Autobiographic Sketches Part 4

I had myself heard him say on many occasions, with patriarchal fervor, "Woman, they are your children, and G.o.d made them. Show mercy to _them_, as you expect it for yourself." But he must have been aware, that, for any three instances of tyrannical usage that fell under his notice, at least five hundred would escape it. That was the sting of the case--that was its poisonous aggravation. But with a nature that sought for peace before all things, in this very worst of its aggravations was found a morbid cure--the effectual temptation to wilful blindness and forgetfulness. The sting became the palliation of the wrong, and the poison became its anodyne. For together with the five hundred hidden wrongs, arose the necessity that they must be hidden. Could he be pinned on, morning, noon, and night, to his wife's ap.r.o.n? And if not, what else should he do by angry interferences at chance times than add special vindictive impulses to those of general irritation and dislike? Some truth there was in this, it cannot be denied: innumerable cases arise, in which a man the most just is obliged, in some imperfect sense, to connive at injustice; his chance experience must convince him that injustice is continually going on; and yet, in any attempt to intercept it or to check it, he is met and baffled by the insuperable obstacles of household necessities. Dr. S. therefore surrendered himself, as under a coercion that was none of _his_ creating, to a pa.s.sive acquiescence and a blindness that soothed his const.i.tutional indolence; and he reconciled his feelings to a tyranny which he tolerated, under some self-flattering idea of submitting with resignation to a calamity that he suffered.

Some years after this, I read "Agamemnon" of Aeschylus; and then, in the prophetic horror with which Ca.s.sandra surveys the regal abode in Mycenae, destined to be the scene of murders so memorable through the long traditions of the Grecian stage, murders that, many centuries after all the parties to them--perpetrators, sufferers, avengers--had become dust and ashes, kindled again into mighty life through a thousand years upon the vast theaters of Athens and Rome, I retraced the horrors, not prophetic but memorial, with which I myself had invested that humble dwelling of Dr. S.; and read again, repeated in visionary proportions, the sufferings which there had darkened the days of people known to myself through two distinct successions--not, as was natural to expect, of parents first and then children, but inversely of children and parents. Manchester was not Mycenae. No, but by many degrees n.o.bler.

In some of the features most favorable to tragic effects, it was so; and wanted only these idealizing advantages for withdrawing mean details which are in the gift of distance and hazy antiquity. Even at that day Manchester was far larger, teeming with more and with stronger hearts; and it contained a population the most energetic even in the _modern_ world--how much more so, therefore, by comparison with any race in _ancient_ Greece, inevitably rendered effeminate by dependence too generally upon slaves. Add to this superior energy in Lanceshire, the immeasurably profounder feelings generated by the mysteries which stand behind Christianity, as compared with the shallow mysteries that stood behind paganism, and it would be easy to draw the inference, that, in the capacity for the infinite and impa.s.sioned, for horror and for pathos, Mycenae could have had no pretentions to measure herself against Manchester. Not that I had drawn such an inference myself. Why should I? there being nothing to suggest the points in which the two cities differed, but only the single one in which they agreed, viz., the dusky veil that overshadowed in both the noonday tragedies haunting their household recesses; which veil was raised only to the gifted eyes of a Ca.s.sandra, or to the eyes that, like my own, had experimentally become acquainted with them as facts. Pitiably mean is he that measures the relations of such cases by the scenical apparatus of purple and gold. That which never _has_ been apparelled in royal robes, and hung with theatrical jewels, is but suffering from an accidental fraud, having the same right to them that any similar misery can have, or calamity upon an equal scale. These proportions are best measured from the fathoming ground of a real uncounterfeit sympathy.

I have mentioned already that we had four male guardians, (a fifth being my mother.) These four were B., E., G., and H. The two consonants, B. and G., gave us little trouble. G., the wisest of the whole band, lived at a distance of more than one hundred miles: him, therefore, we rarely saw; but B., living within four miles of Greenbay, washed his hands of us by inviting us, every now and then, to spend a few days at his house.

