CHAPTER XLVII.

LEAVING Horncastle I bent my steps in the direction of the east. I

walked at a brisk rate, and late in the evening reached a large town,

situate at the entrance of an extensive firth, or arm of the sea, which

prevented my farther progress eastward. Sleeping that night in the

suburbs of the town, I departed early next morning in the direction of

the south. A walk of about twenty miles brought me to another large

town, situated on a river, where I again turned towards the east. At the

end of the town I was accosted by a fiery-faced individual, somewhat

under the middle size, dressed as a recruiting sergeant.

“Young man,” said the recruiting sergeant, “you are just the kind of

person to serve the Honourable East India Company.”

“I had rather the Honourable Company should serve me,” said I.

“Of course, young man. Well, the Honourable East India Company shall

serve you—that’s reasonable. Here, take this shilling; ’t is

service-money. The Honourable Company engages to serve you, and you the

Honourable Company; both parties shall be thus served; that’s just and

reasonable.”

“And what must I do for the Company?”

“Only go to India; that’s all.”

“And what should I do in India?”

“Fight, my brave boy! fight, my youthful hero!”

“What kind of country is India?”

“The finest country in the world! Rivers, bigger than the Ouse. Hills,

higher than anything near Spalding! Trees—you never saw such trees!

Fruits—you never saw such fruits!”

“And the people—what kind of folk are they?”

“Pah! Kauloes—blacks—a set of rascals not worth regarding.”

“Kauloes!” said I; “blacks!”

“Yes,” said the recruiting sergeant; “and they call us lolloes, which in

their beastly gibberish, means reds.”

“Lolloes!” said I; “reds!”

“Yes,” said the recruiting sergeant, “kauloes and lolloes; and all the

lolloes have to do is to kick and cut down the kauloes, and take from

them their rupees, which mean silver money. Why do you stare so?”

“Why,” said I, “this is the very language of Mr. Petulengro.”

“Mr. Pet—?”

“Yes,” said I, “and Tawno Chikno.”

“Tawno Chik—? I say, young fellow, I don’t like your way of speaking;

no, nor your way of looking. You are mad, sir; you are mad; and what’s

this? Why your hair is grey! You won’t do for the Honourable

Company—they like red. I’m glad I didn’t give you the shilling.

Good-day to you.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” said I as I proceeded rapidly along a broad

causeway, in the direction of the east, “if Mr. Petulengro and Tawno

Chikno came originally from India. I think I’ll go there.”

* * * * *

[_End of Vol. II._, _and of the fifth and last of the Autobiography_.]

* * * * *

APPENDIX.

CHAPTER I.

A WORD FOR _LAVENGRO_.

[Shortly after the publication of the first three volumes of the present

work, the author received various letters from individuals, in which he

was requested to state what might be the drift and tendency of

_Lavengro_. The author cannot help thinking it somewhat extraordinary,

that, after a preface in which he was particularly careful to tell the

public what the book was, and the object with which it was written, any

fresh information with respect to it should be required of him. As,

however, all the letters which he has received have been written in a

friendly spirit, he will now endeavour to be a little more explicit than

on a former occasion.]

_Lavengro_ is the history up to a certain period of one of rather a

peculiar mind and system of nerves, with an exterior shy and cold, under

which lurk much curiosity, especially with regard to what is wild and

extraordinary, a considerable quantity of energy and industry, and an

unconquerable love of independence. It narrates his earliest dreams and

feelings, dwells with minuteness on the ways, words and characters of his

father, mother and brother, lingers on the occasional resting-places of

his wandering half-military childhood, describes the gradual hardening of

his bodily frame by robust exercises, his successive struggles, after his

family and himself have settled down in a small local capital, to obtain

knowledge of every kind, but more particularly philological lore; his

visits to the tent of the Romany chal, and the parlour of the

Anglo-German philosopher; the effect produced upon his character by his

flinging himself into contact with people all widely differing from each

other, but all extraordinary; his reluctance to settle down to the

ordinary pursuits of life; his struggles after moral truth; his glimpses

of God and the obscuration of the Divine Being, to his mind’s eye; and

his being cast upon the world of London by the death of his father, at

the age of nineteen. In the world within a world, the world of London,

it shows him playing his part for some time as he best can, in the

capacity of a writer for reviews and magazines, and describes what he saw

and underwent whilst labouring in that capacity; it represents him,

however, as never forgetting that he is the son of a brave but poor

gentleman, and that if he is a hack author, he is likewise a scholar. It

shows him doing no dishonourable jobs, and proves that if he occasionally

associates with low characters, he does so chiefly to gratify the

curiosity of a scholar. In his conversations with the apple-woman of

London Bridge, the scholar is ever apparent, so again in his acquaintance

with the man of the table; for the book is no raker up of the uncleanness

of London, and if it gives what at first sight appears refuse, it

invariably shows that a pearl of some kind, generally a philological one,

is contained amongst it; it shows its hero always accompanied by his love

of independence, scorning in the greatest poverty to receive favours from

anybody, and describes him finally rescuing himself from peculiarly

miserable circumstances by writing a book, an original book, within a

week, even as Johnson is said to have written his _Rasselas_, and

Beckford his _Vathek_, and tells how, leaving London, he betakes himself

to the roads and fields.

In the country it shows him leading a life of roving adventure, becoming

tinker, gypsy, postillion, ostler; associating with various kinds of

people, chiefly of the lower classes, whose ways and habits are

described; but, though leading this erratic life, we gather from the book

that his habits are neither vulgar nor vicious, that he still follows to

a certain extent his favourite pursuits, hunting after strange

characters, or analysing strange words and names. At the conclusion of

the fifth volume, which terminates the first part of the history, it

hints that he is about to quit his native land on a grand philological

expedition.

Those who read this book with attention—and the author begs to observe

that it would be of little utility to read it hurriedly—may derive much

information with respect to matters of philology and literature; it will

be found treating of most of the principal languages from Ireland to

China, and of the literature which they contain; and it is particularly

minute with regard to the ways, manners and speech of the English section

of the most extraordinary and mysterious clan or tribe of people to be

found in the whole world—the children of Roma. But it contains matters

of much more importance than anything in connection with philology, and

the literature and manners of nations. Perhaps no work was ever offered

to the public in which the kindness and providence of God have been set

forth by more striking examples, or the machinations of priestcraft been

more truly and lucidly exposed, or the dangers which result to a nation

when it abandons itself to effeminacy, and a rage for what is novel and

fashionable, than the present.

With respect to the kindness and providence of God, are they not

exemplified in the case of the old apple-woman and her son? These are

beings in many points bad, but with warm affections, who, after an

agonising separation, are restored to each other, but not until the

hearts of both are changed and purified by the influence of affliction.

Are they not exemplified in the case of the rich gentleman, who touches

objects in order to avert the evil chance? This being has great gifts

and many amiable qualities, but does not everybody see that his besetting

sin is selfishness? He fixes his mind on certain objects, and takes

inordinate interest in them, because they are his own, and those very

objects, through the providence of God, which is kindness in disguise,

become snakes and scorpions to whip him. Tired of various pursuits, he

at last becomes an author, and publishes a book, which is very much

admired, and which he loves with his usual inordinate affection; the

book, consequently becomes a viper to him, and at last he flings it aside

and begins another; the book, however, is not flung aside by the world,

who are benefited by it, deriving pleasure and knowledge from it: so the

man who merely wrote to gratify self, has already done good to others,

and got himself an honourable name. But God will not allow that man to

put that book under his head and use it as a pillow: the book has become

a viper to him, he has banished it, and is about another, which he

finishes and gives to the world; it is a better book than the first, and

every one is delighted with it; but it proves to the writer a scorpion,

because he loves it with inordinate affection; but it was good for the

world that he produced this book, which stung him as a scorpion. Yes;

and good for himself, for the labour of writing it amused him, and

perhaps prevented him from dying of apoplexy; but the book is banished,

and another is begun, and herein, again, is the providence of God

manifested; the man has the power of producing still, and God determines

that he shall give to the world what remains in his brain, which he would

not do, had he been satisfied with the second work; he would have gone to

sleep upon that as he would upon the first, for the man is selfish and

lazy. In his account of what he suffered during the composition of this

work, his besetting sin of selfishness is manifest enough; the work on

which he is engaged occupies his every thought, it is his idol, his

deity, it shall be all his own, he won’t borrow a thought from any one

else, and he is so afraid lest, when he publishes it, that it should be

thought that he had borrowed from any one, that he is continually

touching objects, his nervous system, owing to his extreme selfishness,

having become partly deranged. He is left touching, in order to banish

the evil chance from his book, his deity. No more of his history is

given; but does the reader think that God will permit that man to go to

sleep on his third book, however extraordinary it may be? Assuredly not.

God will not allow that man to rest till he has cured him to a certain

extent of his selfishness, which has, however, hitherto been very useful

to the world.

Then, again, in the tale of Peter Williams, is not the hand of Providence

to be seen? This person commits a sin in his childhood, utters words of

blasphemy, the remembrance of which, in after life, preying upon his

imagination, unfits him for quiet pursuits, to which he seems to have

been naturally inclined; but for the remembrance of that sin, he would

have been Peter Williams the quiet, respectable Welsh farmer, somewhat

fond of reading the ancient literature of his country in winter evenings,

after his work was done. God, however, was aware that there was

something in Peter Williams to entitle him to assume a higher calling; he

therefore permits this sin, which, though a childish affair, was yet a

sin, and committed deliberately, to prey upon his mind till he becomes at

last an instrument in the hand of God, a humble Paul, the great preacher,

Peter Williams, who, though he considers himself a reprobate and a

castaway, instead of having recourse to drinking in mad desperation, as

many do who consider themselves reprobates, goes about Wales and England

preaching the word of God, dilating on his power and majesty, and

visiting the sick and afflicted, until God sees fit to restore to him his

peace of mind; which he does not do, however, until that mind is in a

proper condition to receive peace, till it has been purified by the pain

of the one idea which has so long been permitted to riot in his brain;

which pain, however, an angel, in the shape of a gentle, faithful wife,

had occasionally alleviated; for God is merciful even in the blows which

He bestoweth, and will not permit any one to be tempted beyond the

measure which he can support. And here it will be as well for the reader

to ponder upon the means by which the Welsh preacher is relieved from his

mental misery: he is not relieved by a text from the Bible, by the words

of consolation and wisdom addressed to him by his angel-minded wife, nor

by the preaching of one yet more eloquent than himself; but by a

quotation made by Lavengro from the life of Mary Flanders, cut-purse and

prostitute, which life Lavengro had been in the habit of reading at the

stall of his old friend the apple-woman, on London Bridge, who had

herself been very much addicted to the perusal of it, though without any

profit whatever. Should the reader be dissatisfied with the manner in

which Peter Williams is made to find relief, the author would wish to

answer, that the Almighty frequently accomplishes his purposes by means

which appear very singular to the eyes of men, and at the same time to

observe that the manner in which that relief is obtained, is calculated

to read a lesson to the proud, fanciful and squeamish, who are ever in a

fidget lest they should be thought to mix with low society or to bestow a

moment’s attention on publications which are not what is called of a

perfectly unobjectionable character. Had not Lavengro formed the

acquaintance of the old apple-woman on London Bridge, he would not have

had an opportunity of reading the life of Mary Flanders; and,

consequently, of storing in a memory, which never forgets anything, a

passage which contained a balm for the agonised mind of poor Peter

Williams. The best medicines are not always found in the finest shops.

