the idolatrous flatteries hemming in

the prince, the universal lie that hid all things from his better

perceptions, we can fancy some slight extenuation for his mad career.

Not that it ever was my aim, in modern fashion, to excuse villany, or to

gild the brass brow of vice; and verily, I have not spared my odious

hero; nevertheless, in selecting so unamiable a subject, (or rather

emperor,) I wished not to conceal that even in the worst of men there is

a soil for hope and charity; and that if despotism has high

prerogatives, its wealth and state are desperate temptations, whose

dangers mightily predominate, and whose necessary influences, if quite

unbiased, tend to utter misery.

Now to introduce our _dramatis personæ_, with their "cast,"--for better

effect--rather unreasonably presumed. _Nero_--(Macready, who would

impersonate him grandly, and who, moreover, whether complimented or not

by the likeness, wears a head the very counterpart of Nero's, as every

Numismatist will vouch,)--a naturally noble spirit, warped by sensuality

and pride into a very tyrant; liberal in gifts, yet selfish in passion;

not incapable of a higher sort of love, yet liable to sudden changes,

and at times tempestuously cruel. _Nattalis_--(say Vandenhoff,)--his

favourite and evil genius, originally a Persian slave, and still wearing

the Eastern costume: a sort of Iago, spiriting up the willing Nero to

all varieties of wickedness, getting him deified, and otherwise

mystifying the poor besotted prince with all kinds of pleasure and

glory, to subserve certain selfish ends of rapine, power, and

licentiousness, and to avenge, perhaps, the misfortunes of his own

country on the chief of her destroyers. _Marcus Manlius_--(who better

than Charles Kean?--supposing these artistic combinations not to be

quite impossible,)--a fine young soldier, of course loving the heroine,

captain of Nero's body-guard, chivalrous, honourable, noble, and

faithful to his bad master amid conflicting trials. _Publius

Dentatus_--(any _bould_ speaker; besides, it would be rather too much to

engage all the actors yet awhile;)--a worthy old Roman, father of the

heroine. _Galba_, the chief mover in the catastrophe, as also the opener

of its causes, an intriguing and fierce, but well-intentioned patriot,

who ultimately becomes the next emperor. With _Curtius_ a tribune,

senators, conspirators, soldiers, priests, flamens, &c. And so, after

the ungallant fashion of theatrical play-wrights, as to a class inferior

to the very &c. of masculines--(of less intention withal than one of

those &cs. of crabbed Littleton, like an old shoe fricasséed into

savourings of all things by its inimitable Coke,)--come we to the

women-kind. _Agrippina_, (one of the school of Siddons,) empress-mother,

a strong-minded, Lady-Macbeth sort of woman, and the only person in the

world who can awe her amiable son. _Lucia,_ (_you_ cannot be spared

here, clever Helen Faucit)--the heroine, secretly a Christian affianced

to Manlius; a character of martyr's daring and woman's love. _Rufa_, a

haggard old sibyl, with both private and public reasons for detesting

Nero and Nattalis: and all the fitting female attendants to conclude the

list.

Each scene, in which each act will be included, should be pictorially,

so to speak, a _tableau_ in the commencement, and a _tableau_ of

situation in the end. Let us draw up upon scene _the first_.

Back-ground, Rome burning; in front, ruins of fine Tuscan villa, still

smoking; and a terminal altar in the garden. Plebs. running to and fro,

full of conventional little speeches, with goods, parents, penates, and

other lumber, rescued from the flames; till a tribune, (hight Curtius,)

in a somewhat incendiary oration concerning poor men's calamities, and

against the powers that be, sends them to the capital with a procession

of flamines Diales and vestals, dirging solemnly a Roman hymn [some "_Ad

Capitolium, Ad Jovis solium_," and so forth] to good music. At the

end of the train come in Publius and Lucia, to whom from opposite

hurriedly walks Galba, full of talk of omens, direful doings, patriotism,

and old Rome's ruin. To these let there be added--to speak

mathematically--open-hearted Manlius; and let there follow certain

disceptatious converse about Nero, Manlius excusing him, extenuating his

vices by his temptations, giving military anecdotes of his earlier

virtues, and in fact striving to make the most of him, a very gentle

monster: Galba throwing in, sarcastically, blacker shadows. After

disputation, the father and lovers walk off, leaving Galba alone for a

moment's soliloquy; and, from behind the terminal altar, unseen Sibyl

hails him Cæsar; he, astonished at the airy voice so coincident with his

own feelings, thinks it ideal, chides his babbling thoughts, and so

forth: then enter to him suddenly chance-met noble citizens, burnt out

of house and home, who declaim furiously against Nero. Sibyl, still

unseen from behind the altar, again hails Galba as future Cæsar; who, no

longer doubting his ears, and all present taking the omen, they conspire

at the altar with drawn swords, and as the Sibyl suddenly

presides--_tableau_--and down drops the soft green baize. This first

act, you perceive, is stirring, introductory of many characters; and the

picture of the seven-hilled city, seen in a transparent blaze, might

give the followers of Stanfield a triumph.

_Second_: The senate scene, producing another monstrous crime of Nero's,

also inaccurately dated. In the full august assembly, Nero discovered

enthroned, not unmajestic in deportment, yet effeminately chapleted, and

holding a lyre: suppose him just returned from Elis, a pancratist, the

world's acknowledged champion. Nattalis, ever foremost in flatteries,

after praising the prince's exploits in Greece, avows that, like Paris

in Troy, and Alexander at Persepolis, Nero _had_ gloriously fired Rome;

he found it wood, and wished to leave it marble; (so, the catafalque at

the Invalides of the twice-buried Corsican;) in destroying, as well as

blessing, he had asserted his divinity; any after due allusions to

Phoenixes, and fire-kingships, and _coups-de-soliel_ falling from the

same Apollo so great upon the guitar, Nattalis moves that Nero should be

worshipped, and calls on the priest of Jupiter to set a good example.

None dare refuse, and the senate bend before him; whereupon enter, in

clerical procession, augurs, and diviners, men at arms with pole-axes,

and coronaled white bulls, paraded before sacrifice: all this pandering

to present love of splendour and picturesque effect. In the midst of

these classical preparations, enters, with a bevy of attendants, the

haughty queen-like Agrippina, whom Nero, having sent for to complete his

triumph, commands to bend too; but she stoutly refusing, and taking him

fiercely to task, objurgating likewise Rome's degenerate

gray-beards--great bustle--senate broken up hurriedly--and she, with a

"_feri ventrem_," dragged off to be killed by her son's order. Nero

alone with Nattalis by imperial command; his momentary compunction

nullified by the wily Iago, who turns off the subject smoothly to a new

object of desire: Publius was the only senator not in his place, and

Publius has a daughter, the fairest in Rome, Lucia--had not the emperor

noticed her among Agrippina's women? Nero, charmed with any scheme of

novelty that may change remorseful thoughts, is induced, nothing loth,

to attempt the subtle abduction of the heroine; a body-guard, headed as

always by Manlius, ready in the vestibule to escort him, and exit.

Nattalis, alone for a minute, betrays his own selfish schemes concerning

Lucia, who had refused him before, and alludes to his secret reasons for

urging on the maddened Nero to the worst excesses.

_Third scene_ (or part, or _act_, if it must be so), expounds, in

fitting contrast to the foregoing, the tender loves of Lucia and

Manlius; a gentle home-scene, a villa and its terraced gardens: also, as

Lucia is a Christian, we have, poetically, and not puritanically, an

insight into her scruples of conscience as to the heathenism of her

lover: and also into _his_ consistent nobility of character, not willing

to surrender the religion of his fathers unconvinced. To them rushes in

Publius, who has been warned by friend Galba of the near approach of

Nattalis and a guard, to seize Lucia for disreputable Nero: no possible

escape, and all urge Lucia to imitate Virginia, Lucretia, and others of

like Dian fame, by cowardly self-murder; she is high-principled, and

won't: then they--the father and lover--request leave to kill her;

conflicting passions and considerable stage effect; Lucia, who with calm

courage derides the dastard sacrifice, standing unharmed between those

loving thirsty swords: in a grand speech, she makes her quiet departure

a test of Manlius' love, and her ultimate deliverance to be a proof to

him that her God is the true God, the God who guards the innocent.

Manlius, struck with her martyr-like constancy, professes that if indeed

she is saved out of this great trouble, he will embrace her faith,

renounce his own, and so break down the of wealth and rank, are alike

thrown away upon Publius; at last, the prince promises; and when

Publius, after a burst of earnest eloquence, proclaims the new pleasure

to consist in _showing mercy_, Nero's utter wrath, his hurricane of

hate, revoking that hasty promise, and hurrying away old Publius to die

at the same stake with his daughter.