At this house, which stood in the country, there was a family of amiable children, who were more skilfully trained in their musical studies than at that day was usual. They sang the old English glees and madrigals, and correctly enough for me, who, having, even at that childish age, a preternatural sensibility to music, had also, as may be supposed, the most entire want of musical knowledge. No blunders could do much to mar _my_ pleasure. There first I heard the concertos of Corelli; but also, which far more profoundly affected me, a few selections from Jomelli and Cimarosa. With Handel I had long been familiar, for the famous chorus singers of Lancashire sang continually at churches the most effective parts from his chief oratorios. Mozart was yet to come; for, except perhaps at the opera in London, even at this time, his music was most imperfectly diffused through England.

But, above all, a thing which to my dying day I could never forget, at the house of this guardian I heard sung a long canon of Cherubini's.

Forty years later I heard it again, and better sung; but at that time I needed nothing better. It was sung by four male voices, and rose into a region of thrilling pa.s.sion, such as my heart had always dimly craved and hungered after, but which now first interpreted itself, as a physical possibility, to my ear.

My brother did not share my inexpressible delight; his taste ran in a different channel; and the arrangements of the house did not meet his approbation; particularly this, that either Mrs. B. herself, or else the governess, was always present when the young ladies joined our society, which my brother considered particularly vulgar, since natural propriety and decorum should have whispered to an old lady that a young gentleman might have "things" to say to her daughters which he could not possibly intend for the general ear of eavesdroppers--things tending to the confidential or the sentimental, which none but a shameless old lady would seek to partic.i.p.ate; by that means compelling a young man to talk as loud as if he were addressing a mob at Charing Cross, or reading the Riot Act. There were other out-of-door amus.e.m.e.nts, amongst which a swing--which I mention for the sake of ill.u.s.trating the pa.s.sive obedience which my brother levied upon me, either through my conscience, as mastered by his doctrine of primogeniture, or, as in this case, through my sensibility to shame under his taunts of cowardice. It was a most ambitious swing, ascending to a height beyond any that I have since seen in fairs or public gardens. Horror was at my heart regularly as the swing reached its most aerial alt.i.tude; for the oily, swallow-like fluency of the swoop downwards threatened always to make me sick, in which it is probable that I must have relaxed my hold of the ropes, and have been projected, with fatal violence, to the ground. But, in defiance of all this miserable panic, I continued to swing whenever he tauntingly invited me. It was well that my brother's path in life soon ceased to coincide with my own, else I should infallibly have broken my neck in confronting perils which brought me neither honor nor profit, and in accepting defiances which, issue how they might, won self-reproach from myself, and sometimes a gayety of derision from _him_. One only of these defiances I declined. There was a horse of this same guardian B.'s, who always, after listening to Cherubini's music, grew irritable to excess; and, if any body mounted him, would seek relief to his wounded feelings in kicking, more or less violently, for an hour. This habit endeared him to my brother, who acknowledged to a propensity of the same amiable kind; protesting that an abstract desire of kicking seized him always after hearing good performers on particular instruments, especially the bagpipes. Of kicking? But of kicking what or _whom_?

I fear of kicking the venerable public collectively, creditors without exception, but also as many of the debtors as might be found at large; doctors of medicine more especially, but with no absolute immunity for the majority of their patients; Jacobins, but not the less anti-Jacobins; every Calvinist, which seems reasonable; but then also, which is intolerable, every Arminian. Is philosophy able to account for this morbid affection, and particularly when it takes the restricted form (as sometimes it does, in the bagpipe case) of seeking furiously to kick the piper, instead of paying him? In this case, my brother was urgent with me to mount _en croupe_ behind himself. But weak as I usually was, this proposal I resisted as an immediate suggestion of the fiend; for I had heard, and have since known proofs of it, that a horse, when he is ingeniously vicious, sometimes has the power, in lashing out, of curving round his hoofs, so as to lodge them, by way of indors.e.m.e.nt, in the small of his rider's back; and, of course, he would have an advantage for such a purpose, in the case of a rider sitting on the crupper. That sole invitation I persisted in declining.

