shudder at the story told by Tacitus, of those which were discovered
in the mournful house of Germanicus.
_Southey._ Tacitus was also a great poet, and would have been a
greater, had he been more contented with the external and ordinary
appearances of things. Instead of which, he looked at a part of his
pictures through a prism, and at another part through a _camera
obscura_. If the historian were as profuse of moral as of political
axioms, we should tolerate him less: for in the political we fancy a
writer is but meditating; in the moral we regard him as declaiming. In
history we desire to be conversant with only the great, according to
our notions of greatness: we take it as an affront, on such an
invitation, to be conducted into the lecture-room, or to be desired to
amuse ourselves in the study.
_Landor._ Pray go on. I am desirous of hearing more.
_Southey._ Being now alone, with the whole day before us, and having
carried, as we agreed at breakfast, each his Milton in his pocket, let
us collect all the graver faults we can lay our hands upon, without a
too minute and troublesome research; not in the spirit of Johnson, but
in our own.
_Landor._ That is, abasing our eyes in reverence to so great a man,
but without closing them. The beauties of his poetry we may omit to
notice, if we can: but where the crowd claps the hands, it will be
difficult for us always to refrain. Johnson, I think, has been charged
unjustly with expressing too freely and inconsiderately the blemishes
of Milton. There are many more of them than he has noticed.
_Southey._ If we add any to the number, and the literary world hears
of it, we shall raise an outcry from hundreds who never could see
either his excellences or his defects, and from several who never have
perused the noblest of his writings.
_Landor._ It may be boyish and mischievous, but I acknowledge I have
sometimes felt a pleasure in irritating, by the cast of a pebble,
those who stretch forward to the full extent of the chain their open
and frothy mouths against me. I shall seize upon this conjecture of
yours, and say everything that comes into my head on the subject.
Beside which, if any collateral thoughts should spring up, I may throw
them in also; as you perceive I have frequently done in my _Imaginary
Conversations_, and as we always do in real ones.
_Southey._ When we adhere to one point, whatever the form, it should
rather be called a disquisition than a conversation. Most writers of
dialogue take but a single stride into questions the most abstruse,
and collect a heap of arguments to be blown away by the bloated whiffs
of some rhetorical charlatan, tricked out in a multiplicity of ribbons
for the occasion.
Before we open the volume of poetry, let me confess to you I admire
his prose less than you do.
_Landor._ Probably because you dissent more widely from the opinions
it conveys: for those who are displeased with anything are unable to
confine the displeasure to one spot. We dislike everything a little
when we dislike anything much. It must indeed be admitted that his
prose is often too latinized and stiff. But I prefer his heavy cut
velvet, with its ill-placed Roman fibula, to the spangled gauze and
gummed-on flowers and puffy flounces of our present street-walking
literature. So do you, I am certain.
_Southey._ Incomparably. But let those who have gone astray, keep
astray, rather than bring Milton into disrepute by pushing themselves
into his company and imitating his manner. Milton is none of these:
and his language is never a patchwork. We find daily, in almost every
book we open, expressions which are not English, never were, and never
will be: for the writers are by no means of sufficiently high rank to
be masters of the mint. To arrive at this distinction, it is not
enough to scatter in all directions bold, hazardous, undisciplined
thoughts: there must be lordly and commanding ones, with a full
establishment of well-appointed expressions adequate to their
maintenance.
Occasionally I have been dissatisfied with Milton, because in my
opinion that is ill said in prose which can be said more plainly. Not
so in poetry: if it were, much of Pindar and Aeschylus, and no little
of Dante, would be censurable.
_Landor._ Acknowledge that he whose poetry I am holding in my hand is
free from every false ornament in his prose, unless a few bosses of
latinity may be called so; and I am ready to admit the full claims of
your favourite South. Acknowledge that, heading all the forces of our
language, he was the great antagonist of every great monster which
infested our country; and he disdained to trim his lion-skin with
lace. No other English writer has equalled Raleigh, Hooker, and
Milton, in the loftier parts of their works.
_Southey._ But Hooker and Milton, you allow, are sometimes pedantic.
In Hooker there is nothing so elevated as there is in Raleigh.
