Imaginary Conversations and Poems Part 48

_Landor._ Pray go on. I am desirous of hearing more.

_Southey._ Being now alone, with the whole day before us, and having carried, as we agreed at breakfast, each his Milton in his pocket, let us collect all the graver faults we can lay our hands upon, without a too minute and troublesome research; not in the spirit of Johnson, but in our own.

_Landor._ That is, abasing our eyes in reverence to so great a man, but without closing them. The beauties of his poetry we may omit to notice, if we can: but where the crowd claps the hands, it will be difficult for us always to refrain. Johnson, I think, has been charged unjustly with expressing too freely and inconsiderately the blemishes of Milton. There are many more of them than he has noticed.

_Southey._ If we add any to the number, and the literary world hears of it, we shall raise an outcry from hundreds who never could see either his excellences or his defects, and from several who never have perused the n.o.blest of his writings.

_Landor._ It may be boyish and mischievous, but I acknowledge I have sometimes felt a pleasure in irritating, by the cast of a pebble, those who stretch forward to the full extent of the chain their open and frothy mouths against me. I shall seize upon this conjecture of yours, and say everything that comes into my head on the subject.

Beside which, if any collateral thoughts should spring up, I may throw them in also; as you perceive I have frequently done in my _Imaginary Conversations_, and as we always do in real ones.

_Southey._ When we adhere to one point, whatever the form, it should rather be called a disquisition than a conversation. Most writers of dialogue take but a single stride into questions the most abstruse, and collect a heap of arguments to be blown away by the bloated whiffs of some rhetorical charlatan, tricked out in a multiplicity of ribbons for the occasion.

Before we open the volume of poetry, let me confess to you I admire his prose less than you do.

_Landor._ Probably because you dissent more widely from the opinions it conveys: for those who are displeased with anything are unable to confine the displeasure to one spot. We dislike everything a little when we dislike anything much. It must indeed be admitted that his prose is often too latinized and stiff. But I prefer his heavy cut velvet, with its ill-placed Roman fibula, to the spangled gauze and gummed-on flowers and puffy flounces of our present street-walking literature. So do you, I am certain.

_Southey._ Incomparably. But let those who have gone astray, keep astray, rather than bring Milton into disrepute by pushing themselves into his company and imitating his manner. Milton is none of these: and his language is never a patchwork. We find daily, in almost every book we open, expressions which are not English, never were, and never will be: for the writers are by no means of sufficiently high rank to be masters of the mint. To arrive at this distinction, it is not enough to scatter in all directions bold, hazardous, undisciplined thoughts: there must be lordly and commanding ones, with a full establishment of well-appointed expressions adequate to their maintenance.

Occasionally I have been dissatisfied with Milton, because in my opinion that is ill said in prose which can be said more plainly. Not so in poetry: if it were, much of Pindar and Aeschylus, and no little of Dante, would be censurable.

_Landor._ Acknowledge that he whose poetry I am holding in my hand is free from every false ornament in his prose, unless a few bosses of latinity may be called so; and I am ready to admit the full claims of your favourite South. Acknowledge that, heading all the forces of our language, he was the great antagonist of every great monster which infested our country; and he disdained to trim his lion-skin with lace. No other English writer has equalled Raleigh, Hooker, and Milton, in the loftier parts of their works.

_Southey._ But Hooker and Milton, you allow, are sometimes pedantic.

In Hooker there is nothing so elevated as there is in Raleigh.

_Landor._ Neither he, however, nor any modern, nor any ancient, has attained to that summit on which the sacred ark of Milton strikes and rests. Reflections, such as we indulged in on the borders of the Larius, come over me here again. Perhaps from the very sod where you are sitting, the poet in his youth sate looking at the Sabrina he was soon to celebrate. There is pleasure in the sight of a glebe which never has been broken; but it delights me particularly in those places where great men have been before. I do not mean warriors: for extremely few among the most remarkable of them will a considerate man call great: but poets and philosophers and philanthropists, the ornaments of society, the charmers of solitude, the warders of civilization, the watchmen at the gate which Tyranny would batter down, and the healers of those wounds which she left festering in the field. And now, to reduce this demon into its proper toad-shape again, and to lose sight of it, open your _Paradise Lost_.

