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LAST FKUIT ()¥¥ AN OLD TREE.
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J.
THE
LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
BY
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
LONDON:
EDWARD MOXON, DOVER STREET.
/ 1853<
LONDOX :
BEADBUKY AND EVAN'S, PRINTERS, WHITKKKIARS
PR
L33
LAUTORE DI QUESTO LIBRETTO
HA LA CONFIDENZA DI PRESEKTARLO
all' UOJIO
PROBO E BENEVOLO,
AL MINISTRO DI STATO
SAVIO E LIBERALE,
AL
MARCHESE DI AZEGLIO.
I STROVE WITH IS'ONE, FOR NONE WxVS WOKTH MY STRIFE ;
NATURE I LOVED, AND, NEXT TO NATURE, ART;
I WARMED BOTH HANDS BEFORE THE FIRE OF LIFE ;
IT SINKS, AND I AM READY TO DEPART.
l^EEFACE.
Inferior in execution to those I have abeadj set before
the public will perhaps these Imaginary Conversations appear;
certainly for the most-part inferior are the materials.
No sculptor can work in sandstone so artistically and
effectively as in alabaster and marble.
In the sight of higher intelligences the Pio-Nonos, the
Nicholases, the Louis-PhiHppes,, the Louis-Napoleons, and
their domestics in caps and hoods, in flounces and furbelows,
in ribbands and cordages, in stars and crosses, are of mis-
shapen and friable clay, not even " de meliore hito."
In the sight of the Highest Intelligence of all, the poor
humble Madiai, we are informed by unerring authority, are
far superior to such as "affect the nod" and assume the
attributes of deity. Grateful for the gifts that have been
imparted to me, and for the few talents, easy of computation,
which study and thoughtfulness and industry have added,
I have been content to look no higher than the Acropolis
of Athens, and to carry back with me, into the libraries of
my friends, the impressions I have taken from the
physiognomies of Solon and Pericles, of Phocion and
Epicurus ; and of placing Diogenes and Plato and Xenophon
Vm PREFACE.
in tlieir proper light, and where they may be seen distinctly
and walkt round. Pleasant as any of my hours, in that most
delightful of regions, were those I spent with Aspasia and
Leontion, and Theniisto; we called her Ternissa, and she
preferred the name.
Homely, very homely, are the countenances and figures
of the Madiai. But they also have their heroism : they took
the same choice as Hercules, preferring virtue to pleasure,
labour to ease, rectitude to obliquity; patient of imprison-
ment, and worshiping God with unfaltering devotion :
unterrified by the menaces of death. May they awaken, if
not enthusiasm, at least benevolence ! In which hope, on
their behaK and for their sole emolument, I edit this volume.
A great part of the prose bears a reference to those
persons, and that system, under which the Madiai were
deprived of freedom, of health, of air, and, what is also a
necessary to life, the consolation of friendship; their crime
being the worship of God as God himself commanded, and
not as man commands.
The poetry, where it refers to the present times, is what
I wish the prose could have been, mostly panegyrical.
W. S. L.
CONTENTS.
— — -
PAGE
EIGHTEEN IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
TIZIANO VECELLI AND LUIGI CORNARO 3
LEONORA DI ESTE AND FATHER PANIGAROLA 7
ADMIRAL BLAKE AND HUMPHREY BLAKE 9
LOUIS PHILIPPE AND M. GUIZOT 13
M. THIERS AND M. LAMARTINE 27
NICHOLAS, FREDERICK-WILLIAM, NESSELRODE 30
NICHOLAS AND NESSELRODE. FIRST CONVERSATION ... 34
BERANGER AND LA ROCHE-JAQUELIN 52
KING CARLO-ALBERTO AND PRINCESS BELGIOIOSO .... 57
GARIBALDI AND MAZZINI 74
CARDINAL ANTONELLI AND GENERAL GEMEAU. FIRST CONVERSATION 76
„ „ „ SECOND CONVERSATION . 81
LOUIS BONAPARTE AND COUNT MOLE 87
POPE PIO NONO AND CARDINAL ANTONELLI 91
MARTIN AND JACK 94
ARCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER LANDOR 97
NICHOLAS AND NESSELRODE. SECOND CONVERSATION . . . 132
ARCHBISHOP OF FLORENCE AND FRANCESCO MADIAI . . . 137
POPERY : BRITISH AND FOREIGN 141
TEN LETTERS ADDRESSED TO HIS EMINENCE THE CARDINAL WISEMAN. BY
A TRUE BELIEVER 183
THE IDYLS OF THEOCRITUS 215
THE POEMS OF CATULLUS 237
FRANCESCO PETRARCA 281
TO LORD BROUGHAM ON THE NEGLECT OP SOUTHEY .... 317
X CONTENTS.
rAGE
PENSIONS AND ACADEMIES . . . 320
SIB ROBERT PEEL AND MONUMENTS TO PUBLIC MEN .... 321
INSCRIPTION FOR A STATUE AT S. IVES 325
SHAKESPEARE'S HOUSE 326
THE PROPOSED NEW NATIONAL GALLERY 329
EPITAPH ON LADY BLESSINGTON 330
TO THE REVEREND CHARLES CUTHBERT SOUTHEY ON HIS FATHER'S
CHARACTER AND PUBLIC SERVICES 332
ANECDOTE OF LORD CHANCELLOR THURLOW 338
THE QUARTERLY REVIEW 339
THE BENEFITS OF PARLIAMENT 343
COLONISATION, AND BY WHOM PROMOTED 346
TRANQUILITY IN EUROPE 348
WHAT WE HAVE AND WHAT WE OWE 350
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT ' . . " . . 352
A DEACON AND CURATE TO HENRY LORD BISHOP OP EXETER . . . 354
PETITION TO PARLIAMENT FROM A BROTHERHOOD OF ANCIENT BRITONS 356
PETITION OF THE THUGS FOB TOLERATION 358
THE SCHOOLMASTER OF THE NORTH 361
TRUE CHARACTER OF SIB CHARLES JAMES NAPIER .... 363
POEMS.
EPIGRAMS 365
VARIOUS 401
EPISTLES 451
FIVE SCENES . . . , 487
CORRIGENDA.
The reader is requested to make tUe subjoined corrections witli his'pen.
I'lige 157, 1. 16, for "acquired," read "accepted."
„ 172, 1. 9, /or "factious," jea(i" facetious."
„ 174, 1. 25, for " institutions," read " institution."
„ 197, I. 16, read " the guidance of."
„ 220 (n) 1. 11, /or" hanc,"»-rar?"hac,"
„ 224, in the Greek, /or " -;; §«," read " H pa"
„ 265, 1. 4 from bottom, read "not well admit a spondee tor the lirst fi.,)t :
it should be," * &c.
„ 300, 1. 32, /or " Giovanni," read " Giovanna."
,, 304, second line of Italian, /or " debole, read " debile."
„ 325, 1. 25, af/er " historians," inse>-t " since Gibbon."
„ 329, I. 3, o»iu<"and."
„ 332, 1. 7, insert comma after " character."
„ 333, 1. 7, read " I do not call epic, as I have said before"
„ 336, 1. 1, read " Englishmen of our age"
„ 353, 1. 37, read " each of ns possesses."
„ 372, xxxviii, read " In Cyron."
„ 375, liv, for " nerves," read " waves."
„ 393, cxli, read " each in each rejoice."
„ 397, clii, read "the dying on the dead."
,, 408, 1. 28, " Bitter are," &c, should stand as another poem.
„ 431, ccvii, read " whose hand can hurl"
„ 446, 1. 6, read " twain."
„ 476, 1. 2, dele hut, and insert a semicolon instead.
„ 497, 1. 16, for " Santa Ann," read " Santa-Aima."
* Yet here, in 235 verses, nine begin nith it.
THE
LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
THE
LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
TIZIANO VECELLI AND LUIGI COENAKO.
CORNARO.
Many are the years, Tiziano, since we were youths together
here in Venice ; and I believe that at the present hour we are
nearly the oldest of its inhabitants. You indeed are some-
what the younger of the two ; not much ; altho the pre-
sent autumn is about the fiftieth siiice the truest judges
gave you the preference over Giovanni Bellini ; and after that
time you surpassed even greater competitors. Your age hath
far outstript your youth.
TIZIANO.
Ah, Don Luigi ! even on the verge of fourscore the ear
grows not deaf to flattery. I am charmed by your remem-
brance and your praises.
CORNARO.
What ! after those of kings and emperors ?
TIZIANO.
I am far, very far, from indifferent to those commendations
which have been bestowed on me by the masters of mankind,
who happen in our times to be endowed with better judgement,
regarding the higher Arts, than the noblest of their subjects.
Yet a name which adorns the annals of our republic, a
Cornaro, may, without ingratitude toward them, be quite as
dear to me.
B 2
4 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
CORNARO.
The emperor Charles is more generous to artists than to
sovrans, altho he had the magnanimity to admire in a rival as
great a man as himself. But preeminently shone his mngna-
nimity, when he loaded with jewelry and chains and crosses of
gold the artist wlio had depicted the prostration of Austria,
in the memorable field of Cadore. This I firmly believe to be
the greatest work that Italian art ever achieved.
TIZIANO.
Of mine it certainly is the greatest.
CORNARO.
Yet how wonderful is the Saint Peter Martyr ! In both
pictures you have proved yourself the best adapter of external
nature to human and superhuman action. The majestic trees,
at the stroke of your pencil, rise up worthy to shade the
angels in their walks on earth. Many of your subjects were
the productions of your hand after the meridian of life.
TIZIANO,
Long after. My fancy flies often from our sea-girt city to
my native hills of Cadore, and over the intermediate plains
and vineyards and olive-plots and chesnut-groves and forests,
and inhales the sharp sunniness of the Alpine air : it invigorates
me afresh.
CORNARO.
Yes, Tiziano ! Age never droops into decrepitude while
Fancy stands at liis side. To how many have you given an
existence for centuries ! Por centuries, did I say ? I should
have said for ever. Successions of engravers will fix upon
imperishable metal the lineaments you have deemed worthy
of preservation. Canvas may decay, colours may fade; but
these artists, animated by your genius, will follow one another
thro the darkest ages. These are the officers of your household.
Cursores, vital lamj^ada tradunt.
The time will come, perhaps within a few centuries, when the
chief glory of a Yenetian noble will be the possession of an
ancestor by the hand of Tiziano.
TIZIANO VECELLI AND LUIGI COllNARO. 5
TIZIANO.
You greatly overvalue me. There are many in our city
wlio deserve to partake in these eulogies; and many others
^yho followed my steps, and have preceded me to the tomb.
CORNARO.
It belongs to a generous mind to be M'ell pleased with its
likeness in its inferiors : you can bear it even in a rival : you
waft away your own praises, and often point toward Urbino.
TIZIANO.
Urbino is richer than Tyre and Sidon ever were : Urbino is
more glorified than Troy and Rome. There is only one to
whom the Virgin hath confided her Infant : one only to whom
the Infant hath manifested his mother : he leans on her
bosom ; but she hath not all his love. Nearer to us, while
we are conversing on this favorite of heaven, on this purifier
of the human heart, on this inspirer of the most tender and
most true religion, is Antonio AUegri of Correggio. Angels
play with his pencil ; and he catches them by the wing and
■will not let them go. What a canopy hath he raised to
himself in the Dome at Parma ! The highest of the departed
and of the immortal are guardians of his sepulcher : he
deserved it.
CORNARO.
And deserves he little, deserves he less, wdio raiseth his fellow^
men, lower by nature, to almost the same elevation ? Can the
Venetian Senate ever be extinct while it beholds the effigies of
those brave, intelligent, and virtuous men, whom you have
placed in their ancestral palaces ? There they are seated, or
there they stand, according to your disposal and ordinance,
the only sovran, the only instructed, the only true nobility in
Europe. When I have been contemplating the gravity and
grandor of their countenances, and meet afterward a German
or frenchman, I acknowledge the genus, but doubt the
species : I perceive that I have left the master, and recognise
the groom or lackey.
TIZIANO.
Glorious is indeed our Italy ; and worthy is especially our
Venice, of her wide dominion, her long existence, her imperish-
able renown.
b THE LAST FRUIT OFT" AN OLD TREE.
COENARO.
The wisdom and the valovu' wliicli have raised her to tlu's
eminence, above all the nations of the world, are best comme-
morated by you. AVe have industrious and faitliful historians;
but History is not always a safeguard against ingratitude and
neglect. Now let the most negligent, let the most ungrate-
ful, walk in our galleries, and his eyes will open a passage to
liis heart. Thanks to Tiziano !
TIZIANO.
Peace ! peace ! too generous Don Luigi ! I have scarcely
done justice to several of our senators.
CORNARO.
You have added fresh nobility to the noblest of them, fresh
beauty to the most beautiful of their wives and daughters.
TIZIANO.
Let me confess it frankly : I myself do experience no slight
pleasure in looking at them. You smile, Don Luigi. Do
you fancy I am liable to be led back into temptation ?
CORNARO.
Temptations, whether of insane ambition, or any lighter, if
lighter there be any, are unlikely to draw us two astray, so
near the grave as we are. Monumental brass will shine for
ages over yours ; mine will be just as appropriate under the
hospitable turf of Padua. I do not wonder that at this season
of life you retrace your first steps toward the images you have
animated. Our Creator, when he visited for the last time the
Paradise he had planted, went not thither at mid-day, but in
the cool of evening. Manifest once more to the beautiful
pair formed by Him after His own image, moved He, the
Uncreated, casting no shadow.
LEONORA DI ESTE AND FATHER PANIGAROLA.
LEONORA DI ESTE AND FATHER PANIGAROLA.
LEONORA.
You have then seen him, father ? Have you been able, you
who console so many, you who console even me, to comfort
poor Torquato ?
PANIGAROLA.
Madonna ! the ears of the unhappy man are quickened by
his solitude and his sorrow. He seemed aware, or suspicious
at least, that somebody was listening at his prison-door ; and
the cell is so narrow that everv sound in it is audible to those
who stand outside.
LEONORA.
He might have whispered.
PANIGAROLA.
It would have been most imprudent.
LEONORA.
Said he nothing ? not a word ? . . to prove . . to prove
that he had not lost his memory ; his memory ? of what ? of
reading his verses to me, and of my listening to them.
Lucrezia listened to them as attentively as I did, until she
observed his waiting for my applause first. When she
applauded, he bowed so gracefully : when I applauded, he
only held down his head. I was not angry at the diflFerence.
But tell me, good father ! tell me, pray, whether he gave no
sign of sorrow at hearing how soon I am to leave the world.
Did you forget to mention it ? or did you fear to pain liim ?
PANIGAROLA.
I mentioned it plainly, fully.
LEONORA.
And was he, was gentle Torquato, very sorry ?
PANIGAROLA.
Be less anxious. He bore it like a Christian. He said
8 THE LAST FRUIT OrP AN OLD TREE.
deliberately^ but lie trembled and sighed^ as Cliristians should
sigh and tremble^ that^ altho he grieved at your illness, yet
that to write either in verse or prose, on such a visitation of
Providence, was repugnant to his nature.*^
LEONORA.
He said so ? coiJd he say it ? But I thought you told me
he feared a listener. Perhaps too he feared to awaken in me
the sentiments he once excited. However it may be, already
I feel the chilliness of the grave : his words breathe it over
me. I would have entreated him to forget me; but to be
forgotten before I had entreated it ! . . O father, father !
PANIGAROLA.
Human vanity stil is lingering on the precincts of the tomb.
Is it criminal, is it censurable in him, to anticipate your
wishes ?
LEONORA.
Knowing the certainty and the nearness of my departure,
he might at least have told me thro you that he lamented to
lose me.
PANIGAROLA.
Is there no voice within your heart that clearly tells you so ?
LEONORA.
That voice is too indistinct, too troubled with the throbbings
round about it. We women want sometimes to hear what we
know ; we die unless we hear what we doubt.
PANIGAROLA.
Madonna ! this is too passionate for the hour. But the
tears you are shedding are a proof of your compunction. May
the "Virgin, and the Saints around her throne, accept and
ratify it.
LEONORA.
Pather ! what were you saying ? 'V\niat were you asking me ?
Whether no voice whispered to me, assured me ? 1 know not.
* Mr. Milman, in his Life of Tasso, misinterprets the expression. Genio
and ingenio do not always signify genius. His words are " a certain secret
repugnance of his genius" but Ta^so meant temper or disposition. Ingenium
has the same meaning in latin. Milton was not thinking about his genius
when he wrote
" Cseteraque ingenio nou subeuuda meo."
ADMIRAL BLAKE AND HUMPHREY BLAKE. 9
I am weary of tliinldng. He must love me. It is not in tlie
nature of sucli men ever to cease fro)n loving. "Was genius
ever ungrateful? Mere talents are dry leaves, tost up and
down by gusts of passion, and scattered and swept away ; but
Genius lies on the bosom of Memory, and Gratitude at her feet.
PANIGAROLA.
Be composed, be calm, be resigned to the will of Heaven,
be ready for that journey's end where the happier who have
gone before, and the enduring who soon must follow, ^^■ill meet.
LEONORA.
I am prepared to depart; for I have struggled (God knows)
to surmount what is insurmountable ; and the wings of Angels
will sustain and raise me, seeing my descent toward earth too
rapid, too unresisted, and too prone. Pray, father, for my
deliverance : pray also for poor Torquato's : do not separate
us in your prayers. ! could he leave his prison as sm-ely
and as speedily as I shall mine ! it would not be more thank-
fully. O ! that bars of iron were as fragile as bars of clay!
O ! that princes were as merciful as Death ! But tell him,
tell Torquato . . go again ; entreat, persuade, command him,
to forget me.
PANIGAROLA.
Alas ! even the command, even the command from you and
from above, might not avail perhaps. You smile. Madonna !
LEONORA.
I die happy.
ADMIRAL BLAKE AND HUMPHEEY BLAKE.
4
BLAKE.
Humphrey ! it hath pleased God, upon this day, to voucli-
safe unto the English arms a signal victory. Brother! it
grieves my heart that neither of us can rejoice in it as we
should do. Evening is closing on the waters : our crews are
returning thanks and offering up prayers to the Almighty.
Alas ! alas ! that we, who ought to be the most grateful for
10 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
his protection^ and for the spirit he hath breathed into our
people, should be the only men in this vast armament whom
he hath sorely chastened ! that we of all others should be
ashamed to approach the throne of grace among our country-
men and comrades ! There are those who accuse you, and
they are brave and honest men . . there are those, O Humplirey !
Humphrey ! . . was the sound ever heard in our father's
house ? . , who accuse you, brother ! brother ! . . how can I
ever find utterance for the word ? . . yea, of cowardice.
Stand off : I Avant no help : let me be.
HUMPHREY.
To-day, for the first time in my Hfe, I was in the midst of
many ships of superior force firing upon mine, at once and
incessantly.
BLAKE.
The very position where most intrepidity was required. Were
none with you ? were none in the same danger ? Shame !
Shame ! You owed many an example, and you defrauded
them of it. They could not gain promotion, the poor sea-
men ! they could not hope for glory in the wide world :
example they might have hoped for. You would not have
robbed them of their prize-money . .
HUMPHREY.
Brother ! was ever act of dishonesty imputed to a Blake ?
BLAKE.
. . Until now. You have robbed them even of the chance
they had of winning it : you have robbed them of the pride,
the just and chastened pride, awaiting them at home: you
have robbed their children of their richest inheritance, a father's
good repute.
HUMPHREY.
Despite of calumniators, there are worthy men ready to speak
in my favour, at least in extenuation . .
BLAKE.
I will hear them, as becomes me, altho I myself am cognizant
of your defiiult ; for during the conflict how anxiously, as often
as I could, did I look toward your frigate ! Especial care could
not be fairly taken that aid at the trying moment should be at
ADMIRAL BLAKE AND HUMPHREY BLAKE. 11
liand : oilier vessels were no less exposed than yours ; and it
was my duty to avoid all partiality in giving my support.
HUMPHREY.
Grievous as my short-coming may be, surely I am not
precluded from what benefit the testimony of my friends may
afford me.
BLAKE.
Triends . . ah thou hast many, Humphrey ! and many hast
thou well deserved. In youth, in boyhood, in childhood, thy
honied temper brought ever warm friends about thee. Easiness
of disposition conciliates bad and good ahke: it draws affections
to it, and relaxes enmities : but that same easiness renders us,
too often, neghgent of our graver duties. God knows, I may
without the same excuse (if it is any) be impeached of neghgence
in many of mine ; but never where the honour or safety of my
country was concerned. Wherefor the Almighty's hand, in
this last battle, as in others no less prosperous, hath conducted
and sustained me.
Humphrey ! did thy heart wax faint within thee thro want
of confidence in our sole Dehverer ?
HUMPHREY.
Truly I have no such plea.
BLAKE.
It were none ; it were an aggravation.
HUMPHREY.
I confess I am quite unable to offer any adequate defence
for my backwardness, my misconduct. Oh ! could the hour
return, the battle rage again. How many things are worse
than death ! how few things better ! I am twelve years
younger than you are, brother, and want your experience.
BLAKE.
Is that your only want ? Deplorable is it to know, as now
I know, that you will never have it, and that you will have
a country which you can never serve. ^
HUMPHREY.
Deplorable it is indeed. God help me !
12 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
BLAKE.
Worse evil soon may follow ; worse to me, remembering thy
cliildhoocl. Mercifnl Tatlier ! after all the blood that hath
been shed this day, must I devote a brother's ?
HUMPHREY.
Eobert ! always compassionate, always kind and generous !
do not inflict on yourself so lasting a calamity, so unavaihng
a regret !
listen ! . . not to me . . but listen. I hear under your bow
the sound of oars. I hear them drawn into boats : verily do I
believe that several of the captains are come to intercede for
me, as they said they would do.
BLAKE.
Intercession is vain. Honorable men shall judge you. A
man to be honorable must be strictly just, at the least. Will
brave men spare you ? It lies with them. Whatever be their
sentence, my duty is (God give me strength !) to execute it.
Gentlemen ! who sent for you ? [OJicers come aboard.
SE>'IOR OFFICEB.
General ! we, the captains of your fleet, come before you
upon the most painful of duties.
BLAKE (to himself).
1 said so : his doom is sealed. {To Senior Officer.) Speak,
sir ! speak out, I say. A man who hath fought so bravely as
you have fought to-day ought never to hesitate and falter.
SENIOR OFFICER.
General ! we grieve to say that Captain Humphrey Blake,
commanding a frigate in the service of the Commonwealth, is
accused of remissness in his duty.
BLAKE.
I know it. Where is the accuser ? What ! no answer from
any of you ? Then I am he. Captain Humpluey Blake is
here impleaded of neglecting to perform his uttermost in the
seizure or destruction of the enemy's galloons. Is the crime . .
write it, write it down . . no need to speak it here . . capital ?
Nedio-ence ? no worse ? but worse can there be ?
LOUIS PHILIPPE AND M. GUIZOT. 13
SENIOR OFFICER.
We would liumbly represent , .•
BLAKE.
Representations, if made at all, must be made elsewhere.
He goes forthwith to England. Eeturn each of you to his
vessel. Delinquency, grave delinquency, there hath been, of
what nature and to what extent, you must decide. Take him
away. {Alone.) Just God ! am I the guilty man, that I
should drink to the very dregs such a cup of bitterness ?
Forgive, forgive, O Lord ! the sinful cry of thy servant !
Thy will be done ! Thou hast shown thy power tliis day,
Lord ! now show, and make me worthy of, thy mercy !
Various and arduous as were Blake's duties, sucli on all occasions
'were his circumspection and discretion, that no fault could be detected
or invented in him. Ilis victories were won against all calculation
but his own. Hecollecting, however late, his services ; recollecting
that in private life, in political, in military, his purity was ever the
same ; England will place Eobert Blake the foremost and the hishest
of her defenders. He was the archetype of her Nelsons, CoUiiig-
woods, and Pellews. Of all the men that ever bore a sword, none
was w'orthier of that awful trust.
LOUIS PHILIPPE AND M. GUIZOT.
LOUIS PHILIPPE.
Congratulate me, M. Guizot, on the complete success of
our enterprise in Spain. The Infanta is oui"s.
Grave as you ordinarily are, M. Guizot, it appears to me
that you are graver than usual. A formal bow from you is
surely but little on so grand an acquisition. Perhaps I ought
to have congratulated you, instead of asking for your con-
gratulations, since it was mainly by your dexterity that the
business, in despite of impediments, was accomplished.
GUIZOT.
Sire ! it is much, very much indeed, to have merited your
Majesty's approbation.
LOUIS PHILIPPE.
"Well then, if such are your sentiments, and you always
14 THE LAST PRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
have acted so tliat I must believe they are, why this reticence?
why this solemnity of countenance and gravity of manner?
Diplomatists have always something in reserve, even from
their best friends; what is that, may I venture to inquire,
which you have now, ever since your enterance, been holding
back from yours ?
GUIZOT.
Sire, there is nothing I can hold back at present.
LOUIS PHILIPPE.
You have rendered an inestimable service to my family ; and
the money you have disbursed among the needy ministers and
military gamesters in Spain, secured the marriage of my son,
and secures their adherence to my ulterior interests.
GUIZOT.
The most high-minded of nations, as Spain was two
centuries ago, is become the most mercenary. I paid the
gentlemen for their performance with no greater reluctance
than I would have paid dustmen or nightmen. But, denying
to the English minister M'hat I did deny, in regard to the
marriage of the Duke and the Infanta, 1 prevaricated most
grossly.
LOUIS PHILIPPE,
No, no, my dear M. Gaizot, not most grossly; quite the
contrary; say rather, if the awkward word, prevaricate, will
obtrude itself, say rather, most adroitly, most diplomatically.
GUIZOT.
Tor such an action in private life, were it possible I could
have committed it, I should be utterly and forever excluded
from society.
LOUIS PHILIPPE.
Excluded from society ? what society ? the society of myself,
of my queen, of my sons, of my dignitaries m church and
state ?
GUIZOT.
I did not mention the dignitaries, or allude to them, or
think of tliem, but the society of the manly, the disinterested,
the lover of straitforwardness and truth.
LOUIS PHILIPPE.
Be tranquil, be considerate ; reflect a little. Ministers under
arbitrary monarchs may seldom stand quite upright, but they
LOUIS PHILIPPE AND M. GTJIZOT. ]5
are subject to no influences which make them sliuffle, as those
under constitutional kings must do occasionally.* England
contains a greater number of honest men than all the
continents put together. Count me now, if you can, tliree
honest prime ministers in her records of three hundred years.
Honesty in Trance puts on a demisaison quite early, but soon
finds it too cold for wear : Neckar was a strictly virtuous man,
clear-sighted and industrious : Roland was the purest and
completest type of virtue, not in France only, but in the
universe ; his wife, who assisted him in his arduous labours, is
justly a partaker of his glory. You yourself have not cleaner
hands nor sounder judgment, nor purer style than hers. And
what was the fate of all three ? to be depreciated and derided.
Now let us go back to the old monarchy. Richelieu and
Mazarine could do their business without the necessity of
corrupting. He who can hang, imprison, and torture, is above
the baseness of a canvas, purse in hand. Richelieu and
Mazarine, when Trance contained less than half her present
population, expended each on his own account above twenty
millions of francs, and left to his heirs about as much.
Despotic kings find men already corrupted, constitutional
must endure the trouble and the obloquy of making them so.
* According to the general run of opinions expres.^ed the other night
in the House of Commons, on the disgraceful dockyard affair, the parties
implicated have been guilty of " indisci-etion."
It may be useful therefor to the public to understand what it is that
passes for mere indiscretion, according to the judgement of that very
honorable body, the Lower House of Parliament.
The evidence given before the Committee on Dockyard Appointments,
on the very first day of its sitting, will throw some light on this subject.
Mr. Stafford is proved to have denied the existence of a letter which he
is proved to have talked about, and which is proved to have been in the
hands of one of the parties in the roora while he, Mr. Stafford, was dis-
cussing the contents of it. Mr. Stafford is also proved to have cancelled a
Minute of the Board of Admiralty, without the consent of the Board.
And he is also p'-oved to have asserted that he had the authority of the
Board to do so.
These are among Mr. Stafford's "indiscretions."
The Duke of Northumberland is proved to have asserted that he never
had heard of or seen a letter which is proved to have been put into his own
hands, and the purport of it explained to him. This is, we suppose, only
a ducal "indiscretion."
Nee mens hie sermo est, but every word is coi^ied from the most popular
of our writers, remarkable for wit, wisdom, temper, and impartiality'.
16 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Never, my good M. Guizotj was the proverb '^ straining at
gnats and swallowing of camels " so well exemplified. Unless
you had reverted to my own family affairs, I should abstain
from reminding you about Piscatory and K-ougeaux at Athens.
By whose advice was it that the adventurer Rougeaux was
furnisht with dollars to enlist electors, and to purchase
pistols, ready against their adversaries ? By whose advice did
Otho forswear the constitution he had solemnly sworn to ?
At whose instigation was Kalergis banisht, Church divested
of his command, and Lyons received at court contemptuously?
GUIZOT.
By your Majesty's.
LOUIS PHILIPPE.
Sir, kings do not advise, do not instigate ; they command.
GUIZOT.
Your IMajesty is (if I offend not likewise in this expression)
the most able and successful of administrators.
LOUIS PHILIPPE.
And something of the logician. Eeally I see no better
reason for your uneasiness about the share you have taken in
the matrimonial arrangements at Madrid, than about those
equally dehcate at Monte- Yideo. The English were no less
dexterously circumvented by you there than here.
GUIZOT.
I never forfeited my word in that quarter.
LOUIS PHILIPPE.
If we dude, delude, deceive, over-reach (T am ready to take
any one of these synonomes from your book), what matters,
when done, whether it be oral or written ? Breach of
p-onme is an expression at all times in general use ; often
inconsiderately. In fact on these occasions we kings do not
break our promises ; we only cut adroitly the corks we are to
swim upon, and tie them loosely ; neglecting which process, we
should never keep our heads above water and strike out.
You are going to England : go by all means. There you will
see the most honorable men at the helm of government, who
LOUIS PHILIPPE AND M. GUIZOT. 17
never tlioiiglit their worn words wortli keeping any more than
their worn cloaths. I refer to no one party ; all are alike in
this. Men who would scorn to cheat to the amount of a
livre at the whist-table, cheat to the amount of millions at the
Speaker's.
GUIZOT.
Is there never an account to be rendered ?
LOUIS PHILIPPE.
Many believe there is ; all act as if there is none.
GUIZOT.
Surely a sense of glory must actuate some among a people
so thouglitful, so far-sighted, so desirous of self-esteem, of
cordial acceptance at home and abroad, of reputation in hfe
and after.
LOUIS PHILIPPE.
Holy Scripture hath said we are worms; there can be no
offence in classing them. Historians, like those in the rich
and unctuous soil of churchyards, feed upon the dead ;
courtiers and ministers of state, in England as elsewhere, are
tape-worms that feed within live bodies, and are too slender
and slippery (to say no worse of them) for your fingers to
take hold of ; one species draws its sustenance from corruption
in the grave, another from corruption on this side of it. Phi-
losopher, as I was educated to be, I begin to lean toward the
priesthood, and to think their cookery of us the more palatable.
We, like tunnies, are kept best under salt and oil ; we are
pickled at top and bottom, at birth and death, and are con-
signed to the wliolesale dealer, residing at Eome. We must
all bend a little for the benefit of our families and our country.
Was not I myself exposed to the censure of the inconsiderate
on the Duke of Bourbon's death ? I did not hang him ; I did
not hire another to do it. The mistress he found in the streets
of Brighton came into the possession of much wealth and rich
jewelry at his decease. What portion of them she presented to
me and to the queen, you know pretty well, and the gratitude
we showed toward her, inviting her to a family diimer-party,
and seating her at table by the side of royalty. If we can do
these things for Erance and the children of JFrance, what may
not those do who have only the skirts of our dignity to sup-
port ? And what, M. Guizot, was your fault, your oversight ?
c
18 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
GUIZOT.
Neither, sire, neitlier ; but crime, great crime : worse than
simple falsehood; there was a falsehood covered over by a
fraud, and again a fraud by a falsehood, and borne with a
stealthy step into the church.
LOUIS PHILIPPE,
The church gave its blessing ; so let that pass. Take my
word for it, M. Guizot, if you went to liondon this afternoon,
you would be visited tomorrow-morning by the identical
honest men, ministers of state and subordinates, whose
censure you apprehend. I know them perfectly. They
would be courteous and conciliating to you, and ashamed and
afraid of showing to the people that they ever had been duped
and over-reached. Beside, they know, as well as you and I,
that they dare not go to war with me whatever I do ; for I
have six or seven well-disciplined soldiers for their one
undisciplined : I can have two experienced gunners afloat in a
fortnight against their one in a month, scattered as their navy
is, where it can act to no purpose ; for the constitution of
Portugal is worm-eaten already, and two inert bodies, with
cumbrous and costly crowns, weigh heavily and intolerably on
the people. England is titularly a kingdom : some have gone
so far in their folly or their adulation as to call it a monarchy.
The main element is properly the opposite of this. I should
rather have said was than is ; for the Eeform-bill was only a
lasso by which the broken caught tlie unbroken. Instead of
close boroughs, England has now close families, which elect,
not indeed to the parliament, but to the cabinet. She has
neither a democracy nor an aristocracy ; she is subject to an
oligarchy. This oligarchy, which knows little else, knows
perfectly well tlie pacific and economical spirit of the people ;
so that, after providing amply for their families by filling all
military and colonial offices with them, they disband all that is
efficient. They let the corn rot in the ground, content if it
serve as a prop to honeysuckles. Knowing tlie wretched
state into which both their army and navy had fallen, and the
disinclination and incompetency of the oligarchy to correct
any abuses, or to supply any deficiencies in either, it was a
favorite scheme with M. Thiers to strike somewhere, any-
where, an irritating blow against them. He chose the South
Sea. The English spirit would rise against the injustice and
LOUIS PHILIPPE AND M. GUIZOT. 19
indignity ; bnt tlic manufacturers and tradespeople in general
would exclaim against a war for a matter so trifling and
remote.
GUIZOT.
England never was so rich and prosperous as at present.
LOUIS PHIUPPE.
True : nor was Tyre the hour before she was in ruins,
England at no time was so little inclined and so little prepared
for war. With difficulty can she keep Ireland in subjection.
GUIZOT.
She has no such wish. Jesuits and other incendiaries keep
up ancient animosities, religion against religion, race against
race. Hereditary bondmen ! such is the key-note ! aye indeed,
and not only the key-note, but the burden of the song. These
hereditary bondmen enjoy exemption from impositions which
weigh heavily on the other subjects of the empire. What they
sutler in reality is from the rapacity and exactions of landlords
and middlemen. No people is taxt so lightly ; no people
leans so heavily on its neighbour. Assistance is given
unreluctantly, and received ungratefully.
LOUIS PHILIPPE.
They who fare best are often the most insurrectionary and
rebelhous. High feed and none produce the same effect.
Ireland sends a pressing invitation to invaders, not particular
about precedency.
GUIZOT.
It would be imprudent to trust so fickle a people, and
ungenerous. . . .
LOUIS PHILIPPE.
Generosity is to be found in no index to any work on polity :
it is only to be lookt for in the last pages of a novel.
GUtZOT.
The English showed it largely in tlieir last campaign.
LOUIS PHILIPPE.
The English have virtue ; we have honor.
c2
20 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
GUIZOT.
Sire, I am unable to perceive tlie difference, excepting that
honour is only a part, or rather a particle of virtue.
LOUIS PHILIPPE.
There are questions which it is better to investigate but
superficially. We know sufficiently that the beautiful colours
on moths and butterflies are feathers : we need not pluck
them ; if we do, we are in danger of annihilating the insect's
vitality. These feathers are not only its ornament, but its
strength : his honour is to a Erenchman what his hair was to
Sampson.
GUIZOT.
But Sampson did not live to be quite bald, Tahiti, and other
ilands in the Pacific, had been civihsed by the English, who
constantly protected them.
LOUIS PHILIPPE.
But never having killed or drilled the population, never
having imposed tax or tribute, protection is illegitimate.
GUIZOT.
Sire, the invasion and seizure of that land is both unjust and
useless.
LOUIS PHILIPPE.
Not useless, if it had led to war against an enemy which
was never so ill prepared.
GUIZOT.
But your Majesty has more than once declared to me your
determination to remain at peace with all neighbouring states,
and especially with England : you have protested it, both in
person and by letter to Queen Victoria.
LOUIS PHILIPPE.
The Erench army is restless for action, the Erench people
for changes. It is against changes, against innovations and
reforms, that I am resolute. AVar is mischievous, war is
dangerous, and ])ossibly disastrous, but carries with it no
disaster which may overturn my dynasty, as might eventually
be apprehended from reform. You and many others have
often praised my foresight. I am circumspect ; , I am mode-
LOUIS PHILIPPE AND M. GUIZOT. 21
rate ; but the wants of the soldiery and of the people must be
listened to, must be supplied. I march not against the
elements ; I strike not at the iron gauntlet of Winter ; but I
point toward sunny seas and coral grottoes and umbrageous
arbours, where every frenchman may domesticate with his
Calypso. It may be long, it may be a century, before we
conquer the kingdom of Morocco : Spain is not yet ours
completely.
GUIZOT.
Sire, it appears to me that,witlun half that period, "France may-
again be called upon to defend the remainder of her territory.
Russia is mistress of Sweden, of Norway, of Germany, of
Denmark. She moves at will the armies of all these nations.
AU united could not conquer united France. And France
will be united under a mild government and moderate taxes,
feeling the benefits of commerce, and assured that speculation
is not always a mirage. The taxes, I think, might be dimi-
nisht a fifth. At least a third of the civil functionaries
might go into retirement, and two-thirds of the army.
LOUIS PHILIPPE.
I believe so. But the Parisians must be dazzled by glory
to divert their attention from city-fed chimeras ; and the sol-
diery must be attracted by those treasures which lie before
them on the surface, and within their grasp. Tradesmen are
not always such good politicians as you are, M. Guizot, The
Enghsli minister of the colonies will, however, keep you in
countenance where you fear the accusation of duplicity. He
has promised to the Cape and to Australia a constitution
founded on the representative system. Instead of the consti-
tution he sent over to the Cajje a cargo of convicts, and
he demands in Australia fourfold as much for land as its value
is in America. If America, seventy-five years ago, threw oft'
allegiance to a government which oppressed her slightly, and
with little insult, what may be expected from the indignation
of these colonists bound by no ties of consanguinity or of
duty ? Difl^ereuces, and more than dift'erences, will spring up
and accumulate between the governors and the governed;
meanwhile tlie barbarous natives will make forays, carrying off
the arms entrusted to them, and the cattle of all parties.
There are several regiments of Caffres and Fingoes, enow to
excite and to discipline all the tribes for a thousand miles
22 THE LAST PUUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
round. Australia is remoter. She may^ however^ be more
easily kept under subjection, and continue to support procon-
sulsliips and qutestorships, governors and bishops, under the
patronage of the ohgarchy.
GUIZOT.
Tliey conquered Algiers for us : they will not conquer, but
they will devastate the country, and alienate the affections of
their colonists. They may not be oiu's, perhaps ; they cer-
tainly will not be England's. The nation ere long will refuse
to supply so vast an expenditure as they demand. It is better
that England should suffer by her own folly than by ours.
The English I should not fear singly; but there is really
cause for apprehension that she may be aided by another great
naval power, which, by necessity, must increase. We have
taken possession of the Marquesas. America, mistress of
Oregon and California, heiress of India and China, will permit
no such obstruction. She has found but little inconvenience
in the English possessing Canada ; she would never let the
Erench recover it. Interest, on many accounts, prompts her
to an alliance with England. After her war for independence,
a pamphlet was written by Governor Pownall recommending a
confederacy of America, England, Sweden, Norway, and Den-
mark. Happily for us and for Russia it was much too wise to
be adopted, even if the writer had been a member of parliament
and of the aristocracy. I would lay any wager that no English
minister, whig or tory, possesses a copy. This I know ; the
representations of Raffles, incomparably the best and most
practical of their later politicians, were found unopened on the
accession of the present administration. England is rich ; she
can afford such negUgence*
LOUIS PHILIPPE.
She grasps much, but always lets drop again what is best
worth holding. She took possession of Cattaro; and Lord
Castlereagh, the most illiterate and ignorant minister, excepting
Earrinelli, that ever ruled an European nation, delivered it up,
in 1814, to the Austrians. To England it would have been
worth greatly more than the Seven lies and Gibraltar; for
behind and on every side of it are inexhaustible forests of
ancient oaks, and other timber-trees, in a sufficiency to keep up
her navy at a moderate expenditure for many centm-ies. Why
LOUIS PHILIPPE AND M. GUIZOT. 23
repeat it ? I have already said tliey are inexhaustible. She
has lost not only the most commodious and the most defenci-
ble harbour in Europe, but incalculable advantages of trade,
with Bosnia, Servia, and all the populations on the Save,
Drave, and Danube. Her neglect or ignorance of this advan-
tage has made the sluggish Austria both active and commer-
cial, and has raised the hovels of Trieste over the palaces of
Venice and Vienna. If ever France has another war with her
(and with what neighbouring state can France continue much
longer at peace ?) our first and most important conquest is
Cattaro. It ensures to us Turkey ; it replenishes the arsenal
of Toulon ; it keeps in agitation Corfu, Zante, Cephalonia,
Greece. I would rather have Cattaro than the boundary of
the lihine.
GUIZOT.
We want commerce more than territory.
LOUIS PHILIPPE.
Therefor we want Cattaro more than Luxembourg. The
Parisians, in one quarter or otlier, must be dazzled by glory to
divert them from chimeras.
GUIZOT.
That glory which rests on blood is insecure.
L0UI3 PHILIPPE.
Our people have never shown a predilection for security, and
never are so uneasy as when they are sitting still.
GUIZOT.
Eather would I see them with Belial than with Moloch ;
but surely there is a path between the two temples.
LOUIS PHILIPPE.
How different are you from M. Thiers !
GUIZOT.
Often hath your Majesty been graciously pleased to com-
mend me, but never to praise me so highly as now.
LOUIS PHILIPPE.
Thiers is in the condition of a man who struts about in a
24 THE LAST FUUIT OPP AN OLD TREE,
new suit of clothes, yet forgets to change his shirt or wash his
hands. Yet, so fond are the Enghsh of any continental clever-
ness, that, after all his falsehoods and malignity and aims at
war against them, were he to land at Dover, a dozen coronets
would be ready on the beach to catch him up. You scorn
him with much civility. Indeed he is a knave_, to say the
least, and so are all men in some degree, as soon as they enter
the cabinet. No one walks quite upright when he mounts an
eminence. He meets with obstacles he must bend to ere he
removes them.
M. Thiers has made a fine fortune; not entirely by his
newspaper or liis history ; a little perhaps by his portfolio.
Some acquire more by sweeping up the straw and litter than
others by threshing out the grain. Opposition in politics did
not alienate one of you from the other, for it was only occa-
sionally that you were opposite : but similarity of pursuits,
which bring other hunters into fellowship, keep asunder the
hunters in the fields of literature.
GUIZOT.
Sire, nobody ever heard me speak disrespectfully of
M. Thiers as a hterary man.
LOUIS PmLIPPE.
You shall hear me then, who must be dispassionate in that
quarter. I find in him no accuracy of research, no depth of
reflection, no energy of expression, no grace of style : I do find
much direct falsehood, and more indirect misrepresentation.
He might, and certainly did, consult the best authorities on
our battles, especially the naval. Instead of citing or follow-
ing them, he hes up to the Moniteur, or, as Voltaire would
have said, the Lives of the Saints ! Never repeat this obser-
vation of mine to M. de Chateaubriand or to M. de Montalem-
bert, altho the former would smile, remembering his ofter to
a bookseller of a work against, when the bookseller told liim
his customers were bemnnin"" to look Eomeward, and entreated
mm to write for ; he did so, and the Genius of Christianity/
slipt five thousand francs into his pocket.
At present we will not renew our discourse on peace and
war : there is another object close before us, centralization.
This was equally the aim of Louis the I'ourteenth and of
Napoleon. I begin to find a reminiscence of its importance
LOUIS PHILIPPE AND M. GUIZOT. 25
in my own person. Of what service are the best teeth, if the
lower and iip])er do not act together and closely ? Mine, as
you see, are decentrahzed, disoi'ganized, demoralized, insubor-
dinate, and insurgent. They, like my people, want a little of
gold wire to unite, and a little of the same metal to stop them.
Thirty years of peace ought to have rendered the nation rich
and prosperous.
GUIZOT.
And so indeed it might have done, sire, had the army been
duuinished.
LOUIS PHILIPPE.
This Avould have been imprudent. I have always had enemies
on the watch against me, both within and without.
GUIZOT.
Any aggression would have raised the country, and the
invader would have fled as before the armies of Pichegru and
Dumourier, in which your Majesty bore so conspicuous a part.
LOUIS PHILIPPE.
The Ehine would have been French again ; but many of my
adherents had probably been detacht from me.
GUIZOT.
More, and honester, and firmer, had been conciliated.
LOUIS PHILIPPE.
I can ill afford to be a conqueror of exhausted countries.
Money is requisite at home. I rule by the judicious distribu-
tion of innumerable offices. Every family in Prance has a near
relative in one or other of them ; so that every family has an
interest in the continuance of my government.
GUIZOT.
These are quiet : the more restless are the more dangerous.
The man in want will seize by the throat the man who has
plenty. One w^olf tears in pieces many sheep ; and the
idler who wants a dinner will rush upon the idler who sleeps
after it. Already there are indications of discontent. Piles of
offices attract the notice of the starving. Our countrymen are
always ready to warm their hands at a conflagration, tho many
are thiaist too forward and perish. Example and experience are
26 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
without weight to them. jDivision of property^ useful to
military despotism which feeds upon full-grown youth, bound
and carted off to battle, as calves to market, hath in the third
generation so broken up agriculture that farmers are paupers.
Clerks look down on them ; they scowl at clerks; I dread the
unequal conflict of the pen and mattock.
LOUIS PHILIPPE.
I am able to keep down the insurgent and refractory.
GUIZOT.
Sire, you may keep the people down for a while ; but upon
a blown bladder there is no firm footing.
LOUIS PHILIPPE.
Surely you are somewhat nervous tliis morning, ]\I. Guizot.
GUIZOT.
Perhaps in the apprehension of being more so, before long.
What exhausts the wealth, may exhaust the patience of a
people.
LOUIS PHILIPPE.
This is an observation in the form of advice ; and such
advice, M. Guizot, I did not at the moment ask of you. I
would by no means occupy more of your valuable time at
present.
GUIZOT (alone).
Eoyally spoken ! legitimate Bourbon ! Will France always
respect such royalty, such legitimacy ? Craft is insufficient :
he must either be more cruel or more economical. With haK
his wisdom he might rule more wisely. He never looks aside
from the Tuileries, or beyond his family. There is another
and a wider circle : it has blood and flames for its boundary,
and that boundary is uhdiscernably and incalculably far off.
Philippe carries in his hand the fruit of contention : another,
yet bitterer, is about to drop from the stem ; he will find it of
mortal taste. To-day he is at the Tuileries : to-morrow may
decide whether he will be here the day after.
M. THIERS AND M. LAMAETINE. 27
M. THIERS AND M. LAMAETINE.
THIERS.
You look somewhat sliy at me^ M. Lamartine^ now you are
in power, and I am out.
LAMARTINK.
M. Thiers ! we neither of us ever were out of power since
we came to years of discretion, if indeed the poet and the
pubHc man may be said at any time of their lives to have
come to them : for in poetry, imagination leads us astray ; in
politics, ambition.
THIERS.
I never was ambitious.
LAMAHTINE.
I always was. The love of fame, in other words, of appro-
bation, ch'ew me forward not unwillingly. Eeflection comes
down to us in the deep recesses where imagination rests, and
higher and more substantial forms rise around us and come
nearer. The mind, after wandering in distant and in unknown
regions, returns home at last and reposes on the bosom of our
country. Her agitations render her only the more inviting
and the dearer to us. We love her in her tranquiUity, we
adore her in her pangs. I do not rejoice, nor do I repent,
that the voice of the people has called me to the station I
now hold.
THIERS.
It is an elevated and a glorious, but it is also an uncertain
and a dangerous one ; take my word for it.
LAMARTINE.
Pardon my frankness : I would rather take your word than
your example.
THIERS.
My example in what ?
LAMARTINE.
May 1 without offence to you speak my mind at large ?
THIERS.
Speak it unreservedly, as becomes a republican in all his
freshness.
28 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
LAMARTINE.
First tlien^ I should be sorry to grow rich among the
spoliations of my country. Secondly, I scorn to countenance
the passion of the vulgar, and more especially in their mad-
ness for war. •
THIERS.
We must put method into this madness. Be sure, M.
Lamartine, that no earthly power can withhold for a twelve-
month an agitated army of three hundred thousand men,
smarting under past disgraces ! We must, whether we will or
no, send forty thousand from Algiers to Trieste, and seventy
thousand from our southern departments to the Gulphs of
Genoa and Spezzia. I am a moderate man : I would leave
the duchy of Austria to its ancient duke ; Bohemia to whom-
soever the nation may elect as king. Hungary was already
free and independent from the moment that Mettcrnich in
the phrenzy of his dotage consented to accept the intervention
of liussia. She rises both against the hungry and wolfish
pack of Russia, and the somnolent and swinish herd that rubs
her into intolerable soreness from overgorged Yienna. What-
soever was once Poland must be Poland again. She must
extend from the Baltic to the Black Sea ; from Dantzic to
Odessa, and inclusive. Anything short of this will only cause
fresh struggles. Men can never be quiet in the cramp : they
will cry out and kick until the paroxysm is over.
LAMARTINE.
I am afraid you are too precipitate.
THIERS.
There are many good men who are afraid of hearing, or
even of thinking, the truth. They may lie in a ditch with
their hats over their faces, nevertheless the light will come in
upon them somewhere.
LAMARTINE.
Probably the king of Sardinia will demand our aid against
Austria, and insist on the evacuation of Modena and Parma :
we may then, with policy and justice, interfere. Why do you
smile ?
THIERS.
I was thinking at the moment that some laurels grow best
on loose soil, M. Lamartine, but neither that laurel which
M. THIERS AND M. LAMARTINE, 29
crowns the warrior, nor that oak Avhich crowns the saviour of
a citizen. It is our duty not to wait for danger, but to meet
it, not to parley with insolent and stupid despots, but to bind
them hand and foot with their own indigenous plants.
LAMAKTINE.
And yet, M. Thiers, you are a royalist !
THIERS.
Is any man a royalist when he knows he can be greater ?
I had other means of serving my country or (let me speak it
frankly) myself. Kings have worn down their high-heeled
shoes by their incessant strut and swagger. People would
only have laughed at them if they had merely told common
lies and practised only ordinary deceptions. But when the
slight-of-hand emptied every man's pocket, tlie whole crowd
became vociferous; up flew the benches, and the conjuror took
to his heels. At first we were tickled, at last we were
triturated.
LAMARTINE.
Not quite into dust, nor into mud, but only into a state, I
trust, in which, with some new combinations, we may attain
greater solidity and consistency. Democracy is always tlie
work of kings. Ashes, which in themselves are sterile,
fertilize the land they are cast on.
THIERS.
You remind me of what happened in England at the com-
mencement of our first revolution. The beautiful Duchess de
Pienne was solicited too amorously by the Prince of Wales.
*' Sir," replied she, " it is princes like you tvlio maJce demo-
crats." He never forgave her : indeed he never pardoned any
offence, especially when it came from the intelligent and the
virtuous.
LAMARTINE.
Having lived all his life among cheats and swindlers, he
would probably have received with courtesy and amity Louis
Philippe; and having broken his word until there was not
enough of it to be broken again, and having deceived his
friends until there was no friend to deceive, perhaps he would
have naturalized the good Protestant Guizot, and have given
him a seat in the cabinet. At the present day there is a
30 THE LAST FKUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Guizot administration in England. The same reckless ex-
penditure, the same deafness to the popular reclamations, the
same stupid, self-sufficient, subservient, and secure, majority
in parliament. It is well for England that in the most
vulnerable and unquiet part of her dominions there is a chief
magistrate of consummate wisdom, temperate and firm,
energetic and humane. Such a functionary is sadly wanted
to preside over the counsels of Great Britain.
THIERS.
He is best where he is. The English are so accustomed to
a shuffling trot that they would grow impatient at a steddy
amble. They think the roadster must be wanting in spirit
and action, unless they see plenty of froth upon the bit.
NICHOLAS, FEEDEEICK-WILLIAM, NESSELEODE.
NICHOLAS.
Welcome to Warsaw, my dear brotlier. [Presents Nessel-
RODE.) Count Nesselrode is already known to your Majesty. He
admires your military prowess, your political and theological
knowledge ; and appreciates the latter qualities so higlily, that
he declares you are the greatest professor in Germany.
NESSELRODE {aside).
These emperors see no point in anytliing but the sword !
NICHOLAS {aside).
He bows and murmurs his assent.
FREDERICK-WILLIAM.
I feel infinitely bound by the favorable opinion of your
Imperial Majesty, and can never be indifferent to the approba-
tion of so wise a gentleman as Count Nessek'ode.
NESSELRODE {oside).
If either of them should discover that I intended a witticism,
I am a lost man. Siberia freezes mercury.
NICHOLAS^ FREDEIUCK-WILLIAM^ NESSELRODE. 31
NICHOLAS.
Approach its, Count ! you never were intended for a corner.
Let small princes stand behind our chairs : let every man take
his due position. Grooms may keep their distance ; but the
supports of a throne must be at hand. My brother, you
have acted well and wisely in following my advice and indi-
cations : so long as the German princes played at constitutions
with their people, no durable quiet was to be expected for us.
"We permitted you to call out an army, ostensibly to resist the
menaces of Austria, and you very dutifully disbanded it at our
signal. We thank you.
FREDERICK-WILLIAM.
The thanks of your Imperial Majesty are greatly more than
a sufficient compensation for what the tui'bulent call a loss of
dignity and independence.
NICHOLAS.
Independence ! I am surprised that a crowned head should
echo that hateful word. Independence ! we are all dependent;
but emperors and kings are dependent on God alone. We are
the high and pointed rods that carry down the lightning into
the earth, rendering it innoxious.
FREDERICK-WILLIAM.
I am confident I may rely on your Majesty, in case of any
insurrection or disturbance.
NICHOLAS.
The confidence is not misplaced. At present there is no
such danger. We invited the President of France to suppress
the insurgents at Rome, the Socialists and Repubhcans in
Prance. This has rendered him hateful in his own country
and in Italy, where the priesthood, ever selfish and ungrateful,
calls aloud for the Austrian to supplant him. This insures to
you the Ehenine provinces for several years.
FREDERICK- WILLIAM.
Surely your Majesty would establish my family in the per-
petual possession of them ?
NICHOLAS.
Alas ! my brother ! what on earth is perpetual ? Nesselrode !
you who see further and more clearly than any other man on
earth, tell us what is your opinion.
33 THE LAST PRUIT OPF AN OLD TREE.
NESSELRODE.
Sire, in this matter there are clouds above us which obstruct
the clearest sight. Providence^ no less in its beneficence than
in its wisdom, hides from us the far future. Conjecture can
help us but a little way onward, and we often slip back when
we believe we are near the summit.
FREDERICK-WILLIAM (tO himself).
I like this man; he talks piously and wisely. (ToNesselrode.)
Be pleased, Sir Count, to give us your frank opinion upon a
subject very interesting to me personally. Do you foresee the
time when what was apportioned to my family by the Holy
Alliance, will be taken away from us ?
NESSELRODE.
Sire ! I do not foresee the time.
FREDERICK WILLIAM {tO Mmself).
He will speak diplomatically and ambiguously. {To
Nesselrode.) Do you believe I shall ever be deserted by my
august allies ?
NESSELRODE.
Sire ! there is only one policy in Europe wliich never wavers.
Weak men have succeeded to strong, and yet it has stood the
same. Russia and the polar star are alike immovable.
NICHOLAS.
We owe this to our institutions. We are one : I am ive.
NESSELRODE.
True, sire ! perfectly true. Your senate is merely a wool-
pack to shield the battlement : it is neither worse nor better
than a reformed House of Parliament in England. With your
Majesty^s permission, I shall now attempt to answer the
question proposed to me by his Majesty the King of Prussia.
The members of the Holy Alliance, compact and active in
1815, are now dissolved by death. New dynasties have
arisen in Prance and Belgium. At one time there was
danger that Belgium would be reunited to France. Perhaps
it may be found that she is too weak to stand alone ; perhaps
in the convulsions which are about to agitate Prance,
the most quiescent may lean toward its parent stock, and
NICHOLAS^ FREDERICK-WILLIAM, NESSELRODE. 33
separate from the Power to wliicli it was united by violence.
Alsace, Lorraine, Tranche Comte, and whatever was seized from
the ancient dukes of Burgundy, may coalesce into an united
kingdom. Your Majesty's successors, or (if it should soon
occur) your Majesty, would be well indemnified for your losses
on the Ehine by security in future against French aggression.
Germany might then disband her costly armies; until then
never. The Trench themselves, after their civil war, would
have slaked their thirst for blood, and would retire from a table
where they have often lost their last franc. The next war will
be a general war; it will be more destructive than any that has
ever preceded it, and will be almost equally disastrous to all
the parties engaged in it.
NICHOLAS.
One excepted, Nesselrode.
NESSELRODE.
Many feathers must inevitably drop, even from the eagle's
wings ; and possibly its extremities may be amputated.
NICHOLAS.
No croaking, no croaking, my good Nesseh-ode !
NESSELRODE.
Let us rather pat others on the back, and hold their clothes,
and bring them water, and encourage the iighters, than fight.
We may always keep a few hundred thousands in activity, or
at least in readiness.
FREDERICK-WILLIAM.
Such forces are tremendous.
NICHOLAS.
To the disobedient. Li sixty days I could throw a million
of soldiers on the shores of the Baltic.
FREDERICK-WILLIAM.
Might not England interpose ?
NICHOLAS.
Not in sixty days. ]\Iy naval force is greater than hers; for
my ships are manned, hers are not. She is only the third naval
power at the present day. America can man more ships with
34 THE LAST PRUIT OFF AT^ OLt) TREE.
good English sailors in ten days, tlian England can in forty.
Erance lias in the channel a greater force than England has,
and every man aboard is well disciplined. All I want at pre-
sent is to keep England from intermeddling in my affairs.
This I have done, and this I will do. When she stirs, she
wakes up others first; I shall come in at the proper time to put
down the disturbance and to conciliate all parties. They will
be so tired they will be glad to go to sleep. I take but little
time for repose, and I grant them the precedency.
NICHOLAS AND NESSELEODE.
FIRST CONVERSATION.
NICHOLAS.
This Manchester Examiner is most audacious.
NESSELEODE.
"Willingly would I have spared your Majesty the just indig-
nation it excites : but your imperial commands were peremp-
tory and explicit, that every word spoken against your august
person and legitimate authority should be laid before you.
NICHOLAS.
Of all the speeches I ever red, this from Doctor Yaughan,
before the citizens of Manchester, after what had been
spoken by the insurgent and traitor Messaros, is the most in-
tolerable. Do you really think it will excite Lord Palmerston
to interfere with us about the detention of Kossuth ?
NESSELEODE.
Unhkely; very unlikely. Lord Palmerston loves strong
measures. He has recently been defending two unprovoked
and unnecessary massacres ; one in Ceylon, the other on the
opposite side of the Lidian sea, on boatmen by a sudden
metamorphosis turned into pirates for their head-money.
Since the Reform in Parliament, the ministers are irresponsible.
An impeachment might have been an impediment to the race-
course.
NICHOLAS AND NESSELRODE, 35
NICHOLAS.
I wish they would recall from their embassies such men as
Sir Echvard Lyons and Sir Stratford Cannings and would place
them in the House of Commons, where they could do me no
harm.
NESSELRODE.
It is quite unexampled at the present day that men of such
sagacity and such firmness should be employed by either party,
Whig or Tory. We need care Httle for speeches.
NICHOLAS.
Perhaps so. But sometimes a red-hot word, falling upon
soft tinder and smouldering there awhile, is blown beyond,
and sets towns and palaces on fire. Unaccustomed as I am to
be moved or concerned by the dull thumps of honorable
gentlemen in the English Parliament, and very accustomed to
be amused by the sophisms and trickeries, evolutions and re-
volutions, pliant antics and phanter oaths, of the Erencli
tribune, I perused with astonishment the vigorous oration of
this Doctor Vaughan. I did not imagine that any Englishman,
now living, could exert such a force of eloquence. Who in-
deed could ever have believed that English clergymen are so
(what is called) liberal !
NESSELRODE.
Many of them are extremely free in the dissemination of
their political tenets, until the upper branches of preferment
are within sight, until they snift honey in the rotten tree ; then
they show how cleverly and alertly those heavy haunches can
cKmb, and how sharp are those teeth, and how loud are those
growls, and how ready are those paws to clap the loose muzzle
on anybody under.
NICHOLAS.
We must keep this doctor out of parliament.
NESSELRODE.
Sire, no clergyman has a seat in the House of Commons.
If this doctor had, he would be hooted down : his opponents
would imitate the crowing of cocks, the whistle of steam-
engines, and shout question, question.
NICHOLAS.
No, no, no : the English are decorous.
D 2
36 THE LAST FRUIT OEF AN OLD TREE,
NESSELRODE.
At dinner ; and even after ; excepting that they speak to
ladies^ I am told, in the same language, and in the same tone,
as they speak to jockeys. The lords, for the most-part, even
the young and the newly -made, are better.
NICHOLAS.
Never have I seen more perfect gentlemen than among the
English nobiHty.
NESSELRODE.
The Commons, your Majesty will recollect, are reformed.
NICHOLAS.
Among these people, here and there a hint is tlirown out
that I am vulnerable at the extremities of my dominions. . .
Why do not you say something ?
NESSELRODE.
New acquisitions are not soon consoHdated ; nor heteroge-
neous substances, from their inequahties and asperities, firmly
cemented.
NICHOLAS.
No truisms, if you please.
NESSELRODE.
In a diversity of language and religion there is more
repulsion than attraction.
NICHOLAS.
Nesselrode ! Nesselrode ! if you talk philosophy, moral or
physical, I shall think you less practical.
NESSELRODE.
Usually, sire, those who talk it let run to waste what little
they have. Your Majesty has corrected many of my errors
both by precept and example.
NICHOLAS.
Tell me now, in few words, whether you think my empire
assailable.
NESSELRODE.
Sire, your empire, I believe, is larger than the planet which
shines at night above us; I wish I could persuade myself
NICHOLAS AND NESSELRODE. 37
that it is equally out of harm's way. The extremities both of
plants and animals are always the weaker parts ; so is it with
dominions; especially those which are the most extensive.
May I speak plainly my mind, and attempt a fall answer to
your Majesty's inquiry ?
NICHOLAS,
You may : I desire it.
NESSELBODE.
And employ such language as a writer, more properly than a
courtier or a minister, might use ?
NICHOLAS.
Yes, yes ; say on.
NESSELRODE.
Russia, it sometimes has appeared to me, much resembles a
great lobster or crab, strong both in the body and claws ; but
between the body and claws there is a part easy to be severed
and broken. All that can be taken is more than can be held.
NICHOLAS.
ISotliing is more urgent than to strengthen the center.
I have disposed of my brother, liis Prussian Majesty, who
appeared to be imprest by the apprehension that a portion of
his dominions was in jeopardy.
NESSELRODE.
Possibly the scales of Europe are yet to be adjusted.
NICHOLAS.
When the winds blow high they must waver. Against the
danger of contingencies, and in readiness to place my finger
on the edge of one or other, it is my intention to spend
in future a part of my time at Warsaw, that city being so
nearly central in my dominions. Good Nesselrode ! there
should have been a poet near you to celebrate the arching of
your eyebrows. They suddenly dropt down again under the
horizontal line of your Emperor's. Nobody ever started in
my presence ; but I really do think you were upon the verge
of it when I inadvertently said dominions instead of depen-
dencies. Well, well : dependencies are dominions ; and of all
dominions they require the least trouble.
38 THE LAST FRUIT OIT AN OLD TREE;
NESSELRODE,
. Your Majesty has found uo difficulty with any^ excepting the
Circassians*
NICHOLAS.
The Circassians are the Normans of Asia; equally brave,
more generous, more chivalrous. I am no admirer of military
trinkets; but I have been surprised at the beauty of their
chain-armour, the temper of their swords, the richness of hilt,
and the gracefulness of baldric.
NESSELRODE.
It is a pity they are not Christians and subjects of your
Majesty.
NICHOLAS.
If they would become my subjects, I would let them, as
I have let other Mahometans, become Clu*istians at their
leisure. We must brigade them before baptism.
NESSELRODE.
It is singular that this necessity never struck those religious
men who are holding peace conferences in various parts of
Europe.
NICHOLiS.
One of them, I remember, tried to persuade the people of
England that if the bankers in London would negotiate no
loan with me I could carry on no war.
NESSELRODE.
Wonderful! how ignorant are monied men of money matters.
Your Majesty was graciously pleased to listen to my advice
when hostilities seemed inevitable. I was desirous of raising
the largest loan possible, that none should be forthcoming to
the urgency of others. At that very moment your Majesty
had in your coffers more than sufficient for the additional
expenditure of three campaigns. \¥ell may your Majesty
smile at this computation, and at the blindness that suggested
it. Eor never will your Majesty send an army into any part
of Europe which shall not maintain itself there by its own
prowess. Your cavaby will seize all the provisions that are
not stored up within the fortresses ; and in every army those are
to be found who for a few thousand roubles are ready to blow
NICHOLAS AND NESSELRODE. 39
up tlieir munition-waggons. "We know by name almost every
discontented man in Europe.
NICHOLAS.
To obtain this information, my yearly expenses do not
exceed the revenues of half a dozen English bishops. Every
table cVhute on the continent,, you tell me, has one daily guest
sent by me. Ladies in the higher circles have taken my
presents and compliments, part in diamonds and part in
smiles. An emperor's smiles are as valuable to them as their's
are to a cornet of dragoons. Spare nothing in the boudoir
and you will spare much in the field.
NESSELRODE.
Such appears to have been the invariable policy of the
Empress Catharine, now with God.
NICHOLAS.
My father of glorious memory was less observant of it.
He had prejudices and dislikes : he expected to find everybody
a gentleman, even kings and ministers. If they were so, how
could he have hoped to sway them ? and how to turn them
from the strait road into his ?
NESSELRODE.
Your Majesty is far above the influence of antipathies ; but
I have often heard your Majesty express your hatred, and
sometimes your contempt^ of Bonaparte.
NICHOLAS.
I hated him for his insolence, and I despised him alike for
his cowardice and falsehood. Shame is the surest criterion of
humanity. Where one is wanting, the other is. The beasts
never indicate shame in a state of nature : in society some
of them acquire it; Bonaparte not. He neither blushed
at repudiating a modest woman^ nor at supplanting her by
an immodest one. Holding a pistol to the father's ear, he
ordered him to dismount from his carriage ; to deliver up his
ring, his watch, his chain, his seal, his knee-buckle; stripping
off galloon from trouser, and presently trouser too. Caught,
pinioned, sentenced, he fell on both knees in the mud, and
implored this poor creature's intercession to save him from
40 THE LAST mUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
the hangman. He neither blushed at the robbery of a crown
nor at the fabrication of twenty. He was equally ungrateful
in public life and in private. He banished Barras, who
promoted and protected liim : he calumniated the French
admiral, whose fleet for his own safety he detained on the
shores of Egypt, and the EngHsh admiral who defeated him in
Syria with a tenth of liis force. Baffled as he often was, and
at last fatally, and admirably as in many circumstances he
knew how to be a general, never in any did he know how to
be a gentleman. He was fond of displaying the picklock
keys whereby he found entrance into our cabinets, and of
twitching the ears of his accomplices.
NESSELBODE.
Certainly he was less as an emperor than as a soldier.
NICHOLAS.
Great generals may commit grievous and disastrous mistakes,
but never utterly ruinous. Charles V., Gustavus Adolphus,
Peter the Great, Frederic of Prussia, Prince Eugene, Marl-
borough, William, AYellington, kept their winnings, and never
hazarded the last crown-piece. Bonaparte, when he had swept
the tables, cried double or quits.
NESSELRODE.
The wheel of Fortune is apt to make men giddier, the higher
it rises and the quicklier it turns : sometimes it drops them on
a barren rock, and sometimes on a treadmill. The nephew is
more prudent than the uncle.
NICHOLAS.
You were extremely "wise, my dear Nessehode, in suggesting
our idea to the French President, and in persuading him to
acknowledge, in the face of the world, that he had been justly
imprisoned by Louis Phihppe for attempting to subvert the
existing powers. Frenchmen are taught by this declaration
what they may expect for a similar crime against his own
pretensions. We Avill show our impartiality by an equal coun-
tenance and favour toward all parties. In different directions
all are working out the designs of God, and producing unity of
empire " on earth as it is in heaven.'" Until this consum-
mation there can never be universal or indeed any lasting
peace.
NICHOLAS AND NESSELRODE. 41
NESSELRODE.
This lying far remote, I await your Majest/s commands for
what is now before us. Your Majesty was graciously pleased
to express your satisfaction at the manner in which I executed
them in regard to the President of the Trench RepubHck.
NICHOLAS.
Kepublick indeed ! I have ordered it to be a crime in France
to utter the odious name. President forsooth ! we have directed
him hitherto ; let liini now keep his Avay. Our object was to
stifle the spirit of freedom : we tossed the handkerchef to him,
and he found the chloroform. Everything is going on in
Europe exactly as I desire : we must throw notliing in the way
to shake the machine off the rail. It is running at full speed
where no whistle can stop it. Every prince is exasperating his
subjects, and exhausting his treasury in order to keep them
under due controul. What nation on the continent, mine
excepted, can maintain for two years longer its present war
establishment? And without this engine of coercion what
prince can be the master of his people ? England is tranquil
at home ; can she continue so when a forener would place a
tiara over her crown, telling her who shall teach and what shall
be taught? Principally, that where masses are not said for
departed souls, better it would be that there were no souls at
all, since they certainly must be damned. The school which
doubts it is denounced as godless.
NESSELRODE.
England, sire, is indeed tranquil at home ; but that home is
a narrow one, and extends not across the Irish channel. Every
colony is dissatisfied and disturbed. No faith has been kept
with any of them by the secretary now in office. At the Cape
of Good Hope innumerable nations, warlike and well-armed,
have risen up simultaneously against her ; and, to say nothing
of the massacres in Ceylon, your Majesty well knows what
atrocities her Commissioner has long exercised in the Seven
lies. England looks on and applauds, taking a hearty draught
of Lethe at every sound of the scourge.
NICHOLAS.
Nesselrode ! You seem indignant. I see only the cheerful
sparks of a fire at which our dinner is to be drest ; we shall
soon sit down to it; Greece must not call me away until I
42 THE LAST FEUIT OPP AN OLD TREE.
rise from tlie dessert ; I will tlien take my coffee at Constanti-
nople. The crescent ere long will become tlie full harvest-
moon : our reapers have already the sides in their hands.
NESSELRODE.
England may grumble.
NICHOLAS.
So she will. She is as ready now to grumble as she for-
merly was to fight. She grumbles too early ; she fights too
late. Extraordinary men are the English. They raise the
hustings higher than the throne ; and^ to make amends^ being
resolved to build a new palace, they push it under an old
bridge. The Cardinal, in his way to the Abbey, may in part
disrobe at it. Noble vestry-room ! where many habiliments
are changed. Capacious dovecote ! where carrier-pigeons and
fantails aiid croppers, intermingle with the more ordinary, bill
and coo, ruffle and smoothen their feathers, and bend their
versicolor necks to the same corn.
It is amusing to look at a playground of striped tops, hum-
ming, whirring, wavering, now dipping to tliis side, now to
that, whipt from the center to the circumference of the court-
yard, and losing all distinctness of colour by the rapidity of
their motion. We are consistent, Nesselrode. We can sit
quiet and look on. I am fortunate, another may say judicious,
in my choice of instruments. The English care more about
the organ-loft than the organ, in the construction of which
they employ stout bellows, but look little to the keys and stops.
M. Pitt could speak fluently for hours together, and that was
enough : he was permitted to spend a million a-w^eek in expe-
ditions. Canning issued state-papers of sucli elaborate lace-
work that ladies might make shrouds of them for their dead
canaries. Of Castlereagh you know as much as I do. We
blew softly the snuff into his eyes and gave him the boxes
to carry home. He has the glory of being the third founder
of the French monarchy. Pitt sharpened the sword of Bona-
parte and placed the iron crown upon his head. He was the
cooper who drew together and compacted the barrel, by setting
on fire the chips and shavings and putting them in the center.
NESSELRODE.
Small is the expenditure of keeping a stop-watch under the
NICHOLAS AND NESSELRODE. 43
pillow and an alarum at the bedside. I'or less than ten thousand
croAvns yearly, your Majesty knows the movements of every
dangerous demagogue on the continent. To gratify your
Majesty, no less than his Majesty of Naples, the chevaher
Graham, then a minister of England, gave information against
the two brothers Eandiera, by which they were seized and
shot.
NICHOLAS.
I hope we shaU see the chevalier once more in office.
NESSELRODE.
The English are romantic. Some of them were displeased,
not so much at his delivering up tlie young men to inevitable
death, as at opening the letter. They have an expression of
their own; tliey called it ungentlemanhj and continental.
Practical as they are in their oAvn private concerns, they much
undervalue expediency in their political. I am persuaded
that, in general, the betrayal of the Bandieras is more odious
to them than the tortures in the Ionian ilands, which it
behoves us poHtically, when occasion offers, to commiserate.
NICHOLAS.
We will keep our commiseration covered up until it is
requisite to make the fire burn afresh. At present we must
turn our eyes toward Prance, balancing as well as we can the
parties now at variance. Democrats, and even socialists, may
for a time be permitted to move; Orleanists, Legitimists,
Bonapartists, set against one another. I believe I am destined
by Providence to render the Greek Church triumphant. The
pope is hard at work for me : for infallibility and perfidy can
never coexist. He must renew his fealty to the emperor of
the east, the Eoman is extinct.
NESSELRODE.
Yigilant quiescency is uncostly wisdom. Napoleon, the
most imprudent of imprudent rulers, assumed to himself not
only the title, but the faculties and virtues, of Charlemagne.
The present leader of the nation is do less arrogant.
NICHOLAS.
We must sound the brass once more, and bring again out
of our remoter woodlands a stronger swarm. Pumigation has
44 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
not torpified the Prankish ; on tlie contrary, it has rendered it
more restless, noisy, and resolved to sting.
NESSELRODE.
Napoleon^s nephew will assert his hereditary right, not only
to the kingdom of Holland, but to the empire of Prance. On
this event, wliich I think is imminent, what may be your
Majesty^s pleasure ?
NICHOLAS.
One emperor is sufficient for one planet. There is only one
Supreme in heaven, there ought to be only one on earth, in
conformity with this manifestation of the divine will. There-
for I wonder at your asking me what steps I intend to take
in the prevention of an adventurer who should attempt such
an elevation. I forbid it. Are these words sufficient ?
NESSELRODE.
Perfectly, sire. Obstreperous the factions may be, but
must submit. Germany will resume her arms; Hungary,
Poland, Italy, will resent the prostration of their excited
hopes, and the perfidy that called them forward only to dash
them down again. The history of human nature, of Trench
nature itself, shows no parallel.
NICHOLAS.
Much is accomplished ; and what is next to be done ?
NESSELRODE.
Most of it by others, somewhat by ourselves. When the
furnace is heated and the metal is poured forth, we may give
it its form and pressure.
NICHOLAS.
Certainly all nations are exasperated against the French;
equally sure is it that Austria has lost in great measure the
affection of her subjects. There are some things which stick
into the memory with all the tenacity and venom of an adder's
fang. I wished the Hungarians to be made sensible of two
important truths : my power, and their prince's perfidy.
NESSELRODE.
Never was wish more perfectly accomplished. Yet, pardon
NICHOLAS AND NESSELUODE. 45
me, sire, your Majesty wishes to enforce the legitimacy of the
young Austrian usurper. But will Austrians or Hungarians,
or any other people, deem that ruler legitimate who deprives
his cousin of the throne, and who begins and ends with
perfidy and perjury ?
NICHOLAS.
They must believe what I condescend to teach ; they must
believe it as coming from God.
NESSELRODE.
Eeasonable and just : but they may start and stumble at
what is so close before their eyes in the form of a palpable
untruth.
NICHOLAS.
Stumble or start, and we drive a spur into their sides.
Whatever we deem necessary must be said and done : upon
us alone lies the responsibility, and we feel no weight in it.
Holy Church sanctions our acts in peace and war.
NESSELRODE.
Certainly, the head of the Eomish Church, and all its mem-
bers, who ought to possess less power than the Greek, gave
recently praise to God for several hundred massacres, and
several thousand spoliations of property and violations of
women, in Transylvania ; yet . . .
NICHOLAS.
Cease ; be silent : I would have forbidden them, perhaps,
to commit, certainly to praise God for, such enormities. I
doubt whether they are altogether pleasing in his sight.
NESSELRODE.
Such things on such occasions have perpetually been done.
NICHOLAS.
You reconcile me. Transylvania was rising, or likely to
rise. A field, to be fertile, should not only be harrowed, but
pulverized. I was moderate and prudent in abstaining from
the occupation of a country so disaffected as was Transylvania.
NESSELRODE.
The longest strides do not always make the greatest
46 THE LAST FRUIT OPP AN OLD TEEE.
progress in the whole day^s march. Your Majesty was per-
suaded, more by your own singular intuition than by my
advice, to be contented \^'itli gaining a little at a time. A
small purse well tied may hold more than a larger ill secured.
The faults of our neighbours do for us what our own
wisdom might fail in. Where others are hated and despised,
as in Transylvania, love grows around us without our sowing
it, and we shall be called at the due time to gather in the
harvest.
NICHOLAS.
Yes ; yes ; whether we take the field, or sit here in the
cabinet, God fights for us visibly. You look grave, Nessel-
rode ! is it not so ? Speak, and plainly.
NESSELRODE.
She, in my humble opinion, God never fights at all.
NICHOLAS.
Surely he fought for Israel, when he was invoked by prayer.
NESSELRODE.
Sire, I am no theologian; and I fancy I must be a bad
geographer, since I never knew of a nation which was not
Israel when it had a mind to shed blood and to pray. To fight
is an exertion, is violence : the Deity in his omnipotence needs
none. He has devils and men always in readiness for fighting :
and they are the instruments of their own punishment for
their past misdeeds.
NICHOLAS.
The chariots of God are numbered by thousands in the
volumes of the Psalmist.
NESSELRODE.
No psalmist, or engineer, or commissary, or arithmetician,
could enumerate the beasts that are harnessed to them, or the
fiends that urge them on.
NICHOLAS.
Nesselrode ! you grow more and more serious.
NESSELRODE.
Age, sire, even without wisdom, makes men serious,
whether they are inclined or not. I could hardly have been
NICHOLAS AND NESSELEODE. 47
SO long conversant in the affairs of mankind (all which in all
quarters your Majesty superintends and directs) without much
cause for seriousness.
NICHOLAS.
I feel the consciousness of supreme power^ but I also feel
the necessity of subordinate help.
NESSELRODE.
Your Majesty is the first monarch, since the earlier Csesars
of imperial Rome, who could controll, directly or indirectly,
every country in our hemisphere^ and thereby in both.
NICHOLAS.
There are some who do not see this.
NESSELRODE.
There were some, and they indeed the most acute and
politic of mankind, who could not see the power of the
Macedonian king until he showed his full hightli upon the
towers of Cherona3a. There are some at this moment in
England who disregard the admonitions of the most wary and
experienced general of modern times, and listen in preference
to babblers holding forth on economy and peace from slippery
sacks of cotton and wool.
NICHOLAS.
Hush ! hush ! these are our men ; what should we do
without them ? A single one of them in the parliament or
townhall is worth to me a regiment of cuirassiers. These are
the true bullets with conical heads wliich carry far and sure.
Hush ! hush !
NESSELRODE.
They do not hear us : they do not hear Wellington : they
would not hear Nelson were he living.
NICHOLAS.
No other man that ever lived, having the same power in
his hands, would have endured with the same equanimity as
Wellington the indignities he suffered in Portugal; superseded
in the hour of victory by two generals, one upon another, like
marsh frogs ; people of no experience, no ability. He might
have become king of Portugal by compromise, and have added
Gallicia and Biscay.
48 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
NESSELBODE.
The English^ out of parliament, are delicate and fastidious.
He would have thought it dislionorable to profit by the in-
dignation of his army in the field, and of liis countrymen at
home. Certainty that Bonaparte wordd attempt to violate any
engagement with him, might never enter into the computation ;
for Bonaparte could less easily drive him again out of Portugal
than lie could drive the usurper out of Spain. We ourselves
should have assisted him actively ; so would the Americans ;
for every naval power would be prompt at diminishing the pre-
ponderance of the English. Practicability was here with
Wellhigtou : but, endowed with a keener and a longer foresight
than any of his contemporaries, he held in prospective the
glory that awaited him, and felt conscious that to be the
greatest man in England is somewhat more than to be the
greatest in Portugal. He is universally called the duke;
to the extinction or absorption of that dignity over all the
sui'face of the earth : in Portugal he could only be called king
of Portugal.
NICHOLAS.
Eaith ! that is little : it was not overmuch even before the
last accession. I admire his judgment and moderation. The
English are abstinent : they rein in their horses where the
Erench make them fret and curvett. It displeases me to
think it possible that a subject should ever become a sovran.
We were angry with the Duke of Sudermania for raising a
Erenchman to that dignity in Sweden, although we were willing
that Gustavus, for offences and affronts to our family, should
be chastised, and even expelled. Here was a bad precedent.
Eortunately the boldest soldiers dismount from their chargers
at some distance from the throne. What withholds them ?
NESSELRODE.
Spells are made of words. The word service among the
military has great latent negative power. All modern nations,
even the free, employ it.
NICHOLAS.
An excellent word indeed ! It shows the superiority of
modern languages over ancient ; christian ideas over pagan ;
living similitudes of God over bronze and marble. What an
escape had England from her folly, perversity, and injustice !
Her admirals had the same wrongs to avenge : her fleets would
NICHOLAS AND NESSELRODE. 49
have anchored in Ferrol and Cormia ; thousands of volunteers
from every part of both ilands would have assembled round
the same standard ; and both Indies would have bowed before
the conqueror. Who knows but that Spain herself might have
turned to the same quarter^ from the idiocy of Ferdinand, the
immorality of Joseph, and the perfidy of Napoleon ?
NESSELRODE.
England seems to invite and incite, not only her colonies,
but her commanders, to insurrection. Nelson was treated
even more ignominiously than Wellington. A man equal in
abilities and in energy to either met with every affront from the
East India Company. After two such victories in succession
as the Duke liimseK declared before the Lords that he had
never known or red of, he was removed from the command of
his army, and a general by whose rashness it was decimated was
raised to the peerage. If Wellington could with safety have
seized the supreme power in Portugal, Napier could M'ith
greater have accomplished it in India. The distance from
home was farther ; the army more confident ; the allies more
numerous, more, unanimous. One avenger of their wrongs
would have found a million avengers oilds. Affglianistan, Cabul,
and Scinde, would have united their acclamations on the Ganges:
songs of triumph, succeeded by songs of peace, would have
been chanted at Dellii and have re-echoed at Samarcand.
NICHOLAS.
I am desirous that Persia and India should pour their trea-
sures into my dominions. The English are so credulous as to
believe that I intend, or could accomplish, the conquest of
Hindostan. I want only the commerce ; and I hope to share
it with the Americans ; not I indeed, but my successors. The
possession of California has opened the Pacific and the Indian
seas to the Americans, who must, within the lifetime of some
now born, predominate in both. Supposing that emigrants to
the amount of only a quarter of a million settle in the United
States every year, within a century from the j^resent day their
population must exceed three hundred millions. It will not
extend from pole to pole, only because there will be room
enough without it.
NESSELRODE.
Eeligious wars, the most sanguinary of any, are stifled in the
50 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TEEE.
fields of agriculture ; creeds are tlirowii overboard by com-
merce.
iniCHOLAS.
Theological questions come at last to be decided by tbe
broadsword; and the best artillery brings forward the best
arguments. Montecuculi and Wallenstein were irrefragable
doctors. Saint Peter was commanded to put up liis sword ;
but the ear was cut off first.
NESSELEODE.
The blessed saint's escape from capital punishment^ after tliis
violence^ is among the greatest of miracles. Perhaps there may
be a perplexity in the text. Had he committed so great a
crime against a person so highly protected as one in the high-
priest's household^ he never would have lived long enough to
be crucified at Rome, but would have carried his cross up to
Calvary three days after the off'ence. The laws of no country
would tolerate it.
NICHOLAS.
How did he ever get to Rome at all ? He must have been
conveyed by an angel, or have slipt on a sudden into a railroad
train, purposely and for the nonce provided. There is a con-
troversy at the present hour about his delegated authority, and
it appears to be next to certain that he never was in the capital
of the west. It is my interest to find it decided in the negative.
Successor to the emperors of the east, who sanctioned and
appointed the earliest popes, as the bishops of Rome are denomi-
nated, I may again at my own good time claim the privilege
and prerogative. The cardinals and their subordinates are
extending their claws in all directions : we must throw these
crabs upon their backs again.
NESSELRODE.
Some among the Italians, and chiefly among the Romans,
are venturing to express an opinion that there would be less of
false religion, and more of true, if no priest of any description
were left upon earth.
NICHOLAS.
Horrible ! unless are exempted those of the venerable Greek
church. All others worship graven images : we stick to
pictures.
NICHOLAS AND NESSELEODE. 51
NESSELRODE.
One scliolar mentioned^ not witliout an air of derision^ that
a picture had descended from heaven recently on the coast of
Italy.
NICHOLAS.
Framed ? varnisht ? imder glass ? on pannel ? on canvas ?
What like ?
NESSELRODE.
The Virgin Mary, whatever made of.
NICHOLAS.
She must be ours then. She missed her road : she never
would have taken her place among stocks and stones and blind
worshipers. Easterly winds must have blown her toward a
pestilential city, where at every street-corner is very signifi-
cantly inscribed its true name at full length, Immondezzalo.
But I hope I am guilty of no profaneness or infidelity when I
express a doubt if every picture of the Blessed Virgin is sentient;
most are ; perhaps not every one. If they want her in England,
as they seem to do, let them have her . . unless it is the one
that rolls the eyes : in that case I must claim her : she is too
precious by half for papist or tractarian. I must order imme-
diately these matters. No reasonable doubt can be entertained
that I am the visible head of Clu:ist's church. Theologians
may be consulted in regard to St. Peter, and may discover a
manuscript at Novgorod, stating his martyrdom there, and
proving his will and signature.
NESSELRODE.
Theologians may find perhaps in the Revelatiom some Beast
foreshadowing your Majesty.
NICHOLAS.
How? sir! how?
NESSELRODE,
Emperors and kings, we are taught, are designated as great
beasts in the Holy Scriptures. . . [Aside) , . and elsewhere.
E -Z
52 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
BERANGER AND LA EOCHE-JAQUELIN.
LA ROCHE-JAQUELIN.
Passing by Tours, I could not resist the desire of present-
ing my respects to the greatest of our poets.
BERANGER.
"Were I indeed so, I should be worthy to celebrate the
heroism of the noble Eoche-Jaquelins, husband and wife, your
nearest relatives, who contended and suffered so heroically in
La Vendee. Poetry is envious of history, and feels her
inadequacy to a like attempt. Painful as is the retrospect,
there is glory to relieve it; can we say the same of the
prospect now before us ?
LA ROCHE-JAQTJELIN.
Let US hope we may, and that the narrow present is alone
disgraceful. Loyalty may exist in aU hearts, in aU circum-
stances.
BERANGER.
I was taught in early youth that it is an error to pronounce
the word loyalty as if it began with the letter r. Do not smile,
M. le Marquis. I have always been a conservative.
LA EOCHE-JAQUELIN.
Indeed !
BERANGER.
Yes, indeed and fundamentally. I have always been a
conservative of Imo, from which conservatism takes the name
of loyalty : have all our kings ? all our rulers ?
LA ROCHE-JAQUELIN.
King Henry has been misguided in his attempt to cast aside
many wholesome instructions, and to aUow no other than suited
his own good ])leasure.
BERANGER.
We know, by sad experience, that the fjood pleasure of
kings is often stimulated by the evil pleasure of their
ministers; hence it is requisite that there should be some
legitimate and temperate restraint.
\
BEEANGER AND LA EOCHE-JAQUELIN. 53
LA EOCHE-JAQUELIN.
We rrench require a vigilant eye and strong hand over
us. Mirabeau himself, the ablest man among us since the
administration of Eichelieu, was unable to regulate the tempest
he had excited.
Do you, M. de Beranger, who are a consistent and
staunch republican, think the present order of things at all
better than the last or the preceding ?
BERANGER.
Order of things ! What order of things, M. le Marquis,
can you expect in Prance ? We change perpetually from the
grub to the butterfly, from the butterfly to the grub. This is
our order of things, and this order is invariable.
LA ROCHE-JAQUEUN.
Perspicacity hke yours discerned long beforehand the
inevitable result of our late commotions, and prudence led
you into retirement. The wisest and the happiest lead
studious and almost soHtary lives.
BERANGER.
This is the reflection of the ambitious, when Ambition has
jilted them. There are extremely few so wise as to know
where are the haunts of Happiness. Never have I been
acquainted with any man who would not prefer the tumult of
high ofiice to the tranquility of domestic peace. I know an
Englishman to whom a Lord Chancellor said,
"You have made the best choice.'''
And the reply was :
"You would rather be the highest subject than the
happiest.'''
LA EOCHE-JAQUELIN.
You are safe.
BERANGER.
So are you, M. le Marquis. "The Powers that be," are
clear-sighted Powers. They see me and overlook my prin-
ciples ; you they treat with high consideration, however they
may hate you. They behold in you a lofty stem, a strong
deep-rooted trunk, soHtary and august in the ancient forests
of Brittainy. They would be appalled, as Lucan describes
the soldiers of Ccesar in the sacred grove near Massilia, at
54 THE LAST FKUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
cutting down the most eminent^ if not the last^ relic of true
nobiHty, of inflexible honor, on the soil of Prance. Un-
hesitatingly and safely could they send into exile, or into the
hulks, a gang of vociferating lawyers and vulgar generals :
but a stroke on a La Eoche-Jaquelin would sound and
reverberate among your druidical stones with awful and
appaUing omen to them.
LA EOCHE-JAQUEUN.
I neither fear nor respect such people.
BEEANGER.
Pardon me, M. le Marquis ; but it appears to me that you
have no reason to be very weU affected either to the occupant
or the claimant.
The king of Prohsdorff,
Teres atque rotundus
in body, is endowed with a mind of similar conformation.
' LA EOCHE-JAQUELIN.
You compliment him liiglily.
BEEANGER.
Unwarily then have I slipt into flattery. My meaning is,
that, puffed up by vanity, he is only fit to be what he is . . . the
football of fortune.
LA EOCHE-JAQUELIN.
Do not be severe on him. If you must be severe, be at
least impartial. The possessor of supreme and arbitrary
power, in Paris, deserves surely as much acerbity as the
prince who, having dismissed his few faithful servants, sits
stript of power, shuddering and crouching at Prohsdorff,
BEEANGER.
There is not a drop of bitterness in me for either. No boat-
man on our beautiful Loire, no laundress on its sands below the
bridge, is less important to me than those two. Petulance and
arrogance are the king's characteristics ; ambition the presi-
dent's. One has done, the other would have done, what you
approve, and what my intellect and heart ahke denounce.
BERANGER AND LA ROCHE- JAQUELIN. 55
LA ROCHE-JAQUELIN.
Indeed ! Avliat can tliat be ?
BERANGER.
The restoration of darkness ; the striking out of three hun-
dred years from the clu'onology of mind ; the resuscitation of
Popery, as she sat at Avignon when she was expelled from
Rome. Sovrans will bitterly repent of such a step backward :
she will fall heavily on them ere long.
I heard it reported in this city that when the Trench general
landed at Civita Vecchia, with a lie in liis mouth thrust into
it by the president, an English gentleman sent back the work
on artillery which the president had given to him. This gen-
tleman Avas in the habitude of meeting the prince at Lady
Blessington's, under whose roof a greater number of remark-
able and illustrious men assembled from all nations, than under
any other since roofs took the place of caverns. "When he
returned to London from his captivity at Ham, he was greeted
by Lady Blessington's friend, "as having escaped the two
heaviest of misfortunes, a prison and a throne!^
" Whichever of the two may befall me,'" said the prince,
" I hope I shall see you."
" If a prison," said the other, " the thing is possible ; if a
throne, not."
LA ROCHE-JAQUELIN.
Let liim beware of visiting Paris.
BERANGER.
Pifty years ago he spent some time there ; some ten later
he resided in this city; and he went into Italy after the
Restoration.
LA ROCHE-JAQUELIN.
Ah, ]\I. deBeranger ! I imagine he would much prefer Italy
or Touraine to Cayenne or Algeria.
BERANGER.
I do not beHeve he is likely, so late in life, to try the
experiment.
LA ROCHE-JAQUELIN.
Pardon me : I have been trespassing too far on youi' time.
BERANGER.
Quite the contrary : you have made it valuable.
56 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TEEE.
LA ROCHE-JAQtJELIN.
Surely as I entered I saw you suddenly lay down your hat.
If you were about to walk, not to visit, I should beg permission
to accompany you.
BERANGEB.
Gladly will I attend you, M. le Marquis. You will travel
down the Loire on your road homeward : by way of variety
shall our promenade be toward the Cher ?
LA ROCHE- JAQUELIN,
By all means : it runs close to the town.
BERANGER.
Here we are. The beautiful plain has lately been enclosed.
A few years ago it was as nature formed it.
LA BOCHE-JAQUELIN.
Aye : just as when Charles Martell discomfited and drove
out the Saracens.
BERANGER.
May we never have to curse the memory of Charles Martell.
LA ROCHE-JAQUELIN.
God forbid !
BERANGER.
Yet how flourishing was Spain under the Saracens during
great part of a millenium ! What pleasure and politeness,
what chivalry and poetry, what arts and sciences, in her cities !
what architecture within her walls, and round about ! what
bridges ! what fountains ! what irrigation ! Look at her now
under her Bourbons. Look off from her, look toward Italy.
Who, tell me, who, M. le Marquis, hath held down men un-
improved, unprogressive, motionless ? no, not motionless . . .
nor was the wheel of Ixion.
LA ROCHE-JAQUELIN.
Bravo ! M. de Beranger !
But seriously now, do you attribute aU our civilization, all
our enlightenment, all our arts and sciences, to these Saracens?
BERANGER.
M. le Marquis ! if there is a gentleman in Prance, it is
KING CARLO-ALBERTO AND PRINCESS BELGIOIOSO. 57
because tlie Saracens were here or in the neighbourhood, or
because his ancestors encountered them under the walls of
Ascalon and Acca. However, I do not attribute all our
civilization, all our enlightenment, all our arts and sciences,
to them. No ; far from it. In their vesture, which is among
the earlier signs of civihzation, they never wore, or made their
slaves wear, conical caps emblazoned with fiery serpents,
surmounted as a crest with spiral flames; they never wore,
or made their slaves wear, robes ornamented with open-
mouthed dogs and grinning devils. Fanciful as they were in
architectural decorations, they did not clear the market-place
to erect scaffolds in it, surrounded by stakes and faggots for
the concremation of human victims, the virgin, the matron,
the bride, the nursing mother. Inventive as they were in
mechanics, they did not invent the thumbscrew, the puUey,
and many other such elegant articles of furniture. Studious
as they were of medicine, adepts as they were in chemistry, it
was left for more sagacious heads and for more pious hands to
invent and to apply the Acqua Toffana. The only people now
that appear to open their eyes, are the people of canvas and
marble.
KING CAELO-ALBEETO AND PEINCESS BELGIOIOSO.*
KING.
Permit me. Princess, to offer you my compliment on your
entering a new career of conquest. AVhen ladies of such rank
and accomplishments condescend to lead the brave volunteers
of Lombardy, good fortune must foUow.
PRINCESS.
Excuse me, sir, it is far from condescension in me : on the
contrary, I feel it to be an act of self-elevation; I hope a
pardonable one. I was never proud until now ; for never was
I so well aware of my duties, and so resolved to perform them.
KING.
Plattery, wealth, station, beauty, were in a conspiracy
against you : surely it was a diflicult matter to resist their
united forces.
* Printed first for the benefit of the sufferers at Messina.
58 THE LAST FllUIT OPF AN OLD TEEE.
PRINCESS.
Each of these contingencies has many disadvantages, which
its parallel advantages make ns too often overlook. The best
of men and women have to fill up certain gaps or discon-
tinuities in their character : here is a field for it.
KING.
I enter it willingly.
PRINCESS.
Italy, sir, had always her eyes on you : she once abased
them in deep sorrow : her confidence now returns. Only one
man upon earth enjoys j)ower equal to yours : behold how he
employs it . . . the calm, the prudent, the beneficent, the ener-
getic, Pio Nono. At your suggestion all the potentates of
Italy would engage in their service a proportionate force of
Swiss. Your Majesty and the King of Naples could each
afford to subsidize twelve thousand for a single year, a second
will not be necessary for the expulsion of the Austrians. It
is better to accomplish the great work without the intervention
of Trance, wliich would create much jealousy in Germany and
in Eno'land.
KING.
I would rather not see the Prench again in Piedemont.
Already the apprehension of such an event has induced Lord
Palmerston to make me a strong remonstrance.
PRINCESS.
Sir, Lord Palmerston has lately been very much in the
habit of making strong remonstrances ; and strong ridicule has
always rebounded to the racket. It was only this week that he
made one of his strong remonstrances to the Government
of Spain ; which strong remonstrance was thrown back in his
teeth (if he has any left) with derision and defiance. ISfarvaez
stood aloof with folded arms, and left him to be bufletted and
beaten down by poor old Sottomayor. His conduct in regard
to Portugal has alienated from England all . . . liberals.
KING.
Are there many of them in that country? and are they
persons of consideration and respectability ?
PRINCESS.
Many of the clergy, both lower and higher ; nearly all the
KING CARLO-ALBERTO AND PRINCESS BELGIOIOSO. 59
principal mercliants; and not only the best informed, but also
the larger part of the nobility ; just as they are in ours.
KING.
I wonder what could have induced his lordship to abandon
his policy and principles ?
PRINCESS.
Sir, he abandoned no policy, no principles ; his lordship is
a whig ; these whigs have neither : protestations serve
instead.
KING.
It must be conceded that, in the multiplicity of parties and
interests, and in the conciliation and management of the two
Houses, an English minister is placed in circumstances of
great difficulty, and where strict integrity is quite impossible.
PRINCESS.
What is to be thought of that mane's wisdom or prudence
who walks deliberately, and with his eyes open, into those
circumstances ?
KING.
Simpler governments have produced honester ministers than
the complex. England has never seen her Colbert, her
Turgot, her Necker, her Eoland. In the course of the last
eighty years, her only minister on whom there was the slightest
suspicion of sound principles, was tlie Marquis of Eockingham,
patron of the celebrated Burke. The King never spoke witli
cordiality to him, excepting on the day of his dismissal. If
Lord-Palmerston miscarries, it will not be for incompliancy to
the wishes of the Coiu't : he has obtained a firm footing there
by trampling on Portugal. But as Austria is no fief of
Saxony, he might permit me to regulate my own concerns,
and not attempt to trip me up in crossing the frontier.
PRINCESS.
Your Majesty is defending your own country in defending
Italy, and you do not cross the frontier until you cross the
Alps. It may be necessary ; for certain I am that the Em-
peror of Austria and the King of Prussia are awaiting with
earnest anxiety to meet the advance of the Kussian armies.
60 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
KING.
They would ruin Hungary and the Baltic provinces.
PRINCESS.
The more welcome for that. By such devastation the power
of resistance would be annihilated in the refractory. Posen
has already been treated like Oporto.
KING.
You appear to doubt the Prussian king's sincerity.
PRINCESS.
If his Majesty is an honest man, it is a great deal more
than his father and his grandfather were ; and indeed to find any
such character in the archives of Hohenzollern would require
an antiquary the most zealous and the most acute. Certainly
in the last reign the heir to the throne was considered to be
more anti-democratic than the possessor : and since his acces-
sion what he has conceded to the people came from him as an
emanation of power and wisdom on indigence and imbecility.
There are professors in Germany who declare that the kings
and upper classes must be taught a purer language, not with-
out an infusion of neology, tlio most of these teachers are
involved in their own smoke and can see no further than the
library.
KING.
Princess ! you must acknowledge that kings, at the present
day, are placed in an embarrassing situation; I among the
rest.
PRINCESS.
Then extricate yourself, sir, speedily. Unless it is speedily,
it aWII never be. You may recover all you have lost of
popularity and renown, by valour and determination. Your
countryman Alfieri was correct in his assertion that the
Italians, both in mental and corporeal power, are superior to
all the nations round about. They want only good examples
and liberal institutions.
KING.
I am afraid. Princess, you want a Napoleon and a republick.
PRINCESS.
If I desired the existence of the one, I must desire the
KING CAULO-ALBERTO AND PRINCESS BELGIOIOSO. 61
extinction of the other. Napoleon would permit no other free-
dom than his own personal. Never did any sovran, not
Louis Philippe himself, so belie his protestations: never did any
one enact so many laws restrictive of freedom in so many of its
attributes. The most arbitrary of despots never issued so great
a quantity of edicts against the press. Not only was it a
crime to call in question any of his actions, but it also was one
to omit the praise of them. Madame de Stael was exiled for
it, and an impression of her work on Germany seized by the
pohce, condemning her thereby to a loss of twenty thousand
francs. Military men, especially those who beheve that all
honor lies in the field of battle, may admire him; but
they who abhor selfishness, malice, and (what we women think
a crime) vulgarity, abhor Napoleon. He did, however, good
service to Italy, be the motive what it may, in extirpathig the
Bourbons, sticking in again only one weak twig which never
could take root.
KING.
You see then with satisfaction the difficulties which beset
the King of Naples ?
PBINCESS.
Certainly; and so does your Majesty. It is necessary to
expel that family from the nations it has humihated, from the
thrones it has disgraced. The Sicilians, the best of our
Italian races, have decreed it.
KING.
Kings must not place it in the power of the people to decide
on their destiny.
PRINCESS.
Kings do not place it in their power, but God does. Kings
themselves begin the work of delving under their palaces and
preparing the combustibles for explosion. They never know
where they are, until they find themselves blown into some
foren land. The head grows cooler when the crown is oH' :
yet they would run again after it, as a Httle girl after her
bonnet which a breeze is rolling in the dust.
KING.
I am half persuaded that the little girl's loss is the gravest,
and that she is the wiser of the two runners.
62 THE LAST PRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
PRINCESS.
Your Majesty lias inspired me with confidence to proceed in
speaking out plainly. You are now in my country, and you
can save it. Unless you do, you will lead an unhappy life ;
if you do, a happy one. Security of dominion is desiraMe, not
extent. There are those who whisper, what I never can believe,
that your Majesty is ambitious of being the King of Lombardy.
Supposing it practicable, do you imagine that the people of
Turin will be contented to see the seat of government trans-
ferred to Milan, or tliat the rich and noble and ancient families
of ]\Iilan will submit to become the footstools of theTurinese?
Never, sir, never,
KING.
Would you have the whole world republican ?
PBINCESS.
In due time : at the present, few nations are prepared for it :
the best prepared is the Italian. Every one of our cities shows
the deep traces of its carroccio, and many still retain their
raunici])ality and i\\Q\xpo(lesta. I see no reason why they should
not all be restored to their pristine state and vigour, all equally
subject to one strict confederation. The causes of their dissidence
and decline exist no longer. The Emperor is a powerless crea-
ture, tied by the leg to a worm-eaten throne. The Pope, reposing
on the bosom of God, inspires the purest devotion, the sublimest
virtue. He reigns in the hearts of the most irreligious, and
exerts over the most obstinate the authority of paternal love.
I have seen proud scoffers lower their heads at the mention of
his name : I have heard cold philosophers say, with the hand
upon tlie breast. This man is truly God's vicegerent. Pio IMono
is with Italy. One shake of the hand-bell on his table would
arouse fifty millions of our co-religionists.^
KING.
Our family hath always looked up with reverence to the
Popes : and without the countenance of Pio Nono toward my
people I should perhaps have been slower in approval of their
demonstrations.
PRINCESS.
The English ministry sent over a worthy man to warn the
* He soon began to calculate the probable duration of a Pope's life who
resists the Sacred College. God had inspired him with all but wisdom,
truth, and courage.
KING CARLO-ALBERTO AND PRINCESS BELGIOIOSO. 63
Pope of his clanger in giving so much encouragement to the
Hberals. Pio smiled with his usual benignity. He felt that
it was not in man to order the sun to stop or the stars to
slacken their courses. The plenipotentiary, in the plenitude
of his potentiality, could do nothing at Eome; and he struggled
with like ill success in the straits of Scylla and Carybdis.
KING.
It is piteous to observe with how little wisdom and probity
the affairs of England are conducted. She hath utterly lost
all her influence in Europe. She can not hold her nearest
dependencies : her remoter drop off one after another, and grow
stronger from that moment. The preservation of her territories
in the two Indies, extensive, fertile, wealtliy as they are, brings
only debt upon her.
PRINCESS.
Pardon me, sir, it does much more than that : it not only
exhausts her treasures, but, between the West Indies and Africa,
it consumes several thousands of soldiers and sailors yearly.
KING.
Yet England enjoys a free constitution and wise laws.
PRINCESS.
So it is said by the framers, whose families are cloathed and
fed by them : I can only judge by facts. Mythologists tell us
that stones were turned into men : perhaps the same metamor-
phosis may, after a wliile, be enacted in England.
KING.
It was even less probable at Vienna.
PRINCESS.
The blow of the hammer which struck out the kindling
spark was given here in Italy.
KING.
Events may come too suddenly.
• PRINCESS.
Knowing this, we should be as well prepared as we can be.
I myself am a witness to the suddenness of events. One day
64 THE LAST FETJIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
I was walking on a wide waste in the maremma of Tuscany : the
next, by enterprise and industry, were excavated the magnifi-
cent structures of ancient days. Thus suddenly hath all Italy
come forth from sterility to within sight of her glorious insti-
tutions.
KING.
Ah princess ! you make me smile. Those tombs which you
mention did indeed open again; but it was only to show the
semblances of kings.
PRINCESS.
Sir ! in one moment they had been visible and had dis-
appeared ; in one moment the crown was on their heads and off
again ; it was hfted up, and only dust was under : but the works
of art, of genius, shone down on them bright as ever. It is
lamentable that kings should be less powerful than artificers ;
they might be greatly more so, and without the exertion of
labour or the expenditure of apprenticeship.
KING.
Lamentable it may be; but is it not equally that people
who call themselves liberals should carp at the first shadow of
liberalism in princes ? A celebrated man of the Whig party
in England, and (by virtue of the office he once held) a
member of the peerage, tried to be at once an Englislmian
and a Frenchman, a tory and a repubhcan.
PRINCESS.
The Erench minister made him understand his duties; no
minister or man will ever make him perform them. A shallow
scholar, an inelegant writer, an awkward orator, he throws
himself into the middle of every road where there is the most
passing, fond of heat and sunshine as a viper or a flea. In
the gazettes he announced his own death, not indeed to excite
commiseration, which, if he cared about it, would be hopeless,
but curiosity. It is said that foxes, found in places where
they had no means of escape, have simulated death : he has
had the advantage of being thrown out after detection, and
lives to yelp and purloin. Among the whigs themselves there
is nowhere to be found so whi})t a deserter, so branded an
impostor. There is no party which he has not flattered and
cajoled, espoused and abandoned. Possessing a variety of
KING CAELO-ALBEllTO AND PRINCESS BELGIOIOSO. G5
talents, Avitliout tlie ability to make a single one available, tlie
learned Lord Stowel said of him on his elevation to office, He
knoios a little of everijtli'ing excepting laio. His lordship might
have added, if he had thought sncli qualities of any import-
ance in his profession, veracity and decorum. He declared it
as his opinion that it is the duty of a barrister to defend a
client at any expense of truth, even if the crime were shifted
off the shoulders of the guilty on the innocent. His opinion
was taken by a man as unscrupulous as himself, to screen a
murderer. Two virtuous women were inculpated; one was
only ruined, the other was driven mad. The same turbulent
and malicious man insulted the Italian peo])le in the House
of Lords, and condemned the interference of your Majesty.
KING.
I am little surprised at it, and feel less the indignity of this
brawler than the insolence of the minister who replied. He
said, and it was true although he said it, that he would have
prevented my step if he could. Italy, now resolved on free
institutions, must look in another direction than toward
England.
PRINCESS.
She calls upon you, sir, in this crisis of her sufferings. In
the old heroic ages one man alone slew many wild beasts : it
were strange if, in an age far more heroic, many men should
be insufficient to quell a single tame one, with his back broken
by a mass of rubbish faUing down on liim in the den.
KING.
We must not only think of Austria, but also of the other
German potentates. The King of Prussia, fond of managing
and intermeddling, and having his own way and walking by
the light of his own wisdom, has been forced into liberalism.
If his people are prudent, they will not allow him to march,
as he proposes, at the head of his army into Poland. He
might play the same game as the late king of Naples played,
when his parliament gave Imn permission to leave his
metropolis for Vienna. He has clever men about him, men
of pliant principles and lanky purses, unreluctant to leave
sour-crout for French cookery, and to exchange a horn snuff-
box for a diamond one witli an emperor on the lid. AYe
66 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
want experienced diplomatists capable of coping with their
sagacity and wariness.
PKlNCESa.
The less intelligent sometimes bafRe them by firmness and
integrity. I have seen slender girls support an incredible
weight on their heads, because they stood quite upright and
walked steddily. The ministers of kings would persuade the
world of their wisdom by vacillation and obliquity : one false
step^ and they are fallen.
KING.
I see many things to disquiet, and some to endanger me.
PKINCESS.
The hearts of great men neither collapse in the hour of per-
sonal danger nor ossify in that of public distress. It is not to
be dissembled that falsehood in the cause of freedom may be
apprehended on the side of Prussia : and it is far from impos-
sible that the Prussian king and the Austrian emperor are wait-
ing with impatience to embrace the Tzar. Tlie massacre of
the nobles in Gallicia was organized and rewarded at Vienna :
the persecution of all classes in Posen is countenanced and
commanded at Berlin. Czartoryski, the humane^ the charitable,
the moderate, the just, the patriotic, writes thus to the prime
minister of that country : / quit Berlin with a heavy heart.
JFhatever he the cause, it is a fact, that tip to this day not
one of the promises made to theinhabitantsof the grand-duchy of
Tosen, hy the Prussian government, has heenfulflled. To what
part of its people has that government been true ? Stript and
scourged by Bonaparte, tear after tear fell through the king^'s
white eyelashes, and promise after promise from his quivering
lips. His nation picked him up, dragged him out of the mire,
cloaked him anew, and set him on his horse again. Generals
are now sent by liim into Posen, with conflicting autho-
rities, to sow dissension, and to exasperate the German invader
against his generous host. The Prussian is not contented to
occupy the house and the land he hath seized on ; he is not
contented with an equal share in the administration of laws
and taxes ; he would split into shreds the country he already
has broken into sphnters, and would abolish its nationality.
