TALBOYS.

I will immediately.

NORTH.

To my mind--angler as I am--

TALBOYS.

The Prince of Anglers.

NORTH.

To my mind, two lines and a half about Fishes are here too much--"finny

darter" seems conceited--and "dwells and _revels_" needlessly

strong--and the _frequent rising_ of "finny darters with the glittering

scales" to me seems hardly consistent with the solemn serenity inspired

by the Temple, "of small and delicate proportion" "keeping its memory

of Thee,"--whatever that may mean;--nor do I think that a poetical mind

like Byron's, if fully possessed in ideal contemplation with the beauty

of the whole, would have thought so much of such an occurrence, or

dwelt upon it with so many words.

TALBOYS.

I wish that finny darters with the glittering scales had oft leaped

from out thy current's calmness, Thou Glenorchy, yesterday--but not a

fin could I stir with finest tackle and Double-Nothings.

NORTH.

That is no answer, either one way or another, to my gentle demur to

the perfection of the stanzas. The "scattered water-lily" may be well

enough--so let it pass--with this ob, that the flower of the water-lily

is not easily separated from its stalk--and is not, in that state,

eligible as an image of peace.

TALBOYS.

It is of beauty.

NORTH.

Be it so. But, is "scattered" the right word? No. A water-lily to be

_scattered_ must be _torn_--for you scatter many, not one--a fleet, not

a ship--a flock of sheep, not one lamb. A solitary water-lily--broken

off and drifting by, has, as you said, its own beauty--and Byron

doubtlessly intended that--but he has not said it--he has said the

reverse--for a "scattered" water-lily is a dishevelled water-lily--a

water-lily no more--a dispersed or dispersing multitude of leaves--of

what had been a moment before--a Flower.

TALBOYS.

The image pleases everybody--take it as you find it, and be content.

NORTH.

I take it as I find it, and am not content; I take it as I don't find

it, and am. Then I gently demur to "still tells its bubbling tales." In

Gray's line--

"And pore upon the brook that babbles by,"

the word "babbles" is the right one--a mitigated "brawling"--a

continuous murmur without meaning, till you give it one or many--like

that of some ceaseless female human being, pleasantly accompanying

your reveries that have no relation to what you hear. Her blameless

babble has that effect--and were it to stop, you would awake. But

Byron's "shallower wave still tells its _bubbling tales_"--a tale is

still about something--however small--and pray what is that something?

Nothing. "Tales," then, is not the _very_ word here--nor will

"bubbling" make it so--at best it is a prettyism rather than Poetry.

The Poet is becoming a Poetaster.

TALBOYS.

I shall never recite another finest descriptive passage from the whole

range of our British Poets--during the course of my life--in this

Pavilion.

NORTH.

Let us look at the Temple.

TALBOYS.

Be done, I beseech you, sir.

NORTH.

Talboys, you have as logical--as legal a head as any man I know.

TALBOYS.

What has a logical or legal head to do with Byron's description of the

Clitumnus?

NORTH.

As much as with any other "Process." And you know it. But you are in a

most contradictory--I had almost said captious mood, this forenoon--and

will not imbibe genially----

TALBOYS.

Imbibe genially--acids--after having imbibed in the body immeasurable

rain.

NORTH.

Let us look at the Temple. "A Temple still" might mean a still temple.

TALBOYS.

But it doesn't.

NORTH.

A Poet's meaning should never, through awkwardness, be ambiguous.

But no more of that. "Keeps its Memory of Thee" suggests to my mind

that the Temple, dedicated of old to the River-God, retains, under

the new religion of the land, evidence of the old Deification and

Worship. The Temple survives to express to us of another day and

faith, a Deification and worship of Thee--Clitumnus--dictated by the

same apprehension of thy characteristic Beauty in the hearts of those

old worshippers that now possesses ours looking on Thee. Thou art

unchanged--the sensitive and imaginative intelligence of Thee in man is

unchanged--although times have changed--states, nations--and, to the

eyes of man, the heavens themselves! If all this be meant--all this is

not said--in the words you admire.

TALBOYS.

I cannot say, as an honest man, that I distinctly understand you, my

dear sir.

NORTH.

You understand me better than you understand Byron.

TALBOYS.

I understand neither of you.

NORTH.

The poetical thought seems to be here--that the Temple rises up

spontaneously on the bank--under the power of the Beautiful in the

river--a permanent self-sprung reflexion of _that_ Beautiful--as

indeed, to imagination, all things appear to create themselves!

TALBOYS.

You speak like yourself now, sir.

NORTH.

But look here, my good Talboys. The statue of Achilles may "keep

its memory"--granting the locution to be good, which it is not--of

Achilles--for Achilles is no more. Sink--in a rapture of thought--the

hand of the artist--think that the statues of Achilles _came of

themselves_--as unsown flowers come--for poets to express to all

ages the departed Achilles. They keep--as long as they remain

unperished--"their memory of Achilles"--they were from the beginning

voluntary and intentional conservators of the Memory of the Hero. But

_Clitumnus is here_--alive to this hour, and with every prospect of

outliving his own Temple. What do you say to that?

TALBOYS.

To what?

NORTH.

Finally--if that reminiscence of the Heathen deification, which I

first proposed, was in Byron's mind--and he means by "still keeps

its memory of Thee" memory of the River-God--and of the Worship of

the River-God--then all he says about the mere natural river--its

leaping fishes, and so forth, is wide of his own purpose--and what is

worse--implies an absurdity--a reminiscence--not of the past--but of

the present.

TALBOYS.

If all that were submitted to me for the Pursuer, in Printed Papers--I

should appoint answers to be given in by the Defender--within seven

days--and within seven days after that--give judgment.

NORTH.

Keep your temper, Mr Testy. As I have no wish to sour you for the

rest of the day, I shall say little about the Third Stanza. "Pass not

unblest the Genius of the Place," would to me be a more impressive

prayer, if there were more _spirituality_ in the preceding stanzas--and

in the lines which follow it; for the Genius of the Place has been

acting, and continues to act, almost solely on the Senses. And who

is the Genius of the Place? The River-God--he to whom the Gentile

worship built that Temple. But Byron says, most unpoetically, "along

his margin"--along the margin of the Genius of the Place! Then, how

flat--how poor--after "the Genius of the Place"--"_the freshness of

the Scene_"--for the freshness of _the Scene_ bless the genius of

_the Place_! Is that language flowing, from the emotion of a Poet's

heart? And the last line spoils all; for he, whom we are to bless--the

River-God--or the Genius of the Place--has given the heart but a

"moment's" cleanness from dry dust--but a moment's, and no more! And

never did hard, coarse Misanthropy so mar a Poet's purpose as by

the shocking prose that is left grating on our souls--"_suspension

of disgust_!" So, after all this beauty--and all this enjoyment of

beauty--well or ill painted by the Poet--you _must pay orisons_ to the

River-God or the Genius--whom you had been called onto _bless_--for a

mere momentary suspension of disgust to all our fellow-creatures--a

disgust that would return as strong--or stronger than ever--as soon as

you got to Rome.

TALBOYS.

I confess I don't like it.

NORTH.

"MUST!" There are NEEDS of all sorts, shapes, and

sizes. There is terrible necessity--there is bitter necessity--there is

grinding necessity--there is fine--delicate--loving--playful necessity.

TALBOYS.

Sir?

NORTH.

There are MUSTS that fly upon the wings of devils--Musts

that fly upon the wings of angels--Musts that walk upon the feet

of men--Musts that flutter upon the wings of Fairies.--But I am

dreaming!--Say on.

TALBOYS.

I think the day's clearing--let us launch Gutta Percha, Buller, and

troll for a Ferox.

NORTH.

Then fling that Tarpaulin over your Feather-Jacket, on which you plume

yourself, and don't forget your Gig-Parasol, Longfellow--for the

rain-gauge is running over, so are the water-butts, and I hear the Loch

surging its way up to the Camp. The Cladich Cataract is a stunner. Sit

down, my dear Talboys. Recite away.

TALBOYS.

No.

NORTH.

Gentlemen, I call on Mister Buller.

BULLER.

