CHAPTER XXXVI.

AND LAST.

Subtle, Surly,--Mammon, Dol,

Hot Ananias, Dapper, Dragger,--all

With whom I traded.

The Alchemist.

As when some rural citizen-retired for a fleeting holiday, far from the

cares of the world strepitumque Romae,--[“And the roar of

Rome.”]--to the sweet shades of Pentonville or the remoter plains of

Clapham--conducts some delighted visitor over the intricacies of that

Daedalian masterpiece which he is pleased to call his labyrinth or

maze,--now smiling furtively at his guest's perplexity, now listening

with calm superiority to his futile and erring conjectures, now

maliciously accompanying him through a flattering path in which the

baffled adventurer is suddenly checked by the blank features of a

thoroughfareless hedge, now trembling as he sees the guest stumbling

unawares into the right track, and now relieved as he beholds him

after a pause of deliberation wind into the wrong,--even so, O pleasant

reader! doth the sage novelist conduct thee through the labyrinth of

his tale, amusing himself with thy self-deceits, and spinning forth,

in prolix pleasure, the quiet yarn of his entertainment from the

involutions which occasion thy fretting eagerness and perplexity. But as

when, thanks to the host's good-nature or fatigue, the mystery is once

unravelled, and the guest permitted to penetrate even into the concealed

end of the leafy maze, the honest cit, satisfied with the pleasant pains

he has already bestowed upon his visitor, puts him not to the labour of

retracing the steps he hath so erratically trod, but leads him in three

strides, and through a simpler path, at once to the mouth of the maze,

and dismisseth him elsewhere for entertainment; even so will the prudent

narrator, when the intricacies of his plot are once unfolded, occasion

no stale and profitless delays to his wearied reader, but conduct him,

with as much brevity as convenient, without the labyrinth which has

ceased to retain the interest of a secret.

We shall therefore, in pursuance of the tit's policy, relate as rapidly

as possible that part of our narrative which yet remains untold. On

Brandon's person was found the paper which had contained so fatal an

intelligence of his son; and when brought to Lord Mauleverer, the words

struck that person (who knew Brandon had been in search of his lost

son, whom we have seen that he had been taught however to suppose

illegitimate, though it is probable that many doubts whether he had

not been deceived must have occurred to his natural sagacity) as

sufficiently important to be worth an inquiry after the writer. Dummie

was easily found, for he had not yet turned his back on the town when

the news of the judge's sudden death was brought back to it; and

taking advantage of that circumstance, the friendly Dunnaker remained

altogether in the town (albeit his long companion deserted it as hastily

as might be), and whiled the time by presenting himself at the jail,

and after some ineffectual efforts winning his way to Clifford. Easily

tracked by the name he had given to the governor of the jail, he was

conducted the same day to Lord Mauleverer; and his narrative, confused

as it was, and proceeding even from so suspicious a quarter, thrilled

those digestive organs, which in Mauleverer stood proxy for a heart,

with feelings as much resembling awe and horror as our good peer was

capable of experiencing. Already shocked from his worldly philosophy

of indifference by the death of Brandon, he was more susceptible to a

remorseful and salutary impression at this moment than he might have

been at any other; and he could not, without some twinges of conscience,

think of the ruin he had brought on the mother of the being he had but

just prosecuted to the death. He dismissed Dummie, and after a

little consideration he ordered his carriage, and leaving the funeral

preparations for his friend to the care of his man of business, he set

off for London, and the house, in particular, of the Secretary of the

Home Department. We would not willingly wrong the noble penitent; but

we venture a suspicion that he might not have preferred a personal

application for mercy to the prisoner to a written one, had he not felt

certain unpleasant qualms in remaining in a country-house overshadowed

by ceremonies so gloomy as those of death. The letter of Brandon and

the application of Mauleverer obtained for Clifford a relaxation of his

sentence. He was left for perpetual transportation. A ship was already

about to sail; and Mauleverer, content with having saved his life,

was by no means anxious that his departure from the country should be

saddled with any superfluous delay.

Meanwhile the first rumour that reached London respecting Brandon's fate

was that he had been found in a fit, and was lying dangerously ill

at Mauleverer's; and before the second and more fatally sure report

arrived, Lucy had gathered from the visible dismay of Barlow, whom

she anxiously cross-questioned, and who, really loving his master,

was easily affected into communication, the first and more flattering

intelligence. To Barlow's secret delight, she insisted instantly on

setting off to the supposed sick man; and accompanied by Barlow and

her woman, the affectionate girl hastened to Mauleverer's house on

the evening after the day the earl left it. Lucy had not proceeded far

before Barlow learned, from the gossip of the road, the real state

of the case. Indeed, it was at the first stage that with a mournful

countenance he approached the door of the carriage, and announcing the

inutility of proceeding farther, begged of Lucy to turn back. So soon as

Miss Brandon had overcome the first shock which this intelligence gave

her, she said with calmness,--

“Well, Barlow, if it be so, we have still a duty to perform. Tell the

postboys to drive on!”

“Indeed, madam, I cannot see what use it can be fretting yourself,--and

you so poorly. If you will let me go, I will see every attention paid to

the remains of my poor master.”

“When my father lay dead,” said Lucy, with a grave and sad sternness

in her manner, “he who is now no more sent no proxy to perform the last

duties of a brother; neither will I send one to discharge those of a

niece, and prove that I have forgotten the gratitude of a daughter.

Drive on!”

We have said that there were times when a spirit was stricken from Lucy

little common to her in general; and now the command of her uncle sat

upon her brow. On sped the horses, and for several minutes Lucy remained

silent. Her woman did not dare to speak. At length Miss Brandon turned,

and, covering her face with her hands, burst into tears so violent that

they alarmed her attendant even more than her previous stillness. “My

poor, poor uncle!” she sobbed; and those were all her words.

We must pass over Lucy's arrival at Lord Mauleverer's house; we must

pass over the weary days which elapsed till that unconscious body was

consigned to dust with which, could it have retained yet one spark of

its haughty spirit, it would have refused to blend its atoms. She had

loved the deceased incomparably beyond his merits, and resisting all

remonstrance to the contrary and all the forms of ordinary custom, she

witnessed herself the dreary ceremony which bequeathed the human remains

of William Brandon to repose and to the worm. On that same day Clifford

received the mitigation of his sentence, and on that day another trial

awaited Lucy. We think briefly to convey to the reader what that scene

was; we need only observe that Dummie Dunnaker, decoyed by his great

love for little Paul, whom he delightedly said he found not the least

“stuck up by his great fame and helewation,” still lingered in the

town, and was not only aware of the relationship of the cousins, but had

gleaned from Long Ned, as they journeyed down to ------, the

affection entertained by Clifford for Lucy. Of the manner in which the

communication reached Lucy, we need not speak; suffice it to say, that

on the day in which she had performed the last duty to her uncle, she

learned for the first time her lover's situation.

On that evening, in the convict's cell, the cousins met.

Their conference was low, for the jailer stood within hearing; and it

was broken by Lucy's convulsive sobs. But the voice of one whose iron

nerves were not unworthy of the offspring of William Brandon, was clear

and audible to her ear, even though uttered in a whisper that scarcely

stirred his lips. It seemed as if Lucy, smitten to the inmost heart by

the generosity with which her lover had torn himself from her at the

time that her wealth might have raised him in any other country far

above the perils and the crimes of his career in this; perceiving now,

for the first time, and in all their force, the causes of his mysterious

conduct; melted by their relationship, and forgetting herself utterly in

the desolation and dark situation in which she beheld one who, whatever

his crimes, had not been criminal towards her;--it seemed as if, carried

away by these emotions, she had yielded altogether to the fondness and

devotion of her nature,--that she had wished to leave home and friends

and fortune, and share with him his punishment and his shame.

“Why,” she faltered,--“why--why not? We are all that is left to each

other in the world! Your father and mine were brothers; let me be to you

as a sister. What is there left for me here? Not one being whom I love,

or who cares for me,--not one!”

It was then that Clifford summoned all his courage, as he answered.

Perhaps, now that he felt (though here his knowledge was necessarily

confused and imperfect) his birth was not unequal to hers; now that he

read, or believed he read, in her wan cheek and attenuated frame that

desertion to her was death, and that generosity and self-sacrifice had

become too late,--perhaps these thoughts, concurring with a love in

himself beyond all words, and a love in her which it was above humanity

to resist, altogether conquered and subdued him. Yet, as we have said,

his voice breathed calmly in her ear; and his eye only, which brightened

with a steady and resolute hope, betrayed his mind. “Live, then!” said

he, as he concluded. “My sister, my mistress, my bride, live! In one

year from this day--I repeat--I promise it thee!”

