murdered. This was a capital oversight of the professional men in the
seventeenth century; because in every light he was a fine subject for
murder, except, indeed, that he was lean and skinny; for I can prove
that he had money, and (what is very funny) he had no right to make the
least resistance; for, according to himself, irresistible power creates
the very highest species of right, so that it is rebellion of the
blackest dye to refuse to be murdered, when a competent force appears to
murder you. However, gentlemen, though he was not murdered, I am happy
to assure you that (by his own account) he was three times very near
being murdered. The first time was in the spring of 1640, when he
pretends to have circulated a little manuscript on the king’s behalf,
against the Parliament; he never could produce this manuscript, by the
by: but he says that, “Had not his Majesty dissolved the Parliament” (in
May), “it had brought him into danger of his life.” Dissolving the
Parliament, however, was of no use; for, in November of the same year,
the Long Parliament assembled, and Hobbes, a second time, fearing he
should be murdered, ran away to France. This looks like the madness of
John Dennis, who thought that Louis XIV. would never make peace with
Queen Anne, unless he were given up to his vengeance; and actually ran
away from the sea-coast in that belief. In France, Hobbes managed to
take care of his throat pretty well for ten years; but at the end of
that time, by way of paying court to Cromwell, he published his
Leviathan. The old coward now began to “funk” horribly for the third
time; he fancied the swords of the cavaliers were constantly at his
throat, recollecting how they had served the Parliament ambassadors at
the Hague and Madrid. “Tum,” says he, in his dog-Latin life of
himself,--
“Tum venit in mentem mihi Dorislaus et Ascham;
Tanquam proscripto terror ubique aderat.”
And accordingly he ran home to England. Now, certainly, it is very true
that a man deserved a cudgelling for writing Leviathan; and two or three
cudgellings for writing a pentameter ending so villanously as, “terror
ubique aderat”! But no man ever thought him worthy of anything beyond
cudgelling. And, in fact, the whole story is a bounce of his own. For,
in a most abusive letter which he wrote “to a learned person” (meaning
Wallis the mathematician), he gives quite another account of the matter,
and says (p. 8), he ran home “because he would not trust his safety with
the French clergy”; insinuating that he was likely to be murdered for
his religion, which would have been a high joke indeed,--Tom’s being
brought to the stake for religion.
Bounce or not bounce, however, certain it is, that Hobbes, to the end of
his life, feared that somebody would murder him. This is proved by the
story I am going to tell you: it is not from a manuscript, but (as Mr.
Coleridge says) it is as good as manuscript; for it comes from a book
now entirely forgotten, namely, “The Creed of Mr. Hobbes Examined; in a
Conference between him and a Student in Divinity” (published about ten
years before Hobbes’s death). The book is anonymous, but it was written
by Tennison, the same who, about thirty years after, succeeded Tillotson
as Archbishop of Canterbury. The introductory anecdote is as follows: “A
certain divine, it seems (no doubt Tennison himself), took an annual
tour of one month to different parts of the island. In one of these
excursions (1670) he visited the Peak in Derbyshire, partly in
consequence of Hobbes’s description of it. Being in that neighborhood,
he could not but pay a visit to Buxton; and at the very moment of his
arrival, he was fortunate enough to find a party of gentlemen
dismounting at the inn door, amongst whom was a long, thin fellow, who
turned out to be no less a person than Mr. Hobbes, who probably had
ridden over from Chatsworth. Meeting so great a lion, a tourist, in
search of the picturesque, could do no less than present himself in the
character of bore. And luckily for this scheme, two of Mr. Hobbes’s
companions were suddenly summoned away by express; so that, for the rest
of his stay at Buxton, he had Leviathan entirely to himself, and had the
honor of bowsing with him in the evening. Hobbes, it seems, at first
showed a good deal of stiffness, for he was shy of divines; but this
wore off, and he became very sociable and funny, and they agreed to go
into the bath together. How Tennison could venture to gambol in the same
water with Leviathan, I cannot explain; but so it was: they frolicked
about like two dolphins, though Hobbes must have been as old as the
hills; and in those intervals wherein they abstained from swimming and
plunging themselves” (i. e. diving) “they discoursed of many things
relating to the Baths of the Ancients, and the Origine of Springs. When
they had in this manner passed away an hour, they stepped out of the
bath; and, having dried and cloathed themselves, they sate down in
expectation of such a supper as the place afforded; designing to refresh
themselves like the _Deipnosophilæ_, and rather to reason than to drink
profoundly. But in this innocent intention they were interrupted by the
disturbance arising from a little quarrel, in which some of the ruder
people in the house were for a short time engaged. At this Mr. Hobbes
seemed much concerned, though he was at some distance from the persons.”
