Section X.--Misfortunes of Dryden's Old Age

This was one of his last works;[480] brilliant and poetical, it was born

amidst the greatest sadness. The king for whom he had written was

deposed and in exile; the religion which he had embraced was despised

and oppressed; a Roman Catholic and a royalist, he was bound to a

conquered party, which the nation resentfully and distrustfully

considered as the natural enemy of liberty and reason. He had lost the

two places which were his support; he lived wretchedly, burdened with a

family, obliged to support his sons abroad; treated as a hireling by a

coarse publisher, forced to ask him for money to pay for a watch which

he could not get on credit, beseeching Lord Bolingbroke to protect him

against Tonson's insults, rated by this shopkeeper when the promised

page was not finished on the stated day. His enemies persecuted him with

pamphlets; the severe Collier lashed his comedies unfeelingly; he was

damned without pity, but conscientiously. He had long been in ill

health, crippled, constrained to write much, reduced to exaggerate

flattery in order to earn from the great the indispensable money which

the publishers would not give him:[481] "What Vergil wrote in the vigor

of his age, in plenty and at ease, I have undertaken to translate in my

declining years; struggling with wants, oppressed with sickness, curbed

in my genius, liable to be misconstrued in all I write; and my judges,

if they are not very equitable, already prejudiced against me, by the

lying character which has been given them of my morals."[482] Although

he looked at his conduct from the most favorable point of view, he knew

that it had not always been worthy, and that all his writings would not

endure. Born between two epochs, he had oscillated between two forms of

life and two forms of thought, having reached the perfection of neither,

having kept the faults of both; having discovered in surrounding manners

no support worthy of his character, and in surrounding ideas no subject

worthy of his talent. If he had founded criticism and good style, this

criticism had only its scope in pedantic treatises or unconnected

prefaces; this good style continued out of the track in inflated

tragedies, dispersed over multiplied translations, scattered in

occasional pieces, in odes written to order, in party poems, meeting

only here and there an afflatus capable of employing it, and a subject

capable of sustaining it. What gigantic efforts to end in such a

moderate result! This is the natural condition of man. The end of

everything is pain and agony. For a long time gravel and gout left him

no peace; erysipelas seized one of his legs. In April, 1700, he tried to

go out; "a slight inflammation in one of his toes became, from neglect,

a gangrene;" the doctor would have tried amputation, but Dryden decided

that what remained to him of health and happiness was not worth the

pain. He died at the age of sixty-nine.

[Footnote 376: Dryden's Works, ed. Sir Walter Scott, 2d ed. 18 vols.

1821, XI. 94.]

[Footnote 377: Rapin (1621-1687), a French Jesuit, a modern Latin poet

and literary critic. Bossu, or properly Lebossu (1631-1680), wrote a

"Traité du Poème épique," which had a great success in its day.

Both critics are now completely forgotten.--Tr.]

[Footnote 378: In his "Defence of the Epilogue of the Second Part of the

Conquest of Granada," IV. 226, Dryden says: "Now, if they ask me, whence

it is that our conversation is so much refined, I must freely, and without

flattery, ascribe it to the court."]

[Footnote 379: "Heroic stanzas to the memory of Oliver Cromwell."]

[Footnote 380: "Defence of the Epilogue of the Second Part of the Conquest

of Granada," IV. 213.]

[Footnote 381: Preface to "Troilus and Cressida," VI. 239.]

[Footnote 382: "Defence of the Epilogue of the Conquest of Granada," IV.

219.]

[Footnote 383: "Defence of the Epilogue of the Conquest of Granada," IV.

225-228.]

[Footnote 384: Preface to "All for Love," V. 306.]

[Footnote 385: "An Essay of Dramatic Poesy," XV. 337-341.]

[Footnote 386: "An Essay of Dramatic Poesy," XV. 343.]

[Footnote 387: In the preface of "All for Love," V. 308, Dryden says:

"In this nicety of manners does the excellency of French poetry consist.

Their heroes are the most civil people breathing, but their good

breeding seldom extends to a word of sense; all their wit is in their

ceremony; they want the genius which animates our stage.... Thus, their

Hippolytus is so scrupulous in point of decency, that he will rather

expose himself to death than accuse his stepmother to his father; and my

critics, I am sure, will commend him for it: But we of grosser

apprehensions are apt to think that this excess of generosity is not

practicable but with fools and madmen."

"... But take Hippolytus out of his poetic fit, and I suppose he would

think it a wiser part to set the saddle on the right horse, and chuse

rather to live with the reputation of a plain-spoken honest man, than to

die with the infamy of an incestuous villain.... (The poet) has chosen

to give him the turn of gallantry, sent him to travel from Athens to

Paris, taught him to make love, and transformed the Hippolytus of

Euripides into Monsieur Hippolite." This criticism shows in a small

compass all the common sense and freedom of thought of Dryden; but, at

the same time, all the coarseness of his education and of his age.]

[Footnote 388: Epistle XIV. to Mr. Motteux, XI. 70.]

[Footnote 389: "Tyrannic Love," III. 2, I.]

[Footnote 390: Ibid.]

[Footnote 391: Ibid.]

[Footnote 392: "Tyrannic Love," III. 3, I. This Maximin has a turn for

jokes. Porphyrius, to whom he offers his daughter in marriage, says that

"the distance was so vast"; whereupon Maximin replies: "Yet heaven and

earth, which so remote appear, are by the air, which flows betwixt them,

near" (2, 1).]

[Footnote 393: Lulli (1633-1687), a renowned Italian composer. "Armide" is

one of his chief works.--Tr.]

[Footnote 394: Christian Priest: "But we by martyrdom our faith avow."

Montezuma: "You do no more than I for ours do now.

To prove religion true,

If either wit or sufferings would suffice,

All faiths afford the constant and the wise,

And yet even they, by education sway'd,

In age defend what infancy obeyed."

Christian Priest: "Since age by erring childhood is misled,

Refer yourself to our unerring head."

Montezuma: "Man, and not err! what reason can you give?"

Christian Priest: "Renounce that carnal reason, and believe...."

Pizarro: "Increase their pains, the cords are yet too slack."

--"The Indian Emperor," V. 2.]

[Footnote 395: "Tyrannic Love," III. 5, 1. When dying Maximin says: "And

shoving back this earth on which I sit, I'll mount, and scatter all the

Gods I hit."]

[Footnote 396: "Aureng-Zebe," V. 4, 1. Dryden thought he was imitating

Racine, when six lines further on he makes Nourmahal say:

"I am not changed, I love my husband still;

But love him as he was, when youthful grace

And the first down began to shade his face:

That image does my virgin-flames renew,

And all your father shines more bright in you."

Racine's Phèdre (2, 5) thinks her husband Thesus dead, and says to her

stepson Hippolytus:

"Oui, prince, je languis, je brûle pour Thésée:

Je l'aime...

Mais fidèle, mais fier, et même un peu farouche,

Charmant, jeune, traînant tous les coeurs après soi,

Tel qu'on dépeint nos dieux, ou tel que je vous voi.

Il avait votre port, vos yeux, votre langage;

Cette noble pudeur colorait son visage."

According to a note in Sir Walter Scott's edition of Dryden's works,

Langbaine traces this speech also to Seneca's Hippolytus.--Tr.]

[Footnote 397: "The Indian Emperor," I. 2.]

[Footnote 398: "Aureng-Zebe," V. 2, 1.]

[Footnote 399: "Marriage à la Mode," IV. 3, 1.]

[Footnote 400: "The first image I had of him was from the Achilles of

Homer, the next from Tasso's Rinaldo, and the third from the Artaban of

Monsieur Calpranède."--Preface to "Almanzor."]

[Footnote 401: "The Moors have heaven, and me, to assist their cause"

"I'll whistle thy tame fortune after me" (3, 1).

He falls in love, and speaks thus:

"'Tis he; I feel him now in every part;

Like a new lord he vaunts about my heart,

Surveys in state each corner of my breast,

While poor fierce I, that was, am dispossess'd'" (3, 1).]

[Footnote 402: Compare the song of the Zambra dance in the first part of

"Almanzor and Almahide."]

[Footnote 403: The first part of "Almanzor and Almahide," IV. 5, 2.]

[Footnote 404: "The Indian Emperor," II. 1, 1.]

[Footnote 405: The first part of "Almanzor and Almahide," IV. 2, 1. This

same Lyndaraxa says also to Abdalla (4, 2), "Poor women's thoughts are

all extempore." These logical ladies can be very coarse; for example,

this same damsel says in Act 2, 1, to the same lover, who entreats her

to make him "happy, If I make you so, you shall pay my price."]

[Footnote 406: "He words me, girls; he words me, that I should not

Be noble to myself; but hark thee, Charmian....

Now, Iras, what think'st thou?

Thou, an Egyptian puppet shalt be shown

In Rome, as well as I: mechanic slaves,

With greasy aprons, rules and hammers, shall

Uplift us to the view....

Saucy lictors

Will catch at us, like strumpets; and scald rhymers

Ballad us out o' tune; the quick comedians

Extemporally will stage us, and present

Our Alexandrian revels; Antony

Shall be brought drunken forth, and I shall see

Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness

I' the posture of a whore....

Husband, I come:

Now to that name my courage prove my title!

I am fire and air; my other elements

I give to baser life. So; have you done?

Come, then, and take the last warmth of my lips.

Farewell, kind Charmian; Iras, long farewell....

Dost thou not see my baby at my breast,

That sucks the nurse asleep?"

--Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra," 5, 2.

These two last lines, referring to the asp, are sublime, as the bitter

joke of a courtesan and an artist.]

[Footnote 407: Iras: "Call reason to assist you."

Cleopatra: "I have none,

And none would have: My love's a noble madness

Which shews the cause deserved it: Modest sorrow

Fits vulgar love, and for a vulgar man;

But I have loved with such transcendent passion,

I soared, at first, quite out of reason's view,

And now am lost above it."--"All for Love," V. 2, 1.]

[Footnote 408: Cleop.: "Come to me, come, my soldier, to my arms!

You've been too long away from my embraces;

But, when I have you fast, and all my own,

With broken murmurs, and with amorous sighs,

I'll say, you were unkind, and punish you,

And mark you red with many an eager kiss."--Ibid. V. 3, 1.]

[Footnote 409: Ibid. 4, 1.]

[Footnote 410: Dryden's Miranda says, in the "Tempest" (2, 2): "And if I

can but escape with life, I had rather be in pain nine months, as my

father threatened, than lose my longing." Miranda has a sister; they

quarrel, are jealous of each other, and so on. See also in "The State of

Innocence," 3, 1, the description which Eve gives of her happiness, and

the ideas which her confidences suggest to Satan.]

[Footnote 411: This impotence reminds one of Casimir Delavigne.]

[Footnote 412: See the introductory notice, by Sir Walter Scott, of "All

for Love," V. 290.]

[Footnote 413: Ibid. V. 307.]

[Footnote 414: Ibid. V. 319.]

[Footnote 415: "All for Love," V. 3, 1.]

[Footnote 416: "All for Love," V. 3, 1.]

[Footnote 417: Ibid. 4, 1.]