Suppose, for example, if, instead of going to London Bridge to read, he

had gone to Albemarle Street, and had received from the proprietors of

the literary establishment in that very fashionable street, permission to

read the publications on the tables of the saloons there, does the reader

think he would have met any balm in those publications for the case of

Peter Williams? does the reader suppose that he would have found Mary

Flanders there? He would certainly have found that highly

unobjectionable publication _Rasselas_, and the _Spectator_, or _Lives of

Royal and Illustrious Personages_, but, of a surety, no Mary Flanders; so

when Lavengro met with Peter Williams, he would have been unprovided with

a balm to cure his ulcerated mind, and have parted from him in a way not

quite so satisfactory as the manner in which he took his leave of him;

for it is certain that he might have read _Rasselas_, and all the other

unexceptionable works to be found in the library of Albemarle Street,

over and over again, before he would have found any cure in them for the

case of Peter Williams. Therefore the author requests the reader to drop

any squeamish nonsense he may wish to utter about Mary Flanders, and the

manner in which Peter Williams was cured.

And now with respect to the old man who knew Chinese, but could not tell

what was o’clock. This individual was a man whose natural powers would

have been utterly buried and lost beneath a mountain of sloth and

laziness had not God determined otherwise. He had in his early years

chalked out for himself a plan of life in which he had his own ease and

self-indulgence solely in view; he had no particular bad passions to

gratify, he only wished to lead an easy, quiet life, just as if the

business of this mighty world could be carried on by innocent people fond

of ease and quiet, or that Providence would permit innocent, quiet drones

to occupy any portion of the earth and to cumber it. God had at any rate

decreed that this man should not cumber it as a drone. He brings a

certain affliction upon him, the agony of which produces that terrible

whirling of the brain which, unless it is stopped in time, produces

madness; he suffers indescribable misery for a period, until one morning

his attention is arrested, and his curiosity is aroused, by certain

Chinese letters on a teapot; his curiosity increases more and more, and,

of course, in proportion as his curiosity is increased with respect to

the Chinese marks, the misery in his brain, produced by his mental

affliction, decreases. He sets about learning Chinese, and after the

lapse of many years, during which his mind subsides into a certain state

of tranquillity, he acquires sufficient knowledge of Chinese to be able

to translate with ease the inscriptions to be found on its singular

crockery. Yes, the laziest of human beings, through the providence of

God, a being, too, of rather inferior capacity, acquires the written part

of a language so difficult that, as Lavengro said on a former occasion,

none but the cleverest people in Europe, the French, are able to acquire

it. But God did not intend that man should merely acquire Chinese. He

intended that he should be of use to his species, and by the

instrumentality of the first Chinese inscription which he translates, the

one which first arrested his curiosity, he is taught the duties of

hospitality; yes, by means of an inscription in the language of a people,

who have scarcely an idea of hospitality themselves, God causes the

slothful man to play a useful and beneficent part in the world, relieving

distressed wanderers, and, amongst others, Lavengro himself. But a

striking indication of the man’s surprising sloth is still apparent in

what he omits to do; he has learnt Chinese, the most difficult of

languages, and he practises acts of hospitality, because he believes

himself enjoined to do so by the Chinese inscription, but he cannot tell

the hour of the day by the clock within his house; he can get on, he

thinks, very well without being able to do so; therefore, from this one

omission, it is easy to come to a conclusion as to what a sluggard’s part

the man would have played in life, but for the dispensation of

Providence; nothing but extreme agony could have induced such a man to do

anything useful. He still continues, with all he has acquired, with all

his usefulness, and with all his innocence of character, without any

proper sense of religion, though he has attained a rather advanced age.

If it be observed, that this want of religion is a great defect in the

story, the author begs leave to observe that he cannot help it. Lavengro

relates the lives of people so far as they were placed before him, but no

further. It was certainly a great defect in so good a man to be without

religion; it was likewise a great defect in so learned a man not to be

able to tell what was o’clock. It is probable that God, in His loving

kindness, will not permit that man to go out of the world without

religion; who knows but some powerful minister of the Church, full of

zeal for the glory of God, will illume that man’s dark mind; perhaps some

clergyman will come to the parish who will visit him and teach him his

duty to his God. Yes, it is very probable that such a man, before he

dies, will have been made to love his God; whether he will ever learn to

know what’s o’clock, is another matter. It is probable that he will go

out of the world without knowing what’s o’clock. It is not so necessary

to be able to tell the time of day by the clock as to know one’s God

through His inspired word; a man cannot get to heaven without religion,

but a man can get there very comfortably without knowing what’s o’clock.

But, above all, the care and providence of God are manifested in the case

of Lavengro himself, by the manner in which he is enabled to make his way

in the world up to a certain period, without falling a prey either to

vice or poverty. In his history, there is a wonderful illustration of

part of the text, quoted by his mother: “I have been young, but now am

old, yet never saw I the righteous forsaken, or his seed begging bread”.

He is the son of good and honourable parents, but at the critical period

of life, that of entering into the world, he finds himself without any

earthly friend to help him, yet he manages to make his way; he does not

become a Captain in the Life Guards, it is true, nor does he get into

Parliament, nor does the last volume conclude in the most satisfactory

and unobjectionable manner, by his marrying a dowager countess, as that

wise man Addison did, or by his settling down as a great country

gentleman, perfectly happy and contented, like the very moral Roderick

Random, or the equally estimable Peregrine Pickle; he is hack author,

gypsy, tinker and postillion, yet, upon the whole, he seems to be quite

as happy as the younger sons of most earls, to have as high feelings of

honour; and when the reader loses sight of him, he has money in his

pocket honestly acquired, to enable him to commence a journey quite as

laudable as those which the younger sons of earls generally undertake.

Surely all this is a manifestation of the kindness and providence of God;

and yet he is not a religious person; up to the time when the reader

loses sight of him, he is decidedly not a religious person; he has

glimpses, it is true, of that God who does not forsake him, but he prays

very seldom, is not fond of going to church; and, though he admires Tate

and Brady’s version of the Psalms, his admiration is rather caused by the

beautiful poetry which that version contains than the religion; yet his

tale is not finished—like the tale of the gentleman who touched objects,

and that of the old man who knew Chinese without knowing what was

o’clock; perhaps, like them, he is destined to become religious, and to

have, instead of occasional glimpses frequent and distinct views of his

God; yet, though he may become religious, it is hardly to be expected

that he will become a very precise and straightlaced person; it is

probable that he will retain, with his scholarship, something of his

gypsyism, his predilection for the hammer and tongs, and perhaps some

inclination to put on certain gloves, not white kid, with any friend who

may be inclined for a little old English diversion, and a readiness to

take a glass of ale, with plenty of malt in it, and as little hop as may

well be—ale at least two years old—with the aforesaid friend, when the

diversion is over; for, as it is the belief of the writer that a person

may get to heaven very comfortably without knowing what’s o’clock, so it

is his belief that he will not be refused admission there, because to the

last he has been fond of healthy and invigorating exercises, and felt a

willingness to partake of any of the good things which it pleases the

Almighty to put within the reach of his children during their sojourn

upon earth.

CHAPTER II.

ON PRIESTCRAFT.

THE writer will now say a few words about priestcraft, and the

machinations of Rome, and will afterwards say something about himself,

and his motives for writing against them.

With respect to Rome, and her machinations, much valuable information can

be obtained from particular parts of _Lavengro_, and its sequel. Shortly

before the time when the hero of the book is launched into the world, the

Popish agitation in England had commenced. The Popish propaganda had

determined to make a grand attempt on England; Popish priests were

scattered over the land, doing the best they could to make converts to

the old superstition. With the plans of Rome, and her hopes, and the

reasons on which those hopes are grounded, the hero of the book becomes

acquainted, during an expedition which he makes into the country, from

certain conversations which he holds with a priest in a dingle, in which

the hero had taken up his residence; he likewise learns from the same

person much of the secret history of the Roman See, and many matters

connected with the origin and progress of the Popish superstition. The

individual with whom he holds these conversations is a learned,

intelligent, but highly-unprincipled person, of a character however very

common amongst the priests of Rome, who in general are people void of all

religion, and who, notwithstanding they are tied to Rome by a band which

they have neither the power nor wish to break, turn her and her

practices, over their cups with their confidential associates, to a

ridicule only exceeded by that to which they turn those who become the

dupes of their mistress and themselves.

It is now necessary that the writer should say something with respect to

himself, and his motives for waging war against Rome. First of all, with

respect to himself, he wishes to state, that to the very last moment of

his life, he will do and say all that in his power may be to hold up to

contempt and execration the priestcraft and practices of Rome; there is,

perhaps, no person better acquainted than himself, not even among the

choicest spirits of the priesthood, with the origin and history of

Popery. From what he saw and heard of Popery in England, at a very early

period of his life, his curiosity was aroused, and he spared himself no

trouble, either by travel or study, to make himself well acquainted with

it in all its phases, the result being a hatred of it, which he hopes and

trusts he shall retain till the moment when his spirit quits the body.

Popery is the great lie of the world; a source from which more misery and

social degradation have flowed upon the human race, than from all the

other sources from which those evils come. It is the oldest of all

superstitions; and though in Europe it assumes the name of Christianity,

it existed and flourished amidst the Himalayan hills at least two

thousand years before the real Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea; in

a word, it is Buddhism; and let those who may be disposed to doubt this

assertion, compare the Popery of Rome, and the superstitious practices of

its followers, with the doings of the priests who surround the grand

Lama; and the mouthings, bellowing, turnings round, and, above all, the

penances of the followers of Buddh with those of Roman devotees. But he

is not going to dwell here on this point; it is dwelt upon at tolerable

length in the text, and has likewise been handled with extraordinary

power by the pen of the gifted but irreligious Volney; moreover, the

_élite_ of the Roman priesthood are perfectly well aware that their

system is nothing but Buddhism under a slight disguise, and the European

world in general has entertained for some time past an inkling of the

fact.

And now a few words with respect to the motives of the writer for

expressing a hatred for Rome.

