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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey,
+Vol. 1 (2 vols), by Thomas De Quincey
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey,  Vol. 1 (2 vols)
+
+Author: Thomas De Quincey
+
+Editor: Alexander H. Japp
+
+Release Date: December 9, 2007 [EBook #23788]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THOMAS DE QUINCEY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Connal, Marcia Brooks and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by the Bibliotheque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at
+http://gallica.bnf.fr)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE POSTHUMOUS WORKS
+
+OF
+
+THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
+
+_EDITED FROM THE ORIGINAL MSS.,
+WITH INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES._
+
+
+BY
+
+ALEXANDER H. JAPP,
+
+LLD., F.R.S.E.
+
+
+_VOLUME I._
+
+
+
+LONDON:
+
+WILLIAM HEINEMANN.
+
+1891.
+
+[_All rights reserved._]
+
+
+
+
+SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS.
+
+=With Other Essays,=
+
+_CRITICAL, HISTORICAL, BIOGRAPHICAL,
+PHILOSOPHICAL, IMAGINATIVE
+AND HUMOROUS,_
+
+BY
+
+THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+LONDON:
+
+WILLIAM HEINEMANN.
+
+1891.
+
+[_All rights reserved._]
+
+
+
+
+_To
+Mrs. BAIRD SMITH and Miss DE QUINCEY,
+who put into my hands the remains in manuscript
+of their father, that I might select and
+publish from them what was deemed
+to be available for such a purpose,
+this volume is dedicated,
+with many and
+grateful thanks for
+their confidence
+and aid, by
+their devoted
+friend,_
+
+_ALEXANDER H. JAPP._
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+It only needs to be said, by way of Preface, that the articles in the
+present volume have been selected more with a view to variety and
+contrast than will be the case with those to follow. And it is right
+that I should thank Mr. J. R. McIlraith for friendly help in the reading
+of the proofs.
+
+A. H. J.
+
+
+[Transcriber's Note: This etext contains letters with macrons, and have
+been noted as such: =u represents "u" with a macron, and )o represents
+o with a breve.]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER                                                             PAGE
+
+GENERAL INTRODUCTION                                                  xi
+
+    I. SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS:
+           Introduction, with Complete List of the 'Suspiria'          1
+        1. The Dark Interpreter                                        7
+        2. The Solitude of Childhood                                  13
+        3. Who is this Woman that beckoneth and warneth
+            me from the Place where she is, and in whose eyes
+            is Woeful Remembrance? I guess who she is                 16
+        4. The Princess who overlooked one Seed in a Pomegranate      22
+        5. Notes for 'Suspiria'                                       24
+
+   II. THE LOVELIEST SIGHT FOR WOMAN'S EYES                           29
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  III. WHY THE PAGANS COULD NOT INVEST THEIR GODS WITH
+     ANY IOTA OF GRANDEUR                                             33
+
+   IV. ON PAGAN SACRIFICES                                            39
+
+    V. ON THE MYTHUS                                                  43
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+   VI. DAVID'S NUMBERING OF THE PEOPLE--THE POLITICS OF
+    THE SITUATION                                                     47
+
+  VII. THE JEWS AS A SEPARATE PEOPLE                                  62
+
+ VIII. 'WHAT IS TRUTH?' THE JESTING PILATE SAID--A FALSE GLOSS        68
+
+   IX. WHAT SCALIGER SAYS ABOUT THE EPISTLE TO JUDE                   71
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    X. MURDER AS A FINE ART                                           77
+
+   XI. ANECDOTES--JUVENAL                                             85
+
+  XII. ANNA LOUISA                                                    89
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ XIII. SOME THOUGHTS ON BIOGRAPHY                                    100
+
+  XIV. GREAT FORGERS: CHATTERTON AND WALPOLE, AND 'JUNIUS'           125
+
+   XV. DANIEL O'CONNELL                                              132
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  XVI. FRANCE PAST AND FRANCE PRESENT                                143
+
+ XVII. ROME'S RECRUITS AND ENGLAND'S RECRUITS                        147
+
+XVIII. NATIONAL MANNERS AND FALSE JUDGMENT OF THEM                   163
+
+XIX. INCREASED POSSIBILITIES OF SYMPATHY IN THE PRESENT AGE          165
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+   XX. THE PRINCIPLE OF EVIL                                         168
+
+  XXI. ON MIRACLES                                                   173
+
+ XXII. 'LET HIM COME DOWN FROM THE CROSS'                            177
+
+XXIII. IS THE HUMAN RACE ON THE DOWN GRADE?                          180
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ XXIV. BREVIA: SHORT ESSAYS (IN CONNECTION WITH EACH OTHER):
+        1. Paganism and Christianity--the Ideas of Duty
+            and Holiness                                             185
+        2. Moral and Practical                                       194
+        3. On Words and Style                                        207
+        4. Theological and Religious                                 226
+        5. Political, etc.                                           269
+        6. Personal Confessions, etc.                                271
+        7. Pagan Literature                                          279
+        8. Historical, etc.                                          283
+        9. Literary                                                  292
+
+  XXV. OMITTED PASSAGES AND VARIATIONS:
+        1. The Rhapsodoi                                             306
+        2. Mrs. Evans and the _Gazette_                              310
+        3. A Lawsuit Legacy                                          313
+        4. The True Justifications of War                            315
+        5. Philosophy Defeated                                       317
+        6. The Highwayman's Skeleton                                 320
+        7. The Ransom for Waterloo                                   323
+        8. Desiderium                                                326
+
+
+
+
+GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+These articles recovered from the MSS. of De Quincey will, the Editor
+believes, be found of substantive value. In some cases they throw
+fresh light on his opinions and ways of thinking; in other cases they
+deal with topics which are not touched at all in his collected works:
+and certainly, when read alongside the writings with which the public
+is already familiar, will give altogether a new idea of his range
+both of interests and activities. The 'Brevia,' especially, will
+probably be regarded as throwing more light on his character and
+individuality--exhibiting more of the inner life, in fact--than any
+number of letters or reminiscences from the pens of others would be
+found to do. It is as though the ordinary reader were asked to sit
+down at ease with the author, when he is in his most social and
+communicative mood, when he has donned his dressing-gown and
+slippers, and is inclined to unbosom himself, and that freely, on
+matters which usually, and in general society, he would have been
+inclined to shun, or at all events to pass over lightly. Here we have
+him at one moment presenting the results of speculations the loftiest
+that can engage the mind of man; at another making note of whimsical
+or surprising points in the man or woman he has met with, or in the
+books he has read; at another, amusing himself with the most recent
+anecdote, or _bon-mot_, or reflecting on the latest accident or
+murder, or good-naturedly noting odd lapses in style in magazine or
+newspaper.
+
+It must not be supposed that the author himself was inclined to lay such
+weight on these stray notes, as might be presumed from the form in which
+they are here presented. That might give the impression of a most
+methodic worker and thinker, who had before him a carefully-indexed
+commonplace book, into which he posted at the proper place his rough
+notes and suggestions. That was not De Quincey's way. If he was not one
+of the wealthy men who care not how they give, he was one who made the
+most careless record even of what was likely to be valuable--at all
+events to himself. His habit was to make notes just as they occurred to
+him, and on the sheet that he chanced to have at the moment before him.
+It might be the 'copy' for an article indeed, and in a little square
+patch at the corner--separated from the main text by an insulating line
+of ink drawn round the foreign matter--through this, not seldom, when
+finished he would lightly draw his pen; meaning probably to return to it
+when his MS. came back to him from the printer, which accounts, it may
+be, in some measure for his reluctance to get rid of, or to destroy,
+'copy' already printed from. Sometimes we have found on a sheet a dozen
+or so of lines of a well-known article; and the rest filled up with
+notes, some written one way of the paper, some another, and now and then
+entangled in the most surprising fashion. In these cases, where the
+notes, of course, were meant for his own eye, he wrote in a small
+spidery handwriting with many contractions--a kind of shorthand of his
+own, and very different indeed from his ordinary clean, clear, neat
+penmanship. In many cases these notes demanded no little care and
+closeness in deciphering--the more that the MSS. had been tumbled about,
+and were often deeply stained by glasses other than inkstands having
+been placed upon them. 'Within that circle none dared walk but he,' said
+Tom Hood in his genially humorous way; and many of these thoughts were
+thus partially or wholly encircled. Pages of articles that had already
+been printed were intermixed with others that had not; and the first
+piece of work that I entered on was roughly to separate the printed from
+the unprinted--first having carefully copied out from the former any of
+the spidery-looking notes interjected there, to which I have already
+referred. The next process was to arrange the many separate pages and
+seeming fragments into heaps, by subjects; and finally to examine these
+carefully and, with a view to 'connections,' to place them together. In
+not a few cases where the theme was attractive and the prospect
+promising, utter failure to complete the article or sketch was the
+result, the opening or ending passages, or a page in the middle, having
+been unfortunately destroyed or lost.
+
+So numerous were these notes, so varied their subjects, that one got
+quite a new idea of the extreme electrical quality of his mind, as he
+himself called it; and I shall have greatly failed in my endeavour in
+the case of these volumes, if I have not succeeded in imparting
+something of the same impression to the reader. Here we have proof that
+vast schemes, such as the great history of England, of which Mr. James
+Hogg, senr., humorously told us in his 'Recollections' ('Memoir,' ch.
+ed., pp. 330, 331), were not merely subjects of conversation and jest,
+but that he had actually proceeded to build up masses of notes and
+figures with a view to these; and various slips and pages remain to show
+that he had actually commenced to write the history of England. The
+short article, included in the present volume, on the 'Power of the
+House of Commons as Custodian of the Purse,' is marked for 'My History
+of England.' Other portions are marked as intended for 'My book on the
+Infinite,' and others still 'For my book on the Relations of
+Christianity to Man.' One can infer, indeed, that several of the
+articles well-known to us, notably 'Christianity as an Organ of
+Political Movement,' for one, were originally conceived as portions of a
+great work on 'Christianity in Relation to Human Development.'
+
+It is thus necessary to be very explicit in stating that, though these
+notes are as faithfully reproduced as has been possible to me, the
+classification and arrangement of them, under which they assume the
+aspect of something of one connected essay on the main subject, I alone
+am responsible for; though I do not believe, so definite and clear were
+his ideas on certain subjects and in certain relations, that he himself
+would have regarded them as losing anything by such arrangement, but
+rather gaining very much, if they were to be given at all to the public.
+
+Several of the articles in this volume suggest that he also contemplated
+a great work on 'Paganism and Christianity,' in which he would have
+demonstrated that Paganism had exhausted all the germs of progress that
+lay within it; and that all beyond the points reached by Paganism is due
+to Christianity, and alone to Christianity, which, in opening up a clear
+view of the infinite through purely experimental mediums in man's heart,
+touched to new life, science, philosophy, art, invention and every kind
+of culture.
+
+Respecting the recovered 'Suspiria,' all that it is needful to say will
+be found in an introduction special to that head, and it does not seem
+to me that I need to add here anything more. In every other respect the
+articles must speak for themselves.
+
+
+
+
+DE QUINCEY'S POSTHUMOUS WORKS.
+
+
+
+
+_I. SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS._
+
+INTRODUCTION, WITH COMPLETE LIST OF THE 'SUSPIRIA.'
+
+
+The finale to the first part of the 'Suspiria,' as we find from a note
+of the author's own, was to include 'The Dark Interpreter,' 'The Spectre
+of the Brocken,' and 'Savannah-la-Mar.' The references to 'The Dark
+Interpreter' in the latter would thus become intelligible, as the reader
+is not there in any full sense informed who the 'Dark Interpreter' was;
+and the piece, recovered from his MSS. and now printed, may thus be
+regarded as having a special value for De Quincey students, and, indeed,
+for readers generally. In _Blackwood's Magazine_ he did indeed
+interpolate a sentence or two, and these were reproduced in the American
+edition of the works (Fields's); but they are so slight and general
+compared with the complete 'Suspiria' now presented, that they do not in
+any way detract from its originality and value.
+
+The master-idea of the 'Suspiria' is the power which lies in suffering,
+in agony unuttered and unutterable, to develop the intellect and the
+spirit of man; to open these to the ineffable conceptions of the
+infinite, and to some discernment, otherwise impossible, of the
+beneficent might that lies in pain and sorrow. De Quincey seeks his
+symbols sometimes in natural phenomena, oftener in the creation of
+mighty abstractions; and the moral of all must be set forth in the
+burden of 'The Daughter of Lebanon,' that 'God may give by seeming to
+refuse.' Prose-poems, as they have been called, they are deeply
+philosophical, presenting under the guise of phantasy the profoundest
+laws of the working of the human spirit in its most terrible
+disciplines, and asserting for the darkest phenomena of human life some
+compensating elements as awakeners of hope and fear and awe. The sense
+of a great pariah world is ever present with him--a world of outcasts
+and of innocents bearing the burden of vicarious woes; and thus it is
+that his title is justified--_Suspiria de Profundis_: 'Sighs from the
+Depths.'
+
+We find De Quincey writing in his prefatory notice to the enlarged
+edition of the 'Confessions' in November, 1856:
+
+'All along I had relied upon a crowning grace, which I had reserved for
+the final page of this volume, in a succession of some twenty or
+twenty-five dreams and noon-day visions, which had arisen under the
+latter stage of opium influence. These have disappeared; some under
+circumstances which allow me a reasonable prospect of recovering them,
+some unaccountably, and some dishonourably. Five or six I believe were
+burned in a sudden conflagration which arose from the spark of a candle
+falling unobserved amongst a very large pile of papers in a bedroom,
+where I was alone and reading. Falling not _on_, but amongst and within
+the papers, the fire would soon have been ahead of conflict, and, by
+communicating with the slight woodwork and draperies of a bed, it would
+have immediately enveloped the laths of the ceiling overhead, and thus
+the house, far from fire-engines, would have been burned down in
+half-an-hour. My attention was first drawn by a sudden light upon my
+book; and the whole difference between a total destruction of the
+premises and a trivial loss (from books charred) of five guineas was due
+to a large Spanish cloak. This, thrown over and then drawn down tightly,
+by the aid of one sole person, somewhat agitated, but retaining her
+presence of mind, effectually extinguished the fire. Amongst the papers
+burned partially, but not so burned as to be absolutely irretrievable,
+was "The Daughter of Lebanon," and this I have printed and have
+intentionally placed it at the end, as appropriately closing a record in
+which the case of poor "Ann the Outcast" formed not only the most
+memorable and the most suggestively pathetic incident, but also _that_
+which, more than any other, coloured--or (more truly, I should say)
+shaped, moulded and remoulded, composed and decomposed--the great body
+of opium dreams.'
+
+After this loss of the greater portion of the 'Suspiria' copy, De
+Quincey seems to have become indifferent in some degree to their
+continuity and relation to each other. He drew the 'Affliction of
+Childhood' and 'Dream Echoes,' which stood early in the order of the
+'Suspiria,' into the 'Autobiographic Sketches,' and also the 'Spectre of
+the Brocken,' which was meant to come somewhat later in the series as
+originally planned; and, as we have seen, he appended 'The Daughter of
+Lebanon' to the 'Opium Confessions,' without any reference, save in the
+preface, to its really having formed part of a separate collection of
+dreams.
+
+From a list found among his MSS. we are able to give the arrangement of
+the whole as it would have appeared had no accident occurred, and all
+the papers been at hand. Those followed by a cross are those which are
+now recovered, and those with a dagger what were reprinted either as
+'Suspiria' or otherwise in Messrs. Black's editions.
+
+
+
+
+SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS.
+
+
+ 1. Dreaming, [cross]
+ 2. The Affliction of Childhood. [cross]
+        Dream Echoes. [cross]
+ 3. The English Mail Coach. [cross]
+        (1) The Glory of Motion.
+        (2) Vision of Sudden Death.
+        (3) Dream-fugue.
+ 4. The Palimpsest of the Human Brain. [cross]
+ 5. Vision of Life. [cross]
+ 6. Memorial Suspiria. [cross]
+ 7. Levana and our Ladies of Sorrow.
+ 8. Solitude of Childhood. [big cross]
+ 9. The Dark Interpreter. [big cross]
+10. The Apparition of the Brocken. [cross]
+11. Savannah-la-Mar.
+12. The Dreadful Infant. (There was the glory of innocence
+        made perfect; there was the dreadful beauty
+        of infancy that had seen God.)
+13. Foundering Ships.
+14. The Archbishop and the Controller of Fire.
+15. God that didst Promise.
+16. Count the Leaves in Vallombrosa.
+17. But if I submitted with Resignation, not the less
+        I searched for the Unsearchable--sometimes in
+        Arab Deserts, sometimes in the Sea.
+18. That ran before us in Malice.
+19. Morning of Execution.
+20. Daughter of Lebanon. [cross]
+21. Kyrie Eleison.
+22. The Princess that lost a Single Seed of a Pomegranate. [big cross]
+23. The Nursery in Arabian Deserts.
+24. The Halcyon Calm and the Coffin.
+25. Faces! Angels' Faces!
+26. At that Word.
+27. Oh, Apothanate! that hatest Death, and cleansest
+        from the Pollution of Sorrow.
+28. Who is this Woman that for some Months has
+        followed me up and down? Her face I cannot
+        see, for she keeps for ever behind me.
+29. Who is this Woman that beckoneth and warneth
+        me from the Place where she is, and in whose
+        Eyes is Woeful remembrance? I guess who she is. [big cross]
+30. Cagot and Cressida.
+31. Lethe and Anapaula.
+32. Oh, sweep away, Angel, with Angelic Scorn, the
+        Dogs that come with Curious Eyes to gaze.
+
+Thus of the thirty-two 'Suspiria' intended by the author, we have only
+nine that received his final corrections, and even with those now
+recovered, we have only about one half of the whole, presuming that
+those which are lost or remained unwritten would have averaged about the
+same length as those we have. To those who have studied the 'Suspiria'
+as published, how suggestive many of these titles will be! 'Count the
+Leaves in Vallombrosa'--what phantasies would that have conjured up! The
+lost, the apparently wasted of the leaves from the tree of human life,
+and the possibilities of use and redemption! De Quincey would there
+doubtless have given us under a form more or less fanciful or symbolical
+his reading of the problem:
+
+    'Why Nature out of fifty seeds
+    So often brings but one to bear.'
+
+The case of the Cagots, the pariahs of the Pyrenees, as we know from
+references elsewhere, excited his curiosity, as did all of the pariah
+class, and much engaged his attention; and in the 'Cagot and Cressida'
+'Suspiria' we should probably have had under symbols of mighty
+abstractions the vision of the pariah world, and the world of health and
+outward fortune which scorns and excludes the other, and partly, at all
+events, actively dooms it to a living death in England of to-day, as in
+India of the past, and in Jewry of old, where the leper was thrust
+outside the wall to wail 'Unclean! unclean!'
+
+
+
+
+1.--THE DARK INTERPRETER.
+
+     'Oh, eternity with outstretched wings, that broodest over the
+     secret truths in whose roots lie the mysteries of man--his whence,
+     his whither--have I searched thee, and struck a right key on thy
+     dreadful organ!'
+
+
+Suffering is a mightier agency in the hands of nature, as a Demiurgus
+creating the intellect, than most people are aware of.
+
+The truth I heard often in sleep from the lips of the Dark Interpreter.
+Who is he? He is a shadow, reader, but a shadow with whom you must
+suffer me to make you acquainted. You need not be afraid of him, for
+when I explain his nature and origin you will see that he is essentially
+inoffensive; or if sometimes he menaces with his countenance, that is
+but seldom: and then, as his features in those moods shift as rapidly as
+clouds in a gale of wind, you may always look for the terrific aspects
+to vanish as fast as they have gathered. As to his origin--what it is, I
+know exactly, but cannot without a little circuit of preparation make
+_you_ understand. Perhaps you are aware of that power in the eye of many
+children by which in darkness they project a vast theatre of
+phantasmagorical figures moving forwards or backwards between their
+bed-curtains and the chamber walls. In some children this power is
+semi-voluntary--they can control or perhaps suspend the shows; but in
+others it is altogether automatic. I myself, at the date of my last
+confessions, had seen in this way more processions--generally solemn,
+mournful, belonging to eternity, but also at times glad, triumphal
+pomps, that seemed to enter the gates of Time--than all the religions of
+paganism, fierce or gay, ever witnessed. Now, there is in the dark
+places of the human spirit--in grief, in fear, in vindictive wrath--a
+power of self-projection not unlike to this. Thirty years ago, it may
+be, a man called Symons committed several murders in a sudden epilepsy
+of planet-struck fury. According to my recollection, this case happened
+at Hoddesdon, which is in Middlesex. 'Revenge is sweet!' was his hellish
+motto on that occasion, and that motto itself records the abysses which
+a human will can open. Revenge is _not_ sweet, unless by the mighty
+charm of a charity that seeketh not her own it has become benignant.[1]
+And what he had to revenge was woman's scorn. He had been a plain
+farm-servant; and, in fact, he was executed, as such men often are, on a
+proper point of professional respect to their calling, in a smock-frock,
+or blouse, to render so ugly a clash of syllables. His young mistress
+was every way and by much his superior, as well in prospects as in
+education. But the man, by nature arrogant, and little acquainted with
+the world, presumptuously raised his eyes to one of his young
+mistresses. Great was the scorn with which she repulsed his audacity,
+and her sisters participated in her disdain. Upon this affront he
+brooded night and day; and, after the term of his service was over, and
+he, in effect, forgotten by the family, one day he suddenly descended
+amongst the women of the family like an Avatar of vengeance. Right and
+left he threw out his murderous knife without distinction of person,
+leaving the room and the passage floating in blood.
+
+The final result of this carnage was not so terrific as it threatened to
+be. Some, I think, recovered; but, also, one, who did _not_ recover, was
+unhappily a stranger to the whole cause of his fury. Now, this murderer
+always maintained, in conversation with the prison chaplain, that, as he
+rushed on in his hellish career, he perceived distinctly a dark figure
+on his right hand, keeping pace with himself. Upon _that_ the
+superstitious, of course, supposed that some fiend had revealed himself,
+and associated his superfluous presence with the dark atrocity. Symons
+was not a philosopher, but my opinion is, that he was too much so to
+tolerate that hypothesis, since, if there was one man in all Europe that
+needed no tempter to evil on that evening, it was precisely Mr. Symons,
+as nobody knew better than Mr. Symons himself. I had not the benefit of
+his acquaintance, or I would have explained it to him. The fact is, in
+point of awe a fiend would be a poor, trivial _bagatelle_ compared to
+the shadowy projections, _umbras_ and _penumbras_, which the
+unsearchable depths of man's nature is capable, under adequate
+excitement, of throwing off, and even into stationary forms. I shall
+have occasion to notice this point again. There are creative agencies in
+every part of human nature, of which the thousandth part could never be
+revealed in one life.
+
+
+You have heard, reader, in vision which describes our Ladies of Sorrow,
+particularly in the dark admonition of Madonna, to her wicked sister
+that hateth and tempteth, what root of dark uses may lie in moral
+convulsions: not the uses hypocritically vaunted by theatrical devotion
+which affronts the majesty of God, that ever and in all things loves
+Truth--prefers sincerity that is erring to piety that cants. Rebellion
+which is the sin of witchcraft is more pardonable in His sight than
+speechifying resignation, listening with complacency to its own
+self-conquests. Show always as much neighbourhood as thou canst to grief
+that abases itself, which will cost thee but little effort if thine own
+grief hath been great. But God, who sees thy efforts in secret, will
+slowly strengthen those efforts, and make that to be a real deed,
+bearing tranquillity for thyself, which at first was but a feeble wish
+breathing homage to _Him_.
+
+In after-life, from twenty to twenty-four, on looking back to those
+struggles of my childhood, I used to wonder exceedingly that a child
+could be exposed to struggles on such a scale. But two views unfolded
+upon me as my experience widened, which took away that wonder. The first
+was the vast scale upon which the sufferings of children are found
+everywhere expanded in the realities of life. The generation of infants
+which you see is but part of those who belong to it; were born in it;
+and make, the world over, not one half of it. The missing half, more
+than an equal number to those of any age that are now living, have
+perished by every kind of torments. Three thousand children per
+annum--that is, three hundred thousand per century; that is (omitting
+Sundays), about ten every day--pass to heaven through flames[2] in this
+very island of Great Britain. And of those who survive to reach
+maturity what multitudes have fought with fierce pangs of hunger, cold,
+and nakedness! When I came to know all this, then reverting my eye to
+_my_ struggle, I said oftentimes it was nothing! Secondly, in watching
+the infancy of my own children, I made another discovery--it is well
+known to mothers, to nurses, and also to philosophers--that the tears
+and lamentations of infants during the year or so when they have no
+_other_ language of complaint run through a gamut that is as
+inexhaustible as the cremona of Paganini. An ear but moderately learned
+in that language cannot be deceived as to the rate and _modulus_ of the
+suffering which it indicates. A fretful or peevish cry cannot by any
+efforts make itself impassioned. The cry of impatience, of hunger, of
+irritation, of reproach, of alarm, are all different--different as a
+chorus of Beethoven from a chorus of Mozart. But if ever you saw an
+infant suffering for an hour, as sometimes the healthiest does, under
+some attack of the stomach, which has the tiger-grasp of the Oriental
+cholera, then you will hear moans that address to their mothers an
+anguish of supplication for aid such as might storm the heart of Moloch.
+Once hearing it, you will not forget it. Now, it was a constant remark
+of mine, after any storm of that nature (occurring, suppose, once in two
+months), that always on the following day, when a long, long sleep had
+chased away the darkness and the memory of the darkness from the little
+creature's brain, a sensible expansion had taken place in the
+intellectual faculties of attention, observation, and animation. It
+renewed the case of our great modern poet, who, on listening to the
+raving of the midnight storm, and the crashing which it was making in
+the mighty woods, reminded himself that all this hell of trouble
+
+    'Tells also of bright calms that shall succeed.'
+
+Pain driven to agony, or grief driven to frenzy, is essential to the
+ventilation of profound natures. A sea which is deeper than any that
+Count Massigli[3] measured cannot be searched and torn up from its
+sleeping depths without a levanter or a monsoon. A nature which is
+profound in excess, but also introverted and abstracted in excess, so as
+to be in peril of wasting itself in interminable reverie, cannot be
+awakened sometimes without afflictions that go to the very foundations,
+heaving, stirring, yet finally harmonizing; and it is in such cases that
+the Dark Interpreter does his work, revealing the worlds of pain and
+agony and woe possible to man--possible even to the innocent spirit of a
+child.
+
+
+
+
+2.--THE SOLITUDE OF CHILDHOOD.
+
+
+As nothing which is impassioned escapes the eye of poetry, neither has
+this escaped it--that there is, or may be, through solitude, 'sublime
+attractions of the grave.' But even poetry has not perceived that these
+attractions may arise for a child. Not, indeed, a passion for the grave
+_as_ the grave--from _that_ a child revolts; but a passion for the grave
+as the portal through which it may recover some heavenly countenance,
+mother or sister, that has vanished. Through solitude this passion may
+be exalted into a frenzy like a nympholepsy. At first, when in childhood
+we find ourselves torn away from the lips that we could hang on for
+ever, we throw out our arms in vain struggles to snatch at them, and
+pull them back again. But when we have felt for a time how hopeless is
+that effort, and that they cannot come to _us_, we desist from that
+struggle, and next we whisper to our hearts, Might not we go to _them_?
+
+Such in principle and origin was the famous _Dulce Domum_[4] of the
+English schoolboy. Such is the _Heimweh_ (home-sickness) of the German
+and Swiss soldier in foreign service. Such is the passion of the
+Calenture. Doubtless, reader, you have seen it described. The poor
+sailor is in tropical latitudes; deep, breathless calms have prevailed
+for weeks. Fever and delirium are upon him. Suddenly from his restless
+hammock he starts up; he will fret no longer in darkness; he ascends
+upon deck. How motionless are the deeps! How vast--how sweet are these
+shining zaarrahs of water! He gazes, and slowly under the blazing
+scenery of his brain the scenery of his eye unsettles. The waters are
+swallowed up; the seas have disappeared. Green fields appear, a silent
+dell, and a pastoral cottage. Two faces appear--are at the door--sweet
+female faces, and behold they beckon him. 'Come to us!' they seem to
+say. The picture rises to his wearied brain like a _sanctus_ from the
+choir of a cathedral, and in the twinkling of an eye, stung to madness
+by the cravings of his heart, the man is overboard. He is gone--he is
+lost for this world; but if he missed the arms of the lovely women--wife
+and sister--whom he sought, assuredly he has settled into arms that are
+mightier and not less indulgent.
+
+I, young as I was, had one feeling not learned from books, and that
+_could_ not have been learned from books, the deepest of all that
+connect themselves with natural scenery. It is the feeling which in 'The
+Hart-leap Well' of Wordsworth, in his 'Danish Boy,' and other exquisite
+poems is brought out, viz., the breathless, mysterious, Pan-like silence
+that haunts the noon-day. If there were winds abroad, then I was roused
+myself into sympathetic tumults. But if this dead silence haunted the
+air, then the peace which was in nature echoed another peace which lay
+in graves, and I fell into a sick languishing for things which a voice
+from heaven seemed to say '_cannot_ be granted.'
+
+There is a German superstition, which eight or ten years after I read,
+of the Erl-king and his daughter. The daughter had power to tempt
+infants away into the invisible world; but it is, as the reader
+understands, by collusion with some infirmity of sick desire for such
+worlds in the infant itself.
+
+    'Who is that rides through the forest so fast?'
+
+It is a knight who carries his infant upon his saddle-bow. The
+Erl-king's daughter rides by his side; and, in words audible only when
+she means them to be heard, she says:
+
+    'If thou wilt, dear baby, with me go away,
+     We will see a fine show, we will play a fine play.'
+
+That sounds lovely to my ears. Oh yes, that collusion with dim sleeping
+infancy is lovely to me; but I was too advanced in intellect to have
+been tempted by _such_ temptations. Still there was a perilous
+attraction for me in worlds that slept and rested; and if the Erl-king's
+daughter had revealed herself to my perceptions, there was one 'show'
+that she might have promised which would have wiled me away with her
+into the dimmest depths of the mightiest and remotest forests.
+
+
+
+
+3.--WHO IS THIS WOMAN THAT BECKONETH AND WARNETH ME FROM THE PLACE WHERE
+SHE IS, AND IN WHOSE EYES IS WOEFUL REMEMBRANCE? I GUESS WHO SHE IS.
+
+
+In my dreams were often prefigurements of my future, as I could not but
+read the signs. What man has not some time in dewy morn, or sequestered
+eve, or in the still night-watches, when deep sleep falleth on other men
+but visiteth not his weary eyelids--what man, I say, has not some time
+hushed his spirit and questioned with himself whether some things seen
+or obscurely felt, were not anticipated as by mystic foretaste in some
+far halcyon time, post-natal or ante-natal he knew not; only assuredly
+he knew that for him past and present and future merged in one awful
+moment of lightning revelation. Oh, spirit that dwelleth in man, how
+subtle are _thy_ revelations; how deep, how delirious the raptures thou
+canst inspire; how poignant the stings with which thou canst pierce the
+heart; how sweet the honey with which thou assuagest the wound; how dark
+the despairs and accusings that lie behind thy curtains, and leap upon
+us like lightning from the cloud, with the sense as of some heavenly
+blazoning, and oftentimes carry us beyond ourselves!
+
+It is a sweet morning in June, and the fragrance of the roses is wafted
+towards me as I move--for I am walking in a lawny meadow, still wet
+with dew--and a wavering mist lies over the distance. Suddenly it seems
+to lift, and out of the dewy dimness emerges a cottage, embowered with
+roses and clustering clematis; and the hills, in which it is set like a
+gem, are tree-clad, and rise billowy behind it, and to the right and to
+the left are glistening expanses of water. Over the cottage there hangs
+a halo, as if clouds had but parted there. From the door of that cottage
+emerges a figure, the countenance full of the trepidation of some dread
+woe feared or remembered. With waving arm and tearful uplifted face the
+figure first beckons me onward, and then, when I have advanced some
+yards, frowning, warns me away. As I still continue to advance, despite
+the warning, darkness falls: figure, cottage, hills, trees, and halo
+fade and disappear; and all that remains to me is the look on the face
+of her that beckoned and warned me away. I read that glance as by the
+inspiration of a moment. We had been together; together we had entered
+some troubled gulf; struggled together, suffered together. Was it as
+lovers torn asunder by calamity? was it as combatants forced by bitter
+necessity into bitter feud, when we only, in all the world, yearned for
+peace together? Oh, what a searching glance was that which she cast on
+me! as if she, being now in the spiritual world, abstracted from flesh,
+remembered things that I could not remember. Oh, how I shuddered as the
+sweet sunny eyes in the sweet sunny morning of June--the month that was
+my 'angelical'; half spring, yet with summer dress, that to me was very
+'angelical'--seemed reproachfully to challenge in me recollections of
+things passed thousands of years ago (old indeed, yet that were made new
+again for us, because now first it was that we met again). Oh, heavens!
+it came over me as doth the raven over the infected house, as from a bed
+of violets sweeps the saintly odour of corruption. What a glimpse was
+thus revealed! glory in despair, as of that gorgeous vegetation that hid
+the sterilities of the grave in the tropics of that summer long ago; of
+that heavenly beauty which slept side by side within my sister's coffin
+in the month of June; of those saintly swells that rose from an infinite
+distance--I know not whether to or from my sister. Could this be a
+memorial of that nature? Are the nearer and more distant stages of life
+thus dimly connected, and the connection hidden, but suddenly revealed
+for a moment?
+
+This lady for years appeared to me in dreams; in that, considering the
+electric character of my dreams, and that they were far less like a lake
+reflecting the heavens than like the pencil of some mighty artist--Da
+Vinci or Michael Angelo--that cannot copy in simplicity, but comments in
+freedom, while reflecting in fidelity, there was nothing to surprise.
+But a change in this appearance was remarkable. Oftentimes, after eight
+years had passed, she appeared in summer dawn at a window. It was a
+window that opened on a balcony. This feature only gave a distinction, a
+refinement, to the aspect of the cottage--else all was simplicity.
+Spirit of Peace, dove-like dawn that slept upon the cottage, ye were not
+broken by any participation in my grief and despair! For ever the vision
+of that cottage was renewed. Did I roam in the depths of sweet pastoral
+solitudes in the West, with the tinkling of sheep-bells in my ears, a
+rounded hillock, seen vaguely, would shape itself into a cottage; and at
+the door my monitory, regretful Hebe would appear. Did I wander by the
+seashore, one gently-swelling wave in the vast heaving plain of waters
+would suddenly transform itself into a cottage, and I, by some
+involuntary inward impulse, would in fancy advance toward it.
+
+Ah, reader, you will think this which I am going to say too near, too
+holy, for recital. But not so. The deeper a woe touches me in heart, so
+much the more am I urged to recite it. The world disappears: I see only
+the grand reliques of a world--memorials of a love that has departed,
+has been--the record of a sorrow that is, and has its greyness converted
+into verdure--monuments of a wrath that has been reconciled, of a wrong
+that has been atoned for--convulsions of a storm that has gone by. What
+I am going to say is the most like a superstitious thing that I ever
+shall say. And I have reason to think that every man who is not a
+villain once in his life must be superstitious. It is a tribute which he
+pays to human frailty, which tribute if he will not pay, which frailty
+if he will not share, then also he shall not have any of its strength.
+
+The face of this monitory Hebe haunted me for some years in a way that I
+must faintly attempt to explain. It is little to say that it was the
+sweetest face, with the most peculiar expression of sweetness, that I
+had ever seen: that was much, but that was earthly. There was something
+more terrific, believe me, than this; yet that was not the word: terror
+looks to the future; and this perhaps did, but not primarily. Chiefly it
+looked at some unknown past, and was for that reason awful; yes,
+awful--that was the word.
+
+Thus, on any of those heavenly sunny mornings, that now are buried in an
+endless grave, did I, transported by no human means, enter that cottage,
+and descend to that breakfast-room, my earliest salute was to her, that
+ever, as the look of pictures do, with her eyes pursued me round the
+room, and oftentimes with a subtle checking of grief, as if great sorrow
+had been or would be hers. And it was, too, in the sweet Maytime. Oh
+yes; she was but as if she had been--as if it were her original ...
+chosen to have been the aurora of a heavenly clime; and then suddenly
+she was as one of whom, for some thousand years, Paradise had received
+no report; then, again, as if she entered the gates of Paradise not less
+innocent; and, again, as if she could not enter; and some blame--but I
+knew not what blame--was mine; and now she looked as though broken with
+a woe that no man could read, as she sought to travel back to her early
+joy--yet no longer a joy that is sublime in innocency, but a joy from
+which sprung abysses of memories polluted into anguish, till her tears
+seemed to be suffused with drops of blood. All around was peace and the
+deep silence of untroubled solitude; only in the lovely lady was a sign
+of horror, that had slept, under deep ages of frost, in her heart, and
+now rose, as with the rushing of wings, to her face. Could it be
+supposed that one life--so pitiful a thing--was what moved her care? Oh
+no; it was, or it seemed, as if this poor wreck of a life happened to be
+that one which determined the fate of some thousand others. Nothing
+less; nothing so abject as one poor fifty years--nothing less than a
+century of centuries could have stirred the horror that rose to her
+lovely lips, as once more she waved me away from the cottage.
+
+Oh, reader, five years after I saw that sweet face in reality--saw it in
+the flesh; saw that pomp of womanhood; saw that cottage; saw a thousand
+times that lovely domicile that heard the cooing of the solitary dove in
+the solitary morning; saw the grace of childhood and the shadows of
+graves that lay, like creatures asleep, in the sunshine; saw, also, the
+horror, somehow realized as a shadowy reflection from myself, which
+warned me off from that cottage, and which still rings through the
+dreams of five-and-twenty years.
+
+
+The general sentiment or sense of pre-existence, of which this
+_Suspiria_ may be regarded as one significant and affecting
+illustration, had this record in the outset of the 'Reminiscences of
+Wordsworth':
+
+'Oh, sense of mysterious pre-existence, by which, through years, in
+which as yet a stranger to those valleys of Westmoreland, I viewed
+myself as a phantom self--a second identity projected from my own
+consciousness, and already living amongst them--how was it, and by what
+prophetic instinct, that already I said to myself oftentimes, when
+chasing day-dreams along the pictures of these wild mountainous
+labyrinths, which as yet I had not traversed, "Here, in some distant
+year, I shall be shaken with love, and there with stormiest grief and
+regret"? Whence was it that sudden revelations came upon me, like the
+drawings up of a curtain, and closing again as rapidly, of scenes that
+made the future heaven of my life? And how was it that in thought I
+_was_, and yet in reality _was not_, a denizen, already, in 1803, 1804,
+1805, of lakes and forest lawns, which I never saw till 1807? and that,
+by a prophetic instinct of heart, I rehearsed and lived over, as it
+were, in vision those chapters of my life which have carried with them
+the weightiest burden of joy and sorrow, and by the margin of those very
+lakes and hills with which I prefigured this connection? and, in short,
+that for me, by a transcendent privilege, during the novitiate of my
+life, most truly I might say:
+
+    '"In to-day already walked to-morrow."'
+
+
+
+
+4.--THE PRINCESS WHO OVERLOOKED ONE SEED IN A POMEGRANATE.
+
+
+There is a story told in the 'Arabian Nights' of a princess who, by
+overlooking one seed of a pomegranate, precipitated the event which she
+had laboured to make impossible. She lies in wait for the event which
+she foresees. The pomegranate swells, opens, splits; the seeds, which
+she knows to be roots of evil, rapidly she swallows; but one--only
+one--before it could be arrested, rolls away into a river. It is lost!
+it is irrecoverable! She has triumphed, but she must perish. Already she
+feels the flames mounting up which are to consume her, and she calls for
+water hastily--not to deliver herself (for that is impossible), but,
+nobly forgetting her own misery, that she may prevent that destruction
+of her brother mortal which had been the original object for hazarding
+her own. Yet why go to Arabian fictions? Even in our daily life is
+exhibited, in proportions far more gigantic, that tendency to swell and
+amplify itself into mountains of darkness, which exists oftentimes in
+germs that are imperceptible. An error in human choice, an infirmity in
+the human will, though it were at first less than a mote, though it
+should swerve from the right line by an interval less than any thread
+
+    'That ever spider twisted from her womb,'
+
+sometimes begins to swell, to grow, to widen its distance rapidly,
+travels off into boundless spaces remote from the true centre, spaces
+incalculable and irretraceable, until hope seems extinguished and return
+impossible. Such was the course of my own opium career. Such is the
+history of human errors every day. Such was the original sin of the
+Greek theories on Deity, which could not have been healed but by putting
+off their own nature, and kindling into a new principle--absolutely
+undiscoverable, as I contend, for the Grecian intellect.
+
+Oftentimes an echo goes as it were to sleep: the series of
+reverberations has died away. Suddenly a second series awakens: this
+subsides, then a third wakens up. So of actions done in youth. After
+great tumults all is quieted. You dream that they are over. In a moment,
+in the twinkling of an eye, on some fatal morning in middle-life the
+far-off consequences come back upon you. And you say to yourself, 'Oh,
+Heaven, if I had fifty lives this crime would reappear, as Pelion upon
+Ossa!' So was it with my affection. Left to natural peace, I might have
+conquered it: _Verschmerzeon_. To charm it down by the mere suffering of
+grief, to hush it by endurance, that was the natural policy--that was
+the natural process. But behold! A new form of sorrow arises, and the
+two multiply together. And the worm which was beginning to fall asleep
+is roused again to pestilential fierceness.
+
+
+
+
+5.--NOTES FOR 'SUSPIRIA.'
+
+
+Mystery unfathomable of Death! Mystery unapproachable of God! Destined
+it was, from the foundations of the world, that each mystery should make
+war upon the other: once that the lesser mystery should swallow up for a
+moment a _limbus_ of the greater; and that woe is past: once that the
+greater mystery should swallow up for ever the whole vortex of the
+lesser; and that glory is yet to come. After which man, that is the son
+of God, shall lift up his eyes for ever, saying, 'Behold! these were two
+mysteries; and one is not; and there is but one mystery that survives
+for ever!'
+
+
+If an eternity (Death supposed) is as vast as a star, yet the most
+miserable of earthly blocks not four feet square will eclipse, masque,
+hide it from centre to circumference. And so it really is. Incredible as
+it might seem apart from experience, the dreadful reality of death is
+utterly withdrawn from us because itself dwindles to an apparent mote,
+and the perishing non-reality thickens into a darkness as massy as a
+rock.
+
+
+Great changes summon to great meditations. Daily we see the most joyous
+of events take a colouring of solemnity from the mere relation in which
+they stand to an uncertain future: the birth of a child, heir to the
+greatest expectations, and welcomed clamorously by the sympathy of
+myriads, speaks to the more reflecting in an undertone of monitory
+sadness, were it only as a tribute to the frailty of human expectations:
+and a marriage-day, of all human events the most lawfully festal, yet
+needs something of effort to chase away the boding sadness which settles
+unavoidably upon any new career; the promise is vague, but new hopes
+have created new dangers, and responsibilities contracted perhaps with
+rapture are charged with menace.
+
+
+For every one of us, male or female, there is a year of crisis--a year
+of solemn and conscious transition, a year in which the light-hearted
+sense of the _irresponsible_ ceases to gild the heavenly dawn. A year
+there is, settled by no law or usage, for me perhaps the eighteenth, for
+you the seventeenth, for another the nineteenth, within the gates of
+which, underneath the gloomy archway of which, sits a phantom of
+yourself.
+
+
+Turn a screw, tighten a linch-pin--which is not to disease, but perhaps
+to exalt, the mighty machinery of the brain--and the Infinities appear,
+before which the tranquillity of man unsettles, the gracious forms of
+life depart, and the ghostly enters. So profoundly is this true, that
+oftentimes I have said of my own tremendous experience in this
+region--destined too certainly, I fear, finally to swallow up intellect
+and the life of life in the heart, unless God of His mercy fetches me
+away by some sudden death--that death, considered as an entrance to this
+ghostly world, is but a postern-gate by comparison with the
+heaven-aspiring vestibule through which this world of the Infinite
+introduces the ghostly world.
+
+
+Time, if it does not diminish grief, alters its character. At first we
+stretch out our hands in very blindness of heart, as if trying to draw
+back again those whom we have lost. But, after a season, when the
+impotence of such efforts has become too sensibly felt, finding that
+they will not come back to us, a strange fascination arises which yearns
+after some mode of going to _them_. There is a gulf fixed which
+childhood rarely can pass. But we link our wishes with whatsoever would
+gently waft us over. We stretch out our hands, and say, 'Sister, lend us
+thy help, and plead for us with God, that we may pass over without much
+agony.'
+
+
+The joy of an infant, or joy-generation, without significance to an
+unprofound and common mind--how strange to see the excess of pathos in
+that; yet men of any (or at least of much) sensibility see in this a
+transpicuous masque for another form, viz., the eternal ground of sorrow
+in all human hearts. This, by the way, in an essay on William
+Wordsworth, should be noticed as the charm of his poetry; and the note
+differential, in fact. At least, I know not of any former poet who has
+so systematically sought his sadness in the very luxury of joy. Thus, in
+the 'Two April Mornings,' 'what a mortal freshness of dewy radiance!
+what an attraction of early summer! what a vision of roses in June! Yet
+it is all transmuted to a purpose of sadness.'
+
+
+Ah, reader, scorn not that which--whether you refuse it or not as the
+reality of realities--is assuredly the reality of dreams, linking us to
+a far vaster cycle, in which the love and the languishing, the ruin and
+the horror, of this world are but moments--but elements in an eternal
+circle. The cycle stretches from an East that is forgotten to a West
+that is but conjectured. The mere fact of your own individual calamity
+is a life; the tragedy is a nature; the hope is but as a dim augury
+written on a flower.[5]
+
+
+If the things that have fretted us had not some art for retiring into
+secret oblivion, what a hell would life become! Now, understand how in
+some nervous derangements this horror really takes place. Some things
+that had sunk into utter forgetfulness, others that had faded into
+visionary power, all rise as gray phantoms from the dust; the field of
+our earthly combats that should by rights have settled into peace, is
+all alive with hosts of resurrections--cavalries that sweep in gusty
+charges--columns that thunder from afar--arms gleaming through clouds of
+sulphur.
+
+
+God takes care for the religion of little children wheresoever His
+Christianity exists. Wheresoever there is a national Church established,
+to which a child sees all his protectors resort; wheresoever he beholds
+amongst earthly creatures whom most he honours prostrate in devotion
+before these illimitable heavens, which fill to overflowing the total
+capacities of his young adoring heart; wheresoever at intervals he
+beholds the sleep of death, falling upon the men or women whom he has
+seen--a depth stretching as far below his power to fathom as those
+persons ascend beyond his powers to pursue--God speaks to their hearts
+by dreams and their tumultuous grandeurs. Even by solitude does God
+speak to little children, when made vocal by the services of
+Christianity, as also he does by darkness wheresoever it is peopled
+with visions of His almighty power. For a pagan child, for a Greek
+child, solitude was nothing; for a Christian child it is made the power
+of God, and the hieroglyphic of His most distant truth. The solitude in
+life is deep for the millions who have none to love them, and deep for
+those who suffer by secret and incommunicable woe and have none to pity
+them. Thus, be you assured that though infancy talks least of that which
+slumbers deepest, it yet rests in its own transcendent solitude. But
+infancy, you say, talks surely most of that which is uppermost in its
+heart. Yes, doubtless of that which is uppermost, but not at all of that
+which slumbers below the foundations of its heart.
+
+[And then follows a suggestion to put in a note:]
+
+
+I except one case, the case of any child who is marked for death by
+organic disease, and knows it. In such cases the creature is
+changed--that which would have been unchildlike ceases to offend, for a
+new character is forming.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] See the story of the young soldier who told his officer, on having
+been struck by him, that 'he would make him repent it.' (Close of
+autobiographic sketch, 'Infant Literature.')
+
+[2] Three thousand children are annually burnt to death in the nations
+of England and Scotland, chiefly through the carelessness of parents. I
+shudder to add another and darker cause, which is a deep disgrace to the
+present age.
+
+[3] Count Massigli (an Austrian officer in the imperial service) about
+sixty years ago fathomed and attempted to fathom many parts of the
+Mediterranean and the Atlantic. If I remember rightly, he found the
+bottom within less than an English mile.
+
+[4] The story and the verses are, or used to be, well known. A
+schoolboy, forbidden to return home at the holidays, is suspected to
+have written the lyrical Latin verses upon the rapture of returning
+home, and to have breathed out his life in the anguish of thus reviving
+the images which for him were never to be realized.... The reader must
+not fancy any flaw in the Latin title. It is elliptic; _revisere_ being
+understood, or some similar word.
+
+[5] I allude to the _signatures_ of nature.
+
+
+
+
+_II. THE LOVELIEST SIGHT FOR WOMAN'S EYES._
+
+
+The loveliest sight that a woman's eye opens upon in this world is her
+first-born child; and the holiest sight upon which the eyes of God
+settle in Almighty sanction and perfect blessing is the love which soon
+kindles between the mother and her infant: mute and speechless on the
+one side, with no language but tears and kisses and looks. Beautiful is
+the philosophy ... which arises out of that reflection or passion
+connected with the transition that has produced it. First comes the
+whole mighty drama of love, purified[6] ever more and more, how often
+from grosser feelings, yet of necessity through its very elements,
+oscillating between the finite and the infinite: the haughtiness of
+womanly pride, so dignified, yet not always free from the near contagion
+of error; the romance so ennobling, yet not always entirely reasonable;
+the tender dawn of opening sentiments, pointing to an idea in all this
+which it neither can reach nor could long sustain. Think of the great
+storm of agitation, and fear and hope, through which, in her earliest
+days of womanhood, every woman must naturally pass, fulfilling a law of
+her Creator, yet a law which rests upon her mixed constitution; animal,
+though indefinitely ascending to what is non-animal--as a daughter of
+man, frail ... and imperfect, yet also as a daughter of God, standing
+erect, with eyes to the heavens. Next, when the great vernal passover of
+sexual tenderness and romance has fulfilled its purpose, we see, rising
+as a Phoenix from this great mystery of ennobled instincts, another
+mystery, much more profound, more affecting, more divine--not so much a
+rapture as a blissful repose of a Sabbath, which swallows up the more
+perishing story of the first; forcing the vast heart of female nature
+through stages of ascent, forcing it to pursue the transmigrations of
+the Psyche from the aurelic condition, so glowing in its colour, into
+the winged creature which mixes with the mystery of the dawn, and
+ascends to the altar of the infinite heavens, rising by a ladder of
+light from that sympathy which God surveys with approbation; and even
+more so as He beholds it self-purifying under His Christianity to that
+sympathy which needs no purification, but is the holiest of things on
+this earth, and that in which God most reveals Himself through the
+nature of humanity.
+
+Well is it for the glorification of human nature that through these the
+vast majority of women must for ever pass; well also that, by placing
+its sublime germs near to female youth, God thus turns away by
+anticipation the divinest of disciplines from the rapacious absorption
+of the grave. Time is found--how often--for those who are early summoned
+into rendering back their glorious privilege, who yet have tasted in
+its first-fruits the paradise of maternal love.
+
+And pertaining also to this part of the subject, I will tell you a
+result of my own observations of no light importance to women.
+
+It is this: Nineteen times out of twenty I have remarked that the true
+paradise of a female life in all ranks, not too elevated for constant
+intercourse with the children, is by no means the years of courtship,
+nor the earliest period of marriage, but that sequestered chamber of her
+experience, in which a mother is left alone through the day, with
+servants perhaps in a distant part of the house, and (God be thanked!)
+chiefly where there are no servants at all, she is attended by one sole
+companion, her little first-born angel, as yet clinging to her robe,
+imperfectly able to walk, still more imperfect in its prattling and
+innocent thoughts, clinging to her, haunting her wherever she goes as
+her shadow, catching from her eye the total inspiration of its little
+palpitating heart, and sending to hers a thrill of secret pleasure so
+often as its little fingers fasten on her own. Left alone from morning
+to night with this one companion, or even with three, still wearing the
+graces of infancy; buds of various stages upon the self-same tree, a
+woman, if she has the great blessing of approaching such a luxury of
+paradise, is moving--too often not aware that she is moving--through the
+divinest section of her life. As evening sets in, the husband, through
+all walks of life, from the highest professional down to that of common
+labour, returns home to vary her modes of conversation by such thoughts
+and interests as are more consonant with his more extensive capacities
+of intellect. But by that time her child (or her children) will be
+reposing on the little couch, and in the morning, duly as the sun
+ascends in power, she sees before her a long, long day of perfect
+pleasure in this society which evening will bring to her, but which is
+interwoven with every fibre of her sensibilities. This condition of
+noiseless, quiet love is that, above all, which God blesses and smiles
+upon.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[6] How purified? And if it should be answered, through and under
+Christianity, the fool in his heart would scoff and say: 'What woman
+thinks of religion in her youthful courtship?' No; but it is not what
+she thinks of, but what thinks of her; not what she contemplates in
+consciousness, but what contemplates her, and reaches her by a necessity
+of social (? ideal) action. Romance is the product of Christianity, but
+so is sentiment.
+
+
+
+
+_III. WHY THE PAGANS COULD NOT INVEST THEIR GODS WITH ANY IOTA OF
+GRANDEUR._
+
+
+It is not for so idle a purpose as that of showing the Pagan
+backsliding--that is too evident--but for a far subtler purpose, and one
+which no man has touched, viz., the incapacity of creating grandeur for
+the Pagans, even with _carte blanche_ in their favour, that I write this
+paper. Nothing is more incomprehensible than the following fact--nothing
+than this when mastered and understood is more thoroughly
+instructive--the fact that having a wide, a limitless field open before
+them, free to give and to take away at their own pleasure, the Pagans
+could not invest their Gods with any iota of grandeur. Diana, when you
+translate her into the Moon, then indeed partakes in all the _natural_
+grandeur of a planet associated with a dreamy light, with forests,
+forest lawns, etc., or the wild accidents of a huntress. But the Moon
+and the Huntress are surely not the creations of Pagans, nor indebted to
+them for anything but the murderous depluming which Pagan mythology has
+operated upon all that is in earth or in the waters that are under the
+earth. Now, why could not the ancients raise one little scintillating
+glory in behalf of their monstrous deities? So far are they from thus
+raising Jupiter, that he is sometimes made the ground of nature (not,
+observe, for any positive reason that they had for any relation that
+Jupiter had to Creation, but simply for the negative reason that they
+had nobody else)--never does Jupiter seem more disgusting than when as
+just now in a translation of the 'Batrachia' I read that Jupiter had
+given to frogs an amphibious nature, making the awful, ancient,
+first-born secrets of Chaos to be his, and thus forcing into contrast
+and remembrance his odious personality.
+
+Why, why, why could not the Romans, etc., make a grandeur for their
+Gods? Not being able to make them grand, they daubed them with finery.
+All that people imagine in the Jupiter Olympus of Phidias--_they_
+themselves confer. But an apostle is beyond their reach.
+
+When, be it well observed, the cruel and dark religions are far more
+successful than those of Greece and Rome, for Osiris, etc., by the might
+of the devil, of darkness, are truly terrific. Cybele stands as a middle
+term half-way between these dark forms and the Greek or Roman. Pluto is
+the very model of a puny attempt at darkness utterly failing. He looks
+big; he paints himself histrionically; he soots his face; he has a
+masterful dog, nothing half so fearful as a wolf-dog or bloodhound; and
+he raises his own _manes_, poor, stridulous Struldbrugs.
+
+Vainly did the ancient Pagans fight against this fatal weakness.
+
+They may confer upon their Gods glittering titles of 'ambrosial,'
+'immortal'; but the human mind is careless of positive assertion, and of
+clamorous iteration in however angry a tone, when silently it observes
+stealing out of facts already conceded some fatal consequence at war
+with all these empty pretensions--mortal even in _the virtual_
+conceptions of the Pagans. If the Pagan Gods were really immortal, if
+essentially they repelled the touch of mortality, and not through the
+adulatory homage of their worshipers causing their true aspects to
+unsettle or altogether to disappear in clouds of incense, then how came
+whole dynasties of Gods to pass away, and no man could tell whither? If
+really they defied the grave, then how was it that age and the
+infirmities of age passed upon them like the shadow of eclipse upon the
+golden faces of the planets? If Apollo were a beardless young man, his
+father was not such--_he_ was in the vigour of maturity; maturity is a
+flattering term for expressing it, but it means _past youth_--and his
+grandfather was superannuated. But even this grandfather, who _had_ been
+once what Apollo was now, could not pretend to more than a transitory
+station in the long succession of Gods. Other dynasties, known even to
+man, there had been before his; and elder dynasties before _that_, of
+whom only rumours and suspicions survived. Even this taint, however,
+this _direct_ access of mortality, was less shocking to my mind in
+after-years than the abominable fact of its reflex or indirect access in
+the shape of grief for others who had died. I need not multiply
+instances; they are without end. The reader has but to throw his memory
+back upon the anguish of Jupiter, in the 'Iliad,' for the approaching
+death of his son Sarpedon, and his vain struggles to deliver himself
+from this ghastly net; or upon Thetis, fighting against the vision of
+her matchless Pelides caught in the same vortex; or upon the Muse in
+Euripides, hovering in the air and wailing over her young Rhesus, her
+brave, her beautiful one, of whom she trusted that he had been destined
+to confound the Grecian host. What! a God, and liable to the pollution
+of grief! A Goddess, and standing every hour within the peril of that
+dismal shadow!
