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SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.

UNCLE TOM’S CABIN.

Let us imagine one of our critical successors of a century hence—that is, in the month of October 1953—sitting musingly before a copy of a work called Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which a few days previously he had taken down by chance from one of the least-used shelves of his library. May one also amuse one’s imagination by a picture of the possible state of things then existing on the other side of the Atlantic, by the light of which our shadowy friend of 1953 has read the work which his substantial one of 1853 has just laid down?

—The present United States of America, after having been, perhaps, more than once split asunder and soldered together again—or the whole, or a large portion voluntarily reannexed to the mother country, and by and by again detached—after these and other, possibly more or less sudden, violent, and bloody vicissitudes—have become a great Empire, under the stern, but salutary, one-willed sway of the Emperor of America: his majesty a jet black, who had shown consummate and unexpected high qualities for acquiring and retaining the fear and submission of millions of the stormiest tempers of mankind; but his lovely empress a white. He has an immense army devoted to his person and will, composed of men of every complexion—from black, through copper-middle tints, down to white; and correspondingly diversified are his banners, but black, of course, the predominant: a quadroon being commander-in-chief. As for his majesty’s civil service, he has a coal-black chancellor, equally at home in the profoundest mysteries of white and black letter; a mulatto minister of instruction, and a white secretary of state; black and white clergy, and a similarly constituted bar—here a big black face frowning out of a white wig, and there a little white face, grinning out of a black wig, with black and white bands, and gowns varied ad libitum. And the laws which they are concerned in administering, accord with these harmonious diversities—it being, for instance, enacted, under heavy penalties, that no black shall, by gesture, speech, or otherwise, presume to ridicule a white because of his colour, nor, vice versâ, shall a white affect to disparage a black because of his complexion; [Pg 394]that the emperor and empress shall always be of different colours, and that the succession to the throne shall alternate between black and white, or mulatto, members of the imperial family. By this and other provisions have been secured a complete fusion between North and South, between black and white, glitteringly typified by intermingled gems in the imperial crown; the central one being the identical black diamond that figured in the famous Exhibition in Great Britain in 1851, and presented to the emperor by one of the descendants of her Majesty Queen Victoria, then on the British throne! “To this complexion” shall it be that matters have “come at last?”

Or will our sturdy cousins of 1953 be still republican, a united republic, but with offices, honours, rights, and privileges, equally distributed, as in our fancied empire, among those of every shade of colour? Or, after a fearful succession of struggles between black and white, ... the ... is predominant; ... slavery, after a ... sang— ... or a noble spontaneous....⁠[2]

From a preliminary dissertation prefixed to the book, our critic of 1953 learns that it excited, almost immediately on its appearance, a prodigious sensation among all classes, both in Europe and America; that both sexes, high and low, young and old, literate and illiterate, vulgar and refined, phlegmatic and excitable, shed tears over it, and wrote and talked about it everywhere; that, within a few months’ time, impressions of it were multiplied by millions, and in most languages of the civilised world. That its writer, an American woman, immediately came over to England, and made her appearance in public assemblies, called in honour of her; and she was also “lionised” [a word explained, in a long note, as indicating a custom prevalent in that day, among weak persons, of running after any notorious person weak enough to appear pleased with it] among the fashionables and philanthropists of the day, but preserved, nevertheless, amidst it all, true modesty of demeanour, and silence amidst extravagant eulogy. Inflamed with curiosity, our shadowy successor sits down to peruse a work—then possibly little, if ever, mentioned—anxious to see what could have produced such a marvellous effect, in the middle of the intelligent nineteenth century, on all classes of readers; and whether it produced permanent results, or passed away as a nine days’ wonder. Having at length closed the pages of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and judged it according to the critical canons of 1953, will he deem it adequate to have produced such effects? What estimate will he form of our intellectual calibre?

We cannot tell, and shall not attempt to conjecture. Dismissing, therefore, but for a while only, the imaginary occupant of our critical chair a century hence, let us say for ourselves, that though our silence, and that of one or two quarterly contemporaries, may have excited notice, both in America and this country, we have been by no means indifferent spectators of the reception which this singularly-successful book has met with; regarding it as one of those sudden phenomena in literature, demanding, even, a deliberate consideration of cause and effect. We apprehend no one will doubt that, to excite such attention and emotion among all classes of readers, in both hemispheres, as this work has excited, it must possess something remarkable; and what that is, it will be our endeavour to determine. We ourselves never read this work till within the last month, and then as a matter of mere critical curiosity, uninfluenced by the past excitement of others, and the favourable and unfavourable opinions which we heard expressed as to the merits of the work. If we could have been biassed at all, it would have been rather against, than in favour of, a writer who had been over persuaded by her friends to come to this country, for the purpose of making a sort of public appearance, at the moment that admiration of her work was at fever height. Nothing could palliate such an indiscretion on the part of this lady’s advisers, in the eyes of a fastidious Englishman, but the belief that she was a simple-minded enthusiastic crusader against [Pg 395]American slavery, considering that the totally unexpected celebrity of her work had afforded her an opportunity of accelerating a European movement, in a holy cause, by her personal presence. Criticism, however, ought not to be influenced by petty disturbing forces like these, nor will ours. We shall judge Uncle Tom’s Cabin by its own intrinsic merits or demerits—occasionally looking for the light which she has thought proper to reflect upon it from its companion volume, “The Key.”

Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a remarkable book unquestionably; and, upon the whole, we are not surprised at its prodigious success, even as a mere literary performance; but whether, after all, it will have any direct effect upon the dreadful INSTITUTION at which it is aimed, may be regarded as problematical. Of one thing we are persuaded—that its author, as she has displayed in this work undoubted genius, in some respects of a higher order than any American predecessor or contemporary, is also a woman of unaffected and profound piety, and an ardent friend of the unhappy black. Every word in her pages issues glistening and warm from the mint of woman’s love and sympathy, refined and purified by Christianity. We never saw in any other work, so many and such sudden irresistible appeals to the reader’s heart—appeals which, moreover, only a wife and a mother could make. One’s heart throbs, and one’s eyes are suffused with tears without a moment’s notice, and without anything like effort or preparation on the writer’s part. We are, on the contrary, soothed in our spontaneous emotion by a conviction of the writer’s utter artlessness; and when once a gifted woman has satisfied her most captious reader that such is the case, she thenceforth leads him on, with an air of loving and tender triumph, a willing captive to the last. There are, indeed, scenes and touches in this book which no living writer, that we know of, can surpass, and perhaps none even equal.

No English man or woman, again, could have written it—no one, but an actual spectator of the scenes described, or one whose life is spent with those moving among them; scenes scarce appreciable by FREE English readers—fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, brothers and sisters. We can hardly realise to ourselves human nature tried so tremendously as, it seems, is only adumbrated in these pages. An Englishman’s soul swells at the bare idea of such submission to the tyrannous will of man over his fellow-man, as the reader of this volume becomes grievously familiar with; and yet we are assured by Mrs Stowe that she has given us only occasional glimpses of the indescribable horrors of slavery. To this part of the subject, however, we shall return. Let us speak first, and in only general terms, of the literary characteristics of the author, as displayed in her work.

Mrs Stowe is unquestionably a woman of GENIUS; and that is a word which we always use charily: regarding genius as a thing per se—different from talent, in its highest development, altogether, and in kind. Quickness, shrewdness, energy, intensity, may, and frequently do accompany, but do not constitute genius. Its divine spark is the direct and special gift of God: we cannot completely analyse it, though we may detect its presence, and the nature of many of its attributes, by its action; and the skill of high criticism is requisite, in order to distinguish between the feats of genius and the operations of talent. Now, we imagine that no person of genius can read Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and not feel in glowing contact with genius—generally gentle and tender, but capable of rising, with its theme, into very high regions of dramatic power. This Mrs Stowe has done several times in the work before us—exhibiting a passion, an intensity, a subtle delicacy of perception, a melting tenderness, which are as far out of the reach of mere talent, however well trained and experienced, as the prismatic colours are out of the reach of the born blind. But the genius of Mrs Stowe is of that kind which instinctively addresses itself to the Affections; and though most at home with the gentler, it can be yet fearlessly familiar with the fiercest passions which can agitate and rend the human breast. With the one she can exhibit an exquisite tenderness and sympathy; watching the other, however, with stern but calm scrutiny, and delineating both with a [Pg 396]truth and simplicity, in the one case touching, in the other really terrible.

“Free men of the North, and Christians,” says she, in her own vigorous and earnest way, “cannot know what slavery is.... From this arose a desire,” on the author’s part, “to exhibit it in a living dramatic reality. She has endeavoured to show it fairly in its best and its worst phases. In its best aspect, she has perhaps been successful; but oh! who shall say what yet remains untold in that valley and shadow of death that lies on the other side?... The writer has only given a faint shadow—a dim picture—of the anguish and despair that are at this very moment riving thousands of hearts, shattering thousands of families, and driving a helpless and sensitive race to frenzy and despair.”

Without going further, the beautiful, accomplished, but ruined and heart-broken slave Cassy—the bought, abhorring, and ultimately discarded mistress of the miscreant Legree, and whose heart is full of despair and murder towards him—affords many instances of both kinds, the tender and the terrible. Her successor in the affections! of the monster, is the lovely young slave Emmeline, of but fifteen summers! and Cassy obtains a great ascendancy over her, winning her love by the story of her own indignities and bereavements.

Of the terrible we have a thrilling, indeed a sickening instance, in Cassy’s frenzied determination to murder the fiend Legree, whose brandy she has drugged for the purpose—but we anticipate.

Occasionally, also, Mrs Stowe displays a fine perception of external nature—irradiating her inanimate scenes with the rich hues of imagination. At these, however, she generally looks through a sort of solemn religious medium. Here, for instance, is a startlingly suggestive picture. It is poor Uncle Tom, sitting at midnight, exhausted and heart-broken, during a moment’s respite from the wasting and cruel inflictions of slavery, and reading his Bible by moonlight.

Here, again, is the lovely smile of early morning flung over the monster Legree (poor Tom’s brutal master), as he wakes from a foul debauch:—

’Twas somewhat different, that same morning, with his poor slave Tom, waking bruised, wearied, and well-nigh spirit-broken.

These passages, taken at random, are highly characteristic of the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in more ways than one, as will by and by be shown.

Up and down the book are to be found strewn, as it were, carelessly, striking and grand reflections, evincing the deeply thoughtful moralist, and profoundly convinced believer.

One of these problems—perhaps the greatest at present insoluble by man—torments poor Tom.

Character is often drawn by our author with delicate discrimination; [Pg 398]and, at the same time, she almost as often exhibits a poverty and crudeness in dealing with such subjects, which would be surprising, but that it is evidently referrible to haste and inattention. Her mind, too, is so intent upon the great, noble, and holy purpose of her book, that she often does not give herself time to develop or mature her own happiest conceptions. The momentary exigencies of her story require the introduction of an additional figure; on which, having paused for a moment to call up the image of one before her mind’s eye, she forthwith gives a few strokes, possibly intending, at a future time, to complete and retouch them; but that future time never comes, for she has got into new scenes, and moves on, crowded with new characters and associations. In this respect her book may be compared to the studio of a great painter, where the visitor sees some pictures in all the splendour of their completeness, and others in various stages of incompleteness—some exhibiting the master’s hand, and others that of a hasty and unskilled workman; all which may, perhaps, be visibly accounted for by the painter’s being absorbed by some masterpiece, itself, however, only approaching completeness. We feel bound, nevertheless, to express our opinion that an additional solution of the matter is to be found in her probably limited range of observation of actual life, at all events of such life as Europeans can appreciate. In delineating the character of slaves and the “slave-trader, kidnapper, negro-catcher, negro-whipper,” as she herself groups them, she handles her pencil with the confident ease of a master. “The writer,” says she herself, at the close of her work, “has lived for many years on the frontier line of slave states, and has had great opportunities of observation among those who formerly were slaves.” To her sadly-familiar eye “there are some things about these slaves which cannot lie: those deep lines of patient sorrow upon the face—that attitude of crouching and humble subjection—that sad habitual expression of hope deferred in the eye—would tell their story, if the slave never spoke.” We shall, however, presently have ample opportunities of showing Mrs Stowe’s profound appreciation of the negro character; one of a far more composite construction than any but a philosopher might suppose, and also of great interest to those who are contemplating the future of the negro race, as a large, though many may unhappily deem it an unsightly element, in ascertaining the fates of the human family. “This is an age of the world, truly,” says our author, “when nations are trembling and convulsed. A mighty influence is abroad, surging and heaving the world as with an earthquake. And,” she asks, “is America safe? Every nation that carries in its bosom great and unredressed Injustice, has in it the elements of this great convulsion.”

While the pathos of Mrs Stowe is deep and pure, her humour and satire are genuine and racy, but quiet. Gloomy as is the prevalent tone of her work, her reader’s feelings are discreetly relieved by many little touches of quaint dry drollery. Master Shelby, for instance, is a sharp youth of thirteen, the eldest son of Uncle Tom’s first and kind-hearted master; and he has taken it in hand to teach Tom (old enough to be almost his grandfather) his letters. Chloe is Uncle Tom’s wife, and the cook of Mr Shelby; and it seems that she is a capital cook, to boot, as Master Shelby has found out. He often visits Uncle Tom’s cabin, to teach old Tom his letters—and also partake of certain good things which Aunt Chloe used to prepare for her favourite; who displays no little art in inflaming her ambition by faintly undervaluing the culinary skill of one of her rivals, a cook at a neighbouring plantation. The whole scene is admirably sketched, and forms one of the earliest in the work. Excited to the utmost, she prepares a delicious supper for Master George, who, it will be seen, does it full justice.

One Black Sam, a friendly fellow-slave of Uncle Tom’s, is unconsciously caught in the attitude of deeply considering the interests of number One, as soon as he hears of the departure of poor Uncle Tom, who has been suddenly sold to another master, leaving a vacancy in his somewhat confidential office, which some one must supply. “One touch of” selfishness “makes the whole world kin”—and here is how it strikes our black brother.

There are, however, many indications throughout the work of the writer’s humorous powers being checked and restrained, either purposely or unconsciously, as if from a severe sense of the purpose with which she writes—as though before her mind’s eye was ever the bleeding heart of the negro. We have an indistinct recollection of more than one disposition, or rather juxta-position, of persons and incidents most suggestive of fun: but they are suddenly discarded, the reader breathlessly following the grave and ardent writer, over whose pale countenance the smile had but furtively flickered for an instant, like a glance of moonlight on a gloomy sea. Here is one of the passages to which we allude. Mr St Clare and his heartless lackadaisical wife are conversing about his newly-acquired slave, Uncle Tom, for whom he feels no little regard; but she is speaking of him in a disparaging, contemptuous tone.

How much of the pious disinterested character of the poor slave, the heartless distrust of his mistress, the humorous, good-natured levity of his master, and the earnest goodness of Ophelia, does this quiet touch reveal to us!

On another occasion, Mrs St Clare, who has no more intellect or feeling than her thimble, or thread paper, is conversing with her lovely little daughter, Eva, who is pleading with her mamma on behalf of the poor little negress, Topsy (of whom more anon), and meekly suggesting the possibility of Topsy’s being human! and consequently capable of improvement.

This is very masterly. It has a sort of rich stillness of satire, and, at the same time, a truthfulness and suggestiveness which make the reader first admire the writer’s acute perception of character and power of felicitous dialogue, and then pause and ponder the state of mind and feeling revealed—that of frivolous, ignorant, indifferent acquiescence!

The above extract incidentally indicates another excellence of Mrs Stowe. Her dialogue is almost always admirable; brief, lively, pointed, and characteristic—that is, when she does not, so to speak, crowd too much sail upon it, in her intense anxiety to be didactic and hortatory on the great subject on which her eyes are ever fixed. When she yields to the promptings of her own power over character and expression, she exhibits high dramatic capabilities. She perceives a fine situation with the unerring intuition of genius, and inspires her characters with fitting sentiments, conferring upon them appropriate eloquence. Akin to this is the easy strength of her narrative. She hurries her reader along with her, breathless. The flight and pursuit of poor Eliza and her child—the incidents selected to heighten the interest in their fate—the introduction of Marks and Tom Loker, and their interview with Haley—their encounter at the rocky pass with George and his wife and child, are, in parts, worthy of the pencil of Sir Walter Scott: but, it must be added, that that consummate master of his art would never have drawn up suddenly in his exciting course, to interpolate drivelling allusions to Austria and the Hungarians, Poland, Ireland, and England—or tame and even irritating moralisings at the very crisis of the adventure, as is but too often the case with Mrs Stowe. But this very fault, and a serious one to a reader of fiction it is, must be referred to a cause [Pg 401]infinitely and eternally honourable to the author—her pure and noble purpose in writing the book. With our eye fixed on that purpose, we will forgive her five times as many faults of style and arrangement as she is fairly chargeable with.

And in the application of this obviously just critical canon, we are disposed to look, in the present case, with peculiar benignity on miscarriages as to means. One or two of them, however, we must lightly indicate (for we are in our critical chair) in addition to those at which we have already glanced.

We shall begin with a small matter. It is evident that the writings of one English author at least of the present day have made a deep impression on Mrs Stowe. This is Mr Dickens, with whom, indeed, she has much in common; but he must not attribute it to mere gallantry, if we express our opinion that there are parts of Uncle Tom’s Cabin which he never can surpass, which he never has surpassed. She probes human nature every whit as tenderly and truly as he; her sympathies are as keen and subtle, her spirit is as generous, as his; her perception of the humorous as quick and vivid as his own. She shows also his—so to speak—structural faults; which, in a general way, we may indicate by saying, that condensation and directness of course would greatly improve the compositions of both. A lively reader hates to be detained on his way, in order to have traced out for him the source and operation of the motives by which characters are actuated. He likes to be given credit for a capacity to do that for himself. It occurs to us, that had Mr Dickens passed his life among the same scenes as Mrs Stowe, making allowance for certain special circumstances affecting the latter, he would have produced a work very similar, in both its faults and excellencies, to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. That she is a reader, and doubtless an admirer of his, is abundantly evident; for she has closely copied his manner, and that not in its most favourable manifestations, but rather the more obvious mannerisms. Mr Dickens might have written this passage for her.

Another little mannerism acquired from the same quarter is the use, in grave composition, of the colloquial, “can’t,” “won’t,” “didn’t,” “couldn’t,” &c. &c. These are little bits of vulgar slip-slop which are sad eyesores to readers of taste; and we cannot for the life of us see what end is gained by introducing them into black and white, except, perhaps, in fitting dialogue.

We have already intimated a considerable want of tact in Mrs Stowe, in twitching aside, as it were, her reader, when in full course of following her breathless, to listen to some very self-obvious and commonplace moralising. [Pg 402]Here is one most provoking instance. Poor beautiful Eliza Harris, supported by almost supernatural energy, is flying from misery and infamy—her little son close-clasped in her arms—with but a little time to improve her precarious chances of escape to Canada; knowing that her little one is sold, and that the blood-hounds may almost then, even, be snuffing on her track! ’Tis early—very early—in a frosty February morning; the sparkling stars are looking down, as it were, out of the cold silent heavens with pitying looks on the poor fugitive. She hastily hushes her child into silence, as “with vague terror he clings round her neck.” He could have walked;—but let good Mrs Stowe’s own fleet pencil tell of her heroine’s feathery movements:⁠—

While the reader—perhaps herself a palpitating mother, almost blinded with her tears—is flying along with the dear fugitive and her child, bah! she is arrested, to listen to twaddle—we must say it—as follows:⁠—

Forgive us, dear Mrs Stowe, if we gently reproach you for thus marring your own beautiful narrative, and also giving English mothers credit for being so obtuse and phlegmatic as to be unable to realise all these thoughts and feelings as they are hasting along with you!

And there are very many such instances of defective workmanship. A considerable portion of these consists of preaching—always, doubtless, perfectly orthodox and evangelical, but smacking too strongly—will she forgive us?—of the conventicle twang. After all, however, Mrs Stowe must be tried by the canon already cited—“regard the writer’s end;” and doubtless she knows that portion of the American public for which she chiefly writes, and what kind and amount of hard-hitting, so to speak, is necessary to make an impression on sensibilities enclosed in rhinoceros hide. We do not say that it is so; but we suppose that Mrs Stowe has classes of hard people in view, and knew the rough force requisite to hit home.

All these, however, and other similar little matters which might be mentioned, are mere motes in sunbeams, when regarded by the eye of a just and generous criticism; which only regrets, every now and then, that the gifted authoress had not had the advantage of submitting her MS., or her printed sheets, to the eye of some competent censor, capable of seizing the scope of her noble purpose, and solicitous to remove every obstacle in the way of her attaining it. But she evidently did not write for us in England—in Europe; nor did this pious daughter of genius dream of the world-wide fame which she was destined to acquire. She has assured us, in print, that, “when writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” she was “entirely unaware and unexpectant of the importance which would be attached to its statements and opinions.” We implicitly believe her; and our heart gives her its entire confidence, as to a simple-minded and gifted Christian woman, writing out of the fulness of her heart, in order to open before the eyes of free shuddering Christendom a hideous and blood-smeared page of living humanity. She has repeatedly and solemnly asseverated that she has taken the greatest possible pains not to mis-state or exaggerate the case against slavery; that she speaks from long personal observation; [Pg 403]and, in short, “that this work, more than any other work of fiction that ever was written, has been a collection and arrangement of real incidents, of actions really performed, of words and expressions really uttered, grouped together with reference to a general result, in the same manner that the mosaic artist groups his fragments of various stones into one general picture. His is a mosaic of gems—this is a mosaic of facts.... The book had a purpose entirely transcending artistic purpose, and accordingly encounters, at the hands of the public, demands not usually made on fictitious works. It is treated as a reality—sifted, tried, and tested as a reality; and, therefore, as a reality it may be proper that it should be defended.... It is a very inadequate representation of slavery, and necessarily so, for this reason—that slavery, in some of its workings, is too dreadful for the purpose of art. A work which should represent it strictly as it is, would be a work which could not be read.” “The writer,” she adds, in the preface to her Key, “has aimed, as far as was possible, to say what is true.... She has used the most honest and earnest endeavours to learn the truth.” ... “And the book is commended to the candid attention and earnest prayers of all Christians throughout the world.” These are grave statements, especially when falling from the pen of one who had already secured a world-wide hearing; and by the light of such statements Uncle Tom’s Cabin ought to be read, unless Mrs Stowe’s means of knowledge, or her truthfulness, can be seriously impeached. Looked at in this light, the writer is regarded as actuated by a magnificent spirit: one which cannot stoop to regard petty carping and cavilling, and need concern itself with nothing but grave and temperate objections based upon facts. It will not do for her American critics to aver, that, “without being actuated by wrong motives in the preparation of this work, she has done a wrong which no ignorance can excuse, and no penance can expiate”⁠[5]—unless such an allegation can be sustained by unequivocal evidence of exaggeration, misrepresentation, and falsehood. All we shall say at present is, that if Mrs Stowe is to be believed by her reader, he will lay down her book, on having deliberately read it, with feelings and thoughts too painful and deep for utterance, and which ought to lead to action.

The title of Mrs Stowe’s book—“Uncle Tom’s Cabin”—is far from commensurate with the scope of the fiction, or rather series of “pictures,” of which it consists. The cabin is not the scene of any events of importance to the story. It is not impossible that her intention originally was to confine her pencil to the delineation of Tom, his residence, family, relations, and the incidents which befell item personally through the operation of slavery. Uncle Tom and his fortunes might have constituted a work by itself, and those of George and Eliza Harris, a second. The former might have been called Uncle Tom, and the latter George and Eliza; or The Cabin, and The Flight; for there are two classes of adventures quite separate from each other—the experiences of the submissive, and the adventures of the recalcitrant, slave. It is true that the authoress seeks to link them together, at starting, by making Uncle Tom and Eliza Harris fellow-slaves of the same master and mistress, and Uncle Tom and Eliza’s child, Harry, the subjects of a joint sale to the slave-trader; but beyond this slight connection there is none other. Eliza, with her sold child, pays only one hasty affrighted midnight visit to the cabin of Uncle Tom; but her husband is never shown near it. At the very end of the story, however, Mrs Stowe seems to have had suggested to her the propriety of coupling the fates of her characters together in some way or other—so that, in a manner which may provoke the smile of a veteran novelist, she contrives to make a female slave, Cassy, whom Tom encounters at the close of his career, prove to be the mother of Eliza Harris; and a lady passenger, who happens, by the merest accident on earth, to be in the steamboat in which the aforesaid slave is escaping, turns out to be the sister of George Harris! Rather a fortunate coincidence this, it must be owned. Thus it is, that, [Pg 404]under the title “Uncle Tom’s Cabin—a Picture of Slave Life in America,” there are two distinct threads of story, only nominally and arbitrarily connected together; while on each is strung a series of interesting, affecting, and even horrifying incidents, developing character, and the working of institutions upon it.

The tale opens with a very skilfully contrived scene, the object being to arrest attention, without plunging into horrors which might at first shock a reader, and render him incredulous; and yet it is very startling to a European not familiar with slavery. It is a tête-à-tête between a respectable Kentuckian planter, involved by over-speculation, and the slave-dealer Haley, an impudent, swaggering, hard-hearted, gaudily-dressed brute, who bargains over his brandy-and-water for flesh and blood, just as he would do in respect of a bale of cotton. Mrs Stowe opens the wretch’s character, as it were an oyster, with a firm and practised hand. It is quickly seen that the subject of chaffering is the sale of poor Tom, with whom Mr Shelby is reluctantly compelled to part, as some of his heaviest “paper” had found its way into the hands of Mr Haley. In this introductory dialogue we meet with new and fearful phraseology, as applied to human beings. Mrs Stowe, with much tact, contrives, by a word or two, to excite the reader’s interest in Tom long before he comes on the scene. In enumerating his good qualities, Mr Shelby speaks of poor Tom’s religious character as a guarantee of his fidelity. This is how it strikes the slave-dealer. “Some folks don’t believe there’s pious niggers, Shelby; but I do. I had a feller, now, in this yer last lot I took to Orleans—’twas as good as a meetin’ now, really, to hear that critter pray!... He fetched me a good sum, too; for I bought him cheap of a man that was ’bliged to sell out” (a tasteful allusion to the exact quandary of his companion!) “so I realised six hundred on him. Yes.—I consider religion a valeyable thing in a nigger, when it’s the genuine article, and no mistake!” By and by, in bursts little Harry, romping about the room, trotted out by Mr Shelby, to amuse his hateful companion by his quaint antics; who had first asked, as the child entered—while the two gentlemen! were haggling about the price of Tom—“Well; haven’t you a boy or a gal that you could throw in with Tom?”... After a while, Mr Haley adds—“I’ve got a friend that’s going into this yer branch of the business—and wants to buy up handsome boys to raise for the market—fancy articles entirely!” Mr Shelby having hinted his reluctance to separate the child from his beautiful mother, who had just withdrawn him from the room, Mr Haley favours his companion with the result of his experiences in such matters; deprecating doing anything rashly (“though these critters arn’t like white folks, you know”), lest—lest—it should injure the mother’s health, and lower her price in the market! And he mentions a grievous blunder made by a friend of his, who too suddenly sold away a mother’s baby, on which she “jist went ravin’ mad, and died in a week—clear waste, sir, of a thousand dollars, jist for want of management—there’s where’t is. It’s always best to do the humane thing, sir; that’s been my experience.” (By this time, our gentleman reader is disposed to fling friend Haley through the window; and our lady reader—but, oh! as for her, we have much more serious matter in store). Mr Shelby, it is intimated, was desirous to help Mr Haley down stairs with a kick, but he was Mr Shelby’s creditor! On the former’s return, his debtor’s scruples have been overcome; and poor good old Tom, and little Harry, have become the property of Mr Haley, who is to take them away the next morning! The whole of this introductory scene is highly creditable to Mrs Stowe’s powers: it is graphic and dramatic, character and incident being hit off with a quiet strength, auguring well for the rest of her performance. She has not overdrawn Haley. She has given us quite enough to startle and disgust us with—the system, more than the individual, and has at the same time relieved the reader’s mind by a just perceptible strain of drollery and piquant satire. But how distinctly you see, all the while, the dismayed and ungratefully-treated [Pg 405]patriarch, old Tom, and the beautiful mother, with bleeding heart soon to come before us—the one, his big heart heaving with grief and astonishment; the mother’s, bleeding and broken! The first few chapters of this work will satisfy the most fastidious reader that he is sitting down before the production of a great artist. The scene enacting in Uncle Tom’s cabin, during the time that his master is selling him to Haley, and consigning him to those of unknown suffering and death, is first-rate, and peculiarly racy to European readers; who, though strangers to such scenes, feel that this must be painted to the very life. From the first to the end of the eighth chapter, including also the tenth, we are conducted, indeed, “from gay to grave, from lively to severe;” the lights and shadows of negro life are brought before us with equal vividness and distinctness, by scenes most happily contrived, without a tinge of exaggeration, or a disfiguring touch of coarseness. Mr and Mrs Shelby are just what they ought to be, without any marked characteristics; the reader’s attention being thus fixed undisturbedly on the new figures of Haley, Uncle Tom and Aunt Chloe, George and Eliza Harris, Marks, and Tom Loker, as well as the skittish, frolicsome, mischievous, and selfish negro servants. The story, too, is advancing; Tom is on his journey, manacled and fettered, in the slave-waggon with Haley, whose pursuit after Eliza and her child has been hitherto in vain, in spite of his grim auxiliaries; and George also has started safe on the desperate race for freedom: the little we have seen of him induces us heartily to say—God speed you! brave soul, you are worthy of the prize—may you win it!

The ninth chapter introduces us to quite a different scene—Senator Bird, and his bustling little soft-hearted wife, who became the host and hostess of fugitive Eliza—the pallid, the breathless—with tottering knees and bleeding feet—who has been led by the Kentuckian, who had helped her up the bank of the river, to the house of the senator and his wife, just as they are discussing—the abolition question. They, their children, and their quiet home-scene, are beautifully sketched—as are the means by which Eliza and her child are conducted to a place of temporary succour and safety.

The eleventh chapter introduces us to a different time and locality—an evening in a remote Kentucky hotel. The wild Kentuckian guests squat about and straddle their legs, and chew, and spit, before us. What a gathering of hats of all shapes and sizes—“quite a Shakspearian study!”—is before us! We see them all, and can conjecture the stranger aspect of those who wear them! It is here that our disguised friend George turns up, in the way we have mentioned. ’Tis here that he says, with erect form and flashing eye, to his former kind master, Mr Wilson, “I’ve said Mas’r for the last time to any man! I’m free!”

“All men are free and equal in the grave, if it comes to that, Mr Wilson,” says lion-hearted George, who is armed to the teeth.... “Good-by, sir; if you hear that I’m taken, you may know that I’m dead!” He stood up like a rock, and put out his hand with the air of a prince. Well done, Mrs Stowe! And how tenderly she presently smites the rock of his resolution, till the pent-up waters of a husband and a father gush forth! So do those of Mr Wilson, as he accepts poor George’s little commission, to give to his wife the pin which she had formerly given to him as a Christmas present, and beseech her to get to Canada if ever she have the means, “and,” he adds, “tell her to bring up our boy A FREE MAN!”

Chapter XII. gives us a hateful glimpse of an auction sale of slaves; after which we accompany friend Haley, with poor Tom and some other human cattle, in La Belle Rivière, a boat on the Ohio, “floating gaily down the stream,” stuffed full of slaves, “under a brilliant sky, the stripes and stars of free America waving and fluttering overhead!” Who can read without a shudder of the young mother, whose infant has been deceitfully sold from her—who is suddenly told of her bereavement: “she did not scream, the shot had passed too straight and direct through her heart for cry or tear. Dizzily she sate down. Her slack hands fell lifeless by [Pg 406]her side. Her eyes looked straight forward, but she saw nothing. All the noise and the hum of the boat, the groaning of the machinery, mingled dreamily to the bewildered ear; and the poor dumb-stricken heart had neither cry nor tear to show for its utter misery. She was quite calm.” In vain, during the bright starlight solitude and silence, had poor Tom, forgetting his own griefs—his forlorn wife and children—crawled for a moment to her side, and tried to whisper a word of comfort from the New Testament. Her heart was palsied; and some time afterwards the good old slave was startled from his doze. “Something black passed by him quickly, ... he heard a splash in the water.... No one else had seen or heard anything. He got up and searched—the woman’s place was vacant—the poor bleeding heart was still at last, and the river rippled and dimpled just as brightly as if it had not closed above that heart!”—“Where alive is that gal?” said her new master, perplexedly, in the morning, searching every corner of the boat in vain; and then trying to make up his mind to the loss of so many dollars’ worth, with what philosophy he might.

Chapter XIII. finds Eliza and her husband in the Quaker settlement, all prim, precise, kindly, thoughtful, and resolute about securing the safety of the fugitives. “Thou’rt safe here by daylight,” said his hospitable host Simeon, “for every one in the settlement is a Friend, and all are watching. Moreover, it is safer to travel by night.” Thus ends the chapter. The next three, XIV., XV., XVI., in continuation with chapters XVIII., XIX., XX., XXII., XXIII., XXIV., XXV., XXVI., XXVII., XXVIII., XXIX., (that is, fourteen, or upwards of a third of the entire work) find us in widely distant and different scenes,—travelling up the magnificent Mississippi, and finally housed at New Orleans, and moving among a new set of characters: Tom having, on the voyage, changed hands, and become the property of Mr St Clare, grateful for his having saved the life of his daughter Eva—for she falls over boat side into the water, and Tom plunges in after her. This is a somewhat startling incident, and it was not quite necessary to peril the fragile little creature’s life, in order to supply her father with an inducement to buy Tom. Story-tellers should never use greater machinery to bring about their ends than is adequate. The doing so generally argues a deficiency of power or invention. In the present instance the gentle reader’s feelings are shocked, and needlessly; for as little Evangeline St Clare was the only and idolised child of her father, who was onboard, and wanted a coachman—having dismissed his own for drunkenness—what more natural than for Tom, having gained, as in a very pretty and natural way he had done, the affection of little Eva on the voyage, to occur to her, and to her father, as a good successor to his discarded Jehu? A silvery word or two from Eva’s sweet little lips would have sufficed, and Tom, in the quietest way in the world, would have become the sable chattel of Mr St Clare. Observe, the very idea had occurred to Eva before her sudden and superfluous immersion, and she herself had told him of her intention.

Five minutes afterwards Mrs Stowe has heart enough to let the benevolent little creature go overboard, simply to be rescued by Tom! Nor is the [Pg 407]incident told forcibly; and it elicits no unusual trait of character in anybody. Having thus introduced Tom to new places and persons, let us give a general account of this elaborate episodical portion of Mrs Stowe’s undertaking.

The figures in the foreground of this large picture are—Mr and Mrs St Clare, his cousin Miss Ophelia, his daughter Eva (or Evangeline), Topsy, and Uncle Tom. Those in the background are Mr St Clare’s brother, his youthful son Henrique, and a confused heap of domestic slaves—all as happy as happy can be, under the protection of their wealthy, indolent, good-natured proprietor, Mr St Clare; but there is also, almost hid in the dark shadow, one Prue! As for Tom, the lines have fallen to him in exceedingly pleasant places; he leads a life of only nominal servitude—the huge pet of pretty little Eva, and consequently a favourite of her father. Here Mrs Stowe has evidently expended much greater pains than on any other portion of her work; but we doubt greatly whether she will be satisfied with our judgment on the subject. Speaking as English critics, we are of opinion that Topsy is worth all the others, ten times over; then comes Mrs St Clare; then the cook, ladies’-maids, and the valet Adolph; then Miss Ophelia, then Eva, and then Mr St Clare. The others have nothing distinctive about them, and seem introduced simply to “draw out” the characters and opinions of Mr St Clare and his daughter Eva.

Augustine St Clare and his brother Alfred are of Canadian descent—the sons of a wealthy Louisianian planter; their mother having been a lovely and pious Huguenot French lady, whose family had been early emigrants to Louisiana; and these two had been her only children. It is with Augustine⁠[7] that we are at present concerned; and he having been crossed in love, through the cunning cupidity of the young lady’s guardians—in disgust, and to show his indifference towards one whom he erroneously supposed to have jilted him, married the wealthy reigning belle of the season—“a fine figure, a pair of bright dark eyes, and—a hundred thousand dollars.” Her husband was of a “sensitive temperament”—“gay, easy, unpunctual, unpractical, sceptical.” Indeed, he himself declares, as to this last, “religion is a remarkably scarce article at our house.” Almost immediately after his marriage, he received a letter from the lady to whom he had been “so passionately—romantically” attached, explaining the true state of matters. She was yet unmarried, and wrote fervently to him, supposing him also unmarried!

“Thus ended the whole romance and ideal of life for Augustine St Clare,” whose wife was the mere incarnation of silliness, vanity, selfishness, and tyranny, as far as she dared to show this last. Her husband treated her, from first to last, with undisguised but laughing contempt; but it may be doubtful whether she really appreciated the extent to which he civilly despised her.

Happy couple! But we think we have such in our own island home! Mrs St Clare was “beautiful, accomplished, and an heiress—having no doubt that Augustine was a most fortunate man in having obtained her.” “It is a great mistake,” justly observes Mrs Stowe, “to suppose that a woman with no heart will be an easy creditor in the exchange of affection. There is not on earth a more merciless exactor of love from others than a thoroughly selfish woman; and the more unlovely she grows, the more jealously and scrupulously she exacts love to the uttermost farthing.” At length she brings her husband a solitary child—Evangeline—whom he names after his gifted, beloved, and sainted mother. From the time of Eva’s birth, her mother’s health “gradually sunk. A life of constant inaction, bodily and mental—the friction of ceaseless ennui and discontent, united to the ordinary weakness which attended the period of maternity, in the course of a few years changed the blooming young belle into a yellow, faded, sickly woman, whose time was divided among a variety of fanciful diseases, and who considered herself in every sense the most ill-used and suffering person in existence.”

Such a woman as this, being worse than a mere cipher in his establishment, and Eva’s health requiring change of air, he had taken her to Vermont for a season; bringing back with him his cousin Ophelia—a spinster of forty-five; a model of propriety, exactitude, and a sort of hard conscientiousness. She was the absolute bond-slave of the “ought.” Her standard of right was so high, so all-embracing, so minute, and making so few concessions to human frailty, that, though she strove with heroic ardour to reach it, she never actually did so, and of course was burdened with a constant and often harassing sense of deficiency. This gave a severe and somewhat gloomy cast to her religious character.

The contrast between this starched, prim, yet worthy beau-ideal of Duty and “gay, easy, unpunctual, unpractical” St Clare is well conceived, and nearly as well carried out before the reader, who gradually conceives a kind of respect for her, which seems continually on the point of warming into regard; but the predominant idea in his mind is, that Miss Ophelia would make an excellent housekeeper in—somebody else’s establishment: for himself, she would—he fears—be too good, and, too hard—and—“tall, square-formed, and angular.” What a treasure, however, thinks he, for a widowed cousin—three hundred miles off, with eight or ten wild boys and girls to break in! Mrs Stowe tells us, that Miss Ophelia is “the representative of a very numerous class of the very best of northern people, of activity, zeal, unflinching conscientiousness, clear intellectual discrimination between truth and error, and great logical and doctrinal correctness;⁠[8] but with a want of that SPIRIT OF LOVE, without which, in the eye of Christ, the most perfect character is as deficient as a wax flower, wanting in life and perfume.... Yet that blessed principle is not dead, but only sleepeth, and always answers to the touch of the true magnet—divine love.” She, however, “unconsciously represents one great sin—the prejudice of caste, and colour.” Even in the New England States, where slavery has been abolished by law, this prejudice flourishes in full and fell vigour, despite, even, the melting sunbeams of Christianity! Those who will nobly stint themselves of luxuries, and almost necessaries, to send the gospel to the distant dark heathens—at home, loathe the sight and contiguity of their black [Pg 409]brother, and exhibit it even in the house of God. “Supposing,” Mrs Stowe says, solemnly and finely, “our Lord was now on earth as he was once, what course is it probable that he would pursue with regard to this unchristian prejudice of colour? There was a class of men in those days, as much despised by the Jews as the negroes are by us; and it was a complaint made of Christ that he was a friend of publicans and sinners. And if Christ should enter, on some communion season, into a place of worship, and see the coloured man sitting afar off by himself, would it not be just in His spirit to go there and sit with him, rather than to take the seats of his richer and more prosperous brethren?”

The character of Miss Ophelia is most happily developed, by means, principally, of Topsy—the Gem of the book, of whom more anon; and that character is, as will be seen, proper to the moral climate of New England; whereas, according to Mrs Stowe herself, “Mrs St Clare is the type of a class of women not peculiar to any latitude, nor any condition in society ... she may be found in England, or America.” The same, indeed, is to be said of “Alfred and Augustine St Clare, who represent,” she says, “two classes of men which are to be found in all countries, the radically aristocratic and democratic men.” In defining her “aristocrat” and “democrat,” it must be borne in mind that she is speaking of American exhibitions of those characters, and as connected with the relation of slaveholders. On this subject we might make many observations; but content ourselves with saying, that, in the main, we concur with Mrs Stowe’s views, as expounded by herself, with reference to the perilousness of intrusting man with practically irresponsible authority over his fellow-man. That state of society is essentially vicious, and foully rotten before the eyes of our Almighty Maker, who hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, which does not make THE LAWS the indifferent and easily accessible protector, vindicator, and avenger of every human being living in that state.

The two brothers discuss frequently, and with considerable force, the question of slavery, as to its consistency or inconsistency with an enlightened and civilised system of laws, and the spirit and precepts of Christianity.

Why Mrs Stowe should have thought it necessary to represent her favourite St Clare as a sceptic on religious subjects, is not quite clear; unless, indeed, she intends to intimate that it is a dark and grievous characteristic of the whole class which he represents. Perhaps it may be, unfortunately, so; and, indeed, she seems, with bitter sarcasm, to hint that one thing which tends to produce this result is, the cool accommodation of the principles and precepts of the Gospel to the existing order of things in the slave states, in even their vilest aspects. Upon the whole, however, Mrs Stowe succeeds in satisfying the reader that her gentleman hero is a manly fellow, with all his faults. His love of his little daughter, his grief as he perceives her withering away before his eyes under the blight of consumption, his anguish and despair when she is taken from him, are all told touchingly—very touchingly, with true pathos. So also the fondness with which he cherishes the memory of his mother. He forms the resolution to give poor Tom his freedom; but as it is necessary, for the exigencies of the story, to get poor Tom into worse hands, there is no other way occurs to the author than to make Mr St Clare die abruptly; and the most suitable mode of bringing about that result is, when his moral being has been soothed and solemnised by a religious conversation with his cousin Ophelia, in which he says he “does not know what makes him think so much of his mother that night.” He “has a strange kind of feeling as if she were near him ...;” he by and by says, “I believe I’ll go down street and hear the news to-night.” He gets into a café; and while reading the paper, an affray arises between two partially intoxicated gentlemen; he “attempts to wrest a bowie knife from one of them, who gives him a fatal stab with it in the side.” He is brought home on a shutter, wrapped in a cloak, to the consternation of all in the house, and dies the same evening, having first said to Tom, “pray!” He dies, [Pg 410]“opening his eyes with a sudden light, as of joy and recognition, and saying ‘mother’—and then he was gone.”

