Quincey_All.txt

the winter had set in with unusual
severity throughout qualia and bavaria though
as yet scarcely advanced beyond the first week 
november it was in fiwrt at the point when our
tale commences the th that month or in our
modem computation the th long after which
date it had been customary late years inter any
ordinary state the weather to extend the course
 military operations and without much decline 
vigour latterly indeed it had become apparent
that entire winter campaigns without either formal
suspensions hostilities or even partial relaxations
had entered professedly as a point policy into the
system warfare which now swept over germany
 klostebheih
in full career threatening soon to convert its vast
central provinces so recently blooming eden 
peace and expanding prosperity into a howling
wilderness j and which had already converted immense
tracts into one universal aceldama or homan
bailies reviving to the recollection at every step
the extent past happiness in the endless memorials
 its destruction this innovation upon tho
old practice war had been introduced by the swedish
armies whose northern habits and training
had fortunately prepared them to receive a german
winter as a very beneficial exchange whilst upon
the less hardy soldiers from italy spain and the
southern france to whom the harsh transition from
their own sunny skies had made the very same climate
s severe trial constitution this change 
policy pressed with a hardship that sometimes
crippled their exertions
it was a change however not so long settled as to
resist the extraordinary circumstances the weather
so tierce had been the cold for the last forts
 kbich twe ii man i
gnat dislioiioiir if frenv
in the tturtj yeim ww
klosterheibt 
night and so premature that a pretty confident
anticipation had arisen in all quarters throughout
the poor exhausted land a general armistice
and as this once established would offer a ready
opening to some measure permanent pacification
it could not be surprising that the natural hopefulness
 the human heart long oppressed by gloomy
prospects should open with unusual readiness to
the first colourable dawn happier times in fact
the reaction in the public spirits was sudden and
universal it happened also that the particular occasion
 this change prospect brought with it a
separate pleasure on its own account winter
which by its peculiar severity had created the apparent
necessity for an armistice brought many
household pleasures in its train associated immemorially
with that season in all northern climates
the cold which had casually opened a path to more
distant hopes was also for the present moment a
screen between themselves and the enemy's sword
and thus it happened that the same season which
held out a not improbable picture final restoration
however remote to public happiness promised them
a certain foretaste this blessing in the immediate
security their homes
kxostehheih
but in tha ancient city klosterheim it might
have been imagined that uobodj participated in these
feelings a stir and agitation amongst the citizens
had been conspicuous for some days and on the
coming the sth spite the intense cold persons
 every rank were leon crowding from an early
hour to the city walls and returning homewards
at intervals with anxiaog and dissatisfied looks
groups both sees were collected at every corner
 the rider streets keenly debating or angrily protesting
 at one time denouncing vengeance to horae
great enemy at another passionately lamenting
some past or halfforgotten calamity recalled to
their thoughts whilst anticipating a similar catastrophe
for the present day
above all the great square upon which the ancient
castellated palace or schloss opened by one 
its fronts as well as a principal convent the city
was the resort many turbulent spirits most 
these were young men and amongst them many
students the university for the war which
had thinned or totally dispersed some the greatest
universities in germany under the particular circumstances
 its situation had greatly increased
that klosterheim judging by the tone which
prevailed and the random expressions wlucli fell
upon the ear at intervals a stnwir might conjecture
that it was no empty lamentation over impending
evils which occupied this crowd but some
serious preparation for meaning or redressing them
an officer sora distinction had been for sometime
observing them from the antique portals the
palace it was probable however that little more
than their gestures had readied li for at length
he moved nearer and gradually insinuated himself
into the thickest part the mob with the air 
one who took no further concern in their proceedings
than that simple curiosity but his martial
air and bis dress allowed him no means covering
his purpose with more warning and leisure to
arrange his precautions he might hove passed as an
indifferent spectator as it was his jewelhilted sabre
the massy gold chain depending in sont from a costly
button and loop which secured it half way down his
back and his broad crimson scarf embroidered ina
style peculiar splendour announced him as a
favoured ofscer the landgrave whose ambitious
pretensions and tyrannical mode supporting them
were just now the objects general abhorrence in
klosterheim his own appearance did not belie
the service which he hail adopted he wis a man
 stout perean somewhat elegantly formed in age
about three or fiveandthirty though perhaps a
year or two his apparent age might be charged
upon the bronziug effects eun and wind in
bearing and carriage he announced to every eye the
mixed carelessness and selfpossession a military
training and as his features were regular and remarkably
intelligent he would have been pronounced
on the whole a man winning exterior
were it not for the repulsive effect his eye in
which there was a sinister expression treachery
and at times a ferocious one cruelty
placed upon their guard by his costume and the
severity his countenance those the lower rank
were silent as he moved languor lowered theirvoices
into whispers and inaudible murmurs amongst
the students however whenever they happened to
minster stnragly were many fiery young men who
disdained to temperate expression their feelings
or to moderate their tone a large group these
at one comer the square lrew attention upon
themselves as well by the conspicuous station which
they occupied upon the steps a church portico
as by the loudness their voices towards then
xlosterheim 
the officer direct hia steps and probably no lover
 scenes would have had very long to wait for some
explosion between parties both equally ready to
take offence and careless giving it but at that
moment from an opposite angle the square wag
seen approaching a young man in plain clothes who
drew off the universal regard the mob upon himself
eiid by the iippobfofwekome which saluted him
occasioned all other sounds to be stifled long life
to our noble leader welcome to the good
max i resounded through the square hail to
our noble brother i was the acclamation the
students and every body hasfenwl forward to
meet him with an impetuosity which for the moment
drew off all attention from the officer he was
left standing by himself on the steps the church
looking down upon this scene joyous welcome
the sole spectator who neither fully understood its
meaning nor shared in its feelings
the stranger who wore in part the antique costume
 the university klosterheim except where
lie still retained underneath a travelling dress stained
with recent marks the roads and the weather
advanced amongst hia friends with an air at once
frank kind and dignified ha replied to their
 klosterbeim
greetings in the language cheerfulness but his
features expressed anxiety and his manner was
hurried whether he had not observed the officer
overlooking them ur thought that the importance
 the communications which he had to make transcended
all common restraints caution there
waa little time to judge so it was at any rate that
without lowering hie voice he entered abruptly
upon his business
friends i i have seen the accursed holkerstein j
i have penetrated within his fortress with my own
eyes i have viewed and numbered his vile assassins
they are in strength triple the utmost amount 
our friends without help from us our kinsmen
are lost scarce one us but will lose a dear friend
before three nights are over should klosterheim not
resolutely do her duty
she shall she shall exclaimed a multitude 
voices
then friends it must be speedily never was
there more call for sudden resolution perhaps
before tomorrow's sun shall set the sword this
detested robber will be at their throats for he has
some intelligence whence i know not nor how
much their approach neither think that holkw
klosterheim 
fltein is a man acquainted with any touch mercy or
relenting where no ransom is to be had he is in
those circumstances that he will and must deliver
himself from the burden prisoners by a general
massacre infants even will not be spared
many women had by this time flocked to the
outer ring the listening audience and perhaps
r tjteir ears in particular it was that the young
stranger urged these last circumstances adding
will you look down tamely from your city was
upon such another massacre the innocents as we
hare once before witnessed 
 cursed be holkerstein i said a multitude 
voices
and cursed be those that openly or secretly
support him v added one the students looking
earnestly at the officer
 amen i said the officer in a solemn tone and
looking round him with the aspect one who will
not suppose himself to laye been included in the
suspicion
and mends remember this pursued the popular
favourite whilst you are discharging the
first duties christians and brave men to those
who are now throwing themselves upon the hospes

talityof your city you will tilso be acquitting yourselves
 a great debt to the emperor
softly young gentleman softly interrupted
the officer his serene highness my liege lord and
yours goren here and the emperor has no part
in our allegiance for debts slut the city owes to
the emperor she will pay but men and horses
i take it
are precisely the coin which the time demands 
these will best please the emperor and perhaps
will suit the circumstances the city but
leaving the emperor's rights as a question for lawyers
 you sir are a soldier i question not a
brave one will you arise his highness the landgrave
to look down irom the castle windows upon
a rile marauder stripping or murdering the innocent
people who are throwing themselves upon the
hospitality this ancient city
 ay sir that will i he you well assured the
landgrave is my sovereign
 since when since thursday week i think 
jbr so long it is since your terlia first entered
kloeterheim but in that as you will and if it be
klosterheim 
a point honour with you gentlemen walloons to
look on whilst women and children are butchered
jpor such a purpose no man is my sovereign and as
to the landgrave in particular
 nor ours nor ours shouted a tumult 
voices which drowned the young student's words
about the landgrave though apparently part 
them reached the officer he looked round in quest
 some military comrades who might support him
ixl the vote dujhit to which at this point his
passion prompted him but seeing none he exclaimed
o stop patna's and maximilian's
llmihmedt had transpired through many 
mivtti'ra but with some circumstances fic
 t ilffonding maximilian upon those charges
rol to his character and the hvehben
ft lipute on this point had nearly ended in 
 total to their unanimity on the immediate es
gph ftt issnp good sense however and indignation
 hkt landgrave finally brought them round again
m thir first resolution and they separated iritfa
ke unanimous intention meeting at noon on tete
fhuoiafc tiny fas the purpose carting it into
bitt thir wmniaitx on teak pitt wm laoim
m lor mib fluy buff ob l iolhnni aocn
ofh vmrv ow ilok mm id heob inaobt at dk
i
klostekheim
 conspiracy and marched off to one the
prisons the count st aldenhcim was himself
sole exception and this was a distinction odious to
his generous nature as it drew upon him a cloud 
suspicion he was sensible that he would be supposed
to owe his privilege to some discovery or act
 treachery more or less by which he tad merited
the favour the landgrave the fed was that in
the indulgence shewn to the count no motive had
influenced the landgrave but a politic consideration
 the great favour and influence which the count's
brother the palsgrave at this moment enjoyed in
the camp his awn swedish allies on this principle
 policy the landgrave contented himself
with placing st aldenheim under a slight military
confinement to his own house under the guard 
a few sentinels posted in his hall
for him therefore under the powerful protection
which he enjoyed elsewhere there was no great
anxiety entertained but for the rest many whom
had no friends or friends who did them the ill service
 enemies being in act regarded as enemies
by the landgrave and his council serious fears were
entertained by the whole city their situation was
evidently critical the landgrave had the
iso kltebheim
 whig distinguished merit hated him or as good
citizens klosterheim and connected by old finely
thea with the interests that town were disposed
to chaise muximiuaii with ambitious views private
aggrandizement t the eisipenee the city
grounded upon the emperor's favour or upon a
supposed marriage with some lady the imperial
house for the story pauhna's and maximilian's
mutual attachment thud transpired through many 
the travellers but with some circumstances fiction
in defending moximihen upon those charges
his friends had betrayed a natural warmth at the
injustice offered to his character and the liveliness
 the dispute on this point had nearly ended in a
way ital to their unanimity on the immediate question
at issue good sense however and indignation
at the ijlndgtave finally brought them round again
to their first resolution and they separated with
the unanimous intention meeting at noon on the
following day for the purpose carrying it into
effect
but their unanimity on this point was little
avail for at an early hour on the following morning
every one those who had been present at the
meeting was arrested by a file soldiers on a chai
 conspiracy and marched off to one the city
prison the count st aldenheim was himself the
sole exception and this was a distinction odious to
his generous nature aa it drew upon him a cloud 
suspicion he was sensible that he would he supposed
to owe his privilege to some discovery or act
 treachery more or less hy which he bad merited
the feyour the landgrave the feet was that in
the indulgence shewn to the count no motive had
influenced the landgrave hut a politic consideration
 the great favour and influence which the count's
brother the palsgrave at this moment enjoyed in
the camp his own swedish allies on this principle
 policy the landgrave contented himself
with placing st alileuheim under a slight military
confinement to his own house under the guard 
a few sentinels posted in his hall
for him therefore under the powerful protection
which he enjoyed elsewhere there was no great
anxiety entertained but for the rest many whom
hod ao ihends or friends who did them the ill service
 enemies being in feet regarded as enemies
by the landgrave and his council serious fears were
entertained by the whole city their situation was
evidently critical the landgrave had them in his
klostkrucim
power he wos notoriously a inn gloomy bnrial interest in ktoterfaeim whii would
ultimately determine his own place and value in
the eetibute his new nlliee he was not a
character to be eoeily duped by mytoy yet he
con not but acknowledge to himself that there
was something calculated to impress awe and the
sort fear which is connected with the supernatural
in the sudden appearances and vanishing as
sudden the masque he came no one could
goebi whence retreated no one could guess whither
was intercepted and yet eluded arrest and if half
the stories in circulation could he credited seemed
inaudible in his steps at pleasure to make himself
invisible and impalpable to the very bands stretched
o ut to detain him mach this no doubt was
klobterheim 
militia exaggeration or the fictions fears selfdeluded
but enough remained after every allowance
to justify an extraordinary interest in so
singular a being and the landgrave could not
avind wishing that chance might offer an opportunity
to himself observing him
profound silence had for some time reigned
throughout the castle a dock which stood in the
room broke it for a moment by striking the quarters
 and raising his eyes the landgrave perceived
that it was past two he rose to retire for the
night and stood for a moment musing with one
hand resting upon the table a momentary feeling
 awe came across him as his eyes travelled through
the gloom at the lower the room on the
sudden thought that a being so mysterious aid
capable piercing through so many impediments
to the interior every mansion in klosterheim
was doubtless likely enough to visit the castle nay
it would be no ways improbable that he should
penetrate to this very room what bars had yet
beii found sufficient to repel him and who could
pretend to calculate the hour his visit this
night even might be the time which he would select
thinking thus the landgrave was suddenly aware
 a whisky figure entering the room by door at
the lower the room had the length and general
proportions a gallery and the further wae
 remote from the candles which stood on the
landgrave's table that the deep gloom was but
slightly penetrated by their rays light however
there was sulgcient to tlispky the outline a
figure slowly and inaudibly advancing up the room
it could not he void that the heure advanced stealthily
 on the contrary its motion carriage and bearing
were in the highest dree dignified and solemn
but the feeling a stealthy purpose was suggested
by the perfect silence its tread the motion 
a shadow could not be more noiseless and this
drcunistance confirmed the landgrave's first impressed
that now he wee on the point accomplishing
his recent wish and meeting that mysterious being
who was the object so much awe and the author
 so farspread a panic
he was right it was indeed the masque armed
capapie as usual he advanced with an equable
and determined step in the direction the landgrave
whether be saw his highness who stood a
little in the shade a laje cabinet could not be
knovm i the landgrave doubted not that he did
i
kiterhih
he was a prince firm nerves by constitution and
 great intrepidity yet as one who shared in the
superstitions his age he could not be expected
entirely to suppress an emotion indefinite apprehension
as he now beheld the solemn approach a
beta who by some unaccountable means lad trepanned
so many different individuals from so many
different honseb most them prepared for selfdefence
and fenced in by the protection stone walls
locks and bars
the landgrave however lost none bis presence
 mind and in the midst his discomposure
as bis eye fell upon the habiliments this mysterious
person and the arms and military accoutrements
which he bore naturally his thoughts settled
upon the more earthly means annoyance which
this martial apparition carried about him the
landgrave was himself unarmed he had no arms
even within reach nor was it possible for him in
his present situation very speedily to summon assistance
with these thoughts passing rapidly through
his mind and sensible that in any viewof hisnalnire
and powers the being now in his presence was a
very formidable antagonist the landgrave could not
but feel relieved from a burden aimons tremors
ts klobthhlm
when he saw the masque suddenly turn towards a
door which opened about half way up the room and
lead into a picturegiiuery at right angles with the
room in which they both were
into the picturegallery the masque passed at the
same solent pace without apparently looking at
the landgrave this movement seemed to argue
either that he purposely declined an interview with
the prince and that might aise fear or that he
had not been aware his presence either supposition
as implying something human infirmity
seemed incompatible with supernatural faculties
partly upon this consideration and partly perhaps
because he suddenly recollected that the road taken
by the masque would lead him directly past the
apartments the old seneschal where assistance
might be summoned the landgrave foimd his spirits
at this moment revive the consciousness rank
and birth also came to his aid and that sort disdain
 the aggressor which possesses every man 
brave or cowardly alike within the walls his
own dwelling unarmed as he was he determined
to pursue and perhaps to speak
the restraints high breeding and the ceremonious
decorum his rank involuntarily checked the
landgrave from pnrsning with a hurried pace he
advanced with hia habitual gmvity step so that
the masque was half way down the gallery before
the prince entered it this gallery furnished on
each side with pictures which some were portraits
was great length the masque and the prince
continued to advance preserving a pretty equal distance
it did not appear by any sign or gbbtnre
that the masque was aware the landgrave's pursuit
suddenly however he paused drew hia word
halted the landgrave also halted then turning
half round and waving with his hand to the prince
so as to solicit his attention slowly the masque elevated
the point his sword to the level a picture
it wa the portrait a young cavalier in a hunting
dress blooming with youth and youthful ftaergj
the landgrave turned pale trembled and was ruefully
agitated the masque kept his sword in its
position for half a minute then dropping it shook
hia head and raised his hand with a peculiar solemnity
 expression the landgrave recovered himself
 his features swelled with passion he quickened
his step and again followed in pursuit
the masque however had by this time turned
out the gallery into a passage which after a single
t terminated in the private room the seneschal
believing that his ignorance the localities
wbb thus leading him on to certain capture the
landgrave pursued more leisurely the passage
was dimly lighted every image floated in a cloudy
obscurity and upon reaching the curve it seemed
to the landgrave that the masque was just on the
point entering the seneschal's room no other
door was heard to open and he felt assured that he
had seen the lofty figure the masque ghdiiig into
that apartment he again quickened his steps a
light bumped within the door stood ajar quietly
the prince pushed it open and entered with the
fullest assurance that he should here at length overtake
the object bis pursuit
great was his consternation upon finding in a
room which presented no outlet not a living creature
except the elderly seneschal who lay quietly
sleeping in his armchair the first impulse the
prince was to awaken him roughly that he might
summon aid and cooperate in the search one
glance at a paper upon the table arrested his hand
he saw a name written there interesting to his
fears beyond all others in the world hie eye was
riveted as by fascination to the paper he read one
klosteaheiu 
instant that satisfied him that the old seneschal
must be overcome hy no counterfeit slumbers when
he could thus surrender a secret capital importance
to the gee that eye irom which above all
others he must desire to screen it one moment
he deliberated with himself the old man hired
and muttered in his dreams the landgrave seized
the paper and stood irresolute for an instant whether
to await his wakening and authoritatively to claim
what so nearly concerned his own interest or to retreat
with it from the room before the old mac should
be aware the prince's visit or his own loss
but the seneschal wearied perhaps with some
unusual exertion had but moved in his chair again
he composed himself to deep slumber made deeper
by the warmth a hot fire the raving the
wind as it whistled round this angle the schloss
drowned all sounds that could have disturbed him
the landgrave secreted the paper nor did any
sense his rank and character interpose to check
him in an act so unworthy an honourable cavalier
whatever crimes he had hitherto committed or
authorized this was perhaps the first instance in
which he had offended by an instance petty knavery
he retired with the stealthy pace a robber
aiudoiis to trade detectumi and stole back to his
own apartments with in ov e i yoiiw ij ng interest in the
disooyeij he had made so aoddentauj and with an
an x i ety to investigate it further which absinrfoed for
the time all other cares and banished from his
thoughts even the mssqoe himself whose sodden
iqpeamnce and retreat had in ct thrown into his
hands the secret which now so exdnsiyelj disturbed
him
klostebheim
chapter xn
meantime the masque t one the magnificent
hungarian dancer which the emperor's
court at vienna had transplanted to the camp 
wallenstein and thence to till the great hoites 
germany bevies noble women in every variety
 fencifid costume hut in each considerable group
presenting deep masses black or purple velvet
on which with the most striking advantage radiant
relief lay the costly pearl ornaments or the
sumptuous jewels so generally significant in those
times high ancestral pretensions intermingled
with the drooping plumes martial cavaliers who
presented almost universally the soldierly air 
frankness which liclongs to active service mixed
with the castilian grandest that still breathed
through the camps germany emanating originally
from the magnificent courts brussels 
madrid and vienna and propagated to this age
by the links tilly the bavarian commander and
wallenstein the more than princely commander for
j
klosterueiai
the emperor figures and habiliments so commanding
were themselves enough to till the eye and
occupy the imagination but beyond all this feelings
 awe and mystery under more shapes than
one brooded over the whole scene and diffused a
tone suspense and intense excitement throughout
the test assembly it was known that illustrious
strangers were present incognito there now began
to be some reason for anticipating a great battle
in the neighbourhood the men were now present
perhaps the very hands were now visibly displayed
for the coming dance which in a few days or even
hours so rapid were the movements at this periods
were to wield the truncheon that might lay the
catholic empire prostrate or might mould the destiny
 europe for centuries even this feeling
gave way to one still more enveloped in shades 
the masque would he keep his promise and appear
might he not be there already might he
not even now be moving amongst them may he
not even at this very moment thought each person
secretly be near me or even touching myself or
painting my own steps
yet again thought most people for at that time
hardly any body affected to be incredulous in matters
klosterheim 
allied to the supernatural was this raysteriona being
liable to touch f was he not same impassive
nature inaudible invisible impalpable many 
his escapes if truly reported seemed to argue as
much if then connected with the spiritual world
was it with the gctoil or the evil in that inscrutable
region p but then the bloodshed the torn dresses
the marks deadly struggle which remained behind
in some those cases where mysterious disappearances
had occurred these seemed undeniable
arguments murder foul and treacherous murder
every attempt in short to penetrate the mystery
 this being's nature proved as abortive as the attempts
to intercept his person and all efforts at
applying a solution to the difficulties the case
made the mystery even more mysterious
these thoughts however generally as they pervaded
the company would have given way for a time
at least to the excitement the scene for a sudden
clapping hands from some officers the household
to enforce attention and as a signal to the
orchestra in one the galleries at this moment
proclaimed that the dances were en the point commencing
in another half minute when suddenly a
shriek from a female and then a loud tumultuous
 klosterueim
cry hai a multitude voices announced some
fearful catastrophe and in the next moment a short
 e a single gentleman
or burdened with a wife and family these and
similar discussions were increasing in vivacity and
kindling more and more gaiety repartee when suddenly
with the effect a funeral knell upon their
mirth a whisper began to circulate that there wan
one masque too inantf in company persons had
been stationed by adomi in different galleries with
instructions to note accurately the dress every
person in the company to watch the motions 
every one who gave the slightest cause for suspicion
by standing aloof from the rest the assembly or
by any other peculiarity manner but above all
to count the numbers the total assembly this
last injunction was more easily obeyed than at first
sight seemed possible at this time the hungarian
dances which required a certain number partners
to execute the movements the figure were 
themselves a suiscient register the precise amount
 persons engaged in them and as these dances
continued for a long time undisturbed this calculation
once made left no further computation necessary
than simply to take the account all who
d otherwise engaged this list being much the
klosteaheiiw 
smaller one was soon mule aud the reports 
several liffereiit observers stationed in different galleries
and checked liy each other all tallied in reporting
a total just twelve hundred and one persons
after every allowance was made for the known
members the landgrave's suite who were all nne
report was announced with considerable trepidation
in a very audible whisper to adomi and
the landgrave the buzz agitation attracted in
slant attention the whisper was loud enough to
catch the ears several the news went rapidly
kindling through the room that the company was
too many by one all the ladies trembled their
knees shook their voices failed they stopped in the
very middle questions answers halted for their
conclusion and were never more remembered by
either party the very music began to falter the
lights seemed to waned sicken forth fact was now
too evident that the masque had kept his appointment
and was at this moment in the room to
meet the landgrave and his honourable company
adomi and the landgrave now walked apart
from the rest the household and were obviously
consulting together on the next step to be taken i
klosterheim
or on the proper moment for executing one which
had already been decided on some crisp seemed
imncbiog and the knees many ladies knocked
together as they anticipated some cruel or bloody
act vengeance oh poor masqne sighed a
yoimg lady is her tenderhearted concern for one
who seemed now at the mercy his enemies do
f mi think sir addressing ber partner they will
cnt him to pieces athiziiig
friend
she had already taken some steps towards the
attainment her wishes when unexpectedly an
coming out from the vesper service the sister madeline
placed herself by the side paulina and
they walked down one the long side aisles together
the saintly memorials about them the records
 everlasting peace which lay sculptured ax
their feet and the strains which still ascended to
heaven from the organ and the whiterobed choir
all speaking a rest from trouble so little to be
found on earth and so powerfully contrasting with
klosterheim 
the decorations poor harassed germany affected
them deeply and both hurst into tears at length
the eider lady spoke
daughter you keep your faith piously with
him whom you suppose dead
paulina started the other continued 
honour to young hearts that are knit together
by ties so firm that even death has no power
to dissolve them honour to the hove which can
breed so deep a shtow yet even in this world
the good are not always the unhappy i doubt
not that even now at vespers you foiot not to
pray for him that would willingly have died for
you
oh gracious lady i when when have foiot
that what other prayer what other image is
ever at my heart 
daughter i could not doubt it and heaven
sometimes sends answers to prayers when they are
least expected and to yours it sends this through
with these words she stretched out a letter to
paulina who painted with sudden surprise and delight
on recognising the hand maximilian
kloetelthblm
chapter xviii
it was indeed the hand writing her lower and
the first words the letter which bore a recent
date asdoudced his safit and his recovered health
a rapid sketch all which hod befallen him since
they hill kst parted informed her that he had been
severely wounded in the action with hoikerstein's
people and probably to that misfortune had been
indebted for his life banco the difficulty transporting
him on horseback when unable to sit upright
had compelled the party charged with his care to
leave him for the night at waldenhausen from
that place he had been carried off in the nighttime
to a hall imperial garrison in the neighbourhood
bathe care two faithful servants who had found
little difficulty in first intoxicating and then overpowering
the small guard judged sufficient for a
prisoner so completely disabled by hie wowidb in
this garrison he had recovered had corresponded
klostebheim 
with vienna had concerted measures with the
emperor and was now on the point giving full
effect to their plans at the moment when certain
circum stances should arise to favour the scheme
what these were he forbore designedly to say in a
letter which ran some risk falling into the enemy's
hanb but he bade paulina speedily to expect a
great change for the better which would put it in
their power to meet without restraint or fear and
concluded by giving utterance in the fondest terms
to a lover's hopes and tenderest anxieties
paulina had scarcely recovered from the tumultuous
sensations pleasure and sudden restoration
to hope when she received a shock in the opposite
direction from a summons to attend the landgrave
the language the message vas imperative and
more peremptory than had ever before been addressed
to herself a lady the imperial family she knew
the landgrave's character and his present position 
both these alarmed her when connected with the
style and language bis sununons for that announced
distinctly enough that his resolution had
been now taken to commit himself to a hold course
no longer to hang doubtfully between two policies
but openly to throw himself into the arms the
emperor's menes ib
benefit to ber spirits from this bmgtatiaeia ae
luidgtave'g messrs sbe was nether nod air
apt to take offence on the contrary sbe wis cnlfe
and meek fw the itnpiilsea month and elenfcd
birth bail id ber been chastened hj her eadj ae
urinttuice with great national calamities and the
enlarged stmpatby which that had bred with ha
fellowcreatures every rank bat sbe felt that
in this gnperflaoub expression authority the
landgrave waa at the same time infringing the
rightful hospitality and her own privileges ofex
indignation at his unmanly conduct gave ber spirit
to ace bim though be apprehended a scene silence
and had the more reason to feel the trepidations
 uncertainty because nie very imperfectly
comprehended hia purposes as respected herself
these were not easily explained she found the
landgrave pacing the room with violence his back
wm turned towards her aa she catrnl but as the
nsber announced loudly on her entrance tba
countess paulina hohenhetder he turned impetuously
and advanced to meet her with the
landgrave however irritated the first impulse waa
to comply with the ceremonious observance that
klostksheih
belonged to his rank he made a cid obeisance
whilst an attendant placed a seat t and then motioning
to all present to withdraw began to unfold the
causes which had rated for lady paulina's presence
so much art was mingled with so much violence
that for some time paulina gathered nothing his
real purposes resolved however to do justice to
her own insulted dignity she took the first opening
which offered to remonstrate with the landgrave on
the needless violence his summons his serene
highness wielded the sword in klosterheim and
could hare no reaean for anticipating resistance to
his commands
the lady paulina then distinguishes between
the power and the right i expected as much
 by no means she knew nothing the claimants
to either she was a stranger seeking only
hospitality in klosterheim which apparently was
violated by unprovoked exertions authority
but the laws hospitality replied the landgrave
 press equally on the guest and the host
each has his separate duties and the lady paulina
in the character guest violated hers from the moment
when she formed cabals in klosterheim and
ministered to the fury conspirators
poor ear sir is atidfed i bare not so mncli as
stepped beyond the precincts the content in which
i reside until this day in paying obedience to your
highness's mandate
that may be and that mar arise only the
more caution and subtlety the personal presence
 a lady so distinguished in her appearance as the
lady carolina at any resort conspirators or in
writers would have published too much the suspicions
to which such a countenance would be liable
but in writing hare joq dispersed nothing calculated
to alienate the attachment my subjects 
the lady psuuna shook her head she knew not
even in what direction the landgrave's suspicions
pointed
as for example this does the lady paulina
recognise this part icnlar paper 
saying this he drew forth from a portfolio a letter
or paper inatmctionb consisting several sheets
to which a large official seal was attached the
countess glanced her eye over it attentively in one
or two places the words maximilian and kloaur
keith attracted her attention but she felt satisfied
at once that she now saw it for the first time
 this paper she said at length in a 

mined tone i know nothing the handwriting
i believe i may hare seen before it resembles that
 one the emperor's secretaries beyond that
i have no means even conjecturing its origin
beware madam beware how fair you commit
yourself suppose now this paper were actually
brought in one yoiir ladyship's mails amongst
your own private property
that may very well be said lady paulina
and yet imply no falsehood on my part falsehood
i i disdain such an insinuation your highness
has been the first person who ever dared to make
it at that moment she called to mind the robbery
 her carriage at waldenhausen colouring deeply
with indignation she added even in the case
sir which you have supposed as unconscious bearer
 this or any other paper i am still innocent the
intentions which such an act might argue in some
people i am as incapable offending in that way
as i shall always bo disavowing any my own
acts according to your ungenerous insinuation but
now sir tell me how far those may be innocent who
have possessed themselves a paper carried as your
highness alleges among my private baggage p was
 klostebbsiu
it for a prince to countenance a robbery that nature
or to appropriate its spoils 
the blood rushed to the landgrave temples
in these times young lady petty rights individuals
give way to state necessities neither are
there any such rights iodiridiials in bar sacs
 an inquisition they are forfeited as i told joa
before when the guest foists his duties but
and here he frowned it seems to me countess
that you are now forgetting your situation not i
remember but yourself are now placed on trial
indeed said the countess that i was
certainly not aware who then is my accuser who
my judge or is it in your serene highness that
i see both
your accuser lady iiuliua is the paper i
have shewn you a treasonable paper perhaps i
have others to bring forward the same bearing
perhups this is sufficient
the lady pauljuagrew suddenly stand thoughtful
here was a tyrant with matter against her
which even to an unprejudiced judge might really
wear some face plausibility the paper had perhaps
really been one those plundered irom ber
carriage it might really contain matter fitted to
klteeheim 
excite affection against the landgrave's government
her own innocence will participation io
the designs which it purposed to abet might find no
credit or might avail her not at all in a situation
so far removed from the imperial protection she
hod in fact unadvisedly entered a dty which at the
time her entrance might be looked upon as neutral
but since then had been forced iiito the raitks
 the emperor's enemies too abruptly to allow 
warning or retreat this was her exact situation
she saw her danger and again apprehended that
at the very moment recovering her lover from
the midst perils besetting hia situation she might
lose him by the perils her own
the landgrave watched the changes her countenance
and read lor thoughts
yes he said at length your situation is one
 peril but take courage confess freely and you
have every thing to hope for from my clemency
such clemency said a deep voice from some
remote quarter the room as the wolf shews to
the lamb
paulina started and the landgrave looked angry
and perplexed within there i he cried loudly to
the attendants in the next room will no more
 klostefihelm
endure these insults he exclaimed go instantly
take a file soldiers place them at all the outlet
and search the rooms adjoining shore and below
such mummery is insufferable
the voice replied again landgrave you search
in vain look toyourselfl young max is upon yon
this babbler said the landgrave making an
effort to recover his coolness reminds me well 
that adventurer young maximilian who is he
whence comes he by whom authorized 
paulina blushed but roused by the landgrave's
contumelious expressions applied to her lover she
replied he is no adventurer nor was ever in
that class the emperor's savour is not bestowed
upon such
then what brings him to klosterheim for
what is it that he would trouble the repose this
before paulina could speak in rejoinder the voice
from a little further distance replied audibly for
his rights i see that you landgrave make no resistance

the prince arose in fury his eyes dashed fire he
clenched his hands in impotent determination the
same voice had annoyed him on former occasions
klosterheim 
but never under circumstances which mortified him
so deeply ashamed that the youthful countess
should be a witness the insults put upon him
and seeing that it was in vain to pursue his conversation
with her further in a situation which exposed
him to the sarcasms a third person under no restraint
 fear or partiality he adjourned the further
prosecution his enquiry to another opportunity
and for the present gave her leave to depart a license
which she gladly availed herself and retired
in fear and perplexity
 klosterheim
chapter xdl
it wis dark as pnnlina returned to ber oooyent
two servants the landgibte's preceded ho with
torches to the great gates st agnes which was
at a terr short distance at that point she entered
within the shelter the consent gates and the
prince's servants left her at her own request no
person was now within call bnt a little page her
own and perhaps the porter at the convent bnt after
the first turn in the garden st agnes she might
almost consider herself as left to her own guardianship
 for the little boy who followed her was too
young to afford her any effectual help she felt sorry
as she surveyed the long avenue ancient trees which
was yet to be traversed before she entered upon the
cloisters that she should have dismissed the servants
 the landgrave these gardens were easily scaled
from the outside and a ready communication 

iste between the remotest parts this very avenue
and borne the least reputable parts klos
terbeim the city now overflowed with people 
every rank and amongst them were continually
recognised and occasion ally challenged some the
vilest deserters from the imperial camps wallenstein
himself and other imperial commanders bnt
above all hoik had attracted to their standards
the very refuse the german jails and allowing
nn unlimited license plunder during some periods
 their career had themselves evoked a fiendish
spirit lawless aggression and spoliation which
afterwards they had found it impossible to exorcise
within its former limits people were every where
obliged to be on their gird not alone as heretofore
against the military tyrant or freebooter but also
against the private servants whom they hired into
their service for some time back suspicious persons
had been seen strolling at desk in the gardens
 st agnes or even intruding into the cloisters
then the recollection the masque now in the
very height his mysterious career flashed upon
paulina's thoughts who knew his motives or the
principle his mysterious warfare which at any
klosterhbim
rate in its niimle had latterly been marked bj blood
bed as these things came rapidly into her mind
she trembled more trora fear than from the witty
wind which now blair keenly ad gustily through
the avenue
the gardens st ages were extensive and
paulina vet wanted two hundred yards reading
the cloisters when she observed a dusky object
stealing along the margin a little pool which in
uirts lay open to the walk whilst in others where
the walk receded from the water the imnks were
stnddedwiththicketsoftallshnibs paulina stopped
und observed the figure which she was soon satisfied
most be that a man at times he rose to
his full height at times he cowered downwards
amongst the bushes that he was not merely seeking
a retreat became evident som this that the
best road for such a purpose lay open to him in the
opposite direction that he was watching henelf
also became probable from the way in which he
seemed to regulate his own motions by hers at
length whilst paulina hesitated in some perplexity
whether to go forward or to retreat towards the
porter's lodge be suddenly plunged into the thickest
kitekhsh s
belt shnibs and left the road clear paulina
seized the moment and with a palpitating heart
quickened her steps towards the cloister
she had cleared about one half the way without
obstruction when suddenly a powerful grasp
seized her by the shoulder
 stop lady i said a deep coarse yojce stop 
i mean no harm perhaps i bring your ladyship
what will be welcome news
but why here exclaimed paulina wherefore
do you alarm me thus oh i heavens your
eyes are wild and fierce say is it money that you
perhaps i do to the like me lady you
may be sure that money never comes amiss hut
that is not my errand hero is what will make all
clear and as he spoke he thrust his hand into
the huge pocket within the horseman's cloak which
enveloped him instead the pistol or dag which
paulina anticipate he drew forth a large packet
carefully sealed paulina felt so much relieved at
beholding this pledge the man's pacific intentions
that she eagerly pressed her purse into his hand
and was hastening to heare him when the man
stopped her to deliver a verbal message from his
master requesting eamestlv that if she concluded
to keep the appointment arranged in the letter she
would dot he a minute later than the time fixed
and who said paulina is your master
surely the general madam the yotmg gene
nil maximilian many a time and oft have i waited
ou liitn when visiting your ladyship at the certes
but here i dare not show my face d
hanker if the landgrave knew that michael elotz
was in klosterheim i reckon that all the ladies in
st agnes could not leg him a reprieve till tomorrow
morning
then villain said the foremost two men
who shed hastily from the adjoining shrubs be
assured that the landgrave docs know it let thisbe
your warrant i with these words he fired and
immediately after his comrade whether the fugitive
were wounded could not he known for he
instantly plunged into the water and after two
or three moments was heard upon the opposite
margin his pursuers seemed to shrink from this
attempt for they divided and took the opposite extremities
 the pool from the other bank which
klosterheim 
they were soon heard animating and directing each
other through the darkness
paulina confused and agitated and anxious above
all to examine her letters took the opportunity 
a clear road and fled in trepidation to the convent
chapter xx
the countess had brought home with her a
double subject anxiety she knew not to what
result the landgrave's purposes irene tending she
feared also from this madden and new method 
communication opened with herself so soon after
his persons letter that some unexpected bad fortune
mibt now be threatening her lover hastily
she tore open the packet which manifestly contained
something larger than letters the first article
which presented itself was a nun's veil exactly on
the pattern those worn by the nuns st agues
the accompanying letter sufficiently explained ite
purpose
it was in the handwriting and bore the nature
 maximilian in a few words he told her
that a sudden communication but from a quarter
entirely to be depended on had reached him a
klostebheiai
great danger unending over her from the landgrave
 that in the present submission kloster
heim to that prince's will instant flight presented
the sole means delivering her for which purpose
be would himself meet her in disguise on the following
morning as early as four o'clock or if that
should prove impossible under the circumstances 
the case would send a faithful servant that one or
other them would attend at a particular station
easily recognised by the description added in a
ruinous part the boundary wall in the rear the
convent garden a large travelling cloak would be
brought to draw over the rest her dress but
meanwhile as a meaosof passing unobserveilthrough
the convent grounds where the landgrave's agents
were continually watching her motions the nun's
veil was almost indispensable the other circumstances
 the journey would be communicated to
her upon meeting in conclusion the writer implored
pauhna to suffer no scruples false delicacy
to withhold her from a step which had so suddenly
become necessary to her preservation and cautioned
her particularly against communicating her intentions
to the lady abbess whose sense decorum
klostebbeih
i
night lead her to nr advice at this moment inconsistent
with her safety
again and again did paulina read this agitating
letter again and again did she scrutinize the handwriting
apprehensive that she might be making 
a dupe to some hidden enemy the handwriting
undoubtedly had not all the natural freedom
which characterised that maximilian it
was somewhat stiff in its movement but not more
co than that his previous letter in which he had
accounted tor the slight change from a wound eoi
perfectly healed in hia right hand in other respects
the letter seemed halle to no just suspicion the
danger apprehended from the landgrave lied with
her own knowledge the convent grounds were
certainly haunted as the letter alleged by the landgrave's
people that she had just received a convincing
proof for though the two stranger had
turned off in pursuit the messenger who bore
maximilian's letter yet doubtless their original
abject attention bad been herself they were
linen posted to watch her motions and they had
avowed themselves in effect the iandgrave'a people
that part the advice again which respected the
klostbrbeim
lady abbess seemed judicious on considering the
character that lady however much at first sight
it might warrant some jealousy the writer's purposes
to find him warning her against her 
best
friends aftut all what most disturbed the confidence
 paulina was the countenance the man
who presented the letter if this man were to bethe
representative maximilian on the following
morning she felt and was persuaded that she would
continue to feel an invincible repugnance to commit
her safety to any such keeping upon the
whole she resolved to keep the appointment but
to be guided in herfiirther conduct by circumstances
as they should arise at the moment
that night paulina's favourite female attendant
employed herself in putting into as small a compass
as possible the slender wardrobe which they woulil
lie able to carry with them the young countess
herself spent the hours iu writing to the lady
abbess and sister madeline acquainting them withall
the circumstances her iatemew with the
landgrave the certain grounds she had for apprehending
some great danger in that quarter and
the proposals so unexpectedly made to her on the
 eltebhxim
part masirailion for evading it to ask that they
should fee no anxiety on her account in times
which mode even a successful escape from danger
so very hazardous she acknowledged would be tain 
but in judging the degree prudence which she
had exhibited on this occasion she begged them to
reflect on the certain hangers which awaited her
from the landgrave and finally in excuse for not
having sought the advice so dear a friend as the
lady abbess she enclosed the letter upon which
she had acted
these preparations were completed by midnight
after which paulina sought an hour or two repose
at three o'clock vere celebrated the early
matins attended liy the devourer part the sisterhood
in the chapel pauhna and her maid took this
opportunity for leaving their chamber and shipping
unobserved amongst the crowd who were hurrying
on that summons into the cloisters the organ w
pealing solemnly through the labyrinth passages
which led from the interior the convent 
paulina's eyes were suffused with tears as the gentler
recollections her earlier days and the peace
which belongs to those who have abjured this world
klosterheim 
and its treacherous promises arose to her mind
under the influence the sublime music in powerful
contrast with the tempestuous troubles germany
 snow become so comprehensive in their desolating
sweep as to involve even herself and others
 station as elevated
klosteroeibt
chapter xxl
the convent clock chiming the quarters at
length announced that they had reached the bp
pointed hour trembling itli fear and cold though
muffled up in furs pauline and her attendant with
their nuns veils drawn over their headdress sallied
forth into the garden all was profoundly dark
and overspread with the stillness the grave the
lights within the chapel threw a rich glow through
the painted windows and h re and there grata a few
scattered casements in the vast pile st agnes
streamed a few weak rays from a taper or a lamp
indicating the trouble a sickbed or the peace 
prayer but these rare lights did but deepen the
massy darkness au beside and paulina with her
attendant had much difficulty in making her way
to the appointed station having reached the wall
however they pursued its windings certain meet

mg ao important obstacles until they attained a
part where their progress was impedes by frequent
dilapidation here they halted and in low tones
communicated their doubts about the precise locality
 the station imitated in the letter when suddenly
a man started up fiijm the ground and greeted them
with the words st agnes i all is right which
had been preconceived as the signal in the letter
this man was courteous and respectful lu his manner
 speaking and had nothing the ruffian voice
which belonged to the bearer the letter in
rapid tents he assured paulina that the young
general hod not found circumstances favourable for
venturing within the walls but that he would meet
her a few miles beyond the city gates and that at
present they had no time to lose sang this he
unshaded a dark lantern which showed them a
ladder rapes attached to the summit a wall
which at this point was too low to occasion them
much uneasiness or difficulty in ascending but
paulina insisted previously on hearing something
more circumstantial the manner and style 
their escape from the city walls and in what company
their journey von be performed the man
hsu klosterheim
had already done something to conciliate panting's
confidence by the propriety his address which
indicated a superior education and habits intercourse
with people rank he explained as much
 the plan as seemed necessary for the immediate
occasion a convoy arms and military stores
was leaving the dty for the post at wallenstein
several carriages containing privileged persons to
whom the landgrave or his minister had granted a
license were taking the benefit an escort over
the forest and a bribe in the proper quarter had
easily obtained permission from the officer on duty
at the gates to suffer aji additional carriage to pass
a one in a great lady's suite on the simple condition
that it should contain none but females as
persons that sex were liable to no suspicion 
being fugitives from the wrath which was now supposed
ready to descend upon the conspirators ajgeunst
the landgrave
this explanation reconciled paulina to the scheme
she felt cheered by the prospect having other
ladies to countenance the mode her nocturnal
journey and at the worst hearing this renewed
mention conspirators and punishment which
klostebheih
easily connected itself with all that had passed in
her interview with the landgrave she felt assured
at any rate that the dangers she fled from transcended
any which she waa likely to incur upon her
route her determination was immediately taken
she passed over the wall with her attendant and
they found themselves in a narrow lane close to the
city walls with none hut a few ruinous outhouses on
either side a low whistle from the man was soon
answered by the rumbling wheels and from some
distance as it seemed a sort calico advanced
drawn by a pair horses paulina and her attendant
stepped hastily in for at the very moment when
the carriage drew up a signal gun was heard which
as their guide assured them proclaimed that the
escort and the whole train carriages were at that
moment defiling from the city gate the driver
obeying the directions the other man drove off
as rapidly as the narrow road and the darkness would
allow a few turns brought them into the great
square in front the waom from which a few
more open streets traversed at fell gallop soon
brought them into the rear the convoy which
had been unexpectedly embarrassed in its progress
to the gate from the rear by dexterous management
they gradually insinuated themselves into the
centre and contrary to their expectations amongst
the press baggagewaggons artillery and travel
king equipages all tumultuously clamouring to push
on as the best chance evading holkertein in the
forest their own unpretending vehicle passed without
other notice than a curse from the officer on
duty which however they could not presume to
appropriate as it might he supposed equitably distributed
amongst all who stripped the road at the
moment
paulina shuddered as she looked out upon the
hne fierce feces illuminated by the glare 
torches and mingling with horses heads and the
gleam sabres all around ber the roar artillery
wheels above her head the vast arch the gates
its brood massy shadows resting below and in the
vista beyond which the archway deduced a mass 
blackness in which she rather imagined than saw
the interminable solitudes the forest soon the
gate was closed their own carriage passed the
tardier parts the convoy and with a dozen or
two others astounded by a squadron drag

goons headed the train happy beyond k
at the certainty that she had now cleared the gates
 klosterheim that she was in the wide open forest
free iron a detested tyrant and on the same side
 the gates as her lover who was doubtless advancing
to meet her she threw herself back in the
carriage and resigned herself to a slumber which
the anxieties and watchings the night hal made
more than usually welcome
the city clocks were now heard in the forest
solemnly knelling out the hour four hardly
however had paulina slept en hour when she was
gently awaked by her attendant who had felt it
to be her duty to apprise her lady the change
which had occurred in their situation they had
stopped it seemed to attach a pair leaders to
thei wheel horses and were now advancing at a
thundering pace separated from the rest the convoy
and surrounded hy a small escort cavalry
the darkness was still intense and the lights 
klosterheim which the frequent windings the
road brought often into view were at this moment
conspicuously seen the castle from its commanding
position and the consent st agnes were
both easily traced foot bj means the lights gleaming
from their long ranges upper window a
phticiikr turret which epnug to an almost aerial
ahitiule above the rest the building in which it
wm generally reported that the landgrave slc
was more distinguishable than any other part 
eloeterhdid from one brilliant lustre which shot
its rays through a large oriel window there at
this moment was sleeping that unhappy prince
tyrannical and selftormenting whose unmanly learn
had menaced her own innocence with so much indefinite
danger whom in escaping she knew iron
if she had escaped and whose snares as a rueful
misgiving began to suggest were perhaps gathering
peter about her with every echo which the startled
forest returned the resounding tread their flying
cavalcade she leaned back again in the carriage 
again she fell asleep again she dreamed bnt her
elect was refreshing her dreams were agitated
confused and haunted by terrific images and she
awoke repeatedly with her cheerful anticipation continually
decaying speedily perhaps ever again
rejoining ber gallant maximilian there wis indeed
yet a possibility that she might be under the
klosterheim 
superintending care her lover but she secretly
felt that she was betrayed and she wept when she
reflected that her own precipitance had facilitated
the accomplishment the plot which had perhaps
for ever ruined her happiness
i
chapter xxl
meantime paulina awoke from the troubled slumbers
into which her fatigues had thrown her to find
herself still flying along as rapidly as four powerful
horses could draw their light burden and still escorted
by a considerable body the landgrave's dragoons
she wss undoubtedly separated from all the
rest the convoy with whom she had left kloster
heim it was now apparent even to ber humble
attendant that they were betrayed and paulina
reproached herself with having voluntarily cooperated
with her enemy's stratagems certainly the
dangers from which she fled were great and imminent
 yet still in klosterheim she derived some
protection from the favour the lady abbess
that lady lad great powers a legal nature
throughout the city and still greater influence with
a roman catholic populace at this particular period
when their prince had laid himself open to suspicions
 favouring protestant allies and paulina bitterly
bewailed the imprudence which in removing her
from the convent st agiies had removed her
from her only intends
it was about noon when the party halted at a
solitary house for rest and refreshments paulina
had heard nothing the route which they had
hitherto taken nor did she find it easy to collect
from the short and churlish responses her escort
to the few questions she had yet ventured to propose
in what direction their aitnre advance would
proceed a hasty summons bade her alight j and
a few steps under the guidance a trooper brought
her into a little gloomy wainscoted room where
some refreshments had been already spread upon a
table adjoining was a small bedroom and she
was desired with something more civility than she
had yet experienced to consider both as allotted for
the use herself and servant during the time 
their stay which was expected however not to
exceed the two or three hours requisite for resting
the horses
but that was an arrangement which depended as
tm yntr whhi the mia krff dw mort kad
scat on ie palace the nati is m mc am untamed
will the miweloinie n
tbcsrami ime tbmrdb in ae ei
ceedii uutaatlr the orr ainadj imbed sir
adrumx irre therefore luuijtiuiiihided and a adulation
was at length adopted br the leader the
parts fcrtakiiig up their abode doing the nht in
their pnaent very tolerate quarters
paulina wearied and directed and recoiling nhtn
idly roni the indefinite prospects kaiser bdbre
her waa not the least rejoiced at this change in ih
origins plan bv which she benefited at any rate to
the extent a qtdet shelter for one nigfat more a
meaning whkb the next day's adventures might
deny her and atiq more by that postponement 
opening evil which is so often welcome to the
very finest minds when exhausted hr toil aod
affliction having this certainty however one
night's continuance in her present abode she re
pasted to hare the rocnn made a little mare com
klosixrheih m
foretaste by the exhilarating blaze a fire for this
indulgence there were the principal requisites in a
hearth and spacious chimney and an aged crane
probably the sole female servant upon the premises
speedily presented herself with a plentiful supply 
wood and the two supporters or andirons as they
were formerly called for raising the billets so as to
allow the air to circulate from below there was
some difficulty at first in kindling the wood and
the old servant resorted once or twice after some
little apologetic muttering doubts with herself to
a closet containing as paulina could observe a considerable
body papers
the fragments which sbe left remained strewed
upon the ground and paulina taking them up with
a careless air was suddenly transfixed with astonishment
on observing that they were undoubtedly
in a handwriting familiar to her eye the handwriting
 the most confidential amongst the imperial
secretaries other recollections now rapidly
obviated themselves together which led her hastily
to open the closet door and there as she had already
half expected she saw the travelling mail stolen
from her own carriage its lock forced and the re
kldsthbbenc
l
naming contents for every thing bearing a money
tslue bad probably vanishing on its first disappearance
lying in confusion hatui made this discovery
she hastily closed the door the closet
resolved to prosecute her investigations in the nighttime
but at present when she was liable to conttntuj
intnuiodg to give no occasion for those suspicion
trfiiidi once aroused might in baffling h design

meantime she occupied herself in conjectures
upon the particular course accident which could
have brought the trunk and papers into the situation
where she had been fortunate enough to nd
them and with the clue already in her possession
she was not long in making another discovery she
had previously felt some him sense recognition
as her eyes wandered over the room but bad es
planned it away into some resemblance to one o
other the many strange scenes which she had
passed through since leaving vienna but now on
retracing the fumitnre and aspect the two rooms
she was struck with her own inattention in not
having sooner arrived at the discovery that it 
old quarters waldeubausen the very place
klosterereim
in which the robbery had been effected where they
had again the prospect spending the night and
 recovering in part the loss she had sustained
midnight lame and the lady paulina prepared
to avail herself ber opportunities she drew out
the parcel papers which was large and miscellaneous
in its contents by fer the greater part as
she was happy to observe were mere copies originals
in the chancery at vienna those related to
the civic affairs klosterheim and were probably
 a iiftture not to have been acted upon during the
predominance the swedish interest in the counsels
and administration that city with the revival
 the imperial cause no doubt these orders
would be repeated and with the modifications which
new circumstances and the peeress events would
then have rendered expedient this portion the
papers therefore paulina willingly restored to their
situation in the closet no evil would arise to any
party from their present detention in a place where
they were little likely to attract notice from anybody
but the old lady ia her ministries upon the
fire suspicion would be also turned aside from
herself in appropriating the few papers which re