+
+Here in one moment mark the recoil, the intolerable recoil, upon the
+Pagan mind, of that sting which vainly they pretended to have conquered
+on behalf of their Pantheon. Did the reader fancy that I was fatiguing
+myself with any task so superfluous as that of proving the Gods of the
+heathen to be no Gods? In that case he has not understood me. My object
+is to show that the ancients, that even the Greeks, could not support
+the idea of immortality. The idea crumbled to pieces under their touch.
+In realizing that idea unconsciously, they suffered elements to slip in
+which defeated its very essence in the result; and not by accident:
+other elements they could not have found. Doubtless an insolent Grecian
+philosopher would say, 'Surely, I knew that immortality meant the being
+liberated from mortality.' Yes, but this is no more than the negative
+idea, and the demand is to give the affirmative idea. Or perhaps I shall
+better explain my meaning by substituting other terms with my own
+illustration of their value. I say, then, that the Greek idea of
+immortality involves only the nominal idea, not the real idea. Now, the
+nominal idea (or, which is the same thing, the nominal definition) is
+that which simply sketches the outline of an object in the shape of a
+problem; whereas the real definition fills up that outline and solves
+that problem. The nominal definition states the conditions under which
+an object would be realized for the mind; the real definition executes
+those conditions. The nominal definition, that I may express it most
+briefly and pointedly, puts a _question_; the real definition _answers_
+that question. Thus, to give our illustration, the insoluble problem of
+squaring the circle presents us with a good nominal idea. There is no
+vagueness at all in the idea of such a square; it is that square which,
+when a given circle is laid before you, would present the same
+superficial contents in such exquisite truth of repetition that the eye
+of God could detect no shadow of more or of less. Nothing can be plainer
+than the demand--than the question. But as to the answer, as to the
+_real_ conditions under which this demand can be realized, all the wit
+of man has not been able to do more than approach it. Or, again, the
+idea of a _perfect commonwealth_, clear enough as a nominal idea, is in
+its infancy as a real idea. Or, perhaps, a still more lively
+illustration to some readers may be the idea of _perpetual motion_.
+Nominally--that is, as an idea sketched problem-wise--what is plainer?
+You are required to assign some principle of motion such that it shall
+revolve through the parts of a mechanism self-sustained. Suppose those
+parts to be called by the names of our English alphabet, and to stand in
+the order of our alphabet, then A is through B C D, etc., to pass down
+with its total power upon Z, which reciprocally is to come round
+undiminished upon A B C, etc., for ever. Never was a _nominal_
+definition of what you want more simple and luminous. But coming to the
+_real_ definition, and finding that every letter in succession must
+still give something less than is received--that O, for instance, cannot
+give to P all which it received from N--then no matter for the
+triviality of the loss in each separate case, always it is gathering and
+accumulating; your hands drop down in despair; you feel that a principle
+of death pervades the machinery; retard it you may, but come it will at
+last. And a proof remains behind, as your only result, that whilst the
+nominal definition may sometimes run before the real definition for
+ages, and yet finally be overtaken by it, in other cases the one flies
+hopelessly before the pursuit of the other, defies it, and never _will_
+be overtaken to the end of time.
+
+That fate, that necessity, besieged the Grecian idea of immortality.
+Rise from forgotten dust, my Plato; Stagyrite, stand up from the grave;
+Anaxagoras, with thy bright, cloudless intellect that searched the
+skies, Heraclitus, with thy gloomy, mysterious intellect that fathomed
+the deeps, come forward and execute for me this demand. How shall that
+immortality, which you give, which you _must_ give as a trophy of honour
+to your Pantheon, sustain itself against the blights from those
+humanities which also, by an equal necessity, starting from your basis,
+give you must to that Pantheon? How will you prevent the sad reflux of
+that tide which finally engulfs all things under any attempt to execute
+the nominal idea of a Deity? You cannot do it. Weave your divinities in
+that Grecian loom of yours, and no skill in the workmanship, nor care
+that wisdom can devise, will ever cure the fatal flaws in the texture:
+for the mortal taint lies not so much in your work as in the original
+errors of your loom.
+
+
+
+
+_IV. ON PAGAN SACRIFICES._
+
+
+Ask any well-informed man at random what he supposes to have been done
+with the sacrifices, he will answer that really he never thought about
+it, but that naturally he supposes the flesh was burnt upon the altars.
+Not at all, reader; a sacrifice to the Gods meant universally a banquet
+to man. He who gave a splendid public dinner announced in other words
+that he designed to celebrate a sacrificial rite. This was of course.
+He, on the other hand, who announced a sacrificial pomp did in other
+words proclaim by sound of trumpet that he gave a dinner. This was of
+necessity. Hence, when Agamemnon offers a hecatomb to Jupiter, his
+brother Menelaus walks in to dinner, [Greek: hachletost], without
+invitation. As a brother, we are told by Homer that no invitation was
+required. He had the privilege of what in German is beautifully called
+'ein Kind des Hauses,' a child of the house. This dispensation from the
+necessity of a formal invitation Homer explains, but as to explanation
+how he knew that there was a dinner, that he passes over as superfluous.
+A vast herd of oxen could not be sacrificed without open and public
+display of the preparation, and that a human banquet must accompany a
+divine sacrifice--this was so much a self-evident truth that Homer does
+not trouble himself to make so needless an explanation.
+
+Hence, therefore, a case of legislation in St. Paul's Christian
+administration, which I will venture to say few readers understand. Take
+the Feast of Ephesus. Here, as in all cities of Asia Minor and Greece,
+the Jews lived in great numbers. The universal hospitality over all
+these regions was exhibited in dinners ([Greek: dehipna]). Now, it
+happened not sometimes, but always, that he who gave a dinner had on the
+same day made a sacrifice at the Great Temple; nay, the dinner was
+always part of the sacrifice, and thus the following dilemma arose.
+Scruples of eating part of sacrifices were absolutely unintelligible,
+except as insults to Ephesus. To deny the existence of Diana had no
+meaning in the ears of an Ephesian. All that he did understand was, that
+if you happened to be a hater of Ephesus, you must hate the guardian
+deity of Ephesus. And the sole inference he could collect from your
+refusing to eat what had been hallowed to Diana was--that you hated
+Ephesus. The dilemma, therefore, was this: either grant a toleration of
+this practice, or else farewell to all amicable intercourse for the Jews
+with the citizens. In fact, it was to proclaim open war if this
+concession were refused. A scruple of conscience might have been allowed
+for, but a scruple of this nature could find no allowance in any Pagan
+city whatever. Moreover, it had really no foundation. The truth is far
+otherwise than that Pagan deities were dreams. Far from it. They were as
+real as any other beings. The accommodation, therefore, which St. Paul
+most wisely granted was--to eat socially, without regard to any ceremony
+through which the food might have passed. So long as the Judaizing
+Christian was no party to the religious ceremonies, he was free of all
+participation in idolatry. Since if the mere open operation of a Pagan
+process could transform into the character of an accomplice one who with
+no assenting heart ate of the food, in that case Christ Himself might by
+possibility have shared in an idolatrous banquet, and we Christians at
+this day in the East Indies might for months together become unconscious
+accomplices in the foul idolatries of the Buddhist and Brahminical
+superstitions.
+
+But so essentially were the convivial banquets of the Pagans interwoven
+with their religious rites, so essentially was a great dinner a great
+offering to the Gods, and _vice versa_--a great offering to the Gods a
+great dinner--that the very ministers and chief agents in religion were
+at first the same. Cocus, or [Greek: mageirost], was the very same
+person as the Pope, or presiding arbiter in succession to a Pope. 'Sunt
+eadem,' says Casaubon, 'Cocus et Pope.' And of this a most striking
+example is yet extant in Athenaeus. From the correspondence which for
+many centuries was extant between Alexander the Great, when embarked
+upon his great expeditions, and his royal mother Olympias, who remained
+in Macedon, was one from which we have an extract even at this day,
+where he, as we learn from the letter quoted, had been urging his mother
+to purchase for him a good cook. And what was made the test supreme of
+his skill? Why, this, that he should be [Greek: thysihon hempeirost], an
+artist able to dress a sacrificial banquet. What he meant is this: I do
+not want an ordinary cook, who might be equal to the preparation of a
+plain (or, what is the same thing, secular) dinner, but a person
+qualified or competent to take charge of a hecatomb dinner. His mother's
+reply addresses itself to that one point only: [Greek: Peligua ton
+mageiron labe hapd thest metrost], which is in effect: 'A cook is it
+that you want? Why, then, you cannot do better than take mine. The man
+is a reliable table of sacrifices; he knows the whole ritual of those
+great official and sacred dinners given by the late king, your father.
+He is acquainted with the whole _cuisine_ of the more mysterious
+religions, the Orgiacs' (probably from the neighbouring Thrace), 'and
+all the great ceremonies and observances practised at Olympia, and even
+what you may eat on the great St. Leger Day. So don't lose sight of the
+arrangement, but take the man as a present, from me, your affectionate
+mother, and be sure to send off an express for him at your earliest
+convenience.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     [Professor Robertson Smith in his latest work has well pointed out
+     that even with the Hebrews the sacrifices were eaten in common till
+     the seventh century B. C., when the sin-offerings, in a time of
+     great national distress, came to be slain before Jehovah, and 'none
+     but the priests ate of the flesh,' a phase of sacrificial
+     specialization which marks the beginning of the exclusive
+     sacerdotalism of the Jews.--ED.]
+
+
+
+
+_V. ON THE MYTHUS._
+
+
+That which the tradition of the people is to the truth of facts--that is
+a _mythus_ to the reasonable origin of things. [Transcriber's Note: three
+dots in a vertical line above a tiny circle] These objects to an eye at
+[Transcriber's Note: low tiny circle] might all melt into one another, as
+stars are confluent which modern astronomy has prismatically split. Says
+Rennell, as a reason for a Mahometan origin of a canal through Cairo,
+such is the tradition of the people. But we see amongst ourselves how
+great works are ascribed to the devil or to the Romans by antiquarians.
+In Rennell we see the effects of synthesis. He throws back his
+observations, like a woman threading a series of needles or a shuttle
+running through a series of rings, through a succession of Egyptian
+canals (p. 478), showing the real action of the case, that a tendency
+existed to this. And, by the way, here comes another strong illustration
+of the popular adulterations. They in our country confound the 'Romans,'
+a vulgar expression for the Roman Catholics, with the ancient national
+people of Rome. Here one element of a _mythus_ B has melted into the
+_mythus_ X, and in far-distant times might be very perplexing to
+antiquarians, when the popular tradition was too old for them to _see_
+the point of juncture where the alien stream had fallen in.
+
+Then, again, not only ignorance, but love, combines to adulterate the
+tradition. Every man wishes to give his own country an interest in
+anything great. What an effort has been made to suck Sir T. R. back into
+Scotland!
+
+Thus, it is too difficult without a motive to hold apart vast distances
+_or_ intervals that lie in a field which has all gathered into a blue
+haze. Stars, divided by millions of miles, collapse into each other. So
+_mythi_: and then comes the perplexity--the entanglement. Then come
+also, from lacunae arising in these interwelded stories, temptations to
+falsehood. By the way, even the recent tale of Astyages seems to have
+been pieced: the difficulty was to find a motive for Cyrus, reputed a
+good man, to make war on his grandfather. Kill him he might by accident.
+But the dream required that he should dethrone his grandfather.
+Accordingly the dreadful story is devised; but why should Cyrus adopt
+the injuries of a nobleman who, if all were true, had only saved himself
+by accident?
+
+Impossible as it would seem to transmute Socrates into a _mythus_,
+considering the broad daylight which then rested upon Athenian history,
+and the inextricable way in which Socrates is entangled in that history
+(although we have all seen many a Scriptural personage so transmuted
+under far less colourable pretenses or advantages), still it is evident
+that the mediaeval schoolmen _did_ practically treat Socrates as
+something of that sort--as a mythical, symbolic, or representative man.
+Socrates is the eternal burthen of their quillets, quodlibets, problems,
+syllogisms; for them he is the Ulysses of the Odyssey, that
+much-suffering man; or, to speak more adequately, for _them_ he is the
+John Doe and the Richard Roe of English law, whose feuds have tormented
+the earth and incensed the heavens through a cycle of uncounted
+centuries, and must have given a bad character of our planet on its
+English side. To such an extent was this pushed, that many of the
+scholastic writers became wearied of enunciating or writing his name,
+and, anticipating the occasional fashion of _My lud_ and _Your ludship_
+at our English Bar, or of _Hocus Pocus_ as an abbreviation of pure
+weariness for _Hoc est Corpus_, they called him not _Socrates_, but
+_Sortes_. Now, whence, let me ask, was this custom derived? As to Doe
+and Roe, who or what first set them by the ears together is now probably
+past all discovery. But as to _Sortes_, that he was a mere contraction
+for _Socrates_ is proved in the same way that _Mob_ is shown to have
+been a brief way of writing _Mobile vulgus_, viz., that by Bishop
+Stillingfleet in particular the two forms, _Mob_ and _Mobile vulgus_ are
+used interchangeably and indifferently through several pages
+consecutively--just as _Canter_ and _Canterbury gallop_, of which the
+one was at first the mere shorthand expression of the other, were at one
+period interchanged, and for the same reason. The abbreviated form wore
+the air of plebeian slang at its first introduction, but its convenience
+favoured it: soon it became reconciled to the ear, then it ceased to be
+slang, and finally the original form, ceasing to have any apparent
+advantage of propriety or elegance, dropped into total disuse. _Sortes_,
+it is a clear case, inherited from Socrates his distressing post of
+target-general for the arrows of disputatious Christendom. But how came
+Socrates by that distinction? I cannot have a doubt that it was strength
+of tradition that imputed such a use of the Socratic name and character
+to Plato. The reader must remember that, although Socrates was no
+_mythus_, and least of all could be such, to his own leading disciple,
+that was no reason why he should not be treated as a _mythus_. In Wales,
+some nine or ten years ago, _Rebecca_, as the mysterious and masqued
+redresser of public wrongs, was rapidly passing into a _mythical_
+expression for that universal character of Rhadamanthian avenger or
+vindicator. So of Captain Rock, in Ireland. So of Elias amongst the Jews
+(_when Elias shall come_), as the sublime, mysterious, and in some
+degree pathetic expression for a great teacher lurking amongst the
+dreadful mists.
+
+
+
+
+_VI. DAVID'S NUMBERING OF THE PEOPLE--THE POLITICS OF THE SITUATION._
+
+
+You read in the Hebrew Scriptures of a man who had thirty sons, all of
+whom 'rode on white asses'; the riding on white asses is a circumstance
+that expresses their high rank or distinction--that all were princes. In
+Syria, as in Greece and almost everywhere, white was the regal symbolic
+colour.[7] And any mode of equitation, from the far inferior wealth of
+ancient times, implied wealth. Mules or asses, besides that they were so
+far superior a race in Syria no less than in Persia, to furnish a
+favourite designation for a warlike hero, could much more conveniently
+be used on the wretched roads, as yet found everywhere, until the Romans
+began to treat road-making as a regular business of military pioneering.
+In this case, therefore, there were thirty sons of one man, and all
+provided with princely establishments. Consequently, to have thirty sons
+at all was somewhat surprising, and possible only in a land of polygamy;
+but to keep none back in obscurity (as was done in cases where the funds
+of the family would not allow of giving to each his separate
+establishment) argued a condition of unusual opulence. That it was
+surprising is very true. But as therefore involving any argument against
+its truth, the writer would justly deny by pleading--for that very
+reason, _because_ it was surprising, did I tell the story. In a train of
+1,500 years naturally there must happen many wonderful things, both as
+to events and persons. Were these crowded together in time or locally,
+these indeed we should incredulously reject. But when we understand the
+vast remoteness from each other in time or in place, we freely admit the
+tendency lies the other way; the wonder would be if there were _not_
+many coincidences that each for itself separately might be looked upon
+as strange. And as the surgeon had set himself to collect certain cases
+for the very reason that they were so unaccountably fatal, with a
+purpose therefore of including all that did _not_ terminate fatally, so
+we should remember that generally historians (although less so if a
+Jewish historian, because he had a far nobler chain of wonders to
+record) do not feel themselves open to the objection of romancing if
+they report something out of the ordinary track, since exactly that sort
+of matter is their object, and it cannot but be found in a considerable
+proportion when their course travels over a vast range of successive
+generations. It would be a marvellous thing indeed if every one of five
+hundred men whom an author had chosen to record biographically should
+have for his baptismal name--Francis. But if you found that this was the
+very reason for his admitting the man into his series, that, however
+strange a reason, it had in fact governed him in selecting his subjects,
+you would no longer see anything to startle your belief.
+
+But let me give an interesting case partly illustrating this principle.
+Once I was present on an occasion where, of two young men, one very
+young and very clever was suggesting infidel scruples, and the other, so
+much older as to be entering on a professional career with considerable
+distinction, was on the very point of drinking-in all that his companion
+urged as so much weighty objection that could not be answered. The
+younger man (in fact, a boy) had just used a passage from the Bible, in
+which one of the circumstances was--that the Jewish army consisted of
+120,000 men. 'Now,' said he, 'knowing as we all do the enormity of such
+a force as a peace establishment, even for mighty empires like England,
+how perfectly like a fairy-tale or an Arabian Nights' entertainment does
+it sound to hear of such monstrous armaments in a little country like
+Judaea, equal, perhaps, to the twelve counties of Wales!' This was
+addressed to myself, and I could see by the whole expression of the
+young physician that his condition was exactly this--his studies had
+been purely professional; he made himself a king, because (having
+happened to hurt his leg) he wore white _fasciae_ about his thigh. He
+knew little or nothing of Scriptural records; he had not read at all
+upon this subject; quite as little had he thought, and, unfortunately,
+his conversation had lain amongst clever chemists and naturalists, who
+had a prejudgment in the case that all the ability and free power of
+mind ran into the channel of scepticism; that only people situated as
+most women are should acquiesce in the faith or politics of their
+fathers or predecessors, or could believe much of the Scriptures, except
+those who were slow to examine for themselves; but that multitudes
+pretended to believe upon some interested motive. This was precisely
+the situation of the young physician himself--he listened with manifest
+interest, checked himself when going to speak; he knew the danger of
+being reputed an infidel, and he had no temper for martyrdom, as his
+whole gesture and manner, by its tendency, showed what was passing in
+his mind. 'Yes, X is right, manifestly right, and every rational view
+from our modern standard of good sense and reflective political economy
+tends to the same conclusion. By the reflex light of political economy
+we know even at this hour much as to the condition of ancient lands like
+Palestine, Athens, etc., quite unrevealed to the wisest men amongst
+them. But for me, who am entering on a critical walk of social life, I
+shall need every aid from advantageous impression in favour of my
+religious belief, so I cannot in prudence speak, for I shall speak too
+warmly, and I forbear.'
+
+What I replied, and in that instance usefully replied--for it sufficed
+to check one who was gravitating downwards to infidelity, and likely to
+settle there for ever if he once reached that point--was in substance
+this:
+
+Firstly, that the plea, with regard to the numbers as most
+extraordinary, was so far from affecting the credibility of the
+statement disadvantageously, that on that ground, agreeably to the logic
+I have so scantily expounded, this very feature in the case was what
+partly engaged the notice of the Scriptural writer. It _was_ a great
+army for so little a nation. And _therefore_, would the writer say,
+_therefore_ in print I record it.
+
+Secondly, that we must not, however, be misled by the narrow limits, the
+Welsh limits, to suppose a Welsh population. For that whilst the twelve
+counties of Wales do not _now_ yield above half-a-million of people,
+Palestine had pretty certainly a number fluctuating between four and six
+millions.
+
+Thirdly, that the great consideration of this was the stage in the
+expansion of society at which the Hebrew nation then stood, and the
+sublime interest--sublime enough to them, though far from comprehending
+the solemn freight of hopes confided to themselves--which they
+consciously defended. It was an age in which no pay was given to the
+soldier. Now, when the soldier constitutes a separate profession, with
+the regular pay he undertakes the regular danger and hardships. There is
+no motive for giving the pay and the rations but precisely that he
+_does_ so undertake. But when no pay at all is allowed out of any common
+fund, it will never be endured by the justice of the whole society or by
+an individual member that he, the individual, as one insulated
+stake-holder, having no greater interest embarked than others, should
+undertake the danger or the labour of warfare for the whole. And two
+inferences arise upon having armies so immense:
+
+First, that they were a militia, or more properly not even that, but a
+Landwehr--that is, a _posse comitatus_, the whole martial strength of
+the people (one in four), drawn out and slightly trained to meet a
+danger, which in those times was always a passing cloud. Regular and
+successive campaigns were unknown; the enemy, whoever he might be, could
+as little support a regular army as the people of Palestine.
+Consequently, all these enemies would have to disperse hastily to their
+reaping and mowing, just as we may observe the Jews do under Joshua. It
+required, therefore, no long absence from home. It was but a march, but
+a waiting for opportunity, watching for a favourable day--sunshine or
+cloud, the rising or subsiding of a river, the wind in the enemy's face,
+or an ambush skilfully posted. All was then ready; the signal was given,
+a great battle ensued, and by sunset of one anxious day all was over in
+one way or another. Upon this position of circumstances there was
+neither any fair dispensation from personal service (except where
+citizens' scruples interfered), nor any motive for wishing it. On the
+contrary, by a very few days' service, a stigma, not for the individual
+only, but for his house and kin, would be evaded for ages of having
+treacherously forsaken the commonwealth in agony. And the preference for
+a fighting station would be too eager instead of too backward. It would
+become often requisite to do what it is evident the Jews in reality
+did--to make successive sifting and winnowing from the service troops,
+at every stage throwing out upon severer principles of examination those
+who seemed least able to face a trying crisis, whilst honourable posts
+of no great dependency would be assigned to those rejected, as modes of
+soothing their offended pride. This in the case of a great danger; but
+in the case of an ordinary danger there is no doubt that many vicarious
+arrangements would exist by way of evading so injurious a movement as
+that of the whole fighting population. Either the ordinary watch and
+ward, in that section which happened to be locally threatened--as, for
+instance, by invasion on one side from Edom or Moab, on another side
+from the Canaanites or Philistines--would undertake the case as one
+which had fallen to them by allotment of Providence; or that section
+whose service happened to be due for the month, without local regards,
+would face the exigency. But in any great national danger, under that
+stage of society which the Jews had reached between Moses and
+David--that stage when fighting is no separate professional duty, that
+stage when such things are announced by there being no military pay--not
+the army which is so large as 120,000 men, but the army which is so
+small, requires to be explained.[8]
+
+Secondly, the other inference from the phenomenon of no military pay,
+and therefore no separate fighting profession, is this--that foreign
+war, war of aggression, war for booty, war for martial glory, is quite
+unknown. Now, all rules of political economy, applied to the maintenance
+of armies, must of course contemplate a regular trade of war pursued
+with those objects, and not a domestic war for beating off an attack
+upon hearths and altars. Such a war only, be it observed, could be
+lawfully entertained by the Jewish people. Mahomet, when he stole all
+his great ideas from the Mosaic and Christian revelations, found it
+inevitable to add one principle unknown to either: this was a religious
+motive for perpetual war of aggression, and such a principle he
+discovered in the imaginary duty of summary proselytism. No instruction
+was required. It was sufficient for the convert that, with or without
+sincerity, under terror of a sword at his throat, he spoke the words
+aloud which disowned all other faith than in Allah and Mahomet his
+prophet. It was sufficient for the soldier that he heard of a nation
+denying or ignoring Mahomet, to justify any atrocity of invasive
+warfare. But the Jews had no such commission--a proselyte needed more
+evidences of assent than simply to bawl out a short formula of words,
+and he who refused to become a proselyte was no object of persecution.
+Some nations have forced their languages upon others as badges of
+servitude. But the Romans were so far from treating _their_ language in
+this way, that they compelled barbarous nations on their frontier to pay
+for a license to use the Latin tongue. And with much more reason did the
+Jews, instead of wishing to obtrude their sublime religion upon
+foreigners, expect that all who valued it should manifest their value by
+coming to Jerusalem, by seeking instruction from the doctors of the law,
+and by worshipping in the outer court of the Temple.
+
+Such was the prodigious state of separation from a Mahometan principle
+of fanatical proselytism in which the Jews were placed from the very
+first. One small district only was to be cleared of its ancient
+idolatrous, and probably desperately demoralized, tribes. Even this
+purification it was not intended should be instant; and upon the
+following reason, partly unveiled by God and partly left to an
+integration, viz., that in the case of so sudden a desolation the wild
+beasts and noxious serpents would have encroached too much on the human
+population. So much is expressed, and probably the sequel foreseen was,
+that the Jews would have lapsed into a wild hunting race, and have
+outworn that ceremonial propensity which fitted them for a civil life,
+which formed them into a hive in which the great work of God in Shiloh,
+His probationary Temple or His glorious Temple and service at Jerusalem,
+operated as the mysterious instinct of a queen bee, to compress and
+organize the whole society into a cohesion like this of life. Here,
+perhaps, lay the reason for not allowing of any sudden summary
+extirpation, even for the idolatrous tribes; whilst, upon a second
+principle, it was never meant that this extirpation should be complete.
+Snares and temptations were not to be too thickly sown--in that case the
+restless Jew would be too severely tried; but neither were they to be
+utterly withdrawn--in that case his faith would undergo no probation.
+Even upon this small domestic scale, therefore, it appears that
+aggressive warfare was limited both for interest and for time. First, it
+was not to be too complete; second, even for this incompleteness it was
+not to be concentrated within a short time. It was both to be narrow and
+to be gradual. By very necessity, therefore, of its original appointment
+this part of the national economy, this small system of aggressive
+warfare, could not provide a reason for a military profession. But all
+other wars of aggression, wars operating upon foreign objects, had no
+allowance, no motive, no colourable plea; for the attacks upon Edom,
+Midian, Moab, were mere acts of retaliation, and, strictly speaking, not
+aggressive at all, but parts of defensive warfare. Consequently there
+remained no permanent case of war under Divine allowance that could ever
+justify the establishment of a military caste; for the civil wars of the
+Jews either grew out of some one intolerable crime taken up, adopted,
+and wickedly defended by a whole tribe (as in the case of that horrible
+atrocity committed by a few Benjamites, and then adopted by the whole
+tribe), in which case a bloody exterminating war under God's sanction
+succeeded and rapidly drew to a close, or else grew out of the ruinous
+schism between the ten tribes and the two seated in or about Jerusalem.
+And as this schism had no countenance from God, still less could the
+wars which followed it. So that what belligerent state remains that
+could have been contemplated or provided for in the original Mosaic
+theory of their constitution? Clearly none at all, except the one sole
+case of a foreign invasion. But as this, if in any national strength,
+struck at the very existence of the people, and at their holy citadel in
+Shiloh or in Jerusalem, it called out the whole military strength to the
+last man of the Hebrew people. Consequently in any case, when the armies
+could tend at all to great numerical amount, they must tend to an
+excessive amount. And, so far from being a difficult problem to solve in
+the 120,000 men, the true difficulty would lie the other way, to account
+for its being so much reduced.
+
+It seems to me highly probable that the offence of David in numbering
+the people, which ultimately was the occasion of fixing the site for the
+Temple of Jerusalem, pointed to this remarkable military position of the
+Jewish people--a position forbidding all fixed military institutions,
+and which yet David was probably contemplating in that very _census_.
+Simply to number the people could not have been a crime, nor could it be
+any desideratum for David; because we are too often told of the muster
+rolls for the whole nation, and for each particular tribe, to feel any
+room for doubt that the reports on this point were constantly corrected,
+brought under review of the governing elders, councils, judges, princes,
+or king, according to the historical circumstances, so that the need and
+the criminality of such a _census_ would vanish at the same moment. But
+this was not the _census_ ordered by David. He wanted a more specific
+return, probably of the particular wealth and nature of the employment
+pursued by each individual family, so that upon this return he might
+ground a permanent military organization for the people; and such an
+organization would have thoroughly revolutionized the character of the
+population, as well as drawn them into foreign wars and alliances.
+
+It is painful to think that many amiable and really candid minds in
+search of truth are laid hold of by some plausible argument, as in this
+case the young physician, by a topic of political economy, when a local
+examination of the argument would altogether change its bearing. This
+argument, popularly enforced, seemed to imply the impossibility of
+supporting a large force when there were no public funds but such as ran
+towards the support of the Levites and the majestic service of the
+altar. But the confusion arises from the double sense of the word
+'army,' as a machine ordinarily disposable for all foreign objects
+indifferently, and one which in Judaea exclusively could be applied only
+to such a service as must in its own nature be sudden, brief, and always
+tending to a decisive catastrophe.
+
+And that this was the true form of the crime, not only circumstances
+lead me to suspect, but especially the remarkable demur of Joab, who in
+his respectful remonstrance said in effect that, when the whole strength
+of the nation was known in sum--meaning from the ordinary state
+returns--what need was there to search more inquisitively into the
+special details? Where all were ready to fight cheerfully, why seek for
+separate _minutiae_ as to each particular class? Those general returns
+had regard only to the ordinary _causa belli_--a hostile invasion. And,
+then, all nations alike, rude or refined, have gone upon the same
+general outline of computation--that, subtracting the females from the
+males, this, in a gross general way, would always bisect the total
+return of the population. And, then, to make a second bisection of the
+male half would subtract one quarter from the entire people as too young
+or too old, or otherwise as too infirm for warlike labours, leaving
+precisely one quarter of the nation--every fourth head--as available for
+war. This process for David's case would have yielded perhaps about
+1,100,000 fighting men throughout Palestine. But this unwieldy
+_pospolite_ was far from meeting David's secret anxieties. He had
+remarked the fickle and insurrectionary state of the people. Even
+against himself how easy had it been found to organize a sudden
+rebellion, and to conceal it so prosperously that he and his whole court
+saved themselves from capture only by a few hours' start of the enemy,
+and through the enemy's want of cavalry. This danger meantime having
+vanished, it might be possible that for David personally no other great
+conspiracy should disturb his seat upon the throne. None of David's sons
+approached to Absalom in popularity; and yet the subsequent attempt of
+Adonijah showed that the revolutionary temper was still awake in that
+quarter. But what David feared, in a further-looking spirit, was the
+tenure by which his immediate descendants would maintain their title.
+The danger was this: over and above the want of any principle for
+regulating the succession, and this want operating in a state of things
+far less determined than amongst monogamous nations--one son pleading
+his priority of birth; another, perhaps, his mother's higher rank, a
+third pleading his very juniority, inasmuch as this brought him within
+the description of _porphyrogeniture_, or royal birth, which is often
+felt as transcendent as _primogeniture_--even the people, apart from the
+several pretenders to the throne, would create separate interests as
+grounds for insurrection or for intestine feuds. There seems good reason
+to think that already the ten tribes, Israel as opposed to Judah, looked
+upon the more favoured and royal tribe of Judah, with their
+supplementary section of Benjamin, as unduly favoured in the national
+economy. Secretly there is little doubt that they murmured even against
+God for ranking this powerful tribe as the prerogative tribe. The
+jealousy had evidently risen to a great height; it was suppressed by the
+vigilant and strong government of Solomon; but at the outset of his
+son's reign it exploded at once, and the Scriptural account of the case
+shows that it proceeded upon old grievances. The boyish rashness of
+Rehoboam might exasperate the leaders, and precipitate the issue; but
+very clearly all had been prepared for a revolt. And I would remark that
+by the 'young men' of Rehoboam are undoubtedly meant the soldiers--the
+body-guards whom the Jewish kings now retained as an element of royal
+pomp. This is the invariable use of the term in the East. Even in
+Josephus the term for the military by profession is generally 'the young
+men'; whilst 'the elders' mean the councilors of state. David saw
+enough of the popular spirit to be satisfied that there was no political
+reliance on the permanence of the dynasty; and even at home there was an
+internal source of weakness. The tribe of Benjamin were mortified and
+incensed at the deposition of Saul's family and the bloody proscription
+of that family adopted by David. One only, a grandson of Saul, he had
+spared out of love to his friend Jonathan. This was Mephibo-sheth; but
+he was incapacitated for the throne by lameness. And how deep the
+resentment was amongst the Benjamites is evident from the insulting
+advantage taken of his despondency in the day of distress by Shimei. For
+Shimei had no motive for the act of coming to the roadside and cursing
+the king beyond his attachment to the house of Saul. Humanly speaking,
+David's prospect of propagating his own dynasty was but small. On the
+other hand, God had promised him _His_ support. And hence it was that
+his crime arose, viz., upon his infidelity, in seeking to secure the
+throne by a mere human arrangement in the first place; secondly, by such
+an arrangement as must disorganize the existing theocratic system of the
+Jewish people. Upon this crime followed his chastisement in a sudden
+pestilence. And it is remarkable in how significant a manner God
+manifested the nature of the trespass, and the particular course through
+which He had meant originally, and _did_ still mean, to counteract the
+worst issue of David's apprehensions. It happened that the angel of the
+pestilence halted at the threshing-floor of Araunah; and precisely that
+spot did God by dreams to David indicate as the site of the glorious
+Temple. Thus it seemed as though in so many words God had declared: 'Now
+that all is over, your crime and its punishment, understand that your
+fears were vain. I will continue the throne in your house longer than
+your anxieties can personally pursue its descent. And with regard to the
+terrors from Israel, although this event of a great schism is inevitable
+and essential to My councils, yet I will not allow it to operate for the
+extinction of your house. And that very Temple, in that very place where
+My angel was commissioned to pause, shall be one great means and one
+great pledge to you of My decree in favour of your posterity. For this
+house, as a common sanctuary to all Jewish blood, shall create a
+perpetual interest in behalf of Judah amongst the other tribes, even
+when making war upon Jerusalem.' Witness if it were but that one case
+where 200,000 captives of Judah were restored without ransom, were
+clothed completely, were fed, by the very men who had just massacred
+their fighting relatives.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[7] Even in Rome, where the purple (whatever colour that might have
+been) is usually imagined to be the symbol of regal state--and
+afterwards their improved arts of dyeing, and improved materials, became
+so splendid that it was made so--white had always been the colour of a
+monarchy. ['A white linen band was the simple badge of Oriental royalty'
+(Merivale's 'History of Rome,' ii., p. 468).--ED.]
+
+[8] This was the case even with the Homeric Greeks. Mr. Gladstone makes
+a point of this (see 'Juventus Mundi,' p. 429): 'The privates of the
+army are called by the names of _laos_, the people; _demos_, the
+community; and _pleth[=u]s_, the multitude. But no notice is taken
+throughout the poem of the exploits of any soldier below the rank of an
+officer. Still, all attend the Assemblies. On the whole, the Greek host
+is not so much an army, as a community in arms.' Even the common people,
+not only in cities but in camps, assembled to hear the deliberations of
+the chiefs.--ED.
+
+
+
+
+_VII. THE JEWS AS A SEPARATE PEOPLE._
+
+
+The argument for the separation and distinct current of the Jews,
+flowing as they pretend of the river Rhone through the Lake of
+Geneva--never mixing its waters with those which surround it--has been
+by some infidel writers defeated and evaded by one word; and here, as
+everywhere else, an unwise teacher will seek to hide the answer. Yet how
+infinitely better to state it fully, and then show that the evasion has
+no form at all; but, on the contrary, powerfully argues the
+inconsistency and incapacity of those who urge it. For instance, I
+remember Boulanger, a French infidel, whose work was duly translated by
+a Scotchman, answers it thus: What is there miraculous in all this? he
+demands. Listen to me, and I will show you in two minutes that it rests
+upon mere show and pure delusion. How is it, why is it, that the Jews
+have remained a separate people? Simply from their usages, in the first
+place; but, secondly, still more from the fact that these usages, which
+with other peoples exist also in some representative shape, with _them_
+modify themselves, shift, alter, adapt themselves to the climate or to
+the humour or accidents of life amongst those amidst whom chance has
+thrown them; whereas amongst the Jews every custom, the most trivial, is
+also part of their legislation; and their legislation is also their
+religion. (Boulanger, by the way, is far from expressing that objection
+so clearly as I have here done; but this is his drift and purpose, so
+far as he knew how to express it.) Take any other people--Isaurians,
+Athenians, Romans, Corinthians--doubtless all these and many others have
+transmitted their blood down to our ages, and are now living amongst us
+by representation. But why do we not perceive this? Why do the Athenians
+seem to have perished utterly? Simply for this reason: they were a
+plastic, yielding, unobstinate race. An Athenian lived in a port of
+Italy, married an Italian woman; thence threw out lines of descent to
+Milan, thence to Paris; and because his Attic usages were all local,
+epichorial, and tied to a particular mythology which has given way, or
+to a superstition which is defunct, or to a patriotic remembrance which
+has vanished with the land and the sympathy that supported it; hence,
+and upon other similar arguments, the Athenian has long since melted
+into the mass with which he was intermixed; he was a unit attached to a
+vast overpowering number from another source, and into that number he
+has long since been absorbed; he was a drop in a vast ocean, and long
+ago he has been confounded with the waters that did not differ, except
+numerically, from his own. But the Jews are an obstinate, bigoted
+people; and they have maintained their separation, not by any overruling
+or coercing miracle, but in a way perfectly obvious and palpable to
+themselves--obvious by its operation, obvious in its remedy. They would
+not resign their customs. Upon these ordinances, positive and negative,
+commanding and forbidding many peculiar rites, consecrating and
+desecrating many common esculent articles, these Jews have laid the
+stress and emphasis of religion. They would not resign them; they did
+not expect others to adopt them--not in any case; _a fortiori_ not from
+a degraded people. And hence, not by any mysterious operation of
+Providential control, arose their separation, their resolute refusal to
+blend with other races.
+
+This is the infidel's attempt to rebut, to defeat, utterly to confound,
+the argumentative force of this most astonishing amongst all historical
+pictures that the planet presents.
+
+The following is the answer:
+
+It is forgotten that along with the Jews there is another people
+concerned as illustrations of the same prophetic fatality--of that same
+inevitable eye, that same perspective of vision, which belonged to those
+whose eyes God had opened. The Arabs, as children of a common ancestor,
+ought not to be forgotten in this sentence upon their brother nation.
+They through Ishmael, the Jews through Isaac, and more immediately
+through Israel the son of Isaac, were two diverging branches of one
+original stem; and to both was pronounced a corresponding doom--a
+sentence which argued in both a principle of duration and
+self-propagation, that is memorable in any race. The children of Ishmael
+are the Arabs of the desert. Their destiny as a roving robber nation,
+and liable to all men's hands, as they indifferently levied spoil on
+all, was early pronounced. And here, again, we see at once how it will
+be evaded: it is the desert, it is the climate, it is the solemnity of
+that unchanging basis, which will secure the unchanging life of its
+children. But it is remarkable enough that Gibbon and other infidels,
+kicking violently against this standing miracle (because, if not so in
+itself, yet, according to Bishop Butler's just explanation concerning
+miraculous _per de_-_rivationem_ as recording a miraculous power of
+vision), have by oscillation clung to the fixture of basis, and rejected
+it; for now Gibbon denies that the Arabs have held this constant tenor
+of life; they have changed it, he asserts, in large and notorious cases.
+Well, then, if they have, then at once falls to the ground this alleged
+overruling coercion _a priori_ of the climate and the desert. Climate
+and desert do not necessarily coerce them, if in large and notorious
+cases they have failed to do so. So feels Gibbon; and, by an instinct of
+timidity, back he flies to the previous evasion--to the natural
+controlling power of climate and soil, admitting the Scriptural fact,
+but seeking for it an unscriptural ground, as before he had flown in
+over-precipitate anxiety to the denial of the Scriptural fact, but in
+that denial involving a withdrawal of the unscriptural ground.
+
+The sceptics in that instance show their secret sense of a preference
+from the distracted eagerness with which they fly backwards and
+forwardwise between two reciprocally hostile evasions.
+
+The answer I reserve, and meantime I remark:
+
+Secondly, that, supposing this answer to have any force, still it meets
+only one moiety of the Scriptural fatality; viz., the dispersion of the
+Jews--the fact that, let them be gathered in what numbers they might,
+let them even be concentrated by millions, therefore in the literal
+sense _not_ dispersed, yet in the political sense universally
+understood, they would be dispersed, because never, in no instance,
+rising to be a people, _sui juris_, a nation, a distinct community,
+known to the public law of Europe as having the rights of peace and war,
+but always a mere accident and vagrant excess amongst nations, not
+having the bare rights of citizenship; so far from being a nation, not
+being an acknowledged member of any nation. This exquisite
+dispersion--not ethnographic only, but political--is that half of the
+Scriptural malediction which the Boulanger answer attempts to meet; but
+the other half--that they should be 'a byword, an astonishment,'
+etc.--is entirely blinked. Had the work even prospered, it would still
+have to recommence. The Armenians are dispersed through all Eastern
+lands, so are the Arabs; even the descendants of Ali are found severed
+from their natal soil; but they are not therefore dispersed: they have
+endured no general indignities.
+
+Thirdly, it does not meet the fact of the Jewish _existence_ in any
+shape, whether as a distinct or an amalgamated people. There is no doubt
+that many races of men, as of brute animals, have been utterly
+extinguished. In cases such as those of the Emim, or Rethinim, a race
+distinguished by peculiar size, so as to be monstrous in comparison with
+other men, this extinction could more readily be realized; or in the
+case of a nation marked, as Herodotus records, by a slighter texture of
+scale, the extinction might be ascertained by the physiologist; but no
+doubt it has often occurred, precisely as a family is extinguished, or
+as certain trees (for example, the true golden pippin) are observed to
+die off, not by local influences only, but by a decay attacking the very
+principle of their existence. Of many ancient races it is probable
+enough that no blood directly traced from them could at this day be
+searched by the eye of God. Families arise amongst the royal lineage of
+Europe that suddenly, like a lamp fitfully glowing up just the moment
+before it expires, throw off, as by some final effort, a numerous
+generation of princes and princesses; then suddenly all contract as
+rapidly into a single child, which perishing, the family is absolutely
+extinct. And so must many nations have perished, and so must the Jews
+have been pre-eminently exposed to perish, from the peculiar, fierce,
+and almost immortal, persecutions which they have undergone, and the
+horrid frenzies of excited mobs in cruel cities of which they have stood
+the brunt.
+
+
+
+
+_VIII. 'WHAT IS TRUTH?' THE JESTING PILATE SAID--A FALSE GLOSS._
+
+
+It is true that Pilate could not be expected fully to comprehend an idea
+which was yet new to man; Christ's words were beyond his depth. But,
+still, his natural light would guide him thus far--that, although he had
+never heard of any truth which rose to that distinction, still, if any
+one class of truth should in future come to eclipse all other classes of
+truth immeasurably, as regarded its practical results, as regarded some
+dark dependency of human interests, in that case it would certainly
+merit the distinctive name of 'The Truth.' The case in which such a
+distinction would become reasonable and available was one utterly
+unrealized to his experience, not even within the light of his
+conjectures as to its special conditions; but, still, as a general
+possibility it was conceivable to his understanding; though not
+comprehensible, yet apprehensible. And in going on to the next great
+question, to the inevitable question, 'What _is_ the truth?' Pilate had
+no thought of jesting. Jesting was the last thing of which his
+impassioned mood in that great hour was capable. Roman magistrates of
+supreme rank were little disposed to jesting on the judgment-seat
+amongst a refractory and dangerous people; and of Pilate in particular,
+every word, every effort, every act, demonstrate that he was agitated
+with new instincts and misgivings of some shadowy revelation opening
+upon man, that his heart was convulsed with desponding anxiety in the
+first place to save the man who appeared the depositary of this
+revelation, but who, if, after all, only a sublime lunatic, was, at the
+very least, innocent of all offence. It must have struck all close
+observers of early Christianity how large a proportion of the new
+converts lay amongst Roman officers, or (to speak more adequately)
+amongst Romans of high rank, both men and women. And for that there was
+high reason. In the advance of civilization, and in the corresponding
+decay of idolatrous religions, there was fast arising a new growth of
+cravings amongst men. Mythological and desperately immoral religions,
+that spoke only to the blind sense of power, had been giving way through
+the three previous centuries to a fearful extent. They had receded from
+the higher natures of both Greece and Rome as the sea has locally
+receded from many shores of the earth. Such natures were left 'miserably
+bare'; the sense of dependency by any tie upon the invisible world, or
+at least upon the supernatural world, had decayed, and unless this
+painful void were filled up by some supplementary bond in the same
+direction, a condition of practical atheism must take place, such as
+could not but starve and impoverish in human nature those yearnings
+after the infinite which are the pledges of all internal grandeur. But
+this dependency could not be replaced by one of the same vicious nature.
+Into any new dependency a new element must be introduced. The sense of
+insufficiency would be renewed in triple strength if merely the old
+relations of weakness to power, of art to greater art, of intellect to
+higher intellect, of less to more within the same exact limits as to
+kind of excellence, should be rehearsed under new names or improved
+theogonies. Hitherto, no relation of man to divine or demoniac powers
+had included the least particle or fraction or hint of any moral
+element; nor was such an element possible in that dependency, for
+profound reasons.
+
+
+
+
+_IX. WHAT SCALIGER SAYS ABOUT THE EPISTLE TO JUDE._
+
+
+Before any canon was settled, many works had become current in Christian
+circles whose origin was dubious. The traditions about them varied
+locally. Some, it is alleged, that would really have been entitled to a
+canonical place, had been lost by accident; to some, which still
+survived, this place had been refused upon grounds that might not have
+satisfied _us_ of this day, if we had the books and the grounds of
+rejection before us; and, finally, others, it is urged, have obtained
+this sacred distinction with no right to it. In particular, the Second
+Epistle of St. Peter, the Second of St. Jude, the Epistle of St. James,
+and the three of St. John, are denounced as supposititious in the
+'Scaligerana.' But the writer before us is wrong in laying any stress on
+the opinions there expressed. They bear the marks of conversational
+haste and of Scaligeran audacity. What is the objection made, for
+instance, to 'in quibus sunt mira, quae non _videntur_ esse Apostolica'?
+_That_ is itself more strange as a criticism than anything in the
+epistles _can_ be for its doctrine. The only thing tending to a reason
+for the summary treatment is that the Eastern Church does not
+acknowledge them for canonical. But opinions quoted from _ana_ are
+seldom of any authority; indeed, I have myself too frequently seen the
+unfaithfulness of such reports. The reporter, as he cannot decently be
+taking notes at the time of speaking, endeavours afterwards to recall
+the most interesting passages by memory. He forgets the context; what
+introduced--what followed to explain or modify the opinions. He supplies
+a conjectural context of his own, and the result is a romance. But if
+the reporter were even accurate, so much allowance must be made for the
+license of conversation--its ardour, its hurry, and its frequent
+playfulness--that when all these deductions are made, really not a
+fraction remains that one can honestly carry to account. Besides, the
+elder Scaliger was drunk pretty often, and Joe seems rather 'fresh' at
+times.
+
+Upon consideration, it may be as well to repeat what it is that Scaliger
+is reported to have said:
+
+'The Epistle of Jude is not _his_, as neither is that of James, nor the
+_second_ of Peter, in all which are strange things that seem (seem--mark
+that!) far enough from being Apostolical. The three Epistles of John are
+not from John the Apostle. The second of Peter and Jude belong to a
+later age. The Eastern Church does not own them, neither are they of
+evangelical authority. They are unlearned, and offer no marks of Gospel
+majesty. As regards their internal value, believe them I may say that I
+do, but it is because they are in no ways hostile to _us_.'
+
+Now, observe, the grounds of objection are purely aesthetical, except in
+the single argument from the authority of the Eastern Church. What does
+he mean by 'unlearned,' or wanting 'majesty,' or containing 'strange
+things'? Were ever such vague puerilities collected into one short
+paragraph? This is pure impertinence, and _Phil_. deserves to be
+privately reprimanded for quoting such windy chaff without noting and
+protesting it as colloquial. But what I wish the reader to mark--the
+[Greek: tho hepimhythion]--is, that suppose the two Scaligers amongst
+the Christian Fathers engaged in fixing the canon: greater learning you
+cannot have; neither was there, to a dead certainty, one tenth part as
+much amongst the canon-settlers. Yet all this marvellous learning fumes
+away in boyish impertinence. It confounds itself. And every Christian
+says, Oh, take away this superfluous weight of erudition, that, being so
+rare a thing, cannot be wanted in the broad highways of religion. What
+we _do_ want is humility, docility, reverence for God, and love for man.
+These are sown broadcast amongst human hearts. Now, these apply
+themselves to the _sense_ of Scripture, not to its grammatical niceties.
+But if so, even that case shows indirectly how little could depend upon
+the mere verbal attire of the Bible, when the chief masters of verbal
+science were so ready to go astray--riding on the billows so imperfectly
+moored. In the _ideas_ of Scripture lies its eternal anchorage, not in
+its perishable words, which are shifting for ever like quicksands, as
+the Bible passes by translation successively into every spoken language
+of the earth.
+
+What then?--'What then?' retorts the angry reader after all this, 'why
+then, perhaps, there may be a screw loose in the Bible.' True, there
+may, and what is more, some very great scholars take upon them to assert
+that there is. Yet, still, what then? The two possible errors open to
+the Fathers of our canon, to the men upon whom rested the weighty task
+of saying to all mankind what should be Bible, and what should be _not_
+Bible, of making and limiting that mighty world, are--that they may
+have done that which they ought _not_ to have done, and, secondly, left
+undone that which they ought to have done. They may have admitted
+writers whom they ought to have excluded; and they may have excluded
+writers whom they ought to have admitted. This is the extent of their
+possible offences, and they are supposed by some critics to have
+committed both. But suppose that they _have_, still I say--what then?
+What is the nature of the wrong done to us by the worst mistake ascribed
+to them? Let us consider. It is supposed by some scholars that we have
+in the New Testament as it now stands a work written by Apollos, viz.,
+the Epistle to the Romans. Yet, if so, the error amounts only to a
+misnomer. On the other hand, there are Epistles on which has been
+charged the same error in relation to the name of the author, and the
+more important error of thoughts unbecoming to a Christian in authority:
+for instance, the Epistle of St. James. This charge was chiefly urged by
+a very intemperate man, and in a very intemperate style. I notice it as
+being a case which _Phil_. has noticed. But _Phil_. merits a gentle rap
+on his knuckles for the inconsideration with which he has cited a charge
+made and reported with so much levity. He quotes it from the
+'Scaligerana.' Now, what right upon such a subject has any man to quote
+such an authority? The reasons against listening with much attention to
+the 'Scaligerana' are these:
+
+First, the Scaligers, both father and son, were the two most impudent
+men that ever walked the planet. I should be loath to say so ill-natured
+a thing as that their impudence was equal to their learning, because
+that forces every man to say, 'Ah, then, what impudent fellows they
+must have been!' It is kinder and juster to say that their learning was
+at least equal to their impudence, for _that_ will force every man to
+exclaim, 'Ah, if so, what prodigies of learning they must have been!'
+Yes, they were--absolute monsters of learning, learned monsters. But as
+much learning often makes men mad, still more frequently it makes them
+furious for assault and battery; to use the American phrase, they grow
+'wolfy about the shoulders,' from a periodical itchiness for fighting.
+Other men being shy of attacking the Scaligers, it was no fault of
+theirs, you know, but a necessity, to attack other men--unless you
+expected them to have no fighting at all. It was always a reason with
+_them_ for trying a fall with a writer, if they doubted much whether
+they had any excuse for hanging a quarrel on.
+
+Secondly, all _ana_ whatever are bad authorities. Supposing the thing
+really said, we are to remember the huge privilege of conversation, how
+immeasurable is that! You yourself, reader, I presume, when talking,
+will say more in an hour than you will stand to in a month. I'm sure _I_
+do. When the reins are put into my hands I stick at nothing--headlong I
+drive like a lunatic, until the very room in which we are talking, with
+all that it inherits, seems to spin round with absolute vertigo at the
+extravagances I utter.
+
+Thirdly, but again, was the thing really said? For, as another censure
+upon the whole library of _ana_, I can assert--that, if the license of
+conversation is enormous, to that people who inhale that gas of
+colloquial fermentation seldom mean much above one part in sixty of what
+they say, on the other hand the license of reporters is far greater. To
+forget the circumstances under which a thing was said is to alter the
+thing, to have lost the context, the particular remark in which your
+own originated, the mitigations of a harsh sentiment from playfulness of
+manner; in short, to drop the _setting_ of the thoughts is oftentimes to
+falsify the tendency and value of those thoughts.
+
+     NOTE BY THE EDITOR.--The _Phil_. here referred to is the
+     _Philoleutheros Anglicanus_ of the essay on 'Protestantism,' as
+     shortened by De Quincey, and with whom De Quincey, in that essay,
+     deals very effectively and wittily on occasion.
+
+
+
+
+_X. MURDER AS A FINE ART._
+
+(SOME NOTES FOR A NEW PAPER.)
+
+
+A new paper on Murder as a Fine Art might open thus: that on the model
+of those Gentlemen Radicals who had voted a monument to Palmer, etc., it
+was proposed to erect statues to such murderers as should by their
+next-of-kin, or other person interested in their glory, make out a claim
+either of superior atrocity, or, in equal atrocity, of superior
+neatness, continuity of execution, perfect preparation or felicitous
+originality, smoothness or _curiosa felicitas_ (elaborate felicity). The
+men who murdered the cat, as we read in the Newgate Calendar, were good,
+but Williams better who murdered the baby. And perhaps (but the hellish
+felicity of the last act makes us demur) Fielding was superior. For you
+never hear of a fire swallowing up a fire, or a rain stopping a deluge
+(for this would be a reign of Kilkenny cats); but what fire, deluge, or
+Kilkenny cats could not do, Fielding proposed, viz., to murder the
+murderers, to become himself the Nemesis. Fielding was the murderer of
+murderers in a double sense--rhetorical and literal. But that was, after
+all, a small matter compared with the fine art of the man calling
+himself Outis, on which for a moment we must dwell. Outis--so at all
+events he was called, but doubtless he indulged in many aliases--at
+Nottingham joined vehemently and sincerely, as it seemed, in pursuit of
+a wretch taxed with having murdered, twelve years previously, a wife and
+two children at Halifax, which wretch (when all the depositions were
+before the magistrate) turned out to be the aforesaid Mr. Outis. That
+suggests a wide field of speculation and reference.[9]
+
+Note the power of murderers as fine-art professors to make a new start,
+to turn the corner, to retreat upon the road they have come, as though
+it were new to them, and to make diversions that disarm suspicion. This
+they owe to fortunate obscurity, which attests anew the wonderful
+compensations of life; for celebrity and power combine to produce
+drawbacks.
+
+A foreigner who lands in Calcutta at an hour which nobody can name, and
+endeavours to effect a sneaking entrance at the postern-gate[10] of the
+governor-general's palace, _may_ be a decent man; but this we know, that
+he has cut the towing-rope which bound his own boat to the great ark of
+his country. It may be that, in leaving Paris or Naples, he was simply
+cutting the connection with creditors who showed signs of _attachment_
+not good for his health. But it may also be that he ran away by the
+blaze of a burning inn, which he had fired in order to hide three
+throats which he had cut, and nine purses which he had stolen. There is
+no guarantee for such a man's character. Have we, then, no such
+_vauriens_ at home? No, not in the classes standing favourably for
+promotion. The privilege of safe criminality, not liable to exposure, is
+limited to classes crowded together like leaves in Vallombrosa; for
+_them_ to run away into some mighty city, Manchester or Glasgow, is to
+commence life anew. They turn over a new leaf with a vengeance. Many are
+the carpenters, bricklayers, bakers' apprentices, etc., who are now
+living decently in Bristol, Newcastle, Hull, Liverpool, after marrying
+sixteen wives, and leaving families to the care of twelve separate
+parishes. That scamp is at this moment circulating and gyrating in
+society, like a respectable _te-totum_, though we know not his exact
+name, who, if he were pleased to reveal himself in seventeen parts of
+this kingdom, where (to use the police language) he has been 'wanted'
+for some years, would be hanged seventeen times running, besides putting
+seventeen Government rewards into the pockets of seventeen policemen.
+Oh, reader, you little know the unutterable romances perpetrated for
+ever in our most populous empire, under cloud of night and distance and
+utter poverty, Mark _that_--of utter poverty. Wealth is power; but it is
+a jest in comparison of poverty. Splendour is power; but it is a joke to
+obscurity. To be poor, to be obscure, to be a baker's apprentice or a
+tailor's journeyman, throws a power about a man, clothes him with
+attributes of ubiquity, _really_ with those privileges of concealment
+which in the ring of Gyges were but fabulous. Is it a king, is it a
+sultan, that such a man rivals? Oh, friend, he rivals a spiritual power.