This expressed abhorrence of the author for Rome might be entitled to

little regard, provided it were possible to attribute it to any

self-interested motive. There have been professed enemies of Rome, or of

this or that system; but their professed enmity may frequently be traced

to some cause which does them little credit; but the writer of these

lines has no motive, and can have no motive, for his enmity to Rome, save

the abhorrence of an honest heart for what is false, base and cruel. A

certain clergyman wrote with much heat against the Papists in the time of

— {311a} who was known to favour the Papists, but was not expected to

continue long in office, and whose supposed successor, {311b} the person,

indeed, who did succeed him, was thought to be hostile to the Papists.

This divine, who obtained a rich benefice from the successor of — {311c}

who during —’s {311d} time had always opposed him in everything he

proposed to do, and who, of course, during that time affected to be very

inimical to Popery—this divine might well be suspected of having a motive

equally creditable for writing against the Papists, as that which induced

him to write for them, as soon as his patron, who eventually did

something more for him, {312a} had espoused their cause; but what motive,

save an honest one, can the present writer have, for expressing an

abhorrence of Popery? He is no clergyman, and consequently can expect

neither benefices nor bishoprics, supposing it were the fashion of the

present, or likely to be the fashion of any future administration to

reward clergymen with benefices or bishoprics, who, in the defence of the

religion of their country write, or shall write, against Popery, and not

to reward those who write, or shall write, in favour of it, and all its

nonsense and abominations.

“But if not a clergyman, he is the servant of a certain society which has

the overthrow of Popery in view, and therefore,” etc. This assertion,

which has been frequently made, is incorrect, even as those who have made

it probably knew it to be. He is the servant of no society whatever. He

eats his own bread, {312b} and is one of the very few men in England who

are independent in every sense of the word.

It is true he went to Spain with the colours of that society on his

hat—oh! the blood glows in his veins! oh! the marrow awakes in his old

bones when he thinks of what he accomplished in Spain in the cause of

religion and civilisation with the colours of that society in his hat,

and its weapon in his hand, even the sword of the word of God; how with

that weapon he hewed left and right, making the priests fly before him,

and run away squeaking: “_Vaya_! _qué demonio es este_!” Ay, and when he

thinks of the plenty of Bible swords which he left behind him, destined

to prove, and which have already proved, pretty calthrops in the heels of

Popery. “Halloo! Batuschca,” he exclaimed the other night on reading an

article in a newspaper; {312c} “what do you think of the present doings

in Spain? Your old friend the zingaro, the gitano who rode about Spain,

to say nothing of Galicia, with the Greek Buchini behind him as his

squire, had a hand in bringing them about; there are many brave Spaniards

connected with the present movement {312d} who took Bibles from his

hands, and read them and profited by them, learning from the inspired

page the duties of one man towards another, and the real value of a

priesthood and their head, who set at nought the Word of God, and think

only of their own temporal interests; ay, and who learned Gitano—their

own Gitano—from the lips of the London Caloró, and also songs in the said

Gitano, very fit to dumbfounder your semi-Buddhist priests when they

attempt to bewilder people’s minds with their school-logic and

pseudo-ecclesiastical nonsense, songs such as—

“‘Un Erajai

Sinaba chibando un sermon—’.” {313}

But with that society he has long since ceased to have any connection; he

bade it adieu with feelings of love and admiration more than fourteen

years ago, so in continuing to assault Popery, no hopes of interest

founded on that society can sway his mind—interest! who, with worldly

interest in view, would ever have anything to do with that society? It

is poor and supported, like its founder Christ, by poor people; and so

far from having political influence, it is in such disfavour, and has

ever been, with the dastardly great, to whom the government of England

has for many years past been confided, that the having borne its colours

only for a month would be sufficient to exclude any man, whatever his

talents, his learning, or his courage may be, from the slightest chance

of being permitted to serve his country either for fee, or without. A

fellow who unites in himself the bankrupt trader, the broken author, or

rather book-maker, and the laughed-down single speech spouter of the

House of Commons, may look forward, always supposing that at one time he

has been a foaming radical, to the government of an important colony.

Ay, an ancient fox who has lost his tail may, provided he has a score of

radical friends, who will swear that he can bark Chinese, though Chinese

is not barked but sung, be forced upon a Chinese colony, though it is

well known that to have lost one’s tail, is considered by the Chinese in

general as an irreparable infamy, whilst to have been once connected with

a certain society, to which, to its honour be it said, all the radical

party are vehemently hostile, would be quite sufficient to keep any one

not only from a government, but something much less, even though he could

translate the rhymed _Sessions of Hariri_, and were versed, still

retaining his tail, in the two languages in which Kien-Loung wrote his

Eulogium on Moukden, that piece which, translated by Amyot, the learned

Jesuit, won the applause of the celebrated Voltaire.

No! were the author influenced by hopes of fee or reward, he would,

instead of writing against Popery, write for it; all the trumpery

titled—he will not call them great again—would then be for him, and their

masters the radicals, with their hosts of newspapers, would be for him,

more especially if he would commence maligning the society whose colours

he had once on his hat—a society which, as the priest says in the text,

is one of the very few Protestant institutions for which the Popish

Church entertains any fear, and consequently respect, as it respects

nothing which it does not fear. The writer said that certain “rulers”

would never forgive him for having been connected with that society; he

went perhaps too far in saying “never”. It is probable that they would

take him into favour on one condition, which is, that he should turn his

pen and his voice against that society; such a mark “of a better way of

thinking,” would perhaps induce them to give him a government, nearly as

good as that which they gave to a certain ancient radical fox at the

intercession of his radical friends (who were bound to keep him from the

pauper’s kennel), after he had promised to foam, bark and snarl at

corruption no more; he might even entertain hopes of succeeding, nay, of

superseding, the ancient creature in his government; but even were he as

badly off as he is well off, he would do no such thing. He would rather

exist on crusts and water; he has often done so, and been happy; nay, he

would rather starve than be a rogue—for even the feeling of starvation is

happiness compared with what he feels who knows himself to be a rogue,

provided he has any feeling at all. What is the use of a mitre or

knighthood to a man who has betrayed his principles? What is the use of

a gilt collar, nay, even of a pair of scarlet breeches, to a fox who has

lost his tail? Oh! the horror which haunts the mind of the fox who has

lost his tail; and with reason, for his very mate loathes him and more

especially if, like himself, she has lost her brush. Oh! the horror

which haunts the mind of the two-legged rogue who has parted with his

principles, or those which he professed—for what? We’ll suppose a

government. What’s the use of a government, if, the next day after you

have received it, you are obliged for very shame to scurry off to it with

the hoot of every honest man sounding in your ears?

“Lightly liar leaped and away ran.”

—PIERS PLOWMAN.

But bigotry, it has been said, makes the author write against Popery; and

thorough-going bigotry, indeed, will make a person say or do anything.

But the writer is a very pretty bigot truly! Where will the public find

traces of bigotry in anything he has written? He has written against

Rome with all his heart, with all his mind, with all his soul, and with

all his strength; but as a person may be quite honest, and speak and

write against Rome, in like manner he may speak and write against her,

and be quite free from bigotry; though it is impossible for any one but a

bigot or a bad man to write or speak in her praise; her doctrines,

actions and machinations being what they are.

Bigotry! The author was born, and has always continued, in the wrong

Church for bigotry, the quiet, unpretending Church of England; a Church

which, had it been a bigoted Church, and not long suffering almost to a

fault, might with its opportunities, as the priest says in the text, have

stood in a very different position from that which it occupies at

present. No! let those who are in search of bigotry, seek for it in a

Church very different from the inoffensive Church of England, which never

encourages cruelty or calumny. Let them seek for it amongst the members

of the Church of Rome, and more especially amongst those who have

renegaded to it. There is nothing, however false and horrible, which a

pervert to Rome will not say for his Church, and which his priests will

not encourage him in saying; and there is nothing, however horrible—the

more horrible indeed and revolting to human nature, the more eager he

would be to do it—which he will not do for it and which his priests will

not encourage him in doing.

Of the readiness which converts to Popery exhibit to sacrifice all the

ties of blood and affection on the shrine of their newly-adopted

religion, there is a curious illustration in the work of Luigi Pulci.

This man, who was born in Florence in the year 1432, and who was deeply

versed in the Bible, composed a poem, called the _Morgante Maggiore_,

which he recited at the table of Lorenzo de’ Medici, the great patron of

Italian genius. It is a mock-heroic and religious poem, in which the

legends of knight-errantry, and of the Popish Church, are turned to

unbounded ridicule. The pretended hero of it is a converted giant,

called Morgante; though his adventures do not occupy the twentieth part

of the poem, the principal personages being Charlemagne, Orlando, and his

cousin Rinaldo of Montalban. Morgante has two brothers, both of them

giants, and in the first canto of the poem, Morgante is represented with

his brothers as carrying on a feud with the abbot and monks of a certain

convent, built upon the confines of heathenesse; the giants being in the

habit of flinging down stones, or rather huge rocks, on the convent.

Orlando, however, who is banished from the court of Charlemagne, arriving

at the convent, undertakes to destroy them, and, accordingly, kills

Passamonte and Alabastro, and converts Morgante, whose mind had been

previously softened by a vision, in which the “Blessed Virgin” figures.

No sooner is he converted than, as a sign of his penitence, what does he

do, but hastens and cuts off the hands of his two brothers, saying—

“Io vo’ tagliar le mani à tutti quanti

E porterolle à que’ monaci santi”. {316a}

And he does cut off the hands of his brethren, and carries them to the

abbot, who blesses him for so doing. Pulci here is holding up to

ridicule and execration the horrid butchery or betrayal of friends by

popish converts, and the encouragement they receive from the priest. No

sooner is a person converted to Popery, than his principal thought is how

he can bring the hands and feet of his brethren, however harmless they

may be, and different from the giants, to the “holy priests,” who, if he

manages to do so, never fail to praise him, saying to the miserable

wretch, as the abbot said to Morgante:—

“Tu sarai or perfetto e veto amico

A Cristo, quauto tu gli eri nemico”. {316b}

Can the English public deny the justice of Pulci’s illustration, after

something which it has lately witnessed? Has it not seen equivalents for

the hands and feet of brothers carried by popish perverts to the “holy

priests,” and has it not seen the manner in which the offering has been

received? Let those who are in quest of Bigotry seek for it among the

perverts to Rome, and not amongst those who, born in the pale of the

Church of England, have always continued in it.

CHAPTER III.

ON FOREIGN NONSENSE.

WITH respect to the third point, various lessons which the book reads to

the nation at large, and which it would be well for the nation to ponder

and profit by.