trained these contained too frequent mention 
a name dear to herself not to have a considerable
rale in her eves she was resolved if possible to
carry them off liv concealing them within her bosom
 hot at all events in preparation for any ansfortune
that might ultimately compel her to resign
them she determined without hoes time to make
herself mistress their contents
one and the most important these documents
wa a lone and confidential letter from the emperor
to the towncouncil and the chief heads conventual
house in klosterheim it contained a rapid
summary the principal events in her lover's
life from his infancy when some dreadliil domestic
tragedy had thrown him upon the emperor's
protection to his present period early manhood
when his own sword and distmgmishel talents had
niind him to a brilliant name and n high military
nnk in the imperial service what were the 
 that tragedy as a case sufficiently well
town to those whom he addressed or to be 
from accompanying papers the emperor did
but he lavished every variety praise
maximilian with a liberality that won tears
klobtskheim s
 delight from the solitary young lady as she now
sat at midnight looking over these gradus testimonies
to her lover's merit a theme so delightful
to paulina could not be unseasonable at any time
and never did her thoughts revert to him more
fondly than at this moment when she so much
needed his protecting arm yet the emperor she
was aware must have some more special motive for
enlarging upon this topic than his general favour
to maximilian what this could be in a case so
closely connecting the parties to the correspondence
on both sides with kloeterheiro a little interested
her curiosity and on looking more nsr
rmvly at the accompanying documents in one which
had been most pointedly referred to by the emperor
she found some disclosures on the subject her
lover's early misfortunes which whilst they med
her with horror and astonishment elevated the natural
pretensions maximilian in point birth
and descent more nearly to a level with the splendour
 his selfcreated distinctions and thus
crowned bim who already lived in her apprehension
as the very mode a hero with the only advantages
that he had ever been supposed to want 
klostebheih
the interest which attaches to unmerited misfortunes
and the splendour an illustrious descent
as she thus eat absorbed in the story her
lovers early misfortunes a murmuring sound e
talking attracted her ear apparently issuiri from
the closet hastily throwing open the door sba
found that a thin wooden partition veined with
numerous chinks was the sole separation between
the closet and an adjoining hedroom the words
were startling incoherent and at times daring evidently
they proceeded from some patient stretched
on a bed sickness and dealing with a sort horrors
in his distempered fancy worse it was to be
hoped than any which the records his own remembrance
could bring before him sometimes he
spoke in the character one who chases a deer ina
forest sometimes he was close upon the haunches
 his game sometimes it seemed on the point 
escaping him then the nature the game changed
utterly and became something human and a ci
panton was suddenly at his side with him he
quarrelled fiercely aliout their share in the ptusnit
and capture oh my lord you must not deny it
look look your hands are bloodier than mine
klostebheiu
fie fie is there no running water in the forest 
so young as he i and so noble stand off i
he hill coyer ns all with his blood oh what a
groan wa that it will have broke somebody's
heartstrings i think it would have broken mine
when i was younger but these wars make us all
cruel yet you are worse than i am then again
after a pause the patient seemed to start up in bed
and he cried out convulsively give me my share
i say wherefore must ray share be so small 
there he conies past again now strike now now
now i get his head down my lord he's off by
g now if he gets out the forest two hours
will take him to vienna and we must go to rome 
where else could we get absolution oh heavens 
the forest is full blood well may our hands be
bloody i see flowers all the way to vienna but
there is blood below oh what a depth i what a
depth i oh heart heart i see how he starts up
from his lair i oh i your highness has deceived
me i there are a thousand upon one mau 
in such terms he continued to rave until paulina's
mind was so much harassed with the constant
succession dreadful images and finzted ejaculu
kuistebheih
tioob all making report a life passed in scenes 
horror bloodshed and violence that at length for
her own relief she was obliged to close the door
through which however at intervals piercing
shrieks or halfstifled curses still continued to find
their way it struck her as a remarkable coincidence
that something like a slender thread ou
uexion might be found between the dreadful story
narrated in the imperial document and the delirious
ravings this poor wretched creature to
whom accident had made her a neighbour for a
single night
early the next morning paulina and her servant
were suraraoned to resume their journey and
three hours more rapid travelling brought them
to the frowning fortress lovensteio their escort
with any one whom they had found but few
opportunities communicating had shown themselves
throughout gloomy and obstinately silent
they knew not therefore to what distance thei
journey extended but from the elaborate ceremonies
with which they were here received and the
formal receipt for their persons which was drawn

klosterheim 

up and delivered by the governor to the officer
commanding their escort paulina judged that the
castle lovenstein would prove to be their final
destination
r
elosterhbur
chapter xxii
two days elapsed without any change in panline's
situation ae she fotmd it arranged upon her
first arrival at lovenstein her rooms were not incommodious
 but the massy barricades at the doors
the grated windows and the sentinels who mounted
guard upon ail the avenues which led to her apartments
satisfied her sufficiently that she was a prithee
third morning after her arrival brought hera
still more unwelcome proof this melancholy
truth in the summons which she received to attend
a court criminal justice on the succeeding day
connected with the tenor its language her heart
died within her as she found herself called upon to
answer as a delinquent on a charge treasonable
conspiracy with various members the university 
 klosterheim against the sovereign prince the
klostsheiu
landgrave x witnesses in exculpation
whom could sbe produce or how defend herself
before a tribunal where all alike judge evidence
accuser were in effect one and the same malignant
enemy in what way she could have come to be
connected in the landgrave's mind with a chaise
 treason against his princely rights she found it
difficult to explain unless the mere fact having
carried the imperial despatches in the trunks about
her carriages were sufficient to implicate her ss a
secret emissary or agent concerned in the imperial
diplomacy but she strongly suspected that some
deep misapprehension existed in the landgrave
mind and its origin she fancied might be found in
the refined knavery their ruffian host at 
in making his market the papers wbicli
he had purloined bringing them forward separately
and by piecemeal he had probably hoped to
receive bo many separate rewards but as it would
often happen that one paper was necessary in the
way explanation to another and the whole perhaps
were almost essential to the proper understanding
 any one the result would inevitably be
grievously to mislead the landgrave further
cninge ready r ant service hnrverdirmtime
arelebalikeofperilorofiniiiy in coraotodwitb
ninny partisan officers who had sprrm from the iwls
in this adventurous war seeing on eirry side badin
the highest quarters princes as well as supreme
commanders the uttermost contempt justice and
moral principle he had fought his war to discretion
and fortune through every species ignoble
cruelty he had passed from service to service us
be taw an opening ibr his own peculiar interest or
klosterheiirr 
merit everywhere vilified as b soldier desperate
enterprise everywhere abhorred as a man by birth
a croatia he had exhibited himself as one the
most eavftge leaders that order barbarians in
the sack maglebnrgh where he served under
tilly i but latterly he had taken service again
under his original patron the landgrave who hail
lured him back to his interest by the rank general
and the governorship lovestein
this brutal officer who had latterly lived in a
state continual intoxication was the judge before
whom the lovely and innocent paulina was now
arraigned on a chai affecting her life in fact it
became obvious that the process was not designed for
any other purpose than to save appearances and
if that should seem possible to extract further discoveries
from the prisoner the general acted as
supreme arbiter in every question rights and
power that arose to the court in the administration
 their almost unlimited functions doubts he
allowed none and cut every knot jurisprudence
whether form or substance by his croatian
sabre two assessors however he willingly received
upon his bench justice to rdieve him from
 klosterheim
the fatigue and difficulty conducting a perplexed
examination
these assessors were lawyers a low dash who
tempered the exercise their official duties with
as few scruples justice and as little regard tothe
restraints courtesy as their military principal
the three judges were almost equally ferocious and
tools equally abject the unprincipled sovereign
whom they served
a sovereign however he was and imlina was
well aware that in his own states he had the power
 life and death she had good reason to see that
her own death was resolved on still she neglected
no means honourable selfdefence in a tone 
mingled sweetness and dignity she maintained her
innocence all that was alleged against her protested
that she was unacquainted with the tenpv wish a long list 
interrogatories to ivohna bade her now rdieaise
terinllt the sum the answers which she designed
to give running ladh though them pmliiia
replied with dignity ret trembling and agitated
that these woe qaesdons which in an j sense she
could not answa man j them lehiing to paints
on which she had no knowledge and none tient
being consistent with the gratitude and friendship
so largely due on her side to the persons implicated
in the bearing these questions
then you refuse 
 certainly there are three questions only which
it is in my power to answer at all even thes imperfectly
answers such as you expect would load
me with dishonour
then you refuse 

into control even the brutal cnndan gotemor
knew that do plea or extremity cimunstanccs
would atone for one act disobedience to h onlen
and hence it was that the ministers this tynat
retired with so much prompt obedience to ber commands

experience however had taught the princes
that not nofreaentlytordersappareatlt obeyed wm
afterwards secretly evaded and the disregard paid
 late to her letters complaint satisfied her tbu
they were stifled and suppressed by the tenor
paulina therefore whom a few hours restrain
ed intercourse had made interesting to her heart
she would not suffer even to sleep apart from herself
her own agitation on the poor prisoner's behalf
became greater even than that paulina and
a fresh circumstances suspicion daily arose n
the sava tremor's deportment she now took in
klostebheim 
good earnest those measures for escape to kloster
beam which she had long arranged in this purpose
she was greatly assisted by the absolute authority
which her other had conceded to her over
every thing but the mere military arrangements in
the fortress under the colour an excursion such
as she had been daily accustomed to take she found
no difficulty in placing paulina sufficiently disused
amongst her own servants at a proper point 
the road paulina and a few attendants with the
princess herself issued from their coaches and bidding
them await their return in half an hour's interval
by that time were r advanced upon their
road to the military post falkenberg
 closes
chapter xxiv
is tway day the mysterious masque had smn
moved the landgimye to answer sdt agnes u
atoned before a tribunal where no power but that 
innocence could avail him hies days wore
nearly expired the morning the twentieth
had arrived
there were two interpretations this summons
by many it was believed that the tribunal contemplated
was that the emperor and that by some
mysterious plot which could not be more difficult
 execution than others which had actually
been accomplished by the masque on this day the
landgrave would be carried off to vienna others
again understanding by the tribunal in the same
sense the imperial chamber criminal justice believed
it possible to fulfil the summons in some way
less liable to delay or uncertainty than by a long
klostefiheim 
journey to vienna through a country beset with
enemies but a third party differing from both
the others understood by the tribunal where innocence
was the only shield the judgment seat 
heaven and believed that on this day justice would
be executed on the landgrave for crimes known
and unknown by a pnbhc and memorable death
under any interpretation however nobody amongst
the citizens could venture peremptorily to deny after
the issue the manned ball and so many other
public denunciations that the masque would keep
his word to the letter
it followed necessity that every body was on
the tiptoe suspense and that the interest hanging
upon the issue this night's events swallowed
up all other anxieties whatsoever nature even
the battle which was now daily expected between
the imperial and swedish armies ceased to occupy
the hearts and conversation the citizens domestic
and public concerns alike gave way to the coming
catastrophe so solemnly denounced by the masque
the landgrave alone maintained a gloomy reserve
and the expression a haughty disdain he
had resolved to meet the summons with the 
klosterheim
lies expression defiance by fixing this evening
for a second masque ball upon a greater scale than
the first in doing this he acted advisedly and with
the counsel his swedish allies they represented
to him that the issue the approaching battle night
be relied upon as pretty neaiiy certain all the indications
were indeed generally thought to promise a
decisive turn in their favour but in the worst case
no defeat the swedish army in this war had ever
been complete that the bulk the retreating
army if the swedes should be obliged to retreat
would take the road to klosterheim and would furnish
to himself a garrison capable holding the
city for many months to come and thai would not
fill to bring many fresh chances to all them
whilst to his new and cordial allies this course would
offer a secure retreat from pursuing enemies and a
satisfactory proof his own fidelity this even in
the worst case whereas in the better and more probable
one a victory to the swedes to maintain the
city but for a day or two longer against internal conspirators
and the secret cooperators outside would be
in effect to ratify any victory which the swedes might
klosterueim s
gtiin by putting into their hands at b critical moment
one its most splendid trophies and guarantees
these compels fell too ranch into the landgrave's
own way thinking to meet with any demurs
from him it was agreed therefore that as
many swedish troops as could at this important moment
be spared should be introduced into the halls
and saloons the castle on the etentftil evening
disguised as reasoners these were about four hundred
 and other arrangement were made equally
mysterious and some them known only to the
landgrave
at seven o'clock as on the former occasion the
company began to assemble the same rooms were
thrown open but as the party was now ibr more
numerous and was made more comprehensive in
point rank in order to include all who were involved
in the conspiracy which had been some time
maturing in klosterheim fresh suites rooms were
judged necessary on the pretext giving feller effect
to the princely hospitalities the landgrave
and on this occasion according to an old privilege
conceded in the case coronations or gas magnificence
by the lady abbess st agnes the 
o tint the tro twt wtiwiih b t i winch
on one sde wcxe tuutjg ui to each
dis laid into one
the oonuij had bow counaedto
two hoofs the pdbce ani the lefecsiairj the
rent vere now orerdowiii with hghtb and npknim
iiiafiies the areiuies and commons nmg with m
sic and though ereiy heart was thnmug with
hear and sdspeniey do outward expression was wbt
in jos and festal measure for the freaen t all
was cain around the shnnberiiig tolcadou
suddenly the count st aldenhejm who
standing with anne dulled and screwing the
liant scene mt some one tondi his hand in the
way concerted amongst the conspirators as a state
signal recognition he turned and recognised
his friend the baron deport who sainted him with
three emphatic words we are betrayed v then
after a pause follow me
st aldenheim made his way through the glittering
crowds and pressed after his conductor into one
 the most pnvate corridors
klterheim 
fear not said the other that we shall be
hatched vigilance is no longer necessary to our
crafty enemy he has already triuinjihed every
stenue escape ia barred and secured against us 
every outlet the palace is occupied by the landgrave's
troops not a man us will return alive
heaven forbid we should prove ourselves such
gulls yon are but jesting my friend
would to god i were i my information is but
too certain something i have overheard by accident
 something has been told me and bones
i have seen come you also count and see
what i will show you then judge for yourself
so saying be led st aldenheim by little circuit
 passages to a doorway through which they passed
into a hall vast proportions to judge by the 
and mural monuments scattered at intervals
along the vast expanse its orchis this seemed
to be the antechapel st agues in fact it
was so a few hunt lights glimmered through the
gloomy extent this immense chamber placed
according to the catholic rite at the shrine the
saint feeble as it was however the light was
powerful enough to display in the centre a pile 
scaffolding covered with black drapery
at the foot they could trace the outlines a stage
at the stint fenced in with railings a block
and the other apparatus for the solemnity a public
execution whilst the sawdust below their feet
ascertained the spot in which the heads were to fell
shall we ascend and rehearse our parts asked
the count for methinks every thing is prepared
except the headsman and the spectators a plague
on the inhospitable knave i
 yes st aldenheim all is prepared even to
the sufferers on that list you stand foremost believe
me i apeak with knowledge no matter wlme
gaiiied it is certain
well necemloi non habet legem and he that
dies on tuesday will never catch cold on wednesday
but still that comfort ia something the
oldest think you that none better could be hod 
as bow
revenge par exemple a little revenge
might one not screw the neck this base prince
who abuses the confidence cavaliers so perfidiously
 to die i care not but to be caught in a
k ii
klterheim 
trap and die like a rat lured by a bait twisted
cheese faugh i ray country blood rebels against
itr
something might surely be done if we could
muster in any strength that is we might die
sword in hand but
enough i ask no more now let us go we
will separately pace the rooms draw together he
many our party as we can single out and then
proclaim ourselves let each answer for one victim
ill take his highness for my share
with this purpose and thus forewarned the
dreadful fate at hand they left the gloomy antechapel
traversed the long suite entertaining
rooms and collected as many as could easily be detached
from the dances without too much pointing
out their own motions to the attention all present
the count st aldenheim was seen rapidly explaining
to them the circumstances their dreadful situation
whusthandsupliftedjorsuddenlyapphed to
the hilt the sword with other gestures sudden
emotion expressed the different impressions rage
or fear which trader each variety character impressed
the several hearers some them how

r weretoomgvudedmiciramitiaab and the
eaei agggertknktionsliadimnr b e giua to sttact
the attention the company
the landgimte hhrntrff had his ere iron them
but at this momait his atipntiim wasdnmu cishw
an npoar oonfbsian in an antechamber which
aifned some tragical impottanoein the case that
oonld pi u m i t so sudden a d infer e ga id ior the lestudents
 time and place
kltehheim
chapter xxv
his highness issued from the room in consternation
followed by many the company in the
very centre the anteroom hooted and spurred
bearing all the marks extreme haste pam'c and
contusion stood a swedish officer dealing forth hasty
fragments some heartshaking intelligence allie
lost i said he not a regiment has escaped 
and the place exclaimed a press enquirers
northmen and which way has the swedish
army retreated demanded a masque behind him
retreat retorted the officer i tel you there
is no retreat all have perished the army is no
more horse foot artillery all is wrecked crushed
annihilated whatever yet lives is in the power 
the imperialists
at this moment the landgrave came up and in
every way strove to check thes too liberal communes
klioanbbbmlu
nicatioos he frowned the officer saw him not
he laid his hand on the officer's ana bat all in vwn
he spoke hut the officer knew not or forgot his
rank panic and immeasurable sorrow had crushed
his heart he cared not lor restraints decomm and
ceremony were become idle words the swedifili
army had perished the greatest easter the
whole thirty years war had fallen upon his countrymen
his own eyes had witnessed the trbpedjr
and he bad no power to check or restrain that which
mode his heart overflow
the landgrave retired but in half an boor
the banquet was announced and his highness bad
go much command over his own feelings that he
took his seat at the table he seemed tranquil in
the midst general agitation for the company were
distracted by various passions some exulted in the
great victory the imperialists and the approaching
liberation klosterheira some who were in
the secret anticipated with horror the coming tragedy
 vengeance upon his enemies which the
landgrave bad prepared for this night some were
filled with suspense and awe on the probable fulfilment
in some way or other doubtful as to the mode
but tragic it was not doubted for the result the
masque's mysterious denunciation
under anch circumstances universal agitation
and buflpense for on one side or other it seemed inevitable
that this night must produce a tragical catastrophe
 it was not extraordinary that silence and
embarrassment should at one moment take possession
 the company and at another that kind forced
and intermitting gaiety which still more forcibly
proclaimed the trepidation which really mastered the
spirits the assemblage the banquet was magnificent
 but it moved heavily and in sadness the
music which broke the silence at intervals was
animating and triumphant but it had no power to
disperse the gloom which hung over the evening
and which was gathering strength conspicuously as
the hours advanced to midnight
as the clock struck eleven the orchestra had
suddenly become silent and as no buzz conversation
succeeded the anxiety expectation became
more partially irritating the whole vast assemblage
was hushed gazing t the doors at each
 taa tn vkim it 
gov teh mr bvibwk tlmm atgiirfw
if d wm mi it m koid
ia tk next imtht tw fhmk hme wia k
itjoa mdviaft wry iiniiwfal afedd
mck it wa tjiitli im ribty k
to cm fkammoms iawki 
l
wimv hid ob lt mi the i
fasti wlmcfe mnrikkc the cmrimi af 
aaoag ice rnmjiy who had ibi cwia
klosterhetm signal
event and more painfully interested others
whose finite was consciously dependant upon the 
which the next hour might happen to bring
up silence still continuing to prevail and if possible
deeper silence than before it was inevitable
that all the company those even whose honourable
temper would least have brooked any settled purpose
 auirisingp the landgrave's secrets should in
some measure become a party to what was now
passing in the anteroom
the voice the landgrave was heated at times 
briefly and somewhat sternly in reply but apparently
in the tone one who is thrown upon the
necessity selfdefence on the other side the
speaker was earnest solemn and as it seemed
upon an ofllce menace or upbraiding for a time
however the tones were low and subdued but as
the passion the scene advanced less restraint was
observed on both sides and at length many believed
that in the stranger's voice they recognised that 
the loftily abbess and it was some corroboration 
this conjecture that the name paulina began now
frequently to be caught and in connexion with
ominous words indicating some dreadful fate supposed
to have befallen her
elosterbbnr
a fear moments dispersed all doubts the tones
 bitter and angry reproach rose loader baa before
theywerewiuiontdoolpt those the abbess
she charge the blood panama npou the laad
te's head denounced the instant vengeance 
the emperor for so great an atrodtt and if that
old be ervded tie him expect certum ktribotioii
froai hmtsb far so motdn and useless bo efiiuion
the lamina nffie ia a icma key and his
warfc were few lad iipii tw tier were irnds
rf fan e wtgiimriobwglyoollqed from the
mac m ia the nux tante t panics eemiated
uti linie cenamin ne saaaentlv evident
ilwnlh thelnd
bfthabitim hk asiibiilktiod
tort br the tide he tndwd hk mm all tnccs 
 i i t nwl expression rtctn serenity nd his
mmbcn their annul air perfect a
tbe clock st agnes struck twefte at that
klostehheiu ua
sound the landgrave rose friends and illustrious
stranger said he i have caused one seat
to be left empty for that bloodstained masque who
summoned me to answer on this night for a crime
which he could not name at a bar which no man
knows his summons you heard its fulfilment
is yet to come but i suppose few us are weak
enough to expect
ttiat the masque klosterheim will ever break
his engagements said a deep voice suddenly interrupting
the landgrave all eyes were directed to
the sound and behold there stood the masque
and seated himself quietly in the chair which bad
been left vacant for his reception
it is well said the landgrave but the air 
vexation and panic with which he sank back into
his seat belied his words rising again after a
pause with some agitation he said audacious
criminal since last we met i have learned to know
you and to appreciate your purposes jt is now fit
they should be known to klosterheim a scene 
justice awaits you at present which will teach this
city to understand the delusions which could build
any part her hopes upon yourself citizens and
sbc i sac passe msl esmamk
frakot hurrji on w mk to tike
lis lillilifbi m
other resfftxu it named st aueaheim mi
left it
the swedish maibeqacs had inadt them withdim
fipom the gala on hearing the dreadful tar 
ncyrduiifeik but eocra remained when strengthened
bf the body gnaid the landgimre to make
op a corp nearij fire hundred men under the
eoqunand caafdel v
the last rightful landgrave whilst yet a young
kifmbueih
man had been assassinated in the forest when
hunting a year or two before this catastrophe he
had contracted what from the circumstances was
presumed at the time to be a morganatic or lefthanded
marriage with a lady high birth nearly
connected with the imperial house the effect 
such a marriage went to incapacitate the children who
might be born under it male or female join succeeding
on that account as well as because current report
had represented her as childless the widow lady
escaped all attempts from the assaesiii meantime
this lady who was no other than sister madeline
had been thus indebted for her safety to two honours
irhich were in fact equally false she soon found
means convincing the emperor who hod been
the bosom friend her princely husband that her
marriage was a perfect one and conferred the fullest
rights succession upon heriiifiint son maximilian
whom at the earliest age and with the utmost
secrecy she had committed to the care his imperial
majesty this powerful guardian bad in every
way watched over the interests the young prince
but the thirty years war had thrown all germany
into distractions which for a time thwarted the
 klobterheih 
emperor and favoured the views the nsnrpei
latterly also another question had arisen on the city
and dependencies klosterheim as distinct som
the landgrariate these it was now affirmed were
a female appanage and could only pass back to the
landgrave x through a manage with the
female inheretrix to reconcile all claims therefore
on ending this bar in the way the emperor had
resolved to promote a marriage for maximilian with
paulina who stood equally related to the imperial
house and to that her lower in this view he hait
despatched paulina to klostetheim with proper documents
to support th claims both parties 
these documents she had been robbed at 
 and the very letter which was designed
to introduce maximilian as the child and sole representative
 the late murdered landgrave felling
in this surreptitious way into the usurper's head
bad naturally misdirected his attacks to the person
 paiihna
for the rest as regarded the mysterious movements
 the masque these were easily explained
fear and the exaggerations fear had done onfl
half the work to his hands by preparing people to
klobterheim
 easy dupes to the pins laid hind bf increasing
the romantic wonders bis achievements cooperation
also on the part the very students and
others who stood forward as the night watch air
detecting him had served the mnaque no less
powerfully the appearances deadly struggles
had been arranged artificially to countenance the
plot and to aid the terror finally the secret passages
which communicated between the forest and
the chapel st agnes passages which many
were aeluallj applied to that very use in the thirty
years war had been unreservedly placed at their
disposal by the lady abbess an early friend the
unhappy landgravine who sympathized deeply with
that lady's unmerited sufferings
one other explanation followed communicated
in a letter from maxinuuau to the legate this
related to the murder the old seneschal a matter
in which the young prince took some mame to
himself as having unintentionally drawn upon that
excellent servant his unhappy fate the senex
chsl said the writer was the laithinl friend ot
my bnuly and knew the whole course its misfortunes
he continued his abode at the schloss to
ms
klostbbbeim
serre my interest and in kine measure i moy fear
that i drew upon him his fate traversing lfate ooe
erenittg a spite rooms which his assistance and my
own mysterious disguise laid open to mv passage at
all hours i came suddenly upon the prince's retirement
he pursued me but with hesitation snbe
check i gave to his motions by halting befwa
portrait my unhappy father and eraphaticaqy
pointing his attention to it conscience i well
knew wotild supply a commentary to my act i
produced the impression which i had anticipated
but not bo strongly as to stop his pursuit my
vmirae necessarily drew faim into the seneclids 
rotten the old man was sleeping and this cadet
threw into the prince's hands a paper which
i have reason to think shed some considerable light
upon my own pretensions and in feet first m
my enemy acquainted with my existence and tiny
claims meantime the seneschal had secured iba
prince's vengeance upon himself he was aew m
known as a feithfiil agent in my service that gt i
sied his deathwarrant there is a window in j
b gallery which commands the interior the i
seneschal's room on the evening the last jtf 
waiting there for an opportunity speaking securely
with this faithful servant i heard a deep
groan and then another andaaother i raised myself
and with an ejaculation horror looked down
upon the murderer then surveying his victim with
hellish triumph my loud exclamation di'ew the
murderer's eye upwards under the pangs an agitated
conscience i have reason to think that he took
me for my unhappy father who perished at my age
and is said to have resembled me closely who that
murderer was i need not say more directly he
fled with the terror one who flies iron an apparition
 taking a lesson from this incident on that
seine night by the very same sudden revelation 
what passed no doubt for my father's countenance
aided by my mysterious character and the proof i
had announced to him immediately before my acquaintance
with the secret the seneschal's murder
 in this and no other way it was that i produced
that powerful impression upon the prince
which terminated the festivities that evening and
which all klosterheim witnessed if not it is for
the prince to explain in what other way i did or
fiouldafltect him so powerfully
im klonzkheix
teak exptanttmh tliedieii
nr wttniuated by the ex'landgimtc on ti
exposure the masqne'a featmc recsrd r
taarkable confirmation from the canfaaaoa te
numnble asbuain at wauenbanacb tins i
ilium had been sint night on i the mmiitm
bock a ntiutioa pretty nearly the atm bison
a conscience more disturbed and a more aer
ititioiu mind in the rety act attempting to atinnate
or rob maximilian be had been baildenlt
dragged by that prince into a dazzling light 
this settling full upon features which too vividly recalled
to the murderer's recollection the last anbapnr
landgrave e nt the very same period blooming muboot
and in his own favourite hunting palace not
far from which the murder had been perpetrated naturally
enough hai for a time unsettled the guilty
man's understanding and terminating in a nervous
fever had at length produced his penitential death
a death happily the same character soon oyertook
the deposed landgrave he was laid by the
side his daughter whose memory as much even
as his own penitence availed to gather round his
final restingplfloj the forgiving thoughts even 
klosterheim 
those who had suffered most from his crimes
klosterheim in the next age flourished greatly being
one those cities which benefited by the peace
 westphalia many changes took place in consequence
greatly affecting the architectural character
 the town and its picturesque antiquities but
amidst all revolutions this nature the secret passages
still survive and to this day are shewn occasionally
to strangers rank and consideration by
which more than by any other the advantages at
his disposal the masque klosterheim was enabled
to replace himself in his patrimonial rights
and at the same time to liberate from a growing
oppression his own compatriots and subjects
three memorable murders

a sequel to murder considered as one of the fine arts 




it is impossible to conciliate readers of so saturnine and gloomy a class
that they cannot enter with genial sympathy into any gaiety whatever but
least of all when the gaiety trespasses a little into the province of the
extravagant in such a case not to sympathize is not to understand and
the playfulness which is not relished becomes flat and insipid or
absolutely without meaning fortunately after all such churls have
withdrawn from my audience in high displeasure there remains a large
majority who are loud in acknowledging the amusement which they have
derived from a former paper of mine on murder considered as one of the
fine arts at the same time proving the sincerity of their praise by one
hesitating expression of censure repeatedly they have suggested to me
that perhaps the extravagance though clearly intentional and forming one
element in the general gaiety of the conception went too far i am not
myself of that opinion and i beg to remind these friendly censors that
it is amongst the direct purposes and efforts of this bagatelle to
graze the brink of horror and of all that would in actual realization be
most repulsive the very excess of the extravagance in fact by
suggesting to the reader continually the mere aeriality of the entire
speculation furnishes the surest means of disenchanting him from the
horror which might else gather upon his feelings let me remind such
objectors once for all of dean swift's proposal for turning to account
the supernumerary infants of the three kingdoms which in those days
both at dublin and at london were provided for in foundling hospitals by
cooking and eating them this was an extravaganza though really bolder
and more coarsely practical than mine which did not provoke any
reproaches even to a dignitary of the supreme irish church its own
monstrosity was its excuse mere extravagance was felt to license and
accredit the little jeu d'esprit precisely as the blank impossibilities
of lilliput of laputa of the yahoos c had licensed those if
therefore any man thinks it worth his while to tilt against so mere a
foam-bubble of gaiety as this lecture on the aesthetics of murder i
shelter myself for the moment under the telamonian shield of the dean
but in reality my own little paper may plead a privileged excuse for its
extravagance such as is altogether wanting to the dean's nobody can
pretend for a moment on behalf of the dean that there is any ordinary
and natural tendency in human thoughts which could ever turn to infants
as articles of diet under any conceivable circumstances this would be
felt as the most aggravated form of cannibalism cannibalism applying
itself to the most defenceless part of the species but on the other
hand the tendency to a critical or aesthetic valuation of fires and
murders is universal if you are summoned to the spectacle of a great
fire undoubtedly the first impulse is to assist in putting it out but
that field of exertion is very limited and is soon filled by regular
professional people trained and equipped for the service in the case of
a fire which is operating upon private property pity for a neighbor's
calamity checks us at first in treating the affair as a scenic spectacle
but perhaps the fire may be confined to public buildings and in any case
after we have paid our tribute of regret to the affair considered as a
calamity inevitably and without restraint we go on to consider it as a
stage spectacle exclamations of how grand how magnificent arise in a
sort of rapture from the crowd for instance when drury lane was burned
down in the first decennium of this century the falling in of the roof
was signalized by a mimic suicide of the protecting apollo that surmounted
and crested the centre of this roof the god was stationary with his lyre
and seemed looking down upon the fiery ruins that were so rapidly
approaching him suddenly the supporting timbers below him gave way a
convulsive heave of the billowing flames seemed for a moment to raise the
statue and then as if on some impulse of despair the presiding deity
appeared not to fall but to throw himself into the fiery deluge for he
went down head foremost and in all respects the descent had the air of a
voluntary act what followed from every one of the bridges over the
river and from other open areas which commanded the spectacle there
arose a sustained uproar of admiration and sympathy some few years before
this event a prodigious fire occurred at liverpool the goree a vast
pile of warehouses close to one of the docks was burned to the ground
the huge edifice eight or nine stories high and laden with most
combustible goods many thousand bales of cotton wheat and oats in
thousands of quarters tar turpentine rum gunpowder c continued
through many hours of darkness to feed this tremendous fire to
aggravate the calamity it blew a regular gale of wind luckily for the
shipping it blew inland that is to the east and all the way down to
warrington eighteen miles distant to the eastward the whole air was
illuminated by flakes of cotton often saturated with rum and by what
seemed absolute worlds of blazing sparks that lighted up all the upper
chambers of the air all the cattle lying abroad in the fields through a
breadth of eighteen miles were thrown into terror and agitation men of
course read in this hurrying overhead of scintillating and blazing
vortices the annunciation of some gigantic calamity going on in
liverpool and the lamentation on that account was universal but that
mood of public sympathy did not at all interfere to suppress or even to
check the momentary bursts of rapturous admiration as this arrowy sleet
of many-colored fire rode on the wings of hurricane alternately through
open depths of air or through dark clouds overhead

precisely the same treatment is applied to murders after the first
tribute of sorrow to those who have perished but at all events after
the personal interests have been tranquillized by time inevitably the
scenical features what aesthetically may be called the comparative
advantages of the several murders are reviewed and valued one
murder is compared with another and the circumstances of superiority as
for example in the incidence and effects of surprise of mystery c
are collated and appraised i therefore for my extravagance claim an
inevitable and perpetual ground in the spontaneous tendencies of the human
mind when left to itself but no one will pretend that any corresponding
plea can be advanced on behalf of swift

in this important distinction between myself and the dean lies one reason
which prompted the present writing a second purpose of this paper is to
make the reader acquainted circumstantially with three memorable cases of
murder which long ago the voice of amateurs has crowned with laurel but
especially with the two earliest of the three viz the immortal
williams murders of the act and the actor are each separately in
the highest degree interesting and as forty-two years have elapsed since
 it cannot be supposed that either is known circumstantially to the
men of the current generation

never throughout the annals of universal christendom has there indeed
been any act of one solitary insulated individual armed with power so
appalling over the hearts of men as that exterminating murder by which
during the winter of john williams in one hour smote two houses
with emptiness exterminated all but two entire households and asserted
his own supremacy above all the children of cain it would be absolutely
impossible adequately to describe the frenzy of feelings which throughout
the next fortnight mastered the popular heart the mere delirium of
indignant horror in some the mere delirium of panic in others for twelve
succeeding days under some groundless notion that the unknown murderer
had quitted london the panic which had convulsed the mighty metropolis
diffused itself all over the island i was myself at that time nearly
three hundred miles from london but there and everywhere the panic was
indescribable one lady my next neighbor whom personally i knew living
at the moment during the absence of her husband with a few servants in a
very solitary house never rested until she had placed eighteen doors so
she told me and indeed satisfied me by ocular proof each secured by
ponderous bolts and bars and chains between her own bedroom and any
intruder of human build to reach her even in her drawing-room was like
going as a flag of truce into a beleaguered fortress at every sixth
step one was stopped by a sort of portcullis the panic was not confined
to the rich women in the humblest ranks more than once died upon the
spot from the shock attending some suspicious attempts at intrusion upon
the part of vagrants meditating probably nothing worse than a robbery
but whom the poor women misled by the london newspapers had fancied to
be the dreadful london murderer meantime this solitary artist that
rested in the centre of london self-supported by his own conscious
grandeur as a domestic attila or scourge of god this man that walked
in darkness and relied upon murder as afterwards transpired for bread
for clothes for promotion in life was silently preparing an effectual
answer to the public journals and on the twelfth day after his inaugural
murder he advertised his presence in london and published to all men the
absurdity of ascribing to him any ruralizing propensities by striking a
second blow and accomplishing a second family extermination somewhat
lightened was the provincial panic by this proof that the murderer had
not condescended to sneak into the country or to abandon for a moment
under any motive of caution or fear the great metropolitan castra
stativa of gigantic crime seated for ever on the thames in fact the
great artist disdained a provincial reputation and he must have felt as
a case of ludicrous disproportion the contrast between a country town or
village on the one hand and on the other a work more lasting than
brass a greek chtaema es aei a murder such in quality as any murder
that he would condescend to own for a work turned out from his own
studio

coleridge whom i saw some months after these terrific murders told me
that for his part though at the time resident in london he had
not shared in the prevailing panic him they effected only as a
philosopher and threw him into a profound reverie upon the tremendous
power which is laid open in a moment to any man who can reconcile himself
to the abjuration of all conscientious restraints if at the same time
thoroughly without fear not sharing in the public panic however
coleridge did not consider that panic at all unreasonable for as he said
most truly in that vast metropolis there are many thousands of households
composed exclusively of women and children many other thousands there are
who necessarily confide their safety in the long evenings to the
discretion of a young servant girl and if she suffers herself to be
beguiled by the pretence of a message from her mother sister or
sweetheart into opening the door there in one second of time goes to
wreck the security of the house however at that time and for many
months afterwards the practice of steadily putting the chain upon the
door before it was opened prevailed generally and for a long time served
as a record of that deep impression left upon london by mr williams
southey i may add entered deeply into the public feeling on this
occasion and said to me within a week or two of the first murder that
it was a private event of that order which rose to the dignity of a
national event but now having prepared the reader to appreciate on
its true scale this dreadful tissue of murder which as a record belonging
to an era that is now left forty-two years behind us not one person in
four of this generation can be expected to know correctly let me pass to
the circumstantial details of the affair

yet first of all one word as to the local scene of the murders
ratcliffe highway is a public thoroughfare in a most chaotic quarter of
eastern or nautical london and at this time viz in when no
adequate police existed except the detective police of bow street
admirable for its own peculiar purposes but utterly incommensurate to the
general service of the capital it was a most dangerous quarter every
third man at the least might be set down as a foreigner lascars chinese
moors negroes were met at every step and apart from the manifold
ruffianism shrouded impenetrably under the mixed hats and turbans of men
whose past was untraceable to any european eye it is well known that the
navy especially in time of war the commercial navy of christendom is
the sure receptacle of all the murderers and ruffians whose crimes have
given them a motive for withdrawing themselves for a season from the
public eye it is true that few of this class are qualified to act as
able seamen but at all times and especially during war only a small
proportion or nucleus of each ship's company consists of such men the
large majority being mere untutored landsmen john williams however who
had been occasionally rated as a seaman on board of various indiamen c
was probably a very accomplished seaman pretty generally in fact he was
a ready and adroit man fertile in resources under all sudden
difficulties and most flexibly adapting himself to all varieties of
social life williams was a man of middle stature five feet seven and
a-half to five feet eight inches high slenderly built rather thin but
wiry tolerably muscular and clear of all superfluous flesh a lady who
saw him under examination i think at the thames police office assured
me that his hair was of the most extraordinary and vivid color viz
bright yellow something between an orange and lemon color williams had
been in india chiefly in bengal and madras but he had also been upon the
indus now it is notorious that in the punjaub horses of a high caste
are often painted crimson blue green purple and it struck me that
williams might for some casual purpose of disguise have taken a hint
from this practice of scinde and lahore so that the color might not have
been natural in other respects his appearance was natural enough and
judging by a plaster cast of him which i purchased in london i should
say mean as regarded his facial structure one fact however was
striking and fell in with the impression of his natural tiger character
that his face wore at all times a bloodless ghastly pallor you might
imagine said my informant that in his veins circulated not red life-
blood such as could kindle into the blush of shame of wrath of pity 
but a green sap that welled from no human heart his eyes seemed frozen
and glazed as if their light were all converged upon some victim lurking
in the far background so far his appearance might have repelled but on
the other hand the concurrent testimony of many witnesses and also the
silent testimony of facts showed that the oiliness and snaky insinuation
of his demeanor counteracted the repulsiveness of his ghastly face and
amongst inexperienced young women won for him a very favorable reception
in particular one gentle-mannered girl whom williams had undoubtedly
designed to murder gave in evidence that once when sitting alone with
her he had said now miss r supposing that i should appear about
midnight at your bedside armed with a carving knife what would you say
to which the confiding girl had replied oh mr williams if it was
anybody else i should be frightened but as soon as i heard your
voice i should be tranquil poor girl had this outline sketch of mr
williams been filled in and realized she would have seen something in the
corpse-like face and heard something in the sinister voice that would
have unsettled her tranquillity for ever but nothing short of such
dreadful experiences could avail to unmask mr john williams

into this perilous region it was that on a saturday night in december
mr williams whom we suppose to have long since made his coup d'essai
forced his way through the crowded streets bound on business to say was
to do and this night he had said to himself secretly that he would
execute a design which he had already sketched and which when finished
was destined on the following day to strike consternation into all that
mighty heart of london from centre to circumference it was afterwards
remembered that he had quitted his lodgings on this dark errand about
eleven o'clock p m not that he meant to begin so soon but he needed to
reconnoitre he carried his tools closely buttoned up under his loose
roomy coat it was in harmony with the general subtlety of his character
and his polished hatred of brutality that by universal agreement his
manners were distinguished for exquisite suavity the tiger's heart was
masked by the most insinuating and snaky refinement all his acquaintances
afterwards described his dissimulation as so ready and so perfect that
if in making his way through the streets always so crowded on a saturday
night in neighborhoods so poor he had accidentally jostled any person he
would as they were all satisfied have stopped to offer the most
gentlemanly apologies with his devilish heart brooding over the most
hellish of purposes he would yet have paused to express a benign hope
that the huge mallet buttoned up under his elegant surtout with a view
to the little business that awaited him about ninety minutes further on
had not inflicted any pain on the stranger with whom he had come into
collision titian i believe but certainly rubens and perhaps vandyke
made it a rule never to practise his art but in full dress point ruffles
bag wig and diamond-hilted sword and mr williams there is reason to
believe when he went out for a grand compound massacre in another sense
one might have applied to it the oxford phrase of going out as grand
compounder always assumed black silk stockings and pumps nor would he
on any account have degraded his position as an artist by wearing a
morning gown in his second great performance it was particularly noticed
and recorded by the one sole trembling man who under killing agonies of
fear was compelled as the reader will find from a secret stand to become
the solitary spectator of his atrocities that mr williams wore a long
blue frock of the very finest cloth and richly lined with silk amongst
the anecdotes which circulated about him it was also said at the time
that mr williams employed the first of dentists and also the first of
chiropodists on no account would he patronize any second-rate skill and
beyond a doubt in that perilous little branch of business which was
practised by himself he might be regarded as the most aristocratic and
fastidious of artists

but who meantime was the victim to whose abode he was hurrying for
surely he never could be so indiscreet as to be sailing about on a roving
cruise in search of some chance person to murder oh no he had suited
himself with a victim some time before viz an old and very intimate
friend for he seems to have laid it down as a maxim that the best person
to murder was a friend and in default of a friend which is an article
one cannot always command an acquaintance because in either case on
first approaching his subject suspicion would be disarmed whereas a
stranger might take alarm and find in the very countenance of his
murderer elect a warning summons to place himself on guard however in
the present ease his destined victim was supposed to unite both
characters originally he had been a friend but subsequently on good
cause arising he had become an enemy or more probably as others said
the feelings had long since languished which gave life to either relation
of friendship or of enmity marr was the name of that unhappy man who
whether in the character of friend or enemy had been selected for the
subject of this present saturday night's performance and the story
current at that time about the connection between williams and marr
having whether true or not true never been contradicted upon authority
was that they sailed in the same indiaman to calcutta that they had
quarrelled when at sea but another version of the story said no they
had quarrelled after returning from sea and the subject of their quarrel
was mrs marr a very pretty young woman for whose favor they had been
rival candidates and at one time with most bitter enmity towards each
other some circumstances give a color of probability to this story
otherwise it has sometimes happened on occasion of a murder not
sufficiently accounted for that from pure goodness of heart intolerant
of a mere sordid motive for a striking murder some person has forged and
the public has accredited a story representing the murderer as having
moved under some loftier excitement and in this case the public too much
shocked at the idea of williams having on the single motive of gain
consummated so complex a tragedy welcomed the tale which represented him
as governed by deadly malice growing out of the more impassioned and
noble rivalry for the favor of a woman the case remains in some degree
doubtful but certainly the probability is that mrs marr had been the
true cause the causa teterrima of the feud between the men meantime
the minutes are numbered the sands of the hour-glass are running out
that measure the duration of this feud upon earth this night it shall
cease to-morrow is the day which in england they call sunday which in
scotland they call by the judaic name of sabbath to both nations under
different names the day has the same functions to both it is a day of
rest for thee also marr it shall be a day of rest so is it written
thou too young marr shalt find rest thou and thy household and the
stranger that is within thy gates but that rest must be in the world
which lies beyond the grave on this side the grave ye have all slept your
final sleep

the night was one of exceeding darkness and in this humble quarter of
london whatever the night happened to be light or dark quiet or stormy
all shops were kept open on saturday nights until twelve o'clock at the
least and many for half an hour longer there was no rigorous and
pedantic jewish superstition about the exact limits of sunday at the very
worst the sunday stretched over from one o'clock a m of one day up to
eight o'clock a m of the next making a clear circuit of thirty-one
hours this surely was long enough marr on this particular saturday
night would be content if it were even shorter provided it would come
more quickly for he has been toiling through sixteen hours behind his
counter marr's position in life was this he kept a little hosier's shop
and had invested in his stock and the fittings of his shop about 
pounds like all men engaged in trade he suffered some anxieties he was
a new beginner but already bad debts had alarmed him and bills were
coming to maturity that were not likely to be met by commensurate sales
yet constitutionally he was a sanguine hoper at this time he was a
stout fresh-colored young man of twenty-seven in some slight degree
uneasy from his commercial prospects but still cheerful and
anticipating how vainly that for this night and the next night at
least he will rest his wearied head and his cares upon the faithful bosom
of his sweet lovely young wife the household of marr consisting of five
persons is as follows first there is himself who if he should happen
to be ruined in a limited commercial sense has energy enough to jump up
again like a pyramid of fire and soar high above ruin many times
repeated yes poor marr so it might be if thou wert left to thy native
energies unmolested but even now there stands on the other side of the
street one born of hell who puts his peremptory negative on all these
flattering prospects second in the list of his household stands his
pretty and amiable wife who is happy after the fashion of youthful wives
for she is only twenty-two and anxious if at all only on account of her
darling infant for thirdly there is in a cradle not quite nine feet
below the street viz in a warm cosy kitchen and rocked at intervals
by the young mother a baby eight months old nineteen months have marr
and herself been married and this is their first-born child grieve not
for this child that it must keep the deep rest of sunday in some other
world for wherefore should an orphan steeped to the lips in poverty
when once bereaved of father and mother linger upon an alien and
murderous earth fourthly there is a stoutish boy an apprentice say
thirteen years old a devonshire boy with handsome features such as most
devonshire youths have satisfied with his place not overworked
treated kindly and aware that he was treated kindly by his master and
mistress fifthly and lastly bringing up the rear of this quiet
household is a servant girl a grown-up young woman and she being
particularly kind-hearted occupied as often happens in families of
humble pretensions as to rank a sort of sisterly place in her relation to
her mistress a great democratic change is at this very time and
has been for twenty years passing over british society multitudes of
persons are becoming ashamed of saying my master or my mistress the
term now in the slow process of superseding it is my employer now in
the united states such an expression of democratic hauteur though
disagreeable as a needless proclamation of independence which nobody is
disputing leaves however no lasting bad effect for the domestic
helps are pretty generally in a state of transition so sure and so rapid
to the headship of domestic establishments belonging to themselves that
in effect they are but ignoring for the present moment a relation which
would at any rate dissolve itself in a year or two but in england where
no such resources exist of everlasting surplus lands the tendency of the
change is painful it carries with it a sullen and a coarse expression of
immunity from a yoke which was in any case a light one and often a benign
one in some other place i will illustrate my meaning here apparently
in mrs marr's service the principle concerned illustrated itself
practically mary the female servant felt a sincere and unaffected
respect for a mistress whom she saw so steadily occupied with her domestic
duties and who though so young and invested with some slight authority
never exerted it capriciously or even showed it at all conspiciously
according to the testimony of all the neighbors she treated her mistress
with a shade of unobtrusive respect on the one hand and yet was eager to
relieve her whenever that was possible from the weight of her maternal
duties with the cheerful voluntary service of a sister

to this young woman it was that suddenly within three or four minutes
of midnight marr called aloud from the head of the stairs directing her
to go out and purchase some oysters for the family supper upon what
slender accidents hang oftentimes solemn lifelong results marr occupied
in the concerns of his shop mrs marr occupied with some little ailment
and restlessness of her baby had both forgotten the affair of supper the
time was now narrowing every moment as regarded any variety of choice
and oysters were perhaps ordered as the likeliest article to be had at
all after twelve o'clock should have struck and yet upon this trivial
circumstance depended mary's life had she been sent abroad for supper at
the ordinary time of ten or eleven o'clock it is almost certain that she
the solitary member of the household who escaped from the exterminating
tragedy would not have escaped too surely she would have shared
the general fate it had now become necessary to be quick hastily
therefore receiving money from marr with a basket in her hand but
unbonneted mary tripped out of the shop it became afterwards on
recollection a heart-chilling remembrance to herself that precisely as
she emerged from the shop-door she noticed on the opposite side of the
street by the light of the lamps a man's figure stationary at the
instant but in the next instant slowly moving this was williams as a
little incident either just before or just after at present it is
impossible to say which sufficiently proved now when one considers the
inevitable hurry and trepidation of mary under the circumstances stated
time barely sufficing for any chance of executing her errand it becomes
evident that she must have connected some deep feeling of mysterious
uneasiness with the movements of this unknown man else assuredly she
would not have found her attention disposable for such a case thus far
she herself threw some little light upon what it might be that semi-
consciously was then passing through her mind she said that
notwithstanding the darkness which would not permit her to trace the
man's features or to ascertain the exact direction of his eyes it yet
struck her that from his carriage when in motion and from the apparent
inclination of his person he must be looking at no 

the little incident which i have alluded to as confirming mary's belief
was that at some period not very far from midnight the watchman had
specially noticed this stranger he had observed him continually peeping
into the window of marr's shop and had thought this act connected with
the man's appearance so suspicious that he stepped into marr's shop and
communicated what he had seen this fact he afterwards stated before the
magistrates and he added that subsequently viz a few minutes after
twelve eight or ten minutes probably after the departure of mary he
the watchman when re-entering upon his ordinary half-hourly beat was
requested by marr to assist him in closing the shutters here they had a
final communication with each other and the watchman mentioned to marr
that the mysterious stranger had now apparently taken himself off for
that he had not been visible since the first communication made to marr by
the watchman there is little doubt that williams had observed the
watchman's visit to marr and had thus had his attention seasonably drawn
to the indiscretion of his own demeanor so that the warning given
unavailingly to marr had been turned to account by williams there can be
still less doubt that the bloodhound had commenced his work within one
minute of the watchman's assisting marr to put up his shutters and on the
following consideration that which prevented williams from commencing
even earlier was the exposure of the shop's whole interior to the gaze of
street passengers it was indispensable that the shutters should be
accurately closed before williams could safely get to work but as soon
as ever this preliminary precaution had been completed once having
secured that concealment from the public eye it then became of still
greater importance not to lose a moment by delay than previously it had
been not to hazard any thing by precipitance for all depended upon going
in before marr should have locked the door on any other mode of effecting
an entrance as for instance by waiting for the return of mary and
making his entrance simultaneously with her it will be seen that
williams must have forfeited that particular advantage which mute facts
when read into their true construction will soon show the reader that he
must have employed williams waited of necessity for the sound of the
watchman's retreating steps waited perhaps for thirty seconds but when
that danger was past the next danger was lest marr should lock the door
one turn of the key and the murderer would have been locked out in
therefore he bolted and by a dexterous movement of his left hand no
doubt turned the key without letting marr perceive this fatal stratagem
it is really wonderful and most interesting to pursue the successive steps
of this monster and to notice the absolute certainty with which the
silent hieroglyphics of the case betray to us the whole process and
movements of the bloody drama not less surely and fully than if we had
been ourselves hidden in marr's shop or had looked down from the heavens
of mercy upon this hell-kite that knew not what mercy meant that he had
concealed from marr his trick secret and rapid upon the lock is
evident because else marr would instantly have taken the alarm
especially after what the watchman had communicated but it will soon be
seen that marr had not been alarmed in reality towards the full
success of williams it was important in the last degree to intercept
and forestall any yell or shout of agony from marr such an outcry and in
a situation so slenderly fenced off from the street viz by walls the
very thinnest makes itself heard outside pretty nearly as well as if it
were uttered in the street such an outcry it was indispensable to stifle
it was stifled and the reader will soon understand how meantime at
this point let us leave the murderer alone with his victims for fifty
minutes let him work his pleasure the front-door as we know is now
fastened against all help help there is none let us therefore in
vision attach ourselves to mary and when all is over let us come
back with her again raise the curtain and read the dreadful
record of all that has passed in her absence

the poor girl uneasy in her mind to an extent that she could but half
understand roamed up and down in search of an oyster shop and finding
none that was still open within any circuit that her ordinary experience
had made her acquainted with she fancied it best to try the chances of
some remoter district lights she saw gleaming or twinkling at a distance
that still tempted her onwards and thus amongst unknown streets poorly
lighted and on a night of peculiar darkness and in a region of
london where ferocious tumults were continually turning her out of what
seemed to be the direct course naturally she got bewildered the purpose
with which she started had by this time become hopeless nothing remained
for her now but to retrace her steps but this was difficult for she was
afraid to ask directions from chance passengers whose appearance the
darkness prevented her from reconnoitring at length by his lantern she
recognized a watchman through him she was guided into the right road and
in ten minutes more she found herself back at the door of no in
ratcliffe highway but by this time she felt satisfied that she must have
been absent for fifty or sixty minutes indeed she had heard at a
distance the cry of past one o'clock which commencing a few seconds
after one lasted intermittingly for ten or thirteen minutes