+
+Two men are on record, perhaps many more _might_ have been on that
+record, who wrote so many books, and perpetrated so many pamphlets, that
+at fifty they had forgotten much of their own literary villainies, and
+at sixty they commenced with murderous ferocity a series of answers to
+arguments which it was proved upon them afterwards that they themselves
+had emitted at thirty--thus coming round with volleys of small shot on
+their own heads, as the Whispering Gallery at St. Paul's begins to
+retaliate any secrets you have committed to its keeping in echoing
+thunders after a time, or as Sir John Mandeville under Arctic skies
+heard in May all those curses thawing, and exploding like minute-guns,
+which had been frozen up in November. Even like those self-replying
+authors, even like those self-reverberators in St. Paul's, even like
+those Arctic practitioners in cursing, who drew bills and _post obits_
+in malediction, which were to be honoured after the death of winter,
+many men are living at this moment in merry England who have figured in
+so many characters, illustrated so many villages, run away from so many
+towns, and performed the central part in so many careers, that were the
+character, the village, the town, the career, brought back with all its
+circumstances to their memories, positively they would fail to recognise
+their own presence or incarnation in their own acts and bodies.
+
+We have all read the story told by Addison of a sultan, who was
+persuaded by a dervish to dip his head into a basin of enchanted water,
+and thereupon found himself upon some other globe, a son in a poor
+man's family, married after certain years the woman of his heart, had a
+family of seven children whom he painfully brought up, went afterwards
+through many persecutions, walked pensively by the seashore meditating
+some escape from his miseries, bathed in the sea as a relief from the
+noon-day heat, and on lifting up his head from the waves found himself
+lifting up his head from the basin into which that cursed dervish had
+persuaded him to dip. And when he would have cudgelled the holy man for
+that long life of misery which had, through _his_ means, been inflicted
+upon himself, behold! the holy man proved by affidavit that, in this
+world, at any rate (where only he could be punishable), the life had
+lasted but thirty-three seconds. Even so do the dark careers of many
+amongst our obscure and migratory villains from years shrink up to
+momentary specks, or, by their very multitude, altogether evanesce.
+Burke and Hare, it is well known, had lost all count of their several
+murders; they no more remembered, or could attempt to remember, their
+separate victims, than a respectable old banker of seventy-three can
+remember all the bills with their indorsements made payable for
+half-a-century at his bank; or than Foote's turnpike-keeper, who had
+kept all the toll-bar tickets to Kensington for forty-eight years,
+pretended to recollect the features of all the men who had delivered
+them at his gate. For a time, perhaps, Burke (who was a man of fine
+sensibility) had a representative vision of spasms, and struggles, and
+convulsions, terminating in a ten-pound note indorsed by Dr. ----. Hare,
+on the other hand, was a man of principle, a man that you could depend
+upon--order a corpse for Friday, and on Friday you had it--but he had
+no feeling whatever. Yet see the unity of result for him and Burke. For
+both alike all troublesome recollections gathered into one blue haze of
+heavenly abstractions: orders executed with fidelity, cheques on the
+bankers to be crossed and passed and cashed, are no more remembered.
+That is the acme of perfection in our art.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One great class of criminals I am aware of in past times as having
+specially tormented myself--the class who have left secrets, riddles,
+behind them. What business has any man to bequeath a conundrum to all
+posterity, unless he leaves in some separate channel the solution? This
+must have been done in malice, and for the purpose of annoying us, lest
+we should have too much proper enjoyment of life when he should have
+gone. For nobody knows whether the scoundrel could have solved it
+himself--too like in that respect to some charades which, in my boyish
+days (but then I had the excuse of youth, which they had not), I not
+unfrequently propounded to young ladies. Take this as a specimen: My
+first raises a little hope; my second very little indeed; and my whole
+is a vast roar of despair. No young lady could ever solve it; neither
+could I. We all had to give it up. A charade that only needs an answer,
+which, perhaps, some distant generation may supply, is but a half and
+half, tentative approach to this. Very much of this nature was the
+genius or Daimon (don't say _De_mon) of Socrates. How many thousands of
+learned writers and printers have gone to sleep over too profound
+attempts to solve _that_, which Socrates ought to have been able to
+solve at sight. I am myself of opinion that it was a dram-bottle, which
+someone raised a ghost to explain. Then the Entelecheia of Aristotle;
+did you ever read about that, excellent reader? Most people fancy it to
+have meant some unutterable crotchet in metaphysics, some horrible idea
+(lest the police should be after it) without a name; that is, until the
+Stagyrite repaired the injustice of his conduct by giving it a pretty
+long one. My opinion now, as you are anxious to know it, is, that it was
+a lady, a sweetheart of Aristotle's; for what was to hinder Aristotle
+having a sweetheart? I dare say Thomas Aquinas, dry and arid as he was,
+raised his unprincipled eyes to some Neapolitan beauty, began a sonnet
+to some lady's eyebrow, though he might forget to finish it. And my
+belief is that this lady, ambitious as Semele, wished to be introduced
+as an eternal jewel into the great vault of her lover's immortal
+Philosophy, which was to travel much farther and agitate far longer than
+his royal pupil's conquests. Upon that Aristotle, keeping her hand,
+said: 'My love, I'll think of it.' And then it occurred to him, that in
+the very heavens many lovely ladies, Andromeda, Cassiopeia, Ariadne,
+etc., had been placed as constellations in that map which many
+chronologists suppose to have been prepared for the use of the ship
+_Argo_, a whole generation before the Trojan war. Berenice, though he
+could not be aware of _that_, had interest even to procure a place in
+that map for her ringlets; and of course for herself she might have.
+Considering which, Aristotle said: 'Hang me! if I don't put her among
+the ten Categories!' On after thoughts he put her higher, for an
+Entelecheia is as much above a Category as our Padishah Victoria is
+above a Turkish sultan. 'But now, Stag,' said the lady (privileged as a
+sweetheart she called him _Stag_, though everybody else was obliged to
+call him Stagyrite), 'how will they know it's meant for me, Stag?' Upon
+which I am sorry to say the philosopher fell to cursing and swearing,
+bestowing blessings on his own optics and on posterity's, meaning yours
+and mine, saying: 'Let them find it out.' Well, now, you see I _have_
+found it out. But that is more than I hope for my crypto-criminals, and
+therefore I take this my only way of giving them celebration and
+malediction in one breath.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[9] Notwithstanding what he had written in the essay on the 'Essenes,'
+no doubt De Quincey, if he had completed this paper, could not have
+escaped characteristic, and perhaps grimly humorous, references of his
+own to the Sicarii, of whom Josephus has a good deal to tell in his
+'Jewish War'; for it seems to us his thoughts were bearing directly that
+way. Josephus says of the Sicarii: 'In these days there arose another
+sort of robbers in Jerusalem, who were named Sicarii, who slew men in
+the day-time and in the middle of the city, more especially at the
+festivals. There they mixed with the multitude, and having concealed
+little daggers under their garments, with these they stabbed those that
+were their enemies; and when any fell down dead, the murderers joined
+the bystanders in expressing their indignation; so that from their
+plausibilities they could by no means be discovered. The first man that
+was slain by them was Jonathan the high-priest, after which many were
+slain every day.'--ED.
+
+[10] 'Postern-gate.' See the legend of Sir Eustace the Crusader, and the
+good Sir Hubert, who 'sounded the horn which he alone could sound,' as
+told by Wordsworth.
+
+
+
+
+_XI. ANECDOTES--JUVENAL._
+
+
+All anecdotes, as I have often remarked in print, are lies. It is
+painful to use harsh words, and, knowing by my own feelings how much the
+reader is shocked by this rude word _lies_, I should really be much
+gratified if it were possible to supplant it by some gentler or more
+courteous word, such as _falsehoods_, or even _fibs_, which dilutes the
+atrocity of untruth into something of an amiable weakness, wrong, but
+still venial, and natural (and so far, therefore, reasonable). Anything
+for peace: but really in this instance I cannot indulge the reader. The
+instincts of morality will not allow of it, and still less the passion
+which made Juvenal a poet,[11] viz., the passion of enormous and bloody
+indignation. From the beginning of this century, with wrath continually
+growing, I have laid it down as a rule, and if the last year of it,
+viz., A. D. 1900, should overhear _my_ voice amongst the babblings that
+will then be troubling the atmosphere--in that case it will hear me
+still reaffirming, with an indignation still gathering strength, and
+therefore approaching ever nearer and nearer to a Juvenalian power of
+versification, so that perhaps I shall then speak in rhymed
+couplets--that all anecdotes pretending to be _smart_, but to a dead
+certainty if they pretend to be _epigrammatic_, are and must be lies.
+There is, in fact, no security for the truth of an anecdote, no
+guarantee whatever, except its intense stupidity. If a man is searched
+at a police-office, on the ground that he was caught trying the
+window-shutters of silversmiths; then, if it should happen that in his
+pockets is found absolutely nothing at all except one solitary
+paving-stone, in that case Charity, which believeth all things (in fact,
+is credulous to an anile degree), will be disposed to lock up the
+paving-stone, and restore it to the man on his liberation as if it were
+really his own, though philosophy mutters indignantly, being all but
+certain that the fellow stole it. And really I have been too candid a
+great deal in admitting that a man may appropriate an anecdote, and
+establish his claim to it by pleading its awful stupidity. That might be
+the case, and I believe it _was_, when anecdotes were many and writers
+were few. But things are changed now. Fifty years ago, if a man were
+seen running away with the pace of a lunatic, and you should sing out,
+'Stop that fellow; he is running off with the shin-bone of my
+great-grandmother!' all the people in the street would have cried out in
+reply, 'Oh, nonsense! What should he want with your great-grandmother's
+shin-bone?' and that would have seemed reasonable. But now, to see how
+things are altered, any man of sense would reply, 'What should he want
+with my great-grandmother's shin-bone? Why, he'll grind it, and then
+he'll mix it with guano.' This is what he and the like of him have
+actually done by shiploads of people far more entitled to consideration
+than any one of my four great-grandmothers (for I had _four_, with eight
+shin-bones amongst them). It is well known that the field of Waterloo
+was made to render up all its bones, British or French, to certain
+bone-mills in agricultural districts. Borodino and Leipzig, the two
+bloodiest of modern battlefields, are supposed between them--what by the
+harvest of battle, what by the harvest of neighbouring hospitals--to be
+seized or possessed of four hundred thousand shin-bones, and other
+interesting specimens to match. Negotiations have been proceeding at
+various times between the leading bone-mills in England and the Jews in
+Dresden or in Moscow. Hitherto these negotiations have broken down,
+because the Jews stood out for 37 per shent., calculated upon the costs
+of exhumation. But of late they show a disposition to do business at 33
+per shent.: the contract will therefore move forwards again; it will go
+ahead; and the dust of the faithful armies, together with the dust of
+their enemies, will very soon be found, not in the stopper of a bunghole
+(as Prince Hamlet conceived too prematurely), but in an unprecedented
+crop of Swedish turnips.
+
+Bones change their value, it seems thus clearly; and anecdotes change
+their value; and in that proportion honesty, as regards one or the
+other, changes the value of its chances. But what has all this to do
+with 'Old Nick'? Stop: let me consider. That title was placed at the
+head of this article, and I admit that it was placed there by myself.
+Else, whilst I was wandering from my text, and vainly endeavouring to
+recollect what it was that I had meant by this text, a random thought
+came over me (immoral, but natural), that I would charge the heading of
+_Old Nick_ upon the compositor, asserting that he had placed it there in
+obstinate defiance of all the orders to the contrary, and supplications
+to the contrary, that I had addressed to him for a month; by which means
+I should throw upon _him_ the responsibility of accounting for so
+portentous an ensign.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     EDITOR'S NOTE.--It is evident that De Quincey meditated a much
+     longer essay on anecdotes as false, in which Niccolo Machiavelli
+     would have come in for notice--hence the playful references in the
+     close.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[11] '_The passion which made Juvenal a poet_.' The scholar needs no
+explanation; but the reader whose scholarship is yet amongst his
+futurities (which I conceive to be the civilest way of describing an
+_ignoramus_) must understand that Juvenal, the Roman satirist, who was
+in fact a predestined poet in virtue of his ebullient heart, that boiled
+over once or twice a day in anger that could not be expressed upon
+witnessing the enormities of domestic life in Rome, was willing to
+forego all pretensions to natural power and inspiration for the sake of
+obtaining such influence as would enable him to reprove Roman vices with
+effect.
+
+
+
+
+_XII. ANNA LOUISA._
+
+SPECIMEN TRANSLATION FROM VOSS IN HEXAMETERS, WITH LETTER TO PROFESSOR
+W. ('CHRISTOPHER NORTH').
+
+
+DR. NORTH,
+
+_Doctor_, I say, for I hear that the six Universities of England and
+Scotland have sent you a doctor's degree, or, if they have not, all the
+world knows they ought to have done; and the more shame for them if they
+keep no 'Remembrancer' to put them in mind of what they must allow to be
+amongst their most sacred duties. But that's all one. I once read in my
+childhood a pretty book, called 'Wilson's Account of the Pelew Islands,'
+at which islands, you know, H.M.S. _Antelope_ was wrecked--just about
+the time, I fancy, when you, Doctor, and myself were in long petticoats
+and making some noise in the world; the book was not written by Captain
+Wilson, but by Keates, the sentimentalist. At the very end, however, is
+an epitaph, and that _was_ written by the captain and ship's company:
+
+    'Stop, reader, stop, let nature claim a tear;
+     A prince of mine, Lee Boo, lies buried here.'
+
+This epitaph used often to make me cry, and in commemoration of that
+effect, which (like that of all cathartics that I know of, no matter how
+drastic at first) has long been growing weaker and weaker, I propose
+(upon your allowing me an opportunity) to superscribe you in any
+churchyard you will appoint:
+
+    'Stop, reader, stop, let genius claim a tear;
+     A doct'r of mine, Lee Kit, lies buried here.'
+
+'_Doct'r of_' you are to read into a dissyllable, and pretty much like
+Boney's old friend on the road from Moscow, General Doct'roff, who
+'doctor'd them off,' as the Laureate observes, and prescribed for the
+whole French army _gratis_. But now to business.
+
+For _your_ information, Doctor, it cannot be necessary, but on account
+of very many readers it will be so, to say that Voss's 'Luise' has long
+taken its place in the literature of Germany as a classical work--in
+fact, as a gem or cabinet _chef d'oeuvre_; nay, almost as their unique
+specimen in any national sense of the lighter and less pretending muse;
+less pretending, I mean, as to the pomp or gravity of the subject, but
+on that very account more pretending as respects the minuter graces of
+its execution. In the comparative estimate of Germans, the 'Luise' holds
+a station corresponding to that of our 'Rape of the Lock,' or of
+Gresset's 'Vert-vert'--corresponding, that is, in its _degree_ of
+relative value. As to its _kind_ of value, some notion may be formed of
+it even in that respect also from the 'Rape of the Lock,' but with this
+difference, that the scenes and situations and descriptions are there
+derived from the daily life and habits of a fashionable belle and the
+fine gentlemen who surround her, whereas in the 'Luise' they are derived
+exclusively from the homelier and more patriarchal economy of a rural
+clergyman's household; and in this respect the 'Luise' comes nearest by
+much, in comparison of any other work that I know of, to our own 'Vicar
+of Wakefield.' Like that delightful portrait of rural life in a
+particular aspect, or idyll as it might be called, the 'Luise' aims at
+throwing open for our amusement the interior of a village parsonage
+(_Scotice_, 'manse'); like that in its earlier half (for the latter half
+of the 'Vicar' is a sad collapse from the truth and nature of the
+original conception into the marvellous of a commonplace novel), the
+'Luise' exhibits the several members of a rustic clergyman's family
+according to their differences of sex, age, and standing, in their
+natural, undisguised features, all unconsciously marked by
+characteristic foibles, all engaged in the exercise of their daily
+habits, neither finer nor coarser than circumstances naturally allow,
+and all indulging in such natural hopes or fictions of romance as grow
+out of their situation in life. The 'Luise,' in short, and the 'Vicar of
+Wakefield' are both alike a succession of circumstantial delineations
+selected from mere rustic life, but rustic life in its most pure and
+intellectual form; for as to the noble countess in the 'Luise,' or the
+squire and his uncle, Sir William, in the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' they do
+not interfere sufficiently to disturb the essential level of the
+movement as regards the incidents, or to colour the manners and the
+scenery. Agreeing, however, in this general purpose, the two works
+differ in two considerable features; one, that the 'Vicar of Wakefield'
+describes the rural clergyman of England, 'Luise' the rural clergyman of
+North Germany; the other, that the English idyll is written in prose,
+the German in verse--both of which differences, and the separate
+peculiarities growing out of them, will, it may perhaps be thought,
+require a few words of critical discussion.
+
+There has always existed a question as to the true principles of
+translation when applied, not to the mere literature of _knowledge_
+(because _there_ it is impossible that two opinions can arise, by how
+much closer the version by so much the better), but to the literature of
+_power_, and to such works--above all, to poems--as might fairly be
+considered _works of art_ in the highest sense. To what extent the
+principle of _compensation_ might reasonably be carried, the license,
+that is, of departing from the strict literal forms of the original
+writer, whether as to expressions, images, or even as to the secondary
+thoughts, for the sake of reproducing them in some shape less repellent
+to a modern ear, and therefore virtually sustaining the harmony of the
+composition by preventing the attention from settling in a
+disproportionate degree upon what might have a startling effect to a
+taste trained under modern discipline--this question has always been
+pending as a question open to revision before the modern courts of
+criticism; as surely to you, Dr. North, one of the chief 'swells' on
+that bench, I need not say. But, for the sake of accurate thinking, it
+is worth while observing that formerly this question was moved almost
+exclusively with a view to the Latin and Greek classics; and that
+circumstance gave a great and a very just bias to the whole dispute. For
+the difference with regard to any capital author of ancient days, as
+compared with modern authors, is this, that here we have a twofold
+interest--an interest with work, and a separate interest in the writer.
+Take the 'Prometheus Desmotes' of AEschylus, and suppose that a
+translator should offer us an English 'Prometheus,' which he
+acknowledged to be very free, but at the same time contended that his
+variations from the Greek were so many downright improvements, so that,
+if he had not given us the genuine 'Prometheus,' he had given us
+something better. In such a case we should all reply, but we do not want
+something better. Our object is not the best possible drama that could
+be produced on the fable of 'Prometheus'; what we want is the very
+'Prometheus' that was written by AEschylus, the very drama that was
+represented at Athens. The Athenian audience itself, and what pleased
+its taste, is already one subject of interest. AEschylus on his own
+account is another. These are collateral and alien subjects of interest
+quite independent of our interest in the drama, and for the sake of
+these we wish to see the real original 'Prometheus'--not according to
+any man's notion of improvement, but such as came from a sublime Grecian
+poet, such as satisfied a Grecian audience, more than two thousand years
+ago. We wish, in fact, for the real AEschylus, 'unhousel'd, unaneal'd,'
+with all his imperfections on his head.
+
+Such was the way, and the just way, of arguing the point when the
+application was limited to a great authentic classic of the Antique; nor
+was the case at all different where Ariosto or any other illustrious
+Italian classic was concerned. But a new sort of casuistry in this
+question has arisen in our own times, and by accident chiefly in
+connection with German literature; but it may well be, Dr. North, that
+you will be more diverted by a careful scrutiny of my metres after Voss
+in illustration, than by any further dissertation on my part on a
+subject that you know so well.
+
+Believe me,
+Always yours admiringly,
+X. Y. Z.
+
+
+_The Parson's Dinner._
+
+  In the month of leafy June, beneath celestial azure
+  Of skies all cloudless, sate the aged Rector of Esthwaite
+  Dining amidst his household; but not the meridian ardour
+  Of sunbeams fierce he felt; him the shady veranda
+  With vine-clad trellis defends: beyond a pendulous awning
+  Of boughs self-wreath'd from limes (whose mighty limbs overarching
+  Spanned the low roof of the house) spreads far effectual umbrage
+  For young and old alike; noontide awfully breathless
+  Settled in deepest silence on the woods and valley of Esthwaite.
+  Yet not the less there would rise, after stillest interval often,      10
+  Low whispering gales that stole, like sobbing murmur of infant
+  Dreaming in arms maternal, into the heart o' the youngest:
+  Gales that at most could raise a single ringlet of auburn
+  As it pencill'd the noble brow of the youthful Anna Louisa--
+  Sole child that survived to thee, oh, aged pastor of Esthwaite.
+  Clad in his morning gown, the reverend priest at a table
+  Of sculptur'd stone was seated; and his seat was a massy but easy
+  Settle of oak, which in youth his ancient servitor, Isaac,
+  Footman, sexton, and steward, butler and gardener also,
+  Carved by the winter fire in nights of gloomy November,
+  And through many a long, long night of many a dark December.           21
+  The good man's heart was glad, and his eyes were suffus'd with a
+      rapture
+  Of perfect love as they settled on her--that pulse of his heart's
+      blood,
+  The one sole prop of his house, the beautiful Anna Louisa.
+  By the side of himself sate his wife, that ancient tamer of
+      housemaids,[12]
+  Yet kind of heart as a dove, and with matron graces adorning
+  Her place as she sate dispensing hospitality boundless
+  To the strangers within her gates; for, lo! two strangers on one side
+  Sate of the long stone table; yet strangers by manner or action
+  One would not suppose them; nor were they, but guests ever honour'd,   30
+  And dear to each heart in the house of th' ancient Rector of
+      Esthwaite.
+  The elder of them was called Augustus Harry Delancey,
+  And he rode as a cornet of horse in the mighty imperial army.
+  Him had the parents approved (and those were melodious accents,
+  The sweetest he ever had heard) as suitor of Anna Louisa.
+  But from lips more ruby far--far more melodious accents
+  Had reach'd his ears since then; for she, the daughter, her own self,
+  Had condescended at last to utter sweet ratification
+  Of all his hopes; low whisp'ring the 'yes'--celestial answer
+  That raised him to paradise gates on pinion[13] of expectation.        40
+  Over against his beloved he sate--the suitor enamour'd:
+  And God He knows that indeed should it prove an idolatrous error
+  To look in the eyes of a lady till you feel a dreamy devotion,
+  I fear for the health of your soul that day, oh, Harry Delancey!
+  Next to Delancey there sate his pupil, Magnus Adolphus,
+  A fair-haired boy of ten, half an orphan, a count of the empire--
+  Magnus Adolphus of Arnstein, that great Bavarian earldom.
+  Him had his widowed mother, the noble Countess of Arnstein,
+  Placed with Delancey betimes, as one in knightly requirements
+  Skilful and all-accomplished, that he the 'youthful idea'[14]          50
+  Might 'teach how to shoot' (with a pistol, videlicet),--horses
+  To mount and to manage with boldness, hounds to follow in hunting
+  The fox, the tusky boar, the stag with his beautiful antlers:
+  Arts, whether graceful or useful, in arms or equestrian usage,
+  Did Augustus impart to his pupil, the youthful earl of the empire.
+  To ride with stirrups or none, to mount from the near-side or off-side
+  (Which still is required in the trooper who rides in the Austrian
+      army),
+  To ride with bridle or none, on a saddle Turkish or English,
+  To force your horse to curvet, pirouette, dance on his haunches,
+  And whilst dancing to lash with his feet, and suggest an effectual
+      hinting                                                            60
+  To the enemy's musqueteers to clear the road for the hinter:
+  Or again, if you want a guide by night, in a dangerous highway
+  Beset with the enemies' marksmen and swarming with murderous ambush,
+  To train your horse in the art of delicate insinuation,
+  Gently raising a hoof to tap at the door o' the woodsman.
+  But, if he persists in snoring, or pretending to snore, or is angry
+  At your summons to leave his lair in the arms of his wife or his
+      infants,
+  To practise your horse in the duty of stormy recalcitration,
+  Wheeling round to present his heels, and in mid caracoling
+  To send the emperor's greeting smack through the panel of oakwood[15]  70
+  That makes the poor man so hard of hearing imperial orders.
+  Arts such as these and others, the use of the sabre on horseback,
+  All modes of skill gymnastic, modes whether forceful or artful,
+  Of death-grapple if by chance a cannon-shot should un-horse you,
+  All modes of using the limbs with address, with speed, or enormous
+  Effort of brutal strength, all this did Harry Delancey
+  Teach to his docile pupil: and arts more nobly delightful,
+  Arts of the head or the heart, arts intellectual; empire
+  Over dead men's books, over regions of high meditation,
+  Comparative tactics, warfare as then conducted in ages
+  When powder was none, nor cannon, but brute catapultae,                 81
+  Blind rams, brainless wild asses, the stony slinger of huge
+      stones.[16]
+  Iron was lord of the world; iron reigned, man was his engine;
+  But now the rule is reversed, man binds and insults over iron.
+  Together did they, young tutor, young pupil, Augustus, Adolphus,
+  Range over history martial, or read strategical authors,
+  Xenophon, Arrian, old Polybius, old Polyaenus
+  (Think not these Polys, my boy, were blooming Pollies of our days!),
+  And above all others, they read the laurel'd hero of heroes,
+  Thrice kingly Roman Julius, sun-bright leader of armies,
+  Who planted his god-like foot on the necks of a whole generation.      91
+  Such studies, such arts were those by which young Harry Delancey
+  Sought to discharge the trust which to him the Lady of Arnstein
+  Confided with hopes maternal; thus trained, he hoped that Adolphus
+  Would shine in his native land, for high was his place in the empire.
+
+     EDITOR'S NOTE.--This was, of course, written for _Blackwood's
+     Magazine_; but it never appeared there.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[12] 'That tamer of housemaids': [Greek: Hektoros ippodamoio]--of
+Hector, the tamer of horses ('Iliad').
+
+[13] 'On pinion of expectation.' Here I would request the reader to
+notice that it would have been easy for me to preserve the regular
+dactylic close by writing '_pinion of anticipation_;' as also in the
+former instance of '_many a dark December_' to have written '_many a
+rainy December_.' But in both cases I preferred to lock up by the massy
+spondaic variety; yet never forgetting to premise a dancing
+dactyle--'many a'--and 'pinion of.' Not merely for variety, but for a
+separate effect of peculiar majesty.
+
+[14] Alluding to a ridiculous passage in Thomson's 'Seasons':
+
+    'Delightful task! to teach the young idea how to shoot.'
+
+[15] All these arts, viz., teaching the horse to fight with his forelegs
+or lash out with his hind-legs at various angles in a general melee of
+horse and foot, but especially teaching him the secret of 'inviting' an
+obstinate German boor to come out and take the air strapped in front of
+a trooper, and do his duty as guide to the imperial cavalry, were
+imported into the Austrian service by an English riding-master about the
+year 1775-80. And no doubt it must have been horses trained on this
+learned system of education from which the Highlanders of Scotland
+derived their terror of cavalry.
+
+[16] 'Blind rams, brainless wild asses,' etc. The 'arietes,' or
+battering-rams with iron-bound foreheads, the 'onagri,' or wild asses,
+etc., were amongst the poliorcetic engines of the ancients, which do not
+appear to have received any essential improvement after the time of the
+brilliant Prince Demetrius, the son of Alexander's great captain,
+Antigonus.
+
+
+
+
+_XIII. SOME THOUGHTS ON BIOGRAPHY._
+
+
+We have heard from a man who witnessed the failure of Miss Baillie's 'De
+Montford,' notwithstanding the scenic advantages of a vast London
+theatre, fine dresses, fine music at intervals, and, above all, the
+superb acting of John Kemble, supported on that occasion by his
+incomparable sister, that this unexpected disappointment began with the
+gallery, who could not comprehend or enter into a hatred so fiendish
+growing out of causes so slight as any by possibility supposable in the
+trivial Rezenvelt. To feel teased by such a man, to dislike him,
+occasionally to present him with your compliments in the shape of a
+duodecimo kick--well and good, nothing but right. And the plot
+manifestly tended to a comic issue. But murder!--a Macbeth murder!--not
+the injury so much as the man himself was incommensurate, was too slight
+by a thousand degrees for so appalling a catastrophe. It reacts upon De
+Montford, making _him_ ignoble that could be moved so profoundly by an
+agency so contemptible.
+
+Something of the same disproportion there is, though in a different way,
+between any quarrel that may have divided us from a man in his life-time
+and the savage revenge of pursuing the quarrel after his death through a
+malicious biography. Yet, if you hated him through no quarrel, but
+simply (as we all hate many men that died a thousand years ago) for
+something vicious, or which you think vicious, in his modes of thinking,
+why must you, of all men, be the one to undertake an edition of his
+works, 'with a life of the author'? Leave that to some neutral writer,
+who neither loves nor hates. And whilst crowds of men need better
+biographical records whom it is easy to love and not difficult to
+honour, do not you degrade your own heart or disgust your readers by
+selecting for your exemplification not a model to be imitated, but a
+wild beast to be baited or a criminal to be tortured? We privately hate
+Mr. Thomas Hobbes, of Malmsbury; we know much evil of him, and we could
+expose many of his tricks effectually. We also hate Dean Swift, and upon
+what we think substantial arguments. Some of our own contemporaries we
+hate particularly; Cobbett, for instance, and other bad fellows in
+fustian and corduroys. But for that very reason we will not write their
+lives. Or, if we should do so, only because they might happen to stand
+as individuals in a series, and after warning the reader of our own
+bias. For it is too odious a spectacle to imprison a fellow-creature in
+a book, like a stag in a cart, and turn him out to be hunted through all
+his doubles for a day's amusement. It too much resembles that case of
+undoubted occurrence both in France and Germany, where 'respectable'
+individuals, simply as amateurs, and not at all with any view to the
+salary or fees of operating, have come forward as candidates for the
+post of public executioner. What is every man's duty is no man's duty by
+preference. And unless where a writer is thrust upon such a duty by an
+official necessity (as, if he contracts for a 'Biographia Britannica,'
+in that case he is bound by his contract to go through with the whole
+series--rogues and all), it is too painful to see a human being courting
+and wooing the task of doing execution upon his brother in his grave.
+Nay, even in the case where this executioner's task arises spontaneously
+out of some duty previously undertaken without a thought of its severer
+functions, we are still shocked by any exterminating vengeance too
+rancorously pursued. Every reader must have been disgusted by the
+unrelenting persecution with which Gifford, a deformed man, with the
+spiteful nature sometimes too developed in the deformed, had undertaken
+'for our fathers in the Row' an edition of Massinger. Probably he had
+not thought at the time of the criminals who would come before him for
+judgment. But afterwards it did not embitter the job that these
+perquisites of office accrued, _lucro ponatur_, that such offenders as
+Coxeter, Mr. Monck Mason, and others were to be 'justified' by course of
+law. Could he not have stated their errors, and displaced their rubbish,
+without further personalities? However, he does _not_, but makes the air
+resound with his knout, until the reader wishes Coxeter in his throat,
+and Monck Mason, like 'the cursed old fellow' in Sinbad, mounted with
+patent spurs upon his back.
+
+We shall be interrupted, however, and _that_ we certainly foresee, by
+the objection--that we are fighting with shadows, that neither the
+_eloge_ in one extreme, nor the libel in the other extreme, finds a
+place in _our_ literature. Does it not? Yes, reader, each of these
+biographical forms exists in favour among us, and of one it is very
+doubtful indeed whether it ought not to exist. The _eloge_ is found
+abundantly diffused through our monumental epitaphs in the first place,
+and _there_ every man will countersign Wordsworth's judgment (see 'The
+Excursion' and also Wordsworth's prose Essay on Epitaphs), that it is a
+blessing for human nature to find one place in this world sacred to
+charitable thoughts, one place at least offering a sanctuary from evil
+speaking. So far there is no doubt. But the main literary form, in which
+the English _eloge_ presents itself, is the Funeral Sermon. And in this
+also, not less than in the churchyard epitaph, kind feeling ought to
+preside; and for the same reasons, the sanctity of the place where it is
+delivered or originally published, and the solemnity of the occasion
+which has prompted it; since, if you cannot find matter in the departed
+person's character fertile in praise even whilst standing by the
+new-made grave, what folly has tempted you into writing an epitaph or a
+funeral sermon? The good ought certainly to predominate in both, and in
+the epitaph nothing _but_ the good, because were it only for a reason
+suggested by Wordsworth, viz., the elaborate and everlasting character
+of a record chiselled out painfully in each separate letter, it would be
+scandalous to confer so durable an existence in stone or marble upon
+trivial human infirmities, such as do not enter into the last solemn
+reckoning with the world beyond the grave; whilst, on the other hand,
+all graver offences are hushed into 'dread repose,' and, where they
+happen to be too atrocious or too memorable, are at once a sufficient
+argument for never having undertaken any such memorial. These
+considerations privilege the epitaph as sacred to charity, and tabooed
+against the revelations of candour. The epitaph cannot open its scanty
+records to any breathing or insinuation of infirmity. But the Funeral
+Sermon, though sharing in the same general temper of indulgence towards
+the errors of the deceased person, might advantageously be laid open to
+a far more liberal discussion of those personal or intellectual
+weaknesses which may have thwarted the influence of character otherwise
+eminently Christian. The _Oraison Funebre_ of the French proposes to
+itself by its original model, which must be sought in the _Epideictic_
+or panegyrical oratory of the Greeks, a purpose purely and exclusively
+eulogistic: the problem supposed is to abstract from everything _not_
+meritorious, to expand and develop the total splendour of the individual
+out of that one centre, that main beneficial relation to his own age,
+from which this splendour radiated. The incidents of the life, the
+successions of the biographical detail, are but slightly traced, no
+farther, in fact, than is requisite to the intelligibility of the
+praises. Whereas, in the English Funeral Sermon, there is no principle
+of absolute exclusion operating against the minutest circumstantiations
+of fact which can tend to any useful purpose of illustrating the
+character. And what is too much for the scale of a sermon literally
+preached before a congregation, or modelled to counterfeit such a mode
+of address, may easily find its place in the explanatory notes. This is
+no romance, or ideal sketch of what might be. It is, and it has been.
+There are persons of memorable interest in past times, of whom all that
+we know is embodied in a funeral sermon. For instance, Jeremy Taylor in
+that way, or by his Epistles Dedicatory, has brought out the
+characteristic features in some of his own patrons, whom else we should
+have known only as _nominis umbras_. But a more impressive illustration
+is found in the case of John Henderson, that man of whom expectations so
+great were formed, and of whom Dr. Johnson and Burke, after meeting and
+conversing with him, pronounced (in the Scriptural words of the
+Ethiopian queen applied to the Jewish king, Solomon) 'that the half had
+not been told them.' For this man's memory almost the sole original
+record exists in Aguttar's funeral sermon; for though other records
+exist, and one from the pen of a personal friend, Mr. Joseph Cottle, of
+Bristol, yet the main substance of the biography is derived from the
+_fundus_ of this one sermon.[17] And it is of some importance to cases
+of fugitive or unobtrusive merit that this more quiet and sequestered
+current of biography should be kept open. For the local motives to an
+honorary biographical notice, in the shape of a Funeral Sermon, will
+often exist, when neither the materials are sufficient, nor a writer
+happens to be disposable, for a labour so serious as a regular
+biography.
+
+Here then, on the one side, are our English _eloges_. And we may add
+that amongst the Methodists, the Baptists, and other religious
+sectaries, but especially among the missionaries of all nations and
+churches, this class of _eloges_ is continually increasing. Not
+unfrequently men of fervent natures and of sublime aspirations are thus
+rescued from oblivion, whilst the great power of such bodies as the
+Methodists, their growing wealth, and consequent responsibility to
+public opinion, are pledges that they will soon command all the
+advantages of colleges and academic refinement; so that if, in the
+manner of these funeral _eloges_, there has sometimes been missed that
+elegance which should have corresponded to the weight of the matter,
+henceforwards we may look to see this disadvantage giving way before
+institutions more thoroughly matured. But if these are our _eloges_, on
+the other hand, where are our libels?
+
+This is likely to be a topic of offence, for many readers will start at
+hearing the upright Samuel Johnson and the good-humoured, garrulous
+Plutarch denounced as traffickers in libel. But a truth is a truth. And
+the temper is so essentially different in which men lend themselves to
+the propagation of defamatory anecdotes, the impulses are so various to
+an offence which is not always consciously perceived by those who are
+parties to it, that we cannot be too cautious of suffering our hatred of
+libel to involve every casual libeller, or of suffering our general
+respect for the person of the libeller to exonerate him from the charge
+of libelling. Many libels are written in this little world of ours
+unconsciously, and under many motives. Perhaps we said that before, but
+no matter. Sometimes a gloomy fellow, with a murderous cast of
+countenance, sits down doggedly to the task of blackening one whom he
+hates worse 'than toad or asp.' For instance, Procopius performs that
+'labour of hate' for the Emperor Justinian, pouring oil into his wounds,
+but, then (as Coleridge expresses it in a 'neat' sarcasm), oil of
+vitriol. Nature must have meant the man for a Spanish Inquisitor, sent
+into the world before St. Dominic had provided a trade for him, or any
+vent for his malice--so rancorous in his malignity, so horrid and
+unrelenting the torture to which he subjects his sovereign and the
+beautiful Theodora. In this case, from the withering scowl which
+accompanies the libels, we may be assured that they _are_ such in the
+most aggravated form--not malicious only, but false. It is commonly
+said, indeed, in our courts, that truth it is which aggravates the
+libel. And so it is as regards the feelings or the interests of the man
+libelled. For is it not insufferable that, if a poor man under common
+human infirmity shall have committed some crime and have paid its
+penalty, but afterwards reforming or out-growing his own follies, seeks
+to gain an honest livelihood for his children in a place which the
+knowledge of his past transgression has not reached, then all at once he
+is to be ruined by some creature purely malignant who discovers and
+publishes the secret tale? In such a case most undoubtedly it is the
+truth of the libel which constitutes its sting, since, if it were not
+true or could be made questionable, it would do the poor man no
+mischief. But, on the other hand, it is the falsehood of the libel which
+forms its aggravation as regards the publisher. And certain we are, had
+we no other voucher than the instinct of our hatred to Procopius, that
+his disloyal tales about his great lord and lady are odiously
+overcharged, if not uniformly false. Gibbon, however, chooses to gratify
+his taste for the luxury of scandal by believing at once in the perfect
+malice of the slanderer, and the perfect truth of his slanders.
+
+Here then, in this Procopius, is an instance of the gloomy libeller,
+whose very gloom makes affidavit of his foul spirit from the first.
+There is also another form, less odious, of the hostile libeller: it
+occurs frequently in cases where the writer is not chargeable with
+secret malice, but is in a monstrous passion. A shower-bath might be of
+service in that case, whereas in the Procopius case nothing but a
+copious or a _Pro_copius application of the knout can answer. We, for
+instance, have (or had, for perhaps it has been stolen) a biography of
+that same Parker, afterwards Bishop of Oxford, with whom Andrew Marvell
+'and others who called Milton friend' had such rough-and-tumble feuds
+about 1666, and at whose expense it was that Marvell made the whole
+nation merry in his 'Rehearsal Transprosed.' This Parker had a 'knack'
+at making himself odious; he had a _curiosa felicitas_ in attracting
+hatreds, and wherever he lodged for a fortnight he trailed after him a
+vast parabolic or hyperbolic tail of enmity and curses, all smoke and
+fire and tarnish, which bore the same ratio to his small body of merit
+that a comet's tail, measuring billions of miles, does to the little
+cometary mass. The rage against him was embittered by politics, and
+indeed sometimes by knavish tricks; the first not being always
+'confounded,' nor the last 'frustrated.' So that Parker, on the whole,
+was a man whom it might be held a duty to hate, and therefore, of
+course, to knout as often as you could persuade him to expose a fair
+extent of surface for the action of the lash. Many men purchased a knout
+for his sake, and took their chance for getting a 'shy' at him, as
+Parker might happen to favour their intentions. But one furious
+gentleman, who is resolved to 'take his full change' out of Parker, and
+therefore to lose no time, commences operations in the very first words
+of his biography: 'Parker,' says he, 'the author of ----, was the _spawn_
+of Samuel Parker.' His rage will not wait for an opportunity; he throws
+off a torrent of fiery sparks in advance, and gives full notice to
+Parker that he will run his train right into him, if he can come up with
+his rear. This man is not malicious, but truculent; like the elder
+Scaliger, of whom it was observed that, having been an officer of
+cavalry up to his fortieth year (when he took to learning Greek), he
+always fancied himself on horseback, charging, and cutting throats in
+the way of professional duty, as often as he found himself summoned to
+pursue and 'cut up' some literary delinquent. Fire and fury, 'bubble and
+squeak,' is the prevailing character of his critical composition. 'Come,
+and let me give thee to the fowls of the air,' is the cry with which the
+martial critic salutes the affrighted author. Yet, meantime, it is
+impossible that he can entertain any personal malice, for he does not
+know the features of the individual enemy whom he is pursuing. But thus
+far he agrees with the Procopian order of biographers--that both are
+governed, in whatever evil they may utter, by a spirit of animosity: one
+by a belligerent spirit which would humble its enemy as an enemy in a
+fair pitched battle, the other by a subtle spirit of malice, which would
+exterminate its enemy not in that character merely, but as an individual
+by poison or by strangling.
+
+Libels, however, may be accredited and published where there is no
+particle of enmity or of sudden irritation. Such were the libels of
+Plutarch and Dr. Johnson. They are libels prompted by no hostile
+feelings at all, but adopted by mere blind spirit of credulity. In this
+world of ours, so far as we are acquainted with its doings, there are
+precisely four series--four aggregate bodies--of _Lives_, and no more,
+which you can call celebrated; which _have_ had, and are likely to have,
+an extensive influence--each after its own kind. Which be they? To
+arrange them in point of time, first stand Plutarch's lives of eminent
+Greeks and Romans; next, the long succession of the French Memoirs,
+beginning with Philippe de Commines, in the time of Louis XI. or our
+Edward IV., and ending, let us say, with the slight record of himself
+(but not without interest) of Louis XVIII.; thirdly, the _Acta
+Sanctorum_ of the Bollandists; fourthly, Dr. Johnson's 'Lives of the
+Poets.' The third is a biographical record of the Romish saints,
+following the order of the martyrology as it is digested through the
+Roman calendar of the year; and, as our own 'Biographia Britannica' has
+only moved forwards in seventy years to the letter 'H,' or thereabouts
+(which may be owing to the dissenting blight of Dr. Kippis), _pari
+passu_, the _Acta Sanctorum_ will be found not much farther advanced
+than the month of May--a pleasant month certainly, but (as the
+_Spectator_ often insinuates) perilous to saintship. Laying this work
+out of consideration, as being chiefly employed in eulogy such as
+_could_ not be extravagant when applied to the glorious army of martyrs
+(although here also, we doubt not, are many libels against men
+concerning whom it matters little whether they were libelled or not),
+all the rest of the great biographical works are absolutely saturated
+with libels. Plutarch may be thought to balance his extravagant slanders
+by his impossible eulogies. He sees nothing wonderful in actions that
+were far beyond the level of any motives existing under pagan
+moralities; and, on the other hand, he traduces great men like Caesar,
+whose natures were beyond his scale of measurement, by tracing their
+policy to petty purposes entirely Plutarchian. But he was a Greekling in
+a degenerate age of Grecians. As to the French Memoirs, which are often
+so exceedingly amusing, they purchase their liveliness by one eternal
+sacrifice of plain truth. Their repartees, felicitous _propos_, and
+pointed anecdotes are but one rolling fire of falsehoods. And,
+generally, it may be laid down as a rule, that all collectors of happy
+retorts and striking anecdotes are careless of truth. Louis XIV. _does_
+seem to have had a natural gift of making brilliant compliments and
+happy impromptus; and yet the very best of his reputed _mots_ were
+spurious. Some may be traced to Cicero, Hierocles, Diogenes; and some to
+his modern predecessors. That witty remark ascribed to him about the
+disposition of Fortune, as being a lady, to withdraw her favours from
+old men like himself and the Marechal Boufflers, was really uttered
+nearly two centuries before by the Emperor Charles V., who probably
+stole it from some Spanish collection of jests. And so of fifty in every
+hundred beside. And the French are not only apt beyond other nations to
+abuse the license of stealing from our predecessor _quod licuit
+semperque licebit_, but also, in a degree peculiar to themselves, they
+have a false de-naturalized taste in the humorous, and as to the limits
+of the extravagant. We have formerly illustrated this point, and
+especially we noticed it as a case impossible to any nation _but_ the
+French to have tolerated the pretended 'absences' of La Fontaine--as,
+for instance, his affecting to converse with his own son as an entire
+stranger, and asking the lady who had presented him what might be the
+name of that amiable young man. The _incredulus odi_ faces one in every
+page of a French memoir; veracity is an unknown virtue, and, wherever
+that is the taste, look for libels by wholesale. Too often even the
+unnatural and the monstrous is courted, rather than miss the object of
+arresting and startling. Now, Dr. Johnson's calumnies or romances were
+not of that order. He had a healthy spirit of reverence for truth; but
+he was credulous to excess, and he was plagued by an infirmity not
+uncommon amongst literary men who have no families of young people
+growing up around their hearth--the hankering after gossip. He was
+curious about the domestic habits of his celebrated countrymen;
+inquisitive in a morbid degree about their pecuniary affairs: 'What have
+you got in that pocket which bulges out so prominently?' 'What did your
+father do with that hundred guineas which he received on Monday from
+Jacob Jonson?' And, as his 'swallow' was enormous--as the Doctor would
+believe more fables in an hour than an able-bodied liar would invent in
+a week--naturally there was no limit to the slanders with which his
+'Lives of the Poets' are overrun.
+
+Of the four great biographical works which we have mentioned, we hold
+Dr. Johnson's to be by far the best in point of composition. Even
+Plutarch, though pardonably overrated in consequence of the great
+subjects which he treats (which again are 'great' by benefit of distance
+and the vast abstracting process executed by time upon the petty and the
+familiar), is loose and rambling in the principles of his _nexus_; and
+there lies the great effort for a biographer, there is the strain, and
+that is the task--viz., to weld the disconnected facts into one
+substance, and by interfusing natural reflections to create for the
+motions of his narrative a higher impulse than one merely chronologic.
+In this respect, the best of Dr. Johnson's 'Lives' are undoubtedly the
+very best which exist. They are the most highly finished amongst all
+masterpieces of the biographic art, and, as respects the Doctor
+personally, they are, beyond comparison, his best work. It is a great
+thing in any one art or function, even though it were not a great one,
+to have excelled all the literature of all languages. And if the reader
+fancies that there lurks anywhere a collection of lives, or even one
+life (though it were the 'Agricola' of Tacitus), which as a work of
+refined art and execution can be thought equal to the best of Dr.
+Johnson's, we should be grateful to him if he would assign it in a
+letter to Mr. Blackwood:
+
+               'And though the night be raw,
+    We'll see it too, the first we ever saw.'
+
+We say nothing of the Calmuck Tartars; they hold (see Bergmann's
+'Streifereien') that their 'Dschangariade' is the finest of all epic
+poems, past or coming; and, therefore, the Calmuck Lives of the Poets
+will naturally be inimitable. But confining our view to the unhappy
+literatures of Europe, ancient or modern, this is what we think of Dr.
+Johnson's efforts as a biographer. Consequently, we cannot be taxed with
+any insensibility to his merit. And as to the critical part of his
+Lives, if no thoughtful reader can be expected to abide by his haughty
+decisions, yet, on the other hand, every man reads his opinions with
+pleasure, from the intellectual activity and the separate justice of the
+thoughts which they display. But as to his libellous propensity, that
+rests upon independent principles; for all his ability and all his logic
+could not elevate his mind above the region of gossip.
+
+Take his 'Life of Savage.' This was the original nest-egg, upon which,
+as a basis, and perhaps as the occasional suggestion of such an
+enterprise, all the rest--allow us a pompous word--supervened. It was
+admirably written, because written _con amore_, and also because written
+_con odio_; and under either impulse is it possible to imagine grosser
+delusions? Johnson persuaded himself that Savage was a fine gentleman (a
+_role_ not difficult to support in that age, when ceremony and a
+gorgeous _costume_ were amongst the auxiliary distinctions of a
+gentleman), and also that he was a man of genius. The first claim was
+necessarily taken upon trust by the Doctor's readers; the other might
+have been examined; but after a few painful efforts to read 'The
+Wanderer' and other insipid trifles, succeeding generations have
+resolved to take _that_ upon trust also; for in very truth Savage's
+writings are of that order which 'do not let themselves be read.' Why,
+then, had publishers bought them? Publishers in those days were mere
+tradesmen, without access to liberal society. Even Richardson, though a
+man of great genius, in his publisher's character was an obsequious,
+nay, servile, admirer of the fine gentleman who wore a sword,
+embroidered clothes, and Mechlin ruffles about his wrists; above all
+things, he glorified and adored a Lovelace, with a fine person, who sang
+gaily to show his carelessness of low people, never came abroad except
+in a sedan-chair, and liberally distributed his curses to the right and
+the left in all respectable men's shops. This temper, with her usual
+sagacity, Lady M. Wortley Montagu could detect in Richardson, and for
+this she despised him. But this it was, and some little vision of
+possible patronage from Lord Tyrconnel, which had obtained any prices at
+all for Savage from such knowing publishers as were then arising; but
+generally Savage had relied upon subscriptions, which were still common,
+and, in his case, as a man supposed unfortunate, were given purely as
+charity. With what astonishment does a literary foreigner of any
+judgment find a Savage placed amongst the classics of England! and from
+the scale of his life reasonably he must infer that he is ranked amongst
+the leaders, whilst the extent in which his works are multiplied would
+throw him back upon the truth--that he is utterly unknown to his
+countrymen. These, however, were the delusions of good nature. But what
+are we to think of Dr. Johnson's abetting that monstrous libel against
+Lady Macclesfield? She, unhappily, as a woman banished without hope from
+all good society by her early misconduct as a wife (but, let it not be
+forgotten, a neglected wife), had nobody to speak a word on her behalf:
+all evil was believed of one who had violated her marriage vows. But had
+the affair occurred in our days, the public journals would have righted
+her. They would have shown the folly of believing a vain, conceited man
+like Savage and his nurse, with no vouchers whatever, upon a point where
+they had the deepest interest at stake; whilst on the opposite side,
+supposing their story true, spoke for them the strongest of all natural
+instincts--the pleading of the maternal heart, combated by no
+self-interest whatever. Surely if Lady Macclesfield had not been
+supported by indignation against an imposture, merely for her own ease
+and comfort, she would have pensioned Savage, or have procured him some
+place under Government--not difficult in those days for a person with
+her connections (however sunk as respected _female_ society) to have
+obtained for an only son. In the sternness of her resistance to all
+attempts upon her purse we read her sense of the fraud. And, on the
+other hand, was the conduct of Savage that of a son? He had no legal
+claims upon her, consequently no pretence for molesting her in her
+dwelling-house. And would a real son--a great lubberly fellow, well able
+to work as a porter or a footman--however wounded at her obstinate
+rejection, have been likely, in pursuit of no legal rights, to have
+alarmed her by threatening letters and intrusions, for no purpose but
+one _confessedly_ of pecuniary extortion? From the very mode of pursuing
+his claim it is plain that Savage felt it to be a false one. It seems,
+also, to be forgotten by most readers, that at this day real sons--not
+denied to be such--are continually banished, nay, ejected forcibly by
+policemen, from the paternal roof in requital of just such profligate
+conduct as Savage displayed; so that, grant his improbable story, still
+he was a disorderly reprobate, who in these days would have been
+consigned to the treadmill. But the whole was a hoax.
+
+Savage, however, is but a single case, in relation to which Dr. Johnson
+stood in a special position, that diseased his judgment. But look at
+Pope's life, at Swift's, at Young's--at all the lives of men
+contemporary with himself: they are overrun with defamatory stories, or
+traits of that order which would most have stung them, had they returned
+to life. But it was an accident most beneficial to Dr. Johnson that
+nearly all these men left no near relatives behind to call him to
+account. The public were amused, as they always are by exhibitions of
+infirmity or folly in one whom otherwise they were compelled to admire;
+that was a sort of revenge for them to set off against a painful
+perpetuity of homage. Thus far the libels served only as jests, and,
+fortunately for Dr. Johnson, there arose no after-reckoning. One period,
+in fact, of thirty years had intervened between the last of these men
+and the publication of the Lives; it was amongst the latest works of Dr.
+Johnson: thus, and because most of them left no descendants, he escaped.
+Had the ordinary proportion of these men been married, the result would
+have been different; and whatever might have been thought of any
+individual case amongst the complaints, most undoubtedly, from the great
+number to which the Doctor had exposed himself, amongst which many were
+not of a nature to be evaded by any vouchers whatsoever, a fatal effect
+would have settled on the Doctor's moral reputation. He would have been
+passed down to posterity as a dealer in wholesale scandal, who cared
+nothing for the wounded feelings of relatives. It is a trifle after that
+to add that he would frequently have been cudgelled.
+
+This public judgment upon Dr. Johnson and these cudgellings would have
+been too severe a chastisement for the offences, which, after all,
+argued no heavier delinquency than a levity in examining his chance
+authorities, and a constitutional credulity. Dr. Johnson's easiness of
+faith for the supernatural, the grossness of his superstition in
+relation to such miserable impostures as the Cock Lane ghost, and its
+scratchings on the wall, flowed from the same source; and his
+conversation furnishes many proofs that he had no principle of
+resistance in his mind, no reasonable scepticism, when any disparaging
+anecdote was told about his nearest friends. Who but he would have
+believed the monstrous tale: that Garrick, so used to addressing large
+audiences _extempore_, so quick and lively in his apprehensions, had
+absolutely been dismissed from a court of justice as an idiot--as a man
+incapable of giving the court information even upon a question of his
+own profession? As to his credulity with respect to the somewhat
+harmless forgeries of Psalmanazer, and with respect to the villainous
+imposture of Lander, we imagine that other causes co-operated to those
+errors beyond mere facility of assenting. In the latter case we fear
+that jealousy of Milton as a scholar, a feeling from which he never
+cleansed himself, had been the chief cause of his so readily delivering
+himself a dupe to allegations _not_ specious, backed by forgeries that
+were anything but ingenious. Dr. Johnson had a narrow escape on that
+occasion. Had Dr. Douglas fastened upon him as the collusive abettor of
+Lander, as the man whose sanction had ever won even a momentary credit
+for the obscure libeller, and as the one beyond all others of the age
+whose critical occupation ought most to have secured him against such a
+delusion, the character of Johnson would have suffered seriously.
+Luckily, Dr. Douglas spared him; and Johnson, seeing the infamy of the
+hoax, and the precipice near which he stood, hastened to separate
+himself from Lander, and to offer such reparation as he could, by
+dictating that unhappy letter of recantation. Lander must have consented
+to this step from hopes of patronage; and perhaps the obscure place of
+slave-driver in the West Indies, in which he died (after recanting his
+recantation), might be the unsatisfactory bait of his needy ambition.
+But assuredly Lander could have made out a better case for himself than
+that which, under his name, the Doctor addressed to the Bishop; it was a
+dark spot in Dr. Johnson's life. A Scotsman, said he, must be a strange
+one who would not tell a falsehood in a case where Scotland was
+concerned; and we fear that any fable of defamation must have been gross
+indeed which Dr. Johnson would not have countenanced against Milton. His
+'Life of Milton,' as it now stands, contains some of the grossest
+calumnies against that mighty poet which have ever been hazarded; and
+some of the deepest misrepresentations are coloured, to the unsuspecting
+reader, by an affectation of merriment. But in his 'heart of hearts' Dr.
+Johnson detested Milton. Gray, even though, as being little of a meddler
+with politics, he furnished no handle to the Doctor for wrath so
+unrelenting, was a subject of deep jealousy from his reputed
+scholarship. Never did the spite of the Doctor more emblazon itself
+than in his review of Gray's lyrical compositions; the very affectation
+of prefacing his review by calling the two chief odes 'the wonderful
+wonder of wonders' betrays a female spite; and never did the arrogance
+of Dr. Johnson's nature flame out so conspicuously as in some of the
+phrases used on this occasion. Perhaps it is an instance of
+self-inflation absolutely unique where he says, 'My kindness for a man
+of letters'; this, it seems, caused him to feel pain at seeing Gray
+descending to what he, the Doctor (as a one-sided opinion of his own),
+held to be a fantastic foppery. The question we point at is not this
+supposed foppery--was it such or not? Milton's having cherished that
+'foppery' was a sufficient argument for detesting it. What we fix the
+reader's eye upon is, the unparalleled arrogance of applying to Gray
+this extreme language of condescending patronage. He really had 'a
+kindness' for the little man, and was not ashamed, as some people would
+be, to own it; so that it shocked him more than else it would have done,
+to see the man disgracing himself in this way.
+
+However, it is probable that all the misstatements of Dr. Johnson, the
+invidious impressions, and the ludicrous or injurious anecdotes fastened
+_ad libitum_ upon men previously open to particular attacks, never will
+be exposed; and for this, amongst other reasons, that sometimes the
+facts of the case are irrecoverable, though falsehood may be apparent;
+and still more because few men will be disposed to degrade themselves by
+assuming a secondary and ministerial office in hanging upon the errors
+of any man. Pope was a great favourite with Dr. Johnson, both as an
+unreflecting Tory, who travelled the whole road to Jacobitism--thus far
+resembling the Doctor himself; secondly, as one who complimented
+himself whilst yet a young man, and even whilst wearing a
+masque--complimented him under circumstances which make compliments
+doubly useful, and make them trebly sincere. If any man, therefore, he
+would have treated indulgently Pope: yet his life it is which has mainly
+fixed upon Pope that false impression which predominates at this
+day--that doubtless intellectually he was a very brilliant little man;
+but morally a spiteful, peevish, waspish, narrow-hearted cynic. Whereas
+no imputation can be more unfounded. Pope, unless in cases when he had
+been maddened by lampoons, was a most benignant creature; and, with the
+slightest acknowledgment of his own merit, there never lived a literary
+man who was so generously eager to associate others in his own
+honours--those even who had no adequate pretensions. If you, reader,
+should, like ourselves, have had occasion to investigate Pope's life,
+under an intention of recording it more accurately or more
+comprehensively than has yet been done, you will feel the truth of what
+we are saying. And especially we would recommend to every man, who
+wishes to think justly of Pope in this respect, that he should compare
+his conduct towards literary competitors with that of Addison. Dr.