There are many species of nonsense to which the nation is much addicted,

and of which the perusal of _Lavengro_ ought to give them a wholesome

shame. First of all, with respect to the foreign nonsense so prevalent

now in England. The hero is a scholar; but, though possessed of a great

many tongues, he affects to be neither Frenchman, nor German, nor this or

that foreigner; he is one who loves his country, and the language and

literature of his country, and speaks up for each and all when there is

occasion to do so. Now what is the case with nine out of ten amongst

those of the English who study foreign languages? No sooner have they

picked up a smattering of this or that speech than they begin to abuse

their own country, and everything connected with it, more especially its

language. This is particularly the case with those who call themselves

German students. It is said, and the writer believes with truth, that

when a woman falls in love with a particularly ugly fellow, she squeezes

him with ten times more zest than she would a handsome one, if captivated

by him. So it is with these German students; no sooner have they taken

German in hand than there is nothing like German. Oh, the dear,

delightful German! How proud I am that it is now my own, and that its

divine literature is within my reach! And all this whilst mumbling the

most uncouth speech, and crunching the most crabbed literature in Europe.

The writer is not an exclusive admirer of everything English; he does not

advise his country people never to go abroad, never to study foreign

languages, and he does not wish to persuade them that there is nothing

beautiful or valuable in foreign literature; he only wishes that they

would not make themselves fools with respect to foreign people, foreign

languages or reading; that if they chance to have been in Spain, and have

picked up a little Spanish, they would not affect the airs of Spaniards;

that if males they would not make Tom-fools of themselves by sticking

cigars into their mouths, dressing themselves in _zamarras_, and saying,

_carajo_! {318} and if females that they would not make zanies of

themselves by sticking cigars into their mouths, flinging mantillas over

their heads, and by saying _carai_, and perhaps _carajo_ too; or if they

have been in France or Italy, and have picked up a little French or

Italian, they would not affect to be French or Italians; and

particularly, after having been a month or two in Germany, or picked up a

little German in England, they would not make themselves foolish about

everything German, as the Anglo-German in the book does—a real character,

the founder of the Anglo-German school in England, and the cleverest

Englishman who ever talked or wrote encomiastic nonsense about Germany

and the Germans. Of all infatuations connected with what is foreign, the

infatuation about everything that is German, to a certain extent

prevalent in England, is assuredly the most ridiculous. One can find

something like a palliation for people making themselves somewhat foolish

about particular languages, literatures and people. The Spanish

certainly is a noble language, and there is something wild and

captivating in the Spanish character, and its literature contains the

grand book of the world. French is a manly language. The French are the

great martial people in the world; and French literature is admirable in

many respects. Italian is a sweet language, and of beautiful

simplicity—its literature perhaps the first in the world. The

Italians!—wonderful men have sprung up in Italy. Italy is not merely

famous for painters, poets, musicians, singers and linguists—the greatest

linguist the world ever saw, the late Cardinal Mezzofanti, was an

Italian; but it is celebrated for men—men emphatically speaking: Columbus

was an Italian, Alexander Farnese was an Italian, so was the mightiest of

the mighty, Napoleon Bonaparte; but the German language, German

literature, and the Germans! The writer has already stated his opinion

with respect to German; he does not speak from ignorance or prejudice; he

has heard German spoken, and many other languages. German literature!

He does not speak from ignorance, he has read that and many a literature,

and he repeats—however, he acknowledges that there is one fine poem in

the German language, that poem is the _Oberon_; a poem, by-the-bye,

ignored by the Germans—a speaking fact—and of course, by the

Anglo-Germanists. The Germans! he has been amongst them, and amongst

many other nations, and confesses that his opinion of the Germans, as

men, is a very low one. Germany, it is true, has produced one very great

man, the monk who fought the Pope, and nearly knocked him down; but this

man his country-men—a telling fact—affect to despise, and, of course, the

Anglo-Germanists: the father of Anglo-Germanism was very fond of

inveighing against Luther.

The madness, or rather foolery, of the English for foreign customs,

dresses and languages, is not an affair of to-day, or yesterday—it is of

very ancient date, and was very properly exposed nearly three centuries

ago by one Andrew Borde, who under the picture of a “Naked man, with a

pair of shears in one hand, and a roll of cloth in the other,” inserted

the following lines along with others:—{319}

I am an Englishman, and naked I stand here,

Musing in my mind what garment I shall weare;

For now I will weare this, and now I will weare that,

Now I will weare, I cannot tell what.

All new fashions be pleasant to mee,

I will have them, whether I thrive or thee;

What do I care if all the world me fail?

I will have a garment [shall] reach to my taile;

Then am I a minion, for I weare the new guise.

The next yeare after I hope to be wise,

Not only in wearing my gorgeous array,

For I will go to learning a whole summer’s day,

I will learn Latine, Hebrew, Greek, and French,

And I will learn Dutch, sitting on my bench.

I had no peere if to myself I were true,

Because I am not so, divers times do I rue.

Yet I lacke nothing, I have all things at will

If I were wise and would hold myself still,

And meddle with no matters but to me pertaining,

But ever to be true to God and my King.

But I have such matters rowling in my pate,

That I will and do — — I cannot tell what, etc.

CHAPTER IV.

ON GENTILITY NONSENSE.

What is gentility? People in different stations in England entertain

different ideas of what is genteel, {320} but it must be something

gorgeous, glittering or tawdry, to be considered genteel by any of them.

The beau-ideal of the English aristocracy, of course with some

exceptions, is some young fellow with an imperial title, a military

personage of course, for what is military is so particularly genteel,

with flaming epaulets, a cocked hat and plume, a prancing charger, and a

band of fellows called generals and colonels, with flaming epaulets,

cocked hats and plumes, and prancing chargers vapouring behind him. It

was but lately that the daughter of an English marquis was heard to say,

that the sole remaining wish of her heart—she had known misfortunes, and

was not far from fifty—was to be introduced to—whom? The Emperor of

Austria! The sole remaining wish of the heart of one who ought to have

been thinking of the grave and judgment, was to be introduced to the

miscreant who had caused the blood of noble Hungarian females to be

whipped out of their shoulders, for no other crime than devotion to their

country, and its tall and heroic sons. The middle classes—of course

there are some exceptions—admire the aristocracy, and consider them

pinks, the aristocracy who admire the Emperor of Austria, and adored the

Emperor of Russia, till he became old, ugly and unfortunate, when their

adoration instantly terminated; for what is more ungenteel than age,

ugliness and misfortune! The beau-ideal with those of the lower classes,

with peasants and mechanics, is some flourishing railroad contractor:

look, for example, how they worship Mr. Flamson. This person makes his

grand début in the year ’thirty-nine, at a public meeting in the

principal room of a country inn. He has come into the neighbourhood with

the character of a man worth a million pounds, who is to make everybody’s

fortune; at this time, however, he is not worth a shilling of his own,

though he flashes about dexterously three or four thousand pounds, part

of which sum he has obtained by specious pretences, and part from certain

individuals who are his confederates. But in the year ’forty-nine, he is

really in possession of the fortune which he and his agents pretended he

was worth ten years before—he is worth a million pounds. By what means

has he come by them? By railroad contracts, for which he takes care to

be paid in hard cash before he attempts to perform them, and to carry out

which he makes use of the sweat and blood of wretches who, since their

organisation, have introduced crimes and language into England to which

it was previously almost a stranger—by purchasing, with paper, shares by

hundreds in the schemes to execute which he contracts, and which are of

his own devising; which shares he sells as soon as they are at a high

premium, to which they are speedily forced by means of paragraphs,

inserted by himself and agents, in newspapers devoted to his interest,

utterly reckless of the terrible depreciation to which they are almost

instantly subjected. But he is worth a million pounds, there can be no

doubt of the fact—he has not made people’s fortunes, at least those whose

fortunes it was said he would make; he has made them away; but his own he

has made, emphatically made it; he is worth a million pounds. Hurrah for

the millionnaire! The clown who views the pandemonium of red brick which

he has built on the estate which he has purchased in the neighbourhood of

the place of his grand début in which every species of architecture,

Greek, Indian and Chinese, is employed in caricature—who hears of the

grand entertainment he gives at Christmas in the principal dining-room,

the hundred wax-candles, the waggon-load of plate, and the oceans of wine

which form parts of it, and above all the two ostrich poults, one at the

head, and the other at the foot of the table, exclaims: “Well! if he

a’n’t bang up, I don’t know who be; why he beats my lord hollow!” The

mechanic of the borough town, who sees him dashing through the streets in

an open landau, drawn by four milk-white horses, amidst its attendant

out-riders; his wife, a monster of a woman, by his side, stout as the

wife of Tamerlane, who weighed twenty stone, and bedizened out like her

whose person shone with the jewels of plundered Persia, stares with

silent wonder, and at last exclaims: “That’s the man for my vote!” You

tell the clown that the man of the mansion has contributed enormously to

corrupt the rural innocence of England; you point to an incipient branch

railroad, from around which the accents of Gomorrah are sounding, and beg

him to listen for a moment, and then close his ears. Hodge scratches his

head and says: “Well, I have nothing to say to that; all I known is that

he is bang up, and I wish I were he”; perhaps he will add—a Hodge has

been known to add—“He has been kind enough to put my son on that very

railroad; ’tis true the company is somewhat queer, and the work rather

killing, but he gets there half a crown a day, whereas from the farmers

he would only get eighteenpence.” You remind the mechanic that the man

in the landau has been the ruin of thousands, and you mention people whom

he himself knows, people in various grades of life, widows and orphans

amongst them, whose little all he has dissipated, and whom he has reduced

to beggary by inducing them to become sharers in his delusive schemes.

But the mechanic says: “Well, the more fools they to let themselves be

robbed. But I don’t call that kind of thing robbery, I merely call it

out-witting; and everybody in this free country has a right to outwit

others if he can. What a turn-out he has!” One was once heard to add:

“I never saw a more genteel-looking man in all my life except one, and

that was a gentleman’s walley, who was much like him. It is true he is

rather undersized, but then, madam, you know, makes up for all.”

CHAPTER V.

SUBJECT OF GENTILITY CONTINUED.

