L A N D O I
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
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IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS
BY WALTF.R SAVAGE LANDOR
WITH BIBLIOGRAPHICAL AND EX-
PLANATORY NOTES BY CHARI
CRUMP
.
IN SIX VOLUMES
FOURTH VOLUMi:
LONDON PRINTED FOR J. M. DENT & CO.,
AND PUBLISHED BY THEM AT ALDINE
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TABLE OF CONTENTS.
DIALOGUES OF LITERARY MEN.
IX. DAVID HUME AND JOHN HOME . . pp. 9-19
X. ALFIEJU AND SALOMON THE FLORENTINE
JEW ......
XI. ROUSSEAU AND MALFSHERBES
XII. JOSEPH SCALIGER AND MoNTAJCNE .
XIII. BOCCACCIO AND PETRARCA
XIV. CHAUCER, BOCCACCIO, AND PETRARCA ,
XV. BARROW AND NEWTON.
XVI. WALTON, COTTON, AND OLDWAYS .
XVII. MACHIA?ELU AND MICHEL- ANCELO
BUONARROTI . . '74-'93
XVIII. SOUTHEV AND LANDOR . . 193-146
SoUTHBY AND LANDOR ( ttCO*d COUVfrjdtion) 246-302
XIX. ANDREW MARVEL AND BISHOP PARKFR . 302-352
XX. STEELR AND ADWSON .... 35*'355
XXI. LA FONTAINE AND DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULT 356-373
XXII. MELANCTHON AND CALVIN . . . 374"3 8 4
XXIII. GAULEO, MILTON, AND A DOMINICAN . 384-393
XXIV. ESSEX AMD SPENSER . . . 393-4<*
XXV. ARCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER LANDOR 401-432
DIALOGUES OF LITERARY MEN.
DIALOGUES OF LITERARY MEN
IX. DAVID HUME AND JOHN HOME.*
Hume. We Scotchmen, sir, are somewhat proud of our fa mi IK .
and relationships ; this is however a nationality which perhaps I
should not have detected in myself, if I had not been favored
with the flattering present of your tragedy. Our names, as often
happens, are spelled differently ; but I yielded with no reluctance
to the persuasion that we are, and not very distantly, of the same
stock.
Home. I hope, sir, our mountains will detain you among them
some time, and I presume to promise you that you will find in
Edinburgh a society as polished and literate as in Paris.
Hume. As literate I can easily believe, my cousin, and per-
f ' The date of thU Conversation must have been about the sumn
1766, when Hume went to live in Edinburgh aftejrbis Mttirn from France.
The Conversation read* a* though Landor nad supposed that Hume and
Home had not met before. But in fact they had been for some time
acquainted. Hume dedicated the 1758 edition of his "Essays and
Treatise*" to Home. Both men considered themselves as belonging
to the same " name," and in his will Hume pleasantly alludes
difference of spelling, as one of the two points on which alone the friend*
differed ; the other was the precedence in merit of port or claret, see p.
10 of the - Biography of Hume," which Dr Birkbcck Hill has concealed
in his note* to "The Letter* of David Hume " (Clarendon Press, iSSS).
The discussion in the Conversation on the borderland between Religion
and Morality is a theme often referred to in Hume's essays. The particu-
lar instance of a brother and sister innocently wedded may have been de-
rived from the e**ay entitled A Dialogue ; " the other instance may
have been taken from a similar discussion in BoswelTs "Johnson." iii. p.
347-8 (Clarendon Press, 1887). (imag. Convert., H.. 1824. ii.. 1816.
1846. Works, iv., 1876.)!
io Imaginary Conversations.
haps as polished, if you reason upon the ingredients of polish ; but
there is certainly much more amenity and urbanity at Paris than any-
where else in the world, and people there are less likely to give and
take offence. All topics may be discussed without arrogance and
superciliousness : an atheist would see you worship a stool or light
a candle at noon without a sneer at you ; and a bishop, if you
were well-dressed and perfumed, would argue with you calmly
and serenely, though you doubted the whole Athanasian creed.
Home. So much the worse : God forbid we should ever ex-
perience this lukewarmness in Scotland !
Hume. God, it appears, has forbidden it ; for which reason,
to show my obedience and submission, I live as much as possible
in France, where at present God has forbidden no such thing.
Home. Religion, my dear sir, can alone make men happy and
keep them so.
Hume. Nothing is better calculated to make men happy than
religion, if you will allow them to manage it according to their
minds ; in which case the strong men hunt down others until they
can fold them, entrap them, or noose them. Here, however, let
the discussion terminate. Both of us have been in a cherry orchard,
and have observed the advantages of the jacket, hat, and rattle.
Home. Our reformed religion does not authorize any line of
conduct diverging from right reason : we are commanded by it to
speak the truth to all men.
Hume. Are you likewise commanded to hear it from all
men?
Hornet Yes, let it only be proved to be truth.
Hume. I doubt the observance : you will not even let the fact
be proved ; you resist the attempt ; you blockade the preliminaries.
Religion, as you practise it in Scotland, in some cases is opposite
to reason and subversive of happiness.
Home. In what instance ?
Hume. If you had a brother whose wife was unfaithful to
him without his suspicion ; if he lived with her happily ; if he
had children by her ; if others of which he was fond could be
proved by you, and you only, not to be his, what would you
do?
Home. Oh the harlot ! we have none such here, excepting the
wife indeed (as we hear she is) of a little lame blear-eyed lieutenant,
Da\id Hume and John lloim>. i I
brought with him from Sicily, and bearing an Etna of her own
about her, and truly no quiescent or intermittent one, which
Mungo Murray (the apprentice of Hector Abercrombie) tells roe
has engulk-d halt the disso lutes in the parish. Of 2 the married
mm who visited her, there was ne\er one whose boot did not
pinch him soon after, or the weather was no weather for corns
and rheumatisms, or he must e'en go to Glasgow to look after a
bad debt, the times being too ticklish to bear losses. I run into
this discourse, not fearing that another philosopher will, like Em-
pedocles, precipitate himself into the crater, but merely to warn
you against the husband, whose intrepidity on entering the houses
of strangers has caught many acute and wary folks. After the
first compliments, he will lament to you that elegant and solid
literature is more neglected in our days than it ever was. He
will entreat you to recommend him to your bookseller ; his own
having been too much enriched by him had grown insolent, hi,
desirable that it should be one who could advance three or four
guineas : not that he cares about the money, but that it is always
best to have a check upon these people. You smile : he has pro-
bably joined you in the street already, and found his way into
your study, and requested of you by tbf bye a trifling loan, as
being the only person in the world with whom he could take such
a liberty.
Hume. You seem to forget that I am but just arrived, and
never knew htm.
Home. That is no impediment : on the contrary, it is a rea-
son the more. A new face is as inviting to him as to the mos-
quitoes in America. If you lend him a guinea to be rid of him,
he will declare the next day that he borrowed it at your own
request, and that he returned it the same evening.
Hume. Such men perhaps may have their reasons for being
here ; but the woman must be, as people say, like a fish out of
water. Again* to the question. Come now, if you had a
brother, I was supposing, whose wife
[* Prom " Of " to " rheumatism* " (3 lines) added in ind ed. From
" or " to "loMe*"(i lines) added in trded. From " 1 " to wmter " (15
lines) added in ind ed.]
[ J First ed. reads : " parish. But if you had such a one. Home" Ac.]
1 2 Imaginary Conversations.
Home. Out upon her ! should my brother cohabit with her ?
Should my nephews be defrauded of their patrimony by bastards ?
Hume. You would then destroy his happiness, and his child-
ren's ; for, supposing that you preserved to them a scanty portion
more of fortune (which you could not do), still the shame they
would feel from their mother's infamy would much outweigh it.
Home. I do not see clearly that this is a question of religion.
Hume. All the momentous actions of religious men are refer-
able to their religion, more or less nearly ; all the social duties,
and surely these are implicated here, are connected with it. Sup-
pose again that you knew a brother and sister, who, born in
different countries, met at last, ignorant of their affinity, and
married.
Home. Poor, blind, sinful creatures ! God be merciful to
them!
Hume. I join you heartily in the prayer, and would only add
to it, Man be merciful to them also ! Imagine them to have lived
together ten years, to have a numerous and happy family, to come
and reside in your parish, and the attestation of their prior relation-
ship to be made indubitable to you by some document which alone
could establish and record it : what would you do ?
Home. I would snap asunder the chain that the devil had en-
/ snared them in, even if he stood before me ; I would implore God
to pardon them, and to survey with an eye of mercy their un-
offending bairns.
Hume. And would not you be disposed to behold them with
an eye of the same materials ?
Home. Could I leave them in mortal sin, a prey to the en-
snarer of souls ? No, I would rush between them as with a
flaming sword ; I would rescue them by God's help from per*
dition.
Hume. What misery and consternation would this rescue
bring with it !
Home. They would call upon the hills to cover them, to
crush and extinguish their shame.
Hume. Those who had lived together in love and innocence
and felicity ? A word spoken to them by their pastor brings
them into irremediable guilt and anguish. And you would do
this ?
David Hume aiul John Home. i ;,
Home. The laws of God arc above all other l.ius : hi^ ways
.scruuble : thick darkness covers his throne.
M. My cousin, you who have written so elegant a nil
' pathetic a tragedy cannot but have read the best-contrived one in
tence, the (Edifnu of Sophocles.
Home. It has wrung my heart ; it has deluged my eyes with
weeping.
Hun. \\ would you rather do, cause and excite those
sufferings, or assuage and quell them ?
Home. Am I a Scotchman or an islander of the Red Sea,
V|hat a question like this should be asked me?
H*mt. You would not then have given to CEdipus that in-
formation which drove him and Jocasta to despair ?
Home.* As a Christian and a minister of the gospel, I am
commanded to defy the devil, and to burst asunder the bonds of
Mil.
Hume. I am certain you would be greatly pained in doing it.
Home. I should never overcome the grief and anxiety so
severe a duty would cause me.
Hume. You have now proved, better than I could have done
in twenty //<*?/, that, it morality is not religion, neither is
religion morality. Either of them, to be good (and the one must
be and the other should be so), will produce good effects from
. the beginning to the end, and be followed by no remorse or
\ repentance.
It * would be presumptuous in me to quote the Bible to you,
who are so much more conversant in it ; yet I cannot refrain
from repeating, for my own satisfaction, the beautiful sentence
\ on holiness : that M ail her ways are pleasantness, and all her
\ paths are peace." It says, not one or two paths, but all : for
' vice hath one or two passably pleasant in the season, if we could
forget that, when we would return, the road is difficult to find,
and must be picked out in the dark. Imagine anything in the
' semblance of a duty attended by regret and sorrow, and be
\ assured that holiness hat no concern in it. Admonition, it is
true, is sometimes of such a nature, from that of the irregularity it
would correct, as to occasion a sigh or a Mush to him who gives
[ Pint ed. read* : * //*-. To him no. At," ftc.l
[ Prom It " to dkct " (19 line*) added in ind ed.]
14 Imaginary Conversations.
it : in this case, the sensation so manifested adds weight to the
reproof and indemnifies the reprover. He is happy to have done
what from generosity and tenderness of heart he was sorry and
slow to do ; and the person in whose behalf he acted must
be degraded beneath the dignity of manhood, if he feels less for
himself than another has felt for him. The regret is not at the
performance of his duty, but at the failure of its effect.
To produce as much happiness as we can, and to prevent as
much misery, is the proper aim and end of true morality and
true religion. Only give things their right direction : do but
place and train them well, and there is room to move easily and
pleasantly in the midst of them.
Home. What ! in the midst of vice and wickedness ? And
must we place and train those ?
P Hume. There was a time when what is wine was not wine,
when what is vinegar was not vinegar, when what is corruption
was not corruption. That which would turn into vice may
not only not turn into it, but may, by discreet and attentive
management, become the ground- work of virtue. A little watch-
fulness over ourselves will save us a great deal of watchfulness
over others, and will permit the kindliest of religions to drop her
inconvenient and unseemly talk of enmity and strife, cuirasses and
breastplates, battles and exterminations.
Home. These carnal terms are frequent in the books of the
Old Testament.
Hume. Because the books of the Old Testament were written
when the world was much more barbarous and ferocious than it
is at present ; and legislators must accommodate their language to
the customs and manners of the country.
Home. Apparently you would rather abolish the forcible
expressions of our pious reformers, than the abominations at
which their souls revolted. I am afraid you would hesitate
as little to demolish kirks as convents, to drive out ministers
as monks.
Hume. I would let ministers and their kirks alone. I would
abolish monasteries, but gradually and humanely ; and not until
I had discovered how and where the studious and pious could
[ 6 First ed. reads: "direction ; there is room. Do but train and place
them well. Home. What wickedness. Hume." &c.]
D.iviJ lliinu' aiul John Homr. 15
spend their time better. I hold religion in tin- li;.',ht of .1 medal
M has contracted rust from ages. This rust seems to have
reserver for many centuries, but after some few more
will certainly be its consumer, and leave no vestige of effigy or
superscription behind : it should be detached carefully and patiently,
not ignorantly and rudely scoured off. Happiness may be taken
away from many with the design of communicating it to more :
but that which is a grateful and refreshing odor in a !
space would be none whatever in a larger ; that which is com-
fortable warmth to the domestic circle would not awaken the
chiq>ing of a cricket, or stimulate the flight of a butterfly, in
the forest ; that which satisfies a hundred poor monks would, if
thrown open to society at large, contribute not an atom to its
benefit and emolument. Placid tempers, regulated habitudes,
consolatory visitations, are suppressed and destroyed, and nothing
rises from their ruins. Better let the cell be standing, than level
it only for the thorn and net-
Home. What good do these idlers with their cords and
u .-.Ilets, or, if you please, with their regularities?
Hume. These have their value, at least to the possessor and
the few about him. Ask rather, what is the worth of his abode
to the prince or to the public ? Who is the wiser for his cowl,
the wanner for his frock, the more contented for his cloister,
when they are taken from him ? Monks, it is true, are only as
stars that shine upon the desert ; but tell me, I beseech you, who
caused such a desert in the moral world, and who rendered so
faint a light, in some of its periods, a blessing ? Ignorant rulers,
must be the answer, and inhuman laws. They should cease to
exist some time before their antidotes, however ill-compounded,
are cast away.
If we had lived seven or eight centuries ago, John Home
would probably have been saying Mass at the altar, and David
Hume, fatter and lazier, would have been pursuing his theological
studies in the convent. We are so much the creatures of times
and seasons, so modified and fashioned by them, that the very
plants upon the wall, if they were as sensible as some suppose
them to be, would laugh at us.
fiomf. Fantastic forms and ceremonies are rather what the
philosopher will reprehend. Strip away these, reduce things
1 6 Imaginary Conversations.
to their primitive state of purity and holiness, and nothing
can alter or shake us, clinging, as we should, to the anchor
of faith.
Hume. People clung to it long ago ; but many lost their
grasp, benumbed by holding too tightly. The Church of Scot-
land brings close together the objects of veneration and abhor-
rence. The evil principle, or devil, was, in my opinion, hardly
worth the expense of his voyage from Persia ; but, since you
have him, you seem resolved to treat him nobly, hating him,
defying him, and fearing him nevertheless. I would not, how-
ever, place him so very near the Creator, let his pretensions,
from custom and precedent, be what they may.
Home. He is always marring the fair works of our Heavenly
Father : in this labor is his only proximity.
Hume. You represent him as spurring men on to wicked-
ness, from no other motive than the pleasure he experiences in
rendering them miserable.
Home. He has no other, excepting his inveterate spite and
malice against God ; from which indeed, to speak more properly,
this desire originates.
Hume. Has he lost his wits, as well as his station, that
he fancies he can render God unhappy by being spiteful and
malicious ? You wrong him greatly ; but you wrong God more.
For in all Satan's attempts to seduce men into wickedness, he
leaves every one his free will either to resist or yield ; but the
Heavenly Father, as you would represent him, predestines the
/greater part of mankind to everlasting pains and torments, ante-
/ cedently to corruption or temptation. There -w-m-impiety in
Asking you which is the worst : for impiety most certainly
does not consist in setting men right on what is demonstrable
in their religion, nor in proving to them that God is greater
and better than, with all their zeal for him, they have ever
thought him.
Home. This is to confound religion with philosophy, the
source of nearly 7 every evil in conduct and of every error in ethics.
Hume. Religion is the eldest sister of Philosophy : on what-
ever subjects they may differ, it is unbecoming in either to quarrel,
and most so about their inheritance.
[ 7 First ed. reads : " of every evil and of every error."]
Da\id I hum- aiul John Honu- 17
Ami iuve you nothing, sir, to say against the |*>
.nul v.miiios of otlv : ;>s, tli.it you should assail the
institutions of your native country ? To fear God, I
suppose, thm, is lew meritorious than to build steeples, ami
embroider surplices, and compose chants, and blow the bellows
of organs.
Hume. My dear sir, it is not because God is delighted with
hymns and instruments of music, or prefers bass to tenor or
<> bass, or Handel to Giles Hallo way, that nations throng
to celebrate in their churches his power and his benefit
it is not that Inigo Jones or Christopher Wren could erect to
him a habitation more worthy of his presence than the humblest
cottage on the loneliest moor : it is that the best feelings, the
highest faculties, the greatest wealth, should be displayed and
exercised in the patrimonial palace of every family united. For
such are churches both to the rich and poor.
