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IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.

Avoid a mistake in attributing to the writer any opinions in this book but what are spoken under his own name. The introduction of characters now or recently existing has been censured; but among the relics of antiquity the censurer probably has been gratified at finding an allusion to the contemporaries of the authors: let him be consistent and acquiescent, and believe that the dialogues now before him may be also among the relics of antiquity. A few public men of small ability are introduced, to show better the proportions of the great; as a painter would situate a beggar under a triumphal arch, or a camel against a pyramid.

RICHARD I. AND THE ABBOT OF BOXLEY.

THE abbot of Boxley was on his road to Haguenau in search of Richard, and the appearance of the church-tower in the horizon had begun to accelerate his pace, when he perceived a tall pilgrim at a distance, waving his staff toward some soldiers who would have advanced before him: they drew back.

"He may know something of the Lion-heart," said the abbot, spurred his horse onward, and in an instant threw himself at the pilgrim's feet, who raised and embraced him affectionately.

Abbot. O my king! my king! the champion of our faith at the mercy of a prince unworthy to hold his stirrup! the conqueror of Palestine led forth on foot! a captive! a captive of those he commanded and protected! Could Saladin see it...

Richard. The only prince in the universe who would draw his sword for me against the ruffian of Austria. He alone is worthy to rescue me who hath proved himself worthy to fight me. I might have foreseen this insult. What sentiment of magnanimity, of honour, of humanity, ever warmed an Austrian bosom?

Tell me, declare to me, abbot, speak it out at once... is this the worst of my misfortunes? Groans burst from me; they cleave my heart; my own English, I hear, have forsaken me: my brother John is preferred to me . . . I am lost indeed. What nation hath ever witnessed such a succession of brave kings, two hundred years together, as have reigned uninterruptedly in England? Example formed them, danger nurtured them, difficulty instructed them, peace and war in an equal degree were the supporters of their throne. If John succeed to me, which he never can by vir

tue, never shall by force, and I pray to God never may by fortune, what will remain to our country but the bitter recollection of her extinguished glory? I would not be regretted at so high a price: I would be better than the gone, presumptuous as is the hope, but may the coming be better than I Abbot, I have given away thrones, but never shall they be torn from me: rather than this, a king of England shall bend before an emperor of Germany*, but only to rise up again in all his majesty and strength.

Abbot. God grant it! Abandoning a king like

* Opinions have changed on most things, and greatly on

titles and dignities. A consul is appointed to reside in a and in landed property, beneath the level of an English seaport a Roman senator was often, in political weight gentleman; yet not only a Roman senator, but a Roman citizen, held himself superior to kings. It might well be permitted our Richard to assume a rank above any potentate of his age. If almanacks and German courtcalendars are to decide on dignities, the emperors of Morocco and Austria shall precede the kings of England: learned men have thought otherwise. On this subject hear Leonardo Aretino.

suprema

Ex his

"Quid enim mea refert quemadmodum barbari loquantur, quos neque corrigere possum si velim, neque magnopere velim si possim? De rege tamen et imperatore idem sentio quod tu, et jampridem ridens barbariem istam, hoc ipsum notavi atque redargui. Tres enim gradus majorum dignitatum apud Romanos, de quorum principe loquimur, fuere: rex, dictator, imperator. secundum tenuit dignitatis locum dictatura; post dictaomnium potestas rex est; post regem verò turam imperium tertio gradu consequitur. Hujusce rei probatio est, quod Octaviano imperatori optime se gerenti Senatus Populusque Romanus dignitatem augere, pro recepit, sed flexo genu recusavit, quasi majoris statūs imperatore dictatorem facere decrevit, quod ille non majorisque invidiæ dignitatem existimans, Imperatoris nomen modicum ac populare, si ad Dictatoris fastigium

B

Richard, we abandon our fathers and children, to contend with him and to love him. Look now our inheritance and name: far from us be for ever such ignominy! May the day when we become the second people upon earth, Almighty God! be the day of our utter extirpation!

Richard. I yet am king, yea, king am I more than ever, who even in this condition rule over hearts like thine.

