The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey Volume I Part 17

A (the subject of def.)is _x_. The Truth is the sum of Christianity.

But C is _x_. But my Baptist view is the sum of Christianity.

_Ergo_ C is A. _Ergo_ my Baptist view is the Truth.

[33] It seems that Herod made changes so vast--certainly in the surmounting works, and _also_ probably in one place as to the foundations, that it could not be called the same Temple with that of the Captivity, except under an abuse of ideas as to matter and form, of which all nations have furnished ill.u.s.trations, from the ship _Argo_ to that of old Drake, from Sir John Cutler's stockings to the Highlander's (or Irishman's) musket.

[34] Just as if a man spending his life to show the folly of Methodism should burst into maudlin tears at sight of John Wesley, and say, 'Oh, if all men, my dear brothers, were but Methodists!'

[35] How so? If the Jews were naturally infidels, why did G.o.d select them? But, first, they might have, and they certainly had, other balancing qualities; secondly, in the sense here meant, all men are infidels; and we ourselves, by the very nature of one object which I will indicate, are pretty generally infidels in the same sense as they.

Look at our evidences; look at the sort of means by which we often attempt to gain proselytes among the heathen and at home. Fouler infidelities there are not. Special pleading, working for a verdict, etc., etc.

[36] [This idea is expanded and followed out in detail in the opening of 'Homer and the Homeridae;' but this is evidently the note from which that grew, and is here given alike on account of its compactness and felicity.--ED.]

[37] Satire ix., lines 60, 61.

[38] Who can answer a sneer?

[39] Butler--'unanswerable ridicule.'

[40] Said of members of the Bristol family.

_XXV. OMITTED Pa.s.sAGES AND VARIATIONS._

1.--THE RHAPSODOI.

The following on the 'Rhapsodoi' is a variation on that which appeared in 'Homer and the Homeridae,' with some quite additional and new thoughts on the subject.

About these people, who they were, what relation they bore to Homer, and why they were called 'Rhapsodoi,' we have seen debated in Germany through the last half century with as much rabid ferocity as was ever applied to the books of a fraudulent bankrupt. Such is the natural impertinence of man. If he suspects any secret, or any base attempt to hide and conceal things from himself, he is miserable until he finds out the mystery, and especially where all the parties to it have been defunct for 2,500 years. Great indignation seems reasonably to have been felt by all German scholars that any man should presume to have called himself a _rhapsodos_ at any period of Grecian history without sending down a sealed letter to posterity stating all the reasons which induced him to take so unaccountable a step. No possible solution, given to any conceivable question bearing upon the 'Rhapsodoi,' seems by any tendency to affect any question outstanding about Homer. And we do not therefore understand the propriety of intermingling this dispute with the general Homeric litigation. However, to comply with the practice of Germany, we shall throw away a few sentences upon this, as a pure _ad libitum_ digression.

The courteous reader, whom we beg also to suppose the most ignorant of readers, by way of thus founding a necessity and a case of philosophic reasonableness for the circ.u.mstantiality of our own explanations, will be pleased to understand that by ancient traditionary usage the word _rhapsodia_ is the designation technically applied to the several books or cantos of the 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey.' So the word _fytte_ has gained a technical appropriation to our narrative poetry when it takes the ballad form. Now, the Greek word _rhapsody_ is derived from a tense of the verb _rhapto_, to sew as with a needle, to connect, and _ode_, a song, chant, or course of singing. If, therefore, you conceive of a _rhapsodia_, not as the _opera_, but as the _opus_ of a singer, not as the form, but as the result of his official ministration, viz., as that section of a narrative poem which forms an intelligible whole in itself, whilst in a subordinate relation it is one part of a larger whole--this idea represents accurately enough the use of the word _rhapsodia_ in the latter periods of Greek literature. Suppose the word _canto_ to be taken in its literal etymological sense, it would indicate a metrical composition meant to be sung or chanted. But what const.i.tutes the complexity of the idea in the word _rhapsodia_ is that both its separate elements, the poetry and the musical delivery, are equally essential; neither is a casual, neither a subordinate, element.