"The roar of waters!--from the headlong height

Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice;

The fall of waters! rapid as the light

The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss;

The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss,

And boil in endless torture; while the sweat

Of their great agony, wrung out from this

Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet

That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,

"And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again

Returns in an unceasing shower, which round,

With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain,

Is an eternal April to the ground,

Making it all one emerald:--how profound

The gulf! and how the giant element

From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,

Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent

With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent

"To the broad column which rolls on, and shows

More like the fountain of an infant sea

Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes

Of a new world, than only thus to be

Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly

With many windings, through the vale;--Look back:

Lo! where it comes like an eternity,

As if to sweep down all things in its track,

Charming the eye with dread,--a matchless cataract,

"Horribly beautiful! but on the verge,

From side to side, beneath the glittering morn,

An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge,

Like Hope upon a death-bed, and, unworn

Its steady dyes, while all around is torn

By the distracted waters, bears serene

Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn;

Resembling, 'mid the torture of the scene,

Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.'"

NORTH.

In the First Stanza there is a very peculiar and a very striking

form--or construction--The Roar of Waters--The Fall of Waters--The Hell

of Waters.

BULLER.

You admire it.

NORTH.

I do.

TALBOYS.

Don't believe him, Buller. Let's be off--there is no rain worth

mentioning--see--there's a Fly. Oh! 'tis but a Red Professor dangling

from my bonnet--a Red Professor with tinsy and a tail. Come, Seward,

here's the Chess-Board. Let us make out the Main.

NORTH.

The four lines about the Roar and the Fall are good----

TALBOYS.

Indeed, sir.

NORTH.

Mind your game, sir. Seward, you may give him a Pawn. The next

four--about Hell--are bad.

TALBOYS.

Indeed, sir.

NORTH.

Seward, you may likewise give him a Knight. As bad as can be. For there

is an incredible confusion of tormented and tormentor. They howl, and

hiss, and boil in endless torture--they are suffering the Pains of

Hell--they are in Hell. "But the sweat of their great agony is wrung

out from this their Phlegethon." Where is this their Phlegethon? Why,

this their Phlegethon is--themselves! Look down--there is no other

river--but the Velino.

BULLER.

Hear Virgil--

"Moenia lata, videt, triplici circumdata muro,

Quæ rapidus flammis ambit torrentibus amnis

Tartareus Phlegethon, torquetque sonantia saxa."

No Phlegethon with torrents of fire surrounding and shaking Byron's

Hell. I do not understand it--an unaccountable blunder.

NORTH.

In next stanza, what is gained by

"How profound

The gulf! and how the giant element

From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound"?

Nothing. In the First Stanza, we had the "abyss," "the gulf," and the

agony--all and more than we have here.

SEWARD.

Check-mate.

TALBOYS.

Confound the board!--no, not the board--but Hurwitz himself could not

play in such an infernal clatter.

NORTH.

Buller has not got to the word "infernal" yet, Phillidor--but he will

by-and-by. "Crushing the Cliffs"-crushing is not the right word--it

is the wrong one--for not such is the process--visible or invisible.

"_Downward_ worn" is silly. "Fierce footsteps," to my imagination, is

tame and out of place--though it may not be to yours;--and I thunder

in the ears of the Chess-players that the first half of the next

stanza--the third--is as bad writing as is to be found in Byron.

TALBOYS.

Or in North.

NORTH.

Seward--you may give him likewise a Bishop--

"Look back:

Lo! where it comes like an Eternity!"

I do not say that is not sublime. If it is an image of

Eternity--sublime it must be--but the Poet has chosen his time badly

for inspiring us with that thought--for we look back on what he had

pictured to us as falling into hell--and then flowing diffused "only

thus to be parents of rivers that flow gushingly with many windings

through the vale"--images of Time.

"As if to sweep down all things in its track,"

is well enough for an ordinary cataract, but not for a cataract that

comes "like an Eternity."

TALBOYS.

"Charming the eye with dread--a matchless cataract,

Horribly beautiful."

SEWARD.

One game each.

TALBOYS.

Let us go to the Swiss Giantess to play out the Main.

NORTH.

In Stanza Fourth--"But _on the verge_," is very like nonsense--

TALBOYS.

Not at all.

NORTH.

The Swiss Giantess is expecting you--good-bye, my dear Talboys. Now,

Buller, I wish you, seriously and calmly, to think on this image--

"An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge,

Like Hope upon a death-bed."

Did Hope--could Hope ever sit by _such_ a death-bed! The infernal

surge--the hell of waters--the howling--the hissing--the boiling

in endless torture--the sweat of the great agony wrung out--and

more of the same sort--_these image the death-bed_. Hope has sat

beside many a sad--many a miserable death-bed--but not by such

as this; and yet, here, such a death-bed is hinted at as not

uncommon--in a few words--"like Hope upon a death-bed." The simile

came not of itself--it was sought for--and had far better have been

away. There is much bad writing here, too--"unworn"--"unshorn"

--"torn"--"dyes"--"hues"--"beams"--"torture _of the scene_"--epithet

heaped on epithet, without any clear perception, or sincere

emotion--the Iris changing from Hope upon a death-bed to Love watching

Madness--both of which I pronounce, before that portion of mankind

assembled in this Tent, to be on the FALSETTO--and wide from

the thoughts that visit the suffering souls of the children of men

remembering this life's greatest calamities.

SEWARD.

Yet throughout, sir, there is Power.

NORTH.

Power! My dear Seward, who denies it? But great Power--true poetical

Power--is self-collected--not turbulent though dealing with

turbulence--in its own stately passion dominating physical nature in

its utmost distraction--and in her blind forces seeing a grandeur--a

sublimity that only becomes visible or audible to the senses, through

the action of imagination creating its own consistent ideal world

out of that turmoil--making the fury of falling waters appeal to our

Moral Being, from whose depths and heights rise emotions echoing all

the tones of the thundering cataract. In these stanzas of Byron, the

main Power is in the Cataract--not in the Poetry--loud to the ear--to

the eye flashing and foaming--full of noise and fury, signifying not

much to the soul, as it stuns and confounds the senses--while its more

spiritual significations are uncertain, or unintelligible, accepted

with doubt, or rejected without hesitation, because felt to be false

and deceitful, and but brilliant mockeries of the Truth.

TALBOYS.

Spare Byron, who is a Poet--and castigate some popular Versifier.

NORTH.

I will not spare Byron--and just because he is a Poet. For popular

Versifiers, they may pipe at their pleasure, but aloof from our

Tents--chirp anywhere but in this Encampment; and if there be a

Gowdspink or Yellow-hammer among them, let us incline our ear kindly to

his chattering or his yammering, "low doun in the broom," or high up

on his apple-tree, in outfield or orchard, and pray that never naughty

schoolboy may harry his nest.

SEWARD.

Would Sir Walter's Poetry stand such critical examination?

NORTH.

All--or nearly so--directly dealing with War--Fighting in all its

branches. Indeed, with any kind of Action he seldom fails--in

Reflection, often--and, strange to say, almost as often in description

of Nature, though there in his happier hours he excels.

SEWARD.

I was always expecting, during that discussion about the Clitumnus,

that you would have brought in Virgil.

NORTH.

Ay, Maro--in description--is superior to them all--in the Æneid as

well as in the Georgics. But we have no time to speak of his Pictures

now--only just let me ask you--Do you remember what Payne Knight says

of Æneas?

SEWARD.

No, for I never read it.

NORTH.

Payne Knight, in his _Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of

Taste_--a work of high authority in his own day, and containing

many truths vigorously expounded, though characterised throughout

by arrogance and presumption--speaks of that "selfish coldness with

which the Æneas of Virgil treats the unfortunate princess, _whose

affections he had seduced_," and adds, that "Every modern reader

of the Æneid finds that the Episode of Dido, though in itself the

most exquisite piece of composition existing, weakens extremely the

subsequent interest of the Poem, it being impossible to sympathise

either cordially or kindly with the fortunes or exertions of a hero who

sneaks away from his high-minded and much-injured benefactress in a

manner so base and unmanly. When, too, we find him soon after imitating

all the atrocities, and surpassing the utmost arrogance, of the furious

and vindictive Achilles, without displaying any of his generosity,

pride, or energy, he becomes at once mean and odious, and only excites

scorn and indignation; especially when, at the conclusion, he presents

to Lavinia a hand stained with the blood of her favoured lover, whom

he had stabbed while begging for quarter, and after being rendered

incapable of resistance." Is not this, Seward, much too strong?