in the tumult of agonizing thoughts that very soon surprised her
naturally it became hard for her to recall distinctly the whole succession
of doubts and jealousies and shadowy misgivings that soon opened upon
her but so far as could be collected she had not in the first moment of
reaching home noticed anything decisively alarming in very many cities
bells are the main instruments for communicating between the street and
the interior of houses but in london knockers prevail at marr's there
was both a knocker and a bell mary rang and at the same time very gently
knocked she had no fear of disturbing her master or mistress them
she made sure of finding still up her anxiety was for the baby who being
disturbed might again rob her mistress of a night's rest and she well
knew that with three people all anxiously awaiting her return and by
this time perhaps seriously uneasy at her delay the least audible
whisper from herself would in a moment bring one of them to the door yet
how is this to her astonishment but with the astonishment came creeping
over her an icy horror no stir nor murmur was heard ascending from the
kitchen at this moment came back upon her with shuddering anguish the
indistinct image of the stranger in the loose dark coat whom she had seen
stealing along under the shadowy lamp-light and too certainly watching
her master's motions keenly she now reproached herself that under
whatever stress of hurry she had not acquainted mr marr with the
suspicious appearances poor girl she did not then know that if this
communication could have availed to put marr upon his guard it had
reached him from another quarter so that her own omission which had in
reality arisen under her hurry to execute her master's commission could
not be charged with any bad consequences but all such reflections this
way or that were swallowed up at this point in over-mastering panic that
her double summons could have been unnoticed this solitary fact in
one moment made a revelation of horror one person might have fallen
asleep but two but three that was a mere impossibility and even
supposing all three together with the baby locked in sleep still how
unaccountable was this utter utter silence most naturally at this moment
something like hysterical horror overshadowed the poor girl and now at
last she rang the bell with the violence that belongs to sickening terror
this done she paused self-command enough she still retained though fast
and fast it was slipping away from her to bethink herself that if any
overwhelming accident had compelled both marr and his apprentice-boy to
leave the house in order to summon surgical aid from opposite quarters a
thing barely supposable still even in that case mrs marr and her infant
would be left and some murmuring reply under any extremity would be
elicited from the poor mother to pause therefore to impose stern
silence upon herself so as to leave room for the possible answer to this
final appeal became a duty of spasmodic effort listen therefore poor
trembling heart listen and for twenty seconds be still as death still
as death she was and during that dreadful stillness when she hushed her
breath that she might listen occurred an incident of killing fear that
to her dying day would never cease to renew its echoes in her ear she
mary the poor trembling girl checking and overruling herself by a final
effort that she might leave full opening for her dear young mistress's
answer to her own last frantic appeal heard at last and most distinctly a
sound within the house yes now beyond a doubt there is coming an answer
to her summons what was it on the stairs not the stairs that led
downwards to the kitchen but the stairs that led upwards to the single
story of bed-chambers above was heard a creaking sound next was heard
most distinctly a footfall one two three four five stairs were slowly
and distinctly descended then the dreadful footsteps were heard advancing
along the little narrow passage to the door the steps oh heavens
whose steps have paused at the door the very breathing can be heard
of that dreadful being who has silenced all breathing except his own in
the house there is but a door between him and mary what is he doing on
the other side of the door a cautious step a stealthy step it was that
came down the stairs then paced along the little narrow passage narrow
as a coffin till at last the step pauses at the door how hard the fellow
breathes he the solitary murderer is on one side the door mary is on
the other side now suppose that he should suddenly open the door and
that incautiously in the dark mary should rush in and find herself in the
arms of the murderer thus far the case is a possible one that to a
certainty had this little trick been tried immediately upon mary's
return it would have succeeded had the door been opened suddenly upon
her first tingle-tingle headlong she would have tumbled in and perished
but now mary is upon her guard the unknown murderer and she have both
their lips upon the door listening breathing hard but luckily they are
on different sides of the door and upon the least indication of unlocking
or unlatching she would have recoiled into the asylum of general
darkness

what was the murderer's meaning in coming along the passage to the front
door the meaning was this separately as an individual mary was worth
nothing at all to him but considered as a member of a household she had
this value viz that she if caught and murdered perfected and rounded
the desolation of the house the case being reported as reported it would
be all over christendom led the imagination captive the whole covey of
victims was thus netted the household ruin was thus full and orbicular
and in that proportion the tendency of men and women flutter as they
might would be helplessly and hopelessly to sink into the all-conquering
hands of the mighty murderer he had but to say my testimonials are dated
from no ratcliffe highway and the poor vanquished imagination sank
powerless before the fascinating rattlesnake eye of the murderer there is
not a doubt that the motive of the murderer for standing on the inner side
of marr's front-door whilst mary stood on the outside was a hope that
if he quietly opened the door whisperingly counterfeiting marr's voice
and saying what made you stay so long possibly she might have been
inveigled he was wrong the time was past for that mary was now
maniacally awake she began now to ring the bell and to ply the knocker
with unintermitting violence and the natural consequence was that the
next door neighbor who had recently gone to bed and instantly fallen
asleep was roused and by the incessant violence of the ringing and the
knocking which now obeyed a delirious and uncontrollable impulse in mary
he became sensible that some very dreadful event must be at the root of so
clamorous an uproar to rise to throw up the sash to demand angrily the
cause of this unseasonable tumult was the work of a moment the poor girl
remained sufficiently mistress of herself rapidly to explain the
circumstance of her own absence for an hour her belief that mr and mrs
marr's family had all been murdered in the interval and that at this very
moment the murderer was in the house

the person to whom she addressed this statement was a pawnbroker and a
thoroughly brave man he must have been for it was a perilous undertaking
merely as a trial of physical strength singly to face a mysterious
assassin who had apparently signalized his prowess by a triumph so
comprehensive but again for the imagination it required an effort of
self-conquest to rush headlong into the presence of one invested with a
cloud of mystery whose nation age motives were all alike unknown
rarely on any field of battle has a soldier been called upon to face so
complex a danger for if the entire family of his neighbor marr had been
exterminated were this indeed true such a scale of bloodshed would seem
to argue that there must have been two persons as the perpetrators or if
one singly had accomplished such a ruin in that case how colossal must
have been his audacity probably also his skill and animal power
moreover the unknown enemy whether single or double would doubtless
be elaborately armed yet under all these disadvantages did this
fearless man rush at once to the field of butchery in his neighbor's
house waiting only to draw on his trousers and to arm himself with the
kitchen poker he went down into his own little back-yard on this mode of
approach he would have a chance of intercepting the murderer whereas
from the front there would be no such chance and there would also be
considerable delay in the process of breaking open the door a brick wall
nine or ten feet high divided his own back premises from those of marr
over this he vaulted and at the moment when he was recalling himself to
the necessity of going back for a candle he suddenly perceived a feeble
ray of light already glimmering on some part of marr's premises marr's
back-door stood wide open probably the murderer had passed through it one
half minute before rapidly the brave man passed onwards to the shop and
there beheld the carnage of the night stretched out on the floor and the
narrow premises so floated with gore that it was hardly possible to
escape the pollution of blood in picking out a path to the front-door in
the lock of the door still remained the key which had given to the unknown
murderer so fatal an advantage over his victims by this time the heart-
shaking news involved in the outcries of mary to whom it occurred that by
possibility some one out of so many victims might still be within the
reach of medical aid but that all would depend upon speed had availed
even at that late hour to gather a small mob about the house the
pawnbroker threw open the door one or two watchmen headed the crowd but
the soul-harrowing spectacle checked them and impressed sudden silence
upon their voices previously so loud the tragic drama read aloud its own
history and the succession of its several steps few and summary the
murderer was as yet altogether unknown not even suspected but there were
reasons for thinking that he must have been a person familiarly known to
marr he had entered the shop by opening the door after it had been closed
by marr but it was justly argued that after the caution conveyed to
marr by the watchman the appearance of any stranger in the shop at that
hour and in so dangerous a neighborhood and entering by so irregular and
suspicious a course ie walking in after the door had been closed
and after the closing of the shutters had cut off all open communication
with the street would naturally have roused marr to an attitude of
vigilance and self-defence any indication therefore that marr had not
been so roused would argue to a certainty that something had occurred
to neutralize this alarm and fatally to disarm the prudent jealousies of
marr but this something could only have lain in one simple fact viz
that the person of the murderer was familiarly known to marr as that of an
ordinary and unsuspected acquaintance this being presupposed as the key
to all the rest the whole course and evolution of the subsequent drama
becomes clear as daylight the murderer it is evident had opened gently
and again closed behind him with equal gentleness the street-door he had
then advanced to the little counter all the while exchanging the ordinary
salutation of an old acquaintance with the unsuspecting marr having
reached the counter he would then ask marr for a pair of unbleached
cotton socks in a shop so small as marr's there could be no great
latitude of choice for disposing of the different commodities the
arrangement of these had no doubt become familiar to the murderer and he
had already ascertained that in order to reach down the particular parcel
wanted at present marr would find it requisite to face round to the rear
and at the same moment to raise his eyes and his hands to a level
eighteen inches above his own head this movement placed him in the most
disadvantageous possible position with regard to the murderer who now at
the instant when marr's hands and eyes were embarrassed and the back of
his head fully exposed suddenly from below his large surtout had unslung
a heavy ship-carpenter's mallet and with one solitary blow had so
thoroughly stunned his victim as to leave him incapable of resistance
the whole position of marr told its own tale he had collapsed naturally
behind the counter with his hands so occupied as to confirm the whole
outline of the affair as i have here suggested it probable enough it is
that the very first blow the first indication of treachery that reached
marr would also be the last blow as regarded the abolition of
consciousness the murderer's plan and rationale of murder started
systematically from this infliction of apoplexy or at least of a stunning
sufficient to insure a long loss of consciousness this opening step
placed the murderer at his ease but still as returning sense might
constantly have led to the fullest exposures it was his settled practice
by way of consummation to cut the throat to one invariable type all the
murders on this occasion conformed the skull was first shattered this
step secured the murderer from instant retaliation and then by way of
locking up all into eternal silence uniformly the throat was cut the
rest of the circumstances as self-revealed were these the fall of marr
might probably enough cause a dull confused sound of a scuffle and the
more so as it could not now be confounded with any street uproar the
shop-door being shut it is more probable however that the signal for
the alarm passing down to the kitchen would arise when the murderer
proceeded to cut marr's throat the very confined situation behind the
counter would render it impossible under the critical hurry of the case
to expose the throat broadly the horrid scene would proceed by partial
and interrupted cuts deep groans would arise and then would come the
rush up-stairs against this as the only dangerous stage in the
transaction the murderer would have specially prepared mrs marr and the
apprentice-boy both young and active would make of course for the
street door had mary been at home and three persons at once had combined
to distract the purposes of the murderer it is barely possible that one
of them would have succeeded in reaching the street but the dreadful
swing of the heavy mallet intercepted both the boy and his mistress before
they could reach the door each of them lay stretched out on the centre of
the shop floor and the very moment that this disabling was accomplished
the accursed hound was down upon their throats with his razor the fact
is that in the mere blindness of pity for poor marr on hearing his
groans mrs marr had lost sight of her obvious policy she and the boy
ought to have made for the back door the alarm would thus have been given
in the open air which of itself was a great point and several means of
distracting the murderer's attention offered upon that course which the
extreme limitation of the shop denied to them upon the other

vain would be all attempts to convey the horror which thrilled the
gathering spectators of this piteous tragedy it was known to the crowd
that one person had by some accident escaped the general massacre but
she was now speechless and probably delirious so that in compassion for
her pitiable situation one female neighbor had carried her away and put
her to bed hence it had happened for a longer space of time than could
else have been possible that no person present was sufficiently
acquainted with the marrs to be aware of the little infant for the bold
pawnbroker had gone off to make a communication to the coroner and
another neighbor to lodge some evidence which he thought urgent at a
neighboring police-office suddenly some person appeared amongst the crowd
who was aware that the murdered parents had a young infant this would be
found either below-stairs or in one of the bedrooms above immediately a
stream of people poured down into the kitchen where at once they saw the
cradle but with the bedclothes in a state of indescribable confusion on
disentangling these pools of blood became visible and the next ominous
sign was that the hood of the cradle had been smashed to pieces it
became evident that the wretch had found himself doubly embarrassed 
first by the arched hood at the head of the cradle which accordingly
he had beat into a ruin with his mallet and secondly by the gathering of
the blankets and pillows about the baby's head the free play of his blows
had thus been baffled and he had therefore finished the scene by applying
his razor to the throat of the little innocent after which with no
apparent purpose as though he had become confused by the spectacle of his
own atrocities he had busied himself in piling the clothes elaborately
over the child's corpse this incident undeniably gave the character of a
vindictive proceeding to the whole affair and so far confirmed the
current rumor that the quarrel between williams and marr had originated in
rivalship one writer indeed alleged that the murderer might have found
it necessary for his own safety to extinguish the crying of the child but
it was justly replied that a child only eight months old could not have
cried under any sense of the tragedy proceeding but simply in its
ordinary way for the absence of its mother and such a cry even if
audible at all out of the house must have been precisely what the
neighbors were hearing constantly so that it could have drawn no special
attention nor suggested any reasonable alarm to the murderer no one
incident indeed throughout the whole tissue of atrocities so much
envenomed the popular fury against the unknown ruffian as this useless
butchery of the infant

naturally on the sunday morning that dawned four or five hours later the
case was too full of horror not to diffuse itself in all directions but i
have no reason to think that it crept into any one of the numerous sunday
papers in the regular course any ordinary occurrence not occurring or
not transpiring until fifteen minutes after a m on a sunday morning
would first reach the public ear through the monday editions of the sunday
papers and the regular morning papers of the monday but if such were
the course pursued on this occasion never can there have been a more
signal oversight for it is certain that to have met the public demand
for details on the sunday which might so easily have been done by
cancelling a couple of dull columns and substituting a circumstantial
narrative for which the pawnbroker and the watchman could have furnished
the materials would have made a small fortune by proper handbills
dispersed through all quarters of the infinite metropolis two hundred and
fifty thousand extra copies might have been sold that is by any journal
that should have collected exclusive materials meeting the public
excitement everywhere stirred to the centre by flying rumors and
everywhere burning for ampler information on the sunday se'ennight
sunday the octave from the event took place the funeral of the
marrs in the first coffin was placed marr in the second mrs marr and
the baby in her arms in the third the apprentice boy they were buried
side by side and thirty thousand laboring people followed the funeral
procession with horror and grief written in their countenances

as yet no whisper was astir that indicated even conjecturally the
hideous author of these ruins this patron of grave-diggers had as much
been known on this sunday of the funeral concerning that person as became
known universally six days later the people would have gone right from
the churchyard to the murderer's lodgings and brooking no delay would
have torn him limb from limb as yet however in mere default of any
object on whom reasonable suspicion could settle the public wrath was
compelled to suspend itself else far indeed from showing any tendency to
subside the public emotion strengthened every day conspicuously as the
reverberation of the shock began to travel back from the provinces to the
capital on every great road in the kingdom continual arrests were made
of vagrants and trampers who could give no satisfactory account of
themselves or whose appearance in any respect answered to the imperfect
description of williams furnished by the watchman

with this mighty tide of pity and indignation pointing backwards to the
dreadful past there mingled also in the thoughts of reflecting persons an
under-current of fearful expectation for the immediate future the
earthquake to quote a fragment from a striking passage in wordsworth 

 the earthquake is not satisfied at once

all perils specially malignant are recurrent a murderer who is such by
passion and by a wolfish craving for bloodshed as a mode of unnatural
luxury cannot relapse into inertia such a man even more than the
alpine chamois hunter comes to crave the dangers and the hairbreadth
escapes of his trade as a condiment for seasoning the insipid monotonies
of daily life but apart from the hellish instincts that might too surely
be relied on for renewed atrocities it was clear that the murderer of the
marrs wheresoever lurking must be a needy man and a needy man of that
class least likely to seek or to find resources in honorable modes of
industry for which equally by haughty disgust and by disuse of the
appropriate habits men of violence are specially disqualified were it
therefore merely for a livelihood the murderer whom all hearts were
yearning to decipher might be expected to make his resurrection on some
stage of horror after a reasonable interval even in the marr murder
granting that it had been governed chiefly by cruel and vindictive
impulses it was still clear that the desire of booty had co-operated with
such feelings equally clear it was that this desire must have been
disappointed excepting the trivial sum reserved by marr for the week's
expenditure the murderer found doubtless little or nothing that he
could turn to account two guineas perhaps would be the outside of what
he had obtained in the way of booty a week or so would see the end of
that the conviction therefore of all people was that in a month or
two when the fever of excitement might a little have cooled down or have
been superseded by other topics of fresher interest so that the newborn
vigilance of household life would have had time to relax some new murder
equally appalling might be counted upon

such was the public expectation let the reader then figure to himself the
pure frenzy of horror when in this hush of expectation looking indeed
and waiting for the unknown arm to strike once more but not believing
that any audacity could be equal to such an attempt as yet whilst all
eyes were watching suddenly on the twelfth night from the marr murder a
second case of the same mysterious nature a murder on the same
exterminating plan was perpetrated in the very same neighborhood it was
on the thursday next but one succeeding to the marr murder that this
second atrocity took place and many people thought at the time that in
its dramatic features of thrilling interest this second case even went
beyond the first the family which suffered in this instance was that of a
mr williamson and the house was situated if not absolutely in
ratcliffe highway at any rate immediately round the corner of some
secondary street running at right angles to this public thoroughfare mr
williamson was a well-known and respectable man long settled in that
district he was supposed to be rich and more with a view to the
employment furnished by such a calling than with much anxiety for further
accumulations he kept a sort of tavern which in this respect might be
considered on an old patriarchal footing that although people of
considerable property resorted to the house in the evenings no kind of
anxious separation was maintained between them and the other visitors from
the class of artisans or common laborers anybody who conducted himself
with propriety was free to take a seat and call for any liquor that he
might prefer and thus the society was pretty miscellaneous in part
stationary but in some proportion fluctuating the household consisted of
the following five persons  mr williamson its head who was an old
man above seventy and was well fitted for his situation being civil and
not at all morose but at the same time firm in maintaining order 
mrs williamson his wife about ten years younger than himself a
little grand-daughter about nine years old a housemaid who was
nearly forty years old a young journeyman aged about twenty-six
belonging to some manufacturing establishment of what class i have
forgotten neither do i remember of what nation he was it was the
established rule at mr williamson's that exactly as the clock struck
eleven all the company without favor or exception moved off that was
one of the customs by which in so stormy a district mr williamson had
found it possible to keep his house free from brawls on the present
thursday night everything had gone on as usual except for one slight
shadow of suspicion which had caught the attention of more persons than
one perhaps at a less agitating time it would hardly have been noticed
but now when the first question and the last in all social meetings
turned upon the marrs and their unknown murderer it was a circumstance
naturally fitted to cause some uneasiness that a stranger of sinister
appearance in a wide surtout had flitted in and out of the room at
intervals during the evening had sometimes retired from the light into
obscure corners and by more than one person had been observed stealing
into the private passages of the house it was presumed in general that
the man must be known to williamson and in some slight degree as an
occasional customer of the house it is not impossible that he was
but afterwards this repulsive stranger with his cadaverous ghastliness
extraordinary hair and glazed eyes showing himself intermittingly
through the hours from to pm revolved upon the memory of all who
had steadily observed him with something of the same freezing effect as
belongs to the two assassins in macbeth who present themselves reeking
from the murder of banquo and gleaming dimly with dreadful faces from
the misty background athwart the pomps of the regal banquet

meantime the clock struck eleven the company broke up the door of
entrance was nearly closed and at this moment of general dispersion the
situation of the five inmates left upon the premises was precisely this
the three elders viz williamson his wife and his female servant were
all occupied on the ground floor williamson himself was drawing ale
porter c for those neighbors in whose favor the house-door had been
left ajar until the hour of twelve should strike mrs williamson and her
servant were moving to and fro between the back-kitchen and a little
parlor the little grand-daughter whose sleeping-room was on the
first floor which term in london means always the floor raised by
one flight of stairs above the level of the street had been fast asleep
since nine o'clock lastly the journeyman artisan had retired to rest for
some time he was a regular lodger in the house and his bedroom was on
the second floor for some time he had been undressed and had lain down
in bed being as a working man bound to habits of early rising he was
naturally anxious to fall asleep as soon as possible but on this
particular night his uneasiness arising from the recent murders at no
 rose to a paroxysm of nervous excitement which kept him awake it is
possible that from somebody he had heard of the suspicious-looking
stranger or might even personally observed him slinking about but were
it otherwise he was aware of several circumstances dangerously affecting
this house for instance the ruffianism of this whole neighborhood and
the disagreeable fact that the marrs had lived within a few doors of this
very house which again argued that the murderer also lived at no great
distance these were matters of general alarm but there were others
peculiar to this house in particular the notoriety of williamson's
opulence the belief whether well or ill founded that he accumulated in
desks and drawers the money continually flowing into his hands and
lastly the danger so ostentatiously courted by that habit of leaving the
house-door ajar through one entire hour and that hour loaded with extra
danger by the well-advertised assurance that no collision need be feared
with chance convivial visiters since all such people were banished at
eleven a regulation which had hitherto operated beneficially for the
character and comfort of the house now on the contrary under altered
circumstances became a positive proclamation of exposure and
defencelessness through one entire period of an hour williamson himself
it was said generally being a large unwieldy man past seventy and
signally inactive ought in prudence to make the locking of his door
coincident with the dismissal of his evening party

upon these and other grounds of alarm particularly this that mrs
williamson was reported to possess a considerable quantity of plate the
journeyman was musing painfully and the time might be within twenty-eight
or twenty-five minutes of twelve when all at once with a crash
proclaiming some hand of hideous violence the house-door was suddenly
shut and locked here then beyond all doubt was the diabolic man
clothed in mystery from no ratcliffe highway yes that dreadful
being who for twelve days had employed all thoughts and all tongues was
now too certainly in this defenceless house and would in a few
minutes be face to face with every one of its inmates a question still
lingered in the public mind whether at marr's there might not have been
two men at work if so there would be two at present and one of
the two would be immediately disposable for the up-stairs work since no
danger could obviously be more immediately fatal to such an attack than
any alarm given from an upper window to the passengers in the street
through one half-minute the poor panic-stricken man sat up motionless in
bed but then he rose his first movement being towards the door of his
room not for any purpose of securing it against intrusion too well he
knew that there was no fastening of any sort neither lock nor bolt nor
was there any such moveable furniture in the room as might have availed to
barricade the door even if time could be counted on for such an attempt
it was no effect of prudence merely the fascination of killing fear it
was that drove him to open the door one step brought him to the head of
the stairs he lowered his head over the balustrade in order to listen
and at that moment ascended from the little parlor this agonizing cry
from the woman-servant lord jesus christ we shall all be murdered
what a medusa's head must have lurked in those dreadful bloodless
features and those glazed rigid eyes that seemed rightfully belonging to
a corpse when one glance at them sufficed to proclaim a death-warrant

three separate death-struggles were by this time over and the poor
petrified journeyman quite unconscious of what he was doing in blind
passive self-surrender to panic absolutely descended both flights of
stairs infinite terror inspired him with the same impulse as might have
been inspired by headlong courage in his shirt and upon old decaying
stairs that at times creaked under his feet he continued to descend
until he had reached the lowest step but four the situation was
tremendous beyond any that is on record a sneeze a cough almost a
breathing and the young man would be a corpse without a chance or a
struggle for his life the murderer was at that time in the little parlor
 the door of which parlor faced you in descending the stairs and this
door stood ajar indeed much more considerably open than what is
understood by the term ajar of that quadrant or degrees which the
door would describe in swinging so far open as to stand at right angles to
the lobby or to itself in a closed position degrees at the least
were exposed consequently two out of three corpses were exposed to the
young man's gaze where was the third and the murderer where was he as
to the murderer he was walking rapidly backwards and forwards in the
parlor audible but not visible at first being engaged with something or
other in that part of the room which the door still concealed what the
something might be the sound soon explained he was applying keys
tentatively to a cupboard a closet and a scrutoire in the hidden part
of the room very soon however he came into view but fortunately for
the young man at this critical moment the murderer's purpose too
entirely absorbed him to allow of his throwing a glance to the staircase
on which else the white figure of the journeyman standing in motionless
horror would have been detected in one instant and seasoned for the
grave in the second as to the third corpse the missing corpse viz mr
williamson's that is in the cellar and how its local position can
be accounted for remains a separate question much discussed at the time
but never satisfactorily cleared up meantime that williamson was dead
became evident to the young man since else he would have been heard
stirring or groaning three friends therefore out of four whom the
young man had parted with forty minutes ago were now extinguished
remained therefore per cent a large per centage for williams to
leave remained in fact himself and his pretty young friend the little
grand-daughter whose childish innocence was still slumbering without fear
for herself or grief for her aged grand-parents if they are gone
for ever happily one friend for such he will prove himself indeed if
from such a danger he can save this child is pretty near to her but
alas he is still nearer to a murderer at this moment he is unnerved for
any exertion whatever he has changed into a pillar of ice for the
objects before him separated by just thirteen feet are these the
housemaid had been caught by the murderer on her knees she was kneeling
before the fire-grate which she had been polishing with black lead that
part of her task was finished and she had passed on to another task
viz the filling of the grate with wood and coals not for kindling at
this moment but so as to have it ready for kindling on the next day the
appearances all showed that she must have been engaged in this labor at
the very moment when the murderer entered and perhaps the succession of
the incidents arranged itself as follows from the awful ejaculation and
loud outcry to christ as overheard by the journeyman it was clear that
then first she had been alarmed yet this was at least one and a-half or
even two minutes after the door-slamming consequently the alarm which had
so fearfully and seasonably alarmed the young man must in some
unaccountable way have been misinterpreted by the two women it was said
at the time that mrs williamson labored under some dulness of hearing
and it was conjectured that the servant having her ears filled with the
noise of her own scrubbing and her head half under the grate might have
confounded it with the street noises or else might have imputed this
violent closure to some mischievous boys but howsoever explained the
fact was evident that until the words of appeal to christ the servant
had noticed nothing suspicious nothing which interrupted her labors if
so it followed that neither had mrs williamson noticed anything for in
that case she would have communicated her own alarm to the servant since
both were in the same small room apparently the course of things after
the murderer had entered the room was this mrs williamson had probably
not seen him from the accident of standing with her back to the door
her therefore before he was himself observed at all he had stunned and
prostrated by a shattering blow on the back of her head this blow
inflicted by a crow-bar had smashed in the hinder part of the skull she
fell and by the noise of her fall for all was the work of a moment had
first roused the attention of the servant who then uttered the cry which
had reached the young man but before she could repeat it the murderer
had descended with his uplifted instrument upon her head crushing
the skull inwards upon the brain both the women were irrecoverably
destroyed so that further outrages were needless and moreover the
murderer was conscious of the imminent danger from delay and yet in
spite of his hurry so fully did he appreciate the fatal consequences to
himself if any of his victims should so far revive into consciousness as
to make circumstantial depositions that by way of making this
impossible he had proceeded instantly to cut the throats of each all
this tallied with the appearances as now presenting themselves mrs
williamson had fallen backwards with her head to the door the servant
from her kneeling posture had been incapable of rising and had presented
her head passively to blows after which the miscreant had but to bend
her head backwards so as to expose her throat and the murder was
finished

it is remarkable that the young artisan paralyzed as he had been by fear
and evidently fascinated for a time so as to walk right towards the lion's
mouth yet found himself able to notice everything important the reader
must suppose him at this point watching the murderer whilst hanging over
the body of mrs williamson and whilst renewing his search for certain
important keys doubtless it was an anxious situation for the murderer
for unless he speedily found the keys wanted all this hideous tragedy
would end in nothing but a prodigious increase of the public horror in
tenfold precautions therefore and redoubled obstacles interposed between
himself and his future game nay there was even a nearer interest at
stake his own immediate safety might by a probable accident be
compromised most of those who came to the house for liquor were giddy
girls or children who on finding this house closed would go off
carelessly to some other but let any thoughtful woman or man come to the
door now a full quarter of an hour before the established time of
closing in that case suspicion would arise too powerful to be checked
there would be a sudden alarm given after which mere luck would decide
the event for it is a remarkable fact and one that illustrates the
singular inconsistency of this villain who being often so superfluously
subtle was in other directions so reckless and improvident that at this
very moment standing amongst corpses that had deluged the little parlor
with blood williams must have been in considerable doubt whether he had
any sure means of egress there were windows he knew to the back but
upon what ground they opened he seems to have had no certain information
and in a neighborhood so dangerous the windows of the lower story would
not improbably be nailed down those in the upper might be free but then
came the necessity of a leap too formidable from all this however the
sole practical inference was to hurry forward with the trial of further
keys and to detect the hidden treasure this it was this intense
absorption in one overmastering pursuit that dulled the murderer's
perceptions as to all around him otherwise he must have heard the
breathing of the young man which to himself at times became fearfully
audible as the murderer stood once more over the body of mrs williamson
and searched her pockets more narrowly he pulled out various clusters of
keys one of which dropping gave a harsh gingling sound upon the floor
at this time it was that the secret witness from his secret stand
noticed the fact of williams's surtout being lined with silk of the finest
quality one other fact he noticed which eventually became more
immediately important than many stronger circumstances of incrimination
this was that the shoes of the murderer apparently new and bought
probably with poor marr's money creaked as he walked harshly and
frequently with the new clusters of keys the murderer walked off to the
hidden section of the parlor and here at last was suggested to the
journeyman the sudden opening for an escape some minutes would be lost to
a certainty trying all these keys and subsequently in searching the
drawers supposing that the keys answered or in violently forcing them
supposing that they did not he might thus count upon a brief interval
of leisure whilst the rattling of the keys might obscure to the murderer
the creaking of the stairs under the re-ascending journeyman his plan
was now formed on regaining his bedroom he placed the bed against
the door by way of a transient retardation to the enemy that might give
him a short warning and in the worst extremity might give him a chance
for life by means of a desperate leap this change made as quietly as
possible he tore the sheets pillow-cases and blankets into broad
ribbons and after plaiting them into ropes spliced the different lengths
together but at the very first he descries this ugly addition to his
labors where shall he look for any staple hook bar or other fixture
from which his rope when twisted may safely depend measured from the
window-sill ie the lowest part of the window architrave there
count but twenty-two or twenty-three feet to the ground of this length
ten or twelve feet may be looked upon as cancelled because to that
extent he might drop without danger so much being deducted there would
remain say a dozen feet of rope to prepare but unhappily there is no
stout iron fixture anywhere about his window the nearest indeed the sole
fixture of that sort is not near to the window at all it is a spike
fixed for no reason at all that is apparent in the bed-tester now the
bed being shifted the spike is shifted and its distance from the window
having been always four feet is now seven seven entire feet therefore
must be added to that which would have sufficed if measured from the
window but courage god by the proverb of all nations in christendom
helps those that help themselves this our young man thankfully
acknowledges he reads already in the very fact of any spike at all being
found where hitherto it has been useless an earnest of providential aid
were it only for himself that he worked he could not feel himself
meritoriously employed but this is not so in deep sincerity he is now
agitated for the poor child whom he knows and loves every minute he
feels brings ruin nearer to her and as he passed her door his
first thought had been to take her out of bed in his arms and to carry
her where she might share his chances but on consideration he felt that
this sudden awaking of her and the impossibility of even whispering any
explanation would cause her to cry audibly and the inevitable
indiscretion of one would be fatal to the two as the alpine avalanches
when suspended above the traveller's head oftentimes we are told come
down through the stirring of the air by a simple whisper precisely on
such a tenure of a whisper was now suspended the murderous malice of the
man below no there is but one way to save the child towards her
deliverance the first step is through his own and he has made an
excellent beginning for the spike which too fearfully he had expected to
see torn away by any strain upon the half-carious wood stands firmly when
tried against the pressure of his own weight he has rapidly fastened on
to it three lengths of his new rope measuring eleven feet he plaits it
roughly so that only three feet have been lost in the intertwisting he
has spliced on a second length equal to the first so that already
sixteen feet are ready to throw out of the window and thus let the worst
come to the worst it will not be absolute ruin to swarm down the rope so
far as it will reach and then to drop boldly all this has been
accomplished in about six minutes and the hot contest between above and
below is steadily but fervently proceeding murderer is working hard in
the parlor journeyman is working hard in the bedroom miscreant is
getting on famously down-stairs one batch of bank-notes he has already
bagged and is hard upon the scent of a second he has also sprung a covey
of golden coins sovereigns as yet were not but guineas at this period
fetched thirty shillings a-piece and he has worked his way into a little
quarry of these murderer is almost joyous and if any creature is still
living in this house as shrewdly he suspects and very soon means to
know with that creature he would be happy before cutting the creature's
throat to drink a glass of something instead of the glass might he not
make a present to the poor creature of its throat oh no impossible
throats are a sort of thing that he never makes presents of business 
business must be attended to really the two men considered simply as men
of business are both meritorious like chorus and semi-chorus strophe
and antistrophe they work each against the other pull journeyman pull
murderer pull baker pull devil as regards the journeyman he is now
safe to his sixteen feet of which seven are neutralized by the distance
of the bed he has at last added six feet more which will be short of
reaching the ground by perhaps ten feet a trifle which man or boy may
drop without injury all is safe therefore for him which is more than
one can be sure of for miscreant in the parlor miscreant however takes
it coolly enough the reason being that with all his cleverness for
once in his life miscreant has been over-reached the reader and i know
but miscreant does not in the least suspect a little fact of some
importance viz that just now through a space of full three minutes he
has been overlooked and studied by one who though reading in a dreadful
book and suffering under mortal panic took accurate notes of so much as
his limited opportunities allowed him to see and will assuredly report
the creaking shoes and the silk-mounted surtout in quarters where such
little facts will tell very little to his advantage but although it is
true that mr williams unaware of the journeyman's having assisted at
the examination of mrs williamson's pockets could not connect any
anxiety with that person's subsequent proceedings nor specially
therefore with his having embarked in the rope-weaving line assuredly he
knew of reasons enough for not loitering and yet he did loiter
reading his acts by the light of such mute traces as he left behind him
the police became aware that latterly he must have loitered and the
reason which governed him is striking because at once it records that
murder was not pursued by him simply as a means to an end but also as an
end for itself mr williams had now been upon the premises for perhaps
fifteen or twenty minutes and in that space of time he had dispatched in
a style satisfactory to himself a considerable amount of business he had
done in commercial language a good stroke of business upon two
floors viz the cellar-floor and the ground-floor he has accounted
for all the population but there remained at least two floors more and
it now occurred to mr williams that although the landlord's somewhat
chilling manner had shut him out from any familiar knowledge of the
household arrangements too probably on one or other of those floors there
must be some throats as to plunder he has already bagged the whole and
it was next to impossible that any arrear the most trivial should still
remain for a gleaner but the throats the throats there it was that
arrears and gleanings might perhaps be counted on and thus it appeared
that in his wolfish thirst for blood mr williams put to hazard the
whole fruits of his night's work and his life into the bargain at this
moment if the murderer knew all could he see the open window above
stairs ready for the descent of the journeyman could he witness the life-
and-death rapidity with which that journeyman is working could he guess
at the almighty uproar which within ninety seconds will be maddening the
population of this populous district no picture of a maniac in flight of
panic or in pursuit of vengeance would adequately represent the agony of
haste with which he would himself be hurrying to the street-door for final
evasion that mode of escape was still free even at this moment there
yet remained time sufficient for a successful flight and therefore for
the following revolution in the romance of his own abominable life he had
in his pockets above a hundred pounds of booty means therefore for a
full disguise this very night if he will shave off his yellow hair and
blacken his eyebrows buying when morning light returns a dark-colored
wig and clothes such as may co-operate in personating the character of a
grave professional man he may elude all suspicions of impertinent
policemen may sail by any one of a hundred vessels bound for any port
along the huge line of sea-board stretching through twenty-four hundred
miles of the american united states may enjoy fifty years for leisurely
repentance and may even die in the odor of sanctity on the other hand
if he prefer active life it is not impossible that with his subtlety
hardihood and unscrupulousness in a land where the simple process of
naturalization converts the alien at once into a child of the family he
might rise to the president's chair might have a statue at his death and
afterwards a life in three volumes quarto with no hint glancing towards
no ratcliffe highway but all depends on the next ninety seconds
within that time there is a sharp turn to be taken there is a wrong turn
and a right turn should his better angel guide him to the right one all
may yet go well as regards this world's prosperity but behold in two
minutes from this point we shall see him take the wrong one and then
nemesis will be at his heels with ruin perfect and sudden

meantime if the murderer allows himself to loiter the ropemaker overhead
does not well he knows that the poor child's fate is on the edge
of a razor for all turns upon the alarm being raised before the murderer
reaches her bedside and at this very moment whilst desperate agitation
is nearly paralyzing his fingers he hears the sullen stealthy step of the
murderer creeping up through the darkness it had been the expectation of
the journeyman founded on the clamorous uproar with which the street-door
was slammed that williams when disposable for his up-stairs work would
come racing at a long jubilant gallop and with a tiger roar and perhaps
on his natural instincts he would have done so but this mode of
approach which was of dreadful effect when applied to a case of surprise
became dangerous in the case of people who might by this time have been
placed fully upon their guard the step which he had heard was on the
staircase but upon which stair he fancied upon the lowest and in a
movement so slow and cautious even this might make all the difference
yet might it not have been the tenth twelfth or fourteenth stair never
perhaps in this world did any man feel his own responsibility so cruelly
loaded and strained as at this moment did the poor journeyman on behalf
of the slumbering child lose but two seconds through awkwardness or
through the self-counteractions of panic and for her the total
difference arose between life and death still there is a hope and
nothing can so frightfully expound the hellish nature of him whose baleful
shadow to speak astrologically at this moment darkens the house of life
than the simple expression of the ground on which this hope rested the
journeyman felt sure that the murderer would not be satisfied to kill the
poor child whilst unconscious this would be to defeat his whole purpose
in murdering her at all to an epicure in murder such as williams it
would be taking away the very sting of the enjoyment if the poor child
should be suffered to drink off the bitter cup of death without fully
apprehending the misery of the situation but this luckily would require
time the double confusion of mind first from being roused up at so
unusual an hour and secondly from the horror of the occasion when
explained to her would at first produce fainting or some mode of
insensibility or distraction such as must occupy a considerable time the
logic of the case in short all rested upon the ultra fiendishness
of williams were he likely to be content with the mere fact of the
child's death apart from the process and leisurely expansion of its
mental agony in that case there would be no hope but because our
present murderer is fastidiously finical in his exactions a sort of
martinet in the scenical grouping and draping of the circumstances in his
murders therefore it is that hope becomes reasonable since all such
refinements of preparation demand time murders of mere necessity williams
was obliged to hurry but in a murder of pure voluptuousness entirely
disinterested where no hostile witness was to be removed no extra booty
to be gained and no revenge to be gratified it is clear that to hurry
would be altogether to ruin if this child therefore is to be saved it
will be on pure aesthetical considerations 

but all considerations whatever are at this moment suddenly cut short a
second step is heard on the stairs but still stealthy and cautious a
third and then the child's doom seems fixed but just at that moment all
is ready the window is wide open the rope is swinging free the
journeyman has launched himself and already he is in the first stage of
his descent simply by the weight of his person he descended and by the
resistance of his hands he retarded the descent the danger was that the
rope should run too smoothly through his hands and that by too rapid an
acceleration of pace he should come violently to the ground happily he
was able to resist the descending impetus the knots of the splicings
furnished a succession of retardations but the rope proved shorter by
four or five feet than he had calculated ten or eleven feet from the
ground he hung suspended in the air speechless for the present through
long-continued agitation and not daring to drop boldly on the rough
carriage pavement lest he should fracture his legs but the night was not
dark as it had been on occasion of the marr murders and yet for
purposes of criminal police it was by accident worse than the darkest
night that ever hid a murder or baffled a pursuit london from east to
west was covered with a deep pall rising from the river of universal
fog hence it happened that for twenty or thirty seconds the young man
hanging in the air was not observed his white shirt at length attracted
notice three or four people ran up and received him in their arms all
anticipating some dreadful annunciation to what house did he belong even
that was not instantly apparent but he pointed with his finger to
williamson's door and said in a half-choking whisper marr's murderer
now at work

all explained itself in a moment the silent language of the fact made its
own eloquent revelation the mysterious exterminator of no ratcliffe
highway had visited another house and behold one man only had escaped
through the air and in his night-dress to tell the tale
superstitiously there was something to check the pursuit of this
unintelligible criminal morally and in the interests of vindictive
justice there was everything to rouse quicken and sustain it

yes marr's murderer the man of mystery was again at work at this
moment perhaps extinguishing some lamp of life and not at any remote
place but here in the very house which the listeners to this dreadful
announcement were actually touching the chaos and blind uproar of the
scene which followed measured by the crowded reports in the journals of
many subsequent days and in one feature of that case has never to my
knowledge had its parallel or if a parallel only in one case what
followed i mean on the acquittal of the seven bishops at westminster in
 at present there was more than passionate enthusiasm the frenzied
movement of mixed horror and exultation the ululation of vengeance which
ascended instantaneously from the individual street and then by a sublime
sort of magnetic contagion from all the adjacent streets can be
adequately expressed only by a rapturous passage in shelley 

 the transport of a fierce and monstrous gladness
 spread through the multitudinous streets fast flying
 upon the wings of fear from his dull madness
 the starveling waked and died in joy the dying
 among the corpses in stark agony lying
 just heard the happy tidings and in hope
 closed their faint eyes from house to house replying
 with loud acclaim the living shook heaven's cope
 and fill'd the startled earth with echoes 

there was something indeed half inexplicable in the instantaneous
interpretation of the gathering shout according to its true meaning in
fact the deadly roar of vengeance and its sublime unity could
point in this district only to the one demon whose idea had brooded and
tyrannized for twelve days over the general heart every door every
window in the neighborhood flew open as if at a word of command
multitudes without waiting for the regular means of egress leaped down
at once from the windows on the lower story sick men rose from their
beds in one instance as if expressly to verify the image of shelley in
v a man whose death had been looked for through some days
and who actually did die on the following day rose armed himself
with a sword and descended in his shirt into the street the chance was a
good one and the mob were made aware of it for catching the wolfish dog
in the high noon and carnival of his bloody revels in the very centre of
his own shambles for a moment the mob was self-baffled by its own numbers
and its own fury but even that fury felt the call for self-control it
was evident that the massy street-door must be driven in since there was
no longer any living person to co-operate with their efforts from within
excepting only a female child crowbars dexterously applied in one minute
threw the door out of hangings and the people entered like a torrent it
may be guessed with what fret and irritation to their consuming fury a
signal of pause and absolute silence was made by a person of local
importance in the hope of receiving some useful communication the mob
became silent now listen said the man of authority and we shall
learn whether he is above-stairs or below immediately a noise was heard
as if of some one forcing windows and clearly the sound came from a
bedroom above yes the fact was apparent that the murderer was even yet
in the house he had been caught in a trap not having made himself
familiar with the details of williamson's house to all appearance he had
suddenly become a prisoner in one of the upper rooms towards this the
crowd now rushed impetuously the door however was found to be slightly
fastened and at the moment when this was forced a loud crash of the
window both glass and frame announced that the wretch had made his
escape he had leaped down and several persons in the crowd who burned
with the general fury leaped after him these persons had not troubled
themselves about the nature of the ground but now on making an
examination of it with torches they reported it to be an inclined plane
or embankment of clay very wet and adhesive the prints of the man's
footsteps were deeply impressed upon the clay and therefore easily traced
up to the summit of the embankment but it was perceived at once that
pursuit would be useless from the density of the mist two feet ahead of
you a man was entirely withdrawn from your power of identification and
on overtaking him you could not venture to challenge him as the same whom
you had lost sight of never through the course of a whole century could
there be a night expected more propitious to an escaping criminal means
of disguise williams now had in excess and the dens were innumerable in
the neighborhood of the river that could have sheltered him for years from
troublesome inquiries but favors are thrown away upon the reckless and
the thankless that night when the turning-point offered itself for his
whole future career williams took the wrong turn for out of mere
indolence he took the turn to his old lodgings that place which in all
england he had just now the most reason to shun

meantime the crowd had thoroughly searched the premises of williamson the
first inquiry was for the young grand-daughter williams it was evident
had gone into her room but in this room apparently it was that the sudden
uproar in the streets had surprised him after which his undivided
attention had been directed to the windows since through these only any
retreat had been left open to him even this retreat he owed only to the
fog and to the hurry of the moment and to the difficulty of approaching
the premises by the rear the little girl was naturally agitated by the
influx of strangers at that hour but otherwise through the humane
precautions of the neighbors she was preserved from all knowledge of the
dreadful events that had occurred whilst she herself was sleeping her
poor old grandfather was still missing until the crowd descended into the
cellar he was then found lying prostrate on the cellar floor apparently
he had been thrown down from the top of the cellar stairs and with so
much violence that one leg was broken after he had been thus disabled
williams had gone down to him and cut his throat there was much
discussion at the time in some of the public journals upon the
possibility of reconciling these incidents with other circumstantialities
of the case supposing that only one man had been concerned in the affair
that there was only one man concerned seems to be certain one
only was seen or heard at marr's one only and beyond all doubt the same
man was seen by the young journeyman in mrs williamson's parlor and one
only was traced by his footmarks on the clay embankment apparently the
course which he had pursued was this he had introduced himself to
williamson by ordering some beer this order would oblige the old man to
go down into the cellar williams would wait until he had reached it and
would then slam and lock the street-door in the violent way described
williamson would come up in agitation upon hearing this violence the
murderer aware that he would do so met him no doubt at the head of the
cellar stairs and threw him down after which he would go down to
consummate the murder in his ordinary way all this would occupy a minute
or a minute and a half and in that way the interval would be accounted
for that elapsed between the alarming sound of the street-door as heard by
the journeyman and the lamentable outcry of the female servant it is
evident also that the reason why no cry whatsoever had been heard from
the lips of mrs williamson is due to the positions of the parties as i
have sketched them coming behind mrs williamson unseen therefore and
from her deafness unheard the murderer would inflict entire abolition of
consciousness while she was yet unaware of his presence but with the
servant who had unavoidably witnessed the attack upon her mistress the
murderer could not obtain the same fulness of advantage and she
therefore had time for making an agonizing ejaculation

it has been mentioned that the murderer of the marrs was not for nearly a
fortnight so much as suspected meaning that previously to the williamson
murder no vestige of any ground for suspicion in any direction whatever
had occurred either to the general public or to the police but there were
two very limited exceptions to this state of absolute ignorance some of
the magistrates had in their possession something which when closely
examined offered a very probable means for tracing the criminal but as
yet they had not traced him until the friday morning next after
the destruction of the williamsons they had not published the important
fact that upon the ship-carpenter's mallet with which as regarded the
stunning or disabling process the murders had been achieved were
inscribed the letters j p this mallet had by a strange oversight on
the part of the murderer been left behind in marr's shop and it is an
interesting fact therefore that had the villain been intercepted by the
brave pawnbroker he would have been met virtually disarmed this public
notification was made officially on the friday viz on the thirteenth
day after the first murder and it was instantly followed as will be
seen by a most important result meantime within the secrecy of one
single bedroom in all london it is a fact that williams had been
whisperingly the object of very deep suspicion from the very first that
is within that same hour which witnessed the marr tragedy and singular
it is that the suspicion was due entirely to his own folly williams
lodged in company with other men of various nations at a public-house
in a large dormitory there were arranged five or six beds these were
occupied by artisans generally of respectable character one or two
englishmen there were one or two scotchmen three or four germans and
williams whose birth-place was not certainly known on the fatal saturday
night about half-past one o'clock when williams returned from his
dreadful labors he found the english and scotch party asleep but the
germans awake one of them was sitting up with a lighted candle in his
hands and reading aloud to the other two upon this williams said in an
angry and very peremptory tone oh put that candle out put it out
directly we shall all be burned in our beds had the british party in
the room been awake mr williams would have roused a mutinous protest
against this arrogant mandate but germans are generally mild and facile
in their tempers so the light was complaisantly extinguished yet as
there were no curtains it struck the germans that the danger was really
none at all for bed-clothes massed upon each other will no more burn
than the leaves of a closed book privately therefore the germans drew
an inference that mr williams must have had some urgent motive for
withdrawing his own person and dress from observation what this motive
might be the next day's news diffused all over london and of course at
this house not two furlongs from marr's shop made awfully evident and
as may well be supposed the suspicion was communicated to the other
members of the dormitory all of them however were aware of the legal
danger attaching under english law to insinuations against a man even
if true which might not admit of proof in reality had williams used the
most obvious precautions had he simply walked down to the thames not a
stone's-throw distant and flung two of his implements into the river no
conclusive proof could have been adduced against him and he might have
realized the scheme of courvoisier the murderer of lord william russell
 viz have sought each separate month's support in a separate well-
concerted murder the party in the dormitory meantime were satisfied
themselves but waited for evidences that might satisfy others no sooner
therefore had the official notice been published as to the initials j p
on the mallet than every man in the house recognized at once the well-
known initials of an honest norwegian ship-carpenter john petersen who
had worked in the english dockyards until the present year but having
occasion to revisit his native land had left his box of tools in the
garrets of this inn these garrets were now searched petersen's tool-
chest was found but wanting the mallet and on further examination
another overwhelming discovery was made the surgeon who examined the
corpses at williamson's had given it as his opinion that the throats were
not cut by means of a razor but of some implement differently shaped it
was now remembered that williams had recently borrowed a large french
knife of peculiar construction and accordingly from a heap of old lumber
and rags there was soon extricated a waistcoat which the whole house
could swear to as recently worn by williams in this waistcoat and glued
by gore to the lining of its pockets was found the french knife next it
was matter of notoriety to everybody in the inn that williams ordinarily
wore at present a pair of creaking shoes and a brown surtout lined with
silk many other presumptions seemed scarcely called for williams was
immediately apprehended and briefly examined this was on the friday on
the saturday morning viz fourteen days from the marr murders he was
again brought up the circumstantial evidence was overwhelming williams
watched its course but said very little at the close he was fully
committed for trial at the next sessions and it is needless to say that
on his road to prison he was pursued by mobs so fierce that under
ordinary circumstances there would have been small hope of escaping
summary vengeance but upon this occasion a powerful escort had been
provided so that he was safely lodged in jail in this particular jail at
this time the regulation was that at five o'clock p m all the
prisoners on the criminal side should be finally locked up for the night
and without candles for fourteen hours that is until seven o'clock on
the next morning they were left unvisited and in total darkness time
therefore williams had for committing suicide the means in other
respects were small one iron bar there was meant if i remember for the
suspension of a lamp upon this he had hanged himself by his braces at
what hour was uncertain some people fancied at midnight and in that
case precisely at the hour when fourteen days before he had been
spreading horror and desolation through the quiet family of poor marr now
was he forced into drinking of the same cup presented to his lips by the
same accursed hands