_Seventh_: the catastrophe scene lies in the Coliseum amphitheatre; (I

mean the older one, anterior to Vespasian's:) bloody games pictured

behind, and those "human torches" at fiery intervals. Nero, enthroned in

side front, surrounded by a brilliant court, amongst whom are some of

the conspirators: at other side Publius and Lucia, tied at one stake in

white robes, back to back, to die before Nero's eyes, Manlius and

soldiers guarding them: he, Manlius, having nobly resolved to test

miraculous assistance to the last, but now tremblingly believing the

chance of a Providence interfering, since Lucia's escape from Nero at

the golden house. Just as the emperor, after a sarcastic speech,

characteristically interlarded with courtier conversation, is commanding

the fagot to be lighted, and Lucia's constant faith has bade Manlius _do

it_--a rush of Nattalis with attendant conspirators and Rufa the Sibyl,

up to Nero; Nattalis strikes him, but the sword breaks short off on the

hidden armour; Nero's majestic rising for a moment, asserting himself

Cæsar still, the inviolable majesty;--suddenly stopped by a centripetal

rush of the conspirators; who kill him, (after he has vainly attempted

in despair to kill himself,) and Galba sits on the throne, while Nero,

unpitied and unhelped, gasps out in the middle his dying speech.

Meanwhile, at the other side, Manlius has killed Nattalis for his

treachery, cut the bonds of Publius and Lucia, and all ends in moral

justice for the triumph of good, and the defeat of evil; Manlius and

Lucia, hand in hand, Publius with white head and upraised hands blessing

them, Nero, a mangled corpse, Nattalis in his dying agonies persecuted

by the vindictive Rufa, and Galba hailed as Cæsar by the assembled

Romans. So, upon a magnificent _tableau_, slowly falls the lawny

curtain.

Patient reader, what think you of my long-winded tragedy? No quibbling

about Nero having really died in a drain, four years after the murder of

Aggrippina; no learned disquisitions, if you please, as to his innocence

of Rome's fire, a counterpart to our slander on the Papacy in the matter

of London's; spare me, I pray you, learned pundit, your suspicions about

Galba's too probable _alibi_ in Spain. Tell me rather this: do I falsify

history in any thing more important than mere accidental anachronisms

and anatopisms? do I make an untrue delineation of character, blackening

the good, or white-washing the wicked? Do I not, by introducing Nero's

three greatest crimes so near upon his assassination, merely accelerate

the interval between causes and effect? And is not tragic dignity

justified in varnishing, with other compost than the dregs of Rome, the

exit of the last true Cæsar of the Augustan family? For all the rest,

good manager, provide me actors, and I am even now uncertain--such is my

weakness--whether this skeleton might not at some time be clad with

flesh and skin, and a decent Roman toga. I fear it will yet haunt me as

a '_Midsummer Night's Dream_,' destroying my quiet with involuntary

shreds and patches of long-metred blank; the notion is still vivacious,

albeit scotched: Alexandrine though the synopsis appear, it must not be

thrown on the highroad as a dead snake; nay, let me cherish it yet on my

hearth, and not hurl it away like a _bonum waviatum_; a little more

boiling up of Roman messes in my brain, and my tragedy might flow forth

spontaneously as lava. What if this book be, after all, a sort of

pilot-balloon, to show my huge Nassau the way the wind blows--a feeler

as to which and which may please? Whether or not this be so, I will

still confess on, emptying my brain of booklets, and, if by happy

possibility I can keep my secret, shall hear unsuspected, friend, _your_

verdict.

* * * * *

I must rather hope, than expect, that my next bit of possible authorship

is not like the last, a subject forestalled. Scribbling as I find myself

for very listlessness in a dull country-house, there's not a publisher's

index within thirty miles; so, for lack of evidence to the contrary, I

may legitimately, for at least a brief period of self-delusion, imagine

the intoxicating field my own. And yet so fertile, important,

interesting a subject, cannot have been quite overlooked by the corps of

professed literary labourer's: the very title-page would insure five

thousand readers (especially with a Brunswicker death's-head and

marrow-bones added underneath).

OPIUM;

A HISTORY;

standing alone in single blackiness: Opium, a magnificent theme,

warranted to fill a huge octavo: and certain, from sheer variety of

information, to lead into the captivity of admiring criticism minds of

every calibre. Its natural history, with due details of all manner of

poppies, their indigenous habitats, botanical characters, ratios of

increase, and the like; its human history, discovery as a drug; how,

when, where, and by whom cultivated; dissertations as to the possibility

of Chaldean, Pharaonic, Grecian, or Roman opium eating, with most

erudite extracts out of all sorts of scribes, from Sanchoniathon down to

Juvenal, on these topics; its medicinal uses, properties, accidents, and

abuses; as to whether it might not be used homoeopathically or in

infinitesimal doses, to infuse a love of the pleasures of imagination

into clodpoles, lawyers' clerks, and country cousins; its intellectual

possibilities of usefulness, stimulating the brain; its moral ditto,

allaying irritability; together with a dreadful detail of its evils in

excess, idiotizing, immoralizing, ruining soul and body. Plenty of stout

unquestionable statistics, from all crannies of the globe, to

corroborate all the above to the extreme satisfaction of practical men,

with causes and consequences of its insane local popularity. All this,

moreover, at present, with especial reference to China and the East;

added to the moral bearings of the Opium-war, and our national

responsibilities relative to that unlucky traffic. The metaphysical

question stated and answered, whether or not prohibition of any thing

does not lead to its desire; showing the increasing appetency of those

sottish Serics for the forbidden vice, and illustrating Gay's fable of

the foolish young cock, who ne'er had been in that condition, but for

his mother's prohibition: moreover, how is it, that so captivating a

form of intoxication is so little rife among our drunken journeymen?

queries, however, as to this; and whether or not the humbug of

teetotalism (a modern speculation, got up by and for the benefit of

grocers and sugar-planters on the one side, schismatics and conspiring

demagogues on the other,) has already substituted opium-eating,

drinking, or smoking, for the wholesomer toddies, among factory folk and

the finest pisantry. Millions of anecdotes regarding Eastern Rajahs,

Western Locofocos, Southern Moors, and North-country Muscovites, as to

the drug in its abuses: strange cures (if any) of strange ailments of

mind or body by its prudent use: how to wean men and nations from those

deleterious chewings and smokings; with true and particular accounts of

such splendid self-conquests as Coleridge and De Quincey, and--shall I

add another, a living name?--have attained to. Then, again, what a field

for poetical vagaries, and madnesses of imagination, would be afforded

by the subject of opium-dreams! Now, strictly speaking, in order to

hallucinate honestly, your opium-writer ought to have had some

practical knowledge of opium-eating: then could he descant with the

authority of experience--yea, though he write himself thereby down an

ass--on its effects upon mind and body; then could he tell of luxuries

and torments in true Frenchified detail; then could he expound its pains

and pleasures with all the eloquence of personal conviction. But, as to

such real risk of poisoning myself, and of making I wot not how actual a

mooncalf, of my present sound mind and body, I herein would reasonably

demur: and, if I wanted dreams, would tax my fancy, and not my

apothecary's bill. Dreams? I need not whiff opium, nor toss off laudanum

negus, to imagine myself--a young Titan, sucking fiery milk from the

paps of a volcano; a despot so limitless and magnificent, as to spurn

such a petty realm as the Solar System, with Cassiopeia, Boötes, and his

dog, to boot; an intellect, so ravished, that it feels all flame, or a

mass of matter so inert, that it lies for ages in the silent depths of

ocean, a lump of primeval metal: Madness, with the red-hot iron hissing

in his brain: Murder, with the blood-hound ghost, over land, over sea,

through crowds, deserts, woods, and happy fields, ever tracking silently

in horrid calmness; the oppression of indefinite Guilt, with that Holy

Eye still watching; the consciousness of instant danger, the sense of

excruciating pain, the intolerable tyranny of vague wild fear, without

will or power to escape: spurring for very life on a horse of marble:

flying upward to meet the quick-falling skies--O, that universal

crash!--greeted in a new-entered world with the execrations of the

assembled dead--that hollow, far-echoing, malicious laughter--that

hurricane-sound of clattering skulls; to be pent up, stifling like a

toad, in a limestone rock for centuries; to be haunted, hunted, hooted;

to eat off one's own head with its cruel madly crunching under-jaw;

