Part 14
As I have been making allusions to the introduction of the gods in the battles of the Epics, I shall proceed to say a few words upon the subject. The worthy gentry of Olympus, resembling men in their vices, their passions, their liability to pain, and their delight in carnage, made a very tolerable figure in a fair stand-up fight. Their characters could suffer very little from their making use of brazen arms, riding in wooden chariots, and wrestling with antagonists of mere flesh and blood. Mars, to be sure, would have done better if he had refrained from howling; and Juno would not have lost in dignity if she had been a little more cautious in boxing the ears of Diana. But, upon the whole, these people are very good matter for the poet; and I would as lief meet them in an hexameter as in a temple.
But it is a very different thing when the person of the only true God is to be introduced in a poem. A pigmy in poetry may trifle with the thunders of Jupiter; but a Hercules should beware how he handles the terrors of Jehovah. A rhymer may talk what nonsense he pleases of a mythology which consists of fiction and tinsel; but he should be afraid to touch upon a theme in which there is truth, and eternity, and power. It is for this reason that I can never read without disgust those passages of Tasso in which the divine agency is degraded to the level of the machinery of the poem.
When, however, the description falls into the hands of one who is able to do justice to it, see how the glories of the heathen mythology sink before the effulgence of the living God. Search the most celebrated descriptions of heathen writers; and where, in the brightest moments of inspiration, will you find a passage that can for a moment be compared with that of the Psalmist?
“The earth trembled and quaked; the very foundations of the hills shook, and were removed, because He was wrath. There went a smoke out in His presence, and a consuming fire out of His mouth, so that coals were kindled at it. He bowed the heavens also and came down, and it was dark under His feet. He rode upon the cherubims and did fly: He came flying upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness his secret place; His pavilion round about Him with dark water, and thick clouds to cover Him. At the brightness of his presence His clouds removed; hailstones and coals of fire. The Lord also thundered out of heaven, and the Highest gave His thunder; hailstones and coals of fire. He sent out His arrows and scattered them; He cast forth lightnings and destroyed them. The springs of waters were seen, and the foundations of the round world were discovered, at Thy chiding, Ο Lord, at the blasting of the breath of Thy displeasure.”
When I look at the famous nod of Jupiter--
Ἧ, καὶ κυανέησιν ἐπ’ ὀφρύσι νεῦσε Κρονίων, Ἀμβρόσιαι δ’ ἄρα χαῖται ἐπεῥῤώσαντο ἄνακτος Κρατὸς ἀπ’ ἀθανάτοιο· μέγαν δ’ ἐλέλιξεν Ὄλυμπον--
I have before me a distinct image of a handsome terrible-looking man, sitting on a throne, and shaking his head; but when I read the passage which I have quoted above, I find no clear image represented; I feel only a dark and undefinable sensation of awe--a consciousness of the presence of the Deity, visible, yet clothed with darkness as with a veil.
Look now at the terrible magnificence with which Ezekiel has overshadowed the Almighty. After a gorgeous description of the attendant ministers, he says--
“And there was a voice from the firmament that was over their heads, when they stood and had let down their wings. And above the firmament that was over their heads, was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone, and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man upon it. And I saw as the colour of amber, as the appearance of fire round about within it, from the appearance of his loins even upward, and from the appearance of his loins even downward, I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about. As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face, and I heard a voice of one that spake.”
My quotations are running to a great length; nevertheless I cannot refrain from transcribing the splendid description of the Messiah, in which our own Milton has united the above two passages:--
Forth rushed with whirlwind sound The chariot of Paternal Deity, Flashing thick flames, wheel within wheel withdrawn Itself instinct with spirit, but convoyed By four cherubick shapes; four faces each Had wondrous; as with stars their bodies all And wings were set with eyes, with eyes the wheels Of beryl, and careering fires between; Over their heads a crystal firmament, Whereon a sapphire throne inlaid with pure Amber, and colours of the showery arch. He in celestial panoply all armed Of radiant Urim, work divinely wrought, Ascended; at his right hand Victory Sate eagle-winged; beside him hung his bow And quiver, with three-bolted thunder stored; And from about him fierce effusion rolled Of smoke and bickering flame, and sparkles dire. Attended with ten thousand thousand saints He onward came; far off his coming shone; And twenty thousand (I their number heard) Chariots of God, half on each hand were seen. He on the wings of cherub rode sublime, On the crystalline sky in sapphire throned.
After having transcribed three such passages as these, I am in no mind to return at present to the dirt and filth of Pagan superstition, and I shall hasten to a conclusion.