[Footnote 418: "All for Love," I, 1.]

[Footnote 419: Ibid.]

[Footnote 420: "All for Love," V., 1.]

[Footnote 421: Ibid.]

[Footnote 422: "All for Love," I., 1.]

[Footnote 423: Ibid. II., 1, end.]

[Footnote 424: "All for Love," V., 1.]

[Footnote 425: Monimia says, in the "Orphan" (5, end), when dying, "How

my head swims! 'Tis very dark; good night."]

[Footnote 426: See the death of Pierre and Jaffier in "Venice Preserved"

(5, last scene). Pierre, stabbed once, bursts into a laugh.]

[Footnote 427: Jaffier: "Oh, that my arms were rivetted

Thus round thee ever! But my friends,

my oath!

This, and no more." (Kisses her.)

Belvidera: "Another, sure another

For that poor little one you've ta'en

such care of;

I'll giv't him truly."

--"Venice Preserved," 5, 1.

There is jealousy in this last word.]

[Footnote 428: "Oh, thou art tender all,

Gentle and kind, as sympathizing

nature,

Dove-like, soft and kind....

I'll ever live your most obedient

wife,

Nor ever any privilege pretend

Beyond your will."--"Orphan," 4, 1.]

[Footnote 429: "Venice Preserved," III, 1. Antonio is meant as a copy of

the "celebrated Earl of Shaftesbury, the lewdness of whose latter years,"

says Mr. Thornton in his edition of Otway's Works, 3 vols. 1815, "was a

subject of general notoriety."--Tr.]

[Footnote 430: "The Soldier's Fortune," I, 1.]

[Footnote 431: "The Soldier's Fortune," I, 1.]

[Footnote 432: "Who'd be that sordid foolish thing called man,

To cringe thus, fawn, and flatter for a pleasure,

Which beasts enjoy so very much above him?

The lusty bull ranges thro' all the field,

And from the herd singling his female out,

Enjoys her, and abandons her at will.

It shall be so, I'll yet possess my love,

Wait on, and watch her loose unguarded hours:

Then, when her roving thoughts have been abroad,

And brought in wanton wishes to her heart;

I' th' very minute when her virtue nods,

I'll rush upon her in a storm of love,

Beat down her guard of honour all before me,

Surfeit on joys, till ev'n desire grew sick;

Then by long absence liberty regain.

And quite forget the pleasure and the pain."--"The Orphan," I, 1.

It is impossible to see together more moral roguery and literary

correctness.]

[Footnote 433: Page (to Monimia): "In the morning when you call me to you,

And by your bed I stand and tell you stories,

I am ashamed to see your swelling breasts;

It makes me blush, they are so very white."

Monimia: "Oh men, for flatt'ry and deceit renown'd!"--Ibid.]

[Footnote 434: Burns said, after his arrival in Edinburgh, "Between the

man of rustic life and the polite world, I observed little

difference.... But a refined and accomplished woman was a being

altogether new to me, and of which I had formed but a very inadequate

idea."--(Burns's Works, ed. Cunningham, 1832, 8 vols. I. 207.)]

[Footnote 435: Dryden says, in his "Essay on Satire," XIII. 30, "the

staple to which my genius never much inclined me."]

[Footnote 436: "Essay on Satire," dedicated to the Earl of Dorset, XIII.

16.]

[Footnote 437: "Essay on Satire," XIII. 16.]

[Footnote 438: Ibid. 84.]

[Footnote 439: Dedication of the "Æneïs," XIV. 204.]

[Footnote 440: See Book III, chapter first, section IV.]

[Footnote 441: Ibid.]

[Footnote 442: Dedication of "The Indian Emperor," II. 261.]

[Footnote 443: Dedication of "Tyrannic Love," III. 347.]

[Footnote 444: He also says in the same epistle dedicatory: "All men will

join me in the adoration which I pay you." To the Earl of Rochester he

writes in a letter (XVIII. 90): "I find it is not for me to contend any

way with your Lordship, who can write better on the meanest subject than

I can on the best.... You are above any incense I can give you." In his

dedication of the Fables (XI. 195) he compares the Duke of Ormond to

Joseph, Ulysses, Lucullus, etc. In his fourth poetical epistle (XI. 20)

he compares Lady Castlemaine to Cato.]

[Footnote 445: Dedication of the "Essay of Dramatic Poesy," XV. 286.]

[Footnote 446: See Andrew Marvell's Works, I. 210.]

[Footnote 447: "Marriage à la Mode," IV. 245.]

[Footnote 448: Scott's "Life of Dryden," I. 447.]

[Footnote 449: Letter 2, "to Mr. John Dennis," XVIII. 114.]

[Footnote 450: Letter 29, "to Mrs. Steward," XVIII. 144.]

[Footnote 451: "Essay of Dramatic Poesy," XV. 302.]

[Footnote 452: Preface to "An Evening's Love," III. 225.]

[Footnote 453: Letter 23, "to his sons at Rome," XVIII. 133.]

[Footnote 454: Scott's "Life of Dryden," I. 449.]

[Footnote 455: "Essay on Satire," XIII. 80.]

[Footnote 456: Preface to the Fables, VI. 238.]

[Footnote 457: Ibid.]

[Footnote 458: Ibid. XI. 209.]

[Footnote 459: Charles II.]

[Footnote 460: The Duke of Monmouth.]

[Footnote 461: The Earl of Shaftesbury:

"Of these the false Achitophel was first,

A name to all succeeding ages curst:

For close designs and crooked counsels fit,

Sagacious, bold and turbulent of wit--

Restless, unfixed in principles and place,

In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace;

A fiery soul, which working out its way,

Fretted the pigmy body to decay

And o'er-informed the tenement of clay.

A daring pilot in extremity,

Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high,

He sought the storm; but, for a calm unfit,

Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.

Great wits are sure to madness near allied

And thin partitions do their bounds divide;

Else, why should he, with wealth and honour blest,

Refuse his age the needful hours of rest?

Punish a body which he could not please,

Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?

And all to leave what with his toil he won,

To that unfeathered two-legged thing, a son,

Got, while his soul did huddled notions try,

And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy,

In friendship false, implacable in hate,

Resolved to ruin or to rule the state."]

[Footnote 462: The Duke of Buckingham.]

[Footnote 463: Slingsby Bethel.]

[Footnote 464: Mac Flecknoe.]

[Footnote 465: Mac Flecknoe.]

[Footnote 466: "Strong were our sires, and as they fought they writ,

Conquering with force of arms and dint of wit:

Theirs was the giant race before the flood,

And thus, when Charles return'd, our empire stood.

Like Janus, he the stubborn soil manured,

With rules of husbandry the rankness cured;

Tamed us to manners, when the stage was rude,

And boisterous English wit with art endured....

But what we gain'd in skill we lost in strength,

Our builders were with want of genius curst;

The second temple was not like the first."

--"Epistle 12 to Congreve," XI. 59.]

[Footnote 467: "Held up the buckler of the people's cause

Against the crown, and skulk'd against the laws....

Desire of power, on earth a vicious weed,

Yet, sprung from high, is of celestial seed!"

--"Absalom and Achitophel," Part I.]

[Footnote 468: "Why then should I, encouraging the bad,

Turn rebel, and run popularly mad?"

--Ibid.]

[Footnote 469: "Though Huguenots contemn our

ordination.

Succession, ministerial vocation,"

etc.

("The Hind and the Panther," Part. II. 10. 166). Such are the harsh words

we often find in his books.]

[Footnote 470: Preface to the "Religio Laid," X. 32.]

[Footnote 471: What Augustus says about Horace is charming, but cannot be

quoted, even in Latin.]

[Footnote 472: Epistle 15, XI. 75.]

[Footnote 473: Beginning of "Religio Laici," X. 37.]

[Footnote 474: "The Hind and the Panther," Part I. lines 64-75, X. 121.]

[Footnote 475: "Theodore and Honoria," XI. 435.]

[Footnote 476: "The Hind and the Panther," Part III. lines 553-560, X.

214.]

[Footnote 477: "For her the weeping heavens become

serene,

For her the ground is clad in cheerful

green,

For her the nightingales are taught

to sing,

And nature for her has delayed the

Spring."

These charming verses on the Duchess York remind one of those of La

Fontaine in "Le Songe," addressed to the Princess of Conti.]

[Footnote 478: For instance, in the "Chant du Cirque."]

[Footnote 479: "Alexander's Feast," XI. 183-188.]

[Footnote 480: "Alexander's Feast" was written in 1697, soon after the

publication of the Vergil. In 1699 appeared Dryden's translated tales and

original poems, generally known as "The Fables," in which the portrait of

the English country gentleman is to be found.--Tr.]

[Footnote 481: He was paid two hundred and fifty guineas for ten thousand

lines.]

[Footnote 482: Postscript of Vergil's Works, as translated by Dryden, XV.

p. 187.]

CHAPTER THIRD

The Revolution

Section I.--The Moral Revolution

With the constitution of 1688 a new spirit appears in England. Slowly,

gradually, the moral revolution accompanies the social: man changes with

the state, in the same sense and for the same causes; character moulds

itself to the situation; and little by little, in manners and in

literature, we see spring up a serious, reflective, moral spirit,

capable of discipline and independence, which can alone maintain and

give effect to a constitution.

Section II.--Brutality of the People.--Private Morals.--Chesterfield

and Gay

This was not achieved without difficulty, and at first sight it seems as

though England had gained nothing by this revolution of which she is so

proud. The aspect of things under William, Anne, and the first two

Georges, is repulsive. We are tempted to agree with Swift in his

judgment, to say that if he has depicted a Yahoo, it is because he has

seen him; naked or drawn in his carriage, the Yahoo is not beautiful. We

see but corruption in high places, brutality in low, a band of

intriguers leading a mob of brutes. The human beast, inflamed by

political passions, gives vent to cries and violence, burns Admiral Byng

in effigy, demands his death, would destroy his house and park, sways in

turns from party to party, seems with its blind force ready to

annihilate civil society. When Dr. Sachevevell was tried, the butcher

boys, crossing-sweepers, chimney-sweepers, costermongers, drabs, the

entire scum, conceiving the Church to be in danger, follow him with

yells of rage and enthusiasm, and in the evening set to work to burn and

pillage the dissenters' chapels. When Lord Bute, in defiance of public

opinion, was set up in Pitt's place, he was assailed with stones, and

was obliged to surround his carriage with a strong guard. At every

political crisis was heard a riotous growl, were seen disorder, blows,

broken heads. It was worse when the people's own interests were at

stake. Gin had been discovered in 1684, and about half a century later

England consumed seven millions of gallons.[483] The tavernkeepers on

their signboards invited people to come in and get drunk for a penny;

for twopence they might get dead drunk; no charge for straw; the

landlord dragged those who succumbed into a cellar, where they slept off

their carouse. A man could not walk London streets without meeting

wretches, incapable of motion or thought, lying in the kennel, whom the

care of the passers-by alone could prevent from being smothered in mud,

or run over by carriage wheels. A tax was imposed to stop this madness:

it was in vain; the judges dared not condemn, the informers were

assassinated. The House gave way, and Walpole, finding himself

threatened with a riot, withdrew his law.[484] All these bewigged and

ermined lawyers, these bishops in lace, these embroidered and

gold-bedizened lords, this fine government so cleverly balanced, was

carried on the back of a huge and formidable brute, which as a rule

would tramp peacefully though growlingly on, but which on a sudden, for

a mere whim, could shake and crush it. This was clearly seen in 1780,

during the riots of Lord George Gordon. Without reason or guidance at

the cry of No Popery the excited mob demolished the prisons, let loose

the criminals, abused the Peers, and was for three days master of

London, burning, pillaging, and glutting itself. Barrels of gin were

staved in and made rivers in the streets. Children and women on their

knees drank themselves to death. Some became mad, others fell down

besotted, and the burning and falling houses killed them, and buried

them under their ruins. Eleven years later, at Birmingham, the people

sacked and gutted the houses of the Liberals and Dissenters, and were

found next day in heaps, dead drunk, in the roads and ditches. When

instinct rebels in this over-strong and well-fed race it becomes

perilous. John Bull dashed headlong at the first red rag which he

thought he saw.