to--but enough of horrors: and as to delights, all that Delacroix

suggests of perfume, and Mahomet of Houris, and Gunter of cookery, and

the German opera of music: all Camilla-like running unexertive, all that

sea unicorns can effect in swift swimming, or storm-caught condors in

things aërial; all the rapid travellings of Puck from star to star,

system to system, all things beauteous, exhilarating, ecstatic--ages of

all these things, warranted to last. Now, multiply all these several

alls by forty-nine, and the product will serve for as exaggerated a

statement as possible of opium pandering to pleasure; yes, by

forty-nine, by seven times seven at the least, that we be not accused of

extenuating so fatal an excitement; for it is competent to conceive

one's self expanded into any unlimited number of bodies, seven sevens

being the algebraic _n_, and if so, into their huge undefined

aggregate; a giant's pains are throes indeed, a giant's pleasures indeed

flood over. But, we may do harm to morality and truth, by falsely making

much of a faint, fleeting, paltry, excitation. The brain waltzing

intoxicated, the heart panting as in youth's earliest affection, the

mind broad, and deep, and calm, a Pacific in the sunshine, the body

lapped in downy rest, with every nerve ministering to its comfort; what

more can one, merely and professedly of this world of sensualism--an

opium-eater for instance--conceive of bliss? Such imaginative flights as

these, with its pungent final interrogatory, suggestive to man's

selfishness of joys as yet untried, might tempt to tamper with the dear

delight; whereas the plain statement of the most that opium could

minister to happiness, as contrasted with those false vain views of it,

remind me of Tennyson's poetical '_Timbuctoo_,' gorgeous as a new

Jerusalem in Apocalyptic glories, and the mean filth-obstructed kraals

dotted on an arid plain, to which, for very truthfulness, his soaring

fancy drops plumbdown, as the shot eagle in '_Der Freischutz_.'

Let this then serve as a meagre sketch of my defunct treatise on opium:

think not that I love the subject, curious and fertile though it be;

perhaps, philosophically regarded, it is not a better one than _gin_;

but ears polite endure not the plebeian monosyllable, unless indeed with

a rëduplicated _n_, as Mr. Lane _will_ have it our whilom genie should

be spelt: accordingly, I magnanimously give up the whole idea, and am

liberal enough, in this my dying determination, to sign a codicil,

bequeathing opium to my executors.

* * * * *

Novelism is a field so filled with copy-holders, so populously tenanted

in common, that it requires no light investigation to find a site

unoccupied, and a hero or heroine waiting to be hired. Nevertheless, I

seem to myself to have lighted on a rich and little-cultivated corner;

imagining that the subject is a good one, because still untouched,

founded on facts, and with amplifiable variations that border on the

probable. He that lionizes Stratford-on-Avon, will remember in one of

the Shakspearian museums of that classic town, the pictured trance of

hapless

CHARLOTTE CLOPTON,

as it was limned in death-seeming life. He will be shown the tombs of

her ancient family in Stratford church, and the door of that fatal

vault; he will hear something of her noble birth--her fine

character--her fascinating beauty--her short, innocent, eventful

life--her horrible death. Consider, too, the age and locality in which

she lived, Elizabethan, Shakspeare's; the great contemporary characters

that might be casually introduced; the mysterious suicide, in that dim

dreadful pool at the end of the terraced walk among the cropped yews, of

her poor only sister, Margaret; equalled only in the miserable interest

by that of Charlotte herself. And then for a plot: some darkly hinted

parricide of years agone, in the generation but one preceding, has dropt

its curse upon the now guiltless, but, by the law of Providence,

still-not-acquitted family; a parricide consequent on passionate love,

differing religions, and the Montague-and-Capulet-school of hating

feudal fathers--Theodore Clopton having been a Catholic, Alice Beauvoir

a Protestant; an introductory recountal of old Beauvoir's withering

curse on the Clopton family for Theodore's abduction of his daughter,

followed by the tragic event of the father and son, Cloptons', mutual

hatred, and the former found in his own park with the broken point of

his son's sword in him, the latter flying the realm: the curse has slept

for a generation; and now two fair daughters are all that remain to the

high-bred Sir Clement and his desponding lady, on whom the Beauvoir

descendant, a bitterest enemy, takes care to remind them the hovering

curse must burst. This Rowland Beauvoir is the villain of the story,

whose sole aim it is, after the fulfilment of his own libertine wishes,

to see the curse accomplished: and Charlotte's love for a certain young

Saville, whom Beauvoir hates as his handsome rival in court patronage,

as well as her pointed refusal of himself, gives new and present life to

his ancestral grudge. The lovers are espoused, and to make Sir Clement's

joy the greater, Saville has interest sufficient to meet the old

knight's humour of keeping up the ancient family name, by getting it

added to his own; so that the Beauvoir hatred and parricidal curse seem

likely to be frustrated. But--the first hindrance to their union is poor

sister Margaret's secret and infatuated love for that scheming villain

Rowland, her then too probable seduction, melancholic madness, and

suicide: successively upon this follow the last illnesses and deaths of

the heart-broken old people, whom Rowland's dreadful ubiquity terrifies

in their very chamber of disease; and as the too likely consequence of

such accumulated sorrows on a creature of exquisite sensibility,

Charlotte, the only remaining heiress of that ancient lineage,

gradually, and with all the semblance of death, falls into her terrible

trance. Rowland, who, through his intimacy with Margaret, knows all the

secret passages and sliding panels of the old mansion, and who thereby

gets mysterious admission whenever he pleases, comes into that silent

chamber, and finds Saville mourning over his dead-seeming bride: she,

all the while, though unable to move, in an agony of self-consciousness;

and at last, when Rowland in fiendish triumph pronounces the curse

complete, to the extreme horror of both, by an effort of tortured mind

over apparently inanimate matter, rolls her glazed eyes, and gives an

involuntary groan: having thus to all appearance confirmed the curse,

she lies more marble-white, more corpse-like, more entranced than ever.

Then, after long lingering, draws on the horrible catastrophe: a

catastrophe, alas! as far at least as regards the heroine, _quite true_.

Fully aware of all that is going on--the preparations for burial, the

misery of her lover, the gratified malice of her foe--she is placed in

the coffin: the rites proceed, her heart-stricken espoused takes his

last long leave, she is carried to the grave, locked in the family vault

under Stratford church, and there left alone, fearfully buried alive!

And then, after a day or two, how shrieks and groans are heard in the

church-yard by truant school-boys, and are placed to the account of the

curse: how, at last, her despairing lover demands to have the vault

opened; and the wretch Rowland--partly from curiosity, partly from

malice--determined to be there to see. As they and some church-followers

come near the door of the vault, they hear knockings, and desperate

plunges within; Saville swoons away, the crowd falls back in terror, and

the hardened Rowland alone dares unlock the door. Instantly, in her

shroud, mad, starved, with the flesh gnawed from her own fair shoulders,

rushes out the maniac Charlotte: in phrensied half-reason she has seized

Rowland by the throat, with the strength of insanity has strangled him,

and then falls dead upon the steps of the vault! Of Saville--who, as

having swooned, is spared all this scene of horror, and who leaves the

country for ever--little or nothing is more said: and Clopton Hall

remains a ruin, tenanted by ghosts and bats.

P.S. If thought fit, after the fashion of Parisian charcoal-burners in

ill-ventilated bed-rooms, Charlotte may have recorded her experiences in

the vault, by writing with a rusty nail on the coffin-plates.

Now, the gist of this Victor-Hugo tale of terror is its general truth: a

true end of a truly-named family, in its own neighbourhood, and long

since extinct: the house, now rëbuilt and rëstyled--the vault--the

picture of that poor unfortunate, (how unsearchable in real life often

are the ways of Providence! how frequently the innocent suffer for the

guilty!)--the gloomy well--and something extant of the story--remains

still, and are known to some at Stratford. To do the thing graphically,

one should go there, and gain materials on the spot: and nothing could

be easier than to mix with them fifteenth-and-sixteenth-century

costumes, modes of thought, and historical allusions; accessories of the

humorous, if the age demands it, might relieve the pathetic; Charlotte's

own innocence and piety might be made to soften her hard fate, with the

assurance of a better life; Saville might become a wisely-resigned

recluse; and while the sins of the fathers are not gently, though

justly, visited on the children, the villain of the story meets his full

reward.

Behold, then, hungry novel-monger, what grist is here for the mill!