A young gentleman had joined us as a fellow-student under the care of our tutor. He was an only son; indeed, the only child of an amiable widow, whose love and hopes all centred in _him_. He was destined to inherit several separate estates, and a great deal had been done to spoil him by indulgent aunts; but his good natural disposition defeated all these efforts; and, upon joining us, he proved to be a very amiable boy, clever, quick at learning, and abundantly courageous. In the summer months, his mother usually took a house out in the country, sometimes on one side of Manchester, sometimes on another. At these rusticating seasons, he had often much farther to come than ourselves, and on that account he rode on horseback. Generally it was a fierce mountain pony that he rode; and it was worth while to cultivate the pony's acquaintance, for the sake of understanding the extent to which the fiend can sometimes incarnate himself in a horse. I do not trouble the reader with any account of his tricks, and drolleries, and scoundrelisms; but this I may mention, that he had the propensity ascribed many centuries ago to the Scandinavian horses for sharing and practically a.s.serting his share in the angry pa.s.sions of a battle. He would fight, or attempt to fight, on his rider's side, by biting, rearing, and suddenly wheeling round, for the purpose of lashing out when he found himself within kicking range. [20] This little monster was coal black; and, in virtue of his carca.s.s, would not have seemed very formidable; but his head made amends--it was the head of a buffalo, or of a bison, and his vast jungle of mane was the mane of a lion. His eyes, by reason of this intolerable and unshorn mane, one did not often see, except as lights that sparkled in the rear of a thicket; but, once seen they were not easily forgotten, for their malignity was diabolic. A few miles more of less being a matter of indifference to one who was so well mounted, O. would sometimes ride out with us to the field of battle; and, by manoeuvring so as to menace the enemy of the flanks, in skirmishes he did good service. But at length came a day of pitched battle. The enemy had mustered in unusual strength, and would certainly have accomplished the usual result of putting us to flight with more than usual ease, but, under the turn which things took, their very numbers aided their overthrow, by deepening their confusion. O. had, on this occasion, accompanied us; and, as he had hitherto taken no very decisive part in the war, confining himself to distant "demonstrations," the enemy did not much regard his presence in the field. This carelessness threw them into a dense ma.s.s, upon which my brother's rapid eye saw instantly the opportunity offered for operating most effectually by a charge.

O. saw it too; and, happening to have his spurs on, he complied cheerfully with my brother's suggestion. He had the advantage of a slight descent: the wicked pony went down "with a will;" his echoing hoofs drew the general gaze upon him; his head, his leonine mane, his diabolic eyes, did the rest; and in a moment the whole hostile array had broken, and was in rapid flight across the brick fields. I leave the reader to judge whether "Te Deum" would be sung on that night. A Gazette Extraordinary was issued; and my brother had really some reason for his a.s.sertion, "that in conscience he could not think of comparing Cannae to this smashing defeat;" since at Cannae many brave men had refused to fly--the consul himself, Terentius Varro, amongst them; but, in the present rout, there was no Terentius Varro--_every body_ fled.

The victory, indeed, considered in itself, was complete. But it had consequences which we had not looked for. In the ardor of our conflict, neither my brother nor myself had remarked a stout, square-built man, mounted on an uneasy horse, who sat quietly in his saddle as spectator of the battle, and, in fact, as the sole non-combatant present. This man, however, had been observed by O., both before and after his own brilliant charge; and, by the description, there could be no doubt that it had been our guardian B., as also, by the description of the horse, we could as little doubt that he had been mounted on Cherubini.

My brother's commentary was in a tone of bitter complaint, that so n.o.ble an opportunity should have been lost for strengthening O.'s charge. But the consequences of this incident were graver than we antic.i.p.ated. A general board of our guardians, vowels and consonants, was summoned to investigate the matter. The origin of the feud, or "war," as my brother called it, was inquired into. As well might the war of Troy or the purser's accounts from the Argonautic expedition have been overhauled. Ancient night and chaos had closed over the "incunabula belli;" and that point was given up in despair. But what hindered a general pacification, no matter in how many wrongs the original dispute had arisen? Who stopped the way which led to peace?

Not we, was our firm declaration; we were most pacifically inclined, and ever had been; we were, in fact, little saints. But the enemy could not be brought to any terms of accommodation. "That we will try," said the vowel amongst our guardians, Mr. E. He, being a magistrate, had naturally some weight with the proprietors of the cotton factory. The foremen of the several floors were summoned, and gave it as their humble opinion that we, the aristocratic party in the war, were as bad as the _sans culottes_--"not a pin to choose between us." Well, but no matter for the past: could any plan be devised for a pacific future?

