Part 34

Horace uses the expressive phrase, _bibit aure_, in one of his odes—literally, “drink in with the ear”—a phrase admired by the commentators for its lyric boldness. “I was all fixed to listen,” says Dante, in the tenth gulf of _l’Inferno_. “O speak your counsel now, for Saturn’s ear is all a-hungered,” entreats the Titan, in Keats’s _Hyperion_. D’Artagnan, in the ante-chamber of M. de Treville, is described as looking with all his eyes and listening with all his ears, stretching his five senses so as to lose nothing. The same author tells how Mazarin listened, dying as he was, to Anne of Austria, as ten living men could not have listened. “Will you listen?” asks a prince in the same story; and is answered, “Can you ask me? You speak of a matter of life or death to me, and then ask if I will listen.”

When Falstaff asks the prince, “Dost thou hear me, Hal?” “Ay, and mark thee too,” is the reply; and that there is a difference between hearing and marking, between lending one ear and giving both, Falstaff knew as well as most men. And could practise what he knew, if occasion prompted. Witness his wilful deafness when taken to task by the Lord Chief Justice. “Boy, tell him I’m deaf,” he bids his page say. So, “You must speak louder, my master’s deaf,” says the boy. “I am sure he is, to the hearing of anything good,” rejoins the Chief Justice. And when, anon, his lordship taxes the incorrigible knight with being deaf to what he is saying, Sir John assures him, with that consummate assurance of his, that he hears him very well: “Rather, an’t please you, it is the disease of not listening, the malady of not marking, that I am troubled withal.” Quite capable is that witty profligate of entering into the import of each phrase in the collect on the Holy Scriptures, which prays that we may in such wise hear them, as to mark and learn, and inwardly digest them.

A late divine, treating of “animal men” in the “animal” sense of St. Paul, as those who cannot discern spiritual things, but are absorbed in animalism as their being’s end and aim, affirmed that unavailing as it seems to be to talk to them of religion, it avails no more talking of poetry, and art, or speculative science, or the nobler things of the soul: “How can such men discern the things of the Spirit? They understand Tennyson as little as they understand St. Paul.” Having ears they hear not anything so far away as the music of the spheres. Of _that_, and such as that, the animal man might say, by self-application of a couplet of Cowper’s,

“For which, alas! my destiny severe, Though ears she gave me two, gave me no ear.”

_NOT ALONE IN THE VALLEY OF SHADOWS._

PSALM xxiii. 4.

No good thing will He, from whom cometh every good gift, withhold from them that love Him, and that walk uprightly; least of all then His presence when most that presence is indispensable,—as a _very_ present help in trouble. And when so indispensable as in the valley of the shadow of death—darkening more and more unto the perfect night? We must die alone. It is a truism, in its natural sense. But in what the devout mind refuses to call or consider a non-natural sense, the righteous hath companionship as well as hope in his death. He who can say, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, confines not his reliance to the range of green pastures and still waters, but extends it to the glooms of the grave and the swellings of Jordan. Not alone at the last, for the Good Shepherd knoweth His sheep, and is known of them. And how known? For one that will not let them want. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.”

Pascal said that the solitude of death was the bitterest pang of humanity; and because one must die alone, the end of life is its heaviest trial. Some Frenchmen and Frenchwomen, very French, have essayed, in their peculiar fashion, to elude the disaster, simply by dying in public. People in Paris died in public in the seventeenth century. Death, as Mr. Herman Merivale puts it, was but the last scene of the play, to be performed with a theatrical bow and exit. He shows us the young beauty, perishing of dissipation, who made her adieux to the world in appropriate costume and sentiments; and the worn-out statesman, who might not turn his face to the wall in peace, but was surrounded by a whole court in full dress, and talked on till his husky accents could no longer convey the last of his smart sayings to the listeners.[42] With all his fribbles and frivolities Horace Walpole was not quite Frenchified enough to willingly face death in a French hotel, with all its noise and excitement, “and, what would be still worse, exposed to receive all visits; for the French, you know,” he writes to Conway, “are never more in public than in the act of death. I am like animals, and love to hide myself when I am dying”—which refers to his periodical, and prolonged, and always perilous attacks of gout. “If,” says the author of “Life in the Sick-room,” “I could not trust my friends to save me from involuntary encroachment at the last, I had rather scoop myself a hole in the sand of the desert, and die alone, than be tended by the gentlest hands, and soothed by the most loving voices in the choicest chamber.” Wordsworth’s Marmaduke exclaims,—