 

the case of the m'keans which has been specially alluded to merits also
a slight rehearsal for the dreadful picturesqueness of some two or three
amongst its circumstances the scene of this murder was at a rustic inn
some few miles i think from manchester and the advantageous situation
of this inn it was out of which arose the two fold temptations of the
case generally speaking an inn argues of course a close cincture of
neighbors as the original motive for opening such an establishment but
in this case the house individually was solitary so that no interruption
was to be looked for from any persons living within reach of screams and
yet on the other hand the circumjacent vicinity was eminently populous
as one consequence of which a benefit club had established its weekly
rendezvous in this inn and left the peculiar accumulations in their club-
room under the custody of the landlord this fund arose often to a
considerable amount fifty or seventy pounds before it was transferred to
the hands of a banker here therefore was a treasure worth some little
risk and a situation that promised next to none these attractive
circumstances had by accident become accurately known to one or both of
the two m'keans and unfortunately at a moment of overwhelming
misfortune to themselves they were hawkers and until lately had borne
most respectable characters but some mercantile crash had overtaken them
with utter ruin in which their joint capital had been swallowed up to the
last shilling this sudden prostration had made them desperate their own
little property had been swallowed up in a large social catastrophe and
society at large they looked upon as accountable to them for a robbery in
preying therefore upon society they considered themselves as pursuing a
wild natural justice of retaliation the money aimed at did certainly
assume the character of public money being the product of many separate
subscriptions they forgot however that in the murderous acts which too
certainly they meditated as preliminaries to the robbery they could plead
no such imaginary social precedent in dealing with a family that seemed
almost helpless if all went smoothly they relied entirely upon their own
bodily strength they were stout young men twenty-eight to thirty-two
years old somewhat undersized as to height but squarely built deep-
chested broad-shouldered and so beautifully formed as regarded the
symmetry of their limbs and their articulations that after their
execution the bodies were privately exhibited by the surgeons of the
manchester infirmary as objects of statuesque interest on the other
hand the household which they proposed to attack consisted of the
following four persons  the landlord a stoutish farmer but him they
intended to disable by a trick then newly introduced amongst robbers and
termed hocussing ie clandestinely drugging the liquor of the
victim with laudanum the landlord's wife a young servant woman 
a boy twelve or fourteen years old the danger was that out of four
persons scattered by possibility over a house which had two separate
exits one at least might escape and by better acquaintance with the
adjacent paths might succeed in giving an alarm to some of the houses a
furlong distant their final resolution was to be guided by circumstances
as to the mode of conducting the affair and yet as it seemed essential
to success that they should assume the air of strangers to each other it
was necessary that they should preconcert some general outline of their
plan since it would on this scheme be impossible without awaking violent
suspicions to make any communications under the eyes of the family this
outline included at the least one murder so much was settled but
otherwise their subsequent proceedings make it evident that they wished
to have as little bloodshed as was consistent with their final object on
the appointed day they presented themselves separately at the rustic inn
and at different hours one came as early as four o'clock in the
afternoon the other not until half-past seven they saluted each other
distantly and shyly and though occasionally exchanging a few words in
the character of strangers did not seem disposed to any familiar
intercourse with the landlord however on his return about eight o'clock
from manchester one of the brothers entered into a lively conversation
invited him to take a tumbler of punch and at a moment when the
landlord's absence from the room allowed it poured into the punch a
spoonful of laudanum some time after this the clock struck ten upon
which the elder m'kean professing to be weary asked to be shown up to
his bedroom for each brother immediately on arriving had engaged a bed
on this the poor servant girl had presented herself with a bed-candle to
light him upstairs at this critical moment the family were distributed
thus the landlord stupefied with the horrid narcotic which he had
drunk had retired to a private room adjoining the public room for the
purpose of reclining upon a sofa and he luckily for his own safety was
looked upon as entirely incapacitated for action the landlady was
occupied with her husband and thus the younger m'kean was left alone in
the public room he rose therefore softly and placed himself at the
foot of the stairs which his brother had just ascended so as to be sure
of intercepting any fugitive from the bedroom above into that room the
elder m'kean was ushered by the servant who pointed to two beds one of
which was already half occupied by the boy and the other empty in these
she intimated that the two strangers must dispose of themselves for the
night according to any arrangement that they might agree upon saying
this she presented him with the candle which he in a moment placed upon
the table and intercepting her retreat from the room threw his arm round
her neck with a gesture as though he meant to kiss her this was evidently
what she herself anticipated and endeavored to prevent her horror may be
imagined when she felt the perfidious hand that clasped her neck armed
with a razor and violently cutting her throat she was hardly able to
utter one scream before she sank powerless upon the floor this dreadful
spectacle was witnessed by the boy who was not asleep but had presence
of mind enough instantly to close his eyes the murderer advanced hastily
to the bed and anxiously examined the expression of the boy's features
satisfied he was not and he then placed his hand upon the boy's heart in
order to judge by its beatings whether he were agitated or not this was a
dreadful trial and no doubt the counterfeit sleep would immediately have
been detected when suddenly a dreadful spectacle drew off the attention
of the murderer solemnly and in ghostly silence uprose in her dying
delirium the murdered girl she stood upright she walked steadily for a
moment or two she bent her steps towards the door the murderer turned
away to pursue her and at that moment the boy feeling that his one
solitary chance was to fly while this scene was in progress bounded out
of bed on the landing at the head of the stairs was one murderer at the
foot of the stairs was the other who could believe that the boy had the
shadow of a chance for escaping and yet in the most natural way he
surmounted all hindrances in the boy's horror he laid his left hand on
the balustrade and took a flying leap over it which landed him at the
bottom of the stairs without having touched a single stair he had thus
effectually passed one of the murderers the other it is true was still
to be passed and this would have been impossible but for a sudden
accident the landlady had been alarmed by the faint scream of the young
woman had hurried from her private room to the girl's assistance but at
the foot of the stairs had been intercepted by the younger brother and
was at this moment struggling with him the confusion of this life-and-
death conflict had allowed the boy to whirl past them luckily he took a
turn into a kitchen out of which was a back-door fastened by a single
bolt that ran freely at a touch and through this door he rushed into the
open fields but at this moment the elder brother was set free for pursuit
by the death of the poor girl there is no doubt that in her delirium the
image moving through her thoughts was that of the club which met once a-
week she fancied it no doubt sitting and to this room for help and for
safety she staggered along she entered it and within the doorway once
more she dropped down and instantly expired her murderer who had
followed her closely now saw himself set at liberty for the pursuit of
the boy at this critical moment all was at stake unless the boy were
caught the enterprise was ruined he passed his brother therefore and
the landlady without pausing and rushed through the open door into the
fields by a single second perhaps he was too late the boy was keenly
aware that if he continued in sight he would have no chance of escaping
from a powerful young man he made therefore at once for a ditch into
which he tumbled headlong had the murderer ventured to make a leisurely
examination of the nearest ditch he would easily have found the boy made
so conspicuous by his white shirt but he lost all heart upon failing at
once to arrest the boy's flight and every succeeding second made his
despair the greater if the boy had really effected his escape to the
neighboring farm-house a party of men might be gathered within five
minutes and already it might have become difficult for himself and his
brother unacquainted with the field paths to evade being intercepted
nothing remained therefore but to summon his brother away thus it
happened that the landlady though mangled escaped with life and
eventually recovered the landlord owed his safety to the stupefying
potion and the baffled murderers had the misery of knowing that their
dreadful crime had been altogether profitless the road indeed was now
open to the club-room and probably forty seconds would have sufficed to
carry off the box of treasure which afterwards might have been burst open
and pillaged at leisure but the fear of intercepting enemies was too
strongly upon them and they fled rapidly by a road which carried them
actually within six feet of the lurking boy that night they passed
through manchester when daylight returned they slept in a thicket twenty
miles distant from the scene of their guilty attempt on the second and
third nights they pursued their march on foot resting again during the
day about sunrise on the fourth morning they were entering some village
near kirby lonsdale in westmoreland they must have designedly quitted
the direct line of route for their object was ayrshire of which county
they were natives and the regular road would have led them through shap
penrith carlisle probably they were seeking to elude the persecution of
the stage-coaches which for the last thirty hours had been scattering
at all the inns and road-side cabarets hand-bills describing their
persons and dress it happened perhaps through design that on this
fourth morning they had separated so as to enter the village ten minutes
apart from each other they were exhausted and footsore in this condition
it was easy to stop them a blacksmith had silently reconnoitred them and
compared their appearance with the description of the hand-bills they
were then easily overtaken and separately arrested their trial and
condemnation speedily followed at lancaster and in those days it
followed of course that they were executed otherwise their case fell so
far within the sheltering limits of what would now be regarded as
extenuating circumstances that whilst a murder more or less was not to
repel them from their object very evidently they were anxious to
economize the bloodshed as much as possible immeasurable therefore was
the interval which divided them from the monster williams they perished
on the scaffold williams as i have said by his own hand and in
obedience to the law as it then stood he was buried in the centre of a
quadrivium or conflux of four roads in this case four streets
with a stake driven through his heart and over him drives for ever the
uproar of unresting london


footnotes

 see miscellaneous essays p 

 i am not sure whether southey held at this time his appointment to the
editorship of the edinburgh annual register if he did no doubt in the
domestic section of that chronicle will be found an excellent account of
the whole

 an artist told me in this year that having accidentally seen a
native devonshire regiment either volunteers or militia nine hundred
strong marching past a station at which he had posted himself he did not
observe a dozen men that would not have been described in common parlance
as good looking

 i do not remember chronologically the history of gas-lights but in
london long after mr winsor had shown the value of gas-lighting and its
applicability to street purposes various districts were prevented for
many years from resorting to the new system in consequence of old
contracts with oil-dealers subsisting through long terms of years

 let the reader who is disposed to regard as exaggerated or romantic
the pure fiendishness imputed to williams recollect that except for the
luxurious purpose of basking and revelling in the anguish of dying
despair he had no motive at all small or great for attempting the
murder of this young girl she had seen nothing heard nothing was fast
asleep and her door was closed so that as a witness against him he
knew that she was as useless as any one of the three corpses and yet he
was making preparations for her murder when the alarm in the street
interrupted him

 revolt of islam canto xii

 see his bitter letters to lady suffolk




the true relations of the bible to merely human science


it is sometimes said that a religious messenger from god does not come
amongst men for the sake of teaching truths in science or of correcting
errors in science most justly is this said but often in terms far too
feeble for generally these terms are such as to imply that although no
direct and imperative function of his mission it was yet open to him as
a permissible function that although not pressing with the force of an
obligation upon the missionary it was yet at his discretion if not to
correct other men's errors yet at least in his own person to speak with
scientific precision i contend that it was not i contend that to
have uttered the truths of astronomy of geology c at the era of new-
born christianity was not only below and beside the purposes of a
religion but would have been against them even upon errors of a far
more important class than errors in science can ever be superstitions
for instance that degraded the very idea of god prejudices and false
usages that laid waste human happiness such as slavery and many
hundreds of other abuses that might be mentioned the rule evidently
acted upon by the founder of christianity was this given the purification
of the well-head once assumed that the fountains of truth are cleansed
all these derivative currents of evil will cleanse themselves as a
general rule the branches of error were disregarded and the roots only
attacked if then so lofty a station was taken with regard even to such
errors as really had moral and spiritual relations how much more with
regard to the comparative trifles as in the ultimate relations of human
nature they are of merely human science but for my part i go further
and assert that upon three reasons it was impossible for any messenger
from god or offering himself in that character to have descended into
the communication of truth merely scientific or economic or worldly and
the three reasons are these first because such a descent would have
degraded his mission by lowering it to the base level of a collusion with
human curiosity or in the most favorable case of a collusion with petty
and transitory interests secondly because it would have ruined his
mission by disturbing its free agency and misdirecting its energies in
two separate modes first by destroying the spiritual auctoritas the
prestige and consideration of the missionary secondly by vitiating the
spiritual atmosphere of his audience that is corrupting and misdirecting
the character of their thoughts and expectations he that in the early
days of christianity should have proclaimed the true theory of the solar
system or that by any chance word or allusion should then in a condition
of man so little prepared to receive such truths have asserted or assumed
the daily motion of the earth on its own axis or its annual motion round
the sun would have found himself entangled at once and irretrievably in
the following unmanageable consequences first of all and
instantaneously he would have been roused to the alarming fact that by
this dreadful indiscretion he himself the professed deliverer of a new
and spiritual religion had in a moment untuned the spirituality of his
audience he would find that he had awakened within them the passion of
curiosity the most unspiritual of passions and of curiosity in a fierce
polemic shape the very safest step in so deplorable a situation would be
instantly to recant already by this one may estimate the evil when such
would be its readiest palliation for in what condition would the
reputation of the teacher be left for discretion and wisdom as an
intellectual guide when his first act must be to recant and to recant
what to the whole body of his hearers would wear the character of a
lunatic proposition such considerations might possibly induce him not
to recant but in that case the consequences are far worse having once
allowed himself to sanction what his hearers regard as the most monstrous
of paradoxes he has no liberty of retreat open to him he must stand to
the promises of his own acts uttering the first truth of a science he is
pledged to the second taking the main step he is committed to all which
follow he is thrown at once upon the endless controversies which science
in every stage provokes and in none more than in the earliest starting
besides from the authority of a divine mission he could not as others
might have the privilege of selecting arbitrarily or partially if upon
one science then upon all if upon science then upon art if upon art
and science then upon every branch of social economy his reformations
and advances are equally due due as to all if due as to any to move in
one direction is constructively to undertake for all without power to
retreat he has thus thrown the intellectual interests of his followers
into a channel utterly alien to the purposes of a spiritual mission

the spiritual mission therefore the purpose for which only the religious
teacher was sent has now perished altogether overlaid and confounded by
the merely scientific wranglings to which his own inconsiderate
precipitance has opened the door but suppose at this point that the
teacher aware at length of the mischief which he has caused and seeing
that the fatal error of uttering one solitary novel truth upon a matter of
mere science is by inevitable consequence to throw him upon a road leading
altogether away from the proper field of his mission takes the laudable
course of confessing his error and of attempting a return into his proper
spiritual province this may be his best course yet after all it will
not retrieve his lost ground he returns with a character confessedly
damaged his very excuse rests upon the blindness and shortsightedness
which forbade his anticipating the true and natural consequences neither
will his own account of the case be generally accepted he will not be
supposed to retreat from further controversy as inconsistent with
spiritual purposes but because he finds himself unequal to the dispute
and in the very best case he is by his own acknowledgment tainted with
human infirmity he has been ruined for a servant of inspiration and how
by a process let it be remembered of which all the steps are inevitable
under the same agency that is in the case of any primitive christian
teacher having attempted to speak the language of scientific truth in
dealing with the phenomena of astronomy geology or of any merely human
knowledge

now thirdly and lastly in order to try the question in an extreme form
let it be supposed that aided by powers of working miracles some early
apostle of christianity should actually have succeeded in carrying through
the copernican system of astronomy as an article of blind belief sixteen
centuries before the progress of man's intellect had qualified him for
naturally developing that system what in such a case would be the true
estimate and valuation of the achievement simply this that he had thus
succeeded in cancelling and counteracting a determinate scheme of divine
discipline and training for man wherefore did god give to man the powers
for contending with scientific difficulties wherefore did he lay a secret
train of continual occasions that should rise by relays through scores
of generations for provoking and developing those activities in man's
intellect if after all he is to send a messenger of his own more than
human to intercept and strangle all these great purposes this is to
mistake the very meaning and purposes of a revelation a revelation is not
made for the purpose of showing to indolent men that which by faculties
already given to them they may show to themselves no but for the
purpose of showing that which the moral darkness of man will not
without supernatural light allow him to perceive with disdain
therefore must every thoughtful person regard the notion that god could
wilfully interfere with his own plans by accrediting ambassadors to
reveal astronomy or any other science which he has commanded men by
qualifying men to reveal for themselves

even as regards astronomy a science so nearly allying itself to religion
by the loftiness and by the purity of its contemplations scripture is
nowhere the parent of any doctrine nor so much as the silent
sanctioner of any doctrine it is made impossible for scripture to teach
falsely by the simple fact that scripture on such subjects will not
condescend to teach at all the bible adopts the erroneous language of men
which at any rate it must do in order to make itself understood not by
way of sanctioning a theory but by way of using a fact the bible for
instance uses postulates the phenomena of day and night of
summer and winter and in relation to their causes speaks by the same
popular and inaccurate language which is current for ordinary purposes
even amongst the most scientific of astronomers for the man of science
equally with the populace talks of the sun as rising and setting as
having finished half his day's journey c and without pedantry could
not in many cases talk otherwise but the results which are all that
concern scripture are equally true whether accounted for by one
hypothesis which is philosophically just or by another which is popular
and erring

now on the other hand in geology and cosmology the case is stronger
here there is no opening for a compliance even with a language that is
erroneous for no language at all is current upon subjects that have never
engaged the popular attention here where there is no such stream of
apparent phenomena running counter as in astronomy there is to the real
phenomena neither is there any popular language opposed to the
scientific the whole are abtruse speculations even as regards their
objects nor dreamed of as possibilities either in their true aspects or
their false aspects till modern times the scriptures therefore nowhere
allude to such sciences either as taking the shape of histories applied
to processes current and in movement or as taking the shape of theories
applied to processes past and accomplished the mosaic cosmogony indeed
gives the succession of natural births and probably the general outline
of such a succession will be more and more confirmed as geology advances
but as to the time the duration of this successive evolution it is the
idlest of notions that the scriptures either have or could have
condescended to human curiosity upon so awful a prologue to the drama of
this world genesis would no more have indulged so mean a passion with
respect to the mysterious inauguration of the world than the apocalypse
with respect to its mysterious close yet the six days of moses days
but is it possible that human folly should go the length of understanding
by the mosaical day the mysterious day of that awful agency which
moulded the heavens and the heavenly host no more than the ordinary
nychthemeron or cycle of twenty-four hours the period implied in a
day when used in relation to the inaugural manifestation of
creative power in that vast drama which introduces god to man in the
character of a demiurgus or creator of the world indicated one stage
amongst six involving probably many millions of years the silliest of
nurses in her nursery babble could hardly suppose that the mighty
process began on a monday morning and ended on saturday night if we are
seriously to study the value and scriptural acceptation of scriptural
words and phrases i presume that our first business will be to collate
the use of these words in one part of scripture with their use in other
parts holding the same spiritual relations the creation for instance
does not belong to the earthly or merely historical records but to the
spiritual records of the bible to the same category therefore as the
prophetic sections of the bible now in those and in the psalms how do
we understand the word day is any man so little versed in biblical
language as not to know that except in the merely historical parts of
the jewish records every section of time has a secret and separate
acceptation in the scriptures does an aeon though a grecian word bear
scripturally either in daniel or in st john any sense known to grecian
ears do the seventy weeks of the prophet mean weeks in the sense
of human calendars already the psalms xc already st peter d
epist warn us of a peculiar sense attached to the word day in
divine ears and who of the innumerable interpreters understands the
twelve hundred and sixty days in daniel or his two thousand and odd days
to mean by possibility periods of twenty-four hours surely the theme of
moses was as mystical and as much entitled to the benefit of mystical
language as that of the prophets

the sum of this matter is this god by a hebrew prophet is sublimely
described as the revealer and in variation of his own expression
the same prophet describes him as the being that knoweth the darkness
under no idea can the relations of god to man be more grandly expressed
but of what is he the revealer not surely of those things which he has
enabled man to reveal for himself but of those things which were it not
through special light from heaven must eternally remain sealed up in
inaccessible darkness on this principle we should all laugh at a revealed
cookery but essentially the same ridicule not more and not less
applies to a revealed astronomy or a revealed geology as a fact there
is no such astronomy or geology as a possibility by the a priori
argument which i have used viz that a revelation on such fields would
counteract other machineries of providence there can be no such
astronomy or geology in the bible consequently there is none
consequently there can be no schism or feud upon these subjects between
the bible and the philosophies outside




schlosser's literary history of the eighteenth century


in the person of this mr schlosser is exemplified a common abuse not
confined to literature an artist from the italian opera of london and
paris making a professional excursion to our provinces is received
according to the tariff of the metropolis no one being bold enough to
dispute decisions coming down from the courts above in that particular
case there is seldom any reason to complain since really out of germany
and italy there is no city if you except paris and london possessing
materials in that field of art for the composition of an audience
large enough to act as a court of revision it would be presumption in the
provincial audience so slightly trained to good music and dancing if it
should affect to reverse a judgment ratified in the supreme capital the
result therefore is practically just if the original verdict was just
what was right from the first cannot be made wrong by iteration yet even
in such a case there is something not satisfactory to a delicate sense of
equity for the artist returns from the tour as if from some new and
independent triumph whereas all is but the reverberation of an old one
it seems a new access of sunlight whereas it is but a reflex illumination
from satellites

in literature the corresponding case is worse an author passing by means
of translation before a foreign people ought de jure to find himself
before a new tribunal but de facto he does not like the opera artist
but not with the same propriety he comes before a court that never
interferes to disturb a judgment but only to re-affirm it and he returns
to his native country quartering in his armorial bearings these new
trophies as though won by new trials when in fact they are due to
servile ratifications of old ones when sue or balzac hugo or george
sand comes before an english audience the opportunity is invariably lost
for estimating them at a new angle of sight all who dislike them lay them
aside whilst those only apply themselves seriously to their study who
are predisposed to the particular key of feeling through which originally
these authors had prospered and thus a new set of judges that might
usefully have modified the narrow views of the old ones fall by mere
inertia into the humble character of echoes and sounding-boards to swell
the uproar of the original mob

in this way is thrown away the opportunity not only of applying
corrections to false national tastes but oftentimes even to the unfair
accidents of luck that befall books for it is well known to all
who watch literature with vigilance that books and authors have their
fortunes which travel upon a far different scale of proportions from
those that measure their merits not even the caprice or the folly of the
reading public is required to account for this very often indeed the
whole difference between an extensive circulation for one book and none
at all for another of about equal merit belongs to no particular
blindness in men but to the simple fact that the one has whilst
the other has not been brought effectually under the eyes of the
public by far the greater part of books are lost not because they are
rejected but because they are never introduced in any proper sense of
the word very few books are published technically they are published
which means that for six or ten times they are advertised but they are
not made known to attentive ears or to ears prepared for attention
and amongst the causes which account for this difference in the fortune of
books although there are many we may reckon as foremost personal
accidents of position in the authors for instance with us in england it
will do a bad book no ultimate service that it is written by a lord or
a bishop or a privy counsellor or a member of parliament though
undoubtedly it will do an instant service it will sell an edition or
so this being the case it being certain that no rank will reprieve a bad
writer from final condemnation the sycophantic glorifier of the public
fancies his idol justified but not so a bad book it is true will not
be saved by advantages of position in the author but a book moderately
good will be extravagantly aided by such advantages lectures on
christianity that happened to be respectably written and delivered had
prodigious success in my young days because also they happened to be
lectures of a prelate three times the ability would not have procured
them any attention had they been the lectures of an obscure curate yet on
the other hand it is but justice to say that if written with three
times less ability lawn-sleeves would not have given them buoyancy
but on the contrary they would have sunk the bishop irrecoverably
whilst the curate favored by obscurity would have survived for another
chance so again and indeed more than so as to poetry lord carlisle
of the last generation wrote tolerable verses they were better than lord
roscommon's which for one hundred and fifty years the judicious public
has allowed the booksellers to incorporate along with other refuse of the
seventeenth and eighteenth century into the costly collections of the
british poets and really if you will insist on odious comparisons
they were not so very much below the verses of an amiable prime minister
known to us all yet because they wanted vital stamina not only they
fell but in falling they caused the earl to reel much more than any
commoner would have done now on the other hand a kinsman of lord
carlisle viz lord byron because he brought real genius and power to
the effort found a vast auxiliary advantage in a peerage and a very
ancient descent on these double wings he soared into a region of public
interest far higher than ever he would have reached by poetic power
alone not only all his rubbish which in quantity is great passed for
jewels but also what are incontestably jewels have been and will be
valued at a far higher rate than if they had been raised from less
aristocratic mines so fatal for mediocrity so gracious for real power
is any adventitious distinction from birth station or circumstances of
brilliant notoriety in reality the public our never-sufficiently-to-be-
respected mother is the most unutterable sycophant that ever the clouds
dropped their rheum upon she is always ready for jacobinical scoffs at a
man for being a lord if he happens to fail she is always ready for
toadying a lord if he happens to make a hit ah dear sycophantic old
lady i kiss your sycophantic hands and wish heartily that i were a duke
for your sake

it would be a mistake to fancy that this tendency to confound real merit
and its accidents of position is at all peculiar to us or to our age dr
sacheverell by embarking his small capital of talent on the springtide of
a furious political collision brought back an ampler return for his
little investment than ever did wickliffe or luther such was his
popularity in the heart of love and the heart of hatred that he would
have been assassinated by the whigs on his triumphal progresses through
england had he not been canonized by the tories he was a dead man if he
had not been suddenly gilt and lacquered as an idol neither is the case
peculiar at all to england ronge the ci-devant romish priest whose
name pronounce as you would the english word wrong supposing that it
had for a second syllable the final a of sopha ie wronguh
has been found a wrong-headed man by all parties and in a venial degree
is perhaps a stupid man but he moves about with more eclat by far
than the ablest man in germany and in days of old the man that burned
down a miracle of beauty viz the temple of ephesus protesting with
tears in his eyes that he had no other way of getting himself a name
has got it in spite of us all he's booked for a ride down all history
whether you and i like it or not every pocket dictionary knows that
erostratus was that scamp so of martin the man that parboiled or par-
roasted york minster some ten or twelve years back that fellow will float
down to posterity with the annals of the glorious cathedral he will

 pursue the triumph and partake the gale

whilst the founders and benefactors of the minster are practically
forgotten

these incendiaries in short are as well known as ephesus or york but
not one of us can tell without humming and hawing who it was that
rebuilt the ephesian wonder of the world or that repaired the time-
honored minster equally in literature not the weight of service done or
the power exerted is sometimes considered chiefly either of these must
be very conspicuous before it will be considered at all but the splendor
or the notoriety or the absurdity or even the scandalousness of the
circumstances surrounding the author

schlosser must have benefitted in some such adventitious way before he
ever could have risen to his german celebrity what was it that
raised him to his momentary distinction was it something very wicked that
he did or something very brilliant that he said i should rather
conjecture that it must have been something inconceivably absurd which he
proposed any one of the three achievements stands good in germany for a
reputation but however it were that mr schlosser first gained his
reputation mark what now follows on the wings of this equivocal
reputation he flies abroad to paris and london there he thrives not by
any approving experience or knowledge of his works but through blind
faith in his original german public and back he flies afterwards to
germany as if carrying with him new and independent testimonies to his
merit and from two nations that are directly concerned in his violent
judgments whereas which is the simple truth he carries back a careless
reverberation of his first german character from those who have far too
much to read for declining aid from vicarious criticism when it will spare
that effort to themselves thus it is that german critics become audacious
and libellous kohl von raumer dr carus physician to the king of
saxony by means of introductory letters floating them into circles far
above any they had seen in homely germany are qualified by our own
negligence and indulgence for mounting a european tribunal from which
they pronounce malicious edicts against ourselves sentinels present arms
to von raumer at windsor because he rides in a carriage of queen
adelaide's and von raumer immediately conceives himself the chancellor of
all christendom keeper of the conscience to universal europe upon all
questions of art manners politics or any conceivable intellectual
relations of england schlosser meditates the same career

but have i any right to quote schlosser's words from an english
translation i do so only because this happens to be at hand and the
german not german books are still rare in this country though more by
one thousand to one than they were thirty years ago but i have a full
right to rely on the english of mr davison i hold in my hand as
gentlemen so often say at public meetings a certificate from herr
schlosser that to quote mr davison is to quote him the english
translation is one which mr schlosser durchgelesen hat und fur deren
genauigkeit und richtigkeit er burgt has read through and for the
accuracy and propriety of which he pledges himself mr schossler was so
anxious for the spiritual welfare of us poor islanders that he not only
read it through but he has even aufmerksam durchgelesen it read
it through wide awake und gepruft and carefully examined it nay he
has done all this in company with the translator oh ye athenians how
hard do i labor to earn your applause and as the result of such
herculean labors a second time he makes himself surety for its precision
er burgt also dafur wie fur seine eigne arbeit he guarantees it
accordingly as he would his own workmanship were it not for this
unlimited certificate i should have sent for the book to germany as it
is i need not wait and all complaints on this score i defy above all
from herr schlosser 

in dealing with an author so desultory as mr schlosser the critic has a
right to an extra allowance of desultoriness for his own share so
excuse me reader for rushing at once in medias res

of swift mr schlosser selects for notice three works the drapier's
letters gulliver's travels and the tale of a tub with respect to
the first as it is a necessity of mr s to be forever wrong in his
substratum of facts he adopts the old erroneous account of wood's
contract as to the copper coinage and of the imaginary wrong which it
inflicted on ireland of all swift's villainies for the sake of
popularity and still more for the sake of wielding this popularity
vindictively none is so scandalous as this in any new life of swift the
case must be stated de novo even sir walter scott is not impartial and
for the same reason as now forces me to blink it viz the difficulty of
presenting the details in a readable shape gulliver's travels schlosser
strangely considers spun out to an intolerable extent many evil things
might be said of gulliver but not this the captain is anything but
tedious and indeed it becomes a question of mere mensuration that can
be settled in a moment a year or two since i had in my hands a pocket
edition comprehending all the four parts of the worthy skipper's
adventures within a single volume of pages some part of the space was
also wasted on notes often very idle now the st part contains two
separate voyages lilliput and blefuscu the d one the d five
and the th one so that in all this active navigator who has
enriched geography i hope with something of a higher quality than your
old muffs that thought much of doubling cape horn here gives us nine
great discoveries far more surprising than the pretended discoveries of
sinbad which are known to be fabulous averaging quam proxime forty-
seven small mo pages each oh you unconscionable german built round in
your own country with circumvallations of impregnable tos oftentimes
dark and dull as avernus that you will have the face to describe dear
excellent captain lemuel gulliver of redriff and subsequently of newark
that darling of children and men as tedious it is exactly because he
is not tedious because he does not shoot into german foliosity that
schlosser finds him intolerable i have justly transferred to
gulliver's use the words originally applied by the poet to the robin-
redbreast for it is remarkable that gulliver and the arabian nights
are amongst the few books where children and men find themselves meeting
and jostling each other this was the case from its first publication
just one hundred and twenty years since it was received says dr
johnson with such avidity that the price of the first edition was
raised before the second could be made it was read by the high and the
low the learned and the illiterate criticism was lost in wonder now on
the contrary schlosser wonders not at all but simply criticises which
we could bear if the criticism were even ingenious whereas he utterly
misunderstands swift and is a malicious calumniator of the captain who
luckily roaming in sherwood and thinking often with a sigh of his
little nurse glumdalclitch would trouble himself slightly about what
heidelberg might say in the next century there is but one example on our
earth of a novel received with such indiscriminate applause as gulliver
and that was don quixote many have been welcomed joyfully by a class
 these two by a people now could that have happened had it been
characterized by dulness of all faults it could least have had that
as to the tale of a tub schlosser is in such cimmerian vapors that no
system of bellows could blow open a shaft or tube through which he might
gain a glimpse of the english truth and daylight it is useless talking to
such a man on such a subject i consign him to the attentions of some
patriotic irishman

schlosser however is right in a graver reflection which he makes upon
the prevailing philosophy of swift viz that all his views were
directed towards what was immediately beneficial which is the
characteristic of savages this is undeniable the meanness of swift's
nature and his rigid incapacity for dealing with the grandeurs of the
human spirit with religion with poetry or even with science when it
rose above the mercenary practical is absolutely appalling his own
yahoo is not a more abominable one-sided degradation of humanity
than is he himself under this aspect and perhaps it places this
incapacity of his in its strongest light when we recur to the fact of his
astonishment at a religious princess refusing to confer a bishoprick
upon one that had treated the trinity and all the profoundest mysteries
of christianity not with mere scepticism or casual sneer but with set
pompous merriment and farcical buffoonery this dignitary of the church
dean of the most conspicuous cathedral in ireland had in full
canonicals made himself into a regular mountebank for the sake of giving
fuller effect by the force of contrast to the silliest of jests directed
against all that was most inalienable from christianity ridiculing such
things could he in any just sense be thought a christian but as
schlosser justly remarks even ridiculing the peculiarities of luther and
calvin as he did ridicule them swift could not be thought other
than constitutionally incapable of religion even a pagan philosopher if
made to understand the case would be incapable of scoffing at any
form natural or casual simple or distorted which might be
assumed by the most solemn of problems problems that rest with the weight
of worlds upon the human spirit 

 fix'd fate free-will fore-knowledge absolute

the destiny of man or the relations of man to god anger therefore
swift might feel and he felt it to the end of his most wretched
life but what reasonable ground had a man of sense for astonishment 
that a princess who according to her knowledge was sincerely pious
should decline to place such a man upon an episcopal throne this argues
beyond a doubt that swift was in that state of constitutional irreligion
irreligion from a vulgar temperament which imputes to everybody else its
own plebeian feelings people differed he fancied not by more and less
religion but by more and less dissimulations and therefore it seemed
to him scandalous that a princess who must of course in her heart
regard in common with himself all mysteries as solemn masques and
mummeries should pretend in a case of downright serious business to pump
up out of dry conventional hoaxes any solid objection to a man of his
shining merit the trinity for instance that he viewed as the
password which the knowing ones gave in answer to the challenge of the
sentinel but as soon as it had obtained admission for the party within
the gates of the camp it was rightly dismissed to oblivion or to
laughter no case so much illustrates swift's essential irreligion since
if he had shared in ordinary human feelings on such subjects not only he
could not have been surprised at his own exclusion from the bench of
bishops after such ribaldries but originally he would have abstained
from them as inevitable bars to clerical promotion even upon principles
of public decorum

as to the style of swift mr schlosser shows himself without
sensibility in his objections as the often hackneyed english reader shows
himself without philosophic knowledge of style in his applause schlosser
thinks the style of gulliver somewhat dull this shows schlosser's
presumption in speaking upon a point where he wanted st original
delicacy of tact and dly familiar knowledge of english gulliver's
style is purposely touched slightly with that dulness of
circumstantiality which besets the excellent but somewhat dull race of
men old sea captains yet it wears only an aerial tint of dulness the
felicity of this coloring in swift's management is that it never goes the
length of wearying but only of giving a comic air of downright wapping
and rotherhithe verisimilitude all men grow dull and ought to be dull
that live under a solemn sense of eternal danger one inch only of plank
often worm-eaten between themselves and the grave and also that see
for ever one wilderness of waters sublime but like the wilderness on
shore monotonous all sublime people being monotonous have a tendency
to be dull and sublime things also milton and aeschylus the sublimest
of men are crossed at times by a shade of dulness it is their weak side
but as to a sea captain a regular nor-nor-wester and sou-sou-easter
he ought to be kicked out of the room if he is not dull it is not
ship-shape or barely tolerable that he should be otherwise yet after
all considering what i have stated about captain gulliver's nine voyages
crowding into one pocket volume he cannot really have much abused his
professional license for being dull indeed one has to look out an excuse
for his being so little dull which excuse is found in the fact that he
had studied three years at a learned university captain gulliver though
a sailor i would have you to know was a gownsman of cambridge so says
swift who knew more about the captain than anybody now-a-days cantabs
are all horsemen ergo gulliver was fit for any thing from the
wooden shoon of cambridge up to the horse marines

now on the other hand you common-place reader that as an old
tradition believe swift's style to be a model of excellence hereafter i
shall say a word to you drawn from deeper principles at present i
content myself with these three propositions which overthrow if you
can 

 that the merit which justly you ascribe to swift is
vernacularity he never forgets his mother-tongue in exotic forms
unless we may call irish exotic for hibernicisms he certainly has this
merit however is exhibited not as you fancy in a graceful
artlessness but in a coarse inartificiality to be artless and to be
inartificial are very different things as different as being natural and
being gross as different as being simple and being homely

 that whatever meantime be the particular sort of excellence or the
value of the excellence in the style of swift he had it in common with
multitudes beside of that age de foe wrote a style for all the world the
same as to kind and degree of excellence only pure from hibernicisms so
did every honest skipper dampier was something more who had occasion to
record his voyages in this world of storms so did many a hundred of
religious writers and what wonder should there be in this when the main
qualification for such a style was plain good sense natural feeling
unpretendingness some little scholarly practice in putting together the
clockwork of sentences so as to avoid mechanical awkwardness of
construction but above all the advantage of a subject such in its
nature as instinctively to reject ornament lest it should draw off
attention from itself such subjects are common but grand impassioned
subjects insist upon a different treatment and there it is that
the true difficulties of style commence

 which partly is suggested by the last remark that nearly all the
blockheads with whom i have at any time had the pleasure of conversing
upon the subject of style and pardon me for saying that men of the most
sense are apt upon two subjects viz poetry and style to talk
most like blockheads have invariably regarded swift's style not
as if relatively good ie given a proper subject but as if
absolutely good good unconditionally no matter what the subject now
my friend suppose the case that the dean had been required to write a
pendant for sir walter raleigh's immortal apostrophe to death or to many
passages that i will select in sir thomas brown's religio medici and
his urn-burial or to jeremy taylor's inaugural sections of his holy
living and dying do you know what would have happened are you aware
what sort of ridiculous figure your poor bald jonathan would have cut
about the same that would be cut by a forlorn scullion or waiter from
a greasy eating-house at rotterdam if suddenly called away in vision to
act as seneschal to the festival of belshazzar the king before a thousand
of his lords

schlosser after saying any thing right and true and he really did say
the true thing about swift's essential irreligion usually becomes
exhausted like a boa-constrictor after eating his half-yearly dinner the
boa gathers himself up it is to be hoped for a long fit of dyspepsy in
which the horns and hoofs that he has swallowed may chance to avenge the
poor goat that owned them schlosser on the other hand retires into a
corner for the purpose of obstinately talking nonsense until the gong
sounds again for a slight refection of sense accordingly he likens swift
before he has done with him to whom i might safely allow the reader
three years for guessing if the greatest of wagers were depending between
us he likens him to kotzebue in the first place how faithful the
resemblance how exactly swift reminds you of count benyowski in siberia
and of mrs haller moping her eyes in the stranger one really is
puzzled to say according to the negro's logic whether mrs haller is
more like the dean of st patrick's or the dean more like mrs haller
anyhow the likeness is prodigious if it is not quite reciprocal the
other terminus of the comparison is wieland now there is some shadow
of a resemblance there for wieland had a touch of the comico-cynical in
his nature and it is notorious that he was often called the german
voltaire which argues some tiger-monkey grin that traversed his features
at intervals wieland's malice however was far more playful and genial
than swift's something of this is shown in his romance of idris and
oftentimes in his prose but what the world knows wieland by is his
oberon now in this gay musical romance of sir huon and his enchanted
horn with its gleams of voluptuousness is there a possibility that any
suggestion of a scowling face like swift's should cross the festal scenes

from swift the scene changes to addison and steele steele is of less
importance for though a man of greater intellectual activity than
addison he had far less of genius so i turn him out as one would turn
out upon a heath a ram that had missed his way into one's tulip preserve
requesting him to fight for himself against schlosser or others that may
molest him but so far as concerns addison i am happy to support the
character of schlosser for consistency by assuring the reader that of
all the monstrosities uttered by any man upon addison and of all the
monstrosities uttered by schlosser upon any man a thing which he says
about addison is the worst but this i reserve for a climax at the end
schlosser really puts his best leg foremost at starting and one thinks
he's going to mend for he catches a truth viz the following that all
the brilliances of the queen anne period which so many inconsiderate
people have called the augustan age of our literature point to this 
that the reading public wished to be entertained not roused to think to
be gently moved not deeply excited undoubtedly what strikes a man in
addison or will strike him when indicated is the coyness and
timidity almost the girlish shame which he betrays in the presence of
all the elementary majesties belonging to impassioned or idealized nature
like one bred in crowded cities when first left alone in forests or
amongst mountains he is frightened at their silence their solitude
their magnitude of form or their frowning glooms it has been remarked by
others that addison and his companions never rise to the idea of
addressing the nation or the people it is always the town even
their audience was conceived of by them under a limited form yet
for this they had some excuse in the state of facts a man would like at
this moment to assume that europe and asia were listening to him and as
some few copies of his book do really go to paris and naples some to
calcutta there is a sort of legal fiction that such an assumption is
steadily taking root yet unhappily that ugly barrier of languages
interferes schamyl the circassian chief though much of a savage is not
so wanting in taste and discernment as to be backward in reading any book
of yours or mine doubtless he yearns to read it but then you see that
infernal tchirkass language steps between our book the darling
and him the discerning reader now just such a barrier existed
for the spectator in the travelling arrangements of england the very few
old heavies that had begun to creep along three or four main roads
depended so much on wind and weather their chances of foundering were so
uncalculated their periods of revolution were so cometary and uncertain
that no body of scientific observations had yet been collected to warrant
a prudent man in risking a heavy bale of goods and on the whole even
for york norwich or winchester a consignment of specs was not
quite a safe spec still i could have told the spectator who was anxious
to make money where he might have been sure of a distant sale though
returns would have been slow viz at oxford and cambridge we know from
milton that old hobson delivered his parcels pretty regularly eighty years
before and one generation before that it is plain by the
interesting though somewhat jacobinical letters of joseph mede the
commenter on the apocalypse that news and politics of one kind or other
and scandal of every kind found out for themselves a sort of
contraband lungs to breathe through between london and cambridge not
quite so regular in their systole and diastole as the tides of ebb and
flood but better than nothing if you consigned a packet into the proper
hands on the st of may as sure as death to speak scottice it would
be delivered within sixty miles of the capital before mid-summer still
there were delays and these forced a man into carving his world out of
london that excuses the word town

inexcusable however were many other forms of expression in those days
which argued cowardly feelings one would like to see a searching
investigation into the state of society in anne's days its extreme
artificiality its sheepish reserve upon all the impassioned grandeurs
its shameless outrages upon all the decencies of human nature certain it
is that addison because everybody was in that meanest of conditions
which blushes at any expression of sympathy with the lovely the noble or
the impassioned the wretches were ashamed of their own nature and
perhaps with reason for in their own denaturalized hearts they read only
a degraded nature addison in particular shrank from every bold and
every profound expression as from an offence against good taste he durst
not for his life have used the word passion except in the vulgar sense
of an angry paroxysm he durst as soon have danced a hornpipe on the top
of the monument as have talked of a rapturous emotion what would he
have said why sentiments that were of a nature to prove agreeable after
an unusual rate in their odious verses the creatures of that age talk
of love as something that burns them you suppose at first that they are
discoursing of tallow candles though you cannot imagine by what
impertinence they address you that are no tallow-chandler upon such
painful subjects and when they apostrophize the woman of their heart
for you are to understand that they pretend to such an organ they
beseech her to ease their pain can human meanness descend lower as if
the man being ill from pleurisy therefore had a right to take a lady for
one of the dressers in an hospital whose duty it would be to fix a
burgundy-pitch plaster between his shoulders ah the monsters then to
read of their phillises and strephons and chloes and corydons names
that by their very non-reality amongst names of flesh and blood proclaim
the fantasticalness of the life with which they are poetically connected 
it throws me into such convulsions of rage that i move to the window and
without thinking what i am about throwing it up calling police
police what's that for what can the police do in the business why
certainly nothing what i meant in my dream was perhaps but one forgets
what one meant upon recovering one's temper that the police should
take strephon and corydon into custody whom i fancied at the other end of
the room and really the justifiable fury that arises upon recalling such
abominable attempts at bucolic sentiments in such abominable language
sometimes transports me into a luxurious vision sinking back through one
hundred and thirty years in which i see addison phillips both john and
ambrose tickell fickell budgell and cudgell with many others beside
all cudgelled in a round robin none claiming precedency of another none
able to shrink from his own dividend until a voice seems to recall me to
milder thoughts by saying but surely my friend you never could wish to
see addison cudgelled let strephon and corydon be cudgelled without end
if the police can show any warrant for doing it but addison was a man of
great genius true he was so i recollect it suddenly and will back out
of any angry things that i have been misled into saying by schlosser who
by-the-bye was right after all for a wonder

but now i will turn my whole fury in vengeance upon schlosser and
looking round for a stone to throw at him i observe this addison could
not be so entirely careless of exciting the public to think and feel as
schlosser pretends when he took so much pains to inoculate that public
with a sense of the miltonic grandeur the paradise lost had then been
published barely forty years which was nothing in an age without reviews
the editions were still scanty and though no addison could eventually
promote for the instant he quickened the circulation if i recollect
tonson's accurate revision of the text followed immediately upon addison's
papers and it is certain that addison must have diffused the
knowledge of milton upon the continent from signs that soon followed but
does not this prove that i myself have been in the wrong as well as
schlosser no that's impossible schlosser's always in the wrong but
it's the next thing to an impossibility that i should be detected in an
error philosophically speaking it is supposed to involve a
contradiction but surely i said the very same thing as schlosser by
assenting to what he said maybe i did but then i have time to make a
distinction because my article is not yet finished we are only at page
six or seven whereas schlosser can't make any distinction now because
his book's printed and his list of errata which is shocking though he
does not confess to the thousandth part is actually published my
distinction is that though addison generally hated the impassioned
and shrank from it as from a fearful thing yet this was when it combined
with forms of life and fleshy realities as in dramatic works but not
when it combined with elder forms of eternal abstractions hence he did
not read and did not like shakspeare the music was here too rapid and
life-like but he sympathized profoundly with the solemn cathedral
chanting of milton an appeal to his sympathies which exacted quick
changes in those sympathies he could not meet but a more stationary
key of solemnity he could indeed this difference is illustrated
daily a long list can be cited of passages in shakspeare which have been
solemnly denounced by many eminent men all blockheads as ridiculous and
if a man does find a passage in a tragedy that displeases him it is
sure to seem ludicrous witness the indecent exposures of themselves made
by voltaire la harpe and many billions beside of bilious people
whereas of all the shameful people equally billions and not less
bilious that have presumed to quarrel with milton not one has thought
him ludicrous but only dull and somnolent in lear and in hamlet as
in a human face agitated by passion are many things that tremble on the
brink of the ludicrous to an observer endowed with small range of sympathy
or intellect but no man ever found the starry heavens ludicrous though
many find them dull and prefer a near view of a brandy flask so in the
solemn wheelings of the miltonic movement addison could find a sincere
delight but the sublimities of earthly misery and of human frenzy were
for him a book sealed beside all which milton renewed the types of
grecian beauty as to form whilst shakspeare without designing at all
to contradict these types did so in effect by his fidelity to a new
nature radiating from a gothic centre

in the midst however of much just feeling which one could only wish a
little deeper in the addisonian papers on paradise lost there are some
gross blunders of criticism as there are in dr johnson and from the
self-same cause an understanding suddenly palsied from defective passion
a feeble capacity of passion must upon a question of passion constitute
a feeble range of intellect but after all the worst thing uttered by
addison in these papers is not against milton but meant to be
complimentary towards enhancing the splendor of the great poem he tells
us that it is a grecian palace as to amplitude symmetry and
architectural skill but being in the english language it is to be
regarded as if built in brick whereas had it been so happy as to be
written in greek then it would have been a palace built in parian marble
indeed that's smart that's handsome i calculate yet before a man
undertakes to sell his mother-tongue as old pewter trucked against gold
he should be quite sure of his own metallurgic skill because else the
gold may happen to be copper and the pewter to be silver are you quite
sure my addison that you have understood the powers of this language
which you toss away so lightly as an old tea-kettle is it a ruled case
that you have exhausted its resources nobody doubts your grace in a
certain line of composition but it is only one line among many and it is
far from being amongst the highest it is dangerous without examination
to sell even old kettles misers conceal old stockings filled with guineas
in old tea-kettles and we all know that aladdin's servant by exchanging
an old lamp for a new one caused an iliad of calamities his master's
palace jumped from bagdad to some place on the road to ashantee mrs
aladdin and the piccaninies were carried off as inside passengers and
aladdin himself only escaped being lagged for a rogue and a conjuror by
a flying jump after his palace now mark the folly of man most of the
people i am going to mention subscribed generally to the supreme
excellence of milton but each wished for a little change to be made 
which and which only was wanted to perfection dr johnson though he
pretended to be satisfied with the paradise lost even in what he
regarded as the undress of blank verse still secretly wished it in rhyme
that's no addison though quite content with it in english still
could have wished it in greek that's no bentley though admiring the
blind old poet in the highest degree still observed smilingly that
after all he was blind he therefore slashing dick could have
wished that the great man had always been surrounded by honest people
but as that was not to be he could have wished that his amanuensis has
been hanged but as that also had become impossible he could wish to do
execution upon him in effigy by sinking burning and destroying his
handywork upon which basis of posthumous justice he proceeded to
amputate all the finest passages in the poem slashing dick was no 
payne knight was a severer man even than slashing dick he professed to
look upon the first book of paradise lost as the finest thing that earth
had to show but for that very reason he could have wished by your
leave to see the other eleven books sawed off and sent overboard
because though tolerable perhaps in another situation they really were a
national disgrace when standing behind that unrivalled portico of book 
there goes no then came a fellow whose name was either not on his
title page or i have forgotten it that pronounced the poem to be
laudable and full of good materials but still he could have wished that
the materials had been put together in a more workmanlike manner which
kind office he set about himself he made a general clearance of all
lumber the expression of every thought he entirely re-cast and he fitted
up the metre with beautiful patent rhymes not i believe out of any
consideration for dr johnson's comfort but on principles of mere
abstract decency as it was the poem seemed naked and yet was not
ashamed there went no him succeeded a droller fellow than any
of the rest a french book-seller had caused a prose french translation to
be made of the paradise lost without particularly noticing its english
origin or at least not in the title page our friend no getting hold
of this as an original french romance translated it back into english
prose as a satisfactory novel for the season his little mistake was at
length discovered and communicated to him with shouts of laughter on
which after considerable kicking and plunging for a man cannot but turn
restive when he finds that he has not only got the wrong sow by the ear
but actually sold the sow to a bookseller the poor translator was tamed
into sulkiness in which state ho observed that he could have wished his
own work being evidently so much superior to the earliest form of the
romance might be admitted by the courtesy of england to take the
precedency as the original paradise lost and to supersede the very rude
performance of milton mr john 

schlosser makes the astounding assertion that a compliment of boileau to
addison and a pure compliment of ceremony upon addison's early latin
verses was credite posteri the making of addison in england
understand schlosser that addison's latin verses were never heard of by
england until long after his english prose had fixed the public attention
upon him his latin reputation was a slight reaction from his english
reputation and secondly understand that boileau had at no time any such
authority in england as to make anybody's reputation he had first
of all to make his own a sure proof of this is that boileau's name was
first published to london by prior's burlesque of what the frenchman had
called an ode this gasconading ode celebrated the passage of the rhine in
 and the capture of that famous fortress called skink le fameux
fort de by louis xiv known to london at the time of prior's parody by
the name of louis baboon that was not likely to recommend master
boileau to any of the allies against the said baboon had it ever been
heard of out of france nor was it likely to make him popular in england
that his name was first mentioned amongst shouts of laughter and mockery
it is another argument of the slight notoriety possessed by boileau in
england that no attempt was ever made to translate even his satires
epistles or lutrin except by booksellers hacks and that no such
version ever took the slightest root amongst ourselves from addison's day
to this very summer of boileau was essentially and in two senses
viz both as to mind and as to influence un homme borne

addison's blenheim is poor enough one might think it a translation from
some german original of those times gottsched's aunt or bodmer's wet-
nurse might have written it but still no fibs even as to blenheim his
enemies did not say this thing against blenheim aloud nor his
friends that thing against it softly and why because at that time
- he had made no particular enemies nor any particular friends
unless by friends you mean his whig patrons and by enemies his tailor and
co

as to cato schlosser as usual wanders in the shadow of ancient night
the english people it seems so extravagantly applauded this wretched
drama that you might suppose them to have altogether changed their
nature and to have forgotten shakspeare that man must have forgotten
shakspeare indeed and from ramollissement of the brain who could
admire cato but says schlosser it was only a fashion and the
english soon repented the english could not repent of a crime which they
had never committed cato was not popular for a moment nor tolerated for
a moment upon any literary ground or as a work of art it was an apple
of temptation and strife thrown by the goddess of faction between two
infuriated parties cato coming from a man without parliamentary
connections would have dropped lifeless to the ground the whigs have
always affected a special love and favor for popular counsels they have
never ceased to give themselves the best of characters as regards public
freedom the tories as contradistinguished to the jacobites knowing that
without their aid the revolution could not have been carried most
justly contended that the national liberties had been at least as much
indebted to themselves when therefore the whigs put forth their
man cato to mouth speeches about liberty as exclusively their pet
and about patriotism and all that sort of thing saying insultingly to the
tories how do you like that does that sting sting indeed
replied the tories not at all it's quite refreshing to us that the
whigs have not utterly disowned such sentiments which by their public
acts we really thought they had and accordingly as the popular
anecdote tells us a tory leader lord bolingbroke sent for booth
who performed cato and presented him populo spectante with fifty
guineas for defending so well the cause of the people against a perpetual
dictator in which words observe lord bolingbroke at once asserted the
cause of his own party and launched a sarcasm against a great individual
opponent viz marlborough now mr schlosser i have mended your
harness all right ahead so drive on once more

but oh castor and pollux whither in what direction is it that the man
is driving us positively schlosser you must stop and let me get
out i'll go no further with such a drunken coachman many another absurd
thing i was going to have noticed such as his utter perversion of what
mandeville said about addison viz by suppressing one word and
misapprehending all the rest such again as his point-blank
misstatement of addison's infirmity in his official character which was
not that he could not prepare despatches in a good style but
diametrically the opposite case that he insisted too much on style to
the serious retardation of public business but all these things are as
nothing to what schlosser says elsewhere he actually describes addison
on the whole as a dull prosaist and the patron of pedantry addison
the man of all that ever lived most hostile even to what was good in
pedantry to its tendencies towards the profound in erudition and the non-
popular addison the champion of all that is easy natural superficial
a pedant and a master of pedantry get down schlosser this moment or
let me get out

