The Glory of English Prose Part 8

17

MY DEAR ANTONY,

Grattan, of whom I have already written, had in the first Lord Plunket a successor and a compatriot very little his inferior in the gift of oratory.

He was born in 1764, and was therefore some fourteen years younger than Grattan, whom he survived by thirty-four years.

Like Grattan, he displayed a burning patriotism and, like him, fiercely opposed the Act of Union.

Few orators have displayed greater powers of clear reason and convincing logic than Plunket. It may be admitted that he seldom rose to great heights of eloquence, but tradition credits his delivery with a quality of dignity amounting almost to majesty. The gift of oratory consists in how things are said as much as in what things are said, and the voice, gesture, and manner of Plunket were commanding and magnificent.

When Attorney-General in Ireland, in 1823, in a speech prosecuting the leaders of the riot known as "the Bottle Riot," Plunket uttered the following fine tribute to the character of William the Third:--

"Perhaps, my lords, there is not to be found in the annals of history a character more truly great than that of William the Third. Perhaps no person has ever appeared on the theatre of the world who has conferred more essential or more lasting benefits on mankind; on these countries, certainly none. When I look at the abstract merits of his character, I contemplate him with admiration and reverence. Lord of a petty princ.i.p.ality--dest.i.tute of all resources but those with which nature had endowed him--regarded with jealousy and envy by those whose battles he fought; thwarted in all his counsels; embarra.s.sed in all his movements; deserted in his most critical enterprises--he continued to mould all those discordant materials, to govern all these warring interests, and merely by the force of his genius, the ascendancy of his integrity, and the immovable firmness and constancy of his nature, to combine them into an indissoluble alliance against the schemes of despotism and universal domination of the most powerful monarch in Europe, seconded by the ablest generals, at the head of the bravest and best disciplined armies in the world, and wielding, without check or control, the unlimited resources of his empire. He was not a consummate general; military men will point out his errors; in that respect Fortune did not favour him, save by throwing the l.u.s.tre of adversity over all his virtues. He sustained defeat after defeat, but always rose _adversa rerum immersabilis unda_. Looking merely at his shining qualities and achievements, I admire him as I do a Scipio, a Regulus, a Fabius; a model of tranquil courage, undeviating probity, and armed with a resoluteness and constancy in the cause of truth and freedom, which rendered him superior to the accidents that control the fate of ordinary men.

"But this is not all--I feel that to him, under G.o.d, I am, at this moment, indebted for the enjoyment of the rights which I possess as a subject of these free countries; to him I owe the blessings of civil and religious liberty, and I venerate his memory with a fervour of devotion suited to his ill.u.s.trious qualities and to his G.o.dlike acts."

This is not so magnificent a panegyric as that of Grattan in his written tribute to Chatham, but, enhanced by the gesture and voice of the great orator, it was reputed to have left a deep impression upon all who heard it.

But few speeches, however eloquent, survive, while the printed work of the writer may long endure; but to the orator is given what the writer never experiences--the fierce enjoyment, amounting almost to rapture, of holding an audience entranced under the spell of the spoken cadences; and English, Antony, has a splendour all its own when uttered by a master of its august music.

Your loving old G.P.

18

MY DEAR ANTONY,

To-day I will write about Robert Southey, and, as he and Coleridge married sisters, you may claim a distant relationship with him. His personal character was beautiful and unselfish, and his dwelling at Keswick was the home that for years sheltered Coleridge's children.

With hardly an exception the poets of England have had an easy and royal mastery of prose; and in the case of Robert Southey there are some, and they are not the worst critics, who antic.i.p.ate that his prose will long outlast his poetry in the Temple of Fame.

We may suppose that to a man whose whole private life was stainlessly dedicated to a n.o.ble rect.i.tude of conduct, and whose every act was sternly subjected to the judgment of an unbending conscience, some circ.u.mstances of the private life of Nelson must have been distasteful and open to censure; but no such reservations dimmed the splendour of Southey's tribute to the public hero who gave his life in the act of establishing, beyond reach of dispute or cavil, the throne of England as Queen of the Sea.

"The death of Nelson was felt in England as something more than a public calamity; men started at the intelligence, and turned pale, as if they had heard of the loss of a dear friend. An object of our admiration and affection, of our pride and of our hopes, was suddenly taken from us, and it seemed as if we had never, till then, known how deeply we loved and reverenced him.