SEWARD.

I think, sir, it is not only much too strong, but outrageous; and that

we are bound, in justice to Virgil, to have clearly before our mind his

own Idea of his Hero.

TALBOYS.

To try that Æneas by the rules of poetry and of morality; and if we

find his character such as neither our imagination nor our moral sense

will suffer us to regard with favour--to admire either in Hero or

Man--then to throw the Æneid aside.

BULLER.

And take up his Georgics.

TALBOYS.

To love Virgil we need not forget Homer--but to sympathise with Æneas,

our imagination must not be filled with Achilles.

SEWARD

Troy is dust--the Son of Thetis dead. Let us go with the Fugitives and

their Leader.

TALBOYS.

Let us believe from the first that they seek a Destined Seat--under

One Man, who knows his mission, and is worthy to fulfil it. Has Virgil

so sustained the character of that Man--of that Hero? Or has he, from

ineptitude, and unequal to so great a subject--let him sink below our

nobler sympathies--nay, unconscious of failure of his purpose, as Payne

Knight says, accommodated him to our contempt?

SEWARD.

For seven years he has been that Man--that Hero. One Night's Tale

has shown him--as he is--for I presume that Virgil--and not Payne

Knight--was his Maker. If that Speech was all a lie--and the Son

of Anchises, not a gallant and pious Prince, but a hypocrite and a

coward--shut the Book or burn it.

TALBOYS.

Much gossip--of which any honest old woman, had she uttered the half of

it, would have been ashamed before she had finished her tea--has been

scribbled by divers male pens--stupid or spritely--on that magnificent

Recital. Æneas, it has been said, by his own account, skulked during

the Town Sack--and funked during the Sea Storm. And how, it has been

asked, came he to lose Creusa? Pious indeed! A truly pious man, say

they, does not speak of his piety--he takes care of his household gods

without talking about Lares and Penates. Many critics--some not without

name--have been such--unrepentant--old women. Come we to Dido.

NORTH.

Be cautious--for I fear I have been in fault myself towards Æneas for

his part in that transaction.

TALBOYS.

I take the account of it from Virgil. Indeed I do not know of any

scandalous chronicle of Carthage or Tyre. A Trojan Prince and a

Tyrian Queen--say at once a Man and a Woman--on sudden temptation and

unforeseen opportunity--SIN--and they continue to sin. As

pious men as Æneas--and as kingly and heroic too, have so sinned far

worse than that--yet have not been excommunicated from the fellowship

of saints, kings, or heroes.

SEWARD.

To say that Æneas "seduces Dido," in the sense that Payne Knight uses

the word, is a calumnious vulgarism.

TALBOYS.

And shows a sulky resolution to shut his eyes--and keep them shut.

SEWARD.

Had he said that in the Schools at Oxford, he would have been plucked

at his Little-go. But I forget--there was no plucking in those

days--and indeed I rather think he was not an University Man.

NORTH.

Nevertheless he was a Scholar.

SEWARD.

Not nevertheless, sir--notwithstanding, sir.

NORTH.

I sit corrected.

SEWARD.

Neither did Infelix Elissa seduce him--desperately in love as she

was--'twas not the storm of her own will that drove her into that fatal

cave.

TALBOYS.

Against Venus and Juno combined, alas! for poor Dido at last!

SEWARD.

Æneas was in her eyes what Othello was in Desdemona's. No Desdemona

she--no "gentle Lady"--nor was Virgil a Shakspeare. Yet those

remonstrances--and that raving--and that suicide!

TALBOYS.

Ay, Dan Virgil feared not to put the condemnation of his Hero into

those lips of fire--to let her winged curses pursue the Pious

Perfidious as he puts to sea. But what is truth--passion--nature from

the reproachful and raving--the tender and the truculent--the repentant

and the revengeful--the true and the false Dido--for she had forgot and

she remembers Sychæus--when cut up into bits of bad law, and framed

into an Indictment through which the Junior Jehu at the Scottish Bar

might drive a Coach and Six!

SEWARD.

But he forsook her! He did--and in obedience to the will of heaven.

Throughout the whole of his Tale of Troy, at that fatal banquet, he

tells her whither, and to what fated region, the fleet is bound--he is

not sailing under scaled orders--Dido hears the Hero's destiny from

the lips of Moestissimus Hector, from the lips of Creusa's Shade.

But Dido is deaf to all those solemn enunciations--none so deaf as

those who will not hear; the Likeness of Ascanius lying-by her on her

Royal Couch fired her vital blood--and she already is so insane as to

dream of lying ere long on that God-like breast. He had forgot--and

he remembers his duty--yes--his duty; according to the Creed of his

country--of the whole heathen world--in deserting Dido, he obeyed the

Gods.

TALBOYS.

He sneaked away! says Knight. Go he must--would it have been more

heroic to set fire to the Town, and embark in the General Illumination?

SEWARD.

Would Payne Knight have seriously advised Virgil to marry Æneas, in

good earnest, to Dido, and make him King of Carthage?

BULLER.

Would they have been a happy Couple?

SEWARD.

Does not our sympathy go with Æneas to the Shades? Is he unworthy to

look on the Campos Lugentes? On the Elysian Fields? To be shown by

Anchises the Shades of the predestined Heroes of unexisting Rome?

TALBOYS.

Do we--because of Dido--despise him when first he kens, on a calm

bright morning, that great Grove on the Latian shore near the mouth of

the Tiber?

"Æneas, primique duces, et pulcher Iulus,

Corpora sub ramis deponunt arboris altæ,

Instituuntque dapes."

SEWARD.

But he was a robber--a pirate--an invader--an usurper--so say the Payne

Knights. Virgil sanctifies the Landing with the spirit of peace--and

a hundred olive-crowned Envoys are sent to Laurentum with such

peace-offerings as had never been laid at the feet of an Ausonian King.

TALBOYS.

Nothing can exceed in simple grandeur the advent of Æneas--the

reception of the Envoys by old Latinus. The right of the Prince to the

region he has reached is established by grant human and divine. Surely

a father, who is a king, may dispose of his daughter in marriage--and

here he must; he knew, from omen and oracle, the Hour and the Man.

Lavinia belonged to Æneas--not to Turnus--though we must not severely

blame the fiery Rutulian because he would not give her up. Amata,

in and out of her wits, was on his side; but their betrothment--if

betrothed they were--was unhallowed--and might not bind in face of Fate.

BULLER.

Turnus was in the wrong from beginning to end. Virgil, however, has

made him a hero--and idiots have said that he eclipses Æneas--the same

idiots, who, at the same time, have told us that Virgil could not paint

a hero at all.

TALBOYS.

That his genius has no martial fervour. Had the blockheads read the

Rising--the Gathering--in the Seventh Æneid?

NORTH.

Sir Walter himself had much of it by heart--and I have seen the

"repeated air" kindle the aspect, and uplift the Lion-Port of the

greatest War-Poet that ever blew the trumpet.

SEWARD.

Æneas at the Court of Evander--that fine old Grecian! There he is a

Hero to be loved--and Pallas loved him--and he loved Pallas--and all

men with hearts love Virgil for their sakes.

TALBOYS.

And is he not a Hero, when relanding from sea at the mouth of his own

Tiber, with his Etrurian Allies--some thousands strong? And does he

not then act the Hero? Virgil was no War-Poet! Second only to Homer, I

hold--

SEWARD.

An imitator of Homer! With fights of the Homeric age--how could he help

it? But he is, in much, original on the battle-field--and is there in

all the Iliad a Lausus, or a Pallas?--

BULLER.

Or a Camilla?

SEWARD.

Fighting is at the best a sad business--but Payne Knight is offensive

on the cruelty--the ferocity of Æneas. I wish Virgil had not made him

seize and sacrifice the Eight Young Men to appease the Manes of Pallas.

Such sacrifice Virgil believed to be agreeable to the manners of the

time--and, if usual to the most worthy, here assuredly due. In the

final Great Battle,

"Away to heaven, respective Lenity,

And fire-eyed Fury be my conduct now."

BULLER.

