"the Ferrara, too, our nation's pride."
The dialogue is throughout absolutely stupid. You are not made by it
either to hate or despise the Swains, nor are you led to laugh at them;
but lay down the satire for minute or two, peevishly suspecting that you
have been reading arrant nonsense.
You take up the trash again; and, being a Scotsman, you are perhaps not
altogether quite so well pleased to find that it suddenly waxes into
something very like poetry. The description of the cave had made you
wince--why, you knew not; for nothing the least like it ever existed in
Scotland, or out of it; and your high cheekbones had tingled. The
reprobate can write, you are forced to confess, while Christopher North
holds up to your confusion the picture of Famine.
"Thus plain'd the boys, when from her throne of turf
With boils emboss'd, and overgrown with scurf,
Vile humours, which, in life's corrupted well,
Mix'd at the birth, not abstinence could quell,
Pale Famine rear'd the head; her eager eyes,
Where hunger ev'n to madness seem'd to rise,
Speaking aloud her throes and pangs of heart,
Strain'd to get loose, and from their orbs to start.
Her hollow cheeks were each a deep sunk cell,
Where wretchedness and horror lov'd to dwell:
With double rows of useless teeth supply'd,
Her mouth from ear to ear extended wide,
Which when for want of food her entrails pin'd
She op'd, and, cursing, swallow'd nought but wind:
All shrivell'd was her skin; and here and there,
Making their way by force, her bones lay bare:
Such filthy sight to hide from human view
O'er her foul limbs a tatter'd plaid she threw.
"'Cease,' cry'd the goddess, 'cease, despairing swains!
And from a parent hear what Jove ordains.
"'Pent in this barren corner of the isle,
Where partial Fortune never deign'd to smile,
Like Nature's bastards, reaping for our share
What was rejected by the lawful heir;
Unknown amongst the nations of the earth,
Or only known to raise contempt and mirth;
Long free, because the race of Roman braves
Thought it not worth their while to make us slaves,
Then into bondage by that nation brought
Whose ruin we for ages vainly sought,
Whom still with unslak'd hate we view, and still,
The pow'r of mischief lost, retain the will;
Consider'd as the refuse of mankind,
A mass till the last moment left behind,
Which frugal Nature doubted, as it lay,
Whether to stamp with life or throw away;
Which, form'd in haste, was planted in this nook,
But never enter'd in Creation's book,
Branded as traitors, who, for love of gold,
Would sell their God, as once their king they sold;
Long have we borne this mighty weight of ill,
These vile injurious taunts, and bear them still;
But times of happier note are now at hand,
And the full promise of a better land:
There, like the sons of Isr'el, having trode
For the fix'd term of years ordain'd by God,
A barren desert, we shall seize rich plains,
Where milk with honey flows, and plenty reigns:
With some few natives join'd, some pliant few,
Who worship int'rest, and our track pursue;
There shall we, tho' the wretched people grieve,
Ravage at large, nor ask the owners' leave.
"'For us the earth shall bring forth her increase;
For us the flocks shall wear a golden fleece;
Fat beeves shall yield us dainties not our own,
And the grape bleed a nectar yet unknown:
For our advantage shall their harvests grow,
And Scotsmen reap what they disdain'd to sow:
For us the sun shall climb the eastern hill;
For us the rain shall fall, the dew distil:
When to our wishes Nature cannot rise,
Art shall be task'd to grant us fresh supplies;
His brawny arm shall drudging Labour strain,
And for our pleasure suffer daily pain:
Trade shall for us exert her utmost pow'rs,
Hers all the toil, and all the profit ours:
For us the oak shall from his native steep
Descend, and fearless travel thro' the deep;
The sail of commerce, for our use unfurl'd,
Shall waft the treasures of each distant world;
For us sublimer heights shall science reach;
For us their statesmen plot, their churchmen preach:
Their noblest limbs of counsel we'll disjoint,
And, mocking, new ones of our own appoint:
Devouring War, imprison'd in the north,
Shall at our call in horrid pomp break forth;
And when, his chariot wheels with thunder hung,
Fell Discord braying with her brazen tongue,
Death in the van, with Anger, Hate, and Fear,
And Desolation stalking in the rear,
Revenge, by Justice guided, in his train,
He drives inpet'ous o'er the trembling plain,
Shall at our bidding quit his lawful prey,
And to meek, gentle, gen'rous Peace give way.
