Part 15

To have written it ultra-Protestant, would mislead into an expectation of polemical matter, offensive to Orangeism, and entirely alien from the purpose. For who is the hyper-protester, not to write it ultra-Protestant, of whom we speak? None other than St. Peter. Nominally the first Pope. But let that pass. Whether technically an ultra-Protestant or not,—let that pass too. It is with his surplusage of protestations, vehemently asserted, and anon ignominiously ignored, that we are at present concerned. Though all men, all, should be offended because of Christ, should stumble and fall because of Him, yet would he never be offended, never stumble, never lose his footing, firm as a rock, firm as his own name, Peter, Cephas; a rock on which the Church was to be built. The protest of the apostle won no meed of thanks and assurance of conviction from his Lord. He who needed not that any should testify of man, for He knew what was in man—and knew what was wanting in _this_ man,—waved aside, as absolutely worthless, the perfervid protestations of the impulsive son of Jonas. Thrice should Peter deny Him before dawn of another day. Deny Him? Had it come to that? The protester must become ultra in his protests. “Though I should die with Thee, yet will I not deny Thee!” It would be beside the mark here to take into account the other _voces et præterea nihil_, echoing the same thing—protested notes at the best—for likewise also said all the disciples. Peter is their representative man, and ours.

Gertrude’s comment in “Hamlet,” on the accumulated asseverations of the stage-queen, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” has passed into a proverb. “The more vehemently they assert, the less credit they obtain for sincerity,” observes Hartley Coleridge, of some examples of impulsive womankind. Racine’s Bérénice turns the tables on Titus in this regard, when she tells him,

“Hé quoi! vous me jurez une éternelle ardeur, Et vous me la jurez avec cette froideur! Pourquoi même du ciel attester la puissance? Faut-il par des serments vaincre ma défiance? Mon cœur ne prétend point, seigneur, vous démentir; Et je vous en croirai sur un simple soupir.”

How fulsome and hollow, exclaims Marcus Antoninus, does that man look who cries, “I’m resolved to deal clearly with you.” Hark you, friend, the philosophic emperor addresses him, “what need of all this flourish? let your actions speak.” Mr. Disraeli, in his earliest book, has an eloquent paragraph on “that eagerness of protestation which,” in the man charged with criminality, “is a sure sign of crime.” There is as much of overacting one’s part on the great stage of life, as on the mimic boards; and that with graver issues and a drearier fate.

* * * * *

When the subtle and ambitious John of Gischala, pursuing his own dark course, as it is traced in the “History of the Jews,” joined outwardly the party of Ananus, and was active beyond others in council and camp, he yet kept up a secret correspondence with the Zealots, to whom he betrayed all the movements of the assailants. “To conceal this secret he redoubled his assiduities, and became so extravagant in his protestations of fidelity to Ananus and his party, that he completely over-acted his part, and incurred suspicion.” His intended dupes began gradually, and none too soon, to look with a jealous eye on their too obsequious, most obedient, and most devoted servant.

Describing the ten dreary years during which (A.D. 1198-1208), with but short intervals of truce, Germany was abandoned to all the horrors of civil war, Dean Milman observes that “the repeated protestations” of Pope Innocent III., that _he_ was not the cause of these fatal discords, betray the fact that he was accused of the guilt, and that he had to wrestle with his own conscience to acquit himself of the charge. Sir Thomas Overbury suggestively avers that

“He that says oft that he is not in love, By repetition doth himself disprove.”

Hawthorne remarks that Italian asseverations of any questionable fact, though uttered with rare earnestness of manner, never vouch for themselves as coming from any depth, like roots drawn out of the substance of the soul, with some of the soil clinging to them. Their energy expends itself in exclamation. The vaulting ambition of their hyperboles overleaps itself, and falls on the other side. Swift refers to oaths in the mouth of a gamester, as ever most used as their truth is most questioned.

