Part 35

[12] In the book called “God’s Acre; or, Historical Notices relating to Churchyards,” there is a loathsome story of a Mr. Thompson, of Worcester, who baited his angling-hook with part of the corrupted form of King John, and carried the fish he caught with it in triumph through the streets.

[13] “Et puisque le monde n’est qu’une comédie, il faut prendre la queue lapin et l’épée de bois comme les autres.”—Lettres de Chaulieu, ed. 1850.

[14] Boswell’s “Life of Johnson,” April 29, 1783.

[15] In the etymological sense, now practically obsolete, of misbeliever.

[16] Perhaps a better version of perhaps the same story is that of the young Dauphin exclaiming to his right reverend preceptor, when some book mentioned a king as having died, “Quoi donc, les rois meurent-ils?” “Quelquefois, monseigneur,” was the reply—ironical, or parasitical, as may be.

[17] John Asgill distinguished himself by maintaining in a treatise now forgotten, that death is no natural necessity, and that to escape it is within the range of the humanly practicable. But Asgill’s biography, like every other, has for a last page the inevitable “And he died.”

[18] That is, “Let thy spirit (goste), not thy appetite, lead thee.” In St. Peter’s words, “Abstain from fleshly lusts.”

[19] St. Augustine, Lyra, Bellarmine, and others, are chargeable with this judgment and sentence.

[20] “Fortunately these things are known to Him, from whom no secrets are hidden; and let us rest in the assurance that His judgments are not as ours.”—_Rogers’s Italy._

[21] The friends spoken of were Coleridge and Miss Wordsworth. The scene was the eastern shore of Grasmere. The date of the poem is 1800.

[22] On the “false humility” which shrinks from all censure or reprobation of what is evil, under cover of the text “judge not, that ye be not judged,”—as if it were the intent of that text, not to warn us against rash, presumptuous, and uncharitable judgments, but absolutely to forbid our taking account of the distinction between right and wrong,—see Sir Henry Taylor’s essay on Humility and Independence in his valuable “Notes from Life.” The man of true humility, we are there taught, will come to the task of judgment, on serious occasions, not lightly or unawed, but praying to have “a right judgment in all things;” and whilst exercising that judgment in no spirit of compromise or evasion, he will feel that to judge his brother is a duty and not a privilege; and he will judge him in sorrow, humbled by the contemplation of that fallen nature of which he is himself part and parcel. (See “Notes from Life” (1847), pp. 46, _sqq._)

[23] Were we all turned inside out, however, Mr. Trollope elsewhere surmises, some of us might find “our shade of brown to be very dark.”—_The Bertrams_, chap. xix.

[24] The avoidance of moral _estimate_, on the other hand, is imputed to an insufficient sense of the duty incumbent on all of us to form determinate estimates of men and actions, if only as bearing on our own conduct in life. (See “W. C. Roscoe’s Essays,” vol. ii., p. 308.)

[25] Owen Meredith: “The Artist.”

[26] “Cleon,” by Robert Browning.

[27] Completed. _Finis coronat opus._ Children and fools, it has been observed, should not see a work that is half done, they not having the sense to make out what the artist is designing. “The whole of this world that we see, is a work half done; and thence fools are apt to find fault with Providence.”—ARCHBISHOP WHATELY.

[28] Sonnets, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “Perplexed Music.”

[29] He is said to have emptied two baskets of figs and of eggs, which he swallowed alternately, and the repast was concluded with marrow and sugar. In one of his pilgrimages to Mecca, Soliman is asserted to have eaten, at a single meal, seventy pomegranates, a kid, six fowls, and a huge quantity of the grapes of Tayaf. “If,” says Gibbon, “the bill of fare be correct, we must admire the appetite rather than the luxury of the sovereign of Asia.”—_Hist. Rom. Empire_, ch. lii.

[30] A broken-down old schoolmaster bore witness to Dr. Chalmers’ _modus operandi_. “Many a pound-note has the doctor given me, and he always did the thing as if he were afraid that any person should see him. May God reward him!”—Hanna’s “Life of Chalmers,” chap. i.

[31] The case of St. Peter was expressly within the preacher’s view. “It is shocking, doubtless, to allow ourselves even to admit that this is possible; yet no one knowing human nature from men and not from books, will deny that this might befall even a brave and true man. St. Peter was both; yet this was his history. In a crowd, suddenly, the question was put directly, ‘This man also was with Jesus of Nazareth?’ Then a prevarication—a lie: and yet another.”—_Sermon on the Restoration of the Erring._

[32] Froude, “History of Reign of Elizabeth,” vol. ii., pp. 126, 215, 226, 277, 278.