Behold, Sosii, what capabilities of orders from every library in the

kingdom!--As doomed ones, and denounced ones, and undying ones, and

unseen ones, seem to be such taking titles, what think you of the

_Buried-alive-one_!--is it not new, thrilling, terrible? Who is he that

would pander to the popular taste for details of dreadful, cruel,

criminal, and useless abominations? "Should such a one as I?" In

emptying my head of the notion, I have ministered too much already: but

the sample of henbane is poured out, an offering to the infernal manes,

and poisons no longer the current of my thoughts. Thy ghost, poor

beautiful Charlotte! shall not be disturbed by me; thy misfortunes sleep

with thee. Nevertheless, this tale about a more amiable Charlotte than

Werter's, so naturally also falling into the orthodox three-volume

measure, is capable of being fabricated into something of deep,

romantic, tragical interest; such a character, in such circumstances, in

such an age, and such a place: I commend it to those of the Anglo-Gallic

school, who love the domestically horrible, and delight in unsunned

sorrows: but, I throw not any one topic away as a waif, for the casual

passer-by to pick up on the highway. Shadows, indeed, are flung upon the

waters, but Phulax still holds the substance with tenacious teeth.

Stop awhile, my dog and shadow, and generously drop the world a morsel;

be not quite so bold when no one thinks of robbing you, and spare your

gasconade: the expediency of a sample has been cleverly suggested, and

WE _ego et canis meus_, royal in munificence, do graciously

accede. Will this serve the purpose, my ever-pensive public? At any

rate, with some aid of intellect in readers, it is happily an extract

which explains itself--the death of poor infatuated Margaret: we will

suppose preliminaries, and hazard the abrupt.

* * * * *

"That bitter speech shot home; it had sped like an arrow to her brain:

it had flown to her heart like the breath of pestilence: for Rowland to

be rough, uncourteous, unkind, might cause indeed many a pang; but such

conduct had long become a habit, and woman's charitable soul excused

moroseness in him, whom she loved more than life itself, more than

honour. But now, when the dread laugh of a seemingly more righteous

world was daily, hourly, to be feared against her--when the cold finger

of scorn was preparing to be pointed at her fading beauty, and her

altered form--now, when indulgence is most due, and cruelty has a sting

more scorpion than ever--to be taunted with that once-kind tongue with

having rightfully inherited _a curse_--to be told, in a sort of fiendish

triumph, that some ancient family grudge, forsooth, against her father's

fame, certainly as much as the selfish motives of a libertine professed,

had warped the will of Rowland to her ruin--to know, to hear, yea, from

his own lips, that the oft-repented crime of her warm and credulous

youth--of her too free, unsuspicious affection--had calmly been

contrived by the heart she clung to for her first, her only love--here

was misery, here was madness!

"Rowland, at the approach of footsteps, had hastily slunk away behind

the accustomed panel, and alone in the chamber was left poor Margaret:

his last sneering speech, the mockery of his sarcastic pity, were still

haunting her ear with echoes full of wretchedness; and she had uttered

one faint cry, and sunk swooning on a couch, when her sister entered.

"Charlotte, gentle Charlotte, had nothing of the hardness of a heroine;

her mind, as her most fair body, was delicate, nervous, spiritualized;

but the instinct of imperious duty ever gave her strength in the day of

trial. Long with an elder sister's eye had she watched and feared for

Margaret; she had palliated natural levity by evident warmth of

disposition, and excused follies of the judgment by kindness of the

heart. Charlotte was no child; in any other case, she had been keener of

perception; but in that of a young, generous, and most loving sister,

suspicion had been felt as a wickedness, and had long been lulled

asleep: now, however, it awaked in all its terrors; and, as Margaret lay

fainting, the sorrowful condition of one soon to be a mother who never

was a wife, was only too apparent. She touched her, sprinkled water on

her pale face, and, as the fixed eyes opened suddenly, Charlotte started

at their strange wild glare: they glittered with a freezing brilliancy,

and stared around with the vacuity of an image. Could Margaret be mad?

She bit her tender lips with sullen rage, and a gnashing desperation;

her cheek was cold, white, and clammy as the cheek of a corpse; her

hair, still woven with the strings of pearl she often wore, hung down

loose and dishevelled, except that on her flushing brow the crisp curls

stood on end, as a nest of snakes. And now a sudden thought seemed to

strike the brain; her eyes were set in a steady horror; slowly, with

dread determination, as if inspired by some fearful being, other than

herself, uprose Margaret; and, while her frightened sister, shuddering,

fell back, she glided, still gazing on vacancy, to the door: so, like a

ghost through the dark corridor, down those old familiar stairs, and

away through the Armory-hall; Charlotte now more calmly following, for

her father's library, where his use was to study late, opened out of it,

and surely the conscience-stricken Margaret was going in her penitence

to him. But, see! she has silently passed by; her hand is on the lock of

the hall-door; with one last look of despairing recklessness behind her,

as taking an eternal leave of that awe-struck sister, the door turns

upon its hinge, and she, still with slow solemnity, goes out. Whither,

oh God!--whither? The night is black as pitch, rainy, tempestuous; the

old knight's guests at Clopton Hall have gladly and right wisely

preferred even such questionable accommodation as the blue chamber, the

dreary white apartment looking on the moat--nay, the haunted room of the

parricide himself--to encountering the dangers and darkness of a

night-return so desperate; but Margaret, in her gayest evening attire,

near upon so foul a midnight in November, stalks like a spectre down the

splashy steps. Charlotte follows, calls, runs to her--but cannot rescue

from some settled purpose, horribly suggested, that gentle fearful

creature, now so changed. Suddenly in the dark she has lost her. Which

way did the maniac turn?--whither in that desolate gloom shall Charlotte

fly to find her? Guided by the taper still twinkling in her father's

study, she rushes back in terror to the hall; and then--Help,

help!--torches, torches! The household is roused, dull lanterns glance

among the shrubberies; pine-lights, ill-shielded from wind and rain by

cap or cloak, are seen dotting the park in every direction, and dance

about through the darkness, like sportive wild-fires: Sir Clement in

moody calmness looks prepared for any thing the worst, like a man who

anticipates evil long-deserved; the broken-hearted mother is on her

knees at the cold door-steps, striving to pierce the gloom with her

eyes, and ejaculating distracted prayers: and so the live-long

night--that night of doubt, and dread, and dreariness--through bitter

hours of confusion and dismay, they sought poor Margaret--and found her

not!

"But, with morning's light came the awful certainty. At the end of a

terraced walk, mournfully shaded by high-cropped yews, stood an arbour,

and behind it, half-hidden among rank weeds, was an old half-forgotten

fountain; there, on many a sultry summer night, had Rowland met with

Margaret, and there had she resolved in terrible remorse to perish. With

the seeming fore-thought of reason, and the resolution of a phrensied

fortitude, she had bound a quantity of matted weeds about her face, and

twisted her hands in her fettering garments, that the shallow pool might

not in cruel kindness fail to drown her; she lay scarcely half immersed

in those waters of death; a few lazy tench floating sluggishly about,

appeared to be curiously inspecting their ghastly, uninvited guest; and

the fragments of an enamelled miniature, with some torn letters in the

hand-writing of Rowland Beauvoir, were found scattered on the

overflowing margin of the pool."

* * * * *

Well, unkindly whelp, if your bone has no pickings better than this, not

a cur shall envy you the sorry banquet. Yet, had my genius been better

educated in the science of French cookery, this might have been served

up with higher seasoning as a savoury _ragout_: but you get it in

simplicity, scarce grilled; and in sooth, good world, it is easier to

sneer at a novel than to imagine one; and far more self-complacency may

be gained by manfully affecting to despise the novelist, than by adding

to his honours in the compliment of humble imitation.

* * * * *

Things supernatural have every where and every when exercised mortal

curiosity. Fear and credulity support the arms of superstition, fierce

as city griffins, rampant as the lion and the unicorn; and forasmuch as

no creature, Nelson not excepted, can truly boast of having never known

fear, and no man also--from polite Voltaire, shrewd Hume, Leviathan

Hobbes, and erudite Gibbon, down to the most stultified

Van-Diemanite--can honestly swear himself free from the influence of

some sort of faith, for thus much the marvellous and the terrible meet

with universal popularity. Now, one or two curious matters connected

with those "more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of

in your philosophy," which have even occurred to mine own self,

(whereof, to gratify you, shall be a little more anon), have heretofore

induced me to touch upon sundry interesting points, which, like pikemen

round their chief, throng about the topic of

THE MARVELLOUS.