KING CARLO-ALBERTO AND PRINCESS BELGIOIOSO. 67
KING.
Uncertainty in respect to Prussia, you must acknowledge,
is enough to make me cautious and deliberate.
PRINCESS.
An English poet says that the woman wJio deliberates is lost ;
it may sometimes be said with equal truth of the general and
of the prince. Behold, sir, this beautiful city of A^icenza !
Even so small a place, being so lovely, is worth risking life for ;
what then our grand and glorious Italy ! Look down only on
the portals of the palaces before us. In Paris and London we
creep through a crevice in the wall : here a cavalier finds no
difficulty in placing his hand under a lady's elbow, at due
distance, and in leading her without bruize or contusion
through the crowded hall, to the wide and light staircase,
where Heroes and Gods and Graces stand forth to welcome
them as they ascend. The inanimate world here outvalues the
animated elsewhere. It is worth all that remains of life to
have lived one year in Italy. No wonder I am enthusiastic :
I have lived here many.
KING.
Many ? you ? the Princess Belgioioso here beside me ? The
Graces you speak of seem to contradict you,
PRINCESS.
I would rather trust the Heroes, as being nearer at hand.
KING.
It is a relief to change the subject a little from politics and
battles. No subject can support a long-continued conversa-
tion, excepting love.
PRINCESS.
Love also is the fresher for a short excursion. Seldom do I
read a dialogue, even by the cleverest author, without a sense
of weariness. Sentences cut up into question and answer on
grave subjects, into repartee on lighter, are intolerable. Such
is the worst method of instructing a child, or of attracting a
man or woman. And there is something very absurd in the
supposition that any abstruse question, or matter of deep
thought, can be shuftled backward and forward in tliis off'-hand
F 2
68 THE LAST FKUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
manner. Even where the discourse is upon a subject the
most easy and tractable, we are fond of departing from the
strait level walk to some narrower alley that diverges out of it :
and we always feel the cooler and pleasanter in passing out of
one room into another. But the Austrians in Yienna will not
allow me to linger here among the orange-trees and myrtles
and oleanders of Vicenza, within view of the white uniform.
We will revert, sir (with permission) to the serious and sub-
stantial.
KINO.
Of the serious I find quite enough ; the substantial, I trust,
is somewhere in reserve. My old ministers have perplexed me
almost as much as my old allies.
PRINCESS.
It is certain that every man in power thinks himself wiser
than every man out of poAver ; and the getting into it seems a
sort of warrantry for the surmise. Yet it may so happen that
these who look over the chairs, and have no seat themselves,
shall see somewhat more of the game and of its chances than
the gamesters can. Others may be cooler and more disinter-
ested, who do not climb the ladder with the hod upon their
heads, but stand at the bottom of the building, and look up
and round.
KINO.
If only a few ladies like you would go into Austria and
Hungary, you could dissuade and detain the leaders of those
nations from the desire of invading ours.
* PRINCESS.
What does any gain by it ? All must contribute money and
men to hold the conquest in subjection. Kings themselves
are none the happier or the more powerful for it. A few
noble families are enriched, and rendered thereby in a higher
condition to dictate to their master.
KING.
There is something in that.
PRINCESS.
The greatest victory, the greatest conquest, never brought
more pleasm-e to the winner than a game of chess or whist.
KING CAllLO-ALBERTO AND PRTNCESS BELGIOIOSO. 69
Yet what crimes, wliat miseries, what mortal anguish, not only
in the field of battle, but in the far-oft' home ! what curses !
what misgiving's of a watchful, a just, and a protecting Provi-
dence ! The Austrians are Httle better than meal-magots : but
surely the brave Hungarians will espouse our cause, instead
of denouncing it. They themselves have been contending for
the same, and have won it ; not against us, but against the
very same enemy. Hungary, Switzerland, Tyrol, are the
natural allies of Italy : she wants no other.
KINO.
I am happy to find you delivering this opinion. You have
lived much among the Trench, and perhaps may entertain
toward the nation the sentiments of esteem due only to the
best societies. You seem to take it little to heart or to con-
sideration, that, if you stand too near the focus of democracy,
the flounces and feathers of nobility may be caught and
shriveled.
PRINCESS.
In France the titles of nobility are abolished. Important
or unimportant, I do not believe the lower orders in Italy Avill
discard the use of them. They address one another as we
address your Majesty, by the title of S'ujnore. It comprehends
alike the lowest and the highest. If a marquis has twenty
sons, they are aU marquises. Many, indeed most of them,
are sadly poor : it is a comfort, no doubt, to receive the whole
of the patrimonial title where there is only a fraction of the
estate. Already one Italian is on a parity Avitli another.
They are the least invidious of mankind, and unite the most
of courtesy and cordiality. The scientific and learned, the
patriotic and eloquent, are treated in our societies with much
higher distinction thau persons of birth and title. The French,
who have learnt so much from us, have learnt this also ; later
indeed, but not less perfectly. It will penetrate to Germany
and England. In Germany the nobility is ignorant and
ancient : in England it is well-informed and new. There are
few families in the peerage whose name, even as kniglit's or
gentleman's, existed on the accession of the Tudors. False
shame, trying to support and strengthen the sufferer with a stiff
and defiant carriage, snaps asunder the titled new nobiUty from
the untitled old. In our country no clever advocate is caught
up by a patron, and seated first in the lower house, presently in
70 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
the higher. Ancient services to the state^ ancient benefits to
the people, are the only true and recognised titles of oiu'
nobility : those are neither to be taken away nor to be con-
ferred, by a less active hand, a less energetic intellect. I should
be what I am whether I were called so or not ; the same when
my camariera has taken off my gown as when she put it on ;
the insertion or the removal of a pin makes all the difference.
KING.
This is talking more jihilosophically than, by what I com-
prehend of it, men talk generally.
PRINCESS.
Eew men are ashamed of mounting upon stilts, in order to
raise their heads above the multitude. They are most sup-
ported wdien they are most unsteddy, and are most listened to
when they speak in a feigned voice through masks.
KING.
But where there are ladies there should be courts, distinc-
tions, and festivals.
PRINCESS.
"We ladies of Milan can do extremely well without them.
Happy in our circles, in our conversations, in our music, ready
to receive instruction and grateful to our instructors, many of
us seldom leave the city but for the vintage-season, or leave it
for no fui'ther an excursion than to the lake of Como or Yarese.
KING.
Tranquil is the scene and beautiful round Yarese ; redundant
in the profusion of gifts and exalted in the graces of majesty
is the Lario ; but eminent over your Lago Maggiore we behold
the awful benignity of Saint Carlo Borrommeo. At his
prayers and before his omnipresence, Tamine and Pestilence
lied from Milano ; and Gustavus Adolphus, conqueror of
Germany, recalled his advancing and irresistible army from the
marshes of Gravedona.
PRINCESS.
Sir ! his descendant is worthy of his name and his protection.
Unless the bravery of my friend and the intercession of our
KING CARLO-ALBERTO AND PRINCESS BELGIOIOSO. 71
patron saint be efficient, we may perhaps ere long be seen
pitching our tents in Piedemont.
KING.
It is a comfort to believe that you prefer us to our
neighbours, and that Prance is not about to win you from us.
I do confess to you, princess, that tlie remembrance of what
happened in the first revolution disquieted me a little at the
early rumours of the last.
PRINCESS.
The first Prench revolution was a very vile preface to a
very noble volume. Opening the introduction of the second,
we may augur better, but with fear at the side of hope, for its
continuation.
KING.
It is remarkable that the sober-minded Germans should
have committed much greater excesses and much more glaring
injustice : and it is not only in these countries of ours, but
equally in their own, and along the whole extent of the Baltic.
It is seldom or never tliat hounds worry one another while the
prey is before them and the huntsmen are sounding the horn.
Eeally and truly I wish you would compose a manifesto, which
I may address to the Austrians and Hungarians.
PRINCESS.
Perhaps in some places there might be an objectionable
word.
KING.
You must be less inflammatory than Lord Palmerston.
PRINCESS.
I could neither be more hasty nor more inefficient. Touch-
wood makes but an inditterent torch.
KING.
Give lis a specimen of appeal.
PRINCESS.
It would be like this ; " Austrians and Hungarians ; why
do you wish to impose on others a yoke which you yourselves
have shaken off ! If they whom you persist in your endeavours
72 THE LAST FllUlT OFF AN OLD TREE.
of reducing to servitude, liad attempted tlie same against you,
tlien indeed resentment miglit warrant jou, and retributive
justice would be certainly on your side. It may gi'atify the
vanity of a family to exercise dominion over distant states :
and the directors of court-pageants may be loth to drop the
fruits of patronage. These fruits are paid for with your blood.
Of what advantage is it to any citizen of Buda or Yienna to
equip an arch-duke and trumpet him forth to Milan ? Extent
of territory never made a nation the happier, unless on its own
natal soil, giving it room for enterprise and industry. On the
contrary, it always liath helped its ruler to become more
arbitrary. Supposing you were governed by the wisest, instead
of the weakest, in the universe, could he render you more
prosperous by sending you from your peaceful homes to scare
away order from others ? Hungarians ! is not Hungary wide
enough for you ? Austrians ! hath Heaven appointed you to
control much greater, much more numerous, much more war-
like nations than you ever were; Hungary for instance, and
Lombardy ? Be contented to enjoy a closer union with
Moravia and (if she will listen to it) with Bohemia. Leave to
Hungary what she will take, whether you will or no, Stiria,
lllyria, and Croatia. You are not a maritime power, and you
never can be, for you are without a sea-board ; but Hungarian
generosity will open to you the Adriatic as freely as the
Danube. Be moderate while moderation can profit you, and
you will soon cease to smart under the wounds of war, and to
struggle under the burden of debt.'^
KING.
This appeal is very impressive, because it terminates at the
proper place. Taxation is more intolerable than cruelty and
injustice. The purse is a nation's panoply ; and when you
strike through it, you wound a vital part. Kefusal to reduce
taxation by the aboHtion of inutilities, may shake the broad and
solid edifice of the English constitution, which the socialist and
chartist have assailed in vain. The debts of Italy are light.
PRINCESS.
The lands and palaces of the king of Naples would pay off
the heaviest : the remainder is barely sufficient to serve as a
keystone to consolidate our interests. There are far-sighted
KING CAKLO-ALBEHTO AND PRINCESS BELGIOIOSO. 73
men in England who would not gladly see the great debt of
that country very much diminished.
KING.
Part of ours will disappear now we are no longer to give
out ratioiis to the hordes of Austria. I hope they may be
convinced that they can be happier and safer in their own
houses than in the houses of other men.
PRINCESS.
If they believe^ as it seems they do^ that they are incapable
of governing themselves, and that an idiot is their proper head,
let them continue to enjoy the poppy crown, but leave the
iron one behind at Monza. Is'othing more will be required of
them than cooperation with the other states of Germany
against liussia. A force no greater than the peace-establish-
ment will secure the independence and integrity of Poland.
Nay, if Germany sends only 150,000 men, Hungary 40,000,
Italy 40,000, France 50,000, Eussia will break down under
them, and Moscow be again her capital. Great states are
great curses, both to others and to themselves. One such,
however, is necessary to the equipoise of the political world.
Poland is the natural barrier of civilisation against barbarism,
of freedom against despotism. No potentate able to coerce
the progress of nations must anywhere exist. All that ever
was Poland must again be Poland, and much more. Power,
predominant power, is necessary to her for the advantage of
Europe. She must be looked up to as an impregnable out-
work protecting the nascent liberties of the world.
KING.
Eussia is rich and warlike and hard to manae:e.
"G"
PRINCESS.
Her Cossacks and Tartars, of various denominations, might
nearly all be detacht from her by other means than arms.
Her empire will split and splinter iiito the infinitesimals of
which its vast shapeless body is composed. The south breathes
against it and it dissolves.
74 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
GAEIBALDI AND MAZZINI.
MAZZINI.
It was in vain that I represented to you, Garibaldi, the
imprudence of letting the ^French army debark unopposed at
Civita Yeccliia.
GARIBALDI.
I now acknowledge the imprudence of it : but I believed at
the time that the French soldiers were animated by a love of
freedom, the French officers by a sentiment of honour and
veracity ; and I doubted not that they came for our support.
Do you laugh at me, Mazziui? Can there be a laugh or a
smile in any Italian at the present hour, M'hen after our
citizens had driven from our walls, and rolled on the plain,
the most courageous and confident of the hostile army, we
experience in turn grave disasters every day, from the supe-
riority of their weapons and the advantages of their experience ?
Every day their rifles strike down from om- cannon on the
walls our best artillerymen. True, there are ardent youths
who supply their places instantly : but how long can this last ?
MAZZINI.
Believe me, brave and generous Garibaldi, I did not laugh
at any thing but what all Europe laughs at ; Erench honour,
Erencli veracity. Is this the first tune they have deceived us ?
is this the first time our youth have paid the price of their
blood for their credulity? Never more can they deceive,
never more can they conciliate us. Italy henceforth is
divided from Erance by a stronger and loftier barrier than
the Alps.
GARIBALDI.
Ingratitude is more flagitious in them even than perfidy.
Look into our hospitals : three-fourths of the wounded are
Erench soldiers. They were abandoned by their officers and
comrades on their ignominious field of battle, partly from
indifference toward those who had served and could serve no
longer; partly on the calcidation of our humanity and the
knowledge of our deficiency in provisions.
GA.11IBALDI AND MAZZINI. 75
MAZZINI.
Even the wildest of the beasts are calculators : the serpent^
the tiger, make no spring without a calculation; but neither
makes it wantonly ; the one must be offended or frightened,
the other must be in search of food.
GARIBALDI.
The ambition of one man is the fountain-head of our
calamity. Fallen we may be; but never so fallen as the
French themselves : we resisted ; they succumbed. Can any
one doubt the ulterior views of this impostor ?
MAZZINI.
He will not rest here : he will claim the kingdom of Rome
and the empire of France. He has proved liis legitimacy by
his contempt of law ; in this alone he bears a resemblance to
Napoleon. Napoleon, upon several occasions, showed the
obtuser part of liis triangular hat, but never until he had
shown the pointed. The hatter at Strasburg would have taken
back at small discount the imitation of it, which he forwarded
to liis customer for the expedition toward Paris. Already
his emissaries have persuaded the poor ignorant population of
the proviiices that he is the Emperor Napoleon just escaped
from an English prison.
GARIBALDI.
Presently, I repeat it, he will assume the title. The Dutch
are more likely than the French to hold it in derision. They
know that his mother did not cohabit with her husband; and
they might have expected one much honester from the
Admiralty than they received from it.
MAZZINI.
Garibaldi ! we have other occupations than reference to
paternities, to similitudes, and verisimilitudes. The French
are at the gates of our city : fire no longer from the walls :
let them enter : let Eome be a Saragoza : within the ramparts
we have defensible positions, none upon them : all weapons
are equal, or nearly so, hand to hand, Roman women have
displayed the same courage and devotion as Saragozan :
lloman artizans are as resolute as Numantian.
76 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TKEE.
GARIBALDI.
Neither in Numantia nor in Saragoza was there any woman
Avho, coming from afar, incited by admiration of freedom and
valour, abandoned a luxurious home, the society of the learned,
the homage of the chivalrous, to spend her days and nights in
administering comfort to the wounded, in tasting the bitter
medicine that the feverish lip might not reject it, in swathing
with delicate hand the broken and festered limb, in smoothing
the pallet that agony had made uneven and hard. Man's
courage is of earth, however high ; woman's angelic, and of
heaven.
A Suetonius and a Tacitus may tell the world hereafter what
are our pontifical princesses ; a Belgioiso stands before us,
and shows by her magnanimity and beneficence what is a
Milanese.
Learned men ! inquisitorial professors ! cold sceptics !
violators of the tomb ! stumblers on the bones and ashes ye
would kick aside ! ye who doubt the realities of our ancient
glory, of our ancient self-devotion, come hither, bathe your
weak eyes and strengthen your wavering belief.
CAEDINAL ANTONELLI AND GENERAL GEMEAU.
FIRST CONVERSATION.
• »
CARDINAL AXTONELLI.
General ! on the eve of your departure
GENERAL GEMEAU (ciSlde).
Sacre ! what does the man mean ?
CARDINAL ANTONELLL
. in the name of the Holiness of our Lord, of the
Sacred College, of the bishops, of the clergy at large. . .
GENERAL GEMEAU.
Eminence ! come, if you please, to the point. "What the
devil is implied in this superfine tissue of verbiage and
fanfaronade ?
CARDINAL ANTONELLI AND GENERAL GEMEAU. 77
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
. it is incumbent on me (and never was any duty more
gratifying to my licart) to declare to your Excellency the
satisfaction of his Holiness at the assistance you have rendered
his Holiness^ in upholding, under the banner of the Church,
and under the Pontifical blessing, the rights and authority of
the Holy See.
GENERAL GEMEAU.
Parbleu ! well may you thank us ; but if you take it into
your head that we are going, your thanks, supposing them
final, my brave Eminence, are somewhat premature.
CARDINAL ANTONELLL
. And I am commanded by his Beatitude to place at
your disposal one thousand medals and one thousand crosses,
decorated with appropriate ribbands, that your Excellency may
distribute them among those officers and soldiers most distin-
guished for their devotion to our true religion.
GENERAL GEMEAU.
If your Eminence talks of sending off your deliverers in
this manner, they will throw your ribbands and crosses to the
Jews and to the smelting-pot.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
I speak from authority, and with the voice of a prophet, in
declaring to your Excellency that such a sacrilege would be
most detrimental to the perpetrators. But out of evil cometh
good : such invariably is the order of Divine Providence.
Tlie laws of nature in this instance will bend before it, and a
miracle will be the result, to the edification of the believer, and
the conversion or the confusion of the unbeliever.
GENERAL GEMEAU.
Eminence ! you gentlemen are always quite enough of
prophets to foresee a miracle. Eavor me with a vision of that
which is now impending, that I may either keep the soldiers
in the barracks or order them to take up a position, according
to the exigency.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
If such a profanation were offered to those crosses and
medals whicli have received a benediction from the Holiness
78 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
of our Lordj the fire over which they should be placed in the
crucible would totally change their properties, and the metal
would be only base metal.
GENERAL GEMEAU.
INTame of God ! I thought as much. But every metal is
base metal which turns a citizen into a satellite, the defender of
his freedom into the subverter of another's. Eminence !
we were not born to be Mamelukes, we were not educated to
be Janisaries. Shall those orders of men which are abolished
in Turkey and Egypt be maintained in France, for the benefit
of Eome ?
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
General ! with due submission, this language is novel and
unintelligible to me.
GENERAL GEMEATJ.
Plahily then; you and your master are ungrateful. We
have endured your clerical insolence and your Koman climate
long enough.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
His Holiness is quite of your opinion, and therefor would
graciously bestow on you, in the hour of your departure, liis
benediction and valediction.
GENERAL GEMEAU.
His Holiness, it seems to me, reckons without his host.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
We are most sensible of the great benefits the Erencli
government and the Erencli army have conferred upon us.
GENERAL GEMEAU.
Truly so it seems ! We do not want more of this sensibility;
we will grant you gratuitously more of these benefits. Have
we not sacrificed to you our oaths as citizens, our honour as
soldiers ? Did we not SAvear that we entered the Eoman
States to defend the liberty of the Eoman people ? And did
we not, without delay, bombard the city ?
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
To the danger of the palaces and of the churches.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI AND GENERAL GEMEAU. 79
GENERAL GEMEAU.
Which of the princes, which of the cardinals, ever once
entered the hospitals where our wounded, to the number of
above a thousand, lay dying ? The Koraan ladies, old and
young, attended them, drest their wounds, sat at the side of
their couches day and night, administered their medicines,
assuaged their thirst, and frequently, from heat and inanition,
fainted on the floor. Often have the tears of our brave
soldiers fallen on their inanimate nurses. Nature was
exhausted, beneficence flowed on.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
In Austria they would have been severely whipt for it, and
imprisoned among the prostitutes: our government is clement.
We are deeply indebted to your President for his succour and
support. But we can not dissemble .
GENERAL GEMEAU (aside).
Odd enough that !
CARDINAL ANTONELLL
. we can not dissemble from ourselves that we greatly
owe his interference to a pressure from without.
GENERAL GEMEAU.
Eminence ! be pleased to explain.
CARDINAL ANTONELLL
The President was anxious to conciliate the Potvers that be.
He was the head of his nation, and naturally leaned to the
heads of other nations, irrespective alike of Roman and of
Prenchman. If instead of sending eighteen thousand men to
chastise a rebellious city, which his wisdom has ensnared, he
had sent only half the number to encourage and protect it, all
Europe, long before the present hour, had been cursed with
constitutions. Heaven had showered down no more miracles,
no saintly eyes compassionately rolling from the painted
canvas, but had abandoned the sinful world to its own devices.
America will soon be left alone to the popular will : Europe is
well-nigh freed from it.
80 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
GEXERAL GEMEAU.
A spoke is shattered in the wheel of tlie Kevoliition : we
must substitute another and stronger : \^ must swear again^
and keep our oaths better.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
In the opinion of many (God forbid that I should entertain
it) the climate of the Erench heart is too hot and intemperate
for anything to keep sweet and sound in it. According to
them, your honor is quite satisfied by bloodshed ; to be proved
a liar is no disgrace ; to be called one is inexpiable.
GENERAL GEMEAU.
Pardon me, Eminence, pardon me : the offender's blood
expiates it. The pain of being caught in a lie, take my word
for it, is bad enough ; it shows such clumsiness and stupidity;
but to be called a liar in consequence of it . . bah ! and
without a moral power of shot or sabre to rebutt the chnrge . .
bah ! a Mediterranean of blood is insufiicient to staunch the
wound.
CARDINAL ANTONELLL
Christianity teaches us . .
GENERAL GEMEAU.
Don't tell me what Christianity teaches us. Christianity
holds the book in her hand, but can neither thrust it nor
conjure it into men's heads. Christianity says that her first
officers shall not call themselves lords : yet even those who
pretend to purity and reformation take the title. Christianity
commands them to forbear from lucre : yet I read in the
English journals that several English bislmps, judges in their
own cause, adjudicators of their own claims, are convicted of
seizing what they had voluntarily renounced in behalf of their
poorer brethren. Kobbers of the industrious and necessitous,
prevaricators and swindlers, as they are proved to be in Parlia-
ment, there is nobody at hand to knock the marrow-bone out
of their jaws, and to drive them back to kennel. The High-
priest of Jerusalem scoffed at Christ, but he would liave
scorned to filch a farthing from under the rags of Lazarus.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
We shall be indebted to these abuses for a large accession
CARDINAL ANTONELLI AND GENERAL GEMEAU. 81
to our holy cliurcli. Wliat man would pay a dollar to hear a
hurdy-gurdy who may hear the finest chorus for a soldo ?
Again, let me repeat, sir, the expression of the Supreme
PontifF^s benevolence for the services you and your army have
rendered to our Holy Faith. At present liis Majesty the king
of Naples and his ]\Iajesty the emperor of Austria are suffi-
ciently able and disposed to aid us against the rebels and
infidels of Italy.
GENERAL GEMEAU.
It was only that they might have no such duty to perform
we entered the papal states. It vexes me to be reminded not
oidy of the reverses we endured under your walls, but also of
the equal ignominy of having marched against them. Dis-
honored for ever are the names of several generals Avliose
fathers were signalised under the republiclc and under the
emperor. Oui" soldiers have fallen unprofitably ; but never,
sir, be persuaded that they have been garnering the harvest
for the benefit of Austrians and Neapolitans.
CARDINAL ANTONELLL
Your Excellency will recollect that the Austrian and
Neapolitan sovrans have territories and allies in Italy : the
French have none. These potentates have an unquestionable
right to secure their own tlirones in this country ; the French
have no throne and no allies to defend in it, no people which
calls or which in future will ever call to them for aid.
GENERAL GEMEAU (asicle).
Pardie ! priest as he is, he speaks the truth. A pretty
game hath our President been playing ! The chair is an
unlucky one ; yet there are those behind who are ready enough
to cut for it.
SECOND CONVERSATION.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
I AM charmed to find your Excellency in so much better
health than I expected.
GENERAL GEMEAU.
Many thanks to your Eminence. I have taken no medicine
8a THE LAST PRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
since my arrival in Eome, and I brouglit my cook with me
from Paris.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
We also have excellent cooks in Rome.
GENERAL GEMEAU.
Sometimes they deal too largely with the chemist and
druggist. Even the wine at the altar, and administered by
prelates, has been found sometimes to disagree with the
stomach. Stories therfor have been buzzed into the ears of
the studious and inquisitive, and have been related by grave
historians, of secret doors discovered, which opened from the
church into the laboratory, and of strong prescriptions under
the hand and seal . .
CARDINAL ANTONELU.
False, Sir, false altogether. No pope . .
GENERAL GEMEAU.
Did I name any ?
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
Permit me to express my confidence that your Excellency
means nothing more than what your words in their simplest
and most obvious form convey.
GENERAL GEMEAU.
Notliing more, nothing more whatever.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
With equal simphcity and with equal truth, I wiU now
interpret Avhat the Holiness of our Lord in liis benignity hath
deigned to impart. Apprehensive that some malady, and
hoping that notliing worse than a slight indisposition, had
detained your Excellency, at this unhealthy season of the year,
within the walls of Eome . .
GENERAL GEMEAU.
Eminence! you may at your own good time return and
inform the Holiness of our Lord that his Beatitude ought to
lie no longer under any such apprehension. Assure him that,
whatever he had reason to believe, you found me perfectly
CARDINAL ANTONELLI AND GENERAL GEMEAU. 83
hale and liearty : that my apartments are well ventilated^ my
cellar well filled with french Avines, which agree with me much
better than the Italian might do, and that, out of reverence to
Holy Church, I present to my chaplain his cup of coffee in
the evening, and of chocolate in the morning, before I drink a
drop. Indeed it is thought dangerous to remain in Rome
during the lieats of July and August : but there is nothing
wliich I would not endure in the service of his Holiness.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
Neighbouring potentates are quite willing to relieve your
Excellency from so incommodious and dangerous a service.
GENERAL GEMEAU.
It would be uupoUte and unfriendly to impose on a neighbour
any incommodity or danger which we ourselves decline.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
His Holiness is very anxious to calm animosities and obviate
collisions.
GENERAL GEMEAU.
The sword best calms animosities, best obviates collisions.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
Your Excellency means assuredly the sword of the spirit.
GENERAL GEMEAU.
Eminence ! the spirit of theologians and religionists is shown
clearly, though unconsciously, by their customary phraseology.
You borrow our swords, practically and efficiently, when your
own daggers are too short ; but, metaphorically and virtually,
every word you utter is drawn from our military vocabulary.
Shield, buckler, standard, conflict, blood, spmiing, rebuffing,
repulsing, overthrowing, trampling down tmder foot, rising
victorious, all these expressions and more such, echo from
church to chiu-ch, and mingle somewhat inharmoniously,
methinks, with prayers and exhortations. Good Christians
have a greater variety of them, and utter them with greater
intensity, than the wildest Cherokee or Australian.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
We are calm and considerate wliile we employ them.
G 2
84 THE LAST mUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
GENERAL GEMEAU.
Considerate too and calm is the Thug of India while he
mui'ders or excites to murder ; he also is rehgious and devout.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
Sir, I did not expect this language from a general who, if
I mistake not, hath served in Africa.
GENERAL GEMEAU.
Perhaps your Eminence may have mistaken ; but, whether
or no, every Trench officer is bound in honor to maintain the
character of every other. We are consistent : what one is all
are; what one says all say; what one does all do.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
I am too well aware of the fact for any dispute or disceptation
on any part of it. But, General, to avoid the possibiHty of
irritating or displeasing you, with my natural frankness and
well-known sincerity I will lay open to you the whole heart of
his Hohness. It is wounded profoundly at the dissensions of
his sons.
GENERAL GEMEAU.
If the question be not indiscreet, how many has he, poor
man?
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
More than ever, now your glorious President hath taken to
his bosom the Society of Jesus.
GENERAL GEMEAU.
I thought they never quarrelled. Wolves never do while
they hunt in packs ; and foxes at aU times know how little is
to be got by fighting.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
Your Excellency has misunderstood me. Austria and
Naples look with an evil eye upon your arms in Italy.
GENERAL GEMEAU.
Then let them stand farther off and look another way.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
Impossible to persuade them.
1
CARDINAL ANTONELLI AND GENERAL GEMEAU. 85
GENERAL GEMEAU.
We rrenclimen have often used such arguments as con-
vinced them perfectly. Austria sacrificed at another Tauris
another Ipliigenia ; Saint Jauuarius found us so true believers
that he sweated blood for us, and Cristo Bianco and Cristo
Nero* paraded the streets to our Marseillese hymn.
CARDINAL ANTONEUjI.
Happily those days are over.
GENEBAL GEMEAU.
I am not so sure of that. I would advise the Saint to
sweat wdiile he has any blood in his veins. We Frenchmen
know how to treat liim ; but among the Italians there are
many Avho would use liim to roast their chesnuts, or would
stir their polenta over liim.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
Alas ! too true. But the pious spirit wliich animates the
French soldier will render him ever obedient to the commands
of the Holy Father.
GENERAL GEMEAU.
The French soldier is possest by another spirit beside the
pious one, the spirit of obedience to his commander. The
Holiness of our Lord may command in the Yatican, but, Emi-
nence ! I command here. The Castle of St. Angelo is nigh
enough to the Vatican for me to hear any cry of distress from
His Beatitude ; the Austrians and Neapolitans are more
distant.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
They may approach.
GENERAL GEMEAU.
Let them, if they dare. At their advance I seize upon
certain hostages of the liighest rank and office.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
It would be sacrilege.
* Two idols carried in opposition about tlie streets of Naples, tlie devout
often beating the head of one against the head of the other.
86 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
GENERAL GEMEAU.
Tlie Pope will be close at hand to absolve me from it. He
holds the keys of Heaven and Hell ; I hold those of Castel-
Sant-Angelo.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
The Holiness of our Lord might forbid any resistance.
GENERAL GEMEAU.
In snch an events I would dehver him from fi-esh ignominy,
such as what liis HoHness bore, casting off his slipper for jack-
boots, liis triple crown for jockey-cap, and arrayed in the dress
livery of the French embassador, fain to take up a position at
a pretty good distance from the Cross of Christ, mindless of
his promises and of liis flock, and shouting aloud to King
Bomba for help.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
He flew to the faithful.
GENERAL GEMEAU.
And, seeing liis ui'gency, they delivered up to liim all the
faith they had about them.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
Excellency ! Eeally I distrust my senses ; never will I
believe that in a Trench general I have found a scoffer.
GENERAL GEMEAU.
Eminence ! I yield ; I give up the point ; you have beaten
me fairly at dissembling. I kept my countenance and my
temper as long as I could. I ought only to have laught at
the threat of being superseded, by the only king existing who
has been (in the field at least) convicted of cowardice, and
moreover at the instigation of the only Pope in modern times
who has been caught blowing bubbles to the populace, and
exerting his agility at a maskerade.
LOUIS BONAPARTE AND COUNT MOLE. 87
LOUIS BONAPAETE AND COUNT MOLE.
LOUIS BONAPARTE.
M. DE Mole ! I have often been desirous of profiting by
your wisdom and experience ; let me hope tliat the hour is
arrived.
COUNT MOLE.
Experience, M. le President, is baffled, trampled, trodden
down, and run over, by the rapid succession and blind conflict
of events : its utility is lost, is annihilated. Wisdom has had
no share in the creation of them, and can hope to exercise but
little control in their management.
LOUIS BONAPARTE.
We must now appeal to French courage and Trench honor.
COUNT MOLE.
We must sound the bell to silence the courage : on the
other hand, we must call a huissier with the loudest voice to
read an appeal to the honor. Are there twenty men of high
station in Erance who are unforsworn ? are there among her
representatives half the number who have not violated three
oaths in the last three months ?
LOUIS BONAPARTE.
But honor is left at the bottom of the heart.
COUNT MOLE.
If not there, yet under it, on the same side. The scabbard
holds it : and quite sufficiently capacious for the whole of it
would be a much narrower receptacle. Call a man a liar, and
out it flies upon you. He proves the contrary by a clear . .
I was about to say demoiutration . . the word is detonation.
!For one who enters a picture-gallery, fifty enter a pistol-
gallery : for one who has learnt the rudiments of grammar,
fifty have learnt the rudiments of gunnery. I should never
have made these remarks, M. le President, if you had not
invited me to converse with you upon the state of the nation^
88 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
upon wliat led to it^ and upon what may^ under Providence,
lead it again to security and peace. These are never to be
attained while no man holds sacred liis own word, or believes
in any other's.
LOUIS BONAPARTE.
I am entirely of your opinion, M. de Mole; so was my
uncle the Emperor. Tor which reason he restored to the Pope
his primitive authority, and hglited anew the candles on our
altars. This was the first step he took after his recall of the
emigrants. I have brought around me not only six or seven
of the old nobihty, but even such names as Penelon and
Turgot.
COUNT MOLE.
Easily done. Poverty, sir, is no phantom : she is the most
importunate of the Euries, and has the appetite of a Harpy.
She looks for her larder through the windows of the Treasury,
and, if she sees only empty dishes there, she screams and flies
away to another quarter. Be pleased, sir, to consider that I
cast a reflection on nobody.
LOUIS BONAPARTE.
I am aware of it, ]\I. de ]\Iole. If in any slight degree
I differ from you in opinion, it is in my general estimate of
Erench honor : it appears to me large and cathoKc.
COUNT MOLE,
Very large indeed, and truly catholic : I only wish we could
limit and define it, bringing it back -uithin its ancient boundary.
M. le President knows that a fortification is the stronger for a
wide extent of rotten ground about it. Cardinal de Eichelieu,
the wisest of politiciaus, knew it hkewise. Therfor he drew
into Paris, by offices and preferments, the ancient nobility of
the realm. The poorer he enriched by giving them places :
the richer he impoverished by leading them tlu-ough their
vanity to a vast expenditure. He took especial care that the
ladies, from the hour they left the convent, should be taught
the secrets of gaming. And what chevalier, worthy of his
spurs, could decline the acknowledgment of their smiles at
the tournay of green cloth ? Luxury, by which I mean good
cookery and good wine, seldom hurts the bodily frame. Late
hours, and the mortification of loss, cast down corporeal and
LOUIS BONAPARTE AND COUNT MOLE. 89
mental power alike. At tlie close of these days, and at the
commencement of our own, external commerce had begun to
ramify widely; and commerce will always introduce cosmo-
polite opinions. Turgot fostered it, and could not exclude
the sequel. He died too early for the prosperity of France.
No minister who united such integrity with such intellect is
recorded in the annals of any nation. Perhaps he was for-
tunate in living Avhile the government was simply monarchal,
thus having the fewer men to converse with and deceive. In
fact, he never deceived any one. Had he lived under a con-
stitutional system, he must have given up half his principles
or all liis power.
LOUIS BONAPARTE.
These, ]\I. de Mole, are serious considerations. We ought
to take good care how men may keep their principles. You
will assist me in this arduous undertaking, I am confident.
COUNT MOLE.
To the best of my poor abilities.
LOUIS BONAPARTE.
By this promise the uttermost scope of my ambition is
attained. I am resolved to extinguish the flame that would
consume all that is venerable in Eome, giving my solemn
word to citizen and soldier that I come frankly and loyally to
their assistance. The high clergy, with few exceptions in this
country, and fewer in Italy, are unanimous in recommending it.
COUNT MOLE.
In recommending, sir, a breach of promise ? a falsehood ?
LOUIS BONAPARTE.
M. de Mole ! the head of a state can commit no falsehood.
The preamble to all decrees runs . . "After hearing the
Council of Ministers," the President, or whatever may be the
title of the executive, decrees, &c. Beside which, it is
acknowledged by every true catholic that on emergencies a
word, or oath, or contract, may be broken and cast aside. In
courts the ties of consanguinity are relaxt j uncles and nieces,
aunts and nephews, intermarry, not simply with the consent,
but also with the benediction, of the Chui'ch. Shall not we,
90 THE LAST FRUIT OPF AN OLD TREE.
her sons, ever called the most Christian, be grateful to the
Holy Father for granting such indulgences, and lay every
snare to entrap the vermin that would undermine them ?
M. de Montalembert, a most religious man, together with
every member of the Society of Jesus, approves of my decision.
The Holy Father himself, when he bestowed on his people
from the balcony of the Quirinal his constitution and benedic-
tion, lowered his head, and in the same breath, with liis hand
upon his heart, called the Virgin to witness that he would
revoke all his promises. He who can take from his girdle
and turn round the keys of heaven, can surely turn round as
easily a hght and empty word. He has done it. AVe surely
can never err in following the course of Infallibility. Incest
is no incest, if he says it is none ; and oath, if he wills it, is
no oath.
COUNT MOLE.
There may indeed be some danger of Roman republicanism
flying across the Alps. The flame of a burning candle leans
toward the smoke of a candle half extinguisht, and relumes it.
This consideration has greater weight ^vith me than casuistry.
In France within a few months nothing will be left of repubhck
but the name : yet the name, if we hear it too frequently, or
too near, may evoke the spirit. M. de Montalembert would
not let the Romans burn their fetiches, and would rather burn
the Romans : I would rather let them alone if we could but
keep them quiet.
LOUIS BONAPARTE,
Precisely : that is all I wish. I woidd moderate the intem-
perate zeal of conflicting parties ; in which service to humanity,
M. de Mole, I entreat your counsel and co-operation.
POPE PIO NONO AND CAUDINAL ANTON ELII. 91
POPE PIO NONO AND CAEDINAL ANTONELLI.
PIO NONO.
Cardinal Antonelli ! Cardinal Antonelli ! I begin to fear
we shall be convicted of lying by the unbeliever.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
Holiness! we have hed: but it was for the glory of God and
of His Blessed Mother, and for the exaltation of the Church.
Need I recapitulate to your Beatitude the number of learned
casuists who have inculcated the duty of so doing ? Need I
bring before you the princes of the present day who have
broken their promises and oaths to their subjects ? If we were
bound to them^ we should be the subjects, and not they.
PIO NONO.
Nevertheless, I have had certain quahns of conscience from
time to time : insomuch as to have humiliated myself before
my confessor.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
And what said he ?
PIO NONO.
I am ashamed to repeat what he said, he almost said it
approached to sin. But, as in duty bound, he absolved me ;
on condition of eating a tench for supper, an isinglass jeUy,
and two apricot tarts, preceded by a basin of almond soup,
and followed by a demi-flask of Orvieto. I begged hard
against the tench, and pleaded for a mullet.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
Indignity ! was the beast so stupid as to be unaware that
your HoHness, who can absolve fifty nations at the erection of
a finger, could absolve yourseK ?
PIO NONO.
But it is easier and more commodious to procure another to
scratch our back and shoulder when they itch.
93 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
True, most true. But the business wliicli has brought me
tliis evening into the presence of your Beatitude is somewhat
worse than itcliing. The French Emperor is peremptory that
your Beatitude should crown liim.
PIO NONO.
I promised it.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
Indefinitely ; with evasions. And has not the French
Emperor done somewhat more than evade liis promises ? Has
he not broken them over and over again ?
PIO NONO.
I must not play tight and loose with liim : I must not turn
suddenly from hot to cold.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
The armourer, who makes a strong sword-blade, turns it first
in fire, then plunges it in water.
PIO NONO.
He might do me harm.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
The Austrians are always at hand to prevent it.
PIO NONO.
I am advised that twenty thousand more French with a
hundred thousand stand of arms for the malcontents, could
sweep Italy clear of the Austrians in six weeks, from Livorno
to Mantua. Louis Napoleon is "wdser and warier than his
uncle. Europe has never seen a prince more capable of
ruhng, more resolved to be obeyed.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
He has given great offence to Austria by the Declaration he
made preparatory to his marriage.
PIO NONO.
Doubtless : but what can Austria do against him ? Her
POPE PIO NONO AND CARDINAL ANTONELLI. 93
fleet in the Adriatic could not preserve Dalmatia to her.
Hungary would lie open : Piedemont and Switzerland would
rise simultaneously, and revenge tlie wrongs and insults they
daily are receiving. The Austrian empire would dissolve ere
autumn.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
Kussia would step forward again.
PIO NONO.
So much the worse for Austria. The Eussians would
bring Tamine with the sword. A Eussian army of eighty
tliousand men, I am credibly informed by a sound strategist,
would perish from inanition. Two hundred thousand Hunga-
rians, one hundred thousand ItaHans, and (say only) tliree
hundred thousand French, in addition to an Austrian army, of
perhaps a hundred thousand, after the desertion of Hungarians,
Italians, and Bohemians, would find but scanty provisions for
three months. AU the rich country of Lombardy and Austria
would be overrun by the enemy; and Prussia would take
Bohemia and Moravia under her protection.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
So long as your Holiness defers the coronation, Louis
Napoleon will be moderate.
PIO NONO.
I am aware of it. Between ourselves, there is nothing I so
much admhe in him as his choice of a consort. His uncle
was ruined by the Austrian alliance. History, close at hand,
in vain admonished him. The unfortunate Maria Antoinette,
the most amiable of her family and the best, was hated by the
Trench, not only for her extravagance, but for her country.
CARDINAL ANTONELLI.
Louis Napoleon's misalliance tends Little to conciliate them.
PIO NONO.
Gently, my good Cardinal ! The house of Guzman is as
ancient and noble as the house of Hapsburg. I have half a
mind to start directly and to pronounce my benediction on
the crown in Notre-Dame.
94 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
MAETIN AND JACK.
[Lord Peter, Martin, and Jack, brouglit the people much about
them in a disturbance long ago. Lord Peter, the proudest, most
intolerant, most exclusive, of his order, suddenly grew condescend-
ing and bland. Martin had little confidence in this demonstration;
so little indeed that he ordered the locksmith to alter the locks of
his cellar and larder, well knowing that, however different in
stature and features, there was a marvellous family-likeness in
appetite and quickness of digestion. Jack, whose house was
smaller, was contented with a cellar of proportionate dimensions ;
and, if you only sent him a simple calf's head toward the close of
January, cared little for any other delicacy of the larder. When
Peter spoke to him, which was seldom, he pretended that he was
ignorant of his language, and avowed that neither father nor
mother had taught it to any of their children. Martin had caught
a few words of it from Peter, and was somewhat fond of display-
ing his acquisition. Jack, who kept aloof from both brothers,
was more scandalised at Martin. At last, taciturn as was his
nature, he zealously burst forth in this brotherly expostulation.]
JACK.
Brother Martin^ friends we have met, whatever were our
feuds formerly, and friends, in God's name, let us part. We
have been somewhat too much given to the holding forth of
long discourses; and perhaps I, in this particular, have been
the more censurable of the two. Let me now come to the
point and have done with it. I always knew that Peter was
an impostor and a bastard : I always knew he was neither our
father's son nor our mother's son. Had he been, would he ever
have attempted to strangle us in our cradles ? Would he not
rather have helped us in our sickness and infirmity ? would he
not rather have fed us with pure fresh milk and unfermented
bread in it ? would he not rather have taken us by the hand,
and guided our tottering steps, patiently and cautiously?
Instead of which, he blew out the rush-light, because it was
only a rush-light ; he set fire to our cribs, and burnt us cruelly.
MARTIN.
I have heard all this story from our nurse ; but, Jack !
Jack ! thou wert always a froward child.
MARTIN AND JACK. 95
JACK.
Too true, brother ! but age hath sobered and softened me :
I trust it continues to render me, day by day, a little more like
our father. If this aspiration be too high, if tliis expression
be too presumptuous, permit me to correct it, and only to say
that, as I advance in life, I do heartily hope, I do anxiously
desire, that my steps be more prone and more direct toward
him.
MARTIN.
Give me thy hand, brother Jack ! This is manly ; this is
true-hearted.
JACK.
Can you then bear questioning and reproof, brother ?
MARTIN.
Not very well, as you know, my old boy. But come ; let
me try ; out with it ; out at once.
JACK.
Martin ! Martin ! the hottest air taints and corrupts our
viands no more certaiidy, nor more intimately, nor more per-
niciously, than the lukewarm. So is it, my brother, with the
sustenance of the spirit. I have lived where the flocks are
scattered and healthy, and where the life of the shepherd is
innocent and laborious. You have been spending your days
where there is no true shepherd at all, and where the crowded
fold is a sad congestion of ordure, scab, and foot-rot. You
are grown angry, I hear, at certain new impertinences of the
proud bastard whom you never have ventured to disclaim as
iDrother. Shall I reveal to you the secret of this anger ?
MARTIN {yawning).
With all my heart.
JACK.
Indifferent as usual ! Well then ; continue this indifference
until the close of our conversation. The audacious bastard,
who dared to spit in our father's face when he forbade any to
call him lord, sees many of his spawn grown recently, from
wriggling black little tadpoles, into party-coloured, puffy,
croaking frogs; and he claims the whole fat marsh for liis own
property. The neighbouring lords assumed the livery of our
Lord Peter, and imitated liis voice and bearing. But no
96 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TEEE.
sooner had lie laid claim to the whole fat marshy and had
driven into it their cattle for his own use, than they raised an
outcry tlu'oughout the land.
MARTIN.
Methinks it was time, brother Jack.
JACK.
Brother Martin ! it was time long before. The dissolute
old bastard collected those spies and assassins who had, even
when nations were thought to be less civiUzed, been driven
forth from every kingdom. He now stocks every kingdom
with them again, and mounts every throne with them vica-
riously. Well do I remember the time, my brother, when I
reproved you for a tendency to what is called philosophy. It
is true, you laught in my face : certainly you will never laugh
in it again for any similar reproof. If priests there must be,
let them keep their proper station : let the king have liis
palace, not the priest. When you have assigned to the
endowment of schools the many millions which pamper your
hierarchs, those burly beUies, swaying some one way, some
another, then, Martin, we shall meet in brotherly love, and
shall say (what I wish we could say sooner, instead of the
contrary), " Tliis is verily God's work, and it is marvellous in
our eyes."
MARTIN.
There is only one set of men in Europe who are avowedly
adverse to the propagation of knowledge, aware that the
propagation of knowledge is adverse to their dominion. My
friends, I am sorry to say it, are almost as much given to
lying as these are. Both parties call themselves catJiolic,
which neither is. Nor indeed, my dear Jack, between our-
selves, is it desirable that either should be. Every sect is a
moral check on its neighbour. Competition is as wholesome
in rehgion as in commerce. We must bid high for heaven ;
we must surrender much ; we must strive much, we must
suffer much ; we must make way for others, in order that in
our turn we may succeed. There is but one guide : we know
him by the gentleness of his voice, by the serenity of his
countenance, by the wounded in spirit who are clinging to his
knees, by the children whom he hath called to him, and by
the disciples in whose poverty he hath shared.
ARCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER LANDOR. 97
AECHDEACON HAEE AND WALTER LANDOR.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
In some of your later writings, I perceive, you have not
strictly followed the line you formerly laid down for spelling.
WALTER LANDOR.
I found it inexpedient ; since whatever the pains I took,
there was, in every sheet almost, some deviation on the side of
the compositor. Inconsistency was forced on me against all
my struggles and reclamations. At last nothing is left for
me but to enter my protest, and to take the smooth path
instead of the broken-up highway.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
It is chiefly in the preterites and participles that I have
followed you perseveringly. We are rich in having two for
many of our verbs, and unwise in corrupting the spelling, and
thereby rendering the pronunciation difficult. We pronounce
"astonisht/' we write astonished or astonished; an unnecessary
harshness. Never was spoken dvoipped, or lo'pped, or ho^^ped,
or prop/9«/; but dropt, &c.; yet with the choice before us, we
invariably take the wrong. I do not resign a right to " asto-
mshed " or " diminish(?f/." They may, with many hke them,
be useful in poetry ; and several such terminations add dignity
and solemnity to what we read in our church, the sanctuary at
once of our faith and of our language.
WALTER LANDOR.
In more essential things than preterites and participles
I ought rather to have been your follower than you mine.
No language is purer or clearer than yours. Vigorous
streams from the mountain do not mingle at once with the
turbid lake, but retain their force and their colour in the
midst of it. We are sapt by an influx of putridity.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Come, come ; again to our spelling-book.
98 . THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
WALTER LANDOR.
Well then, we differ on the spelling of honour , favour , &c.
You would retain the u : I would eject it, for the sake of con-
sistency. We have dropt it in author, emperor, amhassador.
Here again, for consistency and compliancy, I write " embas-
sador/^ because I write, as all do, "embassy." I write
theate;-, sepulche'r, meter, in their english form rather than
the french. The best authors have done it ; all write " hexa-
vxtier" and " pentameter."
ARCHDEACON HARE.
It is well to simplify and systematize wherever we can do it
conveniently.
WALTER LANDOR.
And without violence to vested rights ; which words have
here some meaning. Why "amend," if "emendation ?" Why
not " pont?/;" if " cait^/"."
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Why then should grandeur be left in solitary state ? The
Englishman less easily protrudes his nether jaw than the
Prenchmau, as "grandeur" seems to require. Grandeur (or
grander, if you will have it so) sounds better.
WALTER LANDOR.
I will have it so ; and so will you and others at last.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
]\Ieanwhile, let us untie this last knot of Norman bondage
on the common-law of language in our land.
WALTER LANDOR.
Set about it : no authority is higher than yours : I will run
by the side of you, or be your herald, or (what better becomes
me) your pursuivant.
There is an affectation of scholarship in compilers of spelling-
books, and in the authors they follow for examples, when
they bring forward phenomena and the like. They might as
well bring forward mysteria. We have no right to tear greek
and latin declensions out of their grammars : we need no
vortices when we have vortexes before us ; and while M'e have
memorandums, factotums, %dthnatmns, let our shepherd-dogs
ARCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER LANDOR. 99
bring back to us by the ear such as have wandered from the
flock.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
We have " stimul^w^! ;" why "stimulw^?" why "stimuli ?"
Wliy "recipe?" why "receipi?" we might as reasonably write
" deceipt" and " conceijii." I believe we are the only people
who keep the Dramatis Personce on the stage^ or announce
their going off by "exeunt:" "eant" for departure, is endurable,
and kept in countenance by transit: let us deprecate the
danger of hearing of a friend's obit, which seems imminent : a
"post-obit " is bad enough : an item I would confine to the
ledger. I have no mind for animus.
WALTER LANDOR.
Beside these there are two expressions either of which is
quite enough to bring doAra curses and mortality on the poet.
"Stand confest" (even if not written "confe^/^/") is one:
"unbidden tears" the other. I can imagine no such nonsense
as unbidden tears. Why do we not write the verb control with
an e at the end, and the substantive with u as soul ? we might
as reasonably write ivhol for whole : very unreasonably do we
write wliolly with a double 1 ; ivholy and soly might follow the
type of holy. We see printed, befal with one 1, but Tieverfal,
and yet in the monosyllable we should not be doubtful of the
accentuation. It is but of late that we controi^, reca/, appa<?, we
do not yet rol. Will any one tell me who put such a lazy
beast to our munitioti-tvain, and spelt on the front of the
carriage «;wmunition. We write enter and inter equally with
a single final r : surely the latter wants another.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
What is quite as censurable, while we reject the good of our
own countrymen, we adopt the bad of the forener. We are
much in the habit of using the word Jlibustier. Surely we
might let the French take and torture Q>m freebooter. In our
fondness for making verbs out of substantives, we even go to
the excess oijiibustering. And now from coarse vulgarity let
us turn our eyes toward inconsiderate refinement. When I
was a boy every girl among the poets was a nymph, whether in
country or town. Johnson countenanced them, and, arm-in-
arm with Pope, followed them even into Jerusalem. "Ye
nymphs of Solyma, kc,"
H 2
loo THE LAST PRUIT OFI' AN OLD TREE.
WALTER LANDOR.
Pity tliey ever found their way back !
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Few even now object to Muse and Bard.
WALTER LANDOR.
Nor would I in their proper places : the Muse in Greece
and Italy ; the Bard on our side of the Alps, up almost as far
as Scandinavia, quite as far as the Cimbrian Chersonese.
But the Bard looks better at nine or ten centuries off than
among gentlemen in roquelaures or paletots. Johnson, a
great reprehender, might fairly and justly have reprehended
him in the streets of London, whatever were his own excesses
among the " Nymphs of Solyma." In the midst of his
gravity he was not quite impartial, and, extraordinary as were
his intellectual powers, he knew about as much of poetry as
of geography. In one of his letters he talks of Guadaloupe as
being in another hemisphere. Speaking of that iland, his very
words are these : " Whether you return hither or stay in
another hemisphere." At the commencement of his Satire on
the Vanity of Human wishes (a noble specimen of declamation),
he places China nearer to us than Peru.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
The negligences of Johnson may easily be forgiven, in con-
sideration of the many benefits he has conferred on literature.
A small poet, no great critic, he was a strenuous and lofty
moralist. Your pursuers are of another breed, another race.
They will soon tire themselves, hang out their tongues, and
drop along the road. Time is not at all misapplied by you in
the analysis and valuation of Southey^s and Wordsworth's
poetry, which never has been done scrupulously and correctly.
But surely gravel may be carted and shot down on the highway
without the measure of a Winchester bushel. Consider if
what you have taken in hand is worthy of your workmansliip.
WALTER LANDOR.
The most beautiful tapestry is workt on extremely coarse
canvas. Open a volume of BayW s Biographical JJictionary ;
and how many just and memorable observations will you find
on people of no " note or likeHhood."
ARCHDEACON HAllE AND WALTER LANDOR. 101
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Unliappily for us, we are insensible of the corruptions tliat
creep yearly into our language. At Cambridge or Oxford (I
am ignorant which of them claims the glory of the invention)
some undergraduate was so facetious as to say, " Well, while
you are discussing the question, I will discuss my wine/' The
gracefulness of this witticism was so captivating, that it took
possession not only of both universities, but seized also on
''men about town." Even the ladies, the vestals who preserve
the purity of language, caught up the expression from those
who were Hbertines in it.
WALTER LANDOR.
Chesterfield and Horace Walpole, who are among the most
refined of our senators, have at present no more authority in
language than in dress. By what we see, we might imagine
that the one article is to be cast aside after as short a wear as
the other. It occurs to me at this moment, that, when we
have assumed the habiliments of the vulgar, we are in danger
of contracting their coarseness of language and demeanour.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Certainly the Eomans were (offati in their tongue, as well as
in their wardrobe. Purity and gravity of style were left
uncontaminated and unshaken by the breath of Tiberius
and his successor. The Antonines spoke better latin than
the Triumvir Antonius ; and Marcus Aurelius, altho on some
occasions he preferred the greek, was studious to maintain
his own idiom strong and healthy, "When the tongue is
paralyzed, the limbs soon follow. No nation hath long
survived the decrepitude of its language.
There is perpetually an accession of slang to our vernacular,
which is usually biennial or triennial.
WALTER LANDOR.
I have been either a fortunate or a prudent man to have
escaped for so many years together to be "pitched into" among
*' giant trees," ^'monster meetings," " glorimis ivmi," ''splendid
cigars, dogs, horses, and bricks," "palmi/ days," "rich
oddities ;" to owe nobody a farthing for any other fashionable
habits of rude device and demi-saison texture ; and above all,
to have never come in at the " deventli hour" wliich has been
102 . THE LAST FRUIT OFP AN OLD TREE.
sounding all day long the whole year. They do me a little
injustice who say that such a good fortune is attributable to
my residence in Italy. The fact is, I am too cautious and too
aged to catch disorders, and I walk fearlessly through these
epidemics.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Simply to open is insufficient : we " open %jp " and " open
out. A gentleman indues a coat ; it will be difficult to ex2ie
if he tries ; he must lie down and sleep in it.
''Foolery" was thought of old sufficiently expressive:
nothing short of tomiooXtx'^ will do now. To repudiate was
formerly to put away what disgraced us : it now signifies (in
America at least) to reject the claims of justice and honour.
We hear people re-read, and see them re-write ; and are invited
to a spread, where we formerly went to a dinner or collation.
We cut down harracks to a single barrack; but we leave
the " stocks " in good repair. We are among ambitions, and
among peoples, until Sternhold and Hopkins caU us into a
quieter place, and we hear once again
"All people that on earth do dwell."
Shall we never have done with " rule and excepition" " ever
and anon" " many a time and oft ? "
WALTER LANDOB.
It is to be regretted that Home Tooke and Bishop Lowtli
were placed so far apart, by many impediments and obstruc-
tions, that they never could unite in order to preserve the
fiuials and pinnacles of our venerable fabric, to stop the inno-
vations and to diminish the anomalies of our language.
Southey, altho in his youth during their time, might have
assisted them ; for early in life he had studied as sedulously the
best of our old authors as they had, and his judgement was as
mature at twenty-five as theirs at fifty. He agreed with me
that mind,fi7id, kind, blind, behind, should have a final e, in
order to signify the sound, and that the verb wind should like-
wise for the same reason. I brought Fairfax's " Tasso " with
me, and showed him that Fairfax had done it, and had spelt
many other words better than our contemporaries, or even
tlian the most-part of his own.
ARCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER LANDOR. 103
ARCHDEACON HAHK.
There are two expressions of freqvient occurrence, equally
wrong : " incorrect orthography " and " vernacular idiom."
Distempers in language, as in body, which rise from the
crowded lane, creep up sometimes to where the mansions are
higher and better ventilated. I think you once remarkt to
me that you would just as properly write pill(2??ger for pillager,
as messeii?ger for messager. The more excusable vulgar add to
these dainties their sausenger. Have you found anything
more to notice where you have inserted those slips of paper in
your Fairfax ?
WALTER LANDOR.
Much : to run over all would be tedious. He writes M'ith
perfect propriety dismaid, applle, chefe, hart, imsht, hnsht, spred,
Southey was entirely of my opinion that if lead in the present
is led in the preterite, read should be red. There is no danger
of mistaking the adjective for the verb by it. He ridiculed
the spelling of Byron redde ; which is quite as ridiculous as
the conceit of that antiquarian society which calls itself the
" Eoxburghe Club ;" e was never added to burgh.
Howell, a very careful writer, an excellent authority, writes
forren, frend, Mahometism, totmg, extemporal, shipwracJc, cole,
onely, sutable, plaid, asM, hegger, apparance, brest, yeer,
plaid, lanch, peece, tresure, scepter, incertain, kinde, perle.
Drayton and Daniel may be associated with Howell.
Drayton in his prose wrote red, and there is no purer or more
considerate author. He writes also ransacks, distinguish/^,
dispers;^, worship/", admonish/5, tax/5, deck/!, wrack/5, profes/5,
extols?, purchasif. He writes /ained, tuch, yeers, onely, dore.
Sir Thomas More writes lerned, clereness, preste (priest),
sholde, wolde, leve, yere, harte, mynde, here (hear), herer,
(hearer), appere, speher, seJce, grevoHS,fynde, doiite, viherof, seme,
dede, nede, tethe [i&Qth), precher, peple, sene (seen), erg* (ears),
toJce, therfor, mete (meat), frend, therin, fere (fear), a wever,
rede (read). A host of these words only show that the best
authors avoided the double vowel.
Spenser, in consecutive verses, writes were (wear), and bere
(bear), and heven daidi foule.
" Upon her thombe or in her purse to bere."
" There is no foule that flieth under heaven."
Camden vrntesforraine and iland^
104 THE LAST FKUIT Oi'F AN OLD TREE.
It was late before ea was employed in place of the simple
vowel e. Chaucer writes " eny pecock." Shal and wil, so written
by him, are more proper than shall and toill, by avoiding
the form of substantives. Caxton writes, as many of his
time, werk not "work.''' Tyndal, long after, writes doo for do.
Spenser writes dore instead of door. Sackville writes psarst.
Dryden is less accurate than Cowley, and Waller, and Sprat.
Speaking of Cowley, he says "he never could forgive a
conceit," meaning forego. In our own age many, Burke
among the rest, say " By this means." It would be affecta-
tion to say By this mean, in the singular ; but the proper
expression is "By these means."
ARCHDEACON HARE.
In regard to terminations, it is difficult to account for the
letter e when we say " by and bye. There is none in account-
ing for it in " Good 3ye," which is the most comprehensive of
all contractions : it is " Good be with ye ! " or " God be with
ye ! " which in effect is the same. Formerly ye was more
universal than you. Ignorant critics reprehend it wrongly in
such a position as " I would not hurt ye." But it is equally
good english as " Ye would not hurt me." No word is more
thoroughly vernacular, from of old to this present day, among
the people throughout the land. We should keep our homely
well-seasoned words, and never use the grave for light
purposes.
Among the many we misapply is the word destiny. We
hear of a man controling the destiny of another. Nothing
on earth can controle the ^e^^^i?^^^/, whether the term be apphed
strictly or laxly. Element is another, meaning only a consti-
tuent. Graver stil is incarnation. We hear about the mission
of fellows whose highest could be only to put a letter into the
post-office.
We usually set ' before 'neath : improperly : the better
spelling is nethe, whence nether. We also prefix the same ' to
yhre. We say (at least those who swear do) " yhre God ;"
never " before God." Cause in like manner is a word of
itself, no less than " because." But this form is properer for
poetry.
Chaucer writes peple, as we pronounce it.
Skelton writes sault and mault, also in accordance with the
pronunciation, and there is exactly the same reason for it as in
ARCHDEACON IIAEE AND WALTEE LANDOll. 105
fault. It woiild not be going far out of our way to bring
them back again^ and then cry haidt, which we do only with
the pen in hand.
We are in the habitude of writing onwards, backwards,
toward*, afterwards; he more gracefully drops the final s. We
write strip?^, whip^^^ yet hesitate at trip^! and worship^. We
possess in many cases two for one of the preterites, and, to
show our impartiality and fairness, we pronounce the one and
write the other. We write said and laid, but never staid
or plaid. We write official ; why not influencial, circum-
stan(?fal, differencial ? We write entrance the substantive like
entrance the verb. Shakspeare wisely wrote
"That sounds the fatal enterance of Duncan." &c.
Wond^rous is a finer word than ivondrous.
It is not every good scholar, or every fair poet, who possesses
the copiousness and exhibits tlie discrimination of Shakspeare.
Even when we take the hand he offers us, we are accused of
innovating.
■WALTER LANDOR.
So far from innovating, the words I propose are brought
to their former and legitimate station ; you have sanc-
tioned the greater part, and have thought the remainder
worth your notice. Every intelligent and unprejudiced
man will agree with you. I prefer high authorities to
lower, analogy to fasliion, a Restoration to a Usitrpation.
Innovators, and worse than innovators, were those Reformers
called, who disturbed the market-place of manorial Theology,
and went back to Religion where she stood alone in her
original purity. We English were the last people to adopt the
reformed style in the kalendar, and we seem determined to be
likewise the last in that of language. We are ordered to
please the public ; we are forbidden to instruct it. Not only
publishers and booksellers are against us, but authors too;
and even some of them who are not regularly in the service of
those masters. The outcry is, " IFe have not ventui'ed to alter
what we find in use, and why should he ? "
ARCHDEACON HARE.
If the most learned and intelligent, in that age which has
been thought by many the most glorious in our literature,
were desirous that the language should be settled and fixt.
106 THE LAST PEUIT OFP AN OLD THEE.
liow mucli more desirable is it tliat its accretion of corrup-
tions should be now removed ! It may be difficult ; and stil
more difficult to restore the authority of the ancient dynasty.
WALTER LANDOR.
We never have attempted it. But there are certain of their
laws and usages which we would not willingly call obsolete.
Often in the morning I have lookt among your books for
them, and I deposit in your hands the first fruits of my
research. It is only for such purposes that I sit hours
together in a library. Either in the sunshine or under the
shade of trees, I must think, meditate, and compose.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Thoughts may be born in a room above-stairs or below,
but they are stronger and healthier for early exercise in the
open air. It is not only the conspirator to whom is appro-
priate the " modo citus modo tardus incessus ;" it is equally
his who follows fancy, and his also who searches after truth.
WALTER LANDOR.
The treasures of your library have sometimes tempted me
away from your pictures ; and I have ceast for a moment to
regret that by Selections and Compendiums we had lost a
large portion of the most noble works, when I find so accurate
a selection, so weighty a compendium, carried about with him
who is now walking at my side.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
I would have strangled such a compliment ere it had
attained its full growth : however, now it is not only full-
grown but over-grown, let me ofl'er you in return not a com-
phment, but a congratulation, on your courage in using the
plural compendi?/;;^,$ " where another woidd have pronounced
" compendia."
WALTER LANDOR.
Would that other, whoever he may be, have said musea ?
All I require of people is consistency, and rather in the right
than in the wrong. When we have admitted a greek, or
latin, or french word, we ought to allow it the right of
citizenship, and induce it to comply and harmonize with the
rest of the vocular community. " Pindari^^^e " went away with
ARCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER LANDOR. 107
Cowley, and died in the same ditch with him ; but '' obh*^?^^ "
is inflexible, and stands its ground. He would do well who
should shove it away, or push it into the ranks of the new
militia. " kiitigjie " is the worst portion of Gray^s heritage.
His former friend, Horace Walpole, had many antiques, and
other trifles at Strawberry-hill, but none so worthless as this.
In honest truth, we neither have, nor had then, a better and
purer writer than he, although he lived in the time of the
purest and best. Goldsmith, Sterne, Fielding, and Inchbald.
He gave up his fashionable french for a richer benefice. He
would not use " roiige " but " red ;" very different from the
ladies and gentlemen of the present day, who bring in
entremets, and lardes, casting now and then upon the lukewarm
hearth a log of latin, and in the sleeping-room they have
prepared for us, spread out as counterpane a remnant of
etruscan from under a courier's saddlebag.
Chaucer, who had resided long in France, and much among
courtiers, made english his style. Have you patience to read
a list of the words he spelt better than we do? and not he only
but liis remote successors.
ABCHDEACON HARE.
I have patience, and more than patience, to read, or hear,
or see, whatever is better than ourselves. Such investigations
have always interested me, you know of old.
WALTER LANDOR.
Eare quality ! I scarcely know where to find another who
possesses it, or whose anger would not obtain the mastery
over his conscience at the imputation.
Let your eyes run down this catalogue. Here are swete
and swote, Jinde, ther, ivel, kerken, herk, gilt (guilt),
shal, don (done), werks (works), weping, dene, defaidte,
therof, speking, erthe, hereth (bearetli), seate, mete (meat),
shuld (should), hevi/, hevn, grevous, grete, hete, yere, fode
(food) ; we stil ?,?ij fodder, not fooder ; ete (eat), lede, throt, wel,
drede, shal, gess (guess), fid, wheras, trespas, hetwene, repe,
slepe, sliete, frend, dedhj, delites, teres, kering, clereness, jiige,
plese, speke, tvold (would), ded, tred, bereve, thred, peple,
dore, dreme, denie, reson, indede, meke, fehle, wede, nede,
fele, cese, pece, dedly, deme, resonable, slepe, titel, refrein,
preeste.
108 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
AKCHDEACON HAKE.
In adding the vowel^ he makes it available for verse. Covetise,
how much better than covetiousness ! Among the words wliich
might be brought back again to adorn our poetical diction
is beforne, before. Here is cllstemperament (for inclemency
of season) •,forlet, forgive, another good word ; so is wanhope,
despair. Has no poet the courage to step forth and to
rescue these maidens of speech, unprotected beneath the very
castle-walls of Chaucer?
WALTER LAXDOR.
If they are resolved to stitch up his rich old tapestry
with muslin, they would better let it stay where it is.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Several more words are remaining in which a single vowel
is employed where we reduplicate. Sheres, ajojjere, specTie,
wele, hereth, reson, onening, pleasance, stele, coles, mekeness,
reve (bereave), rore, long, corageous, forbere, hepe, othe
(oath), cese, shepe, clreme, werse (worse), reken (reckon).
Certainly this old spelling is more proper than its substitute.
To reken is to look over an account before casting it up.
Here are grevance, lerne, bete, seke, speke, freze (freeze), cJiese,
dense, tretise, meke. Here I find axe (ask), which is now a
vulgarism, though we use tax for task. With great propriety
he writes persever ; we, with great impropriety, persevere. He
uses the word spiced for overnice, which in common use is
gingerly. I think you would not be a stickler for the best of
these, whichever it may be.
WALTER LANDOR.
No indeed : but there are in Chaucer, as there are in other
of our old, yet somewhat later writers, tilings which with
regret I see cast aside for worse. I wish every editor of an
author, whether in poetry or prose, would at least add a
glossary of his words as he spelt and wrote them, without
which attention the history of a language must be incomplete.
Heine in his Virgil, Wakefield in his Lucretius, have preserved
the text itself as entire as possible. Greek words do not
appear in their spelling to have been subject to the same
vicissitudes as latin.
I have not been engaged in composing a grammar or
ARCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER LANDOR. 109
vocabulary, nor is a conversation a treatise ; so with your usual
kindness you will receive a confused collection of words,
bearing my mark on them and worthy of yours. They are
somewhat like an Italian pastry, of heads and necks and feet
and gizzards off a variety of birds of all sorts and sizes. If
my simily is undignified, let me go back into the Sistine
Chapel, where Michel Angiolo displays the same thing more
gravely and grandly in his Last Judgment.
ARCHDEACON HAKE.
Do not dissemble your admiration of this illustrious man,
nor turn into ridicule what you reverence. Among the hardy
and false things caught from mouth to mouth is the apothegm
that " there is only a step from the sublime to the ridiculous/'
There was indeed but a step from Bonaparte's.
• WALTER LANDOR.
I perceive you accept the saying as his. It was uttered long
before his birth, and so far back as the age of Louis the
Fourteenth. Another is attributed, to him, wluch was
spoken by Barrere in the Convention. He there called the
English " cette nation houtiqimre."
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Well, now empty out your sack of words, and never mind
which comes first.
WALTER LANDOR.
Probably there are several of them which we have noticed
before. Here are a few things which I have markt with my
pencil from time to time ; others are obliterated, others lost.
There is a very good reason why rarel and travel should be
spelt with a single I, pronunciation requires it ; equally does
pronunciation require a double 1 in befell, expell, compell, rebell.
We often find kneeled instead of knelt, yet I do not remem-
ber /ee/er/ iovfelt. Shaftesbury, and the best writers of his age
and later, wrote cou'd, shou'd, wou'd: we do not, although
in speaking we never insert the I. Hurd writes, " Under the
circumstances." Circumstances are about us, not above us.
" Master of the situation," is the only expression we have
borrowed lately of the Spanish, and it is not worth having.
I have observed rent as preterite oirend: improper : as nient
would be of mend.
110 THE LAST FKUIT OFF AN OLD TREE,
All too well, &C.J the word all used needlessly. All the
greater, &c. These expressions are among the many which
have latterly been swept out of the servants' hall, who often
say (no doubt), "I am all the better for my dinner/'
Daresay is now written as one word.
Egotist should be egoist: to doze should not be written
dose, as it often is.
I once was present when a scholar used the words vexed
question : he was not laughed at, altho he was thought a
pedant for it ; many would willingly be thought pedants who
never can be ; but they can more cheaply be thought affected,
as they would be if they assumed this latinism. In oui"
english sense, many a question vexes, none is vext. The sea
is vexatum when it is tost hither and thither, to and fro ; but a
question, however unsettled, has never been so called in
good english.
*' Sought his bedchamber;" improper, because he knew where
it was. To seek is to go after what may or may not be found.
Firstly is no Enghsh. To gather a rose is improper. To
gather two roses would be proper. Better to cull, which
may be said of choosing one out of several; cull is from
the italian cogllere, originally in latin colligare. But to us
in our vernacular, the root is invisible : not so to gather, of
which we are reminded by " together."
There is a bull of the largest Irish breed in nearly the
most beautifid of Wordsworth's poems.
" I lived upon what casual bounty yields,
Now coldly given, now utterly refv^ed^'
The Irish need not cry out for their potatoes, if they can live
upon what they can not get.
" The child is father of the man,"
says Wordsworth, well and truly. The verse animadverted on
must have been written before the boy had begotten his parent.
What can be sillier than those verses of his wliich many
have quoted with unsuspicious admiration ?
" A maid whom there was none to praise,
And very few to love."
He might have written more properly if the rhyme and
meter had allowed it,
" A maid whom there were none to love,
And very few to praise."
ARCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER LANDOR. Ill
Por surely the few who loved her would praise her. Here
he makes love subordinate to praise : there were some who
loved her, none (even of these) who praised her. Eeaders of
poetry hear the bells, and seldom mind what tliey are ringing
for. Where there is laxity there is inexactness.
Frequently there are solid knolls in the midst of Words-
worth's morass, but never did I expect to find so much
animation, such vigour, such succinctness^ as in the paragraph
beginning with
" All degrees and shapes of spurious form,"
and ending with
" Left to herself, unheard of and unknown."
Here indeed the waggoner's frock drops off, and shows to
our surprise the imperial purple underneath it. Here is the
brevity and boldness of Cowper ; here is heart and soul ; here
is the €iKMV l3a(nkLKri of Poetry.
I beUeve there are few, if any, who enjoy more heartily than
I do, the best poetry of my contemporaries, or who have com-
mended them both in private and in public with less parsimony
and reserve. Several of them, as you know, are personally
my friends, altho we seldom meet. Perhaps in some I may
desiderate the pure ideal of what is simply great. If we must
not always look up at Theseus and the Amazons, we may
however catch more frequent ghmpses of the Graces, witli
their zones on, and their zones only. Amplification and
diffuseness are the principal faults of tliose who are now
standing the most prominent. Dilution does not always make
a thing the clearer ; it may even cause turbidity.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Stifness is as bad as laxness. Pindar and Horace, Milton
and Shakspeare, never caught the cramp in their mountain-
streams : their movements are as easy as they are vigorous.
WALTER LANDOR.
The strongest are the least subject to stifness. Diffuseness
is often the weakness of vanity. The vain poet is of opinion
that nothing of his can be too much : he sends to you basket-
ful after basketful of juiceless fruit covered with scentless
flowers.
112 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
ARCHDEACON HARE,
Many an unlucky one is like the big and bouncing foot-baU^
which is blown up in its cover by unseemly puffing, and
serves only for the game of the day. I am half-inchned to
take you to task, my dear friend, feeling confident and
certain that I should do it without ofl'ence.
WALTER LANDOR.
Without offence, but not without instruction. Here I am
ready at the desk, with both hands down.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
To be serious. Are you quite satisfied that you never have
sought a pleasure in detecting and exposing the faults of
authors, even good ones ?
WALTER LANDOR.
I have here and there sought that pleasure, and found it.
To discover a truth and to separate it from a falsehood, is
surely an occupation worthy of the best intellect, and not at
all unworthy of the best heart. Consider how few of our
countrymen have done it, or attempted it, on w^orks of
criticism : how few of them have analyzed and compared.
Without these two processes there can be no sound judgement
on any production of genius. We are accustomed to see the
beadel limp up into the judge's chair ; to hear him begin with
mock gravity, and to find him soon dropping it for liis natural
banter. He condemns with the black cap on, but we discover
through its many holes and dissutures the uncombed
wig. Southey is the first and almost the only one of our
critics who moves between his intellect and his conscience,
close to each.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
How much better would it be if our reviewers and magazine-
men would analyze, in this manner, to the extent of their
abilities, and would weigh evidence before they pass sentence.
Eut they appear to think that unless they hazard much they
can win little; while in fact they hazard and lose a great
deal more than there is any possibility of their recovering.
One rash decision ruins the judge's credit, which twenty
correcter never can restore. Animosity, or perhaps some-
thing more ignoble, usually stimulates rampant inferiority
against high desert.
ARCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER LANDOR. 113
I have never found you disconcerted by any injustice toward
yourself; not even by the assailants of this our lleformation.
WALTER LANDOR.
If we know a minor, whose guardians and trustees have
been robbing him of his patrimony, or misapplying it, or
wearing out the land by bad tillage, would we not attempt to
recover for him whatever we could ; and especially if we were
intimate with the family, if we had enjoyed the shade of its
venerable woods, the refreshing breezes from its winding
streams, and had in our early days taken our walks among
them for study, and in our stil earlier gone into tlie depths of
its forests for our recreation ?
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Next in criminality to him who violates the laws of his
country, is he who violates the language. In this he is a
true patriot, and somewhat beside,
" Qui consulta patrum qui leges juraque servat."
Byron is among the defaulters. On Napoleon he says
" Like he of Babylon.^' '^The annal of Gibbon." '' I have
eat" &c. There is a passage in Tacitus on a vain poet,
Luterius, remarkably applicable to our lately fashionable one.
" Studia ilia, ut plena vecordia?, ita inania et fiuxa sunt : nee
quidquam grave ac serium ex eo metuas qui, suorum ipse flagi-
tiorum proditor, non virorum animis sed muliercularum
adrepit."
WALTER LANDOR.
It suits him perfectly. I would however pardon him some
false grammar and some false sentiment, for his vigorous appli-
cation of the scourge to the two monsters of dissimilar con-
figuration who degraded and disgraced, at the same period, the
two most illustrious nations in the world. The Ode against
Napoleon is full of animation : against the other there is less
of it ; for animation is incompatible with nausea. Byron had
good action, but he tired by fretting, and tossing his head, and
rearing.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Let reflections for a moment give way to recollections.
In the morning we were interrupted in some observations on
the aspirate.
114 THE LAST ERUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
WALTER LANDOB.
. Either I said, or was about to say, that the aspirate,
wherever it is written, should be pronounced. If we say '■'a
house,^' M'hy not say " a hour ?" if ^' a horse,^' why not " a
honour ? ^' J\^obody says " an heavy load," " an heavenly
joy," " an holy man," " an hermit," '' an high place," " an
huge monster," " an holly-bough," '^ an happy day." Let
the minority yield here to the majority. Our capriciousness
in admitting or rejecting the service of the aspirate was con-
tracted from the Trench. The Italians, not wanting it, sent
it off, and called it back merely for a mark discriminatory,
for instance in the verb Ho, hai, ha.
AECHDEACON HARE.
You have been accused oi pJionetic spelling.
WALTER LANDOR.
Inconsiderately, and with even less foundation than false-
hood has usually under it. Nothing seems to me more grossly
absurd, or more injurious to an ancient family, the stem of our
words and thoughts. Such a scheme, about fourscore years
ago, was propounded by Elphinstone : it has lately been
reproduced, only to wither and die down again.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
I always knew, and from yourself, that you are a " good
hater" of innovation, and that your efforts were made strenu-
ously on the opposite side, attempting to recover in our
blurred palimpsests what was written there of old. We have
dropt a great deal of what is good, as you just now have
shown, and we have taken into our employment servants
without a character, or with a worthless one. We adorn our
new curtains with faded fringe, and embellish stout buck-
skiu with point-lace.
WALTER LANDOR.
After this conversation, if it ever should reach the public
ear, I may be taken up for a brawl in the street, more serious
than an attack on the new grammar-school.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
What can you mean ? Taken up ? Eor a brawl ?
ARCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER LANDOR. 115
WALTER LANDOR.
Little are you aware that I have lately been accused of
a cfraver oli'ence, and one committed in the dark.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
And in the dark you leave me. Pray explain.
WALTER LANDOR.
I am indited for perpetrating an J^?'*?.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Indeed ! I am glad to hear the announcement. And when
does the cause come into court ? And who is the accuser ?
And what are his grounds ?
WALTER LANDOR.
Longer ago by some years than half a century, I wrote
Geblr. The cause and circumstances I have detailed elsewhere.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Is tliis the epic ?
WALTER LANDOR.
It appears so.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Already you look triumphant from that ancient car.
WALTER LANDOR.
No truly ; I am too idle for a triumph : and the enemy's
forces were so small that none could legitimately be decreed.
" Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor
Qui face barbaricos calamoque sequare colonos."
" Surely sball some one come, alert and kind,
With torch and quill to guide the blundering hind."
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Clowns and boys and other idlers, if they see a head above
a garden-wall, are apt to throw a pebble at it, which mischief
they abstain from doing when the head is on their level
and near.
WALTER LANDOR.
Nobody reads this poem, I am told; and nothing more
likely.
I 2
116 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Be that as it may. The most disappointed of its readers
would be the reader who expected to find an epic in it. To
the epic not only its certain spirit, but its certain form, is
requisite ; and not only in the main body, but likewise in the
minute articulations. I do not call epic that which is in lyric
meter, nor indeed in any species of rhyme. The cap and bells
should never surmount the helmet and breastplate; Ariosto
and Tasso are lyrical romancers. Your poem, wliich Southey
tells us he took for a model, is in blank verse.
WALTER LANDOR.
Southey, whom I never had known or corresponded with,
hailed it loudly in the Critical Beview, on its first appearance*
He recommended it to Charles Wynne, Charles Wynne
to the Hebers; they to your uncle Shipley, Dean of
St. Asaph's. Southey's splendid criticism, whatever may be
the defects and deficiencies of the poem, must have attracted
at the time some other readers; yet I believe (tho I never
heard or inquired) that they were not numerous. Frere,
Canning, and Bobus Smith were among them. Enough for me.
Within these few months, a wholesale dealer in the brittle
crockery of market criticism has pickt up some shards of it,
and stuck them in his shelves. Among them is my Sea-shell,
which Wordsworth clapt into his pouch. There it became
incrusted with a compost of mucus and shingle ; there it lost its
" pearly hue within/' and its memory of where it had abided.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
But Wordsworth had the industry and skill to turn every-
thing to some account.
WALTER LANDOR.
Perfectly true. And he is indebted to me for more than
the value of twenty Shells : he is indebted to me for praise, if
not more profuse, yet surely more discriminating, than of those
critics who were collected at wakes and hired by Party. Such
hospital-nurses kill some children by starving, and others by
pampering with unwholesome food. '
ARCHDEACON HARE.
I have often heard you express your admiration of Words-
worth; and I never heard you complain, or notice, that he
owed any tiling to you.
AUCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER LAN DOR. 117
WALTKR LA.NDOR.
Truly lie owes me little. My shell may be among tlie
prettiest on liis mantelpiece, but a trifle it is at best. I often
wish, in liis longest poem, he had obtained an Inclosure-act,
and subdivided it. What a number of delightful Idyls it would
have afforded ! It is pity that a vapour of metaphysics should
overhang and chill any portion of so beautiful a plain; of
which, however, the turf would be finer and the glebe solider
for a moderate expenditure in draining and top-dressing.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Your predilections led you to rank Southey higher.
WALTER LANDOR.
Wordsworth has not written three poems so excellent as
Tkalaba, the Curse of Kehama, and Roderic ; nor indeed any
poem exhibiting so great a variety of powers. Southey had
abundance of wit and humour, of which Wordsworth, like
greater men, such for instance as Gothe and Milton, was
destitute. The present age will easily pardon me for placing
here the German and the Englishman together : the future,
I sadly fear, would, without some apology, be inexorable.
If Wordsworth wants the diversity and invention of Southey,
no less than the humour, he wants also the same geniality
belonging in the same degree to Cowper, with terseness and
s uccinctness.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
You have often extolled, and in the presence of many, the
beauty of his rural scenes and the truth of his rural characters.
WALTER LANDOR.
And never will I forego an opportunity. In the delineation
of such scenes and characters, far, infinitely far beneath him
are Virgil and Theocritus. Yet surely it is an act of grievous
cruelty, however unintentional, in those who thrust him into
the same rank and file with Milton. He wants muscle,
breadth of shoulder, and highth.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Sometimes he may be prosaic.
WALTER LANDOR.
He slithers on the soft mud, and can not stop himself until
118 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TEEE.
he comes down. In his poetry there is as much of j^rose as
there is of poetry in the prose of Milton. But prose on
certain occasions can bear a great deal of poetry : on the other
handj poetry sinks and swoons under a moderate weight of
prose; and neither fan nor burnt feather can bring her to
herself again.
It is becoming and decorous that due honours be paid to
Wordsworth ; undue have injured him. Discriminating praise
mingled with calm censure is more beneficial than lavish praise
without it. Eespect him ; reverence him ; abstain from wor-
shiping him. Eemember, no ashes are lighter than those of
incence^ and few things burn out sooner.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
It appears that you yourself, of late, have not suffered
materially by the wafting of the thuiible.
WALTER LANDOR.
Paith ! I had quite forgotten what we were speaking about last.
It was about myself, I suspect, and the worthy at Edinburgh
who reviews me. According to him, it appears that only two
had read Gebvr, namely, Southey and Mr. De Quincey. I have
mentioned a few others ; I might have added Coleridge, to
whom Southey lent it, and who praised it even more enthusi-
astically, until he once found Southey reciting a part of it in
company : after which, I am told, he never mentioned it, or
slightly. In the year of its publication Carey, translator of
Dante, had praised it. His opinion of it I keep to myself, as
one among the few which I value. This was long before
Mr. De Quincey knew Southey. It is marvelous that a man
of so retentive a memory, as Southey, should have forgotten a
thing to which he himself had given its importance : it is less
so that Mr. De Quincey imagined it, under the influence of
that narcotic the effects of which he so ingenuously and so
well described, before he exhibited this illustration.
He had another imaginary conversation with Southey, in
which they agree that Gehir very much resembled the Ao'go-
iiautics of Valerius Flaccus. Hearing of this, about a
twelvemonth ago, I attempted to read that poem, but was
unsuccessful. Long before, and when my will was stronger,
I foundered in the midst of Statins. Happily in my school-
days, I had mastered Lucan and Juvenal.
ARCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER LANDOR. 119
ARCHDEACON HARE.
They are grandly declamatory : but declamatioii overlays
and strangles poetry, and disfigures even satire.
WALTER LANDOR.
Eeserving the two mentioned, and Martial, I doubt whether
the most speculative magazine-man would hazard five pounds
for the same quantity of englhli poetry (rightly called letter-
press) as all the other post-Ovidian poets have left behind.
After the banisliment of Ovid hardly a breath of pure poetry
breathed over the Cmnpagna di Roma. Declamation was
spouted in floodgate verse : Juvenal and Lucan are high in that
school, in which, at the close of the poetical day, was heard
the street cow-horn of Statins.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Even for the company of such as these, I think I would
have left the E-eeker in Auld Reekie. Flies are only the more
troublesome and importunate for being driven off, and they
wiU keep up with your horse, however hard you ride, without
any speed or potency of their own.
WALTER LANDOR.
True : but people who sell unsound wares, and use false
scales and measures, ought to be pointed out and put down,
altho we ourselves may be rich enough to lose an ounce or two
by their filching.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
No one ever falls among a crowd of Kterary men without
repenting of it sooner or later. You may encounter a single
hound outside the kennel, but there is danger if you enter in
among them, even with a kind intention and a bland
countenance.
WALTER LANDOR.
Tt must be a dog in the distemper that raises up his spine
at me. I have spoken favorably of many an author, unde
servedly of none : therfor both at home and abroad I have
received honorary visits from my countrymen and from foreners.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Possibly there may be some of them incontinent of the acri-
monious humour pricking them in the paroxism of wit. I
120 THE LAST PRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
know not whether there be any indication of it in the soil under
your shovel. Grains of wit^ however^ may sometimes be
found in petulance, as grains of gold in quartz ; but petulance
is not wit, nor quartz gold.
Are you aware how much thought you have here been
throwing away ?
WALTER LANDOR.
My dear friend ! thought is never thrown away : wherever
it falls, or runs, or rests, it fertilizes. I speak not of that
thought Avhich has evil in it, or which tends to evil, but of
that which is the exercise of intellect on the elevated and
healthy training-ground of truth. We descend; and as we
descend, we may strike off the head of a thistle, or blow away
the wandering seed of a dandelion which comes against the
face, but, in a moment forgetting them totally, we carry home
with us freshness and strength.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
I have never knoM^i you, at any former time, take much
trouble about your literary concerns.
WALTER LANDOR.
Never have I descended to repell an attack, and never will ;
but I must defend the understanding and consistency of a
wiser and better man in Southey. Never have I feared that a
little and loose petard would burst or unhinge the gates of my
fortress, or that a light culverine at a vast distance below
would dismantle or reach the battlements.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
It is dangerous to break into a park where the paling is
high, for it may be difficult to find the way out again, or to
escape the penalty of transgression. You never before spoke
a syllable about your Shell.
WALTER LANDOR.
The swallow builds her nest under a Doric architrave, but
does not build it of the same materials.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
It is amusing to observe the off-hand facility and intrejDid
assurance with which small writers attack the greater, as small
AUCHDEACON HAEE AND WALTER LANDOR. 121
birds do, pursuing tlicm the more vociferously the higher the
flight. Milton stoopt and struck down two or three of these
obstreperous chatterers, of which the feathers he scattered are
all that remains ; and these are curiosities.
It is moroseness to scowl at the levity of impudence ; it is
affabihty, not without wisdom, to be amused by it. Graver
men, critics of note, have seen very indistinctly, where the sun
has been too bright for them. Giflbrd, the translator of Juvenal,
who was often so grave that ordinary people took him for
judicious, thought wit the better part of Shakespeare, and in
which alone he was superior to his contemporaries. Another
finds him sadly deficient in his female characters. Johnson's
ear was insensible to Milton's diapason ; and in his Life of
Somervile he says,
" If blank verse be not tumid and gorgeous, it is crippled
prose."
WALTER LANDOR.
Johnson had somewhat of the medlar in his nature; one
side hard and austere, the other side unsound. We call him
qfected for his turgidity : this was not afl'ected ; it was the
most natural part of him. He hated both affectation and
tameness.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Two things intolerable, whether in prose or poetry.
Wordsworth is guiltless at least of affectation.
WALTER LANDOR.
True ; but he often is as tame as an abbess's cat, which in
kittenhood has undergone the same operation as the Holy
Father's choristers.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Sometimes indeed he might be more succinct. A belt is
good for the breath, and without it we fail in the long run.
And yet a man will always be more lookt at wdiose dress
flutters in the air than he whose dress sits tight upon him :
but he will soon be left on the roadside. Wherever there is a
word beyond what is requisite to express the meaning, that
word must be peculiarly beautiful in itself or strikingly
harhionious; either of which qualities may be of some service
in fixins; the attention and enforcing the sentiment. But the
proper word in the proper place seldom leaves anythnig to be
122 THE LAST FRUIT OIT AN OLD TREE.
desiderated on the score of harmony. The beauty of health
and strength is more attractive and impressive than any
beauty conferred by ornament. I know the dehght you fee],
not only in Milton's immortal verse, but (altlio less) in
Wordsworth's.
WALTER LANDOR.
A Mozart to a Handel ! But who is not charmed by the
melody of Mozart ? Critics have their favorites ; and, like the
same rank of people at elections, they chair one candidate and
pelt another.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
A smaller object may be so placed before a greater as to
intercept the view of it in its just proportions. This is the
favorite manoeuvre in the Eeview-field. Fierce malignity is
growing out of date. Nothing but fairness is spoken of;
regret at the exposure of faults, real or imaginary, has taken
place of derision, sarcasm, and arrogant condemnation. Nothing
was wanting to Byron's consistency when he had exprest his
contempt of Shakspeare.
WALTER LANDOR.
Giffords, who sniffed at the unsavory skirts of Juvenal, and
took delight in paddling among the bubbles of azote, no longer
ply the trade of critics to the same advantage. Generosity, in
truth or semblance, is expected and required. Chattertons
may die in poverty and despair ; but Keatses are exposed no
longer to a lingering death under that poison which paralyzes
the heart, contempt.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
In youth the appetite for fame is strongest. It is cruel
and inhuman to withold the sustenance which is necessary to
the growth, if not the existence, of genius ; sympathy, encou-
ragement, commendation. Praise is not fame ; but the praise
of the intelligent is its precursor. Vaticide is no crime in the
statute-book ; but a crime, and a heavy crime, it is : and the
rescue of a poet from a murderous enemy, altho there is no
oaken crown decreed for it, is among the higher virtues.
WALTER LANDOK.
Many will pass by ; many will take the other side ; many
will cherish the less deserving ; but some one, considerate and
ARCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER LANDOR. 123
compassionate, will raise up tlie neglected : and, where a
strong hand does it, several less strong will presently be ready
to help. Alas ! not always. There is nothing in the ruins of
Eome which throws so chilling a shadow over the heart as
the monument of Keats.
Our field of poetry at the present time is both wider and
better cultivated than it has ever been. But if the tyrant of
old who walked into the growing corn, to inculcate a lesson of
order by striking off the heads of the higher poppies, were to
enter ours, he would lay aside his stick, so nearly on a level is
the crop. Every year there is more good poetry written now, in
this our country, than was written between the Metamorjjlioses
and the Bivina Commedia. We walk no longer in the cast-off
clothes of the ancients, often ill sewn at first, and now ill
fitting. We have pulpier flesh, stouter limbs, we take longer
walks, explore wider fields, and surmount more craggy and
more lofty eminences. From these let us take a leisurely look
at Pancy and Imagination. Your friend Wordsworth was
induced to divide his minor Poems under the separate heads
of these two; probably at the suggestion of Coleridge, who
persuaded him, as he himself told me, to adopt the name
of Lyrical Ballads. He was sorry, he said, that he took the
advice. And well he might be ; for lyre and hallad belong
not to the same age or the same people. It would have
puzzled Coleridge to have drawn a strait boundary -line between
the domains of Fancy and those of Imagination, on a careful
survey of these pieces ; or perhaps to have given a satisfactory
definition of their qualifies.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Do you beHeve you yourself can ?
WALTER LANDOR.
I doubt it. The face is not the same, but the resemblance
is sisterly ; and, even by the oldest friends and intimates of
the family, one is often taken for the other, so nearly are they
alike. Fancy is Imagination in her youth and adolescence.
Fancy is always excursive ; Imagination, not seldom, is sedate.
It is the business of Imagination, in her maturity, to create
and animate such Beings as are worthy of her plastic hand ;
certainly not by invisible wires to put marionettes in motion,
nor to pin butterflies on blotting-paper. Yigorous thought.
124 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
elevated sentiment, just expression, developement of character,
power to bring man out from the secret haunts of liis soul
and to place him in strong outline against the sky, belong to
Imagination. Fancy is thought to dwell among the Faeries
and their congeners ; and they frequently lead the weak and
ductile poet far astray. He is fond of playing at little-go
among them ; and, wdien he grows bolder, he acts among the
Witches and other such creatures ; but his hankering after the
Faeries stil continues. Their tiny rings, in which the intelligent
see only the growth of fungusses, are no arena for action and
passion. It was not in these circles that Homer and iEschylus
and Dante strove.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
But Shakspeare sometimes entered them, who, with infinitely
greater power, moulded his composite and consistent Man,
breathing into him an immortality never to be forfeited.
WALTER LANDOR.
Shaks])eare's fuU strength and activity were exerted on
Macbeth and Othello : he trifled wdth Ariel and Titania ; he
played with Caliban: but no other would have thought of
playing with him, any more than of playing with Cerberus.
Shakspeare and Milton and Chaucer have more imagination
than any of those to whom the quality is peculiarly attributed.
It is not inconsistent witli vigour and gravity. There may be
a large and effuse light without
" the motes that people the sunbeams."
Imagination foUow's the steps of Homer throughout the Troad,
from the ships on the strand to Priam and Helen on the
city-waU : Imagination played with the baby Astyanax at the
departure of Hector from Andromache, and was present at the
noblest scene of the Iliad, where, to repeat a verse of Cow^per's
on Acliilles, more beautiful than Homer's own,
" his hand he placed
On the old man's hand, and xiusht it gently away.''''
No less potently does Imagination urge JEschylus on, from
the range of beacons to the bath of Agamemnon ; nor expand
less potently the vulture's wing over the lacerated bosom on
the rocks of Caucasus. With the earliest flowers of the freslily
created earth Imagination strewed the nuptial couch of Eve.
ARCHDEACON HAEE AND WALTER LANDOR. 125
Not Ariel, nor Caliban, nor Witches who ruled the elements,
but Eve, and Satan, and Prometheus, are the most wonderous
and the most glorious of her works. Imagination takes the
weaker hand of Yirgil out of Dante^s who grasps it, and
guides the Florentine exile thro the triple world.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Whatever be your enthusiasm for the great old masters, you
must often feel, if less of so strong an impulse, yet a cordial
self-congratulation in having bestowed so many eulogies on
poetical contemporaries, and on others whose genius is apart
from poetry.
WALTER LANDOR.
Indeed I do. Every meed of Justice is delivered out of her
own full scale. The poets, and others who may rank with them.,
indeed all the great men, have borne toward me somewhat
more than civility. The few rudenesses I have ever heard of,
are from such as neither I nor you ever meet in society, and
such as warm their fingers and stomachs round less ornamental
hearths.
A¥hen they to whom we have been unknown, or indifferent,
begin to speak a little well of us, we are sure to find some
honest old friend ready to trim the balance. I have had
occasion to smile at this.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
We sometimes stumble upon slyinvidiousness and smouldering
mahgnity, quite unexpectedly, and in places which we should
have believed were above the influence of such malaria. When
Prosperity pays to Wisdom her visit in state, would we not,
rather than halloo the yard-dog against her, clear the way for
her, and adorn the door with garlands ? How fond are people
in general of clinging to a great man's foibles ! they can climb
no higher. It is not the solid, it is the carious, that grubs
feed upon.
WALTER LANDOR.
The practice of barring out the master is stil continued in
the world's great schoolroom. Our sturdy boys do not fear a
flogging ; they fear only a book or a lectui'e.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Authors are like cattle going to a fair ; those of the same
field can never move on without butting one another.
126 THE LAST FRUIT OFF Ali OLD TREE.
WALTER LANDOB.
It has been my fortune and felicity, from my earliest days,
to liave avoided all competitions. My tutor at Oxford could
never persuade me to write a piece of latin poetry for the
Prize, earnest as he was that his pupil should be a winner at
the forth-coming Encaenia. Poetry was always my amusement,
prose my study and business. I have publisht five volumes
of Imaginary Conversations: cut the worst of them thro the
middle, and there will remain in this decimal fraction quite
enough to satisfy my appetite for fame. I shall dine late ;
but the diningroom will be well lighted, the guests few and
select.
In this age of discovery it may haply be discovered, who
first among our Cisalpine nations led Greek to converse like
Greek, Eoman like Eoman, in poetry or prose. Gentlemen of
fashion have patronized them occasionally, have taken them
under the arm, have recommended their own tailor, their own
perfumer, and have lighted a cigar for them from their own at
the door of the Traveler's or Athenmim : there they parted.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Before we go into the house again, let me revert to what
you seem to have forgotten, the hasty and inaccui'ate remarks
on Gebir.
WALTER LANDOR.
It is hardly A^^orth our while. Evidently they were written
by a very young person, who with a little encouragement, and
induced to place his confidence in somewhat safer investment
than himself, may presently do better things.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Southey too, I remember, calls the poem in some parts
obscure.
WALTER LANDOR.
It must be, if Southey found it so. I never thought of
asking him where lies the obscurity : I would have attempted
to correct whatever he disapproved.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
He himself, the clearest of writers, professes that he imitated
your versification : and the style of his Colloquies is in some
degree modified by yours.
ARCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER LANDOR. 127
WALTER LANDOR.
Little cause had lie for preferring any other to his own.
Perhaps the indictmn ore alio is my obscurity. Gothe is
acknowledged by his highest admirers to be obscure in several
places; which he thinks a poet may and should be occasion-
ally. I differ from him, and would avoid it everywhere :
he could see in the dark. This great poet carries it with him
so far as into Epigram. I now regret that I profited so little
by the calm acuteness of Southey. In what poet of the last
nineteen centuries, who has written so much, is there less
intermixture of prose, or less contamination of conceit? in
what critic, who has criticized so many, less of severity or
assumption ?
I would never fly for shelter under the strongest wing :
but you know that commentators, age after age, have found
obscurities in Pindar, in Dante, and in Shakspeare.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
And it is not in every place the effect of time. You have
been accused, I hear, either by this writer or some such
another, of turgidUi/.
WALTER LANDOR.
Certainly by this : do not imagine there is anywhere such
another.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
"Without a compliment, no poet of ours is less turgid.
Guests may dispense with potage and puff-paste, with radishes
and water-cresses, with salad and cream-cheese, who "implentur
veteris bacclii pinguisque ferinse."
WALTER LANDOR,
Encouraged by your commendation, let me read to you (for
I thiidi I placed it this evening in my pocket) what was
transcribed for me as a curiosity out of the same Article.
Yes ; here it is.
" His great defect is a certain crudeness of the judgment, implied in the
selection of the subject matter, and a further want of skill and perspicuity
in the treatment. Except in a few passages, it has none of those peculiar
graces of style and sentiment which render the writings of our more
prominent modern authors so generally delightful."
128 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TEEE.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Opinion on most matters, but chiefly on literary, and above
all on poetical, seems to me like an empty eggshell in a cluck-
pond, turned on its stagnant water by the slightest breath of
air ; at one moment the crackt side nearer to sight, at another
the sounder, but the emptiness at all times visible.
Is your detractor a brother poet ?
WALTER LANDOR.
An incipient one he may be. Poets in that stage of exist-
ence, subject to sad maladies, kick hard for life and scratch
the nurse^s face. Like some trees, fir trees for instance, they
must attain a certain highth aiid girth before they are
serviceable or sightly.
ARCHDEACON HARE,
The weakest wines fall soonest into tlie acetous fermenta-
tion; the more generous retain their sweetness with their
strength. Somewhat of this diversity is observable in smaller
wits and greater, more especially in the warm climate where
poetry is the cultivation.
WALTER LANDOR.
The ancients often hung their trophies on obtruncated and
rotten trees : we may do the like at present, leaving our
enemies for sepulture.
ARCHDEACON HARE,
Envy of pre-eminence is universal and everlasting. Little
men, whenever they find an opportunity, follow the steps of
greater in this dark declivity. The apple of Discord was full-
grown soon after the Creation, It fell between the two first
brothers in the garden of Eden : it fell between two later on
the plain of Thebes. Narrow was the interval, when again it
gleamed portentously on the short grass of Ida. It roUed into
the palace of Pella, dividing Philip and "Pliilip's godlike
son \' it followed that insatiable youth to the extremities of
his conquests, and even to his sepulcher; then it broke the
invincible jihalanx and scattered the captains wide apart. It
lay in the gates of Carthage, so that they could not close
against the enemy : it lay between the generous and agnate
families of Scipio and Gracchus, Marius and Sulla, Julius
and Pompeius, Octavius and Antonius, were not the last who
experienced its fatal malignity. King imprisoned king, emperor
ARCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER LANDOR. 129
stabbed emperor, pope poisoned pope, contending for God's
vicegerency. Tlie rollcall of their names, with a cross against
each, is rotting in the lumber-room of History. Do not
wonder then if one of the rabble runs after vou from the
hustings, and, committing no worse miscliief, snatches at the
colours in your hatband.
WALTER LANDOR.
Others have snatcht more. My quarry lies upon a high
common a good way from the public road, and everybody
takes out of it what he pleases " witli privy paw, and nothing
said " beyond " a curse on the old fellow ! how hard his granite
is, one can never make it fit." This is all I get of quitrent or
acknowledgment. I know of a poacher who noosed a rabbit
on my warren, and I am told he made such a fricassee of it
that there was no taste of rabbit or sauce. I never had him
taken up : he is at large, drest in new clothes, and worth
money.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Your manors are extensive, comprehending
" Prata, arva, iugentes sylvas, saltusque paludesque
Usque ad oceanum."
WALTER LANDOR.
I never drive the poor away if they come after dry sticks
only, but they must not with impunity lop or burn my
plantations.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
I regret that your correspondent was sickened or tired of
transcribing.
WALTER LANDOR.
Here is another slip from the same crabtree. It is objected
that most of my poems are occasional.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
In number they may be, but in quantity of material I doubt
whether they constitute a seventh. We will look presently,
and we shall find perhaps that the gentleman is unlucky
at his game of hazard.
WALTER LANDOR.
Certainly his play is not deep. We who are sober dare not
E
130 THE LAST PRUIT OFF AN OLD THEE.
sit down at a table where a character may be lost at a cast :
they alone are so courageous who have nothing to be seized on.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
The gentleman sweeps the cloth wdth little caution and less
calculation. Of your poems the smaller alone are occasional :
now not only are the smaller, but the best, of Catullus and
Horace, and all of Pindar. Were not the speeches of Lysias,
TEschines, Demosthenes, occasional ? Draw nearer home.
What bat occasional were the Letters of Junius ? Materiem
superabat opus.
WALTER LANDOR.
True. The ministers and their king are now mould and
worms ; they w^ere little better w^hen above-ground ; but the
bag-wig and point-lace of Junius are suspended aloft upon a
golden peg for curiosity and admiration.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Eegarding the occasional in poetry ; is there less merit in
taking and treating what is before us, than in seeking and
wandering through an open field as we would for muslu-ooms ?
WALTER LANDOR.
I stand out a rude rock in the middle of a river, with no
exotic or parasitical plant on it, and few others. Eddies and
dimples and froth and bubbles pass rapidly by, without
shaking me. Here indeed is Kttle room for pic-nic and polka.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
Praise and censure are received by you with nearly the same
indifference.
WALTER LANDOR.
Not yours. Praise on poetry, said to be the most exhila-
rating of all, affects my brain but little. Certainly I never
attempted to snatch " the peculiar graces so generally delight-
ful.'''' My rusticity has at least thus much of modesty in it.
ARCHDEACON HARE.
The richest fiowers have not most honey-cells.
You seldom find the bee about the rose,
Oftener the beetle eating into it.
The violet less attracts the noisy hum
Thau the minute and poisonous bloom of box.
ARCHDEACON IIAEE AND WALTER LANDOR. 131
Poets know this ; Nature's invited guests
Draw near and note it down and ponder it ;
The idler sees it, sees unheedingly,
Unheedingly the rifler of the hive."
Is your critic wiser, more experienced, and of a more
poetical mind tlian Southey? Utri liorum creditis,
Quirites ?
Vanity and presumption are not always the worst parts of
the man they take possession of, altho they are usually the
most prominent. ]\'Ialignity sticks as closely to him, and keeps
more cautiously out of sight. Sorry I have often been to see
a fellow Christian, one of much intellect and much worth, one
charitable to the poor, one attendant on the sick, one compas-
sionate with the sufferer, one who never is excited to anger
but by another^s wrongs, enjoying a secret pleasure in saying
unpleasant things at no call of duty ; inflicting wounds which
may be long before they heal; and not only to those who are
unfriendly or unknown, but likewise to the nearest and the
friendliest. Meanwhile those who perhaps are less observant
of our ritual, not only abstain from so sinful an indulgence,
but appear to be guided in their demeanour by the less
imperative and less authoritative dictate of Philosophy. I
need not exhort or advise you, who have always done it, to
disregard the insignificant and obscure, so distant from you,
so incapable of approaching you. Only look before you at
this instant ; and receive a lesson from Nature, who is able
and ready at all times to teach us, and to teach men wiser
than we are. Unwholesome exhalations creep over the low
marshes of Pevensey, but they ascend not to Beachy-head nor
to Hurstmonceaux.
K 2
]32 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
NICHOLAS AND NESSELEODE.
SECOND CONVERSATION.
NICHOLAS.
It seems. Count Nesselrode, that you have not a word to say.
NESSELRODE.
Your Majesty had not spoken.
NICHOLAS.
Indeed ! I thought I had.
NESSELEODE.
Your Majesty seemed preoccupied.
NICHOLAS.
No wonder. These cursed Turks, Medjid at the head of
them, affront me. I did believe the young man was effeminate.
NESSELEODE.
The effeminate are sometimes unwieldy, the weak intractable.
NICHOLAS,
I did believe that the concessions he had already surrendered
to me in favour of my protectorate, or rather my headsliip of
the Greek Church, would have alienated from him all devout
Mahometans, Instead of which, tolerant and generous as
they always are wherever the Government is concerned, the
miscreants applaud him for his exercise of these virtues, and
are rabid against me for demanding more and greater con-
cessions.
NESSELEODE.
Certainly they are roused, and even exasperated.
NICHOLAS.
That would be nothing ; I might indeed have desired it ;
but the voice of Europe is encouraging them in their obstinacy.
NICHOLAS AND NESSELRODE. 133
NESSELBODE.
Too true.
NICHOLAS.)
Too true ! is that all ? Has a minister of state, a prime
minister, to say nothing but too true ?
NESSELRODE.
May it please your Majesty, it seldom has happened that
Ministers have been censured for the objectionable too true.
NICHOLAS.
I do believe thou hast by nature a grain or two of wit in
the vortexes of thy brain. The smallest of these quantities is
enough to undo a poKtician. Speak seriously ; for matters and
times are serious.
NESSELRODE.
Sire ! it is in such matters and times that a single thought
of less gravity than the rest is a godsend.
NICHOLAS.
Worse and worse ! First a witticism, now a reflection !
Nesselrode ! I can well believe that you are growing old, but
not in a court.
What is to be done ?
No, I do not ask you what is to be done, but how to do it.
I am resolved to execute my design, to continue my operations.
Consistency and firmness have always been among my attri-
butes ; never must I lose them in the eyes of my people and
of the world.
NESSELRODE.
It would indeed be disgraceful, and, what is worse than dis-
graceful, it would be difficult and detrimental to retract.
NICHOLAS.
If France had been silent and quiet about the Eoly Places,
I might have been too.
NESSELRODE.
Louis Napoleon wanted to conciliate the pope, and to bring
him for his coronation to Paris round by Jerusalem. Louis
Napoleon is long-sighted, and never puts out an arm without
134 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
an object which he is certain he can seize. If the pope
refuses him now^ he will bring His Holiness by the ear into
Notre-Dame.
NICHOLAS.
I admire the man's resolute character, and only wish I may
never have to deal with it. I ought to have entertained a
suspicion that he would, directly or indirectly^ thwart me in
my steps against the Ottoman empire.
NESSELRODE.
Sire ! It might have been seen easily and clearly. I was
not encouraged by your Majesty to deliver my opinion at full
length upon this subject ; military men, and nobles of ancient
family, your Majesty deigned to assure me, had set their hearts
upon it.
NICHOLAS.
Scarcely was there a courtier who had not fixt upon the site
of palace and villa and garden round Constantinople.
NESSELRODE.
This I knew; but I likewise knew that those hearts,
whether light ones or heavy ones, must be cast down from the
pleasant places they were set upon, and that the Turks will
continue to lie along them at full length, or with legs crost
under them, for some time yet.
NICHOLAS.
This is vexatious to think of. It may not be. Rather
would I hazard a war with half Europe.
NESSELRODE.
Perhaps your Majesty might encounter more than half
Europe in this enterprize.
NICHOLAS.
Impossible. Austria is under my thumb.
NESSELRODE.
Under the soft part of it, may it please your Majesty.
Austria is greatly more interested to prevent the absorption or
the partition of Turkey than any other Power is. The Danube
NICHOLAS AND NESSELRODE. 135
rolls indolently now along her dominions ; it miglit swell into
formidable activity against her under the steam and the
fortresses of your Majesty.
NICHOLAS.
France has always turned her eyes toward the East :
England will counteract her interference.
NESSELBODE.
England has even a greater interest in maintaining the
Ottoman empire than Erance has. England will never be so
insane as to take an active part in hostihties on this question :
but the Catholic Powers and the conterminary Powers will
unite, if necessary, in active opposition to your Majesty's
progress.
