BOOK I.

CRITICAL, HISTORICAL, and MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS

By Lord Macaulay

With A Memoir and Index

In Six Volumes. Vol. I.

New York: Sheldon and Company

1860

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PUBLISHER’S ADVERTISEMENT.

This edition of Lord Macaulay’s Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous

Essays, contains all the articles published with the author’s correction

and revision (3 vols., London: Longman, Green, & Co.) during his

lifetime, and all the articles published by his friends (2 vols.,

London: Longman, Green & Co.) since his death. An Appendix contains

several essays attributed to Lord Macaulay, and unquestionably his, not

found in any other edition of his miscellaneous writings.

In this edition the Essays have been arranged in chronological order,

so that their perusal affords, so to speak, a complete biographical

portraiture of the brilliant author’s mind. No other edition possesses

the same advantage.

A very full Index has been especially prepared for this

edition,--without which the vast stores of historical learning and

pertinent anecdote contained in the Essays can be referred to only by

the fortunate man who possesses a memory as great as that of Macaulay

himself. In this respect it is superior to the English editions, and

wholly unlike any other American edition.

This edition also contains the pure text of Macaulay’s Essays. The

exact punctuation, orthography, etc. of the English editions have been

followed.

The portrait is from a photograph by Claudet, and represents the great

historian as he appeared in the latter years of his life.

The biographical and critical Introduction is from the well-known pen

of Mr. E. P. Whipple, who is fully entitled to speak with authority in

regard to the most brilliant essayist of the age.

The typographical excellence of the publication places it among the best

that have issued from the “Riverside” Press. We trust the public will

appreciate what has long been needed,--a complete and correct edition,

in handsome library style, of Lord Macaulay’s Essays.

Sheldon And Company.

New York, Oct 1860.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF MACAULAY.

The materials for the biography of Lord Macaulay are scanty, and the

writer of the present sketch has been able to glean few facts regarding

his career which are not generally known. His life was comparatively

barren in events, and though he rose to conspicuous social, literary,

and political station, he had neither to struggle nor scramble for

advancement. Almost as soon as his talents were displayed they were

recognized and rewarded, and he attained fortune and power without using

any means which required the least sacrifice, either of the integrity or

the pride of his character.

Thomas Babington Macaulay was born at Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, on

the twenty-fifth of October, 1800. His father, Zachary Macaulay, the son

of a Scotch Presbyterian clergyman, was one of the worthiest and ablest

antislavery philanthropists and politicians of his time, distinguished,

even among such men as Wilberforce, Clarkson, and Stephen, for courage,

sagacity, integrity, and religious principle. His mother was the

daughter of Thomas Mills, a bookseller in Bristol, and belonged to

the Society of Friends. Under her loving care he received his early

education, and was not sent from home until his thirteenth year, when

he was placed in a private academy. As a boy, he astonished all who knew

him, by the brightness and eagerness of his mind, and the extent and

variety of his acquisitions. Two lately published letters, written

by Hannah More to his father, afford a pleasing glimpse of him, as he

appeared to a shrewd and affectionate observer of his early years. She

speaks of his “great superiority of intellect and quickness of passion,”

at the age of eleven. He ought, she thinks, to have competitors, for “he

is like the prince who refused to play with anything but kings.”

“I never,” she says, “saw any one bad propensity in him; nothing except

natural frailty and ambition, inseparable perhaps from such talents and

so lively an imagination; he appears sincere, veracious, tender-hearted,

and affectionate.” He was a fertile versifier, even at that tender age,

but she “observed with pleasure that though he was quite wild till the

ebullitions of his muse were discharged, he thought no more of them

afterwards than the ostrich is said to do of her eggs after she has laid

them.” In another letter, written about two years afterwards, when the

bright lad was nearly fourteen, she says, “the quantity of reading

Tom has poured in, and the quantity of writing he has poured out, is

astonishing.” Poetry continued to be his passion, but his venerable

friend still testifies to his promising habit of throwing his verses

away as soon as he had read them to her. “We have poetry,” she writes,

“for breakfast, dinner, and supper. He recited all _Palestine_, while we

breakfasted, to our pious friend, Mr. Whalley, at my desire, and did it

incomparably.” She refers to his loquacity, but that quality seems not,

in her presence, to have been connected with dogmatism, for she calls

him very docile. At that early age he appears to have been sufficiently

master of his stores of information to play with them, and his wit kept

pace with his understanding. “Several men of sense and learning,” she

says, “have been struck with the union of gayety and rationality in

his conversation.” Accuracy of expression seems also to have been as

striking a trait of the boy’s mind as volubility of utterance. One fault

is mentioned, which was probably the result of his absorption in study

and composition. Incessantly occupied, mentally, he paid but little

attention to his personal appearance, and in dress was something of a

sloven. Neither his father nor Hannah More could cure him of this fault,

and, up to the time he became a peer, this neglect of externals seems to

have been a characteristic trait. A fellow-pupil at the academy to which

he was sent, describes him as “rather largely-built than otherwise,

but not fond of any of the ordinary physical sports of boys; with a

disproportionately large head, slouching or stooping shoulders, and a

whitish or pallid complexion; incessantly reading or writing, and

often reading or repeating poetry in his walks with his companions.” In

October, 1818, the precocious youth entered Trinity College, Cambridge,

and during the whole period of his residence at the University his

special studies did not divert him from gratifying his thirst for

general knowledge, and taste for general literature. In 1819 he gained

the chancellor’s medal for a poem on the subject of Pompeii, and in 1821

the same prize for one on Evening. For these, and for all compositions

of the kind, he afterwards professed to feel the utmost scorn. Two years

after his second success as a prize poet, we find him comparing prize

poems to prize sheep. “The object,” he says, “of the competitor for the

agricultural premium is to produce an animal fit, not to be eaten, but

to be weighed. The object of the poetical candidate is to produce, not a

good poem, but a poem of the exact degree of frigidity and bombast which

may appear to his censors to be correct or sublime. In general prize

sheep are good for nothing but to make tallow candles, and prize poems

are good for nothing but to light them.”

In 1821 he was elected Craven University Scholar; and in 1822 he

graduated, and received his degree of B. A.; though he did not compete

for honors, owing, it is said, to his dislike for mathematics. Between

this period and 1824, when he was elected Fellow of his College, he

contributed to Knight’s Quarterly Magazine the poems and essays,

in which, for the first time, we detect the leading traits of his

intellectual character. He possessed the feeling and the faculty of

the poet only so far as they are necessary for the interpretative

and representative requirements of the historian. He possessed the

understanding of the philosopher only so far as it is necessary to throw

into relations the vividly conceived facts derived from the records of

the annalist. He could not create, but he could reproduce; he could not

vitally combine, but he could logically dispose. The fair operation

of these mental qualities was disturbed by the peculiarities of

his disposition. He had boundless self-confidence, which had been

consciously or unconsciously pampered by friends who admired the

remarkable brilliancy of his powers. Independence of thought was thus

early connected with imperiousness of will and petulant disrespect for

other minds. Having no self-distrust, there was nothing to check the

positiveness of his judgments. Where more cautious thinkers doubted he

dogmatized; their probabilities were his certainties; and generally the

tone of his judgments seemed to imply his inward belief in the maxim

of the egotist--“difference from me is the measure of absurdity.” Lord

Melbourne afterwards acutely touched upon this foible, when he lazily

expressed his wish that he “was as sure of anything as Tom Macaulay was

of everything.”

A portion of this positiveness is perhaps to be referred as much to the

vividness of his perceptions as to the autocracy of his disposition. All

that he read he remembered; and his memory, being indissolubly connected

with his feelings and his imagination, vitalized all that it retained.

Facts and persons of a past age were not to him hidden in the words

which pretended to convey them to the mind, but were perceived as actual

events and living beings. He could recollect because he could realize

and reproduce. To his mental eye the past was present, and he had the

delight of the poet in viewing as things what the historian had recorded

in words. All men are more positive in regard to what they have seen

than in regard to what they have heard. If what they have seen awakens

in them joy and enthusiasm, their expression is instinctively dogmatic,

especially if they come into collision with persons of fainter and

colder perceptions, whose understandings are sceptical because their

sensibilities are dull. Such, to some degree, at least, was the

dogmatism of Macaulay in his statements of facts. In respect to his

positiveness in opinion, it may be said that his leading opinions were

blended with his moral passions, and an unmistakable love of truth

animates even his fiercest, haughtiest and most disdainful treatment

of the opinions of opponents. These qualities do not of course wholly

explain or extenuate the leading defect of his character; for behind

them, it must be admitted, were the triumphant consciousness of

personal vigor, the insolent sense of personal superiority, and

the relentlessness of temper which so often accompanies strength of

intellectual conviction.

Among his contributions to Knight’s Quarterly Magazine, the Fragment of

a Roman Tale and The Athenian Revels, indicate that at college he had

studied the ancient classics so thoroughly as to gain no little insight

into Greek and Roman life. Alcibiades, Cæsar, and Catiline, seem as real

to him as Canning and Wellington. In the papers on Mitford’s History of

Greece and The Athenian Orators, the same tendency of mind is displayed

in a critical direction. His intellect penetrates to the realities

of the society and the individuals he assumes to judge, and the

independence, originality, and decision of his thinking, correspond to

the clearness of his perceptions. The Conversation between Cowley

and Milton is an example of the same sympathetic historic imagination

exercised in the discussion of great historical questions, yet angrily

debated; and in the poem of The Battle of Naseby, which purports to be

written by Obadiah Bind-their-Kings-in-Chains-and-their-Nobles-with-

links-of-Iron, Serjeant in Ireton’s Regiment, an attempt is made to

reproduce the fiercest and gloomiest religious passions which raged in

the breasts of the military fanatics among the Puritans. The critical

papers on Dante and Petrarch exhibit the general characteristic of the

writer’s later literary criticism--intellectual sympathy superior to

rules, but submissive to laws; praising warmly, but at the same time,

judging keenly; and as intolerant of faults as sensitive to merits. The

style, both of the historical and critical articles, is substantially

the style of Macaulay’s more celebrated essays. There is less energy and

freedom of movement, a larger use of ornament for the sake of ornament,

and a more obvious rhetorical artifice in the declamatory passages, but

in essential elements it is the same.

In the choice of a profession, Macaulay fixed upon the law. He was

called to the bar in February, 1826, but we hear of no clients; and it

is doubtful if he ever mastered the details of his profession. Sydney

Smith, who knew him at this time, said afterwards--“I always prophesied

his greatness from the first moment I saw him, then a very young

and unknown man, on the Northern Circuit. There are no limits to his

knowledge, on small subjects as well as great: he is like a book

in breeches.” Indeed, politics and literature had, from the first,

attractions too strong for him to resist; and before he entered on the

practice of his profession, he had, by one article in a review, passed

at a bound to a conspicuous place among the writers of the time.

It might have been expected, from his family connections, that he would

be a zealous whig and abolitionist, and his first contribution to

the Edinburgh Review was on the subject of West India Slavery. It was

published in the number for January, 1825, and in extent of information,

force and acuteness of argument, severity of denunciation and sarcasm,

and fervor and brilliancy of style, it ranks high among the many

vigorous productions in which Macaulay has recorded his love of freedom

and hatred of oppression, and exhibited his power of making tyranny

ridiculous as well as odious. It is curious that this paper, so full

of the peculiar traits of his character and style, should not have

been generally recognized as his, after his subsequent articles had

familiarized the public with his manner of expression. But the date of

his first contribution to the Review is still commonly considered to be

the month of August, 1825, when his article on Milton appeared, and

at once attained a wide popularity. Though when, in 1848, the author

collected his Essays, he declared that this article “hardly contained a

paragraph that his matured judgment approved,” and regretted that he had

to leave it unpruned of the “gaudy and ungraceful ornament” with which

it was overloaded, its popularity has survived its author’s harsh

judgment.

Whatever were its youthful faults of taste, impertinences of statement,

and errors of theory, few articles which had ever before appeared in

a British journal contained so much solid matter in so compact and

readable a form. If it did not touch the depths of the various topics it

so confidently discussed, it certainly contained a sufficient number of

strong and striking thoughts to rescue its brilliancy from the charge

of superficiality. If the splendor of its rhetoric seemed consciously

designed for display, this defect applies in great measure to Macaulay’s

rhetoric in general. He popularizes everything. He converts his

acquirements into accomplishments, and contrives that their show

shall always equal their substance; but in this essay, as in the

dazzling-series of essays which succeeded it, a discerning eye can

hardly fail to perceive beneath the external glitter of the periods, the

presence of two qualities which are sound and wholesome, namely, broad

common sense, and earnest enthusiasm.

Following the article on Milton, came, in the Edin burgh Review for

February, 1826, the month in which he was called to the bar, a paper on

the London University. This was succeeded in March, 1827, by a powerful

and well-reasoned, but exceedingly bitter and sarcastic antislavery

article on the Social and Industrial Capacities of Negroes. In June of

the same year, appeared a paper, evidently written by him, entitled

“The Present Administration,” one of the most acrimonious and audacious

political articles ever published in the Edinburgh Review. Its tone was

so violent and virulent, and excited so much opposition, that, in the

next number of the Review, a kind of apology was offered for it under

the form of explaining its real meaning. Macaulay’s real meaning is

evident; he “meant mischief;” but in the confused sentences of his

apologist hardly any meaning is perceptible; and there is something

ludicrous in the very supposition that the meaning of the clearest and

most decisive of writers could be mistaken by the public he addressed,

and especially by the Tories he assailed.

In all editions of his Essays, the admirable article on Machiavelli, one

of the ablest, most elaborate, and most thoughtful productions of his

mind, succeeds the article on Milton. It was published in the number of

the Review for March, 1827. Between 1827 and 1830 appeared the

articles on Dryden, History, Hallam’s Constitutional History, Southey’s

Colloquies on Society, and the three articles on the Utilitarian Theory

of Government. These proved the capacity of the author to discuss

both political and literary questions with a boldness, brilliancy, and

effectiveness, hardly known before in periodical literature. Each essay

included an amount of digested and generalized knowledge which might

easily have been expanded into a volume, but which, in its condensed

form and sparkling positiveness of expression, was all the more

efficient. To the Whig party as well as to the Whig Review, such an

ally had claims which could not be disregarded; and in 1830, through the

interest of Lord Lansdowne, he was elected a member of Parliament for

the borough of Caine. His reputation was so well established that no

idea of patronage entered into this arrangement; and he could afterwards

boast, with honest pride, that he was as independent when he sat in

Parliament as the nominee of Lord Lansdowne as when he represented the

popular constituencies of Leeds and Edinburgh.

As an orator, he won a reputation second only to his reputation as a man

of letters. From all accounts he owed little to his manner of speaking.

“His head,” we are told, “was set stiff on his shoulders, and his feet

were planted immovable on the floor. One hand was fixed behind him

across his back, and in this rigid attitude, with only a slight movement

of his right hand, he poured forth, with inconceivable velocity, his

sentences.” His first speech was on the Jews’ Disabilities Bill, on the

fifth of April, 1830, followed in December by one on Slavery in the West

Indies. Both evinced the broad views of the statesman as well as the

generous warmth of the reformer. He threw himself with characteristic

ardor into the great struggle for Parliamentary Reform, and his speeches

on that measure, not only drew forth unbounded applause from his party

and unwilling admiration from his opponents, but, as read now, after the

excitement of the occasion has subsided, justify in a great degree the

enthusiastic praise of those who heard them delivered. Clear and logical

in arrangement, abundant in precedents and arguments, fearless in tone,

and animated in movement, they are particularly marked by that fusion of

intelligence and sensibility which makes passion intelligent and reason

impassioned. The rush of the declamation is kept carefully within the

channels of the argument; they convince through the very process

by which they kindle. Their style is that of splendid and animated

conversation; though carefully premeditated they have the appearance

of being spontaneous; and indeed were not, as is commonly supposed,

originally written out and committed to memory, but thought out and

committed to memory. Without writing a word, he could prepare an

hour’s speech, in his mind, carefully attending even to the most minute

felicities of expression, and then deliver it with a rapidity so great

that no reporter could follow him. The effect on the House of these

declaimed disquisitions can perhaps be best estimated by quoting a

passage from one of his political opponents, whose pen, in the heat of

faction, was unrestrained by any of the proprieties of controversy. In

the number of the _Noctes Ambrosiano_, for August, 1831, Macaulay is

sneered at as a person whom it is the fashion among a small coterie to

call “the Burke of the age.” After admitting him to be “the cleverest

declaimer on the Whig side of the House,” the account thus proceeds:

“He is an ugly, cross-made, splay-footed, shapeless little dumpling of

a fellow, with a featureless face, too--except indeed a good expansive

forehead--sleek, puritanical, sandy hair, large glimmering eyes--and

a mouth from ear to ear. He has a lisp and burr, moreover, and speaks

thickly and huskily for several minutes before he gets into the swing

of his discourse; but after that nothing can be more dazzling than his

whole execution. What he says is substantially, of course, stuff

and nonsense; but it is so well-worded, and so volubly and

forcibly delivered--there is such an endless string of epigram and

antithesis--such a flashing of epithets--such an accumulation of

images--and the voice is so trumpetlike, and the action so grotesquely

emphatic, that you might hear a pin drop in the House. Even Manners

Sutton himself listens.”

In the Reformed Parliament, which met in January, 1833, Macaulay took

his seat as member for Leeds. He was soon after made Secretary of the

Board of Control. An economist of his reputation, he did not speak

often, but reserved himself for those occasions when he could speak with

effect. Throughout his parliamentary career he showed no inclination to

mingle in strictly extemporaneous debate, though it seems difficult

to conceive that a man of such intellectual hardihood as well as

intellectual capacity, and who in conversation was one of the most

fluent and well-informed of human beings, lacked the power of thinking

on his legs. It is probable that he disliked the drudgery of practical

political life, and was incapable of the continuous party passion which

sustains the professional politician. An ardent Whig partisan, his

partisanship was still roused by the principles of his party rather than

by its expedients. Literature and the philosophy of politics had more

fascination for him than the contentions of the House of Commons; and

he has repeatedly expressed contempt for the sophisms and misstatements

which, though they will not bear the test of careful perusal, pass in

the House for facts and arguments when volubly delivered in excited

debate. Indeed, from 1830 to 1834, the period when he was most ambitious

for political distinction and preferment, his contributions to the

Edinburgh Review indicate that while in Parliament he gave as much time

and thought to literature as he did before he became a member. To this

period belong his articles on Saddler’s Law of Population, Bunyan,

Byron, Hampden, Lord Burleigh, Mirabeau, Horace Walpole, the elder Pitt,

Croker’s Edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, the Civil Disabilities

of the Jews, and the War of the Succession in Spain. Only one of his

speeches can perhaps compare with the best of these articles In range

of thought and knowledge, and richness of diction. This was the speech

which he delivered as Secretary of the Board of Control, in July 1833,

on the new India Bill of the Whig government. Few persons were in

the house; but Jeffrey, who was in London, wrote to one of his

correspondents in regard to it:--“Mac is a marvellous person. He made

the very best speech that has been made this session on India. The

Speaker, who is a severe judge, says he rather thinks it the best speech

he ever heard.”

Since the time of Burke, no speech in Parliament on the subject of India

had equalled this in comprehensiveness of thought and knowledge. It

justified his appointment, made a few months after, of member and legal

adviser of the Supreme Council of India. Shiel, in a mocking defence of

Macaulay from the sneers of some person who questioned his abilities,

thus alluded to this appointment:--“Nonsense, sir! Don’t attempt to run

down Macaulay. He’s the cleverest man in Christendom. Didn’t he make

four speeches on the Reform Bill, and get £10,000 a year? Think of that,

and be dumb!” The largeness of the salary, nearly twice that of the

President of the United States, was probably Macaulay’s principal

inducement to accept the office. His means were small; the gains of

the office would in a few years make him independent of the world;

and though he seemed, in accepting it, to abandon the objects of his

political ambition, he really chose the right course to advance them.

Pecuniary independence would relieve him from all imputations of being

a political adventurer; and he had every reason to suppose that he might

reach, in England, high political office all the more surely if it were

understood that the emoluments of high political office were not the

primary objects of his ambition. Apart from such considerations as

these, there was something in the terms of his appointment eminently

calculated to induce him to accept it. The special object of his mission

was to prepare a new code of Indian law; and it is impossible to read

his articles on the Utilitarian Theory of Government, and Dumont’s

Recollections of Mirabeau, without perceiving that he had studied

jurisprudence as a science, and that he considered the province of the

jurist as even superior to that of the statesman. He went to India in

1834, with the feeling that he could prepare a code at once practical

and just. For four years he labored to solve this problem, and the

decision of his countrymen appeared to be that, though his solution

might be just, it was not practical. In the opinion, especially of those

East Indians whose interests were affected by its justice, it was a

“Black Code.” When it was published, on his return from India in 1838,

it was mercilessly denounced and ridiculed. Alarmists prophesied that,

if adopted, it would lead to the downfall of the British power in India.

Wits calculated, with malicious accuracy, the number of guineas which

each word cost the British people. Between alarmists and wits the whole

project fell through. There was a general impression that the code would

not work, and, while its ability was admitted, its practicability was

denied.

During his absence in India only two of his articles, the review of

Mackintosh’s History of the Revolution in England in 1688, and the paper

on Bacon, were published in the Edinburgh Review. The sketch of

Bacon’s life and philosophy is one of the most elaborate, ingenious

and brilliant products of his mind, but it is full of extravagant

overstatements. It is biography and criticism in a series of dazzling

epigrams; the exaggeration of epigram taints both the account of Bacon’s

life and the estimate of Bacon’s philosophy; but the charm of the

style is so great that, for a long time yet to come, it will probably

influence the opinion which even educated men form of Bacon, though to

thoughtful students of the age of Elizabeth and James, and to thoughtful

students of the history of scientific and metaphysical speculation, it

may seem as inaccurate in its disposition of facts as it is superficial

in philosophy.

Soon after his return from India, in June, 1838, Macaulay was offered

the office of Judge Advocate, which he declined. In 1839 the whigs

of Edinburgh invited him to offer himself as a candidate for the

representation of that city in Parliament. In a private letter to

Adam Black, he gave the reasons why, if elected, the position would

be agreeable to him. “I should,” he wrote, “be able to take part in

politics, as an independent Member of Parliament, with the weight and

authority which belongs to a man who speaks in the name of a great and

intelligent body of constituents. I should, during half the year, be at

leisure for other pursuits to which I am more inclined, and for which I

am perhaps better fitted; and I should be able to complete an

extensive literary work which I have long meditated.” He expressed

an unwillingness to accept office under the government he intended to

support, on the ground that he disliked the restraints of official life.

“I love,” he says, “freedom, leisure, and letters. Salary is no object

to me, for my income, though small, is sufficient for a man who has

no ostentatious tastes.” In regard to the expenses of the election,

he makes one condition which may surprise those American readers, who

suppose that none but English politicians who are corrupt, pay money to

get into Parliament. “I cannot,” he says, “spend more than £500 on the

election. If, therefore, there be any probability that the candidate

will be required to pay more than this, I hope you will look round

for another person.” On the 29th of May, 1839, he made a speech to the

electors, which for clearness and pungency of statement and argument

is a model for all orators who are called upon to address a popular

audience. It was probably this speech which drew forth the unintentional

compliment from the Edinburgh artisan, that he thought he could have

made it himself. “Ou! it was a wise-like speech, an’ no that

defecshunt in airgument; but, eh! man”--with a pause of intense

disappointment--“I’m thinkin’ I could ha’ said the haill o’ it mysel’!”

After some inefficient radical opposition, Macaulay, on the fourth of

June, was declared duly elected. In September of the same year he was

induced to accept the office of Secretary at War, in Lord Melbourne’s

administration. In 1841, when Sir Robert Peel came into power, he went

into opposition, and some of his ablest speeches were made during the

five years the tories were in office. In 1842, his “Lays of Ancient

Rome,” were published, and attained a wide popularity. In 1843 he

published a collection of his Essays, contributed to the Edinburgh

Review, including the masterly biographies of Temple, Clive, Hastings,

Frederic the Great, and Addison, and the papers on Church and

State, Ranke’s History of the Popes, and the Comic Dramatists of the

Restoration, written since his return from India. In July, 1846, on

the return of the Whigs to power, he was made Paymaster-General of the

Forces. Though his speech and vote on the Maynooth College Bill, in

1845, had roused a serious opposition to him among the dissenters of

Edinburgh, he was still reelected to Parliament, though not without a

severe struggle, on his acceptance of office. In 1847 Parliament was

dissolved. By this time his offences against the theological opinions of

his constituents had been increased by his support of what they called

the system of “godless education,” which the government to which he

belonged had patronized. The publicans and spirit dealers of the city

were also in ill-humor with the Whig government, on account of the

continuance of “undue restrictions in regard to their licenses.” From

the state of the mob that yelled and hissed round the hustings, there

would have seemed to be no “undue restriction” on the disposal of

spirituous liquors to carry the election. Adam Black sums up the

opposition to Macaulay as consisting of “the no-popery men, the

godless-education men, the crotchety coteries, and the dealers in

spirits.” To all these Macaulay was blunt and unconciliating, strong

in the feeling that he had excited their hatred by acts which his

conscience prompted and his reason approved. He would not recant a

single expression, much less a single opinion.

“The bray of Exeter Hall,” a phrase in his Maynooth speech particularly

obnoxious to the dissenters, he would not take back, and it was used

against him with great effect. A Mr. Cowan, a man of no note, was

selected as the opposing candidate, as if his enemies had determined to

mortify his pride as well as deprive him of his seat. His speeches from

the hustings were continually interrupted by a mob who, infuriated

by fanaticism or whiskey, received his statements with insults, and

answered his arguments by jeers. “If,” exclaimed Macaulay in one of

his speeches, “your representative be an honest man”--“Ay! but he’s no

that!” was a cry that came back from the crowd. To interruptions and

to insults, however, he presented a bold front, and met outrage

with defiance. He would not condescend to humor at the hustings the

prejudices he had offended in Parliament, but reaffirmed his opinions in

the most pointed and explicit language. One of his arguments was that,

in regal’d to the Maynooth grant, no principle was involved. A sum had

always been yearly voted to support that Roman Catholic College; the

only cause of complaint against him was that he had spoken and voted for

an additional sum. He was therefore opposed, not on a principle, but on

a quibble. “And,” he exclaimed, “if you want a representative who will

peril the peace of the empire for a mere quibble, that representative I

will not be.”

He was defeated, and after it was known that he was defeated, he was

hissed. In his speech to the crowd, announcing that his political

connection with Edinburgh was dissolved forever, he alluded to this last

circumstance as unprecedented in political warfare. To hiss a defeated

candidate, he reminded them, was below the ordinary magnanimity of the

most factious mob. In his farewell address to the electors, written

after he had returned to London, he indicated that, to an honest,

honorable, and patriotic statesman, there might be solid consolations,

even to personal pride, in the circumstances of his defeat. “I shall

always be proud,” he writes, “to think that I once enjoyed your favor,

but permit me to say I shall remember, not less proudly, how I risked

and how I lost it.” The following noble poem, published since his death,

contains, perhaps, the most authentic record of his feelings on the

occasion:--

_Lines Written In August, 1847._

The day of tumult, strife, defeat, was o’er;

Worn out with toil and noise and scorn and spleen,

I slumbered, and in slumber saw once more

A room in an old mansion, long unseen.

That room, methought, was curtained from the light;

Yet through the curtains shone the moon’s cold ray

Full on a cradle, where, in linen white,

Sleeping life’s first soft sleep, an infant lay.

Pale flickered on the hearth the dying flame,

And all was silent in that ancient hall,

Save when by fits on the low night-wind came

The murmur of the distant water-fall.

And lo! the fairy queens who rule our birth

Drew nigh to speak the new-born baby’s doom:

With noiseless step, which left no trace on earth,

From gloom they came, and vanished into gloom.

Not deigning on the boy a glance to cast,

Swept careless by the gorgeous Queen of Gain;

More scornful still, the Queen of Fashion passed,

With mincing gait and sneer of cold disdain.

The Queen of Power tossed high her jewelled head,

And o’er her shoulder threw a wrathful frown:

The Queen of Pleasure on the pillow shed

Scarce one stray rose-leaf from her fragrant crown.

Still Fay in long procession followed Fay;

And still the little couch remained unblest;

But, when those wayward sprites had passed away,

Came One, the last, the mightiest, and the best.

Oh, glorious lady, with the eyes of light

And laurels clustering round thy lofty brow,

Who by the cradle’s side didst watch that night,

Warbling a sweet strange music, who wast thou?

“Yes, darling; let them go;” so ran the strain:

“Yes; let them go, gain, fashion, pleasure, power,

And all the busy elves to whose domain

Belongs the nether sphere, the fleeting hour.

“Without one envious sigh, one anxious scheme,

The nether sphere, the fleeting hour resign.

Mine is the world of thought, the world of dream,

Mine all the past, and all the future mine.

“Fortune, that lays in sport the mighty low,

Age, that to penance turns the joys of youth,

Shall leave untouched the gifts which I bestow,

The sense of beauty and the thirst of truth.

“Of the fair brotherhood who share my grace,

I, from thy natal day, pronounce thee free;

And, if for some I keep a nobler place,

I keep for none a happier than for thee.

“There are who, while to vulgar eyes they seem

Of all my bounties largely to partake,

Of me as of some rival’s handmaid deem,

And court me but for gain’s, power’s, fashion’s sake.

“To such, though deep their lore, though wide their fame,

Shall my great mysteries be all unknown:

But thou, through good and evil, praise and blame,

Wilt not thou love me for myself alone?

“Yes; thou wilt love me with exceeding love;

And I will tenfold all that love repay,

Still smiling, though the tender may reprove,

Still faithful, though the trusted may betray.

“For aye mine emblem was, and aye shall be,

The ever-during plant whose bough I wear,

Brightest and greenest then, when every tree

That blossoms in the light of Time is bare.

“In the dark hour of shame, I deigned to stand

Before the frowning peers at Bacon’s side:

On a far shore I smoothed with tender hand,

Through months of pain, the sleepless bed of Hyde:

“I brought the wise and brave of ancient days

To cheer the cell where Raleigh pined alone:

I lighted Milton’s darkness with the blaze

Of the bright ranks that guard the eternal throne.

“And even so, my child, it is my pleasure

That thou not then alone shouldst feel me nigh,

When, in domestic bliss and studious leisure,

Thy weeks uncounted come, uncounted fly;

“Not then alone, when myriads, closely pressed

Around thy car, the shout of triumph raise;

Nor when, in gilded drawing-rooms, thy breast

Swells at the sweeter sound of woman’s praise.

No: when on restless night dawns cheerless morrow,

When weary soul and wasting body pine,

Thine am I still, in danger, sickness, sorrow’,

In conflict, obloquy, want, exile, thine;

“Thine, where on mountain waves the snow-birds scream.

Where more than Thule’s winter barbs the breeze,

Where scarce, through lowering clouds, one sickly gleam

Lights the drear May-day of Antarctic seas;

“Thine, when around thy litter’s track all day

White sand-hills shall reflect the blinding glare;

Thine, when, through forests breathing death, thy way

All night shall wind by many a tiger’s lair;

“Thine most, when friends turn pale, when traitors fly,

When, hard beset, thy spirit, justly proud,

For truth, peace, freedom, mercy, dares defy

A sullen priesthood and a raving crowd.

“Amidst the din of all things fell and vile,

Hate’s yell and envy’s hiss and folly’s bray,

Remember me; and with an unforced smile

See riches, baubles, flatterers, pass away.

“Yes: they will pass away; nor deem it strange:

They come and go, as comes and goes the sea:

And let them come and go: thou, through all change,

Fix thy firm gaze on virtue and on me."