“Give me a reason why the wisest thing That the earth knows shall never choose to die, But some one must be near to count his groans. The wounded deer retires to solitude, And dies in solitude: all things but man, All die in solitude.”

Special note has been taken of the exceptional characteristic in the altogether exceptional career of the prophet Elijah, that, in his last hour, when he was on his way to a strange and unprecedented departure from this world—when the whirlwind and flame chariot were ready, he asked for no human companionship. “The bravest men are pardoned if one lingering feeling of human weakness clings to them at the last, and they desire a human eye resting on them—a human hand in theirs—a human presence. But Elijah would have rejected all. In harmony with the rest of his lonely severe character, he desired to meet his Creator alone.” One hears of such preferences now and then, in oddly constituted natures. Sir Walter Scott, in a letter to his sister-in-law, appears to indicate a disposition of this kind as prevalent in his father’s family. “Poor aunt Curle,” he tells her, “died like a Roman, or rather like one of the Sandy-Knowe bairns, the most stoical race I ever knew. She turned every one out of the room, and drew her last breath alone. So did my uncle, Captain Robert Scott, and several others of that family.” Affectation was so inherent in Chateaubriand’s confessions and professions, that one knows not how far genuine may have been his plea for what he calls the “necessity of isolation,” and its advantages in death as in life. “Any hand is good enough to reach us the glass of water that we call for in the fever of death. Ah! may that hand not be too dear to us!” The “necessity of isolation” reminds us of Keble’s query:—

“Why should we faint and fear to live alone, Since all alone, so Heaven has will’d, we die, Nor even the tenderest heart, and next our own, Knows half the reasons why we smile and sigh?”

And that again reminds us, with a difference—the difference between Madame de Staël and the sweet singer of the “Christian Year,”—of Corinne on her death-bed, saying to Castel Forte: “But for you, I should die alone. There is no help for such a moment; friends can but follow us to the brink; there begin thoughts too deep, too troublous, to be confided.” _Mon sort est de mourir seul_, writes Rousseau’s bereaved Solitaire; _et la seule Providence me fermera les yeux_. Scott was not of mere imagination all compact when he made Edie Ochiltree say, in the cave that forms the old mendicant’s favourite retreat, “I hae had mony a thought, that when I found myself auld and forfairn, and no able to enjoy God’s blessed air ony langer, I wad e’en streek mysell out here, and abide my removal, like an auld dog that trails its useless ugsome carcass into some bush or bracken.” Montaigne says that, might he have his choice, he thought he should like best to die out of his own house, and away from his own people. The Emperor Marcus Aurelius, on the seventh day of his last illness, admitted none but his unworthy son (Commodus) to his chamber, and after a few words dismissed him, “covered his head for sleep, and”—in Dean Merivale’s words—“passed away alone and untended.” Epigrammatic historians love to tell of Catherine the Great, who had reigned over five hundred and forty towns, over forty-two governments, over a multitude of isles of the sea from Kamschatka to Japan, and over eighty millions of slaves, that she died alone, entirely alone, without a single slave at hand to support her drooping head. The picture is meant to be sensational, and as written in French and for the French, it may be telling enough. It tells, for instance, upon such a nature as Madame Sophie Gay, who used to promise her friends to come and die among them, when it was her turn and her time; adding, in her very French style, “Je ne veux pas que cette demoiselle”—meaning _la mort_—“me trouve seule.” Upon others, the grand climax of supreme solitude fails of effect. “It has always been my wish,” writes Southey, for example, “to die far from my friends, to crawl like a dog into some corner and expire unseen. I would neither give nor receive unavailing pain.” When death overtook St. Francis Xavier, he was on board of a vessel bound for Siam, and at his own request he was removed to the shore, that he might die with the greater composure. Stretched on the naked beach, with the cold blasts of a Chinese winter aggravating his pains—thus Sir James Stephen describes his last moments—he contended alone with the agonies of the fever which wasted his vital power. “It was an agony and a solitude for which the happiest of the sons of men might well have exchanged the dearest society, and the purest of the joys of life.... It was a solitude thronged by blessed ministers of peace and consolation, visible in all their bright and lovely aspects to the now unclouded eye of faith; and audible to the dying martyr through the yielding bars of his mortal prison-house, in strains of exulting joy till then unheard and unimagined.”