Eva is evidently a favourite creation of the author’s, and she is undoubtedly a gentle and sweet little spirit, suggesting the tenderest thoughts of love and pity; but a mere worldly reader is apt to think, with a little impatience, that she is so very good; she talks so much beyond her years;⁠[9] and challenges our admiration, with the confidence of a pattern child. No one can find fault with anything she says or does; but unfortunately, you see that the writer from the first intended her to be a little piece of perfection. Frail and sensitive human nature is a little irritated by this, and suspects something factitious. It says, peevishly, “I know many good and charming children, but here’s an angel in flesh!” When, however, our excellent and pious author herself tells us, that “the gentle Eva is an impersonation, in childish form, of the love of Christ—” worldly criticism utters not another word, but reverences the writer’s motives. Here is little Eva’s death⁠—

It might have been grander, perhaps, if her voiceless response, had been that “glorious smile,” reflecting the ineffable happiness—the suddenly seen glory of heaven. Are not these words, again, more likely to have fallen from an adult, than a mere child?—Let the spectator’s eye now be turned heavily towards the darkest portion of the background—and there is crouching a grisly figure—old Prue—“cross old Prue”—as even sweet Eva styled her! This creature is introduced and disposed of by the author, with a certain dreadful power; she is seen for but a short space—but in that short space, what a tale of horror does she tell!

Prue was a tall, bony, coloured woman, with a scowling expression of countenance, and a sullen, grumbling voice. Her office was, to carry on her head a basket of rusks and hot rolls to Mr St Clare’s house.

She is among the merry, saucy, black and quadroon servants, who jibe her, as soon as Miss Ophelia is gone. The only one who notices her is Tom, who offers to carry her basket for her, and tries to persuade her to leave off drinking—to which misery has driven her. She wishes herself in hell—Tom shuddering the while—to be out of her misery.

And she proceeds to describe that misery; and many a tender mother has sickened and shuddered over the next eighteen lines.

A few days afterwards another woman came in old Prue’s place, to bring the rusks. On being asked about her by Dinah, another servant, she says, mysteriously, “Prue isn’t coming any more!”

The unhappy wretch had been whipped to death in a cellar, left there, and—“the flies had got to her!” Miss Ophelia’s honest soul was fired with indignation on hearing it; and when she expressed her kindled womanly feelings to Mr St Clare, he received it with levity, “peeling his orange,” while good excited Miss Ophelia is denouncing it as “perfectly abominable”—and answering her with badinage; gaily adding, “My dear cousin, I didn’t do it, and I can’t help it; I would, if I could!”

Let us turn, however, from this revolting incident, to Mrs Stowe’s chef-d’œuvre—the inimitable Topsy—a true psychological curiosity—a character quite new to us, and delineated by the pencil of a consummate limner. The portrait will not bear an additional touch, nor the loss of one that has been given it. It exactly satisfies the critical eye.

We have already given the reader Topsy’s presentation to Miss Ophelia. Here is the little black imp in propriâ personâ before you, as Mr St Clare paraded her before the astounded eye of his prim cousin:⁠—

A world of scrubbing and cleansing brings to sight “great welts and calloused (?) spots”—ineffaceable marks of the system under which she had grown up that far, at the sight of which the heart of Miss Ophelia—who had a horrid repugnance to the touch of a nigger!—“became pitiful within her!” She had compelled Jane, one of the quadroon maids, to assist her in the task of ablution, as she did, tossing her head with disgust; the “young one” “scanning, with a keen and furtive glance of her flickering eyes, the ornaments which Jane wore in her ears!”

When arrayed, at last, in a suit of decent clothing, and her hair had been cropped close to her head, Miss Ophelia sits down to question the thing; who tells her, with a grin showing all her glittering teeth, that she does not know how old she is; that she never had a mother; never was born; never had no father, nor mother, nor nothin. “I was raised by a speculator, with lots of others. Old Aunt Sue used to take care on us.”

“Virgin soil here,” indeed, as St Clare slily suggested to his dismayed [Pg 412]cousin. By and by—behold Topsy, washed and shorn, arrayed in a clean gown, with well-starched apron, standing reverently before Miss Ophelia, with an expression of solemnity well befitting a funeral, while she carefully initiates her sooty little charge into the mysteries of bed-making. Topsy pays profound attention to all the directions about under-sheets, bolsters, and turning down; but not too profound to prevent her, the young disciple, when her teacher’s back was turned for a moment, snatching a pair of gloves and a ribbon, which she adroitly slipped into her sleeves, and stood with her hands duly folded as before!

Being required, by and by, to reduce her lessons to practice, out drops from her sleeve an end of the purloined ribbon! at which she looks, when furiously challenged, with innocent wonder. She declares solemnly she had never seen it till that minute; and when angrily shaken by Miss Ophelia, out dropped the gloves from the other sleeve! Topsy now owns to the gloves, steadily denying the ribbon; but, threatened with a whipping, confesses to both, with woeful expressions of penitence. Being adjured to “confess” if she has taken anything else, the little wretch owns to having taken “Miss Eva’s red thing she wears round her neck,” and Rosa’s red earrings, and having burnt them! “Burnt them! why did you do that?” inquires the astounded lady. “’Cause I’se wicked—I is! It’s mighty wicked, anyhow. I can’t help it!” But in a moment or two’s time, Eva and Rosa make their appearance, with necklace and earrings as usual, never having parted with them.

If Miss Ophelia’s conscientiousness was—to use the slang of the phrenologists—“largely developed,” that of Topsy was about equal to the conscientiousness of a squirrel or a monkey; and good Miss Ophelia observes her protegée, “lithe as a cat, and active as a monkey,” and to the full as wantonly mischievous, with dumb despair. One of her fancies was to deck herself in Miss Ophelia’s choicest ornaments, and rehearse in them, like an actress, before the glass, singing, whistling, and making grimaces. Once surprised by the lady, with her “very best scarlet Indian crape shawl wound round her head for a turban,” “Topsy,” says she, at the end of all patience, “what does make you act so?”

Though one might almost as well, one would have thought, have tried to teach a hedgehog astronomy, Miss Ophelia devoted herself to teaching the gnome the Catechism; and, after a patient year and a half’s efforts, here were some of the blessed results, as exhibited before laughing Mr St Clare, before whom were confident catechist and hopeful catechumen:⁠—

But what the sedulous didactic teaching of Miss Ophelia failed to do, would have doubtless been effected by sweet little Eva, had she lived: from whom, one day, fell the first word of kindness she had ever heard in her life; and the sweet tone and manner struck strangely on the wild rude heart, and a sparkle of something like a tear shone in the keen, round, glittering eye.

Twice again this strange creature flits across the scene, and on one of these occasions says⁠—

Poor Topsy!—these words go to the heart of all but—a moral leper white as snow! There is in them a huge volume of anguish and reproach.

It required the potent eloquence of little Eva’s death to dispel the last lingering feelings of Miss Ophelia’s repugnance towards the unhappy little black, in whom also the same solemn event had worked a marked change. “The callous indifference was gone ... there was a striving for good—a strife, irregular, interrupted, suspended, oft—but yet renewed again.” The finishing touch to this singular and masterly delineation is exquisite in every way:⁠—

“Topsy,” says Mrs Stowe, “stands as the representative of a large class of the children who are growing up under the institution of slavery—quick, active, subtle, and ingenious—apparently utterly devoid of principle and conscience—keenly penetrating, by an instinct which exists in the childish mind, the degradation of their condition, and the utter hopelessness of rising above it.” In a note to a friend on the same subject, she writes very beautifully—“There lies, buried down in the heart of the most seemingly stupid and [Pg 414]careless slave, a bleeding spot that bleeds and aches, though he could scarcely tell why—and this sore spot is the degradation of his position.”

Miss Ophelia, having had a formal gift of Topsy from Mr St Clare, takes her home to Vermont, where we are told, she “grew rapidly in grace and favour with the family,” at first sufficiently staggered by the quaint apparition. “At the age of womanhood she was at her own request baptised; and finally recommended and approved as a missionary to one of the stations in Africa.” Of course the mode of training Topsy was beyond the scope of the writer’s purpose; but we could have wished to see a good deal more of Topsy, in the progress of her mental and moral development. But as it is, the sketch is pregnant with instruction, encouragement, and warning: and were it for this one portrait alone, Mrs Stowe would be entitled to the blessings of generations of blacks yet unborn. With the divine penetration of genius consecrated by holiness, she has wrought down to the seat of our common nature, in the black, crushed beneath whole piled up mountains of prejudice, scorn, and despair.

We must now return to poor Tom, whose course is henceforth brief, and of deepening gloom, and whose sun goes down in blood.

Detestable Mrs St Clare, released from the humanising presence of her husband, as though she had been a deadly snake half-crushed by the presence of authority, makes amends for past inaction, by darting venomously at every one within her reach. She orders off a poor girl to the whipping-house, to be flogged, naked, by the common flogger—a huge man—in the presence of as many of both sexes as chose to look on, and be entertained by her shrieks, and the sight of her quivering ensanguined flesh.⁠[11] Mrs St Clare contemptuously discarded the entreaties of Miss Ophelia, based mainly, with a womanly energy, on the mere sense of sex: and in disgust, Miss Ophelia returns, with Topsy, to her own country. Moreover, though poor Tom had been repeatedly promised his freedom by her husband, as she well knows, she ruthlessly sells him, with all the other slaves. Tom is told of his fate—to be forthwith sent to the slave mart. “The Lord’s will be done!” he exclaimed, folding his arms, and sighing heavily. He appeals to Miss Ophelia, who makes a hopeless attempt on Mrs St Clare, relying on her deceased husband’s promise. “Indeed,” says that charming lady, delicately clad in most elegantly made mourning for him whose solemn wishes she was violating, as he lay scarce cold in his grave—“Indeed I shall do no such thing! Tom is one of the most valuable slaves in the place! It could not be afforded any way!” ... “But consider his chance of getting a bad master——” “O! that’s all humbug——:” and the good lady turns a scornfully deaf ear to the solemn assurance, that Mr St Clare had made the promise to Eva on her deathbed. Marie St Clare is the type, we are told, of a class.

Here we part with this viper; assuring the class whom she may represent, that they are burthened with the execration of the civilised world—most piercing of all, those of her fair, Free sisters.

Now one’s heart aches to see poor Tom, the helpless, sorrowful inmate, amongst a great quantity of uproarious and quasi-merry other live lumber—of a New Orleans slave-market. O sickening scene! But here the two figures arresting the eye—and whose brief tale is told with melting pathos and simplicity—are Susan and Emmeline, both beautiful, mother and daughter; the latter only fifteen, just budding into womanhood: both with hearts trembling at the fear of approaching separation—and what kind [Pg 415]of life before them? The mother to be sold for the purpose of breeding other slaves; the daughter—oh speak it not in the ears of Free fathers and mothers—of Christian men or women—to be “sold to a life of shame!” She has “the same soft, dark eye” as her mother, “with longer lashes, and her curling hair is of a luxuriant brown.” And in passing, we are told, with an appalling irony, that “the gentleman to whom they belong, and to whom the money for their sale is to be transmitted, is a member of a Christian church in New York, who will receive the money, and go thereafter to the sacrament of his Lord AND THEIRS, and think no more of it.”

The hurriedly-whispered dialogue of these two would break a heart of stone to overhear: they are—that forlorn mother and daughter—trying to express a hope—a faint hope—poor souls!—that they may be sold together! In order to aid this result, and disguise her beauty, the mother and she comb out her luxuriant tresses, so as to “look plain and decent;” but in the morning, when the watchful owner comes round to look at his human cattle—“How’s this?” he said, stepping in front of Susan and Emmeline, “where’s your curls, gal?” He is told, timidly, that they thought it looked “more respectable so.”

Can horror go deeper? Yes, one step. The loathsome monster, Legree—of whom in a moment—is presently attracted by her beauty.

“He put out his heavy, dirty hand, and drew the girl towards him”—oh, Mrs Stowe! shall we go on?—“passed it over her neck and bust; felt her arms; looked at her teeth, and then pushed her back against her mother, whose patient face showed the sufferings she had been going through, at every motion of the hideous stranger.”

Presently the mother is put up on the block, and bought by a benevolent purchaser; in descending from it she gazes wistfully at her lovely daughter; and implores her purchaser—“O, do buy my daughter!” He tries to do so; but alas! she has inflamed the sensual monster Legree: he quietly bids against Benevolence, resolved to secure his victim: “the hammer falls; he has got the girl, body and soul, unless God help her!” But will He? The chapter ends ominously with a passage from his Word⁠—

This Legree also purchases Tom, having quickly appreciated his “points,” as a “valleyable nigger:” and here you may see the cobra, uncoiled for you, in all its hideousness.

Legree’s exterior only very faintly adumbrates the interior horrors of his [Pg 416]character, as the reader soon finds out. He seems specially pleased with one of his purchases—the sweet Emmeline, who, as they approach “home,” feels the hot foul breath of the serpent upon her.

Alas, sweet Emmeline! motherless Emmeline! was there no MAN—no father, no brother, near you, to fell the monster to the earth? No, none; and you are close to the residence of your eager and brutal proprietor. There he had destined her as the successor of one of whom he was tired—but whom yet he feared: and that was Cassy; a being whom we did not suppose Mrs Stowe, with all our trust in her previously exhibited powers, equal to conceiving and supporting. She occasionally reminds us of some of the greatest passages in Greek tragedy.

Her relations to Legree were of a mysterious character. The first that Tom saw of her was when she suddenly, and to the surprise of all her fellow-slaves, made her appearance, as one of themselves, in the cotton-fields, walking by his side, erect and proud, in the dim grey of the dawn. She works with the others, but infinitely quicker and more effectively. Observing Tom generously transfer some cotton of his own picking to the sack of a feeble female fellow-slave, whom he had just seen brutally maltreated by the driver—she approached him, and transferred some of her own cotton to his bag, telling him in a fearful whisper, “that he knew nothing about that place, or he would not have done what he had: that when he had been there a month, he would have ceased helping anybody, finding it hard enough to take care of his own skin.”

“The Lord forbid, missus,” quoth Tom, instinctively recognising her superiority over the others.

At length it is Cassy’s time, and she delivers her basket to be weighed with a haughty, negligent air: Legree looking in her eyes with a sneering, yet inquiring glance. She fixed her black eyes on him steadily—her lips moved slightly, and she said something in French. What it was, no one knew, but the expression of Legree’s face became demoniacal; and he half-raised his hand, as if to strike—a gesture which she regarded with fierce disdain, and turned, and walked away. Then Tom comes up; and—poor fellow—for once we rejoice to say, shows something like a spirit: for being ordered to try his hand on flogging the poor female slave—falsely accused of not having picked her quantity—he steadily refuses; and after having received a shower of blows from Legree, firmly repeats, “This yer thing I can’t feel it right to do,” wiping the blood from his face; “and massa, I never shall do it—never!” All the shivering wretches around exhibit consternation at his audacity; and Legree looked stupefied and confounded; but at last he burst forth:⁠—

Sambo and Quimbo are two huge black fiends, each savage, sycophantic towards Legree, rivals of each other in his good graces, and abhorring poor Tom, whom some expressions of Legree show to have been designed to become his chief overlooker.

While Tom is lying in an exposed outhouse at midnight, groaning and bleeding, alone, the night damp and close, the thick air swarming with myriads of musquitoes, which increased the restless torture of his wounds, whilst a burning thirst—a torture beyond all others, filled up the uttermost measure of physical anguish⁠—

“Oh, good Lord, do look down! Give me the victory—give me the victory over all!” prayed poor Tom, in his anguish, when a footstep is heard [Pg 418]behind him—the light of a lantern flashes in his eyes, and he recognises Cassy, come to him like a ministering angel. At length she sits beside him, when he has become somewhat more easy and composed for a while under the soothing applications of his companion; and she mutters a few words, in rejoinder to his feeble but trustful exclamations, of despair and atheism—“There’s no God, or he’s taken sides against us; all goes against us, heaven and earth! Everything is pushing us into hell! Why shouldn’t we go?” In a few scorching words of misery she tells him that she, “a woman delicately bred,” has been for four long years in the hell—of Legree’s presence and power—her whole body and soul, cursing every moment of her life—the slave of his brutal passions; “and now he has got a new one—a young thing, only fifteen! And she’s brought her Bible here—here, to hell with her!” She adds, that she has witnessed scenes of savage cruelty, of mortal cruelty, which “would make any one’s hair rise, and teeth chatter to hear—but it is useless resisting. There’s not a white person who could testify if you were burned alive!” She lets fall a hint that sweet Emmeline is trying bravely to struggle against her fate—at present!

She gives Tom an outline of her history. She had been the idolised daughter of a lovely slave, and educated in the most expensive manner at a convent; but her father, before he could fulfil his intention of freeing her, died of cholera; and she was sold to a man, who concealed from her that he had given two thousand dollars for her. Imagining that she was his free choice, and he handsome, fond, and indulgent, she lived a little while with him as in Paradise, and had two children—a boy, Henry, and a girl, Elise. A cousin of his caught sight of her, and resolved to possess her, succeeded by shameful arts in alienating his affection from her, and then persuading him to sell her, with her two children. He forced her, recoiling from his embraces, to live with him, and sold off her two idolised children. In a moment of frenzy——All she recollects is, that “something snapped in her head—there was a great bowie-knife gleaming on the table.... She caught it—flew upon him—all grew dark, and she knew nothing more till she woke, long afterwards, when she found that he had left her to be sold; and, to realise the most from her, had secured her good attendance. As the fever left her, “they made her get up and dress every day; and gentlemen used to come in, and stand, and smoke their cigars, and look at me, and ask questions, and debate my price!—They threatened to whip if I were not gayer, and didn’t take pains to make myself agreeable.” She was ultimately bought by a planter, a Captain Stuart; and the child she had by him—so like her lost Henry!—when, two weeks old, she kissed, cried over, and—poisoned with laudanum—“I held him close to my heart, while he slept to death!” At length, Captain Stuart dies of fever. “Everybody died that wanted to live; and I, that wanted to die, lived” to be “sold, passed from hand to hand, till I grew faded, wrinkled, had a fever—and—this wretch (Legree) bought me, and—here I am!... In the judgment-day, I will stand up before God a witness against them that have ruined me and my children, body and soul!—When I was a girl, I thought I was religious. I used to love God and prayer! Now, I’m a lost soul, pursued by devils that torment me day and night. They keep pushing me on—and—I’ll do it, too, some of these days!” she said, clenching her hand, while an insane light gleamed in her heavy black eyes.

Legree in his lair resembles a huge tiger. As painted by the author, with graphic force,—sitting in his desolate apartment, drowning reflection in brandy-and-water,—admitting Sambo and Quimbo to his savage debauches,—and in their absence having his fierce bloodhounds for his companions—(anything better than being alone)—it seems wonderful that any human being could obtain over him any kind of influence, and much less ascendancy; yet Cassy has, in spite of himself, acquired—“the kind of influence which a strong impassioned woman can ever keep on the most brutal man.” Of late, however, she had become “more irritable and restless under the hideous yoke of her servitude, and her irritability sometimes burst forth in the ravings of insanity; [Pg 419]and this liability made her an object of dread to Legree, who had that superstitious horror of insane persons which is common to coarse and uninstructed minds. When he brought Emmeline to the house, all the smouldering embers of womanly feeling flashed up in the exhausted heart of Cassy, and she took part with the girl.”

One night, very late, she was gliding about unknown, and came to the window of the room where he was wildly carousing with the twin-fiends, Sambo and Quimbo. “She rested her small slender hand on the window behind, and looked fixedly at them—a world of anguish, scorn, and fierce bitterness in her black eyes,” as she saw them “singing, whooping, upsetting chairs, and making all manner of ludicrous and horrid grimaces at each other. ‘Would it be a sin to rid the world of such a wretch?’ said she to herself.” Many subsequent scenes in his career passing before us must more and more have inclined Cassy to answer the fearful question in the negative; as though it had shaped itself—“Is it any harm to kill a rattlesnake that has located itself near your house?”

In fact, her tormentor was on one occasion much nearer a ghastly climax than he had any idea of; for she had drugged his brandy—left him helpless—the back door unlocked—and then gone silently, at midnight, to Tom, to tell him that the hour of liberty was at hand.

The slave triumphed, and saved the life of—his murderer. He suggests to Cassy the attempt to escape, however desperate, “without blood-guiltiness;” and while he is speaking to her, “there flashed through her mind a plan so simple and feasible in all its details, as to awaken an instant hope.” We suspect that our readers will hardly be of her opinion. This was the nature of “the stratagem” which had occurred to her. Legree was very superstitious; and it is evident that some not very recent and barbarous murder of one of his slaves had largely developed his superstitious fears, and especially with reference to a particular apartment. Cassy, having taken Emmeline into her counsels, resolves to terrify Legree with the idea of this room being haunted, in order that, having a secret access to it, she may, when the proper time arrives, make it her safe and undisturbed retreat. She forthwith commences operations by training Legree’s mind into a more and more terrified mood with reference to this apartment, causing all sorts of strange, dismal, unearthly noises to issue from it, ghosts to be seen gliding in white out of it, and so forth. Thus far she succeeds; and having, in the meanwhile, made up two little beds in a huge box in the dreaded room, and provided food, candle-light, and clothes for their journey, she puts her scheme in operation. Late in the evening, she and Emmeline affect to make their escape, contriving to be seen in the act by Legree; on which he gallops homeward—orders out Sambo and Quimbo, and a posse of other willing [Pg 420]myrmidons, and also the bloodhounds, and away they start on their cruel and perhaps bloody errand. In the meantime, the supposed fugitives have returned home unobserved, and taken up their abode in the haunted chamber. There they listen to the hunting party—men, horses, dogs—returning wearied and disappointed. The next day the search is renewed, with the like ill success; and, after a day or two’s seclusion in their hiding-place—near which ghosts are seen to glide, and from which unearthly noises issue—the adventurous pair start on their perilous journey—Cassy disguised as a Creole Spanish lady, dressed entirely in black, and Emmeline as her servant. She found no difficulty in assuming and sustaining the character. “Brought up from early life in the highest society, her language, air, and movements were all in accordance with it; and she had still sufficient left of her once splendid wardrobe and sets of jewels, to enable her to complete her personation. A small black bonnet on her head, covered by a veil thick with embroidery, concealed her face.” It was near sunrise when the two terrified and breathless travellers paused, for a moment, in a little knot of trees near the town. Having purchased a trunk in the outskirts, she requested the seller to send it with her; and thus, escorted by a boy wheeling her trunk, and Emmeline behind her carrying her carpet-bag and sundry bundles, she made her appearance at a small tavern, like a lady of consideration, and there encountered George Shelby, who, with herself, was awaiting the arrival of the boat. He handed her courteously to it, and provided her with a good state-room; but Cassy found it expedient, on the plea of indisposition, to keep her room, and her bed—sedulously attended, it may be imagined, by her maid Emmeline—during the whole time they were on the Red River. Arrived at the Mississippi, they entered the good steamboat Cincinnati. How she disclosed herself to George Shelby, and became acquainted with Madame de Thoux—how the latter proved to be Emily, the long-lost sister of George Harris, and Cassy the mother of George’s wife—somewhat compendious work, it must be owned—has been seen. It was, in truth, as the author seems to have suspected, rather “a singular coincidence in their fortunes.” In due time they find their way to Montreal, where George and Eliza had established themselves in a neat tenement in the outskirts of the town, very happy and contented, he having found constant occupation in the shop of a worthy machinist. Cassy is now ending her days happily, “a devout and tender Christian.” Emmeline continued with them; and, on her passage to France, her beauty captivated the first mate of the vessel, and, shortly after entering the port, she became his wife. Before, however, this happy result has been effected, has occurred the crowning act of the tragedy—the martyrdom of poor Tom; who, being suspected by Legree of knowing of their escape, will not deny that he was privy to it, but will afford him no information. On this Legree, mortally infuriated, tells him that he “means to kill him”—“I’ve made up my mind to kill you.”

We shall spare our readers the frightful scene, as one of simple butchery. One might as well describe, in detail, the slaughter of an ox by the slaughterer and his two assistants. He is felled to the ground by a blow of Legree, and Sambo and Quimbo flog him to death. These two grim instruments of their master’s murderous vengeance are filled with sudden remorse, when they shortly after revisit their victim, and hear from him words of resignation and forgiveness. They ask him “Who is Jesus, anyhow?” and on Tom, in a heavenly spirit, telling them, they ask Him for mercy.

“Poor critturs!” said Tom, “I’d be willing to bar all I have, if it’ll only bring you to Christ! O Lord! give me these two more souls, I pray!” To very many of our readers, these expressions will appear somewhat forced and peculiar; whilst others may recognise in them language with which poor Tom had become familiar in those scenes of religious exercise to which, we are told, he had been accustomed for four years before his introduction to the reader. “‘Tom,’ said Mr Shelby to Haley, ‘is a good, steady, sensible, pious fellow. He [Pg 421]got religion at a camp meeting, four years ago; and I believe he really did get it. I have trusted him, since then, with everything I have: money, house, horses—and let him come and go round the country; and I always found him true and square in everything.” If such results follow “camp meetings,” they might be advantageously tried, and on a large scale, too, in this country. Some little time afterwards occurs the interview between dying Tom and young Mr Shelby, who had come to ransom him.

“‘Who—who—who shall separate us from the love of Christ?’ he said, in a voice that contended with mortal weakness; and with a smile he fell asleep.”

Regarded merely as a stroke of art, this closing scene may be contemplated with qualified feelings; but we shall offer no remarks upon what has evidently been conceived in a high religious, a nobly human spirit, and executed with no little power. Viewed in this light—and it ought to be viewed in no other, by a critic who has seized the scope and entered into the spirit of his author—objections to the development of Uncle Tom’s character melt away. He is not drawn to meet the views, or satisfy the exacting spirit of mere worldly persons, sickly novel-readers, or conceited supercilious critics. No, Tom is conceived in a lofty spirit, and adorned with all the meekness, the gentleness, the long-suffering, which can be drawn from the inexhaustible sources of our holy religion alone; he is set sublimely on a pinnacle to attract towards his oppressed race, represented by his crushed and bleeding form, the pitying eye of Christendom—to awaken, to encourage, to warn. “Suffering is,” indeed, “the badge of all their tribe;” and Europe has felt it to be so more strongly and directly, since the publication of this work, than it ever felt before. In the soft, glorious sunlight of Christian sympathy, the blackness of our poor brother’s skin—his skin torn with the incessant lash—disappears. Uncle Tom is actuated by religious principles which will not admit of his speaking or doing otherwise than he is represented as speaking and doing. His condition was that of a slave; it was a very hard one often, but had not always been such; and he was on the eve of escaping from it by lawful means, more than once, but the will of Providence had decreed otherwise. The sudden death of St Clare was permitted to consign unoffending Tom to the hideous Legree. But is not such an occurrence frequent in God’s ordinary all-wise, but inscrutable direction of human affairs? Presented to us under the conditions dictated by the objects and purposes of Mrs Stowe, how could she, without outraging propriety and defeating her whole, her only, and righteous purpose, have represented him, for instance, organising a revolt against the oppressor, in the course of which he and his maddened fellow-sufferers would have imbrued their hands in the blood of Legree? With Mrs Stowe’s proved powers of description, and her mastery over the feelings, she could have flashed before our eyes characters, scenes, and actions which only St Domingo could have paralleled! Instead, however, of playing the part of a mad incendiary, she has calmly and magnanimously addressed herself to the tribunal of public opinion, to the sense of justice, and of religion, by which all civilised mankind profess to be guided. She solemnly appeals to “the whole American church, of all denominations, unitedly to seek the entire abolition of slavery throughout America and throughout Christendom.” To “every individual Christian, who wishes to do something for the abolition of slavery,” she says—“Begin by doing what lies in your power for the coloured people in your vicinity.... The contest is to be carried on ‘with love unfeigned’—‘through every degree of opposition and persecution, a divine unprovokable spirit of love, which must finally conquer.... We must love both the slaveholder and the slave, never forgetting that both are our brethren.... We must use, as means, an earnest application of all straightforward, honourable, and just measures, for the removal of the system of slavery. Every man in his place should remonstrate against it. All its sophistical arguments should be answered, its biblical defences unmasked, by correct reasoning, and interpretation. Every mother should teach the evil of it to her children; every clergyman should fully and continually [Pg 422]warn his church against any complicity with such a sin.” These are the weapons, not carnal, but of holy temper, with which Mrs Stowe would enter upon this warfare; and who shall rebuke her, and say her Nay? Not we. We say to her, with a tender recollection that it is a WOMAN of whom we are writing, All hail, thou impersonation of Christian love and purity! Thou very genius of philanthropy! Verily thou wilt have thy reward. Not merely in the praises of men, though they have been accorded already with an almost unanimous and universal assent; but in the reflections of a chastened and subdued—a warm, a loving, and devout spirit.

Taken as a literary whole, Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a work standing before the critical eye in large proportions, but somewhat irregularly and inartificially disposed; exhibiting, here and there, minor and easily removable marks of haste, and inexperienced workmanship. It would have been easy to contrive incidents, and that without deranging her general scheme, which would have kept curiosity on the stretch from first to last, and secured a sort of poetical justice which might have satisfied the minds of many of her readers;—by dealing, for instance, with Marie St Clare, a beautiful but venomous little reptile,—and the huge speckled monster Legree,—in a spirit of retribution, making their own acts entail upon them condign and appropriate punishment; but how could that have aided the declared moral purpose of the writer? She has done well, on the contrary, in representing a Haley, a Legree, a Marie St Clare, as still—cumbering the ground, as so many of the centres of innumerable circles of despotic barbarity.

The main defect of the construction of her work as a “story”—for such she terms it—is, its want of connectedness. The reader is hurried incessantly from side to side of the dividing line between the fortunes of Uncle Tom, and those of George and Eliza Harris, with the episodical incidents depending on them; coming to each with sympathies attuned to the other; which, again, as soon as they have begun to be attracted to the new object, are suddenly dissociated, to address themselves to the one which they had but recently quitted so abruptly.

With all its defects, however, this book is an instrument worthy of contributing to effect a grand purpose, to attack and subvert A SYSTEM: the only condition, in this view, being, that it is founded, not upon exaggeration and misrepresentation, but upon TRUTH. The moment that the work had attracted universal notice, it was obvious that it must challenge attention to the point of—TRUE, or FALSE, in its representations of the condition of American slavery. Mrs Stowe has cheerfully accepted the challenge thrown out to her—accepted it in a calm and temperate spirit, and with the resolute confidence of one believing herself right. She formally consents to have her book tried by the test proposed, always protesting that she has painted slavery as it is—has done ample justice to large portions of humane Southern slaveholders; but insisting that that is no answer to her case, which is, that the SYSTEM is one altogether opposed to the spirit of Christianity, and subversive of the rights, and destructive of the best interests, of man. It is one, she would say, that tends to stamp out, in every newly-born slave, the noble image of his Maker, to depress him beneath the level of humanity; and it is no answer to this to assert, as is asserted by one of the keenest and sternest of her opponents, that “the peculiar falsity of the book consists in making exceptional or impossible cases the representatives of the system.”⁠[12] To establish her great principle, on the one hand, and to controvert by evidence, on the other, the charge in point of fact, of having made the exception the rule, she has published what she calls A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which is, in fact, simply a series of Proofs and Illustrations of the truth of her representations. We have examined this Key to the Cabin with some attention, and are of opinion that its alleged facts are such as must be answered; or those whose accusations provoked its publication, will have succeeded in only placing a professed Fiction upon the solid basis of Fact. No one who reads this Key will tolerate being simply told, that [Pg 423]Uncle Tom’s Cabin is founded on falsehood. She quotes (evidently, and even avowedly,) under the guidance of gentlemen of adequate experience and knowledge of the subject, from the authentic records of judicial decision, dealing with cases so appalling as, for a moment, even to make one think Legree painted in colours less dark than he might have been;—and also exhibits a vast mass of documents which cannot be disposed of, but by counterproof. We, of course, can deal with such statements but as we find them; knowing that they derive their value from the trustworthiness of a conscientious writer, conclusively confirmed by the absence of substantial disproof.—This volume, in a word, we commend to the serious consideration of every reflecting European and American reader of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

It were idle to class among these latter those who read simply to indulge a spurious whimpering sentimentality, or to have a morbid curiosity stimulated and inflamed by scenes of suffering and horror. But the Christian statesman, the enlightened politician, in either hemisphere, is bound, we think, to deal with the existence of this book, and the extensive effects produced by it, as a signal FACT. Great as are its literary merits, they are by no means sufficient, of themselves, to account for the universal attention which it has excited. It is because—to descend to a homely illustration—this book has acted like the sudden flash of the policeman’s lantern on a scene of secret midnight crime; it has painted in such vivid colours a condition of humanity hidden from European observation, as has attracted and fixed upon it the startled eyes of thinking Europe—of a FREE Christian people. In vain is it to hang beside it hasty recriminatory daubs of countervailing white slavery, or of the charms of slavery, as exhibited by a quasi paradisaical state, where such monsters as Legree, Mrs St Clare, Haley, Marks, and Tom Loker, exist not. All such attempts have already proved, as might have been anticipated, ridiculous failures, as far as they had been designed to stultify and falsify Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and divert from it the stern eye of public morality. How to deal with slavery is a tremendous problem for enlightened Christian statesmanship. It cannot tolerate the meddling of an unfortunate, impulsive, unreasoning, unreflecting, however ardent and generous, so-called humanity. True humanity, in this instance, consists in a sincere, comprehensive, deliberate, and resolute effort to rouse the PUBLIC OPINION of America on behalf of its slave population; and we believe that that public opinion will ere long find—with more embarrassment and danger the longer the discovery takes to be made—that slavery is an ulcer, a foul spreading ulcer, eating its way, perilously, to the very vitals of the body politic.

Will slavery—American slavery—will slavery at all—be in existence on the earth, a century hence? It is a vast question, and we will not presume to answer it. Perhaps our imaginary brother of the twentieth century may read what is here being written by his brother of the nineteenth, and applaud our caution. Slavery may then have become a thing of the past; or, in the fortunes of the world, in the mysterious, sublime, and even then unaccomplished destiny of the human race, that institution may still have its monstrous strangling coils encircling large and helpless sections of the family of man.

But if our shadowy brother of 1953 come to any other conclusions than are favourable to the intelligence of us of 1853, in respect of our reception of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, as Maga will doubtless be then in flourishing existence, we look to our lineal successors, in our seat of critical justice, to take up the cudgels for us, and vindicate our opinions and cautious vaticinations. And, in the mean time, Harriet Beecher Stowe, be it known a century hence, that we are ashamed of neither yourself, nor our reception of your book; that one not of the least important names of the present century is your own—already, and though you should never write another book. We doubt, indeed, whether you ever will do so—whether, at least, it will, or can be, a great book; for this one embodies your life-long experiences, heart-yearnings, and long-cherished thoughts. Your whole soul is wrapped up in its single noble purpose; so, Sis fœmina Unius Libri.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Uncle Tom’s Cabin: A Picture of Slave Life in America. By Harriet Beecher Stowe. 1852.

The Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Presenting the original Facts and Documents upon which the Story is founded. By Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 1853.

[2] Here the MS. becomes unfortunately illegible for some lines.

[3] Is this word a suggestion from good Mrs Stowe’s husband?

[4] Topsy—an incomparable sketch—excited at first sight no pleasureable sensations in good, starched Miss Ophelia. “Now, Augustine (Mr St Clare), what upon earth is this for? Your house is so full of these little plagues already, that a body can’t set their foot down without treading on ’em! I get up in the morning, I find one asleep behind the door, see one black head poking out from under the table, one lying on the door-mat; and they are mopping, and mowing, and grinning between all the railings, and tumbling over the kitchen floor! What on earth did you want to bring this one for?”

“For you to educate—didn’t I tell you? You’re always preaching about educating. I thought I would make you a present of a fresh-caught specimen, and let you try your hand on her, and bring her up in the way she should go!... The fact is, this concern (!) belonged to a couple of drunken creatures, that kept a low restaurant which I have to pass every day, and I am tired of hearing her screaming, and them beating and swearing at her. She looked bright and funny, too, as if something might be made of her; so I bought her (!) and I’ll give her to you. Try, now—and give her a good orthodox New England bringing up, and see what it’ll make of her!”

“Well—I’ll do what I can,” said Miss Ophelia; and she approached her new subject, very much as a person might be supposed to approach a black spider—supposing him to have benevolent designs towards it!

[5] New York Courier, Nov. 5, 1852. Quoted, Key, p. 97.

[6] “I mean to ask him to.” This is a form of expression continually occurring in this work. It is also one used by the vulgar in this country; but Mrs Stowe puts it into the mouths alike of educated and uneducated—black and white. We might notice many analogous vulgarisms in at least English eyes, but the critic is disposed heartily to act on the principle⁠—

“Verum ubi plura nitent ... non ego paucis

Offendar maculis.”

[7] Mrs Stowe is evidently very anxious to ingratiate her favourite hero with her readers—and perhaps with young ladies she may succeed—by constantly dwelling on his “large, blue, flashing eyes”—“large, melancholy, blue eyes”—“his fine face, classic as that of a Greek statue”—and so forth; but sterner touches are requisite to make him a manly hero. It seems also somewhat odd to see him “sitting on the floor, and laying his head back in Miss Ophelia’s lap”—who lays her “hand on his forehead”—he saying to her, “Don’t take on, so awfully serious!”

[8] “Her theological tenets were all made up, labelled in the most positive and distinct forms, and put by, like the bundles in her patch trunk; there were just so many of them, and there were never to be any more. Underlaying all, deeper than anything else, higher and broader, lay the strongest principle of her being—conscientiousness. Nowhere is conscience so dominant and all-absorbing as with New England women.” [Bless them!] “It is the granite formation which lies deepest, and rises out, even to the tops of the highest mountains.” This last we suspect to be a touch of her relative—The “Professor!”

[9] Here, however, is an exquisite touch. When Eva can no longer walk, Tom carried her; and on one occasion her father seeks to perform that office. “Oh, papa! let Tom take me! Poor fellow, it pleases him; and you know, it’s all he can do, and he wants to do something!”

“So do I, Eva—.”

“Well, papa, you can do everything, and are everything to me. You read to me,—you sit up at nights; but Tom has only this one thing, and his singing!”

[10] The next sentence in the text is a striking instance of the superfluous and even irritating habit of Mrs Stowe already alluded to. As if she had not painted so vividly as to touch the most stolid feelings, she adds—“It was a curious mixture of the pathetic and the ludicrous—the little old stocking, black crape, text-book, fair soft curl, and Topsy’s utter distress.” Surely this is writing under the picture of a horse—“This is a horse: do you see its hair, head, neck, body, legs, hoofs, and tail? And it has eyes and nostrils!”

[11] The luckless girl bore her own penal letter-missive—“An order, written in Mrs St Clare’s delicate Italian hand, to the master of a whipping establishment, to give the bearer fifteen lashes!” and this for only a hastily-uttered saucy expression!

[12] See the New York Enquirer, Nov. 5, 1852. Key, 97.

SCENE.—The Capital of “What not.”

Persons—John, Thomas, Executive, and Chorus. Thirty-two. Varlets—Mute Persons.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] Populus, not Plebs. These terms are often confounded, by the use of a word which may be said to be the translation of either. I do not here object to a nation’s being all Plebs, but protest against this reading when it is not.

PART X.—CHAP. XLVII.

“You seem so much better to-day,” said Mr Payne next morning to Mr Levitt, “that I think I shall leave you alone with the Captain, and go down to Larches, where I have not paid my customary visit for a couple of weeks past.”

“By all means,” said the invalid; “I should like to go with you if I could. I’ve a little curiosity to see that young lady of yours” (which Mr Payne knew to signify that his friend felt a warm interest in Orelia, though he had never seen her since she was a child). “She’s handsome, you say?”

“Really,” said Mr Payne, “making due deduction for a parent’s partiality, I should say you wouldn’t often see a finer young woman.”

“And accomplished too!—and high spirited. Payne, do you know, I wish you’d take Durham down with you. I’m quite well enough to do without anybody now.”

“To be sure,” said Mr Payne; “if you think you can spare him, I shall be delighted. ’Twill do Orelia good, too, for she, and a friend of hers, who is staying with her, seem to me to be falling into a sort of religious melancholy; and, to tell you the truth, it has caused me a good deal of anxiety.”

“And if—if the two should take a fancy to each other—Payne, I needn’t say that my heir would lose nothing in my estimation with your daughter for a wife. I once indulged in some little castle-building of that kind, of which Durham was not the hero.”

“Ah, we won’t speak of that now, my dear friend,” said Mr Payne hastily. “I’ll go at once, and ask the Captain to join me.”

“It needn’t be dull for you,” said Mr Payne, “even if you shouldn’t succeed in finding Langley. Besides my daughter there’s a friend of hers, a very charming person, whom I think you must know—Lady Lee.”

“Come,” said Mr Payne, “this is fortunate. We’ll start after lunch, and get down to Larches by dinner-time. Frewenham is just fifty miles from here.”

Fane agreed. Since finding out that Orelia lived near Frewenham, he divined at once why Langley’s steps should be drawn in that direction, and made sure of finding him there. Accordingly, after lunch, they set off, and repaired in Mr Levitt’s carriage to the railway, which took them the greater part of their journey.

Fane was but a silent companion. He was about, then, to see Lady Lee again—to be under the same roof with her; that was the text on which his thoughts discoursed. Was it not foolhardy to run into the dangerous proximity?—to expose himself to the influence of charms which could never be his? On the other hand, would it not be mere weakness to avoid it? Why should he permit his movements to be governed, his feelings played upon, by a woman who had preferred another to him?—who was probably awaiting but the expiration of her period of mourning to be the wife of another—of a man he despised. Besides, he had some curiosity to see how she would receive and treat him. Yes, that was it! Curiosity was the feeling that made him wish to see her again.

And Fane, though as sensible a fellow as you would be likely to meet, and by no means given to self-deception, really persuaded himself that his anxiety once more to behold Lady Lee proceeded entirely from curiosity. If he had a lurking doubt about that, there were plenty of other plausible reasons to satisfy his conscience; for, even admitting curiosity to be too trivial a feeling to cause him to accept Mr Payne’s invitation, yet how could he help accompanying him? Mr Payne was such an old friend of his uncle’s—and his uncle wished it too; and then he should be glad to see Orelia again—he had a great regard for Orelia! Above all, there was the prospect of securing his cousin Langley—oh, there [Pg 427]were reasons enough why he should be anxious and eager for the termination of the journey, quite independent of the prospect of seeing Lady Lee. Moreover, there was nothing he despised so much as a man who would give a second thought to a woman after he had ascertained that she didn’t care for him.

Didn’t care for him!—here he left arguing, and branched off into recollections—such as he had a thousand times before banished, and resolved to have done with for ever. Was her treatment of him, at one time, that of a woman who didn’t care for him? Was she a likely person to be guilty of setting traps for a man just to feed her vanity? Wasn’t she the reverse of everything hollow, trifling, and insincere? These questions resulted in the satisfactory and novel general axiom that women were unaccountable beings, and as changeable as the moon.

They had quitted the railway at Frewenham, and Fane stood at the door of the principal hotel awaiting the harnessing of a horse to the gig which was to convey them to Larches (which operation Mr Payne was superintending), when he felt a hand laid gently on his arm, and a voice said, “Bless me, Captain Fane, is that you? Who’d have thought it!”

Fane turned and beheld Miss Fillett. Kitty was dressed in sober-coloured and sober-cut garments, very different from the coquettish array in which she had been accustomed, when Fane last saw her, to go flirting about the precincts of the Heronry. Her very face seemed to have lost its pert expression; at least, if not quite lost, it was driven to lurk in the corners of her mouth and eyes. Beside her walked a youth of about fourteen, in whose features might be traced a strong family likeness to Kitty.

“How d’ye do, Kitty? You’ve come here with your lady, have you?” said Fane.

“This is my nittive place,” answered Miss Fillett. “I’m living with my own femily, though I do see my lady and Miss Payne from time to time. My lady took me from here when she married. This is my brother, Captain,” looking at the youth at her side. “Go on, Thomas,” she said to this relative, “and wait for me at the meeting-house door; and mind you have nothink to say to them depraved boys that’s always playing marbles there.”

Thomas departed. “Why, goodness gracious, Captain, what bekim of you that time you left us so suddin?” said Kitty, coming close up to Fane, and speaking in a low earnest tone. “There was certain persons fretted after you, I can tell you.”

