Normanby. Joseph Scaliger. Le Doux. A German critic, was he not? Le Doux. He writes then as if he lived a hun- whose benevolence a stranger was so deeply indebted. "Not at all," said he. "A few lines are written while you take a sandwich, and Lady Newark will be charmed that I present to her the grandson of so distinguished an officer." "It is Lord Newark then who has condescended to show me this kindness. ." He bowed. 'It can hardly be called so, though you accept it, as I trust you will do." I thanked him; but added that, as I did not intend to remain at sea long, and as my studies had not been nautical, I must decline an introduction which might procure for me eventually what could not belong to me. Whether my words, my resolute but respectful manner, a faultering in a voice that seemed little apt to faulter, or the bow, so unlike what I could make again or ever had made, while I placed my right hand upon a breast enlarged with gratitude, whether one of these or all of them interested him, as I walked fast away he sat quietly upon his pony. Soon however he came beside me. "I perceive, sir," said he, taking off his hat again, "I have done very ill the honours of the place: we have not always the same presence of mind, seamen or landsmen, You will not favour me with your company, nor permit me to make a trial whether I have a friend in the navy who may recollect me". . he paused. I was silent. . " if however at any time you should happen to think of our short conversation, allow me to tell you that this place is called Thoresby Park, and that the post town is Ollerton. I wish you a pleasant journey, a prosperous voyage, and a speedy recovery of your health." Normanby. "I have heard my father say thus," continued I, "when he lent me Potter's Eschylus to read. Christopher, I doubt not that Thespis was preferred to him by the graver critics; there was something so unaffected in a cart, and so little of deception in wine-dregs; and yet, Christopher, the Prometheus is the grandest poetical conception that ever entered into the heart of man. Homer could no more have written this tragedy than Eschylus could have written the Iliad. Mind me, I do not compare them. An elephant could not beget a lion, nor a lion an elephant. Critics talk most about the visible in sublimity the Jupiter, the Neptune. Magnitude and power are sublime but in the second degree, managed as they may be. Where the heart is not shaken, the gods thunder and stride in vain. True sublimity is the perfection of the pathetic, which has other sources than pity; generosity, for instance, and self-devotion. When the generous and self-devoted man suffers, there comes Pity: the basis of the sublime is then above the water, and the poet, with or without the gods, can elevate it above the skies. Terror is but the relic of a childish feeling: pity is not given to children.' So said he; I know not whether rightly. For the wisest differ on poetry, the knowledge of which, like other most important truths, seems to be Everything I had seen this day, everything I reserved for a purer state of sensation and exist had felt, was new and strange to me. Unkindence. Seldom have I doubted my father's judg-ness had pained me; kindness, in such swift ment; but as he was not a poet, and as none but the very greatest have a voice on poetry, here I hesitate." I had paused: the gentleman on the pony looked at me attentively. "If you will take any refreshment," said he, "I shall have great pleasure in accompanying you to the house." I thanked him, and told him that I was on my road to the sea, hoping to serve my country, and impatient to reach my destination. "I myself was of that profession," said he. "Have you been fortunate in your promotion?" "To say the truth, sir," answered I, "I never was in the profession, and wish chiefly to try whether the service will benefit my spirits." succession after it, overthrew me. Little did I then imagine how highly I should have gratified the most amiable and friendly man living, by affording him an opportunity of assisting me! Little did I consider, or know indeed, that I should be the means of enlivening the sweet sense of obligation, in some one among the many whom his care had educated, his bounty had fed, and his interest had promoted. I was hardly on the public road when I perceived a magnificent coach at the door of a publichouse, and a gentleman in scarlet uniform, whom I supposed to be the general of the district, particularly as he was giving some orders to another in uniform, who held a horn. On seeing me, he "Have you any friend who has a command, or cried proudly, but invitingly, "Are you for the whose credit may recommend you?" I mentioned my grandfather's name, as the only chance. "He was a gallant and good creature, I have heard, and must have many friends still living among our older admirals. My recommendation is less weighty, but such as it is you may command it." Opposition?" "No, sir," answered I indignantly and sharply, "I do not rejoice in the misfortunes of my country, nor triumph in its misrule, nor exalt its enemies." He lifted up his eyebrows scornfully, and addressing himself to a lady in the coach, "The merest fool I ever set eyes upon!" said he aloud. I requested to know the name of a person to And looking at me again, “What, in the devil's name, has the Opposition to do with politics! containing some maxims, some reminiscences, and Out with fifteen shillings, man, and you sleep at the Swan with Two Necks to-morrow