I have been digressing from my original proposition, until at last I have left the Divinities of the Ancients, and set to work at proving that Homer and Virgil are far inferior to David, Ezekiel, and Milton, which after all is a very easy task, and not very new. I intended to have made this a very learned paper, to have talked much of Egypt, a little of M. Belzoni, and several other matters which I have not time to enumerate. Here, however, is the fruit of my labours; I am too lazy, or too busy, to alter, or add, or erase; in thus rambling through five or six pages, instead of labouring through fifty, my time has been expended, I am sure, more pleasantly to myself, and I hope as agreeably to my readers.
REMINISCENCES OF MY YOUTH.
“Admonitu locorum.”--CICERO.
It is the seventh day of my revisiting! The burst of almost painful affection which came over me as I first trod upon the scene of brighter hours, and the glow of heart and brow, which seemed like a resuscitation of feelings and passions that have long lain dormant in forgetfulness--these have gradually died away; but there has succeeded, dearest spot, a mellowed fondness for you, which, were I to live an eternity with you, would remain through that eternity imperishable. I now am delighted to muse upon the sweetness of those recollections, whose overpowering throb I at first could hardly endure; and love to call up before me those imaginings, which at first rushed upon me with the overwhelming force of a cataract. I look around me! A spirit seems to be sitting on every house-top, lingering in every grove; incidents in themselves the most humble, objects in themselves the most mean--like insects preserved in amber--derive nobility and beauty from the colours which memory has thrown around them!
There are associations in the names and the aspects of places which it is impossible for us to restrain or subdue. Who shall gaze upon the Capitol, and not think upon the Cæsars? Who shall roam round Stonehenge, and not shudder at the knife of the Druids? Who shall be a sojourner in Eastcheap, and not enjoy sweet visions of Shakespeare? My native village! Less celebrated are the worthies whose images you recall to my imagination, but they are recalled in colours as constant and as vivid. How can I look upon your sports, without thinking of those who were my companions when I joined in them? How can I listen to the voice of your merriment, without thinking of those from whom in other days it sprung?
Before me is the tavern! The lapse of years has hardly bored an additional excavation in its dusky window-curtain, or borrowed a single shade from the boards of its faded sign. But its inmates have vanished; their laughter is no longer heard in their place; and the red-brick wall of the Ship stands before me like the cemetery of their mirth, their wit, and their good-humour. In my youth I was wild--blame me you that have never been so--and I loved to mingle in this scene of rustic joviality, to listen to the remarks of untutored simplicity, to envy those who had grown grey untainted by the corruptions of “this great Babel,” and to feel how truly it was said,
Where ignorance is bliss, ’Tis folly to be wise.
Many years ago I looked upon these boyish pursuits with an eye very different from that which is now cast back towards them. Many years ago, I thought nothing disgraceful which was not incompatible with innocence in myself and charity towards my fellow-creatures. What would you have? I have grown more prudent, and I am not so happy.
The great room of this humble building was the curia of the village. In it the patriarchs of the place held their nightly sittings, and discussed ale and politics with unremitting assiduity. There was no inebriety, no tumult, no ill-mannered brutality in their sessions; everything was conducted with the greatest order and tranquillity; the old men assembled with all the gravity, with all the earnestness, perhaps with much of the wisdom, of great statesmen. Alas! ye profane ones, ye smile. Ye look with contempt upon my rustic curia and my weather-beaten statesmen. And what are the great ones of this earth? Shall not the beings of a more exalted sphere contemplate with equal scorn the wranglings of more honoured senates? You turn with disgust from the eloquence of a Huggins or a Muggins! Look ye then to the oratory of a Cicero, to the patriotism of a Brutus, or, if you will, to the commanding energies of a Pitt and a Fox! Years roll on, and--what are they?
However, call it a curia, or a club, or what ye will, custom had established in this mansion a meeting of all the wise heads and all the choice spirits of the hamlet. At first the members of it were very independent of all party considerations, and each was too conscious of his own individual merits to become a hanger-on of any more important potentate. Whatever subject was tabled, whether it were the Holy Alliance or the Holy Church--the taste of the new tap or the conduct of the new member--every one said what he thought, and had no idea of bowing to the opinion of his neighbour. In process of time, however, this laudable spirit of liberty and equality began, as in other places, to decline. Some of the members became idle and complaisant, others waxed mighty and overbearing; until at last the Parliament of---- became subservient to the will and wishes of a single ruler, and Jeremiah Snaggs took his place in my memorandum-book as the first Dictator.
