BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
NO. CCCCXVI. JUNE, 1850. VOL. LXVII.
CONTENTS.
LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS, 641
THE HUNGARIAN JOSEPH, 658
MY PENINSULAR MEDAL. BY AN OLD PENINSULAR. PART VII., 661
A MONTH AT CONSTANTINOPLE, 679
MADAME SONTAG AND THE OPERA, 688
THE GREEN HAND--A "SHORT" YARN. PART X., 701
PALACE THEATRICALS. A DAY-DREAM, 722
THE QUAKER'S LAMENT, 733
THE GREAT PROTECTION MEETING IN LONDON, 738
INDEX, 783
EDINBURGH: WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, 45 GEORGE STREET; AND 37
PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON. _To whom all communications (post paid) must
be addressed._
SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
NO. CCCCXVI. JUNE, 1850. VOL. LXVII.
LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS.[1]
[1] _Latter-Day Pamphlets_, edited by THOMAS CARLYLE. No. I. The
Present Time. No. II. Model Prisons. No. III. Downing Street. No.
IV. The New Downing Street. London: 1850.
It is nothing unusual, in this wayward world of ours, to find men
denouncing, with apparent sincerity, that very fault which is
most conspicuous in themselves. How often do we detect the most
quarrelsome fellow of our acquaintance, the Hotspur of his immediate
circle, uttering a grave homily against intemperance of speech, and
rebuking for some casual testiness a friend, whose general demeanour
and bearing give token of a lily-liver? What more common than to
hear the habitual drunkard railing at the sin of inebriety, and
delivering affecting testimony against the crying iniquity of the
ginshop? We have listened to discourses on the comeliness of honesty,
and the degrading tendencies of mammon-worship, from gentlemen
who, a few hours before, had given private instructions to their
brokers to rig the market, and who looked upon George Hudson as the
greatest ornament of the age. Cobden mounts the platform to propose
a motion in favour of universal peace and brotherhood, and, by way
of argument, suggests the propriety of crumpling up the empire of
the Russias, like the sheet of white paper which trembles in his
omnipotent hand. He is seconded by a Quaker.
Mr Thomas Carlyle has, of late years, devoted a good deal of
his leisure time to the denunciation of shams. The term, in his
mouth, has a most extended significance indeed--he uses it with
Catholic application. Loyalty, sovereignty, nobility, the church,
the constitution, kings, nobles, priests, the House of Commons,
ministers, Courts of Justice, laws, and lawgivers, are all alike,
in the eyes of Mr Carlyle, shams. Nor does he consider the system
as of purely modern growth. England, he thinks, has been shamming
Isaac for several hundred years. Before the Commonwealth it was
overridden by the frightful Incubus of Flunkeyism; since then, it
has been suffering under Horsehair and Redtapism, two awful monsters
that present themselves to Mr Carlyle's diseased imagination,
chained at the entrances of Westminster Hall and Downing Street.
Cromwell, perhaps, was not a sham, for in the burly regicide brewer
Mr Carlyle discerns certain grand inarticulate strivings, which
elevate him to the heroic rank. The gentlemen of the present age,
however, are all either shams or shamming. The honourable Felix
Parvulus, and the right honourable Felicissimus Zero, mounted
respectively upon "desperate Sleswick thunder-horses"--M'Crowdy the
political economist--Bobus--Flimnap, Sec. Foreign Department--the
Right Honourable Minimus, and various other allegorical personages,
intended, we presume, to typify carnal realities, are condemned as
Solemn Shams, Supreme Quacks, Phantasm Captains, the Elixir of the
Infatuated, and Able-Editor's Nobles.
It is natural to suppose that an individual who habitually deals in
such wholesale denunciation, and whose avowed wish is to regenerate
and reform society upon some entirely novel principle, must be a man
of immense practical ability. The exposer of shams and quackeries
should be, in his own person, very far indeed above suspicion of
resembling those whom he describes, or tries to describe, in language
more or less intelligible. If otherwise, he stands in imminent
danger of being treated by the rest of the world as an impertinent
and egregious impostor. Now, Mr Thomas Carlyle is anything but a
man of practical ability. Setting aside his style for the present,
let us see whether he has ever, in the course of his life, thrown
out a single hint which could be useful to his own generation, or
profitable to those who may come after. If he could originate any
such hint, he does not possess the power of embodying it in distinct
language. He has written a history of the French Revolution, a
pamphlet on Chartism, a work on Heroes and Hero-worship, and a sort
of political treatise entitled _Past and Present_. Can any living man
point to a single practical passage in any of these volumes? If not,
what is the real value of Mr Carlyle's writings? What is Mr Carlyle
himself but a Phantasm of the species which he is pleased to denounce?