He now devoted his time to a work he had long meditated, and for which

he had not only collected a considerable portion of the materials, but

had probably written some portion of the text,--the History of England,

from the Accession of James II. The first two volumes of this were

published in the autumn of 1848, and gave him a literary reputation far

beyond what he had acquired by his historical essays. The book was as

popular as any of Scott’s or Dickens’s novels, while its solid merits of

research and generalization placed it among the great historical works

of the century. Its circulation, large in England, was immense in

the United States; and in every portion of the world where English

literature is esteemed, it was widely read, either in the original text

or in carefully prepared translations.

In 1852, the city of Edinburgh, desirous of repairing the injustice it

had done to Macaulay in 1847, elected him its representative without his

appearing as a candidate. He accepted the trust, though his health

had begun to fail, and he was already visited with the symptoms of the

disease which eventually caused his death. He wrote to Adam Black, in

August, 1852, that “any excitement, or any violent exertion, instantly

brings on a derangement of the circulation, and an uneasy feeling of

the heart.” He was unable to perform his parliamentary duties to his

own satisfaction from the first, and repeatedly expressed his desire to

resign. He was withheld from so doing by the assurances he received

from Edinburgh that his constituents were satisfied with his partial

attendance on the duties of his post. At length, in January, 1856,

he became aware of his incapacity to serve any longer without serious

prejudice to his health, and resigned his seat. Meanwhile, two more

volumes of his History had been completed and published, evincing that

the energy of his mind was not affected by the ills of his body. He

also had devoted some time to preparing a volume of his speeches for the

press, and published them in 1854. In 1857, without any solicitation

on his part, and entirely to his own surprise, he was elevated to the

peerage. Though it was known that his health was infirm, there was

no apprehension on the part of the public that he would not live to

complete a large portion of the immense work he had contemplated. His

delightful biographies of Atterbury, Bunyan, Goldsmith, Johnson, and

Pitt, contributed to the new edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica,

proved that his faculties were in their full vigor and splendor. It

was therefore with a shock of painful surprise that all readers of the

English race heard of his sudden death, by disease of the heart, on the

28th of December, 1859. It was felt, even by those who most vehemently

disagreed with him in opinion, that in losing him England lost the

man who, beyond all other men, carried in his brain the facts of

her history. He was buried, with great pomp, in the Poet’s Corner of

Westminster Abbey, “at the foot of Addison’s monument and beside the

remains of Sheridan.”

The first and strongest impression we derive from a consideration

of Macaulay’s life and writings is that of the robust and masculine

qualities of his intellect and character. Since his death it has become

generally known that he was by no means deficient in those tender and

benevolent feelings which found little expression in his works.

Among his intimate friends and relations he passed as one of the most

affectionate of men, and his benevolence to unsuccessful artists and men

of letters, absorbed no inconsiderable portion of his income. But in his

speeches in parliament, in his essays, and in his history, he makes the

impression of a stout, strong, and tough polemic, who is thoroughly

well furnished for combat, and who neither gives nor expects quarter.

No tenderness to frailty interferes with the merciless severity of his

judgments. His own political and personal integrity was without a stain.

“You might,” said Sydney Smith, in testifying to his incorruptibility

and his patriotism, “lay ribbons, stars, garters, wealth, titles, before

him in vain. He has an honest, genuine love of his country, and the

world could not bribe him to neglect her interests.” This integrity

of character gave a certain puritan relentlessness of tone to his

intellectual and moral judgments. He had a warm love for what was

beautiful and true, but, in his writings, it generally took the negative

form of hatred for what was deformed and false. He abhorred meanness,

baseness, fraud, falsehood, conniption, and oppression, with his whole

heart and soul, and found a grim delight in holding them up to public

execration. His talent for this work, and his enjoyment of it, were so

great, that he was tempted at times to hunt after criminality for the

pleasure of punishing it. He acquired a diseased taste for character

that was morally tainted, in order that he might exercise on its

condemnation the rich resources of his scorn and invective. His progress

through a tract of history was marked by the erection of the gallows,

the gibbet, and the stake, and he was almost as insensible to mitigating

circumstances as Judge Jeffreys himself. He seemed to consider that the

glory of the judge rested on the number of the executions; and he has

hanged, drawn, and quartered many individuals, whose cases are now at

the bar of public opinion, in the course of being reheard.

The last and finest result of personal integrity is intellectual

conscientiousness, and this Macaulay cannot be said to have attained.

His intellect, bright and broad as it was, was the instrument of his

individuality. His sympathies and antipathies colored his statements,

and he rarely exhibited anything in “dry light.” In this respect, he is

inferior to Hallam and Mackintosh, who are inferior to him in extent of

information, and genius for narrative. The vividness of his perceptions

confirmed the autocracy of his disposition, and his convictions had to

him the certainty of facts. It must be admitted that he had some

reason for his dogmatism. He excelled all Englishmen of his time in his

knowledge of English history. There was no drudgery he would not endure

in order to obtain the most trivial fact which illustrated the opinions

or the manners of any particular age. Indeed, the minuteness of his

information astonished even antiquaries, and in society was sometimes

thought “to be erected into a colossal engine of colloquial oppression.”

And this information was not a mere assemblage of dead facts. It was

vitalized by his passions and imagination; it was all alive in the

many-peopled domain of his “vast and joyous memory;” and it was so

completely possessed as to be always in readiness to sustain an argument

or illustrate a principle. The songs, ballads, satires, lampoons, plays,

private correspondence of a period, were as familiar to him as the

graver records of its annalists. But in disposing his immense materials

he followed the law of his own mind rather than the law inherent in the

facts. Instead of viewing things in their relations to each other, he

viewed things in their relation to himself. His representation of them,

therefore, partook of the limitations of his character. That character

was broad, but it would be absurd to say that it was as broad as the

English race. He _Macaulayized_ English history as a distinguished poet

of the century was said to have _Byronized_ human life. Even in some

of his most seemingly triumphant statements it will be found that

a different disposition of the facts will result in establishing an

opposite opinion. Take the article on Bacon, the most glaring of all

the instances in which he has refused to assume the point of view of the

person he has resolved to condemn; and any intellect, resolute enough to

resist the marvellous fascination of the narrative, can easily redispose

the facts so as to arrive at an opposite conclusion.

A prominent cause of Macaulay’s popularity is to be found in the

definiteness of his mind. He always aspired to present his matter

in such a form as to exclude the possibility of doubt, either in his

statement or argument. Of all great English writers he is therefore

the least suggestive. All that he demands of a reader is simple

receptiveness. Selection, arrangement, reasoning, pictorial

representation, are all done by himself. This explicitness, too, is

purchased at some sacrifice of truth. His comprehensiveness is apt to

be of that kind which arrives at broad generalizations by excluding

a number of the facts and principles it ought to include. Real

comprehensiveness of mind is impossible unless the interior life of the

separate facts included in the sweeping generalization is adequately

comprehended. Shakspeare, of all English minds, is the most

comprehensive; and Shakspeare, in virtue of his comprehensiveness, would

doubt in many instances where Macaulay is most certain. The most perfect

exhibition of Macaulay’s talent is his analysis and representation of

the character of James II., from a hostile point of view. He catches his

victim in a series of cunningly contrived traps, and the poor creature,

in Macaulay’s narrative, cannot move a step without falling into the

trap marked folly or the trap marked wickedness. Shakspeare’s method of

dealing with character was entirely different.

As an artist Macaulay is greater in his Essays than in his History

of England. Each of his essays is a unit. The results of analysis

are diffused through the veins of narration, and details are strictly

subordinated to leading conceptions. In his History details are so

numerous as to confuse the mind. Events succeed each other in their

chronological rather than their intellectual order; and his readers gain

an intense perception of particular facts without any general view of

the whole field. The power of the author to interest us is as evident in

his account of the Bank of England as in his account of the Massacre

of Glencoe. We pass from one topic to another without any sense of the

connection of topics. Picture succeeds picture as in the anarchy of

a panorama. It seems as if we were reading the work of a poet who had

turned annalist. By emphasizing everything, interest in particulars is

obtained at the expense of general effect. It is only by turning to the

table of contents that we are able to generalize the events of a reign.

There are scores of pages in the third and fourth volumes which we read

as we read a newspaper, where an account of a murder may be succeeded

immediately by an account of a masquerade. Prescott, who cannot be named

with Macaulay in respect to fulness of matter, fertility of thought,

originality of style, and unwearied energy of mind, is still superior to

him in the artistic disposition of his materials. In reading Prescott,

we have but a faint impression of the author and no feeling at all of

the felicity of the style, but the real business of the historian is

none the less performed, for we get a large view of facts in their true

relations, and are enabled to take in the subject he treats of as a

whole. In Macaulay the narrative of particular facts and incidents is

incomparably bright and stimulating, but the facts and incidents are not

seen from a commanding point.

In his essays, especially his biographical and historical essays, this

defect is not observable. They rank among the finest artistic products

of the century. They partake of the imperfections of his thinking and

the limitations of his character, but they are still perfect of their

kind. The articles on Machiavelli, Banyan, Clive, Hastings, Frederic the

Great, Barere, Chatham, not to mention others, are eminent specimens of

that critical and interpretative biography, in which the character of

the biographer appears chiefly to give unity to the representation of

facts and the application of principles. The amount of knowledge each of

them includes can only be estimated by those who have patiently read the

many volumes they so brilliantly condense. In style they show a mastery

of English which has been attained by no other English author who did

not possess a creative imagination. The art of the writer is shown as

much in his deliberate choice of common and colloquial phrases as

in those splendid passages in which he almost seems to exhaust the

resources of the English tongue. As a narrator, in his own province,

it would be difficult to name his equal among English writers; to

his narrative, all his talents and accomplishments combined to lend

fascination; and in it he exhibited the understanding of Hallam, and the

knowledge of Mackintosh, joined to the picturesqueness of Southey, and

the wit of Pope.

E. P. W.

ESSAYS

FRAGMENTS OF A ROMAN TALE

{1}(Knight’s Quarterly Magazine, June 1823.)

It was an hour after noon. Ligarius was returning from the Campus

Martins. He strolled through one of the streets which led to the forum,

settling his gown, and calculating the odds on the gladiators who were

to fence at the approaching Saturnalia. While thus occupied, he overtook

Flaminius, who, with a heavy-step and a melancholy face, was sauntering

in the same direction. The light-hearted young man plucked him by the

sleeve.

“Good day, Flaminius. Are you to be of Catiline’s party this evening?”

“Not I.”

“Why so? Your little Tarentine girl will break her heart.”

“No matter. Catiline has the best cooks and the finest wine in Rome.

There are charming women at his parties. But the twelve-line board and

the dice-box pay for all. The Gods confound me if I did not lose two

millions of sesterces last night. My villa at Tibur, and all the statues

that my father the prætor {2}brought from Ephesus, must go to the

auctioneer. That is a high price, you will acknowledge, even for

Phonicopters, Chian, and Callinice.”

“High indeed, by Pollux.”

“And that is not the worst. I saw several of the leading senators this

morning. Strange things are whispered in the higher political circles.”

“The Gods confound the political circles. I have hated the name of

politician ever since Sylla’s proscription, when I was within a moment

of having my throat cut by a politician, who took me for another

politician. While there is a cask of Falernian in Campania, or a girl in

the Suburra, I shall be too well employed to think on the subject.”

“You will do well,” said Flaminius gravely, “to bestow some little

consideration upon it at present. Otherwise, I fear, you will soon renew

your acquaintance with politicians, in a manner quite as unpleasant as

that to which you allude.”

“Averting Gods! what do you mean?”

“I will tell you. There are rumors of conspiracy. The order of things

established by Lucius Sylla has excited the disgust of the people, and

of a large party of the nobles. Some violent convulsion is expected.”

“What is that to me? I suppose that they will hardly proscribe the

vintners and gladiators, or pass a law compelling every citizen to take

a wife.”

“You do not understand. Catiline is supposed to be the author of the

revolutionary schemes. You must have heard bold opinions at his table

repeatedly.”

“I never listen to any opinions upon such subjects, bold or timid.”

“Look to it. Your name has been mentioned.” {3}"Mine! good Gods! I call

heaven to witness that I never so much as mentioned Senate, Consul, or

Comitia, in Catiline’s house.”

“Nobody suspects you of any participation in the inmost counsels of the

party. But our great men surmise that you are among those whom he has

bribed so high with beauty, or entangled so deeply in distress, that

they are no longer their own masters. I shall never set foot within

his threshold again. I have been solemnly warned by men who understand

public affairs; and I advise you to be cautious.”

The friends had now turned into the forum, which was thronged with

the gay and elegant youth of Rome. “I can tell you more,” continued

Flaminius; “somebody was remarking to the Consul yesterday how loosely a

certain acquaintance of ours tied his girdle. ‘Let him look to himself,’

said Cicero, ‘or the state may find a tighter girdle for his neck.’”

“Good Gods! who is it? You cannot surely mean--”

“There he is.”

Flaminius pointed to a man who was pacing up and down the forum at a

little distance from them. He was in the prime of manhood. His

personal advantages were extremely striking, and were displayed with an

extravagant but not ungraceful foppery. His gown waved in loose folds;

his long dark curls were dressed with exquisite art, and shone and

steamed with odours; his step and gesture exhibited an elegant

and commanding figure in every posture of polite languor. But his

countenance formed a singular contrast to the general appearance of his

person. The high and imperial brow, the keen aquiline features, {4}the

compressed mouth, the penetrating eye, indicated the highest degree of

ability and decision. He seemed absorbed in intense meditation. With

eyes fixed on the ground, and lips working in thought, he sauntered

round the area, apparently unconscious how many of the young gallants

of Rome were envying the taste of his dress, and the ease of his

fashionable stagger.

“Good Heaven!” said Ligarius, “Caius Caesar is as unlikely to be in a

plot as I am.”

“Not at all.”

“He does nothing but game, feast, intrigue, read Greek, and write

verses.”

“You know nothing of Caesar. Though he rarely addresses the Senate,

he is considered as the finest speaker there, after the Consul. His

influence with the multitude is immense. He will serve his rivals in

public life as he served me last night at Catiline’s. We were playing at

the twelve lines.(1)--Immense stakes. He laughed all the time, chatted

with Valeria over his shoulder, kissed her hand between every two moves,

and scarcely looked at the board. I thought that I had him. All at once

I found my counters driven into the corner. Not a piece to move,

by Hercules. It cost me two millions of Sesterces. All the Gods and

Goddesses confound him for it!”

“As to Valeria,” said Ligarius, “I forgot to ask whether you have heard

the news.”

“Not a word. What?”

(1) Duodecim scripta, a game of mixed chance and skill,

which seems to have been very fashionable in the higher

circles of Rome. The famous lawyer Mucius was renowned for

his skill in it.--( Cic. Oral. i. 50.)

“I was told at the baths to-day that Cæsar escorted {5}the lady home.

Unfortunately old Quintus Lutatius had come hack from his villa in

Campania, in a whim of jealousy. He was not expected for three days.

There was a fine tumidt. The old fool called for his sword and his

slaves, cursed his wife, and swore that he would cut Cæsar’s throat.”

“And Cæsar?”

“He laughed, quoted Anacreon, trussed his gown round his left arm,

closed with Quintus, flung him down, twisted his sword out of his hand,

burst through the attendants, ran a freed-man through the shoulder, and

was in the street in an instant.”

“Well done! Here he comes. Good day, Caius.” Cæsar lifted his head at

the salutation. His air of deep abstraction vanished; and he extended a

hand to each of the friends.

“How are you after your last night’s exploit?”

“As well as possible,” said Cæsar laughing.

“In truth we should rather ask how Quintus Lutatius is.”

“He, I understand, is as well as can be expected of a man with a

faithless spouse and a broken head. His freed-man is most seriously

hurt. Poor fellow! he shall have half of whatever I win to-night.

Flaminius, you shall have your revenge at Catiline’s.”

“You are very kind. I do not intend to be at Catiline’s till I wish to

part with my town-house. My villa is gone already.”

“Not at Catiline’s, base spirit! You are not of his mind, my gallant

Ligarius. Dice, Chian, and the loveliest Greek singing-girl that was

ever seen. Think of that, Ligarius. By Venus, she almost made me adore

her, by telling me that I talked Greek with the most Attic accent that

she had heard in Italy.” {6}"I doubt she will not say the same of me,”

replied Ligarius. “I am just as able to decipher an obelisk as to read a

line of Homer.”

“You barbarous Scythian, who had the care of your education?”

“An old fool,--a Greek pedant,--a Stoic. He told me that pain was no

evil, and flogged me as if he thought so. At last one day, in the middle

of a lecture, I set fire to his enormous filthy beard, singed his face,

and sent him roaring out of the house. There ended my studies. From that

time to this I have had as little to do with Greece as the wine that

your poor old friend Lutatius calls his delicious Samian.”

“Well done, Ligarius. I hate a Stoic. I wish Marcus Cato had a beard

that you might singe it for him. The fool talked his two hours in the

Senate, yesterday, without changing a muscle of his face. He looked as

savage and as motionless as the mask in which Roscius acted Alecto. I

detest everything connected with him.”

“Except his sister, Servilia.”

“True. She is a lovely woman.”

“They say that you have told her so, Caius.”

“So I have.”

“And that she was not angry.”

“What woman is?”

“Aye,--but they say--”

“No matter what they say. Common fame lies like a Greek rhetorician.

You might know so much, Ligarius, without reading the philosophers. But

come, I will introduce you to little dark-eyed Zoe.”

“I tell you I can speak no Greek.”

“More shame for you. It is high time that you should begin. You will

never have such a charming* {7}instructress. Of what was your father

thinking when he sent for an old Stoic with a long beard to teach you?

There is no language-mistress like a handsome woman. When I was at

Athens, I learnt more Greek from a pretty flower-girl in the Peiræus

than from all the Portico and the Academy. She was no Stoic, Heaven

knows. But come along to Zoe. I will be your interpreter. Woo her in

honest Latin, and I will turn it into elegant Greek between the throws

of dice. I can make love and mind my game at once, as Flaminius can tell

you.”

“Well, then, to be plain, Cæsar, Flaminius has been talking to me about

plots, and suspicions, and politicians. I never plagued myself with such

things since Sylla’s and Marius’s days; and then I never could see much

difference between the parties. All that I am sure of is, that those who

meddle with such affairs are generally stabbed or strangled. And, though

I like Greek wine and handsome women, I do not wish to risk my neck for

them. Now, tell me as a friend, Caius;--is there no danger?”

“Danger!” repeated Cæsar, with a short, fierce, disdainful laugh: “what

danger do you apprehend?”

“That you should best know,” said Flaminius; “you are far more intimate

with Catiline than I. But I advise you to be cautious. The leading men

entertain strong suspicions.”

Cæsar drew up his figure from its ordinary state of graceful relaxation

into an attitude of commanding dignity, and replied in a voice of

which the deep and impassioned melody formed a strange contrast to

the humorous and affected tone of his ordinary conversation. “Let them

suspect. They suspect because they know what they have deserved. What

have they done {8}for Rome?--What for mankind?--Ask the citizens. Ask

the provinces. Have they had any other object than to perpetuate their

own exclusive power, and to keep us under the yoke of an oligarchical

tyranny, which unites in itself the worst evils of every other system,

and combines more than Athenian turbulence with more than Persian

despotism?”

“Good Gods! Cæsar. It is not safe for you to speak, or for us to listen

to, such things, at such a crisis.”

“Judge for yourselves what you will hear. I will judge for myself what

I will speak. I was not twenty years old, when I defied Lucius Sylla,

surrounded by the spears of legionaries and the daggers of assassins.

Do you suppose that I stand in awe of his paltry successors, who have

inherited a power which they never could have acquired; who would

imitate his proscriptions, though they have never equalled his

conquests?”

“Pompey is almost as little to be trifled with as Sylla. I heard a

consular senator say that, in consequence of the present alarming state

of affairs, he would probably be recalled from the command assigned to

him by the Manilian law.”

“Let him come,--the pupil of Sylla’s butcheries,--the gleaner of

Lucullus’s trophies,--the thief-taker of the Senate.”

“For heaven’s sake, Caius!--if you knew what the Consul said--”

“Something about himself, no doubt. Pity that such talents should be

coupled with such cowardice and coxcombry. He is the finest speaker

living,--infinitely superior to what Horten sins was, in his best

days;--a charming companion, except when he tells over for the twentieth

time all the jokes that he made at {9}Verres’s trial. But he is the

despicable tool of a despicable party.”

“Your language, Caius, convinces me that the reports which have been

circulated are not without foundation. I will venture to prophecy that

within a few months the republic will pass through a whole Odyssey of

strange adventures.”

“I believe so; an Odyssey of which Pompey will be the Polyphemus, and

Cicero the Siren. I would have the state imitate Ulysses: show no

mercy to the former; but contrive, if it can be done, to listen to

the enchanting voice of the other, without being seduced by it to

destruction.”

“But whom can your party produce as rivals to these two famous leaders?”

“Time will show. I would hope that there may arise a man, whose genius

to conquer, to conciliate, and to govern, may unite in one cause an

oppressed and divided people;--may do all that Sylla should have done,

and exhibit the magnificent spectacle of a great nation directed by a

great mind.”

“And where is such a man to be found?”

“Perhaps where you would least expect to find him. Perhaps he may be

one whose powers have hitherto been concealed in domestic or literary

retirement. Perhaps he may be one, who, while waiting for some adequate

excitement, for some worthy opportunity, squanders on trifles a genius

before which may yet be humbled the sword of Pompey and the gown of

Cicero. Perhaps he may now be disputing with a sophist; perhaps

prattling with a mistress; perhaps-----” and, as he spoke, he turned

away, and resumed his lounge, “strolling in the Forum.” {10}It was

almost midnight. The party had separated. Catiline and Cethegus were

still conferring in the supper-room, which was, as usual, the highest

apartment of the house. It formed a cupola, from which windows opened on

the flat roof that surrounded it. To this terrace Zoe had retired. With

eyes dimmed with fond and melancholy tears, she leaned over the

balustrade, to catch the last glimpse of the departing form of Cæsar, as

it grew more and more indistinct in the moonlight. Had he any thought of

her? Any love for her? He, the favourite of the high-born beauties of

Rome, the most splendid, the most graceful, the most eloquent of its

nobles? It could not be. His voice had, indeed, been touchingly soft

whenever he addressed her. There had been a fascinating tenderness even

in the vivacity of his look and conversation. But such were always the

manners of Cæsar towards women. He had wreathed a sprig of myrtle in her

hair as she was singing. She took it from her dark ringlets, and kissed

it, and wept over it, and thought of the sweet legends of her own dear

Greece,--of youths and girls, who, pining away in hopeless love, had

been transformed into flowers by the compassion of the Gods; and she

wished to become a flower, which Cæsar might sometimes touch, though he

should touch it only to weave a crown for some prouder and happier

mistress.

She was roused from her musings by the loud step and voice of Cethegus,

who was pacing furiously up and down the supper-room.

“May all the gods confound me, if Cæsar be not the deepest traitor, or

the most miserable idiot, that ever intermeddled with a plot!”

Zoe shuddered. She drew nearer to the window. She stood concealed from

observation by the curtain {11}of fine network which hung over the

aperture, to exclude the annoying insects of the climate.

“And you, too!” continued Cethegus, turning fiercely on his accomplice;

“you to take his part against me!--you, who proposed the scheme

yourself!”

“My dear Caius Cethegus, you will not understand me. I proposed the

scheme; and I will join in executing it. But policy is as necessary

to our plans as boldness. I did not wish to startle Cæsar--to lose his

co-operation--perhaps to send him off with an information against us to

Cicero and Catulus. He was so indignant at your suggestion, that all my

dissimulation was scarcely sufficient to prevent a total rupture.”

“Indignant! The gods confound him!--He prated about humanity, and

generosity, and moderation. By Hercules, I have not heard such a lecture

since I was with Xenochares at Rhodes.”

“Cæsar is made up of inconsistencies. He has boundless ambition,

unquestioned courage, admirable sagacity. Yet I have frequently observed

in him a womanish weakness at the sight of pain. I remember that once

one of his slaves was taken ill while carrying his litter. He alighted,

put the fellow in his place, and walked home in a fall of snow. I wonder

that you could be so ill-advised as to talk to him of massacre,

and pillage, and conflagration. You might have foreseen that such

propositions would disgust a man of his temper.”

“I do not know. I have not your self-command, Lucius. I hate

such conspirators. What is the use of them? We must have

blood--blood,--hacking and tearing work--bloody work!”

“Do not grind your teeth, my dear Caius; and lay {12}down the

carving-knife. By Hercules, you have cut up all the stuffing of the

couch.”

“No matter; we shall have couches enough soon,--and down to stuff

them with,--and purple to cover them,--and pretty women to loll

on them,--unless this fool, and such as he, spoil our plans. I had

something else to say. The essenced fop wishes to seduce Zoe from me.”

“Impossible! you misconstrue the ordinary gallantries which he is in the

habit of paying to every handsome face.”

“Curse on his ordinary gallantries, and his Akerses, and his

compliments, and his sprigs of myrtle! If Cæsar should dare--by

Hercules, I will tear him to pieces in the middle of the Forum.”

“Trust his destruction to me. We must use his talents and

influence--thrust him upon every danger--make him our instrument while

we are contending--our peace-offering to the Senate if we fail--our

first victim if we succeed.”

“Hark! what noise was that?”

“Somebody in the terrace!--lend me your dagger.” Catiline rushed to the

window. Zoe was standing in the shade. He stepped out. She darted

into the room--passed like a flash of lightning by the startled

Cethegus--flew down the stairs--through the court--through the

vestibule--through the street. Steps, voices, lights, came fast and

confusedly behind her;--but with the speed of love and terror she gained

upon her pursuers. She fled through the wilderness of unknown and dusky

streets, till she found herself, breathless and exhausted, in the midst

of a crowd of gallants, who, with chaplets on their heads, and torches

in their hands, were reeling from the portico of a stately mansion.

{13}The foremost of the throng was a youth whose slender figure and

beautiful countenance seemed hardly consistent with his sex. But the

feminine delicacy of his features rendered more frightful the mingled

sensuality and ferocity of their expression. The libertine audacity of

his stare, and the grotesque foppery of his apparel, seemed to indicate

at least a partial insanity. Flinging one arm round Zoe, and tearing

away her veil with the other, he disclosed to the gaze of his thronging

companions the regular features and large dark eyes which characterise

Athenian beauty.

“Clodius has all the luck to-night,” cried Ligarius. “Not so, by

Hercules,” said Marcus Colius; “the girl is fairly our common prize: we

will fling dice for her. The Venus (1) throw, as it ought to do, shall

decide.”

“Let me go--let me go, for Heaven’s sake,” cried Zoe, struggling with

Clodius.

“What a charming Greek accent she has. Come into the house, my little

Athenian nightingale.”

“Oh! what will become of me? If you have mothers--if you have

sisters----”

“Clodius has a sister,” muttered Ligarius, “or he is much belied.”

“By Heaven, she is weeping,” said Clodius.

“If she were not evidently a Greek,” said Colius, “I should take her for

a vestal virgin.”

“And if she were a vestal virgin,” cried Clodius fiercely, “it should

not deter me. This way;--no struggling--no screaming.”

“Struggling! screaming!” exclaimed a gay and commanding voice; “You are

making very ungentle love, Clodius.”

(1) Venus was the Roman term for the highest throw on the

dice. {14}The whole party started. Cæsar had mingled with

them unperceived.

The sound of his voice thrilled through the very heart of Zoe. With

a convulsive effort she burst from the grasp of her insolent admirer,

flung herself at the feet of Cæsar, and clasped his knees. The moon

shone full on her agitated and imploring face: her lips moved; but she

uttered no sound. He gazed at her for an instant--raised her--clasped

her to his bosom. “Fear nothing, my sweet Zoe.” Then, with folded

arms, and a smile of placid defiance, he placed himself between her and

Clodius.

Clodius staggered forward, flushed with wine and rage, and uttering

alternately a curse and a hiccup.

“By Pollux, this passes a jest. Cæsar, how dare you insult me thus?”

“A jest! I am as serious as a Jew on the Sabbath. Insult you; For such a

pair of eyes I would insult the whole consular bench, or I should be as

insensible as King Psammis’s mummy.”

“Good Gods, Cæsar!” said Marcus Colius, interposing; “you cannot think

it worth while to get into a brawl for a little Greek girl!”

“Why not? The Greek girls have used me as well as those of Rome.

Besides, the whole reputation of my gallantry is at stake. Give up such

a lovely woman to that drunken boy! My character would be gone for ever.

No more perfumed tablets, full of vows and raptures? No more toying

with fingers at the Circus. No more evening walks along the

Tiber. No more hiding in chests, or jumping from windows. I, the

favoured suitor of half the white stoles in Rome, could never again

aspire above a freed-woman. You a man of gallantry, and think of such

{14}a thin, lovely woman to that drunken boy! My character would be gone

for ever. No more perfumed tablets, full of vows and raptures? No more

toying with fingers at the Circus. No more evening walks along the

Tiber. No more hiding in chests, or jumping from windows. I, the

favoured suitor of half the white stoles in Rome, could never again

aspire above a freed-woman. You a man of gallantry, and think of such

{15}a thing! For shame, my dear Colius! Do not let Clodia hear of it.”

While Cæsar spoke he had been engaged in keeping Clodius at arm’s

length. The rage of the frantic libertine increased as the struggle

continued. “Stand back, as you value your life,” he cried; “I will

pass.”

“Not this way, sweet Clodius. I have too much regard for you to suffer

you to make love at such disadvantage. You smell too much of Falernian

at present. Would you stifle your mistress? By Hercules, you are fit

to kiss nobody now, except old Piso, when he is tumbling home in the

morning from the vintners.” (1)

Clodius plunged his hand into his bosom, and drew a little dagger, the

faithful companion of many desperate adventures.

“Oh, Gods! he will be murdered!” cried Zoe.

The whole throng of revellers was in agitation. The street fluctuated

with torches and lifted hands. It was but for a moment. Cæsar watched

with a steady eye the descending hand of Clodius, arrested the blow,

seized his antagonist by the throat, and flung him against one of the

pillars of the portico with such violence that he rolled, stunned and

senseless, on the ground.

“He is killed,” cried several voices.

“Fair self-defence, by Hercules!” said Marcus Colius. “Bear witness, you

all saw him draw his dagger.”

“He is not dead--he breathes,” said Ligarius. “Carry him into the house;

he is dreadfully bruised.”

The rest of the party retired with Clodius. Colius turned to Cæsar.

“By all the Gods, Caius! you have won your (1) Cic. in Pis. {16}lady

fairly. A splendid victory! You deserve a triumph.”

“What a madman Clodius has become!”

“Intolerable. But come and sup with me on the Nones. You have no

objection to meet the Consul?”

“Cicero? None at all. We need not talk politics. Our old dispute about

Plato and Epicurus will furnish us with plenty of conversation. So

reckon upon me, my dear Marcus, and farewell.”

Caesar and Zoe turned away. As soon as they were beyond hearing, she

began in great agitation:--

“Cæsar, you are in danger. I know all. I overheard Catiline and

Cethegus. You are engaged in a project which must lead to certain

destruction.”

“My beautiful Zoe, I live only for glory and pleasure. For these I have

never hesitated to hazard an existence which they alone render valuable

to me. In the present case, I can assure you that our scheme presents

the fairest hopes of success.”

“So much the worse. You do not know--you do not understand me. I

speak not of open peril, but of secret treachery. Catiline hates

you;--Cethegus hates you;--your destruction is resolved. If you survive

the contest, you perish in the first hour of victory. They detest you

for your moderation;--they are eager for blood and plunder. I have

risked my life to bring you this warning; but that is of little moment.

Farewell!--Be happy----”

Cæsar stopped her. “Do you fly from my thanks, dear Zoe?”

