Chapter 19

I will not dispute with you whether the Pope be or be not the Scarlet Lady of Babylon. I hope it is not so; because I am afraid it will induce His Majesty's Chancellor of the Exchequer to introduce several severe bills against popery, if that is the case; and though he will have the decency to appoint a previous committee of inquiry as to the fact, the committee will be garbled, and the report inflammatory. Leaving this to be settled as he pleases to settle it, I wish to inform you, that, previously to the bill last passed in favour of the Catholics, at the suggestion of Mr. Pitt, and for his satisfaction, the opinions of six of the most celebrated of the foreign Catholic universities were taken as to the right of the Pope to interfere in the temporal concerns of any country. The answer cannot possibly leave the shadow of a doubt, even in the mind of Baron Maseres; and Dr. Rennel would be compelled to admit it, if three Bishops lay dead at the very moment the question were put to him. To this answer might be added also the solemn declaration and signature of all the Catholics in Great Britain.

I should perfectly agree with you, if the Catholics admitted such a dangerous dispensing power in the hands of the Pope; but they all deny it, and laugh at it, and are ready to abjure it in the most decided manner you can devise. They obey the Pope as the spiritual head of their Church; but are you really so foolish as to be imposed upon by mere names? What matters it the seven-thousandth part of a farthing who is the spiritual head of any Church? Is not Mr. Wilberforce at the head of the Church of Clapham? Is not Dr. Letsom at the head of the Quaker Church? Is not the General Assembly at the head of the Church of Scotland? How is the government disturbed by these many-headed Churches? or in what way is the power of the Crown augmented by this almost nominal dignity?

The King appoints a fast-day once a year, and he makes the bishops: and if the government would take half the pains to keep the Catholics out of the arms of France that it does to widen Temple Bar, or improve Snow Hill, the King would get into his hands the appointments of the titular Bishops of Ireland. Both Mr. C----'s sisters enjoy pensions more than sufficient to place the two greatest dignitaries of the Irish Catholic Church entirely at the disposal of the Crown. Everybody who knows Ireland knows perfectly well that nothing would be easier, with the expenditure of a little money, than to preserve enough of the ostensible appointment in the hands of the Pope to satisfy the scruples of the Catholics, while the real nomination remained with the Crown. But, as I have before said, the moment the very name of Ireland is mentioned, the English seem to bid adieu to common feeling, common prudence, and common sense, and to act with the barbarity of tyrants and the fatuity of idiots.

Whatever your opinion may be of the follies of the Roman Catholic religion, remember they are the follies of four millions of human beings, increasing rapidly in numbers, wealth, and intelligence, who, if firmly united with this country, would set at defiance the power of France, and if once wrested from their alliance with England, would in three years render its existence as an independent nation absolutely impossible. You speak of danger to the Establishment: I request to know when the Establishment was ever so much in danger as when Hoche was in Bantry Bay, and whether all the books of Bossuet, or the arts of the Jesuits, were half so terrible? Mr. Perceval and his parsons forget all this, in their horror lest twelve or fourteen old women may be converted to holy water and Catholic nonsense. They never see that, while they are saving these venerable ladies from perdition, Ireland may be lost, England broken down, and the Protestant Church, with all its deans, prebendaries, Percevals, and Rennels, be swept into the vortex of oblivion.

Do not, I beseech you, ever mention to me again the name of Dr. Duigenan. I have been in every corner of Ireland, and have studied its present strength and condition with no common labour. Be assured Ireland does not contain at this moment less than 5,000,000 people. There were returned in the year 1791 to the hearth tax 701,000 houses, and there is no kind of question that there were about 50,000 houses omitted in that return. Taking, however, only the number returned for the tax, and allowing the average of six to a house (a very small average for a potato-fed people), this brings the population to 4,200,000 people in the year 1791: and it can be shown from the clearest evidence (and Mr. Newenham in his book shows it), that Ireland for the last 50 years has increased in its population at the rate of 50,000 or 60,000 per annum; which leaves the present population of Ireland at about 5,000,000, after every possible deduction for _existing circumstances, just and necessary wars, monstrous and unnatural rebellions_, and all other sources of human destruction. Of this population, two out of ten are Protestants; and the half of the Protestant population are dissenters, and as inimical to the Church as the Catholics themselves. In this state of things thumbscrews and whipping--admirable engines of policy as they must be considered to be--will not ultimately avail. The Catholics will hang over you; they will watch for the moment, and compel you hereafter to give them ten times as much, against your will, as they would now be contented with, if it were voluntarily surrendered. Remember what happened in the American war, when Ireland compelled you to give her everything she asked, and to renounce, in the most explicit manner, your claim of sovereignty over her. God Almighty grant the folly of these present men may not bring on such another crisis of public affairs!