We have known, ere now, in England, political writers who,
single-handed, have waged war with Ministers, and denounced the
methods of government. But they were men of strong masculine
understanding, capable of comprehending principles, and of exhibiting
them in detail. They never attempted to write upon subjects which
they did not understand: consequently, what they did write was well
worthy of perusal, more especially as their sentiments were conveyed
in clear idiomatic English. Perhaps the most remarkable man of this
class was the late William Cobbett. Shrewd and practical, a master
of figures, and an utter scorner of generalisation, he went at once
in whatever he undertook to the root of the matter, and, right or
wrong, demonstrated what he thought to be the evil, and what he
conceived to be the remedy. There was no slip-slop, burlesque, or
indistinctness about William Cobbett. Mr Carlyle, on the other hand,
can never stir one inch beyond the merest vague generality. If he
were a doctor, and you came to him with a cut finger, he would regale
you with a lecture on the heroical qualities of Avicenna, or commence
proving that Dr Abernethy was simply a Phantasm-Leech, instead of
whipping out his pocket-book, and applying a plaster to the wound.
Put him into the House of Commons, and ask him to make a speech on
the budget. No baby ever possessed a more indefinite idea of the
difference between pounds, shillings, and pence. He would go on
maundering about Teufelsdrökh, Sauerteig, and Dryasdust, Sir Jabez
Windbag, Fire-horses, Marsh-jötuns, and vulturous Choctaws, until he
was coughed down as remorselessly as ever was Sir Joshua Walmsley.
And yet this is the gentleman who has the temerity to volunteer his
services as a public instructor, and who is now issuing a series of
monthly tracts, for the purpose of shedding a new light upon the most
intricate and knotty points of the general policy of Great Britain!
Something of this kind we have already witnessed in a neighbouring
country, but never in the like degree. France has had her Flocons
and her Louis Blancs, small, pert, presumptuous animals, chalking
out schemes of social regeneration, organised labour, industrial
regiments, and the like. We do not intend to insinuate that either
of these scribes is entitled to be ranked, for parity of intellect,
with Mr Carlyle, because by doing so we might involve ourselves in
a squabble with some of his benighted admirers. But we say, with
perfect sincerity, that so far as regards political attainments
and information, clear views, and we shall even add common sense,
(distant as that attribute is from any of the parties above named,)
MM. Flocon and Blanc are at least as capable guides as Mr Carlyle
can pretend to be. Something tangible there is, however pernicious
to society, in the propositions of the former--the latter does not
favour us with propositions at all; he contents himself with abusing
men and matters in a barbarous, conceited, uncouth, and mystical
dialect.
One peculiarity there is about the _Latterday Pamphlets_, as
contradistinguished from their author's previous lucubrations, which
has amused us not a little. Mr Carlyle has hitherto been understood
to favour the cause of self-styled Liberalism. His mania, or rather
his maunderings, on the subject of the Protector gained him the
applause of many who are little less than theoretical republicans,
and who regard as a glorious deed the regicide of the unfortunate
Charles. Moreover, certain passages in his _History of the French
Revolution_ tended to strengthen this idea; he had a kindly side for
Danton, and saw evident marks of heroism in the loathsome miscreant
whom, in his usual absurd jargon, he styles "the pale sea-green
Incorruptible," Robespierre. On this ground, his works were received
with approbation by a section of the public press; and we used
to hear him lauded and commended as a writer of the profoundest
stamp, as a deep original thinker, a thorough-paced philanthropist,
the champion of genuine greatness, and the unflinching enemy of
delusions. Now, however, things are altered. Mr Carlyle has got a new
crochet into his head, and to the utter discomfiture of his former
admirers, he manifests a truculent and ultra-tyrannical spirit,
abuses the political economists, wants to have a strong coercive
government, indicates a decided leaning to the whip and the musket
as effectual modes of reasoning, and, in short, abjures democracy!
The sensation caused by this extraordinary change of sentiment has
been as great as if Joe Hume had declared himself a spendthrift. Only
think of such a document as the following, addressed to the sovereign
people!
"_Speech of the British Prime Minister to the floods of Irish
and other Beggars, the able-bodied Lackalls, nomadic or
stationary, and the general assembly, outdoor and indoor, of the
Pauper Populations of these Realms._
"Vagrant Lackalls! foolish most of you, criminal many of you,
miserable all; the sight of you fills me with astonishment
and despair. What to do with you I know not; long have I been
meditating, and it is hard to tell. Here are some three millions
of you, as I count; so many of you fallen sheer over into the
abysses of open Beggary; and, fearful to think, every new unit
that falls is _loading_ so much more the chain that drags
the other over. On the edge of the precipice hang uncounted
millions; increasing, I am told, at the rate of 1200 a-day. They
hang there on the giddy edge, poor souls, crumping themselves
down, holding on with all their strength, but falling, falling
one after another; and the chain is getting _heavy_, so that
ever more fall; and who at last will stand! What to do with you?
The question, what to do with you? especially since the potato
died, is like to break my heart!
"One thing, after much meditating, I have at last discovered,
and now know for some time back: That you cannot be left to roam
abroad in this unguided manner, stumbling over the precipices,
and loading ever heavier the fatal _chain_ upon those who might
be able to stand; that this of locking you up in temporary Idle
Workhouses, when you stumble, and subsisting you on Indian meal,
till you can sally forth again on fresh roamings, and fresh
stumblings, and ultimate descent to the devil;--that this is
_not_ the plan; and that it never was, or could out of England
have been supposed to be, much as I have prided myself upon it!