_Landor._ Neither he, however, nor any modern, nor any ancient, has
attained to that summit on which the sacred ark of Milton strikes and
rests. Reflections, such as we indulged in on the borders of the
Larius, come over me here again. Perhaps from the very sod where you
are sitting, the poet in his youth sate looking at the Sabrina he was
soon to celebrate. There is pleasure in the sight of a glebe which
never has been broken; but it delights me particularly in those places
where great men have been before. I do not mean warriors: for
extremely few among the most remarkable of them will a considerate man
call great: but poets and philosophers and philanthropists, the
ornaments of society, the charmers of solitude, the warders of
civilization, the watchmen at the gate which Tyranny would batter
down, and the healers of those wounds which she left festering in the
field. And now, to reduce this demon into its proper toad-shape again,
and to lose sight of it, open your _Paradise Lost_.
* * * * *
THE EMPEROR OF CHINA AND TSING-TI
On the morrow I was received at the folding-doors by Pru-Tsi, and
ushered by him into the presence of his majesty the Emperor, who was
graciously pleased to inform me that he had rendered thanks to
Almighty God for enlightening his mind, and for placing his empire far
beyond the influence of the persecutor and fanatic. 'But,' continued
his majesty, 'this story of the sorcerer's man quite confounds me.
Little as the progress is which the Europeans seem to have made in the
path of humanity, yet the English, we know, are less cruel than their
neighbours, and more given to reflection and meditation. How then is
it possible they should allow any portion of their fellow-citizens to
be hoodwinked, gagged, and carried away into darkness, by such
conspirators and assassins? Why didst thou not question the man
thyself?'
_Tsing-Ti._ I did, O Emperor! and his reply was, 'We can bury such
only as were in the household of the faith. It would be a mockery to
bid those spirits go in peace which we know are condemned to
everlasting fire.'
_Emperor._ Amazing! have they that? Who invented it? Everlasting fire!
It surely might be applied to better purposes. And have those rogues
authority to throw people into it? In what part of the kingdom is it?
If natural, it ought to have been marked more plainly in the maps. The
English, no doubt, are ashamed of letting it be known abroad that they
have any such places in their country. If artificial, it is no wonder
they keep such a secret to themselves. Tsing-Ti, I commend thy
prudence in asking no questions about it; for I see we are equally at
a loss on this curiosity.
_Tsing-Ti._ The sorcerer has a secret for diluting it. Oysters and the
white of eggs, applied on lucky days, enter into the composition; but
certain charms in a strange language must also be employed, and must
be repeated a certain number of times. There are stones likewise, and
wood cut into particular forms, good against this eternal fire, as
they believe. The sorcerer has the power, they pretend, of giving the
faculty of hearing and seeing to these stones and pieces of wood; and
when he has given them the faculties, they become so sensible and
grateful, they do whatever he orders. Some roll their eyes, some
sweat, some bleed; and the people beat their breasts before them,
calling themselves miserable sinners.
_Emperor._ _Sinners_ is not the name I should have given them,
although no doubt they are in the right.
_Tsing-Ti._ Sometimes, if they will not bleed freely, nor sweat, nor
roll their eyes, the devouter break their heads with clubs, and look
out for others who will.
_Emperor._ Take heed, Tsing-Ti! Take heed! I do believe thou art
talking all the while of idols. Thou must be respectful; remember I am
head of all the religions in the empire. We have something in our own
country not very unlike them, only the people do not worship them;
they merely fall down before them as representatives of a higher
power. So they say.
_Tsing-Ti._ I do not imagine they go much farther in Europe, excepting
the introduction of this club-law into their adoration.
_Emperor._ And difference enough, in all conscience. Our people is
less ferocious and less childish. If any man break an idol here for
not sweating, he himself would justly be condemned to sweat, showing
him how inconvenient a thing it is when the sweater is not disposed.
As for rolling the eyes, surely they know best whom they should ogle;
as for bleeding, that must be regulated by the season of the year. Let
every man choose his idol as freely as he chooses his wife; let him be
constant if he can; if he cannot, let him at least be civil. Whoever
dares to scratch the face of any one in my empire, shall be condemned
to varnish it afresh, and moreover to keep it in repair all his
lifetime.