"'Think not, my sons! that this so bless'd estate
Stands at a distance on the roll of Fate;
Already big with hopes of future sway,
Ev'n from this cave I scent my destin'd prey.
Think not that this dominion o'er a race,
Whose former deeds shall Time's last annals grace,
In the rough face of peril must be sought,
And with the lives of thousands dearly bought:
No--fool'd by cunning, by that happy art
Which laughs to scorn the blund'ring hero's heart,
Into the snare shall our kind neighbours fall,
With open eyes, and fondly give us all."
Alongside of any one of the masterpieces of Dryden or Pope, this, perhaps
the most vigorous thing of Churchill's, is seen to be a daub. Yet Cockney
connoisseurs still think it a fine picture. When fresh from the easel, it
was thus praised by a metropolitan critic:--
"You'll own the great Churchill possesses, I hope,
More fancy than Cowley, more numbers than Pope;
More strength, too, than Dryden--for, think on what's past,
He has not only rivall'd, but beat them at last."
A hearty national prejudice is no bad foundation for a Poem. It implies
one great requisite of success--a secure large sympathy. This "trusted
home" animates the poet; and a reception, answering to the confidence,
awaits the work. Moreover, ungrounded or exaggerated as these
depreciations and antipathies are likely to be, they usually spring out of
some deep-laid element in the character of those who entertain them, and
have thus the vital warmth and strength that feed poetry, and an original
truth of nature mixed up amongst fallacies of opinion. Caricatured
representation is the proper vehicle. For Censure is then half disarmed,
when to her exception, "This is not so," the reply lies upon the face of
the performance, "Neither is it offered for true." The hyperbole of the
phrase covers the distortion of the thinking. If we are to find fault with
Churchill's "Prophecy of Famine," it must be upon some other ground than
the injustice or cruelty of the attack upon poor Scotland, or the hardness
of the hits delivered, it may be, by a fist gloved in iron.
Who grudges the attack? Not Sawney himself, if it is made in masterly
style. A magnanimous combatant, who has the true enthusiasm of the fight,
admires the skill of the stroke that threatens him with defeat or death.
Spite, malice, aversion, enmity, are not ingratiating demonstrations. Far
from it. Ill-will is naturally met with ill-will. But besides that which
is unavoidably self-regarding in such a relation of parties, room is open
for views of a more general feature, of a more generous complexion. John
Bull scowls at Sawney, and makes mouths at his oatmeal diet, with lips to
which the memory of his own roast-beef cleaves. The last-mentioned dish is
not altogether unknown north of the Tweed. But John Bull knows not the
unimaginable fact, or knew it not, for the barrier is now widely broken
down. Sawney has humour enough to be amused by the writhing apprehension
of dry and lean fare which deforms the well-fed and jocund face of the
bacon-bolter.