NICHOLAS.
Has Erance forgotten that we once spared her? Has
Austria that we lately saved her ?
NESSELRODE.
No, sire, and neither of them ever will forget or forgive it.
NICHOLAS,
I am not the man to eat my words ; and my tlireats are the
least indigestible of any.
NESSELEODE.
We may so masticate our words, and remove so much, by a
dexterous use of the fingers, of what is gristle or husk, that
the operation is far from difficult or unpleasant.
NICHOLAS.
Erance and England can never act together.
NESSELRODE.
They did at Navarino.
NICHOLAS.-
It was but for the day. You are grown over-cautious and
somewhat timid ; I would not willingly say conscientious ; I
would not hint at incapacity in a minister who has served
me so long and faithfully. You seem abuost to apprehend
a coalition against me.
136 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
NESSELRODE.
God forbid! Luckily for us, there is only one vigorous
mind among the arbiters of human affairs.
NICHOLAS.
Nesselrode ! Nesselrode ! no flattery ! What makes you
start ?
NESSELRODE.
Sire, my incomplete meaning was, that at present there is
only one vigorous mind among all the Powers of Europe which
could inspire the fear of our humiliation. Certainly, too cer-
tainly, the time is advancing when the chief continental
Powers will unite in that confederacy. Already there is not a
single one of them which does not see distinctly that Eussia is
too formidable for Europe : Persia has long seen it. While
the kings of Christendom bring Greek and Latin close toge-
ther, Persia and Turkey will unite their sects in one common
cause, chaunting " There is but one God, and Mahomet is his
prophet/'
NICHOLAS.
You shall never be mine. You are capable of managing
the weak ministers of Potentates round about me, but not me.
Constantinople is already in flames before me.
NESSELRODE.
The Greeks deprecate the degradation of their Church in
its transfer to Moscow or Petersburg; and tlie Muscovite
nobility, in the city of their ancestors, are happier round the
Kremlin than they ever will be round the Seven Towers.
Those fires of Constantinople will crack and split your
empire.
AECHBISHOP OF FLORENCE AND FRANCESCO MADIAI. 137
ARCHBISHOP OF FLOEENCE AND FRANCESCO MADIAI.
ARCHBISHOP.
It grieves my heart, unfortunate man ! to find you
reduced to tliis condition.
FRANCESCO MADIAI.
Pity it is, my lord, that so generous a heart should be
grieved by anything.
ARCHBISHOP.
Spoken like a Christian ! There are then some remains of
faith and charity left witliin you ?
FRANCESCO MADIAI.
Of faith, my lord, there are only the roots, such as have
often penetrated ere now the prison-floor. Charity too is
among those plants which, altho they tluive best under the
genial warmth of heaven, do not wither and weaken and die
down deprived of air and sunsliine. I might never have
thought seriously of praying for my enemies, had it not been
the will of a merciful and all-wise God to cast me into the
midst of them.
ARCHBISHOP.
Prom these, whom you rashly caU enemies, you possess the
power of dehvering yourseK. Confess your crime.
FRANCESCO MADIAI.
I know the accusation, not the crime.
ARCHBISHOP.
Disobedience to the doctrines of the Church.
FRANCESCO MADIAI.
I am so ignorant, my lord, as never to have known a tenth
or twentieth part of its doctrines. But by God's grace I
know and understand the few and simple ones which His
blessed Son taught us.
]o8 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
AECHBISHOP.
Ignorant as joii acknowledge yourself to be^ do you presume
that you are able to interpret them ?
FRANCESCO MADIAI.
'No, my lord. He has done that Himself, and intelligibly
to all mankind.
ARCHBISHOP.
By whose authority did you read and expound the Bible ?
FRANCESCO MADIAI.
By His.
ARCHBISHOP.
By His? To Thee?
FRANCESCO MADIAI.
Wliat He commanded the Apostles to do, and what they
did, surely is no impiety.
ARCHBISHOP,
It may be.
FRANCESCO MADIAI,
Our Lord commanded his Apostles to go forth and preach
the Gospel to aU nations.
ARCHBISHOP.
Are you an Apostle, vain foolish man ?
FRANCESCO MADIAI.
Alas ! my lord ! how far, how very far, from the least of
them ! But surely I may follow where they lead ; and I am
more likely to follow them in the right road if I listen to no
directions from others far belund.
ARCHBISHOP.
Go on, go on, self-willed creature ! doomed to perdition.
FRANCESCO MADIAI.
I have ventured to repeat the ordinances of Christ and the
Apostles ; no more ; I have nothing to add, nothing to
interpret.
ARCHBISHOr.
I shall look into the matter ; I doubt whether He ever gave
AECIIUISHOP OF FLORENCE AND FRANCESCO MADIAI. 139
them such an ordinance . . I mean in sucli a sense . . for I
remember a passage which may lead astray the unwary. Any-
thing more ?
FRANCESCO MADIAI.
My lord, there is also another.
ARCHBISHOP.
What is that ?
FBANCESCO MADIAI.
" Seek truth, and ensue it.'"
ARCHBISHOP.
There is only one who can tell us, of a surety, what truth
is, namely our Holy Pather.
FRANCESCO MADIAI.
Yes, my lord, of this I am convinced.
ARCHBISHOP.
Avow it then openly and you are free at once.
FRANCESCO MADIAI.
Openly, most openly, do I, and have I, and ever wiU I
avow it. Permit me, ray lord archbishop, to repeat the
blessed words which have fallen from your lordship. " There
is only one lolio can tell us of a certaintij what truth is : "
" our Holy Father,'^ our Father which is in Heaven.
ARCHBISHOP.
Scoffer ! heretic ! infidel ! No, I am not angry ; not in the
least ; but I am hurt, Avounded, wounded deeply. It becomes
not me to hold a longer conference with one so obstinate and
obdurate. A lower order in the priesthood has this duty to
perform.
FRANCESCO MADIAJ.
My lord, you have conferred, I must acknowledge, an
unmerited distinction upon one so humble and so abject as
I am. Well am I aware that men of a lower order are the
most proper men to instruct me. They have taken that
trouble, with me and thousands more.
140 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
ARCHBISHOP.
Indeed ! indeed ! so many ? His Imperial Highness, well-
informed, as we thought, of what passes in every house, from
the cellar to the bedchamber, had no intelligence or notion of
this. Denounce the culpable, and merit liis pardon, his
protection, his favour. Do not beat your breast, but clear it.
Give me at once the names of these teachers, these Listeners ;
I will intercede in their behalf.
FRANCESCO MADIAI,
The name of the first and highest was written on the cross
in Calvary ; poor fishermen were others on the sea of Galilee.
I could not enumerate the Hsteners; but the foremost rest,
some venerated, some forgotten, in the catacombs of Eome.
ARCHBISHOP.
Francesco Madiai ! there are yet remaining in you certain
faint traces of the Church in her state of tribulation, of the
blessed saints and martyrs in the catacombs. But, coming
near home, Madiai, you have a wife, aged and infirm ;
would not you help her ?
FRANCESCO MADIAL
God will ; I am forbidden.
ARCHBISHOP.
It is more profitable to strive than to sigh. I pity your
distress ; let me carry to her an order for her liberation.
FRANCESCO MADIAI.
Your lordship can.
ARCHBISHOP.
Not without your signature.
FRANCESCO MADIAI.
The cock may crow ten times, ten mornings, ten years,
before I deny my Christ. wife of my early love, persevere,
persevere.
ARCHBISHOP.
This to me ?
FRANCESCO MADIAI.
No, my lord ! but to a martyr ; from one unworthy of that
POPERY : BRITISH AND FOREIGN. 141
glory ; in tlie presence of Him who was merciful and found
no mercy, my crucified Eedeemer.
ARCHBISHOP.
After such perverseness, I declare to you, with all the
frankness of my character, there is no prospect of your
Kberation.
FRANCESCO MADIAI.
Adieu, adieu, Rosa ! Light and enlivener of my earlier
days, solace and support of my declining ! We must now love
God alone, from God alone hope succour. We are chastened
but to heal our infirmities ; we are separated but to meet
inseparably. To the constant and resigned there is always
an Angel that opens the prison-door; we wrong liim when
we caU him Death.
POPERY : BEITISH AND FOEEIGN.
" Maxima Taurus Victima." Virg.
—
CHAPTER I.
Somewhat more than a century ago, a dignitary of the
Anglican Church published a clever and facetious book,
entitled A Tale of a Tub. Outcries were raised against it
as irreverent and profane. Irreverent it certainly was toward
the Church of Eome and the Church of Geneva ; not profane
however. Our gracious Queen's ministers, I mean her par-
Hamentary, omitting her ecclesiastical, have profited by the
liint of tliis title, and have lately thrown out a tub to the
mighty occupant of the northern and southern seas, which
he now is tossing over and over, and certainly will never
swallow.
Lord John Eussell, in a letter both undignified and unwise,
addressed to the Prince-bishop of Durham, protests his indigna-
tion against the audacity of the Pope's encroachments. Does
any man beUeve liis lordship feels the slightest? Does any man
doubt that he is heartily glad at seeing public attention turned
toward the Vatican, and aside from his relative at Ceylon,
from the torturer and murderer of the Cephalonians he retains
and protects in Corfu, and from the Jesuit he enthroned at
142 THE LAST FRUIT OFP AN OLD TREE.
Malta ? At any other period of our liistory, from the accession
of the fourth Henry to the abdication of the last James,
upright men would have been found in parliament to impeach
these satraps of high crimes and misdemeanors. Even in the
parliament now about to sit, surely the dignity of the nation
will somewhat stimulate the slumbering and supine. Our
justice ought to be visible to all ; our rehgion is safe in our
own bosoms, and the healthier for quiescency and repose. But
agitation is necessary, it seems, in a distant quarter; and minis-
ters are of opinion that it is better the wind should blow off
shore. Patronage else would be in danger of diminution by the
reclamations of the people against domestic popery ; a great
and grievous anomaly in the English constitution. Charles II.
and his brother James cherished it fondly and consistently.
It was a prodigious engine of power in their hands ; it was
desirable to their patron the French king ; it was more desirable
to the Roman pontif. No doubt was entertained by them
that the English stray sheep could be whistled or barked into
the fold again ; and proof sufficient had already been afforded
that bishops are readier to change their faith than lose their
benefices. The Prince of Orange, no friend to the order,
deemed it politic to tolerate and maintain it. His ministers
bribed their adherents from the spoils of the Roman altar :
Queen Yictoria's do the same. The smoke of this altar is now
partially bloAvn away : cardinals^ shallow lials are flapping on
one side of it, succincter shovels curl up on the other. People
are surprised at the resemblance of the features underneath,
and will discover when they have stripped them (which they
soon will do) that in what lies out of sight they are stil more
similar.
CHAPTER II.
The wisest and most important letter that has yet been
written on the Popish Question is Sir Benjamin Hallos.
Reasonably may we hope and entreat that he will follow up
the Archbishop of Canterbury into parliament. In which
belief and confidence I beg permission to ofi'er him a few sug-
gestions. Let me ask,
1. Whether a great body, both of the laity and the clergy,
have not lost much of their faith and trust in their Episcopal
Guides, by the Ecclesiastical Commission, wliich these
Episcopal Guides mainly influenced ?
POPEiiY : BiirrisH and foueign. 143
2. "VYhetlierj since the establislimeut of Christianity in
England, tliere is any other instance of such fraudidence,
ejffrontery, and rapacity, as theirs ?
3. Whether the Queen's ministers did not countenance and
support them tlu'oughout ?
4. Whether, under these Eeformers, the Bishop of London
has not received from his diocese (being himself a principal
one among the said Eeformers) much nearer a million than
half a million within the last twenty years, after all deduc-
tions ?
5. Whether the Cardinals of Eome, one with another,
receive from their Church one (piarter of that money ?
6. Whether the hierarchs of the Keformed Ohm'ch in
England ought to be eudoAved, as they are, with tenfold the
property of what is granted to the hierarchs of any other
Reformed Clim-ch in Christendom ?
7. Whether Parliament has not the same right to diminish
the pay of any prelate novj, as it had lately, when it divided
one see into two, and when it diminished it in some othei's
which were not divided ?
These questions come home to the breasts and (what lie
very near the breasts) the pockets of Englishmen. Leaving
to English and Irish bishops a tldnl more than is enjoyed by
the bishops of Erance, where religion would sit in sad j)light
without splendour, from the church-lands which belong to the
State, and of wliich the State always has disposed at its good
pleasure, enough would remain for the establishment of
parochial schools throughout both countries. I disagree with
Sir Benjamin Hall, that every clergyman should receive two
hundred pounds a-year. In Wales the most efficient preachers
have often much less than one : the same in Scotland : but
my opinion is, that whoever keeps a curate should be obliged,
under forfeiture of liis Kving, to give him at least two hundred,
and never less than a third of the benefice, whatever be its
amount. In every part of Europe the richest clergymen are
usually the least influential over theu' congregations. On the
contrary, there is neither schism nor dissatisfaction where the
pastor stands not high above the sympathies. There are no
ferments, because there is no leaven, hi Protestant Germany,
in Protestant Switzerland, in Protestant Denmark, in Protestant
Sweden, in Protestant Scotland. Men throughout these
144 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
countries mind alike their teacher and their business. Exactly
in proportion to its distance from popery is a nation industrious,
free, and moral.
CHAPTER III.
Napoleon said that the Papacy was worth fifty thousand men
to him : it was so : he might have ruled the world with it :
but he never could rest in a soft bed : he grew delirious, threw
himself out upon the floor, and could not find liis way back
again. His nephew, a warier man, stifled under the triple
crown the last gasps of Italy, Hungary, and Austria. And
now was the time to try the experiment whether any blood or
breath was left in the body of England.
Methodism had reclaimed from turbulence and crime the
most profligate of the people. The gentle and vii'tuous Wesley
brought about him as great multitudes as ever surrounded
the earlier apostles, and worked as great marvels in their
hearts. The beneficed clergy set their faces against him; and
angry faces they were ; partly from old prejudices and partly
from old port. The nation was divided into high church and
low church : the church of Clirist is neither : few clergymen
know that ; none preach it. In the present day the Papists call
themselves Catholics: the Protestants in England call themselves
the same. Both lie ; and both know they lie ; yet neither will
give up the point. If there is a schism, as the Papists insist
there is, that very schism is a fraction broken off something :
the Protestants, being in a minority, are less Catholic, if
Catholic means universal. Would it not be wiser and better
to simplify the matter ? The Protestant may fairly claim to
be a member of the church established by Christ, if church it
can be called; a member of that community in which were
his disciples and apostles. But there indeed none was greater
than another ; so it would not do now. We are off-shoots
from the fruit-tree transplanted to Rome ;
" Miraturque novas frondes et non sua poma."
The older the tree the smaller the fruit. The nations which
separated themselves from Popery protested against the pontif,
but did not pronounce for Christ. Small communities, and
only very small ones, did ; principally the Moravians. It was
much however to protest against the sale of indulgences, the
POPERY : BRITISH AND FOREIGN. 145
dominion over consciences, the permission of falsehood, and
the duty of torturing or of slaying for dissent. Plain enough
it appeared that such authority was not of God. Tlieologians,
occupied in their own peculiar studies, had little time or
inclination for historical research. There did arise however
some few who fancied they perceived a very close affinity
between papal and pagan Rome. A learned language veiled
their investigation from the people. In another ^ place I have
cited the authors out of which Dr. Conyers Middleton com-
piled his celebrated letter. Neither he nor Gibbon, neither
Voltaire nor Bayle, have enlarged on the prime question.
There is the strongest circumstantial evidence that the claims
of the Bishop of Rome are founded on forgery and falsehood ;
that St. Peter was never bishop there, and never saw the city.
I will render these pages valuable, by transcribing into them
what is contained on this subject in the Exmuiner of
December 28, 1850.
ST. PETER NEVER AT ROME.
Sir, The Pope is the supreme head or governor in spirituals of a
large number of our fellow-subjects, who are taught to believe that
their condition in a future state is dependent upon their obedience
to his behests in this. In pursuance, he says, of his duty to consult
for their future bbss, he has done a thing which is most insulting
to the feelings of the majority of her Majesty's subjects ; and thus
his influence over the minds of our Catholic brethren becomes the
source of dissension between them and ourselves, a thing which
neither they nor we desire. Although there seems to be some
difficulty in fixing on the course which it will be best to take in this
conjuncture, yet there is one thing which certainly ought to be done.
The Uueen, acting for the community at large, and peculiarly for
her Catholic subjects, is called upon to place before them the state
of the facts, on the alleged reality of which the Pope claims from
them that obedience which constitutes the strength that he employs
to do that which must draw them and ourselves into a quarrel.
Now their attention has never been authoritatively called to the
facts to which I am about to refer ; and such is their character when
examined, that it is highly probable the Catholics will clearly
perceive that it does not justify him in claiming from them that
obedience which he demands and perverts. At all events, as sub-
jects, from whom a divided allegiance is now claimed by a foreign
potentate on what he calls spiritual grounds, they are entitled to
the most indulgent consideration from their natural sovereign, and
* Imag. Convers. Middletou and Magliabepchi,
146 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
to receive every aid from her in the embarrassing situation in which
their spiritual sovereign has placed them, towards her and their
fellow-subjects. No aid promises to be more useful to them than
that which I now suggest. One of the facts, — and this the most
important of all, as being that on which the validity of all the other
associated facts, were they realities, would depend — on which the
Pope grounds his claim to the obedience he has so arrogantly
demanded from the English Catholics, can easily be shown to be
wholly fictitious. The fact I mean is the affirmed presence at any
time whatever of Simon Peter at Eome. There is not a particle of
evidence to prove that he was ever there, while there is very strong
evidence indeed to prove that he never was there.
The Popes assert that he resided there twenty-five years as
bishop, that he had certain peculiar prerogatives — Begalia — which
he transmitted to his successors, and that they are his successors.
The Pope — albeit, one of us poor weak miserable human worms —
claims to be, as the successor of Simon Peter, the vicegerent of the
Supreme of Beings — the vicar of the Creator of innumerable suns
with their planets — the lieutenant of this immeasurable Being — and
to be, like Him, infallible. As to this world in particular, we learn
from the Council of Lateran, that he is the prince of it — Orbis
Princejjs — that he is Hex Regum et Orbis terrarum Monarcha — the
king of all kings, and the monarch of the whole globe : and as to
the next world, he is denominated " Virum in quo erat potestas
mpra ovmes potestates tam cceli quam terra '^ the being whose power
is above all other powers, whether of heaven or earth. He possesses
the power of determining thebhss or torment of his fellow-creatures
in the next world : he holds the keys of heaven.
The foundation ought indeed to be sure on which is raised such
an immense superstructure as this. Now the keystone of the arch
of all this horrible blasphemy is the alleged fact, " that Simon Peter
was Bishop of Eome." I do not propose to invite the Catholics
to any polemical or theological controversy, but I do propose that
under the authority of a commission from the Queen to some of our
greatest lawyers, and two or three historians, like Mr. Grote, Mr.
Macaulay, Mr. Hallam, and the Bishop of St. David's, the whole
of the evidence touching the fact of Simon Peter's alleged presence
at Kome, and the counter-evidence, should be collected, analysed,
and reported. It will turn out that, while there is just as much
evidence to show that St. Peter was at Delhi, Pekin, or Nishni
Novgorod, as at Eome — that is to say, just none at all — there is
really no evidence to show that he might not have been at any one
of the three first cities I have named, although there is very strong
evidence to show that he never could have been at Eome. When
this report shall be made to her Majesty, it will become her part
to lay it particularly before her Catholic subjects, with an exhorta-
POPEHY : BRITISH AND FOREIGN. 147
tion to them not to sufftn- one wliom tliey must clearly perceive to
be a gross impostor to lead them into a quarrel with their fellow-
subjects. Her proclamation would draw a clear line between the
theology of the Catholics and their actions as members of our
community. Her Majesty might say, that under her sceptre all
men are permitted to adopt what theological views they like, and
that she should not think it a duty on her part to inquire into the
reasons why the Catholics believe in transubstantiation, practise
Maryolatry, &c., &c., &c. ; and that it is by no means her intention
now to disturb their belief in, or practice of, those or any other of
the distinctive points of their faith or their customs ; but that,
finding that the head of their religion by means of the opinion which
they entertain, that he is successor to Simon Peter in the bishopric
of Eome, works upon them to disturb the civil harmony in which
they are living with the rest of her subjects, she had thought it her
duty, as their temporal Sovereign, to ascertain for their behoof how
the facts stand regarding the successorship in question ; that the
investigation clearly shows that the successorship is a fiction,
because the fact of Simon Peter's ever having been at Eome at all
turns out to be a fiction. That under these circumstances, while
they will continue to enjoy every protection in the belief and prac-
tice of their religion, they must abstain from supporting any action
of an impostor hke the Pope which shall interfere, nominally or
really, with her prerogatives.
The course which I have proposed may at first sight appear to
partake of what is ludicrous ; and I confess that the idea, when it
first suggested itself, made me smile myself. But it has repeatedly
recurred to my mind ; and each time it has appeared to be more
and more susceptible of useful application. It is rather remarkable
that the controversies to which the Keformation gave rise, turned
entirely on what is called dogma — doctrine — interpretation, &c. ;
and that no one seems to have clearly perceived, on the Protestant
side, that the actual presence of St. Peter at Eome was the key of
the Papal position, that it was most easy to carry this position, and
that, if that were done, the whole fabric of Papal usurpation and
imposition would vanish Like an enchanted palace in a fairy tale,
when the knight to whom its overthrow is destined comes at last
to deliver its long imprisoned and metamorphosed inmates. It is
true that Frederick Spanheim denied it in a specific treatise ; and
others have denied it ; but the controversy with the Papal power
might far better have been placed on this one issue, when the eye
of the world would have necessarily concentrated itself on this, the
vital point. It is curious to see how Barrow, in his noble work on the
Papal Supremacy, overlooks its importance, unconscious that, had
he properly handled it, he might have spared himself the trouble
of writing his learned and instructive volume. The truth I imagine
l2
148 . THE LAST TRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
to have been that men, when they first broke off from the Papacy,
attended wholly to what they thought were its abuses. Laud and
the high-Church party had, and continue to have, a tenderness for
it ; and the Puritans arose afterwards and identified it with " Anti-
christ;" their attention did not turn to the fact of its being a
baseless unreality, as their theory rather led them to take its reality
for granted. Hence this portion of the foundation of the Papal
power has never yet been critically examined.
But the time has fortunately arrived when such an examination
is demanded, and when there is strong ground for hoping that its
results, authoritatively and irrefragably showing that the tale of
St. Peter's ever being at Kome is a pure invention, will produce the
most salutary effect throughout Christendom. The papal power is
the most monstrous, and by far the most degrading, imposition that
ever outraged and deformed the human intellect ; it must, some
day or other, in the order of a benevolent Providence, be destroyed ;
it has now provoked chastisement — the eye of the world, in breath-
less expectation, looks for the issue of the contest — and here, close
at hand and challenging employment, lies the simple and hitherto
neglected instrument which has power to terminate its evil existence.
And the hand of her gracious Majesty would seem to be the one
appointed to hurl the pebble that shall destroy the monster, for she
is clearly called upon by the Pope's audacious assumption of regal
authority in her dominions in virtue of his impostrous heirship of
the royal prerogatives — the Regalia — of St. Peter, to cause the
minds of her Catholic svibjects to be enlightened as to the absolute
nullity of that title on which he impiously claims their obedience.
I hope, therefore, that her Majesty will be advised to appoint such
a commission as I suggest ; and I will venture to remark that, as
the cpiestion " whether Simon Peter was ever in the city of Eome"
is not a theological one, the investigation should not be submitted
to clergymen, for their decision, as liable to the suspicion of par-
tizanship, would command the less consideration. It should be
entrusted to lawyers and men familiar with examinations of evidence
and historical research. The question sliould be kept separate
from every collateral point, and thoroughly exhausted ; and the
results should be laid before the world with that calmness and im-
partiality that ought to characterise all judicial investigations,
without the slightest tinge of partiality and partizanship ; and how-
ever the conclusions may be disputed by the Catholics in the heat
and irritation of the moment, yet in a few years it will probably be
ditficult to find a Catholic, unless he should either be a priest or a
brutified serf of that communion unable to read or to write, who
shall believe that the Pope is a whit more the successor of St. Peter
in the bishopric of Rome, than he is of Fo in the Foship of China.
One word more. Our bishops, by complaining that the Pope
POPERY : BRITISH AND FOREIGN, 149
"ignores their existence — disallows their Orders — pretends to take
possession of England as a spiritual waste — is guilty of schism in
the church, &c., kc, &c." — appear to me very much to strengthen
in the eyes of the Catholics the position which he assumes, for this
strain involves an admission that he has a general right of some
sort in these matters. It tends no less to confuse the mind of the
Protestant laity ; and it is high time that an authority, superior to
that of our bishops in ecclesiastical matters, should extend her pro-
tecting shield over the laity, while the Medussean loveliness of the
Truth which she wiU reveal shall look into eternal stone the wretched
impostor who has so long deluded mankind.
Anglic ANUS.
Geiiius_, in the form of Paxton, lias erected an edifice of
stupendous magnificence and unrivalled beauty, wherein all
the nations of the world are invited to exhibit the products of
their industry. Nothing so costly is required for a congress
of learned men. Indeed no congress of them is necessary.
Twelve or thirteen in England and Germany might be selected
to inquire into the Pope's pretensions; and first into the
authority he assumes as successor to St. Peter. If we only
trim a few boughs, and prune off a branch or two, the sap will
rise again the more vigorously and rankly into the same places;
strike at the root, strike through it, and down falls the tree.
But take heed you do not crush or maim the poor creatures
that are basking under it : they are asleep ; wake them, and
gently.
CHAPTER IV.
Anglicanus, in the last chapter, thinks it " curious to see
how Barrow overlooks the importance '^ of the inquiry. Barrow
feared that, had he touched the tiara, he might have stuck his
finger at the same time through the apostolical succession. A
little thorn may tear to rags a loose lawn sleeve. No bishop
will ever venture to say all he knows or all he thinks on these
matters. The simple-hearted Hooker was also cautious lest
his foot offended. As in politics a fault has been called worse
than a crime, so in religion is indiscretion held worse than a
perjury. All bishops swear that they are unwilling to be
bishops ; their modesty at last is prevailed on to be frocked ;
to unfrock it, would make it shudder and scream : the one is
courtship, the other is violation.
The most eloquent work in our language, or perhaps in
150 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
anjj is Milton's Discourse on Frelaty. Mucli as he liatli said
about it, he might have said much more; and probably he
would, if the nation had not already been sickened by the
smoking and rancid snuff of those candles which are now
relighted. He might have walked straightforward up to
Eome, and have emptied into the streets the satchel of
forgeries stored in the Vatican. It must now be done by
others. Although there is little chance that the world will
ever hear again such eloquence, ever be warmed by such
fervency, ever guided by such united zeal and wisdom, there
are men in existence who Avill compensate for these deficiencies,
by the steddiness of their steps and the clearness of their
demonstrations. Let such men come forward, called or
uncalled; the Hallams, the Macaulays, and the Grotes;
Germany will for a while forget her humiliation in the exercise
of her sagacity ; the endurance of her own bondage in break-
ing the bondage of mankind.
CHAPTER V.
The Church-of-England-man, at the present hour, is seen
limping between two lame guides ; one kicking liim, the other
leaning on him so heavily that he would rather be kicked than
bear it. He remembers the cruelties of Popery, and how one
bishop feasted his Christianity upon the stake that roasted
another. Of these things he has only heard; but he has
seen, with his own eyes, bishops, at the beck of Pitt, taking
their seats in our House of Lords, opposite to Marat and
Eobespierre, on precisely the same level, and voting year after
year for war. People will no longer let them sit upon those
benches: gouty feet must find other remedies than blood-baths.
Exercise among the needy and afflicted, visits to the hospital
and the school, are more healthy, and may tend to prolong
their days.
Perocious as have been many sects of Protestants, they have
all, after a while, relaxed their strife. Popery alone marks
out and claims her victims : she alone is always the same, and
boasts of it. The cities of Eome and Naples bear witness,
at this hour, to the validity of her claim. Hundreds are
imprisoned, and have been for all the last year, on suspicion
of heterodoxy; some avowedly, others ostensibly, on different
charges, but certaiidy for the same offences. Hundreds more
have fled from those cities, knowing what would await them if
POPERY: BRITISH AND FOREIGN. 151
they staid. At Rome the sun stil turns round the earth;
whatever was^ is; whatever is, must be. Civilization must
for ever keep clear of the Holy Office. Both Papists and
Protestants, among the ignorant and unreflecting, are per-
suaded that tortures and burnings are never more to be
inflicted on heretics ; and this conclusion they draw from the
enlightenment and liberality of the age. What do they mean
by enlightenment ; by liberaHty ; by the age ? Those whom
they call enlightened, admit no other light than what they
themselves have placed upon the altar, to be kindled or
extinguished, as they appoint. The men whom the fools call
liberal forbid them imperatively to read those books on which
the Christian faith is founded The age ! In regard to learn-
ing, it has rolled far back. Learning was never so highly
cidtivated in Italy as when ]\Iuretus delivered an oration in
praise of Catherine de^ Medici, in celebration of the massacre
on St. Bartholomew's day. Give the same priests the same
power, and nothing Aiill be wanting but latinity for the
oration.
CHAPTER VI.
Let us have cheap bread, whether we have it from our own
country or from abroad : let us have cheap religion, whether
it comes from Lambeth or Geneva. The religion of Eome is
found to contain more impurities in the barrel; but though
it is apt to get into the head, it agrees very well with most
stomachs. The great capitalist who sends it over has a
prodigious number of customers; he gives long credit, and
takes smaU interest, having a mortgage on every article in the
house, from the baby's whistle to the mother's nightcap. His
factors must be admitted at all houi's, whether of the day or
of the night, at the ringing of the bell ; so that presently the
wife is not the husband's, nor the husband the wife's, nor the
children cither's. If the flour is to be bolted at aU, it must
be bolted at such mills as he appoints; and a pretty good
quantity of bran is thought to make it wholesomer. How-
ever, by paying more, you may be scoured less. At last, the
factors in many places grew too numerous for the consumers,
and so insolent that they partitioned the land among them-
selves, and assumed the names and titles of the landlords.
The farmers cared not a straw who took the tithes, until it
occurred to them that after one party had taken them, another
152 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
miglit come and do the same. It had pleased them lately to
see the children of theu" old curates made lords^ and sitting in
Parliament with black aprons over their knees, as decent and
orderly as their good housewives at home. Ultimately they
began to grow suspicious that somewhat was in the wind,
when they found candlesticks and candles and artificial flowers
on the communion-tables in their parish churches. Stroking
their hair for\\'ard, and drawing one foot backward, they
" made so bold " as to ask the reason of this fashion ; and
they were informed, by a priest at each end and another in
the middle, that it was no communion-table, but an altar. At
last a whole detachment in sable was landed upon the coast,
and surveyors with long poles began their measurements.
Then assembled all classes to consult together what was to be
done. Some of the elders took up the Booh of Life, and
examined it attentively. It soon appeared to them, not only
that nothing could be found in recommendation of bees-wax
as a salve for the soul, or of stone altars to nail their faith to,
or of another man's garment wherewithal to cover their naked-
ness and conceal their uncleanliness and unsoundness, but they
also found a passage in which it is forbidden to make long
prayers, and an ordinance by which only one prayer is
sanctioned, and every word of it plainly written down. The
ordinance is from the Son of God himself; the prayer is from
his own dictation. They then met daily and said that prayer,
after which they consulted the best educated, the most moral,
the fittest to instruct them in regard to their interests, temporal
and eternal. Ere long, the inquiry went so far as into the
signification of lords spiritual. Again the Book of Life was
opened ; but its oracles here were mute. Nothing of the kind
could be found in it from beginning to end; but sundry
denunciations to shock the sincere believer, sadly troubled for
those who, whether from unbelief or from indifference, took
openly to themselves what had been so solemnly interdicted.
Suddenly there was a great tumult in the country. One
body of lords spiritual was tearing to rags the habiliments of
other lords spiritual. At this sight the quieter of the old men
stood apart, and warned their sons and daughters fi'om going
too near the conflict. Some of them called off' their dogs, lest
they should contract a bad habit of barking inopportunely.
When the fighters had torn off the clothes from one another's
backs and loins, it was discovered that the Hneu of the last
POPERY: BRITISH AND FOREIGX. 153
arrived was generally the finer ; the skin of the native, here and
there, the cleanlier. Contagious diseases had, however, been
caught mutually ; and it was deemed convenient to place the
patients in separate wards of the general hospital.
CHAPTER VII.
Our century seems to have been split asunder; one half
rolling forward, the other half backward : inquiry closed by
icebergs; credulity carried to the torrid zone. Oxen no
longer speak in the cow-market ; but wooden images roll
their eyes in the shrine. Even we Englishmen are the fools
of fashion. Inigo Jones and Wren and Vanbrugh had built
houses fit for gentlemen to inhabit. We could look out of the
windows and see the country ; we coidd look at the walls and
see the paintings hung against them. Suddenly the plumber
and glazier divide the panes equally, and we must mount upon
chairs if we would see the other side. Old benches, old tables,
old wainscoting, decorate the chambers; old missals and
breviaries, opened for the miniatures, displace Voltaire and
Montesquieu. Have these follies been quite without their
consequences ? I wish I could speak in the affirmative.
Here again we find splitting and discrepancy ; water-sprinklers
and scoui'ges, steam-vessels and railroads; engineers who
would carry us rapidly across the globe, and mischievous and
malignant idlers who would throw in their rubbish to obstruct
the velocity of the train. We must keep the way clear; we
must carefully watch the electric wire; we must preserve it
unbroken in our country. Protestantism, the assertor no less
of civil than of religious rights, has been rooted out fi'om
among the nations which first nui'tured it. Had violence and
perfidy been inactive against it, had the princes of Germany
upheld it manfully, had their emperor and the French king
never been taught by the ministers of their religion that oaths
with heretics were invalid, and ought to be broken for the
benefit of the faith, we may fairly calculate that forty millions
of Protestants would be now existing where scarcely two
millions have been left ; such was their industry and prosperity,
in Prance, Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary, Transylvania, and
Poland. The world never sustained so grievous a loss as in
Gustavus Adolphus, or so grievous a disgrace as in the empire
of Napoleon. He estabKshed such schools as were suitable only
154 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
to tlie darkest ages, and lie restored such a religion as had
caused their darkness. The same lust of domination, the
same fraudulence and treachery, the same meekness of aspect
in conflagrations and murders, as when the olive-yards and vine-
yards of the Vaudois and Albigenses were insufficient to supply
the faggots for burning the father, the mother, and tlie babe.
No Popish priest dares hesitate to execute the Pope's
commands. The Pope declares in word and deed that his
religion is now what it was always. Whoever is desirous
of knowing more about it, may be referred to James's Bark
Scenes of History, and may read the exploits of Simon de
Montfort and of Wallenstein. If ever a pope casts his slipper
over England, I trust we shall return it him with a full
attendance of his own servants in their richest liveries. Christ
says, '' Ye can not serve two masters." The Pope says, "ye can;"
he says more ; he says, "whomsoever you serve, unless you serve
me in preference, and obey my orders in despite of his : I, who
have the power of doing it, will send you to the devil." In
Piedemont a refractory bishop was sentenced to a mild punish-
ment for open disobedience of the laws. The Pope threatened
to throw the whole nation into disorder because the bishop was
not allowed to be disorderly. The weak and dying were to be
deprived of life's last comforts and hopes, unless an ovation, or
indeed a triumph, were granted to a criminal and a rebel. Yet
there are found among us men of learning who would permit
their easy chairs to be wheeled round, and who would sit readily
and unsuspiciously with any gentlemanly guest who claims
relationship. So far no harm is done. But beware, old
gentleman, of letting your guest's servants have possession of
your servants' hall, make the men drunk, and pump many
secrets out of the women, and some in.
CHAPTER VIII.
It is better to wear our own home-woven clothes than to
throw over our shoulders those which others have left behind
them, unventilated, moth-eaten, and soUed. And yet the
wearing of these loose ill-fitting habiliments has made the
fortune of many, by giving them a venerable air out of their
very mustiness. Even in the works of some wise men there is
little which is applicable to our present modes of life, much as
there is which keeps us above these modes, and which holds us
high and erect amid the conflict of creeds and passions. The
POPERY: BEITISH AND POllEIGN. 155
brutal part of a man^s nature (and there is a brutal part
in most men) is usually the stronger for a time. It is exer-
cised the first ; it has most ground under it. The head of the
Centaur is disproportionate to the body : but there may be in
the elevation and aspect of this head so much comeliness and
grandor that the inferior parts are overlooked.
The arts and sciences have made wonderful progress within
our memory ; has moral philosophy made any ? Compare the
writings, compare the conduct, of those who occupy the
highest seats in the Christian synagogue, both at home and
abroad, with the writings and conduct of Epictetus and
Seneca and Plutarch and Marcus Antoninus. On which side
lies Christianity ? It lies invariably on the side of those who
knew not Christ. No persecution, no strife, no intolerance,
on their part; no cessation or remission on the opposite.
Not contented with aU the body and aU the bones of contention
which ultramontane bigotry and superstition had furnished,
our pastors come to buflets with each other about a few drops
of water ; some insisting that an infant on whom they never
have been sprinkled has no right or pretence to enter the
kingdom of heaven, altho the omission of so momentous a
duty be no fault of his : others would more kindly give the
infant a free ticket, but insist that grown men should be
soused over head and ears. Again, so angry are people at
what they call innovations in their church, that
Surgit amari aliquid quod in ipsis floiibus angit.
The Bishop of London thinks there may be a httle too much of
them at one time upon the altar : liis lordsliip has no
objection to a trim discreet posey, but he must look into it,
and pick out here and there a constituent. Herb-of-grace,
marjoram, fennel, sage, and other useful domestic condiments,
may enter and remain. A rose bears too near an af&nity to a
rosary : in regard to rosemary there are serious doubts lest the
multitude should mistake its derivation, and believe it denoted
the mother of God. Therefor it is deemed prudent at the
present juncture to suspend the rosemary. Similar hesitation
I once remember at a dinner in Paris. A gentleman of
ancient family, high rank, and distinguished services, was
appointed by the lady of the house to superintend the salad.
He felt at once the honor and the responsibility, wliich he
avowed, but he manfully undertook the charge. After a
156 THE LAST FKUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
coup d'oeil and a short reconnoissance, lie placed three plates
before him^ and then selected the 7nateriel, which he tlirew
forward in detachments. Everything went on smoothly and
successfully, only there was one little herb that perplexed him,
on which hung the key of the position, the success of the
operation. He had already mixed up a small part of it in the
bowl, another part much smaller was suspended between his
thumb and finger : doubt hung over his brow : at last, with
desperate resolution, after detaching a single leaf and tossing
aside the residue, he committed that leaf irrevocably to its
doom. His heart was now at ease ; he had performed his duty.
In our country, where incense for the present is unused, a
few sweet herbs may be innocently and advantageously indulged
in. Abroad I have often been in the midst of a desperate
conflict between gum and garlic, and have been constrained to
fly for protection, as near as possible, to the priest and
thurible. The " dura messorum ilia" imparted no strength to
my stomach, but tried it cruelly. Historians have not recorded
the exact time when the Romans and other Italians ceased to
be fond of flowers. Probably it happened in the midst of some
epidemic, when the nerves could ill support the odour. Many
things are left off unseasonably, and many unseasonabl}''
continued. A¥e deem it no sin to decorate our churches on
the most festive day of the year, altho the decorations are
druidical : surely the sin is no greater to decorate them all the
year round, with beautiful and fresh and fragrant flowers, as
was the custom of that milder paganism from which, with
•little change, we have received our rites and ceremonies,
through our step-mother at Eome. Let the two kings on the
Tiber and Thames, cognate as they are, smell at the same
nosegay.
We already owe Popery too much : if we are induced
to borrow more from her, be it rather what she never makes
use of; what was bequeathed to her by her brave and frugal
ancestors, and not what she holds in common with the
brotherhood of the Thugs. If she comes to tickle our ears in
order to cut our throats, beyond a doubt it is entirely for our
good, and not for her aggrandisement : if she comes to pick
our pockets, it is only that notliing may be left in them which
could do us harm in falling. She finds in our purses snares
fabricated by the devil, and she melts them into indulgences to
give him a specimen how two can play at that game. She is
POPERY: BRITISH AND FOREIGN. 157
lotli to spill our blood, unless we are refractory and contu-
macious; and then it is purely and simply to show others,
straying after us, what dangerous paths we misguided sinners
have taken. Arminianism is popery, with a leaden thumb-
screw instead of an iron one, and with seven wires to the cat
instead of nine. Archbishop Laud was the most celebrated of
its pontifs : Charles the Martyr was the only one canonised of
its saints. He well merited this distinction, for the number of
ears and noses with which he tesselated the pavement of
Whitehall, and for the number of perjuries with which he con-
secrated the chapel of St. Stephen. Eor these the wisdom and
virtue of a reformed parliament declared he should be ever-
more its patron : for these, and these only, he merged the
inferior dignities of king and saint, assuming at one step the
supreme command in the glorious army of martyrs ; which
command, as long as he could, he decHned; and he aoquircd-''^^'^^^
it only at the urgent intercession of Cromwell. Laus Deo.
CHAPTER IX.
There is a proverb which begins, " Between two stools."
Our most gracious Queen, if this proverb hold good, may
soon be somewhat worse off than merely genihus minor, with
the thorough-bred Papist on one side of her, and the hybrid
on the other.
The Holy Pather sets a bad ensample to his children,
legitimate and illegitimate. Beyond a question, the impudence
of his Holiness exceeds the impudence of any other Holiness
that ever wore the Babylonian scarlet. Has the Pope of
Eome a better right to exercise authority in the British
dominions, than the head of the Anglican church has to
exercise it in the Roman? The Queen of England most
graciously permits to every Papist the exercise of his religion,
not only in private but in public, inasmuch as it interferes not
with civic order ; while the Pope not only prohibits it even in
its last offices at the grave, but forbids in private houses the
followers of Jesus Christ to introduce that Gospel which
he commanded his apostles to preach openly in all lands.
And this gentleman forsooth is delegated by the Prince of
Apostles ! Nay, he goes beyond, far beyond, this assumption.
He not only is Christ's messager, but Christ's viceregent.
Not only does he come forward under a false name, but
158 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
lie forges title-deeds to a vast estate; wliicli estate never
belonged to the pretended owner. St. Peter^s patrimony
is the name inscribed on the endorsement. Now St. Peter
has never been proven, and never pretended^ to have possessed
an acre of land; no, nor ev^en a bank of bulrushes on the sea
of Gahlee. Yet this gentleman lays claim, not only to so vast
an estate as no other gentleman on earth possesses, but he
pretends to show you the very seal under which it was signed
and delivered. He caUs it, probably in jest, the Fisherman's
Seal. Unluckily for the joke, if he intends it as one, in the
days of this fisherman no person of his quality and condition
had a seal to seal with : none under the rank of knight
enjoyed such privilege. This seal-ring is quite as miraculous
as that of Gyges : it turns a fisherman into a prince ; it can
make visible what is invisible; it can make invisible what
is clear as day. Children, and other than children, say,
let tliose laugh who win. Whatever rights our fisherman may
fail in establishing, he has established this. Surely he must
have caught Proteus in liis drag-net, and have learnt from hun
all his tricks. There must have been a prodigious shoal
of miirices taken at the same draught, enough of them to dye
of the finest pui'ple the dirtiest coats abroad. The fisher-
man now grown wealthy, altho he had not yet taken to
the forgery of title-deeds, chose to change his mode of life a
little for one easier and more comfortable, and became a
shepherd. He soon grew very skillful in shearing, and not
only in shearing, but equally in flaying; so that aU the
butchers round were ready to employ him. Whenever he
wanted a piece of mutton for his table, he quarreled with his
butcher, and kept the sheep for himself. There was notliing
at last to which he would not tui-n his hand. Nowhere was
there a rotten tree, for miles and miles round about, from
which he failed to extract a pot of honey, after fumigating and
paralysing the bees. Several swarms by natural instinct
betook themselves elsewhere; but a part was allui'ed back
arain bv tin kettles, and other loud instruments, into their old
hives. If anybody intercepted them, coming or going, it was
at his peril. Some who attempted it were poisoned, others
were stabbed ; and the shepherd-fisherman was often heard to
curse heartily the luckier ones he never could reach. He
always had about liim a great number of noisy fish-M^omen in
old-fashioned caps and blood-coloured stockings, who bandied
POPERY: BRITISH AND FOREIGN. 159
curses and dealt blows wherever he directed them. Por
a time the constables only laughed ; at last they grew serious,
and thought it high time to repair the stocks. He has left a
large number of natural sons behind him, to enjoy what
is called Pete/s patr'monij even unto this day, together
with the valuable receipts of innumerable medicaments,
provocative and sedative, together with others for anointing
swords and scenting gloves. In the present age, conjurors
must have recourse to novelties in shght of hand, if they
expect success. The swallowing of daggers and Hve coals, the
catching of bullets on the rapier's point, are stale tricks:
images of absent friends, in liquid ink in the palm of a boy's
hand, are sought no longer. Gulls rise up before us, hatched
in the shmy beds of the old shepherd-fisherman, a few miles up
the Tiber. Our cHmate is uncongenial to that particular
brood. Many people burst into loud outcries the moment
they begin to settle on our shores ; and certainly they will be
pelted at their first pounce upon our soles and turbots.
Already we have plenty, and more than plenty, of the same
genus, though of a smaller species, whose maws are propor-
tionally capacious. These however are little more than king-
fishers in comparison; yet even these are so noisy and so
voracious that we must clip their wings, confine them within
walls, and make them feed simply on grubs, worms, and
beetles.
CHAPTER X.
Ministers have brought upon the Queen and country the
greater part, if not the whole, of the- Pope's insolence. His
priests have been acknowledged under the titles he conferred
upon them. If our Protestant bishops had been divested
of baronial dignities and seats, nothing of the kind would
have been assumed in this country by the papal. There is no
reason why either papal or protestant should be called other
than doctor. Such is the ordinary style and title, and as such
the professors of both creeds may be admitted into the pre-
sence of royalty. Nobody can suppose that the dignitaries of
our religion will be permitted much longer to possess vast
principalities. Prince Albert must know many princes in
Germany whose revenues fall greatly short of our poorest
bishopric. We have the same right to curtail them as we
have to reduce our military to half-pay. Indeed it is more
160 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
just that a bishop's salary should be reduced to a thousand
a-year than an admiral's to three hundred, A captain in the
army, who has bought his commission^ may, after twenty years'
service and suffering from infirmities and wounds, receive less
than a seventieth part of a bishopric. Let it never more be
objected that the property of the church was granted or
bequeathed by pious benefactors, lest the Pope seize it ; for
these pious benefactors left it to his church. Parliament has
acted repeatedly on wiser notions, dissolving some bishoprics,
annexing others. It has done it anciently, it has done it .
lately, it will do it soon again. Ours is not much longer to
continue the only unreformed church in Christendom, unre-
formed in its vital parts, in equity, moderation, and diffusion
of knowledge. People are no longer to be blinded, or to have
their eyes diverted, by the dust thrown into them through the
riotous wrestling of overfed ecclesiastics. The patrons of
prelaty and pluralities do not afi'ect, as they do most things,
indignation at the Pope's audacity. Lord J. Eussell, in his
letter to the Prince-bishop of Durham, says that anger pre-
dominates over all his other feelings on this forener's most
insolent encroachment. Reasonably in part we may believe
him ; for his patronage is in jeopardy when an old church is
turned into an extinguisher on a newer, which seems moulded
on purpose to receive it. Infallibility comes forward with
great advantage while our bishops are scuffling in the market-
place, and, where dead infants are lying before their feet, are
debating which of the poor innocents are to be buried as chil-
dren, and which as dogs. She sprinkles with salt water those
she favors, and straightway they mount into heaven. It is
painful to think, with Infallibility, that the others are at best
in limbo; and worse to believe, with Infallibility's twin-
brother and claimant of her estate, that very probably they
are even worse off. Between these two we shall never live
peaceably, and perhaps if either should be left alone to have
his own way, it would nowise mend the matter.
A strong man was troubled with two fierce mastifs quarrel-
ing daily in his court-yard. His own being the stronger and
quieter, he looked on with indifference at first, and indeed
until the strange dog took to the kitchen and larder. His
own only growled at this intrusion : but when the adversary
leaped up against the stable-door and seized a horse's hind-
quarter, patience was exhausted, the combat was renewed, and
POTERY : BRITISH AND FOREIGN. 161
more resolutely than ever before. The master had more
conlidence in his dog's fierceness than in his fidelity, and
began to surmise that he fought only to fill his belly : so, when
they were both exhausted, and their tongues were a span-
length out of their mouths, he plucked up courage, took each
together by the scutt' of the neck, and threw them into the
stone- quarry from which the mansion was built. Incredible
how quiet was the house, how orderly the domestics, after
these two quarrelsome beasts were gone. Until then they
could never say their prayers without the one barking and the
other howling ; and the maids as they knelt fancied the strange
dog perpetually at their heels.
CHAPTER XI.
The new dignitary who comes under orders from the
papal court, to supersede the Hierarchy of England, has been
graciously pleased to offer the shelter of his wing to the
Dissenters.
" We are accustomed," says a Dissenter in reply, " we are
accustomed to read the Gospels ; and there we find the blessed
Founder of our religion forbidding those around him to call
him Lord, although the acknowledged Son of God. Among
the many reasons which have compelled us to separate our-
selves from the main body of our fellow Christians, is the
violation of this positive and oral ordinance."' But it now
appears that to be a lord, is to be too little : we must have a
prince to lead us Godward ; and such a prince as pushes aside
all others, even the royal. Our kingdom is minished into
parts and parcels smaller than our heptarchies; but greater
men than the heptarchs are come among us from over-sea;
stouter and bolder men than Danish and Saxon kings ; meii
invested with authority by superhuman hands. Cardinals are not
only far superior to these chieftains, but distance the Apostles.
!Pestus would not have been with them "most noble Festus;"
and Csesar himself, instead of receiving tribute, would have
been called upon to pay it.
Emperors and kings are servants of the servant. The
attendants and disciples of our Saviour were poor fishermen :
they would have stared at any gentleman leaping into their
boat in a lappeted cap and flounced petticoat ; no preface of
" with your leave, or by your leave ; " fhst taking the helm.
162 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD THEE.
then seizing and dragging the net^ simply and solely for his
own emolument. They were plain, honest, peaceable men;
but one or other might have had his choler stirred thereby;
and peradventure the intruder might have been fain to find his
way back again by fairly swimming for it.
It is not to be dissembled that there are many who rejoice
in the conflict of prelate with prelate; that there are many
who tliink them well matched ; and there are many who care
little whether the rat kills the weazel, or the weazel kiUs the
rat ; for in that light they hold them. But as an Englishman,
I must declare my opinion that the thieves should be driven
out of the house, before we look to see what is missing or
damaged. In this inquiry, we may presently find that our
own head-servants have wasted much of our substance, and
that one or other has left the door open for the depredators.
We must have them up, in open court, before those who
administer justice.
I hear from several of my neighbours who have travelled in
foren parts, that Popery is injurious to industry; that among
the Germans and Switzers the naked eye readily distinguishes
the line of demarcation between the Papist and the Protestant ;
that no country is so iL. cultivated, no people so immoral, as
where dominates the gentleman who styles liimself "God's
vicegerent."
There are causes for everything. Now, what and whence
are the causes why an intemperate religion, long ago repudiated
by the manlier and calmer nations of Enrope, for caprices,
immoralities, and violences; for cheating, and swearing, and
blaspheming; for housebreaking, and arson, and assassination;
all clearly proven against it . . should be brought home again
triumphantly through the streets of our metropolis ? There
is a reason ; there are many reasons : all of them ought to
have been, and might have been, removed. But from the
Church of England, as from the mistress of Horace,
•' Fugit juventus et verecundus coloi-."
It is painful to find the bishops simmering and seething so
long over the coals. The fault is entirely their own : they
might have crept out of the hot water while it was somewhat
less hot : tliey now begin to turn red, and some of them are
shpping their shells.
The conduct of the prelates on one side, and of the people
POPERY : BRITISH AND FOREIGN. 163
on the other, may be described, by a slight variation in some
verses of Pindar :
" One Mortal shall Vain-glory cast
From the good things wheron his heart relies ;
Another let his foe run past
Where he might seize him : but are these the wisel"
After our long and heavy sleep, half broken by a dream of
mysterious fountains and magical fingers dripping over them,
and of wailing infants transfixt by the horns of devils ; here
comes before us a figure in scarlet, with a fine embroidered
kerchef in its hand, which, muttering an incantation and a
prayer, it dips in chloroform and ties across our noses.
Questions on baptism led the minds of men to questions on
apostolical succession. The humane and judicious Gorham
says
" Infants baptised, and dying before actual sin, are certainly
saved.
"As ignorance, if not wilful, is a plea ever admitted in
rigJiteous human tribunals, so, we are taught, will due weight
be allowed to it at the seat of Divine Judgment."
Alas ! ignorance not wilful is far from admission to the plea
at (what are called) righteous human tribunals. And now to
the second point of the position. If due weight will be
allowed to it at the seat of Divine Justice, surely due weight
will also be allowed to the ignorance of the infant, whose
parents may have been negligent, or whose death, by the
dispensation of that Divine Justice, of that Providence ever
merciful, was immature. There are many sound and earnest
Christians, who believe that sprinkling a few drops of water
on an infant's face is no more baptism than a sandwich is a
dinner, and that such sprinkling has exactly the same effect,
here and hereafter, whether the grace is prevenient or not, and
whatever the priest may think about the matter. His opinion
can nowise alter the destiny of the infant in the dispensations
of its Maker. Why not let it pass then for what it is worth,
whether much or little ? The creature is saved, that is clear ;
and enjoys thenceforward as much grace, and exercises (let
us hope) quite as much discretion, as they who litigate and
militate in the church about him, whether under the black
ensign, or the white, or the scarlet.
The best tactician can never see with clearness and certainty
to what results the first skirmish may lead. Apostohcal suc-
M 2
J 64 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TEEE.
cession, in all its branches, must be demonstrated or disproved.
The earliest authorities quoted by the Papists are quoted falsely.
Protestants are no sufferers by the deception : but Eoman
Catholic gentlemen are deeply interested in a thorough inquiry
whether St. Peter ever was at Rome? to whom he gave
authority there or elsewhere ? what power he had to give it ?
whether the Holy Spirit, which he is believed by them to have
imparted, directed the murderous and incestuous Popes, who,
all and equally, claimed their descent from liim, and (what he
never did) assumed the title and office of God's sole vice-
gerents. If such rights and privileges can be established,
then indeed it will be wiser in our own bishops to touch Pio
Nono reverentially; wiser to let the thread of succession lie
broken in two or three places, and to bow their heads before
Him alone who, despoiled even of that garment for which two
wrangling soldiers are now drawing lots, has left no other
heritage than his example.
CHAPTER XII.
PoRMEELY the Dissenters were clamorous against Popery
and Prelaty. How happens it that the sour presbyterian is
sour no longer, but soft and mealy ? Not only is he loyal,
but he is courtly. This loyalty and courtliness are suspicious
in the eyes of the more petted. Some of them, nearest to
royalty, presuming on the favours they have received from her
Majesty, have ventured not only to expostulate, but to reprove.
The same persons have, both covertly and openly, countenanced
the ceremonies of Popery. The oily tongue of Wilberforce,
bishop of Oxford, can easily turn itself round in the wards of
the privy-closet, while the bishop of London, laden with the
treasures torn formerly from the spoliation of his predecessors,
kicks at the royal chapel-door and insists upon an audience,
talking so loud that people bear it throughout the country.
What would Queen Elizabeth have said on such an occasion ?
She who called the bishop of Ely a " proud prelate,^' and, as
manfully as ever her father could have done, swore hy God she
would 7cvfrocJc him. We recommend at the present day no
such hasty and intemperate measures; we would not quite
unfrock; but it might be "of good ensample^' to turn up just
as much of the tucks and trimmings as should be necessary
in administrating a moderate and lenient castigation.
POPERY: BRITISH AND FOREIGN. 165
Rome and London are brought near together by other
machinery than radroads and steamers. The fashionable wear
of the winter is scarlet, genuine Babylonian, with broad sleeves
and broader bustles. Lord John was permitted by Lord Peter
to call him insolent, &c., on the understanding that he should
send to him as ministers, in his several dependent states
throughout Italy, those who profess his doctrines and acknow-
ledge his supremacy, especially those who abolish from the
coinage of the British realm the Queen's title, style, and
dignity, as Defender of the Faith. After this humiliation, we
may expect to find in the court calender of 1851, that the
contracting parties have smoothed every difficulty in the union
of two persons so close in consanguinity; and that this
marriage in high life wiU be, with permission of Pio Nono
who promises to sign it, celebrated by the bishop of London.
There is a rumour, the gazettes will say, wliich we hope we
shall soon be able to contradict by authority, that the bride's
guardians have embezzled a large part of her property; on
the other hand, certain title-deeds are not forth-coming.
However, to accomplish so desirable an event, and to silence
all other claimants, it is suggested that these irregularities
win be overlooked by both parties, and that defalcations on
one sheet of the ledger and excrescences on the opposite will
be compromised.
All we know at present in regard to the late differences is
tliis : that Lord Minto is declared, on grave authority, to have
been cognisant of the Pope's inclinations, and without remon-
strance. His instructions from home, and his despatches in
return, must have obviated the surprise of Lord John Eussell;
which surprise must therefor be fictitious; a mask appropriate
to the domino. He caught up the pattern of Ms indignation
from the people. If they never had stirred, he would never
have pasted on the broad conspicuous shoulders of the Prince-
bishop a Manifesto in form of a Letter. In an English
minister, the alternative of two things is requisite; strict
silence or strict veracity. Lord John Eussell chose rather to
be vociferous ; and, although he writes to a Prince-bishop, he
uses sundry expressions which are almost as coarse in their
texture as the pieces of common slang which lately have been
running from mouth to mouth, and replacing the cigar. His
Lordship is more offensive; the terms of his assumed surprise
and dehberate indignation more calculated to "astonish the
166 THE LAST FRUIT OFP AN OLD TREE;
natives/^ Never was there written a Letter, whether from a
jealous mistress or a detected adulteress, so indecorous or so
indiscreet.
CHAPTER XIII.
Now the fox has broken cover and the dogs are in full cry
after him, it is curious to see animals so similar as the dog is
to the fox, in such hot pursuit and enmity, and passing the
other beasts of the field without molesting them.
Prelaty is one and the same in all countries ; and there is
just enough of difl'erence in doctrine to keep up excitement
and animosity in their partisans. There are thousands in
England who have never seen an English bishop ; and there
are thousands more who have not seen one since their con-
firmation. Probably their lordships will not make themselves
quite so scarce now other candidates are in the field, now the
canvas is growing hot, now the rival chairs of St. Peter and
St. Paul, decorated with their favours and banderoles, are
clashing.
Whatever may be the aggression, whosoever the enemy, and
whencesoever the invasion, John Bull is equally angry. He
now sees the scarlet opposite to him, rushes blindly with his
head down against it, and never suspects that under the flowing
robe there is concealed the imperial uniform. While he
tramples on the weak audacity of a bewildered priest, a dozen
of kings and their ministers are laughing at him, amused at
the manakin they have puffed out and protruded into the
ring. Heartily glad must be our own Prince-bishops that
the public attention is diverted from them. The palace of the
Yatican will stand longer than the solidest of theirs. The
Pope is consistent in his perfidy : they waver in theirs ; and
instead of a bold straight-forward lie, repair to the lower and
the weaker subterfuge of prevarication.
CHAPTER XIV.
We are resolved (it appears) to show how far we are
removed from the practices of the Papists. Instead of tying
a recusant to the stake and surrounding him with fire and
faggots, we only pelt him with the putrid offal of the most
offensive words. This is principally done from the higher'
booths, on which gilded ribbons are waving, and where certain
lords are sitting just over the winning-post. Meanwhile a
POPERY : BEITISH AND FOREIGN. 167
crowd of people is bursting into the newly-furnished old house,
calling the occupant an intruder, and entreating the Queen's
Majesty to kick him out again. Looking round narrowly,
I find the stump of the charred stake yet standing where it
stood formerly. We have no fire at hand ; and only just
enough of the timber is above-ground to produce a crop of
funguses.
Our Church, willing to hold her own, but holding much
faster to the broad lands, the prelatical palaces, the baronial
benches, the thrones on a level with the royal, than to corroded
theories built upon shifting sands and^ exposed to every gust
in every quarter, turned from side to side, entreated, exhorted,
expostulated : at one time meek as a dove, at another erecting
her crest and threatening Hke a basilisk. Lord Peter, a great
quoter of latin, whispered in her ear,
" Nos hsec novimus esse nihil."
She simpered, and said nothing in reply. At last she drew
nearer and nearer to him, requesting him however to keep
liis hands off, and promising if he would not sit upon her
skirts, to hold a correspondence with him secretly and con-
fidentially. This was done with the fingers, but not upon
paper. Jack Avas outrageous at hearing the whisper. He
tlirew the seducer on the ground : the seducer soon got up
again, shook his embroidered uniform, replaced his pistols in
the holster, aud marched off, according to his own report,
insulted indeed, but never thrown down ; assailed by a legion,
of devils, but victorious and triumphant.
The merits of the combatants, the rights of primogeniture,
the advantages of the feudal system, the obligations of its
serfs to the mitre, may be brought under discussion in open
court. We have only to declare at present that what is set
apart for the public service is public property. Such is a
clmrch, and everything appertaining to a church. The State
has a right to alter it, to enlarge it, to contract it, to demolish
it. The State may remove a bishopric as legally as an organ-
loft, a bishop as a chorister. It may competently say to
either, " I consider your services worth so much to me : if
you are discontented with it, go your way and do better for
yourself." Many would murmur; few would move. It is
difficult for reverend corpulency to rise from a well-padded
elbow-chair ; and greatly less pleasant for gouty feet to walk
168 THE LAST rUUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
between two crutches than between two liverjTnen in plush
and powder.
In the next chapter I shall adduce the authority of a
churchman,, who has taken a nearer and a more accurate
survey of this interesting subject. We may deduce from his
arguments and demonstrations that a thread which has long
been twisted carries with it wdien untwisted the tortuosity of
its entanglement ; that you may indeed pull it straight again ;
but that, if it is to continue so, it must be pulled fairly out
and held tight.
Will what has happened in the present age be credited
in the next ? Will it ever be believed that the Reformed
Parliament, soon after its Eeformation, appointed men to be
judges in their own cause ? Will it be believed that so little
was left of Christianity, of equity, of decency, that the bishops
of England, who had long enjoyed vast revenues, should
vote for themselves the same revenues for life, declaring them
to be too much for their successors ? They did indeed, how-
ever reluctantly, pluck off some little : just as much as a clever
cook plucks off a stick of celery, to make it look somewhat
handsomer and more eatable. That the people may not turn
back their eyes on these enormities, small questions are raised,
small offences are taken and made greater. They know very
well that it is only from among the rich and luxurious, who
have lived in such society as their own, that Popery shoots
and ramifies. It is not with Popery they are angry, it is with
the Pope. He claims what they hold, and what they have
taken from him ; and he claims only a part of this. It belongs
to neither ; it belongs to the people at large ; to the people
belong both spirituals and temporals ; and to their benefit, and
theirs only, must both be, ere long, converted.
As there are many prayers in common with the two pre- •
latical churches, there is also one canticle,
"If the world is worth thy winning,
Think, think it worth enjoying."
The senses of no man can be so seduced from him that
he shall admit the supposition of a quarrel on articles of
faith.
" Hsec prius fuere, nirnc reconclita
Senent quiete."
It would be the greatest of absurdities to quan'el for an
POPERY : BRITISH AND PO REIGN. 169
absiu-dity; and above all where there are more of them
at home with each party than he can manage. There
will always be in the Anglican Church, and peculiarly
among the occupants of thrones under canopies, many
loth to ascend into a purer atmosphere, and to leave
beliind them
" Furuum et opes strepitumque Komae."
Doctrines and dogmas are hardly worth our notice. Let
the Pope have his own, and all his own; but let him
show liis claim. Again I repeat it, if St. Peter had the
power to grant, and did actually grant, under his seal,
in the presence of witnesses, the spirituals and temporals
wliich the Bishop of Home claims, both from this tes-
tamentary and hereditary right, our bishops must hold
their tongues. Meanwhile the wiry-haired, long-backed,
indefatigable German terriers are questing among the
intricate caverns and bramble-covered ruins of Eome, and
will unearth and drive the old badger from under the
palace of the Caesars.
CHAPTER XV.
No rehgion hath ever done so much mischief in the
world as that which falsely, among innumerable other
falsehoods, calls itself the catholic. It never was the
catholic, and, let us trust in the mercies of God, it
never will be. There was a tiiiie when the Arians out-
numbered the papists; and it was only by the exercise
of imperial power, by the sword in the balance, that the
scale flew up and scattered its contents. Again did
imperial power, by similar means, obstruct the progress
of the Pteformation, when the more civilised and intel-
ligent, not only in Germany and Holland and Prance,
but also in Italy, among those who had no personal
interests to consult, and among many who had them,
preferred the plain doctrine and pure authority of the
Gospel to the glosses and assumptions of the papacy.
At the present day the question turns less about the
doctrinal points of Popery, than about the influence which
its ministers again are exercising on the social condition
of Europe. Prance has begun to renew her dracjonnades,
not indeed within her own territories, but within those
170 THE LAST FUUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
territories where in right and justice she can pretend
to no controul. Neither tlie Pope nor the King of
Naples has displayed more perfidy than the Erencli
president. Each of the Italian potentates had kept within
his dominions, tirst cajoling and then oppressing what
he was permitted to call his own people. But the other
came in the guise of a friend and a protector, and took
away all the valuables of the house he entered, leaving
his host to he tied up in a surplice and suffocated in
the Tiber. The Emperor of Austria has followed, although
with unequal paces, the Erench president; and the Jesuits
have trampled out the last vestiges left by Jerome of
Prague. Bohemia, Hungary, Transylvania, had enjoyed in
peace the liberty of worship. No zealot proclaimed it
unchristian to bend the knee before Clirist alone, without
his mother, without his followers, near or remote. Schools
were not declared to be godless, for no other reason
than because the scholars were required to join their
classes at lecture and their family at prayer. Nothing
is now to be taught, in that part of our dominions
where both the people and the priesthood is the most
ignorant, but under the eye of the blind and the guidance
of the lame. The same ordinances, it seems, are now to
be observed in other places. Tell me which of our
sovrans in better times w^ould have endured or have
tolerated this ? what minister ? w' ould even the lesser Pitt ?
would Eox ? would Wyndham ? would Burke ? Certain I am
that neither "VYalpole nor Chatham, neither Harley nor
Bolingbroke, would place the crozier above the sceptre,
or across it. Different as are tlie ministers of Queen
Victoria, both in energy and in intellect, from the ministers
of Queen Anne, even they, surely even they, never will
permit the streets of London and Westminster to be
infested by the surpliced Hnkboys of popish processions :
surely the police will turn the horses' heads in another
direction when the Cardinal of Westminster's carriage
stops the way. Eirmly do I believe that many Eoman
Catholic gentlemen, both in England and in Ireland, are,
as they have been for centuries in Prance, unfriendly to
the inordinate claims of the Pope. Eirmly do I believe that,
if the Reformation had never been established in these realms,
they would have been among the fu-st of the Reformers.
POPEUY : BUITISH AND FOREIGN. 171
What gentleman of either country lias exhibited more enlight-
ened zeal in the cause of education, more liberality in every
department, then he who so worthily represents our Queen at
Athens ? The oldest and best families of Roman CathoHcs,
both in England and in Ireland, have ever been distinguished
for manhness and patriotism. The stem of chivalry is as
strong as ever ; and if some of the flowers are fallen off, the
mule^s hoof must not trample them into the earth. The dregs
of society, in ferment and commotion, are beginning to foam
through the bunghole, and there are certain persons whose
bread is to be raised by the yeast. Already they hold the
spigot in their hands, and, unless you are prompt and reso-
lute, they can either stop it or let it run waste as they will.
There are unholy incantations known and practised by them,
wliich, to their consternation and dismay, shall perhaps evoke
the spirit of Nassau, perhaps the more awful one of Cromwell.
There is a line wliich if they cross, other stars will shine
above their heads, and other pilots will be required to
steer them into port.
CHAPTER XVI.
The following words are Sydney Smithes :
" The Arclibishop of Canterbury, at his consecration, takes a solemn oath
that he will maintain the rights and liberties of the Church of Canterbury.
He seizes two-thirds of its revenues and abolishes two-thirds of its
members."
Surely the latter part of the sentence is incorrect ; he must
mean dignitaries ; not rectors, vicars, and curates. Doubtless,
the archbishop did always maintain the rights he swore
he would maintain ; and if he has tlie power of abolishing any
offices and of removing any official of the chui'ch. Parliament
and the supreme head of the church must possess a power
quite equal to his Grace's. The dignitary Sydney Smith
declares his Grace has taken away what he solemnly swore he
would maintain in its place. This sounds oddly to uumitred
ears ; but much may depend upon the sounding-board. There
are things incomprehensible to the laity which are plain enough
to the clergy round about them. Thus for instance the bodies
of St. Simon and St. Jude are deposited in the Church of
St. Peter's at Eome : the same bodies are likewise deposited in
the Church of St. John's at Verona. Heretics may hereupon
172 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
be captious and incredulous; true believers can entertain
no doubt. Tra Filippo Perraris tells us expressly that these
same bodies may exist contemporaneously in separate places ;
and Cardinal Valerio explains most satisfactorily liow it may be
so : it is by a pia estensione.
Now the archbishop does this tangibly. He soars above
the metaphor, and pounces down on his prey like a taloned
angel. The pia estensione of his talons reminds the learned
C^tco<t4 and fojotiott & Canon of YirgiFs
" Urbem quam dicunt Romam, Meliboee, putavi
(Stullus ego !) liuic nostrte similem."
If the spiritual city is here to be understood, why the
stidtus ego ? The words would be more apposite and appro-
])riate if he thought differently. Reluctant as I am to raise
objections to the language and reasoning of a man who
generally both reasoned and wrote more admirably than the
cleverest (with one exception) of his contemporaries, whose
humour flowed genially and gracefully through society, and is
never to be dried up, yet, now we are walking the same way, I
must take the liberty to join liim and to ask him a few
questions. And first, what he means by the words, " Mezen-
tian oath which binds the Irish to the English Church ? "
Pray which of them is the living body, and which the dead ?
Metliinks they are both " alive, alive,'' otherwise the one could
not rob nor the other murder. The rustics at Eathcormac
and the moss-troopers on Lambeth-marsh show equal signs of
life.
With profound despondency, " Nobody wants more pre-
bendaries \" sighs the Canon. Perhaps we might do without
them altogether, and mthout deans too : but pray, Mr. Canon,
leave us the blessing of bishops. If you are resolved to show
us how naughty they are, we must shut our eyes.
" I must express my surprise," says he, " that nothing is
said of the duties of bishops ; a bishop is not now forced
by law to be in his diocese." He should be : and be
fined severely for absence. Eemove him first from the
House of Lords.
After comments on several, no little to their disadvantage,
he says,
" Another bishop, who not only never entered his palace, but turned his
horses into the garden, &c."
POPEllY: BRITISH: AND FOEEIGN. 173
There is a radical cure for tins evil. Give liim no palace, and
contract his garden within the same dimensions as his next
neighbom-'s.
" The real disgrace of the squabble is in the attack, and not in the
defence."
In both, if Christ's word is to be taken. He forbids stnfe ;
and one alone, in this sense of the word, cannot strive.
"Are they (videlicet canons, &c.) to submit to a spoliation so gross,
accompanied by ignominy and degradation, and to bear all this in submis-
sive silence ? "
Ay, certainly, if they are followers of Christ and mind the
gospel ; glad moreover of such an opportunity. Abundance
of texts I would cite to prove it, were I not afraid of the
pugnacity of the priesthood, and too prudent in such a crisis
to bring on a general engagement. They are as angry at
having Christ's word taken out of their mouths, as ]\Iammon's
purse out of their pockets.
" In common seasons they (videlicet canons, &c.) would willingly obey,"
(Q. E. D.) " but in this matter have tarnished their dignity, &c."
Then wipe them gently and clean them ; but never tear a hole
in the exergue of the pantaloon because they have been sitting
in a dirty place. In the very commencement of this expostu-
lation, so early as in the third page, the Canon says,
" Of seven communications made to the Commission by cathedrals, and
involving many serious representations respecting high interests, six were
totally disregarded."
Neither Laud nor "Wolsey ever acted with such prelatical pride,
such utter disregard to justice, honesty and decency. If
Parliament does not pass a vote of censure on this conduct,
with a declaration that the Ecclesiastical Commission has
neglected its duty, it should be dissolved. In the very same
page the Canon says,
" I would not have operated so tamely on an old and (I fear) a decaying
building, &c."
And says Milton,
" Experience doth attain
To somewhat of prophetic strain."
He tells us in the next page that the odium of great riches is
removed from the rector of a parish where there are eight or
17-i THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD THEE.
more tlionsand people. Does lie mean communicants? If
so, there ought to be no such number under any one clergy-
man. " There/' says the Canon, " he works for his wealth."
No, no ; the wealth has already made him too fat and idle
for work; he finds a curate who labors under no such
incommodity. He proceeds to remark that,
*• The gi'eat object was to remove tlie causes of hatred from the chiirch,
by lessening such incomes as those of Canterbmy, Durham, and London,
exorhitantly and absurdly great, by making idleness work."
Surely such a chimera was ne^/er entertained by any
reformer, moderate or immoderate. Idleness will never work
better from inanition than fulness; and the habit here has
already been induced by the locality and the posture. The
"great objecf was, or ought to have been, to reduce the inor-
dinate riches of the higher clergy, applying it, as best might
be, to the promotion of religion and morality, of which the
accompaniments are content and peace. Property held at
present, after aU pretended sacrifices, under the sees of Can-
terbury, London, Winchester, and Durham, would sell for
about three millions.
My voice, I am afraid, will be lost in the clamour of
opponents. But I am determined to maintain the character
of Conservative, under which title I ordered to be printed, but
never advertised, " Letters," many years ago. Again I say it,
let there be bishops : let them be of apostolic institution)^, not
of papal ; let them overlook, guide, correct ; not persecute, not
dominate. Let there be more of them, if more are called for;
let their authority be greater in their dioceses; let them be
witnesses and advisers when necessary, never voters at any
time, in what concerns the interests of religion. Let them
be located where they are most wanted, not age after age in
one place; wliicli place may have become a desert, while
another, at some distance, has many populous towns. Gatton
and Old Sarum are fallen, and have lost their representatives
in the Lower House; Wells stands mitred in the Upper.
Four bishops are sufficient for what is left of the Reformed
Church in Ireland ; two for Wales ; one for Scotland. Most
important of all is it that they be chosen (as anciently) by the
clergy^ and from among the natives of the country where they
abide and rule. Every question, or nearly every one, in the
Various Lections of Euripides and Aristophanes is now settled ;
POPERY: BRITISH AND POREIGX. ' 175
SO that we may turn our horses' lieads, and beat about for
bishops elsewhere than among greek roots and spinosities,
through which a young mendicant German woukl have guided
us for a thaler.
Idleness and high food have made our prelates restless and
pugnacious, and, like game-cocks, they crow the louder by
feeling the corn-stack under them. It were more prudent iu
their Lordships had they leaned on their clouded gold-headed
canes, walking straight onward in the smooth and verdant
path before them, and had abstained from dipping it wantonly
in the still Avaters of a inephitic pool, and thus discovering as
many weeds and as much mud in the northern extremity as in
the southern. Parmer's friends and protectionists as they are,
let them look about them : they have a rate to pay which,
being an uncustomary, they may call a heavy one. The only
bread that is not reasonably cheap at present is " the bread of
life." Let its factors and speculators be admonished that
our people will not permit it much longer to continue at its
enormous price.
The vast dormitory of our baronial prelates is not to be
disinfected by sprinkling a little sugar on the warming-pan,
as their old women would fain set about it ; but by something-
more searching and sharp and antiseptic.
Having in this chapter selected a few plain and sensible
words from a clergyman and dignitary of the Anglican Church
as by law established, from a man whose wisdom was equal to
his wit, and whose good-nature was collateral to both ; I shall,
in my next and last, be usher to one of higher power aiul
authority. The voice of Milton is about to be heard above
all the clamour and discord of conflicting priesthoods. It is
improbable that they will listen to him : even the more
moderate talk only of Jeremy Taylor, of whose writings they
seem to remember little, and of whose conduct nothing at all.
Taylor caught a genial glow from the setting sun of Milton.
There were dapples and streaks of mild light along the melt-
ing clouds; there was somewhat of warmth, temperate but
not enervating ; and there was largely spred a fertilizing dew
over the quiescent scene, which aimounced a fair day on the
morrow. But the morrow disappointed the prognostics.
Ever since his departure, our bishops and their partisans have
been quarreling one with another incessantly, and caUing
reciprocally for pains and penalties. May nothing of the kind
176 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
befall the worst and most vindictive of these unchristian
priests ! Only cool them with frugal and salutary diet,
reminding them that the premises of many a pyi'otect have
been blown up into the air, together with his crackers and
serpents, and wheels and rockets, and stores of loose powder
on coarse paper. Animosities at the present day are carried
on principally by the very parties whose bounden duty and
salaried office it is to allay and to remove them. Genealogists
now declare that Eoman Popery and Anglican Prelaty are
twin -brothers. The neighbourhood is scandalised at the
quarrel of such near relatives about a chest of old clothes
and candles, contemning their father's last injunction, setting
his will aside, mimicking his voice and manner, and appoint-
ing as the place of contention and of combat the inclosure of
his grave. Similar dissensions, similar denunciations, similar
graspings at undue wealth, twelve centuries ago, attracted a
swarm from Arabia which fattened upon their blood ; God's
avengers of hypocrisy and unbelief.
CHAPTER XVII.
" For modes of faith let angry zealots fight" said a quieter
and more rational Catholic than any now squaring liis elbows
for the contest. And fight they certainly will before long.
Already there is betting on black against scarlet, and the odds
are in favour of black. Black's horse is the strongest, but
scarlet is tlie best jockey. One of our most wealthy and
active bishops invited the parties to a trial of strength and
skill, waving his hand, cracking his whip, and clearing the
ground of intruders. He began by a preachment on baptism,
but he soon gave signs of having eaten too much Avild honey,
and left the path he had trodden in extremely bad odour, and
unfit to follow. Erom another quarter, not quite opposite,
comes forward the Cardinal of Westminster. He proclaims
his advent from the chm-ch of St. Pudentia in the city of
Eome, informing us also that, according to report and belief,
the father of St. Pudentia was an Englishman. Possibly he
was; but there is little reason, looking at Pio Nono, either
from what the Prench have lately taught us to call his
antecedents, or from his present demeanour in regard to
England, for entertaining the behef that any particle of the
Pudent blood is running in the Holy Eather's veins. Dis-
POPERY: BRITISH AND FOREIGN. 177
interested then as well as complimentary is this appointment
of the patroness. However, it is within the range of
possibility that our gracious Queen, although her Majesty
has no reason to be jealous of any lady upon earth, may be
jealous of the defunct Pudentia. The shadow is often more
terrible than the substance. And when this shadow is enter-
ing the keyhole, such entrance may show the way to come
into the room and rifle it. If there is not a struggle in the
passage, there will certainly be a struggle in the chamber. It
is now about a quarter of a century since we began again to
build houses in the old fashion, as I remarked in a former
chapter, and so much lead about the narrow panes that little
is to be seen if we could. The furniture seems of the same
description. In order to be consistent, we recur to old churches
and old ceremonies. I trust it is only the fashion of the day,
having seen the same enthusiasm for Calvinism. A few per-
sons of high birth and high fashion took it up; others followed
in the train : for of all people upon earth those of the present
century are the most obsequious. Calvinism lost its hold on
them when a countess or two dropped off. Catholicism has
stronger attractions and a firmer grasp. Gin palaces open
into other palaces, where there is as much intoxication and
more splendour, and where both cost nothing. Men and
women who are prohibited from visiting their friends on a
Sunday, and from enjoying any kind of innocent amusement,
may now enter a licensed opera-house and enjoy the best
music. Furthermore, they may have a quarterns credit for
any favorite sin, and the heaviest weight is taken off their
shoulders, and borne to any distance on another's, for a few
shillings, which few shillings may be paid after their death.
The deuce is in it if such a religion as this can fail of
proselytes. If it should be thought advisable by our governors
to counteract its influence, there is no better or surer way
of doing it than by allowing to the people the same freedom
of innocent enjoyment as under our first Protestant rulers.
If the stern self-willed Elizabeth, if the quibbling theologian
James, permitted them to consider the Sabbath-day not as a
day of fierce moroseness or of sullen idleness, but, after due
worship, a day of friendly intercourse and harmless recreation,
why should our parliament or our church at the present time
be more restrictive or more severe ? If the authority of these
two potentates, who have been deemed both wise and religious.
178 THE LAST FRUIT OPF AN OLD TREE.
is insufficient, they have before them a much higher, the
authority of Charles the Martyr, their own martyr, the sole
martyr of the Anglican church as by law established. Not
only did he sanction it, but he practised it; the martyr Avas
present at plays acted on a Sunday in his own palace.
Instead of counter-poisons, let us more distinctly exhibit the
homoeopathic remedies. Counter-poisons very often serve
only to protract the sufferings of the patient. Here is an
instance. A learned nosologist of Pisa, now about forty years
ago, tried to counteract the venom of a mad dog by the venom
of a viper, on the principle that one causes death by inflam-
mation, the other by torpor of the heart : the patient suffered
equally under both, and died.
CHAPTER XVIII.
It is only of late that the public attention has been drawn
to the worst nuisances of the community ; pestilential sewers,
intramural burying-grounds, and lastly, to what is deemed by
many to be no less important, the collapse and splitting of the
English church. Two of these evils are brought down on the
country by the clergy. Honest and sincere as are the greater
part of these functionaries, there are others, whether false in
doctrine I presume not to decide, but certainly false in
practice, false to their oaths and to their trust. Prelaty gave
a tacit sanction to their backslidings, modestly closed her eyes
before their simperings and genuflexions, and condescended to
the ancillary office of decorating their toilette. It was only
when her own house was in danger, from the sparks blown
upward out of neighbour Ucalegon's, that she sent after the
churchwarden, and directed him where to place the fire-engine.
She then was willing to dismiss the posture-master, weU
remembering what a sturdy parson of the old school had told
her; that a steddy setter works best in the field ^nthout a
couple or more to back him.
It is time however for all of us to be serious. Such is the
dispensation of Providence, that not only the misfortunes of
m.en, but often their crimes, ferment and mingle in the
elements to the benefit of the species. Institutions which have
long borne heavily on society, institutions founded on fraudu-
lence and maintained by injustice, have suddenly given way ;
not from any power that wisdom has brought into activity
against them, but under the sloth and negligence of those most
POPERY: BRITISH AND FOREIGN. 179
interested iu repairing them. Quarrels in the house of Ilim -who
proclaimed upon earth peace and good-will toward men, were,
and are stil, most violent and outrageous among those who
have occupied the highest offices under Him. Neither argu-
ment nor conscience could coerce their malignant passions.
Christianity, very contrary to the intention of its blessed
Founder, has almost from the beginning been the smelting-
house of discords and animosities. The tall chimneys of the
church, instead of conducting the smoke above the habitations
of the people, serve only to concentrate it into the most acrid
and corrosive crystallisations : foul weather beats down again
what had escaped ; the breath of the people is contaminated
by it, and they will endure the pest no longer. Pride has
blinded those who should have been, by their special appoint-
ment, overseers and guides. When their quieter friends
would have kept them to their houses, they would sally forth
tumultuously, and let no man rest within liis own. The most
patient at last rose against them. In the reign of James and
liis son, many serious and religious, and many of deep research,
both jurists and divines, wrote in condemnation of Prelaty :
Milton stamped the warrant. Loth am I that anything
of antiquity should be so utterly swept away as to leave
no vestige. It would grieve me to foresee a day when
our cathedrals and our chui'ches shall be demolished or dese-
crated ; when the tones of the organ, when the symphonies of
Handel, no longer swell and reverberate along the groined roof
and dim windows. But let old superstitions crumble into
dust ; let Faith, Hope, and Charity, be simple in their attire ;
let few and solemn words be spoken before Him " to whom all
hearts are open, all desires known." Principalities and powers
belong not to the service of the Crucified; and religion can
never be pure, never '^of good report," among those who
usurp or covet them.
Desirous that whatever I write should stand or fall by its
own weight, I have seldom in any of my works quoted another
man^s authority. On the subject which now occupies me, so
much eloquence, so much wisdom, so much virtue and religion,
have been displayed by Milton, that it behoves me to close my
slender book, and to intreat my reader to take up his instead ;
by which his heart will be strengthened, liis soul pmified,
to such a degree that, if duly reverential, he may stand
unabashed in the presence of the most commanding genius that
N 2
180 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TEEE.
ever God appointed for the governance of tlie human intellect.
Those, and those only, who are intimately conversant with the
grand and perfect models of antiquity, can rightly estimate his
qualities. They, on examination, will find in him a much
greater variety, with more than equal intensity, of power. No
poetry, not even his own, is richer in thought, in imagery, or
in harmony ; yet to vulgar eyes the glories of his prose appear
to have been absorbed in that vast central light. Will it be
credited that such merits should either have been unkno^Ti or
suppressed by a writer who lays claim to eloquence, Hberality,
and learning? Wherever there is a multitude, a noisy
demagogue is seen running out of breath at their heels, and
urging them on to turbulence and mischief. Intruding on the
court in the last reign, he forgot that William had left the
mess-room and had entered the council-chamber. Whatever
is uppermost he cKngs to, always tearing the coat-skirt that
has helped him to clamber so high.
Not only men light and versatile have taken the scomer's
chair to sit in judgment on our instructor and defender. A
very large sect, perhaps the most numerous sect of all, and
composed from almost every other, believes that religion is to
be secured by malignity and falsehood. Johnson threw down
among them his unwieldy distempered mind, and frowned hke
a drunken man against the high serenity of Milton. He
would have fared better with Johnson had he been a sycophant ;
better with the other had he been a demagogue. He indulges
in no pranks and vagaries to captivate the vulgar mind; he
leads by the hght of liis countenance, never stooping to grasp
a coarse hand to obtain its suffrages. In his language he
neither has nor ever can have an imitator. Such an attempt
would display at once the boldest presumption and the weakest
affectation. His gravity is unsuitable to the age we live in.
The cedars and palms of his Paradise have disappeared : we
see the earth before us in an altered form : we see dense and
dwarf plants upon it everywhere : we see it scratched by a
succession of squatters, who rear a thin crop and leave the
place dry and barren. Constancy and perseverance are
among Milton^s characteristics, with contempt of everything
mean and sordid. Indifference to celebrity, disdain for
popularity, unobtrusive wisdom, sedate grandor, energy kept
in its high and spacious armory until the signal of action
sounded, until the enemy was to be driven from his intrench-
POPERY : BRITISH AND FOREIGN. 181
ment, these are above the comprehension, above the gaze,
of noisy drummers in their caps and tassels. Milton stood
conspicuous over the mines of fuel he accumulated for
that vast lighthouse, founded on a solitary rock, which threw
forth its radiance to Europe from amid the darkness and
storminess of the British sea. In his eyes, before they closed
for ever, all shades of difference in sectarians had disappeared :
but Prelaty was necessary to despotism ; and they met again.
With weaker adversaries he had abstained from futile fencings,
in which the button is too easily broken off the foil, and
he sat down with the grave and pensive who united love of
God with love of country. The enemies of the Independents
could never wrench away their tenets, could overwhelm them
only by numbers, and, when they were vanquished, could not
deny that they were the manliest of mankind. Milton's
voice, more potent and more pervading than any human
voice before or since, inspired by those heavenly Powers
with whom we may believe he now exists in completer union,
warned nations against the fragment of Popery impending
over them from a carious old rock, of which carious old rock
Simon-Peter knew no more than of the carious old house
which, as the Pope tells the faithful, God's angels brought
through the air and deposited in the village of Loreto.
CHAPTER XIX,
Eeligion and freedom, and all things appertaining to
them, are seen at the present hour, more rapidly than ever
in the liistory of mankind,
" In pejus ruere et retro sublapsa referri."
Notliing but abuses, nothing but what ought to have been
long ago swept off, is left standing and unchanged. Un-
changed ! no indeed. Buttresses, at a vast expenditure, are
built up against crumbling old walls : palaces, not only in
cities but also in country-places, are purchased and enlarged
for the accommodation of bishops and their enlarged and
enlarging coffers. And now comes, duty-free, a vast importa-
tion of trumpery, collected in the Catholic Ghetto, from every
country where idols ever were worshipped ; from Egypt and
Syria mostly. In the time of Augustus the fashionable world
knelt before the mysteries of Isis : yet the rude little gods
of earthenware, the Lares and Penates, maintained their i^laces
182 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TEEE.
against tlie wall, none the worse for the smoke of the chimney.
The same precedency and subordination are stil maintained.
But the generous old Romans, instead of insisting under pain
of death and eternal torments that other nations should adore
their gods, took to themselves for adoration those they found
in the temples of the conquered. And by these, without the
same liberality, the Papal rulers at Rome continue to profit.
Although they scarcely have a force sufficient to drive a
drove of buffaloes, they issue as loud commands as when the
trumpets sounded to the legions, and Cains Marius and Caius
Julius marched under the eagles through the Alps.
We Englishmen have little to win, little to resist, much to
remove, much to recover. The people by their own efforts
will sweep away the gross inequalities now obstructing the
church-path : will sweep away from amidst the habitations of
the industrious the moral cemeteries, the noisome markets
around the house of God, whatever be the selfish interests
that stubbornly resist the operation. Lord John Russell, the
slowest to move in any reform, would have stood quietly by.
He saw the billows rising high about him. Reluctant at
first, and then desperate, he seized the forelock of the nearest
wave, which, while he is carried on it, the stupider think he
carries. The people, as he reaches the shore on knees and
elbows, ■wipe the foam off his mouth, the weeds and slime off
his neck and shoulders, rub him, if not clean, yet dry again,
and conduct him to a seat between Doctor Titus Gates and
Doctor Henry Sacheverel.
Unlikely is such a character to submit to the Queen's
Majesty the wise proposition of Anglicanus ; the question
whereon the Pope's supremacy rests. Por it will be liinted
to liim that the same hinges which support one half of the
folding-door support also the other half.
At the moment of concluding my last chapter, I found in
the Examiner a Remonstrance to Anglicanus, from a proselyte
to the Church of Rome, in which Remonstrance Saint Ignatius
is triumphantly quoted. Saint Ignatius was indeed an honest
zealot and a brave martyr : but what is to be thought of
any man's information and authorit}^, v:\\o was ignorant how
long Jesus Christ lived and preached, and who mis-stated the
time almost half the years ? Is it probable that he, who
knew so little of his master, should know better the habitats
of Simon-Peter?
TEN LETTEES TO CARDI^'AL WISEMAN. 183
TEN LETTERS
ADDBESSED TO HIS EMINENCE THE CARDINAL WISEMAN.
BY A TRUE BELIEVER.
LETTER L
May it please your Eminence to take into your considera-
tion,, whether it may not be expedient in the actual posture of
affairs to convoke a synod, in order that the same may examine
the merits of Elizabeth Barton, a blessed martyr to our holy
faith. She never hath been canonised for want of sufficient
funds ; canonisation, as your Eminence knows, being extremely
dispendious, however much below its value be the few hundred
thousand crowns demanded for it by the Holiness of our Lord.
Possibly his Holiness, inclining an ear to the supplications of
the faithful, might be induced to abate a fourth or fifth part of
it, taking up the same smn from the illustrious peers who have
consistently supported, and the learned converts who have
recently embraced, our most holy and only true faith. Neither
vour Eminence nor his Beatitude can have forgotten the suffer-
ings of Elizabeth Barton in the reign of Henry the Eighth. In
order to maintain the verities of the Catholick religion, she per-
mitted her humble spirit to follow the dictation of the blessed
monk Bearing, and the enthusiastic Doctor Bockiug, canon of
Canterbury. By the intercession and prayers of these two holy
men, and of tliousands who were worked upon by the same
spirit, she uttered many bold truths against the king. It
behoved not the bishops, who examined her by his orders, to
touch upon these truths, which might have been inconvenient
and detrimental to themselves. Prudently therefor they
were contented with acknowledging the verity of her visions, of
which as many were vouchsafed unto her as the importunity of
their prayers could extort from the saints above. To record
the remainder of her sad history, too weU known already, would
wring tears of blood from the paternal eyes of your Eminence.
It is better to let the memory rest in its imperfection than to
184j the last feuit off an old tree.
fasten it on a rack. In fine, this saintly virgin, whose revela-
tions had been communicated to the legates and administrators
of his Holiness, was commanded by his Infallibility to persist
and persevere in them. Suddeidy she and her assessors, holy
men, priests, monks, confessors, were seized and examined in
the Star Chamber. Here, it is pretended, they confessed the
particulars of a gross imposture. Afterward they appeared on
a scaffold erected at St. Paul's Cross ; thence they were con-
veyed to the Tower, and were imprisoned therin until the
meeting of Parhament, by which Parliament they were found
guilty of a conspiracy against the king's life and crown. The
holy maiden, together with Bocking and Bearing, was hanged
at Tyburn. Before the execution of the sentence, it is reported
that she made publick confession of the whole, calling it openly
an imposture, laying the blame on the priests and monks, and
craving pardon of God and of the king.
No doubt can exist in any dispassionate and truly Catholick
mind, not only that tliis confession was the devil's work, but
also that it came directly from his own mouth, under the form
and semblance of the blessed maiden. The historian Saunders,
in his work on the martyrs of our holy faith under King Henry,
would enumerate these among them : but even in Catholicks
he found unbelievers. Things may be seen too near to be seen
in their just proportions. We are now at a proper distance to
discern the merits of Elizabeth Barton. When they were laid
before the HoKness of the Pontif, then holding the keys, he
had money in his pocket ; moreover there were nobler claimants
for precedency. So the answer of his Holiness was not indeed
angry or contemptuous, but somewhat curt : " Cazzo, I have
already too many Saint Elizabeths on the Calendar , no more of
them for me : this last, methhiTcs, turned out unlucky."
It is idle to argue with Infallibility without the banker at
hand. Only a churchman the most elevated in station would
venture to suggest to his Beatitude that Canonisation pays by
the ducat. Indulgence by the quattrino. Saints and martyrs
and miracles must be put into requisition, else no cathedral
will commemorate God's justice in the penal fires of Smithfield.
Kissing the hem of the purple, I have the honor to be
Your Eminence's devoted servant and
A True Believer.
TEN LETTEES TO CARDINAL WISEMAN. 185
LETTER II.
Permit me once more in all humility to approach your
Eminence.
No Catholick in this unhappy country is either too high or
too low for persecution.
The suggestion I laid before your Eminence, last week,
hath immediately provoked the most unfair and the most
cruel adversary, who wanders far beyond it, and ventures to
call in question the wisdom, and even the cliristianity, of
our spiritual directors. It was indeed imprudent, as your
Eminence signified to me, to have given the publick what I
submitted to yolir graver consideration. Reverence preceded
and precluded reflection : zeal impelled me, over-anxious to
prepare the eyes of my dreaming fellow-citizens for the
apparition of another shining light.
Expostulation is the term applied to the insolent notification
I enclose. What profane and execrable words will your
Eminence find therin ! These are only an infinitesimal part
of i\\% dust and rubbish cast against my door privately :
"Can you seriously think that you Papists have not impostors enow
already 1 Would you fabricate another piece of coarse incoherent clay into
a new object of worship! Does not the apostle tell us that we shall not
worship the work of man's hands 1"
Nobody in liis senses will condescend to notice these
petulant questions. Such irritation can only awaken us to
the defence of our blessed faith, as we received it at the hands
of our shepherd: such aggravation can serve only to consolidate
the keystone in the magnificent arch of the sole temple that is
undefiled.
Eminence ! I lose my patience : pardon me ; commiserate
me. Eool ! scoffer ! can he be ignorant that the Eucharist
itself, by wliich alone we live eternally, is, " the work of men's
hands?" Might he not daily see upon the confectioner's
fingers the identically same substance as, two inches farther
ofp, is very God within the half-hour? I tremble at the
darkness that surrounds liim, concealing from liim the
precipice at his feet, down which he is about to plunge, and
to be consumed at the bottom (if bottom there be) in
unquenchable fire to all eternity. He presumes to say, as
other infidels have said before him, that it is only a simple
altho a solemn commemoration of an awfully sad event. He
186 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TEEE.
calls it sad, when it makes us what we are ; he calls it solemn,
when we enjoy it every day^ at the tinkling of the least bell
in the parish. He has the stupid audacity to ask me how it
happens that the only true faith is supported by such a
quantity of falsehoods ; and why^ if they were not to the taste
and to the benefit of the clergy, neither Pope nor priest had
ever set his shoulder or lifted up his sprinkler against them.
He quibbles about the blessed Veronica; he ridicules the
miracle of the partridges, and fifty more, equally w^ell
authenticated. Your Eminence will see twelve closely-written
pages of large letter-paper containing these abominations, brief
as he is on each, and pluming his vanity on selection of topic,
arrangement of materials, directness of application, and con-
ciseness of style. Toward the close of his communication, he
takes the liberty of reminding me how General Championet at
Naples warned the priests that unless Saint Januarius bled,
they should. " The priests," says the scofl'er, " only sweated;
the saint bled, as behoved him."
Somewhat in the way of peroration and summing up, he
asks whether a man who lives habitually among cheats and
liars, well knowing that they are such characters, is not liable
himself to a similar imputation; whether, if he doubts the
testimony borne against them, he ought not to examine it
scrupulously ; and whether it is merely to close his eyes and
to fear a danger in doubt. He insists that a wise and honcvst
man wdll attempt to separate the false from the true, and Avill
drive out of doors the impostor and interloper who would
hinder him. Eminence ! what is to be done when reasoners
are so subdolous ? He acknowledges, as indeed we must all
acknowledge, that a httle of the false will alight and adhere
to the true; and that, unless it is removed in time, it will
harden about it, and perhaps incorporate with it. But this is
quite ina])plicable to our pure religion, wdiich alone retains its
primitive form and beauty. So that his reflection is gratuitous
and idle, where he observes that, altho no soil or stain is
observable on hand and face, yet we wash them constantly.
However, he is not what scoffers usually are, ungentle and
inhumane. Heretick as he is, he expresses a just concern for
the calamities of his Holiness our Lord, confessing that it was
a melancholy sight to see God^s Vicegerent in a jockey-cap
and jack-boots, with a French ambassador holding a bottle of
hartshorn at liis nose, when he had forgotten in bis hurry to
TEN LETTERS TO CARDINAL WISEMAN. 187
fasten round liis loins liis intermediate external garment,
forced by the faithless to fly in despair from the children of
his bowels, and leaving to be scattered by the winds of heaven
so many broken promises behind him.
Kissing the hem of the purple, I have the honor to be
Your Eminence's devoted servant and
A True Believer.
LETTER III.
I AM doomed, it seems, my Lord Cardinal, to more and
more tribulation. The correspondent, or antagonist, if such
he may be called, when " ego vapulo tantum " is so indiscreet
as to question me, among other matters, on masses for the
souls of the dead.
" Where the tree falls there must it lie," says he. Foolish
man ! Are there no carpenters and joiners to cut it into
beams and boards and scantlings, according to its quality and
its bulk ? And do we not measure the human tree, and apply
it to such purposes as we deem fit, after it hath ceast to
occupy its place upon the earth.
He continues at one moment to ask questions the most
captious and impertinent ; at another, with insidious calm and
quietness, to make the most unchristian comments. Would
any rational man, any man within the pale of humanity, raise
objections against the usefulness and beneficence of masses
for souls defunct ? He asks whether it be seemly or just to
charge money for liberating a fellow Christian (if such a place
exist and such a feat be possible) from the fires of purgatory ?
He asks whether the poorest of the poor is not often known
to hazard his life in extinguishing the conflagration of a cot-
tage, and without the shghtest hope or the most transient
desire of reward. He asks whether no schoolboy has himself
been drowned in attempting to rescue another from drowning.
"I am firmly of opinion," says the unbeliever, "that a
mass can no more afi'ect a dead Christian than a dead rat ; no
more save the one from perdition than the other from putre-
faction. If you believe it can, you ought to offer it gratuitously.
Did not your Saviour give gratuitously that for which you
demand a price ? No\^diere in the church of the apostles do
I find a tariflF, for sins of all dimensions, pasted on the wall.
Indulgence there "was indeed for offences ; and the cost was
the same for each, namely the cost of repentance. He who
188 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
offered any other was guilt}' of worse than simony : he who
received any other sinned against the Holy Ghost : he violated
that divine Spirit; he arrogated to himself the functions of the
Tatlier and of the Son: he sold his Saviour for less than tliirty
pieces of silver, when by no trickery he could obtain so much/^
Such foul reproaches, my Lord Cardinal, are cast into our
teeth, and under the nostrils of our Holy Father. Never-
theless we must forgive and forego, until it shall please the
Lord, as the blessed Psalmist saith, to make our enemies our
footstool. At last that day is dawning. Hourly will I con-
tinue to exhort the faithful to forget entirely the injuries and
insults that are incessantly heaped upon them ; and sedulously
will I particularise one after another, in due order, to ensure
the oblivion I preach ; until at last the Catholick Church, rising
triumphant, dominant, supreme, and sole, wave the torch of
truth above her head, cast it among the heathen, and consume
them bodily like thriftless flax.
Kissing the hem of the purple, I have the honor to be
Your Eminence's devoted servant and
A True Believer.
LETTER IV.
Casuists there are, my lord Cardinal, who doubt, or pretend
to doubt, whetlier the atheist or the heretick be the worse.
Surely the whole immemorial practice of our holy Cliurch
affords a sufficient evidence of her decisive and irreversible
judgment on this head. If a neighbour, when invited and
entreated, will not enter my house, he is worse to me than a
stranger. A younger son who involves an elder in a vexatious
and pertinacious lawsuit, instead of helping him to increase
the patrimony by getting whatever can be got from the sweat
and simplicity of the tenants, is wickedly unwise, raising up
an insuperable fence of separation, and exciting no end of
rancour by what he calls an improved system of husbandry.
What are we to tliink of the man who stands afar off", folding
his arms and quietly smiling at both ? Lukewarmness is per-
haps as odious in the sight of God as even the doubt or denial
of his existence. Li our spiritual as in our carnal food we
prefer the hot or the cold to the lukewarm. And are we not
made in God's image ? and are we not taught to love and hate
as He does ? Atheism, I grieve to remember, hath heretofore
taken her seat even in the Conclave together with Poetry and
TEN LETTERS TO CARDINAL WISEMAN. 189
Paganism ; and cardinals have composed and sung lascivious
verses when they ought to have chaunted the miserere. They
have thrown open the doors of the temi^le to the pretended
Gods and Goddesses of antiquity, who shouldered and trampled
on the toes of our blessed saints and martyrs. Yet Atheism
hath always been less loquacious against us than obtrusive and
wrangling Heresy. She follows us step by step, comes up to
us, looks into our faces, enters the front door with us, sits upon
our skirts, and sometimes eyes our victuals with a wistful eye ;
until at last we have been fain to take up the poker or the
brand in self-defence. There are atheists on our own manors :
we do not exterminate, we do not hunt them down. Weazels
and polecats are often of use in preserves, against more prohfic
vermin : a few atheists in Kke manner are tolerated round the
homestead of the Church : we have traps and fumigations for
them when they grow too numerous. There is one dogma of
our holy Church against wliich the calmest atheist joins the
fiercest heretick.
" The earth is the Lord's, and all that is therein,"
They would equally wrest this verity awry : they would take
away the earth from the Lord's Vicegerent : they would deny
that the bodies, minds, hearts, souls of men, belong to him.
Insensate creatures ! hath he not power to order the body what
species of food it shall receive ; and at what day, and at what
hour of the day, it shall receive it ; and to what extent of time
it shall abstain ? Hath he not power to dictate what studies
the mind shall pursue ; what truths it shall admit ; and what
other truths (however demonstrated) it shall reject ? Hath he
not power to tear away the heart from parent, brother, sister,
friend ; nay, even from sacrament, the sacrament of matrimony,
to confine it for life to the cloister, to nail it to the cross ?
Hath he not power to liberate the soul from sin and sin's
penalty, and equal power to hold it down in everlasting
torment ?
I tremble, partly at this superhuman power, and partly at
the audacious impiety that would contest it.
Kissing the hem of the purple, I have the honor to be
Your Eminence's devoted servant and
A True Believer.
190 THE LAST FRTJIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
LETTER V.
Eecovered from the consternation in which I tlirew myself
at the feet of your Eminence, when I behehl the immoraUty of
those wretched men who would strip of his attributes the
Holiness of our Lord, again I take in hand, the question
of Indulgences. Truly they appear to be as necessary for the
building of St. Peter's in London as they were for the
completion of St. Peter's in the metropoHs of the Christian
world. Insuperable fear comes over me, lest as many centuries
should elapse between the foundation and erection of ours in
England as of that glorious one which overshadows the Conti-
nent. With what sickness of soul and heaviness of heart do I
turn over the pages of grave CathoHck historians in their
mention of Papal Indulgences! Guicciardiui, in his four-
teenth book, referring to the promulgation of those which the
heretical, in their pravity, pretend to have occasioned the
Lutheran schism, says (I fear the trembling of my hand
at such impiety in a son of the Church may render the words
illegible) :
" He " (namely our Holy Father) " bad dispersed over all the world,
without distinction of time and place, the most ample Indulgences, not
only for the benefit of the livmg, but also for liberating the souls of the
dead from the pains of Purgatory. Which faculties being notoriously
granted to extort men's money, and being imprudently exercised by those
who had contributed for the sale of them, excited in many places great
indignation and scandal, especially in Germany, where many administrators
of the Holy See were selling them quite a bargain, and the power of
delivering a soul from Purgatory was played for at hazard in the Tavern."
Even Paolo Giovio, who was much with the Holy Pather,
says inadvertently that the profusion of his Indulgences was
injurious to his credit and reputation; but, as becomes a
Catholick, he remarks at the same time that they were " old
instruments of the Popedom to get money."' I wish he had
added, "and to save souls." But he fancied he was doing
quite enough in showing its authority tliro its antiquity. It
is only what is seasoned that" is sure to stand : what is unsea-
soned warps : fire alone can bend it back again, bring its edges
close together, and make it hold.
Indulgences, like other necessaries of Hfe, may fall in price,
to the detriment of the landlord. The Church, however, hath
granaries under it which never fail. Miracles, under the
auspices of the Holy Pather, may be multiplied to any amount ;
TEN LETTERS TO CARDINAL AVISEMAN. 191
and the faithful may at small cost be fed with salubrious
sustenance from the bones of saints. Eidicule, always
groveling, will never affect with its venomous breath their
vivifying influence. And should worldly Wisdom, called
Philosophy, come forth against them, take them up, turn
them over and weigh them, pretending to estimate, but
resolving to depreciate them ; should this same worldly
Wisdom lift her audacious front and sacrilegious hand,
menacing the outermost part of the incorruptible Church
which enshrines them; we have lay ministers within call,
lowly men, pious men, men of pure faith, and of hfe irre-
proachable, decorous Irishmen, tens of thousands in our
metropolis, ever ready to maintain peace among men of good-
will, at the hazard of limb and life, under the ensign of the
cross. We know their names and habitations, and they know
our voice. Devout and tractable, these worthy communicants,
having each his certificate of absolution from every sin, past
and future, may be commanded to bring back by the ear the
sheep that have strayed from our fold. Lenity may be promised
to the more obedient ; they must, however, learn that they are
ours ; that their secession, or the secession of their forefathers,
is a grievous and equal crime in them, wliichever shall have
committed it; that altho justice condemns, yet charity, by due
atonement, may overlook it. A fugitive slave is not only
claimed from whomsoever he may have taken refuge with, but
also bound and scourged. Unconditional obedience, in the
performance of whatever work his master shall appoint for
him, alone can expiate his crime.
Eeciirring to the point from which I started, I fear
your Eminence may be perplext (if indeed anything can
perplex your sagacity) in the choice of distributors of Indul-
gences and receivers of the money. Patronage in this, as in
aU other employments, is much to be considered. Having
laid before your Eminence the publick papers and the debates
in Parhament, it is unnecessary for me to mention the bishops,
deans, and chapters, which have apphed to their own uses,
year after year, large sums devized by benefactors for the
maintenance of schools and charities. It was not enough to
defraud their pious brethren of what they had reluctantly
conceded and furtively seized back ; they have turned inside-
out the pocket of chorister and charity-boy. The patrons of
these thefts, holding the liighest places in Parliament, draw
192 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
the popular attention from them toward what they are pleased
to call the aggressions of the Papacy. Tliis cry, factious and
factitious, cannot be long kept up, nor can the capacious lawn
sleeve conceal or contain the spoil. People will rip it from
wrist to elbow ere long, and down will drop bag after bag.
Meanwhile, might it not be advisable to comfort the said
bishops, deans, and chapters, offering them a somewhat of
indemnity, by the appointment of them to the partner receiver-
ship and restricted sale of Indulgences ? We must be watch-
ful : it may be difficult to detect them, so expert and practised
are they in the commission of frauds and purloinings ; but with
patience we are sure of it ; and what they have not already
done for the furtherance of our holy religion, they will do. In
the hour of their abasement and contrition we shall be ready to
receive them into the bosom of the Church.
Kissing the hem of the purple, I have the honor to be
Your Eminence's devoted servant and
A True Believer.
LETTER VI.
Impiety upon impiety ! abomination upon abomination !
When I remonstrated against the levity and indecency with
which the unworthy son of my old friend the squire spoke
about the procession of our Holy Father toward Naples ; when
I lauded the humihty of his Beatitude in assuming a garb
apparently but little suited to the king of kings, the only ruler
of princes ; when I reminded liim that our blessed S'aviour
whom he represents, and whom on that occasion he more
especially represented, entered Jerusalem on an ass . .
" Father ! " said the reprobate, " the blessed Lord whom
we Protestants serve in all humihty, and alone, hath been un-
seated, and his saddle occupied by a sharper in embroidered
shppers and a scarlet robe. However, I wiU freely confess to
you his merits as a jockey : he beats the best at Astley's : he
rides not only one ass but many : all braying in chorus to a
band of wind-instruments. Lately I was present when, leaping
from one animal to another, he cried imperiously to a bedizened
groom, in the words of Shakspeare,
' Saddle white Surrey for the field to-morrow.'
The groom had already made white Surrey so docile, that I
saw him bend his knee and lav down his head before the
TEN LETTEUS TO CARDINAL WISEMAN. 193
stableboy. White Surrey is a fine liaudsome creature,
but there are many ^vho doubt his blood and disHke his
action."
I stood amazed. He then reverted thus to his Beatitude^s
procession.