What are your dangers which threaten the Establishment? Reduce this declamation to a point, and let us understand what you mean. The most ample allowance does not calculate that there would be more than twenty members who were Roman Catholics in one house, and ten in the other, if the Catholic emancipation were carried into effect. Do you mean that these thirty members would bring in a bill to take away the tithes from the Protestant, and to pay them to the Catholic clergy? Do you mean that a Catholic general would march his army into the House of Commons, and purge it of Mr. Perceval and Dr. Duigenan? or, that the theological writers would become all of a sudden more acute or more learned, if the present civil incapacities were removed? Do you fear for your tithes, or your doctrines, or your person, or the English Constitution? Every fear, taken separately, is so glaringly absurd, that no man has the folly or the boldness to state it. Everyone conceals his ignorance, or his baseness, in a stupid general panic, which, when called on, he is utterly incapable of explaining. Whatever you think of the Catholics, there they are--you cannot get rid of them; your alternative is to give them a lawful place for stating their grievances, or an unlawful one: if you do not admit them to the House of Commons, they will hold their parliament in Potatoe Place, Dublin, and be ten times as violent and inflammatory as they would be in Westminster. Nothing would give me such an idea of security as to see twenty or thirty Catholic gentlemen in Parliament, looked upon by all the Catholics as the fair and proper organ of their party. I should have thought it the height of good fortune that such a wish existed on their part, and the very essence of madness and ignorance to reject it. Can you murder the Catholics? Can you neglect them? They are too numerous for both these expedients. What remains to be done is obvious to every human being--but to that man who, instead of being a Methodist preacher, is, for the curse of us and our children, and for the ruin of Troy and the misery of good old Priam and his sons, become a legislator and a politician.

A distinction, I perceive, is taken by one of the most feeble noblemen in Great Britain, between persecution and the deprivation of political power; whereas, there is no more distinction between these two things than there is between him who makes the distinction and a booby. If I strip off the relic-covered jacket of a Catholic, and give him twenty stripes ... I persecute; if I say, Everybody in the town where you live shall be a candidate for lucrative and honourable offices, but you, who are a Catholic ... I do not persecute! What barbarous nonsense is this! as if degradation was not as great an evil as bodily pain or as severe poverty: as if I could not be as great a tyrant by saying, You shall not enjoy--as by saying, You shall suffer. The English, I believe, are as truly religious as any nation in Europe; I know no greater blessing; but it carries with it this evil in its train, that any villain who will bawl out, "_The Church is in danger!_" may get a place and a good pension; and that any administration who will do the same thing may bring a set of men into power who, at a moment of stationary and passive piety, would be hooted by the very boys in the streets. But it is not all religion; it is, in great part, the narrow and exclusive spirit which delights to keep the common blessings of sun and air and freedom from other human beings. "Your religion has always been degraded; you are in the dust, and I will take care you never rise again. I should enjoy less the possession of an earthly good by every additional person to whom it was extended." You may not be aware of it yourself, most reverend Abraham, but you deny their freedom to the Catholics upon the same principle that Sarah, your wife, refuses to give the receipt for a ham or a gooseberry dumpling: she values her receipts, not because they secure to her a certain flavour, but because they remind her that her neighbours want it:--a feeling laughable in a priestess, shameful in a priest; venial when it withholds the blessings of a ham, tyrannical and execrable when it narrows the boon of religious freedom.