"Vagrant Lackalls! I at last perceive, all this that has been
sung and spoken, for a long while, about enfranchisement,
emancipation, freedom, suffrage, civil and religious liberty
over the world, is little other than sad temporary jargon,
brought upon us by a stern necessity,--but now ordered by a
sterner to take itself away again a little. Sad temporary
jargon, I say; made up of sense and nonsense,--sense in small
quantities, and nonsense in very large;--and, if taken for the
whole or permanent truth of human things, it is no better than
fatal infinite nonsense eternally _untrue_. All men, I think,
will soon have to quit this, to consider this as a thing pretty
well achieved; and to look out towards another thing much more
needing achievement at the time that now is."
Flat burglary as ever was committed! O villain! thou wilt be
condemned into everlasting redemption for this--so say the political
Dogberrys to the gentleman whom they used to applaud. We are not
surprised at their wrath. It _is_ rather hard to be told at this time
of day that ballot-boxes and extension of the suffrage are included
in Mr Carlyle's catalogue of Shams, and that Messrs Thompson, Fox,
and Co., must even submit to the charge of talking unveracities and
owlism. Surely there is some mistake here. Not a whit of it. Mr
Carlyle is in grim earnest, and lays about him like a man. He has
not studied the records of the French Revolution for nothing; and he
is not able to discern in the late Continental revolts any ground
for general congratulation on the improved prospects of mankind.
Such language as the following must sound as a strange rebuke in the
ears of divers organs of the public press, who, not long ago, were
flinging up their caps in ecstasies at the fall of constitutions,
backing up Garibaldi against the Pope, Charles Albert against
Radetsky, the Sicilian insurgents against their Sovereign of Naples,
Kossuth against the Emperor, Von Gagern against Federalism, Ledru
Rollin against Civilisation, and Lamartine against Common-sense.
"Certainly it is a drama full of action, event fast following
event; in which curiosity finds endless scope, and there are
interests at stake, enough to arrest the attention of all men
simple and wise. Whereat the idle multitude lift up their
voices, gratulating, celebrating sky-high; in rhyme and prose
announcement, more than plentiful, that _now_ the New Era, and
long-expected Year One of Perfect Human Felicity has come.
Glorious and immortal people, sublime French citizens, heroic
barricades; triumph of civil and religious liberty--O Heaven!
one of the inevitablest private miseries, to an earnest man in
such circumstances, is this multitudinous efflux of oratory
and psalmody from the universal human throat; drowning for the
moment all reflection whatsoever, except the sorrowful one that
you are fallen in an evil, heavy-laden, long-eared age, and
must resignedly bear your part in the same. The front-wall of
your wretched old crazy dwelling, long denounced by you to no
purpose, having at last fairly folded itself over, and fallen
prostrate into the street, the floors, as may happen, will still
hang on by the mere beam-ends and coherency of old carpentry,
though in a sloping direction, and depend there till certain
poor rusty nails and wormeaten dovetailings give way:--but is it
cheering, in such circumstances, that the whole household burst
forth into celebrating the new joys of light and ventilation,
liberty and picturesqueness of position, and thank God that now
they have got a house to their mind?"
Sham-kings may and do exist, thinks Mr Carlyle, but the greatest
unveracity of all is this same Democracy, which people were lately
so very willing to applaud. It must be admitted that our author is
perfectly impartial in the distribution of his strokes. He has no
love for Kings, or Metternichs, or Redtape, or any other fiction
or figure of speech whereby he typifies existing governments: he
disposes of them in a wholesale manner of Impostors and Impostures.
But no more does he regard with affection Chartist Parliament, Force
of Public Opinion, or "M'Crowdy the Seraphic Doctor with his last
evangel of Political Economy." M'Culloch is, in his eyes, as odious
as the First Lord in Waiting, whoever that functionary may be.
Clenching both his fists, he delivers a facer to the Trojan on the
right, and to the Tyrian on the left. Big with the conviction that
all Governments are wrong, as presently or lately constituted, he can
see no merit, but the reverse, in any of the schemes of progress, or
reform, or financial change, which have yet been devised. Here follow
some of his notions with regard to the most popularly prescribed
remedies:--
"A divine message, or eternal regulation of the Universe, there
verily is, in regard to every conceivable procedure and affair
of man: faithfully following this, said procedure or affair will
prosper, and have the whole universe to second it, and carry
it, across the fluctuating contradictions, towards a victorious
goal; not following this, mistaking this, disregarding this,
destruction and wreck are certain for every affair. How find it?