"In the Hejira from Rome the Holy Spirit was less per-
ceptible than the Spirit of Hartshorn, administered by the
Prench Ambassador ; and the coach (I hear) displayed on the
carpet less of sanctification than of humif action."
To this indelicate taunt my answer was ready.
" Sir ! what in the Pharmacopoeia is called spirit of hartshorn,
is not always, if ever, the effluvium from the genus cervinum,
but is extracted by the application of fire from the horn of any
animal. In the case you have cited we know pretty well
whence proceeded both the fire and the horn. The liquefaction,
superficial and vesicular, of his Beatitude, is preserved in
phials to cure the diseases of the faithful. The fire was
extinct before him; the horn was evanescent; the odour
was left as a testimony, not unmingled with one more
salutiferous."
He laughed outright in my face. Might it not be well to
bring attestations to the fact, my Lord Cardinal ? It may be
discussed in open court, and witnesses may be examined, after
due preparation : first of all his Excellency the French
Ambassador. The jury will never venture to decide against
us in any country of true believers. In France they will, as
they lately did, declare their incompetency. If they are
adverse and contumacious, then proceedings may be instituted
agahist them, as accomplices of criminals who excite to dis-
cord. Many who were compelled by the laws to swear
obedience to the EepubHck have died in prison for uttering
the very name. Fraternity, brotherly love, to which they also
swore, comes under the head of socialism, which is interdicted.
Passages of the ' Evangile ^ are quoted as countenancing it,
and supported by the very words of our Saviour. Sm'ely it is
high time that our blessed Lord Pio Nono should lay his
interdict on the utterers of such blasphemy. His predecessors
have turned over a more impressive and less questionable page,
in which our Saviour tells them that he brought not peace, but
a sword into the world : and where, in their blindness, they
would read Teace on earth, and good-will to men, the true
reading is, Veace to men of good-will ; that is, men of good-
o
194< THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TKEE.
will toward iis, and those men only. This we repeat -and
inculcate from the altar on the Lord^s day.
Eminence ! the infidels are beginning, as you perceive, to
mingle scoffs with rancour. On my remarking to one of them,
a member of Parliament, that the Queen^s ministers had con-
cocted a bill over the fire of hell, wliich they had not the
courage to enforce; that we had openly set it at defiance ; that
we had broken through and through it ; that it was a matter
of wonder how such feeble swaggerers should ever find such
stout and consistent supporters in both Houses of Parliament ;
he, who was heartily sick of the Session, and was about to
start for the moors of Scotland, thus briefly, in a tone of calm
derision, replied,
" The sportsmen who take so inaccurate an aim ought to
bring into the field many staunch retrievers.''^
By the levity of this speech. Eminence, I thought he was
making game of me. But better so than persecute us in the
horrible way his party are doing, under the vain pretence that
we . have no right to the churches and revenues which our
ancestors built and endowed. They dare to assert that our
ancestors were theirs also ; that they descend from an elder
brother, who was defrauded and ejected under a counterfeit
will and testament ; that there are proofs of bastardy in our
progenitor ; that he was driven out of the countries where he
was best known for manifold acts of profligacy ; that he had
committed both murder and incest ; that he had received bribes
for concealing and countenancing in others these enormous
crimes ; finally, that he had been reduced to so low estate that
he had sold loUipops in the publick street, and advertised
them at every corner and in every brothel, as the best and
safest remedy for all diseases.
Worse, if possible, than tliis ; they quote a text of Scripture.
" As ye mete it shall be meted unto you."
And they tell us it is only fair that we shall enjoy all the
privileges which the Holy Pather grants to the refractory ; and
no other. "What folly and inconsistency, when the Parliament
has conceded, long ago, many more and incomparably greater.
And now, forsooth ! they set their mastifs at our Shepherd !
and for no better reason than because he would whistle the
sheep into the ancient fold, marking them with his raddle, and
TEN LETTERS TO CARDINAL WISEMAN. 195
making tliem indistinguishable from his own. Many of their
old rams and bell-wethers have already entered, and many
ewes and yearlings have been allured by the bells and by the
odour to follow. Cantemus ! oremus !
Kissing the hem of the purple, I have the honor to be
Your Eminence's devoted servant and
A True Believer.
LETTER VII.
Eminence ! I have obeyed your injunctions. No more con-
versations or conferences have I held with a creature so insane
as to bring the naked Evangile up to my very eyes without
the authority and the glosses of our holy Church. Little
better hath it fared with me since my repudiation of him, in
my zeal to proselytize. Several young ladies, it is true, in-
clined an ear to me, persuaded how convenient, in a secular
point of view, are confessors. Young unmarried men bear
more sympathies toward young unmarried women than austere
and suspicious parents, or maiden aunts or jealous cousins.
Knots, wliich the ignorant tie faster by trying to unravel, are
easily solved by fingers which the chrysm hath lubricated.
The confessor takes the penitent to his bosom, touches the
quick of her heart with fire from the altar, wipes away her
tears, penetrates to their sources, and pours into the fresh
wound the sweetest balm. Nothing is hidden from him ; her
conscience is as open to him as his own ; he looks into it from
above; another superintending Providence. I have been
enabled to lead many into the right way, by holding in pro-
spective the sacrament of matrimony. By converting the
young maiden, we convert by her instrumentality the young
man : and by converting the young man, we show him where-
withal to smoothen, mollify, and overcome, whatever slight
spinosities may exist between them.
By command of your Eminence I went aboard two of the
ships about to set sail from Liverpool to America. Might it
not be well in the Archbishop, Primate of all Ireland, to issue
his orders that the same vessel do never take as passagers
the true believer and the protestant ? Ships are surely the
first and foremost of ungodly schools. It would be difficult,
nay, it would be impossible, to separate the catholick from
the heretick throughout a voyage across the Atlantick. Friend-
ships might be formed injm-ious to the faith ; and sjiurious
o 2
196 THE LAST PRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
children might, within the year_, be the offspring of unlawful
and unchristian marriages. Portentous clouds hke these must
often have troubled the serenity of your observant mind. My
exhortations and expostulations^ with God^s grace, have not
been quite ineffectual. I have succeeded, on many occasions,
in dissuading the true Irishman from intercourse with the
false. Unhappily it was not always that I found the un-
questioning and compliant. The master of our steamer was
an American. He listened at first with great attention to
my discourse : he looked sedate, dutiful, and reverential : at
last said he,
" Master ! how many proselytes have you lugged by the ear
into your sty within a quarter of a century ? "
After a mild reproof, repressing my indignation, and seeing
no Irishman or other with a fit instrument of chastisement
in his hand, I repHed : " Sir ! our church is pure and unde-
filed : swine may enter it, but they come out lambs. I wiU
venture to assert that, within the term you fix, we have in
divers countries, and especially in England, brought home
unto our fold three thousand erring souls."
"Well done, master," cried he, "and I guess you think it
a proof that your religion flogs all others."
"It is a proof," answered I, "that others could not resist
the verities it incidcates."
" "What the verities are," said he, " I am quite at a loss to
find out : but you have stowed such a cargo of rotten lies
into the hold, that I doubt they will ferment and blow up
your ship. Pictures bleeding and rolling their eyes ; wenches
with wonderful figures imprest upon their stomachs and their
linen ! My eyes ! Our ladies in trousers are nothing to this.
Well, but as the song says :
' Parson, leave the girls alone,'
and come straightway to the multiplication-table. Three
thousand ; aye ? That is the figure, ain't-it ? Proof of truth ;
ain't-it ? Joe Smith then beats you hollow. Joe, without
casting his beagles off through every bush and wild country
in Europe, has converted in the same time three hundred
thousand to Ms true faith. He has founded and filled a State :
he has priests, if not as plentiful, as stout and resolute as
yours, and confessors who perform as many daily miracles in
Cluing deafness among the female penitents."
TEN LETTERS TO CARDINAL AVISEMAN. 197
Your Eminence cliargcd me to report verbatim and seriatim
my experiences. These Mormons are supplanting us.
Kissing the hem of the purple, I have the honor to be
Your Eminence's devoted servant and
A True Believer.
LETTER VIII.
My Lord Cardinal ! In the last missive which I had the
honor of addressing to your Eminence, I mentioned (altho
I expressed it inadequately) how confounded I was at the rude-
ness, how shocked at the impiety, of that American captain,
who pretended to demonstrate, not logically, but arithmetically,
a power displayed by an itinerant preacher in his country,
superior to any exerted in Europe by the Holiness of our
Lord ! He calculated the number of conversions ; and accord-
ing to his summary, the converts of Joe Smith within an equal ^
period were tenfold more numerous, under the guidance 4e- oj^
Satan, than the converts to Pio Nono under the immediate
inspiration of the adorable Virgin ! The blasphemous vaga-
bond, who preached little but temperance and industry, was
ultimately led by the devil into the wilderness, where he died,
as he deserved, by an untimely and a violent death. It is only
to be regretted that the execution Avas performed by a mob :
but in that benighted hemisphere, although the better part, the
southern, is pure and catholick, there is no Holy Office of
Inquisition, no prudent, beneficent, overruling Sovran, as those
in Naples and even in Prussia.
Eminence 1 the Americans have wide mouths, made expressly
for grinning; otherwise I would have remarked to my scoffer
that the visible interposition of Angels guarded the Beatitude
of our Lord, from the moment when he mounted the coach-
step, until that happier moment wlien he raised from the earth
his dutiful son, monarch of the Two Sicihes. Nothing worse
attended his course than a slight oscillation of the bowels,
which, together with its consequences, from zenith to nadir,
had subsided ere he knelt on the velvet cushion in his oratory.
EoUowing the counsels and ordinances of your Eminence, I
have abstained from a second encounter with the sly and in-
sidious questioners of the Trans-Atlantic race. Whatever
poor abilities your Eminence is graciously pleased to assign
unto me, have been strenuously, however unsuccessfully, exerted,
For my next disputant I selected a grave elderly man,
198 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
apparently of courteous manners and a contemplative physio-
gnomy. I began as usual with professing how open I was to con-
viction^ how desirous to be set right when T was wrong, and how
anxious to remove any painful and dangerous doubt, not only
from my own mind, but also and equally from the mind of
others. He bowed and said he was quite sure of it. Could I
believe him ? Did he believe me ? Why did I ask myself
either of these two questions ? I waved them off, easily as the
mesmerist waves off sleep from the brow of the mesmerised.
Heaven I thought had opened to me. I had only to walk
before my sheep and he would follow me into our fold.
Alas ! the Devil in all his wiliness and might stood invisible
between us.
I began by demonstrating how near was the Anglican Church
to the Eoman ; and what multitudes of holy men had walked
across without perceiving it, and were almost in, when, being
jeered by the poj)ulace round them, they grew resolute, swore
they had their wits about them more than ever, and went
thro the open door. He listened attentively, and said, "I
know several of these gentlemen in high collars, stiff cravats,
and green spectacles ; we have only to laugh at them, and
they will do anything to show their contempt for us, and
how immeasurably they themselves are above the reach of it.
When I was younger, I do verily believe I should have expe-
rienced a touch of pleasure and pride in making a convert or
comforting a penitent, or catching the skirts of a waverer.''* I
started ; but when I saw he was serious and shook his head, I
encouraged him by the assurance that it must be late in hfe,
very late indeed, when we should despair of our ability, or our
call, to perform one or other of things so desirable. Again he
shook his head, and acknowledged that he wanted both energy
and faith for the performance.
" Take courage, sir,^' said I. " Let there be the will, and
there soon comes the vocation. Faith ? want faith ? Behold
our glorious convert. Doctor Ne'WTnan ! Has he not had the
courage to declare that nobody in his senses can doubt for a
moment the Blessed Virgin's house having been carried by
angels through the air, over seas and ilands, over cities and
over mountain-tops, and deposited at Loreto ? Has he not had
the truly Catholick spirit to avow his unqualified belief, that a
blessed saint was safely carried on his cloak over the immen-
sity of tempestuous waves; and to protest that this miracle, and
TEN LETTERS TO CAEDINAL WISEMAN. 199
every other acknowledged by Holy Cliurcli, is quite as credible,
quite as much an article of faith, as any worked by our Saviour
in the presence of the apostles and of thousands round about ?
The learned and logical doctor has enforced on the conscience
of every true believer, that the miracles performed under the
Popes are exactly of the same quality and importance as those
performed in the presence and recorded by the testimony of the
apostles ; and he would treat with utter contempt the captious
quibbler, who should venture to ask him whether the necessity
was as urgent, the utility as great, and tlie testimony as credi-
ble : who should remark that Christ and his apostles worked
their miracles for the conversion of unbelievers ; and that the
Papal saints and Papal angels, in hours of idleness, played at
these with handkerchefs, cloaks, rings, necklaces, &c., among
good simple people who believed already in everything that was
told them. Yet Dr. Newman is, with the sole exception of
Mr. Kenelm Digby,'" the most learned and the most dexterous
theologian within the pale of the Roman Catholick Church.''^
He smiled for the first time bitterly. " We know," said he,
"that Christ and his apostles gained only scorn, scourges,
imprisonment, and death. We know that the impudent
knaves who took their places, when they were safer, forged
wills and other documents in order to retain them. We
know that the professors of poverty were the amassers of wealth;
that they were receivers of stolen goods and confederates of
robbers. We know that every crime had its stated price ; that
the price of a crime was to be paid down on the nail ; that the
price of virtue was to be paid at a distant day, and in another
world. After all, the main question is about the possession of
wealth and distribution of power. You cry out before you are
hurt, well knowing that you never will be, unless you try your
hand at the temporalities. The Act of Parliament which
raises so much clamour among you is waste paper ; and the
minister who framed its preamble showed exactly what he
meant by it, when he addressed it in a letter to the richest of
the bishops. They all took the alarm : the people laughed ;
seeing the little old woman throw up her rod so high that it
caught on a nail, and she could not reach it if she would. She
only scowls, as becomes her station : unless she did, the
guardians would turn her out for remissness, difficult as they
know it is to find another such old woman to fill her place.
* Author of the Ages oj Faith.
200 THE LAST FKUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Eeligion lias notliiiig to do in the business, and Eeason but
little. Eeason has a weaker dominion in this world, and fewer
subjects than Interest has."
'' But we are poor/' said I. " Involuntarily," retorted he.
If you catch at a feather on the surface of the stream, you
would swallow a worm at the bottom. You seize titles with
avidity, and throw off yarn stockings for silk. Nevertheless
you would order all other men to be abstinent where the appe-
tite is more natural. Possibly some of them have as strong an
appetite on the Friday as on the Thursday, and think it little
sin or shame to give a rasher of bacon a practical preference
over a red herring. Possibly they may have heard, what I
know to be a fact, that certain heads of families take out a
yearly license for themselves and children to eat butcher's meat
in Lent, while they who need it more, being more laborious,
must not have their cutlet ; for if by hard work they can gain
enough to pay the butcher, there is not enough left to pay the
Pope. Possibly if they knew the legend of Arion, they deemed
it less miraculous that he should be carried on the back of a
dolphin thro the sea, than that a gouty old marquis should be
carried up to heaven on the shoulder of a codfish, or between
a lobster's claws. Possibly the hale young countryman, altho
he is tormented by no wild desire to be united in the bonds of
holy matrimony to a venerable aunt ; altho he sees many a
pretty girl of whom he oftener thinks than of his niece ; altho
his appetite never was keen after the piece de resistance in the
elderly lady, and he thought it discreet to abstain from the
fricandeau in the niece, yet he wondered on what principle of
therapeutics God's carver sent either of them to the plethorick.
Possibly he fancied that being invited to the Lord's table, no
waiter should come at the close of the entertainment with a
long account in his hand, collaring him and cm-sing him, and
turning him out of doors, unless he discharged it to a fartliing;
and looking at last very grim and ferocious, unless a gratuity
be offered him for the trouble he had taken in collaring and
cursing."
After this rambling and inconclusive aggression, " Sir," said
I, indignantly, " this may be wit for aught I know to the con-
trary, but wit on these occasions is out of place." He an-
swered complacently, " Whether it is wit or not, I am quite
as much at a loss to determine as you are. But every man
who possesses it, together with a range of reading and an
TEN LETTERS TO CARDINAL WISEMAN. 201
independence of spirit^ will contribute from these various stores
to keep in order the importunate and insolent blockaders of
every dining-room and bed-room. Their tracts will ultimately
lead round to tracts quite opposite ; the tracts of Diderot, of
D'Alembert, of Voltaire, and other infidels, much better-
tempered and much pleasanter associates, with greatly more
of the philosopher in them, and not greatly less of the
Christian.''^
I was indignant and horrified at the mention of these
names : and I exclaimed, " Would you countenance the
introduction of such poison?" To which he replied evasively,
"There are certain poisons which not only are antidotes to
other poisons, but which in moderate quantities are the only
remedies in chronick diseases." I heard, or fancied I heard
in him, a few slender and tinkling cachinnations, not unlike
the sound of small coin when the money-box is shaken round
in our churches, and when, as is too often the case, there is
little of it within. I asked him, boldly and confidently,
whether he would compare such tawdry and trivial authors to
Dr. Newman, asserting that his writings are not only most
pious but most logical, and that no other man could have
written the very worst of them.
" I believe it," said he, "but there are many who could have
written the very best, if their minds had been contracted and
bent down to it. We will, however, cease to discuss his merits
as philosopher or logician ; between which two characters the
difi'erence often is extremely wide : a living tree, with myriad
lives about it, is hardly more dissimilar to a butcher^s block.
Always must the pliilosopher have recourse to logick ; rarely
does the logician Kft up his head high enough to discern the
features of philosophy. Inquiring and acute and conscientious
men, deep logicians too, namely Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint
Bernard, and Peter Abeillard, had. one single point before
them ; at wliich point they all aimed ; and they all missed it.
Have you never stood before your mirrour in the morning,
with your tweezers between thumb and forefinger, trying over
and over again to seize the crooked hair that tickled your
nostril, and turning the instrument here and there, more
widely away at almost every attempt. Thus is it with the
theologian ; and thus will it ever be until he looks up to God
alone, and ceases his quest after a crooked hair in a deceptive
mirrour. We do not want unity of faith so much as unity of
202 THE LAST FUUIT OFF AK OLD TREE.
feeling; we want mutual confidence, mutual concession, a
lively trust in one common Father, a certainty that it was His
voice, and not a feigned one, which said, ' Love one another.'
If He commanded the obedient to punish the disobedient, let
them read the commission before they open the assize."
Eminence ! the man^s wit was bad, his commentary worse :
and see how he takes God's name in vain !
Kissing the hem of the purple, I have the honor to be
Your Eminence's devoted servant and
A True Believer.
LETTER IX.
My Lord Cardinal ! whilst I was walking from Golden
Square toward the Paddington Station, intent on the counsel
your Eminence had just vouchsafed me, whom of all others in
the world should I happen to meet, but the very gentleman
who had been so recently the subject of our conversation !
The more resentment I felt, the more courtesy I resolved to
show toward him. Accordingly I bowed and smiled; altho
at smiling I believe I hesitated. He accosted me with his
natural frank politeness. The keenest rapiers have velvet-
lined sheaths. Immediately, on accepting my hand, he
expressed a hope that he had avoided all commission of
offence at our last meeting.
"Quite the contrary of offence, sir," I replied; "you afforded
me only cause for reflection and self-examination, after what
was to me a most delightful and most instructive conference."
Upon which, he declared that it had always been his habitude
and determination to avoid theological questions, partly from
disposition and temperament, partly from utter incapacity to
manage such weighty weaj)ons. I now began to entertain
hopes of him, feeling my confidence increase in proportion as
his abated.
" Unanimity," said I, " my dear sir, little as you appear to
value it, is everywhere desirable ; desirable where two are met,
where twenty are met, in our own household, and in the
household of God. Discussion too frequently terminates in
discord, conference in controversy, and pertinacity in conflict.
A silken thread separates the two main regions of this empire :
there is a hand which can untie the knot and let it down
between them." He bowed, and as I thought, assented.
With the gentlest smile, and in the calmest voice possible, he
TEN LETTERS TO CAHDINAL WISEMAN. 203
thus replied, " Eeverend sir ! tlicre is nothing truer, nothing
more judicious, than your statement. Unhappily the hand
which can untie the knot is tying it harder just at present.
Silken it may be, but men may be hanged in silk. The
marks of the thread, which was tied about our necks by dry
nurses in our infancy, stil remain there. The older dry
nurses were discarded for fresher, who, to keep us asleep in
the night, have had recourse to your prescriptions, and we
only at this late hour are awakening from the effects of the
narcotic, I will forbear to argue with a gentleman so much
more learned and experienced than myself; but permit me,
reverend sir, for my instruction and edification, to venture on
a few questions.
" How happens it that Ireland is immersed in ignorance and
barbarism, wliile Scotland is civilized and well-informed ? In
each country the clergy have been, as was convenient and
proper, the instructors. Every sect in that nation hath been
sedulous in sowing the seeds of knowledge, and anxious that
every man should be able to show his reasons for his faith.
This by the priest in Ireland is witholden and forbidden."
''Do you think, sir," said I, "that all the contents of the
Bible, to which I perceive you maliciously allude, ought to be
placed indiscriminately in the hands of the ignorant ? "
" My dear sir," interrupted he, " whose fault is it that they
are so ignorant ? whose fault, if the bread of life, which you
are commanded by the Founder of our religion to administer
to the faithful, is rendered so unsuitable to their stomachs ?
Any one Gospel out of the four (prove only its authenticity)
is quite sufficient ; give me Mark's in preference ; one single
prayer is the only one that has been taught and commanded
by divine authority; others may be needful to the reverent
dealers in them, and are very showy in the clerical shop-
window. Eising from my knees after praying for my enemies,
I should tremble and shudder at responding to certain psalms
of King David, in which he calls upon God for vengeance. I
agree with you that better examples of sanctitude might be
propounded to the people ; that these compositions are more
fitted to the library-shelf than to the pulpit ; and even on the
library-shelf I would draw a green curtain before them. The
pm^itans made the Bible unwholesome by the sourness of the
leaven they kneaded into it; the papists froth it over Avith
fine sugar like a bride-cake, trim it with pretty flowers and
204 THE LAST FPtUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
glistening, fresh, and infantine figures, lay it under tlie pillow,
and dream upon it. The Holy Scriptures, in fact, are our
title-deeds to an estate which no church hath a riglit to put
into chancery. They require but few witnesses and little wax.
People use no darkened glasses when there is no eclipse.
Yigilant to an excess, you will not allow a gentleman to look
out of his own window, lest he should see too far beyond the
chappel. When we would express the vilest cowardice, we
say of a person, and believe all the while that we exaggerate,
he dares not call Jus soul Ids own : under your regimen the
bravest man would never venture to assert his jDroperty in it ;
his soul is yours, yours entirely and exclusively. You can
confine it for ever, you can torture it, you can enchain it in
utter darkness, you can hold it fast or loose, as revenge or
whim, as humiliation or money, may influence you. There
have been learned and inquisitive men who traced your
ceremonies and your patron saints up among the ruins and
rubbish of paganism. There have been dignitaries of the
highest order, in the halls of the Vatican and under the dome
of Saint Peter'' s, who never in their hearts preferred a prying
and prowling superstition to one of equally easy virtue, but
more general, generous, and gracious : equally meretricious
but less mercenary. Pew of us like better a night -hawk than
an eagle; a bold swooping vulture than an ostrich with its
high stride and stately plume. Let us descend from ancient
Eome to modern. At the present time you are exercising a
more stringent authority than ever was permitted to you, in
England or Ireland, when all were papists, and when our kings
were not sovrans but slaves. Thirty years ago the priest in
Ireland was not admitted to the gentleman's table. If he
ventured to interfere with the household he was ordered
imperatively and sternly to mind his own business. At
present a posse of them assembles in the market-place or
town-hall, and denounces any gentleman as untrue to his
country who chooses his own representative in parliament
preferably to theirs. They tread the laws underfoot, and
call it j^assive resistance; they disobey the magistrate, they
challenge the police, they defy the army ; but then, ever loyal
subjects ! they protect the crown ! yea, forsooth they do
indeed protect it: by putting the mitre over it! Remonstrate,
and bludgeons answer; beat down the bludgeon, and then
comes the buUet. In what otlier country, in what other
TEN LETTERS TO CARDINAL WISEMAN. 205
times, -wonld this rebellious spirit, this open and raging
insurrection, be tolerated? Your priests have re-established
the papal power throughout the continent, excepting the
brave, the moral, the thoughtful, the dutiful, the industrious
nations of the north. Compare the fruits of your system
Avith theirs ; compare Ireland with Holland, with Westphalia,
"vidth Denmark, with Sweden, with Norway. The sands of
Holland, the swamps of Westphalia, the alluvial banks of
Denmark, the mountain-ridges of Sweden, the rocks, the
forests, and the fiords of Norway, are alive with industry and
enterprise. Ireland, which contains at least two-thirds of
as much improvable and cultivable land as Great Britain,
better fisheries, harbom's more numerous and more adapted to
commerce, is involved in sloth, immerst in ignorance, and
shaken up from its dark profundity to fret and foam in wild
agitation amidst unprofitable wrath."
Eminence ! he had now said quite enough ; and what is
remarkable, much of it is true. I could only ask him whether
all the evils of Ireland, if indeed any part of them, can fairly
be attributed to our priesthood ; and whether the richness of
the soil is not in itself a temptation to idleness. " Certainly
the reverse," said he. "The Moors in Spain were industrious:
priests, and kings under priestly rowels, drove them out. Not
only had they richness of soil but softness of climate; yet
even modern cultivation in England itself, with every invention
of science, every expenditure of wealth, scarcely rivals theirs.
Look at the Spaniards who supplanted them ; hardly one inch
in mental stature above the oxen they drive afield. The chief
advantage they possess over the brutes, is that they, having
hands, can scratch their backs and breasts more conveniently.
And now look further eastward, look toward a nation ruled
by you and your Bourbons. In those once happy lands the
Syrens and Calypso, Ulysses and-Telemachus, were no fables,
but lessons only. Musick and grace accompanied domestic
offices. Innocence more confident than strength, more royal
than royalty, held forth her hand to the stranger at the
fountain. The garden bore fruit for all ; and everywhere was
the garden. Pareiital and filial love thrilled gently and
genially thro the human breast; and every breast was human.
Patriarcal and heroick ages were succeeded by others in which
the intellect was more cultivated, the heart not less. Ascetics
who pick up only the husks of philosophy and make wry faces
206 THE LAST FRUIT 0F¥ AN OLD TREE.
over tliem, moan at the mention of those noble cities which
swelled into ripeness here. Sybaris had her luxuries; those
luxuries were from the harvest of prosperity : and did pros-
perity ever rise but out of industry and exertion ? Probably
so flourishing a city was much maligned by the ignorant and
the indolent. What would they say then against Croton?
The same government, the same arts and sciences, the same
prosperity, were Croton's; and yet she produced her Milo.
Eools as we are, and as those before us have been and have
made us, do we believe that she never produced much better
men, and even much braver, than he? What cities, from
Sybaris to Tarentum, and on every side around, once covered
that Southern Italy wliich is covered now with brambles.
What gymnasia, what groves and porticoes, were open here!
what numerous disciples of Pythagoras and of Plato saluted
one another in amity and concord, where the buffalo now
raises his head above the mud, and looks in liis sullenness like
another Bourbon.''^
My patience, as the Italians say, escaped me ; but, resolving
to turn aside the discourse from what is so venerable and
august, I said, " You have been in Italy, sir, no doubt, and
perhaps have visited the countries you describe." He
answered that he had seen little of them beyond Psestum, a
fair specimen of the rest. "But I enjoyed the honor," he
added, "of a daily conversation with the virtuous and truly
noble archbishop of Tarento, then resident at Naples, and I
was so imprudent as to decline his offer of an introduction
by letters to several ancient barons of the realm, who pass
their lives, more independently than princes, on their
hereditary estates in those provinces. If taken by brigands,
the captain would only have conducted me to the place of my
destination. Of this I was confident; but I chose in preference
the conversation of his Grace and the caresses of liis two
amiable white cats."
Specimens of his levity he had given me abundantly, yet I
was ill-prepared for this, and I do believe I ejaculated in my
astonishment. Cats and ArcWishops ! After a pause I said to
him, " Surely, sir, you who have evidently spent some time in
Naples and its vicinity, must have seen very different things
from interminable wastes and deserts."
"Yes, reverend sir," he answered, "I have sailed by the
ilands of Ischia and Procida, where the king of the two
TEN LETTERS TO CARDINAL WISEMAN. 207
Sicilies holds in narrow, dark, pestilential dungeons the citizen
who trusted and obeyed him, the soldier, the jurist, the judge,
the minister of state. I have debarked on Nisicla, contem-
plative and alone, permitting my memory to wander after
Brutus, once residing there, a little while before he left Italy
for ever. What a change of men and things ! Believe me,
sir, the change is not the last. Vesuvius was quiescent for
long long ages : but heaven frowned j and earth trembled to
the center. My spirit cried witliin me, 'Are these lovely
scenes to he corroded by despotism and choaked by superstition ?
Lnciillus! Scipio! tender and brave Cornelia 1 .
generous youths lohom she presses to her bosom, shall ye have
lived and died in vain ? ' "
I drew back involuntarily, not without trepidation. Surely
here was insanity. "Whether men ever do say such things to
themselves I know not; if they do, I fervently hope they never
will again to me. Providentially we were going on the road
which leads toward Hanwell. After a time he appeared in
some measure, altho but imperfectly, to recover. Tor my
own sake, as well as for his own, I attempted to moderate and
compose his phrenzy; but, on my offering him the consolations
of our pure and infallible religion, it broke forth again, tho
somewhat less violently, at least in elocution. " If my heart
seemed afflicted," said he, " it was not at these vicissitudes on
the face of nature, in regions where nature is fairest, since all
earthly things must change, but it was that vulgar and venal
superstitions have crept over superstitions more elevated and
august. If man must have them, and it seems he must, let
them not be forced upon him. If he must walk in the dark
and must fear it, try to diminish his fear by walking at his
side and investigating its causes, and never take advantage of
it to ransack his closet and to peep into his daughter's bed.
Glorious is it now, it seems, to be submiss and abject,
dangerous to be upright and erect ; to mount the tribunal is
to mount the scaflbld; to live a citizen is to die a traitor.
How happens it, reverend sir, that wherever Popery hath long
prevailed, despotic government not only hath extinguisht
the vitality, but hath suppressed the very form of freedom ?
Witness the Aragon of former days, witness the Prance of
ours. The time is approaching, I suspect, when some dreadful
example will arouse to simultaneous exertion the dark inert
masses of mankind; when some high throne wiU suddenly
208 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TEEE.
crack and tumble, some usurper, some perjurer, be crushed
under it. Then fall others, many, all. No man should take
justice into his own hands, it is said : let it also be said, no
man should take injustice into them. Some men are above
law, but none is above justice. Like the hghtning which
oftentimes comes from the heavens in the stillest weather, she
strikes by day and by night. Her blow is sudden, certain,
unforeseen, irresistible, irremediable. He who punishes un-
justly is punisht justly; he who treads down the laws hath
no right to complain that a nation acts against him without
them. Wlien the people is tongue-tied, God speaks. At one
blast of his trumpet falls the axe, and the head that smote the
heavens smites the dust."
I lookt up aghast to the face of my interlocutor ; I observed
what I had less observed before, that he was old, that he was
pale ; yet he carried his grey brow loftily, and his strides were
so rapid that I could hardly keep pace with him. I was not
sorry when he paused to take breath, apparently exhausted.
Such I presume must always be the case, when a legion or
demi-brigade of devils hath taken flight from the body, and
before the sinciput, the occiput, the diaphragm, and the
abdomen, can be sprinkled with holy water.
Kissing the hem of the purple, I have the honor to be
Your Eminence's devoted servant and
A True Believer.
LETTER X.
My Lord Cardinal ! To atone for my futiu'e sins (all my
past having been satisfactorily settled for) it hath pleased the
blessed Hierarchy above to deliver me once more into the
hands of my implacable tormentor. Perhaps I w^as not wholly
ineff'ective in my last conference. But human hopes are
checkered ; and the brightest morning in our variable climate
is often the harbinger of a gloomy day.
Wishing to supply a few of our L-ish representatives with
arguments, and words to support them, and having accom-
plished that mission, I strolled over Westminster-bridge, and
rested at the southern end to gaze down on the new Houses
of Parliament. A gentleman came near me for the advantage
of the view, and placed his elbows on the parapet.
"We are admiring in common, sir, the beauty of the
edifice,^' said I. He looked at me suspiciously, and somewhat
TEN LETTERS TO CARDINAL WISEMAN. 209
coldly, as Englishmen always do look when an equal first
accosts tliem, different as their manner is toward a superior
or inferior. He started a little at the voice, turned suddenly,
and, recognising me after a moment, replied " that it was an
elaborate work of much beauty, but that he shoidd have been
better pleased with it if it had been built over the bridge
instead of under. He added that he understood it was too
small for the members ; that even the Irish could not make
themselves heard in it ; that the architect in a pure spirit of
humanity had contracted its dimensions, because one of them
had declared that, under the wrongs his country was suffering,
if he could not redress them, he would die upon the floor.
Hearing this commination the architect was resolved to coun-
teract the completion of such a suicide, and that if he died
upon the floor it should not be at full length, but a good
half of him on the knee or shoulder of the member next to
him. The same clever architect made nitches, for the reception
of barons in their armour, so narrow that if they had entered
in woolen waistcoats they must have shuffled them off as they
could; and so low that their helmets were to be knocked
down over their noses. In his Reform Cluhroom, the tubes
for warming it were conducted along the icehouse."
Vexed as I was about our member on the floor, I smiled
at this ; and telling him that having travelled much abroad,
T was deeply interested in any sensible man's remarks on
architecture ; I should be gratified by his upon the Abbey.
He said he was walking that way. Before we came to it, he
looked to the left, and requested me to give him my opinion
of the masonry (architecture he declared he would never call it)
stuck against Westminster HaU. I told him that I had visited
the best part of Europe, but had found in no coiuitry any
buildings so disgraceful as those erected in England during
the reign of George the Third; and those erected since showed
but small improvement. He assented; and then he asked
me what I thought of Canning's statue. I praised in some
measure its execution.
'' Not amiss," said he, " but the site would be more proper
in Liverpool or Oxford : he represented the one city, and
gained a prize for latin poetry in the other. In parliament
he failed as signally ; he tried both parties ; both discarded
him ; and, what is unexampled, not even in the cabinet could
he retain one single adherent. Better had he continued to
210 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
dabble among the sunny shallows and crisp ripples of literature.
" On this pedestal should be erected the statue of an incom-
parably great man, to whose sagacity in jurisprudence Ave owe
every reform which, reluctantly and by driblets, hath been since
introduced into our laws : I pronounce the name of Bentham !
Had his advice to the ^French Directory been taken, they
would have released their colonies, and an army of forty thou-
sand men, sent into Saint Domingo soon after by Bonaparte,
had been saved: it was the second instalment of the nine
hundred thousand French carcases on which he built his
throne. Equally reckless, and without any sense of glory true
or false, our minister of the colonies is devoting his quota to
perdition, instead of profiting by the experience of others,
or of reading a little book which at the present hour should
be the Encheuidion of all Statesmen.''^
On my remarking that Bentham inhabited the house of
Milton, ''Yes, sir,'^ answered he, "and inherited Miltou''s spirit ;
not indeed of poetry, but of argumentation and of truth.''^ I
assented to the commendations of these two patriots, as far as a
catholick could in conscience do it. My road, your Eminence
knows, lay toward Belgrave-square : his also was somewhere
in that quarter. When we had reached the upper part of the
new street leading to Pimlico, near the palace, he stood still.
"If they continue to make improvements,'^ said he, "let
us hope they will give EngHshmen a view of Nelson's column,
direct from the center of this building ; it may be done by the
demolition of fewer than twenty houses. The comparatively
poor municipality of Paris is opening her streets at four-fold
the expenditure : we remove that only which is ornamental.
Paxton's grand edifice, built for national and more than
national use, is about to be removed. Gladly would I see it,
not filled nor half-filled, but decorated, with long avenues and
wide transepts of exotic trees, principally the citron in its
varieties. Tropical plants I would exclude ; the temperature
should be no higher than our rooms in winter ; without wliich
precaution the place, instead of health and recreation, would
induce debility and disease. The plants should be contained
in no such wooden tubs and troughs as disfigure our con-
servatories, but in richly ornamented vases of terra cotta:
I had several such in Tuscany four and five feet in diameter :
they were believed to be above two centuries old. Admit no
bedsj no borders; but statues and busts of historians, of
TEN LETl'EIlS TO CARDINAL WISEMAN. 211
moralists, of pliilosopliers, of poets, and of those writers who
blend by their genius all these characters in one. The novelist's
Little Nell should enter her Elysium amid these fragrant
shades : the hearts of many weary and sore-laden should be
comforted and invigorated by Household JFords. No theo-
logian here, no preacher, no orator, no debater, no potentate,
no captain ; not a Nelson, not a Sidney Smith, not even men
who united with equal skill and courage the calmer and purer
graces of humanity, such as a Blake, a CoUingwood, and a
Pellew, since these might humiliate the stranger ; for these
there are, or ought to be, fit places. Ranges of them should
extend throughout Saint Paul's and Westminster Abbey. The
saviours of their country would prepare the heart for that
thanksgiving which the devout are called together in those
places to offer up to the common Saviour of mankind/'
I crossed myself when, heretick and infidel as he was, he
talked so like a Christian. " Sir," said I, "we agree on almost
every point, especially on patriotism." Then I began to mag-
nify those of our true rehgion who attained their scope by
incessant agitation. He stopt me, and replied with emphasis,
" Reverend sir ! the word is odious, and formerly was dis-
graceful. Truly in Ireland the expression of monster meeting
is not quite inapplicable ; but it was intended by the agitators
to convey a very different signification. Multitude is not
magnitude ; agitation is not strength : on the contrary, the
strong are confident and quiet." I ventured to remark that
O'Connell was true to his country and his rehgion. To which
he replied, " that a man may be zealous for both ; that zeal,
however, is not always truth, but is often found in those to
whom truth is a matter of indifi'erence." I then submitted to
his calm consideration whether the zeal of the catholicks could
possibly have aught but truth for its foundation, since it had
resisted, so successfully, such oppression. "Sir," said he,
the catholicks in this country began with stabbing and burning
their fellow subjects. Now stabbing and burning are thought
by some people not only to be extremely incommodious, but
also grave misdemeanours ; and the stabbers and burners ere
long were kicked and cuffed, and sometimes hanged, accor-
dingly." In my indignation I avowed myself an obedient son
of the Church, ready to lay down my life for her, and resolved
to propagate all her verities in every part of these dominions.
" Reverend sir/' said he smiling, " you may propagate all her
p 2
213 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
verities with small expenditure from the seed-bag. AVhat is
sound and weighty lies at the bottom, and you are loth to put
your arm into it so deeply. It would be better for yourselves
and for the community, if you looked down more attentively
into your own breasts, and less inquisitively into the concerns
of your neighbour. Under the plea of solicitude for his sal-
vation, are you quite certain that tliere is nowhere hidden
about you a lurking and intemperate desire of predominant
authority ? In putting on the armour of righteousness for
your tourney, a little crevice is sometimes discovered in the
links of the mail, thro which the silken wadding of vanity
is apparent. Perhaps, altho you are commanded to put on
the armour of righteousness, you, according to your version or
any other, are not commanded to sleep on it, or to wear it
every day. Treely do I confess to you, reverend sir, that I
care very little about any crack in your corslet ; and I assure
you I never Mall take advantage of it to aim a thrust of my
lance at the place : all I desire of you is the tranquillity of the
realm. Tiiis, we protestants, and many catholicks, not only
in England but also in Ireland, are firmly persuaded is mainly
to be accomplished, and most permanently secured, by di'awing
closer the bonds of concord in the young. The Scotch and
tlie Welsh live under the same laws and obey the same stranger.
The Celts of Cornwall and the Celts of Connaught differ in
this only ; that the former are obedient to the laws of their
own prince, the latter to a prince in another and distant
land . . the real stranger. We inhabitants of Great Britain
spring from various nations, and among us are various reh-
gions. Is it not a remarkable fact that the communicants of
all these various religions should live together in amity ; with
one sole exception ? In Trance, which you call a catholick
and free country, it is punishable by law to excite hatred
among the citizens. Your representatives in parliament, your
delegates to Dublin, your bishops, your primate, would incur
this penalty in that exemplarily catholick and superlatively
free country. Incendiarism of a cottage is a capital crime ;
is the incendiarism of a kingdom a fighter ? Disunion is
preached openly, and authoritatively enforced. The most
reverend Doctor Cullen, primate of all Ireland, denounces his
subordinate bishop. Doctor Murray, for having sent untimely
to hell in his zeal as many souls as Achilles did in his anger.
How happens it that two hairs taken from above the same rib
TEN LETTERS TO CARDINAL WISEMAN. 213
of tlie same goat are so dissimilar? Infallibility can eommn-
nicate itself, having infinite power from above, and immediate
intercourse with Grod ; therefor it never can be mistaken
in its chosen vessels. Now Doctors Murray, Crolly, and Doyle,
are desirous that cliildren in Ireland sliould not be greatly
more ignorant than children in New Zealand ; and they per-
ceive no reason why brotherly love and mutual good offices
should be discountenanced in the national schools. The
primate of all Ireland, the most reverend Doctor Cullen, sees
distinctly wliy those who are now separate should be separate
for ever. A century ago there was indifference to religion,
especially to Popery, in almost every part of Europe : aged
people were then living more accordantly with the spirit of
Christianity. Virtuous, religious, zealous men presently arose ;
and, as they walked along, the hamlet, the city, the held, the
forest, rang with hymns to the Saviour. Men at that time
almost as lawless as the Irish, flocked around Whitfield and
Wesley. Their hearts were touched ; their consciences were
shaken by the divine force of the Gospel, and sifted tho-
roughly by their own unsparing grasp ; contention ceased
among them ; labour was redoubled, inebriating draughts
were diminished, that their wives and children might come
in a decent apparel before their venerable pastor. This
enthusiasm, like all other enthusiasm, subsided; but not
suddenly, nor soon. Meanwhile the rector and vicar, by slow
degrees, stretched out their legs, yawned, groaned, and weighed
up their bodies, a few hours after dinner, de prqfundis of the
cushion on the aim-chair. Presently the poorer of the
parishioners shared their attention (if not quite impartially)
with poney and pointer. Once aroused from their torpidity
they grow restless: they quarrel about baptism, prevenient
grace, apostolical succession, white and black drapery; they
discuss whether a table shall be called table or altar, whether
candles shall be lighted on it at noonday, or whether candle-
sticks with clear and tall white candles in them are not
all-sufficient ; lastly, whether flowers, natural or artificial, and
in what quantity, shall, as is quite the fasliion at well-ordered
dioceses, be set upon table, or (if altar) upon altar. Amidst
this butlery and housewifery there peers thro the doorway a
certain tall shadow, pale, tepid with holy dew and radiant
with seraphical delight."
" Sir," I said, " I do not understand you. In many places
214 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
the rector and vicar are in doctrine essentially ours ; so are tlie
bishops; they wait only for the develojjment ; when our
parliament has indemnified them, it is complete. The way
was prepared for us by hot fanaticks : they cleared the forest for
our cultivation. We come late into the field, but we are
come, and are at work.'' He smiled and replied, " Yes indeed,
sir, the papist comes somewhat late into the field and when
the birds are grown wilder ; yet he contrives to drag his net
over a stray covey here and there ; and, feeling the breast of a
tender young bird, he pouches it."'
Eminence ! at this ribaldry, I could forbear no longer : it
was too . . . what shall I call it ? . . . provoking, irritating.
On my grave remonstrance he apologized politely, and added,
" Eeverend sir ! religions in all European states are trades,
and like other trades, thrive best by competition. The
methodists wake the sleepers in our churches by a loud
repetition of God's recorded words : you papists waft the
thurible under their noses, and engage pretty girls to
embroider their linen and sing to them. I quarrel with no
religion, no community. Eor my part the gypsey may lie in
idleness under the tent or hedgerow : I disapprove indeed of
his purloining old sticks out of my fences to boil his kettle :
but if he creeps on nearer the homestead, if I catch liim
throwing bits of poisoned horseflesh to my watchdog, or
raising up a low ladder in the dusk toward my henroost, I
call without delay for the policeman."
Eminence ! I have lived and yet breathe under this. We
must all carry our cross : yours, my I^ord Cardinal, is the
heaviest ; but among the faitliful there is not one to be found
who would not readily run up to bear it. Such is our devotion
to the will of our Eather who is in Rome, whose kingdom is
come, who gives us our daily bread, who forgives us our
trespasses, and whose name is ever to be sanctified and
adored.
Kissing the hem of the purple, I have the honor to be
Your Eminence's devoted servant, and
A True Believer.
THE IDYLS OP THEOCRITUS. 215
THE IDYLS OF THEOCEITUS.
Within the last lialf-century the Germans have given us
several good editions of Theocritus. That of Augustus
Meinekius, to which the very inferior and very different
poems of Eion and Moschus are appended, is among the best
and the least presuming. No version is added : the notes
are few and pertinent, never pugnacious, never prolix. In
no age, since the time of Aristarchus, or before, has the
greek language been so profoundly studied, or its poetry in
its nature and meter so perfectly understood, as in ours.
Neither Athens nor Alexandria saw so numerous or so intel-
ligent a race of grammarians as Germany has recently seen
contemporary. Nor is the society diminisht, nor are its
labours relaxt, at this day. Valckenaer, Schrieber, SchaefFer,
Kiesling, Wuesteman, are not the only critics and editors
who, before the present one, have bestowed their care and
learning on Theocritus.
Doubts have long been entertained upon the genuineness
of several among his Idyls. But latterly a vast number,
even of those which had never been disputed, have been
called in question by Ernest Reinhold, in a treatise printed
at Jena in 1819. He acknowledges the eleven first, the
thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and eighteenth.
Against the arbitrary ejection of the remainder rose Augustus
Wissowa in 1828. In his Theocritus Theocntccus, vindicating
them from suspicion, he subjoins to his elaborate criticism
a compendious index of ancient quotations, in none of whicli
is any doubt entertained of their authenticity. But surely
it requires no force of argument, no call for extraneous help,
to subvert the feeble position that, because the poet wrote
his Pastorals mostly in his native dialect, the doric, he can
never have written in another. If he composed the eighteenth
Idyl in the seolic, why may he not be allowed the twelfth
and twenty-second in the ionic ? Not, however, that in the
twelfth he has done it uniformly : the older manuscripts of
this poem contain fewer forms of that dialect than were
216 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
afterwards foisted into it^ for the sake of making it all of a
piece. It is easy to believe that the Idyls he wrote in Sicily
were doric^ with inconsiderable variations, and that he
thought it more agreeable to Hiero_, whose favour he was
desirous of conciliating. But when he retired from Sicily
to the court of Ptolemy, where Callimachus and Apollonius
and Aratus were residing, he would not on every occasion
revert to an idiom little cultivated in Egypt. Not only to
avoid the charge of rivalry with the poets who were then
flourishing there, but also from sound judgment, he wrote
heroic poetry in Homeric verse ; in verse no less ionic than
Homer's own ; indeed more purely so.
Thirty of his poems are entitled Idyls : in short all but
the Epigrams, however different in length, in subject, and
in meter. But who gave them this appellation ? or whence
was it derived ? We need go up no higher than to etSos for the
derivation : and it is probable that the poet himself supplied
the title. But did he give it to all his compositions ? or even
to all those (excepting the Epigrams) which are now extant.
•We think he did not, although we are unsupported in our
opinion by the old scholiast who wrote the arguments. "The
poet," says he, " did not wish to specify his pieces, but ranged
them all under one title." We believe that he ranged what
he thought the more important and the more epic under tliis
category, and that lie omitted to give any separate designation
to the rest, prefixing to each piece (it may be) its own title.
Nay, it appears to us not at all improbable that those very
pieces which we moderns call more peculiarly Idyls, were not
comprehended by him in this designation. We believe that
iihvXkiov means a small image of something greater ; and that
it was especially applied at first to his short poems of the
heroic cast and character. As the others had no genuine
name denoting their quality, but only the names of the inter-
locutors or the subjects (which the ancient poets, both greek
and roman, oftener omitted) they were all after a while
comprehended in a mass within one common term. That the
term was invented long after the age of Theocritus, is the
opinion of Heine and of Wissowa : but where is the proof
of the fact, or foundation for the conjecture ? Nobody has
denied that it existed in the time of Virgil ; and many have
wondered that he did not thus entitle his Bucohcs, instead
of calling them Eclogues. And so indeed he probably would
THE IDYLS OF THEOCRITUS. 217
have done, had he believed that Theocritus intended any such
designation for his Pastorals. But neither he nor Calpurnius^
nor Nemesian, called by the name of Idyl their bucolic
' poems ; which they surely would have done if, in their opinion
or in the opinion of the public, it was applicable to them. It
was not thought so when literature grew up again in Italy,
and when the shepherds and shepherdesses recovered their
lost estates in the provinces of poetry, under the patronage of
Petrarca, Boccacio, Pontanus, and Mantuanus.
Eobanus Hessus, a most voluminous writer of latin verses,
has translated much from the greek classics, and among the
rest some pieces from Theocritus. Prom time to time we have
spent several hours of idleness over his pages; but the fur-
ther we proceeded, whatever was the direction, the duller
and drearier grew his unprofitable pine-forest, the more
wearisome and disheartening his flat and printless sands.
After him, Bruno Sidelius, another German, was the first of
the moderns who conferred the name of Idyl on their Bucolics.
As this word was enlarged in its acceptation, so was another
in another kind of poetry, namely, the Psean, which at first
was appropriated to Apollo and Artemis, but was afterward
transferred to other deities. Servius, on the first Eneid, tells
us that Pindar not only composed one on Zeus of Dodona,
but several in honor of mortals. The same may be said of
the Dithyrambic. Elegy too, in the commencement, was
devoted to grief exclusively, like the nmim and tlirence:
subsequently it embraced a vast variety of matters, some of
them ethic and didactic ; some the very opposite to its insti-
tution, inciting to war and patriotism, for instance those of
Tyrtreus; and some to. love and licentiousness, in which
Mimnermus has been followed by innumerable disciples to
the extremities of the earth.
Before we inspect the Idyls of Theocritus, one by one, as we
intend to do, it may be convenient in this place to recapitulate
what little is knoM^n about him. He tells us, in the epigraph
to them, that there was another poet of the same name, a native
of Chios, but that he himself was a Syracusan of low origin,
son of Praxagoras and Philina. He calls his mother TreptKAetrrj
(illustrious), evidently for no other reason than because the
verse required it. There is no ground for disbelieviiag what
he records of his temper ; that he never was guilty of detraction.
His exact age is unknown, and unimportant. One of the Idyls
218 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
is addressed to the younger Hiero, another to Ptolemy Phila-
delphus. The former of these began his reign in the one
hundred and twenty-sixth Olympiad^ the latter in the one hun-
dred and twenty-third. In the sixteenth Idyl the poet insinuates
that the valour of Hiero was more conspicuous than his libe-
rality : on Ptolemy he never had reason to make any such
remark* Among his friends in Egypt was Aratus, of whom
Cicero and Csesar thought highly, and of whose works both of
them translated some parts. Philetus the Coan was another :
and his merit must also have been great; for Propertius joins
him with Callimachus, and asks permission to enter the sacred
grove of poetry in their company.
Callimachi manes et Coi sacra Philetse !
In vestrum quseso me sinite ire nemus.
It appears, however, that Aratus was more particularly and
intimately Theocritusis friend. To him he inscribes the sixth
Idyl, describes his loves in the seventh, and borrows from him
the rehgious exordium of the seventeenth. After he had
resided several years in Egypt, he returned to his native country,
and died there.
We now leave the man for the writer, and in this capacity
we have a great deal more to say. The poems we possess from
him are only a part, although probably the best, of what he
wrote. He composed hymns, elegies, and iambics. Hermann,
in his dissertation on hexameter verse, expresses liis wonder
that Virgil, in the Eclogues, should have deserted the practice
of Theocritus in its structure ; and he remarks, for instance,
the first in the first Idyl.
'A5u Tj TO ^iOvpifffxa Kai a iriri/s . . anro\e ttjj/o.
This pause, however, is almost as frequent in Homer as in
Theocritus : and it is doubtful to us, who indeed have not
counted the examples, whether any other pause occurs so often
in the Iliad. In reading this verse, we do not pause after
TTiTvs, but after ^//-t^D/sicrjua : but in the verses which the illus-
trious critic quotes from Homer the pause is precisely in that
place,
UovTw fxiv TO. "Kpiara Kopvcraerai . . avrap eirfiTa
X(p(fiv priyuvfjifvuv ficyaAa fipijJ.il . • a/x^i 5e t' aKpas.
Although the pause is greatly more common in the greek
hexameter than in the latin, yet Hermann must have taken
THE IDYLS OF THEOCRITUS. 219
up Virgil's Eclogues very inattentively in making his remark.
For that which he wonders the Eoman has imitated so spar-
ingly from the Syracusan occurs quite frequently enough in
Virgil, and rather too frequently in Theocritus. It may be
tedious to the inaccurate and negligent ; it may be tedious to
those whose reading is only a species of dissipation, and
to whom ears have been given only as ornaments ; nevertheless,
for the sake of others, we have taken some trouble to establish
our position in regard to the Eclogues, and the instances are
given below.*
* Eel. i., containing 83 vei'ses.
Namque erit ille milii sempei* deus . .
Non eqiiidem invideo, miror magis . .
Ite mese, felix quondam, pecus . .
Eel. ii. 73 verses.
Atque superba pati fastidia . ,
Cum plaeidum ventis staret mare , .
Bina die siccant ovis ubera . .
Heu, heu ! quid volui misero milii .
Eel. iii. Ill verses.
Die mihi, Damceta, cujum pecus .
Infelix, semper eves pecus , .
Et, si non aliqua nocuisses . .
Si neseis, meus ille caper fuit . .
Bisque die numerant ambo pecus . .
Parta mese Veneri sunt munera . .
Pollio et ipse facit nova carmina . .
Parcite, oves, nimium procedere . ,
Eel. V. 86 verses.
Sive antro potius succedimus . .
Frigida, Daphni, boves ad flumina . .
Quale sopor fessis in gramine . ,
Hsec eadem docuit cujum pecus . .
Eel. vi. 86 verses.
Cum canei'em reges et prselia . .
>Egle Naiadum pulcherrima . .
Carmina quaj vultis cognoseite . .
Aut aliquam in magno sequitur grege , .
Errabunda bovis vestigia . .
Quo cursu deserta petiverit . .
Eel. vii. 70 verses,
Ambo florentes cctatibus . .
Vir gregis ipse caper deerraverat . .
Aspicio ; ille ubi me contra videt . .
Nymphse noster amor Lebethrides
Quale meo Codro concedite . .
220 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD THEE.
In Theocritus it is not this usage which is so remarkable ; it
is the abundance and exuberance of dactyls. The}' hurry on
one after another, like the waves of a clear and rapid brook in
the sunshine, reflecting all tilings the most beautiful in nature,
but not resting upon any.
Idyl I. Of all the poetry in all languages that of Theocritus
is the most fluent and easy ; but if only this Idyl were extant,
it would rather be memorable for a weak imitation of it by
Yirgil, and a beautiful one by Milton, than for any great merit
beyond the harmony of its verse. Indeed it opens with such
sounds as Pan himself in a prelude on his pipe might have
Setosi caput hoc apri tibi . .
Ite domum pasti, si quis pudor . .
Aut si ulti-a placitum laudarit . .
Si fcetura gregem suppleverit . .
Solstitiura pecori defendite . .
Populus Alcidse gratissima . ,
Fraxinus iu sylvis pulcherrima.
Eel. viii. 109 verses.
Sive Oram Illyrici legis ajquoris . ,
A te principium, tibi desiuet . .
Carmioa ccepta tuis, atque handf sine . .
Nascere prajque diem veniens age . .
Omnia vel medium fiant mare . .
Desine Mtenalios jam desine . .
Ducite ab urbe domum, mea cai-mina . ,
Transque caput jace ; ne respexeris . .
Eel. ix. 67 verses.
Heu cadit in quemquam tan turn scelus . ,
Tityre dum redeo, brevis est via . .
Et potum pastas age Titj-re . .
Pierides, sunt et mihi carmina . .
Omnia fert sctas, animum quoque . .
Nunc oblita mihi tot carmina . .
Hinc adeo media est nobis via . ,
Incipit apparere Bianoris . ,
Eel. X. 77 verses.
Nam neque Parnassi, vobis juga . ,
Omnes unde amor iste rogaut tibi . .
Instances of the cadence are not wanting in the Eneid. The fourth
book, the most elaborate of all, exhibits them.
" Tempora, quis rebus dexter modus " . .
And again in the last lines, with only one interposed.
" Devolat, et supra caput adstitit . .
Sic ait et dextra crinem secat."
THE IDYLS OF THEOCRITUS. 221
produced. The dialogue is betweeu Tliyrsis and a goatherd.
Here is much of appropriate description ; but it appears un-
suitable to the character and condition of a goatherd to offer
so large a reward as he offers for singing a song. " If you will
sing as you sang in the contest with the Libyan shepherd
Chromis, I will reward you with a goat, mother of two kids,
which goat you may milk thrice a-day ; for, though she suckles
two kids, she has milk enough left for two pails.''^
We often hear that such or such a thing " is not worth an
old song." Alas ! how very few things are ! What precious
recollections do some of them awaken ! what pleasurable
tears do they excite ! They purify the stream of life ; they
can delay it on its shelves and rapids ; they can turn it back
again to the soft moss amidst which its sources issue.
But we must not so suddenly quit the generous goatherd :
we must not turn our backs on him for the sake of indulging
in these reflections. He is ready to give not only a marvel-
lously fine goat for the repetition of a song, but a commodity
of much higher value in addition ; a deep capacious cup of the
most elaborate workmanship, carved and painted in several
compartments. Let us look closely at these. The fu'st con-
tains a woman in a veil and fillet : near her are two young
suitors who throw fierce words one against the other : she never
minds them, but smiles upon each alternatehj. Surely no
cup, not even a magical one, could express all this. But they
continue to carry on their ill-will. In the next place is an old
fisherman on a rock, from which he is hauling his net. Not
far from him is a vineyard, laden with purple grapes. A little
boy is watching them near the boundary-hedge, while a couple
of foxes are about their business : one walking through the
rows of vines, picking out the ripe grapes as he goes along ; the
other devising mischief to the boy's wallet, and declaring on the
word of a fox that he will never quit the premises until he has
captured tbe breakfast therein deposited. The song is deferred
no longer : and a capital song it is : but the goatherd has well
paid the piper. It is unnecessary to transcribe the verses
wliicli Vu'ffil and Milton have imitated.
'&^
Nam neque Pamassi vobis juga nam neque Piudi
Ulla moram facere, neque Aonia Aganippe.
Virgil himself, on the present occasion, was certainly not de-
tained in any of these places. Let us try whether we cannot
222 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
come toward the original with no greater deviation, and some-
what less dulness.
Where were ye, ye nymphs ! when Daphnis died ?
For not on Pindus were ye, nor beside
Peneus in his softer glades, nor where
Acis might well expect you, once your care.
But neither Acis did your steps detain,
Nor strong Anapus rushing forth amain,
Nor high-brow'd Etna with her forest chain.
Harmonious as are the verses of Theocritus, the greek lan-
guage itself could not bear him above Milton in his Lycidas.
He had the good sense to imitate the versification of Tasso's
Aminta, employing rhyme where it is ready at hand, and per-
mitting his verses to be longer or shorter, as may happen.
They are never deficient in sweetness, taken separately, and
never at the close of a sentence disappoint us. However, we
can not but regret the clashing of irreconcileable mythologies.
Neither in a poem nor in a picture do we see willingly the
Nymphs and the Druids together : Saint Peter comes even
more inopportunely : and although, in the midst of such scenery,
we may be prepared against wolves with their own heads and
"maws" and " privy paws" yet we deprecate them when they
appear with a bishop's : they are then an over-match for us.
The ancients could not readily run into such errors : yet
sometliing of a kind not very dissimilar may be objected to
Yirgil.
Venit Apollo,
' Galle ! quid insanis ] ' inquit.
When the poet says, " Cynthius aurem veUit et admonuit," we
are aware that it is merely a form of phraseology : but among
those who, in Yirgil'^ age, believed in Apollo, not one believed
that he held a conversation with G alius. The time for these
famiharities of gods with mortals had long been over.
Nee se contingi patiuntur lumiue claro.
There was only one of them who could stil alight without
suspicion among the poets. Phoebus had become a mockery, a
by-word : but there never will be a time probably when Love
shall lose his personality, or be wished out of the way if he has
crept into a poem. But the poem must be a little temple of
his own, admitting no other occupant or agent beside himself
and (at most) two worshipers.
THE IDYLS OF THEOCRITUS. 223
To return to this first Idyl. Theocritus may be censured for
representing a continuity of action in one graven piece, where
tlie girl smiles on two young men alternately. But his defence
is ready. He would induce the belief that, on looking at the
perfection of the workmanship, we must necessarily know not
only what is passing, but also what is past and what is to come.
We see the two foxes in the same spirit, and enter into their
minds and machinations. We swear to the wickedest of the
two that we will keep his secret, and that we will help him to
the uttermost of our power, when he declares {(part.) that he
will have the boy's breakfast. Perhaps we might not be so
steadily his partisan, if the boy himself were not meditating
an ill turn to another creature. He is busy in making a
httle cage for the cicala. Do we never see the past and the
future in the pictures of Edwin Landseer ? who exercises over
all the beasts of the field and fowls of the air an undivided and
unlimited dominion, Kat voov eyrw.
We shall abstain, as far as may be, in this review, from
verbal criticism, for which the judicious editor, after many
other great scholars, has left but little room : but we can not
consent with him to omit the hundred and twentieth verse,
merely because we find it in the fifth Idyl, nor because
he tells us it is rejected in the best editions. Yerses have been
repeated both by Lucretius and by Virgil. In the present
case the sentence, Vv'ithout it, seems obtruncated, and wants
the peculiar rhythm of Theocritus, which is complete and
perfect with it. In the two last verses are aibe \L\j.aipai Ov
ixi] (TKLpTaayiTe. Speaking to the she-goats he could not well say
at, which could only be said in speaking of them. Probably
the right reading is cu6e, although we beheve there is no
authority for it. The repetition of that word is graceful and
adds to the sense. " Come hither, Kissaitha ! milk this one :
but, you others ! do not leap about /lere, lest, &c." The poet
tells us he will hereafter sing more sweetly : it is much to say ;
but he will keep his promise : he speaks in the character of
Thyrsis. When the goatherd gives the cup to the shepherd he
wishes his mouth to be filled with honey, and with the honey-
co)nd !
Idyl II. is a monologue, and not bucolic. Cimsetha, an
enchantress, is in love with Delphis. The poem is curious,
containing a complete system of incantation as practised by
the Greeks, Out of two verses, by no means remarkable,
224 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Yirgil has framed some of the most beautiful iu all liis works.
Whether the Idyl was in this particular copied from ApoUonius,
or whether he in the Argonautics had it before him, is uncer-
tain. Neither of them is so admirable as,
Sylvseque et SEeva quierant
^quora.
At nou infelix animi Phoenissa ; neque unquam
Solvitur in somnos, oculisve aut pectore noctem
Accipit : iugeminant cura3, rursusque resurgens
Ssevit amor.
The woods and stormy waves were now at rest,
But not the hapless Dido ; never sank
She into sleep, never received she night
Into her bosom ; grief redoubled grief,
And love sprang up more fierce the more represt.
Idyl III. A goatherd, whose name is not mentioned,
declares his love, with prayers and expostulations, praises and
reproaches, to Amaryllis. The restlessness of passion never
was better expressed. The tenth and eleventh lines are copied
by Yirgil, with extremely ill success.
Quod potui, puero sylvestn ex arbore lecta
Aurea mala decem misi, eras altera mittam.
How poor is qicodpotid ! and what a selection (lecta) is that
of crabs ; moreover, these were sent as a present (misi), and
not offered in person. There is not even the action, such as it
is, but merely the flat relation of it. Instead of a narration
about sending these precious crabs, and the promise of as many-
more on the morrow, here in Theocritus the attentive lover says,
" Behold ! I bring you ten apples. I gathered them myself
from the tree whence you desired me to gather them : to-
morrow I will bring you more. Look upon my soul-tor-
menting grief ! I wish I were a bee that 1 might come into
your grotto, penetrating through the ivy and fern, however
thick about you.''^ Springing up and away from his dejection
and supplication, he adds wildly,
Nw eYi/wv Tov Ep&JTa : fiapvs 6eos t) pa. Keaivas
MacrSoj/ 607}\a^e, Spvfj.'ji> Se fiLV erpecpe fiarr/p. *
Now know I Love, a cruel God, who drew
A lioness's teat, and in the foi'est grew.
* "We have given not the editor's but our own punctuation : none affer
deos : for if there were any in that place, we should have wished the words
were fiapvv 6eov.
THE IDYLS OP THEOCRITUS. 225
Virgil has amplified the passage to no purpose.
Nunc scio quid sit amor : duris in cotibus ilium
Ismarus aut Rhodope aut extremi Garamantes
Nee generis nostri puerum nee sanguinis edunt.
Where is the difference of meaning here between gemis and
sanguis ? And Avhy all this bustle about Ismarus and Rhodope
and the Garamantes ? A lioness in an oak-forest stands in
place of them all, and much better. Love being the deity, not
the passion, qui would have been better than qidd, both in
propriety and in sound. There follows.
Alter ab undecimo jam turn me ceperat annus.
This is among the most faulty expressions in Virgil. The
words jam turn me sound woodenly : and me ceperat annus is
scarcely latin. Perhaps the poet wrote 7)iiM, abbreviated to
mi ; mihi coejoerat annus. There has been a doubt regarding
the exact meaning : but this should raise none. The meaning
is, " I was entering my thirteenth year.^^ TJnus ab undecimo
would be the twelfth : of course alter ab undecimo must be the
thirteenth. Virgil is little more happy in his translations from
Theocritus than he is in those from Homer. It is probable
that they were only school exercises, too many and (in his
opinion) too good to be thrown away. J. C. Scaliger, zealous
for the great Eoman poet, gives him the preference over Homer
in every instance where he has copied him. But in fact there
is nowhere a sentence, and only a single verse anywhere, in
which he rises to an equality with his master. He says of
Fame,
Ingrediturque solo et caput inter sidera condit.
The noblest verse in the latin language.
Idyl IV. Battus and Corydon.* The greater part is
tedious; but at verse thirty-eight begins a tender grief of
Battus on the death of his Amaryllis : Corydon attempts to
console him. " You must be of good courage, my dear Battus !
* The close of verse thirty-one is printed o re ZokwOos; in other editions
a ZuKwdus. Perhaps both are wrong. The first syllable of ZaKvvdos is short,
which is against the latter reading; and re would be long before Z, which is
against the former. Might not a shepherd who uses the Doric dialect have
said AaKvuOos. We have heard of a coin inscribed AaKupOiaiv. In Virgil we
read nemorosa Zacyntkos: but it seems impossible that he should have
written the word with a Z.
Q
226 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Things may go better with you another day/^ To which
natural and brief reflection we believe all editions have added
two verses as spoken by Corydon. Nevertheless, we suspect
that Theocritus gave the following one to Battus, and that he
says in reply, or rather in refutation, " There are hopes in the
living, but the dead leave us none." Then says Corydon,
"The skies are sometimes serene and sometimes rainy."
Battus is comforted ; he adds but dapa-coi ; for he perceives on
a sudden that the calves are nibbling the olives. Good Battus
has forgotten at once all his wishes and regrets for Amaryllis,
and would rather have a stout cudgel. His animosity soon
subsides,^ however, and he asks Corydon an odd question about
an old shepherd, which Corydon answers to liis satisfaction
and delight.
Idyl V. Comatas, a goatherd, and Lacon, a shepherd,
accuse one another of thievery. They carry on their recrimi-
nations with much spirit : but the beauty of the verses could
alone make the contest tolerable. Alter the fortieth are
several which Virgil has imitated, with little honor to his
selection. Theocritus, always harmonious, is invariably the
most so in description. This is, however, too long continued
in many places : but here we might wish it had begun earlier
and lasted longer. Lacon says.
Sweeter beneath this olive will you sing,
By the grove-side and by the running spring,
Where grows the grass in bedded tufts, and where
The shrill cicala shakes the slumberous air.
This is somewhat bolder than the original will warrant,
but not quite so bold as Virgil^s " rumpunt arhusta cicadse."
It is followed by what may be well in character with two
shepherds of Sibaris, but what has neither pleasantry nor
novelty to recommend it : and the answer would have come
with much better grace uninterrupted. Comatas, after re-
minding Lacon of a very untoward action in which both were
implicated, thus replies :
I will not thither : cypi-esses are here,
Oafe^s, and two springs that gurgle cool and clear,
And bees are flying for their hives, and through
The shady branches birds their talk pursue.
They both keep their places, and look out for an arbitrator
THE IDYLS OF THEOCRITUS. 227
to decide on the merit of their songs. Morson, a woodman^
is sphtting a tree near them ; and they call him. There is
something very dramatic in their appeal, and in the objurgation
that follows. The contest is carried on in extemporary
verses, two at a time. After several, Comatas says, " All my
she-goats, excepting two, are bearers of twins : nevertheless,
a girl who sees me among them says, ' Unfortunate creature !
do you milk them all yourself ! ' " Lacon, as the words now
ii?iii^,xe^\\QS,,"Pheu!^heu!" an exclamation which among
the tragedians expresses grief and anguish, but which here
signifies Psha, jishu. Now it is evident that Comatas had
attempted to make Lacon jealous, by telling him how sorry
the girl was that he should milk the goats himself wathout
anybody to help him. Lacon in return is ready to show that
he also had his good fortune. There is reason therefor to
suspect that the name KaKiav should be Aaficoz;; because
from all that precedes we may suppose that Lacon was never
possessed of such wealth, and that Comatas would have turned
him into ridicule if he had boasted of it. " Psha ! psha ! you
are a grand personage with your twin-bearing goats, no
doubt ! but you milk them yourself : now Damon is richer
than you are: he fills pretty nearly twenty hampers with cheeses.'*
This seems indubitable from the following speech of
Lacon. Not to be teased any more after he had been
taunted by Comatas, that Clearista, although he was a goat-
herd, tlirew apples at him, and began to sing the moment
he drove his herd by her, Lacon, out of patience at last,
says, " Cratidas makes me wild with that beautiful hair
about the neck." There could have been no room for this
if he had spoken of liimseK, however insatiable. For, in a
later verse, Cratidas seems already to have made room for
another.
'AAA' i-yut Eu/iTjSews epafiat /xeya.
^Finding Damon here in Theocritus, we may account for his
appearance in Yirgil. No greek letters are more easily mis-
taken one for the other than the capital A for A, and the small
K for fx. In the one hundred and fifth verse, Comatas boasts
of possessing a cup sculptured by Praxiteles. This is no very
grave absurdity in such a braggart : it suits the c-haracter :
Virgil, who had none to support for his shepherd, makes him
state that his is only " diviui opus Alcimedontis/'
Q 2
228 THE LAST I'EUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
It may be remarked^ in conclusion, that no other Idyl
contains so many pauses after the fourth foot, which
Hermann calls bucolic : nearly half of the verses have tliis
cadence.
Idyl VI. This is dramatic, and is addressed to Aratus.
The shepherds Damsetas and Daphnis had driven their flocks
into one place^ and, sitting by a fountain, began a song about
Polyphemus and Galatea. Daplmis acts the character of
Galatea, Damsetas of Polyphemus. The various devices of
the gigantic shepherd to make her jealous, and his confidence
of success in putting them into practice, are very amusing.
His slyness in giving a secret sign to set the dog at her, and
the dog knowing that he loved her in his heart, and pushing
his nose against her thigh instead of biting her, are such
touches of true poetry as are seldom to be found in pastorals.
In the midst of these our poet has been thought to have
committed one anaclironism. But where Galatea is said to
have mistaken the game, when
<j>fvyfi (ptKeovra Kai ov (l>i\eovTa SiWKu
Kai Toy OLiro ypafifias Kivfi \idov,
. . Seeks him who loves not, him who loves, avoids :
And makes false moves,
she herself is not represented as the speaker, nor is Polyphemus,
but Daphnis. It is only at the next speech that either of the
characters comes forth in person : here Damsetas is the Poly-
phemus, and acts his part admirably.
Idyl VII. The last was different in its form and character
from the five preceding : the present is more different stil.
The poet, on his road to Alexandria with Eucritus and Amyntas,
meets Phrasidamus and Antigenes, and is invited to accompany
them to the festival of Ceres, called Thalysia. He falls in with
Lycidas of Cidon, and they relate their love-stories. This Idyl
closes with a description of summer just decHning into autumn.
The invocation to the Nymphs is in the spirit of Pindar.
Idyl VIII."^ The subject is a contest in singing between
* The two first lines are the least pleasant to the ear of any in this
naelodious poet.
AaipviSi ttS) xop'f | v n , . , crvvr}VT€To fiovKoXio \ v ri
MoAa vefj.u>v ws <pa \ v ri, &C.
'Cts (pavri is found in all editions ; but Pierson has suggested Atocpavre.
Diophantus was a friend of Theocritus, addressed in Idyl XXI.
THE IDYLS OF THEOCRITUS. 229
Menalcas and Daphnis, for a pipe. Here are some verses of
exquisite simplicity, which Virgil has most clumsily translated.
Ego hunc vitulum, ne forte recuses, &c.
De grege non ausim quidquam deponere tecum,
Est mihi namque domi pater, est mjusta noverca,
Bisque die numerant ambo pecus . . alter et hcedos.
It is evident that Virgil means by jo^cm^ the sheep only; pecora
at this day means an ewe in Italian. VirgiFs Menalcas had no
objection to the robbery, but was afraid of the chastisement.
The Menalcas of Theocritus says, "I will never lay what
belongs to my father; but I have a pipe which I made myself/'
and according to his account of it, it was no ordinary piece of
workmanship. Damsetas, it appears, had made exactly such
another, quite as good, and the cane of which it was made cut
his finger in making it. They carry on the contest in such
sweet hexameters and pentameters as never were heard before
or since : but they finish with hexameters alone. The prize is
awarded to Daphnis by the goatherd who is arbitrator. He
must have been a goatherd of uncommonly fine discernment :
the match seems equal : perhaps the two following verses
turned the balance.
AA\' vno TO. TreTpa tuS" aao/xai, ayvas ex'^v tv,
^vvofia fiaX' erropoiv, ray ^cKeAav es aAa.
Of these, as of those above, we can only give the meaning :
he who can give a representation of them, can give a repre-
sentation of the sea-breezes.
It never was my wish to have possest
The land of Pelops and bis golden store;
But only, as I hold you to my breast,
Glance at our sheep and our Sicilian shore.
Idyl IX. Again Menalcas and Daphnis ; but they must
both have taken cold.
Idyl X. Milo and Battus are reapers. Milo asks Battus
what ails him, that he can neither draw a straight furrow nor
reap like his neighbours. For simplicity none of the pastorals
is more delightful, and it abounds in rustic irony.
Idyl XI. is addrest to Nikias of Miletus, and appears to
have been written in Sicily, by the words 6 KukAo\// 6 -nap rnxiv.
It describes the love of Polyphemus for Galatea, his appeal to
her, his promises (to the extent of eleven kids and four bear-
230 THE LAST FKUIT OFF AN OLD TREE,
cubs), and his boast that, if he can not have her, he can find
another perhaps more beautiful ; for that many are ready
enough to phiy with him, challenging him to that efl'ect, and
giggling (klx^lCovtl) when he listens to them. Yirgil's
imitation of this Idyl is extremely, and more than usually,
feeble. The last verse however of Theocritus is somewhat
flat.*
Idyl XII. "We now arrive at the first of those Idyls of
which the genuineness has been so pertinaciously disputed.t
And why ? Because forsooth it pleased the author to compose
it in the ionic dialect. Did Burns, who wrote mostly in the
Scottish, write nothing in the enghsh? With how much
better reason has the competitor of Apollonius and Callimachus
deserted the doric occasionally ! Meleager, and other writers
of inscriptions, mix frequently ionic forms with doric. In
fact, the most accurate explorers must come at last to the
conclusion, that even in the pastoral portion of these Idyls,
scarcely a single one is composed throughout of unmingled
doric. The ear that is accustomed to the exuberant flow of
Theocritus, will never reject as spurious this melodious and
graceful poem. Here, and particularly toward the conclusion,
as very often elsewhere, he writes in the style and spirit of
Pindar, while he celebrates the loves extolled by Plato.
Idyl XIII. is addrest to Nikias, as the eleventh was. It is
not a dialogue : it is a narrative of the loss of Hylas. The
same story is related by Propertius in the most beautiful of
his elegies.
Idyl XIV. is entitled Cynisca^s Love, and is a dialogue
between her husband TEschines and his friend Thyonichus.
Cynisca had taken a fancy to Lucos. At an entertainment
given by ^schines, a very mischievous guest, one Apis, sings
about a wolf {Avkos), who was quite charming. TEschines
* paov Se Sia-y 7} xpi/O'oi' eSa>Kev.
"He lived more pleasantly than if he had given gold for it."
This is barely sense; nor can it be improved without a bold substitution,
Such terminations are occasionally to be found in our poet; for example.
Idyl 1. oAAo /J-axev fioi. Idyl 2. oaffov eyw Stiv. Idyl 3. ii (ptXens jue, and
three lines further on, oweK' e^w fJ-ev, &c.
f The title of this is Aites, -which among the Thessalians was what,
according to the poet in v. 13, eicnrveiXos was among the Spartans : the one
T^apa TO Tov ipwfxepov etffaiitu, the other from ei(nrye7v rov epura tSi aya-Kaivn.
THE IDYLS OF THEOCRITUS. 231
had had some reason for jealousy before. Hearing Cynisca
sigh at the name of Lucos, he can endure it no longer, and
gives her a slap in the face, then another, and so forth, until
she runs out of the house, and takes refuge with her Lucos
day and night. All this the husband relates to Thyonichus ;
and the verses from the thirty-fourth to thirty-eighth, dakire
c})lXov, are very laughable. Thyonichus advises that so able a
boxer should enter the service of Ptolemy.
Idyl XV. The Syracusan Gossips. Never was there so
exact or so delightful a description of such characters. There
is a little diversity, quite enough, between Praxinoe and Gorgo.
Praxinoe is fond of dress; conceited, ignorant, rash, abusive
in her remarks on her husband, ambitious to display her
knowledge as well as her finery, and talking absurdly on what
she sees about her at the festival of Adonis. Gorgo is desirous
of insinuating her habits of industry. There are five speakers :
Gorgo, Praxitioe, Eunoe, an old woman and a traveller, beside
a singing girl, who has nothing to do with the party or the
dialogue. " Gorgo : Don^t talk in this way against your
husband while your baby is by. See how he is looking at you.
Praxinoe: Sprightly, my pretty Zopyrion ! I am not talking
of papa. Gor : By Proserpine ! he understands you. Papa
is a jewel of a papa." After a good deal of tattle, they are
setting out for the fair, and the child shows a strong desire to
be of the party. " Gor : I can't take you, darhng ! There's
a hobgoblin on the other side of the door ; and there's a biting
horse. Ay, ay, cry to your heart's content. Do you think I
would have you lamed for life ? Come, come ; let us be off."
Laughter is irrepressible at their mishaps and exclamations in
the crowd. This poem, consisting of one hundred and forty-
four verses, is the longest in Theocritus, excepting the heroics
on Hercules. The comic is varied and relieved by the song
of a girl on Adonis. She notices everything she sees, and
describes it as it appears to her. After an invocation to
Venus, she has a compliment for Berenice, not without an eye
to the candied flowers and white pastry, and the pretty little
baskets containing mossy gardens and waxwork Adonisses,
and tiny Loves flying over,
"'0(01 arjSoi/tijfs €(p€^on€VOt eirt SevSpcov
TlctiTcovrai, Trrepvycav TrupcefXivoi o^ov' an' o{a>.
Like the young nightingales, some nestling close,
Some plying the fresh wing from bough to bough.
232 THE LAST TEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Idyl XVI. The Graces. Here Hiero is reminded how
becoming is liberality in the rich and powerful ; and here is
sometimes a plaintive undersong in the praise. The attributes
of the Graces were manifold; the poet has them in view
principally as the distributors of just rewards. ^Ye have
noticed the resemblance he often bears to Pindar : nowhere is
it so striking as in this and the next. The best of Pindar^s
odes is not more energetic throughout: none of them surpasses
these two in the cliief qualities of that admirable poet;
rejection of what is light and minute^ disdain of what is
trivial^ and selection of those blocks from the quarry which
will bear strong strokes of the hammer and retain aU the
marks of the chisel. Of what we understand by sublimity
he has little ; but he moves in the calm majesty of an elevated
mind. Of all poets he least resembles those among us whom
it is the fashion most to admire at the present day. The
verses of this address to Hiero by Theocritus^ from the thirty-
fourth to the forty-seventh, are as sonorous and elevated as
the best of Homer's; and so are those beginning at the
ninety-eighth verse to the end.
Idyl XVII. This has nothing of the Idyl in it, but is a
noble eulogy on Ptolemy Philadelphus, son of Ptolemy Lagus
and Berenice. Warton is among the many who would deduct
it from the works of our poet. It is grander even than the
last on Hiero, in which he appears resolved to surpass all that
Pindar has written on the earlier king of that name. It is
only in versification that it differs from him : in comprehen-
siveness, power, and majesty, and in the manner of treating the
subject, the same spirit seems to have guided the same hand.
Idyl XVIII. The Epithalamium of Helen. There were
two species of epithalamium : the kolixtitlkov, such as this, and
such hkewise as that of Catullus, sung as the bride was
conducted to her chamber; and the eyeprtKoy, sung as she
arose in the morning. The poet, in the first verses, introduces
twelve Spartan girls crowned with hyacinths, who sing and
dance about Menelaus. " And so you are somewhat heavy
in the knees, sweet spouse ! rather fond of sleep, are you ?
You ought to have gone to sleep at the proper time, and
have let a young maiden play with other young maidens at
her mother's until long after daybreak.'' Then follow the
praises of Helen, wishes for her prosperity, and promises to
return at the crowing of the cock.
THE IDYLS OF THEOCRITUS. 233
Idyl XIX. Kariocleptes, or the Hive-stealer, contains but
eight verses. It is the story of Cupid stung by a bee: the
first and last bee that ever stung all the fingers {LaKTvka
TTavr' vTTevv^ev) of both hands : for it is not xf'po? but yjeipG>v.
Having said in the first verse that the bee stung him, as he
was pbindering the hive, we may easily suspect in what part
the wound was inflicted; and, among the extremely few
things we could wish altered or omitted in Theocritus, are the
words
AaKTvXa iravS' virswi^iv. 'O S' &\yee
All the needful and all the ornamental would be comprised in
Krjpiov eK (rijxl3\uv (rvXevjiivov, 6s xep' ((pvaae, &c.
Idyl XX. The Oxherd. He complains of Ennica, who
holds his love in derision and finds fault with his features,
speech, and manners. From plain downright contemptuous-
ness she bursts forth into irony.
is aypia naiaSfts
'Cs rpv(pepov \a\eets, us KcariAa pruj-ara (ppaaSeis, &c.
How rustic is your play !
How coarse your language ! &c.
He entertains a very diff'erent opinion of himself, boasts that
every girl upon the hills is in love with him, and is sure that
only a town-lady (which he thinks is the same thing as a lady
of the town) could have so little taste. There is simplicity in
this Idyl, but it is the worst of the author.
Idyl XXL The Fisherman. Two fishermen were lying
stretched on seaweed in a wattled hut, and resting their heads
against the wall composed of twigs and leaves. Around them
were spred all the implements of their trade, which are
specified in very beautiful verse. They arose before dawn,
and one said to the other, " They speak unwisely who teU us
that the nights are shorter in summer when the days are
longer ; for within the space of this very night I have dreamt
innumerable dreams. Have you ever learnt to interpret
them ? " He then relates how he dreamt of having caught
a golden fish, how afraid he was that it might be the favorite
fish of Neptune or Amphitrite. His fears subsided, and he
swore to himself that he would give up the sea for ever and
be a king. " I am now afraid of having sworn any such
234 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
oath," said he, " Never fear/^ replied the other : " the only
danger is, of dying with hunger in the midst of such golden
dreams."
Idyl XXII. This is the first heroic poem in Theocritus :
it is in two parts. First is described ths fight of Polideukes and
Amycus : secondly, of Castor and Lynceus. Of Amycus
the poet says that " his monstrous chest was spherical : "
kircpaipooTo.
Omitting this, we may perhaps give some idea of the scene.
In solitude both wandered, far away
From those they sail'd with. On the hills above,
Beneath a rocky steep, a fount they saw
Full of clear water; and below were more
That bubbled from the bottom, silvery,
Crystalline. In the banks around grew pines,
Poplars, and cypresses, and planes, and flowers
Sweet-smelling; pleasant work for hairy bees
Born in the meadows at the close of spring.
There, in the sunshine, sat a savage man,
Horrid to see ; broken were both his ears
With cestuses, his shoulders were like rocks
Polisht by some vast river's ceaseless whirl.
ApoUonius and Valerius Flaccus have descril3ed the fight
of Amycus and Polideukes : both poets are clever, Valerius
more than usually : Theocritus is masterly.
Idyl XXIII. Dyseros, or the Unhappy Lover. The sub-
ject of this is the same as the Corydon of Virgil : but here the
statue of Cupid falls on and crushes the inflexible.
Idyl XXIV. Heracliskos, or the Infant Hercules. There
are critics of so weak a sight in poetry as to ascribe this
magnificent and wonderful work to Bion or Moschus. Her-
cules is cradled in Amphitryon^s shield. The description of
the serpents, of the supernatural light in the chamber, and
the prophecy of Tiresias, are equal to Pindar and Homer.
Idyl XXV. Hercules the Lion-killer, This will bear
no comparison with the preceding. The story is told by
Hercules himself, and the poet has taken good care that it
should not be beyond his capacity.
Idyl XXVI. The Death of Pentheus. Little can be said
for this also ; only that the style is the pure antique.
Idyl XXVII. Daplmis and the Shepherdess, has been
translated by Dry den. He has given the Shepherdess a
muslin gown bespangled, Tliis easy and vigorous poet too
THE IDYLS OF THEOCUITUS. 235
often turns the country into tlie town, smells of the ginshop,
and stnggers toward the brothel. lie was quite at home with
Juvenal, imitating his scholastic strut, deep frown, and loud
declamation : no other has done such justice to Lucretius, to
Virgil, to Horace, and to Ovid : none is so dissimilar to
Theocritus. Wherever he finds a stain, he enlarges its cir-
cumference, and renders it vivid and indelible. In this lively
poem we wish the sixty-fifth and sixty-sixth verses were
omitted.
Idyl XXYIII. Neither this nor any one of the following
can be called an Idyl. The meter is the pentameter chori-
ambic, like Catullus's " Alphene immemor, 8fc"
Idyl XXIX. Expostulation against Inconstancy. The
meter is the dactylic pentameter, in which every foot is a
dactyl, excepting the first, which is properly a trochee : this
however may be converted to a spondee or an iambic, enjoying
the same licence as the phaleucian. In the twentieth verse
there is a false quantity, w^here Ke is short before (.
Idyl XXX. The Death of Adonis. Yenus orders the
Loves to catch the guilty boar and bring him before her.
They do so : he makes his defence against the accusation,
which is, that he only wished to kiss the thigh of Adonis ;
and he offers his tusk in atonement, and, if the tusk is
insufficient, his cheek. Venus pitied him, and he was set at
liberty. Out of gratitude and remorse, he went to a fire and
burnt his teeth down to the sockets. Let those who w^ould
pillage Theocritus of his valuables, show the same contrition :
w^e then promise them this poem, to do what they will with.
The Inscriptions, which follow, are all of extreme simplicity
and propriety. These are followed by the poems of Bion
and Moschus. Bion was a native of Smyrna, Moschus (his
scholar) of Syracuse. They are called authors of Idyls, but
there is nothing of idyl or pastoral in their works. The worst
of them, as is often the case, is the most admired. Bion tells
us that the boar bit the thigh of Adonis with his tusk j the
tv/iite thigh lolth the ivhite tusk; and that Adonis grieved
Venus by breathing sqftli/ while the blood was running. Such
faults as these are rarely to be detected in greek poetry, but
frequently on the revival of Pastoral in Italy.
Chaucer was born before that epidemic broke out which
soon spred over Europe, and infected the english poetry as
badly as any. The thoughts of our poets in the Elizabethan
236 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TEEE.
age often look the stronger because they are complicated and
twisted. We have the boldness to confess that we are no
admirers of the Elizabethan style. Shakspeare stood alone
in a fresh and vigorous and vast creation : yet even his first-
born were foul oft'enders, bearing on their brows the curse of
a fallen state. Elsewhere, in every quarter, we are at once
slumberous and restless under the heaviness of musk and
benzoin, and sigh for the unattainable insipidity of fresh air.
We are regaled with dishes in which no condiment is for-
gotten, nor indeed any thing but simply the meat ; and we
are ushered into chambers where the tapestry is all composed
of dwarfs and giants, and the floor all covered with blood.
Thomson, in the Seasons, has given us many beautiful de-
scriptions of inanimate nature ; but the moment any one speaks
in them the charm is broken. The figures he introduces are
fantastical. The Hassan of Collins is excellent : he however
is surpassed by Burns and Scott : and AVordsworth, in his
Michael, is nowise inferior to them. Among the moderns
no poet, it appears to us, has written an Idyl so perfect, so
pure and simple in expression, yet so rich in thought and
imagery, as the Godiva of Alfred Tennyson. Wordsworth,
like Thomson, is deficient in the delineation of character, even
of the rustic, in W'liich Scott and Burns are almost equal. But
some beautiful Idyls might be extracted from the Excursion,
which would easily split into lamina, and the residue might,
with little loss, be blown away. Eew are suspicious that they
may be led astray and get benighted by following simphcity
too far. If there are pleasant fruits growing on the ground,
must we therefor cast aside, as unwholesome, those which
have required the pruning-knife to correct and the ladder to
reach them? Beautiful thoughts are seldom disdainful of
sonorous epithets : we find them continually in the Pastorals
of Theocritus : sometimes we see, coming rather obtrusively,
the wanton and indelicate; but never (what poetry most
abhors) the mean and abject. Widely difi'erent from our
homestead poets, the Syracusan is remarkable for a facility
that never draggles, for a spirit that never flags, and for a
variety that never is exhausted. His reflections are frequent,
but seasonable ; soon over, like the shadows of spring clouds
on flowery meadows, and *iot hanging heavily upon the scene,
nor depressing the vivacity of the blythe antagonists.
THE POEMS OF CATULLUS. 237
THE POEMS OF CATULLUS.
Doeeing's first edition of Catullus came out nearly half a
century before his last edition. When he returned to his
undertaking, he found many things, he tells us, to be struck
out, many to be altered and set right. We believe we shall
be able to show that several are stil remaining in these
predicaments.
They who in our days have traced the progress of poetry,
have pursued it generally not as poets or philosophers, but as
hasty observers or cold chronologists. If we take our stand
on the Roman world, just before the subversion of its free
institutions, we shall be in a position to look backward on
Greece, and forward on Italy and England : and we shall be
little disposed to pick up and run away with the stale
comments left by those who went before us ; but rather
to loiter a little on the way, and to indulge, perhaps too com-
placently, in the freshness of our own peculiar opinions and
favorite speculations.
The last poet who flourished at Rome, before the extinction
of tlie republic by the arms of Julius Cfesar, was Catullus; and
the last record we possess of him is about the defamatory
verses which he composed on that imperishable name. Cicero,
to whom he has expressed his gratitude for defending him in
a law-suit, commends on this occasion the equanimity of
Csesar, who listened to the reading of them in his bath before
dinner. There is no reason to believe that the poet long
survived his father's guest, the Dictator : but his decease was
unnoticed in those times of agitation and dismay ; nor is the
date of it to be ascertained. It has usually been placed at the
age of forty-six, four years after Csesar's. Nothing is more
absurd than the supposition of Martial, which however is but
a poetical one.
Si forsan tener ausus est Catullus
Magno mittere Passerem Maroni.
(It is scarcely worth a remark by the way, that si forsan is not
latin ; si forte would be : si and an can have nothing to do
with each other.) But allowing that Virgil had written liis
238 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Ceiris and C/ile.r, two poems inferior to several in the Eton
school-exercises, he could not have pubHshed his first Eclogues
in the lifetime of Catullus : and if he had, the whole of them
are not worth a single phaleucian or scazon of the vigorous
and impassioned Veronese.
But Virgil is not to be depreciated by us, as he too often
has been of late, both in this country and abroad ; nor is he at
all so when we deliver our opinion that his pastorals are
almost as inferior to those of Theocritus as Pope's are to his.
Even in these, there not only are melodious verses, but
harmonious sentences, appropriate images, and tender thoughts.
Once or twice we find beauties beyond any in Theocritus : for
example,
Ite, capellas !
Non ego vos posthac viridi projectus in antro
Dumosa pendere procul de rupe videbo.
Yet in other places he is quite as harsh as if he had been ever
so negligent. One instance is,
Nunc victi, tristes, quoniam Fors omnia versaf,
Hos illi (quod nee bene vertat) mittimus haedos.
But now we must stoop,
To the worst in the troop,
And must do whatsoever that vagabond wills :
I wish the old goat
Had a horn in his throat,
And the kids and oui'selves were again on the hills.
Supposing the first of the Eclogues to have appeared seven
years after the death of Catullus, and this poet to have
composed his earliest works in the lifetime of Lucretius, we
can not but ponder on the change of the latin language in so
short a space of time. Lucretius was by birth a Roman, and
wrote in Eome ; yet who would not say unhesitatingly, that
there is more of what Cicero calls nrbane in the two provincials,
Virgil and Catullus, than in the authoritative and stately man
who leads Memmius from the camp into the gardens of
Epicurus. He complains of poverty in the latin tongue ; but
his complaint is only on its insufficiency in philosophical
terms, which Cicero also felt twenty years later, and called in
greek auxiliaries. But in reality the language never exhibited
such a profusion of richness as in the comedies of Plautus,
whose style is the just admiration of the Roman orator.
Cicero bears about him many little keepsakes received from
THE POEMS OF CATULLUS. 239
tliis quarter, particularly tlie diminutives. His fondness for
them borders on extravagance. Could you believe that the
language contains in its whole compass a hundred of these ?
could you believe that an orator and philosopher was likely to
employ a quarter of the number ? Yet in the various works
of Cicero we have counted and written down above a hundred
and sixty. Catullus himself has employed them much more
sparingly than Cicero, or than Plautus, and always with
propriety and effect. The playful Ovid never indulges in
them, nor does Propertius, nor does TibuUus. Nobody is
willing to suspect that Yirgil has ever done it; but he has
done it once in
Oscula libavit natae.
Perhaps they had been turned into ridicule, for the misappli-
cation of them by some forgotten poet in the commencement
of the Augustan age. Quintilian might have given us
information on this : it lay in his road. But whether they
died by a natural death or a violent one, they did not appear
again as a plague until after the deluge of the Dark Ages ;
and then they increased and multiplied in the slime of those
tepid shallows from which Italy in few j)laces has even yet
emerged. In the lines of Hadrian,
Animula, vagula, blandula,
they have been greatly admired, and very undeservedly. Pope
has made sad work of these. Whatever they are, they did not
merit such an experimentum crucis at his hands.
In Catullus no reader of a poetical mind would desire one
diminutive less. In Politian and such people they buzz about
our ears insufferably ; and we would waft every one of them
away, with little heed or concern if we brush off together with
them all the squashy insipidities they alight on.
The imitators of Catullus have indeed been peculiarly
unsuccessful. Numerous as they are, scarcely iive pieces
worth remembrance can be found among them. There are
persons who have a knowledge of latinity, there are others who
have a knowledge of poetry, but it is not always tlfat the same
judge decides with equal wisdom in both courts. Son:e
hendecasyllabics of the late Serjeant Lens, an excellent man,
a first-rate scholar, and a graceful poet, have been rather
unduly praised; to us they appear monotonous and redun-
240 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
dant. We will transcribe only the first two for particular notice
and illustration.
Grates insicliis tuis dolisque
Viuclis jam refero lubens solutis.
Never were words more perplext and involved. He who
brings them forward as classical, is unaware that they are
closely copied from a beautiful little poem of Metastasio, which
J. J. Rousseau has translated admirably.
Grazie agli inganni tuoi
Alfiu respiro, Nice !
How much better is the single word inganni than the useless
and improper insicliis, which renders dolis quite unnecessary.
A better line would be
Vincla projicio libens soluta.
Or,
Tandem projicio soluta vincla.
In fact, it would be a very difficult matter to suggest a worse.
The most-part of the verses may be transposed in any way
whatsoever : each seems to be independent of the rest : they
are good^ upright, sound verses enough^ but never a sentence
of them conciliates the ear. The same objection is justly
made to nearly all the modern hendecasyllabics. Serjeant
Lens has also given us too many lines for one phaleucian
piece : the meter will admit but few advantageously : it is
the very best for short poems. This might be broken into
three or four, and almost in any place indifferently. Like the
seta equina, by pusliing out a head and a tail, each would go
on as well as ever.
In how few authors of hendecasyllabics is there one fine
cadence ! Such, for instance, as those in Catullus :
And those.
Soles occidere et redire possunt,
Nobis quum semel occidit brevis lux
Nox est perpetua una dormienda.
Quamvis Candida millies puella
Euntem revocet, manusque coUo
Ambas injiciens roget morari.
And twenty more. In the former of these quotations.
THE POEMS OF CATULLUS. 241
Catullus had before liim the best passage in Moschus, which
may be thus translated :
All ! when the mallow in the croft dies down,
Or the pale parsley or the crisped anise,
Again they grow, another year they flourish ;
But we, the great, the valiant, and the wise.
Once covered over in the hollow earth.
Sleep a long, dreamless, uuawakening sleep.
The original verses are as harmonious as almost any in the
language. But the epithet which the poet has prefixed
to parsley is very undistinguishing. Greek poets more
frequently than Latin, gave those rather which suited the
meter than those which conveyed a peculiar representation.
Neither the y\.uipa, applied to parsley, is in any of its senses
very appropriate, nor are the eu^aXes and ov\.ov to anise, but
rather to burrage.
Catullus has had innumerable imitators in the phaleucian,
but the only dexterity displayed by them, in general, is
in catching a verse and sending it back again like a shuttle-
cock. Until our own times, there is little thought, little
imagination, no passion, no tenderness, in the modern latin
poets. Casimir shows most genius and most facility : but
Casinnr, in his best poem, writes
Sonora buxi filia sutilis.
Was ever allegory treated with such indignity ! What
becomes of this tight-laced daughter of a box-tree ? She was
hanged. Where ? On a high poplar. Wherefor ? That
she might be the more easily come at by the poet. Pontanus
too has been praised of late : but throughout his thick
volume there is scarcely a glimpse of poetry. There are
certain eyes which, seeing objects at a distance, take snow for
sunsliine.
Two verses of Joannes Secundus, almost the only two he
has written worth remembering, outvalue all we have imported
from the latter ages. They would have been quoted, even
from Catullus himself, as among his best.
Non est suaviolum dare, kix mea, sed dare tantum
Est desiderium flebile suavioli.
The six of Bembo on Yenice are admirable also. And
242 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
tliere are two from two Prench autliors^ each worth two
Pontanuses. The first is on the Irish.
Gens ratione furens et mentem pasta chimseris.
The second (but this is stolen from Manilius) on Franklin, his
discoveries in electricity, and liis energy in the liberation of
his country.
Eripuit coelo fulmen sceptrumque tyranno.
Another has been frequently quoted from a prize poem by
Canning. Such as it is, it also is stolen ; and with much injury
(as stolen things often are) from the Nutricia of Politian,
among whose poems one only, that on the death of Ovid, has
any merit. This being the only one which is wdthout metrical
faults, and the rest abounding in them, a reasonable doubt
may arise whether he could have written it : he who has
written by the dozen such as the following :
Impedis amplexu,
intending impedis for a dactyl :
Quando expediret inseris hexametro,
for a pentameter :
Mutare domi-num dSm-us hsec nescit suum,
for an iambic :
Lucreti fuit hoc, et Euripldis,
for a phaleucian : and in whom we find PlutarcJms short in the
first syllable ; Bis-ve semelve ; and Vatlcani long in the second
syllable twice.
Mnton has been thought like Politian in his hexameters
and pentameters. In his Elegies he is Ovidian; but he
is rather the fag than the playfellow of Ovid. Among his
latin poems the scazon Be Hofiiinis Arclietypo is the best. In
those of the moderns there is rarely more than one tiling
missing ; namely, the poetry ; which some critics seem to have
held for a matter of importance. If we may hazard a
conjecture, they are in the right. Robert Smith is the only
one who has ascended into the higher regions. But even the
best scholars, since they receive most of their opinions from
tradition, and stunted and distorted in the crevices of a
quadi'angle, will be slowly brought to conclude that his poetry
THE POEMS OF CATULLUS. 243
is better (and better it surely is) tlian the greater part of that
wliich dazzles them from the luminaries of the Augustan age.
In vigour and harmony of diction, in the selection of topics, in
the rejection of little ornaments, in the total suppression
of playful prettinesses, in solidity and magnitude of thought,
sustained and elevated by the purest spirit of poetry, we find
nothing in the Augustan age of the same continuity, the
same extent. We refer to the poem entitled Flatonis Prin-
cipia, in which there are a hundred and eleven such verses as
are scarcely anywhere together in all the realms of poetry.
The alcaic ode of the same writer. Mare Liberum, is not
without slight blemishes. For instance, at the beginning,
Primo Creator spiritus halitu
Caliginosi regna sileutii
Tiirbavit.
In latinity there is no distinction between spiritus and halitus;
and, if theology has made one, the halitus can never be said
to proceed from the spiritus. In the second verse the lyric
meter requires silent] for sileutii. Cavilers may also object to
the elision of qua at the conclusion.
Et rura quh ingentea Amazon
Kumpit aquas, violentus amnis.
It has never been elided unless at the close of a polysyllable ;
as, among innumerable instances,
Obliqu^ invidia stimulisque agitabat amaris.
This fact is the more remarkable, since qiccs and pra are
eHded ; or, speaking more properly, coalesce,
Et tibi prse invidiS, Nereides increpitarent. Peopebtius,
Qiiw omnia bella devoratis. Catullus.
Qiue imbelles dant prselia cervi :
Quce Asia circum. Viegil.
But what ode in any language is more animated or more
sublime ?
In reading the Classics we pass over false quantities, and
defer to time an authority we refuse to reason. But never
can time acquit Horace of giving us false measure in palus
aptaque remis, nor in quomodo. Whether you divide or unite
the component parts of quomodo, quo and modo, the case is the
same. And as palus is paludis in the genitive case, salus
k2
244 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
saliitis, no doubt can exist of its quantity. Modern latin
poets^ nevertheless, have written saluher. Thomas Warton, a
good scholar, and if once fairly out of latinity^ no bad poet,
writes in a phaleucian
Saluberrimis et herbis.
There is also a strange false quantity in one of the most
accurate and profound grammarians, Menage. He wrote an
inscription, in one latin hexameter, for Mazarines college, then
recently erected.
Has Phoebo et Musis Mazarinus consecrat sedes.
Every vowel is long before z. He knew it, but it escaped his
observation, as tilings we know often do. We return from
one learned man to another, more immediately the object of
our attention, on whom the same appellation was conferred.
Catidlus has been called the learned : and critics have been
curious in searching after the origin of this designation.
Certainly both Virgil and Ovid had greatly more of archaeology,
and borrowed a great deal more of the Greeks. But Catullus
was, what Horace claims for himself, the first who imported
into latin poetry any vast variety of their meters. Evidently
he translated from the greek liis galliambic on Atys. The
proof is, that
Tympanum tubam Cybeles
would be opposite to, and inconsistent with, the meter. He
must have written Typammi, finding rviravov before him. But
as, while he was in the army, he was stationed some time in
Bithynia and Phrygia, perhaps he had acquired the language
spoken in the highlands of those countries : in the lowlands it
was greek. No doubt, his curiosity led him to the temple of
Cybele ; and there he heard the ancient hymns in celebration
of that goddess. Nothing breathes such an air of antiquity as
his galliambic, which must surely have been translated into
greek from the phrygian. Joseph Warton, in the intem-
perance of admiration, prefers it not only to every work
of Catullus, but to every one in the language. There is indeed
a gravity and solemnity in it, a fitness and propriety in every
part, unequalled and unrivalled. Poetry can however rise
higher than these "templa serena," and has risen higher
with Catullus. No human works are so perfect as some
THE POEMS OF CATULLUS. 245
of his, but many are incomparably greater. Among tlie works
of the moderns, the fables of La Fontaine come nearest
to perfection ; but are there none grander and higher ?
This intemperance of admiration has been less excusable in
some living critics of modern latin poetry. Yet when we
consider how Erasmus, a singidarly wise and learned man, has
erred in his judgment on poetry, saying, while he speaks
of Sidonius iVpollinaris, ^'Let us listen to our Pindar," we
are disposed to be gentle and lenient even in regard to one
who has declared his opinion, that the elegies of Sannazar
"may compete with Tibullus/'* If they may, it can only be
in the number of feet ; and there they are quite on an equality.
In another part of the volume which contains so curious a
decision, some verses are quoted from the Paradise Regained
as " perhaps the most musical the author ever produced." Let
us pause a few moments on this assertion, and examine the
verses referred to. It will not be without its use to exhibit
their real character, because, in coming closer to the examina-
tion of Catullus, we shall likewise be obliged to confess that,
elegant and graceful as he is, to a degree above all other
poets in the more elaborate of his compositions, he too is by
no means exempt from blemishes in his versification. But in
Milton they are flatnesses ; in Catullus they are asperities :
which is the contrary of what might have been expected from
the characters of the men.
There is many a critic who talks of harmony, and whose ear
seems to have been fashioned out of the callus of his foot.
" Quotus enim quisque est," as Cicero says, " qui teneat
artem numerorum atque modorum !" The great orator him-
self, consummate master of the science, runs from rhetorical
into poetical measure at tliis very place.
Numerorum atque modorum
is the same in time and modulation as the verses in Horace,
Miserarum est neque amori
Dare ludum neque dulci &c.
Well ; but what " are perhaps the most musical verses
Milton has ever produced?" They are these (si diis placet !) :
* Mr. Hallam, in the first volume of bis Introduction to the Literatme
of Europe, p. 597.
246 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Such forces met not, nor so wide a camp,
When Agrican with all his northern powers
Besieged Albracca, as romances tell,
The city of Gallaphrone, from thence to win
The fairest of her sex Angelica
His dauc/hter, sought hy many prowest Tcnights,
Both Paynim and the peers of Charlemagne.
There is a sad hiatus in " Albracca as.'' On the whole how-
ever, the verses, thus unluckily hit upon for harmony, are
fluent ; too fluent ; they are feeble in the extreme, and little
better than prose, either in thought or expression : stil, it is
better to praise accidentally in the wrong place than to censure
universally. The passage which is before them leads us to
that magnificent view of the cities and empires, the potentates
and armies, in all their strength and glory, with which the
Tempter would have beguiled our Redeemer. These appear
to have left no impression on the critic, who much prefers what
every schoolboy can comprehend, and what many undergra-
duates could have composed. But it is somewhat, no doubt,
to praise that which nobody ever praised before, and to pass
over that which suspends by its grandour the footstep of
all others. ^
There is prodigious and desperate vigour in the Tempter s
reply to our Saviour's reproof :
All hope is lost
Of my reception into grace : what worse ?
For when no hope is left, is left no fear.
If there be worse, the expectation more
Of worse torments me than the feeling can.
I would be at the worst : worst is my port,*
My harbour, and my ultimate repose ;
The end I would attain, my final good.
Yet Milton, in this Paradise Begahied, seems to be subject
to strange hallucinations of the ear ; he who before had greatly
excelled all poets of all ages in the science and display of har-
mony. And if in his last poem we exhibit his deficiencies,
surely we never shall be accused of disrespect or irreverence to
this immortal man. It may be doubted whether the Creator
ever created one altogether so great ; taking into our view at
once (as much indeed as can at once be taken into it) his
manly virtues, his superhuman genius, his zeal for truth, for
* A daring critic might suggest fort for port, since harbour makes that
word unnecessary.
THE POEMS OP CATULLUS. 247
true piety, true freedom, his eloquence in displaying it, his
contempt of personal power, his glory and exultation in his
country^s.
AVarton and Johnson are of opinion that Milton is defective
in the sense of harmony. Eut Warton had lost his ear by
laying it down on low and swampy places, on ballads and
sonnets; and Johnson was a deaf adder coiled up in the
brambles of party prejudices. He was acute and judicious, he
was honest and generous, he was forbearing and humane ; but
he was cold where he was overshadowed. The poet^s peculiar
excellence, above all others, was in his exquisite perception of
rh}i;hm, and in the boundless variety he has given it, both in
verse and prose. Virgil comes nearest to him in his assiduous
study of it, and in his complete success. With the poetical
and oratorical, the harmony is usually in proportion to the
energy of passion. But the numbers may be transferred:
thus the heroic has been carried into the Georgics. There are
many pomps and vanities in that fine poem, which we would
relinquish unreluctantly for one touch of nature ; such as
It tristis arator
Moerentem abjungens fraterna morte juvencum.
In sorrow goes the ploughman, and leads off
Unyoked from his dead mate the sorrowing steer.
Here however the poet is not seconded by the language. The
ploughman can not be going on while he is in the act of sepa-
rating the dead ox from, its partner, as the words it and
ahjunge^is signify.
We shall presently show that Catullus was the first among
the Romans in whose heroic verse there is nothing harsh and
dissonant. But it is not necessary to turn to the grander
poetry of Milton for verses more harmonious than those
adduced; we find them even in the midst of his prose.
Whether he is to be censured for giving way to his genius, in
such compositions, is remote from the question now before us.
But what magnificence of thought is here ! how totally free is
the expression from the encumbrances of amplification, from the
crutches and cushions of swollen feebleness !
When God commands to take the trumpet
And blow a shriller and a louder blast,
It rests not in Man's will what he shall do,
Or what he shall forbear.
348 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
This sentence in the Treatise on Prelaty is printed in prose : it
sounds like inspiration. " It rested not in Milton's will '' to
crack his organ-pipe, for the sake of splitting and attenuating
the gush of harmony.
We will now give the reason for the falling iichiess with
which several of his verses are stricken. He was too fond of
showing what he had red : and the things he has taken from
others are always much worse than his own. Habituated to
Italian poetry, he knew that the verses are rarely composed of
pure iambics, or of iambics mixed with spondees, but contain a
great variety of feet, or rather of subdivisions. When he
wrote such a line as
In tlie bosiSm of bliss and light of light,
he thought he had sufficient authority in Dante, Petrarca,
Aj-iosto, and Tasso, who wrote
Questa selvS, selvaggia. Dante.
Tra le vanS speranze. Petraeca.