“I wish not for your thanks, but for your safety;--I desire not to

defraud Valeria or Servilia of one caress, extorted from gratitude or

pity. Be my feelings what they may, I have learnt in a fearful school

{17}to endure and to suppress them. I have been taught to abase a proud

spirit to the claps and hisses of the vulgar:--to smile on suitors

who united the insults of a despicable pride to the endearments of a

loathsome fondness;--to affect sprightliness with an aching head, and

eyes from which tears were ready to gush;--to feign love with curses

on my lips, and madness in my brain. Who feels for me any esteem,--any

tenderness? Who will shed a tear over the nameless grave which will soon

shelter from cruelty and scorn the broken heart of the poor Athenian

girl? But you, who alone have addressed her in her degradation with a

voice of kindness and respect, farewell. Sometimes think of me,--not

with sorrow;--no; I could bear your ingratitude, but not your distress.

Yet, if it will not pain you too much, in distant days, when your lofty

hopes and destinies are accomplished,--on the evening of some mighty

victory,--in the chariot of some magnificent triumph,--think on one who

loved you with that exceeding love which only the miserable can feel.

Think that, wherever her exhausted frame may have sunk beneath the

sensibilities of a tortured spirit,--in whatever hovel or whatever vault

she may have closed her eyes,--whatever strange scenes of horror and

pollution may have surrounded her dying bed, your shape was the last

that swam before her sight--your voice the last sound that was ringing

in her ears. Yet turn your face to me, Cæsar. Let me carry away one last

look of those features, and then----” He turned round. He looked at her.

He hid his face on her bosom, and burst into tears. With sobs long and

loud, and convulsive as those of a terrified child, he poured forth on

her bosom the tribute of impetuous and uncontrollable emotion. He raised

his head; but {18}he in vain struggled to restore composure to the brow

which had confronted the frown of Sylla, and the lips which had rivalled

the eloquence of Cicero. He several times attempted to speak, but in

vain; and his voice still faltered with tenderness, when, after a pause

of several minutes, he thus addressed her:

“My own dear Zoe, your love has been bestowed on one who, if he

cannot merit, can at least appreciate and adore you. Beings of similar

loveliness, and similar devotedness of affection, mingled, in all my

boyish dreams of greatness, with visions of curule chairs and ivory

cars, marshalled legions and laurelled fasces. Such I have endeavored

to find in the world; and, in their stead, I have met with selfishness,

with vanity, with frivolity, with falsehood. The life which you have

preserved is a boon less valuable than the affection----”

“Oh! Cæsar,” interrupted the blushing Zoe, “think only on your own

security at present. If you feel as you speak,--but you are only mocking

me,--or perhaps your compassion------”

“By Heaven!:--by every oath that is binding----”

“Alas! alas! Cæsar, were not all the same oaths sworn yesterday to

Valeria? But I will trust you, at least so far as to partake your

present dangers. Flight may be necessary:--form your plans. Be they what

they may, there is one who, in exile, in poverty, in peril, asks only to

wander, to beg, to die with you.”

“My Zoe, I do not anticipate any such necessity. To renounce the

conspiracy without renouncing the principles on which it was originally

undertaken,--to elude the vengeance of the Senate without losing

the confidence of the people,--is, indeed, an arduous, but not an

impossible, task. I owe it to myself and to my {19}country to make the

attempt. There is still ample time for consideration. At present I am

too happy in love to think of ambition or danger.”

They had reached the door of a stately palace. Cæsar struck it. It was

instantly opened by a slave. Zoe found herself in a magnificent hall,

surrounded by pillars of green marble, between which were ranged the

statues of the long line of Julian nobles.

“Call Endymion,” said Cæsar.

The confidential freed-man made his appearance, not without a slight

smile, which his patron’s good nature emboldened him to hazard, at

perceiving the beautiful Athenian.

“Arm my slaves, Endymion; there are reasons for precaution. Let

them relieve each other on guard during the night. Zoe, my love, my

preserver, why are your cheeks so pale? Let me kiss some bloom into

them. How you tremble! Endymion, a flask of Samian and some fruit. Bring

them to my apartments. This way, my sweet Zoe.”

ON THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE.

{20}(Knight’s Quarterly Magazine, June 1823.)

This is the age of societies. There is scarcely one Englishman in ten

who has not belonged to some association for distributing books, or for

prosecuting them; for sending invalids to the hospital, or beggars to

the treadmill; for giving plate to the rich or blankets to the poor. To

be the most absurd institution among so many institutions is no small

distinction; it seems, however, to belong indisputably to the Royal

Society of Literature. At the first establishment of that ridiculous

academy, every sensible man predicted that, in spite of regal patronage

and episcopal management, it would do nothing, or do harm. And it will

scarcely be denied that those expectations have hitherto been fulfilled.

I do not attack the founders of the association. Their characters are

respectable; their motives, I am willing to believe, were laudable.

But I feel, and it is the duty of every literary man to feel, a strong

jealousy of their proceedings. Their society can be innocent only while

it continues to be despicable. Should they ever possess the power to

encourage merit, they must also possess the power to depress it. Which

power will be more frequently exercised, let every one who has studied

literary history, let every one who has studied human nature, declare.

{21}Envy and faction insinuate themselves into all communities. They

often disturb the peace, and pervert the decisions, of benevolent and

scientific associations. But it is in literary academies that they exert

the most extensive and pernicious influence. In the first place, the

principles of literary criticism, though equally fixed with those on

which the chemist and the surgeon proceed, are by no means equally

recognised. Men are rarely able to assign a reason for their approbation

or dislike on questions of taste; and therefore they willingly submit

to any guide who boldly asserts his claim to superior discernment. It is

more difficult to ascertain and establish the merits of a poem than

the powers of a machine or the benefits of a new remedy. Hence it is

in literature, that quackery is most easily puffed, and excellence most

easily decried.

In some degree this argument applies to academies of the fine arts; and

it is fully confirmed by all that I have ever heard of that institution

which annually disfigures the walls of Somerset-House with an acre of

spoiled canvass. But a literary tribunal is incomparably more dangerous.

Other societies, at least, have no tendency to call forth any opinions

on those subjects which most agitate and inflame the minds of men. The

sceptic and the zealot, the revolutionist and the placeman, meet on

common ground in a gallery of paintings or a laboratory of science. They

can praise or censure without reference to the differences which exist

between them. In a literary body this can never be the case. Literature

is, and always must be, inseparably blended with politics and theology;

it is the great engine which moves the feelings of a people on the most

momentous questions. It is, therefore, impossible that any society can

be formed so impartial as to {22}consider the literary character of an

individual abstracted from the opinions which his writings inculcate. It

is not to be hoped, perhaps it is not to be wished, that the feelings

of the man should be so completely forgotten in the duties of the

academician. The consequences are evident. The honours and censures

of this Star-chamber of the Muses will be awarded according to the

prejudices of the particular sect or faction which may at the time

predominate. Whigs would canvass against a Southey, Tories against a

Byron. Those who might at first protest against such conduct as unjust

would soon adopt it on the plea of retaliation; and the general good of

literature, for which the society was professedly instituted, would be

forgotten in the stronger claims of political and religious partiality.

Yet even this is not the worst. Should the institution ever acquire any

influence, it will afford most pernicious facilities to every malignant

coward who may desire to blast a reputation which he envies. It will

furnish a secure ambuscade, behind which the Maroons of literature may

take a certain and deadly aim. The editorial _we_ has often been fatal

to rising genius; though all the world knows that it is only a form of

speech, very often employed by a single needy blockhead. The academic

_we_ would have a far greater and more ruinous influence. Numbers, while

they increased the effect, would diminish the shame, of injustice.

The advantages of an open and those of an anonymous attack would be

combined; and the authority of avowal would be united to the security of

concealment. The serpents in Virgil, after they had destroyed Laocoön,

found an asylum from the vengeance of the enraged people behind

the shield of the statue of Minerva. And, in the same manner, every

{23}thing that is grovelling and venomous, every thing that can hiss,

and every thing that can sting, would take sanctuary in the recesses of

this new temple of wisdom.

The French academy was, of all such associations, the most widely and

the most justly celebrated. It was founded by the greatest of ministers;

it was patronised by successive kings; it numbered in its lists most of

the eminent French writers. Yet what benefit has literature derived from

its labours? What is its history but an uninterrupted record of servile

compliances--of paltry artifices--of deadly quarrels--of perfidious

friendships? Whether governed by the Court, by the Sorbonne, or by

the Philosophers, it was always equally powerful for evil, and equally

impotent for good. I might speak of the attacks by which it attempted

to depress the rising fame of Corneille; I might speak of the reluctance

with which it gave its tardy confirmation to the applauses which the

whole civilised world had bestowed on the genius of Voltaire. I might

prove by overwhelming evidence that, to the latest period of its

existence, even under the superintendence of the all-accomplished

D’Alembert, it continued to be a scene of the fiercest animosities and

the basest intrigues. I might cite Piron’s epigrams, and Marmontel’s

memoirs, and Montesquieu’s letters. But I hasten on to another topic.

One of the modes by which our Society proposes to encourage merit is the

distribution of prizes. The munificence of the king has enabled it

to offer an annual premium of a hundred guineas for the best essay in

prose, and another of fifty guineas for the best poem, which may be

transmitted to it. This is very laughable. In the first place the judges

may err. Those imperfections of human intellect to which, as {24}the

articles of the church tell us, even general councils are subject may

possibly be found even in the Royal Society of Literature. The French

academy, as I have already said, was the most illustrious assembly of

the kind, and numbered among its associates men much more distinguished

than ever will assemble at Mr. Hatchard’s to rummage the box of the

English Society. Yet this famous body gave a poetical prize, for which

Voltaire was a candidate, to a fellow who wrote some verses about _the

frozen and the burning pole_.

Yet, granting that the prizes were always awarded to the best

composition, that composition, I say without hesitation, will always be

bad. A prize poem is like a prize sheep. The object of the competitor

for the agricultural premium is to produce an animal fit, not to be

eaten, but to be weighed. Accordingly he pampers his victim into morbid

and unnatural fitness; and, when it is in such a state that it would

be sent away in disgust from any table, he offers it to the judges. The

object of the poetical candidate, in like manner, is to produce, not a

good poem, but a poem of that exact degree of frigidity or bombast which

may appear to his censors to be correct or sublime. Compositions thus

constructed will always be worthless. The few excellences which they may

contain will have an exotic aspect and flavour. In general, prize sheep

are good for nothing but to make tallow candles, and prize poems are

good for nothing but to light them.

The first subject proposed by the Society to the poets of England was

Dartmoor. I thought that they intended a covert sarcasm at their own

projects. Their institution was a literary Dartmoor scheme;--a plan

for forcing into cultivation the waste lands of intellect,--for raising

poetical produce, by means of bounties. {25}from soil too meagre to have

yielded any returns in the natural course of things. The plan for the

cultivation of Dartmoor has, I hear, been abandoned. I hope that this

may be an omen of the fate of the Society.

In truth, this seems by no means improbable. They have been offering for

several years the rewards which the king placed at their disposal, and

have not, as far as I can learn, been able to find in their box one

composition which they have deemed worthy of publication. At least no

publication has taken place. The associates may perhaps be astonished

at this. But I will attempt to explain it, after the manner of ancient

times, by means of an apologue.

About four hundred years after the deluge, King Gomer Chephoraod reigned

in Babylon. He united all the characteristics of an excellent sovereign.

He made good laws, won great battles, and white-washed long streets.

He was, in consequence, idolised by his people, and panegyrised by many

poets and orators. A book was then a serious undertaking; Neither paper

nor any similar material had been invented. Authors were therefore under

the necessity of inscribing their compositions on massive bricks. Some

of these Babylonian records are still preserved in European museums; but

the language in which they are written has never been deciphered. Gomer

Chephoraod was so popular that the clay of all the plains round the

Euphrates could scarcely furnish brick-kilns enough for his eulogists.

It is recorded in particular that Pharonezzar, the Assyrian Pindar,

published a bridge and four walls in his praise.

One day the king was going in state from his palace to the temple of

Belus. During this procession it was lawful for any Babylonian to offer

any petition or suggestion {26}to his sovereign. As the chariot passed

before a vintner’s shop, a large company, apparently half-drunk, sallied

forth into the street; and one of them thus addressed the king:

“Gomer Chephoraod, live for ever! It appears to thy servants that of all

the productions of the earth good wine is the best, and bad wine is the

worst. Good wine makes the heart cheerful, the eyes bright, the speech

ready. Bad wine confuses the head, disorders the stomach, makes us

quarrelsome at night, and sick the next morning. Now therefore let my

lord the king take order that thy servants may drink good wine.”

“And how is this to be done?” said the good-natured prince.

“Oh, King,” said his monitor, “this is most easy. Let the king make a

decree, and seal it with his royal signet: and let it be proclaimed that

the king will give ten she-asses, and ten slaves, and ten changes of

raiment, every year, unto the man who shall make ten measures of the

best wine. And whosoever wishes for the she-asses, and the slaves, and

the raiment, let him send the ten measures of wine to thy servants, and

we will drink thereof and judge. So shall there be much good wine in

Assyria.”

The project pleased Gomer Chephoraod. “Be it so,” said he. The people

shouted. The petitioners prostrated themselves in gratitude. The same

night heralds were despatched to bear the intelligence to the remotest

districts of Assyria.

After a due interval the wines began to come in; and the examiners

assembled to adjudge the prize. The first vessel was unsealed. Its

odour was such that the judges, without tasting it, pronounced unanimous

{27}condemnation. The next was opened: it had a villainous taste of

clay. The third was sour and vapid. They proceeded from one cask of

execrable liquor to another, till at length, in absolute nausea, they

gave up the investigation.

The next morning they all assembled at the gate of the king, with pale

faces and aching heads. They owned that they could not recommend any

competitor as worthy of the rewards. They swore that the wine was little

better than poison, and intreated permission to resign the office of

deciding between such detestable potions.

“In the name of Belus, how can this have happened?” said the king.

Merolchazzar, the high-priest, muttered something about the anger of

the Gods at the toleration shown to a sect of impious heretics who ate

pigeons broiled, “whereas,” said he, “our religion commands us to

eat them roasted. Now therefore, oh King,” continued this respectable

divine, “give command to thy men of war, and let them smite the

disobedient people with the sword, them, and their wives, and their

children, and let their houses, and their flocks, and their herds,

be given to thy servants the priests. Then shall the land yield its

increase, and the fruits of the earth shall be no more blasted by the

vengeance of heaven.”

“Nay,” said the King, “the ground lies under no general curse from

heaven. The season has been singularly good. The wine which thou

didst thyself drink at the banquet a few nights ago, oh venerable

Merolchazzar, was of this year’s vintage. Dost thou not remember how

thou didst praise it? It was the same night that thou wast inspired by

Belus, and didst reel to and fro, and discourse sacred mysteries. These

{28}things are too hard for me. I comprehend them not. The only wine

which is had is that which is sent to my judges. Who can expound this to

us?”

The king scratched his head. Upon which all the courtiers scratched

their heads.

He then ordered proclamation to be made, that a purple robe and a golden

chain should be given to the man who could solve this difficulty.

An old philosopher, who had been observed to smile rather disdainfully

when the prize had first been instituted, came forward and spoke thus:--

“Gomer Chephoraod, live for ever! Marvel not at that which has happened.

It was no miracle, but a natural event. How could it be otherwise? It is

true that much good wine has been made this year. But who would send

it in for thy rewards? Thou know-est Ascobaruch who hath the great

vineyards in the north, and Cohahiroth who sendeth wine every year from

the south over the Persian gulf. Their wines are so delicious that ten

measures thereof are sold for an hundred talents of silver. Thinkest

thou that they will exchange them for thy slaves and thine asses? What

would thy prize profit any who have vineyards in rich soils?”

“Who then,” said one of the judges, “are the wretches who sent us this

poison?”

“Blame them not,” said the sage, “seeing that you have been the authors

of the evil. They are men whose lands are poor, and have never yielded

them any returns equal to the prizes which the king proposed. Wherefore,

knowing that the lords of the fruitful vineyards would not enter into

competition with them, they planted vines, some on rocks, and some in

light sandy soil, and some in deep clay. Hence {29}their wines are bad.

For no culture or reward will make barren land bear good vines. Know

therefore, assuredly, that your prizes have increased the quantity of

bad but not of good wine.”

There was a long silence. At length the king spoke. “Give him the purple

robe and the chain of gold. Throw the wines into the Euphrates; and

proclaim that the Royal Society of Wines is dissolved.”

SCENES FROM “ATHENIAN REVELS.”

{30}(Knight’s Quarterly Magazine, January 1824.)

A DRAMA.

I.

Scene--_A Street in Athens_.

_Enter_ Callidemus and Speusippus.

CALLIDEMUS.

So, you young reprobate! You must be a man of wit, forsooth, and a man

of quality! You must spend as if you were as rich as Nicias, and prate

as if you were as wise as Pericles! You must dangle after sophists and

pretty women! And I must pay for all! I must sup on thyme and onions,

while you are swallowing thrushes and hares! I must drink water, that

you may play the cottabus (1) with Chian wine! I must wander about as

ragged as Pauson,(2) that you may be as fine as Alcibiades! I must lie

on bare boards, with a stone (3) for my pillow, and a rotten mat for

my coverlid, by the light of a wretched winking lamp, while you are

marching in state, with as many torches as one sees at the feast of

Ceres, to thunder with your hatchet(4) at the doors of half the Ionian

ladies in Peiræus.(5)

(1) This game consisted in projecting wine out of cups; it

was a diversion extremely fashionable at Athenian

entertainments.

(2) Pauson was an Athenian painter, whose name was

synonymous with beggary. See Aristophanes; Plutus, 602. From

his poverty, I am inclined to suppose that he painted

historical pictures.

(3) See Aristophanes; Plutus, 542. {31}

(4)See Theocritus; Idyll ii. 128.

(5) This was the most disreputable part of Athens. See

Aristophanes; Pax, 165.

SPEUSIPPUS.

Why, thou unreasonable old man! Thou most shameless of fathers!----

CALLIDEMUS.

Ungrateful wretch; dare you talk so? Are you not afraid of the thunders

of Jupiter?

SPEUSIPPUS.

Jupiter thunder! nonsense! Anaxagoras says, that thunder is only an

explosion produced by----

CALLIDEMUS.

He does! Would that it had fallen on his head for his pains!

SPEUSIPPUS.

Nay: talk rationally.

CALLIDEMUS.

Rationally! You audacious young sophist! I will talk rationally. Do you

know that I am your father? What quibble can you make upon that?

SPEUSIPPUS.

Do I know that you are my father? Let us take the question to pieces, as

Melesigenes would say. First, then, we must inquire what is knowledge?

Secondly, what is a father? Now, knowledge, as Socrates said the other

day to Theætetus,---(1)

(1) See Plato’s Theætetus.

CALLIDEMUS. {32}Socrates! what! the ragged flat-nosed old dotard, who

walks about all day barefoot, and filches cloaks, and dissects gnats,

and shoes(1) fleas with wax?

SPEUSIPPUS.

All fiction! All trumped up by Aristophanes!

CALLIDEMUS.

By Pallas, if he is in the habit of putting shoes on his fleas, he is

kinder to them than to himself. But listen to me, boy; if you go on in

this way, you will be ruined. There is an argument for you. Go to your

Socrates and your Melesigenes, and tell them to refute that. Ruined! Do

you hear?

SPEUSIPPUS.

Ruined!

CALLIDEMUS.

Ay, by Jupiter! Is such a show as you make to be supported on

nothing? During all the last war, I made not an obol from my farm; the

Peloponnesian locusts came almost as regularly as the Pleiades;--corn

burnt;--olives stripped;--fruit trees cut down;--wells stopped up;--and,

just when peace came, and I hoped that all would turn out well, you must

begin to spend as if you had all the mines of Thasus at command.

SPEUSIPPUS.

Now, by Neptune, who delights in horses----

CALLIDEMUS.

If Neptune delights in horses, he does not resemble

(1) See Aristophanes; Nubes, 150. {33}me. You must ride at

the Panathenæa on a horse fit for the great king: four acres

of my best vines went for that folly. You must retrench, or

you will have nothing to eat. Does not Anaxagoras mention,

among his other discoveries, that when a man has nothing to

eat he dies?

SPEUSIPPUS.

You are deceived. My friends-----------

CALLIDEMUS.

Oh, yes! your friends will notice you, doubtless, when you are squeezing

through the crowd, on a winter’s day, to warm yourself at the fire of

the baths;--or when you are fighting with beggars and beggars’ dogs for

the scraps of a sacrifice;--or when you are glad to earn three wretched

obols(1) by listening all day to lying speeches and crying children.

SPEUSIPPUS.

There are other means of support.

CALLIDEMUS.

What! I suppose you will wander from house to house, like that wretched

buffoon Philippus(2), and beg every body who has asked a supper-party to

be so kind as to feed you and laugh at you; or you will turn sycophant;

you will get a bunch of grapes, or a pair of shoes, now and then, by

frightening some rich coward with a mock prosecution. Well! that is a

task for which your studies under the sophists may have fitted you.

(1) The stipend of an Athenian juryman.

(2) Xenophon, Convivium

SPEUSIPPUS.

You are wide of the mark.

CALLIDEMOS. {34}

Then what, in the name of Juno, is your scheme? Do you intend to join

Orestes,(1) and rob on the highway? Take care; beware of the eleven; (2)

beware of the hemlock. It may be very pleasant to live at other people’s

expense; but not very pleasant, I should think, to hear the pestle

give its last hang against the mortar, when the cold dose is ready.

Pah!---------

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

Hemlock! Orestes! folly!--I aim at nobler objects. What say you to

politics,--the general assembly?

CALLIDEMUS.

You an orator!--oh no! no! Cleon was worth twenty such fools as you.

You have succeeded, I grant, to his impudence, for which, if there

be justice in Tartarus, he is now soaking up to the eyes in his own

tan-pickle. But the Paphlagonian had parts.

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

And you mean to imply-----------

CALLIDEMUS.

Not I. You are a Pericles in embryo, doubtless. Well: and when are you

to make your first speech? oh Pallas!

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

I thought of speaking, the other day, on the Sicilian expedition; but

Nicias (3) got up before me.

(1) A celebrated highwayman of Attica. See Aristophanes;

Aves, 711: and in several other passages.

(2) The police officers of Athens.

(3) See Thucydides, vi. 8.

CALLIDEMUS.

{35}Nicias, poor honest man, might just as well have sate still; his

speaking did but little good. The loss of your oration is, doubtless, an

irreparable public calamity.

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

Why, not so; I intend to introduce it at the next assembly; it will suit

any subject.

CALLIDEMUS.

That is to say, it will suit none. But pray, if it be not too

presumptuous a request, indulge me with a specimen.

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

Well; suppose the agora crowded;--an important subject under

discussion;--an ambassador from Argos, or from the great king;--the

tributes from the islands;--an impeachment;--in short, anything you

please. The crier makes proclamation.--“Any citizen above fifty years

old may speak--any citizen not disqualified may speak.” Then I rise:--a

great murmur of curiosity while I am mounting the stand.

CALLIDEMUS.

Of curiosity! yes, and of something else too. You will infallibly be

dragged down by main force, like poor Glaucon (1) last year.

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

Never fear. I shall begin in this style:

“When I consider, Athenians, the importance of our city;--when I

consider the extent of its power,

(1) See Xenophon; Memorabilia, iii.

{36}the wisdom of its laws, the elegance of its decorations--when

I consider by what names and by what exploits its annals are

adorned;--when I think on Harmodius and Aristogiton, on Themistocles

and Miltiades, on Cimon and Pericles;--when I contemplate our

pre-eminence in arts and letters;--when I observe so many flourishing

states and islands compelled to own the dominion, and purchase the

protection, of the City of the Violet Crown(1)--

CALLIDEMUS.

I shall choke with rage. Oh, all ye gods and goddesses, what sacrilege,

what perjury have I ever committed, that I should be singled out from

among all the citizens of Athens to be the father of this fool?

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

What now? By Bacchus, old man, I would not advise you to give way to

such fits of passion in the streets. If Aristophanes were to see you,

you would infallibly be in a comedy next spring.

CALLIDEMUS.

You have more reason to fear Aristophanes than any fool living. Oh, that

he could but hear you trying to imitate the slang of Straton(2) and the

lisp of Alcibiades!(3) You would be an inexhaustible subject. You would

console him for the loss of Cleon.

SPEÜSIPPÜS

No, no. I may perhaps figure at the dramatic representations before

long; but in a very different way.

(1) A favourite epithet of Athens. See Aristophanes; Acharn.

637.

(2) See Aristophanes; Equités, 1375.

(3) See Aristophanes; Vespæ, 44.

CALLIDEMUS.

{37}What do you mean?

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

What say you to a tragedy?

CALLIDEMUS.

A tragedy of yours?

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

Even so.

CALLIDEMUS.

Oh Hercules! Oh Bacchus! This is too much. Here is an universal genius;

sophist,--orator,--poet. To what a three-headed monster have I given

birth! a perfect Cerberus of intellect! And pray what may your piece

be about? Or will your tragedy, like your speech, serve equally for any

subject?

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

I thought of several plots;--Odipus,--Eteocles and Polynices,--the war

of Troy, the murder of Agamemnon.

CALLIDEMUS.

And what have you chosen?

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

You know there is a law which permits any modern poet to retouch a play

of Æschylus, and bring it forward as his own composition. And, as there

is an absurd prejudice, among the vulgar, in favour of his extravagant

pieces, I have selected one of them, and altered it.

CALLIDEMUS.

{38}Which of them?

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

Oh! that mass of barbarous absurdities, the Prometheus. But I have

framed it anew upon the model of Euripides. By Bacchus, I shall make

Sophocles and Agathon look about them. You would not know the play

again.

CALLIDEMUS.

By Jupiter, I believe not.

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

I have omitted the whole of the absurd dialogue between Vulcan and

Strength, at the beginning.

CALLIDEMUS.

That may be, on the whole, an improvement. The play will then open with

that grand soliloquy of Prometheus, when he is chained to the rock.

“Oh! ye eternal heavens! Ye rushing winds!

Ye fountains of great streams! Ye ocean waves,

That in ten thousand sparkling dimples wreathe

Your azure smiles! All-generating earth!

All-seeing sun! On you, on you, I call.” (1)

Well, I allow that will be striking; I did not think you capable of that

idea. Why do you laugh?

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

Do you seriously suppose that one who has studied the plays of that

great man, Euripides, would ever begin a tragedy in such a ranting

style?

(1) See Æschylus; Prometheus, 88.

CALLIDEMUS.

{39}What, does not your play open with the speech of Prometheus?

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

No doubt.

CALLIDEMUS.

Then what, in the name of Bacchus, do you make him say?

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

You shall hear; and, if it be not in the very style of Euripides, call

me a fool.

CALLIDEMUS.

That is a liberty which I shall venture to take, whether it be or no.

But go on.

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

Prometheus begins thus:

“Coelus begat Saturn and Briareus,

Cottus and Creius and Iapetus,

Gyges and Hyperion, Phoebe, Tethys,

Thea and Rhea and Mnemosyne.

Then Saturn wedded Rhea, and begat

Pluto and Neptune, Jupiter and Juno."

CALLIDEMUS.

Very beautiful, and very natural; and, as you say, very like Euripides.

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

You are sneering. Really, father, you do not understand these things.

You had not those advantages in your youth--

CALLIDEMUS.

Which I have been fool enough to let you have. No; in my early days,

lying had not been dignified into a science, nor politics degraded into

a trade. {40}wrestled, and read Homer’s battles, instead of dressing my

hair, and reciting lectures in verse out of Euripides. But I have some

notion of what a play should be; I have seen Phrynichus, and lived with

Æschylus. I saw the representation of the Persians.

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

A wretched play; it may amuse the fools who row the triremes; but it is

utterly unworthy to be read by any man of taste.

CALLIDEMUS.

If you had seen it acted;--the whole theatre frantic with joy, stamping,

shouting, laughing, crying. There was Cynaegeirus, the brother of

Æschylus, who lost both his arms at Marathon, beating the stumps against

his sides with rapture. When the crowd remarked him--But where are you

going?

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

To sup with Alcibiades; he sails with the expedition for Sicily in a few

days; this is his farewell entertainment.

CALLIDEMUS.

So much the better; I should say, so much the worse. That cursed

Sicilian expedition! And you were one of the young fools(1) who stood

clapping and shouting while he was gulling the rabble, and who drowned

poor Nicias’s voice with your uproar. Look to it; a day of reckoning

will come. As to Alcibiades himself--

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

What can you say against him? His enemies themselves acknowledge his

merit.

(1) See Thucydides, vi. 13.

CALLIDEMUS.

{41}They acknowledge that he is clever, and handsome, and that he was

crowned at the Olympic games. And what other merits do his friends claim

for him? A. precious assembly you will meet at his house, no doubt.

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

The first men in Athens, probably.

CALLIDEMUS.

Whom do you mean by the first men in Athens?

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

Callicles.(1)

CALLIDEMUS.

A sacrilegious, impious, unfeeling ruffian!

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

Hippomachus.

CALLIDEMUS.

A fool, who can talk of nothing but his travels through Persia and

Egypt. Go, go. The gods fordid that I should detain you from such choice

society.

[Exeunt severally.

(1) Callicles plays a conspicuous part in the Gorgias of

Plato.

II.

Scene--_A Hall in the House of_ Alcibiades,

Alcibiades, Speusippus, Callicles, Hippomachus, Chariclea, _and others,

seated round a table, feasting._

ALCIBIADES. {42}Bring larger cups. This shall be our gayest revel. It is

probably the last--for some of us at least.

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

At all events, it ‘will be long before you taste such wine again,

Alcibiades.

CALLICLES.

Nay, there is excellent wine in Sicily. When I was there with

Eurymedon’s squadron, I had many a long carouse. You never saw finer

grapes than those of Ætna.

HIPPOMACHUS.

The Greeks do not understand the art of making wine. Your Persian is the

man. So rich, so fragrant, so sparkling. I will tell you what the Satrap

of Caria said to me about that when I supped with him.

ALCIBIADES.

Nay, sweet Hippomachus; not a word to-night about satraps, or the

great king, or the walls of Babylon, or the Pyramids, or the mummies.

Chariclea, why do you look so sad?

CHARICLEA.

Can I be cheerful when you are going to leave me, Alcibiades?

ALCIBIADES.

My life, my sweet soul, it is but for a short time. In {43}a year we

conquer Sicily. In another, we humble Carthage. (1) I will bring back

such robes, such necklaces, elephants’ teeth by thousands, ay, and the

elephants themselves, if you wish to see them. Nay, smile, my Chariclea,

or I shall talk nonsense to no purpose.

HIPPOMACHUS.

The largest elephant that I ever saw was in the grounds of Teribazus,

near Susa. I wish that I had measured him.

ALCIBIADES.

I wish that he had trod upon you. Come, come, Chariclea, we shall soon

return, and then----

CHARICLEA.

Yes; then, indeed.

ALCIBIADES.

Yes, then--

Then for revels; then for dances,

Tender whispers, melting glances.

Peasants, pluck your richest fruits:

Minstrels, sound your sweetest flutes:

Come in laughing crowds to greet us,

Dark-eyed daughters of Miletus;

Bring the myrtles, bring the dice,

Floods of Chian, hills of spice.

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

Whose lines are those, Alcibiades?

ALCIBIADES.

My own. Think you, because I do not shut myself up to meditate, and

drink water, and eat herbs, that I cannot write verses? By Apollo, if I

did not spend

(1) See Thucydides, vi. 90.

{44}my days in politics, and my nights in revelry, I should have made

Sophocles tremble. But now I never go beyond a little song like this,

and never invoke any Muse but Chariclea. But come, Speusippus, sing. You

are a professed poet. Let us have some of your verses.

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

My verses! How can you talk so? I a professed poet.

ALCIBIADES.

Oh, content you, sweet Speusippus. We all know your designs upon the

tragic honours. Come, sing. A chorus of your new play.

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

Nay, nay--

HIPPOMACHUS.

When a guest who is asked to sing at a Persian banquet refuses----

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

In the name of Bacchus----

ALCIBIADES.

I am absolute. Sing.