Knight is a ninny on the Single Combat. In all the previous

circumstances regarding it, Turnus behaved ill--now that he must fight,

he fights well: 'tis as fair a fight as ever was fought in the field of

old Epic Poetry: tutelary interposition alternates in favour of either

Prince: the bare notion of either outliving defeat never entered any

mind but Payne Knight's: nor did any other fingers ever fumble such

a charge against the hero of an Epic as "Stabbing while begging for

quarter"--but a momentary weakness in Turnus which was not without its

effect on Æneas, till at sight of _that Belt_, he sheathed the steel.

TALBOYS.

Payne works himself up, in the conclusion of the passage, into an

absolute maniac.

NORTH.

Good manners, Talboys--no insult--remember Mr Knight has been long dead.

TALBOYS.

So has Æneas--so has Virgil.

NORTH.

True. Young gentlemen, I have listened with much pleasure to your

animated and judicious dialogue. Shall I now give Judgment?

BULLER.

Lengthy?

NORTH.

Not more than an hour.

BULLER.

Then, if you please, my Lord, to-morrow.

NORTH.

You must all three be somewhat fatigued by the exercise of so much

critical acumen. So do you, Talboys and Seward, unbend the bow at

another game of Chess; and you, Buller, reanimate the jaded Moral

Sentiments by a sharp letter to Marmaduke, insinuating that if he don't

return to the Tents within a week, or at least write to say that he and

Hal, Volusene and Woodburn, are not going to return at all, but to join

the Rajah of Sarawak, the Grand Lama, or Prester John--which I fear

is but too probable from the general tone and tenor of their life and

conversation for some days before their Secession from the Established

Camp--there will be a general breaking of Mothers' hearts, and in his

own particular case, a cutting off with a shilling, or disinheriting

of the heir apparent of one of the finest Estates in Cornwall. But I

forget--these Entails will be the ruin of England. What! Billy, is that

you?

BILLY.

Measter, here's a Fish and a Ferocious.

TALBOYS.

Ha! what Whappers!

BULLER.

More like Fish before the Flood than after it.

SEWARD.

After it indeed! During it. What is Billy saying, Mr North? That

Coomerlan' dialect's Hottentot to my Devonshire ears.

NORTH.

They have been spoiled by the Doric delicacies of the "Exmoor

Courtship." He tells me that Archy M'Callum, the Cornwall Clipper, and

himself, each in a cow-hide, having ventured down to the River Mouth

to look after and bale Gutta Percha, foregathered with an involuntary

invasion of divers gigantic Fishes, who had made bad their landing on

our shores, and that after a desperate resistance they succeeded in

securing the Two Leaders--a Salmo Salar and a Salmo Ferox--see on snout

and shoulder tokens of the Oar. Thirty--and Twenty Pounders--Billy

says; I should have thought they were respectively a third more. No

mean Windfall. They will tell on the Spread. I retire to my Sanctum for

my Siesta.

TALBOYS.

Let me invest you, my dear sir, with my Feathers.

BULLER.

Do--do take my Tarpaulin.

SEWARD.

Billy, your Cow-hide.

NORTH.

I need none of your gimcracks--for I seek the Sanctum by a

subterranean--beg your pardon--a Subter-Awning Passage.

SCENE II.

SCENE--_Deeside._

TIME-_Seven_ P.C.

NORTH--BULLER--SEWARD--TALBOYS.

NORTH.

How little time or disposition for anything like serious Thinking,

or Reading, out of people's own profession or trade, in this Railway

World! The busy-bodies of these rattling times, even in their leisure

hours, do not affect an interest in studies their fathers and their

grandfathers, in the same rank of life, pursued, even systematically,

on many an Evening sacred from the distraction that ceased with the

day.

TALBOYS.

Not all busy-bodies, my good Sir--think of----

NORTH.

I have thought of them--and I know their worth--their liberality and

their enlightenment. In all our cities and towns--and villages--and in

all orders of the people--there is Mind--Intelligence, and Knowledge;

and the more's the shame in that too general appetence for mere

amusement in literature, perpetually craving for a change of diet--for

something new in the light way--while anything of any substance, is,

"with sputtering noise rejected" as tough to the teeth, and hard of

digestion--however sweet and nutritious; would they but taste and try.

SEWARD.

I hope you don't mean to allude to Charles Dickens?

NORTH.

Assuredly not. Charles Dickens is a man of original and genial

genius--his popularity is a proof of the goodness of the heart of the

people;--and the love of him and his writings--though not so thoughtful

as it might be--does honour to that strength in the English character

which is indestructible by any influences, and survives in the midst of

frivolity, and folly, and of mental depravations, worse than both.

SEWARD.

Don't look so savage, sir.

NORTH.

I am not savage--I am serene. Set the Literature of the day aside

altogether--and tell me if you think our conversation since dinner

would not have been thought _dull_ by many not altogether uneducated

persons, who pride themselves not a little on their intellectuality and

on their full participation in the Spirit of the Age?

TALBOYS.

Our conversation since dinner DULL!! No--no--no. Many poor

creatures, indeed, there are among them--even among those of them who

work the Press--pigmies with pap feeding a Giant who sneezes them away

when sick of them into small offices in the Customs or Excise;--but

not one of our privileged brethren of the Guild--with a true ticket to

show--but would have been delighted with such dialogue--but would be

delighted with its continuation--and thankful to know that he, "a wiser

and a better man, will rise to-morrow morn."

SEWARD.

Do, my dear sir--resume your discoursing about those Greeks.

NORTH.

I was about to say, Seward, that those shrewd and just observers, and

at the same time delicate thinkers, the ancient Greeks, did, as you

well know, snatch from amongst the ordinary processes which Nature

pursues, in respect of inferior animal life, a singularly beautiful

Type or Emblem, expressively imaging to Fancy that bursting disclosure

of Life from the bosom of Death, which is implied in the extrication

of the soul from its corporeal prison, when this astonishing change

is highly, ardently, and joyfully contemplated. Those old festal

religionists--who carried into the solemnities of their worship the

buoyant gladsomeness of their own sprightly and fervid secular life,

and contrived to invest even the artful splendour and passionate human

interest of their dramatic representations with the name and character

of a sacred ceremony--found for that soaring and refulgent escape of

a spirit from the dungeon and chains of the flesh, into its native

celestial day, a fine and touching similitude in the liberation of a

beautiful Insect, the gorgeously-winged, aérial Butterfly, from the

living tomb in which Nature has, during a season, eased and urned its

torpid and death-like repose.

SEWARD.

Nor, my dear sir, was this life-conscious penetration or intuition

of a keen and kindling intelligence into the dreadful, the desolate,

the cloud-covered Future, the casual thought of adventuring Genius,

transmitted in some happier verse only, or in some gracious and

visible poesy of a fine chisel; but the Symbol and the Thing symbolised

were so bound together in the understanding of the nation, that in the

Greek language the name borne by the Insect and the name designating

the Soul is one and the same--ΨΥΧΗ.

NORTH.

Insects! They have come out, by their original egg-birth, into an

active life. They have crept and eaten--and slept and eaten--creeping,

and sleeping, and eating--still waxing in size, and travelling on

from fitted pasture to pasture, they have in not many suns reached

the utmost of the minute dimensions allotted them--the goal of their

slow-footed wanderings, and the term, shall we say--_of their life_.

SEWARD.

No! But of that _first period_, through which they have made some

display of themselves as living agents. They have reached _this_ term.

And look at them--now.

NORTH.

Ay--look at them--now. Wonder on wonder! For now a miraculous instinct

guides and compels the creature--who has, as it were, completed one

life--who has accomplished one stage of his existence--to entomb

himself. And he accordingly builds or spins himself a tomb--or he

buries himself in his grave. Shall I say, that she herself, his

guardian, his directress, Great Nature, _coffins_ him? Enclosed in a

firm shell--hidden from all eyes--torpid--in a death-like sleep--_not

dead_--he waits the appointed hour, which the days and nights bring,

and which having come--his renovation, his resuscitation is come. And

now the sepulture no longer holds him! Now the prisoner of the tomb

has right again to converse with embalmed air and with glittering

sunbeams--now, the reptile that _was_--unrecognisably transformed from

himself--a glad, bright, mounting creature, unfurls on either side

the translucent or the richly-hued pinions that shall waft him at his

liking from blossom to blossom, or lift him in a rapture of aimless

joyancy to disport and rock himself on the soft-flowing undulating

breeze.

SEWARD.