pope by far the most important writer english or continental of his own
age is treated with more extensive ignorance by mr schlosser than any
other and excepting addison with more ambitious injustice a false
abstract is given or a false impression of any one amongst his brilliant
works that is noticed at all and a false sneer a sneer irrelevant to
the case at any work dismissed by name as unworthy of notice the three
works selected as the gems of pope's collection are the essay on
criticism the rape of the lock and the essay on man on the first
which with dr johnson's leave is the feeblest and least interesting of
pope's writings being substantially a mere versification like a metrical
multiplication-table of common-places the most mouldy with which
criticism has baited its rat-traps since nothing is said worth answering
it is sufficient to answer nothing the rape of the lock is treated with
the same delicate sensibility that we might have looked for in brennus if
consulted on the picturesque or in attila the hun if adjured to decide
aesthetically between two rival cameos attila is said though no doubt
falsely to have described himself as not properly a man so much as the
divine wrath incarnate this would be fine in a melodrama with bengal
lights burning on the stage but if ever he said such a naughty thing he
forgot to tell us what it was that had made him angry by what
title did he come into alliance with the divine wrath which
was not likely to consult a savage and why did his wrath hurry by forced
marches to the adriatic now so much do people differ in opinion that
to us who look at him through a telescope from an eminence fourteen
centuries distant he takes the shape rather of a mahratta trooper
painfully gathering chout or a cateran levying black-mail or a
decent tax-gatherer with an inkhorn at his button-hole and supported by a
select party of constabulary friends the very natural instinct which
attila always showed for following the trail of the wealthiest footsteps
seems to argue a most commercial coolness in the dispensation of his
wrath mr schlosser burns with the wrath of attila against all
aristocracies and especially that of england he governs his fury also
with an attila discretion in many cases but not here imagine this hun
coming down sword in hand upon pope and his rosicrucian light troops
levying chout upon sir plume and fluttering the dove-cot of the
sylphs pope's duty it was says this demoniac to scourge the follies
of good society and also to break with the aristocracy no surely
something short of a total rupture would have satisfied the claims of
duty possibly but it would not have satisfied schlosser and pope's
guilt consists in having made his poem an idol or succession of pictures
representing the gayer aspects of society as it really was and supported
by a comic interest of the mock-heroic derived from a playful machinery
instead of converting it into a bloody satire pope however did not
shrink from such assaults on the aristocracy if these made any part of
his duties such assaults he made twice at least too often for his own
peace and perhaps for his credit at this day it is useless however to
talk of the poem as a work of art with one who sees none of its exquisite
graces and can imagine his countryman zacharia equal to a competition
with pope but this it may be right to add that the rape of the lock
was not borrowed from the lutrin of boileau that was impossible
neither was it suggested by the lutrin the story in herodotus of the
wars between cranes and pigmies or the batrachomyomachia so absurdly
ascribed to homer might have suggested the idea more naturally both
these there is proof that pope had read there is none that he had
read the lutrin nor did he read french with ease to himself the
lutrin meantime is as much below the rape of the lock in brilliancy
of treatment as it is dissimilar in plan or the quality of its pictures

the essay on man is a more thorny subject when a man finds himself
attacked and defended from all quarters and on all varieties of
principle he is bewildered friends are as dangerous as enemies he must
not defy a bristling enemy if he cares for repose he must not disown a
zealous defender though making concessions on his own behalf not
agreeable to himself he must not explain away ugly phrases in one
direction or perhaps he is recanting the very words of his guide
philosopher and friend who cannot safely be taxed with having first led
him into temptation he must not explain them away in another direction
or he runs full tilt into the wrath of mother church who will soon bring
him to his senses by penance long lents and no lampreys allowed would
soon cauterize the proud flesh of heretical ethics pope did wisely
situated as he was in a decorous nation and closely connected upon
principles of fidelity under political suffering with the roman
catholics to say little in his own defence that defence and any
reversionary cudgelling which it might entail upon the quixote undertaker
he left meekly but also slyly humbly but cunningly to those whom he
professed to regard as greater philosophers than himself all parties
found their account in the affair pope slept in peace several pugnacious
gentlemen up and down europe expectorated much fiery wrath in dusting each
other's jackets and warburton the attorney finally earned his
bishoprick in the service of whitewashing a writer who was aghast at
finding himself first trampled on as a deist and then exalted as a
defender of the faith meantime mr schlosser mistakes pope's courtesy
when he supposes his acknowledgments to lord bolingbroke sincere in their
whole extent

of pope's homer schlosser think fit to say amongst other evil things
which it really does deserve though hardly in comparison with the
german homer of the ear-splitting voss that pope pocketed the
subscription of the odyssey and left the work to be done by his
understrappers don't tell fibs schlosser never do that any more
true it is and disgraceful enough that pope like modern contractors for
a railway or a loan let off to sub-contractors several portions of the
undertaking he was perhaps not illiberal in the terms of his contracts
at least i know of people now-a-days much better artists that would
execute such contracts and enter into any penalties for keeping time at
thirty per cent less but navies and billbrokers that are in excess
now then were scarce still the affair though not mercenary was
illiberal in a higher sense of art and no anecdote shows more pointedly
pope's sense of the mechanic fashion in which his own previous share of
the homeric labor had been executed it was disgraceful enough and needs
no exaggeration let it therefore be reported truly pope personally
translated one-half of the odyssey a dozen books he turned out of his
own oven and if you add the batrachomyomachia his dozen was a baker's
dozen the journeyman did the other twelve were regularly paid regularly
turned off when the job was out of hand and never once had to strike for
wages how much beer was allowed i cannot say this is the truth of the
matter so no more fibbing schlosser if you please

but there remains behind all these labors of pope the dunciad which is
by far his greatest i shall not within the narrow bounds assigned to me
enter upon a theme so exacting for in this instance i should have to
fight not against schlosser only but against dr johnson who has
thoroughly misrepresented the nature of the dunciad and consequently
could not measure its merits neither he nor schlosser in fact ever
read more than a few passages of this admirable poem but the villany is
too great for a brief exposure one thing only i will notice of
schlosser's misrepresentations he asserts not when directly speaking of
pope but afterwards under the head of voltaire that the french author's
trivial and random temple de gout shows the superiority in this
species of poetry to have been greatly on the side of the frenchman
let's hear a reason though but a schlosser reason for this opinion
know then all men whom it concerns that the englishman's satire only
hit such people as would never have been known without his mention of
them whilst voltaire selected those who were still called great and
their respective schools pope's men it seems never had been
famous voltaire's might cease to be so but as yet they had not
ceased as yet they commanded interest now mark how i will put three
bullets into that plank riddle it so that the leak shall not be stopped
by all the old hats in heidelberg and schlosser will have to swim for his
life first he is forgetting that by his own previous confession
voltaire not less than pope had immortalized a great many
insignificant persons consequently had it been any fault to do
so each alike was caught in that fault and insignificant as the people
might be if they could be immortalized then we have schlosser
himself confessing to the possibility that poetic splendor should create a
secondary interest where originally there had been none secondly the
question of merit does not arise from the object of the archer but from
the style of his archery not the choice of victims but the execution
done is what counts even for continued failures it would plead
advantageously much more for continued and brilliant successes that pope
fired at an object offering no sufficient breadth of mark thirdly it is
the grossest of blunders to say that pope's objects of satire were obscure
by comparison with voltaire's true the frenchman's example of a scholar
viz the french salmasius was most accomplished but so was the
englishman's scholar viz the english bentley each was absolutely
without a rival in his own day but the day of bentley was the very day of
pope pope's man had not even faded whereas the day of salmasius as
respected voltaire had gone by for more than half a century as to dacier
which dacier bezonian the husband was a passable scholar but
madame was a poor sneaking fellow fit only for the usher of a boarding-
school all this however argues schlosser's two-fold ignorance first
of english authors second of the dunciad else he would have known
that even dennis mad john dennis was a much cleverer man than most of
those alluded to by voltaire cibber though slightly a coxcomb was born
a brilliant man aaron hill was so lustrous that even pope's venom fell
off spontaneously like rain from the plumage of a pheasant leaving him
to mount far upwards with the swans of thanes and finally let it not
be forgotten that samuel clarke burnet of the charterhouse and sir
isaac newton did not wholly escape tasting the knout if that rather
impeaches the equity and sometimes the judgment of pope at least it
contributes to show the groundlessness of schlosser's objection that the
population of the dunciad the characters that filled its stage were
inconsiderable


fox and burke

it is or it would be if mr schlosser were himself more interesting
luxurious to pursue his ignorance as to facts and the craziness of his
judgment as to the valuation of minds throughout his comparison of burke
with fox the force of antithesis brings out into a feeble life of
meaning what in its own insulation had been languishing mortally into
nonsense the darkness of his burke becomes visible darkness under the
glimmering that steals upon it from the desperate commonplaces of this
fox fox is painted exactly as he would have been painted fifty years
ago by any pet subaltern of the whig club enjoying free pasture in
devonshire house the practised reader knows well what is coming fox is
formed after the model of the ancients fox is simple fox is
natural fox is chaste fox is forcible why yes in a sense fox is
even forcible but then to feel that he was so you must have heard
him whereas for forty years he has been silent we of that can
only read him hearing fox described as forcible are disposed to
recollect shakspeare's mr feeble amongst falstaff's recruits who also is
described as forcible viz as the most forcible feeble and
perhaps a better description could not be devised for fox himself so
feeble was he in matter so forcible in manner so powerful for instant
effect so impotent for posterity in the pythian fury of his gestures in
his screaming voice in his directness of purpose fox would now remind
you of some demon steam-engine on a railroad some fire-king or salmoneus
that had counterfeited because he could not steal jove's thunderbolts
hissing bubbling snorting fuming demoniac gas you think gas from
acheron must feed that dreadful system of convulsions but pump out the
imaginary gas and behold it is ditch-water fox as mr schlosser
rightly thinks was all of a piece simple in his manners simple in his
style simple in his thoughts no waters in him turbid with new
crystalizations everywhere the eye can see to the bottom no music in
him dark with cassandra meanings fox indeed disturb decent gentlemen
by allusions to all the sciences from the integral calculus and
metaphysics to navigation fox would have seen you hanged first burke
on the other hand did all that and other wickedness besides which fills
an vo page in schlosser and schlosser crowns his enormities by charging
him the said burke p with wearisome tediousness among my own
acquaintances are several old women who think on this point precisely as
schlosser thinks and they go further for they even charge burke with
tedious wearisomeness oh sorrowful woe and also woeful sorrow when
an edmund burke arises like a cheeta or hunting leopard coupled in a
tiger-chase with a german poodle to think in a merciful spirit of the
jungle barely to contemplate in a temper of humanity the
incomprehensible cane-thickets dark and bristly into which that bloody
cheeta will drag that unoffending poodle

but surely the least philosophic of readers who hates philosophy as toad
or asp must yet be aware that where new growths are not germinating
it is no sort of praise to be free from the throes of growth where
expansion is hopeless it is little glory to have escaped distortion nor
is it any blame that the rich fermentation of grapes should disturb the
transparency of their golden fluids fox had nothing new to tell us nor
did he hold a position amongst men that required or would even have
allowed him to tell anything new he was helmsman to a party what he had
to do though seeming to give orders was simply to repeat their
orders port your helm said the party port it is replied the
helmsman but burke was no steersman he was the orpheus that sailed with
the argonauts he was their seer seeing more in his visions than he
always understood himself he was their watcher through the hours of
night he was their astrological interpreter who complains of a prophet
for being a little darker of speech than a post-office directory or of
him that reads the stars for being sometimes perplexed

but even as to facts schlosser is always blundering post-office
directories would be of no use to him nor link-boys nor blazing
tar-barrels he wanders in a fog such as sits upon the banks of cocytus
he fancies that burke in his lifetime was popular of course it
is so natural to be popular by means of wearisome tediousness
that schlosser above all people should credit such a tale burke has
been dead just fifty years come next autumn i remember the time from
this accident that my own nearest relative stepped on a day of october
 into that same suite of rooms at bath north parade from which six
hours before the great man had been carried out to die at beaconsfield
it is therefore you see fifty years now ever since then his
collective works have been growing in bulk by the incorporation of
juvenile essays such as his european settlements his essay on the
sublime on lord bolingbroke c or as more recently by the
posthumous publication of his mss and yet ever since then in spite
of growing age and growing bulk are more in demand at this time half a
century after his last sigh burke is popular a thing let me tell
you schlosser which never happened before to a writer steeped to his
lips in personal politics what a tilth of intellectual lava must
that man have interfused amongst the refuse and scoria of such mouldering
party rubbish to force up a new verdure and laughing harvests annually
increasing for new generations popular he is now but popular he
was not in his own generation and how could schlosser have the face to
say that he was did he never hear the notorious anecdote that at one
period burke obtained the sobriquet of dinner-bell and why not
as one who invited men to a banquet by his gorgeous eloquence but as one
that gave a signal to shoals in the house of commons for seeking refuge
in a literal dinner from the oppression of his philosophy this
was perhaps in part a scoff of his opponents yet there must have been
some foundation for the scoff since at an earlier stage of burke's
career goldsmith had independently said that this great orator

     went on refining
 and thought of convincing whilst they thought of dining

i blame neither party it ought not to be expected of any popular
body that it should be patient of abstractions amongst the intensities of
party-strife and the immediate necessities of voting no deliberative
body would less have tolerated such philosophic exorbitations from public
business than the agora of athens or the roman senate so far the
error was in burke not in the house of commons yet also on the other
side it must be remembered that an intellect of burke's combining power
and enormous compass could not from necessity of nature abstain from
such speculations for a man to reach a remote posterity it is sometimes
necessary that he should throw his voice over to them in a vast arch it
must sweep a parabola which therefore rises high above the heads of
those next to him and is heard by the bystanders but indistinctly like
bees swarming in the upper air before they settle on the spot fit for
hiving

see therefore the immeasurableness of misconception of all public men
that stand confessedly in the first rank as to splendor of intellect
burke was the least popular at the time when our blind friend schlosser
assumes him to have run off with the lion's share of popularity fox on
the other hand as the leader of opposition was at that time a household
term of love or reproach from one end of the island to the other to the
very children playing in the streets pitt and fox throughout burke's
generation were pretty nearly as broad distinctions and as much a war-
cry as english and french roman and punic now however all this is
altered as regards the relations between the two whigs whom schlosser so
steadfastly delighteth to misrepresent

 now is the winter of our discontent
 made glorious summer

for that intellectual potentate edmund burke the man whose true mode of
power has never yet been truly investigated whilst charles fox is known
only as an echo is known and for any real effect of intellect upon
this generation for anything but the whistling of a name the fox of
- sleeps where the carols of the larks are sleeping that
gladdened the spring-tides of those years sleeps with the roses that
glorified the beauty of their summers 


junius

schlosser talks of junius who is to him as to many people more than
entirely the enigma of an enigma hermes trismegistus or the mediaeval
prester john not only are most people unable to solve the enigma but
they have no idea of what it is that they are to solve i have to inform
schlosser that there are three separate questions about junius of which
he has evidently no distinct knowledge and cannot therefore have many
chances to spare for settling them the three questions are these a who
was junius b what was it that armed junius with a power so
unaccountable at this day over the public mind c why having actually
exercised this power and gained under his masque far more than he ever
hoped to gain did this junius not come forward in his own person
when all the legal danger had long passed away to claim a distinction
that for him among the vainest of men must have been more precious
than his heart's blood the two questions b and c i have examined in
past times and i will not here repeat my explanations further than to
say with respect to the last that the reason for the author not claiming
his own property was this because he dared not because it would have
been infamy for him to avow himself as junius because it would have
revealed a crime and published a crime in his own earlier life for which
many a man is transported in our days and for less than which many a man
has been in past days hanged broken on the wheel burned gibbeted or
impaled to say that he watched and listened at his master's key-holes is
nothing it was not key-holes only that he made free with but keys he
tampered with his master's seals he committed larcenies not like a
brave man risking his life on the highway but petty larcenies larcenies
in a dwelling-house larcenies under the opportunities of a confidential
situation crimes which formerly in the days of junius our bloody code
never pardoned in villains of low degree junius was in the situation of
lord byron's lara or because lara is a plagiarism of harriet lee's
kraitzrer but this man because he had money friends and talents
instead of going to prison took himself off for a jaunt to the continent
from the continent in full security and in possession of the otium cum
dignitate he negotiated with the government whom he had alarmed by
publishing the secrets which he had stolen he succeeded he sold himself
to great advantage bought and sold he was and of course it is understood
that if you buy a knave and expressly in consideration of his knaveries
you secretly undertake not to hang him honor bright lord barrington
might certainly have indicted junius at the old bailey and had a reason
for wishing to do so but george iii who was a party to the negotiation
and all his ministers would have said with fits of laughter oh come
now my lord you must not do that for since we have bargained for a
price to send him out as a member of council to bengal you see clearly
that we could not possibly hang him before we had fulfilled our bargain
then it is true we might hang him after he comes back but since the man
being a clever man has a fair chance in the interim of rising to be
governor-general we put it to your candor lord barrington whether it
would be for the public service to hang his excellency in fact he might
probably have been governor-general had his bad temper not overmastered
him had he not quarrelled so viciously with mr hastings it is ten to
one that he might by playing his cards well have succeeded him as it
was after enjoying an enormous salary he returned to england not
governor-general certainly but still in no fear of being hanged instead
of hanging him on second thoughts government gave him a red ribbon he
represented a borough in parliament he was an authority upon indian
affairs he was caressed by the whig party he sat at good men's tables
he gave for toasts joseph surface sentiments at dinner parties 
the man that betrays something or other the man that sneaks into
other men's portfolios perhaps is ay what is he why he is
perhaps a knight of the bath has a sumptuous mansion in st james's
square dies full of years and honor has a pompous funeral and fears
only some such epitaph as this here lies in a red ribbon the man who
built a great prosperity on the basis of a great knavery i complain
heavily of mr taylor the very able unmasker of junius for blinking the
whole questions b and c he it is that has settled the question a so that
it will never be re-opened by a man of sense a man who doubts after
really reading mr taylor's work is not only a blockhead but an
irreclaimable blockhead it is true that several men among them lord
brougham whom schlosser though hating him and kicking him cites still
profess scepticism but the reason is evident they have not read
the book they have only heard of it they are unacquainted with the
strongest arguments and even with the nature of the evidence lord
brougham indeed is generally reputed to have reviewed mr taylor's book
that may be it is probable enough what i am denying is not at all
that lord brougham reviewed mr taylor but that lord brougham read
mr taylor and there is not much wonder in that when we see professed
writers on the subject bulky writers writers of answers and refutations
dispensing with the whole of mr taylor's book single paragraphs of which
would have forced them to cancel their own the possibility of scepticism
after really reading mr taylor's book would be the strongest
exemplification upon record of sancho's proverbial reproach that a man
wanted better bread than was made of wheat  would be the old case
renewed from the scholastic grumblers that some men do not know when they
are answered they have got their quietus and they still continue to
maunder on with objections long since disposed of in fact it is not
too strong a thing to say and chief justice dallas did say something
like it that if mr taylor is not right if sir philip francis is not
junius then was no man ever yet hanged on sufficient evidence even
confession is no absolute proof even confessing to a crime the man may
be mad well but at least seeing is believing if the court sees a man
commit an assault will not that suffice not at all ocular delusions
on the largest scale are common what's a court lawyers have no better
eyes than other people their physics are often out of repair and whole
cities have been known to see things that could have no existence now
all other evidence is held to be short of this blank seeing or blank
confessing but i am not at all sure of that circumstantial evidence
that multiplies indefinitely its points of internexus with known
admitted facts is more impressive than direct testimony if you detect a
fellow with a large sheet of lead that by many to wit seventy salient
angles that by tedious to wit thirty reentrant angles fits into and
owns its sisterly relationship to all that is left of the lead upon your
roof this tight fit will weigh more with a jury than even if my lord
chief justice should jump into the witness-box swearing that with
judicial eyes he saw the vagabond cutting the lead whilst he himself sat
at breakfast or even than if the vagabond should protest before this
honorable court that he did cut the lead in order that he the said
vagabond might have hot rolls and coffee as well as my lord the witness
if mr taylor's body of evidence does not hold water then is there no
evidence extant upon any question judicial or not judicial that will

but i blame mr taylor heavily for throwing away the whole argument
applicable to b and c not as any debt that rested particularly upon
him to public justice but as a debt to the integrity of his own
book that book is now a fragment admirable as regards a but by
omitting b and c not sweeping the whole area of the problem there yet
remains therefore the dissatisfaction which is always likely to arise 
not from the smallest allegatio falsi but from the large suppressio
veri b which on any other solution than the one i have proposed is
perfectly unintelligible now becomes plain enough to imagine a heavy
coarse hard-working government seriously affected by such a bauble as
they would consider performances on the tight rope of style is mere
midsummer madness hold your absurd tongue would any of the ministers
have said to a friend descanting on junius as a powerful artist of style 
do you dream dotard that this baby's rattle is the thing that keeps us
from sleeping our eyes are fixed on something else that fellow whoever
he is knows what he ought not to know he has had his hand in some of
our pockets he's a good locksmith is that junius and before he reaches
tyburn who knows what amount of mischief he may do to self and partners
the rumor that ministers were themselves alarmed which was the naked
truth travelled downwards but the why did not travel and the
innumerable blockheads of lower circles not understanding the real cause
of fear sought a false one in the supposed thunderbolts of the rhetoric
opera-house thunderbolts they were and strange it is that grave men
should fancy newspapers teeming as they have always done with
publicolas with catos with algernon sidneys able by such trivial
small shot to gain a moment's attention from the potentates of downing
street those who have despatches to write councils to attend and votes
of the commons to manage think little of junius brutus a junius brutus
that dares not sign by his own honest name is presumably skulking from
his creditors a timoleon who hints at assassination in a newspaper one
may take it for granted is a manufacturer of begging letters and it is a
conceivable case that a twenty pound note enclosed to timoleon's address
through the newspaper office might go far to soothe that great patriot's
feelings and even to turn aside his avenging dagger these sort of people
were not the sort to frighten a british ministry one laughs at the
probable conversation between an old hunting squire coming up to comfort
the first lord of the treasury on the rumor that he was panic-struck
what surely my dear old friend you're not afraid of timoleon first
lord yes i am c gent what afraid of an anonymous fellow in the
papers f l yes dreadfully c gent why i always understood
that these people were a sort of shams living in grub street or where
was it that pope used to tell us they lived surely you're not afraid of
timoleon because some people think he's a patriot f l no not at
all but i am afraid because some people think he's a housebreaker in
that character only could timoleon become formidable to a cabinet
minister and in some such character must our friend junius brutus have
made himself alarming to government from the moment that b is properly
explained it throws light upon c the government was alarmed not at such
moonshine as patriotism or at a soap-bubble of rhetoric but because
treachery was lurking amongst their own households and if the thing went
on the consequences might be appalling but this domestic treachery
which accounts for b accounts at the same time for c the very same
treachery that frightened its objects at the time by the consequences it
might breed would frighten its author afterwards from claiming its
literary honors by the remembrances it might awaken the mysterious
disclosures of official secrets which had once roused so much
consternation within a limited circle and like the french affair of the
diamond necklace had sunk into neglect only when all clue seemed lost for
perfectly unravelling its would revive in all its interest when a
discovery came before the public viz a claim on the part of francis to
have written the famous letters which must at the same time point a
strong light upon the true origin of the treacherous disclosures some
astonishment had always existed as to francis how he rose so suddenly
into rank and station some astonishment always existed as to junius how
he should so suddenly have fallen asleep as a writer in the journals the
coincidence of this sudden and unaccountable silence with the sudden and
unaccountable indian appointment of francis the extraordinary familiarity
of junius which had not altogether escaped notice with the secrets of
one particular office viz the war office the sudden recollection sure
to flash upon all who remembered francis if again he should become
revived into suspicion that he had held a situation of trust in that
particular war office all these little recollections would begin to take
up their places in a connected story this and that laid together
would become clear as day-light and to the keen eyes of still surviving
enemies horne tooke little chamier ellis the fitzroy russell and
murray houses the whole progress and catastrophe of the scoundrelism the
perfidy and the profits of the perfidy would soon become as intelligible
as any tale of midnight burglary from without in concert with a wicked
butler within that was ever sifted by judge and jury at the old bailey
or critically reviewed by mr john ketch at tyburn

francis was the man francis was the wicked butler within whom pharaoh
ought to have hanged but whom he clothed in royal apparel and mounted
upon a horse that carried him to a curule chair of honor so far his
burglary prospered but as generally happens in such cases this
prosperous crime subsequently avenged itself by a just retribution the
success of junius in two senses so monstrously exaggerated exaggerated
by a romantic over-estimate of its intellectual power through an error of
the public not admitted to the secret and equally exaggerated as to its
political power by the government in the hush-money for its future
suppression became the heaviest curse of the successful criminal this
criminal thirsted for literary distinction above all other distinction
with a childish eagerness as for the amrecta cup of immortality
and behold there the brilliant bauble lay glittering in the sands of a
solitude unclaimed by any man disputed with him if he chose to claim
it by nobody and yet for his life he durst not touch it he stood he
knew that he stood in the situation of a murderer who has dropt an
inestimable jewel upon the murdered body in the death-struggle with his
victim the jewel is his nobody will deny it he may have it for asking
but to ask is his death-warrant oh yes would be the answer here's
your jewel wrapt up safely in tissue paper but here's another lot that
goes along with it no bidder can take them apart viz a halter also
wrapt up in tissue paper francis in relation to junius was in that
exact predicament you are junius you are that famous man who has been
missing since and you can prove it god bless me sir what a long
time you've been sleeping every body's gone to bed well then you are
an exceedingly clever fellow that have had the luck to be thought ten
times more clever than really you were and also you are the greatest
scoundrel that at this hour rests in europe unhanged francis died and
made no sign peace of mind he had parted with for a peacock's feather
which feather living or dying he durst not mount in the plumage of his
cap


footnotes

 even pope with all his natural and reasonable interest in
aristocratic society could not shut his eyes to the fact that a jest in
his mouth became twice a jest in a lord's but still he failed to
perceive what i am here contending for that if the jest happened to miss
fire through the misfortune of bursting its barrel the consequences
would be far worse for the lord than the commoner there is you see a
blind sort of compensation

 mr schlosser who speaks english who has read rather too much
english for any good that he has turned it to and who ought to have a
keen eye for the english version of his own book after so much reading
and study of it has however overlooked several manifest errors i do
not mean to tax mr davison with general inaccuracy on the contrary he
seems wary and in most cases successful as a dealer with the
peculiarities of the german but several cases of error i detect without
needing the original they tell their own story and one of these i here
notice not only for its own importance but out of love to schlosser and
by way of nailing his guarantee to the counter not altogether as a bad
shilling but as a light one at p of vol in a foot-note which is
speaking of kant we read of his attempt to introduce the notion of
negative greatness into philosophy negative greatness what strange
bird may that be is it the ornithorynchus paradoxus mr schlosser
was not wide awake there the reference is evidently to kant's essay
upon the advantages of introducing into philosophy the algebraic idea of
negative quantities it is one of kant's grandest gleams into hidden
truth were it only for the merits of this most masterly essay in
reconstituting the algebraic meaning of a negative quantity so
generally misunderstood as a negation of quantity and which even sir
isaac newton misconstrued as regarded its metaphysics great would have
been the service rendered to logic by kant but there is a greater from
this little brochure i am satisfied was derived originally the german
regeneration of the dynamic philosophy its expansion through the idea of
polarity indifference c oh mr schlosser you had not gepruft p 
of vol you skipped the notes

 little nurse the word glumdalclitch in brobdingnagian
absolutely means little nurse and nothing else it may seem odd that
the captain should call any nurse of brobdingnag however kind to him by
such an epithet as little and the reader may fancy that sherwood forest
had put it into his head where robin hood always called his right hand
man little john not although but expressly because john stood
seven feet high in his stockings but the truth is that glumdalclitch
was little and literally so she was only nine years old and says the
captain little of her age being barely forty feet high she had time
to grow certainly but as she had so much to do before she could overtake
other women it is probable that she would turn out what in westmoreland
they call a little stiffenger very little if at all higher than a
common english church steeple

 activity it is some sign of this as well as of the more
thoroughly english taste in literature which distinguished steele that
hardly twice throughout the spectator is shakspeare quoted or alluded to
by addison even these quotations he had from the theatre or the breath
of popular talk generally if you see a line from shakspeare it is safe
to bet largely that the paper is steele's sometimes indeed of casual
contributors but almost to a certainty not a paper of addison's
another mark of steele's superiority in vigor of intellect is that much
oftener in him than in other contributors strong thoughts came forward
harsh and disproportioned perhaps to the case and never harmoniously
developed with the genial grace of addison but original and pregnant
with promise and suggestion

 letters of joseph mede published more than twenty years ago by sir
henry ellis

 it is an idea of many people and erroneously sanctioned by
wordsworth that lord somers gave a powerful lift to the paradise lost
he was a subscriber to the sixth edition the first that had plates but
this was some years before the revolution of and when he was simply
mr somers a barrister with no effectual power of patronage

 milton mr john dr johnson expressed his wrath in an
amusing way at some bookseller's hack who when employed to make an
index introduced milton's name among the m's under the civil title of 
milton mr john

 louis baboon as people read nothing in these days that is more
than forty-eight hours old i am daily admonished that allusions the most
obvious to anything in the rear of our own time needs explanation louis
baboon is swift's jesting name for louis bourbon ie louis xiv

 of his mss and if all that i have heard be true much has
somebody to answer for that so little has been yet published the two
executors of burke were dr lawrence of doctors commons a well-known m
p in forgotten days and windham a man too like burke in elasticity of
mind ever to be spoken of in connection with forgotten things which of
them was to blame i know not but mr r sharpe m p twenty-five years
ago well known as river sharpe from the greek aperantologia of
his conversation used to say that one or both of the executors had
offered him the river a huge travelling trunk perhaps an imperial or
a salisbury boot equal to the wardrobe of a family filled with burke's
mss on the simple condition of editing them with proper annotations an
oxford man and also the celebrated mr christian curwen then member for
cumberland made in my hearing the same report the oxford man in
particular being questioned as to the probable amount of ms deposed
that he could not speak upon oath to the cubical contents but this he
could say that having stripped up his coat sleeve he had endeavored by
such poor machinery as nature had allowed him to take the soundings of
the trunk but apparently there were none with his middle finger he could
find no bottom for it was stopped by a dense stratum of ms below which
you know other strata might lie ad infinitum for anything proved to
the contrary the trunk might be bottomless

 a man in fox's situation is sure whilst living to draw after him
trains of sycophants and it is the evil necessity of newspapers the most
independent that they must swell the mob of sycophants the public
compels them to exaggerate the true proportions of such people as we see
every hour in our own day those who for the moment modify or
may modify the national condition become preposterous idols in the
eyes of the gaping public but with the sad necessity of being too utterly
trodden under foot after they are shelved unless they live in men's
memory by something better than speeches in parliament having the usual
fate fox was complimented whilst living on his knowledge of
homeric greek which was a jest he knew neither more nor less of homer
than fortunately most english gentlemen of his rank quite enough that
is to read the iliad with unaffected pleasure far too little to revise
the text of any three lines without making himself ridiculous the
excessive slenderness of his general literature english and french may
be seen in the letters published by his secretary trotter but his
fragment of a history published by lord holland at two guineas and
currently sold for two shillings not two pence or else i have
been defrauded of s d most of all proclaims the tenuity of his
knowledge he looks upon malcolm laing as a huge oracle and having read
even less than hume a thing not very easy with great naivete cannot
guess where hume picked up his facts

 even in dr francis's translation of select speeches from
demosthenes which lord brougham naturally used a little in his own labors
on that theme there may be traced several peculiarities of diction that
startle us in junius sir p had them from his father and lord brougham
ought not to have overlooked them the same thing may be seen in the notes
to dr francis's translation of horace these points though not
independently of much importance become far more so in combination
with others the reply made to me once by a publisher of some eminence
upon this question was the best fitted to lower mr taylor's
investigation with a stranger to the long history of the dispute
i feel he said the impregnability of the case made out by mr taylor
but the misfortune is that i have seen so many previous impregnable cases
made out for other claimants ay that would be unfortunate but
the misfortune for this repartee was that i for whose use it was
intended not being in the predicament of a stranger to the dispute
having seen every page of the pleadings knew all except mr taylor's to
be false in their statements after which their arguments signified
nothing




the antigone of sophocles as represented on the edinburgh stage


every thing in our days is new roads for instance which being
formerly of the earth earthy and therefore perishable are now iron
and next door to being immortal tragedies which are so entirely
new that neither we nor our fathers through eighteen hundred and ninety
odd years gone by since caesar did our little island the honor to sit
upon its skirts have ever seen the like to this antigone and finally
even more new are readers who being once an obedient race of men
most humble and deferential in the presence of a greek scholar are now
become intractably mutinous keep their hats on whilst he is addressing
them and listen to him or not as he seems to talk sense or nonsense
some there are however who look upon all these new things as being
intensely old yet surely the railroads are new no not at all talus
the iron man in spenser who continually ran round the island of crete
administering gentle warning and correction to offenders by flooring them
with an iron flail was a very ancient personage in greek fable and the
received opinion is that he must have been a cretan railroad called the
great circular coast-line that carried my lords the judges on their
circuits of jail-delivery the antigone again that wears the freshness
of morning dew and is so fresh and dewy in the beautiful person of miss
faucit had really begun to look faded on the athenian stage and even of
a certain age about the death of pericles whose meridian year was the
year before christ lastly these modern readers that are so
obstinately rebellious to the once papal authority of greek they no on
consideration they are new antiquity produced many monsters but
none like them

the truth is that this vast multiplication of readers within the last
twenty-five years has changed the prevailing character of readers the
minority has become the overwhelming majority the quantity has disturbed
the quality formerly out of every five readers at least four were in
some degree classical scholars or if that would be saying too
much if two of the four had small latin and less greek they were
generally connected with those who had more or at the worst who had much
reverence for latin and more reverence for greek if they did not all
share in the services of the temple all at least shared in the
superstition but now-a-days the readers come chiefly from a class of
busy people who care very little for ancestral crazes latin they have
heard of and some of them know it as a good sort of industrious language
that even in modern times has turned out many useful books
astronomical medical philosophical and as mrs malaprop observes
diabolical but as to greek they think of it as of an ancient mummy you
spend an infinity of time in unswathing it from its old dusty wrappers
and when you have come to the end what do you find for your pains a
woman's face or a baby's that certainly is not the better for being
three thousand years old and perhaps a few ears of wheat stolen from
pharaoh's granary which wheat when sown in norfolk or mid-lothian
reaped thrashed ground baked and hunted through all sorts of tortures
yields a breakfast roll that as a scottish baker observed to me is not
just that bad certainly not not exactly that bad not worse than
the worst of our own but still much fitter for pharaoh's breakfast-table
than for ours

i for my own part stand upon an isthmus connecting me at one terminus
with the rebels against greek and at the other with those against whom
they are in rebellion on the one hand it seems shocking to me who am
steeped to the lips in antique prejudices that greek in unlimited
quantities should not secure a limited privilege of talking nonsense is
all reverence extinct for old and ivy-mantled and worm-eaten things
surely if your own grandmother lectures on morals which perhaps now and
then she does she will command that reverence from you by means of her
grandmotherhood which by means of her ethics she might not to be
a good grecian is now to be a faded potentate a sort of phantom mogul
sitting at delhi with an english sepoy bestriding his shoulders matched
against the master of ologies in our days the most accomplished
of grecians is becoming what the master of sentences had become long
since in competition with the political economist yet be assured
reader that all the ologies hitherto christened oology ichthyology
ornithology conchology palaeodontology c do not furnish such mines
of labor as does the greek language when thoroughly searched the
mithridates of adelung improved by the commentaries of vater and of
subsequent authors numbers up about four thousand languages and jargons
on our polyglot earth not including the chuckling of poultry nor
caterwauling nor barking howling braying lowing nor other respectable
and ancient dialects that perhaps have their elegant and their vulgar
varieties as well as prouder forms of communication but my impression
is that the greek taken by itself this one exquisite language
considered as a quarry of intellectual labor has more work in it
is more truly a piece de resistance than all the remaining three
thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine with caterwauling thrown into the
bargain so far i side with the grecian and think that he ought to be
honored with a little genuflexion yet on the other hand the finest
sound on this earth and which rises like an orchestra above all the
uproars of earth and the babels of earthly languages is truth absolute
truth and the hatefulest is conscious falsehood now there is
falsehood nay which seems strange even sycophancy in the old
undistinguishing homage to all that is called classical yet why should
men be sycophants in cases where they must be disinterested sycophancy
grows out of fear or out of mercenary self-interest but what can there
exist of either pointing to an old greek poet cannot a man give his free
opinion upon homer without fearing to be waylaid by his ghost but it is
not that which startles him from publishing the secret demur which his
heart prompts upon hearing false praises of a greek poet or praises
which if not false are extravagant what he fears is the scorn of his
contemporaries let once a party have formed itself considerable enough to
protect a man from the charge of presumption in throwing off the yoke of
servile allegiance to all that is called classical let it be a party
ever so small numerically and the rebels will soon be many what a man
fears is to affront the whole storm of indignation real and affected in
his own solitary person goth vandal he hears from every side break
that storm by dividing it and he will face its anger let me be a goth
he mutters to himself but let me not dishonor myself by affecting an
enthusiasm which my heart rejects

ever since the restoration of letters there has been a cabal an academic
interest a factious league amongst universities and learned bodies and
individual scholars for exalting as something superterrestrial and quite
unapproachable by moderns the monuments of greek literature france in
the time of louis xiv england in the latter part of that time in fact
each country as it grew polished at some cost of strength carried this
craze to a dangerous excess dangerous as all things false are dangerous
and depressing to the aspirations of genius boileau for instance and
addison though neither of them accomplished in scholarship nor
either of them extensively read in any department of the classic
literature speak every where of the classics as having notoriously and
by the general confession of polished nations carried the functions of
poetry and eloquence to that sort of faultless beauty which probably does
really exist in the greek sculpture there are few things perfect
in this world of frailty even lightning is sometimes a failure niagara
has horrible faults and mont blanc might be improved by a century of
chiselling from judicious artists such are the works of blind elements
which poor things cannot improve by experience as to man who
does the sculpture of the greeks in their marbles and sometimes in
their gems seems the only act of his workmanship which has hit the
bull's eye in the target at which we are all aiming not so with
permission from messrs boileau and addison the greek literature the
faults in this are often conspicuous nor are they likely to be hidden for
the coming century as they have been for the three last the idolatry
will be shaken as idols some of the classic models are destined
to totter and i foresee without gifts of prophecy that many laborers
will soon be in this field many idoloclasts who will expose the signs of
disease which zealots had interpreted as power and of weakness which is
not the less real because scholars had fancied it health nor the less
injurious to the total effect because it was inevitable under the
accidents of the grecian position

meantime i repeat that to disparage any thing whatever or to turn the
eye upon blemishes is no part of my present purpose nor could it be
since the one sole section of the greek literature as to which i profess
myself an enthusiast happens to be the tragic drama and here only i
myself am liable to be challenged as an idolater as regards the antigone
in particular so profoundly do i feel the impassioned beauty of her
situation in connection with her character that long ago in a work of my
own yet unpublished having occasion by way of overture introducing one
of the sections to cite before the reader's eye the chief pomps of the
grecian theatre after invoking the magnificent witch medea i call up
antigone to this shadowy stage by the apostrophe holy heathen daughter
of god before god was known flower from paradise after paradise was
closed that quitting all things for which flesh languishes safety and
honor a palace and a home didst make thyself a houseless pariah lest
the poor pariah king thy outcast father should want a hand to lead him
in his darkness or a voice to whisper comfort in his misery angel that
badst depart for ever the glories of thy own bridal day lest he that had
shared thy nursery in childhood should want the honors of a funeral
idolatrous yet christian lady that in the spirit of martyrdom trodst
alone the yawning billows of the grave flying from earthly hopes lest
everlasting despair should settle upon the grave of thy brother c in
fact though all the groupings and what i would call permanent attitudes
of the grecian stage are majestic there is none that to my mind towers
into such affecting grandeur as this final revelation through antigone
herself and through her own dreadful death of the tremendous wo that
destiny had suspended over her house if therefore my business had been
chiefly with the individual drama i should have found little room for any
sentiment but that of profound admiration but my present business is
different it concerns the greek drama generally and the attempt to
revive it and its object is to elucidate rather than to praise or to
blame to explain this better i will describe two things st the sort
of audience that i suppose myself to be addressing and dly as growing
out of that the particular quality of the explanations which i wish to
make

st as to the audience in order to excuse the tone which occasionally i
may be obliged to assume of one speaking as from a station of knowledge
to others having no knowledge i beg it to be understood that i take that
station deliberately on no conceit of superiority to my readers but as a
companion adapting my services to the wants of those who need them i am
not addressing those already familiar with the greek drama but those who
frankly confess and according to their conjectural appreciation of it
who regret their non-familiarity with that drama it is a thing well known
to publishers through remarkable results and is now showing itself on a
scale continually widening that a new literary public has arisen very
different from any which existed at the beginning of this century the
aristocracy of the land have always been in a moderate degree literary
less however in connection with the current literature than with
literature generally past as well as present and this is a tendency
naturally favored and strengthened in them by the fine collections
of books carried forward through successive generations which are so
often found as a sort of hereditary foundation in the country mansions of
our nobility but a class of readers prodigiously more extensive has
formed itself within the commercial orders of our great cities and
manufacturing districts these orders range through a large scale the
highest classes amongst them were always literary but the interest of
literature has now swept downwards through a vast compass of descents and
this large body though the busiest in the nation yet by having under
their undisturbed command such leisure time as they have at all under
their command are eventually able to read more than those even who
seem to have nothing else but leisure in justice however to the
nobility of our land it should be remembered that their stations in
society and their wealth their territorial duties and their various
public duties in london as at court at public meetings in parliament
c bring crowded claims upon their time whilst even sacrifices of time
to the graceful courtesies of life are in reference to their stations
a sort of secondary duties these allowances made it still remains true
that the busier classes are the main reading classes whilst from their
immense numbers they are becoming effectually the body that will more and
more impress upon the moving literature its main impulse and direction
one other feature of difference there is amongst this commercial class of
readers amongst the aristocracy all are thoroughly educated excepting
those who go at an early age into the army of the commercial body none
receive an elaborate and what is meant by a liberal education except
those standing by their connections in the richest classes thus it
happens that amongst those who have not inherited but achieved their
stations many men of fine and powerful understandings accomplished in
manners and admirably informed not having had the benefits when young of
a regular classical education find upon any accident bringing up such
subjects a deficiency which they do not find on other subjects they are
too honorable to undervalue advantages which they feel to be
considerable simply because they were denied to themselves they regret
their loss and yet it seems hardly worth while on a simple prospect of
contingencies that may never be realized to undertake an entirely new
course of study for redressing this loss but they would be glad to avail
themselves of any useful information not exacting study these are the
persons this is the class to which i address my remarks on the
antigone and out of their particular situation suggesting upon all
elevated subjects a corresponding tone of liberal curiosity will arise
the particular nature and direction of these remarks

accordingly i presume secondly that this curiosity will take the
following course these persons will naturally wish to know at starting
what there is differentially interesting in a grecian tragedy as
contrasted with one of shakspeare's or of schiller's in what respect and
by what agencies a greek tragedy affects us or is meant to affect us
otherwise than as they do and how far the antigone of sophocles was
judiciously chosen as the particular medium for conveying to british minds
a first impression and a representative impression of greek tragedy so
far in relation to the ends proposed and the means selected finally
these persons will be curious to know the issue of such an experiment let
the purposes and the means have been bad or good what was the actual
success and not merely success in the sense of the momentary acceptance
by half a dozen audiences whom the mere decencies of justice must have
compelled to acknowledge the manager's trouble and expense on their
behalf but what was the degree of satisfaction felt by students of the
athenian tragedy in relation to their long-cherished ideal did the
representation succeed in realizing for a moment the awful pageant of
the athenian stage did tragedy in milton's immortal expression

    come sweeping by
 in sceptred pall

or was the whole though successful in relation to the thing attempted a
failure in relation to what ought to have been attempted such are the
questions to be answered

 

the first elementary idea of a greek tragedy is to be sought in a serious
italian opera the greek dialogue is represented by the recitative and
the tumultuous lyrical parts assigned chiefly though not exclusively to
the chorus on the greek stage are represented by the impassioned airs
duos trios choruses c on the italian and there at the very outset
occurs a question which lies at the threshold of a fine art that is of
any fine art for had the views of addison upon the italian opera had
the least foundation in truth there could have been no room or opening
for any mode of imitation except such as belongs to a mechanic art

the reason for at all connecting addison with this case is that he
chiefly was the person occupied in assailing the italian opera and this
hostility arose probably in his want of sensibility to good that is to
italian music but whatever might be his motive for the hostility the
single argument by which he supported it was this that a hero ought not
to sing upon the stage because no hero known to history ever summoned a
garrison in a song or changed a battery in a semichorus in this argument
lies an ignorance of the very first principle concern in every fine
art in all alike more or less directly the object is to reproduce in
mind some great effect through the agency of idem in alio the
idem the same impression is to be restored but in alio in a
different material by means of some different instrument for instance
on the roman stage there was an art now entirely lost of narrating and
in part of dramatically representing an impassioned tale by means of
dancing of musical accompaniment in the orchestra and of elaborate
pantomime in the performer saltavit hypermnestram he danced that is
he represented by dancing and pantomime the story of hypermnestra now
suppose a man to object that young ladies when saving their youthful
husbands at midnight from assassination could not be capable of waltzing
or quadrilling how wide is this of the whole problem this is still
seeking for the mechanic imitation some imitation founded in the very
fact whereas the object is to seek the imitation in the sameness of the
impression drawn from a different or even from an impossible fact if a
man taking a hint from the roman saltatio saltavit andromachen
should say that he would whistle waterloo that is by whistling
connected with pantomime would express the passion and the changes of
waterloo it would be monstrous to refuse him his postulate on the
pretence that people did not whistle at waterloo precisely so neither
are most people made of marble but of a material as different as can well
be imagined viz of elastic flesh with warm blood coursing along its
tubes and yet for all that a sculptor will draw tears from you by
exhibiting in pure statuary marble on a sepulchral monument two young
children with their little heads on a pillow sleeping in each other's
arms whereas if he had presented them in wax-work which yet is far more
like to flesh you would have felt little more pathos in the scene than if
they had been shown baked in gilt gingerbread he has expressed the
idem the identical thing expressed in the real children the sleep that
masks death the rest the peace the purity the innocence but in
alio in a substance the most different rigid non-elastic and as
unlike to flesh if tried by touch or eye or by experience of life as
can well be imagined so of the whistling it is the very worst objection
in the world to say that the strife of waterloo did not reveal itself
through whistling undoubtedly it did not but that is the very ground of
the man's art he will reproduce the fury and the movement as to the only
point which concerns you viz the effect upon your own sympathies
through a language that seems without any relation to it he will set
before you what was at waterloo through that which was not at
waterloo whereas any direct factual imitation resting upon painted
figures drest up in regimentals and worked by watchwork through the whole
movements of the battle would have been no art whatsoever in the sense of
a fine art but a base mechanic mimicry

this principle of the idem in alio so widely diffused through all
the higher revelations of art it is peculiarly requisite to bear in mind
when looking at grecian tragedy because no form of human composition
employs it in so much complexity how confounding it would have been to
addison if somebody had told him that substantially he had himself
committed the offence as he fancied it which he charged so bitterly upon
the italian opera and that if the opera had gone farther upon that road
than himself the greek tragedy which he presumed to be so prodigiously
exalted beyond modern approaches had gone farther even than the opera
addison himself when writing a tragedy made this violation as he would
have said of nature made this concession as i should say to a
higher nature that he compelled his characters to talk in metre it is
true this metre was the common iambic which as aristotle remarks is the
most natural and spontaneous of all metres and for a sufficient reason
in all languages certainly but aristotle never meant to say that it was
natural for a gentleman in a passion to talk threescore and ten iambics
consecutively a chance line might escape him once and away as we
know that tacitus opened one of his works by a regular dactylic hexameter
in full curl without ever discovering it to his dying day a fact which
is clear from his never having corrected it and this being a very
artificial metre a fortiori tacitus might have slipped into a simple
iambic but that was an accident whilst addison had deliberately
and uniformly made his characters talk in verse according to the common
and false meaning which was his own meaning of the word nature he had
as undeniably violated the principle of the natural by this metrical
dialogue as the italian opera by musical dialogue if it is hard and
trying for men to sing their emotions not less so it must be to deliver
them in verse

but if this were shocking how much more shocking would it have seemed to
addison had he been introduced to parts which really exist in the grecian
drama even sophocles who of the three tragic poets surviving from the
wrecks of the athenian stage is reputed the supreme artist if
not the most impassioned poet with what horror he would have overwhelmed
addison when read by the light of those principles which he had himself
so scornfully applied to the opera in the very monsoon of his raving
misery from calamities as sudden as they were irredeemable a king is
introduced not only conversing but conversing in metre not only in
metre but in the most elaborate of choral metres not only under the
torture of these lyric difficulties but also chanting not only chanting
but also in all probability dancing what do you think of that mr
addison

there is in fact a scale of graduated ascents in these artifices for
unrealizing the effects of dramatic situations

 we may see even in novels and prose comedies a keen attention paid to
the inspiriting and dressing of the dialogue it is meant to be life-
like but still it is a little raised pointed colored and idealized

 in comedy of a higher and more poetic cast we find the dialogue
metrical

 in comedy or in tragedy alike which is meant to be still further
removed from ordinary life we find the dialogue fettered not only by
metre but by rhyme we need not go to dryden and others of our
own middle stage or to the french stage for this even in shakspeare as
for example in parts of romeo and juliet and for no capricious purpose
we may see effects sought from the use of rhyme there is another
illustration of the idealizing effect to be obtained from a particular
treatment of the dialogue seen in the hamlet of shakspeare in that drama
there arises a necessity for exhibiting a play within a play this
interior drama is to be further removed from the spectator than the
principal drama it is a deep below a deep and to produce that effect
the poet relies chiefly upon the stiffening the dialogue and removing it
still farther than the general dialogue of the including or outside
drama from the standard of ordinary life

 we find superadded to these artifices for idealizing the situations
even music of an intermitting character sometimes less sometimes more
impassioned recitatives airs choruses here we have reached the italian
opera

 and finally besides all these resources of art we find dancing
introduced but dancing of a solemn mystical and symbolic character
here at last we have reached the greek tragedy probably the best
exemplification of a grecian tragedy that ever will be given to a
modern reader is found in the samson agonistes of milton now in the
choral or lyric parts of this fine drama samson not only talks st
metrically as he does every where and in the most level parts of the
scenic business but d in very intricate metres and d occasionally
in rhymed metres though the rhymes are too sparingly and too
capriciously scattered by milton and th singing or chanting
these metres for as the chorus sang it was impossible that he
could be allowed to talk in his ordinary voice else he would have put
them out and ruined the music finally th i am satisfied that milton
meant him to dance the office of the chorus was imperfectly
defined upon the greek stage they are generally understood to be the
moralizers of the scene but this is liable to exceptions some of
them have been known to do very bad things on the stage and to come
within a trifle of felony as to misprision of felony if there is
such a crime a greek chorus thinks nothing of it but that is no business
of mine what i was going to say is that as the chorus sometimes
intermingles too much in the action so the actors sometimes intermingle
in the business of the chorus now when you are at rome you must do as
they do at rome and that the actor who mixed with the chorus was
compelled to sing is a clear case for his part in the choral ode
is always in the nature of an echo or answer or like an antiphony
in cathedral services but nothing could be more absurd than that one of
these antiphonies should be sung and another said that he was also
compelled to dance i am satisfied the chorus only sometimes
moralized but it always danced and any actor mingling with the
chorus must dance also a little incident occurs to my remembrance from
the moscow expedition of which may here be used as an illustration
one day king murat flourishing his plumage as usual made a gesture of
invitation to some squadrons of cavalry that they should charge the enemy
upon which the cavalry advanced but maliciously contrived to envelope the
king of dandies before he had time to execute his ordinary manoeuvre of
riding off to the left and becoming a spectator of their prowess the
cavalry resolved that his majesty should for once ride down at their head
to the melee and taste what fighting was like and he finding that the
thing must be though horribly vexed made a merit of his necessity and
afterwards pretended that he liked it very much sometimes in the
darkness in default of other misanthropic visions the wickedness of this
cavalry their mechancete causes me to laugh immoderately now i
conceive that any interloper into the greek chorus must have danced when
they danced or he would have been swept away by their impetus
nolens volens he must have rode along with the orchestral charge
he must have rode on the crest of the choral billows or he would have
been rode down by their impassioned sweep samson and oedipus and
others must have danced if they sang and they certainly did sing by
notoriously intermingling in the choral business

but now says the plain english reader what was the object of all
these elaborate devices and how came it that the english tragedy which
surely is as good as the greek and at this point a devil of defiance
whispers to him like the quarrelsome servant of the capulets or the
montagus say better that the english tragedy contented itself
with fewer of these artful resources than the athenian i reply that the
object of all these things was to unrealize the scene the english drama
by its metrical dress and by other arts more disguised unrealized
itself liberated itself from the oppression of life in its ordinary
standards up to a certain height why it did not rise still higher and
why the grecian did i will endeavor to explain it was not that the
english tragedy was less impassioned on the contrary it was far more
so the greek being awful rather than impassioned but the passion of each
is in a different key it is not again that the greek drama sought a lower
object than the english it sought a different object it is not imparity
but disparity that divides the two magnificent theatres