Home Your hand, David ! Pardon me, sir : the sentiment
carried me beyond custom ; for it recalled to me the moments of
blissful enthusiasm when I was writing my tragedy, and charmed
me the more as coming from you.
Hume. I explain the causes of things, and leave them.
Home. Go onT sir, pray go on ; for here we can walk
together. Suppose that God never heard us, never cared for us :
do those care for you or hear you whose exploits you celebrate
at public dinners, our Wallaces and Bruces : Yet are not we
thence the braver, the more generous, the more grateful ? *^
Hume. I do not see clearly how the more grateful ; but I /
would not analyze by reducing to a cinder a lofty sentiment. /
Home. Surely 8 we are grateful for the benefits our illustrious
patriots have conferred on us; and every act of gratitude is
rewarded by reproduction. Justice is often pale and melancholy ;
but Gratitude, her daughter, is constantly in the flow of spirits
and the bloom of loveliness. You call out to her when you
fancy she is passing ; you want her for your dependants, your
domestics, your friends, your children. The ancients, as you
know, habitually asked their gods and goddesses by which of
their names it was most agreeable to them to be invoked : now
let Gratitude be, what for the play of our fancy we have just
[ Prom " Surely " to " u " (i lines) added in 3 rd ed.]
IV. B
1 8 Imaginary Conversations.
imagined her, a sentient living power; I cannot think of any
name more likely to be pleasing to her than Religion. The
simplest breast often holds more reason in it than it knows of,
and more than Philosophy looks for or suspects. We almost as
frequently despise what is not despicable as we admire and rever-
ence what is. No nation in the world was ever so enlightened,
and in all parts and qualities so civilized, as the Scotch. Why
would you shake or unsettle or disturb those principles which
have rendered us peaceable and contented ?
Hume. I would not by any means.
Home. Many of your writings have evidently such a
tendency.
Hume. Those of my writings to which you refer will be
read by no nation : a few speculative men will take them ; but
none will be rendered more gloomy, more dissatisfied, or more
unsocial by them. Rarely will you find one who, five minutes
together, can fix his mind even on the surface : some new tune,
some idle project, some light thought, some impracticable wish,
will generally run, like the dazzling haze of summer on the dry
heath, betwixt them and the reader. A bagpipe will swallow
them up, a strathspey will dissipate them, or Romance with the
/death-rattle in her throat will drive them away into dark staircases
and charnel-houses.
You and I, in the course of our conversation, have been at
variance, as much as discreet and honest men ought to be : each
knows that the other thinks differently from him, yet each
esteems the other. I cannot but smile when I reflect that a few
paces, a glass of wine, a cup of tea, conciliate those whom
Wisdom would keep asunder.
Home. No wonder you scoff emphatically, as you pronounce
the word wisdom.
Hume. If men would permit their minds like their children
to associate freely together, if they would agree to meet one
another with smiles and frankness, instead of suspicion and
defiance, the common stock of intelligence and of happiness
would be centupled. Probably those two men who hate each
other most, and whose best husbandly is to sow burs and thistles
in each other's path, would, if they had ever met and conversed
familiarly, have been ardent and inseparable friends. The
Alfieri and Salomon. 19
minister who may order my book to be burned to-morrow by the
un, if I, by any accident, had been seated yesterday by his
side at dinner, might perhaps in another fortnight recommend me
to his master, fora man of such gravity and understanding as to
be worthy of being a privy councillor, and might conduct me to
the treasury-bench.
X. ALFIERI AND SALOMON THE FLORENTINE
JEV
Aljitri. Let us walk to the window, signor Salomon. And
now, instead of the silly, simpering compliments repeated at
introductions, let me assure you that you are the only man in
Florence with whom I would willingly exchange a salutation.
Salomon. I must think myself highly flattered, signor Conte,
having always heard that you are not only the greatest democrat,
but also the greatest aristocrat, in Europe.
jllftfri. These two things, however opposite, which your
smile would indicate, are not so irreconcilable as you imagine.
Let 8 us first understand the words, and then talk about them.
The democrat is he who wishes the people to have a due share
in the government, and this share if you please shall be the
principal one. The aristocrat of our days is contented with
no actual share in it ; but if a man of family is conscious of his
dignity, and resentful that another has invaded it, he may be, and
is universally, called an aristocrat. The principal difference is,
that one carries outward what the other carries inward. I am
thought an aristocrat by the Florentines for conversing with few
[ l I have failed to discover who Salomon was, or whether there was any
such person. There is no mention of him in Alfieri's autobiography.
For Alfieri, see the Conversation between Alferi and Mtkutajio, where
Landor ha* given a rather more detailed picture of a poet and aristocrat
whose life suggests the name of Byron irresistibly. It is worth noting
that in the autobiography Alfieri speaks of the sonnet of Casstani quoted
on p. 33 as a beautiful sonnet, and that he wrote a companion sonnet on
the carrying away of Ganymede in imitation of it. (Imag. Conrers., ii.,
1824. ii., 1816. Works, ii., 1846. Works, iv., 1876.)]
[* Prom " Let " to - Siena " (16 lines) added in 2nd ed.]
20 Imaginary Conversations.
people, and for changing my shirt and shaving my beard on other
days than festivals ; which the most aristocratical of them never
do, considering it, no doubt, aa an excess. I am, however, from
my soul a republican, if prudence and modesty will authorize
any man to call himself so ; and this, I trust, I have demonstrated
in the most valuable of my works, the Treatise on Tyranny and
the Dialogue with my friend at Siena. The aristocratical part of
me, if part of me it must be called, hangs loose and keeps off
insects. I see no aristocracy in the children of sharpers from
behind the counter, nor, placing the matter in the most favour-
able point of view, in the descendants of free citizens who
accepted from any vile enslaver French, Spanish, German, or
priest, or monk 3 (represented with a piece of buffoonery, like a
beehive on his head and a picklock key at his girdle) the titles
of counts and marquises. In Piedmont the matter is different :
we must either have been the rabble or their lords ; we were
military, and we retain over the populace the same rank and
spirit as our ancestors held over the soldiery. But 4 we are
as prone to slavery as they were averse and reluctant.
Under the best of princes we are children all our lives. Under
the worse, we are infinitely more degraded than the wretches
who are reduced to their servitude by war, or even by crimes ;
begging our master to take away from us the advantages of our
education, and of our strength in mind and body. Is this picture
overcharged ?
Salomon. Not with bright colors certainly.
Alfieri. What think you then if we are threatened with hell
by those who take away earth from us, and scourge and imprison
and torture us ?
Salomon. Hell is a very indifferent hospital for those who
are thrust into it with broken bones. It is hard indeed, if they
who lame you will not let you limp. Indeed I do hear, signer
Conte, that the churchmen call you an atheist and a leveller.
Alfari. So, during the plague at Milan, if a man walked
upright in the midst of it, and without a sore about him, he
was a devil or an anointer : it was a crime and a curse not to be
[ 3 First ed. reads : " monk, with a honeycomb on his head and a key,"
&c. Second ed. reads : " with a hive on his head and a key," &c.]
[ 4 From " But " to " smoother " (21 lines) added in 3rd ed.]
Alfiori and Salomon. 2 i
infected. But, signer Salomon, a |>oet never can be
nor can a gentleman be a level k-r. For my part, I would rather
walk alone in a rugged path than with the many in a smoother.
Salomon. Signor Conte, I have heard of levellers, but I
nrviT seen one : all are disposed to level down, but no-
body to level up. As for nobility, there is none in Europe
beside the Venetian. Nobility must be self-constituted and
independent : the free alone are noble ; slavery, like death, levels
all. The English comes nearest to the Venetian : they are
ndent, but want the main characteristic, the self-constituted.
You have been in England, signor Conte, and can judge of t hi- m
bettrr than I
Jtlperi. England, as you know, is governed by Pitt, the
most insidious of her demagogues, and the most hostile to aris-
tocracy. Jealous of power, and distrustful of the |>cople that
raised him to it, he enriches and attaches to him the commercial
part of the nation by the most wasteful prodigality both in finance
and war, and he loosens from the landed the chief proprietors by
raising them to the peerage. Nearly a third of the lords have
been created by him, and prove themselves devotedly his creatures. 6
This Empusa puts his ass's foot on the French, and his iron one
on the English. He possesses not the advantage possessed by
insects, which, if they see but one inch before them, stv
inch distinctly. He knows not that the machine which runs
on so briskly will fall to pieces the moment it stops. He will
indeed carry his point in debasing the aristocracy ; but he will
equally debase the people. Undivided power he will continue to
enjoy ; but, after his death, none will be able to say from any
visible proof or appearance, How glorious a people did he govern !
He will have changed its character in all ranks and conditions.
After this it is little to say that he will have exalted its rival,
who, without his interposition, would have sunk under distress
[ Note in i*t and xnd eds. reads: " All this refers to a state of things
belonging to history, but past away from us ; it being evident that no-
an be more respectable than the present English ministry. A I fieri
spoke scornfully and disdainfully : because he was generally ill received
in England ; for although he was at that time the greatest man in
Europe, he was not acknowledged or known to be so. Prom " this "
h " (i lines) added in ind ed.1
[ From " He " to " stops " (i lines) added in snd ed.]
22 Imaginary Conversations.
and crime. But interposition was necessary to his aggrandize-
ment, enabling him to distribute in twenty years, if he should
live so long, more wealth among his friends and partisans, than
has been squandered by the uncontrolled profusion of French
monarchs, from the first Louis to the last.
Salomon. How happens it that England, richer and more
powerful than other States, should still contain fewer nobles ?
Alfieri. The greater part of the English nobility has neither
power nor title. Even those who are noble by right of pos-
session, the hereditary lords of manors with large estates attached
to them, claim no titles at home or abroad. Hence in all foreign
countries the English gentleman is placed below his rank, which
naturally and necessarily is far higher than that of your slipshod
counts and lottery-office marquises, whose gamekeepers, with
their high plumes, cocked hats, and hilts of rapiers have no other
occupation than to stand behind the carriage, if the rotten plank
will bear them ; whose game is the wren and redbreast, and
whose beat is across the market.
Menestrier, who both as a Frenchman and as a Jesuit speaks
contemptuously of English nobility, admits the gentlemen to
this dignity. Their property, their information, their political
influence, and their moral character place them beyond measure
above the titularies of our country, be the rank what it may ; and
it is a remarkable proof of moderation in some, and of contempt-
uousness in others, that they do not openly claim from their king,
or assume without such intervention, the titles arivsing from landed
wealth, which conciliate the attention and civility of every class,
and indeed of every individual abroad.
It is among those who stand between the peerage and the
people that there exists a greater mass of virtue and of wisdom
than in the rest of Europe. Much of their dignified simplicity
may be attributed to the plainness of their religion, and, what will
always be imitated, to the decorous life of their king ; for what-
ever may be the defects of either, if we compare them with others
round us, they are excellent.
Salomon. A young religion jumps upon the shoulders of an
older one, and soon becomes like her, by mockery of her tricks,
her cant, and her decrepitude. Meanwhile the old one shakes
with indignation, and swears there is neither relationship nor
AliR-ri unJ Salomon. 23
likeness. Was there ever a religion in the world that was not
the true religion, or was there ever a king that was not the best
of kings ?
dlfifri. In the latter case we must have arrived nigh per-
fection ; since it is evident from the authority of the gravest
men theologians, presidents, judges, corporations, universities,
senates that every prince is better than his father, " of blessed
memory, now with God." If they continue to rise thus tran-
scendendy, earth in a little time will be incapable of holding
them, and higher heavens must be raised upon the highest
heavens for their reception. The lumber of our Italian courts,
the most crazy part of which is that which rests upon a red
cushion in a gilt chair, with stars and sheep and crosses dangling
from it, must be approached as Artaxerxes and Domitian.
These automatons, we are told nevertheless, are very condescend-
ing. Poor fools who tell us it ! ignorant that where on one side
is condescension, on the other side must be baseness. The rascals
have ruined my physiognomy. I wear an habitual sneer upon my
face ; God confound them for it !
Salomon. This temper or constitution of mini! I am afi.tid
may do injury to your works.
Alfrri. Surely not to all : my satire at least must be the I
for it.
Salomon. I think differently. No satire can be excellent
where displeasure is expressed with acrimony and vehemence.
When satire ceases to smile, it should be momentarily, and for
the purpose of inculcating a moral. Juvenal is hardly more a
satirist than I,ucan : he is indeed a vigorous and bold declaim, i,
but he stamps too often, and splashes up too much filth. We
Italians have TU> delicacy in wit : we have indeed no conception
of it ; we fancy we must be weak if we are not offensive. The
scream of Pulcinello is imitated more easily than the masterly
strokes of Plautus, or the sly insinuations of Catullus and of
Flaccus.
jllfifn. We are the least witty of men because we are the
most trifling.
Salomon. You would persuade me then that to be witty one
must be grave : this is surely a contradiction.
Jljirri. I would persuade you only that banter, pun, and
24 Imaginary Conversations.
quibble are the properties of light men and shallow capacities ;
that genuine humor and true wit require a sound and capacious
mind, which is always a grave one. Contemptuousness is not
incompatible with them : worthless is that man who feels no
contempt for the worthless, and weak who treats their emptiness
as a thing of weight. At first it may seem a paradox, but it is
perfectly true, that the gravest nations have been the wittiest ;
and in those nations some of the gravest men. In England
Swift and Addison, in Spain Cervantes. Rabelais and La
Fontaine are recorded by their countrymen to have been
reveurs. Few 7 men have been graver than Pascal ; few have
been wittier.
Salomon. It is indeed a remarkable thing that such should be
the case among the moderns : it does not appear to have been so
among the ancients.
Alfierl. I differ from you, M. Salomon. When we turn
toward the Athenians, we find many comic writers, but few
facetious. Menander, if we may judge from his fragments,
had less humor than Socrates. 8 Quintilian says of Demos-
thenes, "non displicuisse illi jocos sed non contigisse." In
this he was less fortunate than Phocion and Cicero. Facility
in making men smile gives a natural air to a great orator, and
adds thereby much effect to what he says, provided it come
discreetly. It is in him somewhat like affability in a prince;
excellent if used with caution. Every one must have perceived
how frequently those are brought over by a touch of humor who
have resisted the force of argument and entreaty. Cicero thought
in this manner on wit. Writing to his brother, he mentions
a letter from him, " Aristophanico modo, valde mehercule et
suavem et gravem." Among the Romans, the gravest nation
after the English, I think Cicero and Catullus were the wittiest.
Cicero from his habits of life and studies must have been grave ;
Catullus we may believe to have been so, from his being tender
and impassioned in the more serious part of his poetry.
Salomon. This is to me no proof; for the most tender and
impassioned of all poets is Shakspeare, who certainly was him-
[7 From " Few "to " wittier " added in 2nd ed.]
[ 8 First ed. reads: " Socrates, and Aristophanes himself than Phocion.
From " Quintilian " to " entreaty " appears as a note in ist ed.]
Alfkri aiul Salomon. 25
I from gravity, however much of it he imparted to
some personages of his dt
dij ' Shakspeare was gay and pleasurable in con-
versation I can easily admit ; for there never was a mind at once
so plastic and so pliant : but, without much gravity, could there
have been that potency and comprehensiveness of though'
di-j-th of feeling, that creation of imperishable ideas, that sojourn
in the sods of other men ? He was amused in his workshop :
such was society. But when he left it, he meditated intensely
upon those limbs and muscles on which he was about to bestow
new action, grace, and majesty ; and so* great an intensity of
meditation must have strongly impressed his whole character.
Salomon. You will, however, allow that we have no proof of
v in Horace or Plautus.
Aljitri. On the contrary, I think we have many. Horace,
like all the pusillanimous, was malignant : like all courtiers,
he yielded to the temper of his masters. His lighter touches
were agreeable less to his own nature than to the nature of
Augustus and Mecxnas, both of them fond of trifling ; but
in his Odes and his Discourses there is more of gravity than of
gayety. That he was libidinous is no proof that he was playful ;
for often such men are even melancholic.
.tus, 9 rich in language, rich in reflection, rich in character,
is oftener graver than could have suited the inclinations of a
coarse and tumultuous popujace. What but the stong bent of his
nature could have moved him to it ? The English display an
equal share of facetiousness and of humor (as they call it) in their
comedies.
Salomon. I do not understand the distinction.
Alfifri. Nor indeed is it well understood by many of their
best authors. It is no uncommon thing to hear, He has humor
rather than wit." Here the expression can only mean pleas-
antry : for whoever has humor has wit, although it does not
follow that whoever has wit has humor. Humor is wit apper-
taining to character, and indulges in breadth of drollery rather
[* Firrt ed. read* : " Plautu*, who appears to me to have been by far tin
firtt of comic writers, rich,** Ac. Four linen below, from "The EnglMi "
to "generic" (18 lines) added in 3rd ed. Pint and 2nd ed*. read:
The French are witty. Alfitri. Thin I concede," &c.]
26 Imaginary Conversations.
than in play and brilliancy of point. Wit vibrates and spurts ;
humor springs up exuberantly, as from a fountain, and runs on.
In Congreve you wonder what he will say next : in Addison
you repose on what is said, listening with assured expectation of
something congenial and pertinent. The French have little
humor because they have little character : they excel all nations
in wit, because of their levity and sharpness. The personages on
their theatre are generic.
Salomon. You do allow that they are facetious : from you no
small concession.