My dearest sir, the Greek in his darkness, or uncertain twilight of

belief, has culled and perpetuated his beautiful emblem. Will the

Christian look unmoved upon the singular imaging, which, amidst the

manifold strangely-charactered secrets of nature, he finds of his own

sealed and sure faith?

NORTH.

No, Seward. The philosophical Theologian claims in this likeness more

than an apt simile, pleasing to the stirred fancy. He sees here an

ANALOGY--and this Analogy he proposes as one link in a chain

of argumentation, by which he would show that Reason might dare to win

from Nature, as a Hope, the truth which it holds from God as revealed

knowledge.

SEWARD.

I presume, sir, you allude to Butler's Analogy. I have studied it.

NORTH.

I do--to the First Chapter of that Great Work. This parallelism, or

apprehended resemblance between an event continually occurring and

seen in nature, and one unseen but continually conceived as occurring

upon the uttermost brink and edge of nature--this correspondency,

which took such fast hold of the Imagination of the Greeks, has, as

you know, my dear friends, in these latter days been acknowledged by

calm and profound Reason, looking around on every side for evidences or

intimations of the Immortality of the Soul.

BULLER.

Will you be so good, sir, as let me have the volume to study of an

evening in my own Tent?

NORTH.

Certainly. And for many other evenings--in your own Library at home.

TALBOYS.

Please, sir, to state Butler's argument in your own words and way.

NORTH.

For Butler's style is hard and dry. A living Being undergoes a

vicissitude by which on a sudden he passes from a state in which he

has long, continued into a new state, and with it into a new scene of

existence. The transition is from a narrow confinement into an ample

liberty--and this change of circumstances is accompanied in the subject

with a large and congruous increment of powers. They believe this who

believe the Immortality of the Soul. But the fact is, that changes

bearing this description do indeed happen in Nature, under our very

eyes, at every moment; this method of progress being universal in her

living kingdoms. Such a marvellous change is literally undergone by

innumerable kinds, the human animal included, in the instant in which

they pass out from the darkness and imprisonment of the womb into

the light and open liberty of this breathing world. Birth has been

the image of a death, which is itself nothing else than a birth from

one straightened life into another ampler and freer. The ordering of

Nature, then, is an ordering of Progression, whereby new and enlarged

states are attained, and, simultaneously therewith, new and enlarged

powers; and all this not slowly, gradually, and insensibly, but

suddenly and _per saltum_.

TALBOYS.

This analogy, then, sir, or whatever there is that is in common to

_birth_ as we _know_ it, and to _death_ as we _conceive_ it, is to be

understood as an evidence set in the ordering of Nature, and justifying

or tending to justify such our conception of Death?

NORTH.

Exactly so. And you say well, my good Talboys, "justifying or

tending to justify." For we are all along fully sensible that a

vast difference--a difference prodigious and utterly confounding to

the imagination--holds, betwixt the case _from_ which we reason,

_birth_--or that further expansion of life in some breathing kinds

which might be held as a _second birth_--betwixt these cases, I say,

and the case _to_, which we reason, DEATH!

TALBOYS.

Prodigious and utterly confounding to the imagination indeed! For in

these physiological instances, either the same body, or a body changing

by such slow and insensible degrees that it seems to us to be the same

body, accompanies, encloses, and contains the same life--from the first

moment in which that life comes under our observation to that in which

it vanishes from our cognisance; whereas, sir, in the case to which we

apply the Analogy--our own Death--the life is supposed to survive in

complete separation from the body, in and by its union with which we

have known it and seen it manifested.

NORTH.

Excellently well put, my friend. I see you have studied Butler.

TALBOYS.

I have--but not for some years. The Analogy is not a Book to be

forgotten.

NORTH.

This difference between the case from which we reason, and the case to

which we reason, there is no attempt whatever at concealing--quite the

contrary--it stands written, you know, my friend, upon the very Front

of the Argument. This difference itself is the very motive and occasion

of the Whole Argument! Were there not _this difference_ between the

cases which furnish the Analogy, and the case to which the Analogy is

applied--had we certainly known and seen a Life continued, although

suddenly passing out from the body where it had hitherto resided--or

were _Death_ not the formidable disruption which it is of a hitherto

subsisting union--the cases would be identical, and there would be

nothing to reason about or to inquire. There _is_ this startling

difference--and accordingly the Analogy described has been proposed by

Butler merely as a first step in the Argument.

TALBOYS.

It remains to be seen, then, whether any further considerations can be

proposed which will bring the cases nearer together, and diminish to

our minds the difficulty presented by the sudden separation.

NORTH.

Just so. What ground, then, my dear young friends--for you seem and

are young to me--what ground, my friends, is there for believing

that the Death which we _see_, can affect the living agent which we

do not see? Butler makes his approaches cautiously, and his attack

manfully--and this is the course of his Argument. I begin with

examining my present condition of existence, and find myself to be a

Being endowed with certain Powers and Capacities--for I act, I enjoy, I

suffer.

TALBOYS.

Of this much there can be no doubt; for of all this an unerring

consciousness assures me. Therefore, at the outset, I hold this one

secure position--that I exist, the possessor of certain powers and

capacities.

NORTH.

But that I do now before Death exist, endued with certain powers and

capacities, affords a presumptive or _primâ facie_ probability that

I shall after death continue to exist, possessing these powers and

capacities--

BULLER.

How is that, sir?

NORTH.

You do well to put that question, my dear Buller--a _primâ facie_

probability, unless there be some positive reason to think that death

is the "destruction" of Me, the living Being, and of these my living

Faculties.

BULLER.

A presumptive or _primâ facie_ probability, sir? Why does Butler say so?

NORTH.

"Because there is in every case a probability that _all_ things will

continue as we experience they are, in _all_ respects, except those in

which we have some reason to think they will be altered."

BULLER.

You will pardon me, sir, I am sure, for having asked the question.

NORTH.

It was not only a proper question, but a necessary one. Butler wisely

says--"This is that kind of Presumption or Probability from Analogy,

expressed in the very word CONTINUANCE, which seems our only natural

reason for believing the course of the world will continue to-morrow,

as it has done so far as our experience or knowledge of history can

carry us back." I give you, here, the Bishop's very words--and I

believe that in them is affirmed a truth that no scepticism can shake.

TALBOYS.

If I mistake not, sir, the Bishop here frankly admits, that were we not

fortified against a natural impression, with some better instruction

than unreflecting Nature's, the spontaneous disposition of our Mind

would undoubtedly be to an expectation that in this great catastrophe

of our mortal estate, We Ourselves must perish; but he contends--does

he not, sir?--that it would be a blind fear, and without rational

ground.

NORTH.

Yes--that it is an impression of the illusory faculty, Imagination,

and not an inference of Reason. There would arise, he says, "a general

confused suspicion, that in the great shock and alteration which we

shall undergo by death, We, _i.e._ our living Powers, might be wholly

destroyed;"--but he adds solemnly, "there is no particular distinct

ground or reason for this apprehension, so far as I can find."

TALBOYS.

Such "general confused suspicion," then, is not justified?

NORTH.

Butler holds that any justifying ground of the apprehension that,

in the shock of death, I, the living Being, or, which is the same

thing, These my powers of acting, enjoying, and suffering, shall be

extinguished and cease, must be found either in "the reason of the

Thing" itself, or in "the Analogy of Nature." To say that a legitimate

ground of attributing to the sensible mortal change a power of

extinguishing the inward life is to be found in the Reason of the

Thing, is as much as to say, that when considering the essential nature

of this great and tremendous, or at least dreaded change, Death, and

upon also considering _what_ these powers of acting, of enjoying, of

suffering, truly _are_, and _in what manner_, absolutely, they subsist

in us--there does appear to lie therein demonstration, or evidence,

or likelihood, that the change, Death, will swallow up such living

Powers--and that _We_ shall no longer _be_.

TALBOYS.

In short, sir, that from considering _what_ Death is, and _upon what_

these Powers and their exercise depend, there is _reason_ to think,

that the Powers or their exercise will or _must_ cease with Death.

NORTH.

The very point. And the Bishop's answer is bold, short, and decisive.

We cannot _from_ considering what Death is, draw this or any other

conclusion, _for we do not know what Death is_! We know only certain

effects of Death--the stopping of certain sensible actions--the

dissolution of certain sensible parts. We can draw no conclusion, for

we do not possess the premises.