Con la gente di Francia. Ariosto.
Canto r armi pietose. Tasso,
And there is no verse whatsoever in any of his poems for the
meter of which he has not an Italian prototype.
The critic who knows any thing of poetry, and is resolved to
select a passage from the Paradise Regained, will prefer tliis
other far above the rest ; and may compare it, without fear of
ridicule or reprehension, to the noblest in the nobler poem.
And either tropic now
'Gan thunder, and both ends of heaven : the clouds,
From many a horrid rift, abortive poured
Fierce rain with lightning mixt, water with fire.
In ruin reconciled : nor slept the winds
Within their stony caves, but rushed abroad
From the four hinges of the world, and fell
On the vext wilderness, whose tallest pines,
Though rooted deep as high, and sturdiest oaks.
Bowed their stiff necks, loaden with stormy blasts
Or torn up sheer. Ill wast thou shrouded then,
patient son of God ! yet only stoodst
Unshaken ! Nor yet stayed the terrour there :
Infernal ghosts and hellish furies rotmd
Environed thee : some howled, some yelled, some shrieked,
Some bent at thee their fiery darts ; whUo thou
Satst unappall'd in calm and sinless peace."
THE POEMS or CATULLUS. 249
No such poetry as this has been written since, and little at
any time before. But Homer would not have attributed to
the pine what belongs to the oak. The tallest pines have
superficial roots ; they certainly are never " deep as high :' oaks
are said to be ; and if the saying is not phytologically true, it
is poetically ; although the oak itself does not quite send
radicem ad Tartara.
There is another small oversight.
Yet only stoodst
Unshaken.
Below we find
Satst unappalled.*
But what verses are the following !
And made hini bow to the gods of his wives. . .
Cast wanton eyes on the daughters of men. • .
After forty days' fasting had remained. . .
And with these words his temptation pursued. . .
Not difficult if thou hearken to me.
It is pleasanter to quote such a description as no poet, not
even IVIilton liimself, ever gave before, of ]\Iorning,
Who with her radiant finger stilled the roar
Of thunder, chased the clouds and laid the winds
And grisly spectres, which the Fiend had raised
To tempt the son of God with terrors dire."
In Catullus we see morning in another aspect ; not per-
sonified : and a more beautiful description, a sentence on the
whole more harmonious, or one in which every verse is better
* But Milton's most extraordinary oversight is in L' Allegro.
Hence loathed Melancholy !
Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born."
Unquestionably he meant to have written Erebus instead of Cerberus,
whom no imagination could represent as the sire of a goddess. Midnight
is scarcely to be converted into one, or indeed into any allegorical person-
age : and the word " blackest " is far from aiding it. Milton is singularly
unfortunate in allegory ; but nowhere more so than here. The daughter
of Cerberus takes the veil, takes the
Sable stole of Cyprus lawn,
and becomes, now her father is out of the way,
A nun devout and pure.
250 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
adapted to its peculiar office, is neither to be found nor
conceived.
Heic qualis flatu placidum mare matutino
Horrificans zephyrus proclivas incitat undas,
Aurora exorieute vagi sub lumina solis,
Qua; tarde primum dementi flamine pulsse
Procedunt, leni resonant plangore cacliinni,
Post, vento crescente, magis magis increbescunt,
Purpureaque prociol nantes a luce refulgent."
Our translation is very inadequate :
As, by the Zephyr ■wakened, underneath
The sun's expansive gaze the waves move on
Slowly and placidly, with gentle plash
Against each other, and light laugh ; but soon,
The breezes freshening, rough and huge they swell,
Afar refulgent in the crimson east.
"What a fall is tliere from these lofty cliffs, dashing back the
waves against the winds that sent them ; what a fall is there to
the " wracks and flaws " wliicli Milton tells us
Are to the main as inconsiderable
And harmless, if not wholesome, as a sneeze.
In the lines below, from the same poem, the good and bad
are strangely mingled : the poet keeping in his verse, however,
the firmness and majesty of his march.
So saying, he caught him up, and, witliout wing
Of liippogrif, bore through the air sublime,
Over the wilderness — and o'er the plain :
Till undei-neath them fair Jerusalem,
The holy city, lifted high her towers.
And higher yet the glorious temple — reared
Her pile, far off appearing like a mount
Of alabaster, topt with golden spires.
Splendid as this description is, it bears no resemblance
whatsoever to the temple of Jerusalem. It is hke one of those
fancies in which the earlier painters of Florence, Pisa, Lucca,
and Siena, were fond of indulging ; not for similitude, but for
effect. The poets of Greece and Eome allowed themselves no
such latitude. The Palace of the Sun, depicted so gorgeously
by Ovid, where imagination might wander unrestricted, con-
tains nowhere an inappropriate decoration.
No two poets are more dissimilar in thought and feeling
THE POEMS OF CATULLUS. 251
than Milton and Catullus ; yet we have chosen to place them
in juxtaposition, because the latin language in the time of
Catullus was nearly in the same state as the english in the time
of Milton. Each had attained its full perfection, and yet the
vestiges of antiquity were preserved in each. Yirgil and Pro-
pertius were, in regard to the one poet, what Dryden and
Waller were in regard to the other. They removed the
archfcisms ; but the herbage grew up rarer and slenderer after
those extirpations. If so consummate a master of versification
as Milton is convicted of faults so numerous and so grave in
it, pardon will the more easily be granted to Catullus. Another
defect is likewise common to both ; namely the disposition or
ordinance of parts. It would be difficult to find in any other
two poets, however low their station in that capacity, two such
signal examples of disproportion as are exhibited in The Nup-
tials of Peleus and Thetis and in The Masque of Comns. The
better part of the former is the description of a tapestry ; the
better part of the latter are three undramatic soliloquies. In
other respects, the oversights of Catullus are fewer : and in
Comus there is occasional extravagance of expression such as
we never find in Catullus, or in the playful Ovid, or in any the
least correct of the ancients. For example, we read of
The ja-girt isles,
That, like to rich an(7 /arious gems, inlay
The unadorned bosom of the deep.
How unadorned, if inlaid Math rich and various gems ? This is
a pendant to be placed exactly opposite :
The silken vest Prince Vortigern had on,
Which from a naked Pict his grandsire won.
We come presently to
The sounds and seas.
Sounds are parts of seas. Comus, on the borders of North
Wales, talks of
A green mantling vine,
That crawls along the side of yon small hill ;
and of
Plucking ripe clusters.
Anon we hear ' of " stabled wolves." What wolves can
252 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
those be ? The faults we find in the poet we have undertaken
to review we shall at the same time freely show.
Carmen I. Ad Cornelium Nejiotem, In verse 4, we read
Jam tuna cum ausus es.
We believe the poet, and all the writers of his age, wrote
qimni. Qiioi for cui grew obsolete much earlier, but was
always thus spelt by Catullus. The best authors at all times
wrote the adverb qtmm.
Carmen II. Ad Passerem Leshice. In verse 8 we read
" acquiescat /' the poet wrote " af/quiescat," which sounds
fuller.
Carmen III. Licctus in Morte Passeris. This poem, and
the preceding, seem to have been admired, both by the ancients
and the moderns, above all the rest. Beautiful indeed they are.
Grammarians may find fault with the hiatus in
factum male/ miselle passer !
poets will not.
We shall now, before we go farther, notice the meter. Ee-
gularly the phaleucian verse is composed of four trochees and
one dactyl : so is the sapphic, but in another order. The
phaleucian employs the dactyl in the second place ; the sapphic
employs it in the third. But the latin poets are fonder of a
spondee in the first. CatuUus frequently admits an iambic ;
as in
Meas esse aliquid putare nugas.
Tua nunc oper& meae puellse. &c.
Carmen IV. Bedicatio PJiaseli. This is a senarian, and
composed of pure iambics. Nothing can surpass its elegance.
The following bears a near resemblance to it in the beginning,
and may be ofl^ered as a kind of paraphrase.
The vessel which lies here at last
Had once stout ribs and topping mast,
And, whate'er wind there might prevail, ^
Was ready for a row or sail.
It now lies idle on its side.
Forgetful o'er the waves to glide.
And yet there have been days of yore
When pretty maids their posies bore
To crown its prow, its deck to trim.
And freight it with a world of whim.
A thousand Btories it could teU,
THE POEMS OF CATULLUS. 253
But it loves secrecy too well.
Come closer, my sweet girl ! pray do !
There may be stil one left for you.
Carmen V. Ad Lesbiam. It is difficult to vary our
expression of delight at reading the three first poems which
Lesbia and her sparrow have occasioned. This is the last of
them that is fervid and tender. There is love in many of the
others, but impure and turbid, and the object of it soon
presents to us an aspect far less attractive.
Carmen VI. Ad Flavium. Whoever thinks it worth his
while to peruse this poem, must enclose in a parenthesis the
words " Nequicquara taciturn.''' Taciturn is here a participle :
and the words mean, " It is in vain that you try to keep it
a secret.''^
Carmen YII. Again to Lesbia. Here, as in all his hen-
decasyllabics, not only are the single verses full of harmony,
a merit to which other writers of them not unfrequently have
attained, but the sentences leave the ear no " aching void," as
theirs do.
Carmen YIII. Ad seipsum. This is the first of the
scazons. The meter in a long poem would perhaps be more
tedious than any. CatuUus, with admirable judgment, has
never exceeded the quantity of twenty-one verses in it. No
poet, uttering his own sentiments on his own condition
in a soliloquy, has evinced such power in the expression
of passion, in its sudden throbs and changes, as Catullus has
done here.
In Doering's edition we read, verse 14,
At tu dolebis, cum rogaberis nuU^,
Scelesta! nocte.
No such pause is anywhere else in the poet. In Scaliger the
verses are.
At tu dolebis, quum rogaberis nulla.
Scelesta rere, quae tibi manet vita.
The punctuation in most foren books, however, and in all
engiish, is too frequent : so that we have snatches and broken
bars of tune, but seldom tune entire. Scaliger's reading
is probably the true one, by removing the comma after rere :
Scelesta rere quse tibi manet vita !
{Consider what must be the remainder of your life !)
254 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Now certainly there were many words obliterated in tlie
only copy of our author. It was found in a cellar^ and under
a wine-barrel. Thus the second word in the second line
appears to have left no traces behind it ; otherwise^ words so
different as node and rere could never have been mistaken.
Since the place is open to conjecture, therefor, and since every
expression round about it is energetic, we might suggest
another reading :
At tu dolebis quum rogaberis nulla,
Scelesta ! nullo. Quae tibi manet vita ?
Quis nunc te adibit ? quoi videberis bella 1
Quern nunc amabis ? quojus esse diceris ?
Quern basiabis ? quoi labella mordebis?
At tu, CatuUe ! destinatus obdura.
"VMiich we will venture to translate :
But you shall grieve while none complains,
None, Lesbia ! None. Think, what remains
For one so fickle, so untrue !
Henceforth, wretched Lesbia ! who
Shall call you dear 1 shall call you his ?
Whom shall you love 1 or who shall kiss
Those lips again ? Catullus ! thou
Be firm, be ever firm, as now.
The angry taunt very naturally precedes the impatient
expostulation. The repetition of mcllo is surely not unex-
pected. Nidliis was of'ten used absolutely in the best times
of latinity. " Ab nullo repetere/' and '' nullo aut paucissimis
prsesentibus," by Sallust. " Qui scire possum ? nullus plus,"
by Plautus. "Vivis his incolumibusque, liber esse nullus
potest," by Cicero.
It may as well be noticed here that hasiare, hasium, hasiatio,
are words unused by Yirgil, Propertius, Horace, Ovid, or
TibuUus, They belonged to Cisalpine Gaul more especially,
altho the root has now extended through all Italy, and
has quite supplanted oscnlum and its descendants. Bellus has
done the same in regard io for mosus, which has lost its footing
in Italy, altho it retains it in Spain, slightly shaken, in
hermoso. The saviari and savium of Plautus, Terence, Cicero,
and Catullus, are never found in the poets of the Augustan
age, to the best of our recollection, excepting once in Propertius.
Carmen IX. Ad Verannium. Nothing was ever livelier
or more cordial than the welcome here given to Veramiius on
THE POEMS OF CATULLUS, 255
his return from Spain. It is comprised in eleven verses.
Our poets^ on such an occasion^ would have spread out a
larger table-cloth with a" less exquisite dessert upon it.
Carmen X. Be Varri Scorto. Instead of expatiating on
thisj which contains^ in truths some rather coarse expressions,
but is witty and characteristical, we will subjoin a paraphrase,
with a few defalcations.
Varrus would take me t' other day
To see a little girl he knew,
Pretty and witty iu her way,
With impudence enough for two.
Scarce are we seated, ere she chatters
(As pretty girls are wont to do)
About all persons, places, matters . .
" And pray, what has been done for you I
"Bithynia, lady!" I replied,
" Is a fine province for a pretor,
For none (I promise you) beside.
And least of all am I her debtor."
" Sorry for that ! " said she. " However
You have brought with you, I dare say,
Some litter bearers : none so clever
In any other part as they.
" Bithynia is the very place
For all that's steddy, tall, and strait ;
It is the nature of the race.
Could not you lend me six or eight 1 "
" Why, six or eight of them or so."
Said I, determined to be grand,
" My fortune is not quite so low
But these are stil at my command."
" You'll send them ? " " Willingly ! " I told her,
Altho I had not here or there
One who could carry on his shoulder
The leg of an old broken chair.
" Catullus ! what a charming hap is
Our meeting in this sort of way !
I would be carried to Serapis
To-morrow." " Stay, fair lady, stay !
"You overvalue my intention.
Yes, there are eight . . there may be nine
I merely had forgot to mention
That they are Cinna's, and not mine.
256 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Catullus lias added two verses which we have not translated,
because they injure the poem.
Sed tu insulsa male et molesta vivis
Per quam non licet esse negligentem.
This, if said at all, ought not to be said to the lady. The
reflection might be (but without any benefit to the poetry)
made in the poet^s own person. Among tlie ancients however,
when we find the events of common life and ordinary people
turned into verse, as here for instance, and in the Praxinoe
of Theocritus, and in another of his where a young person
has part of her attire torn, we never are bored with prolixity
and platitude, in which a dull moral is our best relief at the
close of a dull story.
Carmen XI. AdFurium et Aurelmm. Purius and Aure-
lius were probably the comrades of Catullus in Bithynia. He
appears to have retained his friendship for them not extremely
long. Here he entrusts them with a message for Lesbia,
wliich they were fools if they dehvered, altho there is
abundant reason for believing that their modesty would never
have restramed them. He may well call these
Non bona dicta.
But there are worse in reserve for themselves, on turning
over the very next page. The last verses in the third strophe
are printed
Gallicum Rhenum horribilesgwe ulti-
Mosque Britannos."
The enchtic qzce should be changed to ad, since it could not
support itseK without the intervention of an aspirate,
Gallicum Rhenum horribileis ad ulti-
mosque Britannos."
and the verse " Csesaris visens," &c. placed in a parenthesis.
When the poet wrote these sappliics, his dislike of Csesar
had not begun. Perhaps it was occasioned long afterward,
by some inattention of the great commander to the Valerian
family on his last return from Transalpine Gaul. Here he
writes,
Csesaris visens monimenta magni.
Very different from the contemptuous and scurril language
with wliich he addressed him latterly.
THE POEMS OP CATULLUS. 257
Carmen XII. Ad Asinium PoUionem. Asinius Pollio and
his brother were striplings when this poem was written. The
worst, but most admired of Virgil's Eclogues, was composed
to celebrate the birth of PoUio's son, in his consulate. In
this Eclogue, and in this alone, his versification fails him
utterly. The lines ait'ord one another no support. For in-
stance, tliis sequence.
Ultima Cumsei venit jam carminis setas.
Magnus ab integro sseclorum nascitur ordo,
Jam redit et virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna.
Toss them in a bag and throw them out, and they will fall as
rightly in one place as another. Any one of them may come
first; any one of them may come last; any one of them may
come intermediately ; better that any one should never come
at all. Throughout the remainder of the Eclogue, the ampulla
of Vii-gil is puffier than the worst of Statius or Lucan.
In the poem before us it seems that Asinius, for whose
infant the universe was to change its aspect, for whom grapes
were to hang upon thorns, for whom the hardest oaks were
to exude honey, for whom the rams in the meadows were to
dye their own fieeces with murex and saffron . . this Asinius
picked Catullus's pocket of his handkerchef. Catullus tells
him he is a blockhead if he is ignorant that there is no wit in
such a trick, which he says is a very dirty one, and appeals to
the brother, calling him a smart and clever lad. He declares
he does not mind so much the value of the handkerchef, as
because it was a present sent to him out of Spain by his friends
Eabullus and Veraunius, who united (it seems) their fiscal
forces in the investment. This is among the lighter effusions
of the volume, and worth as little as YirgiFs Eclogue, though
exempt from such grave faidts.
Carmen XIII. Ad Fahidlmii. A pleasant invitation to
dinner.
Verse 8. Plenus sacculus est aranearum.
It is curious that Doering, so sedulous in collecting scraps of
similitudes, never thought of this in Plautus, where the idea
and expression too are so alike.
Ita inaniis sunt oppletm atque araneis.
Let US offer a paraphrase :
258 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
With me, Fabullus, you shall dine,
And gaudily, I promise you.
If you will only bring the wine,
The dinner, and some beaiity too.
With all your frolic, all your fun,
I have some little of my own ;
And nothing else : the spiders run
Throughout my purse, now theii-s alone.
He goes on rather too far, and promises his invited guest
so sweet a perfume, that he shall pray the gods to become all
nose ; that is, we may presume, if no one should intervene to
correct or divert in part a wish so engrossing.
Carmen XIV. Ad Calvum Licininm. The poet seems in
general to have been very inconstant in his friendships : but
there is no evidence that he ever was estranged from Calvus.
This is the more remarkable as Calvus was a poet, the only
poet among his friends, and wrote in the same style. At the
close of the poem here addressed to him, properly ending at
the twenty-third verse, we find four others appended. They
have nothing at all to do with it : they are a worthless frag-
ment : and it is a pity that the wine-cask, which rotted off
and dislocated so many pieces, did not leak on and obliterate
this, and many similar, particularly the two next. We should
then, it may be argued, have known less of the author's
character. So much the better. Unless, by knowing the
evil that is in any one, we can benefit him, or oui'selves, or
society, it is desirable not to know it at all.
Carmen XVII. Ad Coloniam. Here are a few beautiful
verses in a very indifferent piece of poetry. We shall tran-
scribe them, partly for their beauty, and partly to remove an
obscurity.
Quoi quiim sit viridissimo nupta flore puella,
Et puella teuellulo delicatior hado,
Asservanda nigerrimis diligentius uvis ;
Ludere banc sinit ut lubet, nee pili facit uni.
Nee se sublevat ex sua parte ; sed vehit alnus
In fossfi Liguri jacet suppernata securi,
Tantundem omnia sentiens quam si nulla sit usquam,
Talis iste mens stupor nil videt, nihil audit,
Ipse qui sit, utrum sit, an non sit, id quoque nescit.
This is in the spirit of Aristophanes, and we may fancy we
hear his voice in the cantilena. Asservanda should be printed
adservanda ; and supjpernata, siihj^ernata. Liguri is doubtful.
THE POEMS OF CATULLUS. 259
Ligurw is the genitive case of Ligur. The Ligurians may in
ancient times, as in modern, have exercised their industry
out of their own country, and the poorer of them may have
been hewers of wood. Then seciiris Ligtin?, woukl be the right
interpretation. But there are few countries in which there
are fewer ditches, or fewer alders, than in Liguria : we, who
have travelled through the country in all directions, do not
remember to have seen a single one of either. It would be
going farther, but going where both might be found readily,
if we went to the Liger, and red " In fossa lA^Gxis."
Carmina XVIII., XIX., XX. Ad Priapum. The first of
these tliree is a Dedication to the God of Gardens. In the
two following the poet speaks in his own person. The first
contains only four lines. The second is descriptive, and
terminates with pleasantry.
pueri ! malas abstinete rapinas !
Vicinus prope dives est, negligensque Priapus ;
Inde sumite ; semita hsec deinde vos feret ipsa.
In the third are these exquisite verses :
Mihi corolla picta vere ponitur,
Mihi rubens arista sole fei-vido,
Mihi virente dulcis uva pampino,
Mihique glauca dure oliva frigore.
Meis capella delicata pascuis
In urbem adulta lacte portat ubera,
Meisque pingnis agnus ex ovilibus
Gravem domuni remittit ajre desteram,
Teneraque madre mugiente vaccula
Detiin profundit ante templa sanguinem.
We wiU attempt to translate them.
In spring the many-colour'd crown,
The sheafs in summer, ruddy-brown,
The autumn's twisting tendrils green.
With nectar-gushing grapes between.
Some pink, some purple, some bright gold,
Then shrivel'd olive, blue with cold.
Are all for me : for me the goat
Comes with her milk from hills remote,
And fatted lamb, and calf pursued
By moaning mother, sheds her blood.
The third verse, as printed in this edition and most others,
is contrary to the laws of meter in the pure iambic.
s 2
260 THE LAST FUUIT OFF AN OLD TEEE.
Agellulum hunc, sinistra, tute quam vides.
And Uite is inelegant and useless. Scaliger proposed " sinis-
tera ante quern vides/' He was near the mark^ but missed it ;
for Catullus would never have written " sinistera." It is very
probable that he wrote the verse
Agellulum hunc sinistrk, inante quern vides.
On the left hand, just before you.
Inante and exante were applied to time rather than place, but
not exclusively.
Carmen XXII. Ad Varrum. Tliis may be adviintageously
contracted in a paraphrase.
Suffenus, whom so well you know,
My Varrus, as a wit and beau.
Of smart address and smirking smile,
Will write you verses by the mile.
You can not meet with daintier fare
Than titlepage and binding are;
But when you once begin to read
You find it sorry stufiP indeed,
And you are ready to cry out
Upon this beau, Ah! what a lout!
No man on earth so pi'oud as he
Of his own precious poetry,
Or knows such perfect bliss as when
He takes in hand that nibbled pen.
Have we not all some faults like these ?
Are we not all SufFenuses?
In others the defect we find.
But can not see our sack behind.
Carmen XXA''. Ad Tlicdlnm. It is hardly safe to steal a
laugh here, and yet it is difficult to refrain from it. Some of
the verses must be transposed. Those which are printed
Thalle ! turbidS, rapacior procelld,
Cmn de via mulier aves ostendit oscitantes,
Remitte pallium mihi, meum quod involaste,
ought to be printed,
Thalle ! turbidd rapacior procellA,
Remitte pallium mihi, meum, quod involaste
Quum " devias " mulier aves ostendit oscitantes.
This shows that Thallus had purloined Catullus's cloak
wliile he was looking at a nest of owls j for such are device
THE POEMS OF CATULLUS. 261
aves, and so they are called by Ovid. It is doubtful whether
the right reading is oscitaides, " opening their beaks/^ or
oscinentes, which is applied to birds that do not sing ; by
Valerius Maximus to crows, by Livy to birds of omen. In the
present case we may believe them to be birds of augury, and
inauspicious, as the word always signifies, and as was manifest
in the disaster of Catullus and his cloak. In the eleventh
verse there is a false quantity :
Inusta turpiter tibi flagella consc?'ibillent.
Was there not such a word as contribulo ?
Carmen XXIX. Ad Cmsarem. This is the poem by which
the author, as Cicero remarks, affixes an eternal stigma on the
name of Cassar, but wliich the most powerful and the best
tempered man in the world heard without any expression of
anger or concern. The punctuation appears ill-placed in the
sixteenth and seventeenth verses.
Quid est ? ait sinistra liberalitas :
Parum expatravit. An paruni helluatus est ?
We would write them.
Quid est? ain? Sinistra liberalitas
Parutu expatravit? &c.
" Where is the harm ? do you ask ? What ! has this left-
handed liberality of his," &c.
Carmen XXX. Ad Alphemim. A poem of sobs and sighs,
of complaint, reproach, tenderness, sad reflection, and pure
l^oetry.
Carmen XXXI. Ad Sirmionem Feninsidam. Never was a
return to home expressed so sensitively and beautifully as here.
In the thirteenth line we find
Gaudete vosque Lydise lacus undje.
The " Lydian waves of the lake " would be an odd expression.
Although, according to a groundless and somewhat absurd
tradition,
Gens Lyda jugis insedit Etruscis,
yet no gens Li/da could ever have penetrated to these Alpine
regions. One of the Etrurian nations did penetrate so far,
whether by conquest or expulsion is uncertain. But Catullus
here calls upon Sirmio to rejoice in Ms return, and he invites
263 THE LAST PRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
the waves of the lake to laugh. Whoever has seen this beau-
tiful expanse of water, under its bright sun and gentle breezes,
will understand the poet's expression ; he will have seen the
waves laugh and dance. Catullus, no doubt, wrote
Gaudete yosque " Iwdise " lactis undse !
Ye revellers and dancers of the lake !
If there was the word Indius, which we know there was, there
must also have been India.
Carmen XXXIV. Ad Dianam. A hymn, of the purest
simplicity.
Carmen XXXV. Cacilmm invited. It appears that Csecilius,
like Catullus, had written a poem on Cybele. Catullus invites
him to leave Como for Verona :
Quamvis Candida millies puella
Euntem revocet, manusque coUo
Ambas injiciens roget morari.
Wliich may be rendered :
Although so passing fair a maid
Call twenty times, be not delayed;
Nay, do not be delayed although
Both arms around your neck she throw.
Tor it appears she was desperately in love with him from the
time he had written the poem. Catullus says it is written so
beautifully, that he can pardon the excess of her passion.
Carmen XXXIX. In Egnaiimn. This is the second time
he has ridiculed Egnatius, a Celtiberian, and overfond of dis-
playing his teeth by continually laughing. Part of the poem
is destitute of merit, and indelicate : the other part may be
thus translated, or paraphrased rather :
Egnatius has fine teeth, and those
Eternally Egnatius shows.
Some criminal is being tried
For murder; and they open wide ;
A widow wails her only son ;
Widow and him they open on.
'Tis a disease, I'm very sure,
And wish 'twere such as you could cure.
My good Egnatius ! for what's half
So silly as a silly laugh 1
We can not agree with Doering that we should read
Aut porcm Umber aut obesus Etruscus. Ferse 11.
THE POEMS OF CATULLUS. 263
First, because the porous and obesiis convey the same meaning
without any distinction ; and secondly, because the distinction
is necessary both for the poet and the fact. The Etrurians
were a most luxurious people ; the Umbrians a pastoral and
industrious one. He wishes to exhibit a contrast between
these two nations, as he has done in the preceding verse
between what is urbane and what is Sabine. Therefor he
wrote,
Aut " parous " Umber aut obesus Hetniscus,
Carmen XL. Ad Bav'uhim, The sixth verse is printed im-
properly
Quid vis ? qua lubet esse notus optas ? "
Read
Quid vis] qua lubet esse notus? opta.
" Opta," make your option.
Carmen XLII. Ad Qnandani. We shoidd not notice this
"Ad Quandam" were it not to correct a mistake of Doering.
" Eidentem canis ore Gallicani." His note on this expression
is, " Epitheton ornans, pro qiiovis cane venatico cujus rictus
est latior.''^ No, the canis gaUicus is the greyhound, whose
rictus is indeed much latior than that of other dogs ; and
Catullus always uses words the most characteristic and expressive.
Carmen XLV, Be Acme et Septiniio. Perhaps this poem
has been admired above its merit. But there is one exqui-
sitely fine passage in it, and replete with that harmony which,
as we have already had occasion to remark, Catullus alone has
given to the phaleucian metre.
At Acme leviter caput reflectens,
Et dulcis pueri ebrios ocellos
Isto purpureo ore saviata,
" Sic," inquit, " mea vita Septimille !
Huic uno domino usque serviamus.
Carmen XLYI. Be Adventu Veris. He leaves Phrygia in
the beginning of spring, and is about to visit the celebrated
cities of maritime Asia. What beauty and vigour of expres-
sion is there in
Jam mens prsetrepidans avet vagari,
Jam laeti studio pedes vigescunt.
There is also much tenderness at the close in the short valedic-
tion to his companions, who set out together with him in the
&
^64 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
expedition, and will return (whenever tliey do return) by-
various roads into tlieir native country.
Carmen L. Ad Licinium. On the day preceding the com-
position of this poem, he and Licinius had agreed to write to-
gether in different meters, and to give verse for verse. Catullus
was so delighted with the performances of Licinius, that he
could never rest, he tells us, until he had signified it by this
graceful little poem.
Carmen LI. This is a translation from Sappho's ode, and
perhaps is the first that had ever been attempted into latin,
although there is another which precedes it in the volume.
Nothing can surpass the graces of this, and it leaves us no
regret but that we have not more translations by him of Sappho's
poetry. He has copied less from the greek than any latin poet
had done before TibuUus.
The adonic at the close of the second strophe is lost. Many
critics have attempted to substitute one. In the edition before
us we find,
Simul te
Lesbia ! adspexi, nihil est super mi
Vocis in ore.
A worse can not be devised.
Quod loguar amens
would be better. The ode ends, and always ended with
Lumina nocte.
Carmen LIII. De Qmdam et Calvo. Calvus, as well as
Cicero, spoke publicly against Yatinius. It will be requisite
to write out the five verses of which this piece of Catullus is
composed.
Risi nescio quem modo in corona
Qui quum mirifice Vatiuiana
Mens crimina Calvus explicasset,
Admiraus ait bsec manusque toUens,
Du magui ! salaputium disertum !
Doering's note on the words is this : " Vox nova, ridicula
et, ut videbatur, j!5/e(5(?fa {Salaputmm). CatuUum ad hos versus
scribendos impulit." He goes on to put into prose what
Catullus had told us in verse, and adds, " Catullus a risu sibi
temperare non potuit." Good Herr Hoering does not see
where' s the fun. It lies in the fact of Calvus being a very
little man, and in the clown hearing a very little man so
THE POEMS OF CATULLUS. 205
eloquent, and crying out, " Heavens above ! what a clever
little coclcij !" The word should not be written " salapu^Jium/'
but " salapu^ium." The termination in um is a signification
of endearment ; as deliciohm for delicia: : and correspondently
the ov in Greek ; Traibcov, for instance, and -naihapiov. It can
not be salepijgium, as some critics have proposed, because the
third syllable in this word (supposing there were any such)
would, according to its greek origin, be short. Perhaps the
best reading may be " sah'pusium," from sal and pusiiis.
Eustic terms are unlikely to be compounded with accuracy.
In old latin the word, or words, would be sali (for sails)
pusium. But t is equivalent to-?; and the modern. Italian,
which is founded on the most ancient latin, ]\2i%putto.
Oaemen LIV. Ad Casarem.
Fuffitio seni recocto.
On this is the note " Homo recoctus jam dicitur qni in rebus
agendis din multumque agitatus, versatus, exercitatus, et quasi
percodus, rerum naturam penitus perspexit,^^ &c.
Surely these qualities are not such as Catullus or Caesar
ought to be displeased with. But " senex recoctus" means an
old dandy boiled up into youth again in Medea^s caldron. In
this poem Catullus turns into ridicule no other than personal
peculiarities and defects, first in Otho, then in Libo, lastly in
Puffitius.
Carmen LVII. In Mamurrani et Casarem. If Caesar had
hired a poet to write such wretched verses as these and swear
them to Catullus, he could never in any other way have more
injured his credit as a poet. The Bug Cessans Anti-Catones,
which are remembered as having been so bulky, could never
have fallen on Cato so fatally as this Anti-Catullus on
Catullus.
Carmen LXI. Be Nuptiis Julice et Maulii. Never was
there, and never will there be probably, a nuptial song of
equal beauty. But in verse 129 there is a false quantity as
now printed, and quite unnoticed by the editor.
Desertum domini audiens.
^— The meter does not admit a spondee for the cccond foot : it
'/ivziiJ^fw*^ be a trochee; and this is obtained by the true reading,
" Desitum."
Carmen LXII. Another nuptial song, and properly an
260 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Epithalamium, in heroic verse, and very masterly. It seems
incredible however that the last lines, beginning
At tu ne pugna,
were written by Catullus. They are trivial : and beside, the
young singing men never have sung so long together in the
former parts assigned to them. The longest of these consists
of nine verses, with the choral
Hymen, Hymensee !
and the last would contain eleven with it, even after rejecting
these seven which intervene, and which, if admitted, would
double the usual quantity. We would throw them out because
there is no room for them, and because they are trash.
Carmen LXIII. This has ever been, and ever will be, the
admiration of all who can distinguish the grades of poetry.
The thirty-ninth verse is printed,
Piger his labantes languore oculos sopor operifc.
The meter will not allow it. "We must read, " labantg lan-
guore," although the construction may be somewhat less
obvious. The words are in the ablative absolute, " Sleep
covers their eyes, a languor dropping over tliem.''^
Verse 64 should be printed " gymnasj," not gymnasii.
The seventy-fifth and seventy-sixth lines must be reversed, and
instead of
Geminas " Oeorum " ad aures nova nuncia referens
Ibi juncta juga resolveus Cybele leonibus
Laevumque pecoris hostem stimulans,
read
Ibi juncta juga resolvens Cybele leouibus,
Geminas " eorum " ad aureis nova nuucia referens, &c.
Carmen LXIV. NuptlcR Pelei et Thetidis. Among many
excellences of the highest order, there are several faults and
inconsistencies in this heroic poem.
Verse 15. lUaque haudque alia, &c.
It is incredible that Catullus should have written " haud^z^e.''
Verse 37. Pharsaliam coeunt, Pharsalia rura frequentant.
No objection can be raised against this reading. " Pharsaliam"
is a trisyllable. The i sometimes coalesces with another vowel,
as a and <? do. In Virgil we find
THE POEMS OF CATULLUS. 267?
Stellio et lucifugis.
Aurea eomposuit spond^,
Una eademque via.
Uno eodemque igni.
Perque serea scuta.
Verses 58 and tlie following are out of tlieir order. Tliey
stand tlius :
Rura colit nemo : mollescunt colla juvencis :
Non humilis curvis purgatur vinea rastris :
Non glebain prouo convellit vomere taurus :
Non falx attenuat frondatorum arboris umbram :
Squalida desertis robigo infei'tur aratris.
The proper and natural series is, together with the right
punctuation,
Rura colit nemo : mollescunt colla juvencis,
Non glebam prono convellit vomere taurus ;
Squalida desertis robigo infertur aratris.
Non humilis curvis purgatur vinea rastris,
Non falx attenuat frondatorum arboris umbram.
Because here the first, the second, and the third, refer to the
same labour, that of ploughing : the fourth and fifth to the
same also, that of cultivating the two kinds of vineyard. In
one kind the grapes are cut low, and fastened on poles wdtli
bands of withy, and raked between : in the other they
are trained against trees : formerly the tree preferred was the
elm; at present it is the maple, particularly in Tuscany.
The branches are lopt and thinned when the vines are pruned,
to let in sun and air. By ignorance of such customs in
agriculture, many things in the classics are mistaken. Few
people know the meaning of the words in Horace,
Cum duplice ficu.
Most fancy it must be the purple fig and the yellow. But
there is also a green one. The Italians, to dry their figs the
more expeditiously, cut them open and expose them on the
pavement before their cottages. They then stick two together,
and this is duplew Jicus.
We now come to graver faults (and faults certainly the
poet's) than a mere transposition of verses. In the palace of
Peleus there is a piece of tapestry which takes up the best
part of the poem.
Hsec Testis priscis hominum variata figuris,
26 S THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
exliibits tlie story of Theseus and Ariadne. Their adventures
could not have happened five-and-twenty years before these
nuptials. Of the Argo, which carried Peleus when Thetis fell
in love with him, the poet says, as others do.
Ilia rudem cursu prima imbuit Amphitriten,
But, in the progress of sixty lines, we find that vessels had
been sailing to Crete every year, with the Athenian youths
devoted to the Minotaur. Castor and Pollux sailed in the
Argo with Peleus ; and Helen, we know, was their sister :
she was about the same age as AchiUes, and Theseus had run
away with her before Paris had. But equal inconsistencies
are to be detected in the vEneid, a poem extolled, century
after century, for propriety and exactness. An anachronism
quite as strange as this of Catullus, is in the verses on
Acragas, Agrigeutum.
Arduus inde Acragas ostentat maxima longe
Moenia, magnanimum quondam generator equorum.
Whether the city itself was built in the age of J^jueas is not
the question ; but certainly the breed of horses was introduced
by the Carthagenians, and improved by Hiero and Gelon.
The breed of the iland is small, as it is in all mountainous
countries, where the horses are never found adapted to cha-
riots, any more than chariots are adapted to surfaces so
uneven.
Yerse 83, for " Fiinem Cecropise," &c., we must read
" Tuh'is Cecropise."
Verse 119. '^ Quae misera,'' &c., is supposititious.
Verse 178. Idomeiuos-tu petam montes? at gurgite lato, &c.
Idomeneus was unborn in the earlier days of Theseus. Pro-
bably the verses were written,
Idam ideone petam 1 Montes (ah gurgite vasto
Discemens !) pouti truculentum dividit sequor.
Verse 191. Nothing was ever grander or more awful than
the adjuration of Ariadne to the Eumenides.
Quare facta virdm multantes vindice poena
Eumenides ! quarum anguineo redimita capillo
Frons expirantes prwportat pectoris iras,
Hue, hue adventate I
THE POEMS OF CATULLUS. 269
Verse 199. Doering explains,
Vos nolite pati nostrum vanescere luctum,
" Li?pmtitiiM TcameTe." What? her grief ? Does she pray that
her grief may not remain unpunished ? No, she implores that
the prayers that arise from it may not be in vain.
Verse 212. Namque ferunt olim [classi cum moenia Divse]
Linquentem, natum, ventis concrederet ^Egeus,
Talia complexum juveni mandata dedisse.
The monlcl of the barrel has been doing sad mischief there.
We must read
Namque ferunt, natum ventis quum crederat -^Egeus.
Verse 250. At parte ex aliS,.
This scene is the subject of a noble picture by Titian, now
in the British Gallery. It has also been deeply studied by
Nicolas Poussin. But there is a beauty which no painting
can attain in
Plangebant alii proceris tympana palmis,
Aut tereti tenues tinnitus cere ciebant.
Soon follows that exquisite description of morning on the
sea-side, already transcribed, and placed by the side of Milton's
personification.
Verse 340. Nascetur vobis expers teiToris Achilles,
Hostihus haucl tergo seel forti pectore notus.
Qui perssepe vagi victor eertamine cursils
Fiammea prtevertet celeris vestigia cei'vi.
It is impossible that Catullus, or any poet whatever, can
have written the second of these. Some stupid critic must
have done it, who fancied that the " expers terroris" was
not clearly and sufficiently proven by urging the car over the
field of battle, and had Kttle or nothing to do in outstripping
the stag.
Verse 829. Rarely have the Fates sung so sweetly as in
these to Peleus.
Adveniet tibi jam portans optata maritis
Hesperus, adveniet fausto cum sidere conjux.
Quae tibi flexanimo mentem perfundat amore
Languidulosque paret tecum conjungere somnos,
Lajvia substerneus robusto bracliia coUo.
Carmen LXV. Ad Hortalwm. He makes his excuse to
270 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Hortalus for delaying a compliance with his wishes for some
verses. This delay he tells him was occasioned by tlie death
of his brother, to whom he was most affectionately attached,
and whose loss he laments in several of liis poems. In this
he breaks forth into a very pathetic appeal to him :
Alloquai' 1 audiero nunquam tua facta loquentem ?
Nunquam ego te, vita frater amabilior,
Adspiciam postliac ! At certe semper amabo,
Semper msesta tud carmina morte canam.
The two following lines are surely supposititious. Thinking
with such intense anguish of his brother's death, he could find
no room for so frigid a conceit as that about the Daulian bird
and Ityius. This is almost as much out of place, though not
so bad in itself, as the distich which heads the epistle of Dido
to JEneas in Ovid.
Sic, ubi Fata vocant, udis abjectus in berbis
Ad vada Mceandri conciuit albus olor.
As if the Fates were busied in " calling white swans \" Ovid
never composed any such trash. The epistle in fact begins
with a verse of consummate beauty, tenderness, and gravity.
Verse 21. Quod miserte oblitse molli sub veste locatum,
Dum adventu mati-is prosilit, excutitur.
These require another punctuation.
Quod miserse (oblitse molli sub veste locatum).
The Germans, to whom we owe so much in every branch of
learning, are not always fortunate in tlieir punctuation : and
perhaps never was any thing so subversive of harmony as that
wliich Heyne has given us in a passage of Tibullus.
Blanditiis vult esse locum Venus ipsa.
Who could ever doubt this fact ? that even Yenus herself wiU
admit of blandishments ! But Tibullus laid down no such
truism. Heyne writes it thus, and proceeds,
querelis
Supplicibus, miseris fietibus, ilia favet.
The tender and harmonious poet wrote not " Blanditiis " but
" Bland^tis.
Blanditis vult esse locum Venus ipsa querelis ;
Supplicibus, miseris, flentibus, ilia favet.
THE POEMS OP CATULLUS. 271
Here the "blanditijE" are quite out of the question; but the
"hlanclit(R querela" are complaints softly expressed and
coaxingly preferred.
To return to Catullus. The following couplet is,
Atque illud prono prajceps agitur decursu ;
Huic ruanat tiisti couscius ore rubor.
Manat can hardly be applicable to rubor. We would prefer,
Huic manet in tristi conscius ore rubor
the opposite to " agitur " decursu.
They whose ears have been accustomed to the Ovidian
elegiac verse, and have been taught at school that every
pentameter should close with a dissyllable, will be apt to find
those of CatuUas harsh and negligent. But let them only
read over, twice or thrice, the twelve first verses of this poem,
and their ear will be cured of its infirmity. By degrees they
may be led to doubt whether the worst of all Ovid^s conceits
is not his determination to give every alternate verse this
syllabic uniformity.
Carmen LXVI. Be Coma Berenices. This is imitated from
a poem of Callimachus, now lost. Probably it was an early
exercise of our poet, corrected afterward, but insufficiently. The
sixth verse, however, is exquisite in its cadence.
Ut Triviam furtim sub Latmia saxa relegans
Didcis amor gyro devocat aerio.
Verse 27. Anne bonum oblita es facinus, quo regium adepta es
Conjugium, quod non fortior ausit alls.
Berenice is said to have displayed great courage in battle. To
render the second verse intelligible, we must admit alls for
alius, as al/d is used for aliud in Lucretius. IMoreover, we
must givejhrtior the expression of strengtlt, not of courage, as
forte throughout Italy at the present time expresses never
courage, always strength. The sense of the passage then is,
" Have you forgotten the great action by which you won your
husband ? an action which one much stronger than yourself
would not have attempted.'" For it would be nonsense to say,
" You have performed a brave action which a braver person
would not have dared." In the sense of Catullus are those
passages of Sallust and Virgil,
Neque a " fortissimis " infirmissimo generi resisti posse.
"Forti" fidis equo.
Verse 65. Virgirds, et sa3vi contingens namque Leonis Lumina.
272 THE LAST rUUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Namqiie may be the true reading. The editor has adduced
two examples from Pkutus to show the probabihtj of it, but
fails.
Quando hsec iunata est nam tibi. Pers. ii. 5, 13.
Quid tibi ex filio nam eegre est. Bacch. v. 1. 20.
He seems unaware that nam, in the first, is only a part of
quid-nam, the quid being separated ; quando-nam, the same for
ecquando [ede quando) "tell me when/^ quimiam, &c. : but
namqne is not in the like condition, and in this place it is
awkward. The nam added to the above words is always an
interrogative.
Carmen LXYII. Ad Januam, Sj-c.
Verse 31. Atqui non solum se dicit cognitum habere
Brixia, Cycnffiaj supposita speculse,
Flatus quam molli jtercuvrit jlumine Mela,
Brixia Veronse mater amata mese.
Why should the sensible Marchese Scipione Maffei have
taken it into his head that the last couplet is spurious ? What
a beautiful verse is that in italics !
Carmen LXVIII. Ad Mardium. A rambling poem quite
unworthy of the author. The verses from the beginning of the
twenty-sixth to the close of the thirtieth aj)pertain to some
other piece, and break the context. Doering has given a
strange interpretation to
Veronse turpe Catullo, &e.
The true meaning is much more obvious and much less
delicate. In the sixty-third we must read "At" for "Ac:"
this helps the continuity. After the seventy-third, we must
omit, as belonging to another place, all, until we come to
verse 143. Here w^e catch the thread again. The interme-
diate lines belong to two other poems; both perhaps addressed
to Manlius ; one relating to the death of the poet^'s brother,
the other on a very different subject : we mean the fragment
just now indicated,
Quare quod scribis, Verona? turpe Catullo, (fee.
Verse 145. Sed furtiva dedit mira munuscula nocte,
Ipsius ex ipso demta viri gremio.
The verses are thus worded and punctuated in Doering's
edition and others, but improperly. " 3Iird nocte " is non-
sense. We must read the lines thus :
Or thus
THE POEMS OF CATULLUS. 273
Sed furfciva dedit mire muuuscula nocte
Ipsius ex ipso, &c.
Sed furtiva dedit media munuscula nocte
Ipsius ex ipso demta viri gremio.
Verse 147. Quare illud satis est, si nobis is datur unus,
Quern lapide ilia diem candidiore uotat,
Doering thus interprets :
Quare jam illud mihi satis est, si ilia vel unum diem, quem mecwn vixit,
ut diom faustum felicemque albo lapide insigniat.
That the verses have no such meaning is evident from the
preceding :
Quse tamen etsi uno non est contenta Catullo
Kara verecundee furta feremus hereB.
This aboHshes the idea of one single day contenting him,
contented as lie professes himself to be with little aberrations
and infidelities. Scaliger has it :
Quare illud satis est, si nobis id datur unis :
Quod lapide ilia dies candidiore uotat.
And it appears to us that Scaliger has given the first line
correctly ; but not the punctuation. We should prefer,
Quare illud satis e^t, si nobis id datur unis
Quo lapide ilia diem candidiore notet.
"Quo," ob quod.
Verses 69, 70. Trito fulgentem in limine plantam
Innisa arguta constitit in soled.
The slipper could not be arguta while she was standing in
it. Scaliger reads " co'usiii'mt solea,'^ The one is not sense :
the other is neither sense nor latin, unless the construction is
constituit jdajitam ; and then aU the other words are in disarray.
The meaning is, " she placed her foot against the door, and,
withotd speaking, rapped it with her sounding slipper ;" then
the words would be " ari^uta conticuit solea."
Verse 78. Nil mihi tarn valde placeat, Rhamnusia virgo,
Quod temere invitis suscipiatur heris.
In Scaliger it is :
Quh,m temere, &c.
274 THE LAST PRUIT OPF AN OLD TKEE.
The true reading is neither, but
Qukm lit tern ere.
Such elisions are found in this very poem and the preceding :
Ne amplius a misero.
and.
Qui ipse sui gnati.
Carmen LXXI. Ad Virronem. Doering thinks, as others
have done, that the poem is against Virro. On the contrary,
it is a facetious consolation to him on the punishment of his
rival.
Mirifice est a te nactus utrumque malum,
means only "for his offence against you.'' We have a little
more to add on this in CXV.
Cajimen LXXV. Ad Leshiam. Here are eight verses,
the rhytlim of which plunges from the ear into the heart. Our
attempt to render them in English is feeble and vain.
None could ever say that she,
Lesbia ! was so loved by me.
Never all the world around
Faith so true as mine was found :
If no longer it endures
(Would it did !) the fault is yours.
I can never think again
Well of you : I try in vain :
But . . be false , . do what you will . .
Lesbia ! I must love you stil.
Carmen LXXVI. Ad seipsum. They whose ears retain
only the sound of the hexameters and pentameters they recited
and wrote at school, are very unlikely to be greatly pleased
with the versification of this poem. Yet perhaps one of equal
earnestness and energy was never written in elegiac meter.
Sentences must be red at once, and not merely distichs ; then
a fresh harmony will spring up exuberantly in every part of it,
into which many discordant verses will sink and lose them-
selves, to produce a part of the effect. It is, however, difficult
to restrain a smile at such expressions as these from such
a man.
Si vitam puriter egi,
Dii ! reddite ml hoc pro pietate meS, I
THE POEMS OF CATULLUS. 275
Carmen LXXXV. De Amore siio.
Odi et amo. Qaare id faciam, fortasse requiris:
Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.
The words in italics are flat and prosaic : tlie thought is
beautiful, and similar to that expressed in LXXV.
I love and hate. Ah ! never ask why so !
I hate and love . . and that is all I know.
I see 'tis folly, but I feel 'tis woe.
Carmen XCII. De Leshia. The fourth verse is printed,
Quo signol quasi non totidem mox deprecor illi
Assidue.
Mox and assidue can not stand together. Jacobs has given a
good emendation.
Quasi non totidem mala depreeer illi, &c.
Carmen XCIII. In Cmsarem. Nothing can be imagined
more contemptuous than the indifference he here affects
toward a name destined in all after ages to be the principal
jewel in the highest crowns : and, thinking of Cesar's genius,
it is difficult to see without derision the greatest of those who
assume it. Catullus must have often seen, and we have
reason to believe he personally knew, the conqueror of Gaul
when he wrote this epigram.
I care not, Ca3sar, what you are,
Nor know if you be brown or fair.
Carmen XCV. De Smyrna CimicB Poetce. There is notliiug
of this poem, in whicli Cinna^s Smyrna is extolled, wortli
notice, excepting the last line ; and that indeed not for what
we read in it, but for what we have lost.
Parva mei mihi sunt cordi monumenta ..."
The word " mon?<menta" is spelt improperly : it is '^ moni-
menta.'" The last word in the verse is wanting : yet we have
seen quoted^ and prefixed to volumes of poetry :
Parva mei mihi sunt cordi monumenta laboris.
But Catullus is not speaking of himself: he is speaking
of Cinna : and the proper word comes spontaneously
" sodalis."
X 2.
276 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD THEE.
Carmen XCIX. Ad Juventium.
Multis diluta labella
Guttis abstersisti omnibus artlcuUs.
How few will this verse please ! but liow greatly those few !
Carmen CI. In/eria ad Fratris Tanmlimi. lu these verses
there is a sorrowful but a quiet solemnity, wliich we rarely find
in poets on similar occasions. The grave and firm voice,
which has uttered the tliird, breaks down in the fourth.
Multas per gentes et multa per requora vectus
Adveni has iniseras, frater, ad inferias,
Ut te postremo donarem muuere mortis
Et mutum nequidquam alloquerer cinerem.
Unusual as is the cadence, the caesura, who would wish
it other than it is ? If there were authority for it, we would
readj in the sixth, instead of
Heu misei- indigne frater ademte mihi !
Heu niniis, &c.
Because just above we have,
Adveni has itiiseras, frater, ad inferias.
Carmen ex. AdAnfilenam. Doering says, " Utrum poetse
an scribarum socordia tribuenda sit, qua ultimi hujus carminis
versus laborant, obscuritas, pro suo quisque statuat arbitrio.
ToUi quidem potest heec obscuritas, sed emendandi genere
liherrimo." We are not quite so sure of that : we are only
sure that we find no obscurity at all in them. The word
factum is understood, and would be inelegant if it could have
found for itself a place in the verse.
Carmen CXV. It is requisite to transcribe the verses here
to show that Doering is mistaken in two places ; he was, at
LXXI., in one orJy.
Prata arva, iugentes sylvas saltusque jjaludesque
Usque ad Hyperboreos et mare ad Ocean um.
Omnia magna hajc sunt, tamen ipse est maxim-us ulior.
He quotes LXXL, forgetting that that poem is addressed to
Yirro, and this to Mamurra, under his old nickname : Mamurra,
whatever else he might be, was no waxinms tiltor here. The
context will show what the word should be. Mamurra, by his
own account, is possessor of meadow ground and arable ground,
THE POEMS OF CATULLUS. 277
of woods, forests, and marshes, from the Hj'perboreaus to the
Atlantic. " These are great things/^ says Catullus, " but he
himself is great hej/ond them all ■" " ipse est maximus, ultra :"
sc. Hyperboreas et Oceanum.
In how ditlerent a style, how artificially, with what infinite
fuss and fury, has Horace addressed Virgil on the death of
QuintiHus Varus. Melpomene is called from a distance, and
several more persons equally shadowy are brought forward ;
and then Virgil is honestly told that, if he could sing and play
more blandly than the Thracian Orpheus, he never could re-
animate an empty image which j\Iercury had drawn off among
his " black flock!"
In selecting a poet for examination, it is usual either to
extol him to the skies, or to tear him to pieces and trample on
him. Editors in general do the former : critics ou editors
more usually the latter. But one poet is not to be raised by
casting another under him. Catullus is made no richer by an
attempt to transfer to him what belongs to Horace, nor Horace
by what belongs to Catullus. Catullus has greatly more than
he ; but he also has much ; and let him keep it. We are not
at liberty to indulge in frowardness and caprice, snatching a
decoration from one and tossing it over to another. We will
now sum up what we have collected from the mass of materials
which has been brought before us, laying down some general
rules and observations.
There are four things requisite to constitute might, majesty,
and dominion, in a poet : these are creativeness, constructive-
ness, the sublime, the pathetic. A poet of the first order must
have formed, or taken to himself and modified, some great
subject. He must be creative and constructive. Creativeness
may work upon old materials : a new world may spring from
an old one. Shakspeare found Hamlet and Ophelia ; he found
Othello and Desdemona : nevertheless he, the only universal
poet, carried this, and all the other qualifications, far beyond
the reach of competitors. He was creative and constructive,
he was sublime and pathetic, and he has also in his humanity
condescended to the familiar and the comic. There is nothing
less pleasant than the smile of Milton ; but at one time Momus,
at another the Graces, hang upon the neck of Shakspeare.
Poets whose subjects do not restiict them, and whose ordinary
gait displays no indication of either greave or buskin, if they
278 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TEEE.
want the facetious and humorous^ and are not creative^ nor
sublime^ nor pathetic^ must be ranked by sound judges in the
secondary order_, and not among the foremost even there.
Cowper, and Byron^ and Southey, "with much and deep ten-
derness, are richly humorous. Wordsworth, grave, elevated,
observant, and philosophical, is equidistant from humour and
from passion. Always contemplative, never creative, he
delights the sedentary and tranquilizes the excited. I^o tear
ever fell, no smile ever glanced, on his pages. With him you
ore beyond the danger of any turbulent emotion, at terror, or
valour, or magnanimity, or generosity. Nothing is there about
him like Burns's Scots icha hue ivi' Wallace hied, or Campbell's
Battles of Copenhagen and Hohenlinden, or those exquisite
works which, in Hemans, rise up like golden spires among
broader but lower structures, Ivan and CasaUanca. Byron,
often impressive and powerful, never reaches the heroic and the
pathetic of these two poems ; and he wants the freshness and
healthiness we admire in Burns. But an indomitable fire of
poetry, the more vivid for the gloom about it, bursts through
the crusts and crevices of an unsound and hollow mind. He
never chatters with chiUiness, nor falls overstrained into
languor ; nor do metaphysics ever muddy his impetuous and
precipitate stream. It spreads its ravages in some places, but
it is limpid and sparkling everywhere. If no story is well told
by him, no character well dehneated, if all resemble one another
by their beards and Turkish dresses, there is however the first
and the second and the third requisite of eloquence, whether in
prose or poetry, vigour. But no large poem of our days is so
animated, or so truly of the heroic cast, as Ilarmion. Southey's
Roderick has less nerve and animation : but what other living
poet has attempted, or shown the ability, to erect a structure
so symmetrical and so stately ? It is not enough to heap de-
scription on description, to cast reflection over reflection : there
must be development of character in the development of story;
there must be action, there must be passion ; the end and the
means must alike be great.
The poet whom we mentioned last is more studious of
classical models than the others, especially in his Inscriptions.
Interest is always excited by him, enthusiasm not always. If
his elegant prose and harmonious verse are insufficient to
excite it, turn to his virtues, to his manhness in defence of
truth, to the ardour and constancy of liis friendships, to his
THE POEMS OF CATULLUS. 279
disinterestedness, to his generosity, to his rejection of title and
office, and consequently of wealth and influence. He has
labored to raise up merit in whatever path of literature he found
it; and poetry in particular has never had so intelligent, so
impartial, and so merciful a judge. Alas ! it is the will of
God to deprive him of those faculties which he exercised with
such discretion, such meekness, and such humanity.
We digress ; not too far, but too long : we must return to
the ancients, and more especially to the author whose volume
lies open before us.
There is little of the creative, little of the constructive, in
him : that is, he has conceived no new varieties of character ;
he has built up no edifice in the intellectual world ; but he
always is shrewd and brilliant ; he often is pathetic ; and he
sometimes is sublime. Without the sublime, we have said
before, there can be no poet of the first order : but the pathetic
may exist in the secondary ; for tears are more easily drawn
forth than souls are raised. So easily are they on some occa-
sions, that the poetical power needs scarcely be brought into
action ; while on others the pathetic is the very summit of
sublimity. We have an example of it in the Ariadne of
Catullus : we have another in the Priam of Homer. All
the heroes and gods, debating and fighting, vanish before the
father of Hector in the tent of Achilles, and before the storm
of conflicting passions his sorrows and prayers excite. But
neither in the spirited and energetic Catullus, nor in the mas-
culine and scornful and stern Lucretius, no, nor in Homer, is
there anything so impassioned, and therefor so sublime, as the
last hour of Dido in the ^Eueid. Admirably as two Greek
poets have represented the tenderness, the anguish, the terrific
wrath and vengeance of Medea, all the works they ever wrote
contain not the poetry which Yirgil has condensed into about
a hundred verses : omitting, as we must, those which drop
like icicles from the rigid lips of iEneas ; and also the similies
which, here as everywhere, sadly interfere with passion. In
this place Virgil fought his battle of Actium, which left him
poetical supremacy in the Roman world, whatever mutinies
and conspiracies may have arisen against him in Germany or
elsewhere.
The Ariadne of Catullus has greatly the advantage over the
Medea of ApoUonius : for what man is much interested by
280 THE LAST PllUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
such a termagant ? We have no sympathies with a woman
whose potency is superhuman. In general, it may be appre-
hended, we hke women Httle the better for excelling us even
moderately in our own acquirements and capacities. But what
energy springs from her weaknesses ! what poetry is the fruit
of her passions ! once perhaps in a thousand years bursting
forth with imperishable splendour on its golden bough. If
there are fine things in the Argonautics of Apollonius, there
are finer stil in those of Catullus. In relation to Yirgil, he
stands as Correggio in relation to Raffael : a richer colourist, a
less accurate draftsman; less capable of executing grand
designs, more exquisite in the working-out of smaller. Yirgil
is depreciated by the arrogance of self-sufficient poets, nurtured
on coarse fare, and dizzy with home-brewed flattery. Others,
who have studied more attentively the ancient models, are
abler to show his relative station, and readier to venerate his
powers. Although we find him incapable of contriving, and
more incapable of executing, so magnificent a work as the
Iliad, yet there are places in his compared with which the
grandest in that grand poem lose much of their elevation.
Never was there such a whirlwind of passions as Virgil raised
on those African shores, amid those rising citadels and depart-
ing sails. When the vigorous verses of Lucretius are extolled,
no true poet, no sane critic, will assent that the seven or eight
examples of the best are equivalent to this one : even in force
of expression, here he falls short of Yirgil.
When we drink a large draught of refreshing beverage, it is
only a small portion that afi'ects the palate. In reading the
best poetry, moved and excited as we may be, we can take in
no more than a part of it. Passages of equal beauty are unable
to raise enthusiasm. Let a work in poetry or prose, indicating
the highest power of genius, be discoursed on ; probably no two
persons in a large company will recite the same portion as
having struck them the most forcibly. But when several
passages are pointed out and red emphatically, each listener
will to a certain extent doubt a httle his own judgment in this
one particular, and hate you heartily for shaking it. Poets
ought never to be vext, discomposed, or disappointed, when
the better is overlookt, and the inferior is commended. Much
may be assigned to the observer's point of vision being more
on a level witli the object. And this reflection also will con-
sole the artist, when really bad ones are called more simple
PRANCESCO PETllARCA. 281
and natural, while in fact tlicy arc only more ordinary and
coniraon. In a palace we must look to the elevation and pro-
portions; wheras a low grotto may assume any form and
almost any deformity. Eudeness is liere no blemish ; a shell
reversed is no false ornament ; moss and fern may be
stuck with the root outward ; a crystal may sparkle at tlie top
or at the bottom ; dry sticks and fragmentary petrifactions find
everywhere their proper place ; and loose soil and plashy water
show just what nature delights in. Ladies and gentlemen who
at first were about to turn back, take one another by the hand,
duck their heads, enter it together, and exclaim, " What a
charming grotto !"
In j)oetry, as in architecture, the Eustic Order is proper
only for the lower story.
They who have listened, patiently and supinely, to the
catarrhal songsters of goose-grazed commons, will be loth and
ill-fitted to mount up with Catullus to the highest steeps in
the forests of Ida, and will shudder at the music of the Cory-
bantes in the temple of the Great Mother of the Gods.
FEANCESCO PETEARCA.
Scarcely on any author, of whatever age or country, has
there so much been written, spoken, and thought, by both
sexes, as on the subject of this criticism, Petrarca.
The compilation by Mr. Campbell is chiefly drawn together
from the french. It contains no criticism on the poetry of his
author, beyond a hasty remark or two in places which least
require it. He might have read Sismondi and Ginguene more
profitably : the author of the Introduction to the Literature
of JEiiirope had already done so ; but neither has he thrown
any fresh hglit on the character or the writings of Petrarca, or,
in addition to what had already been performed by those two
judicious men, furnished us with a remark in any way worlh
notice. The readers of Italian, if they are suspicious, may
even suspect that Mr. Campbell knows not very much of the
language. Among the many apparent causes for this suspi-
cion, we shall notice only two. Instead of Friuli, he writes
the Prench word Frionl ; and, instead of i\\QMarca di Ancona,
the Marshes, In itahan, a marsh is palude or padule :
2S2 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
whereas marca is the origin of marchese : the one a confine ;
the other a defender of a confine, or lord of such a territory.
Whoever is desirous of knowing all about Petrarca, will
consult Muratori and De Sade : whoever has been waiting for
a compendious and sound judgment on his works at large, will
listen attentively to Ginguene : whoever can be gratified by a
rapid glance at his works and character, will be directed by
the clear-sighted follower of truth, Sismondi : and whoever
reads only english, and is contented to fare on a small portion
of recocted criticism in a long excursion, may be accommodated
by Mrs. Dobson, Mr. Hallam, and Mr. Campbell.
It may seem fastidious and affected to Avrite, as I have done,
his Italian name in preference to his english one ; but I think
it better to call him as he called himself, as Laura called him,
as he was called by Colonna and Rienzi and Boccaccio, and in
short by all Italy : for I pretend to no vernacular familiarity
with a person of his distinction, and should almost be as ready to
abbreviate Francesco into IVank, as Petrarca into Petrarch.
Beside, the one appellation is euphonious, the other quite the
reverse.
We Enghshraen take strange liberties with italian names.
Perhaps the human voice can articulate no sweeter series of
sounds than the syllables which constitute Livorno : certainly
the same remark is inapplicable to Leghorn. However, we are
not liable to censure for this depravation : it originated with
the Genoese, the ancient masters of the town, whose language
is extremely barbarous, not unlike the Provensal of the
Troubadours. With them the letter g, pronounced hard, as
it always was among the Greeks and Eomans, is common for
V : thus lagoro for lavoro.
I hope to be pardoned my short excursion, which was
only made to bring my fellow-labourers home from afield. At
last we are beginning to call people and things by their right
names. We pay a little more respect to Cicero than we did
formerly, calling him no longer by the appellation of Tully :
we never say Laurence, or Lai de Medici, but Lorenzo. On
the same principle, I beg permission to say Petrarca and
Boccaccio, instead of Petrarch and Boccace. These errors
were fallen into by following french translations : and we stopt
and recovered our footing only wdien we came to Tde-live
and Aidu-gelle. It was then indeed high time to rest and wipe
our foreheads. Yet we cannot shake off the illusion that
PllANCESCO PETRARCA. 283
Horace was one of us at scliool, and we continue the friendly
nickname, altlio with a whimsical inconsistency we con-
tinue to talk of the Horatii and Curiatii. Ovid, our earlier
friend, sticks by us stil. The ear informs us that Virgil and
Pindar and Homer and Hesiod suffer no worse by defalcation
than fruit-trees do : the sounds indeed are more euphonious
than what fell from the native tongue. The great historians,
the great orators, and the great tragedians of Greece, have
escaped unmutilated; and among the Romans it has been the
good fortune, at least as far as we are concerned, of Pater-
culus, Quintus Cartius, Tacitus, Catullus, Propertius, and
Tibullus, to remain intact by the hand of onomaclasts.
Spellings, whether of names or things, should never be
meddled with, unless where the ignorant have superseded the
learned, or where analogy has been overlooked by these. The
courtiers of Charles II. chalked and charcoaled the orthography
of Milton. It was thought a scandal to have been educated
in England, and a worse to write as a republican had written.
We were the subjects of the french king, and we borrowed at
a ruinous rate from french authors : but not from the best.
Eloquence was extinct; a gulf of ignominy divided us from
the genius of Italy ; the great Master of the triple world was
undiscovered by us ; and the loves of Petrarca were too pure
and elevated for the sojourners of Versailles.
Erancesco Petrarca, if far from the greatest, yet cer-
tainly the most celebrated of poets, was born in the night
between the nineteenth and twentieth day of July, 1304.
His father's name was Petracco, his mother's Eletta Canigiani.
Petracco left Elorence under the same sentence of banishment
as his friend Dante Alighieri, and joined with him and the
other exiles of the Bianchi army in the unsuccessful attack on
that city, the very night when, on his return to Arezzo, he
found a son born to him : it was his first. To tliis son, after-
ward so illustrious, was given the name of Erancesco di
Petracco. In after hfe the sound had something in it which
he thought ignoble ; and he converted it into Petrarca. The
wise and virtuous Gravina, patron of one who has written
much good poetry, and less of bad than Petrarca, changed in
like manner the name of Trapasso to Metastasio. I can not
agree with him that the sound of the hellenized name is
more harmonious : the reduplication of the syllable tas
is painful: but I do agree with Petrarca^ whose adopted
284 THE LAST PIIUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
form lias only one fault, wliicli is, that tliere is no meaning
in it.
When he Avas seven months old he was taken by his mother
from. Arezzo to Incisa, in the Yal-cFArno, where the life so
lately given was nearly lost. The infant was dropt into the
river, which is always rapid in that part of its course, and was
then swoIIbu by rain into a torrent. At Incisa he remained
with her seven. years. The father had retired to Pisa; and
now his wife and Francesco, and another son born after,
named Gherardo, joined him there. In a short time however
he took them to Avignon, where he hoped for employment
under Pope Clement Y. In that crowded city lodgings and
provisions were so dear, that he soon found it requisite to send
his wife and children to the small episcopal town of Carpentras,
where he often went to visit them. In this place Francesco
met Convenole, who had taught him his letters, and who now
undertook to teach him what he knew of rhetoric and logic.
He had attained his tenth year when the father took him with
a party of friends to the fountain of Vaucluse. Even at that
early age his enthusiasm was excited by the beauty and
solitude of the scene. The waters then flowed freely : habita-
tions there were none but the most rustic : and indeed one
only near the rivulet. Such was then Yaucluse ; and such it
remained all his lifetime, and long after. The tender heart is
often moulded by localities. Perhaps the purity and single-
ness of Petrarca''s, his communion with it on one only altar,
his exclusion of all images but one, result from this early visit
to the gushing springs, the eddying torrents, the insur-
mountable rocks, the profound and inviolate solitudes, of
Yaucluse.
The time was now come when his father saw the necessity
of beginning to educate him for a profession : and he thought
the canon law was likely to be the most advantageous. Con-
sequently he was sent to Montpeher, the nearest university,
where he resided four years ; not engaged, as he ought to have
been, among the jurisconsults, but among the classics.
Information of this perversity soon reached Petracco, who
hastened to the place, found the noxious books, and threw
them into the fire : but, affected by the lamentations of his son,
he recovered the Cicero and the Yirgil, and restored them to him,
partially consumed. At the age of eighteen he was sent from
Montpelier to Bologna, where he found Cino da Pistoja,
FRANCESCO PETUAECA. 285
to wliom lie npplied himself in good earnest^ not indeed for liis
knowledge as a jurisconsult, in which he had acquired the
highest reputation, but for his celebrity as a poet. After two
more years he lost his father : and the guardians, it is said,
were unfaithful to their trust. Probably there was little for
them to administer. He now returned to Avignon, where,
after tlie decease of Clement V., John XXII. occupied the
popedom. Here his latin poetry soon raised him into notice,
for nobody in Avignon wrote so good ; but happily, both for
himself and many thousand sensitive hearts in every age and
nation, he soon desired his verses to be received and under-
stood by one to whom the latin was unknown.
Benedetto sia il giorno, e '1 mese, e I'anno !
Blest be the day, and month, and year !
Laura, daughter of Audibert de Noves, was married to
Hugh de Sade ; persons of distinction. She was younger by
three years than Petrarca. They met first on Good-Friday, in
the convent-church of St. Claire, at six in the morning. That
hour she inspired such a passion, by her beauty and her modesty,
as years only tended to strengthen, and death to sanctify. The
incense which burnt in the breast of Petrarca before his Laura,
might have purified, one would have thought, even the court
of Avignon ; and never was love so ardent breathed into ear
so chaste. The man who excelled all others in beauty of per-
son, in dignity of demeanour, in genius, in tenderness, in devo-
tion, was perhaps the only one who failed in attaining the
object of his desires. But cold as Laura was in temperament,
rigid as she was in her sense of duty, she never was insensible
to the merits of her lover. A light of distant hope often
shone upon him, and tempted him onward, through surge after
surge, over the depths of passion. Laura loved admiration, as
the most retired and most diffident of women do : and the
admiration of Petrarca di'ew after it the admiration of the
world. She also, what not all women do, looked forward to
the glory that awaited her, when those courtiers, and those
crowds, and that city should be no more, and wdien of all
women, the Madonna alone should be so glorified on earth.
Perhaps it is well for those who delight in poetry that she
was inflexible and obdurate ; for the sw" eetest song ceases when
the feathers have lined the nest. Incredible as it may seem,
Petrarca was capable of quitting her : he w^as capable of
286 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE;
believing tliat absence could moderate, or perhaps extinguish,
his passion. Generally the lover who can think so, has almost
succeeded ; but Petrarca had contracted the habit of writing
poetry ; and now writing it on Laura, and Laura only, he
brought the past and the future into a focus on his breast.
All magical powers, it is said, are dangerous to the possessor :
none is more dangerous than the magic of the poet, who can
call before him at will the object of liis wishes ; but her coun-
tenance and her words remain her own, and beyond his
influence.
It is wonderful how extremely few, even of Italian scholars,
and natives of Italy, have red his letters or his poetry entirely
through. I am not speaking of his latin ; for it would
indeed be a greater marvel if the most enterprising industry
succeeded there. The thunderbolt of war . . ' Scipiades ful-
men belli' . . has always left a barren place behind. No poet
ever was fortunate in the description of his exploits ; and the
least fortunate of the number is Petrarca. Probably the whole
of the poem contains no sentence or image worth remembering.
I say probably : for whosoever has hit upon what he thought
the best of it, has hit only upon what is worthless, or else upon
what belongs to another. The few lines quoted and applauded
by Mr. Campbell, are taken partly from VirgiFs Mne'ul, and
partly from Ovid's Metamorphoses. I can not well beheve
that any man living has red beyond five hundred lines of
Africa : I myself, in sundry expeditions, have penetrated
about thus far into its immeasurable sea of sand. But the
wonder is that neither the poetry nor the letters of Petrarca
seem to have been, even in his own country, red thoroughly
and attentively ; for surely his commentators ought to have
made themselves masters of tliese, before they agitated the
question, some whether Laura really existed, and others
whether she was flexible to the ardour of her lover. Speaking
of his friends, Socrates and Lffilius, of whose first meeting with
him I shall presently make mention, he says.
Con costor colsi '1 glorioso ramo
Onde forse anzi tempo ornai le temple,
In memoria di quel la cli' i' taut' amo :
Ma pur di lei che il cuor di jiensier m' empie
Non potei coglier mai I'amo ue foglie ;
Si fur' le sue radici acerbe ed empie.
I can not render these verses much worse than they actually
FRANCESCO PETRARCA. 287
are, with their 'tempo' and ' iempie,' and their 'radici empie,
so let me venture to offer a translation :
They saw me win the glorious bough
That shades my temples even now.
Who never bough nor leaf could take
From that severe one, for whose sake
So many sighs and teai-s arose . ,
Unbending root of bitter woes.
There is a canzone to the same purport, to be noticed in
its place ; and several of his letters could also be adduced in
evidence. We may believe that, although he had resolved
to depart from Avignon for a season, he felt his love increasing
at every line he wrote. Such thoughts and images can not
be turned over in the mind and leave it perfectly in compo-
sure. Yet perhaps when he had completed the most
impassioned sonnet, the surges of his love may have subsided
under the oil he had poured out on his vanity. Tor love,
if it is a weakness, was not the only weakness of Petrarca :
and, when he had performed what he knew was pleasing in the
eyes of Laura, he looked abroad for the applauses of all around.
Giacomo Colonna, who had been at the university of
Bologna with him, had come to Avignon soon after. It was
with Colonna he usually spent his time ; both had alike
enjoyed the pleasures of the city, until the day when Francesco
met Laura. To Giacomo was now given the bishopric of
Lombes, in reward of a memorable and admirable exj^loit,
among the bravest that ever has been performed in the sight
of Rome herself. When Lewis of Bavaria went thither to
depose John XYIIL, Giacomo Colonna, attended by four
men in masks, red publicly, in the Piazza di San Marcello,
the bull of that emperor's excommunication and dethrone-
ment, aud challenged to single combat any adversary. None
appearing, he rode onward to the stronghold of his family
at Palestrina, the ancient Preneste. His reward was this
little bishopric. When Petrarca found liim at Lombes, in
the house of the bishop he found also two persons of worth,
who became the most intimate of his friends; the one a
Eoman, Lello by name, which name the poet latinized to
Laelius; the other from the borders of the Rhine, whose
appellation was probably less tractable, and whom he called
Socrates, Toward the close of autumn the whole party
returned to Avignon.
288 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
In the bosom of Petrarca love burnt again more ardently
than ever. It is censured as the worst of conceits in him that
he played so often on the name of Laura; and many have
suspected that there could be little passion in so much allusion.
A purer taste might indeed have corrected in the poetry the
outpourings of tenderness on the name ; but surely there is
a true and a pardonable pleasure in cherishing the very sound
of what we love. If it belongs to the hearty as it does, it
belongs to poetry, and is not easily to be cast aside. The
shrub recalling the idea of Laura was planted by his hand ;
often, that he might nurture it, was the pen laid by; the
leaves were often shaken by his sighs, and not unfrecjuently
did they sparkle with his tears. He felt the comfort of
devotion as he bent before the image of her name. But he
now saw little of her, and was never at her house : it was only
in small parties, chiefly of ladies, that they met. She excelled
them all in grace of person and in elegance of attire. Pro-
bably her dress was not the more indifferent to her on her
thinking whom she was about to meet : yet she maintained
the same reserve : the nourisher of love, but not of hope.
Restless, for ever restless, again went Petrarca from
Avignon. He hoped he should excite a little regret at his
departure, and a desire to see him again soon, if not exprest
to him before he left the city, yet conveyed by letters or
reports. He proceeded to Paris, thence to Cologne, and was
absent eight months. On his return, the bishop, whom he
expected to meet, was neither at Avignon nor at Lombes.
His courage and conduct were required at Rome, to keep
down the rivals of his family, the Orsini. Disappointed in
his visit, and hopeless in his passion, the traveller now retired
to Yaucluse ; and here he poured in solitude from his inner-
most heart incessant strains of love and melancholy.
At Paris he had met with Dionigi de' Ruperti, an Augustine
monk, born at Borgo San Sepolcro, near Plorence, and
esteemed as one of the most learned, eloquent, philosophical
and religious men in Prance. To him Petrarca wrote earnestly
for counsel ; but before the answer came he had seen Laura.
A fever was raging in the city, and her life was in danger.
Benedict XII., to whom he addressed the least inelegant of
his latin poems, an exhortation to transfer the Roman See to
Rome, conferred on him, now in the thirtieth year of his age,
a canonry at Lombes. But the bishop was absent from the
FRANCESCO PETRARCA. 289
diocese^ and again at Eome. Thitlier hastened Petrarca^ and
was received at Capraniccia, a castle of tlie Colonnas, not
only by his diocesan, bnt likewise by Stefano senator of Eome,
to which city they both conducted him. His stay here was
short ; he returned to Avignon ; but, inflamed with unquench-
able love, and seeking to refresh his bosom with early
memories, he retired to A^aucluse. Here he purchased a poor
cottage and a small meadow ; hither he transferred his books ;
and hither also that image which he could nowhere leave
behind. Summer, autumn, winter, he spent among these
solitudes ; a fisherman was his only attendant, but occasionally
a few intimate friends came from Avignon to visit him. The
Bishop of Cavaillon, Philippe de Cabassoles, in whose diocese
was Vaucluse, and who had a villa not far off", here formed
Avitli him a lasting friendship, and was worthy of it. During
these months the poet wrote the three canzoni on the eyes of
Laura, which some have called the " Three Graces,^' but which
he himself called the " Three Sisters.''^ The Italians, the best-
tempered and the most polite of nations, look rather for
beauties than faults, and imagine them more easily. A
brilliant thought blinds them to improprieties, and they are
incapable of resisting a strong expression. Enthusiastic
criticism is common in Italy, ingenious is not deficient,
correct is yet to come.
About tills time Simone Memmi of Siena, whom some
without any reason whatsoever have called a disciple of
Giotto, was invited by the pope to Avignon, where he painted
an apartment in the pontifical palace, just then completed.
Petrarca has celebrated him, not only in two sonnets, but
also in his letters, in which he says, " Duos ego novi pictores
egregios : Joctium Plorentinum civem, cujus inter modernos
fama ingens est, et Simonem Senensem."
Had so great an artist been the scholar of Giotto, it would
have added to the reputation of even this illustrious
man, a triumvir with Ghiberti and Michel- Angiolo. These,
altho indeed not flourishing together, may be considered
as the first triumvirate in the republic of the arts ; Eafl'ael,
Correggio, and Titian, the second. There is no resemblance
to Giotto in the manner of Simone ; nor does Ghiberti men-
tion him as the disciple of the Florentine. No man knew
better than Ghiberti how distinct are the Sanese and the
riorentiue schools. Simone Memmi, the first of the moderns
290 THE LAST FRUIT OFP AN OLD TREE.
who gave roundness and beauty to the female face^ neglected
not the graceful aii* of Laura. Frequently did he repeat her
modest features in the principal figure of his sacred compo-
sitions ; and Petrarca was alternately tortured and consoled
by the possession of her portrait from the hand of Memmi.
It was painted in the year 1339, so that she was thirty-two
years old ; but, whether at the desire of her lover, or guided
by his own discretion, or that in reality she retained the
charms of youth after bearing eight or nine children, she is
represented youthful, and almost girlish, whenever he intro-
duces her.
With her picture now before him, Petrarca thought he
could reduce in number and duration liis visits to Avignon,
and might undertake a work sufficient to fix his attention and
occupy his retirement. He began to compose in latin a
history of Rome, from its foundation to the subversion of
Jerusalem. But, almost at the commencement, the exploits
of Scipio Africanus seized upon his enthusiastic imagination,
and determined liim to abandon history for poetry. The
second Punic war was the subject he chose for an epic.
Deficient as the \^■ork is in all the requisites of poetry, his
friends applauded it beyond measure. And indeed no small
measure of commendation is due to it ; for here he had
restored in some degree the plan and tone of antiquity. But
to such a pitch was his vanity exalted, that he aspired to
higher honors than Virgil had received under the favor of
Augustus, and was ambitious of being crowned in the capitol.
His powerful patrons removed every obstacle ; and the senator
of Rome invited him by letter to his coronation, A few
houi-s afterward, on the 23rd of August 1340, another of the
same purport was delivered to him from the University of
Paris. The good king Robert of Naples had been zealous
in obtaining for him the honor he solicited : and to Naples he
hastened, ere he proceeded to Rome.
It was in later days that kings began to avoid the con-
versation and familiarity of learned men. Robert received
Prancesco as became them both ; and, on his departure from
the court of Naples, presented to him the gorgeous robe in
which, four days afterward, he was crowned in the capitol.
At the close of his life he lamented the glory he had thus
attained, and repined at the malice it drew down on him.
Even in the hour of triumph he was exposed to a specimen
FRANCESCO PETRARCA. 291
of the kind. Most of those among the ancient Romans to
whom in their triumphal honours the Laurel crown was
decreed, were exposed to invectives and reproaches in their
ascent. Fescennine verses, rude and limping, interspersed
with saucy trochaics, were generally their unpalatable fare.
But Petrarca, the elect of a senator and a pope, was doomed
to worse treatment. Not on his advance, but on his return,
an old woman emptied on his laurelled head one of those
mysterious vases which are usually in administration at the
solemn hour of night. Charity would induce us to hope
that her venerable age was actuated by no malignity. But
there were strong surmises to the contrary: nor can I adduce
in her defence that she had any poetical vein, by which I
might account for this extraordinary act of incontinence.
Partaking, as was thought by the physicians, of the old
woman''s nature, the contents of the vase were so acrimonious
as to occasion baldness. Her cauldron, instead of restoring
youth, drew down old age, or fixed immovably its odious
signal. A projectile scarcely more fatal, in a day also of
triumph, was hurled by a similar enemy on the liead of
Pyrrhus. The laurel decreed in full senate to Julius Caesar,
altho it might conceal the calamity of baldness, never
could have prevented it : nor is it probable that either his
skill or his fortune could have warded off efficaciously what
descended from such a quarter. The Italians, who carry
more good humour about them than any other people,
are likely to have borne this catastrophe of their poet with
equanimity, if not hilarity. Perhaps even the gentle Laura,
when she heard of it, averted the smile she could not quite
suppress.
I will not discuss the question, how great or how little
was the glory of this coronation ; a glory which Homer and
Dante, which Shakspeare and Milton, never sought, and never
would have attained. Merit has rarely risen of itself, but a
pebble or a twig is often quite sufficient for it to spring from
to the highest ascent. There is usually some baseness before
there is any elevation. After all, no man can be made greater
by another, although he may be made more conspicuous by
title, dress, position, and acclamation. The powerful can only
be ushers to the truly great; and in the execution of this
office, they themselves approach to greatness. But Petrarca
stood far above all the other poets of his age ; and, incompetent.
u 2
292 THE LAST FRUIT OPF AN OLD TREE.
as were his judges^ it is much to their praise that they
awarded due honour to the purifier both of language and of
morals. With these indeed to solicit the wife of another may
seem inconsistent; but such was always the custom of the
Tuscan race ; and not always with the same chastity as was
enforced by Laura. As Petrarca loved her^
Id, Manli ! non est turpe, magis mlserum est.
Love is the purifier of the heart ; its depths are less turbid
than its shallows. In despite of precepts and arguments, the
most sedate and the most religious of women think charitably,
and even reverentially, of the impassioned poet. Constancy is
the antagonist of frailty, exempt from the captivity and above
the assaults of sin.
There is much resemblance in the character of Petrarca to
that of Abeillard. Both were learned, both were disputatious,
both were handsome, both were vain ; both ran incessantly
backward and forward from celebrity to seclusion, from seclu-
sion to celebrity ; both loved unhappily ; but the least for-
tunate was the most beloved.
Devoted as Petrarca was to the classics, and prone as the
italia]! poets are to follow and imitate them, he stands apart
with Laura ; and if some of his reflections are to be found in
the sonnets of Cino da Pistoja, and a few in the more precious
reliquary of latin Elegy, he seems disdainful of repeating in
her ear what has ever been spoken in another's. Although
a cloud of pure incense rises up and veils the intensity of his
love, it is such love as animates all creatures upon earth, and
tends to the same object in all. Throughout lifeM'e have been
accustomed to hear of the Platonic : absurd as it is everywhere,
it is most so here. Nothing in the voluminous works of
Plato authorizes us to affix this designation to simple friend-
ship, to friendship exempt from passion. On the contrary,
the philosopher leaves us no doubt whatever that his notion
of love is sensual.* He says expressly what species of it, and
* A mysteriouf? and indistiuct idea, not dissipated by the closest view
of the original, led the poetical mind of Shelley into the labyrinth that
encompassed the garden of Academus. He has given us an accurate and
graceful translation of the most eloquent of Plato's dialogues. Con-
sistently with modesty he found it impossible to present the whole to his
readers; but as the subject is entirely on the nature of love, they will
discover that nothing is more unlike Petrarca's. The trifles, the quibbles,
FRANCESCO PETllARCA. 293
from what bestowerSj sliould be tlie reward of sages and
heroes.
Dii meliora piis !
Beside Sonnets and Canzoni Petrarca wrote ''Sestine;''
so named because each stanza contains six verses, and each
poem six stanzas, to the last of which three lines are added.
If the terza-rima is disagreeable to the ear, what is the sestina,
in which there are only six rhymes to thirty-six verses, and all
these respond to the same words ! Cleverness in distortion
can proceed no farther. Petrarca wearied the popes by his
repeated solicitations that they would abandon Avignon : he
never thought of repeating a sestina to them : it would have
driven the most obtuse and obstinate out to sea ; and he never
would have removed his hands from under the tiara until lie
entered the port of Civita-Vecchia. While our poet was thus
amusing his ingenuity by the most intolerable scheme of
rhyming that tJie poetry of any language has exhibited, his
friend Boccaccio was occupied in framing that very stanza, the
ottava-rima, which so deliglits us in Berni, Ariosto, and Tasso.
But Tasso is most harmonious when he expatiates most freel}',
"numerisque fertur lege solutis:" for instance, in the Am'mta,
where he is followed by Milton in his Li/cldas.
We left Petrarca not engaged in these studies of his retire-
ment, but passing in triumph through the capital of the world.
On his way toward Avignon, where he was ambitious of dis-
playing his fresh laurels, he stayed a short time at Pai-ma with
Azzo da Correggio, who had taken possession of that city.
Azzo was among the most unprincipled, ungrateful, and mean,
of the numerous petty tyrants who have infested Italy.
Petrarca's love of liberty never quite outrivalled his love of
princes : for which Boccaccio mildly expostulates with him ;
and Sismondi, as liberal, wise, and honest as Boccaccio, severely
reprehends him. But what other, loving as he loved, would
the unseasonable jokes, of what is exhibited in very harmonious greek,
and in english nearly as harmonious, pass uncensured and unnoticed by
the fascinated Shelley. So his gentleness and warmth of heart induced
him to look with affection on the poetry of Petrarca ; poetry by how many
degrees inferior to his own ! Nevertheless, with justice and propriety he
ranks Dante higher in the same department, who indeed has described love
more eloquently than any other poet, excepting (who always must be
excepted) Shakspeare. Francesca and Beatrice open all the heart, and fill
it up with tenderness and with pity.
294 THE LAST TEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
have urged incessantly the return to Italy, the abandonment of
Avignon ? At times^ beyond a doubt, he preferred his imper-
fect hopes to the complete restoration of itahan glory ; but he
shook them like dust from his bosom, and Laura was less than
Rome. Shall we refuse the name of patriot to sucli a man ?
No ; those alone will do it who have little to lose or leave.
Sismondi, who never judges harshly, never hastily, passes no
such sentence on him.
So pleased was he with his residence at Parma, that he pur-
chased a house in the city, where he completed his poem of
'' Africa." He was now about to rejoin at Lombes his friend
and diocesan, whom he saw in a dream, pale as death. He
communicated this dream to several persons ; and twenty-five
days afterward he received the intelligence of its perfect truth.
Another friend, more advanced in years, Dionigi di Borgo San
Sepolcro, soon followed. Before the expiration of the year he
was installed archdeacon of Parma. Soon after this appoint-
ment, Benedict XII. died, and Clement VI. succeeded. This
pontif was superior to all his predecessors in gracefulness of
manners and delicacy of taste ; and at his accession, the cor-
ruptions of the papal court became less gross and offensive. He
divided his time between literature and the ladies : not quite im-
partially. The people of Eome began to entertain new and higher
hopes that their city would again be the residence of Cluist^s
vicegerent. To this intent they delegated eighteen of the prin-
cipal citizens, and chose Petrarca, who had received the freedom
of the city on his coronation, to present at once a remonstrance
and an invitation, The polite and wary pontif heard him com-
placently, talked affably and familiarly with him, conferred on
him the priory of Migliorino ; but, being a Frenchman, thought
it gallant and patriotic to remain at Avignon. Petrarca was little
disposed to return with the unsuccessful delegates. He con-
tinued at Avignon, where his countryman Sennuccio del Bene,
who visited the same society as Laura, and who knew her per-
sonally, gave him frequent information of her, though Httle
hope.
Youth has swifter wings than Love. He had loved her six-
teen years ; but all the beauty that had left her features had
settled on his heart, immovable, unchangeable, eternal. Politics
could however at all times occupy him ; not always worthily.
He was induced by the pope to undertake a mission to Naples,
and to claim the government of. that kingdom on the part of
FRANCESCO PETRARCA. 295
his Holiness. The good king Eobcrt was dead, and had
bequeathed the crown to the elder of his two graudaughters.
Giovanna, at nine years of age, was betrothed to her cousin
Andreas of Hungary, who was three years younger. She was
beautiful, graceful, gentle, sensible, and fond of literature : he
w^as uncouth, ferocious, ignorant, and governed by a Hungarian
monk of the same character, Fra Ilupert. It is deplorable to
think that Petrarca could ever have been induced to accept an
embassy, of which the purport was to deprive of her inheritance
an innocent and lovely girl, the grandaughter of his friend and
benefactor. She received him with cordiality, and immediately
appointed him her private chaplain. His departure, he says,
was hastened by two causes : first, by the insolence of Fra
Eupert, which he has well described; and secondly, by an
atrocious sight, which also he has commemorated. He was
invited to an entertainment, of which he gives us to understand
he knew not at all the nature. Suddenly he heard shouts of
joy, and " turmn(j his head," he Ijeheld a youth of extraordinary
strength and beaut}^, covered with dust and blood, expirhig at his
feet. He left Naples without accomplishing the dethronement
of Giovanna, or, what also was entrusted to him, the liberation
from prison of some adherents of the Colonnas ; robbers, no
doubt, and assassins, who had made forays into the Neapolitan
territory; for all persons of that description were under the
protection of the Colonnas or the Orsini. His failure was the
cause of his return, and not the ferocity of a monk and a
gladiator.
He went to Parma on his way back to Avignon : the roads
were dangerous ; war was raging in the country. His
friend Azzo had refused to perform the promise he made to
Lucchino Visconti, by whose intervention he had obtained
his dominion, which he was to retain for five years, and then
resign. Azzo he found had taken refuge with Mastino della
Scala, at Yerona; and he embarked on the Po for that city.
His friends hastened him forward to Avignon; some by telhng
him how often the pope had made inquiries about him ; and
others, that Laura looked melancholy. On liis return Clement
offered him the office of Apostolic secretary : it was a very
laborious one, and was declined.
Laura, pleased by his return to her, was for a time less
rigorous. Within the year, Charles of Luxemburg, soon after
made emperor, went to Avignon. Knowing the celebrity of
296 THE LAST PRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Laura^ and finding her at a ball, he went up to her and kissed
her forehead and her eyes. " This sweet and strange action/^
says her lover, " filled me with envy/' Surely, to him at least,
the sweetness must have been somewhat less tlian the strange-
ness. She was now indeed verging on her fortieth year : but
love is forgetful of arithmetic. The following summer, Fran-
cesco for the first time visited his only brother Gherardo, who
had taken the monastic habit in the Chartreuse of Montrieu.
On his return he w^ent to Yaucluse, where he composed a
treatise Be Otlo Religiosormn, which he presented to the
monastery.
Very different thoughts and feelings now suddenly burst
upon him. Among the seventeen who accompanied him in
the deputation, inviting the pope to Rome, there was another
beside Petrarca chosen for his eloquence. It was Cola
Eienzi. The love of letters and the spirit of patriotism
united them in friendsliip. This extraordinary man, now
invested with power, had driven the robbers and assassins,
with their patrons the Orsini and Colonnas out of Rome,
and had established (what rarely are established together)
both liberty and order. The dignity of tribune was conferred
on him ; by which title Petrarca addressed him, in a letter
of sound advice and earnest solicitation. Now the bishop
of Lombes was dead he little feared the indignation of the
other Colonnas, but openly espoused and loudly pleaded the
cause of the resuscitated commonwealth. The cardinal was
probably taught by him to believe that, by his influence
with Eienzi, he might avert from his family the disaster
and disgrace into which the mass of the nobility had fallen.
" No family on earth," says he, " is dearer to me ; but the
republic, liome, Italy, are dearer.'"
He took leave of the prelate, with amity on both sides
undiminished : he also took leave of Laura. He could not
repress, he could not conceal, he could not moderate his
grief, nor could he utter one sad adieu. A look of fondness
and compassion followed his parting steps; and the lover
and the beloved were separated for ever. He did not think
it ; else never could he have gone ; but he thought a brief
absence might be endured once more, rewarded as it would
be with an accession to his glory ; and, precluded from other
union with him, in his glory Laura might participate.
Retired^ and thinking of her duties and her home^ sat
FRANCESCO PETRAECA. 297
Laura ; not indifferent to the praises of the most celebrated
man alive (for her heart in all its regions was womanly) but
tepidly tranquil, or moved invisibly, and retaining her purity
amidst the uncleanlv stream that delu2;ed Avit^non. We
may imagine that she sometimes drew out, and unfolded on
lier bed, the apparel long laid apart and carefully preserved
by her, in w^liicli she first had captivated the giver of her
immortality ; we may imagine that she sometimes compared
with him an illiterate, coarse, morose husband ; and per-
haps a sigh escaped her, and perhaps a tear, as she folded
up again the cherished gown she wore on that Good
Iriday.
On his arrival at Genoa, Petrarca heard of the folhes and
extravagances connnitted by Eienzi, and, instead of pursuing
his journey to Rome, turned off to Parma. Here he learnt
that the greater part of the Iloman nobility, and many of
the Colonnas, had been exterminated by order of the tribune.
Unquestionably they had long deserved it; but the exercise
of such prodigious power unsettled the intellects of Eienzi.
In January the poet left Parma for Vienna, w-here on the 25tli
(1348) he felt the shock of an earthquake. In the pre-
ceding month a column of fire w'as observed above the
pontifical palace. After these harbingers of calamity came
that memorable plague, to which we owe the immortal work
of Boccaccio; a work occupying the next station, in con-
tinental literature, to the Divina Commedia, and displaying
a greater variety of jiow^ers. The pestilence had now^ pene-
trated into the northern parts of Italy, and into the southern
of France ; it had ravaged Marseilles ; it w'as raging in
Avignon. Petrarca sent messager after messager for intel-
ligence. Their return was tardy; and only on the 19th
of May w^as notice brought to him that Laura had departed
on the Gth of April, at six in the morning; the very day,
the very hour, he met her fu-st. Beloved by all about her
for her gentleness and serenity, she expired in the midst of
relatives and friends. But did never her eyes look round
for one who was away ? And did not love, did not glory
tell him, that in that cliamber he might at least have died ?
Other friends w^ere also taken from him. Two months
after this event he lost Cardinal Colonna ; and then Senuuccio
del Bene, the depository of his thoughts and the interpreter
of Laura's.
298 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TEEE.
The Lord of ]\Iantua, Liiigi Gonzaga, had often invited
him to his court, and he now accepted the invitation. From
tliis residence he went to visit the hamlet of Pietola, formerly
Andes, the birth])lace of Virgil. At the cradle of her illus-
trious poet the glories of ancient Rome burst again upon
him ; and, hearing that Charles of Luxemburg was about to
cross the Alps, he addressed to him an eloquent exhortation,
De pacificandd Italia. After three years the emperor sent
him an answer. The testy republican may condemn him, as
Dante was condemned before, for inviting a stranger to
become supreme in Italy; but how many evils would this
step have obviated ! Recluses, and idlers, and often the most
vicious, had been elevated to the honours of demigods ; and
incense had been wafted before the altar, among the most
solemn rites of religion, to pilferers and impostors. As the
Roman empire, with all the kingdoms of the earth, was sold
under the spear by the Pretorian legion, so now, with title-
deeds more defective, was the kingdom of Heaven knocked
down to the best bidder. It was not a desire of office and
emolument, it was a love of freedom and of Roman glory,
which turned the eyes of Petrarca, first in one quarter, then
in another, to seek for the deliverance and regeneration of
his native land.
No preferment, no friendsliip, stood before this object. In
the beginning he exhorted Rienzi to the prosecution of his
enterprise, and augured its success. But the vanity of the
tribune, like Buonaparte^ s, precipitated his ruin. Both were
so improvident as to be quite unaware, that he who continues
to play at double or quits must at last lose all. Rienzi,
different from that other, was endowed by nature with manly,
frank, and generous sentiments. Meditative but communi-
cative, studious but accessible, he would have followed, we
may well believe, the counsels of Petrarca, had they been
given him personally. Cautious but not suspicious, severe
but not vindictive, he might perhaps have removed a
D^Enghien by the axe, but never a L'Ouverture by famine.
He would not have banished, he would not have treated with
insolence and indignity, the greatest writer of the age, from
a consciousness of inferiority in intellect, as that other did
in Madame de Stael. With that other, similarity of views
and sentiments was no bond of union : he hated, he maligned,
he persecuted, the wisest and bravest who would not serve
FRANCESCO PETUARCA. 299
his purposes : patriotism was a ridicule, honour was an
insult to him, aud veracity a reproach. The heart of Eienzi
was not insane. Instead of ordering the murder, he would
have condemned to the gallows the murderer, of such a man
as Hofer. In his impetuous and eccentric course he carried
less about him of the middle ages, than the pestilent meteor
that flamed forth in ours. Petrarca had too much wisdom,
too much virtue, to praise or countenance him in his pride
and insolence ; hut his fall was regretted by him, and is even
stil to be regretted by his country. It is indeed among
the greatest calamities that have befallen the human race,
condemned for several more centuries to lie in chains and
darkness.
In the year of the jubilee (1350) he went again to Eome.
Passing through Florence, he there visited Boccaccio, whom
he had met at Naples. What was scarcely an acquaintance
grew rapidly into friendship ; and this friendship, honorable
to both, lasted throughout life, unbroken and undiminished.
Both were eloquent, both richly endowed with fancy and
imagination ; but Petrarca, who had incomparably the least
of these qualities, had a readier faculty of investing them
with verse, in which Boccaccio, fond as he was of poetry,
ill succeeded. There are stories in the Decameron which
require more genius to conceive and execute than all the
poetry of Petrarca, and indeed there is in Boccaccio more
variety of the mental powers than in any of his countrymen,
greatly more deep feeling, greatly more mastery over the
human heart, than in any other but Dante. Honesty, manli-
ness, a mild and social independence, rendered him the most
delightful companion and the sincerest friend.
Petrarca, on his road through Arezzo, was received with
aU the honors due to him, and among the most delicate and
acceptable to a man of his sensibility was the attendance of
the principal inhabitants in a body, who conducted him to
the house in which he was born, showing him that no
alteration had been permitted to be made in it. Padua was
the place to which he was going : on his arrival he found
that the object of his visit, Giovanni da Carrara, had been
murdered : nevertheless, he remained there several days, and
then proceeded to Venice. Andrea Dandolo was doge ; and
war was about to break out between the Venetians and the
jGrenoese. Petrarca, who always wished most anxiously the
300 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
concord and union of the Italian States, wrote a letter to
Dandolo, powerful in reasoning and eloquence_, dissuading
liim from hostilities. The poet on this occasion showed
himseK more provident than the greatest statesman of the
age. On the 6th of Ajnil, the third anniversary of Laura^s
death, a message was conveyed to him from the republic of
Florence, restoring his property and liis rights of citizen.
Unquestionably lie who brought the message counselled the
measure, and calculated the day : Boccaccio again embraced
Petrarca.
It was also proposed to establish a university at Florence,
and to nominate the illustrious poet its rector. Declining
the office, he returned to Vaucluse, but soon began to fancy
that his duty called him to Avignon. Eome and all Italy
swarmed with robbers. Clement, from the bosom of the
Yicomtesse de Turenue, consulted with the cardinals on the
means of restoring security to his dominions. Petrarca too
was consulted, and, in the most elaborate and most eloquent
of his M'ritings, he recommended the humiliation of the
nobles, the restoration of the republic, and the enactment of
equal laws.
The people of Eome however had taken up arms again,
and had elected for their chief magistrate Giovanni Cerroni.
The privileges of the popedom were left untouched and
unquestioned ; not a drop of blood was shed ; property was
secure; tranquility was established. Clement, ■whose health
was declining, acquiesced. Petrarca,, disappointed before, was
reserved and silent. But his justice, his humanit}^, his grati-
tude, were called into action elsewhere.
Ten years had elapsed since his mission to the court of
Naples. The king Andreas had been assassinated, and the
queen Giovann'it/was accused of the crime. Andreas had
alienated from him all the Neapolitans, excepting the servile,
which in every court form a party, and in most a majority.
Luigi of Taranto, the queen^s cousin, loved her from her
cliildhood, but left her at that age. Graceful and gallant as
he was, there is no evidence that she placed too implicit and
intimate a confidence in him. Never has any great cause
been judged with less discretion by posterity. The pope, to
whom she appealed in person, and who was deeply interested
in her condemnation, with all the cardinals and all the judges,
unanimously and unreservedly acquitted her, of participation;
FRANCESCO PETRATICA. 301
or connivance, or knowledge. Giannone, the most impartial
and temperate of historians, who neglected no sources of
information, bears testimony in her behalf. Petrarca and
Boccaccio, men abhorrent from every atrocity, never mention
her but with gentleness and compassion. The writers of the
country, who were nearest to her person and her times,
acquit her of all complicity. Nevertheless, she has been
placed in the dock by the side of Mary Stuart. It is as cer-
tain that Giovanna was not guilty as that Mary tvas. She
acknowledged before the whole pontifical court her hatred
of her husband; and, in the simplicity of her heart, attributed
it to magic. How different was the magic of Othello on
Desdemona ! and this too was believed.
If virtuous thoughts and actions can compensate for an
irrecoverable treasure which the tomb encloses, surely now
must calm and happiness have returned to Petrarca's bosom.
JSFot only had he defended the innocent and comforted tlie
sorrowful, in Giovanna, but, wdth singular care and delicacy,
he reconciled two statesmen whose disunion would have been
ruinous to her government; Acciajoli and Barili. Another
generous action was now performed by him, in behalf of a
man by whom he, and Home, and Italy, had been deceived.
Rienzi, after wandering about for nearly four years, was cast
into prison at Prague, and then delivered up to the pope.
He demanded to be judged according to law : w^hich w^as
refused. The spirit of Petrarca rose up against this injustice,
and he addressed a letter to the Roman people, urging their
interference. They did nothing. But it was believed at
Avignon that Rienzi, the correspondent and friend of Petrarca,
was not only an eloquent and learned man, but (what Petrarca
had taught the world to reverence) a poet. This caused a
relaxation in the severity of his confinement, subsequently his
release, and ultimately his restoration to power.
Again the office of apostolic secretary was offered to
Petrarca; again he declined it ; again he retired to Yaucluse.
Clement died ; Innocent was elected ; so illiterate and silly a
creature, that he took the poet for a wizard, because he red
Virgil. It was time to revisit Italy. Acciajoli had invited
him to Naples, Dandolo to Venice : but he went to neither.
Giovanni Visconti, archbishop of Milan, had succeeded his
brother Lucchino in the sovranty. Clement, just before his
decease, sent a nuncio to him, ordering him to make choice
303 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AK OLD TREE.
between the temporal and spiritual power. The duke-arch-
bishop made no answer; but on the next Sunday, after
celebrating pontifical mass in the cathedral, he took in one
hand a crosier, in the other a drawn sword, and "Tell the
Holy Father,^^ said he, "here is the spiritual, here the
temporal : one defends the other." Innocent was unlikely to
intimidate a prince who had thus defied his predecessor,
Giovanni Yisconti was among the most able statesmen that
Italy has produced ; and Italy has produced a greater number
of the greatest than all the rest of the universe. Genoa,
reduced to extremities by Venice, had thrown herself under
his protection; and Venice, although at the head of the
Italian league, guided by Dandolo, and flushed with conquest,
felt herself unable to contend with him. Visconti, who
expected and feared the arrival of the emperor in Italy,
assumed the semblance of moderation. He engaged Petrarca,
whom he had received with every mark of distinction and
affection, to preside in a deputation with offers of peace to
Dandolo. The doge refused the conditions ; and Visconti lost
no time in the prosecution of hostilities. These were so
successful, that Venice was in danger of falling ; and Dandolo
died of a broken heart. In the following month died also
Giovanni Visconti. The emperor Charles, who had deceived
the hopes of the Venetians by delaying to advance into Italy,
now crossed the Alps; and Petrarca met him at Mantua.
Finding liim, as usual, wavering and avaricious, the poet soon
left him, and returned to the nephews and heirs of Visconti.
He was induced by Galeazzo to undertake an embassy to the
emperor. Ill disposed as was Charles to the family, he declared
that he had no intention of carrying liis arms into Italy. On
this occasion he sent to Petrarca the diploma of Count Palatine,
in a golden box, which golden box the Count Francesco
returned to the German chancellor : and he made as little use
of the title.
He now settled at Garignano, a village three miles from
Milan, to which residence he gave the name of Linterno,
from the villa of Scipio on the coast of Naples. Pond as
he was of the great and powerful, he did not always give
them the preference. Capra, a goldsmith of Bergamo,
enthusiastic in admiration of his genius, invited him with
earnest entreaties to honor that city with a visit. On his
arrival, the governor and nobility contended which should
FRANCESCO PETRAHCA. 303
perform the offices of hospitality toward so illustrious a guest :
but he went at once to the house of Capra^ where he was
treated by his worthy host with princely magnificence, and
with delicate attentions which princely magnificence often
overlooks. The number of choice volumes in the library^ and
the conversation of Capra, were evidences of a cultivated
understanding and a virtuous heart. In the winter following
(1359) Boccaccio spent several days at Linterno, and the poet
gave him his latin Eclogues in his own handwriting. On
his return to Florence^ Boccaccio sent his friend the B'lv'ma
Commedia, written out likewise by himself, and accompanied
with profuse commendations.
Incredible as it may appear, this noble poem, the glory of
Italy, and admitting at that time but one other in the world
to a proximity with it, was wanting to the library of Petrarca.
His reply was cold and cautious : the more popular man, it
might be thought, took umbrage at the loftier. He was
jealous even of the genius which had gone by, and which
bore no resemblance to his own, excepting in the purity and
intensity of love : for this was a portion of the genius in
both. He was certainly the very best man that ever was a
very vain one : and vanity has a better excuse for itself in him
than in any other, since none was more admued by the world
at large, and particularly by that part of it which the wisest
are most desirous to conciliate, turning their wisdom in full
activity to the elevation of their happiness. Laura, it is true,
was sensible of little or no passion for him; but she was
pleased with his ; and stood like a beautiful Cariatid of stain-
less marble, at the base of an image on which the eyes of Italy
were fixt.
Petrarca, like Boccaccio, regretted at the close of hfe, not
only the pleasm-e he had enjoyed, but also the pleasure he liad
imparted to the world. Botii of them, as their mental faculties
were diminishing, and their animal spirits were leaving them
apace, became unconscious how incomparably greater was the
benefit than the injmy done by their writings. In Boccaccio
there are certain tales so coarse that modesty casts them aside,
and those only who are irreparably contaminated can receive
any amusement from them. But in the greater part, what
trutlifulness, what tenderness, what joyousness, what purity !
Their levities and gaieties are like the harmless lightnings of a
summer sky in the delightful regions they were written in.
304 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Petrarca, with a mind which bears the same proportion to
Boccaccio's as the Sorga bears to the Arno, has been the
solace of many sad hours to those who probably were more
despondent. It may be that_, at the time when he was writing
some of his softest and most sorrowful complaints, his dejection
was caused by dalliance with another, far more indulgent than
Laura. But his ruling passion was ungratified by her ; there-
for she died unsung, and, for aught we know to the contrary,
unlamented. He had forgotten what he had declared in
Sonnet 17.
E, se di lui forse altra donna spera,
Vive in speranza deb^le e fallace,
Mio, perche sdegno cib ch' a voi dispiace, &c.
If any other hopes to find
That love in me which you despise.
Ah ! let her leave the hope behind :
I hold from all what you alone should prize.
It can only be said that he ceased to be a visionary : and we
ought to rejoice that an inflammation, of ten years' recurrence,
sank down into a regular fit, and settled in no vital part. Yet
I can not but wish that he had been as zealous in giving
instruction and counsel to his only sou, a youth whom he
represents in one of his letters to have been singularly modest
and docile, as he had been in giving it to princes, emperors,
and popes, who exhibited very little of those characters. While
he was at his villa at Linterno, the unfortunate youth robbed
the house in Milan, and fled. We may reasonably suppose
that home had become irksome to him, and that neither the
eye nor the heart of a father was over him. Giovanni was
repentant, was forgiven, and died.
The tenderness of Petrarca, there is too much reason to fear,
was at all times concentrated in self. A nephew of his early
patron Colonna, in whose house he had spent many happy
hours, was now deprived of house and home, and, being
reduced to abject poverty, had taken refuge in Bologna. He
had surely great reason to complain of Petrarca, who never in
his journeys to and fro had visited or noticed him, or, rich as
he was in benefices by the patronage of his family, oflFered him
any succour. This has been excused by Mr. Campbell : it
may be short of turpitude; but it is farther, much farther,
from generosity and from justice. Never is mention made by
FRANCESCO PETRARCA. 305
him of Laura's cliildrcn, whom he must have seen with her,
and one or other of wliom must have noticed with the pure
delight of unsuspicious childhood his fond glances at the
lovely mother. Surely in all the years he was devoted to
Laura, one or other of lier children grieved her by ill-health,
or perhaps by dying; for virtue never set a mark on any
door so that sickness and sorrow must not enter. But
Petrarca thought more about her eyes than about those tears
that are usually the inheritance of the brightest, and may well
be supposed to have said, in some inedited canzone.
What care I what tears there be,
If the tears are not for me ?
His love, when it administered nothing to his celebrity, was
silent. Of his two children, a son and a daughter, not a word
is uttered in any of his verses. How beautifully does Ovid,
who is thought in general to Imve been less tender, and was
probably less chaste, refer to the purer objects of his affection !
Unica nata, mei justissima causa doloris, &c.
Petrarca's daughter lived to be the solace of his age, and
married happily. Boccaccio, in the most beautiful and
interesting letter in the whole of Petrarca's correspondence,
mentions her kind reception of him, and praises her beauty
and demeanour. Even the unhappy boy appears to have been
by nature of nearly the same character. According to the
father's own account, liis disposition was gentle and tractable ;
he was modest and shy, and abased his eyes before the smart
witticisms of Petrarca on the defects his own negligence had
caused. A parent should never excite a blush, nor extinguish
one.