All the world answers me, 'Count heads'; ask Universal Suffrage
by the ballot-boxes, and that will tell! Universal Suffrage,
ballot-boxes, count of heads? Well,--I perceive we have got
into strange spiritual latitudes indeed. Within the last half
century or so, either the Universe or else the heads of men
must have altered very much. Half a century ago, and down from
Father Adam's time till then, the Universe, wherever I could
hear tell of it, was wont to be of somewhat abstruse nature;
by no means carrying its secret written on its face, legible
to every passer-by; on the contrary, obstinately hiding its
secret from all foolish, slavish, wicked, insincere persons,
and partially disclosing it to the wise and noble-minded alone,
whose number was not the majority in my time!--Or perhaps the
chief end of man being now, in these improved epochs, to make
money and spend it, his interests in the Universe have become
amazingly simplified of late; capable of being voted on with
effect by almost anybody? 'To buy in the cheapest market, and
sell in the dearest:' truly if that is the summary of his
social duties, and the final divine message he has to follow,
we may trust him extensively to vote upon that. But if it is
_not_, and never was, or can be? If the Universe will not carry
on its divine bosom any commonwealth of mortals that have no
higher aim,--being still 'a Temple and Hall of Doom! not a mere
Weaving-shop and Cattle-pen? If the unfathomable Universe has
decided to _reject_ Human Beavers pretending to be Men; and will
abolish, pretty rapidly perhaps, in hideous mud-deluges, their
'markets' and them, unless they think of it?--In that case, it
were better to think of it; and the Democracies and Universal
Suffrages, I can observe, will require to modify themselves a
good deal!"
Now, reader, what do you think of all this? We doubt not you are
a good deal puzzled: and an admission to that effect would be no
impeachment of your intellect. Well then, let us try to extract from
these pamphlets of Mr Carlyle some tendency, if not distinct meaning,
which may at least indicate the current of his hopes and aspirations.
Putting foreign governments altogether out of the question, we
gather that Mr Carlyle considers this realm of Britain as most
scandalously misgoverned; that he looks upon Downing Street as an
absolute sewer; that he decidedly yields to Mr Hawes in reverence for
Lord John Russell; that he regards the Protectionists as humbugs;
that he laughs at ballot-boxes, despises extension of the suffrage,
and repudiates, as a rule of conduct, the maxim about the markets,
which indeed, by this time, stinks in every British nostril as yet
unplugged with calico; that he detests the modern brood of political
economists with a cordiality which does him credit; and that he is
firmly convinced that democracy is a thing forever impossible. This
is a tolerably extensive creed, though as yet entirely a negative
one--is there no one point upon which Mr Carlyle will condescend to
be positive?
Yes, one there is; not apparent perhaps to the casual reader, but
detectible by him who studies closely those pages of oracular
thought--a point very important at the present moment, for this
it is--that there is ONE MAN existing in her Majesty's dominions
who could put everything to rights, if he were only allowed to do
so. Who that man is we may possibly discover hereafter. At present
we are hardly entitled to venture beyond the boundaries of dim
conjecture. Nor is it very clear in what way the Unknown, or rather
the Undeveloped, is to set about his exalted mission. Is he to be
minister--or something more? Perhaps Mr Carlyle did not like to be
altogether explicit on such a topic as this; but we may possibly gain
a little light from indirect and suggestive passages. Take this for
example:
"Alas, it is sad enough that anarchy is here; that we are not
permitted to regret its being here,--for who that had, for this
divine Universe, an eye which was human at all, could wish that
shams of any kind, especially that Sham Kings should continue?
No: at all costs, it is to be prayed by all men that Shams may
_cease_. Good Heavens, to what depths have we got, when this
to many a man seems strange! Yet strange to many a man it does
seem; and to many a solid Englishman, wholesomely digesting his
pudding among what are called the cultivated classes, it seems
strange exceedingly, a mad ignorant notion, quite heterodox,
and big with mere ruin. He has been used to decent forms long
since empty of meaning, to plausible modes, solemnities grown
ceremonial,--what you in your iconoclast humour call shams,--all
his life long; never heard that there was any harm in them,
that there was any getting on without them. Did not cotton spin
itself, beef grow, and groceries and spiceries come in from the
East and the West, quite comfortably by the side of shams?
Kings reigned, what they were pleased to call reigning; lawyers
pleaded, bishops preached, and honourable members perorated; and
to crown the whole, as if it were all real and no sham there,
did not scrip continue saleable, and the banker pay in bullion,
or paper with a metallic basis? 'The greatest sham, I have
always thought, is he that would destroy shams.'
"Even so. To such depth have _I_, the poor knowing person of
this epoch, got;--almost below the level of lowest humanity, and
down towards the state of apehood and oxhood! For never till in
quite recent generations was such a scandalous blasphemy quietly
set forth among the sons of Adam; never before did the creature
called man believe generally in his heart that this was the rule
in this Earth; that in deliberate long-established lying could
there be help or salvation for him, could there be at length
other than hindrance and destruction for him."
We have been sorely tempted to mark with italics certain portions of
the above extract, but on second thoughts we shall leave it intact.
After applying ourselves most diligently to the text, with the view
of eliciting its meaning, we have arrived at the conclusion, that
it is either downright nonsense, or something a great deal worse.
Observe what he says. It is to be prayed for by all men that Shams
may cease--more especially Sham Kings. But certain solid Englishmen
are not prepared for this. They have been "used to decent forms long
since fallen empty of meaning, to plausible modes, solemnities grown
ceremonial,--what you in your iconoclast humour call shams." They
thought no harm of them. "Kings reigned, what they were pleased to
call reigning; lawyers pleaded, bishops preached, and honourable
members perorated," &c. And those who differ in their estimate of
these things from Mr Carlyle are "almost below the level of lowest
humanity, and down towards the state of apehood and oxhood:"--and
their belief is a "scandalous blasphemy." So then, the Monarchy
is a sham, and so are the laws, the Church, and the Constitution!