The higher ranks were even less estimable than the lower. If there has

been no more beneficial revolution than that of 1688, there has been

none that was launched or supported by dirtier means. Treachery was

everywhere, not simple, but double and triple. Under William and Anne,

admirals, ministers, members of the Privy Council, favorites of the

antechamber, corresponded and conspired with the same Stuarts whom they

had sold, only to sell them again, with a complication of bargains, each

destroying the last, and a complication of perjuries, each surpassing

the last, until in the end no one knew who had bought him, or to what

party he belonged. The greatest general of the age, the Duke of

Marlborough, is one of the basest rogues in history, supported by his

mistresses, a niggard user of the pay which he received from them,

systematically plundering his soldiers, trafficking on political

secrets, a traitor to James II, to William, to England, betraying to

James the intended plan of attacking Brest, and even, when old and

infirm, walking from the public rooms in Bath to his lodgings, on a cold

and dark night, to save sixpence in chair-hire. Next to him we may place

Bolingbroke, a sceptic and cynic, minister in turn to Queen and

Pretender, disloyal alike to both, a trafficker in consciences,

marriages, and promises, who had squandered his talents in debauch and

intrigue, to end in disgrace, impotence, and scorn.[485] Walpole, who

used to boast that "every man had his price,"[486] was compelled to

resign, after having been prime minister for twenty years. Montesquieu

wrote in 1729:[487] "There are Scotch members who have only two hundred

pounds for their vote, and sell it at this price. Englishmen are no

longer worthy of their liberty. They sell it to the king; and if the

king should sell it back to them, they would sell it him again." We read

in Bubb Doddington's Diary the candid fashion and pretty contrivances of

this great traffic. So Dr. King states: "He (Walpole) wanted to carry a

question in the House of Commons, to which he knew there would be great

opposition.... As he was passing through the Court of Requests, he met a

member of the contrary party, whose avarice, he imagined, would not

reject a large bribe. He took him aside and said, 'Such a question comes

on this day; give me your vote, and here is a bank-bill of two thousand

pounds,' which he put into his hands. The member made him this answer:

'Sir Robert, you have lately served some of my particular friends; and

when my wife was last at court, the King was very gracious to her, which

must have happened at your instance. I should therefore think myself

very ungrateful (putting the bank-bill into his pocket) if I were to

refuse the favor you are now pleased to ask me.'"[488] This is how a man

of the world did business. Corruption was so firmly established in

public manners and in politics, that after the fall of Walpole, Lord

Bute, who had denounced him, was obliged to practise and increase it.

His colleague Henry Fox, the first Lord Holland, changed the pay-office

into a market, haggled about their price with hundreds of members,

distributed in one morning twenty-five thousand pounds. Votes were only

to be had for cash down, and yet at an important crisis these

mercenaries threatened to go over to the enemy, struck for wages, and

demanded more. Nor did the leaders miss their own share. They sold

themselves for, or paid themselves with, titles, dignities, sinecures.

In order to get a place vacant, they gave the holder a pension of two,

three, five, and even seven thousand a year. Pitt, the most upright of

politicians, the leader of those who were called patriots, gave and

broke his word, attacked or defended Walpole, proposed war or peace, all

to become or to continue a minister. Fox, his rival, was a sort of

shameless sink. The Duke of Newcastle, "whose name was perfidy, a

living, moving, talking caricature," the most clumsy, ignorant,

ridiculed and despised of the aristocracy, was in the Cabinet for thirty

years and premier for ten years, by virtue of his connections, his

wealth, of the elections which he managed, and the places in his gift.

The fall of the Stuarts put the government into the hands of a few great

families which, by means of rotten boroughs, bought members and

high-sounding speeches, oppressed the king, moulded the passions of the

mob, intrigued, lied, wrangled, and tried to swindle each other out of

power.

Private manners were as lovely as public. As a rule, the reigning king

detested his son; this son got into debt, asked Parliament for an

increased allowance, allied himself with his father's enemies. George I

kept his wife in prison thirty-two years, and got drunk every night with

his two ugly mistresses. George II, who loved his wife, took mistresses

to keep up appearances, rejoiced at his son's death, upset his father's

will. His eldest son cheated at cards,[489] and one day at Kensington,

having borrowed five thousand pounds from Bubb Doddington, said, when he

saw him from the window: "That man is reckoned one of the most sensible

men in England, yet with all his parts I have just nicked him out of

five thousand pounds."[490] George IV was a sort of coachman, gamester,

scandalous roisterer, unprincipled betting-man, whose proceedings all

but got him excluded from the Jockey Club. The only upright man was

George III, a poor half-witted dullard, who went mad, and whom his

mother had kept locked up in his youth as though in a cloister. She gave

as her reason the universal corruption of men of quality. "The young

men," she said, "were all rakes; the young women made love, instead of

waiting till it was made to them." In fact, vice was in fashion, not

delicate vice as in France. "Money," wrote Montesquieu, "is here

esteemed above everything, honor and virtue not much. An Englishman must

have a good dinner, a woman, and money. As he does not go much into

society, and limits himself to this, so, as soon as his fortune is gone,

and he can no longer have these things, he commits suicide or turns

robber." The young men had a superabundance of coarse energy, which made

them mistake brutality for pleasure. The most celebrated called

themselves Mohocks, and tyrannized over London by night. They stopped

people, and made them dance by pricking their legs with their swords;

sometimes they would put a woman in a tub, and set her rolling down a

hill; others would place her on her head, with her feet in the air; some

would flatten the nose of the wretch whom they had caught, and press his

eyes out of their sockets. Swift, the comic writers, the novelists, have

painted the baseness of this gross debauchery, craving for riot, living

in drunkenness, revelling in obscenity, issuing in cruelty, ending by

irreligion and atheism.[491] This violent and excessive mood requires to

occupy itself proudly and daringly in the destruction of what men

respect, and what institutions protect. These men attack the clergy by

the same instinct which leads them to beat the watch. Collins, Tindal,

Bolingbroke, are their teachers; the corruption of manners, the frequent

practice of treason, the warring amongst sects, the freedom of speech,

the progress of science, and the fermentation of ideas, seemed as if

they would dissolve Christianity. "There is no religion in England,"

said Montesquieu. "Four or five in the House of Commons go to prayers or

to the parliamentary sermon.... If anyone speaks of religion, everybody

begins to laugh. A man happening to say, 'I believe this like an article

of faith,' everybody burst out laughing." In fact, the phrase was

provincial, and smacked of antiquity. The main thing was to be

fashionable, and it is amusing to see from Lord Chesterfield in what

this fashion consisted. Of justice and honor he only speaks transiently,

and for form's sake. Before all, he says to his son, "have manners, good

breeding, and the graces." He insists upon it in every letter, with a

fulness and force of illustration which form an odd contrast: "_Mon cher

ami, comment vont les graces, les manières, les agréments, et tous ces

petits riens si nécessaires pour rendre un homme aimable? Les

prenez-vous? y faites-vous des progrès?... A propos, on m'assure que

Madame de Blot sans avoir des traits, est jolie comme un cœur, et que

nonobstant cela, elle s'en est tenue jusqu'ici scrupuleusement à son

mari, quoiqu'il y ait déjà plus d'un an qu'elle est mariée. Elle n'y

pense pas._"[492]... "It seems ridiculous to tell you, but it is most

certainly true, that your dancing-master is at this time the man in all

Europe of the greatest importance to you."[493]... "In your person you

must be accurately clean; and your teeth, hands, and nails' should be

superlatively so.... Upon no account whatever put your fingers in your

nose or ears.[494] What says Madame Dupin to you? For an attachment I

should prefer her to _la petite_ Blot.[495]... Pleasing women may in

time be of service to you. They often please and govern others."[496]

And he quotes to him as examples, Bolingbroke and Marlborough, the two

worst _roués_ of the age. Thus speaks a serious man, once

Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and ambassador and plenipotentiary, and

finally a Secretary of State, an authority in matters of education and

taste.[497] He wishes to polish his son, to give to him a French air, to

add to solid diplomatic knowledge and large views of ambition an

engaging, lively, and frivolous manner. This outward polish, which at

Paris is of the true color, is here but a shocking veneer. This

transplanted politeness is a lie, this vivacity is want of sense, this

worldly education seems fitted only to make actors and rogues.

So thought Gay in his "Beggars' Opera," and the polished society

applauded with _furore_ the portrait which he drew of it. Sixty-three

consecutive nights the piece ran amidst a tempest oft laughter; the

ladies had the songs written on their fans, and the principal actress

married a duke. What a satire! Thieves infested London, so that in 1728

the queen herself was almost robbed; they formed bands, with officers, a

treasury, a commander-in-chief, and multiplied, though every six weeks

they were sent by the cartload to the gallows. Such was the society

which Gay put on the stage. In his opinion, it was as good as the higher

society; it was hard to discriminate between them; the manners, wit,

conduct, morality in both were alike. "Through the whole piece you may

observe such a similitude of manners in high and low life, that it is

difficult to determine whether (in the fashionable vices) the fine

gentlemen imitate the gentlemen of the road, or the gentlemen of the

road the fine gentlemen."[498]

Wherein, for example, is Peachum different from a great minister? Like

him, he is a leader of a gang of thieves; like him, he has a register

for thefts; like him, he receives money with both hands; like him, he

contrives to have his friends caught and hanged when they trouble him;

he uses, like him, parliamentary language and classical comparisons; he

has, like him, gravity, steadiness, and is eloquently indignant when his

honor is suspected. It is true that Peachum quarrels with a comrade

about the plunder, and takes him by the throat. But lately, Sir Robert

Walpole and Lord Townsend had fought with each other on a similar

question. Listen to what Mrs. Peachum says of her daughter: "Love him!