There is in the description and Amabaean lament of the two gaunt and
shivering young Arcadians, and in the cave of the tutelary Goddess,
Famine, the intention at least of the picturesque and poetical. The fault
is, that the thing has no bringing out or completeness. It is
incomposite--as a plan, unintelligible. Are the _dramatis personae_,
Sawney, Jockey, and the Goddess, with Sawney's love, the whole population
of Scotland? Do the two lads, and their sheep, and Famine, occupy the same
sole cave which is all the houses in Scotland? Is it a comprehensive
Allegory under the guise of a pastoral Idyl? A ground is laid; and it is
easy to conceive that a Hogarth in verse, with his stored eye, and that
hand mimic and creative, which, by some unmistaken touch of nature, sets
upon capricious extravagance the known seal of truth, might have finished
a picture which experience itself would have half-believed in spite of its
conviction, that never had there been such an hungered race. But such a
Hogarth in verse was not Churchill. Upon the ground laid, a Satire might
have been made out by such a genius, exaggerated, witty,
poetical--pleasing even to the posterity of the victims. But instead of
crowded ideas, here are but three or four. This writing does, in fact, not
express the national prejudices of South Britain against North Britain. It
expresses the zeal of party and of a partizan. One can hardly conceive
such an ignorance of Scotland in England, as that a man of ability wishing
to traduce and ridicule the country, should sit down contented under such
a paucity of mischievous information. He writes under one simple
rule--negation. To deny food, to deny clothes, to deny houses, to deny
sunshine, grass, _rivers_ even, requires no mental effort of any kind, and
is the part of a dunce and an ignoramus. For any thing positive, the
Scotch are proud, have high cheekbones, and love brimstone and rebellion.
That is the amount of the picture. Famine consoles the two hungry lads who
mourn over the Fifteen and the Forty-five, with prophesying the invasion
and conquest of England by the Bute Administration--a glorious hope, a
national redress, and a private filling of empty purses and stomachs.
Churchill was himself poverty-stricken in mind, during the composition of
this blunder, to a degree that never befell any true poet.
An Englishman of this day must be puzzled to bring back the time when
Scotland was so completely a _terra incognita_ to her sister, as that this
rude and unlearned caricature could pass. Indeed, he hardly understands
the hate--he to whom prose and verse, from one great hand, and poetry
profusedly scattered like flowers all over the soil from another, have
made hallowed the land of romance, and of dreams more beautiful than
romance, and for whom the words, "Caledonia, stern and wild," mean any
thing but repulsion. But one must remember, that poetry was at the time at
a low ebb, almost stagnant in England, and that any thing that looked like
an image was aprodigy. If Gray and Collins now and then struck the lyre,
they stood apart from the prevailing prosaic and common-place tone of the
times. An Englishman of to-day knows the name of Home by one of the most
popular tragedies on his stage, if not one of the most vigorous, yet
amongst modern dramas, one of the most affecting; and he wonders when that
name is introduced by Churchill for the purpose of aggravating the
contempt of Scotland, represented as a region Boeotian in wit, quite as
much as by its atmosphere. He understands by what attraction Collins
addressed to Home his "Ode on the Superstitions of the Highlands."
Political hatred, the dislike, the indignation, which may have been widely
enough diffused through the nation, at the interloping of Scotchmen in the
high places of power and emolument--this was the sentiment in the national
bosom which gave a meaning to the poem, and found it a reception. Such a
sentiment is not scrupulous or critical--it is passionate merely--and asks
not the happinesses of humour, wit, fancy, of the graphical and the
characteristic. It asks bitter animosity, and vile vituperation, and is
satisfied.
The individuality of a nation is curiously made up. The country which they
inhabit makes a part of it, the most easily understood. Their manners,
customs, and institutions make another part of it, much of which is
outward, picturesque, and easily seen. Their history, that which they have
done, and that which they have endured, makes a part. And lastly, that
which runs through all, rises out of all, animates all, their proper
personality, their intellectual and moral character, makes a part--and now
you have the whole. We demand of the writer who will, in earnest, paint
the people, that he shall know all these things extensively, variously,
profoundly. And of the Satirist, who will hold up the nation to dislike
and to laughter, that he too shall show he knows them, their defects and
their deformities, their crimes and their customs, their sins and their
sorrows, their sufferings and their absurdities, their monstrosities and
their misfortunes, God's curse or of their own consciences, that may have
stricken their country and their condition, and starved the paupers in
body and in soul. Such chastisement might be terrible, and not undeserved.
But to inflict it, was far beyond the power of poor Charles Churchill.