Domestic cares bore indeed lightly on a man perpetually
busy in negotiations. He could not but despise the emperor,
who yet had influence enough over him to have brought him
into Germany. But bands of robbers infested the road, and
the plague was raging in many of the intermediate cities. It
had not reached Venice : and there he took refuge. Wherever
he went, he carried a great part of his library with him : but
he found it now more inconvenient than ever, and therefor
he made a present of it to the republic, on condition that
it neither should be sold nor separated. It was never sold,
it was never separated ; but it was suffered to fall into decay,
and not a single volume of the collection is now extant.
306 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
While he was at Yerona^ his friend Boccaccio made him
another visits and remained with him tliree summer months.
The plague deprived him of Lselius, of Socrates, and of
Barbato. Among his few surviving friends was Philip de
Cabassoles, now patriarch of Jerusalem, to whom he had pro-
mised the dedication of liis treatise on " Solitary Life/' which
he began at Vaucluse.
Uriaan V, successor to Innocent, designed to reform the
disciphne of the church; and Petrarca thought he had a
better chance than ever of seeing its head at Rome. Again
he wrote a letter on the occasion, learned, eloquent, and
enthusiastically bold. Urban had perhaps already fixed his
determination. Despite of remonstrances on the side of the
French king, and of intrigues on the side of the cardinals,
■whose palaces and mistresses must be left behind, he quitted
Avignon on the 30th of April, 1367, and, after a stay of
four months at Viterbo, entered Eome. Before this event
Petrarca had taken into his house, and employed as secretary,
a youth of placid temper and sound understanding, which
he showed the best disposition to cultivate. His name was
Giovanni Malpighi, better known afterward as Giovanni da
Ravenna. He was admitted to the table, to the walks, and
to the travels of his patron, enjoying far more of his kindness
and affection than, at the same'time of life, had ever been
bestowed upon his son. Petrarca superintended his studies,
and prepared him for the clerical profession. Unexpectedly
one morning this youth entered his study, and declared he
would stay no longer in the house. In vain did Petrarca
try to alter his determination : neither hope nor fear moved
him : and nothing was left but to accompany him as far as
Yenice. Giovanni would see the tomb of Yirgil : he would
visit the birthplace of Ennius : he would learn greek &t
Constantinople. He went however no farther than Pavia,
where Petrarca soon followed him, and pardoned his extra-
vagance.
Urban had no sooner estabhshed the holy see at Rome
ao-ain, than he began to set Italy in a flame, raising troops
in all quarters, and directing them against the Yisconti. The
emperor too in earnest had resolved on war. But Bernabo
Yisconti, who knew his avarice, knew how to divert his arms.
He came into Italy, but only to lead the pope's palfrey and
to assist at the empress's coronation. Urban sent an invitation
FRANCESCO PETRARCA. 307
to Petrarca ; and lie prepared, although in winter, to revisit
Home. Conscious that his health was declining, he made
his will. To the Lord of Padua he bequeathed a picture of
the Virgin by Giotto ; and to Boccaccio fifty gold florins,
for a cloak to keep him warm in his study. Such was his
debility, he could proceed no farther than Perrara, and
thought it best to return to Padua. Por the benefit of the
air he settled in the hamlet of Arqua, where he built a villa,
and where Ms daughter and her husband Prancesco di
Brossano, came to live with him. Urban died, and was
succeeded by Gregory XI, who would have added to the
many benefices held already by Petrarca : and the poet in
these his latter days was not at all averse to the gifts of for- ,
tune. His old friend the bishop of Cabassoles, now a cardinal,
was sent as legate to Perugia : Petrarca was desirous of
visiting him, and the rather as the prelate^s health was
declining : but before his own enabled him to undertake the
journey, he had expired.
One more effort of friendship was the last reserved for
him. Hostilities broke out between the Venetians and
Prancesco da Perrara, aided by the king of Hungary, who
threatened to abandon his cause unless he consented to terms
of peace. Venice now recovered her advantages, and reduced
Prancesco to the most humiliating conditions. He was
obliged to send his son to ask pardon of the republic. To
render this less intolerable, he prevailed on Petrarca to
accompany the youth, and to plead liis cause before the
senate. Accompanied by a numerous and a splendid train,
they arrived at the city; audience was granted them on the
morrow. But fatigue and illness so affected Petrarca that
he could not deliver the speech he had prepared. Among
the many of his compositions which are lost to us, is this
oration. Happily there is preserved the friendly letter he
wTote to Boccaccio on his return; the last of his writings.
During the greater part of his lifetime, though no less zealous
than Boccaccio himself in recovering the works of the classics,
he never had red the Bivina Commedia ; nor, until this
period of it, the Decameron; the two most admirable
works the continent has produced from the restoration of
learning to the present day. Boccaccio, who had given him
the one, now gave him the other. In his letter of thanks
for it, he excuses the levity of his friend in some places,
X 2
308 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AX OLD TREE.
attributes it to the season of life iu wliicli the book was
written^ and relates the effect the story of Griseldis had
produced, not only on himself, but on another of less sensi-
bility. He even learnt it by heart, that he might recite it
to his friends ; and he sent the author a latin translation of
it. Before this, but among his latest compositions, he had
written an indignant answer to an unknown rrencli monk,
who criticised his letter to Urban, and had spoken con-
temptuously of Rome and Italy. Monks generally know at
what most vulnerable part to aim the dagger : and the
rrenchman struck Petrarca between his vanity and his
patriotism. A greater mind would have looked down indiffer-
ently on a dwarf assailant, and would never have lifted him
np, even for derision. The most prominent rocks and head-
lands are most exposed to the elements ; but those which
can resist the violence of the storms are in little danger from
the corrosion of the limpets.
On the 18th of July, 1374, Petrarca was found in liis
library, his brow upon a book he had been reading : he
was dead.
There is no record of any literary man, or perhaps of any
man whatsoever, to wliom such honors, honors of so many
kinds, and from such different quarters and personages,
have been ofl'ered. They began in his early life; and we
are walking at this hour in the midst of the procession.
Pew travellers dare to return from Italy until they can de-
scribe to the attentive ear and glistening eye the scenery
of the Euganean hills. He who has loved truly, and, above
all, he who has loved unhappily, approaches, as holiest
altars are approached, the cenotaph on the little columns
at Arqua.
The latin works of Petrarca were esteemed by himself more
liiglily than his Italian.^ His Letters and his Dialogues
"De Contemptu Mundi," are curious and valuable. In the
latter he converses with Saint Augustin, to whom he is
introduced by Tndh, the same personage who appears in his
* It is incredible that Julius Caesar Scaliger, who has criticised so vast a
number of later poets quite forgotten, and deservedly, should never have
even seen the latin poetry of Petrarca. His words ai'e : " Primus, quod
equidem sciam, Petrarca ex lutulenta barbarie os ccclo attollere ausus est,
fujus, quemadmodum diximus alibi, quod nihil videre licucret, ejus viri
castigationes sicut et alia multa, reliuquam studiosis." Poet. 1. vi., p. 769.
PRANCESCO PETRARCA. 309
Africa, and whom Voltaire also invokes to descend on his
little gravelly Champ de Mars, the Ilenriade. The third
dialogue is about his love for Laura, and nobly is it defended.
He wrote a treatise on the ignorance of one's self and others
{rmdtonim), in which he has taken much from Cicero and
Augustin, and in which he afterward forgot a little of his
own. "Ought we to take it to heart/' says he, "if we are
ill spoken of by the ignorant and malicious, when the
same thing happened to Homer and Demosthenes, to
Cicero and Yirgil?'' He was fond of following these two;
Cicero in the number of his epistles, Yirgil in eclogue and
in epic.
Of his twelve eclogues, which by a strange nomenclature
he also called bucolics, many are satirical. In the sixth
and seventh Pope Clement is represented in the character
of Mitio. In the sixth Saint Peter, under the name of
Pamphilus, reproaches him for the condition in which he
keeps his flock, and asks liim what he has done with the
wealth intrusted to him. Mitio answers that he has kept
the gold arising from the sale of the lambs, and that he has
given the milk to certain friends of his. He adds that his
spouse, very different from the old woman Pamphilus was
contented with, went about in gold and jewels. As for the
rams and goats, they played their usual gambols in the
meadow; and he himself looked on. Pamphilus is indignant,
and tells him he ought to be flogged and sent to prison for
life. Mitio drops on a sudden his peaceful character, and
calls him a faithless runaway slave, deserving the fetter and
the cross. In the twelfth eclogue, under the appellations of
Pan and Arcticus, are represented the kings of France and
England. Arcticus is indignant at the favors Pan receives
from Faustula (Avignon). To king John the pope had
remitted his tenths, so that he was enabled to continue the
war agamst England, whicli ended in his captivity.
Petrarca in all his latin poetry, and indeed in all his latin
compositions, is an imitator, and generally a very unsuc-
cessful one; but his versification is more harmonious, and
his language has more the air of antiquity, and more re-
sembles the better models, than any had done since Boethius.
AVe now come to his Italian poetry. In this he is less
deficient in originality, though in several pieces he has imitated
too closely Cino da Pistoja. " Mille dubj in un di," for
310 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
instance, in his seventli canzone. Cino is crude and enig-
matical ; but there is a beautiful sonnet by him addressed
to Dante, which he wrote on passing the Apennines, and
stopping to visit the tomb and invoke the name of Selvaggia.
Petrarca, late in life, made a collection of sonnets on Laura ;
they are not printed in the order in which they were Avritten.
The first is a kind of prologue to the rest, as the first ode of
Horace is. There is a melancholy grace in this preliminary
piece. The third ought to have been the second ; for, after
having in the first related his errors and regrets, we might
have expected to find the cause of them in the following ;
we find it in the third. " Di pensier in pensier," " Chiare
dolci e fresche acque,^' "Se il pensier che mi strugge,^'
" Benedetto sia il giorno,'^ " Solo e pensoso," are incom-
parably better than the " Tre Sorelle," by wliich the Italians
are enchanted, and which the poet himself views with great
complacency. These three are upon the eyes of Laura. The
seventh canzone, the second of the " Sorelle," or, as they have
often been styled, the " Grazie," is the most admired of them.
In this however the ear is offended at " Qnal all' alia." The
critics do not observe this sad cacophony. And nothing is
less appropriate than
Ed al fuoco gentil ond' io tutl' ardo.
The close is,
Canzon ! I'una Sorella h poco inanzi,
E r altra sento in quel medesmo albergo
Apparecchiarsi, ond' io piU carta vergo.
This ruins the figure. What becomes of the Sorella, and the
alhergo, and the apjiareccliiarsi ? The tliird is less celebrated
than the two elder sisters.
Muratori, the most judicious of Italian commentators, gives
these canzoni the preference over the others : but it remained
for a forener to write correctly on them, and to demonstrate
that they are very faulty. I find more faults and graver
than Ginguene has found in them : but I do not complain
with him so much that the commencement of the third
is heavy and languid, as that serious thoughts are intersected
with quibbles, and spangled with conceits. I will here remark
freely, and in some detail, on this part of the poetry of
Petrarca.
Sonetto 21. It will be difficult to find in aU the domains
FRANCESCO PETRA.IICA. 311
of poetry so frigid a conceit as in tlie conclusion of this
sonnet,
E far delle sue braccia a se stess' ombra.
Strange that it should be followed by the most beautiful he
ever wrote :
Solo e pensoso, &c.
Canzone 1.
Ne mano ancor m' agghiaccia
L' esser coperto poi di bianche piume,
Oud' io presi col suou color di cigno !
How very inferior is this childish play to Horace's ode, in
which he also becomes a swan.
Canzone 3. Among the thousand offices which he attributes
to the eyes is carrying the keys. Here he talks of the sioeet
eyes carrying the keys of his sweet thoughts. Again he has a
peep at the keyhole in the seventh.
Quel cuor ond' hanno i begli occbi la chiave.
He also lets us into the secret that he is really fond of com-
plaining, and that he takes pains to have his eyes always full
of tears.
Ed io son un di quel oh' il pianger giova,
E par ben ch' io m' inrjegno
Che di lagrime pregui
Sien gli occhi miei.
Sonetto 20. Here are Phcebus, Yulcan, Jupiter, Ccesar,
Janus, Saturn, Mars, Orion, Neptune, Juno, and a chorus of
Angels : and they have only fourteen lines to turn about in.
Canzone 4. The last part has merit from " E perche un
poco.''
Sonetto 39. In this beautiful sonnet, as in almost every one,
there is a redundancy of words : for instance,
Benedetto sia il giorno, e '1 mesa, e 1' anno,
E la stagion, e 'I tempo.
Sonetto 40 is very serious. It is a prayer to God that his
heart may be turned to other desires, and that it may remember
how on that day He was cruciSed.
Sestina 3. With what derision would a poet of the present
day be treated who had written such stuff as,
E pel bel petto 1' indurato ghiaccio
Che trae dal mio si dolorosi venti.
312 THE LAST FRUIT OPF AN OLD TREE.
Soiietto 44. "L'aspetto sacro" is ingenious^ yet without
conceits.
Canzone 8. As far as we know it has never been remarked
(nor indeed is an italian Academia worth a remark) that the
motto of the Academia della Crusca, " U piu bel fior ne coghe "
is from
E, le onorate
Cose cercando, il piu bel fior ne coglie.
Sonetto 46. Here he wonders whence all the ink can come
with which he fills his paper on Laura.
Sonetto 50. In the foui'teenth year of his passion, his ardour
is increasing to such a degree, that, he says, "Death ap-
proaches . . . and life flies away."
Che la morte m'appressa . . . . c7 viver fugge.
We believe there is no instance where hfe has resisted the
encounter.
Sonetto 59. This is very different from all his others. The
first part is poor enough : the last would be interesting if we
could believe it to be more than imaginary. Here he boasts of
the impression he had made on Laura, yet in his last Canzone
he asks her whether he ever had. The words of this sonnet
are,
Era ben forte la nemica mia,
E lei viddi io ferita in mezzo al core.
But we may well take all this for ideal, when we read the very
next, in which he speaks of being free from the thraldom that
had held him so many years.
Sonetto 66. The conclusion from "Ne mi lece ascoltar," is
very animated : here is greatly more vigor and incitation than
usual.
Canzone 9. It would be difficult to find anywhere, except in
the rarest and most valuable books, so wretched a poem as
this. Tlie rhymes occur over and over again, not only at the
close, but often at the fifth and sixth syllables, and then
another time. Metastasio has managed best the redundant
rhymes.
Sonetto 73. The final part, "1/ aura soave," is exquisitely
beautiful, and the harmony complete.
Sonetto 84. " Quel vago impallidir " is among the ten
best.
Canzone 10. In the last stanza there is a lightness of
FRANCESCO PETRARCA. 313
movement not always to be found in the graces of
Petrarca.
Canzone J 1. This is incomparably the most elaborate work
of the poet^ but it is very far from the perfection of " Solo e
pensoso/^ The second and third stanzas are inferior to the
rest ; and the fera hella e mansueta is quite unworthy of the
place it occupies.
Canzone 13 is extremely beautiful until we come to
Pur ti medesmo assido,
Me freddo, pietra morta in pietra viva.
Sonetto 95. "Pommi ovi '1 Sol/' is imitated from Horace's
" Pone me pigris/' &c.
Sonetto 98. Four verses are filled with the names of rivers,
excepting the monosyllables ?ion and e. He says that all these
rivers can not slake the fire that is the anguish of his heart :
no, nor even ivy, fir, pine, beech, or juniper. It is by no
means a matter of wonder, that these subsidiaries lend but
little aid to the exertions of the fireman.
Sonetto 110.
anime gentili ed amorose
has been imitated and improved upon by Redi, in his
Donne gentili, divote d' amore.
Sonetto 111. No extravagance ever surpassed the invo-
cation to the rocks in the water, requiring that hence-
forward there would not be a single one which had neglected
to learn how to burn with his flames. He himself can only go
farther in.
Sonetto 119, where he tells us that Laura's eyes can burn
up the llhine when it is most frozen, and crack its hardest
rocks.
Sonetto 132. In the precarious state of her health, he fears
more about the disappointment of his hopes in love than about
her danger.
Sonetto 148. His descriptions of beauty are not always dis-
tinct and correct : for example,
Gli occhi sereni e le stellanti ciglia
La bella bocca angelica . . de perle
Plena, e di rose . . e di dolci parole.
In this place we shall say a little about occhi and ciglia. First,
314 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
the sense would be better and the verse equally goodj if, trans-
posing the epithets, it were written
Gli ocelli etellanti e le serene ciglia.
The Italian poets are very much in the habit of putting the
eyelashes for the eyes, because ciglia is a most useful rhyme.
The hatin poets, contented with oculi, ocelli, and lumina, never
employ cilia, of which indeed they appear to have made but
little account. Greatly more than a hundred times has
Petrarca inserted eyes into the first part of his sonnets ; it is
rarely that we find one without its occJd. They certainly are
very ornamental things ; but it is not desirable for a poet to
resemble an Argus.
Canzone 15. The versification here differs from the others,
but is no less beautiful than in any of them. However, where
Love appears in person, we would rather that Pharaoh, Eachel,
&c., were absent.
Sonetto 157. He tells us on what day he entered the
labyrinth of love.
Mille trecento ventisette appunto
Suir ora prima il di setto d' Aprili.
This poetry has very unfairly been taken advantage of, in a
book
Written by William Prynne Esquier, the
Year of our Lord six hundred thirty-three.
Sonetto 158. He has now loved twenty years.
Sonetto 161. The first verse is rendered very inharmonious
by the cesura and the final word having syllables that rhyme.
Tutto '1 di piango, e per la notte quando, hgvhnando, and con-
suma7ido, are considered as rhymes, although rhymes should be
formed by similarity of sound and not by identity. The
Italians, the Spaniards, and the French, reject this canon.
Sonetto 187, on the present of two roses, is hght and pretty.
Sonetto 192. He fears he may never see Laura again. Pro-
bably this was written after her death. He dreams of her
saying to him, " do you not remember the last evening, when
I left you with your eyes in tears ? Forced to go away from
you, I would not tell you, nor could I, what I teU you now.
J)o not hope to see me again on earth!' This most simple and
beautiful sonnet has been less noticed than many which a pure
taste would have rejected. The next is a vision of Laura's
FRANCESCO PETllARCA. 315
death. There are verses in Petrarca which will be uttered by
many sorrowers through many ages. Such, for instance, are
Non la conobbe il mondo mentre 1' cbbe,
Couobbila io chi a pianger qui rimasi.
But we are hard of behef when he says
Pianger cercai, non gia dal pianto onwe.
There are fourteen more Sonnets, and one more Canzone in
the first series of the Rime ; but we must here close it. Of the
second, third, and fourth series we must be contented with
fewer notices, for already we have exceeded the limits we pro-
posed. They were written after Laura's death, and contain
altogether somewhat more that the first alone. Many of the
poems in them are grave, tender, and beautiful. There are the
same faults, but fewer in number, and less in degree. He
never talks again, as he does in the last words of the first, of
carrying a laurel and a column in his bosom, the one for fifteen,
the other for eighteen years.
Ginguene seems disinclined to allow a preference to this
second part of the Canzoniere. But surely it is in general
far more pathetic, and more exempt from the importunities
of petty fancies. He takes the trouble to translate the
wretched sonnet (33, part 2) in which the waters of the river
are increased by the poet's tears, and the fish (as they had a
right to expect) are spoken to. But the next is certainly a
most beautiful poem, and worthy of Dante himself, whose
manner of thinking and style of expression it much resembles.
There is a canzone in dialogue which also resembles it in
sentiment and feeling ;
Quando soave mio fido conforto, &c.
The next again is imitated fromCino da Pistoja: what a crowd
of words at the opening !
Quel antico mio dolce empio signore.
It is permitted in no other poetry than the Italian to shovel up
such a quantity of trash and triviality before the doors. But
rather than indulge in censure, we wiU recommend to the
especial perusal of the reader another list of admirable com-
positions. "Alma fehce," "Anima bella," "Ite rime dolenti,"
"Tornami a mente," "Quel rossignol," "Yago augelletto,"
"Dolce mio caro," "GK angeli," "Ohime! il bel viso," "Che
debbo io far," " Amor ! se vuoi," " aspettata," " Anima, che
316 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD THEE.
dimostra/^ "Spirto gentil/^ "Italia mia/^ Yew indeed, if any^
of these are without a flaw; but they are of higher worth
than those on which the reader, unless forewarned, woidd
spend his time unprofitably. It would be a great blessing if
a critic deeply versed in this literature, like Carey, would
publish the italian poets with significant marks before the
passages worth reading; the more worth, and the less.
Probably it would not be a mark of admiration, only that
surprise and admiration have but one between them, which
would follow the poet's declaration in Can. 18, that "if he
does not melt away it is because fear holds him together."
After this foolery he becomes a true poet again, "0 colli!" &c.,
then again bad, "You see how many colors love paints my
face with."
Nothing he ever wrote is so tender as a reproach of Laura's,
after ten years' admiration, "You are soon grown tired of loving
me!"
There is poetry in Petrarca which we have not yet adverted
to, in which he has changed the chords Kat Trjv Xvprjv airaaav:
such as "Eiamma del ciel," "L' avara Babilonia," "Fontanadi
dolor." The volumes close with the " Trionfi." The first, as
we might have anticipated, is "II Trionfo d' Amore." The
poem is a vile one, stufted with proper names. The "Triumph
of Chastity " is shorter, as might also be anticipated, and not
quite so full of them. At the close, Love meets Laura, who
makes him her captive, and carries him in triumph among the
virgins and matrons most celebrated for purity and constancy.
The "Triumph of Death" follows.
This poem is truly admirable. Laura is returning from her
victory over Love ; suddenly there appears a black flag, followed
by a female in black apparel, and terrible in attitude and voice.
She stops the festive procession, and strikes Laura. The poet
now describes her last moments, and her soft sleep of death,
in which she retains all her beauty. In the second part she
comes to him in a dream, holds out her hand, and invites him.
to sit by her on the bank of a rivulet, under the shade of
a beech and a laurel. Nothing, in this most beautiful of
languages, is so beautiful, excepting the lines of Dante on
Prancesca, as these.
E quella man' gik tanto desiata,
A me, parlando e sospirando, parse.
LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 317
Their discourse is upon deatli, which she tells him should be
formidable only to the wicked, and assures him that the enjoy-
ment she receives from it, is far beyond any which life has to
bestow. He then asks her a question, which he alone had a
right to ask her, and only in her state of purity and bliss.
She sigh'd, and said, " No ; nothing could dissever
My heart fi-om thine, and nothing shall there ever.
If, thy fond ardor to repress,
I sometimes frown'd (and how could I do less ?)
If, now and then, my look was not benign,
'Twas but to save my fame, and thine.
And, as thou knowest, when I saw thy grief,
A glance was ready with relief."
Scarce with dry cheek
These tender words I heard her speak.
" "Were they but true ! " I cried. She bent the head,
Not unreproachfully, and said,
" Yes, I did love thee ; and whene'er
I turn'd away my eyes, 'twas shame and fear ;
A thousand times to thee did they incline.
But sank before the flame that shot from thine."
He who, the twentieth time, can read unmoved this canzone,
never has experienced a love which could not be requited, and
never has deserved a happy one.
TO LORD BROUGHAM ON THE NEGLECT OF SOUTHEY.
Your lordship will think it strange enough to receive a
letter from me, on any occasion whatsoever. To save you the
trouble of answering it, which, if addrest to you privately,
youi- known pohteness might induce, I intend to commit
it to the Examiner, not without a hope that others of
high station may look over your shoulder while you are
reading it.
The Letters mid Life of &outlieij are now before the public.
In these it appears that your lordship, for a moment, took an
interest in his occupations and in his welfare. This is some-
what ; indeed it is quite as much as was ever taken by those
whose cause he was zealously defending. No man can better
judge than you, whether all the writers of a whole century,
bishops included, have written so well and so effectively in
318 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE;
defence of the Church of England. Within that period more
than twenty millions have been enjoyed by the bishops alone
for their comparatively small services. The greater part of
one million has fallen to the Bishop of London's share; I
mean the present bishop's. It is only now, when he is in
danger, not from the opposition, but from the proximity, of
the pope, that he begins in good earnest to defend the church.
He met his Holiness half-way in sticking up candles on
the altar, and only deferred the lighting of them until a later
hour. He would have left to his Holiness half the wax ; but
was reluctant to yield an ounce of the honey. Southey was
little aware in whose defence he drew his weapon. Honest
and disinterested, he thought the higher ministers of religion
were as pure and conscientious as liimseK. He thought the
English Church in danger of falling ; and instead of laboring
in his own great field, cultivated so long and so much
embellished by him, he took the pickaxe on his shoulder and
labored in the quarry for materials to support it. And now
let us consider what brought it to such a state of dilapidation
and decay. It was that which the late Lord Grey perceived,
when in the House of Lords he openly warned the bishops to
put their house in order. The cry of the nation was loud
against them. Honest men and brave men could ill endure
that clergymen should be barons and inhabit palaces, while
admirals who had served and saved their country were living
in lodgings no better than alms-houses. In their plain
understandings justly did they scoif at those insincere and
hollow sophists, who represented to them that bishoprics were
little more lucrative than the salaries of the judges : for
perfectly well they knew that the judges had given up a
practice at the bar more profitable than the bench affords.
Their appointments were always the reward of long labour
and tried abilities.
If the church, which Southey so well defended, is now in
greater danger than it has ever been since the reign of James
the Second, who has brought it to this danger ? The bishops,
I say, the bishops; some by their intemperate zeal, and
alacrity in persecution ; others by their abject supineness.
There is now an outcry which makes them shake their ears.
People will find other remains of popery to sweep away, beside
what are lying in the vestry and upon the altar. Surplices
and tapers are pushed aside : palaces are about to be turned
LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 319
into school-rooms : the bishop is no longer to be a lord, nor
the curate a pauper. Changes more gradual, than such as are
now inevitable and near, would have been produced by the
wisdom of Southey. What prelate ever thanked him, much
less rewarded him, for his labours ? Among the servants of
the crown. Sir Eobert Peel was the only one who acknow-
ledged them. He would have rewarded with honors the true
" Defender of the Taitli " and the most able champion of our
political institutions.
I now come, by direct consequence, to your lordship^s letter.
It might have been expected, from your generosity to many
who are adverse to you in pohtics, that you would have recom-
mended Southey for one merit or otlier. Several of your
party, now high in office, have idly dipt an infantine hand in
the shallower puddles of literature. Small dogs abhor great
ones. The fleecy petted poodles of "my lady^s chamber"
skulked away from the solitary guardian of tlie house-door.
You had less cause for jealousy. I have no hesitation in
declaring my opinion that public honors and pecuniary
rewards should be bestowed on literary men. Louis the
Pourteenth, when Prance was exhausted by long wars, granted
pensions of great amount to Southey's inferiors. The money
which our parliament has granted for building an infant's
stables would have richly rewarded the ten greatest geniuses
of our country. In my opinion an academy, not a royal one
but a literary one, ought to be established ; not containing
forty members, for forty men of genius never were con-
temporary on the globe, but ten or twelve. Surely it would
tend neither to the ruin nor the danger of the country, if five
hundred pounds yearly were given to half of them, and three
hundred to the other half. Such a proposal is in Southey's
letter, and such was published by me twenty years ago in
the Imaginary Conversations. Whatever the number, it is
improbable that I should be nominated, and quite certain that
I should refuse it. Whatever honor I am desirous of receiv-
ing I can confer upon myself, and would accept none whatever
from any other person. In regard to emoluments, I may
speak as plainly, or more so. If any of my sons accepted any
place under government, I would disinherit him. There is no
danger : nothing will ever be offered to me or mine : we have
done nothing to deserve it ; and I trust we never shall, know-
ing by what deserts such favours are obtained. I claim no
320 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
place in the world of letters ; I am alone ; and will be alone,
as long as I live, and after. Southey, who was foremost in
the defence of that edifice which is now crumbling fast away,
deserves at least that those nearest and dearest to him should
not be quite abandoned. No minister has rewarded him for
Ms services to tlie state ; no chancellor or bishop has conferred
on his only son a benefice of forty pounds a year. Sir Eobert
Peel would never have suffered this ignominy to rest upon our
country. Eirmly do I believe him to have been the wisest
and most honest minister that ever served under the English
crown. He was a patron of agriculture, a promoter of com-
merce, a fosterer of industry, a friend of literature, and, above
all, a lover of truth. He died ; and with him died the hopes
of Southey's family."^
PENSIONS AND ACADEMIES.
In the letter I addressed to Lord Brougham, last week, in
reference to Southey, much was left unsaid on pensions to
literary men, and on academies. His lordship expressed an
opinion that pensions would be conferred by favour, and for
unworthy services. Certainly they would be if conferred by
the present ministers ; and probably, altho in a less degree,
by others. This objection is easily removed, by referring the
merits of the recipient to a committee in the House of
Commons. A vote of parliament would render the pension
not only a benefit but an honor. Probably the time is not
far distant when the arts and sciences, and even literary
genius, may be deemed no less M'orthy of this distinction than
the slaughter of a thousand men. But how, in the midst
of our vast expenditure, spare so prodigious a sum as five
hundred a year to six, and three hundred a year to six more ?
If so many thousands are bestowed on the "^administrators of
woods and forests, men than wliom more idle and more
ignorant could not be raked together in any parish of England
or Wales, an equal difficulty in finding the money seems to
have been obviated. Stables are built for a child scarcely tall
enough to mount a donkey: palaces are built, pulled down
again, and rebuilt; marble arches, of which the mortar is just
grown hard enough to make difficult the demolition, lie before
* But see p. 336.
SIR EOBEKT PEEL AND MONUMENTS. 321
our feet. Picture-gnlleries, more fit for the mysteries of
Eleusis ; Houses of Parliament, models for bride-cakes; all
these have obtained the votes of our legislators. In
general T am far from recommending the customs and
practices of other nations. But when I see in Ger-
many and elsewhere princes the most despotic, many of
them poor, deem worthy of notice, of patronage, of
rank and honor, the philosopher, the poet, the man of
science, it appears to me that any reign in England will
be markt with ignominy by future historians, in which
such men, with scarcely an exception, have been utterly
neglected.
SIR ROBERT PEEL AND MONUMENTS TO PUBLIC MEN.
Statues are now rising in every quarter of our metropolis,
and mallet and chisel are the chief instruments in use.
Whatever is conducive to the promotion of the arts ought un-
doubtedly to be encouraged ; but love in this instance, quite
as much as in any, ought neither to be precipitate nor blind.
A true lover of his country should be exempted from the pain
of blushes, when a forener inquires of him, " Whom does this
statue represent? and for whut merits was it raised?" The de-
fenders of their country, not the dismemberers of it, should
be first in honor ; the maintainers of the laws, not the sub-
verters of them, should follow next. I may be askt by the
studious, the contemplative, the pacifick, whether I would
assign a higher station to any publick man than to a Milton
and a Newton. My answer is plainly and loudly. Yes. But
the higher station should be in streets, in squares, in houses
of parliament ; such are their places : our vestibules and our
libraries are best adorned by poets, philosophers, and philan-
thropists. There is a feeling which street-walking and
publick-meeting men improperly call loyaltij ; a feeling in-
temperate and intolerant, smelling of dinner and wine and
toasts, which swells their stomachs and their voices at the
sound of certain names reverberated by the newspaper press.
As little do they know about the proprietary of these names
as pot-wallopers know about the candidates at a borough
election, and are just as vociferous and violent. A few days
ago I received a most courteous invitation to be named on a
Committee for erecting a statue to Jenner. It was impossible
822 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD THEE.
for me to decline it; and equally was it impossible to ab-
stain from the observations wliicli I am now about to state.
I recommended tliat the statue should be placed before a
publick hospital, expressing my sense of impropriety in con-
founding so great a benefactor of mankind, in any street or
square or avenue, with the Dismemberer of America and his
worthless sons. Nor would I willingly see him among the
worn-out steam engines of parliamentary debates. Tlie
noblest parliamentary men who had nothing to distribute,
not being ministers, are Mithout statues. The illustrious
Burke, the wisest, excepting Bacon, who at any time sat
within the people^s house ; Eomilly, the sincerest patriot of
his day; Huskisson, the most intelligent in commercial affairs;
have none. Peel is become popular, not by his incomparable
merits, but by his untimely death. Shall we never see
the day when Oliver and AVilliam mount the chargers
of Charles and George ; and when a royal swindler is
superseded by the purest and most exalted of our heroes,
Blake ?
Now the fever hath somewhat subsided which came over
the people from the grave of Sir Robert Peel, there is room
for a few observations on his decease and on its consequences.
All publick writers, I believe, have expatiated on his character,
comparing him with others who, within our times, have occu-
pied the same position. My own opinion has invariably
been that he was the wisest of all our statesmen ; and cer-
tainly, though he found reason to change his sentiments
and his measures, he changed them honestly, well-weighed,
always from conviction, and always for the better. He has
been compared, and seemingly in no spirit of hostility or de-
rision, with a Castlereagh, a Perceval, an Addington, a Can-
ning. Only one of these is worthy of notice, namely Canning,
whose brilliancy made his shallowness less visible, and whose
graces of style and elocution threw a veil over his unsound-
ness and lubricity. Sir Robert Peel was no satirist or epi-
grammatist : he was only a statesman in public life, oidy a
virtuous and friendly man in private. Par negotiis, nee supra.
Walpole alone possessed his talents for business. But neither
Peel nor his family were enriched from the spoils of his
country ; Walpole spent in building and pictures more than
SIR ROBERT PEEL AND MONUMENTS. 323
double the value of liis hereditary estate^ and left the quad-
ruple to his descendants.
Dissimilar from Walpole, and from commoner and coarser
men who occupied the same office, Peel forbade that a name
which he had made illustrious should be degraded and stig-
matised hy any title of nobility. For he knew that all those
titles had their origin and nomenclature from military ser-
vices, and belong to military men, like their epaulets and
spurs and chargers. They sound well enough against the
sword and helmet, strangely in law-courts and cathedrals :
but, reformer as he was, he could not reform all this ; he could
only keep clear of it in his own person.
1 now come to the main object of my letter.
Subscriptions are advertised for the purpose of raising
monuments to Sir Robert Peel ; and a motion has been
made in Parhament for one in Westminster Abbey at the
publick expeuse. Whatever may be the precedents, surely
the house of God should contain no object but such as may
remind us of His presence and our duty to Him. Long ago
I proposed that ranges of statues and busts should com-
memorate the great worthies of our country. All the lower
parts of our National Gallery might be laid open for this
purpose. Even the best monuments in Westminster Abbey
and St. Paul's are deformities to the edifice. Let us not con-
tinue this disgrace. Deficient as we are in architects, we
have many good statuaries, and we might well employ them
on the statues of illustrious commanders, and the busts of
illustrious statesmen and writers. Meanwhile our cities, and
especially the commercial, would, I am convinced, act more
wisely, and more satisfactorily to the relict of the deceased,
if, instead of statues, they erected schools and almshouses,
with an inscription to his memory.
We glory in about sixty whose busts and statues may occupy
wdiat are now the " deep solitudes and awful cells" in our
national gallery. Our literary men of eminence are happily
more numerous than the political or the warlike, or both
together. There is only one class of them which might be ad-
vantageously excluded, namely, the theological; and my reasons
are these. Pirst, their great talents were chiefly employed on
controversy ; secondly, and consequently, their images would
excite dogmatical discord, every sect of the Anglican Church,
and every class of dissenters, complaining of undue preferences.
T 2
324 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Painture and sculpture lived in the midst of corruption^ lived
throughout it, and seemed indeed to draw vitality from it, as
flowers the most delicate from noxious air ; but they collapsed
at the searching breath of free inquiry, and could not abide
persecution. The torch of philosophy never kindled the suf-
focating faggot, under whose smoke Theology was mistaken
for Eeligion. Theology had, until now, been speculative and
quiescent : she abandoned to Philosophy these humbler qua-
lities : instead of allaying and dissipating, as Philosophy had
always done, she excited and she directed, animosities. Orien-
tal in her parentage, and keeping up her wide connections in
that country, she acquired there all the artifices most neces-
sary to the furtherance of her designs : among the rest was
ventriloquism, which she quite perfected, making her words
seem to sound from above and from below and from every
side around. Ultimately, when men had fallen on their faces
at this miracle, she assumed the supreme power. Kings were
her lackies, and nations the dust under her palfrey^s hoof.
By her sentence Truth was gagged, scourged, branded, cast
down on the earth in manacles ; and Fortitude, who had stood
at Truth's side, was fastened with nails and pulleys to the
stake. I would not revive by any images, in the abode of the
graceful and the gentle Arts, these sorrowful reminiscences.
The vicissitudes of the world appear to be bringing round
again the spectral Past. Let us place great men between it
and ourselves : they are all tutelar : not the warrior and the
statesman only ; not only the philosopher ; but also the histo-
rian who follows them step by step, and the poet who secures
us from peril and dejection by his counter-charm. Philoso-
phers in most places are unwelcome : but there is no better
reason why Shaftesbury and Hobbes should be excluded from
our galler}^, than why Epicurus should have been from Cicero's
or Zeno from Lucullus's.
Of our sovrans, I think Alfred, Cromwell, and William III.
alone are eligible; and they, because they opposed success-
fully the subverters of the laws. Three viceroys of Ireland
will deservedly be placed in the same receptacle; Sir John
Perrot, Lord Chesterfield, and (in due time) the last Lord-
Deputy. One Speaker, one only, of the Parliament ; he with-
out whom no Parhament would be now existing ; he who de-
clared to Henry IV. that, until all pubhc grievances were
removed, no subsidy should be granted. The name of tliis
SIR ROBERT PEEL AND MONUMENTS. 325
Speaker may be found in Eapin; English liistorians talk
about facts, forgetting men.
Admirals and generals are numerous and conspicuous.
Drake, Blake, Ilodnej, Jervis, Nelson, Collingwood ; the sub-
duer of Algiers beaten down for the French to occupy ; and
the defender of Acre, the first who defeated, discomfited,
routed, broke, and threw into shameful flight, Bonaparte.
Our generals are Marlborough, Peterborough, Wellington, and
that successor to his fame in India, who established the em-
pire that was falling from us, who achieved in a few days
two arduous victories, who never failed in any enterprise,
who accomplished the most difficult with the smallest expen-
diture of blood, who corrected the disorders of the military,
who gave the soldier an example of temperance, the civilian
of simplicity and frugality, and whose sole (but exceedingly
great) reward was the approbation of our greatest man.
With these come the statesmen of the Commonwealtli, the
students of Bacon, the readers of Philip Sidney, the compa-
nions of Algernon, the precursors of Locke and Newton. Op-
posite to them are Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, ]\Iilton :
lower in dignity, Dryden, Pope, Gray, Goldsmith, Cowper,
Keats, Scott, Burns, Shelley, Southey, Byron, Wordsworth ;
the author of Hohenlinden and the Battle of the Baltic ; and
the glorious woman who equalled these two animated works
in her Ivan and Casablanca. Historians^have but recently /^^.ft/vtt,^
risen up among us : and long be it before, by command of
Parliament, the chisel grates on the brow of a Napier, a
Grote, and a Macaulay !
INSCRIPTION FOR A STATUE AT S. IVES.
OLIVER CROMWELL,
a good son, a good husband, a good father,
a good citizen, a good ruler
both in war and peace,
was born in this town.
To know his publick acts,
open the History of England,
where it exhibits in few pages
(alas too few !)
the title of Commonwealth.
326 THE LAST PRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
SHAKESPEARE'S HOUSE.
I AM now writing to jou on the very day and in the very
town in which the Archaeological Society is assembled. My
habits of life withhold me from crowded parties and from long
speeches; therefor I would rather make my soKtary and silent
appeal through the Examiner. The report has long been
prevalent, and uncontradicted, that the house in' which
Shakespeare was born is offered for sale. A letter of Lord
Morpeth has avowed the fact, and that government has
decHned to be the purchaser. Are our rulers aware of the
ignominy that will pursue them for their indifference to the
best poet and the wisest man, whom not only England but
God's whole woi-ld has produced ? Are they aware that the
reign of Victoria will thus be rendered by them inglorious
and disgraceful in our annals ? While many thousands of
pounds are expended in the installation of a royal chancellor
at Cambridge, two thousand are refused by the learned and
the royal to preserve the most memorable edifice that exists
on earth. This edifice contained that illustrious cradle near
which all human learning shines faintly, and where lay that
infant who was_ destined to glorify and exalt our greatest
kings. A.nd_ tliis was among the least of his labours,
I was invited to assist in celebrating his birth-day at
Stratford, and was reprehended for declining it. There
could be no satisfaction to me in meeting a set of people of
whoQi I know nothing, and who know just as httle of me :
nor am I of opinion that Shakespeare wants any celebrity, or
that any can be conferred on him by knives and forks over
beef and mutton, or by toasts and songs, however brave and
loyal. But some small honor may indeed be conferred both
on him and on the Archaeological Society, if, instead of chatter-
ing and chewing, each member pays down for the conservation
of Shakespeare's house as much money as he expends on his
journey and his ordinary. The gentlemen of Warwickshire
have never been foremost in letters, in sciences, or in arts :
but if publick opinion takes an opposite direction, they have
now a glorious opportunity of controverting it. In my zeal
to elevate their character as much as may be, let me express
my firm conviction that altho, if Shakespeare were living at
this hour, there are scarcely three gentlemen in the county
who would bear any deference or respect toward liim, yet that
SHAKESrEARE's HOUSE. 327
there are many who would stop their horses^ and turn round
upon their saddles, to take a last look at the closed and lighted
chamber of the dead, and who would tell the groom, trotting
on again, that a clever inoffensive sort of man had occupied it.
Nay, I am confident that several of them would give orders
for cutting down an elm, if one were wanted to make his
coffin ; let them now bestow an elm, or an elm's worth, to
prop his house.
If the crown and parliament are so insensible to disgrace, if
the English people at large are so ungratefid to the teacher of
whom they have been boasting all their lives, let me exhort
and implore his more immediate neighbours to protect his
deserted mansion.
In the Examiner of August 7, I find an interesting letter,
and personally to me a very courteous one, from the Rev. Geo.
Wilkins, of Wix, near Manningtree. It gives me the informa-
tion that the house in which Shakespeare was born is no better
known than Homer's. Mr. Wilkins is so obliging as to
promise that he will " look-up " a pubhcation of his, in which
the proofs of deception on this subject are manifest. It
appears, that the house in question was occupied by Shake-
speare's father, in the poet's boyhood. The fact is curious,
that, in all countries, the birth-place of an illustrious man is
more sought after than the country of his education, or of his
writings, or of his exploits. If this in reality is not the house
in which the unbaptized infant uttered his first cries, neverthe-
less it appears to be the very place in which his first ideas ger-
minated: if it was not the birth-place of the child, it was the
birth-place of the poet.
Milton entreats " the colonel or Jcnigid at arms," to protect
his habitation, as Alexander had protected Pindar's. Tor this
protection it was not requisite to the Macedonian conqueror
that the glorious Theban should have been born in any
chamber of it. I know not, and care not, whether Schiller
was born in that house, which a patriotic prince is restoring,
and in which an enthusiastic nation sees the brightness of its„
glory. It is natural that some pleasurable sensations should
arise in the mind of Mr. Wilkins, on reflecting that the
ground-work of his education was laid in the same school to
which the boy William Shakespeare, with his satchel and
328 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
shining morning face, went, perhaps unwillingly. It seems
to have imparted to him also the rudiments of generous senti-
ments and sound judgment. He must indeed be overflowing
with heartiness, who gives Lord Morpeth and the government
his most "hearty" thanks for not making themselves agents or par-
ticipators in the protection of Shakespeare^s house. Such, until
I am favored by Mr. Wilkins with proofs to the contrary, I
must believe it to be, altho not the house of his birth.
It grieves me to be under the necessity of remarking, that
neither in life nor in death have men of genius in England
been honored by their government, of late, so highly as
abroad. It would be indelicate in those to complain who have
most reason : but I am exempted by my humble station in
literatui'e from any suspicion of personal soreness on the
subject, as well as by a station somewhat higher (however
unworthily) in fortune.
A sense of shame among the administrators of our affairs
urges them at last to take under their patronage the roof and
rafters of Shakespeare^s lowly mansion. Let me indulge the
hope that a similar feeling will make its visitors, in future,
abstain from the desecration they commit, by writing and
scratching their ignoble names upon the walls. If those who
have committed this offence had been sensible of decency and
shame, they would rather have undergone the self-inflicted
penalty of Scaevola. It would be gracious in government to
obliterate the memorials of such thoughtless guilt, and to
admonish through the beadle those who are ready to commit it.
The gentlemen of the 7Foof/,9 awf/ ^ore*^;^ receive their thousands
yearly for their important functions ; a sum greater than those
woods and forests bring to the revenue of the country.
Beyond a doubt, these gentlemen well merit their appointment.
Modestly as they have concealed their talents from public
view, probably some of them have rendered great services to
our country by their valour; others by profound philosophical
inquiries ; others by the easier graces of polite literature. It
would be unreasonable to ask or expect, from those gentlemen of
the Woods and Forests a subscription amounting to a twentieth
or a thirtieth part of what the country has bestowed on them:
but in their capacity of commissioners of her Majesty^s Woods
and Forests, we may be permitted to approach them with our
humble thanks, for acting so liberally as to offer their patronage
of a housekeeper, on the certain information they have received
THE PROPOSED NEW NATIONAL GALLERY. 329
that Shakespeare's house was somewhere on the outskirts of
the Forest of Arden. They have therefor a clear right to exer-
cise their patronage •*»Wl in placing an old woman to protect it,
whether one of themselves or one from beyond the pale : and
it is reported that, in the general enthusiasm, they are so
magnanimous as to afford this protection without a petition to
parliament for the enlargement of their salaries.
THE PROPOSED NEW NATIONAL GALLERY.
We are about to build another national picture gallery ; to
expend nearly a hundred thousand pounds in purchasing the
land around it ; and perhaps the double of that amount in the
edifice itself. The situation is not such as will very long exempt
it from the effect of smoke and many other annoyances. ^'\ e
may be sure that houses of all descriptions will cluster and
inclose it. For a tenth of the money the palace of Kensington,
obnoxious to no such inconvenience, might be converted to
the same pui-pose. Little more would be necessary than to
replace the roof by one similar to that of the J^ouvre ; to
remove the partitions and floors ; to divide it into seven or
eight compartments, and to decorate the exterior with pilasters.
The palace would have this great advantage over any new
structure : it v/ould be ready for the reception of pictures in a
few months, without danger of dampness; whereas the new
structure, if we may calculate by the progress of other large
public edifices, would be the work of many years ; and succes-
sive parliaments might be called on for successive grants beyond
the estimate. But, in this Hospital, such of the pictures as
survived the inflictions they have undergone, may, tended by
careful nurses, reach a good old age.
It would be a novelty in England, but is none in Italy, in
Germany, or in Prance, to see the abandoned residences of
princes given up to the instruction and recreation of the people.
Speculators, both the interested and the fanciful, will object to
the scheme proposed.
This is no Jonger a royal residence ; and, even if it were,
the concession of it would be but a small compensation for
what the people of England has lately granted in the con-
struction of others.
Parhament, at no distant time, may insist on the alienation
330 THE LAST PRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
of what were royal domains until an equivalent was voted and
accepted. It is only to scatter our money among the JFoods
and Forests, among rangers and wardens, among chancellors
and commissioners, that the ministers of the crown retain what
to the crown is of small benefit, and might be of great benefit
to the people. Property to the amount of many millions, now
uncultivated, might be sold at high prices to the intelligent
and industrious ; and a certain portion of the proceeds might
be set apart to accumulate for the younger branches of the
royal family. Purchasers will be more interested in preserving
what is planted than they who have received enormous salaries
for the office. Among the blessings we enjoj'is the popularity
of our rulers. But has popularity in any age been celebrated
for constancy ? where is that coast on which there has been an
liigh tide without an ebb ?
The architect who proposes to take down an inconvenient
building, or to restore a dilapidated one, must not wait for a
stormy day. Improvidence in the management of a man^s
afl^airs makes another provident, perhaps suspicious ; and some-
times a wise man gathers more from an unwise than ever an
unwise from a wise.
Integrity is for once united with sagacity in a Chancellor of
the Exchequer; and we may confidently hope from Mr. Glad-
stone what we should vainly have expected from any of his
predecessors.
EPITAPH ON LADY BLESSINGTOK
The honor of literature, and of literary men, never was
inditi'erent to you. Knowing this, I venture to solicit a small,
yet perhaps undue, place in the Athenaum. 1 find in tlie
"Memoir of Lady Blessington" an epitaph ascribed to
me, which a verger or a gravedigger would be ashamed to
have written; such are its bald latinity and trivial common-
place. It is only by placing in juxta -position the true and the
fictitious, the favour which I am now requesting, that the
reasonableness and the necessity of my appeal will be quite
evident.
The original.
lufra sepvltvm est id omne qvod sepeliri potest
mvlieris qvondani pvlcherrimse.
Ingenivm svvm svmmo stvdio colvit,
aliorvm pari adjvvit.
EPITAPH ON LADY BLESSINGTON. 331
Beuefacta sva celare iiovit ; iugenivm non ita.
Erga omneis erat larga bonitate ;
peregrinis eleganter hospitalis.
Venit Lvtetiam Parisiorvin Aprili mense:
qvarto Jvnii die svpremvm svvm obiit.
The substituted.
Hie est depositum
Quod superest mulieris
Quondam pulcherrimse
Beuefacta celare potuit
Ingeuium swum non potuit
Perigrinos quoslihet
Grata hospitalitate convocabat
Liitetise ^arisiorum
Ad meliorem vitam abiit
Die IV mensis Junii
MDCCCXLIX.
Permit me, sir, here to remark, not for the observance of such
conceited and incorrigible fools as this iconoclast, but for the
benefit of other readers and writers of latin epitaphs, that the
word depositum, which occurs in the greater part of them, is
not latin in this signification. To specify all the blunders in
the patchwork would be tedious. But, henefacta celare potv'it,
omitting sva, and putting svvm in the next line, would leave
for interpretation that she could conceal another's beneficence,
but could not her own talents. The qvoslihet would infer that
she was not very choice ; and the convocabat that she sounded
a gong to bring people in promiscuously. The last two lines,
properly construed, would inform us that she left Gore House
for a better Hfe at Paris.
Your lady readers may perhaps wish to see my english of
the epitaph.
To the Memory of Marguerite, Countess of Blessinriton.
Underneath is buried all that could be buried of a woman once most
beautiful. She cultivated her genius with the greatest zeal, and fostered it
in others with equal assiduity. The benefits she conferred she could con-
ceal, her talents not. Elegant in her hospitality to strangers, charitable to
all, she retired to Paris in April, and there she breathed her last on the 4th
of June 1849.
It may be thought superfluous to remark that epitaphs have
certain qualities in common; for instance, all are encomiastic.
The main difference and the main difiiculty lie in the expression,
since nearly all people are placed on the same level in the
epitaph as in the grave. Hence, out of eleven or twelve
333 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
thousand latin ones, ancient and modern, I find scarcely three-
score in which there is originality or elegance. Pure latinity is
not uncommon, and is perhaps as little uncommon in the
modern as in the ancient, where certain forms exclude it, to
make room for what a])peared more venerable. Nothing is
now left to be done but to bring forward, in due order and just
proportions, the better peculiarities of character^ composing the
features of the dead, and modulating the tones of grief.
TO THE EEVEREND CHARLES CUTHBERT SOUTHEY ON HIS
FATHER'S CHARACTER AND PUBLIC SERVICES.
It is not because I enjoyed your father's friendship, my dear
sir, that I am now about to send you my testimony to his
worth. Indeed that very friendship, and the frequent expres-
sion of it in his letters for more than forty years, have made
me hesitate too long before the public.
Never in the course of my existence have I known a man
so excellent on so many points. What he was as a son, is
now remembered by few ; what he was as a husband and a
father, shows it more clearly than the best memory could
represent it. The purity of his youth, the integrity of his
manhood, the soundness of his judgment, and the tenderness
of his heart, they alone who have been blest with the same
qualities can appreciate. And who are they ? Many with
one, some with more than one, nobody with all of them in the
like degree. So there are several who possess one quality of
his poetry ; none who possess the whole variety.
For poetry there must be invention, energy, truth of con-
ception, wealth of words, and purity of diction. His were
indeed all these, excepting one ; and that one often came when
called for; I mean energy. This is the chief characteristic
and highest merit of Byron; it is also Scott's, and perhaps
more than equally. Shelley is not deficient in it; nor is
Keats, whose heart and soul is sheer poetry, overflowing from
its fermentation. Wordsworth is as meditative and thought-
ful as your father, but less philosophical ; his intellect was less
amply stored; his heart was narrower. He knew the fields
better than men, and ordinary men better than extraordinary.
He is second to your father alone, of all poets, ancient or
modern, in local description. The practice of the ancients has
inculcated the belief that scenery should be rare and scanty in
southky's ciiaracteu and public services. 333
heroic poetry. Even those among them who introduce us into
pastoral hfe are sparing of it. Little is there in Theocritus,
hardly a glimpse in Moschus or Bion: but Yirgil has more
and better of (what is called) description, in his JEneid than
in his Eclogues or Georgics. The other epic poets, whatever
the age or country, are little worth noticing, with the single . ,
and sole exception of Apollonius. I do not call epicj^i\\diiff2dcL
which is written in a li/ric meter, nor indeed in any species
of rhyme. Tor, the cap and bells should never surmount the
helmet and breast-plate. To the epic not only a certain spirit
but also a certain form is requisite, and not only in the main
body, but likewise in the minute articulations. Ariosto and
Tasso are lyric romancers. To call Milton epic or heroic
would degrade him from his dignity. To call Paradise Lost
a divine poem is in every sense of the word to call it rightly.
I am inclined to think there is more of beautiful and appro-
priate scenery in Roderic alone, than the whole range of ])oetry,
in all its lands, contains. Whatever may be the feeling of
others in regard to it, I find it a relief from sanguinary actions
and conflicting passions, to rest a while beyond, but within
sight. However, the poet ought not at any time to grow cool
and inactive in the field of battle, nor retire often, nor long.
The warmest admirers of Wordsworth are nevertheless so
haunted by antiquity, that there are few among them, I
beheve, who would venture to call him, what 1 have no
hesitation in doing, the superior both of Virgil and of
Theocritus in description. And description, let it be remem-
bered, is not his only nor his highest excellence. Before I
come to look into his defects, I am ready to assert that he has
written a greater number of good sonnets than all the other
sonneteers in Europe put together: yet sometimes in these
compositions, as in many others of the smaller, he is expletive
and diffuse; which Southey never is. Rural and humble life
has brought him occasionally to a comparison with Crabbe.
They who in their metaphors are fond of applying the physical
to the moral, might say perhaps that Wordsworth now and
then labors under a diarrhcea ; Crabbe under a constipation ;
each without the slightest symptom of fever or excitement.
Immeasurably above Crabbe, and widely different, less graphic,
less concise, less anatomical, he would come nearer to Cowper,
had he Cowper's humour. This, wliich Wordsworth totally
wanted your father had abundantly. Certainly the commentator
334 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
who extolled him for imiversaliiy , intended no irony, altho
it seems one. He wanted not only universality, but variety,
in which none of our later poets is comparable to Southey.
His humour is centle and delicate, yet exuberant. If in the
composition of Wordsworth there had been this one ingredient,
he would be a Cowper in solution, with a crust of prose at the
bottom, and innumerable flakes and bee-wings floating up and
down loosely and languidly. Much of the poetry lately, and
perhaps even stil, in estimation, reminds me of plashy and
stagnant water, with here and there the broad flat leaves of its
fair but scentless lily on the surface, showing at once a want
of depth and of movement. I would never say this openly,
either to the censurers or favorers of such as it may appear to
concern. Por it is inhumane to encourage enmities and dis-
likes, and scarcely less so to diminish an innocent pleasure in
good creatures incapable of a higher. I would not persuade,
if I could, those who are enraptured with a morrice-dancer
and a blind fiddler, that their raptures ought to be reserved
for a Grisi and a Beethoven, and that if they are very happy
they are very wrong. The higher kinds of poetry, of painture,
and of sculpture, can never be duly estimated by the majority
even of the intellectual. The marbles of the Parthenon and
the Odes of Pindar bring many false worshippers, few sincere.
Cultivation will do much in the produce of the nobler arts,
but tliere are only a few spots into which this cultivation
can be carried. Of what use is the plough, or the harrow,
or the seed itself, if the soil is sterile and the climate un-
congenial ?
Remarks have been frequently and justly made, on the
absurdity of classing in the same category the three celebrated
poets who resided contemporaneously, and in fellowship, near
the Lakes. There is no resemblance between any two of them
in the features and character of their poetry. Southey could
grasp great subjects, and completely master them; Coleridge
never attempted it; Wordsworth attempted it, and failed.
He has left behind him no poem, no series or collection of his,
requiring and manifesting so great and diversified powers as
are exhibited in Marmion, or The Lady of the Lake, in
Roderic, or Thalaha, or Kehama. His Excursion is a vast
congeries of small independent poems, several very pleasing.
Breaking up this unwieldy vessel, he might have constructed
but of its material several eclogues ; craft drawing little water.
southey's character and public services. 335
Coleridge left unfinished, year after year, until his death,
the promising Christahel. Before he fell exhausted from it,
he had done enough to prove that he could write good poetry,
not enough to prove that he could ever be a great poet. He
ran with spirit and velocity a short distance, then dropt.
Excelling no less in prose than in poetry, he raised expectations
which were suddenly overclouded and blank, undertook what
he was conscious he never should perform, and declared he
was busily employed in what he had only dreamt of. Never
was love more imaginary than his love of truth. Not only
did he never embrace her, never bow down to her and worship
her, but he never looked her earnestly in the face. Possessing
the most extraordinary powers of mind, his unsteddiness gave
him the appearance of weakness. Tew critics wxre more
acute, more sensitive, more comprehensive; but, like other
men, what he could say most eloquently he said most willingly ;
and he would rather give or detract with a large full grasp,
than weigh deliberately.
What a difference there is between the characters of Coleridge
and of Southey ! Coleridge was fond of indulging in a soft
malignity, while all the energy of Southey lay in his benevo-
lence. Southey had long and continuous trains of thought ;
Coleridge was unable to hold together, in poetry or prose, as
much as might be contained in half a dozen pages. Southey
often walkt upon tenacious clay ; Coleridge on deep and spark-
ling shingle. Southey valued truth above all things ; Cole-
ridge prized the copy far more highly than the original,
and would rather see it reflected in the glass than right before
him. He was giddy by the plethora of power, and after a few
paces he was constrained to stop. He wanted not time to
finish the finest of his poems, the Christahel, but the means he
wanted. I think more highly of his Ancieni Mariner than
Southey did ; but there are several poems of Shelley, Keats,
and Wordsworth, incomparably better. Here I speak of poets
who write no longer; I might speak it as justly of quite as
many who are moving in the same path among us every day.
Several of these have struck as deep a root, but in none of
them are there such wide ramifications. Coleridge would
have written a restless and rambling history ; part very rich
and part very ragged, its holes stufi'ed up with metaphysics
and disquisition, without a mane's face to be seen throughout :
Southey has shown us he could do more than any other
336 THE LAST FUUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Englishman j\liad done in this department^ until Napier came
and won from him the Peninsula.
Conscience with Southey stood on the other side of Enthu-
siasm. What he saw, he said ; what he found, he laid open.
He alone seems to have been aware that criticism, to be com-
plete, must be both analytical and synthetic. Every work
should be measured by some standard. It is only by such
exposition and comparison of two, more or less similar in the
prominent points, that correctness of arbitriment can be
attained. All men are critics ; all men jadge the written or
unwritten words of others. It is not in works of imagination,
as you would think the most likely for it, but it is chiefly in
criticism that writers at the present day are discursive and
erratic. Among our regular bands of critics there is almost
as much and as ill-placed animosity on one side, and enthu-
siasm on the other, as there is among the vulgar voters at par-
liamentary elections, and they who difi^er from them are pelted
as heartily. In the performance of the ancient drama there
were those who modulated with the pipe the language of the
actor. Ko such instrument is found in the wardrobe of our
critics, to temper their animosity or to direct their enthusiasm.
Your father carried it with him wherever he sat in judgment ;
because he knew tliat his sentence would be recorded, and not
only there. Oblivion is the refuge of the unjust ; but their
confidence is vain in the security of that sanctuary. The most
idle and ignorant hold arguments on literary merit. Usuall}',
the commencement is, ' I tlilnh with you, hut, &c., or ' Iclo not
think with yo2i.' The first begins with a false position ; and
there is probably one, and more than one, on each side. The
second would be quite correct if it ended at the word think;
for there are few who can do it, and fewer who will. The
kindlier tell us that no human work is perfect. This is
untrue : many poetical works are ; many of Horace, more
of Catullus, stil more of Lafontaine ; if indeed fable may
be admitted as poetry by coming in its garb and equipage.
Surely there are some of Moore^s songs, and several
of Barry Cornwall's, absolutely perfect : surely there are
also a few small pieces in the italian and french. I
wonder, on a renewed investigation, to find so few among the
Greeks. But the fluency of the language carried them too
frequently on the shallows ; and even in the graver and
more sententious the current is greater than the depth. The
SOUTHEY^S CHARACTER AND PUBLIC SEllVICES. 337
Ilissus is sometimes a sandbank. In tlie elegant and graceful
arrow there is often not only much feather and little barb,
but the barb wants weight to carry it with steddiness and
velocity to the mark. Milton and Cowper were the first and
last among us who breathed without oppression on the serene
and cloudless higliths where the Muses were born and
educated. Each was at times a truant from his school ; but
even the lower of the two, in liis Task, has done what ex-
tremely few of his preceptors could do. Alas ! Ids attic honey
was at last turned sour by the leaven of fanaticism. I wish
he and Goldsmith, and your father, could call to order some
adventurous members of our poetical yacht-club, who are
hoisting a great deal of canvas on a slender mast, and 'un-.-
known regions dare explore ' without compass, plummet, or
anchor. Nobody was readier than Southey to acknowledge
that, in his cajiacity of laureate, he had written some indifferent
poetry ; but it was better than his predecessor''s or successor's
on similar occasions. Personages whom he was expected to
commemorate lookt the smaller for the elevation of their
position, and their naturally coarse materials crumbled under
the master's hand. Against these frail memorials we may
safely place his Imcr'tptions, and challenge all nations to con-
front them. We are brought by these before us to the
mournful contemplation of his own great merits lying unno-
ticed; to the indignant recollection of the many benefices,
since his departure, and since you were admitted into holy
orders, bestowed by chancellors and bishops on clergymen
undistinguished in literature or virtue.* Aiid there has often
been a powerful call where there has been a powerful can-
vasser. The father puts on the colors of the candidate;
and the candidate, if successful, throws a scarf and a lambskin
over the shoulder of the son. Meanwhile, the son of that
great and almost universal genius, who, above all others, was
virtually, truly, and emphatically, and not by a vain title. De-
fender of the Faith, defender far more strenuous and more
potent than any prelatical baron since the Eeformation ; who
has upheld more efficiently, because more uprightly, the as-
saulted and endangered constitution of the realm than any party-
man within the walls of the Parliament-house ; who declined the
baronetcy which was ofi'ered to him and the seat to which he
* Subsequent to the date of this letter a living was bestowed on Guthbert
Southey by Lord Chancellor Truro.
338 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
was elected ; he leaves an only son, ill-provided for, with a
family to support. Different, far different, was his conduct in
regard to those whom the desire of fame led awav from the
road to fortune. He patronized a greater number of intellectual
and virtuous young men, and more warmly, more effectually,
than all the powerful. I am not quite certain that poets in
general are the best deserving of patronage : he however
could and did sympathise with them, visit them in their
affliction, and touch their unsoundness tenderly. Invidious-
ness seems to be the hereditary ophthalmia of our unfortunate
family ; he tended many labouring under the disease, and
never was infected. Several of those in office, I am credibly
informed, have entered the fields of literature ; rather for its
hay-making, I presume, than for its cultivation. Whatever
might have been the disadvantages to your father from their
competition, will I hope, be unvisited upon you. On the
contrary, having seen him safe in the earth, probably they will
not grudge a little gold-leaf for the letters on his gravestone,
now you have been able to raise it out of the materials he has
left behind. We may expect it reasonably; for a brighter
day already is dawning. After a cpiarter of a million spent in
the enlargement of royal palaces and the accommodation of
royal horses ; after a whole miUion laid out under Westminster
Bridge ; after an incalculable sum devoted to another Tower
of Babel, for as many tongues to wag in ; the Queen's Majesty
has found munificent advisers, recommending that the entire
Q>i twenty -five pounds annually shall be granted to the repre-
sentative of that officer who spent the last years of his life, and
life itself, in doing more for I'lngland's commerce than
Alexander and the Ptolemies did for the world's. He quelled
the terrors of the desert, and drew England and India close
together.
ANECDOTE OF LORD CHAXCELLOR THURLOW.
Chancellor Thurlow, who was endowed with as little of
religion as of morality, and with scarcely more of law than of
either, was detained by a thunder storm at a country inn.
The storm continued longer than such storms usually do, and
the Chancellor, tired of waiting its termination, askt the
hostess whether she had any books in the house. She
brouglit the Bible, he tossed it away : " What ! nothing else,
old lady r
THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. 339
She then brought Ilorsley's Sermons. " Who the Devil
is he r
" Our parson, Sir, left the hook for me to read on Sundays:
I don't know ivho wrote it."
To cure idleness by short distraction, his lordship opened the
volume, and continued to read in it for a whole hour, even for
some time after the rain had ceased. He was so struck and
so occupied with it, that he carried it unconsciously quite up
to the carriage steps. He then threw it back to the hostess,
muttering " Ftl he damned if I don't make this fellow a
bishop." He was as good as his word; which indeed it was
easy to be. I am reminded of this occurrence by your mention
of Lord Truro's wise and noble patronage of Southey's son.
Never were two chancellors, or two men, more utterly dis-
similar. If, as Lord John Russell proposes, church-livings
are to be removed from the chancellor's gift to the premier's,
we have probably seen the last instance of patronage bestowed
for services rendered to the state, irrespective of party. His
lordship has been unable to conceal this secret. AVould it
not be better to sell in perpetuity all the crown advowsons by
public auction ? The incumbents would then, in general, be
known to the parishioners, and one source of baseness and
corruption be cut clear off, and more than one year's window-
tax redeemed.
THE QUARTERLY REVIEW.
The (Quarterly Review for December, '49, was shown to me
this morning, for the sake of a note in p. 130. A reviewer
comes valiantly forth in his obscurity, and strikes at me in the
bottom of a page, without provocation and without aim.
Nothing of mine was in question : the subject was utterly
remote. Rabid animals run strait : could not this ? is he
blind? apparently. The Q^ar^e/'/^ would prolong its painful
struggles for existence by clinging to my name.
Speaking of the Dake of Wellington's Dispatches, the
Reviewer observes, " When rrencli people could not resist the
evidence of all great gifts and noble qualities with which that
record was filled — when they owned that it would not do to
persist in their old vein of disparagement now the world had
before it that series of writings in which it was impossible to
say whether one should admire most, the range of knowledge,
z2
340 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
reflection, sense, and wisdom, or the unaffected display of every
manlj, modest, and human feeling under an almost infinite
variety of circumstances, and all conveyed in language of such
inimitable simplicity, so thoroughly the style becoming a
Captain and Statesman of the most illndrlous class; — wlien
this was the result in Prance, the liome faction san^ it was
time to consider the matter, and they undoubtedly shoAved,
and have continued to show, proper signs of repentance.
The exceptions are very few. Here in England we know
of none at all in what can be called society — of none in
the periodical press, leyoncl its very lowest disgraces. Among
authors,'^ &c.
It would be well if the writer of this verbose and rambling
note had attempted, at least the '' inimitable simplicity" which
he has been taught by some wiser authority to commend. No
man ever praised more unreservedly or more heartily the
Duke of Wellington's style, honesty, wisdom, and achieve-
ments, than I have always done ; and though his Grace may
care little for such commendations, he will probablv, if ever
he hears of them, set them somewhere apart from the Quarterly
Reviewer's.
The Eeviewer proceeds to number me among the Jwme
faction. Certainly I never was " at home" in it, and never
knew where its home was; I never was at a public dinner, at
a club, or hustings. I never influenced or attempted to
influence a vote ; yet many, and not only of my own tenants,
have askt me to whom they shoidd give theirs. If the
Eeviewer is desirous of obtaining any favour from the Duke
of Wellington, let me assure him that the safest way is by
descending from flattery to truth. Even the Duke (as future
ages, like the present, will call him) could not make his actions
greater than they are ; they can only be diminisht, as the
steps of holy places, by the groveling knees and importunate
kisses of fanatic worshipers. When I commend the concise-
ness, the manliness, the purit}^, of the Duke's style, it is not,
as it must be in the Reviewer, from hearsay and tradition.
Let him also be taught, and repeat with less ostentation and
more reverence, that far above the faded flowers wherewith his
puny hands have bestrewn the great man's road, our Deliverer
has confirmed the religious, more than all the theologians in
the country, in the belief that there is a superintending and a
ruling Power, under which, and by whose especial guidance.
THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. 341
a single arm can scatter myriads of the powerful, and raise up
prostrate nations.
I must now mount again the "bad eminence" on which it
hath pleased this gentleman to place me. " Among authors
^ books o/'any sort of note," he continues, "verse or prose,
we recollect (f none, unless Mr. W. Savage Landor, who,
however, clings with equal pertinacity to his ancient abuse of
Bonaparte as a blockhead and a coivard^oi Byron as a rhymer
wholly devoid of genms or toit — of Pitt as a villam — of Pox as
a scoundrel — of Canning as a scamp — and so on!'
Now I appeal to you, and to every man Avho, however neg-
ligently or however malignantly, has red my writings, whether
my education and habits of life have permitted me such lan-
guage. It is such as no gentleman could either have used or
have attributed to another. Even if the phrases were reduced
to synonymes of more decorum, the falsehood of the statement
would remain. I have never called Bonaparte a blockhead or
a coward. I ^A'ould not call by such a name even the writer of
this criticism. Bonaparte committed many gross errors, some
in polity, some in war ; greater indeed and more numerous
than any leader of equal eminence. He lost three great armies ;
he abandoned three in defeat.
It is curious that the (Quarterly Bevieio should rail against
my opinion on Bonaparte, when the only man of genius con-
nected with it, Southey, far exceeded me in hostihty to that
sanguinary and selfish despot. His laws against ihe press
were more numerous and more stringent than ever had existed
in any country, and alienate from him every true friend of
liberty and letters. His cruelty to Toussaint L'Ouverture
(omitting an infinitude of others) was such as Charles IX.
would have discountenanced, and such as could hardly have
been perpetrated by his compatriot Eccellino. His miscalcu-
lations in Syria, in Egypt, in Spain, in Germany, in Eussia,
where an open road to conquest lay before him along the
Baltic, will supplant in another age the enthusiasm that now
supports him. It is singular that a Quarterly Reviewer should
assail me for joining all his leaders in hostility to this
destroyer; and scarcely is it less so that I should continue on
terms of intimacy with many the most prominent of his
admirers. Throughout life it has been my good fortune to
enjoy the unbroken and unaltered friendsliip of virtuous and
illustrious men whose poHtical opinions have been adverse.
342 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
If it is any honor, it has been conferred on me, to have
received from Napoleon^s heir the hterary work he composed
in prison, well knowing, as he did, and expressing his regret
for, my sentiments on his uncle. The explosion of the first
cannon against Rome threw us apart for ever.
Of Byron I never have spoken as a mere rhymer; I never
have represented him as destitute of genius or of M'it. He
had much of both, with much energy, not always well applied.
Lord Malmesbury has inforined us that Mr. Pitt entered into
the war against Trance contrary to his own opinion, to gratify
the king. If so, the Avord villain would carry with it too
feeble a sound for me to employ it, even in the company of
such persons as my critick, supposing me ever to have been
conversant in such. My intimacy with the friends and near
relatives of Mr. Tox would have certainly closed my lips
against the utterance of the appellation of scoundrel in regard
to him. He had more and warmer friends than any statesman
upon record : he was ingenuous, liberal, learned, philosopliical:
he was the delight of social life, the ornament of domestick.
Mr. Fox was a man of genius, and (what in the ])resent day is
almost as rare) a gentleman. Specimens of either character
may never have fallen in the Reviewer's way ; and if peradven-
ture they should liave, probably it was not very closely, and
his inexperience may easily have mistaken them. Reverence
for the unknown, or for the dimly seen, may indeed be common
to the vidgar; but here is an instance that it is by no means
universal.
Mr. Canning was a grnceful writer both in poetry and
prose : he had also the gift of eloquence in debate. His
conduct towards his colleague in the Administration lost him
all his popularity, which was not recovered by his asking an
office from the Minister he had traduced and fought. The
word scamp was applied to Mr. Canning by the late Lord
Yarmouth, who certainly ought to have known its full signifi-
cation. It was on the morning when, second to Lord Castle-
reagh, he saved Mr. Canning's life, desiring his cousin to give
"the scamp a chance," by taking into the field, not his own
well-tried pistols, but those which Lord Yarmouth had brought
with him and laid upon the table. This account I received
from the only other person then present, and now living.
But whatever I may continue to think of Mr. Canning, I prefer
^ phraseology somewhat circuitous to a monosyllable better
THE BENEFITS OF PARLIAMENT. 343
adapted to the style and temper of the Reviewer than to
mine.
Few writers have been less obnoxious to rudeness and im-
pertinence than I have been; and I should abstain from
noticing them now, had they been unaccompanied by a mis-
representation of my manners and a forgery of my words.
These are grave ofi'ences, such as public justice takes out of
private hands. I remember a fable of Pha3drus, in which a
mischievous youth cast a pebble at a quiet vvay-farer, who,
instead of resentment or remonstrance, advises him to perform
the same exploit on a dignitary then coming up. I am quieter
than the dignitary, and even than the quiet man. Instead of
sending to the cross or to the whipping-post the mischievous
youth who passes over the road to cast his pebble at me,
altho I might not perhaps beg him o(f from the latter in-
flictions, I would entreat his employer, the moment I could
learn the editor's name, to continue the payment of his wages,
and to throw in an additional trifle for his (however ill-directed)
originality. I suspect he will neither be so grateful nor so
proud as he miglit be on obtaining this notice. Could he
have hoped it ? But thus is extracted from the drycst and
hardest lichen in the coldest regions, where men are the most
diminutive, a nutricious sustenance, often remedial in a low
disease. .
THE BENEFITS OF PARLIAMENT.
Cleaesighted and farsighted men are discussing the benefit
of Parliaments, such as time and decay, restoration and re-
form, have rendered them : and the blush of anger surmounts
the blush of shame on the brow of duped credulity. Honester
men, whoever they were, purchased those seats which the
more cunning, from under the hedgerow and from under the
counter, have crept into. This is the principal change we
have hitherto seen effected : we shall presently see a greater,
but not so soon a better ; tempestuous times, and cruel throes,
and carnage too probably, must intervene.
Surely such an air of insolence and indifference never was
displayed before, at the exposure of broken promises, gross
deceptions, connivance at torture, at murder, and somewhat
more than connivance at the surreptitious concealment of
damnatory evidence. Inertness ever looks like moderation :
but violent changes are sometimes brought about by tranquil
344 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
and temporizing men. Notliing is so liable to overturn a
state laden with debt^ as loose materials thrown into the
middle of the road under the fallacious plea of mending and
repairing. History opens her pages in vain to people who,
without instruction, without reflection, without inquiry, call
themselves practical. Never to have lookt at a demonstration
or a theory is their only claim to the little they assume.
And what, forsooth, is the practice of these practicals ? To
take another course from that which their predecessors had
taken; to undo what little good they may have done; and
to exhaust the people's streiigth in opening new roads with-
out an object and without a resting-place. This in gene-
ralities is metaphor, but ni particulars it is truth. Ireland
hath exhibited such a wasteful and unprofitable expenditure
as utterly demoralised the lower orders, and rendered them
almost as contemptible as the higher. It caused improvi-
dence in the one, peculation in the other, together with im-
pudence, exaction, and ingratitude. The better part, which
lay between, secreted their savings, left their country, and
purchased freeholds in the United States. This fermenting
leaven will there find room for expansion, and will work itself
off innoxiously. The priest who would preach disatt'ection
would be puzzled to discover an object for it in the woods and
prairies. Quarrels and bloodshed there will be for a time,
wherever that race exists, but they will be only internecive.
Pirmly do I believe that tlie calamities which have befallen
Ireland were necessary for her welfare, and that never in
thousands of years has the hand of Providence been more
manifest. By the stupidity and blindness and deafness of
rulers, this salutary infliction was providentially prolonged :
on the other hand, by the formation of a police, the work of
a great statesman now departed, that country has been
preserved from as sanguinary a desolation as ravaged Prance
at the close of last century. Want, in one form or other,
the malesiiada Fames, and tnrpis Egestas, lies at the bottom
of that vast vacuity, where burn inextinguishably the
central fires, which shake at uncalculated periods all the
regions of the earth. Something may be done toward the
prognostication. To swell the affluent with fresh profusion
is sure to wear down the patience of those who are driven
to the wall. Sympathy, at first weak, inoperative, and
silent, stirs by degrees and ultimately speaks out. Kesist-
THE BENEFITS OF PARLIAMENT. 345
aiice comes against it from the high and powerful ; sup-
pression is aimed at; force recoils^ and recoils in splinters;
society has then no stedfast basis : the foundations heave ; the
superstructure rocks. Look rounds and see who are the men
who make democrats. They stand close above you. De-
mocracy is the blubbery spawn begotten by the drunken-
ness of aristocracy. Exposed^ bare^ thriftless^ hardy, Envy,
Hatred, and Malice are never apart from the ear of the dis-
owned, until the child kills the parent or the parent kills the
child. AVhoever inherits lands, and the reminiscences grow-
ing out of them, deprecates the sad alternative.
" Give us peace in our time, O Lord \" is truly a pious and
a righteous prayer: "Give us peace in all times,'' is one
more pious and more righteous. Can we expect it, can we
dare to hope it, if we squander on idle and luxurious princes
the money extorted from toil and penury to purchase the light
of day ? Parliament must be commanded by its constituents
to revoke all inordinate grants, ancient and recent. Charles
11. had no right to confer on his bastards the patrimony of
the people. Patent offices must be declared abuses : not only
are they contrary to equity, but also to the usages of those
forefathers to whose weakness we cling, but whose strength
and manliness we seem to have forgotten. Let cause be
shown why on the nephew or grandson of a king there be
voted a dotation ; let his services in war or peace be shown to
us; let us measure his capacity, let us sound his depth, let us
be made familiar with his merits. Sternly will it be askt
before long, why the Parhament of 1850 has anticipated
future years, and decided for future Parliaments, which alone
can be competent arbiters of its necessity. Has it suspicions
and doubts whether another house of representatives would
be accompanied with other instructions ? WJiat one Parlia-
ment hath sanctioned, another may annuU. If the people
may give directions for revoking any old statute, it surely
may give directions for revoking a grant of its money while
the money is yet unpaid. To what extent of royal consan-
guinity must we carry our heavy taxation ? By degrees there
may be as many claimants as claim the green turban for
descent from the Propliet. I never heard that the head of
the family, reigning at Constantinople, allowed them more
than this distinction ; or demanded from his people, when he
could demand all they possess, the value of one zecchin for
346 THE LAST FUUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
his relatives. Little did he ever think of surrounding them
with muftis and horse-tails^ with the j^ageantry of religion
and the pomp of war.
If we are to bow down and worship whatever images it may
please the high menials of the palace to set up before us, be
it permitted to remark that no images are rendered more
venerable by a profusion of jewelry, a redundance of drapery,
a flutter of embroidery, or gilding from head to foot. If we
are to distinguish the features, if we are to admire the work-
manship, it is of no advantage that they may be poised on
columns a hundred feet above us. The barbarian may adore
his own carving, a thing viler than himself; but civilised
man requires the voice, the activity, the attention, the sym-
pathy, of those to whom he assigns a station and is willing
to respect.
COLONISATIOiSr, AND BY WHOM PROMOTED.
There are few desires which animate the patriot's breast
with a more generous and wholesome temperature than the
desire that nations should be attacht to his country by an
identity of sympathies and interests. Neither of these will
be felt to be the same where they are not exprest in the same
language. The palace, yet warm with the revelry of the
Stuarts, bore little love toward them ; the mountains of their
country, which they had never visited, rusht forward to pour
out their blood in their defence. How was this? It was
because the same Saxon tongue spoke and was answered in
the cities of both nations, while the most generous of Celtic tribes
stood aloof, and disowned the degenerate scions of the plains.
The natural courtesy of his manners, and the pure elevation
of his religion, brought the Highlander down to fraternity and
union with the inhabitant of the south. Priestly domination,
and the pride of a religion wliich asks all questions and which
answers none, separate, and must long separate, the Irish from
the English. A people so quick in ridicule and so sharp in
sarcasm would have exploded the priesthood of Egypt and the
mythology of Hindustan. They struggled, not against those
who had laid the noose in the heds^e, but against those who
were taking it out. If the two races had only been instructed
in the same language, the stumps of the old religion must
have been overgrown by the branches of the fresher, and not
COLONISATION^ AND BY WITOji rnuMOiJiJU. £54 7
enough for the exchision of light or the exercise of activity.
Perrot and Cromwell, tlie two greatest men that ever trod that
soil, could not lay aside the sword, nor look beyond the field
of battle. And indeed in their day that glorions vision had
not yet been manifested; that vision more awful and more
sublime than stood before the discoverer of another Avorld ;
that vision which proclaims to the regenerate English in
America the destiny their children must fulfil, No minister
of the British crown ever cared a straw for the glory of his
nation. It was enough to hang like a jewel at the royal ear,
and to caress the staunch buckhounds of the court.
The Greeks and Romans knew, and acted on the knowledge,
that by extending their language they extended their authority.
The United States will continue to unite other states to them
by pursuing the same course. They will not be negligent in
establishing English schools wherever large bodies of foreners
resort. Perjured and ferocious princes are as certainly the
builders of republicks as slaves were of the Pyramids. Battered
crowns, broken sceptres, and blunted swords, are the com-
memorative coins embedded under the broad foundation-stone.
The philanthropist may then, but not earlier, look forward to
the abolition of capital punishment, when the most capital of
all crimes hath been smitten down by it; but he must not turn
a tiger loose into the market-place, nor drive him across the
way. Indigenous brutes, the reptiles and ravagers of forest
and savannah, will be the only adversaries to the industry
transferred from Europe. Southern races will press south-
ward; but English laws and English language will embrace
all fraternities and climates. Within two more centuries
Rio de Janeiro and Valparaiso will be the richest of the cities
in the forty United States, and will contend with each other
which of the two speaks with most purity the Anglo-Saxon
tongue. The German, the Hungarian, the Polander, will
repeat in our language the battles of their forefathers against
the despots of the north, and relate how one was poisoned like
a weazel, another entrapt like a wolf, another stabbed bke a
wild boar; showing how vainly they were stockaded in their
palaces by files of mercenaries. Substantial mansions with
brief inscriptions will attract the curiosity of travellers, who
stop to read carefully in what year they were erected by
generous high-minded citizens, and with what quantity of
ground allotted round about, as a reward for punishing such
«51'0 ixiji liACT -PRXJIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
outlaws as only justice (law being under their feet) could reacli.
There also the Italian will close the warm evening, bright and
serene as ever evenings were at Tivoli, by throwing aside his
Gerusalemme Liberata, and by chaunting the hymn, not edited
nor composed at present,
Fuggono i Galli ; liberata e Roma.
" Give it 2is in EngUsJi," soft voices say ; he springs on
his feet from the slenderer he had leaned against, and
s.
Fled are the Gauls, and Rome again stands free.
The ancient and incessant destroyers of peace, order,
and liberty in Europe will alone be without a welcome in
America.
sing..
TRANQUILITY IN EUROPE.
Europe is now restored to such a state of tranquility as she
never enjoyed before. The ramparts of constitutions have
fallen under the cannon of kings : and kings have absolved
themselves from oaths ; oaths ! barbarous inventions of ancient
Paganism, continued through the dark ages, melted down by
the burning light of France, resodered and reformed by her,
and ultimately thrown into the smelting-pot, in order to be
made into handles of sabres and crosses of honor. What a per-
fect state of peace and happiness does our world enjoy ! Every
prince in harmony with his neighbour ; universal concord and
decorous silence throughout rival nations ; Religion reseated
on her throne, and sanctioning in a voice from above the
chastisement of the refractory. Eorests, which supplied timber
for the machinery of manufactories, where the ill-disposed
became wealthy and turbulent, now supply it more copiously
for gibbets ; the lither twigs being tied up into rods for the
flanks of ladies who bemoan their husbands. Not a vestige of
what the factious call liberty is to be seen, either in the fields
of industry or in the sandy and less fertile tracts of literature.
To make amends, an electrical wire, stronger than that which
unites France and England, is about to unite France and
Ireland, and to be conveyed like gas from house to house.
These blessings never would have been conferred upon
Humanity, had Russia been deterred from interference in
Hungary. Austria was repulsed and subdued : Italy had cast
TRANQUILITY IN EUROPE. 349
from her neck upon her toilet that beautifnl chain which liad
so long adorned her, made froward by too much kindness.
She now sings again in her chamber, delighted with her happy
deliverance from incendiaries,
" Pojoe Pins he is God, and Louis is Jus ProjjJiet."
"We have no further trouble about politicks. Everything is
now arranged for us according to the most approved system
of JinaHtif. However, with all our ])rudence, and all our per-
suasion, some refractory minds will stand out against us,
never to be convinced that " whatever is, is right " any more
than the author himself of that saying was, who spent the
greater part of his life in loud declamations, proofs, and ex-
amples to the contrary. Nothing is pleasanter, few things are
more difficult, than to shut one's eyes before any imminent
danger, especially a conflagration. We are doing it; but
I sadly fear that before we open them, our eyelashes will
be sorely singed, and our sinews seared into inactivity.
The only turbulence we have lately seen is a turbulence for
peace.
Certainly war is a grievous curse; but it is not an irreparable
evil, it is not a mortal sin against society. Attribute both to
those (and drive them beyoiid the pale of humanity) who de-
prive fellow man of his manhood; of natural law, of civil
liberty, of locomotion ; who lop him to a pollard in his early
growth, cut him down in his maturity, and plane him and glue
him and fashion him into various machines for their outlying
farms or commodities for their domestick furniture. Against
such men war is always just, but is not always expedient.
Some virtuous men turn their attention more fixedly on economy
than on humanity. It behoves us to consider both ; but
humanity in preference. Great offenders have always great
defenders. What can the powerless do against the poAverful ?
In the field nothing ! Must then the destroyers of their species
rest their heads cjuietly on the bodies of the fallen ? Shall
they who have broken every law of God enjoy in tranquillity
the fruits of their crimes ? Does Justice, does Reason, does
Religion inculcate this ? Yes, the religion of Montalembert ;
the religion of Catherine de Medici ; the religion of Louis
Bonaparte. M. de Montalembert calls upon all good French-
men to vote for this traitor, perjurer, and murderer: for what
services ? Tor cannonading Rome and Paris ; for setting up
350 THE LAST FUriT OFF AX OLD TREE.
God's image (such doubtless is Pio Nono) on the ruins of the
two finest cities in the world.
Behold this Religion ! behold her stalking up the Church
aroid halberts, and swords, and bayonets^ and baldrics ! a booted
and spiu'red Religion, whose front outbrazens the brass helmet
over it, and whose stride is the stride of Bellona. Here she
comes ! shaking at every step embroidery and horsehair, ring
and dasfo-er ! Here she comes ! marchins; to the clan"-or of
regimental trumpets . . unmindful aud reckless that behind, and
near at hand, is also the Arc-angel's.
WHAT WE HAVE AND WHAT WE OWE.
At the close of this half-century the march of intellect is
indeed a funeral march. What has been obtained by genius
or by science for the benefit of mankind ? Greater and more
glorious discoveries have been made within our memory than
ever were made before. AYe may with the rapidity of
lightning
" Speed the intercourse of soul with soul,
And waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole."
Alas ! we have httle else to waft.
Dreamers have made others dream; and the rich gambler
has ruined the poorer gambler at his first and last stake. His-
tory, in recording the crimes of princes, may record perhaps
some more atrocious than those who now rule exhibit ; but
no future Tacitus or Suetonius will have patience to describe
their obliquity, false promises, defection from duty, and from
even kingly pride. Even that specious glitter, even that
reptile's scale, appears not in the tortuous track they are
pursuing. Two of these creatures are at this instant raising
up a threatening crest against each other; the patron of
liaynau and the persecutor of Waldeck. A million of men
will be marshalled in arms to fight their battles. Each pro-
tests he fights for Germany; each lies. Whichever is the
' winner, Germany will gain nothing. Two swords wdl hew
her through the centre : two eagles (vultures rather) will
divide and devour her.
Of what use is any form of Government which fails to
protect the lives and properties of the people ? And what
form of Government in Europe has done this ? That Govern-
WHAT WE IIxiVE AND WHAT WE OWE. 351
meiit wliicli Austria, Trance, and Spain, have united to re-
establish, not only failed to protect the lives and properties
of the people, but paralysed their energies and stifled their
consciences. Spain and Austria make no pretensions to
honor or honesty in this aggression ; but the President of
the French Kepublick uses these words at the banquet in the
Hotel de Ville :
" It has often been said that honor finds an echo in France."
Never were words truer. There is mostly an echo where
there is a hollow and a vacuity. Honor had an echo, and
a very loud one too, every time an oath was taken and every
time an oath was violated. I forget how many dozens of them
Talleyrand said he remembered to have taken. The best
Clu'istians in Prance, catholick and philosophical, romantick
and poetical, swore they would lend assistance to all nations
that invoked them in the name of liberty ; and within a few
months they bombarded Eome, scattering the patriots who
defended her, recalKng the Po])e who abandoned her, and
restoring the Inquisition.
The Americans have declared their sentiments freely, loudly,
widely, consistently, against the violence and perfidy of
Eussia and Austria. They must do greatly more ; they must
offer an asylum to whoever, rising up against oppression
and indignity, shall, in the absence of law and equity,
have slain those who caused it. For it is impossible
that such iniquities, as certain men in high places have
perpetrated, should be unavenged. Conspiracies will
never more exist : two persons (but preferably one) will
undertake the glorious task, which not only antiquity ap-
plauded, but wliich has been applauded also year after year,
generation after generation, century after century, in the
seclusion of colleges, and raised the first tumult in the bovish
heart. To maintain the inordinate pride of a few worthless
families, hecatombs of brave men have fallen, and industry
has been turned into brutality. Even in our own country
many millions have been idly squandered in ships unfit for
sailing and unnecessary for fighting. This we know from one
whose very name bears the warrant of truth and intelligence.
There were times when the Lords of the Admiralty would
have been fined to the full amount of the damages they have
sanctioned. We may soon want the ships that are no more ;
353 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
for, ere six mouths are over, Ave sliall have to support the
Turkish empire. If we trust to France for help, we shall
receive from her just as much as before. Bat there are masses
now inert which our machinery may raise, combine, and make
combustible. Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Circassia, Persia,
will occupy the hundred hands of the Muscovite giant, vul-
nerable in many parts of his body, and liable to sudden deatli
from that curia! apoplexy which has carried off nearly all his
predecessors.
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.
The Examiner has contained for many years the best com-
mentaries on the English laws. Whoever will take the trouble
to look back into it will find, within the ten last, a greater
number of inconsiderate laws exposed to view, and the proof
of a greater inimber mischievously applied, than could be
collected within the same period from all the courts of
judicature on tlie continent. Alterations, called amendments,
have been made in most sessions of parliament; some by
the hot-headed, some by the blunder-headed, and some
(perhaps the best of them) by the empty-headed. It has been
said, and has been repeated over and over again with less and
less hesitation and reflection, that the reforming of the offender
is the main purport of his punishment. I deny it totally.
The offender is one ; the injured are many, are all. Society
is set at nought when the laws are. What is the meaning
oi pains and penalties ? Is it the mere laying down of money
for the luxury of a crime ? Thousands are always in readiness
to gamble at this table. Many trust in their sleight of hand;
many to the chance of gaining a sufliciency for a niglit^s riot
and revel, with the certainty that, if they are losers, they have
enough in their pockets to pay for it, and encouragement
enough to start again.
. There are three modes of punishment, in various degrees,
suitable to all offenders : these are, imprisonment, hard labour,
and scourging. Fantastical and false humanity rejects the
most effectual of the three . . so incompatible -with gentility !
But is not crime so, too ? Does not the same crime reduce
all to the same level ? If it does not, then poverty can be the
only extenuation. Plogging is the more applicable to the well-
educated than to the worse, being more merited. How often
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 353
has our reason being insulted and our patience wearied by
police-reports of decent women subjected to such outrages as
even the most indecent should be protected from ! and this by
well-drest men of respectable parentage, which well-drest men
have been liberated on paying a few shillings ! Surely for such
misdemeanours a year's hard labour and hard living, with a
flogging at the termination of the imprisonment, would be no
excessive retribution.
We protestants hold it a folly, an abomination, that a priest
should pubhsh a list of pardons, each at a fixed price. Is it
no folly, no abomination, that a lawyer should do the like?
Are bribery and corruption to be found only under the
hustings ? Must they lie warm and snug under the ermine ?
Wherever I differ from the Examiner and our friend Dickens,
I doubt and suspend my judgment. I observe in the
Exammer that you demur on the expediency of abolishing the
punishment of death for murder. I do not approve of this
homcEopathick remedy. If you apply it to murder, consider
whether no other crime requires it equally. Murder is not
always committed by the stronger against the weaker. Law
should most especially protect those who are most unable to
protect themselves. Pemales are subjected to such violences
and indignities as render their whole lives intolerable and their
whole famihes disgraced. Is the crime less atrocious than
murder ? does it affect the sufferer less acutely, less durably ?
No; it withers every branch of the tree by striking one; it
runs from the trunk to the root, and consumes from the
tenderest sprig to the strongest fibre. Life alone can punish
this ; chains and scourges, solitude and darkness. I deprecate
the punishment of death for every crime, excepting one;
namely, the crune of a prince who wages war against his
people. And this also is to be deprecated ; for it must be, in
most cases, inflicted without mature deliberation, and extra-
judicially. It is, however, a case of necessity, and ought
never to be remitted. No nation has a right to cancel or
resign its title-deeds, for every one has its descendants and its
heirs. Each of us possessJAmore or less, a private property
at his own disposal; all possess in common one, which is
inalienable.
A A
354 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
A DEACON AND CURATE TO HENRY LORD BISHOP OF
EXETER.
My Lord Bishop ! Unknown as I am to your lordsliip and
to the world, I feel but little at my ease even in the duty of
offering my humble apology for addressing a personage of your
dignity.
The momentous question, with which your lordship hath
lately agitated the Church of England, continues still to vibrate
in it, disquieting the conscience and perplexing the under-
standing of many. Among the rest I continue to be one,
intellectually the lowest; but in sincerity I confidently trust I am
more nearly on a level with my betters. In common with other
aspirants after truth, I must be quite uncertain whether I
have obtained it, until it pleases your lordship to illuminate
priests and deacons by the publication of a sermt)n on the
subject.
The importance of baptism is undoubted : but unhappily
there are some (let us hope and pray there be but few) who
doubt the entire regeneration thereby of an infant born in sin,
even though a couple of godfathers and as many godmothers
answered for the result of the water in the font. A short
time ago, when a most cruel murder was the subject of conver-
sation, I shuddered at the very mention of the name : imagine,
my lord, how much more violently was I shocked when, refer-
ring to the efficacy of baptism, a magistrate said aloud, " If
this rascal was regenerated by baptism, what the deuce was he
made of before ? It would have been better, both for himself
and for society, that he never had been born at all than that he
had been born again. I do not deny, sir, (said he, turning to
me), that his original stains were washed away; but can you
assure me that they were much uglier than those he hath since
contracted ? "
I was extremely mortified ; for this language, until I had well
considered it, seemed to me not unlike a scoff". He removed
from me totally the momentary pain of this impression by
adding,
" When we see young vagabonds and thieves, upon whose
forehead the blessed water is (figuratively) yet standing, whip-
ped and imprisoned a score times and stil somewhat like
•uuregenerate, we are almost apt to fancy (God forgive me
A DEACON AND CURATE TO THE BISHOP OF EXETEU. 355
if I cannot help it !) that baptism in some cases is less elfficient
than in others, like mesmerism and vaccination. Yet it would
be an impiety to repeat it."
The Church of llome insists on more sacraments than ours
(pardon me, my lord, if I am incorrect in the pronoun), yet the
Church of Rome hath daily abundant proofs at her confessionals
that extremely few of her members are regenerate. Often do
I ask luyself whether any man feels quite certain that all his sins
have been washed away at the baptismal font ? whether ambi-
tion and intolerance, cpialities the most alien from the Christian,
never intrude upon him, never are cherished and indulged;
whether he never lies to his own heart, whether even in his
prayers and supplications, he never lies to God himself, who
fashioned that heart, and sees what is in it day and night.
Then I ask and I tremble at my own interrogation, whether
the original sin cleansed by baptism could be worse than the
sin abiding with us. Whatever be the benefit of the ablution,
do we not aU (pardon me, my lord, an earnestness so indiscreet
as such an appeal to a personage of your rank and station), do
we not all feel the necessity of the great atonement ? of that
sorrowful solemnity, that awful supper, which would depress
the stoutest and most confident heart if there stood not by, to
support and raise it, the ministering angels of gratitude and
love?
Like every other question, the sooner this also is set at rest
the better. There is a moral, a religious, a political gas, which,
instead of acquiring intensity or activity by concentration,
acquires it by dilation. The devout are disturbed by the
agitation it has been your will and pleasure to excite : scoflers
are bold enough to deride the schism in the bench of bishops ;
Catholicks chuckle over its vacillation and disunion, repeating
a coarse and vulgar adage about two stools ; nay, some of
them go so far a-field as to point out ox and ass at one plough
' dragging two different ways. Worse than all, there are per-
sons who never raise their eyes to the elevation of the Church,
and who keep them intently on the schoolroom. These
whisper among themselves that mitred abbots have disappeared,
and that mitred barons must soon follow. If the secular
peers could profit by the spoil as they did under Henry, actum
esset; but since they can gain nothing by it, and on the con-
trary would lose the heritage of their younger children, and
moreover what is promised to the tutors of the elder, they
A A
356 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
certainly will resist, as long as resistance against tlie whole
frantic people is feasible. I hope, my lord, the consideration
of what is imminent and inevitable, uncertain as may be the
hour of its befalling, will influence and animate the sermon I
most devoutly expect; altho no worldly gain or loss ever
entered into your lordship^s calculation.*
PETITION TO PARLIAMENT FROM A BROTHERHOOD OF
ANCIENT BRITONS.
"We the oppressed and insulted Brotherhood of Ancient
Britons, professing the Holy Druidic rehgion, beg humbly to
submit to the wisdom of your Honorable House, the wrongs
Ave, patiently and submissively, have undergone for ages, by
following the footsteps of our forefathers. During the whole
of nineteen hundred years we have endured in silence the
manifold griefs of which we now complain. We have been
forbidden to celebrate in public the mysteries of our holy faith,
or to sacrifice even in private the victims most acceptable to
our Gods. Perverse and obstinate men, who defied their
power and denied their beneficence, were offered up in propi-
tiation on their altars. The consecrated basket of wickerwork,
in which these impious wretches were suspended on the trees
of the forest, and consumed by fire, no longer are penetrated
by their repentant cries, acknowledging the mercy of our
Omnipotent Lords, and the enormity of their own transgres-
sions. Since our oblations to the Powers above were aboHshed
by innovating and cruel laws, the Earth, season after season,
hath refused her fruits, or hath given only such as stink in our
nostrils. We therefor do most humbly entreat of your Honor-
able House, that it will be graciously, pleased to permit the
importation, from Prance and other parts abroad, of any de-
sirable quantity of wdcker-baskets, not only duty-free, but also
with a bounty ; and that certain parts of all the royal forests,
now about to be submitted to an Inclosure-Act, be left vacant,
with the most ancient of the oak-trees now standing thereon,
in order that our Druids may duly exercise their vocation.
We entertain no doubt whatever that the Queen's ]\Iajesty
* Lord Normanton, when he married, had less (with his wife's fortune)
than lOOOZ. : he was bishop and archbishop in Ireland, and left nearly
600,000?. No churchman ever left so much.
PETITION TO PARLIAMENT PROM ANCIENT BRITONS. 357
will most graciously accede to our petition, seeing that the
whole of these forests, together with the greater part of the
land round about, did formerly of right belong to them. It
by no means grieves their most uncraving and abstemious
hearts to have been despoiled of their temporal goods, for
which idlers and wranglers at this present hour are contend-
ing ; but sorely indeed are they afflicted that they may offer
up no longer the blood of the impious, nor scatter their ashes
to the winds. Through us, in all humility, they require in the
whole of the kingdom no more than forty-nine chief places
where, amidst benedictions given and received, they may rest
the soles of their feet; no more than forty-nine high altars
whereupon the impious and malignant may be brought to due
atonement. They would even limit the number of hebdomadal
victims to nine in each basket. There are two places which
we more especially desire for the celebration of our holocausts,
such two places having been not only the most august, but
also the last, in which they were offered up to the Almighties.
The wisdom of Parliament and the clemency of Majesty will
not, we are confident, be invoked in vain. Our blessed con-
cremations rose above the fogs of Oxford and purified the con-
taminations of Smithfield. In Smitlifield they have left only
faint altho sweet remembrances : but in Oxford the ancient
faith regerminates, and flies back into the fostering bosom of
our priesthood. We claim nothing, but the miserable in their
extremity are not forbidden to entreat and implore. Our in-
stitutions remain, and will remain for ever. Frail is the
authority of learning when it is confronted with the authority
of antiquity ; otherwise we would appeal to the most sapient
in the University of Oxford. We have venerable books which
it is unlawful for any but the initiated to open; along the
margin of these are documents and glosses upon matters of
great import, unsuspected by antiquarians and historians.
Illustrating the contents, in the proximate interior of the
covers, are maps of wide domains, with grants of them from
princes and archdruids. Generosity prompts us to concede a
certain portion to the actual occupants. Ninetenths of
Britain were woodland and swamp at the invasion of Julius
Csesar. The whole of this swamp and woodland, the whole of
the mountains and downs, with enough of arable and pasture
to support their dignity, belonged exclusively to our Druids.
We can show the instruments under which they held the
358 THE LAST niUIT Ol-'P AN OLD TKEE.
property, signed with their own seals, and with the seals of the
shepherds on the hills and the fishermen on the marshes, and
emperors and empresses on the throne. We require and want
nothing more than what our ancient laws authorise, and what,
as the truest of true Britons, we have the right to demand and
tlie resolution to enforce. We humbly crave permission to
remind and admonish your Honorable House, that the Druids,
our ancestors and spiritual guides, know the secrets of sundry
poisons and the methods of compounding them, in such a
manner that the patient on taking them should be pleased
Avith their taste and quite unconscious of their effect. These
secrets they have bequeathed unto us : unfortunate should we
deem ourselves if ever we were compelled to have recourse
to them. Modern science hath also unrolled before us what
are indeed no secrets, but simply means whereby we might
involve our oppressors in confusion and consternation. There
are vapours, now dormant in the laboratory, by which the most
numerous assemblages of the most potential men conspiring
against us, could be stifled. There are combustions which
could annihilate armies. Electricity might be brought down
from the heavens, and taught to run along the earth wherever
we direct it, even into the dockyard, even into the palace.
Such thoughts, praised be the Gods ! have never once entered
our hearts, have never once flitted across our imaginations.
But against the enemies of the Almighties, who have too much
patience, against the sworn enemies of their most faithful
servants, ministers of their pure and only true religion, all
weapons are lawful. We bear goodwill toward men of good-
will ; toward none others. We must not trample on our ancient
laws, nor tolerate those who do. Professing and maintaining
such sentiments, we are and have always been the most dutiful
of her Majesty's subjects, and wait with anxiety to be also the
most grateful.
(Here follow the signatures.)
PETITION OF THE THUGS FOR TOLERATION.
We, the most religious fraternity of Thugs, having heard
it reported throughout the whole extent of India, that tole-
ration is granted by the wisdom of the British Parliament
PETITION OP THE THUGS FOR TOLERATION, 359
to every diversity of creeds do most humbly submit ouf
grievances to the patient consideration of your Honorable
House. We claim a much higher antiquity than the earliest
of devotional institutions known in Britain. We are the
first-born of Cain. We profit by the holy book he left
behind him, covering with figieaf what we consider to be
unessential or liable to misinterpretation. Our humanity
teaches us to confine no dissidents in unhealthy prisons,
to separate no husband from his wife, no father from his
children, but merely to offer up man^s lifeblood to Him who
gave man life. Our forefather, Cain, did not cast his brother
Abel into a dark cavern infested by bats and serpents, but
slew him as manfully, and dexterously, and instantaneously,
as could have been done by the best swordsman in the service
of Hyder Ali.
It is reported to us, that there are religions by which it is
declared lawful and right to disobey the prince they have
sworn to obey, and even to select out of the rabble a leader
of singing boys in flowing stoles, sable and white, purple and
scarlet ; and to place him in opposition to the rightful ruler
of the land.
Fables are told in all countries, and this statement hath
much the appearance of one. But if there is any truth in it,
we would contrast it with the unquestionable history of our
exploits and demeanour. Millions, in the vast country round
about us, hold it a religious duty for wives to perish by fire
at the side of their defunct husbands. We ask no such
favour, nor do our wives. Moreover, it is reported that in
some island or peninsula on our western coast, not, as here,
the willing and wary, but they whose tender age exposes them
to be warped at every breath, are sacrificed yearly, thousand
after thousand. Inadvertently and involuntarily do they
suffer. The unmarried, the adolescent, are debarred from the
duties of marriage, the delights of adolescence. The boys are
placed under a knife which would be more innocent were it
murderous, that their voices may be acceptable to the chief-
priest in his orgies. The girls, if their mothers are unable to
sell them advantageously, are delivered up to the discretion of
the inferior priesthood, and diligently taught by their spiritual
guides, as they call themselves, to answer all psychological
queries, and to undergo the most abstruse physiological
examinations. We dispute not the propriety or the sanctity
360 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
of this discipline, leaving it entirely to the arbitration of your
Honorable House. We entreat the much smaller favour of
liberty to take away life when life hath had its enjoyments,
which we have always done gently, considerately, without pain
and without passion. Never do we violate, under the cloak
of religion, the prime ordinance of nature, the first com-
mand given by the Almighty to the father of our progenitor,
Cain.
We lay our cause with confidence at the bar of your Honor-
able House, claiming and deserving no more than has already
been granted by it, to the three or four last religions which
have consecutively been dominant in Great Britain. We
hear that these religions are rolling over one another at
this instant, and exercising a prodigious volubility of limb
and tongue; the elderly and decrepit thrown on its back,
cursing and swearing, but holding down the younger by the
throat. We take no delight, no interest, in these prolusions ;
and we demand only simple protection, in meet reward for
undivided allegiance.
No prayers do we ofi'er up to God that it may please his
Divine Majesty to assist us in sweeping our enemies from his
earth ; no thanksgivings for having bestrewn it with limbs and
carcases to satiate the hysena and the vulture. We invite our
fellow men to die as becomes them in his service. We lead
death by the hand in quiet and silence to his own door, and
we depart in peace. Therefor we, conscious of our innocence
and purity, venture to remind our generous protectors that the
few we sacrifice are sacrificed to our God alone, and neither to
gratify pride nor vengeance ; that if we slay a few hundreds in
the space of a year, our gracious protectors slay occasionally as
many thousands between the rising and setting sun. We do
not, indeed, with the same fervour and magnificence as our
gracious protectors, sing hymns, beat drums, blow trumpets,
and swing bells from lofty towers in jubilee ; but we wash our
hands, lay aside our daggers, bend our knees, and pray.
Confidently then do we approach our gracious protectors,
and entreat the same favour, the same liberty of worship, as
our fellow subjects.
(Here foEow the signatures.)
THE SCHOOLMASTER OF THE NORTH. 361
THE SCHOOLMASTER OF THE NORTH.
There is somewhere in the north, I forbear to describe the
locality, a schoolmaster as ferocious and grasping as that one
depicted by Dickens. He was lately cited to appear before
two justices of the peace, for a violent assault on a quiet
neighbour, from whose poultry-yard he had abstracted at
sundry times many fine fat birds, oftener in the dusk, but
sometimes in open day, plucking and spitting them in sight
of the whole parish. At last he picked a quarrel with him
about an old barn, much frequented by wandering gangs of
gypsies, and lying in the middle of the estate. Over this old
barn the schoolmaster claimed a right of supervision, as trustee
and guardian. Unjust as was the claim, it was conceded :
and the only condition was that every gang of gypsies, which
had formerly taken up night lodgings there, should continue
to enjoy the same privilege. The reply was a smart blow in
the face. The sufferer had been a powerful and courageous
man, but was now grown old and feeble, and much disabled
by former contusions from the same quarter : he therefor
made no resistance, but applied to the two justices. The
schoolmaster was indignant at this appeal : but aware that the
two justices and their parishes had been usually on bad terms,
he hoped and trusted that also on this occasion they would
disagree. The aggression was, however, so audacious and
flagrant, that every man in each parish who had a man's
heart under his waistcoat cried out against it : both justices,
instead of committing the offender, expostulated.
It may now be stated who the justices are.
One of them, altho he walks in some degree awry, is an
able-bodied man, vigilant, active, sagacious, and with a
remarkably quick eye. The people round about are almost
unanimously favorable to him as nephew of one who kept the
bull-ring. He has lately changed his name upon coming into
a large estate. The other lives across the river, in the next
Hundred, and was lately Chairman of the Sessions. The
squires and the rural population call him familiarly Pam, as in
the game of cards they call the Knave of Clubs. I know not
whether the idea of clubs was suggested by his pugnacity in
former days, or the idea of knave by some odd resemblance to
862 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
the court card. He stil is mettlesome, and, when the market
folks press him, he knows how to strike. But, having a step-
mother who, altho young enough to be his daughter, can do
great things for his family, he is indisposed to disoblige her,
knowing that the schoolmaster has come over her by his win-
ning ways. However he goes as far as he dares, and has
shown on many occasions his dislike to the brawny bully, and
how gladly he would see him taken down. But the elderly
domestics are afraid of crossing the doorsill. Shame ultimately
and shouts have impelled them to a distant and safe demon-
stration : they hesitated at the threat that, if they advanced a
step farther, he would instantly set fire to the homestead. He
proclaimed himself the injured man, protested his pure honor
and strict integrity, and swore that no man living was ever so
desirous of good-neighbourhood, peace, and justice. While
they were pondering with downcast eyes, amazed by his impu-
dence and intimidated by his menacing attitude, so different
from his words, he ordered the big boys to leap over the
garden-wall, and, before the old man could come up to them,
ran against him furiously, and knocked out three of his front
teeth at a single blow, loosening as many more. The justices
were alarmed at this fresh outrage, and were more and more
afraid of encountering so resolute a fellow. In their con-
sternation they could think of nothing better than to propose
two arbitrators. These were more cowed than themselves, as
they lived nearer, and they requested his permission to act.