Alfieri. This I do concede to them ; and no person will
accuse me of partiality in their favor. Not only are they witty,
but when they discover a witty thing, they value it so highly
that they reserve it for the noblest purposes, such as tragedies,
sermons, and funeral orations. Whenever a king of theirs is
inaugurated at Rheims, a string of witticisms is prepared for him
during his whole reign, regularly as the civil list ; regularly as
menageries, oratories, orangeries, wife, confessor, waterworks,
fireworks, gardens, parks, forests, and chases. Sometimes one is
put into his mouth when he is too empty, sometimes when he is
too full ; but he always hath his due portion, take it when or how
he may. A decent one, somewhat less indeed than that of their
sovereign, is reserved for the princes of the blood ; the greater
part of which is usually packed up with their camp-equipage ; and
I have seen a label to a Ion mot, on which was written, " Brillant
comme la reponse de Henri IV. quand," but the occasion had
not been invented.
We Italians sometimes fall into what, if you will not call
it witticism, you may call the plasma of witticism, by mere
mistake, and against our genius. 10 A blunder, by its very
stumbling, is often carried a little beyond what was aimed at,
and falls upon something which, if it hie not wit, is invested with
its powers.
[ 10 First ed. reads: "genius. Reading in a gazette, Hier le roi a
travaille avec ses ministres, and knowing the man's character, a young
courtier cried innocently, ' What! his most Christian majesty condescends
to dine with his subjects, and they joke upon it 1 ' In another, Les
enfans de France se promenent en carosse, &c., his sister enquired of her
confessor how many there were of them he answered, ' Twenty-four or
twenty-five millions.' A blunder," &c.]
Alficri .uul Salomon.
Salomon. I have had opportunities to observe the obtuseness
of the 'IV ticul .11- on these matters. Lately I lent my
and when he returned the volumes,
I asked him how he liked them : Per Bafeo, he exclaimed,
" the names are very comical, Sguanarelli and those others,"
They who have no wit of their own are ignorant of it when it
occurs, mistake it, and misapply it. A sailor found upon the
shore a piece of amber ; he carried it home, and, as he was food
of fiddling, began to rub it across the strings of his violin. It
would not answer. He then broke some pieces off, boiled them
in blacking, and found to his surprise and disquiet that it gave no
fresh lustre to the shoe-leather. What are you about ? " cried
a messmate. " Smell it, man : it is amber." " The devil take
it," cried the finder, - I led it was resin ; " and he threw it
into the sea. We despise what we cannot use.
Aljifri. Your observations on Italian wit are correct. Even
our comedies are declamatory : long speeches and inverted sen-
tences overlay and stifle the elasticity of humor. The great
Machiavelli is, whatever M. dc Voltaire may assert to the
contrary, a coarse comedian ; hardly better than the cardinal
Bibiena, poisoned by the Holiness of our Lord Pope Leo foi
wearying him with wit.*
* If Cardinal Bibiena was poisoned by Leo, an opinion to which the
profligacy of the pope fjave rite, and the malignity of nu-n >
should be recorded in line** that he wished to \
the family. We find among the letters of Bembo a very beautiful
and energetic one, written in the name of Leo to Frantic I., relating
to Bibiena. There it something not untwpicious in the mode of ex-
pression, where he repeat* that, although Bibiena thinks himself sure
of dying, tktrt aftean imm nfiatt Ay r . . . if it ihoU tufttm,
&C.
"Cum Bernard u Bibiena cardinal!* aliquot jam dies ex itomacko laboret,
stqgMfvr timorr ymJam tm fwm mortu vi itrgemtf, brevi se existimet mori-
turum. . . . Quanquam enim nihildum sane video, quo quidem de
illiu- vita sit omnino magnopere timcndum. Si id accidat quod ipse
nupiattw, tua in ilium munificentia tuumque prxclarum munu* non
statim neqne una cum ipsius vita extinguatur, prxvrtim cum e! tarn
breve temporis spatium illo ipso tuo munere frui licuerit, ut ante amissum
posstt quam quale quantumve fuerit percipt ab illo cognoscive
potuerit. . . . Ut ipse, si moriendum ei >it,' f occ.
The Italian* are too credulous on poison, which at one period was
almost a natural death among them. Englishmen were shocked at the
28 Imaginary Conversations.
Salomon. His Holiness took afterward a stirnip-cup of the
same brewery, and never had committed the same offence, poor
man ! I n should have thought the opinion of Voltaire less
erroneous on wit, although it carries no weight with it on poetry
or harmony.
Alferi. It is absurd to argue with a Frenchman on any thing
relating to either. The Spaniards have no palate, the Italians
no scent, the French no ear. Garlic and grease and the most
nauseous of pulse are the favorite cheer of the. Spaniard ; the
confidence with which they asserted it of two personages, who occupied
in the world a rank and interest due to neither, and one of whom died in
England, the other in Elba.
The last words of the letter are ready to make us unbelievers of Leo's
guilt in this business. What exquisite language ! what expressions of
zeal and sincerity 1
" Qua* quidem omnia non tarn propterea colligo, quod non illud unum
existimem apud te plurimum valiturum, amorem scilicet erga ilium
tuum, itemque incredibilem ipsius in te cultum, quod initio dixi, sed ut
mihi ipsi, qui id magnopere cupio, satisfaciam ; ne perfamiliari ac
pernecessario meo, mihique charissimo ac suavissimo atque in omni
vita: munere probatissimo, mea benevolentia meusque amor hoc extreme
ejus vitae tempore, si hoc extremum erit, plane defuisse videatur."
In the tenth book of these epistles there is one addressed to the
Cardinal, by which the Church of Loretto is placed under his care, with
every rank of friendship and partiality.
"De tua enim in Divam pietate, in rem Romanam studio, in me
autem, cui quidem familixque meas omnia psene usque a puero summx
cum integritatis et fidei, turn vero curae atque diligentias egregia atque
praeclara officia prscstitisti, perveteri observantia voluntateque admonitus,
nihil est rerum omnium quod tibi recte manderi credique posse non
existimem."
It is not in human nature that a man ever capable of these feelings
toward any one should poison him, when no powerful interest or deep
revenge was to be gratified : the opinion, nevertheless, has prevailed ;
and it may be attributed to a writer not altogether free from malignity,
a scorner of popes and princes, and especially hostile to the Medicean
family. Paolo Giovio says that Bibiena was poisoned in afresh egg.
The sixteenth century was the age of poison. Bibiena was poisoned, we
may believe ; not, however, by Leo, who loved him as being his preceptor.
Leo sent him into France to persuade Francis I. to enter into a league
against the Turks. The object of this league was to divert both him and
Charles V. from Italy, and to give the preponderating power in it to the
family of Medici.
[ n From " I " to " harmony " (3 lines) added in 3rd ed. From " Alferi "
to "writers" (26 lines) added in 2nd ed.]
Alder! ami Salomon. 29
olfactory nerves of the Italian endure any tiling but odoriferous
is and essences; and no sounds but soft ones otic IK! the
Siikmw. And yet several of the French prose writers are
harmonious than the best of ours.
Aljieri. In the construction of their sentences they have
obtained from study what sensibility has denied them. Rousseau
is an exception : he beside is trie only musical composer that
< \r, had a tolerable ear for prose. Music is both sunshine and
irrigation to the mind ; but when it occupies and covers it too
long, it debilitates and corrupts it. Sometimes I have absorbed
music so totally, that nothing was left of it in its own form : my
ear detained none of the notes, none of the melody : they went
into the heart immediately, mingled with the spirit, and lost
themselves among the operations of the fancy, whose finest and
most recondite springs they put simultaneously and vigorously in
motion. Rousseau 1J kept it subordinate ; which must always be
done with music as well as with musicians. He excels all the
moderns in the harmony of his periods.
Salomon. I have heard it reported that you prefer Pascal
Alfcri. Certainly, on the whole I consider him the most
perfect of writers.
Salomon. 19 Many other of the French theologians are said to
be highly eloquent ; but theology is without attraction for me, so
that I am ignorant of their merit.
Alfifri. How deplorable that whatever is excellent in modern
style should, with hardly any deduction, be displayed by fanaticism !
I am little more interested by the contentions of Fenelon and
Bossuet than I am by the Cruto Bianco and Critto Nero of the
Neapolitan rabble, two processional idols, you must know,
which are regularly carried home with broken heads.
Salomon. I dare not hazard a word upon these worthies.
[)* Second ed. reads : Roumeau is the only composer of music on the
modern system who could write one sentence of poetry or prose worth
reading. He kept it .... periods. Bossuet comes next Salomon,"
&c.]
[" From "&&* " to " Alfiri " (4 lines) added in jrd ed. Second
ed. reads : " How deplorable .... contentions of such men as Pascal
and Bossuet with their opponents than 1 am," &c. From How " to
" details " (78 lines) added in ind ed.]
30 Imaginary Conversations.
You, who had a Catholic father and whose blood is truly
Christian, may ridicule them with impunity : the people who
would laugh with you would stone me. Our incurable diarrhoea
of words should not always make you take the other side of the
road. Machiavelli is admirable for precision of style, no less
than for acuteness of argument and depth of thought. Guicciar-
dini, if his sentences were properly stopped, would be found in
general both full and concise, whatever may be asserted to the
contrary by the fastidious and inattentive.
Alfierl. I have often thought the same. As for Machia-
velli, I would rather have written his Discourses on the Jirst
Decade of Lfoius (in which nothing is amiss but the title)
than all the volumes, prose and poetry, of Voltaire. If the
Florentine History is not so interesting as the more general
one of Guicciardini, there is the same reason for it as there is
that the Batrachomyomachia is not so interesting as the Iliad.
Salomon. Certainly no race of men upon earth ever was so
unwarlike, so indifferent to national dignity and to personal honor,
as the Florentines are now : yet in former days a certain pride,
arising from a resemblance in their government to that of Athens,
excited a vivifying desire of approximation where no danger or
loss accompanied it ; and Genius was no less confident of his
security than of his power. Look from the window. That
cottage on the declivity was Dante's: that square and large
mansion, with a circular garden before it elevated artificially,
was the first scene of Boccaccio's Decameron. A boy might
stand at an equal distance between them, and break the windows
of each with his sling. What idle fabricator of crazy systems
will tell me that climate is the creator of genius ? The climate
of Austria is more regular and more temperate than ours, which
I am inclined to believe is the most variable in the whole
universe, subject, as you have perceived, to heavy fogs for two
months in winter, and to a stifling heat, concentrated within the
hills, for five more. Yet a single man of genius hath never
appeared in the whole extent cf Austria, an extent several
thousand times greater than our city ; and this very street has
given birth to fifty.
Alfieri. Since the destruction of the republic, Florence has
produced only one great man, Galileo, and abandoned him to
A I fieri .UK! Salomon. 31
indignity th.it f.maticism and despotism could invent.
.ordinary men, like the stones that are formed in the
higher regions of the air, fall upon the earth only to be broken
and cast into the furnace. The precursor of Newton lived in
the deserts of the moral world, drank water, and ate locusts
and wild honey. It was fortunate that his head also was not
lopped off: had a singer asked it, instead of a dancer, it would
:>een.
Salomon. In fact it was ; for the fruits of it were shaken
down and thrown away : he was forbidden to publish the most
important of his discoveries, and the better part of his manuscripts
was burned after his death.
Alftri. Yes, signer Salomon, those things may rather be
called our heads than this knob above the shoulder, of which
(as matters stand) we are rather the porters than the pro-
prietors, and which is really the joint concern of barber and
dentist.
Salomon. Our thoughts, if they may not rest at home, may
wander freely. Delighting in the remoter glories of my native
i forget at times its humiliation and ignominy. A town so
little that the voice of a cabbage-girl in the midst of it may be
heard at the extremities, reared within three centuries a greater
number of citizens illustrious for their genius than all the re-
mainder of the continent (excepting her sister Athens) in six
thousand years. My ignorance of the Greek forbids me to
compare our Dante with Homer. The propriety and force of
language and the harmony of verse in the glorious Grecian are
quite lost to me. Dante had not only to compose a poem, but
in great part a language. Fantastical as the plan of his poem is,
and, I will add, uninteresting and uninviting ; unimportant, mean,
contemptible, as are nine-tenths of his characters and his details,
and u wearisome as is the scheme of his versification, there are
more thoughts highly poetical, there is more reflection, and the
nobler properties of mind and intellect are brought into more
intense action, not only than in the whole course of French
poetry, but also in the whole of continental ; nor do I think
[> From - aod " to tcrtification " added in trd cd. From there "
to " pedestal " (19 lines) added in xnd ed. Second ed. reads: " than in
the Iliad ; nor do I," *c.]
32 Imaginary Conversations.
(I must here also speak with hesitation) that any one drama
of Shakspeare contains so many. Smile as you will, signer
Conte, what must I think of a city where Michel - Angelo,
Frate Bartolomeo, Ghiberti (who formed them), Guicciardini,
and Machiavelli 15 were secondary men ? And certainly such
were they, if we compare them with Galileo and Boccaccio and
Dante.
Alfieri. I smiled from pure delight, which I rarely do ; for
I take an interest deep and vital in such men, and in those who
appreciate them rightly and praise them unreservedly. These are
my fellow-citizens : I acknowledge no other ; we are of the
same tribe, of the same household ; I bow to them as being older
than myself, and I love them as being better.
Salomon. Let us hope that our Italy is not yet effete.
Filangieri died but lately : what think you of him ?
Alfieri. If it were possible that I could ever see his statue
in a square at Constantinople, though I should be scourged for an
idolater, I would kiss the pedestal. As 16 this, however, is less
likely than that I should suffer for writing satirically, and as
criticism is less likely to mislead me than speculation, I will
revert to our former subject.
Indignation and contempt may be expressed in other poems
than such as are usually called satires. Filicaia, in his celebrated
address to Italy, steers a middle course.
Salomon. True, he is neither indignant nor contemptuous ; but
the verses of Michel- Angelo would serve rather for an example,
added to which they are much better.
Alfieri. In fact, the former part of Filicaia's is verbose and
confused : let us analyse them :
" Italia, Italia, o tu cui die 1 la sorte
Dono infelice di bellezza, onde hai
Funesta dote d'infiniti guai,
Che in fronte scritti per g ran doglia porti."
Fate gives the gift, and this gift gives the dowry, which dowry
consists of infinite griefs, and these griefs Italy carries written on
her brow, though great sorrow /
" Deh, fosti, tu men bella o almen piu forte I "
[i 5 Second ed. for " Machiavelli " reads " Boccaccio." One line below,
" Boccaccio " added in 3rd ed.]
[W From " As " to " subject " (4 lines) added in 3rd ed.]
Alfieri and Salomon. 53
Men and almrn sound wretchedly : he might have written oppur.*
There are those who would persuade us that verbal crnu
unfair, ami that few poems can resist it. The truth of th<
assertion by no means establishes the former : all good criticism
hath its foundation on verbal. Long dissertations are often de-
nominated criticisms, without one analysis ; instead of which it is
thought enough to say : " There is nothing finer in our language
we can safely recommend imbued with the true spirit
destined to immortality," &c.
A perfect piece of criticism must .exhibit 'where a work i
good or bad ; why it is good or bad ; in what degree it is goo.'.
or bad ; must also demonstrate in what manner and to what
extent the same ideas or reflections have come to others, and,
if they be clothed in poetry, why, by an apparently slight variation,
what in one author is mediocrity, in another is excellence. I
have never teen a critic of Florence or Pisa or Milan or Bologn
who did not commend and admire the sonnet of Cassiani on the
rape of Proserpine, without a suspicion of its manifold and grave
defects. Few sonnets are indeed so good ; but if we examine it
attentively, we shall discover its flaws and patches :
" Die' un alto trido, gitto i fiori, e volta
All* improviaa mama chr la ante,
Tntta in itptr U ttma tnJtfm *lu
La Sicilian* rergine >i striiue."
The land is inadequate to embrace a body ; j/rrW, which comes
after, would have done better : and the last two verses tell only
what the first two had told, and feebly ; nothing can be more to
than the tema ondtfu colta.
There U another connet of Filicaia 7te/y, remarkable for identity ol
sound, in four correspondent cloaes :
- DOT* e. Italia, U tuo braccio ? e a che ti /rrw
Tu dell altrui ? Non e, se io scorgo il vera
Di chi ti offende il difensor men fero. . .
Ambi ncmici M>no : ambi fur tervi.
Co! dunque 1'onor, col coiurrvt
GU avanzi ru del giorioso impero ?
Cotl al valor, cot) al valor primiero
(Che a te fede giurd) la fede otirrvif "
Ff. r
34 Imaginary Conversations.
" II nero dio la calda bocca involta
D' ispido pelo a ingordo bacio spinse,
E di stigia fuligin con la folta
Barba 1'eburnea gola e H sen le time."
Does not this describe the devils of our carnival, rather than the
majestic brother of Jupiter, at whose side upon asphodel and
amaranth the sweet Persephone sits pensively contented, in that
deep motionless quiet which mortals pity and which the gods
enjoy ; rather than him who, under the umbrage of Elysium,
gazes at once upon all the beauties that on earth were separated,
Helena and Eriphyle, Polyxena and Hermione, Deidamia and
Dcianira, Leda and Omphale, Atalanta and Cydippe, Laodamia,
with her arm round the neck of a fond youth whom she still
seems afraid of losing, and, apart, the daughters of Niobe 17 cling-
ing to their parent ?