They are all lies, and in deliberate long-established lying there
can be no help or salvation for the subject! This may not be Mr
Carlyle's meaning, and we are very willing to suppose so; but he
has no title to be angry, were we to accept his words according to
their evident sense. If men, through conceit or affectation, will
write in this absurd and reckless fashion, they must be prepared
to stand the consequences. The first impression on the mind of
every one who peruses the above passage must be, that the author is
opposed to the form of government which is unalterably established
in these kingdoms. If this be so, we should like to know in what
respect such doctrines differ from the pestilential revolutionary
trash which has inundated France and Germany? What kind of overturn
does Mr Carlyle contemplate, for overturn there must be, and that
of the most extensive kind, if his views are ever destined to be
realised? Is it not, perhaps, as melancholy a spectacle as may be,
to find a man of some genius, and considerable learning, attempting
to unsettle the minds of the young and enthusiastic, upon points
distinctly identified with all that is great and glorious in our past
history; and insinuating doctrines which are all the more dangerous
on account of the oblique and uncertain language in which they are
conveyed? Fear God and honour the King, are precepts not acknowledged
by Mr Carlyle as the rudiment and foundation of his faith. He does
not recognise them as inseparably linked together. He would set up
instead some wretched phantom of his own imagination, framed out of
the materials which he fondly supposes to be the attributes of the
heroic character, and he would exalt that above all other authority,
human and divine. He is, if we do not entirely misconstrue the tenor
of these pamphlets, possessed at this moment with the notion of the
advent of another Cromwell, the sole event which, as he thinks, can
save England from being swallowed up by the evils which now beset
her. What these evils are, we shall shortly endeavour to ascertain;
in the mean time, let us keep our attention fixed on this primary
matter of authority.
Cromwellism, then, if we may use the term, is Mr Carlyle's secret
and theory. Cromwellism, is, we know, but another phrase for
despotism; and we shall not put so harsh a construction on the
term as to suppose that it necessarily involves extinguishment of
the royal function. The example of Richelieu is sufficient to save
us from such a violent interpretation, and therefore we may fairly
assume that our author contemplates nothing more than the lodgment
of the executive power in the hands of some stern and inexorable
minister. To this the whole of his multitudinous political ravings,
when melted into intelligible speech, would seem to tend. He has
little regard for Kings, despises Lords, contemns Bishops, scouts
the House of Commons, sneers at Chartists, repudiates the political
economists, spurns the mob, and laughs at the Ten-pounders. There
is here a tolerably extensive range of scorn--we doubt whether it
could have been equalled by the reflective philosopher of the tub.
Now, lest we should be thought harsh in our judgment of Mr Carlyle,
or uncharitable in our method of construing him, let us hear what
he has to say with regard to popular representation. Let us suppose
that monarchy is cleared away as a Sham, or at all events placed
in respectable abeyance, and that there is no farther debate as to
hereditary right or even constitutional sovereignty. Also that we
have got rid of Peers and Bishops. Now, then, as to Congress:--
"To examine this recipe of a Parliament, how fit it is for
governing Nations, nay, how fit it may now be, in these new
times, for governing England itself where we are used to it so
long: this, too, is an alarming inquiry, to which all thinking
men, and good citizens of their country, who have an ear for
the small still voices and eternal intimations, across the
temporary clamours and loud blaring proclamations, are now
solemnly invited. Invited by the rigorous fact itself; which
will one day, and that perhaps soon, demand practical decision,
or redecision of it from us,--with enormous penalty if we decide
it wrong. I think we shall all have to consider this question,
one day; better perhaps now than later, when the leisure may
be less. If a Parliament, with suffrages and universal or any
conceivable kind of suffrages, _is_ the method, then certainly
let us set about discovering the kind of suffrages, and rest no
moment till we have got them. But it is possible a Parliament
may not be the method! Not the whole method; nor the method at
all, if taken as the whole? If a Parliament with never such
suffrages is _not_ the method settled by this latter authority,
then it will urgently behove us to become aware of that fact,
and to quit such method;--we may depend upon it, however
unanimous _we_ be, every step taken in that direction will,
by the Eternal Law of things, be a step from improvement, not
towards it."
Was there ever so tantalising a fellow? We only know of one parallel
instance. Sancho, after a judicial hearing at Barrataria, sits down
to dinner, but every dish upon which he sets his fancy is whisked
away at the command of a gaunt personage stationed on one side of his
chair, having a wholesome rod in his hand. Fruit, meat, partridges,
stewed rabbits, veal, and olla-podrida, vanish in succession, and
for the removal of each some learned reason is assigned by the
representative of Esculapius. We give the remainder of the anecdote
in the words of Cervantes. "Sancho, hearing this, threw himself
backward in his chair, and, looking at the doctor from head to foot,
very seriously, asked him his name, and where he had studied. To
which he answered: 'My Lord Governor, my name is Doctor Pedro Rezio
de Aguero; I am a native of a place called Tirteafuera, lying between
Caraquel and Almoddobar del Campo on the right hand, and I have taken
my doctor's degree in the University of Ossuna.' 'Then hark you,'
said Sancho in a rage, 'Signor Doctor Pedro Rezio de Aguero, native
of Tirteafuera, lying on the right hand as we go from Caraquel to
Almoddobar del Campo, graduate in Ossuna, get out of my sight this
instant--or, by the light of heaven! I will take a cudgel, and,
beginning with your carcase, will so belabour all the physic-mongers
in the island, that not one of the tribe shall be left!--I mean of
those like yourself, who are ignorant quacks; for those who are
learned and wise I shall make much of, and honour, as so many angels.