Now, the 'Rhapsodoi,' as may be supposed, are the personal correlates of the _rhapsodia._ This being the poem adapted to chanting, those were the chanters. And the only important question which we can imagine to arise is, How far in any given age we may presume the functions of the poetical composer and the musical deliverer to have been united. We cannot perceive that any possible relation between a rhapsody considered as a section of a poem and the whole of that poem, or any possible relation which this same rhapsody considered as a thing to be sung or accompanied instrumentally could bear to the naked-speaking rehearsal of the same poem or to the original text of that poem, ever can affect the main question of Homer's integrity. The 'Rhapsodoi' come to be mentioned at all simply as being one link in the transmission of the Homeric poems. They are found existing before Pisistratus, they are found existing after Pisistratus. And they declined exactly as the art of reading became general. We can approximate pretty closely to the time when the 'Rhapsodoi' ceased; but at what time they began we defy any man to say. Plato (Rep. x.) represents them as going back into the days of Homer; nay, according to Plato, Homer himself was a _rhapsodos_, and itinerated in that character. So was Hesiod. And two remarkable lines, ascribed to Hesiod by one of the Scholiasts upon Pindar, if we could be sure that they were genuine, settle that question:

[Greek: En Delo tote proton ego xai Homeros aoidoi Melpomen, en nearois umnois rapsantes aoide.]

'Then, first of all,' says Hesiod, 'did I and Homer chant as bards in Delos, laying the nexus of our poetic composition in proaemial hymns.' We understand him to mean this: There were many singers and harpers who sang or accompanied the words of others; perhaps ancient words--at all events, not their own. Naturally he was anxious to have it understood that he and Homer had higher pretensions. They killed their own mutton.

They composed the words as well as sang them. Where both functions were so often united in one man's person, it became difficult to distinguish them. Our own word _bard_ or _minstrel_ stood in the same ambiguity. You could not tell in many cases whether the word pointed to the man's poetic or musical faculty. Antic.i.p.ating that doubt, Hesiod says that they sang as original poets. For it is a remark of Suidas, which he deduces laboriously, that poetry, being uniformly sung in the elder Greece, acquired the name of [Greek: aoide]. This term became technically appropriated to the poetry, or substance of whatever was sung, in contradistinction to the musical accompaniment. And the poet was called [Greek: aoidos] So far Hesiod twice over secures the dignity of their office from misinterpretation. And there, by the word [Greek: raphantes] he indicates the sort of poetry which they cultivated, viz., that which was expanded into long heroic narratives, and naturally connected itself both internally amongst its own parts, and externally with other poems of the same cla.s.s. Thus, having separated Homer and himself from the mere musicians, next he separates them even as poets from those who simply composed hymns to the G.o.ds. These heroic legends were known to require much more elaborate study and art. Yet, because a critical reviewer might take occasion to tax his piety in thus composing human legends in neglect of the G.o.ds, Hesiod, forestalling him, replies: 'You're out there, my friend; we were both pious, and we put our piety into hymns addressed to the G.o.ds, which, with cabinetmakers' skill, we used also as interludes of transition from one legend to another.' For it is noticed frequently and especially by a Scholiast on Aristophanes (Pac. 826), that generally speaking the _proaemia_ to the different parts of narrative-poems were entirely detached, [Greek: kai ouden pros to pragma delon], and explain nothing at all that concerns the business.

2.--Mrs. Evans and the 'Gazette.'

In his autobiographic sketch, 'Introduction to the World of Strife,' he tells of his brother's enterprise in establishing the _Gazette_, which was to record their doings, and also of Mrs. Evans's place on the _Gazette_. The following is evidently a pa.s.sage which was prepared for that part of the article, but was from some cause or other omitted:

I suppose no creature ever led such a life as I led on the _Gazette_; sometimes running up, like Wallenstein, to the giddiest pinnacles of honour, then down again without notice or warning to the dust; cashiered--rendered incapable of ever serving H. M. again; nay, actually drummed out of the army, my uniform stripped off, and the 'rogue's march' played after me. And all for what? I protest, to this hour, I have no guess. If any person knows, that person is not myself; and the reader is quite as well able to furnish guesses to me as I to him--to enlighten _me_ upon the subject as I _him_.