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

Well, then, I will sing you a chorus, which, I think, is a tolerable

imitation of Euripides.

CHARICLEA.

Of Euripides?--Not a word!

ALCIBIADES.

Why so, sweet Chariclea?

CHARICLEA. {45}Would you have me betray my sex? Would you have me forget

his Phædras and Sthenoboas? No: if I ever suffer any lines of that

woman-hater, or his imitators, to be sung in my presence, may I (1) sell

herbs like his mother, and wear rags like his Telephus. (2)

ALCIBIADES.

Then, sweet Chariclea, since you have silenced Speusippus, you shall

sing yourself.

CHARICLEA.

What shall I sing?

ALCIBIADES.

Nay, choose for yourself.

CHARICLEA.

Then I will sing an old Ionian hymn, which is chanted every spring at

the feast of Venus, near Miletus. I used to sing it in my own country

when I was a child; and--Ah, Alcibiades!

ALCIBIADES.

Dear Chariclea, you shall sing something else. This distresses you.

CHARICLEA.

No: hand me the lyre:--no matter. You will hear the song to

disadvantage. But if it were sung as I have heard it sung;--if this were

a beautiful morning

(1) The mother of Euripides was a herb-woman. This was a

favourite topic of Aristophanes.

(2) The hero of one of the lost plays of Euripides, who

appears to have been brought upon the stage in the garb of a

beggar. See Aristophanes; Acham. 430; and in other places.

{46}in spring, and if we were standing on a woody promontory, with the

sea, and the white sails, and the blue Cyclades beneath us,--and the

portico of a temple peeping through the trees on a huge peak above our

heads,--and thousands of people, with myrtles in their hands, thronging

up the winding path, their gay dresses and garlands disappearing and

emerging by turns as they passed round the angles of the rock,--then

perhaps--

ALCIBIADES.

Now, by Venus herself, sweet lady, where you are we shall lack neither

sun, nor flowers, nor spring, nor temple, nor goddess.

CHARICLEA. (Sings.)

Let this sunny hour be given,

Venus, unto love and mirth:

Smiles like thine are in the heaven;

Bloom like thine is on the earth;

And the tinkling of the fountains,

And the murmurs of the sea,

And the echoes from the mountains,

Speak of youth, and hope, and thee.

By whate’er of soft expression

Thou hast taught to lovers’ eyes

Faint denial, slow confession,

Glowing cheeks and stifled sighs;

By the pleasure and the pain,

By the follies and the wiles,

Routing fondness, sweet disdain,

Happy tears and mournful smiles;

Come with music floating o’er thee;

Come with violets springing round:

Let the Graces dance before thee,

All their golden zones unbound;

Now in sport their faces hiding,

Now, with slender fingers fair,

From their laughing eyes dividing

The long curls of rose-crowned hair.

ALCIBIADES. {47}Sweetly sung; but mournfully, Chariclea; for which I

would chide you, but that I am sad myself. More wine there. I wish to

all the gods that I had fairly sailed from Athens.

CHARICLEA.

And from me, Alcibiades?

ALCIBIADES.

Yes, from you, dear lady. The days which immediately precede separation

are the most melancholy of our lives.

CHARICLEA.

Except those which immediately follow it.

ALCIBIADES.

No; when I cease to see you, other objects may compel my attention; but

can I be near you without thinking how lovely you are, and how soon I

must leave you?

HIPPOMACHUS.

Ay; travelling soon puts such thoughts out of men’s heads.

CALLICLES.

A battle is the best remedy for them.

CHARICLEA.

A battle, I should think, might supply their place with others as

unpleasant.

CALLICLES.

No. The preparations are rather disagreeable to a novice. But as soon

as the fighting begins, by Jupiter, it is a noble time;--men

trampling,--shields {48}clashing,--spears breaking,--and the poan

roaring louder than all.

CHARICLEA.

But what if you are killed?

CALLICLES.

What indeed? You must ask Speusippus that question. He is a philosopher.

ALCIBIADES.

Yes, and the greatest of philosophers, if he can answer it.

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

Pythagoras is of opinion--

HIPPOSIACHUS.

Pythagoras stole that and all his other opinions from Asia and Egypt.

The transmigration of the soul and the vegetable diet are derived from

India. I met a Brachman in Sogdiana--

CALLICLES.

All nonsense!

CHARICLEA.

What think you, Alcibiades?

ALCIBIADES.

I think that, if the doctrine be true, your spirit will be transfused

into one of the doves who carry (1) ambrosia to the gods or verses to

the mistresses of poets. Do you remember Anacreon’s lines? How should

you like such an office?

(1) Homer’s Odyssey, xii. 63.

CHARICLEA. {49}If I were to be your dove, Alcibiades, and you would

treat me as Anacreon treated his, and let me nestle in your breast and

drink from your cup, I would submit even to carry your love-letters to

other ladies.

CALLICLES.

What, in the name of Jupiter, is the use of all these speculations about

death? Socrates once (1) lectured me upon it the best part of a day.

I have hated the sight of him ever since. Such things may suit an old

sophist when he is fasting; but in the midst of wine and music--

HIPPOMACHUS.

I differ from you. The enlightened Egyptians bring skeletons into their

banquets, in order to remind their guests to make the most of their life

while they have it.

CALLICLES.

I want neither skeleton nor sophist to teach me that lesson. More wine,

I pray you, and less wisdom. If you must believe something which you

never can know why not be contented with the long stories about

the other world which are told us when we are initiated at the (2 )

Eleusinian mysteries.

CHARICLEA.

And what are those stories?

(1)See the close of Plato’s Gorgias.

(2) The scene which follows is founded upon history.

Thucydides tells us, in his sixth book, that about this time

Alcibiades was suspected of having assisted at a mock

celebration of these famous mysteries. It was the opinion of

the vulgar among the Athenians that extraordinary privileges

were granted in the other world to all who had been

initiated.

ALCIBIADES.

{50}Are not you initiated, Chariclea?

CHARICLEA.

No; My mother was a Lydian, a barbarian; and therefore--

ALCIBIADES.

I understand. Now the curse of Venus on the fools who made so hateful a

law. Speusippus, does not your friend Euripides (1) say--

“The land where thou art prosperous is thy country?"

Surely we ought to say to every lady

“The land where thou art pretty is thy country."

Besides, to exclude foreign beauties from the chorus of the initiated in

the Elysian fields is less cruel to them than to ourselves. Chariclea,

you shall be initiated.

CHARICLEA.

When?

ALCIBIADES.

Now.

CHARICLEA.

Where?

ALCIBIADES.

Here.

CHARICLEA.

Delightful!

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

But there must be an interval of a year between the purification and the

initiation.

ALCIBIADES.

We will suppose all that.

(1) The right of Euripides to this line is somewhat

disputable. See Aristophanes; Plutus, 1152.

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

{51}And nine days of rigid mortification of the senses.

ALCIBIADES.

We will suppose that too. I am sure it was supposed, with as little

reason, when I was initiated.

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

But you are sworn to secrecy.

ALCIBIADES.

You a sophist, and talk of oaths! You a pupil of Euripides, and forget

his maxims!

“My lips have sworn it; but my mind is free.” (1)

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

But Alcibiades----

ALCIBIADES.

What! Are you afraid of Ceres and Proserpine?

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

No--but--but--I--that is I--but it is best to be safe--I mean--Suppose

there should be something in it.

ALCIBIADES.

Now, by Mercury, I shall die with laughing. Oh Speusippus, Speusippus!

Go back to your old father. Dig vineyards, and judge causes, and be a

respectable citizen. But never, while you live, again dream of being a

philosopher.

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

Nay, I was only----

(1)See Euripides; Hyppolytus, 606. For the jesuitical

morality of this line Euripides is bitterly attacked by the

comic poet.

ALCIBIADES.

{52}A pupil of Gorgias and Melesigenes afraid of Tartarus! In what

region of the infernal world do you expect your domicile to be fixed?

Shall you roll a stone like Sisyphus? Hard exercise, Speusippus!

SPEUSIFPUS.

In the name of all the gods--

ALCIBIADES.

Or shall you sit starved and thirsty in the midst of fruit and wine like

Tantalus? Poor fellow! I think I see your face as you are springing up

to the branches and missing your aim. Oh Bacchus! Oh Mercury!

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

Alcibiades!

ALCIBIADES.

Or perhaps you will be food for a vulture, like the huge fellow who was

rude to Latona.

SPEÜSIPPÜS.

Alcibiades!

ALCIBIADES.

Never fear. Minos will not be so cruel. Your eloquence will triumph

over all accusations. The furies will skulk away like disappointed

sycophants. Only address the judges of hell in the speech which you were

prevented from speaking last assembly. When I consider--is not that

the beginning of it? Come, man, do not be angry. Why do you pace up

and down with such long steps? You are not in Tartarus yet. You seem to

think that you are already stalking like poor Achilles,

“With stride

“Majestic through the plain of Asphodel.” (1)

SPEÜSIPPÜS. {53}How can you talk so, when you know that I believe all

that foolery as little as you do?

ALCIBIADES.

Then march. You shall be the crier. (2) Callicles, you shall carry the

torch. Why do you stare?

CALLICLES.

I do not much like the frolic.

ALCIBIADES.

Nay, surely you are not taken with a fit of piety. If all be true that

is told of you, you have as little reason to think the gods vindictive

as any man breathing. If you be not belied, a certain golden goblet

which I have seen at your house was once in the temple of Juno at

Corcyra. And men say that there was a priestess at Tarentum----

CALLICLES.

A fig for the gods! I was thinking about the Archons. You will have an

accusation laid against you to-morrow. It is not very pleasant to be

tried before the king. (3)

(1) See Homer’s Odyssey, xi. 538.

(2) The crier and torch-hearer were important functionaries

at the celebration of the Kleusinian mysteries.

(3) The name of king was given in the Athenian democracy to

the magistrate who exercised those spiritual functions which

in the monarchical times had belonged to the sovereign. His

court took cognisance of offences against the religion of

the state.

ALCIBIADES.

{54}Never fear: there is not a sycophant in Attica who would dare to

breathe a word against me, for the golden (1) plane-tree of the great

king.

HIPPOMACHUS.

That plane-tree----

ALCIBIADES.

Never mind the plane-tree. Come, Callicles, you were not so timid when

you plundered the merchantman off Cape Malea. Take up the torch and

move. Hippomachus, tell one of the slaves to bring a sow. (2)

CALLICLES.

And what part are you to play?

ALCIBIADES.

I shall be hierophant. Herald, to your office. Torch-bearer, advance

with the lights. Come forward, fair novice. We will celebrate the rite

within. (Exeunt.)

(1) See Herodotus, viii. 28.

(2) A sow was sacrificed to Ceres at the admission to the

greater mysteries.

CRITICISMS ON THE PRINCIPAL ITALIAN WRITERS.

{55}(_Knight’s Quarterly Magazine_), January 1824.

No. I. DANTE.

“Fairest of stars, last in the train of night

If better thou belong not to the dawn,

Sure pledge of day, that crown’st the smiling morn

With thy bright circlet.”

Milton.

In a review of Italian literature, Dante has a double claim to

precedency. He was the earliest and the greatest writer of his country.

He was the first man who fully descried and exhibited the powers of

his native dialect. The Latin tongue, which, under the most favourable

circumstances, and in the hands of the greatest masters, had still been

poor, feeble, and singularly unpoetical, and which had, in the age of

Dante, been debased by the admixture of innumerable barbarous words

and idioms, was still cultivated with superstitious veneration, and

received, in the last stage of corruption, more honours than it had

deserved in the period of its life and vigour. It was the language of

the cabinet, of the university, of the church. It was employed by all

who aspired to distinction in the higher walks of poetry. In compassion

to the ignorance of his mistress, a cavalier might now and then proclaim

his passion in Tuscan or Provençal rhymes. The vulgar might occasionally

be edified by a pious {56}allegory in the popular jargon. But no writer

had conceived it possible that the dialect of peasants and market-women

should possess sufficient energy and precision for a majestic and

durable work. Dante adventured first. He detected the rich treasures of

thought and diction which still lay latent in their ore. He refined them

into purity. He burnished them into splendour. He fitted them for every

purpose of use and magnificence. And he has thus acquired the glory, not

only of producing the finest narrative poem of modern times, but also of

creating a language, distinguished by unrivalled melody, and peculiarly

capable of furnishing to lofty and passionate thoughts their appropriate

garb of severe and concise expression.

To many this may appear a singular panegyric on the Italian tongue.

Indeed the great majority of the young gentlemen and young ladies, who,

when they are asked whether they read Italian, answer “Yes,” never go

beyond the stories at the end of their grammar,--The Pastor Fido,--or an

act of Artaserse. They could as soon read a Babylonian brick as a canto

of Dante. Hence it is a general opinion, among those who know little

or nothing of the subject, that this admirable language is adapted only

to the effeminate cant of sonnetteers, musicians, and connoisseurs.

The fact is that Dante and Petrarch have been the Oromasdes and

Arimanes of Italian literature. I wish not to detract from the merits

of Petrarch. No one can doubt that his poems exhibit, amidst some

imbecility and more affectation, much elegance, ingenuity, and

tenderness. They present us with a mixture which can only be compared to

the whimsical concert described by the humorous poet of Modena:

“S’udian gli usignuoli, al primo albore,

E gli asiui eantar versi d’ amore.” (1)

{57}I am not, however, at present speaking of the intrinsic excellencies

of his writings, which I shall take another opportunity to examine, hut

of the effect which they produce on the literature of Italy. The florid

and luxurious charms of his style enticed the poets and the public from

the contemplation of nobler and sterner models. In truth, though a

rude state of society is that in which great original works are

most frequently produced, it is also that in which they are worst

appreciated. This may appear paradoxical, but it is proved by

experience, and is consistent with reason. To be without any received

canons of taste is good for the few who can create, but bad for the many

who can only imitate and judge. Great and active minds cannot remain at

rest. In a cultivated age they are too often contented to move on in

the beaten path. But where no path exists they will make one. Thus

the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Divine Comedy, appeared in dark and half

barbarous times: and thus of the few original works which have been

produced in more polished ages, we owe a large proportion to men in low

stations and of uninformed minds. I will instance, in our own language,

the Pilgrim’s Progress and Robinson Crusoe. Of all the prose works of

fiction which we possess, these are, I will not say the best, but the

most peculiar, the most unprecedented, the most inimitable. Had Bunyan

and Defoe been educated gentlemen, they would probably have published

translations and imitations of French romances “by a person of quality.”

I am not sure that we should have had Lear if Shakspeare had been able

to read Sophocles.

(1) Tassoni; Seccliia Rapita, canto i. stanza G.

{58}But these circumstances, while they foster genius, are unfavourable

to the science of criticism. Men judge by comparison. They are unable

to estimate the grandeur of an object when there is no standard by which

they can measure it. One of the French philosophers (I beg Gerard’s

pardon), who accompanied Napoleon to Egypt, tells us that, when he first

visited the great Pyramid, he was surprised to see it so diminutive. It

stood alone in a boundless plain. There was nothing near it from which

he could calculate its magnitude. But when the camp was pitched beside

it, and the tents appeared like diminutive specks around its base, he

then perceived the immensity of this mightiest work of man. In the same

manner, it is not till a crowd of petty writers has sprung up that the

merit of the great master-spirits of literature is understood.

We have indeed ample proof that Dante was highly admired in his own and

the following age. I wish that we had equal proof that he was admired

for his excellencies. But it is a remarkable corroboration of what has

been said, that this great man seems to have been utterly unable to

appreciate himself. In his treatise _De Vulgari Eloquentia_, he talks

with satisfaction of what he has done for Italian literature, of the

purity and correctness of his style. “_Cependant_,” says a favourite

(1) writer of mine, “_il ri est ni pur, ni correct, mais il est

créateur.”_Considering the difficulties with which Dante had to

struggle, we may perhaps be more inclined than the French critic to

allow him this praise. Still it is by no means his highest or most

peculiar title to applause. It is scarcely necessary to say that those

qualities which escaped the notice of the poet himself were not likely

to attract the attention of the commentators. The fact is, that, while

the

(1) Sismondi; Littérature du Midi de l’ Europe.

{59}public homage was paid to some absurdities with which his works

may be justly charged, and to many more which were falsely imputed to

them,--while lecturers were paid to expound and eulogise his physics,

his metaphysics, his theology, all bad of their kind,--while annotators

laboured to detect allegorical meanings of which the author never

dreamed, the great powers of his imagination, and the incomparable force

of his style, were neither admired nor imitated. Arimanes had prevailed.

The Divine Comedy was to that age what St. Paul’s Cathedral was to Omai.

The poor Otaheitean stared listlessly for a moment at the huge cupola,

and ran into a toyshop to play with beads. Italy, too, was charmed with

literary trinkets, and played with them for four centuries.

From the time of Petrarch to the appearance of Alfieri’s tragedies, we

may trace in almost every page of Italian literature the influence of

those celebrated sonnets which, from the nature both of their beauties

and their faults, were peculiarly unfit to be models for general

imitation. Almost all the poets of that period, however different in

the degree and quality of their talents, are characterised by great

exaggeration, and, as a necessary consequence, great coldness of

sentiment; by a passion for frivolous and tawdry ornament; and, above

all, by an extreme feebleness and diffuseness of style. Tasso, Marino,

Guarini, Metastasio, and a crowd of writers of inferior merit and

celebrity, were spell-bound in the enchanted gardens of a gaudy and

meretricious Alcina, who concealed debility and deformity beneath the

deceitful semblance of loveliness and health. Ariosto, the great Ariosto

himself, like his own Ruggiero, stooped for a time to linger amidst

the magic flowers and fountains, and to caress the gay {60}and painted

sorceress. But to him, as to his own Ruggiero, had been given the

omnipotent ring and the winged courser, which bore him from the paradise

of deception to the regions of light and nature.

The evil of which I speak was not confined to the graver poets. It

infected satire, comedy, burlesque. No person can admire more than I do

the great masterpieces of wit and humour which Italy has produced. Still

I cannot but discern and lament a great deficiency, which is common to

them all. I find in them abundance of ingenuity, of droll naïveté, of

profound and just reflection, of happy expression. Manners, characters,

opinions, are treated with “a most learned spirit of human dealing.” But

something is still wanting. We read, and we admire, and we yawn. We look

in vain for the bacchanalian fury which inspired the comedy of Athens,

for the fierce and withering scorn which animates the invectives of

Juvenal and Dryden, or even for the compact and pointed diction which

adds zest to the verses of Pope and Boileau. There is no enthusiasm,

no energy, no condensation, nothing which springs from strong

feeling, nothing which tends to excite it. Many fine thoughts and fine

expressions reward the toil of reading. Still it is a toil. The Secchia

Rapita, in some points the best poem of its kind, is painfully diffuse

and languid. The Animali Parlanti of Casti is perfectly intolerable. I

admire the dexterity of the plot, and the liberality of the opinions.

I admit that it is impossible to turn to a page which does not contain

something that deserves to be remembered; but it is at least six times

as long as it ought to be. And the garrulous feebleness of the style is

a still greater fault than the length of the work.

It may be thought that I have gone too far in attributing {61}these

evils to the influence of the works and the fame of Petrarch. It cannot,

however, be doubted that they have arisen, in a great measure, from a

neglect of the style of Dante. This is not more proved by the decline

of Italian poetry than by its resuscitation. After the lapse of four

hundred and fifty years, there appeared a man capable of appreciating

and imitating the father of Tuscan literature--Vittorio Alfieri. Like

the prince in the nursery tale, he sought and found the Sleeping Beauty

within the recesses which had so long concealed her from mankind. The

portal was indeed rusted by time;--the dust of ages had accumulated on

the banonnors;--the furniture was of antique fashion;--and the gorgeous

colour of the embroidery had faded. But the living charms which were

well worth all the rest remained in the bloom of eternal youth, and well

rewarded the bold adventurer who roused them from their long slumber. In

every line of the Philip and the Saul, the greatest poems, I think, of

the eighteenth century, we may trace the influence of that mighty

genius which has immortalised the ill-starred love of Francesca, and

the paternal agonies of Ugolino. Alfieri bequeathed the sovereignty of

Italian literature to the author of the Aristodemus--a man of genius

scarcely inferior to his own, and a still more devoted disciple of the

great Florentine. It must be acknowledged that this eminent writer has

sometimes pushed too far his idolatry of Dante. To borrow a sprightly

illustration from Sir John Denham, he has not only imitated his garb,

but borrowed his clothes. He often quotes his phrases; and he has,

not very judiciously as it appears to me, imitated his versification.

Nevertheless, he has displayed many of the higher excellencies of his

master; {62}and his works may justly inspire us with a hope that Italian

language will long flourish under a new literary dynasty, or rather

under the legitimate line, which has at length been restored to a throne

long occupied by specious usurpers.

The man to whom the literature of his country owes its origin and

its revival was horn in times singularly adapted to call forth his

extraordinary powers. Religious zeal, chivalrous love and honour,

democratic liberty, are the three most powerful principles that have

ever influenced the character of large masses of men. Each of them

singly has often excited the greatest enthusiasm, and produced the

most important changes. In the time of Dante all the three, often in

amalgamation, generally in conflict, agitated the public mind. The

preceding generation had witnessed the wrongs and the revenge of the

brave, the accomplished, the unfortunate Emperor Frederic the Second,--a

poet in an age of schoolmen,--a philosopher in an age of monks,--a

statesman in an age of crusaders. During the whole life of the poet,

Italy was experiencing the consequences of the memorable struggle which

he had maintained against the Church. The finest works of imagination

have always been produced in times of political convulsion, as the

richest vineyards and the sweetest flowers always grow on the soil which

has been fertilised by the fiery deluge of a volcano. To look no

further than the literary history of our own country, can we doubt

that Shakspeare was in a great measure produced by the Reformation,

and Wordsworth by the French Revolution? Poets often avoid political

transactions; they often affect to despise them. But, whether they

perceive it or not, they must be influenced by them. As long as their

minds have any {63}point of contact with those of their fellow-men,

the electric impulse, at whatever distance it may originate, will he

circuitously communicated to them.

This will be the case even in large societies, where the division of

labour enables many speculative men to observe the face of nature, or

to analyse their own minds, at a distance from the seat of political

transactions. In the little republic of which Dante was a member the

state of things was very different. These small communities are most

unmercifully abused by most of our modern professors of the science

of government. In such states, they tell us, factions are always

most violent: where both parties are cooped up within a narrow space,

political difference necessarily produces personal malignity. Every man

must be a soldier; every moment may produce a war. No citizen can lie

down secure that he shall not be roused by the alarum-bell, to repel

or avenge an injury. In such petty quarrels Greece squandered the blood

which might have purchased for her the permanent empire of the world,

and Italy wasted the energy and the abilities which would have enabled

her to defend her independence against the Pontiffs and the Cæsars.

All this is true: yet there is still a compensation. Mankind has not

derived so much benefit from the empire of Rome as from the city of

Athens, nor from the kingdom of France as from the city of Florence.

The violence of party feeling may be an evil; but it calls forth that

activity of mind which in some states of society it is desirable to

produce at any expense. Universal soldiership may be an evil; but where

every man is a soldier there will be no standing army. And is it no evil

that one man in every fifty should be bred to the trade of slaughter;

should live only by destroying {64}and by exposing himself to be

destroyed; should fight without enthusiasm and conquer without glory; be

sent to a hospital when wounded, and rot on a dunghill when old? Such,

over more than two-thirds of Europe, is the fate of soldiers. It was

something that the citizen of Milan or Florence fought, not merely in

the vague and rhetorical sense in which the words are often used, but

in sober truth, for his parents, his children, his lands, his house,

his altars. It was something that he marched forth to battle beneath the

Carroccio, which had been the object of his childish veneration; that

his aged father looked down from the battlements on his exploits; that

his friends and his rivals were the witnesses of his glory. If he fell,

he was consigned to no venal or heedless guardians. The same day saw him

conveyed within the walls which he had defended. His wounds were dressed

by his mother; his confession was whispered to the friendly priest

who had heard and absolved the follies of his youth; his last sigh was

breathed upon the lips of the lady of his love. Surely there is no sword

like that which is beaten out of a ploughshare. Surely this state of

things was not unmixedly bad: its evils were alleviated by enthusiasm

and by tenderness; and it will at least be acknowledged that it was well

fitted to nurse poetical genius in an imaginative and observant mind.

Nor did the religious spirit of the age tend less to this result than

its political circumstances. Fanaticism is an evil, but it is not the

greatest of evils. It is good that a people should be roused by any

means from a state of utter torpor;--that their minds should be diverted

from objects merely sensual, to meditations, however erroneous, on the

mysteries of the moral and intellectual world; and from interests which

are immediately {65}selfish to those which relate to the past, the

future, and the remote. These effects have sometimes been produced by

the worst superstitions that ever existed; but the Catholic religion,

even in the time of its utmost extravagance and atrocity, never wholly

lost the spirit of the Great Teacher, whose precepts form the noblest

code, as his conduct furnished the purest example, of moral excellence.

It is of all religions the most poetical. The ancient superstitions

furnished the fancy with beautiful images, but took no hold on the

heart. The doctrines of the Reformed Churches have most powerfully

influenced the feelings and the conduct of men, but have not presented

them with visions of sensible beauty and grandeur. The Roman Catholic

Church has united to the awful doctrines of the one what Mr. Coleridge

calls the “fair humanities” of the other. It has enriched sculpture

and painting with the loveliest and most majestic forms. To the Phidian

Jupiter it can oppose the Moses of Michael Angelo; and to the voluptuous

beauty of the Queen of Cyprus, the serene and pensive loveliness of

the Virgin Mother. The legends of its martyrs and its saints may vie

in ingenuity and interest with the mythological fables of Greece; its

ceremonies and processions were the delight of the vulgar; the huge

fabric of secular power with which it was connected attracted the

admiration of the statesman. At the same time, it never lost sight of

the most solemn and tremendous doctrines of Christianity,--the incarnate

God,--the judgment,--the retribution,--the eternity of happiness

or torment. Thus, while, like the ancient religions, it received

incalculable support from policy and ceremony, it never wholly became,

like those religions, a merely political and ceremonial institution.

{66}The beginning of the thirteenth century was, as Machiarelli has

remarked, the era of a great revival of this extraordinary system. The

policy of Innocent,--the growth of the inquisition and the mendicant

orders,--the wars against the Albigenses, the Pagans of the East, and

the unfortunate princes of the house of Swabia, agitated Italy during

the two following generations. In this point Dante was completely

under the influence of his age. He was a man of a turbid and melancholy

spirit. In early youth he had entertained a strong and unfortunate

passion, which, long after the death of her whom he loved, continued to

haunt him. Dissipation, ambition, misfortunes had not effaced it. He was

not only a sincere, but a passionate, believer. The crimes and abuses

of the Church of Pome were indeed loathsome to him; but to all its

doctrines and all its rites he adhered with enthusiastic fondness and

veneration; and, at length, driven from nis native country, reduced to

a situation the most painful to a man of his disposition, condemned

to learn by experience that no (1) food is so bitter as the bread of

dependence, and no ascent so painful as the staircase of a patron,--his

wounded spirit took refuge in visionary devotion. Beatrice, the

unforgotten object of his early tenderness, was invested by his

imagination with glorious and mysterious attributes; she was enthroned

among the highest of the celestial hierarchy: Almighty Wisdom had

assigned to her the care of the sinful and unhappy wanderer who had

loved her with such a perfect love. (2) By a confusion, like that which

often

(1)"Tu proverai si come sa di sale

Lo pane altrui, e come è duro calle

Lo scendere c’l salir per l’ altrui scale.”

Parndiso, canto xvii.

(2) “L’ amico mio, e non della ventura.”--_Inferno_, canto

ii.

{67}takes place in dreams, he has sometimes lost sight of her human

nature, and even of her personal existence, and seems to consider her as

one of the attributes of the Deity.

But those religious hopes which had released the mind of the sublime

enthusiast from the terrors of death had not rendered his speculations

on human life more cheerful. This is an inconsistency which may often be

observed in men of a similar temperament. He hoped for happiness beyond

the grave: but he felt none on earth. It is from this cause, more than

from any other, that his description of Heaven is so far inferior to the

Hell or the Purgatory. With the passions and miseries of the suffering

spirits he feels a strong sympathy. But among the beatified he appears

as one who has nothing in common with them,--as one who is incapable of

comprehending, not only the degree, but the nature of their enjoyment.

We think that we see him standing; amidst those smiling; and radiant

spirits with that scowl of unutterable misery on his brow, and that curl

of bitter disdain on his lips, which all his portraits have preserved

and which might furnish Chantrey with hints for the head of his

projected Satan.

There is no poet whose intellectual and moral character are so closely

connected. The great source, as it appears to me, of the power of the

Divine Comedy is the strong belief with which the story seems to be

told. In this respect, the only books which approach to its excellence

are Gulliver’s Travels and Robinson Crusoe. The solemnity of his

asseverations, the consistency and minuteness of his details, the

earnestness with which he labors to make the reader understand the exact

shape and size of every thing that he describes, give an air of reality

to his wildest fictions. {68}I should only weaken this statement by

quoting instances of a feeling which pervades the whole work, and to

which it owes much of its fascination. This is the real justification

of the many passages in his poem which had critics have condemned as

grotesque. I am concerned to see that Mr. Cary, to whom Dante owes more

than ever poet owed to translator, has sanctioned an accusation utterly

unworthy of his abilities. “His solicitude,” says that gentleman, “to

define all his images in such a manner as to bring them within the

circle of our vision, and to subject them to the power of the pencil,

renders him little better than grotesque, where Milton has since taught

us to expect sublimity.” It is true that Dante has never shrunk from

embodying his conceptions in determinate words, that he has even given

measures and numbers, where Milton would have left his images to float

undefined in a gorgeous haze of language. Both were right. Milton

did not profess to have been in heaven or hell. He might therefore

reasonably confine himself to magnificent generalities. Far different

was the office of the lonely traveller, who had wandered through the

nations of the dead. Had he described the abode of the rejected spirits

in language resembling the splendid lines of the English poet,--had he

told us of--

“An universe of death, which God by curse

Created evil, for evil only good,

Where all life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds

Perverse all monstrous, all prodigious tilings,

Abominable, unutterable, and worse

Than fables yet have feigned, or fear conceived,

Gorgons, and hydras, and chimæras dire,”--

this would doubtless have been noble writing. But where would have been

that strong impression of {69}reality, which, in accordance with his

plan, it should have been his great object to produce? It was absolutely

necessary for him to delineate accurately “all monstrous, all prodigious

things,”--to utter what might to others appear “unutterable,”--to relate

with the air of truth what fables had never feigned,--to embody what

fear had never conceived. And I will frankly confess that the vague

sublimity of Milton affects me less than these reviled details of Dante.

We read Milton; and we know that we are reading a great poet. When

we read Dante, the poet vanishes. We are listening to the man who has

returned from the valley of the “dolorous abyss;” (1)--we seem to see

the dilated eye of horror, to hear the shuddering accents with which

he tells his fearful tale. Considered in this light, the narratives are

exactly what they should be,--definite in themselves, but suggesting to

the mind ideas of awful and indefinite wonder. They are made up of the

images of the earth:--they are told in the language of the earth.--Yet

the whole effect is, beyond expression, wild and unearthly. The fact

is, that supernatural beings, as long as they are considered merely with

reference to their own nature, excite our feelings very feebly. It is

when the great gulf which separates them from us is passed, when we

suspect some strange and un definable relation between the laws of the

visible and the invisible world, that they rouse, perhaps, the strongest

emotions of which our nature is capable. How many children, and how many

men, are afraid of ghosts, who are not afraid of God! And this, because,

though they entertain a much stronger conviction of the existence of a

Deity than of the reality of apparitions, they have no

(1) “La valle d’ abisso doloroso.”--_Inferno_, canto iv.