+Johnson, having partially examined the lives of both, must have been so
+far qualified to do justice between them. But justice he has _not_ done;
+and to him chiefly we repeat that at this day are owing the false
+impressions of Pope's selfish, ungenial, or misanthropic nature; and the
+humiliating associations connected with Pope's petty manoeuvring in
+trivial domestic affairs, chiefly through Dr. Johnson's means, will
+never be obliterated. Let us turn, however, from Dr. Johnson, whom, with
+our general respect for his upright nature, it is painful to follow
+through circumstances where either jealousy (as sometimes) or credulity
+and the love of gossip (as very often) has misled him into gratifying
+the taste of the envious at a great sacrifice of dignity to the main
+upholders of our literature. These men ought not to have been 'shown up'
+for a comic or malicious effect. A nation who value their literature as
+we have reason to value ours ought to show their sense of this value by
+forgetting the _degrading_ infirmities (not the venial and human
+infirmities) of those to whose admirable endowments they owe its
+excellence.
+
+Turning away, therefore, from those modes of biography which have
+hitherto pursued any vicious extreme, let us now briefly explain our own
+ideal of a happier, sounder, and more ennobling biographical art, having
+the same general objects as heretofore, but with a more express view to
+the benefit of the reader. Looking even at those memoirs which, like
+Hayley's of Cowper, have been checked by pathetic circumstances from
+fixing any slur or irreverential scandal upon their subject, we still
+see a great fault in the mass of biographic records; and what _is_ it?
+It is--that, even where no disposition is manifested to copy either the
+_eloge_ or the libellous pasquinade, too generally the author appears
+_ex officio_ as the constant 'patronus' or legal advocate for the person
+recorded. And so he ought, if we understand that sort of advocacy which
+in English courts the judge was formerly presumed to exercise on behalf
+of the defendant in criminal trials. Before that remarkable change by
+which a prisoner was invested with the privilege of employing separate
+counsel, the judge was his counsel. The judge took care that no wrong
+was done to him; that no false impression was left with the jury; that
+the witnesses against him should not be suffered to run on without a
+sufficient rigour of cross-examination. But certainly the judge thought
+it no part of his duty to make 'the worse appear the better reason'; to
+throw dust into the eyes of the jury; or to labour any point of
+equivocation for the sake of giving the prisoner an extra chance of
+escaping. And, if it is really right that the prisoner, when obviously
+guilty, should be aided in evading his probable conviction, then
+certainly in past times he had less than justice. For most undoubtedly
+no judge would have attempted what we all saw an advocate attempting
+about a year ago, that, when every person in court was satisfied of the
+prisoner's guilt, from the proof suddenly brought to light of his having
+clandestinely left the plate of his murdered victim in a particular
+party's safe keeping, at that moment the advocate (though secretly
+prostrated by this overwhelming discovery) struggled vainly to fix upon
+the honourable witness a foul stigma of self-contradiction and perjury
+for the single purpose of turning loose a savage murderer upon society.
+If this were not more than justice, then assuredly in all times past the
+prisoner had far less. Now, precisely the difference between the
+advocacy of the judge, and the advocacy of a special counsel retained by
+the prisoner, expresses the difference which we contemplate between the
+biographer as he has hitherto protected his hero and that biographer
+whom we would substitute. Is he not to show a partiality for his
+subject? Doubtless; but hitherto, in those lives which have been
+farthest from _eloges_, the author has thought it his duty to uphold the
+general system, polity, or principles upon which his subject has acted.
+Thus Middleton and all other biographers of Cicero, whilst never
+meditating any panegyrical account of that statesman, and oftentimes
+regretting his vanity, for instance, have quite as little thought it
+allowable to condemn the main political views, theories, and
+consequently actions, of Cicero. But why not? Why should a biographer be
+fettered in his choice of subjects by any imaginary duty of adopting the
+views held by him whose life he records? To make war upon the man, to
+quarrel with him in every page, _that_ is quite as little in accordance
+with our notions; and we have already explained above our sense of its
+hatefulness. For then the question recurs for ever: What necessity
+forced you upon a subject whose conduct you thoroughly disapprove? But
+let him show the tenderness which is due to a great man even when he
+errs. Let him expose the _total_ aberrations of the man, and make this
+exposure salutary to the pathetic wisdom of his readers, not alimentary
+to their self-conceit, by keeping constantly before their eyes the
+excellence and splendour of the man's powers in contrast with his
+continued failures. Let him show such patronage to the hero of his
+memoir as the English judge showed to the poor prisoner at his bar,
+taking care that he should suffer no shadow of injustice from the
+witnesses; that the prisoner's own self-defence should in no part be
+defeated of its effect by want of proper words or want of proper skill
+in pressing the forcible points on the attention of the jury; but
+otherwise leaving him to his own real merits in the facts of his case,
+and allowing him no relief from the pressure of the hostile evidence but
+such as he could find either in counter-evidence or in the intrinsic
+weight of his own general character. On the scheme of biography there
+would be few persons in any department of life who would be accompanied
+to the close by a bowing and obsequious reporter; there would be far
+less of uniform approbation presumable in memoirs; but, on the other
+hand, there would be exhibited pretty generally a tender spirit of
+dealing with human infirmities; a large application of human errors to
+the benefit of succeeding generations; and, lastly, there would be an
+opening made for the free examination of many lives which are now in a
+manner closed against criticism; whilst to each separate life there
+would be an access and an invitation laid bare for minds hitherto
+feeling themselves excluded from approaching the subject by imperfect
+sympathy with the principles and doctrines which those lives were
+supposed to illustrate.
+
+But our reformed view of biography would be better explained by a sketch
+applied to Cicero's life or to Milton's. In either case we might easily
+show, consistently with the exposure of enormous errors, that each was
+the wisest man of his own day. And with regard to Cicero in particular,
+out of his own letters to Atticus, we might show that every capital
+opinion which he held on the politics of Rome in his own day was false,
+groundless, contradictory. Yet for all that, we would engage to leave
+the reader in a state of far deeper admiration for the man than the
+hollow and hypocritical Middleton ever felt himself, or could therefore
+have communicated to his readers.
+
+     EDITOR'S NOTE.--The reference on p. 122 is to the famous case of
+     Courvoisier, in 1840, and this fixes 1841 as the date of the essay.
+     Courvoisier was a valet who murdered and robbed his master, putting
+     the plate into the care of an old woman, and making it appear a
+     burglary. He was defended by a barrister named Philips, who
+     received from the prisoner a confession of his guilt, and
+     afterwards, in court, took Heaven to witness that he believed him
+     innocent, though the woman, by accident almost, had been found, and
+     given evidence. Philips was disbarred.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[17] In Mrs. Hannah More's drawing-room at Barley Wood, amongst the few
+pictures which adorned it, hung a kit-kat portrait of John Henderson.
+This, and our private knowledge that Mrs. H. M. had personally known and
+admired Henderson, led us to converse with that lady about him. What we
+gleaned from her in addition to the notices of Aguttar and of some
+amongst Johnson's biographers may yet see the light.
+
+
+
+
+_XIV. GREAT FORGERS: CHATTERTON AND WALPOLE, AND 'JUNIUS.'_
+
+
+I have ever been disposed to regard as the most venial of deceptions
+such impositions as Chatterton had practised on the public credulity.
+Whom did he deceive? Nobody but those who well deserved to be deceived,
+viz., shallow antiquaries, who pretended to a sort of knowledge which
+they had not so much as tasted. And it always struck me as a judicial
+infatuation in Horace Walpole, that he, who had so brutally pronounced
+the death of this marvellous boy to be a matter of little consequence,
+since otherwise he would have come to be hanged for forgery, should
+himself, not as a boy under eighteen (and I think under seventeen at the
+first issuing of the Rowley fraud), slaving for a few guineas that he
+might procure the simplest food for himself, and then buy presents for
+the dear mother and sister whom he had left in Bristol, but as an
+elderly man, with a clear six thousand per annum,[18] commit a far more
+deliberate and audacious forgery than that imputed (if even accurately
+imputed) to Chatterton. I know of no published document, or none
+published under Chatterton's sanction, in which he formally _declared_
+the Rowley poems to have been the compositions of a priest living in
+the days of Henry IV., viz., in or about the year 1400. Undoubtedly he
+suffered people to understand that he had found MSS. of that period in
+the tower of St. Mary Redcliff at Bristol, which he really _had_ done;
+and whether he simply tolerated them in running off with the idea that
+these particular poems, written on _discoloured_ parchments by way of
+colouring the hoax, were amongst the St. Mary treasures, or positively
+_said so_, in either view, considering the circumstances of the case, no
+man of kind feelings will much condemn him.
+
+But Horace Walpole roundly and audaciously affirmed in the first
+sentence of his preface to the poor romance of 'Otranto,' that it had
+been translated from the Italian of Onuphrio Muralto, and that the MS.
+was still preserved in the library of an English Catholic family;
+circumstantiating his needless falsehood by other most superfluous
+details. _Needless_, I say, because a book with the Walpole name on the
+title-page was as sure of selling as one with Chatterton's obscure name
+was at that time sure of _not_ selling. Possibly Horace Walpole did not
+care about selling, but wished to measure his own intrinsic power as a
+novelist, for which purpose it was a better course to preserve his
+_incognito_. But this he might have preserved without telling a
+circumstantial falsehood. Whereas Chatterton knew that his only chance
+of emerging from the obscure station of a grave-digger's son, and
+carrying into comfort the dear female relatives that had half-starved
+themselves for _him_ (I speak of things which have since come to my
+knowledge thirty-five years after Chatterton and his woes had been
+buried in a pauper's coffin), lay in bribing public attention by some
+_extrinsic_ attraction. Macpherson had recently engaged the public gaze
+by his 'Ossian'--an abortion fathered upon the fourth century after
+Christ. What so natural as to attempt other abortions--ideas and
+refinements of the eighteenth century--referring themselves to the
+fifteenth? Had this harmless hoax succeeded, he would have delivered
+those from poverty who delivered _him_ from ignorance; he would have
+raised those from the dust who raised _him_ to an aerial height--yes, to
+a height from which (but it was after his death), like _Ate_ or _Eris_,
+come to cause another Trojan war, he threw down an apple of discord
+amongst the leading scholars of England, and seemed to say: 'There, Dean
+of Exeter! there, Laureate! there, Tyrwhitt, my man! Me you have
+murdered amongst you. Now fight to death for the boy that living you
+would not have hired as a shoeblack. My blood be upon you!' Rise up,
+martyred blood! rise to heaven for a testimony against these men and
+this generation, or else burrow in the earth, and from that spring up
+like the stones thrown by Deucalion and Pyrrha into harvests of feud,
+into armies of self-exterminating foes. Poor child! immortal child!
+Slight were thy trespasses on this earth, heavy was thy punishment, and
+it is to be hoped, nay, it is certain, that this disproportion did not
+escape the eye which, in the algebra of human actions, estimates _both_
+sides of the equation.
+
+Lord Byron was of opinion that people abused Horace Walpole for several
+sinister reasons, of which the first is represented to be that he was a
+gentleman. Now, I, on the contrary, am of opinion that he was _not_
+always a gentleman, as particularly seen in his correspondence with
+Chatterton. On the other hand, it is but just to recollect that in
+retaining Chatterton's MSS. (otherwise an unfeeling act, yet chiefly
+imputable to indolence), the worst aggravation of the case under the
+poor boy's construction, viz., that if Walpole had not known his low
+rank 'he would not have dared to treat him in that way,' though a very
+natural feeling, was really an unfounded one. Horace Walpole (I call him
+so, because he was not _then_ Lord Orford) certainly had not been aware
+that Chatterton was other than a gentleman by birth and station. The
+natural dignity of the boy, which had not condescended to any degrading
+applications, misled this practised man of the world. But recurring to
+Lord Byron's insinuations as to a systematic design of running Lord
+Orford down, I beg to say that I am no party to any such design. It is
+not likely that a furious Conservative like myself, who have the
+misfortune also to be the most bigoted of Tories, would be so. I
+disclaim all participation in any clamour against Lord Orford which may
+have arisen on democratic feeling. Feeling the profoundest pity for the
+'marvellous boy' of Bristol, and even love, if it be possible to feel
+love for one who was in his unhonoured grave before I was born, I resent
+the conduct of Lord Orford, in this one instance, as universally the
+English public has resented it. But generally, as a writer, I admire
+Lord Orford in a very high degree. As a letter-writer, and as a
+brilliant sketcher of social aspects and situations, he is far superior
+to any French author who could possibly be named as a competitor. And as
+a writer of personal or anecdotic history, let the reader turn to
+Voltaire's 'Siecle de Louis Quatorze,' in order to appreciate his
+extraordinary merit.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Next will occur to the reader the forgery of 'Junius.' Who did _that_?
+Oh, villains that have ever doubted since '"Junius" Identified'! Oh,
+scamps--oh, pitiful scamps! You, reader, perhaps belong to this wretched
+corps. But, if so, understand that you belong to it under false
+information. I have heard myriads talk upon this subject. One man said
+to me, 'My dear friend, I sympathize with your fury. You are right.
+Righter a man cannot be. Rightest of all men you are.' I was
+right--righter--rightest! That had happened to few men. But again this
+flattering man went on, 'Yes, my excellent friend, right you are, and
+evidently Sir Philip Francis was the man. His backer proved it. The day
+after his book appeared, if any man had offered me exactly two thousand
+to one in guineas, that Sir Philip was _not_ the man, by Jupiter! I
+would have declined the bet. So divine, so exquisite, so Grecian in its
+perfection, was the demonstration, the _apodeixis_ (or what do you call
+it in Greek?), that this brilliant Sir Philip--who, by the way, wore
+_his_ order of the Bath as universally as ever he taxed Sir William
+Draper with doing--had been the author of "Junius." But here lay the
+perplexity of the matter. At the least five-and-twenty excellent men
+proved by posthumous friends that they, every mother's son of them, had
+also perpetrated "Junius."' 'Then they were liars,' I answered. 'Oh no,
+my right friend,' he interrupted, 'not liars at all; amiable men, some
+of whom confessed on their death-beds (three to my certain knowledge)
+that, alas! they had erred against the law of charity. "_But how?_" said
+the clergyman. "Why, by that infernal magazine of sneers and all
+uncharitableness, the 'Letters of Junius.'" "Let me understand you,"
+said the clergyman: "you wrote 'Junius'?" "Alas! I did," replied A. Two
+years after another clergyman said to another penitent, "And so you
+wrote 'Junius'?" "Too true, my dear sir. Alas! I did," replied B. One
+year later a third penitent was going off, and upon the clergyman
+saying, "Bless me, is it possible? Did _you_ write 'Junius'?" he
+replied, "Ah, worshipful sir, you touch a painful chord in my
+remembrances--I now wish I had not. Alas! reverend sir, I did." Now, you
+see,' went on my friend, 'so many men at the New Drop, as you may say,
+having with tears and groans taxed themselves with "Junius" as the
+climax of their offences, one begins to think that perhaps _all_ men
+wrote "Junius."' Well, so far there was reason. But when my friend
+contended also that the proofs arrayed in pamphlets proved the whole
+alphabet to have written 'Junius,' I could not stand his absurdities.
+Death-bed confessions, I admitted, were strong. But as to these wretched
+pamphlets, some time or other I will muster them all for a field-day; I
+will brigade them, as if the general of the district were coming to
+review them; and then, if I do not mow them down to the last man by
+opening a treacherous battery of grape-shot, may all my household die
+under a fiercer Junius! The true reasons why any man fancies that
+'Junius' is an open question must be these three:
+
+First, that they have never read the proofs arrayed against Sir Philip
+Francis; this is the general case.
+
+Secondly, that, according to Sancho's proverb, they want better bread
+than is made of wheat. They are not content with proofs or absolute
+demonstrations. They require you, like the witch of Endor, to raise Sir
+Philip from the grave, that they may cross-examine him.
+
+Thirdly (and this is the fault of the able writer who unmasked Sir
+Philip), there happened to be the strongest argument that ever picked a
+Bramah-lock against the unknown writer of 'Junius'; apply this, and if
+it fits the wards, oh, Gemini! my dear friend, but you are
+right--righter--rightest; you have caught 'Junius' in a rabbit-snare.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[18] 'Six thousand per annum,' viz., on the authority of his own
+confession to Pinkerton.
+
+
+     EDITOR'S NOTE.--De Quincey is guilty of a slight lapse of memory in
+     reference to 'The Castle of Otranto' and Onuphrio Muralto. It was
+     not in the first sentence of the preface, but on the title-page,
+     that Walpole so plainly attributed the work to another. The
+     _original_ title-page, which, of course, was dropped out when it
+     became known to all the world that Walpole was the author, read
+     thus: 'The Castle of Otranto: a Story. Translated by William
+     Marshall, Gent. From the original Italian of Onuphrio Muralto,
+     Canon of the Church of St. Nicholas, at Otranto. London: printed
+     for Thomas Lownds, in Fleet Street. 1765.'
+
+
+
+
+_XV. DANIEL O'CONNELL._
+
+
+With a single view to the _intellectual_ pretensions of Mr. O'Connell,
+let us turn to his latest General Epistle, dated from 'Conciliation
+Hall,' on the last day of October. This is no random, or (to use a
+pedantic term) _perfunctory_ document; not a document is this to which
+indulgence is due. By its subject, not less than by its address, it
+stands forth audaciously as a deliberate, as a solemn, as a national
+state paper; for its subject is the future political condition of
+Ireland under the assumption of Repeal; for its address is, 'To the
+People of Ireland.' So placing himself, a writer has it not within his
+choice to play the fool; it is not within his competence to tumble or
+'come aloft' or play antics as a mountebank; his theme binds him to
+decency, his audience to gravity. Speaking, though it be but by the
+windiest of fictions, to a nation, is not a man pledged to respectful
+language? speaking, though it is but by a chimera as wild as Repeal to a
+question of national welfare, a man is pledged to sincerity. Had he
+seven devils of mockery and banter within him, for that hour he must
+silence them all. The foul fiend must be rebuked, though it were Mahu
+and Bohu who should prompt him to buffoonery, when standing at the bar
+of nations.
+
+This is the law, this the condition, under which Mr. O'Connell was
+speaking when he issued that recent address. Given such a case, similar
+circumstances presupposed, he could not evade the obligations which they
+impose. From such obligations there is no dispensation to be bought--no,
+not at Rome; from the obligations observe, and those obligations, we
+repeat, are--sincerity in the first place, and respectful or deferential
+language in the second. Such were the duties; now let us look to the
+performance. And that we may judge of _that_ with more advantage for
+searching and appraising the qualities of this document, permit us to
+suggest three separate questions, the first being this: What was the
+occasion of the Address? Secondly, what was its ostensible object?
+Thirdly, what are the arguments by which, as its means, the paper
+travels towards that object?
+
+First, as to the _occasion_ of the Address. We have said that the date,
+viz., the 31st of October, is falsified. It was _not_ dated on the 31st
+of October, but on or about the seventh day of November. Even that
+falsehood, though at first sight trivial, is enough for suspicion. If X,
+a known liar, utters a lie at starting, it is not for him to plead in
+mitigation the apparent uselessness of the lie, it is for us to presume
+out of the fact a use, where the fact exists. A leader in the French
+Revolution protested often against bloodshed and other atrocities--not
+as being too bad, but, on the contrary, as being too good, too precious
+to be wasted upon ordinary occasions. And, on the same principle, we may
+be sure that any habitual liar, who has long found the benefit of
+falsehoods at his utmost need, will have formed too profound a reverence
+for this powerful resource in a moment of perplexity ever to throw away
+a falsehood, or to squander upon a caprice of the moment that lie which,
+being seasonably employed, might have saved him from confusion. The
+artist in lying is not the man to lie gratuitously. From the first,
+therefore, satisfied ourselves that there was a lurking motive--the key
+to this falsification of date--we paused to search it out. In that we
+found little difficulty. For what was the professed object of this
+Address? It was to meet and to overthrow two notions here represented as
+great popular errors. But why at this time? Wherefore all this heat at
+the present moment? Grant that the propositions denounced as erroneous
+_were_ so in very deed, why should criminals standing under the shadow
+of public vengeance ready to descend, so childishly misuse the interval,
+mercifully allowed for their own defence, in reading lectures upon
+abstract political speculations, confessedly bearing no relation to any
+militant interest now in question? Quite as impertinent it would be,
+when called upon for the answer upon 'Guilty or not Guilty?' to read a
+section from the Council of Trent, or a rescript from Cardinal
+Bellarmine. Yet the more extravagant was the logic of this proceeding,
+the more urgent became the presumption of a covert motive, and that
+motive we soon saw to be this. Let the reader weigh it, and the good
+sense of the man who at such a moment could suffer such a motive to
+prevail. Thus it is: when Clontarf was intercepted, and implicitly,
+though not formally, all similar meetings were by that one act for ever
+prohibited, the first days of terror were naturally occupied with the
+panic of the conspirators, and in providing for their personal terrors.
+But when the dust of this great uproar began to settle, and objects
+again became distinguishable in natural daylight, the first consequence
+which struck the affrighted men of the conspiracy was the chilling
+effect of the Government policy upon the O'Connell rent; not the weekly
+rent, applied nobody knows how, but the annual rent applied to Mr.
+O'Connell's _private_ benefit. This was in jeopardy, and on the
+following argument: Originally this rent had been levied as a
+compensation to Mr. O'Connell in his character of Irish barrister--not
+for services rendered or _to be_ rendered, but for current services
+continually being rendered in Parliament from session to session, for
+expenses incident to that kind of duty, and also as an indemnification
+for the consequent loss of fees at the Irish Bar. Yet now, in 1843,
+having ceased to attend his duty in Parliament, Mr. O'Connell could no
+longer claim in that senatorial character. Such a pretension would be
+too gross for the understanding even of a Connaught peasant. And in
+_that_ there was a great loss. For the allegation of a Parliamentary
+warfare, under the vague idea of pushing forward good bills for Ireland,
+or retarding bad ones, had been a pleasant and easy labour to the parish
+priests. It was not necessary to horsewhip[19] their flocks too
+severely. If all was not clear to 'my children's' understanding, at
+least my children had no mutinous demur in a positive shape ready for
+service. Recusants there were, and sturdy ones, but they could put no
+face on their guilt, and their sin was not contagious. Unhappily, from
+this indefinite condition of merit Mr. O'Connell himself had translated
+his claim to a very distinct one founded upon a clear, known, absolute
+attempt to coerce the Government into passive collusion with prospective
+treason. This attempt, said the peasantry, will the Government stand, or
+will it not? 'Why, then,' replied the Government, on the 17th of
+October, 'we will _not_.'
+
+The aristocracy of Ireland may not have done their duty as regards the
+Repeal; it is too certain that they have not, because they have done
+nothing at all. But it is also certain that their very uttermost would
+have been unavailing for one principal object concerned. Other great
+objects, however, might have been attained. Foreign nations might have
+been disabused of their silly delusions on the Irish relations to
+England, although the Irish peasantry could _not_. The monstrous
+impression also upon many English and Scotch parties, that a general
+unity of sentiment prevailed in Ireland as to the desirableness of an
+independent Parliament--this, this, we say loudly, would have been
+dissipated, had every Irish county met by its gentry disavowing and
+abominating all sentiments tending towards a purpose so guilty as
+political disunion. Yet, in palliation of this most grievous failure,
+we, in the spirit of perfect candour, will remind our readers of the
+depressing effect too often attending one flagrant wound in any system
+of power or means. Let a man lose by a sudden blow--by fire, by
+shipwreck, or by commercial failure--a sum of twenty thousand pounds,
+that being four-fifths of his entire property, how often it is found
+that mere dejection of mind will incapacitate him from looking
+cheerfully after the remaining fifth! And this though it is now become
+far more essential to his welfare; and, secondly, upon a motion
+tending upwards and not downwards, he would have regarded five
+thousand pounds as a precious treasure worthy of his efforts, whether
+for protection or for improvement. Something analogous to this weighs
+down the hearty exertions of the Irish gentry. Met at the very
+threshold, affronted at starting, by this insufferable tyranny of
+priestly interference--humiliated and stung to the heart by the
+consciousness that those natural influences which everywhere else
+settle indefeasibly upon property, are in Ireland intercepted,
+filched, violently robbed and pocketed by a body of professional
+nuisances sprung almost universally from paupers--thus disinherited of
+their primary rights, thus pillaged, thus shorn like Samson of those
+natural ornaments in which resided their natural strength, feeling
+themselves (like that same Samson in the language of Milton) turned
+out to the scorn of their countrymen as 'tame wethers' ridiculously
+fleeced and mutilated--they droop, they languish as to all public
+spirit; and whilst by temperament, by natural endowment, by continual
+intercourse with the noble aristocracy of Britain (from whom also they
+are chiefly descended), they _should_ be amongst the leading
+chivalries of Europe, in very fact they are, for political or social
+purposes, the most powerless gentry in existence. Acting in a
+corporate capacity, they can do nothing. The malignant planet of this
+low-born priesthood comes between them and the peasantry, eclipsing
+oftentimes the sunshine of their comprehensive beneficence, and
+_always_ destroying their power to discountenance[20] evil-doers. Here
+is the sad excuse. But, for all that, we must affirm that, if the
+Irish landed gentry do not yet come forward to retrieve the ground
+which they have forfeited by inertia, history will record them as
+passive colluders with the Dublin repealers. The evil is so
+operatively deep, looking backward or forward, that we have purposely
+brought it forward in a second aspect, viz., as contrasted with the
+London press. For the one, as we have been showing, there is a strong
+plea in palliation; for the other there is none.
+
+Let us be frank. This is what we affirm, that it was, it is, it will be
+hereafter, within the powers of the London press to have extinguished
+the Repeal or any similar agitation; they could have done this, and this
+they have _not_ done. But let us also not be misunderstood. Do we say
+this in a spirit of disrespect? Are we amongst the parties who (when
+characterizing the American press) infamously say, 'Let us, however,
+look homewards to our own press, and be silent for very shame'? Are we
+the people to join the vicious correspondent of an evening paper whom
+but a week ago we saw denouncing the editor of the _Examiner_ newspaper
+as a public nuisance, and recommending him as a fit subject of some
+degrading punishment, for no better reason than that he had exercised
+his undoubted right of exposing delinquencies or follies in a garrulous
+lord? Far be such vilenesses from us. We honour the press of this
+country. We know its constitution, and we know the mere impossibility
+(were it only from the great capital required) that any but men of
+honour and sensibilities and conspicuous talent, and men brilliantly
+accomplished in point of education, should become writers or editors of
+a _leading_ journal, or indeed of any daily journal. Here and there may
+float _in gurgite vasto_ some atrocious paper lending itself upon system
+to the villainies of private slander. But such a paper is sure to be an
+inconsiderable one in the mere sense of property, and therefore,
+by a logical consequence in our frame of society, _every_ way
+inconsiderable--rising without effort, sinking without notice. In fact,
+the whole staff and establishment of newspapers have risen in social
+consideration within our own generation; and at this moment not merely
+proprietors and editors, but reporters and other ministerial agents to
+these vast engines of civility, have all ascended in their superior
+orders to the highest levels of authentic responsibility.
+
+We make these acknowledgments in the mere spirit of equity, and because
+we disdain to be confounded with those rash persons who talk glibly of a
+'licentious press' through their own licentious ignorance. Than
+ignorance nothing is so licentious for rash saying or for obstinate
+denying. The British press is _not_ licentious; neither in London nor in
+Edinburgh is it ever licentious; and there is much need that it should
+be otherwise, having at this time so unlimited a power over the public
+mind. But the very uprightness of the leading journalists, and all the
+other elements of their power, do but constitute the evil, do but
+aggravate the mischief, where they happen to go astray; yes, in every
+case where these journalists miss the narrow path of thoughtful
+prudence. They _do_ miss it occasionally; they must miss it; and we
+contend that they _have_ missed it at present. What they have done that
+they ought _not_ to have done. Currency, buoyancy, they ought _not_ to
+have impressed upon sedition, upon conspiracy, upon treason. Currency,
+buoyancy, they _have_ impressed upon sedition, upon conspiracy, upon
+treason.
+
+As to Mr. O'Connell himself, it is useless, and it argues some thick
+darkness of mind, to remonstrate or generally to address any arguments
+from whatsoever quarter, which either appeal to a sense of truth, which,
+secondly, manifest inconsistencies, or, thirdly, which argue therein a
+tendency ruinous to himself. Let us think. Burke asserted of himself,
+and to our belief truly, that having at different periods set his face
+in different directions--now to the east, now to the west, now pointing
+to purposes of relaxation or liberality, now again to purposes of
+coercive and popular restraint--he had notwithstanding been uniform, if
+measured upon a higher scale. Transcending objects, coinciding neither
+instantly with the first, nor except by accident with the last, but
+indifferently aided by aristocratic forces or by democratic, shifting
+weights which sometimes called for accessories of gravity, sometimes for
+subtraction, mighty fluctuating wheels which sometimes needed flywheels
+to moderate or harmonize, sometimes needed concurrent wheels to urge or
+aggravate their impetus--these were the powers which he had found
+himself summoned to calculate, to check, to support, the vast algebraic
+equation of government; for this he had strengthened substantially by
+apparent contrarieties of policy; and in a system of watch-work so
+exquisite as to vary its fine balances eternally, eternally he had
+consulted by redressing the errors emergent, by varying the poise in
+order that he might _not_ vary the equipoise, by correcting
+inequalities, or by forestalling extremes. That was a man of heroic
+build, and of him it might be said at his death, 'Truly this man was a
+son of Anak.' Now, of Mr. O'Connell a man might affirm something
+similar; that as with regard to Edmund Burke it is altogether useless to
+detect contradictions in form, seeing that he knows of this, that he
+justifies this, glories in this, vehemently demands praise for this
+contradiction, as all discord is harmony not understood, planned in the
+letter and overruled in the spirit; so may O'Connell say, 'Gentlemen,
+grubs, reptiles, vermin, trouble not yourselves to find out
+contradictions or discords in my conduct; vex not your slender faculties
+by arraying hosts of promises that defeat promises, or principles that
+destroy principles--you shall not need to labour; I will make you a
+present of three huge canisters laden and running over with the flattest
+denials in one breath of that which I affirmed in another. But, like
+Edmund Burke, I register my conduct by another table and by its final
+result. On the dial which you see, the hands point thus and thus; but
+upon a higher and transcendent dial these fingers do but precipitate or
+retard one gigantic hand, pointing always and monotonously to the unity
+of a perfect selfishness. The everlasting tacking in my course gives me
+often the air of retrograding and losing; but, in fact, these
+retrogressions are momentary, these losings of my object are no more
+than seeming, are still but the same stealthy creeping up under cover of
+frequent compliances with the breeze that happens to thwart me, towards
+the one eternal pole of my own self-interest; that is the pole-star
+which only never sets, and I flatter myself that amidst vast apparent
+wanderings or multiplied divergences there will be detected by the eye
+of the philosopher a consistency in family objects which is absolute, a
+divine unity of selfishness.'
+
+This we do not question. But to will is not to do; and Mr. O'Connell,
+with a true loyalty to his one object of private aims, has _not_
+maintained the consistency of his policy. All men know that he has
+adventured within the limits of conspiracy; that could not be for his
+benefit. He has touched even the dark penumbra of treason; that could
+not but risk the sum of his other strivings. But he who has failed for
+himself in a strife so absolute, for that only must be distrusted by
+his countrymen.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[19] 'To horsewhip,' etc. Let it not be said that this is any slander of
+ours; would that we could pronounce it a slander! But those who (like
+ourselves) have visited Ireland extensively know that the parish priest
+uses a horsewhip, in many circumstances, as his professional _insigne_.
+
+[20] Look at Lord Waterford's case, in the very month of November, 1843.
+Is there a county in all England that would have tamely witnessed his
+expulsion from amongst them by fire, and by sword and by poison?
+
+
+     NOTE BY THE EDITOR.--This article on O'Connell, written in the end
+     of 1843, is printed, not on account of any political reference it
+     might be presumed to have, but only because of its historical and
+     literary interest. Apart from the light it may throw on De
+     Quincey's leanings, as, in certain respects, distinctly in the
+     direction of patriotic Toryism of the most rampant type, it may be
+     of value as suggesting how essentially, in not a few points, the
+     Irish question to-day remains precisely as it was in the time of
+     O'Connell; and how the Tories of to-day are apt to view it from
+     precisely the same plane as those of 1843. It might also be cited
+     as another proof not only of De Quincey's very keen interest in all
+     the leading questions of the time, but as an illustration of the
+     John Bull warmth and heat which he, the dreamer, the recluse, the
+     lover of abstract problems, could bring into such discussions.
+     Here, at all events, his views were definite enough, and stated
+     with a bold precision of English plainness that would have pleased
+     the most pronouncedly Tory or Unionist newspaper editors of that
+     day.
+
+
+
+
+_XVI. FRANCE PAST AND FRANCE PRESENT._
+
+
+To speak in the simplicity of truth, caring not for party or partisan,
+is not the France of this day, the France which has issued from that
+great furnace of the Revolution, a better, happier, more hopeful France
+than the France of 1788? Allowing for any evil, present or reversionary,
+in the political aspects of France, that may yet give cause for anxiety,
+can a wise man deny that from the France of 1840, under Louis Philippe
+of Orleans, ascends to heaven a report of far happier days from the sons
+and daughters of poverty than from the France of Louis XVI.? Personally
+that sixteenth Louis was a good king, sorrowing for the abuses in the
+land, and willing (at least, after affliction had sharpened his
+reflecting conscience), had that choice been allowed him, to have
+redeemed them by any personal sacrifice. But that was not possible.
+Centuries of misrule are not ransomed by an individual ruin; and had it
+been possible that the dark genius of his family, the same who once
+tolled funeral knells in the ears of the first Bourbon, and called him
+out as a martyr hurrying to meet his own sacrifice--could we suppose
+this gloomy representative of his family destinies to have met him in
+some solitary apartment of the Tuileries or Versailles, some twilight
+gallery of ancestral portraits, he could have met him with the purpose
+of raising the curtain from before the long series of his household
+woes--from him the king would have learned that no personal ransom could
+be accepted for misgovernment so ancient. Leviathan is not so tamed.
+Arrears so vast imply a corresponding accountability, corresponding by
+its amount, corresponding by its personal subjects. Crown and
+people--all had erred; all must suffer. Blood must flow, tears must be
+shed through a generation; rivers of lustration must be thrown through
+that Augean accumulation of guilt.
+
+And exactly there, it is supposed, lay the error of Burke; the compass
+of the penalty, the arch which it traversed, must bear some proportion
+to that of the evil which had produced it.
+
+When I referred to the dark genius of the family who once tolled funeral
+knells in the ears of the first Bourbon, I meant, of course, the first
+who sat upon the throne of France, viz., Henri Quatre. The allusion is
+to the last hours of Henry's life, to the remarkable prophecies which
+foreran his death, to their remarkable fulfilment, and (what is more
+remarkable than all beside) to his self-surrender, in the spirit of an
+unresisting victim, to a bloody fate which he regarded as inexorably
+doomed. This king was not the good prince whom the French hold out to
+us; not even the accomplished, the chivalrous, the elevated prince to
+whom history points for one of her models. French and ultra-French must
+have been the ideal of the good or the noble to which he could have
+approximated in the estimate of the most thoughtless. He had that sort
+of military courage which was, and is, more common than weeds. In all
+else he was a low-minded man, vulgar in his thoughts, most unprincely in
+his habits. He was even worse than that: wicked, brutal, sensually
+cruel. And his wicked minister, Sully, than whom a more servile mind
+never existed, illustrates in one passage his own character and his
+master's by the apology which he offers for Henry's having notoriously
+left many illegitimate children to perish of hunger, together with their
+too-confiding mothers. What? That in the pressure of business he really
+forgot them. Famine mocked at last the deadliest offence. His own
+innocent children, up and down France, because they were illegitimate,
+their too-confiding mothers, because they were weak and friendless by
+having for his sake forfeited the favour of God and man, this amiable
+king had left to perish of hunger. They _did_ perish; mother and infant.
+A cry ascended against the king. Even in sensual France such atrocities
+could not utterly sink to the ground. But what says the apologetic
+minister? Astonished that anybody could think of abridging a king's
+license in such particulars, he brushes away the whole charge as so much
+ungentlemanly impertinence, disdaining any further plea than the
+pressure of business, which so naturally accounted for the royal
+inattention or forgetfulness in these little affairs. Observe that this
+pressure of business never was such that the king could not find time
+for pursuing these intrigues and multiplying these reversions of woe.
+What enormities! A king (at all times of Navarre, and for half his life
+of France) suffers his children to die of hunger, consigns their mothers
+to the same fate, but aggravated by remorse and by the spectacle of
+their perishing infants! These clamours could not penetrate to the
+Louvre, but they penetrated to a higher court, and were written in books
+from which there is no erasure allowed. So much for the vaunted
+'generosity' of Henry IV. As to another feature of the chivalrous
+character, elegance of manners, let the reader consult the report of an
+English ambassador, a man of honour and a gentleman, Sir George Carew.
+It was published about the middle of the last century by the
+indefatigable Birch, to whom our historic literature is so much
+indebted, and it proves sufficiently that this idol of Frenchmen allowed
+himself in habits so coarse as to disgust the most creeping of his own
+courtiers; such that even the blackguards of a manly nation would revolt
+from them as foul and self-dishonouring. Deep and permanent is the
+mischief wrought in a nation by false models; and corresponding is the
+impression, immortal the benefit, from good ones. The English people
+have been the better for their Alfred, that pathetic ideal of a good
+king, through a space of now nearly a thousand years. The French are the
+worse to this hour in consequence of Francis I. and Henry IV. And note
+this, that even the spurious merit of the two French models can be
+sustained only by disguises, by suppressions, by elaborate varnishings;
+whereas the English prince is offered to our admiration with a
+Scriptural simplicity and a Scriptural fidelity, not as some gay legend
+of romance, some Telemachus of Fenelon, but as one who had erred,
+suffered, and had been purified; as a shepherd that had gone astray, and
+saw that through his transgressions the flock also had been scattered.
+
+
+
+
+_XVII. ROME'S RECRUITS AND ENGLAND'S RECRUITS._
+
+
+Two facts on which a sound estimate of the Roman corn-trade depends are
+these: first, the very important one, that it was not Rome in the sense
+of the Italian peninsula which relied upon foreign corn, but in the
+narrowest sense Rome the city; as respected what we now call Lombardy,
+Florence, Genoa, etc., Rome did not disturb the ancient agriculture. The
+other fact offers, perhaps, a still more important consideration. Rome
+was latterly a most populous city--we are disposed to agree with
+Lipsius, that it was four times as populous as most moderns esteem--most
+certainly it bore a higher ratio to the total Italy than any other
+capital (even London) has since borne to the territory over which it
+presided. Consequently it will be argued that in such a ratio must the
+foreign importations of Rome, even in the limited sense of Rome the
+city, have operated more destructively upon the domestic agriculture.
+Grant that not Italy, but Rome, was the main importer of foreign grain,
+still, if Rome to all Italy were as one to four in population, which
+there is good reason to believe it was, then even upon that distinction
+it will be insisted that the Roman importation crushed one-fourth of the
+native agriculture. Now, this we deny. Some part of the African and
+Egyptian grain was but a substitution for the Sardinian, and so far made
+no difference to Italy in ploughs, but only in _denarii_. But the main
+consideration of all is, that the Italian grain was not withdrawn from
+the vast population of Rome--this is _not_ the logic of the case--no; on
+the contrary, the vast population of Rome arose and supervened as a
+consequence upon the opening of the foreign Alexandrian corn trade. It
+was not Rome that quirted the home agriculture. Rome, in the full sense,
+never would have existed without foreign supplies. If, therefore, Rome,
+by means of foreign grain, rose from four hundred thousand heads to four
+millions, then it follows that (except as to the original demand for the
+four hundred thousand) not one plough was disused in Italy that ever had
+been used. Whilst, even with regard to the original demand of the four
+hundred thousand, by so much of the Egyptian grain as had been a mere
+substitution for Sardinian no effect whatever could have followed to
+Italian agriculture.
+
+Here, therefore, we see the many limitations which arise to the modern
+doctrine upon the destructive agricultural consequences of the Roman
+corn trade. Rome may have prevented the Italian agriculture from
+expanding, but she could not have caused it to decline.[21] Now, let us
+see how far this Roman corn trade affected the Roman recruiting service.
+It is alleged that agriculture declined under the foreign corn trade,
+and that for this reason ploughmen declined. But if we have shown cause
+for doubting whether agriculture declined, or only did not increase,
+then we are at liberty to infer that ploughmen did not decline, but only
+did not increase. Even of the real and not imaginary ploughmen at any
+time possessed by Italy, too many in the south were slaves, and
+therefore ineligible for the legionary service, except in desperate
+intestine struggles like the Social war or the Servile. Rome could not
+lose for her recruiting service any ploughmen but those whom she had
+really possessed; nor out of those whom really she possessed any that
+were slaves; nor out of those whom (not being slaves) she _might_ have
+used for soldiers could it be said that she was liable to any absolute
+loss except as to those whom ordinarily she _did_ use as soldiers, and
+preferred to use in circumstances of free choice.
+
+These points premised, we go on to say that no craze current amongst
+learned men has more deeply disturbed the truth of history than the
+notion that 'Marsi' and 'Peligni,' or other big-boned Italian rustics,
+ever by choice constituted the general or even the favourite recruiting
+fund of the Roman republic. In thousands of books we have seen it
+asserted or assumed that the Romans triumphed so extensively chiefly
+because their armies were composed of Roman or kindred blood. This is
+false. Not the material, but the military system, of the Romans was the
+true key to their astonishing successes. In the time of Hannibal a Roman
+consul relied chiefly, it is true, upon Italian recruits, because he
+could seldom look for men of other blood. And it is possible enough that
+the same man, Fabius or Marcellus, if he had been sent abroad as a
+proconsul, might find his choice even then in what formerly had been his
+necessity. In some respects it is probable that the Italian rustic of
+true Italian blood was at that period the best raw material[22] easily
+procured for the legionary soldier. But circumstances altered; as the
+range of war expanded to the East it became far too costly to recruit in
+Italy; nor, if it had been less costly, could Italy have supplied the
+waste. Above all, with the advantages of the Roman military system, no
+particular physical material was required for making good soldiers. For
+these reasons it was that, after the Levant was permanently occupied by
+the Romans, where any legion had been originally stationed _there_ it
+continued to be stationed, and _there_ it was recruited, and, unless in
+some rare emergency of a critical war arising at a distance, _there_ it
+was so continually recruited, that in the lapse of a generation it
+contained hardly any Roman or Italian blood in its composition, like the
+Attic ship which had been repaired with cedar until it retained no
+fragment of its original oak. Thus, the legion stationed at Antioch
+became entirely Syrian; that stationed at Alexandria, Grecian, Jewish,
+and, in a separate sense, Alexandrine. Caesar, it is notorious, raised
+one entire legion of Gauls (distinguished by the cognizance upon the
+helmet of the _lark_, whence commonly called the legion of the
+_Alauda_). But he recruited all his legions in Gaul. In Spain the armies
+of Assanius and Petreius, who surrendered to Caesar under a convention,
+consisted chiefly of Spaniards (not _Hispanienses_, or Romans born in
+Spain, but _Hispani_, Spaniards by blood); at Pharsalia a large part of
+Caesar's army were Gauls, and of Pompey's it is well known that many even
+amongst the legions contained no Europeans at all, but (as Caesar
+seasonably reminded his army) consisted of vagabonds from every part of
+the East. From all this we argue that _S.P.Q.R._ did not depend latterly
+upon native recruiting. And, in fact, they did not need to do so; their
+system and discipline would have made good soldiers out of mop-handles,
+if (like Lucian's magical mop-handles) they could only have learned to
+march and to fill buckets with water at the word of command.
+
+We see, too, the secret power and also the secret political wisdom of
+Christianity in another instance. Those public largesses of grain,
+which, in old Rome, commenced upon principles of ambition and of
+factious encouragement to partisans, in the new Rome of Constantinople
+were propagated for ages under the novel motive of Christian charity to
+paupers. This practice has been condemned by the whole chorus of
+historians who fancy that from this cause the domestic agriculture
+languished, and that a bounty was given upon pauperism. But these are
+reveries of literary men. That particular section of rural industry
+which languished in Italy, did so by a reaction from _rent_ in the
+severe modern sense. The grain imported from Sardinia, from Africa the
+province, and from Egypt, was grown upon soils less costly, because with
+equal cost more productive. The effect upon Italy from bringing back
+any considerable portion of this provincial corn-growth[23] to her
+domestic districts would have been suddenly to develop rent upon a large
+series of evils, and to load the provincial grain as well as the
+home-grown--the cheap provincial as well as the dear home-grown--with
+the whole difference of these new costs. Neither is the policy of the
+case at all analogous to our own at the moment. In three circumstances
+it differs essentially:
+
+First, provinces are not foreigners; colonies are not enemies. An exotic
+corn-trade could not for Rome do the two great injuries which assuredly
+it would do for England; it could not transfer the machinery of opulence
+to a hostile and rival state; it could not invest a jealous competitor
+with power suddenly to cut off supplies that had grown into a necessity,
+and thus to create in one month a famine or an insurrection. Egypt had
+neither the power nor any prospect of the power to act as an independent
+state towards Rome; the transfer to Egypt of the Roman agriculture,
+supposing it to have been greater than it really was, could have
+operated but like a transfer from Norfolk to Yorkshire.
+
+Secondly, as respected Italy, the foreign grain _did not enter the same
+markets as the native_. Either one or the other would have lost its
+advantage, and the natural bounty which it enjoyed from circumstances,
+by doing so. Consequently the evils of an artificial scale, where grain
+raised under one set of circumstances fixes or modifies the price for
+grain raised under a different set of circumstances, were unknown in the
+Italian markets. But these evils by a special machinery, viz., the
+machinery of good and bad seasons, are aggravated for a modern state
+intensely, whenever she depends too much upon alien stores; and
+specifically they are aggravated by the fact that both grains _enter the
+same market_, so that the one by too high a price is encouraged
+unreasonably, the other by the same price (too low for opposite
+circumstances) is depressed ruinously as regards coming years; whence in
+the end two sets of disturbances--one set frequently from the _present_
+seasons, and a second set from the way in which these are made to act
+upon the _future_ markets.
+
+Thirdly, the Roman corn-trade did not of necessity affect her military
+service injuriously, and for this reason, that rural economy did not of
+necessity languish because agriculture languished locally; some other
+culture, as of vineyards, _oliveta_, orchards, pastures, replaced the
+declining culture of grain; if ploughmen were fewer, other labourers
+were more. It is forgotten, besides, that the decline of Italian
+agriculture, never more than local, was exceedingly gradual; for two
+hundred and fifty years before the Christian era Italy never _had_
+depended exclusively upon herself. Sardinia and Sicily, at her own
+doors, were her granaries; consequently the change never _had_ been that
+abrupt change which modern writers imagine.
+
+But let us indulge in the luxury of confirming what we have said by the
+light of contrast. Suppose the circumstances changed, suppose them
+reversed, and then all those evil consequence sought to take effect
+which in the case of Rome we have denied. Now, it happened that they
+_were_ reversed; not, indeed, for Rome, who had been herself ruined as
+metropolis of the West before the effects of a foreign corn-dependence
+could unfold themselves, but for her daughter and rival in the East.
+Early in the seventh century, near to the very crisis of the Hegira
+(which dates from the Christian year 622), Constantinople, Eastern Rome,
+suddenly became acquainted with the panic of famine. In one hour perhaps
+this change fell upon the imperial city, and, but for the imperial
+granaries, not the panic of famine, but famine itself, would have
+surprised the imperial city; for the suddenness of the calamity would
+have allowed no means of searching out or raising up a relief to it. At
+that time the greatest man who ever occupied the chair of the Eastern
+Caesars, viz., Heraclius,[24] was at the head of affairs. But the
+perplexity was such that no man could face it. On the one hand
+Constantine, the founder of this junior Rome, had settled upon the
+houses of the city a claim for a weekly _dimensum_ of grain. Upon this
+they relied; so that doubly the Government stood pledged--first, for the
+importation of corn that should be sufficient; secondly, for its
+distribution upon terms as near to those of Constantine as possible.
+But, on the other hand, Persia (the one great stationary enemy of the
+empire) had in the year 618 suddenly overrun Egypt; grain became
+deficient on the banks of the Nile--had it even been plentiful, to so
+detested an enemy it would have been denied--and thus, without a month's
+warning, the supply, which had not failed since the inauguration of the
+city in 330, ceased in one week. The people of this mighty city were
+pressed by the heaviest of afflictions. The emperor, under false
+expectations, was tempted into making engagements which he could not
+keep; the Government, at a period which otherwise and for many years to
+come was one of awful crisis, became partially insolvent; the shepherd
+was dishonoured, the flocks were ruined; and had that Persian armament
+which about ten years later laid siege to Constantinople then stood at
+her gates, the Cross would have been trampled on by the fire-worshipping
+idolater, and the barbarous Avar would have desolated the walls of the
+glorified Caesar who first saw Christ marching in the van of Roman
+armies. Such an iliad of woes would have expanded itself _seriatim_, and
+by a long procession, from the one original mischief of depending for
+daily bread upon those who might suddenly become enemies or tools of
+enemies. England! read in the distress of that great Caesar,[25] who may
+with propriety be called the earliest (as he was the most prosperous) of
+Crusaders, read in the internal struggle of his heart--too conscious
+that dishonour had settled upon his purple--read in the degradations
+which he traversed as some fiery furnace (yet not unsinged), the
+inevitable curses which await nations who sacrifice, for a momentary
+convenience of bread, sacrifice for a loaf, the charter of their
+supremacy! This is literally to fulfil the Scriptural case of selling a
+birthright for a mess of pottage.
+
+For England we may say of this case--_Transeat in exemplum!_
+
+Great Britain, on the contrary, is limited in her recruiting-grounds by
+modern political relations as respects Europe: she _has_ formed an
+excellent foreign corps long ago in the Mediterranean; a Hessian corps
+in America; an admirable Hanoverian legion during the late war. But
+circumstances too often prevent her relying (as the Romans did) on the
+perfection of her military _system_ so far as to dispense with native
+materials; except, indeed, in the East, where the Roman principle is
+carried out to the widest extent, needing only one-tenth of British by
+way of model and inspiration under circumstances of peculiar trial! In
+African stations also, in the West Indies and on the American continent
+(as in Honduras), England proceeds (though insufficiently) upon this
+fine Roman principle, making her theory, her discipline, and the network
+of her rules do the work of her own too costly hands. She, like Rome,
+finds the benefit of her fine system chiefly in the dispensation which
+it facilitates from working with any exhaustible fund of means.
+Excellent must be that workmanship which can afford to be careless about
+its materials; yet still--where naturally and essentially it must be
+said that _materiem superabat opus_, because one section of our martial
+service moves by nautical soldiers, and with respect to the other half
+because it is necessary to meet European troops by men of British
+blood--we cannot, for European purposes, look to any other districts
+than our own native _officinae_ of population. The Life Guards (1st
+regiment) and the Blues (2nd) recruit chiefly, or did so thirty years
+ago, in Yorkshire. This is a manufacturing county, though in a mode of
+manufacturing which escapes many evils of the factory system. And
+generally we are little disposed pedantically to disparage towns as
+funds of a good soldiery. Men of mighty bone and thews, sons of Anak, to
+our own certain knowledge, arise in Kendal, Wakefield, Bradford and
+Leeds; huge men, by thousands, amongst the spinners and weavers of
+Glasgow, Paisley, etc., well able to fight their way through battalions
+of clod-hoppers whose talk is of oxen. But, unless in times subject to
+special distress, it is not so easy to tempt away the weaver from his
+loom as the delver from his spade. We believe the reason to be, that the
+monotony of a rustic life is more oppressive to those who have limited
+resources than the corresponding monotony of a town life. For this
+reason, and for many others, it is certain--and perhaps (unless we get
+to fighting with steam-men) it will continue to be certain through
+centuries--that, for the main staple of her armies and her navies,
+England must depend upon the quality of her bold peasantry and noble
+yeomanry; for we must remember that, of those huge-limbed men who are
+found in the six northern counties of England and in the Scottish
+Lowlands, of those elegantly-formed men who are found in Devonshire,
+Cornwall, etc., of those _hardy_ men (a feature in human physics still
+more important) who are found in every district--if many are now
+resident in towns, most of them originated in rustic life; and from
+rustic life it is that the reservoir of towns is permanently fed. Rome
+was, England never will be, independent of her rural population. Rome
+never had a yeomanry, Rome never had a race of country gentlemen;
+England has both upon a scale so truly noble that it will be the
+simplest expression of that nobility to say, pointing to our villages,
+'Behold the cradle of our army!' as inversely to say, pointing to that
+army: 'Behold the manhood of our villages!' As regards Rome, from the
+bisection of the Roman territory into two several corn districts
+depending upon a separate agriculture, it results that _her_ wealth
+could not be defeated and transferred; secondly, it results from the
+total subjection of Egypt, that no embargo _could_ be laid on the
+harvests of the Nile, and no famine _could_ be organized against Rome;
+thirdly, it results that the Roman military system was thus not liable
+to be affected by any dependency upon foreign grain. On the argument
+that this dependency had _always_ been proceeding gradually in Italy, so
+as virtually to reimburse itself by _vicarious_ culture, whereas in
+England the transition from independency to dependency, being
+accomplished (if at all) in one day by Act of Parliament, would be
+ruinously abrupt; and also on the argument _B_, that Rome, if slowly
+losing any recruiting districts at home, found compensatory districts
+all round the Mediterranean, whilst England could find no such
+compensatory districts--we deny that the circumstances of the Roman corn
+trade have _ever_ been stated truly; and we expect the thanks of our
+readers for drawing their attention to this outline of the points which
+essentially differenced it from the modern corn trade of England.
+England must, but Rome could _not_, reap from a foreign corn dependency:
+firstly, ruinous disturbance to the natural expansions of her wealth;
+secondly, famine by intervals for her vast population; thirdly,
+impoverishment to her recruiting service. These are the dreadful evils
+(some uniform, some contingent) which England would inherit of her
+native agriculture, but which Rome escaped under that partial transfer,
+never really accomplished. Meantime, let the reader remember that it is
+Rome, and not England--Rome historically, not England politically--which
+forms the _object_ of our exposure. England is but the _means_ of the
+illustration.
+
+In our own days wars in their ebbs and flows are but another name for
+the resources of the national exchequer, or expressions of its
+artificial facilities for turning those resources to account. The great
+artifice of anticipation applied to national income--an artifice sure to
+follow where civilization has expanded, and which would have arisen to
+Rome had her civilization been either (_A_) completely developed, or
+(_B_) expanded originally from a true radix--has introduced a new era
+into national history. The man who, having had property, invests in the
+Funds, and divides between his grandchildren and the five subsequent
+generations what will yield them subsistence, is the author of an
+expansive improvement which has been enjoyed by all in turn, and with
+more fixed assurance in the last case than in the first. He is a public
+benefactor in more ways than appears on the surface: he takes the most
+efficient guarantees against needless wars.
+
+Captain Jenkins's ears[26] might have been redeemed at a less price; but
+still the war taught a lesson, which, if avoidable at that instant, was
+certainly blamable; but it had its use in enforcing on other nations the
+conviction that England washed out insult with retribution, and for
+every drop of blood wantonly spilt demanded an ocean in return. Perhaps
+you will say _this_ was no great improvement on the old. No; not in
+_appearance_, it may be; but that was because war had to open a field
+which mere diplomacy, unsupported by the sword, could not open, and
+secured what we may well call a _moral_ result in the eye of the whole
+world, which diplomacy could not secure in our guilty Europe. But was
+that, you ask, a condition to be contemplated with complete
+satisfaction? No; nor is it right that it should. But the dawn of a new
+era is approaching, for which that may have done its installment of
+preparation. Not that war will cease for many generations, but that it
+will continually move more in greater subjection to national laws and
+Christian opinion. Nevermore will it be excited by mere court intrigue,
+or even by ministerial necessities. No more will a quarrel between two
+ladies about a pair of gloves, or a fit of ill-temper in a prince toward
+his minister, call forth the dread scourge by way of letting off
+personal irritation or redressing the balance of parties.
+
+_Funding_, therefore, was a great step in advance; and even already we
+have only to look into the Exchequer in order to read the possibilities,
+the ebbs and flows of war beforehand. This consideration of money, it is
+true--even as the sinews of war--was not so great in ancient history.
+And the reason is evident. Kings did not then go to war _by_ money, but
+_for_ money. They did not look into the Exchequer for the means of a
+campaign, but they looked into a campaign for the means of an Exchequer.