I say again, Signor Pedro Rezio, begone! or I shall take the chair I
sat on, and comb your head with it, to some tune, and, if I am called
to an account for it, when I give up my office, I will prove that I
have done a good service, in ridding the world of a bad physician,
who is a public executioner.'"
Mr Carlyle, though he may not be aware of it, is even such a
political doctor. He despises De Lolme on the British Constitution,
and peremptorily forbids his patient to have anything to do with
that exploded system. "I should like to have," says the pupil
placed under his charge, "in the first place, a well-regulated
constituted monarchy." "'Tis a sham!" cries Signor Doctor Thomas
Carlyle--"Are solemnly constituted Impostors the proper kings of
men? Do you think the life of man is a grimacing dance of apes?
To be led always by the squeak of a paltry fiddle? Away with it!"
The wand is waved, and constitutional monarchy disappears. "Well
then," quoth the tyro, "suppose we have an established Church and a
House of Peers?" "Avaunt, ye Unveracities--ye Unwisdoms," shrieks
the infuriated graduate. "What are ye but iniquities of Horsehair?
O my brother! above all, when thou findest Ignorance, Stupidity,
Brute-mindedness,--yes, there, with or without Church-tithes and
Shovelhat, or were it with mere dungeons, and gibbets, and crosses,
attack it, I say; smite it wisely, unweariedly, and rest not while
thou livest and it lives! Instead of heavenly or earthly Guidance for
the souls of men, you have Black or White Surplice Controversies,
stuffed Hair-and-leather Popes;--terrestrial Law-words, Lords, and
Lawbringers organising Labour in these years, by passing Corn Laws.
Take them away!" "What say you to the House of Commons, doctor?"
"Owldom! off with it." "A Democracy?" "On this side of the Atlantic
and on that, Democracy, we apprehend, is for ever impossible." "And
why will none of these things do?" "Because," quoth the graduate
with a solemn aspect, "you perceive we have actually got into the
New Era there has been such prophesying of: here we all are, arrived
at last;--and it is by no means the land flowing with milk and honey
we were led to expect! very much the reverse. A terrible new country
this: no neighbours in it yet, that I can see, but irrational flabby
monsters (philanthropic and other) of the giant species; hyænas,
laughing hyænas, predatory wolves; probably _devils_, blue (or
perhaps blue-and-yellow) devils, as St Guthlac found in Croyland long
ago. A huge untrodden haggard country, the chaotic battlefield of
Frost and Fire, a country of savage glaciers, granite-mountains, of
foul jungles, unhewed forests, quaking bogs;--which we shall have our
own ados to make arable and habitable, I think!" What wonder if the
pupil, hearing this pitiable tirade, should bethink him of certain
modes of treatment prescribed by the faculty, in cases of evident
delirium, as extremely suitable to the symptoms exhibited by his
beloved preceptor?
Let us now see what sort of government Mr Carlyle would propose
for our adoption, guidance, and regeneration. Some kind of shapes
are traceable even in fog-banks, and the analogy encourages us to
persevere in our Latter-day researches.
Mr Carlyle is decidedly of opinion that it is our business to
find out the very Noblest possible man to undertake the whole
job. What he means by Noblest is explicitly stated. "It is the
Noblest, not the Sham-Noblest; it is God Almighty's Noble, not
the Court-Tailor's Noble, nor the Able-Editor's Noble, that must
in some approximate degree be raised to the supreme place; he and
not a counterfeit--under penalties." This _Noblest_, it seems, is
to have a select series or staff of _Noblers_, to whom shall be
confided the divine everlasting duty of directing and controlling
the Ignoble. The mysterious process by means of which "the Noblest"
is to be elevated--when he is discovered--is not indicated, but the
intervention of ballot-boxes is indignantly disclaimed. "The Real
Captain, unless it be some Captain of mechanical Industry hired by
Mammon, where is he in these days? Most likely, in silence, in sad
isolation somewhere, in remote obscurity; trying if, in an evil
ungoverned time, he cannot at least govern himself." There are limits
to human endurance, and we maintain that we have a right to call upon
Mr Carlyle either to produce this remarkable Captain, or to indicate
his whereabouts. He tells us that time is pressing--that we are
moving in the midst of goblins, and that everything is going to the
mischief for want of this Noblest of his. Well, then, we say, where
is this Captain of yours? Let us have a look at him--give us at least
a guess as to his outward marks and locality--does he live in Chelsea
or Whitehall Gardens; or has he been, since the general emigration
of the Stags, trying to govern himself in sad isolation and remote
obscurity at Boulogne? If you know anything about him, out with
it--if not, why pester the public with these sheets of intolerable
twaddle?