Genii and angels move and repose on clouds; the same do monarchs, but on less compact ones, and scarcely firm enough for a dream to pillow on. Visions of reluctant homage from crowned heads, and of enthusiastic love from those who keep them so, have passed away from me, and leave no vacancy. One thought commemorative of my country, and characteristic of my countrymen, is worth them all.

Abbot. Here are barely, I reckon, more than three-score men; and, considering the character both of their prince and of their race, I cannot but believe that the scrip across my saddlebow contains a full receipt for the discharge of my Sovran. Certain I am that little is left unto him of the prize he made in the caravan of Egypt.

Richard. The gold and silver were distributed among my soldiers; for the only prizes worthy of me were Saladin and Jerusalem. I have no hesitation in esteeming Saladin not only above all the potentates now living, which of a truth is little, but, from what hath been related to me, above all who have ever reigned; such is his wisdom, his courage, his courtesy, his fidelity; and I acknowledge that if I had remained to conquer him, I would have restored to him the whole of his dominions, excepting Palestine. And the crown of Palestine which of the crusaders should wear which among them could have worne it one twelvemonth? I would do nothing in vain; no, not even for glory. The Christian princes judged of me from their own worthlessness Saladin judged of me from himself: to them he sent pearls and precious stones, to me figs and dates; and I resolved from that moment comparetur. Majorem vero esse regiam potestatem quam

dictaturam ex eo potest intelligi, quia Julius Cæsar, Dictator cum esset, affectavit Regem fieri."

The dignity of a sovran does not depend on the title he possesses, which he may with equal arrogance and indis

cretion assume, but on the valour, the power, the wealth, the civilisation, of those he governs. This view of the

subject the Aretine has not taken.

Rank pretends to fix the value of everyone, and is the most arbitrary of all things. Roman knights, correspond

ing for the most-part in condition with our wealthier

yeomanry and inferior esquires, would have disdained to be considered as no better or more respectable than the kings they hired. In our days, an adventurer to whom a petty prince or his valet has given a pennyworth of ribbon, looks proudly and disdainfully on anyone who has nothing else in his button-hole than the button.

Few authors are sounder than Plutarch; and no remark of his more judicious than the following on Juba; at which however there is not a deputy-commissary or under-secretary who would not laugh.

"His son, named also Juba, was carried in triumph while yet a child: and truly most happy was his imprisonment, by which, barbarian as he was, he came to be numbered among the most learned writers."

toward the Holy Alliance. Philip swore upon the Evangelists to abstain from aggression in my absence. Collecting an army on the borders of Normandy, he protests that his measures are pacific, invokes heaven against usurpers, and invades the province. He would persuade me, no doubt, that a squadron of horse on the low grounds is a preventive of agues, and a body of archers on the hills a specific for a fever. Ay, abbot, and his bishops lead him forth and light him on his nobility follows him with alacrity and applause. In the whole extent of France there is neither sword nor crozier unsullied by perjury. Where upon earth was there ever a people so ready to swear and to forswear, to fight and to fly? Equally enthusiastic in opposite causes, and embracing them without breathing betwixt, their enthusiasm is always in proportion to their number. A Frenchman, like a herring, loses his course when he loses his company, and his very instinct (in truth he has little else) forsakes him. The bravest kings with him are those who cast down conscience the most readily, and those whose appetites are the most grovelling are the best. As in the black-puddings of our country-folk, if blood is wanting, it must be made out by fat*.

Abbot. Times ought to be very quiet, and nations very prosperous, when rulers are valued like bears and porpoises for their fur and grease. The perfidy of a rival may justly have excited the disdain, but ought never to have turned aside the arms, of Richard. The cause of truth and righteousness is thine, O king! and when hast thou deserted what thou hast once upholden?

Richard. Saladin was defeated and Jerusalem would have fallen; but God will forgive me if, leaving his bones and sepulchre to his own care and protection, I chastise a disloyal rather than a loyal enemy.

Abbot. I wish my liege could have taken him prisoner, that he might have saved such a soul by infusing into it the true faith under baptism.