(Macheath), worse and worse! I thought the girl had been better

bred."[499] The daughter observes: "A woman knows how to be mercenary

though she has never been in a court or at an assembly."[500] And the

father remarks: "My daughter to me should be, like a court lady to a

minister of stale, a key to the whole gang."[501] As to Macheath, he is

a fit son-in-law for such a politician. If less brilliant in council

than in action, that only suits his age. Point out a young and noble

officer who has a better address, or performs finer actions. He is a

highwayman, that is his bravery; he shares his booty with his friends,

that is his generosity: "You see, gentlemen, I am not a mere

court-friend, who professes everything and will do nothing.... But we,

gentlemen, have still honour enough to break through the corruptions of

the world."[502] For the rest he is gallant; he has half à dozen

wives, a dozen children; he frequents stews, he is amiable towards the

beauties whom he meets, he is easy in manners, he makes elegant bows to

everyone, he pays compliments to all: "Mistress Slemmekin! as careless

and genteel as ever! all you fine ladies, who know your own beauty

affect undress.... If any of the ladies chuse gin, I hope they will be

so free as to call for it. Indeed, sir, I never drink strong waters, but

when I have the colic.--Just the excuse of the fine ladies! why, a lady

of quality is never without the colic."[503] Is this not the genuine

tone of good society? And does anyone doubt that Macheath is a man of

quality when we learn that he has deserved to be hanged, and is not?

Everything yields to such a proof. If, however, we wish for another, he

would add that, "As to conscience and musty morals, I have as few

drawbacks upon my pleasures as any man of quality in England; in those I

am not at least vulgar."[504] After such a speech a man must give in. Do

not bring up the foulness of these manners; we see that there is nothing

repulsive in them, because fashionable society likes them. These

interiors of prisons and stews, these gambling-houses, this whiff of

gin, this pander-traffic, and these pickpockets' calculations, by no

means disgust the ladies, who applaud from the boxes. They sing the

songs of Polly; their nerves shrink from no details; they have already

inhaled the filthy odors from the highly polished pastorals of the

amiable poet.[505] They laugh to see Lucy show her pregnancy to

Machoath, and give Polly "rat-bane." They are familiar with all the

refinements of the gallows, and all the niceties of medicine. Mistress

Trapes expounds her trade before them, and complains of having "eleven

fine customers now down under the surgeon's hands." Mr. Filch, a

prison-prop, uses words which cannot even be quoted. A cruel keenness,

sharpened by a stinging irony, flows through the work, like one of those

London streams whose corrosive smells Swift and Gay have described; more

than a hundred years later it still proclaims the dishonour of the

society which is bespattered and befouled with its mire.

Section III.--Principles of Civilization in France and England

These were but the externals; and close observers, like Voltaire, did

not misinterpret them. Betwixt the slime at the bottom and the scum on

the surface rolled the great national river, which, purified by its own

motion, already at intervals gave signs of its true color, soon to

display the powerful regularity of its course and the wholesome

limpidity of its waters. It advanced in its native bed; every nation has

one of its own, which flows down its proper slope. It is this slope

which gives to each civilization its degree and form, and it is this

which we must endeavor to describe and measure.

To this end we have only to follow the travellers from the two countries

who at this time crossed the channel. Never did England regard and

imitate France more, nor France England. To see the distinct current in

which each nation flowed, we have but to open our eyes. Lord

Chesterfield writes to his son:

"It must be owned, that the polite conversation of the men and Women at

Paris, though not always very deep, is much less futile and frivolous

than ours here. It turns at least upon some subject, something of taste,

some point of history, criticism, and even philosophy, which, though

probably not quite so solid as Mr. Locke's, is however better, and more

becoming rational beings, than our frivolous dissertations upon the

weather or upon whist."[506]

In fact, the French became civilized by conversation; not so the

English. As soon as the Frenchman quits mechanical labor and coarse

material life, even before he quits it, he converses: this is his goal

and his pleasure.[507] Barely has he escaped from religious wars and

feudal isolation, when he makes his bow and has his way. With the Hôtel

de Rambouillet we get the fine drawing-room talk, which is to last two

centuries: Germans, English, all Europe, either novices or dullards,

listen to France open-mouthed, and from time to time clumsily attempt an

imitation. How amiable are French talkers! What discrimination! What

innate tact! With what grace and dexterity they can persuade, interest,

amuse, stroke down sickly vanity, rivet the diverted attention,

insinuate dangerous truth, ever soaring a hundred feet above the

tedium-point where their rivals are floundering with all their native

heaviness. But, above all, how sharp they soon have become!

Instinctively and without effort they light upon easy gesture, fluent

speech, sustained elegance, a characteristic piquancy, a perfect

clearness. Their phrases, still formal under Guez de Balzac, are looser,

lighter, launch out, move speedily, and under Voltaire find their wings.

Did any man ever see such a desire, such an art of pleasing? Pedantic

sciences, political economy, theology, the sullen denizens of the

Academy and the Sorbonne, speak but in epigrams. Montesquieu's "Esprit

des Lois" is also "Esprit sur les lois." Rousseau's periods, which

begat a revolution, were balanced, turned, polished for eighteen hours

in his head. Voltaire's philosophy breaks out into a million sparks.

Every idea must blossom into a witticism; people only have flashes of

thought; all truth, the most intricate and the most sacred, becomes a

pleasant drawing-room conceit, thrown backward and forward, like a

gilded shuttlecock, by delicate women's hands, without sullying the lace

sleeves from which their slim arms emerge, or the garlands which the

rosy Cupids unfold on the wainscoting. Everything must glitter, sparkle,

or smile. The passions are deadened, love is rendered insipid, the

proprieties are multiplied, good manners are exaggerated. The fine man

becomes "sensitive." From his wadded taffeta dressing-gown he keeps

plucking his worked handkerchief to whisk away the moist omen of a tear;

he lays his hand on his heart, he grows tender; he has become so

delicate and correct, that an Englishman knows not whether to take him

for a hysterical young woman or a dancing-master.[508] Take a near view

of this beribboned puppy, in his light-green dress, lisping out the

songs of Florian. The genius of society which has led him to these

fooleries has also led him elsewhere; for conversation, in France at

least, is a chase after ideas. To this day, in spite of modern distrust

and sadness, it is at table, after dinner, over the coffee especially,

that deep politics and the loftiest philosophy crop up. To think, above

all to think rapidly, is a recreation. The mind finds in it a sort of

ball; think how eagerly it hastens thither. This is the source of all

French culture. At the dawn of the century, the ladies, between a couple

of bows, produced studied portraits and subtle dissertations; they

understand Descartes, appreciate Nicole, approve Bossuet. Presently

little suppers are introduced, and during the dessert they discuss the

existence of God. Are not theology, morality, set forth in a noble or

piquant style, pleasures for the drawing-room and adornments of luxury?

Fancy finds place amongst them, floats about and sparkles like a light

flame over all the subjects on which it feeds. How lofty a flight did

intelligence take during this eighteenth century! Was society ever more

anxious for sublime truths, more bold in their search, more quick to

discover, more ardent in embracing them? These perfumed marquises, these

laced coxcombs, all these pretty, well-dressed, gallant, frivolous

people, crowd to hear philosophy discussed, as they go to hear an opera.

The origin of animated beings, the eels of Needham,[509] the adventures

of Jacques the Fatalist,[510] and the question of free-will, the

principles of political economy, and the calculations of the "Man with

Forty Crowns"[511]--all is to them a matter for paradoxes and

discoveries. All the heavy rocks, which the men who have made it their

business, were hewing and undermining laboriously in solitude, being

carried along and polished in the public torrent, roll in myriads,

mingled together with a joyous clatter, hurried onwards with an

ever-increasing rapidity. There was no bar, no collision; they were not

checked by the practicability of their plans: they thought for

thinking's sake; theories could be expanded at ease. In fact, this is

how in France men have always conversed. They play with general truths;

they glean one nimbly from the heap of facts in which it lay concealed,

and develop it, they hover above observation in reason and rhetoric;

they find themselves uncomfortable and commonplace when they are not in

the region of pure ideas. And in this respect the eighteenth century

continues the seventeenth. The philosophers had described good breeding,

flattery, misanthropy, avarice; they now instituted inquiries into

liberty, tyranny, religion; they had studied man in himself; they now

study him in the abstract. Religious and monarchical writers are of the

same school as impious and revolutionary writers; Boileau leads up to

Rousseau, Racine to Robespierre. Oratorical reasoning formed the regular

theatre and classical preaching; it also produced the Declaration of

Rights and the "Contrat Social." They form for themselves a certain idea

of man, of his inclinations, faculties, duties; a mutilated idea, but

the more clear as it was the more reduced. From being aristocratic it

becomes popular; instead of being an amusement, it is a laith; from

delicate and sceptical hands it passes to coarse and enthusiastic hands.

From the lustre of the drawing-room they make a brand and a torch. Such

is the current on which the French mind floated for two centuries,

caressed by the refinements of an exquisite politeness, amused by a

swarm of brilliant ideas, charmed by the promises of golden theories,

until, thinking that it touched the cloud-palace, made bright by the

future, it suddenly lost its footing and fell in the storm of the

Revolution.

Altogether different is the path which English civilization has taken.

It is not the spirit of society which has made it, but moral sense; and

the reason is that in England man is not as he is in France. The

Frenchmen who became acquainted with England at this period were struck

by it. "In France," says Montesquieu, "I become friendly with everybody;

in England with nobody. You must do here as the English do, live for

yourself, care for no one, love no one, rely on no one." Englishmen were

of a singular genius, yet "solitary and sad. They are reserved, live

much in themselves, and think alone. Most of them having wit, are

tormented by their very wit. Scorning or disgusted with all things, they

are unhappy amid so many reasons why they should not be so." And

Voltaire, like Montesquieu, continually alludes to the sombre energy of

the English character. He says that in London there are days when the

wind is in the east, when it is customary for people to hang themselves;

he relates shudderingly how a young girl cut her throat, and how her

lover without a word redeemed the knife. He is surprised to see "so many

Timons, so many splenetic, misanthropes." Whither will they go? There

was one path which grew daily wider. The Englishman, naturally serious,

meditative, and sad, did not regard life as a game or a pleasure; his

eyes were habitually turned, not outward to smiling nature, but inward

to the life of the soul; he examines himself, ever descends within

himself, confines himself to the moral world, and at last sees no other

beauty but that which shines there; he enthrones justice as the sole and

absolute queen of humanity, and conceives the plan of disposing all his

actions according to a rigid code. He has no lack of force in this; for

his pride comes to assist his conscience. Having chosen himself and by

himself the route, he would blush to quit it; he rejects temptations as

his enemies; he feels that he is fighting and conquering,[512] that he

is doing a difficult thing, that he is worthy of admiration, that he is

a man. Moreover, he rescues himself from his capital foe, tedium, and

satisfies his craving for action; understanding his duties, he employs

his faculties and he has a purpose in life, and this gives rise to

associations, endowments, preachings; and finding more steadfast souls,

and nerves more tightly strung, it sends them forth, without causing

them too much suffering, too long strife, through ridicule and danger.

The reflective character of the man has given a moral rule; the militant

character now gives moral force. The mind, thus directed, is more apt

than any other to comprehend duty; the will, thus armed, is more capable

than any other of performing its duty. This is the fundamental faculty

which is found in all parts of public life, concealed but present, like

one of those deep primeval rocks, which, lying far inland, give to all

undulations of the soil a basis and a support.