“Thou must go forth alone, my soul, thou must go forth alone,— To other scenes, to other worlds, that mortal hath not known, Thou must go forth alone, my soul, to tread the narrow vale; But He, whose word is sure, hath said His comforts shall not fail. His rod and staff shall comfort thee across the dreary road, Till thou shalt join the blessed ones, in Heaven’s serene abode.”

Mr. de Quincey has finely said of solitude, that, although it may be silent as light, it is, like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. “All men come into this world _alone_; all leave it _alone_. Even a little child has a dread, whispering consciousness, that, if he should be summoned to travel into God’s presence, no gentle nurse will be allowed to lead him by the hand, nor mother to carry him in her arms, nor little sister to share his trepidations.” King and priest, we are further reminded, warrior and maiden, philosopher and child, all must walk those mighty galleries alone. The solitude, therefore, which this author describes as in this world appalling or fascinating a child’s heart,[43] is but the echo of a far deeper solitude, through which already he has passed, and of another solitude, deeper still, through which he _has_ to pass: reflex of one solitude—prefiguration of another.

Crabbe says of man that, feeling his weakness, it is his habit to run to society, to numbers,—

“Himself to strengthen, or himself to shun; But though to this our weakness may be prone, Let’s learn to live, for we must die, alone.”

Among the pangs which belong to death is emphatically reckoned by F. W. Robertson, in his sermon on Victory over it, the sensation of loneliness which attaches to that transit through the valley of shadows. Have we ever, he asks, seen a ship preparing to sail with its load of pauper emigrants to a distant colony? for that is keenly suggestive of the desolation which comes from feeling unfriended on a new and untried excursion. He dilates on all beyond the seas being to the ignorant poor man a strange land—away from the helps and friendships and companionships of life, scarcely knowing what is before him; and it is in such a moment, when a man stands upon a deck, taking his last look of his fatherland, that there comes upon him what the preacher calls “a sensation new, strange, and inexpressibly miserable—the feeling of being alone in the world. Brethren, with all the bitterness of such a moment, it is but a feeble image when placed by the side of the loneliness of death. We die alone. We go on our dark mysterious journey for the first time in all our existence, without one to accompany us. Friends are beside our bed, they must stay behind. Grant that a Christian has something like familiarity with the Most High, _that_ breaks this solitary feeling; but what is it with the mass of men? It is a question full of loneliness to them.” Says the elder Humboldt (Wilhelm), in one of his letters: “However many companions a man may have in the active sympathising world, he must ever make the journey which leads across the boundaries of earthly things alone; no one may accompany him.” Not but that in some moods, and in some sense, this contemplative philosopher might have assented to the protest of Paul Flemming, that had we spiritual organs, to see and hear things now invisible and inaudible to us, we should behold the air thronged with the departing souls of that vast multitude which every moment dies. For, “truly the soul departs not alone on its last journey, but spirits of its kind attend it, when not ministering angels; and they go in families to the unknown land. Neither in life nor in death are we alone.” But then as we have _not_ the spiritual organs in question, the fact of conscious isolation _in articulo mortis_ is not affected; and their character, after all, pertains rather to spiritualism than to spirituality.