"Waft me, some Muse, to Tweed's enchanting stream,
Where all the little Loves and Graces dream:
_Where, slowly winding, the dull waters creep,_
_And seem themselves to own the power of sleep;_
_Where on the surface lead, like feathers, swims;_
There let me bathe my yet unhallow'd limbs,
As once a Syrian bathed in Jordan's flood;
Wash off my native stains, correct that blood
Which mutinies at call of English pride,
And, deaf to prudence, rolls a patriot tide."
Ay, much the better would he have been of a dip in the Tweed. He was a
big, burly fellow; but, though no great swimmer, he would have found it
buoyant after a debauch. His native stains, washed off, would, alas! have
sadly discoloured the Angler's Delight. Worse than a hundred
Sheep-washings. But at one gleam of the showery bow, the waters would have
resumed their lustre. He was the last man in the world who ought to have
abused brimstone; for his soul had the Itch. A wallow in the sweet
mould--the pure mire of Cardronna Mains--on a dropping day, would have
been of service to his body, bloated with foul blood. Smeared with that
sanative soil, he might have been born again--no more a leper.
"I remember well," says Dr Kippis, "that he dressed his younger son [the
son of his wife--not of the mistress for whom he abandoned her] in a
Scottish plaid, like a little Highlander, and carried him every where in
that garb. The boy being asked by a gentleman with whom I was in company,
why he was clothed in such a manner, answered _with great
vivacity_,--'Sir, my father hates the Scotch, and does it to plague
them.'" For a father to dress up his son in the garb of a people, despised
and detested with perpetual scunner, seems an odd demonstration either of
party spite or of paternal fondness--about as sensible as, on the
anniversary of his birth-day, in compliment to his mother, to have dressed
him up like a monkey.
The Patriot Satirist! The question inevitably obtrudes itself--what is the
pointing of destiny, which singles out Churchill for the indignant
protector, in verse, of England's freedom and welfare? What calls his hand
into the van of battle, with the strong lance of justice laid in rest, to
tilt against the ill-defended breast of poor, proud, hungry, jacobinical,
place-loving, coin-attached and coin-attaching, muse-left,
gibbet-favoured, tartan-clad, sulphur-scented, and thistle-growing
Scotland? The hero of liberty, the self-offered martyr for the rights and
the wrongs of a great people, should carry on his front, one might
suppose, some evidence of the over-mastering spirit which, like a
necessity, finds him out, and throws him, as if a lot-drawn champion,
alone into the jaws and jeopardy of the war. It should be one, of whom, if
you knew him yet obscure, you might divine and say, "This is _his_
hour--_his_ is the mind that consecrates its possessor to a consecrated
cause, that discriminates, essentially as the spirits of light as divided
from the spirits of darkness, the lover of his country from the factious
partizan, and from the seditious demagogue." There should be a private
life and character that but repeat themselves in the public ones, on a
bolder and gigantic scale. Else how ready does the apprehension rise, that
the professed hostility to unjust men in power is no more than the
reluctance of an ill-disciplined spirit, under the offence and constraint
of institutions which set superiors over his head, and gall him by
bridling an unruly will;--whilst the clamorous zeal for the general good
is purely the choice of the staking gamester between red and black, and
the preference of the million-headed patron to the cheapener with a few
heads or with one. The two known traits, which largely comprehend the
private life of Churchill, do not prepossess one in his favour. He left
his profession, the church; and he exchanged his wife, after many years'
cohabitation, for a mistress; two paramount desecrations unhappily met.
And the trumpet-call to the war-field of patriotism sings but
uncheeringly, when the blast is winded by the breath of Wilkes.
When the shame of England burns in the heart of Cowper, you must believe
him; for through that heart rolled the best of England's blood. But
Churchill! Faugh!
_Edinburgh: Printed Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work._
Footnotes:
[1] _Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, Esq., R.A._ Composed chiefly
of his Letters. By C. R. LESLIE, R.A. Second Edition. Longmans.