night. Come, jump up; we are off." The passengers explained; I mounted; I arrived in London. The next morning, on the road to my banker's, I bowed to those who looked at me. One returned my civility by the words "I am surprised at your assurance: I never knew you." In fact, sir, what is a civility in other countries, in England is the reverse we have a national antipathy to courtesy and politeness. Le Doux. I would not have ventured to make that remark. Allow me to congratulate you on your candour: you have given me better occasions to pay my compliment on your originality. I attend you. Normanby. On reaching Lombard-street, a place excessively thronged, I stopped several times, begging the persons to pass. One asked me whether I took him for a pick-pocket; I could not imagine why. Unfortunately I did the same thing, in a gentler tone of voice, to a young lady of great beauty, who had just alighted from her carriage, and who in some confusion took the arm of her brother. He filliped me under the nose, threw a card at me, which from the spitefulness of his manner I thought might be some combustible, and said "Another time you will know a modest woman." a sampler. Believe who will that there are no amulets against evil, against the very worst of evil, mad resentments and desires. Never did one of them touch me the day I had but looked upon that sampler. My landlady said that her sittingroom was always at my disposal; that the bedroom was too dark to read conveniently; and that she perceived I had some books. She went down stairs again, and shortly afterward the dinner was served. Two young women entered, curtsied, and took their seats; they were pretty; silent, but not shy: immediately after dinner they retired. The lady then said, "Those are my daughters, Mr. Normanby. I did not introduce them; such is my way; excuse me." "Madam," said I, "I must blush at my rusticity: I never was much in the society of ladies, and my spirits make me unworthy of theirs. I hope I committed no peculiar act of inattention." At tea they both spoke to me, and with such gentleness that I was happy. I retired to bed early, and observed over the chest of drawers two little shelves suspended by a green cord, and filled with books. Different were indeed the authors, far different in manner and merit; but those who read them seldom know that; and I hail the family where I find them. Milton, The Spectator, Young, Parnell, Hervey's Meditations, and Thomson's Seasons. Translated from the French were Telemachus and the Travels of Cyrus. Finding my banker, I told him my business. He inquired if I wished to go as school-master. I I returned to my banker at the time appointed: answered "No; the active life of a sailor is neces- he showed me a letter from Edgeware, by which sary to my health and spirits." He went away, I learned that, after the sale of my furniture, an and conversed in almost a whisper with a gentle-addition was made to my fortune of nearly eighty man who often looked at me in great good-humour, pounds. Incredible! I had in the whole some insomuch that I was on the point of making my hundreds; and yet I went to sea! obeisance to him, in despite of the lessons I had "Well," said my banker, "you go down to the received. The banker came to me, and said if I Nore and sail with Admiral Gambier." I went would return in three days I might hear of some-down, and sailed. The gentleman I had seen at thing. I requested of him to inform me where I could find a private lodging. After a few moments of reflection, he spoke to an elderly clerk, who replied in a low voice, "You think then, sir, he may be trusted?" He nodded: the clerk took me two miles off, across the river, stopped at a small house, and speaking to a decent woman, called to me, and said, "Would you like to dine with the family?" "Beyond all things," I replied, "for I do not know a soul within a hundred and fifty miles, and would rather go without a meal than look for one." The mistress said she had only one spare room; that if I remained a week the price was one guinea; but that if I disliked the apartment I should pay the proportion, and not be obliged to keep it. She then asked me when I proposed to come. I told her, if she permitted it I would begin from that moment; for one hour's walk in London had tired me more than four in the country. She consented. Shortly came my clothes: I placed them on the little white tent-bed, with my bibles, prayer-books, and my father's black pocket-book, the banker's was commander of the fleet. We made on this cruise the greatest nautical discovery that ever had been made by our countrymen. Le Doux. I never heard it: you were before Brest, surely, and blockading the harbour. Normanby. We were. Le Doux. Well then, how make any discovery? Normanby. We found that we could fight, when occasion was offered us, just as well without the damnation of our eyes, or any limb or faculty about us, as if we had been splitting or blasting the whole day long, and even though we believed that God was with us and helping us. Peace was concluded. The admiral was pleased to say that he had been a witness of my coolness and intrepidity on a service of some enterprise, and thanked me. Perhaps I should not have mentioned this, unless it were to illustrate an observation I made at the time; namely, that a single good word is quite sufficient to compensate for all the bad that were ever cast against us. We had two Frenchmen aboard our ship: one of them taught me to