Salomon. These images are better than satires ; but continue,
in preference to other thoughts or pursuits, the noble career you
have entered. Be contented, signer Conte, with the glory of
our first great dramatist, and neglect altogether any inferior one.
Why vex and torment yourself about the French ? They buzz
and are troublesome while they are swarming ; but the master
will soon hive them. Is the whole nation worth the worst of
your tragedies ? All the present race of them, all the creatures
in the world which excite your indignation, will lie in the grave,
while young and old are clapping their hands or beating their
bosoms at your Bruto Primo. Consider also that kings and
emperors should in your estimation be but as grasshoppers and
beetles : let them consume a few blades of your clover without
molesting them, without bringing them to crawl on you and claw
you. The difference between them and men of genius is almost
as great as between men of genius and those higher intelligences
who act in immediate subordination to the Almighty. Yes, I
assert it, without flattery and without fear, the angels are not
higher above mortals than you are above the proudest that trample
on them.
dlfieri. I believe, sir, you were the first in commending my
tragedies.
[ 17 First ed. reads : " Niobe, though now in smiles, . . . parent ; and
many thousands more each of whom is worth the dominions once envied
of both brothers. Salomon," &c.]
Rousseau and MaloluTlu-v 35
Salomon. He who first praises a good book becomingly is
in merit to the author.
Aljitri. As a writer and as a man I know my station : if I
found in the world five equal to myself, 1 would walk out of it,
not to be jostled.
iust now, signer Salomon, take my leave of you ; for his
Eminence my coachman and their Excellencies my horses are
:ng.
XL ROUSSEAU AND MALESHERBES. '
Rousseau. I am ashamed, sir, of my countrymen : let my
humiliation expiate their offi-n . I wish it had not been a
minister of the gospel who received you with such inhospitality.
[ The scene of this Conversation is the village of Motier-Travers,
where Rousseau lived for a short time after his sudden departure from
France. It was there that he put on the Armenian drew to the bewilder-
ment of his neighbours. With M. de Montmollin, the pator, he was at
first on good terms but if we may trust Rousseau's own account, in his
"Confession*," the publication of tl . dc ma Montague "
turned the friendship into persecution. It is not likely that Malesherbes
ever travelled so far. H? was, however, a friend to Rousseau ; and
indeed to all the men of letters of the time. He held for some years the
poet of censor, and used his powers to grant to literature as much irregular
troedoai aa the laws could be strained to permit, and more than was
nt with his office. He lost his life in the Terror, and it i-
said that he deeply regretted that by any act of hit he had opened t la-
way to the Revolution. If he did say so, he failed for once at least in
clear-sightedness. Note in ist ed. reads: "Among the four illus-
trious victims of the French Revolution, Malesherbes was, 1 think, the
moat so. Roland, Lavoisier, Bailly, and he were four such characters aa
the prince* of Europe could not consign to the scaffold or the flames, to
banishment or neglect. France seems to have thought herself unable
to show her great men. unless the executioner held up their heads. The
condemnation of Malesherbes and the coronation of Buonaparte are the
two most detestable crimes committed by the French in the whole course
of their Revolution. How different the destiny of the best and worst
man among them ! Never has there been to deplorable a judgment as
that by which Malesherbes was sent in his old age, and with his
daughter and hi* grand -daughter, to the scaffold, sin.-- tin- time of
Phoeion." (Imag. Convers., iii., 18*8. Work, si., 1846. Works, iv.,
1876.)]
36 Imaginary Conversations.
Maksherbes. Nothing can be more ardent and more cordial
than the expressions with which you greet me, M. Rousseau, on
my return from your lakes and mountains.
Rousseau. If the pastor took you for a courtier, I reverence
him for his contempt uousness.
Malesherbes. Why so ? Indeed you are in the wrong, my
friend. No person has a right to treat another with contemptu-
ousness unless he knows him to deserve it. When a courtier
enters the house of a pastor in preference to the next, the pastor
should partake in the sentiment that induced him, or at least
not be offended to be preferred. A courtier is such at court :
in the house of a clergyman he is not a courtier, but a guest. If
to be a courtier is offensive, remember that we punish offences
where they are committed, where they can be examined, where
pleadings can be heard for and against the accused, and where
nothing is admitted extraneous from the indictment, excepting
what may be adduced in his behalf by witnesses to the general
tenor of his character.
Rousseau. Is it really true that the man told you to mount
the hay-loft if you wished a night's lodging ?
Malesherbes. He did : a certain proof that he no more took
me to be a courtier than I took him to be. I accepted his offer,
and never slept so soundly. Moderate fatigue, the Alpine air,
the blaze of a good fire [for I was admitted to it some moments),
and a profusion of odoriferous hay, below which a cow was sleep-
ing, subdued my senses, and protracted my slumbers beyond the
usual hour.
Rousseau. You have no right, sir, to be the patron and
remunerator of inhospitality. Three or four such men as you
would corrupt all Switzerland, and prepare it for the fangs of
France and Austria. Kings, like hyenas, will always fall upon
dead carcasses, although their bellies are full, and although they
are conscious that in the end they will tear one another to pieces
over them. Why should you prepare their prey ? Were your
fire and effulgence given you for this ? Why, in short, did you
thank this churl ? Why did you recommend him to his superiors
for preferment on the next vacancy ?
Malesherbes. I must adopt your opinion of his behavior in
order to answer you satisfactorily. You suppose him imhospit-
Rousseau and Malr.shu' ,.,
.-.Mr : tt-h.it miKlcr H m,,r, rffivtu:,! mode of rcprovinR him
"7,' "V 1 "'' '" a.lm..nih him? If h, ,,ij
c v,l, hav, I no ,uthonty bcf,,: , c , lmmamis me , m ^
uood for Beheve me, M. Rouleau, the execution of
command ,5 always accompanii-d by the heart', applause, and
opportumues of obedience are more frequent here aX
Would not you exchange rentmem for ,h, contrary f-lin fi ,
even ,f rehpon or duty M id nothing about the matte?? I am
h, mow ph.lo.opmcal of u. are wmerime. a little perverse
and will not be happy a. they might be, bccauae thTJSl
pomted out to them, and becau he who points it out i. wi and
'
hum0r8 without
</,. Sir, I perceive you are among my enemies I did
. " """ "* my faUlU> ' am t
And do not think " now> ! ratreat
/?//. Court, and wciety have corrupted the belt heart
in France and have perverted the be intellect
Malata-la. They have done much evil then.
Rou,, tau Amrwer me, and your own conscience: how
could jou choo to l,ve anx,ng the perfidie. of Pan. and Ve"
<***"' l-awye, and advocate, in particular, rm
live there ; phUo^pher. need not. If every honest man thouZ
reu to leave tho* cide^ would Ae inhabitant.^!
You have entered into intimacies with the mem-
mof vanou. adnwawionj opporite in plan, and .-mimen^
* al,ke hostile to you, and all of whom, if they could have kept
CT '
ob, ngn
"ble. they cead to perwcute, and would gladly tempt you
Oder the ,embl.mce of friendrf,ip and e*eem to Iplicftefor
ome office, that they might indicate to the world your' unwortht.
and
They will never tempt me to supplicate for
38 Imaginary Conversations.
any thing but justice, and that in behalf of others. I know
nothing of parties. If I am acquainted with two persons of
opposite sides in politics, I consider them as you consider a
watchmaker and a cabinet-maker : one desires to rise by one
way, the other by another. Administrations and systems of
government would be quite indifferent to those very function-
aries and their opponents, who appear the most zealous partisans,
if their fortunes and consequence were not affixed to them.
Several of these men seem consistent, and indeed are ; the reason
is, versatility would loosen and detach from them the public
esteem and confidence
Rousseau. By which their girandoles are lighted, their dinners
served, their lacqueys liveried, and their opera-girls vie in
benefit-nights. There is no State in Europe where the least
wise have not governed the most wise. We find the light and
foolish keeping up with the machinery of government easily and
leisurely, just as we see butterflies keep up with carriages at full
speed. This is owing in both cases to their levity and their
position : the stronger and the more active are left behind. I am
resolved to prove that farmers-general are the main causes of the
defects in our music.
Malesherbes. Prove it, or any thing else, provided that the
discussion does not irritate and torment you.
Rousseau. Truth is the object of philosophy.
Malesherbes. Not of philosophers : the display of ingenuity,
for the most part, is and always has been it. I must here offer
you an opinion of my own, which, if you think well of me,
you will pardon, though you should disbelieve its solidity. My
opinion then is, that truth is not reasonably the main and ultimate
object of philosophy ; but that philosophy should seek truth
merely as the means of acquiring and of propagating happiness.
Truths are simple ; wisdom, which .is formed by their apposition
and application, is concrete : out of this, in its vast varieties, open
to our wants and wishes, comes happiness. But the knowledge
of all the truths ever yet discovered does not lead immediately to
it, nor indeed will ever reach it, unless you make the more im-
portant of them bear upon your heart and intellect, and form, as
it were, the blood that moves and nurtures them.
Rousseau. I never until now entertained a doubt that truth is
aiul Maksherbes. 39
the ultimate aim and object of philosophy : no writer has denied
it, I think.
Afalesherl'es. Designedly none may : but when it is agreed
th;:t happiness is the chief good, it must also be agreed that the
chief \vi*dom will pursue it ; and I h i\e already said, what your
own experience cannot but have pointed out to you, that no truth,
or series of truths, hypothetically, can communicate or attain it.
, M. Rousseau, tell me candidly, do you derive no pleasure
i sense of superiority in genius and independence ?
Rousseau. The highest, sir, from a consciousness of in-
dependence.
Matesherbes. Ingenuous is the epithet we affix to modesty;
but modesty often makes men act otherwise than ingenuously :
you, for example, now. You are angry at the servility of people,
and disgusted at their obtuseness and indifference, on matters of
most import to their welfare. If they were equal to you, this
anger would cease ; but the fire would break out somewhere else,
on ground which appears at present sound and level. 2 Voltaire,
for instance, is less eloquent than you : but Voltaire is wittier than
aan living. This quality
Rousseau. Is the quality of a buffoon and a courtier. But
the buffoon should have most of it, to support his higher dignity.
Malcshtrbfj. Voltaire's is Attic.
Rousseau. I f malignity is Attic. Petulance is not wit, although
a few grains of wit may be found in petulance ; quartz is not gold,
h a few grains of gold miy be found in quartz. Voltaire
a monkey in mischief, and a spaniel in obsequiousness. He de-
claims against the cruel and tyrannical ; and he kisses the hands
of adultresses who murder their husbands, and of robbers who
decimate their gang.
Malesbrrbes. I will not discuss with you the character of the
man, and only that part of the author's on which I spoke. There
may be malignity in wit, there cannot be violence. You may irritate
and disquiet with it ; but it must be by means of a flower or a
[* First ed. read*: " level. You would only be the most eloquent man
id ; and even here you would tread upon thorns. Cicero and
tighbour Voltaire are wittier. The latter is more Attic than any
Athenian ever was. Rotmeju. If malignity is Attic. Matttherbtt. \ will
." &c. (14 lines below.)]
4O Imaginary Conversations.
feather. Wit and humor stand on one side, irony and sarcasm
on the other.
Rousseau. They stand very near.
Malesherles. So do the Elysian fields and Tartarus.
Rousseau. Pray, go on : teach me to stand quiet in my stall,
while my masters and managers pass by.
Malesherbes. Well then, Pascal argues as closely and method-
ically ; Bossuet is as scientific in the structure of his sentences ;
Demosthenes, many think, has equal fire, vigor, dexterity : equal
selection of topics and equal temperance in treating them, immeas-
urably as he falls short of you in appeals to the sensibility, and in
every thing which by way of excellence we usually call genius.
Rousseau. Sir, I see no resemblance between a pleader at the
bar, or a haranguer of the populace, and me.
Malesherbes. Certainly his questions are occasional : but one
great question hangs in the centre, and high above the rest ; and
this is, whether the Mother of liberty and civilization shall exist,
or whether she shall be extinguished in the bosom of her family.
As we often apply to Eloquence and her parts the terms we apply
to Architecture and hers, let me do it also, and remark that no-
thing can be more simple, solid, and symmetrical, nothing more frugal
in decoration or more appropriate in distribution, than the apart-
ments of Demosthenes. Yours excel them in space and altitude ;
your ornaments are equally chaste and beautiful, with more variety
and invention, more airiness and light. But why, among the
Loves and Graces, does Apollo flay Marsyas? and why may not
the tiara still cover the ears of Midas ? Cannot you, who detest
kings and courtiers, keep away from them ? If I must be with
them, let me be in good humor and good spirits. If I will tread
upon a Persian carpet, let it at least be in clean shoes.
As the raciest wine makes the sharpest vinegar, so the richest
fancies turn the most readily to acrimony. Keep yours, my dear
M. Rousseau, from the exposure and heats that generate it. Be
contented ; enjoy your fine imagination ; and do not throw your
salad out of window, nor shove your cat off your knee, on hearing
it said that Shakspeare has a finer, or that a minister is of opinion
that you know more of music than of state. My friend ! the
quarrels of ingenious men are generally far less reasonable and just,
less placable and moderate, than those of the stupid and ignorant.
Rousseau ami Mal^liu 1 41
ught to blush at this : and we should blush yet more deeply
bring them in as parties to our differences. Let us con-
quer by kindness ; which we cannot do easily or well without
< mmunicatioru Oar s antipathies ought to be against the vices
of men, and not against their opinions. If their opinions are
v different from ours, their vices ought to render them more
dissimilar to us. Yet the opinions instigate us to hostility ; the
vices are snatched at with avidity, as rich materials to adorn our
triumph.
Rousseau. This is sophistry ; and at best is applicable only
to the malicious. At a moment when truth is penetrating
the castle of the powerful, and when freedom looks into the
window of the poor, there are writers who would draw them
back and confine them to their own libraries and theatres.
Malesbtrbes. Whether they proceed from the shelf or from
the stage, generous sentiments are prevalent among us ; and the
steps both of truth and freedom are not the less rapid or the less
firm because they advance in silence. Montesquieu has rendered
them greater and more lasting service, than the fiercest anabaptist
in Munster.
Rousseau. Many read him, some are pleased with him, few
are instructed by him, none are guided. His Lettrts Ptnanct
are light and lively. His Temple de Guide is Parisian from the
steps to the roof ; there is but little imagination in it, and no
warmth. There is more of fancy in his Esprit ties Loit, of
which the title-page would be much correcter with only the first
word than with all three. He twitches me by the coat, turns me
round, and is gone.
Maletherbes. Concise he certainly is, but he also is acute.
Rousseau. How far does his acuteness penetrate ? A pin can
pierce no deeper than to its head. He would persuade men that,
if patriotism is the growth of republics, honor is the growth of
monarchies. I would say it without offence, but say it I will,
that honor is feeble and almost extinct in every ancient kingdom.
In Spain it flourished more vigorously than in any other : pray,
how much is left there ? And what addition was made to it when
the Bourbon crossed the Bidassoa ? One vile family is sufficient
to debase a whole nation. Voltaire, perhaps as honest and
['From "Our "to" them "(in linn) added In ind cd.]
42 Imaginary Conversations.
certainly as clear-sighted a man as any about the Tuileries, called
Louis XV. Titus. Is this honor ? If it be, pray show me the
distinction between that quality and truth. As I cannot think a
liar honorable, I cannot think a lie honor. Gentlemen at court
would rather give their lives than be called what they would
scarcely give a denier not to be. Readiness to display courage is
not honor, though it is what Montesquieu mistakes for it.
Surely he might have praised his country for something better
than this fantastic foolery, which, like hair-powder, requires a
mask to be worn by those who put it on. He might have said,
justly and proudly, that while others cling to a city, to a faction,
to a family, the French in all their fortunes cling to France.
Malesherbes. Gratify me, I entreat you, by giving me your
idea of honor.
Rousseau. The image stands before me, substantially and
vigorously alive. Justice, generosity, delicacy, are the three
Graces that formed his mind. Propriety of speech, clearness,
firmness
Malesherbes. Repress this enthusiasm. If you are known
to have made me blush, you ruin me for ever in my profession.
Rousseau. Look, then, across the narrow sea. When
Edward the Black Prince made your king his prisoner, he
reverenced his age, his station, his misfortunes ; attending him,
serving him, consoling him, like a son. Many of your country-
men who were then living lived to see the tide of victory turn,
and the conquerors led into captivity. Talbot, whose name alone
held provinces back from rebellion, was betrayed and taken, and
loaded with indignities.
Malesherbes. Attribute it to the times. The English were
as cruel to fallen valor in the person of Jeanne d' Arc.
Rousseau. There neither the genius of the nation nor the
spirit of the times is reproachable, but the genius and spirit of
fanaticism, which is violent and blind in all alike. Jeanne
d'Arc was believed to be a sorceress, and was condemned to
death for it by the ecclesiastical judges of each nation. Nothing
but the full belief of the English, that she was under the guidance
of an invisible and evil power, would have turned to flight those
Saxo- Normans who never yielded to the Franco-Gauls when
there were only three against one ; no, not once in the incessant
Kuussi-an and Malcshfr 43
in- three hundred years, which ended in the utter
subjugation of your country. As the French acknowledged her
to be the inspired of God, they fancied there was no d,';
Jawing her : as the English thought her instigated by the
, they felt the insufficiency of hum j n opposing her.
fierever she was not, the field was covered with French bodies,
xrfore; wherever she was, it was covered with English, as it
hern until then, i ne d'Arc been born in
>d and fought for England, the people at this hour, although
no longer slaves to idolatry, would almost worship her: every
year would her festival be kept in every village of the land. But
ranee not a hymn is chanted to her, not a curl of incense is
wafted, not a taper is lighted, not a daisy, not a rush, is strewn upon
the ground throughout the whole kingdom she rescued. Instead
f which, a shirt-airer to a libidinous king,-^ ribald poet, a pie-
xdd Of tragedy and comedy, a contemnc r alike of purity and
wtnousm, throws his filth against her mutilated features.