suffer me reader at this point to borrow from my-self and do not
betray me to the authorities that rule in this journal if you happen to
know which is not likely that i am taking an idea from a paper which
years ago i wrote for an eminent literary journal as i have no copy of
that paper before me it is impossible that i should save myself any labor
of writing the words at any rate i must invent afresh and as to the
idea you never can be such a churlish man as by insisting on a new
one in effect to insist upon my writing a false one in the following
paragraph therefore i give the substance of a thought suggested by
myself some years ago

that kind of feeling which broods over the grecian tragedy and to court
which feeling the tragic poets of greece naturally spread all their
canvas was more nearly allied to the atmosphere of death than that of
life this expresses rudely the character of awe and religious horror
investing the greek theatre but to my own feeling the different principle
of passion which governs the grecian conception of tragedy as compared
with the english is best conveyed by saying that the grecian is a
breathing from the world of sculpture the english a breathing from the
world of painting what we read in sculpture is not absolutely death but
still less is it the fulness of life we read there the abstraction of a
life that reposes the sublimity of a life that aspires the solemnity of
a life that is thrown to an infinite distance this last is the feature of
sculpture which seems most characteristic the form which presides in the
most commanding groups is not dead but sleepeth true but it is the
sleep of a life sequestrated solemn liberated from the bonds of space
and time and as to both alike thrown i repeat the words to a
distance which is infinite it affects us profoundly but not by
agitation now on the other hand the breathing life life kindling
trembling palpitating that life which speaks to us in painting this is
also the life that speaks to us in english tragedy into an english
tragedy even festivals of joy may enter marriages and baptisms or
commemorations of national trophies which or any thing like which is
incompatible with the very being of the greek in that tragedy what
uniformity of gloom in the english what light alternating with depths of
darkness the greek how mournful the english how tumultuous even the
catastrophes how different in the greek we see a breathless waiting for a
doom that cannot be evaded a waiting as it were for the last shock of
an earthquake or the inexorable rising of a deluge in the english it is
like a midnight of shipwreck from which up to the last and till the final
ruin comes there still survives the sort of hope that clings to human
energies

connected with this original awfulness of the greek tragedy and possibly
in part its cause or at least lending strength to its cause we may next
remark the grand dimensions of the ancient theatres every citizen had a
right to accommodation there at once was a pledge of grandeur out
of this original standard grew the magnificence of many a future
amphitheatre circus hippodrome had the original theatre been merely a
speculation of private interest then exactly as demand arose a
corresponding supply would have provided for it through its ordinary
vulgar channels and this supply would have taken place through rival
theatres but the crushing exaction of room for every citizen put an
end to that process of subdivision drury lane as i read or think
that i read thirty years ago allowed sitting room for three thousand
eight hundred people multiply that by ten imagine thirty-eight
thousand instead of thirty-eight hundred and then you have an idea of the
athenian theatre 

next out of that grandeur in the architectural proportions arose as by
necessity other grandeurs you are aware of the cothurnus or buskin
which raised the actor's heel by two and a half inches and you think that
this must have caused a deformity in the general figure as incommensurate
to this height not at all the flowing dress of greece healed all that

but besides the cothurnus you have heard of the mask so far as
it was fitted to swell the intonations of the voice you are of opinion
that this mask would be a happy contrivance for what you say could a
common human voice avail against the vast radiation from the actor's
centre of more than three myriads if indeed like the homeric stentor
an actor spoke in point of loudness greek text as much as other fifty
then he might become audible to the assembled athenians without aid but
this being impossible art must be invoked and well if the mask together
with contrivances of another class could correct it yet if it could
still you think that this mask would bring along with it an overbalancing
evil for the expression the fluctuating expression of the features the
play of the muscles the music of the eye and of the lips aids to acting
that in our times have given immortality to scores whither would those
have vanished reader it mortifies me that all which i said to you upon
the peculiar and separate grandeur investing the greek theatre is
forgotten for you must consider that where a theatre is built for
receiving upwards of thirty thousand spectators the curve described by
what in modern times you would call the tiers of boxes must be so vast as
to make the ordinary scale of human features almost ridiculous by
disproportion seat yourself at this day in the amphitheatre at verona
and judge for yourself in an amphitheatre the stage or properly the
arena occupying in fact the place of our modern pit was much nearer
than in a scenic theatre to the surrounding spectators allow for this
and placing some adult in a station expressing the distance of the
athenian stage then judge by his appearance if the delicate pencilling of
grecian features could have told at the grecian distance but even if it
could then i say that this circumstantiality would have been hostile to
the general tendencies as already indicated of the grecian drama the
sweeping movement of the attic tragedy ought not to admit of
interruption from distinct human features the expression of an
eye the loveliness of a smile ought to be lost amongst effects so
colossal the mask aggrandized the features even so far it acted
favorably then figure to yourself this mask presenting an idealized face
of the noblest grecian outline moulded by some skilful artist phidiaca
manu so as to have the effect of a marble bust this accorded with
the aspiring cothurnus and the motionless character impressed upon
the features the marble tranquillity would i contend suit the solemn
processional character of athenian tragedy far better than the most
expressive and flexible countenance on its natural scale yes you say
on considering the character of the greek drama generally it might in
forty-nine cases suppose out of fifty but what shall be done in the
fiftieth where some dreadful discovery or anagnorisis ie
recognition of identity takes place within the compass of a single line
or two as for instance in the oedipus tyrannus at the moment when
oedipus by a final question of his own extorts his first fatal discovery
viz that he had been himself unconsciously the murderer of laius true
he has no reason as yet to suspect that laius was his own father which
discovery when made further on will draw with it another still more
dreadful viz that by this parricide he had opened his road to a throne
and to a marriage with his father's widow who was also his own natural
mother he does not yet know the worst and to have killed an arrogant
prince would not in those days have seemed a very deep offence but then
he believes that the pestilence had been sent as a secret vengeance for
this assassination which is thus invested with a mysterious character of
horror just at this point jocasta his mother and his wife says on
witnessing the sudden revulsion of feeling in his face i shudder oh
king when looking on thy countenance now in what way could this
passing spasm of horror be reconciled with the unchanging expression in
the marble-looking mask this and similar cases to this must surely be
felt to argue a defect in the scenic apparatus but i say no first
because the general indistinctiveness from distance is a benefit that
applies equally to the fugitive changes of the features and to their
permanent expression you need not regret the loss through absence
of an appearance that would equally though present have been lost
through distance secondly the greek actor had always the resource
under such difficulties of averting his face a resource sanctioned in
similar cases by the greatest of the greek painters thirdly the
voluminous draperies of the scenic dresses and generally of the greek
costume made it an easy thing to muffle the features altogether by a
gesture most natural to sudden horror fourthly we must consider
that there were no stage lights but on the contrary that the general
light of day was specially mitigated for that particular part of the
theatre just as various architectural devices were employed to swell the
volume of sound finally i repeat my sincere opinion that the general
indistinctness of the expression was on principles of taste an
advantage as harmonizing with the stately and sullen monotony of the
greek tragedy grandeur in the attitudes in the gestures in the groups
in the processions all this was indispensable but on so vast a scale as
the mighty cartoons of the greek stage an attic artist as little regarded
the details of physiognomy as a great architect would regard on the
frontispiece of a temple the miniature enrichments that might be suitable
in a drawing-room

with these views upon the grecian theatre and other views that it might
oppress the reader to dwell upon in this place suddenly in december last
an opportunity dawned a golden opportunity gleaming for a moment amongst
thick clouds of impossibility that had gathered through three-and-twenty
centuries for seeing a grecian tragedy presented on a british stage and
with the nearest approach possible to the beauty of those athenian pomps
which sophocles which phidias which pericles created beautified
promoted i protest when seeing the edinburgh theatre's programme
that a note dated from the vatican would not have startled me more though
sealed with the seal of the fisherman and requesting the favor of my
company to take coffee with the pope nay less for channels there were
through which i might have compassed a presentation to his holiness but
the daughter of oedipus the holy antigone could i have hoped to see her
in the flesh this tragedy in an english version and with german
music had first been placed before the eyes and ears of our countrymen at
convent garden during the winter of   it was said to have
succeeded and soon after a report sprang up from nobody knew where that
mr murray meant to reproduce it in edinburgh

what more natural connected so nearly with the noblest house of scenic
artists that ever shook the hearts of nations nobler than ever raised
undying echoes amidst the mighty walls of athens of rome of paris of
london himself a man of talents almost unparalleled for versatility 
why should not mr murray always so liberal in an age so ungrateful to
his profession have sacrificed something to this occasion he
that sacrifices so much why not sacrifice to the grandeur of the antique
i was then in edinburgh or in its neighborhood and one morning at a
casual assembly of some literary friends present professor wilson
messrs j f c n l c and others advocates scholars lovers of
classical literature we proposed two resolutions of which the first was
that the news was too good to be true that passed nem con and
the second resolution was nearly passing viz that a judgment would
certainly fall upon mr murray had a second report proved true viz that
not the antigone but a burlesque on the antigone was what he meditated
to introduce this turned out false l the original report was suddenly
revived eight or ten months after immediately on the heels of the promise
the execution followed and on the last which i believe was the seventh
representation of the antigone i prepared myself to attend

it had been generally reported as characteristic of myself that in
respect to all coaches steamboats railroads wedding-parties baptisms
and so forth there was a fatal necessity of my being a trifle too late
some malicious fairy not invited to my own baptism was supposed to have
endowed me with this infirmity it occurred to me that for once in my life
i would show the scandalousness of such a belief by being a trifle too
soon say three minutes and no name more lovely for inaugurating such a
change no memory with which i could more willingly connect any
reformation than thine dear noble antigone accordingly because a
certain man whose name is down in my pocket-book for no good had told me
that the doors of the theatre opened at half-past six whereas in fact
they opened at seven there was i if you please freezing in the little
colonnade of the theatre precisely as it wanted six-and-a-half minutes to
seven six-and-a-half minutes observe too soon upon which this son of
absurdity coolly remarked that if he had not set me half-an-hour
forward by my own showing i should have been twenty-three-and-a-half
minutes too late what sophistry but thus it happened namely through
the wickedness of this man that upon entering the theatre i found
myself like alexander selkirk in a frightful solitude or like a single
family of arabs gathering at sunset about a solitary coffee-pot in the
boundless desert was there an echo raised it was from my own steps did
any body cough it was too evidently myself i was the audience i was the
public and if any accident happened to the theatre such as being burned
down mr murray would certainly lay the blame upon me my business
meantime as a critic was to find out the most malicious seat
ie the seat from which all things would take the most unfavorable
aspect i could not suit myself in this respect however bad a situation
might seem i still fancied some other as promising to be worse and i was
not sorry when an audience by mustering in strength through all parts of
the house began to divide my responsibility as to burning down the
building and at the same time to limit the caprices of my distracted
choice at last and precisely at half-past seven the curtain drew up a
thing not strictly correct on a grecian stage but in theatres as in
other places one must forget and forgive then the music began of which
in a moment the overture slipped out at one ear as it entered the other
which with submission to mr mendelssohn is a proof that it must be
horribly bad for if ever there lived a man that in music can neither
forget nor forgive that man is myself whatever is very good never
perishes from my remembrance that is sounds in my ears by intervals for
ever and for whatever is bad i consign the author in my wrath to his
own conscience and to the tortures of his own discords the most
villanous things however have one merit they are transitory as the best
things and that was true of the overture it perished then suddenly
 oh heavens what a revelation of beauty forth stepped walking in
brightness the most faultless of grecian marbles miss helen faucit as
antigone what perfection of athenian sculpture the noble figure the
lovely arms the fluent drapery what an unveiling of the ideal
statuesque is it hebe is it aurora is it a goddess that moves before
us perfect she is in form perfect in attitude

 beautiful exceedingly
 like a ladie from a far countrie

here was the redeeming jewel of the performance it flattered one's
patriotic feelings to see this noble young countrywoman realizing so
exquisitely and restoring to our imaginations the noblest of grecian
girls we critics dispersed through the house in the very teeth of duty
and conscience all at one moment unanimously fell in love with miss
faucit we felt in our remorse and did not pretend to deny that our duty
was to be savage but when was the voice of duty listened to in the first
uproars of passion one thing i regretted viz that from the
indistinctness of my sight for distant faces i could not accurately
discriminate miss faucit's features but i was told by my next neighbor
that they were as true to the antique as her figure miss faucit's voice
is fine and impassioned being deep for a female voice but in this organ
lay also the only blemish of her personation in her last scene which is
injudiciously managed by the greek poet too long by much and perhaps
misconceived in the modern way of understanding it her voice grew too
husky to execute the cadences of the intonations yet even in this scene
her fall to the ground under the burden of her farewell anguish was in a
high degree sculpturesque through the whole succession of its stages

antigone in the written drama and still more in the personated drama
draws all thoughts so entirely to herself as to leave little leisure for
examining the other parts and under such circumstances the first
impulse of a critic's mind is that he ought to massacre all the rest
indiscriminately it being clearly his duty to presume every thing bad
which he is not unwillingly forced to confess good or concerning which he
retains no distinct recollection but i after the first glory of
antigone's avatar had subsided applied myself to consider the general
setting of this theban jewel creon whom the greek tragic poets take
delight in describing as a villain has very little more to do until
his own turn comes for grieving than to tell antigone by minute-guns
that die she must well uncle don't say that so often is the answer
which secretly the audience whispers to antigone our uncle grows
tedious and one wishes at last that he himself could be put up the
spout mr glover from the sepulchral depth of his voice gave effect to
the odious creontic menaces and in the final lamentations over the dead
body of haemon being a man of considerable intellectual power mr glover
drew the part into a prominence which it is the fault of sophocles to have
authorized in that situation for the closing sympathies of the spectator
ought not to be diverted for a moment from antigone

but the chorus how did they play their part mainly their part must
have always depended on the character of the music even at athens that
must have been very much the case and at edinburgh altogether because
dancing on the edinburgh stage there was none how came that about for
the very word orchestral suggests to a greek ear dancing as the
leading element in the choral functions was it because dancing with us is
never used mystically and symbolically never used in our religious
services still it would have been possible to invent solemn and intricate
dances that might have appeared abundantly significant if expounded by
impassioned music but that music of mendelssohn like it i cannot say
not that mendelssohn is a great composer he is so but here he was
voluntarily abandoning the resources of his own genius and the support of
his divine art in quest of a chimera that is in quest of a thing called
greek music which for us seems far more irrecoverable than the greek
fire i myself from an early date was a student of this subject i read
book after book upon it and each successive book sank me lower into
darkness until i had so vastly improved in ignorance that i could myself
have written a quarto upon it which all the world should not have found
it possible to understand it should have taken three men to construe one
sentence i confess however to not having yet seen the writings upon
this impracticable theme of colonel perronet thompson to write
experimental music for choruses that are to support the else meagre
outline of a greek tragedy will not do let experiments be tried upon
worthless subjects and if this of mendelssohn's be greek music the
sooner it takes itself off the better sophocles will be delivered from an
incubus and we from an affliction of the auditory nerves

it strikes me that i see the source of this music we that were learning
german some thirty years ago must remember the noise made at that time
about mendelssohn the platonic philosopher and why was there any thing
particular in der phaedon on the immortality of the soul not at all
it left us quite as mortal as it found us and it has long since been
found mortal itself its venerable remains are still to be met with in
many worm-eaten trunks pasted on the lids of which i have myself perused
a matter of thirty pages except for a part that had been too closely
perused by worms but the key to all the popularity of the platonic
mendelssohn is to be sought in the whimsical nature of german liberality
which in those days forced jews into paying toll at the gates of cities
under the title of swine but caressed their infidel philosophers now
in this category of jew and infidel stood the author of phaedon he was
certainly liable to toll as a hog but on the other hand he was much
admired as one who despised the pentateuch now that mendelssohn
whose learned labors lined our trunks was the father of this
mendelssohn whose greek music afflicts our ears naturally then it
strikes me that as papa mendelssohn attended the synagogue to save
appearances the filial mendelssohn would also attend it i likewise
attended the synagogue now and then at liverpool and elsewhere we all
three have been cruising in the same latitudes and trusting to my own
remembrances i should pronounce that mendelssohn has stolen his greek
music from the synagogue there was in the first chorus of the
antigone one sublime ascent and once repeated that rang to heaven it
might have entered into the music of jubal's lyre or have glorified the
timbrel of miriam all the rest tried by the deep standard of my own
feeling that clamors for the impassioned in music even as the daughter
of the horse-leech says give give is as much without meaning as most
of the hebrew chanting that i heard at the liverpool synagogue i advise
mr murray in the event of his ever reviving the antigone to make the
chorus sing the hundredth psalm rather than mendelssohn's music or
which would be better still to import from lancashire the handel chorus-
singers

but then again whatever change in the music were made so as to better
the condition of the poor audience something should really be done to
better the condition of the poor chorus think of these worthy men in
their white and skyblue liveries kept standing the whole evening no
seats allowed no dancing no tobacco nothing to console them but
antigone's beauty and all this in our climate latitude fifty-five
degrees th of december and fahrenheit groping about i don't pretend
to know where but clearly on his road down to the wine cellar mr
murray i am perfectly sure is too liberal to have grudged the expense
if he could have found any classic precedent for treating the chorus to a
barrel of ale ale he may object is an unclassical tipple but perhaps
not xenophon the most attic of prose writers mentions pointedly in his
anabasis that the ten thousand when retreating through snowy
mountains and in circumstances very like our general elphinstone's
retreat from cabul came upon a considerable stock of bottled ale to be
sure the poor ignorant man calls it barley wine greek oitos
chrithinos but the flavor was found so perfectly classical that not
one man of the ten thousand not even the attic bee himself is reported
to have left any protest against it or indeed to have left much of the
ale

but stop perhaps i am intruding upon other men's space speaking
therefore now finally to the principal question how far did this
memorable experiment succeed i reply that in the sense of realizing all
that the joint revivers proposed to realize it succeeded and failed only
where these revivers had themselves failed to comprehend the magnificent
tendencies of greek tragedy or where the limitations of our theatres
arising out of our habits and social differences had made it impossible
to succeed in london i believe that there are nearly thirty theatres
and many more if every place of amusement not bearing the technical name
of theatre were included all these must be united to compose a
building such as that which received the vast audiences and consequently
the vast spectacles of some ancient cities and yet from a great mistake
in our london and edinburgh attempts to imitate the stage of the greek
theatres little use was made of such advantages as really were at
our disposal the possible depth of the edinburgh stage was not laid open
instead of a regal hall in thebes i protest i took it for the boudoir of
antigone it was painted in light colors an error which was abominable
though possibly meant by the artist but quite unnecessarily as a proper
ground for relieving the sumptuous dresses of the leading performers the
doors of entrance and exit were most unhappily managed as to the dresses
those of creon of his queen and of the two loyal sisters were good
chaste and yet princely the dress of the chorus was as bad as bad as
could be a few surplices borrowed from episcopal chapels or rather the
ornamented albes c from any rich roman catholic establishment
would have been more effective the coryphaeus himself seemed to
my eyes no better than a railway laborer fresh from tunnelling or
boring and wearing a blouse to hide his working dress these ill-
used men ought to strike for better clothes in case antigone should
again revisit the glimpses of an edinburgh moon and at the same time they
might mutter a hint about the ale but the great hindrances to a perfect
restoration of a greek tragedy lie in peculiarities of our theatres that
cannot be removed because bound up with their purposes i suppose that
salisbury plain would seem too vast a theatre but at least a cathedral
would be required in dimensions york minster or cologne lamp-light gives
to us some advantages which the ancients had not but much art would be
required to train and organize the lights and the masses of superincumbent
gloom that should be such as to allow no calculation of the dimensions
overhead aboriginal night should brood over the scene and the sweeping
movements of the scenic groups bodily expression should be given to the
obscure feeling of that dark power which moved in ancient tragedy and we
should be made to know why it is that with the one exception of the
persae founded on the second persian invasion in which
aeschylus the author was personally a combatant and therefore a
contemporary not one of the thirty-four greek tragedies surviving
but recedes into the dusky shades of the heroic or even fabulous times

a failure therefore i think the antigone in relation to an object
that for us is unattainable but a failure worth more than many ordinary
successes we are all deeply indebted to mr murray's liberality in two
senses to his liberal interest in the noblest section of ancient
literature and to his liberal disregard of expense to have seen a
grecian play is a great remembrance to have seen miss helen faucit's
antigone were that all with her bust greek os agalmatos and
her uplifted arm pleading against unjust tribunals is worth what is it
worth worth the money how mean a thought to see helen to see helen
of greece was the chief prayer of marlow's dr faustus the chief gift
which he exacted from the fiend to see helen of greece dr faustus we
have seen her mr murray is the mephistopheles that showed her to us
it was cheap at the price of a journey to siberia and is the next best
thing to having seen waterloo at sunset on the th of june 


footnotes

 when sown as it has been repeatedly a fact which some
readers may not be aware of

 boileau it is true translated longinus but there goes little greek
to that it is in dealing with attic greek and attic poets
that a man can manifest his grecian skill

 before god was known ie known in greece

 at times i say pointedly the athenian rather than the
grecian tragedy in order to keep the reader's attention awake to a
remark made by paterculus viz that although greece coquettishly
welcomed homage to herself as generally concerned in the greek
literature in reality athens only had any original share in the drama or
in the oratory of greece

 the supreme artist it is chiefly by comparison with euripides
that sophocles is usually crowned with the laurels of art but there is
some danger of doing wrong to the truth in too blindly adhering to these
old rulings of critical courts the judgments would sometimes be reversed
if the pleadings were before us there were blockheads in those days
undoubtedly it is past denying that euripides at times betrays marks of
carelessness in the structure of his plots as if writing too much in a
hurry the original cast of the fable is sometimes not happy and the
evolution or disentangling is too precipitate it is easy to see that he
would have remoulded them in a revised edition or diaskeue greek on
the other hand i remember nothing in the greek drama more worthy of a
great artist than parts in his phoenissae neither is he the effeminately
tender or merely pathetic poet that some people imagine he was able to
sweep all the chords of the impassioned spirit but the whole of this
subject is in arrear it is in fact res integra almost unbroken ground

 i see a possible screw loose at this point if you see it reader
have the goodness to hold your tongue

 athenian theatre many corrections remain to be made athens in
her bloom was about as big as calcutta which contained forty years ago
more than half a million of people or as naples which being long rated
at three hundred thousand is now known to contain at least two hundred
thousand more the well known census of demetrius phalereus gave twenty-
one thousand citizens multiply this by or - and you have their
families add ten thousand multiplied by - for the inquilini then
add four hundred thousand for the slaves total about five hundred and
fifty thousand but upon the fluctuations of the athenian population there
is much room for speculation and quaere was not the population of
athens greater two centuries before demetrius in the days of pericles

 having no sophocles at hand i quote from memory not pretending
therefore to exactness but the sense is what i state

 whose version i do not know but one unaccountable error was
forced on one's notice thebes which by milton and by every scholar is
made a monosyllable is here made a dissyllable but thebez the
dissyllable is a syrian city it is true that causabon deduces from a
syriac word meaning a case or enclosure a theca the name of thebes
whether boeotian or egyptian it is probable therefore that thebes the
hundred-gated of upper egypt thebes the seven-gated of greece and thebes
of syria had all one origin as regards the name but this matters not it
is the english name that we are concerned with

 false or rather inaccurate the burlesque was not on the
antigone but on the medea of euripides and very amusing

 but in this instance perhaps distance of space combined with the
unrivalled grandeur of the war was felt to equiponderate the distance of
time susa the persian capital being fourteen hundred miles from athens

 greek sterna th'os agalmatos her bosom as the bosom of a
statue an expression of euripides and applied i think to polyxena
at the moment of her sacrifice on the tomb of achilles as the bride that
was being married to him at the moment of his death

 amongst the questions which occurred to me as requiring an answer in
connection with this revival was one with regard to the comparative
fitness of the antigone for giving a representative idea of the greek
stage i am of opinion that it was the worst choice which could have been
made and for the very reason which no doubt governed that choice viz 
because the austerity of the tragic passion is disfigured by a love
episode rousseau in his letter to d'alembert upon his article geneve
in the french encyclopedie asks qui est-ce qui doute que sur nos
theatres la meilleure piece de sophocle ne tombat tout-a-plat and his
reason as collected from other passages is because an interest derived
from the passion of sexual love can rarely be found on the greek stage
and yet cannot be dispensed with on that of paris but why was it so rare
on the greek stage not from accident but because it did not harmonize
with the principle of that stage and its vast overhanging gloom it is
the great infirmity of the french and connected constitutionally with the
gayety of their temperament that they cannot sympathize with this
terrific mode of grandeur we can and for us the choice should have
been more purely and severely grecian whilst the slenderness of the plot
in any greek tragedy would require a far more effective support from
tumultuous movement in the chorus even the french are not uniformly
insensible to this grecian grandeur i remember that voltaire amongst
many just remarks on the electra of sophocles mixed with others that are
not just bitterly condemns this demand for a love fable on the french
stage and illustrates its extravagance by the french tragedy on the same
subject of crebillon he in default of any more suitable resource has
actually made electra whose character on the greek stage is painfully
vindictive in love with an imaginary son of aegisthus her father's
murderer something should also have been said of mrs leigh murray's
ismene which was very effective in supporting and in relieving the
magnificent impression of antigone i ought also to have added a note on
the scenic mask and the common notion not authorized i am satisfied by
the practice in the supreme era of pericles that it exhibited a janus
face the windward side expressing grief or horror the leeward expressing
tranquillity believe it not reader but on this and other points it
will be better to speak circumstantially in a separate paper on the greek
drama as a majestic but very exclusive and almost if one may say so
bigoted form of the scenic art




the marquess wellesley 


it sounds like the tolling of funeral bells as the annunciation is made
of one death after another amongst those who supported our canopy of
empire through the last most memorable generation the eldest of the
wellesleys is gone he is gathered to his fathers and here we have his
life circumstantially written

who and of what origin are the wellesleys there is an impression current
amongst the public or there was an impression that the true name
of the wellesley family is wesley this is a case very much resembling
some of those imagined by the old scholastic logicians where it was
impossible either to deny or to affirm saying yes or saying no
equally you told a falsehood the facts are these the family was
originally english and in england at the earliest era there is no
doubt at all that its name was de welles leigh which was pronounced in
the eldest times just as it is now viz as a dissyllable the first
syllable sounding exactly like the cathedral city wells in
somersetshire and the second like lea a field lying fallow it
is plain enough from various records that the true historical
genesis of the name was precisely through that composition of
words which here for the moment i had imagined merely to illustrate its
pronunciation lands in the diocese of bath and wells lying by the
pleasant river perret and almost up to the gates of bristol constituted
the earliest possessions of the de wellesleighs they seven centuries
before assay and waterloo were seised of certain rich leas
belonging to wells and from these saxon elements of the name some
have supposed the wellesleys a saxon race they could not possibly have
better blood but still the thing does not follow from the premises
neither does it follow from the de that they were norman the first
de wellesley known to history the very tip-top man of the pedigree is
avenant de wellesleigh about a hundred years nearer to our own times
viz in came michael de wellesleigh of whom the important fact is
recorded that he was the father of wellerand de wellesley and what did
young mr wellerand perform in this wicked world that the proud muse of
history should condescend to notice his rather singular name reader he
was killed that is all and in company with sir robert de percival
which again argues his somersetshire descent for the family of lord
egmont the head of all percivals ever was and ever will be in
somersetshire but how was he killed the time when viz the
place where are known but the manner how is not exactly stated it
was in skirmish with rascally irish kernes fellows that when presented
at the font of christ for baptism had their right arms covered up from
the baptismal waters in order that still remaining consecrated to the
devil those arms might inflict a devilish blow such a blow with such an
unbaptized arm the irish villain struck and there was an end of
wellerand de wellesleigh strange that history should make an end of a
man before it had made a beginning of him these however are the
facts which in writing a romance about sir wellerand and sir
percival i shall have great pleasure in falsifying but how says the too
curious reader did the de wellesleighs find themselves amongst irish
kernes had these scamps the presumption to invade somersetshire did they
dare to intrude into wells not at all but the pugnacious de wellesleys
had dared to intrude into ireland some say in the train of henry ii some
say but no matter there they were and there they stuck like
limpets they soon engrafted themselves into the county of kildare
from which by means of a fortunate marriage they leaped into the county
of meath and in that county as if to refute the pretended mutability of
human things they have roosted ever since there was once a famous copy
of verses floating about europe which asserted that whilst other princes
were destined to fight for thrones austria the handsome house of
hapsburgh should obtain them by marriage

 pugnabunt alii tu felix austria nube

so of the wellesleys sir wellerand took quite the wrong way not
cudgelling but courting was the correct way for succeeding in kildare
two great estates by two separate marriages the de wellesleighs obtained
in kildare and by a third marriage in a third generation they obtained
in the county of meath castle dengan otherwise dangan with lordships as
plentiful as blackberries castle dangan came to them in the year of our
lord ie before agincourt and in castle dangan did field-
marshal the man of waterloo draw his first breath shed his first tears
and perpetrate his earliest trespasses that is what one might call a
pretty long spell for one family four hundred and thirty-five years has
castle dangan furnished a nursery for the wellesley piccaninnies amongst
the lordships attached to castle dangan was mornington which more
than three centuries afterwards supplied an earldom for the grandfather of
waterloo any further memorabilia of the castle dangan family are not
recorded except that in which sure was the year of bosworth field
they began to omit the de and to write themselves wellesley tout
court from indolence i presume for a certain lady di le fl whom
once i knew a howard by birth of the house of suffolk told me as her
reason for omitting the le that it caused her too much additional
trouble

so far the evidence seems in favor of wellesley and against wesley but
on the other hand during the last three centuries the wellesleys wrote
the name wesley they however were only the maternal ancestors of
the present wellesleys garret wellesley the last male heir of the direct
line in the year left his whole estate to one of the cowleys a
staffordshire family who had emigrated to ireland in queen elizabeth's
time but who were however descended from the wellesleys this cowley or
colley taking in the name of wesley received from george ii the
title of earl mornington and colley's grandson the marquess wellesley of
our age was recorded in the irish peerage as wesley earl of
mornington was uniformly so described up to the end of the eighteenth
century and even arthur of waterloo whom most of us europeans know
pretty well on going to india a little before his brother was thus
introduced by lord cornwallis to sir john shore lord teignmouth the
governor-general dear sir i beg leave to introduce to you colonel
wesley who is a lieutenant-colonel of my regiment he is a sensible man
and a good officer posterity for we are posterity in respect of
lord cornwallis have been very much of his opinion colonel wesley
really is a sensible man and the sensible man soon after his
arrival in bengal under the instigation of his brother resumed the old
name of wellesley in reality the name of wesley was merely the
abbreviation of indolence as chumley for cholmondeley pomfret for
pontefract cicester for cirencester or in scotland marchbanks for
majoribanks chatorow for the duke of hamilton's french title of
chatelherault i remember myself in childhood to have met a niece of
john wesley the proto-methodist who always spoke of the second lord
mornington author of the well-known glees as a cousin and as intimately
connected with her brother the great foudroyant performer on the
organ southey in his life of john wesley tells us that charles wesley
the brother of john and father of the great organist had the offer from
garret wellesley of those same estates which eventually were left to
richard cowley this argues a recognition of near consanguinity why the
offer was declined is not distinctly explained but if it had been
accepted southey thinks that then we should have had no storming of
seringapatam no waterloo and no arminian methodists all that is not
quite clear tippoo was booked for a desperate british vengeance by his
own desperate enmity to our name though no lord wellesley had been
governor-general napoleon by the same fury of hatred to us was booked
for the same fate though the scene of it might not have been waterloo
and as to john wesley why should he not have made the same schism with
the english church because his brother charles had become unexpectedly
rich

the marquess wellesley was of the same standing as to age or nearly so
as mr pitt though he outlived pitt by almost forty years born in 
three or four months before the accession of george iii he was sent to
eton at the age of eleven and from eton in his eighteenth year he was
sent to christ church oxford where he matriculated as a nobleman he
then bore the courtesy title of viscount wellesley but in when he
had reached his twenty-first year he was summoned away from oxford by the
death of his father the second earl of mornington it is interesting at
this moment to look back on the family group of children collected at
dangan castle the young earl was within a month of his majority his
younger brothers and sisters were william wellesley pole since dead
under the title of lord maryborough then aged eighteen anne since
married to henry son of lord southampton aged thirteen arthur aged
twelve gerald valerian now in the church aged ten mary elizabeth
since lady culling smith aged nine henry since lord cowley and
british ambassador to spain france c aged eight the new lord
mornington showed his conscientious nature by assuming his father's
debts and by superintending the education of his brothers he had
distinguished himself at oxford as a scholar but he returned thither no
more and took no degree as earl of mornington he sat in the irish house
of lords but not being a british peer he was able to sit also in the
english house of commons and of this opening for a more national career
he availed himself at the age of twenty-four except that he favored the
claims of the irish catholics his policy was pretty uniformly that of mr
pitt he supported that minister throughout the contests on the french
revolution and a little earlier on the regency question this came
forward in on occasion of the first insanity which attacked george
iii the reader who is likely to have been born since that era will
perhaps not be acquainted with the constitutional question then at issue
it was this mr fox held that upon any incapacity arising in the
sovereign the regency would then settle ipso facto of that incapacity
upon the prince of wales overlooking altogether the case in which there
should be no prince of wales and the case in which such a prince might
be as incapable from youth of exercising the powers attached to the
office as his father from disease mr pitt denied that a prince of wales
simply as such and apart from any moral fitness which he might possess
had more title to the office of regent than any lamp-lighter or scavenger
it was the province of parliament exclusively to legislate for the
particular case the practical decision of the question was not called
for from the accident of the king's sudden recovery but in ireland from
the independence asserted by the two houses of the british council the
question grew still more complex the lord lieutenant refused to transmit
their address and lord mornington supported him powerfully in his
refusal

ten years after this hot collision of parties lord mornington was
appointed governor-general of india and now first he entered upon a stage
worthy of his powers i cannot myself agree with mr pearce that the
wisdom of his policy is now universally recognized because the same
false views of our indian position which at that time caused his splendid
services to be slighted in many quarters still preponderates all
administrations alike have been intensely ignorant of indian politics and
for the natural reason that the business of home politics leaves them no
disposable energies for affairs so distant and with which each man's
chance of any durable connection is so exceedingly small what lord
mornington did was this he looked our prospects in the face two great
enemies were then looming upon the horizon both ignorant of our real
resources and both deluded by our imperfect use of such resources as
even in a previous war we had possessed one of these enemies was tippoo
the sultan of mysore him by the crushing energy of his arrangements
lord mornington was able utterly to destroy and to distribute his
dominions with equity and moderation yet so as to prevent any new
coalition arising in that quarter against the british power there is a
portrait of tippoo of this very ger in the second volume of mr pearce's
work which expresses sufficiently the unparalleled ferocity of his
nature and it is guaranteed by its origin as authentic tippoo from
the personal interest investing him has more fixed the attention of
europe than a much more formidable enemy that enemy was the mahratta
confederacy chiefly existing in the persons of the peishwah of scindia
of holkar and the rajah of berar had these four princes been less
profoundly ignorant had they been less inveterately treacherous they
would have cost us the only dreadful struggle which in india we have
stood as it was lord mornington's government reduced and crippled the
maharattas to such an extent that in lord hastings found it
possible to crush them for ever three services of a profounder nature
lord wellesley was enabled to do for india first to pave the way for the
propagation of christianity mighty service stretching to the clouds
and which in the hour of death must have given him consolation
secondly to enter upon the abolition of such hindoo superstitions as are
most shocking to humanity particularly the practice of suttee and the
barbarous exposure of dying persons or of first-born infants at sangor on
the ganges finally to promote an enlarged system of education which if
his splendid scheme had been adopted would have diffused its benefits all
over india it ought also to be mentioned that the expedition by way of
the red sea against the french in egypt was so entirely of his suggestion
and his preparation that to the great dishonor of messrs pitt and
dundas whose administration was the worst as a war administration
thus ever misapplied or non-applied the resources of a mighty empire it
languished for eighteen months purely through their neglect

in having staid about seven years in india lord mornington was
recalled was created marquess of wellesley was sent in as viceroy
to ireland where there was little to do having previously in been
sent ambassador to the spanish cortes where there was an affinity to do
but no means of doing it the last great political act of lord wellesley
was the smashing of the peel ministry in viz by the famous
resolution which he personally drew up for appropriating to general
education in ireland any surplus arising from the revenues of the irish
church full of honors he retired from public life at the age of seventy-
five and for seven years more of life dedicated his time to such
literary pursuits as he had found most interesting in early youth

mr pearce who is so capable of writing vigorously and sagaciously has
too much allowed himself to rely upon public journals for example he
reprints the whole of the attorney-general's official information against
eleven obscure persons who from the gallery of the dublin theatre did
wickedly riotously and routously hiss groan insult and assault to
say nothing of their having caused and procured to be hissed groaned
c the marquess wellesley lord-lieutenant general and general governor
of ireland this document covers more than nine pages and after all
omits the only fact of the least consequence viz that several missiles
were thrown by the rioters into the vice-regal box and amongst them a
quart-bottle which barely missed his excellency's temples considering
the impetus acquired by the descent from the gallery there is little
doubt that such a weapon would have killed lord wellesley on the spot in
default however of this weighty fact the attorney-general favors us with
memorializing the very best piece of doggerel that i remember to have
read viz that upon divers to wit three thousand papers the rioters
had wickedly and maliciously written and printed besides observe
causing to be written and printed no popery as also the following
traitorous couplet 

 the protestants want talbot
 as the papists have got all but

meaning all but that which they got some years later by means of the
clare election yet if in some instances like this mr pearce has too
largely drawn upon official papers which he should rather have abstracted
and condensed on the other hand his work has a specific value in
bringing forward private documents to which his opportunities have gained
him a confidential access two portraits of lord wellesley one in middle
life and one in old age from a sketch by the comte d'orsay are
felicitously executed

something remains to be said of lord wellesley as a literary man and
towards such a judgment mr pearce has contributed some very pleasing
materials as a public speaker lord wellesley had that degree of
brilliancy and effectual vigor which might have been expected in a man of
great talents possessing much native sensibility to the charms of style
but not led by any personal accidents of life into a separate cultivation
of oratory or into any profound investigation of its duties and its
powers on the arena of a british senate there is less call for speaking
of lord wellesley in this character where he did not seek for any eminent
distinction than in the more general character of an elegant
litterateur which furnished to him much of his recreation in all
stages of his life and much of his consolation in the last it is
interesting to see this accomplished nobleman in advanced age when other
resources were one by one decaying and the lights of life were
successively fading into darkness still cheering his languid hours by the
culture of classical literature and in his eighty-second year drawing
solace from those same pursuits which had given grace and distinction to
his twentieth

one or two remarks i will make upon lord wellesley's verses greek as well
as latin the latin lines upon chantrey's success at holkham in killing
two woodcocks at the first shot which subsequently he sculptured in
marble and presented to lord leicester are perhaps the most felicitous
amongst the whole masquerading in lord wellesley's verses as
praxiteles who could not well be represented with a manon having a
percussion lock chantrey is armed with a bow and arrows

 en trajecit aves una sagitta duas

in the greek translation of parthenopaeus there are as few faults
as could reasonably be expected but first one word as to the original
latin poem to whom does it belong it is traced first to lord grenville
who received it from his tutor afterwards bishop of london who had
taken it as an anonymous poem from the censor's book and with very
little probability it is doubtfully assigned to lewis of the war
office meaning no doubt the father of monk lewis by this anxiety in
tracing its pedigree the reader is led to exaggerate the pretensions of
the little poem these are inconsiderable and there is a conspicuous
fault which it is worth while noticing because it is one peculiarly
besetting those who write modern verses with the help of a gradus viz
that the pentameter is often a mere reverberation of the preceding
hexameter thus for instance 

 parthenios inter saltus non amplius erro
 non repeto dryadum pascua laeta choris

and so of others where the second line is but a variation of the first
even ovid with all his fertility and partly in consequence of his
fertility too often commits this fault where indeed the thought is
effectually varied so that the second line acts as a musical minor
succeeding to the major in the first there may happen to arise a
peculiar beauty but i speak of the ordinary case where the second is
merely the rebound of the first presenting the same thought in a diluted
form this is the commonest resource of feeble thinking and is also a
standing temptation or snare for feeble thinking lord wellesley however
is not answerable for these faults in the original which indeed he
notices slightly as repetitions and his own greek version is spirited
and good there are however some mistakes the second line is
altogether faulty

 greek choria mainaliph pant erateina theph
 achnumenos leipon

does not express the sense intended construed correctly this clause of
the sentence would mean i sorrowfully leaving all places gracious to
the maenalian god but that is not what lord wellesley designed i
leaving the woods of cyllene and the snowy summits of pholoe places that
are all of them dear to pan that is what was meant that is to say
not leaving all places dear to pan far from it but leaving a few
places every one of which is dear to pan in the line beginning

 greek kan eth uph aelikias

where the meaning is and if as yet by reason of my immature age
there is a metrical error and greek aelikia will not express
immaturity of age i doubt whether in the next line

 greek maed alkae thalloi gounasin aeitheos

greek gounasin could convey the meaning without the preposition
greek eth and in

 greek spherchomai ou kaleousi theoi

i hasten whither the gods summon me greek ou is not the right
word it is however almost impossible to write greek verses which
shall be liable to no verbal objections and the fluent movement of these
verses sufficiently argues the off-hand ease with which lord wellesley
must have read greek writing it so elegantly and with so little of
apparent constraint

meantime the most interesting from its circumstances of lord wellesley's
verses is one to which his own english interpretation of it has done less
than justice it is a latin epitaph on the daughter an only child of
lord and lady brougham she died and as was generally known at the time
of an organic affection disturbing the action of the heart at the early
age of eighteen and the peculiar interest of the case lies in the
suppression by this pious daughter so far as it was possible of her own
bodily anguish in order to beguile the mental anguish of her parents the
latin epitaph is this

 blanda anima e cunis heu longo exercita morbo
 inter maternas heu lachrymasque patris
 quas risu lenire tuo jucunda solebas
 et levis et proprii vix memor ipsa mali
 i pete calestes ubi nulla est cura recessus
 et tibi sit nullo mista dolore quies

the english version is this

 doom'd to long suffering from earliest years
 amidst your parents grief and pain alone
 cheerful and gay you smiled to soothe their tears
 and in their agonies forgot your own
 go gentle spirit and among the blest
 from grief and pain eternal be thy rest

in the latin the phrase e cunis does not express from your cradle
upwards the second line is faulty in the opposition of maternas to
patris and in the fourth line levis conveys a false meaning levis
must mean either physically light ie not heavy which is not the
sense or else tainted with levity which is still less the sense what
lord wellesley wished to say was light-hearted this he has not
said but neither is it easy to say it in good latin

i complain however of the whole as not bringing out lord wellesley's own
feeling which feeling is partly expressed in his verses and partly in
his accompanying prose note on miss brougham's mournful destiny her life
was a continual illness contrasted with her fortitude her innocent
gaiety and the pious motives with which she supported this gaiety to the
last not as a direct version but as filling up the outline of lord
wellesley sufficiently indicated by himself i propose this 

 child that for thirteen years hast fought with pain
 prompted by joy and depth of natural love 
 rest now at god's command oh not in vain
 his angel ofttimes watch'd thee oft above
 all pangs that else had dimm'd thy parents eyes
 saw thy young heart victoriously rise
 rise now for ever self-forgetting child
 rise to those choirs where love like thine is blest
 from pains of flesh from filial tears assoil'd
 love which god's hand shall crown with god's own rest


footnotes

 memoirs and correspondence

 as a dissyllable just as the annesley family of
which lord valentia is the present head do not pronounce their name
trisyllabically as strangers often suppose but as the two syllables
anns lea accent on the first

 which adopted neither view for by offering the regency of ireland
to the prince of wales they negatived mr fox's view who held it to be
the prince's by inherent right and on the other hand they still more
openly opposed mr pitt




milton versus southey and landor


this conversation is doubly interesting interesting by its subject
interesting by its interlocutors for the subject is milton whilst the
interlocutors are southey and landor if a british gentleman when
taking his pleasure in his well-armed yacht descries in some foreign
waters a noble vessel from the thames or the clyde riding peaceably at
anchor and soon after two smart-looking clippers with rakish masts
bearing down upon her in company he slackens sail his suspicions are
slightly raised they have not shown their teeth as yet and perhaps all
is right but there can be no harm in looking a little closer and
assuredly if he finds any mischief in the wind against his countryman he
will show his teeth also and please the wind will take up such a
position as to rake both of these pirates by turns the two dialogists are
introduced walking out after breakfast each his milton in his pocket
and says southey let us collect all the graver faults we can lay our
hands upon without a too minute and troublesome research just so
there would be danger in that help might put off from shore not
says he in the spirit of johnson but in our own johnson we may
suppose is some old ruffian well known upon that coast and faults
may be a flash term for what the americans call notions a part of the
cargo it clearly is and one is not surprised to hear landor whilst
assenting to the general plan of attack suggesting in a whisper that
they should abase their eyes in reverence to so great a man without
absolutely closing them which i take to mean that without trusting
entirely to their boarders or absolutely closing their ports they should
depress their guns and fire down into the hold in respect of the vessel
attacked standing so high out of the water after such plain speaking
nobody can wonder much at the junior pirate landor muttering it will
be difficult for us always to refrain of course it will refraining
was no part of the business i should fancy taught by that same
buccaneer johnson there is mischief you see reader singing in the
air miching malhecho and it is our business to watch it

but before coming to the main attack i must suffer myself to be detained
for a few moments by what mr l premises upon the moral of any great
fable and the relation which it bears or should bear to the solution
of such a fable philosophic criticism is so far improved that at this
day few people who have reflected at all upon such subjects but are
agreed as to one point viz that in metaphysical language the moral
of an epos or a drama should be immanent not transient or
otherwise that it should be vitally distributed through the whole
organization of the tree not gathered or secreted into a sort of red
berry or racemus pendent at the end of its boughs this view mr landor
himself takes as a general view but strange to say by some landorian
perverseness where there occurs a memorable exception to this rule as in
the paradise lost in that case he insists upon the rule in its rigor 
the rule and nothing but the rule where on the contrary the rule
does really and obviously take effect as in the iliad and odyssey
there he insists upon an exceptional case there is a moral in his
opinion hanging like a tassel of gold bullion from the iliad and what
is it something so fantastic that i decline to repeat it as well might
he have said that the moral of othello was try warren's blacking
there is no moral little or big foul or fair to the iliad up to the
th book the moral might seem dimly to be this gentlemen keep the
peace you see what comes of quarrelling but there this moral ceases
 there is now a break of guage the narrow guage takes place after this
whilst up to this point the broad guage viz the wrath of achilles
growing out of his turn-up with agamemnon had carried us smoothly along
without need to shift our luggage there is no more quarrelling after book
 how then can there be any more moral from quarrelling if you insist
on my telling you what is the moral of the iliad i insist upon
your telling me what is the moral of a rattlesnake or the moral of a
niagara i suppose the moral is that you must get out of their way if
you mean to moralize much longer the going-up or anabasis of the greeks
against troy was a fact and a pretty dense fact and by accident the
very first in which all greece had a common interest it was a joint-stock
concern a representative expedition whereas previously there had been
none for even the argonautic expedition which is rather of the darkest
implied no confederation except amongst individuals how could it for the
argo is supposed to have measured only twenty-seven tons how she would
have been classed at lloyd's is hard to say but certainly not as a 
there was no state-cabin everybody demi-gods and all pigged in the
steerage amongst beans and bacon greece was naturally proud of having
crossed the herring-pond small as it was in search of an entrenched
enemy proud also of having licked him into almighty smash this was
sufficient or if an impertinent moralist sought for something more
doubtless the moral must have lain in the booty a peach is the moral of a
peach and moral enough but if a man will have something better a
moral within a moral why there is the peach-stone and its kernel out
of which he may make ratafia which seems to be the ultimate morality that
can be extracted from a peach mr archdeacon williams indeed of the
edinburgh academy has published an octavo opinion upon the case which
asserts that the moral of the trojan war was to borrow a phrase from
children tit for tat it was a case of retaliation for crimes against
hellas committed by troy in an earlier generation it may be so nemesis
knows best but this moral if it concerns the total expedition to the
troad cannot concern the iliad which does not take up matters from so
early a period nor go on to the final catastrophe of ilium

now as to the paradise lost it happens that there is whether there
ought to be or not a pure golden moral distinctly announced separately
contemplated and the very weightiest ever uttered by man or realized by
fable it is a moral rather for the drama of a world than for a human
poem and this moral is made the more prominent and memorable by the
grandeur of its annunciation the jewel is not more splendid in itself
than in its setting excepting the well-known passage on athenian oratory
in the paradise regained there is none even in milton where the
metrical pomp is made so effectually to aid the pomp of the sentiment
hearken to the way in which a roll of dactyles is made to settle like the
swell of the advancing tide into the long thunder of billows breaking for
leagues against the shore

 that to the height of this great argument
 i may assert eternal providence 

hear what a motion what a tumult is given by the dactylic close to each
of the introductory lines and how massily is the whole locked up into the
peace of heaven as the aerial arch of a viaduct is locked up into
tranquil stability by its key-stone through the deep spondaic close

 and justify the ways of god to man

that is the moral of the miltonic epos and as much grander than any other
moral formally illustrated by poets as heaven is higher than earth

but the most singular moral which mr landor anywhere discovers is in
his own poem of gebir whether he still adheres to it does not
appear from the present edition but i remember distinctly in the
original edition a preface now withdrawn in which he made his
acknowledgments to some book read at a welsh inn for the outline of the
story and as to the moral he declared it to be an exposition of that
most mysterious offence over-colonization much i mused in my
youthful simplicity upon this criminal novelty what might it be could
i by mistake have committed it myself was it a felony or a
misdemeanor liable to transportation or only to fine and imprisonment
neither in the decemviral tables nor in the code of justinian nor the
maritime code of oleron nor in the canon law nor the code napoleon nor
our own statutes at large nor in jeremy bentham had i read of such a
crime as a possibility undoubtedly the vermin locally called
squatters both in the wilds of america and australia who pre-
occupy other men's estates have latterly illustrated the logical
possibility of such an offence but they were quite unknown at the era of
gebir even dalica who knew as much wickedness as most people would have
stared at this unheard of villany and have asked as eagerly as i
did what is it now let's have a shy at it in egypt i indeed knew a
case but dalica did not of shocking over-colonization it was the
case which even yet occurs on out-of-the-way roads where a man unjustly
big mounts into the inside of a stage-coach already sufficiently crowded
in streets and squares where men could give him a wide berth they had
tolerated the injustice of his person but now in a chamber so confined
the length and breadth of his wickedness shines revealed to every eye and
if the coach should upset which it would not be the less likely to do for
having him on board somebody or other perhaps myself must lie
beneath this monster like enceladus under mount etna calling upon jove
to come quickly with a few thunderbolts and destroy both man and mountain
both succubus and incubus if no other relief offered meantime the
only case of over-colonization notorious to all europe is that which some
german traveller riedesel i think has reported so eagerly in ridicule
of our supposed english credulity viz the case of the foreign swindler
who advertised that he would get into a quart bottle filled drury lane
pocketed the admission money and decamped protesting in his adieus to
the spectators that it lacerated his heart to disappoint so many noble
islanders but that on his next visit he would make full reparation by
getting into a vinegar cruet now here certainly was a case of over-
colonization not perpetrated but meditated yet when one examines this
case the crime consisted by no means in doing it but in not doing it
by no means in getting into the bottle but in not getting into it the
foreign contractor would have been probably a very unhappy man had he
fulfilled his contract by over-colonizing the bottle but he would have
been decidedly a more virtuous man he would have redeemed his pledge
and if he had even died in the bottle we should have honored him as a
vir bonus cum mala fortuna compositus as a man of honor matched in
single duel with calamity and also as the best of conjurers over-
colonization therefore except in the one case of the stage-coach is
apparently no crime and the offence of king gebir in my eyes remains a
mystery to this day

what next solicits notice is in the nature of a digression it is a kind
of parenthesis on wordsworth

landor when it was a matter of wonder how keats who was ignorant of
greek could have written his hyperion shelley whom envy never
touched gave as a reason because he was a greek wordsworth being
asked his opinion of the same poem called it scoffingly a pretty piece
of paganism yet he himself in the best verses he ever wrote and
beautiful ones they are reverts to the powerful influence of the pagan
creed