The interview was over, and Lucy returned home with a firm step. She was

on foot. The rain fell in torrents, yet even in her precarious state her

health suffered not; and when within a week from that time she read that

Clifford had departed to the bourne of his punishment, she read the news

with a steady eye and a lip that, if it grew paler, did not quiver.

Shortly after that time Miss Brandon departed to an obscure town by the

seaside; and there, refusing all society, she continued to reside.

As the birth of Clifford was known but to few, and his legitimacy was

unsuspected by all except, perhaps, by Mauleverer, Lucy succeeded to the

great wealth of her uncle; and this circumstance made her more than ever

an object of attraction in the eyes of her noble adorer. Finding himself

unable to see her, he wrote to her more than one moving epistle; but as

Lucy continued inflexible, he at length, disgusted by her want of taste,

ceased his pursuit, and resigned himself to the continued sterility of

unwedded life. As the months waned, Miss Brandon seemed to grow weary

of her retreat; and immediately on attaining her majority, which she did

about eight months after Brandon's death, she transferred the bulk of

her wealth to France, where it was understood (for it was impossible

that rumour should sleep upon an heiress and a beauty) that she intended

in future to reside. Even Warlock (that spell to the proud heart of her

uncle) she ceased to retain. It was offered to the nearest relation of

the family at a sum which he did not hesitate to close with; and by the

common vicissitudes of Fortune, the estate of the ancient Brandons has

now, we perceive by a weekly journal, just passed into the hands of a

wealthy alderman.

It was nearly a year since Brandon's death when a letter bearing a

foreign postmark came to Lucy. From that time her spirits--which before,

though subject to fits of abstraction, had been even and subdued, not

sad--rose into all the cheerfulness and vivacity of her earliest youth.

She busied herself actively in preparations for her departure from this

country; and at length the day was fixed, and the vessel was engaged.

Every day till that one, did Lucy walk to the seaside, and ascending the

highest cliff, spend hours, till the evening closed, in watching, with

seemingly idle gaze, the vessels that interspersed the sea; and with

every day her health seemed to strengthen, and the soft and lucid colour

she had once worn, to rebloom upon her cheek.

Previous to her departure Miss Brandon dismissed her servants, and only

engaged one female, a foreigner, to accompany her. A certain tone of

quiet command, formerly unknown to her, characterized these measures,

so daringly independent for one of her sex and age. The day arrived,--it

was the anniversary of her last interview with Clifford. On entering the

vessel it was observed that she trembled violently, and that her face

was as pale as death. A stranger, who had stood aloof wrapped in

his cloak, darted forward to assist her; that was the last which her

discarded and weeping servants beheld of her from the pier where they

stood to gaze.

Nothing more in this country was ever known of the fate of Lucy Brandon;

and as her circle of acquaintances was narrow, and interest in her fate

existed vividly in none save a few humble breasts, conjecture was never

keenly awakened, and soon cooled into forgetfulness. If it favoured,

after the lapse of years, any one notion more than another, it was that

she had perished among the victims of the French Revolution.

Meanwhile let us glance over the destinies of our more subordinate

acquaintances.

Augustus Tomlinson, on parting from Long Ned, had succeeded in reaching

Calais; and after a rapid tour through the Continent, he ultimately

betook himself to a certain literary city in Germany, where he became

distinguished for his metaphysical acumen, and opened a school of morals

on the Grecian model, taught in the French tongue. He managed, by the

patronage he received and the pupils he enlightened, to obtain a very

decent income; and as he wrote a folio against Locke, proved that men

had innate feelings, and affirmed that we should refer everything not to

reason, but to the sentiments of the soul, he became greatly respected

for his extraordinary virtue. Some little discoveries were made after

his death, which perhaps would have somewhat diminished the general

odour of his sanctity, had not the admirers of his school carefully

hushed up the matter, probably out of respect for the “sentiments of the

soul!”

Pepper, whom the police did not so anxiously desire to destroy as they

did his two companions, might have managed, perhaps many years longer,

to graze upon the public commons, had not a letter, written somewhat

imprudently, fallen into wrong hands. This, though after creating a

certain stir it apparently died away, lived in the memory of the

police, and finally conspired, with various peccadilloes, to produce

his downfall. He was seized, tried, and sentenced to seven years'

transportation. He so advantageously employed his time at Botany

Bay, and arranged things there so comfortably to himself, that at

the expiration of his sentence he refused to return home. He made an

excellent match, built himself an excellent house, and remained in “the

land of the blest” to the end of his days, noted to the last for the

redundance of his hair and a certain ferocious coxcombry of aspect.

As for Fighting Attie and Gentleman George, for Scarlet Jem and for Old

Bags, we confess ourselves destitute of any certain information of their

latter ends. We can only add, with regard to Fighting Attie, “Good luck

be with him wherever he goes!” and for mine host of the Jolly Angler,

that, though we have not the physical constitution to quaff “a bumper

of blue ruin,” we shall be very happy, over any tolerable wine and

in company with any agreeable convivialist, to bear our part in the

polished chorus of--

“Here's to Gentleman George, God bless him!”

Mrs. Lobkins departed this life like a lamb; and Dummie Dunnaker

obtained a license to carry on the business at Thames Court. He boasted,

to the last, of his acquaintance with the great Captain Lovett, and

of the affability with which that distinguished personage treated him.

Stories he had, too, about Judge Brandon, but no one believed a syllable

of them; and Dummie, indignant at the disbelief, increased, out of

vehemence, the marvel of the stories, so that, at length, what was added

almost swallowed up what was original, and Dummie himself might have

been puzzled to satisfy his own conscience as to what was false and what

was true.

The erudite Peter MacGrawler, returning to Scotland, disappeared by

the road. A person singularly resembling the sage was afterward seen at

Carlisle, where he discharged the useful and praiseworthy duties of Jack

Ketch. But whether or not this respectable functionary was our identical

Simon Pure, our ex-editor of “The Asinaeum,” we will not take upon

ourselves to assert.

Lord Mauleverer, finally resolving on a single life, passed the

remainder of his years in indolent tranquillity. When he died, the

newspapers asserted that his Majesty was deeply affected by the loss

of so old and valued a friend. His furniture and wines sold remarkably

high; and a Great Man, his particular intimate, who purchased his books,

startled to find, by pencil marks, that the noble deceased had read some

of them, exclaimed, not altogether without truth,

“Ah! Mauleverer might have been a deuced clever fellow--if he had liked

it!”

The earl was accustomed to show as a curiosity a ring of great value,

which he had received in rather a singular manner. One morning a packet

was brought him which he found to contain a sum of money, the ring

mentioned, and a letter from the notorious Lovett, in which that

person in begging to return his lordship the sums of which he had

twice assisted to rob him, thanked him, with earnest warmth, for the

consideration testified towards him in not revealing his identity with

Captain Clifford; and ventured, as a slight testimony of respect, to

inclose the aforesaid ring with the sum returned.

About the time Mauleverer received this curious packet, several

anecdotes of a similar nature appeared in the public journals; and

it seemed that Lovett had acted upon a general principle of

restitution,--not always, it must be allowed, the offspring of a

robber's repentance. While the idle were marvelling at these anecdotes,

came the tardy news that Lovett, after a single month's sojourn at his

place of condemnation, had, in the most daring and singular manner,

effected his escape. Whether, in his progress up the country, he had

been starved or slain by the natives, or whether, more fortunate, he had

ultimately found the means of crossing seas, was as yet unknown. There

ended the adventures of the gallant robber; and thus, by a strange

coincidence, the same mystery which wrapped the fate of Lucy involved

also that of her lover. And here, kind reader, might we drop the curtain

on our closing scene, did we not think it might please thee to hold it

up yet one moment, and give thee another view of the world behind.