[33] Mr. Thackeray incidentally opposes the quasi-apologists for smuggling on the ground that it is a complicated tissue of lying. In his very last and unfinished work, he makes a good old rector allow that to run an anker of brandy may seem no monstrous crime; but when men engage in these lawless ventures, who knows how far the evil will go? “I buy ten kegs of brandy from a French fishing-boat, I land it under a lie on the coast, I send it inland ever so far, and all my consignees lie and swindle. I land it, and lie to the revenue officer. Under a lie (that is, a mutual secrecy), I sell it to the landlord of the Bell at Maidstone, say.... My landlord sells it to a customer under a lie. We are all engaged in crime, conspiracy, and falsehood; nay, if the revenue looks too closely after us, we out with our pistols, and to crime and conspiracy add murder. Do you suppose men engaged in lying every day will scruple about a false oath in a witness-box? Crime engenders crime, sir.”—_Denis Duval_, chap. vii.

[34] From Sir Walter Scott we might gather numerous examples and aphorisms to the purpose. “It’s a sair judgment on a man,” says Ratcliffe, in the “Heart of Mid-Lothian,” “when he has once gane sae far wrang as I hae dune”—the present thief-taker being in fact an ex-thief—that never a bit “he can be honest, try’t whilk way he will.” The career of Effie Deans, anon Lady Staunton, in the same story, is a practical sermon on the same text. “I drag on,” she owns, “the life of a miserable impostor, indebted for the marks of regard I receive to a tissue of deceit and lies, which the slightest accident may unravel.” Her sister, on perusing the letter which contains these confessions, is impressed with such an instance of the staggering condition of those who have risen to distinction by undue arts, and the “outworks and bulwarks of fiction and falsehood, by which they are under the necessity of surrounding and defending their precarious advantages.”

Then again there is old Caleb Balderstone, querulous at being what he calls “forced” to imperil his soul “wi’ telling ae lee after another faster than I can count them,”—and elsewhere at the “cost” of “telling twenty daily lees to a wheen idle chaps and queans, and, what’s waur, without gaining credence.”

And for another instance we have the titular Earl of Etherington, in “St. Ronan’s Well,” in the position as of a spider when he perceives that his deceitful web is threatened with danger, and sits balanced in the centre, watching every point, and uncertain which he may be called upon first to defend. “Such is one part, and not the slightest part, of the penance which never fails to wait on those, who, abandoning the ‘fair play of the world,’ endeavour to work out their purposes by a process of deception and intrigue.”

In one of Mr. Disraeli’s earlier fictions, there is a young man whose frankness is proverbial, but who finds himself involved in a course of prevarication—due effect being given to its preliminary process, though “only the commencement of the system of degrading deception which awaited him.”

But perhaps the most direct and forcible illustration of the subject in modern fiction, is to be found in the “White Lies” of Mr. Charles Reade, a work the title of which declares its didactic scope. Rose Beaurépaire in an unguarded moment equivocates, or tells a white lie, and thereby hangs the tale. Soon we have her bitterly bewailing the imbroglio in which she has involved herself and others, and the necessity of fresh fibs to maintain the meaning and credit of the first. “There is no end to it,” she sobs despairingly. “It is like a spider’s web: every struggle to be free but multiplies the fine yet irresistible thread that seems to bind me.” In the next chapter a significant paragraph intimates, “This was the last lie the poor entangled wretch had to tell that morning.” And the penultimate chapter opens with a notice anew of the “fatal entanglement” into which two high-minded sisters had been led, through yielding to a natural foible: the desire, namely, to hide everything painful from those they loved, even at the expense of truth. The author lays stress on the inextricable complications due to their “amiable dishonesty,” and he importunes the reader to take notice that after the first White Lie or two, circumstances overpowered them, and drove them on against their will. It was no small part, he insists, of all their misery, that they longed to get back to truth and could not.

[35] In apposition, or opposition, to which, note the bidding and the demur in Talfourd’s tragedy of “Ion”:—

“_Adrastus._ No; strike at once; my hour is come: in thee I recognise the minister of Jove, And, kneeling thus, submit me to his power.

_Ion._ Avert thy face.