And why was he concerned, gentlemen? No doubt you fancy, from some
benign and disinterested love of peace and harmony, worthy of an old man
and a philosopher. But listen,--“For a while he was not composed, but
related it once or twice as to himself, with a low and careful tone, how
Sextus Roscius was murthered after supper by the Balneæ Palatinæ. Of
such general extent is that remark of Cicero, in relation to Epicurus
the Atheist, of whom he observed that he of all men dreaded most those
things which he contemned,--Death and the Gods.” Merely because it was
supper-time, and in the neighborhood of a bath, Mr. Hobbes must have the
fate of Sextus Roscius. What logic was there in this, unless to a man
who was always dreaming of murder? Here was Leviathan, no longer afraid
of the daggers of English cavaliers or French clergy, but “frightened
from his propriety” by a row in an alehouse between some honest
clodhoppers of Derbyshire, whom his own gaunt scarecrow of a person,
that belonged to quite another century, would have frightened out of
their wits.
Malebranche, it will give you pleasure to hear, was murdered. The man
who murdered him is well known; it was Bishop Berkeley. The story is
familiar, though hitherto not put in a proper light. Berkeley, when a
young man, went to Paris and called on Père Malebranche. He found him in
his cell cooking. Cooks have ever been a _genus irritabile_; authors
still more so; Malebranche was both; a dispute arose; the old father,
warm already, became warmer; culinary and metaphysical irritations
united to derange his liver: he took to his bed, and died. Such is the
common version of the story: “So the whole ear of Denmark is abused.”
The fact is, that the matter was hushed up, out of consideration for
Berkeley, who (as Pope remarked) had “every virtue under heaven”: else
it was well known that Berkeley, feeling himself nettled by the
waspishness of the old Frenchman, squared at him; a _turn-up_ was the
consequence; Malebranche was floored in the first round; the conceit was
wholly taken out of him; and he would perhaps have given in; but
Berkeley’s blood was now up, and he insisted on the old Frenchman’s
retracting his doctrine of Occasional Causes. The vanity of the man was
too great for this; and he fell a sacrifice to the impetuosity of Irish
youth, combined with his own absurd obstinacy.
Leibnitz being every way superior to Malebranche, one might, _a
fortiori_, have counted on _his_ being murdered; which, however, was not
the case. I believe he was nettled at this neglect, and felt himself
insulted by the security in which he passed his days. In no other way
can I explain his conduct at the latter end of his life, when he chose
to grow very avaricious, and to hoard up large sums of gold, which he
kept in his own house. This was at Vienna, where he died; and letters
are still in existence, describing the immeasurable anxiety which he
entertained for his throat. Still his ambition, for being _attempted_ at
least, was so great, that he would not forego the danger. A late English
pedagogue, of Birmingham manufacture, namely, Dr. Parr, took a more
selfish course, under the same circumstances. He had amassed a
considerable quantity of gold and silver plate, which was for some time
deposited in his bedroom at his parsonage house, Hatton. But growing
every day more afraid of being murdered, which he knew that he could not
stand, and to which, indeed, he never had the slightest pretension, he
transferred the whole to the Hatton blacksmith; conceiving, no doubt,
that the murder of a blacksmith would fall more lightly on the _salus
reipublicæ_ than that of a pedagogue. But I have heard this greatly
disputed; and it seems now generally agreed that one good horseshoe is
worth about two and one fourth Spital sermons.
As Leibnitz, though not murdered, may be said to have died, partly of
the fear that he should be murdered, and partly of vexation that he was
not,--Kant, on the other hand, who had no ambition in that way, had a
narrower escape from a murderer than any man we read of, except Des
Cartes. So absurdly does Fortune throw about her favors! The case is
told, I think, in an anonymous life of this very great man. For health’s
sake, Kant imposed upon himself, at one time, a walk of six miles every
day along a high-road. This fact becoming known to a man who had his
private reasons for committing murder, at the third milestone from
Konigsberg, he waited for his “intended,” who came up to time as duly as
a mail-coach.