Meanwhile an edifice is being erected in your city to the glory of
Geneve, which will exhaust the fortunes and almost the
maledictions of the people.
Jfcfafcnfer. We certainly are not the most grateful of
nations.
. I hope our gratitude in fiiture will be excited by
hmg better than the instruments of war. The nation is
btood' nR m rC civilized and humanc ' ^ young have never lapped
*"". I prefer the vices of the present king to the glories
is predecessor: I swine to a panther, and the outer
ide of the stye or grating to the i
n.
MaltibcrbH. You, being a philanthropist, must rejoice that
our reigning pnnce abstains from the field of b.utK-.
Rousseau. Unless he did, he could not continue to give a
sand Joins daily for the young maidens brought to him. A
.
thou g htjc m ; a prodigal prince is a thought-
>cr. Your country endures enough without war. But
non and valor, like Voltaire's fever and quinquina, grow
44 Imaginary Conversations.
Maksherbes. What ! and are not our people brave ?
Rousseau. I call those brave, and those only, who rise up
simultaneously against the first indignity offered by their adminis-
trators, and who remove, without pause and without parley, trunk,
root, and branch.
Maksherbes. As we cannot change at once the whole
fabric of government, let us be attentive to the unsounder parts,
and recommend the readiest and safest method of repairing them.
Rousseau. The minister would expel me from his ante-
chamber, and order his valets to buffet me, if I offered him any
proposal for the advantage of mankind.
Maksherbes. Call to him then from this room, where the
valets are civiler. Nature has given you a speaking-trumpet,
which neither storm can drown nor enemy can silence. If you
esteem him, instruct him ; if you despise him, do the same.
Surely, you who have much benevolence would not despise any
one willingly or unnecessarily. Contempt is for the incorrigible :
now, where upon earth is he whom your genius, if rightly and
temperately exerted, would not influence and correct ?
I never was more flattered or honored than by your patience in
listening to me. Consider me as an old woman who sits by the
bedside in your infirmity, who brings you no savory viand, no
exotic fruit, but a basin of whey or a basket of strawberries from
your native hills ; assures you that what oppressed you was a
dream, occasioned by the wrong position in which you lay ; opens
the window, gives you fresh air, and entreats you to recollect the
features of Nature, and to observe (which no man ever did so
accurately) their beauty. In your politics you cut down a forest
to make a toothpick, and cannot make even that out of it ! Do
not let us in jurisprudence be like critics in the classics, and change
whatever can be changed, right or wrong. No statesman will
take your advice. Supposing that any one is liberal in his
sentiments and clear-sighted in his views, nevertheless love of
power is jealous, and he would rejoice to see you fleeing from
persecution or turning to meet it. The very men whom you
would benefit will treat you worse. As the ministers of- kings
wish their masters to possess absolute power that the exercise of
it may be delegated to them, which it naturally is from the
violence and sloth alternate with despots as with wild beasts, and
Rousseau and Malesherbes. 45
that they may apprehend no check or control from those who
discover their misdemeanors, in like manner the people places
more trust in favor than in fortune, and hopes to obtain by sub-
s.r \iency what it never might by election or by chance. Else in
free governments, so some are called (for names once given are
the last things lost), all minor offices and employments would be
assigned by ballot. Each province or canton would present a list
annually of such persons in it as are worthy to occupy the local
administrations.
To avoid any allusion to the country in which we live, let us
take England for example. Is it not absurd, iniquitous, and re-
volting, that the minister of a church in Yorkshire should be
appointed by a lawyer in London, who never knew him, never
saw him, never heard from a single one of the parishioners a
recommendation of any kind : 4 Is it not more reasonable that a
justice of the peace should be chosen by those who have always
been witnesses of his equity ?
Rousseau. The English in former days insisted more firmly
and urgently on improving their Constitution than they have ever
done since. In the reign of Edward III. they claimed the
nomination of the chancellor. And surely, if any nomination of
any functionary is left to the people, it should be this. It is
somewhat like the tribunitial power among the Romans, and is
the only one which can intercede in a conciliatory way between
the prince and people. Exclusively of this one office in the
higher posts of government, the king should appoint his ministers,
and should invest them with power and splendor ; but those
ministers should not appoint to any civil or religious place of
trust or profit which the community could manifestly fill better.
The greater part of offices and dignities should be conferred for
a short and stated time, that all might hope to attain and strive to
deserve them. Embassies in particular should never exceed one
year in Europe, nor consulates two. To the latter office I assign
this duration as the more difficult to fulfil properly, from requiring
a knowledge of trade although a slight one, and because those
who possess any such knowledge are inclined for the greater
[ First cd. read*: " kind, or a syllable in his favour. Is it not more
reasonable that a collector of taxes or a justice," &c. Two lines below,
from "Rotuttau " to government " (9 lines) added in ind ed.]
46 Imaginary Conversations.
part to turn it to their own account, which a consul ought by no
means to do. Frequent 5 election of representatives and of civil
officers in the subordinate employments would remove most causes
of discontent in the people, and of instability in kingly power.
Here is a lottery in which every one is sure of a prize, if not for
himself, at least for somebody in his family or among his friends ;
and the ticket would be fairly paid for out of the taxes.
Malesherbes. So it appears to me. What other system can
present so obviously to the great mass of the people the two
principal piers and buttresses of government, tangible interest and
reasonable hope ? No danger of any kind can arise from it, no
antipathies, no divisions, no imposture of demagogues, no caprice
of despots. On the contrary, many and great advantages in places
which at the first survey do not appear to border on it. At
present, the best of the English juridical institutions, that of
justices of the peace, is viewed with diffidence and distrust.
Elected as they would be, and increased in number, the whole
judicature, civil and criminal, might be confided to them, and
their labors be not only not aggravated but diminished. Suppose
them in four divisions to meet at four places in every county once
in twenty 6 days and to possess the power of imposing a fine not
exceeding two hundred francs on every cause implying oppression,
and one not exceeding fifty on such as they should unanimously
declare frivolous.
Rousseau. Few would become attorneys, and those from
among the indigent.
Malesherbes. Almost the greatest evil that exists in the
world, moral or physical, would be removed. A second appeal
might be made in the following session ; a third could only come
before Parliament, and this alone by means of attorneys, the
number of whom altogether would not exceed the number of
coroners ; for in England there are as many who cut their own
throats as who would cut their own purses.
Rousseau. The famous trial by jury would cease : this would
disgust the English.
Malesherbes. The number of justices would be much augmented :
nearly all those who now are jurymen would enjoy this rank and
[ 5 First ed. reads: "do. Rousseau. Frequent," &c.j
[ 6 First ed. reads : " in ten days."]
Rousseau and Malesherbes. 47
dignity, and would be flattered by sitting on the same bench with
the first gentlemen of the land.
Rousseau. What number would sit ?
Malesherbes. Three or five in the first instance ; five or seven
in the second, as the number of causes should permit.
Rousseau. The laws of England are extremely intricate and
perplexed : such men would be puzzled.
Malesherbes. Such men having no interest in the perplexity,
but on the contrary an interest in unravelling it, would see such
laws corrected. Intricate as they are, questions on those which
are the most so are usually referred by the judges themselves to
private arbitration ; of which my plan, I conceive, has all the
advantages, united to those of open and free discussion among
men of unperverted sense, and unbiassed by professional hopes
and interests. The different courts of law in England cost about
seventy millions of francs annually. On my system, the justices
or judges would receive five-and-twcnty francs daily ; as the
special jurymen do now, without any sense of shame or impro-
priety, however rich they may be : such being the established
practice.
Rousseau. Seventy millions ! seventy millions !
Malesherbes. There are attorneys and conveyancers in London
who gain one hundred thousand francs a year, and advocates
more. The chancellor
Rousseau. The Celeno of these harpies
Alalesherbes. Nets above one million, and is greatly more
than an archbishop in the church, scattering preferment in Cum-
berland and Cornwall from his bench at Westminster.
Rousseau. Absurdities and enormities are great in proportion
to custom or insuetude. If we had lived from childhood with
a boa constrictor, we should think it no more a monster than
a canary-bird. The sum you mentioned, of seventy millions, is
incredible.
Malesberbes. In this estimate the expense of letters by the
post, and of journeys giade by the parties, is not and cannot be
included.
Rousseau. The whole machine of government, civil and
religious, ought never to bear upon the people with a weight so
oppressive. I do not add the national defence, which being
48 Imaginary Conversations.
principally naval is more costly, nor institutions for the promotion
of the arts, which in a country like England ought to be liberal.
But such an expenditure should nearly suffice for these also, in
time of peace. Religion and law indeed should cost nothing : at
present the one hangs property, the other quarters it. I am con-
founded at the profusion. I doubt whether the Romans expended
so much in that year's war which dissolved the Carthaginian
empire, and left them masters of the universe. What is certain,
and what is better, it did not cost a tenth of it to colonize
Pennsylvania, in whose forests the cradle of freedom is suspended,
and where the eye of philanthropy, tired with tears and vigils,
may wander and may rest. Your system, or rather your arrange-
ment of one already established, pleases me. Ministers would
only lose thereby that portion of their possessions which they give
away to needy relatives, unworthy dependents, or the requisite
supporters of their authority and power.
Malesherbes. On this plan, no such supporters would be
necessary, no such dependents could exist, and no such relatives
could be disappointed. Beside, the conflicts of their opponents
must be periodical, weak, and irregular.
Rousseau. The 7 craving for the rich carrion would be less
keen ; the zeal of opposition, as usual, would be measured by the
stomach, whereon hope and overlooking have always a strong
influence.
Malesherbfs. My excellent friend, do not be offended with
me for an ingenious and frank confession : promise me your
pardon.
Rousseau. You need none.
Malesherles. Promise it, nevertheless.
Rousseau. You have said nothing, done nothing, which could
in any way displease me.
Malesherbes. You grant me then a bill of indemnity for what
I may have undertaken with a good intention since v/e have been
together ?
f 7 First ed. reads : " Rousseau. The country* would be at worst, but as
one Prometheus to one vulture, and there being no instruments at hand,
no voices under the rock, to drive him off, the craving . . . influence.
The meaning ot the word ambition, which few understand even now, and
which many have an interest in misinterpreting, must after a time be
sought for in the dictionary. Malesherbes. My excellent," &c.]
Rousseau and Malcsherbes. 49
Willingly.
shfrbes. I fell into your views, I walked along with you
side hy >ide, merely to occupy your mind, which I perceived was
ed.
Rousseau.* In other words, to betray me. I had begun to
nc there was one man in the universe not my enemy.
fshrrbts. There are many, my dear M. Rousseau ! yes,
-\en in France and England; to say nothing of the remoter
regions on each side of the equator, discovered and undiscovered.
Be reasonable, be just.
Rousseau. I am the only man who is either. What would
you say more ?
Maleshrrbes. Perhaps I would even say less. You are fond
of discoursing on the visionary and hypothetical : I usually avoid
it.
Rousseau. Pray why, sir ?
Malfsberbts. Because it renders us more and more dis-
contented with the condition in which Divine Providence hath
placed us. We can hope to remove but a small portion of the
evils that encompass us ; there being many men to whom these
are no evils at all, and such having the management of our
concerns, and keeping us under them as tightly as the old man
kept Sinbad.
Rousseau. I would teach them that what are evils to us are
evils to them likewise, and heavier and more dangerous. The
rash, impetuous rider, or (to adopt your allusion) the intolerably
heavy one, is more liable to break his bones by a fall than the
animal he has mounted. Sooner or later the cloud of tyranny
bants ; and fortunes, piled up inordinately and immeasureably, not
only are scattered and lost, but first overwhelm the occupier.
We, like metallic blocks, are hardened by the repetition of the
blows that flatten us, and every part of us touching the ground,
we cannot fell lower: the hammerers, once fallen, are an-
nihilated.
Your remarks, although inapplicable to the Continent, are
applicable to England ; and several of them, however they may
[From " ***" to Malvkerl** " (48 lines) added in ind ed.
ed. reads: "agitated. You are fond of discoursing on these
matters; I dislike it. For compliance," &c.]
IV. O
50 Imaginary Conversations.
be pecked, scratched, and kicked about by the pullets fattening in
the darkened chambers of Parliament, are worthy of being
weighed by the people, loath as may be ministers of state to
employ the scales of Justice on any such occasion. But if the
steadier hand refuses to perform its functions, the stronger may
usurp them.
Malesherbes. Nothing more probable. Often the worst
evil of bad government is not in its action but its counteraction.
Rousseau. Is it possible to doubt at what country you now
are pointing ? I cannot see then why you should have treated
me like a driveller.
Malesherbes. How so, my friend, how so ?
Rousseau. To say the least, why you should believe me
indifferent to the welfare of your country, to the dictates of
humanity, to the improvement of the species.
Malesherbes. In compliance with your humor, to engage your
fancy, to divert it awhile from Switzerland, 7 by which you appear
and partly on my account to be offended, I began with reflections
upon England: I raised up another cloud in the region of them,
light enough to be fantastic and diaphanous, and to catch some
little irradiation from its western sun. Do not run after it
farther ; it has vanished already. Consider : the three great
nations
Rousseau. Pray, which are those ?
Malesherbes. I cannot in conscience give the palm to the
Hottentots, the Greenlanders, or the Hurons : I meant to
designate those who united to empire the most social virtue
and civil freedom. Athens, Rome, and England have re-
ceived on the subject of government elaborate treatises for
their greatest men. You have reasoned more dispassionately
and profoundly on it than Plato has done, or probably than
Cicero, led away as he often is by the authority of those who are
inferior to himself: but do you excel Aristoteles in calm and
patient investigation ? Or, think you, are your reading and range
of thought more extensive than Harrington's and Milton's ? Yet
what effect have the political works of these marvellous men pro-
duced upon the world ? What effect upon any one State, any one
city, any one hamlet ? A clerk in office, an accountant," a gauger
[ 9 First ed. reads: " Switzerland and France, I raised up," &c.]
Scaligrr aiul Montaigne. 51
of snull-ho-r, .1 song-writer for a tavern dinner, produces more.
rusts his rags into the hole whence the wind comes, and
sleeps soundly. While you and I are talking about elevations and
proportions, pillars and pilasters, architraves and friezes, the
buildings we should repair are falling to the earth, and the
materials for their restoration are in the quarry.
Rousseau. I could answer you : but my mind has certain
moments of repose, or rather of oscillation, which I would not for
the world disturb. Music, eloquence, friendship, bring and
prolong them.
Malesberbfs. Enjoy them, my dear friend, and convert them
if possible to months and years. It is as much at your arbitra-
tion on what theme you shall meditate, as in what meadow you
shall botanize ; and you have as much at your option the choice
of your thoughts, as of the keys in your harpsichord.
Rousseau. If this were true, who could be unhappy ?
Malesbtrbes. Those of whom it is not true. Those who
from want of practice cannot manage their thoughts, who have
few to select from, and who, because of their sloth or of their
weakness, do not roll away the heaviest from before them.
XII. JOSEPH SCALIGER AND MONTAIGN1 .'
Montaignt. What could have brought you, M. de PEscale,
to visit the old man of the mountain, other than a good heart ?
Oh how delighted and charmed I am to hear you speak such ex-
cellent Gascon.* You rise early, I see : you must have risen
with the sun, to be here at this hour ; it is a stout half-hour's
walk from the brook. I have capital white wine, and the best
cheese in Auvergnc. You saw the goats and the two cows before
the cattle*
Pierre, thou hast done well : set it upon the table, and tell
[> Imaff. Convent.. Hi., 1818. Works, i., 1846. Works, iv. ( 1876.]
* " Ma mere e"ttit fort eloquent* en Gascon." &o/rra*i, p. 131.
52 Imaginary Conversations.
Master Matthew to split a couple of chickens and broil them, and
to pepper but one. Do you like pepper, M. de PEscale ?
Scaliger. Not much.
Montaigne. Hold hard ! let the pepper alone : I hate it. Tell
him to broil plenty of ham ; only two slices at a time, upon his
salvation.
Scaliger. This, I perceive, is the antechamber to your library :
here are your every-day books.
Montaigne. Faith ! I have no other. These are plenty,
methinks ; is not that your opinion ?
Scaliger. You have great resources within yourself, and there-
fore can do with fewer.
Montaigne. Why, how many now do you think here may be ?
Scaliger. I did not believe at first that there could be above
fourscore.
Montaigne. Well ! are fourscore few ? are we talking of peas
and beans ?
Scaliger. I and my father (put together) have written well-
nigh as many.
Montaigne. Ah ! to write them is quite another thing : but
/ one reads books without a spur, or even a pat from our Lady
Vanity. How do you like my wine ? it comes from the little
knoll yonder : you cannot see the vines, those chestnut-trees are
between.