+Yet even in these nations, more of their history, of their doings and
+sufferings, lay in their economy than anywhere else. The great Oriental
+phantoms, such as the Pharaohs and the Sargons, did, it is true, bring
+nations to war without much more care for the commissariat department
+than is given in the battles of the Kites and Daws. Yet even there the
+political economy made itself felt, obscurely and indirectly it may be,
+but really and effectively, acting by laws that varied their force
+rather to the eye than to the understanding, and presented indeed a
+final restraining force to these kings also. For examine these wars,
+fabulous as they are; look into the when, the whence, the how; into the
+duration of the campaigns, into their objects, and into the quality of
+the troops, into the circumstances under which they were trained and
+fought, and this will abundantly appear.
+
+Certainly, the commissariat which we do by foresight, they did by brute
+efforts of power; but the leading economical laws which are now clear to
+us, and which, with full perception of their inevitable operation, we
+take into account, made themselves felt in the last result if only then
+blindly realized; and in the fact that these laws are now clearly
+apprehended lies the prevailing reason that modern wars must, on the
+side alike of the commissariat and of social effects in various
+directions, be widely different from war in ancient times.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[21] One pretended proof of a decline is found in the supposed
+substitution of slave labour for free Italian labour. This began, it is
+urged, on the opening of the Nile corn trade. Unfortunately, that is a
+mere romance. Ovid, describing rural appearances in Italy when as yet
+the trade was hardly in its infancy, speaks of the rustic labourer as
+working in fetters. Juvenal, in an age when the trade had been vastly
+expanded, notices the same phenomenon almost in the same terms.
+
+[22] 'The best raw material.' Some people hold that the Romans and
+Italians were a cowardly nation. We doubt this on the whole. Physically,
+however, they were inferior to their neighbours. It is certain that the
+Transalpine Gauls were a conspicuously taller race. Caesar says: 'Gallis,
+prae magnitudine corporum quorum, brevitas nostra contemptui est' ('Bell.
+Gall.' 2, 30 _fin_.); and the Germans, in a still higher degree, were
+both larger men and every way more powerful. The kites, says Juvenal,
+had never feasted on carcases so huge as those of the Cimbri and
+Teutones. But this physical superiority, though great for special
+purposes, was not such absolutely. For the more general uses of the
+legionary soldier, for marching, for castrametation, and the daily
+labours of the spade or mattock, a lighter build was better. As to
+single combats, it was one effect from the Roman (as from every good)
+discipline--that it diminished the openings for such showy but perilous
+modes of contest.
+
+[23] '_Any considerable portion of this provincial corn growth,' i.e._,
+of the provincial culture which was pursued on account of Rome, meaning
+not the government of Rome, but, in a rigorous sense, on account of Rome
+the city. For here lies a great oversight of historians and economists.
+Because Rome, with a view to her own _privileged_ population, _i.e._,
+the urban population of Rome, the metropolis, in order that she might
+support her public distributions of grain, almost of necessity depended
+on foreign supplies, _we are not to suppose that the great mass of
+Italian towns and municipia did so_. Maritime towns, having the benefit
+of ports or of convenient access, undoubtedly were participators in the
+Roman advantage. But inland towns would in those days have forfeited the
+whole difference between foreign and domestic grain by the enormous cost
+of inland carriage. Of canals there was but one; the rivers were not
+generally navigable, and ports as well as river shipping were wanting.
+
+[24] '_Heraclius._' The same prosodial fault affects this name as that
+of _Alexandria_. In each name the Latin _i_ represents a Greek _ei_, and
+in that situation (viz., as a penultimate syllable) should receive the
+emphasis in pronunciation as well as the sound of a long _i_ (that sound
+which is heard in Long_i_nus). So again Academ_i_a, not Acad_e_mia. The
+Greek accentuation may be doubted, but not the Roman.
+
+[25] We have already said that Heraclius, who and whose family filled
+the throne of Eastern Caesar for exactly one hundred years (611-711),
+consequently interesting in this way (if in no other), that he, as the
+reader will see by considering the limits in point of time, must have
+met and exhausted the first rage of the Mahometan _avalanche_, merits
+according to our estimate the title of first and noblest amongst the
+Oriental Caesars. There are records or traditions of his earliest acts
+that we could wish otherwise. Which of us would _not_ offend even at
+this day, if called upon to act under one scale of sympathies, and to be
+judged under another? In his own day, too painfully we say it, Heraclius
+could not have followed what we venture to believe the suggestions of
+his heart, in relation to his predecessor, because a policy had been
+established which made it dangerous to be merciful, and a state of
+public feeling which made it effeminate to pardon. First make it safe to
+permit a man's life, before you pronounce it ignoble to authorize his
+death. Strip mercy of ruin to its author, before you affirm upon a
+judicial punishment of death (as then it was) cruelty in the adviser or
+ignobility in the approver. Escaping from these painful scenes at the
+threshold of his public life, we find Heraclius preparing for a war, the
+most difficult that in any age any hero has confronted. We call him the
+earliest of Crusaders, because he first and _literally_ fought for the
+recovery of the Cross. We call him the most prosperous of Crusaders,
+because he first--he last--succeeded in all that he sought, bringing
+back to Syria (ultimately to Constantinople) that sublime symbol of
+victorious Christianity which had been disgracefully lost at Jerusalem.
+Yet why, when comparing him not with Crusaders, but with Caesars, do we
+pronounce him the noblest? Reader, which is it that is felt by a
+thoughtful man--supposing him called upon to select one act by
+preference before all others--to be the grandest act of our own
+Wellesley? Is it not the sagacious preparation of the lines at Torres
+Vedras, the self-mastery which lured the French on to their ruin, the
+long-suffering policy which reined up his troops till that ruin was
+accomplished? '_I bide my time_,' was the dreadful watchword of
+Wellington through that great drama; in which, let us tell the French
+critics on Tragedy, they will find _the most_ absolute unity of plot;
+for the forming of the lines as the fatal noose, the wiling back the
+enemy, the pursuit when the work of disorganization was perfect, all
+were parts of one and the same drama. If he (as another Scipio) saw
+another Zama, in this instance he was not our Scipio or Marcellus, but
+our Fabius Maximus:
+
+'Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem.'--'Ann.' 8, 27.
+
+Now, such was the Emperor Heraclius. He also had his avenging Zama. But,
+during a memorable interval of eleven years, he held back; fiercely
+reined up his wrath; brooded; smiled often balefully; watched in his
+lair; and then, when the hour had struck, let slip his armies and his
+thunderbolts as no Caesar had ever done, except that one who founded the
+name of Caesar.
+
+[26] A brutal outrage on a Captain Jenkins--i.e., cutting off his
+ears--was the cause of a war with Spain in the reign of George II.--ED.
+
+
+
+
+_XVIII. NATIONAL MANNERS AND FALSE JUDGMENT OF THEM._
+
+
+Anecdotes illustrative of manners, above all of national manners, will
+be found on examination, in a far larger proportion than might be
+supposed, rank falsehoods. Malice is the secret foundation of all
+anecdotes in that class. The ordinary course of such falsehoods is, that
+first of all some stranger and alien to those feelings which have
+prompted a particular usage--incapable, therefore, of entering fully
+into its spirit or meaning--tries to exhibit its absurdity more forcibly
+by pushing it into an extreme or trying case. Coming himself from some
+gross form of _Kleinstaedtigkeit_, where no restraints of decorum exist,
+and where everybody speaks to everybody, he has been utterly confounded
+by the English ceremony of 'introduction,' when enforced as the _sine
+qua non_ condition of personal intercourse. If England is right, then
+how clownishly wrong must have been his own previous circles! If England
+is not ridiculously fastidious, then how bestially grovelling must be
+the spirit of social intercourse in his own land! But no man reconciles
+himself to this view of things in a moment. He kicks even against his
+own secret convictions. He blushes with shame and anger at the thought
+of his own family perhaps brought suddenly into collision with polished
+Englishmen; he thrills with wrath at the recollection of having himself
+trespassed upon this code of restriction at a time when he was yet
+unwarned of its existence. In this temper he is little qualified to
+review such a regulation with reason and good sense. He seeks to make it
+appear ridiculous. He presses it into violent cases for which it was
+never intended. He supposes a case where some fellow-creature is
+drowning. How would an Englishman act, how _could_ he act, even under
+such circumstances as these? _We_ know, we who are blinded by no spite,
+that as a bar to personal communication or to any interchange of good
+offices under appeals so forcible as these, this law of formal
+presentation between the parties never did and never will operate. The
+whole motive to such a law gives way at once.
+
+
+
+
+_XIX. INCREASED POSSIBILITIES OF SYMPATHY IN THE PRESENT AGE._
+
+
+Some years ago I had occasion to remark that a new era was coming on by
+hasty strides for national politics, a new organ was maturing itself for
+public effects. Sympathy--how great a power is that! Conscious
+sympathy--how immeasurable! Now, for the total development of this
+power, _time_ is the most critical of elements. Thirty years ago, when
+the Edinburgh mail took ninety-six hours in its transit from London, how
+slow was the reaction of the Scottish capital upon the English! Eight
+days for the _diaulos_[27] of the journey, and two, suppose, for getting
+up a public meeting, composed a cycle of _ten_ before an act received
+its commentary, before a speech received its refutation, or an appeal
+its damnatory answer. What was the consequence? The sound was
+disconnected from its echo, the kick was severed from the
+recalcitration, the '_Take you this!_' was unlinked from the '_And take
+you that!_' Vengeance was defeated, and sympathy dissolved into the air.
+But now mark the difference. A meeting on Monday in Liverpool is by
+possibility reported in the London _Standard_ of Monday evening. On
+Tuesday, the splendid merchant, suppose his name were Thomas Sands, who
+had just sent a vibration through all the pulses of Liverpool, of
+Manchester, of Warrington, sees this great rolling fire (which hardly
+yet has reached his own outlying neighbourhoods) taken up afar off,
+redoubled, multiplied, peal after peal, through the vast artilleries of
+London. Back comes rolling upon him the smoke and the thunder--the
+defiance to the slanderer and the warning to the offender--groans that
+have been extorted from wounded honour, aspirations rising from the
+fervent heart--truth that had been hidden, wisdom that challenged
+co-operation.
+
+And thus it is that all the nation, thus 'all that mighty heart,'
+through nine hundred miles of space, from Sutherlandshire by London to
+the myrtle climate of Cornwall, has become and is ever more becoming one
+infinite harp, swept by the same breeze of sentiment, reverberating the
+same sympathies
+
+    'Here, there, and in all places at one time.'[28]
+
+Time, therefore, that ancient enemy of man and his frail purposes, how
+potent an ally has it become in combination with great mechanic changes!
+Many an imperfect hemisphere of thought, action, desire, that could not
+heretofore unite with its corresponding hemisphere, because separated by
+ten or fourteen days of suspense, now moves electrically to its
+integration, hurries to its complement, realizes its orbicular
+perfection, spherical completion, through that simple series of
+improvements which to man have given the wings and _talaria_ of Gods,
+for the heralds have dimly suggested a future rivalship with the
+velocities of light, and even now have inaugurated a race between the
+child of mortality and the North Wind.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[27] 'The _diaulos_ of the journey.' We recommend to the amateur in
+words this Greek phrase, which expresses by one word an egress linked
+with its corresponding regress, which indicates at once the voyage
+outwards and the voyage inwards, as the briefest of expressions for what
+is technically called '_course of post,' i.e._, the reciprocation of
+post, its systole and diastole.
+
+[28] Wordsworth.
+
+
+
+
+_XX. THE PRINCIPLE OF EVIL._
+
+
+We are not to suppose the rebel, or, more properly, corrupted
+angels--the rebellion being in the result, not in the intention (which
+is as little conceivable in an exalted spirit as that man should prepare
+to make war on gravitation)--were essentially evil. Whether a principle
+of evil--essential evil--anywhere exists can only be guessed. So gloomy
+an idea is shut up from man. Yet, if so, possibly the angels and man
+were nearing it continually.
+
+Possibly after a certain approach to that Maelstrom recall might be
+hopeless. Possibly many anchors had been thrown out to pick up, had
+all dragged, and last of all came to the Jewish trial. (Of course,
+under the Pagan absence of sin, _a fall was impossible_. A return was
+impossible, in the sense that you cannot return to a place which you
+have never left. Have I ever noticed this?) We are not to suppose that
+the angels were really in a state of rebellion. So far from that, it
+was evidently amongst the purposes of God that what are called false
+Gods, and are so in the ultimate sense of resting on tainted
+principles and tending to ruin--perhaps irretrievable (though it would
+be the same thing practically if no restoration were possible but
+through vast aeons of unhappy incarnations)--but otherwise were as
+real as anything can be into whose nature a germ of evil has entered,
+should effect a secondary ministration of the last importance to man's
+welfare. Doubt there can be little that without any religion, any
+sense of dependency, or gratitude, or reverence as to superior
+natures, man would rapidly have deteriorated; and that would have
+tended to such destruction of all nobler principles--patriotism
+(strong in the old world as with us), humanity, ties of parentage or
+neighbourhood--as would soon have thinned the world; so that the
+Jewish process thus going on must have failed for want of
+correspondencies to the scheme--possibly endless oscillations which,
+however coincident with plagues, would extirpate the human race. We
+may see in manufacturing neighbourhoods, so long as no dependency
+exists on masters, where wages show that not work, but workmen, are
+scarce, how unamiable, insolent, fierce, are the people; the poor
+cottagers on a great estate may sometimes offend you by too obsequious
+a spirit towards all gentry. That was a transition state in England
+during the first half of the eighteenth century, when few
+manufacturers and merchants had risen to such a generous model. But
+this leaves room for many domestic virtues that would suffer greatly
+in the other state. Yet this is but a faint image of the total
+independency. Oaths were sacred only through the temporal judgments
+supposed to overtake those who insulted the Gods by summoning them to
+witness a false contract. But this would have been only part of the
+evil. So long as men acknowledged higher natures, they were doubtful
+about futurity. This doubt had little strength on the side of hope,
+but much on the side of fear. The blessings of any future state were
+cheerless and insipid mockeries; so Achilles--how he bemoans his
+state! But the torments were real. By far more, however, they,
+through this coarse agency of syllogistic dread, would act to show man
+the degradation of his nature when all light of a higher existence had
+disappeared. That which did not exist for natures supposed capable
+originally of immortality, how should it exist for him? And that man
+must have observed with little attention what takes place in this
+world if he needs to be told that nothing tends to make his own
+species cheap and hateful in his eyes so certainly as moral
+degradation driven to a point of no hope. So in squalid dungeons, in
+captivities of slaves, nay, in absolute pauperism, all hate each other
+fiercely. Even with us, how sad is the thought--that, just as a man
+needs pity, as he is stript of all things, when most the sympathy of
+men should settle on him, then most is he contemplated with a
+hard-hearted contempt! The Jews when injured by our own oppressive
+princes were despised and hated. Had they raised an empire, licked
+their oppressors well, they would have been compassionately loved. So
+lunatics heretofore; so galley-slaves--Toulon, Marseilles, etc. This
+brutal principle of degradation soon developed in man. The Gods,
+therefore, performed a great agency for man. And it is clear that God
+did not discourage _common_ rites or rights for His altar or theirs.
+Nay, he sent Israel to Egypt--as one reason--to learn ceremonies
+amongst a people who sequestered them. In evil the Jews always clove
+to their religion. Next the difficulty of people, miracles, though
+less for false Gods, and least of all for the meanest, was _alike_ for
+both. Astarte does not kill Sayth on the spot, but by a judgment.
+Gods, no more their God, spake an instant law. Even the prophets are
+properly no prophets, but only the mode of speech by God,--as clear as
+He _can_ speak. Men mistake God's hate by their own. So neither could
+He reveal Himself. A vast age would be required for seeing God.
+
+But for the thought of man as evil (or of any other form of evil), as
+reconcilable with their idea of a perfect God, a happy idea may, like
+the categories, proceed upon a necessity for a perfect _inversion_ of
+the _methodus conspiciendi_. Let us retrace, but in such a form as to be
+apprehensible by all readers. Analytic and synthetic propositions at
+once throw light upon the notion of a category. Once it had been a mere
+abstraction; of no possible use except as a convenient cell for
+referring (as in a nest of boxes), which may perhaps as much degrade the
+idea as a relative of my own degraded the image of the crescent moon by
+saying, in his abhorrence of sentimentality, that it reminded him of the
+segment from his own thumb-nail when clean cut by an instrument called a
+nail-cutter. This was the Aristotelian notion. But Kant could not
+content himself with this idea. His own theory (1) as to time and space,
+(2) the refutation of Hume's notion of cause, and (3) his own great
+discovery of synthetic and analytic propositions, all prepared the way
+for a totally new view. But, now, what is the origin of this necessity
+applied to the category as founded in the synthesis? How does a
+synthesis make itself or anything else necessary? Explain me that.
+
+This was written perhaps a fortnight ago. Now, Monday, May 23 (day fixed
+for Dan Good's execution), I _do_ explain it by what this moment I seem
+to have discovered--the necessity of cause, of substance, etc., lies in
+the intervening synthesis. This you _must_ pass through in the course
+tending to and finally reaching the idea; for the analytical presupposes
+this synthesis.
+
+Not only must the energies of destruction be equal to those of creation,
+but, in fact, perhaps by the trespassing a little of the first upon the
+last, is the true advance sustained; for it must be an advance as well
+as a balance. But you say this will but in other words mean that forces
+devoted (and properly so) to production or creation are absorbed by
+destruction. True; but the opposing phenomena will be going on in a
+large ratio, and each must react on the other. The productive must meet
+and correspond to the destructive. The destructive must revise and
+stimulate the continued production.
+
+
+
+
+_XXI. ON MIRACLES._
+
+
+What else is the laying of such a stress on miracles but the case of 'a
+wicked and adulterous generation asking a sign'?
+
+But what are these miracles for? To prove a legislation from God. But,
+first, this could not be proved, even if miracle-working were the test
+of Divine mission, by doing miracles until we knew whether the power
+were genuine; _i.e._, not, like the magicians of Pharaoh or the witch of
+Endor, from below. Secondly, you are a poor, pitiful creature, that
+think the power to do miracles, or power of any kind that can exhibit
+itself in an act, the note of a god-like commission. Better is one ray
+of truth (not seen previously by man), of _moral_ truth, _e.g._,
+forgiveness of enemies, than all the powers which could create the
+world.
+
+'Oh yes!' says the objector; 'but Christ was holy as a man.' This we
+know first; then we judge by His power that He must have been from God.
+But if it were doubtful whether His power were from God, then, until
+this doubt is _otherwise_, is independently removed, you cannot decide
+if He _was_ holy by a test of holiness absolutely irrelevant. With other
+holiness--apparent holiness--a simulation might be combined. You can
+never tell that a man is holy; and for the plain reason that God only
+can read the heart.
+
+'Let Him come down from the cross, and we,' etc. Yes; they fancied so.
+But see what would really have followed. They would have been stunned
+and confounded for the moment, but not at all converted in heart. Their
+hatred to Christ was not built on their unbelief, but their unbelief in
+Christ was built on their hatred; and this hatred would not have been
+mitigated by another (however astounding) miracle. This I wrote (Monday
+morning, June 7, 1847) in reference to my saying on the general question
+of miracles: Why these _dubious_ miracles?--such as curing blindness
+that may have been cured by a _process_?--since the _unity_ given to the
+act of healing is probably (more probably than otherwise) but the
+figurative unity of the tendency to _mythus_; or else it is that unity
+misapprehended and mistranslated by the reporters. Such, again, as the
+miracles of the loaves--so liable to be utterly gossip, so incapable of
+being watched or examined amongst a crowd of 7,000 people. Besides, were
+these people mad? The very fact which is said to have drawn Christ's
+pity, viz., their situation in the desert, surely could not have escaped
+their own attention on going thither. Think of 7,000 people rushing to a
+sort of destruction; for if less than that the mere inconvenience was
+not worthy of Divine attention. Now, said I, why not give us (if
+miracles _are_ required) one that nobody could doubt--removing a
+mountain, _e.g._? Yes; but here the other party begin to _see_ the evil
+of miracles. Oh, this would have _coerced_ people into believing! Rest
+you safe as to that. It would have been no believing in any proper
+sense: it would, at the utmost--and supposing no vital demur to popular
+miracle--have led people into that belief which Christ Himself describes
+(and regrets) as calling Him Lord! Lord! The pretended belief would have
+left them just where they were as to any real belief in Christ.
+Previously, however, or over and above all this, there would be the
+demur (let the miracle have been what it might) of, By what power, by
+whose agency or help? For if Christ does a miracle, probably He may do
+it by alliance with some _Z_ standing behind, out of sight. Or if by His
+own skill, how or whence derived, or of what nature? This obstinately
+recurrent question remains.
+
+There is not the meanest court in Christendom or Islam that would not
+say, if called on to adjudicate the rights of an estate on such evidence
+as the mere facts of the Gospel: 'O good God, how can we do this? Which
+of us knows who this Matthew was--whether he ever lived, or, if so,
+whether he ever wrote a line of all this? or, if he did, how situated as
+to motives, as to means of information, as to judgment and
+discrimination? Who knows anything of the contrivances or the various
+personal interests in which the whole narrative originated, or when? All
+is dark and dusty.' Nothing in such a case _can_ be proved but what
+shines by its own light. Nay, God Himself could not attest a miracle,
+but (listen to this!)--but by the internal revelation or visiting of the
+Spirit--to evade which, to dispense with which, a miracle is ever
+resorted to.
+
+Besides the objection to miracles that they are not capable of
+attestation, Hume's objection is not that they are false, but that they
+are incommunicable. Two different duties arise for the man who witnesses
+a miracle and for him who receives traditionally. The duty of the first
+is to confide in his own experience, which may, besides, have been
+repeated; of the second, to confide in his understanding, which says:
+'Less marvel that the reporter should have erred than that nature should
+have been violated.'
+
+How dearly do these people betray their own hypocrisy about the divinity
+of Christianity, and at the same time the meanness of their own natures,
+who think the Messiah, or God's Messenger, must first prove His own
+commission by an act of power; whereas (1) a new revelation of moral
+forces could not be invented by all generations, and (2) an act of power
+much more probably argues an alliance with the devil. I should gloomily
+suspect a man who came forward as a magician.
+
+Suppose the Gospels written thirty years after the events, and by
+ignorant, superstitious men who have adopted the fables that old women
+had surrounded Christ with--how does this supposition vitiate the report
+of Christ's parables? But, on the other hand, they could no more have
+invented the parables than a man alleging a diamond-mine could invent a
+diamond as attestation. The parables prove themselves.
+
+
+
+
+_XXII. 'LET HIM COME DOWN FROM THE CROSS.'_
+
+
+Now, this is exceedingly well worth consideration. I know not at all
+whether what I am going to say has been said already--life would not
+suffice in every field or section of a field to search every nook and
+section of a nook for the possibilities of chance utterance given to any
+stray opinion. But this I know without any doubt at all, that it cannot
+have been said effectually, cannot have been so said as to publish and
+disperse itself; else it is impossible that the crazy logic current upon
+these topics should have lived, or that many separate arguments should
+ever for very shame have been uttered. Said or not said, let us presume
+it unsaid, and let me state the true answer as if _de novo_, even if by
+accident somewhere the darkness shelters this same answer as uttered
+long ago.
+
+Now, therefore, I will suppose that He _had_ come down from the Cross.
+No case can so powerfully illustrate the filthy falsehood and pollution
+of that idea which men generally entertain, which the sole creditable
+books universally build upon. What would have followed? This would have
+followed: that, inverting the order of every true emanation from God,
+instead of growing and expanding for ever like a [symbol: <], it would
+have attained its _maximum_ at the first. The effect for the half-hour
+would have been prodigious, and from that moment when it began to flag
+it would degrade rapidly, until, in three days, a far fiercer hatred
+against Christ would have been moulded. For observe: into what state of
+mind would this marvel have been received? Into any good-will towards
+Christ, which previously had been defeated by the belief that He was an
+impostor in the sense that He pretended to a power of miracles which in
+fact He had not? By no means. The sense in which Christ had been an
+impostor for them was in assuming a commission, a spiritual embassy with
+appropriate functions, promises, prospects, to which He had no title.
+How had that notion--not, viz., of miraculous impostorship, but of
+spiritual impostorship--been able to maintain itself? Why, what should
+have reasonably destroyed the notion? This, viz., the sublimity of His
+moral system. But does the reader imagine that this sublimity is of a
+nature to be seen intellectually--that is, insulated and _in vacuo_ for
+the intellect? No more than by geometry or by a _sorites_ any man
+constitutionally imperfect could come to understand the nature of the
+sexual appetite; or a man born deaf could make representable to himself
+the living truth of music, a man born blind could make representable the
+living truth of colours. All men are not equally deaf in heart--far from
+it--the differences are infinite, and some men never could comprehend
+the beauty of spiritual truth. But no man could comprehend it without
+preparation. That preparation was found in his training of Judaism;
+which to those whose hearts were hearts of flesh, not stony and charmed
+against hearing, had already anticipated the first outlines of Christian
+ideas. Sin, purity, holiness unimaginable, these had already been
+inoculated into the Jewish mind. And amongst the race inoculated Christ
+found enough for a central nucleus to His future Church. But the natural
+tendency under the fever-mist of strife and passion, evoked by the
+present position in the world operating upon robust, full-blooded life,
+unshaken by grief or tenderness of nature, or constitutional sadness, is
+to fail altogether of seeing the features which so powerfully mark
+Christianity. Those features, instead of coming out into strong relief,
+resemble what we see in mountainous regions where the mist covers the
+loftiest peaks.
+
+We have heard of a man saying: 'Give me such titles of honour, so many
+myriads of pounds, and then I will consider your proposal that I should
+turn Christian.' Now, survey--pause for one moment to survey--the
+immeasurable effrontery of this speech. First, it replies to a proposal
+having what object--our happiness or his? Why, of course, his: how are
+we interested, except on a sublime principle of benevolence, in his
+faith being right? Secondly, it is a reply presuming money, the most
+fleshly of objects, to modify or any way control religion, _i.e._, a
+spiritual concern. This in itself is already monstrous, and pretty much
+the same as it would be to order a charge of bayonets against
+gravitation, or against an avalanche, or against an earthquake, or
+against a deluge. But, suppose it were _not_ so, what incomprehensible
+reasoning justifies the notion that not we are to be paid, but that he
+is to be paid for a change not concerning or affecting our happiness,
+but his?
+
+
+
+
+_XXIII. IS THE HUMAN RACE ON THE DOWN GRADE?_
+
+
+As to individual nations, it is matter of notoriety that they are often
+improgressive. As a whole, it may be true that the human race is under a
+necessity of slowly advancing; and it may be a necessity, also, that the
+current of the moving waters should finally absorb into its motion that
+part of the waters which, left to itself, would stagnate. All this may
+be true--and yet it will not follow that the human race must be moving
+constantly upon an ascending line, as thus:
+
+                           B
+                          /
+                         /
+                        /
+                       /
+                      /
+                     /
+                    A
+
+nor even upon such a line, with continual pauses or rests interposed, as
+thus:
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+where there is no going back, though a constant interruption to the
+going forward; but a third hypothesis is possible: there may be
+continual loss of ground, yet so that continually the loss is more than
+compensated, and the total result, for any considerable period of
+observation, may be that progress is maintained:
+
+[Illustration]
+
+At O, by comparison with the previous elevation at A, there is a
+repeated falling back; but still upon the whole, and pursuing the
+inquiry through a sufficiently large segment of time, the constant
+report is--ascent.
+
+Upon this explanation it is perfectly consistent with a general belief
+in the going forward of man--that this particular age in which we live
+might be stationary, or might even have gone back. It cannot, therefore,
+be upon any _a priori_ principle that I maintain the superiority of this
+age. It is, and must be upon special examination, applied to the
+phenomena of this special age. The last century, in its first thirty
+years, offered the spectacle of a death-like collapse in the national
+energies. All great interests suffered together. The intellectual power
+of the country, spite of the brilliant display in a lower element, made
+by one or two men of genius, languished as a whole. The religious
+feeling was torpid, and in a degree which insured the strong reaction of
+some irritating galvanism, or quickening impulse such as that which was
+in fact supplied by Methodism. It is not with that age that I wish to
+compare the present. I compare it with the age which terminated thirty
+years ago--roused, invigorated, searched as that age was through all its
+sensibilities by the electric shock of the French Revolution. It is by
+comparison with an age so keenly alive, penetrated by ideas stirring and
+uprooting, that I would compare it; and even then the balance of gain in
+well-calculated resource, fixed yet stimulating ideals, I hold to be in
+our favour--and this in opposition to much argument in an adverse spirit
+from many and influential quarters. Indeed, it is a remark which more
+than once I have been led to make in print: that if a foreigner were to
+inquire for the moral philosophy, the ethics, and even for the
+metaphysics, of our English literature, the answer would be, 'Look for
+them in the great body of our Divinity.' Not merely the more scholastic
+works on theology, but the occasional sermons of our English divines
+contain a body of richer philosophical speculation than is elsewhere to
+be found; and, to say the truth, far more instructive than anything in
+our Lockes, Berkeleys, or other express and professional philosophers.
+Having said this by way of showing that I do not overlook their just
+pretensions, let me have leave to notice a foible in these writers which
+is not merely somewhat ludicrous, but even seriously injurious to
+truth. One and all, through a long series of two hundred and fifty
+years, think themselves called upon to tax their countrymen--each
+severally in his own age--with a separate, peculiar, and unexampled
+guilt of infidelity and irreligion. Each worthy man, in his turn, sees
+in his own age overt signs of these offences not to be matched in any
+other. Five-and-twenty periods of ten years each may be taken,
+concerning each of which some excellent writer may be cited to prove
+that it had reached a maximum of atrocity, such as should not easily
+have been susceptible of aggravation, but which invariably the _relays_
+through all the subsequent periods affirm their own contemporaries to
+have attained. Every decennium is regularly worse than that which
+precedes it, until the mind is perfectly confounded by the _Pelion upon
+Ossa_ which must overwhelm the last term of the twenty-five. It is the
+mere necessity of a logical _sorites_, that such a horrible race of
+villains as the men of the twenty-fifth decennium ought not to be
+suffered to breathe. Now, the whole error arises out of an imbecile
+self-surrender to the first impressions from the process of abstraction
+as applied to remote objects. Survey a town under the benefit of a ten
+miles' distance, combined with a dreamy sunshine, and it will appear a
+city of celestial palaces. Enter it, and you will find the same filth,
+the same ruins, the same disproportions as anywhere else. So of past
+ages, seen through the haze of an abstraction which removes all
+circumstantial features of deformity. Call up any one of those ages, if
+it were possible, into the realities of life, and these worthy praisers
+of the past would be surprised to find every feature repeated which they
+had fancied peculiar to their own times. Meanwhile this erroneous
+doctrine of sermons has a double ill consequence: first, the whole
+chain of twenty-five writers, when brought together, consecutively
+reflect a colouring of absurdity upon each other; separately they might
+be endurable, but all at once, predicating (each of his own period
+exclusively) what runs with a rolling fire through twenty-five such
+periods in succession, cannot but recall to the reader that senseless
+doctrine of a physical decay in man, as if man were once stronger,
+broader, taller, etc.--upon which hypothesis of a gradual descent why
+should it have stopped at any special point? How could the human race
+have failed long ago to reach the point of _zero_? But, secondly, such a
+doctrine is most injurious and insulting to Christianity. If, after
+eighteen hundred years of development, it could be seriously true of
+Christianity that it had left any age or generation of men worse in
+conduct, or in feeling, or in belief, than all their predecessors, what
+reasonable expectation could we have that in eighteen hundred years more
+the case would be better? Such thoughtless opinions make Christianity to
+be a failure.
+
+
+
+
+_XXIV. BREVIA: SHORT ESSAYS (IN CONNECTION WITH EACH OTHER.)_
+
+
+1.--PAGANISM AND CHRISTIANITY--THE IDEAS OF DUTY AND HOLINESS.
+
+The Pagan God could have perfect peace with his votary, and yet could
+have no tendency to draw that votary to himself. Not so with the God of
+Christianity, who cannot give His peace without drawing like a vortex to
+Himself, who cannot draw into His own vortex without finding His peace
+fulfilled.
+
+'An age when lustre too intense.'--I am much mistaken if Mr. Wordsworth
+is not deeply wrong here. Wrong he is beyond a doubt as to the _fact_;
+for there could have been no virtual intensity of lustre (unless merely
+as a tinsel toy) when it was contradicted by everything in the
+_manners_, _habits_, and situations of the Pagan Gods--they who were
+content to play in the coarsest manner the part of gay young bloods,
+_sowing_ their wild oats, and with a recklessness of consequences to
+their female partners never by possibility rivalled by men. I believe
+and affirm that lustre the most dazzling and blinding would not have any
+_ennobling_ effect except as received into a matrix of previous
+unearthly and holy type.
+
+
+As to Bacchus being eternally young, the ancients had no idea or power
+to frame the idea of eternity. Their eternity was a limitary thing. And
+this I say not empirically, but _a priori_, on the ground that without
+the idea of holiness and unfleshliness, eternity cannot rise buoyant
+from the ground, cannot sustain itself. But waive this, and what becomes
+of the other things? If he were characteristically distinguished as
+young, then, by a mere rebound of the logic, the others were not so
+honoured, else where is the special privilege of Bacchus?
+
+
+'And she shall sing there as in the days of her youth' (Hosea ii.
+15).--The case of pathos, a person coming back to places, recalling the
+days of youth after a long woe, is quite unknown to the ancients--nay,
+the maternal affection itself, though used inevitably, is never
+consciously reviewed as an object of beauty.
+
+
+Duties arise everywhere, but--do not mistake--not under their sublime
+form _as_ duties. I claim the honour to have first exposed a fallacy too
+common: duties never did, never will, arise save under Christianity,
+since without it the sense of a morality lightened by religious motive,
+aspiring to holiness, not only of act, but of motive, had not before it
+even arisen. It is the pressure of society, its mere needs and palpable
+claims, which first calls forth duties, but not _as_ duties; rather as
+the casting of parts in a scenical arrangement. A duty, under the low
+conception to which at first it conforms, is a _role_, no more; it is
+strictly what we mean when we talk of a _part_. The sense of conscience
+strictly is not touched under any preceding system of religion. It is
+the daughter of Christianity. How little did Wordsworth seize the fact
+in his Ode: 'Stern Daughter of the Voice of God' is not enough; the
+voice of God is the conscience; and neither has been developed except by
+Christianity.
+
+
+The conscience of a pagan was a conscience pointing to detection: it
+pointed only to the needs of society, and caused fear, shame, anxiety,
+only on the principles of sympathy; that is, from the impossibility of
+releasing himself from a dependence on the reciprocal feelings--the
+rebound, the dependence on the _re_sentments of others.
+
+
+_Morals._--Even ordinary morals could have little practical weight with
+the ancients: witness the Roman juries and Roman trials. Had there been
+any sense of justice predominant, could Cicero have hoped to prevail by
+such defences as that of Milo and fifty-six others, where the argument
+is merely fanciful--such a _Hein-gespinst_ as might be applauded with
+'very good!' 'bravo!' in any mock trial like that silly one devised by
+Dean Swift.
+
+
+The slowness and obtuseness of the Romans to pathos appears _a priori_
+in their amphitheatre, and its tendency to put out the theatre;
+secondly, _a posteriori_, in the fact that their theatre was put out;
+and also, _a posteriori_, in the coarseness of their sensibilities to
+real distresses unless costumed and made sensible as well as
+intelligible. The grossness of this demand, which proceeded even so far
+as pinching to elicit a cry, is beyond easy credit to men of their time.
+
+
+The narrow range of the Greek intellect, always revolving through seven
+or eight centuries about a few memorable examples--from the Life of
+Themistocles to Zeno or Demosthenes.
+
+
+The Grecian glories of every kind seem sociable and affable, courting
+sympathy. The Jewish seem malignantly [Greek: autarkeis].
+
+
+But just as Paganism respected only rights of action, possession, etc.,
+Christianity respects a far higher scale of claims, viz., as to the
+wounds to feelings, to deep injury, though not grounded in anything
+measurable or expoundable by external results. Man! you have said that
+which you were too proud and obstinate to unsay, which has lacerated
+some heart for thirty years that had perhaps secretly and faithfully
+served you and yours. Christianity lays hold on that as a point of
+conscience, if not of honour, to make _amends_, if in no other way, by
+remorse.
+
+
+As to the tears of Oedipus in the crises. I am compelled to believe that
+Sophocles erred as regarded nature; for in cases so transcendent as this
+Greek nature and English nature could not differ. In the great agony on
+Mount Oeta, Hercules points the pity of his son Hyllus to the extremity
+of torment besieging him on the humiliating evidence of the tears which
+they extorted from him. 'Pity me,' says he, 'that weep with sobs like a
+girl: a thing that no one could have charged upon the man' (pointing to
+himself); 'but ever without a groan I followed out to the end my
+calamities.' Now, on the contrary, on the words of the oracle, that
+beckoned away with impatient sounds Oedipus from his dear sublime
+Antigone, Oedipus is made to weep.
+
+But this is impossible. Always the tears arose, and will arise, on the
+_relaxation_ of the torment and in the rear of silent anguish on its
+sudden suspense, amidst a continued headlong movement; and also, in
+looking back, tears, unless checked, might easily arise. But never
+during the torment: on the rack there are no tears shed, and those who
+suffered on the scaffold never yet shed tears, unless it may have been
+at some oblique glance at things collateral to their suffering, as
+suppose a sudden glimpse of a child's face which they had loved in life.
+
+
+Is not every [Greek: aion] of civilization an inheritance from a
+previous state not so high? Thus, _e.g._, the Romans, with so little of
+Christian restraint, would have perished by reaction of their own vices,
+but for certain prejudices and follies about trade, manufacture, etc.,
+and but for oil on their persons to prevent contagion. Now, this oil had
+been, I think, a secret bequeathed from some older and higher
+civilization long since passed away. We have it not, but neither have we
+so much needed it. Soon, however, we shall restore the secret by science
+more perfect.
+
+
+Was Christianity meant to narrow or to widen the road to future
+happiness? If I were translated to some other planet, I should say:
+
+1. _No_; for it raised a far higher standard--_ergo_, made the
+realization of this far more difficult.
+
+2. _Yes_; for it introduced a new machinery for realizing this standard:
+(first) Christ's atonement, (second) grace.
+
+
+But, according to some bigots (as Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas Browne),
+as cited by Coleridge, Christianity first opened any road at all. Yet,
+surely they forget that, if simply to come too early was the fatal bar
+to their claims in the case, Abraham, the father of the faithful, could
+not benefit.
+
+
+Yesterday, Thursday, October 21 (1843), I think, or the day before, I
+first perceived that the first great proof of Christianity is the proof
+of Judaism, and the proof of that lies in the Jehovah. What merely
+natural man capable of devising a God for himself such as the Jewish?
+
+
+Of all eradications of this doctrine (of human progress), the most
+difficult is that connected with the outward shows--in air, in
+colouring, in form, in grouping of the great elements composing the
+furniture of the heavens and the earth. It is most difficult, even when
+confining one's attention to the modern case, and neglecting the
+comparison with the ancient, at all to assign the analysis of those
+steps by which to us Christians (but never before) the sea and the sky
+and the clouds and the many inter-modifications of these, A, B, C, D,
+and again the many interactions of the whole, the sun (S.), the moon
+(M.), the noon (N. S.)--the breathless, silent noon--the gay
+afternoon--the solemn glory of sunset--the dove-like glimpse of Paradise
+in the tender light of early dawn--by which these obtain a power utterly
+unknown, undreamed of, unintelligible to a Pagan. If we had spoken to
+Plato--to Cicero--of the deep pathos in a sunset, would he--would
+either--have gone along with us? The foolish reader thinks, Why, perhaps
+not, not altogether as to the quantity--the degree of emotion.
+Doubtless, it is undeniable that we moderns have far more sensibility to
+the phenomena and visual glories of this world which we inhabit. And it
+_is_ possible that, reflecting on the singularity of this characteristic
+badge worn by modern civilization, he may go so far as to suspect that
+Christianity has had something to do with it. But, on seeking to
+complete the chain which connects them, he finds himself quite unable to
+recover the principal link.
+
+Now, it will prove, after all, even for myself who have exposed and
+revealed these new ligatures by which Christianity connects man with
+awful interests in the world, a most insurmountable task to assign the
+total nidus in which this new power resides, or the total phenomenology
+through which that passes to and fro. Generally it seems to stand thus:
+God reveals Himself to us more or less dimly in vast numbers of
+processes; for example, in those of vegetation, animal growth,
+crystallization, etc. These impress us not primarily, but secondarily on
+reflection, after considering the enormity of changes worked annually,
+and working even at the moment we speak. Then, again, other arrangements
+throw us more powerfully upon the moral qualities of God; _e.g._, we see
+the fence, the shell, the covering, varied in ten million ways, by which
+in buds and blossoms He insures the ultimate protection of the fruit.
+What protection, analogous to this, has He established for animals; or,
+taking up the question in the ideal case, for man, the supreme of His
+creatures? We perceive that He has relied upon love, upon love
+strengthened to the adamantine force of insanity or delirium, by the
+mere aspect of utter, utter helplessness in the human infant. It is not
+by power, by means visibly developed, that this result is secured, but
+by means spiritual and 'transcendental' in the highest degree.
+
+
+The baseness and incorrigible ignobility of the Oriental mind is seen in
+the radical inability to appreciate justice when brought into collision
+with the royal privileges of rulers that represent the nation. Not only,
+for example, do Turks, etc., think it an essential function of royalty
+to cut off heads, but they think it essential to the consummation of
+this function that the sacrifice should rest upon caprice known and
+avowed. To suppose it wicked as a mere process of executing the laws
+would rob it of all its grandeur. It would stand for nothing. Nay, even
+if the power were conceded, and the sovereign should abstain from using
+it of his own free will and choice, this would not satisfy the wretched
+Turk. Blood, lawless blood--a horrid Moloch, surmounting a grim company
+of torturers and executioners, and on the other side revelling in a
+thousand unconsenting women--this hideous image of brutal power and
+unvarnished lust is clearly indispensable to the Turk as incarnating the
+representative grandeur of his nation. With this ideal ever present to
+the Asiatic and Mohammedan mind, no wonder that even their religion
+needs the aid of the sword and bloodshed to secure conversion.
+
+
+In the _Spectator_ is mentioned, as an Eastern apologue, that a vizier
+who (like Chaucer's Canace) had learned the language of birds used it
+with political effect to his sovereign. The sultan had demanded to know
+what a certain reverend owl was speechifying about to another owl
+distantly related to him. The vizier listened, and reported that the
+liberal old owl was making a settlement upon his daughter, in case his
+friend's son should marry her, of a dozen ruined villages. Loyally long
+life to our noble sultan! I shall, my dear friend, always have a ruined
+village at your service against a rainy day, so long as our present
+ruler reigns and desolates.
+
+
+_Obliviscor jam injurias tuas, Clodia._--This is about the most
+barefaced use of the rhetorical trick--viz., to affect _not_ to do, to
+pass over whilst actually doing all the while--that anywhere I have met
+with.--'Pro Caelio,' p. 234 [p. 35, Volgraff's edition].
+
+
+_Evaserint_ and _comprehenderint._--Suppose they had rushed out, and
+suppose they had seized Licinus. So I read--not _issent._--_Ibid., p.
+236_ [_Ibid., p. 44_].
+
+
+_Velim vel potius quid nolim dicere._--Aristotle's case of throwing
+overboard your own property. He _vult dicere_, else he could not mean,
+yet _nonvult_, for he is shocked at saying such things of
+Clodia.--_Ibid., p. 242_ [_Ibid., p. 49_].
+
+
+2.--MORAL AND PRACTICAL.
+
+_Morality._--That Paley's principle does not apply to the higher
+morality of Christianity is evident from this: when I seek to bring
+before myself some ordinary form of wickedness that all men offend by, I
+think, perhaps, of their ingratitude. The man born to L400 a year thinks
+nothing of it, compares himself only with those above his own standard,
+and sees rather a ground of discontent in his L400 as not being L4,000
+than any ground of deep thankfulness. Now, this being so odious a form
+of immorality, should--by Paley--terminate in excessive evil. On the
+contrary, it is the principle, the very dissatisfaction which God uses
+for keep_ing_ the world mov_ing_ (how villainous the form--these
+'ings'!).
+
+
+All faith in the great majority is, and ought to be, implicit. That is,
+your faith is not unrolled--not separately applied to each individual
+doctrine--but is applied to some individual man, and on him you rely.
+What he says, you say; what he believes, you believe. Now, he believes
+all these doctrines, and you implicitly through him. But what I chiefly
+say as the object of this note is, that the bulk of men must believe by
+an implicit faith. _Ergo_, decry it not.
+
+
+You delude yourself, Christian theorist, with the idea of offences that
+else would unfit you for heaven being washed out by repentance. But
+hearken a moment. Figure the case of those innumerable people that,
+having no temptation, small or great, to commit murder, _would_ have
+committed it cheerfully for half-a-crown; that, having no opening or
+possibility for committing adultery, _would_ have committed it in case
+they had. Now, of these people, having no possibility of repentance (for
+how repent of what they have not done?), and yet ripe to excess for the
+guilt, what will you say? Shall they perish because they _might_ have
+been guilty? Shall they not perish because the potential guilt was not,
+by pure accident, accomplished _in esse_?
+
+
+Here is a mistake to be guarded against. If you ask why such a man,
+though by nature gross or even Swift-like in his love of dirty ideas,
+yet, because a gentleman and moving in corresponding society, does not
+indulge in such brutalities, the answer is that he abstains through the
+modifications of the sympathies. A low man in low society would not be
+doubtful of its reception; but he, by the anticipations of sympathy (a
+form that should be introduced as technically as Kant's anticipations of
+perception), feels it would be ill or gloomily received. Well now, I,
+when saying that a man is altered by sympathy so as to think _that_,
+through means of this power, which otherwise he would not think, shall
+be interpreted of such a case as that above. But wait; there is a
+distinction: the man does not think differently, he only acts as if he
+thought differently. The case I contemplate is far otherwise; it is
+where a man feels a lively contempt or admiration in consequence of
+seeing or hearing such feelings powerfully expressed by a multitude, or,
+at least, by others which else he would not have felt. Vulgar people
+would sit for hours in the presence of people the most refined, totally
+unaware of their superiority, for the same reason that most people (if
+assenting to the praise of the Lord's Prayer) would do so
+hyper-critically, because its real and chief beauties are negative.
+
+
+Not only is it false that my understanding is no measure or rule for
+another man, but of necessity it is so, and every step I take towards
+truth for myself is a step made on behalf of every other man.
+
+
+We doubt if the world in the sense of a synthesis of action--the
+procession and carrying out of ends and purposes--_could_ consist with
+the [Greek: anti]-world (in a religious sense). Men who divide all into
+pious people and next to devils see in such a state of evil the natural
+tendency (as in all other _monstrous_ evils--which this must be if an
+evil at all) to correction and redress. But now assume a man, sober,
+honourable, cheerful, healthy, active, occupied all day long in toilsome
+duties (or what he believes duties) for ends not selfish; this man has
+never had a thought of death, hell, etc., and looking abroad on those
+who dwell in such contemplations, he regards them sincerely, not
+unkindly or with contempt; partially he respects them, but he looks on
+them as under a monstrous delusion, in a fever, in a panic, as in a case
+of broken equilibrium. Now he is right. And, moreover, secondly, two
+other feelings or suspicions come on, (1) of hypocrisy, (2) of the
+violation of inner shame in publishing the most awful private feelings.
+
+
+_The Tendency of a Good Fortune inherited._--I know not that any man has
+reason to wish a _sufficient_ patrimonial estate for his son. Much to
+have something so as to start with an advantage. But the natural
+consequence of having a full fortune is to become idle and vapid. For,
+on asking what a young man has that he can employ himself upon, the
+answer would be, 'Oh! why, those pursuits which presuppose solitude.' At
+once you feel this to be hollow nonsense. Not one man in ten thousand
+has powers to turn solitude into a blessing. They care not, _e.g._, for
+geometry; and the cause is chiefly that they have been ill taught in
+geometry; and the effect is that geometry must and will languish, if
+treated as a mere amateur pursuit. So of any other. Secondly, yet of
+Englishmen I must say that beyond all nations a man so situated does
+not, in fact, become idle. He it is, and his class, that discharge the
+public business of each county or district. Thirdly: And in the view,
+were there no other, one sees at once the use of fox-hunting, let it be
+as boisterous as you please. Is it not better to be boisterous than
+gossip-ridden, eaves-dropping, seeking aliment for the spirits in the
+petty scandal of the neighbourhood?
+
+
+'He' (_The Times_) 'declares that the poorest artisan has a greater
+stake than they' ('the Landed Interest') 'in the prosperity of the
+country, and is, consequently, more likely to give sound advice. His
+exposition of the intimate connection existing between the welfare of
+the poor workman and the welfare of the country is both just and
+admirable. But he manifestly underrates the corresponding relations of
+the landowners, and wholly omits to show, even if the artisan's state
+were the greatest, how his opinions are likely to be most valuable. To
+suppose that a man is necessarily the best judge in whatever concerns
+him most is a sad _non-sequitur_; for if self-interest ensured wisdom,
+no one would ever go wrong in anything. Every man would be his own
+minister, and every invalid would be his own best physician. The wounded
+limbs of the community are the best judges of the pain they suffer; but
+it is the wise heads of the community that best can apply a remedy that
+best can cure the wound without causing it to break out in another
+quarter. Poverty is blind; but the upper classes "education has
+enlightened, and habit made foreseeing."'
+
+
+We live in times great from the events and little from the character of
+the actors. Every month summons us to the spectacle of some new perfidy
+in the leaders of parties and the most conspicuous public servants; and
+the profligacy which we charge upon the statesmen of the seventeenth
+century has revolved in full measure upon our own days.
+
+
+_Justifications of Novels._--The two following justifications of novels
+occur to me. Firstly, that if some dreadful crisis awaited a ship of
+passengers at the line--where equally the danger was mysterious and
+multiform, the safety mysterious and multiform--how monstrous if a man
+should say to a lady, 'What are you reading?' 'Oh, I'm reading about our
+dreadful crisis, now so near'; and he should answer, 'Oh, nonsense! read
+something to improve your mind; read about Alexander the Great, about
+Spurius Ahala, about Caius Gracchus, or, if you please, Tiberius.' But
+just such nonsense it is, when people ridicule reading romances in which
+the great event of the fiction is the real great event of a female
+life.
+
+There are others, you say--she loses a child. Yes, that's a great event.
+But that arises out of this vast equinoctial event.
+
+Secondly, as all things are predisposed to the natures which must be
+surrounded by them, so we may see that the element of social evolution
+of character, manners, caprices, etc., has been adapted to the vast mass
+of human minds. It is a mean element, you say. The revelations of Albert
+Smith, Dickens, etc., are essentially mean, vulgar, plebeian, not only
+in an aristocratic sense, but also in a philosophical sense. True, but
+the minds that are to live and move in it are also mean, essentially
+mean. Nothing grand in them? Yes, doubtless in the veriest grub as to
+capacity, but the capacity is undeveloped.
+
+_Ergo_, as to the intrigue or fable, and as to the conduct or evolution
+of this fable--novels must be the chief natural resource of woman.
+
+
+_Moral Certainty._--As that a child of two years (or under) is not party
+to a plot. Now, this would allow a shade of doubt--a child so old might
+cry out or give notice.
+
+
+This monstrous representation that the great war with France (1803-15)
+had for its object to prevent Napoleon from sitting on the throne of
+France--which recently, in contempt of all truth and common-sense, I
+have so repeatedly seen advanced--throws a man profoundly on the
+question of what _was_ the object of that war. Surely, in so far as we
+are concerned, the matter was settled at Amiens in the very first year
+of the century. December, 1799, Napoleon had been suffered by the
+unsteady public opinion of France--abhorring a master, and yet sensible
+that for the chief conscious necessity of France, viz., a developer of
+her latent martial powers, she must look for a master or else have her
+powers squandered--to mount the consular throne. He lived, he _could_
+live, only by victorious war. Most perilous was the prospect for
+England. In the path which not Napoleon, but France, was now preparing
+to tread, and which was the path of Napoleon no otherwise than that he
+was the tool of France, was that servitor who must gratify her grand
+infirmity or else be rapidly extinguished himself, unhappily for
+herself, England was the main counter-champion. The course of honour
+left to England was too fatally the course of resistance. Resistance to
+what? To Napoleon personally? Not at all; but to Napoleon as pledged by
+his destiny to the prosecution of a French conquering policy. That
+personally England had no hostility to Napoleon is settled by the fact
+that she had at Amiens cheerfully conceded the superior power. Under
+what title? would have been the most childish of demurs. That by act she
+never conceded the title of emperor was the mere natural diplomatic
+result of never having once been at peace with Napoleon under that
+title. Else it was a point of entire indifference. Granting the
+consulship, she had granted all that could be asked. And what she
+opposed was the determined war course of Napoleon and the schemes of
+ultra-Polish partition to which Napoleon had privately tempted her under
+circumstances of no such sense as existed and still exist for Russia.
+This policy, as soon as exposed, and not before bitter insults to
+herself, England resisted. And therefore it is that at this day we live.
+But as to Napoleon, as apart from the policy of Napoleon, no
+childishness can be wilder.
+
+
+At some unlucky moment when the Crown commanded unusual resources, the
+De Quinceys met with the fate ascribed, perhaps fabulously, to some
+small heavenly bodies (asteroids or what, I do not precisely know): on
+some dark day, by mistake perhaps, they exploded, and scattered their
+ruins all over the central provinces of England, where chiefly had lain
+their territorial influence. Especially in the counties of Leicester,
+Lincoln and Rutland were found fragments of the vast landed estates held
+by these potentates when Earls of Winchester.
+
+
+The hatred of truth at first dawning--that instinct which makes you
+revolt from the pure beams which search the foul depths and abysses of
+error--is well illustrated by the action of the atmospheric currents,
+when blowing through an open window upon smoke. What do you see?
+Sometimes the impression is strong upon your _ocular_ belief that the
+window is driving the smoke in. You can hardly be convinced of the
+contrary--scarcely when five or seven minutes has absolutely rarefied the
+smoke so much that a book-lettering previously invisible has become even
+legible. And at last, when the fact, the result, the experience, has
+corrected the contradictory theory of the eye, you begin to suspect,
+without any aid from science, that there were two currents, one of which
+comes round in a curve [Illustration: )] and effects the exit for the
+other which the window had driven in; just as in the Straits of Gibraltar
+there is manifestly an upper current setting one way, which you therefore
+conjecture to argue a lower current setting the other, and thus
+redressing the equilibrium. Here the smoke corresponds to bits of chip or
+any loose suspended body in the Gibraltar current. What answers to the
+current of water is the air, and if the equilibrium _is_ kept up, the
+re-entrant current balances your retiring current, and the latter carries
+out the smoke entangled in itself. By the objection, say, of a child,
+there ought to be a re-entrant column of smoke, which there is not. For
+the air drives the smoke of the fire up the chimney, and of its own
+contribution the air has no smoke to give.
+
+Or the Augean stable may image it. Doubtless when the first disturbance
+took place in the abominable mess, those acting would be apt to question
+for a moment whether it had not been more advisable to leave it alone.
+
+
+Moralists say, 'Nobody will attack you, or hate you, or blame you for
+your virtues.' What falsehood! Not _as_ virtues, it may be in their
+eyes, but virtues, nevertheless. Connect with Kant the error of
+supposing _aetas parentum_, etc., to be the doctrine of sin.
+
+
+Not for what you have done, but for what you are--not because in life
+you did forsake a wife and children--did endure to eat and drink and lie
+softly yourself whilst those who should have been as your heart-drops
+were starving: not because you did that so much is forgiven you, but
+because you were capable of that, therefore you are incapable of heaven.
+
+
+_Immodesty._--The greatest mistake occurs to me now (Wednesday, April
+17th, '44). A girl who should have been unhappily conscious of
+voluptuous hours, her you would call modest in case of her passing with
+downcast looks. But why, then, is she not so? That girl is immodest who
+reconciles to herself such things, and yet assumes the look of
+innocence.
+
+
+_About Women._--A man brings his own idle preconceptions, and fancies
+that he has learned them from his experience.
+
+
+Far more to be feared than any depth of serious love, however absorbing
+and apparently foolish, is that vicious condition in which trifling
+takes the place of all serious love, when women are viewed only as
+dolls, and addressed with an odious leer of affected knowingness as 'my
+dear,' wink, etc. Now to this tends the false condition of women when
+called 'the ladies.' On the other hand, what an awful elevation arises
+when each views in the other a creature capable of the same noble
+duties--she no less than he a creature of lofty aspirations; she by the
+same right a daughter of God as he a son of God; she bearing her eyes
+erect to the heavens no less than he!
+
+
+_Low Degree._--We see often that this takes place very strongly and
+decidedly with regard to men, notoriously pleasant men and remarkably
+good-natured, which shows at once in what road the thing travels. And if
+such a nature should be combined with what Butler thinks virtue, it
+might be doubtful to which of the two the tribute of kind attentions
+were paid; but now seeing the true case, we know how to interpret this
+hypothetical case of Butler's accordingly.
+
+
+'Visit the sins of the fathers,' etc. This people pretend to think
+monstrous. Yet what else in effect happens and must happen to Jews
+inheriting by filial obedience and natural sympathy all that
+anti-Christian hostility which prevailed in the age succeeding to that
+of Christ? What evil--of suffering, of penalties now or in reserve may
+be attached to this spirit of hostility--follows the children through
+all generations!