Richard. Ay, that indeed were well. Tunny. fish under oil, men under baptism, those alone of both creatures are worth a November melon. So said the bishop of Hermopolis one day after dinner; and I wish he could have kept awake and sober, to edify us more at large thereupon.

A word in your ear, my abbot. Saladin lives in a country where prophet comes after prophet, and each treads out the last vestige from the sand. I am afraid it would not hold. Abbot. Better as it is then.

Richard. There are many in foreign parts who

*The ancient fare of our kings differed from that of the commonality in plenteousness only. If Richard did not dress his own dinner, like Achilles, he knew at least the composition of the few plain dishes then in use. Indeed the black-pudding was of such moment that it shook the whole christian world. Michael Cellularius, patriarch of Constantinople, condemned the Bishop of Rome, Leo IX. for eating unleavened bread in the eucharist, and blackpudding at home.

cannot be brought to comprehend how a sprinkle | penitence, avaricious of another's wealth under of water should prepare a man's eternal happi- vows of poverty, and jealous of another's glory in ness*, or the curtailment of a cuticle his eternal the service of their God. Is this Christianity? and misery. is Saladin to be damned if he despises it?

Abbot. Alas, my liege, society is froth above and dregs below, and we have hard work to keep the middle of it sweet and sound, to communicate right reason and to preserve right feelings. In voyages you may see too much and learn too little. The winds and waves throw about you their mutability and their turbulence. When we lose sight of home, we lose something else than that which schoolboys weep for.

Richard. By the keenness of your eye, compassionate as it is, I discover, my good abbot, that you have watched and traced me from the beginning of my wanderings. Let me now tell my story. . to confession another time. I sailed along the realms of my family: on the right was England, on the left was France little else could I discover than sterile eminences and extensive shoals. They fled behind me: so pass away generations; so shift and sink and die away affections. In the wide ocean I was little of a monarch: old men guided me, boys instructed me; these taught me the names of my towns and harbours, those showed me the extent of my dominions: one cloud, that dissolved in one hour, covered them.

Before I joined my worthy brotherhood of the faith, I was tossed about among the isles and islets, which in some places are so thickly set, you may almost call them sea-stars.

A sailor's story is worth little without a tempest: I had enough of one to save my credit at the fireside and in the bower.

The despot or emperor of Cyprus* (I forget his title) threw into prison the crew of an English vessel wrecked on his coast; and, not contented with this inhumanity, forbade the princess of Navarre my spouse, and the queen of Sicily who attended her, to take refuge from the storm in any of his ports. I conquered his dominions, with the loss, on my part, of a dinner, two men, and a bridle. He was brought before me. My emperor had an aversion to iron in every form: therefore I adorned his imperial feet with a silver chain, and invited him to the festivities of my nuptials with Berengere, followed by her coronation as queen of Cyprus. We placed his daughter under the protection of Jane+, knowing her sweet temper and courtesy, and reminding her that a lady of rank rises one step higher by I debark in Sicily, place my hand upon the misfortune. She hath exchanged the cares of a throne of Tancred, and fix it. Again we sail, and crown for the gaiety of a court, and I hope that within a day or two behold, as the sun is setting, what she lost as princess she will gain as woman. the solitary majesty of Crete, mother of a religion, | I intend to place her suitably in marriage, and her it is said, that lived two thousand years. Onward, and many bright specks bubble up along the blue Egean; islands, every one of which, if the songs and stories of the pilots are true, is the monument of a greater man than I am. We leave them afar off... and for whom? For creatures of less import than the sea-mews on their cliffs; men praying to be heard and fearing to be understood, ambitious of another's power in the midst of