{70}apprehension that he will manifest himself to them in any sensible

manner. While this is the case, to describe super-human beings in the

language, and to attribute to them the actions, of humanity may be

grotesque, unphilosophical, inconsistent; but it will be the only

mode of working upon the feelings of men, and, therefore, the only mode

suited for poetry. Shakspeare understood this well, as he understood

every thing that belonged to his art. Who does not sympathise with

the rapture of Ariel, flying after sunset on the wings of the bat, or

sucking in the cups of flowers with the bee? Who does not shudder at the

caldron of Macbeth? Where is the philosopher who is not moved when he

thinks of the strange connection between the infernal spirits and “the

sow’s blood that hath eaten her nine farrow?” But this difficult task of

representing supernatural beings to our minds, in a manner which shall

be neither unintelligible to our intellects, nor wholly inconsistent

with our ideas of their nature, has never been so well performed as by

Dante. I will refer to three instances, which are, perhaps, the most

striking---the description of the transformations of the serpents and

the robbers, in the twenty-fifth canto of the Inferno,--the passage

concerning Nimrod, in the thirty-first canto of the same part,--and the

magnificent procession in the twenty-ninth canto of the Purgatorio.

The metaphors and comparisons of Dante harmonise admirably with that

air of strong reality of which I have spoken. They have a very peculiar

character. He is perhaps the only poet whose writings would become much

less intelligible if all illustrations of this sort were expunged. His

similes are frequently rather those of a traveller than of a poet.

He employs them {71}not to display his ingenuity by fanciful

analogies,--not to delight the reader by affording him a distant and

passing glimpse of beautiful images remote from the path in which he

is proceeding,--but to give an exact idea of the objects which he is

describing, by comparing them with others generally known. The boiling

pitch in Malebolge was like that in the Venetian arsenal:--the mound on

which he travelled along the banks of Phlegethon was like that between

Ghent and Bruges, but not so large:--the cavities where the Simoniacal

prelates are confined resembled the fonts in the Church of John at

Florence. Every reader of Dante will recall many other illustrations

of this description, which add to the appearance of sincerity and

earnestness from winch the narrative derives so much of its interest.

Many of his comparisons, again, are intended to give an exact idea of

his feelings under particular circumstances. The delicate shades of

grief, of fear, of anger, are rarely discriminated with sufficient

accuracy in the language of the most refined nations. A rude dialect

never abounds in nice distinctions of this kind. Dante therefore employs

the most accurate and infinitely the most poetical mode of marking

the precise state of his mind. Every person who has experienced the

bewildering effect of sudden bad tidings,--the stupefaction,--the vague

doubt of the truth of our own perceptions which they produce,--will

understand the following simile:--“I was as he is who dreameth his own

harm,--who, dreaming, wishes that it may be all a dream, so that he

desires that which is as though it were not.” This is only one out of a

hundred equally striking and expressive similitudes. The comparisons of

Homer and Milton are magnificent digressions. It scarcely injures

their effect to detach {72}them from the work. Those of Dante are very

different. They derive their beauty from the context, and reflect beauty

upon it. His embroidery cannot be taken out without spoiling the whole

web. I cannot dismiss this part of the subject without advising every

person who can muster sufficient Italian to read the smile of the

sheep, in the third canto of the Purgatorio. I think it the most

perfect passage of the kind in the world, the most imaginative, the most

picturesque, and the most sweetly expressed.

No person can have attended to the Divine Comedy without observing how

little impression the forms of the external world appear to have made on

the mind of Dante. His temper and his situation had led him to fix his

observation almost exclusively on human nature. The exquisite opening

of the eighth (1) canto of the Purgatorio affords a strong instance

of this. He leaves to others the earth, the ocean, and the sky. His

business is with man. To other writers, evening may be the season of

dews and stars and radiant clouds. To Dante it is the hour of fond

recollection and passionate devotion,--the hour which melts the heart of

the mariner and kindles the love of the pilgrim,--the hour when the toll

of the bell seems to mourn for another day which is gone and will return

no more.

(1) I cannot help observing that Gray’s imitation of that

noble line “Che paia’l giorno pianger che si muore,” is one

of the most striking instances of injudicious plagiarism

with which I am acquainted. Dante did not put this strong

personification at the beginning of his description. The

imagination of the reader is so well prepared for it by the

previous lines, that it appears perfectly natural and

pathetic. Placed as Gray has placed it, neither preceded nor

followed by any thing that harmonises with it, it becomes a

frigid conceit. Woe to the unskilful rider who ventures on

the horses of Achilles.

{73}The feeling of the present age has taken a direction diametrically

opposite. The magnificence of the physical world, and its influence

upon the human mind, have been the favourite themes of our most eminent

poets. The herd of blue-stocking ladies and sonneteering gentlemen seem

to consider a strong sensibility to the “splendour of the grass, the

glory of the flower,” as an ingredient absolutely indispensable in the

formation of a poetical mind. They treat with contempt all writers who

are unfortunately

nec ponere lucurn

Artifices, nec rus saturum laudare.

The orthodox poetical creed is more Catholic. The noblest earthly object

of the contemplation of man is man himself. The universe, and all its

fair and glorious forais, are indeed included in the wide empire of the

imagination; but she has placed her home and her sanctuary amidst the

inexhaustible varieties and the impenetrable mysteries of the mind.

In tutte parti impera, e quivi regge;

Quivi è la sua cittade, e l’ alto seggio. (1)

Othello is perhaps the greatest work in the world. From what does it

derive its power? From the clouds? From the ocean? From the mountains?

Or from love strong as death, and jealousy cruel as the grave! What is

it that we go forth to see in Hamlet? Is it a reed shaken with the wind?

A small celandine? A bed of daffodils? Or is it to contemplate a mighty

and wayward mind laid bare before us to the inmost recesses? It may

perhaps be doubted whether the lakes and the hills are better fitted for

the education of a poet than the dusky streets of a huge capital. Indeed

who is not tired to death with pure description of

(1) Inferno, canto i.

{74}scenery? Is it not the fact, that external objects never strongly

excite our feelings but when they are contemplated in reference to man,

as illustrating his destiny, or as influencing his character? The most

beautiful object in the world, it will be allowed, is a beautiful woman.

But who that can analyse his feelings is not sensible that she owes her

fascination less to grace of outline and delicacy of colour, than to

a thousand associations which, often unperceived by ourselves, connect

those qualities with the source of our existence, with the nourishment

of our infancy, with the passions of our youth, with the hopes of our

age, with elegance, with vivacity, with tenderness, with the strongest

of natural instincts, with the dearest of social ties?

To those who think thus, the insensibility of the Florentine poet to

the beauties of nature will not appear an unpardonable deficiency. On

mankind no writer, with the exception of Shakspeare, has looked with

a more penetrating eye. I have said that his poetical character had

derived a tinge from his peculiar temper. It is on the sterner and

darker passions that he delights to dwell. All love, excepting the half

mystic passion which he still felt for his buried Beatrice, had palled

on the fierce and restless exile. The sad story of Rimini is almost a

single exception. I know not whether it has been remarked, that, in one

point, misanthropy seems to have affected his mind as it did that of

Swift. Nauseous and revolting images seem to have had a fascination

for his mind; and he repeatedly places before his readers, with all

the energy of his incomparable style, the most loathsome objects of the

sewer and the dissecting-room.

There is another peculiarity in the poem of Dante, which, I think,

deserves notice. Ancient mythology {75}has hardly ever been successfully

interwoven with modern poetry. One class of writers have introduced the

fabulous deities merely as allegorical representatives of love, wine,

or wisdom. This necessarily renders their works tame and cold. We may

sometimes admire their ingenuity; but with what interest can we read

of beings of whose personal existence the writer does not suffer us

to entertain, for a moment, even a conventional belief? Even Spenser’s

allegory is scarcely tolerable, till we contrive to forget that Una

signifies innocence, and consider her merely as an oppressed lady under

the protection of a generous knight.

Those writers who have, more judiciously, attempted to preserve the

personality of the classical divinities have failed from a different

cause. They have been imitators, and imitators at a disadvantage;

Euripides and Catullus believed in Bacchus and Cybele as little as we

do. But they lived among men who did. Their imaginations, if not their

opinions, took the colour of the age. Hence the glorious inspiration of

the Bacchæ and the Atys. Our minds are formed by circumstances: and I do

not believe that it would be in the power of the greatest modern poet to

lash himself up to a degree of enthusiasm adequate to the production of

such works.

Dante alone, among the poets of later times, has been, in this respect,

neither an allegorist nor an imitator; and, consequently, he alone has

introduced the ancient fictions with effect. His Minos, his Charon,

his Pluto, are absolutely terrific. Nothing can be more beautiful or

original than the use which lie has made of the river of Lethe. He has

never assigned to his mythological characters any functions inconsistent

with the creed of the Catholic Church. He has {76}related nothing

concerning them which a good Christian of that age might not believe

possible. On this account, there is nothing in these passages that

appears puerile or pedantic. On the contrary, this singular use of

classical names suggests to the mind a vague and awful idea of some

mysterious revelation, anterior to all recorded history, of which the

dispersed fragments might have been retained amidst the impostures and

superstitions of later religions. Indeed the mythology of the Divine

Comedy is of the elder and more colossal mould. It breathes the spirit

of Homer and Æschylus, not of Ovid and Claudian.

This is the more extraordinary, since Dante seems to have been utterly

ignorant of the Greek language; and his favorite Latin models could only

have served to mislead him. Indeed, it is impossible not to remark his

admiration of writers far inferior to himself; and, in particular,

his idolatry of Virgil, who, elegant and splendid as he is, has no

pretensions to the depth and originality of mind which characterise his

Tuscan worshipper. In truth, it may be laid down as an almost universal

rule that good poets are bad critics. Their minds are under the tyranny

of ten thousand associations imperceptible to others. The worst writer

may easily happen to touch a spring which is connected in their minds

with a long succession of beautiful images. They are like the gigantic

slaves of Aladdin, gifted with matchless power, but bound by spells

so mighty that when a child whom they could have crushed touched a

talisman, of whose secret he was ignorant, they immediately became his

vassals. It has more than once happened to me to see minds, graceful

and majestic as the Titania of Shakspeare, bewitched by the charms of

an ass’s head, bestowing on it the fondest {77}caresses, and crowning it

with the sweetest flowers. I need only mention the poems attributed to

Ossian. They are utterly worthless, except as an edifying instance of

the success of a story without evidence, and of a book without merit.

They are a chaos of words which present no image, of images which have

no archetype:--they are without form and void; and darkness is upon the

face of them. Yet how many men of genius have panegyrised and imitated

them!

The style of Dante is, if not his highest, perhaps his most peculiar

excellence. I know nothing with which it can be compared. The noblest

models of Greek composition must yield to it. His words are the fewest

and the best which it is possible to use. The first expression in which

he clothes his thoughts is always so energetic and comprehensive that

amplification would only injure the effect. There is probably no writer

in any language who has presented so many strong pictures to the mind.

Yet there is probably no writer equally concise. This perfection of

style is the principal merit of the Paradiso, which, as I have already

remarked, is by no means equal in other respects to the two preceding

parts of the poem. The force and felicity of the diction, however,

irresistibly attract the reader through the theological lectures and the

sketches of ecclesiastical biography, with which this division of the

work too much abounds. It may seem almost absurd to quote particular

specimens of an excellence which is diffused over all his hundred

cantos. I will, however, instance the third canto of the Inferno, and

the sixth of the Purgatorio, as passages incomparable in their kind. The

merit of the latter is, perhaps, rather oratorical than poetical; nor

can I recollect any thing in the great Athenian speeches {78}which

equals it in force of invective and bitterness of sarcasm. I have heard

the most eloquent statesman of the age remark that, next to Demosthenes,

Dante is the writer who ought to be most attentively studied by every

man who desires to attain oratorical eminence.

But it is time to close this feeble and rambling critique. I cannot

refrain, however, from saying a few words upon the translations of the

divine comedy. Boyd’s is as tedious and languid as the original is rapid

and forcible. The strange measure which he has chosen, and, for ought I

know, invented, is most unfit for such a work. Translations ought never

to be written in a verse which requires much command of rhyme. The

stanza becomes a bed of Procrustes; and the thoughts of the unfortunate

author are alternately racked and curtailed to fit their new receptacle.

The abrupt and yet consecutive style of Dante suffers more than that

of any other poet by a version diffuse in style, and divided into

paragraphs, for they deserve no other name, of equal length.

Nothing can be said in favour of Hayley’s attempt, but that it is better

than Boyd’s. His mind was a tolerable specimen of filagree work,--rather

elegant, and very feeble. All that can be said for his best works is

that they are neat. All that can be said against his worst is that they

are stupid. He might have translated Metastasio tolerably. But he was

utterly unable to do justice to the

“rime e aspre e chioce,

Come si converrebbe al tristo buco.” (1)

I turn with pleasure from these wretched performances to Mr. Cary’s

translation. It is a work which well deserves a separate discussion, and

on which, if

(1)Inferno, canto xxxii.

{79}this article were not already too long, I could dwell with great

pleasure. At present I will only say that there is no other version in

the world, as far as I know, so faithful, yet that there is no other

version which so fully proves that the translator is himself a man of

poetical genius. Those who are ignorant of the Italian language should

read it to become acquainted with the Divine Comedy. Those who are most

intimate with Italian literature should read it for its original merits:

and I believe that they will find it difficult to determine whether the

author deserves most praise for his intimacy with the language of Dante,

or for his extraordinary mastery over his own.

{80}(_Knight’s Quarterly Magazine,_ April 1824.)

No. II. PETRARCH.

Et vos, o lauri, carpam, et te, proxima myrte,

Sic positæ quoniam suaves miscetis odores. _Virgil_.

It would not be easy to name a writer whose celebrity, when both its

extent and its duration are taken into the account, can be considered as

equal to that of Petrarch. Four centuries and a half have elapsed since

his death. Yet still the inhabitants of every nation throughout the

western world are as familiar with his character and his adventures as

with the most illustrious names, and the most recent anecdotes, of their

own literary history. This is indeed a rare distinction. His detractors

must acknowledge that it could not have been acquired by a poet

destitute of merit. His admirers will scarcely maintain that the

unassisted merit of Petrarch could have raised him to that eminence

which has not yet been attained by Shakspeare, Milton, or Dante,--that

eminence, of which perhaps no modern writer, excepting himself and

Cervantes, has long retained possession,--an European reputation.

It is not difficult to discover some of the causes to which this great

man has owed a celebrity, which I {81}cannot but think disproportioned

to his real claims on the admiration of mankind. In the first place, he

is an egotist. Egotism in conversation is universally abhorred. Lovers,

and, I believe, lovers alone, pardon it in each other. No services,

no talents, no powers of pleasing, render it endurable. Gratitude,

admiration, interest, fear, scarcely prevent those who are condemned to

listen to it from indicating their disgust and fatigue. The childless

uncle, the powerful patron, can scarcely extort this compliance. We

leave the inside of the mail in a storm, and mount the box, rather than

hear the history of our companion. The chaplain bites his lips in the

presence of the archbishop. The midshipman yawns at the table of

the First Lord. Yet, from whatever cause, this practice, the pest of

conversation, gives to writing a zest which nothing else can impart.

Rousseau made the boldest experiment of this kind; and it fully

succeeded. In our own time Lord Byron, by a series of attempts of the

same nature, made himself the object of general interest and admiration.

Wordsworth wrote with egotism more intense, but less obvious; and he has

been rewarded with a sect of worshippers, comparatively small in number,

but far more enthusiastic in their devotion. It is needless to multiply

instances. Even now all the walks of literature are infested with

mendicants for fame, who attempt to excite our interest by exhibiting

all the distortions of their intellects, and stripping the covering from

all the putrid sores of their feelings. Nor are there wanting many who

push their imitation of the beggars whom they resemble a step further,

and who find it easier to extort a pittance from the spectator, by

simulating deformity and debility from which they are exempt, than

by such {82}honest labour as their health and strength enable them to

perform. In the mean time the credulous public pities and pampers a

nuisance which requires only the tread-mill and the whip. This art,

often successful when employed by dunces, gives irresistible fascination

to works which possess intrinsic merit. We are always desirous to know

something of the character and situation of those whose writings we have

perused with pleasure. The passages in which Milton has alluded to

his own circumstances are perhaps read more frequently, and with more

interest, than any other lines in his poems. It is amusing to observe

with what labour critics have attempted to glean from the poems of

Homer some hints as to his situation and feelings. According to one

hypothesis, he intended to describe himself under the name of Demodocus.

Others maintain that he was the identical Phemius whose life Ulysses

spared. This propensity of the human mind explains, I think, in a great

degree, the extensive popularity of a poet whose works are little else

than the expression of his personal feelings.

In the second place, Petrarch was not only an egotist, but an amatory

egotist. The hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows, which he described,

were derived from the passion which of all passions exerts the widest

influence, and which of all passions borrows most from the imagination.

He had also another immense advantage. He was the first eminent amatory

poet who appeared after the great convulsion which had changed, not only

the political, but the moral, state of the world. The Greeks, who, in

their public institutions and their literary tastes, were diametrically

opposed to the oriental nations, bore a considerable resemblance to

those nations in their domestic habits. Like them, they {83}despised the

intellects and immured the persons of their women; and it was among

the least of the fright-fid evils to which this pernicious system gave

birth, that all the accomplishments of mind, and all the fascinations of

manner, which, in a highly-cultivated age, will generally be necessary

to attach men to their female associates, were monopolised by the

Phrynes and the Lamias. The indispensable ingredients of honourable and

chivalrous love were nowhere to be found united. The matrons and their

daughters, confined in the harem,--insipid, uneducated, ignorant of all

but the mechanical arts, scarcely seen till they were married,--could

rarely excite interest; while their brilliant rivals, half graces, half

harpies, elegant and informed, but fickle and rapacious, could never

inspire respect.

The state of society in Rome was, in this point, far happier; and

the Latin literature partook of the superiority. The Roman poets have

decidedly surpassed those of Greece in the delineation of the passion of

love. There is no subject which they have treated with so much success.

Ovid, Catullus, Tibullus, Horace, and Propertius, in spite of all their

faults, must be allowed to rank high in this department of the art. To

these I would add my favourite Plautus; who, though he took his plots

from Greece, found, I suspect, the originals of his enchanting female

characters at Rome.

Still many evils remained: and, in the decline of the great empire, all

that was pernicious in its domestic institutions appeared more strongly.

Under the influence of governments at once dependent and tyrannical,

which purchased, by cringing to their enemies, the power of trampling on

their subjects, the Romans sunk {84}into the lowest state of effeminacy

and debasement. Falsehood, cowardice, sloth, conscious and unrepining

degradation, formed the national character. Such a character is totally

incompatible with the stronger passions. Love, in particular, which, in

the modern sense of the word, implies protection and devotion on the one

side, confidence on the other, respect and fidelity on both, could not

exist among the sluggish and heartless slaves who cringed around the

thrones of Honorius and Augustulus. At this period the great renovation

commenced. The warriors of the north, destitute as they were of

knowledge and humanity, brought with them, from their forests and

marshes, those qualities without which humanity is a weakness, and

knowledge a curse,--energy--independence--the dread of shame--the

contempt of danger. It would be most interesting to examine the manner

in which the admixture of the savage conquerors and the effeminate

slaves, after many generations of darkness and agitation, produced the

modern European character;--to trace back, from the first conflict to

the final amalgamation, the operation of that mysterious alchemy, which,

from hostile and worthless elements, has extracted the pure gold of

human nature--to analyse the mass, and to determine the proportions

in which the ingredients are mingled. But I will confine myself to the

subject to which I have more particularly referred. The nature of the

passion of love had undergone a complete change. It still retained,

indeed, the fanciful and voluptuous character which it had possessed

among the southern nations of antiquity. But it was tinged with the

superstitious veneration with which the northern warriors had been

accustomed to regard women. Devotion and war had {85}imparted to it

their most solemn and animating feelings. It was sanctified by

the blessings of the Church, and decorated with the wreaths of the

tournament. Venus, as in the ancient fable, was again rising above the

dark and tempestuous waves which had so long covered her beauty. But she

rose not now, as of old, in exposed and luxurious loveliness. She still

wore the eestus of her ancient witchcraft; but the diadem of Juno was

on her brow, and the ægis of Pallas in her hand. Love might, in fact, be

called a new passion; and it is not astonishing that the first poet of

eminence who wholly devoted his genius to this theme should have excited

an extraordinary sensation. He may be compared to an adventurer who

accidentally lands in a rich and unknown island; and who, though he may

only set up an ill-shaped cross upon the shore, acquires possession of

its treasures, and gives it his name. The claim of Petrarch was indeed

somewhat like that of Amerigo Vespucci to the continent which should

have derived its appellation from Columbus. The Provençal poets were

unquestionably the masters of the Florentine. But they wrote in an age

which could not appreciate their merits; and their imitator lived at the

very period when composition in the vernacular language began to attract

general attention. Petrarch was in literature what a Valentine is

in love. The public preferred him, not because his merits were of a

transcendent order, but because he was the first person whom they saw

after they awoke from their long sleep.

Nor did Petrarch gain less by comparison with his immediate successors

than with those who had preceded him. Till more than a century after his

death Italy produced no poet who could be compared to him. This decay

of genius is doubtless to be ascribed, in a {86}great measure, to the

influence which his own works had exercised upon the literature of

his country. Yet it has conduced much to his fame. Nothing is more

favourable to the reputation of a writer than to be succeeded by a race

inferior to himself; and it is an advantage, from obvious causes, much

more frequently enjoyed by those who corrupt the national taste than by

those who improve it.

Another cause has co-operated with those which I have mentioned to

spread the renown of Petrarch. I mean the interest which is inspired by

the events of his life--an interest which must have been strongly felt

by his contemporaries, since, after an interval of five hundred years,

no critic can be wholly exempt from its influence. Among the great men

to whom we owe the resuscitation of science he deserves the foremost

place; and his enthusiastic attachment to this great cause constitutes

his most just and splendid title to the gratitude of posterity. He was

the votary of literature. He loved it with a perfect love. He worshipped

it with an almost fanatical devotion. He was the missionary, who

proclaimed its discoveries to distant countries--the pilgrim, who

travelled far and wide to collect its reliques--the hermit, who retired

to seclusion to meditate on its beauties--the champion, who fought its

battles--the conqueror, who, in more than a metaphorical sense, led

barbarism and ignorance in triumph, and received in the capitol the

laurel which his magnificent victory had earned.

Nothing can be conceived more noble or affecting than that ceremony. The

superb palaces and porticoes, by which had rolled the ivory chariots

of Marius and Cæsar, had long mouldered into dust. The laurelled

fasces--the golden eagles--the shouting legions--{87}the captives and

the pictured cities--were indeed wanting to his victorious procession.

The sceptre had passed away from Rome. But she still retained the

mightier influence of an intellectual empire, and was now to confer the

prouder reward of an intellectual triumph. To the man who had extended

the dominion of her ancient language--who had erected the trophies

of philosophy and imagination in the haunts of ignorance and

ferocity--whose captives were the hearts of admiring nations enchained

by the influence of his song--whose spoils were the treasures of ancient

genius rescued from obscurity and decay--the Eternal City offered the

just and glorious tribute of her gratitude. Amidst the ruined monuments

of ancient and the infant erections of modern art, he who had restored

the broken link between the two ages of human civilization was crowned

with the wreath which he had deserved from the moderns who owed to him

their refinement--from the ancients who owed to him their fame. Never

was a coronation so august witnessed by Westminster or by Rheims.

When we turn from this glorious spectacle to the private chamber of the

poet,--when we contemplate the struggle of passion and virtue,--the

eye dimmed, the cheek furrowed, by the tears of sinful and hopeless

desire,--when we reflect on the whole history of his attachment, from

the gay fantasy of his youth to the lingering despair of his age, pity

and affection mingle with our admiration. Even after death had placed

the last seal on his misery, we see him devoting to the cause of the

human mind all the strength and energy which love and sorrow had spared.

He lived the apostle of literature;--he fell its martyr:--he was found

dead with his head reclined on a book. {88}Those who have studied the

life and writings of Petrarch with attention, will perhaps be inclined

to make some deductions from this panegyric. It cannot be denied that

his merits were disfigured by a most unpleasant affectation. His zeal

for literature communicated a tinge of pedantry to all his feelings and

opinions. His love was the love of a sonnetteer:--his patriotism was the

patriotism of an antiquarian. The interest with which we contemplate

the works, and study the history, of those who, in former ages, have

occupied our country, arises from the associations which connect

them with the community in which are comprised all the objects of our

affection and our hope. In the mind of Petrarch these feelings were

reversed. He loved Italy, because it abounded with the monuments of the

ancient masters of the world. His native city--the fair and glorious

Florence--the modern Athens, then in all the bloom and strength of its

youth, could not obtain, from the most distinguished of its citizens,

any portion of that passionate homage which he paid to the decrepitude

of Rome. These and many other blemishes, though they must in candour be

acknowledged, can but in a very slight degree diminish the glory of

his career. For my own part, I look upon it with so much fondness and

pleasure that I feel reluctant to turn from it to the consideration of

his works, which I by no means contemplate with equal admiration.

Nevertheless, I think highly of the poetical powers of Petrarch. He did

not possess, indeed, the art of strongly presenting sensible objects to

the imagination;--and this is the more remarkable, because the talent of

which I speak is that which peculiarly distinguishes the Italian poets.

In the Divine Comedy it is displayed {89}in its highest perfection. It

characterises almost every celebrated poem in the language. Perhaps this

is to be attributed to the circumstance, that painting and sculpture

had attained a high degree of excellence in Italy before poetry had been

extensively cultivated. Men were debarred from books, but accustomed

from childhood to contemplate the admirable works of art, which, even in

the thirteenth century, Italy began to produce. Hence their imaginations

received so strong a bias that, even in their writings, a taste for

graphic delineation is discernible. The progress of things in England

has been in all respects different. The consequence is, that English

historical pictures are poems on canvass; while Italian poems are

pictures painted to the mind by means of words. Of this national

characteristic the writings of Petrarch are almost totally destitute.

His sonnets indeed, from their subject and nature, and his Latin poems,

from the restraints which always shackle one who writes in a dead

language, cannot fairly be received in evidence. But his Triumphs

absolutely required the exercise of this talent, and exhibit no

indications of it.

Genius, however, he certainly possessed, and genius of a high order. His

ardent, tender, and magnificent turn of thought, his brilliant fancy,

his command of expression, at once forcible and elegant, must be

acknowledged. Nature meant him for the prince of lyric writers. But by

one fatal present she deprived her other gifts of half their value. He

would have been a much greater poet had he been a less clever man. His

ingenuity was the bane of his mind. He abandoned the noble and natural

style, in which he might have excelled, for the conceits which he

produced with a facility at once admirable and disgusting. His muse

{90}like the Roman lady in Livy, was tempted by gaudy ornaments to

betray the fastnesses of her strength, and, like her, was crushed

beneath the glittering bribes which had seduced her.

The paucity of his thoughts is very remarkable. It is impossible to look

without amazement on a mind so fertile in combinations, yet so barren

of images. His amatory poetry is wholly made up of a very few topics,

disposed in so many orders, and exhibited in so many lights, that it

reminds us of those arithmetical problems about permutations, which so

much astonish the unlearned. The French cook, who boasted that he could

make fifteen different dishes out of a nettle-top, was not a greater

master of his art. The mind of Petrarch was a kaleidoscope. At every

turn it presents us with new forms, always fantastic, occasionally

beautiful; and we can scarcely believe that all these varieties have

been produced by the same worthless fragments of glass. The sameness of

his images is, indeed, in some degree, to be attributed to the sameness

of his subject. It would be unreasonable to expect perpetual variety

from so many hundred compositions, all of the same length, all in

the same measure, and all addressed to the same insipid and heartless

coquette. I cannot but suspect also that the perverted taste, which is

the blemish of his amatory verses, was to be attributed to the influence

of Laura, who probably, like most critics of her sex, preferred a gaudy

to a majestic style. Be this as it may, he no sooner changes his subject

than he changes his manner. When he speaks of the wrongs and degradation

of Italy, devastated by foreign invaders, and but feebly defended by

her pusillanimous children, the effeminate lisp of the sonnetteer is

exchanged for a cry, wild, and solemn, and piercing as {91}that which

proclaimed “Sleep no more” to the bloody house of Cawdor. “Italy seems

not to feel her sufferings,” exclaims her impassioned poet; “decrepit,

sluggish, and languid, will she sleep for ever? Will there be none to

awake her? Oh that I had my hands twisted in her hair!” (1)

Nor is it with less energy that he denounces against the Mahometan

Babylon the vengeance of Europe and of Christ. His magnificent

enumeration of the ancient exploits of the Greeks must always excite

admiration, and cannot be perused without the deepest interest, at a

time when the wise and good, bitterly disappointed in so many other

countries, are looking with breathless anxiety towards the natal land of

liberty,--the field of Marathon,--and the deadly pass where the Lion of

Lacedæmon turned to bay. (2)

His poems on religious subjects also deserve the highest commendation.

At the head of these must be placed the Ode to the Virgin. It is,

perhaps, the finest hymn in the world. His devout veneration receives an

exquisitely poetical character from the delicate perception of the sex

and the loveliness of his idol, which we may easily trace throughout the

whole composition.

I could dwell with pleasure on these and similar parts of the writings

of Petrarch; but I must return to his amatory poetry: to that he

entrusted his fame; and to that he has principally owed it.

The prevailing defect of his best compositions on this subject is the

universal brilliancy with which they

(1) Clie suoi guai non par che senta;

Vecchia, oziosa, e lenta.

Dormira sempre, e non fia chi la svegli?

Le man l’avess’ io avvolte entro e capegli.--Canzone xi.

(2)

Maratona, e le mortali strette

Che difese il Leon con poca gente.--Canzone v.

{92}are lighted up. The natural language of the passions is, indeed,

often figurative and fantastic; and with none is this more the case than

with that of love. Still there is a limit. The feelings should, indeed,

have their ornamental garb; but, like an elegant woman, they should be

neither muffled nor exposed. The drapery should be so arranged, as at

once to answer the purposes of modest concealment and judicious display.

The decorations should sometimes be employed to hide a defect, and

sometimes to heighten a beauty; but never to conceal, much less to

distort, the charms to which they are subsidiary. The love of Petrarch,

on the contrary, arrays itself like a foppish savage, whose nose is

bored with a golden ring, whose skin is painted with grotesque forms

and dazzling colours, and whose ears are drawn down his shoulders by the

weight of jewels. It is a rule, without any exception, in all kinds of

composition, that the principal idea, the predominant feeling, should

never be confounded with the accompanying decorations. It should

generally be distinguished from them by greater simplicity of

expression; as we recognise Napoleon in the pictures of his battles,

amidst a crowd of embroidered coats and plumes, by his grey cloak and

his hat without a feather. In the verses of Petrarch it is generally

impossible to say what thought is meant to be prominent. All is equally

elaborate. The chief wears the same gorgeous and degrading livery with

his retinue, and obtains only his share of the indifferent stare which

we bestow upon them in common. The poems have no strong lights and

shades, no background, no foreground;--they are like the illuminated

figures in an oriental manuscript,--plenty of rich tints and no

perspective. Such are the fruits of the most celebrated of these

compositions. {93}Of those which are universally acknowledged to be bad

it is scarcely possible to speak with patience. Yet they have much

in common with their splendid companions. They differ from them, as a

May-day procession of chimney-sweepers differs from the Field of Cloth

of Gold. They have the gaudiness but not the wealth. His muse belongs to

that numerous class of females who have no objection to be dirty,

while they can be tawdry. When his brilliant conceits are exhausted, he

supplies their place with metaphysical quibbles, forced antitheses, bad

puns, and execrable charades. In his fifth sonnet he may, I think, be

said to have sounded the lowest chasm of the Bathos. Upon the whole,

that piece may be safely pronounced to be the worst attempt at poetry,

and the worst attempt at wit, in the world.