+
+
+Case of Timoleon, whose killing of his brother might afterwards be read
+into X Y Z or into X a b according to his conduct (either into murder or
+patriotism), is a good illustration of synthesis.
+
+
+To illustrate Cicero's argument in 'Pro Caelio' as to the frequency of
+men wild and dissipated in youth becoming eminent citizens, one might
+adduce this case from the word _Themistocles_ in the Index to the Graeci
+Rhetorici. But I see or I fancy cause to notice this passage for the
+following cause: it contains only nine words, four in the first comma,
+five in the last, and of these nine four are taken up in noting the time
+[Greek: to proton to telen]; ergo, five words record the remarkable
+revolution from one state to another, and the character of each state.
+
+Two cases of young men's dissipation--1. Horace's record of his father's
+advice: 'Concessa,' etc.; 2. Cicero's 'Pro Caelio.'
+
+
+_What Crotchets in every Direction!_--1. The Germans, or, let me speak
+more correctly, some of the Germans (and doubtless full of Hoch beer or
+strong drink), found out some thirty years ago that there were only
+three men of genius in the records of our planet. And who were they? (1)
+Homer; (2) Shakespeare; (3) Goethe. So that absolutely Milton was shut
+out from the constellation. Even he wanted a ticket, though Master
+Sorrows-of-Werther had one. The porter, it seems, fancied he had no
+marriage garment, a mistake which a mob might correct, saying, 'No
+marriage garment! then, damme, he shall have this fellow's' (viz.,
+Goethe's). The trinity, according to these vagabonds, was complete
+without Milton, as the Roman pomp was full to the eye of the sycophant
+without the bust of Brutus.
+
+2. Macaulay fancied there were only two men of genius in the reign of
+Charles II., viz., Milton and the tinker Bunyan.
+
+3. Coleridge (p. 237, 'Table-Talk') fancied there were only two men of
+genius in his own generation: W. W. and Sir Humphrey Davy.
+
+
+Jeremy Taylor having mentioned two religious men, St. Paul the Hermit
+and Sulpitius, as having atoned for some supposed foolish garrulities,
+the one by a three years' silence, the other by a lifelong silence, goes
+on to express his dissatisfaction with a mode of _rabiosa silentia_ so
+memorable as this.
+
+Yet it is certain in silence there is wisdom, and there may be deep
+religion. And indeed it is certain, great knowledge, if it be without
+vanity, is the most severe bridle of the tongue. For so I have heard
+that all the noises and prating of the pool, the croaking of frogs and
+toads, is hushed and appeased upon the instant of bringing upon them the
+light of a candle or torch. Every beam of reason and ray of knowledge
+checks the dissoluteness of the tongue. 'Ut quisque contemplissimus est,
+ita solutissimae linguae est,' said Seneca.
+
+The silence must be [Greek: kairios], not sullen and ill-natured; 'nam
+sic etiam tacuisse nocet'?--of all things in the world a prating
+religion and much talk in holy things does most profane the
+mysteriousness of it, and dismantles its regard, and makes cheap its
+reverence and takes off fear and awfulness, and makes it loose and
+garish, and like the laughters of drunkenness.
+
+
+_Public Morality._--It ought not to be left to a man's interest merely
+to protect the animals in his power. Dogs are no longer worked in the
+way they were, although the change must have arbitrarily robbed many
+poor men of half bread. But in a case as valuable as that of the horse,
+it has been known that a man has incurred the total ruin of a series of
+horses against even his own gain or self-interest. There ought to be a
+_custos veteranorum_, a keeper and protector of the poor brutes who are
+brought within the pale of social use and service. The difficulty, you
+say! Legislation has met and dealt effectively with far more complicated
+and minute matters than that. For, after all, consider how few of the
+brute creation on any wide and permanent scale are brought into the
+scheme of human life. Some birds as food, some fishes as ditto; beeves
+as food and _sometimes_ as appliers of strength; horses in both
+characters. These with elephants and camels, mules, asses, goats, dogs,
+and sheep, cats and rabbits, gold-fishes and singing-birds, really
+compose the whole of our animal equipage harnessed to the car of human
+life.
+
+
+3.--On Words And Style.
+
+There are a number of words which, unlocked from their absurd
+imprisonment, would become extensively useful. We should say, for
+instance, 'condign honours,' 'condign treatment' (treatment appropriate
+to the merits), thus at once realizing two rational purposes, viz.,
+giving a useful function to a word, which at present has none, and also
+providing an intelligible expression for an idea which otherwise is left
+without means of uttering itself except through a ponderous
+circumlocution. Precisely in the same circumstances of idle and absurd
+sequestration stands the term _polemic_. At present, according to the
+popular usage, this word has some fantastic inalienable connection with
+controversial theology. There cannot be a more childish chimera. No
+doubt there is a polemic side or aspect of theology; but so there is of
+_all_ knowledge; so there is of _every_ science. The radical and
+characteristic idea concerned in this term _polemic_ is found in our own
+Parliamentary distinction of _the good speaker_, as contrasted with _the
+good debater_. The good speaker is he who unfolds the whole of a
+question in its affirmative aspects, who presents these aspects in their
+just proportions, and according to their orderly and symmetrical
+deductions from each other. But the good debater is he who faces the
+negative aspects of the question, who meets sudden objections, has an
+answer for any momentary summons of doubt or difficulty, dissipates
+seeming inconsistencies, and reconciles the geometrical smoothness of _a
+priori_ abstractions with the coarse angularities of practical
+experience. The great work of Ricardo is of necessity, and almost in
+every page, polemic; whilst very often the particular objections or
+difficulties, to which it replies, are not indicated at all, being
+spread through entire systems, and assumed as _precognita_ that are
+familiar to the learned student.
+
+
+Writing to scholastic persons, I should be ashamed to explain, but
+hoping that I write to many also of the non-scholastic, and even of the
+unlearned, I rejoice to explain the proper sense of the word _implicit_.
+As the word _condign_, so capable of an extended sense, is yet
+constantly restricted to one miserable association, viz., that with the
+word _punishment_ (for we never say, as we might say, 'condign
+rewards'), so also the word _implicit_ is in English always associated
+with the word _faith_. People say that Papists have an _implicit_ faith
+in their priests. What they mean is this: If a piece of arras, or a
+carpet, is folded up, then it is _implicit_ according to the original
+Latin word; if it is unfolded and displayed, then it is _explicit_.
+Therefore, when a poor illiterate man (suppose a bog-trotter of Mayo or
+Galway) says to his priest (as in effect always he _does_ say), 'Sir, I
+cannot comprehend all this doctrine; bless you, I have not the
+thousandth part of the learning for it, so it is impossible that I
+should directly believe it. But your reverence believes it, the thing is
+_wrapt up_ (implicit) in you, and I believe it on that account.' Here
+the priest believes explicitly: _he_ believes implicitly.
+
+
+_Modern._--Is it not shameful that to this hour even literary men of
+credit and repute cannot for the life of them interpret this line from
+'As You Like It'--
+
+    'Full of wise saws and modern instances'?
+
+A man as well read as Mr. Theodore Hook, and many a hundred beside, have
+seriously understood it to mean 'Full of old proverbs, the traditionary
+wisdom of nations, and of illustrative examples drawn from modern
+experience.' Nonsense! The meaning is, 'Full of old maxims and proverbs,
+and of trivial attempts at argument.' That is, tediously redundant in
+rules derived from the treasury of popular proverbs,' and in feeble
+attempts at connecting these general rules with the special case before
+him. The superannuated old magistrate sets out with a proverb, as for
+instance this, that _the mother of mischief is no bigger than a midge's
+wing_. That proverb forms his major proposition. In his minor
+proposition he goes on to argue that the trespass charged upon the
+particular prisoner before him was very little bigger than a midge's
+wing. And then in his conclusion triumphantly he infers, Ergo, the
+prisoner at the bar is the mother of mischief. But says the constable,
+'Please, your worship, the prisoner is a man, a hulking clodhopper, some
+six or seven feet high, with a strong black beard.' 'Well, that makes no
+odds,' rejoins his worship; 'then he's the father of mischief. Clerk,
+make out his mittimus.'
+
+The word 'instance' (from the scholastic _instantia_) never meant
+_example_ in Shakespeare's age. The word 'modern' never once in
+Shakespeare means what it means to _us_ in these days. Even the monkish
+Latin word 'modernus' fluctuated in meaning, and did not always imply
+_recens_, _neotericus_; but in Shakespeare never. What _does_ it mean in
+Shakespeare? Once and for ever it means _trivial_, _inconsiderable_. Dr.
+Johnson had too much feeling not to perceive that the word 'modern' had
+this value in Shakespeare's acceptation; practically, he felt that it
+_availed_ for that sense, but theoretically he could not make out the
+_why_. It means that, said the Doctor; but feebly and querulously, like
+one sick of the pip, he added, 'Yet I don't know why.' Don't you? Now,
+we _do_. The fact is, Dr. Johnson was in a fit of the dismals at that
+time; he had recently committed a debauch of tea, having exceeded his
+usual allowance by seventy-five cups, so that naturally he had a
+'curmurring' in the stomach. Else he could not have failed to see what
+we are now going to explain with a wet finger. Everybody is aware that
+to be _material_ is the very opposite of being trivial. What is
+'material' in a chain of evidence, or in an argument, can never be
+trifling. Now, therefore, if you can find a word that will flatly
+contradict this word _material_, then you have a capital term for
+expressing what is trivial. Well, you find in the word _immaterial_ all
+that you are seeking. 'It is quite immaterial' will suit Mr. Touts's
+purpose just as well as 'It is really of no consequence, of no
+consequence in the world.' To say in a law court that the objection is
+immaterial is otherwise to say that it is trivial. Here, then, is the
+first step: to contradict the idea of _material_ is effectually to
+express the idea of _trivial_. Let us now see if we can find any other
+contradiction to the idea of _material_, for one antithesis to that idea
+will express as well as any other antithesis the counterpole of the
+trivial. Now, clearly the substance of a thing, the material out of
+which it is made, is oftentimes of great importance by comparison with
+its shape, fashion, or mode. It is of value in your eyes to know whether
+your family plate is in substance of gold or of silver; but whether such
+a vessel is round or square, ornamented with a wreath of acanthus or
+ivy, supported by tigers or by fawns, may be a trivial consideration, or
+even worse; for the fashion of your plate, after it has once become
+obsolete, may count against you for so much loss as something that will
+cost a good deal of money to alter. Here, then, is another contradiction
+to the material, and therefore another expression for the trivial:
+matter, as against vacancy or the privation of matter, yields the
+antithesis of material or immaterial, substantial and unsubstantial;
+matter, as against form, yields the antithesis of substance and shape,
+or otherwise of material and modal--what is matter and what is the mere
+modification of matter, its variation by means of ornament or shape.
+
+The word 'modern' is therefore in Shakespeare uniformly to be pronounced
+with the long _o_, as in the words m_o_dal, m_o_dish, and never with the
+short _o_ of m[)o]derate, m[)o]dest, or our present word m[)o]dern. And
+the law under which Shakespeare uses the word is this: whatsoever is so
+trivial as to fall into the relation of a mere shape or fleeting mode to
+a permanent substance, _that_ with Shakespeare is modish, or (according
+to his form) modern.[29] Thus, a weak, trivial argument (or _instantia_,
+the scholastic term for an argument not latent merely, or merely having
+the office of sustaining a truth, but urged as an objection, having the
+polemic office of contradicting an opponent) is in Shakespeare's idiom,
+when viewed as against a substantial argument, a _modern_ argument.
+
+Again, when Cleopatra, defending herself against the perfidy of her
+steward, wishes to impress upon Octavius that any articles which she may
+have kept back from the inventory of her personal chattels are but
+trifles, she expresses this by saying that they are but
+
+    'Such as we greet modern friends withal;'
+
+_i.e._, such as we bestow, at welcoming or at parting, upon the
+slightest acquaintances. The whole stress of the logic lies upon the
+epithet _modern_--for simply as friends, had they been substantial
+friends, they might have levied any amount from the royal lady's bounty;
+kingdoms would have been slight gifts in her eyes, and _that_ would soon
+have been objected to by her conqueror. But her argument is, that the
+people to whom such gifts would be commensurate are mere _modish_
+friends, persons known to us on terms of bare civility, people with whom
+we exchange salutations in the street, or occasional calls, what now we
+call acquaintances, for whom in Shakespeare's time there was no
+distinguishing expression.
+
+Another case we remember at this moment in 'All's Well that Ends Well.'
+It occurs in Act II., at the very opening of scene iii.; the particular
+edition, the only one we can command at the moment, is an obscure one
+published by Scott, Webster and Geary, Charterhouse Square, 1840, and we
+mention it thus circumstantially because the passage is falsely
+punctuated; and we have little doubt that in all other editions, whether
+with or without the false punctuation, the syntax is generally
+misapprehended. In reality, the false punctuation has itself grown out
+of the false apprehension of the syntax, and not _vice versa_. Thus the
+words stand _literatim et punctuatim_: 'They say, miracles are past: and
+we have our philosophical persons to make modern and familiar things,
+supernatural and causeless.' The comma ought to have been placed after
+'familiar,' the sense being this--and we have amongst us sceptical and
+irreligious people to represent as trivial and of daily occurrence
+things which in reality are supernatural and causeless (that is, not
+lying amongst the succession of physical causes and effects, but sent as
+miracles by the immediate agency of God). According to the true sense,
+_things supernatural and causeless_ must be understood as the subject,
+of which _modern and familiar_ is the predicate.
+
+
+Mr. Grindon fancies that _frog_ is derived from the syllable [Greek:
+trach (k)] of [Greek: batrachos]. This will cause some people to smile,
+and recall Menage's pleasantry about Alfana, the man of Orlando; It is
+true that _frog_ at first sight seems to have no letter in common except
+the snarling letter (_litera canina_). But this is not so; the _a_ and
+the _o_, the _s_ and the _k_, are perhaps essentially the same. And even
+in the case where, positively and literally, not a single letter is
+identical, it is odd, but undeniable, that the two words may be nearly
+allied as mother and child. One instance is notorious, but it is worth
+citing for a purpose of instructive inference. 'Journal,' as a French
+word, or, if you please, as an English word--whence came that?
+Unquestionably and demonstrably from the Latin word _dies_, in which,
+however, visibly there is not one letter the same as any one of the
+seven that are in journal. Yet mark the rapidity of the transition.
+_Dies_ (a day) has for its derivative adjective _daily_ the word
+_diurnus_. Now, the old Roman pronunciation of _diu_ was exactly the
+same as _gio_, both being pronounced as our English _jorn_. Here, in a
+moment, we see the whole--_giorno_, a day, was not derived directly from
+_dies_, but secondarily through _diurnus_. Then followed _giornal_, for
+a diary, or register of a day, and from that to French, as also, of
+course, the English _journal_. But the _moral_ is, that when to the eye
+no letter is the same, may it not be so to the ear? Already the _di_ of
+_dies_ anticipates and enfolds the _giorno_.
+
+Mr. Grindon justly remarks upon the tendency, in many instances, of the
+German _ss_ to reappear in English forms as _t_. Thus _heiss_ (hot),
+_fuss_ (foot), etc. These are Mr. Grindon's own examples, and a striking
+confirmation occurs in the old English _hight_, used for _he was
+called_, and again for the participle _called_, and again, in the 'Met.
+Romanus,' for _I was called_: 'Lorde, he saide, I highth Segramour.'
+Now, the German is _heissen_ (to be called). And this is a tendency
+hidden in many long ages: as, for instance, in Greek, every person must
+remember the transition of [Greek: tt] and [Greek: ss] as in [Greek:
+thatto], [Greek: thasso].
+
+
+_On Pronunciation and Spelling._--If we are to surrender the old
+vernacular sound of the _e_ in certain situations to a ridiculous
+criticism of the _eye_, and in defiance of the protests rising up
+clamorously from every quarter of old English scholarship, let us at
+least know to _what_ we surrender. What letter is to usurp the vacant
+seat? What letter? retorts the purist--why, an _e_, to be sure. An _e_?
+And do you call _that_ an _e_? Do you pronounce 'ten' as if it were
+written 'tun', or 'men' as if written 'mun'? The 'Der' in Derby,
+supposing it tolerable at all to alter its present legitimate sound,
+ought, then, to be pronounced as the 'Der' in the Irish name Derry, not
+as 'Dur'; and the 'Ber' in Berkeley not as 'Bur,' but as the 'Ber' in
+Beryl. But the whole conceit has its origin in pure ignorance of English
+archaeology, and in the windiest of all vanities, viz., the attempt to
+harmonize the spelling and the pronunciation of languages.
+
+Naturally, it fills one with contempt for these 'Derby' purists to find
+that their own object, the very purpose they are blindly and
+unconsciously aiming at, has been so little studied or steadily
+contemplated by them in anything approaching to its whole extent. Why,
+upon the principle which they silently and virtually set up, though
+carrying it out so contradictorily (driving out an _a_ on the plea that
+it is not an _e_, only to end by substituting, _and without being
+aware_, the still remoter letter _u_), the consequence must be that the
+whole language would go to wreck. Nine names out of every ten would need
+tinkering. 'London,' for instance, no more receives the normal sound of
+the _o_ in either of its syllables than does the _e_ in 'Derby.' The
+normal sound of the _o_ is that heard in 'song,' 'romp,' 'homage,'
+'drop.' Nevertheless, the sound given to the _o_ in 'London,'
+'Cromwell,' etc., which strictly is the short sound of _u_ in 'lubber,'
+'butter,' etc., is a secondary sound of _o_ in particular combinations,
+though not emphatically its proper sound. The very same defence applies
+to the _e_ in 'Berkeley,' etc. It is the legitimate sound of the English
+_e_ in that particular combination, viz., when preceding an _r_, though
+not its normal sound. But think of the wild havoc that would be made of
+other more complex anomalies, if these purists looked an inch in
+advance. Glocester or Gloucester, Worcester, Cirencester, Pontefract,
+etc. What elaborate and monstrous pronunciations would they affix to
+these names? The whole land would cease to recognise itself. And that
+the purists should never have contemplated these veritable results, this
+it is which seals and rivets one's contempt for them.
+
+Now, if such harmony were at all desirable (whereas, on the contrary, we
+should thus be carrying ruin into the traditions and obliteration into
+the ethnological links of languages, industriously, in fact, throwing up
+insuperable obstacles in the path of historical researches), it would be
+far better, instead of adjusting the pronunciation to the imaginary
+value of the spelling, inversely to adjust the spelling to the known and
+established pronunciation, as a certain class of lunatics amongst
+ourselves, viz., the _phonetic gang_, have for some time been doing
+systematically.
+
+Here, therefore, I hope is one fixed point. Here there is anchorage. The
+usage is the rule, at any rate; and the law of analogy takes effect only
+where _that_ cannot be decisively ascertained.
+
+
+_The Latin Word 'Felix.'_--The Romans appear to me to have had no term
+for _happy_, which argues that they had not the idea. _Felix_ is tainted
+with the idea of success, and is thus palpably referred to life as a
+competition, which for Romans every distinguished life was. In fact,
+apart from his city the Roman was nothing. Too poor to have a villa or
+any mode of retirement, it is clear that the very idea of Roman life
+supposes for the vast majority a necessity of thick crowded intercourse,
+without the possibility of solitude. I, for my peculiar constitution of
+mind, to whom solitude has in all periods of life been more of a
+necessity almost than air, view with special horror the life of a Roman
+or Athenian. All the morning he had to attend a factious hustings or a
+court--assemblies deliberative or judicial. Here only he was somebody,
+and yet, however, somebody through others. Combining with one leader and
+many underlings like himself, he also became a power; but in himself and
+for himself, after all, he was consciously nothing. When Cicero speaks
+of his _nunquam minus Solus quam cum solus_, he is announcing what he
+feels to be, and knows will be, accepted as a very extraordinary fact.
+For even _in rure_ it is evident that friends made it a duty of
+friendship to seek out and relieve their rusticating friends.
+
+
+_On the Distinction between 'Rhetorica utens' and 'Rhetorica
+docens'._--It was a perplexity, familiar to the experience of the
+Schoolmen, that oftentimes one does not know whether to understand by
+the term _logic_ the act and process of reasoning involved and latent in
+any series of connected propositions, or this same act and process
+formally abstracting itself as an art and system of reasoning. For
+instance, if you should happen to say, 'Dr. Isaac Watts, the English
+Nonconformist, was a good man, and a clever man; but alas! for his
+logic, what can his best friend say for it? The most charitable opinion
+must pronounce it at the best so, so'--in such a case, what is it that
+you would be understood to speak of? Would it be the general quality of
+the Doctor's reasoning, the style and character of his philosophical
+method, or would it be the particular little book known as 'The Doctor:
+his _Logic_,' price 5s., bound in calf, and which you might be very shy
+of touching with a pair of tongs, for fear of dimming their steel
+polish, so long as your wife's eye was upon your motions? The same
+ambiguity affects many other cases. For instance, if you heard a man
+say, 'The _rhetoric_ of Cicero is not fitted to challenge much
+interest,' you might naturally understand it of the particular style and
+rhetorical colouring--which was taxed with being florid; nay, Rhodian;
+nay, even Asiatic--that characterizes that great orator's compositions;
+or, again, the context might so restrain the word as to _force_ it into
+meaning the particular system or theory of rhetoric addressed to
+Herennius, a system which (being traditionally ascribed to Cicero) is
+usually printed amongst his works. Here, and in scores of similar cases,
+lies often a trap for the understanding; but the Schoolmen evaded this
+trap by distinguishing between 'Rhetorica _utens_,' and 'Rhetorica
+_docens_,' between the rhetoric that laid down or delivered didactically
+the elements of oratorical persuasion as an art to be learned, and
+rhetoric, on the other hand, as a creative energy that _wielded_ these
+elements by the mouth of Pericles in the year 440 B. C., or by the mouth
+of Demosthenes, 340 B. C.; between rhetoric the scholastic art and
+rhetoric the heaven-born _power;_ between the rhetoric of Aristotle that
+illuminated the solitary student, and the rhetoric of Demosthenes that
+ran along in rolling thunders to the footstool of Artaxerxes' throne.
+Oh, these dear spindle-shanked Schoolmen! they were people, respected
+reader, not to be sneezed at. What signifies having spindle-shanks?
+
+
+_Synonyms._--A representative and a delegate, according to Burke, are
+identical; but there is the same difference as between a person who on
+his own results of judgment manages the interests of X, and a person
+merely reporting the voice of X. Probably there never was a case which
+so sharply illustrated the liability of goodish practical understanding
+to miss, to fail in seeing, an object lying right before the eyes; and
+that is more wonderful in cases where the object is not one of
+multitude, but exists almost in a state of insulation. At the coroner's
+inquest on a young woman who died from tight-lacing, acting, it was
+said, in combination with a very full meal of animal food, to throw the
+heart out of position, Mr. Wakely pronounced English or British people
+all distorted in the spine, whereas _Continental_ people were all right.
+Continental! How unlimited an idea! Why, it meant nothing; it defines
+nothing, limits nothing, excludes nothing. Who or what is Continental?
+Apparently it means anyone out of 240 millions not being one of the 27
+millions in the Britannides. Every man escapes an insane folly who
+happens to breathe an air E. (N. E., S. E., N. N. E., S. S. E., etc.) of
+the Britannides. Vanity, the inevitable wish to improve, or rather to
+avail, one's self of a natural means offered for deepening and marking
+out the natural outline of the shape, _i.e._, of the sexual
+characteristics, has no effect, dies out, the instant that a family is
+one of those who have the privilege of basking anywhere 2,000 miles E.
+or 2,000 miles N. and S.!
+
+
+A whistling to a horse: Poppysme (_vide_ Whistling, Lat. Dict.); but
+poppysme is a patting, a clapping, on the back, neck, or, doubtless,
+wherever the animal is sensible of praise.
+
+
+'Takest away.' This beautiful expression, though exquisitely treated by
+position--
+
+          'That all evil thoughts and aims
+    Takest away,'
+
+is yet originally borrowed by Mr. W. from the Litany: 'O Lamb of God,
+that takest away the sins of the world.'
+
+
+In style to explain the true character of note-writing--how compressed
+and unrambling and direct it ought to be, and _illustrate_ by the
+villainous twaddle of many Shakespearian notes.
+
+
+_Syllogism._--In the _Edin. Advertiser_ for Friday, January 25, 1856, a
+passage occurs taken from _Le Nord_ (or _Journal du Nord_), or some
+paper whose accurate title I do not know, understood to be Russian in
+its leanings, which makes a most absurd and ignorant use of this word.
+The Allies are represented as addressing an argument to Russia,
+amounting, I think, to this, viz.: that, in order to test her sincerity,
+would it not be well for Russia at once to cede such insulated points of
+territory as were valuable to Russia or suspicious to the Allies simply
+as furnishing means for invasion of Turkey? And this argument is called
+a _syllogism_.
+
+
+'_Laid in wait_ for him.'--This false phrase occurs in some article (a
+Crimea article, I suppose) in the same _Advertiser_ of January 25. And I
+much doubt whether any ordinary ear would reconcile itself to _lay in
+wait_ (as a _past_ tense) even when instructed in its propriety.
+
+
+Those Scotticisms are worst which are nonsensical, as _e.g._:
+
+    'Whenever he died
+     Fully more.'
+
+
+_Timeous_ and _dubiety_ are bad, simply as not authorized by any but
+local usage. A word used only in Provence or amongst the Pyrenees could
+not be employed by a classical French writer, except under a _caveat_
+and for a special purpose.
+
+
+Plent_y_, used under the absurd misleading of its terminal 'y' as an
+adjective. _Alongst_, remember _of_; able _for_, the worse _of_ liquor,
+to call _for, to go the length_ of, as applied to a distance; 'I don't
+think _it_,' instead of 'I don't think _so_.'
+
+
+In the _Lady's Newspaper_ for Saturday, May 8, 1852 (No. 280), occurs
+the very worst case of exaggerated and incredible mixed silliness and
+vulgarity connected with the use of _assist_ for _help_ at the
+dinner-table that I have met with. It occurs in the review of a book
+entitled 'The Illustrated London Cookery Book,' by Frederick Bishop. Mr.
+Bishop, it seems, had 'enjoyed the office of cuisinier at the Palace,
+and among some of our first nobility.' He has, by the way, an
+introductory 'Philosophy of Cookery.' Two cases occur of this matchless
+absurdity:
+
+1. An ideal carver is described: he, after carving, 'is as cool and
+collected as ever, and _assists_ the portions he has carved with as much
+grace as he displayed in carving the fowl.'
+
+2. Further on, when contrasting, not the carvers, but the things _to be_
+carved, coming to '_Neck of Veal_,' he says of the carver: 'Should the
+vertebrae have not been jointed by the butcher, you would find yourself
+in the position of the ungraceful carver, being compelled to exercise a
+degree of strength which should never be suffered to appear, very
+possibly, too, _assisting_ gravy in a manner not contemplated by the
+person unfortunate enough to receive it.'
+
+
+_Genteel_ is the vulgarest and most plebeian of all known words.
+Accordingly (and strange it is that the educated users of this word
+should not perceive that fact), aristocratic people--people in the most
+undoubted _elite_ of society as to rank or connections--utterly ignore
+the word. They are aware of its existence in English dictionaries; they
+know that it slumbers in those vast repositories; they even apprehend
+your meaning in a vague way when you employ it as an epithet for
+assigning the pretensions of an individual or a family. Generally it is
+understood to imply that the party so described is in a position to make
+morning calls, to leave cards, to be presentable for anything to the
+contrary apparent in manners, style of conversation, etc. But these and
+other suggestions still leave a vast area unmapped of blank charts in
+which the soundings are still doubtful.
+
+The word 'genteel' is so eminently vulgar apparently for this reason,
+that it presents a non-vulgar distinction under a gross and vulgar
+conception of that distinction. The true and central notion, on which
+the word revolves, is elevating; but, by a false abstraction of its
+elements, it is degraded. And yet in parts of this island where the
+progress of refinement is torpid, and the field of vision is both narrow
+and unchanging in all that regards the _nuances_ of manners, I have
+remarked that the word 'genteel' maintains its old advantageous
+acceptation; and as a proof of this, eminent and even revolutionary
+thinkers born and bred in such provincial twilight, use the word as if
+untainted and hardly aware that it is flyblown.
+
+Among ourselves it is certain that a peculiar style of gossip, of
+babble, and of miniature intriguing, invests the atmosphere of little
+'townishness,' such as often entangles the more thoughtful and
+dignified of the residents in troublesome efforts at passive resistance
+or active counter-action. In dealing with this matter, Mr. Wordsworth
+instanced Northampton and Nottingham; but a broader difference could
+hardly be than between these towns. And just as 'genteel' remains the
+vulgarest of all words, so the words 'simple' and 'simplicity,' amongst
+all known words, offer the most complex and least simple of ideas.
+
+Having made this deprecation on behalf of my own criminality in using
+such a word as 'genteel,' I go on to say that whilst Northampton was
+(and _is_, I believe) of all towns the most genteel, Nottingham for more
+than two centuries has been the most insurrectionary and in a scarlet
+excess democratic. Nottingham, in fact, has always resembled the
+Alexandria of ancient days; whilst Northampton could not be other than
+aristocratic as the centre of a county more thickly gemmed by the
+ancestral seats of our nobility than any beside in the island. Norwich,
+again, though a seat of manufacturing industry, has always been modified
+considerably by a literary body of residents.
+
+
+'Mein alter Herr' (von Stein) 'pflegte dann wohl scherzend zu sagen: Ich
+muesse von irgend eine Hexe meinen Altem als ein Wechselbalg in's Nest
+gelegt seyn; ich gehoere offenbar einem Stamm amerikanischer wilden an,
+und habe noch die Huehnerhundnase zum Auswittern des verschiedenen
+Blutes.' Arndt, speaking of his power to detect at sight (when seen at a
+distance) Russians, English, etc., says that Von Stein replied thus in
+his surprise. But I have cited the passage as one which amply
+illustrates the suspensive form of sentence in the German always
+indicated by a colon (:), thus: 'zu sagen: Ich muesse'--to say that I
+must have been (p. 164).
+
+
+The active sense of _fearful_, viz., that which causes and communicates
+terror--not that which receives terror--was undoubtedly in Shakespeare's
+age, but especially amongst poets, the preponderant sense. Accordingly I
+am of opinion that even in neutral cases, such as are open indifferently
+to either sense, viz., that which affrights, or that which is itself
+affrighted, the bias in Shakespeare's interpretation of the feeling lay
+towards the former movement. For instance, in one of his sonnets:
+
+    'Oh, fearful meditation! where, alas!'
+
+the true construction I believe to be--not this: Oh, though _deriving_
+terror from the circumstances surrounding thee, _suffering_ terror from
+the _entourage_ of considerations pursuing thee; but this: Oh, thought
+impressing and creating terror, etc. A 'fearful' agent in Shakespeare's
+use is not one that shrinks in alarm from the act, but an agent that
+causes others to shrink; not panic-struck, but panic-striking.
+
+
+Miss Edgeworth, let me remark, commits trespasses on language that are
+really past excusing. In one place she says that a man 'had a
+_contemptible_ opinion' of some other man's understanding. Such a
+blunder is not of that class which usage sanctions, and an accuracy not
+much short of pedantry would be argued in noticing: it is at once
+illiterate and vulgar in the very last degree. I mean that it is common
+amongst vulgar people, and them only. It ranks, for instance, with the
+common formula of '_I_ am agreeable, if you prefer it.'
+
+
+Style is the disentangling of thoughts or ideas reciprocally involved in
+each other.
+
+
+4.--THEOLOGICAL AND RELIGIOUS.
+
+Religion under any of its aspects, revealing or consoling--religion in
+connection with any of its affinities, ethics or metaphysics, when
+_self_-evoked by a person of earnest nature, not imposed from without by
+the necessities of monastic life, not caught as a contagion from the
+example of friends that surround you, argues some 'vast volcanic agency'
+moving at subterraneous depths below the ordinary working mind of daily
+life, and entitled by its own intrinsic grandeur to ennoble the
+curiosity (else a petty passion) which may put questions as to its
+origin. In any case of religion arising, as a spontaneous birth, in the
+midst of alien forces, it is inevitable to ask for its _why_ and its
+_whence_. Religion considered as a sentiment of devotion, as a yearning
+after some dedication to an immeasurable principle of that noblest
+temple among all temples--'the upright heart and pure,' or religion,
+again, as the apprehension of some mighty synthesis amongst truths dimly
+perceived heretofore amidst separating clouds, but now brought into
+strict indissoluble connection, proclaims a revolution so great that it
+is otherwise not to be accounted for than as the breaking out of a germ
+of the supernatural in man as a seed from a hitherto barren soil.
+
+
+Sin is that secret word, that dark _aporreton_ of the human race,
+undiscoverable except by express revelation, which having once been laid
+in the great things of God as a germinal principle, has since blossomed
+into a vast growth of sublime ideas known only to those nations who have
+lived under the moulding of Scriptural truth--and comprehending _all_
+functions of the Infinite operatively familiar to man. Yes, I affirm
+that there is no form through which the Infinite reveals itself in a
+sense comprehensible by man and adequate to man; that there is no
+sublime agency which _compresses_ the human mind from infancy so as to
+mingle with the moments of its growth, positively none but has been in
+its whole origin--in every part--and exclusively developed out of that
+tremendous mystery which lurks under the name of sin.
+
+Yes, I affirm that even in its dreams every Christian child is invested
+by an atmosphere of sublimity unknown to the greatest of Pagan
+philosophers: that golden rays reach it by two functions of the
+Infinite; and that these, in common with those emanations of the
+Infinite that do not settle upon the mind until mature years, are all
+projections--derivations or counterpositions--from the obscure idea of
+sin; could not have existed under any previous condition; and for a
+Pagan mind would not have been intelligible.
+
+
+_Sin._--It is not only that the Infinite arises as part of the entire
+system resting on sin, but specifically from sin apart from its
+counterforces or reactions, viz., from sin as a thing, and the only
+thing originally shadowy and in a terrific sense mysterious.
+
+
+_Stench._--I believe that under Burke's commentary, this idea would
+become a high test of the doctrine of the Infinite. He pronounces it
+sublime, or sublime in cases of intensity. Now, first of all, the
+intense state of everything or anything is but a mode of power, that
+idea or element or moment of greatness under a varied form. Here, then,
+is nothing _proper_ or separately peculiar to stench: it is not stench
+_as_ stench, but stench as a mode or form of sensation, capable
+therefore of intensification. It is but a case under what we may suppose
+a general Kantian rule--that every sensation runs through all
+gradations, from the lowest or most obscure and nascent to the highest.
+Secondly, however, pass over to the contemplation of stench _as_ stench:
+then I affirm--that as simply expounding the decay, and altering or
+spoiling tendency or state of all things--simply as a register of
+imperfection, and of one which does not (as ruins to the eye) ever put
+on a pleasing transitional aspect, it is merely disagreeable, but also
+at the same time mean. For the imperfection is merely transitional and
+fleeting, not absolute. First, midst and last, it is or can be grand
+when it reverts or comes round upon its mediating point, or point of
+reaction.
+
+
+The arrangement of my Infinite must be thus: After having expounded the
+idea of holiness which I must show to be now potent, proceed to show
+that the Pagan Gods did not realize and did not meet this idea; that
+then came the exposure of the Pagan Gods and the conscious presence of a
+new force among mankind, which opened up the idea of the Infinite,
+through the awakening perception of holiness.
+
+
+I believe that in every mode of existence, which probably is always by
+an incarnation, the system of flesh is made to yield the organs that
+express the alliance of man with the Infinite. Thus the idea of mystery,
+[Greek: aporreta], finds its organ of expression in the sensualities of
+the human race. Again, the crime, whatever it were, and the eternal
+pollution is expressed in these same organs. Also, the prolongation of
+the race so as to find another system is secured by the same organs.
+
+
+Generally, that is, for a million against a unit, the awful mystery by
+which the fearful powers of death, and sorrow, and pain, and sin are
+locked into parts of a whole; so as, in fact, to be repetitions,
+reaffirmations of each other under a different phase--this is nothing,
+does not exist. Death sinks to a mere collective term--a category--a
+word of convenience for purposes of arrangement. You depress your hands,
+and, behold! the system disappears; you raise them, it reappears. This
+is nothing--a cipher, a shadow. Clap your hands like an Arabian girl,
+and all comes back. Unstop your ears, and a roar as of St. Lawrence
+enters: stop your ears, and it is muffled. To and fro; it is and it is
+not--is not and is. Ah, mighty heaven, that such a mockery should cover
+the whole vision of life! It is and it is not; and on to the day of your
+death you will still have to learn what is the truth.
+
+The eternal now through the dreadful loom is the overflowing future
+poured back into the capacious reservoir of the past. All the active
+element lies in that infinitesimal _now_. The future is not except by
+relation; the past is not at all, and the present but a sign of a nexus
+between the two.
+
+
+God's words require periods, so His counsels. He cannot precipitate
+them any more than a man in a state of happiness _can_ commit suicide.
+Doubtless it is undeniable that a man may arm his hand with a sword: and
+that his flesh will be found penetrable to the sword, happy or not. But
+this apparent physical power has no existence, no value for a creature
+having a double nature: the moral nature not only indisposes him to use
+his power, but really creates a far greater antagonist power.
+
+
+This God--too great to be contemplated steadily by the loftiest of human
+eyes; too approachable and condescending to be shunned by the meanest in
+affliction: realizing thus in another form that reconcilement of
+extremes, which St. Paul observed: far from all created beings, yet also
+very near.
+
+
+'A conviction that they needed a Saviour was growing amongst men.' How?
+In what sense? Saviour from what? You can't be saved from nothing. There
+must be a danger, an evil threatening, before even in fancy you can
+think of a deliverer. Now, what evil was there existing to a Pagan? Sin?
+Monstrous! No such idea ever dawned upon the Pagan intellect. Death?
+Yes; but that was inalienable from his nature. Pain and disease? Yes;
+but these were perhaps inalienable also. Mitigated they might be, but it
+must be by human science, and the progress of knowledge. Grief? Yes; but
+this was inalienable from life. Mitigated it might be, but by superior
+philosophy. From what, then, was a Saviour to save? If nothing to save
+from, how any Saviour? But here arises as the awful of awfuls to me, the
+deep, deep exposure of the insufficient knowledge and sense of what is
+peculiar to Christianity. To imagine some sense of impurity, etc.,
+leading to a wish for a Saviour in a Pagan, is to defraud Christianity
+of all its grandeur. If Paganism could develop the want, it is not at
+all clear that Paganism did not develop the remedy. Heavens! how
+deplorable a blindness! But did not a Pagan lady feel the insufficiency
+of earthly things for happiness? No; because any feeling tending in that
+direction would be to her, as to all around her, simply a diseased
+feeling, whether from dyspepsia or hypochondria, and one, whether
+diseased or not, worthless for practical purposes. It would have to be a
+Christian lady, if something far beyond, something infinite, were not
+connected with it, depending on it. But if this were by you ascribed to
+the Pagan lady, then _that_ is in other words to make her a Christian
+lady already.
+
+
+_Exhibition of a Roman Dialogue on Sin._--What! says the ignorant and
+unreflecting modern Christian. Do you mean to tell me that a Roman,
+however buried in worldly objects, would not be startled at hearing of a
+Saviour? Now, hearken.
+
+ROMAN. Saviour! What do you mean? Saviour for what? In good faith, my
+friend, you labour under some misconception. I am used to rely on myself
+for all the saving that I need. And, generally speaking, if you except
+the sea, and those cursed north-east winds, I know of no particular
+danger.
+
+CHRISTIAN. Oh, my friend, you totally mistake the matter. I mean saving
+from sin.
+
+ROMAN. Saving from a fault, that is--well, what sort of a fault? Or, how
+should a man, that you say is no longer on earth, save me from any
+fault? Is it a book to warn me of faults that He has left?
+
+CHRISTIAN. Why, yes. Not that He wrote Himself; but He talked, and His
+followers have recorded His views. But still you are quite in the dark.
+Not faults, but the fountain of all faults, that is what He will save
+you from.
+
+ROMAN. But how? I can understand that by illuminating my judgment in
+general He might succeed in making me more prudent.
+
+CHRISTIAN. 'Judgment,' 'prudent'--these words show how wide by a whole
+hemisphere you are of the truth. It is your will that He applies His
+correction to.
+
+ROMAN. 'Will!' why I've none but peaceable and lawful designs, I assure
+you. Oh! I begin to see. You think me a partner with those pirates that
+we just spoke to.
+
+CHRISTIAN. Not at all, my friend. I speak not of designs or intentions.
+What I mean is, the source of all desires--what I would call your wills,
+your whole moral nature.
+
+ROMAN (_bridling_). Ahem! I hope Roman nature is quite as little in need
+of improvement as any other. There are the Cretans; they held up their
+heads. Accordingly they had their fire institutions, and that true
+institution against bribery and luxury, and all such stuff. They fancied
+themselves impregnable. Why, bless you! even Marcus Tullius, that was a
+prosing kind of man and rather peevish about such things, could not keep
+in the truth. 'Why, Cato, my boy,' says he, 'you talk.' And to hear you,
+bribery and luxury would not leave one a stick to fight for. Why, now,
+these same Cretans--lord! we took the conceit out of them in
+twenty-five minutes. No more time, I assure you, did it cost three of
+our cohorts to settle the whole lot of them.
+
+CHRISTIAN. My friend, you are more and more in the dark. What I mean is
+not present in your senses, but a disease.
+
+ROMAN. Oh, a disease! that's another thing. But where?
+
+CHRISTIAN. Why, it affects the brain and the heart.
+
+ROMAN. Well, now, one at a time. Take the brain--we have a disease, and
+we treat it with white hellebore. There may be a better way. But answer
+me this. If you are generally affected, what right have you to bring, as
+you are supposing, a diseased brain to a sound one? We Romans are all
+sound--sound as a bell.
+
+Then Christian goes on to the history of the fall. But the whole would
+be self-baffled and construed away from want of sin as the antithesis of
+holiness.
+
+
+_Why St. Paul and the Athenians did not come to an Understanding._--So,
+again, if you think that St. Paul had a chance with the Athenians. If he
+had, it would tax his divine benevolence to see that he forbore to
+pursue it. This attempt shows that he was under a misconception. He
+fancied a possibility of preaching a pure religion. What followed? He
+was, he must have been defeated. That is, practically, else why did he
+not persist? But his confutation was the factual confutation of
+experience. It was no go. That he found too surely. But why? I am sure
+that he never found out. Enough that he felt--that under a strong
+instinct he misgave--a deep, deep gulf between him and them, so that
+neither could he make a way to their sense, nor they, except
+conjecturally, to his. For, just review the case. What was the [Greek:
+euangelion], the good tidings, which he announced to man? What burthen
+of hope? What revelation of a mystery of hope arising out of a deeper
+mystery of despair? He announced a deliverer. Deliverer! from what?
+Answer that--from what? Why, from evil, you say. Evil! of what kind?
+Why, you retort, did not the Pagans admit that man was lying under evil?
+Not at all; nothing of the kind. But you are sure you have heard of such
+things? Very likely. And now you are forced back upon your arguments you
+remember specially that evil as to its origin was a favourite
+speculation of theirs. Evil, in its most comprehensive designation,
+whence is it? How came it? Now, mark, even to that extent, viz., the
+extent indicated by this problem, the ancients had no conception of evil
+corresponding to, no, nor dimly approaching to, a correspondence with
+ours. They had no ineffable standard of purity; how, then, any function
+of impurity? They had no ineffable doctrine of pain or suffering
+answering to a far more realized state of perception, and, therefore,
+unimaginably more exquisite; how, then, could they raise a question on
+the nature or fountains of such pains? They executed no synthesis, and
+could execute none upon the calamities of life; they never said in
+ordinary talk that this was a world of sorrow, either apostrophizing a
+newborn child, or a world of disappointment, bemoaning a mature victim;
+neither as in the anguish of meditative reflection, nor in the prudence
+of extenuating apology. The grand _sanctus_ which arises from human
+sensibility, Perish empires and the crowns of kings, etc., first arose
+in connection with Christianity.[30] Life was a good life; man was a
+prosperous being. Hope for men was his natural air; despondency the
+element of his own self-created folly. Neither could it be otherwise.
+For, besides that, it would be too immeasurable a draught of woe to say
+in one breath that this only was the crux or affirmation of man's fate,
+and yet that this also was wretched _per se_; not accidentally made
+wretched by imprudence, but essentially and irrevocably so by necessity
+of its nature. Besides all this, which has a lurking dependency upon
+man's calculations of what is safe, he sees that this mode of thinking
+would leave him nothing; yet even that extreme consequence would not
+check some honest or sincere or desperate minds from uttering their
+convictions that life really _was_ this desperate game--much to lose
+and nothing in the best case to win. So far there would have been a
+dangerous gravitation at all times to the sad conclusion of Paganism.
+But, meanwhile, this dangerous gravitation was too dangerous, and
+Providence has deeply counteracted it by principles laid down in human
+nature. I affirm that where the ideas of man, where the possible
+infinities are not developed, then also the exorbitant on the other
+field is strongly pulled up. No ideals of evil can take place except
+under ideals of happiness that passeth all understanding. No synthesis
+can ever be executed, that is, no annumeration of A, B, C into a common
+total, viewed as elements tending to a common unity, unless previously
+this unity has been preconceived, because the elements are not elements,
+viz., original constituents of a representative whole (a series tending
+to a summation), unless that which is constituted--that whole--is
+previously given in idea. Since A and B and C could not be viewed as
+tending to a unity, having no existence except through them, unless
+previously that unity had existed for the regulation and eduction of its
+component elements. And this unity in the case of misery never could
+have been given unless far higher functions than any which could endure
+Paganism, or which Paganism could endure. Until the sad element of a
+diseased will is introduced, until the affecting notion is developed of
+a fountain in man himself welling up the misery for ever, no idea of
+misery could arise. Suffering is limited and transitory. What pain is
+permanent in man? Even the deepest laceration of the human heart, that
+which is inflicted by the loss of those who were the pulses of our
+hearts, is soothed (if never wholly healed) by time. One agency of time
+would avail for this effect were there no other. The features of the
+individual whom we mourn grow dimmer and dimmer as time advances; and,
+_pari passu_, the features of places and collateral objects and
+associated persons from whom reverberated these afflicting reminiscences
+of the lost object.
+
+I return: Deliverer from what? From suffering or misery. But that was
+not acknowledged, nor could have been, we could see no misery as a
+hypothesis except in these two modes: First, as a radication in man by
+means of something else, some third thing. Secondly, as a synthesis--as
+a gathering under a principle which must act prior to the gathering in
+order to provoke it. (The synthesis must be rendered possible and
+challenged by the _a priori_ unity which otherwise constitutes that
+unity.) As a metaphysical possibility evil was recognised through its
+unfathomable nature. But this was because such a nature already
+presupposed a God's nature, realizing his own ends, stepped in with
+effect. For the highest form--the normal or transcendent form--of virtue
+to a Pagan, was in the character of citizen. Indeed, the one sole or
+affirmative form of virtue lay in this sole function, viz., of public,
+of patriotic virtue. Since here only it was possible to introduce an
+_additional_ good to the world. All other virtue, as of justice between
+individual and individual, did but redress a previous error, sometimes
+of the man himself, sometimes of social arrangement, sometimes of
+accident. It was a _plus_ which balanced and compensated a pre-existing
+_minus_--an action _in regressu_, which came back with prevailing power
+upon an action _in progressu_. But to be a patriot was to fulfil a call
+of the supererogatory heart--a great nisus of sympathy with the one sole
+infinite, the sole practical infinite that man pre-Christian ever could
+generate for his contemplation. Now, therefore, it followed that the
+idea of virtue here only found its realization. Virtue, in fact, was not
+derivatively or consequentially connected with patriotism, it was
+_immanent_; not transitively associated by any links whatever, but
+immanently intertwisted, indwelling in the idea. Therefore it happened
+that a man, however heartsick of this tumid, bladdery delusion, although
+to him it was a balloon, by science punctured, lacerated, collapsing,
+trailed through ditch and mud under the rough handling and the fearful
+realities of life, yet he durst not avow his private feelings. That
+would have been even worse than with us: it would have been to proclaim
+virtue and vice mere bubbles and chimeras. He who really thinks so even
+we reasonably suspect of _practical_ indifference unless when we believe
+him to speak as a misanthrope.
+
+The question suppose to commence as to the divine mission of Christ. And
+the feeble understanding is sure to think this will be proved best by
+proving the subject of this doubt to have been a miracle-working power.
+And of all miracles, to have mastered (not merely escaped or evaded)
+death will be in his opinion the greatest. So that if Christ could be
+proved to have absolutely conquered death, _i.e._, to have submitted to
+death, but only to recoil from his power and overthrow it, to have died
+and subsequently to have risen again, will, _a fortiori_, prove Him to
+have been sent of God.
+
+Not so. All and every basis of credibility must be laid in the _moral_
+nature, where the thing to be believed is important, _i.e._, moral. And
+I therefore open with this remark absolutely _zermalmende_ to the common
+intellect: That from a holy faith you may infer a power of resurrection,
+but not from a power of resurrection fifty times repeated can we infer a
+holy faith. What in the last result is the thing to be proved? Why, a
+holy revelation, not of knowledge, but of things practical; of agenda,
+not scienda. It is essential that this holy should also be _new_,
+_original_, _revelatum_. Because, else, the divinest things which are
+_connata_ and have been common to all men, point to no certain author.
+They belong to the dark foundations of our being, and cannot challenge a
+trust, faith, or expectation as suspended upon any particular individual
+man whatever.
+
+Here, then, arises the [Greek: protontokinon]. Thick darkness sits on
+every man's mind as to Christ's revelation. He fancies that it amounts
+to this: 'Do what is good. Do your duty. Be good.' And with this vague
+notion of the doctrine, natural is it that he should think it as old as
+the hills. The first step to a saner view is, to understand--if a man
+has sense enough to reach so high--that the subtlest discoveries ever
+made by man, all put together, do not make one wave of that Atlantic as
+to novelty and originality which lies in the moral scheme of
+Christianity. I do not mean in the total scheme of Christianity,
+redemption, etc. No, but in the ethics.
+
+All ethics that ever Greece refined or Rome illustrated, was, and could
+be, only the same universal system of social ethics--ethics proper and
+exclusive to man and man _inter se_, with no glimpse of any upward
+relationship.
+
+Now Christianity looks upward for the first time. This in the first
+place. Secondly, out of that upward look Christianity looks secondarily
+down again, and reacts even upon the social ethics in the most
+tremendous way.
+
+
+_For my Book on the Relations of Christianity to Man._--S. T. C. cites
+Jeremy Taylor, etc., for horrible passages on the gloomy state of the
+chances for virtuous Pagans. S. T. C. in a more liberal generation is
+shocked; and of course in his readers as in himself secretly, he
+professes more liberal ideas. Aye, but how is he entitled to these
+ideas? For, on further consideration, it is not Cicero only, or
+Epictetus only, that would suffer under this law of Christianity viewed
+in its reagency, but also Abraham, David, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Hezekiah.
+Because, how could they benefit by a Redeemer not yet revealed--nay, by
+a Redeemer not even existing? For it is not the second person in the
+Trinity--not He separately and abstractedly--that is the Redeemer, but
+that second person incarnated. St. Paul apparently wished to smuggle
+this tremendous question into a fraudulent solution, by mixing up
+Abraham (with others pre-Christian and Christian) into the long array of
+those whose _Faith_ had saved them. But faith in whom? General faith in
+God is not the thing, it is faith in Jesus Christ; and we are solemnly
+told in many shapes that no other name was given on earth through which
+men could be delivered. Indeed, if not, how is the Messiah of such
+exclusive and paramount importance to man? The Messiah was as yet (viz.,
+in Abraham's time) a prophecy--a dim, prophetic outline of one who
+_should_ be revealed. But if Abraham and many others could do without
+Him, if this was a dispensable idea, how was it in any case, first or
+last, indispensable? Besides, recur to the theory of Christianity. Most
+undeniably it was this, that neither of the two elements interested in
+man could save him; not God; He might have power, but His purity
+revolted. Power (or doubtfully so), but no will. Not man--for he, having
+the will, had no power. God was too holy; manhood too _un_holy. Man's
+gifts, applicable, but insufficient. God's sufficient, but
+inapplicable. Then came the compromise. How if man could be engrafted
+upon God? Thus only, and by such a synthesis, could the ineffable
+qualities of God be so co-ordinated with those of man.
+
+
+Suppose even that a verbal inspiration could have been secured--secured,
+observe, against _gradual_ changes in language and against the
+reactionary corruption of concurrent versions, which it would be
+impossible to guarantee as also enjoying such an inspiration (since, in
+that case, _what_ barrier would divide mine or anybody's wilfully false
+translations from that pretending to authority? I repeat _what_? None is
+conceivable, since what could you have beyond the assurance of the
+translator, even which could only guarantee his intentions)--here is a
+cause of misinterpretation amounting to ruin, viz., after being read for
+centuries as if practically meant for our guidance, such and such a
+chapter (_e.g._, Jael and Sisera), long proscribed by the noble as a
+record of abominable perfidy, has at length been justified on the ground
+that it was never meant for anything else. Thus we might get rid of
+David, etc., were it not that for his flexible obedience to the _clerus_
+he has been pronounced the man after God's own heart.
+
+Is it not dreadful that at the very vestibule of any attempt to execute
+the pretended law of God and its sentences to hell we are interrupted by
+one case in every three as exceptional? Of the deaths, one in three are
+of children under five. Add to these surely _very_ many up to twelve or
+thirteen, and _many_ up to eighteen or twenty, then you have a law which
+suspends itself for one case in every two.
+
+_Note in the argument drawn from perishableness of language._ Not only
+(which I have noted) is any language, _ergo_ the original, Chaldaean,
+Greek, etc., perishable even for those who use it, but also the vast
+openings to error which all languages open to translators form a separate
+source of error in translators, viz.:
+
+1. The old one on my list that for them the guidance of inspiration has
+ceased, else, if not, you must set up an inspiration separately to
+translators, since, if you say--No, not at all, why, which then?
+
+2. The uncertainty of a foreign language even in a day contemporary with
+the original writer, and therefore over and above what arises from lapse
+of time and gradual alterations.
+
+
+_On Human Progress._--Oftentimes it strikes us all that this is so
+insensible as to elude observation the very nicest. Five years add
+nothing, we fancy. Now invert your glass. In 1642 Englishmen are
+fighting for great abstract principles. In 1460-83 (_i.e._, 100 + 17 +
+42 years before, or 159 years) they are fighting for persons, for rival
+candidates. In 1460 they could not have conceived more than an Esquimaux
+can entertain a question about the constitution of lyric poetry, or the
+differential principles of English and Greek tragedy, the barest
+approximation to questions that in 1642 are grounds of furious quarrel,
+of bloody quarrel, of extermination. Now then, looking forward, you
+would see from year to year little if any growth; but inverting your
+glass, looking back from the station of 1642 to 1460, you see a progress
+that if subdivided amongst all the 159 years would give to each _x_/0 as
+its quota, _i.e._ infinity. In fact, it is like the progression from
+nothing to something. It is--creation.
+
+All the body of the Christian world would fly out in a rage if you
+should say that Christianity required of you many things that were easy,
+but one thing that was _not_. Yet this is undoubtedly true; it requires
+you to _believe_, and even in the case where you know what it is to
+believe, and so far are free from perplexity, you have it not in your
+own power to ensure (though you can influence greatly) your own power to
+believe. But also great doubt for many (and for all that are not
+somewhat metaphysical) attends the knowledge of what is believing.
+
+
+As to my mother's fancy that Sir W. Jones had found in the East proofs
+of Christianity, having gone out an infidel.
+
+To do her justice, never once after she had adopted a theory of
+Christianity did she inquire or feel anxious about its proof. But to
+review the folly of this idea.
+
+1. That Christianity there where it reigned and was meant to reign
+should be insufficient in its proofs; but that in a far distant land,
+lurking in some hole or corner, there should be proofs of its truth,
+just precisely where these proofs were not wanted. And again, that these
+should be reserved for one scholar rambling into a solitary path, where
+in a moral sense _nobody_ could follow him (for it _is_ nobody--this or
+that oriental scholar). And we are sure that his proof was not of that
+order to shine by its own light, else it would have resounded through
+England.
+
+2. That for many hundreds of years Christianity should have been
+received, generation after generation should have lived under its vital
+action, upon no sufficient argument, and suddenly such an argument
+should turn up as a reward to a man in a country not Christian for being
+more incredulous than his neighbours; how impossible!