Fane felt his colour rise in spite of himself. “I suspect you’re mistaken, Kitty,” he said, affecting to laugh.

“To go off in that hasty way, without so much as saying good-by,” Kitty went on, “and when there was persins, perhaps, wishing to see you, if ’twas only to bid farewell—’twasn’t quite the thing, Captain.”

“Perhaps not, Kitty,” said the Captain, “but we can’t always do what we wish, you know.”

“No,” said Kitty, “Hevin knows we can’t—in particular, when our wish is to do what is right. I’ve wanted to see you this long time, Captain Fane, about a matter in which I’ve took blame to myself. Ever since the loss of dear Master Juley, which my lady never will forgive me, though I’d have laid down my life for him, Hevin knows, Captain, my conscience have pricked me”⁠—

Kitty stopt suddenly as she looked up the street. Fane’s eyes following the direction of hers, he beheld a man in black advancing on the opposite side of the way. His face hung down over his white neckcloth; so that, in order to look round him, his eyes, which were of a leaden colour, were forced to peer in a stealthy stare from under his thick black eyebrows. His depressed nose, and his advancing lips, rounding smugly and smilingly over the teeth, gave him some resemblance to a sheep or goat.

“’Tis the Rev. Mr Fallalove,” said Kitty, “the minister of our chapel. O, what will he think of me talking to you, sir! I’ll meet you, sir,” added Kitty, in a rapid under-tone, “outside the town, on the road to Larches, at ten o’clock to-morrow morning. I’ve really got something to tell you, sir—something you’d give a good deal, perhaps, to know.” Fane promised to come—and Kitty, dropping a demure [Pg 428]curtsey, walked away to greet the Rev. Mr Fallalove; while Mr Payne appearing with the gig, he and Fane drove off to Larches.

“Go on and announce yourself, while I take my coat off,” said Mr Payne to Fane, standing in the lobby at Larches—“through the drawing-room’s your way.”

Fane advanced—the door of the dining-room was open, and he paused, looking at its occupants, who, taking his step for that of a servant, did not look towards him.

Orelia, the queenly Orelia, seated at the head of the table, was eating her soup with her usual lofty composure. She was worth more attention than Fane bestowed on her, for his gaze never rested on her, nor on the martyr Priscilla, whose face was swathed up like a mummy’s, but who smiled, nevertheless, in spite of her teeth. He was altogether absorbed in the contemplation of Lady Lee, who sat at the foot of the table, her soup untouched, her cheek resting on her hand, her look turned aside towards a small foot which peeped from beneath her black dress.

How long he might have so stood is uncertain; but Mr Payne’s advancing step and voice now caused them all to look up, and they saw Fane standing in the doorway. Lady Lee visibly started; her bosom and shoulders gave one quick heave, and her colour flushed up for a moment. Orelia’s spoon stopped on its way to her mouth—she calmly laid it down, and rose to receive her visitors.

Fane, acting up to his principle that it would be mere weakness to allow himself to show any feeling beyond strict civility towards her ladyship, rather, as is customary in such cases, overdid his part, and threw such an extreme amount of indifference into his salutation, that the warmth with which she came forward to meet him was dissipated in a moment. Chilled and hurt, she resumed her seat in silence.

Fane, supporting his character of chance and uninterested visitor with great success, conversed fluently on a variety of topics, though it would have puzzled him to remember his own remarks half an hour after. It was one of the few occasions in his life when he had acted a part, and he, of course, overacted it. He was pointedly amusing to Orelia; he listened with great attention to the inanities of Priscilla, lending the most courteous ear to a protracted account of her toothache; but when Lady Lee spoke, which only happened once or twice, though her voice made his heart beat, he manifested no consciousness of her presence. Once or twice, addressing some trivial remark to her, he caught her eyes fixed on him with a look of sorrowful surprise, but they were immediately averted.

Mr Payne did not find Fane more sociable, when the ladies left them to their wine, than he had on the journey. At tea with the ladies he resumed his former demeanour; and afterwards Orelia, thinking to do him and Hester a kindness, set her father and Priscilla down to double dummy, in a remote corner, and sat by the card-table herself.

Fane felt rather awkward, and glanced at Lady Lee, who was reading. Presently he found himself approaching her—not that he would have owned himself impelled to take that course—not at all; he set it all down to civility—he couldn’t leave her sitting there by herself, you know. But he would be very guarded; he would try to hit the line between the confidence of friends and the reserve of new acquaintances, so that his present demeanour might blend harmoniously into their ancient intimacy on the one hand, and the distant civility that was to exist between them in future, on the other.

Lady Lee did not seem so absorbed in her book as not to notice his approach; for though she did not look round, she coloured a little, and tremulously turned over two leaves at once, without discovering the gap thus left in the narrative. She laid the volume down when he took a seat near and addressed her.

“This must be a pleasant place of your friend’s when the flowers are in bloom,” said Fane.

“I trust,” said Fane, “they may [Pg 429]soon lose the distinction of being the happiest.”

A pause. Strange to say, the thought that Lady Lee had no happiness immediately in store for her, did not altogether displease Fane.

“Happiness often takes us unawares,” said Fane; “and,” he added, “another of its peculiarities, as we all know, is to slip from us as we prepare to close our grasp on it. Most of us experience much oftener its elusive power than its pleasant surprises.”

“Yours used to be a more cheerful philosophy,” said Lady Lee. “I remember, in one of our last conversations, you denounced those views of life which are tinged with complaint or despondency, as unmanly and untrue.”

“I suspect our philosophy comes more from without than within,” he said; “and we preach hope or cynicism as we happen to be prosperous or disappointed.”

“I should regret,” said Lady Lee, in a low tone, “to hear that you had any real cause for such a change.”

“Our opinions as to what might or might not be a real cause would possibly differ,” returned Fane. “Of course, if one has bound up one’s happiness in some ideal which turns out to be a delusion, there is perhaps no one to blame but one’s-self. I say perhaps, because the deception may have been so complete as to excuse the credulity; but, at any rate, one must not then find fault with views of life which others, more fortunate, are justified in adhering to.”

“It must be a weaker belief in good than I had fancied Captain Fane’s to be, which a single error can shake,” said Lady Lee.

“But if the error is so important as to upset all calculation,” said Fane. “If I have been all my life——. But I will not talk of myself,” he said, breaking off, as he perceived how near dangerous ground he was treading. “What is the book you are reading?”

“It has a radical fault in your eyes,” said Lady Lee; “it is written by a woman.”

“Ah!” said Fane, “I remember I used to think it a kind of desecration for a woman to confide her sentiments to the world; and the finer the sentiments, the more it seemed to me a pity that they should ever be blown on by the rude breath of the public. If she must write them, let her write them in her journal, or her letters to a chosen few—perhaps a chosen one; but to trot her feelings out, to show the form and paces of her mind to cold-eyed critics and gaping fools, I would as soon see the woman I loved capering in the scantiest gauze at the opera. So I used to say.”

“Used to say!” said Lady Lee. “Are your opinions on this point changing too?”

“Yes,” said Fane, with a good deal of unconscious bitterness in his tone—“yes; I begin to think that if a woman’s sentiments do not influence her life in its chief actions, it is of no great consequence what becomes of them; let her trumpet them in the marketplace, if she likes, after the manner of a proclamation. I don’t mean to say they should be always manifesting themselves in every petty action, but they should colour her existence, and influence its main outlines. But if these sentiments and feelings would never have found expression at all if not in writing—if, by presenting them to the public, she is robbing her daily life of no delicate tint—then my objections to female authorship are gone; but with them is also gone some of my belief in the excellence of feminine nature.”

Can he have left Doddington on some love enterprise, and been disappointed? whispered Lady Lee’s heart; or can the sharpness of his tone be meant for me? A dim thought that he might be alluding to her marriage with Sir Joseph crossed her mind. Poor woman! no wonder she was puzzled; she could not see the handsome, self-complacent, coxcombical image of Sloperton, which to Fane’s fancy sat between them, like Banquo’s ghost, and seemed to push him from his stool.

“Perhaps,” she said presently—“perhaps you are on principle getting rid of some of the tenets of your former faith, stripping yourself, that you may be the lighter to run the race of ambition; for you never denied you were ambitious, you know.”

“I never did,” said Fane; “but I [Pg 430]do now. For do but consider, Lady Lee, if my faith in my ideals has vanished, if the companionship and reflected interest which these give to a man’s efforts are no longer among his prospects, where is he to look for the stimulus and reward of ambition?”

“You show a dreary picture,” said Lady Lee, with an unconscious sigh; “but then ambition is a dreary thing, and does not seem, in general, to look for sympathy as its reward.”

“True,” said Fane; “and when I see men long past their youth joining in the contest for fame, I always ask myself where lies their inducement?—Not in love, for they have outlived it—not in friendship, for they reject it—not even in applause, for to that they seem not to listen. They seem actuated by an insane desire to climb to a barren eminence, and there die. For my own part, I could not value nor wish for fame, unless I could read it focussed and reflected in ——. But I will not trouble you with my abandoned aspirations and opinions; I leave them, with my other theories, to some one who has not yet discovered that he is a dreamer of dreams.”

Fane imagined that he had conducted the conversation so as to show perfect indifference and independence. It never occurred to him that he would not have talked thus, nor on such subjects, to a woman he did not care about.

When Lady Lee went to her room that night, Orelia followed her, and, sitting down by her side on the sofa at the foot of the bed, looked inquiringly into her eyes. Lady Lee knew what she meant, but, having nothing to say, said nothing. She only turned away and sighed; and Orelia, kissing her forehead, bid her good night.

Ah, if Fane could have afterwards seen Lady Lee whispering her sorrow to her pillow in the watches of the night, what a pebble he must have been had he not run to comfort her. But he couldn’t see her, for there was a solid wall separating her room from the one where he strode to and fro musingly.

If it is hard for two, who would gladly give up all and everything for each other, to find inseparable obstacles interposed between them, must it not be the devil’s spite for them to discover, perhaps in the next world, that they were divided in this one by some merely imaginary bar—some difference that a word would have dissipated?

Fane was angry with himself next morning to perceive how anxiously he looked for Lady Lee’s entrance to the breakfast-room. He looked in vain, however; she breakfasted in her own room; and when the meal was finished, he set off, without having seen her, to keep his appointment with Miss Fillett.

Kitty was lingering about a milestone when Fane came up, and, appearing in great distress lest any one should see her talking to him, she got over a stile when she saw him coming, and walked along a bypath.

Kitty’s conscience had, as she said, smitten her since the loss of Julius for the share which she had taken in Bagot’s schemes, and she now, as soon as Fane reached her, began, with much circumlocutory penitence, to hint at what she called her lady’s parshality for Fane—told what she knew of the Colonel’s design on Sloperton, and how she had helped to forward it—mentioned the circumstances which gave Bagot his power over Lady Lee—and, lastly, described the final exit which Sloperton had made in apparent discomfiture from the Heronry. She naturally took some pains to excuse her own complicity, but she might have spared them; Fane attended to, and cared for, nothing but the leading facts, which showed him how he had been imposed on; and when she stopt, he actually caught Kitty round the neck and kissed her.

“Good Hevins, Captain!” said Miss Fillett, who, probably from surprise, had submitted quietly to the salute, “why, I never! ain’t you ashamed? Do behave, sir!”

“’Twas a kiss of pure gratitude,” said Fane, “and might have been [Pg 431]given by a hermit to a saint, Kitty. I shall always look on you as a benefactor.”

“To be sure I will,” said Fane, “only you mustn’t intrigue any more with the Colonel,” he added, laughing.

He was hastening off, when he suddenly remembered that he had intended to ask Kitty if she had seen anything of the dragoon Onslow in Frewenham, and hurried back to put the question.

In reply, Miss Fillett dived down into her pocket, and extracting therefrom a yellow printed paper, she unfolded it, smoothed out the creases against her knee, and gave it to Fane.

It was a playbill, and announced, under the special patronage of the mayor and corporation of Frewenham, Sheridan’s comedy of the Rivals for that night.

“Well, Kitty, what has this to do with the matter?” asked Fane. Kitty pointed to the list of dramatis personæ.

“‘Sir Anthony Absolute—Mr Cavendish,’” Fane read. “‘Captain Absolute—Mr Onslow.’ What, he’s gone on the stage, then!” Fane paused to consider. He had plenty to occupy him that morning; it must have been very urgent business indeed that would keep him that morning away from Larches; he could see his cousin as well at night, as now—yes; he would go to the play, see him act, and discover himself afterwards.

“I knew him the minute I set eyes on him,” said Kitty, “for all he have shaved off his mustache. They say he acts beautiful—and I must own to a sinful wish to see him. But plays,” added Kitty piously, “is vanity.”

“Come to-night, Kitty,” said Fane, dropping his purse into the pocket of her apron; “perhaps we may have occasion for a little more talk together, since you seem to know so much of what’s been going on at the Heronry, and I can’t spare a moment to hear it now. Come by all means, Kitty, and I’ll promise you absolution,” and he once more quitted her, going back at his swiftest pace to Larches; while Miss Fillett, after a short struggle with herself, determined to see Onslow act that night, let the Rev. Mr Fallalove and Co. say what they might about it.

Fane entered the drawing-room at Larches, just as Lady Lee was going out by another door. She turned a pale tearful face towards him, and was going to give him a distant salutation, when the slight movement was arrested, and the expression changed to one of surprise, as he hurried up and seized her hand.

“I have a long explanation to give,” he said, “and then I think you will forgive me. But first let me say what has been on my mind for this long time,” which he did in three words.

Lady Lee did not carry out her original intention of quitting the room; in fact, she forgot it altogether. She allowed him to lead her to a seat, and listened with deep attention. Fane had a turn for arrangement, and therefore (after the compendious preamble or overture of three words above-mentioned) he began his tale at the beginning. He told Lady Lee, with a degree of eloquence that altogether astonished himself, how he had first admired, secondly loved her; how her seemingly capricious treatment of him had caused him to alternate between hope and despair—and of his interview with Josiah; and to all this her ladyship listened with the sweetest patience, her eyes being sometimes downcast, sometimes fixed on Fane. But when he told her of the consent which Sloperton had procured and exhibited to him, patience gave way to indignation; her eyes, neither downcast nor fixed on Fane, sparkled with anger, which was presently quenched in tears. This stage passed, he told of his dreary existence since, and of his efforts to forget her—of the cause of his coming to Larches, involving the episode of his cousin Langley and Orelia; and wound up his epic by swearing he was now the happiest rascal in existence, and kissing her ladyship’s hand.

She, too, had a little tale to tell—of her unhappiness and anxiety—her futile attempts to account for his sudden departure and continued absence; and it is really enough to make one ashamed of one’s species, and to cause [Pg 432]one to believe in Rochefoucault, Thackeray, and other cynic philosophers, to know that Fane listened to this account of her woes with positive pleasure, and was raised to a state bordering on rapture at hearing that the night before had been passed by her in sleeplessness and tears.

They got no farther than this before lunch; but Orelia, seeing at a glance how things were going, left them alone together after that meal—and the conclusion they arrived at before dinner was this, that after an interval granted to Hester’s sorrow, they should be married—with Bagot’s consent, if that were obtainable by purchase, or otherwise—if not, they would be married without it, and let him do his worst.

That building which in Frewenham was now devoted to the drama, bore, in general, but little resemblance to a theatre. It was a long narrow room enclosed by four isolated walls, and had been built by an enterprising master-mason as a speculation. It was the public room of Frewenham. Here balls took place; here lectures were delivered; here public meetings were held. It served all sorts of opposite purposes; and here—where only a few days before an enthusiastic missionary had collected plates-ful of money from the devout inhabitants of Frewenham in aid of a project for convincing the Kaffirs, by the power of moral reasoning, of the advantages of universal peace and brotherhood, and subsequently forming them into a great South African Tee-total Society—here such of the pleasure-loving portion of the townsfolk as could command the price of admission, were now assembled to witness Sheridan’s comedy.

One end of this room was divided from the rest, partly by a painted wooden partition, which stretched across the ceiling and down the sides, partly by a green baize curtain in the centre of it. In front of the curtain flared and smoked a row of footlights, diffusing an odour suggestive at once of train-oil and boiled mutton.

The stage being on the ground-floor, there was no pit, properly so called—a row of forms, at a few feet from the footlights, evidently represented the boxes, inasmuch as their occupants paid highest for their seats; but this was the only advantage they possessed over the pit and gallery behind them, except that the vapour of the footlights was there inhaled in greater freshness and perfection. The orchestra was raised on one side of the boxes, and consisted of a violoncello, a serpent, and two fiddles, all belonging to the county militia. The musicians were perfectly well known to the audience, which was a great comfort to those impatient persons in the gallery, who had stormed the door and rushed in about an hour and a half before the play commenced, for they were enabled to relieve their otherwise painful suspense by calling to them by name for favourite airs, and making them the subjects of many playful allusions. “Rub your elbow with the rosin, Jim,” shouted a wag to the leader of the band, who was preparing his violin-bow with that substance; “there was too much rheumatism in that last tune.” “Your serpent’s got a hoaze, Biffin,” cried another, to the performer on that wind instrument: “put him in ’ot flannel when you go home, and don’t bring him out no more o’ nights.” “Cherry ripe!” shouted a chorus of voices. “Music, play up!” “Polly, put the kettle on!” demanded an opposition chorus—and faction ran so high between the adverse connoisseurs, that, when the music struck up, nobody knew what they were playing—while the gallery, with its darkness visible, and the confusion that reigned in its obscurest nooks, where the choice spirits had collected, presented the aspect of an amiable pandemonium, till the rising of the curtain produced an instantaneous calm.

Fane had entered early, and stood leaning against the wall watching the entry of the spectators, who gradually filled the house. The green baize on the seats in the boxes became invisible foot by foot, as careful fathers and matrons selected good points of view for themselves and offspring—as a [Pg 433]young ladies’ school entered in a body, and with demureness, relieved by private titters under each other’s bonnets, ranged themselves in order—as gay bachelors, who had been chatting with female acquaintances at a distance, rushed to secure their places. Cheerfulness and expectation prevailed; but the person among all the audience, whose feelings Fane envied most, was a sharp-looking little boy, in a red frock with black specks on it, and a magnificent feathered hat, who came in with his papa and brothers, and, being placed on his feet in the front row, gazed round him with intense delight. Fane remembered that the last time he had been in such a place he was about that age and size, and he knew that the scene was, to that little boy, the most charming spot on earth; that he had dreamt of it for two or three previous nights, at least—that the smell of the footlights was a sweet savour in his nostrils, the noise in the gallery solemn music in his ears—the whole place paradise—and that he would watch the progress of the drama with breathless interest, and most uncriticising faith. There was an elder brother of his, too, who appeared, probably for the first time in his life, in Wellington boots and a shirt-collar, to his great pride and discomfort; and Fane guessed with considerable correctness that this youth would conceive an ardent and respectful passion for the lady who did Lydia Languish.

Presently, as the place began to fill, a stout gentleman stood up and blew his nose like a trumpet, and, after replacing his handkerchief with much ceremony in his pocket, gazed round him with great sternness and dignity. He was evidently a man of the first importance in a civic point of view—his bunch of seals was massive, his hair was brushed ferociously up from his forehead, and his shirt-collars appeared to be cutting his ears off. As the noise in the gallery increased, he lifted up his hand majestically, as if to calm the tumult; still it went on—he shook his head as if at so many noisy children, when a voice was heard to shout amid the din, “Hark to old Bribery and Corruption!” which was the nickname the stout gentleman was known by among his fellow-townsmen, in consequence of some valuable electioneering qualities—whereupon he turned away redder than ever, and stooping down, pretended to whisper to another stout gentleman, who shook his head, frowned fiercely, and said the rascals had been getting more impudent every day since the passing of the Reform Bill.

Fane saw Kitty Fillett steal in, accompanied by her young brother, and silently seat herself in the pit—a sort of purgatory, or middle state between the inferno of the gallery, and the paradise of the boxes. She seemed anxious to avoid notice, but in this she was disappointed, for she was presently recognised by some vigilant censors in the gallery. “Won’t Miss Fillett ask a blessing?” cried one. “No backsliders,” shouted another. “Give her the Old Hundredth,” said a third, addressing the orchestra—whereat Miss Fillett, wrapping her shawl nervously about her, looked around, sniffing in high scorn and defiance.

Fane recognised the dragoon directly Captain Absolute entered, and saw in a moment that the high encomium passed by Mr Payne on Langley’s powers as an actor was no more than just. He infused great spirit into the part, and made the points tell admirably. He was dressed in perfect taste, and looked so handsome and high-bred, that the entire young ladies’ school fell in love with him, and two teachers began to pine away from that very night; while Lydia Languish, a showy-looking girl, acted the love scenes with a degree of warmth that showed she must either be a mistress of that kind of acting, or else not acting at all. Sir Anthony, too, was remarkably well acted by an old man, the manager of the company, who called himself Mr Cavendish. The costumes were correct, and in excellent taste; and some of the scenes were admirably painted in a style that Fane at once ascribed to Langley’s pencil.

The curtain fell at the end of the last act amid great approbation. Shortly afterwards, old Mr Cavendish made his appearance before the curtain, to announce that the Infant Roscius was [Pg 434]about to appear as Young Norval, and to request that, however much the audience might approve his performance, they would refrain from loud applause, as that would probably put such an inexperienced performer out in his part.

Again the bell rang, and the curtain ascended creaking. After a pause Young Norval entered, clad in full Highland costume. He seemed about four or five years old, and came in with a sort of mock manliness in his gait, which at once insured him the sympathies of the female portion of the audience. In fact, Fane heard one young lady near pronounce him a “darling” before he opened his mouth, while another expressed a desire to kiss him.

The juvenile tragedian having informed the audience, in a bold lisp, that his name was Norval, and having mentioned the “Gwampian hills” as the place of his paternal abode, was proceeding to describe his connection with the warlike lord, when a voice in the pit was heard to exclaim, “Master Juley! O goodness gracious, Master Juley!”

Young Norval paused with an amazed air—fumbled with his dirk—looked about him for a moment, and, forgetting his heroic character, began to cry. Again the voice in the pit was heard. “Master Juley,” it cried, “come to Kitty!” when the drop-scene suddenly descended, with great swiftness, and hid him from view.

A great commotion now took place in the house, especially the pit, where the fainting form of Kitty Fillett was seen passed from hand to hand on its way to the open air. Fane, on hearing her exclamation, had quitted the house, and ran round to the stage-door, which he entered. The first person he encountered was Captain Absolute, who was standing with his back towards him, but who turned instantly as Fane called out “Langley.”

“You know who I am then?” he said, advancing. “I saw you among the audience.”

“I’ve been following you these six weeks,” said Fane, shaking his hand. “First let me see the child, and I’ll speak to you afterwards.” At that moment the old manager passed, making for the stage-door, with Julius kicking and struggling in his arms. Fane, laying one hand on the shoulder of the old gentleman, lifted the boy from him with the other. Julius recognised Fane at once, and, calling him by name, ceased crying.

Mr Holmes (for the manager was no other than that venerable person) surrendered the boy at once. “Allow me to speak to you one moment, sir,” he said, drawing Fane aside by the arm. “Doubtless you intend to restore him to his friends,” said Mr Holmes, in a calm business-like tone.

“Instantly,” said Fane. “But how came he with you, when he is believed dead by his friends? You will have to account for this.”

Mr Holmes looked round, to see that no one was within earshot, and, motioning to Fane to stoop, he whispered in his ear.

“Good God!” said Fane, as Mr Holmes ceased. “I can’t believe it. And yet, why not? But this may be a slander of yours, to screen yourself, and gain time to escape.”

“Me!” said Mr Holmes, shrugging his shoulders, and spreading out his palms. “I shall make no attempt to escape. My account of the matter is plain, so far as I am concerned. I was requested to take charge of the young gentleman, and accepted it. Then naturally comes the question. By whom were you requested? And whether a public answer will be satisfactory to the young gentleman’s family and friends, you may judge for yourself.”

“The old scoundrel is right,” muttered Fane. “It cannot be kept too quiet.” Then he said aloud, “This will be matter for his friends to decide on; in the mean time, I shall take him to his mother.”

“One word more,” said Mr Holmes. “I have reason to believe it was intended to restore the young gentleman to his family very shortly. It was with that view, I imagine, that I received directions to proceed to this place; though I didn’t know they were in this neighbourhood.”

Fane, still holding Julius in his arms, now went towards the door. As he passed Langley, he stopped and drew out his watch. “It is now ten,” said he. “Can you, in an hour from [Pg 435]this, meet me, Langley, at the hotel in Fore Street?” Langley assented, and Fane left the theatre.

Miss Fillett having been conveyed by charitable hands into the open air, had been forthwith surrounded by a circle of her own sex, who fanned her face, stuffed hartshorn and smelling salts up her nose, beat her hands, and adopted other established remedies for her restoration. These had so far recovered her that, on seeing Fane emerge with Julius, she broke from the sympathetic females around her, and, snatching the young baronet, cast herself on her knees on the pavement, and squeezed him in her arms, murmuring hysterically, and shedding tears over him.

“Where is the hold villain?” said Kitty presently, looking round in search of Mr Holmes. “It misgive me, the moment I see him, that I knew his ugly old face. Let me kim to him. I’ll tear his eyes out.”

A word in her ear from Fane, however, induced her to defer her vengeance for the present; and he prevailed on her to come with Julius, whom she would not let out of her clutch for an instant, to the hotel, where a conveyance might be got to convey them to Larches; and thither they accordingly repaired, attended by a considerable crowd, who had been solacing themselves by listening outside the theatre to catch stray sounds and music, and obtaining hasty glimpses of a green baize screen whenever the door was opened.

A quarter of an hour saw them speeding along in a dog-cart, Fane driving, and Fillett holding the recovered little baronet in her lap. He slept there soundly. “Dear soul!” said Fillett, looking down at him, and covering him with her shawl, “he used to be always a-bed by eight o’clock. We shan’t get speech of him to-night.”

They stopt at a little distance from the cottage, and a stable-boy who sat behind took the reins to hold the horse till the return of Fane, who now proceeded with Fillett and her charge to the house.

There was a light in the drawing-room, and Fane, going softly up, and standing on a flower-bed underneath, peeped in. He was very glad to see Orelia seated there reading, alone, and, returning to Fillett, he took Julius from her, and sent her in to prepare Miss Payne for the strange news of his recovery.

Fillett went, and Fane heard the murmur of their voices for a minute or two—when Orelia’s grew louder—the drawing-room door opened, and forth she came in such tempestuous fashion, that it was fortunate she ran against nobody in the passage. Seeing Julius asleep in Fane’s arms as he stood in the porch, and recognising the boy instantly in spite of his Highland costume, she snatched him eagerly, and covered him with kisses. “I wonder what Langley would give for one or two of those,” said Fane to himself, as he followed her to the drawing-room.

In answer to her breathless inquiries, he told how he had found Julius, and the reasons which appeared to exist for keeping his abduction as secret as possible. Then they consulted together as to the best mode of breaking the news to Lady Lee. “I’ll go and tell her immediate,” said the excited Fillett. “I ain’t afraid to face my lady now.”

“Stay, my good girl,” said Fane; “we mustn’t be rash. Miss Payne, you could prepare her better than any one.”

“Right,” said Fane. “But what do you think, Miss Payne, of placing Julius, who doesn’t seem likely to wake till morning, by his mother’s side?”

“Ho!” said Kitty, “the very thing!—and when my lady wakes, she’ll think ’tis a dream.”

“Do you know,” said Orelia, “that strikes me as a happy thought of yours. I’m resolved it shall be done—yes—it shall.” So saying, she took up the slumbering Julius, and desiring Fillett to accompany her, conveyed him to her own room; while Fane quitted the house to rejoin Langley, saying he would return for news in the morning.

Arrived in her chamber, Orelia desired Kitty to undress Julius, an [Pg 436]office she was well accustomed to, and gladly undertook. He fretted a little, in a sleepy way, at being disturbed, and thrust his knuckles into his eyes; but the moment the disrobing was accomplished he relapsed into sound slumbers, with a long-drawn sigh. “Bless you,” said Kitty, “he’d sleep now if you put him standing on his head on the floor, the dear!”

Orelia, on her first visit to Hester’s room, had left a light there. Very softly she now re-entered, bearing her young friend, with his head against her bosom, his bare legs dangling perpendicularly from the bend of her arm, and, stealing to the side of the bed, stood looking at its occupant, while Kitty, with elaborate caution, crept after. The youthfulness of Hester’s look, as she lay with her face turned up till her chin approached her upraised shoulder, struck Orelia—she beheld the Hester of five years before. She stood a moment gazing at her, figuring to herself the astonishment that would appear in those eyes when their lids were next raised; then she motioned to Fillett, who turned down the bed-clothes far enough to admit Julius, and Orelia, stooping silently down, deposited him with his head on the pillow near Lady Lee’s. It seemed a matter of indifference to him what they did with him; he merely rubbed his nose with his hand, as if something tickled it, made a noise with his lips as if tasting something, and slept on. Lady Lee, too, slept quietly; and Orelia, after having once or twice turned to look at them, withdrew with Kitty. She closed the door softly, then, listening, thought she heard a noise—re-opened it—it was only Lady Lee turning in her sleep; she now lay with her face turned to the boy’s, and her arm across his neck—and Orelia retired to her own room.

Fane found Langley waiting at the hotel door, and, taking his arm, drew him into a private room. As he had dined early, and imagined his cousin had probably done so too, he ordered supper forthwith. “We should be hungry enough before we had half done talking,” said Fane. “First, while supper is getting ready, I’ll have my say.”

Accordingly he told his cousin how he had got a clue to their relationship by means of the seal ring at the silversmith’s—of his late visit to their uncle—of his uncle’s smothered affection for Langley—of the visit with Miss Betsey to his old apartments—of his conversation with Mr Payne; which last, however, he recapitulated only so far as it related to the manner in which Langley had first provoked his uncle, saying nothing at present about the forgery, which he wished to hear Langley’s own version of.

His cousin listened eagerly—seemed surprised at the share his ring had borne in detecting him—smiled at Fane’s mention of Miss Betsey, and interrupted him to characterise her as a “jolly old woman.” But the account of the rooms, still preserved in the state he had left them in, and of his uncle’s nocturnal visits to them, excited deeper emotion. He rose from his chair, walked about the room, and, when he resumed his seat, brushed off some moisture from his eyelashes.

“I believe in my soul,” said Langley, “that he once loved me better than anything on earth. But his last letter to me was so harsh, so severe in tone, that I imagined I should not have obtained forgiveness, even had I sought it. To seek it, however, was far from my thoughts; my uncle’s condemnation of my conduct was mild compared with my own, and I had resolved, before his letter came, never to look on his face again till I could do so without shame.”

“You must have played the very deuce,” observed Fane, “to call forth these feelings in him and yourself. ’Twas play, I suppose, that did it.”

“Yes,” said Langley, “that finished me; but I had no turn for saving, and I had, besides, dropt a good deal on a favourite for the Leger. All my uncle’s allowance went. I asked for more—’twas sent with some caustic remarks; next time, the remarks were angry, instead of caustic—then bitter. At last, while playing to win back, I lost all I had. I sold everything, and was still a hundred pounds short. This sum I wrote to my uncle for, assuring him ’twas the last time I should ever trouble him. He evidently didn’t believe me, for, with the [Pg 437]check for a hundred, came the letter I already told you of, the harshest he had ever written.”

“I paid my gaming debts, in some of which I suspected foul play, though it would have been difficult to prove that. All paid, I found myself with about fifteen shillings, and a suit of clothes, as my sole possessions, to make a fresh start in the world with. I left London, making my way on foot towards a seaport; and, while making a meal of bread and cheese, to be paid for with my last remaining coin, a recruiting sergeant spoke to me, and I enlisted directly. You know my career afterwards, till I left the Heronry Lodge.”

“But the last check from my uncle,” said Fane, “I want to hear about that. To whom did you pay it?”

“To the man I had lost most to, and who had the greatest share in my ruin,” said Langley. “He came to my lodgings on the day I received it. I threw it across the table to him, telling him, calmly enough outwardly, that I was done for, and that he would never hear of me more, for that my intention was to quit the country that very day.”

“Never till we met on the day of the review in the Heronry grounds,” returned Levitt, “when he seemed confused enough at the meeting, as well he might, for, as I say, Seager had more to do with my ruin than anybody.”

“Seager!” exclaimed Fane. “I always thought him a horrible rascal. ’Twas to him, then, you transferred your check?”

“Yes,” said Langley; “and, at the same time, I showed him the letter that accompanied it, that he might see the kind of misery such proceedings as his lead to. He read it—threw it back to me. ‘All up there,’ said he; ‘the old boy’s done with you—what do you mean to do?’ I told him I should quit the country that very day. He approved of this design, and offered to pay my passage to any foreign port I chose. This I declined; and, meeting the recruiting party, I abandoned my first intention, and enlisted.”

Fane stood up, leaning his arm against the chimneypiece, his head upon his hand, deep in thought. “Certainly,” he said to himself, “Langley is innocent of the forgery—and I think I see who is guilty—now, to prove it is the point.”

Levitt paused for a minute to think. “I’m not sure,” he replied, “’twas so long ago; but I rather think Mounteney was present.”

“Probably,” returned Levitt—“indeed, I should say, certainly, if he was present, as I rather fancy he was. But why do you ask?”

Fane, however, waived this question; it could answer no purpose, at present, to show Langley the suspicion he lay under. Supper appearing at the moment enabled him to change the subject.

“Your health, Durham,” said Langley; “long may you enjoy my uncle’s favour, which you deserve better than I did. By Jupiter!” he added, setting down his glass, “I had almost forgotten the flavour of champagne. It is long since I tasted it, and ’twill, probably, be yet longer before I taste it again.”

“They are hardly definite enough to talk about; but I’m not used to despond. My one clear purpose is to leave England. Since I left the service, I have found how difficult it is to make, unassisted, the first step in the ascent of life. Now, I consider myself rather a sharp fellow, Durham, as fellows go. I am willing to turn my hand to any earthly thing it is capable of, in an honest way; and a man who, though naturally impatient, yet performs three years’ service in the lower ranks of the army with credit, has some title to trust his own temper and perseverance. Yet I’ve been for these—let me see, how many weeks is it since I sold my last sketch?—three, I think—hovering on the confines of absolute penury.”

“Fact,” said Levitt, with a laugh. [Pg 438]“So I resolved to try what virtue there was in a stout arm and a gay heart, in a country like Canada or Australia. But the passage-money—there was the rub. I’ve been trying to raise it, as I came along, by selling sketches to booksellers, but that hardly kept me in bread and cheese. Arriving here, however, I found a theatrical company in want of a scene-painter. I offered myself, was approved of, and tolerably well paid; and four or five mornings ago, when their walking gentleman was sick, I volunteered to supply his place. Old Cavendish the manager gave me a benefit to-night, which has put a few pounds in my pocket, and the day after to-morrow I start for the New World.”

“There is only one little point left unaccounted for in your narrative,” said Fane, smiling. “Frewenham is not exactly in the road to any point of embarkation for Canada, or Australia either; and you have not explained what brought you here.”

He fixed his eyes on Levitt, who, spite of his efforts to look indifferent, coloured deeply.

“I’m a confounded fool, Durham—I believe that’s undeniable,” he said. “And yet, I’m not ashamed to say that I came so far out of my way to take a last look at a woman. Such a woman, Durham—ah, you must be, as I’ve been, beneath the very heel of fortune, and habituated to the sense of appearing to others in a false light, to know the true value of a charming woman’s sympathy. If I had met her anywhere, or at any period of my life, I should have preferred her to all the world—but circumstances have made me positively adore her. I would not present myself again before her for the world—that could answer no good purpose—but I could not deny myself one last glimpse of Orelia.”

“Though I smile,” said Fane, “don’t think, my dear fellow, ’tis at your devotion. On the contrary, I honour you for it. I was merely paying tribute to my own penetration at having guessed what brought you here.”

Hereupon there ensued a conversation on the subject of love, its exacting and engrossing nature, its dreams, its power to excite, its anxieties, and the astonishing absurdities which even sensible people commit, without any shame or compunction, under its influence. And as this was a subject more interesting to the two interlocutors than to whole-hearted, devil-may-care people like you and me, reader, who are not yet, heaven be praised, utterly hoodwinked, and have no occasion to pluck cherry lips and neatly-turned ankles out of our eyes in order to see clearly—and as, moreover, it has been touched upon by one or two previous writers, we will merely mention in this place that the two cousins seemed wonderfully unanimous in their opinions and feelings, and separated for the night with a very strong regard for each other.

Next morning Fane wrote a note to Orelia, to say that he wished to hear from her how Lady Lee had borne the restoration of Julius to her arms—for that he would not commit the sacrilege of intruding upon her on a day that ought to be sacred to other feelings than those his presence could inspire.

“I slept so little, and so lightly, last night” (wrote Orelia, in reply, after describing how she had deposited Julius, undiscovered, by his mother’s side), “that I was easily roused by what I thought was a cry from Hester. I sat up in bed and listened in silence—then I stole to her door, and heard such a kind of murmuring within as a dove might make over its young. I entered. Hester was hanging over Julius, apparently not quite certain whether she waked or slept—indeed, she seemed to think it a vivid dream, for she stared at me as I entered, and passed her hand confusedly across her eyes. I sat down on the bed, and whispered to her that ’twas all real, and if she would lie quite still and composed, I would tell her the whole of the story as far as I knew it.

“You did right not to come to-day. She is still a little bewildered—and was quite so till she had a good cry. For some little time she did what I’m sure you never heard her do—she talked nonsense. As for the cause of all these tears, he seems tolerably unconcerned. He submitted to our embraces this morning as coolly as if he had only been away a week, and is now busy, dressed in his Highland costume (for there are no clothes of his here), in making acquaintance with Moloch. This helps to compose Hester, and she is now able to comprehend her happiness—to-morrow she will be radiant.

This note was brought by Mr Payne; and Fane, after he had read it, told that gentleman he had seen Langley, and was persuaded of his innocence in the matter of the forgery. He mentioned Seager as the person who had received the check, and Mr Payne at once remembered that to be the name of the person who had presented it, and who had excited no suspicion of anything irregular, as this was not the first that had been paid to him. Fane also told what he had learnt from Lady Lee of the charge of swindling now pending against Seager, and of the additional probability thus afforded that he was the delinquent. Mr Payne promptly adopted this view of the case, and proposed that he should go instantly to town to consult a legal adviser on the matter, and, if necessary, have an interview with Seager himself. “You see,” he said, “that what we want, in this instance, is, not to prosecute or recover, but simply to establish Langley’s innocence; and if, by confessing, he can avoid a prosecution, perhaps we may, without difficulty, get Seager to admit his guilt.”

After Mr Payne had departed, Fane spent the rest of the day in investigating Mr Holmes’s account of the abduction of Julius. It really appeared that Bagot was the instigator of it—and, moreover, that the Colonel had intended to restore Julius so soon as the conclusion of the trial should have removed the original inducement for concealing him, which was to obtain funds wherewith to meet the trial.

Lady Lee was, as Orelia had prophesied, all radiant when Fane next saw her, and looked altogether so cheerful and charming that he experienced a sudden impulse to embrace her; and, not seeing any just cause or impediment, had already, with that view, put his arm round her waist, when she stooped, and, snatching Julius from the ground, held him before her as a shield. Julius, being fond of Fane, immediately clung round his neck, and thus covered any little discomfiture he might naturally have felt at having his intention defeated.

This placing of Julius between the lovers involved a kind of metaphor; for Lady Lee reminded Fane that, though they might have dispensed with Bagot’s consent on mere pecuniary grounds, yet now, when Julius’s interests were again at stake, it was imperative to obtain it.

Fane, who had in fact come rushing into Lady Lee’s presence with the full intention of pressing for immediate union, now that her mourning was thus happily at an end, was fairly staggered by this consideration, which he had in his eagerness quite overlooked. But though he could have found resolution to submit to what was inevitable, it was not in his nature to be patient while any alternative remained. First, he would go instantly, seek out Bagot, and demand the consent—would go down on his knees for it, if necessary, professing himself ready for any amount of baseness and sycophancy to propitiate the potent Colonel. But Lady Lee, feeling that Bagot might possibly vent the anger she knew him to entertain against Fane in some coarse insult, told the latter her reasons for thinking the Colonel was not to be propitiated. Then he urged that if Bagot could not be cajoled, he might be threatened or bought—that a hint of exposure in the business of the abduction might bring him to terms.

This certainly seemed feasible; but this hope was put to flight by a letter from Mr Payne, announcing that, arriving in town on the last day of the trial, with the intention of seeing Seager, he found both him and Bagot fled, and the latter had been traced to France. This was a terrible stroke, [Pg 440]affecting so powerfully as it did the interests both of Fane and Langley. And as this brings us to the point of Mr Seager’s flight from town, we will now follow that gentleman in his career.

Seager, fancying himself dogged at the railway terminus on the day of his flight from London, took his ticket for the station beyond that where he intended to alight, to avoid detection. At Frewenham he left the train and repaired to an inn, a second-rate one, which he had selected as a less dangerous abode than the principal hotel.

Keeping up his disguise, he spent two whole days (precious days to him) in walking about Larches for an opportunity of speaking to Lady Lee. Fane, or Mr Payne, or Fillett, were for ever there, one or other of them, and it might be fatal to his plans for any of them to discover him. He read in the papers, with a good deal of amusement, the account of the late trial, and was particularly diverted with the paragraph at the close which announced that the prisoners had forfeited their bail, and were supposed to be at large on the Continent. On the third day, however, he saw the coast clear, and taking off his wig and false mustache behind a hedge, he buttoned his greatcoat across the splendour beneath it, and, looking like himself, walked boldly up to the cottage and rang the bell.

“Give that to Lady Lee,” he said to the servant who opened the door, “and say I wait for an answer.”

When Lady Lee opened the note, she read a request from Mr Seager “to grant him a short interview, on a subject of the last importance,” (these words being underlined.)

“Something about the affairs of the wretched Colonel, I suppose,” she said to herself; “shall I admit him? Surely Bagot has forfeited all right to my assistance.” Her eye fell on Julius, and her heart softened. After all, Bagot had done her no irreparable injury. “Take the child away,” she said, “and then admit the person who waits.”

Mr Seager, in full possession of all his brazen assurance, was ushered in. Lady Lee’s look was quite composed, and there was nothing like grief in her aspect. “She’s got over the boy’s loss pretty quickly,” thought Seager.

“Time is precious, my lady,” he said, when he had seated himself; “you’ll excuse me if I come at once to the point, and cut the matter short.”

“Perhaps, when you know what I came about, I shall be more welcome. What if I know of something which nearly concerns you, and which you would give much to hear?”

Lady Lee sat upright on the sofa, and her face assumed a look of anxiety. “What can it be?” she said to herself; and then aloud, “Go on, sir.”

“I must explain that I am peculiarly situated just now, my lady—very peculiarly indeed. I’m leaving the country, and my resources are running very low. This must be my excuse for attaching a condition to the revealing of this secret;—in fact, I am compelled to make a matter of business of it. You can command a good sum, I dare say, such as would be a vast thing to me, without any inconvenience to yourself.”

“But the nature of your information, sir?—the nature of it?” said Lady Lee, her curiosity excited to an extreme degree.

“You see,” said Seager, “you may not have the sum I should require in the house; but I’ll take your note of hand, or I.O.U. I know you’d be honourable, my lady.”

“Hem,” said Mr Seager, clearing his throat, and muttering to himself. “It does look rather heartless, but it can’t be helped. In a word, you had a son who passes for dead—what if I could give tidings of him?”

Lady Lee gave a sigh of relief, and fell back on the sofa. She saw his [Pg 441]error. Mr Seager took it for a sign of agitation, and went on.

“You’ll say, of course, Prove your words? Very well; do you know this handwriting?” He rose, and held a letter before her eyes.