In a certain town of that Great Country where shoes are imperfectly

polished--[See Captain Hall's late work on America]--and opinions are

not prosecuted, there resided, twenty years after the date of Lucy

Brandon's departure from England, a man held in high and universal

respect, not only for the rectitude of his conduct, but for the energies

of his mind, and the purposes to which they were directed. If you asked

who cultivated that waste, the answer was, “Clifford!” who procured the

establishment of that hospital, “Clifford!” who obtained the redress of

such a public grievance, “Clifford!” who struggled for and won such a

popular benefit, “Clifford!” In the gentler part of his projects and his

undertakings--in that part, above all, which concerned the sick or the

necessitous--this useful citizen was seconded, or rather excelled, by a

being over whose surpassing loveliness Time seemed to have flown with a

gentle and charming wing. There was something remarkable and touching

in the love which this couple (for the woman we refer to was Clifford's

wife) bore to each other; like the plant on the plains of Hebron, the

time which brought to that love an additional strength brought to it

also a softer and a fresher verdure. Although their present neighbours

were unacquainted with the events of their earlier life previous to

their settlement at ----------, it was known that they had been wealthy

at the time they first came to reside there, and that, by a series

of fatalities, they had lost all. But Clifford had borne up manfully

against fortune; and in a new country, where men who prefer labour to

dependence cannot easily starve, he had been enabled to toil upward

through the severe stages of poverty and hardship with an honesty and

vigour of character which won him, perhaps, a more hearty esteem for

every successive effort than the display of his lost riches might ever

have acquired him. His labours and his abilities obtained gradual but

sure success; and he now enjoyed the blessings of a competence earned

with the most scrupulous integrity, and spent with the most kindly

benevolence. A trace of the trials they had passed through was

discernible in each; those trials had stolen the rose from the wife's

cheek, and had sown untimely wrinkles in the broad brow of Clifford.

There were moments, too, but they were only moments, when the latter

sank from his wonted elastic and healthful cheerfulness of mind into a

gloomy and abstracted revery; but these moments the wife watched with a

jealous and fond anxiety, and one sound of her sweet voice had the

power to dispel their influence; and when Clifford raised his eyes,

and glanced from her tender smile around his happy home and his growing

children, or beheld through the very windows of his room the public

benefits he had created, something of pride and gladness glowed on his

countenance, and he said, though with glistening eyes and subdued voice,

as his looks returned once more to his wife, “I owe these to thee!”

One trait of mind especially characterized Clifford,--indulgence to the

faults of others. “Circumstances make guilt,” he was wont to say; “let

us endeavour to correct the circumstances, before we rail against the

guilt!” His children promised to tread in the same useful and honourable

path that he trod himself. Happy was considered that family which had

the hope to ally itself with his.

Such was the after-fate of Clifford and Lucy. Who will condemn us for

preferring the moral of that fate to the moral which is extorted

from the gibbet and the hulks,--which makes scarecrows, not beacons;

terrifies our weakness, not warms our reason. Who does not allow that

it is better to repair than to perish,--better, too, to atone as the

citizen than to repent as the hermit? Oh, John Wilkes, Alderman of

London, and Drawcansir of Liberty, your life was not an iota too

perfect,--your patriotism might have been infinitely purer, your morals

would have admitted indefinite amendment, you are no great favourite

with us or with the rest of the world,--but you said one excellent

thing, for which we look on you with benevolence, nay, almost with

respect. We scarcely know whether to smile at its wit or to sigh at its

wisdom. Mark this truth, all ye gentlemen of England who would make

law as the Romans made fasces,--a bundle of rods with an axe in the

middle,--mark it, and remember! long may it live, allied with hope in

ourselves, but with gratitude in our children,--long after the book

which it now “adorns” and “points” has gone to its dusty slumber,--long,

long after the feverish hand which now writes it down can defend or

enforce it no more: “THE VERY WORST USE TO WHICH YOU CAN PUT A MAN IS TO

HANG HIM!”

NOTE.

In the second edition of this novel there were here inserted two

“characters” of “Fighting Attie” and “Gentleman George,” omitted in the

subsequent edition published by Mr. Bentley in the “Standard Novels.” At

the request of some admirers of those eminent personages, who considered

the biographical sketches referred to impartial in themselves, and

contributing to the completeness of the design for which men so

illustrious were introduced, they are here retained, though in the more

honourable form of a separate and supplementary notice.

FIGHTING ATTIE.

When he dies, the road will have lost a great man, whose foot was rarely

out of his stirrup, and whose clear head guided a bold hand. He carried

common-sense to its perfection, and he made the straight path the

sublimest. His words were few, his actions were many. He was the

Spartan of Tobymen, and laconism was the short soul of his professional

legislation!

Whatever way you view him, you see those properties of mind which

command fortune; few thoughts not confusing each other,--simple

elements, and bold. His character in action maybe summed in two

phrases,--“a fact seized, and a stroke made.” Had his intellect been

more luxurious, his resolution might have been less hardy; and his

hardiness made his greatness. He was one of those who shine but in

action,--chimneys (to adapt the simile of Sir Thomas More) that seem

useless till you light your fire. So in calm moments you dreamed not

of his utility, and only on the road you were struck dumb with the

outbreaking of his genius. Whatever situation he was called to, you

found in hire what you looked for in vain in others; for his strong

sense gave to Attie what long experience ought, but often fails, to

give to its possessors. His energy triumphed over the sense of novel

circumstance, and he broke in a moment through the cobwebs which

entangled lesser natures for years. His eye saw a final result, and

disregarded the detail. He robbed his man without chicanery; and took

his purse by applying for it rather than scheming. If his enemies

wish to detract from his merit,--a merit great, dazzling, and yet

solid,--they may, perhaps, say that his genius fitted him better to

continue exploits than to devise them; and thus that, besides the renown

which he may justly claim, he often wholly engrossed that fame which

should have been shared by others: he took up the enterprise where it

ceased at Labour, and carried it onwards, where it was rewarded with

Glory. Even this charge proves a new merit of address, and lessens not

the merit less complicated the have allowed him before. The fame he

has acquired may excite our emulation; the envy he has not appeased may

console us for obscurity.

A stanza of Greek poetry--Thus, not too vigorously, translated by Mr.

West,--

“But wrapped in error is the human mind, And human bliss is ever

insecure--Know we what fortune shall remain behind? Know we how long the

present shall endure?”

GENTLEMAN GEORGE.

For thee, Gentleman George, for thee, what conclusive valediction

remains? Alas! since we began the strange and mumming scene wherein

first thou went introduced, the grim foe hath knocked thrice at thy

gates; and now, as we write,--[In 1830]--thou art departed thence,--thou

art no more! A new lord presides to thine easy-chair, a new voice rings

from thy merry board,--thou art forgotten! thou art already, like these

pages, a tale that is told to a memory that retaineth not! Where are

thy quips and cranks; where thy stately coxcombries and thy regal

gauds? Thine house and thy pagoda, thy Gothic chimney and thy Chinese

sign-post,--these yet ask the concluding hand. Thy hand is cold; their

completion, and the enjoyment the completion yields, are for another!

Thou sowest, and thy follower reaps; thou buildest, thy successor holds;

thou plantest, and thine heir sits beneath the shadow of thy trees,--

“Neque harum, quas colis, arborum

Te, praeter invisas cupressos,

Ulla brevem dominum sequetur!”

[“Nor will any of these trees thou didst cultivate follow thee,

the shortlived lord, save the hateful Cyprus.”]

At this moment thy life,--for thou veert a Great Man to thine order,

and they have added thy biography to that of Abershaw and Sheppard,--thy

life is before us. What a homily in its events! Gayly didst thou laugh

into thy youth, and run through the courses of thy manhood. Wit sat

at thy table, and Genius was thy comrade. Beauty was thy handmaid; and

Frivolity played around thee,--a buffoon that thou didst ridicule, and

ridiculing enjoy! Who among us can look back to thy brilliant era, and

not sigh to think that the wonderful men who surrounded thee, and amidst

whom thou wert a centre and a nucleus, are for him but the things of

history, and the phantoms of a bodiless tradition? Those brilliant

suppers, glittering with beauty, the memory of which makes one spot

(yet inherited by Bachelor Bill) a haunted and a fairy ground; all who

gathered to that Armida's circle,--the Grammonts and the Beauvilliers

and the Rochefoucaulds of England and the Road,--who does not feel that

to have seen these, though but as Gil Blas saw the festivities of his

actors, from the sideboard and behind the chair, would have been a

triumph for the earthlier feelings of his old age to recall? What,

then, must it have been to have seen them as thou didst see,--thou, the

deceased and the forgotten!---seen them from the height of thy youth and

power and rank (for early wert thou keeper to a public), and reckless

spirits, and lusty capacities of joy? What pleasures where sense

lavished its uncounted varieties? What revellings where wine was the

least excitement?

Let the scene shift. How stirring is the change! Triumph and glitter

and conquest! For thy public was a public of renown; thither came the

Warriors of the Ring,--the Heroes of the Cross,--and thou, their patron,

wert elevated on their fame! “Principes pro victoria pugnant, comites

pro Principe.”--[Chiefs for the victory fight,--for chiefs the

soldiers]--What visions sweep across us! What glories didst thou

witness! Over what conquests didst thou preside! The mightiest epoch,

the most wonderful events which the world, thy world, ever knew,--of

these was it not indeed, and dazzlingly thine,--

“To share the triumph and partake the gale”?