Section IV.--Religion

This faculty gives first a basis and a support to Protestantism, and it

is from this structure of mind that the Englishman is religious. Let us

find our way through the knotty and uninviting bark. Voltaire laughs at

it, and jests about the ranting of the preachers and the austerity of

the faithful. "There is no opera, no comedy, no concert on a Sunday in

London; cards even are expressly forbidden, so that only persons of

quality, and those who are called respectable people, play on that day."

He amuses himself at the expense of the Anglicans, "so scrupulous in

collecting their tithes"; the Presbyterians, "who look as if they were

angry, and preach with a strong nasal accent"; the Quakers, "who go to

church and wait for inspiration with their hats on their heads." But is

there nothing to be observed but these externals? And do we suppose that

we are acquainted with a religion because we know the details of

formulary and vestment? There is a common faith beneath all these

sectarian differences: whatever be the form of Protestantism, its object

and result are the culture of the moral sense; that is why it is popular

in England: principles and dogmas all make it suitable to the instincts

of the nation. The sentiment which in the Protestant is the source of

everything, is qualms of conscience; he pictures perfect justice, and

feels that his uprightness, however great, cannot stand before that. He

thinks of the Day of Judgment, and tells himself that he will be damned.

He is troubled, and prostrates himself; he prays God to pardon his sins

and renew his heart. He sees that neither by his desires, nor his deeds,

nor by any ceremony or institution, nor by himself, nor by any creature,

can he deserve the one or obtain the other. He betakes himself to

Christ, the one Mediator; he prays to him, he feels his presence, he

finds himself justified by his grace, elect, healed, transformed,

predestinated. Thus understood, religion is a moral revolution; thus

simplified, religion is only a moral revolution. Before this deep

emotion, metaphysics and theology, ceremonies and discipline, all is

blotted out or subordinate, and Christianity is simply the purification

of the heart. Look now at these men, dressed in sombre colors, speaking

through the nose on Sundays, in a box of dark wood, whilst a man in

bands, "with the air of a Cato," reads a psalm. Is there nothing in

their heart but theological "trash" or mechanical phrases? There is a

deep sentiment--veneration. This bare Dissenters' meeting-house, this

simple service and church of the Anglicans, leave them open to the

impression of what they read and hear. For they do hear, and they do

read; prayer in the vulgar tongue, psalms translated into the vulgar

tongue, can penetrate through their senses to their souls. They do

penetrate; and this is why they have such a collected mien. For the race

is by its very nature capable of deep emotions, disposed by the

vehemence of its imagination to comprehend the grand and tragic; and the

Bible, which is to them the very word of eternal God, provides it. I

know that to Voltaire it is only emphatic, unconnected, ridiculous; the

sentiments with which it is filled are out of harmony with French

sentiments. In England the hearers are on the level of its energy and

harshness. The cries of anguish or admiration of the solitary Hebrew,

the transports, the sudden outbursts of sublime passion, the desire for

justice, the growling of the thunder and the judgments of God, shake,

across thirty centuries, these Biblical souls. Their other books assist

it. The Prayer Book, which is handed down as an heirloom with the old

family Bible, speaks to all, to the dullest peasant, or the miner, the

solemn accent of true prayer. The new-born poetry, the reviving religion

of the sixteenth century, have impressed their magnificent gravity upon

it; and we feel in it, as in Milton himself, the pulse of the twofold

inspiration which then lifted a man out of himself and raised him to

heaven. Their knees bend when they listen to it. That Confession of

Faith, these collects for the sick, for the dying, in case of public

misfortune or private grief, these lofty sentences of impassioned and

sustained eloquence, transport a man to some unknown and august world.

Let the fine gentlemen yawn, mock, and succeed in not understanding: I

am sure that, of the others, many are moved. The idea of dark death and

of the limitless ocean, to which the poor weak soul must descend, the

thought of this, invisible justice, everywhere present, ever foreseeing,

on which the changing show of visible things depends, enlighten them

with unexpected flashes. The physical world and its laws seem to them

but a phantom, and a figure; they see nothing more real than justice; it

is the sum of humanity, as of nature. This is the deep sentiment which

on Sunday closes the theatre, discourages pleasures, fills the churches;

this it is which pierces the breastplate of the positive spirit and of

corporeal dulness. This shopkeeper, who all the week has been counting

his bales or drawing up columns of figures; this cattle-breeding squire,

who can only bawl, drink, jump a fence; these yeomen, these cottagers,

who in order to amuse themselves draw blood whilst boxing, or vie with

each other in grinning through a horse-collar--all these uncultivated

souls, immersed in material life, receive thus from their religion a

moral life. They love it; we hear it in the yells of a mob, rising like

a thunderstorm, when a rash hand touches or seems to touch the Church.

We see it in the sale of Protestant devotional books; the "Pilgrim's

Progress" and "The Whole Duty of Man" are alone able to force their way

to the window-ledge of the yeoman and squire, where four volumes, their

whole library, rest amid the fishing-tackle. We can only move the men of

this race by moral reflections and religious emotions. The cooled

Puritan spirit still broods underground, and is drawn in the only

direction where fuel, air, fire, and action are to be found.

We obtain a glimpse of it when we look at the sects. In France,

Jansenists and Jesuits seem to be puppets of another century, fighting

for the amusement of this age. Here Quakers, Independents, Baptists

exist, serious, honored, recognized by the State, distinguished by their

able writers, their deep scholars, their men of worth, their founders of

nations.[513] Their piety causes their disputes; it is because they will

believe that they differ in belief: the only men without religion are

those who do not care for religion. A motionless faith is soon a dead

faith; and when a man becomes a sectarian, it is because he is fervent.

This Christianity lives because it is developed; we see the sap, always

flowing from the Protestant inquiry and faith, re-enter the old dogmas,

dried up for fifteen hundred years. Voltaire, when he came to England,

was surprised to find Arians, and amongst them the first thinkers in

England--Clarke, Newton himself. Not only dogma, but feeling, is

renewed; beyond the speculative Arians were the practical Methodists;

behind Newton and Clarke came Whitefield and Wesley.

No history more deeply illustrates the English character than that of

these two men. In spite of Hume and Voltaire, they founded a monastical

and convulsionary sect, and triumph through austerity, and exaggeration,

which would have ruined them in France. Wesley was a scholar, an Oxford

student, and he believed in the devil; he attributes to him sickness,

nightmare, storms, earthquakes. His family heard supernatural noises;

his father had been thrice pushed by a ghost; he himself saw the hand of

God in the commonest events of life. One day at Birmingham, overtaken by

a hailstorm, he felt that he received this warning, because at table he

had not sufficiently exhorted the people who dined with him; when he had

to determine on anything, he opened the Bible at random for a text, in

order to decide. At Oxford he fasted and wearied himself until he spat

blood and almost died; at sea, when he departed for America, he only ate

bread, and slept on deck; he lived the life of an apostle, giving away

all that he earned, travelling and preaching all the year, and every

year, till the age of eighty-eight;[514] it has been reckoned that he

gave away thirty thousand pounds, travelled about a hundred thousand

miles, and preached forty thousand sermons. What could such a man have

done in France in the eighteenth century? Here he was listened to and

followed, at his death he had eighty thousand disciples; now he has a

million. The qualms of conscience, which forced him in this direction,

compelled others to follow in his footsteps. Nothing is more striking

than the confessions of his preachers, mostly low-born and laymen.

George Story had the spleen, dreamed and mused gloomily; took to

slandering himself and the occupations of men. Mark Bond thought himself

damned, because when a boy he had once uttered a blasphemy; he read and

prayed unceasingly and in vain, and at last in despair he enlisted, with

the hope of being killed. John Haime had visions, howled, and thought he

saw the devil. Another, a baker, had scruples because his master

continued to bake on Sunday, wasted away with anxiety, and soon was

nothing but a skeleton. Such are the timorous and impassioned souls

which become religious and enthusiastic. They are numerous in this land,

and on them doctrine took hold. Wesley declares that "A string of

opinions is no more Christian faith than a string of beads is Christian

holiness. It is not an assent to any opinion, or any number of

opinions. This justifying faith implies not only the personal

revelation, the inward evidence of Christianity, but likewise a sure and

firm confidence in the individual believer that Christ died for _his_

sin, loved _him_, and gave his life for _him._"[515] "By a Christian, I

mean one who so believes in Christ, as that sin hath no more dominion

over him."[516]

The faithful feels in himself the touch of a superior hand, and the

birth of an unknown being. The old man has disappeared, the new man has

taken his place, pardoned, purified, transfigured, steeped in joy and

confidence, inclined to good as strongly as he was once drawn to evil. A

miracle has been wrought, and it can be wrought at any moment, suddenly,

under any circumstances, without warning. Some sinner, the oldest and

most hardened, without wishing it, without having dreamed of it, falls

down weeping, his heart melted by grace. The hidden thoughts, which

fermented long in these gloomy imaginations, break out suddenly into

storms, and the dull brutal mood is shaken by nervous fits which it had

not known before. Wesley, Whitefield, and their preachers went all over

England preaching to the poor, the peasants, the workmen in the open

air, sometimes to a congregation of twenty thousand people. "The fire is

kindled in the country." There was sobbing and crying. At Kingswood,

Whitefield, having collected the miners, a savage race, "saw the white

gutters made by the tears which plentifully fell down from their black

cheeks, black as they came out from their coal-pits."[517] Some trembled

and fell; others had transports of joy, ecstasies. Southey writes thus

of Thomas Olivers: "His heart was broken, nor could he express the

strong desires which he felt for righteousness.... He describes his

feelings during a _Te Deum_ at the cathedral, as if he had done with

earth, and was praising God before His throne."[518] The god and the

brute, which each man carries in himself, were let loose; the physical

machine was upset; emotion was turned into madness, and the madness

became contagious. An eye-witness says:

[Illustration: CHOICE EXAMPLES OF EARLY PRINTING AND ENGRAVING.

Fac-similes from Rare and Curious Books.

_PRINTER'S MARK OF PHILIPPE LE NOIR._

The early printers, in order to distinguish their work, used a special

mark or plate which, as in the case before us, sometimes took the form

of a sort of rebus, or punning device. The negroes who support the

initial shield in this mark are gorgeous and Oriental in attire, and the

design, as a whole, is one of the most picturesque examples of this kind

of composition.]

"At Everton some were shrieking, some roaring aloud.... The most general

was a loud breathing, like that of people half strangled and gasping for

life; and, indeed, almost all the cries were like those of human

creatures dying in bitter anguish. Great numbers wept without any noise;

others fell down as dead.... I stood upon the pew-seat, as did a young

man in the opposite pew, an able-bodied, fresh, healthy countryman, but

in a moment, when he seemed to think of nothing else, down he dropt,

with a violence inconceivable.... I heard the stamping of his feet,

ready to break the boards, as he lay in strong convulsions at the bottom

of the pew.... I saw a sturdy boy, about eight years old, who roared

above his fellows; ... his face was red as scarlet; and almost all on

whom God laid his hand, turned either very red or almost black."[519]

Elsewhere, a woman, disgusted with this madness, wished to leave, but

had only gone a few steps when she fell into as violent fits as others.