“Well, read a line or two of it,” said Seager, opening it so that one paragraph was visible.

She read—“Hester, we shall never meet again, and I will repair an injury I have done you. Your boy is not dead, he——”

“There,” said Mr Seager, refolding the letter, “that will satisfy you of my good faith. Now, if I give this, containing full information of your son’s whereabouts, what will you give?”

“But,” said Lady Lee, “have you any right to withhold such information?”

“That’s not the question,” said Seager; “we won’t talk about rights. I’ve no time for humbug. In a word, name your figure, or else I put the letter in my pocket, and in six hours I shall be in France. Speak out, and be liberal!”

“Send ’em away,” said Mr Seager; “this matter must be between you and me.”

Lady Lee knew who the intruder was, and going to the door opened it, and admitted Julius.

Lady Lee led Julius to the sofa with something of a smile on her face, and seated him on her lap.

“Well, sir,” she said to Seager, “you forgot to mention the price you set upon a mother’s feelings.”

“Damnation!” muttered Seager; “it’s no go. I’ll be off. Shall I try to get some money out of her for Lee? No, she wouldn’t trust me with it now, and time’s precious. My secret is forestalled,” he said aloud, with a brazen grin. “I’m sorry we couldn’t have made a bargain for it. But you needn’t say you have seen me, my lady—promise you won’t,” he added. “There’s been no harm done, you know.”

Lady Lee rose and rang the bell. Seager made off towards the door, opened it, and turned round. “Don’t mention you saw me,” he repeated; “’twill do no good.”

He was hurrying off, cursing his ill luck, and resolving to continue his flight instantly, when he ran full tilt, in the passage, against the police officer whom he had evaded at the London station. His delay in the attempt to extort money from Lady Lee had been fatal to his plan of escape. The policeman addressed him by name, and told him he was his prisoner. Seager started back, with an exclamation, followed by a muttered curse.

“Got on your scent last night, sir,” said the policeman, “and have been dodging you all the morning. I saw you take off your wig behind the hedge, and knew you in a minute.”

Again Seager began a string of curses in a low tone. Presently he drew forth a pocket-book. “Come,” he said, “you’ll get nothing by my capture—what shall we say, now, for letting me slip? Nobody need ever know you found me.”

“Stuff!” said Seager. “Every man has his price. Why shouldn’t you turn a penny when you can?”

He was still pressing his point, and the officer was getting impatient, when the front door near which they stood opened, and Fane entered from the garden.

“What! Seager!” he cried, on seeing that gentleman—“the very man I want above all others. What brought you here! and who is this?” he asked, looking at the policeman.

“Be so good as to bring your prisoner in here,” said Fane, opening the door of a small room. “I won’t detain you long, and you cannot object to the delay, as it may result in a fresh charge against Mr Seager.”

Seager affected to laugh at this, but felt rather alarmed, nevertheless. His capture had upset all his calculations, and momentarily shaken his habitual confidence in himself.

“Please to attend to this conversation,” Fane said to the police officer. “In the first place, I must tell you, Mr Seager, that your former victim, my cousin Langley Levitt, is now in Frewenham, and that Mr Payne is now in London, investigating the circumstances of the forgery of a certain check on his bank.”

“Ay,” said Seager; “but that doesn’t prove I forged it, or knew it was forged. Can you prove that?”

“I think we can. A person was present when Langley gave it you, and the amount of it was then known. I give you credit for cleverness in your calculations. You knew Langley was resolved to disappear from his family and the world—you calculated that when the forgery should be discovered the matter would be hushed up—and that, while Langley passed as the forger, the fraud would never be known. But now that he has reappeared, and is in communication with his friends, the matter must come to light.”

Mr Seager sullenly shrugged his shoulders. “Well,” said he, “I’m in a hole, and no mistake. I can’t show play for it, since this gentleman has bagged me” (looking at the policeman). “You must take your own course. But,” he added in a low tone, intended exclusively for Fane’s ear, “I can’t understand your interest in detecting me. Haven’t you taken Levitt’s place with your uncle?”

“Well, then,” said Mr Seager, “your line is plain enough. You can say you believe (of course, with great regret), but still, you’re compelled to believe, that your cousin was the forger. Your uncle takes your word for it, and drops the matter—Langley goes to the devil—and you remain sole favourite and heir, don’t you see? So much for that,” whispered Mr Seager, with the air of a man who has put his case incontrovertibly.

Fane smiled as he looked steadily at Seager. “You are a clever rascal, certainly,” he said, “in a small way. You are well acquainted with your own side of human nature, but beyond that you’re in the dark. Dismissing, then, this new and practical view of the case, allow me to offer a suggestion. Our principal object, of course, is justice to Langley rather than revenge on you. A prosecution, though it would probably lead to your conviction, especially now that your character is blasted, would require time, while your confession would at once answer the purpose.”

“Nothing,” said Fane. “A bribe would impair the value of your admissions. But I promise you this, that if you confess, I will use what interest I possess to stop all proceedings against you on account of the forgery. Now,” said he, setting writing materials before him, “take your choice. Silence and prosecution, or confession and impunity.”

Mr Seager pondered for a minute; but he was too shrewd not to see where his advantage lay. He had nothing to lose by confessing—his character was already gone, and could scarcely suffer farther, while a conviction for the forgery might entail transportation. After a very short interval of consideration, he took up a pen. “I’m ready,” he said; “I’ll do it in the penitent style if you like. Prickings of conscience, desire to render tardy reparation, and all that.”

“No,” said Fane, “it shall be simple and genuine; allow me to dictate it.”

This he accordingly did, setting forth—first, that the confession was quite voluntary, and, secondly, admitting the forgery and the circumstances that led to its commission. Seager signed this, and the sergeant and Fane witnessed it, and the latter now desired the officer to remove his prisoner. Mr Seager nodded to Fane, and winked facetiously as he left the room, made a face at the policeman, who preceded him out, and then departed to undergo his sentence.

Fane had already confided Langley’s history to Lady Lee, and he now showed her the testimony of his innocence, and consulted her as to the best course to be pursued.

They agreed it would be best to say nothing, either to Langley or Orelia, of the matter, until Mr Payne should have apprised Mr Levitt of his nephew’s innocence, and effected a reconciliation. Fane did not in the least doubt that his uncle would be eager to extend forgiveness; but a delay of a day or two would be trifling, and the pleasure of a first meeting between the lovers would be greatly enhanced by the removal, beforehand, of every obstacle to their happiness.

Mr Payne, coming down from town to report his ill success in the attempt to discover Seager, was agreeably surprised by Fane’s news. He posted off without delay to show the document to his friend Mr Levitt, and, a couple of days afterwards, wrote to tell Fane that the news had produced the best effect on his uncle’s health, that he was eager to embrace Langley, and that they would be down together in person on the following day.

Fane was seated on a sofa near the fire (it was a cold morning) whispering into Lady Lee’s willing yet averted ear, numerous reckless and persuasive arguments for an immediate union. What were riches to them while they were thus kept apart? He, for his part, would, he said, dig cheerfully all day, could he be sure of finding her ready to give zest to his pottage, cheerfulness to his fireside, when he came home. Let Bagot take her income; and as for Julius, they would take him and flee to some remote corner of Europe, there to abide till the Colonel relented, or had drunk himself to death. Lady Lee smiled at all this display of love, but shook her head. He, Durham, must be patient, she said.

“Miss Payne,” called out Fane to Orelia, “be on my side.” Orelia was sitting in a bay window designing a picture. She seldom came near the fire, and never felt cold. “I am telling Hester that we ought to break through the cobwebs that sunder us—scatter the filthy lucre to the winds—snatch up Julius out of reach of the ogre Bagot, and try if the wings of Eros cannot shield us against the hardest fate.”

“Hester has given up much for you already, Captain Fane,” said the austere Orelia. “Your coming has upset the rarest plan; and now I am left to walk the path alone.”

“We were going, Orelia and I,” said Lady Lee, with an irreverent smile, “to daff the world aside—to devote ourselves to good works—and we actually set out on our thorny path; but I see now, that if we had continued as we begun, casting as we did so many glances backward on the vanities of the past, we should, if justice had been administered now as in the days of the patriarchs, have both been made pillars of salt.”

“Speak for yourself, my dear,” returned Orelia, sharpening her pencil and her tone. “I, at least, was quite resolute to persevere, and am so still.”

“Perhaps an equally unworthy excuse, as that which Hester pleads for changing her mind, may yet avail you,” suggested Fane.

“Do you think she really doesn’t care for Langley?” whispered Fane to Lady Lee.

Lady Lee looked towards her friend with an affectionate smile. “She’s an odd girl,” she said, “and ’tisn’t easy to ascertain her feelings till they are strongly excited.”

“I’ll prove them, now,” said Fane, rising, and going to a portfolio in the room, and taking thence a drawing. “Miss Payne,” he said, “you are always ready to recognise skill in art. See, here is a sketch I lately rescued from the oblivion of a bookseller’s shop; what do you think of it?”

Orelia took it. No one knew better than she the peculiar touch and bold outline. She gazed at it earnestly for a minute—looked up wonderingly and inquiringly at Fane; but, meeting [Pg 444]a peculiar searching glance, she lowered her eyes, and coloured violently.

“If you like it, and would wish others of the same sort, I think I could procure you some,” he said.

Orelia laid down the drawing—glanced aside—again looked at it—then turned her eye uneasily to Lady Lee, who was smilingly watching her. “How very heartless to trifle with me so,” thought Orelia, “particularly of Hester; but I’ll show them they can’t move me. I won’t be their sport.”

So she stoically resumed her employment, feeling very fidgety nevertheless. In her agitation, she shaded a cloud in her sky with sepia instead of the proper grey tint—dashed a brushful of water at it—smudged her whole sky irretrievably, as if an eccentric-looking thunderstorm were brewing—rubbed a hole in the paper in getting it out, and threw down her brush with an expression of impatience.

“He’s a very promising artist the person who did this sketch,” said the unfeeling Fane to Lady Lee. “I feel quite interested in him.” Lady Lee shook her head while she smiled at him. She saw her impetuous friend was getting quite excited. “Serve her right for her hypocrisy,” whispered Fane. “I don’t pity her in the least. They must be in Frewenham by this time,” he added, looking at his watch; “and, allowing an hour for the interview between them and Langley, they will be here to lunch.”

Orelia’s ears were on the stretch to catch any further information, which, however, she would have died rather than ask for.

But the only further talk on the subject was when Fane asked Lady Lee “if she didn’t think it would be a kind act to take this poor artist by the hand, and give him an opening to make his way?”

“Poor artist! Take him by the hand, indeed!” thought Orelia, with a glance of great scorn; and indeed she would hardly have been content to vent her indignation in glances, had not Miss Fillett just then entered, and changed the current of their discourse. Kitty’s manner was excited, and her eyes were red.

“Ho, my lady,” cried she, “here’s Noble have come, and he wish to see your ladyship.”

“Noble!” cried her ladyship; “did they not say he was with Colonel Lee?”

“He was, my lady; but, ho! Colonel Lee”—here Fillett choked. “Harry’ll tell you himself: come in, Noble, and speak to my lady.”

“You come from the Colonel—you have a letter for me,” said Lady Lee, holding out her hand for the expected missive.

“We started for France, me and the Colonel,” said Noble, clearing his throat; “and as soon as ever he got ashore, he was took ill in the same way as he was in London. The doctors said ’twas owing to his not being able to keep nothing on his stomach on the passage across—brandy nor nothing—for the water was very rough.”

“Dead,” said Noble. “He got quite wild when he was took to the hotel; and after we got him to bed, he did himself a mischief, by jumping out of window while he was out of his mind. When we picked him up he couldn’t speak.”

“Not immediate,” said Noble, speaking in a deep low voice, and keeping his eyes fixed firmly on Lady Lee; “he got his speech again for a little, and knowed me. ‘This is the finish, Noble,’ says he, ‘and I’m glad of it; I wouldn’t have consented to live.’ Them was his last sensible words. He talked afterwards, to be sure, but not to know what he was saying. He appeared to be in the belief that he was back at the Heronry. He talked of the horses there, in particular of old Coverly, who died of gripes better than six years ago.”

Lady Lee put her handkerchief to her eyes. She had a tear for poor Bagot. Death sponged away the recollection of his animosity towards [Pg 445]her, and she remembered only the old familiar face and rough good-nature. “The poor Colonel,” she said; “the poor, poor Colonel! And his remains, Noble?”

“There was two gentlemen as was friends of his in the town; Sir John Barrett was one of ’em. They was very sorry; they ordered everything, and went to the funeral; and though it warn’t altogether in the style I could wish—no hearse nor mourners—yet it was done respectable.”

Lady Lee wept silently, and Fane thought her tears became her. Both of them probably remembered that the only obstacle to their union was removed by Bagot’s death, but the taste of both was too fine to allow such a thought to be expressed that day in any way. “Leave me now, Noble,” she said; “I will hear more from you another time.”

Kitty—who, when Noble reached the catastrophe, had been seized with an hysterical weeping that sounded like a succession of small sneezes—opened the door for him, and followed him out. Noble walked down stairs before her, not turning his head nor speaking.

“I thought we were friends, Noble,” said Miss Fillett, taking up the corner of her apron, and examining it.

“There’s people in the world one can’t be friends with, however a body may wish it,” replied Noble.

“And am I one of that sort, Harry?” said Kitty, with a sidelong look. “Am I, Harry?”

“Yes,” said Harry, “yes, you be. Look here! I’d have cut off my arm to do you any good” (striking it with the edge of his hand). “You know that very well, but I can’t stand your ways—no, I can’t, and I ain’t agoing to any more.”

“What ways do you mean?” said Miss Fillett innocently; “I’m sorry my ways isn’t pleasant, Harry.”

“Pleasant!” said Harry; “they can be pleasant enough when you like; but when you drive a man a’most crazy, and make him wish to cut his fellow-creeturs’ throats, and his own afterwards, do you think that’s pleasant?”

Kitty at this tossed up her head, and sniffed with an injured air. “If I give you such thoughts as them, Mr Noble, of course ’tis better to have nothink to say to me. I wasn’t aware my conversation made people murderers.”

“Look here,” said Noble; “I don’t say I like you the worse for it. No, cuss it! I like you the better—that’s the cussed part of it; but what I mean is, that I ain’t going to be tormented and kept awake at nights, and to lose my meals as well as my sleep, and to go a-hating my fellow-creeturs, just upon account of your philanderings; and the best way is not to care who you philander with, and to leave you to keep company with them as can stand having the life worried out of ’em better than I can.”

“I’m glad you’ve spoke out, Noble,” said Kitty, who spied relenting in his look, and who kept up the injured air. “I didn’t know I was such a rogue and a villain as I’m made out to be by you. If I’d wished to slay or hang somebody, you couldn’t have spoke worse of me.”

“Well,” said Noble, “I didn’t mean to vex you, though you’ve vexed me many a time. I was only saying why it was I warn’t going to be fooled any longer. Come, I’ll shake hands with you.”

“Ho, what! take the hand of a young person that wishes people to cut other people’s throats! I wonder at you,” said Miss Fillett, allowing him to get only the tip of her little finger into his hand.

“Come,” said the unhappy victim of female arts, “say you won’t torment me any more with talking and smiling at fellows, and I’ll be as fond of you as ever. Look here; here’s some French gloves that I smuggled over, and was going to put into your bandbox without your knowing who they’d come from. Let me try ’em on, Kitty.”

Miss Fillett glanced aside at the packet displayed in his hand. “What lovely colours!” thought Kitty; “that lilac is genteel, and so is the straw [Pg 446]colour. He never could have chose ’em himself.” But she still feigned displeasure, and Mr Noble’s desire for reconciliation was becoming proportionably ardent, when the pair were disturbed by a carriage driving up to the door, and made off to terminate the interview in the kitchen.

The carriage in question contained those whom Fane expected—viz., Mr Payne, Mr Levitt, and Langley. The latter helped out his uncle (who appeared to be in much better health) with a care and affection that showed they were entirely reconciled. At the first meeting Mr Levitt had attempted to maintain his cynical demeanour, and was highly disgusted with himself, afterwards, to remember how signally he had failed. “Till I witnessed that meeting,” said Mr Payne afterwards to Fane, “I had no idea how much your uncle loved that boy.”

Fane was looking out of the window, and saw them approach. “Here they are,” he said—“your papa, Miss Payne, and my uncle; and I see my cousin Langley is with them. Have you ever heard me speak of him? I think you’ll like him.”

“Do you, indeed!” said Orelia stiffly; for she had by no means recovered her temper since the drawings had been produced by Fane, and was not disposed to be particularly amiable to her new guests.

“I bring an old and a young friend of mine, my dear. This is Mr Levitt, and—where’s Langley? Come along, Langley.”

“Yes,” said the ex-dragoon, in a low voice, and with his well-known smile, “Onslow and Langley Levitt.”

“You didn’t know, sir,” said Fane to his uncle, “of the fatted calf we had ready for your prodigal nephew. He and Orelia are old friends—I think I may add, something more than old friends.”

“You don’t say so!” said Mr Levitt, pressing forward and taking both Orelia’s hands in his. “My dear,” he said, watching Langley’s and her agitation, “I believe you are going to put the finishing stroke to my happiness, and I shall like you better even than I expected.”

“Why, God bless me!” cried Mr Payne, “I never heard a word of this. The monkey has been extremely sly.”

Orelia, now a little paler than usual, was regarding her lover with steady eyes.

“I shall never call you anything but Onslow,” she said; and she kept her word.

Mr Levitt was in every respect satisfied with the choice of his nephews, as indeed he had good reason to be. What did the man expect, I wonder! He was almost as impatient as the young men to put all future disappointment out of the power of fate by immediate marriage; and as the ladies did not offer a very spirited resistance, he had his way.

Accordingly the courtship was short, and principally remarkable for a revolution that took place in the opinions of Lady Lee. Formerly, she had been accustomed, in the moments of dignified cynicism which occasionally visited her, to be very unsparing in her contempt for the ordinary forms of love-making; kissing, in particular, she considered to be a practice even beneath contempt, from its extreme silliness—fit, she would say, only for children—an opinion she had occasionally communicated to Sir Joseph when his fondness became troublesome.

This, however, with many graver theories, had been upset since she fell in love with Fane. The first time he kissed her it evaporated in an uncommon flutter of not unpleasant emotion, which puzzled her ladyship the more because she perfectly remembered that a kiss from Sir Joseph had never caused her to feel any greater agitation than if she had flattened her nose against a pane of glass.

However, to do justice to her consistency, she didn’t abandon the theory at the first defeat; but, taking counsel with herself, and fortifying her mind anew with reasoning on the subject, the next time he offered to be so childish, she repelled the attempt with a great deal of dignity. Fane, who had a theory of his own on such matters (whether the result of intuition [Pg 447]or experience, I can’t say), and knew what he was about perfectly, very wisely let her alone for a time. Her ladyship grew quite fidgety; and though Fane had never been more brilliant, she paid very little attention to what he said, and, when he only shook hands with her at parting, felt half inclined to quarrel with him. After this, Fane never met with any resistance; on the contrary, not content with one of these silly proceedings at meeting and parting, her ladyship would sometimes manœuvre, artfully enough, for an extra or surplus salute. Such is the singular superiority of practice over theory.

Very shocking and humiliating to the philosopher and student of human nature is the fact, that these two intellectual beings, with their high imaginations and their cultivated tastes, should sometimes, during their courtship, demean themselves with no greater regard for their dignity than a redfaced dairymaid and her sweetheart Robin. But it is true, nevertheless; and if Fane discovered a fresh charm in his goddess, it was in the naïve pleasure with which she condescended (at least he thought it condescension) to express her fondness. And Langley, for the same reason, was doubly delighted with the warmth which the outwardly majestic Orelia did not scruple to display towards the man to whom she had given her heart. This is all I shall say on this part of the subject, as courtship is of the class of performances which afford much more satisfaction to the dramatis personæ than the audience.

They were married, these two pairs, in the church which Hester’s father had formerly served; and afterwards Fane and she set off for the Heronry, where they were quite alone (for Rosa and the Curate had, before their coming, gone to take possession of the vicarage in Mr Levitt’s gift which Fane had formerly offered to Josiah, and which he did not again refuse), while Langley and Orelia stayed at the cottage.

It is a vile practice that of winding up a story with a marriage, as if the sole object of all that inkshed was to put a couple of characters to bed; and I wonder the rigid propriety of our novel writers and readers doesn’t revolt at it. Besides, considering the matter on artistic grounds, it is not satisfactory to check, by the chilling word Finis, the ardour of the reader, just excited to a high pitch at the spectacle of the hero and heroine sinking into each other’s arms. It is like quitting the opera, as the curtain falls on a splendid group, tinted with rose light, while the whole strength of the company sings a chorus; and going splashing home through the rain to a bachelor’s lodging, where the maid has let the fire out and forgot the matches, and you have to stumble to bed punchless and oysterless in the dark.

A year passed, after the marriages aforesaid, and a party, including many of our principal characters, was assembled in the little church of Lanscote to celebrate another wedding.

Josiah was the officiating clergyman; he had come partly for that purpose, partly to perform another ceremony. The persons to be joined together in holy matrimony, on this occasion, were Rosa and Bruce.

The principal agent in effecting this had been the old antiquary Mr Titcherly. That lover of inscriptions had now become himself the subject of a tombstone; and having, as aforesaid, great regard for Bruce, and having no kindred of his own to bequeath to, had in his will, after making ample provision for the future editions of his great work on the antiquities of Doddington, left the rest of his property, amounting to about £4000, to Rosa, on condition she married Bruce; and this, together with the solicitations of his wife, who had been gained over to the other party by Bruce’s enthusiastic description of Rosa’s excellencies, had melted the heart of that splendid old fellow the dean of Trumpington. That reverend personage was now present at the wedding, together with his wife, and Dr Macvino, who had dined the night before at the Heronry, and pronounced the port excellent.

Fane gave away the little magnificent bride, half hidden in an ample rich veil of white lace sent by Orelia, which cost nobody knows how much. Bruce was in his dragoon uniform. His mustache had flourished much in the last year, and Rosa thought him handsomer than Apollo. Langley was there, and Mr Oates appeared as groom’s man, and the two Clumbers as bridesmaids.

The ceremony was over, the bridegroom duly shaken by the hand, the bride, all blush and bloom and smile, duly kissed. The Curate, leaving the altar, took up his position beside the antique font, and the group following him, and ranging themselves round, lost the gorgeous hues which the one painted window above the altar of Lanscote Church had shed on them during the marriage ceremony; and, as the Curate began the baptismal service, they stood in the cheerful light of the morning sun.

The principal personage of this second ceremony had been held, during the first one, in the arms of Miss Fillett in the background. Kitty, who looked rather staid and matronly, in consequence of having been married to Mr Noble a few weeks before, and who had hitherto, in this new capacity, acquitted herself entirely to Harry’s satisfaction, dandled the infant in the most approved fashion. “Have done, Master Julius,” said Kitty, giving that young gentleman a good shake as he attempted to rush up the pulpit-stairs. “Can’t you behave for a minute, not even when they are a-baptising of your little sister?”

The preliminary part of the service being read, the infant was handed to Josiah. He took it gently in his arms, and looked down on its small face, where he saw the rudiments of Hester’s features. The service was for a moment at a standstill, and a tear was seen to drop on the child’s cheek as he bent over it—the first holy water that touched its face that morning. “Good fellow, old Josey,” thought Fane, as he noticed it. “Poor dear Josiah!” mentally ejaculated Hester, with a truer though secret knowledge of the source of his emotion.

The dean of Trumpington hemmed impatiently—he wanted his breakfast; and the sympathetic Doctor Macvino, going behind Josiah, jogged his arm. The Curate started from his reverie, and looked around. “Name this child,” he said, proceeding with the ritual.

“Rosa Orelia,” answered the bride, who officiated as one godmother, while Trephina Clumber was proxy for Orelia (who was detained at home by private business of her own.)

The christening was finished without further delay. Then the assembly passed forth from the old ivy-covered porch, and, amid the admiration and applause of the inhabitants of Lanscote, entered their carriages to drive back to the Heronry.

The breakfast was pronounced by Dr Macvino, by no means an incompetent judge, a magnificent affair. Speeches were made afterwards—one jocosely cynical, and sprinkled with puns, by Mr Levitt; one gay, fluent, and agreeable, from Captain O’Reilly, a fresh-coloured man, with white teeth, who had succeeded Tindal in command of the detachment, and who had practised popular oratory at various contested elections; one rich and oily, delivered ore rotundo, by Dr Macvino, with some others.

The newly-married pair had driven off; the guests had dispersed; even the Curate had, in despite of the urgent entreaties of Hester and Durham, inexorably departed. Fane and his wife were alone together in the library.

“I told you yesterday, Hester,” he said, leaning over the back of her chair, “of the opening into public life now offered me. My answer must be written to-night.”

“I thought we had been very happy this year past. I knew I had, and I flattered myself you had; but you are weary of me;” and, as she spoke, the first sad tears since her marriage came into her eyes.

“I swear to you,” he said, removing the tears in the readiest way that occurred to him—“I swear to you that I would rather live the past year over again than the best ten others of my existence. But what right have I to continue this life of pleasant uselessness, when I may exert myself?”

“Uselessness!” said his wife; “do you call being my companion and instructor uselessness?”

“You have a new companion now in that young Christian of yours, whom I hear squalling,” said Fane; “she will prevent you from missing me. As to the instruction part, I have learnt as much as I could teach for the life of me. If I have widened your mind, you have no less refined mine; and, could I but rid myself of a certain uneasy conviction that we are both of us accountable beings, I would contentedly let the world slide for ever as softly and easily as now. But is this unproductive interchange of sentiment, however elevated and refined, fit to be the sole occupation of a man who can be up and doing?”

Hester sighed. “You force me,” said she, “to look at a truth I would willingly shut my eyes to. One other year would not tire you, Durham; put it off for one—only one.”

“But the opportunity would be gone,” said Fane. “Come, make up your mind to it, and you will acknowledge next year that, in watching my career, applauding my success, if I meet with it, soothing my disappointments when they find me, you have new and worthier occupation.”

Hester disputed no farther; he wrote the letter of acceptance; and next year she acknowledged that she was growing more ambitious for him than he was for himself.

The Curate did not remain long in the living to which Mr Levitt had presented him. An incident that occurred in the second year of his incumbency gave him a disgust at the place. A female parishioner, of tolerably mature years, made a dead set at Josiah. She had experiences to impart; she took share in his parochial matters; she even studied botany; and the unsuspecting Josiah was the only person who didn’t penetrate her designs on his heart. When the fair one found these would certainly fail, she brought an action for breach of promise; and the evidence being about as strong as that in the celebrated case of Bardell versus Pickwick, the jury, as Englishmen and fathers, of course found for the plaintiff, with £200 damages. About that time Dean Bruce, in consideration of the family connection, managed to get Josiah elected canon of the cathedral; and in course of time he became a prebend. He has a good house and capital garden; his study is one of the pleasantest rooms to be found anywhere, with a cloistered air about it, the pointed window all hung with ivy, looking on the great window of the cathedral, and on one of the buttressed towers. He has an ancient married housekeeper, who looks faithfully after his comforts; he entertains his friends nobly when they come to see him (his small but choice cellar was laid in by Dr Macvino); the great library of the cathedral is within a few paces of his door, where he is treated by the librarian with more deference than the bishop himself; and when he needs change he goes down to the Heronry. Time softens the acuteness of his disappointment in love, and the recollection of it now brings a not unpleasant sadness.

Poor old Josey!—after all, perhaps the most loveable and respectable of our dramatis personæ—more so, at least, than our heroes, whose more discursive natures included some corners which they would probably have been unwilling that even their wives should pry into; whereas Josiah’s heart might have been turned page by page; and, while much might have been found to interest, there would have been little to correct, and nothing to blot. But somehow or other, women do not seem always to give such unobtrusive merits the highest place in their affections. Orelia and Lady Lee were, as we have seen, among the number; and many young ladies will, we doubt not, understand and sympathise with their errors of judgment.

A day or two after Rosa’s marriage, Hester got a letter from Orelia. “Mine is a girl too,” she said, “and I’ve set my heart on her marrying Julius when they are of a proper age. You must promise to forward the project, Hester.” And as young persons invariably allow their parents to choose for them on these points, and never presume to form any counter predilections of their own, there is, of course, every prospect that Orelia’s desire will be gratified.

Major Tindal did not easily forgive [Pg 450]Orelia’s marriage, nor forget his own discomfiture. He remains a sporting, hard-riding bachelor; and when one of his acquaintances marries, he affects to pity him. “Poor devil!” he says, “I’ll write and condole with him.”

Mr Seager, coming out of jail at the end of two years, found himself without money, friends, or character. He could not, of course, resume his old position; but Seager was not proud, and fitted himself with admirable facility to a new one. He started in the thimble-rig line, that being a profession requiring little other capital than dexterity and a knowledge of human nature under its more credulous and pigeonable aspect. He augments the income derived from this source by that which he earns as a racing prophet. He advertises that he, Seager, is the only man who can foretell the winners of all the great events; asserts that he has hitherto been infallible; and professes his readiness to let correspondents enjoy a lucrative peep into the future, on their enclosing a specified number of postage stamps. From such shifts as these he ekes out a living.

Bagot could not have lived so; and is better as he is, sleeping under his foreign turf. In the grave he preserves a kind of incognito, and when called upon to answer for his deeds, may certainly plead a misnomer; for the French stone-mason who carved his unpretending tombstone, taking the name of the deceased from dictation, Gallicised it, and inscribed on the monument “Ci-gît Monsieur le Colonel Bagote-Lys.”

Another marriage had been celebrated in Lanscote Church a short time before Rosa’s. Jennifer Greene had brought her arts and experience to bear with more effect on Squire Dubbley than on the Curate. The thoroughly subjugated Squire, after being compelled to see all the females of his establishment, under fifty years of age, replaced by the most withered frumps to be found in those parts, had yielded to his fate. His adviser, Mr Randy, had been previously disposed of.

Jennifer had no sooner established her ascendancy, than she proceeded to exert it in the expulsion of Mr Randy. Thus alone in power, she was not long in convincing the Squire that she was quite necessary to his existence, and his sole defence against a horde of plunderers. The Squire, moreover, was impressed by the good looks of the housekeeper, to which the Curate had been so insensible; and the grand attack, which had only harassed Josiah, had laid the unprotected Squire at her feet.

Lady Lee, I am loth to lose you! Not with this page will your form pass rustling out of sight. But, reader, her independent life has ceased—her thoughts are now centred in the career of another—and a chronicle of her deeds and aspirations would be a mere repetition of, to you, humdrum happiness. Her restlessness, and discontent, and languor are no more; she has lost even the memory of these since the event which, like this last sentence of my last chapter, has put a period to Lady Lee’s Widowhood.

Before finishing the business of the old MS. corrector, we may be permitted to dispose of a case, very small, indeed, but somewhat personal to ourselves, and arising out of these discussions. In Notes and Queries, p. 169 (August 20, 1853), the following remark occurs: “The critic in Blackwood disclaims consulting Notes and Queries; and it is, no doubt, a convenient disclaimer.” Good Notes and Queries, we simply regretted that it was not in our power to consult your pages when writing our first article on the New Readings. We wished to have been able to confirm, or rather to complete, a reference to you which Mr Singer had made in his Vindication of Shakespeare. But unfortunately your volumes were not at hand; for you need scarcely be told that we provincials cannot always readily command the wisdom which emanates from your enlightened circle. But why was it “a convenient disclaimer?” Good old ladies, you surely cannot think that we would purloin your small savings; we would sooner rob the nest of a titmouse. No, no; believe us, we have no heart for that. We did, however, at first, fear that we had inadvertently picked a small morsel—perhaps its little all—out of the mouth of a sparrow; and our heart smote us for the unintentional unkindness. We were prepared to make any amends in our power to the defrauded little chirper. We have been at some pains to discover in what we may have wronged any of your mild fraternity, provocative of the polite insinuation implied in your epithet “convenient,” and we find that we are as innocent as Uncle Toby with his fly. We have not hurt, even undesignedly, a single hair upon your buzzing head.

We had no doubt, at first, that our offence must have been the expression of some little hint about Shakespeare in which we had been anticipated by Notes and Queries. And accordingly, insignificant as the point might be—still knowing what a small nibble is a perfect fortune to that minute fry—we were prepared to acknowledge publicly their priority of claim to anything we might have said, and to stomach their not very handsome appellative as we best might. But how stands the case?—thus. Some time near the beginning of August, Icon asks Notes and Queries—“Has any one suggested, ‘Most busy, when least I do?’—(Tempest, iii. i.) The ‘it’ seems surplusage.” (The complete line, we should mention, is—“Most busy, least when I do it.”) That is a very plain question, and Notes and Queries answers it, at first, correctly enough—“Yes,” says he, “this reading was proposed in Blackwood’s Magazine for August;” that is, some time before the query was put. Notes and Queries then goes on to say—“But Icon will also find the same reading with an anterior title of nearly three years, together with some good reasons for its adoption, in Notes and Queries, vol. ii. p. 338.” Here, then, we had no doubt that we had been anticipated, and were quite ready to make restitution; for Notes and Queries’ answer seems decisive. But stop a little; just give him time to get his ideas into disorder, and we shall see what will turn up. He goes on to say—“In the original suggestion in Notes and Queries, there is no presumption of surplusage; the word ‘it’ is understood in relation to labours.” So that this is the position of Notes and Queries: he is asked—Has the word “it” ever been left out of a certain line in Shakespeare? Yes, answers he, it was left out in a reading proposed in our volumes three years ago, and identical with one lately published in Blackwood—the only difference, he adds, sotto voce, between the two readings being, that in ours the word “it” is not left out, while in Blackwood’s it is!

So that, after all, our whole offence consists in not having been anticipated in this reading by Notes and Queries. But we cannot help that. Why should he punish us for his own want of sagacity? We appeal to an impartial public to take up the cause of injured [Pg 452]innocence against this oppressor, throughout whose pages we observe a good deal of nibbling at the text of Shakespeare. The teeth-marks of the little vermin are just perceptible on the bark of that gigantic trunk; and the traces which they leave behind are precisely such as a mouse might make upon a cheese the size of Ben Lomond. But we have not, like Shakespeare, the hide of a tree or a rhinoceros; nor are we, like him, a mountain three thousand feet high. The small incisor has consequently grazed our outer cuticle, and we should like to know what can have provoked our puny assailant to question,—not our competency to review the old MS. corrector, for this too he does, and this he is at perfect liberty to do; his doing it is a matter with which we have no concern—but to impeach our disposition to deal fairly and honestly towards himself and all others interested in the new readings. This, we say, he is not at liberty to do without very good cause being shown. Most gladly, to get rid of the little nibbler, would we have given up to him this reading, and any other pittances of the kind, to increase his small stock in trade. But he cannot make out any title to the reading. He tries, indeed, hard to believe that it is actually his—he coaxes it to come to him, he whistles to it, but no—the reading knows its own master, and will not go near him; whereupon he gets angry, and bites us. He charges us with finding it convenient to ignore his wisdom—that is, with being ignorant of something in his pages, which, however, he confesses is not to be found within any of their four corners. But even supposing that all which Notes and Queries implies we are guilty of could be made out—only conceive its being convenient for a man not to know—that is, to pretend ignorance—of something which may have been written on Shakespeare, or on any other subject, by these commentators on “Here we go, up, up, up,” &c.! There is a complication of absurdity in the idea which it is not easy to unravel, and which defies all power of face. For one of themselves to have said that it might be convenient for a man to know and profit by their small sayings and doings, would have been ludicrous enough; but how any man should find a convenience—that is to say, an advantage—in not knowing, or rather in pretending not to know, how this innocent people are employing themselves—this is a conception which, in point of naïveté, appears to us to be unequalled by anything out of Æsop’s Fables. How would it do for them to call themselves “Gnats and Queries?” We recommend that new reading to their consideration.

We are not sure, however, that this small community is so very innocent after all. Connected with this very reading, “Most busy,” &c., they have been guilty of as much mala fides as can be concentrated upon a point so exceedingly minute. To propose a new reading without having the remotest conception of its meaning, is to deserve no very great credit as a critic; yet this is what Gnats and Queries has done. He (or one of his many pin-heads symbolised by A. E. B.), saw (Gnats and Queries, vol. ii. p. 338) that the construction of the line was, “Most busy, when least I do it”—or, as he explains it, “Most busy, when least employed.” But how does he explain that, again?—he actually makes the word “busy” apply to Ferdinand’s thoughts. He says, “Is it not those delicious thoughts (of Miranda) ‘most busy’ in the pauses of (Ferdinand’s) labour, making those pauses still more refreshing and renovating?” So it seems that the thoughts of Miranda refresh, not Ferdinand’s labours, but his idleness; and that he is “most busy” in thinking upon her, not when he is hardest at work, but when he is sitting with his hands across. As if that circumstance would have been any motive for him to go to work: it would have been the very contrary. It would have kept him from his labour. If this be not the most senseless reversal of Shakespeare’s plain meaning ever proposed by any mole-eyed interpreter, we promise to eat Mr Collier’s old MS. corrector without salt. Yet A. E. B. claims to himself credit for having, to some extent, anticipated our new reading; to the extent, that is, of seeing that the word when should be placed (in construing) before the word least. But what does that signify, when he had not the remotest inkling of the meaning? More [Pg 453]than that. The true and only meaning of the line was thoroughly explained in Blackwood’s Magazine for August last, p. 186. A. E. B. has seen that explanation—yet he still not only takes credit for the new reading, but he makes no apology for his antecedent senselessness. We call that mala fides. And further, he aggravates the criminality of his dulness by referring to a passage in Cicero (quoted in Gnats and Queries, vol. iii. p. 229), which has no bearing whatever on the reading, and can only serve to throw the reader off the true scent. Altogether, for so small a matter, this is as complicated a case of stupidity, and of something worse, as ever came under the notice of the public. We may just add, what we only recently discovered, that Mr Collier had inserted the original text of the line, “Most busy, least when I do it,” in his edition of Shakespeare published some ten years ago; but then he deserves just as little credit for this as A. E. B. does; because his note, as might very easily be shown, and as will be apparent to any one who reads it along with Blackwood’s Magazine, p. 186, is directly at variance with his text.

But we have kept the old Corrector too long waiting. Begging pardon, we shall now attend to his interests, taking him mildly in hand,—at least at first.

Titus Andronicus.—Act I. Scene 2.—To change “set abroad” into set abroach may be permissible; but it is not necessary. In the following line (Act II. Scene 1) the alteration is most decidedly for the worse:⁠—

“Dreadful” is altered by the MS. corrector to dreadless—a very unpoetical, indeed senseless substitution.

We cannot accept the corrector’s rhyming phraseology in Act II. Scene 2. No man has any business to rewrite Shakespeare after this fashion. The liberty which this scourer of the old text here takes with the play is just another of the numerous proofs that his design was, not to restore their language, but merely to popularise it. Dine, however, for “drive,” in the line,

is a very sensible emendation, and one which we are disposed to recommend for the text, “drive” being very probably a misprint. Possibly also “breeder” (Act IV. Scene 2) may be a misprint for burthen, which the corrector proposes, and to which we have no very great objection. The best part of the change of the words, “Not far one Muliteus” into “not far hence Muli lives,” is due to Steevens: the MS. corrector’s contribution being very unimportant.

Act IV. Scene 4.—The flow of the following line, as printed in the common editions, is much more easy and idiomatic,

Nothing further of any mark or likelihood presents itself in the corrections of this play. The emendations are generally insignificant; but in one instance, and perhaps two, they may deserve some approbation.

Romeo and Juliet.—Act I. Scene 1.—We never can accept puffed in lieu of “purged” in the lines⁠—

Urged, as proposed by Johnson, is infinitely better than puffed; but no change is required.

In the following lines, the MS. corrector’s amendment seems to us to be no improvement either upon the common or the original text. The text of the quarto 1597 is this (Romeo is speaking of Rosaline)⁠—

that is, disenchanted. The ordinary reading is “unharm’d” for “uncharmed,” and it affords a very excellent and obvious sense. The MS. corrector proposes encharmed—i. e. enchanted. But if any one is dissatisfied with “unharmed,” we think he will do more wisely to fall back on the primitive reading, rather than espouse [Pg 454]the MS. corrector’s emendation. It seems more natural to say that a person is disenchanted from the power of love by the shield of chastity, than to say that she is enchanted therefrom by means of that protection.

The following remark by Mr Collier puzzles us excessively. Scene 4, in the fine description of Queen Mab, this line occurs⁠—

But “courtiers” have been already mentioned. “To avoid this repetition,” says Mr Collier, “Pope read ‘lawyer’s nose;’ but while shunning one defect he introduced another, for though the double mention of ‘courtiers’ is thus avoided, it occasions the double mention of lawyers. In what way, then, does the old corrector take upon himself to decide the question? He treats the second ‘courtiers’ as a misprint for a word which, when carelessly written, is not very dissimilar⁠—

That counsellors,” continues Mr Collier, “and their interest in suits at court, should be thus ridiculed, cannot be thought unnatural.” But are not counsellors lawyers? and is not this precisely the same blunder as that which Mr Collier condemns Pope for having fallen into? Surely Queen Mab must have been galloping to some purpose over Mr Collier’s nob, when he forgot himself thus marvellously. It seems that there must be a repetition, and therefore it is better to let it fall on the word “courtiers” than on the word “lawyers,” or its synonym, counsellors,—for “courtiers” is the original text.

Act II. Scene 2.—We are so wedded to the exquisite lines about “the winged messenger of heaven,”

that it is with the utmost unwillingness we consent even to the smallest change in their expression. But it seems that “lazy-puffing” (an evident misprint) is the reading of the old editions; and this goes far to prove that lazy-passing (the MS. correction) is the genuine word—the long ſſ having been mistaken by the compositor for ff. Although as a matter of taste, perhaps of association, we prefer “lazy-pacing,” still lazy-passing is very good, and we have little doubt that it is the authentic reading. We agree also with Mr Collier in thinking that “unbusied youth” for “unbruised youth” (Act II. Scene 3) comes, as he says, “within the class of extremely plausible emendations.” “Weak dealing” (Scene 4), in the mouth of the nurse, may very well be a malapropism for “wicked dealing,” and therefore the text ought not to be disturbed. The MS. corrector is, perhaps, right in his alteration of the line about Juliet’s cheeks (Scene 5), where the nurse says⁠—

For “straight at any,” he reads, “straightway at my.” But the point would require further consideration before the change can be recommended, with certainty, for the text.

Act III. Scene 2.—In this scene there occurs one of the most disputed passages in the whole of Shakespeare, and one on which conjectural emendation and critical explanation have expended all the resources both of their ingenuity and their stupidity, without reaching any very memorable result, except in one instance, which we are about to mention with hearty commendation. The difficulty presents itself in the lines where Juliet says⁠—

Who is “Runaway”? He is a printer’s (not devil but) blunder, says the old corrector; we should read enemies. Those may read enemies who choose. We certainly shall not—no, not even at the bidding of Queen Victoria herself. We shall not turn ourselves into a goose to please the ghost of an old amateur play-corrector, though he should keep rapping at us till his knuckles are worn out. Read Rumourers, says Mr Singer. No, Mr Singer, we will not read Rumourers. Read this thing, and read that thing, say other wise authorities: no, gentlemen, we shall not read anything except what Shakespeare wrote, and we know for certain that the word which he wrote was “Runaway’s,” just as it stands in the books; for we learnt this from a medium;—yes, [Pg 455]and the medium was the Rev. Mr Halpin, who, in the “Shakespeare Society’s Papers,” vol. ii., has proved to our entire satisfaction that the text calls for, and indeed admits of, no alteration. There could not be a happier-chosen or more expressive word than “Runaway’s,” as here employed.