Let the scene shift. Manhood is touched by age; but Lust is “heeled” by

Luxury, and Pomp is the heir of Pleasure; gewgaws and gaud, instead of

glory, surround, rejoice, and flatter thee to the last. There rise thy

buildings; there lie, secret but gorgeous, the tabernacles of thine

ease; and the earnings of thy friends, and the riches of the people whom

they plunder, are waters to thine imperial whirlpool. Thou art lapped

in ease, as is a silkworm; and profusion flows from thy high and unseen

asylum as the rain poureth from a cloud.--Much didst thou do to beautify

chimney-tops, much to adorn the snuggeries where thou didst dwell.

Thieving with thee took a substantial shape; and the robberies Of the

public passed into a metempsychosis of mortar, and became public-houses.

So there and thus, building and planning, didst thou spin out thy latter

yarn, till Death came upon thee; and when we looked around, lo! thy

brother was on thy hearth. And thy parasites and thy comrades and thine

ancient pals and thy portly blowens, they made a murmur, and they packed

up their goods; but they turned ere they departed, and they would have

worshipped thy brother as they worshipped thee,--but he would not! And

thy sign-post is gone and mouldered already; and to the Jolly Angler has

succeeded the Jolly Tar! And thy picture is disappearing fast from the

print-shops, and thy name from the mouths of men! And thy brother, whom

no one praised while thou didst live, is on a steeple of panegyric built

above the churchyard that contains thy grave. O shifting and volatile

hearts of men! Who would be keeper of a public? Who dispense the wine

and the juices that gladden, when the moment the pulse of the band

ceases, the wine and the juices are forgotten?

To History,--for thy name will be preserved in that record which,

whether it be the calendar of Newgate or of nations, telleth its alike

how men suffer and sin and perish,--to History we leave the sum and

balance of thy merits and thy faults. The sins that were thine were

those of the man to whom pleasure is all in all: thou wert, from root to

branch, sap and in heart, what moralists term the libertine; hence

the light wooing, the quick desertion, the broken faith, the organized

perfidy, that manifested thy bearing to those gentler creatures who

called thee 'Gentleman George.' Never to one solitary woman, until

the last dull flame of thy dotage, didst thou so behave as to give no

foundation to complaint and no voice to wrong. But who shall say be

honest to one, but laugh at perfidy to another? Who shall wholly confine

treachery to one sex, if to that sex he hold treachery no offence? So

in thee, as in all thy tribe, there was a laxness of principle, an

insincerity of faith, even unto men: thy friends, when occasion suited,

thou couldst forsake; and thy luxuries were dearer to thee than justice

to those who supplied them. Men who love and live for pleasure as thou,

are usually good-natured; for their devotion to pleasure arises from the

strength of their constitution, and the strength of their constitution

preserves them from the irritations of weaker nerves. So went thou

good-natured and often generous; and often with thy generosity didst

thou unite a delicacy that showed thou hadst an original and a tender

sympathy with men. But as those who pursue pleasure are above all

others impatient of interruption, so to such as interfered with thy main

pursuit thou didst testify a deep, a lasting, and a revengeful anger.

Yet let not such vices of temperament be too severely judged! For

to thee were given man's two most persuasive tempters, physical and

moral,--Health and Power! Thy talents, such as they were,--and they were

the talents of a man of the world,--misled rather than guided thee, for

they gave thy mind that demi-philosophy, that indifference to exalted

motives, which is generally found in a clever rake. Thy education was

wretched; thou hadst a smattering of Horace, but thou couldst not write

English, and thy letters betray that thou went wofully ignorant of

logic. The fineness of thy taste has been exaggerated; thou wert

unacquainted with the nobleness of simplicity; thy idea of a whole

was grotesque and overloaded, and thy fancy in details was gaudy and

meretricious. But thou hadst thy hand constantly in the public purse,

and thou hadst plans and advisers forever before thee; more than all,

thou didst find the houses in that neighbourbood wherein thou didst

build, so preternaturally hideous that thou didst require but little

science to be less frightful in thy creations. If thou didst not improve

thy native village and thy various homes with a solid, a lofty, and a

noble taste, thou didst nevertheless very singularly improve. And thy

posterity, in avoiding the faults of thy masonry, will be grateful for

the effects of thy ambition. The same demi-philosophy which influenced

thee in private life exercised a far benigner and happier power over

thee in public. Thou wert not idly vexatious in vestries, nor ordinarily

tyrannic in thy parish; if thou wert ever arbitrary it was only when thy

pleasure was checked, or thy vanity wounded. At other times thou didst

leave events to their legitimate course, so that in thy latter years

thou wert justly popular in thy parish; and in the grave thy great good

fortune will outshine thy few bad qualities, and men will say of thee

with a kindly, not an erring judgment, “In private life he was not worse

than the Rufers who came to this bar; in public life he was better than

those who kept a public before him.” Hark! those huzzas! what is the

burden of that chorus? Oh, grateful and never time-serving Britons, have

ye modified already for another the song ye made so solely in honour of

Gentleman George: and must we, lest we lose the custom of the public and

the good things of the tap-room,--roust we roar with throats yet hoarse

with our fervour for the old words, our ardour for the new--

“Here's to Mariner Bill, God bless him!

God bless him!

God bless him!

Here 's to Mariner Bill, God bless him!”

TOMLINSONIANA;

OR,

THE POSTHUMOUS WRITINGS

OF THE CELEBRATED

AUGUSTUS TOMLINSON,

PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF -------

ADDRESSED TO HIS PUPILS,

AND COMPRISING

I

MAXIMS ON THE POPULAR ART OF CREATING, ILLUSTRATED BY TEN CHARACTERS,

BEING AN INTRODUCTION TO THAT NOBLE SCIENCE BY WHICH EVERY MAN MAY

BECOME HIS OWN ROGUE.

II

BRACHYLOGIA; OR, ESSAYS CRITICAL, SENTIMENTAL, MORAL, AND ORIGINAL.

INTRODUCTION.

Having lately been travelling in Germany, I spent some time at that

University in which Augustus Tomlinson presided as Professor of Moral

Philosophy. I found that that great man died, after a lingering illness,

in the beginning of the year 1822, perfectly resigned to his fate, and

conversing, even on his deathbed, on the divine mysteries of Ethical

Philosophy. Notwithstanding the little peccadilloes to which I have

alluded in the latter pages of “Paul Clifford,” and which his pupils

deemed it advisable to hide from--

“The gaudy, babbling, and remorseless day,”

his memory was still held in a tender veneration. Perhaps, as in the

case of the illustrious Burns, the faults of a great man endear to you

his genius. In his latter days the PROFESSOR was accustomed to wear a

light-green silk dressing-gown, and, as he was perfectly bald, a

little black velvet cap; his small-clothes were pepper and salt. These

interesting facts I learned from one of his pupils. His old age was

consumed in lectures, in conversation, and in the composition of the

little morceaux of wisdom we present to the public. In these essays and

maxims, short as they are, he seems to have concentrated the wisdom of

his industrious and honourable life. With great difficulty I procured

from his executors the manuscripts which were then preparing for the

German press. A valuable consideration induced those gentlemen to become

philanthropic, and to consider the inestimable blessings they would

confer upon this country by suffering me to give the following essays

to the light, in their native and English dress, on the same day whereon

they appear in Germany in the graces of foreign disguise.

At an age when, while Hypocrisy stalks, simpers, sidles, struts, and

hobbles through the country, Truth also begins to watch her adversary in

every movement, I cannot but think these lessons of Augustus Tomlinson

peculiarly well-timed. I add them as a fitting Appendix to a Novel that

may not inappropriately be termed a Treatise on Social Frauds; and if

they contain within them that evidence of diligent attention and that

principle of good in which the satire of Vice is only the germ of its

detection, they may not, perchance, pass wholly unnoticed; nor be even

condemned to that hasty reading in which the Indifference of to-day is

but the prelude to the Forgetfulness of to-morrow.

CONTENTS.