Conversions followed these transports; the converted paid their debts,

foreswore drunkenness, read the Bible, prayed, and went about exhorting

others. Wesley collected them into societies, formed "classes" for

mutual examination and edification, submitted spiritual life to a

methodic discipline, built chapels, chose preachers, founded schools,

organized enthusiasm. To this day his disciples spend very large sums

every year in missions to all parts of the world, and on the banks of

the Mississippi and the Ohio their shoutings repeat the violent

enthusiasm and the conversions of primitive inspiration. The same

instinct is still revealed by the same signs; the doctrine of grace

survives in uninterrupted energy, and the race, as in the sixteenth

century, puts its poetry into the exaltation of the moral sense.

Section V.--The Pulpit

A sort of theological smoke covers and hides this glowing hearth which

burns in silence. A stranger who, at this time, had visited the country,

would see in this religion only a choking vapor of arguments,

controversies, and sermons. All those celebrated divines and preachers,

Barrow, Tillotson, South, Stillingfleet, Sherlock, Burnet, Baxter,

Barclay, preached, says Addison, like automatons, monotonously, without

moving their arms. For a Frenchman, for Voltaire, who did read them, as

he read everything, what a strange reading! Here is Tillotson first, the

most authoritative of all, a kind of father of the Church, so much

admired that Dryden tells us that he learned from him the art of writing

well, and that his sermons, the only property which he left his widow,

were bought by a publisher for two thousand five hundred guineas. This

work has, in fact, some weight; there are three folio volumes, each of

seven hundred pages. To open them, a man must be a critic by profession,

or be possessed by an absolute desire to be saved. And now let us open

them. "The Wisdom of being Religious"--such is his first sermon, much

celebrated in his time, and the foundation of his success:

"These words consist of two propositions, which are not distinct in

sense;... So that they differ only as cause and effect, which by a

metonymy, used in all sorts of authors, are frequently put one for

another."[520]

This opening makes us uneasy. Is this great orator a teacher of grammar?

"Having thus explained the words, I come now to consider the proposition

contained in them, which is this:

"That religion is the best knowledge and wisdom.

"This I shall endeavour to make good these three ways:--

"1st. By a direct proof of it;

"2d. By shewing on the contrary the folly and ignorance of irreligion

and wickedness;

"3d. By vindicating religion from those common imputations which seem to

charge it with ignorance or imprudence. I begin with the direct proof of

this...."[521]

Thereupon he gives his divisions. What a heavy demonstrator! We are

tempted to turn over the leaves only, and not to read them. Let us

examine his forty-second sermon: "Against Evil-speaking:"

"Firstly: I shall consider the nature of this vice, and wherein it

consists.

"Secondly: I shall consider the due extent of this prohibition, To

speak evil of no man.

"Thirdly: I shall show the evil of this practice, both in the causes

and effects of it.

"Fourthly: I shall add some further considerations to dissuade men

from it.

"Fifthly: I shall give some rules and directions for the prevention

and cure of it."[522]

What a style! and it is the same throughout. There is nothing lifelike;

it is a skeleton, with all its joints coarsely displayed. All the ideas

are ticketed and numbered. The schoolmen were not worse. Neither rapture

nor vehemence; no wit, no imagination, no original and brilliant idea,

no philosophy; nothing but quotations of mere scholarship, and

enumerations from a handbook. The dull argumentative reason comes with

its pigeon-holed classifications upon a great truth of the heart or an

impassioned word from the Bible, examines it "positively and

negatively," draws thence "a lesson and an encouragement," arranges each

part under its heading, patiently, indefatigably, so that sometimes

three whole sermons are needed to complete the division and the proof,

and each of them contains in its exordium the methodical abstract of all

the points treated and the arguments supplied. Just so were the

discussions of the Sorbonne carried on. At the court of Louis XIV

Tillotson would have been taken for a man who had run away from a

seminary. Voltaire would have called him a village curé. He has all

that is necessary to shock men of the world, nothing to attract them.

For he does not address men of the world, but Christians; his hearers

neither need nor desire to be goaded or amused; they do not ask for

analytical refinements, novelties in matter of feeling. They come to

have Scripture explained to them, and morality demonstrated. The force

of their zeal is only manifested by the gravity of their attention. Let

others have a text as a mere pretext; as for them, they cling to it: it

is the very word of God, they cannot dwell on it too much. They must

have the sense of every word hunted out, the passage interpreted phrase

by phrase, in itself, by the context, by parallel passages, by the whole

doctrine. They are willing to have the different readings, translations,

interpretations expounded; they like to see the orator become a

grammarian, a Hellenist, a scholiast. They are not repelled by all this

dust of scholarship, which rises from the folios to settle upon their

countenance. And the precept being laid down, they demand an enumeration

of all the reasons which support it; they wish to be convinced, carry

away in their heads a provision of good approved motives to last the

week. They came there seriously, as to their counting-house or their

field, not to amuse themselves, but to do some work, to toil and dig

conscientiously in theology and logic, to amend and better themselves.

They would be angry at being dazzled. Their great sense, their ordinary

common-sense, is much better pleased with cold discussions; they want

inquiries and methodical reports of morality, as if it was a subject of

export and import duties, and treat conscience as port wine or herrings.

In this Tillotson is admirable. Doubtless he is pedantic, as Voltaire

called him; he has all "the bad manners learned at the university"; he

has not been "polished by association with women"; he is not like the

French preachers, academicians, elegant discoursers, who by a courtly

air, a well-delivered Advent sermon, the refinements of a purified

style, earn the first vacant bishopric and the favor of good society.

But he writes like a perfectly honest man; we can see that he is not

aiming in any way at the glory of an orator; he wishes to persuade

soundly, nothing more. We enjoy this clearness, this naturalness, this

preciseness, this entire loyalty. In one of his sermons he says:

"Truth and reality have all the advantages of appearance and many more.

If the show of anything be good for anything, I am sure sincerity is

better; for why does any man dissemble, or seem to be that which he is

not, but because he thinks it good to have such a quality as he pretends

to? For to counterfeit and dissemble, is to put on the appearance of

some real excellency. Now, the best way in the world for a man to seem

to be anything, is really to be what he would seem to be. Besides, that

it is many times as troublesome to make good the pretence of a good

quality, as to have it; and if a man have it not, it is ten to one but

he is discovered to want it, and then all his pains and labour to seem

to have it are lost. There is something unnatural in painting, which a

skilful eye will easily discern from native beauty and complexion.

"It is hard to personate and act a part long; for where truth is not at

the bottom, nature will always be endeavouring to return, and will peep

out and betray herself one time or other. Therefore, if a man think it

convenient to seem good, let him be so indeed, and then his goodness

will appear to everybody's satisfaction;... so that, upon all accounts,

sincerity is true wisdom."[523]

We are led to believe a man who speaks thus; we say to ourselves,

"This is true, he is right, we must do as he says." The impression

received is moral, not literary; the sermon is efficacious, not

rhetorical; it does not please, it leads to action.

In this great manufactory of morality, where every loom goes on as

regularly as its neighbor, with a monotonous noise, we distinguish two

which sound louder and better than the rest--Barrow and South. Not that

they were free from dulness. Barrow had all the air of a college pedant,

and dressed so badly that one day in London, before an audience who did

not know him, he saw almost the whole congregation at once leave the

church. He explained the word εύχαριστέΐν in the pulpit with

all the charm of a dictionary, commenting, translating, dividing,

subdividing like the most formidable of scholiasts,[524] caring no more

for the public than for himself; so that once, when he had spoken for

three hours and a half before the Lord Mayor, he replied to those who

asked him if he was not tired, "I did, in fact, begin to be weary of

standing so long." But the heart and mind were so full and so rich, that

his faults became a power. He had a geometrical method and

clearness,[525] an inexhaustible fertility, extraordinary impetuosity

and tenacity of logic, writing the same sermon three or four times over,

insatiable in his craving to explain and prove, obstinately confined to

his already overflowing thoughts, with a minuteness of division, an

exactness of connection, a superfluity of explanation, so astonishing

that the attention of the hearer at last gives way; and yet the mind

turns with the vast engine, carried away and doubled up as by the

rolling weight of a flattening-machine.

Let us listen to his sermon, "Of the Love of God." Never was a more

copious and forcible analysis seen in England, so penetrating and

unwearying a decomposition of an idea into all its parts, a more

powerful logic, more rigorously collecting into one network all the

threads of a subject:

"Although no such benefit or advantage can accrue to God, which may

increase his essential and indefectible happiness; no harm or damage can

arrive that may impair it (for he can be neither really more or less

rich, or glorious, or joyful than he is; neither have our desire or our

fear, our delight or our grief, our designs or our endeavours any

object, any ground in those respects); yet hath he declared, that there

be certain interests and concernments, which, out of his abundant

goodness and condescension, he doth tender and prosecute as his own; as

if he did really receive advantage by the good, and prejudice by the bad

success, respectively belonging to them; that he earnestly desires and

is greatly delighted with some things, very much dislikes and is

grievously displeased with other things: for instance, that he bears a

fatherly affection towards his creatures, and earnestly desires their

welfare; and delights to see them enjoy the good he designed them; as

also dislikes the contrary events; doth commiserate and condole their

misery; that he is consequently well pleased when piety and justice,

peace and order (the chief means conducing to our welfare) do flourish;

and displeased, when impiety and iniquity, dissension and disorder

(those certain sources of mischief to us) do prevail; that he is well

satisfied with our rendering to him that obedience, honour, and respect,

which are due to him; and highly offended with our injurious and

disrespectful behaviour toward him, in the commission of sin and

violation of his most just and holy commandments; so that there wants

not sufficient matter of our exercising good-will both in affection and

action toward God; we are capable both of wishing and (in a manner, as

he will interpret and accept it) of doing good to him, by our

concurrence with him in promoting those things which he approves and

delights in, and in removing the contrary."[526]

This entanglement wearies us, but what a force and dash is there in this

well-considered and complete thought! Truth thus supported on all its

foundations can never be shaken. Rhetoric is absent. There is no art

here; the whole oratorical art consists in the desire thoroughly to

explain and prove what he has to say. He is even unstudied and artless;

and it is just this ingenuousness which raises him to the antique level.