[2] Even there we see that he viewed the matter as a task, and piqued
himself only on having succeeded in a _tour-de-force_. Writing to
Archdeacon Fisher, he says--"It was the most difficult subject in
landscape I ever had on my easel. I have not flinched at the windows,
buttresses, &c.; but I have still kept to my grand organ, colour, and have
as usual made my escape in the evanescence of chiaroscuro."--(P. 109.)
[3] "I cannot but recall here a passage in a letter to Mr Fisher, written
by Constable nearly ten years before his death, in which, after speaking
of having removed his family to Hampstead, he says, 'I could gladly
exclaim, here let me take my everlasting rest!'"
[4] One of the greatest and most memorable of the Turkish princes was
Mahmood the Ghaznavide, who reigned in the eastern provinces of Persia,
A.D. 997-1028. His father, Sebactagi, arose from the condition of a slave
to the command of the city and province of Ghazna. In the fall of the
dynasty of the Sammanides, the fortune of Mahmood was confirmed. For him
the title of _sultan_ (signifying _lord_ and _master_) was first invented,
and his kingdom was enlarged from Transoxiana to the neighbourhood of
Ispahan, from the shores of the Caspian to the mouth of the Indus. The
prowess and magnificence of Mahmood, his twelve expeditions into
Hindostan, and the holy wars he waged against the idol-worship of that
country, in one of which he destroyed an image of peculiar sanctity at Diu
or Du in Guzerat, and carried off the gates of Somnauth, (so recently,
once more, become a trophy of triumph and defeat,) the vast treasures
amassed in his campaigns, and the extent and greatness of the Ghaznavide
empire, have always been favourite subjects with Eastern historians. The
instance of his justice recorded in the verses, is given by Gibbon, from
whose history this note is chiefly taken.
Ghazna, from being the emporium of India, and the metropolis of a vast
dominion, had almost shrunk from the eye of the geographer, until, under
the modified appellation of Ghizni, it again emerged into importance in
our Affghan war. A curious crowd of associations is suggested by the fact,
that the town which gave its name to a dynasty that shook the successors
of Mahomet on their thrones, now confers the dignity of Baron on a native
of one of the obscurest villages in Ireland--Lord Keane of Ghizni, _and_
of Cappoquin in the county of Waterford.
[5] Kaff of late years is considered to have been more a creation of
Eastern mythology, than a genuine incontestable mountain. Its position is
supposed to be at the highest point of the great Hindoo-Kosh range. Such
was its astonishing altitude, that, says D'Herbelot, "vous trouvez souvent
dans leurs anciens livres, pour exprimer le lever du soleil, cette facon
de parler, _aussitot que cet astre parut sur la cime du Mont Caf, le monde
fut eclaire de sa lumiere_: de meme pour comprendre toute l'etendue de la
terre et de l'eau, ils disent _Depuis Caf a Caf_--c'est a dire, d'une de
ses extremites a l'autre."
[6] The name of Sind, Attok, or Indus, is applied indifferently to the
mighty stream that forms the western boundary of Hindostan.
[7] The tribes of savage warriors inhabiting the Kipchak, or table-land of
Tartary, have been distinguished by the name of the Golden Hordes. There
is a magnificent lyric on their Battle-charge, by Dr Croly, in the
_Friendship's Offering_ for 1834.
[8] _Essays on Natural History, chiefly Ornithology._ By CHARLES WATERTON,
Esq., author of "Wanderings in South America." Second Series; with a
continuation of the Autobiography of the Author.
[9] "'I do hereby disclaim, disavow, and solemnly abjure any intention to
subvert the present Church Establishment within this realm,' &c. In
framing that abominable oath, I don't believe that Sir Robert Peel cared
one fig's-end whether the soul of a Catholic went up, after death, to the
King of Brightness or descended to the King of Brimstone. His only aim
seems to have been to secure to the Church by law established the full
possession of the loaves and fishes."--_Essays_, 1st series, p. 19.