“’Tis not the many oaths that make the truth, But the plain single vow, that is vowed true,”

says Shakspeare’s Diana of Florence. And though from Shakspeare to Wolcot is a descent indeed, Peter Pindar is for once quotable when he writes,

“Truth needs not, John, the eloquence of oaths, Not more so than a decent suit of clothes Requires of broad gold lace the expensive glare, That makes the linsey-woolsey million stare; Besides, a proverb, suited to my wish, Declares that swearing never catches fish.”

That scapegrace guardian of George Canning’s boyhood, Mr. Reddish, is said to have been significantly fond, on quite trivial occasions, of making affidavits,—“the refuge of base and vulgar minds,” Robert Bell calls them,—as if he, Reddish, felt that his word was not to be believed. Cowper is caustic in his application of St. Paul’s statement, that oaths terminate all strife, for “some men have surely then a peaceful life!” he infers, in lines that go on to tell how

“Asseveration blustering in your face Makes contradiction such a hopeless case; In every tale they tell, or false or true, Well-known, or such as no man ever knew, They fix attention, heedless of your pain, With oaths like rivets forced into the brain; And e’en when sober truth prevails throughout, They swear it, till affirmance breeds a doubt.”

The imprecation of Corneille’s Dorante, _Que le foudre à vos yeux m’écrase si je mens!_ only evokes from Clarice the contemptuous rebuff, _Un menteur_ [which, and more than which, emphatically, Dorante is, for he is _Le Menteur_,] _est toujours prodigue de serments_. So again Racine’s Theseus: _Toujours les scélérats ont recours au parjure_,—when Hippolytus begins to call heaven, and earth, and universal nature to witness, etc. So, too, Chamont, in Otway’s tragedy: “When a man talks of love, with caution trust him; but if he swears, he’ll certainly deceive thee.” Indeed, as Owen Feltham has it, wherever there is too much profession, there is cause for suspicion. “Reality cares not to be tricked out with too taking an outside; and deceit, when she intends to cozen, studies disguise. Least of all should we be taken with swearing asseverations. Truth needs not the varnish of an oath to make her plainness credited.” Fielding’s Pettifogger, on a certain occasion, calling to mind that he had not been sworn, as he usually was, before he gave his evidence, “now bound what he had declared with so many oaths and imprecations, that the landlady’s ears were shocked, and she put a stop to his swearing, by assuring him of her belief,” inconsiderately enough, as the manner of the man might have proved. Scott’s Jorworth, when heaping asseveration on asseveration, is cut short by the honest Fleming he is striving to mislead: “Stop, good Jorworth; thou heapest thine oaths too thickly on each other, for me to value them to the right estimate; that which is so lightly pledged, is sometimes thought not worth redeeming.” So again Monkbarns tells the gaberlunzie, after hearing his story of the adept, “I am strongly disposed to believe that you have spoken the truth, the rather, that you have not made any of those obtestations of the superior powers, which I observe you and your comrades always make use of when you mean to deceive folks.” The author of “London Labour and the London Poor,” recounts the redundance of “Glory be to God! it’s the thruth I’m telling of you, sir,” etc., etc.; which he had to hear from Irish mendicity, or mendacity, or both. “The dignity of truth is lost with much protesting,” the Cicero of Jonson’s “Catiline” says.