Mrs. Evans was a very important person in the play; I don't suppose that things could have gone on without _her_. For, as there was no writer in the _Gazette_ but my brother, so there was no reader of it except Mrs.

Evans. And here came in a shocking annoyance to me that, as often as any necessity occurred (which was every third day) for restoring me to my rank, since my brother would not have it supposed that he could be weak enough to initiate such an indulgence, the _Gazette_ threw the _onus_ of this amiable weakness, and consequently of my grat.i.tude, upon Mrs. Evans, affirming that the major-general had received a pardon and an amnesty for all his past atrocities at the request of 'a distinguished lady,' who was obscurely indicated in a parenthesis as 'the truly honourable Mrs. Evans.' To listen to the _Gazette_ one would have supposed that this woman, who so cordially detested me, spent her whole time in going down on her knees and making earnest supplications to the throne on my behalf. But what signified the representations of the _Gazette_ if I knew them to be false? Aye, but I did not know that they were false. It is true that my obligations to her were quite aerial, and might, as the reader will think, have been supported without any preternatural effort. But exactly these aerial burdens, whether of grat.i.tude or of honour, most oppressed me as being least tangible and incapable of pecuniary or other satisfaction. No sinking fund could meet them. And even the dull unimaginative woman herself, eternally held up to admiration as my resolute benefactress, got the habit (I am sure) of looking upon me as under nameless obligations to her. This raised my wrath. It was not that to my feelings the obligations were really a mere figment of pretence. On the contrary, according to my pains endured, they towered up to the clouds. But I felt that n.o.body had any right to load me with favours that I had never asked for, and without leave even asked from me; and the more real were the favours, the deeper the wrong done to me. I sought, therefore, for some means of retaliation. And it is odd that it was not till thirty years after that I perceived one. It then struck me that the eternal intercession might have been equally odious to her. To find herself prostrate for ever, weeping like Niobe, and, if the _Gazette_ was to be believed, refusing to raise herself from the mud or the flinty pavement till I had been forgiven, and reinstated in my rank--ah, how loathsome that must have been to her! Ah, how loathsome the whole cycle of favours were to me, considering from whom they came! Then we had effectually plagued each other. And it was not without loud laughter, as of malice unexpectedly triumphant, that I found one night thirty years after, on regretting my powerlessness of vengeance, that, in fact, I had amply triumphed thirty years before. So, undaunted Mrs. Evans, if you live anywhere within call, listen to the a.s.surance that all accounts are squared between us, and that we balanced our mutual debts by mutual disgust; and that, if you plagued me perversely, I plagued you unconsciously.

And though shot and bullets were forbidden fruit, yet something might be done with hard wadding. A good deal of cla.s.sical literature disappeared in this way, which by one who valued no cla.s.sics very highly might be called the way of all flesh. The best of authors, he contended, had better perish by this warlike consummation than by the inglorious enmity of bookworms and moths--honeycombed, as most of the books had been which had gone out to India with our two uncles. Even wadding, however, was declared to be inadmissible as too dangerous, after wounds had been inflicted more than once.

3.--A LAWSUIT LEGACY.