"What the country had lost in its great naval hero--the greatest of our own, and of all former times, was scarcely taken into the account of grief. So perfectly, indeed, had he performed his part, that the maritime war, after the battle of Trafalgar, was considered at an end; the fleets of the enemy were not merely defeated, but destroyed; new navies must be built, and a new race of seamen reared for them, before the possibility of their invading our sh.o.r.es could again be contemplated.

"It was not, therefore, from any selfish reflection upon the magnitude of our loss that we mourned for him; the general sorrow was of a higher character. The people of England grieved that funeral ceremonies, public monuments and posthumous rewards, were all which they could now bestow upon him whom the king, the legislature, and the nation, would alike have delighted to honour; whom every tongue would have blessed; whose presence in every village through which he might have pa.s.sed would have wakened the church bells, have given schoolboys a holiday, have drawn children from their sports to gaze upon him, and 'old men from the chimney corner' to look upon Nelson ere they died.

"The victory of Trafalgar was celebrated, indeed, with the usual forms of rejoicing, but they were without joy; for such already was the glory of the British Navy through Nelson's surpa.s.sing genius, that it scarcely seemed to receive any addition from the most signal victory that ever was achieved upon the sea; and the destruction of this mighty fleet, by which all the maritime schemes of France were totally frustrated, hardly appeared to add to our security or strength, for while Nelson was living to watch the combined squadrons of the enemy, we felt ourselves as secure as now, when they were no longer in existence.

"There was reason to suppose from the appearances upon opening the body, that in the course of nature he might have attained, like his father, to a good old age. Yet he cannot be said to have fallen prematurely whose work was done; nor ought he to be lamented, who died so full of honours, and at the height of human fame. The most triumphant death is that of a martyr; the most awful, that of the martyred patriot; the most splendid, that of the hero in the hour of victory; and if the chariot and the horses of fire had been vouchsafed for Nelson's translation, he could scarcely have departed in a brighter blaze of glory.

"He has left us, not indeed his mantle of inspiration, but a name and an example which are at this hour inspiring hundreds of the youth of England; a name which is our pride, and an example which will continue to be our shield and our strength."

Nelson left England the Queen of the Sea, and the great war with Germany has failed to displace her from that splendid throne. For the plain fact of history remains that, after the battle of Jutland, the German High Seas Fleet never ventured out of port again till the end of the war; and when it did emerge from its ignominious security, it sailed to captivity at Scapa Flow, there ultimately to repose on the bottom of the sea.

Your loving old G.P.

19

MY DEAR ANTONY,

There are four very celebrated lines written by Walter Savage Landor which you may have heard quoted; they were written towards the close of his life, and are certainly distinguished and memorable:--

"I strove with none, for none was worth my strife; Nature I loved, and next to Nature Art; I warmed both hands before the fire of life; It sinks, and I am ready to depart."

It does not detract from the merit of the lines that as a fact Landor was of a fiery disposition, and strove a great deal with many adversaries, often of his own creation, throughout his long life[1]; and although he was of a fierce and combative nature he displayed in his writings a cla.s.sical restraint and tender beauty hardly achieved by his contemporaries.

In the form of an imaginary conversation between aesop and Rhodope, Landor makes the latter describe how her father, in the famine, unbeknown to her, starved that she might have plenty, and, when all was gone, took her to the market-place to sell her that she might live.

There is an exquisite delicacy in this dialogue that places it among the wonders of literature:--

"_Rhodope_. Never shall I forget the morning when my father, sitting in the coolest part of the house, exchanged his last measure of grain for a chlamys of scarlet cloth, fringed with silver. He watched the merchant out of the door, and then looked wistfully into the cornchest. I, who thought there was something worth seeing, looked in also, and finding it empty, expressed my disappointment, not thinking, however, about the corn. A faint and transient smile came over his countenance at the sight of mine. He unfolded the chlamys, stretched it out with both hands before me, and then cast it over my shoulders. I looked down on the glittering fringe and screamed with joy. He then went out; and I know not what flowers he gathered, but he gathered many; and some he placed in my bosom, and some in my hair. But I told him with captious pride, first that I could arrange them better, and again that I would have only the white. However, when he had selected all the white and I had placed a few of them according to my fancy, I told him (rising in my slipper) he might crown me with the remainder.