A strong proof of the truth of these criticisms is, that almost all the

sonnets produce exactly the same effect on the mind of the reader. They

relate to all the various moods of a lover, from joy to despair:--yet

they are perused, as far as my experience and observation have gone,

with exactly the same feeling. The fact is, that in none of them are the

passion and the ingenuity mixed in just proportions. There is not enough

sentiment to dilute the condiments which are employed to season it. The

repast which he sets before us resembles the Spanish entertainment in

Dry-den’s _Mock Astrologer_, at which the relish of all the dishes

and sauces was overpowered by the common flavour of spice.

Fish,--flesh,--fowl,--everything at table tasted of nothing but red

pepper.

The writings of Petrarch may indeed suffer undeservedly from one cause

to which I must allude. His imitators have so much familiarised the ear

of Italy {94}and of Europe to the favourite topics of amorous flattery

and lamentation, that we can scarcely think them original when we

find them in the first author; and, even when our understandings have

convinced us that they were new to him, they are still old to us. This

has been the fate of many of the finest passages of the most eminent

writers. It is melancholy to trace a noble thought from stage to stage

of its profanation; to see it transferred from the first illustrious

wearer to his lacqueys, turned, and turned again, and at last hung on a

scare-crow. Petrarch has really suffered much from this cause. Yet that

he should have so suffered is a sufficient proof that his excellences

were not of the highest order. A line may be stolen; but the pervading

spirit of a great poet is not to be sureptitiously obtained by a

plagiarist. The continued imitation of twenty-five centuries has left

Homer as it found him. If every simile and every turn of Dante had been

copied ten thousand times, the Divine Comedy would have retained all

its freshness. It was easy for the porter in Farquhar to pass for Beau

Clincher, by borrowing his lace and his pulvilio. It would have been

more difficult to enact Sir Harry Wildair.

Before I quit this subject I must defend Petrarch from one accusation,

which is in the present day frequently brought against him. His sonnets

are pronounced by a large sect of critics not to possess certain

qualities which they maintain to be indispensable to sonnets, with as

much confidence, and as much reason, as their prototypes of old insisted

on the unities of the drama. I am an exoteric--utterly unable to explain

the mysteries of this new poetical faith. I only know that it is a

faith, which except a man do keep pure and undefiled, without doubt he

shall be called a {95}blockhead. I cannot, however, refrain from asking

what is the particular virtue which belongs to fourteen as distinguished

from all other numbers. Does it arise from its being a multiple of

seven? Has this principle any reference to the sabbatical ordinance?

Or is it to the order of rhymes that these singular properties are

attached? Unhappily the sonnets of Shakspeare differ as much in this

respect from those of Petrarch, as from a Spenserian or an octave

stanza. Away with this unmeaning jargon! We have pulled down the old

regime of criticism. I trust that we shall never tolerate the equally

pedantic and irrational despotism, which some of the revolutionary

leaders would erect upon its ruins. We have not dethroned Aristotle and

Bossu for this.

These sonnet-fanciers would do well to reflect that, though the style of

Petrarch may not suit the standard of perfection which they have chosen,

they lie under great obligations to these very poems,--that, but for

Petrarch, the measure, concerning which they legislate so judiciously,

would probably never have attracted notice;--and that to him they owe

the pleasure of admiring, and the glory of composing, pieces, which seem

to have been produced by Master Slender, with the assistance of his man

Simple.

I cannot conclude these remarks without making a few observations on the

Latin writings of Petrarch. It appears that, both by himself and by his

contemporaries, these were far more highly valued than his compositions

in the vernacular language. Posterity, the supreme court of literary

appeal, has not only reversed the judgment, but, according to its

general practice, reversed it with costs, and condemned the unfortunate

works to pay, not only for their own inferiority, but {96}also for the

injustice of those who had given them an unmerited preference. And

it must be owned that, without making large allowances for the

circumstances under which they were produced, we cannot pronounce a very

favourable judgment. They must be considered as exotics, transplanted to

a foreign climate, and reared in an unfavourable situation; and it would

be unreasonable to expect from them the health and the vigour which

we find in the indigenous plants around them, or which they might

themselves have possessed in their native soil. He has but very

imperfectly imitated the style of the Latin authors, and has not

compensated for the deficiency by enriching the ancient language with

the graces of modern poetry. The splendour and ingenuity, which we

admire, even when we condemn it, in his Italian works, is almost totally

wanting, and only illuminates with rare and occasional glimpses the

dreary obscurity of the Africa. The eclogues have more animation; but

they can only be called poems by courtesy. They have nothing in common

with his writings in his native language, except the eternal pun about

Laura and Daphne. None of these works would have placed him on a level

with Vida or Buchanan. Yet, when we compare him with those who preceded

him, when we consider that he went on the forlorn hope of literature,

that he was the first who perceived, and the first who attempted to

revive, the finer elegancies of the ancient language of the world, we

shall perhaps think more highly of him than of those who could never

have surpassed his beauties if they had not inherited them.

He has aspired to emulate the philosophical eloquence of Cicero, as well

as the poetical majesty of {97}Virgil. His essay on the Remedies of Good

and Evil Fortune is a singular work, in a colloquial form, and a most

scholastic style. It seems to be framed upon the model of the Tusculan

Questions,--with what success those who have read it may easily

determine. It consists of a series of dialogues: in each of these a

person is introduced who has experienced some happy or some adverse

event: he gravely states his case; and a reasoner, or rather Reason

personified, confutes him; a task not very difficult, since the disciple

defends his position only by pertinaciously repeating it, in almost

the same words, at the end of every argument of his antagonist. In this

manner Petrarch solves an immense variety of cases. Indeed, I doubt

whether it would be possible to name any pleasure or any calamity which

does not find a place in this dissertation. He gives excellent advice to

a man who is in expectation of discovering the philosopher’s stone;--to

another, who has formed a fine aviary;--to a third, who is delighted

with the tricks of a favourite monkey. His lectures to the unfortunate

are equally singular. He seems to imagine that a precedent in point is a

sufficient consolation for every form of suffering. “Our town is taken,”

says one complainant;” “So was Troy,” replies his comforter. “My wife

has eloped,” says another; “If it has happened to you once, it happened

to Menelaus twice.” One poor fellow is in great distress at having

discovered that his wife’s son is none of his. “It is hard,” says he,

“that I should have had the expense of bringing up one who is

indifferent to me.”

“You are a man,” returns his monitor, quoting the famous line of

Terence; “and nothing that belongs to any other man ought to be

indifferent to you.” The physical calamities of life are not omitted;

{98}and there is in particular a disquisition on the advantages of

having the itch, which, if not convincing, is certainly very amusing.

The invectives on an unfortunate physician, or rather upon the medical

science, have more spirit. Petrarch was thoroughly in earnest on this

subject. And the bitterness of his feelings occasionally produces, in

the midst of his classical and scholastic pedantry, a sentence worthy of

the second Philippic. Swift himself might have envied the chapter on the

causes of the paleness of physicians.

Of his Latin works the Epistles are the most generally known and

admired. As compositions they are certainly superior to his essays.

But their excellence is only comparative. From so large a collection of

letters, written by so eminent a man, during so varied and eventful

a life, we should have expected a complete and spirited view of the

literature, the manners, and the politics of the age. A traveller--a

poet--a scholar--a lover--a courtier--a recluse--he might have

perpetuated, in an imperishable record, the form and pressure of the age

and body of the time. Those who read his correspondence, in the hope

of finding such information as this, will be utterly disappointed. It

contains nothing characteristic of the period or of the individual. It

is a series, not of letters, but of themes; and, as it is not generally

known, might be very safely employed at public schools as a magazine of

common-places. Whether he write on politics to the Emperor and the

Doge, or send advice and consolation to a private friend, every line is

crowded with examples and quotations, and sounds big with Anaxagoras and

Scipio. Such was the interest excited by the character of Petrarch, and

such the admiration {99}which was felt for his epistolary style, that

it was with difficulty that his letters reached the place of their

destination. The poet describes, with pretended regret and real

complacency, the importunity of the curious, who often opened, and

sometimes stole, these favourite compositions. It is a remarkable

fact that, of all his epistles, the least affected are those which are

addressed to the dead and the unborn. Nothing can be more absurd than

his whim of composing grave letters of expostulation and commendation to

Cicero and Seneca; yet these strange performances are written in a

far more natural manner than his communications to his living

correspondents. But of all his Latin works the preference must be given

to the Epistle to Posterity; a simple, noble, and pathetic composition,

most honourable both to his taste and his heart. If we can make

allowance for some of the affected humility of an author, we shall

perhaps think that no literary man has left a more pleasing memorial of

himself.

In conclusion, we may pronounce that the works of Petrarch were below

both his genius and his celebrity; and that the circumstances under

which he wrote were as adverse to the development of his powers as they

were favourable to the extension of his fame.

SOME ACCOUNT OF THE GREAT LAWSUIT BETWEEN THE PARISHES OF ST. DENNIS AND

ST. GEORGE IN THE WATER.

{100}(_Knight’s Quarterly Magazine_, April 1824.)

I.

The parish of St. Dennis is one of the most pleasant parts of the

country in which it is situated. It is fertile, well wooded, well

watered, and of an excellent air. For many generations the manor had

been holden in tail-male by a worshipful family, who have always taken

precedence of their neighbor’s at the races and the sessions.

In ancient times the affairs of this parish were administered by a

Court-Baron, in which the freeholders were judges; and the rates were

levied by select vestries of the inhabitant householders. But at length

these good customs fell into disuse. The Lords of the Manor, indeed,

still held courts for form’s sake; but they or their stewards had the

whole management of affairs. They demanded services, duties, and customs

to which they had no just title. Nay, they would often bring actions

against their neighbours for their own private advantage, and then send

in the bill to the parish. No objection was made, during many years, to

these proceedings, so that the rates became heavier {101}and heavier:

nor was any person exempted from these demands, except the footmen and

gamekeepers of the squire and the rector of the parish. They indeed were

never checked in any excess. They would come to an honest labourer’s

cottage, eat his pancakes, tuck his fowls into their pockets, and cane

the poor man himself. If he went up to the great house to complain, it

was hard to get the speech of Sir Lewis; and, indeed, his only chance of

being righted was to coax the squire’s pretty housekeeper, who could do

what she pleased with her master. If he ventured to intrude upon the

Lord of the Manor without this precaution, he gained nothing by his

pains. Sir Lewis, indeed, would at first receive him with a civil face;

for, to give him his due, he could be a fine gentleman when he pleased.

“Good day, my friend,” he would say “what situation have you in my

family?”

“Bless your honour!” says the poor fellow, “I am not one of your

honour’s servants; I rent a small piece of ground, your honour.”

“Then, you dog,” quoth the squire, “what do you mean by coming here? Has

a gentleman nothing to do but to hear the complaints of clowns? Here!

Philip, James, Dick, toss this fellow in a blanket; or duck him, and set

him in the stocks to dry.”

One of these precious Lords of the Manor enclosed a deer-park; and, in

order to stock it, he seized all the pretty pet fawns that his tenants

had brought up, without paying them a farthing, or asking their leave.

It was a sad day for the parish of St. Dennis. Indeed, I do not believe

that all his oppressive exactions and long bills enraged the poor

tenants so much as this cruel measure.

Yet for a long time, in spite of all these inconveniences, {102}St.

Dennis’s was a very pleasant place. The people could not refrain from

capering if they heard the sound of a fiddle. And, if they were inclined

to be riotous, Sir Lewis had only to send for Punch, or the dancing

dogs, and all was quiet again. But this could not last for ever; they

began to think more and more of their condition; and, at last, a club of

foulmouthed, good-for-nothing rascals was held at the sign of the Devil,

for the purpose of abusing the squire and the parson. The doctor, to own

the truth, was old and indolent, extremely fat and greedy. He had not

preached a tolerable sermon for a long time. The squire was still worse:

so that, partly by truth and partly by falsehood, the club set the whole

parish against their superiors. The boys scrawled caricatures of the

clergyman upon the church-door, and shot at the landlord with pop-guns

as he rode a hunting. It was even whispered about that the Lord of the

Manor had no right to his estate, and that, if he were compelled to

produce the original title-deeds, it would be found that he only held

the estate in trust for the inhabitants of the parish.

In the mean time the squire was pressed more and more for money. The

parish could pay no more. The rector refused to lend a farthing. The

Jews were clamorous for their money; and the landlord had no other

resource than to call together the inhabitants of the parish, and to

request their assistance. They now attacked him furiously about their

grievances, and insisted that he should relinquish his oppressive

powers. They insisted that his footmen should be kept in order, that

the parson should pay his share of the rates, that the children of the

parish should be allowed to fish in the trout-stream, and to gather

blackberries in the {103}hedges. They at last went so far as to demand

that he should acknowledge that he held his estate only in trust for

them. His distress compelled him to submit. They, in return, agreed

to set him free from his pecuniary difficulties, and to suffer him

to inhabit the manor-house; and only annoyed him from time to time by

singing impudent ballads under his window.

The neighbouring gentlefolks did not look on these proceedings with much

complacency. It is true that Sir Lewis and his ancestors had plagued

them with law-suits, and affronted them at county-meetings. Still they

preferred the insolence of a gentleman to that of the rabble, and felt

some uneasiness lest the example should infect their own tenants.

A large party of them met at the house of Lord Cæsar Germain. Lord Cæsar

was the proudest man in the country. His family was very ancient and

illustrius ones, though not particularly opulent. He had invited most of

his wealthy neighbours. There was Mrs. Kitty North, the relict of poor

Squire Peter, respecting whom the coroner’s jury had found a verdict

of accidental death, but whose fate had nevertheless excited strange

whispers in the neighbourhood. There was Squire Don, the owner of the

great West Indian property, who was not so rich as he had formerly been,

but still retained his pride, and kept up his customary pomp; so that he

had plenty of plate but no breeches. There was Squire Von Blunderbussen,

who had succeeded to the estates of his uncle, old Colonel Frederic

Von Blunderbussen, of the hussar’s. The colonel was a very singular old

fellow; he used to learn a page of Chambaud’s grammar, and to translate

Telemaque, every morning, and he kept six French masters to teach him to

parleyvoo. Nevertheless, he was a {104}shrewd clever man, and improved

his estate with so much care, sometimes by honest and sometimes by

dishonest means, that he left a very pretty property to his nephew.

Lord Cæsar poured out a glass of Tokay for Mrs. Kitty. “Your health, my

dear madam, I never saw you look more charming. Pray, what think you of

these doings at St. Dennis’s?”

“Fine doings! indeed!” interrupted Von Blunderbussen;

“I wish that we had my old uncle alive, he would have had some of them

up to the halberts. He knew how to use a cat-o’-nine-tails. If things

go on in this way, a gentleman will not be able to horsewhip an impudent

farmer, or to say a civil word to a milkmaid.”

“Indeed, it’s very true, Sir,” said Mrs. Kitty; “their insolence is

intolerable. Look at me, for instance:--a poor lone woman!--My dear

Peter dead! I loved him:--so I did; and, when he died, I was so

hysterical you cannot think. And now I cannot lean on the arm of a

decent footman, or take a walk with a tall grenadier behind me, just to

protect me from audacious vagabonds, but they must have their nauseous

suspicions;--odious creatures!”--

“This must be stopped,” replied Lord Cæsar. “We ought to contribute to

support my poor brother-in-law against these rascals. I will write to

Squire Guelf on this subject by this night’s post. His name is always at

the head of our county subscriptions.”

If the people of St. Dennis’s had been angry before, they were well nigh

mad when they heard of this conversation. The whole parish ran to the

manor-house. Sir Lewis’s Swiss porter shut the door against them; but

they broke in and knocked him on the head for his {105}impudence. They

then seized the squire, hooted at him, pelted him, ducked him, and

carried him to the watch-house. They turned the rector into the street,

burnt his wig and band, and sold the church-plate by auction. They put

up a painted Jezebel in the pulpit to preach. They scratched out the

texts which were written round the church, and scribbled profane

scraps of songs and plays in their place. They set the organ playing

to pot-house tune. Instead of being decently asked in church, they were

married over a broomstick. But, of all their whims, the use of the new

patent steel-traps was the most remarkable.

This trap was constructed on a completely new principle. It consisted

of a cleaver hung in a frame like a window; when any poor wretch got

in, down it came with a tremendous din, and took off his head in a

twinkling. They got the squire into one of these machines. In order to

prevent any of his partisans from getting footing in the parish, they

placed traps at every corner. It was impossible to walk through the

highway at broad noon without tumbling into one or other of them. No

man could go about his business in security. Yet so great was the hatred

which the inhabitants entertained for the old family, that a few decent

honest people, who begged them to take down the steel-traps, and to put

up humane man-traps in their room, were very roughly handled for their

good nature.

In the mean time the neighbouring gentry undertook a suit against the

parish on the behalf of Sir Lewis’s heir, and applied to Squire Guelf

for his assistance.

Everybody knows that Squire Guelf is more closely tied up than any

gentleman in the shire. He could, therefore, lend them no help; but

he referred them to {106}the Vestry of the Parish of St. George in

the Water. These good people had long borne a grudge against their

neighbours on the other side of the stream; and some mutual trespasses

had lately occurred which increased their hostility.

There was an honest Irishman, a great favourite among them, who used to

entertain them with raree-shows, and to exhibit a magic lantern to the

children on winter evenings. He had gone quite mad upon this subject.

Sometimes he would call out in the middle of the street--“Take care

of that corner, neighbours; for the love of Heaven, keep clear of that

post, there is a patent steel-trap concealed thereabouts.” Sometimes he

would be disturbed by frightful dreams; then he would get up at dead of

night, open his window and cry “fire,” till the parish was roused, and

the engines sent for. The pulpit of the Parish of St. George seemed

likely to fall; I believe that the only reason was that the parson had

grown too fat and heavy; but nothing would persuade this honest man but

that it was a scheme of the people at St. Dennis’s, and that they had

sawed through the pillars in order to break the rector’s neck. Once he

went about with a knife in his pocket, and told all the persons whom he

met that it had been sharpened by the knife-grinder of the next parish

to cut their throats. These extravagancies had a great effect on the

people; and the more so because they were espoused by Squire Guelf’s

steward, who was the most influential person in the parish. He was a

very fair-spoken man, very attentive to the main chance, and the idol of

the old women, because he never played at skittles or danced with the

girls; and, indeed, never took any recreation but that of drinking

on Saturday nights with his friend Harry, the Scotch {107}pedlar. His

supporters called him Sweet William; his enemies the Bottomless Pit.

The people of St. Dennis’s, however, had their advocates. There was

Frank, the richest farmer in the parish, whose great grandfather had

been knocked oil the head many years before, in a squabble between the

parish and a former landlord. There was Dick, the merry-andrew, rather

light-fingered and riotous, but a clever droll fellow. Above all, there

was Charley, the publican, a jolly, fat, honest lad, a great favourite

with the women, who, if he had not been rather too fond of ale and

chuck-farthing, would have been the best fellow in the neighbourhood.

“My boys,” said Charley, “this is exceedingly well for Madam North;--not

that I would speak uncivilly of her; she put up my picture in her best

room, bless her for it! But, I say, this is very well for her, and for

Lord Cæsar, and Squire Don, and Colonel Von;--but what affair is it of

yours or mine? It is not to be wondered at, that gentlemen should wish

to keep poor people out of their own. But it is strange, indeed, that

they should expect the poor themselves to combine against their own

interests. If the folks at St. Dennis’s should attack us we have the law

and our cudgels to protect us. But why, in the name of wonder, are we to

attack them? When old Sir Charles, who was Lord of the Manor formerly,

and the parson, who was presented by him to the living, tried to bully

the vestry, did not we knock their heads together, and go to meeting to

hear Jeremiah Ringletub preach? And did the Squire Don, or the great Sir

Lewis, that lived at that time, or the Germains, say a word against us

for it? Mind your own business, my lads: law is not to {108}be had for

nothing; and we, you may be sure, shall have to pay the whole bill.”

Nevertheless the people of St. George’s were resolved on law. They cried

out most lustily, “Squire Guelf for ever! Sweet William for ever! No

steel traps!” Squire Guelf took all the rascally footmen who had worn

old Sir Lewis’s livery into his service. They were fed in the kitchen

on the very best of every thing, though they had no settlement. Many

people, and the paupers in particular, grumbled at these proceedings.

The steward, however, devised a way to keep them quiet.

There had lived in this parish for many years an old gentleman, named

Sir Habeas Corpus. He was said by some to be of Saxon, by some of

Norman, extraction. Some maintained that he was not born till after

the time of Sir Charles, to whom we have before alluded. Others are of

opinion that he was a legitimate son of old Lady Magna Charta, although

he was long concealed and kept out of his birthright. Certain it is that

he was a very benevolent person. Whenever any poor fellow was taken

up on grounds which he thought insufficient, he used to attend on his

behalf and bail him; and thus he had become so popular, that to take

direct measures against him was out of the question.

The steward, accordingly, brought a dozen physicians to examine Sir

Habeas. After consultation, they reported that he was in a very bad way,

and ought not, on any account, to be allowed to stir out for several

months. Fortified with this authority, the parish officers put him

to bed, closed his windows, and barred his doors. They paid him every

attention, and from {109}time to time issued bulletins of his health.

The steward never spoke of him without declaring that he was the best

gentleman in the world; but excellent care was taken that he should

never stir out of doors.

When this obstacle was removed, the Squire and the steward kept the

parish in excellent order; flogged this man, sent that man to the

stocks, and pushed forward the law-suit with a noble disregard of

expense. They were, however, wanting either in skill or in fortune.

And every thing went against them after their antagonists had begun to

employ Solicitor Nap.

Who does not know the name of Solicitor Nap? At what alehouse is not his

behaviour discussed? In what print-shop is not his picture seen? Yet how

little truth has been said about him! Some people hold that he used to

give laudanum by pints to his sick clerks for his amusement. Others,

whose number has very much increased since he was killed by the

gaol distemper, conceive that he was the very model of honour and

good-nature. I shall try to tell the truth about him.

He was assuredly an excellent solicitor. In his way he never was

surpassed. As soon as the parish began to employ him, their cause took

a turn. In a very little time they were successful; and Nap became rich.

He now set up for a gentleman; took possession of the old manor-house;

got into the commission of the peace, and affected to be on a par with

the best of the county. He governed the vestries as absolutely as the

old family had done. Yet, to give him his due, he managed things with

far more discretion than either Sir Lewis or the rioters who had pulled

the Lords of the Manor down. He kept his servants in tolerable order.

He {110}removed the steel traps from the highways and the corners of

the streets. He still left a few indeed In the more exposed parts of his

premises; and set up a board announcing that traps and spring guns were

set in his grounds. He brought the poor parson hack to the parish;

and, though he did not enable him to keep a fine house and a coach as

formerly, he settled him in a snug little cottage, and allowed him a

pleasant pad-nag. He whitewashed the church again; and put the stocks,

which had been much wanted of late, into good repair.

With the neighbouring gentry, however, he was no favourite. He was

crafty and litigious. He cared nothing for right, if he could raise a

point of law against them. He pounded their cattle, broke their hedges,

and seduced their tenants from them. He almost ruined Lord Caesar with

actions, in every one of which he was successful. Von Blunderbussen went

to law with him for an alleged trespass, but was cast, and almost ruined

by the costs of suit. He next took a fancy to the seat of Squire Don,

who was, to say the truth, little better than an idiot. He asked the

poor dupe to dinner, and then threatened to have him tossed in a blanket

unless he would make over his estates to him. The poor Squire signed and

sealed a deed by which the property was assigned to Joe, a brother of

Nap’s, in trust for and to the use of Nap himself. The tenants, however,

stood out. They maintained that the estate was entailed, and refused

to pay rents to the new landlord; and in this refusal they were stoutly

supported by the people in St. George’s.

About the same time Nap took it into his head to match with quality, and

nothing would serve him but one of the Miss Germains. Lord Cæsar swore

like {111}a trooper; but there was no help for it. Nap had twice put

executions in his principal residence, and had refused to discharge the

latter of the two, till he had extorted a bond from his Lordship, which

compelled him to comply.

THE END OF THE FIRST PAST.

A CONVERSATION BETWEEN MR. ABRAHAM COWLEY AND MR. JOHN MILTON, TOUCHING

THE GREAT CIVIL WAR.

SET DOWN BY A GENTLEMAN OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE.

{112}(_Knight’s Quarterly Magazine_, August 1824.)

“Referre sermones Deorum efe

Magna modis tenuare parvis.”--Horace.

I have thought it good to set down in writing a memorable debate,

wherein I was a listener, and two men of pregnant parts and great

reputation discoursers; hoping that my friends will not be displeased to

have a record both of the strange times through which I have lived, and

of the famous men with whom I have conversed. It chanced, in the warm

and beautiful spring of the year 1665, a little before the saddest

summer that ever London saw, that I went to the Bowling-Green at

Piccadilly, whither, at that time, the best gentry made continual

resort. There I met Mr. Cowley, who had lately left Barnelms. There

was then a house preparing for him at Chertsey; and, till it should be

finished, he had come up for a short time to London, that he might

urge a suit to his Grace of Buckingham touching certain lands of

her Majesty’s, whereof he requested a lease. I had the honour to be

familiarly acquainted with that worthy gentleman {113}and most excellent

poet, whose death hath been deplored with as general a consent of all

Powers that delight in the woods, or in verse, or in love, as was of old

that of Daphnis or of Gallus.

After some talk, which it is not material to set down at large,

concerning his suit and his vexations at the court, where indeed his

honesty did him more harm than his parts could do him good, I entreated

him to dine with me at my lodging in the Temple, which he most

courteously promised. And, that so eminent a guest might not lack a

better entertainment than cooks or vintners can provide, I sent to the

house of Mr. John Milton, in the Artillery-Walk, to beg that he would

also be my guest. For, though he had been secretary, first to the

Council of State, and, after that, to the Protector, and Mr. Cowley had

held the same post under the Lord St. Albans in his banishment, I hoped,

notwithstanding, that they would think themselves rather united by their

common art than divided by their different factions. And so indeed it

proved. For, while we sat at table, they talked freely of many men and

things, as well ancient as modern, with much civility. Nay, Mr. Milton,

who seldom tasted wine, both because of his singular temperance and

because of his gout, did more than once pledge. Mr. Cowley, who was

indeed no hermit in diet. At last, being heated, Mr. Milton begged that

I would open the windows. “Nay,” said I, “if you desire fresh air and

coolness, what should hinder us, as the evening is fair, from sailing

for an hour on the river?” To this they both cheerfully consented; and

forth we walked, Mr. Cowley and I leading Mr. Milton between us, to the

Temple Stairs. There we took a boat; and thence we were rowed up the

river. {114}The wind was pleasant; the evening fine; the sky, the earth,

and the water beautiful to look Upon. But Mr. Cowley and I held our

peace, and said nothing of the gay sights around us, lest we should too

feelingly remind Mr. Milton of his calamity; whereof, however, he needed

no monitor: for soon he said sadly, “Ah, Mr. Cowley, you are a happy

man. What would I now give but for one more look at the sun, and the

waters, and the gardens of this fair city!”

“I know not,” said Mr. Cowley, “whether we ought not rather to envy

you for that which makes you to envy others: and that specially in this

place, where all eyes which are not closed in blindness ought to become

fountains of tears. What can we look upon which is not a memorial of

change and sorrow, of fair things vanished, and evil things done? When

I see the gate of Whitehall, and the stately pillars of the Banqueting

House, I cannot choose but think of what I have there seen in former

days, masques, and pageants, and dances, and smiles, and the waving of

graceful heads, and the bounding of delicate feet. And then I turn to

thoughts of other things, which even to remember makes me to blush and

weep;--of the great black scaffold, and the axe and block, which were

placed before those very windows; and the voice seems to sound in mine

ears, the lawless and terrible voice, which cried out that the head of a

king was the head of a traitor. There stands Westminster Hall, which who

can look upon, and not tremble to think how time, and change, and death

confound the councils of the wise, and beat down the weapons of

the mighty? How have I seen it surrounded with tens of thousands of

petitioners crying for justice and privilege! How have I heard it shake

{115}with fierce and proud words, which made the hearts of the people

burn within them! Then it is blockaded by dragoons, and cleared by

pikemen. And they who have conquered their master go forth trembling at

the word of their servant. And yet a little while, and the usurper comes

forth from it, in his robe of ermine, with the golden staff in one

hand and the Bible in the other, amidst the roaring of the guns and the

shouting of the people. And yet again a little while, and the doors are

thronged with multitudes in black, and the hearse and the plumes come

forth; and the tyrant is borne, in more than royal pomp, to a royal

sepulchre. A few days more, and his head is fixed to rot on the

pinnacles of that very hall where he sat on a throne in his life, and

lay in state after his death. When I think on all these things, to look

round me makes me sad at heart. True it is that God hath restored to us

our old laws, and the rightful line of our kings. Yet, how I know not,

but it seems to me that something is wanting--that our court hath not

the old gravity, nor our people the old loyalty. These evil times, like

the great deluge, have overwhelmed and confused all earthly things. And,

even as those waters, though at last they abated, yet, as the learned

write, destroyed all trace of the garden of Eden, so that its place hath

never since been found, so hath this opening of all the flood-gates of

political evil effaced all marks of the ancient political paradise.”

“Sir, by your favour,” said Mr. Milton, “though, from many circumstances

both of body and of fortune, I might plead fairer excuses for

despondency than yourself, I yet look not so sadly either on the past

or on the future. That a deluge hath passed over this our nation, I deny

not. But I hold it not to be {116}such a deluge as that of which you

speak; but rather a blessed flood, like those of the Nile, which in

its overflow doth indeed wash away ancient landmarks, and confound

boundaries, and sweep away dwellings, yea, doth give birth to many foul

and dangerous reptiles. Yet hence is the fulness of the granary, the

beauty of the garden, the nurture of all living things.

“I remember well, Mr. Cowley, what you have said concerning these things

in your Discourse of the Government of Oliver Cromwell, which my friend

Elwood read to me last year. Truly, for elegance and rhetoric, that

essay is to be compared with the finest tractates of Isocrates and

Cicero. But neither that nor any other book, nor any events, which with

most men have, more than any book, weight and authority, have altered my

opinion, that, of all assemblies that ever were in this world, the best

and the most useful was our Long Parliament. I speak not this as wishing

to provoke debate; which neither yet do I decline.”

Mr. Cowley was, as I could see, a little nettled. Yet, as he was a man

of a kind disposition and a most refined courtesy, he put a force upon

himself, and answered with more vehemence and quickness indeed than was

his wont, yet not uncivilly. “Surely, Mr. Milton, you speak not as you

think. I am indeed one of those who believe that God hath reserved to

himself the censure of kings, and that their crimes and oppressions are

not to be resisted by the hands of their subjects. Yet can I easily

find excuse for the violence of such as are stung to madness by grievous

tyranny. But what shall we say for these men? Which of their just

demands was not granted? Which even of their cruel and unreasonable

requisitions, so as it {117}were not inconsistent with all law and

order, was refused? Had they not sent Strafford to the block and Laud to

the Tower? Had they not destroyed the Courts of the High Commission and

the Star Chamber? Had they not reversed the proceedings confirmed by the

voices of the judges of England, in the matter of ship-money? Had they

not taken from the king his ancient and most lawful power touching

the order of knighthood? Had they not provided that, after their

dissolution, triennial parliaments should be holden, and that their own

power should continue till of their great condescension they should be

pleased to resign it themselves? What more could they ask? Was it not

enough that they had taken from their king all his oppressive powers,

and many that were most salutary? Was it not enough that they had filled

his council-board with his enemies, and his prisons with his adherents?

Was it not enough that they had raised a furious multitude, to shout

and swagger daily under the very windows of his royal palace? Was it

not enough that they had taken from him the most blessed prerogative of

princely mercy; that, complaining of intolerance themselves, they had

denied all toleration to others; that they had urged, against forms,

scruples childish as those of any formalist; that they had persecuted

the least remnant of the popish rites with the fiercest bitterness of

the popish spirit? Must they besides all this have full power to command

his armies, and to massacre his friends?