Scaligtr. The wine is excellent ; light, odoriferous, with a
smartness like a sharp child's prattle.
Montaigne. It never goes to the head, nor pulls the nerves,
which many do as if they were guitar-strings. I drink a couple
of bottles a-day, winter and summer, and never am the worse for
it. You gentlemen of the Agennois have better in your province,
and indeed the very best under the sun. I do not wonder that
the Parliament of Bordeaux should be jealous of their privileges,
and call it Bordeaux. 2 Now, if you prefer your own country
wine, only say it : I have several bottles in my cellar, with corks
as long as rapiers, and as polished. I do not know, M. de TEscale,
whether you are particular in these matters : not quite, I should
imagine, so great a judge in them as in others ?
[ 2 First ed. reads : " Bordeaux wine. All privileges are unjust ; this
as bad as any now," &c.]
J<>M'p!i Sc.ili-cr anJ M-'iiKii^iK'. 53
ScaTiger. I know three things, wine, poetry, and the
woi
Montaigne. You know one too many, then. I hardJy know
whether I know any thing about poetry ; for I like Clem Marot
better than Ronsard. Ronsard is so plaguily stiff and stately,
where there is no occasion for it ; I verily do think the man must
have slept with his wife in a cuirass.
Scafiger.* He had no wife : he was an abbe at Tours,
Montaigne. True, true ; being an abbe* he could never have
one, and never want one; particularly at Tours, where the
women profess an especial calling and most devotional turn for
the religious.
ScaTtger. It pleases me greatly that you like Marot, His
version of the Psalms is lately set to music, and added to the New
Testament, of Geneva.
Montaigne. It is putting a slice of honeycomb into a barrel of
vinegar, which will never grow the sweeter for it.
ScaTtger. Surely, you do not think in this fashion of the New
ie s lament!
Montaigne. Who supposes it ? Whatever is mild and kindly
is there. But Jack Calvin has thrown bird-lime and vitriol upon
it, and whoever but touches the cover dirties his fingers or burns
them.
Scaliger. Calvin is a very great man, I do assure you, M. de
Montaigne.
Montaigne. I do not like your very great men who beckon me
to them, call me their begotten, their dear child, and their
entrails ; and, if I happen to siy on any occasion, " I beg leave,
sir, to dissent a little from you," stamp and cry, " The devil you
do ! " and whistle to the executioner.
Scafiger. You exaggerate, my worthy friend !
Montaigne. Exaggerate do I, M. de FEscale ? What was
it he did the other day to the poor devil there with an odd name ?
Melancthon, I think it is.
Scaliger. I do not know : I have received no intelligence of
late from Geneva.
* Je me connais en trois chows, * i* aliu, in VM, ptai, et j*gtr dti
f>trto**t i. "Scatter MM, p. 132.
[ From &fl2g*r " to religion* " (4 lines) added in ind ed.]
54 Imaginary Conversations.
Montaigne. It was but last night that our curate rode over
from Lyons (he made two days of it, as you may suppose) and
supped with me. He told me that Jack had got his old friend
hanged and burned. I could not join him in the joke, for I find
none such in the Neiv Testament, on which he would have
founded it ; and, if it is one, it is not in my manner or to my
taste.
Scaliger. I cannot well believe the report, my dear sir. He
was rather urgent, indeed, on the combustion of the heretic
Michael Servetus some years past.
Montaigne. A thousand to one, my spiritual guide mistook
the name. He has heard of both, I warrant him, and thinks in
his conscience that either is as good a roast as the other.
Scaliger. Theologians are proud and intolerant, and truly the
farthest of all men from theology, if theology means the rational
sense of religion, or indeed has any thing to do with it in any way.
Melancthon was the very best of the reformers ; quiet, sedate,
charitable, intrepid, firm in friendship, ardent in faith, acute in
argument, and profound in learning.
Montaigne. Who cares about his argumentation or his learning,
if he was the rest ?
Scaliger. I hope you will suspend your judgment on this
affair, until you receive some more certain and positive informa-
tion.
Montaigne. I can believe it of the Sieur Calvin.
Scaliger. I cannot. John Calvin is a grave man, orderly and
reasonable.
Montaigne. In my opinion he has not the order nor the reason
of my cook. Mat never took a man for a sucking-pig, cleaning
and scraping and buttering and roasting him ; nor ever twitched
God by the sleeve and swore he should not have his own way.
Scaliger. M. de Montaigne, have you ever studied the doctrine
of predestination ?
Montaigne. I should not understand it, if I had ; and I
would not break through an old fence merely to get into a cavern.
I would not give a fig or a fig-leaf to know the truth of it, as far
as any man can teach it me. Would it make me honester or
happier, or, in other things, wiser ?
Scaliger. I do not know whether it would materially.
I ph Suiliger and Montaigne. 55
ttiigne. I should be an egregious fool then to care about
it. Our disputes on controverted points have filled the country
with missionaries and cut-throats. Both parties have shown a
disposition to turn this comfortable old house of mine into a for-
tress. If I had inclined to either, the other would have done it.
Come walk about it with me ; after a ride, you can do nothing
better to Like off fatigue.
Scaliger. A most spacious kitchen !
Montaigne. Look up !
ScaTiger. You have twenty or more flitches of bacon hanging
tin-!.-.
Montaigne. And if I had been a doctor or a captain, I should
have had a cobweb and predestination in the place of them. Your
soldiers of the religion on the one side, and of the good old faith on
the other, would not have left unto me safe and sound even that
good old woman there.
ScaKger. Oh yes they would, I hope.
Old Woman. Why dost giggle, Mat ? What should he know
about the business ? He speaks mighty bad French, and is as
spiteful as the devil. Praised be God, we have a kind master,
who thinks about us, and feels for us.
Scaliger. Upon my word, Mi de Montaigne, this gallery is an
interesting one.
Montaigne. I can show you nothing but my house and my
dairy. We have no chase in the month of May, you know,
unless you would like to bait the badger in the stable. This is
rare sport in rainy days.
Scaliger. Are you in earnest, M. de Montaigne ?
Montaigne. No, no, no, I cannot afford to worry him out-
right : only a little for pastime, a morning's merriment for the
dogs and wenches.
Scaliger^ You really are then of so happy a temperament
that, at your time of life, you can be amused by baiting a badger !
Montaigne. Why not ? Your father, a wiser and graver and
older man than I am, was amused by baiting a professor or critic.
I have not a dog in the kennel that would treat the badger worse
than brave Julius treated Cardan and Erasmus, and some dozens
more. We are all childish, old as well as young ; and our very
last tooth would fain stick, M. de 1'Escale, in some tender place
56 Imaginary Conversations.
of a neighbor. Boys laugh at a person who falls in the dirt ; men
laugh rather when they make him fall, and most when the dirt is
of their own laying.
Is not the gallery rather cold, after the kitchen ? We must
go through it to get into the court where I keep my tame rabbits ;
the stable is hard by : come along, come along.
Scaliger. Permit me to look a little at those banners. Some
of them are old indeed.
Montaigne. Upon my word, I blush to think I never took
notice how they are tattered. I have no fewer than three
women in the house, and in a summer's evening, only two
hours long, the worst of these rags might have been darned
across.
Scaliger. You would not have done it surely !
Montaigne. I am not over-thrifty : the women might have
been better employed. It is as well as it is then ; ay ?
Scaliger. I think so.
Montaigne. So be it.
Scaliger. They remind me of my own family, we being de-
scended from the great Cane dclla Scala, Prince of Verona, and
from the House of Hapsburg,* as you must have heard from my
father.
Montaigne. What signifies it to the world whether the great
Cane was tied to his grandmother or not ? As for the House
of Hapsburg, if you could put together as many such houses
as would make up a city larger than Cairo, they would not
be worth his study, or a sheet of paper on the table of it.
XIII. BOCCACCIO AND PETRARCA.i
Boccacccio. Remaining among us, I doubt not that you would
soon receive the same distinctions in your native country as others
* " Descendimus ex filia Comitis Hapsburgensis." ScaJigerana, p. 231.
[ x This and the following Conversation were preparatory studies for the
larger work in which Landor afterwards dealt with these two men.
(Imag. Convers., iv., 1829. Works, i., 1846. Works, iv., 1876).]
u> iiiki lYir.uvu. 57
have conferred ujxm you : ind-ed, in confidence I may promise
r. I- or greatly aiv the- Florentines ashamed that the most
of their writers and the most independent of their c
lives in exile, by the injustice he had suffered in the detriment
to his property, through the intemperate administration of
their laws.
Pftrarca. Let them recall me soon and honorably : then
perhaps I may assist them to remove their ignominy, which I
carry about with me wherever I go, and which is pointed out by
my exotic laurel.
Boccaccio. There is, and ever will be, in all countries and
under all governments, an ostracism for their greatest men.
\irca. At present we will talk no more about it. To-
morrow I pursue my journey toward Padua, where I am ex-
pected ; where some few value and esteem me, honest and
learned and ingenious men ; although neither those Transpadane
regions^ nor whatever extends beyond them, have yet produced an
equal to Boccaccio.
Boccaccio. Then, in the name of friendship, do not go thither !
form such rather from your fellow citizens. I love my equals
heartily ; and shall love them the better when I see them raised
up here, from our own mother earth, by you.
Petrarca. Let us continue our walk.
Boccaccio. If you have been delighted (and you say you
have been) at seeing again, after so long an absence, the house
and garden wherein I have placed the relaters of my stories, as
reported in the Decameron^ come a little way further up the
ascent, and we will pass through the vineyard on the west of the
villa. You will see presently another on the right, lying in its
warm little garden close to the roadside, the scene lately of some-
what that would have looked well, as illustration, in the midst of
your Latin reflections. It shows us that people the most serious
and determined may act at last contrariwise to the line of conduct
they have laid down.
J'ftrarca. Relate it to me, Messer Giovanni ; for you are
able to give reality the merits and charms of fiction, just as easily
as you give fiction the semblance, the stature, and the movement
of reality.
Boccaccio. I must here forego such powers, if in good truth I
possess them.
58 Imaginary Conversations.
Petrarca. This long green alley, defended by box and
cypresses, is very pleasant. The smell of box, although not
sweet, is more agreeable to me than many that are ; I cannot say
from what resuscitation of early and tender feeling. The 2 cypress
too seems to strengthen the nerves of the brain. Indeed, I delight
in the odor of most trees and plants.
Will not that dog hurt us ? he comes closer.
Boccaccio. Dog! thou'hast the colors of a magpie and the
tongue of one ; prythee be quiet : art thou not ashamed ?
Petrarca. Verily he trots off, comforting his angry belly with
his plenteous tail, flattened and bestrewn under it. He looks
back, going on, and puffs out his upper lip without a bark.
Bocccaccio. These creatures are more accessible to temperate
and just rebuke than the creatures of our species, usually angry
with less reason, and from no sense, as dogs are, of duty. Look
into that white arcade ! Surely it was white the other day ;
and now I perceive it is still so : the setting sun tinges it with
yellow.
Petrarca. The house has nothing of either the rustic or the
magnificent about it ; nothing quite regular, nothing much varied.
If there is anything at all affecting, as I fear there is, in the story
you are about to tell me, I could wish the edifice itself bore ex-
ternally some little of the interesting that I might hereafter turn
my mind toward it, looking out of the catastrophe, though not
away from it. But I do not even find the peculiar and uncostly
decoration of our Tuscan villas : the central turret, round which
the kite perpetually circles in search of pigeons or smaller prey,
borne onward, like the Flemish skater, by effortless will in
motionless progression. The view of Fiesole must be lovely from
that window ; but I fancy to myself it loses the cascade under
the single high arch of the Mugnone.
Boccaccio. I think so. In this villa, come rather further
off: the inhabitants of it may hear us, if they should- happen to
be in the arbor, as most people are at the present hour of day,
in this villa, Messer Francesco, lives Monna Tita Monalda, who
tenderly loved Amadeo degli Oricellaria. She however was
reserved and coy ; and Father Pietro de' Pucci, an enemy to the
family of Amadeo, told her never more to think of him, for that,
[ 2 From " The " to " plants" (3 lines) added in 2nd ed.]
Boccaccio and Pctrarca. 59
just before In- knew her, he had thrown his arm round the neck
of Nunciata Righi, his mother's maid, calling her most immodestly
a sweet creature, and of a whiteness that marble would .split with
en\y at,
Monna Tita trembled and turned pale. " Father is the girl
really so very fair ? " said she anxiously.
" Madonna/' replied the father, after confession she is not
much amiss : white she is, with a certain tint of pink not belong-
ing to her, but coming over her as through the wing of an angel
pleased at the holy function ; and her breath is such, the very ear
smells it : poor, innocent, sinful soul ! Hei ! The wretch,
Amadeo, would have endangered her salvation."
44 She must be a wicked girl to let him," said Monna Tita,
" A young man of good parentage and education would not dare
to do such a thing, of his own accord. I will see him no more
however. But it was before he knew me : and it may not be
true. I cannot think any young woman would let a young man
do so, even in the last hour before Lent. Now in what month
was it supposed to be ? "
ippoeed to be ! " cried the father indignantly : " in June ;
I say in June."
" Oh ! that now is quite impossible : for on the second of July,
forty-one days from this, and at this very hour of it, he swore to
me eternal love and constancy. I will inquire of him whether it
is true : I will charge him with it."
She did. Amadeo confessed his fault, and, thinking it a
venial one, would have taken and kissed her hand as he asked
n
Petrarca. Children ! children ! I will go into the house,
and if their relatives, as I suppose, have approved of the marriage,
I will endeavor to persuade the young lady that a fault like this,
on the repentance of her lover, is not unpardonable. But first, is
Amadeo a young man of loose habits ?
Boccaccio. Less than our others : in fact, I never heard of
any deviation, excepting this.
Petrarca. Come then with me.
Boccaccio. Wait a little.
Petrarca. I hope the modest Tita after a trial, will not be
too severe with him.
60 Imaginary Conversations.
Boccaccio. Seventy is far from her nature ; but, such is her
purity and innocence, she shed many and bitter tears at his con-
fession, and declared her unalterable determination of taking the
veil among the nuns of Fiesole. Amadeo fell at her feet, and
wept upon them. She pushed him from her gently, and told him
she would still love him, if he would follow her example, leave
the world, and become a friar of San Marco. Amadeo was
speechless ; and, if he had not been so, he never would have
made a promise he intended to violate. She retired from him :
after a time he arose, less wounded than benumbed by the sharp
uncovered stones in the garden walk ; and, as a man who fears
to fall from a precipice goes farther from it than is necessary, so
did Amadeo shun the quarter where the gate is, and, oppressed
by his agony and despair, throw his arms across the sun-dial and
rest his brow upon it, hot as it must have been on a cloudless day
in August. When the evening was about to close, he was
aroused by the cries of rooks over-head ; they flew toward
Florence, and beyond : he too went back into the city.
Tita fell sick from her inquietude. Every morning ere sunrise
did Amadeo return ; but could hear only from the laborers in
the field that Monna Tita was ill, because she had promised to
take the veil and had not taken it, knowing, as she must do, that
the heavenly bridegroom is a bridegroom never to be trifled with,
let the spouse be young and beautiful as she may be. Amadeo
had often conversed with the peasant of the farm, who much pitied.
so worthy and loving a gentleman ; and, finding him one evening
fixing some thick and high stakes in the ground, offered to help
him. After due thanks, " It is time," said the peasant, " to re-
build the hovel and watch the grapes."
He went into the stable, collected the old pillars of his
autumnal observatory, drove them into the ground, and threw the
matting over them.
" This is my house," cried he. " Could I never, in my
stupidity, think about rebuilding it before ? Bring me another
mat or two : I will sleep here to-night, to-morrow night, every
night, all autumn, all winter."
He slept there, and was consoled at last by hearing that Monna
Tita was out of danger, and recovering from her illness by spiritual
means. His heart grew lighter day after day. Every evening
Boccaccio and IVt rare; i. 6 1
tlul he observe the rooks, in the same order, pass along the same
in the heavens, just over San Marco : and it now occurred
to him, a her three weeks indeed, that Monna Tita had pt
^ range idea, in choosing his monastery, not unconnected with
the passage of these birds. He grew calmer upon it, until he
asked himself whether he might hope. In the midst of this half-
meditation, half-dream, his whole frame was shaken by the voices,
however low and gentle, of two monks coming from the villa and
approaching him. He would have concealed himself under this
b.mk whereon we are standing ; but they saw him and called him
by name. He now perceived that the younger of them was
Guiberto Oddi, with whom he had been at school about six or
seven years ago, and who admired him for his courage and frank-
ness when he was almost a child.
" Do not let us mortify poor Amadeo," said Guiberto to his
companion. *' Return to the road : I will speak a few words to
him, and engage him (I trust) to comply with reason and yield to
necessity." The elder monk, who saw he should have to climb
the hill again, assented to the proposal, and went into the road.
After the first embraces and few words, * Amadeo ! Amadeo ! "
said Guiberto, " it was love that made me a friar ; let any thing
else make you one."
* Kind heart ! " replied Amadeo. " If death or religion, or
hatred of me, deprives me of Tita Monalda, I will die, where she
commanded me, in the cowl. It is you who prepare her then to
throw away her life and mine ! "
" Hold ! Amadeo ! " said Guiberto, " I officiate together with
good Father Fontesecco, who invariably falls asleep amid our
holy function."