"The splendour of my apparel gave me a sensation of authority.

Soon as the flowers had taken their station on my head, I expressed a dignified satisfaction at the taste displayed by my father, just as if I could have seen how they appeared! But he knew that there was at least as much pleasure as pride in it, and perhaps we divided the latter (alas! not both) pretty equally.

"He now took me into the market-place, where a concourse of people were waiting for the purchase of slaves. Merchants came and looked at me; some commending, others disparaging; but all agreeing that I was slender and delicate, that I could not live long, and that I should give much trouble. Many would have bought the chlamys, but there was something less saleable in the child and flowers.

"_aesop_. Had thy features been coa.r.s.e and thy voice rustic, they would all have patted thy cheeks and found no fault in thee.

"_Rhodope_. As it was, every one had bought exactly such another in time past, and been a loser by it. At these speeches, I perceived the flowers tremble slightly on my bosom, from my father's agitation. Although he scoffed at them, knowing my healthiness, he was troubled internally, and said many short prayers, not very unlike imprecations, turning his head aside.

Proud was I, prouder than ever, when at last several talents were offered for me, and by the very man who in the beginning had undervalued me most, and prophesied the worst of me. My father scowled at him and refused the money. I thought he was playing a game, and began to wonder what it could be, since I had never seen it played before. Then I fancied it might be some celebration because plenty had returned to the city, insomuch that my father had bartered the last of the corn he h.o.a.rded.

"I grew more and more delighted at the sport. But soon there advanced an elderly man, who said gravely, 'Thou hast stolen this child; her vesture alone is worth a hundred drachmas. Carry her home again to her parents, and do it directly, or Nemesis and the Eumenides will overtake thee.' Knowing the estimation in which my father had always been holden by his fellow-citizens, I laughed again and pinched his ear. He, although naturally choleric, burst forth into no resentment at these reproaches, but said calmly, 'I think I know thee by name, O guest! Surely thou art Xanthus, the Samian. Deliver this child from famine.'

"Again I laughed aloud and heartily, and thinking it was now part of the game, I held out both my arms, and protruded my whole body toward the stranger. He would not receive me from my father's neck, but he asked me with benignity and solicitude if I was hungry; at which I laughed again, and more than ever; for it was early in the morning, soon after the first meal, and my father had nourished me most carefully and plentifully in all the days of the famine. But Xanthus, waiting for no answer, took out of a sack, which one of his slaves carried at his side, a cake of wheaten bread and a piece of honeycomb, and gave them to me. I held the honeycomb to my father's mouth, thinking it the most of a dainty.

He dashed it to the ground, but seizing the bread he began to devour it ferociously. This also I thought was in the play, and I clapped my hands at his distortions. But Xanthus looked at him like one afraid, and smote the cake from him, crying aloud, 'Name the price,' My father now placed me in his arms, naming a price much below what the other had offered, saying, 'The G.o.ds are ever with thee, O Xanthus! therefore to thee do I consign my child.'

"But while Xanthus was counting out the silver my father seized the cake again, which the slave had taken up and was about to replace in the wallet. His hunger was exasperated by the taste, and the delay. Suddenly there arose much tumult. Turning round in the old woman's bosom who had received me from Xanthus, I saw my beloved father struggling on the ground, livid and speechless. The more violent my cries, the more rapidly they hurried me away; and many were soon between us.

"Little was I suspicious that he had suffered the pangs of famine long before: alas! and he had suffered them for me. Do I weep while I am telling you they ended? I could not have closed his eyes; I was too young; but I might have received his last breath, the only comfort of an orphan's bosom. Do you now think him blameable, O aesop?"

"_aesop_. It was sublime humanity; it was forbearance and self-denial which even the immortal G.o.ds have never shown us."

The _Dream of Petrarca_ is, I think, more famous but not more beautiful than this narrative of Rhodope; it lacks the deep human tragedy and infinite charity of the winsome child, and the self-contained father silently perishing of hunger for her; but if the _aesop and Rhodope_ had never been written, the _Dream of Petrarca_ would secure its author a place among the immortals:--

"... Wearied with the length of my walk over the mountains, and finding a soft molehill, covered with grey moss, by the wayside, I laid my head upon it and slept. I cannot tell how long it was before a species of dream or vision came over me.