IN the last chapter have been exhibited specimens of gentility, so

considered by different classes; by one class, power, youth and epaulets

are considered the _ne plus ultra_ of gentility; by another class, pride,

stateliness and title; by another, wealth and flaming tawdriness. But

what constitutes a gentleman? It is easy to say at once what constitutes

a gentleman, and there are no distinctions in what is gentlemanly, {323}

as there are in what is genteel. The characteristics of a gentleman are

high feeling—a determination never to take a cowardly advantage of

another—a liberal education—absence of narrow views—generosity and

courage, propriety of behaviour. Now a person may be genteel according

to one or another of the three standards described above, and not possess

one of the characteristics of a gentleman. Is the emperor a gentleman,

with spatters of blood on his clothes, scourged from the backs of noble

Hungarian women? Are the aristocracy gentlefolks, who admire him? Is

Mr. Flamson a gentleman, although he has a million pounds? No! cowardly

miscreants, admirers of cowardly miscreants, and people who make a

million pounds by means compared with which those employed to make

fortunes by the getters up of the South Sea Bubble might be called honest

dealing, are decidedly not gentlefolks. Now as it is clearly

demonstrable that a person may be perfectly genteel according to some

standard or other, and yet be no gentleman, so is it demonstrable that a

person may have no pretensions to gentility, and yet be a gentleman. For

example, there is Lavengro! Would the admirers of the emperor, or the

admirers of those who admire the emperor, or the admirers of Mr. Flamson,

call him genteel? and gentility with them is everything! Assuredly they

would not; and assuredly they would consider him respectively as a being

to be shunned, despised, or hooted. Genteel! Why at one time he is a

hack author—writes reviewals for eighteenpence a page—edits a Newgate

chronicle. At another he wanders the country with a face grimy from

occasionally mending kettles; and there is no evidence that his clothes

are not seedy and torn, and his shoes down at the heel; but by what

process of reasoning will they prove that he is no gentleman? Is he not

learned? Has he not generosity and courage? Whilst a hack author, does

he pawn the books entrusted to him to review? Does he break his word to

his publisher? Does he write begging letters? Does he get clothes or

lodgings without paying for them? Again, whilst a wanderer, does he

insult helpless women on the road with loose proposals or ribald

discourse? Does he take what is not his own from the hedges? Does he

play on the fiddle, or make faces in public-houses, in order to obtain

pence or beer? or does he call for liquor, swallow it, and then say to a

widowed landlady, “Mistress, I have no brass?” In a word, what vice and

crime does he perpetrate—what low acts does he commit? Therefore, with

his endowments, who will venture to say that he is no gentleman?—unless

it be an admirer of Mr. Flamson—a clown—who will, perhaps, shout: “I say

he is no gentleman; for who can be a gentleman who keeps no gig?”

The indifference exhibited by Lavengro for what is merely genteel,

compared with his solicitude never to infringe the strict laws of honour,

should read a salutary lesson. The generality of his countrymen are far

more careful not to transgress the customs of what they call gentility,

than to violate the laws of honour or morality. They will shrink from

carrying their own carpet-bag, and from speaking to a person in seedy

raiment, whilst to matters of much higher importance they are shamelessly

indifferent. Not so Lavengro; he will do anything that he deems

convenient, or which strikes his fancy, provided it does not outrage

decency, or is unallied to profligacy; is not ashamed to speak to a

beggar in rags, and will associate with anybody, provided he can gratify

a laudable curiosity. He has no abstract love for what is low, or what

the world calls low. He sees that many things which the world looks down

upon are valuable, so he prizes much which the world contemns; he sees

that many things which the world admires are contemptible, so he despises

much which the world does not; but when the world prizes what is really

excellent, he does not contemn it, because the world regards it. If he

learns Irish, which all the world scoffs at, he likewise learns Italian,

which all the world melts at. If he learns Gypsy, the language of the

tattered tent, he likewise learns Greek, the language of the college

hall. If he learns smithery, he also learns—ah! what does he learn to

set against smithery?—the law? No; he does not learn the law, which, by

the way, is not very genteel. Swimming? Yes, he learns to swim.

Swimming, however, is not genteel; and the world—at least the genteel

part of it—acts very wisely in setting its face against it; for to swim

you must be naked, and how would many a genteel person look without his

clothes? Come, he learns horsemanship; a very genteel accomplishment,

which every genteel person would gladly possess, though not all genteel

people do.

Again as to associates: if he holds communion when a boy with Murtagh,

the scarecrow of an Irish academy, he associates in after life with

Francis Ardry, a rich and talented young Irish gentleman about town. If

he accepts an invitation from Mr. Petulengro to his tent, he has no

objection to go home with a rich genius to dinner; who then will say that

he prizes a thing or a person because they are ungenteel? That he is not

ready to take up with everything that is ungenteel he gives a proof, when

he refuses, though on the brink of starvation, to become bonnet to the

thimble-man, an office, which, though profitable, is positively

ungenteel. Ah! but some sticker-up for gentility will exclaim: “The hero

did not refuse this office from an insurmountable dislike to its

ungentility, but merely from a feeling of principle”. Well! the writer

is not fond of argument, and he will admit that such was the case; he

admits that it was a love of principle, rather than an over-regard for

gentility, which prevented the hero from accepting, when on the brink of

starvation, an ungenteel though lucrative office, an office which, the

writer begs leave to observe, many a person with a great regard for

gentility, and no particular regard for principle, would in a similar

strait have accepted; for when did a mere love for gentility keep a

person from being a dirty scoundrel, when the alternatives apparently

were “either be a dirty scoundrel or starve?” One thing, however, is

certain, which is, that Lavengro did not accept the office, which if a

love for what is low had been his ruling passion he certainly would have

done; consequently, he refuses to do one thing which no genteel person

would willingly do, even as he does many things which every genteel

person would gladly do, for example, speaks Italian, rides on horseback,

associates with a fashionable young man, dines with a rich genius, et

cetera. Yet—and it cannot be minced—he and gentility with regard to many

things are at strange divergency; he shrinks from many things at which

gentility placidly hums a tune, or approvingly simpers, and does some

things at which gentility positively shrinks. He will not run into debt

for clothes or lodgings, which he might do without any scandal to

gentility; he will not receive money from Francis Ardry, and go to

Brighton with the sister of Annette Le Noir, though there is nothing

ungenteel in borrowing money from a friend, even when you never intend to

repay him, and something poignantly genteel in going to a watering-place

with a gay young Frenchwoman; but he has no objection, after raising

twenty pounds by the sale of that extraordinary work _Joseph Sell_, to

set off into the country, mend kettles under hedge-rows, and make pony

and donkey shoes in a dingle. Here, perhaps, some plain, well-meaning

person will cry—and with much apparent justice—how can the writer justify

him in this act? What motive, save a love for what is low, could induce

him to do such things? Would the writer have everybody who is in need of

recreation go into the country, mend kettles under hedges, and make pony

shoes in dingles? To such an observation the writer would answer, that

Lavengro had an excellent motive in doing what he did, but that the

writer is not so unreasonable as to wish everybody to do the same. It is

not everybody who can mend kettles. It is not everybody who is in

similar circumstances to those in which Lavengro was. Lavengro flies

from London and hack authorship, and takes to the roads from fear of

consumption; it is expensive to put up at inns, and even at

public-houses, and Lavengro has not much money; so he buys a tinker’s

cart and apparatus, and sets up as tinker, and subsequently as

blacksmith; a person living in a tent, or in anything else, must do

something or go mad; Lavengro had a mind, as he himself well knew, with

some slight tendency to madness, and had he not employed himself, he must

have gone wild; so to employ himself he drew upon one of his resources,

the only one available at the time. Authorship had nearly killed him, he

was sick of reading, and had besides no books; but he possessed the

rudiments of an art akin to tinkering; he knew something of smithery,

having served a kind of apprenticeship in Ireland to a fairy smith; so he

draws upon his smithery to enable him to acquire tinkering, and through

the help which it affords him, owing to its connection with tinkering, he

speedily acquires that craft, even as he had speedily acquired Welsh,

owing to its connection with Irish, which language he possessed; and with

tinkering he amuses himself until he lays it aside to resume smithery. A

man who has any innocent resource, has quite as much right to draw upon

it in need, as he has upon a banker in whose hands he has placed a sum;

Lavengro turns to advantage, under particular circumstances, a certain

resource which he has, but people who are not so forlorn as Lavengro, and

have not served the same apprenticeship which he had, are not advised to

follow his example. Surely he was better employed in plying the trades

of tinker and smith than in having recourse to vice, in running after

milk-maids, for example. Running after milk-maids is by no means an

ungenteel rural diversion; but let any one ask some respectable casuist

(The Bishop of London for example), whether Lavengro was not far better

employed, when in the country, at tinkering and smithery than he would

have been in running after all the milk-maids in Cheshire, though

tinkering is in general considered a very ungenteel employment, and

smithery little better, notwithstanding that an Orcadian poet, who wrote

in Norse about eight hundred years ago, reckons the latter among nine

noble arts which he possessed, naming it along with playing at chess, on

the harp, and ravelling runes, or as the original has it, “treading

runes”—that is, compressing them into a small compass by mingling one

letter with another, even as the Turkish caligraphists ravel the Arabic

letters, more especially those who write talismans.

Nine arts have I, all noble;

I play at chess so free,

At ravelling runes I’m ready,

At books and smithery;

I’m skill’d o’er ice at skimming

On skates, I shoot and row,

And few at harping match me,

Or minstrelsy, I trow.

But though Lavengro takes up smithery, which, though the Orcadian ranks

it with chess-playing and harping, is certainly somewhat of a grimy art,

there can be no doubt that, had he been wealthy and not so forlorn as he

was, he would have turned to many things, honourable, of course, in

preference. He has no objection to ride a fine horse when he has the

opportunity: he has his day-dream of making a fortune of two hundred

thousand pounds by becoming a merchant and doing business after the

Armenian fashion; and there can be no doubt that he would have been glad

to wear fine clothes, provided he had had sufficient funds to authorise

him in wearing them. For the sake of wandering the country and plying

the hammer and tongs, he would not have refused a commission in the

service of that illustrious monarch George the Fourth, provided he had

thought that he could live on his pay, and not be forced to run in debt

to tradesmen, without any hope of paying them, for clothes and luxuries,

as many highly genteel officers in that honourable service were in the

habit of doing. For the sake of tinkering, he would certainly not have

refused a secretaryship of an embassy to Persia, in which he might have

turned his acquaintance with Persian, Arabic, and the Lord only knows

what other languages, to account. He took to tinkering and smithery,

because no better employments were at his command. No war is waged in

the book against rank, wealth, fine clothes or dignified employments; it

is shown, however, that a person may be a gentleman and a scholar without

them. Rank, wealth, fine clothes and dignified employments, are no doubt

very fine things, but they are merely externals, they do not make a

gentleman, they add external grace and dignity to the gentleman and

scholar, but they make neither; and is it not better to be a gentleman

without them than not a gentleman with them? Is not Lavengro, when he

leaves London on foot with twenty pounds in his pocket, entitled to more

respect than Mr. Flamson flaming in his coach with a million? And is not

even the honest jockey at Horncastle, who offers a fair price to Lavengro

for his horse, entitled to more than the scoundrel lord, who attempts to

cheat him of one-fourth of its value.