SEWARD.

From your Exposition, sir, I feel that the meaning of the First Chapter

of the Analogy is dawning into clearer and clearer light.

NORTH.

Inconsiderately, my dear sir, we seem indeed to ourselves to know what

Death is; but this is from confounding the Thing and its Effects.

For we see effects: at first, the stoppage of certain sensible

actions--afterwards, the dissolution of certain sensible parts. But

_what_ it is that has happened--_wherefore_ the blood no longer

flows--the limbs no longer move--_that_ we do not see. We do not

see it with our eyes--we do not discern it by any inference of our

understanding. It is a _fact_ that seems to lie shrouded for ever from

our faculties in awful and impenetrable mystery. That fact--the produce

of an instant--which has happened _within, and in the dark_--that fact

come to pass, in an indivisible point of time--that stern fact--ere

the happening of which the Man was alive--an inhabitant of this

breathing world--united to ourselves--our Father, Brother, Friend--at

least our Fellow-Creature--by the happening, _he_ is gone--is for ever

irrecoverably sundered from this world, and from us its inhabitants--is

DEAD--and that which lies outstretched before our saddened

eyes is only his mortal remains--a breathless corpse--an inanimate,

insensible clod of clay:--Upon that interior _sudden_ fact--_sudden_,

at last, how slowly and gradually soever prepared--since the utmost

attenuation of a thread is a thing totally distinct from its ending,

from its becoming no thread at all, and since, up to that moment,

there was a possibility that some extraordinary, perhaps physical

application might for an hour or a few minutes have rallied life, or

might have reawakened consciousness, and eye, and voice--upon that

elusive _Essence_ and _self_ of Death no curious searching of ours

has laid, or, it may be well assumed, will ever lay hold. When the

organs of sense no longer minister to Perception, or the organs of

motion to any change of posture--when the blood stopped in its flow

thickens and grows cold--and the fair and stately form, the glory

of the Almighty's Hand, the burning shrine of a Spirit that lately

rejoiced in feeling, in thought, and in power, lies like a garment

done with and thrown away--"a kneaded clod"--ready to lose feature and

substance--and to yield back its atoms to the dominion of the blind

elements from which they were gathered and compacted--_What is Death_?

And what grounds have we for inferring that an event manifested to us

as a phenomenon of the Body, which alone we touch, and hear, and see,

has or has not reached into the Mind, which is for us Now just as it

always was, a Thing utterly removed and exempt from the cognisance and

apprehension of our bodily senses? The Mind, or Spirit, the unknown

Substance, in which Feeling, and Thought, and Will, and the Spring of

Life were--was united to this corporeal frame; and, being united to

it, animated it, poured through it sensibility and motion, glowing

and creative life--crimsoned the lips and cheeks--flashed in the

eye--and murmured music from the tongue;--_now_, the two--Body and

Soul--are _disunited_--and we behold one-half the consequence--the

Thing of dust relapses to the dust;--we dare to divine the other half

of the consequence--the quickening Spark, the sentient Intelligence,

the Being gifted with Life, the Image of the Maker, in Man, has,

reascended, has returned thither whence it came, into the Hand of God.

SEWARD.

If, sir, we were without light from the revealed Word of God, if we

were left, by the help of reason, standing upon the brink of Time,

dimly guessing, and inquiringly exploring, to find for ourselves the

grounds of Hope and Fear, would your description, my dear Master, of

that which has happened, seem to our Natural Faculties impossible?

Surely not.

NORTH.

My dear Seward, we have the means of rendering some answer to that

question. The nations of the world have been, more or less, in the

condition, supposed. Self-left, they have borne the burden of the

dread secret, which for them only the grave could resolve; but

they never were able to sit at rest in the darkness. Importunate

and insuppressible desire, in their bosoms, knocked at the gate of

the invisible world, and seemed to hear an answer from beyond. The

belief in a long life of ages to follow this fleet dream--imaginary

revelations of regions bright or dark--the mansions of bliss or of

sorrow--an existence to come, and often of retribution to come--has

been the religion of Mankind--here in the rudest elementary shape--here

in elaborated systems.

SEWARD.

Ay, sir; methinks the Hell of Virgil--and his Elysian Fields are

examples of a high, solemn, and beautiful Poetry. But they have a much

deeper interest for a man studious, in earnest, of his fellow-men.

Since they really express the notions under which men have with serious

belief shadowed out for themselves the worlds to which the grave is a

portal. The true moral spirit that breathes in his enumeration of the

Crimes that are punished, of the Virtues that have earned and found

their reward, and some scattered awful warnings--are impressive even to

us Christians.

NORTH.

Yes, Seward, they are. Hearken to the attestation of the civilised

and the barbarous. Universally there is a cry from the human heart,

beseeching, as it were, of the Unknown Power which reigns in the Order

and in the Mutations of Things, the prolongation of this vanishing

breath--the renovation, in undiscovered spheres, of this too brief

existence--an appeal from the tyranny of the tomb--a prayer against

annihilation. Only at the top of Civilisation, sometimes a cold and

barren philosophy, degenerate from nature, and bastard to reason, has

limited its sullen view to the horizon of this Earth--has shut out and

refused all ulterior, happy, or dreary anticipation.

SEWARD.

You may now, assured of our profound attention--return to Butler--if

indeed you have left him----

NORTH.

I have, and I have not. A few minutes ago I was expounding--in my

own words--and for the reason assigned, will continue to do so--his

argument. If, not knowing what death is, we are not entitled to

argue, from the nature of death, that this change must put an end

to Ourselves, and those essential powers in our mind which we are

conscious of exerting--just as little can we argue from the nature of

these powers, and from their manner of subsisting in us, that they are

liable to be affected and impaired, or destroyed by death. For what do

we know of these powers, and of the conditions on which we hold them,

and of the mind in which they dwell? Just as much as we do of the great

change, Death itself--that is to say--NOTHING.

TALBOYS.

We know the powers of our mind solely by their manifestations.

NORTH.

But people in general do not think so--and many metaphysicians have

written as if they had forgot that it is only from the manifestation

that we give name to the Power. We know the fact of Seeing, Hearing,

Remembering, Reasoning--the feeling of Beauty--the actual pleasure

of Moral Approbation, the pain of Moral Disapprobation--the

state--pleasure or pain of loving--the state--pleasure or pain

of hating--the fire of anger--the frost of fear--the curiosity

to know--the thirst for distinction--the exultation of conscious

Power--all these, and a thousand more, we know abundantly: our

conscious Life is nothing else but such knowledge endlessly

diversified. But the POWERS themselves, which are thus exerted--what

_they_ are--_how_ they subsist in us ready for exertion--of this we

know--NOTHING.

TALBOYS.

We know something of the Conditions upon which the exercise of these

Powers depends--or by which it is influenced. Thus we know, that for

seeing, we must possess that wondrous piece of living mechanism, the

eye, in its healthy condition. We know further, that a delicate and

complicated system of nerves, which convey the visual impressions from

the eye itself to the seeing power, must be healthy and unobstructed.

We know that a sound and healthy state of the brain is necessary to

these manifestations--that accidents befalling the Brain totally

disorder the manifestations of these powers--turning the clear

self-possessed mind into a wild anarchy--a Chaos--that other accidents

befalling the same organ suspend all manifestations. We know that sleep

stops the use of many powers--and that deep sleep--at least as far as

any intimations that reach our waking state go--stops them all. We know

that a nerve tied or cut stops the sensation--stops the motory volition

which usually travels along it. We know how bodily lassitude--how

abstinence--how excess--affects the ability of the mind to exert its

powers. In short, the most untutored experience of every one amongst us

all shows bodily conditions, upon which the activity of the faculties

which are seated in the mind, depends. And within the mind itself

we know how one manifestation aids or counteracts another--how Hope

invigorates--how Fear disables--how Intrepidity keeps the understanding

clear--

NORTH.