He had lived many years in the place, so that he was well known to most of its inhabitants--to some too well. He had long enjoyed the office of collector of the taxes in---- and its neighbourhood, and had contrived to grow rich, as some whispered not by the most creditable methods. However that might be, he was rich, and, as the patriarchal simplicity of the spot declined, many began to look with ill-concealed covetings upon the possessions of Jeremiah Snaggs. He had built to himself a mansion by the roadside, with a small garden in front; and there was a very extraordinary appendage to it, which excited much speculation among his unsophisticated contemporaries, and which he denominated a veranda. For some time he remained shut up in his citadel, and seemed to contemn the courtesies and repel the approaches of the inferior beings who moved around him. Afterwards, however, he found the solitude of his home (for he was a bachelor) insupportable; and he emerged gradually from his retirement, and condescended to join in the social assemblies of his neighbours. He joined them not as a fellow-citizen, but as a sovereign; he came among them, not to brighten their festivity, but to chill their good-humour; his presence was not an assistance, but a restraint. Nevertheless, he was the great man of the place, and in a short time his word was law among its inhabitants. Whether the ascendency was owing rather to the talents which he occasionally displayed, or to the dinners which he occasionally gave, I cannot say. Thomas the boatbuilder, who till now had the credit of being a staunch Whig, and the boldness to avow it, drew in his horns; his patriotism, his oratory, his zeal shrank into nothing before the fiat of the Tory bashaw. He made indeed a violent opposition when Jeremiah proposed the introduction of port wine in lieu of the malt which had hitherto been the inspiration of their counsels, and he was somewhat refractory when the dictator insisted upon turning out the seats of the last generation and introducing modern chairs. But upon both points the boatbuilder was outvoted; and in obedience to Mr. Snaggs the senators dozed upon nauseous port, and fidgeted upon cane bottoms, for the space of six years. Look now! You smile at the disputes of a Thomas and a Snaggs! Yet why? What is there of greater moment in those of a Londonderry and a Brougham?
A period, however, was soon put to this terrible system of misrule: an old favourite of the hundred returned from fighting his country’s battles, in which occupation he had been perseveringly engaged for the last fourteen years. Sergeant Kerrick was disgusted with the innovations of the day, and set vigorously to work to drive them before him, as he expressed himself, at the point of the bayonet. The sergeant was always a fine man, but he was now a cripple into the bargain; he had always majestic black eyes, but he had now the additional advantage of having a cut over both; he had always the two legs of Hercules, but now--glorious destiny!--he had only one to stand upon. He was irresistible! The veranda, the roast mutton, the will--all, all was forgotten. In a short time Snaggs was beat by unheard-of majorities; a week--and the tide of Whitbread’s best was turned into its proper channel; another--and the cane-bottoms were kicked ignominiously from the Parliament. Thomas the boatbuilder, who had seceded in disappointment, was brought back in triumph; the dictator in vain attempted to check the progress of the revolution! baffled, defeated, insulted on all sides, he retired from the field in dismay, and died within a week afterwards from the falling of his veranda. His death produced no sensation; for it was evident that the man of war had been already installed in his place.
The Sergeant bore his faculties right meekly, and promoted the restoration of _l’ancien régime_ to the utmost of his abilities. During his administration people began to talk with some little degree of freedom, although at first they were much awed by the laurels and the scars of their president. They had a wondrous idea of the wisdom he had attained upon his travels. How could they talk of politics in his presence? Why, gracious! he had held the Emperor o’ Russia’s stirrup at Petersburg, and taken off his hat to the Pope o’ Rome--ay! and caught a glimpse o’ Boney to boot. Then, as to religious matters! why the Vicar was nothing to him: he had seen some nations that pray cross-legged, and some that pray in the open air, and some that don’t pray at all; and he had been to St. Peter’s, and a place they call the Pantheon, and all among the convents and nunneries, where they shut up young folk to make clergymen of them. It is not surprising that all this condensation of knowledge produced much veneration in the neighbourhood; it wore off, however, rapidly, and his companions began to enjoy the tales of his hardships, his privations, his battles, and his triumphs, without any feeling of distance or dissatisfaction. Enchanted by the stories he told, enchanted still more by the enthusiasm with which he told them, the _Patres Conscripti_ began to despise their hitherto pacific habits; they carried their sticks on their shoulders, instead of trailing them on the ground; they longed
To follow to the field some warlike lord;
all of them began to look big, and one or two made some proficiency in swearing. By the edict of the dictator, the Biblical prints which were ranged round the chamber made room for coloured representations of Cressy and Agincourt; and the table was moved into such a situation as to give sufficient room for the manual exercise. The women of the village began to be frightened; Matthew Lock, a fine young man of eighteen, ran away to be listed; Mark Fender, a fine old man of eighty, lost an eye in learning parry tierce; two able-bodied artisans caught an ague by counter-marching in a shower; apprehensions of a military government began to be pretty general--when suddenly the dictator was taken off by an apoplexy. _Ibi omnis effusus labor!_ He died when the organization of the corps was just completed; he was carried to his final quarters in great state, and three pistols and a blunderbuss were fired over his grave. Why should we contemn his lowly sepulchre? He died--and so did Alexander.