[10] A long-protracted lawsuit between this artist and Prince Giustiniani
has since attracted much public notice. On cleaning a painting apparently
of little value, which he had purchased at a sale of the refuse of the
prince's gallery, Signor Vallati detected traces of a superior production
beneath that painted over it, on removing which, the long-lost duplicate
of Correggio's Reading Magdalen was brought to light. A claim was now set
up by Prince Giustiniani for the restitution of the picture, or payment of
its full value:--but the cause, after being carried from one tribunal to
another, was at last decided in favour of the right of Vallati to his
prize.
[11] A close analogy, according to this system, existed between pigs and
humming-birds--each representing the _gliriform_ type in their respective
circles, and resembling each other in their small eyes and suctorial
propensities!--See SWAINSON'S _Classification of Birds in_ LARDNER'S
_Cabinet Cyclopaedia_, i. 43.
[12]
"Mopso Nisa datur. Quid non speremus amantes?
Jungentur jam gryphes equis."
VIRGIL, _Eclog._ viii. 26.
[13] _A Popular and Practical Introduction to Law Studies_, &c. &c. By
SAMUEL WARREN, Esq., F.R.S., of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-Law.
[14] P. 71.
[15] The following extract from a memoir of Lord Wynford, written
evidently by a lawyer, manifests, in rather an amusing manner, the _esprit
de corps_ of the profession, and shows how the excitement of the contest
between the advocates effaces the dull interest of what are called the
merits of the case. Note how combative, how military, is the style:--"He
(Lord Wynford) was a dangerous, because he was a most watchful and
enterprising adversary. You could not any more sleep in his neighbourhood
than could the Duke while Massena was near, though he might, in the
neighbourhood of others, enjoy some repose. But if you never could be sure
of his not making some venturous move himself, and were thus kept on the
watch, so also you could not venture upon moves in the hope of his eyes
being closed. It may almost safely be pronounced that he never failed to
see or to profit by the slip of his adversary; to say that he never,
seldom, made slips himself, would be very wide of the truth. In fact, he
was not always a safe leader. Circumspect enough to see when his
antagonist failed, he took a very narrow, or very one-sided, view of his
own risks. Bold to rashness, hasty in his resolutions, quick in all his
thoughts and all his movements, he was often in dangers wholly needless to
be encountered; and though he would occasionally, by desperate courses,
escape beyond all calculation from risks, both inevitable and of his own
seeking, he could not be called a successful advocate."--_Article on_ LORD
WYNFORD, _No. III., Law Review._
[16] Correspondence between Count MUeNSTER and the Baron VON STEIN, in vol.
ii. of the _Lebensbilder aus dem Befreiungskriege_, Jena: 1841.
Letters of Baron STEIN to Baron GAGERN, in Von Gagern's _Antheil an der
Politik_, vol. iv. Stuttgart and Tuebingen: 1833.
[17] Besides the correspondence of Muenster and Gagern, which refer only to
the latter part of Stein's life, from 1811 to his death, we have only a
notice in the _Conversations Lexikon_, and a short biographical sketch by
Arndt, (the Baron's secretary,) appended to his _Erinnerungen_, (Leipsig,
1840,) to guide us in the early part of Stein's career. There are some
notices in the body of _Arndt's Reminiscences_, in Varnhagen's Memoirs,
and in some others, none of which, however, go further back than the year
1811.
[18] _In Prag halten sich die staerksten Maechte und Autriche zum Hassen
gegen Napoleon Zugammengehaeuft._--VARNHAGEN VON ENSE, iii. 195, first
edition.
[19] "_Donnerschwangere Fulgurationer._"--HORMAYR, in the _Lebensbilder_,
i. 63.
[20] SCHARNHORST, Count DOHNA, and President VON SCHOEN, mentioned by
Stein in a previous letter not translated.
[21] _Essai sur les Fictions._