Millions, however, seem to think otherwise, by their servile adoration of

people whom without rank, wealth and fine clothes they would consider

infamous, but whom possessed of rank, wealth and glittering habiliments

they seem to admire all the more for their profligacy and crimes. Does

not a blood-spot, or a lust-spot, on the clothes of a blooming emperor,

give a kind of zest to the genteel young god? Do not the pride,

superciliousness and selfishness of a certain aristocracy make it all the

more regarded by its worshippers? and do not the clownish and

gutter-blood admirers of Mr. Flamson like him all the more because they

are conscious that he is a knave? If such is the case—and alas! is it

not the case?—they cannot be too frequently told that fine clothes,

wealth and titles adorn a person in proportion as he adorns them; that if

worn by the magnanimous and good they are ornaments indeed, but if by the

vile and profligate they are merely _san benitos_, and only serve to make

their infamy doubly apparent; and that a person in seedy raiment and

tattered hat, possessed of courage, kindness and virtue, is entitled to

more respect from those to whom his virtues are manifested than any cruel

profligate emperor, selfish aristocrat, or knavish millionnaire in the

world.

The writer has no intention of saying that all in England are affected

with the absurd mania for gentility; nor is such a statement made in the

book; it is shown therein that individuals of various classes can prize a

gentleman, notwithstanding seedy raiment, dusty shoes or tattered hat—for

example, the young Irishman, the rich genius, the postillion, and his

employer. Again, when the life of the hero is given to the world, amidst

the howl about its lowness and vulgarity, raised by the servile crew whom

its independence of sentiment has stung, more than one powerful voice has

been heard testifying approbation of its learning and the purity of its

morality. That there is some salt in England, minds not swayed by mere

externals, he is fully convinced; if he were not, he would spare himself

the trouble of writing; but to the fact that the generality of his

countrymen are basely grovelling before the shrine of what they are

pleased to call gentility, he cannot shut his eyes.

Oh! what a clever person that Cockney was, who, travelling in the

Aberdeen railroad carriage, after edifying the company with his remarks

on various subjects, gave it as his opinion that Lieutenant P— would, in

future, be shunned by all respectable society! And what a simple person

that elderly gentleman was, who, abruptly starting, asked in rather an

authoritative voice, “And why should Lieutenant P— be shunned by

respectable society?” and who, after entering into what was said to be a

masterly analysis of the entire evidence of the case, concluded by

stating, “that having been accustomed to all kinds of evidence all his

life, he had never known a case in which the accused had obtained a more

complete and triumphant justification than Lieutenant P— had done in the

late trial”.

Now the Cockney, who is said to have been a very foppish Cockney, was

perfectly right in what he said, and therein manifested a knowledge of

the English mind and character, and likewise of the modern English

language, to which his catechist, who, it seems, was a distinguished

member of the Scottish bar, could lay no pretensions. The Cockney knew

what the Lord of Session knew not, that the British public is gentility

crazy, and he knew, moreover, that gentility and respectability are

synonymous. No one in England is genteel or respectable that is “looked

at,” who is the victim of oppression; he may be pitied for a time, but

when did not pity terminate in contempt? A poor harmless young

officer—but why enter into the details of the infamous case? they are but

too well known, and if ever cruelty, pride and cowardice, and things much

worse than even cruelty, cowardice and pride were brought to light, and,

at the same time, countenanced, they were in that case. What availed the

triumphant justification of the poor victim? There was at first a roar

of indignation against his oppressors, but how long did it last? He had

been turned out of the service, they remained in it with their red coats

and epaulets; he was merely the son of a man who had rendered good

service to his country; they were, for the most part, highly

connected—they were in the extremest degree genteel, he quite the

reverse; so the nation wavered, considered, thought the genteel side was

the safest after all, and then with the cry of “Oh! there is nothing like

gentility,” ratted bodily. Newspaper and public turned against the

victim, scouted him, apologised for the—what should they be called?—who

were not only admitted into the most respectable society, but courted to

come, the spots not merely of wine on their military clothes, giving them

a kind of poignancy. But there is a God in heaven; the British glories

are tarnished—Providence has never smiled on British arms since that

case—oh! Balaklava! thy name interpreted is net of fishes, and well dost

thou deserve that name. How many a scarlet golden fish has of late

perished in the mud amidst thee, cursing the genteel service, and the

genteel leader which brought him to such a doom.

Whether the rage for gentility is most prevalent amongst the upper,

middle or lower classes it is difficult to say; the priest in the text

seems to think that it is exhibited in the most decided manner in the

middle class; it is the writer’s opinion, however, that in no class is it

more strongly developed than in the lower: what they call being well-born

goes a great way amongst them, but the possession of money much farther,

whence Mr. Flamson’s influence over them. Their rage against, and scorn

for, any person who by his courage and talents has advanced himself in

life, and still remains poor, are indescribable; “he is no better than

ourselves,” they say, “why should he be above us?”—for they have no

conception that anybody has a right to ascendency over themselves except

by birth or money. This feeling amongst the vulgar has been, to a

certain extent, the bane of the two services, naval and military. The

writer does not make this assertion rashly; he observed this feeling at

work in the army when a child, and he has good reason for believing that

it was as strongly at work in the navy at the same time, and is still as

prevalent in both. Why are not brave men raised from the ranks? is

frequently the cry, why are not brave sailors promoted? the Lord help

brave soldiers and sailors who are promoted; they have less to undergo

from the high airs of their brother officers, and those are hard enough

to endure, than from the insolence of the men. Soldiers and sailors

promoted to command are said to be in general tyrants; in nine cases out

of ten, when they are tyrants, they have been obliged to have recourse to

extreme severity in order to protect themselves from the insolence and

mutinous spirit of the men,—“He is no better than ourselves: shoot him,

bayonet him, or fling him overboard!” they say of some obnoxious

individual raised above them by his merit. Soldiers and sailors in

general, will bear any amount of tyranny from a lordly sot, or the son of

a man who has “plenty of brass”—their own term—but will mutiny against

the just orders of a skilful and brave officer who “is no better than

themselves”. There was the affair of the _Bounty_, for example: Bligh

was one of the best seamen that ever trod deck, and one of the bravest of

men; proofs of his seamanship he gave by steering, amidst dreadful

weather, a deeply laden boat for nearly four thousand miles over an

almost unknown ocean—of his bravery, at the fight of Copenhagen, one of

the most desperate ever fought, of which after Nelson he was the hero: he

was, moreover, not an unkind man; but the crew of the _Bounty_, mutinied

against him, and set him half naked in an open boat, with certain of his

men who remained faithful to him, and ran away with the ship. Their

principal motive for doing so was an idea, whether true or groundless the

writer cannot say, that Bligh was “no better than themselves”; he was

certainly neither a lord’s illegitimate, nor possessed of twenty thousand

pounds. The writer knows what he is writing about, having been

acquainted in his early years with an individual who was turned adrift

with Bligh, and who died about the year ’22, a lieutenant in the navy, in

a provincial town in which the writer was brought up. The ringleaders in

the mutiny were two scoundrels, Christian and Young, who had great

influence with the crew, because they were genteelly connected. Bligh,

after leaving the _Bounty_, had considerable difficulty in managing the

men who had shared his fate, because they considered themselves “as good

men as he,” notwithstanding, that to his conduct and seamanship they had

alone to look, under Heaven, for salvation from the ghastly perils that

surrounded them. Bligh himself, in his journal, alludes to this feeling.

Once, when he and his companions landed on a desert island, one of them

said, with a mutinous look, that he considered himself “as good a man as

he”; Bligh, seizing a cutlass, called upon him to take another and defend

himself, whereupon the man said that Bligh was going to kill him, and

made all manner of concessions; now why did this fellow consider himself

as good a man as Bligh? Was he as good a seaman? no, nor a tenth part as

good. As brave a man? no, nor a tenth part as brave; and of these facts

he was perfectly well aware, but bravery and seamanship stood for nothing

with him, as they still stand with thousands of his class; Bligh was not

genteel by birth or money, therefore Bligh was no better than himself.

Had Bligh, before he sailed, got a twenty-thousand pound prize in the

lottery, he would have experienced no insolence from this fellow, for

there would have been no mutiny in the _Bounty_. “He is our betters,”

the crew would have said, “and it is our duty to obey him.”

The wonderful power of gentility in England is exemplified in nothing

more than in what it is producing amongst Jews, Gypsies and Quakers. It

is breaking up their venerable communities. All the better, some one

will say. Alas! alas! It is making the wealthy Jews forsake the

synagogue for the opera-house, or the gentility chapel, in which a

disciple of Mr. Platitude, in a white surplice, preaches a sermon at

noon-day from a desk, on each side of which is a flaming taper. It is

making them abandon their ancient literature, their _Mischna_, their

_Gemara_, their _Zohar_, for gentility novels, _The Young Duke_, the most

unexceptionably genteel book ever written, being the principal favourite.

It makes the young Jew ashamed of the young Jewess, it makes her ashamed

of the young Jew. The young Jew marries an opera dancer, or if the

dancer will not have him, as is frequently the case, the cast-off Miss of

the honourable Spencer So-and-so. It makes the young Jewess accept the

honourable offer of a cashiered lieutenant of the Bengal Native Infantry;

or, if such a person does not come forward, the dishonourable offer of a

cornet of a regiment of crack hussars. It makes poor Jews, male and

female, forsake the synagogue for the sixpenny theatre or penny hop; the

Jew to take up with an Irish female of loose character, and the Jewess

with a musician of the Guards, or the Tipperary servant of Captain

Mulligan. With respect to the gypsies, it is making the women what they

never were before—harlots; and the men what they never were

before—careless fathers and husbands. It has made the daughter of

Ursula, the chaste, take up with the base drummer of a wild-beast show.

It makes Gorgiko Brown, the gypsy man, leave his tent and his old wife,

of an evening, and thrust himself into society which could well dispense

with him. “Brother,” said Mr. Petulengro the other day to the Romany

Rye, after telling him many things connected with the decadence of

gypsyism, “there is one Gorgiko Brown, who, with a face as black as a

tea-kettle, wishes to be mistaken for a Christian tradesman; he goes into

the parlour of a third-rate inn of an evening, calls for rum and water,

and attempts to enter into conversation with the company about politics

and business; the company flout him or give him the cold shoulder, or

perhaps complain to the landlord, who comes and asks him what business he

has in the parlour, telling him if he wants to drink to go into the

tap-room, and perhaps collars him and kicks him out, provided he refuses

to move.” With respect to the Quakers, it makes the young people like

the young Jews, crazy after gentility diversions, worship, marriages or

connections, and makes old Pease do what it makes Gorgiko Brown do,

thrust himself into society which could well dispense with him, and out

of which he is not kicked, because unlike the gypsy he is not poor. The

writer would say much more on these points, but want of room prevents

him; he must therefore request the reader to have patience until he can

lay before the world a pamphlet, which he has been long meditating, to be

entitled “Remarks on the strikingly similar Effects which a Love for

Gentility has produced, and is producing, amongst Jews, Gypsies and

Quakers”.

