Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub

SOMETHING MYSTERIOUS.

"Ho, par Dieu, Domine, une paire de chausses est bonne, et vir sapiens non abhorrebit eam. Ho, ha, n'a pas paire de chausses qui veult. Je le sçais bien, quant est de moi."-RABELAIS. "Nos autem philosophi esse volumus, rerum auctores, non fabularum.”—Cicero.

WHO does not remember the time, when he was first set down to the headach and the Latin grammar, and was invited (as the French say) to decline musa, or to make out as he best might (what might puzzle Edipus himself) the precise meaning of a "noun substantive standing alone." For our part, we have a lively recollection of that incident in our life, and recal it ever with a heavy heart. Right willingly would we have declined, not musa only, but the whole concern, if we had been permitted. Accordingly, about that time, we incontinently fell into somewhat of an ill-temper with things in general, and with Nimrod, the mighty hunter in particular, for bringing down upon mankind the bore of such a multiplicity of languages; and we entered fully into the censure levelled by an honest sailor against our natural enemies, for being (as he said) such fools as to call a horse a shovel, and bread pain. What visions of green fields and perpetual birdnesting were bound up in our childish imagina'tion, with the splendid hypothesis of all men speaking with one tongue! Was not the whole business of school comprised in the study of the classics? What, therefore, more natural than to suppose that their knowledge and employment must be the one concern of adult life? What more simple than to argue,-for what can we argue but from what we know, that if Nimrod had stuck to his five-barred gates, and had left castle-building alone, there would have been no such ill-ventilated prisons as schools, that birch-trees would have furnished the raw material of nothing but brooms, and that canes would have flourished only over empty coats?

Since that time, however, we are sadly changed; and new cares have materially altered our notions concerning language. We have too long arrived at what must pass for years of discretion, not to have lost sight of the consummation, formerly so devoutly to be wished. We have discovered many merits in a diversity of speech, and in the privileges accorded to the professors of words; and we are quite ready to subscribe to the Homeric doctrine, which considers the epithet of many-tongued as eminently distinctive of men indeed.

For this faith, which has sprung up within us, we have discovered a new reason at the present moment, when we have undertaken "a deed without a name," that is to treat" cosa non detta mai," a subject for which the English language no longer acknowledges an appellative, and which is never named in what once was English, without loss of caste. Many, indeed, are the themes, from "that thing in Latin" (whatever it was), which Mr. Moore has wedded to immortal verse, down to the unnamed one that we have chosen for the subject of this paper inclusive, which stand in this awkward predicament. As far as the English language is concerned, the doom of such matters is sealed: and to their forbidden condition, the forlorn and shadowless modality of that high transparency, Mr. Peter Schlemil, is a state of positive beatitude. Had

man been gifted with but one tongue, and that tongue had been English, all these subjects (and fairer, honester, and more inoffensive subjects never lived under a monarchy) would have been voted out of existence, as unparliamentary, unnational, or unsomething else, and the world had wanted all that world of knowledge which they are capable of suggesting. May we not then conjecture, that the true final cause of the dispersion of Nimrod's hodmen, may be somehow connected with the provision of an asylum in the learned languages, for all truths, too mighty for vulgar discussion, and for that host of realities in human affairs, which false delicacy and a fastidious refinement are too conscious, to discourse of in the vernacular.

But however this may be in theory, practically the fact is so: whatever is not good "to be said or sung in all churches and chapels," in plain English, is by the courtesy of literature admitted to "prate of its whereabouts," under cover of the dead languages; and those who are best acquainted with theologians and classical commentators (not to speak of Gibbon's Greek notes), can best declare how largely they have profited by the permission. In sitting down, therefore, to treat concerning a thing dont on ne parle plus que de noces en paradis, and which is so strictly tabooed, as that of which we are about to discourse, it is impossible not to envy Rabelais the decent obscurity of his obsolete French, or the happier latinity of him who passed through Frankfort on the Maine, in his way from the promontory of Noses. Pressed, indeed, by the difficulty of our position we at first thought of availing ourselves of our literary rights; and having borrowed from our old acquaintance Cicero for the occasion, had got, indeed, as far in our narrative as sed ne cui vestrum mirum videatur, me in quæstione legitimâ, when luckily we recollected that Mr. Colburn always refuses contributions for the magazine, when they are presented to him in Latin, insisting that they should be "undone into English" for the benefit of the learned. French communications, too, are equally unprecedented; a circumstance the more to be lamented, inasmuch as that language knows no false delicacy en fait de paroles; but would call the very devil himself by his ugliest name, provided it had passed muster with the Aristarchuses of the academy. Besides, to have adopted either of these languages, would have compromised the fair character of the subject under discussion, which we uphold to be as void of offence, as capable of meeting the daylight of her majesty's English, as any in the whole round of things real or metaphysical.