_Tsing-Ti._ In Europe such an offence would be punished with the
extremities of torture.
_Emperor._ Perhaps their idols cost more, and are newer. Is there no
chance, in all their changes, that we may be called upon to supply
them with a few?
_Tsing-Ti._ They have plenty for the present, and they dig up fresh
occasionally.
_Emperor._ In regard to the worship of idols, they have not a great
deal to learn from us; and what is deficient will come by degrees as
they grow humaner. But how little care can any ruler have for the
happiness and improvement of his people, who permits such ferocity in
the priesthood. If its members are employed by the government to
preside at burials, as according to thy discourse I suppose, a
virtuous prince would order a twelvemonth's imprisonment, and spare
diet, to whichever of them should refuse to perform the last office of
humanity toward a fellow-creature. What separation of citizen from
citizen, and necessarily what diminution of national strength, must be
the consequence of such a system! A single act of it ought to be
punished more severely than any single act of sedition, not only as
being a greater distractor of civic union, but, in its cruel
sequestration of the best affections, a fouler violator of domestic
peace. I always had fancied, from the books in my library, that the
Christian religion was founded on brotherly love and pure equality. I
may calculate ill; but, in my hasty estimate, damnation and dog-burial
stand many removes from these.
'Wait a little,' the Emperor continued: 'I wish to read in my library
the two names that my father said are considered the two greatest in
the West, and may vie nearly with the highest of our own country.'
Whereupon did his majesty walk forth into his library; and my eyes
followed his glorious figure as he passed through the doorway,
traversing the _gallery of the peacocks_, so called because fifteen of
those beautiful birds unite their tails in the centre of the ceiling,
painted so naturally as to deceive the beholder, each carrying in his
beak a different flower, the most beautiful in China, and bending his
neck in such a manner as to present it to the passer below. Traversing
this gallery, his majesty with his own hand drew aside the curtain of
the library door. His majesty then entered; and, after some delay, he
appeared with two long scrolls, and shook them gently over the
fish-pond, in this dormitory of the sages. Suddenly there were so many
splashes and plunges that I was aware of the gratification the fishes
had received from the grubs in them, and the disappointment in the
atoms of dust. His majesty, with his own right hand, drew the two
scrolls trailing on the marble pavement, and pointing to them with his
left, said:
'Here they are; Nhu-Tong: Pa-Kong. Suppose they had died where the
sorcerer's men held firm footing, would the priests have refused them
burial?'
I bowed my head at the question; for a single tinge of red, whether
arising from such ultra-bestial cruelty in those who have the
impudence to accuse the cannibals of theirs, or whether from abhorrent
shame at the corroding disease of intractable superstition, hereditary
in the European nations for fifteen centuries, a tinge of red came
over the countenance of the emperor. When I raised up again my
forehead, after such time as I thought would have removed all traces
of it, still fixing my eyes on the ground, I answered:
'O Emperor! the most zealous would have done worse. They would have
prepared these great men for burial, and then have left them
unburied.'
_Emperor._ So! so! they would have embalmed them, in their reverence
for meditation and genius, although their religion prohibits the
ceremony of interring them.
_Tsing-Ti._ Alas, sire, my meaning is far different. They would have
dislocated their limbs with pulleys, broken them with hammers, and
then have burnt the flesh off the bones. This is called an _act of
faith_.
_Emperor._ _Faith_, didst thou say? Tsing-Ti, thou speakest bad
Chinese: thy native tongue is strangely occidentalized.
_Tsing-Ti._ So they call it.
_Emperor._ God hath not given unto all men the use of speech. Thou
meanest to designate the ancient inhabitants of the country, not those
who have lived there within the last three centuries.
_Tsing-Ti._ The Spaniards and Italians (such are the names of the
nations who are most under the influence of the spells) were never so
barbarous and cruel as during the first of the last three centuries.
The milder of them would have refused two cubits of earth to the two
philosophers; and not only would have rejected them from the cemetery
of the common citizens, but from the side of the common hangman; the
most ignorant priest thinking himself much wiser, and the most
enlightened prince not daring to act openly as one who could think
otherwise. The Italians had formerly two illustrious men among them;
the earlier was a poet, the later a philosopher; one was exiled, the
other was imprisoned, and both were within a span of being burnt
alive.