MAXIMS ON THE POPULAR ART OF CHEATING, Illustrated by Ten

Characters, being an Introduction to that noble Science by which

every Man may become his own Rogue

BRACHYLOGIA:

On the Morality taught by the Rich to the Poor

Emulation

Caution against the Scoffers of “Humbug”

Popular Wrath at Individual Imprudence

Dum deflnat Amnis

Self-Glorifiers

Thought on Fortune

Wit, and Truth

Auto-theology

Glorious Constitution

Answer to the Popular Cant that Goodness in a Statesman is

better than Ability

Common-sense

Love, and Writers on Love

The Great Entailed

The Regeneration of a Knave

Style

MAXIMS

ON

THE POPULAR ART OF CHEATING,

ILLUSTRATED BY TEN CHARACTERS;

BEING AN INTRODUCTION TO THAT NOBLE SCIENCE BY WHICH EVERY MAN MAY

BECOME HIS OWN ROGUE.

Set a thief to catch a thief.---Proverb.

I.

Whenever you are about to utter something astonishingly false, always

begin with, “It is an acknowledged fact,” etc. Sir Robert Filmer was

a master of this method of writing. Thus, with what a solemn face that

great man attempted to cheat! “It is a truth undeniable that there

cannot be any multitude of men whatsoever, either great or small, etc.,

but that in the same multitude there is one man amongst them that in

nature hath a right to be King of all the rest,--as being the next heir

to Adam!”

II.

When you want something from the public, throw the blame of the asking

on the most sacred principle you can find. A common beggar can read you

exquisite lessons on this the most important maxim in the art of popular

cheating. “For the love of God, sir, a penny!”

III.

Whenever on any matter, moral, sentimental, or political, you find

yourself utterly ignorant, talk immediately of “The Laws of Nature.”

As those laws are written nowhere,--[Locke]--they are known by nobody.

Should any ask you how you happen to know such or such a doctrine as the

dictate of Nature, clap your hand to your heart and say, “Here!”

IV.

Yield to a man's tastes, and he will yield to your interest.

V.

When you talk to the half-wise, twaddle; when you talk to the ignorant,

brag; when you talk to the sagacious, look very humble, and ask their

opinion.

VI.

Always bear in mind, my beloved pupils, that the means of livelihood

depend not on the virtues, but the vices of others. The lawyer, the

statesman, the hangman, the physician, are paid by our sins; nay, even

the commoner professions--the tailor, the coachmaker, the upholsterer,

the wine-merchant--draw their fortunes, if not their existence, from

those smaller vices, our foibles. Vanity is the figure prefixed to the

ciphers of Necessity. Wherefore, oh my beloved pupils! never mind what a

man's virtues are; waste no time in learning them. Fasten at once on his

infirmities. Do to the One as, were you an honest man, you would do to

the Many. This is the way to be a rogue individually, as a lawyer is a

rogue professionally. Knaves are like critics,--[Nullum simile est

quod idem.--EDITOR.]--“flies that feed on the sore part, and would have

nothing to live on were the body in health.”--[Tatler].

VII.

Every man finds it desirable to have tears in his eyes at times,--one

has a sympathy with humid lids. Providence hath beneficially provided

for this want, and given to every man, in its divine forethought,

misfortunes painful to recall. Hence, probably, those human calamities

which the atheist rails against! Wherefore, when you are uttering

some affecting sentiment to your intended dupe, think of the greatest

misfortune you ever had in your life; habit will soon make the

association of tears and that melancholy remembrance constantly

felicitous. I knew, my dear pupils, a most intelligent Frenchman, who

obtained a charming legacy from an old poet by repeating the bard's

verses with streaming eyes. “How were you able to weep at will?” asked I

(I was young then, my pupils). “Je pensois,” answered he, “a mon

pauvre pere, qui est mort.” The union of sentiment with the ability of

swindling made that Frenchman a most fascinating creature!

VIII.

Never commit the error of the over-shrewd, and deem human nature worse

than it is. Human nature is so damnably good that if it were not for

human art, we knaves could not live. The primary elements of a man's

mind do not sustain us; it is what he owes to “the pains taken with his

education,” and “the blessings of civilized society!”

IX.

Whenever you doubt, my pupils, whether your man be a quack or not,

decide the point by seeing if your man be a positive asserter. Nothing

indicates imposture like confidence. Volney saith well, “that the most

celebrated of charlatans--[Mahomet]--and the boldest of tyrants begins

his extraordinary tissue of lies by these words, 'There is no doubt in

this book!'”

X.

There is one way of cheating people peculiar to the British Isles, and

which, my pupils, I earnestly recommend you to import hither,--cheating

by subscription. People like to be plundered in company; dupery then

grows into the spirit of party. Thus one quack very gravely requested

persons to fit up a ship for him and send him round the world as its

captain to make discoveries; and another patriotically suggested that

L10,000 should be subscribed--for what?--to place him in parliament!

Neither of these fellows could have screwed an individual out of a

shilling had he asked him for it in a corner; but a printed list, with

“His Royal Highness” at the top, plays the devil with English guineas.

A subscription for individuals may be considered a society for the

ostentatious encouragement of idleness, impudence, beggary, imposture,

and other public virtues!

XI.

Whenever you read the life of a great man, I mean a man eminently

successful, you will perceive all the qualities given to him are the

qualities necessary even to a mediocre rogue. “He possessed,” saith the

biographer, “the greatest address [namely, the faculty of wheedling];

the most admirable courage [namely, the faculty of bullying]; the most

noble fortitude [namely, the faculty of bearing to be bullied]; the most

singular versatility [namely, the faculty of saying one thing to one

man, and its reverse to another]; and the most wonderful command over

the mind of his contemporaries [namely, the faculty of victimizing

their purses or seducing their actions].” Wherefore, if luck cast you in

humble life, assiduously study the biographies of the great, in order to

accomplish you as a rogue; if in the more elevated range of society, be

thoroughly versed in the lives of the roguish: so shall you fit yourself

to be eminent!

XII.

The hypocrisy of virtue, my beloved pupils, is a little out of fashion

nowadays; it is sometimes better to affect the hypocrisy of vice. Appear

generously profligate, and swear with a hearty face that you do not

pretend to be better than the generality of your neighbours. Sincerity

is not less a covering than lying; a frieze great-coat wraps you as well

as a Spanish cloak.

XIII.

When you are about to execute some great plan, and to defraud a number

of persons, let the first one or two of the allotted number be the

cleverest, shrewdest fellows you can find. You have then a reference

that will alone dupe the rest of the world. “That Mr. Lynx is

satisfied,” will amply suffice to satisfy Mr. Mole of the honesty of

your intentions! Nor are shrewd men the hardest to take in; they rely on

their strength: invulnerable heroes are necessarily the bravest. Talk to

them in a business-like manner, and refer your design at once to their

lawyer. My friend John Shamberry was a model in this grand stroke of

art. He swindled twelve people to the tune of some thousands, with no

other trouble than it first cost him to swindle--whom do you think?--the

Secretary to the Society for the Suppression of Swindling!

XIV.

Divide your arts into two classes,--those which cost you little labour,

those which cost much. The first,--flattery, attention, answering

letters by return of post, walking across a street to oblige the man you

intend to ruin; all these you must never neglect. The least man is worth

gaining at a small cost. And besides, while you are serving yourself,

you are also obtaining the character of civility, diligence,

and good-nature. But the arts which cost you much labour--a long

subservience to one testy individual; aping the semblance of a virtue,

a quality, or a branch of learning which you do not possess, to a person

difficult to blind,--all these never begin except for great ends, worth

not only the loss of time, but the chance of detection. Great pains

for small gains is the maxim of the miser. The rogue should have more

grandeur d'ame!--[Greatness of soul].

XV.

Always forgive.

XVI.

If a man owe you a sum of money--pupils though you be of mine, you may

once in your lives be so silly as to lend--and you find it difficult

to get it back, appeal, not to his justice, but to his charity. The

components of justice flatter few men! Who likes to submit to an

inconvenience because he ought to do it,--without praise, without

even self--gratulation? But charity, my dear friends, tickles up human

ostentation deliciously. Charity implies superiority; and the feeling of

superiority is most grateful to social nature. Hence the commonness of

charity, in proportion to other virtues, all over the world; and hence

you will especially note that in proportion as people are haughty

and arrogant, will they laud almsgiving and encourage charitable

institutions.

XVII.

Your genteel rogues do not sufficiently observe the shrewdness of the

vulgar ones. The actual beggar takes advantage of every sore; but the

moral swindler is unpardonably dull as to the happiness of a physical

infirmity. To obtain a favour, neglect no method that may allure

compassion. I knew a worthy curate who obtained two livings by the

felicity of a hectic cough, and a younger brother who subsisted for ten

years on his family by virtue of a slow consumption.

XVIII.