Take up any ordinary history, and you are but too sure to come across examples enough and to spare, of people who did protest too much, and did not keep their word. Glance at Alison’s big book, and on one page you read, of Napper Tandy, for instance, “But the conduct of this leader was far from keeping pace with these vehement protestations; for no sooner did he hear of the reverse sustained by the French corps which had landed in Killala Bay, than he re-embarked on board the French brig _Anacreon_, and got safe across the channel.” On another we have Tippoo Saib striving to disarm the suspicions of the British Government by “professions of eternal gratitude and attachment,” and considerably overacting his part. On another we have Napoleon bidding Marmont “spare no protestations of assistance to Turkey;” and himself assuring the Turkish ambassador that, “his right hand was not more inseparable from his left, than the Sultan Selim should ever be to him;” in consequence of which protestations, Turkey threw herself into the breach against both Russia and England, only to find the imperial ultra-protester, within one little month from the protestations, arranging for the immediate partition, with the Czar, of the Turkish dominions. Look, again, at Benjamin Constant, launching his vehement philippic against Napoleon, in the _Journal des Débats_ on the eve of the Emperor’s return from Elba, and declaring, “Never will I crawl, like a base deserter from power to power. Under Louis XVIII. we enjoy a representative government. Under Bonaparte we endured a government of Mamelukes. He is an Attila, a Gengis Khan!” And then we read how, a few days after this fulmination, Constant, the _in_constant, became a councillor of state under this Attila, an active supporter of this Gengis Khan. Another ground of indictment against Napoleon is found by Alison in the eagerness of his protestations to Russia, that he had no way connived at the election of Bernadotte to the throne of Sweden, when next vacant. “The extreme anxiety which Napoleon evinced for some time afterwards to convince the court of St. Petersburg that he had taken no concern in this election, only renders it the more probable that he was in reality at the bottom of the transaction.” The asseverations commenced by the younger Pennyboy, in Jonson’s “Staple of News,” are declined and dismissed, by the elder, who knows their worth, with this summary and suggestive caution:

“No vows, no promises; too much protestation Makes that suspected oft, we would persuade.”

_FLEETING SHADOWS._

JOB xiv. 2.

As man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble; as he is said to come forth like a flower, only to be cut down, so is it further said of him, that “he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.” His days are like a shadow that declineth. He himself is gone as a shadow that fleeteth away. For man is vanity, his days are as a shadow, saith the psalmist. And the preacher, whose text is vanity of vanities, all is vanity, finds vexation of spirit in meditations on man, all the days of whose vain life he spendeth as a shadow.

_What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue!_ The exclamation was that of a great statesman, amid the excitement and the contests of public life, when there reached him news of the sudden death of a fellow-candidate and colleague. Shadow-hunted shadows. The pursued and the pursuers—the game and the sportsmen—shadows all. Burke’s exclamation was often in the mind of the late Sir James Graham, and, towards the close of his life, not unfrequently on his lips.

“Ὁρῶ γὰρ ἡμᾶς οὐδὲν ὄντας ἄλλο, πλὴν Εἰδωλ’, ὅσοιπερ ζῶμεν, ἤ κούφην ΣΚΙΑΝ.”

_O curas hominum! O quantum est in rebus inane!_ Men were ever of old, and they are found to be now, the willing victims of illusion in all stages of life: children, youths, adults, and old men, all, as Emerson puts it, are led by one bauble or another. “There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream. The toys, to be sure, are various, and are graduated in refinement to the quality of the dupe.” For instance, the intellectual man requires a fine bait, while the sots are easily amused. “But everybody is drugged with his own frenzy, and the pageant marches at all hours, with music and banner and badge.” Shadows before, and shadows behind, and all fleeting. False glozing pleasures, to adopt George Herbert’s diction, are the shadowy lure,

... “casks of happiness, Foolish night-fires, women’s and children’s wishes, Chases in arras, gilded emptiness, Shadows well mounted, dreams in a career, Embroider’d lies, nothing between two dishes,— These are the pleasures here.”

Marcus Antoninus, in his “Meditations,” harps on the note of shadow-hunting or shadow-hunted shadows. You will soon be reduced to ashes and a skeleton, he keeps telling himself; and even if you leave a name,—what is a name? what is in a name? _Vox et præterea nihil._ The shadows you, a shade, pursue, are miserably shadowy. The prizes of life are, he says, so paltry, that to scuffle for them is ridiculous, and puts him in mind of a set of puppies snarling for a bone, or of the contests of children for a toy. Wherever he looks, the wide world over, and in whatever age of its history, he sees abundance of people very busy, and big with their projects, who presently drop off, and moulder to dust and ashes. The freshest laurels wither apace, and the echoes of Fame are soon silenced. The “insect youth” that people the air and make it murmurous with busy life,—is not their close resemblance to the children of men one of poetry’s common-places?

“To Contemplation’s sober eye, Such is the race of man; And they that creep, and they that fly, Shall end where they began.

“Alike the busy and the gay, But flutter through life’s little day, In fortune’s varying colours drest; Brushed by the hand of rough Mischance, Or chilled by Age, their airy dance They leave, in dust to rest.”