A latter-day Christian lyrist expatiates on the sense of loneliness one has at midnight, in the dread calmness of the dark,—or again, on pathless hills, when the sun is set, and the ear listens in vain for some social sound from afar. But,—

“If this be solitude, while life retains her healthful tone, How shall I feel when, faint with pain,—I die alone?

“Of all the happy things that live in ocean, earth, or air, Not one with kindred sympathy my lonely lot shall share. My friend shall vainly scan the glance that speaks no language now; My dog shall lick the languid hand that falters on his brow: But none shall venture forth with me, to meet the dread unknown, And I between two living worlds—must die alone!”

_Je mourrai seul._ Pascal’s words are continually cited, though only to be forgotten. Mrs. Browning feelingly and earnestly expands into a sonnet what she entitles “A Thought for a Lonely Death-bed. Inscribed to my friend E. C.”

“If God compel thee to this destiny, To die alone,—with none beside thy bed To ruffle round with sobs thy last word said, And mark with tears the pulses ebb from thee,— Then pray alone—‘O Christ, come tenderly! By Thy forsaken Sonship in the red Drear wine-press,—by the wilderness outspread,— And the lone garden where Thine agony Fell bloody from Thy brow,—by all of those Permitted desolations, comfort mine! No earthly friend being near me, interpose No deathly angel ’twixt my face and Thine, But stoop Thyself to gather my life’s rose, And smile away my mortal to Divine.’”

One can hardly quit this subject without recalling the awful significance of a cry that once expressed, if one may say it, inexpressible anguish,—anguish indescribable, incommunicable,—“My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me!” Penultimate words, these were; and appalling in their suggestiveness of uttermost desolation. But not the last words of all. He was not alone, consciously not alone, at the very last. Later than these, and triumphant over these—however subdued and serene the triumph—came those other words, Divinely calm, as became the Speaker,—“Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.” And it was when He had _this_ said, that He gave up the ghost.

FOOTNOTES

[1] “Wave your hand; the motion which has apparently ceased is taken up by the air, from the air by the walls of the room, etc., and so by direct and re-acting waves, continually comminuted, but never destroyed.”—_Grove’s Correlation of Physical Forces._

[2] The Candidate, Lord Sandwich.

[3] See on the scope of the words ἐπιθυμῶν χορτασθῆναι (St. Luke xvi. 21), _Analecta Theologica_ (Rev. W. Trollope’s) _in loc._

[4] Earlier in the tale there is a touch to remind us of Lear on the heath:

“‘Know you his conduct?’ ‘Yes, indeed, I know, And how he wanders in the wind and snow; Safe in our rooms the threatening storm we hear, But he feels strongly what we faintly fear.’”

[5] Plentiful illustrations might be drawn from Plutarch to the same effect. There is Mutius Scævola, for instance, addressing Porsenna: “Your threatenings I regarded not, but am subdued by your generosity.” There is Porsenna himself, who, as Publicola found, could not be quelled by dint of arms, but whom he converted into a friend to Rome, by “the gentle arts of persuasion.” There is young Alexander, afterwards to be, or to be called, the Great, whose astute father saw that he did not easily submit to authority, because he would not be forced to anything, but that he might be led to his duty by the gentler hand of reason; and therefore, as a wise father, who knew his own son, Philip took the method of persuasion rather than of command.

What Plutarch says of the gentler hand of reason, reminds us of Swift’s account of the _Houyhnhnms_, that “they have no conception how a rational creature can be compelled, but only advised or exhorted.” And by the way, Swift remarks in a letter on England’s harsh rule over the Irish, “Supposing even the size of a native’s understanding just equal to that of a dog or a horse, I have often seen these two animals civilized by rewards at least as much as by punishments.”

But to return to Plutarch. There is his Flaminius, again, whose appointment to the command in the war with Macedon, he calls very fortunate for Rome, since what was required was “a general who did not want to do everything by force and violence, but rather by gentleness and persuasion.” As Claudian says, _Peragit tranquilla potestas quad violenta nequit_.