When you want to possess yourself of a small sum, recollect that the

small sum be put into juxtaposition with a great. I do not express

myself clearly--take an example. In London there are sharpers who

advertise L70,000 to be advanced at four per cent; principals only

conferred with. The gentleman wishing for such a sum on mortgage goes to

see the advertiser; the advertiser says he must run down and look at the

property on which the money is to be advanced; his journey and expenses

will cost him a mere trifle,--say, twenty guineas. Let him speak

confidently; let the gentleman very much want the money at the interest

stated, and three to one but our sharper gets the twenty guineas,--so

paltry a sum in comparison to L70,000 though so serious a sum had the

matter related to halfpence!

XIX.

Lord Coke has said: “To trace an error to its fountainhead is to refute

it.” Now, my young pupils, I take it for granted that you are interested

in the preservation of error; you do not wish it, therefore, to be

traced to its fountain head. Whenever, then, you see a sharp fellow

tracking it up, you have two ways of settling the matter. You may say,

with a smile, “Nay, now, sir, you grow speculative,--I admire your

ingenuity;” or else look grave, colour up, and say, “I fancy, sir, there

is no warrant for this assertion in the most sacred of all authorities!”

The Devil can quote Scripture, you know; and a very sensible Devil it is

too!

XX.

Rochefoucauld has said: “The hate of favourites is nothing else but the

love of favour.” The idea is a little cramped; the hate we bear to any

man is only the result of our love for some good which we imagine

he possesses, or which, being in our possession, we imagine he has

attacked. Thus envy, the most ordinary species of hate, arises from our

value for the glory, or the plate, or the content we behold; and revenge

is born from our regard for our fame that has been wounded, or our acres

molested, or our rights invaded. But the most noisy of all hatreds is

hatred for the rich, from love for the riches. Look well on the poor

devil who is always railing at coaches and four! Book him as a man to be

bribed!

XXI.

My beloved pupils, few have yet sufficiently studied the art by which

the practice of jokes becomes subservient to the science of swindlers.

The heart of an inferior is always fascinated by a jest. Men know this

in the knavery of elections. Know it now, my pupils, in the knavery of

life! When you slap yon cobbler so affectionately on the back, it is

your own fault if you do not slap your purpose into him at the same

time. Note how Shakspeare (whom study night and day,--no man hath

better expounded the mysteries of roguery!) causes his grandest and most

accomplished villain, Richard III., to address his good friends, the

murderers, with a jocular panegyric on that hardness of heart on which,

doubtless, those poor fellows most piqued themselves,--

“Your eyes drop millstones, where fools' eyes drop tears--

I like you, lads!”

Can't you fancy the knowing grin with which the dogs received this

compliment, and the little sly punch in the stomach with which Richard

dropped those loving words, “I like you, lads!”

XXII.

As good-nature is the characteristic of the dupe, so should good-temper

be that of the knave; the two fit into each other like joints. Happily,

good-nature is a Narcissus, and falls in love with its own likeness.

And good-temper is to good-nature what the Florimel of snow was to the

Florimel of flesh,--an exact likeness made of the coldest materials.

XXIII.

BEING THE PRAISE OF KNAVERY.

A knave is a philosopher, though a philosopher is not necessarily a

knave. What hath a knave to do with passions? Every irregular desire he

must suppress; every foible he must weed out; his whole life is spent in

the acquisition of knowledge: for what is knowledge?--the discovery of

human errors! He is the only man always consistent yet ever examining;

he knows but one end, yet explores every means; danger, ill-repute, all

that terrify other men, daunt not him; he braves all, but is saved from

all: for I hold that a knave ceaseth to be the knave--he hath passed

into the fool--the moment mischief befalls him. He professes the art of

cheating; but the art of cheating is to cheat without peril. He is

teres et rotundas; strokes fly from the lubricity of his polish, and the

shiftings of his circular formation. He who is insensible of the glory

of his profession, who is open only to the profit, is no disciple of

mine. I hold of knavery, as Plato hath said of virtue, “Could it be seen

incarnate, it would beget a personal adoration!” None but those who are

inspired by a generous enthusiasm will benefit by the above maxims, nor

(and here I warn you solemnly from the sacred ground, till your head be

uncovered, and your feet be bared in the awe of veneration) enter with

profit upon the following descriptions of character,--that Temple of the

Ten Statutes, wherein I have stored and consecrated the most treasured

relics of my travelled thoughts and my collected experience.

TEN CHARACTERS.

I.

The mild, irresolute, good-natured, and indolent man. These qualities

are accompanied with good feelings, but no principles. The want of

firmness evinces also the want of any peculiar or deeply rooted system

of thought. A man conning a single and favourite subject of meditation

grows wedded to one or the other of the opinions on which he revolves. A

man universally irresolute has generally led a desultory life, and never

given his attention long together to one thing. This is a man most easy

to cheat, my beloved friends; you cheat him even with his eyes open.

Indolence is dearer to him than all things; and if you get him alone and

put a question to him point blank, he cannot answer, No.

II.

The timid, suspicious, selfish, and cold man. Generally a character of

this description is an excellent man of business, and would at first

sight seem to baffle the most ingenious swindler. But you have

one hope,--I have rarely found it deceive me,--this man is usually

ostentatious. A cold, a fearful, yet a worldly person has ever an eye

upon others; he notes the effect certain things produce on them; he is

anxious to learn their opinions, that he may not transgress; he likes to

know what the world say of him; nay, his timidity makes him anxious

to repose his selfishness on their good report. Hence he grows

ostentatious, likes that effect which is favourably talked of, and that

show which wins consideration. At him on this point, my pupils!

III.

The melancholy, retired, sensitive, intellectual character. A very good

subject this for your knaveries, my young friends, though it requires

great discrimination and delicacy. This character has a considerable

portion of morbid suspicion and irritation belonging to it,--against

these you must guard; at the same time its prevailing feature is a

powerful but unacknowledged vanity. It is generally a good opinion of

himself, and a feeling that he is not appreciated by others, that make

a man reserved; he deems himself unfit for the world because of

the delicacy of his temperament, and the want of a correspondent

insensibility in those he sees! This is your handle to work on. He is

peculiarly flattered, too, on the score of devotion and affection; he

exacts in love, as from the world, too much. He is a Lara, whose females

must be Medoras; and even his male friends should be extremely like

Kaleds! Poor man! you see how easily he can be duped. Mem.--Among

persons of this character are usually found those oddities, humours,

and peculiarities which are each a handle. No man lives out of the world

with impunity to the solidity of his own character. Every new outlet to

the humour is a new inlet to the heart.

IV.

The bold, generous, frank, and affectionate man,--usually a person of

robust health. His constitution keeps him in spirits, and his spirits

in courage and in benevolence. He is obviously not a hard character, my

good young friends, for you to deceive; for he wants suspicion, and all

his good qualities lay him open to you. But beware his anger when he

finds you out! He is a terrible Othello when his nature is once stung.

Mem.--A good sort of character to seduce into illegal practices; makes

a tolerable traitor or a capital smuggler. You yourselves must never

commit any illegal offence,--aren't there cat's-paws for the

chestnuts? As all laws are oppressions (only necessary and often sacred

oppressions, which you need not explain to him), and his character

is especially hostile to oppression, you easily seduce the person we

describe into braving the laws of his country. Yes! the bold, generous,

frank, and affectionate man has only to be born in humble life to be

sure of a halter!

V.

The bold, selfish, close, grasping man will in all probability cheat

you, my dear friends. For such a character makes the master-rogue, the

stuff from which Nature forms a Richard the Third. You had better leave

such a man quite alone. He is bad even to serve. He breaks up his tools

when he has done with them. No, you can do nothing with him, my good

young men!

VI.

The eating, drinking, unthoughtful, sensual, mechanical man,--the

ordinary animal. Such a creature has cunning, and is either cowardly or

ferocious; seldom in these qualities he preserves a medium. He is not

by any means easy to dupe. Nature defends her mental brutes by the

thickness of their hide. Win his mistress if possible; she is the best

person to manage him. Such creatures are the natural prey of artful

women; their very stolidity covers all but sensuality. To the Samson-the

Delilah.

VII.

The gay, deceitful, shrewd, polished, able man,--the courtier, the

man of the world. In public and stirring life this is the fit

antagonist,--often the successful and conquering rival of Character V.