Not easily. The workspeople were so thoroughly independent of their employers, and so careless of their displeasure, that finally this only settlement was available as wearing any promise of permanence, viz., that we should alter our hours, so as not to come into collision with the exits or returns of the boys.

Under this arrangement, a sort of hollow armistice prevailed for some time; but it was beginning to give way, when suddenly an internal change in our own home put an end to the war forever. My brother, amongst his many accomplishments, was distinguished for his skill in drawing. Some of his sketches had been shown to Mr. De Loutherbourg, an academician well known in those days, esteemed even in these days, after he has been dead for forty or fifty years, and personally a distinguished favorite with the king, (George III.) He p.r.o.nounced a very flattering opinion upon my brother's promise of excellence. This being known, a fee of a thousand guineas was offered to Mr. L. by the guardians; and finally that gentleman took charge of my brother as a pupil. Now, therefore, my brother, King of Tigrosylvania, scourge of Gombroon, separated from me; and, as it turned out, forever. I never saw him again; and, at Mr. De L.'s house in Hammersmith, before he had completed his sixteenth year, he died of typhus fever. And thus it happened that a little gold dust skilfully applied put an end to wars that else threatened to extend into a Carthaginian length. In one week's time

"Hi motus animorum atque haec certamina tanta Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quierunt."

Here I had terminated this chapter, as at a natural pause, which, whilst shutting out forever my eldest brother from the reader's sight and from my own, necessarily at the same moment worked a permanent revolution in the character of my daily life. Two such changes, and both so abrupt, indicated imperiously the close of one era and the opening of another. The advantages, indeed, which my brother had over me in years, in physical activities of every kind, in decision of purpose, and in energy of will,--all which advantages, besides, borrowed a ratification from an obscure sense, on my part, of duty as incident to what seemed an appointment of Providence,--inevitably _had_ controlled, and for years to come _would have_ controlled, the free spontaneous movements of a contemplative dreamer like myself.

Consequently, this separation, which proved an eternal one, and contributed to deepen my const.i.tutional propensity to gloomy meditation, had for me (partly on that account, but much more through the sudden birth of perfect independence which so unexpectedly it opened) the value of a revolutionary experience. A new date, a new starting point, a redemption (as it might be called) into the golden sleep of halcyon quiet, after everlasting storms, suddenly dawned upon me; and not as any casual intercalation of holidays that would come to an end, but, for any thing that appeared to the contrary, as the perpetual tenor of my future career. No longer was the factory a Carthage for me: if any obdurate old Cato there were who found his amus.e.m.e.nt in denouncing it with a daily _"Delenda est,"_ take notice, (I said silently to myself,) that I acknowledge no such tiger for a friend of mine.

Nevermore was the bridge across the Irwell a bridge of sighs for me.

And the meanest of the factory population--thanks be to their discrimination--despised my pretensions too entirely to waste a thought or a menace upon a cipher so abject.

This change, therefore, being so sudden and so total, ought to signalize itself externally by a commensurate break in the narrative. A new chapter, at the least, with a huge inters.p.a.ce of blank white paper, or even a new book, ought rightfully to solemnize so profound a revolution. And virtually it shall. But, according to the general agreement of antiquity, it is not felt as at all disturbing to the unity of that event which winds up the "Iliad," viz., the death of Hector, that Homer expands it circ.u.mstantially into the whole ceremonial of his funeral obsequies; and upon that same principle I--when looking back to this abrupt close of all connection with, my brother, whether in my character of major general or of potentate trembling daily for my people--am reminded that the very last morning of this connection had its own separate distinction from all other mornings, in a way that ent.i.tles it to its own separate share in the general commemoration.