+
+That fraudulent argument which affects to view the hardships of an
+adventurous life and its perils as capable of one sole impression--that
+of repulsion--and secondly as the sole circumstances about such
+adventures, injures from the moment when it is perceived: not
+
+1. The writer only; no matter for him, worthless liar, how much he sinks
+in the opinion of his readers: but
+
+2. The Apostles. Now see the injury of falsehood. Suddenly it snaps, and
+with a great reaction causes a jar to the whole system, which in
+ordinary minds it is never likely to recover. The reason it is not
+oftener perceived is that people read such books in a somnolent,
+inactive state of mind, one-tenth coming to a subject on which they have
+already made up their minds, and open to no fresh impressions, the other
+nine-tenths caring not one straw about the matter, as reading it in an
+age of irreflectiveness and purely through an act of obedience to their
+superiors, else not only does this hypocritical attempt to varnish give
+way all at once, and suddenly (with an occasion ever after of doubt, and
+causing a reflection to any self-sufficient man, suddenly coming to
+perceive that he has been cheated, and with some justification for
+jealousy thenceforwards to the maker up of a case), but also it robs the
+Apostles of the human grace they really possessed. For if we suppose
+them armed against all temptations, snares, seductions, by a
+supernatural system of endowments, this is but the case of an
+angel--nay, not of an angel, for it is probable that when an angel
+incarnated himself, or one of the Pagan deities, who was obliged first
+to incarnate himself before he could act amongst men, or so much as be
+seen by men, he was bound by all the defects of man, _i.e._, he could
+choose only an ideal, so far ideal as to elude the worst effects from
+vice, intemperance, etc. The angel who wrestled with Jacob probably did
+his best; he was a stout fellow, but so was the patriarch. The very
+condition of incarnation, and this because the mere external form
+already includes limitations (as of a fish, not to fly; of a man, not to
+fly, etc.) probably includes as a _necessity_, not as a choice, the
+adoption of all evils connected with the nature assumed. Even the Son of
+God, once incarnated, was not exempted from any evil of flesh; He grew,
+passed through the peculiar infirmities of every stage up to mature
+life; would have grown old, infirm, weak, had He lived longer; was
+liable to death, the worst of all human evils, and was not, we may be
+sure, exempted from any one fleshly desire with regard to sex, or
+enemies, or companions, but because that divine principle, which also
+_is in man_, yes, in every man the foulest and basest--this light which
+the darkness comprehended not, and which in some is early extinguished,
+but in _all_ fights fitfully with the winds and storms of this human
+atmosphere, in Him was raised to a lustre unspeakable by His pure and
+holy will.
+
+If the Apostles were more celestially armed in any other sense than as
+we are all armed from above by calling forth our better natures, if in
+any other sense than as sorrow arms us by purifying our natures, as
+sorrowful reflection, as meditation and earnest endeavours to resist our
+angry instincts (which, on the contrary, how often do men _obey_ under
+the vile pretence of being put by conscience on a painful duty), then, I
+say, what were the Apostles to us? Why should we admire them? How can we
+make them models of imitation? It is like that case of Anarcharsis the
+Scythian.
+
+
+It does certainly incense a Christian to think that stupid Mahommedans
+should impute to us such _childish_ idolatries as that of God having a
+son and heir--just as though we were barbarous enough to believe that
+God was liable to old age--that the time was coming, however distant,
+when somebody would say to him, 'Come, Sir,' or 'Come, my Lord, really
+you are not what you were. It's time you gave yourself some ease
+([Greek: euphemi], time, indeed, that you resigned the powers to which
+you are unequal), and let a younger man take the reins.' None but a
+filthy barbarian could carry forward his thoughts so little as not to
+see that this son in due time would find himself in the same
+predicament.
+
+Now mark how Christian lands would enforce this doctrine of unity by
+horrid coercions. They hang, drown, burn, crucify those who deny it. So
+that, be assured you are planting your corner-stone on the most windy of
+delusions. You yourselves do not ascribe any merit to Mahommed separate
+from that of revealing the unity of God. Consequently, if that is a
+shaken craze arising from mere inability on his part, a little, a very
+little information would have cut up by the very roots the whole
+peculiarity of Islam. For if a wise man could have assembled these
+conceited Arabians and told them: Great thieves, you fancy yourselves to
+have shot far ahead of the Christians as to the point of unity, and if
+you had I would grant that you had made a prodigious advance. But you
+are deceiving quarrellers. It is all a word--mere smoke, that blinds
+you. The Christian seems to affirm three Gods, and even to aggravate
+this wickedness by calling one of them 'a Son,' thus seeming to accept
+that monstrous notion that God is liable to old age and decrepitude, so
+as to provide wisely against His own dotage. But all this is an error:
+these three apparent Gods are but one, and in the most absolute sense
+one.
+
+
+The most shockingly searching, influential, and permanent blunder that
+ever has affected the mind of man has been the fancy that a religion
+includes a creed as to its [Greek: aporrheta], and a morality; in short,
+that it was doctrinal by necessity, enactory, and (which has been the
+practical part of the blunder) therefore exclusive, because:
+
+1. With our notion of a religion as essentially doctrinal, the very
+first axiom about it is, that being true itself it makes all others
+false. Whereas, the capital distinction of the Pagan was--that given,
+supposing to be assumed, 10,000 religions--all must be true
+simultaneously, all equally. When a religion includes any distinct
+propositions offered to the understanding (that is, I think, resting
+upon a principle or tendency to a consequence by way of differencing
+from facts which also are for the understanding, but then barely to
+contemplate not with a power of reacting on the understanding, for every
+principle introduces into the mind that which may become a modification,
+a restraint; whereas, a fact restrains nothing in the way of thought
+unless it includes a principle), it would rise continually in its
+exclusive power according to the number of those propositions. At first
+it might exclude all but ten, eight, seven, and so on; finally, as
+integrated it would exclude all.
+
+2. If you ask on what principle a Pagan believed his religion, the
+question to him was almost amusing and laughable. I will illustrate the
+case. A man meets you who inquires in a hurried, suppose even in an
+agitated way, whether you met a tall man, blind of one eye, dressed in
+such a coloured dress, etc. Now, does it ever occur to you that the
+inquirer is lying? Lying! Wherefore should he lie? Or again, if you say
+that your house stands under a hill, that three out of four chimneys
+smoke, and that you must indeed try some of the inventions for remedying
+this annoyance, would any man in his senses think of speculating on the
+possibility that all this should be a romance? Or, to come nearer in the
+kind of fact, if a man represented his family fortune as having been
+bequeathed by a maiden aunt in the last generation, would any man say
+otherwise than that doubtless the man knew his own benefactors and
+relatives best? On this same principle, when Christ was mentioned as the
+divinity adored by a certain part of the Jews who were by way of
+distinction called Christians, why should a Roman object? What motive
+could he have for denying the existence or the divine existence of
+Christ? Even the idea of dissent or schism, some Jews worshipping, some
+protesting, would not much puzzle him. Something like it had occurred in
+Pagan lands. Neptune and Athene had contended for Attica. And under the
+slight inquiry which he would ever make, or listen to when made by
+others, he might wonder at the rancour displayed by the protesting
+party, but he would take it for granted that a divinity of some local
+section had been unduly pushed into pre-eminence over a more strictly
+epichorial divinity. He would go off with this notion, that whereas, the
+elder Jews insisted on paying vows, etc., to a God called Jehovah, a
+section sought to transfer that allegiance to a divinity called Christ.
+If he were further pressed on the subject, he would fancy that very
+possibly, as had been thought, found or imagined in the case of Syrian
+deities or Egyptian, etc., that perhaps Christ might correspond to
+Apollo, as Astarte to Diana, Neptune of Latium to the Poseidon of
+Greece. But if not, that would cause no scruple at all. Thus far it was
+by possibility a mere affair of verbal difference. But suppose it
+ascertained that in no point of the symbols surrounding the worship of
+Christ, or the conception of His person, He could be identified with any
+previously-known Pagan God--that would only introduce Him into the
+matricula of Gods as a positive novelty. Nor would it have startled a
+Roman to hear that in India or any country large enough there should be
+a separate Pantheon of many thousand deities, _plus_ some other Pantheon
+of divinities corresponding to their own. For Syria--but still more in
+one section of Syrian Palestine--this would surprise him _quoad_ the
+degree, not _quoad_ the principle. The Jew had a separate or peculiar
+God, why not? No nation could exist without Gods: the very separate
+existence of a people, trivial as it might be in power and wealth,
+argued a tutelary God, but, of course, proportioned to the destinies at
+least (and in part to the present size) of the country. Thus far no
+difficulties at all. But the morality! Aye, but that would never be
+accounted a part of religion. As well confound a science with religion.
+Aye, but the [Greek: aporrheta]. These would be viewed as the rites of
+Adonis, or of Ceres; you could not warn him from his preconception that
+these concerned only Jews. Where, therefore, lodged the offence? Why
+here, as personalities--for such merely were all religions--the God must
+be measured by his nation. So some Romans proposed to introduce Christ
+into the Roman Pantheon. But what first exploded as a civil offence was
+the demand of supremacy and the inconceivable principle set up of
+incompatibility. This was mere folly.
+
+
+A much more solemn, significant and prophetic meaning than the common
+one may be secured to the famous passage in St. Matthew--'And thou shalt
+call His name _Jesus_.' This injunction wears the most impressive
+character belonging to heavenly adjuration, when it is thus confided to
+the care and custody of a special angel, and in the very hour of
+inauguration, and amongst the very birth-throes of Christianity. For in
+two separate modes the attention is secretly pointed and solicited to
+the grand serpentine artifice, which met and confronted the almost
+insurmountable difficulty besetting Christianity on its very threshold:
+First, by the record of the early _therapeutic_ miracles, since in that
+way only, viz., by a science of healing, which the philosopher equally
+with the populace recognised as resting upon inspiration from God, could
+the magistrate and civil authority have been steadily propitiated;
+secondly, by the very verbal suggestion couched in the name _Jesus_, or
+_Healer_. At the most critical of moments an angel reveals himself, for
+the purpose of saying '_Thou shalt call His name Jesus_'--and why Jesus?
+Because, says the angel, 'He shall heal or cleanse His people from sin
+as from a bodily disease.' Thus, in one and the same moment is suggested
+prospectively to the early Christian, who is looking forward in search
+of some adequate protection against the civil magistrate, and
+theoretically and retrospectively is suggested to the Christian of our
+own philosophizing days, that admirable resource of what by a shorthand
+expression I will call _Hakimism_. The _Hakim_, the _Jesus_, the
+_Healer_, comes from God. Mobs must not be tolerated. But neither must
+the deep therapeutic inspirations of God be made of none effect, or
+narrowed in their applications. And thus in one moment was the panic
+from disease armed against the panic from insurgent mobs; the privileged
+Hakim was marshalled against the privileged magistrate; and the deep
+superstition, which saw, and not unreasonably, a demon raging in a
+lawless mob, saw also a demon not less blind or cruel in the pestilence
+that walked in darkness. And, as one magnet creates other magnets, so
+also the Hakim, once privileged, could secretly privilege others. And
+the physical Hakim could by no test or shibboleth be prevented from
+silently introducing the spiritual Hakim. And thus, whilst thrones and
+councils were tumultuating in panic, behold! suddenly the Christian
+soldier was revealed amongst them as an armed man.
+
+
+'_Ecrasez l'infame_,' I also say: and who is he? It would be mere
+insanity to suppose that it could be _any_ teacher of moral truths. Even
+I, who so much despise Socrates, could not reasonably call him
+_l'infame_.
+
+But who, then, is _l'infame_? It is he who, finding in those great ideas
+which I have noticed as revelations from God, and which throw open to
+the startled heart the heaven of heavens, in the purity, the holiness,
+the peace which passeth all understanding, finding no argument of
+divinity, then afterwards _does_ find it in the little tricks of
+legerdemain, in conjuring, in praestigia. But here, though perhaps roused
+a little to see the baseness of relying on these miracles, and also in
+the rear a far worse argument against them, he still feels uncomfortable
+at such words applied to things which Christ did. Christ could not
+make, nor wished to make, that great which was inherently mean; that
+relevant, which was originally irrelevant. If He did things in
+themselves mean, it was because He suited Himself to mean minds,
+incapable of higher views; wretches such as exist amongst us of modern
+days by millions, on whom all His Divine words were thrown away,
+wretches deaf and blind and besotted, to whom it was said in vain: 'He
+that looketh upon a woman,' and what follows, creating by a rod of
+divinity in man's heart a far superior ideal of the moral; who heard
+with indifference His 'Bless those who persecute you;' yes, listened
+unmoved to His 'Suffer little children to come unto Me;' who heard with
+anger His 'In heaven there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage;'
+who abhorred His great doctrine that the counsels of God were not read
+in the events of things[31]; who slighted as trivial that prayer which a
+wise man might study with profit for a thousand years; beasts, wretches,
+that turned away deaf and blind, even as their sons turn away, from
+these arguments of a truth far transcending all that yet had come
+amongst men; but whilst trampling with their brutal hoofs upon such
+flowers of Paradise, turned in stupid wonderment to some mere
+legerdemain or jugglery.
+
+
+_The Truth._--But what tongue can express, what scale can measure, the
+awful change in man's relations to the unseen world? Where there had
+been a blank not filled by anything, not by any smoke or dusky tarnish
+of suspicion, not filled by so much as any shadowy outline or vague
+phantom of possibility, _there_ was now seen rising, 'like Teneriffe or
+Atlas'--say rather, by symbolizing the greatest of human interests by
+the greatest of human visual objects, like the snowy peaks of the
+Himalaya, peaks that by men's feelings are referred to the heavens
+rather than to the earth; to the beings 'whose dwelling is no thick
+flesh,' rather than to men who have in no age succeeded in scaling them;
+and who in their steps to those mighty thrones have heard nothing but
+dread crashes of sound--again to fade or vanish, the colossal form,
+never the mighty idea of 'The Truth.'[32] Where there had been nothing,
+a blank, a chasm, there stood in solemn proportions a new object for
+man, called The Truth. Why was it called _The_ Truth? How could such an
+idea arise? Many persons will be weak enough to fancy that, as [Greek:
+hopoetes] was sometimes an artifice of rhetoric for expressing the
+exclusive supremacy of Homer, and as by a pure affectation and movement
+of dissimulation a man was called by the title of _The Orator_, his own
+favourite Greek or Roman thus affecting for the moment to know of no
+other (for all such emphatic and exclusive uses of _the_ imply a
+momentary annihilation of the competitors, as though in comparison of
+the ideal exemplification these minor and approximating forms had no
+existence--or at least, not _quoad hunc locum_--as 'the mountain in
+Sicily' would rightly indicate Etna), on the same artificial principle
+they may imagine rhetoricians to have denominated (or if not, to have
+had it in their power to denominate) some one department of truth which
+they wished to favour as _the_ truth. But this conventional denomination
+would not avail, and for two reasons: First, that rival modes of truth
+(physics against mathematics, rhetoric against music) would contest the
+title, and no such denomination would have a basis of any but a sort of
+courtesy or vicarious harmonious reality from the very first. Secondly,
+that, standing in no relation whatever to God, every mode, form,
+division or subdivision of truth merely intellectual would gain nothing
+at all by such ostentatious arts. Algebra has been distinguished by
+glorious names; so has the fancied knowledge of transmutation applied to
+the metals; so, doubtless, has many a visionary speculation of magic;
+so, again, has the ridiculous schwermerey of the Rabbis in particular
+ages. But those are as transient and even for the moment as partial
+titles as the titles of Invincible or Seraphic applied to scholastic
+divines. Out of this idea the truth grew, next (suppose _x_) another
+_Martyrdom_.
+
+The difference between all human doctrines and this is as between a
+marble statue and a quick thing. The statue may be better, and it may be
+of better material; it may be of ivory, of marble, and amongst marbles
+known to the ancient sculptors of several different kinds the most
+prized; of silver gilt, of hollow gold, of massy gold, and in all
+degrees of skill; but still one condition applies to all--whatever the
+material, whoever the artist, the statue is inanimate, the breath of
+life is not within its nostrils. Motion, spontaneity, action and
+antagonist action, the subtle watch-work of the brain, the mighty
+laboratory of the heart, vision, sensibility, self-propagated warmth,
+pleasure, hope, memory, thought, liberty--not one of these divine gifts
+does it possess. It is cold, icy, senseless, dull, inert matter. Let
+Phidias have formed the statue, it is no better. Let the purest gold be
+its material, it is no worthier than the meanest model in clay to the
+valuation of the philosopher. And here, as in so many cases, the great
+philosopher meets with the labouring man; both meet with the little
+innocent child. All have the same undervaluation of the statue. And if
+any man values it preposterously, it will be neither a great
+philosopher, nor a labouring man with horny fists, nor a little innocent
+and natural child. It will be some crazy simpleton, who dignifies
+himself as a man of taste, as _elegans formarum spectator_, as one
+having a judicious eye for the distinctions of form. But now, suddenly,
+let one of the meanest of these statues begin to stir and shiver with
+the mystery of life, let it be announced that something 'quick' is in
+the form, let the creeping of life, the suffusion of sensibility, the
+awful sense of responsibility and accountability ripen themselves, what
+a shock--what a panic! What an interest--how profound--would diffuse
+itself in every channel. Such is the ethics of God as contrasted with
+the ethics of Greek philosophers. The only great thing ever done by
+Greece or by Greek philosophers was the ethics. Yet, after all, these
+were but integrations of the natural ethics implanted in each man's
+heart. Integrations they were, but rearrangements--redevelopments from
+some common source.
+
+
+It is remarkable that the Scriptures, valuing clearness and fencing
+against misunderstandings above all things, never suspend--there is no
+[Greek: epoche] in the scriptural style of the early books. And,
+therefore, when I first came to a text, 'If when,' I was thunderstruck,
+and I found that this belongs to the more cultivated age of Hebrew
+literature.
+
+
+'_And the swine because it divideth the hoof, yet cheweth not the cud,
+it is unclean unto you_' (Deut. xiv. 8). Now the obvious meaning is,
+_prima facie_, that the ground of its uncleanness was its dividing the
+hoof. Whereas, so far from this, to divide the hoof is a ground of
+cleanness. It is a fact, a _sine qua non_--that is, a negative condition
+of cleanness; but not, therefore, taken singly the affirmative or
+efficient cause of cleanness. It must in addition to this chew the
+cud--it must ruminate. Which, again, was but a _sine qua non_--that is,
+a negative condition, indispensable, indeed; whose absence could not be
+tolerated in any case, but whose presence did not therefore, and as a
+matter of course, avail anything. For the reverse case occurred in the
+camel, hare, and rabbit. They _do_ chew the cud, the absence of which
+habit caused the swine to be rejected, but then they 'divide not the
+hoof.' Accordingly they were equally rejected as food with the swine.
+
+
+We see the great Jewish lawgiver looking forward to cases which actually
+occurred nearly five hundred years after, as demanding a king, and again
+looking still farther to cases eight hundred and a thousand years
+after--their disobedience and rebellion to God. Now, many will think
+that it must have been an easy thing for any people, when swerving from
+their law, and especially in that one great fundamental article of
+idolatry as the Jews so continually did, and so naturally when the case
+is examined, to always have an easy retreat: the plagues and curses
+denounced would begin to unfold themselves, and then what more easy than
+to relinquish the idolatrous rites or customs, resuming with their old
+rituals to God their old privileges? But this was doubly impossible.
+First, because men utterly misconceive the matter when they suppose that
+with direct consecutive succession the judgment would succeed the
+trespass. Large tracts of time would intervene. Else such direct
+clockwork as sin and punishment, repentance and relief, would dishonour
+God not less than they would trivialize the people. God they would
+offend by defeating all His purposes; the people they would render vile
+by ripening into mechanic dissimulation. The wrath of God slept often
+for a long season; He saw as one who saw not. And by the time that His
+large councils had overtaken them, and His judgments were fast coming up
+with the offenders, they had so hardened themselves in error that a
+whole growth of false desires had sprung up, and of false beliefs, blind
+maxims, bad habits, bad connections, and proverbs, which found out a
+reconciliation of that irreconcilable truth with the foulest pollutions.
+The victims of temptation had become slow even to suspect their own
+condition. And, if some more enlightened did so, the road of existence
+was no longer easy. Error had woven chains about them. They were
+enmeshed. And it is but a faint emblem of their situation to say, that
+as well may a man commence a habit of intoxication for the purpose of
+having five years' pleasure, and then halting in his career, as the Jews
+may contaminate themselves tentatively with idolatrous connections under
+the delusion that it would always be time enough for untreading their
+steps when these connections had begun to produce evil. For they could
+not recover the station from which they swerved. They that had now
+realized the _casus foederis_, the case in which they had covenanted
+themselves to desist from idolatry, were no longer the men who had made
+that covenant. They had changed profoundly and imperceptibly. So that
+the very vision of truth was overcast with carnal doubts; the truth
+itself had retired to a vast distance and shone but feebly for them, and
+the very will was palsied in its motions of recovery.
+
+In such a state, suppose it confirmed and now threatening towards a
+total alienation from the truth once delivered, what could avail to save
+them? Nothing but affliction in the heaviest form. Vain it was now to
+hope for a cheaper restoration, since the very first lightening of their
+judicial punishment would seem to them a reason for relapsing, by
+seeming to argue that there had been two principles. It was but a false
+alarm, they would say, after all. Affliction, therefore, was past all
+substitution or remedy. Yet even this case, this prostration to the
+ground, had been met for a thousand years by God's servants.
+
+
+If I have shown that quickening spirit which, diffusing itself through
+all thoughts, schemata, possible principles, motives of sensibility, and
+forms of taste, has differenced the pre-Christian man from the
+post-Christian; if I have detected that secret word which God subtly
+introduced into this world, kept in a state of incubation for two
+millennia, then with the flames and visible agency of a volcanic
+explosion forced into infinite disruption, caused to kindle into a
+general fire--that word by which sadness is spread over the face of
+things, but also infinite grandeur--then may I rightly lay this as one
+chapter of my Emendation of Human Knowledge.
+
+
+The same thing precisely takes place in literature as in spiritual
+things. When a man is entangled and suffocated in business, all relating
+to that which shrinks up to a point--and observe, I do not mean that
+being conceived as a tent above his head it contracts, but that, viewed
+as a body at a distance, it shrinks up to a point, and really vanishes
+as a real thing--when this happens, having no subjective existence at
+all, but purely and intensely objective, he misconceives it just in the
+same way as a poor ignorant man misconceives learning or knowledge;
+fancying, _e.g._, like Heylius senior, that he ought to know the road
+out of the wood in which they were then entangled.
+
+
+It is probable that Adam meant only the unity of man as to his nature,
+which also is meant by making all men of one blood. Similarly
+Boeckh--[Greek: en genei]--which does not mean that Gods _and_ men are
+the same, but that of each the separate race has unity in itself. So the
+first man, Adam, will mean the earliest race of men, perhaps spread
+through thousands of years.
+
+
+It is a violent case of prejudice, this ordinary appeal of Bossuet,
+'Qu'ont gagne les philosophes avec leurs discours pompeux?' (p. 290).
+Now how _should_ that case have been tried thoroughly before the
+printing of books? Yet it may be said the Gospel _was_ so tried. True,
+but without having the power of fully gratifying itself through the
+whole range of its capability. That was for a later time, hence a new
+proof of its reality.
+
+
+_An Analogy._--1. I have somewhere read that a wicked set of Jews,
+probably, when rebuked for wickedness, replied, 'What! are we not the
+peculiar people of God? Strange, then, if we may not have a privilege
+more than others to do wrong!' The wretches fancied that to be the
+people of God--the chosen people--implied a license to do wrong, and had
+a man told them, No, it was just the other way; they were to be better
+than others, absolutely, they would have trembled with wrath.
+
+2. Precisely the same idea, I am sure, lurks in many minds as to
+repentance. It is odious to think of, this making God the abettor and
+encourager of evil; but I am sure it is so, viz., that, because God has
+said He will have mercy on the penitent, they fancy that, as the chief
+consequence from that doctrine, they may commit sins without anxiety;
+though others, not under the Christian privilege, would be called to
+account for the same sin, penitent or not penitent. But they--such is
+their thought--are encouraged to sin by the assurance that repentance
+will always be open to them, and this they may pursue at leisure.
+
+Now, if a man should say: 'But, my friends, this means _real
+penitence_;' they would reply, 'Oh, but we mean _real penitence_.'
+'Well, if you do, you must know that that is not always possible.' 'Not
+possible!' Then make them understand that; they will roar with wrath,
+and protest against it as no privilege at all.
+
+
+The literal interpretation of the Mosaic Cosmogony is the very
+expression of a barbarian mind and people, relying so far on magic as to
+make all natural process of generation or production impossible, relying
+so far on natural processes as to make the fiat of supreme power
+evidently inapplicable. It is exactly the Minerva of the Pagans draggled
+in her skirts.
+
+
+_Idolatry._--It is not only a mere blind crotchet of Isaiah's
+(Jeremiah's?) to ridicule idols--utterly wide of any real imperfection,
+but also it misses all that really might be bad. The true evil is not to
+kindle the idea of Apollo by an image or likeness, but to worship
+Apollo, _i.e._, a god to be in some sense false--belonging to a system
+connected with evil. That may be bad; but there can be no separate evil
+in reanimating the idea of this Apollo by a picture.
+
+
+I have observed many times, but never could understand in any rational
+sense, the habit of finding a confirmation of the Bible in mere
+archaeologic facts occasionally brought to light and tallying with the
+Biblical records. As in the Pharaonic and Egyptian usages, and lately in
+the case of Nimrod, a great collateral confirmation of Ezekiel has been
+fancied. But how? Supposing Ezekiel to have recited accurately the
+dimensions of Nineveh, how should _that_ make him a true prophet? Or
+supposing him a false one, what motive should that furnish for
+mismeasuring Nineveh? The Gospels appear to have been written long after
+the events, and when controversies or variations had arisen about them,
+they have apparently been modified and shaped to meet those disputes.
+
+
+_The sun stands still._ I am persuaded that this means no such
+incredible miracle as is ordinarily imagined. The interpretation arises
+from misconceiving an Oriental expression, and a forcible as well as
+natural one. Of all people the Jews could least mistake the nature of
+the sun and moon, as though by possibility they could stand in a
+relation to a particular valley: that the sun could have stood still in
+Gibeon, and the moon in Ajalon. Since they viewed sun and moon as two
+great lights, adequated and corresponding to day and night, that alone
+shows that they did not mean any objective solstice of the hour, for
+else why in Ajalon? Naturally it would be a phenomenon chiefly made
+known to the central sanctity of that God whose miraculous interposition
+had caused so unknown an arrest of ordinary nature; Jerusalem was not
+then known, it was Jebus, a city of Jebusites; and the fact which
+subsequently created its sanctity did not occur till more than four
+centuries afterwards (viz., on the threshing-floor of Araunah). But
+Shiloh existed, and Horeb, and Sinai, and the graves of the Patriarchs.
+And all those places would have expounded the reference of the miracle,
+would have traced it to the very source of its origin; so as to show not
+then only, not to the contemporaries only, but (which would be much more
+important) to after generations, who might suspect some mistake in their
+ancestors as explaining their meaning, or in themselves as understanding
+it. What it really means, I am persuaded, is merely to express that the
+day was, of all historical days, the most important. What! do people
+never reflect on the [Greek: to] positive of their reading? If they
+_did_, they would remember that the very idea of a great cardinal event,
+as of the foundation of the Olympiads, was as an arrest, a pausing, of
+time; causing you to hang and linger on that time. And the grandeur of
+this Jewish Waterloo in which God established possessions for His people
+and executed an earthly day of judgment on the ancient polluters
+(through perhaps a thousand years) of the sacred land (already sacred as
+the abode and burying-place of His first servants under a covenant) was
+expressed by saying that the day lingered, arrested itself by a burthen
+of glorious revolution so mighty as this great day of overthrow. For
+remember this: Would not God have changed Pharaoh's heart, so
+intractable, by such a miracle, had it been at all open to His eternal
+laws? Whereas, if you say, Aye, but on that account why grant even so
+much distinction to the day as your ancestor does? answer, it was the
+_final-cause_ day.
+
+
+The English Church pretends to give away the Bible without note or
+comment, or--which, in fact, is the meaning--any impulse or bias to the
+reader's mind. The monstrous conceit of the Protestant Churches, viz.,
+the right of private judgment (which is, in effect, like the right to
+talk nonsense, or the right to criticise Sir John Herschel's books
+without mathematics), is thus slavishly honoured. Yet all is deception.
+Already in the translation at many hundred points she has laid a
+restraining bias on the reader, already by the division of verses,
+already by the running abstracts over the Prophets, she has done this.
+
+
+Can the power adequated to a generation of minds, or to a succession of
+many generations, find its comprehension in an individual? Can the might
+which overflows the heaven of heavens be confined within a local
+residence like that which twice reared itself by its foundations, and
+three times by its battlements, above the threshing-floor of
+Araunah?[33] Of that mystery, of that local circumscription--in what
+sense it was effected, in what sense not effected, we know nothing. But
+this by mere human meditation, this profound difficulty we may humanly
+understand and measure, viz., the all but impossibility of reaching the
+man who stands removed to an extent of fifteen centuries. But here comes
+in the unspiritual mind which thinks only of facts--yet mark me so far,
+Rome by an augury of wicked gods stretched to a period of 1,200 years.
+Yet how open to doubt in one sense! Not, I am sure, in any sense
+understood by man, but I doubt not in the ominous sense intended.
+Changed in all things essential, she was yet a mighty sceptered potentate
+for the world until her dependency on Attila's good-will and
+forbearance. 444 after Christ added to 752 B. C. complete the period.
+But period for what? For whom? For a great idea that could not be lost.
+The conception could not perish if the execution perished. But, next
+think of the temptation to _mythus_. And, finally, of God's plan
+unrealized, His conceptions unanswered. We should remember that by the
+confusion introduced into the economy of internal Divine operations
+there is a twofold difficulty placed between the prayer and the
+attainment of the prayer. 1st, the deflection, slight though it may seem
+to the man, from the state of perfect simplicity and of natural desire;
+2ndly, the deflection of the object desired from the parallelism with
+the purposes _now_ became necessary to God in order to remedy
+_abnormous_ shifting of the centre by man. And again, in the question of
+the language of Scripture, I see the same illustration. Sir William
+Jones, in a fit of luxurious pleasure-giving, like Gibbons' foolish
+fit[34] as to the Archbishop of Carthagena, praises the language of
+Scripture as unattainable. I say, No. This is hypocrisy. It is no
+dishonour if we say of God that, in the sense meant by Sir William
+Jones, it is not possible for Him to speak better than powerful writers
+can speak. They have the same language as their instrument, and as
+impossible would it be for Apollonius or Sir William Jones to perform a
+simple process of addition better than an ordinary keeper of a shop. In
+the schemata, because in the original ideas, God says indeed what man
+cannot, for these are peculiar to God; but who before myself has shown
+what they were? As to mere language, however, and its management, we
+have the same identically. And when a language labours under an
+infirmity, as all do, not God Himself could surmount it! He is
+compromised, coerced, by the elements of language; but what of that? It
+is an element of man's creating. And just as in descending on man by His
+answers God is defeated or distorted many times by the foul atmosphere
+in which man has thrown himself, so in descending upon the mind (unless
+by dreams, or some language that he may have kept pure), God is thwarted
+and controlled by the imperfections of human language. And, apart from
+the ideas, I myself could imitate the Scriptural language--I know its
+secret, its principle of movement which lies chiefly in high
+abstractions--far better than is done in most parts of the Apocrypha.
+
+The power lies in the spirit--the animating principle; and verily such a
+power seems to exist. And the fact derived from the holiness, the
+restraints even upon the Almighty's power through His own holiness,
+goodness, and wisdom, are so vast that, instead of the unlimited power
+which hypocritical glorifiers ascribe to Him by way of lip-honour, in
+reaching man _ex-abundantibus_ in so transcendent a way that mere excess
+of means would have perplexed a human choice, on the contrary, I am
+persuaded that besides the gulf of 1,500 years so as to hold on, so as
+to hold hard, and to effect the translation of His will unaltered,
+uncorrupted, through the violent assaults of idolatries all round, and
+the perverse, headstrong weakness of a naturally unbelieving people,[35]
+down to the time of Christ from the time of Moses--there was the labour
+hardly to be effected; and why? I have always been astonished at men
+treating such a case as a simple _original_ problem as to God. But far
+otherwise. It was a problem secondary to a change effected by man. His
+rays, His sun, still descended as ever; but when they came near to the
+foul atmosphere of man, no ray could pierce unstained, unrefracted, or
+even untwisted. It was distorted so as to make it hardly within the
+limits of human capacity (observe, the difficulty was in the human power
+to receive, to sustain, to comprehend--not in the Divine power to
+radiate, to receive what was directed to it). Often I have reflected on
+the tremendous gulf of separation placed between man, by his own act,
+and all the Divine blessings which could visit him. (This is illustrated
+by prayer; for, while we think it odd that so many prayers of good men
+for legitimate objects of prayer should seem to be unanswered, we
+nevertheless act as to our prayers in a kind of unconscious hypocrisy,
+as though to our sense they had been answered in some ineffable way, and
+all the while our conduct, to speak strictly, lies outside all this, and
+remains wholly uninfluenced by it).
+
+These ideas of God have life only by their own inherent power: yet what
+risk that Jews should lapse into supposing themselves separately a
+favoured people? By this very error they committed the rebellion against
+which they had been warned--in believing that they only were concerned
+in receiving a supernatural aid of redemption: thus silently
+substituting their own merits for the Divine purposes. All which did in
+fact happen. But their errors were overruled, else how could the human
+race be concerned in their offences, errors, or ministries? The Jews
+forgot what we moderns forget, that they were no separate objects of
+favour with God, but only a means of favour.
+
+What occasion to 'argal-bargal' about why God did not sooner accomplish
+the scheme of Christianity? For besides that, 1st, possibly the scheme
+in its expansion upon earth required a corresponding expansion
+elsewhere; 2ndly, it is evident even to our human sense that none but
+the most childish eudamonist, whose notion of happiness is that of lazy
+luxury, would think of cramming men, bidding them open their mouths, and
+at once drugging them with a sensual opium (as all blessing must be
+without previous and commensurate elevation to the level of that
+blessing); 3rdly, the physical nature of the evil to be undone was such
+as would not have _been_ (_objectively_ would not have been, but still
+less could it _subjectively_ have been) for the conception of man that
+dreadful mystery which it really is, had the awful introversion been
+measured back by fewer steps; 4thly, and finally, it seems at first
+sight shocking to say of God that He cannot do this and this, but it is
+not so. Without adverting to the dark necessities that compass our
+chaotic sense when we ascend by continual abstraction to the _absolute_,
+without entangling ourselves vainly in those wildernesses that no
+created intellect can range or measure--even one sole attribute of God,
+His holiness, makes it as impossible for Him to proceed except by
+certain steps as it would be impossible for a man, though a free agent,
+and apparently master, as he feels and thinks, of his own life, to cut
+his throat while in a state of pleasurable health both of mind and
+body.
+
+
+5.--Political, etc.
+
+Sir Robert Walpole, as to patriots, was like a man who has originally,
+from his nursery up, been thoroughly imbued with the terror of ghosts,
+which by education and example afterwards he has been encouraged to
+deny. Half he does disbelieve, and, under encouraging circumstances, he
+does disbelieve it stoutly. But at every fresh plausible alarm his early
+faith intrudes with bitter hatred against a class of appearances that,
+after all, he is upon system pledged to hold false. Nothing can be more
+ludicrous than his outcry, and his lashing of his own tail to excite his
+courage and his wrath and his denial--than his challenge of the lurking
+patriots in what he conceives the matter of frauds on the revenue. He
+assaults them as if he saw them standing in a row behind the door, and
+yet he pummels them for being mere men of the shades--horrible
+mockeries. Had there been any truth in their existence, surely, so
+strongly as they muster by their own report, some one or other of this
+fact should have given me warning--should have exposed the frauds. But
+no, all are silent as the grave. But here Sir Robert Walpole is as much
+wrong as if, doubting the value or power of Methodist preachers, he
+should make it the test of their useful existence that, as often as a
+highwayman, a footpad, started out of the wayside, from the other side
+should start a Methodist preacher to reason with him and to convert
+him.
+
+
+Are the Whigs less aristocratic than the Tories? Not at all. In tendency
+by principle they are the same. The real difference is not in the creed,
+in the groundwork, but in certain points of practice and method.
+
+
+'He took his stand upon the truth'--said by me of Sir Robert Peel--might
+seem to argue a lower use of '_the_ truth,' but in fact it is as happens
+to the article _the_ itself: you say _the_ guard, speaking of a coach;
+_the_ key, speaking of a trunk or watch, _i.e._, _the_ as by usage
+appropriated to every coach, watch, trunk. So here the truth, namely, of
+the particular perplexity.
+
+
+The Sepoy mutiny will be best understood if you suppose the Roman
+emperors, from Romulus to Augustus, from the Alban Fathers down to the
+Ostrogoths--the whole line of a thousand years crowded into two.
+
+
+Trunkmakers may be great men: they clearly have the upper hand of
+authors whom all the world admits to be great men. For the trunkmaker is
+the _principal_ in the concern--he makes the trunk, whereas the author,
+quite a secondary artist, furnishes only the linings.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Case of Casuistry._--Wraxall justly notices that errors like Prince
+Rupert's from excess of courage, however ruinous, are never resented by
+a country. _Ergo_ the inference that prudence would be, always if in
+Byng's or Lord St. German's cases, in a matter of doubt held to be bold
+fighting; and yet in morals is that an allowable position?
+
+
+6.--Personal Confessions, etc.
+
+Avaunt, ye hypocrites! who make a whining pretence, according to a fixed
+rule, of verbally uttering thanks to God for every chastisement, and who
+say this is good for you. So do not I, being upright, and God seeing my
+heart, who also sees that I murmur not; but if it were not good in the
+end, yet I submit. He is not offended that with upright sincerity I give
+no thanks for it. And I say that, unless a man perceives the particular
+way in which it has been good for him, he cannot sincerely, truly, or so
+as not to mock God with his lips, give thanks simply on an _a priori_
+principle, though, of course, he may submit in humbleness.
+
+
+I do not believe that the faith of any man in the apparent fact that he
+will never again see such a person (_i.e._, by being removed by death)
+is real. I believe that the degree of faith in this respect is regulated
+by an original setting or fixing of our nature quite unconscious to
+ourselves. So, again, I believe that hope is never utterly withdrawn,
+despair is never absolute. And again, I believe that, at the lowest
+nadir, the resource of dying as a means of escape and translation to new
+chances and openings is lodged in every man far down below the
+sunlights of consciousness. He feels that his death is not final; were
+it otherwise he could not rush at the escape so lightly. Indeed, were
+his fate fixed immutably, I feel that it would not have been left
+possible for him to commit suicide.
+
+
+_Justice._--You say in the usual spirit of vanity, Y or X has the same
+degree of the spirit of justice as V. This is easily said, but the test
+is, what will he _do_ for it? Suppose a man to propose rewards
+exclusively to those who assisted at a fire, then X and Y, suppose, have
+equally seen that many did _not_ assist, even refused to do so. But X
+perhaps will shrink from exposing them; V will encounter any hatred for
+truth and justice by exposing the undeserving.
+
+
+It is a foolish thing to say 'Hard words break no bones.' How impossible
+to call up from the depths of forgotten times all the unjust or shocking
+insinuations, all the scornful refusals to understand one aright, etc.
+But surely an injury is nothing to them; for that may be measured, made
+sensible, and cannot be forgotten, whereas the other case is like the
+dispute, 'Is he wrong as a _poet_?' compared with this, 'Is he wrong as
+a _geometrician_?' There need be no anger with the latter dispute; it is
+capable of decision.
+
+
+Then, again, a heart so lacerated is required by Christianity to forgive
+the lacerator. Hard it is to do, and imperfectly it is ever done, except
+through the unbuckling of human nature under higher inspirations
+_working together with time_.
+
+
+Instead of being any compliment it is the most profound insult, the
+idea one can write something rapidly. It is no homage to the writer; it
+is villainous insensibility to the written.
+
+
+Two subjects of stories occur to me. 1. For my Arabian tales, founded on
+the story of the Minyas Treasure-House at Orchomenus. 2. Another of an
+abbess, who was such by dispensation, but had been married; her
+accomplished son succeeds in carrying off a nun. She labours for the
+discovery and punishment of the unknown criminal, till she learns who he
+is; then parting from him for ever in the early dawn, she, sacrificing
+to a love that for her was to produce only hatred and the total
+destruction of the total hopes of her ageing life. Splendide Mendax! and
+the more angel she.
+
+
+I find the double effect as the reason of my now reading again with
+profit every book, however often read in earlier times, that by and
+through my greater knowledge and the more numerous questions growing out
+of that knowledge, I have deeper interest, and by and through this
+deeper interest I have a value put upon those questions, and I have
+other questions supervening through the interest alone. The interest is
+incarnated in the wider knowledge; the knowledge is incarnated in the
+interest, or at least the curiosity and questions.
+
+
+Upon trying to imprint upon my memory that at such a period the Argives
+ceased to be called Pelasgi, and were henceforward called Danai, I felt
+how impracticable (and doubtless in their degree injurious, for though
+an infinitesimal injury only as regards any single act doubtless, yet,
+_per se_, by tendency doubtless all blank efforts of the memory
+unsupported by the understanding are bad), must be any violent efforts
+of the memory not falling in with a previous preparedness.
+
+
+_Music._--I am satisfied that music involves a far greater mystery than
+we are aware of. It is that universal language which binds together all
+creatures, and binds them by a profounder part of their nature than
+anything merely intellectual ever could.
+
+
+It is remarkable (as proving to me the delibility of caste) that the
+Sudras of Central India, during its vast confusions under the Mahrattas
+have endeavoured to pass themselves for descendants of the Kshatriyas
+(or warrior caste) by assuming the sacred thread, also assumed by the
+Rajpoots, and also by some of the Sikhs.
+
+
+I never see a vast crowd of faces--at theatres, races, reviews--but one
+thing makes them sublime to me: the fact that all these people have to
+die. Strange it is that this multitude of people, so many of them
+intellectually, but also (which is worse) morally, blind, are without
+forethought or sense of the realities of life.
+
+
+Though I love fun, eternal jesting, buffoonery, punning absolutely kills
+me. Such things derive all their value from being made to intervene well
+with other things.
+
+
+This is curious:
+
+    Shame, pain, and poverty shall I endure,
+    When ropes or opium can my ease procure?
+
+This offends nobody, not till you say, 'I'll buy a rope.' But now:
+
+    When money's gone, and I no debts can pay,
+    _Self-murder_ is an honourable way--
+
+though the same essentially, this shocks all men.
+
+
+I have in the course of my misfortunes fasted for thirty years: a
+dreadful fate, if it had been to come. But, being past, it is lawful to
+regard it with satisfaction, as having, like all fasting and
+mortification, sharpened to an excruciating degree my intellectual
+faculties. Hence my love and even furor now for mathematics, from which
+in my youth I fled.
+
+
+The _Arrow Ketch_, six guns, is recorded in the _Edinburgh Advertiser_
+for June 14th, 1844, as having returned home (to Portsmouth) on
+Thursday, June 7th, 'after six years and upwards in commission,' most of
+it surveying the Falkland Islands; 'has lost only two men during this
+long service, and those from natural causes;' 'never lost a spar, and
+has ploughed the ocean for upwards of 100,000 miles.'
+
+
+Anecdotes from _Edinburgh Advertiser_, for June and May. The dog of a
+boy that died paralytic from grief. Little child run over by railway
+waggon and horse, clapping its hands when the shadow passed away,
+leaving it unhurt. Little girl of six committing suicide from fear of a
+stepmother's wrath.
+
+
+To note the dire reactions (?) of evils: young thieves growing to old
+ones, no sewers, damp, famine-engendering, desolating and wasting
+plagues or typhus fever, want of granaries or mendacious violence
+destroying food, civil feuds coming round in internecine wars, and
+general desolations, and, as in Persia, eight millions occupying the
+homesteads of three hundred millions. Here, if anywhere, is seen the
+almighty reactions through which the cycle of human life, oscillating,
+moves.
+
+
+In the speech of the Lord Provost of Edinburgh (reported on June 14th,
+1844), it is recited that boys 'left to stroll about the streets and
+closes,' acquire habits so fixed, if not of vice, at least of idleness,
+that in consequence of their not being trained to some kind of
+discipline in their early years, the habit of vagabondizing acquires
+such power that it is uncontrollable. And how apt and forcible was that
+quotation in the place assigned it: 'If thou forbear to deliver them
+that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain; if thou
+sayest, _Behold, we knew it not_, doth not He that pondereth the heart,
+consider it?'--consider it, regard it, make account of it.
+
+
+_Manners._--The making game of a servant before company--a thing
+impossible to well-bred people. Now observe how this is illustrative of
+H---- Street.
+
+
+I confess myself wholly at a loss to comprehend the objections of the
+Westminster reviewer and even of my friend Dr. Nichol, to my commentary
+on the strange appearance in Orion. The reviewer says that this
+appearance (on which he seems to find my language incomprehensible) had
+been dispersed by Lord Rosse's telescope. True, or at least so I hear.
+But for all this, it was originally created by that telescope. It was
+in the interval between the first report and the subsequent reports
+from Lord Rosse's telescope that I made my commentary. But in the case
+of contradiction between two reports, more accurate report I have not.
+As regards the reviewer, there had been no time for this, because the
+book, which he reviews, is a simple reprint in America, which he knows I
+had had no opportunity of revising. But Dr. Nichol perplexes me. That a
+new stage of progress had altered the appearances, as doubtless further
+stages will alter them, concerns me nothing, though referring to a
+coming republication; for both alike apparently misunderstood the case
+as though it required a _real_ phenomenon for its basis. To understand
+the matter as it really is, I beg to state this case. Wordsworth in at
+least four different places (one being in the fourth book of 'The
+Excursion,' three others in Sonnets) describes most impressive
+appearances amongst the clouds: a monster, for instance, with a
+bell-hanging air, a dragon agape to swallow a golden spear, and various
+others of affecting beauty. Would it have been any just rebuke to
+Wordsworth if some friend had written to him: 'I regret most sincerely
+to say that the dragon and the golden spear had all vanished before nine
+o'clock'? So, again, of Hawthorne's face on a rock. The very beauty of
+such appearances is in part their evanescence.
+
+
+To be or _not_ to be. 'Not to be, by G----' said Garrick. This is to be
+cited in relation to Pope's--
+
+    'Man never is, but always to be blessed.'
+
+
+_Political Economy._--Which of these two courses shall I take? 1. Shall
+I revise, extend, condense my logic of Political Economy, embodying
+every doctrine (and numbering them) which I have amended or
+re-positioned, and introduce them thus in a letter to the
+Politico-Economical Society: 'Gentlemen, certain ideas fundamental to
+Political Economy I presented in a book in the endeavour to effect a
+certain purpose. These were too much intermingled with less elementary
+ideas in consequence of my defective self-command from a dreadful
+nervous idea, and thus by interweaving they were overlapped and lost.
+But I am not disposed to submit to that wrong. I affirm steadily that
+the foundations of Political Economy are rotten and crazy. I defy, and
+taking up my stand as a scholar of Aristotle, I defy all men to gainsay
+the following exposures of folly, one or any of them. And when I show
+the darkness all round the very base of the hill, all readers may judge
+how great is that darkness.' Or, 2. Shall I introduce them as a chapter
+in my Logic?
+
+
+7.--PAGAN LITERATURE.
+
+We must never forget, that it is not _impar_ merely, but also _dispar_.
+And such is its value in this light, that I protest five hundred kings'
+ransoms, nay, any sum conceivable as a common contribution from all
+nations would not be too much for the infinite treasure of the Greek
+tragic drama alone. Is it superior to our own? No, nor (so far as
+capable of collation) not by many degrees approaching to it. And were
+the case, therefore, one merely of degrees, there would be no room for
+the pleasure I express. But it shows us the ultimatum of the human mind
+mutilated and castrated of its infinities, and (what is worse) of its
+moral infinities.
+
+You must imagine not only everything which there is dreadful in fact,
+but everything which there is mysterious to the imagination in the
+pariah condition, before you can approach the Heracleidae. Yet, even with
+this pariah, how poorly do most men conceive it as nothing more than a
+civil, a police, an economic affair!
+
+
+Valckenaer, an admirable Greek scholar, was not a man of fine
+understanding; nor, to say the truth, was Porson. Indeed, it is
+remarkable how mean, vulgar, and uncapacious has been the range of
+intellect in many first-rate Grecians; though, on the other hand, the
+reader would deeply deceive himself if he should imagine that Greek is
+an attainment other than difficult, laborious, and requiring exemplary
+talents. Greek taken singly is, to use an indispensable Latin word,
+_instar_, the knowledge of all other languages. But men of the highest
+talents have often beggarly understandings. Hence, in the case of
+Valckenaer, we must derive the contradictions in his diatribe. He
+practises this intolerable artifice; he calls himself [Greek:
+philenripideios]; bespeaks an unfair confidence from the reader; he
+takes credit for being once disposed to favour and indulge Euripides. In
+this way he accredits to the careless reader all the false charges or
+baseless concessions which he makes on any question between Euripides
+and his rivals. Such men as Valckenaer it is who are biased and
+inflected beforehand, without perceiving it, by all the commonplaces of
+criticism. These, it is true, do not arise out of mere shadows. Usually
+they have a foundation in some fact or modification. What they fail in
+is, in the just interpretation of these truths, and in the reading of
+their higher relations. 'The Correggiosity of Correggio' was precisely
+meant for Valckenaer. The Sophocleity of Sophocles he is keen to
+recognise, and the superiority of Sophocles as an artist is undeniable;
+nor is it an advantage difficult to detect. On the other hand, to be
+more Homeric than Homer is no praise for a tragic poet. It is far more
+just, pertinent praise, it is a ground of far more interesting praise,
+that Euripides is granted by his undervalues to be the most _tragic_
+([Greek: tragichotatos]) of tragic poets. After that he can afford to
+let Sophocles be '[Greek: Homerichotos], who, after all, is not '[Greek:
+Homerichotutos], so long as AEschylus survives. But even so far we are
+valuing Euripides as a poet. In another character, as a philosopher, as
+a large capacious thinker, as a master of pensive and sorrow-tainted
+wisdom, as a large reviewer of human life, he is as much beyond all
+rivalship from his scenic brethren as he is below one of them as a
+scenic artist.
+
+Is the Nile ancient? So is Homer. Is the Nile remote and hiding its head
+in fable? So is Homer. Is the Nile the diffusive benefactor of the
+world? So is Homer.[36]
+
+_The AEneid._--It is not any supposed excellence that has embalmed this
+poem; but the enshrining of the differential Roman principle (the grand
+aspiring character of resolution), all referred to the central principle
+of the aggrandizement of Rome.
+
+The sublime of wrath is nowhere exhibited so well as in Juvenal. Yet in
+Juvenal pretty glimpses of rural rest--
+
+    '... infans cum collusore catello.'[37]
+
+That is pretty! There is another which comes to my mind and suggests his
+rising up and laying aside, etc., and shows it to be an _occasional_
+act, and, _ergo_, his garden is but a relaxation, amusement.
+
+Glances which the haughty eyes of Rome threw sometimes gently and
+relentingly aside on man or woman, children or the flowers.
+
+Herodotus is as sceptical as Plutarch is credulous. How often is _now_
+and _at this time_ applied to the fictitious present of the author,
+whilst a man arguing generally beforehand would say that surely a man
+could always distinguish between _now_ and _then_.
+
+
+
+
+8.--HISTORICAL, ETC.
+
+
+_Growth of the House of Commons._--The House of Commons was the power of
+the purse, and what gave its emphasis to that power? Simply the growing
+necessity of standing forces, and the growing increase of war, so that
+now out of twenty millions, fifteen are applied to army and navy.
+
+One great evil, as in practice it had begun to show itself, pressed with
+equal injustice on the party who suffered from it (viz., the nation),
+and the party who seemed to reap its benefit. This was the fact that as
+yet no separation had taken place between the royal peculiar revenue,
+and that of the nation. The advance of the nation was now (1603, 1st of
+James I.) approaching to the point which made the evil oppression, and
+yet had not absolutely reached the point at which it could be undeniably
+perceived. Much contest and debate divided the stage of incipient evil
+from the stage of confessed grievance. In spending L100,000 upon a
+single fete, James I. might reasonably allege that he misapplied, at any
+rate, his own funds. Wise or not, the act concerned his own private
+household. Yet, on the other hand, in the case of money _really_ public,
+the confusion of the two expenditures invited and veiled the transfer
+of much from national objects that could wait, and were, at any rate,
+hidden from effectual scrutiny to the private objects which tempted the
+king's profusion. When Mr. Macaulay speaks so often of England sinking
+under this or that Stuart to a third-rate power, he is anachronizing.
+There was no scale of powers. Want of roads and intercommunication
+forbade it. And hence until the Thirty Years' War there was no general
+war. Austria, as by fiction the Roman Empire, and always standing
+awfully near to North Italy, had a natural relation and gravitation
+towards Rome. France, by vainglory and the old literary pretensions of
+Anjou, had also a balancing claim upon Italy. Milanese formed indeed (as
+Flanders afterwards) the rendezvous for the two powers. Otherwise, only
+Austria and Spain (and Spain not till joined to Austria) and France--as
+great powers that touched each other in many points--had ever formed a
+warlike trio. No quadrille had existed until the great civil war for
+life and death between Popery and Protestantism. It was another great
+evil that the functions towards which, by inevitable instincts and
+tendency of progress, the House of Commons was continually
+travelling,--not, I repeat, through any encroaching spirit as the Court
+and that House of Commons itself partially fancied,--were not yet
+developed: false laws of men, _i.e._, laws framed under theories
+misunderstood of rights and constitutional powers, having as much
+distorted the true natural play of the organic manifestation and
+tendency towards a whole, as ever a dress too tight, or a flower-pot too
+narrow, impeded the development of child or plant. Queen Elizabeth,
+therefore, always viewed the House of Commons as a disturber of the
+public peace, as a mutineer and insurrectionist, when any special
+accident threw it upon its natural function; she spoke of State
+affairs, and especially of foreign affairs, as beyond their
+'_capacity_,' which expression, however, must in charity be interpreted
+philosophically as meaning the range of comprehension consistent with
+their _total_ means of instruction and preparation, including,
+therefore, secret information, knowledge of disposable home resources as
+known to the official depositaries of State secrets, etc., and not, as
+the modern reader will understand it, simply and exclusively the
+intellectual power of appreciation. Since, with all her disposition to
+exalt the qualities of princely persons, she could not be so absurdly
+haughty as to claim for princes and the counsellors whom interest or
+birth had suggested to them a precedency in pure natural endowments.
+
+Charles was a sincere believer but not an earnest believer of the Roman
+Catholic faith. James was both sincere and preternaturally earnest.
+
+
+_The Reformation._--This seems to show two things: 1st, that a deep
+searching and 'sagacious-from-afar' spirit of morality can mould itself
+under the prompting of Christianity, such as could not have grown up
+under Paganism. For it was the abominations in point of morality (_en
+fait de moralite?_)--indulgences, the confessional, absolution, the
+prevalence of a mere ritual--the usurpation of forms--these it was which
+Rome treated violently; and if she draw in her horns for the present,
+still upon any occasion offering, upon the cloud of peril passing away,
+clearly she would renew her conduct. It was a tendency violently and
+inevitably belonging to the Roman polity combined with the Roman
+interest, unless, perhaps, as permanently controlled by a
+counter-force. 2ndly, the synthesis of this curative force is by
+apposition of parts separately hardly conscious of the danger or even of
+their own act. For we cannot suppose the vast body of opposition put
+forward was so under direct conscious appreciation of the evil and by an
+adequate counter-action--doubtless it was by sympathy with others having
+better information. These last burned more vividly as the evil was
+fiercer. That more vivid sympathy drew increase of supporters.
+
+
+_Memorandum._--In my historical sketches not to forget the period of
+woe, _anterior_ to the Siege of Jerusalem, which Josephus describes as
+occurring in all the Grecian cities, but which is so unaccountably
+overlooked by historians.
+
+The rule is to speak like the foolish, and think like the wise, and
+therefore I agree to call our worthy old mother 'little'--our 'little
+island'--as that seems to be the prevailing notion; otherwise I myself
+consider Great Britain rather a tall island. A man is not called short
+because some few of his countrymen happen to be a trifle taller; and
+really I know but of two islands, among tens of thousands counted up by
+gazetteers on our planet, that are taller; and I fancy, with such
+figures as theirs, they are neither of them likely to think of any
+rivalship with our dear old mother. What island, for instance, would
+choose to be such a great fat beast as Borneo, as broad as she is long,
+with no apology for a waist? Talk of lacing too tight, indeed! I'm sure
+Borneo does not injure herself in that way. Now our mother, though she's
+old, and has gone through a world of trouble in her time, is as jimp
+about the waist as a young lass of seventeen. Look at her on any map of
+Europe, and she's quite a picture. It's an old remark that the general
+outline of the dear creature exactly resembles a lady sitting. She turns
+her back upon the Continent, no doubt, and that's what makes those
+foreigneering rascals talk so much of her pride. But she _must_ turn her
+back upon somebody, and who is it that should have the benefit of her
+countenance, if not those people in the far West that are come of her
+own blood? They say she's 'tetyy' also. Well, then, if she is, you let
+her alone, good people of the Continent. She'll not meddle with you if
+you don't meddle with her. She's kind enough, and, as to her person, I
+do maintain that she's quite tall enough, rather thin, it's true, but,
+on the whole, a bonny, elegant, dear old fighting mamma.