You spend a great deal of ink about the character of the present prime minister. Grant you all that you write--I say, I fear he will ruin Ireland, and pursue a line of policy destructive to the true interest of his country: and then you tell me, he is faithful to Mrs. Perceval, and kind to the Master Percevals! These are, undoubtedly, the first qualifications to be looked to in a time of the most serious public danger; but somehow or another (if public and private virtues must always be incompatible), I should prefer that he destroyed the domestic happiness of Wood or Cockell, owed for the veal of the preceding year, whipped his boys, and saved his country.

The late administration did not do right; they did not build their measures upon the solid basis of facts. They should have caused several Catholics to have been dissected after death by surgeons of either religion; and the report to have been published with accompanying plates. If the viscera, and other organs of life, had been found to be the same as in Protestant bodies; if the provisions of nerves, arteries, cerebrum, and cerebellum, had been the same as we are provided with, or as the dissenters are now known to possess; then, indeed, they might have met Mr. Perceval upon a proud eminence, and convinced the country at large of the strong probability that the Catholics are really human creatures, endowed with the feelings of men, and entitled to all their rights. But instead of this wise and prudent measure, Lord Howick, with his usual precipitation, brings forward a bill in their favour, without offering the slightest proof to the country that they were anything more than horses and oxen. The person who shows the lama at the corner of Piccadilly has the precaution to write up--_Allowed by Sir Joseph Banks to be a real quadruped_, so his Lordship might have said--_Allowed by the bench of Bishops to be real human creatures_.... I could write you twenty letters upon this subject; but I am tired, and so I suppose are you. Our friendship is now of forty years' standing; you know me to be a truly religious man; but I shudder to see religion treated like a cockade, or a pint of beer, and made the instrument of a party. I love the king, but I love the people as well as the king; and if I am sorry to see his old age molested, I am much more sorry to see four millions of Catholics baffled in their just expectations. If I love Lord Grenville and Lord Howick, it is because they love their country; if I abhor ... it is because I know there is but one man among them who is not laughing at the enormous folly and credulity of the country, and that he is an ignorant and mischievous bigot. As for the light and frivolous jester, of whom it is your misfortune to think so highly, learn, my dear Abraham, that this political Killigrew, just before the breaking up of the last administration, was in actual treaty with them for a place; and if they had survived twenty-four hours longer, he would have been now declaiming against the cry of No Popery! instead of inflaming it. With this practical comment on the baseness of human nature, I bid you adieu!

JAMES SMITH.

(1775-1839.)

LVI. THE POET OF FASHION.

From the famous _Rejected Addresses_.

His book is successful, he's steeped in renown, His lyric effusions have tickled the town; Dukes, dowagers, dandies, are eager to trace The fountain of verse in the verse-maker's face: While, proud as Apollo, with peers _tête-à-tête_, From Monday till Saturday dining off plate, His heart full of hope, and his head full of gain, The Poet of Fashion dines out in Park Lane.

Now lean-jointured widows who seldom draw corks, Whose tea-spoons do duty for knives and for forks, Send forth, vellum-covered, a six-o'clock card, And get up a dinner to peep at the bard; Veal, sweetbread, boiled chickens, and tongue crown the cloth, And soup _à la reine_, little better than broth. While, past his meridian, but still with some heat, The Poet of Fashion dines out in Sloane Street,

Enrolled in the tribe who subsist by their wits, Remember'd by starts, and forgotten by fits, Now artists and actors, the bardling engage, To squib in the journals, and write for the stage. Now soup _à la reine_ bends the knee to ox-cheek, And chickens and tongue bow to bubble-and-squeak. While, still in translation employ'd by "the Row" The Poet of Fashion dines out in Soho.

Pushed down from Parnassus to Phlegethon's brink, Toss'd, torn, and trunk-lining, but still with some ink, Now squat city misses their albums expand, And woo the worn rhymer for "something off-hand"; No longer with stinted effrontery fraught, Bucklersbury now seeks what St. James's once sought, And (O, what a classical haunt for a bard!) The Poet of Fashion dines out in Barge-yard.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

(1775-1864.)