A shadow fell upon this particular morning as from a cloud of danger, that lingered for a moment over our heads, might seem even to muse and hesitate, and then sullenly pa.s.sed away into distant quarters. It is noticeable that a danger which approaches, but wheels away,--which threatens, but finally forbears to strike,--is more interesting by much on a distant retrospect than the danger which accomplishes its mission. The Alpine precipice, down which many pilgrims have fallen, is pa.s.sed without much attention; but that precipice, within one inch of which a traveller has pa.s.sed unconsciously in the dark, first tracing his peril along the snowy margin on the next morning, becomes invested with an attraction of horror for all who hear the story. The dignity of mortal danger ever after consecrates the spot; and, in this particular case which I am now recalling, the remembrance of such a danger consecrates the day.

That day was amongst the most splendid in a splendid June: it was--to borrow the line of Wordsworth--

"One of those heavenly days which cannot die;"

and, early as it was at that moment, we children, all six of us that then survived, were already abroad upon the lawn. There were two lawns at Greenhay in the shrubbery that invested three sides of the house: one of these, which ran along one side of the house, extended to a little bridge traversed by the gates of entrance. The central gate admitted carriages: on each side of this was a smaller gate for foot pa.s.sengers; and, in a family containing so many as six children, it may be supposed that often enough one or other of the gates was open; which, most fortunately, on this day was not the case. Along the margin of this side lawn ran a little brook, which had been raised to a uniform level, and kept up by means of a wear at the point where it quitted the premises; after which it resumed its natural character of wildness, as it trotted on to the little hamlet of Greenhill. This brook my brother was at one time disposed to treat as Remus treated the infant walls of Rome; but, on maturer thoughts, having built a fleet of rafts, he treated it more respectfully; and this morning, as will be seen, the breadth of the little brook did us "yeoman's service." Me at one time he had meant to put on board this fleet, as his man Friday; and I had a fair prospect of first entering life in the respectable character of supercargo. But it happened that the current carried his rafts and himself over the wear; which, he a.s.sured us, was no accident, but a lesson by way of practice in the art of contending with the rapids of the St. Lawrence and other Canadian streams. However, as the danger had been considerable, he was prohibited from trying such experiments with me. On the centre of the lawn stood my eldest surviving sister, Mary, and my brother William.

Round _him_, attracted (as ever) by his inexhaustible opulence of thought and fun, stood, laughing and dancing, my youngest sister, a second Jane, and my youngest brother Henry, a posthumous child, feeble, and in his nurse's arms, but on this morning showing signs of unusual animation and of sympathy with the glorious promise of the young June day. Whirling round on his heel, at a little distance, and utterly abstracted from all around him, my next brother, Richard, he that had caused so much affliction by his incorrigible morals to the Sultan Amurath, pursued his own solitary thoughts--whatever those might be. And, finally, as regards myself, it happened that I was standing close to the edge of the brook, looking back at intervals to the group of five children and two nurse maids who occupied the centre of the lawn; time, about an hour before _our_ breakfast, or about two hours before the world's breakfast,-- _i.e._, a little after seven,--when as yet in shady parts of the grounds the dazzling jewelry of the early dews had not entirely exhaled. So standing, and so occupied, suddenly we were alarmed by shouts as of some great mob manifestly in rapid motion, and probably, at this instant taking the right-angled turn into the lane connecting Greenhay with the Oxford Road. The shouts indicated hostile and headlong pursuit: within one minute another right-angled turn in the lane itself brought the uproar fully upon the ear; and it became evident that some imminent danger--of what nature it was impossible to guess--must be hastily nearing us. We were all rooted to the spot; and all turned anxiously to the gates, which happily seemed to be closed. Had this been otherwise, we should have had no time to apply any remedy whatever, and the consequences must probably have involved us all. In a few seconds, a powerful dog, not much above a furlong ahead of his pursuers, wheeled into sight. We all saw him pause at the gates; but, finding no ready access through the iron lattice work that protected the side battlements of the little bridge, and the pursuit being so hot, he resumed his course along the outer margin of the brook. Coming opposite to myself, he made a dead stop. I had thus an opportunity of looking him steadily in the face; which I did, without more fear than belonged naturally to a case of so much hurry, and to me, in particular, of mystery. I had never heard of hydrophobia. But necessarily connecting the furious pursuit with the dog that now gazed at me from the opposite side of the water, and feeling obliged to presume that he had made an a.s.sault upon somebody or other, I looked searchingly into his eyes, and observed that they seemed glazed, and as if in a dreamy state, but at the same time suffused with some watery discharge, while his mouth was covered with ma.s.ses of white foam.