How then shall we proceed? Not all the wealth of Ormus or of Ind, would induce us to name the thing we wot of,-a name more ineffable than the tetra grammaton on Solomon's seal. Not that for the heart of us, we can understand the cause of its ill-favour, with all the obloquy heaped on its head, it has made the fortune of an edition of a bible, in the purchase of which more is paid for the unutterable vocable, than for all the rest of the blessed contents, from Genesis to the Revelations. There is nothing certainly in the sound, quasi sound, why it should not be uttered. The soldier who fights his way into an enemy's town through a door of his own making, scruples not to pronounce it, in all companies (and especially at the head of his own), with a well-earned triumph. Then, as for the sound significative, if it be not as modest a vocable as any in the dictionary, more shaine on the austerest of moralists and lexico

graphers, who gave it a place in such good company. Our fathers, and our mothers, too, who were at least as virtuous as we, if not quite so squeamish, thought no shame to use the word upon all lawful occasions; and if we are not as free-thoughted as they, the difference, it is to be feared, is not altogether to our advantage. Is there not, then, it may be asked, a want of moral courage on our part, in refusing to stand by a word, thus unmeritedly sent to Coventry, and in not boldly saying our say, in defiance of a censorious and an idle age? May be so; but in matters of language we know where the jus et norma loquendi lies; and we remember that imperial power, when that power was strongest, could not prevail against the lawful authority, so far as to smuggle into use, without its consent, a mere letter. If when we are at Rome we must do as Rome does, much more must we speak as Rome speaks so we shall endeavour, salvâ pudicitiâ, to insinuate our meaning as we best may.

Thus much we may venture to declare, that the ineffable article belongs more to the domain of Aristotle than of Plato, it is of Locke more than of Kant. It represents no unintelligible subtlety of thought, forms no part of the absolu, nor requires to be sought for, like that very slippery and anguillous personage, the moi, in the solitude of a darkened chamber. With the moi, indeed, it stands in the relation of direct opposition; for as that entity, without forming part of the body and limbs of a man, still enters into the ideal complex, on the spiritual side of the question, so does the unmentionable thing, though equally independent of body and limbs, amalgamate in thought with their personality, on the material phasis of the combination. On all common occasions, they both alike form a part of our idea of a man; and when the said man is cited to make his appearance in a court of record, we should as soon expect to see him without the one, as without the other of these appendages.

For the due understanding of this mysterious alliance which hovers between the meum and the non meum, the unmentionable thing possesses a striking advantage over the moi in having, as we have hinted, an existence a parte rei, and as being in full and lawful possession of all the immunities and predicaments thereunto appertaining; all open to be examined inside and out without the assistance of an ox-hydrogen microscope, or the infinitesimal imagination of an homeopathist; and herein consists the great difference between the good fortune of those German artists, who are employed on the reality (and who in the course of their labours conceive such accurate notions of the fitness of things), and the ill-fate of their metaphysical countrymen, who have never been able to take measure of a moi, or to form any clear conception of the cut of its parts and proportions. It will then be a matter of little surprise to an accurate reasoner on manners, when he discovers that there are so many individuals about town, who in taking an account of their own personals, attach much greater importance to the material, than to the metaphysical adjunct; and who are much more sedulous that the former, than the latter should be without stain, and perfectly irreproachable.

If the foregoing paragraph should prove a mystery to the uninitiated, we beg them to believe that the fault is neither theirs nor our own. We question, indeed, whether it be not equally so with the adepts themselves; and we shall say no more on the abstruse subject, except

once for all, to implore our readers not to lose sight of the important fact, that we are discussing no unreal mockery, no fanciful product of a brainsick imagination, but a positive, substantial, this-world-like existence; which may be brought as often as need be to the test of the senses, and its truths reduced to a demonstration, as convincing as those of Euclid himself; or Madame Laffarge's arsenic.