As to the Nobler gentry, who are to surround the Noblest, whenever
that Cromwell Redivivus shall appear, there is, in Mr Carlyle's
opinion, no such pitiable uncertainty. They may not, perhaps, be
altogether as plentiful as blackberries on an autumnal hedge, yet
nevertheless they are to be found. "Who are available to your offices
in Downing Street?" quoth he. "All the gifted souls, of every rank,
who are born to you in this generation. These are appointed, by the
true eternal 'divine right' which will never become obsolete, to be
your governors and administrators; and precisely as you employ them,
or neglect to employ them, will your State be favoured of Heaven or
disfavoured. This noble young soul, you can have him on either of two
conditions; and on one of them, since he is here in the world, you
must have him. As your ally and coadjutor; or failing that, as your
natural enemy: which shall it be?" Now, this we call speaking to the
point. We are acquainted, more or less intimately, with some couple
of dozen "noble young souls," all very clever fellows in their way,
who have not the slightest objections to take permanent quarters in
Downing Street, if anybody will make it worth their while; and we
undertake to show that the dullest of them is infinitely superior,
in point of intellect and education, to the present Secretary of
the Board of Control. But are _all_ the noble young souls, without
exception, to be provided for at the public expense? Really, in these
economical times, such a proposal sounds rather preposterous; yet
even Mr Carlyle does not insinuate that the noble young souls will
do any work without a respectable modicum of pay. On the contrary,
he seems to admit that, without pay, they are likely to be found in
the opposition. Various considerations crowd upon us. Would it have
been a correct or a creditable thing for M. Guizot to have placed in
office all the noble young souls of the _National_, simply by way of
keeping them out of mischief? The young nobility connected with that
creditable print certainly did contrive to scramble into office along
the ridges of the barricades, and a very nice business they made of
it when they came to try their hands at legislation. But perhaps Mr
Carlyle would only secure talent of the very highest description.
Well, then, what kind of talent? Are we to look out for the best
poets, and make them Secretaries of State? The best Secretaries of
State we have known in our day, were about as poor poets as could be
imagined; and we are rather apprehensive that the converse of the
proposition might likewise be found to hold good.
"How sweet an Ovid was in Melbourne lost!"
sighed a Whig critic, commenting with rapture on some of that
nobleman's early lucubrations; and yet, after all, we have no reason
to think that the roll of British bards has been impoverished by
the accidental exclusion. Flesh and blood could not have endured a
second tragedy from Lord John Russell, and yet the present Premier,
despite of Don Carlos, is thought by some partial friends to cut a
tolerably decent figure as a politician. As to that, we shall venture
no opinion. Mr Carlyle, however, is clear for the poets. Listen to
his instance.
"From the lowest and broadest stratum of Society, where the
births are by the million, there was born, almost in our own
memory, a Robert Burns; son of one who 'had not capital for his
poor moor-farm of twenty pounds a-year.' Robert Burns never had
the smallest chance to get into Parliament, much as Robert Burns
deserved, for all our sakes, to have been found there. For the
man,--it was not known to men purblind, sunk in their poor dim
vulgar element, but might have been known to men of insight who
had any loyalty, or any royalty of their own,--was a born-king
of men: full of valour, of intelligence and heroic nobleness;
fit for far other work than to break his heart among poor mean
mortals, gauging beer. Him no ten-pound Constituency chose, nor
did any Reforming Premier."
Of course they did not, and why should they? If Burns was alive at
the present moment, in the full glory of his intellect and strength,
would any sensible constituency think of sending him to Parliament?
Of all the trash that Mr Carlyle has ever written--and there is a
good deal of it,--this about Robert Burns, whom he calls the "new
Norse Thor," not being selected as a statesman, is perhaps the most
insufferable. The vocation of a poet is, we presume, to sing; to
pour forth his heart in noble, animating, or touching strains; not
to discuss questions of policy, or to muddle his brains over Blue
Books, or the interminable compilations of Mr Porter. Not so thinks
Carlyle. He would have shut up Burns in Downing Street, debarred him
from the indulgence of verse, and clapped him at the head of a Board
of Poor-law Commissioners. "And the meagre Pitt, and his Dundasses,
and red-tape Phantasms (growing very ghastly now to think of) did not
in the least know or understand, the impious god-forgetting mortals,
that Heroic Intellects, if Heaven were pleased to send such, were the
one salvation for the world and for them and all of us." Mr Carlyle
seems to have most original notions on the subject of nature's gifts.
It would be as reasonable to say that, because a nightingale sings
more sweetly than its compeers, it ought to be taken to the house and
trained as a regular falcon.
We are very far indeed from wishing to maintain that literary men
may not be possessed of every quality which is most desirable in
a statesman. But instances of this combination are rare, and on
the whole we think that our "Heroic Intellects," and "noble young
souls," will acquit themselves most creditably by following out
the peculiar bent of their own genius. If they have any political
tendency, it will develop itself in due season; but we protest, most
strenuously, against a Parliament of men of genius, or a cabinet of
literateurs. We have seen quite enough of that in other countries.