He gave it, reminding them that all three had been confede-
rates in robberies, and that he had recently lifted up the
strongest of them, wdio had been fairly knocked down and beaten
ignominiously with his own scabbard. He commanded both
to suspend the inquisition, and to defer it as long as
possible.
The two justices had promised the maimed old man to protect
him : and now was the performance of that promise claimed.
They laid their heads together, and said dispassionately to
him, " You have certainly had your garden broken into, your
laborers driven out, your farmers plundered, your steward for-
bidden to receive your rents, and finally you have had your
three front teeth knocked out, and perhaps as many, or a few
more, loosened in their sockets. But be calm ; be considerate.
Do you really call it an outrage ? If you do . . but it is impos-
sible you should . . we may in due time remonstrate. If you
TllUE CHAEACTEE, OP SIR CHAULES JAMES NAPIER. 363
reflect, like the reasonable man we have always taken you for,
you will perceive that God, in his inscrutable wisdom, hai
only tried your constancy, and in his infinite mercy has left
you all your grinders."
"But what to grind?" cried the impatient cripple. "My
enemy has trampled me low enough already : in conling thus
to protect me, fallen as I am, your friendly feet across my
body serve only to stamp me deeper into the mire."
TEUE CHARACTER OF SIR CHARLES JAMES NAPIER.
All men most rehgiously hate injustice when it is committed
against themselves, but the generality are latitudinarians in
toleration when it is committed against another. Not so was
it, but exactly the reverse, with Sir C, Napier. Indignantly,
no doubt, but often in silence, he bore the heavy wrongs it
was his destiny to bear with him to the grave; much slighter,
when even a stranger suffered them, whether soldier or
civilian, excited him to stern remonstrance. No wonder that,
Avitli his experience of Indian polity, he found fault with the
latter ; no wonder that, with his high sense of honor, he ex-
posed it publickly; no wonder that the peculator, and such as
connived at peculation, were his bitter enemies. By people
of this character, stript bare by his exposure, and smarting
under the scourges he had inflicted, he was accused of ill-
temper. Is there any proof of it in any single instance, in his
social or civil or military life, unless at falsehood, dishonesty,
cruelty, or ingratitude? Of ingratitude no man ever expe-
rienced more with less complaint. His family, his intimates,
his staft' officers, his soldiers, his domestics, never saw it : his
crosses, his indignities, his restless days and nights, his unre-
quited services, his agonizing wounds, excited him to no ex-
pression of resentment or disgust. A man more w^armly
beloved by all who knew him intimately is nowhere left among
us. Neither he nor his family could be more highly gratified
by any honors than by those which the Duke conferred on
him in a speech before the House of Lords, placing his exploits
(as was most due) above any that our contemporary generals
had performed. Under the weight of such a man^s word, a
gross of ministerial coronets would have sunk into the dust.
M4< THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
The great historian of English victories, the most eloquent, the
most truthful, may from his own science and experience do
justice to his brother; more than justice he neither could nor
would. God grant that his faihug health, and wounds wliich
grief exasperates, may not quite disable him, nor long detain
liim from tliis sacred duty.
Thy greatest man from earth had past,
England ! and now is gone thy last ;
Thy last save one, whom thou hast borne
That loss, a brother's loss, to mom-n.
In union history shall place
The noblest of a noble race ;
For, just and gi-ateful, she well knows
How much to each of them she owes.
High shines the soldier's sword of fire,
The record held by truth shines higher.
POEMS.
Undeu the title of Epigrams some will be found here which
the general reader may hardly recognise in that character.
It will also easUy be believed, from the subjects if not from
the execution, that several of the lighter pieces were written
in early youth. My thanks are now returned to those amiable
friends who have thought them worthy of preservation so long.
At the close of my seventy-iunth year I am amused in recollecting
the occasions. W. S. L.
EPIGRAMS.
I. TO ONE WHO QUOTES AND DETRACTS.
Hob me and maim me ! Why, man, take such pains
On your bare heath to hang yourself in chains ?
11.
Who never borrow and who never lend,
Whate'er their losses, will not lose their friend.
III.
Poet ! I like not mealy fruit ; give me
Presliness and crispness and solidity ;
Apples are none the better over-ripe,
And prime buck-venison I prefer to tripe.
366 THE LAST PRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
IV.
The Hector of Saint Peter's, I know where.
Of erring ignorance takes special care ;
Preaching, " It much behoves us that we pray
Por these, our flock ; none want it more than they.
Por such benighted creatures all must feel . .
Scarce can they tell a lamprey from an eel \"
V.
Seeing Loreto's holy house descend,
Two robbers were converted. Into what ?
Into more robbers ; robbers without end.
Who grind men's bones and feed upon men's fat.
VI. ON CATULLUS.
Tell me not what too well I know
About the bard of Sirmio . .
Yes, in Thalia's son
Such stains there are . . as when a Grace
Sprinkles another's laughing face
With nectar, and runs on.
VII.
Montalembert and Paraguay,
Rejoice ! 'tis Preedom's closing day.
Rejoice ! one only is the reign
Now from the Neva to the Seine.
VIII.
There falls with every wedding chime
A feather from the wing of Time.
You pick it up, and say " How fair
To look upon its colours are !"
Another drops day after day
Unheeded ; not one word you say.
When bright and dusky are blown past,
Upon the herse there nods the last.
IX.
Across, up, down, our fortunes go.
Like particles of feathery snow.
Never so certain or so sound
As when they're fallen to the ground.
EPIGRAMS. 367
X.
Erewhile exulting in its power
Hose thy bright form o'er worlds of sighs :
Graceful as then, at this late hour
Upon the scattered Howers it lies.
XI. DEFENDERS OP HAYNAU, &c.
A Jew apostate, a degenerate Scot,
Tongue after tongue, lick smooth the darkest hlot.
But only widen what they would erase
And show more horrible the wretch they praise.
The scourge that lacerates the modest bride.
And swings about the matron's breast, they hide.
Bullet and halter for the brave and wise !
Honor and wealth for loyal perjuries !
Wait ! there are thunderbolts not forged in heaven.
And crimes there only, if e'en there, forgiven.
XII.
Early I thought the worst of lies
In poets was, that beauty dies ;
I thoiie;ht not onlv it must stay,
But glow the brighter every day :
Some who then bloom'd on earth are gone.
In some the bloom is overblown.
XIII.
Winter has changed his mind and fixt to come.
Now two or three snow-feathers at a time
Drop heavily, in doubt if they should drop
Or wait for others to support their fall.
XIV.
O WHAT a pleasant thing it is
To see our Derby and our Dis
Walk hand in hand together ;
While Lord John Eussell bites his nail
At whigs and liberals who turn tail.
And wince against the tether.
After his poor three pints of port
The farmer cries, " Ha ! that's your sort
Of chaps to save the nation.
368 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Hip ! for dear parsons and dear corn !
Hip ! for the bull of crumpled horn !
Hip ! liip ! for Convocation ! "
But no such pleasant thing it is
Tor Derby at the side of Dis
Cantering o^er the Commons,
When he believes he hears the bell
Por dinner-time, it tolls his knell
Of parting power. Sad summons !
XV. A NOTE-COVER WITH SIX OF MY CARDS.
To her old friend does Rose devote
Sometimes two minutes, rarely three,
Yet never came there any note
(However kind) so full of me.
XVI.
I ENTREAT you, Alfred Tennyson,
Come and share my haunch of venison.
I have too a bin of claret.
Good, but better when you share it.
Tho ^tis only a small bin,
There^s a stock of it within.
And as sure as Fm a rhymer.
Half a butt of Rudesheimer.
Come ; among the sons of men is one
Welcomer than AKred Tennyson ?
XVII.
Smithfield ! thy festival prepare
And drive the cattle from the fair ;
Another drove is coming fast . .
Tie, tie the faggot to the mast :
And purify the nation's crimes
Again as in the good old times.
" Huzza I" the children cry, '' huzza !
Now then for one more holiday !"
XVIIL
Joy is the blossom, sorrow is the fruit.
Of human life ; and worms are at the root.
EPIGRAMS. 369
XIX.
'' Why do I smile ?" To hear you say
" One month, and tJien the shortest day!"
The shortest, whatever month it be,
Is the bright day you pass with me.
XX.
Martha, now somewhat stern and old,
Found men grow every day k^ss bokl ;
Yet bad enough ; but tolerated
Because, poor souls ! by God created.
She loved her dog (the worst do that)
And pamper'd him, morosely fat.
Rising up half-asleep, it hapt
She trod upon him and he snapt.
" Ah, what a pitch," good Martha says,
'' Have dogs arrived at in our days 1 "
XXI. COWLEY'S STYLE.*
Dispenser of wide-wasting woe,
Creation's laws you overtlirow.
Mankind in your fierce flames you burn
And drown in their own tears by turn.
Deluged had been the world in vain.
Your fire soon dried its clothes again.
XXII.
Ye who adore God's Vicar while he saith.
Blessed he every lie that props the faith,
Draw ye from Peter's fish no purer oil
To feed your Lamp ? In vain then do ye toil.
XXIII.
Thought fights with thought : out springs a spark of truth
Trom the collision of the sword and shield.
* Cowley's style in poetry is like Lamartine's in prose ; he in his
" Eaphaelle " thus writes of a lover who burns the letters of his beloved.
" /e la ai brulees parce que la cendre meme en cut ete trop cliaude pour la
pensee, et je I'ai jettee aux vents du del."
The French are returning to their ancien regime, we see.
B B
370 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
XXIV.
Where are the sounds that swam along
The buoyant air when I was young ?
The last vibration now is o'er.
And they who listened are no more ;
Ah ! let me close my eyes and dream,
I see one imaged on the Learn.
XXV.
Pair Love ! and fairer Hope ! we play'd together.
When ye were little ones, for many a day.
Sometimes in fine, sometimes in gloomier weather :
Is it not hard to part so soon in May ?
XXVI.
Alas ! 'tis very sad to hear.
Your and your Muse's end draws near ;
I only wish, if this be true.
To lie a little way from you.
The grave is cold enough for me
Without you and your poetry.
XXVII. E. ARUNDELL.
Nature ! thou mayest fume and fret.
There's but one white violet;
Scatter o'er the vernal ground
Paint resemblances around,
Nature ! I will tell thee yet
There's but one white violet.
XXVIII.
Known as thou art to ancient Pame
My praise, Eistormel, sliall be scant:
The Muses gave thy sounding name.
The Graces thy inhabitant.
XXIX.
Mild is Euphemius, mild as summer dew
Or Belgic lion poked to Waterloo.
XXX.
A friendship never bears uncanker'd fmit
Where one of ancient growth has been blown down.
EPIGRAMS. 371
xxxr.
PentheuSj by maddening Furies driven.
Saw, it is said, two suns in heaven,
And I believe it true ;
I also see a double sun
Where calmer mortals see but one . ,
My sun, my heaven . . in you.
XXXII.
Graceful Acacia ! slender, brittle,
I think I know the like of thee ;
But thou art tall and she is little . .
What God shall call her his own tree ?
Some God must be the last to change her;
Prom him alone she will not flee ;
may he fix to earth the ranger.
And mav he lend her shade to me !
XXXIII.
Whether the Furies lash the criminal
Or weaker Passions lead him powerless on,
I see the slave and scorn him equally.
XXXIV.
Unkindness can be but where kindness was ;
Thence, and thence only, fly her certain shafts
And carry fire and venom on the point.
XXXV. TO POETS.
My children! speak not ill of one another;
I do not ask you not to hate ;
Cadets must envy every elder brother.
The little poet must the great.
XXXVI.
Cahills ! do what you will at home,
OrderM, or orderM not, by Eome.
Teach Innocence the deeds of Shame,
Question her, what each act, each name ?
Hear patiently, where, how, how often.
Ere ghostly commination soften.
B B 2
372 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Brawl, bidding civil discord cease ;
Murder, to please the Prince of Peace.
Por Him who sees thro worlds set spies^
And guard the throne of Truth with lies.
Only, where Treason tempts you, pause.
And leave us house and home and laws.
XXXVIL
Love flies with bow unstrung when Time appears.
And trembles at the assault of heavy years ;
A few bright feathers bear him on his flight
Quite beyond call, but not forgotten quite.
XXXVIII.
Matthias, Gifford, men like those,
Pind in great poets but great foes ;
In Wordsworth but a husky wheeze,
^.-Y^^ Byron but a foul disease.
In Southey one who softly bleats.
And one of thinnest air in Keats.
Yet will these live for years and years.
When those have felt the fatal shears.
XXXIX.
To his young Eose an old man said,
" You will be sweet when I am dead :
Where skies are brightest we shall meet.
And there will you be yet more sweet.
Leaving your winged company
To waste an idle thought on me."'
XL. AMERICAN CHRISTMAS GAMES.
When eating and drinking and spitting and smoking
And romping and roaring and slapping and joking
Have each had fair play, the last toast of the night
Is " Success to the brave who have fought the good fight.
Then America whistles, and Hungary sings,
" The cards in the pack are not all knaves and kings.
There are rogues at Yienna, and worse at Berlin,
Who chuckle at cheating so long as they win;
Por us yet remains a prime duty to do,
Tho we dirty the kennel by dragging them thro.'*
EPIGRAMS. 373
I, NEAR tlie back of Life's dim stage
Eeel tbro the slips the drafts of age.
Fifty good years are gone : with youth
The wind is always in the south.
XLII.
In the odor of sanctity Miriam abounds,
Her husband's is nearer the odor of hounds,
With a dash of the cess-pool, a dash of the sty.
And the water of cabbages running hard-by.
XLIII.
The crysolites and rubies Bacchus brings
To crown the feast where swells the broad-vein'd brow.
Where maidens blush at what the minstrel sings.
They who have coveted may covet now.
Bring me, in cool alcove, the grape uncrusht,
The peach of pulpy cheek and down mature,
Where every voice (but bird's or child's) is husht.
And every thought, like the brook nigh, runs pure.
XLIV.
'' Among the few sure truths we know "
A poet, deep in thought and woe.
Says " Flowers, when they have lived, must die,"
And so, sweet maid ! must you and I.
XLV.
I REMEMBER the time ere his temples were grey.
And I frown'd at the things he'd the boldness to say;
But now he grows old he may say what he will,
I laugh at his nonsense and take nothing ill.
Indeed I must say he's a Kttle improved.
For he watches no longer the slily beloved;
No longer, as once, he awakens my fears.
Not a glance he perceives, not a whisper he hears ;
If ever he heard one, it never transpired.
For his only delight is to see me admired ;
And now, pray, what better return can I make
Than flirt, and be always admired . . for his sake.
374 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
XLVI. DIALOGUE.
M.
Why ! who now in the world is this ?
It cannot be the same . . I miss
The gift he always brought . . a kiss.
Yet stil I know my eyes are bright
And not a single hair turu'd white.
L.
idol of my youth ! upon
That joyous head grey hair there's none.
Nor may there ever be ! grey hair
Is the unthrifty growth of Care,
Which she has planted . . you see where.
XL VII.
We know a poet rich in thought, profuse
In bounty ; but his grain wants winnowing ;
There hangs much chaff about it, barndoor dust.
Cobwebs, small insects : it might make a loaf,
A good large loaf, of household bread ; but flour
Must be well bolted for a dainty roll.
XLVIII.
What garden but glows
With at least its one rose
Whether sunny or showery be June ?
What heart so unblest
That it never possest
One treasure, tho perishing soon ?
XLIX.
Be not in too great haste to dry
The tear that springs from sympathy.
L.
We have survived three months of rain,
come and bring the sun again ;
Your Rosebud, tho she treads on air,
Is only yet the morning star ;
Old January's nineteenth day
To me is like the first of May.
1 drink your health . . but Time, alas I
Holds over mine another glass,
EPIGRAMS. 375
In wliicli no liquid rubies shine.
But whose dry sand drains all the wine :
^ain would I turn it upsidedown.
It will not do . . I fear his frown ;
Tho on the whole (now come and see)
He has been somewhat mild with me.
LI.
I WILL not, dare not, look behind,
On days when you were true and kind,
Oh that I now could grow as blind.
Why did you ever tempt the sea
And the sea-breeze, if there must be
A lesson of inconstancy ?
LII.
No easy thing to hit the mind
That wavers with each gust of wind.
Nor worth the while, unless to show
What a good blade and skill can do,
Damascus sabres at one stroke
Cut lightest plume or hardest oak.
I let your feathers sweep the plain
And sheath my scymeter again.
LIII.
Thou needst not pitch upon my hat,
Thou withered leaf ! to show how near
Is now the winter of my year ;
Alas ! I want no hint of that.
Prythee, ah prythee get along !
Wliisper as gently in the ear,
X once could whisper in, to fear
No change, but live for dance and song.
LIV.
Too mindful of the fault in Eve,
You ladies never will believe,
Else I would venture now to say
I love you quite as well this day
As when fire ran along my veins
Erom your bright eyes, and joys and pains
Each other's swelling ^efjcea. pursued, /vVcH'*^
And when the wooer too was wooed.
376 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
LV.
Neither in idleness consume thy days,
Nor bend thy back to mow the weeds of praise.
LVI.
While thou wert by
With laugliing eye,
I felt the glow and song of spring :
Now thou art gone
I sit alone.
Nor heed who smile nor hear who sing.
LVII.
How many ages did the planets roU
O'er sapient heads that nightly watcht their course.
Ere the most sapient betwixt pole and pole
Believed them fleeter than the dustman's horse I
LVIII.
In quadruped or winged game
Gourmands there are who Kke the Mff/i
'Tis in society the same . .
A touch of taint is spicery.
LIX.
Our days are numbered, O Eliza ! mine
On the left hand have many numerals,
Eew on the right ; but while those days decline
May her's shine bright who graced these lonely halls !
LX.
Cypress and Cedar ! gracefullest of trees,
Eriends of my boyhood ! ye, before the breeze.
As lofty lords before an eastern throne.
Bend the whole body, not the head alone.
LXI.
Zove t/i02i thy neighbour as thyself
Lies an old sawe upon the shelf.
With intercourse and accent bland
Dogs . . smooth Maltese, rough Newfoundland,
And spirited and faithful Spitz . .
EPIGRAMS.
Accost me : let tlicrn teach the wits.
The greater have come up and doue
All honor, the minuter none.
Singling me from amidst the crowd
My next-door neighbor barks most loud.
LXII.
Stop, stop, friend Cogan ! would you throw
That tooth away ? You little know
Its future : that which now you see
A sinner's, an old saint's may be.
And popes may bless it in a ring
To charm the conscience of some king.
377
LXTII.
Yes, I will come to Oxford now
Juicy and green is every bough.
Unfit as yet to roast a Froude :
Exeter cries, " To what a pass
Ai'e we reduced ! alas ! alas \"
And Church and College wail aloud.
LXIV.
People may think the work of sleep
That deep-indented frown ;
Its post of honor let it keep.
Nor draw the nightcap down.
Acknowledge that at every wheeze.
At every grunt and groan,
You hear his verses ; do not these
Proclaim them for his own ?
LXV.
Years, many parti-color'd years.
Some have crept on, and some have flown,
Since first before me fell those tears
I never coidd see fall alone.
Years, not so many, are to come.
Years not so varied, when from you
One more will fall : when, carried home,
I see it not, nor hear adieit.
378 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
LXVL
Death, in approacliiiig, brings me sleep so sound
I scarcely hear the dreams that hover round ;
One cruel thing, one only, he can do . ,
Break the bright image (Life's best gift) of you.
LXVII.
Here stands a civil man, John Hickes,
Waiting, he says, to cross the Styx.
Check that dog's treble-bass, Charon !
Take him, and lay the lighest fare on.
LXVIII. YOUNG.
Thou dreariest droll of puffy short-breathed writers !
All thy night-thoughts and day-thoughts hung on miters.
LXIX. A quarrelsome BISHOP.
To hide her ordure, claws the cat ;
You claw, but not to cover that.
Be decenter, and learn at least
One lesson from the cleanlier beast.
LXX.
"Instead of idling half my hours,
I might have learnt the names of flowers
In gardens, groves, and fields."
Where then had been the sweet surprize
That sparkles from those dark-blue eyes ?
Less pleasure knowledge yields.
LXXT.
Here lies our honest friend Sam Parr,
A better man than most men are.
So learned, he could well dispense
Sometimes with merely common sense :
So voluble, so eloquent.
You little heeded what he meant :
So generous, he could spare a word
To throw at Warburton or Hurd :
So loving, every village-maid
Sought his caresses, tho afraid.
LXXII.
Jack Campbell ! if few are
So stealthy as you are.
EPIGRAMS.
Tew steal with so honest a face :
But recollect, wheu
You pluck a fresh pen,
That where the soil's richest is deepest the trace.
Beware lest Macaulay,
Hard-fisted, should maul ye
When he catches you sucking his Bacon.
At Lister's church-yard
There is stationed no guard ;
Creep over ; his spoils may be taken.
379
LXXIII.
Blythe bell, that calls to bridal halls.
Tolls deep a darker day ;
The very shower that feeds the flower
Weeps also its decay.
LXXIV. TO AN OLD MULBERRY-TREE.
Old mulberry ! with all thy moss around.
Thy arms are shattered, but thy heart is sound :
So then remember one for whom of yore
Thy tenderest boughs the crimson berry bore ;
Remember one who, trusting in thy strength.
Lay on the low and level branch full length.
No strength has he, alas ! to climb it now.
Nor strength to bear him, if he had, hast thou.
LXXV.
Hasten, hasten, poet mine !
To give the hoarsest of the Nine
Her usual syrop ; let her go
To sleep, as she lets others do.
LXXVI.
Weak minds return men hatred for contempt,
Strong ones contempt for hatred. Wliich is best ?
LXXVII.
In port, beyond the swell of winds and tides.
My little skiff the Independence rides.
Scanty, tho strong and hearty is her crew.
So, come aboard ; she can find room for you.
380 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD THEE.
LXXVIII. THE DUKE OF YORK'S STATUE.
Enduring is the bust of bronze,
And thine, O flower of George^s sons.
Stands higli above all laws and duns.
As honest men as ever cart
Convey' d to Tyburn took thy part
And raised thee up to where thou art.
LXXIX.
Why do the Graces now desert the Muse ?
They hate bright ribbons tying wooden shoes.
LXXX.
When a man truly loves he is at best
A frail thermometer to the beloved ;
His spirits rise and fail but at her breath,
And shower and sunshine are divined from her.
LXXXI.
Better to praise too largely small deserts.
Than censure too severely great defects.
LXXXII.
Hungarians ! raise your laurel'd brows again.
Ye who can raise them from amid the slain.
And swear we hear but fables, and the youth
Who sways o'er Austria never " swerv'd from truth."
LXXXIII.
Bidden by Hope the sorrowful and fond
Look o'er the present hour for hours beyond.
Some press, some saunter on, until at last
They reach that chasm which none who breathe hath past.
Before them Death starts up, and opens wdde
His wings, and wafts them to the farther side.
LXXXIV.
Ireland never was contented . .
Say you so ? you are demented.
Ireland was contented when
All could use the sword and pen.
And when Tara rose so high
That her turrets split the sky.
EPIGRAMS. 381
And about her courts were seen
Liveried Angels robed in green,
Wearing, by Saint Patrick^s bounty,
Emeralds big as half a county.
LXXXV. LADY HAMILTON.
Long have the Syrens left their sunny coast.
The Muse's voice, heard later, soon was lost :
Of all the Graces one remains alone,
Gods call her Emma ; mortals, Hamilton.
LXXXVI.
There is a time when the romance of life
Should be shut up, and closed with double clasp
Better that this be done before the dust
That none can blow away falls into it.
LXXXVII.
Nay, thank me not again for those
Camelias, that untimely rose ;
But if, whence you might please the more
And win the few unwon before,
I sought the flowers you loved to wear,
O'erjoy'd to see them in your hair.
Upon my grave, I pray you, set
One primrose or one violet.
. . . Stay ... I can wait a little yet.
LXXXVIIL
Expect no grape, no fig, no wholesome fruit
Erom Gaul engrafted upon Corsican.
LXXXIX. AN IRISHMAN TO FATHER MATTHEW.
FATHER Matthew !
Whatever path you
In life pursue,
God grant your Eeverence
May brush off never hence
Our mountain dew !
xc.
'A Parap/irase on Job " we see
By Young : it loads the shelf :
He who can read one half must be
Patient as Job himself.
382 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
XCI.
Meyrick ! surrounded by Silurian boors^
Against that rabble shut your castle-doors ;
I mean that coarser rabble which aspires
To square its shoulders in the squad of squires ;
Which holds the scholar under heavy ban,
And, drunk or sober, spurns the gentleman.
Meyrick ! how wide your difference ! hardly wider
Your mellow claret and their musty cider.
XCII.
It often happens a bad pun
Goes farther than a better one.
A miss is often not a bit
Less startling than the fairest hit :
This (under high-raised eyebrows seen)
Poor Goldsmith proved on Titrnham-green.
XCIII.
The ancient Faith brings recreant Gauls
In guise of friends to scale the walls
Of manful Rome : as false their word
As ever, and more foul the sword.
xciv.
"What is my faith?" I do believe
That ladies never would deceive.
And that the little fault of Eve
Is very easy to retrieve.
" She lost us immortalitij ! "
" Well, so she might ; and what care I ?
Eden and Paradise are nigh
As ever : should we pass them by ?"
XCV. TO JOHN FORSTER.
Censured by her who stands above
The Sapphic Muse in song and love,
'' For mhiding vihat such peojile do"
I turn in confidence to you.
Now, Eorster, did you never stop
At orange-peel or turnip-top.
To kick them from your path, and then
Complacently walk on agen ?
EPIGRAMS.
XCVI.
In summer wlien the sun's mad horses pass
Thro more than half the heavens, we sink to rest
In Italy, nor tread the crackling grass,
But wait uiilil they plunge into the west :
And could not you, Mazzini ! wait awhile ?
The grass is withered, but shall spring agen ;
The Gods, who frown on Italy, will smile
As in old times, and men once more be men.
383
XCVII.
God scatters beauty as he scatters flowers
O'er the wide earth, and tells us all are ours.
A hundred lights in every temple burn,
And at each shrine I bend my knee in turn.
XCVIII. TUE DEATH OF MADAME ROLAND.
Genius and Virtue ! dismal was the dearth
Ye saw tlu'oughout all Trance when ye lookt down.
In the wide waste of blood-besprinkled earth,
There was but one great soul, and that had flown.
xcix.
Theee are certain blue eyes
"Which insist on your sighs.
And the readiest to give them is far the most wise ;
An obstinate lout
Resolved to stand out
Cries at last like a criminal under the knout.
c.
Death stands above me, whispering low
I know not what into my ear :
Of his strange language all I know
Is, there is not a word of fear.
CI. ROSE AYLMER'S HAIR, GIVEN BY HER SISTER.
Beautiful spoils ! borne off from vanquisht death !
Upon my heart's high altar shall ye lie.
Moved but by only one adorer's breath.
Retaining youth, rewarding constancy.
384 THE LAST PEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
CII.
Deserted in our utmost need
"VVas Peel^ and what poor fags succeed !
Lie dead, ye bees ! come forth, ye drones !
Malmsburies, Maidstones, Pakingtons
Hum in the sunshine while ye may,
Tomorrow comes a rainy day.
CITI.
A flirt was Belinda ! the more she reproved
Her lover for changing his mind.
" Say Avho," cried the youth, " O my dearly beloved !
Can be steddy that polks with the wind ?"
CIV. THE ONE GRAVE.
Though other friends have died in other days.
One grave there is where memory sinks and stays.
CV. HENRY the EIGHTH.
Thou murderous man ! a time there comes, we trust,
When, king^s or peasant^ s, dust springs forth from dust ;
Then, when the spirit its own form shall see.
Beauteous or hideous, woe then, wretch, to thee !
cvi.
"Wearers of rings and chains !
Pray do not take the pains
To set me right.
In vain my faults ye quote ;
I write as others wrote
On Sunium's bight.
CVII.
Come forth, old lion, from thy den,
Come, be the gaze of idle men.
Old lion, shake thy mane and growl.
Or they will take thee for an owl.
CVIII.
Threaten the wretch who rashly comes
To violate these tranquil tombs.
Eglantine ! sweet protectress ! you
Can threaten him and punish too.
EPIGRAMS. 385
CIX.
Envy ne'er tlirnst into my hand her torch.
The robe of those who mount up higher to scorch.
On old Greek idols I may fix my eyes
Oftener, and bring them larger sacrifice.
Yet on the altar where are vvorshipt ours
I light my taper and lay down my fioM^ers.
ex.
Strike with Thor's hammer, strike agen
The skulking heads of half-form'd men,
And every northern God shall smile
Upon thy well-aim'd blow, Carlyle !
CXI.
By learned men was England led,
When England foUow'd men like these;
His father's speeches One had red, . . .
One, Ovid's Metamorphoses.
CXII.
OLD MAN.
"What wouldst tliou say.
Autumnal day.
Clothed in a mist akin to rain ?
DARK DAY.
Thus I appear.
Because next year.
Perhaps we may not meet again.
CXIII.
Changeful ! how little do you know
Of Byron when you call him so !
True as the magnet is to iron
Byron hath ever been to Biron.
His color'd prints, in gilded frames.
Whatever the designs and names.
One image set before the rest.
In shirt with falling collar drest.
And keeping up a rolling fire at
Patriot, conspirator, and pirate.
c c
386 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
CXIV.
Love, flying out of sight, overshadows me.
And leaves me cold as cold can be ;
Earewell alasses ! and no-mores ! and you.
Sweetest and saddest word, adieu !
CXV, 1853.
Sit quiet at your hearthstones while ye may ;
Look to your arms ; place them within your reach ;
Keep dry the powder ; throw none on the grate
In idle sport ; it might blow up both roof
And door : and then the Bear that growls bursts in.
cxvi.
Blind to the future, to what lies before
The future, what our feet now stand upon.
We see not, look not for, nor think about.
CXVII.
Ye throw your crumbs of bread into the stream.
And there are fish that rise and swallow them ;
Pish too there are that lie along the mud.
And never rise, content to feed on worms.
Thus do we poets ; thus the people do.
What sparkles is caught up ; what sparkles not
Palls to the bottom mingled with the sludge,
And perishes by its solidity.
The minnows twinkle round and let it pass.
Pursuing some minuter particle.
More practicable for the slender gill.
cxviii.
My yarn in verse is short : I sit among
Our few old women who ne^er learnt to spin.
cxix.
Treasures of greek has . . ? In vain I seek 'em.
Is all the greek he has worth album grcecum ?
EPIGRAMS. 387
CXX.
One lovely name adorns my song,
And, dwelling in the heart,
For ever falters at the tongue,
And trembles to depart.
CXXI. ON SOUTHEY'S BIRTHDAY, Nov. 4.
No Angel borne on whiter wing
Hath visited the sons of men.
Teaching the song they ought to sing
And guiding right the unsteddy pen.
Recorded not on earth alone,
O Southey ! is thy natal day.
But there where stands the choral throne
Show us thy light and point the way.
CXXII.
Altho my soberer ear disdains
TJie irksome din of tinkling chains,
I pat two steers more sleek than strong
And yoke them to the car of Song.
CXXIII.
O WRETCHED despicable slaves.
Accomplices and dupes of knaves !
The cut-throat uncle laid ye low.
The cut-purse nephew gags ye now.
Behold at last due vengeance come
For the brave men ye slew at Eome.
cxxiv.
Penthesileia, bright and bold.
Led forth her Amazons of old.
And every man was fain to yield
Who met her on the Attic field
Save Theseus ; by that bosom bare
Undazzled, or that golden hair ;
He, without shuddering, dared to twist
Its rings around his stubborn fist.
The times are alterM : now again
Our Attic virgins scour the j)lain.
And Pallas is observed to rear
O'er those her JEgis and her spear.
c c
388 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
CXXV,
There are some tears that only brave men slied.
The rest are common to the human race.
The cause of Hungary when Kossutli pled
Such tears as his rolFd down the sternest face.'
Girls wonder'd, by the side of youths who loved,
Why they had never wept until that hour ;
Tender they knew those hearts, but never moved
As then. Love own'd there was one greater power.
cxxvi.
The fault is not mine if I love you too much,
I loved you too little too long,
Such ever your graces, your tenderness such.
And the music the heart gave the toiigue.
A time is now coming when Love must be gone
Tho he never abandon^'d me yet.
Acknowledge our friendship, our passion disown.
Our follies (ah can you ?) forget.
CXXVII.
If, when a man has thrown himself on flowers.
He feels a sharp flint under him and springs
Upon his legs, he feels the flint again
Tomorrow, not the flowers : they drifted down
The stream of Lethe imperceptibly.
Heavier and sooner to be now engulpht
I'or every surface-drop which they imbibed.
I have so much of leisure that I hate
To lose a particle ; as hate the rich
To lose the dross they know not to emplov ;
Else would I moralize a good half-hour
On pleasure and its sequences, and speak
As ill of them as men whom they have left
Usually do . . ungrateful, like tlie rest.
CXXVIII.
Leaf after leaf drops oft^ flower after flower.
Some in the chill, some in tlie warmer hour :
Alike they flourish and alike they fall,
And Earth who nourisht them receives them all.
EPIGRAMS. 389
Should wc, her ^vise^ sons, be less content
To sink into her lap when life is spent?
CXXIX. TO A CHILD.
Pout not, my little Rose, but take
With dimpled fingers, cool and soft,
This posy, when thou art awake . .
Mama has worne my posies oft :
This is the first I offer thee.
Sweet baby ! many more shall rise
From trembUng hand, from bended knee,
Mid hopes and fears, mid doubts and sighs.
Before that hour my eyes will close ;
But grant me. Heaven, this one desire . .
In mercy ! may my little Rose
Never be grafted on a briar.
cxxx.
Rest of my heart ! no verse can tell
My blissful pride, beloved by you ;
Yet could I love you half so well
Unless you once had grieved me too ?
CXXXI.
Let Youth, who never rests, run by ;
But should each Grace desert the Muse ?
Should all that once hath charmed us, fly
At heavy Age's creaking shoes ?
The titter of hght Days I hear
To see so strange a figure come ;
Laugh on, light Days, and never fear ;
He passes you; he seeks the tomb.
OXXXII.
The wisest of the wise
Listen to pretty lies
And love to hear 'em told.
Doubt not that Solomon
Listen'd to many a one.
Some in his youth and more when he grew old.
890 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
I never was among
The clioir of Wisdom's song,
But pretty lies loved I
As much as any king,
When youth was on the wing.
And (must it then be told?) when youth had quite gone by
Alas ! and I have not
The pleasant hour forgot
When one pert lady said
" Walter ! I am quite
Bewildered with affright !
I see (sit quiet now) a white hair on your head/'
Another more benign
Snipt it away from mine.
And in her own dark hair
Pretended it was found . . .
She lept, and twirlM it round . .
Eair as she was, she never was so fair.
CXXXIII.
Ulysses-like had Myrrha known.
Aye, many a man in many a town :
At last she swore that she would be
Constant to one alone, to me.
She fails a trifle : I reprove :
Myrrha no longer swears her love ;
One falsehood Jionest Myrrha spares.
And argues better than she swears.
" Look now," says she, " o'er these fair plains^
What find you there that long remains?
The rocks upon yon ugly hill
Are hard and cold and changeless stil."
CXXXIV. TO AN INNOCENT GIRL.
Maid ! who canst hardly yet believe
The Tempter could have tempted Eve_^
And wonderest with rehgions doubt
What the good angels were about
To let that horrid creature in
And try to teach her what is sin . .
EPIGRAMS. 391
Trust me, my little girl, altlio
Strauge is the story, it was so.
Her whom the hollow world applauds
Where'er she moves, whatever the gauds
Of wit and beauty she may wear.
One evil action strips her bare ;
One groveling and seductive vice
Tempts her . . and farewel Paradise !
cxxxv.
The Wine is murmuring in the gloom,
Because he feels that Spring is come
To gladden everything outside . .
To wing the dove to meet his bride.
And not disdainfully to pass
Even the snail along the grass ;
Because he feels that on the slope
Of his own hill the vine-flowers ope ;
Because he feels that never more
Will earth or heaven kis past restore.
He beats against the ribs of iron
Which him and all his strength environ ;
He murmurs, swells, and beats agen.
But murmurs, swells, and beats in vain.
" JF/i^ tldnk about it ?" Need I say,
Remembering one sweet hour last May ?
We think and feel ('twas your remark)
Then most when all around is dark.
cxxxvi.
No insect smells so fulsome as that hard
Unseemly beetle which corrodes the rose.
Bring forth your microscope ; about the bard
One very like it (only less) it shows.
CXXXVII,
A SENTIMENTAL lady sate
Lamenting thus a rose's fate.
As thirty of them, nay threescore.
Bard-bitten all, have done before.
393 THE LAST FRUIT OFi' AN OLD TREE.
" My sweet and lovely one ! all why
Must you so soon decay and die ?"
" I know not," with soft accents said,
And balmy breath the Eose, " kind maid !
I only know they call me fair.
And fragrant in this summer air.
If youths should push their faces down
On mine, I smile, but never frown.
And never (^twere affected) say
So much as '' tvanton ! go aioai/*
I would not wish to stop behind.
And perish in the wint'ry wind.
I have had sisters ; all are gone
Before me, and without a moan.
Be thou as sweet and calm as they.
And never mind the future day."
CXXXVIII. SEPARATION.
There is a mountain and a wood between us,
Where the lone shepherd and late bird have seen us
Morning and noon and even-tide repass.
Between us now the mountain and the wood
Seem standing darker than last year they stood.
And say we must not cross, alas ! alas !
cxxxix.
If wits and poets, two or three,
Tour at the most, speak well of me.
It is because my lonely path
Lies hidden by the hills of Bath.
Neighbours who stir one step from prose
Become inevitable foes.
Poetic steamers rarely fail
Somehow to clash upon the rail.
CXL. IRISH THANKS FOR ROMISH MIRACLES.
Sure from thee, most Holy Pather,
Miracles in heaps we gather:
We have one before us that's
Yery like the Kerry cats.
EPIGRAMS. 393
Whicli our lii story by Moore
Tells us Avere just twenty-four,
Others show the very house, and
Swear there were eleven thousand.
Keeping up a glorious fight
All the day and all the night,
Not a knuckle, not a rib,
Left at morn by Tab or Tib,
But one only tail to tell
What the Kerry cats befell.
Blessings on thee. Holy Father,
And thy miracles ! WeM rather
See as many Frenchmen slain
Than those Kerry cats again,
Tho, as sure as you are born.
Few we w^ant to watch our corn.
Since the Union-guardians eat
Most of that, and all the meat.
Hear those Frenchmen yonder cry
Freedom and fraternity !
See those pebble -loads of carts
Bumbling from their joyous hearts.
See those sabres hicking hacking.
And those rifles clicking clacking !
We may learn one lesson by 't . .
Never go afield to fight.
Botheration! botheration!
Nation striving against nation !
When a single one can do
All the work as well as two.
CXLI. LIGHT AND DARK.
As trees that grow along the waterside.
However stiff and stately be their kind.
Forego their nature, put away all pride
And bend their lofty heads before the wind
Of spring, erect thro winter^s ; while a voice
From the mild ripples charms their branches down.
Branches and ripples each in each doligktj V^o^OU
And these forget to swell and those to frown ;
So does that grave stern man before you now
394 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TKEE.
Lose all liis harshness wliile you sing or speak :
Methiiiks I see shot upward on his brow,
The tender radiance of your virgin cheek.
CXLII. MY LIZARD IN TUSCANY.
You pant like one in love, my Eamorino !
Can it be fear ? Come Walter ! come Carlino !
But not too nigh ; just nigh enough to see
My lizard, greener than your rosemary.
CXLIIL
Know ye the land where from its acrid root
The sweet nepenthe rears her ripen^'d fruit.
Which whoso tastes forgets his house and home ?
Ye know it not : come on then ; come to Eome.
Behold upon their knees with cord and scourge
Men, full-grown men, pale puffy phantasts urge !
Holiness lies with them in fish and frogs.
Mid squealing eunuchs and mid sculptured logs.
Mid gaudy dresses changed for every scene.
And mumbled prayers in unknown tongue between.
These wrongs imposed on them they call their rights!
Por these the poor man toils, the brave man fights !
Exclaiming " Saints above ! your triumphs o'er,
ShaU roasted Eidleys crown the feast no more ?
Shall all our candles gutter into gloom.
And faith sit still, or only sweep the room ?
CXLIV. BRIGHTON 1S07.
You ask what he's doing
Who lately was wooing
And fear'd but those frowais
That came dark o'er the downs :
When night is returning
He sighs for the morning
And ere the first light
Sighs again for the night.
CXLV.
If you no longer love me.
To friendship why pretend ?
EPIGRAMS. 395
Unwortliy was the lover,
Unworthy be tlie friend.
I know there is another
Of late prefer' d to me :
Kecover'd is my freedom.
And you again are free.
Fve seen the bird that summer
Deluded from her spray
Return again in winter
And grieve she flew awav.
CXLVI. THE BEES OF GUILLIVELLE.»
Bees ! conscripts ! braves of Guillivelle !
What poet, yet unborn, shall tell,
Not of your treasuries of sweets.
But of your more than maidy feats ?
Above the song of bard or bee,
Trench soldiers, truly French, are ye :
Your bayonets at once invade
The densest loftiest barricade.
And equally ye take it ill
Of all who stir or who sit still.
Beneath you cart what Proudhons fall !
What Thierses, where those goslings sprawl.
In mire as deep, writhe, hiss, and gabble . .
Excessively uncomfortable !
The President, as due, decrees
Your reiiiment for feats like these
Be called The Bonaparte Bees.
CXLVII. PRIMROSE TO BE DRIED IN A BOOK.
Humble flower ! the gift of Rose !
If today thy life must close.
Yet for ever slialt thou be
Just as fair and fresh to me ;
* A farmer at Guillivelle sent his carter, with a cart and five horses, to
remove some rvibbish from a wall, near which he had 250 hives. Eet.urning
to the house for something, the carter tied his horses to a tree. The bees
issued forth ; the horses were covered with them. Coming back, he found
two dead, the three others rolling about in agony ; and these also died
soon after. The same swarms, some time before, had stung to death
eighteen goslings.
396 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
And when I am underground
Shalt among these leaves be found,
And the finder shall exclaim
" Up ! arise ! awake to fame !
He who gave thee length of daj's
Held her flower above his bays."
CXLVIII.
Your last request no fond false hope deceives ;
Tour's shall be. Rose ! when all your days are o'er,
"The sighs of Zephyrs ""mid the nestling leaves;"
" And many more !
Many shall mourn around you, lovely Eose !
But there must one be absent ; there is one
Who grieved with you in all your little woes . .
He will be gone."
CXLIX. NIL ADMIRARI, &c.
Horace and Creech !
Thus do ye teach ?
What idle speech !
Pope ! and could you
Sanction it too ?
'Twill never do.
One idle pen
Writes it, and ten
Write it agen.
Sages require
Much to admire,
Nought to desire.
God ! grant thou me
Nature to see
Admiringly.
Lo ! how the wise
Eead in her eyes
Thy mysteries !
CL,
When the mad wolf hath bit the scatter'd sheep,
The maddened flock their penfold overleap.
And, rushing blind with fury, trample down
The kindest master with the coarsest clown.
EPIGRAMS. 397
CLI. HOME.
At Rome may everjtliing be Louglit
But honesty, there vainly sought :
Tor other kinds of costly ^val•e
The pontif opens a bazar.
If you have lost your soul, you may
Procure a better . . only pay.
If you have any favorite sin,
The price is ticketed . . walk in.
Tor a few thousand golden pieces
Uncles may marry here their nieces ;
The pontif slijDs the maiden sash,
And winks, and walks away the cash.
Naples, so scant of blushes, sees
And blushes at such tricks as these^
Until a ghostly father saitli
Behold, mij sons! the ancient faHh.
This ancient faith brought faithful Gauls,
In guise of friends to scale the walls
Of manfull Rome ; and Louis' word
Unsheatli'd Christina's tarnisht sword.
CLII.
Our youth was happy : why repine
That, like the Year's, Life's days decHne ?
'Tis well to mingle with the mould
When we ourselves alike are cold.
And when the only tears we shed
Are of the dying orvthe dead.
CLIII. MISTAKE RECTIFIED.
'Tis not Lucilla that you see
Amid the cloud and storm :
'Tis Anger . . What a shame that he
Assumes Lucilla's form !
CLIV. GARDEN AT HEIDELBERG.
Fill me the beaker !
Now, Rhine and Nekkar,
Health to ye both, ye noble streams!
398 THE LAST PRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Yours is a power,
To wing tlie hoiu-
Higli above Wisdom's heavy dreams.
Germans! beer-drinking,
Tobacco-stinking,
Gladly, how gladly ! I resign
All you are worth,
From south to north
For this fresh air and fragrant wine.
CLV. ON A HEAVY EPITAPH.
He who hath piled these verses o'er thy head
Eesolved, it seems, to bury thee in lead.
CLVL
Easy I thought it to descry
In your heart's depths its purity.
It seem'd jDellucid ; but alas
Pellucid too is fragile glass !
What we see smooth we trust is sound.
Nor fear to slip on even ground :
I rise and rub my broken knee,
And so will they who follow me.
CLVn. TO THE GOD TERMINUS.
Terminus ! whether stock or stone,*
We, like our sires, thy godhead own,
And may be pardon'd, let us hope.
If we have changed thy name to jpo-pe.
CLVIII. JUNE '51.
Versailles ! Versailles ! thou shalt not keep
Her whom this heart yet holds most dear :
In her own country she shall sleep ;
Her epitaph be graven here.
CLIX. TO THE COUNTESS DE MOLANDE.
I WONDER not that Youth remains
With you, wherever else she flies :
Wliere could she find such fair domains.
Where bask beneath such sunny eyes ?
* Termine ! sive lapis sive es defossus in agro Stipes. — Tibullus,
EPIGRAMS. 399
CLX.
There are few on whom Fortune in one form or other.
So various and numberless, never hath smiled;
One fountain the sands of the desart maj cover,
Another shall rise in the rocks of the wild.
We leave the bright lotus that floats on our river
And the narrow green margin where youth hath reposed.
Fate drives us ; we sigh, but sigh vainly, that ever
Our eyes in a slumber less sweet should be closed :
Ah ! while it comes over us let us assemble
What once were not visions, but visions are now.
Now love shall not torture, now hope shall not tremble.
And the last leaf of myrtle stil clings to the brow.
CLXI.
In early spring, ere roses took
A matronly unblushing look.
Or lilies had begun to fear
A stain upon their character,
I thought the cuckoo more remote
Than ever, and more hoarse his note.
The nightingale had dropt one half
Of her large gamut, and the laugh
Of upright nodding woodpecker
Less petulantly struck my ear.
Why have the birds forgot to sing-
In this as in a former spring ?
Can it be that the days are cold.
Or (sui-ely no) that I am old.
Strange fancy ! how could I forget
That I have not seen eighty yet !
CLXII.
Why do our joys depart
For cares to seize the heart ?
I know not. Nature says.
Obey; and man obeys.
I see, and know not why
Thorns live and roses die.
400 THE LAST FUUIT OFF AN OLD THEE.
CLXIII.
All is not o^'e^ while the shade
Of parting Hfe, if now aslant,
Eests on the scene whereon it ]:)lay^d
And taught a docile heart to pant.
Antumn is passing by ; his day
Shines mildly yet on gathered sheaves.
And, tho the grape be plnckt away,
Its colour glows amid the leaves.
CLXIV. TW^O KOSES.
Can ye not love more sisterly,
Ye roses, but must yon keep down
The latest-born ? you under, try
To push aside your sister's crown ?
shame upon you, envious pair !
Well may you blush ; and well may you
Hide your young face. Look ! one comes near
Who by her smile shall shame the two.
CLXV. YOUTH.
The days of our youth are not over while sadness
Chills never, and seldom overshadows, the heart ;
AA'hile Friendship is crowning the banquet of Gladness
And bids us be seated and offers us part ;
While the swift-spoken when? and the slowly-breath'd/^?^.^///
Make us half-love the maiden and half-hate the lover.
And feel too what is or what should be a blush . .
Believe me, the days of our youth are not over.
CLXVI. AGE.
Death, tho I see him not, is near
And grudges me my eightieth year.
Now, I Mould give him all these last
Por one that fifty have run past.
Ah ! he strikes all things, all ahke,
But bargains : those he will not strike.
VARIOUS. 401
VARIOUS.
CLXVII.
A BIRD was seen aloft in air ; the sun
Shone brightly round him^ yet few eyes could see
His colour, few could scan his size; his form
Appear\l to some like a huge bow unbent,
To others like a shapeless stake hurlM by,
With a stiff" breeze against it in its flight.
It was an eagle all the while : he swoopt
Steddily onward, careless of the gang
Below him, talkative, disquisitive.
But all agreeing 'twas a bird on wing.
Some said nine inches, some said ten across.
There were old people who could recollect
That market-day, that crowd, that questioning,
Those outcries to drive off the fearless bird.
One of them I accosted ; he rejDlied,
"Yea, I have seen him, and must say for him
Now he is dead (and well it is for us)
He liked a coney or a lamb too much.
But never settled on dead carcases
To pluck out eye or tug at putrid tongue.
They wlio reviled him while he swept the air
Are glad enough to wear a feather now
Of that strong wing, and boast to have observ'd
Its sunny soaring on that market-day.''
CLXVIII.
Why do I praise a peach
Not on my wall, no, nor within my reach ?
Because I see the bloom
And scent the fragrance many steps from home.
Permit me stil to praise
The higher Genius of departed days.
Some are there yet who, nurst
In the same clime, are vigorous as the first,
And never waste their hours
(Ardent for action) among meadow flowers.
Greece with calm eyes I see,
Her pure white marbles have not blinded me,
D D
403 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
But breathe on me the love
Of earthly things as bright as things above
There is (where is there not ?)
In her fair regions many a desart spot ;
Neither is Dirce clear.
Nor is Ilissus full throughout the year.
CLXIX. TO A LADY ARCHER.
Two Goddesses, not always friends.
Are friends alike to you :
To you her bow for trial lends
The statelier of the two.
" Let Cupid have it/' Yenus cries,
Diana says " No ! no !
Until your Cupid grows more wise
He shall not have my bow.'"
Her boy was sitting at her side.
His bow across his knee.
" Use thou thy own, use this," she cried
" I did, in vain !" cried he.
'■'■ Mother ! w^e may as well be gone ;
No shaft of mine can strike
That figure there, so hke thy own,
That heart there, so unlike.
CLXX.
It was a dream (ah ! what is not a dream ?)
In which I wander'd thro a boundless space
Peopled by those that peopled earth erewhile.
But who conducted me ? That gentle Power,
Gentle as Death, Death's brother. On his brow
Some have seen poppies ; and perhaps among
The many flowers about his wavy curls
Poppies there might be ; roses I am sure
I saw, and dimmer amaranths between.
Lightly I thought I lept across a grave
SmeUing of cool fresh turf, and sweet it smelt.
I would, but must not linger ; I must on.
To tell my dream before forgetfulness
VAUious. 403
Sweeps it away, or breaks or changes if.
I was among the Shades (if Shades they were)
And lookt around me for some friendly hand
To guide me on ray way, and tell me all
That compast me around. I wisht to find
One no less firm or ready than the guide
Of Alighieri, trustier far than he.
Higher in intellect, more conversant
With earth and heaven and wtiatso lies between.
He stood before me . . Southey.
"Thou art he,"
Said I, " whom I was wishing."
"That I know,"
Replied the genial voice and radiant eye.
" We may be questioned, question we may not ;
For that might cause to bubble forth again
Some bitter spring which crost the pleasantest
And shadiest of our paths."
"I do not ask"
Said I, " about your happiness ; I see
The same serenity as when we walkt
Along the downs of Clifton. Fifty years
Have roll'd behind us since that summer-tide,
Nor thirty fewer since along the lake
Of Lario, to Bellaggio villa-crowned,
Thro the crisp waves I urged my sideling bark.
Amid sweet salutation off the shore
From lordly Milan's proudly courteous dames."
" Landor ! I well remember it," said he,
" I had just lost my first-born only boy.
And then the heart is tender ; lightest things
Sink into it, and dwell there evermore."
The words were not yet spoken when the air
Blew balmier ; and around the parent's neck
An Angel threw his arms : it was that son.
" Father ! I felt you wisht me," said the boy,
" Behold me here 1 "
Gentle the sire's embrace.
Gentle his tone. " See here your father's friend !"
He gazed into my face, then meekly said
" He whom my father loves hath h'is reward
On earth ; a richer one awaits him here."
D D 2
404 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
CLXXI. ON MOORE'S DEATH.
Idol of youths and virgins, Moore !
Thy days, the bright, the calm, are o^er !
No gentler mortal ever prest
His parent Earth^s benignant breast.
What of the powerful can be said
They did for thee ? They edited.
What of that royal gourd ? Thy verse
Excites our scorn and spares our curse.
Each truant wife, each trusting maid.
All loves, all friendships, he betraid.
Despised in life by those he fed,
By his last mistress left ere dead.
Hearing her only wrench the locks
Of every latent jewel-box.
There spouse and husband strove alike,
Eearing lest Death too soon should strike.
But fixt no plunder to forego
Til the gross spirit sank below.
Thy closing days I envied most.
When all worth losing had been lost.
Alone I spent my earlier hour
While thou wert in the roseate bower,
And raised to thee was every eye.
And every song won every sigh.
One servant and one chest of books
Eollow'd me into mountain nooks,
Where sheltered from the sun and breeze
Lay Pindar and Thucydides.
There antient days came back again.
And British kings renewed their reign ;
There Arthur and his knights sat round
Cups far too busy to be crown''d ;
There Alfred's glorious shade appeared,
Of higher mien than Greece e'er rear'd.
I never sought in prime or age
The smile of Fortune to engage.
Nor rais'd nor lower'd the telescope
Erected on the tower of Hope.
Erom Pindus and Parnassus far
Blinks cold and dim the Georgian star.
VAEIOUS. 405
CLXXII. TO VEKONA.
Verona ! thy tall gardens stand erect
Beckoning me upward. Let me rest awhile
Where the birds whistle hidden in the boughs,
Or fly away when idlers take their place.
Mated as well, conceaFd as willingly ;
Idlers whose nest must not swing there, but rise
Beneath a gleamy canopy of gold.
Amid the flight of Cupids, and the smiles
Of Venus ever radiant o'er their couch.
Here would I stay, here wander, slumber here_,
Nor pass into that theater below
Crowded with their faint memories, shades of joy.
But ancient song arouses me : I hear
Coelius and Aufilena ; I behold
Lesbia, and Lesbians linnet at her lip
Pecking the fruit that ripens and swells out
Por him whose song the Graces loved the most,
Whatever land, east, west, they visited.
Even he must not detain me : one there is
Greater than he, of broader wing, of swoop
Subhmer. Open now that humid arch
Where Juliet sleeps the quiet sleep of death,
And Romeo sinks aside her.
Fare ye well.
Lovers ! Ye have not loved in vain : the hearts
Of millions throb around ye. This lone tomb
One greater than yon walls have ever seen,
Greater than Manto's prophet eye foresaw
In her own child or Rome's, hath hallowed ;
And the last sod or stone a pilgrim knee
Shall press (Love swears it, and swears true) is here.
CLXXIII. LOSS OF MEMORY.
Memory ! thou hidest from me far,
Hidest behind some twinkling star
Which peers o'er Pindus, or wliose beam
Crosses that broad and rapid stream
Where Zeus in wily whiteness shone
And Leda left her virgin zone.
Often I catch thy glimpses stil
By that clear river, that lone hill,
406 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TEEE.
Bat seldom dost thou softly glide
To take thy station at my side.
When later friends and forms are near ;
From these thy traces disappear^,
And scarce a name can I recall
Of those I value most of all.
At times thou hurriest me away.
And, pointing out an earlier day,
Biddest me hsten to a song
I ought to have forgotten long :
Then, looking up, I see above
The plumage of departing Love,
And when I cry, Art thou too gone ?
He laughs at me and passes on.
Some images (alas how few !)
Stil sparkle in the evening dew
Along my path : and must they quite
Yanish before a deeper night ?
Keep one, Memory ! yet awhile
And let me think I see it smile.
CLXXIV.
O POLITICS ! ye wriggling reptiles, liatcht
In hot corruption, head and tail alike.
Can no man touch you but his hand must stink
Throughout the day ? must sound become unsound
In your inclosure ? ye busy mites
That batten on our cheese, and fatten there
And seem its substance ! Ye shall feel the pure
And cutting air, drop, and be swept away.
Scullery and sink receiving you, sent down
Eace after race ; and yet your brood outlast
Old Memnon, with his obelisks for guards.
And older chiefs whose tents are pyramids.
Your generations numberless, your food
Man's corrupt nature, man's corroded heart,
Man's liquified and unsubstantial brain.
Yea, while the world rolls on, unfelt to roll,
There will be grubs and Greys within its core.
Divested of their marrow and their nerve.
Gigantic forms lie underneath our feet
Without our knowing it : we pass, repass.
VARIOUS. 407
And only stop (and then stop heedlessly
Or idly curious) when some patient sage
Explores and holds a bone before our eyes,
And says " Ye've trampled on it long enough,
Now let it teach you somewhat ; tr// to learn.
]\Iean\vliile the meadow hums with insect sounds,
And gilded backs and wings o'ertop the grass :
These are sought keenly, higlily prized, and cased
(With titles on) in royal cabinets/^
CLXXV. NAPIER.
SciNDE conquer' d, England's power restored,
Napier return'd each ])rince his sword ;
Knarled with jewels, there were ten.
And all unsheatliM by gallant men.
" Give me your honor and take mine "
Said he. " Behold the tenns we sign ! "
He wrote to those at home who stand
At ease, and give at ease command ;
And much of peace he spake, and more
Of men who blest the wounds they bore
Eor England's glory ; of his own
What word did Napier utter ? . , none.
Eipon was as discreet ; he kept
The letter from all eyes and slept
Upon that battle-field.
" But where
The letter ? "
" Letter ? I declare
/ have forgotten it!'
Eorget
The blow that rings o'er Indus yet,
And whose eternal echoes roll
Erom sea to sea, from pole to pole !
To save him his last grain of credit,
Let us believe he lied who said it.
CLXXVI. NELSON, COLLINGWOOD, PELLEW.
Stedpast, energic, iron, was Nelson's will
To man, to woman flexible as gold.
Who are the pair beside him that support
His steps ?
408 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Two greater even than himself;
More virtuous, nor less valiant; years on years,
They toird upon the waves, nor rested this
His weary feet on his domestic hearth,
Nor felt the embraces of a tender brood
Or -wife, the cherisht of his youthful days :
And that, with countenance as firmly mild,
Shared nearly the same lot ; but more than once
He claspt his blooming offspring to his breast.
Then sprang afloat.
Our annals shall record
Actions more glorious than whatever shone
O'er other lands and other seas : not Blake,
Not even Blake, tho arm\l by God himself^
Displayed more active, more intrepid skill.
More calm decision, than was thine, Pellew,
Deliverer of all captives that the world
Bemoaned as helpless, hopeless, in Algiers.
Prance came and strode upon those shattered walls
And waved her flag above them, and stil waves,
Eegardless of her vows. But when were oaths
By her regarded? even with herself?
The Frank of old in wood and swamp was free.
The Arab in his desart : now alike
They share the chain ; one proud to see it shine.
The other biting it with frantic tooth
Til burnt alive for such fierce contumacy.
, Eitterajemany tears/but sweet are some ;
Thesenavesliort courses, those run long and wide.
Who hath not struck his brow when Time hath plow'd
Its flowery fields, at thought of wrong and pain
A careless hour inflicted ? Mere neglect
Of helping up a sufferer, is enough
By its reflection to o''ershadow years
Serenely lying on life's colder slope.
Well is it for us when we feel the power
To take another turn, a fairer view.
And bring back homeward little charities.
And hear kind words and grateful sighs again.
Ah ! 'tis refreshing as the earlier breath
Of mower's morn : then tears are sweet indeed.
And from no earth-stain'd sources do they flow.
VARIOUS. 409
CLXXVII. INGRATITUDE. 18th Nov. 1852.
Ingratitude ! we seldom miss
Thy presence in a world like this ;
But thou wert always fond of state,
A close attendant on the great.
So little mix 1 with mankind,
I am doubtful in what house to find
One whom scarce any but hath known . .
Ingratitude ! where art thou flown ?
O'er chariot-wheels and horns and drums
A voice (I think I know it) comes.
What says it ? In my ear it says,
" Men differ in awarding praise ;
But here the nations all unite
In one applause, since each one's right
His sword asserted ; every prince
Swore under it " . . And unswore since.
Of iron crown and sour-krout heart,
Austria, she only, stands apart.
Is tills a novelty ? Before,
When the fierce Turk unhinged her door.
And Sobieski struggled hard
To bar it, what was his reward ?
AVhen Wallenstein no more enlarged
The lands he rescued, he was charged
With treason : when Savoy's Eugene
Saw her fly back, and stood between
Her recreant duke and rushing foe.
And warded off the final blow ;
When Marlborough swell'd the Danau's flood
With Gallick and Bavarian blood ;
What won they ? what ? Ingratitude.
Thus to herself is Austria true . .
Nought better, wiser, could she do,
Than from all honors thus abstain
To him who gave her power to reign.
Two chiefs hath Austria quite her own.
Two fit supporters of the throne :
One from the bailifs ran away,
And one from those who load the dray.
Ah ! how much worthier such men are
Than Wellington, to wear her star,
410 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TliEE.
Her cross, inexplicable riddle,'^
Her tup, hung dangling by the middle,
And, overgorged with gore at Pest,
Eagle, that now befouls the nest.
CLXXVIII. ENGLISH HEXAMETERS.
AsKEST thou if i]i mj youth I have mounted, as others have
mounted.
Galloping Hexameter, Pentameter cantering after,
English by dam and by sire ; bit, bridle, and saddlery, English;
EngHsh the girths and the shoes; all English from snaffle to
crupper ;
Everything English about, excepting the tune of the jockey ?
Latin and Greek, it is true, I have often attacht to my phaeton
Early in life, and sometimes have I ordered them out in its
evening,
Dusting the linings, and pleas'd to have found them unworn
and untarnisht.
Idle ! but Idleness looks never better than close upon sunset.
Seldom mygoosequill, of goose fromGermany, fatted in England,
(Frolicksome though I have been) have I tried on Hexameter,
knowing
Latin and Greek are alone its languages. We have a measure
EashiouM by Milton's own hand, a fuller, a deeper, a louder.
Germans may flounder at wiU over consonant, vowel, and liquid.
Liquid and vowel but one to a dozen of consonants, ending
Each with a verb at the tail, tail heavy as African ram's tail.
Spenser and Shakspeare had each his own harmony; each an
enchanter
Wanting no aid from Avithout. Chevy Chase had delighted
their fathers.
Though of a different strain from the song on the Wrath of
Achilles.
Southey was fain to pour forth his exuberant stream over regions
Near and remote : his command was absolute ; every subject.
Little or great, he controll'd; in language, variety, fancy.
Richer than all his compeers, and wanton but once in dominion ;
'Twas when he left the fuU well that for ages had run by his
homestead.
Pushing the brambles aside which encumber'd another up higher.
Letting his bucket go down, and hearing it bump in descending,
* What the cross should mean on the breast of perjurers.
VARIOUS. 4-11
Gratina: acjainst the loose stones til it came but half-full from
the bottom.
Others abstained from the task. Scott wander'd at large over
Scotland ;
Keckless of Roman and Greek, he chaunted the Lay of the
Minstrel
Better than ever before any minstrel in chamber had chaunted.
Marmion mounted his horse with a shout such as rose under
Ilion ;
Venus, who sprang from the sea, had envied the Lake and its
Lady.
Never on mountain or wild hath echo so cheerily sounded,
Never did monarch bestow such glorious meed upon knight-
hood.
Never had monarch the power, liberality, justice, discretion.
Byron liked new-papered rooms, and pull'd down old wainscoat
of cedar;
Bright-color'd prints he preferr'd to the graver cartoons of a
Eaphael,
Sailor and Turk (with a sack) to Eginate and Parthenon marbles.
Splendid the palace he rais'd, the gin-palace in Poesy's purlieus;
Soft the divan on the sides, with spittoons for the qualmish
and queesy.
Wordsworth, well pleas'd Avitli himself, cared little for modern
or ancient.
His was the moor and the tarn, the recess in the mountain,
the woodland
Scattered with trees far and wide, trees never too solemn or lofty.
Never entangled with plants overrunning the villager's foot-path.
Equable was he and plain, but wandering a little in wisdom.
Sometimes flying from blood and sometimes pouring it freely :
Yet he was English at heart. If his words were too many ;
if Eancy's
Eurniture lookt rather scant in a whitewasht and homely
apartment ;
If in his rural designs there is sameness and tameness ; if often
Eeebleness is there for breadth ; if his ])encil wants rounding
and pointing ;
Eevv of this age or the last stand out on the like elevation.
There is a sheepfold he raisM which my memory loves to revisit,
Sheepfold whose wall shall endure when there is not a stone
of the palace.
412 THE LAST PRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Keats, the most Grecian of all, rejected the meter of Grecians;
Poesy breatli'd over hiyn, breath'd constantly, tenderly, freshly;
Wordsworth she left now and then, outstretcht in a slumberous
languor.
Slightly displeased . . but return' d, as Aurora returned to
Tithonus,
Stil there are walking on earth many poets whom ages hereafter
Will be more willing to praise than we now are to praise one
another :
Some do I know ; but I fear, as is meet, to recount or report them.
For, be whatever the name that is foremost, the next will run
over.
Trampling and rolling in dust his excellent friend the precursor.
Peace be with all ! but afar be ambition to follow the Roman,
Led by theGerman uncombed and jigging in dactyl and spondee.
Lumbering shapeless jackboots which nothing can polish or
supple.
Much as old meters delight me, 't is only where first they were
nurtured.
In their own clime, their own speech : than pamper them here,
I would rather
Tie up my Pegasus tight to the scanty-fed rack of a sonnet.
CLXXIX. TO THE NIGHTINGALE.
Gale of the night our fathers call'd thee, bird !
Surely not rude were they who caU'd thee so.
Whether mid spring-tide mirth thy song they heard
Or whether its soft gurgle melted woe.
They knew not, heeded not, that every clime
Hath been attemper'd by thy minstrelsy;
They knew not, heeded not, from earliest time
How every poet's nest was warm'd by thee.
In Paradise's unpolluted bowers
Did Milton listen to thy freshest strain ;
In his own night didst thou assuage the hours
When Crime and Tyranny were crown'd again.
Melodious Shelley caught thy softest song.
And they who heard his music heard not thine;
Gentle and joyous, delicate and strong.
Prom the far tomb his voice shall silence mine.
VAKIOUS. 413
CLXXX. ROLAND.
When slie whose glory casts in shade
Prance and her best and bravest, was convey'd
Thither wliere all worth praise liad bled.
An aged man in the same car was led
To the same end. The only way,
lloland ! to soothe his fear didst thou essav.
" sir ! indeed you must not see
The blood that is about to flow from me.
Mount first these steps. A mother torne
From her one child worse pangs each day hath borne."'
He trembled . . but obey'd the word . .
Then sprang she up and met the reeking sword.
CLXXXI. CORDAY.
Hearts must not sink at seeing Law lie dead ;
No, Corday, no ;
Else Justice had not crown'd in heaven thy head
Profaned below.
Three women Trance hath borne, each greater far
Than all her men,
And greater many were than any are
At sword or pen.
Corneille, the first among GauFs rhymer race
Whose soul was free,
Descends from his high station, proud to trace
His line in thee.
CLXXXII. JANE OF ARC.
Maid of Arc ! why dare I not to say
Of Orleans ? There thro flames thy glory shone.
Accursed, thrice accursed, be the day
When Enghsh tongues could mock thy parting groan.
With Saints and Angels art thou seated now.
And with true-hearted patriots, host more rare !
To thine is bent in love a Milton's brow.
With many a Demon under . . and Voltaire.
■114 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
CLxxxm.
ON THE STATUE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT BY NEVILLE BUENARD,
ORDERED BY THE WORKING MEN OF SHEFFIELD.
Glory to those who give it ! who erect
The bronze and marble, not where frothy tongue
Or bloody hand points out, no, but where God
Ordains the humble to walk forth before
The humble, and mount higher than the high.
Wisely, Sheffield, wisely hast thou done
To place thy Elliott on the plinth of fame.
Wisely hast chosen for that solemn deed
One like himself, born where no mother^s love
Wrapt purple round him, nor rang golden bells,
Pendent from Libyan coral, in his ear.
To catch a smile or calm a petulance,
Nor tickled downy scalp with Belgic lace ;
But whom strong Genius took from Poverty
And said Blse, mother, and behold thy child!
She rose, and Pride rose with her, but was mute.
Three Elliotts there have been, three glorious men
Each in his generation. One was doomed
By Despotism and Prelaty to pine
In the damp dungeon, and to die for Law,
Rackt by slow tortures ere he reaclit the grave.*
A second hurl'd his thunderbolt and flame
When Gaul and Spaniard moor'd their pinnaces.
Screaming defiance at Gibraltar's frown.
Until one moment more, and other screams
And other writhings rose above the wave.
Prom sails afire and hissing where they fell,
And men half burnt along the buoyant mast.
A third came calmly on, and askt the rich
To give laborious hunger daily bread.
As they in childhood had been taught to pray
By God's own Son, and sometimes have praid since.
God heard ; but they heard not : God sent down bread ;
They took it, kept it all, and cried for more.
Hollowing both hands to catch and clutch the crumbs.
I may not live to hear another voice,
Elliott, of power to penetrate, as thine.
Dense multitudes ; another none may see
* See Forstei''s Statesmen of the Commonwealth.
VAiiious. 4 1 5
Leading the Muses from untlirifty shades
To fields where corn gladdens the heart of Man,
And where the trumpet with defiant blast
Blows in the face of War, and yields to Peace.
Therefor take thou these leaves . . fresh, firm, tho scant
To crown the City that crowns thee her son.
She must decay ; Toledo hath decaid ;
Ebro hath half-forgotten what bright arms
Flasht on his waters, what high dames adorn'd
The baldric, what torn flags o'erhung the aile.
What parting gift the ransom'd knight exchanged.
But louder than the anvil rings the lyre ;
And thine hath raised another city^s wall
In sohd strength to a proud eminence,
Which neither conqueror, crushing braver men,
Nor time, overcoming conqueror, can destroy.
So now, ennobled by thy birth, to thee
She lifts, with pious love, the thoughtful stone.
Genius is tired in search of Gratitude ;
Here they have met : may neither say farewell !
CLXXXIV. GERMAN HEXAMETERS.
Germany ! thou art indeed to the bard his Hercynian forest;
Pufl'y with tufts of coarse grass ; much of stunted (no high-
growing) timber;
Keeping your own, and content with the measure your sires
have bequeath^] you,
Germans ! let Latium rest, and leave the old pipe where ye
found it ;
Leave ye the thirtyfold farrow so quietly sucking their mother
On the warm sands ; they will starve or run wild in the brakes
and the brambles,
Swampy, intangled, and dark, and without any passable road
through :
Yet there are many who wander so far from the pleasanter
places.
Airy and sunny and sound and adorn'd with the garden and
fountain.
Garden where Artemis stands, and fountain where Venus is
bathing.
All the three Graces close by : at a distance, and somewhat
above her,
416 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
(Only the sky overhead) is Apollo the slayer of Python :
Opposite, minding him not, but intent upon bending his ownbow,
Stands other archer, less tall, whom the slayer of Python had
knelt to
Often, when Daphne was coy, and who laught at his handful
of laurel.
Plounder in mud, honest men, then smoke to the end of the
journey.
Only let me undisturbM enjoy the lone scenes ye relinquish :
Strike we a bargain at once : give me these ; and to you I
abandon
Carpenter, cordwainer, tapster, host, pedlar, itinerant actor.
Tinker and tailor and baker and mender of saddles and bellows,
With whomsoever ye list of OlIcI Fellows, of Old Free- And-Basy.
Never shall enter my lips your tobacco-pipe, never yourbevrage,
Bevragethat Bacchus abhors: let it fuddle the beast of Silenus.
Prere is contented to smile, but loud is the laughter of Canning.
CLXXXV. FABLE FOR POETS.
A FLEA had nestled to a dove
Closely as Innocence or Love.
Loth was the dove to take offence
As Love would be, or Innocence.
When on a sudden said the flea
" I wonder what you think of me.'"
Timidly, as becomes the young,
The dove thus answered.
" You are strong
And active, and our house's friend.''
'' No doubt ! and here my merits end? "
Cried the pert flea. A moth flew by.
" Which pleases most, that moth or I ? "
The dove said, " Should not I love best.
The constant partner of my nest ? "
" Come ! that won't do : I wish to hear
Which is most handsome, not most dear."
Innocence in advance of Love
Prompted, and thus replied the dove.
'^ He may have richer colors "...
"He?
What ! and do you too speak of me
Disparaging ? " Ofl" bounced the flea.
VARIOUS. 417
CLXXXYI.
There are some words in every tongue
That come betimes and linger long :
In every land those words men hear
When Youth with rosebud crown draws near ;
Men hear those words when life's full stream
Is rushing to disturb their dream ;
When slowly swings life's vesper bell
Between its throbs they hear it well,
Fainter the sound, but stil the same,
Recalling one beloved name ;
And graven on ice that name they find
When Age hath struck them almost blind.
CLXXXVII. PHELIM'S PRAYER TO ST. VITUS.
There was a damsel ill in Limerick
Of that distemper which impels the nerves
To motion without will ; a dance 'tis call'd.
Of which Saint Yitus is the dancing-master.
Phelim O'Murrough saw the damsel late
Recover'd from this malady : he askt
What it was call'd ? who cured it ? having heard,
Homeward he hasten'd ; yet before the porch
Of the first chapel lying in his road
He fell upon his knees, and thus he pray'd :
" Ah ! now, Saint Vitis ! may it plaise yer Honor !
Ye know as well as any in the world
I never troubled ye, and seldom yours
By father's side or mother's, or presumed
To give the master of the house a wink.
Or bother his dear son about my wife.
But, now I know what ails her, I would fain
•list tell ye what she suffers from . . the same
As lately visited Peg Corcoran
At the bridge-end (see ye) in Limerick,
She had it in her limbs, in every one.
Yet she found saints (your Honor above all)
Who minded her and set her up again.
H^ow surely, good Saint Vitis ! bless your heart !
If you could cure (and who shall doubt you could ?)
E E
418 THE LAST mUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Sucli awful earthquakes over every limb,
'Twould give your Honor mighty little trouble
To lay one finger on one spot alone
Of my poor wife. Unaisy soul ! her dance.
The devirs own dance, she dances day and night ;
But only with the tongue . . Save now and then
It seizes foot and iist and stirs them sore.
She can not help, poor crathur ! but must hoot
Mwrther ! had luck to ye ! and bloody t/iie/f
At every kick and cuft' that she vouchsafes.
These, plaise ye, are the burthen of the song.
And this the dance she leads me up and down.
Without one blest vobiscum, evermore.
Could not yer Honor stop that wagging tongue
And woeful fist and thundering foot of hers ?
Do now ! and Phelim will, when calFd upon.
Work for ye three hard days in Paradise."
CLXXXVIII. CONVERTERS.
All trifle life away ; the light and grave
Trifle it equally. If 'twere at home
^Twere well ; but they are busy too abroad.
They loudly cry, " Take not God's name in vain,'
And call God down to punish all he hates :
The fools are fewer than the hypocrites ;
And yet the fools are Legion.
Viper brood !
Denounced by Him, the gentle and the pure.
Whom your transgressions persecute, look up
And read the tables of eternal law.
Idlers, and worse tlian idlers, ye collect
Pebbles and shells along the Ked Sea coast,
Horeb and Sinai standing close before.
And you not looking from above the sands !
CLXXXIX. TO ANTINOE IN PARIS, 1802.
I VALUE not the proud and stern
Who rided of old o'er bleak Auvergne,
Whose images you fear'd to pass
Recumbent under arching brass.
VAUious. 419
Nor tliouglit how fondly they had smiled
Could they have seen their future child.
And yet, Antinoe, I would pray
Saint after saint to see the day
When undejected you once more
Might pass along that chappel-iloor ;
When, standing at its altar crown'd
With wild flowers from the ruin round,
Your village priest might hear and bless
A love that never shall be less.
cxc.
CisTUS ! whose fragil flower
Waits but the vesper hour
To droop and fall,
Smoothen thy petals now
The Moral Fates allow . .
Ah why so ruffled in fresh youth are all ?
Thou breathest on my breast,
" We are but like the rest
Of our whole family ;
Ruffled we are, "'tis true,
Thro life ; but are not i/ou ? . .
Without our privilege so soon to die."
CXCI. FABLE TO BE LEARNT BY BEGINNERS.
There lived a diver once whose boast
Was that he brought up treasures lost.
However deep, beneath the sea
Of glossy-haired Parthenope.
To try him, people oft threw in
A silver cross or gold zecchin.
Down went the diver " fathoms nine,"
And you might see the metal shine
Between his lips or on his head.
While lazy Tethys lay abed.
And not a Nereid round her heard
The green pearl-spangled curtain stirM.
One day a tempting fiend threw down.
Where whirled the waves, a tinsel crown.
And said, " diver, you who dive
Deeper than any man alive,
£ E 2
420 THE LAST FUUIT OPP AN OLD TREE.
And see, where other folks are bhnd,
And, what all others miss, can find.
You saw the splendid crown I threw
Into the whirlpool : now can you
Eecover it ? thus won, you may
Wear it . . not once, but every day.
So may your sons/' Down^ down he sprang
A hundred Nereids heard the clang,
And closed him round and held him fast . .
The diver there had dived his last.
CXCII. ODE TO SICILY.
No mortal hand hath struck the heroick string
Since Milton's lay in death across his breast.
Bat shall the lyre then rest
Along tired Cupid's wing
With vilest dust upon it ? This of late
Hath been its fate.
ir.
But thou, Sicily ! art born agen.
Ear over chariots and Olympic steeds
I see the heads and the stout arms of men,
And will record (God give me power !) their deeds.
in.
Hail to thee first, Palermo ! hail to thee
Who callest with loud voice, "Arise! be free;
Weak is the hand and rusty is the chain."
Thou callest; nor in vain.
IV.
Not only from the mountain rushes forth
The knighthood of the North,
In whom my soul elate
Owns now a race cognate.
But even the couch of Sloth 'mid painted walls
Swells up, and men start forth from it, where calls
The voice of Honor, long, too long, unheard.
V.
Not that the wretch was fear'd
Who fear'd the meanest as he fear'd the best,
(A reed could break his rest)
But that around all kings
Tor ever springs
VARIOUS. 421
A wasting vapor that absorbs the fire
Of all that would rise higher.
VI.
Even free nations will not let there be
More nations free.
Witness (0 shame !) our own. .
Of late years viler none.
The second Charles found many and made more
Base as liimself : his reign is not yet o'er.
VII.
To gratify a brood
Swamp-fed amid the Suabian wood,
The sons of Lusitania were cajoled
And bound and sold,
And sent in chains where we unchain the slave
We die with thirst to save.
VIII.
Ye too, Sicihans, ye too gave we up
To drain the bitter cup
Ye now dash from ye in the despot's face . .
O glorious race,
IX.
Which Hiero, Gel on, Pindar, sat among
And prais'd for weaker deeds in deathless song;
One is yet left to laud ye. Years have mar'd
My voice, my prelude for some better bard,
When such shall rise, and such your deeds create.
X.
In the lone woods, and late.
Murmurs swell loud and louder, til at last
So strong the blast
That the whole forest, earth, and sea, and sky.
To the loud surge reply.
XI.
Show, in the circle of six hundred years,
Show me a Bourbon on whose brow appears
No brand of traitor. Prune the tree . .
Prom the same stock for ever will there be
The same foul canker, the same bitter fruit.
Strike, Sicily, uproot
The cursed upas. Never trust
That race agen; down with it, dust to dust.
422 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE,
CXCIII.
Men will be slaves ; let tliem ; but force them not ;
To force them into freedom is stil worse ;
In one thej follow their prone nature's bent,
But in the other stagger all awry.
Blind, clamorous, and with violence overthrow
The chairs and tables of the untasted feast.
Bastiles are reconstructed soon enough,
Temples are long in rising, once cast down.
And ever, when men want them, there are those
Who tell them they shall have them, but premise
That they shall rule witliin them and without.
Tlieir voices, and theirs only, reach to heaven.
Their sprinkler cleanses souls from inborn sin
With its sow -bristles shaken in the face.
Their surplice sanctifies the marriage-bed,
Their bell and candle drive the devil off
The deathbed, and their purchast prayers cut short
All pains that Avould await them after death.
O plains of Tours that rang with Martel's arms
Victorious ! these are then the fruits ye bear
From Saracenic blood ! one only God
Had else been worshipt . . but that one perhaps
Had seen less fraud, less cruelty, below.
CXCIV. AN OLD MAN TO A YOUNG GIKL.
I SAW the arrow quit the bow
To lay thy soaring spirits low.
And warned thee long ere now ;
Por tliis thou shunnest me, for this
No more the leap to catch the kiss
Upon thy calm clear brow.
I pitied thee, well knowing why
The broken song, the book thrown by.
And Fido's foot put down.
Who looks so sorrowing all the while.
To hear no name, to hope no smile.
To fear almost a frown.
Lovers who see thy drooping head
In lover's phrase have often said.
VARIOUS.
" The lily drives the rose
In shame away from that sweet face.
Yet shall she soon regain her place
And fresher bloom disclose."
Show them, show one above the rest,
A lily^s petals idly prest
Are firm as they are pure;
Those which but once have given way
Stand up erect no second day.
No gentlest touch endure.
423
CXCV. CONFALIONIERI.
The purest breast that breathes Ausonian air,
Utter'd these words. Hear them, all lands! repeat
All ages ! on thy heart the record bear
Til the last tyrant gasp beneath thy feet.
Thou who hast seen in quiet death lie down
The skulking recreant of the changeling crown.
II.
" I am an old man now ; and yet my soul
By fifteen years is younger than its frame :
Fifteen I lived (if life it was) in one
Dark dungeon, ten feet square : alone I dwelt
Six; then another enter' d : by his voice
I knew it was a man : I could not see
Feature or figure in that dismal place.
One year we talkt together of the past.
Of joys for ever gone . . ay, worse than gone,
Kemember'd, prest into our hearts, that swell'd
And sorely soften'd under them: the next,
We exchanged what thoughts we found: the third, no thought
Was left us; memory alone remained.
The fourth, we askt each other, if indeed
The world had life within it, Kfe and joy
As when we left it.
Now the fifth had come.
And we sat silent: all our store was spent.
When the sixth enter' d, he had disappeared,
Either for death or doom less merciful:
And I repined not ! all things were less sad
Than that dim vision, that unshapen form
42-i THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD THEE.
A year or two years after (indistinct
Was time, as light was, in tliat cell) the door
Crept open, and these sounds came slowly through :
His Majesty the Ewperor mid King
Informs you that twelve months ago your wife
Quitted the living . .
I did hear the words.
All, ere I feU, then heard not bolt nor bar/'
III.
And shall those live who help with armed hand
The weak oppressor ? Shall those live who clear
The path before him with their golden wand ?
Tremble, vile slaves ! your final hour draws near !
Purveyors of a panther's feast are ye,
Degenerate children of brave Maccabee !
IV.
And dare ye claim to sit where Hampden sate,
AYliere Pym and EHot warned the men of blood ;
Where on the wall Charles red his written fate.
And Cromwell sign'd what Milton saw was good ?
Away, ye panders of assassin lust,
Nor ever hope to lick that holy dust.
CXCVl. TO FRANCIS HARE,
BURIED AT PALERMO, ON THE INSURKECTION OP SICILY AND NAPLES.
Hare ! thou art sleeping where the sun strikes hot
On the gold letters that inscribe thy tomb,
And what there passeth round thee knowest not.
Nor pierce those eyes (so joyous once) the gloom;
Else would the brightest vision of thy youth
Rise up before thee, not by Eancy led.
But moving stately at the side of Truth,
Nor higher than the living stand the dead.
CXCVII. TO SAINT CHARLES BORROMEO,
ON THE MASSACRE AT MILAN.
I.
Saint, beyond all in glory who surround
The tlirone above !
Thy placid brow no thorn blood- dropping crown' d.
No grief came o'er thy love^
VARIOUS. 425
II.
Save what tliey suifer'd whom the Phigue's dull fire-
\\asted away.
Or those whom Heaven at last let worse Desire
Sweep with soft swoop away.
HI.
If thou art standing high above the place
Where Verban gleams,
"Where Art and Natm-e give thee form and space
As best beseems,
IV.
Look down on thy fair country, and most fair
The sister iles ;
Whence gratitude eternal mounts with prayer,
Where spring eternal smiles ;
V.
Watch over that brave youth who bears thv name.
And bears it well.
Unmindful never of the sacred flame
With which his temples swell
VI.
When praise from thousands breathes beneath thy shrine.
And incense steeps
Thy calm brow bending over them, for thine
Is bent on him who weeps ;
VII.
And, O most holy one ! what tears are shed
Thro all thy town !
Thou wilt with pity on the brave and dead,
God Avill with wrath, look down.
CXCVIII.
Sleep, tho to Age so needful, shuns my eyes.
And visions, brighter than Sleep brings, arise.
I hear the Norman arms before me ring,
I see them flash upon a prostrate king.
They conquer'd Britain as they conquer'd France
Far over Sicily was liurFd the lance . .
The barking heads by Scylla all croucht low.
And fierce Charybdis waiFd beneath the blow.
Now Sparta-sprung Taranto hail'd again
More daring Spartans on his fertile plain ;
426 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Now Croton saw fresli Milos rise around ;
And Sjbaris, with recent roses crown' d,
Yielded to Valoar her consenting charms
And felt the flush that Beauty feels from arms.
CXCIX. DANTE.
Ere blasts from northern lands
Had covered Italy with barren sands^
Eome's Genius^ smitten sore^
Wail'd on the Danube, and was heard no more.
Twelve centuries had past
And crusht Etruria raisM her head at last.
A mightier Power she saw,
Poet and prophet, give three worlds the law.
^\hen Dante^s strength arose
Eraud met aghast the boldest of her foes ;
Religion, sick to death,
Lookt doubtful up, and drew in pain her breath.
Both to one grave are gone ;
Altars stil smoke, stil is the God unknown.
Haste, whoso from above
Comest with purer fire and larger love,
Quenchest the Stygian torch,
And lead est from the Garden and the Torch,
Where gales breathe fresh and free.
And where a Grace is call'd a Charity,
To Him, the God of peace.
Who bids all discord in his household cease . .
Bids it, and bids again.
But to the purple-vested speaks in vain.
Crying, 'Can this be borne?'
The consecrated wine-skins creak with scorn ;
While, leaving tumult there.
To quiet idols young and old repair.
In places where is light
To lighten day . . and dark to darken night.
cc.
I TOLD ye, since the prophet Milton's day
Heroic song hath never swept the earth
To soar in flaming chariot up to Heaven.
VARIOUS. 437
Taunt, little chiltlrcn ! taunt ye while ye may.
Natural your wonder, natural is your mirth,
Natural your weakness. Ye are all forgiven.
II.
One man above all other men is great,
Even on this globe, where dust obscures the sign.
God closed his eyes to pour into his heart
His own pure wisdom. In chill house he sate,
Fed only on those fruits the hand divine
Disdain^'d not, thro his angels, to impart.
III.
He was despised of those he would have spilt
His blood to ransom. How much happier we,
Altlio so small and feeble ! We are taught
There may be national, not royal guilt.
And, if there has been, then there ought to be.
But ^tis the illusion of a mind distraught.
IV.
This with a tiny hand of ductile lead
Shows me the way ; this takes me doM-n his slate.
Draws me a line and teaches me to write;
Another pats me kindly on the head,
But finds one letter here and there too great.
One passable, one pretty well, one cpiite.
V.
No wonder I am proud. At such award
The Muse most virginal would raise her chin
Porth from her collar-bone. What inward fire
Must swell the bosom of that favor'd bard
And wake to vigorous life the germ within.
On whom such judges look with such regard !
CCI. TO VERONA.
To violate the sanctitude of song.
Of love, of sepulture, have I abstain^,
Yerona ! nor would let just Avrath approach
Garden or theater : but wrongs are heapt
On thy fair head : my pen must help the sword
To sweep them off.
Shall Austria hatch beneath
Thy sunny citadel her mealworm brood ?
Shall Austria pluck thy olives, press thy grapes,
428 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Garner thy corn, tliy flocks and herds consume ?
Enough ^tis surely that Parthenope
Bends under the false Bourbon. Foren force
Crushes, and let it crush, the unmanly race.
Degenerate even from Sybarites ; but thine
The warlike Gaul and Eome's austerer son
Eear'd up to manhood and begirt in arms.
Else then, Verona ! Lift the wave of war.
As Nature lifts Benacus at thy side.
Tempestuous in its surges, while the banks
Are blithe around, and heaven above serene.
The toad's flat claws hold not the dolphin down,
Nor sinks and sewers pollute the Adrian wave.
ecu.
I.
Pew poets beckon to the calmly good,
Few lay a hallowing hand upon the head
Which lowers its barbarous for our Delphick crown
But loose strings rattle on unseason'd wood
And weak words whiffle round where Virtue's meed
Shrines in a smile or shrivels in a frown.
II.
He shall not give it, shall not touch it, he
"Who crawls into the gold-mine, bending low
And bringing from its dripples with much mire
One shining atom. Could it ever be,
O God of light and song ? The breast must glow
Not with thine only, but with Virtue's fire.
CCni. SAPPHO'S EXPOSTULATION.
ToRGET thee ? when ? Thou biddest me ? dost tliou
Bid me, Avhat men alone can, break my vow ?
my too well beloved ! is there aught
1 ever have forgot which thou hast taught?
And shall the lesson first by thee imprest
Drop, chapter after chapter, from my breast ?
Since love's last flickering flame from thine is gone.
Leave me, leave me stil, at least my own.
Let it burn on, if only to consume.
And light me, tho it light me to the tomb.
VARIOUS. 429
False are our drearas or there are fields below
To wliicli tlie weariest feet the swiftest go ;
And there are bitter streams the wretched bless.
Before whose thirst they lose their bitterness.
^Tis hard to love ! to unlove harder yet !
Not so to die . . and then . . perhaps . . forget.
cciv.
What slender youth perfused with fresh macassar
Wooes thee, England, in St. Stephen^s bower ?
For whom unlockest thou the chest that holds thy dower?
Simple as ever ! Is there a deluder
Thou hast not listened to, thou hast not changed,
Laughing at one and all o'er whom thy fancy ranged ?
The last that won thee was not overhappy,
And people found him wavering like thyself :
The little man looks less now laid upon the shelf.
While the big waves against the rocks are breaking.
And small ones toss and tumble, fume and fret,
Along the sunny wall I have hung up my net.
CCV. THE HALL AND THE COTTAGE.
A MAN there sate, not old, but weak and worn
Worse than age wears and weakens, near a wall
Where dogs inside were playing round the court.
While, conscious of his station in the house,
Deep-sided, ebon-footed, and ring-tail' d,
Stalkt the gray cat, and all about gave way.
Yet, fearless of her talon, pigeons dropt.
First one, and then another, from the roof,
To pick up crumbs, shaken from snow-white cloth.
Winter had now set in, and genial fires
Drew families around them ; near the grate
The small round table left the large behind ;
And filberts bristled up, and medlars oped
Their uncouth lids, and chesnuts w^ere reveal'd
Beneath the folded napkin, moist and hot.
Scant had the bounty been if all tliis store.
430 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Supervacaneous, had gone forth bestow^
On the poor wretch outside : he never raisM
His hopes, he never rais'd his thoughts, so high.
Dinner was over in that pleasant home.
And worthy were its inmates to enjoy
In peace its plenteous yet uncostly fare.
Little they thought that wliile the dogs within
The court were playing, some of them erect
Against their adversary, couchant some
And panting to spring forward, while the doves
Cooed hoarse with crop replenisht, and walkt round
Each his own mate, trailing along the tiles
His wing, his bosom purpling with content ;
Little thought they how near tliem loiterM one
Who might have envied the least happy cur
Or cat or pigeon. To his cottage bent
His fancy, from his own sad cares repel'd.
Fancies are fond of lying upon down,
Tho they are often bred aud born elsewhere ;
His was a strange one. But men's minds are warpt
By fortune or misfortune, weal or woe.
By heat and cold alike. The hungry man
Thought of his children's hunger ; tlie sharp blast
Blew from them only. When he rais'd his eyes
And saw the smoke ascending o'er the hall.
He said . . his w^ords are written . . God knows where
" ! could I only catch that smoke which wreathes
And riots round the rich man's chimney-vane.
And bring it dowm among my ice-cold brats.
They would not look and turn away from me.
And rather press the damp brick floor again
With their blue faces, than see him they call'd
Father ! dear father ! when they woke ere dawn."
CCVI. ON THE SLAUGHTER OF THE BROTHERS BANDIERI, BETRAYED
TO THE KING OF NAPLES.
Borne on white horses, which the God of Tlirace
Eein'd not for wanton Glory in the race
Of Elis, when from far
Ean forth the regal car.
Even from Syracuse, across the sea.
To roll its thunder thro that fruitless lea ;
VARIOUS. 431
No ; but on steeds whose foam
Plevv o'er the helm of Home,
Came Castor and his brother ; at which sight
A shout of victory drown'd the din of figlit,
O Eome ! O Italy !
Doomed are ye, doomM to see
Nor guides divine nor high-aspiring men,
Nor proudly tread the battle-field agen ?
Lo ! who are they who land
Uj)on that southern strand ?
Ingenuous are their faces, firm their gait . .
Ah ! but what darkness follows them ? . . 'tis Pate !
They turn their heads . , and blood
Alone shows where they stood !
Sons of Bandiera ! heroes ! by your name
Evoked shall inextinguishable flame
Rise, and o'er-run yon coast.
And animate the host
As did those Twins . . the murderers to pursue
Til the same sands their viler blood imbue.
CCVII. PROPER LESSON FOR CHARLES'S MARTYRDOM.
TO DIXWELL,
Who sivte in judgment on Charles I., and whose descendant is erecting a monument
to him in Boston, U. S. •
Theee are whose hand can throw the shafts of sono-
Athwart wide oceans ; barbM with buraing light
Do they dispell all mists Time throws around.
And where they fall men build the beacon-tower
And watch the cresset, age succeeding age.
Dixwell ! whose name sounds highest toward heaven
Of aE but one^ the fresher earth hath seen,
Honor to thee ! and everlasting praise !
Tliou shrankest not at smiting Perjury
Under the crown : thou shrankest not at rocks
And shoals and ice-tower''d firths, and solitudes
And caverns where the hunter hunted man,
Remote from birthplace, kindred, comrade, friend.
Of seed like thine sprang Freedom strong and arm'd.
Whose empire shall extend beyond the shore
^Vliere Montezuma's plumed head lies low,
* "Washington.
433 THE LAST PRUIT OPF AN OLD TREE.
(A shore whose waters waft the name of Peace)
To realms more ancient than all realms beside^
Where the sun rises over far Cathay.
Blest be thy country ! blest in sons like fcliine !
If lust of gold forbids it . . if the slave
Eaises his manacle and pleads to God
And they who see and hear it mock the prayer.
At least shall tliousands in my words exclaim
*' Honor to thee ! and everlasting praise !
Happy beyond all glory's happiness,
Look down on thy young nation ; there alone
The weak and the distorted from the womb
Never are dandled into frowardness,
Never may seize and fracture what they list,
Striking at random stern and mild alike;
Nor floats the chaff above, nor sinks the grain."
CCVIII.
Tenderest of tender hearts, of spirits pure
The purest ! such, O Cowper ! such wert thou.
But such are not the happiest : thou wert not.
Til borne where all those hearts and spirits rest.
Young was I, when from latin lore and greek
I played the truant for thy sweeter Task,
Nor since that hour hath aught our Muses held
Before me seem'd so precious ; in one hour,
I saw the poet and the sage unite.
More grave than man, more versatile than boy !
Spenser shed over me his sunny dreams ;
Chaucer far more enchanted me ; the force
Of Milton was for boyhood too austere.
Yet often did I steal a glance at Eve :
Pitter for after-years was Shakespeare's world.
Its distant light had not come down to mine.
Thy milder beams with wholesome temperate warmth
PilFd the small chamber of my quiet breast.
I would become as like thee as I could ;
Pirst rose the wish and then the half-belief.
Pounded like other half and whole beliefs
On sand and chaff ! " We must be like, "said I,
" I loved my hare before I heard of his."
^Twas very true ; I loved him, though he stampt
VARIOUS. 433
Sometimes in anger, often moodily.
I am the better for it : stil I love
God's unperverted creatures, one and all,
I dare not call tliem brute, lest tliey retort.
And here is one wlio looks into my face,
Waving his curly plumes upon his back.
And bids me promise faithfully, no hare
Of tliine need fear him when they meet above.
CCIX. TO YOUTH.
Where art thou gone, light-ankled Youth ?
With wing at either shoulder.
And smile that never left thy mouth
Until the Hours grew colder :
Then somewhat seem'd to whisper near
That thou and I must part;
I doubted it ; I felt no fear,
No weight upon the heart :
If aught befell it. Love was by
And rollM it off again ;
So, if there ever was a sigh,
'Twas not a sigh of pain.
I may not call thee back ; but thou
Returnest when the hand
Of gentle Sleep waves o'er my brow
His poppy-crested wand ;
Then smiling eyes bend over mine,
Then lips once prest invite ;
But Sleep hath given a silent sign
And both, alas ! take flight.
cox. TO AGE.
Welcome, old friend! These many years
Have we lived door by door :
The Fates have laid aside their shears
Perhaps for some few more.
F p
434 THE LAST PRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
I was indocil at an age
When better boys were taught,
But thou at length hast made me sage,
If I am sage in aught.
Little I know from other men.
Too little they from me.
But thou hast pointed well the pen
That writes these lines to thee.
Thanks for expelling Fear and Hope,
One vile, the other vain ;
One's scoui'ge, the other's telescope,
I shall not see again :
Eatlier what lies before my feet
My notice shall engage . .
He who hath braved Youth's dizzy heat
Dreads not the frost of Age.
ccxi.
Now yellow hazels fringe the greener plain
And mountains show their unchain'd necks again.
And little rivulets beneath them creep
And gleam and glitter in each cloven steep ;
Now, when supplanted by insidious snow
The huge stone rolls into the lake below.
What can detain my lovely friend from home,
Pond in these scenes, her earlier scenes, to roam ?
'Tis that mid fogs and smoke she hears the claim
And feels the love of freedom and of fame :
Before those two she bends serenely meek . .
They also bend, and kiss her paler cheek.
CCXII. ON MUSIC.
Many love music but for music's sake.
Many because her touches can awake
Thoughts that repose within the breast half-dead.
And rise to follow where she loves to lead.
VARIOUS. 435
What various feelings come from days gone by !
What tears from far-off sources dim the eye !
few, when light fingers with sweet voices play
And melodies swell, pause, and melt away.
Mind how at every touch, at every tone,
A spark of life hath glisten'd and hath gone.
CCXIII. TYRANNICIDE.
Danger is not in action, but in sloth ;
By sloth alone we lose
Our strength, oui- substance, and, far more than both,
The guerdon of the Muse.
Men kill without compunction hawk and kite ;
To save the folded flock
They chase the wily plunderer of the night
O'er thicket, marsh, and rock.
Sacred no longer is Our Lord the wolf
Nor crown'd is crocodile :
And shall ye worship on the Baltick Gulph
The refuse of the Nile ?
Among the myriad men of murder'd sires
Is there not one stil left
Whom wrongs and vengeance urge, whom virtue fires ?
One conscious how bereft
Of all is he . . of country, kindred, home . .
He, doomed to drag along
The dray of serfdom, or thro lands to roam
That mock an unknown tongue?
A better faith was theirs than pulpits preach
Who struck the tyrant down.
Who taught the brave how patriot brands can reach
And crush the proudest crown.
No law for him who stands above the law.
Trampling on truth and trust ;
But hangman's hook or courtier's "privy paw"
Shall drag him thro the dust.
Most dear of all the Virtues to her Sire
Is Justice ; and most dear
To Justice is Tyrannicide ; the fire
That guides her flashes near.
F F
436 THE LAST PRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
See o^er the desert God's red pillar tower !
Follow^ ye Nations ! raise
The hymn to God ! To God alone be power
And majesty and praise ! '^
CCXIV. THE MOTHER OF PRINCE RUPERT.f
Sole one of all thy race
Who never brought disgrace
Upon thy native land !
Against the ruinM wall
Where rang thy marriage-hall^
Now still as heaven, I stand,
And think upon thy son.
Who many laurels won
Where laurels should not grow,
Til England's star prevailed
And Caledonia's paled,
And the dim crown lay low.
CCXV. JEALOUSY ACKNOWLEDGED.
Too happy poet ! true it is indeed
That I am jealous of thee. Bright blue eyes
(Half eye half heaven) look up into thy face
From Tuscan bonnet of such sunny straw.
In wonderment . . Glorious is poetry ;
But give me pretty girls, give youth, give joy ;
If not my youth, another's ; not my joy,
Then too another's. I, alas ! have lost
My quailpipe : I must not approach thy marsh.
To lift the yellow goslings off the ground
And warm them in my bosom with my breath.
Sorely this vexes me ; not all thy wares.
I have mill'd verses somewhat solider
And rounder and more ringing : what of that ?
* Sciebat homo sapiens, jus semper hoc fuisse ut qua; tyranni eripuissent,
ea tyrannis interfedis, ii quibus erepta essent, recuperai'ent. Ille vir fuit,
uos quidem contemnendi. Cicero, Philip. 2.
+ Justice has been lately done to his memory by the discriminating pen
of Eliot "VVarburton. He died poor : his calumniator Clarendon was no
" -whited sepulcher," but a treasury of which the vault fell in.
VARIOUS. 437
Meanwhile the bevy flutters home again,
And thou canst blandly lower thy head to one,
Murmuring the sonnet, whispering tlic roundelay.
Or haply . . such things have been done before . .
Give her, as from thy pantry, not from mine,
The crumbs of my seed-cake, all soakt in milk.
CCXVI. APPEAL TO SLEEP.
Soon to waken, may my Eose
Early sink in soft repose !
Mine ? ah ! mine she must not be,
But, gentle Sleep, to thee
One as dear do I resign
As if Heaven had made her mine.
Gentle Sleep ! let her rest
Upon thy more quiet breast !
When pale Morn returns again,
She returns to gloom and pain,
T^or how many friends will say,
As their pride is torn away,
" Sweetest Eose ! adieu! adieu!"
I may bear to say it too.
But afar from her and you.
CCXVII. A RAILROAD ECLOGUE.
FATHER.
What brought thee back, lad ?
SON.
Father ! the same feet
As took me brought me back, I warrant ve.
FATHER.
Couldst thou not find the rail ?
SON.
The deuce himself.
Who can find most things, could not find the rail.
FATHER.
Plain as a pike-staff miles and miles it lies.
SON.
So they all told me. Pike-staffs in your day
Must have been hugely plainer than just now.
438 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
FATHER.
What didst thou ask for ?
SON.
Ask for ? TewkesbuiT;
Thro Defford opposite to Breedon-hill.
FATHER.
Eight : and they set ye wrong ?
Me wrong ? not they ;
it set me wro
Nor rightj nor anything ; Fd tell ^em that.
SON.
The best among 'em should not set me wrong,
FATHER.
Herefordshire's short horns and shorter wits
Are known in every quarter of the land.
Those blunt, these blunter. Well ! no help for it !
Each might do harm if each had more of each . .
Yet even in Herefordshire there are some
Not downright dolts . . before the cider's broacht.
When all are much alike . . yet most coidd tell
A railroad from a parish or a pike.
How thou couldst miss that railroad puzzles me.
Seeing there lies none other round about.
SON.
I found the rails along the whole brook-side
Left of that old stone bridge across yon Avon.
FATHER.
That is the place.
SON.
There was a house hard-by,
And past it ran a furnace upon wheels.
Like a mad bull, tail up in air, and horns
So low ye might not see 'em. On it bumpt,
Eoaring, as strait as any arrow flits.
As strait, as fast too, ay, and faster went it.
And, could it keep its wind up and not crack.
Then woe betide the eggs at Tewkesbury
This market-day, and lambs, and sheep ! a score
VARIOUS. 439
Of pigs might be made flitches in a trice.
Before tliey well could knuckle.
Father! father!
If they were ourn, thou wouldst not chuckle so.
And shake thy sides, and wipe thy eyes, and rub
Thy breeches-knees, like Sunday shoes, at that rate.
Hows' ever ....
FATHER.
'Twas the train, lad, 'twas the train.
SON.
May-be : I had no business with a train.
" Go thee hy rail'' you told me ; " hy the rail
At Befford" . . and didst make a fool of me.
FATHER.
Ay, lad, I did indeed : it was methinks
Some twenty years agone last Martinmas.
CCXVIII. SOME ANCIENT POET'S DITTY.
A LURID day is coming on, Melissa !
A day more sad than one of sleet and storm.
Together we, Melissa, ^ve have spent
. . 'Twas not the summer of my life, 'twas not
The earliest, brightest, of autumnal hours,
Yet your sweet voice persuaded me 'twas spring :
You said you felt it so, and so must L
My hedge begins to show the naked thorn.
The glow-worm disappears from under it :
Impending is that hour when I must lay
My brow no longer on the placid lap
Of my beloved, bending my right arm.
Around her ancle in a sad constraint.
And fearing to look up and wake reproof
Which fain would slumber : then were lost that hand
Compressing now its petals over mine
And now relaxing to compress again.
Moist as was ever Hebe's or the Morn's.
I go where, sages tell us, bloom afresh
Heroines, divinities : I would not change
(Credulous as I am, and pious too)
Certainties for uncertainties ; beside.
My soul is only soul enough for one.
440
THE LAST PRUIT OFF AN OLD TEEE.
CCXIX. LEDA.
Wonder we that the highest star above
Sprang forth to thj embrace,
Leda ! wonder we, when daring Love
Turn'd thj averted face ?
Smiles he had seen in Hebe, such as won
Him of the popLar crown.
Jove, until then half-envious of his son.
Then threw his scepter down.
Loose hung his eagle's wings ; on either side
A dove thrust in her head :
Eagle had lost his fierceness, Jove his pride .
And Leda what ? . . her dread.
ccxx.
"When closes overhead the warmer ray.
And love has lived his little life away.
How dull and lingering comes the ancient tale.
How sorrowful the song of nightingale !
At last by weariness, not pain, opprest.
We pant for sleep, and find but broken rest ;
A rest unbroken in due order comes.
And friends awake us in their happier homes.
CCXXI. ON THE APPBOACH OF A SISTEK'S DEATH.
Spirit who risest to eternal day,
hear me in thy flight !
Detain thee longer on that opening way
1 would not if I might.
Methinks a thousand come between us two
Whom thou wouldst rather hear :
Traternal love thou smilest on ; but who
Are they that press more near ?
The sorrowfid and innocent and wrong'd.
Yes, these are more thy own,
for these wilt thou be pleading seraph-tongued
(How soon !) before the Throne.
VARIOUS. 441
CCXXII.
ON THE DEATH OF M. D'OSSOLI AND HIS WIFE MARGARET FULLER.
Over his millions Death has lawful power.
But over thee, brave D'Ossoli ! none, none.
After a longer struggle, in a fight
Worthy of Italy to youth restored.
Thou, far from home, art sunk beneath the surge
Of the Atlantick ; on its shore ; in reach
Of help ; in trust of refuge ; sunk with all
Precious on earth to thee . . a child, a wife !
Proud as thou wert of her, America
Is prouder, showing to her sons how high
Swells woman's courage in a virtuous breast.
She would not leave behind her those she loved :
Such solitary safety might become
Others ; not her ; not her who stood beside
The pallet of the wounded, when the worst
Of France and Perfidy assail'd the walls
Of unsuspicious Rome. Eest, glorious soul,
RenownM for strength of genius, Margaret !
Rest with the twain too dear ! My words are few.
And shortly none will hear my faihng voice.
But the same language Avith more full appeal
Shall hail thee. Many are the sons of song
Whom thou hast heard upon thy native plains
Worthy to sing of thee : the hour is come ;
Take we our seats and let the dirge begin.
CCXXIII.
Avon that never thirsts, nor toils along,
Nor looks in anger, listenM to my song.
So that I envied not the passing names
Whose gilded barges burnisht prouder Thames,
Remembering well a better man than I,
Wliom in those meads the giddy herd ran by.
What time the generous Raleigh bled to death.
And Lust and Craft playM for Elizabeth.
While Murder in imperial robe sat by
To watch the twinkling of that sharp stern eye.
Til when a sister-queen was calFd to bleed.
Her fingers cased in jewels signM the deed 1
442 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD THEE.
CCXXIV.
There was a lovelj tree^ I knew
And well remember where it grew.
And very often felt inclined
To hear its whispers iji the wind.
One evening of a summer day
I went, without a thought, that way,
And, sitting down, I seem'd to hear
The tree's soft voice, and some one's near.
Yes, sure enough I saw a maid
With wakeful ear against it laid.
Silent was everything around
"While thus the tree in (|uivering sound :
" They pant to cull our fruit, and take
A leaf, they tell us, for our sake.
On tlie most faithful breast to wear
And keep it, til both perisli, there.
Sad pity such kind hearts should pant
So hard ! We give them all they want.
They come soon after and just taste
The fruit, and throw it on the waste.
Again they come, and then pluck off
What poets call our hair, and scoff ;
And long ere winter you may see
These leaves fall fluttering r-ound the tree.
They come once more : then, then you find
The root cut round and undermined :
Chains are clencht round it : that fine head,
On which stil finer words were said.
Serves only to assist the blow
And lend them aid to lay it low."
Methinks 1 hear a gentle sigh.
And fain would guess the reason wliy ;
It may have been for what was said
Of fruit and leaves, of root and head.
CCXXV. TO THE WORM.
PiusT-BORN of all creation ! yet unsung !
I call thee not to listen to my lay,
Por well I know thou turnest a deaf ear,
Indifferent to the sweetest of complaints.
Sweetest and most importunate. The voice
VARIOUS. 443
Wliicli would awaken, and which almost can.
The sleeping dead, thou rearest up against
And no more heedest than the wreck below.
Yet art thou gentle; and for due reward.
Because thou art so humble in thy ways,
Thou hast sarvived the giants of waste worlds.
Giants whom chaos left unborn behind.
And Earth with fierce abhorrence at first sight
Shook from her bosom, some on burning sands.
Others on icy mountains, far apart ;
Mammoth, and mammoth's architype, and coil
Of serpent cable-long, and ponderous mail
Of lizard, to whom crocodile was dwarf.
Wrono; too hath oft been done thee : I have watcht
The nightingale, that most inquisitive
Of plumed powers, send forth a sidelong glance
From the low hazel on the smooth footpath.
Attracted by a glimmering tortuous thread
Of silver left there when the dew had dried.