_Adras._ No; let me meet thy gaze,” etc.

[36] Deut. xiii. 6. Observe too the seeming climax,—ascending from “thy brother, the son of thy mother,” through the successive stages of “thy son, thy daughter,” and “the wife of thy bosom,” to “thy friend, which is as thine own soul.” As though

“The force of Nature could no further go.”

[37] “If our friends appear to look upon us with little interest, if our arrival is seen without pleasure, and our departure without regret, instead of charging them with a deficiency of feeling, we should turn our scrutiny upon ourselves.”—_Essays on the Formation and Publication of Opinions_, v. i.

[38] Hartley Coleridge, Sonnets.

[39] That is, if attention be shown him.

[40] Gusts of wind.

[41] See Hanna’s Life of Chalmers, Journal of 1810 and of 1825-6, _passim_.

[42] “See the well-known print of Mazarin’s death-bed, surrounded by ladies at cards. According to Grimm, the Maréchale de Luxembourg and two of her friends played at loto by that of Madame du Deffand till she expired. But at that time the proceeding was at least thought singular.”—“Historical Studies,” by Herman Merivale.

[43] “God speaks to children, also, in dreams, and by the oracles that lurk in darkness. But in solitude, above all things, ... God holds with children ‘communion undisturbed.’”—“Autobiographic Sketches,” by Thomas de Quincey, i. 24.

INDEX.

Answer, a soft, wrath-dispelling, 357; most exquisite revenge for reproaches, 358; like healing balm, 359; comes of practised patience, 359; Illustrations from Alison, Sir Matthew Hale, Spenser, Decker, and others, 357-360.

Anticipations of the future, delusive, 333; often crushed when nearest realization, 334; when seeming fulfilled, extinguished by death, 336; Illustrations from Homer, Michelet, Cowper, Mrs. Gaskell, and others, 333-337.

Anxious foreboding, forbidden by Scripture, 47; deprecated by pagan philosophy, 48; no preparation for coming ills, 48; only causes a depression of spirits, 49; and cripples energy, 50; destroys present enjoyment, 51; cannot see into the future, 52; indulged in, breeds despair, 54; remedy for, 54; Illustrations from Hume, Swift, Schleiermacher, Longfellow, and others, 48-55.

Appetite, indulgence in, indecent, 249; cause of death to royalty, 250; inability of some to resist, 251; allowed in Italy, in case of fatal sickness, 253; a common weakness, 254; Illustrations from Adam Smith, Gibbon, Tennyson, Gray, George Herbert, and others, 242-255.

Bargains, makers of, their tactics, 367; depreciate when buying, 368; exaggerate when selling, 369; customs of different countries, 370; horse-dealers, their tactics, 371; an exception to the general rule of, 372; Illustrations from A. K. H. B., Fuller, Leigh Hunt, Capt. Marryat, Kingsley, Plautus, and others, 367-372.

Beauty, but a clothed skeleton, 101; all lost in the grave, 102; only food for worms, 133; Illustrations from Byron, Southey, Blair, Macaulay, and others, 100-104.

Beneficence, secret, an exception to the rule, 259; dislike of, to thanks, 260; of Wellington and Byron, 261; finds a reward in itself, 262; Illustrations from Chamfort, Goldsmith, Smollett, Cowper, and others, 259-262.

Childhood, everything may be hoped from, 382; evanescence of promise in, 383; retrospect of, shows how we have fallen, 384; possibility of a noble future for all, 385; much of the good in, checked from development, 386; Illustrations from Dante, Adam Smith, Samuel Rogers, Baron Alderson, Charles Lamb, Dr. Caird, and others, 381-386.

Children, dying before their parents, an inversion of natural order, 182; one of the greatest sorrows to man, 183; the case of Mohammed cited, 184; ruins the hopes of the parents, 186; Citations from Canon Melvill, Edmund Burke, Moore, and others, 182-187.

Co-workers, all human beings, 348; each in his place or degree, 349; all required to account for their performance of their part, 350; the difference in, not position, but how duties performed, 351; all to one end, and that is with God, 352; Illustrations from Coleridge, John Newton, Mrs. Gaskell, Colani, Milton, and others, 348-352.

Darkness, increases the sense of danger, 223; and the bitterness of death, 324; power of, over the guilty, 324; natural dread of, in mankind, 326; of coming death, rouses a longing for light, 327; the concomitant of misery, 327; Illustrations from Marlowe, Scott, Croly, Professor Newman, Lord Lytton, Dickens, and others, 323-328.