pronounce the language so as at least to be understood, and I had permission to go ashore with him at Morlaix. He was a fisherman of St. Servan: his father had been shot by the republicans at the attack on Dinan, and he himself was thrown among the dead and wounded, from the summit of those lofty walls. His brother had been the playfellow of Lazar Hoche, and, ignorant of his father's fate, accompanied that general in his campaigns, and rose to the rank of colonel. This he learned at Morlaix, and that the regiment was at Paris, where Bonaparte was about to be declared consul for life. The two brothers, though always most brotherly, had taken opposite sides in politics. The sailor was devoted to the cause of Louis, from having heard in his boyhood a little fisher-girl, while she was mending a net, sing a stanza in praise of Henri IV. The colonel was a republican, because a thumb and finger quite as active, and belonging to a lacemaker quite as pretty as his brother's brown Siren, had sewed the tricolor in his hat and had bitten off the thread. They who argue and write and fight about politics have seldom such good reasons or such fixed principles. I accompanied my messmate: the meeting of the brothers was ecstatic, and the colonel swore to me that the next to Lazar Hoche, the truest of republican hearts, he loved his Pierre. I left them, and looked for lodgings, it being agreed that we should dine together. The colonel then begged my address, put it into his pocket, and called on me early the next day. "You have done well," said he;" one likes one's own countrymen." Singular that my lodgings should, within a few houses, be opposite the very man's whose book had caused my exile. Curious to see so celebrated a character, on the departure of my visitor I went across to the door. An old woman met me at it, and, on my inquiry, said, “Go up, my friend; the third story; he will be at breakfast when I return." "Oh! I will call another time then." "Go in, go in." Saying this she closed the door. I mounted the steps, and saw in the antechamber a somewhat elderly man brushing a grey coat. "Friend," said I, " is your master at home?" "Whom do you wish to see? Mr. Paine?" "Yes." "He will be with you shortly: pray sit down." He put on his coat, and followed, and lifting off some leaves from a plate of mulberries, invited me to partake of them. I took two or three, while he waved a clean folded cravat over them, to drive away the flies. He was robust and fresh-complexioned, but every hair was white : his appearance, I thought, was military. The old woman returned, with half a small roll of bread in her hand, passed us, entered the next room, and, in answer to a question which I did not hear, replied "I know he is.. your eyebrows are adjusted in a manner quite different from ours. . and he speaks villanous French, like a Low-Breton, other wise he is a pretty man enough, and does not look so like a fool or an otter as the rest." Paine entered. His knees were unbuttoned; he had neither coat nor waistcoat on; the white was worn off his shirt; it had recovered the original hue belonging to it before it saw the bleachingground, from the flowers of which, if they have any fragrance, it was innocent of stealing any. He was uncombed, unshaven, and unwashed. He looked at me, and returned my salutation not ungracefully. "Mr. Paine," said I, smiling, "you owe me some reparation." 'If I do and can make it, I will." I repeated my story, during which he dipped his bread into a glass of brandy, and ate it his hand and head trembled. It was noon martial music was heard in the street. He pushed away the better part of his roll and brandy; his countenance was inflamed; he looked stedfastly at his friend, and said, "I think, Tate, if I may judge, you have heard military music you like better." "You judge rightly, Thomas!" answered General Tate. "Wonderful it appears to me," said I, "that a nation of late so enthusiastic for liberty, should voluntarily bend to despotism." "You have not lived among us," answered Paine. "The whole nation may be made as enthusiastic about a salad as about a constitution; about the colour of a cockade as about a consul or a king. This fellow has done advisedly in calling himself consul: it will hold for a couple of years: he will then change the name, and be tribune or emperor. . tribune, if prudent, as the more popular, and as the people see emperors in the vilest of their enemies: urchins whipt and promising to be good, very good, for ever good, by Christ and Peter! but spitting at the flogger on being let loose, and holding out one fist at a distance, while the other draws up the waistband. Bonaparte wants conduct, foresight, knowledge, experience, and (the Council of Five-hundred knows it) courage. He will do harm, but not long. He lives in terror. . . . What are you smiling at, Tate?" "My mother had a proverb of her own," replied he, "that a frightened cat throws down most pewter." "You will shortly see," resumed Paine, "the real strength and figure of Bonaparte. He is wilful, headstrong, proud, morose, presumptuous: he will be guided no longer: he has pulled the pad from his forehead, and will break his nose or bruise his cranium against every table, chair, and brick in the room, until at last he must be sent to the hospital." "He has the finest army upon earth," said Tate, "and his enemies are down." "If it were possible," Paine replied, "to be hurt by such enemies, he would point at them, nettle them, shout in their