You are well illustrating Butler, Talboys. Then, again, we know that

_for Seeing_, we must have that wonderful piece of living mechanism

perfectly constructed, and in good order--that a certain delicate

and complicated system of nerves extending from the eye inwards, is

appointed to transmit the immediate impressions of light from this

exterior organ of sight to the percipient Mind--that these nerves

allotted to the function of seeing, must be free from any accidental

pressure; knowledge admirable, curious, useful; but when all is done,

all investigated, that our eyes, and fingers, and instruments, and

thoughts, can reach--_What_, beyond all this marvellous Apparatus of

seeing, is _That which sees_--what the percipient _Mind_ is--that is

a mystery into which no created Being ever had a glimpse. Or what is

that immediate connexion between the Mind itself, and those delicate

corporeal adjustments--whereby certain _tremblings_, or other momentary

changes of state in a set of nerves, upon the sudden, turn into

Colours--into Sight--INTO THE VISION OF A UNIVERSE.

SEWARD.

Does Butler say all that, sir?

NORTH.

In his own dry way perhaps he may. These, my friends, are Wonders into

which Reason looks, astonished; or, more properly speaking, into which

she looks not, nor, self-knowing, attempts to look. But, reverent and

afraid, she repeats that attitude which the Great Poet has ascribed to

"brightest cherubim" before the footstool of the Omnipotent Throne, who

"Approach not, but with both wings veil their eyes."

TALBOYS.

For indeed at the next step beyond lies only the mystery of

Omnipotence--that mystery which connects the world, open and known to

us, to the world withheld and unknown.

NORTH.

The same with regard to Pleasure and Pain. _What_ enjoys Pleasure or

suffers Pain?--all that is, to our clearest, sharpest-sighted science,

nothing else but darkness--but black unfathomable night. Therefore,

since we know not what Death itself is--and since we know not what this

Living Mind is, nor what any of its powers and capacities are--what

conclusion, taken in the nature of these unknown subjects, can we

possibly be warranted in drawing as to the influence which this unknown

change, Death, will exert upon this unknown Being--Mind--and upon its

unknown faculties and sensibilities?--None.

SEWARD.

Shall unknown Death destroy this unknown Mind and its unknown

capacities? It is just as likely, for anything that Reason can see,

that it will set them free to a larger and more powerful existence. And

if we have any reason upon other grounds to expect this--then by so

much the more likely.

NORTH.

We know that this Eye and its apparatus of nerves no longer shall serve

for _seeing_--we know that these muscles and their nerves shall no

longer serve for _moving_--we know that this marvellous Brain itself

no longer shall serve, as we are led to believe that it now serves,

for _thinking_--we know that this bounding heart never again shall

throb and quicken, with all its leaping pulses, with joy--that pain

of this body shall never again _tire_ the mind, and that pain of this

mind shall never again _tire_ this body, once pillowed and covered up

in its bed of imperturbable slumber. And there ends our knowledge.

But that this Mind, which, united to these muscles and their nerves,

sent out vigorous and swift motions through them--which, united to

this Brain, compelled this Brain to serve it as the minister of its

thinkings upon this Earth and in this mode of its Being--which, united

to this Frame, in it, and through it, and from it, felt for Happiness

and for Misery--that this Mind, once _disunited_ from all these, its

instruments and servants, shall therefore perish, or shall therefore

forego the endowment of its powers, which it manifested by these

its instruments--of that we have no warranty--of that there is no

probability.

TALBOYS.

Much rather, sir, might a probability lie quite the other way. For if

the structure of this corporeal frame places at the service of the

Mind some five or six senses, enabling it, by so many avenues, to

communicate with this external world, this very structure shuts up the

Mind in these few senses, ties it down to the capacities of exactness

and sensibility for which _they_ are framed. But we have no reason

at all to think that these few modes of sensibility, which we call

our external senses, are _all_ the modes of sensibility of which our

spirits are capable. Much rather we must believe that, if it pleased,

or shall ever please, the Creator to open in this Mind, in a new world,

new modes of sensation, the susceptibility for these modes is already

there for another set of senses. Now we are confined to an eye that

sees distinctly at a few paces of distance. We have no reason for

thinking that, united with a finer organ of sight, we should not see

far more exquisitely; and thus, sir, our notices of the dependence in

which the Mind now subsists upon the body do of themselves lead us to

infer its own self-subsistency.

NORTH.

What we are called upon to do, my friends, is to set Reason against

Imagination and against Habit. We have to lift ourselves up above

the limited sphere of sensible experience. We have to _believe_ that

something more _is_ than that which we see--than that which we know.

TALBOYS.

Yet, sir, even the facts of Mind, revealed to us living in these

bodies, are enough to show us that more is than these bodies--since

we feel that WE ARE, and that it is impossible for us to regard these

bodies otherwise than as _possessions of ours_--utterly impossible to

regard them as Ourselves.

NORTH.

We distinguish between the acts of Mind, inwardly exerted--the acts,

for instance, of Reason, of Memory, and of Affection--and acts of

the Mind communicating through the senses with the external world.

But Butler seems to me to go too far when he says, "I confess that

in sensation the mind uses the body; but in reflection I have no

reason to think that the mind uses the body." But, my dear friends,

I, Christopher North, think, on the contrary, that the Mind uses

the Brain for a thinking instrument; and that much thought fatigues

the Brain, and causes an oppressive flow of the blood to the Brain,

and otherwise disorders that organ. And altogether I should be

exceedingly sorry to rest the Immortality of the Soul upon so doubtful

an assumption as that the Brain is not, in any respect or sort, the

Mind's Organ of Thinking. I see no need for so timid a sheltering of

the argument. On the contrary, the simple doctrine, to my thought, is

this--The Mind, as we know it, is implicated and mixed up with the

Body--_throughout_--in all its ordinary actions. This corporeal frame

is a system of organs, or Instruments, which the Mind employs in a

thousand ways. They are its _instruments_--all of them are--and none

of them is itself. What does it matter to me that there is one more

organ--the Brain--for one more function--thinking? Unless the Mind were

in itself a seeing thing--that is, a thing able to see--it could not

use the Eye for seeing; and unless the Mind were a thinking thing, it

could not use the Brain for thinking. The most intimate implication

of itself with its instruments in the functions which constitute our

consciousness, proves nothing in the world to me, against its essential

distinctness from them, and against the possibility of its living

and acting in separation from them, and when they are dissolved. So

far from it, when I see that the body chills with fear, and glows

with love, I am ready to call fear a cold, and love a warm passion,

and to say that the Mind uses its bodily frame in fearing and in

loving. All these things have to do with manifestations of my mind

to itself, Now, whilst implicated in this body. Let me lift myself

above imagination--or let my imagination soar and carry my reason on

its wings--I leave the body to moulder, and I go sentient, volent,

intelligent, whithersoever _I_ am called.

TALBOYS.

It seems a timidity unworthy of Butler to make the distinction. Such a

distinction might be used to invalidate his whole doctrine.

NORTH.

It might--if granted--and legitimately. But the course is plain, and

the tenor steadfast. As a child, you think that your finger is a part

of yourself, and that you feel with it. Afterwards, you find that

it can be cut off without _diminishing you_: and physiologists tell

you, and you believe, that it does not feel, but sends up antecedents

of feeling to the brain. Am I to stop anywhere? Not in the body. As

my finger is no part of Me, no more is my liver, or my stomach, or

my heart--_or my brain_. When I have overworked myself, I feel a

lassitude, distinctly local, in my brain--_inside of my head_--and

therewithal an indolence, inertness, inability of thinking. If

reflection--as Butler more than insinuates--hesitatingly says--is

independent of my brain and body, whence the lassitude? And how did

James Watt get unconquerable headaches with meditating Steam-engines?

TALBOYS.

It is childish, sir, to stagger at degrees, when we have admitted the

kind. The Bishop's whole argument is to show, that the thing in us

which feels, wills, thinks, is distinct from our body; that I am one

thing, and my body another.

NORTH.

Have we SOULS? If we have--they can live after the

body--cannot perish with it; if we have not--wo betide us all!

SEWARD.

Will you, sir, be pleased to sum up the Argument of the First Chapter

of the Analogy?

NORTH.

No. Do you. You have heard it--and you understand it.

SEWARD.

I cannot venture on it.

NORTH.

Do you, my excellent Talboys--for you know the Book as well as I do

myself.

TALBOYS.

That the Order of Nature shows us great and wonderful changes, which

the living being undergoes-and arising from beginnings inconceivably

low, to higher and higher conditions of consciousness and action;--That

hence an exaltation of our Powers by the change Death, would be

congruous to the progress which we have witnessed in other creatures,

and have experienced in ourselves;--That the fact, that before Death

we possess Powers of acting, and suffering, and enjoying, affords

a _primâ facie_ probability that, after Death, we shall continue

to possess them; because it is a constant presumption in Nature,

and one upon which we constantly reason and rely, speculatively and

practically, that all things will continue as they are, unless a cause

appear sufficient for changing them;--But that in Death nothing appears

which should suffice to _destroy_ the Powers of Action, Enjoyment,

and Suffering in a Living Being;--For that in all we know of Death we

know the destruction of parts _instrumental_ to the Uses of a Living

Being;--But that of any destruction reaching, or that we have reason

to suppose to reach the Living Being, we know nothing;--That the Unity

of Consciousness persuades us that the Being in which Consciousness

essentially resides is one and indivisible--by any accident, Death

inclusive, indiscerptible;--That the progress of diseases, growing till

they kill the mortal body, but leaving the Faculties of the Soul in

full force to the last gasp of living breath, is a particular argument,

establishing this independence of the Living Being--the Spirit--which

is the Man himself--upon the accidents which may befall the perishable

Frame.

NORTH.

Having seen, then, a Natural Probability that the principle within

us, which is the seat and source of Thought and Feeling, and of such

Life as can be imparted to the Body, will subsist undestroyed by the

changes of the Body--and having recognised the undoubted Power of the

Creator--if it pleases Him--indefinitely to prolong the life which He

has given--how would you and I, my dear Friends, proceed--from the

ground thus gained--and on which--with Butler--we take our stand--to

speak farther of reasons for believing in the Immortality of the Soul?

SEWARD.

I feel, sir, that I have already taken more than my own part in

this conversation. We should have to inquire, sir, whether in His

known attributes, and in the known modes of His government, we could

ascertain any causes making it probable that He will thus prolong our

existence--and we find many such grounds of confidence.

NORTH.

Go on, my dear Seward.

SEWARD.

If you please, sir, be yours the closing words--for the Night.

NORTH.

The implanted longing in every human bosom for such permanent

existence--the fixed anticipation of it--and the recoil from

annihilation--seem to us intimation vouchsafed by the Creator of His

designs towards us;--the horror with which Remorse awakened by sin

looks beyond the Grave, partakes of the same prophetical inspiration.

We see how precisely the lower animals are fitted to the places which

they hold upon the earth, with instincts that exactly supply their

needs, with no powers that are not here satisfied--while we, as if out

of place, only through much difficult experience can adapt ourselves to

the physical circumstances into which we are introduced--and thus, in

one respect, furnished below our condition, are, on the other hand, by

the aspirations of our higher faculties, raised infinitely above it--as

if intimating that whilst those creatures _here_ fulfil the purpose of

their creation, _here_ we do not--and, therefore, look onward;--That

whilst our other Powers, of which the use is over, decline in the

course of nature as Death approaches, our Moral and Intellectual

Faculties often go on advancing to the last, as if showing that they

were drawing nigh to their proper sphere of action;-That whilst the

Laws regulating the Course of Human Affairs visibly proceed from a

Ruler who favours Virtue, and who frowns upon Vice, yet that a just

retribution does not seem uniformly carried out in the good success

of well-doers, and the ill success of evil-doers--so that we are led

on by the constitution of our souls to look forward to a world in

which that which here looks like Moral Disorder, might be reduced into

Order, and the Justice of the Ruler and the consistency of His Laws

vindicated;--That in studying the arrangements of this world, we see

that in many cases dispositions of Human affairs, which, upon their

first aspect, appeared to us evil, being more clearly examined and

better known, resulted in good--and thence draw a hope that the stroke

which daunts our imagination, as though it were the worst of evils,

will prove, when known, a dispensation of bounty--"Death the Gate of

Life," opening into a world in which His beneficent hand, if not nearer

to us than here, will be more steadily visible--no clouds interposing

between the eyes of our soul and their Sun;--That the perplexity which

oppresses our Understanding from the sight of this world, in which the

Good and Evil seem intermixed and crossing each other, almost vanishes,

when we lift up our thoughts to contemplate this mutable scene as a

place of Probation and of Discipline, where Sorrows and Sufferings

are given to school us to Virtue--as the Arena where Virtue strives

in the laborious and perilous contest, of which it shall hereafter

receive the well-won and glorious crown;--That we draw confidence in

the same conclusions, from observing how closely allied and agreeing

to each other are the Two Great Truths of Natural Religion, the Belief

in God and the Belief in our own Immortality; so that, when we have

received the idea of God, as the Great Governor of the Universe, the

belief in our own prolonged existence appears to us as a necessary

part of that Government; or if, upon the physical arguments, we have

admitted the independent conviction of our Immortality, this doctrine

appears to us barren and comfortless, until we understand that this

continuance of our Being is to bring us into the more untroubled

fruition of that Light, which here shines upon us, often through mist

and cloud;--That in all these high doctrines we are instructed to rest

more securely, as we find the growing harmony of one solemn conviction

with another--as we find that all our better and nobler Faculties

co-operate with one another--and these predominating principles carry

us to these convictions--so that our Understanding then first begins

to possess itself in strength and light when the heart has accepted

the Moral Law;--But that our Understanding is only fully at ease, and

our Moral Nature itself, with all its affections, only fully supported

and expanded, when both together have borne us on to the knowledge of

Him who is the sole Source of Law--the highest Object of Thought--the

Favourer of Virtue--towards whom Love may eternally grow, and still be

infinitely less than His due--till we have reached this knowledge, and

with it the steadfast hope that the last act of this Life joins us to

Him--does not for ever shut us up in the night of Oblivion;--And we

have strengthened ourselves in inferences forced upon us by remembering

how humankind has consented in these Beliefs, as if they were a part

of our Nature--and by remembering farther, how, by the force of these

Beliefs, human Societies have subsisted and been held together--how

Laws have been sanctioned, and how Virtues, Wisdom, and all the good

and great works of the Human Spirit have, under these influences, been

produced;--Surely GREAT IS THE POWER of all these concurrent

considerations brought from every part of our Nature--from the

Material and the Immaterial--from the Intellectual and Moral--from the

Individual and the Social--from that which respects our existence on

this side of the grave, and that which respects our existence beyond

it--from that which looks down upon the Earth, and that which looks up

towards Heaven.

_Printed by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh._

FOOTNOTES:

[19] _The Strayed Reveller, and other Poems._ By A. London: 1849.

[20] _Miscellany of the Spalding Club_, iii. 58.

[21] Ibid. 62-3.

[22] We remember once in such a house--it was a rainy day, and for

the amusement of the inmates a general rummage was made among old

papers--that in a corner of a press of a law library were found a

multitude of letters very precisely folded up, and titled--they had a

most business-like and uninteresting appearance, but on being examined

they were found to consist of the confidential correspondence of the

leaders of the Jacobite army in 1745. Their preservation was accounted

for by the circumstance that an ancestor of the owner of the house was

sheriff of the county at the period of the rebellion. He had seized

the letters; but, finding probably that they implicated a considerable

number of his own relations, he did not consider himself especially

called on to invite the attention of the law officers of the crown

to his prize; while, on the other hand, the damnatory documents were

carefully preserved, lest some opportunity should occur of turning

them to use. They are now printed in a substantial quarto, under the

patronage of one of the book clubs.

[23] _Miscellany of the Spalding Club_, iii. 60.

[24] _Miscellany of the Spalding Club_, iii. 6.

[25] _Houston's Memoirs_, 92.

[26] _Miscellany of the Spalding Club_, iii. 34-5.

[27] _Miscellany of the Spalding Club_, iii. p. 57.

[28] _Miscellany of the Spalding Club_, iii. p. 46.

[29] _Miscellany of the Spalding Club_, iii. 4.

[30] Ibid. p. 6.

[31] _Miscellany of the Spalding Club_, pp. 17-20.

[32] _Houston's Memoirs_, p. 31.

[33] Ibid. p. 8.

[34] It is a curious coincidence, that the _first man_ whom her Majesty

met with and addressed, when she landed in Glasgow, was the _Earl of

Morton_, the lineal descendant of the ruthless baron whose arms then

proved so fatal to her beautiful and unfortunate ancestress.

[Transcriber's Note:

Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.]