Death, sum and story of all humanity, 156; the inevitable fate of all, 157; a leveller of all distinctions and grades, 160; even in Arcadia, 163; the actions of the just blossom in, 165; Illustrations from Addison, Barry Cornwall, James Montgomery, Gibbon, Warton, Prior, George Herbert, and others, 156-165.

Elements, the, God only can control, 233; the folly of man commanding, 232; all men subject to, 232; folly of Xerxes cited, 233; legends of power of priests over, 234; the greatest conquerors, impotent against, 235; moral application, 237; Illustrations from Pepys, Longfellow, Gibbon, Carlyle, Cowper, and others, 231-237.

Falsity of friends, the sharpest pang of all, 201; darkens man’s views of the moral government of God, 206; shakes confidence in the whole world, 206; David’s lament over, 208; Illustrations from Colani, Milman, Longfellow, Corneille, Shakspeare, and others, 200-208.

Faults in others, more easily discerned than in ourselves, 187; we should mend our own, before looking for those of others, 188; we often possess those, that we attribute to others, 190; Illustrations from Trench, Horace, Hogg, Molière, Mrs. Inchbald, and others, 187-191.

Flowers, not to be considered in a utilitarian light, 109; awaken finer sensibilities, 110; akin to the poetic faculty in man, 111; the teaching of, lost on the dull, 112; woman compared to, 113; Illustrations from Tennyson, Leigh Hunt, Isaac Taylor, Shenstone, and others, 109-113.

Freedom, from righteousness, a service to sin, 60; true, only found in God’s service, 61; sweetened by constraint, 61; without law, pernicious, 62; at times a relief to give up, 63; too much, in art and literature, hurtful, 64; obedience nobler than, 65; Illustrations from Gray, Wordsworth, Goethe, Mrs. Gaskell, and others, 60-66.

Freedom, the service of, 66; from self-control, a bane, 67; not idleness, 67; may be enjoyed in a prison, 68; maintained by law, 70; Illustrations from Keble, Cowper, Johnson, Hawthorne, and others, 66-70.

Friendship, closer than relationship, 328; want of with relatives, arises from lack of sympathy, 329; or of knowledge of each other, 332; Illustrations from Samuel Bailey, Thackeray, Sir Thos. Browne, Montaigne, Richardson, and others, 328-332.

Futurity, prying into brings a penalty, 76; ignorance of, an advantage and happiness, 77; a knowledge of, would cloud our life, 78; hidden from us by God, 79; could we foresee, we should suffer by anticipation, as well as reality, 80; and lose hope, 81; visionary previsions of, vanity, 82; ignorance of, a source of content, 84; and deprives death of part of its gloom, 85; Illustrations from Cicero, Froude, De Quincey, Scott, La Bruyère, and others, 76-86.

Gray hairs, first notice of decline, 372; various ways, first discovery of, met, 373; a shadow of the end, 374; come unawares, 375; Illustrations from Coleridge, C. Bowles, Thackeray, Trollope, Tennyson, and others, 372-376.

Greatness and affluence, sometimes productive of selfishness, 15; loss of, awakens sympathy with poor and afflicted, 16; peculiar sin of, carelessness rather than inhumanity, 17; this often the result of early education, 18; sympathy with poverty need not destroy natural joy of, 18; one object of suffering, to re-unite poverty with, 19; of some, not a cause of poverty in others, 20; oft performs its charity by commission, 21; desirable for, to make personal acquaintance with misery and suffering, 22; case of the Pretender cited, 26; causes an isolation from the poor, 28; shows best when engaged in works of mercy, 28; results of want of thought in, 29-31; benefit of proper use of, 32; Illustrations from Shakspeare, 17; La Bruyère, Hannah More, and others, 18-32.

Guilt, first thoughts of, abhorrent, 255; case of Hazael, 255; mere protestation against, no safeguard against, 256; familiarity with, breeds apologies for, 257; one step in, speedily induces others, unsuspected, 258; transforms those subject to it, 259; Illustrations from Miss Lee, Tobin, Dr. Hamilton, Southey, Sainte-Beuve, and others, 255-259.

Hearing, with the mind as well as ears, 386; interest in theme, creates attentive, 387; compared with seeing, 388; difference between, and marking, 388; some have no, for spiritual things, 389; Illustrations: Milton, Webster, Balzac, Dumas, Shakspeare, and others, 386-389.