De Quincey, in his autobiographic sketch headed 'Laxton,' tells of the fortune of Miss Watson, who afterwards became Lady Carbery, and also of the legacy left to her in the form of a lawsuit by her father against the East India Company; and among his papers we find the following pa.s.sage either overlooked or omitted, for some undiscoverable reason, from that paper, though it has a value in its own way as expressing some of De Quincey's views on law and equity; and it is sufficiently characteristic to be included here:

In consequence of her long minority, Miss Watson must have succeeded at once to six thousand a year on completing her twenty-first year; and she also inherited a Chancery-suit, which sort of property is _now_ (1853) rather at a discount in public estimation; but let the reader a.s.sure himself that even the Court of Chancery is not quite so black as it is painted; that the true ground for the delays and ruinous expenses in ninety-nine out of one hundred instances is not legal chicanery, still less the wilful circuitousness and wordiness of law processes, but the great eternal fact that, what through lapse of time, decays of memory, and loss of doc.u.ments, and what through interested suppressions of truth, and the dispersions of witnesses, and causes by the score beside, the ultimate truth and equity of human disputes is a matter of prodigious perplexity; neither is there any possibility that the ma.s.s of litigations as to property ever _can_ be made cheap except in proportion as it is made dismally imperfect.

No power that ever yet was lodged in senates or in councils _could_ avail, ever _has_ availed, ever _will_ avail, to intercept the immeasurable expansion of that law which grows out of social expansion.

Fast as the relations of man multiply, and the modifications of property extend, must the corresponding adaptations of the law run alongside. The pretended arrests applied to this heaving volcanic system of forces by codifications, like those of Justinian or Napoleon, had not lasted for a year before all had broke loose from its moorings, and was again going ahead with redoubling impetus. Equally delusive are the prospects held out that the new system of cheap provincial justice will be a change unconditionally for the better. Already the complaints against it are such in bitterness and extent as to show that in very many cases it must be regarded as a failure; and, where it is not, that it must be regarded as a compromise: once you had 8 degrees of the advantage X, 4 of Y; now you have 7 of X, 5 of Y.

4.--THE TRUE JUSTIFICATIONS OF WAR.

The following was evidently intended to appear in the article on _War_:

'Most of what has been written on this subject (the cruelty of war), in connection with the apparently fierce ethics of the Old Testament, is (with submission to sentimentalists) false and profoundly unphilosophic.

It is of the same feeble character as the flashy modern moralizations upon War. The true justifications of war lie far below the depths of any soundings taken upon the charts of effeminate earth-born ethics. And ethics of G.o.d, the Scriptural ethics, search into depths that are older and less measurable, contemplate interests that are more mysterious and entangled with perils more awful than merely human philosophy has resources for appreciating. It is not at all impossible that a crisis has sometimes arisen for the human race, in which its capital interest may be said to have ridden at single anchor. Upon the issue of a single struggle between the powers of light and darkness--upon a motion, a bias, an impulse given this way or that--all may have been staked. Out of Judaism came Christianity, and the mere possibility of Christianity.

From elder stages of the Hebrew race, hidden in thick darkness to us, descended the only pure glimpse allowed to man of G.o.d's nature.

Traditionally, but through many generations, and fighting at every stage with storms or with perils more than ever were revealed to _us_, this idea of G.o.d, this holy seed of truth, like some secret jewel pa.s.sing onwards through armies of robbers, made its way downward to an age in which it became the matrix of Christianity. The solitary acorn had reached in safety the particular soil in which it was first capable of expanding into a forest. The narrow, but at the same time austere, truth of Judaism, furnished the basis which by magic, as it were, burst suddenly and expanded into a vast superstructure, no longer fitted for the apprehension of one single unamiable race, but offering shelter and repose to the whole family of man. These things are most remarkable about this memorable trans-migration of one faith into another, of an imperfect into a perfect religion, viz., that the early stage had but a slight resemblance to the latter, nor could have prefigured it to a human sagacity more than a larva could prefigure a chrysalis; and, secondly, that whereas the product, viz., Christianity, never has been nor will be in any danger of ruin, the germ, viz., the Judaic idea of G.o.d, the great radiation through which the Deity kept open His communication with man, apparently must more than once have approached an awful struggle for life. This solitary taper of truth, struggling across a howling wilderness of darkness, had it been ever totally extinguished, could probably never have been reillumined. It may seem an easy thing for a mere human philosophy to recover, and steadily to maintain a pure Hebrew conception of G.o.d; but so far is this from being true, that we believe it possible to expose in the closest Pagan approximation to this Hebrew type some adulterous elements such as would have ensured its relapse into idolatrous impurity.'