+
+
+_Mora Alexandrina._--Note on Middleton's affected sneer. A villa of
+Cicero's, where probably the usual sound heard would be the groans of
+tormented slaves, had been changed for the cells of Christian monks. Now
+mark: what the hound Middleton means is, how shocking to literary
+sensibilities that where an elegant master of Latinity had lived, there
+should succeed dull, lazy monks, writing (if they wrote at all) in a
+barbarous style, and dreaming away their lives in torpor. Now permit me
+to pause a little. This is one of those sneers which Paley[38] and
+Bishop Butler[39] think so unanswerable, that we must necessarily lie
+down and let the sneer ride rough-shod over us all. Let us see, and for
+this reason, reader, do not grudge a little delay, especially as you may
+'skip' it.
+
+Dr. Conyers ought to have remembered, in the first place, that the villa
+could not long remain in the hands of Cicero. Another owner would
+succeed, and then the chances would be that the sounds oftenest
+ascending in the hour of sunset or in the cool of the dawn would be the
+shrieks of slaves under torture. By their own poor miserable fare
+contrasted with the splendour reeking around them, these slaves had a
+motive, such as our tenderly-treated (often pampered) servants can never
+know the strength of, for breaking the seal of any wine cask. From the
+anecdote told of his own mother by the wretched Quintus Cicero, the foul
+brother of Marcus, it appears that generally there was some
+encouragement to do this, on the chance of 'working down' on the master
+that the violated seal had been amongst the casks legitimately opened.
+For it seems that old Mrs. Cicero's housewifely plan was to seal up all
+alike, empty and not empty. Consequently with her no such excuse could
+avail. Which proves that often it _did_ avail, since her stratagem is
+mentioned as a very notable artifice. What follows? Why, that the slave
+was doubly tempted: 1st, by the luxury he witnessed; 2ndly, by the
+impunity on which he might calculate. Often he escaped by sheer weight
+of metal in lying. Like Chaucer's miller, he swore, when charged with
+stealing flour, that it was not so. But this very prospect and
+likelihood of escape was often the very snare for tempting to excesses
+too flagrant or where secret marks had been fixed. Besides, many other
+openings there were, according to the individual circumstances, but this
+was a standing one, for tempting the poor unprincipled slave into
+trespass that irritated either the master or the mistress. And then came
+those periodical lacerations and ascending groans which Seneca mentions
+as the best means of telling what o'clock it was in various households,
+since the punishments were going on just at that hour.
+
+After, when the gracious revolution of Christianity had taught us, and
+by a memento so solemn and imperishable, no longer to pursue our human
+wrath, that hour of vesper sanctity had come, which, by the tendency of
+the Christian law and according to the degree in which it is observed,
+is for us a type and a symbol and a hieroglyphic of wrath extinguished,
+of self-conquest, of charity in heaven and on earth.
+
+Now, the monks, it is supposable, might be commonplace drones. Often,
+however, they would be far other, transmitters by their copying toils of
+those very Ciceronian works which, but for them, would have perished.
+And pausing duly here, what sense, what propriety would there be in
+calling on the reader to notice with a shock the profanation of
+classical ground in such an example as this: 'Mark the strange
+revolutions of ages; there, where once the divine Plato's Academus
+stood, now rises a huge printing-house chiefly occupied for the last two
+years in reprinting Plato's works.' Why, really Plato himself would look
+graciously on that revolution, Master Conyers. But next, the dullest of
+these monks would hear the Gloria in Excelsis.
+
+
+Oh, how pitiful it is to hear B---- alleging against Mahomet that he had
+done no public miracles. What? Would it, then, alter your opinion of
+Mahomet if he _had_ done miracles? What a proof, how full, how perfect!
+That Christianity, in spirit, in power, in simplicity, and in truth, had
+no more hold over B---- than it had over any Pagan Pontiff in Rome, is
+clear to me from that. So, then, the argument against Mahomet is not
+that he wants utterly the meekness--wants? wants? No, that he utterly
+hates the humility, the love that is stronger than the grave, the purity
+that cannot be imagined, the holiness as an ideal for man that cannot be
+approached, the peace that passeth all understanding, that power which
+out of a little cloud no bigger than a man's hand grows for ever and
+ever until it will absorb the world and all that it inherit, that first
+of all created the terror of death and the wormy grave; but that first
+and last she might triumph over time--not these, it seems by B----, are
+the arguments against Mahomet, but that he did not play legerdemain
+tricks, that he did not turn a cow into a horse!
+
+In which position B---- is precisely on a level with those Arab Sheikhs,
+or perhaps Mamelukes, whom Napoleon so foolishly endeavoured to surprise
+by Chinese tricks: 'Aye, all this is very well, but can you make one to
+be in Cairo and in Damascus at the same moment?' demanded the poor
+brutalized wretches. And so also for B---- it is nothing. Oh, blind of
+heart not to perceive that the defect was entirely owing to the age.
+Mahomet came to a most sceptical region. There was no semblance or
+shadow among the Arabs of that childish credulity which forms the
+atmosphere for miracle. On the contrary, they were a hard, fierce
+people, and in that sense barbarous; but otherwise they were sceptical,
+as is most evident from all that they accomplished, which followed the
+foundation of Islamism. Here lies the delusion upon that point. The
+Arabs were evidently like all the surrounding nations. They were also
+much distinguished among all Oriental peoples for courage. This fact has
+been put on record in (1) the East Indies, where all the Arab troops
+have proved themselves by far more formidable than twelve times the
+number of effeminate Bengalese and Mahrattas, etc. (2) At Aden, where as
+rude fighters without the science of war they have been most ugly
+customers. (3) In Algeria, where the French, with all advantage of
+discipline, science, artillery, have found it a most trying and
+exhausting war. Well, as they are now, so they were before Mahomet, and
+just then they were ripe for conquest. But they wanted a _combining_
+motive and a _justifying_ motive. Mahomet supplied both these. Says he,
+'All nations are idolaters; go and thrust them into the mill that they
+may be transformed to our likeness.'
+
+Consequently, the great idea of the truth, of a truth transcending all
+available rights on the other side, was foreign to Mahometanism, and any
+glimmering of this that may seem to be found in it was borrowed, was
+filched from Christianity.
+
+
+9.--LITERARY.
+
+The three greatest powers which we know of in moulding human feelings
+are, first, Christianity; secondly, the actions of men emblazoned by
+history; and, in the third place, poetry. If the first were represented
+to the imagination by the atmospheric air investing our planet, which we
+take to be the most awful laboratory of powers--mysterious, unseen, and
+absolutely infinite--the second might be represented by the winds, and
+the third by lightning. Napoleon and Lord Byron have done more mischief
+to the moral feelings, to the truth of all moral estimates, to the
+grandeur and magnanimity of man, in this present generation, than all
+other causes acting together. But how? Simply by throwing human feelings
+into false combinations. Both of them linked the mean to the grand, the
+base to the noble, in a way which often proves fatally inextricable to
+the poor infirm mind of the ordinary spectator. Here is Napoleon, simply
+because he wields a vast national machinery, throwing a magic of
+celerity and power into a particular action which absolutely overpowers
+the _genus attonitorum_, so that they are reconciled by the dazzle of a
+splendour not at all _in_ Napoleon, to a baseness which really _is_ in
+Napoleon. The man that never praised an enemy is shown to this vile mob
+by the light thrown off from the radiant power of France as the greatest
+of men; he is confounded with his supporting element, even as the
+Jupiter Olympus of Phidias, that never spared a woman in his lust,
+seemed the holiest of deities when his rottenness was concealed by ivory
+and gold, and his libidinous head was lighted up by sunbeams from above.
+Here is Lord Byron connecting, in the portrait of some poor melodramatic
+hero possibly, some noble quality of courage or perseverance with scorn
+the most puerile and senseless. Prone enough is poor degraded human
+nature to find something grand in scorn; but, after this arbitrary
+combination of Lord Byron's, never again does the poor man think of
+scorn but it suggests to him moral greatness, nor think of greatness but
+it suggests scorn as its indispensable condition.
+
+
+Wordsworth is always recording phenomena as they are enjoyed; Coleridge
+as they reconcile themselves with opposing or conflicting phenomena.
+
+
+W. W.'s social philosophy is surely shallow. It is true the man who has
+a shallow philosophy under the guidance of Christianity has a profound
+philosophy. But this apart, such truths as 'He who made the creature
+will allow for his frailties,' etc., are commonplace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Invention as a Characteristic of Poets._--I happened this evening
+(Saturday, August 3rd, '44) to be saying of W. W. to myself: 'No poet is
+so free from all cases like this, viz., where all the feelings and
+spontaneous thoughts which they have accumulated coming to an end, and
+yet the case seeming to require more to finish it, or bring it round,
+like a peal of church bells, they are forced to invent, and form
+descants on raptures never really felt. Suddenly this suggested that
+invention, therefore, so far from being a differential quality of
+poetry, was, in fact, the polar opposite, spontaneousness being the true
+quality.
+
+
+_Tragedy._--I believe it is a very useful thing to let young persons
+cultivate their kind feelings by repeated indulgences. Thus my children
+often asked when anything was to be paid or given to any person, that
+they might have the satisfaction of giving it. So I see clearly that
+young boys or girls allowed to carry abroad their infant brothers and
+sisters, when the little creature feels and manifests a real dependence
+upon them in every act and movement, which _matre praesente_ they would
+not have done, which again seen and felt calls out every latent goodness
+of the elder child's heart. So again (here I have clipped out the case).
+However, feeding rabbits, but above all the action upon women's hearts
+in the enormous expansion given by the relation to their own children,
+develops a feeling of tenderness that afterwards sets the model for the
+world, and would die away, or freeze, or degenerate, if it were
+generally balked. Now just such an action has tragedy, and if the
+sympathy with calamities caused to noble natures by ignobler, or by dark
+fates, were never opened or moved or called out, it would slumber
+inertly, it would rust, and become far less ready to respond upon any
+call being made. Such sensibilities are not consciously known to the
+possessor until developed.
+
+
+_Punctuation._--Suppose an ordinary case where the involution of clauses
+went three deep, and that each was equally marked off by commas, now I
+say that so far from aiding the logic it would require an immense effort
+to distribute the relations of logic. But the very purpose and use of
+points is to aid the logic. If indeed you could see the points at all in
+this relation
+
+              strophe                     antistrophe
+      1     2     3                    3     2    1
+    ----, ----, ----,       apodosis ----, ----, ----,
+
+then indeed all would be clear, but the six commas will and must be
+viewed by every reader unversed in the logical mechanism of sentences as
+merely a succession of ictuses, so many minute-guns having no internal
+system of correspondence, but merely repeating and reiterating each
+other, exactly as in men, guns, horses, timbrels, baggage-waggons,
+standards.
+
+
+_Sheridan's Disputatiousness._--I never heard of any case in the whole
+course of my life where disputatiousness was the author of any benefit
+to man or beast, excepting always one, in which it became a storm anchor
+for poor Sheridan, saving him from sudden shipwreck. This may be found
+in Mr. Moore's life, somewhere about the date of 1790, and in chapter
+xiii. The book is thirty-seven miles off, which is too far to send for
+water, or for scandal, or even for 'extract,' though I'm 'fond of
+extract.' Therefore, in default of Mr. Moore's version, I give my own.
+The situation was this: Sheridan had been cruising from breakfast to
+dinner amongst Jews, Christians, and players (men, women, and
+Herveys),[40] and constantly in the same hackney coach, so that the
+freight at last settled like the sand-heap of an hour-glass into a
+frightful record of costly moments. _Pereunt et imputantur_, say some
+impertinent time-pieces, in speaking of the hours. They perish and are
+debited to our account. Yes, and what made it worse, the creditor was an
+inexorable old Jarvie, who, though himself a creditor, had never heard
+the idea of credit. A guinea might be owing, and Sheridan, seldom
+remembering his purse, had but a shilling, which even in a court of
+Irish law seemed too small a compromise to offer. Black looked the
+horizon, stormy the offing, and night was coming on, whilst the port of
+consignment was now within thirty minutes' sail. Suddenly a sight of joy
+was described. Driving before the wind, on bare poles, was a well-known
+friend of Sheridan's, Richardson, famed for various talent, but also for
+an invincible headlong necessity of disputing. To pull the check-string,
+to take his friend on board, and to rush into fierce polemic
+conversation was the work of a moment for Sheridan. He well understood
+with this familiar friend how to bring on a hot dispute. In three
+minutes it raged, yard-arm to yard-arm. Both grew warm. Sheridan grew
+purple with rage. Violently interrupting Richardson, he said: 'And these
+are your real sentiments?' Richardson with solemnity and artificial
+restraint replied: 'Most solemnly they are.' 'And you stand to them, and
+will maintain them?' 'I will,' said Richardson, with menacing solemnity
+and even mournfulness. 'I will to my dying day.' 'Then,' said Sheridan
+furiously, 'I'm hanged if I'll stay another minute with a man capable of
+such abominable opinions!' Bang went the door, out he bounced, and
+Richardson, keeping his seat, pursued him with triumphant explosions.
+'Ah, wretch! what? you can't bear the truth. You're obliged to hate the
+truth. That is why you cut and run before it. Huzza! Mr. Sheridan, M.
+P. for Stafford, runs like a hare for fear that he should hear the
+truth.' Precisely so, the truth it was that he ran from. The truth at
+this particular moment was too painful to his heart. Sheridan had fled;
+the awful truth amounted to eighteen shillings.
+
+Yes, virtuous Richardson, you were right; truth it was that he fled
+from; truth had just then become too painful to his infirm mind,
+although it was useless to tell him so, as by this time he was out of
+hearing. 'Yes,' said Richardson meditatively to himself, 'the truth has
+at last become insupportable to this unhappy man.' Right, it _had_ so.
+And in one minute more it became insupportable even to the virtuous
+Richardson, when the coachman revealed the odious extent of the truth,
+viz., that the fare now amounted to two-and-twenty shillings.
+
+As I hate everything that the people love, and above all the odious
+levity with which they adopt every groundless anecdote, especially where
+it happens to be calumnious, I beg not to be supposed a believer in the
+common stories current about Sheridan's carelessness of pecuniary
+obligations. So far from 'never paying,' which is what public slander
+has not ceased to report of him, he was (in Mr. Moore's language)
+'_always_ paying;' and for once that he paid too little, a thousand
+times he paid a great deal too much. Had, indeed, all his excesses of
+payment been gathered into one fund, that fund would have covered his
+deficits ten times over. It is, however, true that, whilst he was
+continually paying the hundred-pound demands against him, with all their
+Jewish accumulations of interest, he was continually unfurnished with
+money for his 'menus plaisirs' and trifling personal expenses.
+
+By strong natural tendency of disposition, Sheridan was a man of
+peculiarly sensitive honour, and the irregularities into which he fell,
+more conspicuously after the destruction of Drury Lane by fire, pained
+nobody so much as himself. It is the sense of this fact, and the belief
+that Sheridan was never a defaulter through habits of self-indulgence,
+which call out in _my_ mind a reaction of indignation at the stories
+current against him.
+
+
+_Bookbinding and Book-Lettering._--Literature is a mean thing enough in
+the ordinary way of pursuing it as what the Germans call a
+_Brodstudium_; but in its higher relations it is so noble that it is
+able to ennoble other things, supposing them in any degree ministerial
+to itself. The paper-maker, ergo the rag-maker, ergo the linen
+cloth-maker, is the true and original creator of the modern press, as
+the Archbishop of Dublin long ago demonstrated. For the art of printing
+had never halted for want of the typographic secret; _that_ was always
+known, known and practised hundreds of years before the Christian era.
+It halted for want of a material cheap enough and plentiful enough to
+make types other than a most costly substitute for hand-copying. Do you
+hear _that_, gentlemen blockheads, that seldom hear anything but
+yourselves? Next after the paper-maker, who furnished the _sine qua
+non_, takes rank, not the engraver or illustrator (our modern novelist
+cannot swim without this caricaturing villain as one of his bladders;
+all higher forms of literature laugh at him), but the binder; for he, by
+raising books into ornamental furniture, has given even to
+non-intellectual people by myriads a motive for encouraging literature
+and an interest in its extension.
+
+Any specimen of Mr. Ferrar's binding I never saw, but by those who
+_have_, it is said to have been magnificent. He and his family were
+once, if not twice, visited by Charles I., and they presented to that
+prince a most sumptuous Bible of their own binding; which Bible, a lady
+once told me, was in that collection gradually formed by George III. at
+Buckingham House, and finally presented to the nation by his son. I
+should fear it must be in ruins as a specimen of the Little Gidding
+workmanship. The man who goes to bed in his coffin dressed in a jewelled
+robe and a diamond-hilted sword, is very liable to a visit from the
+resurrection-man, who usually disarms and undresses him. The Bible that
+has its binding inlaid with gold, sowed with Oriental pearl, and made
+horrent with rubies, suggests to many a most unscriptural mode of
+searching into its treasures, and too like the Miltonic Mammon's mode of
+perusing the gorgeous floors of heaven. Besides that, if the Bible
+escaped the Parliamentary War, the true _art_ of the Ferrar family would
+be better displayed in a case of less cost and luxury. Certainly, in no
+one art was the stupidity of Europe more atrociously recorded than in
+this particular art practised by the Ferrars. Boundless was the field
+for improvement. And in particular, I had myself drawn from this art, as
+practised of old, one striking memorial of that remarkable genius for
+stupidity, which in all ages alike seems to haunt man as by an
+inspiration, unless he is roused out of it by panic. It is this. Look at
+the lettering--that is, the labels lettered with the titles of books--in
+all libraries that are not of recent date. No man would believe that the
+very earliest attempt to impress a mark of ownership upon some bucket of
+the Argonauts, or the rudest scrawl of Polyphemus in forging a tarry
+brand upon some sheep which he had stolen, could be _so_ bad, _so_
+staggering and illegible, as are these literary inscriptions. How much
+better to have had a thin tablet or veneering of marble or iron adjusted
+to the back of the book. A stone-cutter in a rural churchyard once told
+me that he charged a penny _per_ letter. That may be cheap for a
+gravestone, but it seems rather high for a book. _Plato_ would cost you
+fivepence, _Aristotle_ would be shocking; and in decency you must put
+him into Latin, which would add twopence more to every volume. On a
+library like that of Dresden or the Vatican, it would raise a national
+debt to letter the books.
+
+
+_Cause of the Novel's Decline._--No man, it may be safely laid down as a
+general rule, can obtain a strong hold over the popular mind without
+more or less of real power. A reality there must be. The artifice, the
+trickery, cannot arise in this first stage, as by any substitution of a
+shadow for a reality. If the mass of readers _feel_ a power, and
+acknowledge a power, in that case power there must be. It was the just
+remark of Dr. Johnson that men do not deceive themselves in their
+amusements. And amusement it is that the great public seek in
+literature. The meaner and the more sensual the demands of a man are, so
+much the less possible it becomes to cheat him. Seeking for warmth, he
+cannot be wrong when he says that he has found it. Asking for _alcohol_,
+he will never be cheated with water. His feelings in such a case, his
+impressions, instantaneously justify themselves; that is, they bear
+witness past all doubting to the certainty of what they report. So far
+there is no opening to mistake. The error, the opening to the spurious
+on the largest scale, arises first upon the _quality_ of the power.
+Strength varies upon an endless scale, not merely by its own gradations,
+but by the modes and the degrees in which it combines with other
+qualities. And there are many combinations, cases of constant
+recurrence, in which some natural vigour, but of no remarkable order,
+enters into alliance with animal propensities; where a portentous
+success will indicate no corresponding power in the artist, but only an
+unusual insensibility to decency and the opinion of thoughtful persons.
+
+Novels are the one sole class of books that ever interest the public,
+that reach its heart, or even catch its eye. And the reason why novels
+are becoming much more licentious, and much grosser in the arts by which
+they court public favour, lies undoubtedly in the quality of that new
+reading public which the extension of education has added to the old
+one. An education miserably shallow, whilst unavailing for any purpose
+of real elevation, lets in upon the theatre of what is called by
+courtesy literature a vast additional audience that once would have been
+excluded altogether. This audience, changed in no respect from its
+former condition of intellect and manners and taste, bringing only the
+single qualification of ability to read, is now strong enough in numbers
+to impress a new character upon literature in so far as literature has a
+motive for applying itself to _their_ wants. The consequences are
+showing themselves, and _will_ show themselves more broadly. It is
+difficult with proper delicacy to seek illustrations amongst our own
+living writers. Illustrations were all too easily found did we care to
+enter on the task.
+
+It is true that, during the currency of any year, whilst the quantity
+is liable to indeterminate augmentation, ballads will be rather looking
+down in the market. But that is a shadow which settles upon every
+earthly good thing. No Greek book, for instance, amongst the many that
+have perished, would so much rejoice many of us by its resurrection as
+the comedies of Menander. Yet, if a correspondent should write word from
+Pompeii that twenty-five thousand separate dramas of Menander had been
+found in good preservation, adding in a postscript that forty thousand
+more had been impounded within the last two hours, and that there was
+every prospect of bagging two hundred thousand more before morning, we
+should probably petition Government to receive the importing vessels
+with chain-shot. Not even Milton or Shakespeare could make head against
+such a Lopez de Vega principle of ruinous superfluity. Allowing for this
+one case of preternatural excess, assuming only that degree of
+limitation which any absolute past must almost always create up to that
+point, we say that there is no conceivable composition, or class of
+compositions, which will not be welcomed into literature provided, as to
+matter, that it shall embody some natural strain of feeling, and
+provided, as to manner, that it illustrate the characteristic style of a
+known generation.
+
+It might suffice for our present purpose to have once firmly
+distinguished between the two modes of literature. But it may be as well
+to point out a few corollaries from this distinction, which will serve
+at the same time to explain and to confirm it. For instance, first of
+all, it has been abundantly insisted on in our modern times, that the
+value of every literature lies in its characteristic part; a truth
+certainly, but a truth upon which the German chanticleer would not have
+crowed and flapped his wings so exultingly, had he perceived the
+original and indispensable schism between the literature of knowledge
+and the literature of power, because in this latter only can anything
+characteristic of a man or of a nation be embodied. The science of no
+man can be characteristic, no man can geometrize or chemically analyze
+after a manner peculiar to himself. He may be the first to open a new
+road, and in that meaning it may be called _his_ road; but _his_ it
+cannot be by any such peculiarities as will found an _incommunicable_
+excellence. In literature proper, viz., the literature of power, this is
+otherwise. There may doubtless have been many imitative poets, wearing
+little or nothing of a natural individuality; but of no poet, that ever
+_led_ his own class, can it have been possible that he should have been
+otherwise than strongly differenced by inimitable features and by traits
+not transferable. Consequently the [Greek: to] characteristic, of which
+in German cloudland so noisy a proclamation is made as of some
+transcendental discovery, is a mere inference from the very idea of a
+literature. For we repeat that in blank knowledge a separate peculiarity
+marking the individual is not conceivable, whereas in a true literature
+reflecting human nature, not as it represents, but as it wills, not as a
+passive minor, but as a self-moving power, it is not possible to avoid
+the characteristic except only in the degree by which the inspiring
+nature happens to be feeble. The exorbitations that differentiate them
+may be of narrow compass, but only where the motive power was originally
+weak. And agreeably to this remark it may be asserted that in all
+literature properly so-called genius, is always manifested, and talent
+generally; but in the literature of knowledge it may be doubted very
+seriously whether there is any opening for more than talent. Genius may
+be defined in the severest manner as _that which is generally
+characteristic_; but a thousand times we repeat that one man's mode of
+knowing an object cannot differ from another man's. It _cannot_ be
+characteristic, and its geniality cannot be externally manifested. To
+have said, therefore, of the poetry surviving from ancient Latium, from
+Castile, from England, that this is nationally characteristic, and
+knowable apart by inalienable differences, is saying no more than
+follows out of the very definition by which any and every literature
+proper is limited and guarded as a mode of power.
+
+Secondly, even in the exceptions and hesitations upon applying the
+rigour of this distinction, we may read the natural recognition (however
+latent or unconscious) of the rule itself. No man would think, for
+example, of placing a treatise on surveying, on mensuration, on
+geological stratifications, in any collection of his national
+literature. He would be lunatic to do so. A Birmingham or Glasgow
+Directory has an equal title to take its station in the national
+literature. But he will hesitate on the same question arising with
+regard to a history. Where upon examination the history turns out to be
+a mere chronicle, or register of events chronologically arranged, with
+no principle of combination pervading it, nor colouring from peculiar
+views of policy, nor sympathy with the noble and impassioned in human
+action, the decision will be universal and peremptory to cashier it from
+the literature. Yet this case, being one of degree, ranges through a
+large and doubtful gamut. A history like that of Froissart, or of
+Herodotus, where the subjective from the writer blends so powerfully
+with the gross objective, where the moral picturesque is so predominant,
+together with freshness of sensation which belongs to 'blissful
+infancy' in human life, or to a stage of society in correspondence to
+it, cannot suffer a demur of jealousy as to its privilege of entering
+the select fold of literature. But such advantages are of limited
+distribution. And, to say the truth, in its own nature neither history
+nor biography, unless treated with peculiar grace, and architecturally
+moulded, has any high pretension to rank as an organic limb of
+literature. The very noblest history, in much of its substance, is but
+by a special indulgence within the privilege of that classification.
+Biography stands on the same footing. Of the many memorials dedicated to
+the life of Milton, how few are entitled to take their station in the
+literature! And why? Not merely that they are disqualified by their
+defective execution, but often that they necessarily record what has
+become common property.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[29] Between the forms _modal_, _modish_, and _modern_, the difference
+is of that slight order which is constantly occurring between the
+Elizabethan age and our own. _Ish_, _ous_, _ful_, _some_, are
+continually interchanging; thus, _pitiful_ for _piteous_, _quarrelous_
+for _quarrelsome_.
+
+[30] I deny that there is or could have been one truant fluttering
+murmur of the heart against the reality of glory. And partly for these
+reasons: 1st, That, _hoc abstracto_, defrauding man of this, you leave
+him miserably bare--bare of everything. So that really and sincerely the
+very wisest men may be seen clinging convulsively, and clutching with
+their dying hands the belief that glory, that posthumous fame (which for
+profound ends of providence has been endowed with a subtle power of
+fraud such as no man can thoroughly look through; for those who, like
+myself, despise it most completely, cannot by any art bring forward a
+_rationale_, a theory of its hollowness that will give plenary
+satisfaction except to those who are already satisfied). Thus Cicero,
+feeling that if this were nothing, then had all his life been a
+skirmish, one continued skirmish for shadows and nonentities; a feeling
+of blank desolation, too startling--too humiliating to be faced. But
+(2ndly), the unsearchable hypocrisy of man, that hypocrisy which even to
+himself is but dimly descried, that latent hypocrisy which always does,
+and most profitably, possess every avenue of every man's thoughts, hence
+a man who should openly have avowed a doctrine that glory was a bubble,
+besides that, instead of being prompted to this on a principle which so
+far raised him above other men, must have been prompted by a principle
+that sank him to the level of the brutes, viz., acquiescing in total
+ventrine improvidence, imprescience, and selfish ease (if ease, a Pagan
+must have it _cum dignitate_), but above all he must have made
+proclamation that in his opinion all disinterested virtue was a chimera,
+since all the quadrifarious virtue of the scholastic ethics was founded
+either on personal self-sufficiency, on justice, moderation, etc., etc.,
+or on direct personal and exclusive self-interest as regarded health and
+the elements of pleasure.
+
+[31] The tower of Siloam.
+
+[32] Every definition is a syllogism. Now, because the minor proposition
+is constantly false, this does not affect the case; each man is right to
+fill up the minor with his own view, and essentially they do not
+disagree with each other.
+
+A (the subject of def.)is _x_. The Truth is the sum of Christianity.
+
+But C is _x_. But my Baptist view is the sum of Christianity.
+
+_Ergo_ C is A. _Ergo_ my Baptist view is the Truth.
+
+
+[33] It seems that Herod made changes so vast--certainly in the
+surmounting works, and _also_ probably in one place as to the
+foundations, that it could not be called the same Temple with that of
+the Captivity, except under an abuse of ideas as to matter and form, of
+which all nations have furnished illustrations, from the ship _Argo_ to
+that of old Drake, from Sir John Cutler's stockings to the Highlander's
+(or Irishman's) musket.
+
+[34] Just as if a man spending his life to show the folly of Methodism
+should burst into maudlin tears at sight of John Wesley, and say, 'Oh,
+if all men, my dear brothers, were but Methodists!'
+
+[35] How so? If the Jews were naturally infidels, why did God select
+them? But, first, they might have, and they certainly had, other
+balancing qualities; secondly, in the sense here meant, all men are
+infidels; and we ourselves, by the very nature of one object which I
+will indicate, are pretty generally infidels in the same sense as they.
+Look at our evidences; look at the sort of means by which we often
+attempt to gain proselytes among the heathen and at home. Fouler
+infidelities there are not. Special pleading, working for a verdict,
+etc., etc.
+
+[36] [This idea is expanded and followed out in detail in the opening of
+'Homer and the Homeridae;' but this is evidently the note from which that
+grew, and is here given alike on account of its compactness and
+felicity.--ED.]
+
+[37] Satire ix., lines 60, 61.
+
+[38] Who can answer a sneer?
+
+[39] Butler--'unanswerable ridicule.'
+
+[40] Said of members of the Bristol family.
+
+
+
+
+_XXV. OMITTED PASSAGES AND VARIATIONS._
+
+
+1.--THE RHAPSODOI.
+
+The following on the 'Rhapsodoi' is a variation on that which appeared
+in 'Homer and the Homeridae,' with some quite additional and new thoughts
+on the subject.
+
+
+About these people, who they were, what relation they bore to Homer, and
+why they were called 'Rhapsodoi,' we have seen debated in Germany
+through the last half century with as much rabid ferocity as was ever
+applied to the books of a fraudulent bankrupt. Such is the natural
+impertinence of man. If he suspects any secret, or any base attempt to
+hide and conceal things from himself, he is miserable until he finds out
+the mystery, and especially where all the parties to it have been
+defunct for 2,500 years. Great indignation seems reasonably to have been
+felt by all German scholars that any man should presume to have called
+himself a _rhapsodos_ at any period of Grecian history without sending
+down a sealed letter to posterity stating all the reasons which induced
+him to take so unaccountable a step. No possible solution, given to any
+conceivable question bearing upon the 'Rhapsodoi,' seems by any tendency
+to affect any question outstanding about Homer. And we do not therefore
+understand the propriety of intermingling this dispute with the general
+Homeric litigation. However, to comply with the practice of Germany, we
+shall throw away a few sentences upon this, as a pure _ad libitum_
+digression.
+
+The courteous reader, whom we beg also to suppose the most ignorant of
+readers, by way of thus founding a necessity and a case of philosophic
+reasonableness for the circumstantiality of our own explanations, will
+be pleased to understand that by ancient traditionary usage the word
+_rhapsodia_ is the designation technically applied to the several books
+or cantos of the 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey.' So the word _fytte_ has gained a
+technical appropriation to our narrative poetry when it takes the ballad
+form. Now, the Greek word _rhapsody_ is derived from a tense of the verb
+_rhapto_, to sew as with a needle, to connect, and _ode_, a song, chant,
+or course of singing. If, therefore, you conceive of a _rhapsodia_, not
+as the _opera_, but as the _opus_ of a singer, not as the form, but as
+the result of his official ministration, viz., as that section of a
+narrative poem which forms an intelligible whole in itself, whilst in a
+subordinate relation it is one part of a larger whole--this idea
+represents accurately enough the use of the word _rhapsodia_ in the
+latter periods of Greek literature. Suppose the word _canto_ to be taken
+in its literal etymological sense, it would indicate a metrical
+composition meant to be sung or chanted. But what constitutes the
+complexity of the idea in the word _rhapsodia_ is that both its separate
+elements, the poetry and the musical delivery, are equally essential;
+neither is a casual, neither a subordinate, element.
+
+Now, the 'Rhapsodoi,' as may be supposed, are the personal correlates of
+the _rhapsodia._ This being the poem adapted to chanting, those were the
+chanters. And the only important question which we can imagine to arise
+is, How far in any given age we may presume the functions of the
+poetical composer and the musical deliverer to have been united. We
+cannot perceive that any possible relation between a rhapsody considered
+as a section of a poem and the whole of that poem, or any possible
+relation which this same rhapsody considered as a thing to be sung or
+accompanied instrumentally could bear to the naked-speaking rehearsal of
+the same poem or to the original text of that poem, ever can affect the
+main question of Homer's integrity. The 'Rhapsodoi' come to be mentioned
+at all simply as being one link in the transmission of the Homeric
+poems. They are found existing before Pisistratus, they are found
+existing after Pisistratus. And they declined exactly as the art of
+reading became general. We can approximate pretty closely to the time
+when the 'Rhapsodoi' ceased; but at what time they began we defy any man
+to say. Plato (Rep. x.) represents them as going back into the days of
+Homer; nay, according to Plato, Homer himself was a _rhapsodos_, and
+itinerated in that character. So was Hesiod. And two remarkable lines,
+ascribed to Hesiod by one of the Scholiasts upon Pindar, if we could be
+sure that they were genuine, settle that question:
+
+    [Greek: En Delo tote proton ego xai Homeros aoidoi
+    Melpomen, en nearois umnois rapsantes aoide.]
+
+'Then, first of all,' says Hesiod, 'did I and Homer chant as bards in
+Delos, laying the nexus of our poetic composition in proaemial hymns.' We
+understand him to mean this: There were many singers and harpers who
+sang or accompanied the words of others; perhaps ancient words--at all
+events, not their own. Naturally he was anxious to have it understood
+that he and Homer had higher pretensions. They killed their own mutton.
+They composed the words as well as sang them. Where both functions were
+so often united in one man's person, it became difficult to distinguish
+them. Our own word _bard_ or _minstrel_ stood in the same ambiguity. You
+could not tell in many cases whether the word pointed to the man's
+poetic or musical faculty. Anticipating that doubt, Hesiod says that
+they sang as original poets. For it is a remark of Suidas, which he
+deduces laboriously, that poetry, being uniformly sung in the elder
+Greece, acquired the name of [Greek: aoide]. This term became
+technically appropriated to the poetry, or substance of whatever was
+sung, in contradistinction to the musical accompaniment. And the poet
+was called [Greek: aoidos] So far Hesiod twice over secures the dignity
+of their office from misinterpretation. And there, by the word [Greek:
+raphantes] he indicates the sort of poetry which they cultivated, viz.,
+that which was expanded into long heroic narratives, and naturally
+connected itself both internally amongst its own parts, and externally
+with other poems of the same class. Thus, having separated Homer and
+himself from the mere musicians, next he separates them even as poets
+from those who simply composed hymns to the Gods. These heroic legends
+were known to require much more elaborate study and art. Yet, because a
+critical reviewer might take occasion to tax his piety in thus composing
+human legends in neglect of the Gods, Hesiod, forestalling him, replies:
+'You're out there, my friend; we were both pious, and we put our piety
+into hymns addressed to the Gods, which, with cabinetmakers' skill, we
+used also as interludes of transition from one legend to another.' For
+it is noticed frequently and especially by a Scholiast on Aristophanes
+(Pac. 826), that generally speaking the _proaemia_ to the different parts
+of narrative-poems were entirely detached, [Greek: kai ouden pros to
+pragma delon], and explain nothing at all that concerns the business.
+
+
+2.--Mrs. Evans and the 'Gazette.'
+
+In his autobiographic sketch, 'Introduction to the World of Strife,' he
+tells of his brother's enterprise in establishing the _Gazette_, which
+was to record their doings, and also of Mrs. Evans's place on the
+_Gazette_. The following is evidently a passage which was prepared for
+that part of the article, but was from some cause or other omitted:
+
+
+I suppose no creature ever led such a life as I led on the _Gazette_;
+sometimes running up, like Wallenstein, to the giddiest pinnacles of
+honour, then down again without notice or warning to the dust;
+cashiered--rendered incapable of ever serving H. M. again; nay, actually
+drummed out of the army, my uniform stripped off, and the 'rogue's
+march' played after me. And all for what? I protest, to this hour, I
+have no guess. If any person knows, that person is not myself; and the
+reader is quite as well able to furnish guesses to me as I to him--to
+enlighten _me_ upon the subject as I _him_.
+
+Mrs. Evans was a very important person in the play; I don't suppose that
+things could have gone on without _her_. For, as there was no writer in
+the _Gazette_ but my brother, so there was no reader of it except Mrs.
+Evans. And here came in a shocking annoyance to me that, as often as
+any necessity occurred (which was every third day) for restoring me to
+my rank, since my brother would not have it supposed that he could be
+weak enough to initiate such an indulgence, the _Gazette_ threw the
+_onus_ of this amiable weakness, and consequently of my gratitude, upon
+Mrs. Evans, affirming that the major-general had received a pardon and
+an amnesty for all his past atrocities at the request of 'a
+distinguished lady,' who was obscurely indicated in a parenthesis as
+'the truly honourable Mrs. Evans.' To listen to the _Gazette_ one would
+have supposed that this woman, who so cordially detested me, spent her
+whole time in going down on her knees and making earnest supplications
+to the throne on my behalf. But what signified the representations of
+the _Gazette_ if I knew them to be false? Aye, but I did not know that
+they were false. It is true that my obligations to her were quite
+aerial, and might, as the reader will think, have been supported without
+any preternatural effort. But exactly these aerial burdens, whether of
+gratitude or of honour, most oppressed me as being least tangible and
+incapable of pecuniary or other satisfaction. No sinking fund could meet
+them. And even the dull unimaginative woman herself, eternally held up
+to admiration as my resolute benefactress, got the habit (I am sure) of
+looking upon me as under nameless obligations to her. This raised my
+wrath. It was not that to my feelings the obligations were really a mere
+figment of pretence. On the contrary, according to my pains endured,
+they towered up to the clouds. But I felt that nobody had any right to
+load me with favours that I had never asked for, and without leave even
+asked from me; and the more real were the favours, the deeper the wrong
+done to me. I sought, therefore, for some means of retaliation. And it
+is odd that it was not till thirty years after that I perceived one. It
+then struck me that the eternal intercession might have been equally
+odious to her. To find herself prostrate for ever, weeping like Niobe,
+and, if the _Gazette_ was to be believed, refusing to raise herself from
+the mud or the flinty pavement till I had been forgiven, and reinstated
+in my rank--ah, how loathsome that must have been to her! Ah, how
+loathsome the whole cycle of favours were to me, considering from whom
+they came! Then we had effectually plagued each other. And it was not
+without loud laughter, as of malice unexpectedly triumphant, that I
+found one night thirty years after, on regretting my powerlessness of
+vengeance, that, in fact, I had amply triumphed thirty years before. So,
+undaunted Mrs. Evans, if you live anywhere within call, listen to the
+assurance that all accounts are squared between us, and that we balanced
+our mutual debts by mutual disgust; and that, if you plagued me
+perversely, I plagued you unconsciously.
+
+And though shot and bullets were forbidden fruit, yet something might be
+done with hard wadding. A good deal of classical literature disappeared
+in this way, which by one who valued no classics very highly might be
+called the way of all flesh. The best of authors, he contended, had
+better perish by this warlike consummation than by the inglorious enmity
+of bookworms and moths--honeycombed, as most of the books had been which
+had gone out to India with our two uncles. Even wadding, however, was
+declared to be inadmissible as too dangerous, after wounds had been
+inflicted more than once.
+
+
+3.--A LAWSUIT LEGACY.
+
+De Quincey, in his autobiographic sketch headed 'Laxton,' tells of the
+fortune of Miss Watson, who afterwards became Lady Carbery, and also of
+the legacy left to her in the form of a lawsuit by her father against
+the East India Company; and among his papers we find the following
+passage either overlooked or omitted, for some undiscoverable reason,
+from that paper, though it has a value in its own way as expressing some
+of De Quincey's views on law and equity; and it is sufficiently
+characteristic to be included here:
+
+
+In consequence of her long minority, Miss Watson must have succeeded at
+once to six thousand a year on completing her twenty-first year; and she
+also inherited a Chancery-suit, which sort of property is _now_ (1853)
+rather at a discount in public estimation; but let the reader assure
+himself that even the Court of Chancery is not quite so black as it is
+painted; that the true ground for the delays and ruinous expenses in
+ninety-nine out of one hundred instances is not legal chicanery, still
+less the wilful circuitousness and wordiness of law processes, but the
+great eternal fact that, what through lapse of time, decays of memory,
+and loss of documents, and what through interested suppressions of
+truth, and the dispersions of witnesses, and causes by the score
+beside, the ultimate truth and equity of human disputes is a matter of
+prodigious perplexity; neither is there any possibility that the mass of
+litigations as to property ever _can_ be made cheap except in proportion
+as it is made dismally imperfect.
+
+No power that ever yet was lodged in senates or in councils _could_
+avail, ever _has_ availed, ever _will_ avail, to intercept the
+immeasurable expansion of that law which grows out of social expansion.
+Fast as the relations of man multiply, and the modifications of property
+extend, must the corresponding adaptations of the law run alongside. The
+pretended arrests applied to this heaving volcanic system of forces by
+codifications, like those of Justinian or Napoleon, had not lasted for a
+year before all had broke loose from its moorings, and was again going
+ahead with redoubling impetus. Equally delusive are the prospects held
+out that the new system of cheap provincial justice will be a change
+unconditionally for the better. Already the complaints against it are
+such in bitterness and extent as to show that in very many cases it must
+be regarded as a failure; and, where it is not, that it must be regarded
+as a compromise: once you had 8 degrees of the advantage X, 4 of Y; now
+you have 7 of X, 5 of Y.
+
+
+4.--THE TRUE JUSTIFICATIONS OF WAR.
+
+The following was evidently intended to appear in the article on _War_:
+
+
+'Most of what has been written on this subject (the cruelty of war), in
+connection with the apparently fierce ethics of the Old Testament, is
+(with submission to sentimentalists) false and profoundly unphilosophic.
+It is of the same feeble character as the flashy modern moralizations
+upon War. The true justifications of war lie far below the depths of any
+soundings taken upon the charts of effeminate earth-born ethics. And
+ethics of God, the Scriptural ethics, search into depths that are older
+and less measurable, contemplate interests that are more mysterious and
+entangled with perils more awful than merely human philosophy has
+resources for appreciating. It is not at all impossible that a crisis
+has sometimes arisen for the human race, in which its capital interest
+may be said to have ridden at single anchor. Upon the issue of a single
+struggle between the powers of light and darkness--upon a motion, a
+bias, an impulse given this way or that--all may have been staked. Out
+of Judaism came Christianity, and the mere possibility of Christianity.
+From elder stages of the Hebrew race, hidden in thick darkness to us,
+descended the only pure glimpse allowed to man of God's nature.
+Traditionally, but through many generations, and fighting at every
+stage with storms or with perils more than ever were revealed to _us_,
+this idea of God, this holy seed of truth, like some secret jewel
+passing onwards through armies of robbers, made its way downward to an
+age in which it became the matrix of Christianity. The solitary acorn
+had reached in safety the particular soil in which it was first capable
+of expanding into a forest. The narrow, but at the same time austere,
+truth of Judaism, furnished the basis which by magic, as it were, burst
+suddenly and expanded into a vast superstructure, no longer fitted for
+the apprehension of one single unamiable race, but offering shelter and
+repose to the whole family of man. These things are most remarkable
+about this memorable trans-migration of one faith into another, of an
+imperfect into a perfect religion, viz., that the early stage had but a
+slight resemblance to the latter, nor could have prefigured it to a
+human sagacity more than a larva could prefigure a chrysalis; and,
+secondly, that whereas the product, viz., Christianity, never has been
+nor will be in any danger of ruin, the germ, viz., the Judaic idea of
+God, the great radiation through which the Deity kept open His
+communication with man, apparently must more than once have approached
+an awful struggle for life. This solitary taper of truth, struggling
+across a howling wilderness of darkness, had it been ever totally
+extinguished, could probably never have been reillumined. It may seem an
+easy thing for a mere human philosophy to recover, and steadily to
+maintain a pure Hebrew conception of God; but so far is this from being
+true, that we believe it possible to expose in the closest Pagan
+approximation to this Hebrew type some adulterous elements such as would
+have ensured its relapse into idolatrous impurity.'
+
+
+5.--PHILOSOPHY DEFEATED.
+
+We have come upon a passage which is omitted from the 'Confessions,' and
+as it is, in every way, characteristic, we shall give it:
+
+
+My studies have now been long interrupted. I cannot read to myself with
+any pleasure, hardly with a moment's endurance. Yet I read aloud
+sometimes for the pleasure of others--because reading is an
+accomplishment of mine, and, in the slang use of the word
+'accomplishment' as a superficial and ornamental attainment, almost the
+only one I possess--and, formerly, if I had any vanity at all connected
+with any endowment or attainment of mine, it was with this; for I had
+observed that no accomplishment was so rare. Players are the worst
+readers of all; ---- reads vilely, and Mrs. ----, who is so celebrated,
+can read nothing well but dramatic compositions--Milton she cannot read
+sufferably. People in general read poetry without any passion at all, or
+else overstep the modesty of nature and read not like scholars. Of late,
+if I have felt moved by anything in books, it has been by the grand
+lamentations of 'Samson Agonistes,' or the great harmonies of the
+Satanic speaker in 'Paradise Regained,' when read aloud by myself. A
+young lady sometimes comes and drinks tea with us. At her request and
+M----'s I now and then read W----'s poems to them. (W----, by-the-bye,
+is the only poet I ever met who could read his own verses. Blank verse
+he reads admirably.)
+
+This, then, has been the extent of my reading for upwards of sixteen
+months. It frets me to enter those rooms of my cottage in which the
+books stand. In one of them, to which my little boy has access, he has
+found out a use for some of them. Somebody has given him a bow and
+arrows--God knows who, certainly not I, for I have not energy or
+ingenuity to invent a walking-stick--thus equipped for action, he rears
+up the largest of the folios that he can lift, places them on a
+tottering base, and then shoots until he brings down the enemy. He often
+presses me to join him; and sometimes I consent, and we are both engaged
+together in these intellectual labours. We build up a pile, having for
+its base some slender modern metaphysician, ill able (poor man!) to
+sustain such a weight of philosophy. Upon this we place the Dutch
+quartos of Descartes and Spinoza; then a third story of Schoolmen in
+folio--the Master of Sentences, Suarez, Picus Mirandula, and the
+Telemonian bulk of Thomas Aquinas; and when the whole architecture seems
+firm and compact, we finish our system of metaphysics by roofing the
+whole with Duval's enormous Aristotle. So far there is some
+pleasure--building up is something, but what is that to destroying? Thus
+thinks, at least, my little companion, who now, with the wrath of the
+Pythian Apollo, assumes his bow and arrows; plants himself in the
+remotest corner of the room, and prepares his fatal shafts. The
+bow-string twangs, flights of arrows are in the air, but the Dutch
+impregnability of the Bergen-op-Zooms at the base receives the few which
+reach the mark, and they recoil without mischief done. Again the
+baffled archer collects his arrows, and again he takes his station. An
+arrow issues forth, and takes effect on a weak side of Thomas. Symptoms
+of dissolution appear--the cohesion of the system is loosened--the
+Schoolmen begin to totter; the Stagyrite trembles; Philosophy rocks to
+its centre; and, before it can be seen whether time will do anything to
+heal their wounds, another arrow is planted in the schism of their
+ontology; the mighty structure heaves--reels--seems in suspense for one
+moment, and then, with one choral crash--to the frantic joy of the young
+Sagittary--lies subverted on the floor! Kant and Aristotle, Nominalists
+and Realists, Doctors Seraphic or Irrefragable, what cares he? All are
+at his feet--the Irrefragable has been confuted by his arrows, the
+Seraphic has been found mortal, and the greatest philosopher and the
+least differ but according to the brief noise they have made.
+
+For nearly two years I believe that I read no book but one, and I owe it
+to the author, Mr. Ricardo, to make grateful record of it.
+
+And then he proceeds:
+
+Suddenly, in 1818, a friend in Edinburgh sent me down Mr. Ricardo's
+book, etc.
+
+
+6.--THE HIGHWAYMAN'S SKELETON.
+
+In the account which De Quincey gives of the highwayman's skeleton,
+which figured in the museum of the distinguished surgeon, Mr. White, in
+his chapter in the 'Autobiographic Sketches' headed 'The Manchester
+Grammar School,' he was evidently restrained from inserting one passage,
+which we have found among his papers, from considerations of delicacy
+towards persons who might then still be living. But as he has there
+plainly given the names of the leading persons concerned--the famous
+Surgeon Cruikshank,[41] there can at this time of day be little risk of
+offending or hurting anyone by presenting the passage, which the curious
+student of the Autobiography can insert at the proper point, and may
+feel that its presence adds to the completeness of the impression,
+half-humorous, half-_eerie_, which De Quincey was fain to produce by
+that somewhat grim episode. Here is the passage:
+
+
+It was a regular and respectable branch of public industry which was
+carried on by the highwaymen of England, and all the parties to it moved
+upon decent motives and by considerate methods. In particular, the
+robbers themselves, as the leading parties, could not be other than
+first-rate men, as regarded courage, animal vigour, and perfect
+horsemanship. Starting from any lower standard than this, not only had
+they no chance of continued success--their failure was certain as
+regarded the contest with the traveller, but also their failure was
+equally certain as regarded the competition within their own body. The
+candidates for a lucrative section of the road were sure to become
+troublesome in proportion as all administration of the business upon
+that part of the line was feebly or indiscreetly worked. Hence it arose
+that individually the chief highwaymen were sure to command a deep
+professional interest amongst the surgeons of the land. Sometimes it
+happened that a first-rate robber was arrested and brought to trial, but
+from defective evidence escaped. Meanwhile his fine person had been
+locally advertised and brought under the notice of the medical body.
+This had occurred in a more eminent degree than was usual to the robber
+who had owned when living the matchless skeleton possessed by Mr. White.
+He had been most extensively surveyed with anatomical eyes by the whole
+body of the medical profession in London: their deliberate judgment upon
+him was that a more absolutely magnificent figure of a man did not exist
+in England than this highwayman, and naturally therefore very high sums
+were offered to him as soon as his condemnation was certain. The robber,
+whose name I entirely forget, finally closed with the offer of
+Cruikshank, who was at that time the most eminent surgeon in London.
+Those days, as is well known, were days of great irregularity in all
+that concerned the management of prisons and the administration of
+criminal justice. Consequently there is no reason for surprise or for
+doubt in the statement made by Mr. White, that Cruikshank, whose pupil
+Mr. White then was, received some special indulgences from one of the
+under-sheriffs beyond what the law would strictly have warranted. The
+robber was cut down considerably within the appointed time, was
+instantly placed in a chaise-and-four, and was thus brought so
+prematurely into the private rooms of Cruikshank, that life was not as
+yet entirely extinct. This I heard Mr. White repeatedly assert. He was
+himself at that time amongst the pupils of Cruikshank, and three or four
+of the most favoured amongst these were present, and to one of them
+Cruikshank observed quietly: 'I think the subject is not quite dead;
+pray put your knife in (Mr. X. Y.) at this point.' That was done; a
+solemn _finis_ was placed to the labours of the robber, and perhaps a
+solemn inauguration to the labours of the student. A cast was taken from
+the superb figure of the highwayman; he was then dissected, his skeleton
+became the property of Cruikshank, and subsequently of Mr. White. We
+were all called upon to admire the fine proportions of the man, and of
+course in that hollow and unmeaning way which such unlearned expressors
+of judgment usually assume, we all obsequiously met the demand levied
+upon our admiration. But, for my part, though readily confiding in the
+professional judgment of anatomists, I could not but feel that through
+my own unassisted judgment I never could have arrived at such a
+conclusion. The unlearned eye has gathered no rudimental points to begin
+with. Not having what are the normal outlines to which the finest
+proportions tend, an eye so untutored cannot of course judge in what
+degree the given subject approaches to these.
+
+
+7.--THE RANSOM FOR WATERLOO.
+
+The following gives a variation on a famous passage in the 'Dream
+Fugue,' and it may be interesting to the reader to compare it with that
+which the author printed. From these variations it will be seen that De
+Quincey often wrote and re-wrote his finest passages, and sometimes, no
+doubt, found it hard to choose between the readings:
+
+
+Thus as we ran like torrents; thus as with bridal rapture our flying
+equipage swept over the _campo santo_ of the graves; thus as our burning
+wheels carried warrior instincts, kindled earthly passions amongst the
+trembling dust below us, suddenly we became aware of a vast necropolis
+to which from afar we were hurrying. In a moment our maddening wheels
+were nearing it.
+
+'Of purple granite in massive piles was this city of the dead, and yet
+for one moment it lay like a visionary purple stain on the horizon, so
+mighty was the distance. In the second moment this purple city trembled
+through many changes, and grew as by fiery pulsations, so mighty was the
+pace. In the third moment already with our dreadful gallop we were
+entering its suburbs. Systems of sarcophagi rose with crests aerial of
+terraces and turrets into the upper glooms, strode forward with haughty
+encroachment upon the central aisle, ran back with mighty shadows into
+answering recesses. When the sarcophagi wheeled, then did our horses
+wheel. Like rivers in horned floods wheeling in pomp of unfathomable
+waters round headlands; like hurricanes that ride into the secrets of
+forests, faster than ever light travels through the wilderness of
+darkness, we shot the angles, we fled round the curves of the
+labyrinthine city. With the storm of our horses' feet, and of our
+burning wheels, did we carry earthly passions, kindle warrior instincts
+amongst the silent dust around us, dust of our noble fathers that had
+slept in God since Creci. Every sarcophagus showed many bas-reliefs,
+bas-reliefs of battles, bas-reliefs of battlefields, battles from
+forgotten ages, battles from yesterday; battlefields that long since
+Nature had healed and reconciled to herself with the sweet oblivion of
+flowers; battlefields that were yet angry and crimson with carnage.
+
+And now had we reached the last sarcophagus, already we were abreast of
+the last bas-relief; already we were recovering the arrow-like flight of
+the central aisle, when coming up it in counterview to ourselves we
+beheld the frailest of cars, built as might seem from floral wreaths,
+and from the shells of Indian seas. Half concealed were the fawns that
+drew it by the floating mists that went before it in pomp. But the mists
+hid not the lovely countenance of the infant girl that sate wistful upon
+the ear, and hid not the birds of tropic plumage with which she played.
+Face to face she rode forward to meet us, and baby laughter in her eyes
+saluted the ruin that approached. 'Oh, baby,' I said in anguish, 'must
+we that carry tidings of great joy to every people be God's messengers
+of ruin to thee?' In horror I rose at the thought. But then also, in
+horror at the thought, rose one that was sculptured in the bas-relief--a
+dying trumpeter. Solemnly from the field of Waterloo he rose to his
+feet, and, unslinging his stony trumpet, carried it in his dying anguish
+to his stony lips, sounding once, and yet once again, proclamation that
+to _thy_ ears, oh baby, must have spoken from the battlements of death.
+Immediately deep shadows fell between us, and shuddering silence. The
+choir had ceased to sing; the uproar of our laurelled equipage alarmed
+the graves no more. By horror the bas-relief had been unlocked into
+life. By horror we that were so full of life--we men, and our horses
+with their fiery forelegs rising in mid-air to their everlasting
+gallop--were petrified to a bas-relief. Oh, glacial pageantry of death,
+that from end to end of the gorgeous cathedral for a moment froze every
+eye by contagion of panic. Then for the third time the trumpet sounded.
+Back with the shattering burst came the infinite rushing of life. The
+seals of frost were raised from our stifling hearts.
+
+
+8.--DESIDERIUM.
+
+Here is another variation on a famous passage in the 'Autobiographic
+Sketches,' which will give the reader some further opportunity for
+comparison:
+
+
+At six years of age, or thereabouts (I write without any memorial
+notes), the glory of this earth for me was extinguished. _It is
+finished_--not those words but that sentiment--was the misgiving of my
+prophetic heart; thought it was that gnawed like a worm, that did not
+and that could not die. 'How, child,' a cynic would have said, if he had
+deciphered the secret reading of my sighs--'at six years of age, will
+you pretend that life has already exhausted its promises? Have you
+communicated with the grandeurs of earth? Have you read Milton? Have you
+seen Rome? Have you heard Mozart?' No, I had _not_, nor could in those
+years have appreciated any one of them if I had; and, therefore,
+undoubtedly the crown jewels of our little planet were still waiting for
+me in the rear. Milton and Rome and 'Don Giovanni' were yet to come. But
+it mattered not what remained when set over against what had been taken
+away. _That_ it was which I sought for ever in my blindness. The love
+which had existed between myself and my departed sister, _that_, as
+even a child could feel, was not a light that could be rekindled. No
+voice on earth could say, 'Come again!' to a flower of Paradise like
+that. Love, such as that is given but once to any. Exquisite are the
+perceptions of childhood, not less so than those of maturest wisdom, in
+what touches the capital interests of the heart. And no arguments, nor
+any consolations, could have soothed me into a moment's belief, that a
+wound so ghastly as mine admitted of healing or palliation.
+Consequently, as I stood more alone in the very midst of a domestic
+circle than ever Christian traveller in an African Bilidulgerid amidst
+the tents of infidels, or the howls of lions, day and night--in the
+darkness and at noon-day--I sate, I stood, I lay, moping like an idiot,
+craving for what was impossible, and seeking, groping, snatching, at
+that which was irretrievable for ever.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[41] [Born 1746, died 1800.--ED.]
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Posthumous Works of Thomas De
+Quincey,  Vol. 1 (2 vols), by Thomas De Quincey
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THOMAS DE QUINCEY ***
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