Mr Halpin rather fritters away his argument, and is not very forcible; but, coupled with one’s own reflections, he is altogether convincing. The salient points of the argument may be presented shortly as follows: First, “Runaway” holds the text: he has the title which accrues from actual possession. Secondly, there cannot be a doubt that Runaway is the general and classical sobriquet for “Cupid.” Thirdly, Cupid was a most important personage in all epithalamia. Fourthly, important character though he was, he could not be altogether depended on for secresy; and therefore, fifthly, it was highly desirable, for various considerations (at least so thought Juliet), that the night should be so dark that even Cupid should not be able to see very far beyond the point of his own nose; in order, sixthly, that he might not be able to tell tales, or “talk” of what he had “seen.”

That is the first or main portion of the argument. It proceeds on the supposition that Cupid has eyes. In that case, says Juliet, it will be highly proper that he should “wink;” and as there can be no certainty that the little rascal will do so, unless he cannot see, it is further highly desirable that the night should be as black as the brows of John Nox himself. The second and merely auxiliary part of the argument proceeds on the supposition that Cupid has no eyes—“Or,” says Juliet, a little farther on—“or if Love (i. e. Cupid) be blind;” why, then, so much the better; “it best agrees with night;” in other words, a blind Cupid is fully a safer master of ceremonies than is, all things considered, one that can see.

Finally, supposing the Cupid here referred to, to be not a blind but a seeing one, will any person inform us what can be the meaning of the “winking Cupids” spoken of in Cymbeline, II. 4, unless “winking” was, at times, a very important duty on the part of this functionary? Unless this was part of his office, the words referred to have no meaning whatever. It seems to have been considered by our poets, and also by the world at large, as highly becoming—indeed, as absolutely necessary—that a seeing Cupid should possess a marvellous alacrity in “winking,” brought about either by his own sense of the essential fitnesses of things, or by what some moralists have termed the feeling of propriety, or by the darkness of the circumambient night. The latter was the interposing medium to which Juliet chiefly trusted. Who can now doubt that Cupid is “Runaway,” and that “Runaway” was Shakespeare’s word? We have omitted to say anything in explanation of the classical nickname. One word may suffice. The urchin was constantly running away from the apron-strings of his mother Venus, and getting himself into scrapes.

Act III. Scene 5.—The MS. alteration of “brow” into bow is by no means a manifest improvement in the lines where Romeo says⁠—

Why should “Cynthia’s brow” be not as unexceptionable an expression as the “morning’s eye”? To take the words, “These are news indeed!” from Juliet, and to give them to Lady Capulet, is to spoil the consistency of the dialogue. This alteration proves that the old corrector has been no very attentive student of his great master. Lady Capulet says to her daughter Juliet⁠—

She then informs her that the gallant Count Paris is to make her a joyful bride “early next Thursday morn.” Juliet protests against the match, and winds up by exclaiming, “These are news indeed!”—the most natural and appropriate observation which could be made in the circumstances. Yet Mr Collier calls the MS. correction which assigns these words to Lady Capulet a “judicious arrangement.”

Act IV. Scene 2.—Becoming love for “becomed love,” is a specimen of the corrector’s system of modernising the text.

which Mr Collier defends on the ground of what follows in Romeo’s speech:⁠—

But if the “death,” of which the corrector supposes Romeo to speak, has any reference to the death of which he has dreamt, what a ludicrous and unmeaning epithet the word “flattering” is! Flattering death! Why flattering? It is the most senseless adjunct that could be employed in the place. It was his revival from death by the kisses of Juliet that formed the “flattering” part of his dream. This emendation, therefore, must be dismissed as a most signal failure. Mr Singer’s suggestion, though not necessary, is better. He reads, “the flattering soother sleep.” But the text ought to be allowed to stand as it is. “The flattering truth of sleep” merely means—the pleasing truth promised to me in dreams.

Scene 3.—We conclude our observation on this play with the remark, that there is no necessity whatever for changing “outrage” into outcry in the line where the Prince says⁠—

All who are present have been driven nearly distracted by the tragedies they are called upon to witness, and therefore the meaning undoubtedly is—“seal up the mouth of distraction for a while,”

Timon of Athens.—Act I. Scene 1.—The commentators have been very generally at fault in their dealings with the following line. The cynical Apemantus says⁠—

Warburton proposed, “that I had so hungry a wit to be a lord.” Monk Mason suggested, “that I had an angry wish to be a lord.” The MS. corrector, combining these two readings, gives us, “that I had so hungry a wish to be a lord.” Dr Johnson says, “The meaning may be—I should hate myself for patiently enduring to be a lord. This is ill enough expressed. Perhaps some happy change may set it right. I have tried and can do nothing, yet I cannot heartily concur with Dr Warburton.” Warburton’s emendation is substantially the same as the MS. corrector’s—and therefore we have Dr Johnson’s verdict against its admissibility. His own interpretation is unquestionably right, although he gave it with great hesitation. No change whatever is required. The passage is perfectly plain if we take “to be” as standing for “in being.” “That I had no angry wit in being a lord.” It is the pleasure and pride of my life to cherish a savage disposition; but in consenting to be a lord I should show that I had in a great measure foregone this moroseness of nature—and therefore “I should hate myself, because I could have had no angry wit, no splenetic humour upon me, when I consented to be a lord.”

Scene 2.—Dr Delius (of whom favourable mention has been made in our second article) deals very sensibly with the following case. “At Timon’s table,” says he, “Apemantus declares himself to be a water-drinker, because water, unlike strong drink, never leads a man into crime. He says⁠—

The old corrector, hankering after rhymes, changes ‘sinner’ into fire. But had Apemantus indulged in such an unutterable platitude at Timon’s banquet, as the remark that water was not fire, the rest of the guests would most assuredly have turned him to the door. What shall we say when we find Mr Collier seriously believing that Shakespeare’s word was fire!”⁠[14] Well done, Doctor!

Act II. Scene 2.—A construction very similar to the one we lately met with (to be, for in being) occurs in the following lines, which certainly require no amendment. Flavius, Timon’s steward, complaining of his master’s extravagance, says that he

“To take no reserve” is surely more awkward and ungrammatical than the language which Shakespeare employs. And as for the substitution surely, it is very far from being required. The construction is—never did a mind exist, being so unwise, in order to be so kind.

The old copies read “behoove.” But it would not be safe to alter the received text without further deliberation. We cannot accept Mr Singer’s behood.

If the expression of these verses be somewhat elliptical, they are quite intelligible, and the MS. corrector certainly does not improve them. He writes the four last lines thus⁠—

What is the meaning of “to be so mocked with glory as to live but in a dream of friendship?” A man may be so mocked with glory as to live only in a dream of glory. But a dream of friendship is nonsense—or, rather, the change of “or” into as, makes nonsense of the passage. The other changes are not so irrational, but they are quite unnecessary, and cannot, in any respect, be recommended for the text.

Scene 3.—To change “a bawd” into abhorred, as the MS. corrector has done, proves that he was unable to construe the English language. We shall merely refer our readers to Dr Johnson’s note on the place, which explains it thoroughly.

Mr Collier writes, “‘The passive drugs’ of the world surely cannot be right. Timon is supposing the rich and luxurious to be, as it were, sucking freely at the ‘passive dugs’ of the world, and an emendation in manuscript which merely strikes out the superfluous letter supports this view of the passage, and renders needless Monk Mason’s somewhat wild conjecture in favour of drudges.” Reader, look out the word “drug” in Johnson’s Dictionary—a work which does not deal much in wild conjectures, and which, whatever its disparagers may say, is still the best authority going for the use and meaning of the English language—and you will find that one of the meanings of “drug” is drudge. There cannot be a doubt that drugge is the old way of spelling drudge, and just as little can there be a doubt that “drugs” in the passage before us means drudges. To “command” the dugs of the world, would indeed be a wild way of speaking.

Scene 4.—In the following lines, where it is said that it is not right to take vengeance on the living for the crimes of the dead, Shakespeare writes,

For “not square” the new reading is [Pg 458]“is’t not severe.” This smacks very decidedly of more modern times—and is a marked instance of our corrector’s attempt to popularise his author. “Not square” of course means not just.

Julius Cæsar.—Act I. Scene 2.—In his comments on the corrections of this play Mr Collier makes an unfortunate commencement. He says, “The two following lines have always been printed thus⁠—

This reading has never, we believe, been doubted.” No man can be expected to have examined all the editions of Shakespeare. But surely Mr Collier might have been acquainted with Theobald’s (1773), and the common variorum (1785), in both of which “walls” is printed in the text, without a word of comment, as requiring none. Or if he had not examined these editions, surely his remark was somewhat precipitate that “walks” had been always printed in the text, and had never been doubted. We have never seen an edition containing “walks”—but we shall not venture to assert that no such edition exists. This, however, is certain, that the change of “walks” into “walls” is news at least a hundred years old, and is a correction which every child would make the instant the passage was laid before him.

We quote the following from Mr Collier for the sake of the remark with which it concludes. “The MS. corrector,” he says, “requires us to make another change which seems even less necessary, but, at the same time, is judicious:

Under such hard conditions, sounds better, followed as it is by ‘this time,’ but this is perhaps a matter of discretion, and we have no means of knowing whether the writer of the notes might not here be indulging his taste.” This implies—and there are many such insinuations throughout Mr Collier’s book—that we have the means of knowing that the corrector did not exercise merely his own discretion, in the majority of his emendations, but had undoubted authority for his cutting and carving on the text. But what means have we of knowing this? None at all. Sometimes the corrector restores the readings of the old quartos and of the folio 1623; but that is no proof that his other corrections have any guarantee beyond his own caprice. There is no external evidence in their favour, and their manifest inferiority to the received text, in almost every instance of importance, shows that their internal evidence is just as defective. Indeed, as we shall by and by see, we have the means of knowing that, in almost every case, the old corrector was “exercising merely his own discretion,” or rather indiscretion. We admit that in a few minor instances the changes are slightly for the better, as, for instance, the alteration of “make” into mark in these lines (Act II. Scene 1)⁠—

But wherever our corrector attempts an emendation of any magnitude, he, for the most part—indeed, we may say always—signally fails, as has been already abundantly shown; and he fails, because in nine hundred and ninety-nine apparently doubtful cases out of every thousand, the text stands in no need of any alteration.

Act III. Scene 1.—How vilely vulgarised is Cæsar’s answer to Artemidorus by the corrector’s way of putting it. Artemidorus, pressing forward to deliver his warning to Cæsar, says,

The taste of this new reading will not find many approvers, we should think, when it is placed in juxtaposition with the old.

Perhaps the corrector is right in giving the words, “Are we all ready,” to Casca, instead of Cæsar, to whom they are usually assigned; but Ritson had long ago pointed out the propriety of the change. We can accept crouchings [Pg 459]in place of couchings. “Law of children” for “love of children,” has been already recommended by Dr Johnson.

Act IV. Scene 3.—For “new-added,” Mr Singer suggests new-aided, which is certainly much better than the MS. correction new-hearted; but no change is necessary.

Act V. Scene 1.—The old reading, “sword of traitors,” is infinitely better than the new, “word of traitors.” “Forward” for “former” is another instance of the corrector’s attempts to modernise the text. The same may be said of term for “time.” We admit, however, that “those high powers” reads better than “some high powers.”

This, however, is not Shakespeare speaking his own language, but Shakespeare popularised. “A general honest thought” is a comprehensive honest thought; and we may be absolutely certain that “general” is the poet’s word. If the MS. corrector could be brought to life and examined, we are convinced he would admit that he was merely adapting Shakespeare to his own notions of the taste and capacities of a popular assembly.

Macbeth.—Act I. Scene 1.—When Ross enters suddenly, with tidings of the victory gained by Macbeth and Banquo over the Norwegians, Lenox exclaims,

A hypercritical objection has been taken to the words, “seems to speak,” inasmuch as Ross has not yet spoken. Dr Johnson, deserted for a moment by his usual good sense, would read, “that teems to speak.” “He looks like one that is big with something of importance”—a phrase savouring much more of the great lexicographer than of the great poet. The MS. corrector proposes, “that comes to speak.” This is very flat and prosaic. Mr Singer says that “seems is to be received in its usual sense of appears.” This is worse and worse. Malone long ago informed us that “to speak” stood for “about to speak,” and this is undoubtedly right. “To speak” is not the present, but the future infinitive. “So should he look that seems on the point of speaking things strange.” No change is required.

Scene 4.—The king, on meeting Macbeth after his victory over the rebels, thus expresses his obligations to him,

We believe the meaning of this to be, “that the larger share, both of thanks and payment, might have come from my side. As it is, I still owe you more than you can ever owe me.” To change “mine” into more is quite uncalled for.

Scene 5.—The MS. corrector proposes blankness for “blanket,” in the lines where Lady Macbeth, revolving the murder of Duncan, says,

The darkness prayed for is the thickest that can be procured, and therefore the word “blanket” is highly appropriate. It has a stifling effect on the imagination, which the general term blankness has not.

Scene 7.—The next alteration proposed seems to us to be a case of great doubt and difficulty—one in which a good deal may be said on both sides of the question. Macbeth says to his lady, who is pressing him strongly to commit the murder,

The MS. corrector, changing one letter, converts “beast” into boast, whereupon Mr Singer says, “Who could have imagined that any one familiar with the poet, as Mr Collier tells us he has been for the last fifty years, could for a moment entertain the absurd change of ‘beast’ to boast in this celebrated passage?” Here Mr Singer expresses himself, as we think, a great deal too strongly. In better taste is Mr John Foster’s defence of the received reading. He says (we quote from Mr Dyce, p. 124), with great good sense and propriety, “Here Mr Collier reasons, as it appears to us, without sufficient reference to the context of the passage, and its place in the scene. The expression immediately preceding, and eliciting Lady Macbeth’s reproach, is that in which Macbeth declares that he dares do all that may become a man, and that who dares more is none. She instantly takes up that expression—If not an affair in which a man may engage, what beast was it then in himself or others that made him break this enterprise to her? The force of the passage lies in that contrasted word, and its meaning is lost by the proposed substitution.” We admit the force of this reasoning, and it, together with the consideration that beast is the word actually in possession of the text, rather inclines us, though not without much hesitation, to prefer the old reading. We strongly suspect that the contrast of the beast and the man may have been an accident due to the carelessness, or perhaps an alteration due to the ingenuity of the printer. There is to our feelings a stronger expression of contempt, a more natural, if not a fiercer taunt in boast than in “beast.” “What vain braggadocio fit—what swaggering humour was it, then, that made you break this enterprise to me?” There is nothing in Mr Dyce’s objection, that Macbeth had not previously vaunted his determination to murder Duncan. He certainly had broken the project to his wife both by letter and in conversation, and that pretty strongly too, as is evident from her words, “Nor time nor place did then adhere,” that is, when he first broached the subject, “yet you would make both”—that is, you would make both time and place bend to the furtherance of your design, even when they were not in themselves ripe and suitable. And even though Macbeth had not announced his project in a boastful manner, it was quite natural that the lady, disgusted by his vacillation, should, in her excited state, upbraid him as an empty boaster, and a contemptible poltroon. Tried by their intrinsic merits, we regard “boast” as rather the better reading of the two; and if we advocate the retention of “beast,” it is only on the ground that it, too, affords a very good meaning, and is de facto the text of the old folios.

Act III. Scene 4.—The following passage has occasioned some discussion among the commentators. Macbeth addresses the ghost of Banquo,

This is the common reading, or at least was so until a comparatively recent period. “Inhabit,” says Henley, “is the original reading, and it needs no alteration. The obvious meaning is—should you challenge me to encounter you in the desert, and I, through fear, remain trembling in my castle, then protest me,” &c. Horne Tooke (Diversions of Purley, ii. p. 55) slightly varies this reading by placing the comma after then, instead of after inhabit.

i. e., if then I do not meet thee there; if trembling I stay at home, or within doors, or under any roof, or within any habitation; if, when you call me to the desert, I then house me, or through fear hide myself from thee in any dwelling⁠—

At any rate, the MS. corrector’s prosaic substitution—“if trembling I exhibit,” i. e., if I show any symptoms of trepidation, cannot be listened to for a moment.

Act IV. Scene 1.—The MS. corrector [Pg 461]alters very properly “Rebellious dead” of the old copies, into

Theobald had got the length of changing “dead” into head, but the alteration of “rebellious” into rebellion’s is due to the old corrector, and it is decidedly an improvement.

When Macbeth has resolved to seize Macduff’s castle, and put his wife and children to the sword, he exclaims⁠—

The MS. corrector proposes flights, and not without some show of reason. Macbeth has just been informed that Macduff has fled to England, and the escape has evidently discomposed him, as placing beyond his reach his most deadly enemy. Accordingly, he is supposed by the MS. corrector to exclaim, “No more flights! I must take care that no more of that party escape me.” But, on the other hand, Macbeth, a minute before, has been inveighing against the witches. He says⁠—

So that “But no more sights” may mean, I will have no more dealings with these infernal hags. The word “But” seems to be out of place in connection with “flights”—and therefore we pronounce in favour of the old reading.

“Here,” says Mr Collier, “as has been said on many former occasions, ‘opened’ affords sense, but so inferior to that given by the correction of the folio 1632, that we need not hesitate in concluding that Shakespeare, carrying on the figure suggested by the word ‘grafted’ as applied to fruit, must have written⁠—

But does not Mr Collier see that the metaphor is one which does not turn upon fruit at all, but that it turns upon flowers? And who ever heard of flowers ripening? That the allusion is to flowers is obvious from this, that Malcolm’s vices are said to surpass Macbeth’s in their colour. “Compared with me, black Macbeth shall seem as pure as snow.” What confusion of ideas can have put fruit into the dunderhead of the corrector, and what obliquity of judgment should have led Mr Collier to affirm, that “opened” affords a sense so inferior to ripened, it is very difficult to comprehend. In his appendix, Mr Collier says, “an objection to ripened instead of ‘opened,’ may be, that Malcolm is representing these ‘particulars of vice’ in him as already at maturity.” Not at all; that would have been no objection. His vices were immature, but their immaturity was that of flowers, and not that of fruits. So that Mr Collier is equally at fault in his reasons for and in his reasons against the word “opened.” This is not pretty in a man who has some claims to be regarded as one of the greatest Shakespearian scholars of the day.

The MS. corrector in no way redeems his character by suggesting a decided alteration for the worse in the line where Macduff says to Malcolm⁠—

Read enjoy, says the corrector. We have no doubt that “convey” is the right word—only we had better punctuate the line thus,

Act V. Scene 2.—In the lines in which the unsettled condition of Macbeth’s mind is alluded to, the corrector proposes a specious though far from necessary amendment.

The MS. correction is course; i. e. course of action, which is distempered by the shattered condition of his nerves. But “cause” fits the place perfectly well, if taken for his affairs generally, his whole system of procedure; and therefore we are of opinion that the text ought not to be disturbed.

we approve of the substitution of chair for “cheer,” as proposed long ago by Bishop Percy, and now seconded by the MS. corrector. But we see no good reason for changing “stuff” into grief, in the line

There seems to have been but little grief on the part either of the tyrant or his lady; and the repetition of “stuffed” and “stuff” is very much after the manner of Shakespeare.

that is, where any advantage is held out, or “to be given” to them, both strong and weak desert Macbeth’s standard. The MS. corrector proposes “advantage to be gotten; a better reading, which has been often suggested, is “advantage to be gained,” and this we regard as more suitable to modern notions; but we counsel no change in the text, because the old reading was to a certainty the language of Shakespeare.

The latinism of farced, i. e., stuffed out, for “forced,” has not a shadow of probability in its favour. Macbeth says of the troops opposed to him⁠—

“Forced,” says Mr Singer very properly, “is used in the sense of re-inforced.” Neither can we accept quailed for “cooled,” at the recommendation of the MS. corrector, in these lines where Macbeth says⁠—

“My senses would have cooled”—that is, my nerves would have thrilled with an icy shudder. The received text is quite satisfactory.

Hamlet.—Act I. Scene 2.—In consistency with the verdict just given, we must pronounce the following new reading, at any rate, reasonable.

Horatio, describing the effect of the appearance of the ghost upon Bernardo and Marcellus, tells Hamlet, as the quartos give it⁠—

The folios read “bestilled.” The MS. correction is bechill’d. And this we prefer to bestilled. It is quite in keeping with Macbeth’s expression⁠—

Shakespeare probably knew that “jelly” was gelu, ice. But “distilled,” the common reading, affords quite as good a meaning as bechilled, and therefore, as this word has authority in its favour, which bechilled has not, we advise no alteration of the text.

Scene 3.—We think that the old corrector was right, when he changed “chief” into choice in the lines where the style in which Frenchmen dress is alluded to⁠—

This is the reading of the old copies. The modern editions read more intelligibly⁠—

both as affording better sense, and as coming nearer the old text than the received reading does.

We believe that “slander” here means abuse, misuse, and therefore we prefer the received text to squander, the reading of the MS. corrector.

which may be more strictly grammatical than the other. But “despatched” is more forcible, and indicates a more summary mode of procedure. “Despatched,” says Mr Dyce, “expresses the suddenness of the bereavement.” The quartos read “deprived,” which is quite as good as despoiled.

The margins have the weakness to propose “to make transgression bitter!” We are glad to perceive that the mild Mr Dyce “lacks not gall to make senseless criticism bitter.” He says, “This alteration is nothing less than villanous. Could the MS. corrector be so obtuse as not to perceive that ‘lack gall to make oppression bitter,’ means lack gall to make me feel the bitterness of oppression?” Mr Singer proposes aggression, which is just one half as bad as transgression. Why cannot the commentators leave well alone?

simply shows a dogged determination on the part of the old corrector to be more perversely idiotical than we can believe that his stars doomed even him to be. The king is speaking of his usurped crown and dominion as his “wicked prize.” Mr Collier having put on livery in the old corrector’s service, has, of course, nothing for it but to assent. He says, “We need no great persuasion to make us believe that we ought to read purse.” Do not suppose, Mr Collier, that we are going to be gulled by that remark—you yourself, we are convinced, never swallowed so bitter a pill as that new reading, in all your born days.

Act III. Scene 4.—The MS. correction, “I’ll sconce me even here,” says Polonius, is to be preferred to the ordinary reading, “I’ll silence me even here.” This reading was also proposed not long ago by Mr Hunter.

Act IV. Scene 3.—In the next, Mr Collier is not quite so sure of his ground, and well may he distrust it. He says, “The next emendation is well worthy of consideration, and perhaps of adoption. The king asks Hamlet where Polonius is at supper, and the answer is this in the quartos⁠—

The corrector treats us to “a convocation of palated worms,” which is a view of the subject we cannot at all stomach. If there is any one word in all Shakespeare which we can be more certain of than another as having been written by himself, the term “politic,” as used in this place, is that word. The context, “convocation,” proves this. A convocation is a kind of parliament, and does not a parliament imply policy? “Politic” here means polite, social, and discriminating. Mr Collier advances a very singular argument in behalf of palated. “If the text had always stood ‘palated worms,’ and if it had been proposed to change it to ‘politic worms,’ few readers would for an instant have consented to relinquish an expression so peculiarly Shakespearian.” That is to say, if we had the best possible reasons for thinking that Shakespeare wrote “palated,” we should not be disposed to alter it. True: but in that case we can assure Mr Collier that our forbearance would be occasioned only by our respect for the authentic text, and not by our opinion that “palated” is the better word of the two. Palated is, in every respect, inferior to “politic”—so inferior, that had palated been the text, we should strongly have suspected a misprint, and had “politic” stood on the margin we should certainly have recommended it for favourable consideration, as we have done several of the MS. corrections which have not nearly so strong claims on our approval. The corrector must have been very old (or very young) when he set down this new reading.

King Lear.—Act I. Scene 1.—Regan remarks that in comparison with her father’s welfare⁠—

The MS. corrector reads “precious sphere,” which Mr Singer trumps by playing out “spacious sphere.” Both of these new readings are good, considered as modernisations of Shakespeare. But the old text is not to be doubted: it is quite intelligible, and therefore ought not to be disturbed. “Square” means compass, area.

In the following passage, too, we advocate the retention of the old text, though the MS. correction is plausible—is one of the best we have been favoured with. Cordelia entreats her father to

Mr Collier remarks: “Murder (spelt murther in the folios) seems here entirely out of place; Cordelia could never contemplate that anybody would suspect her of murder; she is referring to ‘vicious blots’ and ‘foulness’ in respect to virtue, and there cannot, we apprehend, be a doubt that the old corrector has given us the real language of Shakespeare when he puts the passage thus⁠—

that is, that makes a monster of it—it can be nothing short of some crime of the deepest dye—and therefore “murder” does not seem to be so much out of place in the mouth of Cordelia. Stoop for “step,” as proposed by the corrector, is still less to be accepted. Had he never heard of a faux pas?

Act II. Scene 4.—The fool, declaring that he will not desert his master, sings⁠—

And the MS. corrector does the same. Mr Singer, however, declares “that the words knave and fool are in their right places in the old text.” We wish that he had explained his view; for, to our apprehension, the new reading is the only one which makes sense.

One or two very small amendments here present themselves, which on the score of taste are not altogether objectionable, but the superiority of which is by no means so undoubted as to entitle them to a place in the text. The following is one of them—probably the best—Act IV. Scene 1, Edgar, in disguise, says⁠—

The meaning is—’tis better to be thus contemned and known to one’s-self to be contemned—than contemned, and at the same time so flattered as not to know that you are contemned. The old corrector proposes⁠—

a reading (all but the yes) suggested long ago by Dr Johnson—but one in no respect superior in merit to the common text. The common reading “our mean (i. e. our mediocrity) secures us,” is greatly to be preferred to the MS. correction “our wants secure us.” We confess, however, a predilection for the “lust-dieted man that braves your ordinance” (the ordinance of heaven), instead of the common reading, “slaves your ordinance,” although this is defended by Dr Johnson against Warburton, who long ago proposed the word (braves) which appears on the margins of the folio.

“Who mimics virtue” say the margins, accommodating Shakespeare to the tastes and understandings of a degenerate period. But, “who minces virtue” is far finer: it means, who affects a nicety of virtue. We think [Pg 465]that Dr Delius is wrong in preferring mimics.

Edgar, when he discovers that Goneril has a plot upon her husband’s life, exclaims⁠—

may be dismissed at once as utterly irreconcilable with the context, besides being villanous rhodomontade. The context lets us know very plainly what the meaning of the first line must be. “A plot,” says Edgar, “on the life of her husband, the best of men! and a marriage with my brother, the greatest scoundrel unhanged! Oh, workings of woman’s will, past all finding out—past all distinguishing!” “Oh, unfathomable depth;” “Oh, unintelligible tortuosity;” “Oh, undistinguishable limits;” that we believe to be the meaning of “Oh, undistinguished space of woman’s will.” The text requires no amendment; and we would merely suggest ways or depth as a gloss, and not as a substitute for “space.”

Othello.—Act I. Scene 1.—The old corrector sometimes passes over lines which present intolerable difficulties. We wish, in particular, that he had favoured us with his sentiments on that line which has baffled all mankind, in which Iago describes Cassio as

Difficulty first, Cassio was not married! Difficulty second, Supposing him to be married, why should he be either almost or altogether damned in a fair wife? Difficulty third, Why, if damned at all, should he be only almost, and not completely, damned in her? These are points on which the old scholiast has not attempted to throw any light. Cassio, it is well known, had a mistress. Is it possible, then, that Shakespeare should use “wife” in the sense of mistress or woman? That supposition might remove the difficulty. As it is, all attempts to amend the line have hitherto been abortive. It still stands the opprobrium criticorum.

After trying his hand very unsuccessfully on one or two passages, the MS. corrector comes to the lines in which Desdemona is described by Roderigo as

Mr Collier says: “Here the commentators have notes upon ‘extravagant,’ but pass over ‘wheeling’ without explanation, although very unintelligible where it stands.” He then remarks that “wheedling (the MS. correction for ‘wheeling’) is an important improvement of the text.” Few people, we imagine, will agree with Mr Collier in thinking either that “wheeling” is unintelligible, or that wheedling is an improvement. “A wheeling stranger of here and everywhere” is as plain, and, at the same time, as poetical a periphrasis for a vagabond as can be well conceived. We may be certain that the text as it stands is the language of Shakespeare.

Proceeding onwards, we meet with nothing which can be recommended for the text, and little which attracts our attention, until we come to the expression, “A super-subtle Venetian,” which is Iago’s designation for Desdemona. The old corrector makes him call her “a super-supple Venetian”! But, if his own good taste could not keep the old gentleman right, surely the context might have done so. Iago says—“An erring barbarian (i. e. Othello) and a super-subtle Venetian” (i. e. Desdemona). There is here a fine opposition between barbarism and subtlety; but what opposition, what relation of any kind, is there between barbarism and suppleness?

for which the MS. correction is quelled. Mr Collier says, “There can hardly be a doubt that this is the proper restoration.” Whereupon Mr Singer observes pathetically—and we quite agree with him—“I pity the man who could for a moment think of displacing the effective and now consecrated word collied. Its obvious [Pg 466]meaning is darkened, obfuscated; and a more appropriate and expressive word could not have been used.”

Act IV. Scene 1.—Othello, when the pretended proofs of Desdemona’s guilt are accumulating upon him, and just before he falls into a fit, exclaims, “Nature would not invest herself in such shadowing passion without some instruction.” Johnson thus explains the place, “It is not words which shake me thus. This passion which spreads its clouds over me, is the effect of some agency more than the operation of words: it is one of these notices which men have of unseen calamities.” How near does that come to Campbell’s fine line,

Yet “shadowing” is to be deleted, and shuddering substituted in its room. No, no, thou shadow—but not of Shakespeare—we cannot afford to be mulcted of so much fine poetry.

Scene 2.—We might have called attention more frequently, as we went along, to many instances which prove, what we have now not the smallest doubt of, that these new readings were never at all intended by the MS. corrector to be viewed as restorations of Shakespeare’s text; but simply as avowed departures from his language, admitted innovations, which might better suit the tastes, as he thought, of a progenies vitiosior. That they were designed as restitutions of the true Shakespearian dialect is a pure hypothesis on the part of Mr Collier. It receives no countenance whatever from the handiwork of his corrector, whom, therefore, we exculpate from the crime of forgery, although his offences against good taste and common sense remain equally reprehensible. Mr Collier, we conceive, is greatly to blame for having mistaken so completely his protégé’s intention. As an instance of a new reading in which the text is merely modernised, and certainly not restored, take the following, where Desdemona, speaking of Othello, says,

The latter of which words the corrector changes into misdeed, as more intelligible to the ears of the groundlings subsequent to Shakespeare.

Act V. Scene 2.—Æmilia, after the murder of Desdemona, declares that she will not hold her peace,

The old quarto reads air. The MS. corrector reads wind. “Why, we may ask,” says Mr Collier, “should the old corrector make the change, inasmuch as no reasonable objection may be urged against the use of ‘north,’ which he deletes, not in favour of ‘air’ of the quarto 1622, but in favour of wind? We may presume that he altered the word because he had heard the line repeated in that manner on the stage.” That is not at all unlikely. Actors sometimes take considerable liberties with the text of their parts, and they probably did so in the time of Shakespeare as well as now. A player might use the north, or the air, or the wind, according as the one or other of these words came most readily to his mouth. But that proves nothing in regard to the authentic text of Shakespeare. For this we must look to his published works in their earliest impressions. We attach little or no importance to the mere players’ alterations, even though Mr Collier should be able to prove (what he is not) that many of his corrector’s emendations were playhouse variations, for these were much more likely to have had their origin in individual caprice than in any more authoritative source.

Antony and Cleopatra.—Act I. Scene 2.—Before changing the following passage,

This, however, is one of his most specious emendations. But the words, “by revolution lowering,” are sufficiently intelligible,—and are indeed [Pg 467]a very fine poetical expression for the instability of human pleasure.

that is, bear true witness to my love. The MS. corrector changes “evidence” into credence, as better suited to the popular apprehension, though much less pleasing to the discriminating reader. There cannot be a doubt as to which of the words is Shakespeare’s.

Scene 5.—“An arm-gaunt steed” has puzzled the commentators. Of all the substitutes proposed, termagant is perhaps the best. Arrogant, suggested by Mr Boaden, and adopted by Mr Singer, is also worthy of consideration. Either of these words harmonises with the character of the animal “who neigh’d so high.” Sir T. Hanmer and the old corrector read arm-girt.

Mr Collier says, “we ought undoubtedly, with the old corrector, to amend the text to

Scene 7.—“When Antony,” says Mr Collier, “during the debauch, says to Cæsar, ‘Be a child o’ the time,’ Cæsar replies rather unintelligibly,

What does he mean by telling Antony ‘to possess it?’” His meaning is quite obvious; he means, Be master of it. “Be a child of the time,” says Antony. “Rather be its master, say I,” rejoins Cæsar—a sentiment much more likely to come from the lips of the great dictator than the paltry rejoinder which the old corrector puts into his mouth—“Profess it”—that is, profess to be the child of the time.

that is, when the most favourable representations of my conduct were made to him, he heeded them not, or merely put on the appearance of attending to them. The corrector reads, “but looked;” yet, although the folio 1623 has “he not looked,” we may be pretty sure that the text, as given above, is the right reading, as it is assuredly the only one which makes sense.

Scene 6.—Cæsar expresses his dissatisfaction with the want of ceremony with which Octavia has been received on her entrance into Rome.

For “left” the corrector reads held, and Mr Singer proposes felt. But if either of these emendations were adopted, we should require to read, “is often felt unloving,” and this the measure will not permit. We therefore stand by the old text, the meaning of which we conceive to be—love which is left unshown is often left unreturned. “Wrong led” is better suited to its place than wrongèd, the MS. correction.

Scene 11.—Enobarbus, ridiculing the idea that Cæsar will accept Antony’s challenge to meet him in single combat, says,

that is, it is surprising that Antony, who has experienced every measure of fortune, has drunk of her fullest as well as of her emptiest cup, should dream that the full Cæsar will answer his emptiness. Here the words full and emptiness prove to a demonstration that “measure” is the right word; yet the MS. corrector alters it to miseries! Mr Collier remarks, in his supplementary notes, “Still, it may be fit to hesitate before miseries for ‘measures’ is introduced into the text.” We see no ground for a moment’s [Pg 468]hesitation. Miseries is seen at a glance to be altogether unendurable.

In the same scene, somewhat further on, we think that the word deputation ought to take the place of “disputation.” This was Warburton’s amendment; and the MS. correction coincides with it.

Act IV. Scene 4.—“Antony,” says Mr Collier, “enters calling for his armour; ‘Mine armour, Eros;’ and when the man brings it, Antony is made to say in the old copies, ‘Put thine iron on;’ but surely it ought to be as a manuscript note gives it, ‘Put mine iron on.’” Not at all; either word will do; but “thine” is more consonant with ordinary usage. A gentleman asks his butler, not “have you cleaned my plate?” but “have you cleaned your plate?” meaning, my plate of which you have the charge. Eros had the charge of Antony’s armour. We agree with the corrector, that the words, “What is this for?” should be given to Cleopatra, who is assisting to buckle on Antony’s armour, and not to Antony, to whom they are assigned in the variorum edition 1785. “Bear a storm” for “hear a storm,” the common reading, is a very unnecessary change.

Scene 8.—Gests (gesta, exploits) for “guests” is highly to be commended in the lines where Antony says,

This emendation by the old corrector ought to take its place in the text: and he should get the credit of it, although, as a proposed reading, it may be, as Mr Singer says, already well known.

Scene 9.—Fore sleep instead of “for sleep,” is also entitled to very favourable consideration.

Scene 12.—Composed for “disposed,” is the text modernised, not restored.

Scene 13.—Cleopatra declares that she will never be led in triumph by Cæsar, as an object of scorn to the proud patrician dames.

How good is that expression “still conclusion”! That lady of yours, looking demurely upon me with her modest eyes, and drawing her quiet inferences, shall acquire no honour from the contrast between my fate with her own. And yet we are called upon by the MS. corrector to give up these pregnant words for the vapid substitution of “still condition!” This, we say, is no fair exchange, but downright robbery.

When Cleopatra and her women are endeavouring to raise the dying Antony into the monument, the Egyptian queen exclaims,

Johnson’s note on this place is remarkable, as an instance of want of judgment in a man whose sagacity was very rarely at fault. He says, “I suppose the meaning of these strange words is, here’s trifling; you do not work in earnest.” No interpretation could well go wider of the mark than this. Steevens says that she speaks with an “affected levity.” It would be truer to say that she speaks from that bitterness of heart which frequently finds a vent for itself in irony. The MS. corrector reads, “Here’s port indeed,” which Mr Collier explains by saying, “Here Shakespeare appears to have employed port as a substantive to indicate weight.” But “it would astonish me, and many more,” says Mr Singer, “if Mr Collier should succeed in finding port used for a load or weight in the whole range of English literature.” We might add, that even although authority could be found for it, the proposed reading would still be utterly indefensible⁠—

This is as bad as “old Goody Blake was old and poor.” Mr Singer proposes, “Here’s support indeed,” which we can by no means approve of, as it seems to have no sense.

Act V. Scene 2.—Although the text of the following lines is not very satisfactory, we greatly prefer it to the old corrector’s amendment. Cleopatra, contemplating suicide, says,

“Dung” here is probably used contemptuously, and must be taken in a wide sense for food in general. As bread is raised from manure, man, who lives by bread, may be said to feed on manure. The sense probably is—It is great to do the thing (suicide) which causes us to sleep, and never more to taste the produce of the earth, which nourishes alike Cæsar and the beggar. The MS. correction is dug, which was long ago suggested, and which certainly does not mend matters. This new reading affords no extrication of the construction, “which sleeps,” which we have ventured to explain as “which lays us asleep, and causes us never more to palate or taste,” &c.

is perhaps judiciously altered into “a grief that smites.” The old copies read “suites.” This emendation was also proposed by the late Mr Barron Field.

Cymbeline.—Act I. Scene 5.—“We here encounter,” says Mr Collier, “the first MS. emendation of much value.” Iachimo has remarked, that the marriage of Posthumus with the king’s daughter, from whom, however, he has been divorced, tends to raise Posthumus in the public estimation. “And then his banishment,” says the Frenchman. “Ay,” adds Iachimo, “and the approbation of those that weep this lamentable divorce under her colours are wonderfully to extend him;” that is, his banishment, and the approbation of those of his wife’s party (this is the meaning of “under her colours”), who weep this lamentable divorce, help to enhance still further the opinion of his merits. The old corrector thus disfigures the passage: “Ay, and the approbations of those that weep this lamentable divorce, and her dolours, are wont wonderfully to extend him.” The old corrector’s mental vision does not seem to be capable of taking in more than a quarter of an inch of the text at once. He saw that the verb “are” required a plural nominative, hence he reads “approbations.” But he might have avoided this barbarism had he extended his optical range, so as to comprehend the word “banishment” in the preceding speech. The two words, “banishment” and “approbation,” are surely entitled to be followed by the verb “are.”

Of a piece with this is the next. Posthumus is defying Iachimo to make good his boast that he will overcome the chastity of Imogen. He says, “If you make your voyage upon her, and give me directly to understand you have prevailed, I am no further your enemy.” This is converted into, “if you make good your vauntage upon her,” &c. And this is a restitution of the language of Shakespeare!

In this passage cope has been proposed for “crop,” and unnumbered for “numbered,” by several of the commentators, and among them by Mr Collier’s anonymous corrector. We are of opinion that in neither of the places ought the text to be altered. Cope is a mere repetition of the “vaulted arch,” and must, therefore, be set aside as tautological. “Numbered” is more difficult. Let us consider the bearing of the whole speech. It has a sinister reference to Posthumus, the husband of Imogen, the lady in whose presence the speech is uttered. “How can Posthumus,” says Iachimo, “with such a wife as this—this Imogen—take up with the vile slut who now holds him in her clutches? Are men mad—with senses so fine that they can distinguish, or separate from each other, the fiery orbs above; and also so acute that they can distinguish between the ‘twinned’ (or closely resembling) stones which can be counted upon the beach; ‘with spectacles’—that is, with eyes—so precious, are they yet unable (as Posthumus seems to be) to make partition ’twixt a fair wife and a foul mistress?” The words, “which can distinguish ’twixt the fiery orbs above and the twinned stones,” do [Pg 470]not mean that we have senses so fine that we can distinguish between stars and stones, but senses so fine that we can count, or distinguish from one another, the stars themselves; and can also perceive a difference in the pebbles on the beach, though these be as like to one another as so many peas. This interpretation brings out clearly the sense of the expression, “numbered beach;” it means the beach on which the pebbles can be numbered; indeed, are numerically separated by us from each other, in spite of their homogeneousness, so delicate is our organ of vision by which they are apprehended; “yet,” concludes Iachimo, as the moral of his reflections, “with organs thus discriminating, my friend Posthumus has, nevertheless, gone most lamentably astray.” This explanation renders the substitution of unnumbered not only unnecessary, but contradictory. We cannot be too cautious how we tamper with the received text of Shakespeare. Even though a passage may continue unintelligible to us for years, the chances are a hundred to one that the original lection contains a more pregnant meaning than any that we can propose in its place.

Mr Collier is of opinion that the MS. corrector’s bo-peeping is preferable to “by-peeping” or “lie peeping.” We cannot at all agree with him. “By-peeping” is Shakespeare’s phrase, “lie peeping” is Johnson’s amendment. Either will do; and an editor ought not to go out of his way to make himself ridiculous.⁠[15] A few lines further on, the substitution of pay for “play” is quite unnecessary, as Mr Collier himself admits in one of his supplementary notes. Neither is contemn any improvement upon “condemn.”

The MS. correction is, “may dare the raven’s eye”—i. e., says Mr Collier, may dazzle the eye of the raven. Surely the old commentator must here have been driven to his wits’ end. We have little doubt that “the raven’s eye” here means the night’s eye. “May bare the raven’s eye”—that is, may open the eye of darkness, and thus usher in the day. Has not Milton got “smoothing the raven down of darkness till it smiled?” This interpretation must be placed to the credit of Mr Singer (Shakespeare Vindicated, &c., p. 304), although it had occurred previously to ourselves.

which is the common reading, the corrector proposes “a foaming one.” Mr Singer suggests “a brimeing (i. e., a rutting) one,” and this we greatly prefer. Iarmen is the original text—a word without any meaning.

Act III. Scene 4.—The competing versions of the following lines, in which the MS. corrector’s is pitted against the original text, have given rise to much controversy and speculation. Mr Halliwell has written an ingenious, and, we believe, an exhaustive pamphlet on this single point. He advocates the old reading. We cannot say that we consider his arguments altogether convincing, or that he has been able to adduce any very [Pg 471]pat parallelism, placing the point beyond all doubt; but we believe that he has made the most of his case, and that if he has not produced any such evidence, it is because there is none to produce. We agree with Mr Halliwell’s conclusion, in so far as it rejects the MS. correction; but we advocate the retention of the original reading, simply because it is the text, and because we know for certain that the old corrector had no authority for his emendation except his own brains, generally addled, and not enjoying, in even this instance, a short interval of comparative lucidity.

The passage is this: Imogen, supposing that her husband Posthumus has been led astray by some Italian courtesan, exclaims indignantly and sarcastically⁠—

We take it that “mother” here means Italy, and that “painting” means model; so that the gloss on the passage should run thus: Some jay of Italy, to whom Italy (i. e. Italian manners) was the model according to which she shaped her morals and her conduct, hath betrayed him. That this, or something like it, is the meaning, is confirmed by what follows—“Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion;” that is, the new fashions, the new-fangled ways, are to be found only in Italy, and doubtless that daughter of Italy—that jay or imitative creature by whom Posthumus is now enslaved—is a considerable proficient in those fashionable and novel methods of conquest. This, we conceive, is nearer the meaning than the ordinary interpretation given by Dr Johnson, which represents this “jay” as “the creature not of nature but of painting.” At any rate, if we adopt Johnson’s meaning, we must change was into is, and read—“whose mother is her painting.”