A more laughable spectacle, if it had not also been painful, than
the Frankfort chamber, composed very much of suchlike materials, was
never given to public gaze. Old Ludwig Uhland, for all the appearance
he made, had better have stuck to his ballads. In France, Victor
Hugo, whose name is second in literature to none, cuts a most sorry
figure. Even Lamartine is sadly out of his place, though a longer
experience of the Chamber saves him from incurring that constant
ridicule which is the reward of his dramatic brother. Eugene Sue, we
observe, is another noble young soul, who is panting for political
renown. Far be it from us to anticipate his final destiny: as to his
deservings, there can be little difference of opinion.
It cannot be denied that exceptions, and very plausible ones, might
be taken to the very best ministry ever formed, on the score of
talent. Nay, even that ministry known by the distinguishing title
of "all the Talents," could hardly have borne a searching scrutiny.
But, upon the whole, we are by no means convinced that a Cabinet
of uniform brilliancy is a thing to be desired. One light would be
apt to burn emulously beside another. Moreover talent, though an
excellent and admirable quality, is not the only requisite for a
statesman. Barrington was one of the cleverest fellows of his day;
yet it might have been somewhat hazardous to trust him with the
keys of the Treasury. There have been in our own time in the House
of Commons divers noble young souls, of great and undoubted talent,
whose accession to office would by no means have increased the
confidence of the public in Ministers. And there are men _now_ in the
House of Commons who, to a certain extent, agree with Mr Carlyle,
and complain very bitterly that talent is not allowed to occupy its
proper place. At a meeting of the National Reform Association held
on 23d April last, Mr W. J. Fox, M.P. for Oldham, is reported to
have said--"That the great object they had in view was a _social
revolution_, not gained by blood, or disturbing the constitution,
but raising _the aristocracy of intelligence_ and morality to a
place beside the cliques which had ruled the country merely by the
influence of property and wealth.... An open career to talent was
a favourite maxim of Napoleon, who, so far as he had acted on it,
gave the signal for a great change in the public mind. He hoped that
responsibility would assume the place now held by the interests and
privileges of family cliques, and that talent would thus be made true
to its duties and instincts." Here is another Heroic Intellect quite
ready to take office if he can get it, and ready, moreover, to put
the ballot-box and all manner of extended suffrage into motion, in
order that he may attain his object. We have no doubt that Mr Fox
is a very clever person, and also that he is fully imbued with the
same gratifying impression; nevertheless, we are free to confess that
we would rather see him on the outside, than in the interior of the
hen-roost of Downing Street. There may be persons within it who might
as well, on public considerations, be out; but there are also many
without, who, notwithstanding their vaunted breadth of intellect,
should be kept from getting in. Will Mr Fox venture to aver that, in
Britain, there is not an open career for talent? Now, as ever, talent
will not fail in its aim, provided its possessor is endowed with
other qualities and virtues which are requisite to command success by
securing confidence and esteem.
Let us now suppose that Mr Carlyle has succeeded in his quest after
capable men--that he has fairly bolted his Noblest, like an overgrown
badger, from the hole in which he lies presently concealed, and has
surrounded him with a staff of the Nobler, including, we presume, the
author of the Latter-day Pamphlets. Noblest and Nobler must now go to
work in serious earnest, taking some order with the flabby monsters,
laughing hyænas, predatory wolves, and blue, or blue and yellow
devils, which abound in this New Era. What is the first step to be
adopted? We find it in No. I.
We have transcribed already the commencement of the speech to be made
by the new British Minister to the assembled paupers--let us hear a
few sentences--
"But as for you, my indigent incompetent friends, I have to
repeat, with sorrow but with perfect clearness, what is plainly
undeniable, and is even clamorous to get itself admitted, that
you are of the nature of _slaves_,--or if you prefer the word of
_nomadic, and now even vagrant and vagabond servants that can
find no master on those terms_; which seems to me a much uglier
word. Emancipation? You have been emancipated with a vengeance!
Foolish souls! I say the whole world cannot emancipate
you. Fealty to ignorant unruliness, to gluttonous sluggish
Improvidence, to the Beerpot and the Devil, who is there that
can emancipate a man in that predicament? Not a whole Reform
Bill, a whole French Revolution executed for his behoof alone."
In this style, Noblest proceeds for a page or two, haranguing the
unlucky paupers upon the principle that poverty is crime; taunting
them with previous doles of Indian meal and money, and informing them
that the Workhouses are thenceforward inexorably shut. Finally, he
announces that they are to be embodied into industrial regiments,
with proper officers; and marched off "to the Irish Bogs, to the
vacant desolations of Connaught now falling into Cannibalism, to
mis-tilled Connaught, to ditto Munster, Leinster, Ulster, I will lead
you; to the English fox covers, furze-grown Commons, New Forests,
Salisbury Plains; likewise to the Scotch Hillsides, and bare rushy
slopes which as yet feed only sheep." All these are to be tilled by
the slave regiments under the following penalties for recusancy.
"Refuse to strike into it; shirk the heavy labour, disobey the
rules--I will admonish and endeavour to incite you; if in vain, I
will flog you; if still in vain, I will at last shoot you,--and make
God's Earth, and the forlorn-hope in God's Battle, free of you.
Understand it, I advise you!" O rare Thomas Carlyle!