_Emperor._ We have in Asia some odd religions and some barbarous
princes, but neither are like the Europeans. In the name of God! do
the fools think of their Christianity as our neighbours in Tartary
(with better reason) think of their milk; that it will keep the longer
for turning sour? or that it must be wholesome because it is heady?
Swill it out, swill it out, say I, and char the tub.
LOUIS XVIII AND TALLEYRAND
_Louis._ M. Talleyrand! in common with all my family, all France, all
Europe, I entertain the highest opinion of your abilities and
integrity. You have convinced me that your heart, throughout the
storms of the revolution, leaned constantly toward royalty; and that
you permitted and even encouraged the caresses of the usurper, merely
that you might strangle the more certainly and the more easily his
new-born empire. After this, it is impossible to withhold my
confidence from you.
_Talleyrand._ Conscious of the ridicule his arrogance and presumption
would incur, the usurper attempted to silence and stifle it with
other and far different emotions. Half his cruelties were perpetrated
that his vanity might not be wounded: for scorn is superseded by
horror. Whenever he committed an action or uttered a sentiment which
would render him an object of derision, he instantly gave vent to
another which paralysed by its enormous wickedness. He would extirpate
a nation to extinguish a smile. No man alive could deceive your
majesty: the extremely few who would wish to do it, lie under that
vigilant and piercing eye, which discerned in perspective from the
gardens of Hartwell those of the Tuileries and Versailles. As joy
arises from calamity, so spring arises from the bosom of winter,
purely to receive your majesty, inviting the august descendant of
their glorious founder to adorn and animate them again with his
beneficent and gracious presence. The waters murmur, in voices
half-suppressed, the reverential hymn of peace restored: the woods bow
their heads....
_Louis._ Talking of woods, I am apprehensive all the game has been
woefully killed up in my forests.
_Talleyrand._ A single year will replenish them.
_Louis._ Meanwhile! M. Talleyrand! meanwhile!
_Talleyrand._ Honest and active and watchful gamekeepers, in
sufficient number, must be sought; and immediately.
_Louis._ Alas! if the children of my nobility had been educated like
the children of the English, I might have promoted some hundreds of
them in this department. But their talents lie totally within the
binding of their breviaries. Those of them who shoot, can shoot only
with pistols; which accomplishment they acquired in England, that they
might challenge any of the islanders who should happen to look with
surprise or displeasure in their faces, expecting to be noticed by
them in Paris, for the little hospitalities the proud young gentlemen,
and their prouder fathers, were permitted to offer them in London and
at their country-seats. What we call _reconnaissance_, they call
_gratitude_, treating a recollector like a debtor. This is a want of
courtesy, a defect in civilization, which it behoves us to supply. Our
memories are as tenacious as theirs, and rather more eclectic.
Since my return to my kingdom I have undergone great indignities from
this unreflecting people. One Canova, a sculptor at Rome, visited
Paris in the name of the Pope, and in quality of his envoy, and
insisted on the cession of those statues and pictures which were
brought into France by the French armies. He began to remove them out
of the gallery: I told him I would never give my consent: he replied,
he thought it sufficient that he had Wellington's. Therefore, the next
time Wellington presented himself at the Tuileries, I turned my back
upon him before the whole court. Let the English and their allies be
aware, that I owe my restoration not to them, but partly to God and
partly to Saint Louis. They and their armies are only brute
instruments in the hands of my progenitor and intercessor.
_Talleyrand._ Fortunate, that the conqueror of France bears no
resemblance to the conqueror of Spain. Peterborough (I shudder at the
idea) would have ordered a file of soldiers to seat your Majesty in
your travelling carriage, and would have reinstalled you at Hartwell.
The English people are so barbarous, that he would have done it not
only with impunity, but with applause.
_Louis._ But the sovereign of his country ... would the sovereign
suffer it?
_Talleyrand._ Alas! sire! Confronted with such men, what are
sovereigns, when the people are the judges? Wellington can drill
armies: Peterborough could marshal nations.