Again, perhaps the meaning is this: Some jay of Italy,—whose mother, i. e. whose birthplace (the renowned, the fashionable Italy) was her painting—i. e. was the adornment, the attraction, which allured my husband to her arms,—hath betrayed him. This, on second thoughts, we consider the best interpretation. But we allow the other to stand, as a specimen of groping towards the truth.

The MS. corrector’s version is—“who smothers her with painting;” but if this had stood in the printer’s manuscript, it is exceedingly unlikely that he would have blundered it into the text as we now have it. Moreover, there is a prosaic vulgarity about the expression which smacks much more of the old corrector, and of his notions of what would suit a popular assembly, than of the genius of Shakespeare. We may be certain that there is no allusion to rouge in the passage; and therefore we contend for the retention of the original text, as neither irreconcilable with good sense, nor alien, but rather the reverse, from Shakespeare’s occasional modes of expression.

she means, of princely equals. This is undoubted. Posthumus was beneath her in rank; yet, for his sake, she had declined the proposals of suitors as highborn as herself. “Fellows” is modernised into followers. The change of “pretty, and full of view,” into privy, yet full of view, is a sensible emendation, yet we hesitate to recommend it for the text. Pisanio tells Imogen that when she disguises herself as a youth she must “change fear and niceness into a waggish courage.” The word “fear” here seems to prove that “courage” is the right reading. The MS. correction is “waggish carriage.”

“Tired” should be ’tired—i. e. altered myself like a boy. But this is not a new reading. The word is the same, whether printed tired or ’tired.

Act IV. Scene 1.—Cloten speaking of Imogen, says, “Yet this imperseverant thing (i. e., Imogen) loves him (i. e., Posthumus) in my despight.” “Imperseverant” is explained by Messrs Dyce and Arrowsmith to mean undiscerning. The latter, says Mr [Pg 472]Singer, “has adduced (in Gnats and Queries, vol. vii. p. 400) numerous instances of the use of perseverance for discernment.” The MS. substitution of “perverse errant” seems, therefore, to be quite uncalled for.

That is, the corse of Imogen, who is supposed to be dead. “To winter-ground a plant,” says Steevens, “is to protect it from the inclemency of the winter season by straw, &c.” This is quite satisfactory, and renders the correction winter-guard unnecessary. The change of “so” into lo may be accepted in the speech of Imogen when she awakens from her trance.

Act V. Scene 1.—The last passage on which the old corrector tries his hand is this. He can make nothing of it, nor can we, nor, so far as we know, can any one else. Posthumus, addressing the gods, says⁠—

There is no difficulty with “elder;” it, of course, means, each crime being worse than its predecessor. “And make them dread it,” &c.; this may mean—and make them go on inspiring dread, to the profit of the doer; or, as Steevens explains it, “To make them dread it is to make them persevere in the commission of dreadful crimes.” This, it must be confessed, is not satisfactory; but we like it quite as well as the MS. emendation. “And make men dread it, to the doer’s thrift.” But whatever may be the merit of this new reading, the change of “elder” into later is, at any rate, quite uncalled for. Neither can we assent to Mr Singer’s amendment of the place, which is⁠—

On the whole, it is certainly safest to let the old text stand as it is, until something better can be suggested.

Having now washed our hands as clean as we possibly could of the old MS. corrector, we must, in proceeding to dry them—that is, to sum up—first of all notice whether there be not very small specks of dirt still sticking to them. We are sorry to say that there are several. In our anxiety to do every justice to the old scholiast, and in our determination to redeem to the uttermost the pledge which we came under to him and to our readers—namely, to bring forward everything which told in the remotest way in his favour—we find that we have somewhat overshot the mark; we have fulfilled our obligation in terms too ample; we have been too indulgent to this shadowy sinner, whose very skeleton Apollo and the nine muses are now, no doubt, flaying alive in Hades, if they have not done so long ago. In a word, we have something to retract: not, however, anything that has been said against him, but one or two small things that have been said for him. And, therefore, as we are not altogether a character like old Kirkaldy of Grange, whom the chronicles describe as “ane stoute man, and always ready to defend at the point of the sword whatever he had said,” we may as well eat in our leek at once, without more ado.

We speak at present only of those readings (and fortunately they are very small and very few) which we countenanced or recommended for the text on the authority of the old MS. corrector. In most cases, any mere favourable opinion which we may have expressed of some of the new readings we shall allow to stand, for such opinions are unchanged, and the expression of them was very far from being a recommendation of these readings for the text. It is only the text which we are now solicitous about; and, therefore, insignificant as the sentiments of any humble reviewer may be, still, for the credit of the periodical in which he writes, and also lest the text of Shakespeare should run any risk of being compromised at his hands, it is his duty to retract his opinions to whatever extent he may feel that they have been rather inconsiderately advanced.

We approved, in the first instance, of “get” for let, (Blackwood’s Magazine, Aug., p. 188); that approbation we retract. [Pg 473]“Portent-like,” the common reading, is better than either potent like or potently, (Blackwood’s Magazine, p. 195). “Sheer ale,” and not shire ale, (Blackwood’s Magazine, p. 198), should hold the text. Katherine’s answer to Petruchio (Blackwood’s Magazine, p. 199) is all right and ought not to be changed. “Supplications in the quill” ought to keep its place in the text against Mr Singer’s in the coil, (Blackwood’s Magazine, September, p. 315). “In the quill,” simply means in writing, as Steevens long ago told us. We observe nothing more that we feel called upon to retract.

This deduction leaves, as nearly as we can count them, thirty new readings at the credit of the old corrector. We believe that the whole of these might be placed in the text without the risk of damaging it in any very perceptible degree; a few of them would improve it: indeed, some of the best of them were introduced into it long ago, while others have been suggested independently of the old corrector. So that his contributions to the improvement of Shakespeare are, after all, not very considerable. The only two really valuable and original emendations which he has proposed seem to us to be—these welling heavens, for “the swelling heavens,” (Blackwood’s Magazine, p. 310), and thirst complaint, for “first complaint,” (Blackwood’s Magazine, p. 321.)

This, then, is all that we obtain after winnowing this old savage’s “elements of criticism:” two respectable emendations out of twenty thousand (for at that figure Mr Collier calculates them) blundering attempts, all of which, except these two and a very few others, hit the nail straight upon the point, instead of right upon the head. One thing we at any rate now know, that the conjectural criticism of England must have been at its lowest possible ebb during the seventeenth century, if this nameless old Aristarchus is to be looked upon as its representative, or was president of the Royal Society of Literature.

The concluding question is,—What rank is this scholiast entitled to hold among the commentators, great and small, on Shakespeare? And the answer is, that he is not entitled to hold any rank at all among them. He cannot be placed, even at a long interval, behind the very worst of them. He is blown and thrown out of the course before he reaches the distance-post. He is disqualified not only by his incompetency, but by his virtually avowed determination not to restore to Shakespeare his original language, but to take away from Shakespeare his original language, and to substitute his own crudities in the place of it. We are as certain that this was his intention and his practice, as if we had been told so by himself. That he was an early scholiast is certain. It is also in the highest degree probable—indeed, undoubted, as Mr Knight has suggested—that he was in his prime (his prime!) during the Commonwealth, when the Puritans had the ascendancy, and the theatres were closed. That he had been a hanger-on of the theatres in bygone days, and that he hoped to be a hanger-on of them again, is also pretty clear. So there he sat during the slack time polishing away at Shakespeare, “nursing his wrath to keep it warm,” biding his time till Charlie should come over the water again, and theatricals revive. We can have some sympathy with that, but none with the occupation in which he was engaged—paring and pruning the darling of the universe—shaving and trimming him; taming down the great bard in such a way as to make him more acceptable to the tastes, as he thought, of a more refined, if not a more virtuous generation. For this kind of work we have no toleration. This critic was evidently the first of that school of modernisers of the text of Shakespeare which, commencing with him, culminated and fell in Davenant and Dryden, never more, it is to be hoped, to rise.

With regard to Mr Collier we shall just remark, that although he has obviously committed a mistake (“to err is human,” &c.) in attaching any value to these new readings, and has plainly been imposed upon in thinking them restorations of Shakespeare, still his mistake is not irretrievable, and ought not to make the public forgetful of the antecedent services which he has rendered to our genuine Shakesperian literature. His learning [Pg 474]is undoubted; and his judgment, if not very acute, is sound, if he will but allow it fair play, and obey its behests as faithfully as he formerly did, when he adhered with the tenacity of a man of sense to the authorised and undoubted text. This now appears to us, and, we should imagine, to every one else who has attended to the new readings, as greatly less corrupt than, on a slighter inspection, we have been in the habit of supposing. We can only answer for ourselves; but this we can say, that the ineffectual operations of the old MS. corrector have opened our eyes to a depth of purity and correctness in the received text of Shakespeare, of which we had formerly no suspicion; and that is the true good which the proceedings of this old bungler have effected—they have settled for ever the question as to the purity and trustworthiness of the ordinary editions of Shakespeare. We now believe that the text of no author in the world is so immaculate as that of our great national poet, or stands in less need of emendation, or departs so little from the words of its original composer. Mr Collier, too, thought so once—let him think so again, and his authority will instantly recover: this transient cloud will pass away.

In regard to his edition of Shakespeare, which, we believe, is by this time published with the MS. corrector’s perversions inserted in the text, that is now a blunder past all mending. We can only say this of it, that effectual precautions having been now taken by others, and by us, to prevent this publication from ever becoming the standard edition of Shakespeare, we do not grudge it any amount of success which may fall to its share. We are rather desirous to promote its interests, knowing that it can now do no harm, and will not speedily come to a reprint. Even now it must be a very singular book. Hereafter it will be an exceedingly remarkable book—one entitled to take high rank among the morbid curiosities of literature, and to stand on the same shelf—fit companion—with Bentley’s edition of Milton. The serious truth is, that no Shakesperian collection can be complete without it. Every Shakesperian collector ought, beyond a doubt, to provide himself with a copy. People who intend to be satisfied with only one Shakespeare, ought certainly not to take up with this edition; but those who can indulge themselves with several copies, ought unquestionably to purchase it. We say this in all seriousness and gravity, notwithstanding the riddling which we have thought it incumbent on us to inflict on the old MS. corrector.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Vide Alte handschriftliche Emendationen zum Shakespeare.—p. 93.

[15] The attempts made by a judicious foreigner to amend the text of our great dramatist are interesting, and deserve notice, even though not altogether successful. Herr Delius proposes thereby; but we must give the whole passage. The false Iachimo, endeavouring to bring Posthumus into discredit with Imogen, says, “Had I such a wife, I certainly would not do as Posthumus does,

Join gripes with hands

Made hard with hourly falsehood (falsehood as

With labour), then by peeping in an eye,

Base and illustrious as the smoky light

That’s fed with stinky tallow.”

“Then by” is the original text, but it is ungrammatical. For “then by” Dr Delius proposes to read thereby (dabei, unterdess—that is, besides, meanwhile). But this attempt, though creditable, is not successful. Thereby, as here used, is very nearly, but it is not quite an English idiom, and was certainly not Shakespeare’s word.

The proceedings of the bankruptcy courts occasionally make public painful cases, in which long-suffering parents have been compelled to cut adrift incorrigible prodigals. In vain have the generous “governors” and affectionate mothers bled themselves, pelican-wise, to supply the cravings of extravagant youth; in vain have they compounded with Jews, satisfied tailors, paid long accounts for London-made port and indigenous champagne, met bills of whose “value received” twenty per cent had been given in cash, the remainder in green spectacles, paving stones, and stuffed birds. There is a limit to human patience, a bottom even to paternal pockets; indulgence becomes imbecility when impudence is added to insolvency, and at last further aid and countenance are withheld. The spendthrift grumbler sulks, swears he is the most ill-used of mortals, and is finally lodged in a sponging-house or enlisted in a dragoon regiment. Such appears to us to be the present relative position of England and Spain. For nearly half a century John Bull has been “better than a mother” to the cashless, helpless, graceless Spaniards. He has fought their battles, filled their treasury, helped them to constitutions, assisted them with advice, which they have sometimes been too proud to take, at others too silly to profit by. The seed thus sown has produced an abundant harvest of ingratitude. We have acted the part of Aunt Cli to the scape-grace, Jonathan Jefferson, and we have met the same reward. The Spaniard has used us, and now he abuses us.

Has the day really dawned upon which English capitalists are to be proof against Spanish swindlers? We almost, although with difficulty—for there is no more gullible animal than your capitalist on the look-out for an investment, with his pockets stuffed with cash, and consols at par—believe that it has. Spain can hardly credit the fact, and is rabid at the apprehension. The fright has driven her from her propriety. She proscribes our newspapers, forbids us to bury our dead, and vents mysterious but awful menaces in the columns of the respectable Madrid journal, whose editor is the Spanish Home Secretary, its purveyor of funds the Spanish Queen-mother. A nameless something, we have lately been repeatedly assured by the España, is to be done, if the English press continue its denunciations of Spanish schemes and roguery; and the same journal wrote wrathfully and ominously when a warning was given to the British public that, if they chose to intrust their money to Peninsular speculators and peculators, they must look to themselves alone, and not to their government, for aid in recovering it. “Spain,” then wrote the Rianzares journal, “will know how to vindicate her honour, as on former occasions.” If this means anything beyond an ebullition of petulant spleen, it probably refers to the brief notice to quit given to Sir Henry Bulwer. Lord Howden had better look to himself, and keep his portmanteau packed, for he is evidently exposed to receive his passport at any moment, because his stubborn ungrateful countrymen decline making further advances upon such flimsy security as Spanish bonds—as depreciated and worthless a pledge as Spanish honour.

The whole history of Spain’s transactions with her foreign creditors may be made plain, in few lines, to the meanest capacity. Spain owed a large sum of money, and a good deal of interest upon it. She went to her creditors and said, “I am at war, troops must be paid, my treasury is empty; I want some more money. I am fighting for freedom from an odious tyranny; you, free men, cannot but sympathise with me; lend me the cash. We will add the amount to what I already owe you; capitalise the over-due coupons, the whole will make a nice round sum, upon which I bind myself regularly to pay the interest.” Spain has always been seductive [Pg 476]and smooth-tongued; her fine, sonorous, knightly language—the sole remnant of chivalry she has retained—inspires confidence by its high-sounding phrases and noble expressions. The creditors believed her assurances, and, in an incautious hour, parted with their money, a portion of which was duly applied to the first one or two dividends, and then payment again stopped, and was not resumed. Years passed on, the war terminated, Spain was at peace and comparatively prosperous, her revenue largely increased, notwithstanding the absurd tariffs that grievously restricted her exports; still no effort was made to remove from the national character the stigma of ingratitude and insolvency. At last, when it was supposed that the creditors, weary of waiting, would accept almost anything for the sake of a settlement—when, it has been said and believed by many, a considerable amount of bonds had been bought for Spanish government account, at the wretched price to which the government’s refusal of payment had sunk them in the market—a disgraceful compromise was offered, and finally forced upon the creditors, who could not help themselves, and who looked in vain, whilst thus swindled, for efficient advocacy and support, to those Whig statesmen and fervent admirers of constitutional government in the Peninsula, whose smiling approval and countenance had been given to the transfer of good English money to faithless Spanish pockets. The results are known to the world, and may be briefly summed up. The same people who, in the Peninsular war, did their utmost to rob British troops of their laurels, claiming, to this very day, the glory of victories in which not a battalion of their bisoños figured, except in the rear, or to be routed; and insinuating, upon occasion, that Wellington’s army was a sort of auxiliary corps to their own heroic legions—repaid our military intervention and enormous pecuniary aid in their subsequent civil discords, by betraying us for an Orleanist alliance, grossly insulting our government in the person of its ambassador, and insolently snapping their fingers in the face of the British holder of Spanish bonds. We have no desire to resuscitate defunct questions; but certain it is, that many very sensible people—whom, as they are not members of the Peace Society, there is no reason to consider particularly belligerent or disposed to “crumple up” countries on light grounds—throughout England, and especially in the city of London, are of opinion that, upon more than one occasion during the last six years, the imposing force which in 1851 menaced for a doubtful claim the paltry capital of a petty state, would have been better employed off Cadiz, in insisting on an equitable adjustment of the very large debt rightfully and unquestionably owing to thousands of British subjects. This, of course, is a mere ignorant, common-sense view of the case; we have no doubt it could be quickly demonstrated from Vattel, and other great authorities, that common sense is the only good quality it possesses, and that it is utterly opposed to wise statesmanship and international law. Meanwhile, however, like the Count in the Nozze, the creditor dances to Figaro’s fiddle; Spanish ministers and financiers, who, but the other day, had scarcely a dollar to pay for a dinner, are as rich as Rothschild; Spanish dowager-queens hoard millions upon millions, and are prepared with princely dowries for their numerous progeny by handsome guardsmen; but the poor, long-suffering Spanish bondholder, defrauded of his due, and cut down to a fraction per cent, vegetates in penury, or inquires the way to the Union.

These, in round terms, and stripped of unnecessary details, are the facts of the case—facts that defy refutation; these are the disreputable circumstances under which Spain, having, as the Orientals say, made her face white—that is to say, having acted as her own commissioner of bankrupts, and whitewashed herself upon the most favourable terms—once more, with unblushing effrontery, presents herself in the character of a borrower. The pretext this time is a different one; the ingenious Peninsula has got “a new dodge.” Formerly the guineas were handed over to the sound of martial music and [Pg 477]clashing arms, amidst cries of “Down with the Inquisition!” and “Viva la constitution!” Now it is the clink of the hammer we hear, and a vivid panorama unfolds itself before us. It is of the nature of a dissolving view. In the first instance we behold a rich and fertile country, a land flowing with milk and honey, or, better still, teeming with corn, and wine, and oil. But its prosperity is crippled for want of communications. Behold yonder shirtless and miserable peasant, issuing from his filthy tumble-down habitation! Abundance surrounds him; wine is more plentiful with him than water; not all the efforts of himself and family, aided by the pigs and by that sedate-looking jackass, suffice to consume a fourth part of the delicious fruit produced by his orchard, with so little painstaking on his part. How gladly would he exchange a cart-load of wine and fruit for a shirt to interpose between his tawny skin and his garments of coarse woollen cloth, for a light linen jacket, for cool neat dresses for his wife and daughters, for a few of those articles of furniture which the poorest English cottage possesses, but in which his dwelling is so lamentably deficient! But how can he do this? His neighbours are either as well supplied as himself with the produce of the soil, or they have neither money to buy it with, nor goods to barter for it. For leagues and leagues around, there is neither town nor village in whose overstocked market his commodities would find a sale, or have more than a nominal value. True, at the coast there are people waiting, red-haired barbarians from foreign parts, addicted to strong drinks and plum-puddings, and perfectly willing to take his wine and raisins, and to give him, in return, clothing suited to his climate, crockery for his kitchen, a better knife to prune his vines, and an implement of tillage somewhat superior to that extraordinary antediluvian plough, which in England would be put under a glass case, and exhibited as an Aztec curiosity. He has heard that there are such people, and bethinks him how he can convey to them his fruit and wine-skins. It is very far from his hamlet to the nearest camino réal, and in the interval there is no road much better than a bridle-path. Carriers there are none; of canals he has never heard; he looks at his jackass, but the burro sagaciously shakes his ears, as if to decline so distant a journey. So the poor peasant leans upon his spade, and wipes away a tear, in the midst of his useless abundance; pours out upon the ground the wine of last year, to make room for the better vintage of this one, and purchases, at an exorbitant price, of the contrabandista, the smuggled manufactures, whose original cost has been quadrupled by the danger and difficulty of their introduction, and by the long journey on mule-back from the coast.

This affecting picture now melts away, the scene changes—we have all witnessed the sort of thing at the Polytechnic, and those who have not will find something very like it in most Spanish railway prospectuses—and we are transported into a country where on all sides is to be traced the gratifying progress of industry, commerce, and prosperity. “’Tis Spain, but slothful Spain no more!” All is bustle and movement. Busy towns, improving villages, a thriving peasantry, sharp misery disappearing, comfort and civilisation rapidly advancing. The secret of the change, the charm that has wrought it, is to be found in one word, and that word is Railway. Diverging from la corte, from that capital of the civilised world, the court par excellence, by Spaniards never sufficiently to be lauded—from sandy, treeless, waterless Madrid, in summer a furnace, in winter an ice-house—long iron lines extend in all directions, to every frontier, throwing out branches right and left as they proceed, and finally joining other lines which run parallel to the sea-board. That which gold—when it flowed, in a broad continuous stream, from a newly-discovered continent—was powerless permanently to bring about in the prosperity of Spain, is now effected and assured by the ruder agency of iron. The very nature of the Spaniard is transformed; he is no longer indolent and procrastinating, but active and prompt; the most go-ahead Yankee might take a lesson from him. He has abolished his suicidal tariff, and is applying himself, [Pg 478]heart and soul, to the amelioration of that which must long constitute his country’s true wealth—the olive and vine, the corn-field and orchard, the fleece and the silkworm. The stimulus has spread throughout the land, and is felt by all classes. The peasant, whom we lately beheld hungry and half naked in the midst of abundance, is now a prosperous farmer, and annually sends coastwards many a good cask of wine and case of fruit. The contrabandista has turned stoker; and the lazzaroni lad whom we saw, in the last picture, crouched in the shadow of a crumbling wall, and pursuing entomological researches in the interior of his tattered vest, is hardly to be recognised in that active chap, in a glazed cap and uniform jacket, who is hard at work greasing the wheels of the locomotives.

It is impossible to deny the immense superiority of the latter over the former of these two pictures. The pre-railroad one is sketched from life; the post-railroad is the offspring of the imagination of a Spanish railway projector. The former might be signed, “Truth,” the latter, “Salamanca.” The artists, it will be noticed, are of very opposite schools.

The question of Spanish railways is to be contemplated and examined under two distinct points of view. First, as regards their probable effects upon the state of the country, its trade, prosperity, &c.; secondly, with respect to the prospect of profit, and chances of repayment of those foreigners who may be induced to embark in any of the numerous schemes propounded. The first of these two points may be succinctly disposed of. “The general poverty of Spain is very great,” wrote a good authority on the subject in 1845.⁠[17] Since then eight years have elapsed, years of peace and of a tranquillity almost uninterrupted; yet, within the last few weeks, we have been assured by recent travellers in the country, and by Spaniards—who cannot deny the wretched condition they deplore and feel ashamed of, but are impotent to improve—that Spanish poverty and misery are in no degree diminished. The want of means of communication must be reckoned, if not amongst the causes of that unfortunate state of things, at least amongst the obstacles to its removal. And there can be no reasonable doubt that the establishment of an extensive system of railroads would be productive of great improvement and advantage to Spain. These would not be so rapidly manifest as in more populous and industrious countries, and amongst a more energetic race. Years might be required to do what months have accomplished elsewhere. But ultimately the irresistible power of the greatest invention of this century must make itself felt. “Nothing,” says an accomplished English lady, and intelligent observer of Spain, of whose interesting work, the result of three years’ travel and sojourn in that country, we shall presently speak, “could tend more to improve Spain than the establishment of great main lines of railway.” Whilst agreeing in this respect with Lady Louisa Tenison, we think it desirable to extend our investigation a little farther than she has done, and to examine the probable position of the persons who may be induced to advance money for the construction of those important arteries.

The mountainous character of Spain has been frequently and justly urged as a great, if not an insuperable, obstacle to the formation of long lines of railroad in that country. Ford, in his usual lively and satirical strain, long ago denounced these as impossible of construction.⁠[18] The subject, however, is too serious to be jocularly dismissed in a couple of amusing pages. We readily admit the extreme difficulty and expense of tunnelling “mighty cloud-capped sierras which are solid masses of hard stone;” but a little perseverance and investigation sometimes enables one to turn a difficulty which he could not hope to level, and we have been assured by practical Englishmen, whose attention has been particularly directed to the subject, that, in some of the most formidable of Peninsular mountain-chains, research brings to light defiles through which a moderate amount of labour [Pg 479]would enable the locomotive to wind or incline its way. Then long tracts of level in the interior of the country offer some compensation for costly work in mountain districts; and, upon the whole, and at a proximate compensation, Spanish railroads would probably not be so expensive in construction as has been believed and affirmed by many. The most costly and difficult of all would be the Northern Line, about which such a stir has lately been made, which has caused such agitation and convulsions in the Spanish Cabinet, and led to such unpleasant exposure of the greedy manœuvres and reckless cupidity of the Rianzares gang, and of that very slippery gentleman, Señor Salamanca. The Northern Line (two hundred and fifty miles long, as now projected) would have to make its way through two tremendous mountain barriers—the Somosierra range and that continuation of the Pyrenees which extends through the whole of the north of Spain to Cape Finisterre. Whoever is acquainted with the Basque provinces knows that they are little else than one mass or agglomeration of mountains, through which any railway must pass that is to communicate with Bayonne. As a set-off to this, it is urged that, in the Castilian plains, there would be little else to do than to lay down the sleepers and rails. In railway matters it is not easy to see how impossibilities are to be compensated, consistently with the completeness of a line; and certainly, in the words of Ford, “any tunnels which ever perforate those ranges will reduce that at Box to the delving of the poor mole.” The projected Northern Company has contracted (rather prematurely) with Mr Salamanca, to make the line for about six millions sterling, or £24,000 a-mile; but little dependence will be placed, by sane persons, upon Spanish estimates, contracts, and contractors; and meanwhile, pending the sanction by the Cortes of the royal decree authorising the line, the project is a mere bubble, a château en Espagne, as the French say.

Supposing, however, the Cortes to be bullied, tricked, or wheedled out of their consent, the mountains bored, the tunnels made, the line opened—all for the stipulated six millions—what are the probabilities of a return to the shareholders in this precious speculation? In the first place, it must be observed that the Spanish government, which has just fobbed off its creditors with a shilling or two in the pound, proposes, with that honourable consistency and good faith that habitually characterises it in all financial and most other matters, to guarantee to the shareholders in this and several other extensive railways six per cent interest on the capital advanced. It is the old story. The capitalist gets the first dividend or two (paid out of his own money, of course), and then, when all calls are paid up, the Spanish treasury sports its oak, and the finance minister of the day, looking lugubriously through the vasistas, posts up “no effects.” The shareholder perhaps consoles himself with the reflection that in a year or two the line will be open; and that then, when the proceeds of a lucrative traffic pour in, there can be no pretext of inability to pay, and he will get both dividend and arrears. To satisfy him as to his prospects, we shall quote two highly competent authorities⁠—

Thus far the Handbook man. We turn to an interesting and important letter on the subject of Spanish railroads in the journal whose untimely revelations have procured it the hard sentence of exclusion from Spain.

The greater part of what is here truthfully and forcibly stated is equally applicable to all long lines of railway in Spain. It is unnecessary to pile up facts, or to expend more time in demonstrating the risk, or rather the certain loss incurred by all who lend money to the thriftless, faithless Spaniard, for the carrying out of his new mania for ferro-carriles. His object is to supply himself with railroads at foreign cost. He has not the remotest intention of paying interest, when the lines are once completed; so that, if the traffic does but pay its expenses, he has the property for nothing. We do not hesitate to denounce the whole scheme of Spanish railroads as an impudent and gigantic attempt at a wholesale national swindle. The only persons who would be benefited by it, in case of its success, would be that sprightly Wizard of the North, Mr Salamanca, and a few other speculators of his kidney, Queen Christina, the Duke of Rianzares, and their particular friends and adherents.

We should be sincerely glad, for the sake of the Spanish nation, whose many good qualities we (whilst utterly condemning, contemning, and abominating their dishonest government, their intriguing licentious royal family, their greedy dishonest speculators, and their useless lazy army of empleados) highly and justly admire, to see their land lapped to-morrow in an iron network, could it be done by stroke of fairy-wand or touch of Aladdin’s lamp. But that the fifty millions sterling (we are informed that is the sum needed for the whole scheme of Spanish railway) should be filched from British pockets, into which Don Spaniard has so repeatedly, and on such various pretexts, dipped his digits—never withdrawing them empty—is what we most decidedly object to. The only lines for which there is at present room in Spain, and that are likely to give a profit to the shareholders, are short lines in the most populous and industrious districts. And these should only be gone into when they are got up by private companies, and without government intervention of any kind. The directors should be able to head their prospectus, as Paris shopkeepers head their advertisements, with the words, “Sans garantie du gouvernement.” No reliance can be placed on anything in which a Spanish government has a right to interfere: a feeling now pretty prevalent, and which has swamped, at least for the present—and we hope for a long time to come—the schemes of the Spanish Hudson. Lines like the Madrid and Aranguez, (did it belong to a company, instead of to the state), like the Barcelona and Mataro—a private line, paying a good interest—and like the proposed eighteen-mile line, connecting Cadiz, Port St Mary’s, and Xerez, are those that may safely be gone into. The last named (which is, if we are not mistaken, independent of the government) ought, with decent management and reasonable economy, to be one of the most profitable bits of railway [Pg 481]in Europe. And it is strong evidence of the wholesome distaste at present entertained in this country for everything Spanish, that the London committee appointed to allot a portion of the shares in this certainly most promising enterprise received scarcely a single bona fide application, and were fain to abandon the idea of distributing any in England. So that there seems some hope that John Bull, who usually buys his experience dear, and who has only lately become fully convinced how very insolvent a virtue is Spanish patriotism, will not wait till he burns his fingers, to make up his mind as to the very rotten nature of Spanish railroads.

Enough upon this head. In Spanish phrase, we place ourselves at the feet of the fair authoress of the remarkably handsome volume, two lines in which have led us into the foregoing reflections, and ask her pardon for our want of gallantry in allowing our own lucubrations to take precedence of her strong claims to notice. Lady Louisa Tenison furnishes us with practical proof that, if “great lines of railroad” be a desideratum in Spain, they are by no means indispensable in order that delicately-nurtured dames should visit with safety and enjoyment the most beautiful, and some of the wildest districts of the Peninsula. The romance of travel is evidently at an end, as far as Europe is concerned, when English ladies ride through Spain for months together, encountering as few adventures as though their palfreys pranced in Hyde Park. What, not one brush with banditti, or narrow escape from ambushed assassins! Not a single midnight alarm in the lonely venta, or hand-to-hand conflict with ferocious contrabandistas, in the gloomy sierra, or on the wild despoblado? We grieve to say, not one. Persons there are who, having rambled more or less in Spain, and desiring to perpetrate a book, deem it their duty to the public, and to their publishers, to give spice to the volume by blending fiction with fact. They carefully note exaggerated tales, and polite hoaxes, put upon them by waggish muleteers, or at Madrid tables-d’hôte; embellish them to the best of their ability, and, the cookery complete, present the comical olla to British palates. Ladies and gentlemen taste, and wonder, and vow that Spain shall be the last division of the earth’s surface in which they will set foot, to be carried off to the mountains for ransom, or shot at round corners by lurking bravoes. For our part, we entertain no dislike to the gasconading class of travellers in Spain, whom we hold to be rather amusing than otherwise; and all we would beg of them is to sail under their true colours, to call their books “A Romantic Tour,” or “Imaginative Wanderings,” and so give their readers a chance of sifting the chaff from the grain. It seems an article of faith with them, that a plain, intelligent narrative of what they saw and observed will not satisfy the public; that they must invent, if they would be read. In this respect, Lady Louisa Tenison’s volume will prove them mistaken. It is an unaffected and highly interesting record of her observations on Spain and its people. Three years’ abode, and a good knowledge of the language, should surely qualify so intelligent a person as Lady Louisa evidently is, to write a book on any country free from even an approach to error. Of all countries, however, Spain is the most difficult of which to acquire a thorough knowledge. That Lady Louisa may have fallen into some slight misconceptions is very possible, and ill-conditioned critics, who prefer detecting the flies to admiring the amber, may perhaps note them; but we are acquainted with no book on Spain, by an Englishman, of which the same may not be said. Captain Widdrington (Cook) is one of the most uniformly accurate, temperate, and impartial writers on the Peninsula with whom we are acquainted; but we daresay an enemy, bent on picking holes in his coat, might catch him tripping. Even Ford, who has treated the subject more in extenso, and in greater detail, and who may be said to have daguerreotyped Spain, fixing his tints with a slight racy dash of Chili vinegar, which makes Spaniards (who, whilst concealing their thin skin under a cloak of superb indifference and disdain, are sensitive to the opinion of foreigners) smart extremely, has not altogether escaped blunders, especially when touching upon modern Spanish politics. [Pg 482]Of the book now before us we can say, with great truth, that very few of the many upon the same subject that have appeared within the last fifteen years have given sketches of Spain and Spaniards at once so fair, so sensible, and so generous.

To see Spain, there is nothing like the saddle. Ford and Borrow have emphatically told us this, and all who have been in the country will confirm their decision. Long rides may at first be attended with some weariness of limb and loss of leather; but these soon yield to custom, and, moreover, when persons travel for pleasure, they seldom need to make forced marches. Let them select an easy-pacing Spanish horse and a commodious saddle, and be sure that, in a fine climate and over rough roads, the advantages of this mode of progress more than balance its disagreeables. Lady Louisa Tenison, during her various journeys and excursions, frequently got to horse, riding English fashion, greatly to the admiration of the natives of the more remote places she passed through. Thus she avoided the tedious confinement of galeras and other essentially Spanish and especially wearisome vehicles, and saw many things and much country which she could not possibly have got at except on horseback. No less astonished, we dare to swear, than at her riding-habit and sidesaddle, were the good people of Castile and Andalusia at the English lady’s appearing at all in the heart of their sierras, in their remote villages and unfrequented posadas. Prodigiously must they have been puzzled to conjecture her motives for quitting the comforts of Cadiz and Malaga, to endure hardship and encounter fatigue; for, as she truly says, “As to any enthusiasm about beautiful views, or undergoing any fatigue or trouble in their pursuit, such nonsensical things are classed amongst the other eccentric fancies of the very mad English. A person drawing for the mere love of art is hardly considered in his senses. I have often been asked for how much I would sell my drawings; and, when I replied that they were done merely for amusement, a smile of mingled incredulity and pity convinced me that I was considered not over wise or candid; and, upon one occasion, in the Court of the Lions, whilst copying the arabesques, some inquisitive visitors came to the conclusion that I was painting new patterns for fans!” And at Grazalema, in the sierra of Ronda—a little town plastered, as Ford says, “like a martlet’s nest on the rocky hill,” and one of the places where the inhabitants, unused to the intrusion of foreigners, thronged the streets to gaze and wonder at the amazons—the balcony on which Lady Louisa stationed herself with her sketch-book was escaladed by an adventurous youngster, bent on ascertaining the nature of her mysterious proceedings. “Nothing could be more amusing than the tone of contemptuous surprise in which he exclaimed to the crowd, ‘Nada particular; todo blanco!’ an announcement which was received by his friends with evident signs of disappointment. The excitement spread even to the upper classes in Grazalema, and I had an embassy from some young señoritas, who wished to see what I had been doing—a request I could not well comply with, for the best of reasons, that, at that early stage, there really was nothing to be seen.” However unsatisfactory to the Grazalema critic, the result of Lady Louisa’s sketches at that place has been one of the best of the charming views and characteristic illustrations, of which nearly fifty are distributed through her volume.

Most travellers in Spain, possessed of an eye and a taste for the national and characteristic, deplore the Frenchification that country has for some time past undergone, and whose progress becomes annually more rapid and apparent.

On landing, Lady Louisa Tenison was unpleasantly impressed by this—at Malaga, where she dwelt for the winter after her arrival in Andalusia. We must not wonder if some of a lady’s first observations are about a bonnet. She regrets to see this comparatively unbecoming covering creeping in—even in the south, and supplanting the graceful mantilla—Parisian fashion ousting Spanish grace. Spanish ladies ought to understand that the rich masses of their abundant hair—their opulente chevelure, as a French novelist would call it—are unfavourable to bonnet-wearing. Parisian women, upon the other hand, who have generally [Pg 483]thin hair, offer excellent polls whereupon to perch the masterpieces of milliners. But it is quite horrible to think of a dark-eyed, olive-complexioned Andalusian maiden covering her exuberant tresses, which, when unbound, descend to her very heels, and drape her like a garment—so that she might ride, a second Godiva, unabashed through Coventry’s or Cadiz’ streets—with a rose-coloured capote, in lieu of the beautiful veil of black or white lace which, as Lady Louisa justly remarks, lends her a peculiar charm that cannot be rivalled. Then, in choice of colours, the daughters of Spain, it appears, are lamentably deficient in taste.

And at Seville, we grieve to learn, “the fan is rapidly giving way to the parasol.” Surely the monkeys on Gibraltar rock are not more imitative than the charming Sevillanas and Malagueñas. The men, too, have laid aside the graceful and dignified capa, to adopt that most odious and abortive invention—dreamed by some puny French tailor after a heavy supper—the paletot! How is it that Spaniards, who boast of their Españolismo, who consider it an insult to be called Afrancesados, and who scorn their northern neighbours as gavachos, scruple not eagerly to adopt every French mode? Colbert once said that the fashions were to France what the mines of Peru were to Spain. They have since been proved to be a much more durable and valuable possession. Potosi is lost to Spain; but France still keeps, and is likely long to retain, the monopoly of frippery and finery, and Andalusian ladies, albeit no rich galleons now bear the treasures of another hemisphere into the port of Cadiz, find the wherewithal to become tributary to Parisian bonnet-makers. At Seville, however, Lady Louisa was glad to observe few bonnets—few enough to attract notice when seen, and to enhance, by the contrast, the beauty of the mantilla. Her first visit to the theatre, at Malaga, confirmed an impression she had taken up on landing, that Spanish beauty has been exaggerated by poets, painters, and travellers—three classes of persons to whom license in that respect is generally accorded. “My first disappointment was the almost total absence of beauty amongst the Spanish women.... They have magnificent eyes, beautiful hair, and generally fine teeth; but more than that cannot be said by those who are content to give an honest and candid opinion.” The admissions are liberal; and the three things named, if they do not constitute beauty, at any rate go a very long way towards it. But let us visit the Malaga theatre.

Let the reader here turn to page 183 for an extremely spirited sketch of this gipsy dance, and for an equally graphic prose description of its peculiarities. Then return to the Malaga theatre, to look on and laugh at “a piece called the Mercado de Londres, [Pg 484](the London Market), brought out whilst we were there, and illustrating the adventures of a Spaniard in London. The incidents were not very flattering to our national pride, as the story turned on the interesting subject of a man selling his wife—an event which they seem to think of common occurrence in Soberbia Albion.”

The belief that in England men frequently sell their wives, and that such sale and transfer are perfectly legal and binding upon the three persons implicated in the transaction, is prevalent in various Continental countries, and is rather strengthened than destroyed by the indignant logic with which simple-hearted Englishmen are apt to combat it. Even if they thereby succeed in dissipating the absurd notion (which is not often the case), the foreigner, for the most part, affects to abide in his conviction, in order to tease the John Bull. Less civilised or less prosperous nations are delighted to find or fancy a stain on the scutcheon of one whose superiority they cannot but feel, although they may not admit it. The only way to treat them in such cases—particularly Spaniards, who are very satirical, and quick at hitting upon a “raw”—is to out-herod them at once, to gallop far a-head of their ridiculous assumptions, and assure them that if they go to England, they will find, upon every market-day and market-place, rows of women tethered and ticketed for sale. They soon discover that they are made game of, and end by discrediting that which they at first were inclined to believe. But we shall quit the theatre, and step across with Lady Louisa Tenison to the Protestant cemetery. “It is beautifully situated on the slope of the hills just below the fortress, and was a great boon obtained by the late Mr Mark, British Consul at Malaga. The intolerance of the Spanish nation in not allowing followers of any religion but their own to receive Christian burial in their country, is indeed disgraceful. At Cadiz, Malaga, and still more recently at Madrid, exceptions have been made; but everywhere else in Spain none but Catholics can be buried in consecrated ground.” The manner in which the exception at Madrid was made has lately been the subject of so much comment and discussion, that not much remains to be said about it. The intolerance, that Lady Louisa justly stigmatises as disgraceful, is to be laid at the door of the Spanish government, rather than at that of the nation, and perhaps is to be imputed less to the ministry of the day than to certain occult monkish influences. We cannot bring ourselves to believe that the present prime minister of Spain, General Lersundi, who began his military career twenty years ago as a private volunteer in the ranting, roaring, hard-fighting, loud-swearing corps of Chapelgorris—fellows who would as soon have robbed a church as a larder, and from whose hands few convents (or nuns either) that ever came in their way escaped unscathed—can approve or sympathise with the ridiculous stipulations, worthy of Spain’s blackest days of bigotry, which he was compelled to annex to his permission of Protestant interments at Madrid. But he was doubtless compelled to yield to the combined weight of the priest and the palace. How is the virtuous Isabella to obtain pardon for her peccadilloes, for the péchés mignons to which she is infamously addicted, if she does not atone for them by a double dose of piety, and, above all, by proving herself the “Most Catholic” of queens, and saving her capital from the scandal of witnessing the sober ceremonial of a Protestant funeral? The unchristianlike uncharitableness that is breathed by almost every line of General Lersundi’s well-known letter to Lord Howden, must, we are convinced, be disapproved by numbers of Spaniards, and by all enlightened Roman Catholics, whatsoever their nation. Early in the sixteenth century, when France had but recently emerged from the semi-barbarism and bloody religious persecutions of the middle ages, a French sovereign, Louis XIII., published an edict forbidding his Catholic subjects to apply to the Huguenots the offensive name of heretics. The Reformed Church had its places of worship, its cemeteries—everything, in short, which is refused to it two hundred and forty years later, upon the soil of that Spain which may be said, without exaggeration, to owe its very existence as an independent state to Protestant [Pg 485]blood and treasure. In Spain, Protestants are still heretics and outcasts—ay, in the mouths of many, Judios, (Jews), included through ignorant bigotry with those despised children of Israel whom, notwithstanding their accursed descent, Spanish governments are often very glad to have recourse to, and to flatter and make much of, when pinched for coin, and anxious for an advance on quicksilver mines or Cuban revenue. For Spanish ministers are of that family of saucy dogs who do not scruple to eat unclean puddings, and profess a most Vespasianic indifference to the source of gold, so long as they get it into their hands; for, as the Spanish proverb says, money is always orthodox. And let us see what says, on this head, witty and hard-hitting Master Ford, who is always worth listening to, whether he be discoursing of Spain or gibbeting the addle-brained absurdities of an Urquhart. He bids us “visit, by all means, the Protestant burial-ground (the same of which Lady Louisa Tenison has just spoken), not because it is a pleasant ‘traveller’s bourn,’ but because it was the first permitted, in our time, for the repose of heretical carcases, which used to be buried in the sea-sands, like dead dogs, and beyond the low-water mark; and even this concession offended orthodox fishermen, who feared that the soles might become infected; but the Malagueños, even to the priest, never exhibited any repugnance to the dollars of the living Lutheran Briton, for el dinero es muy catolico. This cemetery, which lies outside the town to the east, was obtained and laid out by our friend Mr Mark, father of the present consul, who planted and enclosed the ground, and with great tact placed a cross over the portal, to the amazement of the natives, who exclaimed, ‘Con que estos Herejes gastan cruces!’ (“So, then, these heretics use crosses!”) (Handbook for Spain, p. 354.) Con que, we quit the subject, sincerely wishing, with the Christian charity that characterises us, that the authors, whosoever they be, of the recent ordinances respecting the burial of Protestants at Madrid, may never come to be buried either in the sea-sands, or at a cross-road, nor be smuggled to their graves, as it appears Englishmen are to be who have the ill-luck to give up the ghost within the precincts of “la corte.” And we return to Lady Louisa Tenison, from whom we have again been unconsciously wandering—certainly a most unjustifiable want of taste on our part. We re-open her book at a passage which makes us laugh outright—réir a carcajadas. “Spain,” says her ladyship, “wants means of developing her resources, under the guidance of a wise and honest government.” Truly, that does she, but where are we to look for the government in question? And if she got it, by a miracle, could one reasonably expect her to keep it? Judging from the past, assuredly not. One honest government, in our own day, Spain has had—when Espartero was regent. Its capacity was, perhaps, not equal to its probity; at any rate, the nation would not endure it; and its members have relapsed into private life, no richer—a rare fact to find in the annals of Spanish cabinets—than when they took office. Wisdom and honesty are indeed an uncommon combination in the land beyond the Pyrenees. Until some modern Diogenes succeeds, after long wandering lantern in hand over Spanish hill and valley, in discovering them united, we may look in vain for such a government as that which Lady Louisa Tenison, for Spain’s sake, desires to behold.