ears while they were sleepy, put crumbs in their beds, shorten their sheets, and empty foul water down their throats, till they contrived to break his shins for him by Le Doux. Excellent! Normanby. The words that follow injure them materially. some machination or other. The army, with such | which we are in the habit of treating friendly means of recruiting it, with Glory for his crimp powers. What were his prophetic words? and Plutus for his paymaster, seems indestructible. Normanby. "That the people would wish for If the earth can not do it, he will throw it into their old kings." crucible after crucible; he will melt it in water or evaporate it in air. In other words, navies and climates can and will shake and dissolve it." "Thomas," answered the general, "I never thought you a visionary; but now indeed I must think you one. I do not estimate very highly the man's abilities, and less highly still his prudence; but he is no fool; he will not throw away what he has." "I will retract my words," said Paine, "at the first wise thing he does. Smile, sir! it is rarely that the wisest man can do anything better, or anything on some occasions more difficult. "Let gazetteers and hawkers be dazzled by the emblazoned names they wave about their ears, and hold out to us with fierce vociferations: but let calmer men ask themselves, whether they really think Bonaparte would have surmounted the difficulties and dangers that environed Threefingered Jack? And whether Three-fingered Jack would have thrown away fifty thousand soldiers so inconsiderately and fruitlessly as Bonaparte? There is not on record one who has committed so many faults and crimes with so little temptation to commit them. There is not a leveret three months old that does not shape its course more sagaciously. Tyrants in general shed blood upon plan or from passion: he seems to have shed it only because he could not be quiet, and from no stronger motive or better reason than he would have had for going to the theatre or the chase. Depend upon it, this giddy and insensate man, deserter of his armies and of his principles, will finish no better than he has been going on. Le Doux. Impossible! so clear-sighted a politician! . . But let me hear the end. Normanby. "Forgetting what beasts they were." Le Doux. The English are much in the practice of using this language, speaking of our kings, and the same bad taste begins to be imitated on the Continent. What did Mr. Tate reply? Normanby. "They may eat their white beans while turkeys and truffles are before them; but they will never run and take down the carrion they have thrown aside and left stinking on the hedge." Le Doux. Two fools! Ignorant of French loyalty, of the veneration we bear toward our kings. The Revolution was the work of halfa-dozen philosophers over their coffee; and its enormities were committed by about as many lawyers and literators, followed by thirty or forty miscreants from Marseilles. The nation was not guilty of it. Normanby. Strange! that the good did not put down the bad. Le Doux. Panic, panic! We are subject to that and the migraine. Mr. Paine and the other might have conversed with you upon subjects they understood better than politics, which require a peculiar tact. Normanby. Indeed they left off where I did. Mr. Paine expressed his regret that he himself was not the only man persecuted for his writings: he offered me brandy. I declined it: “Tate,” said he, "you have some flavoured with orangeflowers: bring it." Tate rose for it. I declared that I never had tasted brandy, nor any other spirit, and could not. "You are a young man," said he, "and may find perhaps a better remedy for your misfortunes than I could offer you: brandy is mine." "There are few who form their opinions of greatness from the individual. His sword, his mantle, his strut, his swagger, and even things which constitute no part of him, are his greatness; such as his porters, his guards, his soldiers, and the gilding on the ceilings of his rooms. Not those who need the fewest, but those who have the most about them, are the great; as though people, like bars of iron, could be mended and magnified by adding one to another. Even in quieter scenes than where such excrescences spring up, if you see a gentleman go out foxhunting in his scarlet jacket and his velvet cap, on a spirited horse, with merry dogs, and a couple of grooms behind him, you consider him "Tate," answered he, "wine is for the indolent as a personage far more worshipful, than if, and the happy. Say no more: I am not quite ignorant of his condition, you found him catching well: that cursed music has hurt me. I might go a rabbit in a hedge-bank with a ferret. Ovid so far as to complain; I should then lose your says, "The girl is the least part of herself:' of himself as certainly the man is. I should not wonder if Bonaparte, by his intemperate use of power and thirst of dominion"... Le Doux. I never heard before of this Mr. Paine he appears to be a staunch royalist, an enemy of usurpation: but his language in regard to the emperors is deficient in that decorum with "I wish, Thomas," said the general, "I had been able to persuade you that a glass of claret would have done better. A bottle between us, which is enough, would have given us time for conversation, and warmed us gently and genially as we went on." esteem, and my own." He raised his head, which for the first time did not tremble: a short silence ensued: I took my leave, requesting his permission to