But for an accident, Kant was a dead man. However, on considerations of
“morality,” it happened that the murderer preferred a little child, whom
he saw playing in the road, to the old transcendentalist: this child he
murdered; and thus it happened that Kant escaped. Such is the German
account of the matter; but my opinion is, that the murderer was an
amateur, who felt how little would be gained to the cause of good taste
by murdering an old, arid, and adust metaphysician; there was no room
for display, as the man could not possibly look more like a mummy when
dead than he had done alive.
* * * * *
Thus, gentlemen, I have traced the connection between philosophy and our
art, until insensibly I find that I have wandered into our own era. This
I shall not take any pains to characterize apart from that which
preceded it, for, in fact, they have no distinct character. The
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, together with so much of the
nineteenth as we have yet seen, jointly compose the Augustan age of
murder. The finest work of the seventeenth century is, unquestionably,
the murder of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, which has my entire approbation.
At the same time, it must be observed that the quantity of murder was
not great in this century, at least amongst our own artists; which,
perhaps, is attributable to the want of enlightened patronage. _Sint
Mæcenates, non deerunt, Flacce, Marones._ Consulting Grant’s
“Observations on the Bills of Mortality” (4th edition, Oxford, 1665), I
find that, out of 229,250, who died in London during one period of
twenty years, in the seventeenth century, not more than eighty-six were
murdered; that is, about four and three tenths per annum. A small number
this, gentlemen, to found an academy upon; and certainly, where the
quantity is so small, we have a right to expect that the quality should
be first-rate. Perhaps it was; yet still I am of opinion that the best
artist in this century was not equal to the best in that which followed.
For instance, however praiseworthy the case of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey
may be (and nobody can be more sensible of its merits than I am), still,
I cannot consent to place it on a level with that of Mrs. Ruscombe of
Bristol, either as to originality of design, or boldness and breadth of
style. This good lady’s murder took place early in the reign of George
III., a reign which was notoriously favorable to the arts generally. She
lived in College Green, with a single maid-servant, neither of them
having any pretension to the notice of history but what they derived
from the great artist whose workmanship I am recording. One fine
morning, when all Bristol was alive and in motion, some suspicion
arising, the neighbors forced an entrance into the house, and found Mrs.
Ruscombe murdered in her bedroom, and the servant murdered on the
stairs: this was at noon; and, not more than two hours before, both
mistress and servant had been seen alive. To the best of my remembrance,
this was in 1764; upwards of sixty years, therefore, have now elapsed,
and yet the artist is still undiscovered. The suspicions of posterity
have settled upon two pretenders,--a baker and a chimney-sweeper. But
posterity is wrong; no unpractised artist could have conceived so bold
an idea as that of a noonday murder in the heart of a great city. It was
no obscure baker, gentlemen, or anonymous chimney-sweeper, be assured,
that executed this work. I know who it was. (_Here there was a general
buzz, which at length broke out into open applause; upon which the
lecturer blushed, and went on with much earnestness._) For Heaven’s
sake, gentlemen, do not mistake me; it was not I that did it. I have not
the vanity to think myself equal to any such achievement; be assured
that you greatly overrate my poor talents; Mrs. Ruscombe’s affair was
far beyond my slender abilities. But I came to know who the artist was,
from a celebrated surgeon, who assisted at his dissection. This
gentleman had a private museum in the way of his profession, one corner
of which was occupied by a cast from a man of remarkably fine
proportions.
“That,” said the surgeon, “is a cast from the celebrated Lancashire
highwayman, who concealed his profession for some time from his
neighbors, by drawing woollen stockings over his horse’s legs, and in
that way muffling the clatter which he must else have made in riding up
a flagged alley that led to his stable. At the time of his execution for
highway robbery, I was studying under Cruickshank; and the man’s figure
was so uncommonly fine, that no money or exertion was spared to get into
possession of him with the least possible delay. By the connivance of
the under-sheriff, he was cut down within the legal time, and instantly
put into a chaise and four; so that, when he reached Cruickshank’s he
was positively not dead. Mr.----, a young student at that time, had the
honor of giving him the _coup de grace_, and finishing the sentence of
the law.” This remarkable anecdote, which seemed to imply that all the
gentlemen in the dissecting-room were amateurs of our class, struck me a
good deal; and I was repeating it one day to a Lancashire lady, who
thereupon informed me that she had herself lived in the neighborhood of
that highwayman, and well remembered two circumstances, which combined,
in the opinion of all his neighbors, to fix upon him the credit of Mrs.