We may meet with an image in his writings which seems to belong to the

finest period of Latin simplicity and dignity:

"The middle, we may observe, and the safest, and the fairest, and the

most conspicuous places in cities are usually deputed for the erections

of statues and monuments dedicated to the memory of worthy men, who have

nobly deserved of their countries. In like manner should we in the heart

and centre of our soul, in the best and highest apartments thereof, in

the places most exposed to ordinary observation, and most secure from

the invasions of worldly care, erect lively representations of, and

lasting memorials unto, the divine bounty."[527]

There is here a sort of effusion of gratitude; and at the end of the

sermon, when we think him exhausted, the expansion becomes more copious

by the enumeration of the unlimited blessings amidst which we move like

fishes in the sea, not perceiving them, because we are surrounded and

submerged by them. During ten pages the idea overflows in a continuous

and similar phrase, without fear of crowding or monotony, in spite of

all rules, so loaded are the heart and imagination, and so satisfied are

they to bring and collect all nature as a single offering:

"To him, the excellent quality, the noble end, the most obliging manner

of whose beneficence doth surpass the matter thereof, and hugely augment

the benefits: who, not compelled by any necessity, not obliged by any

law (or previous compact), not induced by any extrinsic arguments, not

inclined by our merits, not wearied with our importunities, not

instigated by troublesome passions of pity, shame, or fear (as we are

wont to be), not flattered with promises of recompense, nor bribed with

expectation of emolument, thence to accrue unto himself; but being

absolute master of his own actions, only both lawgiver and counsellor to

himself, all-sufficient, and incapable of admitting any accession to his

perfect blissfulness; most willingly and freely, out of pure bounty and

good-will, is our Friend and Benefactor; preventing not only our

desires, but our knowledge; surpassing not our deserts only, but our

wishes, yea, even our conceits, in the dispensation of his inestimable

and unrequitable benefits; having no other drift in the collation of

them, beside our real good and welfare, our profit and advantage, our

pleasure and content."[528]

Zealous energy and lack of taste; such are the features common to all

this eloquence. Let us leave this mathematician, this man of the closet,

this antique man, who proves too much and is too eager, and let us look

out amongst the men of the world him who was called the wittiest of

ecclesiastics, Robert South, as different from Barrow in his character

and life as in his works and his mind; armed for war, an impassioned

royalist, a partisan of divine right and passive obedience, an

acrimonious controversialist, a defamer of the dissenters, a foe to the

Act of Toleration, who never avoided in his enmities the license of an

insult or a foul word. By his side Father Bridaine,[529] who seems so

coarse to the French, was polished. His sermons are like a conversation

of that time; and we know in what style they conversed then in England.

South is not afraid to use any popular and impassioned image. He sets

forth little vulgar facts, with their low and striking details. He never

shrinks, he never minces matters; he speaks the language of the people.

His style is anecdotic, striking, abrupt, with change of tone, forcible

and clownish gestures, with every species of originality, vehemence, and

boldness. He sneers in the pulpit, he rails, he plays the mimic and

comedian. He paints his characters as if he had them before his eyes.

The audience will recognize the originals again in the streets; they

could put the names to his portraits. Read this bit on hypocrites:

"Suppose a man infinitely ambitious, and equally spiteful and malicious;

one who poisons the ears of great men by venomous whispers, and rises by

the fall of better men than himself; yet if he steps forth with a Friday

look and a Lenten face, with a blessed Jesu! and a mournful ditty for

the vices of the times; oh! then he is a saint upon earth: an Ambrose or

an Augustine (I mean not for that earthly trash of book-learning; for,

alas! such are above that, or at least that's above them), but for zeal

and for fasting, for a devout elevation of the eyes, and a holy rage

against other men's sins. And happy those ladies and religious dames,

characterized in the 2d of Timothy, ch. III. 6, who can have such

self-denying, thriving, able men for their confessors! and thrice happy

those families where they vouchsafe to take their Friday night's

refreshments! and thereby demonstrate to the world what Christian

abstinence, and what primitive, self-mortifying rigor there is in

forbearing a dinner, that they may have the better stomach to their

supper. In fine, the whole world stands in admiration of them; fools are

fond of them, and wise men are afraid of them; they are talked of, they

are pointed at; and, as they order the matter, they draw the eyes of all

men after them, and generally something else."[530]

A man so frank of speech was sure to commend frankness; he has done so

with the bitter irony, the brutality of a Wycherley. The pulpit had the

plaindealing and coarseness of the stage; and in this picture of

forcible, honest men, whom the world considers as bad characters, we

find the pungent familiarity of the "Plain Dealer":

"Again, there are some, who have a certain ill-natured stiffness

(forsooth) in their tongue, so as not to be able to applaud and keep

pace with this or that self-admiring, vain-glorious Thraso, while he is

pluming and praising himself, and telling fulsome stories in his own

commendation for three or four hours by the clock, and at the same time

reviling and throwing dirt upon all mankind besides.

"There is also a sort of odd ill-natured men, whom neither hopes nor

fears, frowns nor favours, can prevail upon, to have any of the cast,

beggarly, forlorn nieces or kinswomen of any lord or grandee, spiritual

or temporal, trumped upon them.

"To which we may add another sort of obstinate ill-natured persons, who

are not to be brought by any one's guilt or greatness, to speak or

write, or to swear or lie, as they are bidden, or to give up their own

consciences in a compliment to those who have none themselves.

"And lastly, there are some, so extremely ill-natured, as to think it

very lawful and allowable for them to be sensible when they are injured

or oppressed, when they are slandered in their good names, and wronged

in their just interests; and withal, to dare to own what they find, and

feel without being such beasts of burden as to bear tamely whatsoever is

cast upon them; or such spaniels as to lick the foot which kicks them,

or to thank the goodly great one for doing them all these back

favours."[531]

In this eccentric style all blows tell; we might call it a boxing-match

in which sneers inflict bruises. But see the effect of these churls'

vulgarities. We issue thence with a soul full of energetic feeling; we

have seen the very objects, as they are, without disguise; we find

ourselves battered, but seized by a vigorous hand. This pulpit is

effective; and indeed, as compared with the French pulpit, this is its

characteristic. These sermons have not the art and artifice, the

propriety and moderation of French sermons; they are not like the

latter, monuments of style, composition, harmony, veiled science,

tempered imagination, disguised logic, sustained good taste, exquisite

proportion, equal to the harangues of the Roman forum and the Athenian

agora. They are not classical. No, they are practical. A big

workman-like shovel, roughly handled, and encrusted with pedantic rust,

was necessary to dig in this coarse civilization. The delicate French

gardening would have done nothing with it. If Barrow is redundant,

Tillotson heavy, South vulgar, the rest unreadable, they are all

convincing; their sermons are not models of elegance, but instruments of

edification. Their glory is not in their books, but in their works. They

have framed morals, not literary productions.

Section VI.--Theology

To form morals is not all; there are creeds to be defended. We must

combat doubt as well as vice, and theology goes side by side with

preaching. It abounds at this moment in England. Anglicans,

Presbyterians, Independents, Quakers, Baptists, Antitrinitarians,

wrangle with each other, "as heartily as a Jansenist damns a Jesuit,"

and are never tired of forging weapons. What is there to take hold of

and preserve in all this arsenal? In France at least theology is lofty;

the fairest flowers of mind and genius have there grown over the briers

of scholastics; if the subject repels, the dress attracts. Pascal and

Bossuet, Fénelon and La Bruyère, Voltaire, Diderot and Montesquieu,

friends and enemies, all have scattered their wealth of pearls and gold.

Over the threadbare woof of barren doctrines the seventeenth century has

embroidered a majestic stole of purple and silk; and the eighteenth

century, crumpling and tearing it, scatters it in a thousand golden

threads, which sparkle like a ball-dress. But in England all is dull,

dry, and gloomy; the great men themselves, Addison and Locke, when they

meddle in the defense of Christianity, become flat and wearisome. From

Chillingworth to Paley, apologies, refutations, expositions,

discussions, multiply and make us yawn; they reason well, and that is

all. The theologian enters on a campaign against the Papists of the

seventeenth century and the Deists of the eighteenth,[532] like a

tactician, by rule, taking a position on a principle, throwing up all

around a breastwork of arguments, covering everything with texts,

marching calmly underground in the long shafts which he has dug; we

approach and see a sallow-faced pioneer creep out, with frowning brow,

stiff hands, dirty clothes; he thinks he is protected from all attacks;

his eyes, glued to the ground, have not seen the broad level road beside

his bastion, by which the enemy will outflank and surprise him. A sort

of incurable mediocrity keeps men like him, mattock in hand, in their

trenches, where no one is likely to pass. They understand neither their

texts nor their formulas. They are impotent in criticism and philosophy.

They treat the poetic figures of Scripture, the bold style, the

approximations to improvisation, the mystical Hebrew emotion, the

subtilties and abstractions of Alexandrian metaphysics, with the

precision of a jurist and a psychologist. They wish actually to make of

Scripture an exact code of prescriptions and definitions, drawn up by a

convention of legislators. Open the first that comes to hand, one of the

oldest--John Hales. He comments on a passage of St. Matthew, where a

question arises on a matter forbidden on the Sabbath. What was this?

"The disciples plucked the ears of corn and did eat them."[533] Then

follow divisions and arguments raining down by myriads.[534] Take the

most celebrated: Sherlock, applying the new psychology, invents an

explanation of the Trinity, and imagines three divine souls, each

knowing what passes in the others. Stillingfleet refutes Locke, who

thought that the soul in the resurrection, though having a body, would

not perhaps have exactly the same one in which it had lived. Let us look

at the most illustrious of all, the learned Clarke, a mathematician,

philosopher, scholar, theologian; he is busy patching up Arianism. The

great Newton himself comments on the Apocalypse, and proves that the

Pope is Antichrist. In vain have these men genius; as soon as they touch

religion, they become antiquated, narrow-minded; they make no way; they

are stubborn, and obstinately knock their heads against the same

obstacle. They bury themselves, generation after generation, in the

hereditary hole with English patience and conscientiousness, whilst the

enemy marches by, a league off. Yet in the hole they argue; they square

it, round it, face it with stones, then with bricks, and wonder that,

notwithstanding all these expedients, the enemy marches on. I have read

a host of these treatises, and I have not gleaned a single idea. We are

annoyed to see so much lost labor, and amazed that, during so many

generations, people so virtuous, zealous, thoughtful, loyal, well read,

well trained in discussion, have only succeeded in filling the lower

shelves of libraries. We muse sadly on this second scholastic theology,

and end by perceiving that if it was without effect in the kingdom of

science, it was because it only strove to bear fruit in the kingdom of

action.

All these speculative minds were so in appearance only. They were

apologists, and not inquirers. They busy themselves with morality, not

with truth.[535] They would shrink from treating God as a hypothesis,

and the Bible as a document. They would see a vicious tendency in the

broad impartiality of criticism and philosophy. They would have scruples

of conscience if they indulged in free inquiry without limitation. In

reality there is a sort of sin in truly free inquiry, because it

presupposes scepticism, abandons reverence, weighs good and evil in the

same balance, and equally receives all doctrines, scandalous or

edifying, as soon as they are proved. They banish these dissolving

speculations; they look on them as occupants of the slothful; they seek

from argument only motives and means for right conduct. They do not love

it for itself; they repress it as soon as it strives to become

independent; they demand that reason shall be Christian and Protestant;

they would give it the lie under any other form; they reduce it to the

humble position of a handmaid, and set over it their own inner Biblical

and utilitarian sense. In vain did free-thinkers arise in the beginning

of the century; forty years later they were drowned in

forgetfulness.[536] Deism and atheism were in England only a transient

eruption developed on the surface of the social body, in the bad air of

the great world and the plethora of native energy. Professed irreligious

men, Toland, Tindal, Mandeville, Bolingbroke, met foes stronger than

themselves. The leaders of experimental philosophy,[537] the most

learned and accredited of the scholars of the age,[538] the most witty

authors, the most beloved and able,[539] all the authority of science

and genius was employed in putting them down. Refutations abound. Every

year, on the foundation of Robert Boyle, men noted for their talent or

knowledge come to London to preach eight sermons, for proving the

Christian religion against notorious infidels, viz., atheists, deists,

pagans, Mohammedans and Jews. And these apologies are solid, able to

convince a liberal mind, infallible for the conviction of a moral mind.