Now, Messer Francesco, I must inform you that Father
Fontesecco has the heart of a flower. It feels nothing, it wants
nothing ; it is pure and simple, and full of its own little light.
Innocent as a child, as an angel, nothing ever troubled him but
how to devise what he should confess. A confession costs him
more trouble to invent than any Giornata in my Decameron cost
me. He was once overheard to say on this occasion, " God
forgive me in his infinite mercy, for making it appear that I am
a little worse than he has chosen I should be ! " He is
temperate ; for he never drinks more than exactly half the wine
62 Imaginary Conversations.
and water set before him. In fact, he drinks the wine and
leaves the water, saying, " We have the same water up at San
Domenico ; we send it hither : it would be uncivil to take back
our own gift, and still more to leave a suspicion that we thought
other people's wine poor beverage." Being afflicted by the
gravel, the physician of his convent advised him, as he never was
fond of wine, to leave it off entirely ; on which he said, " I
know few things ; but this I know well : in water there is often
gravel, in wine never. It hath pleased God to afflict me, and
even to go a little out of his way in order to do it, for the greater
warning to other sinners. I will drink wine, brother Anselmini,
and help his work."
I have led you away from the younger monk.
" While Father Fontesecco is in the first stage of beatitude,
chanting through his nose the benedicite, I will attempt," said
Guiberto, "to comfort Monna Tita."
" Good, blessed Guiberto ! " exclaimed Amadeo in a transport
of gratitude, at which Guiberto smiled with his usual grace and
suavity. " Oh Guiberto ! Guiberto ! my heart is breaking.
Why should she want you to comfort her ? but comfort her
then ! " and he covered his face within his hands.
" Remember," said Guiberto placidly, " her uncle is bed-
ridden ; her aunt never leaves him : the servants are old and
sullen, and will stir for nobody. Finding her resolved, as they
believe, to become a nun, they are little assiduous in their
services. Humor her, if none else does, Amadeo ; let her fancy
that you intend to be a friar ; and, for the present, walk not on
these grounds."
"Are you true, or are you traitorous?" cried Amadeo,
grasping his friend's hand most 'fiercely.
" Follow your own counsel, if you think mine insincere," said
the young friar, not withdrawing his hand, but placing the other
on Amadeo's. " Let me, however, advise you to conceal your-
self; and I will direct Silvestrina to bring you such accounts of
her mistress as may at least make you easy in regard to her health.
Adieu."
Amadeo was now rather tranquil ; more than he had ever
been, not only since the displeasure of Monna Tita, but since
the first sight of her. Profuse at all times in his gratitude to
BOCCUT'U) ,uul lYtrarva. 63
Silvi strina, whenever she brought him good news, news better
than usual, In- pressed her to his bosom. Sil\e*trina Pioppi is
about fifteen, slender, fresh, intelligent, lively, good-humored,
sensitive ; and any one but Amadeo might call her very pretty.
Pctr.irca. Ah, Giovanni ! here I find your heart obtaining
the mastery over your vivid and volatile imagination. Well have
you said, the maiden being really pretty, any one but Amadeo
might think her so. On the banks of the Sorga there are
beautiful maids ; the woods and the rocks have a thousand times 8
repeated it. I heard but one echo ; I heard but one name : I
would have fled from them for ever at another.
Boccaccio. Francesco, do not beat your breast just now : wait
a little. Monna Tita would take the veil. The fatal certainty
was announced to Amadeo by his true Guiberto, who had
earnestly and repeatedly prayed her to consider the thing a few
months longer.
" I will see her first! By all the saints of heaven I will see
her ! " cried the desperate Amadeo, and ran into the house,
toward the still apartment of his beloved. Fortunately Guiberto
was neither less active nor less strong than he, and overtaking
him at the moment, drew him into the room opposite. " If you
will be quiet and reasonable, there is yet a possibility left you,"
said Guiberto in his car, although perhaps he did not think it.
* But if you utter a voice or are seen by any one, you ruin the
fame of her you love, and obstruct your own prospects for ever.
It being known that you have not slept in Florence these several
nights, it will be suspected by the malicious that you have slept in
the villa with the connivance of Monna Tita. Compose yourself;
answer nothing ; rest where you are : do not add a worse
imprudence to a very bad one. I promise you my assistance, my
speedy return, and best counsel : you shall be released at day-
break." He ordered Stlvestrina to supply the unfortunate youth
with the cordials usually administered to the uncle, or with the
rich old wine they were made of ; and she performed the order
with such promptitude and attention, that he was soon in some
sort refreshed*
[* Pint ed. reads : time* told me o ; and I would have fled from them
for *aying it. Giovanni ! tkty could feel it ! Hgcutccio. Franceso,"
Ac.)
64 Imaginary Conversations.
Petrarca. I pity him from my soul, poor young man !
Alas, we are none of us, by original sin, free from infirmities or
from vices.
Boccaccio. If we could find a man exempt by nature from
vices and infirmities, we should find one not worth knowing :
he would also be void of tenderness and compassion. What
allowances then could his best friends expect from him in their
frailties ? What help, consolation, and assistance in their mis-
fortunes ? We are in the midst of a workshop well stored with
sharp instruments : we may do ill with many, unless we take
heed ; and good with all, if we will but learn how to employ them.
Petrarca. There is somewhat of reason in this. You
strengthen me to proceed with you : I can bear the rest.
Boccaccio. Guiberto had 4 taken leave of his friend, and had
advanced a quarter of a mile, which (as you perceive) is nearly
the whole way, on his return to the monastery, when he was
overtaken by some peasants who were hastening homeward from
Florence. The information he collected from them made him
determine to retrace his steps. He entered the room again, and,
from the intelligence he had just acquired, gave Amadeo the
assurance that Monna Tita must delay her entrance into the
convent ; for that the abbess had that moment gone down the
hill on her way toward Siena to venerate some holy relics, carry-
ing with her three candles, each five feet long, to burn before
them ; which candles contained many particles of the myrrh
presented at the nativity of our Saviour by the wise men of the
East. Amadeo breathed freely, and was persuaded by Guiberto
to take another cup of old wine, and to eat with him some cold
roast kid, which 5 had been offered him for mcrenda.* After
the agitation of his mind a heavy sleep fell upon the lover, coming
almost before Guiberto departed ; so heavy indeed that Silvestrina
was alarmed. It was her apartment ; and she performed the
honors of it as well as any lady in Florence could have done.
Petrarca. I easily believe it: the poor are more attentive
than the rich, and the young are more compassionate than the old.
[4 From had " to He " (6 lines added in znd ed.]
[ 6 From " which " to " merenda " added in ind ed.]
* Meranda is luncheon, meridiana, eaten by the wealthier at the
hour when the peasants dine.
Boccaccio aiul lYtrurca. 65
Boccaccio. O Francesco! what inconsistent creatures are \u !
Petrarcii. True, indeed ! I now foresee the end. He
migh' e worse.
Boccaccio. I think so.
1 1< ilmost deserved it.
Boccaccio. I think that too.
Pttrarca. Wretched mortals ! our passions for ever lead us
into this, or worse.
Boccaccio. Ay, truly ; much worse generally.
Pftrarca. The very twig on which the flowers grew lately
scourges us to the bone in its maturity.
Boccaccio. Incredible will it be to you, and, by my faith, to
was hardly credible. Certain however is it, that Guiberto
on his return by sunrise found Amadeo in the arms of sleep.
Petrarca. Not at all, not at all incredible : the truest lover
would have done the same, exhausted by suffering.
Boccaccio. He was truly in the arms of sleep ; but, Francesco,
there was another pair of arms about him, worth twenty such,
divinity as he is. A loud burst of laughter from Guiberto did
not arouse either of the parties ; but Monn.t Tita heard it, and
rushed into the room, tearing her hair, and invoking the saints of
heaven against the perfidy of man. She seized Silvestrina by
that arm which appeared the most offending : the girl opened her
eyes, turned on her face, rolled out of bed, and threw herself at
the feet of her mistress, shedding tears, and wiping them away
with the only piece of linen about her. Monna Tita too shed
tears. Amadeo still slept profoundly ; a flush, almost of crimson,
overspreading his cheeks. Monna Tita led away, after some pause,
poor Silvestrina, and made her confess the whole. She then
wept more and more, and made the girl confess it again, and
explain her confession. " I cannot believe such wickedness," she
cried : " he could not be so hardened. O sinful Silvestrina ! how
will you ever tell Father Doni one half, one quarter ? He never
can absolve you."
Petrarccu Giovanni, I am glad I did not enter the house ;
you were prudent in restraining me. I have no pity for the youth
at all : never did one so deserve to lose a mistress.
Boccaccio. Say, rather, to gain a wife.
Petrarca. Absurdity ! impossibility !
66 Imaginary Conversations.
Boccaccio. He won her fairly ; strangely, and on a strange
table, as he played his game. Listen ! that guitar is Monna
Tita's. Listen ! what a fine voice (do not you think it) is
Amadeo's.
Amadeo (singing).
Oh, I have err'd !
I laid my hand upon the nest
(Tita, I sigh to sing the rest)
Of the wrong bird.
Petrarca. She laughs too at it ! Ah ! Monna Tita was
made by nature to live on this side of Fiesole.
XIV. CHAUCER, BOCCACCIO, AND PETRARCA. 1
Petrarca. You have kept your promise like an English man,
Ser* Geoffreddo : welcome to Arezzo. This gentleman is
[* It is well known that the meeting of these three poets may have
actually occurred. In 1371 Chaucer visited Florence on a mission from
the King. Petrarca was then living at Arqua near Padua. Boccaccio
was also near, and the three may easily have met. Landor's reason for
choosing Arezzo is not clear ; perhaps he had visited and liked the place.
Chaucer's lines in prologue to the tale of Grisildis, show his respect for
Petrarca, and at least suggest that he had talked with him.
I wil yow telle a tale, which that I
Lerned at Padowe of a worthy clerk
As proved by his wordes and his werk.
He now is dede and nayled in his chest,
Now God give his soule wel good rest !
Fraunces Petrarch, the laureat poete
Highte this clerk, whos rhetorique swete
Enluinynd al Ytail of poetrie.
The story put into Chaucer's mouth had, of course, to Landor, a local
application. He was a Warwickshire man and liked to make fun of the
Lucy family, as Shakespeare had done before him. There is a curious
letter from Elizabeth Landor (Life, 335), describing the Lucy of that
date and his little grandson. " He is old Lucy exactly. He believes the
whole world was made for him, and in honour of his dignity. He opens
his round little eyes, buttons his round little mouth, inflates his round
little face, and is graver than any owl, including his grandpapa."
(Imag. Convers., iv., 1829. Works, i., 1846. Works, iv., 1876.)]
* Ser is commonly used by Boccaccio and others for Messer.
Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Petrarca. 67
Messer Giovanni Boccaccio, of whose unfinished Decameron,
which I opened to you in manuscript, you expressed your admira-
tion when we met at Florence in the spring.
Boccaccio. I was then at Certaldo, my native place, filling
up my stories, and have only to regret that my acquaintance
with one so friendly and partial to me has been formed so late.
How did Rome answer your expectations,
Chau, : r. I had passed through Pisa; of which city the
Campo Santo, now nearly finished after half a century from its
foundation, and the noble street along the Arno;* are incompar-
ably more beautiful than any thing in Rome.
Petrarca. That is true. 1 have heard, however, some of
your countrymen declare that Oxford is equal to Pisa, in the
solidity, extent, and costliness of its structures.
Chaucer. Oxford is the most beautiful of our cities : it would
be a very fine one if there were no houses in it.
Petrarca. How is that ?
Chaucer. The lath-and-plaster white-washed houses look
despicably mean under the colleges.
Boccaccio. Few see any thing in the same point of view. It
would gratify me highly, if you would tell me with all the frank-
ness of your character and your country, what struck you most
in the capital of the world" as the vilest slaves in it call their
great open cloaca.
Chaucer. After the remains of antiquity, I know not whether
any thing struck me more forcibly than the superiority of our
English churches and monasteries.
Boccaccio. I do not wonder that yours should be richer and
better built, although I never heard before that they are ; for the
money that is collected in Rome or elsewhere, by the pontiffs,
is employed for the most part in the aggrandizement of their
families. Messer Francesco, although he wears the habit of a
churchman, speaks plainlier on these subjects than a simple secular,
as I am, dares to do.
Petrarca. We may, however, I trust, prefer the beauty and
variety of our scenery to that of most in the world. Tuscany is
The Corso in Rome i now much finer. P. Leopold dismantled the
walls of Pia, and demolished more than fifty towers and turrets. Every
year castellated mansions are modernized in Italy.
68 Imaginary Conversations.
less diversified and, excepting 2 the mountains above Camaldoli
and Laverna, less sublime than many other parts of Italy ; yet
where does Nature smile with more contented gayety than in the
vicinity of Florence ? Great part of our sea-coast along the
Mediterranean is uninteresting ; yet it is beautiful in its whole
extent from France to Massa. Afterward there is not a single
point of attraction till you arrive at Terracina. The greater part
of the way round the peninsula, from Terracina to Pcsaro, has its
changes of charms : thenceforward all is flat again.
Boccaccio. We cannot travel in the most picturesque and
romantic regions of our Italy, from the deficiency of civilization
in the people.
Chaucer. Yet, Messer Giovanni, I never journeyed so far
through so enchanting a scenery as there is almost the whole of
the way from Arezzo to Rome, particularly round Terni and
Narni and Perugia.
Our master, Virgil, speaks of dreams that swarm upon the
branches of one solitary elm. In this country, more than
dreams swarm upon every spray and leaf ; and every murmur of
wood or water comes from and brings with it inspiration. Never
shall I forget the hour when my whole soul was carried away
from me by the cataract of Terni, and when all things existing
were lost to ,'me in its stupendous waters. The majestic woods
that bowed their heads before it ; the sun that was veiling his
glory in mild translucent clouds over the furthest course of the
river ; the moon, that suspended her orb in the very centre of it,
seemed ministering Powers, themselves in undiminished ad-
miration of the marvel they had been looking on through un-
numbered ages. What are the works of man in comparison with
this ? What, indeed, are the other works of Nature ?
Petrarca? Ser Giovanni ! this, which appears too great
even for Nature, was not too great for man. Our ancestors
achieved it. Curius Dentatus in his consulate, forbade the
waters of the Velinus to inundate so beautiful a valley, and threw
them down this precipice into the Nar. When the traces of all
their other victories, all their other labors, shall have disappeared,
this work of the earlier and the better Romans shall continue to
[ 2 From " excepting " to " Laverna " added in 2nd ed.]
[ ;! From " Petrarca " to " abroad " (24 lines) added in 2nd ed.]
Chauar, Boccaccio, and Pctrarca. 69
perform its office, shall produce its full effect, and shall astonish
the beholder as it astonished him at its first completion.
Chaucer. I was not forgetful that we heard the story from
our guide, but I thought him a boaster ; and now for the first
time I KM rn that any great power hath been exerted for any
great good. Roads were levelled for aggression, and vast
edifices were constructed either for pride or policy, to com-
memorate some victory, to reward the Gods for giving it, or to
keep them in the same temper. There is nothing of which men
appear to have been in such perpetual apprehension, as the incon-
stancy of the deities they worship.
Many thanks, Ser Francesco, for reminding me of what the
guide asserted, and for teaching me the truth. I thought the
Jail of the Velinus not only the work of Nature, but the most
beautiful she had ever made on earth* My prevention, in regard
to the country about Rome, was almost as great and almost as
unjust to Nature, from what I had heard of it both at home and
abroad. In the approach to the eternal city, she seems to have
surrendered much of her wild ness, and to have assumed all her
statcliness and sedateness, all her awfulness and severity. The
vast plain toward the sea abases the soul together with it ; while
the hills on the left, chiefly those of Tusculum and of Tiber,
overshadow and almost overwhelm it with obscure remembrances,
some of them descending from the heroic ages, others from an
age more miraculous than the heroic, the herculean infancy of
immortal Rome. Soracte comes boldly forward, and stands
alone. Round about, on every side, we behold an infinity of
baronial castles, many moated and flanked with towers and
bastions ; many following the direction of the precipitous hills,
of which they cover the whole summit. Tracts of land, where
formerly stood entire nations, are now the property of some rude
baron, descendant of a murderer too formidable for punishment,
or of a robber too rich for it ; and the ruins of cities, which had
sunk in luxury when England was one wide forest, are caned off
by a herd of slaves and buffaloes to patch up the crevices of a
fort or dungeon.
Boccaccio. Messer Francesco groans upon this and wipes his
! .'. .
Petrarca. Indeed I do.
70 Imaginary Conversations.
Three years ago my fancy and hopes were inflamed by what
I believed to be the proximity of regeneration. Cola Rienzi
might have established good and equitable laws : even the Papacy,
from hatred of the barons, would have countenanced the enaction
of them, hoping at some future time to pervert and subjugate the
people as before. The vanity of this tribune, who corresponded
with kings and emperors, and found them pliable and ductile, was
not only the ruin of himself and of the government he had
founded, but threw down, beyond the chance of retrieving it, the
Roman name.
Let us converse no more about it. I did my duty ; yet our
failure afflicts me, and will afflict me until my death. Jubilees,
and other such mummeries, are deemed abundant compensation
for lost dignity, lost power and empire, lost freedom and in-
dependence. We who had any hand in raising up our country
from her abject state are looked on with jealousy by those
wretches to whom cowardice and flight alone give the titles and
rewards of loyalty ; with sneers and scorn by those who share
among themselves the emoluments of office ; and, lest consolation
be altogether wanting, with somewhat of well-meaning com-
passion, as weak misguided visionaries, by quiet good creatures
who would have beslavered and adored us if we had succeeded.