Fear, observes Adam Smith, is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of government, and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who have the smallest pretensions to independency. “To attempt to terrify them, serves only to irritate their bad humours, and to confirm them in an opposition which more gentle usage perhaps might easily induce them, either to soften, or to lay aside altogether.”

[6] The history of Latin Christianity supplies abundant examples, more or less pertinent. Columban and his disciples are characterized as having had little of the gentle and winning perseverance of missionaries: they had been accustomed to dictate to trembling sovereigns; and their haughty and violent demeanour provoked the pagans, instead of weaning them from their idolatries (iii. 106). So of Boniface (v. 167): it was in the tone of a master that he commanded the world to peace, a tone which provoked resistance. “It was not by persuasive influence, which might lull the conflicting passions of men, and enlighten them as to their real interests.” Contrast with these the temper and policy of Pope Eugenius III. (iii. 407), whose “skilful and well-timed use of means more becoming the head of Christendom than arms and excommunications, wrought wonders in his favour;” and who, by his gentleness and charity, gradually supplanted the senate in the attachment of the Roman people: “the fierce and intractable people were yielding to this gentler influence.” On a later page we come across the able portraiture of our Henry II., as drawn by a churchman who was warning Becket as to the formidable adversary he had undertaken to oppose: “He will sometimes be softened by humility and patience, but will never submit to compulsion,” etc. Ariste _a raison_ when he counsels Geronte, in Gresset’s “Le Méchant,” as the _bien plus sage_ course of dealing with a difficult subject,

“Que vous le rameniez par raison, par douceur, Que d’aller opposer la colère à l’humeur.”

[7] “Such access as Protestantism has gained to the minds of the Catholics in Ireland, it owes, not to the thunders of any missionary Boanerges, but to men like the [late] Archbishop of Dublin [Whately], and the Dean of Elphin, who have taken a very different course, and presented Protestant Christianity to their neighbours in a very different form.”—_Saturday Review_, xi. 71.

[8] Gently soothing.

[9] Another type of mind, deficient in the higher attributes of independence, is often feverishly eager to sink its sense of individual responsibility by seeking what is called “rest in the Church.” Dr. Bungener represents his Julian, when committed to the Bastile, as rather rejoicing at than terrified by the despotism of the hand laid upon him; and in the same way, on taking holy orders, he, being “subdued in heart, enslaved in mind, tired of being his own master, only to create his own torments,” flatters himself that he gives the Church complete power over his faculties at the same time that he gives her plenary power over his actions.

To the baser sort, remarks Sir James Stephen, no yoke is so galling as that of self control, no deliverance so welcome as that of being handsomely rid of free agency. “With such men mental slavery readily becomes a habit, a fashion, and a pride. To the abject many the abdication of self-government is a willing sacrifice.”

One of our acutest essayists on social subjects comments on the readiness of a man to exult in the fact that he has done something which he cannot undo, and has pledged himself to a course from which he cannot draw back, as more commonly the sign of a weak than of a strong nature. “The comfort of plunging right into the stream is unspeakable to anybody who has been accustomed to stand shivering and irresolute on the bank.” When a person of this sort, it is justly observed, has brought himself to take the plunge, his exultation and fearlessness are wonderful: the knowledge that the Rubicon is crossed, and the die cast, seems to relieve him from the necessity of further resolution. “He has set in motion a machine which will of itself wind off results and consequences for him without more ado on his own part; and this is an order of release from the demands of circumstances upon his will, for which he cannot be too thankful.”

[10] When at Bologna he used to visit the Campo Santo, the sexton of which was a favourite of his, and the “beautiful and innocent face” of whose daughter of fifteen, he used to contrast with the skulls that peopled several cells there—and particularly with that of one skull dated 1766, “which was once covered (the tradition goes) by the most lovely features of Bologna—noble and rich.”

[11] Not to be forgotten, however, is the suggestive rejoinder of Mercury, that Menippus would have been as easily fooled as the rest of them, had he but seen, not that grinning skull, but the living face that once concealed it.