A book, so simply titled, with haply underneath a gigantic note of

admiration between two humble queries ?!? would positively, my worthy

publisher, make your worship's fortune. For it should concern ghosts,

dreams, omens, coincidences, good-and-bad luck, warnings, and true

vaticinations: no childish collection, however, of unsupported trumpery,

but authenticated cases staidly evidenced, and circumstantially

detailed; no Mother Goose-cap's tales, no Dick the Ploughman's dreams,

no stories from the '_Terrific Register_,' nor fancies of hysterical

females in Adult asylums; even Merlin witch-finders, and Taliesins

should be excluded: and, in lieu of all such common-places, I should

propose an anecdotic treatise in the manner scientifical. Macnish's

'_Philosophy of Sleep_,' Scott's '_Demonology_,' treatises on

Apparitions, and many a rare black-letter alchemical pamphlet, might

lend us here their aid; the British Museum is full of well-attested

ghost-stories, and there are very few old ladies unable to add to the

supply: then, this ghost department might be climaxed by the author's

own experience; forasmuch as he is ready to avouch that a person's fetch

was heard by many, and seen by some, in an old country-house, a hundred

miles away from the place of death, at the instant of its happening.

As to omens, aforesaid witness deposes that the sceptre, ball, and cross

were struck by lightning out of King John's hand, in the Schools

quadrangle at Oxford, immediately on the accession of William the

Reformer; and all the world is cognusant that York Minster, the Royal

Exchange, and the Houses of Parliament were destroyed by fire near about

the commencement of open hostility, among ruling powers, to our church,

commerce, and constitution; and I myself can tell a tale of no less than

eight remarkable warnings happening one day to a poor friend, who died

on the next, which none could be expected to believe unless I delivered

it on oath as having been an eye-witness to the facts. Dreams

also--strange, vague, mysterious word; there is a gloomy look in it, a

dreary intonation that makes the very flesh creep: the records of public

justice will show many a murder revealed by them, as instance the Red

Barn; more than one poor client, in the clutch of a "respectable"

attorney, has been helped to his rights by their influence; from

Agamemnon and Pilate, down to Napoleon, the oppressors of mankind have

in those had kindly warning. Dreams--how many millions false and

foolish, for the one proving to be true!--but that one, how clear,

determinate, and lasting, as ministered by far other agency than

imagination taking its sport while reason slumbers! Who has not tales to

tell of dreams? A warning not to go on board such and such a ship--which

founders; a strange unlikely scene fixed upon the mind, concerning

friends and circumstances miles away, exactly in the manner and at the

time of its occurrence; the fore-shown coming of an unexpected guest;

the pourtrayed visage of a secret enemy: these, and others like these,

many can attest, and I not least. And of other marvels, though here left

unconsidered, yet might much be said: truths so strange, that the pages

of romance would not trench on such extravagance; combinations so

unlikely, that thrice twelve cast successively by proper dice, were but

probability to those. Thus, in authorial fashion, has the marvellous

dwelt upon my mind; and thus would I suggest a hand-book thereof to

catering booksellers and the insatiable public.

* * * * *

Against bears in a stage-coach, pointers in a drawing-room, lap dogs in

a _vis-à-vis_, and monkeys in a lady's boudoir, my love of comfort and

propriety enters strong protest; an emancipated parrot attracts my

sympathy far less than bright-eyed children feeding their testy pet, for

I dread the cannibal temptation of those soft fair fingers, when brought

into collision with Polly's hook and eye; gigantic Newfoundlanders

dragging their perpetual chains, larks and linnets trilling the faint

song of liberty behind their prison bars, cold green snakes stewing in a

school-boy's pocket, and dormice nestling in a lady's glove, summon my

antipathies; a cargo of five hundred pigs, with whom I had once the

honour of sailing from Cork to London, were far from pleasant as

_compagnons de voyage_; neither can I sleep with kittens in the room.

Nevertheless, no one can profess truer compassion, truer friendship (if

you will) for the animal creation: often have I walked on in weariness,

rather than increase the strain upon the Rosinantes of an omnibus; and

my greatest school scrape was occasioned by thrashing the favoured scion

of a noble house for cruelty to a cat. Such and such-like--for we learn

from Æsop (Fable eighty-eight, to wit) that trumpeters deserve to be

unpopular--is my physical zeal in the cause of poor dumb brutes: nor is

my regard for them the less in matters metaphysical. Bishop Butler, we

may all of us remember, in 'THE _Analogy_' argues that the

objector against a man's immortality must show good cause why that

which exists, should ever cease to exist; and, until that good cause be

shown, the weight of probability is in favour of continual being. Now,

for my part, I wish to be informed why this probability should not be

extended to that innocent maltreated class, whom God's mercy made with

equal skill, and sustains with equal care, as in the case of man,

and--dare we add?--of angels. Doth He not feed the ravens? Do the young

lions not gather what He giveth? Doth a sparrow fall to the ground

without Our Father? and is not the unsinning multitude of Nineveh's

young children climaxed with "much cattle?" It is true, there may be

mighty difference between "the spirit of a man that goeth upward, and

the spirit of a beast that goeth downward in the earth:" but mark this,

there _is_ a spirit in the beast; and as man's eternal heaven may lie in

some superior sphere, so that temporarily designed for the lower animals

may be seen in the renovated earth. It is also true, that St. Paul,

arguing for the temporal livelihood of Christian ministers from the type

of "not muzzling the ox that treadeth out the corn," asks, "Doth God

care for oxen?"--or, in effect, doth He legislate (I speak soberly,

though the sublime treads on the ridiculous,) for a stable?--and the

implication is, "To thy dutiful husbandry, O man! such lesser cares are

left." Sorry, righteously sorry, would it make any good man's heart to

think that the Creator had ceased to care for the meanest of his

creatures: in a certain sense

"He sees with equal eye, as God of all,

A hero perish, or a sparrow fall;"

and, assured that carelessness in a just Creator of his poor dependent

creatures must be impossible, I submit that, critically speaking, some

laudable variation might be made in that text by the simple

consideration that [Greek: melei] is not so strictly rendered "care for"

as [Greek: kedetai]. Scripture, then, so far from militating against the

possible truth, that animals have souls, would seem, by a side-long

glance, to countenance the doctrine: and now let us for a passing moment

turn and see what aid is given to us by moral philosophy.

No case can be conceived more hard or more unjust than that of a

sentient creature (on the hypothesis of its having no soul, no

conscience, necessarily quite innocent), thrown into a world of cruelty

and tyranny, without the chance of compensation for sufferings

undeserved. Neither can any good government be so partial, as (limiting

the whole existence of animals to an hour, a day, a year,) to allow one

of a litter to be pampered with continual luxuries, and another to be

tortured for all its little life by blows, famine, disease--and in its

lingering death by the scientific scalpels of a critical Majendie or a

cold-blooded Spallanzani. Remember, that in the so-called parallel case

of partialities among men--the this-world's choice of a Jacob, the

this-world's rejection of an Esau--the answer is obvious: there are two

scales to the balance, there is yet another world. Far be it from us to

think that all things are not then to be cleared up; that the innocent

little ones of Kedar and the exterminated Canaanites will not then be

heard one by one, and no longer be mingled up indiscriminately in an

overwhelming national judgment; that the pleas of evil education and

example, of hereditary taint and common usage, will be then thrown aside

as vain excuse; and that eventual justice will not with facility explain

every riddle in the moral government of God. But in the case of soulless

extinguished animals, there is, there can be no compensation, no

explanation; whether in pain or pleasure, they have lived and they have

died forgotten by their Maker, and left to the casual kindness or

cruelty of, towards them at least, irresponsible masters. How different

the view opened to us by the possibility of soul being apportioned in

various measure among the lower animals: there is a clue given "to

justify the ways of God to"--brutes: we need not then consider, with a

certain French abbé, that they are fallen angels, doing penance for

their sins; we need not, with old Pythagoras and latter Brahmins,

account them stationed lodges, homes of transmigration for the spirits

of men in process of being purged from their offences: we need not

regard them as Avatars of Vishnu, or incarnations of Apis, visible

deities craving the idolatries of India and Egypt. The truth commends

itself by mere simplicity: nakedness betrays its Eve-like innocence of

guile or error: those living creatures whom we call brutes and beasts,

have, in their degree, the breath of God within them, as well as His

handiwork upon them. And, candid theologian, tell me why--in that

Millenium so long looked-for, when, after a fiery purgation, this earth

shall have its sabbath, and when those who for a time were "caught up

into the air," descending again with their Lord and his ten thousand

saints, shall bodily dwell with others risen in the flesh for that happy

season on this renovated globe--tell me why there should not be some

tithe of the animal creation made to rise again to minister in pleasure,

as they once ministered in pain? And for the rest, the other nine, what

hinders them from tenanting a thousand happy fields in other of the

large domains of space? What hinders those poor dumb slaves from

enjoying some emancipate existence--we need not perhaps accord them

more of immortality than justice, demands for compensation--for a

definite time, a millennium let us think, in scores of those million

orbs that twinkle in the galaxy?