* If Richard had lived a few centuries later, he would surely have been less a freethinker than we hear he was. Fra Sebastiano di Giesu related to Pietro della Valle, that a Persian male-witch (stregone) taken in the fact of witchcraft, was asked whether he could eat the heart of a Portuguese captain, in the same manner as he had just eaten the heart of a cucumber; that is, merely by looking at it. He replied in the negative; for that the Franks had in the breast something like a corslet, of such hardness that no witchery could penetrate it; which, beyond doubt, says Pietro, can be nothing else than the virtue of baptism, the armour of faith, and the privilege of being

sons of the Church. This honest traveller falls, in almost every letter, on some unlucky comparison between the idolatry of his native country and of those he visits. "It appears," says he, "that a great part of the worship paid to their idols, consists in nothing but music and singing, &c. to pass the time gaily and luxuriously." He speaks of the right reverend their fly-flappers as “making a wind and driving off the flies from the idols in the palanquin, offering that obsequiousness which we use toward the Pope, with fans made from the tails of white peacocks. And there were not wanting about the idols many of their religious, and many many torches, with the splendour whereof the night was lighted up." Who would not imagine this description to have rather been made by a Hindoo in Rome, than by a Roman in Hindostan ?

dowry shall be what my treasury is at the time.

Abbot. We have only to consider now what lies before us. Could not my liege have treated with the Duke of Austria?

Richard. Yes, had he been more nearly my equal. I punished his neglect of discipline: it became in his power to satiate his revenge. Henry is mercenary in the same degree, but perhaps less perfidious, certainly less irritated and hostile. land: none can forget that I treated him as a No potentate can forgive the superiority of Engtrooper and dependent, and that the features of my contempt were too broad for any mask in all the rich wardrobe of dissimulation. Henry alone is capable of ensuring my return. I remember the fate of Robert; and if I am not presently in London, I may be in Cardiff.

Those who have abandoned me must ransom me; I myself will dictate the conditions, and they shall be such as no emperor of Germany can refuse+.

Ride on with me.

* Isaac the usurper of Cyprus styled himself emperor. + Queen of Sicily.

Emperor is the title usually given to the heads of the Germanic league: but in fact there never was an emperor of Germany. Adrien Valois, in a letter to Albert Portner, writes thus: "Legi Conringii librum de finibus Imperii Germanici, cujus libri titulum jure quis arguat; nullum enim imperium Germanicum fuit unquam, nullum est hodieque; nec imperator etiamsi in Germaniâ sedem habeat, Germanorum imperator est, sed, ut ipse se more majorum appellat, rex Germaniæ et Romanorum

LORD BROOKE AND SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

Brooke. I come again unto the woods and unto the wilds of Penshurst, whither my heart and the friend of my heart have long invited me.

Sidney. Welcome, welcome! How delightful it is to see a friend after a length of absence! How delightful to chide him for that length of absence, to which we owe such delight.

Brooke. I know not whether our names will be immortal; I am sure our friendship will. For names sound only upon the surface of the earth, while friendships are the purer, and the more ardent, the nearer they come to the presence of God, the sun not only of righteousness but of love. Ours never has been chipt or dimmed even here, and never shall be.

Sidney. Let me take up your metaphor. Friendship is a vase which, when it is flawed by heat or violence or accident, may as well be broken at once; it can never be trusted after. The more graceful and ornamental it was, the more clearly do we discern the hopelessness of restoring it to its former state. Coarse stones, if they are fractured, may be cemented again; precious ones, never. And now, Greville, seat yourself under this oak; since, if you had hungered or thirsted from your journey, you would have renewed the alacrity of your old servants in the hall.

imperator." Here we see the rex is before the imperator: if in the patents of Charles the fifth it is otherwise, the reason is that the title of king is applied to the dominion of several states which his ancestors had acquired more recently. Valois proceeds: "Si tamen Romanorum imperator vocari debet qui urbi Romæ non imperat, et ab episcopo ecclesiæ Romanæ, Romæ, ac senatus populique Romani sententià, dudum desiit consecrari." This letter is not printed among the works of Valois or his brother, but is of unquestionable authenticity, and may be found V. p. 542. Valois was a good scholar, but he errs in his latinity when he objects to the expression imperium Germanicum, for that expression would be correct whether Germany were governed by a king, an emperor, an aristocracy, or a democracy. The Roman state was just as much imperium Romanum under the consuls and tribunes

entire in the Amanitates Literariæ of Schelhorn, Tom.

as under Tiberius or Caligula. The justice of the remark made by Valois is proved by the patents of Charles V, which always began, "Carolus V, divinâ favente clementiâ, Romanorum Imperator Augustus, ac rex Germaniæ, HisThe late emperor of Austria formally laid down a title which never belonged to him: he and all his ministers were ignorant of this, and it may be doubted whether there was a statesman in Europe who knew it.

paniarum, utriusque Siciliæ, Hierusalem, Hungariæ, &c."