here are nine lines exactly in the original type now nine tailors are
ranked by great masters of algebra as one man such is the received
equation or as it is expressed with more liveliness in an old english
drama by a man who meets and quarrels with eighteen tailors come hang
it i'll fight you both but whatever be the algebraic ratio of
tailors to men it is clear that nine landorian lines are not always equal
to the delivery of one accurate truth or to a successful conflict with
three or four signal errors firstly shelley's reason if it ever was
assigned is irrelevant as regards any question that must have been
intended it could not have been meant to ask why was the hyperion so
grecian in its spirit for it is anything but grecian we should praise it
falsely to call it so for the feeble though elegant mythology of greece
was incapable of breeding anything so deep as the mysterious portents
that in the hyperion run before and accompany the passing away of
divine immemorial dynasties nothing can be more impressive than the
picture of saturn in his palsy of affliction and of the mighty goddess
his grand-daughter or than the secret signs of coming woe in the palace
of hyperion these things grew from darker creeds than greece had ever
known since the elder traditions of prometheus creeds that sent down
their sounding plummets into far deeper wells within the human spirit
what had been meant by the question proposed to shelley was no doubt 
how so young a man as keats not having had the advantage of a regular
classical education could have been so much at home in the details of the
elder mythology tooke's pantheon might have been obtained by
favor of any english schoolboy and dumoustier's lettres a emile sur
la mythologie by favor of very many young ladies but these
according to my recollection of them would hardly have sufficed spence's
polymetis however might have been had by favor of any good
library and the bibliotheca of apollodorus who is the cock of
the walk on this subject might have been read by favor of a latin
translation supposing keats really unequal to the easy greek text there
is no wonder in the case nor if there had been would shelley's kind
remark have solved it the treatment of the facts must in any
case have been due to keats's genius so as to be the same whether he had
studied greek or not the facts apart from the treatment must in
any case have been had from a book secondly let mr landor rely upon it
 that wordsworth never said the thing ascribed to him here as any formal
judgment or what scottish law would call deliverance upon the
hyperion as to what he might have said incidentally and collaterally
the meaning of words is so entirely affected by their position in a
conversation what followed what went before that five words dislocated
from their context never would be received as evidence in the queen's
bench the court which of all others least strictly weighs its rules of
evidence is the female tea-table yet even that tribunal would require
the deponent to strengthen his evidence if he had only five detached
words to produce wordsworth is a very proud man as he has good reason to
be and perhaps it was i myself who once said in print of him that it is
not the correct way of speaking to say that wordsworth is as proud as
lucifer but inversely to say of lucifer that some people have conceived
him to be as proud as wordsworth but if proud wordsworth is not
haughty is not ostentatious is not anxious for display is not arrogant
and least of all is he capable of descending to envy who or what is it
that he should be envious of does anybody suppose that wordsworth
would be jealous of archimedes if he now walked upon earth or michael
angelo or milton nature does not repeat herself be assured she will
never make a second wordsworth any of us would be jealous of his own
duplicate and if i had a doppelganger who went about personating
me copying me and pirating me philosopher as i am i might if the
court of chancery would not grant an injunction against him be so far
carried away by jealousy as to attempt the crime of murder upon his
carcass and no great matter as regards him but it would be a sad thing
for me to find myself hanged and for what i beseech you for
murdering a sham that was either nobody at all or oneself repeated once
too often but if you show to wordsworth a man as great as himself still
that great man will not be much like wordsworth the great man will
not be wordsworth's doppelganger if not impar as you say he will be
dispar and why then should wordsworth be jealous of him unless he is
jealous of the sun and of abd el kader and of mr waghorn all of whom
carry off a great deal of any spare admiration which europe has to dispose
of but suddenly it strikes me that we are all proud every man of us and
i daresay with some reason for it be the same more or less for i never
came to know any man in my whole life intimately who could not do
something or other better than anybody else the only man amongst us that
is thoroughly free from pride that you may at all seasons rely on as a
pattern of humility is the pickpocket that man is so admirable in his
temper and so used to pocketing anything whatever which providence sends
in his way that he will even pocket a kicking or anything in that line
of favors which you are pleased to bestow the smallest donations are by
him thankfully received provided only that you whilst half-blind with
anger in kicking him round a figure of eight like a dexterous skater
will but allow him which is no more than fair to have a second shy
at your pretty indian pocket-handkerchief so as to convince you on
cooler reflection that he does not always miss thirdly mr landor
leaves it doubtful what verses those are of wordsworth's which celebrate
the power of the pagan creed whether that sonnet in which wordsworth
wishes to exchange for glimpses of human life then and in those
circumstances forlorn the sight

   of proteus coming from the sea
 and hear old triton wind his wreathed horn

whether this or the passage on the greek mythology in the excursion
whichever he means i am the last man to deny that it is beautiful and
especially if he means the latter but it is no presumption to deny firmly
mr landor's assertion that these are the best verses wordsworth ever
wrote bless the man

 there are a thousand such elsewhere
 as worthy of your wonder 

elsewhere i mean in wordsworth's poems in reality it is
impossible that these should be the best for even if in the
executive part they were so which is not the case the very nature of
the thought of the feeling and of the relation which binds it to the
general theme and the nature of that theme itself forbid the possibility
of merits so high the whole movement of the feeling is fanciful it
neither appeals to what is deepest in human sensibilities nor is meant to
do so the result indeed serves only to show mr landor's slender
acquaintance with wordsworth and what is worse than being slenderly
acquainted he is erroneously acquainted even with these two short
breathings from the wordsworthian shell he mistakes the logic wordsworth
does not celebrate any power at all in paganism old triton indeed he's
little better in respect of the terrific than a mail-coach guard nor
half as good if you allow the guard his official seat a coal-black
night lamps blazing back upon his royal scarlet and his blunderbuss
correctly slung triton would not stay i engage for a second look at the
old portsmouth mail as once i knew it but alas better things than ever
stood on triton's pins are now as little able to stand up for themselves
or to startle the silent fields in darkness with the sudden flash of
their glory gone before it had fall come as triton is to play the
freyschutz chorus on his humbug of a horn but the logic of wordsworth is
this not that the greek mythology is potent on the contrary that it is
weaker than cowslip tea and would not agitate the nerves of a hen
sparrow but that weak as it is nay by means of that very weakness it
does but the better serve to measure the weakness of something which
he thinks yet weaker viz the death-like torpor of london society
in benumbed by conventional apathy and worldliness 

 heavy as frost and deep almost as life

this seems a digression from milton who is properly the subject of this
colloquy but luckily it is not one of my sins mr landor is lord
within the house of his own book he pays all accounts whatever and
readers that have either a bill or bill of exceptions to tender against
the concern must draw upon him to milton he returns upon a very
dangerous topic indeed viz the structure of his blank verse i know of
none that is so trying to a wary man's nerves you might as well tax
mozart with harshness in the divinest passages of don giovanni as
milton with any such offence against metrical science be assured it is
yourself that do not read with understanding not milton that by
possibility can be found deaf to the demands of perfect harmony you are
tempted after walking round a line threescore times to exclaim at last 
well if the fiend himself should rise up before me at this very moment
in this very study of mine and say that no screw was loose in that line
then would i reply sir with submission you are   what suppose
the fiend suddenly to demand in thunder what am i horribly wrong
you wish exceedingly to say but recollecting that some people are
choleric in argument you confine yourself to the polite answer-that
with deference to his better education you conceive him to lie that's
a bad word to drop your voice upon in talking with a fiend and you hasten
to add under a slight a very slight mistake ay you might venture
on that opinion with a fiend but how if an angel should undertake the
case and angelic was the ear of milton many are the prima facie
anomalous lines in milton many are the suspicious lines which in many a
book i have seen many a critic peering into with eyes made up for
mischief yet with a misgiving that all was not quite safe very much
like an old raven looking down a marrow-bone in fact such is the
metrical skill of the man and such the perfection of his metrical
sensibility that on any attempt to take liberties with a passage of his
you feel as when coming in a forest upon what seems a dead lion perhaps
he may not be dead but only sleeping nay perhaps he may not be
sleeping but only shamming and you have a jealousy as to milton even
in the most flagrant case of almost palpable error that after all there
may be a plot in it you may be put down with shame by some man reading
the line otherwise reading it with a different emphasis a different
caesura or perhaps a different suspension of the voice so as to bring
out a new and self-justifying effect it must be added that in
reviewing milton's metre it is quite necessary to have such books as
nare's english orthoepy in a late edition and others of that
class lying on the table because the accentuation of milton's age was
in many words entirely different from ours and mr landor is not free
from some suspicion of inattention as to this point over and above his
accentual difference the practice of our elder dramatists in the
resolution of the final tion which now is uniformly pronounced
shon will be found exceedingly important to the appreciation of a
writer's verse contribution which now is necessarily pronounced as a
word of four syllables would then in verse have five being read into
con-tri-bu-ce-on many readers will recollect another word which for
years brought john kemble into hot water with the pit of drury lane it
was the plural of the word ache this is generally made a dissyllable by
the elizabethan dramatists it occurs in the tempest prospero says 

 i'll fill thy bones with aches

what follows which i do not remember literatim is such metrically
as to require two syllables for aches but how then was this to
be pronounced kemble thought akies would sound ludicrous aitches
therefore he called it and always the pit howled like a famished
menagerie as they did also when he chose and he constantly chose to
pronounce beard like bird many of these niceties must be known
before a critic can ever allow himself to believe that he is right in
obelizing or in marking with so much as a any verse whatever of
milton's and there are some of these niceties i am satisfied not even
yet fully investigated

it is however to be borne in mind after all allowances and provisional
reservations have been made that bentley's hypothesis injudiciously as it
was managed by that great scholar has really a truth of fact to stand
upon not only must milton have composed his three greatest poems the two
paradises and the samson in a state of blindness but subsequently
in the correction of the proofs he must have suffered still more from
this conflict with darkness and consequently from this dependence upon
careless readers this is bentley's case as lawyers say my lord that
is my case it is possible enough to write correctly in the dark as i
myself often do when losing or missing my lucifers which like some
elder lucifers are always rebelliously straying into place where they
can have no business but it is quite impossible to correct a proof in
the dark at least if there is such an art it must be a section of the
black art bentley gained from pope that admirable epithet of slashing
the ribbalds from slashing bentley down to piddling theobalds ie
tibbulds as it was pronounced altogether from his edition of the
paradise lost this the doctor founded on his own hypothesis as to the
advantage taken of milton's blindness and corresponding was the havoc
which he made of the text in fact on the really just allegation that
milton must have used the services of an amanuensis and the plausible one
that this amanuensis being often weary of his task would be likely to
neglect punctilious accuracy and the most improbable allegation that this
weary person would also be very conceited and add much rubbish of his
own bentley resigned himself luxuriously without the whisper of a
scruple to his own sense of what was or was not poetic which sense
happened to be that of the adder for music the deaf adder heareth not
though the musician charm ever so wisely no scholarship which so far
beyond other men bentley had could gain him the imaginative sensibility
which in a degree so far beyond average men he wanted consequently the
world never before beheld such a scene of massacre as his paradise lost
exhibited he laid himself down to his work of extermination like the
brawniest of reapers going in steadily with his sickle coat stripped off
and shirt sleeves tucked up to deal with an acre of barley one duty and
no other rested upon his conscience one voice he heard slash away
and hew down the rotten growths of this abominable amanuensis the carnage
was like that after a pitched battle the very finest passages in every
book of the poem were marked by italics as dedicated to fire and
slaughter slashing dick went through the whole forest like a woodman
marking with white paint the giant trees that must all come down in a
month or so and one naturally reverts to a passage in the poem itself
where god the father is supposed to say to his filial assessor on the
heavenly throne when marking the desolating progress of sin and death 

 see with what havoc these fell dogs advance
 to ravage this fair world

but still this inhuman extravagance of bentley in following out his
hypothesis does not exonerate us from bearing in mind so much
truth as that hypothesis really must have had from the pitiable
difficulties of the great poet's situation

my own opinion therefore upon the line for instance from paradise
regained which mr landor appears to have indicated for the reader's
amazement viz 

 as well might recommend
 such solitude before choicest society

is that it escaped revision from some accident calling off the ear of
milton whilst in the act of having the proof read to him mr landor
silently prints it in italics without assigning his objection but of
course that objection must be that the line has one foot too much it is
an alexandrine such as dryden scattered so profusely without asking
himself why but which milton never tolerates except in the choruses of
the samson

 not difficult if thou hearken to me 

is one of the lines which mr landor thinks that no authority will
reconcile to our ears i think otherwise the caesura is meant to fall
not with the comma after difficult but after thou and there is a
most effective and grand suspension intended it is satan who speaks 
satan in the wilderness and he marks as he wishes to mark the
tremendous opposition of attitude between the two parties to the
temptation

 not difficult if thou  

there let the reader pause as if pulling up suddenly four horses in
harness and throwing them on their haunches not difficult if thou in
some mysterious sense the son of god and then as with a burst of
thunder again giving the reins to your quadriga

   hearken to me

that is to me that am the prince of the air and able to perform all my
promises for those that hearken to any temptations

two lines are cited under the same ban of irreconcilability to our ears
but on a very different plea the first of these lines is 

 launcelot or pellias or pellinore

the other

 quintius fabricius curius regulus

the reader will readily suppose that both are objected to as roll-calls
of proper names now it is very true that nothing is more offensive to
the mind than the practice of mechanically packing into metrical
successions as if packing a portmanteau names without meaning or
significance to the feelings no man ever carried that atrocity so far as
boileau a fact of which mr landor is well aware and slight is the
sanction or excuse that can be drawn from him but it must not be
forgotten that virgil so scrupulous in finish of composition committed
this fault i remember a passage ending

   noemonaque prytaninque

but having no virgil within reach i cannot at this moment quote it
accurately homer with more excuse however from the rudeness of his
age is a deadly offender in this way but the cases from milton are very
different milton was incapable of the homeric or virgilian blemish the
objection to such rolling musketry of names is that unless interspersed
with epithets or broken into irregular groups by brief circumstances of
parentage country or romantic incident they stand audaciously perking
up their heads like lots in a catalogue arrow-headed palisades or young
larches in a nursery ground all occupying the same space all drawn up in
line all mere iterations of each other but in

 quintius fabricius curius regulus

though certainly not a good line when insulated better however
in its connection with the entire succession of which it forms part the
apology is that the massy weight of the separate characters enables them
to stand like granite pillars or pyramids proud of their self-supporting
independency

mr landor makes one correction by a simple improvement in the
punctuation which has a very fine effect rarely has so large a result
been distributed through a sentence by so slight a change it is in the
samson samson says speaking of himself as elsewhere with that
profound pathos which to all hearts invests milton's own situation in the
days of his old age when he was composing that drama 

 ask for this great deliverer now and find him
 eyeless in gaza at the mill with slaves

thus it is usually printed that is without a comma in the latter line
but says landor there ought to be commas after eyeless after
gaza after mill and why because thus the grief of samson is
aggravated at every member of the sentence he like milton was 
blind in a city of triumphant enemies working for daily bread 
herding with slaves samson literally and milton with those whom
politically he regarded as such

mr landor is perfectly wrong i must take the liberty of saying when he
demurs to the line in paradise regained

 from that placid aspect and meek regard

on the ground that meek regard conveys no new idea to placid
aspect but aspect is the countenance of christ when passive
to the gaze of others regard is the same countenance in active
contemplation of those others whom he loves or pities the placid
aspect expresses therefore the divine rest the meek regard
expresses the divine benignity the one is the self-absorption of the
total godhead the other the eternal emanation of the filial godhead

by what ingenuity says landor can we erect into a verse 

 in the bosom of bliss and light of light

now really it is by my watch exactly three minutes too late for him
to make that objection the court cannot receive it now for the line just
this moment cited the ink being hardly yet dry is of the same identical
structure the usual iambic flow is disturbed in both lines by the very
same ripple viz a trochee in the second foot placid in the one
line bosom in the other they are a sort of snags such as lie in the
current of the mississippi there they do nothing but mischief here
when the lines are read in their entire nexus the disturbance stretches
forwards and backwards with good effect on the music besides if it did
not one is willing to take a snag from milton but one does not
altogether like being snagged by the mississippi one sees no particular
reason for bearing it if one only knew how to be revenged on a river

but of these metrical skirmishes though full of importance to the
impassioned text of a great poet for mysterious is the life that connects
all modes of passion with rhythmus let us suppose the casual reader to
have had enough and now at closing for the sake of change let us treat
him to a harlequin trick upon another theme did the reader ever happen to
see a sheriff's officer arresting an honest gentleman who was doing no
manner of harm to gentle or simple and immediately afterwards a second
sheriff's officer arresting the first by which means that second officer
merits for himself a place in history for at the same moment he liberates
a deserving creature since an arrested officer cannot possibly bag his
prisoner and he also avenges the insult put upon that worthy man
perhaps the reader did not ever see such a sight and growing personal
he asks me in return if i ever saw it to say the truth i never
did except once in a too-flattering dream and though i applauded so
loudly as even to waken myself and shouted encore yet all went for
nothing and i am still waiting for that splendid exemplification of
retributive justice but why why should it be a spectacle so uncommon
for surely those official arresters of men must want arresting at times as
well as better people at least however en attendant one may luxuriate
in the vision of such a thing and the reader shall now see such a vision
rehearsed he shall see mr landor arresting milton milton of all men 
for a flaw in his roman erudition and then he shall see me instantly
stepping up tapping mr landor on the shoulder and saying officer
you're wanted whilst to milton i say touching my hat now sir be
off run for your life whilst i hold his man in custody lest he should
fasten on you again

what milton had said speaking of the watchful cherubim was 

 four faces each
 had like a double janus

upon which southey but of course landor ventriloquizing through
southey says better left this to the imagination double januses are
queer figures not at all on the contrary they became so common that
finally there were no other rome in her days of childhood contented
herself with a two-faced janus but about the time of the first or second
caesar a very ancient statue of janus was exhumed which had four faces
ever afterwards this sacred resurgent statue became the model for any
possible janus that could show himself in good company the quadrifrons
janus was now the orthodox janus and it would have been as much a
sacrilege to rob him of any single face as to rob a king's statue of
its horse one thing may recall this to mr landor's memory i think it
was nero but certainly it was one of the first six caesars that built
or that finished a magnificent temple to janus and each face was so
managed as to point down an avenue leading to a separate market-place
now that there were four market-places i will make oath before
any justice of the peace one was called the forum julium one the
forum augustum a third the forum transitorium what the fourth was
called is best known to itself for really i forget but if anybody says
that perhaps it was called the forum landorium i am not the man to
object for few names have deserved such an honor more whether from those
that then looked forward into futurity with one face or from our
posterity that will look back into the vanishing past with another


footnotes

 squatters they are a sort of self-elected warming-pans what
we in england mean by the political term warming-pans are men
who occupy by consent some official place or parliamentary seat until
the proper claimant is old enough in law to assume his rights when the
true man comes to bed the warming-pan respectfully turns out but these
ultra-marine warming-pans wouldn't turn out they showed fight and
wouldn't hear of the true man even as a bed-fellow

 a king's statue till very lately the etiquette of europe was
that none but royal persons could have equestrian statues lord hopetoun
the reader will object is allowed to have a horse in st andrew's
square edinburgh true but observe that he is not allowed to mount him
the first person so far as i remember that not being royal has in our
island seated himself comfortably in the saddle is the duke of
wellington




falsification of english history


i am myself and always have been a member of the church of england and
am grieved to hear the many attacks against the church frequently most
illiberal attacks which not so much religion as political rancor gives
birth to in every third journal that i take up this i say to acquit
myself of all dishonorable feelings such as i would abhor to co-operate
with in bringing a very heavy charge against that great body in its
literary capacity whosoever has reflected on the history of the english
constitution must be aware that the most important stage of its
development lies within the reign of charles i it is true that the
judicial execution of that prince has been allowed by many persons to
vitiate all that was done by the heroic parliament of november and
the ordinary histories of england assume as a matter of course that the
whole period of parliamentary history through those times is to be
regarded as a period of confusion our constitution say they was formed
in - meantime it is evident to any reflecting man that the
revolution simply re-affirmed the principles developed in the strife
between the two great parties which had arisen in the reign of james i
and had ripened and come to issue with each other in the reign of his son
our constitution was not a birth of a single instant as they would
represent it but a gradual growth and development through a long tract of
time in particular the doctrine of the king's vicarious responsibility in
the person of his ministers which first gave a sane and salutary meaning
to the doctrine of the king's personal irresponsibility the king can do
no wrong arose undeniably between and this doctrine is the
main pillar of our constitution and perhaps the finest discovery that was
ever made in the theory of government hitherto the doctrine that the
king can do no wrong had been used not to protect the indispensable
sanctity of the king's constitutional character but to protect the wrong
used in this way it was a maxim of oriental despotism and fit only for a
nation where law had no empire many of the illustrious patriots of the
great parliament saw this and felt the necessity of abolishing a maxim so
fatal to the just liberties of the people but some of them fell into the
opposite error of supposing that this abolition could be effected only by
the direct negation of it their maxim accordingly was the king
can do wrong ie is responsible in his own person in this great
error even the illustrious wife of colonel hutchinson participated 
and accordingly she taxes those of her own party who scrupled to accede to
the new maxim and still adhered to the old one with unconscientious
dealing but she misapprehended their meaning and failed to see where
they laid the emphasis the emphasis was not laid as it was by the royal
party on the words can do no wrong but on the king that is wrong
may be done and in the king's name but it cannot be the king who did it
the king cannot constitutionally be supposed the person who did it by
this exquisite political refinement the old tyrannical maxim was disarmed
of its sting and the entire redress of all wrong so indispensable to the
popular liberty was brought into perfect reconciliation with the entire
inviolability of the sovereign which is no less indispensable to the
popular liberty there is moreover a double wisdom in the new sense for
not only is one object the redress of wrong secured in conjunction with
another object the king's inviolability hitherto held irreconcilable 
but even with a view to the first object alone a much more effectual means
is applied because one which leads to no schism in the state than could
have been applied by the blank negation of the maxim ie by lodging
the responsibility exactly where the executive power ergo the power of
resisting this responsibility was lodged here then is one example in
illustration of my thesis that the english constitution was in a great
measure gradually evolved in the contest between the different parties in
the reign of charles i now if this be so it follows that for
constitutional history no period is so important as that and indeed
though it is true that the revolution is the great era for the
constitutional historian because he there first finds the constitution
fully developed as the bright consummate flower and what is equally
important he there first finds the principles of our constitution
ratified by a competent authority yet to trace the root and growth
of the constitution the three reigns immediately preceding are still more
properly the objects of his study in proportion then as the reign of
charles i is important to the history of our constitution in that
proportion are those to be taxed with the most dangerous of all possible
falsifications of our history who have misrepresented either the facts or
the principles of those times now i affirm that the clergy of the church
of england have been in a perpetual conspiracy since the era of the
restoration to misrepresent both as an illustration of what i mean i
refer to the common edition of hudibras by dr grey for the proof i might
refer to some thousands of books dr grey's is a disgusting case for he
swallowed with the most anile credulity every story the most extravagant
that the malice of those times could invent against either the
presbyterians or the independents and for this i suppose amongst other
deformities his notes were deservedly ridiculed by warburton but amongst
hundreds of illustrations more respectable than dr grey's i will refer
the reader to a work of our own days the ecclesiastical biography in
part a republication of walton's lives edited by the present master of
trinity college cambridge who is held in the highest esteem wherever he
is known and is i am persuaded perfectly conscientious and as impartial
as in such a case it is possible for a high churchman to be yet so it is
that there is scarcely one of the notes having any political reference to
the period of - which is not disfigured by unjust prejudices and
the amount of the moral which the learned editor grounds upon the
documents before him is this that the young student is to cherish the
deepest abhorrence and contempt of all who had any share on the
parliamentary side in the confusions of the period from to 
that is to say of men to whose immortal exertions it was owing that the
very revolution of which dr w will be the first to applaud found
us with any such stock of political principles or feelings as could make a
beneficial revolution possible where let me ask would have been the
willingness of some tories to construe the flight of james ii into a
virtual act of abdication or to consider even the most formal act of
abdication binding against the king-had not the great struggle of
charles's days gradually substituted in the minds of all parties a
rational veneration of the king's office for the old superstition
in behalf of the king's person which would have protected him from
the effects of any acts however solemnly performed which affected
injuriously either his own interests or the liberties of his people
tempora mutantur nos et mutamur in illis those whom we find in
fierce opposition to the popular party about we find still in the
same personal opposition fifty years after but an opposition resting on
far different principles insensibly the principles of their antagonists
had reached even them and a courtier of was willing to concede more
than a patriot of would have ventured to ask let me not be
understood to mean that true patriotism is at all more shown in supporting
the rights of the people than those of the king as soon as both are
defined and limited the last are as indispensable to the integrity of the
constitution as the first and popular freedom itself would suffer as
much though indirectly from an invasion of caesar's rights as by a more
direct attack on itself but in the th century the rights of the people
were as yet not defined throughout that century they were gradually
defining themselves and as happiness to all great practical interests
defining themselves through a course of fierce and bloody contests for
the kingly rights are almost inevitably carried too high in ages of
imperfect civilization and the well-known laws of henry the seventh by
which he either broke or gradually sapped the power of the aristocracy
had still more extravagantly exalted them on this account it is just to
look upon democratic or popular politics as identical in the th century
with patriotic politics in later periods the democrat and the patriot
have sometimes been in direct opposition to each other at that period
they were inevitably in conjunction all this however is in general
overlooked by those who either write english history or comment upon it
most writers of or upon english history proceed either upon servile
principles or upon no principles and a good spirit of english history
that is a history which should abstract the tendencies and main results
as to laws manners and constitution from every age of english history
is a work which i hardly hope to see executed for it would require the
concurrence of some philosophy with a great deal of impartiality how
idly do we say in speaking of the events of our own time which affect our
party feelings we stand too near to these events for an impartial
estimate we must leave them to the judgment of posterity for it is a
fact that of the many books of memoirs written by persons who were not
merely contemporary with the great civil war but actors and even leaders
in its principal scenes there is hardly one which does not exhibit a more
impartial picture of that great drama than the histories written at his
day the historian of popery does not display half so much zealotry and
passionate prejudice in speaking of the many events which have affected
the power and splendor of the papal see for the last thirty years and
under his own eyes as he does when speaking of a reformer who lived three
centuries ago of a translator of the bible into a vernacular tongue who
lived nearly five centuries ago of an anti-pope of a charlemagne or a
gregory the great still further removed from himself the recent events he
looks upon as accidental and unessential but in the great enemies or
great founders of the romish temporal power and in the history of their
actions and their motives he feels that the whole principle of the romish
cause and its pretensions are at stake pretty much under the same feeling
have modern writers written with a rancorous party spirit of the political
struggles in the th century here they fancy that they can detect the
incunabula of the revolutionary spirit here some have been so
sharpsighted as to read the features of pure jacobinism and others 
have gone so far as to assert that all the atrocities of the french
revolution had their direct parallelisms in acts done or countenanced by
the virtuous and august senate of england in strange distortion of
the understanding which can thus find a brotherly resemblance between two
great historical events which of all that ever were put on record stand
off from each other in most irreconcilable enmity the one originating as
mr coleridge has observed in excess of principle the other in the utter
defect of all moral principle whatever and the progress of each being
answerable to its origin yet so it is and not a memoir-writer of that
age is reprinted in this but we have a preface from some red-hot anti-
jacobin warning us with much vapid common-place from the mischiefs and
eventual anarchy of too rash a spirit of reform as displayed in the french
revolution not by the example of that french revolution but by that of
our own in the age of charles i the following passage from the
introduction to sir william waller's vindication published in may
serve as a fair instance he sir w waller was indeed at length
sensible of the misery which he had contributed to bring on his country
by the way it is a suspicious circumstance that sir william first
became sensible that his country was miserable when he became sensible
that he himself was not likely to be again employed and became fully
convinced of it when his party lost their ascendancy he was convinced
by fatal experience that anarchy was a bad step towards a perfect
government that the subversion of every establishment was no safe
foundation for a permanent and regular constitution he found that
pretences of reform were held up by the designing to dazzle the eyes of
the unwary c he found in short that reformation by popular
insurrection must end in the destruction and cannot tend to the formation
of a regular government after a good deal more of this well-meaning
cant the introduction concludes with the following sentence the writer
is addressing the reformers of amongst whom both leaders and
followers he says may together reflect that upon speculative and
visionary reformers ie those of the severest punishment
which god in his vengeance ever yet inflicted was to curse them with the
complete gratification of their own inordinate desires i quote this
passage not as containing any thing singular but for the very reason
that it is not singular it expresses in fact the universal opinion
notwithstanding which i am happy to say that it is false what complete
gratification of their own desires was ever granted to the reformers in
question on the contrary it is well known and no book illustrates that
particular fact so well as sir william waller's that as early as the
army had too effectually subverted the just relations between itself and
parliament not to have suggested fearful anticipations to all discerning
patriots of that unhappy issue which did in reality blight their
prospects and when i speak of an unhappy issue i would be understood
only of the immediate issue for the remote issue was the revolution of
 as i have already asserted neither is it true that even the
immediate issue was unhappy to any extent which can justify the ordinary
language in which it is described here again is a world of delusions we
hear of anarchy of confusions of proscriptions of bloody and
ferocious tyranny all is romance there was no anarchy no confusions
no proscriptions no tyranny in the sense designed the sequestrations
forfeitures and punishments of all sorts which were inflicted by the
conquering party on their antagonists went on by due course of law and
the summary justice of courts martial was not resorted to in england
except for the short term of the two wars and the brief intermediate
campaign of the country was in a very tranquil state nobody was
punished without an open trial and all trials proceeded in the regular
course according to the ancient forms and in the regular courts of
justice and as to tyranny which is meant chiefly of the acts of
cromwell's government it should be remembered that the protectorate
lasted not a quarter of the period in question - a fact which
is constantly forgotten even by very eminent writers who speak as though
cromwell had drawn his sword in january  cut off the king's head 
instantly mounted his throne and continued to play the tyrant for the
whole remaining period of his life nearly ten years secondly as to the
kind of tyranny which cromwell exercised the misconception is
ludicrous continental writers have a notion well justified by the
language of english writers that cromwell was a ferocious savage who
built his palace of human skulls and desolated his country meantime he
was simply a strong-minded rough-built englishman with a character
thoroughly english and exceedingly good-natured gray valued himself upon
his critical knowledge of english history yet how thoughtlessly does he
express the abstract of cromwell's life in the line on the village
cromwell some cromwell guiltless of his country's blood how was
cromwell guilty of his country's blood what blood did he cause to be
shed a great deal was shed no doubt in the wars though less by the way
than is imagined but in those cromwell was but a servant of the
parliament and no one will allege that he had any hand in causing a
single war after he attained the sovereign power no more domestic wars
arose and as to a few persons who were executed for plots and
conspiracies against his person they were condemned upon evidence openly
given and by due course of law with respect to the general character of
his government it is evident that in the unsettled and revolutionary
state of things which follows a civil war some critical cases will arise
to demand an occasional vigor beyond the law such as the roman
government allowed of in the dictatorial power but in general cromwell's
government was limited by law and no reign in that century prior to the
revolution furnishes fewer instances of attempts to tamper with the laws
 to overrule them to twist them to private interpretations or to
dispense with them as to his major-generals of counties who figure in
most histories of england as so many ali pachas that impaled a few
prisoners every morning before breakfast or rather as so many ogres that
ate up good christian men women and children alive they were
disagreeable people who were disliked much in the same way as our
commissioners of the income-tax were disliked in the memory of us all and
heartily they would have laughed at the romantic and bloody masquerade in
which they are made to figure in the english histories what then was the
tyranny of cromwell's government which is confessedly complained of
even in those days the word tyranny was then applied not so much to the
mode in which his power was administered except by the prejudiced as to
its origin however mercifully a man may reign yet if he have no right
to reign at all we may in one sense call him a tyrant his power not
being justly derived and resting upon an unlawful ie a military
basis as a usurper and one who had diverted the current of a grand
national movement to selfish and personal objects cromwell was and
will be called a tyrant but not in the more obvious sense of the word
such are the misleading statements which disfigure the history of england
in its most important chapter they mislead by more than a simple error of
fact those which i have noticed last involve a moral anachronism for
they convey images of cruelty and barbarism such as could not co-exist
with the national civilization at that time and whosoever has not
corrected this false picture by an acquaintance with the english
literature of that age must necessarily image to himself a state of
society as rude and uncultured as that which prevailed during the wars of
york and lancaster ie about two centuries earlier but those
with which i introduced this article are still worse because they
involve an erroneous view of constitutional history and a most
comprehensive act of ingratitude the great men of the long parliament
paid a heavy price for their efforts to purchase for their descendants a
barrier to irresponsible power and security from the anarchy of undefined
regal prerogative in these efforts most of them made shipwreck of their
own tranquillity and peace that such sacrifices were made unavailingly
as it must have seemed to themselves and that few of them lived to see
the good old cause finally triumphant does not cancel their claims upon
our gratitude but rather strengthen them by the degree in which it
aggravated the difficulty of bearing such sacrifices with patience but
whence come these falsifications of history i believe from two causes
first as i have already said from the erroneous tone impressed upon the
national history by the irritated spirit of the clergy of the established
church to the religious zealotry of those times the church was the
object of especial attack and its members were naturally exposed to heavy
sufferings hence their successors are indisposed to find my good in a
cause which could lead to such a result it is their manifest right to
sympathize with their own order in that day and in such a case it is
almost their duty to be incapable of an entire impartiality meantime they
have carried this much too far the literature of england must always be
in a considerable proportion lodged in their hands and the extensive
means thus placed at their disposal for injuriously coloring that
important part of history they have used with no modesty or forbearance
there is not a page of the national history even in its local subdivisions
which they have not stained with the atrabilious hue of their wounded
remembrances hardly a town in england which stood a siege for the king
or the parliament but has some printed memorial of its constancy and its
sufferings and in nine cases out of ten the editor is a clergyman of the
established church who has contrived to deepen the sorrow of the time
by the harshness of his commentary surely it is high time that the wounds
of the th century should close that history should take a more
commanding and philosophic station and that brotherly charity should now
lead us to a saner view of constitutional politics or a saner view of
politics to a more comprehensive charity the other cause of this
falsification springs out of a selfishness which has less claim to any
indulgence viz the timidity with which the english whigs of former days
and the party to whom they succeeded constantly shrank from
acknowledging any alliance with the great men of the long parliament under
the nervous horror of being confounded with the regicides of it was
of such urgent importance to them for any command over the public
support that they should acquit themselves of an sentiment of lurking
toleration for regicide with which their enemies never failed to load
them that no mode of abjuring it seemed sufficiently emphatic to them
hence it was that addison with a view to the interest of his party
thought fit when in switzerland to offer a puny insult to the memory of
general ludlow hence it is that even in our own days no writers have
insulted milton with so much bitterness and shameless irreverence as the
whigs though it is true that some few whigs more however in their
literary than in their political character have stepped forward in his
vindication at this moment i recollect a passage in the writings of a
modern whig bishop in which for the sake of creating a charge of
falsehood against milton the author has grossly mis-translated a passage
in the defensio pro pop anglicano and if that bishop were not
dead i would here take the liberty of rapping his knuckles were it only
for breaking priscian's head to return over to the clerical feud against
the long parliament it was a passage in a very pleasing work of this day
ecclesiastical biography which suggested to me the whole of what
i have now written its learned editor who is incapable of uncandid
feelings except in what concerns the interests of his order has adopted
the usual tone in regard to the men of throughout his otherwise
valuable annotations and somewhere or other in the life of hammond
according to my remembrance he has made a statement to this effect that
the custom prevalent among children in that age of asking their parents
blessing was probably first brought into disuse by the puritans is it
possible to imagine a perversity of prejudice more unreasonable the
unamiable side of the patriotic character in the seventeenth century was
unquestionably its religious bigotry which however had its ground in a
real fervor of religious feeling and a real strength of religious
principle somewhat exceeding the ordinary standard of the th century
but however palliated their bigotry is not to be denied it was often
offensive from its excess and ludicrous in its direction many harmless
customs many ceremonies and rituals that had a high positive value their
frantic intolerance quarrelled with and for my part i heartily join in
the sentiment of charles ii applying it as he did but a good deal more
extensively that their religion was not a religion for a gentleman
indeed all sectarianism but especially that which has a modern origin 
arising and growing up within our own memories unsupported by a grand
traditional history of persecutions conflicts and martyrdoms lurking
moreover in blind alleys holes corners and tabernacles must appear
spurious and mean in the eyes of him who has been bred up in the grand
classic forms of the church of england or the church of rome but because
the bigotry of the puritans was excessive and revolting is that a
reason for fastening upon them all the stray evils of omission or
commission for which no distinct fathers can be found the learned editor
does not pretend that there is any positive evidence or presumption even
for imputing to the puritans a dislike to the custom in question but
because he thinks it a good custom his inference is that nobody could
have abolished it but the puritans now who does not see that if this had
been amongst the usages discountenanced by the puritans it would on that
account have been the more pertinaciously maintained by their enemies in
church and state or even if this usage were of a nature to be prohibited
by authority as the public use of the liturgy organs surplices c
who does not see that with regard to that as well as to other
puritanical innovations there would have been a reflux of zeal in the
restoration of the king which would have established them in more strength
than ever but it is evident to the unprejudiced that the usage in
question gradually went out in submission to the altered spirit of the
times it was one feature of a general system of manners fitted by its
piety and simplicity for a pious and simple age and which therefore even
the th century had already outgrown it is not to be inferred that
filial affection and reverence have decayed amongst us because they no
longer express themselves in the same way in an age of imperfect culture
all passions and emotions are in a more elementary state speak a plainer
language and express themselves externally in such an age the
frame and constitution of society is more picturesque the modes of life
rest more undisguisedly upon the basis of the absolute and original
relation of things the son is considered in his sonship the father in
his fatherhood and the manners take an appropriate coloring up to the
middle of the th century there were many families in which the children
never presumed to sit down in their parents presence but with us in an
age of more complete intellectual culture a thick disguise is spread over
the naked foundations of human life and the instincts of good taste
banish from good company the expression of all the profounder emotions a
son therefore who should kneel down in this age to ask his papa's
blessing on leaving town for brighton or bath would be felt by himself to
be making a theatrical display of filial duty such as would be painful to
him in proportion as his feelings were sincere all this would have been
evident to the learned editor in any case but one which regarded the
puritans they were at any rate to be molested in default of any graver
matter a mere fanciful grievance is searched out still however nothing
was effected fanciful or real the grievance must be connected with the
puritans here lies the offence there lies the puritans it would be very
agreeable to find some means of connecting the one with the other but how
shall this be done why in default of all other means the learned editor
assumes the connection he leaves the reader with an impression
that the puritans are chargeable with a serious wound to the manners of
the nation in a point affecting the most awful of the household charities
and he fails to perceive that for this whole charge his sole ground is 
that it would be very agreeable to him if he had a ground such is the
power of the esprit de corps to palliate and recommend as colorable
the very weakest logic to a man of acknowledged learning and talent in
conclusion i must again disclaim any want of veneration and entire
affection for the established church the very prejudices and injustice
with which i tax the english clergy have a generous origin but it is
right to point the attention of historical students to their strength and
the effect which they have had they have been indulged to excess they
have disfigured the grandest page in english history they have hid the
true descent and tradition of our constitutional history and by
impressing upon the literature of the country a false conception of the
patriotic party in and out of parliament they have stood in the way of a
great work a work which according to my ideal of it would be the most
useful that could just now be dedicated to the english public viz a
philosophic record of the revolutions of english history the english
constitution as proclaimed and ratified in - is in its kind the
noblest work of the human mind working in conjunction with time and what
in such a case we may allowably call providence of this chef d'oeuvre
of human wisdom it were desirable that we should have a proportionable
history for such a history the great positive qualification would be a
philosophic mind the great negative qualification would be this which to
the established clergy may now be recommended as a fit subject for their
magnanimity viz complete conquest over those prejudices which have
hitherto discolored the greatest era of patriotic virtue by contemplating
the great men of that era under their least happy aspect namely in
relation to the established church

now that i am on the subject of english history i will notice one of the
thousand mis-statements of hume's which becomes a memorable one from the
stress which he has laid upon it and from the manner and situation in
which he has introduced it standing in the current of a narrative it
would have merited a silent correction in an unpretending note but it
occupies a much more assuming station for it is introduced in a
philosophical essay and being relied on for a particular purpose with the
most unqualified confidence and being alleged in opposition to the very
highest authority viz the authority of an eminent person contemporary
with the fact it must be looked on as involving a peremptory defiance to
all succeeding critics who might hesitate between the authority of mr
hume at the distance of a century from the facts and sir william temple
speaking to them as a matter within his personal recollections sir
william temple had represented himself as urging in a conversation with
charles ii the hopelessness of any attempt on the part of an english
king to make himself a despotic and absolute monarch except indeed
through the affections of his people this general thesis he had
supported by a variety of arguments and amongst the rest he had
described himself as urging this that even cromwell had been unable to
establish himself in unlimited power though supported by a military force
of eighty thousand men upon this hume calls the reader's attention
to the extreme improbability which there must beforehand appear to be in
supposing that sir w temple speaking of so recent a case with so much
official knowledge of that case at his command uncontradicted moreover by
the king whose side in the argument gave him an interest in contradicting
sir william's statement and whose means of information were paramount to
those of all others could under these circumstances be mistaken
doubtless the reader will reply to mr hume the improbability is
extreme and scarcely to be invalidated by any possible authority which
at best must terminate in leaving an equilibrium of opposing evidence
and yet says mr hume sir william was unquestionably wrong and grossly
wrong cromwell never had an army at all approaching to the number of
eighty thousand now here is a sufficient proof that hume had never read
lord clarendon's account of his own life this book is not so common as
his history of the rebellion and hume had either not met with it or
had neglected it for in the early part of this work lord clarendon
speaking of the army which was assembled on blackheath to welcome the
return of charles ii says that it amounted to fifty thousand men and
when it is remembered that this army was exclusive of the troops in
garrison of the forces left by monk in the north and above all of the
entire army in ireland it cannot be doubted that the whole would amount
to the number stated by sir william temple indeed charles ii himself in
the year ie about four years after this conversation as
sir w temple elsewhere tells us in six weeks time raised an army of
twenty thousand men the completest and in all appearance the bravest
troops that could be any where seen and might have raised many more and
it was confessed by all the foreign ministers that no king in christendom
could have made and completed such a levy as this appeared in such a
time william iii again about eleven years afterwards raised twenty-
three regiments with the same ease and in the same space of six weeks it
may be objected indeed to such cases as in fact it was objected to
the case of william iii by howlett in his sensible examination of dr
price's essay on the population of england that in an age when
manufactures were so little extended it could ever have been difficult to
make such a levy of men provided there were funds for paying and
equipping them but considering the extraordinary funds which were
disposable for this purpose in ireland c during the period of
cromwell's protectorate we may very safely allow the combined authority
of sir william temple of the king and of that very prime minister who
disbanded cromwell's army to outweigh the single authority of hume at the
distance of a century from the facts upon any question of fact indeed
hume's authority is none at all


footnotes

 this is remarked by her editor and descendant julius hutchinson who
adds some words to this effect that if the patriot of that day
were the inventors of the maxim the king can do no wrong we are
much indebted to them the patriots certainly did not invent the maxim
for they found it already current but they gave it its new and
constitutional sense i refer to the book however as i do to almost all
books in these notes from memory writing most of them in situations
where i have no access to books by the way charles i who used the
maxim in the most odious sense furnished the most colorable excuse for
his own execution he constantly maintained the irresponsibility of his
ministers but if that were conceded it would then follow that the king
must be made responsible in his own person and that construction led of
necessity to his trial and death

 amongst these mr d'israeli in one of the latter volumes of his
curiosities of literature has dedicated a chapter or so to a formal
proof of this proposition a reader who is familiar with the history of
that age comes to the chapter with a previous indignation knowing what
sort of proof he has to expect this indignation is not likely to be
mitigated by what he will there find because some one madman fool or
scoundrel makes a monstrous proposal which dies of itself unsupported
and is in violent contrast to all the acts and the temper of those times
 this is to sully the character of the parliament and three-fourths of
the people of england if this proposal had grown out of the spirit of the
age that spirit would have produced many more proposals of the same
character and acts corresponding to them yet upon this one infamous
proposal and two or three scandalous anecdotes from the libels of the
day does the whole onus of mr d'israeli's parallel depend tantamne
rem tam negligenter in the general character of an englishman i have
a right to complain that so heavy an attack upon the honor of england and
her most virtuous patriots in her most virtuous age should be made with so
much levity a charge so solemn in its matter should have been prosecuted
with a proportionate solemnity of manner mr d'israeli refers with just
applause to the opinions of mr coleridge i wish that he would have
allowed a little more weight to the striking passage in which that
gentleman contrasts the french revolution with the english revolution of
- however the general tone of honor and upright principle which
marks mr d'israeli's work encourages me and others to hope that he will
cancel the chapter and not persist in wounding the honor of a great
people for the sake of a parallelism which even if it were true is a
thousand times too slight and feebly supported to satisfy the most
accommodating reader

 sir william and his cousin sir hardress waller were both remarkable
men sir hardress had no conscience at all sir william a very scrupulous
one which however he was for ever tampering with and generally
succeeded in reducing into compliance with his immediate interest he was
however an accomplished gentleman and as a man of talents worthy of the
highest admiration

 until after the year i do not remember ever to have found the
term whig applied except to the religious characteristics of that party
whatever reference it might have to their political distinctions was only
secondary and by implication

 sir william had quoted to charles a saying from gourville a frenchman
whom the king esteemed and whom sir william himself considered the only
foreigner he had ever known that understood england to this effect that
a king of england who will be the man of his people is the greatest king
in the world but if he will be something more by g  he is nothing at
all




a peripatetic philosopher


he was a man of very extraordinary genius he has generally been treated
by those who have spoken of him in print as a madman but this is a
mistake and must have been founded chiefly on the titles of his books he
was a man of fervid mind and of sublime aspirations but he was no madman
or if he was then i say that it is so far desirable to be a madman in
 or when i must have been about thirteen years old walking
stewart was in bath where my family at that time resided he frequented
the pump-room and i believe all public places walking up and down and
dispersing his philosophic opinions to the right and the left like a
grecian philosopher the first time i saw him was at a concert in the
upper rooms he was pointed out to me by one of my party as a very
eccentric man who had walked over the habitable globe i remember that
madame mara was at that moment singing and walking stewart who was a
true lover of music as i afterwards came to know was hanging upon her
notes like a bee upon a jessamine flower his countenance was striking
and expressed the union of benignity with philosophic habits of thought
in such health had his pedestrian exercises preserved him connected with
his abstemious mode of living that though he must at that time have been
considerably above forty he did not look older than twenty-eight at
least the face which remained upon my recollection for some years was that
of a young man nearly ten years afterwards i became acquainted with him
during the interval i had picked up one of his works in bristol viz his
travels to discover the source of moral motion the second volume
of which is entitled the apocalypse of nature i had been greatly
impressed by the sound and original views which in the first volume he had
taken of the national characters throughout europe in particular he was
the first and so far as i know the only writer who had noticed the
profound error of ascribing a phlegmatic character to the english nation
english phlegm is the constant expression of authors when contrasting
the english with the french now the truth is that beyond that of all
other nations it has a substratum of profound passion and if we are to
recur to the old doctrine of temperaments the english character must be
classed not under the phlegmatic but under the melancholic
temperament and the french under the sanguine the character of a
nation may be judged of in this particular by examining its idiomatic
language the french in whom the lower forms of passion are constantly
bubbling up from the shallow and superficial character of their feelings
have appropriated all the phrases of passion to the service of trivial and
ordinary life and hence they have no language of passion for the service
of poetry or of occasions really demanding it for it has been already
enfeebled by continual association with cases of an unimpassioned order
but a character of deeper passion has a perpetual standard in itself by
which as by an instinct it tries all cases and rejects the language of
passion as disproportionate and ludicrous where it is not fully justified
ah heavens or oh my god are exclamations with us so exclusively
reserved for cases of profound interest that on hearing a woman even
ie a person of the sex most easily excited utter such words we look
round expecting to see her child in some situation of danger but in
france ciel and oh mon dieu are uttered by every woman if a mouse
does but run across the floor the ignorant and the thoughtless however
will continue to class the english character under the phlegmatic
temperament whilst the philosopher will perceive that it is the exact
polar antithesis to a phlegmatic character in this conclusion though
otherwise expressed and illustrated walking stewart's view of the english
character will be found to terminate and his opinion is especially
valuable first and chiefly because he was a philosopher secondly
because his acquaintance with man civilized and uncivilized under all
national distinctions was absolutely unrivalled meantime this and
others of his opinions were expressed in language that if literally
construed would often appear insane or absurd the truth is his long
intercourse with foreign nations had given something of a hybrid tincture
to his diction in some of his works for instance he uses the french
word helas uniformly for the english alas and apparently with no
consciousness of his mistake he had also this singularity about him
 that he was everlastingly metaphysicizing against metaphysics to me
who was buried in metaphysical reveries from my earliest days this was
not likely to be an attraction any more than the vicious structure of his
diction was likely to please my scholarlike taste all grounds of disgust
however gave way before my sense of his powerful merits and as i have
said i sought his acquaintance coming up to london from oxford about
 or i made inquiries about him and found that he usually read
the papers at a coffee-room in piccadilly understanding that he was poor
it struck me that he might not wish to receive visits at his lodgings and
therefore i sought him at the coffee-room here i took the liberty of
introducing myself to him he received me courteously and invited me to
his rooms which at that time were in sherrard-street golden-square a
street already memorable to me i was much struck with the eloquence of
his conversation and afterwards i found that mr wordsworth himself the
most eloquent of men in conversation had been equally struck when he had
met him at paris between the years and during the early storms
of the french revolution in sherrard-street i visited him repeatedly and
took notes of the conversations i had with him on various subjects these
i must have somewhere or other and i wish i could introduce them here as
they would interest the reader occasionally in these conversations as in
his books he introduced a few notices of his private history in
particular i remember his telling me that in the east indies he had been a
prisoner of hyder's that he had escaped with some difficulty and that
in the service of one of the native princes as secretary or interpreter
he had accumulated a small fortune this must have been too small i fear
at that time to allow him even a philosopher's comforts for some part of
it invested in the french funds had been confiscated i was grieved to
see a man of so much ability of gentlemanly manners and refined habits
and with the infirmity of deafness suffering under such obvious
privations and i once took the liberty on a fit occasion presenting
itself of requesting that he would allow me to send him some books which
he had been casually regretting that he did not possess for i was at that
time in the hey-day of my worldly prosperity this offer however he
declined with firmness and dignity though not unkindly and i now mention
it because i have seen him charged in print with a selfish regard to his
own pecuniary interest on the contrary he appeared to me a very liberal
and generous man and i well remember that whilst he refused to accept of
any thing from me he compelled me to receive as presents all the books
which he published during my acquaintance with him two of these
corrected with his own hand viz the lyre of apollo and the sophiometer
i have lately found amongst other books left in london and others he
forwarded to me in westmoreland in i saw him often in the spring of
that year i happened to be in london and mr wordsworth's tract on the
convention of cintra being at that time in the printer's hands i
superintended the publication of it and at mr wordsworth's request i
added a long note on spanish affairs which is printed in the appendix the
opinions i expressed in this note on the spanish character at that time
much calumniated on the retreat to corunna then fresh in the public mind
above all the contempt i expressed for the superstition in respect to the
french military prowess which was then universal and at its height and
which gave way in fact only to the campaigns of and fell in as
it happened with mr stewart's political creed in those points where at
that time it met with most opposition in it was i think that i saw
him for the last time and by the way on the day of my parting with him
i had an amusing proof in my own experience of that sort of ubiquity
ascribed to him by a witty writer in the london magazine i met him and
shook hands with him under somerset-house telling him that i should leave
town that evening for westmoreland thence i went by the very shortest
road ie through moor-street soho for i am learned in many
quarters of london towards a point which necessarily led me through
tottenham-court-road i stopped nowhere and walked fast yet so it was
that in tottenham-court-road i was not overtaken by that was
comprehensible but overtook walking stewart certainly as the above
writer alleges there must have been three walking stewarts in london he
seemed no ways surprised at this himself but explained to me that
somewhere or other in the neighborhood of tottenham-court-road there was a
little theatre at which there was dancing and occasionally good singing
between which and a neighboring coffee-house he sometimes divided his
evenings singing it seems he could hear in spite of his deafness in
this street i took my final leave of him it turned out such and
anticipating at the time that it would be so i looked after his white hat
at the moment it was disappearing and exclaimed farewell thou half-
crazy and most eloquent man i shall never see thy face again i did not
intend at that moment to visit london again for some years as it
happened i was there for a short time in and then i heard to my
great satisfaction that walking stewart had recovered a considerable sum
about pounds i believe from the east india company and from the
abstract given in the london magazine of the memoir by his relation i
have since learned that he applied this money most wisely to the purchase
of an annuity and that he persisted in living too long for the peace of
an annuity office so fare all companies east and west and all annuity
offices that stand opposed in interest to philosophers in however
to my great regret i did not see him for i was then taking a great deal
of opium and never could contrive to issue to the light of day soon
enough for a morning call upon a philosopher of such early hours and in
the evening i concluded that he would be generally abroad from what he
had formerly communicated to me of his own habits it seems however that
he afterwards held conversaziones at his own rooms and did not
stir out to theatres quite so much from a brother of mine who at one
time occupied rooms in the same house with him i learned that in other
respects he did not deviate in his prosperity from the philosophic tenor
of his former life he abated nothing of his peripatetic exercises and
repaired duly in the morning as he had done in former years to st
james's park where he sate in contemplative ease amongst the cows
inhaling their balmy breath and pursuing his philosophic reveries he had
also purchased an organ or more than one with which he solaced his
solitude and beguiled himself of uneasy thoughts if he ever had any