Space stretches wide enough for every grain

Of the broad sands that curb our swelling seas,

Each separate in its sphere, to stand apart

As far as sun from sun.

Shall I then say what hinders?--the littleness of man's mind, refusing

possibility of room for those countless quadrillions; and the

selfishness of his pride, scorning the more generous savage, whose

doctrine (certainly too lax in liberality) raises the beast to a level

with mankind, and

"Who thinks, admitted to that equal sky,

His faithful dog shall bear him company."

Truly, the Creator's justice, and mercy, and the majesty of his kingdom,

give hope of after-life to all creation: Saint Antony of Padua did waste

time in homilizing birds, beasts, and fishes; but may they not find

blessings, though ignorant of priests?--And now, suffer me, in my

current fashion, to glance at a few other considerations affecting this

topic. It will be admitted, I suppose, that the lower animals possess,

in their degree, similar cerebral or at least nervous mechanism with

ourselves; in their degree, I say; for a zoöphyte and a caterpillar have

brains, though not in the head; and to this day Waterton does not know

whether he shot a man or a monkey, so closely is his nondescript linked

with either hand to the grovelling Australian and the erect orang

outang. Brutes are nerved as we are, and uncivilized man possesses

instincts like them: all we can with any show of reason deny them is

moral sense, and in our arbitrary refusal of this, and our summary

disposal of what we are pleased to term instinct, we take credit to

ourselves for exclusive participation in that immaterial essence which

is called Soul. But is it, in candour, true that brutes have no moral

sense? Obviously, since moral sense is a growing thing, and ascending in

the scale of being, and since man is its chief receptacle on earth, we

ought to be able to take the best instances of animal morals from those

creatures which have come most within the influence of human example; as

pets of every kind, but mainly dogs. Does not a puppy, that has stolen a

sweet morsel from some butcher's stall, fly, though none pursue him? Is

a fox-hound not conscience-stricken for his harry of the sheep-fold? and

who will deny some sense of duty, and no little strength of affection,

in a shepherd's dog? Have not Cowper's now historic hares displayed an

educated and unnatural confidence; and many a gray parrot, though

limited in speech, said many a witty thing?--Again, read some common

collection of canine anecdotes: What essential difference is there

between the affectionate watch kept by man over his brother's bed of

sickness, and that which has been known of more than one poor cur, whose

solicitude has extended even to dying on his master's grave? The

soldier's faithful poodle licks his wounds upon the stormy battle-field;

and Landseer's colley-dog tears up the turf, and howls the shepherd's

requiem. What real distinction can we make between a high sense of duty

in the captain who is the last to leave his sinking ship, and that in

the watchful terrier, whom neither tempting morsels nor menaced blows

can induce to desert the ploughman's smock committed to his care? Once

more: Who does not recognise individuality of character in animals? A

dog, or a horse, or a tame deer, or, in fact, any domesticated creature,

will act throughout life, in a certain course of disposition, at least

as consistently as most masters: it will also have its whims and ways,

likings and dislikings, habits, fears, joys, and sorrows; and, verily,

in patience, courage, gratitude, and obedience, will put its monarch to

the blush.

But upon this theme--meagre as the sketch may be, fanciful,

illogical--my cursory notions have too long detained you. I had intended

barely to have introduced a black-looking Greek composite, serving for

name to an unwritten essay which we will imagine in existence as

PSYCHOTHERION,

AN INCONCLUSIVE ARGUMENT ON THE SOULS OF BRUTES;

And my thoughts have run on thus far so little conclusively (I humbly

admit to you), that we will, to save trouble, leave the riddle as

unsolved as ever, and gain no better advantage than thus having loosely

adverted to another fancy of your author's mind.

* * * * *

Not yet is my mind a simple freeman, a private, unincumbered, individual

self-possessor: its slaves are not yet all manumitted; I lack not

subjects; I am no lord of depopulated regions; albeit my aim is indeed

akin to that of old Rufus, and Goldsmith's tyrannical Squire of Auburn;

I wish to clear my hunting-grounds, to make a solitude, and call it

peace. Slowly, but still surely, am I working out that will. Meanwhile,

however, there is no need to advertise for heroes; they are only too

rife, clinging like bats to the curtains of my chambers of imagery, or

with attendant satellites hanging in bunches, as swarming bees about

their monarch, to the rafters of my brain. Selection is the hardest

difficulty; here is the labour, here the toil; because for just

selection there should be good reasons. Now, amongst other my

multitudinous authorial projects, this perhaps is not the worst; namely,

by a series of dissimilar novels, psychological rather than religious,

and for interest's sake laid in diverse ages and countries, to

illustrate separately the most rampant errors of the Papacy. For

example, say that Lewis's '_Monk_' is a strong delineation of the evils

consequent on constrained and unchosen celibacy; though its colouring be

meretricious, though its details offend the moralities of nature, still

it is a book replete to thoughtful minds with terrible teaching--be not

high-minded, but fear. In like manner, guilty thoughts dropped upon

innocent young hearts in that foul corner,

THE CONFESSIONAL,

might make a stirring tale, or haply a series of them: the cowled

hypocrite suggesting crime to those whose answer is all innocence; his

schemes of ambition, or avarice, or lust, slowly elaborated by the

fiend-like purposes to which he puts his ill-used knowledge of the human

heart; his sacrilegious violation of the holy grievings made by mistaken

penitence. History should bring its collateral assistance: the Medicean

Queens, Venice, bloody Spain, hard-visaged monks calmly directing the

engines of torture, the poison of anonymous calumny, and dread secrets

more dreadfully betrayed, could furnish much of truthful precedent. The

bad obstructions placed between the sinner and his God by selfish

priestcraft; the souls that would return again, like Noah's weary dove,

enticed by ravens to forsake the ark, mate with them, and feed on their

banquet of corruption; the social, religious, philosophic, and eternal

harms brought out in full detail; the progress of this world's misery in

the lives of the confessing, and of studious crime in the heart of the

absolver: a scene laid among the high Alps, and the sunny plains they

topple over; the time, that of some murderous Simon de Montfort; the

actors, Waldensian saints, and demon inquisitors; the prominent

characters, a plausible intriguing friar, (as of old a monk of Cluni,)

whose ambition is the popedom, and whose conscience has no scruple

about means, bloody, bad, vindictive, atheistic; and then his victims, a

youth that he trains from infancy to the sole end of poisoning, subtly

and slowly, all who stand in his path; a girl who loves this youth, and

who, flying from the foul friar in the day of temptation, betakes her to

the mountains, and ultimately saves her lover from his terrible

destination in guilt, by hiding him in her own haven of refuge, the

persecuted little church; and with these materials to work upon, I need

hardly detail to you an intricate plot and an obvious _dénouement_.

This class of theme, it is probable, has exercised the talents of many;

but as the evils of confessing to deceitful man, and of blind trust in

his deleterious advice, have not specifically met my eye, the subject is

new to me, and may be so to others. Still, I stay not now further to

enlarge upon it; I must press on; and will not cruelly encourage the

birth of thoughts brought forth only to be destroyed, like father

Saturn's babes--the anthropophagite.

A good reason for selection at last presents itself. Sundry collateral

ancestors of mine [every body from Cain downwards must have had

ancestors; so no quibbling, please, nor quarrelling about so exploded an

absurdity as family-pride,] were lucky enough in days lang syne to

appropriate to themselves, amongst other matters, a respectable

allowance of forfeited monastic territory; and I know it by this token:

that in yonder venerable chest of archives and muniments, rest in their

own dust of ages, duly and clearly assorted, all those abbey deeds from

the times of Henry Beauclerc. Here's a fine unlooked-for opportunity of

making dull ancestral spots classic ground, famous among men; here's a

chance of immortalizing the crumbling ruins of an obscure, but

interesting, abbey-church; here's a fair field for dragging in all that

one knows or does not know, all that parchments can prove, or fancy can

invent, of redoubtable or reprobate progenitors, and investing the place

of their possessions with a glory beyond heraldry. Much is on my mind of

the desperate evils consequent on the Romish rule of idol-worship: and

why not lay my scene on the wild banks of the Swale, among the bleak,

rough moors that stand round Richmond, and the gullies that run between

the Yorkshire hills? Why not talk about those names of gentle blood,

familiar to the ear as household words, Uvedale and Scrope, Vavasour and

Ratcliffe? Why not press into the service of instructive novelism truths

stranger than fiction, among characters more marked, and names of higher

note, than the whole hot-pressed family of the Fitzes?