He looked most earnestly at myself and the group beyond me; but he made no effort whatever to cross the brook, and apparently had not the energy to attempt it by a flying leap. My brother William, who did not in the least suspect the real danger, invited the dog to try his chance in a leap--a.s.suring him that, if he succeeded, he would knight him on the spot. The temptation of a knighthood, however, did not prove sufficient.

A very few seconds brought his pursuers within sight; and steadily, without sound or gesture of any kind, he resumed his flight in the only direction open to him, viz., by a field path across stiles to Greenhill.

Half an hour later he would have met a bevy of children going to a dame's school, or carrying milk to rustic neighbors. As it was, the early morning kept the road clear in front. But behind immense was the body of agitated pursuers. Leading the chase came, probably, half a troop of light cavalry, all on foot, nearly all in their stable dresses, and armed generally with pitchforks, though some eight or ten carried carabines.

Half mingled with these, and very little in the rear, succeeded a vast miscellaneous mob, that had gathered on the chase as it hurried through the purlieus of Deansgate, and all that populous suburb of Manchester.

From some of these, who halted to recover breath, we obtained an explanation of the affair. About a mile and a half from Greenhay stood some horse barracks, occupied usually by an entire regiment of cavalry. A large dog--one of a mult.i.tude that haunted the barracks--had for some days manifested an increasing sullenness, snapping occasionally at dogs and horses, but finally at men. Upon this, he had been tied up; but in some way he had this morning liberated himself: two troop horses he had immediately bitten; and had made attacks upon several of the men, who fortunately parried these attacks by means of the pitchforks standing ready to their hands. On this evidence, coupled with the knowledge of his previous illness, he was summarily condemned as mad; and the general pursuit commenced, which brought all parties (hunters and game) sweeping so wildly past the quiet grounds of Greenhay. The sequel of the affair was this: none of the carabineers succeeded in getting a shot at the dog; in consequence of which, the chase lasted for 17 miles nominally; but, allowing for all the doublings and headings back of the dog, by computation for about 24; and finally, in a state of utter exhaustion, he was run into and killed, somewhere in Cheshire. Of the two horses whom he had bitten, both treated alike, one died in a state of furious hydrophobia some two months later, but the other (though the more seriously wounded of the two) manifested no symptoms whatever of const.i.tutional derangement. And thus it happened that for me this general event of separation from my eldest brother, and the particular morning on which it occurred, were each for itself separately and equally memorable.

Freedom won, and death escaped, almost in the same hour,--freedom from a yoke of such secret and fretful annoyance as none could measure but myself, and death probably through the fiercest of torments,--these double cases of deliverance, so sudden and so _unlooked for_, signalized by what heraldically might have been described as a two-headed memorial, the establishment of an _epoch_ in my life. Not only was the chapter of INFANCY thus solemnly finished forever, and the record closed, but--which cannot often happen--the chapter was closed pompously and conspicuously by what the early printers through the 15th and 16th centuries would have called a bright and illuminated colophon.

FOOTNOTES

[1] "_Peculiar_."--Viz., as _endowed_ foundations to which those resort who are rich and pay, and those also who, being poor, cannot pay, or cannot pay so much. This most honorable distinction amongst the services of England from ancient times to the interests of education--a service absolutely unapproached by any one nation of Christendom--is amongst the foremost cases of that remarkable cla.s.s which make England, whilst often the most aristocratic, yet also, for many n.o.ble purposes, the most democratic of lands.

[2] Five years ago, during the carnival of universal anarchy equally amongst doers and thinkers, a closely-printed pamphlet was published with this t.i.tle, "A New Revelation, or the Communion of the Incarnate Dead with the Unconscious Living. Important Fact, without trifling Fiction, by HIM." I have not the pleasure of knowing HIM; but certainly I must concede to HIM, that he writes like a man of extreme sobriety upon his extravagant theme. He is angry with Swedenborg, as might be expected, for his chimeras; some of which, however, of late years have signally altered their aspect; but. as to HIM, there is no chance that he should be occupied with chimeras, because (p. 6) "he has met with some who have acknowledged the fact of their having come from the dead"--_habes confitentem reum_. Few, however, are endowed with so much candor; and in particular, for the honor of literature, it grieves me to find, by p. 10, that the largest number of these shams, and perhaps the most uncandid, are to be looked for amongst "publishers and printers," of whom, it seems, "the great majority" are mere forgeries: a very few speak frankly about the matter, and say they don't care who knows it, which, to my thinking, is impudence, but by far the larger section doggedly deny it, and call a policeman, if you persist in charging them with being shams.

