THE VOYAGE.
Οἰ μέν ἔπειτ’ ἀναβάτες ἐπέπλον ὑγρὰ κέλευθα.
Mounting the bark, they cleft the watery ways.—HOMER.
FOUR beautiful cabined pinnaces, one for the ladies, one for the
gentlemen, one for kitchen and servants, one for a dining-room and band
of music, weighed anchor, on a fine July morning, from below Crotchet
Castle, and were towed merrily, by strong trotting horses, against the
stream of the Thames. They passed from the district of chalk,
successively into the districts of clay, of sand-rock, of oolite, and so
forth. Sometimes they dined in their floating dining-room, sometimes in
tents, which they pitched on the dry, smooth-shaven green of a newly-mown
meadow: sometimes they left their vessels to see sights in the vicinity;
sometimes they passed a day or two in a comfortable inn.
At Oxford, they walked about to see the curiosities of architecture,
painted windows, and undisturbed libraries. The Reverend Doctor Folliott
laid a wager with Mr. Crotchet “that in all their perlustrations they
would not find a man reading,” and won it. “Ay,” said the reverend
gentleman, “this is still a seat of learning, on the principle of—once a
captain, always a captain. We may well ask, in these great reservoirs of
books whereof no man ever draws a sluice, _Quorsum pertinuit stipere
Platona Menandro_? What is done here for the classics? Reprinting
German editions on better paper. A great boast, verily! What for
mathematics? What for metaphysics? What for history? What for anything
worth knowing? This was a seat of learning in the days of Friar Bacon.
But the Friar is gone, and his learning with him. Nothing of him is left
but the immortal nose, which, when his brazen head had tumbled to pieces,
crying “Time’s Past,” was the only palpable fragment among its minutely
pulverised atoms, and which is still resplendent over the portals of its
cognominal college. That nose, sir, is the only thing to which I shall
take off my hat, in all this Babylon of buried literature.
_Mr. Crotchet_.—But, doctor, it is something to have a great reservoir of
learning, at which some may draw if they please.
_The Rev. Dr. Folliott_.—But, here, good care is taken that nobody shall
please. If even a small drop from the sacred fountain, πίδακος ἐξ ἱερῆς
ὀλίγη λιβὰς, as Callimachus has it, were carried off by any one, it would
be evidence of something to hope for. But the system of dissuasion from
all good learning is brought here to a pitch of perfection that baffles
the keenest aspirant. I run over to myself the names of the scholars of
Germany, a glorious catalogue: but ask for those of Oxford,—Where are
they? The echoes of their courts, as vacant as their heads, will answer,
Where are they? The tree shall be known by its fruit: and seeing that
this great tree, with all its specious seeming, brings forth no fruit, I
do denounce it as a barren fig.
_Mr. Mac Quedy_.—I shall set you right on this point. We do nothing
without motives. If learning get nothing but honour, and very little of
that; and if the good things of this world, which ought to be the rewards
of learning, become the mere gifts of self-interested patronage; you must
not wonder if, in the finishing of education, the science which takes
precedence of all others, should be the science of currying favour.
_The Rev. Dr. Folliott_.—Very true, sir. Education is well finished, for
all worldly purposes, when the head is brought into the state whereinto I
am accustomed to bring a marrow-bone, when it has been set before me on a
toast, with a white napkin wrapped round it. Nothing trundles along the
high road of preferment so trimly as a well-biassed sconce, picked clean
within and polished without; _totus teres atque rotundus_. The
perfection of the finishing lies in the bias, which keeps it trundling in
the given direction. There is good and sufficient reason for the fig
being barren, but it is not therefore the less a barren fig.
At Godstow, they gathered hazel on the grave of Rosamond; and, proceeding
on their voyage, fell into a discussion on legendary histories.
_Lady Clarinda_.—History is but a tiresome thing in itself: it becomes
more agreeable the more romance is mixed up with it. The great enchanter
has made me learn many things which I should never have dreamed of
studying, if they had not come to me in the form of amusement.
_The Rev. Dr. Folliott_.—What enchanter is that? There are two
enchanters: he of the north, and he of the south.
_Mr. Trillo_.—Rossini!
_The Rev. Dr. Folliott_.—Ay, there is another enchanter. But I mean the
great enchanter of Covent Garden: he who, for more than a quarter of a
century, has produced two pantomimes a year, to the delight of children
of all ages; including myself at all ages. That is the enchanter for me.
I am for the pantomimes. All the northern enchanter’s romances put
together would not furnish materials for half the Southern enchanter’s
pantomimes.
_Lady Clarinda_.—Surely you do not class literature with pantomime?