The clergymen who write them, Clarke, Bentley, Law, Watt, Warburton,

Butler, are not below the lay science and intellect. Moreover, the lay

element assists them. Addison writes the "Evidences of Christianity,"

Locke the "Reasonableness of Christianity," Ray the "Wisdom of God

Manifested in the Works of the Creation." Over and above this concert of

serious words is heard a ringing voice: Swift compliments with his

terrible irony the elegant rogues who entertained the wise idea of

abolishing Christianity. If they had been ten times more numerous they

would not have succeeded, for they had nothing to substitute in its

place. Lofty speculation, which alone could take the ground, was shown

or declared to be impotent. On all sides philosophical conceptions

dwindle or come to naught. If Berkeley lighted on one, the denial of

matter, it stands alone, without influence on the public, as it were a

theological _coup d'état_, like a pious man who wants to undermine

immorality and materialism at their basis. Newton attained at most an

incomplete idea of space, and was only a mathematician. Locke, almost as

poor,[540] gropes about, hesitates, does little more than guess, doubt,

start an opinion to advance and withdraw it by turns, not seeing its

far-off consequences, nor, above all, exhausting anything. In short, he

forbids himself lofty questions, and is very much inclined to forbid

them to us. He has written a book to inquire what objects are within our

reach, or above our comprehension. He seeks for our limitations; he soon

finds them, and troubles himself no further. Let us shut ourselves in

our own little domain, and work there diligently. Our business in this

world is not to know all things, but those which regard the conduct of

our life. If Hume, more bold, goes further, it is in the same track: he

preserves nothing of lofty science; he abolishes speculation altogether.

According to him, we know neither substances, causes, nor laws. When we

affirm that an object is conjoined to another object, it is because we

choose, by custom; "all events seem entirely loose and separate." If we

give them "a tie," it is our imagination which creates it;[541] there is

nothing true but doubt, and even we must doubt this. The conclusion is,

that we shall do well to purge our mind of all theory, and only believe

in order that we may act. Let us examine our wings only in order to cut

them off, and let us confine ourselves to walking with our legs. So

finished a pyrrhonism serves only to cast the world back upon

established beliefs. In fact, Reid, being honest, is alarmed. He sees

society broken up, God vanishing in smoke, the family evaporating in

hypotheses. He objects as a father of a family, a good citizen, a

religious man, and sets up common sense as a sovereign judge of truth.

Rarely, I think, in this world has speculation fallen lower. Reid does

not even understand the systems which he discusses; he lifts his hands

to heaven when he tries to expound Aristotle and Leibnitz. If some

municipal body were to order a system, it would be this

churchwarden-philosophy. In reality the men of this country did not care

for metaphysics; to interest them it must be reduced to psychology. Then

it becomes a science of observation, positive and useful, like botany;

still the best fruit which they pluck from it is a theory of moral

sentiments. In this domain Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Price, Smith,

Ferguson, and Hume himself prefer to labor; here they find their most

original and durable ideas. On this point the public instinct is so

strong that it enrolls the most independent minds in its service, and

only permit them the discoveries which benefit it. Except two or three,

chiefly purely literary men, and who are French or Frenchified in mind,

they busy themselves only with morals. This idea rallies round

Christianity all the forces which in France Voltaire ranges against it.

They all defend it on the same ground--as a tie for civil society, and

as a support for private virtue. Formerly instinct supported it; now

opinion consecrates it; and it is the same secret force which, by a

gradual labor, at present adds the weight of opinion to the pressure of

instinct. Moral sense, having preserved for it the fidelity of the lower

classes, conquered for it the approval of the loftier intellects. Moral

sense transfers it from the public conscience to the literary world, and

from being popular makes it official.

Section VII.--The Constitution.--Locke's Theory of Government

We would hardly suspect this public tendency, after taking a distant

view of the English constitution: but on a closer view it is the first

thing we see. It appears to be an aggregate of privileges, that is, of

sanctioned injustices. The truth is, that it is a body of contracts,

that is, of recognized rights. Every one, great or small, has its own,

which he defends with all his might. My lands, my property, my chartered

right, whatsoever it be, antiquated, indirect, superfluous, individual,

public, none shall touch it, king, lords, or commons. Is it of the value

of five shillings? I will defend it as if it were worth a million

sterling; it is my person which they would attack. I will leave my

business, lose my time, throw away my money, form associations, pay

fines, go to prison, perish in the attempt; no matter; I shall show that

I am no coward, that I will not bend under injustice, that I will not

yield a portion of my right.

By this sentiment Englishmen have conquered and preserved public

liberty. This feeling, after they had dethroned Charles I and James II,

is shaped into principles in the declaration of 1689, and is developed

by Locke in demonstrations.[542] "All men," says Locke, "are naturally

in a state of perfect freedom, also of equality."[543] "In the State of

Nature everyone has the Executive power of the Law of Nature,"[544]

_i.e._, of judging, punishing, making war, ruling his family and

dependents. "There only is political society where every one of the

members hath quitted this natural Power, resign'd it up into the Hands

of the Community in all Cases that exclude him not from appealing for

Protection to the Law established by it."[545]

"Those who are united into one body and have a common established law

and judicature to appeal to, with authority... to punish offenders, are

in civil society one with another.[546] As for the ruler (they are ready

to tell you), he ought to be absolute.... Because he has power to do

more hurt and wrong, 'tis right when he does it.... This is to think,

that men are so foolish, that they take care to avoid what mischiefs may

be done them by polecats or foxes; but are content, nay, think it

safety, to be devoured by lions.[547] The only way whereby any one

divests himself of his natural liberty, and puts on the bonds of civil

society, is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a

community, for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one amongst

another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties, and a greater

security against any, that are not of it."[548]

Umpires, rules of arbitration, this is all which their federation can

impose upon them. They are freemen, who, having made a mutual treaty,

are still free. Their society does not found, but guarantees their

rights. And official acts here sustain abstract theory. When Parliament

declares the throne vacant, its first argument is, that the king has

violated the original contract by which he was king. When the Commons

impeach Sacheverell, it was in order publicly to maintain that the

constitution of England was founded on a contract, and that the subjects

of this kingdom have, in their different public and private capacities,

as legal a title to the possession of the rights accorded to them by

law, as the prince has to the possession of the crown. When Lord Chatham

defended the election of Wilkes, it was by laying down that "the rights

of the greatest and of the meanest subjects now stand upon the same

foundation, the security of law common to all.... When the people had

lost their rights, those of the peerage would soon become

insignificant." It was no supposition or philosophy which founded them,

but an act and deed, Magna Charta, the Petition of Rights, the Habeas

Corpus Act, and the whole body of the statute laws.

These rights are there, inscribed on parchments, stored up in archives,

signed, sealed, authentic; those of the farmer and prince are traced on

the same page, in the same ink, by the same writer; both are on an

equality on this vellum; the gloved hand clasps the horny palm. What

though they are unequal? It is by mutual accord; the peasant is as much

a master in his cottage, with his rye-bread and his nine shillings a

week,[549] as the Duke of Marlborough in Blenheim Castle, with his many

thousands a year in places and pensions.

There they are, these men, standing erect and ready to defend

themselves. Pursue this sentiment of right in the details of political

life; the force of brutal temperament and concentrated or savage

passions provides arms. If we go to an election, the first thing we see

is the full tables.[550] They cram themselves at the candidate's

expense: ale, gin, brandy are set flowing without concealment; the

victuals descend into their electoral stomachs, and their faces grow

red. At the same time they become furious. "Every glass they pour down

serves to increase their animosity. Many an honest man, before as

harmless as a tame rabbit, when loaded with a single election dinner,

has become more dangerous than a charged culverin."[551] The wrangle

turns into a fight, and the pugnacious instinct, once loosed, craves for

blows. The candidates bawl against each other till they are hoarse. They

are chaired, to the great peril of their necks; the mob yells, cheers,

grows warm with the motion, the defiance, the row; big words of

patriotism peal out, anger and drink inflame their blood, fists are

clenched, cudgels are at work, and bulldog passions regulate the

greatest interests of the country. Let all beware how they draw these

passions down on their heads: Lords, Commons, King, they will spare no

one; and when Government would oppress a man in spite of them, they will

compel Government to suppress their own law.

They are not to be muzzled, they make that a matter of pride. With them,

pride assists instinct in defending the right. Each feels that "his

house is his castle," and that the law keeps guard at his door. Each

tells himself that he is defended against private insolence, that the

public arbitrary power will never touch him, that he has "his body," and

can answer blows by blows, wounds by wounds, that he will be judged by

an impartial jury and a law common to all. "Even if an Englishman," says

Montesquieu, "has as many enemies as hairs on his head, nothing will

happen to him. The laws there were not made for one more than for

another; each looks on himself as a king, and the men of this nation are

more confederates than fellow-citizens." This goes so far "that there is

hardly a day when some one does not lose respect for the king. Lately my

Lady Bell Molineux, a regular virago, sent to have the trees pulled up

from a small piece of land which the queen had bought for Kensington,

and went to law with her, without having wished, under any pretext, to

come to terms with her; she made the queen's secretary wait three

hours."[552] "When Englishmen come to France, they are deeply astonished

to see the sway of 'the king's good pleasure, the Bastille, the _lettres

de cachet_; a gentleman who dare not live on his estate in the country,

for fear of the governor of the province; a groom of the king's chamber,

who, for a cut with a razor, kills a poor barber with impunity."[553] In

England, "one man does not fear another." If we converse with any of

them, we will find how greatly this security raises their hearts and

courage. A sailor who rows Voltaire about, and may be pressed next day

into the fleet, prefers his condition to that of the Frenchman, and

looks on him with pity, whilst taking his five shillings. The vastness

of their pride breaks forth at every step and in every page. An

Englishman, says Chesterfield, thinks himself equal to beating three

Frenchmen. They would willingly declare that they are in the herd of men

as bulls in a herd of cattle. We hear them bragging of their boxing, of

their meat and ale, of all that can support the force and energy of

their virile will. Roast-beef and beer make stronger arms than cold

water and frogs.[554] In the eyes of the vulgar, the French are starved

wigmakers, papists, and serfs, an inferior kind of creatures, who can

neither call their bodies nor their souls their own, puppets and tools

in the hands of a master and a priest. As for themselves,

"Stern o'er each bosom reason holds her state

With daring aims irregularly great.

Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,

I see the lords of human kind pass by;

Intent on high designs, a thoughtful band,

By forms unfashion'd, fresh from nature's hand,

Fierce in their native hardiness of soul,

True to imagin'd right, above control,

While even the peasant boasts these rights to scan,

And learns to venerate himself as man."[555]