Having asked to be told her fortune by the Wise Wight of Mucklestane Moor, Miss Ildeston, in Scott’s story, is told by the cynical recluse, that it is a simple one; an endless chase through life after follies not worth catching, and when caught, successively thrown away—a chase, pursued from the days of tottering infancy to those of old age upon his crutches. “Toys and merry-making in childhood—love and its absurdities in youth—spadille and basto in age, shall succeed each other as objects of pursuit: flowers and butterflies in spring,—butterflies and thistledown in summer,—withered leaves in autumn and winter—all pursued, all caught, all flung aside.” _Que vont elles faire de si grand matin_, Cleopas asks his demon-guide, concerning _ces personnes_ whose early rising and eager bustle have caught and fixed his attention. “Ce que vous souhaitez de savoir, reprit le Démon, est une chose digne d’être observée. Vous allez voir un tableau des soins, des mouvements, des peines que les pauvres mortels se donnent pendant cette vie, pour remplir, le plus agréablement qu’il leur est possible, ce petit éspace qui est entre leur naissance et leur mort.” _Telle est la vie_, as most of us live it.

“Dream after dream ensues, And still they dream that they shall still succeed, And still are disappointed,”

writes William Cowper. Not at all in the same measure or manner, but pretty much to the same effect, writes the picturesque poet of Bells and Pomegranates:

“It is but to keep the nerves at strain, To dry one’s eyes and laugh at a fall, And baffled, get up to begin again,— So the chase take up one’s life, that’s all. While, look but once from your farthest bound, At me so deep in the dust and dark, No sooner the old hope drops to ground Than a new one, straight to the self-same mark I shape me—ever removed.”

There is much that is suggestive in the Abbé Gerbet’s discoursings in the Catacombs at Rome. “Ce dernier calque de l’homme,” he says, in what has been called a commentary on Bossuet’s _mot_, that the corpse of a man becomes a _je ne sais quoi_, for which there is no name in any language—“cette forme si vague, si effacée, à peine empreinte sur une poussière à peu près impalpable, volatile, presque transparente, d’un blanc mat et incertain, est ce qui donne le mieux quelque idée de ce que les anciens appelaient une _ombre_. Cette forme est plus frêle que l’aile d’un papillon, plus prompte à s’evanouir que la goutte de rosée suspendue à un brin d’herbe au soleil; un peu d’air agité par votre main, un souffle, un son deviennent ici des agents puissants qui peuvent anéantir en une seconde ce que dix-sept siècles, peut-être, de destruction ont épargné. Voyez,—vous venez de respirer, et la forme a disparu. Voilà la fin de l’histoire de l’homme en ce monde.” What shadows we are! Ashes to ashes ends, even in Westminster Abbey, man’s noblest story, and dust to dust concludes his noblest song.

“O death all-eloquent! you only prove What dust we doat on, when ’tis man we love.”

Hawthorne’s Gervayse Hastings is a type and symbol, when he describes himself as depressed by a haunting perception of unreality; as one to whom all things, all persons, are like shadows flickering on the wall. “Neither have I myself any real existence,” he says, “but am a shadow like the rest.” And the end—not to say the moral—of his story may serve to remind us of the Abbé Gerbet’s words. Gervayse Hastings is seated with other guests at a feast—of very odd fellows—over whom is suspended the skeleton of the oddest of all, the founder of the feast. As the speaker ceased his confession of shadowy experiences, “it so chanced that at this juncture the decayed ligaments of the skeleton gave way, and the dry bones fell together in a heap.... The attention of the company being thus diverted for a single instant from Gervayse Hastings, they perceived on turning again towards him, that the old man had undergone a change. His shadow had ceased to flicker on the wall.” The woe of this old man was, that to him the world to come was all shadow too.