“For military command, it was never known in any monarchy, nay, in any

well ordered republic, that it was committed to the debates of a large

and unsettled assembly. For their other requisition, that he should give

up to their vengeance all who had defended the {118}rights of his crown,

his honour must have been ruined if he had complied. Is it not therefore

plain that they desired these things only in order that, by refusing,

his Majesty might give them a pretence for war?

“Men have often risen up against fraud, against cruelty, against

rapine. But when before was it known that concessions were met with

importunities, graciousness with insults, the open palm of bounty with

the clenched fist of malice? Was it like trusty delegates of the Commons

of England, and faithful stewards of their liberty and their wealth, to

engage them for such causes in civil war, which both to liberty and

to wealth is of all things the most hostile. Evil indeed must be the

disease which is not more tolerable than such a medicine. Those who,

even to save a nation from tyrants, excite it to civil war do in general

but minister to it the same miserable kind of relief wherewith the

wizards of Pharaoh mocked the Egyptian. We read that, when Moses had

turned their waters into blood, those impious magicians, intending, not

benefit to the thirsting people, but vain and emulous ostentation of

their own art, did themselves also change into blood the water which the

plague had spared. Such sad comfort do those who stir up war minister

to the oppressed. But here where was the oppression? What was the

favour which had not been granted? What was the evil which had not been

removed? What further could they desire?”

“These questions,” said Mr. Milton, austerely, “have indeed often

deceived the ignorant; but that Mr. Cowley should have been so beguiled,

I marvel. You ask what more the Parliament could desire? I will

answer you in one word, security. What are votes, and statutes, and

resolutions? They have no {119}eyes to see, no hands to strike and

avenge. They must have some safeguard from without. Many things,

therefore, which in themselves were peradventure hurtful, was this

Parliament constrained to ask, lest otherwise good laws and precious

rights should be without defence. Nor did they want a great and signal

example of this danger. I need not remind you that, many years before,

the two Houses had presented to the king the Petition of Right, wherein

were set down all the most valuable privileges of the people of this

realm. Did not Charles accept it? Did he not declare it to be law? Was

it not as fully enacted as ever were any of those bills of the Long

Parliament concerning which you spoke? And were those privileges

therefore enjoyed more fully by the people? No: the king did from that

time redouble his oppressions as if to avenge himself for the shame of

having been compelled to renounce them. Then were our estates laid under

shameful impositions, our houses ransacked, our bodies imprisoned. Then

was the steel of the hangman blunted with mangling the ears of harmless

men. Then our very minds were fettered, and the iron entered into our

souls. Then we mere compelled to hide our hatred, our sorrow, and our

scorn, to laugh with hidden faces at the mummery of Laud, to curse under

our breath the tyranny of Wentworth. Of old time it was well and nobly

said, by one of our kings, that an Englishman ought to be free as his

thoughts. Our prince reversed the maxim; he strove to make our thoughts

as much slaves as ourselves. To sneer at a Romish pageant, to miscall a

lord’s crest, were crimes for which there was no mercy. These were all

the fruits which we gathered from those excellent laws of the former

Parliament, from these solemn promises of {120}the king. Were we to be

deceived again? Were we again to give subsidies, and receive nothing but

promises? Were we again to make wholesome statutes, and then leave

them to be broken daily and hourly, until the oppressor should have

squandered another supply, and should be ready for another perjury? You

ask what they could desire which he had not already granted. Let me

ask of you another question. What pledge could he give which he had not

already violated? From the first year of his reign, whenever he had need

of the purses of his Commons to support the revels of Buckingham or the

processions of Laud, he had assured them that, as he was a gentleman

and a king, he would sacredly preserve their rights. He had pawned

those solemn pledges, and pawned them again and again; but when had he

redeemed them? ‘Upon my faith,’--‘Upon my sacred word,’--Upon the honour

of a prince,’--came so easily from his lips, and dwelt so short a time

on his mind, that they were as little to be trusted as the ‘By these

hilts’ of an Alsatian dicer.

“Therefore it is that I praise this Parliament for what else I might

have condemned. If what he had granted had been granted graciously and

readily, if what he had before promised had been faithfully observed,

they could not be defended. It was because he had never yielded the

worst abuse without a long struggle, and seldom without a large bribe:

it was because he had no sooner disentangled himself from his troubles

than he forgot his promises; and, more like a villainous huckster than a

great king, kept both the prerogative and the large price which had been

paid to him to forego it; it was because of these things that it was

necessary and just to bind with forcible restraints {121}one who could

be bound neither by law nor honour. Nay, even while he was making those

very concessions of which you speak, he betrayed his deadly hatred

against the people and their friends. Not only did he, contrary to

all that ever was deemed lawful in England, order that members of the

Commons House of Parliament should be impeached of high treason at

the bar of the Lords; thereby violating both the trial by jury and the

privileges of the House; but, not content with breaking the law by his

ministers, he went himself armed to assail it. In the birth-place and

sanctuary of freedom, in the House itself, nay, in the very chair of the

speaker, placed for the protection of free speech and privilege, he sat,

rolling his eyes round the benches, searching for those whose blood he

desired, and singling out his opposers to the slaughter. This most foul

outrage fails. Then again for the old arts. Then come gracious messages.

Then come courteous speeches. Then is again mortgaged his often

forfeited honour. He will never again violate the laws. He will respect

their rights as if they were his own. He pledges the dignity of his

crown; that crown which had been committed to him for the weal of his

people, and which he never named, but that he might the more easily

delude and oppress them.

“The power of the sword, I grant you, was not one to be permanently

possessed by parliament. Neither did that parliament demand it as a

permanent possession. They asked it only for temporary security. Nor can

I see on what conditions they could safely make peace with that false

and wicked king, save such as would deprive him of all power to injure.

“For civil war, that it is an evil I dispute not. But that it is the

greatest of evils, that I stoutly deny. It {122}doth indeed appear to

the misjudging to be a worse calamity than bad government, because its

miseries are collected together within a short space and time, and may

easily at one view be taken in and perceived. But the misfortunes of

nations ruled by tyrants, being distributed over many centuries and many

places, as they are of greater weight and number, so are they of less

display. When the Devil of tyranny hath gone into the body politic he

departs not but with struggles, and foaming, and great convulsions.

Shall he, therefore, vex it for ever, lest, in going out, he for a

moment tear and rend it? Truly this argument touching the evils of war

would better become my friend Elwood, or some other of the people called

Quakers, than a courtier and a cavalier. It applies no more to this war

than to all others, as well foreign as domestic, and, in this war, no

more to the Houses than to the king; nay not so much, since he by a

little sincerity and moderation might have rendered that needless which

their duty to God and man then enforced them to do.”

“Pardon me, Mr. Milton,” said Mr. Cowley; “I grieve to hear you speak

thus of that good king. Most unhappy indeed he was, in that he reigned

at a time when the spirit of the then living generation was for freedom,

and the precedents of former ages for prerogative. His case was like to

that of Christopher Columbus, when he sailed forth on an unknown ocean,

and found that the compass, whereby he shaped his course, had shifted

from the north pole whereto before it had constantly pointed. So it

was with Charles. His compass varied; and therefore he could not tack

aright. If he had been an absolute king he would doubtless, like Titus

Vespasian, have been called the {123}delight of the human race. If he

had been a Doge of Venice, or a Stadtholder of Holland, he would never

have outstepped the laws. But he lived when our government had neither

clear definitions nor strong sanctions. Let, therefore, his faults be

ascribed to the time. Of his virtues the praise is his own.

“Never was there a more gracious prince, or a more proper gentleman.

In every pleasure he was temperate, in conversation mild and grave, in

friendship constant, to his servants liberal, to his queen faithful and

loving, in battle brave, in sorrow and captivity resolved, in death most

Christian and forgiving.

“For his oppressions, let us look at the former history of this realm.

James was never accounted a tyrant. Elizabeth is esteemed to have been

the mother of her people. Were they less arbitrary? Did they never lay

hands on the purses of their subjects but by Act of Parliament? Did they

never confine insolent and disobedient men but in due course of law? Was

the court of Star Chamber less active? Were the ears of libellers more

safe? I pray you, let not king Charles be thus dealt with. It was enough

that in his life he was tried for an alleged breach of laws which none

ever heard named till they were discovered for his destruction. Let not

his fame be treated as was his sacred and anointed body. Let not his

memory be tried by principles found out _ex post facto_. Let us not

judge by the spirit of one generation a man whose disposition had been

formed by the temper and fashion of another.”

“Nay, but conceive me, Mr. Cowley,” said Mr. Milton; “inasmuch as, at

the beginning of his reign, he imitated those who had governed before

him, I blame him not. To expect that kings will, of their {124}own free

choice, abridge their prerogative, were argument of but slender wisdom.

Whatever, therefore, lawless, unjust, or cruel, he either did or

permitted during the first years of his reign, I pass by. But for what

was done after that he had solemnly given his consent to the Petition

of Right, where shall we find defence? Let it be supposed, which yet I

concede not, that the tyranny of his father and of Queen Elizabeth had

been no less rigorous than was his. But had his father, had that queen,

sworn, like him, to abstain from those rigours. Had they, like him, for

good and valuable consideration, aliened their hurtful prerogatives?

Surely not: from whatever excuse you can plead for him he had wholly

excluded himself. The borders of countries, we know, are mostly the

seats of perpetual wars and tumults. It was the same with the undefined

frontiers, which of old separated privilege and prerogative. They were

the debatable land of our polity. It was no marvel if, both on the one

side and on the other, inroads were often made. But, when treaties have

been concluded, spaces measured, lines drawn, landmarks set up, that

which before might pass for innocent error or just reprisal becomes

robbery, perjury, deadly sin. He knew not, you say, which of his powers

were founded on ancient law, and which only on vicious example. But had

he not read the Petition of Right? Had not proclamation been made from

his throne; _Soit fait comme il est desiré?_

“For his private virtues they are beside the question. Remember you

not,” and Mr. Milton smiled, but somewhat sternly, “what Dr. Caius saith

in the Merry Wives of Shakspeare? ‘What shall the honest man do in my

closet? There is no honest man that shall come in my closet.’ Even so

say I. There is no good {125}man who shall make us his slaves. If he

break his word to his people, is it a sufficient defence that he keeps

it to his companions? If he oppress and extort all day, shall he be held

blameless because he prayeth at night and morning? If he be insatiable

in plunder and revenge, shall we pass it by because in meat and drink

he is temperate? If he have lived like a tyrant, shall all be forgotten

because he hath died like a martyr?

“He was a man, as I think, who had so much semblance of virtues as might

make his vices most dangerous. He was not a tyrant after our wonted

English model. The second Richard, the second and fourth Edwards, and

the eighth Harry, were men profuse, gay, boisterous; lovers of women and

of wine, of no outward sanctity or gravity. Charles was a ruler after

the Italian fashion; grave, demure, of a solemn carriage, and a sober

diet; as constant at prayers as a priest, as heedless of oaths as an

atheist.”

Mr. Cowley answered somewhat sharply: “I am sorry, Sir, to hear you

speak thus. I had hoped that the vehemence of spirit which was caused by

these violent times had now abated. Yet, sure, Mr. Milton, whatever you

may think of the character of King Charles, you will not still justify

his murder.”

“Sir,” said Mr. Milton, “I must have been of a hard and strange nature,

if the vehemence which was imputed to me in my younger days had not been

diminished by the afflictions wherewith it hath pleased Almighty God

to chasten my age. I will not now defend all that I may heretofore have

written. But this I say, that I perceive not wherefore a king should be

exempted from all punishment. Is it just that where most is given least

should be required? Or {126}politic that where there is the greatest

power to injure there should be no danger to restrain? But, you will

say, there is no such law. Such a law there is. There is the law of

self-preservation written by God himself on our hearts. There is the

primal compact and bond of society, not graven on stone, nor sealed with

wax, nor put down on parchment, nor set forth in any express form of

words by men when of old they came together; but implied in the very act

that they so came together, pre-supposed in all subsequent law, not to

be repealed by any authority, not invalidated by being omitted in any

code; inasmuch as from thence are all codes and all authority.

“Neither do I well see wherefore you cavaliers, and, indeed, many of us

whom you merrily call Roundheads, distinguish between those who fought

against King Charles, and specially after the second commission given to

Sir Thomas Fairfax, and those who condemned him to death. Sure, if his

person were inviolable, it was as wicked to lift the sword against it at

Naseby as the axe at Whitehall. If his life might justly be taken, why

not in course of trial as well as by right of war?

“Thus much in general as touching the right. But, for the execution of

King Charles in particular, I will not now undertake to defend it. Death

is inflicted, not that the culprit may die, but that the state may be

thereby advantaged. And, from all that I know, I think that the death of

King Charles hath more hindered than advanced the liberties of England.

“First, he left an heir. He was in captivity. The heir was in freedom.

He was odious to the Scots. The heir was favoured by them. To kill

the captive therefore, whereby the heir, in the apprehension of all

{127}royalists, became forthwith king--what was it, in truth, but to set

their captive free, and to give him besides other great advantages?

“Next, it was a deed most odious to the people, and not only to your

party, but to many among ourselves; and, as it is perilous for any

government to outrage the public opinion, so most was it perilous for a

government which had from that opinion alone its birth, its nurture, and

its defence.

“Yet doth not this properly belong to our dispute; nor can these faults

be justly charged upon that most renowned parliament. For, as you know,

the high court of justice was not established until the house had been

purged of such members as were adverse to the army, and brought wholly

under the control of the chief officers.”

“And who,” said Mr. Cowley, “levied that army? Who commissioned those

officers? Was not the fate of the Commons as justly deserved as was that

of Diomedes, who was devoured by those horses whom he had himself taught

to feed on the flesh and blood of men? How could they hope that others

would respect laws which they had themselves insulted; that swords which

had been drawn against the prerogatives of the king would be put up at

an ordinance of the Commons? It was believed, of old, that there were

some devils easily raised but never to be laid; insomuch that, if a

magician called them up, he should be forced to find them always some

employment; for, though they would do all his bidding, yet, if he left

them but for one moment without some work of evil to perform, they would

turn their claws against himself. Such a fiend is an army. They who

evoke it cannot dismiss it. They are at once its masters and its slaves.

Let {128}them not fail to find for it task after task of blood and

rapine. Let them not leave it for a moment in repose, lest it tear them

in pieces.

“Thus was it with that famous assembly. They formed a force which they

could neither govern nor resist. They made it powerful. They made it

fanatical. As if military insolence were not of itself sufficiently

dangerous, they heightened it with spiritual pride,--they encouraged

their soldiers to rave from the tops of tubs against the men of Belial,

till every trooper thought himself a prophet. They taught them to abuse

popery, till every drummer fancied that he was as infallible as a pope.

“Then it was that religion changed her nature. She was no longer

the parent of arts and letters, of wholesome knowledge, of innocent

pleasures, of blessed household smiles. In their place came sour faces,

whining voices, the chattering of fools, the yells of madmen. Then men

fasted from meat and drink, who fasted not from bribes and blood. Then

men frowned at stage-plays, who smiled at massacres. Then men preached

against painted faces, who felt no remorse for their own most painted

lives. Religion had been a pole-star to light and to guide. It was now

more like to that ominous star in the book of the Apocalypse, which

fell from heaven upon the fountains and rivers and changed them into

wormwood; for even so did it descend from its high and celestial

dwelling-place to plague this earth, and to turn into bitterness all

that was sweet, and into poison all that was nourishing.

“Therefore it was not strange that such things should follow. They who

had closed the barriers of London against the king could not defend

them against their own creatures. They who had so stoutly cried {129}for

privilege, when that prince, most unadvisedly no doubt, came among them

to demand their members, durst not wag their fingers when Oliver filled

their hall with soldiers, gave their mace to a corporal, put their keys

in his pocket, and drove them forth with base terms, borrowed half from

the conventicle and half from the ale-house. Then were we, like the

trees of the forest in holy writ, given over to the rule of the bramble;

then from the basest of the shrubs came forth the fire which devoured

the cedars of Lebanon. We bowed down before a man of mean birth, of

ungraceful demeanour, of stammering and most vulgar utterance, of

scandalous and notorious hypocrisy. Our laws were made and unmade at his

pleasure; the constitution of our parliaments changed by his writ and

proclamation; our persons imprisoned; our property plundered; our lands

and houses overrun with soldiers; and the great charter itself was

but argument for a scurrilous jest; and for all this we may thank that

parliament: for never, unless they had so violently shaken the vessel,

could such foul dregs have risen to the top.”

Then answered Mr. Milton: “What you have now said comprehends so great a

number of subjects, that it would require, not an evening’s sail on the

Thames, but rather a voyage to the Indies, accurately to treat of all:

yet, in as few words as I may, I will explain my sense of these matters.

“First, as to the army. An army, as you have well set forth, is always

a weapon dangerous to those who use it; yet he who falls among thieves

spares not to fire his musquetoon, because he may be slain if it burst

in his hand. Nor must states refrain from defending themselves, lest

their defenders should at last turn {130}against them. Nevertheless,

against this danger statesmen should carefully provide; and, that they

may do so, they should take especial care that neither the officers nor

the soldiers do forget that they are also citizens. I do believe that

the English army would have continued to obey the parliament with all

duty, but for one act, which, as it was in intention, in seeming, and in

immediate effect, worthy to be compared with the most famous in history,

so was it, in its final consequence, most injurious. I speak of that

ordinance called the _self-denying_, and of the new model of the army.

By those measures the Commons gave up the command of their forces into

the hands of men who were not of themselves. Hence, doubtless, derived

no small honour to that noble assembly, which sacrificed to the hope of

public good the assurance of private advantage. And, as to the conduct

of the war, the scheme prospered. Witness the battle of Naseby, and the

memorable exploits of Fairfaix in the west. But thereby the Parliament

lost that hold on the soldiers and that power to control them, which

they retained while every regiment was commanded by their own members.

Politicians there be, who would wholly divide the legislative from

the executive power. In the golden age this may have succeeded; in the

millennium it may succeed again. But, where great armies and great taxes

are required, there the executive government must always hold a great

authority, which authority, that it may not oppress and destroy the

legislature, must be in some manner blended with it. The leaders of

foreign mercenaries have always been most dangerous to a country. The

officers of native armies, deprived of the civil privileges of other

men, are as much to be feared. This was the great {131}error of that

Parliament; and, though an error it were, it was an error generous,

virtuous, and more to be deplored than censured.

“Hence came the power of the army and its leaders, and especially of

that most famous leader, whom both in our conversation to-day, and in

that discourse, whereon I before touched, you have, in my poor opinion,

far too roughly handled. Wherefore you speak contemptibly of his parts

I know not; but I suspect that you are not free from the error common to

studious and speculative men. Because Oliver was an ungraceful orator,

and never said, either in public or private, anything memorable, you

will have it that he was of a mean capacity. Sure this is unjust. Many

men have there been ignorant of letters, without wit, without eloquence,

who yet had the wisdom to devise, and the courage to perform, that which

they lacked language to explain. Such men often, in troubled times, have

worked out the deliverance of nations and their own greatness, not

by logic, not by rhetoric, but by wariness in success, by calmness in

danger, by fierce and stubborn resolution in all adversity. The hearts

of men are their books; events are their tutors; great actions are their

eloquence: and such an one, in my judgment, was his late Highness, who,

if none were to treat his name scornfully now who shook not at the sound

of it while he lived, would, by very few, be mentioned otherwise than

with reverence. His own deeds shall avouch him for a great statesman,

a great soldier, a true lover of his country, a merciful and generous

conqueror.

“For his faults, let us reflect that they who seem to lead are

oftentimes most constrained to follow. They who will mix with men, and

specially they who will {132}govern them, must, in many things, obey

them. They who will yield to no such conditions may be hermits, but

cannot be generals and statesmen. If a man will walk straight forward

without turning to the right or the left, he must walk in a desert, and

not in Cheapside.

“Thus was he enforced to do many things which jumped not with his

inclination nor made for his honour; because the army, on which alone he

could depend for power and life, might not otherwise be contented. And

I, for mine own part, marvel less that he sometimes was fain to indulge

their violence than that he could so often restrain it.

“In that he dissolved the Parliament, I praise him It then was so

diminished in numbers, as well by the death as by the exclusion of

members, that it was no longer the same assembly; and, if at that time

it had made itself perpetual, we should have been governed, not by an

English House of Commons, but by a Venetian Council.

“If in his following rule he overstepped the laws, I pity rather than

condemn him. He may be compared to that Mæandrius of Samos, of whom

Herodotus saith, in his Thalia, that, wishing to be of all men the most

just, he was not able; for after the death of Polycrates he offered

freedom to the people; and not till certain of them threatened to call

him to a reckoning for what he had formerly done, did he change his

purpose, and make himself a tyrant, lest he should be treated as a

criminal.

“Such was the case of Oliver. He gave to his country a form of

government so free and admirable that, in near six thousand years,

human wisdom hath never devised any more excellent contrivance for human

happiness. To himself he reserved so little power {133}that it would

scarcely have sufficed for his safety, and it is a marvel that it could

suffice for his ambition. When, after that, he found that the members of

his parliament disputed his right even to that small authority which he

had kept, when he might have kept all, then indeed I own that he began

to govern by the sword those who would not suffer him to govern by the

law.

“But, for the rest, what sovereign was ever more princely in pardoning

injuries, in conquering enemies, in extending the dominions and

the renown of his people? What sea, what shore did he not mark with

imperishable memorials of his friendship or his vengeance? The gold of

Spain, the steel of Sweden, the ten thousand sails of Holland, availed

nothing against him. While every foreign state trembled at our arms, we

sat secure from all assault. War, which often so strangely troubles both

husbandry and commerce, never silenced the song of our reapers, or the

sound of our looms. Justice was equally administered; God was freely

worshipped.

“Now look at that which we have taken in exchange. With the restored

king have come over to us vices of every sort, and most the basest and

most shameful,--lust without love--servitude, without loyalty--foulness

of speech--dishonesty of dealing--grinning contempt of all things good

and generous. The throne is surrounded by men whom the former Charles

would have spurned from his footstool. The altar is served by slaves

whose knees are supple to every being but God. Rhymers, whose books the

hangman should burn, pandars actors, and buffoons, these drink a health

and throw a main with the King; these have stars on their breasts and

gold sticks in {134}their hands; these shut out from his presence the

best and bravest of those who bled for his house. Even so doth God

visit those who know not how to value freedom. He gives them over to the

tyranny which they have desired.”

“I will not,” said Mr. Cowley, “dispute with you on this argument. But,

if it be as you say, how can you maintain that England hath been so

greatly advantaged by the rebellion?”

“Understand me rightly, Sir,” said Mr. Milton. “This nation is not given

over to slavery and vice. We tasted indeed the fruits of liberty before

they had well ripened. Their flavour was harsh and bitter; and we turned

from them with loathing to the sweeter poisons of servitude. This is

but for a time. England is sleeping on the lap of Dalilah, traitorously

chained, but not yet shorn of strength. Let the cry be once heard--the

Philistines be upon thee; and at once that sleep will be broken, and

those chains will be as flax in the fire. The great Parliament hath left

behind it in our hearts and minds a hatred of tyrants, a just knowledge

of our rights, a scorn of vain and deluding names; and that the

revellers of Whitehall shall surely find. The sun is darkened; but it is

only for a moment: it is but an eclipse; though all birds of evil omen

have begun to scream, and all ravenous beasts have gone forth to prey,

thinking it to be midnight. Woe to them if they be abroad when the rays

again shine forth!

“The king hath judged ill. Had he been wise he would have remembered

that he owed his restoration only to confusions which had wearied us

out, and made us eager for repose. He would have known that the folly

and perfidy of a prince would restore to the good {135}old cause many

hearts which had been alienated thence by the turbulence of factions;

for, if I know aught of history, or of the heart of man, he will soon

learn that the last champion of the people was not destroyed when he

murdered Vane, nor seduced when he beguiled Fairfax.”

Mr. Cowley seemed to me not to take much amiss what Mr. Milton had said

touching that thankless court, which had indeed but poorly requited his

own good service. He only said, therefore, “Another rebellion! Alas!

alas! Mr. Milton! If there be no choice but between despotism and

anarchy, I prefer despotism.”

“Many men,” said Mr. Milton, “have floridly and ingeniously compared

anarchy and despotism; but they who so amuse themselves do but look at

separate parts of that which is truly one great whole. Each is the cause

and the effect of the other; the evils of either are the evils of

both. Thus do states move on in the same eternal cycle, which, from the

remotest point, brings them back again to the same sad starting-post:

and, till both those who govern and those who obey shall learn and mark

this great truth, men can expect little through the future, as they

have known little through the past, save vicissitudes of extreme evils,

alternately producing and produced.

“When will rulers learn that, where liberty is not security and order

can never be? We talk of absolute power; but all power hath limits,

which, if not fixed by the moderation of the governors, will be fixed

by the force of the governed. Sovereigns may send their opposers to

dungeons; they may clear out a senate-house with soldiers; they may

enlist armies of spies; they may hang scores of the disaffected

in chains at every cross road; but what power shall stand in that

{136}frightful time when rebellion hath become a less evil than

endurance? Who shall dissolve that terrible tribunal, which, in the

hearts of the oppressed, denounces against the oppressor the doom of

its wild justice? Who shall repeal the law of self-defence? What arms

or discipline shall resist the strength of famine and despair? How often

were the ancient Cæsars dragged from their golden palaces, stripped of

their purple robes, mangled, stoned, defiled with filth, pierced with

hooks, hurled into Tiber? How often have the Eastern Sultans perished

by the sabres of their own janissaries, or the bow-strings of their own

mutes! For no power which is not limited by laws can ever be protected

by them. Small, therefore, is the wisdom of those who would fly to

servitude as if it were a refuge from commotion; for anarchy is the sure

consequence of tyranny. That governments may be safe, nations must be

free. Their passions must have an outlet provided, lest they make one.

“When I was at Naples, I went with Signor Manso, a gentleman of

excellent parts and breeding, who had been the familiar friend of that

famous poet Torquato Tasso, to see the burning mountain Vesuvius. I

wondered how the peasants could venture to dwell so fearlessly and

cheerfully on its sides, when the lava was flowing from its summit;

but Manso smiled, and told me that when the fire descends freely they

retreat before it without haste or fear. They can tell how fast it will

move, and how far; and they know, moreover, that, though it may work

some little damage, it will soon cover the fields over which it hath

passed with rich vineyards and sweet flowers. But, when the flames are

pent up in the mountain, then it is that they have reason to fear; then

it is that the earth sinks and the {137}sea swells; then cities

are swallowed up; and their place knoweth them no more. So it is in

politics: where the people is most closely restrained, there it gives

the greatest shocks to peace and order; therefore would I say to all

kings, let your demagogues lead crowds, lest they lead armies; let them

bluster, lest they massacre; a little turbulence is, as it were, the

rainbow of the state; it shows indeed that there is a passing shower;

but it is a pledge that there shall be no deluge.”

“This is true,” said Mr. Cowley: “yet these admonitions are not less

needful to subjects than to sovereigns.”

“Surely,” said Mr. Milton; “and, that I may end this long debate with a

few words in which we shall both agree, I hold that, as freedom is the

only safeguard of governments, so are order and moderation generally

necessary to preserve freedom. Even the vainest opinions of men are not

to be outraged by those who propose to themselves the happiness of men

for their end, and who must work with the passions of men for their

means. The blind reverence for things ancient is indeed so foolish

that it might make a wise man laugh, if it were not also sometimes so

mischievous that it would rather make a good man weep. Yet, since it may

not be wholly cured, it must be discreetly indulged; and therefore those

who would amend evil laws should consider rather how much it may be safe

to spare, than how much it may be possible to change. Have you not heard

that men who have been shut up for many years in dungeons shrink if they

see the light, and fall down if their irons be struck off. And so, when

nations have long been in the house of bondage, the chains which have

crippled them are necessary to {138}support them, the darkness which

hath weakened their sight is necessary to preserve it. Therefore release

them not too rashly, lest they curse their freedom and pine for their

prison.

“I think indeed that the renowned Parliament, of which we have talked so

much, did show, until it became subject to the soldiers, a singular

and admirable moderation, in such times scarcely to be hoped, and

most worthy to be an example to all that shall come after. But on this

argument I have said enough: and I will therefore only pray to Almighty

God that those who shall, in future times, stand forth in defence of

our liberties, as well civil as religious, may adorn the good cause

by mercy, prudence, and soberness, to the glory of his name and the

happiness and honour of the English people.”

And so ended that discourse; and not long after we were set on shore

again at the Temple-gardens, and there parted company: and the same

evening I took notes of what had been said, which I have here more fully

set down, from regard both to the fame of the men, and the importance of

the subject-matter.

ON THE ATHENIAN ORATORS.

{139}(_Knight’s Quarterly Magazine_, August 1824.)

“To the famous orators repair,

Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence

Wielded at will that fierce démocratie,

Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece

To Macedon and Artaxerxes’ throne.”--Milton.

The celebrity of the great classical writers is confined within no

limits, except those which separate civilized from savage man. Their

works are the common property of every polished nation. They have

furnished subjects for the painter, and models for the poet. In the

minds of the educated classes throughout Europe, their names

are indissolubly associated with the endearing recollections of

childhood,--the old school room,--the dog-eared grammar,--the first

prize,--the tears so often shed and so quickly dried. So great is the

veneration with which they are regarded, that even the editors and

commentators who perform the lowest menial offices to their memory, are

considered, like the equerries and chamberlains of sovereign princes,

as entitled to a high rank in the table of literary precedence. It is,

therefore, somewhat singular that their productions should so rarely

have been examined on just and philosophical principles of criticism.

The ancient writers themselves afford us but little {140}assistance.

When they particularise, they are commonly trivial: when they would

generalise, they become indistinct. An exception must, indeed, be made

in favour of Aristotle. Both in analysis and in combination, that great

man was without a rival. No philosopher has ever possessed, in an equal

degree, the talent either of separating established systems into their

primary elements, or of connecting detached phenomena in harmonious

systems. He was the great fashioner of the intellectual chaos; he

changed its darkness into light, and its discord into order. He brought

to literary researches the same vigor and amplitude of mind to which

both physical and metaphysical science are so greatly indebted. His

fundamental principles of criticism are excellent. To cite only a

single instance;--the doctrine which he established, that poetry is an

imitative art, when justly understood, is to the critic what the compass

is to the navigator. With it he may venture upon the most extensive

excursions. Without it he must creep cautiously along the coast, or lose

himself in a trackless expanse, and trust, at best, to the guidance of

an occasional star. It is a discovery which changes a caprice into a

science.

The general propositions of Aristotle are valuable. But the merit of the

superstructure bears no proportion to that of the foundation. This is

partly to be ascribed to the character of the philosopher, who, though

qualified to do all that could be done by the resolving and combining

powers of the understanding, seems not to have possessed much of

sensibility or imagination. Partly, also, it may be attributed to the

deficiency of materials. The great works of genius which then existed

were not either sufficiently numerous {141}or sufficiently varied to

enable any man to form a perfect code of literature. To require that a

critic should conceive classes of composition which had never existed,

and then investigate their principles, would be as unreasonable as the

demand of Nebuchadnezzar, who expected his magicians first to tell him

his dream and then to interpret it.

With all his deficiencies, Aristotle was the most enlightened and

profound critic of antiquity. Dionysius was far from possessing the same

exquisite subtilty, or the same vast comprehension. But he had access

to a much greater number of specimens; and he had devoted himself, as

it appears, more exclusively to the study of elegant literature. His

peculiar judgments are of more value than his general principles. He is

only the historian of literature. Aristotle is its philosopher.