* Lord Brooke is less known than the personage with whom he converses, and upon whose friendship he had the virtue and good-sense to found his chief distinction. On his monument at Warwick, written by himself, we read that he was servant of Queen Elizabeth, counsellor of King James, and friend of Sir Philip Sidney. His style is stiff, but his sentiments are sound and manly. The same house produced another true patriot, slain in the civil wars by a shot from Lichfield minster. Clarendon, without any ground for his assertion, says there is reason to believe he would have abandoned his party and principles. The family is extant: a member of it was created Earl of Warwick by George II. for services as Lord of the Bedchamber.

Brooke. In truth I did; for no otherwise the good household would have it. The birds met me first, affrightened by the tossing up of caps; and by these harbingers I knew who were coming. When my palfrey eyed them askance for their clamorousness, and shrank somewhat back, they quarrelled with him almost before they saluted me, and asked him many pert questions. What a pleasant spot, Sidney, have you chosen here for meditation! a solitude is the audience-chamber of God. Few days in our year are like this: there is a fresh pleasure in every fresh posture of the limbs, in every turn the eye takes.

Youth! credulous of happiness, throw down Upon this turf thy wallet, stored and swoln With morrow-morns, bird-eggs, and bladders burst, That tires thee with its wagging to and fro: Thou too wouldst breathe more freely for it, Age! Who lackest heart to laugh at life's deceit. It sometimes requires a stout push, and sometimes a sudden resistance, in the wisest men, not to become for a moment the most foolish. What have I done? I have fairly challenged you, so much my master.

Sidney. You have warmed me: I must cool a little and watch my opportunity. So now, Greville, return you to your invitations, and I will clear the ground for the company; for Youth, for Age, and whatever comes between, with kindred and dependencies. Verily we need no taunts like those in your verses: here we have few vices, and consequently few repinings. I take especial care that my young labourers and farmers shall never be idle, and I supply them with bows and arrows, with bowls and ninepins, for their Sunday evening*, lest they drink and quarrel. In church they are taught to love God; after church they are practised to love their neighbour; for business on workdays keeps them apart and scattered, and on market-days they are prone to a rivalry bordering on malice, as competitors for custom. Goodness does not more certainly make men happy than happiness makes them good. We must distinguish between felicity and prosperity: for prosperity leads often to ambition, and ambition to disappointment: the course is then over; the wheel turns round but once; while the re-action of goodness and happiness is perpetual.

Brooke. You reason justly and you act rightly. *Censurable as this practice may appear, it belonged to the age of Sidney. Amusements were permitted the English on the seventh day, nor were they restricted until the puritans gained the ascendancy. Even labour on certain occasions was not only allowed but enjoined. By an order of Edward VI. the farmer was encouraged to harvest upon the Sunday, and in the same article it is called a great offence to God to be scrupulous and superstitious in foregoing such operations. Aylmer, bishop of London, used to play at bowls after the service; and, according to Strype, when the good prelate was censured for it, he replied that the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.

Piety, warm, soft, and passive as the ether round the throne of Grace, is made callous and inactive by kneeling too much her vitality faints under rigorous and wearisome observances. A forced match between a man and his religion sours his temper, and leaves a barren bed.

Sidney. Desire of lucre, the worst and most general country vice, arises here from the necessity of looking to small gains; it is however but the tartar that encrusts economy.

Brooke. I fear Avarice less from himself than from his associates, who fall upon a man the fiercest in old-age. Avarice (allow me to walk three paces further with Allegory) is more unlovely than mischievous, although one may say of him that he at last

Grudges the gamesome river-fish its food,

And shuts his heart against his own life's blood.