Having thus disposed of the place of our subject in its quality of a simple existence, we shall proceed to state and to maintain, jusqu'au feu exclusivement, that, maugre its forbidden nominal representative, it is a good and a lawful thing, a thing to be honoured, coveted, and obtained at no small charge; a thing, in short, to thank God of, and a thing to be defended by every man masculine (for man, like homo, is common to the entire species), if he would hold a place in respectable society. Vir sapiens non abhorrebit. Yet such, forsooth, is the thing which we must not name! Oh, the ingratitude of man! oh, the emptiness of the world's judgments! Not only are we forbidden to name thee, thou special gift of Providence to man, at a moment, when man most needed gifts and consolation; but we treat with a brutal neglect and contempt, those who dedicate their valuable lives to thy confection and preservation. Nay, is it not a point of honour, never to pay for thee; as if it were meritorious and praiseworthy (forgive the inevitable pun) that a man should be most indebted to the benefactor to whom he owes the most. Yet such is the strange inconsistency of mortal clay, that they who act thus cruelly and insultingly, are precisely the most particular both as to the form and the substance of the thing, whose makers they hold thus cheap. They would, indeed, think themselves disgraced for ever if they" yielded to any man” in the strictest accuracy of these particulars.

While, however, they qualify as a mere quota pars hominis the artist, on whose skill they are dependant for that which in their own imaginations is indeed the quid verum atque decens; for all that is right and fitting in life,-the being on whose invention and genius depends their more than self, yet they do not the less assume the product of his art as the very type and symbol of complete manhood. So deeply indeed is this notion impressed on even infancy itself, that the day when the child first attains to the possession in question, is regarded as a day of pride and glorification to the latest of his remembrance. How precious in masculine apprehension are its prerogatives, may be also collected from the fact that even in the solemn act of matrimony, when at the altar before God and man, the husband endows the woman of his choice with a copartnership in all his worldly goods, this much-prized possession is deemed the only legitimate exception. He, indeed, who submits to feminine usurpation in respect to that article, is deservedly banished from the ranks of man; he forfeits with it all the privileges of his sex, and is despised even by the shetyrant, at whose dictation he surrenders. Touching, however, the jealousy which men exhibit so universally of conjugal usurpations on the matter in question, it cannot be accounted less than a most monstrous inconsistency in them, that what they deem so odious in a wife, they prize as among the most striking excellences of an actress. Many a poor woman has acquitted herself more than creditably on the stage, without notice and encouragement, who has started suddenly into fame and

fashion, the mark of marrying peers, and settlement-making millionaires, on the discovery that she wears the unmentionable with grace and

ease.

To explain this inconsistency of feeling and reasoning, would require more metaphysics than we choose to bestow upon it. The fact, however, subsists; and those who are best acquainted with the secret history of the stage, must be cognizant of instances without number, more conclusive than all the metaphysics in Germany. But the theatrical exception apart, the rule holds universally, and any attempt on the part of the married female to dispute the prize, like all other treasonable attempts, must be justified by success, or be stamped with infamy.

Neither is opinion, in this particular, altogether divested of a sufficing reason for though according to logicians, the article in question is but an accident, though the man is the substance, and the matter to be defended to the death but an attribute, yet can the attribute better do without the substance, than the substance without its attribute. Again, therefore, we ask, why is this all-important object to continue a nameless horror, a thing to be conveyed from mind to mind only by the obscure agency of a metaphor or an aposiopesis?

Further, however, to show the excellency of this unnameable thing, it is enough to state that while a man, as is well known, may be without virtue, without honour, without manners, education, or common probity, nay, may be without even money itself, and yet not forfeit his title to be admitted into genteel company,-(we have known such indeed to have been the glass of fashion, the admired of all beholders, the object of all imitation,) nevertheless should the noblest and the most gifted, the wisest and the best of the species presume to intrude, when divested of this nameless something, he would throw society into confusion, and be cuffed and kicked for his impertinence, if he were not at once clapped up into a madhouse, as an hopeless and incurable lunatic. How necessary a passe par tout is the article in question, how closely connected with the maintenance of social order, is further apparent in this striking circumstance that amidst all the horror inspired by the murders and robberies, the heresies and innovations of the French revolution, the greatest vituperation, the epithet of most burning and enduring contempt, which could be applied to the perpetrators of these enormities, was derived from their habitual deficiency in the one great essential of civilized relations, of which we are discoursing.

It is also to be noticed in praise of the unmentionable thing we have taken under our patronage, that, as in the abstract it is a sine qud non of manly dignity, so in its modes and varieties, in its several forms and colours, it is the best exponent of the different excellences and conditions of the individual whom it adorns. The balls of the coronet may denote the grade of the nobleman in the hierarchy of rank, the ermine may declare the judge, the lawn sleeves the bishop, and the coif the serjeant; but still the decorum and respectability of the exterior of all these dignitaries is inseparably connected with the propriety of that which no one names. Figure to yourself, good reader, that impersonation of all the valour and skill of the commander-in-chief of an army-imagine him riding in full fig at the head of his force, with every other distinctive appurtenance of a field-marshal complete in arms, yet equipped

« AnteriorContinuar »