Quintilian applied to general literature the same principles by which he

had been accustomed to judge of the declamations of his pupils. He looks

for nothing but rhetoric, and rhetoric not of the highest order. He

speaks coldly of the incomparable works of Æschylus. He admires, beyond

expression, those inexhaustible mines of common-places, the plays of

Euripides. He bestows a few vague words on the poetical character of

Homer. He then proceeds to consider him merely as an orator. An orator

Homer doubtless was, and a great orator. But surely nothing is more

remarkable, in his admirable works, than the art with which his

oratorical powers are made subservient to the purposes of poetry. Nor

can I think Quintilian a great critic in his own province. Just as are

many of his remarks, beautiful as are many of his illustrations, we can

perpetually detect in his thoughts {142}that flavour which the soil of

despotism generally communicates to all the fruits of genius. Eloquence

was, in his time, little more than a condiment which served to stimulate

in a despot the jaded appetite for panegyric, an amusement for

the travelled nobles and the blue-stocking matrons of Rome. It is,

therefore, with him, rather a sport than a war; it is a contest of

foils, not of swords. He appears to think more of the grace of the

attitude than of the direction and vigour of the thrust. It must be

acknowledged, in justice to Quintilian, that this is an error to which

Cicero has too often given the sanction, both of his precept and of his

example.

Longinus seems to have had great sensibility, but little discrimination.

He gives us eloquent sentences, but no principles. It was happily

said that Montesquieu ought to have changed the name of his book from

_L’Esprit des Lois to L’Esprit sur les Lois_. In the same manner the

philosopher of Palmyra ought to have entitled his famous work, not

“Longinus on the Sublime,” but “The Sublimities of Longinus.” The origin

of the sublime is one of the most curious and interesting subjects of

inquiry that can occupy the attention of a critic. In our own country it

has been discussed, with great ability, and, I think, with very little

success, by Burke and Dugald Stuart. Longinus dispenses himself from all

investigations of this nature, by telling his friend Terentianus that he

already knows every thing than can be said upon the question. It is to

be regretted that Terentianus did not impart some of his knowledge to

his instructor: for from Longinus we learn only that sublimity means

height--or elevation. This name, so commodiously vague, is applied

{143}indifferently to the noble prayer of Ajax in the Iliad, and to a

passage of Plato about the human body, as full of conceits as an ode of

Cowley. Having no fixed standard, Longinus is right only by accident. He

is rather a fancier than a critic.

Modern writers have been prevented by many causes from supplying the

deficiencies of their classical predecessors. At the time of the revival

of literature, no man could, without great and painful labour, acquire

an accurate and elegant knowledge of the ancient languages. And,

unfortunately, those grammatical and philological studies, without which

it was impossible to understand the great works of Athenian and Roman

genius, have a tendency to contract the views and deaden the sensibility

of those who follow them with extreme assiduity. A powerful mind, which

has been long employed in such studies, may be compared to the gigantic

spirit in the Arabian tale, who was persuaded to contract himself to

small dimensions in order to enter within the enchanted vessel, and when

his prison had been closed upon him, found himself unable to escape

from the narrow boundaries to the measure of which he had reduced his

stature. When the means have long been the objects of application, they

are naturally substituted for the end. It was said, by Eugene of Savoy,

that the greatest generals have commonly been those who have been at

once raised to command, and introduced to the great operations of war,

without being employed in the petty calculations and manoeuvres which

employ the time of an inferior officer. In literature the principle is

equally sound. The great tactics of criticism will, in general, be best

understood by those who have not had much practice in drilling syllables

and particles. {144}I remember to have observed among the French Anas

a ludicrous instance of this. A scholar, doubtless of great learning,

recommends the study of some long Latin treatise, of which I now forget

the name, on the religion, manners, government, and language of the

early Greeks. “For there,” says he, “you will learn every thing of

importance that is contained in the Iliad and Odyssey, without the

trouble of reading two such tedious books.” Alas! it had not occurred to

the poor gentleman that all the knowledge to which he attached so

much value was useful only as it illustrated the great poems which

he despised, and would be as worthless for any other purpose as the

mythology of Caffraria, or the vocabulary of Otaheite.

Of those scholars who have disdained to confine themselves to verbal

criticism few have been successful. The ancient languages have,

generally, a magical influence on their faculties. They were “fools

called into a circle by Greek invocations.” The Iliad and Æneid were

to them not books, but curiosities, or rather reliques. They no more

admired those works for their merits than a good Catholic venerates

the house of the Virgin at Loretto for its architecture. Whatever was

classical was good. Homer was a great poet; and so was Callimachus. The

epistles of Cicero were fine; and so were those of Phalaris. Even with

respect to questions of evidence they fell into the same error. The

authority of all narrations, written in Greek or Latin, was the same

with them. It never crossed their minds that the lapse of five hundred

years, or the distance of five hundred leagues, could affect the

accuracy of a narration;--that Livy could be a less veracious historian

than Polybius;--or that Plutarch could know less about the friends of

Xenophon {145}than Xenophon himself. Deceived by the distance of time,

they seem to consider all the Classics as contemporaries; just as I have

known people in England, deceived by the distance of place, take it for

granted that all persons who live in India are neighbours, and ask an

inhabitant of Bombay about the health of an acquaintance at Calcutta.

It is to be hoped that no barbarian deluge will ever again pass over

Europe. But, should such a calamity happen, it seems not improbable that

some future Rollin or Gillies will compile a history of England from

Miss Porter’s Scottish Chiefs, Miss Lee’s Recess, and Sir Nathaniel

Wraxall’s Memoirs.

It is surely time that ancient literature should be examined in a

different manner, without pedantical prepossessions, but with a just

allowance, at the same time, for the difference of circumstances and

manners. I am far from pretending to the knowledge or ability which

such a task would require. All that I mean to offer is a collection of

desultory remarks upon a most interesting portion of Greek literature.

It may be doubted-whether any compositions which have ever been produced

in the world are equally perfect in their kind with the great Athenian

orations. Genius is subject to the same laws which regulate the

production of cotton and molasses. The supply adjusts itself to the

demand. The quantity may be diminished by restrictions, and multiplied

by bounties. The singular excellence to which eloquence attained at

Athens is to be mainly attributed to the influence which it exerted

there. In turbulent times, under a constitution purely democratic,

among a people educated exactly to that point at which men are most

susceptible of strong and sudden impressions, acute, but {146}not sound

reasoners, warm in their feelings, unfixed in their principles,

and passionate admirers of fine composition, oratory received such

encouragement as it has never since obtained.

The taste and knowledge of the Athenian people was a favourite object of

the contemptuous derision of Samuel Johnson; a man who knew nothing of

Greek literature beyond the common school-books, and who seems to have

brought to what he had read scarcely more than the discernment of a

common school-boy. He used to assert, with that arrogant absurdity

which, in spite of his great abilities and virtues, renders him, perhaps

the most ridiculous character in literary history, that Demosthenes

spoke to a people of brutes;--to a barbarous people;--that there could

have been no civilisation before the invention of printing. Johnson

was a keen but a very narrow-minded observer of mankind. He perpetually

confounded their general nature with their particular circumstances. He

knew London intimately. The sagacity of his remarks on its society is

perfectly astonishing. But Fleet-street was the world to him. He

saw that Londoners who did not read were profoundly ignorant; and

he inferred that a Greek, who had few or no books, must have been as

uninformed as one of Mr. Thrale’s draymen.

There seems to be, on the contrary, every reason to believe that, in

general intelligence, the Athenian populace far surpassed the lower

orders of any community that has ever existed. It must be considered,

that to be a citizen was to be a legislator,--a soldier,--a judge,--one

upon whose voice might depend the fate of the wealthiest tributary

state, of the most eminent public man. The lowest offices, both of

agriculture {147}and of trade, were, in common, performed by slaves. The

commonwealth supplied its meanest members with the support of life, the

opportunity of leisure, and the means of amusement. Books were indeed

few: but they were excellent; and they were accurately known. It is

not by turning over libraries, but by repeatedly perusing and intently

contemplating a few great models, that the mind is best disciplined. A

man of letters must now read much that he soon forgets, and much from

which he learns nothing worthy to be remembered. The best works employ,

in general, but a small portion of his time. Demosthenes is said to have

transcribed six times the history of Thucydides. If he had been a young

politician of the present age, he might in the same space of time have

skimmed innumerable newspapers and pamphlets. I do not condemn that

desultory mode of study which the state of things, in our day, renders

a matter of necessity. But I may be allowed to doubt whether the changes

on which the admirers of modern institutions delight to dwell have

improved our condition so much in reality as in appearance. Rumford,

it is said, proposed to the elector of Bavaria a scheme for feeding his

soldiers at a much cheaper rate than formerly. His plan was simply to

compel them to masticate their food thoroughly. A small quantity, thus

eaten, would, according to that famous projector, afford more sustenance

than a large meal hastily devoured. I do not know how Rumford’s

proposition was received; but to the mind, I believe, it will be found

more nutritious to digest a page than to devour a volume.

Books, however, were the least part of the education of an Athenian

citizen. Let us, for a moment, transport ourselves, in thought, to that

glorious city. Let {148}us imagine that we are entering its gates, in

the time of its power and glory. A crowd is assembled round a portico.

All are gazing with delight at the entablature; for Phidias is putting

up the frieze. We turn into another street; a rhapsodist is reciting

there: men, women, children are thronging round him: the tears are

running down their cheeks: their eyes are fixed: their very breath is

still; for he is telling how Priam fell at the feet of Achilles, and

kissed those hands,--the terrible,--the murderous,--which had slain

so many of his sons. (1) We enter the public place; there is a ring

of youths, all leaning forward, with sparkling eyes, and gestures of

expectation. Socrates is pitted against the famous atheist, from

Ionia, and has just brought him to a contradiction in terms. But we are

interrupted. The herald is crying--“Room for the Prytanes.” The

general assembly is to meet. The people are swarming in on every side.

Proclamation is made--“Who wishes to speak.” There is a shout, and a

clapping of hands; Pericles is mounting the stand. Then for a play of

Sophocles; and away to sup with Aspasia. I know of no modern university

which has so excellent a system of education.

Knowledge thus acquired and opinions thus formed were, indeed, likely

to be, in some respects, defective. Propositions which are advanced

in discourse generally result from a partial view of the question, and

cannot be kept under examination long enough to be corrected. Men of

great conversational powers almost universally practise a sort of

lively sophistry and exaggeration, which deceives, for the moment, both

themselves {149}and their auditors. Thus we see doctrines, which cannot

bear a close inspection, triumph perpetually in drawing-rooms, in

debating societies, and even in legislative or judicial assemblies. To

the conversational education of the Athenians I am inclined to attribute

the great looseness of reasoning which is remarkable in most of their

scientific writings. Even the most illogical of modern writers would

stand perfectly aghast at the puerile fallacies which seem to have

deluded some of the greatest men of antiquity. Sir Thomas Lethbridge

would stare at the political economy of Xenophon; and the author of

_Soirées de Pétersbourg_ would be ashamed of some of the metaphysical

arguments of Plato. But the very circumstances which retarded the growth

of science were peculiarly favourable to the cultivation of eloquence.

From the early habit of taking a share in animated discussion the

intelligent student would derive that readiness of resource, that

copiousness of language, and that knowledge of the temper and

understanding of an audience, which are far more valuable to an orator

than the greatest logical powers.

Horace has prettily compared poems to those paintings of which the

effect varies as the spectator changes his stand. The same remark

applies with at least equal justice to speeches. They must be read

with the temper of those to whom they were addressed, or they must

necessarily appear to offend against the laws of taste and reason; as

the finest picture, seen in a light different from that for which it was

designed, will appear fit only for a sign. This is perpetually forgotten

by those who criticise oratory. Because they are reading at leisure,

pausing at every line, reconsidering every argument, they forget that

{150}the hearers were hurried from point to point too rapidly to detect

the fallacies through which they were conducted; that they had no time

to disentangle sophisms, or to notice slight inaccuracies of expression;

that elaborate excellence, either of reasoning or of language, would

have been absolutely thrown away. To recur to the analogy of the sister

art, these connoisseurs examine a panorama through a microscope, and

quarrel with a scene-painter because he does not give to his work the

exquisite finish of Gerard Dow.

Oratory is to be estimated on principles different from those which

are applied to other productions. Truth is the object of philosophy and

history. Truth is the object even of those works which are peculiarly

called works of fiction, but which, in fact, bear the same relation to

history which algebra bears to arithmetic. The merit of poetry, in

its wildest forms, still consists in its truth,--truth conveyed to the

understanding, not directly by the words, but circuitously by means of

imaginative associations, which serve as its conductors. The object

of oratory alone is not truth, but persuasion. The admiration of the

multitude does not make Moore a greater poet, than Coleridge, or Beattie

a greater philosoper than Berkeley. But the criterion of eloquence is

different. A speaker who exhausts the whole philosophy of a question,

who displays every grace of style, yet produces no effect on his

audience, may be a great essayist, a great statesman, a great master of

composition; but he is not an orator. If he miss the mark, it makes no

difference whether he have taken aim too high or too low.

The effect of the great freedom of the press in England has been, in a

great measure, to destroy this distinction, {151}and to leave among us

little of what I call Oratory Proper. Our legislators, our candidates,

on great occasions even our advocates, address themselves less to the

audience than to the reporters. They think less of the few hearers than

of the innumerable readers. At Athens the case was different; there the

only object of the speaker was immediate conviction and persuasion. He,

therefore, who would justly appreciate the merit of the Grecian orators

should place himself, as nearly as possible, in the situation of

their auditors: he should divest himself of his modern feelings and

acquirements, and make the prejudices and interests of the Athenian

citizen his own. He who studies their works in this spirit will find

that many of those things which, to an English reader, appear to be

blemishes,--the frequent violation of those excellent rules of

evidence by which our courts of law are regulated,--the introduction

of extraneous matter,--the reference to considerations of political

expediency in judicial investigations,--the assertions, without

proof,--the passionate entreaties,--the furious invectives,--are really

proofs of the prudence and address of the speakers. He must not

dwell maliciously on arguments or phrases, but acquiesce in his first

impressions. It requires repeated perusal and reflection to decide

rightly on any other portion of literature. But with respect to works

of which the merit depends on their instantaneous effect the most hasty

judgment is likely to be best.

The history of eloquence at Athens is remarkable. From a very early

period great speakers had flourished there. Pisistratus and Themistocles

are said to have owed much of their influence to their talents for

debate. We learn, with more certainty, that Pericles was distinguished

by extraordinary oratorical powers. {152}The substance of some of his

speeches is transmitted to us by Thucydides; and that excellent writer

has doubtless faithfully reported the general line of his arguments. But

the manner, which in oratory is of at least as much consequence as the

matter, was of no importance to his narration. It is evident that he has

not attempted to preserve it. Throughout his work, every speech on every

subject, whatever may have been the character or the dialect of the

speaker, is in exactly the same form. The grave king of Sparta, the

furious demagogue of Athens, the general encouraging his army, the

captive supplicating for his life, all are represented as speakers

in one unvaried style,--a style moreover wholly unfit for oratorical

purposes. His mode of reasoning is singularly elliptical,--in reality

most consecutive,--yet in appearance often incoherent. His meaning, in

itself sufficiently perplexing, is compressed into the fewest possible

words. His great fondness for antithetical expression has not a little

conduced to’ this effect. Every one must have observed how much more the

sense is condensed in the verses of Pope and his imitators, who never

ventured to continue the same clause from couplet to couplet, than

in those of poets who allow themselves that license. Every artificial

division, which is strongly marked, and which frequently recurs, has

the same tendency. The natural and perspicuous expression which

spontaneously rises to the mind will often refuse to accommodate itself

to such a form. It is necessary either to expand it into weakness, or

to compress it into almost impenetrable density. The latter is generally

the choice of an able man, and was assuredly the choice of Thucydides.

It is scarcely necessary to say that such speeches could never have been

delivered. They are perhaps {153}among the most difficult passages

in the Greek language, and would probably have been scarcely more

intelligible to an Athenian auditor than to a modern reader. Their

obscurity was acknowledged by Cicero, who was as intimate with the

literature and language of Greece as the most accomplished of its

natives, and who seems to have held a respectable rank among the Greek

authors. Their difficulty to a modern reader lies, not in the words, but

in the reasoning. A dictionary is of far less use in studying them than

a clear head and a close attention to the context. They are valuable

to the scholar as displaying, beyond almost any other compositions, the

powers of the finest of languages: they are valuable to the philosopher

as illustrating the morals and manners of a most interesting age: they

abound in just thought and energetic expression. But they do not

enable us to form any accurate opinion on the merits of the early Greek

orators.

Though it cannot be doubted that, before the Persian wars, Athens had

produced eminent speakers, yet the period during which eloquence most

flourished among her citizens was by no means that of her greatest power

and glory. It commenced at the close of the Peloponnesian war. In

fact, the steps by which Athenian oratory approached to its finished

excellence seem to have been almost contemporaneous with those by which

the Athenian character and the Athenian empire sunk to degradation. At

the time when the little commonwealth achieved those victories which

twenty-five eventful centuries have left unequalled, eloquence was

in its infancy. The deliverers of Greece became its plunderers and

oppressors. Unmeasured exaction, atrocious vengeance, the madness of

the multitude, the tyranny {154}of the great, filled the Cyclades with

tears, and blood, and mourning. The sword unpeopled whole islands in

a day. The plough passed over the ruins of famous cities. The imperial

republic sent forth her children by thousands to pine in the quarries

of Syracuse, or to feed the vultures of Ægospotami. She was at length

reduced by famine and slaughter to humble herself before her enemies,

and to purchase existence by the sacrifice of her empire and her laws.

During these disastrous and gloomy years, oratory was advancing towards

its highest excellence. And it was when the moral, the political, and

the military character of the people was most utterly degraded, it was

when the viceroy of a Macedonian sovereign gave law to Greece, that the

courts of Athens witnessed the most splendid contest of eloquence that

the world has ever known.

The causes of this phenomenon it is not, I think, difficult to assign.

The division of labour operates on the productions of the orator as it

does on those of the mechanic. It was remarked by the ancients that the

Pentathlete, who divided his attention between several exercises, though

he could not vie with a boxer in the use of the cestus, or with one who

had confined his attention to running in the contest of the stadium,

yet enjoyed far greater general vigour and health than either. It is

the same with the mind. The superiority in technical skill is often more

than compensated by the inferiority in general intelligence. And this is

peculiarly the case in politics. States have always been best governed

by men who have taken a wide view of public affairs, and who have rather

a general acquaintance with many sciences than a perfect mastery of

one. The union of the political and military departments in Greece

contributed not a little to the splendour of its {155}early history.

After their separation more skilful generals and greater speakers

appeared; but the breed of statesmen dwindled and became almost extinct.

Themistocles or Pericles would have been no match for Demosthenes in

the assembly, or for Iphicrates in the field. But surely they were

incomparably better fitted than either for the supreme direction of

affairs.

There is indeed a remarkable coincidence between the progress of the

art of war, and that of the art of oratory, among the Greeks. They

both advanced to perfection by contemporaneous steps, and from similar

causes. The early speakers, like the early warriors of Greece, were

merely a militia. It was found that in both employments practice and

discipline gave superiority. (1) Each pursuit therefore became first an

art, and then a trade. In proportion as the professors of each became

more expert in their particular craft, they became less respectable in

their general character.

(1) It has often occurred to me, that to the circumstances

mentioned in the text is to be referred one of the most

remarkable events in Grecian history; I mean the silent but

rapid downfall of the Lacedæmonian power. Soon after the

termination of the Peloponnesian war, the strength of

Lacedaemon began to decline. Its military discipline, its

social institutions, were the same. Agesilaus, during whose

reign the change took place, was the ablest of its kings.

Yet the Spartan armies were frequently defeated in pitched

battles,--an occurrence considered impossible in the earlier

ages of Greece. They are allowed to have fought most

bravely; yet they were no longer attended by the success to

which they had formerly been accustomed. No solution of

these circumstances is offered, as far as I know, by any

ancient author. The real cause, I conceive, was this. The

Lacedæmonians, alone among the Greeks, formed a permanent

standing army. While the citizens of other commonwealths

were engaged in agriculture and trade, they had no

employment whatever but the study of military discipline.

Hence, during the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, they had

that advantage over their neighbours which regular troops

always possess over militia. This advantage they lost, when

other states began, at a later period, to employ mercenary

forces, who were probably as superior to them in the art of

war as they had hitherto been to their antagonists.

{156}Their skill had been obtained at too great expense to

be employed only from disinterested views. Thus, the

soldiers forgot that they were citizens, and the orators

that they were statesmen. I know not to what Demosthenes and

his famous contemporaries can be so justly compared as to

those mercenary troops who, in their time, overran Greece;

or those who, from similar causes, were some centuries ago

the scourge of the Italian republics,--perfectly acquainted

with every part of their profession, irresistible in the

field, powerful to defend or to destroy, but defending

without love, and destroying without hatred. We may despise

the characters of these political _Condottieri_; but it is

impossible to examine the system of their tactics without

being amazed at its perfection.

I had intended to proceed to this examination, and to consider

separately the remains of Lysias, of Æschines, of Demosthenes, and of

Isocrates, who, though strictly speaking he was rather a pamphleteer

than an orator, deserves, on many accounts, a place in such a

disquisition. The length of my prolegomena and digressions compels me

to postpone this part of the subject to another occasion. A Magazine is

certainly a delightful invention for a very idle or a very busy man. He

is not compelled to complete his plan or to adhere to his subject. He

may ramble as far as lie is inclined, and stop as soon as he is tired.

No one takes the trouble to recollect his contradictory opinions or his

unredeemed pledges. He may be as superficial, as inconsistent, and as

careless as he chooses. Magazines resemble those little angels, who,

according to the pretty Rabbinical tradition, are generated every

morning by the brook which rolls over the flowers of Paradise,--whose

life is a song,--who {157}warble till sunset, and then sink back without

regret into nothingness. Such spirits have nothing to do with the

detecting spear of Ithuriel or the victorious sword of Michael. It is

enough for them to please and be forgotten.

A PROPHETIC ACCOUNT OF A GRAND NATIONAL EPIC POEM, TO BE ENTITLED “THE

WELLINGTONIAD,” AND TO BE PUBLISHED A.D. 2824.

{158}(_Knight’s Quarterly Magazine_, November 1824.)

How I became a prophet it is not very important to the reader to know.

Nevertheless I feel all the anxiety which, under similar circumstances,

troubled the sensitive mind of Sidrophel; and, like him, am eager to

vindicate myself from the suspicion of having practised forbidden arts,

or held intercourse with beings of another world. I solemnly declare,

therefore, that I never saw a ghost, like Lord Lyttleton; consulted a

gypsy, like Josephine; or heard my name pronounced by an absent person,

like Dr. Johnson. Though it is now almost as usual for gentlemen to

appear at the moment of their death to their friends as to call on them

during their life, none of my acquaintance have been so polite as to pay

me that customary attention. I have derived my knowledge neither from

the dead nor from the living; neither from the lines of a hand, nor from

the grounds of a tea-cup; neither from the stars of the firmament, nor

from the fiends of the abyss. I have never, like the Wesley family,

heard “that mighty leading angel,” who “drew after him the third part

of heaven’s sons,” {159}scratching in my cupboard. I have never been

enticed to sign any of those delusive bonds which have been the ruin of

so many poor creatures; and, having always been an indifferent horseman,

I have been careful not to venture myself on a broomstick.

My insight into futurity, like that of George Fox the quaker, and that

of our great and philosophic poet, Lord Byron, is derived from simple

presentiment. This is a far less artificial process than those which are

employed by some others. Yet my predictions will, I believe, be found

more correct than their’s, or, at all events, as Sir Benjamin Backbite

says in the play, “more circumstantial.”

I prophecy, then, that, in the year 2824, according to our present

reckoning, a grand national Epic Poem, worthy to be compared with the

Iliad, the Æneid, or the Jerusalem, will be published in London.

Men naturally take an interest in the adventures of every eminent

writer. I will, therefore, gratify the laudable curiosity, which, on

this occasion, will doubtless be universal, by prefixing to my account

of the poem a concise memoir of the poet.

Richard Quongti will be born at Westminster on the 1st of July, 2786.

He will be the younger son of the younger branch of one of the most

respectable families in England. He will be lineally descended from

Quongti, the famous Chinese liberal, who, after the failure of the

heroic attempt of his party to obtain a constitution from the Emperor

Fim Fam, will take refuge in England, in the twenty-third century. Here

his descendants will obtain considerable note; and one branch of the

family will be raised to the peerage.

Richard, however, though destined to exalt his family to distinction far

nobler than any which wealth or {160}titles can bestow, will be born to

a very scanty fortune He will display in his early youth such striking

talents as will attract the notice of Viscount Quongti, his third

cousin, then secretary of state for the Steam Department. At the expense

of this eminent nobleman, he will be sent to prosecute his studies at

the university of Tombuctoo. To that illustrious seat of the muses all

the ingenuous youth of every country will then be attracted by the high

scientific character of Professor Quashaboo, and the eminent literary

attainments of Professor Kissey Kickey. In spite of this formidable

competition, however, Quongti will acquire the highest honours in every

department of knowledge, and will obtain the esteem of his associates by

his amiable and unaffected manners. The guardians of the young Duke of

Carrington, premier peer of England, and the last remaining scion of the

ancient and illustrious house of Smith, will be desirous to secure so

able an instructor for their ward. With the Duke, Quongti will perform

the grand tour, and visit the polished courts of Sydney and Capetown.

After prevailing on his pupil, with great difficulty, to subdue a violent

and imprudent passion which he had conceived for a Hottentot lady, of

great beauty and accomplishments indeed, but of dubious character,

he will travel with him to the United States of America. But that

tremendous war which will be fatal to American liberty will at that time

be raging through the whole federation. At New York the travellers

will hear of the final defeat and death of the illustrious champion

of freedom, Jonathan Hioffinbottom, and of the elevation of Ebenezer

Hogsflesh to the perpetual Presidency. They will not choose to proceed

in a journey which would expose {161}them to the insults of that brutal

soldiery, whose cruelty and rapacity will have devastated Mexico and

Colombia, and now, at length, enslaved their own country.

On their return to England, a.d. 2810, the death of the Duke will compel

his preceptor to seek for a subsistence by literary labours. His fame

will be raised by many small productions of considerable merit; and he

will at last obtain a permanent place in the highest class of writers by

his great epic poem.

This celebrated work will become, with unexampled rapidity, a popular

favourite. The sale will be so beneficial to the author that, instead of

going; about the dirty streets on his velocipede, he will be enabled to

set up his balloon.

The character of this noble poem will be so finely and justly given

in the Tombuctoo Review for April, 2825, that I cannot refrain from

translating the passage. The author will be our poet’s old preceptor,

Professor Kissey Kickey.

“In pathos, in splendour of language, in sweetness of versification, Mr.

Quongti has long been considered as unrivalled. In his exquisite poem on

the _Omithorynchus Paradoxus_ all these qualities are displayed in their

greatest perfection. How exquisitely does that work arrest and embody

the undefined and vague shadows which flit over an imaginative mind. The

cold worldling may not comprehend it; but it will find a response in the

bosom of every youthful poet, of every enthusiastic lover who has seen

an Ornithorynchus Paradoxus by moonlight. But we were yet to learn that

he possessed the comprehension, the judgment, and the fertility of mind

indispensable to the epic poet.

“It is difficult to conceive a plot more perfect than that of the

‘Wellingtoniad.’ It is most faithful to the {162}manners of the age to

which it relates. It preserves exactly all the historical circumstances,

and interweaves them most artfully with all the _speciosa miracula_ of

supernatural agency.”

Thus far the learned Professor of Humanity in the university of

Tombuctoo. I fear that the critics of our time will form an opinion

diametrically opposite as to these very points. Some will, I fear,

be disgusted by the machinery, which is derived from the mythology of

ancient Greece. I can only say that in the twenty-ninth century, that

machinery will be universally in use among poets; and that Quongti will

use it, partly in conformity with the general practice, and partly from

a veneration, perhaps excessive, for the great remains of classical

antiquity, which will then, as now, be assiduously read by every man of

education; though Tom Moore’s songs will be forgotten, and only three

copies of Lord Byron’s works will exist: one in the possession of King

George the Nineteenth, one in the Duke of Carrington’s collection,

and one in the library of the British Museum. Finally, should any good

people be concerned to hear that Pagan fictions will so long retain

their influence over literature, let them reflect that, as the Bishop

of St. David’s says, in his “Proofs of the Inspiration of the Sibylline

Verses,” read at the last meeting of the Royal Society of Literature,

“at all events, a Pagan is not a Papist.”

Some readers of the present day may think that Quongti is by no means

entitled to the compliments which his Negro critic pays him on his

adherence to the historical circumstances of the time in which he has

chosen his subject; that, where he introduces any trait of our manners,

it is in the wrong place, and that he confounds the customs of our age

with those of {163}much more remote periods. I can only say that the

charge is infinitely more applicable to Homer, Virgil, and Tasso. If,

therefore, the reader should detect, in the following abstract of the

plot, any little deviation from strict historical accuracy, let him

reflect, for a moment, whether Agamemnon would not have found as much to

censure in the Iliad,--Dido in the Æneid,--or Godfrey in the Jerusalem.

Let him not suffer his opinions to depend on circumstances which cannot

possibly affect the truth or falsehood of the representation. If it

be impossible for a single man to kill hundreds in battle, the

impossibility is not diminished by distance of time. If it be as certain

that Rinaldo never disenchanted a forest in Palestine as it is that the

Duke of Wellington never disenchanted the forest of Soignies, can we, as

rational men, tolerate the one story and ridicule the other? Of this, at

least, I am certain, that whatever excuse we have for admiring the plots

of those famous poems our children will have for extolling that of the

“Wellingtoniad.”

I shall proceed to give a sketch of the narrative. The subject is “The

Reign of the Hundred Days.”

BOOK I.

The poem commences, in form, with a solemn proposition of the subject.

Then the muse is invoked to give the poet accurate information as to the

causes of so terrible a commotion. The answer to this question, being,

it is to be supposed, the joint production of the poet and the muse,

ascribes the event to circumstances which have hitherto eluded all the

research of political writers, namely, the influence of the god Mars,

who, we are told had some forty years before usurped the {164}conjugal

rights of old Carlo Buonaparte, and given birth to Napoleon. By his

incitement it was that the emperor with his devoted companions was

now on the sea, returning to his ancient dominions. The gods were at

present, fortunately for the adventurer, feasting with the Ethiopians,

whose entertainments, according to the ancient custom described by

Homer, they annually attended, with the same sort of condescending

gluttony which now carries the cabinet to Guildhall on the 9th of

November. Neptune, was, in consequence, absent, and unable to prevent

the enemy of his favourite island from crossing his element. Boreas,

however, who had his abode on the banks of the Russian ocean, and who,

like Thetis in the Iliad, was not of sufficient quality to have an

invitation to Ethiopia, resolves to destroy the armament which brings

war and danger to his beloved Alexander. He accordingly raises a storm

which is most powerfully described. Napoleon bewails the inglorious fate

for which he seems to be reserved. “Oh! thrice happy,” says he, “those

who were frozen to death at Krasnoi, or slaughtered at Leipzic. Oh,

Kutusoff, bravest of the Russians, wherefore was I not permitted to fall

by thy victorious sword?” He then offers a prayer to Æolus, and vows

to him a sacrifice of a black ram. In consequence, the god recalls his

turbulent subject; the sea is calmed; and the ship anchors in the port

of Frejus. Napoleon and Bertrand, who is always called the faithful

Bertrand, land to explore the country; Mars meets them disguised as

a lancer of the guard, wearing the cross of the legion of honour. He

advises them to apply for necessaries of all kinds to the governor,

shows them the way, and disappears with a strong smell of gunpowder.

Napoleon makes a pathetic {165}speech, and enters the governor’s house.

Here he sees hanging up a fine print of the battle of Austerlitz,

himself in the foreground giving his orders. This puts him in high

spirits; he advances and salutes the governor, who receives him most

loyally, gives him an entertainment, and, according to the usage of all

epic hosts, insists after dinner on a full narration of all that has

happened to him since the battle of Leipzic.