You perceive a man like this varies so greatly in intellect--from the

mere butterfly talent to the rarest genius, from the person you see

at cards to the person you see in Cabinets, from the ----- to the

Chesterfield, from the Chesterfield to the Pericles--that it is

difficult to give you an exact notion of the weak points of a character

so various. But while he dupes his equals and his superiors, I consider

him, my attentive pupils, by no means a very difficult character for

an inferior to dupe. And in this manner you must go about it. Do not

attempt hypocrisy; he will see through it in an instant. Let him think

you at once, and at first sight, a rogue. Be candid on that matter

yourself; but let him think you a useful rogue. Serve him well and

zealously; but own that you do so, because you consider your interest

involved in this. This reasoning satisfies him; and as men of this

character are usually generous, he will acknowledge its justice

by throwing you plenty of sops, and stimulating you with bountiful

cordials. Should he not content you herein, appear contented; and

profit in betraying him (that is the best way to cheat him), not by his

failings, but by opportunity. Watch not his character, but your time.

VIII.

The vain, arrogant, brave, amorous, flashy character. This sort of

character we formerly attributed to the French, and it is still more

common to the Continent than that beloved island which I shall see no

more! A creature of this description is made up of many false virtues;

above others, it is always profuse where its selfishness is appealed to,

not otherwise. You must find, then, what pleases it, and pander to its

tastes. So will ye cheat it,--or ye will cheat it also by affecting the

false virtues which it admires itself,--rouge your sentiments highly,

and let them strut with a buskined air; thirdly, my good young men, ye

will cheat it by profuse flattery, and by calling it in especial “the

mirror of chivalry.”

IX.

The plain, sensible, honest man,--a favourable, but not elevated

specimen of our race. This character, my beloved pupils, you may take in

once, but never twice. Nor can you take in such a man as a stranger; he

must be your friend or relation, or have known intimately some part

of your family. A man of this character is always open, though in a

moderate and calm degree, to the duties and ties of life. He will always

do something to serve his friend, his brother, or the man whose father

pulled his father out of the Serpentine. Affect with him no varnish;

exert no artifice in attempting to obtain his assistance. Candidly state

your wish for such or such a service, sensibly state your pretensions,

modestly hint at your gratitude. So may you deceive him once, then leave

him alone forever!

X.

The fond, silly, credulous man, all impulse and no reflection,--how my

heart swells when I contemplate this excellent character! What a Canaan

for you does it present! I envy you launching into the world with

the sanguine hope of finding all men such! Delightful enthusiasm

of youth,--would that the hope could be realized! Here is the very

incarnation of gullibility. You have only to make him love you, and no

hedgehog ever sucked egg as you can suck him. Never be afraid of his

indignation; go to him again and again; only throw yourself on his

neck and weep. To gull him once is to gull him always; get his first

shilling, and then calculate what you will do with the rest of his

fortune. Never desert so good a man for new friends; that would

be ungrateful in you! And take with you, by the way, my good young

gentlemen, this concluding maxim: Men are like lands; you will get

more by lavishing all your labour again and again upon the easy than by

ploughing up new ground in the sterile! Legislators,--wise, good, pious

men,--the Tom Thumbs of moral science, who make giants first, and

then kill them,--you think the above lessons villanous. I honour your

penetration. They are not proofs of my villany, but of your folly! Look

over them again, and you will see that they are designed to show that

while ye are imprisoning, transporting, and hanging thousands every day,

a man with a decent modicum of cunning might practise every one of those

lessons which seem to you so heinous, and not one of your laws could

touch him!

BRACHYLOGIA;

OR,

ESSAYS, CRITICAL, SENTIMENTAL, MORAL, AND ORIGINAL.

ADDRESSED TO HIS PUPILS

BY AUGUSTUS TOMLINSON.

The irony in the preceding essays is often lost sight of in the

present. The illness of this great man, which happened while

composing these little gems, made him perhaps more in earnest

than when in robust health.--Editor's Note.

ON THE MORALITY TAUGHT BY THE RICH TO THE POOR.

As soon as the urchin pauper can totter out of doors, it is taught to

pull off its hat, and pull its hair to the quality. “A good little boy,”

says the squire; “there's a ha'penny for you.” The good little boy glows

with pride. That ha'penny instils deep the lesson of humility. Now goes

our urchin to school. Then comes the Sunday teaching,--before church,

which enjoins the poor to be lowly, and to honour every man better off

than themselves. A pound of honour to the squire, and an ounce to the

beadle. Then the boy grows up; and the Lord of the Manor instructs him

thus: “Be a good boy, Tom, and I'll befriend you. Tread in the steps of

your father; he was an excellent man, and a great loss to the parish;

he was a very civil, hard-working, well-behaved creature; knew his

station;--mind, and do like him!” So perpetual hard labour and plenty of

cringing make the ancestral virtues to be perpetuated to peasants till

the day of judgment! Another insidious distillation of morality is

conveyed through a general praise of the poor. You hear false friends of

the people, who call themselves Liberals and Tories, who have an idea of

morals half chivalric, half pastoral, agree in lauding the unfortunate

creatures whom they keep at work for them. But mark the virtues the poor

are always to be praised for,--industry, honesty, and content. The

first virtue is extolled to the skies, because industry gives the rich

everything they have; the second, because honesty prevents an iota

of the said everything being taken away again; and the third, because

content is to hinder these poor devils from ever objecting to a lot so

comfortable to the persons who profit by it. This, my pupils, is the

morality taught by the rich to the poor!

EMULATION.

The great error of emulation is this: we emulate effects without

inquiring into causes. When we read of the great actions of a man,

we are on fire to perform the same exploits, without endeavouring to

ascertain the precise qualities which enabled the man we imitate to

commit the actions we admire. Could we discover these, how often might

we discover that their origin was a certain temper of body, a certain

peculiarity of constitution, and that, wish we for the same success, we

should be examining the nature of our bodies rather than sharpening

the faculties of our minds,--should use dumbbells, perhaps, instead of

books; nay, on the other hand, contract some grievous complaint rather

than perfect our moral salubrity. Who should say whether Alexander would

have been a hero had his neck been straight; or Boileau a satirist, had

he never been pecked by a turkey? It would be pleasant to see you, my

beloved pupils, after reading “Quintus Curtius,” twisting each other's

throat; or, fresh from Boileau, hurrying to the poultry-yard in the hope

of being mutilated into the performance of a second “Lutrin.”

CAUTION AGAINST THE SCOFFERS OF “HUMBUG.”

My beloved pupils, there is a set of persons in the world, daily

increasing, against whom you must be greatly on your guard; there is

a fascination about them. They are people who declare themselves

vehemently opposed to humbug,--fine, liberal fellows, clear-sighted, yet

frank. When these sentiments arise from reflection, well and good,--they

are the best sentiments in the world; but many take them up second hand.

They are very inviting to the indolence of the mob of gentlemen who see

the romance of a noble principle, not its utility. When a man looks

at everything through this dwarfing philosophy, everything has a great

modicum of humbug. You laugh with him when he derides the humbug in

religion, the humbug in politics, the humbug in love, the humbug in the

plausibilities of the world; but you may cry, my dear pupils, when he

derides what is often the safest of all practically to deride,--the

humbug in common honesty! Men are honest from religion, wisdom,

prejudice, habit, fear, and stupidity; but the few only are wise; and

the persons we speak of deride religion, are beyond prejudice, unawed by

habit, too indifferent for fear, and too experienced for stupidity.

POPULAR WRATH AT INDIVIDUAL IMPRUDENCE.

You must know, my dear young friends, that while the appearance of

magnanimity is very becoming to you, and so forth, it will get you

a great deal of ill-will if you attempt to practise it to your own

detriment. Your neighbours are so invariably, though perhaps insensibly,

actuated by self-interest--self-interest--[Mr. Tomlinson is wrong

here; but his ethics were too much narrowed to Utilitarian

principles.--EDITOR.]--is so entirely, though every twaddler denies

it, the axis of the moral world--that they fly into a rage with him who

seems to disregard it. When a man ruins himself, just hear the abuse he

receives; his neighbours take it as a personal affront!

DUM DEFLUAT AMNIS.

One main reason why men who have been great are disappointed, when

they retire to private life, is this: Memory makes a chief source of

enjoyment to those who cease eagerly to hope; but the memory of the

great recalls only that public life which has disgusted them. Their

private life hath slipped insensibly away, leaving faint traces of the

sorrow or the joy which found them too busy to heed the simple and quiet

impressions of mere domestic vicissitude.

SELF-GLORIFIERS.

Providence seems to have done to a certain set of persons--who always

view their own things through a magnifying medium, deem their house

the best in the world, their gun the truest, their very pointer a

miracle--as Colonel Hanger suggested to economists to do; namely,

provide their servants each with a pair of large spectacles, so that a

lark might appear as big as a fowl, and a twopenny loaf as large as a

quartern.

THOUGHT ON FORTUNE.