Ruscombe’s affair. One was, the fact of his absence for a whole
fortnight at the period of that murder; the other that, within a very
little time after, the neighborhood of this highwayman was deluged with
dollars: now Mrs. Ruscombe was known to have hoarded about two thousand
of that coin. Be the artist, however, who he might, the affair remains a
durable monument of his genius; for such was the impression of awe, and
the sense of power left behind, by the strength of conception manifested
in this murder, that no tenant (as I was told in 1810) had been found up
to that time for Mrs. Ruscombe’s house.
But, whilst I thus eulogize the Ruscombian case, let me not be supposed
to overlook the many other specimens of extraordinary merit spread over
the face of this century. Such cases, indeed, as that of Miss Bland, or
of Captain Donnellan, and Sir Theophilus Boughton, shall never have any
countenance from me. Fie on these dealers in poison, say I; can they not
keep to the old honest way of cutting throats, without introducing such
abominable innovations from Italy? I consider all these poisoning cases,
compared with the legitimate style, as no better than waxwork by the
side of sculpture, or a lithographic print by the side of a fine
Volpato. But, dismissing these, there remain many excellent works of art
in a pure style, such as nobody need be ashamed to own, as every candid
connoisseur will admit. _Candid_, observe, I say; for great allowances
must be made in these cases; no artist can ever be sure of carrying
through his own fine preconception. Awkward disturbances will arise:
people will not submit to have their throats cut quietly; they will run,
they will kick, they will bite; and whilst the portrait-painter often
has to complain of too much torpor in his subject, the artist in our
line is generally embarrassed by too much animation. At the same time,
however disagreeable to the artist, this tendency in murder to excite
and irritate the subject is certainly one of its advantages to the world
in general, which we ought not to overlook, since it favors the
development of latent talent. Jeremy Taylor notices, with admiration,
the extraordinary leaps which people will take under the influence of
fear. There was a striking instance of this in the recent case of the
M‘Keands; the boy cleared a height such as he will never clear again to
his dying day. Talents also of the most brilliant description for
thumping, and indeed for all the gymnastic exercises, have sometimes
been developed by the panic which accompanies our artists; talents else
buried and hid under a bushel to the possessors, as much as to their
friends. I remember an interesting illustration of this fact, in a case
which I learned in Germany.
Riding one day in the neighborhood of Munich, I overtook a distinguished
amateur of our society, whose name I shall conceal. This gentleman
informed me that, finding himself wearied with the frigid pleasures (so
he called them) of mere amateurship, he had quitted England for the
continent,--meaning to practise a little professionally. For this
purpose he resorted to Germany, conceiving the police in that part of
Europe to be more heavy and drowsy than elsewhere. His _début_, as a
practitioner, took place at Mannheim; and, knowing me to be a brother
amateur, he freely communicated the whole of his maiden adventure.
“Opposite to my lodging,” said he, “lived a baker: he was somewhat of a
miser, and lived quite alone. Whether it were his great expanse of
chalky face, or what else, I know not, but the fact was, I ‘fancied’
him, and resolved to commence business upon his throat, which, by the
way, he always carried bare,--a fashion which is very irritating to my
desires. Precisely at eight o’clock in the evening, I observed that he
regularly shut up his windows. One night I watched him when thus
engaged,--bolted in after him,--locked the door,--and, addressing him
with great suavity, acquainted him with the nature of my errand; at the
same time advising him to make no resistance, which would be mutually
unpleasant. So saying, I drew out my tools, and was proceeding to
operate. But at this spectacle, the baker, who seemed to have been
struck by catalepsy at my first announce, awoke into tremendous
agitation. ‘I will _not_ be murdered!’ he shrieked aloud; ‘what for will
I lose my precious throat?’ ‘What for?’ said I; ‘if for no other reason,
for this,--that you put alum into your bread. But no matter, alum or no
alum (for I was resolved to forestall any argument on that point), know
that I am a virtuoso in the art of murder, am desirous of improving
myself in its details, and am enamored of your vast surface of throat,
to which I am determined to be a customer.’ ‘Is it so?’ said he, ‘but
I’ll find you a customer in another line.’ And so saying, he threw
himself into a boxing attitude. The very idea of his boxing struck me as
ludicrous. It is true, a London baker had distinguished himself in the
ring, and became known to fame under the title of the Master of the
Rolls; but he was young and unspoiled; whereas, this man was a monstrous
feather-bed in person, fifty years old, and totally out of condition.