Some differences there are between my brother and HIM, but in the great outline of their views they coincide.

[3] Charles II., notoriously wrote a book on the possibility of a voyage to the moon, which, in a bishop, would be called a translation to the moon, and perhaps it was _his_ name in combination with _his_ book that suggested the "Adventures of Peter Wilkins." It is unfair, however, to mention him in connection with that single one of his works which announces an extravagant purpose. He was really a scientific man, and already in the time of Cromwell (about 1656) had projected that Royal Society of London which was afterwards realized and presided over by Isaac Barrow and Isaac Newton. He was also a learned man, but still with a veil of romance about him, as may be seen in his most elaborate work-- "The Essay towards a Philosophic or Universal Language."

[4] "_Middy_."--I call him so simply to avoid confusion, and by way of antic.i.p.ation; else he was too young at this time to serve in the navy.

Afterwards he did so for many years, and saw every variety of service in every cla.s.s of ships belonging to our navy. At one time, when yet a boy, he was captured by pirates, and compelled to sail with them; and the end of his adventurous career was, that for many a year he has been lying at the bottom of the Atlantic.

[5] "Green_heys_," with slight variation in the spelling, is the name given to that district of which Greenhay formed the original nucleus.

Probably it was the solitary situation of the house which (failing any other grounds of denomination) raised it to this privilege.

[6] "_Factory_."--Such was the designation technically at that time. At present, I believe that a building of that cla.s.s would be called a "mill."

[7] This word, however, exists in _Jack-a-dandy_--a very old English word. But what does _that_ mean?

[8] Precisely, however, the same gesture, plebian as it was, by which the English commandant at Heligoland replied to the Danes when civilly inviting him to surrender. Southey it was, on the authority of Lieutenant Southey, his brother, who communicated to me this anecdote.

[9] "_Bridge of sighs_."--Two men of memorable genius, Hood last, and Lord Byron by many years previously, have so appropriated this phrase, and reissued it as English currency, that many readers suppose it to be theirs. But the genealogies of fine expressions should be more carefully preserved. The expression belongs originally to Venice. This _jus postliminii_ becomes of real importance in many cases, but especially in the case of Shakspeare. Could one have believed it possible beforehand?

And yet it is a fact that he is made to seem a robber of the lowest order, by mere dint of suffering robbery. Purely through their own jewelly splendor have many hundreds of his phrases forced themselves into usage so general, under the vulgar infirmity of seeking to strengthen weak prose by shreds of poetic quotation, that at length the majority of careless readers come to look upon these phrases as belonging to the language, and traceable to no distinct proprietor any more than proverbs: and thus, on afterwards observing them in Shakspeare, they regard him in the light of one accepting alms (like so many meaner persons) from the common treasury of the universal mind, on which treasury, meantime, he had himself conferred these phrases as original donations of his own.

Many expressions in the "Paradise Lost," in "Il Penseroso," and in "L'Allegro," are in the same predicament. And thus the almost incredible case is realized which I have described, viz., that simply by having suffered a robbery through two centuries, (for the first attempt at plundering Milton was made upon his juvenile poems,) have Shakspeare and Milton come to be taxed as robbers. N. B.--In speaking of Hood as having appropriated the phrase _Bridge of Sighs_, I would not be understood to represent him as by possibility aiming at any concealment. He was as far above such a meanness by his n.o.bility of heart, as he was raised above all need for it by the overflowing opulence of his genius.