The priest in the book has much to say on the subject of this

gentility-nonsense; no person can possibly despise it more thoroughly

than that very remarkable individual seems to do, yet he hails its

prevalence with pleasure, knowing the benefits which will result from it

to the Church of which he is the sneering slave. “The English are mad

after gentility,” says he; “well, all the better for us; their religion

for a long time past has been a plain and simple one, and consequently by

no means genteel; they’ll quit it for ours, which is the perfection of

what they admire; with which Templars, Hospitalers, mitred abbots, Gothic

abbeys, long-drawn aisles, golden censers, incense, et cetera, are

connected; nothing, or next to nothing, of Christ, it is true, but

weighed in the balance against gentility, where will Christianity be?

why, kicking against the beam—ho! ho!” And in connection with the

gentility-nonsense, he expatiates largely, and with much contempt, on a

species of literature by which the interests of his Church in England

have been very much advanced—all genuine priests have a thorough contempt

for everything which tends to advance the interests of their Church—this

literature is made up of pseudo Jacobitism, Charlie o’er the waterism, or

nonsense about Charlie o’er the water. And the writer will now take the

liberty of saying a few words about it on his own account.

CHAPTER VI.

ON SCOTCH GENTILITY NONSENSE.

OF the literature just alluded to Scott was the inventor. It is founded

on the fortunes and misfortunes of the Stuart family, of which Scott was

the zealous defender and apologist, doing all that in his power lay to

represent the members of it as noble, chivalrous, high-minded,

unfortunate princes; though, perhaps, of all the royal families that ever

existed upon earth, this family was the worst. It was unfortunate

enough, it is true; but it owed its misfortunes entirely to its crimes,

viciousness, bad faith, and cowardice. Nothing will be said of it here

until it made its appearance in England to occupy the English throne.

The first of the family which we have to do with, James, was a dirty,

cowardly miscreant, of whom the less said the better. His son, Charles

the First, was a tyrant—exceedingly cruel and revengeful, but weak and

dastardly; he caused a poor fellow to be hanged in London, who was not

his subject, because he had heard that the unfortunate creature had once

bit his own glove at Cadiz, in Spain, at the mention of his name; and he

permitted his own bull-dog, Strafford, to be executed by his own enemies,

though the only crime of Strafford was, that he had barked furiously at

those enemies, and had worried two or three of them, when Charles

shouted, “Fetch ’em”. He was a bitter, but yet a despicable enemy, and

the coldest and most worthless of friends; for though he always hoped to

be able, some time or other, to hang his enemies, he was always ready to

curry favour with them, more especially if he could do so at the expense

of his friends. He was the haughtiest, yet meanest of mankind. He once

caned a young nobleman for appearing before him in the drawing-room not

dressed exactly according to the court etiquette; yet he condescended to

flatter and compliment him who, from principle, was his bitterest enemy,

namely Harrison, when the republican colonel was conducting him as a

prisoner to London. His bad faith was notorious; it was from abhorrence

of the first public instance which he gave of his bad faith, his breaking

his word to the Infanta of Spain, that the poor Hiberno-Spaniard bit his

glove at Cadiz; and it was his notorious bad faith which eventually cost

him his head; for the Republicans would gladly have spared him, provided

they could put the slightest confidence in any promise, however solemn,

which he might have made to them. Of them, it would be difficult to say

whether they most hated or despised him. Religion he had none. One day

he favoured Popery; the next, on hearing certain clamours of the people,

he sent his wife’s domestics back packing to France, because they were

Papists. Papists, however, should make him a saint, for he was certainly

the cause of the taking of Rochelle.

His son, Charles the Second, though he passed his youth in the school of

adversity, learned no other lesson from it than the following one—take

care of yourself, and never do an action, either good or bad, which is

likely to bring you into any great difficulty; and this maxim he acted up

to as soon as he came to the throne. He was a Papist, but took especial

care not to acknowledge his religion, at which he frequently scoffed,

till just before his last gasp, when he knew that he could lose nothing,

and hoped to gain everything by it. He was always in want of money, but

took care not to tax the country beyond all endurable bounds; preferring

to such a bold and dangerous course, to become the secret pensioner of

Louis, to whom, in return for his gold, he sacrificed the honour and

interests of Britain. He was too lazy and sensual to delight in playing

the part of a tyrant himself; but he never checked tyranny in others save

in one instance. He permitted beastly butchers to commit unmentionable

horrors on the feeble, unarmed and disunited Covenanters of Scotland, but

checked them when they would fain have endeavoured to play the same game

on the numerous united, dogged and warlike Independents of England. To

show his filial piety, he bade the hangman dishonour the corpses of some

of his father’s judges, before whom, when alive, he ran like a screaming

hare; but permitted those who had lost their all in supporting his

father’s cause, to pine in misery and want. He would give to a painted

harlot a thousand pounds for a loathsome embrace, and to a player or

buffoon a hundred for a trumpery pun, but would refuse a penny to the

widow or orphan of an old Royalist soldier. He was the personification

of selfishness; and as he loved and cared for no one, so did no one love

or care for him. So little had he gained the respect or affection of

those who surrounded him, that after his body had undergone an

after-death examination, parts of it were thrown down the sinks of the

palace, to become eventually the prey of the swine and ducks of

Westminster.

His brother, who succeeded him James the Second, was a Papist, but

sufficiently honest to acknowledge his Popery, but upon the whole, he was

a poor creature; though a tyrant, he was cowardly; had he not been a

coward he would never have lost his throne. There were plenty of lovers

of tyranny in England who would have stood by him, provided he would have

stood by them, and would, though not Papists, have encouraged him in his

attempt to bring back England beneath the sway of Rome, and perhaps would

eventually have become Papists themselves; but the nation raising a cry

against him, and his son-in-law, the Prince of Orange, invading the

country, he forsook his friends, of whom he had a host, but for whom he

cared little—left his throne, for which he cared a great deal—and Popery

in England, for which he cared yet more, to their fate, and escaped to

France, from whence, after taking a little heart, he repaired to Ireland,

where he was speedily joined by a gallant army of Papists whom he basely

abandoned at the Boyne, running away in a most lamentable condition, at

the time when by showing a little courage he might have enabled them to

conquer. This worthy, in his last will, bequeathed his heart to England,

his right arm to Scotland, and his bowels to Ireland. What the English

and Scotch said to their respective bequests is not known, but it is

certain that an old Irish priest, supposed to have been a great

grand-uncle of the present Reverend Father Murtagh, on hearing of the

bequest to Ireland, fell into a great passion, and having been brought up

at “Paris and Salamanca,” expressed his indignation in the following

strain: “_Malditas sean tus tripas_! _teniamos bastante del olor de tus

tripas al tiempo de tu huida de la batalla del Boyne_!”

His son, generally called the Old Pretender, though born in England, was

carried in his infancy to France, where he was brought up in the

strictest principles of Popery, which principles, however, did not

prevent him becoming (when did they ever prevent any one?) a worthless

and profligate scoundrel; there are some doubts as to the reality of his

being a son of James, which doubts are probably unfounded, the grand

proof of his legitimacy being the thorough baseness of his character. It

was said of his father that he could speak well, and it may be said of

him that he could write well, the only thing he could do which was worth

doing, always supposing that there is any merit in being able to write.

He was of a mean appearance, and, like his father, pusillanimous to a

degree. The meaness of his appearance disgusted, and his pusillanimity

discouraged, the Scotch when he made his appearance amongst them in the

year 1715, some time after the standard of rebellion had been hoisted by

Mar. He only stayed a short time in Scotland, and then, seized with

panic, retreated to France, leaving his friends to shift for themselves

as they best could. He died a pensioner of the Pope.

The son of this man, Charles Edward, of whom so much in latter years has

been said and written, was a worthless, ignorant youth, and a profligate

and illiterate old man. When young, the best that can be said of him is,

that he had occasionally springs of courage, invariably at the wrong time

and place, which merely served to lead his friends into inextricable

difficulties. When old, he was loathsome and contemptible to both friend

and foe. His wife loathed him, and for the most terrible of reasons; she

did not pollute his couch, for to do that was impossible—he had made it

so vile; but she betrayed it, inviting to it not only Alfieri the Filthy,

but the coarsest grooms. Doctor King, the warmest and almost last

adherent of his family, said that there was not a vice or crime of which

he was not guilty; as for his foes, they scorned to harm him even when in

their power. In the year 1745 he came down from the Highlands of

Scotland, which had long been a focus of rebellion. He was attended by

certain clans of the Highlands, desperadoes used to free-bootery from

their infancy, and, consequently, to the use of arms, and possessed of a

certain species of discipline; with these he defeated at Prestonpans a

body of men called soldiers, but who were in reality peasants and

artisans, levied about a month before, without discipline or confidence

in each other, and who were miserably massacred by the Highland army; he

subsequently invaded England, nearly destitute of regular soldiers, and

penetrated as far as Derby, from which place he retreated on learning

that regular forces which had been hastily recalled from Flanders were

coming against him, with the Duke of Cumberland at their head; he was

pursued, and his rear guard overtaken and defeated by the dragoons of the

duke at Clifton, from which place the rebels retreated in great confusion

across the Eden into Scotland, where they commenced dancing Highland

reels and strathspeys on the bank of the river, for joy at their escape,

whilst a number of wretched girls, paramours of some of them, were

perishing in the waters of the swollen river in an attempt to follow

them; they themselves passed over by eighties and by hundreds, arm in

arm, for mutual safety, without the loss of a man, but they left the poor

paramours to shift for themselves, nor did any of these canny people

after passing the stream dash back to rescue a single female life—no,

they were too well employed upon the bank in dancing strathspeys to the

tune of “Charlie o’er the water”. It was, indeed, Charlie o’er the

water, and canny Highlanders o’er the water, but where were the poor

prostitutes meantime? _In the water_.

The Jacobite farce, or tragedy, was speedily brought to a close by the

battle of Culloden; there did Charlie wish himself back again o’er the

water, exhibiting the most unmistakable signs of pusillanimity; there

were the clans cut to pieces, at least those who could be brought to the

charge, and there fell Giles Mac Bean, or as he was called in Gaelic,

Giliosa Mac Beathan, a kind of giant, six feet four inches and a quarter

high, “than whom,” as his wife said in a _coronach_ she made upon him,

“no man who stood at Cuiloitr was taller”—Giles Mac Bean the Major of the

clan Cattan—a great drinker—a great fisher—a great shooter, and the

champion of the Highland host.

The last of the Stuarts was a cardinal.