Spite of all this, however, and contending against me, who am a master
in the art, he made so desperate a defence that many times I feared he
might turn the tables upon me; and that I, an amateur, might be murdered
by a rascally baker. What a situation! Minds of sensibility will
sympathize with my anxiety. How severe it was, you may understand by
this that for the first thirteen rounds the baker had the advantage.
Round the fourteenth, I received a blow on the right eye, which closed
it up; in the end, I believe, this was my salvation; for the anger it
roused in me was so great that, in this and every one of the three
following rounds, I floored the baker.
“Round 18th. The baker came up piping, and manifestly the worse for
wear. His geometrical exploits in the four last rounds had done him no
good. However, he showed some skill in stopping a message which I was
sending to his cadaverous mug: in delivering which, my foot slipped, and
I went down.
“Round 19th. Surveying the baker, I became ashamed of having been so
much bothered by a shapeless mass of dough; and I went in fiercely, and
administered some severe punishment. A rally took place,--both went
down,--baker undermost,--ten to three on amateur.
“Round 20th. The baker jumped up with surprising agility: indeed, he
managed his pins capitally, and fought wonderfully, considering that he
was drenched in perspiration; but the shine was now taken out of him,
and his game was the mere effect of panic. It was now clear that he
could not last much longer. In the course of this round we tried the
weaving system, in which I had greatly the advantage, and hit him
repeatedly on the conk. My reason for this was, that his conk was
covered with carbuncles; and I thought I should vex him by taking such
liberties with his conk, which in fact I did.
“The three next rounds, the master of the rolls staggered about like a
cow on the ice. Seeing how matters stood, in round twenty-fourth I
whispered something into his ear, which sent him down like a shot. It
was nothing more than my private opinion of the value of his throat at
an annuity office. This little confidential whisker affected him
greatly; the very perspiration was frozen on his face, and for the next
two rounds I had it all my own way. And when I called _time_ for the
twenty-seventh round, he lay like a log on the floor.”
“After which,” said I to the amateur, “it may be presumed that you
accomplished your purpose.” “You are right,” said he, mildly, “I did;
and a great satisfaction, you know, it was to my mind, for by this means
I killed two birds with one stone”; meaning that he had both thumped the
baker and murdered him. Now, for the life of me, I could not see _that_;
for, on the contrary, to my mind it appeared that he had taken two
stones to kill one bird, having been obliged to take the conceit out of
him first with his fist, and then with his tools. But no matter for his
logic. The moral of his story was good, for it showed what an
astonishing stimulus to latent talent is contained in any reasonable
prospect of being murdered. A pursy, unwieldy, half-cataleptic baker of
Mannheim had absolutely fought six-and-twenty rounds with an
accomplished English boxer merely upon this inspiration; so greatly was
natural genius exalted and sublimed by the genial presence of his
murderer.
Really, gentlemen, when one hears of such things as these, it becomes a
duty, perhaps, a little to soften that extreme asperity with which most
men speak of murder. To hear people talk, you would suppose that all the
disadvantages and inconveniences were on the side of being murdered, and
that there were none at all in _not_ being murdered. But considerate men
think otherwise. “Certainly,” says Jeremy Taylor, “it is a less temporal
evil to fall by the rudeness of a sword than the violence of a fever;
and the axe” (to which he might have added the ship-carpenter’s mallet
and the crow-bar) “is a much less affliction than a strangury.” Very
true; the bishop talks like a wise man and an amateur, as he is; and
another great philosopher, Marcus Aurelius, was equally above the vulgar
prejudices on this subject. He declares it to be one of “the noblest
functions of reason to know whether it is time to walk out of the world
or not.” (Book III., Collers’s Translation.) No sort of knowledge being
rarer than this, surely _that_ man must be a most philanthropic
character, who undertakes to instruct people in this branch of knowledge
gratis, and at no little hazard to himself. All this, however, I throw
out only in the way of speculation to future moralists; declaring in the
mean time my own private conviction, that very few men commit murder
upon philanthropic or patriotic principles, and repeating what I have
already said once at least,--that, as to the majority of murderers, they
are very incorrect characters.