All this might be accomplished, were it worth the worry, in

THE PRIOR OF MARRICK.

And now for a story of idolatry. It seems an absurdity, an insanity; it

is one--both. But think it out. Is it quite impossible, quite

incredible? Let me sketch the outline of so strange infatuation. Our

prior was once a good man--an easy, kind, and amiable: he takes the cowl

in early youth, partly because he is the younger son of an unfighting

family, and must, partly because he is melancholy, and will. And

wherefore melancholy? There was brought up with him, from the very

nursery, a fair girl, the weeping orphan of a neighbouring squire, who

had buckled on his harness, and fallen in the wars: they loved, of

course, and the deeper, because secretly and without permission: they

were too young to marry, and indeed had thought little of the matter;

still, substance and shadow, body and soul, were scarcely more needful

to each other, or more united. But--a hacking cough--a hectic cheek--a

wasting frame, were to blue-eyed Mary the remorseless harbingers of

death, and Eustace, standing on her early grave, was in heart a widower:

henceforth he had no aim in life; the cloister was--so thought he, as

many do--his best refuge, to dream upon the past, to soothe his present

sorrows, and earn for a future world the pleasures lost in this. Time,

the best anodyne short of what Eustace could not buy at

Rome--true-healing godliness--alleviates his grief, and makes him less

sad, but not wiser; years pass, the desire of prëeminence in his own

small world has hitherto furnished incentives to existence, and he find

himself a prior too soon; for he has nothing more to live for. Yes:

there is an object; the turmoil of small ambition with its petty cares

is past, and the now motiveless man lingers in yearning thought on the

only white spot in his gloomy journey, the green oasis of his desert

life, that dream of early love. He has long loved the fair, quiet image

of our Lady of Marrick, unwittingly, for another Mary's sake;

half-oblivious of the past in scheming for the present, he has knelt at

midnight before that figure of the Virgin-mother, and knew not why he

trembled; he thought it the ecstacy of devotion, the warm-gushing flood

of calmness, which prayer confers upon care confessed. But now, he sees

it, he knows it; there is, indeed, good cause: how miraculously the

white marble face grows into resemblance with _hers!_ the same sainted

look of delicate unearthly beauty, the same white cheek, so still and

unruffled even by a smile, the same turn of heavenly triumph on the lip,

the same wild compassion in the eye! Great God--he loves again!--that

staid, grave, melancholy man, loves with more than youthful fondness;

the image is now dearer than the most sacred; there is a halo round it,

like light from heaven: he adores its placid, eternal, changeless

aspect; if it could move, the charm would half dissolve; he loves it--as

an image! And then how rapturously joins he with the wondering choir of

more stagnant worshippers, while they yield to this substantial form,

this stone-transmigration of his love, this tangible, unpassionate,

abiding, present deity, the holy hymns of praise, due only to the unseen

God! How gladly he sings her titles, ascribing all excellence to her!

How tenderly falls he at her feet, with eyes lighted as in youth! How

earnestly he prays to his fixed image--_to_ it, not _through_ it, for

his heart is _there_! How zealously he longs for her honour, her worship

among men--hers, the presiding idol of that Gothic pile, the hallowed

Lady, the goddess-queen of Marrick! Stop--can he do nothing for her, can

he venture nothing in her service? Other shrines are rich, other images

decked in gold and jewels; there is yet an object for his useless life,

there are yet ends to be attained, ends--that can justify the means. He

longs for wealth, he plots for it, he dares for it: he plans lying

miracles, and thousands flock to the shrine; he waylays dying men, and,

by threatened dread of torments of the damned, extortionizes conscience

into unjust riches for himself; he accuses the innocent, and reaps the

fine; he connives at the guilty, and fingers the bribe. So wealth flows

in, and the altar of his idol is hung with cloth of gold, her diadem is

alight with gems, costly offerings deck her temple, bending crowds kneel

to her divinity. Is he not happy? Is he not content? Oh, no: an

insatiate demon has possessed him; with more than Pygmalion's insanity,

he loves that image; he dreams, he thinks of that one unchanging form.

The marvelling brotherhood, credulous witnesses of such deep devotion,

hold him for a saint; and Rome, at the wish of the world, sends him, as

to a living St. Eustatius, the patent of canonization: they praise him,

honour him, pray to him; but he contemptuously (and they take it for

humility) spurns a gift which speaks of any other heaven than the

presence of that one fair, beautiful, beloved statue. A thought fills

him, and that with joy: he has heard of sacrifices in old time,

immolations, offerings up of self, as the highest act of a devout

worshipper; he cares not for earth nor for heaven; and one night, in his

enthusiastic vigils, the phrensy of idolatry arms that old man's own

weak hand against himself, and he falls at the statue's feet,

self-murdered, _its_ martyr.

Here were scope for psychology; here were subtle unwindings of motive,

trackings of reason, intricate anatomizations of the heart. All ages,

before these last in which we live, have been worshippers, even to

excess, of "unknown gods," "too superstitious:" we, upon whom the ends

of the world are fallen, may be thought to be beyond a danger into which

the wisest of old time were entrapped: we scarcely allow that the

Brahmin may, notwithstanding, be a learned man and a shrewd, when we see

him fall before his monster; we have not wits to understand how the

Babylonian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman dynasties could be so besotted.

For this superior illumination of mind, let us thank not ourselves, but

the Light of the world; and, warned by the history of ages, let us

beware how we place created things to mediate between us and the most

High; let us be shy of symbolic emblems--of pictures, images,

observances--lest they grow into forms that engross the mind, and fill

it with a swarm of substantial idols.

Now, this tale of the '_Prior of Marrick_' would, but for the present

premature abortion, have seen daylight in the form of an

auto-biography--the catastrophe, of course, being added by some

brother-monk, who winds up all with his moral: and to get at this

auto-biographical sketch--a thing of fragments and wild soliloquies,

incidentally laying bare the heart's disease, and the poisonous

breathings of idolatrous influence--I could easily, and after the true

novelist fashion, fabricate a scheme, somewhat as follows: Let me go

gayly to the Moors by rail, coach, or cart, say for a sportsman's

pastime, a truant vicar's week, or an audit-clerk's holiday: I drop upon

the ruined abbey, now indeed with scarcely a vestige of its former

beauty remaining, but still used as a burial-place; being a bit of an

antiquary, I rout up the sexton, (sexton, cobbler, and general

huckster,) resolved to lionize the old desecrated precinct: I find the

sexton a character, a humourist; he, cobbler-like, looks inquisitively

at my caoutchouc shooting-shoes, and hints that he too is an artist in

the water-proof line; then follows question as how, and rejoinder as

thus. Our sexton has got a name among his neighbours for his capital

double-leather brogues, warranted to carry you dry-shod through a river;

and, warmed by my brandy-flask and _bonhomie_, considering me moreover

little likely to set up a rival shop, cunningly communicates his secret:

he puts parchment between the leathers--Parchment, my good man? where

can you get your parchment hereabouts? I spoke innocently, for I thought

only of ticketing some grouse for my friends southward: but the question

staggered my sexton so sensibly, that I came to the uncharitable

conclusion--he had stolen it. And then follows confession: how, among

the rubbish in a vault, he had found a small oak chest--broke it

open--no coins, no trinkets, "no nothing,"--except parchment; a lot of

leaves tidily written, and--warranted to keep out the wet. A few

shillings and a tankard make the treasure mine, I promising as extra to

send a huge bundle of ancient indentures in place of the precious

manuscript. Thus, in the way of Mackenzie's '_Man of Feeling_,' we

become fragmentary where we fear to be tedious; and so, in a good

historic epoch, among the wars of the Roses, surrounded by friars and

nuns, outlaws and border-riders, chivalrous knights and sturdy bowyers,

consign I to the oblivescent firm of Capulet and Co. my happily

destroyed '_Prior of Marrick_.'