We will not close this paper without giving a longer exemplification than we as yet have done of the agreeable tone and style of the authoress of Castile and Andalucia. We select an amusing sketch of the Spanish court.

What innumerable mute maledictions must courtiers, cooks, and managers heap upon her unpunctual Majesty of Spain. Punctuality, it has been said, is the politeness of the great. In sovereigns, it is both politic and a duty. How great a contrast between the slip-shod, lie-abed practices of the Spanish Queen, and the early-rising, well regulated, active habits of our own royal family.

The account of the Queen of Spain’s habits derives particular pungency from the fact of its being derived from the writer’s personal observations. Of course Lady Louisa Tenison could but skim the surface; minutely to investigate and describe the manner of life of Isabella, would require a far bolder and more unblushing pen than it would beseem an English lady to handle. The remarks on Queen Christina are exceedingly just. No queen ever had a finer opportunity of benefiting her country, making herself adored by her people, and immortalising her name. Her popularity was once great, her talents are undeniable, her powers of fascination, the influence she acquires over all who come in contact with her, are precisely such as have above been told. Popular as the representative of anti-Carlism and of constitutionalism, she might have made herself beloved for her own sake. A large majority of the Spanish nation—which has ever been noted for its loyalty and monarchical predilections—asked no better than to esteem and respect her, and not to look upon her as a mere necessity, a sort of pis-aller, imposed upon Spain by circumstances, and accepted because anything appeared better than the vacillating, [Pg 487]priest-ridden Carlos, and the tyranny he aimed at restoring. But it was soon discovered that, whilst professing to combat absolutism, and to represent liberal principles, Maria Christina was at heart an absolutist and a tyrant, that all her political tendencies were retrograde, and that she was utterly selfish, degradingly sensual, and unboundedly covetous. And, to her shame be it spoken, she brought up her child to be no better than herself. The opprobrious epithet shouted at the mother by the Carlist guerillas, during the civil war, was muttered by the Madrileños, but a very few years later, as often as the daughter showed herself in the streets of her capital—and with equal truth. The gross irregularities of Isabella are, at this moment, as notorious in her capital and throughout Spain as anything of the kind possibly can be. Christina, having now considerably passed her prime, has taken up, “for a good old gentlemanly vice,” with avarice. She has a numerous family by Mr Muñoz, for which she cannot hope, unless she dowers them very richly, to obtain such brilliant alliances as her ambition aspires to. So she speculates, accumulates, and hoards; and there is no saying to what exorbitant figure her fortune has by this time attained.

When such bright examples are set by royal personages, it is truly wonderful that any morality or honesty remains in Spain. The quantity is not large, and it must not be sought amongst the statesmen of the country.

There is no gainsaying this. The empleomania, the rage for place, is at the bottom of much of Spain’s misery and degradation. It reduces numerous classes, which, in other countries, apply themselves industriously and profitably to professions, arts, and trades, to the mean condition for whose designation Spaniards employ two contemptuous and expressive words, whose satirical force can hardly be rendered in English—ojalateros and pordioseros, wishers and beggars.

Lady Louisa Tenison’s illustrations prove her as skilful with the pencil as she is pleasant with the pen, and materially enhance the attractions of her book. There is novelty in her choice of subjects, taste and artistical feeling in the manner of their treatment. The mechanical getting up of the work reflects credit on all concerned; and, as for Mr Bentley’s binding, it is so brilliant that we were almost afraid to touch it, and have been obliged to cover it whilst reviewing, lest our critical judgment should go astray after the gilding.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] Castile and Andalucia. By Lady Louisa Tenison. London: 1853.

[17] Ford’s Handbook, first edition, p. 172.

[18] Handbook for Spain, p. 789.

INTRODUCTORY.

PROEM.

II.

A VOICE.

III.

THE PATH.

IV.

SETTING-OUT.

THE SAME.

VI.

THE HYPHEN.

VII.

Ἀγνωστῳ Θεῳ.

VIII.

AD SODALES.

IX.

RESIGNATION.

PEACE.

A good librarian, as well acquainted with the insides of books as the outsides, made the other day this shrewd observation—that in his experience every third work he took up was defective, either in the title or the first sentence. “What,” he continued, “for example, is the meaning of the word ‘humourist?’ By what authority is it applied to a writer?—is it not misapplied to a wit? unless it be meant to degrade him. ‘The wit,’ says Addison in the Spectator, ‘sinks imperceptibly into a humourist.’ A humourist is one whose conduct, whose ways, are eccentric, ‘his actions seldom directed by reason and the nature of things,’ says Watts. It is best the word should be confined according to our dictionaries, to actions, not extended to authorship. The title of Mr Thackeray’s Lectures would lead a lover of plain English to expect narratives of eccentricities taken from real life, and perhaps from the acted buffooneries of itinerant boards, the dominion of Mr Punch’s dynasty—like other dynasties in this age of presumed matter of fact, becoming a ‘dissolving view.’” Mr Thackeray’s English is generally so good, so perfectly to be understood, of such acceptable circulating coinage, that we are surprised at this mistake in the title of his book. Montaigne would head his chapters with any title—as we believe he ushered in one as “On Coach-horses”—and said nothing about them; and we readily admit that the privilege of “Every Man in his Humour” may be a fair excuse for the author of English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century.

We wish we could say that this little volume were unobjectionable in every other respect—but we cannot. We do not see in it a fair, honest, truth-searching and truth-declaring spirit; yet the style is so captivating, so insinuating in its deceiving plainness, so suggestive of every evil in its simplicity, so alluring onward, even when the passages we have read have left unpleasant impression, that it is impossible to lay down the book, though we fear to proceed. The reader may be like to the poor bird under the known fascination: he never loses sight of the glittering eye—but it looks, even in its confident gaiety, too much like that which charms, and delights in, a victim. We did not, it is true, expect from the author of “Vanity Fair” any flattering pictures of men and manners, nor of the world at large, of any age; but we were not prepared for his so strongly expressed dislike and condemnation of other people’s misanthropy as these pages exhibit, particularly in his character of Swift.

And here we think we have a right to protest against Biographical Lectures. It is hardly possible for a lecturer to be fair to his subject. He has an audience to court and to please—to put in good-humour with themselves—to be flattered into a belief of their own goodness, by a bad portraiture of the eminent of the earth. He has to dig out the virtues from the grave to show what vices cling to them—how they look when exhumed in their corruption. Praise is seldom piquant—commonplace is wearisome—startling novelties must put truth to a hazard. If the dead must be called up to judgment of an earthly tribunal, let it not be before a theatrical audience. The lecturer is under the necessity of being too much of an accuser; and if from his own nature, or from some misconception of the characters he takes up, he be a willing one, he has a power to condemn, that the mere writer has not.

In many passages of the book before us there are examples both of the lecturer’s danger, and of his power: many things said because of his audience; and as such audience is generally largely feminine, what advantage has the over-moralising and for the time over-moralised lecturer against the dumb and bodiless culprit called up from his mortal dust, should there be a suspicion of want of tenderness, or doubt of a fidelity and affection, some hundred and fifty years ago, and unpardonable for ever? The lecture-table is no fit place, nor does it offer a fit occasion, to discuss the [Pg 495]wondrous intricacies of any human character. It is not enough that the lecturer should have thought—there should be a pause, wherein a reader may think; but an audience cannot: nor is the lecturer, however deeply he may have thought, likely to have such disinterested self-possession and caution, in his oral descriptions and appeals for praise or blame, as are absolutely required for a truthful biographer. It is a bold thing to bid the illustrious dead come from the sanctity of their graves, and stand before the judgment-seat of the author of Vanity Fair—to be questioned upon their religion and their morals, and not allowed, even if they could speak for themselves, to answer. The lecturer holds in his hand all their written documents, and all that have been written by scribes of old against them, and he will read, but what he pleases—he, the scrupulously moral, religious man, doubly sanctified at all points for his hour’s lecture in that temporary professor’s garb of proprieties, which he is under no necessity of wearing an hour after he has dismissed his audience. We are not for a moment insinuating any dereliction of all the human virtues and graces, as against Mr Thackeray—but as a lecturer he must put on something of a sanctimonious or of a moral humbug; he is on his stage, he has to act his part, to “fret his hour.” He must do it well—he will do it well; that is, to secure present rapturous applause. The audience is carried away quite out of its sober judgment by the wit, the wisdom, the pathos—and even the well-timed bathos—the pity, the satire, and the satire of all satire, in the pity. The ghosts are dismissed—sent back, as they should be, in the lecturer’s and audience’s estimation, to their “dead men’s bones and all rottenness,” no longer to taint the air of this amiable, judicious, and all-perfect nineteenth century—epitomised in the audience.

Give Professor Owen part of an old bone or a tooth, and he will on the instant draw you the whole animal, and tell you its habits and propensities. What Professor has ever yet been able to classify the wondrous varieties of human character? How very limited as yet the nomenclature! We know there are in our moral dictionary the religious, the irreligious, the virtuous, the vicious, the prudent, the profligate, the liberal, the avaricious, and so on to a few names; but the varieties comprehended under these terms—their mixtures, which, like colours, have no names—their strange complexities and intertwining of virtues and vices, graces and deformities, diversified and mingled, and making individualities—yet of all the myriads of mankind that ever were, not one the same, and scarcely alike: how little way has science gone to their discovery, and to mark their delineation! A few sounds, designated by a few letters, speak all thought, all literature, that ever was or will be. The variety is infinite, and ever creating a new infinite; and there is some such mystery in the endless variety of human character. There are the same leading features to all—these we recognise; but there are hidden individualities that escape research; there is a large terra incognita, hard to find, and harder to make a map of. And if any would try to be a discoverer, here is his difficulty—can he see beyond his own ken? How difficult to have a conception of a character the opposite to one’s-self! What man is so gifted? We are but portrait-painters, and no portrait-painter ever yet painted beyond himself—never represented on canvass an intellect greater than his own. In every likeness there is a something of the artist too. We look to other men, and think to find our own idiosyncracies, and we are prepared to love or hate accordingly. As the painter views his sitter in the glass, he is sure to see himself behind him. You biographers, you judges, self-appointed of other men, what a task do you set yourselves!—have you looked well into your own qualifications? You venture to plunge into the deep dark—to bring up the light of truth, which, if you could find it, would mayhap dazzle all your senses. It is far safer for your reputation to go out with Diogenes’s lantern, or your own little one, and thrust it into men’s faces, and make oath you cannot find an honest one; and then draw the glimmer of it close to your own foreheads, and tell people to look there for honesty. But this is our preface, not Mr Thackeray’s. He is too bold [Pg 496]to need one. He rushes into his subject without excuse or apology, either for his own defects of delineation, or of his subject’s character. If you would desire to see with what consummate ability, and with what perfect reality in an unlikeness he can paint a monster, read the first life of his Lecture, that of the great man—and we would fain believe, in spite of any of his biographers, a good man—Dean Swift.

If we may be allowed to judge from a collection of contradictory statements respecting Swift, no man’s life can be more difficult for a new writer to undertake, or for any reader to comprehend. If we are to judge from the unhesitating tone of the many biographers, and their ready acceptance of data, no life is so easy. The essayist of the Times makes Swift himself answerable for all the contradictions; that they were all in him, and that he was at all times, from his birth to his death, mad. This is, indeed, to make short work of it, and save the unravelling the perplexed skein of his history. Another writer contends that he was never mad at any period, not even the last of his life. That he was always mad is preposterous, unless we are to accept as insanity what is out of and beyond the common rate of men’s thoughts and doings. We certainly lack in the character of Swift the one prevalent idea, which pervades and occupies the whole mind of the madman. Such may have one vivid, not many opposites in him.

But the contradictions ascribed to Swift are more like the impossibilities of human nature—if they are to be received as absolute characteristics, and not as occasional exceptions, which are apt, in the best of mankind, to take the conceit out of the virtues themselves, and to put them into a temporary abeyance, and mark them with a small infirmity, that they grow not too proud.

The received histories, then, tell us that Swift was sincerely religious, and an infidel; that he was the tenderest of men, a brute, a fiend, a naked unreclaimable savage; a misanthrope, and was the kindest of benefactors; that he was avaricious, and so judiciously liberal that he left no great fortune behind him. Such is the summary; the details are both delightful and odious. The man who owns these vices and virtues must indeed be a monster or a madman! These are characters very hard to fathom. Shakespeare has delineated one, and he has puzzled all the world except Shakespeare, who chose to make his picture more true by leaving it as a puzzle to the world. Hamlet has been pronounced mad from his conduct to Ophelia, mainly if not solely. It is a ready solution of the incomprehensible. Swift was a Hamlet to Stella and Vanessa; and as there are two against him, versus Hamlet’s one love, critics pronounce him doubly mad. It is a very ingenious but not very satisfactory way of getting out of the difficulty. Mad or in his senses, he is a character that provokes; provoked writers are apt to be not fair ones; and because they cannot quite comprehend, they malign: damnant quod non intelligunt, is also a rule guiding biographers. Shall he have the qualities “that might become an angel,” or shall his portrait be “under the dark cloud, and every feature be distorted into that of a fiend?” You have equal liberty from the records to depict him as you please. The picture, to be seen at large by an assembled lecturer’s audience, must be strong and coarse in the main, and exhibit some tenderer tones to the near benches in front.

“For a man of my level,” says Swift of himself, “I have as bad a name almost as I deserve! and I pray God that those who give it me, may never have reason to give me a better.” He does not, you see, set up for perfection, but through his present maligners he slaps his after-biographers in the face, who, if they be hurt, will deny the wit or omit it, and prefer instanter a charge of hypocrisy. Angel or fiend! how charitable or how unmerciful are lecturers and biographers! and, being so able to distinguish and choose, how very good they must be themselves! Did the reader ever happen to see a life of Tiberius with two title-pages, both taken from historical authorities; two characters of one and the same person; made up, too, of recorded facts? He is “that inimitable monarch Tiberius,” [Pg 497]during most of his reign “the universal dispenser of the blessings of peace,” yet “he permitted the worst of civil wars to rage at Rome!” We may venture to use the words of the essayist, speaking of Swift—“We doubt whether the histories of the world can furnish, for example and instruction, for wonder and pity, for admiration and scorn, for approval and condemnation, a specimen of humanity at once so illustrious and so small.” We have, from perfect authorities, Tiberius handed down for detestation and for universal admiration. The testimonies are not weak; they are alike strong, and equally accepted standards of historical evidence and literature. “Swift stood a living enigma.” It should seem there have been many such enigmas. Shakespeare, who knew all nature, gave the world one to make out as it can.⁠[19] Grave history offers another. The novelist, M. de Wailly, has tried his hand at this enigma—Swift; but the Frenchman, like most French novelists, went altogether out of nature to establish impossible theories. A dramatist might reduce the tale within the limits of nature, if he could but once, for a few moments, be behind the scenes of truth’s theatre—if he knew accurately all the facts, or perhaps one or two facts, that time has concealed, and perhaps ever will conceal; and which, discovered, would solve the enigma at once. Of course, the great enigma lies in Swift’s amours. These apart, no man would ever have ventured to assert the life-long madness of Swift. Great men and little have had, and, as long as the world lasts, will have their amours, honest ones and dishonest; but, excepting for romance-writing and gossiping of a day, such themes have been thought unworthy history, and to be but slightly notable even in biography. Their natural secresy has hitherto covered the correct ones with a sanctity, and the incorrect with a darker veil, that it is better not to lift; nor is it easy at all times to distinguish the right from the wrong. The living resent the scrutiny: we do not admire the impertinence, nor easily admit the privilege of an amatorial inquisition upon the characters of the dead. And what has curiosity gathered, after all, which ought to justify honest people in maligning Swift, Stella, or Vanessa? A mass of contradictions. They cannot all be true. Even Stella’s marriage, stated as a fact by so many [Pg 498]writers, is denied, and upon as fair evidence as its supposition. The first account of it is given as many as seven years after Swift’s death, and twenty-four years after Stella’s. There are two versions with respect to the dying scene, and supposed dialogue regarding the marriage. They contradict each other; for, in the one, Swift is made brutally to leave the room, and never to have seen her after; in the other, to have desired to acknowledge the marriage, and that Stella said, “It is too late.” Who knows if either be true? and what means “it is too late?” Do those few simple words, overheard, necessarily imply any such acknowledgment? But there is proof that one malicious statement is false. “This behaviour,” says Mr Thomas Sheridan (not Dr Sheridan, the friend of Swift, for whom he has been mistaken, and weight accordingly given to his statement), threw Mrs Johnson into unspeakable agonies; and for a time she sunk under the weight of so cruel a disappointment. But soon after, roused by indignation, she inveighed against his cruelty in the bitterest terms; and sending for a lawyer, made her will, bequeathing her fortune, by her own name, to charitable uses.” It is said this was done in the presence of Dr Sheridan; but the narrator was a mere lad when his father, from whom he is said to have received it, died. But this very will is, if not of Swift’s dictation, the will he had wished her to make (compare it with Swift’s own will—the very phraseology is strongly indicative of his dictation); for he had thus written to Mr Worral when in London, during Stella’s severe illness: “I wish it could be brought about that she might make her will. Her intentions are to leave the interest of all her fortune to her mother and sister during their lives, afterwards to Dr Stevens’s hospital, to purchase lands for such uses as she designs it.” Upon this Mr Wilde, author of The Closing Years of Dean Swift’s Life, remarks most properly: “Now, such was not only the tenor, but the very words of the will made two years afterwards, which Sheridan (Thomas, not Dr Sheridan) would have his readers believe was made in pique at the Dean’s conduct.” Then it follows, that if this paragraph in the tale, and told as a consequence of the previous paragraph, is untrue, as it is proved to be, the first part, the brutal treatment, falls to the ground. In any court the evidence would be blotted from the record. It is curious, and may have possibly some bearing upon the Platonic love of Swift and Stella, that she should, in this will, have been so enamoured of celibacy, that she enjoins it upon the chaplain whom she appointed to read prayers and preach at the hospital. “It is likewise my will that the said chaplain be an unmarried man at the time of his election, and so continue while he enjoys the office of chaplain to the said hospital.” This will is also curious, and worthy of notice, in another respect. Among the slanders upon Swift and Stella, it had been circulated that she had been not only his mistress, but had had a child by him; and an old bellringer’s testimony was adduced for the fact. There may be in the mind of the reader quite sufficient reasons to render the story impossible; but one item of the will is a bequest to this supposed child by name. “I bequeath to Bryan M‘Loglin (a child who now lives with me, and whom I keep on charity) twenty-five pounds, to bind him out apprentice, as my executors, or the survivors of them, shall think fit.” Now, this is the great case of cruelty against Swift, and we think it is satisfactorily disposed of. Have we any other notice given that Swift behaved brutally to Stella? None. Where is there any evidence of her complaining? but there is evidence of the tenderest affection on Swift’s part. Stella’s letters have never seen the light; but, if we may judge by the answers to them, there could have been no charge of cruelty brought against him by her. The whole is an assumption from this narrative of Sheridan the son, and, as we have shown, altogether a misconception or a dream of his. Even with respect to Stella’s parentage authors do not agree—yet each speaks as positively as if he had been at the birth. Swift himself says that her father was a younger brother of a good family in Nottinghamshire, and her mother of a lower degree. Some [Pg 499]assert that she was the natural daughter of Sir Wm. Temple. Johnson says, the daughter of Sir Wm. Temple’s steward; but, in contradiction to this, it is pretty clear that her mother did not marry this steward, whose name was Mosse, till after Sir Wm. Temple’s death, when Stella was in Ireland. Sir William left her a thousand pounds, and, it is said, declared to her her parentage. A writer in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1757, who knew Stella’s mother, and was otherwise well acquainted with facts, is urged, in indignation at the treacherous and spiteful narrative by Lord Orrery, to write a defence of the Dean. From this source, what others had indeed suspected is strongly asserted—that Swift was himself the natural son of Temple. He thus continues: “When Stella went to Ireland, a marriage between her and the Dean could not be foreseen; but when she thought proper to communicate to her friends the Dean’s proposal, and her approbation of it, it was then become absolutely necessary for that person, who alone knew the secret history of the parties concerned, to reveal what otherwise might have been buried in oblivion. But was the Dean to blame, because he was ignorant of his natural relation to Stella? or can he justly be censured because it was not made known to him before the day of the marriage? He admired her; he loved her; he pitied her; and when fate placed the everlasting barrier between them, their affection became a true Platonic love, if not something yet more exalted.... We are sometimes told, that upon the Hanoverian family succeeding to the throne of Great Britain, Swift renounced all hopes of farther preferment; and that his temper became more morose, and more intolerable every year. I acknowledge the fact in part; but it was not the loss of his hopes that soured Swift alone; this was the unlucky epocha of that discovery, that convinced the Dean that the only woman in the world who could make him happy as a wife, was the only woman in the world who could not be that wife.” Delany also entertained a suspicion in agreement with this account. The supposition would seem to throw light upon a mysterious passage in Swift’s life, and to be sufficient explanation of all his behaviour to Stella. “Immediately subsequent to the ceremony (the marriage) Swift’s state of mind,” says Scott, “appears to have been dreadful. Delany, as I have heard from a friend of his relict, being pressed to give his opinion on this strange union, said, that about the time it took place, he observed Swift to be extremely gloomy and agitated—so much so, that he went to Archbishop King to mention his apprehensions. On entering the library, Swift rushed out with a countenance of distraction, and passed him without speaking. He found the Archbishop in tears; and upon asking the reason, he said, ‘You have just met the most unhappy man on earth, but on the subject of his wretchedness you must never ask a question.’” Sir Walter Scott does not admit this story in the Gentleman’s Magazine, but we doubt if the reason of his doubt, or rejection of it, be quite satisfactory. “It is enough to say that Swift’s parents resided in Ireland from before 1665 until his birth in 1667, and that Temple was residing in Holland from April 1666 until January 1668. Lord Orrery says until 1670.” Dates, it appears, are not always accurately ascertained. We cannot determine that ambassadors have no latitude for a little ubiquity; but there is one very extraordinary circumstance with regard to Swift’s childhood, that seems to involve in it no small degree of mystery. “It happened, by whatever accident, that Jonathan was not suckled by his mother, but by a nurse, who was a native of Whitehaven; and when he was about a year old, her affection for him was become so strong, that, finding it necessary to visit a relation who was dangerously sick, and from whom she expected a legacy, she found means to convey the child on shipboard, without the knowledge of his mother or his uncle, and carried him with her to Whitehaven. At this place he continued near three years; for when the matter was discovered, his mother sent orders not to hazard a second voyage, till he should be better able to bear it. The nurse, however, gave other [Pg 500]testimonies of her affection to Jonathan, for during his stay at Whitehaven she had him taught to spell, and when he was five years old he was able to read a chapter in the Bible.”

This undoubted incident is no small temptation to a novelist to spin a fine romance, and affiliate the child according to his fancy. It is a strange story—a very poor widow not suckling her own child! kept three years away from a parent, lest, having borne one voyage well, the young child should not be able to bear a second! The said novelist may find sufficient reason for the mother in after years recommending him to Sir Wm. Temple, and perhaps weave into his story that the nominal mother was one intrusted with a charge not her own. Stella’s mother’s connection with the Temple family may be as rationally accounted for. The writer in the Gentleman’s Magazine, already quoted, seems to have had this account of Johnston from the widow herself. “This gentlewoman (Stella’s mother) was the widow (as she always averred) of one Johnston a merchant, who, having been unfortunate in trade, afterwards became master of a trading sloop, which ran between England and Holland, and there died.” Then, again, to revert to the entanglement of this mystery, although it is received that there was a marriage—a private marriage, as it is said, in the garden, by the Bishop of Clogher—are there really sufficient grounds for a decision in the affirmative? It is traced only to Delany and Sheridan (who could not have known it but by hearsay), and the assertion, on suspicion, of the worst of all evidences with regard to Swift, Orrery (he only knew him in his declining years, as he confesses); but Dr Lyon, Swift’s executor, denied it; and Mrs Dingley, who came to Ireland, after Sir William Temple’s death, with Stella, and lived with her till her death, laughed at it as an idle tale. Mrs Brent, with whom the Dean’s mother lodged, and who subsequently was his housekeeper, never believed it, and often told her daughter so, who succeeded her as housekeeper. It is said the secret was told to Bishop Berkeley by the Bishop of Clogher. “But,” says Sir Walter Scott, “I must add, that if, as affirmed by Mr Monck Mason, Berkeley was in Italy from the period of the marriage to the death of the Bishop of Clogher, this communication could not have taken place.” With evidence so conflicting even as to the marriage—so uncertain—and if a marriage, as to the relationship between the parties—as to the time of discovery—and with that maddening possibility of Swift’s physical infirmity alluded to by Scott; it does appear that it is the assumption of a very cruel critical right, to fasten upon the character of Swift a charge of fiendishness and brutality towards Stella. Where there are so many charitable ways of accounting for his conduct, most of which might well move our admiration and our pity, and where the tenderness of the parties towards each other cannot for a moment be doubted (vide Swift’s diary in his letters, and his most touching letter speaking of her death and burial), there is nothing more improbable, nothing more out of nature, than the acquiescence of both Swift and Stella in a condition which might well have driven both mad, if that condition had been avoidable. We have a hesitation in believing in self-made monsters. Novelists, romance-writers, and dramatists, conjure them up for their hour on the stage, but it is a novelty to admit them into a biography which professes to be true. As to Lord Orrery, the first slanderer of Swift after his death, we have a perfect contempt for his character. He sought the aged Swift for his own ends. His father had bequeathed away from him his library; in his vexation he thought to vindicate himself by an ambition to become a literary character. As Alcibiades sought Socrates, not for Socrates’ virtues, but because his wisdom might aid him in his political schemes; so Lord Orrery took the leading literary characters of the day, and especially Swift, into what companionship he might. He cajoled and flattered the old man, and at his death maligned him. There was hypocrisy, too; for it was contemptible in him to have pretended a friendship so warm, with a man whom he designated as a tyrant, a brute, and irreligious. The world are keen to follow evil report. [Pg 501]The ill life which is told by a friend is authentic enough for subsequent writers, who, like sheep, go over the hedge after their leader. The writer in the Gentleman’s Magazine for November 1757, speaks as one intimately, and of long continuance, acquainted with all the circumstances of the case. He says significantly that he thinks there are some living who have it in their power, from authentic materials, to throw light upon the subject. That he was well acquainted with her mother we learn from the following passage: “I saw her myself in the autumn of 1742 (about a year before her death), and although far advanced in years, she still preserved the remains of a very fine face.” He minutely describes Stella’s person as one who had seen her. “Let those judge who have been so happy as to have seen this Stella, this Hetty Johnston, and let those who have not, judge from the following description”—and as one who had conversed with her: “Her mind was yet more beautiful than her person, and her accomplishments were such as to do honour to the man who was so happy as to call her daughter.” He tells the anecdote (for which he says “I have undoubted authority”) of her presence of mind and courage in firing a pistol at a robber on a ladder about to enter her room at night. He tells the time, and implies the cause of her leaving Moor Park to reside in Ireland. “As soon as she was woman enough to be intrusted with her own conduct, she left her mother, and Moor Park, and went to Ireland to reside, by the order of Sir William, who was yet alive. She was conducted thither by Swift; but of this I am not positive, as I am that her mother parted with her as one who was never to see her again.” Upon that fact, then, he is positive, and scrupulous of assertion where not so. May it be conjectured he had the information from the mother herself, when he saw her so near the time of her death? He asserts that Sir William often “recommended her tender innocence to the protection of Swift, as she had no declared male relation that could be her defender;” that “from that time when they received the proper notice of the secrets of the family, they took care to converse before witnesses, even though they had never taken such precaution before.” “Can we wonder,” he adds, “that they should spend one day in the year in fasting, praying, and tears, from this period to her death? Might it not be the anniversary of their marriage?” “Swift had more forcible reasons for not owning Stella for his wife, than his lordship (Orrery) has allowed; and that it was not his behaviour, but her own unhappy situation, that might perhaps shorten her days.” The contributor, who signs himself C.M.P.G.N.S.T.N.S., writes purposely to vindicate the character of Swift from the double slander of Lord Orrery, who impeaches “the Dean’s charity, his tenderness, and even his humanity, in consequence of his hitherto unaccountable behaviour to his Stella, and of his long resentment shown to his sister.” Lord Orrery had said that Swift had persisted in not owning his marriage from pride, because he had reproached his sister for marrying a low man, and would never see her or communicate with her after her marriage. That as Stella was also of low origin, he feared his reproaches might be thrown back upon himself. Then follows an entire contradiction of this unlikely statement or surmise of Orrery—for that, “after her husband’s and Lady Gifford’s death, she (the sister, Mrs Fenton) retired to Farnham, and boarded with Mrs Mayne, Mrs Mosse boarding there at the same time, with whom she lived in the greatest intimacy; and as she had not enough to maintain her, the Dean paid her an annuity as long as she lived—neither was that annuity a trifle.” Another correspondent in the same Magazine—for December 1757—as desirous of vindicating the Dean, yet, nevertheless, points out a supposed error with regard to the passage in which mention is made of “the unlucky epocha of that discovery,” being that of the accession of the Hanoverian family, and the loss of Swift’s hopes. “But this,” he says, “is inconsistent with Swift’s marrying her in 1716, as (in page 487) we are told he did; or in 1717, in which year, I think, Lord Orrery places this event.” We think this is being too precise. Lord Oxford was impeached and sent to the Tower in [Pg 502]1715, which is sufficiently near to be called the same epocha. Or even if we take the accession from the death of Queen Anne—August 1714—the disappointment must have been rankling in the mind of Swift, still fresh, at the time of the other event. He likewise notices that Sir Wm. Temple was abroad at and before Swift’s birth; but, for reasons we have given, we think this objection of no importance. No mention is made of Vanessa in the article in the Gentleman’s Magazine. The author seems cautiously, conscientiously, to abstain from every item of Orrery’s narrative, but such as he was assured of from his own knowledge.

Johnson, in his life of Swift, speaks disparagingly of Stella’s wit and accomplishments. It was displeasing to the great lexicographer that a woman should spell badly. Bad spelling was, we apprehend, the feminine accomplishment of the day. Dr Drake, in his essay on the literature and manners of that age, says, “It was not wonderful that our women could not spell, when it may be said that our men had not yet learnt to read.”

We prefer Swift’s account of this matter. She was “versed,” he says, “in Greek and Roman history—spoke French perfectly—understood Platonic and Epicurean philosophy, and judged very well of the defects of the latter. She made judicious abstracts of the books she had read,” &c. Of her manners: “It was not safe nor prudent in her presence to offend in the least word against modesty, for she then gave full employment to her wit, her contempt, and resentment, under which stupidity and brutality were forced to sink into confusion; and the guilty person, by her future avoiding him like a bear or a satyr, was never in a way to transgress again.” She thus replied to a coxcomb who tried to put the ladies in her company to the blush: “Sir, all these ladies and I understand your meaning very well, having, in spite of our care, too often met with those of your sex who wanted manners and good sense. But, believe me, neither virtuous nor even vicious women love such kind of conversation. However, I will leave you, and report your behaviour; and whatever visit I make, I shall first inquire at the door whether you are in the house, that I may be sure to avoid you.” “She understood the nature of government, and could point out all the errors of Hobbes, both in that and religion.” This letter of Swift’s is full of her praise; but we know nothing more touching than the passage which speaks of his sickening feelings at the hour of her burial. “January 30, Tuesday.—This is the night of the funeral, which my sickness will not suffer me to attend. It is now nine at night, and I am removed into another apartment that I may not see the light in the church, which is just over against the window of my bed-chamber.” Were these words written by a cruel man!! Well, if so, we must admire a woman’s saying—as it is put by Mr Thackeray: “Ah, it was a hard fate that wrung from them so many tears, and stabbed pitilessly”—(alas, Mr Thackeray, why will you put in that odious pitilessly?)—“that pure and tender bosom! A hard fate; but would she have changed it? I have heard a woman say that she would have taken Swift’s cruelty to have had his tenderness.” And why, Mr Thackeray, will you say of such a man, when he was writing that they had removed him into another apartment, that he might not see the light in the church, and was praising her and loving her when he could speak or write a word—why, we ask, should you say, “in contemplation of her goodness, his hard heart melts into pathos.” Your own heart was a little ossifying into hardness when you wrote this. Ah! did you wish your female audience to think how much more tender you could be yourself? and so did you offer this little apology for some hard things in your novels? We wish you had written an essay, and not read a lecture. You would have been both less hard and less tender,—for, in truth, your tender passages in this life of Swift, are very well to the purpose, to catch your audience; but they are “nihil ad rem.” And your appeal to the “pure and tender bosoms,” all against poor Swift, as a detestable cannibal,—how, in his Modest Proposal, “he rages against children,” and “enters the nursery with the tread and gaiety of an ogre,” how he thought the “loving and having [Pg 503]children” an “unreasonableness,” and “love and marriage” a “folly,” because in his Lilliputian kingdom the state removed children from their parents and educated them; and you wind up your appeal so lovingly, so charmingly, so devotedly, so insinuatingly to your fair audience, upon the blessings of conjugal love and philoprogenitiveness, that you must be the dearest of lecturers, the pet of families, the destroyer of ogres; and, as to that monster Swift, the very children should cry out, as they do in the Children in the Wood, “Kill him again, Mr Thackeray.” And this you did, knowing all the while that the Modest Proposal was a patriotic and political satire—one of real kindness to the people, whose children he supposes, in the depth of his feeling and his satire and bitter irony, the Government should encourage the getting rid of, rather than, in defiance of all his (the Dean’s) schemes for the benefit of Ireland, they should be made a burthen to their parents, and miserable themselves. All this you knew very well: it was shabby and shameful of you by your mere eloquence to make this grave irony appear or be felt as a reality and a cruelty, and tack on to it an importation from Lilliput of a state edict, as if it were one in Swift’s mind with the Modest Proposal. Yes,—you knew, the while these your words were awakening detestation of Swift, you were oratorising a very great sham—all nonsense—stuff—that would never pass current but through the stamp of lectureship. You knew how the witty Earl Bathurst, a kind father with his loved children about him, as good-naturedly as you should have done, received Swift’s benevolently intended satire. “A man who has nine children to feed,” says Lord Bathurst to Swift, “can’t long afford alienos pascere nummos; but I have four or five that are very fit for the table. I only wait for the Lord Mayor’s Day to dispose of the largest, and shall be sure of getting off the youngest whenever a certain great man (Sir R. Walpole) makes another entertainment at Chelsea.” Here are your false words to win all feminine sympathy. “In fact, our great satirist was of opinion that conjugal love was unadvisable, and illustrated the theory by his own practice and example—God help him!—which made him about the most wretched being in God’s world.” How cruel was this in you, under some of the probabilities, and all the possibilities that may be, ought to be, charitably referred to Swift’s case—in his loves or his friendships, be they what they will, for Stella and Vanessa. Vanessa—have we then all this while forgotten Vanessa? Hers is indeed a curious story. It is told in Swift’s poem of “Cadenus and Vanessa,” and published after her death, at the dying orders of Vanessa herself.

At the time Swift was moving in the higher circles in London, he appears to have been remarkable for the gracefulness of his manners and his conversational powers. These accomplishments won for him many friendships in the female society in which he found himself. Indeed, in his letters, his female correspondence possesses a great charm, and speaks very highly in favour of the wit and accomplishments of the really well-educated women of the day. Swift lived in great familiarity with the Vanhomrighs. The eldest daughter (another Esther), ardent by nature, and desirous of improving her mind, earnestly gave herself up to Swift’s converse and instruction. The result on her part was love, on Swift’s friendship: it is possible he may have felt something stronger; but, with an inconsistency, those who charge him with a tenderer feeling deny him the power of entertaining it. The story is too well known to be repeated here. She confessed her passion, and he insisted upon friendship only. She followed him to Ireland. She so expressed her state of mind to him by letter, that Swift had certainly reason to apprehend fatal consequences, if he altogether broke off his intimacy. If it be true that Swift was by nature cold, it is some excuse for imprudence that he did not easily suspect, or perhaps know, the dangerous and seducing power of an attachment warmer than friendship. It is evident he professed nothing more. Whatever be the case in that respect, there is no reason to charge upon either an improper intimacy. Mr Thackeray thinks the two women died, killed by their [Pg 504]love for, and treatment by, Swift. It is possible love, and disappointed love, may have hastened both their deaths, and made the wretchedness of Swift. On all sides, the misery was one for compassion, and such compassion as may charitably cover much blame. But even the story of Vanessa is told differently. There is little certainty to go upon, but enough for any man who pleases to write vilely on. Lord Orrery is very unmerciful on the character of Vanessa. He, in downright terms, charges her with having thrown away her virtue and her religion, preferring passion to one and wit to the other. This certainly gives him a good latitude for maligning his friend. Did he ever give his friend Swift a piece of his mind, and say to him, he thought him a rascal, and would discontinue his friendship? Oh, no; it was pleasanter and very friendly to tell all his spiteful things, after the Dean was dead, to “his Ham,” that they might be handed down to the world from “father to son,” and so the world must know “you would have smiled to have found his house a constant seraglio of very virtuous women, who attended him from morning till night, with an obedience, an awe, and an assiduity, that are seldom paid to the richest or the most powerful lovers; no, not even to the Great Seignior himself.” Yet the facetious father of “my Ham” never saw Stella, and knew perhaps as little of the seraglio. Sir Walter Scott says, as others also, we believe, that, upon Vanessa’s applying to Stella herself to know the nature of the undefined connection between her and Swift, she received from Stella an acknowledgment of the marriage. If this were true, it would of course settle that question; but Lord Orrery, from whom the first statement of the marriage came, and who would readily have seized such a confirmation of his tale, says no such thing. On the contrary, he says Vanessa wrote the letter to Cadenus, not to Stella, and that Swift brought his own written reply, and, “throwing down the letter on her table, with great passion hastened back to his horse, carrying in his countenance the frowns of anger and indignation.” How are we to trust to accounts so different? “She did not,” he adds, “survive many days (he should have said weeks, but days tells more against his friend) the letter delivered to her by Cadenus, but during that short interval she was sufficiently composed to cancel a will, made in Swift’s favour, and to make another,” &c. Who will not ask the question,—Was there a will made in Swift’s favour? It is against probability; for be it remembered, that the same story was told with respect to Stella’s will, and it has been clearly proved that her will was such as Swift wished her to make. Nor was it at all consistent with Swift’s character, proud as he was, and always so cautious to avoid any scandal on Stella’s account, that he would have allowed her to make a will in his favour; and it would have been still more revolting to his pride to have accepted a legacy from Vanessa.

Orrery treats poor Vanessa worse even than he does his friend. He conjectures her motives as against Swift, and writes of her death, “under all the agonies of despair,” which, unless he were present at the last scene, he is not justified in doing, and reviles her with a cruel uncharitableness. The worst that ought to be said of this miserable love and perplexing friendship is said by Scott—“It is easy for those who look back on this melancholy story to blame the assiduity of Swift or the imprudence of Vanessa. But the first deviation from the straight line of moral rectitude is, in such a case, so very gradual, and on the female side the shades of colour which part esteem from affection, and affection from passion, are so imperceptibly heightened, that they who fail to stop at the exact point where wisdom bids, have much indulgence to claim from all who share with them the frailties of mortality.”

More than a hundred and fifty years ago this sad tale, whatever it was in reality, yet now a mystery, was acted to the life in this strange world. The scandal of few real romances seldom lasts so long. It is time to cease pursuing it with feelings of a recent enmity; it is a better charity to hope, that all that was of difference, of vexation, of misery, nay, of wrong, has become as unsubstantial as their dust, and that they are where all that was [Pg 505]of love is sure to be, for love is eternal. Poor Vanessa’s dust may still rest in peace. Swift’s and Stella’s have not been allowed the common repose of the grave. Their bodies have been disturbed. The phrenologists have been busy with the skulls, and their unhallowed curiosity has been rewarded with a singular refutation of their doctrine. The peculiarities of Swift’s skull are—“the extreme lowness of the forehead, those parts which the phrenologists have marked out as the organs of wit, causality, and comparison, being scarcely developed at all, but the head rose gradually from benevolence backwards. The portion of the occipital bone assigned to the animal propensities, philoprogenitiveness and amativeness, &c., appeared excessive.”

There is something very shocking in this disturbance of the dead. We are inclined to join in Shakespeare’s imprecation on the movers of bones. Swift’s larynx has been stolen, and is now, they say, in possession of the purloiner in America. We wish it had Swift’s human utterance, that the thief might wish he had no ears. An itinerant phrenologist is now hawking about Pope’s skull. Matthews’ thigh-bone has circulated from house to house. If ghosts ever visit nowadays our earth, we could wish them to come armed each with a stout stick, and act upon the phrenologists the “Fatal Curiosity.”

if it was not justified, as it certainly was not, during the Dean’s last years, in his melancholy state, may be justified as a prophecy, and fulfilled when his skull was handed about from fashionable house and party, and exhibited as a show.

Before we entirely quit the subject of Swift’s amours, it is necessary to mention a serious offer of marriage which he certainly made, about the year 1696. The lady—Miss Jane Waring—did not at first receive his advances very warmly. After four years the courtship came to an end. It seems Miss Waring became more complying as Swift cooled. In a letter he complained of her want of any real affection for him. It is so worded as to imply some doubts of her temper and judgment. He writes as a man would do who considers himself rather bound in honour than by love, and still offers marriage—upon terms. These terms, those who profess to be conversant in love proprieties, as in other branches of criticism, say no woman could comply with. We do not profess to determine cases of that nature. We apprehend all kinds of terms have been complied with on both sides without impeachment in the Court of Love. This offer of marriage, however, militates against Sir Walter Scott’s hypothesis of physical unfitness, and rather strengthens the argument and statements of the writer in the Gentleman’s Magazine. We believe the exact date of the supposed marriage has not been given. If it did take place, what if it should be possible it was on the day—his birthday (or what he pleases to call his birthday)—at the recurrence of which he bewailed his birth by reading the chapter in Job? Nor must we omit, as it shows the shallow grounds upon which defamation often rests, a charge of violation made against Swift at Kilroot, because such a charge was found to have been really made against one J. S., as it appeared in a magistrate’s books. J. S. might have stood for Jonathan Swift—let him, therefore, bear the iniquity. It might have been fastened upon any or all of the numerous family of Smith, or any other J. S. in the world. It is curious that the first propagator, who, possibly with truth, denied having made the charge, as he might have said the letters J. S. only—as did the register—and unwittingly left the appropriation to his listeners;—it is curious, we observe, that this man became raving mad, and was an inmate in Swift’s hospital. The idle tale has been disproved, and but one of his worst maligners repeats it.

There are no passages in this portion of Mr Thackeray’s Lectures more odious, and more repugnant to our taste and feeling, than those which charge Swift with irreligion; nor are they less offensive because the author says—“I am not here, of course, to speak of any man’s religious views, except in so far as they influence his literary character, his life, his humour.” [Pg 506]This denying latitude really means quite the contrary to its preface; for, since religion does concern every man’s life, and he writes or reads the life, he need not have said he had nothing (of course) to do with it, under any exceptions. But it serves the purposes of assuming a reluctance to touch upon the subject, and of charging upon the necessity of the case the many free and unnecessary animadversions upon Swift’s character as a priest of the Church of England.

