Bound to suffer persecution
And martyrdom with resolution,
T’oppose himself against the hate
And vengeance of the incensed state.--Hudibras.
Born of respectable though not wealthy parents, John Wolfe was one
of those fiery and daring spirits which, previous to some mighty
revolution, Fate seems to scatter over various parts of the earth, even
those removed from the predestined explosion,--heralds of the events in
which they are fitted though not fated to be actors. The period at which
he is presented to the reader was one considerably prior to that French
Revolution so much debated and so little understood. But some such
event, though not foreseen by the common, had been already foreboded
by the more enlightened, eye; and Wolfe, from a protracted residence
in France among the most discontented of its freer spirits, had brought
hope to that burning enthusiasm which had long made the pervading
passion of his existence.
Bold to ferocity, generous in devotion to folly in self-sacrifice,
unflinching in his tenets to a degree which rendered their ardour
ineffectual to all times, because utterly inapplicable to the present,
Wolfe was one of those zealots whose very virtues have the semblance
of vice, and whose very capacities for danger become harmless from the
rashness of their excess.
It was not among the philosophers and reasoners of France that Wolfe had
drawn strength to his opinions: whatever such companions might have
done to his tenets, they would at least have moderated his actions. The
philosopher may aid or expedite a change; but never does the philosopher
in any age or of any sect countenance a crime. But of philosophers Wolfe
knew little, and probably despised them for their temperance: it was
among fanatics--ignorant, but imaginative--that he had strengthened the
love without comprehending the nature of republicanism. Like Lucian’s
painter, whose flattery portrayed the one-eyed prince in profile, he
viewed only that side of the question in which there was no defect, and
gave beauty to the whole by concealing the half. Thus, though on
his return to England herding with the common class of his reforming
brethren, Wolfe possessed many peculiarities and distinctions of
character which, in rendering him strikingly adapted to the purpose of
the novelist, must serve as a caution to the reader not to judge of the
class by the individual.
With a class of Republicans in England there was a strong tendency to
support their cause by reasoning. With Wolfe, whose mind was little
wedded to logic, all was the offspring of turbulent feelings, which, in
rejecting argument, substituted declamation for syllogism. This effected
a powerful and irreconcilable distinction between Wolfe and the better
part of his comrades; for the habits of cool reasoning, whether true or
false, are little likely to bias the mind towards those crimes to which
Wolfe’s unregulated emotions might possibly urge him, and give to the
characters to which they are a sort of common denominator something of
method and much of similarity. But the feelings--those orators which
allow no calculation and baffle the tameness of comparison--rendered
Wolfe alone, unique, eccentric in opinion or action, whether of vice or
virtue.
Private ties frequently moderate the ardour of our public enthusiasm.
Wolfe had none. His nearest relation was Warner, and it may readily
be supposed that with the pensive and contemplative artist he had very
little in common. He had never married, nor had ever seemed to wander
from his stern and sterile path, in the most transient pursuit of the
pleasures of sense. Inflexibly honest, rigidly austere,--in his moral
character his bitterest enemies could detect no flaw,--poor, even to
indigence, he had invariably refused all overtures of the government;
thrice imprisoned and heavily fined for his doctrines, no fear of a
future, no remembrance of the past punishment could ever silence his
bitter eloquence or moderate the passion of his distempered zeal;
kindly, though rude, his scanty means were ever shared by the less
honest and disinterested followers of his faith; and he had been known
for days to deprive himself of food, and for nights of shelter, for the
purpose of yielding food and shelter to another.
Such was the man doomed to forsake, through a long and wasted life,
every substantial blessing, in pursuit of a shadowy good; with the
warmest benevolence in his heart, to relinquish private affections, and
to brood even to madness over public offences; to sacrifice everything
in a generous though erring devotion for that freedom whose cause,
instead of promoting, he was calculated to retard; and, while he
believed himself the martyr of a high and uncompromising virtue, to
close his career with the greatest of human crimes.