Human body, the, reduced to its lowest terms, 104; Hamlet’s speculation on, 105; as Mummy, a merchandise, 106; turned to animal black, 106; suggestion to use bones as a manure, 107; used for earthworks, 108; Illustrations from Sydney Smith, Chateaubriand, Xenophon, Dicey, and others, 101-109.

Human Knowledge, imperfection of, 224; in things of this world, 226; in the workings of providence, 226; imperfect, because we cannot see the end of all, 229; Illustrations from Locke, Mrs. Browning, Thomson, Addison, Le Maistre, and others, 224-231.

Hurry and Excitement, the characteristic of the present age, 242; its effect on current literature, 243; destructive of calm thought, 244; different from haste, 245; hinders clearness of perception, 246; deadens capacity for simpler enjoyments, 247; too little work as fatal as, 248; Illustrations from Chateaubriand, Dr. Boyd, Longfellow, Sir Henry Taylor, and others, 242-249.

Joy—human, mostly overshadowed, 87; of success, overclouded by the thought of the future, 88; of hope, by thought of others’ present suffering, 89; present, by the thought of death, 90; soon fades, 91; Illustrations from Gibbon, R. Browning, Lord Lytton, Hannay, and others, 86-91.

Judgment, Man’s, of his fellow, deprecated, 208; wrong, because he knows not himself, 210; nor the secrets of others, 211; nor their motives, 212; the habit of, presumptuous, 213; God’s, the only just, 214; God’s, more merciful than man’s, 215; man’s necessarily imperfect, 216; human, severe, 219; of the heart, belongs only to God, 221; should be charitable, because of our own failings, 224; Illustrations from Shakspeare, Sir Thomas Browne, La Bruyère, Arthur Helps, O. W. Holmes, Anthony Trollope, Carlyle, and others, 208-224.

Lies, lead to further lies, case of Jacob, 290; carry their punishment, in necessity of further lies, 291; inextricably entangle those who use them, 293; injurious to those who tell them, 294; one makes a necessity for others, 295; Illustrations from Mrs. Browning, Scott, Corneille, Cellini, Jeremy Taylor, Beaumont and Fletcher, and others, 290-296.

Light—“at evening time”—the promise of, a comfort, 313; a deliverance from the fear of death, 314; often clears up the end of a life of trial, 315; disperses all darkness and difficulties, 316; a relief from troubles in declining years, 317; appears sometimes unexpectedly, 318; _Light_—a longing of the human soul, 319; to die in, almost a universal craving, 321; the comfort of dying moments, 322; Illustrations from Bunyan, O. W. Holmes, Dickens, Shirley Brooks, Mrs. Schimmelpenninck, Sophocles, Landor, and others, 313-323.

Love and Gentleness more powerful agents than force, 33; illustrations from Plutarch, 33; children more easily governed by, than fear, 34; this also the case with nations, 35; natures not amenable to, exceptional, 35; the means usually employed by women to gain their ends, 36; the best method for missionaries, 37; used by Queen Elizabeth and Empress Catherine towards their people, 38; when rulers fail with, they employ worse means, 39; best means of eliciting truth, 40; works even on the most depraved natures, 40; Illustrations from Ben Jonson, Mr. Freeman, Scott, Dr. Beattie, and others, 32-41.

Lying, engenders lying, 286; the case of St. Peter, 287; demands a good memory, 288; leads to hopeless entanglement, 289; first step in all wrong doing, 289; Illustrated by Trench, Swift, Robertson, Froude, and others, 286-290. (See also pp. 290-296.)

Mirth, good in due season, 296; must be recommended by higher qualities, 297; too much is wearisome, 298; deep and true feeling of more real value than mere, 299; in some, always inclines to sadness, 300; Illustrations from Tennyson, St. Evremond, Richardson, Scott, Mrs. Riddell, Hood, and others, 296-300.

Music—its power to dispel evil humours, 55; gives ease in various nervous disorders, 56; used by Luther to repel his visions of Satan, 57; removed the melancholy of a king of Spain, 57; wakes up feelings of the past, 58; studied by the Jewish priesthood, 58; effect of, on lunatics, 59; soothes grief, 60; Illustrations from Beveridge, Burton, Sir James Stephen, Schiller, and others, 55-60.