* * * * *

A crank boat needs ballast; and of happy fortune is it for a disposition

towards natural levity, when educational gravity has helped to steady

it. Upon the vivacious, let the reflective supervene: to the gay, suffer

in its season the addition of the serious. Amongst other wholesome

topics of meditation--for wholesome it is to the healthy spirit,

although of some little danger to the presumptuous and inflated--the

study of the sure word of Prophecy has more than once excited the

writing propensity of your author's mind. On most matters it has been my

fate, rather from habits of incurable revery than from any want of

opportunities, to think more than to read; and therefore it is, with

very due diffidence, that as far as others and their judgments are

concerned, I can ever hope to claim originality or novelty. To my own

conscience, however, these things are reversed; for contemplation has

produced that as new to my own mind, which may be old to others deeper

read, and has thought those ideas original, which are only so to its own

fancy. Very little, then, must such as I reasonably hope to add on

Prophetical Interpretation; the Universal Wisdom of two millenaries

cannot be expected to gain any thing from the passing thought of a

hodiernal unit: if any fancies in my brain are really new, and hitherto

unbroached upon the subject, it can scarcely be doubted but that they

are false; so very little reliance do principles of catholicity allow to

be placed upon "private interpretations."

With thus much of apology to those alike who will find, and those who

will not find, any thing of novelty in my notions, I still do not

withhold them. By here a little and there a little, is the general mind

instructed: it would be better for the world if every mighty tome really

contributed its grain.

The prophecies of Holy Writ appear to me to have one great peculiarity,

distinguishing them from all other prophecies, if any, real or

pretended; and that peculiarity I deferentially conceive to be this:

that, whereas all human prophecies profess to have but one fulfilment,

the divine have avowedly many true fulfilments. The former may indeed

light upon some one coincidence, and may exult in the accident as a

proof of truth; the latter bounds as it were (like George Herbert's

sabbaths) from one to another, and another, through some forty

centuries, equally fulfilled in each case, but still looking forward

with hope to some grander catastrophe: it is not that they are loosely

suited, like the Delphic oracles, to whatever may turn up, but that

they, by a felicitous adaptation, sit closely into each era which the

Architect of Ages has arranged. Pythonic divination may be likened to a

loose bag, which would hold and involve with equal ease almost any

circumstance; biblical prophecy to an exact mould, into which alone,

though not all similar in perfection, its own true casts will fit: or

again, in another view of the matter, accept this similitude: let the

All-seeing Eye be the centre of many concentric circles, beholding

equally in perspective the circumference of each, and for accordance

with human periods of time measuring off segments by converging radii:

separately marked on each segment of the wheel within wheel, in the way

of actual fulfilment, as well as type and antitype, will appear its

satisfied word of prophecy, shining onward yet as it becomes more and

more final, until time is melted in eternity. Thus, it is perhaps not

impossible that every interpretation of wise and pious men may alike be

right, and hold together; for different minds travel on the different

peripheries. So our Lord (to take a familiar instance) speaks of his

second advent in terms equally applicable to the destruction of one

city, of the accumulated hosts at Armageddon, and of this material

earth: Antiochus and Antichrist occur prospectively within the same pair

of radii at differing distances; and, in like manner and varying

degrees, may, for aught we can tell, such incarnations of the evil

principle as papal Rome, or revolutionary Europe, or infidel

Cosmopolitism; or, again, such heads of parties, such indexes of the

general mind, as a Cæsar, an Attila, a Cromwell, a Napoleon, a--whoever

be the next. So also of hours, days, years, eras; all may and do cöexist

in harmonious and mutual relations. Good men, those who combine prayer

with study, need not fear necessary difference of result, from holding

different views; the grand error is too loosely generalizing; a little

circle suits our finite ken; we cannot, as yet, mentally span the

universe. These crude and cursory remarks may serve to introduce a

likely-looking idea to which my thoughts have given entertainment, and

which, with others of a similar sort, were once to have come forth in an

essay-form, headed

THE SEVEN CHURCHES;

moreover, for aught that has come across my reading, to be additionally

styled '_A New Interpretation, for these Latter Days_.' Without desiring

to do other than quite confirm the literal view, as having related

primarily to those local churches of old times, geographically in Asia

Minor; without attempting to dispute that they may have an individual

reference to varieties of personal character, and probably of different

Christian sects; I imagine that we may discover, in the Apocalyptic

prospect of these seven churches, an historical view of Christianity,

from the earliest ages to the last: beginning as it did, purely, warmly,

and laboriously, with the apostolic emblematic Ephesus, and to end with

the "shall He find faith on earth" of lukewarm Laodicea: thus Smyrna

would symbolize the state of the church under Diocletian, the

"tribulation ten days:" Pergamus, perhaps the Byzantine age, "where

Satan's seat is" the Balaam and Balak of empire and priesthood;

Thyatira, the avowed commencement of the Papacy, "Jezebel," &c.; Sardis,

the dreary void of the dark ages, the "ready to die;" Philadelphia, the

rise of Protestantism, "an open door, a little strength;" and Laodicea,

(the riches of civilization choking the plant of Christianity,) its

decline, and, but for the Founder's second coming, its fall; if, indeed,

this were possible.

The elucidation of these several hints might show some striking

confirmations of the notion; which, as every thing else in this book,

would humbly claim your indulgence, reader, for my sketches must be

rapid, and their descriptions brief. Concurrently, however, with this,

(which I know not whether any prophetic scholiasts have mentioned or

not,) there may be deduced a still further interpretation, equally, as

far as I am concerned, underived from the lucubrations of others. This

other interpretation involves a typical view of the general

characteristics of Christendom's seven true churches, as they are to be

found standing at the coming of their Lord; the Asiatic seven may be

assimilated, in their religious peculiarities, with the national

Protestant churches of modern Europe: what order should be preserved in

this assimilation, unless indeed it be that of eldership, it might be

difficult to decide; but, excluding those communities which idol-worship

has unchurched, and leaving out of view such anomalies as America

presents, having no national religion, we shall find seven true churches

now existing, between which and the Asiatics many curious parallels

might be run: the seven are, those of England, Scotland, Holland,

Prussia, perhaps Switzerland, Sweden, and Germany. Without professing to

be quite confident as to the list, the idea remains the same: it is but

a light hint on a weighty subject, demanding more investigation than my

slender powers can at present compass. It is merely thrown out as

undigested matter; a crude notion let it rest: if ever I aspire to the

dignity and dogmatism of a theological teacher, it must be after more

and deeper inquiry of the Newtons, Faber, Frere, Croly, Keith, and other

learned interpreters, than it is possible or proper to make in a hurry:

volumes have been, and volumes might be again, written for and against

any prophecy unfulfilled; it is dangerous to teach speculations; for, if

found false, they tend to bring holy truths into disrepute. Let me then

put upon the shelf, as a humble layman should, my hitherto

unaccomplished prophetical treatise; and receive its mention for little

more than my true revelation of another phase of authorship.

* * * * *

And many like attempts have been hazarded by me in the mode theological;

though, from some cause or other, they have mostly fallen abortive. Were

mention here made of the more completed efforts of your author's mind,

in this walk of literature, or of others, it might too evidently lay

bare the mystery of my mask; a piece of secret information intended not

as yet to be bestowed. But this book--purporting to be the medley of my

mind, the _bonâ fide_ emptying of its multifarious fancies--must of

necessity, if honest, pourtray all the wanings and waxings of an

ever-changing lunar disposition: so, haply you shall turn from a play to

a sermon, from a novel to a moral treatise, from a satire or an epigram

to a religious essay. Such and so inconsistent is authorial man. Here

then, in somewhat of order, should have followed lengthily various other

writings of serious import, half-fashioned, and from conflicting reasons

left--perhaps for ever--half-finished. But considering the crude and

apparently careless nature of this present book, and taking into account

the solemn and responsible manner in which such high topics ought

invariably to be treated, I have struck out, without remorse or mercy,

all except a mere mention of the subjects alluded to. The contiguity of

lighter matter demands this sacrifice; not that I am one of those who

deem a cheerful face and a prayerful heart incongruous: there is danger

in a man, however religious, when his brow lowers, and his cheek is

stern; so did Cromwell murder Charles; so did Mary (though bigoted,

sincere,) consign Cranmer to the flames and Jane to the scaffold:

innocence and mirth are near of kin, and the tear of penitence is no

stranger to the laughter-loving eye. But I ramble as usual. Let it

suffice to say, that in accordance with common prejudices, I suffer my

mind to be shorn of its consecrated rays; for albeit my moral censor has

spared the prophetical ideas, and one or two other serious sobrieties,

on the ground that, although they are mere hints, they are at all events

hints of good, still more experimental and more hazardous pieces of

biblical criticism have been not unwisely immolated. The full cause of

this will appear in the mere title of the first of these half-attempted

essays, viz:

THE WISDOM OF REVISION;

whereof my predication shall be simply and strictly _nil_.

The next piece of serious study, as yet little more than a root in my

mind, was to have fructified in the form of