It is often the easiest move that completes the game. Fortune is like

the lady whom a lover carried off from all his rivals by putting an

additional lace upon his liveries.

WIT AND TRUTH.

People may talk about fiction being the source of fancy, and wit being

at variance with truth. Now, some of the wittiest things in the world

are witty solely from their truth. Truth is the soul of a good saying.

“You assert,” observes the Socrates of modern times, “that we have a

virtual representation; very well, let us have a virtual taxation too!”

Here the wit is in the fidelity of the sequitur. When Columbus broke the

egg, where was the wit? In the completeness of conviction in the broken

egg.

AUTO-THEOLOGY.

Not only every sect but every individual modifies the general attributes

of the Deity towards assimilation with his own character: the just man

dwells on the justice, the stern upon the wrath; the attributes that do

not please the worshipper he insensibly forgets. Wherefore, O my pupils,

you will not smile when you read in Barnes that the pygmies declared

Jove himself was a pygmy. The pious vanity of man makes him adore his

own qualities under the pretence of worshipping those of his God.

GLORIOUS CONSTITUTION.

A sentence is sometimes as good as a volume. If a man ask you to give

him some idea of the laws of England, the answer is short and easy: In

the laws of England there are somewhere about one hundred and fifty laws

by which a poor man may be hanged, but not one by which he can obtain

justice for nothing!

ANSWER TO THE POPULAR CANT THAT

GOODNESS IN A STATESMAN IS

BETTER THAN ABILITY.

As in the world we must look to actions, not motives, so a knave is the

man who injures you; and you do not inquire whether the injury be the

fruit of malice or necessity. Place, then, a fool in power, and he

becomes unconsciously the knave. Mr. Addington stumbled on the two very

worst and most villanous taxes human malice could have invented,--one on

medicines, the other on justice. What tyrant's fearful ingenuity could

afflict us more than by impeding at once redress for our wrongs, and

cure for our diseases? Mr. Addington was the fool in se, and therefore

the knave in office; but, bless you! he never meant it!

COMMON-SENSE.

Common-sense,--common-sense,--of all phrases, all catchwords, this is

often the most deceitful and the most dangerous. Look, in especial,

suspiciously upon common-sense whenever it is opposed to discovery.

Common-sense is the experience of every day. Discovery is something

against the experience of every day. No wonder, then, that when Galileo

proclaimed a great truth, the universal cry was, “Pshaw! common-sense

will tell you the reverse.” Talk to a sensible man for the first time on

the theory of vision, and hear what his common-sense will say to it. In

a letter in the time of Bacon, the writer, of no mean intellect himself,

says: “It is a pity the chancellor should set his opinion against the

experience of so many centuries and the dictates of common-sense.”

Common-sense, then, so useful in household matters, is less useful in

the legislative and in the scientific world than it has been generally

deemed. Naturally, the advocate for what has been tried, and averse

to what is speculative, it opposes the new philosophy that appeals to

reason, and clings to the old which is propped by sanction.

LOVE, AND WRITERS ON LOVE.

My warm, hot-headed, ardent young friends, ye are in the flower of your

life, and writing verses about love,--let us say a word on the

subject. There are two species of love common to all men and to most

animals,--[Most animals; for some appear insensible to the love of

custom]--one springs from the senses, the other grows out of custom.

Now, neither of these, my dear young friends, is the love that you

pretend to feel,--the love of lovers. Your passion, having only its

foundation (and that unacknowledged) in the senses, owes everything else

to the imagination. Now, the imagination of the majority is different

in complexion and degree in every country and in every age; so also, and

consequently, is the love of the imagination. As a proof, observe that

you sympathize with the romantic love of other times or nations only

in proportion as you sympathize with their poetry and imaginative

literature. The love which stalks through the “Arcadia” or “Amadis

of Gaul” is to the great bulk of readers coldly insipid or solemnly

ridiculous. Alas! when those works excited enthusiasm, so did the love

which they describe. The long speeches, the icy compliments, expressed

the feeling of the day. The love madrigals of the time of Shenstone,

or the brocade gallantries of the French poets in the last century, any

woman now would consider hollow or childish, imbecile or artificial.

Once the songs were natural, and the love seductive. And now, my young

friends, in the year 1822, in which I write, and shall probably die, the

love which glitters through Moore, and walks so ambitiously ambiguous

through the verse of Byron; the love which you consider now so deep and

so true; the love which tingles through the hearts of your young ladies,

and sets you young gentlemen gazing on the evening star,--all that love

too will become unfamiliar or ridiculous to an after age; and the young

aspirings and the moonlight dreams and the vague fiddle-de-dees which

ye now think so touching and so sublime will go, my dear boys, where

Cowley's Mistress and Waller's Sacharissa have gone before,--go with the

Sapphos and the Chloes, the elegant “charming fairs,” and the chivalric

“most beauteous princesses!” The only love-poetry that stands through

all time and appeals to all hearts is that which is founded on either

or both the species of love natural to all men,--the love of the senses,

and the love of custom. In the latter is included what middle-aged men

call the rational attachment, the charm of congenial minds, as well

as the homely and warmer accumulation of little memories of simple

kindness, or the mere brute habitude of seeing a face as one would see

a chair. These, sometimes singly, sometimes skilfully blended, make the

theme of those who have perhaps loved the most honestly and the most

humanly; these yet render Tibullus pathetic, and Ovid a master over

tender affections; and these, above all, make that irresistible and

all-touching inspiration which subdues the romantic, the calculating,

the old, the young, the courtier, the peasant, the poet, the man of

business, in the glorious love-poetry of Robert Burns.

THE GREAT ENTAILED.

The great inheritance of man is a commonwealth of blunders. One race

spend their lives in botching the errors transmitted to them by another;

and the main cause of all political, that is, all the worst and most

general, blunders is this,--the same rule we apply to individual cases

we will not apply to public. All men consent that swindling for a horse

is swindling,--they punish the culprit and condemn the fault. But in a

State there is no such unanimity. Swindling, Lord help you! is called

by some fine name; and cheating grows grandiloquent, and styles itself

“Policy.” In consequence of this there is always a battle between those

who call things by their right names and those who pertinaciously

give them the wrong ones. Hence all sorts of confusion. This confusion

extends very soon to the laws made for individual cases; and thus in

old States, though the world is still agreed that private swindling is

private swindling, there is the Devil's own difficulty in punishing the

swindling of the public. The art of swindling now is a different thing

to the art of swindling a hundred years ago; but the laws remain the

same. Adaptation in private cases is innovation in public; so, without

repealing old laws, they make new. Sometimes these are effectual, but

more often not. Now, my beloved pupils, a law is a gun which if it

misses a pigeon always kills a crow; if it does not strike the guilty,

it hits some one else. As every crime creates a law, so in turn every

law creates a crime; and hence we go on multiplying sins and evils, and

faults and blunders, till society becomes the organized disorder for

picking pockets.

THE REGENERATION OF A KNAVE.

A man who begins the world by being a fool often ends it by becoming

a knave; but he who begins as a knave, if he be a rich man (and so not

hanged), may end, my beloved pupils, in being a pious creature. And this

is the wherefore: “a knave early” soon gets knowledge of the world. One

vice worn out makes us wiser than fifty tutors. But wisdom causes us to

love quiet, and in quiet we do not sin. He who is wise and sins not can

scarcely fail of doing good; for let him but utter a new truth, and even

his imagination cannot conceive the limit of the good he may have done

to man!

STYLE.

Do you well understand what a wonderful thing style is? I think not; for

in the exercises you sent me, your styles betrayed that no very earnest

consideration had been lavished upon them. Know, then, that you must

pause well before you take up any model of style. On your style often

depends your own character,--almost always the character given you by

the world. If you adopt the lofty style,--if you string together noble

phrases and swelling Sonora,--you have expressed, avowed, a frame of

mind which you will insensibly desire to act up to; the desire gradually

begets the capacity. The life of Dr. Parr is Dr. Parr's style put in

action; and Lord Byron makes himself through existence unhappy for

having accidentally slipped into a melancholy current of words. But

suppose you escape this calamity by a peculiar hardihood of temperament,

you escape not the stamp of popular opinion. Addison must ever be held

by the vulgar the most amiable of men, because of the social amenity of

his diction; and the admirers of language will always consider Burke a

nobler spirit than Fox, because of the grandeur of his sentences. How

many wise sayings have been called jests because they were wittily

uttered! How many nothings swelled their author into a sage, ay,

a saint, because they were strung together by the old hypocrite

nun,--Gravity!

THE END.

End of Project Gutenberg's Paul Clifford, Complete, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton