“the British Peerage,” written at a time when certain worthy fellows out
of doors seemed to be determined that crown, mitre, and coronet should
go together into one blazing bonfire, similar to that which lately
received the state chair of Louis Philippe—and when certain peers within
testified their respect for the dignity and privileges of their order,
by doing their best to have it swamped by new creations—will especially
challenge notice as a stately, dignified, and elaborate composition.
Other essays, such as those on Crime and Transportation, Ireland, the
Navigation Laws, and the Commercial Crisis of 1837, evince the care and
attention which Mr Alison has bestowed on the leading topics of economy
and government with which modern statesmen are inevitably compelled to
grapple. Of their intrinsic merit we shall say nothing. They have often
been cited as the ablest expositions of the peculiar views which they
advocate, and all of them bear the impress of a mind earnest in its
convictions, and thoroughly practical in its tendency. Mr Alison does
not, like too many writers of the day, content himself with finding out
what is faulty, or defective, or radically vicious in any branch of our
social economy—he indulges in no vague and pointless declamation; but
while he lays bare the wound, distinctly and emphatically inculcates the
proper remedy. Many persons there are, of course, who will not subscribe
to his doctrines, but we believe there are very few who will question
the sincerity or deny the philanthropy of his views. And when it is
considered that the three massive volumes, of which this is the first,
were composed at intervals of short respite from the toil of an
engrossing profession, and form but a small portion of the literary
labours of the author, it may be questionable which is most to be
wondered at—the largeness of his information, or the unwearied energy of
his mind.
These certainly are not the columns in which this work of Mr Alison can
be discussed with absolute impartiality, nor is the writer of this
article free from a pardonable bias. Where affection, veneration, and
gratitude for many wholesome lessons, conveyed with a kindliness which
has made those lessons still more valuable, are warm at the heart,
criticism is impossible; and it would be absurd and false to feign that
we approach this book with any idea of fulfilling the critical function.
Yet thus much may we be allowed to say, that for integrity of purpose,
honesty of design, clear and unvarying adherence to principles,
laboriously sought for and conscientiously adopted—for the virtue and
total absence of selfishness which distinguish the patriot, and for the
grace and accomplishment which adorn the scholar and the gentleman, it
would be difficult to find within the four seas that encircle Britain a
superior to the author of these Essays, and of the famous History of
Europe.
OVID’S SPRING-TIME
FROM THE TRISTIA.
For once the zephyrs have removed the cold:
One year is over, and a new begun.
So short a winter, I am daily told,
Never yet yielded to this northern sun.
I see the children skipping o’er the green,
Plucking the faint unodorous violet,
A gentle stranger, rarely ever seen.
With other flowers the mead is sparsely set—
Brown birds are twittering with the joy of spring:
The universal swallow, ne’er at rest,
Aye chirping, glances past on purple wing,
And builds beneath the humble eaves her nest.
The plant, which yester-year the share o’erthrew,
Looks up again from out the opening mould;
And the poor vines, though here but weak and few,
Some scantling buds, like ill-set gems, unfold.
W. E. A.
=Dies Boreales.=
No. VII.
CHRISTOPHER UNDER CANVASS.
_Camp at Cladich._
SCENE—_The Wren’s Nest._ TIME—_Three o’clock_ A.M.
NORTH—TALBOYS.
NORTH.
Perturbed Spirit! why won’t you rest? What brings thee here?
TALBOYS.
Seward snores.
NORTH.
Why select Seward?
TALBOYS.
I do not select him—he selects himself—singles himself out from the
whole host; so that you hear his Snore loud over that of the Camp—say
rather his Snore alone—like Lablache singing a Solo in a chorus.
NORTH.
It must be Buller.
TALBOYS.
Buller began it——
NORTH.
List! How harmonious in the hush the blended Snore of Camp and Village!
How tuned to unison—as if by pitch-pipe—with the dreamy din of our
lapsing friend here, who by and by will awake into a positive Waterfall.
TALBOYS.
The Snore of either army stilly sounds. At this distance, the Snore
disposes to sleep. Seward must have awakened himself—there goes Buller——
NORTH.
Where?
TALBOYS.
Shriller than Seward—quite a childish treble—liker the Snore of a
female—
NORTH.
Females never snore.
TALBOYS.
How do you know? I won’t answer for some of them. Lionesses do—not
perhaps in their wild state—but in Zoological Gardens.
NORTH.
Not quite so loud, Chanticleer—you will disturb my people.
TALBOYS.
Disturb your people! Why, he has already stirred up the Solar System.
“The Cock that is the Trumpet of the Morn,
Doth, with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat,
Awake the God of Day.”
Taking the distance of the Earth from the Sun, in round numbers, at
Ninety-Five Millions of Miles, pretty well for a bird probably weighing
some six pounds not merely to make himself heard by the God of Day, but
by one single crow to startle Dan Phœbus from his sleep, and force him
_nolens volens_ to show his shining morning face at Cladich.
NORTH.
Out of Science, we seldom think of the vastness of the System of the
Universe. Our hearts and imaginations diminish it for the delight of
love. In our usual moods we are all Children with respect to Nature; and
gather up Stars as if they were flowers of the field—to form a coronet
for Neæra’s hair.
TALBOYS.
What ailed poor dear Doctor Beattie at Cocks in general? I never could
understand the Curse.
“Proud harbinger of Day,
Who scarest my visions with thy clarion shrill,
Fell Chanticleer! who oft hath reft away
My fancied good, and brought substantial ill!
Oh, to thy cursed scream discordant still
Let Harmony aye shut her gentle ear;
Thy boastful mirth let jealous rivals spill,
Insult thy crest, and glossy pinions tear,
And ever in thy dreams the ruthless fox appear.”
You Poets, in your own persons, are a savage set.
NORTH.
I am not a Poet, sir; nor will I allow any man with impunity to call me
so.
TALBOYS.
But Doctor Beattie was, and a Professor of Moral Philosophy to boot, at
Aberdeen or St Andrews, or some other one of our ancient
Universities—for every stone-and-lime building in Scotland is ancient;
and. goodness me! hear him cursing cocks, and dooming the whole Gallic
race to every variety of cruel and ignominious deaths, in revenge for
having been disturbed from his morning dreams by a Gentleman with Comb
and Wattles crowing on his own Dunghill, in red jacket, speckled
waistcoat, and grey breeks, the admiration of Earochs and How-Towdies.
NORTH.
Doctor Beattie was a true Poet—and had an eye and an ear for Nature. Yet
now and then he shut both—
“Hence the scared owl on pinions grey
_Breaks from the rustling boughs_;
And down the lone vale sails away
To more profound repose.”
I have seen that Stanza quoted many thousand times as exquisite. It is
criminal. An owl was never heard, scared or unscared, to “break from the
rustling boughs.” Silently as a leaf he leaves his perch; you hear no
rustle, for he makes none—any more than a ghost.
TALBOYS.
Nor are the other lines good—for they present the image of a long
rectilinear flight, which that of an owl in no circumstances is; and, in
a fright, he would take the first blind shelter.
NORTH.
Poets seldom err so—yet I remember a mistake of Coleridge’s about that
commonest of all birds, the Rook.
“My gentle-hearted Charles! when the last Rook
Bent its straight path along the dusky air
Homewards, I blest it! deeming its black wing
(Now a dim speck, now vanishing in light)
Had crossed the mighty orb’s dilated glory,
When thou stood’st gazing; or, when all was still,
_Flew creaking o’er thy head_; and had a charm
For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom
No sound is dissonant which tells of life!”
TALBOYS.
There is much silliness in the Sibylline Leaves. For Charles read
Charlotte. ’Tis more like Love than Friendship—effeminate exceedingly;
and, “no sound is dissonant which tells of life,” reminds one of the
Sunday Jackasses on Blackheath.
NORTH.
“‘_Flew creaking._’ Some months after I had written this line,” says
Coleridge in a note, “it gave me pleasure to find that Bartram had
observed the same circumstance of the Savanna Crane. ‘When these birds
move their wings in flight, their strokes are slow, moderate, and
regular; and even when at a considerable distance, or high above us, we
plainly hear the quill-feathers; their shafts and webs, upon one
another, creak as _the joints or working of a vessel in a tempestuous
sea_.’” That a Rook may fly “creaking” when moulting, or otherwise out
of feather, I shall not take upon me to deny; but in ordinary condition,
he does not fly “creaking.” Coleridge was wont, in his younger days, to
mistake exceptions for general rules. In such a case as this, a moment’s
reflection would have sufficed to tell him that there could not have
been “creaking” without let or hindrance to flight—and that the flight
of a rook is easy and equable—“The blackening train o’ craws to their
repose.” What creaking must have been there! But Burns never heard it.
TALBOYS.
One Burns, as an observer of nature, is worth fifty Coleridges.
NORTH.
Not an arithmetical question. Why, even dear Sir Walter himself
occasionally makes a slip in this way.
“Beneath the broad and ample bone,
That buckled heart to fear unknown,
A feeble and a tim’rous guest
The field-fare framed her lowly nest!”
The Field-fare is migratory—and does not build here; in Norway, where it
is native, it builds in trees—often high up on lofty trees—and in
crowds.
TALBOYS.
I believe, sir, they have been known to breed in this country—and
perhaps here they build on the ground.
NORTH.
Don’t be nonsensical. Our Great Minstrel knew wood-craft well; and
hill-craft and river-craft; yet in his fine picture of Coriskin and
Coolin,
“The wildest glen but this can show
Some touch of nature’s genial glow:
On high Benmore green mosses grow,
And heath-bells bud in deep Glencroe,
And copse on Cruachan Ben;
But here, above, around, below,
In mountain or in glen,
Nor tree, nor shrub, nor plant, nor flower,
Nor aught of vegetative power
The weary eye may ken.
For all is rocks at random strewn,
Black waves, bare crags, and banks of stone,
As if were here denied
The summer’s sun, the spring’s sweet dew,
That clothe with many a varied hue
The bleakest mountain’s head;”
would you believe it, that he introduces Deer—_fallow_ Deer!
TALBOYS.
“Call it not vain, they do not err
Who say that, when the Poet dies,
Mute nature mourns her worshipper,
And celebrates his obsequies;
Who say tall cliff and cavern lone
For the departed bard make moan;
That mountains meet in crystal rill,
That flowers in tears of balm distil;
Through his loved groves that breezes sigh,
And oaks in deeper groan reply,
And rivers teach their rushing wave
To murmur dirges round his grave.”
NORTH.
And there the Last Minstrel should have ceased. What follows spoils
all—fanciful, fantastic—not imaginative, poetical. The Minstrel is at
pains to let us know that
“Mute nature does _not_ mourn her worshipper!”
that not
“O’er mortal urn
These things inanimate can mourn.”
What, then, is the truth? To explain the mystery of flowers distilling
tears of balm, we are told that
“The maid’s pale shade, who wails her lot,
That love, true love, should be forgot,
From rose and heather shakes the tear
Upon the gentle Minstrel’s bier—”
The Phantom Knight shrieks upon the wild blast—and the Chief, from his
misty throne on the mountains, fills the lonely caverns with his
groans—while his
“Tears of rage impel the rill!
All mourn the minstrel’s harp unstrung,
Their name unknown, their praise unsung!”
Had Sir Walter been speaking in his own person he never would have
written thus—nor thus contradicted and extinguished the Passion in the
stanzas you so feelingly recited. But he puts the words into the lips of
an old Harper improvising at a Feast—on which occasion anything will
pass for poetry—even to the mind of the true Poet himself—but, believe
me, it is sheer nonsense—and by power of contrast recalls Wordsworth’s
profound saying—
“The Poets, in their elegies and lays
Lamenting the departed, call the groves—
They call upon the hills and streams to mourn
And senseless rocks; nor idly; for they speak
In these their invocation, with a voice
Obedient to the strong creative power
Of human passion. Sympathies there are
More tranquil, yet perhaps of kindred birth,
That steal upon the meditative mind,
And grow with thought. Beside yon spring I stood,
And eyed its waters till we seemed to feel
One sadness, they and I. For them a bond
Of brotherhood is broken; time has been
When, every day, the touch of human hand
Dislodged the natural sleep that binds them up
In mortal stillness; and they ministered
To human comfort.”
TALBOYS.
Are all these the Cladich Cock and his echoes? No, surely. Farm
crows to Farm, from Auchlian to Sonnachan. You might almost believe
them bagpipes. And so it is—that is a bagpipe. On which side of the
Loch? Why, on neither—beg pardon—on both; forgive me—on the
Water;—incredible—in the Camp! No snore can long outlive that—the
People are up and doing.
In my mind’s eye I see women slipping easily into petticoats—men
laboriously into breeches——
NORTH.
My more Celtic imagination sees chiefly kilts. But pray, may I ask
again, Talboys, what brought you here at this untimeous hour of the
Morn?
TALBOYS.
I feel that I ought to apologise for my unwelcome intrusion on your
privacy, sir; but on my honour I believed you were in the Van. Yesterday
I was so engrossed by you and Shakspeare, that during our colloquy I had
not a moment to look at the Wren’s Nest.
NORTH.
Its existence is believed in by few of the natives. I know no such place
for a murder. There would be no need to bury the body—here at this Table
he might be left sitting for centuries—a dead secret in a Safe.
TALBOYS.
No need to bury the body! You have no antipathy, I trust, sir, to me?
NORTH.
We are not responsible for our antipathies——
TALBOYS.
I allow that—but we are for every single murder we commit; and though
there may be no need to bury the body, murder will spunk out——
NORTH.
We are willing to run the risk. What infatuation to seek the Lion in his
Den—the Wren in his Nest! Sit down, sir, and let us have, in the form of
dialogue, your last speech and dying words on Othello.
TALBOYS.
Hamlet, sir?
NORTH.
Othello.
TALBOYS.
Romeo and Juliet?
NORTH.
Othello.
TALBOYS.
Well—Lear let it be.
NORTH.
Mind what you are about, Talboys. There are limits to human forbearance.
Swear that after this morning’s breakfast you will never again utter the
words Othello—Iago—Cassio—Desdemona——
TALBOYS.
I swear. Meanwhile, let us recur to the Question of Short and Long Time.
NORTH.
When Shakspeare was inditing the Scenes of the “Decline and Fall”—“The
Temptation”—“The Seduction”—or whatsoever else you choose to call it—the
Sequence of Cause and Effect—the bringing out into prominence and power
the successive ESSENTIAL MOVEMENTS of the proceeding transformation were
intents possessing his whole spirit. We can easily conceive that they
might occupy it absolutely and exclusively—that is to say, excluding the
computation and all consideration of actual time. If this be an
excessive example, yet I believe that a huddling up of time is a part of
the poetical state; that you must, and, what is more, may, crowd into a
Theatrical or Epic Day, far more of transaction between parties, and of
changes psychological, than a natural day will hold—ay, ten times over.
The time on the Stage and in Verse is not literal time. Not it, indeed;
and if it be thus with time, which is so palpable, so selfevidencing an
entity, what must be the law, and how wide-ranging, for everything else,
when we have once got fairly into the Region of Poetry?
TALBOYS.
The usefulness of the Two Times is palpable from first to last—of the
Short Time for maintaining the tension of the passion—of the long for a
thousand general needs. Thus Bianca must be used for convincing Othello
very potently, positively, unanswerably. But she cannot be used without
supposing a protracted intercourse between her and Cassio. Iago’s
dialogue with him falls to the ground, if the acquaintance began
yesterday. But superincumbent over all is the _necessity of our not
knowing_ that Iago begins the Temptation, and that Othello extinguishes
the Light of his Life all in one day.
NORTH.
And observe, Talboys, how this concatenation of the passionate scenes
operates. Marvellously! Let the Entrances of Othello be four—A, B, C, D.
You feel the close connexion of A with B, of B with C, of C with D. You
feel the coherence, the nextness; and all the force of the impetuous
Action and Passion resulting. But the logically-consequent near
connexion of A with C, and much more with D, as again of B with D, you
_do not feel_. Why? When you are at C, and feeling the pressure of B
upon C, you have lost sight of the pressure of A upon B. At each
entrance you go back one step—you do not go back two. The suggested
intervals continually keep displacing to distances in your memory the
formerly felt connexions. This could not so well happen in real life,
where the relations of time are strictly bound upon your memory. Though
something of it happens when passion devours memory. But in fiction, the
conception being loosely held, and shadowy, the feat becomes easily
practicable. Thus the Short Time tells for the support of the Passion,
along with the Long Time, by means of virtuous instillations from the
hand or wing of Oblivion. From one to two you feel no intermission—from
two to three you feel none—from three to four you feel none; but I defy
any man to say that from one to four he has felt none. I defy any man to
say honestly, that “sitting at the Play” he has kept count from one to
four.
TALBOYS.
If you come to that, nobody keeps watch over the time in listening to
Shakspeare. I much doubt if anybody knows at the theatre that Iago’s
first suggestion of doubt occurs the day after the landing. I never knew
it till you made me look for it—
NORTH.
For which boon I trust you are duly grateful.
TALBOYS.
’Tis folly to be wise.
NORTH.
Why, Heaven help us! if we did not go to bed, and did not dine, which of
us could ever keep count from Monday to Saturday! As it is, we have some
of us hard work to know what happened yesterday, and what the day
before. On Tuesday I killed that Salmo Ferox?
TALBOYS.
No—but on Wednesday I did. You forget yourself, my dear sir, just like
Shakspeare.
NORTH.
Ay, Willy forgets himself. He is not withheld by the chain of time he is
linking, for he has lost sight of the previous links. Put yourself into
the transport of composition, and answer. But besides, every past
scene—or to speak more suitably to the technical distribution of the
Scenes, in our Editions—every past _changed occupation of the Stage by
one coming in or one going out_, (which different occupation, according
to the technicality of the French Stage, of the Italian, of the Attic,
of Plautus, of Terence, constitutes a Scene)—every such past marked
moment in the progress of the Play has the effect for the Poet, as well
as for you, of protracting the time in retrospect—throwing everything
that has passed further back. As if, in travelling fifty miles, you
passed fifty Castles, fifty Churches, fifty Villages, fifty Towns, fifty
Mountains, fifty Valleys, and fifty Cataracts—fifty Camels, fifty
Elephants, fifty Caravans, fifty Processions, and fifty Armies—the said
fifty miles would seem a good stretch larger to your recollection, and
the five hours of travelling a pretty considerable deal longer, than
another fifty miles and another five hours in which you had passed only
three Old Women.
TALBOYS.
My persuasion is, sir, that nobody alive knows—of the auditors—that the
first suggestion of doubt and the conclusion to kill are in one Scene of
the Play. I do, indeed, believe, with you, sir, that the goings-out and
re-enterings of Othello have a strangely deluding effect—that they
disconnect the time more than you can think—and that all the changes of
persons on the stage—all shiftings of scenes and droppings of curtains,
break and dislocate and dilate the time to your imagination, till you do
not in the least know where you are. In this laxity of your conception,
all hints of extended time sink in and spring up, like that fungus
which, on an apt soil, in a night grows to a foot diameter.
NORTH.
You have hit it there, Talboys. Shakspeare, we have seen, in his calmer
constructions, shows, in a score of ways, weeks, months; that is
therefore the true time, or call it the historical time. Hurried
himself, and hurrying you on the torrent of passion, he forgets time,
and a false show of time, to the utmost contracted, arises. I do not
know whether he did not perceive this false exhibition of time, or
perceiving, he did not care. But we all must see a reason, and a cogent
one, why he should not let in the markings of protraction upon his
dialogues of the Seduced and the Seducer. You can conceive nothing
better than that the Poet, in the moment of composition, seizes the
views which at that moment offer themselves as effective—unconscious or
regardless of incompatibility. He is whole to the present; and as all is
feigned, he does not remember how the foregone makes the ongoing
impracticable. Have you ever before, Talboys, examined time in a Play of
Shakspeare? Much more, have you ever examined the treatment of time on
the Stage to which Shakspeare came, upon which he lived, and which he
left?
TALBOYS.
A good deal.
NORTH.
Not much, I suspect.
TALBOYS.
Why, not at all—except t’other day along with you—in Macbeth.
NORTH.
He came to a Stage which certainly had not cultivated the logic of time
as a branch of the Dramatic Art. It appears to me that those old people,
when they were enwrapt in the transport of their creative power, totally
forgot all regard, lost all consciousness of time. Passion does not know
the clock or the calendar. Intimations of time, now vague, now positive,
will continually occur; but also the Scenes float, like the Cyclades in
a Sea of Time, at distances utterly indeterminate—Most near? Most
remote? That is a Stage of Power, and not of Rules—Dynamic, not Formal.
I say again at last as at first, that the time of Othello, tried by the
notions of time in _our Art_, or tried, if you will, by the type of
prosaic and literal time, is—INSOLUBLE.
TALBOYS.
To the first question, therefore, being What is the truth of the matter?
the answer stands, I conceive without a shadow of doubt or difficulty,
“The time of Othello is—as real time—INSOLUBLE.”
NORTH.
By heavens, he echoes me!
TALBOYS.
Or, it is proposed incongruously, impossibly. Then arises the question,
How stood the time in the mind of Shakspeare?
NORTH.
I answer, I do not know. The question splits itself into two—first, “How
did he _project_ the time?” Second, “How did he conceive it in the
progress of the Play?” My impression is, that he projected extended
time. If so, did he or did he not know that in managing the Seduction he
departed from that design by contracting into a Day? Did he deliberately
entertain a double design? If he did, how did he excuse this to himself?
Did he say, “A stage necessity, or a theatrical or dramatic
necessity”—namely, that of sustaining at the utmost possible reach of
altitude the tragical passion and interest—“requires the precipitation
of the passion from the first breathing of suspicion—the ‘Ha! Ha! I like
not that,’ of the suggesting Fiend to the consecrated ‘killing myself,
to die upon a kiss!’—all in the course of fifteen hours—and this
tragical vehemency, this impetuous energy, this torrent of power I will
have; at the same time I have many reasons—amongst them the general
probability of the action—for a dilated time; and I, being a magician of
the first water, will so dazzle, blind, and bewilder my auditors, that
they shall accept the double time with a double belief—shall feel the
unstayed rushing on of action and passion, from the first suggestion to
the cloud of deaths—and yet shall remain with a conviction that Othello
was for months Governor of Cyprus—they being on the whole unreflective
and uncritical persons?”
TALBOYS.
And, after all, who willingly criticises his dreams or his pleasures?
NORTH.