the works of walking stewart must be read with some indulgence the titles
are generally too lofty and pretending and somewhat extravagant the
composition is lax and unprecise as i have before said and the doctrines
are occasionally very bold incautiously stated and too hardy and high-
toned for the nervous effeminacy of many modern moralists but walking
stewart was a man who thought nobly of human nature he wrote therefore at
times in the spirit and with the indignation of an ancient prophet against
the oppressors and destroyers of the time in particular i remember that
in one or more of the pamphlets which i received from him at grasmere he
expressed himself in such terms on the subject of tyrannicide
distinguishing the cases in which it was and was not lawful as seemed to
mr wordsworth and myself every way worthy of a philosopher but from the
way in which that subject was treated in the house of commons where it
was at that time occasionally introduced it was plain that his doctrine
was not fitted for the luxurious and relaxed morals of the age like all
men who think nobly of human nature walking stewart thought of it
hopefully in some respects his hopes were wisely grounded in others they
rested too much upon certain metaphysical speculations which are
untenable and which satisfied himself only because his researches in that
track had been purely self-originated and self-disciplined he relied upon
his own native strength of mind but in questions which the wisdom and
philosophy of every age building successively upon each other have not
been able to settle no mind however strong is entitled to build wholly
upon itself in many things he shocked the religious sense especially as
it exists in unphilosophic minds he held a sort of rude and unscientific
spinosism and he expressed it coarsely and in the way most likely to give
offence and indeed there can be no stronger proof of the utter obscurity
in which his works have slumbered than that they should all have escaped
prosecution he also allowed himself to look too lightly and indulgently
on the afflicting spectacle of female prostitution as it exists in london
and in all great cities this was the only point on which i was disposed
to quarrel with him for i could not but view it as a greater reproach to
human nature than the slave-trade or any sight of wretchedness that the
sun looks down upon i often told him so and that i was at a loss to
guess how a philosopher could allow himself to view it simply as part of
the equipage of civil life and as reasonably making part of the
establishment and furniture of a great city as police-offices lamp-
lighting or newspapers waiving however this one instance of something
like compliance with the brutal spirit of the world on all other subjects
he was eminently unworldly child-like simple-minded and upright he
would flatter no man even when addressing nations it is almost laughable
to see how invariably he prefaces his counsels with such plain truths
uttered in a manner so offensive as must have defeated his purpose if it
had otherwise any chance of being accomplished for instance in
addressing america he begins thus people of america since your
separation from the mother-country your moral character has degenerated in
the energy of thought and sense produced by the absence of your
association and intercourse with british officers and merchants you have
no moral discernment to distinguish between the protective power of
england and the destructive power of france and his letter to the irish
nation opens in this agreeable and conciliatory manner people of
ireland i address you as a true philosopher of nature foreseeing the
perpetual misery your irreflective character and total absence of moral
discernment are preparing for c the second sentence begins thus you
are sacrilegiously arresting the arm of your parent kingdom fighting the
cause of man and nature when the triumph of the fiend of french police-
terror would be your own instant extirpation  and the letter closes
thus i see but one awful alternative that ireland will be a perpetual
moral volcano threatening the destruction of the world if the education
and instruction of thought and sense shall not be able to generate the
faculty of moral discernment among a very numerous class of the
population who detest the civic calm as sailors the natural calm and
make civic rights on which they cannot reason a pretext for feuds which
they delight in as he spoke freely and boldly to others so he spoke
loftily of himself at p of the harp of apollo on making a
comparison of himself with socrates in which he naturally gives the
preference to himself he styles the harp c this unparalleled work
of human energy at p he calls it this stupendous work and lower
down on the same page he says i was turned out of school at the age of
fifteen for a dunce or blockhead because i would not stuff into my memory
all the nonsense of erudition and learning and if future ages should
discover the unparalleled energies of genius in this work it will prove
my most important doctrine that the powers of the human mind must be
developed in the education of thought and sense in the study of moral
opinion not arts and science again at p of his sophiometer he
says the paramount thought that dwells in my mind incessantly is a
question i put to myself whether in the event of my personal dissolution
by death i have communicated all the discoveries my unique mind possesses
in the great master-science of man and nature in the next page he
determines that he has with the exception of one truth viz the
latent energy physical and moral of human nature as existing in the
british people but here he was surely accusing himself without ground
for to my knowledge he has not failed in any one of his numerous works to
insist upon this theme at least a billion of times another instance of
his magnificent self-estimation is that in the title pages of several of
his works he announces himself as john stewart the only man of nature
 that ever appeared in the world

by this time i am afraid the reader begins to suspect that he was crazy
and certainly when i consider every thing he must have been crazy when
the wind was at nne for who but walking stewart ever dated his books by a
computation drawn not from the creation not from the flood not from
nabonassar or ab urbe condita not from the hegira but from
themselves from their own day of publication as constituting the one
great era in the history of man by the side of which all other eras were
frivolous and impertinent thus in a work of his given to me in and
probably published in that year i find him incidentally recording of
himself that he was at that time arrived at the age of sixty-three with
a firm state of health acquired by temperance and a peace of mind almost
independent of the vices of mankind because my knowledge of life has
enabled me to place my happiness beyond the reach or contact of other
men's follies and passions by avoiding all family connections and all
ambitious pursuits of profit fame or power on reading this passage i
was anxious to ascertain its date but this on turning to the title page
i found thus mysteriously expressed in the th year of astronomical
history and the first day of intellectual life or moral world from the
era of this work another slight indication of craziness appeared in a
notion which obstinately haunted his mind that all the kings and rulers of
the earth would confederate in every age against his works and would hunt
them out for extermination as keenly as herod did the innocents in
bethlehem on this consideration fearing that they might be intercepted
by the long arms of these wicked princes before they could reach that
remote stewartian man or his precursor to whom they were mainly addressed
he recommended to all those who might be impressed with a sense of their
importance to bury a copy or copies of each work properly secured from
damp c at a depth of seven or eight feet below the surface of the
earth and on their death-beds to communicate the knowledge of this fact
to some confidential friends who in their turn were to send down the
tradition to some discreet persons of the next generation and thus if
the truth was not to be dispersed for many ages yet the knowledge that
here and there the truth lay buried on this and that continent in secret
spots on mount caucasus in the sands of biledulgerid and in hiding-
places amongst the forests of america and was to rise again in some
distant age and to vegetate and fructify for the universal benefit of
man this knowledge at least was to be whispered down from generation to
generation and in defiance of a myriad of kings crusading against him
walking stewart was to stretch out the influence of his writings through a
long series of greek lampadophoroi to that child of nature whom
he saw dimly through a vista of many centuries if this were madness it
seemed to me a somewhat sublime madness and i assured him of my co-
operation against the kings promising that i would bury the harp of
apollo in my own orchard in grasmere at the foot of mount fairfield that
i would bury the apocalypse of nature in one of the coves of helvellyn
and several other works in several other places best known to myself he
accepted my offer with gratitude but he then made known to me that he
relied on my assistance for a still more important service which was
this in the lapse of that vast number of ages which would probably
intervene between the present period and the period at which his works
would have reached their destination he feared that the english language
might itself have mouldered away no i said that was not probable
considering its extensive diffusion and that it was now transplanted into
all the continents of our planet i would back the english language
against any other on earth his own persuasion however was that the
latin was destined to survive all other languages it was to be the
eternal as well as the universal language and his desire was that
i would translate his works or some part of them into that language 
this i promised and i seriously designed at some leisure hour to
translate into latin a selection of passages which should embody an
abstract of his philosophy this would have been doing a service to all
those who might wish to see a digest of his peculiar opinions cleared from
the perplexities of his peculiar diction and brought into a narrow compass
from the great number of volumes through which they are at present
dispersed however like many another plan of mine it went unexecuted

on the whole if walking stewart were at all crazy he was so in a way
which did not affect his natural genius and eloquence but rather exalted
them the old maxim indeed that great wits to madness sure are near
allied the maxim of dryden and the popular maxim i have heard disputed
by mr coleridge and mr wordsworth who maintain that mad people are the
dullest and most wearisome of all people as a body i believe they are
so but i must dissent from the authority of messrs coleridge and
wordsworth so far as to distinguish where madness is connected as it
often is with some miserable derangement of the stomach liver c and
attacks the principle of pleasurable life which is manifestly seated in
the central organs of the body ie in the stomach and the apparatus
connected with it there it cannot but lead to perpetual suffering and
distraction of thought and there the patient will be often tedious and
incoherent people who have not suffered from any great disturbance in
those organs are little aware how indispensable to the process of thinking
are the momentary influxes of pleasurable feeling from the regular goings
on of life in its primary function in fact until the pleasure is
withdrawn or obscured most people are not aware that they have any
pleasure from the due action of the great central machinery of the system
proceeding in uninterrupted continuance the pleasure as much escapes the
consciousness as the act of respiration a child in the happiest state of
its existence does not know that it is happy and generally whatsoever
is the level state of the hourly feeling is never put down by the
unthinking ie by out of to the account of happiness it is
never put down with the positive sign as equal to x but simply
as and men first become aware that it was a positive quantity
when they have lost it ie fallen into x meantime the genial
pleasure from the vital processes though not represented to the
consciousness is immanent in every act impulse motion word and
thought and a philosopher sees that the idiots are in a state of
pleasure though they cannot see it themselves now i say that where this
principle of pleasure is not attached madness is often little more than
an enthusiasm highly exalted the animal spirits are exuberant and in
excess and the madman becomes if he be otherwise a man of ability and
information all the better as a companion i have met with several such
madmen and i appeal to my brilliant friend professor w   who is not a
man to tolerate dulness in any quarter and is himself the ideal of a
delightful companion whether he ever met a more amusing person than that
madman who took a post-chaise with us from    to carlisle long years
ago when he and i were hastening with the speed of fugitive felons to
catch the edinburgh mail his fancy and his extravagance and his furious
attacks on sir isaac newton like plato's suppers refreshed us not only
for that day but whenever they recurred to us and we were both grieved
when we heard some time afterwards from a cambridge man that he had met
our clever friend in a stage coach under the care of a brutal keeper  
such a madness if any was the madness of walking stewart his health was
perfect his spirits as light and ebullient as the spirits of a bird in
spring-time and his mind unagitated by painful thoughts and at peace
with itself hence if he was not an amusing companion it was because the
philosophic direction of his thoughts made him something more of
anecdotes and matters of fact he was not communicative of all that he had
seen in the vast compass of his travels he never availed himself in
conversation i do not remember at this moment that he ever once alluded
to his own travels in his intercourse with me except for the purpose of
weighing down by a statement grounded on his own great personal experience
an opposite statement of many hasty and misjudging travellers which he
thought injurious to human nature the statement was this that in all his
countless rencontres with uncivilized tribes he had never met with any so
ferocious and brutal as to attack an unarmed and defenceless man who was
able to make them understand that he threw himself upon their hospitality
and forbearance

on the whole walking stewart was a sublime visionary he had seen and
suffered much amongst men yet not too much or so as to dull the genial
tone of his sympathy with the sufferings of others his mind was a mirror
of the sentient universe the whole mighty vision that had fleeted before
his eyes in this world the armies of hyder-ali and his son with oriental
and barbaric pageantry the civic grandeur of england the great deserts
of asia and america the vast capitals of europe london with its
eternal agitations the ceaseless ebb and flow of its mighty heart 
paris shaken by the fierce torments of revolutionary convulsions the
silence of lapland and the solitary forests of canada with the swarming
life of the torrid zone together with innumerable recollections of
individual joy and sorrow that he had participated by sympathy lay like
a map beneath him as if eternally co-present to his view so that in the
contemplation of the prodigious whole he had no leisure to separate the
parts or occupy his mind with details hence came the monotony which the
frivolous and the desultory would have found in his conversation i
however who am perhaps the person best qualified to speak of him must
pronounce him to have been a man of great genius and with reference to
his conversation of great eloquence that these were not better known and
acknowledged was owing to two disadvantages one grounded in his imperfect
education the other in the peculiar structure of his mind the first was
this like the late mr shelley he had a fine vague enthusiasm and lofty
aspirations in connection with human nature generally and its hopes and
like him he strove to give steadiness a uniform direction and an
intelligible purpose to these feelings by fitting to them a scheme of
philosophical opinions but unfortunately the philosophic system of both
was so far from supporting their own views and the cravings of their own
enthusiasm that as in some points it was baseless incoherent or
unintelligible so in others it tended to moral results from which if
they had foreseen them they would have been themselves the first to
shrink as contradictory to the very purposes in which their system had
originated hence in maintaining their own system they both found
themselves painfully entangled at times with tenets pernicious and
degrading to human nature these were the inevitable consequences of the
greek proton pheudos in their speculations but were naturally
charged upon them by those who looked carelessly into their books as
opinions which not only for the sake of consistency they thought
themselves bound to endure but to which they gave the full weight of
their sanction and patronage as to so many moving principles in their
system the other disadvantage under which walking stewart labored was
this he was a man of genius but not a man of talents at least his
genius was out of all proportion to his talents and wanted an organ as it
were for manifesting itself so that his most original thoughts were
delivered in a crude state imperfect obscure half developed and not
producible to a popular audience he was aware of this himself and
though he claims everywhere the faculty of profound intuition into human
nature yet with equal candor he accuses himself of asinine stupidity
dulness and want of talent he was a disproportioned intellect and so
far a monster and he must be added to the long list of original-minded
men who have been looked down upon with pity and contempt by commonplace
men of talent whose powers of mind though a thousand times inferior 
were yet more manageable and ran in channels more suited to common uses
and common understandings


footnotes

 in bath he was surnamed the child of nature which arose from his
contrasting on every occasion the existing man of our present experience
with the ideal or stewartian man that might be expected to emerge in some
myriads of ages to which latter man he gave the name of the child of
nature

 i was not aware until the moment of writing this passage that walking
stewart had publicly made this request three years after making it to
myself opening the harp of apollo i have just now accidentally
stumbled on the following passage this stupendous work is destined i
fear to meet a worse fate than the aloe which as soon as it blossoms
loses its stalk this first blossom of reason is threatened with the loss
of both its stalk and its soil for if the revolutionary tyrant should
triumph he would destroy all the english books and energies of thought i
conjure my readers to translate this work into latin and to bury it in
the ground communicating on their death-beds only its place of
concealment to men of nature

from the title page of this work by the way i learn that the th
year of astronomical history is taken from the chinese tables and
coincides as i had supposed with the year of our computation




on suicide


it is a remarkable proof of the inaccuracy with which most men read that
donne's biathanatos has been supposed to countenance suicide and
those who reverence his name have thought themselves obliged to apologize
for it by urging that it was written before he entered the church but
donne's purpose in this treatise was a pious one many authors had charged
the martyrs of the christian church with suicide on the principle that if
i put myself in the way of a mad bull knowing that he will kill me i am
as much chargeable with an act of self-destruction as if i fling myself
into a river several casuists had extended this principle even to the
case of jesus christ one instance of which in a modern author the
reader may see noticed and condemned by kant in his religion innerhalb
die gronzen der blossen vernunft and another of much earlier date as
far back as the th century i think in a commoner book voltaire's
notes on the little treatise of beccaria dei delitti e delle pene
these statements tended to one of two results either they unsanctified
the characters of those who founded and nursed the christian church or
they sanctified suicide by way of meeting them donne wrote his book and
as the whole argument of his opponents turned upon a false definition of
suicide not explicitly stated but assumed he endeavored to
reconstitute the notion of what is essential to create an act of suicide
simply to kill a man is not murder prima facie therefore there
is some sort of presumption that simply for a man to kill himself may not
always be so there is such a thing as simple homicide distinct from
murder there may therefore possibly be such a thing as self-homicide
distinct from self-murder there may be a ground for such a distinction
ex analogia but secondly on examination is there any ground for
such a distinction donne affirms that there is and reviewing several
eminent cases of spontaneous martyrdom he endeavors to show that acts so
motived and so circumstantiated will not come within the notion of suicide
properly defined meantime may not this tend to the encouragement of
suicide in general and without discrimination of its species no donne's
arguments have no prospective reference or application they are purely
retrospective the circumstances necessary to create an act of mere self-
homicide can rarely concur except in a state of disordered society and
during the cardinal revolutions of human history where however they
do concur there it will not be suicide in fact this is the natural
and practical judgment of us all we do not all agree on the particular
cases which will justify self-destruction but we all feel and
involuntarily acknowledge implicitly acknowledge in our admiration
though not explicitly in our words or in our principles that there are
such cases there is no man who in his heart would not reverence a woman
that chose to die rather than to be dishonored and if we do not say
that it is her duty to do so that is because the moralist must
condescend to the weakness and infirmities of human nature mean and
ignoble natures must not be taxed up to the level of noble ones again
with regard to the other sex corporal punishment is its peculiar and
sexual degradation and if ever the distinction of donne can be applied
safely to any case it will be to the case of him who chooses to die
rather than to submit to that ignominy at present however there is
but a dim and very confined sense even amongst enlightened men as we may
see by the debates of parliament of the injury which is done to human
nature by giving legal sanction to such brutalizing acts and therefore
most men in seeking to escape it would be merely shrinking from a
personal dishonor corporal punishment is usually argued with a single
reference to the case of him who suffers it and so argued god knows
that it is worthy of all abhorrence but the weightiest argument against
it is the foul indignity which is offered to our common nature lodged in
the person of him on whom it is inflicted his nature is our nature
and supposing it possible that he were so far degraded as to be
unsusceptible of any influences but those which address him through the
brutal part of his nature yet for the sake of ourselves no not merely
for ourselves or for the human race now existing but for the sake of
human nature which trancends all existing participators of that nature 
we should remember that the evil of corporal punishment is not to be
measured by the poor transitory criminal whose memory and offence are
soon to perish these in the sum of things are as nothing the injury
which can be done him and the injury which he can do have so momentary
an existence that they may be safely neglected but the abiding injury is
to the most august interest which for the mind of man can have any
existence viz to his own nature to raise and dignify which i am
persuaded is the first last and holiest command which the
conscience imposes on the philosophic moralist in countries where the
traveller has the pain of seeing human creatures performing the labors of
brutes  surely the sorrow which the spectacle moves if a wise
sorrow will not be chiefly directed to the poor degraded individual too
deeply degraded probably to be sensible of his own degradation but to
the reflection that man's nature is thus exhibited in a state of miserable
abasement and what is worst of all abasement proceeding from man
himself now whenever this view of corporal punishment becomes general
as inevitably it will under the influence of advancing civilization i
say that donne's principle will then become applicable to this case and
it will be the duty of a man to die rather than to suffer his own nature
to be dishonored in that way but so long as a man is not fully sensible
of the dishonor to him the dishonor except as a personal one does not
wholly exist in general whenever a paramount interest of human nature is
at stake a suicide which maintains that interest is self-homicide but
for a personal interest it becomes self-murder and into this principle
donne's may be resolved

 

a doubt has been raised whether brute animals ever commit suicide to me
it is obvious that they do not and cannot some years ago however there
was a case reported in all the newspapers of an old ram who committed
suicide as it was alleged in the presence of many witnesses not having
any pistols or razors he ran for a short distance in order to aid the
impetus of his descent and leaped over a precipice at the foot of which
he was dashed to pieces his motive to the rash act as the papers
called it was supposed to be mere taedium vitae but for my part i
doubted the accuracy of the report not long after a case occurred in
westmoreland which strengthened my doubts a fine young blood horse who
could have no possible reason for making away with himself unless it were
the high price of oats at that time was found one morning dead in his
field the case was certainly a suspicious one for he was lying by the
side of a stone-wall the upper part of which wall his skull had
fractured and which had returned the compliment by fracturing his skull
it was argued therefore that in default of ponds c he had
deliberately hammered with his head against the wall this at first
seemed the only solution and he was generally pronounced felo de
se however a day or two brought the truth to light the field lay
upon the side of a hill and from a mountain which rose above it a
shepherd had witnessed the whole catastrophe and gave evidence which
vindicated the character of the horse the day had been very windy and
the young creature being in high spirits and caring evidently as little
for the corn question as for the bullion question had raced about in all
directions and at length descending too steep a part of the field had
been unable to check himself and was projected by the impetus of his own
descent like a battering ram against the wall

of human suicides the most affecting i have ever seen recorded is one
which i met with in a german book the most calm and deliberate is the
following which is said to have occurred at keswick in cumberland but
i must acknowledge that i never had an opportunity whilst staying at
keswick of verifying the statement a young man of studious turn who is
said to have resided near penrith was anxious to qualify himself for
entering the church or for any other mode of life which might secure to
him a reasonable portion of literary leisure his family however thought
that under the circumstances of his situation he would have a better
chance for success in life as a tradesman and they took the necessary
steps for placing him as an apprentice at some shopkeeper's in penrith
this he looked upon as an indignity to which he was determined in no case
to submit and accordingly when he had ascertained that all opposition to
the choice of his friends was useless he walked over to the mountainous
district of keswick about sixteen miles distant looked about him in
order to select his ground cooly walked up lattrig a dependency of
skiddaw made a pillow of sods laid himself down with his face looking
up to the sky and in that posture was found dead with the appearance of
having died tranquilly


footnotes

 on which account i am the more struck by the ignoble argument of
those statesmen who have contended in the house of commons that such and
such classes of men in this nation are not accessible to any loftier
influences supposing that there were any truth in this assertion which
is a libel not on this nation only but on man in general surely it is
the duty of lawgivers not to perpetuate by their institutions the evil
which they find but to presume and gradually to create a better spirit

 of which degradation let it never be forgotten that france but thirty
years ago presented as shocking cases as any country even where slavery
is tolerated an eye-witness to the fact who has since published it in
print told me that in france before the revolution he had repeatedly
seen a woman yoked with an ass to the plough and the brutal ploughman
applying his whip indifferently to either english people to whom i have
occasionally mentioned this as an exponent of the hollow refinement of
manners in france have uniformly exclaimed that is more than i
can believe and have taken it for granted that i had my information from
some prejudiced englishman but who was my informer a frenchman reader
 m simond and though now by adoption an american citizen yet still
french in his heart and in all his prejudices




superficial knowledge


it is asserted that this is the age of superficial knowledge and amongst
the proofs of this assertion we find encyclopaedias and other popular
abstracts of knowledge particularly insisted on but in this notion and
its alleged proofs there is equal error wherever there is much diffusion
of knowledge there must be a good deal of superficiality prodigious
extension implies a due proportion of weak intension a sea-like
expansion of knowledge will cover large shallows as well as large
depths but in that quarter in which it is superficially cultivated the
intellect of this age is properly opposed in any just comparison to an
intellect without any culture at all leaving the deep soils out of the
comparison the shallow ones of the present day would in any preceding one
have been barren wastes of this our modern encyclopedias are the best
proof for whom are they designed and by whom used by those who in a
former age would have gone to the fountain heads no but by those who in
any age preceding the present would have drunk at no waters at all
encyclopedias are the growth of the last hundred years not because those
who were formerly students of higher learning have descended but because
those who were below encyclopaedias have ascended the greatness of the
ascent is marked by the style in which the more recent encyclopaedias are
executed at first they were mere abstracts of existing books well or ill
executed at present they contain many original articles of great
merit as in the periodical literature of the age so in the
encyclopaedias it has become a matter of ambition with the publishers to
retain the most eminent writers in each several department and hence it
is that our encyclopaedias now display one characteristic of this age the
very opposite of superficiality and which on other grounds we are well
assured of viz its tendency in science no less than in other
applications of industry to extreme subdivision in all the employments
which are dependent in any degree upon the political economy of nations
this tendency is too obvious to have been overlooked accordingly it has
long been noticed for congratulation in manufactures and the useful arts 
and for censure in the learned professions we have now it is alleged no
great and comprehensive lawyers like coke and the study of medicine is
subdividing itself into a distinct ministry as it were not merely upon
the several organs of the body oculists aurists dentists
cheiropodists c but almost upon the several diseases of the same
organ one man is distinguished for the treatment of liver complaints of
one class a second for those of another class one man for asthma 
another for phthisis and so on as to the law the evil if it be one
lies in the complex state of society which of necessity makes the laws
complex law itself is become unwieldy and beyond the grasp of one man's
term of life and possible range of experience and will never again come
within them with respect to medicine the case is no evil but a great
benefit so long as the subdividing principle does not descend too low to
allow of a perpetual re-ascent into the generalizing principle the
greek to commune which secures the unity of the science in
ancient times all the evil of such a subdivision was no doubt realized in
egypt for there a distinct body of professors took charge of each organ
of the body not as we may be assured from any progress of the science
outgrowing the time and attention of the general professor but simply
from an ignorance of the organic structure of the human body and the
reciprocal action of the whole upon each part and the parts upon the
whole an ignorance of the same kind which has led sailors seriously and
not merely as may sometimes have happened by way of joke to reserve one
ulcerated leg to their own management whilst the other was given up to
the management of the surgeon with respect to law and medicine then the
difference between ourselves and our ancestors is not subjective but
objective not ie in our faculties who study them but in the
things themselves which are the objects of study not we the students
are grown less but they the studies are grown bigger and that our
ancestors did not subdivide as much as we do was something of their luck
but no part of their merit simply as subdividers therefore to the extent
which now prevails we are less superficial than any former age in all
parts of science the same principle of subdivision holds here therefore
no less than in those parts of knowledge which are the subjects of
distinct civil professions we are of necessity more profound than our
ancestors but for the same reason less comprehensive than they is it
better to be a profound student or a comprehensive one in some degree
this must depend upon the direction of the studies but generally i
think it is better for the interests of knowledge that the scholar should
aim at profundity and better for the interests of the individual that he
should aim at comprehensiveness a due balance and equilibrium of the mind
is but preserved by a large and multiform knowledge but knowledge itself
is but served by an exclusive or at least paramount dedication of one
mind to one science the first proposition is perhaps unconditionally
true but the second with some limitations there are such people as
leibnitzes on this earth and their office seems not that of planets to
revolve within the limits of one system but that of comets according to
the theory of some speculators to connect different systems together no
doubt there is much truth in this a few leibnitzes in every age would be
of much use but neither are many men fitted by nature for the part of
leibnitz nor would the aspect of knowledge be better if they were we
should then have a state of grecian life amongst us in which every man
individually would attain in a moderate degree all the purposes of the
sane understanding but in which all the purposes of the sane
understanding would be but moderately attained what i mean is this let
all the objects of the understanding in civil life or in science be
represented by the letters of the alphabet in grecian life each man would
separately go through all the letters in a tolerable way whereas at
present each letter is served by a distinct body of men consequently the
grecian individual is superior to the modern but the grecian whole is
inferior for the whole is made up of the individuals and the grecian
individual repeats himself whereas in modern life the whole derives its
superiority from the very circumstances which constitute the inferiority
of the parts for modern life is cast dramatically and the difference
is as between an army consisting of soldiers who should each individually
be competent to go through the duties of a dragoon of a hussar of a
sharp-shooter of an artillery-man of a pioneer c and an army on its
present composition where the very inferiority of the soldier as an
individual his inferiority in compass and versatility of power and
knowledge is the very ground from which the army derives its superiority
as a whole viz because it is the condition of the possibility of a total
surrender of the individual to one exclusive pursuit in science
therefore and to speak more generally in the whole evolution of the
human faculties no less than in political economy the progress of
society brings with it a necessity of sacrificing the ideal of what is
excellent for the individual to the ideal of what is excellent for the
whole we need therefore not trouble ourselves except as a speculative
question with the comparison of the two states because as a practical
question it is precluded by the overruling tendencies of the age which
no man could counteract except in his own single case ie by refusing
to adapt himself as a part to the whole and thus foregoing the advantages
of either one state or the other 


footnote

 the latter part of what is here said coincides in a way which is
rather remarkable with a passage in an interesting work of schiller's
which i have since read on the aesthetic education of men in a
series of letters vid letter the th with us in order to obtain the
representative word as it were of the total species we must
spell it out by the help of a series of individuals so that on a survey
of society as it actually exists one might suppose that the faculties of
the mind do really in actual experience show themselves in as separate a
form and in as much insulation as psychology is forced to exhibit them
in its analysis and thus we see not only individuals but whole classes
of men unfolding only one part of the germs which are laid in them by the
hand of nature in saying this i am fully aware of the advantages which
the human species of modern ages has when considered as a unity over the
best of antiquity but the comparison should begin with the individuals
and then let me ask where is the modern individual that would have the
presumption to step forward against the athenian individual man to man
and to contend for the prize of human excellence the polypus nature of
the grecian republics in which every individual enjoyed a separate life
and if it were necessary could become a whole has now given place to an
artificial watch-work where many lifeless parts combine to form a
mechanic whole the state and the church laws and manners are now torn
asunder labor is divided from enjoyment the means from the end the
exertion from the reward chained for ever to a little individual fraction
of the whole man himself is moulded into a fraction and with the
monotonous whirling of the wheel which he turns everlastingly in his ear
he never develops the harmony of his being and instead of imaging the
totality of human nature becomes a bare abstract of his business or the
science which he cultivates the dead letter takes the place of the living
understanding and a practised memory becomes a surer guide than genius
and sensibility doubtless the power of genius as we all know will not
fetter itself within the limits of its occupation but talents of
mediocrity are all exhausted in the monotony of the employment allotted to
them and that man must have no common head who brings with him the
geniality of his powers unstripped of their freshness by the ungenial
labors of life to the cultivation of the genial after insisting at some
length on this wise schiller passes to the other side of the
contemplation and proceeds thus it suited my immediate purpose to
point out the injuries of this condition of the species without
displaying the compensations by which nature has balanced them but i will
now readily acknowledge that little as this practical condition may suit
the interests of the individual yet the species could in no other way
have been progressive partial exercise of the faculties literally
one-sidedness in the exercise of the faculties leads the individual
undoubtedly into error but the species into truth in no other way than
by concentrating the whole energy of our spirit and by converging our
whole being so to speak into a single faculty can we put wings as it
were to the individual faculty and carry it by this artificial flight far
beyond the limits within which nature has else doomed it to walk just as
certain as it is that all human beings could never by clubbing their
visual powers together have arrived at the power of seeing what the
telescope discovers to the astronomer just so certain it is that
the human intellect would never have arrived at an analysis of the
infinite or a critical analysis of the pure reason the principal
work of kant unless individuals had dismembered as it were and
insulated this or that specific faculty and had thus armed their
intellectual sight by the keenest abstraction and by the submersion of the
other powers of their nature extraordinary men are formed then by
energetic and over-excited spasms as it were in the individual faculties
though it is true that the equable exercise of all the faculties in
harmony with each other can alone make happy and perfect men after this
statement from which it should seem that in the progress of society
nature has made it necessary for man to sacrifice his own happiness
to the attainment of her ends in the development of his species
schiller goes on to inquire whether this evil result cannot be remedied
and whether the totality of our nature which art has destroyed might
not be re-established by a higher art but this as leading to a
discussion beyond the limits of my own i omit




english dictionaries


it has already i believe been said more than once in print that one
condition of a good dictionary would be to exhibit the history of
each word that is to record the exact succession of its meanings but
the philosophic reason for this has not been given which reason by the
way settles a question often agitated viz whether the true meaning of a
word be best ascertained from its etymology or from its present use and
acceptation mr coleridge says the best explanation of a word is often
that which is suggested by its derivation i give the substance of his
words from memory others allege that we have nothing to do with the
primitive meaning of the word that the question is what does it mean
now and they appeal as the sole authority they acknowledge to the
received 

 usus penes quem est jus et norma loquendi

in what degree each party is right may be judged from this consideration
 that no word can ever deviate from its first meaning per saltum
each successive stage of meaning must always have been determined by that
which preceded and on this one law depends the whole philosophy of the
case for it thus appears that the original and primitive sense of the
word will contain virtually all which can ever afterwards arise as in the
evolution-theory of generation the whole series of births is
represented as involved in the first parent now if the evolution of
successive meanings has gone on rightly ie by simply lapsing
through a series of close affinities there can be no reason for recurring
to the primitive meaning of the word but if it can be shown that the
evolution has been faulty ie that the chain of true affinities
has ever been broken through ignorance then we have a right to reform the
word and to appeal from the usage ill-instructed to a usage better-
instructed whether we ought to exercise this right will depend on a
consideration which i will afterwards notice meantime i will first give a
few instances of faulty evolution

 implicit this word is now used in a most ignorant way and from
its misuse it has come to be a word wholly useless for it is now never
coupled i think with any other substantive than these two faith and
confidence a poor domain indeed to have sunk to from its original wide
range of territory moreover when we say implicit faith or
implicit confidence we do not thereby indicate any specific kind of
faith and confidence differing from other faith or other confidence but
it is a vague rhetorical word which expresses a great degree of faith
and confidence a faith that is unquestioning a confidence that is
unlimited ie in fact a faith that is a faith a confidence that
is a confidence such a use of the word ought to be abandoned to women
doubtless when sitting in a bower in the month of may it is pleasant to
hear from a lovely mouth i put implicit confidence in your honor but
though pretty and becoming to such a mouth it is very unfitting to the
mouth of a scholar and i will be bold to affirm that no man who had ever
acquired a scholar's knowledge of the english language has used the word
in that lax and unmeaning way the history of the word is this 
implicit from the latin implicitus involved in folded up was
always used originally and still is so by scholars as the direct
antithete of explicit from the latin explicitus evolved unfolded
and the use of both may be thus illustrated

q did mr a ever say that he would marry miss b a no not
explicitly ie in so many words but he did implicitly by showing
great displeasure if she received attentions from any other man by asking
her repeatedly to select furniture for his house by consulting her on his
own plans of life

q did epicurus maintain any doctrines such as are here ascribed
to him a perhaps not explicitly either in words or by any other
mode of direct sanction on the contrary i believe he denied them 
and disclaimed them with vehemence but he maintained them implicitly for
they are involved in other acknowledged doctrines of his and may be
deduced from them by the fairest and most irresistible logic

q why did you complain of the man had he expressed any contempt
for your opinion a yes he had not explicit contempt i admit for
he never opened his stupid mouth but implicitly he expressed the utmost
that he could for when i had spoken two hours against the old newspaper
and in favor of the new one he went instantly and put his name down as a
subscriber to the old one

q did mr   approve of that gentleman's conduct and way of life 
a i don't know that i ever heard him speak about it but he seemed to
give it his implicit approbation by allowing both his sons to associate
with him when the complaints ran highest against him

these instances may serve to illustrate the original use of the word
which use has been retained from the sixteenth century down to our own
days by an uninterrupted chain of writers in the eighteenth century this
use was indeed nearly effaced but still in the first half of that century
it was retained by saunderson the cambridge professor of mathematics see
his algebra c with three or four others and in the latter half by a
man to whom saunderson had some resemblance in spring and elasticity of
understanding viz by edmund burke since his day i know of no writers
who have avoided the slang and unmeaning use of the word excepting
messrs coleridge and wordsworth both of whom but especially the last
have been remarkably attentive to the scholar-like use of words and
to the history of their own language

thus much for the primitive use of the word implicit now with
regard to the history of its transition into its present use it is
briefly this and it will appear at once that it has arisen through
ignorance when it was objected to a papist that his church exacted an
assent to a great body of traditions and doctrines to which it was
impossible that the great majority could be qualified either as respected
time or knowledge or culture of the understanding to give any
reasonable assent the answer was yes but that sort of assent is not
required of a poor uneducated man all that he has to do is to believe in
the church he is to have faith in her faith by that act he adopts
for his own whatsoever the church believes though he may never have hoard
of it even his faith is implicit ie involved and wrapped up in
the faith of the church which faith he firmly believes to be the true
faith upon the conviction he has that the church is preserved from all
possibility of erring by the spirit of god now as this sort of
believing by proxy or implicit belief in which the belief was not
immediate in the thing proposed to the belief but in the authority
of another person who believed in that thing and thus mediately in
the thing itself was constantly attacked by the learned assailants of
popery it naturally happened that many unlearned readers of these
protestant polemics caught at a phrase which was so much bandied between
the two parties the spirit of the context sufficiently explained to them
that it was used by protestants as a term of reproach and indicated a
faith that was an erroneous faith by being too easy too submissive and
too passive but the particular mode of this erroneousness they seldom
came to understand as learned writers naturally employed the term without
explanation presuming it to be known to those whom they addressed hence
these ignorant readers caught at the last result of the phrase implicit
faith rightly truly supposing it to imply a resigned and unquestioning
faith but they missed the whole immediate cause of meaning by which only
the word implicit could ever have been entitled to express that result

i have allowed myself to say so much on this word implicit because the
history of the mode by which its true meaning was lost applies almost to
all other corrupted words mutatis mutandis and the amount of it
may be collected into this formula that the result of the word is
apprehended and retained but the schematismus by which that result
was ever reached is lost this is the brief theory of all corruption of
words the word schematismus i have unwillingly used because no
other expresses my meaning so great and extensive a doctrine however
lurks in this word that i defer the explanation of it to a separate
article meantime a passable sense of the word will occur to every body
who reads greek i now go on to a few more instances of words that have
forfeited their original meaning through the ignorance of those who used
them

punctual this word is now confined to the meagre denoting of
accuracy in respect to time fidelity to the precise moment of an
appointment but originally it was just as often and just as reasonably
applied to space as to time i cannot punctually determine the origin of
the danube but i know in general the district in which it rises and that
its fountain is near that of the rhine not only however was it applied
to time and space but it had a large and very elegant figurative use
thus in the history of the royal society by sprat an author who was
finical and nice in his use of words i remember a sentence to this
effect the society gave punctual directions for the conducting of
experiments ie directions which descended to the minutiae and
lowest details again in the once popular romance of parismus prince of
bohemia she i forget who made a punctual relation of the whole
matter ie a relation which was perfectly circumstantial and
true to the minutest features of the case


footnotes

 among the most shocking of the unscholarlike barbarisms now
prevalent i must notice the use of the word nice in an objective
instead of a subjective sense nice does not and cannot express a
quality of the object but merely a quality of the subject yet we hear
daily of a very nice letter a nice young lady c meaning a letter
or a young lady that it is pleasant to contemplate but a nice young
lady means a fastidious young lady and a nice letter ought to mean a
letter that is very delicate in its rating and in the choice of its
company

 thus milton who in common with his contemporaries always uses the
word accurately speaks of ezekiel swallowing his implicit roll of
knowledge ie coming to the knowledge of many truths not separately
and in detail but by the act of arriving at some one master truth which
involved all the rest so again if any man or government were to
suppress a book that man or government might justly be reproached as the
implicit destroyer of all the wisdom and virtue that might have been the
remote products of that book




dryden's hexastich


it is a remarkable fact that the very finest epigram in the english
language happens also to be the worst epigram i call it in the
austere greek sense which thus far resembled our modern idea of an
epigram that something pointed and allied to wit was demanded in the
management of the leading thought at its close but otherwise nothing
tending towards the comic or the ludicrous the epigram i speak of is the
well-known one of dryden dedicated to the glorification of milton it is
irreproachable as regards its severe brevity not one word is there that
could be spared nor could the wit of man have cast the movement of the
thought into a better mould there are three couplets in the first
couplet we are reminded of the fact that this earth had in three
different stages of its development given birth to a trinity of
transcendent poets meaning narrative poets or even more narrowly epic
poets the duty thrown upon the second couplet is to characterize these
three poets and to value them against each other but in such terms as
that whilst nothing less than the very highest praise should be assigned
to the two elder poets in this trinity the greek and the roman 
nevertheless by some dexterous artifice a higher praise than the highest
should suddenly unmask itself and drop as it were like a diadem from
the clouds upon the brows of their english competitor in the kind of
expectation raised and in the extreme difficulty of adequately meeting
this expectation there was pretty much the same challenge offered to
dryden as was offered somewhere about the same time to a british
ambassador when dining with his political antagonists one of these the
ambassador of france had proposed to drink his master louis xiv under
the character of the sun who dispensed life and light to the whole
political system to this there was no objection and immediately by way
of intercepting any further draughts upon the rest of the solar system
the dutch ambassador rose and proposed the health of their high
mightinesses the seven united states as the moon and six planets who
gave light in the absence of the sun the two foreign ambassadors
monsieur and mynheer secretly enjoyed the mortification of their english
brother who seemed to be thus left in a state of bankruptcy no funds
being available for retaliation or so they fancied but suddenly our
british representative toasted his master as joshua the son of
nun that made the sun and moon stand still all had seemed lost for
england when in an instant of time both her antagonists were checkmated
dryden assumed something of the same position he gave away the supreme
jewels in his exchequer apparently nothing remained behind all was
exhausted to homer he gave a to virgil he gave b and behold after
these were given away there remained nothing at all that would not have
been a secondary praise but in a moment of time by giving a and
b to milton at one sling of his victorious arm he raised him above homer
by the whole extent of b and above virgil by the whole extent of a this
felicitous evasion of the embarrassment is accomplished in the second
couplet and finally the third couplet winds up with graceful effect by
making a resume or recapitulation of the logic concerned in the
distribution of prizes just announced nature he says had it not in her
power to provide a third prize separate from the first and second her
resource was to join the first and second in combination to make a
third she joined the former two

such is the abstract of this famous epigram and judged simply by the
outline and tendency of the thought it merits all the vast popularity
which it has earned but in the meantime it is radically vicious as
regards the filling in of this outline for the particular quality in
which homer is accredited with the pre-eminence viz loftiness of
thought happens to be a mere variety of expression for that quality
viz majesty in which the pre-eminence is awarded to virgil homer
excels virgil in the very point in which lies virgil's superiority to
homer and that synthesis by means of which a great triumph is reserved
to milton becomes obviously impossible when it is perceived that the
supposed analytic elements of this synthesis are blank reiterations of
each other

exceedingly striking it is that a thought should have prospered for one
hundred and seventy years which on the slightest steadiness of
examination turns out to be no thought at all but mere blank vacuity
there is however this justification of the case that the mould the set
of channels into which the metal of the thought is meant to run really
has the felicity which it appears to have the form is perfect and
it is merely in the matter in the accidental filling up of the mould
that a fault has been committed had the virgilian point of excellence
been loveliness instead of majesty or any word whatever suggesting
the common antithesis of sublimity and beauty or had it been power on the
one side matched against grace on the other the true lurking tendency of
the thought would have been developed and the sub-conscious purpose of
the epigram would have fulfilled itself to the letter

nb it is not meant that loftiness of thought and majesty are
expressions so entirely interchangeable as that no shades of difference
could be suggested it is enough that these shades are not substantial
enough or broad enough to support the weight of opposition which the
epigram assigns to them grace and elegance for instance are far
from being in all relations synonymous but they are so to the full extent
of any purposes concerned in this epigram nevertheless it is probable
enough that dryden had moving in his thoughts a relation of the word
majesty which if developed would have done justice to his meaning it
was perhaps the decorum and sustained dignity of the composition the
workmanship apart from the native grandeur of the materials the majestic
style of the artistic treatment as distinguished from the original
creative power which dryden the translator of the roman poet familiar
therefore with his weakness and with his strength meant in this place to
predicate as characteristically observable in virgil


footnote

 six planets no more had then been discovered




pope's retort upon addison


there is nothing extraordinary or that could merit a special notice in a
simple case of oversight or in a blunder though emanating from the
greatest of poets but such a case challenges and forces our attention
when we know that the particular passage in which it occurs was wrought
and burnished with excessive pains or which in this case is also known
when that particular passage is pushed into singular prominence as having
obtained a singular success in no part of his poetic mission did pope so
fascinate the gaze of his contemporaries as in his functions of satirist
which functions in his latter years absorbed all other functions and
one reason i believe why it was that the interest about pope decayed so
rapidly after his death an accident somewhere noticed by wordsworth
must be sought in the fact that the most stinging of his personal
allusions by which he had given salt to his later writings were
continually losing their edge and sometimes their intelligibility as
pope's own contemporary generation was dying off pope alleges it as a
palliation of his satiric malice that it had been forced from him in the
way of retaliation forgetting that such a plea wilfully abjures the
grandest justification of a satirist viz the deliberate assumption of
the character as something corresponding to the prophet's mission amongst
the hebrews it is no longer the facit indignatio versum pope's
satire where even it was most effective was personal and vindictive and
upon that argument alone could not he philosophic foremost in the order
of his fulminations stood and yet stands the bloody castigation by
which according to his own pretence he warned and menaced but by which
in simple truth he executed judgment upon his false friend addison

to say that this drew vast rounds of applause upon its author and
frightened its object into deep silence for the rest of his life like the
quos ego of angry neptune sufficiently argues that the verses must
have ploughed as deeply as the russian knout vitriol could not scorch
more fiercely and yet the whole passage rests upon a blunder and the
blunder is so broad and palpable that it implies instant forgetfulness
both in the writer and the reader the idea which furnishes the basis of
the passage is this that the conduct ascribed to addison is in its own
nature so despicable as to extort laughter by its primary impulse but
that this laughter changes into weeping when we come to understand that
the person concerned in this delinquency is addison the change the
transfiguration in our mood of contemplating the offence is charged upon
the discovery which we are supposed to make as to the person of the
offender that which by its baseness had been simply comic when imputed to
some corresponding author passes into a tragic coup-de-theatre
when it is suddenly traced back to a man of original genius the whole
therefore of this effect is made to depend upon the sudden scenical
transition from a supposed petty criminal to one of high distinction and
meantime no such stage effect had been possible since the knowledge that
a man of genius was the offender had been what we started with from the
beginning our laughter is changed to tears says pope as soon as we
discover that the base act had a noble author and behold the initial
feature in the whole description of the case is that the libeller was one
whom true genius fired

 peace to all such but were there one whose mind
 true genius fires c

before the offence is described the perpetrator is already characterized
as a man of genius and in spite of that knowledge we laugh but
suddenly our mood changes and we weep but why i beseech you simply
because we have ascertained the author to be a man of genius

 who would not laugh if such a man there be
 who would not weep if atticus were he

the sole reason for weeping is something that we knew already before we
began to laugh

it would not be right in logic in fact it would be a mis-classification
if i should cite as at all belonging to the same group several passages in
milton that come very near to irish bulls by virtue of distorted
language one reason against such a classification would lie precisely in
that fact viz that the assimilation to the category of bulls lurks in
the verbal expression and not as in pope's case amongst the conditions
of the thought and a second reason would lie in the strange circumstance
that milton had not fallen into this snare of diction through any
carelessness or oversight but with his eyes wide open deliberately
avowing his error as a special elegance repeating it and well aware of
splendid grecian authority for his error if anybody should be bold enough
to call it an error every reader must be aware of the case 

 adam the goodliest man of men since born
 his sons the fairest of her daughters eve 

which makes adam one of his own sons eve one of her own daughters this
however is authorized by grecian usage in the severest writers neither
can it be alleged that these might be bold poetic expressions harmonizing
with the grecian idiom for poppo has illustrated this singular form of
expression in a prose-writer as philosophic and austere as thucydides a
form which as it offends against logic must offend equally in all
languages some beauty must have been described in the idiom such as
atoned for its solecism for milton recurs to the same idiom and under
the same entire freedom of choice elsewhere particularly in this
instance which has not been pointed out and never says satan to the
abhorred phantoms of sin and death when crossing his path

 and never saw till now
 sight more detestable than him and thee

now therefore it seems he had seen a sight more detestable than
this very sight he now looked upon something more hateful than x y z
what was it it was x y z

but the authority of milton backed by that of insolent greece would
prove an overmatch for the logic of centuries and i withdraw therefore
from the rash attempt to quarrel with this sort of bull involving itself
in the verbal expression but the following which lies rooted in the mere
facts and incidents is certainly the most extraordinary practical
bull that all literature can furnish and a stranger thing perhaps
than the oversight itself lies in this that not any critic throughout
europe two only excepted but has failed to detect a blunder so
memorable all the rampant audacity of bentley slashing bentley all
the jealous malignity of dr johnson who hated milton without disguise as
a republican but secretly and under a mask would at any rate have
hated him from jealousy of his scholarship had not availed to sharpen
these practised and these interested eyes into the detection of an
oversight which argues a sudden lethean forgetfulness on the part of
milton and in many generations of readers however alive and awake with
malice a corresponding forgetfulness not less astonishing two readers
only i have ever heard of that escaped this lethargic inattention one of
which two is myself and i ascribe my success partly to good luck but
partly to some merit on my own part in having cultivated a habit of
systematically accurate reading if i read at all i make it a duty to
read truly and faithfully i profess allegiance for the time to the man
whom i undertake to study and i am as loyal to all the engagements
involved in such a contract as if i had come under a sacramentum
militare so it was that whilst yet a boy i came to perceive with a
wonder not yet exhausted that unaccountable blunder which milton has
committed in the main narrative on which the epic fable of the paradise
lost turns as its hinges and many a year afterwards i found that paul
richter whose vigilance nothing escaped who carried with him through
life the eye of the hawk and the fire therein had not failed to make
the same discovery it is this the archangel satan has designs upon man
he meditates his ruin and it is known that he does specially to
counteract these designs and for no other purpose whatever a choir of
angelic police is stationed at the gates of paradise having i repeat
one sole commission viz to keep watch and ward over the threatened
safety of the newly created human pair even at the very first this duty
is neglected so thoroughly that satan gains access without challenge or
suspicion that is awful for ask yourself reader how a constable or an
inspector of police would be received who had been stationed at no on
a secret information and spent the night in making love at no 
through the regular surveillance at the gates satan passes without
objection and he is first of all detected by a purely accidental
collision during the rounds of the junior angels the result of this
collision and of the examination which follows is what no reader can
ever forget so unspeakable is the grandeur of that scene between the two
hostile archangels when the fiend so named at the moment under
the fine machinery used by milton for exalting or depressing the ideas of
his nature finally takes his flight as an incarnation of darkness

 and fled
 murmuring and with him fled the shades of night

the darkness flying with him naturally we have the feeling that he
is the darkness and that all darkness has some essential relation
to satan

but now having thus witnessed his terrific expulsion naturally we ask
what was the sequel four books however are interposed before we reach
the answer to that question this is the reason that we fail to remark the
extraordinary oversight of milton dislocated from its immediate plan in
the succession of incidents that sequel eludes our notice which else and
in its natural place would have shocked us beyond measure the simple
abstract of the whole story is that satan being ejected and sternly
charged under almighty menaces not to intrude upon the young paradise of
god rides with darkness for exactly one week and having digested his
wrath rather than his fears on the octave of his solemn banishment
without demur or doubt or tremor back he plunges into the very centre
of eden on a friday suppose he is expelled through the main entrance
on the friday following he re-enters upon the forbidden premises through a
clandestine entrance the upshot is that the heavenly police suffer in
the first place the one sole enemy who was or could be the object of
their vigilance to pass without inquest or suspicion thus they
inaugurate their task secondly by the merest accident no thanks
to their fidelity they detect him and with awful adjurations sentence
him to perpetual banishment but thirdly on his immediate return in
utter contempt of their sentence they ignore him altogether and
apparently act upon dogberry's direction that upon meeting a thief the
police may suspect him to be no true man and with such manner of men
the less they meddle or make the more it will be for their honesty


footnote

 it is strange or rather it is not strange considering the
feebleness of that lady in such a field that miss edgeworth always
fancied herself to have caught milton in a bull under circumstances
which whilst leaving the shadow of a bull effectually disown the
substance and in the lowest deep a lower deep still opens to devour me
this is the passage denounced by miss edgeworth if it was already the
lowest deep said the fair lady how the deuce no perhaps it might be
i that said how the deuce could it open into a lower deep yes
how could it in carpentry it is clear to my mind that it could not
but in cases of deep imaginative feeling no phenomenon is more natural
than precisely this never-ending growth of one colossal grandeur chasing
and surmounting another or of abysses that swallowed up abysses
persecutions of this class oftentimes are amongst the symptoms of fever
and amongst the inevitable spontaneities of nature other people i have
known who were inclined to class amongst bulls milton's all-famous
expression of darkness visible whereas it is not even a bold or
daring expression it describes a pure optical experience of very common
occurrence there are two separate darknesses or obscurities first that
obscurity by which you see dimly and secondly that obscurity which
you see the first is the atmosphere through which vision is performed
and therefore part of the subjective conditions essential to the act
of seeing the second is the object of your sight in a glass-house at
night illuminated by a sullen fire in one corner but else dark you see
the darkness massed in the rear as a black object that is the visible
darkness and on the other hand the murky atmosphere between you and the
distant rear is not the object but the medium through or athwart which
you descry the black masses the first darkness is subjective darkness
that is a darkness in your own eye and entangled with your very faculty
of vision the second darkness is perfectly different it is objective
darkness that is to say not any darkness which affects or modifies your
faculty of seeing either for better or worse but a darkness which is the
object of your vision a darkness which you see projected from yourself
as a massy volume of blackness and projected possibly to a vast
distance