LVII. BOSSUET AND THE DUCHESS OF FONTANGES.

This is taken from Landor's _Imaginary Conversations_, and is one of the best examples of his light, airy, satiric vein.

_Bossuet_. Mademoiselle, it is the King's desire that I compliment you on the elevation you have attained.

_Fontanges_, O monseigneur, I know very well what you mean. His Majesty is kind and polite to everybody. The last thing he said to me was, "Angélique! do not forget to compliment Monseigneur the Bishop on the dignity I have conferred upon him, of almoner to the Dauphiness. I desired the appointment for him only that he might be of rank sufficient to confess you, now you are Duchess. Let him be your confessor, my little girl."

_Bossuet_. I dare not presume to ask you, mademoiselle, what was your gracious reply to the condescension of our royal master.

_Fontanges_. Oh, yes! you may. I told him I was almost sure I should be ashamed of confessing such naughty things to a person of high rank, who writes like an angel.

_Bossuet_. The observation was inspired, mademoiselle, by your goodness and modesty.

_Fontanges_. You are so agreeable a man, monseigneur, I will confess to you, directly, if you like.

_Bossuet_. Have you brought yourself to a proper frame of mind, young lady?

_Fontanges_. What is that?

_Bossuet_. Do you hate sin?

_Fontanges_. Very much.

_Bossuet_. Are you resolved to leave it off?

_Fontanges_. I have left it off entirely since the King began to love me. I have never said a spiteful word of anybody since.

_Bossuet_. In your opinion, mademoiselle, are there no other sins than malice?

_Fontanges_. I never stole anything; I never committed adultery; I never coveted my neighbour's wife; I never killed any person, though several have told me they should die for me.

_Bossuet_. Vain, idle talk! Did you listen to it?

_Fontanges_. Indeed I did, with both ears; it seemed so funny.

_Bossuet_. You have something to answer for, then?

_Fontanges_. No, indeed, I have not, monseigneur. I have asked many times after them, and found they were all alive, which mortified me.

_Bossuet_. So, then! you would really have them die for you?

_Fontanges_. Oh, no, no! but I wanted to see whether they were in earnest, or told me fibs; for, if they told me fibs, I would never trust them again.

_Bossuet_. Do you hate the world, mademoiselle?

_Fontanges_. A good deal of it: all Picardy, for example, and all Sologne; nothing is uglier--and, oh my life! what frightful men and women!

_Bossuet_. I would say, in plain language, do you hate the flesh and the devil?

_Fontanges_. Who does not hate the devil? If you will hold my hand the while, I will tell him so.--I hate you, beast! There now. As for flesh, I never could bear a fat man. Such people can neither dance nor hunt, nor do anything that I know of.

_Bossuet_. Mademoiselle Marie-Angélique de Scoraille de Rousille, Duchess de Fontanges! do you hate titles and dignities and yourself?

_Fontanges_. Myself! does anyone hate me? Why should I be the first? Hatred is the worst thing in the world: it makes one so very ugly.

_Bossuet_. To love God, we must hate ourselves. We must detest our bodies, if we would save our souls.

_Fontanges_. That is hard: how can I do it? I see nothing so detestable in mine. Do you? To love is easier. I love God whenever I think of him, he has been so very good to me; but I cannot hate myself, if I would. As God hath not hated me, why should I? Beside, it was he who made the King to love me; for I heard you say in a sermon that the hearts of kings are in his rule and governance. As for titles and dignities, I do not care much about them while His Majesty loves me, and calls me his Angélique. They make people more civil about us; and therefore it must be a simpleton who hates or disregards them, and a hypocrite who pretends it. I am glad to be a duchess. Manon and Lizette have never tied my garter so as to hurt me since, nor has the mischievous old La Grange said anything cross or bold; on the contrary, she told me what a fine colour and what a plumpness it gave me. Would not you rather be a duchess than a waiting-maid or a nun, if the King gave you your choice?

_Bossuet_. Pardon me, mademoiselle, I am confounded at the levity of your question.

_Fontanges_. I am in earnest, as you see.