_Louis._ Thank God! we have no longer any such pests on earth. The
most consummate general of our days (such is Wellington) sees nothing
one single inch beyond the field of battle; and he is so observant of
discipline, that if I ordered him to be flogged in the presence of the
allied armies, he would not utter a complaint nor shrug a shoulder; he
would only write a dispatch.
_Talleyrand._ But his soldiers would execute the Duke of Brunswick's
manifesto, and Paris would sink into her catacombs. No man so little
beloved was ever so well obeyed: and there is not a man in England, of
either party, citizen or soldier, who would not rather die than see
him disgraced. His firmness, his moderation, his probity, place him
more opposite to Napoleon than he stood in the field of Waterloo.
These are his lofty lines of Torres Vedras, which no enemy dares
assail throughout their whole extent.
_Louis._ M. Talleyrand! is it quite right to extol an enemy and an
Englishman in this manner?
_Talleyrand._ Pardon! Sire! I stand corrected. Forgive me a momentary
fit of enthusiasm, in favour of those qualities by which, although an
Englishman's, I am placed again in your majesty's service.
_Louis._ We will now then go seriously to business. Wellington and the
allied armies have interrupted and occupied us. I will instantly
write, with my own hand, to the Marquis of Buckingham, desiring him to
send me five hundred pheasants' eggs. I am restored to my throne, M.
Talleyrand! but in what a condition! Not a pheasant on the table! I
must throw myself on the mercy of foreigners, even for a pheasant!
When I have written my letter, I shall be ready to converse with you
on the business on which I desired your presence. [_Writes._] Here;
read it. Give me your opinion: is not the note a model?
_Talleyrand._ If the charms of language could be copied, it would be.
But what is intended for delight may terminate in despair: and there
are words which, unapproachable by distance and sublimity, may wither
the laurels on the most exalted of literary brows.
_Louis._ There is grace in that expression of yours, M. Talleyrand!
there is really no inconsiderable grace in it. Seal my letter: direct
it to the Marquis of Buckingham at Stowe. Wait: open it again: no, no:
write another in your own name: instruct him how sure you are it will
be agreeable to me, if he sends at the same time fifty or a hundred
brace of the birds as well as the eggs. At present I am desolate. My
heart is torn, M. Talleyrand! it is almost plucked out of my bosom. I
have no other care, no other thought, day or night, but the happiness
of my people. The allies, who have most shamefully overlooked the
destitution of my kitchen, seem resolved to turn a deaf ear to its
cries evermore; nay, even to render them shriller and shriller. The
allies, I suspect, are resolved to execute the design of the
mischievous Pitt.
_Talleyrand._ May it please your majesty to inform me _which_ of them;
for he formed a thousand, all mischievous, but greatly more
mischievous to England than to France. Resolved to seize the sword, in
his drunkenness, he seized it by the edge, and struck at us with the
hilt, until he broke it off and until he himself was exhausted by loss
of breath and of blood. We owe alike to him the energy of our armies,
the bloody scaffolds of public safety, the Reign of Terror, the empire
of usurpation, and finally, as the calm is successor to the tempest,
and sweet fruit to bitter kernel, the blessing of your majesty's
restoration. Excepting in this one event, he was mischievous to our
country; but in all events, and in all undertakings, he was pernicious
to his own. No man ever brought into the world such enduring evil; few
men such extensive.
_Louis._ His king ordered it. George III loved battles and blood.
_Talleyrand._ But he was prudent in his appetite for them.
_Louis._ He talked of peppering his people as I would talk of
peppering a capon.
_Talleyrand._ Having split it. His subjects cut up by his subjects
were only capers to his leg of mutton. From none of his palaces and
parks was there any view so rural, so composing to his spirits, as the
shambles. When these were not fresh, the gibbet would do.
I wish better luck to the pheasants' eggs than befell Mr. Pitt's
designs. Not one brought forth anything.
_Louis._ No: but he declared in the face of his Parliament, and of
Europe, that he would insist on indemnity for the past and security
for the future. These were his words. Now, all the money and other
wealth the French armies levied in Spain, Portugal, Italy, and
everywhere else, would scarcely be sufficient for this indemnity.
_Talleyrand._ England shall never receive from us a tithe of that
amount.
_Louis._ A tithe of it! She may demand a quarter or a third, and leave
us wondering at her moderation and forbearance.