_The Rev. Dr. Folliott_.—In these cases, I do. They are both one, with a
slight difference. The one is the literature of pantomime, the other is
the pantomime of literature. There is the same variety of character, the
same diversity of story, the same copiousness of incident, the same
research into costume, the same display of heraldry, falconry,
minstrelsy, scenery, monkery, witchery, devilry, robbery, poachery,
piracy, fishery, gipsy-astrology, demonology, architecture,
fortification, castrametation, navigation; the same running base of love
and battle. The main difference is, that the one set of amusing fictions
is told in music and action; the other in all the worst dialects of the
English language. As to any sentence worth remembering, any moral or
political truth, anything having a tendency, however remote, to make men
wiser or better, to make them think, to make them ever think of thinking;
they are both precisely alike _nuspiam_, _nequaquam_, _nullibi_,
_nullimodis_.
_Lady Clarinda_.—Very amusing, however.
_The Rev. Dr. Folliott_.—Very amusing, very amusing.
_Mr. Chainmail_.—My quarrel with the northern enchanter is, that he has
grossly misrepresented the twelfth century.
_The Rev. Dr. Folliott_.—He has misrepresented everything, or he would
not have been very amusing. Sober truth is but dull matter to the
reading rabble. The angler, who puts not on his hook the bait that best
pleases the fish, may sit all day on the bank without catching a gudgeon.
_Mr. Mac Quedy_.—But how do you mean that he has misrepresented the
twelfth century? By exhibiting some of its knights and ladies in the
colours of refinement and virtue, seeing that they were all no better
than ruffians, and something else that shall be nameless?
_Mr. Chainmail_.—By no means. By depicting them as much worse than they
were, not, as you suppose, much better. No one would infer from his
pictures that theirs was a much better state of society than this which
we live in.
_Mr. Mac Quedy_.—No, nor was it. It was a period of brutality,
ignorance, fanaticism, and tyranny; when the land was covered with
castles, and every castle contained a gang of banditti, headed by a
titled robber, who levied contributions with fire and sword; plundering,
torturing, ravishing, burying his captives in loathsome dungeons, and
broiling them on gridirons, to force from them the surrender of every
particle of treasure which he suspected them of possessing; and fighting
every now and then with the neighbouring lords, his conterminal bandits,
for the right of marauding on the boundaries. This was the twelfth
century, as depicted by all contemporary historians and poets.
_Mr. Chainmail_.—No, sir. Weigh the evidence of specific facts; you will
find more good than evil. Who was England’s greatest hero—the mirror of
chivalry, the pattern of honour, the fountain of generosity, the model to
all succeeding ages of military glory? Richard the First. There is a
king of the twelfth century. What was the first step of liberty? Magna
Charta. That was the best thing ever done by lords. There are lords of
the twelfth century. You must remember, too, that these lords were petty
princes, and made war on each other as legitimately as the heads of
larger communities did or do. For their system of revenue, it was, to be
sure, more rough and summary than that which has succeeded it, but it was
certainly less searching and less productive. And as to the people, I
content myself with these great points: that every man was armed, every
man was a good archer, every man could and would fight effectively, with
sword or pike, or even with oaken cudgel; no man would live quietly
without beef and ale if he had them not; he fought till he either got
them, or was put out of condition to want them. They were not, and could
not be, subjected to that powerful pressure of all the other classes of
society, combined by gunpowder, steam, and _fiscality_, which has brought
them to that dismal degradation in which we see them now. And there are
the people of the twelfth century.
_Mr. Mac Quedy_.—As to your king, the enchanter has done him ample
justice, even in your own view. As to your lords and their ladies, he
has drawn them too favourably, given them too many of the false colours
of chivalry, thrown too attractive a light on their abominable doings.
As to the people, he keeps them so much in the background, that he can
hardly be said to have represented them at all, much less misrepresented
them, which indeed he could scarcely do, seeing that, by your own
showing, they were all thieves, ready to knock down any man for what they
could not come by honestly.
_Mr. Chainmail_.—No, sir. They could come honestly by beef and ale,
while they were left to their simple industry. When oppression
interfered with them in that, then they stood on the defensive, and
fought for what they were not permitted to come by quietly.
_Mr. Mac Quedy_.—If A., being aggrieved by B., knocks down C., do you
call that standing on the defensive?
_Mr. Chainmail_.—That depends on who or what C. is.
_The Rev. Dr. Folliott_.—Gentlemen, you will never settle this
controversy till you have first settled what is good for man in this
world; the great question, _de finibus_, which has puzzled all
philosophers. If the enchanter has represented the twelfth century too
brightly for one, and too darkly for the other of you, I should say, as
an impartial man, he has represented it fairly. My quarrel with him is,
that his works contain nothing worth quoting; and a book that furnishes
no quotations, is _me judice_, no book—it is a plaything. There is no
question about the amusement,—amusement of multitudes; but if he who
amuses us most is to be our enchanter κατ’ ἐξοχὴν, then my enchanter is
the enchanter of Covent Garden.