Sidney. We find but little of his handywork among the yeomanry, nor indeed much among those immediately above. The thriving squires are pricked and pinched by their eagerness to rival in expenditure those of somewhat better estate; for, as vanity is selfishness, the vain are usually avaricious, and they who throw away most, exact most. Penurious men are oftener just than spendthrifts.

Brooke. O that anything so monstrous should exist in this profusion and prodigality of blessings! The herbs, elastic with health, seem to partake of sensitive and animated life, and to feel under my hand the benediction I would bestow on them. What a hum of satisfaction in God's creatures! How is it, Sidney, the smallest do seem the happiest ?

Sidney. Compensation for their weaknesses and their fears; compensation for the shortness of their existence. Their spirits mount upon the sunbeam above the eagle; and they have more enjoyment in their one summer than the elephant in his century.

Brooke. Are not also the little and lowly in our species the most happy?

Sidney. I would not willingly try nor overcuriously examine it. We, Greville, are happy in these parks and forests: we were happy in my close winter-walk of box and laurustine. In our earlier days did we not emboss our bosoms with the daffodils, and shake them almost unto shedding with our transport! Ay, my friend, there is a greater difference, both in the stages of life and in the seasons of the year, than in the conditions of men: yet the healthy pass through the seasons, from the clement to the inclement, not only unreluctantly but rejoicingly, knowing that the worst will soon finish, and the best begin anew; and we are desirous of pushing forward into every stage of life, excepting that alone which ought reasonably to allure us most, as opening to us the Via Sacra, along which we move in triumph to our eternal country. We labour to get through the moments of our life, as we would to get through a crowd. Such is our impatience, such our hatred of procrastination, in everything but the amend

ment of our practices and the adornment of our nature, one would imagine we were dragging Time along by force, and not he us. We may in some measure frame our minds for the reception of happiness, for more or for less; we should however well consider to what port we are steering in search of it, and that even in the richest its quantity is but too exhaustible. It is easier to alter the modes and qualities of it, than to increase its stores. There is a sickliness in the firmest of us, which induceth us to change our side, though reposing ever so softly; yet, wittingly or unwittingly, we turn again soon into our old position. Afterward, when we have fixed, as we imagine, on the object most desirable, we start extravagantly; and, blinded by the rapidity of our course toward the treasure we would seize and dwell with, we find another hand upon the lock . . . the hand of one standing in shade ... 'tis Death!

Brooke. There is often a sensibility in poets which precipitates 'em thither.

The winged head of Genius snakes surround,

As erewhile poor Medusa's.

We however have defences against the shafts of the vulgar, and such as no position could give.

Sidney. God hath granted unto both of us hearts easily contented, hearts fitted for every station, because fitted for every duty. What appears the dullest may contribute most to our genius: what is most gloomy may soften the seeds and relax the fibres of gaiety. We enjoy the solemnity of the spreading oak above us: perhaps we owe to it in part the mood of our minds at this instant: perhaps an inanimate thing supplies me, while I am speaking, with whatever I possess of animation. Do you imagine that any contest of shepherds can afford them the same pleasure as I receive from the description of it; or that even in their loves, however innocent and faithful, they are so free from anxiety as I am while I celebrate them? The exertion of intellectual power, of fancy and imagination, keeps from us greatly more than their wretchedness, and affords us greatly more than their enjoyment. We are motes in the midst of generations: we have our sunbeams to circuit and climb. Look at the summits of the trees around us, how they move, and the loftiest the most nothing is at rest within the compass of our view, except the grey moss on the park-pales. Let it eat away the dead oak, but let it not be compared with the living one.

Poets are in general prone to melancholy; yet the most plaintive ditty hath imparted a fuller joy, and of longer duration, to its composer, than the conquest of Persia to the Macedonian. A bottle of wine bringeth as much pleasure as the acquisition of a kingdom, and not unlike it in kind: the senses in both cases are confused and perverted.

Brooke. Merciful heaven! and for the fruition of an hour's drunkenness, from which they must awaken with heaviness, pain, and terror, men

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