return. He told me that he should be glad to see me, but that he must claim a privilege which literary men and invalids possess in common, and to which, therefore, he had a double right; an exemption from the obligation of visit ing; adding, "No man who visits can do much, or anything well." On the following day (for I was little disposed to look at the strides of a usurper) I went again to Mr. Paine's. "Never mind my face," said he 66 water makes it blister: there are blisters enow already and soap cracks the skin. I needed not have written that book: they tell me the arguments are found in others: I had no money to buy, nor time to read them. Gibbon was pensioned, I was prosecuted, for one and the same thing but he was a member of parliament, and wore powder." "And if neither you nor he had written any such things, would you or the world have been the worse?" it down, because some people sit beneath it on a Sunday, and return to their supper the more contented?" "That is unfair," said he; "the motive is misstated." The fact remains," replied I, "under the parable and I thank you for correcting me on the abuse of language. No man ever argued so fairly as he might have done. We pour in more or fewer words, and weaker or stronger, to gratify our organs, according to our warmth and excitement." Carry that home with you," said he, seizing my hand, "and tell the twelve judges, and the score or two of bishops, that they never have said anything so just. Eloquence is the varnish of 'Certainly," said he, "the world would have falsehood; truth has none!" been the worse, because the less wise." “Ah, Mr. Paine ! he is not over-rich in knowledge who can not afford to let the greater part lie fallow, and to bring forward his produce according to the season and the demand. Wisdom is only a good as being an instrument of happiness. There have been great masses of it in the world, collected by experience and approved by experiment; we only survey the fragments, most of which are preserved by religion. The ancients had their sacred groves: pirates and philosophers laughed at them as they passed: they were cut down pestilences followed. Experience had evinced their utility to simpler and calmer men. Whenever people meet . ." A grave decent-looking man now entered, whom the general saluted in silence, giving him his hand, and Mr. Paine said, "Take a seat, Zacha rias! This young man is as religious as you are, and you will hear him with as much pleasure as I do. There are two good things in the world, reason and sincerity: I am convinced he has the one, we will try him on the other. . Go on, go on; let us lose no time." "What!" said I, taking from my pocket and giving to him my Pascal and Epictetus. "Are not these eloquent!" "Neither of them," answered he; "they are only the best-written books in the world, being the plainest and fullest of ratiocination. That is eloquence which moves the reason by working on the passions. Burke is eloquent; I am not. If I write better than he does, it is because I have seen things more distinctly, and have had the courage to take them up, soft or hard, pretty or ugly, and to turn them on their backs in despite of tooth or claw. Plato would give as noble a description of a rhinoceros as Aristoteles could do; ninety-nine in a hundred would prefer it. The only difference is this: while the one has been confounding it with the camelopardalis, the other has been measuring its joints, counting its teeth, inspecting its belly, and anatomising the whole animal." Le Doux. He spoke of the celebrated Mr. "What service will that do?" "It is the plantain," cried I," which the reptile man may creep to and chew with advantage, while the venom is yet fresh in him." I continued: "Wherever people meet and bring Le Doux. A fine noble letter! full of facts and with them good intentions, they humanise more inferences! brilliant imagination! I must read and more at the sight of common wants and it. I very much approve of your argument in common sufferings: they warm in sympathy, they favour of revelation. Mr. Paine can be little strengthen in forbearance. You think no religion short of a Quaker, or Socinian, or Free-thinker. good: I think all are, from which cruelty, fraud, Normanby. I am afraid he remained one. lucre, and domination, are excluded. We mortals "O Mr. Paine !" said I, earnestly, "let me bring want supports: some require a crutch iron- you a few good books: let us open the New Tescramped, some are contented if it is well-tament together!" cushioned, others are kept up fearlessly by the weakest walking-stick. If there is only the probability that a man will be the happier or the honester by one belief than by another, would you hesitate to leave him in possession of it? Wisdom is not to be hazarded with the same levity or indifference as wit. We may acquire the name of deep-thinkers at too high a price, which price, like the interest of money, is limited or illicit, rendering the transaction void, and subjecting us to the forfeit of the little we have been toiling to establish. Shall so acute a reasoner, so clear a writer, rub off his hide and canker his flesh to the bone against a tree, striving to push Le Doux. Mighty smart allusion! he ought to have been affected: was he? Normanby. He replied thus. "Good books, as you call them, make you comfortable: good brandy makes me so. I have the twelve apostles in this bottle, and they never shall complain that I hold them long imprisoned." Le Doux. Charlatan! |