And dart on one of thine, that one of hers
Might play with it. Alas ! the young will play,
Eeckless of leaving pain and death beliind.
I too (but early from such sin forbore)
Have fastened on my hook, aside the stream
Of shady Arrowe or the broad mill-pond,
Thy writhing race. Thou wilt more patiently
Await my hour, more quietly pursue
Thy destined prey legitimate.
First-born,
I call'd thee at the opening of my song ;
Last of creation I will call thee now.
What fiery meteors have we seen transcend
Our firmament ! and mighty was their power.
To leave a solitude and stench behind.
The vulture may have revelFd upon men ;
Upon the vulture's self thou revellest :
Princes may hold high festival ; for thee
Chiefly they hold it. Every dish removed.
Thou comest in the silence of the night,
Takest thy place, thy train insinuatest
Into the breast, lappest that wrinkled heart
Stone-cold within, and with fresh appetite
444 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Agen art ready for a like carouse.
Behold before thee the first minstrel known
To turn from them and laud unbidden guest !
He, who hath never bent his brow to king,
Perforce must bend it, mightier lord, to thee.
CCXXVI. ON SWIFT JOINING AVON NEAR RUGBY.
Silent and modest Brook ! who dippest here
Thy foot in Avon as if childish fear
Witheld thee for a moment, wend along ;
Go, followed by my song.
Sung in such easy numbers as they use
Who turn in fondness to the Tuscan Muse,
And such as often have flow'd down on me
From my own Fiesole.
I watch thy placid smile, nor need to say
That Tasso wove one looser lay.
And Milton took it up to dry the tear
Dropping on Lycidas's bier.
In youth how often at thy side I wander^ !
What golden hours, hours numberless, were squander'd
Among thy sedges, while sometimes
I meditated native rhymes.
And sometimes stumbled upon Latian feet ;
Then, where soft mole -built seat
Invited me, I noted down
What must full surely win the crown,
But first impatiently vain efforts made
On broken pencil with a broken blade.
Anon, of lighter heart, I threw
My hat where circling plover flew,
And once I shouted til, instead of plover.
There sprang up half a damsel, half a lover.
I would not twice be barbarous ; on I went . .
And two heads sank amid the pillowing bent.
Pardon me, gentle Stream, if rhyme
Holds up these records in the face of Time :
Among the falling leaves some birds yet sing.
And Autumn hath his butterflies like Spring.
Thou canst not turn thee back, thou canst not see
Reflected what hath ceast to be ;
Haply thou little knowest why
I check this levity, and sigh.
VARIOUS. 445
Thou never knewcst her whose radiant morn
Lighted my path to Love ; she bore thy name^
She wliom no Grace was tardy to adorn,
Whom one low voice pleas'd more than louder fame:
She now is past my praises : from her urn
To thine, with reverence due, I turn.
O silver -braided Swift ! no victim ever
Was sacrificed to thee.
Nor hast thou carried to that sacred River
Vases of myrrh, nor hast thou run to see
A band of Maenads toss their timbrels high
Mid io-evohes to their Deity.
But holy ashes liave bestrewn thy stream
Under the mingled gleam
Of swords and torches, and the chaunt of Rome,
AVhen WicHf's lowly tomb
Tliro its thick briars was burst
By frantic priests accurst ;
For he had enter'd and laid bare the lies
That pave the labyrinth of their mysteries.
We part . . but one more look !
Silent and modest Brook !
ccxxvii.
A VOICE in sleep hung over me, and said
"Seest thou him yonder V At that voice I raised
My eyes : it was an Angel's : but he veiFd
His face from me with both liis hands, then held
One finger forth, and sternly said agen,
" Seest thou him yonder ?"
On a grassy slope
Slippery with flowers, above a precipice,
A slumbering man I saw : methought I knew
A visage not unlike it ; whence the more
It troubled and perplext me.
''Can it be
My own?" said I.
Scarce had the word escaped
Wlien there arose two other forms, each fair.
And each spake fondest words, and blamed me not.
But blest me, for the tears they shed with me
Upon that only world where tears are shed.
That world which they (why without me .?) had left.
446 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Another now came forth, with eye askance :
That she was of the earth too well I knew.
And that she hated those for loving me
(Had she not told me) I had soon divined.
Of earth was yet another ; but more like
The heavenly t^in in gentleness and love :
She from afar brought pity ; and her eyes
Fill'd with the tears she fear'd must swell from mine
Humanest iAioughts with strongest impulses
Heav'd her fair bosom ; and her hand was raised
To shelter me from that sad blight which fell
Damp on my heart ; it could not ; but a blast.
Sweeping the southern sky, blew from beyond
And tlirew me on the ice-bergs of the north.
CCXXVIII.
From leaves unopenM yet, those eyes she lifts
Which never youthful eyes could safely view.
'^ A book, a flower, such are the only gifts
I like to take . . nor like them least from you."
A voice so sweet it needs no Muse's aid
Spake it, and ceast. We, offering both, reply
" These tell the dull old tale that youth must fade.
This, the bright traih that genius shall not die.'^
CCXXIX. ELIOT WAREURTON.
Above what head more hopeful ever closed
The gates of Ocean, Warburton, than thine ?
Thou mightest in that mansion have reposed
Where Valor's and where Wisdom's tropliies shine:
God will'd it otherwise; nor anthem swells
Around thy mortal spoils ; but, passing o'er
The Atlantick wave, in grief the sailor tells
Where last was seen whom earth shall see no more.
CCXXX. ITALY IN JANUARY 1853.
NATION of Al fieri ! thou
Before the cope and cowl must bow.
And Gallick herds from Tiber drink
Until the stagnant water sink.
And nothing be there left but mud
Dark with long streaks of civic blood.
VAEious. 447
Mark, Galileo, witli what glee,
Prom sorcery's fragile thraldom free.
The sun spins round thy worlds and thee !
Above, to keep them in, is bent
A solid marble firmament.
Which saints and confessors hold down
Surmounted with a triple crown.
Torture had made thee (never mind !)
A little lame, a little blind :
God's own right-hand restores thy sight,
And from his own he gives thee light ;
His arm supports thy mangled feet,
Now firm, and plants near His thy seat.
Savonarola ! look below.
And see how fresh those embers glow
Which once were faggots round the stake
Of him who died for Jesu's sake.
Who walkt where his apostles led.
And from God's wrath, not mortal's, fled.
Come, Dante ! virtuous, sage, and bold.
Come, look into that miry fold ;
Foxes and wolves lie there asleep,
O'ergorged; and men but wake to weep:
Come, Saints and Yirgins ! whose one tomb
Is Rome's parental catacomb ;
Above where once ye bled, there now
Foul breath blows blushes from the brow
Of maidens, whipt until they fall
To feed the plump confessional.
O earlier shades ! no less revered !
In your Elysium ye have heard
No tale so sad, no tale so true,
None so incredible to you.
Gloomy as droops the present day,
And Hope is chill' d and shrinks away,
Another age perhaps may see
Freedom raise up dead Italy.
CCXXXI. SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON.
The tongue of England, that which myriads
Have spoken and will speak, were paralyzed
Hereafter, but two mighty men stand forth
448 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Above the flight of ages, two alone ;
One crying out.
All nations spoJce tJiro me.
The other :
True ; and thro this trumpet burst
God's word; the fall of Angels, and the doom
First of immortal, then of mortal, Man,
Glory ! he glory ! not to me, to God.
CCXXXII. TO MIDSUMMER DAY.
Crown of the Year, how bright thou shinest ?
How little, in thy pride, divinest
Inevitable fall ! albeit
We who stand round about fore-see it.
Shine on ; shine bravely. There are near
Other bright children of the Year,
Almost as high, and much like thee
In features and in festive glee :
Some happy to call forth the mower.
And hear his sharpen'd scythe sweep o'er
Eank after rank : then others wait
Before the grange's open gate.
And watch the nodding w^ane, or watch
The fretted domes beneath the thatch,
Til young and old at once take wing
And promise to return in spring.
Yet I am sorry, I must own.
Crown of the Year ! when thou art gone.
CCXXXIII.
So then, I feel not deeply ! if I did,
I should have seized the pen and pierced therewith
The passive world !
And thus thou reasonest ?
Well hast thou known the lover's, not so well
The poet's heart : while that heart bleeds, the hand
Presses it close. Grief must run on and pass
Into near Memory's more quiet shade
Before it can compose itself in song.
He who is agonised and turns to show
His agony to those who sit around.
Seizes the pen in vain : thought, fancy, power.
VARIOUS. 449
Rush back into his bosom ; all the strength
Of genius can not draw them into light
Trom under mastering Grief; but Memory,
The Muse's mother, nurses, rears them up.
Informs, and keeps them with her all her days.
ccxxxiv.
Little you think, my lovely friend.
While o'er these easy lines you bend
That they can give you many days.
You little think, to whom belong
The purer streams of sacred song.
He from the tomb the prey of Death can raise :
He can, and will; for this is due
From him above the rest to you,
Tho with the rest he shares your smile :
Ah ! most he wants it, as you know . .
One, only one, would soothe his woe . .
Beguile not him . . and all but him beguile !
CCXXXV. TO SHELLEY.
Shelley ! whose song so sweet was sweetest here,
We knew each other little ; now I walk
Along the same green path, along the shore
Of Lerici, along the sandy plain
Trending from Lucca to the Pisan pines.
Under whose shadow scattered camels lie.
The old and young, and rarer deer uplift
Their knotty branches o'er high-featlier'd fern.
Regions of happiness ! I greet ye well ;
Your solitudes, and not your cities, stay'd
My steps among you ; for with you alone
Converst I, and with those ye bore of old.
He who beholds the skies of Italy
Sees ancient Rome reflected, sees beyond.
Into more glorious Hellas, nurse of Gods
And godlike men : dwarfs people other lands.
Frown not, maternal England ! thy weak child
Kneels at thy feet and owns in shame a lie.
G G
450 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
CCXXXVI. "WRITTEN AT HURSTMONCEAUX.
ox READING A POEM OF WOKDSWOKTH'S.
Derwent ! Winander ! sweetest of all sounds
The British tongue e^er utter'd ! lakes that Heaven
Eeposes on, and finds his image there
In all its purity, in all its peace !
How are your ripples playing round my heart
From such a distance? while I gaze upon
The plain where William and where Csesar led
From the same Gaulish strand each conquering host,
And one the Briton, one the Saxon name.
Struck out with iron heel. Well may they play.
Those ripples, round my heart, buoyed up, entranced.
Derwent ! Winander ! your twin poets come
Star-crown'd along with you, nor stand apart.
Wordsworth comes hither, hither Southey comes.
His friend and mine, and every mane's who lives.
Or who shall live when days far off have risen.
Here are they with me yet again, here dwell
Among the sages of Antiquity,
Under his hospitable roof whose life
Surpasses theirs in strong activity.
Whose Genius walks more humbly, stooping down
From the same highth to cheer the weak of soul
And guide the erring from the tortuous way.
Hail ye departed ! hail thou later friend,
Julius ! * but never by my voice invoked
With such an invocation . . hail, and live !
ccxxxvii.
Agen, perhaps and only once agen,
I turn my steps to London. Few the scenes
And few the friends that there delighted me
Will now delight me : some indeed remain,
Tho changed in features . . friend and scene . . both changed !
I shall not watch my lilac burst her bud
In that wide garden, that pm-e fount of air.
Where, risen ere the morns are warm and bright.
And stepping forth in very scant attire.
Timidly, as became her in such garb,
* Archdeacon Hare.
EPISTLES. 451
She hasten' tl prompt to call up slumbering Spring.
White and dim -purple breathed my favorite pair
Under thy terrace, hospitable heart,*
Whom twenty summers more and more endear'd ;
Part on the Arno, part where every clime
Sent its most graceful sons to kiss thy hand.
To make the humble proud, the proud submiss.
Wiser the wisest, and the brave more brave.
Never, ah never now, shall we alight
Where the man-queenf was born, or, liigher up
The nobler region of a nobler soul, J
Where breathed liis last the more than kingly man.
Thou sleepest, not forgotten, nor unmourn'd.
Beneath the chesnut shade by Saint Germain ;
Meanwhile I wait the hour of my repose.
Not under Italy's serener sky.
Where Fiesole beheld me from above
Devising how my head most pleasantly
Might rest ere long, and how with such intent
I smoothed a platform for my villagers,
(Tho stood against me stubborn stony knoll
With cross-grain'd olives long confederate)
And brought together slender cypresses
And bridal myrtles, peering up between.
And bade the modest violet bear her part.
Dance, youths and maidens ! tho around my grave
Ye dance not, as I wisht : bloom, myrtles ! bend
Protecting arms about them, cypresses !
I must not come among you ; fare ye well !
EPISTLES.
CCXXXVIII. TO TUE AUTHOR OF " FESTUS."
ox THE CLA8SICK AND ROMANTICK.
Philip ! I know thee not, thy song 1 know :
It fell upon my ear among the last
Destined to fall upon it ; but while strength
Is left me, I will rise to hail the morn
Of the stout-hearted who begin a work
Wlierin I did but idle at odd hours.
• Lady Blessiugtou. f Elizabeth. X The Protector.
G G 2
452 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
The Paeries never tempted me away
Prom Liglier fountains and severer shades;
Their rings allured me not from deeper track
Left by Olympick Avheel on ampler plain ;
Yet could I see them and can see them now
"With pleasurable warmth, and hold in bonds
Of brotherhood men whom their gamesome wreath
In youth^s fresh slumber caught, and stil detains.
I wear no cestus; my right-hand is free
To point the road few seem inclined to take.
Admonish thou, with me, the starting youth,
Eeady to seize all nature at one gras]i.
To mingle earth, sea, sky, woods, cataracts.
And make all nations think and speak alike.
Some see but sunshine, others see but gloom.
Others confound them strangely, furiously ;
Most have an eye for colour, few for form.
Imperfect is the glory to create,
Unless on our creation we can look
And see that all is good ; we then may rest.
In every poem train the leading shoot;
Break off the suckers. Thought erases thought.
As numerous sheep erase each other's print
When spungy moss they press or sterile sand.
Blades thickly sown want nutriment and di'oop.
Although the seed be sound, and rich the soil ;
Thus healthy-born ideas, bedded close.
By dreaming fondness perish overlain.
A rose or sprig of myrtle in the hair
Pleases me better than a far-sought gem.
I chide the iiounce that checks the nimble feet,
Abhor the cruel piercer of the ear.
And would strike down the chain that cuts in two
The beauteous column of the marble neck.
Barbarous and false are all such ornaments.
Yet such hath poesy in whim put on.
Classical hath been deem'd each Eoman name
Writ on the roU-caU of each pedagogue
In the same hand, in the same tone pronounced ;
Yet might five scanty pages well contain
All that the Muses in fresh youtli would own
Between the grave at Tomos, wet with tears
EPISTLES. 453
Rolling amain down Getick beard unshorn,
And that grand priest whose pur])le shone afar
From his own Venice o^er the Adrian sea.
We talk of schools . . unscholarly ; if schools
Part the romantick from the classical.
The classical like the heroick age
Is past ; but Poetry may reassume
That glorious name with Tartar and with Turk,
With Goth or Arab, Sheik or Paladin,
And not with Roman and with Greek alone.
The name is graven on the workmanship.
The trumpet-blast of Marmion never shook
The God-built walls of Ilion ; yet what shout
Of the Achaians swells the heart so high ?
Nor fainter is the artillery -roar that booms
From Hohe^dmden to the Baltich strand,
Shakespeare with majesty benign calFd up
The obedient classicks from their marble seat.
And led them tlu-o dim glen and sheeny glade.
And over precipices, over seas
Unknown by mariner, to palaces
High-archt, to festival, to dance, to joust,
And gave them golden spur and vizor barred.
And steeds that Pheidias had turn'd pale to see.
The mighty man who open'd Paradise,
Harmonious far above Homerick song.
Or any song that human ears shall hear,
Sometimes was classical and sometimes not :
Rome chainM him down ; the younger Italy
Dissolved (not fatally) his Sampson strength.
I leave behind me those who stood around
The throne of Shakespeare, sturdy, but unclean.
To hurry past the opprobrious courts and lanes
Of the loose pipers at the Belial feast.
Past mime obscene and grinder of lampoon . .
Away the petty wheel, the callous hand !
Goldsmith was classical, and Gray almost;
So was poor Collins, heart-bound to Romance :
Shelley and Keats, those southern stars, shone higher.
Cowper had more variety, more strength,
Gentlest of bards ! stil pitied, stil beloved !
Shrewder in epigram than polity
454 THE LAST PETJIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Was Canning; Frere more graceful; Smith more grand ;^
A genuine poet was the last alone.
Eomantick, classical, the female hand
That chained the cruel Ivan down for ever,
And foUow'd up, rapt in his fiery car.
The boy of Casablanca to the skies.
Other fair forms breathe round us, which exert
With Paphian softness Amazonian power,
And sweep in bright array the Attick field.
To men turn now, who stand or lately stood
With more than Royalty^s gilt bays adornVl.
Wordsworth, in sonnet, is a classick too.
And on that grass-plot sits at Milton's side ;
In the long walk he soon is out of breath
And wheezes heavier than his friends could wish.
Pollow his pedlar up the devious rill.
And, if you faint not, you are well repaid.
Large lumps of precious metal lie engulpht
In gravely beds, whence you must delve them out
And thirst sometimes and hunger ; shudder not
To wield the pickaxe and to shake the sieve.
Well shall the labour be (tho hard) repaid.
Too weak for ode and epick, and his gait
Somewhat too rural for the tragick pall.
Which never was cut out of duffel grey.
He fell entangled, " on the gransel-edge
riat on his face, and shamed his worshipers.^'
Classick in every feature was my friend
The genial Southey : none who ruled around
Held in such order such a wide domain . .
But often too indulgent, too profuse.
The ancients see us under them, and grieve
That we are parted by a rank morass.
Wishing its flowers more delicate and fewer.
Abstemious were the Greeks; they never strove
To look so fierce : their Muses were sedate.
Never obstreperous : you heard no breath
Outside the liute; each sound ran clear within.
The Tauns might dance, might clap their hands, might shout.
Might revel and run riotous ; the Nymphs
* Bobus Smith.
EPISTLES. 455
Furtively glanced, and fear'd, or seem'd to fear ;
Descended on the lightest of light wings.
The graceful son of Maia mused apart,
Graceful, but strong ; he listen'd ; he drew nigh ;
And now with his own lyre and now with voice
Temper^ the strain • Apollo calmly smiled.
CCXXXIX. TO FRIEND JONATHAN.
Friend Jonathan ! for friend thou art,
Do prythee take now in good part
Lines the first steamer shall waft o'er.
Sorry am I to hear the Blacks
Still bear your ensign on their backs ;
The stripes they suffer make me sore.
So ! they must all be given up
To drain again the bitter cup.
Better, far better, gold should come
From Pennsylvania!) wide-awakes,
Ubiquitarian rattlesnakes.
Or, pet of royalty, Tom Thumb.
Another region rolls it down,
Where soon will rise its hundredth town :
The wide Pacifick now is thine.
With power and riches be content ;
More, more than either, God hath sent. .
A man is better than a mine.
Scarce half a century hath past
Ere closed the tomb upon your last,
The man that built the western world:
When gamblers, drunkards, madmen rose.
He wrencht the sword from ail such foes
And crusht them with the iron they hurl'd.
Beware of wrong. The brave are true :
The tree of Freedom never grew
Where Fraud and Falsehood sow'd their salt.
Hast thou not seen it stuck one day
In the loose soil, and swept away
The next, amid the bhnd and halt.
Who danced like maniacs round about ?
The noisi est, foulest, rabble-rout !
456 THE LAST ERUIT OFF AN OLD TKEE.
Earth spurns them from her, half-afraid.
Slaves they will ever be, and shouM,
Drunken with every neighbour's blood.
By every chief they arm betray'd.
CCXL. TO CHAKLES DICKENS.
Call we for harp or song ?
Accordant numbers, measured out, belong
Alone, we hear, to bard.
Let liim this badge, for ages worn, discard;
Eicher and nobler now
Than when the close-trim'd laurel markt his brow.
And from one fount his thirst
Was slaked, and from none other proudly burst
Neighing, the winged steed.
Gloriously fresh were those young days indeed !
Clear, tho confined, the view;
The feet of giants swept that early dew ;
More graceful came behind.
And golden tresses waved upon the wind.
Pity and Love were seen
Li earnest converse on the humble ereen ;
Grief too was there, but Grief
Sat down with them, nor struggled from relief.
Strong Pity was, strong he.
But little Love was bravest of the three.
At what the sad one said
Often he smiled, tho Pity shook her head.
Descending from their clouds.
The Muses mingled with admiring crowds :
Each had her ear inclined.
Each caught and spoke the language of mankind
Erom choral thraldom free . .
Dickens! didst thou teach them or they teach iliee?
CCXLI. TO ROBERT EYRES LANDOR.
ON HIS ¥AWN AND HIS JRETHUSJ.
'AW' Ovdi TCCVTUyi vow iOiVil (pdovi^UV. PiNDAE.
Hare, since the sons of Leda, rare a twain.
Born of one mother, which hath reacht the goal
Of Immortality : the stem is rare
Which ripens close together two rich fruits.
EPISTLES.
Two Scipios were " the thunderbolts of war,"
And blasted what they fell upon : the arm
Of Napier, far more glorious, bent each horn
Of Indus to his yokemate Ganges, hail'd
For higher victory, hail'd for rescueing
A hundred nations from barbaric sway.
The light of Scipio was outshone by him
He vanquisht, by the Julian star eclipst.
And Scipio had no brother who could lift
The scroll of Mars above the reach of Time.
We too, alike in studies, we have toil'd.
In calmer fields and healthier exercise.
Not without Honor : Honor may defer
His hour of audience, but he comes at last.
Behold ! there issue from one house two chiefs'^
Beyond all contest ; one in shafts of wit
Hurl'd o'er the minster to the Atlantic strand.
The other proudly unapproachable
Striking a rock whence gush the founts of song ;
Dull sands lie flat and dwarf shrubs writhe around.
Twice nine the centm-ies since the Latian Muse
Wail'd on the frozen Danube for her son
Exiled, her glory to revive no more
Until that destined period was fulfil'd.
Scaring the wrens at Cam's recumbent side,
Never by Tiber's one of statelier step
Or loftier mien or deeper tone than he
Whom, bold in youth, I dared to emulate.
Nor stoopt my crest to peck light grain among
The cackling poultry of the homestead yard.
Thine is the care to keep our native springs
Pure of pollution, clear of weeds ; but thine
Are also graver cares, with fortune blest
Not above competence, with duties charged
Which with more zeal and prudence none perform.
There are who guide the erring, tend the sick,
Nor frown the starving from a half-closed door,
But none beside my brother, none beside.
In stall thick -litter' d or on mitred throne.
Gives the more needy all the Church gives hhu.
Unaided, tho years press and health declines,
* Sydney and Bobus Smith.
457
458 THE LAST PRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
By augbt of clerical or human aid.
Thou servest God, and God^s poor guests, alone.
Enough were this to damn thee here below.
But not enough to drive those forms away ,^.
Which to pure votary morn and eve descend,
The Muse, the Grace, the Nymph of stream and grove ;
But not enough to make the sun less warm
On thy smooth walks and pleasant glades close mown.
Or lamplight duller on thy pictured walls.
Thy Taney rests upon deep-bosomed Truth,
And wakes to Harmony ; no word is tost
To catch the passing wind like unmade hay.
Few can see this, wliirl'd in the dust around,
And some who can would rather see awry.
If such could add to their own fame the fame
Their hands detract from others, then indeed
The act, liowbeit felonious, were less vile ;
They strip the wealthy, but they clothe the poor.
Aside thy Fawn expect some envious stab.
Some latent arrow from obscure defile ;
Aside thy AretJmsa never hope
Untroubled rest : men will look up and see
"What hurts their eyes in the strong beams above,
And shining points will bring fierce lightnings down
Upon thy head, and mine by birth so near.
Heedless of brawlers in the pit beneath,
To whosoe'er enacts the nobler part,
Known or unknown, or friendly or averse,
I will throw crowns, and throw unsparingly ;
Nor are these crowns too light to fly direct.
Nor fall they short, far as the scope may be.
Better I deem it that my grain of myrrh
Burn for the living than embalm the dead.
Take my fraternal offering, not composed
Of ditch-side flowers, the watery-stalkt and rank,
Such as our markets smell of, all day long,
And roister ditty-roaring rustics wear ;
But fresh, full, shapely, sprinkled with that lymph
Which from Peneios on the olive-wreath
Shook at loud plaudits under Zeus high-throned.
EPISTLES, 459
CCXLII. TO GUYON.
GuYON ! tliy praises few dare sing.
But not so few sliall hear.
From virgin cartli tliy laurels spring
O'er fountain deep and clear.
Honor, not Glory, led thee forth.
Young, ardent : at thy word
Uprose the Danube ; and the North
Saw the last sheath' d thy sword.
CCXLIII. TO AUBREY DE VERE.
Welcome ! who last hast climb'd the cloven hill
Forsaken by its Muses and their God !
Show us the way ; we miss it, young and old.
Roses that can not clasp their languid leaves,
Puffy and odorless and overblown.
Encumber all our walks of poetry;
The satin slipper and the mirror boot
Delight in pressing them : but who hath trackt
A Grace's naked foot amid them all ?
Or who hath seen (ah ! how few care to see !)
The close-bound tresses and the robe succinct ?
Thou hast ; and she hath placed her palm in thine.
Walk ye together in our fields and groves :
We have gay birds and graver, we have none
Of varied note, none to whose harmony
Time long will listen, none who sings alone.
Make thy proud name yet prouder for thy sons,
Aubrey de Yere ! Fling far aside all heed
Of that hyaena race which growls and smiles
Alternate, and which neither blows nor food
Nor stern nor gentle brow, domesticate.
Await some Cromwell, who alone hath strength
Of heart to dash down its wild wantoness
And fasten its fierce grin with steddy gaze.
Come, re-ascend with me the steeps of Greece,
With firmer foot than mine. None stop the road.
And few will follow : we sliall breathe apart
That pure fresh air, and drink the untroubled spring.
460 THE LAST FRUIT OVF AX OLD THEE.
Lead thou the "vray ; I knew it once ; my sight
May miss old marks ; lend me thy hand ; press on ;
Elastic is thy step, thy guidance sure.
CCXLIV. TO A FRIEND'S REMONSTRANCE.
Treacher of discontent I Then large indeed
Would be my audience, copious my display
Of common-places. Better curb and quell
Not by the bridle but the provender.
Sportsmen ! manorial lords ! of you am I,
Let us, since game grows scarcer every day,
Watch our preserves near home ; we need but beat
About the cottage-garden and slim croft
I'or plenteous sport. Catch up the ragged child.
Kiss it, however frightened : take the hand
Of the young girl from out the artizan^s
Who leads her to the factory, soon to wear
The tissue she has woven dyed in shame :
Help the halt eld to rule the swerving ass.
And upright set his crutch outside the porch.
To reach, nor stoop to reach, at his return.
'Tis somewhat to hear blessings, to confer
Is somewhat more. Wealth is content to shine
By his own light, nor asks he Virtue's aid ;
But Virtue comes sometimes, and comes unaskt.
Nay, comes the first to conference.
There is one.
One man there is, high in nobility
Of birth and fortune, who erects liis house
Among the heathen, Avhere dun smoke ascends
All day around, and drearier fire all night.
Far from that house are heard the church's beUs,
And thro deep cinders lies the road, yet there
Walks the rich man, walks in humility,
Because the poor he walks with, and with God.
No mitred purple-buskin'd baron he.
Self-privileged to strip the calendar
Of Sabbath days, to rob the cattle's rest,
And mount, mid prance and neighing, his proud throne.
Of what is thinking now thy studious head,
O artist! in the glorious dome of Art,
EPISTLES. 461
That thou shouldst turn thine eyes from Titian's ray.
Or Raffael's halo round the Virgin's head
And Chikl's, foreshowing Paradise regained ?
Of Ellesmere thou wert tliinking ; so was I.
CCXLV. TO T.ORD DUDLEY C. STUART,
WITH AN ODE TO KOSSUTH.
This is my hour
To bow to Power.
" What Power?'' you ask, with wonder in your eye.
Soon said and heard
The simple word . .
That Power which bends before Humanity.
Go then, my line !
His knees entwine
(Better than garter) who hath cheer'd the slave.
Little can you.
Poor infant ! do . .
Be led by Stuart to the just and brave.
CCXLVI. TO KOSSUTH.
Death in the battle is not death.
Deep, deep may seem the mortal groan,
Yet sweeter than an infant's breath
Is Honor's, on that field alone
"Wliere Kossuth call'd his Spirits forth
Aloft from Danaw's heaving breast :
They quell' d the south, they shook the north.
They sank by fraud, not strength, represt.^^
If Preedom's sacred fire lies quencht.
England ! was it not by thee r
Ere from such hands the sword was wrencht
Thine was the power to shield the free.
Eussells erewhile might raise their crest
Proud as the elder of our land,
Altho I find but, in the best.
The embroider' d glove of Sidney's hand.
462 TlIK LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD THEE.
Rachel may mourn her children now,
From higher source her glory springs,
Where Shakspeare crowns Southampton's brow,
Above the reach or gaze of kings.
Eussells ? where ? where ? To wave on high
Taction her slender twig may place,
And cover when that twig shall die.
With plumes as dark the dark disgrace.
Drive the drear phantom from my sight,
Kossuth ! Eound our wintery shore
Spread broad thy strong and healthy light . .
Crush we these slippery weeds no more.
Each, be he soldier, sage, or bard.
Must breast and cross the sea of strife,
Ere swells the hymn, his high reward,
Sung from the one true Book of Life.
What casket holds it ? in what shrine
Begem'd with pearl and priceless stone ?
The treasury is itself divine . .
The poet's breast . . 'tis there alone.
CCXLVII. TO THE CONQUEROR OF SCINDE.
Welcome to England, thou whom peace
More than triumphant war delights.
Welcome to England, thou whom Greece
Had chosen to protect her rights.
Had chosen to arouse her bands
When Sloth and Pleasure held them down ;
Upon thy brow her grateful hands
Had often placed the double crown.
Napier ! I praise thee not because
Of powerful princes overthrown.
But for those just and equal laws,
Napier ! thy gift, and thine alone.
May years far hence, when British feet
Tread Waterloo's historick plains,
Some pious voice these words repeat,
Thanh Heaven! one hero yet remains.
EPISTLES. 463
CCXLVIII.— TO CAVAIGNAC.
And shall the bloody wave ageii.
Dissevering freedom's bravest men,
Dash all ashore ? and civic fight
Demohsh \vrong_, establish right !
Alas ! it must be ! Well for France,
Awakening from her frantic trance,
She finds at last a virtuous man
To regulate her rushing van.
Never wilt thou, sage Cavaignac !
Pursue Ambition's tortuous track.
The shade of Glory seems to tend
That way, but melts before its end.
What name more glorious than was his
Whose life midway went all amiss ?
He well survey'd the battle-field.
But ill what that soakt soil should yield.
Losing the train that limpt behind.
He lost all energy of mind ;
Like smitten viper, now aloof
To bite, now crusht by heel or hoof.
Mindful of Washington, who hurl'd
Back from the new the worn-out world,
Eemember, First of Men ! that thou
To thy own heart hast made the vow
That France henceforward shall be free . . .
Henceforward is her trust in thee.
CCXLIX. TO GENERAL SIR W. NAPIER.
Over these solid downs eight years have past.
Since, with that man who taught how fields were won,
By every river of Iberia's realms.
And under every mountain, and against
Every beleaguer'd city, I return' d,
Wliile Jupiter shone forth severely bright.
Watcher of aU things in the world below.
Napier, how art thou changed ! The brow, the soul,
Serene as ever, but deep-biting wounds,
And, keener than deep-biting wounds, the fangs
Of malice and ingratitude corrode
Thy generous heart. Bear bravely up, friend !
464 THE LAST FK.UIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
glory of all those wlio call tliee so !
Thy spirit is unchanged. That deathless bird,
The black Caucasian, hither wings his way,
Swooping from sunny Scinde o^er foggy Thames,
And fain would pounce ; he may have tugg\l and torn
Thy breast awhile ; it springs again elate,
And the foul bird flies at the shout of Fame.
COL. TO THE REVEREND CUTHBERT SOUTIIEY.
CuTHBERT ! whose father first in all our land
Sate in calm judgment on poetic peer,
A'Vhom hatred never, friendship seldom, warpt . .
Agen I read his page and hear his voice ;
I heard it ere I knew it, ere I saw
Who utter' d it, each then to each unknown.
Twelve years had past when upon Avon's cliff,
Hard-by his birth-place, first our hands were join'd ;
After three more he visited my home.
Along Lantony's ruin'd ailes we walkt
And woods then patliless, over verdant hill
And ruddy mountain, and aside the stream
Of sparkling Hondy. Just at close of day
There by the comet's light we saw the fox
Eush from the alders, nor relax in speed
Until he trod the pathway of his sires
Under the hoary crag of Comioy.
Then both were happy.
War had paused : the Loire
Invited me. Agen burst forth fierce War.
I minded not his fury : there I staid.
Sole of my countrymen, and foes abstain'd
(Tho sore and bleeding) from my house alone.
But female fear impell'd me past the Alps,
Where, loveliest of all lakes, the Lario sleeps
Under the walls of Como.
There he came
Agen to see me ; there agen our walks
We recommenced . . less pleasant than before.
Grief had swept over him ; days darken'd round :
Bellagio, Valintelvi, smiled in vain.
And Monterosa from Helvetia far
Advanced to meet us, mildin majesty
EPISTLES. 465
Above tlie glittering crests of giant sons
Station'd around ... in vain too ! all in vain !
Perhaps the hour may come when others,, taught
By him to read, may read my page ariglit
And find what lies witliin it ; time enough
Is there before us in tlie world of thought.
The favor I may need I scorn to ask.
"What sovran is there able to reprieve.
How then to grant, the life of the condemn' d
By Justice, where the Muses take their seat ?
Never was I impatient to receive
What any man could give me : when a friend
Gave me my due, I took it, and no more . .
Serenely glad because that friend was pleased.
I seek not many, many seek not me.
If there are few now seated at my board,
I pull no children's hair because they munch
Gilt gingerbread, the figured and the sweet,
Or wallow in the innocence of whey ;
Give me wild-boar, the buck's broad haunch give me,
And wine that time has mellow' d, even as time
Mellows the warrior hermit in his cell.
CCLI. TO ELIZA LYNN, ON HER AMT3WNE.
High names, immortal names, have women borne ;
In every land her amaranthine crown
Virtue hath placed upon the braided brow ;
In many, courage hath sprung up and shamed
The stronger man's unbrave audacity;
In many, nay in all, hath Wisdom touclit
The fairer front benignly, and hath kist
Those lids her lessons kept from their repose.
Only for Hellas had the Muses dwelt
In the deep shadow of the gentler breast.
To soothe its passion or repeat its tale.
They hved not but in Hellas. There arose
Erinna, there Corinna, there (to quench
The torch of poesy, of love, of life.
In the dim water) Sappho. Tar above
AU these, in thought and fancy,* she whose page
* Savary, by order of Bonaparte, seized the whole impression of Madame
de StaeTs Germany, and forced her to take refuge in Sweden.
H H
466 THE LAST rUUIT OPF AN OLD TREE.
The workrs last despot seiz'd and trampled on,
Casting her forth where Summer's giaddenM sun
Shone o'er the nightless laurel from the Pole.
Before her advent, England's maidens heard
The Simple Story : other voices since
Have made their softness sound thro manly tones
And overpower them. In our days, so sweet.
So potent, so diversified, is none
As thine. Protectress of Aspasia's fame.
Thine, golden shield of matchless Pericles,
Pure heart and lofty soul, EHza Lynn !
CCLII. TO SIR V7ILLIAM MOLESWORTH.
No bell, no cannon, by proud Ocean borne
Prom Ganges or from Tagus or from Ehine,
Striking with every fiery pulse (nor less
In every panting interval between)
England's deep heart, sounds now. The world revives
Grief for the saviour of our country sinks
At last into repose. We look around
On those who stood with him and heard his voice
Amid the uproar of domestic strife ;
We spurn, as well we may do, all who left
Their sinking leader in his bravest fight.
Eight against Eamine, fight enthroning Peace.
He who wins power is sure of winning praise.
Sweeter unearn'd than earn'd, and he may sing,
As sang in listless bower the Venusine,
" 27ie ready and the facile one for me /"
I laud the man who struggles hard for Eame.
Borne o'er false suitors and invidious elds.
O'er impotent and sterile blandishments,
O'er sounding names that worthless wealth acquires
Or recreant genius self-exiled from heaven,
Eaithful is Eame to him who holds her dear.
Napiers and Wellingtons not every day
March out before us ; no, nor every day
Are wanted ; but for every day we want
Integrit)^, clear-sighted, even-paced.
Broad-breasted, single-hearted, single-tongued.
Such as in Peel. Longer and quicker step
Sometimes is needful.
EPISTLES. 467
Thou whose patient care.
Patient but zealous, anxious but serene,
Hath watcht o'er every region of our rule
With calm keen eye, mulazzled and uridim'd.
Moleswortli ! watch on ! The false, the insolent,
Who riveted erewhile Australia's chain.
And shook it in her ear to break her rest,
Then call'd up Hope, then calFd up Tantalus,
And rub'd his knees at their credulity . .
Him thou well knowest . . him with hand and foot
Spurn down, and hold him lifelong from the forge.
CCLIII. TO THEODOSIA GARROW AT FLORENCE.
PoNDLER and mourner of The Two Gazelles,
At your approach the heart of Florence swells.
Nobly, O Theo ! has your verse call'd forth
The Eoman valour and Subalpine worth.
So stored with poetry what British mind
Have you, departed from us, left behind ?
This makes a pretty garden, which he fills
With tiny castles and with tinkling rills ;
Then calls the Faeries from their steril ground.
And ranker funguses spring thick around.
This, blear and languid, stiff in beak and claw.
With smaller vermin crams his puffy maw,
Pursues with flapping wing a hedgerow flight
And revels in the richness of the night.
While owls sweep on, and humming-birds flit past.
Your bower, where cedars spring aloft, shall last.
CCLIV. TO THE PRINCESS BEL«I0I0S0.
Eight in my path what goddess stands ?
Whose is that voice? whence those commands ?
I see thy stately step again, .
Thine eyes, the founts of joy and pain.
Daughter of the Triulzi ! those
But now on Lario's lake arose.
Shedding fresh blessings, purer light . .
And hast thou left the Alpine hight.
The yellow vale, grey-budding vine
Whom guardian maple's nets entwine,
The villa where from open sash
H H 2
468 THE LAST FIIUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
We heard columnar fountains dash,
"While candid Gods unmoved above
Soften and quietly reprove
Such restlessness, and citron's bloom
Waves from clear gem its warm perfume.
No loitering here : we must obey,
Where the loud trimipet points the way.
Where new-born men Ausonia calls.
And standards shine from mouldering walls
Cer dark Albunea's woods, and o'er
Where graceful Tibur's temples soar.
Cornelia's race lives yet; nor drown'd
In the drear gulph is Clelia; found
Again is Arria's dagger; now
Who bears it ? Belgioioso, thou.
Light on the wounded rests a hand
Kings may not kiss, much less command ;
Nor shrinkest thou to hear the shrill
Cry thro' gnasht teeth, nor (oozing stil)
To staunch the dense dark blood. At feats
Like these the prowling thief retreats.
Untrue to Italy, to all,
Untruest to himself, the Gaul !
The splayfoot of our British Muse
Wags woefully in wooden fihoes ;
Nor will the Graces bind their zone
Eound panting bosom overgrown;
But thou shalt never feel tlie wrong
Of bruises from a barbarous tongue :
No, nor shall ditty dull and weak
Eaise wrath or blushes to thy cheek ;
Nor shall these wreaths which now adorn
Thy brow, drop off thee, dead ere morn.
When wars and kingly frauds are past.
With Justice side by side, the last
Sad stain of blood (0 blessed day !)
Egeria's lymph shall wash away.
CCLV. TO LUIPINA DE SODRE.
A generation's faded skirts have swept
Thro that door* opposite, since one beloved
* The Bath Eooms.
EPISTLES. 469
(Before your mother's eyes gave heaven its hght.
And made her ^ mother's brighter, even hers)
Behind these benches lean'd upon my arm,
Nor heard the musick that provoked the dance.
And, Luisina ! with a man so okl
Eather wouki you converse than show the waltz
Its native graces ? rear'd in courts, and first
With boys to empire born, with Kaisar's self.
In early girlhood nightly exercised.
Blush not to have been chosen : 'twas that blush.
The dawn of beauty in the pure fresh mind,
Which won the choice : 'twas not Pereira's name,
'Twas not De Sodre's, not Mace do's, sent
To Austria's throne with delegated power,
Well weigh'd, the brightest jewel of Brazil.
To-day he left us : thro the Atlantic wave
To-morrow will he turn his large clear ej^e
(Mirrour where Honor sees himself full-sized)
Toward the city where God's man elect,
Above all other of created men,
Guided the courses of His last-launcht world,
And stampt a name to live when not a wreck
Of that young city shall o'ertop the dust.
My happiness is tranquil ; tlius may yours
Be ever ! But so tranquil ? no, not quite.
Youth has its gales ; weeds grow where ripples cease.
And life in steril sands forgets its course.
If I might whisper in a lady's ear.
Which Memory tells me I have done erewhile.
This is the harmless whisper I would breathe ;
" Winter's rare suns are welcome, Luisina !
But Spring and Summer bring the flower and fruit.
Pain would I live for one more bridal day.
CCLVI. TO A PROFESSOR IN GEHMANY.
Tell me ; which merits most the hangman's hold ?
This, who leaps boldly in the crowded fold
And kills your sheep before your eyes, or that
Whom your too plenteous kitchen clothed with fat ;
Who, mischievous from idleness, repairs,
To steal the cupboard-keys you keep upstairs,
* Countess de Molaud(5.
470 THE LAST FBUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
And, when joii catch him, suddenly turns round
And throws you, bruised and maim\l, along the ground ?
The choice has puzzled you ? and you are loth
To favour either ! Well then, giv^e him both.
Had my last words been heard by yon wise folk.
Your necks no longer had endured the yoke.
Were but some twenty perjurers driven forth,
Tear would have chainM the wolf that gnaws the north :
Poland had risen from her death-like trance.
And shamed, the foulest of seducers, France.
Kossuth and Klapka then at home might die.
Nor Turks alone teach Christianity ;
Eome on no weak old wanton place her trust.
But stamp her brittle idols into dust.
Perjurers, traitors, twenty at the most.
Cast upon Britain^s weed-collecting coast.
Unharmed, and carrying with tliem all their own.
Leaving but what they forfeited . . the throne . .
Had left each German people safely free.
And shown what princes are, and men can be.
While cries of anguish pierce thro cries of joy.
Moves the huge God who moves but to destroy :
O'er India's children the grim idol lours.
Its weaker shadow, westering, reaches ours.
Kings in their madness trample nations down.
Madder are nations who' adore a crown :
One only shines beneficent : the love
Of England guard it ! guard it His above !
CCLTII. TO MESCHID THE LIBERATOR.
Valor not always is propel'd by War;
Often he takes a seat
Under the influence of a milder star.
More happy and more great.
Poremost in every battle waved on high
The plume of Saladin ;
He chased our northern meteors down the skv.
And shone in peace serene.
In vain two proud usurpers side by side^
Meschid ! would shake thy throne :
EPISTLES. 471
Sit firm ; tliesc outlaws of tlie world deride,
And fear tliy God alone.
No God who winks from canvas at the crowd.
No God who sweats from wood.
No God at whose high-cross priests chaffer loud.
No God who sells his blood ;
But merciful and mighty, wise and just.
Who lays the proud man low.
Who raises up the fallen from the dust.
And bids the captive go.
In these thou followest Him, thou one sublime
Among the base who press
Man's heart, man's intellect; the wrongs tlieir crime
Inflicts, thy laws redress.
Justice hath rais'd thee higher than him whose blade
The Drave and Danube won,
Tasteuing the towers of Widdin and Belgrade
To liis Byzantine throne.
Can Egypt, Syria, can the land of m^rrh.
Can all thou rulest o'er.
Such glory on thy diadem confer ?
. . Thy path leads on to more.
Meschid ! I pick up paras in no court,
To none I bend the knee.
But, Virtue's friend ! Misfortune's sole support !
I give my hand to thee.
CCLVIII. TO BERANGER AT TOURS.
O HARP of France ! why hang unstrung
Those poplar-waving iles among
Which thinly shade the sunny Loire ?
Beranger ! bid that harp once more
Eesound to Seine's polluted shore.
And wake to shame thy slumbering choir.
Beauty and love and joyous feast
Become thee^ but become thee least
472 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
In these dark days when none rejoice ;
Yet thou hast deeper tones, and those
Can shake with terror freedom's foes :
Strike, sing ; they shall not drown thy voice.
Bid Trance lift up her brow agen.
Nor cower before the bravest men,
Eemembering those her prime had borne ;
Hated, distrusted, hath she been.
But never until now hath seen
So near, so dark, the scowl of scorn.
Write on the rampire of Marseilles
Here Power in Virtue's presence quails,
And warns the patriot from the pier :
Yet the self-exiled sons of Greece *
Eeposed their shattered limbs in peace.
With barbarous nations round them, here.
In inextinguishable flame
Write thine with Abdel-Kader's name.
On Amboise's high prison-wall :
Add, Beranger, these words below.
Defiance to the advancing foe !
Grace to the vanquisfit ! faith to all!
CCLIX. TO LAMAETINE PRESIDENT OF FRANCE.
History lies wide open : the first page
Of every chapter blood illuminates.
And ductile gold embosses, dense and bright.
Not children only, but grave men admire
The gaudy grand distortions ; hippogryphs.
Unicorns, dragons, infant heads enlarged
To size gigantic, seraph visages.
And scaly serpents trailing underneath.
I trill no cymbal, and I shake no bells
To thee, pacific ruler ! On the plains
Be thou establisht, where power rests secure.
Unshaken by the tempests : there my muse
Shall find and cheer thee when the day is o'er.
And other notes are silent all around.
* The Phocseans, founders of Marseilles.
EPISTLES. 473
'Twas not unseemly in the bravest bard
From Paradise and angels to descend,
And crown his coimtry^s saviour witli a wreath
Above the regal : few his Avords, but strong,
And sounding through all ages and all climes.
He caught the sonnet from the dainty hand
Of Love, who cried to lose it ; and he gave
The notes to Glory. Darwen and Dunbar
Heard him ; Sabrina, whom in youth lie wooed,
Croucht in the sedges at the clang of war.
Until he pointed out from Worcester walls
England's avenger awfully sedate.
In our dull misty day what breast respires
The poetry that warms and strengthens man
To glorious deeds, and makes his coronet
Outlive the festival, nor droop at last ?
Alas ! alas ! the food of nightingales
Is foul ; and plumeless bipeds wdio sing best
Desert the woods for cattle-trodden roads.
And plunge the beak, hungry and athirst, in mire.
Prince ! al)ove princes ! may thy deeds create
A better race ! meanwhile from peaceful shores
Hear, without listening long (for graver cares
Surround and press thee), hear with brow benign
A voice that cheers thee with no vulgar shout.
No hireling impulse, on thy starry way.
CCLX. TO ANOTHER PRESIDENT.
Hast thou forgotten, thou more vile
Than he who clung to Helen's ile
Rather than fall among the brave !
Hast thou forgotten so thy flight.
When sparing Philip's peaceful might
Disdain' d to hurl thee to thy grave ?
Porgotten the chain'd eagle, borne
Shaken by ridicule and scorn
Up Boulogne's proud columnar hill ?
Tw'ice traitor, ere a nation's trust
Rais'd thee a third time from the dust
Por what ? . . to be a traitor stil.
The hands that thrust thy uncle down.
And threw into his face his crown.
474 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Contemptuous^ were held forth to thee ;
Not for thy valour or thy worth,
Believe me, were those hands held forth,
No, but from joy that thou wert free.
brow of brass ! heart of stone !
Dost thou of Europe^s sons alone
Rep ell the exile from thy shore.
Whom Plague's implacable disease,
Whom murderous men, tempestuous seas.
Had spared, whose wrongs far worlds deplore.
Him when the sons of Ismael saw,
The man who gave free men the law.
They stopt the camel-train to gaze ;
Por in the desert they had heard
The miracles of Kossuth's Word,
The myriad voices of his praise.
Him, ever mindful of her trust,
America, the iirm, the just.
Beneath her salutary star
Invotes, and bears across the main,
Until liis native land again
Aveuii'es an unrighteous war.
England ! I glory that mine eyes
Eirst open'd on thy sterner skies.
Where the most valiant of mankind
Bear gentlest hearts ; I glory most
At the proud welcome on thy coast
Of him, the brave, the pure, the wise.
My England, look across the Strait !
Behold the chief whom thousands hate.
But fear to touch ; because the Tzar
Nods at him from his saddle-bow.
And says, " If any strike a hloio
Against my slave, I rush to war."
Safe art thou, Louis ! . . for a time ;
But tremble . . never yet was crime.
Beyond one little space, secure.
The coward and the brave alike
Can wait and watch, can rush and strike. . .
Which marks thee ? one of them, be sure.
Some men love fame, despising power.
Well shelter' d from its sultry hour,
EPISTLES. 475
Alul some love powers despising fame;
Among the crowd of these art tliou,
And soon shalt reach it . . but below
A Jellachich''s and Gorgej's name.
CCLXI. TO ARNDT.
Against the frauds of France did Europe rise
And seize the robber who had lost his way,
Blinded with blood ; she threw him upon rocks
Where none but gulls waiFd over him ; she heaved
(Well may the ]\Iuses blush to speak the word)
A tallow tub on her indignant breast,
And, midst her shrieks and writhings, the sword's point
Graved on the foul bulk-head four letters, K.I.N.G.
'Twas at thy voice, Arndt, that Europe rose,
England's was weak, and Germany's was tuned
To theatres, and lower'd to ducal ears ;
But thy loud clarion waked all living, waked
The dead to march among them. Prussia saw
Her warrior burst his covenants ; Bluker strode
Aside the old man's charger, even paced
Along the path where glory shines austere.
Shedding a dim but no uncertain light.
Cry out again, brave Arndt ! cry out the words
Proclaim'd of old, " Learn justice ! "^ Be forwarn'd!"
And tell the princes of thy native land
That, sprung from robbers, they are robbers too :
Cry out, '' Abstain! or forfeit croivn and life!"
There is a nation high above the rest
In virtue and in valour we have wrong' d.
We Englishmen have wrong'd her, we her sons.
We owe her more than riches can repay
Or penitence or sympathy atone.
Let us at least the arms we seized restore
And drive the coward invader from her coast.
Arndt ! thou art stronger than the strongest arm
That wields in Germany a patriot sword ;
How much then stronger than whichever wields
One temper'd not by justice ! 'Tis to thee
Alone, the greatest of God's great, I call,
I, who alone can now be heard so far,
* Discite justitiam; mouiti. Virgil.
476 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
For (let me wliisper) we have ribbon'd lute
And rural fiddle;l!»^ trumpet we have none.
He who had bled for "Wallace, at his side,
Lies with due honors; due, but long deferrM;
He too, the great magician, multiform.
Who sang the fate of IMarmion, and convoked
From every country all who shone most high
In arms or beautv, drain'd the bowl of ffrief
And sleeps ! Another, his compatriot bard,
"Whose thunder shook the Baltick and the Nile,
And stayM the Uanaw swoln with ice and blood.
Lies . . . dead as Nelson . . . nor more dead than he.
Our richest fruits grew under northern skies ;
We have no grafts ; we have but twigs and leaves.
Up thou ! burst boldly thro the palace-gate.
Announce thy errand, bid a king be just.
So mayest thou, good Arndt, as heretofore
When first I claspt that guiding hand at Eonn,
Return with other laurels, and enjoy
Thy ripening orchard and domestic peace.
CCLXII. FROM FRANCE TO THE POPE.
Made our God again, Pope Pius !
Worthy to be worshipt by us !
Come to Paris, and put on
Thy true son Napoleon
(Blest afresh) that glorious croAvn
Crushing crippled Europe down.
Leaving not a house but shed
Tears for some one maimed or dead.
None but where some father sate
Or some mother, desolate.
Or some maiden tore her hair.
Or some widow shriekt despair.
Or the wolf, when all were gone,
ClaimM the ruin for his own.
Drowsy, and his only fear
When the viper crept too near.
Men three millions, French the most,
Each a soldier, now a ghost.
Watch his tomb. We venerate
(Name he chose) the Man of fate.
El'ISTLES. 477
Come, our God again, Pope Pins !
Worthy to be worsliipt by ns !
Not for him thy help we call
"Who built up an icy wall
Of men^s bodies, all the way
Prom where Moscow^s cinders lay
To the Danube's fettered Hood,
Where side-looking Pranz then stood,
Salesman of his flesh and blood . . .
But for one who far outwits
Keenest-Avitted Jesuits,
And without a blush outlies
Thee and all thy perjuries.
CCLXIII. TO AMERICA.
Daughter of Albion ! thou hast not
The lesson of thy sire forgot ;
Listening at times to Power or Pride,
Eeadier thou turnest to attend
On bleeding Yalor, and befriend
Him who can hope no friend beside.
Long ere the patriarchs of the west
Lands, three vast oceans bound, possest,
When all around was dark and wild.
Adventurous rowers row'd from Greece,
And upward on a sun-like fleece
The maids of ocean gazed and smiled.
Our maidens with no less delight
Survey' d around the cliffs of Wight
Thy swifter pinnace glide along :
Altho the conqueror w^as not one
Their gentle heads might rest upon
When cease the dance and supper-song.
Yet from their thresholds went they forth
To hail the youths of kindred worth,
And clapt uplifted hands, altho
Louder, and with less pause between,
The vollies of their palms had been
Por some beliind they better know.
478 - THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
To teach the mistress of tlie sea
What beam and mast and sail shoukl be.
To teach her how to walk the wave
With graceful step, is such a lore
As never had been taught before . .
Dumb are the wise, aghast the brave.
To strike the neck of Athos thro
Was children's play : man's work they do
Who draw together distant seas.
On Andes raise their starry throne.
Subdue tumultuous Amazon,
And pierce the world of pale Chinese.
The dawn is reddening of the day
When slender and soft-voiced Malay
Shall learn from thee to love the Laws.
Europe in blood may riot stil ;
Only do thou pronounce thy will,
And War, outside her gates, shall pause.
Garlands might well adorn the mast
Which first the Istlimian cleft had past.
And shouts of jubilee might well
Arise when those returned who first
The bonds, imposed by Nature, burst.
And boldest hearts more boldly swell :
Yet sails there now across the main
A prouder ship than e'er again
Shall ride its billows : at her head
Stands Kossuth : there that hero stands
Whom royal Perjury's trembling hands
Struck from afar and left for dead.
Daughter of Albion ! we avow
That worthy of thy sire art thou.
That thou alone his glory sharest :
Eaise up thy head, yea, raise it high
Above the plume of Victory ;
The plumed brow is not the fairest.
EPISTLES. 479
CCLXIV. TO THE LADY OF LT. COLONEL PAYNTER.
There is a. pleasure tlie support of grief
Where duty calls iindj listeii'd to, directs.
Sad was the wound to thee which pierced that breast
Tlian which none braver ever breathed the air
Of torrid India, when impetuous Gough
Order'd the readiest forth to certain death.
Among the men he led the higher fell,
The lower folio wM : one among the higher
Was left alone, transfixt with mortal wound
All thought ; but Providence decreed, if tears
Must flow for him in near and distant lands,
Prom kindred, comrade, friend, the same decreed
Tho the wife's must, the widow's should not fall.*
Eejoice then ! for thyself and him rejoice !
Heaven gave him courage, glory, victory.
Adding one gift more precious . . not mere life
Rescued when little hoped for, but a life
Tor Love and Honor to partake with thee.
CCLXV. LAST OF DECEMBER, 1851.
Bright sets the year in yonder sky,
A flood of glory fills the west.
The two-neckt eagles' hungry cry
Distui'bs not there man's wholesome rest.
Enjoy it, Kossuth ! rest awhile,
Awaken' d only from thy sleep
By those hurrahs that rent our He
And follow'd thee across the deep.
Three nations upon earth remain
Who earn'd their freedom ; one is crost
By adverse fate ; the other twain
Light her to find the gem she lost.
CCLXVI. THE HEROINES OF ENGLAND.
Hereditary honors who confers ?
God ; God alone. Not Marlboro's heir enjoys
A Marlboro's glory. Ye may paste on walls.
Thro city after city, rubric bills.
Large-letter' d, but ere long they all peel off.
And others take their places. 'Tis not thus
* He died of his wounds at last.
480 THE LAST FRL'IT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Where genius stands ; no monarcli here bestows.
No monarch takes away ; above his reach
Are these dotations^ yea, above his siglit.
Despise I then the great ? no ; witness Heaven ! ,
None better knows or venerates them higher,
Or lives among them more familiarly.
Am I a sycophant, and boaster too ?
A little of a boaster, I confess.
No sycophant. Now let me teach my lore.
Those are the great who purify the hearts,
Eaise lofty aspirations from the breasts.
And shower down wisdom on the heads of men.
Cliildren can give, exchange, and break their toys.
But giants can not wrench aw^ay the gifts
The wise, however humble, may impart.
I have seen princes, but among them all
None I would own my equal ; I have seen
Laborious men, and patient, Virtue^s sons.
Men beyond Want, yet not beyond the call
Of strict frugality from ember'd hearth.
And iidy cried, " 0, were lone of these 1"
How many verses, verses not inept.
But stampt for lawful weight and sterling ore.
Are worth one struggle to exalt our kind !
Here let me back my coui'sers, and turn round.
Hereditary honors ! few indeed
Are those they fall to. Norton ! Dufferin !
Eich was your grandsire in the mines of wit.
Strong in the fields of eloquence, but poor
And feeble was he when compared with you.
O glorious England ! never shone the hour
With half so many lights ; and most of these
In female hands are holden. Gone is she
Who shrouded Casa-Bianca^ she who cast
The iron mould of Ivan, yet whose song
Was soft and varied as the nightingale's.
And heard above all others. Few are they
Who well weigh gems : instead of them we see
Flat noses, cheek by jowl, not over-nice.
Nuzzle weak wash in one long shallow trough:
Let me away from them ! fresh air for me !
* Felicia Hemans.
EPISTLES. 481
I must to higher ground.
What glorious forms
Advance ! No man so lofty, so august.
In troops descend bright-belted Amazons . .
But where is Theseus in the field to-day ?
CCLXVII. TO NEW YORK ON ITS RECEPTION OF KOSSUTH.
City of men ! rejoice !
Not to have heard the voice
That raised up millions to Pannonia's side.
But that thy sons respond
With voice that sounds beyond,
And shakes across the sea the despot's pride.
My native Albion ! thou
Mayst also glory now ;
These are thy sons ; altho like Ismael driven
To desert lands afar.
Yet o^er them hung the star •
That show'd the sign of freedom bright in heaven.
Iron and gold are theirs :
And who so justly shares
These powerful gifts as they whose hands are strong.
Whose hearts are resolute
To quell the biped brute
Tramphng on law and rioting on wrong ?
Rise, one and all, as when
Ye hail'd the man of men.
And give not sumptuous feast nor sounding praise
To that brave Magyar,
But wage a pious war
And shed your glory round his closing days.
CCLXVIII. TO THE AUTHOR OF "MARY BARTON."
A FEW have borne me honor in my day.
Whether for flunking as themselves have thought
Or for what else I know not nor inquire.
Among them some there are whose name wiU Kve
Not in the memories but the hearts of men,
Because those hearts they comforted and cheered,
I I
482 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TEEE.
And, where they saw Goc?s images cast down.
Lifted them up again, and blew the dust
Trom the worn feature and disfigured Hmb.
Such thou art, pure and mighty ! such art thou.
Paraclete of the Bartons ! Verse is mute
Or husky in this wintery eve of time.
And they who fain would sing can only cough :
And yet we praise them. Some more strong have left
The narrow field of well-trim\l poetry
For fresher air and wider exercise ;
And they do wisely : I might do the same
If strength could gird and youth could garland me.
Imagination flaps her purple wing
Above the ancient laurels, and beyond ;
Aye, there are harps that never rang aloft
Olympic deeds or Isthmian ; there are hands
Strong even as those that reined the fiery steeds
Of proud Achilles on the Dardan plain ;
There are clear eyes, eyes clear as those that pierced
Tluo Paradise and Hell and all between.
The human heart holds more within its ceU.
Than universal Nature holds without.
This thou hast shown me, standing up erect
While I sat gazing, deep in reverent awe,
Where Avon's Genius and where Arno's meet;
And thou hast taught me at the fount of Truth,
That none confer God's blessing but the poor.
None but the heavy-laden reach His throne.
CCLXIX. HEIXAS TO AUBREY DE VERE ON HIS DEPARTURE.
Te,avei-er ! thou from afar that explorest the caverns of Delphi,
Led by the Muses, M'hose voice thou rememberest, heard over
ocean.
Tell the benighted at home that the spirit hath never departed
Hence, from these cliffs and these streams : that Apollo is stil
King Apollo,
And that no other should rule where Olympus, Parnassus, and
Pindus
Are what they were, ages past ; that, if barbarous bands have
invaded
Temple and shrine heretofore, it is time the reproach be
aboHsht,
EPISTLES. 483
Time that the wrong be redrest, and the stranger no more be
the ruler.
Whether be heard or unheard the complaint of our vallics and
mountains^
From the snow-piles overhead to the furthermost iland of
Pelops,
Peace be to thee and to thine ! And, if Deities hear under
water,
Blandly may Panope clasp and with fervor the knee of
Poseidon !
Blandly may Cymodameia prevail over Glaucos, dividing
With both her hands his white beard and kissing it just in the
middle,
So that the seas be serene which shall carry thee back to thy
country
Where the sun sinks to repose. But ever be mindful of
Hellas !
CCLXX. TO LAYARD, DISCOVERER OF NINEVEH.
No harps, no choral voices, may enforce
The words I utter. Thebes and Elis heard
Those harps, those voices, M'hence high men rose higher
And nations crowned the singer who crowned them.
His days are over. Better men than his
Live among ^is : and must they live unsung
Because deaf ears flap round them ? or because
Gold lies along the shallows of the world.
And vile hands gather it ? My song shall rise,
Altho none heed or hear it : rise it shall.
And swell along the wastes of Nineveh
And Babylon, until it reach to thee,
Layard ! who raisest cities from the dust.
Who driest Lethe up amid her shades.
And pourest a fresh stream on arid sands.
And rescuest thrones and nations, fanes and gods
Prom conquering Time ; he sees thee and turns back.
The weak and slow Power pushes past the wise.
And lifts them up in triumph to her car :
They, to keep firm the seat, sit with flat palms
Upon tlie cushion, nor look once beyond
To cheer thee on thy road. In vain are won
The spoils ; another carries them away ;
ii2
484 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
The stranger seeks tliem in anotlier land,
Torn piecemeal from thee. But no stealthy step
Can intercept thy glory.
Cyrus raised
His head on ruins : he of Macedon
Crumbled them, with their dreamer, into dust :
God gave thee power above them, far above ;
Power to raise up those whom they overthrew,
Power to show mortals that the kings they serve
Swallow each other like the shapeless forms
And unsubstantial which pursue pursued
In every drop of w^ater, and devour
Devoured, perpetual round the crystal globe.*
CCLXXI. TO THE HON. CAROLINE COURTENAY BOYLE.
From Marston's shady paths what Genius led
Your later steps to sandy Portishead?
Has Fortune frown' d ? then leave her and pursue
Guides, to their holier votary, far more true.
I call you not, nor would you hear the call.
Where tasteless fruits and scentless blossoms fall,
"Where plodding Learning plows some barren shore
Or worthless "Wealth counts and recounts his store,
But where, in lovely silence. Nature spreads
Her heaven-crown'd mountains and submissive meads,
Eivers, which now stand still, now swiftly run.
Proud, overjoy' d, to catch the stealthy sun.
And seas, in sadden'd calm, as day declines
O'er the broad headland of umbrageous pines.
Think not ingenuous Art and virtuous Toil
Bend down to common peers the stem of Boyle.
Above the earth are greater than the great
Whom in his image mortal can create.
To a stern mother struggling Honor clings
And sees a sponsor, not a sire, in kings.
A name, a bell-hung whistle, kings may give.
But Toil must brace the creature born to live.
The mine is lower than the fertile sod.
And Man's best gift than the least gift of God.
Behold the noblest of the Howard race
Among the sons of labour take his place.
* Seen thro a solar microscope.
EPISTLES. 485
Beyond all other claims he claims the right
And shows the power to teach and to delight.
Behold Azeglio; him whose hand imparts
A help at once to Ereedom and the Arts:
He quits the pomp of courts, the pride of power,
To spend with Painture an untroubled hour.
Nor scorns his generous heart, his manly sense,
What we call tribute, fools call recompense.
The pencil is a scepter in the hand
That wields it well, and wide is its command :
Exert its sway and (for you can) combine
Turner's warm zeal with Poussin's wise design,
O'er England's mist bid timid gleams arise,
And pour fresh glory from Italian skies.
Such o'er Boccaccio's happy valley shone.
Valley which I, as happy, call'd my own.
When my young chivalry begirt your side
With Tuscan courtesy and English pride.
CCLXXII. TO ELIZA LYNN,
WITH THE FIVE SCEXES.
Eloquence often draws the mind awry
By too much tension, then relaxes it
With magic fires round which the Passions stand
Crazed or perverse ; but thine invigorates,
By leading from the flutter of the crowd,
And from the flimsy lace and rank perfume
And mirror where all faces are alike.
Up the steep hill where Wisdom, looking stern
To those afar, sits calm, benign ; the Gods
But just above, the Graces just below,
Regarding blandly his decorous robe :
There are, my lovely friend, who twitch at thine ;
Suffer it ; walk strait on ; they will have past
Soon out of sight. The powerfulest on earth
Lose all their potency by one assault
On Genius or on Virtue. Where are they
Who pelted Milton ? AVhere are they who raised
Eresh Euries round Rousseau ? Where he accurst,
Thrice a deserter, thrice a fugitive.
Always a dastard, who by torchlight shedd
A Conde's blood ? His march the wolf and bear
486 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Most signalized ; he gorged tliem til they slept,
And howl'd no longer ; men alone howl'd there,
Under sharp wounds and Pamine's sharper fang.
He ridged the frozen flats of Muscovy
And bridged the rivers, paved the roads, with men, . .
Men in the morning, blocks of ice at noon.
Myriads of these are less than one he threw
To death more Uugering in a dungeon^s damp.
The sable cliief who made his brethren free.
Malevolence in guise of Flattery
Will bow before thee. Men I know of old
In whose wry mouths are friendsJiip, truthftdness,
And gentleness, and geniality,
And good old customs, sound old hearts. Beware
Lest they come sideling, lest they slily slip
Some lout before thee whose splay foot impedes
Thy steps, whose shoulder hides thee from thy friends
Leave such behind; let pity temper scorn.
With tliis encouragement, with this advice.
Accept my Christmas gift, perhaps my last.
Behold Five Scenes, scenes not indeed most fit
Por gentle souls to dwell in ; but the worst
Lie out of sight, dark cypresses between ;
Another dared pass thro them, I dare not.
Askest thou why none ever could lead forth
My steps upon the stage ? . . I would evoke
Men's meditation, shunning men's applause.
Let tliis come after me, if come it will ;
I shall not wait for it, nor pant for it.
Nor hold my breath to hear it, far or nigh.
Orestes and Electra walkt with me.
And few observ'd them : then Giovanna shedd
Her tears into my bosom, mine alone.
The shambling step in plashy loose morass,
The froth upon the lip, the slavering tongue.
The husky speech interminable, please
More than the vulgar, tho the vulgar most.
How little worth is fame Avhen even the wise
Wander so widely in our wildering field !
Easy it were for one in whose domain
Each subject hath his own, and but his own.
Easy it were for him to parcel out
FIVE SCENES. 487
A few more speeclies, filling up the cliiiiks ;
Difficult, far more diificult, to work
Wards for tlie lock than liinges for the gate.
I who have skill for wards have also strength
For hinges ; nor should they disgrace the door
Of noblest temple Eome or Athens rear'd.
Content am I to go where soon I must ;
Another day may see me, now unseen ;
I may perhaps rise slowly from my tomb
And take my seat among the living guests.
Meanwhile let some one tell the world thy worth,
One whom the world shall listen to, one great
Above his fellows, nor much lower than thou :
He who can crown stands very near the crownM.
FIVE SCENES.
I. COUNT CENCI AND CONFESSOR.
II. BEATRICE AND HER AJA MARGARITA.
III. COUNT, STEWARD, PEASANTS, BEATRICE.
IV. BEATRICE AND POPE CLEMENT VIII.
V. DEATH OF BEATRICE.
PEEFACE.
Poetry is not History. In features they may resemble; in
particulars, in combinations, m sequences, they must differ. His-
tory should ' teU the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth.' Poetry, like all the fine arts, is eclectic. Where she does
not wholly invent, she at one time ampHfies and elevates ; at another,
with equal power, she simplifies, she softens, she suppresses. This
part of her prerogative has fallen much into desuetude. Many a
rich proprietor is a bad husbandman. The system of deep draining,
or even of carrying off the surface-water, is but partially introduced.
We have, however, seen tragedians, of late, who bear the pall and
sceptre ' right royally."
The author of the Five Scenes assumes no place among them ;
he stands only just near enough to make his plaudit heard. These
scenes interfere very little with Shelley's noble tragedy. Two
names are the same ; one character, by necessity, is similar ; Count
Cenci, the wickedest man on record. His benefactions to the
Papacy, under the rubric of penalties or quit-rents for crimes,
amounted to three hundred thousand crowns ; so that after Saint
488 THE LAST TRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Peter, King Pepin, and Countess Matilda, the Eoman See was
under greater obligations to him than to any other supporter.
Crimes in the Papal States are as productive to Government as vines
and olives : no wonder then his death was so cruelly avenged.
His life had been its gaudy-day ; and his loss was the severest it
ever had sustained in one person. Tet, so little of gratitude is
there in high places, his funeral was unattended by the Cardinals
and Court ; and, what is more remarkable, no poet wrote an elegy
to deplore or an epitaph to praise him.
SCENE I.
Count Cenci and Confessor, in Rome.
CONFESSOR.
Our thoughts, my lord, are not entirely ours :
The Tempter hath much influence over tliem.
And sways tliem to and fro.
COUNT CENCI.
More often to
Than fro, methinks.
CONFESSOR.
Praver can do much, and more
Confession, most goodwill toward the Clmrcli.
Nieces and uncles, aunts and nephews, meet
In holy matrimony ; but beyond.
The Church forbids ; nor grants even these without
Due cause, in alms and Petropatrimonials.
COUNT CENCI.
If one may do it, why may not another ?
CONFESSOR.
Only the great may do it ; only princes.
Sovrans may ride where common men must walk.
And may with safety and with seemliness . .
With seemliness ! aye more . . . with acclamation.
And dance and bonfire, leap across the sheepwalk
Where sheep and shepherd humbly creep along.
COUNT CENCI.
Such are their doings in the Church and Court
And other places, for example-sake
N'o doubt.
FIVE SCENES.
489
CONFESSOR.
No doubt whatever. Great the good
Arising from the weaUh they tlius disburse.
The Church, thus aiding and thus aided, throws
Her sackcloth from her, and sits up elate.
Triumphant, glorified, the spouse of Christ,
Born in the manger but to mount the throne.
None but the fool and the ungodly doubt
These saving truths.
COUNT CENCI.
None but the fool, most surely ;
For who beside the fool would pour his broth
Upon the threshing-floor at noontide hour
When he is hungry and may take his fill ?
About the ungodly you know more than I, •
"Who never have held converse with the knaves,
For, to my mind, they must be fools as well ;
Sure to be losers at our table here.
And doubtful of revenge another day.
CONFESSOR.
They dare not meet confession face to face.
As honester and braver sinners do,
Like you, my Lord, who ask before you take,
Eeady to pay the penalty of guilt.
And weighing both in steady even scales.
COUNT CENCI.
You always comfort the few qualms that rise
Within my breast, too empty or too full.
The present sometimes puzzles me ; the past
Is past for ever.
CONFESSOR.
But beyond the grave . . .
COUNT CENCI.
I am short-sighted, and would spare my eyes ;
Too much light hurts them ; you wear spectacles.
And take them off and put them on again.
To read or not to read, as suits you best.
490 THE LAST FKUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
CONFESSOR.
Your lordsliip has paid dearly for some sins !
COUNT CENCI.
Churchmen may get them cheaper ; they can whirl
The incense round and sweeten one another.
CONFESSOR.
Count ! we are friends ; but this sounds rather free.
COUNT CENCI.
My speech is free, and free too is my hand.
Tliree paoli is the price of masses now
To the poor man ; the citizens pay five ;
The noble seven ; but often bargaining
For thirteen to the dozen : I meanwhile
Reckon but twelve, and pay my crown a-piece.
Ay, for a thousand, father, for a thousand . .
If this won^t save me, what the devil can ?
CONFESSOR.
Do not be angry ; let us hope it w^ill ;
But matters, awkward matters, lie between . .
We say no masses for the soul on earth.
COUNT CENCI.
Yet here it hath its troubles as down yonder ;
Masses might oil them over on the spot
And supple the sting's barb ; it lies not deep.
CONFESSOR.
No, no ; far different is their ordinance.
COUNT CENCI.
Well, I beheve it : let us say no more.
CONFESSOR.
Best so, my son ! Sweet, sweet is resignation.
Three hundred thousand crowns have overlaid
Some gross enormities : stifled they lie.
No whisper over them : the Pope's right hand
Hath wiped the record from the Book of Life.
COUNT CENCI.
Are you quite sui'e ?
Declares it.
FIVE SCENES.
CONFESSOR.
Infallibility
491
COUNT CENCI.
Bless infallibility !
CONFESSOR.
Sin not, my son ! but, sinning, strait confess
And stand absolved.
COUNT CENCI.
Plaffue me no more. I have
Confest. The wish . . again I swear . . is odious.
CONFESSOR.
The very thought confounds and petrifies me.
Ten yokes of oxen, fifty casks of wine
(Were it Orvieto), scarcely would efface
Such scandal.
COUNT CENCI.
I have play'd away the worth
Of those ten yokes, those fifty casks, but lately.
And therefore have not now wherewith . . .
CONFESSOR.
The sin
Of gambling is, alas ! worse . . worse than all.
[After a pause.) If you will have the peach . . why, have the
peach ;
But pay for it : the crab and sloe come cheaper.
Costly or vile, ^tis better to abstain.
[Confessor goes out, the Count remains.
COUNT CENCI {alone).
There must be (since all fear it) pains below.'
But how another's back can pass for mine.
Or how the scourge be softenM into down
By holy water, puzzles me : no drop
Is there ; and nothing holy. Doubt I will.
Now, can these fellows in their hearts believe
"What they would teach us ? Yes ; they must. Methinks
I have some courage : I dare many things,
Most things ; yet were I certain I should fall
Into a lion's jaws at close of day
If I went on, I should be loth to go,
492 THE LAST PRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Altlio some nightcap from some bootli well barr'd
Opens a T^dndow, crying Never fear !
Is there no likeness ? Theirs is tlie look-out.
They toss my sins on shoulder readily ;
Are they quite sure they can as readily
Shuffle them off again ? They catch our pouch.
The price, the stipulated price, I pay ;
Will the receiver be as prompt to them ?
May not he question them ? Well ! there are gone
Three hundred thousand crowns ; and more must go ;
I shall cry quits . . but what will their cry be ?
Wlien time is over/ none can ask for time;
Payment must come . . and these must pay, not I.
' Three hundred thousand crowns/ runs my receipt,
' Holiness and Infallibility '
At bottom. I am safe : the firm is good.
If the wax burn their fingers, let them blow
And cool it : there it sticks : my part is done.
SCENE II.
Beatrice Cenci and her Aja Margarita.
MARGARITA.
Blessed be Saint Eemigio ! This day year,
This his own day, was held the marriage-feast
Within our castle- walls, which always frown' d
Till then, and never since smiled heartily.
BEATRICE.
We have been very happy, Margarita,
Before and since.
MARGARITA.
I want another feast ;
I yearn ; and you must give it, lady mine.
BEATRICE.
My father can alone ordain a feast
Other than what this pleasant vintage-time
Always brings round.
MARGARITA.
Iliings are got ready soon.
Your sister for her bridal festival
riVE SCENES.
493
Borrowed some vases fill'd with citron-trees
Prom those who brought the chaplets. Signer Conte
Has not one citron-tree, one orange-bush,
One lemon, one trained jessamine : he never
Has prickt his finger with bare lavender.
To curse it. Flowers and music he abhors.
And how he hated those dull nightingales !
Indeed they are too tiresome : what think you ?
BEATRICE.
If their sweet sorrow overshadows mine
I ought to love them for it, and I do.
I have not always thought them melancholy ;
'Tis but of late ; and gayer tilings are worse.
MARGARITA.
You were less childish when you were a child.
However, flowers you cull as formerly
And put them in your bosom.
BEATRICE.
They aie cool.
MARGARITA.
Are they ? Some too are sweet. The Count is caught
By fragrance ; not their vulgar fragrance ; gloves.
Gloves I have seen (no matches though) that smelt
Deliciously, about his private room.
But music ! we keep music to ourselves,
And close the door upon it, like the plague.
Make last year this. I did beHeve, I did
Indeed, that you could better understand
My meaning.
BEATRICE.
I have understood it well.
But dare not ask my father anything 3
It is undaughterly, unmaidenly,
To ask for a carousal or a dance.
My sister and my brother may suggest
More properly what might entice our friends.
MARGARITA.
I doubt it. One enticement, one alone.
Depends on you. Marry, my pretty dove !
494 THE LAST FKUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
BEATRICE.
Marry ? and whom ?
MAEGAEITA.
Have you forgotten all
Who drank the vintage of the year before
To make (they said) room for last year's ?
BEATRICE.
In truth
I hardly know their names. I sat not with 'em
At supper or at dinner or at dance . .
Although at dance I was, but placed apart,
With you beside me, pleas'd not quite so well.
MARGARITA.
May-be. But you saw all, and all saw you.
BEATRICE.
May-be that too. I saw them all, and lookt
With joy upon them : whether they saw me
I know not, heed not : 'twas enough that joy
Seem'd universal.
MARGARITA.
But among the guests
Could not you name one name ?
BEATRICE.
Peril aps I could,
And more than one, give me but time to thiidc.
MARGARITA.
None yet ? none ? Let me call them over then.
Don Beppo, Don Ohnto, Don Olimpio,
Don Prospero-Leonzio BufTalmacco,
Don Cane della Scala, Don Gatteschi,
Don Tissaferiie, Don Ambrogio,
Don Michel- Angiolo, Don Angiolo
Without the Michel . . .
BEATRICE.
Take your breath, dear Aja.
They weary you. Suppose we leave the rest.
FIVE SCENES. 4-95
MARGARITA.
Don Carlo, Don Perrante, Don Camillo,
Don Agostino Pecore, Don Gallo,
Don Pio-Maria-Giuseppe Squarcialupi,
Don Innocenzio-Plavio Cinghialone,
Don Neri, Don Petruccio, Don Giuliano,
Don Tito, Don Trajano, Don Aurelio,
Three pretty brothers, save Aureho's eye,
A little red abont it, and Trajano's
Swerving a little, but as black as jet.
And bright as dagger drawn out overnight
And seen to, and fresh-whetted for revenge.
Your noble father hath such furniture,
Stored where you children might not hurt yourselves,
Not in the armoury, but close behind
Old breviaries and missals, and among
The holy relics that preserve the house,
Frightening the demons from it night and day.
BEATRICE.
Oh ! rather run through fifty names than tell
Such stories.
MARGARITA.
Pifty ! aye, there were threescore,
Or near upon it . . men, I mean ; we women
Here count for nothing.
BEATRICE,
Not in dance ?
MARGARITA.
They all
Had partners ; that is certain ; but what then ?
BEATRICE.
You seem to have collected a whole host
Of the young men ; the ladies you forget.
MARGARITA.
Even less worth remembrance.
BEATRICE.
Some were lovely.
496 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
MARGARITA.
I saw no loveliness ; and why should jon.
Whom such girls envy.
BEATRICE.
Envy me ? I shared
No partner. Only one, and she but once
Lookt at me : 'twas when I had clapt my hands
After that pretty song ; which then she bade
Her lover bring me, and you snatcht away.
MARGARITA.
Such silly words !
BEATRICE.
Yes ; but sung plaintively.
I wish I sang as well.
* MARGARITA.
Try then once more.
BEATRICE.
You call them silly; so indeed they are.
MARGARITA.
Songs sound the sweeter in the solitude
Of sense.
BEATRICE.
Who wrote them ?
MARGARITA.
Some young idle boy.
Who should be whipt for his effrontery.
Begin ; or you will have more ears about.
BEATRICE.
I have no heart to sing it.
MARGARITA.
Then will I.
What says the dove on yonder tree ?
Coo coo . . and only a coo coo ?
I hear as plain as plain can be,
Poor restless bird ! come! cornel do I dof
The words I often said to you.
FIVE SCENES. 497
If blushes pain not, be ashamed
A bird hatli caught the sounds from nie,
While you, by that mild teacher blamed,
Have yet to learu by heart what ho
Repeats so well, so tenderly.
BEATRICE.
thank you ! dearest Margarita, thank you !
You sang them with such tenderness ; you made
The most of them.
MARGARITA.
I made them all they are.
Let me go on while memory is at hand,
Or half the signors will slip through my fingers.
BEATRICE.
How good you are ! but are you not quite tired ?
MARGARITA.
Now you have put me out. Peace ! let me try.
Don Sigismondo ^\at]i his twin Goffredo,
Don Serafino, Don Serafico,
Don Sant-Elizabetta, Don Santa-Ann^/
Don Beatifico, Don Ipsilante . .
BEATRICE.
Aja !
MARGARITA.
So ! the shoe then pinches there ?
BEATRICE.
Eather go on than say it. Who is he ?
MARGARITA.
No very proper man. I might have run
A furlong further with more likelihood.
Don Biagio, Don Cristofauo, Don Bino_,
Don Agostino, Don Teodosio,
Don Mario, Don Bastiano, Don Eufemio,
Don Giorgio, Don Giorgione, Don Silvestro,
Don Gasparo, Don Stefano, Don Gino.
BEATRICE.
what a river full of sparkling bubbles !
Will the stream never end ?
K K
498 THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TEEE.
MARGARITA.
Not yet awliile.
Don Cinque-Pesci, Don Maria-Balbo,
Don Eomolo^ Don Cino^ Don Gieronimo,
Don Tertulliano (Teresina's brother),
Don Opobalsamo-di-Caritade^
Don Eomualdo, Don Ricupero,
Don Unigenito Gino Cappone,
Don Amoroo-Galateso Stella,
Don Braccioforte, Don Pacifico,
Don Bacio-Santa-Croce Cicciaporci,
Don Carl-Onofrio-Gru de' Beccafichi.
the strange names !
BEATRICE.
MARGARITA.
Men never choose their own.
But take them as they're given, to show Saint Peter,
"Who knows their water-mark and lets them pass.
BEATRICE.
No doubt of that . . and we may let them too.
MARGARITA.
Wait, wait a moment : here are some few more.
Don Luca, Don Abele,. Don Marino,
Don Sosimo, Don Zeno, Don Caniillo,
Don Loretano (heir of Don Pulgenzio),
Don Curio de Montaspro, Don Pasquale.
BEATRICE.
Wliat an interminable waste of names !
Are not the griUi of last year gone by ?
MARGARITA.
Nearly. Sandrino, Piero, and Cirillo ;
The two first are, the other should be, poor,
Noble, but wanting pride, and shunning friends.
BEATRICE.
Cirillo ! sure 'twas he that sate beside
The little girl whose arms and legs were burnt
So sadly.
FIVE SCENES. 499
MAEGARTTA.
Hideously, most hideously.
Her mother left her by the fire alone
In infancy.
BEATRICE.
Alone he sate with her
On a long barrel.
MARGARITA.
Heeding not who lauglit
Outrageously.
BEATRICE.
I saw them, I saw Mm . .
And could have kist him . . had he been my brother . .
And rather handsomer.
MARGARITA.
BEATRICE.
Could he be that ?
MARGARITA.
So ! Does the pin stick there ? aye, to the head.
BEATRICE.
I ought to love liim : but we never love
(I do believe) the only men we ought,
Or not as we should love them if we might.
MARGARITA.
He would not join the party : no, not he,
Nor offer, where ^twas proper, one salute :
That ugly barrel and that uglier child
Besotted him ; he staid there to the last.
Pride ! no ; ^twas worse ; 'twas sheer rusticity.
Thinking of him, six better men escaped me.
Don Mario, Don Yirgilio, Don Matteo,
Don Beppo, Don Simoni, Don Marziale,
Brother of Donna . . stay . . Donna Lucrezia,
Who ran away from home, and was pursued
Somewhat too late, caught, and let loose again,
A virgin, a pure virgin, to the last.
Ready to swear it were tliree witnesses.
Her father, and her husband, and herself:
No law-court can refuse three witnesses.
K K 2
500 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLT) TREE.
BEATRICE.
One surely is enough where honor is.
Prjthee no more about her.
MAEGAEITA.
Don Marziale
CallM out the vile betrayer, but in vain ;
He fled ; and that same week another won
The lovely prize, and wears it to this day^
At least a part of it, a husband's part.
BEATRICE.
Aja ! what is this ? what words are those ?
But . . hath she turn'd her face to God, and God
His face to her ? May it be thus ! Forgive,
blessed Saint Remigio ! and do thou
Tlu'ice-blessed Virgin, purer than Heaven's light.
My wicked thought ! Thy countenance was turned
One moment from me. In one moment sin
Bursts through our frail embankment, and engulphs
All superstructure human strength can raise.
MARGARITA.
Mad art thou, or inspired ?
BEATRICE.
Mad, mad, I was.
But now, with contrite heart, am calm again.
MARGARITA.
1 do beheve I am as good as most,
If you are better, I am wiser, child I
I say as many prayers, and know more ways
Of happiness. Among these vacant I
Choose one . . or two at most. There are indeed
"Wlio think o?ie better ; and they may be right.
Our mother Church, long-suffering and indulgent,
"VYould rather tie two knots than sever one.
You ponder on these things without one word.
BEATRICE.
I dare not utter one ; I scarce dare ponder.
MARGARITA.
It is all right, if we will only think so.
FIVE SCENES. 501
BEATRICE.
True, true . . but do not make me think about it.
MARGARITA.
No, cliild, wliile there are those who think for us,
And have much broader backs and tougher hides,
rireproof, and tongues that charm the devil oft'.
I like to take all good men at their word.
Without a scruple or suspicion. Thought
Is uphill work : many its paths, few smooth ;
Let others trudge ^em while we two sit still . .
Sit still we may, but not sit quite so grave.
I must not let you look at me demurely
On such a day as this. My lord last year
Admitted, as all other lords are wont.
His contadini, married and unmarried.
To dance upon the terrace with the great.
Will he to-night?
BEATRICE.
I hope he may.
MARGARITA.
The great are absent.
Why hope it ?
BEATRICE,
Yet without the great
The lowly may be happy, at small cost.
Good-morrolo brightens the whole day to them.
Good-night brings early rest and hopeful dreams
A friendly word, a gentle look, is more
From one above than twenty truer ones
From tliose who merit best the peasant's love.
MARGARITA.
Whimsical girl ! whimsical more than ever !
I have seen tears fall on this dimpled hand
When it had graspt the sunburnt hairy one,
And would not let it go, altho I chided ;
I have seen you stand a-tip-toe to return
The kiss imprinted on it, when the face
Was decently averted, whether man's
Or woman's ; for the Count had been enraged.
502- THE LAST FEUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
BEATRICE.
Stern he may be ; but cruel no, not that.
MARGARITA.
Propriety ! maintain propriety !
Minor transgressions every one forgives.
We must not let the humble spring too liigh.
BEATRICE.
Nor sink too low. God gave us hearts for theirs
To rest upon, and formed them not of stone.
MARGARITA.
This now, this brings me back again. Come, talk
Rationally with me . . In this afternoon
My lord your father, as you know, returns.
BEATRICE.
Happier I may be ; not much happier :
Toy when he saw me last, now some months since.
He took me on his knee, then pusht me off.
Suddenly, strangely ; stampt, and left the room.
liARG-ARITA.
Is tliis worth crying for ?
BEATRICE.
I think it is.
MARGARITA.
He may have thought of somebody at Eome
As pretty in his eyes, and not unlike.
BEATRICE.
Should he not love me more then for her sake ?
MARGARITA,
Men are odd creatures ; what they should they don't.
And what they should not, sure enough, they do.
How would you Like a stepmother ?
BEATRICE.
If young
I should so like her ! We would play together
All day, all night.
FIVE SCENES. 503
MARGARITA.
Simpleton !
BEATRICE.
We would toss
Eoses in summer, daffodUs in spring,
Into each other's faces : if they struck
The eyes, O then what kisses ! wliat protests
We were not hurt ! The saints would all forgive.
I know the names of many good to us
Young girls, and mindful they were girls themselves.
MARGARITA.
What fancy strikes you now ?
BEATRICE.
One strange and wild.
Some say my mother lives. It can not be ;
I have not seen her many many days,
A year almost.
MARGARITA.
Stejomotlier, you should say.
BEATRICE.
Stepmother ! what can that be else tlian mother ?
She loved me, and wept over me. She rests,
(I trust) with God. Another may console me.
If she prevail with Him to send another.
My own, who waved me in her arms to sleep.
Could not have loved me better than the last.
When did she die ? and where ? Not here, we know ;
No funeral was here ; no sadder looks
Than usual in the poor good villagers . .
Tell me : it happen' d while I was away ?
MARGARITA.
Useless to ask for what we cannot know.
And what, if we could know it, might do harm.
Nobody here dares stir where the Count's feet
Move softly, nobody his steps espy.
BEATRICE.
How prudent and how gentle the reproof !
But . . could I hear my mother were alive !
50 i THE LAST FEUIT OPP AN OLD TREE,
MARGARITA.
Your brothers^ both are livings tho afar.
She may be too^ and nearer.*
BEATRICE.
Grant it. Heaven !
"Was it not wicked then to think of joy
With one who soon might take her vacant pLace ;
To think of smiles and games where tears were slied.
Perhaps for me too, since mine also fell ?
! it was wicked. Mother ! pray for me !-
Both mothers ! pray for me ! Let not my grief
Disturb your bhss ! bear up my prayer on youi's !
MARGARITA.
Make me not dismal. Prayers are excellent
In the right place. Seven are the sacraments.
And of all seven, marriage is the best :
This lies before you ; some are past, some wait.
Let us return to thoughts far pleasanter ;
1 do not mean of saiuts and patronesses . .
Another, and no saint, but a mama.
Might wish you married ; sure your father would.
BEATRICE.
If ever I should marry . . but I feel
I never shall . . so let me say no more.
MARGARITA.
Were my ears open to catch wind and cold
Like this, my Lady Beatrice ? Speak ;
Say something ; to the purpose, if you can.
But something.
BEATRICE.
Should one love me, may that one
Be better, wiser, older !
MARGARITA.
Hush ! hush ! hush !
Wiser, and no harm done. Older ! God's peace !
Well, certainly sixteen is somewhat young
• She lived imprisoned. The whole family were kept separated.
FIVE SCENES. 505
Por bridegroom . . but no help for it, no harm,
Past all eudurauce.
BEATRICE.
I may hope to live
A few years longer ; and should Heaven bestow
One many older yet, who truly loves,
He will love wisely : he will see in me
Much to correct with calmer eyes than mine.
MARGARITA.
Aye ; some old creature. He would find out faults.
Or make them for you. Never let young blood
Be frozen, or (Madonna !) it will burst
With such a crack as never shepherd heard
In early spring o'er tarn on Appennine.
BEATRICE.
We will not talk about what will not be.
MARGARITA.
Hark ! Was not that the bugle ? There again !
Haste, haste upstairs . . dress yourseK handsomely . .
The Count is coming.
BEATRICE,
I will dress myself
To please him ; but with arms about his neck
First crave his blessing. Loose me; let me run.
SCENE III.
Count, Steward, Peasants, Beatrice.
COUNT.
They might do something better, I should think.
Than sing o' Sundays. I am quite dog-tired
With this hard ride.
STEWARD.
Indeed, my lord, you seem.
Despite of youth as ever on your side.
Wearied and iU at ease. The ride is long :
Strong as they are, alert as are the grooms.
The horses must have suffered tliis hot day.
506 THE LAST FllUIT OFF AN OLD TEEE.
COUNT.
My horses are lialf-dead as well as I :
Bravely they mounted the last hill, however.
At sight of stable : all that was not smoke
Was froth ; the bits had burnt your hand to touch.
STEWARD.
Too weak to battle with the flies, outstretcht
Lies every groom, his hat upon his face.
In the thin shade dropt from the grangers eaves.
COUNT.
Swilled with unwaterM wine.
STEWARD.
No time or heart
Had they to lift the bucket from the well.
COUNT.
I have a mind to whip them up again.
Their liveries look already like the litter.
The silver tarnisht, and the scarlet dim
As the last musty medlar of the year.
What can those idlers yonder want of me ?
What do they here ?
STEWARD.
My gentle lord, permit
Those who have laboured all the week apart,
To meet upon the blessedest of days
After due service ; to inquire how fares
The sick at home ; to slip the thin brass coin
Into the creviced box their priest shakes round.
That the soul suffer not for lack of mass.
What other day for distant friends to hear
The weal or woe that swells the breast with joy
Or sinks with grief? In either case, it pours
Its fulness forth before His awful tlirone
Whose will they are.
COUNT.
No preaching, sir, for me.
A mass, and welcome . . twice or thrice a-year . .
The Church requires it : what the Chui'ch requires
I do . . or pay for what is left undone.
FIVE SCENES. 507
[Tuning of instruments is heard.
Crack me those strings ! stop me that fellow^s breath
Who blows his fife so fitfully ! To hear
Those chords and canes^ sure were enough without
What they call tuning : that is worst of all . . .
STEWAED.
Most gracious Signor Conte ! it may please
My Lady Beatrice.
COUNT.
Let the fools
Tickle their strings^ and twdst their lips. Set on !
[steward gives a sign, peasants chant.
Can any be both great and gay ?
Then may our lord be all his life :
We halve it with him this one day.
Who bring the lute to wed the fife.
We wish no feast : above our heads
Swell the rich clusters of the vine :
No lamps wish we : behold, there spreads
Her robe of stars the jessamine.
We have not many songs to sing,
And those we have are sadly dull ;
The livelier all were made for spring,
When hopes are fresh and hearts are full.
We must not mind the cruel tale
Old rhymers from old books relate.
About the blood on nightingale,
Who comes each year and sings her fate.
She now is gone ; but happier love
Attends the bird that yet remains ;
Attends the chaste, the constant dove,
And soothes (if pains she know) her pains.
Sweet were the flowers May rear'd for June
To kiss, and you to find and cull ;
Sweeter the fruits the vintage-moon
Eipens, with gold-red radiance full.
lady ! much is yours to grant . .
Bride-cake, and ribands, rest within ! . .
A smile to rule our dance we want,
A nod to tune our violin.
To-morrow we prepare to heap
With heavy grapes the creaking wane ;
The heai'ts the last year's bride made leap,
For you this year shall leap again.
508 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
BEATRICE.
Kind friends ! my father would not lose both daughters
So near together. Some years yet must pass
Before we think about it.
COUNT.
Send them ofp.
Wliat insolence ! to mix in my concerns !
My Beatrice ! thou ^^ert ever fond
Of chattering with the peasants. Yery wrong . .
"Wliimper not ; but look up.
BEATRICE.
Could it be wrong ?
COUNT.
Early in childhood very wrong ^twere not,
And more another^s fault than thine, perhaps . .
Nay, bs not vext, my prettiest, overmuch.
BEATRICE.
Kind father ! tliis is, yes, indeed, too kind.
COUNT {to STEWARD.)
I would not have them look upon me now,
Or they might think me weak. They may have heard
The idle name I called her. Spake I loud ?
Did they ; dost thou imagine ? Plagues upon ^em !
STEWARD.
All call her so.
COUNT.
How dare they ?
STEWARD.
They all love her ;
Fathers the most of all, I do believe.
COUNT.
Send them away. Off with them all. Begone !
Off with you !
(To the STEWARD.)
Give the fools some bread and wine,
And send them back.
BEATRICE.
Dear father ! let them stay
A little while. They may do more than I
PIVE SCENES. 509
In cheering you ! Tliey may remind you^ sir^
Of last year's festival. Look now, and sec
If you miss any.
COUNT.
Oxen, horses, mules.
We count.
BEATRICE.
Dear creatures ! yes.
COUNT.
Enough, if those.
BEATRICE.
Here only two are wanting, girls I mean.
Beppina you permitted to be married.
And poor Cristina wastes away . .
COUNT.
Por love.
No doubt . . Let her too go.
BEATRICE.
Alas ! alas !
She will be gone, and soon. She caught the fever
From her old mother.
COUNT.
Of what name ?
BEATRICE-
Her own.
The lame Cristina, who brought strawberries
Prom the hill-side, when sister and myself
Lay, as she lies, in fever.
COUNT.
Was it she
Who made the butter ?
BEATRICE.
0, how glad I am
You recollect her !
COUNT.
If lier girl is sick
She can not make it : if she could, for me
No butter from a house where folks are sick.
510 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
Eeturn we^ Beatrice ; I am tired ;
I have not slept since dinner.
BEATRICE.
Father dear !
May sleep refresh you more than dinner did.
And not be sent away from you so soon !
SCENE IV.
Beatrice and the Pope.
CLEMENT.
Who art thou ? and what art thou ?
BEATRICE.
What I am
I dare not utter, holy father ! Tears
The bitterest ever shed from sleepless eye
Announce me : none so wretched ! none so lost !
CLEMENT.
Thy name ?
BEATRICE.
'Tis Beatrice.
CLEMENT.
Thy surname ?
Was
BEATRICE.
CLEMENT.
Speak, thou sobbing fool ! Then speak will I.
Cenci. No doubt thou gladly wouldst forget
Thy father's name ; it burns into thy soul ;
Thou canst not shake it off, thou canst not quench it.
Thou, ere thou camest hither, didst forget
Thou wert liis child. What wouldst thou urge thereon ?
BEATRICE.
Never did I forget he was my father ;
He did forget . . forget . . I was his child.
FIVE SCENES. 511
CLEMENT.
Passionate tears drop from unholy lids
More often than from holy. The best men
May chide their children ; may dislike ; may hate . . .
BEATRICE.
Oh^ had he hated me !
CLEMENT.
Perverse ! perverse !
Bold interrupter of my speech, vouchsafed
To lead thee from the wandering of thy thoughts.
I would have said, where daughters are untoward.
Chiefly where they are wanton, sires may hate.
BEATRICE.
Urge not that fault, holy father ! spare it !
CLEMENT.
I tliouglit so. I iv'ill spare it. There are more.
Not only hast thou with that little hand
Transfixt the breast which cherisht thee . . Ay, shriek !
Stamp, spread the floor as ^twere with yellow straw . .
Here are no youths to gather that fine gold.
And treasure it, and gloat on it unseen.
Not only hast thou done so, but hast torn
Thy ancient house from its foundation. Crime,
Like hghtning, at one stroke pierces the roof
And penetrates the obscurest stone below.
Ay, writhe, groan, beat thy bosom, dim the light
Of those vain ringlets with those tears as vain ;
All, all, shall not avail thee.
BEATRICE.
Naught avail' d
They all, nor ever can avail me now.
CLEMENT.
I said it. But thy house must suffer shame,
Which timely full confession may avert.
BEATRICE.
Alas ! alas ! no, holy father ! no,
But darken it for ever. Save a branch
512 THE LAST PRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE.
rrom the sad rot that eats into it ; bid
My sister live, my brother be absolved.
CLEMENT.
Thou fearest an impeachment of thy guilt
Trom kindred tongues.
BEATRICE.
Fear is too weak to reach
An agony like mine. I once did fear.
And when that fear was over, courage came
With heavenly power ; courage that show'd the tomb.
But not dishonour opening it.
CLEMENT.
Again ?
Maniac ! again ? "Well shriekest thou disJionor,
And turnest (what none ever did before)
Thy back on me. Shame, shame, thou insolent !
I have no patience with a wench so wild.
So wicked . . setting tliis last scorn aside . .
Enough that I have heard thee ; to forgive
Were impious.
BEATRICE.
Yet the Son of God besought
The Eather to forgive liis murderers.
CLEMENT.
Barest thou utter the word Father, wretch ?
BEATRICE.
Yes, yes, tJiat Father ; and that Father hears :
TJiat Father knows my innocence.
CLEMENT.
He knows it.
And I, and all the city. Wliat then brought thee
Before this footstool, at our throne of grace ?
For pardon ? pardon of a parricide ?
And opens not the earth beneath thy feet !
BEATRICE.
The earth, holy Father ! openM not
Beneath the cross, beneath man's impious feet.
When God's own Son was murder'd.
FIVE SCENES. 513
CLEMENT.
And thy tongue
Can speak of murder ?
BEATRICE.
Could it were I guilty ?
Ah ! for that death none grieves so bitterly
As I do. Gone ! gone ! O unhappy man.
With all his sins upon his head . . the last,
Worst, unrepented.
CLEMENT.
Thou shalt have good time
Por % repentance of one worse than all . .
Parricide.
BEATRICE.
Holy father ! say not so !
It tortures me.
CLEMENT.
Worse tortures there await
Thy dainty limbs.
BEATRICE.
Worse tortures they have caused
Abeady than man's wrath can now inflict.
CLEMENT.
We shall see that, thou murderous miscreant !
BEATRICE.
Spare, holy father ! spare reproacliful words.
CLEMENT.
Audacious \ vengeance, not reproach, is mine.
Justice, God's justice, I pronounce against thee.
BEATRICE.
Ah ! be it but God's justice ! be it His,
And there is mercy ; else what soul could live ?
CLEMENT.
Audacious ! here none argues. When I speak,
I breathe God's spirit and proclaim His law.
BEATRICE.
Porgive an inadvertence in a girl
Who hath not graspt the flowers of sixteen springs,
L Ii
514 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TEEE.
Nor held sweet converse with the riper age
Of girls two fingers higher^ nor learnt the ways
Of courtly life ; but ever bent the head
O^er breviary^ and closed tlie gayer leaves
Left open to engage her, which had taught
Perhaps some better customs than appeared.
CLEMENT.
{Fondering abstractedly/. ) An inadvertence peradventure yea
Never a parricide . . Peace ! peace ! Within
These walls unseemly are such ecstacies.
BEATRICE.
Pity me, blessed Virgin ! pity me !
There is none other careth for my grief,
Thou carest for all sorrowers. Hear me, hear me.
In my last anguish.
CLEMENT.
This is not thy last.
Halters and pulleys may uplift those arms
Again, which thou upliftest impiously
To the most blessed. Hope from her is none
Before confession of thy heinous crime.
I, I myself will hear it (out of grace
To that nobility thy father bore)
And may remit, in part, the penalty.
Confess, thou obstinate !
BEATRICE,
I will not bear
Palse witness . . no, not even against myself . .
Por God will also hear it.
CLEMENT.
Get thee gone.
Parricide ! hie thee from my sight. The rack
Awaits thee.
BEATRICE.
Holy father ! I have borne
That rack already which tears filial love
Prom love parental. Is there worse behind ?
CLEMENT.
Questiouest thou God's image upon earth ?
FIVE SCENES. 515
BEATRICE.
Sire ! I have question'd God himself, and askt
How long shall innocence remain unheard ?
CLEMENT.
Say thou art guilty, and thy bonds are loose.
BEATRICE.
Oh, holy father ! guilty I am not.
CLEMENT.
Die in thy sin then . . unrepentant, curst !
BEATRICE.
My sins are washt away, not by the blood
Of him whose name to utter were opprobrious.
But by His blood who gives you power to rule
And me to suffer.
God ! Thy will be done !
SCENE V.
CITIZENS at a didance from the scaffuld.
CITIZEN.
Wouldst thou not rather look than talk, good man ?
OLD MAN.
I can talk yet, my sight grows somewhat dim ;
Beside, ^tis said that they who see an angel
Live not long after. Surely there stands one
In purest white, immovable as heaven.
Her hair resplendent, not with stars, but suns . .
I would, but dare not . . yes, once more must gaze.
ANOTHER CITIZEN.
Do they still torture her ? At times she quakes.
While they seem only speaking very mildly.
ANOTHER.
Ay, they speak mildly when they torture most.
ANOTHER.
I catch no pulley near, no red-hot iron.
THE NEXT.
The pulley may have crackt, the iron cool'd.
And they alone who suffer it must see it.
516 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE*.
WOMAN.
How pale slie looks !
ANOTHER.
She always did look pale.
They tell me ; all the saints^ and all the good.
And all the tender-hearted, have lookt pale.
Upon the Mount of Olives was there one
Of dawn-red hue even before that day ?
Among the mourners under Calvary
Was there a cheek the rose had rested on ?
OLD WOMAN.
Is she alive or dead ? Oh ! I would give
Half my day^s meal to be as tall as you.
And see her over all those heads. Speak, tell me.
ANOTHER.
She looks so pale, so calm, she may be dead.
THIRD.
But can the dead sit upright ? Tell me that.
ANOTHER.
When they are bound, ankles and throat, they may.
Nardi, who stole the Virgin's rosary
Prom her own fingers, stood right up, although
Eibs were alone of all his bones unbroken.
But every muscle making their amends.
Doubled in size, and swell'd like snakes about them.
WOMAN.
To rob the Yirgin of her rosary !
O what a thief was he !
ANOTHER WOMAN.
Those were true snakes
That lookt like muscles coiling round his bones.
And whence they came, at dead of night, we know.
Ave Maria ! were 1 rich as thou,
Thou shouldst not long look for thy rosary.
FOURTH {to a citizen).
Were there blood-spots about her ? couldst thou spy ?
CITIZEN.
There were blood spots about the blessed cross ;
Yea I but whose were they ? Woe betide the spiUers !
PIVE SCENES. 517
THIRD WOMAN.
the good man ! lie thinks upon the cross !
Then thou couldst see her ?
CITIZEN.
I couhl see no more
Than marble statue sees ; my eyes were stiff.
Prythee now let them drop their heaviness
Upon this waste, this scorching waste, of woe ;
Nor stop them, woman, with tliat idle tongue.
THIRD WOMAiT.
the rude man !
FOURTH WOMAN.
His huge arms scatter us.
Thick as we stand, beating that brawny breast.
Murrain upon those priests !
CITIZEN.
They stood around.
As these do here.
FOURTH WOMAN.
Murrain on these, on all
Tapsters of children's blood.
THIRD WOMAN.
Save good priest Aldi;
He lets me off for little week by week.
O what a wail ! Could it be hers ? It fills
The streets, it overflows the city walls,
The churches and their altars, with one wave.
Huge as the Red Sea heavM upon the host
Of that proud king . . who was he ? . . Now again
What silence !
ANOTHER.
Break it not. Let man's tears fall.
Reverently let them fall, never in shame.
On woman's blood : were yon feet still which stamp,
Erom agony of grief and anger, mine
In this dread pause were heard to splash the stones.
Could not, Christ ! thy saving blood save hers ?
[Outcries before the scaffold : bell.
Are those shrieks hers?
518 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TEEE.
ANOTHER CITIZEN.
Which slirieksj among ten thousand?
Pool ! when all daughters, mothers, fathers, cry
In this whole piazza, thinkest thou a few
Expiring slirieks and sobs can come distinct ?
ANOTHER.
Those must be . . hers must those be.
ANOTHER.
So far off,
She could not make us hear.
ANOTHER.
Yet, Heaven is farther,
And hears her, the sweet innocent ! Again !
Oh ! that sound must have been the scourge that smote her.
ANOTHER WOMAN.
Christ ! crucified Eedeemer ! hear.
Hear that long cry lessening for lack of breath !
ANOTHER.
The very priests, the very cardinals.
Are hardly mute.
CITIZEN.
They curse the cruelty.
Thro fear, not thro compunction. that each
Partook her sufferings. One poor girl hath borne
More than enough to crack the joints of all,
Cased as they are in fatness. But their day
May come, even upon earth.
ANOTHER CITIZEN.
One day will come.
Not upon earth . . one day for them and her !
WOMAN.
Poor soul ! her prayers will save them.
ANOTHER WOMAN.
God is just :
His mercy is but for the merciful.
Hush ! Holy Virgin ! the poor child is dead !
ANOTHER WOMAN.
Is that the passing bell ?
FIVE SCENES. 519
ANOTHER WOMAN.
Down on your knees
AH of you !
ANOTHER WOMAN.
What a silence ! every stroke
Clear as within the belfry : sighs are heard
Half a street off. Now there is voice for prayer ;
And hundreds pray who never pra/d before . .
ANOTHER WOMAN.
Tor they have children. Shower^ ye saints above.
Blessings upon her ! Comfort her among you !
MANY CRY.
Blessings upon her!
CITIZEN.
Curses !
ANOTHER.
Upon whom ?
CITIZEN.
Him who condemned her.
FOURTH CITIZEN.
'Twas the holy father.
THIRD CITIZEN.
Were it the devil I would curse the devil.
FOURTH CITIZEN.
The stroke that fell on her may fall on you.
THIRD CITIZEN.
Speed it ! I should be saved in following her ;
Even I might kiss those beauteous feet and weep . .
Alas ! . . on that rackt corse, in Paradise.
SBIRRO.
Silence ! insensate ! reprobate ! Come out ;
Thy words, thou knowest, violate God's image
Here upon earth.
THIRD CITIZEN.
My words ? Your deeds, say rather.
Jjelioid it. \_Tlie corpse is carried hij.
Eest, daughter ! rest in peace !
520 THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TEEE.
ANOTHEl
Spake she no words at all ?
ANOTHER CITIZEN.
ANOTHER.
These words she spake.
Caught by the nearest, then the farthest off.
And striking every breast throughout the square,
Rapid as lightning, withering too Hke that.
ANOTHER.
Well, well . . the words ?
REPLY.
Hast thou alone not heard ?
Hear now then. No confession ; not a breath.
Poor sinful soul !
OLD ■WOMAN.
CITIZEN.
They urged : she only said . .
And scarcely one or two could hear the sound.
It was so feeble . . for her heart was broken
Worse than her limbs . .
FORMER CITIZEN.
What said she?
LAST CITIZEN.
Wouldst thou torture
Worse than yon paid ones ?
FORMER CITIZEN.
Hold thy peace ! The two
Confessors urged her on each side to speak
While time was left her, and wliile God might hear.
And leave the rest to them. She thus rephed . .
' My father's honor will'd my father's death :
He could not live ; no, nor could I. Now strike.
Strike, and let cpiestioning's worse torture cease.'
The vizor'd struck : a dull sound shook the block :
The head roll'd from it. Mercy on her soul !
Men have been brave, but women have been braver. ?
BEADBUEY AND EVAUS, PEINTERS, WHITEFRIAES.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
Los Angeles
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