[10] Geometry (it has been said) would not evade disputation, if a man could find his interest in disputing it: such is the spirit of cavil. But I, upon a very opposite ground, a.s.sert that there is not one page of prose that could be selected from the best writer in the English language (far less in the German) which, upon a sufficient interest arising, would not furnish matter, simply through its defects in precision, for a suit in Chancery. Chancery suits do not arise, it is true, because the doubtful expressions do not touch any interest of property; but what _does_ arise is this--that something more valuable than a pecuniary interest is continually suffering, viz., the interests of truth.

[11] "_Of a Stuart sovereign_," and by no means of a Stuart only. Queen Anne, the last Stuart who sat on the British throne, was the last of _our princes_ who touched for the _king's evil_, (as scrofula was generally called until lately;) but the Bourbon houses, on the thrones of France, Spain, and Naples, as well as the house of Savoy, claimed and exercised the same supernatural privilege down to a much later period than the year 1714--the last of Queen Anne: according to their own and the popular faith, they could have cleansed Naaman the Syrian, and Gehazi too.

[12] One reason, I believe, why it was held a point of wisdom in ancient days that the metropolis of a warlike state should have a secret name hidden from the world, lay in the pagan practice of _evocation_, applied to the tutelary deities of such a state. These deities might be lured by certain rites and briberies into a transfer of their favors to the besieging army. But, in order to make such an evocation effectual, it was necessary to know the original and secret name of the beleaguered city; and this, therefore, was religiously concealed.

[13] Hamlet, Act v., scene 1.

[14] "_Hide himself in--light_."--The greatest scholar, by far, that this island ever produced, viz., Richard Bentley, published (as is well known) a 4to volume that in some respects is the very worst 4to now extant in the world--viz., a critical edition of the. "Paradise Lost." I observe, in the "Edinburgh Review," (July, 1851, No. 191, p. 15,) that a learned critic supposes Bentley to have meant this edition as a "practical jest."

Not at all. Neither could the critic have fancied such a possibility, if he had taken the trouble (which _I_ did many a year back) to examine it.

A jest book it certainly is, and the most prosperous of jest books, but undoubtedly never meant for such by the author. A man whose lips are livid with anger does not jest, and does not understand jesting. Still, the Edinburgh Reviewer is right about the proper functions of the book, though wrong about the intentions of the author. The fact is, the man was maniacally in error, and always in error, as regarded the ultimate or poetic truth of Milton; but, as regarded truth reputed and truth _apparent_, he often had the air of being furiously in the right; an example of which I will cite. Milton, in the First Book of the "Paradise Lost," had said,--

"That from the _secret_ top Of Oreb or of Sinai didst inspire;"

upon which Bentley comments in effect thus: "How!--the exposed summit of a mountain _secret_? Why, it's like Charing Cross--always the least secret place in the whole county." So one might fancy; since the summit of a mountain, like Plinlimmon or Cader Idris in Wales, like Skiddaw or Helvellyn in England, const.i.tutes a central object of attention and gaze for the whole circ.u.mjacent district, measured by a radius sometimes of 15 to 20 miles. Upon this consideration, Bentley instructs us to subst.i.tute as the true reading--"That on the _sacred_ top," &c. Meantime, an actual experiment will demonstrate that there is no place so absolutely secret and hidden as the exposed summit of a mountain, 3500 feet high, in respect to an eye stationed in the valley immediately below. A whole party of men, women, horses, and even tents, looked at under those circ.u.mstances, is absolutely invisible unless by the aid of gla.s.ses: and it becomes evident that a murder might be committed on the bare open summit of such a mountain with more a.s.surance of absolute secrecy than any where else in the whole surrounding district.

[15] Which "_saying_" is sometimes ascribed, I know not how truly, to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

[16] It strikes me, upon second thoughts, that the particular idiom, which Lord Monboddo ill.u.s.trated as regarded the Greek language, merits a momentary notice; and for this reason--that it plays a part not at all less conspicuous or less delicate in the Latin. Here is an instance of its use in Greek, taken from the well-known night scene in the "Iliad:"--

------_gaethaese de poimenos aetor_,

And the heart of the shepherd _rejoices_; where the verb _gaethaese_ is in the indefinite or aorist tense, and is meant to indicate a condition of feeling not limited to any time whatever--past, present, or future.

In Latin, the force and elegance of this usage are equally impressive, if not more so. At this moment, I remember two cases of this in Horace:- -