The lecturer far outdoes the false friend Orrery, who, speaking of his Gulliver, says, “I am afraid he glances at religion.” It is true, he goes rather far to set up his friend the Dean as an example of punishment by Providence, which punishment he admires and confesses as according to righteous ways. His lordship might have pitied, if angels weep. Not a bit of it. “Here,” he says, “a reflection naturally occurs, which, without superstition, leads me tacitly to admire and confess the ways of Providence. For this great genius, this mighty wit, who seemed to scorn and scoff at all mankind, lived not only to be an example of pride punished in his own person, and an example of terror to others, but lived to undergo some of the greatest miseries to which human nature is liable.” Is this an instance of the charity which “covereth a multitude of sins,” and which saith, “Judge not”? If his lordship had exercised on this occasion his superstition, which he thus adroitly puts aside, he would pretty much have resolved Swift’s sins into a material necessity. Thus he philosophises on vice and virtue as effects—“These effects take their sources from causes almost mechanical.”

Mr Thackeray is still more severe—more unjust. He will not allow his strictness in his religious duties, not even his family devotions, to pass as current coin; they are shams and counterfeits. The Swift too proud to lie, was enacting hypocrisy in all this; and how lucidly conclusive the argument! Would any modern lecturer like to be tried by it? “The boon-companion of Pope and Bolingbroke, who chose these as the friends of his life, and the recipients of his confidence and affection, must have heard many an argument, and joined in many a conversation, over Pope’s port or ‘St John’s’ burgundy, which would not bear to be repeated at other men’s boards.” “Must have heard.”!! Had the lecturer been an eye and ear witness, he could not have said more. Yet this must is a very little must indeed. A letter of Bolingbroke’s, and another from Pope to Swift, which the lecturer, as he ought to have done, had doubtless read, perfectly reduces the little must to nothing at all. Swift, it seems, had written to Pope in some way to convert him from Popery. Pope’s reply parries off the Dean’s shafts by wit, and the letter is very pleasant. Not so Bolingbroke; and as he was of too free a spirit to be false, and a hypocrite, at the time he wrote his reply he was not that bold speculator in atheistical arguments which he may have afterwards been; or if he was a hypocrite, that alternative defends Swift, for it shows the improbability of the arguments over the burgundy having been in their familiar converse; for Bolingbroke was at least no fool to contradict himself before Swift. These are his remarkable words, defending himself from the appellation of a freethinker, in its irreligious sense: “For since the truth of Christianity is as evident as matters of fact, on the belief of which so much depends, ought to be, and agreeable to all our ideas of justice, these freethinkers (such as he had described) must needs be Christians on the best foundation—on that which St Paul himself established (I think it was St Paul), Omnia probate, quod bonum est tenete.” It is not needful for us to vindicate Bolingbroke, nor even to express any great satisfaction at this passage; our purpose is to show Swift’s religious sincerity, and the probable nature of the conversations with Pope and Bolingbroke from these letters.

But to the excess of severity in the lecturer. He contrasts “Harry Fielding and Dick Steele” with Swift for religious sincerity. These “were,” he says, “especially loud, and I believe fervent, in their expressions of belief.” He admits them to have been unreasoning, and Church of England men. “But Swift, his mind had had a different schooling, and possessed a very different [Pg 507]logical power. He was not bred up in a tipsy guardroom, and did not learn to reason in a Covent Garden tavern. He could conduct an argument from beginning to end. He could see forward with a fatal clearness. In his old age, looking at the Tale of a Tub, when he said, ‘Good God! what a genius I had when I wrote that book!’ I think he was admiring, not the genius, but the consequences to which the genius had brought him—a vast genius, a magnificent genius—a genius wonderfully bright, and dazzling, and strong, to seize, to know, to see, to flash upon falsehood, and scorch it into perdition, to penetrate into the hidden motives, and expose the black thoughts of men; an awful, an evil spirit:” and yet Mr Thackeray would make this evil spirit a spirit of truth, of logical power, of brightness to seize, to know, to see, to flash upon falsehood; in fact, that irreligion was the natural result of true good logical reasoning, and therefore Swift had no religion. We have no business to charge the lecturer with irreligious sentiments; indeed we feel assured that he had no irreligious motive whatever in the utterance of this passage; nor could he have had, with any discretion, before a mixed modern audience: in the hurry of his eloquence, he overlooked the want of precise nicety of expression due to such a subject. We could wish that he had otherwise worded this passage, which, to the minds of the many, will certainly convey a notion that the legitimate conclusion of reasonable logical arguments is infidelity. Yet more. “Ah! man! you educated in the Epicurean Temple’s library—you whose friends were Pope and St John—what made you to swear to fatal vows, and bind yourself to a life-long hypocrisy before Heaven, which you adored with such real wonder, humility, and reverence? For Swift’s was a reverent spirit; for Swift could love and could pray.” But his love, according to the lecturer, was cruelty, and his prayer a sham!! Let no man ever own a friend, however he became his friend, of dubious opinions. The lecturer is cautious. Miss Martineau sent her mind into a diseased cow, and it was healed. Pope and Bolingbroke must have sent theirs into Swift, and he was Bolingbroked and Poped to the utmost corruption and defilement. We may here as well ask how poor Swift was positively to know the ultimate sceptical opinions of Bolingbroke? They were published in his works, by Mallet, after his lordship’s death.

Johnson doubted not the sincerity of Swift’s religion. He vindicates the Tale of a Tub, which Mr Thackeray makes a text for his vituperation, from “ill intention.” “He was a Churchman rationally zealous.” “To his duty as a Dean he was very attentive.” “In his church he restored the practice of weekly communion, and distributed the sacramental elements in the most solemn and devout manner with his own hands. He came to his church every morning, preached commonly in his turn, and attended the evening anthem, that it might not be negligently performed.” Swift himself spoke disparagingly of his sermons. Mr Thackeray does more than take him at his word; he pronounces that “they have scarce a Christian characteristic. They might be preached from the steps of a synagogue, or the floor of a mosque, or the box of a coffeehouse almost. There is little or no cant; he is too great and too proud for that; and, so far as the badness of his sermons goes, he is honest.” Is Mr Thackeray really a judge of “Christian characteristics?” or does he pronounce without having read Swift’s sermon on the Trinity, so much and so deservedly admired, and certainly of a Christian character? But of these sermons quite as good a judge is Samuel Johnson as our lecturer, who says, “This censure of himself, if judgment be made from those sermons which have been printed, was unreasonably severe.” Johnson ascribes the suspicion of irreligion to his dread of hypocrisy. Mr Thackeray makes hypocrisy his religion. Even the essayist in the Times, who considers him a madman from his birth, admits him to have been “sincerely religious, scrupulously attentive to the duties of his holy office, vigorously defending the position and privileges of his order: he positively played into the hands of infidelity, by the steps he took, both in his conduct and writings, to expose [Pg 508]the cant and hypocrisy which he detested as heartily as he admired and practised unaffected piety.” If, then, according to this writer, there was a mistake, it was not of his heart. What different judgments, and of so recent dates—a sincerely religious man, of practical unaffected piety, and, per contra, a long-life hypocrite before Heaven. We may well say, “Look on this picture and on this.” Reflect, reader, upon the double title-page to Life of Tiberius, on the mysteries of every man’s life; and the seeming contradictions which can never be explained here. A simple truth might explain them, but truth hides itself, and historians and biographers cannot afford time for accurate search, nor the reading world patience for the delays which truth’s narrative would demand.

The Tale of a Tub, it has been said, was the obstacle to Swift’s preferment—it may have been the ostensible excuse. If the Duchess of Somerset went down on her knees to prevent a bishopric being offered him, another excuse was wanted than the real one. It was ascribed to Swift that he had ridiculed her red hair: such a crime is seldom forgiven. But the “spretæ injuria formæ” will not be producible as an objection. This Tale of a Tub has been often condemned and excused, and will be while literature lasts, and is received amongst persons of different temperaments. There are some so grave that wit is condemned by them before they know the subject upon which it is exercised. To many it is folly, because beyond their conception. We know no reason why the man of wit should not be religious; if there be, wit is a crime; yet it is a gift of nature, and so imperative upon the possessor that he can scarcely withhold it. It is his genius. Wit has its logical forms of argument. Errors in religion, as in manners, present themselves to the man of wit both in a serious and ludicrous light; the two views combine, there is the instant flash for illumination or destruction. The corruptions in a church, as in that of Rome, being the growth of ages, engrafted into the habits and manners of a people, are not to be put down by solemn sermons only: arguments in a new and captivating manner must be adopted, and applied to the ready understanding and familiar common-sense of those on whom more grave and sedate argumentation is lost.

The Reformers were not remiss to take wit as an ally. Even now, those who are temporarily shocked at the apparent lightness with which it was employed in former days, as they read works such as the Tale of a Tub may have received with it solid arguments, never so vividly put to them, and which are still excellent preservatives against Romanism. The enemy who does not like it will call it ribaldry, buffoonery, and magnify it into a deadly sin. The vituperation of it marks its power. This kind of writing, even on the gravest subjects, is more defensible than those who are hurt by it will admit. In a state of warfare, and church is militant, we must not throw away legitimate arms. If wit be a gift, it is a legitimate weapon, and a powerful one. It deals terrible blows on the head of hypocrisy. We owe to it more perhaps than we think. It may be fairly asked, Were the Provincial Letters injurious to the cause of religion? The Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum helped to demolish some strongholds of iniquity. Rabelais, disgusting as he is to modern readers in too many parts, was acceptable to bishops and archbishops. They pardoned much for the depth of sense, knowledge of mankind, and solid learning in the curate of Meudon. There are offences against taste, that are not necessarily offences against religion. There is many an offensive work, especially in modern literature, where taste is guarded and religion hurt. Is there a natural antipathy between wit and religion, or between wit and morals? We trust not; for by it all mankind may be reached—at least those who can be reached by no other appeal, to whom that may be the first, though not the last. In times of controversy all must come into the field, the light-armed as well as the heavy-armed, and they must use their own weapons. David slew Goliath with a pebble and a sling. He had tried these; they were scorned by the giant, but they slew him. But this genius of art is imperative, [Pg 509]and unless you shut the church-doors against it, and anathematise it (and to do so would be dangerous), it will throw about its weapons. Danger cannot put it down. It has its minor seriousness, though you see it not; it has its deep wisdom, and such an abundance of gravity, that it can afford to play with it. It bids the man endowed with it use it even upon the scaffold, as did Sir Thomas More. Admit, that, if it is a power for good or evil, that very admission legitimatises it. The infidel, the scoffer, will use it, and he will be in the enemy’s camp. Yes, we must have, in the gravest cause, our sharpshooters too. There have been buffoons for the gravest purposes as for the vilest. It is well to be cautious in condemning all. Demosthenes could not prevail upon the people of Athens to give attention to him where their safety was concerned, and he abandoned his seriousness, and told them a story of the “shadow of an ass.” Buffoonery may be a part put on—the disguise, but the serious purpose is under it. Brutus was an able actor. A man may be allowed to put on a madness, when it would be death to proclaim himself, so as to be believed, in his senses. What shall we say of the grave buffoon, the wittiest, the wisest, the patriotic, who risked his life to play the fool, because he knew it was the only means of convincing the people, when he, Aristophanes, could not get an actor to take the part of Cleon, and took it himself, not knowing but that a cup of poison awaited him when the play was ended? It is as well to come to the conclusion that the wit, even the buffoon, may be respectable—nay, give them a higher name—even great characters. Their gifts are instincts, are meant for use. As the poet says, they cut in twain weighty matters: “Magnas plerumque secant res.” We fear that if we were to drive the lighter soldiers of wit out of the religious camp, those enlisted on the opposite side would set up a shout, rush in, and, setting about them lustily, have things pretty much their own way. Apply this as at least an apology for Swift. You must have the man with his wit—it was his uncontrollable passion. And, be it remembered, when he conceived, if not wrote, the Tale of a Tub, he was in the riotous spirit of his youth. And abstract from it its wondrous argument, deep sense of illustration, and weigh them, how ponderous the mass is, how able to crush the long age-constructed machinery of designing Popery! But heavy as is the abstract, it would have lain inert matter, but for those nicely-adjusted springs of wit, which, light as they seem, lift buoyantly the ponderous power, that it may fall where directed. If any have a Romish tendency, we would recommend him to read the Tale of a Tub, without fear that it will take religion out of his head or his heart. We perfectly agree with Johnson as to the intention, in contradiction to Mr Thackeray, who says, “The man who wrote that wild book could not but be aware what must be the sequel of the propositions he laid down.” And thus is it cruelly added, “It is my belief that he suffered frightfully from the consciousness of his own scepticism, and that he had bent his pride so far down as to put his apostacy out to hire.” Charity, which “believeth all things,” never believed that.

The virtues reign by turns in this world of ours. Each one is the Queen Quintessence of her time, and commands a fashion upon her subjects. They bear the hue of her livery in their aspects. What is in their bosoms it is not so easy to determine; their tongues are obedient to the fashion, and often join in chorus of universal cant. Philanthropy is now the common language, we doubt if it is the common doing, of the age. We are rather suspicious of it, not very well liking its connections, equality and fraternity, and suspect it to be of a spurious breed, considering some of its exhibitions on the stage of the world within the memory of many of us. As the aura popularis has been long, and is still blowing rather strong from that quarter, it may appear “brutal” to say a syllable per contra. There never was a fitter time to lift up the hands and eyes in astonishment at Swift’s misanthropy. See the monster, how he hated mankind! Perhaps he was a misanthrope. That he was a good hater we verily [Pg 510]believe, but for a misanthrope he was one of the kindest to those who deserved and needed his assistance. It is said of him that he made the fortunes of forty families—that when he had power, he exerted it to the utmost, perseveringly, to advance the interests of this or that man, and did many acts of benevolence secretly and delicately;—witness his payment to Mrs Dingley of £52 per annum, which he made her believe was her own; and he paid it as her agent for money in the funds, and took her receipt accordingly, and this was not known till after his death. Very numerous are the anecdotes of this nature, but here we have no space for them. Such misanthropes are not very bad people—even though, detesting the assumption of uncommon philanthropy, they put on now and then a little roughness, as Swift undoubtedly did, and many very kind people very often do. But he wrote Gulliver, that bitter satire on mankind, for which Mr Thackeray the lecturer is greatly shocked at him. “As for the moral, I think it is horrible, shameful, unmanly, blasphemous; and, giant and great as this Dean is, I say we should hoot him.” Certainly hoot him—pelt him out of your Vanity Fair, which, though bad enough, is far too good for him, for the law there is to treat bad mankind very tenderly, and to make the good come off but second best, and look a trifle ridiculous. There have been strong vigorous satirists, universally read and admired, and made the stock literature of all countries too, and the authors have been hitherto thought highly moral and dignified characters; and they were personal, too, as ever Swift was (not that we admire his personalities—they were part his, and part belonged to his time), and their language as coarse. What are we to say of Juvenal, if we condemn Swift on that score? What of his sixth and tenth satires? The yahoo for mankind is not more hideous than the Tabraca monkey, which so frightfully represents men’s old age, in that famous tenth satire on the “Vanity of Human Wishes.” It is, indeed, a morbid philanthropy, a maudlin philanthropy, that will not give detested vices the lash. What is brutal vice?—degraded human nature, such as our police courts have of late exhibited it, our Cannons, and kickers, and beaters of women—the burkers of our times, murderers for the sake of body-selling, to whom yahoos are as far better creatures. Yet, in our philanthropic days, we must not compare man to low animals. Indeed, we make companion of the faithful dog—we pet the obedient horse—we love them—and we are better for the affection we bestow, and it is in a great degree perhaps reciprocal; but such brutes in human shape, we shrink from comparing our dumb friends with them. They have made themselves an antipathy to human nature, and our nature an antipathy to them.

One would think, to hear some people talk about this Gulliver, that Swift had originated such hideous comparisons with the brute creation, and that he alone had brought his animali parlanti on the stage. Chaucer, whom everybody loves, makes the cock say, as thus Dryden says it for him:⁠—

But let us put the matter thus: In depicting the lowest vices of human nature, Swift, like Hogarth, made them appear more odious, and the former less offensive, by at least ideally or rather formally removing them from our species. The transforming them to brutes in something like human shape, renders the human image less distinct; covers them with a gauze, through which you can bear the sight, and contemplate what brutalised human nature may become. The satirist Hogarth is as strong, and by too near a resemblance, more disgusting, yet is he a great moralist. Is the Yahoo of Swift worse, or so offensive to our pride, as the heroes and heroines of “Beer and Gin Alley,” or the cruelty scenes of Hogarth? Yet who ever called these doings of the painter-satirist “shameful, unmanly, blasphemous.” Hoot him, Mr Lecturer, hoot both or neither. No—the hoot of the Lecturer was nothing but a little oratorical extravagance, for an already indignant audience, [Pg 511]touched upon that tender modern virtue, general philanthropy. Out of his lectures, the lecturer is a true, good, loving, kind-hearted, generous man; his real “hoot” would sound as gently as the “roar” of any “sucking dove.” But at a lecture-table, the audience must be indulged in their own ways. The lecturer puts by his nature and puts on his art. He is acting the magician for the moment, and not himself, and thus his art excuses to him this patting on the back our mock philanthropy; mock, for it is out of nature, and not real. Honest genuine nature is indignant, and has an impulse as its instinct to punish villany. Who ever read history, and did not wish a Cæsar Borgia hanged? Philanthropists are very near being nuisances; they go out of the social course, which runs in circles—at first small ones too, home. There is room for the exercise of plenty of charity, amiableness, goodness; where is the need a man should burthen himself with the whole census? We live for the most part in circles, and if we do good, true, and serviceable duty within them, it little matters if some, with a pardonable eccentricity, deem them magic circles, and that all on the outside of the circumference are fiends ready to leap in open-mouthed to devour them. Professing philanthropists are apt to have too little thought of what is nearest, and to stretch out beyond the natural reach of their arms. They are breakers into other people’s circles, and perpetually guilty of a kind of affectionate burglary—and therefore not punishable, but to be pitied as a trifle insane. Poor Swift! how his friends wept at his last sad condition, which the hard hearts who knew him not, a century and a half after, choose to call Heaven’s punishment, and his misery a “remorse.” How his true friends grieved for him! and such friends, too—men of generous natures that lift humanity out of that, its vexatious condition, which provokes universal satire. He had a circle of friends whom he dearly loved, and who as dearly loved him. No matter how many yahoos go to the whipping-post. Take care of the home circles, and ever keep the temper sweet in that temperate zone, which the natural course of society has provided for you; and be sure the world won’t be a bit worse off, if you light your cigar at your own hearth, and pleasantly write a pretty sharp satire on the world at large. We know not if it is not a fair position to lay down, that all satirists are amiable men; our best have been eminently so. Poor gentle Cowper, in his loving frenzy, wielded the knout stoutly, and had it been in his religion, would have whipped himself like a pure Franciscan; and yet he loved his neighbour. And it is our belief that Swift was good and amiable, and as little like a yahoo as those who depict him as one. Nature gave him a biting power, and it was her instinct that made him use it; and what if he exaggerated? It is the poet’s licence. What did Juvenal? and what did he more than Juvenal? Oh, this at once bold and squeamish age!—bold to do bad things, and to cry out against having them told or punished, but delighting in dressing up an imaginary monster and ticketing it with the name of Jonathan Swift, dead a century ago!!

And was there so little vice and villany in the world in Swift’s time, or in Hogarth’s time, that it should have been allowed to escape? Party was virulent and merciless, and divided men, so that statesmen had no time to care for good public morals. To be a defeated minister was to be sent to the Tower, as Swift’s friend Harley was, and kept there two years. They were corrupt times—yahoo times. What says the sober historian, the narrator of facts, about 1717? There are accounts of the “Mug-houses,” when the Whig and Tory factions divided the nation. There was the attack on these Mug-houses, retaliations and riots, and there were “Mohocks,” of which we read too pleasantly now in the Spectator, who went about with drawn swords, and kept the city in terror. It is somewhere about the year 1730 of which the historian speaks thus:—“A great remissness of government prevailed at this time in England. Peace both at home and abroad continued to be the great object of the minister. Prosperity in commerce introduced luxury—hence necessities were created, and these drove the lower classes of people into the most [Pg 512]abandoned wickedness. Averse to all penal and sanguinary measures, the minister gave not that encouragement to the ordinary magistrates that would enable them to give an effectual check to vice among the multitude. This produced a very pernicious effect among the higher class, so that almost universal degeneracy of manners prevailed. It was not safe to travel the roads or walk the streets; and often the civil officers themselves dared neither to repel the violences nor punish the crimes that were committed. A species of villains now started up, unknown to former times, who made it their business to write letters to men of substance, threatening to set fire to their houses in case they refused their demands; and sometimes their threats were carried into execution. In short, the peculiar depravity of the times became at length so alarming that the government was obliged to interpose, and a considerable reward was offered for discovering the ruffians concerned in such execrable practices.”⁠[20]

If Swift’s miseries were so large as to make Archbishop King shed tears, and pronounce him the most unhappy man on earth, on the subject of whose wretchedness no question may be asked; and if, remembering this, we reflect upon his great and active doings, it will not be without admiration that we shall see how manfully he strove against being overwhelmed with inevitable calamities; and if we think him too much inclined to view mankind ill, we should reflect that he lived in such times as we have been describing, and had ill-treatment enough from mankind to render his best struggles for contentment at times hard, and that he preserved his friendships to the last.

The fortuitous disappointments of life may be borne with a humble patience, the virtue in misery; the disappointments which our fellow-creatures inflict by their falseness and wickedness, are apt in a degree to make generous natures misanthropic; but even then their best feelings do but retreat from their advanced posts—retire within, and cling with greater love and resolution to the home fortress, fortified and sustained by a little army of dear friends. So it was with Swift: out in the world he was the traveller Gulliver—but the best friendships made his world his home. Even in the strictest sense of home, such a home as Swift had, of so strange a home-love, we know not to what great degree we should look on that with pity. It is to be hoped, not one of his revilers have had his miseries—which even his friend was with tears requested not to look into.

The animosities of Whigs and Tories were extreme. Swift declared himself a Whig in politics, a Tory as high-churchman. In the course of political experience, it is evident one of the principles must give way. Swift saw to what the Whig policy tended: the higher interests prevailed with him—he joined the Tories. Giant as he was, we are not surprised at the strong expressions of the essayist whom we have before quoted, “under Harley, Swift reigned, Swift was the Government, Swift was Queen, Lords, and Commons. There was tremendous work to do, and Swift did it all.” We do not mean to say Swift was not a thorough man of the world; nor that he did not look to his own interests, as men of the world do; but at the same time, it would be hard to show that he was profligate as to political principle. He may have changed his views, or political principles may have shifted themselves. We firmly believe him to have been honest. But he left the Whig ranks. Having done so, he was too great not to be feared, and so hated—and is it too much to say that this Whig hatred with regard to him has come down to our day, and unforgiving as it is, as it cannot persecute the man, persecutes his memory? It is next to impossible not to see that political rancour has directed and dipped into its own malignant gall the pen of Lord Jeffrey, who in that essay, which has now become cheap railway reading, heaps all possible abuse on Swift, ascribing to him all bad motives—is furiously wroth with him even now, because he abandoned the Whigs. It is the very burthen of his vituperative essay. He (Swift) is a political apostate, and a [Pg 513]libeller of the Whigs against his conscience; and this Lord Jeffrey gathers from his letters. Indeed! and was it in Lord Jeffrey’s mind so dreadful an offence (if true) this writing against his conscience, and to be discovered in private letters, at supposed variance with published documents, by this said Dean? We fear Lord Jeffrey was not aware that he was passing a very severe censure upon his own conduct when he wrote thus of Swift; for we remember reading a letter by the said Lord Jeffrey in entire contradiction to that which, as Editor of the Edinburgh Review, he had given out to the world. In this private letter, published in his “Life,” he writes in perfect terror, and in the deepest despair of the nation, arising from the dangerous tendency of articles in that Review, with, as we conceive, a very poor apology, that he could not restrain his ardent writers. Party blinded him then, and thus he vents his rancour further, forgetful of the lampoons of the Whig Tom Moore, the Twopenny Post-bag, and a long list—and of the Whig Byron, and his doings in that line. “In all situations the Tories have been the greatest libellers, and, as is fitting, the great prosecutors of libels.” Lord Jeffrey, when he wrote this, was as forgetful of his own party as of himself in particular—of the many personalities in his own review, as of Whig writings. Unfortunately for them, they were not so gifted with wit as their opponents, but their malignity on that account was the greater. What is to be said of Lord Holland’s note-book? But Lord Jeffrey was not the one to condemn, however others might be justified in doing so, even personal libels, which, in his own case, as editor and political Whig agent, he justifies, and, more than that, sets up a principle to maintain his justification. It would appear that one of his contributors had been shocked at the personal libels in the Edinburgh, and had remonstrated. Jeffrey thus defends the practice: “To come, for instance, to the attacks on the person of the Sovereign. Many people, and I profess myself to be one, may think such a proceeding at variance with the dictates of good taste, of dangerous example, and repugnant to good feelings; and therefore will not themselves have recourse to it.” (Here his memory should have hinted⁠—

“Yet,” he continues, “it would be difficult to deny that it is, or may be, a lawful weapon to be employed in the great and eternal contest between the court and the country. Can there be any doubt that the personal influence and personal character of the Sovereign is an element, and a pretty important element, in the practical constitution of the government, and always forms part of the strength or weakness of the administration he employs? In the abstract, therefore, I cannot think that attempts to weaken that influence, to abate a dangerous popularity, or even to excite odium towards a corrupt and servile ministry, by making the prince, on whose favour they depend, generally contemptible or hateful, are absolutely to be interdicted or protested against. Excesses no doubt may be committed. But the system of attacking abuses of power, by attacking the person who instigates or carries them through by general popularity or personal influence, is lawful enough, I think, and may form a large scheme of Whig opposition—not the best or the noblest part, certainly, but one not without its use, and that may, on some occasions, be altogether indispensable.”—Letter to Francis Horner, Esq., 12th March 1815.

The semi-apologetic qualifying expressions “against good taste and feeling,” only make one smile, as showing the clear sin against conscience, in thus falling into or recommending the large scheme of Whig opposition. One might imagine him to have been one of Mr Puff’s conspirators in his tragedy, who had manufactured from the play a particularly Whig party-prayer—a prayer to their god of battle, whoever he was,—certainly one a mighty assistant in such conspiracies.

Every one will now agree, of course, [Pg 514]with Lord Jeffrey, that the Tories have ever been the great libellers!!!

Was it ever known that Tom Moore, or even the editor of the Edinburgh Review, were prosecuted!! We do not justify Swift in all his libels—some bad enough. They were strange times, and of no common licence; and who was more licentiously attacked than Swift himself? And he knew how to retaliate, and he did it terribly and effectually. Many badly-written things were ascribed to Swift which he did not write. But we must not take the code of manners of one age, and a more refined age, and utterly condemn, by reference to them, the manners of another, as a chargeable offence against an individual. Much that Swift wrote could not be written now; much that was written by Mr Thackeray’s other “Humourists” could not be written now; and yet the objections are on the score of manners wanting in refinement, and not that morals were offended. In Swift’s time, both in literature and politics, men wrote coarsely, and acted somewhat coarsely too; for they wrote in disgust, which was scarcely lessened by a fear of the pillory. Retaliations were severe. De Foe, who knew well what political prosecution was, wrote thus on Lord Haversham’s speech: “But fate, that makes footballs of men, kicks some up stairs and some down; some are advanced without honour, others suppressed without infamy; some are raised without merit, some are crushed without crime; and no man knows, by the beginning of things, whether his course shall issue in a peerage or a pillory”—in most witty and satiric allusion to Lord Haversham’s and his own condition. Swift’s “Account of the Court and Empire of Japan,” written in 1728, is no untrue representation of the factions and ministerial profligacy of that period. The Dean, as an Irish patriot—for he heartily took up the cause of Ireland—was persecuted, and a reward of £300 offered for the discovery of the author of one of the Drapier’s Letters. The anecdote told on this occasion is very characteristic of Swift. He was too proud to live in fear of any man. His butler, whom alone he trusted, conveyed these letters to the printer. When the proclamation of reward came out, this servant strolled from the house, and staid out all night and part of next day. It was feared he had betrayed his master. When he returned, the Dean ordered him instantly to strip himself of his livery, and ordered him to leave the house; “For,” says he, “I know my life is in your power, and I will not bear, out of fear, either your insolence or negligence.” The man was, however, honest and humble, and even desired to be confined till the danger should be over. But his master turned him out. The sequel should be told. When the time of information had expired, he received the butler again; and “soon afterwards ordered him and the rest of the servants into his presence, without telling his intentions, and bade them take notice that their fellow-servant was no longer Robert the butler, but that his integrity had made him Mr Blakeney, Verger of St Patrick’s, whose income was between thirty and forty pounds a-year.” As it has fallen in the way to give this narrative of his conduct to a deserving servant, it may not be amiss, in this place, to offer a pendant; and it may be given the more readily, as those who wish to view him as a misanthropic brute, and they who would commend him for his humanity, may make it their text for their praise or their abuse. “A poor old woman brought a petition to the deanery; the servant read the petition, and turned her about her business. Swift saw it, and had the woman brought in, warmed and comforted with bread and wine, and dismissed the man for his inhumanity.”

To revert, however, to his political course. When the Tory Ministry was broken up, he never swerved from his friendships, nor did he court one probable future minister at the expense of the other. Indeed, at the beginning of the break-up, he clung the more closely to Harley, the dismissed minister. But even this conduct has been misrepresented, by those who viewed all his actions upside down, as a deep policy, that he might be sure of a friend at court whichever side might ultimately win.

That he might appear wanting in no possible impossible vice, avarice [Pg 515]has been added to the number adduced. Even Johnson charges his economy upon his “love of a shilling.” This does appear to us, after much examination of data, a very gratuitous accusation. His early habits were necessarily those of a poor man; he never was a rich one; and he was far above the meanness of enlarging his means at the expense of his deanery, its present interests, or of his successor, by any selfish regard to fines. Due economy is often taken to be avarice. Nor does it follow that reasonable parsimony, when constantly practised for a worthy purpose, is avarice. Such avarice is at least not uncommon in great and good minds. Swift so often made it known that he had a good object, and which he fulfilled, that it seems quite malicious to forget his motives, and to ascribe his by no means large accumulations to a miserly disposition. He did not in fact, after all, leave a very ample endowment for his hospital for the insane. The first £500 which he could call his own he devoted to loans, in small sums, to poor yet industrious men. Had he been avaricious, he might have accumulated a fortune by his writings. A very small sum (we believe for his Gulliver) was the only payment received for all his writings. Had he been naturally avaricious, he would not have returned, with marked displeasure, a donation sent him by Harley. There was a sturdy manliness in his pride which forbade him to incur serious debt; and this pride caused him to measure nicely, or rather say frugally, his expenditure. He had, indeed, a “love of a shilling,” as he ought to have had, for he knew for what purpose he husbanded it. We know an instance of seeming parsimony that originated in, and was itself, an admirable virtue. It was in rather humble life. The man had given up his little patrimony—his all—to the maintenance of two sisters, whom he truly loved; and when he went out into the world, trusting to his industry alone, he made a vow to himself that the half of every shilling he could save should go to his sisters. This man drove hard bargains; by habit he came to think that what he spent idly was a half robbery. Many a hard name, doubtless, was cast at this tender-hearted man in his progress through little-knowing and ill-judging society.

We do not attempt a delineation of Swift’s character. We are conscious that it was too great for our pen. It must be a deep philosophy that is able to search into such a mind, and bring all the seeming contradictions into order, and sift his best qualities, from their mixtures of eccentricities, from a real or imaginary insanity. This part of the subject has been ably treated, and with medical discrimination, by Mr Wilde in his Closing Years of Dean Swift’s Life, from whose work we gladly quote some just animadversions upon his vituperators.

“To the slights thrown upon his memory by the Jeffreys, Broughams, Macaulays, De Quinceys, and other modern literati, answers and refutations have been already given. Of these attacks, which exhibit all the bitterness of contemporary and personal enmity, it is only necessary to request a careful analysis, when they will be found to be gross exaggerations of some trivial circumstances, but written in all the unbecoming spirit of partisanship; while the opinions of his contemporaries, Harley, Bolingbroke, Pope, Arbuthnot, Delany, &c., are a sufficient guarantee for the opinion which was entertained of Swift by those who knew him best and longest.”

It was well said, with reference to Jeffrey’s article in the Edinburgh Review, “But Swift is dead, as Jeffrey well knew when he reviewed his works.” If men of mark will be so unjust, unscrupulous, uncharitable, as to apply “base perfidy” to such a man as Swift, no wonder if the small fry of revilers, whose lower minds could never by any possibility rise to the conception of such a character as Swift, should lift their shrieking voices to the same notes, as if they would claim a vain consequence by seeming to belong to the pack. Mr Howitt odiously alludes to the discarded story which we have noticed, the slander at Kilroot, and grounds upon it a charge of “dissipated habits” in his youth. This writer, lacking the ability and influence of the superior libellers, as [Pg 516]is common with such men, yelps his shrill vulgarities the louder in such expressions as “selfish tyranny,” “wretched shuffler,” “contemptible fellow.”

It is a vile thing, this vice of modern times—this love of pulling down the names of great men of a past age—of blotting and slurring over every decent epitaph written in men’s hearts about them. That men of note themselves should fall into it, is but a sad proof that rivalry and partisanship in politics make the judgment unjust. We remember the reproof Canning gave to Sir Samuel Romilly, no common man, who indeed acknowledged Mr Pitt’s talents, but denied that he was a great man. “Heroic times are these we live in,” said Canning, “with men at our elbow of such gigantic qualities as to render those of Pitt ordinary in the comparison. Ah! who is there living, in this house or out of it, who, taking measure of his own mind or that of his coevals, can be justified in pronouncing that William Pitt was not a great man?” Of all our modern revilers of Swift, the pullers to pieces of his fame and character, is there any that might not shrink from putting his own measure of either to the comparison? Political hatred lasts too long—it reverses the law of canonisation: if there is to be worship, it must be immediate. A century destroys it; but enmity survives.

We commenced with the intention of reviewing Mr Thackeray’s Lectures, but have stopped short at his life of Swift, and yet feel that we have but touched upon the subject-matter relating to that great man; and hope to refer to it, with some notice and extracts from his works, at a future time.

And what is Swift? What is any dead man that we should defend his name, which is nothing but a name—and not that to him? What is Swift to us, more than “Hecuba” to the poor player, or “he to Hecuba,” that we should rise with indignation to plead his cause? Praise or blame to the man dead a century and more, is nothing for him, no, nor to any one of his race (for affections of that kind are lost in a wide distribution). Shakespeare makes even honour of a shorter date. “What is honour to him who died o’ Wednesday?” Very soon individual man melts away from his individuality, and merges into the general character; he becomes quite an undistinguishable part of the whole generation; his appearance unknown. Could the great and the small visit us from the dead—they who “rode on white asses,” and they who were gibbeted—they whom the “king delighted to honour,” and they whom the hangman handled—there is no “usher of black rod” that could call them out by their names. Their individualities are gone—their names must go in search of them in vain—they will fasten nowhere with certainty—none know which is which. Let Cæsar come with his murderers, and who shall tell which is Cæsar? After a generation, there is no one on earth to grieve for the guilty or unfortunate, unless in a fiction or tale. We laugh at the weeping lady who puts her tears to the account of the “anniversary of the death of poor dear Queen Elizabeth.” Feelings and affections of past ages are all gone, and become but a cold history, that the poet or the romance-writer may warm again in their sport. They no longer belong to those who had them. While memory and affection lasts there is a kind of vitality, but it soon goes. “Non omnis moriar” is a motto to be translated elsewhere. The atmosphere of fame, for this earth, rises, like that we breathe, but a little way above it, and is ever shifting.

But if the individual thus melts away, not so the general character; that will remain—and in that the living are concerned. We deem it a part of a true philanthropy if we can pull out one name from the pit of defamation into which it has been unhandsomely thrust, and can place it upon the record of our general nature, that our common humanity may be raised, and, as much as may be, glorified thereby. Such has been our motive (for with this motive alone is Swift anything to us), and we hope we have succeeded in rescuing one of [Pg 517]nature’s great men from unmerited obloquy.

We have spoken freely of Mr Thackeray’s Lectures, with reference to his character of Swift.

We believe that he has unfortunately followed a lead; and, in so doing, has been encouraged to a bias by his natural gift—satire. We say not this to his dispraise. Like other natural gifts, the satiric puts out ever its polyp feelers, and appropriates whatever comes within its reach, and promises nutriment. It is not indeed likely, in this our world, to be starved for lack of sustenance; nor would society be the better if it were. But we do doubt if it be quite the talent required in a biographer. We would not have Mr Thackeray abate one atom of the severity of his wit; and we believe him to have an abhorrence of everything vicious, mean, and degrading, and that his purpose in all his writings is to make vice odious. He habitually hunts that prey: having seen the hollowness of professions, he drives his merciless pen through it, and sticks the culprit upon its point, and draws him out upon the clean sheet, and blackens him, and laughs at the figure he has made of him. A writer of such a stamp ought to be considered, what he really is, a moralist—therefore a benefactor in our social system.

But with this power, let him touch the living vices till they shrink away cowed. The portraiture of the vices of men who lived a century or more ago, real or imaginary, may only serve to feed the too flagrant vice of the living—self-congratulating vanity. If then he must write, or lecture, on biography, we would earnestly recommend him to do it with a fear of himself. His other works have contributed many hours of delight to the days of most of us; and in the little volume before us, setting aside his lecture on Swift, there is much to amuse and to instruct. The sharp contrasting choice of his positions, and easy natural manner, not forcing but enticing the reader to reflection, must ever make Mr Thackeray a popular writer. Were he less sure of the public ear, and the public voice in his favour, we should not have endeavoured to rescue the character of Swift from his grasp; and we believe him to be of that generous nature to rejoice, if we have, as we hope, been successful in the attempt. We cannot speak too highly of Mr Thackeray as one most accomplished in his art: his style, eminently English, is unmistakably plain and energetic. It is original—so curt, yet so strong; there is never amplification without a purpose, nor without the charm of a new image. Thoughts are clad in the words that best suit them. With him, pauses speak; and often a full stop, unexpected in a passage, is eloquent. You think that he has not said all, because he has said so little: yet that little is all; and there is left suggestion for feelings which words would destroy. He is never redundant. So perfect is this his art that his very restraint seems an abandon. He knows when and how to gain the credit of forbearance, where in fact there is none. In his mastery over this his peculiar manner, he brings it to bear upon the pathetic or the ridiculous with equal effect; and, like a consummate satirist, makes even the tragic more tragic, more ghastly, by a slight connection with the light, the ridiculous, a certain air of indifference. We instance the passage of the death of Rawdon, in his Vanity Fair. Few are the words, but there is a history in them. The apparent carelessness in dismissing his hero reminds one of that in Richard the Third.

His strongest ridicule is made doubly ridiculous by the gravity he tacks to it. It sticks like a burr upon the habit of his unfortunate victim. He puts the rags of low motives upon seeming respectability, and makes presumption look beggarly—effecting that which the Latin satirist says real poverty does—ridiculos homines facit. Most severe in his indifference, his light playfulness is fearfully Dantesque; it is ever onward, as if sure of its catastrophe. We do not know any author who can say so much in few common words. These are characteristics of genius. It has often been said, and perhaps with truth, that the reader shuts the book uncomfortable, [Pg 518]not very much in love with human nature: we are by no means sure that this is absolutely wrong; such is the feeling on looking at Hogarth’s pictures. It was the author’s intention, in both cases, to be a moral satirist, not a romance-writer. It has been objected that he allows the vicious too much success; but he may plead that so it is in life: even the Psalmist expressed his surprise at the prosperity of the wicked. There is truth to the life in this treatment; a certain seeming success tells not the whole. It is a more serious charge that he has made virtue and goodness insipid. We wish he could persuade himself that there is romance in real life, and that it is full of energies; its true portraiture would give a grace to his works. Cervantes and Le Sage were not all satire; their beautiful touches of romance hurt not the general character of their works; the fantastic frame-lines mar not the pathos of the picture. With this recommendation we close our article, with trust in the good sense and good feeling of Mr Thackeray, rejoiced to think that his powerful genius is in action: whatever vein he may be in, he will be sure to instruct and amuse, and accumulate fame to himself. If the virtues do not look their very best, when he ushers them into company, at least vice will never have to boast of gentle treatment—he will make it look as it deserves; and if he does not always thrust it out of doors in rags and penury, he will set upon it, and leave its further punishment for conjecture.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] It is curious this twofold character of Tiberius—surprising that historians should have credited this single existence of a civilised cannibal—this recorded “eater of human flesh, and drinker of human blood.” The learned writer of this volume on Tiberius, with truthful scrutiny, sifts every evidence, weighs testimony against testimony, and testimony of the same authority against itself, and after patient investigation concludes, as the reasonable solution of the historical enigma, that Tiberius was not only “of all kings or autocrats the most venerable,” but that he was, “in the fourteenth year of his reign, a believer in the divinity of Jesus Christ,” and, “during the last eight years of his reign, the nursing-father of the infant Catholic Church.” It will be readily perceived that the supposition of Tiberius being a Christian, at a time when Christianity was universally held to be an odious and justly-persecuted superstition, must have presented, through known facts and rumours, to the world at large, and to the philosophic minds of historians in particular, an idea of human character so novel and so confused, as to be, in the absence of a clue, and a test which they could not admit, altogether incomprehensible. What could they do with the sacramental fact—the eating human flesh and drinking human blood, by one known for his abstemiousness?

“Τοσαυτης δ’εν τοτε της καταζασεως εοης,

και μηδ’ απαρνησασθαι τινος δυναμενε το μη ε και

των σαρκων αυτε ηδεως εμφαγειν.”—Dion. C.

“Fastidit vinum, quia jam bibit iste cruorem

Tam bibit hunc avide quam bibit iste merum.”—Suet.

The sacramental fact discovered, and undeniable, yet not known as the sacramental fact, must have made up a riddle of contradictions, which it was not in the power of that age to solve. In its ignorance it made a monster. Men are apt to see more than nature ever exhibits.

[20] Russell’s History of England.

We have received, although only at the eleventh hour, a copy of Notes and Queries (September 17, 1853), in which Icon animadverts with proper severity on the unwarrantable conduct of A. E. B. in attacking our harmless selves in the manner he did. He also compliments our article in a strain which makes us blush even deeper than we did when the “gnat” stung us. We thank both him and the editor for the handsome apology which has been made to us—for such we consider it—in the name of Notes and Queries; and we confess that, had we been aware of their friendly disposition sooner, we might have modified some of the remarks made at the opening of this paper. Let the excellent concern, however, take our remarks as kindly as we did theirs; and let all who are connected with it consider, that when a man is struck at in the dark, he must defend himself in the dark, fall his blows where they may. The worthy editor seems to be much more pestered by the fussiness and irritability of his little tribe of correspondents than we are. He complains of this very sorely. He will perhaps find that we have given them a lesson how to behave; and if he passes the remainder of his days in peace and quiet, untormented by the small hornets whom he has in charge, he will know whom he has to thank for it, and will feel grateful accordingly. May Notes and Queries go on and prosper; for, when it commits a mistake, it has the manliness and good sense to avow it, and to make all suitable reparation.

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Uncle Tom’s Cabin,	393
Right Divine,	424
Lady Lee’s Widowhood.—Part X.,	426
New Readings in Shakespeare.—No. III.,	451
Rail and Saddle in Spain,	475
The Wanderer,	488
Thackeray’s Lectures—Swift,	494
Note to the Article on the New Readings in Shakespeare,	518

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh magazine, volume 456, no. 10, November 1853

BLACKWOOD’S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

CONTENTS.