THE EMPEROR OF CHINA AND TSING-TI

On the morrow I was received at the folding-doors by Pru-Tsi, and ushered by him into the presence of his majesty the Emperor, who was graciously pleased to inform me that he had rendered thanks to Almighty G.o.d for enlightening his mind, and for placing his empire far beyond the influence of the persecutor and fanatic. 'But,' continued his majesty, 'this story of the sorcerer's man quite confounds me.

Little as the progress is which the Europeans seem to have made in the path of humanity, yet the English, we know, are less cruel than their neighbours, and more given to reflection and meditation. How then is it possible they should allow any portion of their fellow-citizens to be hoodwinked, gagged, and carried away into darkness, by such conspirators and a.s.sa.s.sins? Why didst thou not question the man thyself?'

_Tsing-Ti._ I did, O Emperor! and his reply was, 'We can bury such only as were in the household of the faith. It would be a mockery to bid those spirits go in peace which we know are condemned to everlasting fire.'

_Emperor._ Amazing! have they that? Who invented it? Everlasting fire!

It surely might be applied to better purposes. And have those rogues authority to throw people into it? In what part of the kingdom is it?

If natural, it ought to have been marked more plainly in the maps. The English, no doubt, are ashamed of letting it be known abroad that they have any such places in their country. If artificial, it is no wonder they keep such a secret to themselves. Tsing-Ti, I commend thy prudence in asking no questions about it; for I see we are equally at a loss on this curiosity.

_Tsing-Ti._ The sorcerer has a secret for diluting it. Oysters and the white of eggs, applied on lucky days, enter into the composition; but certain charms in a strange language must also be employed, and must be repeated a certain number of times. There are stones likewise, and wood cut into particular forms, good against this eternal fire, as they believe. The sorcerer has the power, they pretend, of giving the faculty of hearing and seeing to these stones and pieces of wood; and when he has given them the faculties, they become so sensible and grateful, they do whatever he orders. Some roll their eyes, some sweat, some bleed; and the people beat their b.r.e.a.s.t.s before them, calling themselves miserable sinners.

_Emperor._ _Sinners_ is not the name I should have given them, although no doubt they are in the right.

_Tsing-Ti._ Sometimes, if they will not bleed freely, nor sweat, nor roll their eyes, the devouter break their heads with clubs, and look out for others who will.

_Emperor._ Take heed, Tsing-Ti! Take heed! I do believe thou art talking all the while of idols. Thou must be respectful; remember I am head of all the religions in the empire. We have something in our own country not very unlike them, only the people do not worship them; they merely fall down before them as representatives of a higher power. So they say.

_Tsing-Ti._ I do not imagine they go much farther in Europe, excepting the introduction of this club-law into their adoration.

_Emperor._ And difference enough, in all conscience. Our people is less ferocious and less childish. If any man break an idol here for not sweating, he himself would justly be condemned to sweat, showing him how inconvenient a thing it is when the sweater is not disposed.

As for rolling the eyes, surely they know best whom they should ogle; as for bleeding, that must be regulated by the season of the year. Let every man choose his idol as freely as he chooses his wife; let him be constant if he can; if he cannot, let him at least be civil. Whoever dares to scratch the face of any one in my empire, shall be condemned to varnish it afresh, and moreover to keep it in repair all his lifetime.

_Tsing-Ti._ In Europe such an offence would be punished with the extremities of torture.

_Emperor._ Perhaps their idols cost more, and are newer. Is there no chance, in all their changes, that we may be called upon to supply them with a few?

_Tsing-Ti._ They have plenty for the present, and they dig up fresh occasionally.

_Emperor._ In regard to the worship of idols, they have not a great deal to learn from us; and what is deficient will come by degrees as they grow humaner. But how little care can any ruler have for the happiness and improvement of his people, who permits such ferocity in the priesthood. If its members are employed by the government to preside at burials, as according to thy discourse I suppose, a virtuous prince would order a twelvemonth's imprisonment, and spare diet, to whichever of them should refuse to perform the last office of humanity toward a fellow-creature. What separation of citizen from citizen, and necessarily what diminution of national strength, must be the consequence of such a system! A single act of it ought to be punished more severely than any single act of sedition, not only as being a greater distractor of civic union, but, in its cruel sequestration of the best affections, a fouler violator of domestic peace. I always had fancied, from the books in my library, that the Christian religion was founded on brotherly love and pure equality. I may calculate ill; but, in my hasty estimate, d.a.m.nation and dog-burial stand many removes from these.