Such were the Stuarts, such their miserable history. They were dead and

buried in every sense of the word until Scott resuscitated them—how? by

the power of fine writing, and by calling to his aid that strange

divinity, gentility. He wrote splendid novels about the Stuarts, in

which he represents them as unlike what they really were, as the graceful

and beautiful papillon is unlike the hideous and filthy worm. In a word,

he made them genteel, and that was enough to give them paramount sway

over the minds of the British people. The public became Stuart-mad, and

everybody, especially the women, said, “What a pity it was that we hadn’t

a Stuart to govern”. All parties, Whig, Tory or Radical, became Jacobite

at heart, and admirers of absolute power. The Whigs talked about the

liberty of the subject, and the Radicals about the rights of man still,

but neither party cared a straw for what it talked about, and mentally

swore that, as soon as by means of such stuff they could get places, and

fill their pockets, they would be as Jacobite as the Jacobs themselves.

As for the Tories, no great change in them was necessary; everything

favouring absolutism and slavery being congenial to them. So the whole

nation, that is, the reading part of the nation, with some exceptions,

for thank God there has always been some salt in England, went over the

water to Charlie. But going over to Charlie was not enough, they must,

or at least a considerable part of them, go over to Rome too, or have a

hankering to do so. As the priest sarcastically observes in the text,

“As all the Jacobs were Papists, so the good folks who through Scott’s

novels admire the Jacobs must be Papists too”. An idea got about that

the religion of such genteel people as the Stuarts must be the climax of

gentility, and that idea was quite sufficient. Only let a thing, whether

temporal or spiritual, be considered genteel in England, and if it be not

followed it is strange indeed; so Scott’s writings not only made the

greater part of the nation Jacobite, but Popish.

Here some people will exclaim—whose opinions remain sound and

uncontaminated—what you say is perhaps true with respect to the Jacobite

nonsense at present so prevalent being derived from Scott’s novels, but

the Popish nonsense, which people of the genteeler classes are so fond

of, is derived from Oxford. We sent our sons to Oxford nice honest lads,

educated in the principles of the Church of England, and at the end of

the first term they came home puppies, talking Popish nonsense, which

they had learned from the pedants to whose care we had entrusted them;

ay, not only Popery but Jacobitism, which they hardly carried with them

from home, for we never heard them talking Jacobitism before they had

been at Oxford; but now their conversation is a farrago of Popish and

Jacobite stuff—“Complines and Claverse”. Now, what these honest folks

say is, to a certain extent, founded on fact; the Popery which has

overflowed the land during the last fourteen or fifteen years, has come

immediately from Oxford, and likewise some of the Jacobitism, Popish and

Jacobite nonsense, and little or nothing else, having been taught at

Oxford for about that number of years. But whence did the pedants get

the Popish nonsense with which they have corrupted youth? Why, from the

same quarter from which they got the Jacobite nonsense with which they

have inoculated those lads who were not inoculated with it before—Scott’s

novels. Jacobitism and Laudism, a kind of half Popery, had at one time

been very prevalent at Oxford, but both had been long consigned to

oblivion there, and people at Oxford cared as little about Laud as they

did about the Pretender. Both were dead and buried there, as everywhere

else, till Scott called them out of their graves when the pedants of

Oxford hailed both—ay, and the Pope, too, as soon as Scott had made the

old fellow fascinating, through particular novels, more especially the

_Monastery_ and _Abbot_. Then the quiet, respectable, honourable Church

of England would no longer do for the pedants of Oxford; they must belong

to a more genteel Church—they were ashamed at first to be downright

Romans—so they would be Lauds. The pale-looking, but exceedingly genteel

non-juring clergyman in _Waverley_ was a Laud; but they soon became tired

of being Lauds, for Laud’s Church, gew-gawish and idolatrous as it was,

was not sufficiently tinselly and idolatrous for them, so they must be

Popes, but in a sneaking way, still calling themselves Church of England

men, in order to batten on the bounty of the Church which they were

betraying, and likewise have opportunities of corrupting such lads as

might still resort to Oxford with principles uncontaminated.

So the respectable people, whose opinions are still sound, are, to a

certain extent, right when they say that the tide of Popery, which has

flowed over the land, has come from Oxford. It did come immediately from

Oxford, but how did it get to Oxford? Why, from Scott’s novels. Oh!

that sermon which was the first manifestation of Oxford feeling, preached

at Oxford some time in the year ’38 by a divine of a weak and confused

intellect, in which Popery was mixed up with Jacobitism! The present

writer remembers perfectly well, on reading some extracts from it at the

time in a newspaper, on the top of a coach, exclaiming—“Why, the

simpleton has been pilfering from Walter Scott’s novels!”

O Oxford pedants! Oxford pedants! ye whose politics and religion are

both derived from Scott’s novels! what a pity it is that some lad of

honest parents, whose mind ye are endeavouring to stultify with your

nonsense about “Complines and Claverse,” has not the spirit to start up

and cry, “Confound your gibberish! I’ll have none of it. Hurrah for the

Church, and the principles of _my father_!”

CHAPTER VII.

SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.

NOW what could have induced Scott to write novels tending to make people

Papists and Jacobites, and in love with arbitrary power? Did he think

that Christianity was a gaudy mummery? He did not, he could not, for he

had read the Bible; yet was he fond of gaudy mummeries, fond of talking

about them. Did he believe that the Stuarts were a good family, and fit

to govern a country like Britain? He knew that they were a vicious,

worthless crew, and that Britain was a degraded country as long as they

swayed the sceptre; but for those facts he cared nothing, they governed

in a way which he liked, for he had an abstract love of despotism, and an

abhorrence of everything savouring of freedom and the rights of man in

general. His favourite political picture was a joking, profligate,

careless king, nominally absolute—the heads of great houses paying court

to, but in reality governing, that king, whilst revelling with him on the

plunder of a nation, and a set of crouching, grovelling vassals (the

literal meaning of vassal is a wretch), who, after allowing themselves to

be horsewhipped, would take a bone if flung to them, and be grateful; so

that in love with mummery, though he knew what Christianity was, no

wonder he admired such a Church as that of Rome, and that which Laud set

up; and by nature formed to be the holder of the candle to ancient

worm-eaten and profligate families, no wonder that all his sympathies

were with the Stuarts and their dissipated insolent party, and all his

hatred directed against those who endeavoured to check them in their

proceedings, and to raise the generality of mankind something above a

state of vassalage, that is, wretchedness. Those who were born great,

were, if he could have had his will, always to remain great, however

worthless their characters. Those who were born low, were always to

remain so, however great their talents; though, if that rule were carried

out, where would he have been himself?

In the book which he called the _History of Napoleon Bonaparte_, in which

he plays the sycophant to all the legitimate crowned heads in Europe,

whatever their crimes, vices or miserable imbecilities, he, in his

abhorrence of everything low which by its own vigour makes itself

illustrious, calls Murat of the sabre the son of a pastry-cook, of a

Marseilleise pastry-cook. It is a pity that people who give themselves

hoity-toity airs—and the Scotch in general are wonderfully addicted to

giving themselves hoity-toity airs, and checking people better than

themselves with their birth {342} and their country—it is a great pity

that such people do not look at home—son of a pastry-cook, of a

Marseilleise pastry-cook! Well, and what was Scott himself? Why, son of

a pettifogger, of an Edinburgh pettifogger. “Oh, but Scott was descended

from the old cow-stealers of Buccleuch, and therefore—” descended from

old cow-stealers, was he? Well, had he had nothing to boast of beyond

such a pedigree, he would have lived and died the son of a pettifogger,

and been forgotten, and deservedly so; but he possessed talents, and by

his talents rose like Murat, and like him will be remembered for his

talents alone, and deservedly so. “Yes, but Murat was still the son of a

pastry-cook, and though he was certainly good at the sabre, and cut his

way to a throne, still—” Lord! what fools there are in the world; but as

no one can be thought anything of in this world without a pedigree, the

writer will now give a pedigree for Murat, of a very different character

from the cow-stealing one of Scott, but such a one as the proudest he

might not disdain to claim. Scott was descended from the old

cow-stealers of Buccleuch—was he? Good! and Murat was descended from the

old Moors of Spain, from the Abencerages (sons of the saddle) of Granada.

The name Murat is Arabic, and is the same as Murad (_Le Désiré_, or the

wished-for one). Scott in his genteel _Life of Bonaparte_, says that

“when Murat was in Egypt, the similarity between the name of the

celebrated Mameluke Mourad and that of Bonaparte’s _Meilleur Sabreur_ was

remarked, and became the subject of jest amongst the comrades of the

gallant Frenchman”. But the writer of the novel of Bonaparte did not

know that the names were one and the same. Now which was the best

pedigree, that of the son of the pastry-cook, or that of the son of the

pettifogger? Which was the best blood? Let us observe the workings of

the two bloods. He who had the blood of the “sons of the saddle” in him,

became the wonderful cavalier of the most wonderful host that ever went

forth to conquest, won for himself a crown and died the death of a

soldier, leaving behind him a son, only inferior to himself in strength,

in prowess, and in horsemanship. The descendant of the cow-stealer

became a poet, a novel writer, the panegyrist of great folk and genteel

people; became insolvent because, though an author, he deemed it

ungenteel to be mixed up with the business part of authorship; died

paralytic and broken-hearted because he could no longer give

entertainments to great folks; leaving behind him, amongst other

children, who were never heard of, a son, who, through his father’s

interest, had become lieutenant-colonel in a genteel cavalry regiment. A

son who was ashamed of his father because his father was an author; a son

who—paugh—why ask which was the best blood?

So, owing to his rage for gentility, Scott must needs become the

apologist of the Stuarts and their party; but God made this man pay

dearly for taking the part of the wicked against the good; for lauding up

to the skies the miscreants and robbers, and calumniating the noble

spirits of Britain, the salt of England, and his own country. As God had

driven the Stuarts from their throne, and their followers from their

estates, making them vagabonds and beggars on the face of the earth,

taking from them all they cared for, so did that same God, who knows

perfectly well how and where to strike, deprive the apologist of that

wretched crew of all that rendered life pleasant in his eyes, the lack of

which paralysed him in body and mind, rendered him pitiable to others,

loathsome to himself,—so much so, that he once said, “Where is the beggar

who would change places with me, notwithstanding all my fame?” Ah! God

knows perfectly well how to strike. He permitted him to retain all his

literary fame to the very last—his literary fame for which he cared

nothing; but what became of the sweetness of life, his fine house, his

grand company, and his entertainments? The grand house ceased to be his;

he was only permitted to live in it on sufferance, and whatever grandeur

it might still retain, it soon became as desolate a looking house as any

misanthrope could wish to see—where were the grand entertainments and the

grand company? there are no grand entertainments where there is no money;

no lords and ladies where there are no entertainments—and there lay the

poor lodger in the desolate house, groaning on a bed no longer his,

smitten by the hand of God in the part where he was most vulnerable. Of

what use telling such a man to take comfort, for he had written the

_Minstrel_ and _Rob Roy_,—telling him to think of his literary fame?

Literary fame, indeed! he wanted back his lost gentility.—

Retain my altar,

I care nothing for it—but, oh! touch not my _beard_.

—PARNY’S _War of the Gods_.