5.--PHILOSOPHY DEFEATED.

We have come upon a pa.s.sage which is omitted from the 'Confessions,' and as it is, in every way, characteristic, we shall give it:

My studies have now been long interrupted. I cannot read to myself with any pleasure, hardly with a moment's endurance. Yet I read aloud sometimes for the pleasure of others--because reading is an accomplishment of mine, and, in the slang use of the word 'accomplishment' as a superficial and ornamental attainment, almost the only one I possess--and, formerly, if I had any vanity at all connected with any endowment or attainment of mine, it was with this; for I had observed that no accomplishment was so rare. Players are the worst readers of all; ---- reads vilely, and Mrs. ----, who is so celebrated, can read nothing well but dramatic compositions--Milton she cannot read sufferably. People in general read poetry without any pa.s.sion at all, or else overstep the modesty of nature and read not like scholars. Of late, if I have felt moved by anything in books, it has been by the grand lamentations of 'Samson Agonistes,' or the great harmonies of the Satanic speaker in 'Paradise Regained,' when read aloud by myself. A young lady sometimes comes and drinks tea with us. At her request and M----'s I now and then read W----'s poems to them. (W----, by-the-bye, is the only poet I ever met who could read his own verses. Blank verse he reads admirably.)

This, then, has been the extent of my reading for upwards of sixteen months. It frets me to enter those rooms of my cottage in which the books stand. In one of them, to which my little boy has access, he has found out a use for some of them. Somebody has given him a bow and arrows--G.o.d knows who, certainly not I, for I have not energy or ingenuity to invent a walking-stick--thus equipped for action, he rears up the largest of the folios that he can lift, places them on a tottering base, and then shoots until he brings down the enemy. He often presses me to join him; and sometimes I consent, and we are both engaged together in these intellectual labours. We build up a pile, having for its base some slender modern metaphysician, ill able (poor man!) to sustain such a weight of philosophy. Upon this we place the Dutch quartos of Descartes and Spinoza; then a third story of Schoolmen in folio--the Master of Sentences, Suarez, Picus Mirandula, and the Telemonian bulk of Thomas Aquinas; and when the whole architecture seems firm and compact, we finish our system of metaphysics by roofing the whole with Duval's enormous Aristotle. So far there is some pleasure--building up is something, but what is that to destroying? Thus thinks, at least, my little companion, who now, with the wrath of the Pythian Apollo, a.s.sumes his bow and arrows; plants himself in the remotest corner of the room, and prepares his fatal shafts. The bow-string tw.a.n.gs, flights of arrows are in the air, but the Dutch impregnability of the Bergen-op-Zooms at the base receives the few which reach the mark, and they recoil without mischief done. Again the baffled archer collects his arrows, and again he takes his station. An arrow issues forth, and takes effect on a weak side of Thomas. Symptoms of dissolution appear--the cohesion of the system is loosened--the Schoolmen begin to totter; the Stagyrite trembles; Philosophy rocks to its centre; and, before it can be seen whether time will do anything to heal their wounds, another arrow is planted in the schism of their ontology; the mighty structure heaves--reels--seems in suspense for one moment, and then, with one choral crash--to the frantic joy of the young Sagittary--lies subverted on the floor! Kant and Aristotle, Nominalists and Realists, Doctors Seraphic or Irrefragable, what cares he? All are at his feet--the Irrefragable has been confuted by his arrows, the Seraphic has been found mortal, and the greatest philosopher and the least differ but according to the brief noise they have made.

For nearly two years I believe that I read no book but one, and I owe it to the author, Mr. Ricardo, to make grateful record of it.

And then he proceeds:

Suddenly, in 1818, a friend in Edinburgh sent me down Mr. Ricardo's book, etc.

6.--THE HIGHWAYMAN'S SKELETON.