Mrs. Schimmelpenninck expresses her belief that in youth and middle age there is often a real conviction of the transitory nature of the most established temporal things, but that in old age it is not merely a conviction, but a vivid palpable reality, and that the eternal mountains do then indeed appear near at hand; while all the campaign around seems faded into shadowy distance; and she inclines to say, like the monk, who for forty years had exhibited the picture of the Last Supper, that he had seen so many pass away, that himself and those he spoke to seemed a shadow, while the blessed institution of the Holy Supper stood before him alone a reality. But many are the young hearts that feel as Margaret Hale felt, in Mrs. Gaskell’s story, when to her life seemed a vain show, so unsubstantial, and flickering, and fleeting, and when “it was as if from some aërial belfry, high up above the stir and jar of the earth, there was a bell continually tolling, ‘All are shadows!—all are passing!—all is past!’”

_Le tems même sera detruit_, as La Bruyère says: “ce n’est qu’un point dans les espaces immenses de l’éternité, et il sera effacé. Il y a de légères et frivoles circonstances du tems, qui ne sont pas stables, qui passent, et que j’appelle des modes, la grandeur, la faveur, les richesses, la puissance, l’autorité, l’indépendance, le plaisir, les joies, la superfluité. Que deviendront ces modes, quand le tems même aura disparu? La vertu seule, si peu à la mode, va au-delà des tems.”

“Between two worlds life hovers like a star ’Twixt night and morn, upon the horizon’s verge: How little do we know that which we are! How less what we may be! The eternal surge Of time and tide rolls on, and bears afar Our bubbles; as the old burst, new emerge, Lash’d from the foam of ages; while the graves Of empire heave but like some passing waves.”

So writes Byron in the poem that contains perhaps his grandest and most powerful strains, interspersed among his wittiest and most wicked ones. If ever man was haunted by the conviction that we are shadows all, and that shadows are our pursuit, it was he. But with him there was nothing of a “saving faith” in this. As Shakspeare’s Prince of Arragon reads on the scroll at Belmont,

“Some there be that shadows kiss; Such have but a shadow’s bliss;”

and of such was Byron. And he knew it. Not more alive to this philosophy was Cowper himself, when he pictured men

“For threescore years employed with ceaseless care In catching smoke and feeding upon air;”

or when he pointed with this moral his lines on the felled poplars that once lent him a shade, beneath which he had so often been charmed by the blackbird’s sweet flowing ditty:

“’Tis a sight to engage me, if anything can, To muse on the perishing pleasures of man; Though his life be a dream, his enjoyments, I see, Have a being less durable even than he.”

One great amusement of the household in the Castle of Indolence, on the testimony of its poet-laureate, was,

“In a huge crystal magic globe to spy, Still as you turned it, all things that do pass Upon this ant-hill earth; where constantly Of idly busy men the restless fry Run bustling to and fro with foolish haste, In search of pleasures vain that from them fly, Or which, obtained, the caitiffs do not taste.”

If, with Churchill, we stand as

“Spectators only on this bustling stage, We see what vain designs mankind engage: Vice after vice with ardour they pursue, And one old folly brings forth twenty new.... Squirrels for nuts contend, and, wrong or right, For the world’s empire, kings, ambitious, fight. What odds?—to us ’tis all the selfsame thing, A nut, a world, a squirrel, and a king.”

In other verses, and another measure, the same poet justifies his use of the expression “whatever shadows we pursue,” by the interpolated comment,

“For our pursuits, be what they will, Are little more than shadows still; Too swift they fly, too swift and strong, For man to catch or hold them long.”

Of world-wide application is what Bernardin de Saint-Pierre said of himself, by way of private interpretation: “Toutes mes idées ne sont que des ombres de la nature, recueillies par une autre ombre.” Goldsmith was not altogether in sport when he made Croaker in the comedy pronounce life to be, at the greatest and best, but a froward child, that must be humoured and coaxed a little till it falls asleep, and then all the care is over; while Honeywood assents—Good-natured Man that he is—with a ready “Very true, sir; nothing can exceed the vanity of our existence, but the folly of our pursuits.” For Goldsmith was in sad earnest when he wrote of himself as one

“Impelled with steps unceasing to pursue Some fleeting good that mocks me with the view That like the circle bounding earth and skies, Allures from far, yet, as I follow, flies.”