The warlike Tullus was succeeded by the pacific Numa. Kerrick, the sergeant, was succeeded by Nicholas, the clerk. The six months during which the progeny of Mars had held the reins of government, had unsettled everything; the six weeks which saw Nicholas in his stead set everything in its place again. In the course of a few days it was discovered that drab was a better colour than red, and that an oyster-knife was a prettier weapon than a bayonet. In this short reign the magnates of the place imbibed a strong taste for literature and the arts. The blunderbuss was exchanged for the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” and one of the pistols for the “Whole Duty of Man.” Nicholas himself was a man of considerable acquirements; he was the best reader in the place next to the Vicar, and by dint of much scraping and perseverance he had managed to fill two shelves with a heterogeneous confusion of ancient and modern lore. There was an odd volume of the “History of England,” sundry ditto of sermons, an account of “Anson’s Voyage Round the World,” and “The righte Pathe toe Welle-Doinge,” by Geoffry Mixon. There was also a sage treatise on Ghosts, Spectres, Apparitions, &c., which instigated me to various acts of atrocity, to which I shall presently allude.
Nicholas had presided over the conclave for four months in uninterrupted tranquillity, when an incident occurred which put the firmness of his character to the test. The Parliament had just finished their second jug one evening, and were beginning to think of an adjournment, when a low rumbling noise, like the echo of distant thunder, was heard, and in a moment afterwards the door, as it were spontaneously, flew open, and a spectre flew in. It is needless for me to describe the spectre: it was, _selon règle_, above the common height, with pale cheeks, hollow voice, and staring eyes. It advanced to the dictator’s chair, and moaned, in an audible murmur, “I am thine evil genius, Nicholas! Thou shalt see me at church on Sunday.” And then it immediately vanished, nobody knew how or where. Well indeed it might, for few of the company were qualified to play the spy on its motions. The clerk, however, is said to have kept his seat with great firmness; and all avowed that they had followed his example. Howbeit, unless my memory fails me, there was a whisper that the saddler contrived to be looking under the table for a sixpence, and the exciseman’s sooty appearance told dirty tales of the chimney. The clerk was much importuned not to hazard himself in the church upon the fated Sabbath; but upon this point he was obstinate: it was finally agreed to conceal the matter, and in the event of the apparition’s reappearance to set the minister at him.
On the Sunday (for I suppose the reader is aware that I was intimately acquainted with the causes of the alarm) it was very amusing to watch the different faces of terror or expectation which appeared at public worship, to mark the quivering hue on the sallow cheek of the exciseman, and listen to the querulous intonation of the clerk’s Amen. When at last the sermon was concluded, Nicholas gave his final twang in such a manner that to my ears it resembled an _Io pæan_. He rose from his knees with a countenance of such unmingled, unrepressed triumph, that I could no longer restrain myself! I laughed. Alas! dearly did I rue, unhappy wight, that freak of sacrilegious jocularity.
“And is this all!” See now; you laugh at this deception because a foolish boy was its instrument, and an honest clerk its victim. Have you not often pored, with romantic interest, upon tales of impostures equally gross? Have you not read with horror the celebrated warning of Dion? Have you not shuddered at, “I am thine evil spirit, Brutus; thou shalt see me again at Philippi?” and yet
What’s in a name? “Nicholas” will raise a spirit as well as “Brutus.”
The dictator’s seat was soon after vacated. Ellen, the Vicar’s daughter, had died some years before; and her father, finding himself unable to reconcile himself to the residence which she had so long endeared to him, prepared to quit the village. It was supposed that poor Nicholas was overpowered by the misfortune of his patron: certain it is that he died very quietly one fine summer’s evening, quite prepared for his end, and in the fullest possession of his faculties. He was followed to his grave by as sincere a crowd of mourners as ever wept at a poor man’s obsequies. There is no urn, no column, no monumental splendour where he sleeps! But what of this? Nicholas is dust--and so is Cheops.
One more name lives in my recollection. The old clerk bequeathed his library and his authority to his favourite, Arthur. Arthur!--he had no other name. That of his father was unknown to him, and he was taken from life before his merits had earned one. He was a foundling. He had been left at the old clerk’s door some years before I was born; and Nicholas had relieved the parish of the expense, and had educated him with all the attention of a father. I will not relate the whisper which went about at the time, nor the whispers which succeeded afterwards. Arthur grew in health and beauty, and was quite the pet of the neighbourhood; he had talents too, which seemed designed for brighter days; and patience, which made even his bitter lot endurable. He used to write verses which were the admiration of the synod; and sang his hearers to sleep occasionally with all the good-nature imaginable. At last a critic of distinguished note, who was spending a few months near the hamlet, happened to get a sight of the boy’s poetry, and took a fancy to him. He taught him to read and recite with feeling; pointed out to him the beauties and the errors of the models which he put into his hands; and, on his departure, gave him the works of several of our modern worthies, and promised that he would not forget him. However he did forget him, or gave no symptoms of his remembrance.