_Bossuet_. Flattery will come before you in other and more dangerous forms: you will be commended for excellences which do not belong to you; and this you will find as injurious to your repose as to your virtue. An ingenuous mind feels in unmerited praise the bitterest reproof. If you reject it, you are unhappy; if you accept it, you are undone. The compliments of a king are of themselves sufficient to pervert your intellect.

_Fontanges_. There you are mistaken twice over. It is not my person that pleases him so greatly: it is my spirit, my wit, my talents, my genius, and that very thing which you have mentioned--what was it? my intellect. He never complimented me the least upon my beauty. Others have said that I am the most beautiful young creature under heaven; a blossom of Paradise, a nymph, an angel; worth (let me whisper it in your ear--do I lean too hard?) a thousand Montespans. But His Majesty never said more on the occasion than that I was _imparagonable_! (what is that?) and that he adored me; holding my hand and sitting quite still, when he might have romped with me and kissed me.

_Bossuet_. I would aspire to the glory of converting you.

_Fontanges_. You may do anything with me but convert me: you must not do that; I am a Catholic born. M. de Turenne and Mademoiselle de Duras were heretics: you did right there. The King told the chancellor that he prepared them, that the business was arranged for you, and that you had nothing to do but get ready the arguments and responses, which you did gallantly--did not you? And yet Mademoiselle de Duras was very awkward for a long while afterwards in crossing herself, and was once remarked to beat her breast in the litany with the points of two fingers at a time, when everyone is taught to use only the second, whether it has a ring upon it or not. I am sorry she did so; for people might think her insincere in her conversion, and pretend that she kept a finger for each religion.

_Bossuet_. It would be as uncharitable to doubt the conviction of Mademoiselle de Duras as that of M. le Maréchali.

_Fontanges_. I have heard some fine verses, I can assure you, monseigneur, in which you are called the conqueror of Turenne. I should like to have been his conqueror myself, he was so great a man. I understand that you have lately done a much more difficult thing.

_Bossuet_. To what do you refer, mademoiselle?

_Fontanges_. That you have overcome quietism. Now, in the name of wonder, how could you manage that?

_Bossuet_. By the grace of God.

_Fontanges_. Yes, indeed; but never until now did God give any preacher so much of his grace as to subdue this pest.

_Bossuet_. It has appeared among us but lately.

_Fontanges_. Oh, dear me! I have always been subject to it dreadfully, from a child.

_Bossuet_. Really! I never heard so.

_Fontanges_. I checked myself as well as I could, although they constantly told me I looked well in it.

_Bossuet_. In what, mademoiselle?

_Fontanges_. In quietism; that is, when I fell asleep at sermon-time. I am ashamed that such a learned and pious man as M. de Fénélon should incline to it, as they say he does.

_Bossuet_. Mademoiselle, you quite mistake the matter.

_Fontanges_. Is not then M. de Fénélon thought a very pious and learned person?

_Bossuet_. And justly.

_Fontanges_. I have read a great way in a romance he has begun, about a knight-errant in search of a father. The King says there are many such about his court; but I never saw them nor heard of them before. The Marchioness de la Motte, his relative, brought it to me, written out in a charming hand, as much as the copybook would hold; and I got through, I know not how far. If he had gone on with the nymphs in the grotto, I never should have been tired of him; but he quite forgot his own story, and left them at once: in a hurry (I suppose) to set out upon his mission to Saintonge in the _pays de d'Aunis_, where the King has promised him a famous _heretic-hunt_. He is, I do assure you, a wonderful creature: he understands so much Latin and Greek, and knows all the tricks of the sorceresses. Yet you keep him under.

_Bossuet_. Mademoiselle, if you really have anything to confess, and if you desire that I should have the honour of absolving you, it would be better to proceed in it, than to oppress me with unmerited eulogies on my humble labours.

_Fontanges_. You must first direct me, monseigneur: I have nothing particular. The King assures me there is no harm whatever in his love toward me.

_Bossuet_. That depends on your thoughts at the moment. If you abstract the mind from the body, and turn your heart toward heaven--