'Wait a little,' the Emperor continued: 'I wish to read in my library the two names that my father said are considered the two greatest in the West, and may vie nearly with the highest of our own country.'

Whereupon did his majesty walk forth into his library; and my eyes followed his glorious figure as he pa.s.sed through the doorway, traversing the _gallery of the peac.o.c.ks_, so called because fifteen of those beautiful birds unite their tails in the centre of the ceiling, painted so naturally as to deceive the beholder, each carrying in his beak a different flower, the most beautiful in China, and bending his neck in such a manner as to present it to the pa.s.ser below. Traversing this gallery, his majesty with his own hand drew aside the curtain of the library door. His majesty then entered; and, after some delay, he appeared with two long scrolls, and shook them gently over the fish-pond, in this dormitory of the sages. Suddenly there were so many splashes and plunges that I was aware of the gratification the fishes had received from the grubs in them, and the disappointment in the atoms of dust. His majesty, with his own right hand, drew the two scrolls trailing on the marble pavement, and pointing to them with his left, said:

'Here they are; Nhu-Tong: Pa-Kong. Suppose they had died where the sorcerer's men held firm footing, would the priests have refused them burial?'

I bowed my head at the question; for a single tinge of red, whether arising from such ultra-b.e.s.t.i.a.l cruelty in those who have the impudence to accuse the cannibals of theirs, or whether from abhorrent shame at the corroding disease of intractable superst.i.tion, hereditary in the European nations for fifteen centuries, a tinge of red came over the countenance of the emperor. When I raised up again my forehead, after such time as I thought would have removed all traces of it, still fixing my eyes on the ground, I answered:

'O Emperor! the most zealous would have done worse. They would have prepared these great men for burial, and then have left them unburied.'

_Emperor._ So! so! they would have embalmed them, in their reverence for meditation and genius, although their religion prohibits the ceremony of interring them.

_Tsing-Ti._ Alas, sire, my meaning is far different. They would have dislocated their limbs with pulleys, broken them with hammers, and then have burnt the flesh off the bones. This is called an _act of faith_.

_Emperor._ _Faith_, didst thou say? Tsing-Ti, thou speakest bad Chinese: thy native tongue is strangely occidentalized.

_Tsing-Ti._ So they call it.

_Emperor._ G.o.d hath not given unto all men the use of speech. Thou meanest to designate the ancient inhabitants of the country, not those who have lived there within the last three centuries.

_Tsing-Ti._ The Spaniards and Italians (such are the names of the nations who are most under the influence of the spells) were never so barbarous and cruel as during the first of the last three centuries.

The milder of them would have refused two cubits of earth to the two philosophers; and not only would have rejected them from the cemetery of the common citizens, but from the side of the common hangman; the most ignorant priest thinking himself much wiser, and the most enlightened prince not daring to act openly as one who could think otherwise. The Italians had formerly two ill.u.s.trious men among them; the earlier was a poet, the later a philosopher; one was exiled, the other was imprisoned, and both were within a span of being burnt alive.

_Emperor._ We have in Asia some odd religions and some barbarous princes, but neither are like the Europeans. In the name of G.o.d! do the fools think of their Christianity as our neighbours in Tartary (with better reason) think of their milk; that it will keep the longer for turning sour? or that it must be wholesome because it is heady?

Swill it out, swill it out, say I, and char the tub.

LOUIS XVIII AND TALLEYRAND

_Louis._ M. Talleyrand! in common with all my family, all France, all Europe, I entertain the highest opinion of your abilities and integrity. You have convinced me that your heart, throughout the storms of the revolution, leaned constantly toward royalty; and that you permitted and even encouraged the caresses of the usurper, merely that you might strangle the more certainly and the more easily his new-born empire. After this, it is impossible to withhold my confidence from you.