The nation that loses her liberty is not aware of her misfortune
at the time, any more than the patient is who receives a paralytic
stroke. He who first tells either of them what has happened is
repulsed as a simpleton or a churl.
Boccaccio. When Messer Francesco talks about liberty, he
talks loud. Let us walk away from the green,* into the cathe-
dral which the congregation is leaving.
Petrarca. Come, now, Giovanni, tell us some affecting story,
suitable to the gloominess of the place.
Boccaccio. If Ser Geoffreddo felt in honest truth any pleasure
at reading my Decameron, he owes me a tithe at least of the stories
it contains ; for I shall not be so courteous as to tell him that one
of his invention is worth ten of mine, until I have had all his ten
from him : if not now, another day.
Chaucer. Let life be spared to me, and I will carry the tithe
* The cathedral of Arezzo stands on a green, in which are pleasant
walks commanding an extensive view.
Chauo.T. Boccaccio, and IVtnnv.i 71
in triumph through my country, much as may be shed of the
and rij>er grain by the conveyance and the handling of it.
1 Mjjlishmen what Italians ;ne; how
much deeper in thought, intense! in terling, and richer in imagina-
tion, than rly : and I will try whether we cannot raise
poetry under our fogs, and merriment among our marshes. We
it first throw some litter about it, which those who come
after us may remove.
Do not threaten, Ser Geoffreddo ! Englishmen
act.
Boccaccio. Messer Francesco is grown melancholy at the
spectre of the tribune. Relate to us some amusing tale, either of
court or war.
Chaucer. It would ill become me, signers, to refuse what I
can offer ; and truly I am loath to be silent, when a fair occasion
is before me of adverting to those of my countrymen who fought
in the battle of Cressy, as did one or two or more of the persons
that are the subjects of my narrative.
Boccaccio. Enormous and horrible as was the slaughter of the
French in that fight, and hateful as is war altogether to you and
me, Francesco, I do expect from the countenance of Ser Geof-
freddo, that he will rather make us merry than sad.
Chaucer. I hope I may, the story not wholly nor principally
.; to the battle.
Sir Magnus Lucy is a knight of ample possessions and of no
obscure family, in the shire of Warwick, one of our inland pro-
vinces. He was left in his childhood under the guardianship of
a mother, who loved him more fondly than discreetly. Beside
which disadvantage, there was always wanting in his family the
nerve or fluid, or whatever else it may be, on which the intellectual
powers are nourished and put in motion. The good Lady Joan
would never let him enter the lists at jousts and tournaments, to
which indeed he showed small inclination, nor would she encourage
him to practise or learn any martial exeivise. He was excused
from the wars under the plea that he was subject to epilepsy ;
somewhat of which fit or another had befallen him in his adoles-
cence, from having eaten too freely of a cold swan, after dinner.
To render him justice, he had given once an indication of courage,
mer's son upon his estate, a few years younger than hi
72 Imaginary Conversations.
had become a good player at quarter-staff, and was invited to
Charlecote, the residence of the Lucys, to exhibit his address in
this useful and manly sport. The lad was then about sixteen
years old, or rather more ; and another of the same parish, and
about the same standing, was appointed his antagonist. The sight
animated Sir Magnus ; who, seeing the game over and both com-
batants out of breath, called out to Peter Crosby the conqueror,
and declared his readiness to engage with him, on these conditions:
First, that he should have a helmet on his head with a cushion
over it, both of which he sent for ere he made the proposal, and
both of which were already brought to him, the one from a buck's
horn in the hall, the other from his mother's chair in the parlor ;
secondly, that his visor should be down ; thirdly, that Peter
should never aim at his body or arms ; fourthly and lastly, for
he would not be too particular, that, instead of a cudgel, he should
use a bulrush, enwrapped in the under-coat he had taken off, lest
any thing venomous should be sticking to it, as his mother said
there might be, from the spittle or spawn of toads, evets, water-
snakes, and adders.
Peter scraped back his right foot, leaned forward, and laid his
hooked fingers on his brow, not without scratching it, the multi-
form signification of humble compliance in our country. John
Crosby, the father of Peter, was a merry, jocose old man, not a
little propense to the mischievous. He had about him a powder
of a sternutatory quality, whether in preparation for some trick
among his boon companions, or useful in the catching of chub
and bream, as many suspected, is indifferent to my story. This
powder he inserted in the head of the bulrush, which he pretended
to soften and to cleanse by rubbing, while he instructed his lad in
the use and application of it. Peter learned the lesson so well,
and delivered it so skilfully, that at the very first blow the powder
went into the aperture of the visor, and not only operated on the
nostrils, but equally on the two spherical, horny, fish-like eyes
above it. Sir Magnus wailed aloud, dropped his cudgel, tore
with great effort (for it was well fastened) the pillow from his
helmet, and implored the attendants to embrace him, crying,
" Oh Jesu ! Jesu ! I am in the agonies of death : receive my
spirit ! " John Crosby kicked the ankle of the farmer who
sat next him on the turf, and whispered, " He must find it first."
Boccaccio, and Potrarca. 73
Tin- mischief was attributed to the light and downy particle,
of the bul: . hed by the unlucky blow; and John, spring-
ing up when he had spoken :he words, and sei/ing it from the
of his son, laid it lustily about his shoulders until it fell
in dust on every side, crying, "Scape-grace! scape-grace!
born to break thy father's heart in splinters ! Is it thus thou
begin nest thy service to so brave and generous a master ? Out of
my sight!"
Never was the trick divulged by the friends of Peter until
!eath, which happened lately at the battle of Creasy.
While Peter was fighting for his king and country, Sir Magnus
resolved to display his wealth and splendor in his native land.
He had heard of princes and other great men travelling in dis-
guise, and under names not belonging to them. This is easy of
ion: he resolved to try it; although at first a qualm of
conscience came over him on the part of the Christian name
which his godfathers and godmothers had given him, but which
however was so distinguishing that he determined to lay it aside,
first asking leave of three saints, paying three groats into the alms-
box, saying twelve paternosters within the hour, and making the
priest of the parish drunk at supper. He now gave it out by
sound of horn that he should leave Charlecote, and travel incognito
through several parts of England. For this purpose he locked up
the liveries of his valets, and borrowed for them from his tenants
the dress of yeomanry. Three grooms rode forward in buff
habiliments, with three led horses well caparisoned. Before noon
he reached a small town called Henley-in-Arden, as his host at
the inn-door told him, adding, when the knight dismounted, that
there were scholars who had argued in his hearing whether the
name of Arden were derived from another forest so called in
Germany, or from a puissant family which bore it, being earls of
Warwick in the reign of Edward the Confessor. " It is the
opinion of the Abbot of Tewkesbury, and likewise of my very
good master, him of Evesham," said the host, " that the Saxon
earls brought over the name with them from their own country,
ive it to the wilder part of their dominions in this of ours."
44 No such family now, ' cried the knight, " We have driven
them out, bag and baggage, long ago, being braver men than they
74 Imaginary Conversations.
A thought however struck him that the vacant name might
cover and befit him in this expedition ; and he ordered his
servants to call him Sir Nigel de Arden.
Continuing his march northward, he protested that nothing
short of the Trent (if indeed that river were not a fabulous one)
should stop him ; nay, by the rood, not even the Trent itself, if
there were any bridge over it strong enough to bear a horse
caparisoned, or any ford which he could see a herd of oxen or a
score of sheep fit for the butcher pass across. Early on the
second morning he was nigh upon twenty miles from home, at a
hamlet we call Bromwicham, where be two or three furnaces and
sundry smiths, able to make a horse-shoe in time of need, allow-
ing them drink and leisure. He commanded his steward to dis-
burse unto the elder of them one penny of lawful coin, advising the
cunning man to look well and soberly at his steed's hoofs, and at
those of the other steeds in his company ; which being done, and
no repairs being necessary, Sir Magnus then proceeded to the vicinity
of another hamlet called Sutton Colefield, in which country is a well-
wooded and well-stocked chase, belonging to my dread master
the Duke of Lancaster, who often taketh his sport therein.
Here, unhappily for the knight, were the keepers of the said
chase hunting the red and fallow deer. The horse of the wor-
shipful knight, having a great affection for dogs, and inspirited by
the prancing and neighing of his fellow- creatures about him,
sprang forward, and relaxed not any great matter of his mettle
before he reached the next forest of Cannock, where the buck
that was pursued pierced the thickets and escaped his enemies.
In the village of Cannock was the knight, at his extremity, fain
to look for other farriery than that which is exercised by the
craft in Bromwicham, and upon other flesh than horseflesh, and
about parts less horny than hoofs, however hardened be the same
parts by untoward bumps and contusions. This farriery was
applied by a skilful and discreet leech, while Sir Magnus opened
his missal on his bed in the posture of devotion, and while a
priest, who had been called in to comfort him, was looking
for the penetential psalms of good king David, the only service
(he assured Sir Magnus) that had any effect in the removal or
alleviation of such sufferings.
When the host at Cannock heard the name of his guest,
*^V* 141V? TVV1I%. ISIV, fV TV IU* ** 1 1 J<* I U V H_/ ItlO ICIUIVI O dl> X^Cl 1 1 1 1 1'l. A
were received by the townspeople with much deference
respect. The attendants of Sir Magnus observed it, and
Chaucer. Hi- -cacao, and iVtnircu. 75
44 'Sblood ! " cried he to his son, " ride over, Emanuel, to Long-
croft, and inform the worshipful youths, Humphrey and Henry,
lie of their kinsmen is come over from the other side of
.-ickshire to visit them, and has lost his way in the forest
through a love of sport."
On his road into Rugeley, Emanuel met them together, and
told them his errand. They had heard the horn as they were
riding out, had joined the hunt, and were now returning home.
.mt at first that any one should take the name of their
family, they went on asking more and more questions and their
anger abated as their curiosity increased. Having an abundance
of good-humor and of joviality in their nature, they agreed to
act courteously, and turn the adventure into glee and joyousness.
So they went back with Emanuel to his father's at Cannock, and
>le with much deference and
were
earnest to are in what manner the adventure would terminate.
Go," said Humphrey, " and tell your Master Sir Nigel that
his kinsmen are come to pay their duty to him." The clergyman
who had been reading the penitential psalms, and had afterwards
said Mass, opened the chamber-door for them, and conducted
them to Sir Magnus. They began their compliments by telling
him that, although the house at Longcroft was unworthy of their
kinsman's reception, in the absence of their father, when they
were interrupted by the knight, who cried aloud in a clear quaver,
** Young gentlemen ! I have no relative in these parts : I come
from the very end of Warwickshire. Reverend sir priest ! I do
protest and vow I have no cognizance of these two young gentle-
men.
As be spoke the sweat hung upon his brow, the cause of which
neither the brothers nor the priest could interpret ; but it really
was lest they should have come to dine with him, and perhaps
have moreover some retinue in the yard. Disclaimed so uncere-
moniously, Humphrey dc Arden opened a leathern purse, and
carefully took out his father's letter. Whereat the alarm of Sir
Magnus increased beyond measure, from the uncertainty of its
contents, and from the certainty of being discovered as the
usurper of a noble name. His terrors however were groundless ;
the letter was this :
76 Imaginary Conversations.
" SON HUMPHREY, I grieve that the valet who promised me
those three strong geldings, and took moneys thereupon, hath
mortally disappointed me ; for verily we have hard work here,
being one against seven or eight ; * and, if matters go on in this
guise, T must e'en fight afoot ere it be long : they have killed
among them my brave old Black Jack, who had often winnowed
them with his broken wind, which was not broken till they broke
it. The drunken fat rogue that now fails me would rather hunt
on Colefield or (if he dare come so near to you) on Cannock,
than lead the three good steeds in a halter up Yoxall Lane.
Whenever ye find him, stand within law with him and use whit-
leather rather than Needwood holly, which might provoke the
judge ; and take the three hale nags, coming hither with them
yourselves, and paying him forthwith three angels, due unto him
on the feast of Saint Barnabas and that other (St Jude, as I am
now reminded), if ye have so many ; if not, mortgage a meadow.
And let this serve as a warrant from your loving father, f ft "
" What is that to me ? " cried in agony Sir Magnus. The
priest took the letter and shook his head. " Sir priest ! you see
how it stands with us ; " said the knight. " Do deliver me from
the lion's den and from the young lions ! "
" Friend ! " said the priest, gravely and sternly, " I know the
mark of Sir Humphrey ; and the handwriting is my own brother's,
who, taking with him in his saddle-bag a goose-pie and twelve
strings of black pudding for Sir Humphrey, left his cure at Tarn-
worth but four months ago, and joined the army in France, in
order to shrive the wounded. It is my duty to make known unto
the sheriff whatever is irregular in my parish."
"Oh, for the love of Christ, say nothing to the sheriff! I
will confess all," exclaimed the knight.
The attendants and many of the customers and country-folks
had listened at the door, which was indeed wide open ; and the
priest, being now confirmed in his suspicion by the knight's offer
to "confess all," walked slowly through them, mounted his
* Such soon afterward was the disproportion of numbers at the battle
of Cressy.
t The mark of a knight, instead of his name, is not be wondered at.
Out of the thirty-six barons who subscribed the Magna Charta, three
only signed with their names.
Chaucer, Boccaccio, ami lYtrarca. 77
palfrey, and rode over to the sheriff at Penkridge. The two
young gentlemen were delighted on seeing the consternation of
Sir Magnus and his company, and encouraged by the familiarity
of one among them, led him aside and said, " It will be well and
happy for you if you persuade the others of your party to return
home speedily. The sheriff" is a shrewd severe man, and will
surely send every soul of you into Picardy, excepting such as he
bbct on the common for an ensample."
" Masters ! " replied the Warwickshire wag, " I will return
among them and frighten them into the road ; but you two brave
lads shall have your horses, and your father his, together with
such attendants as you little reckon on. Are ye for the wars ? "
" We were going," said they gayly, '* whenever we could raise
enough moneys from our father's tenantry ; for he, much as he
desires to have us with him, is very loath to be badly equipped ;
and would perad venture see us rather slain in battle, or (what he
thinks worse) not in it at all, than villanously mounted."
" Will ye take me ? " cried the gallant yeoman.
" Gladly," answered they both together.
;>h Roebuck was the name of this brave youngster; and,
without another word, he ran among his fellows, and putting
nd above his ear, as our hunters are wont, shouted aloud,
" Who's for hangn ne morning?" "Ralph!" chimed
they together, somewhat languidly, " What dost mean ? "
* I mean," whispered he slowly and distinctly to the nearest,
" that the country will be up in half an hour ; that the priest is
gone for the sheriff; and that if he went for the devil he could
fetch him. I never knew a priest at a fault, whatever he winded.
Whosoe'er has a horse able to carry him is in luck. In my mind
there will be some heels without a stirrup under them before to-
morrow, kick as they may to find it. I must not however be
unfaithful to my master, for whom I have spoken a fair word and
worn a smiling face, in my perils and tribulations, with these stout
young gallants. Each to his own bit and bridle : the three led
chargers let no man touch, on his life. For the rest, I will be
spokesman, in lack of a better. May we meet again in Charlecote,
at least half the number we set out !"
Away they ran, saddled their horses, and rode off. Ralph,
who had lately been put in the stocks by his master for drinking
78 Imaginary Conversations.
a cup too much and for singing a song by no means dissuasive of
incontinence, now for the first time began to think of it again, and
expected a like repose after less baiting. Presently came up a
swart, thin, fierce little man, with four others bearing arms. He,
observing Ralph, ordered him to " stand," in the king's name.
Ralph had been standing, and stood, with his arms before him,
hanging as if they were broken.
" Varlet and villain ! " cried the under- sheriff, for such was the
little man, " who art thou ? "
" May it please your honor," answered he submissively, " my
name is a real one and my own, such as it is."
"And what may it be, sirrah ! "
" Ralph Roebuck."
" Egad ! " cried the little man starting at it, " that too sounds
like a feigned one. Ye are all rogues and vagrants. Where
are thy fellows ? "
" I can answer only for myself, may it please your worship ! "
said Ralph.
" Where is thy leader, vagabond ! " cried the magistrate, more
and more indignant.
" God knows," answered Ralph, dolorously.
" Has he fled with the rest of his gang ? "
" God grant he may," ejaculated Roebuck, " rather than hang
upon the cursed tree."
The under-sherifF then ordered his people to hold Ralph in
custody, and went and saluted the two De Ardens, who requested
that clemency might be shown to every one implicated in an
offence so slight.
" We must consider of that," answered the under-sheriff.
" Edward a Brocton the priest of Cannock here, has given me
this letter, which he swears is written by his brother William,
priest of Tarn worth, and marked by your worshipful father."
The young men bowed. " Who is the rogue that defrauded
him," resumed the under-sheriff, " in the three horses, to our
lord the king's great detriment and discomfort ? "
It was not for them, they replied, to incriminate any one ; nor
indeed would they knowingly bring any man's blood on their
heads, if they could help it.
" The impostor in the house shall be examined," cried the little
Boccaai.). and Prtrarca. 79
in.m, d IT .tlon^ hi.-. lip.-*, for they were foamy.
nt into the room and found the knight in a shower of tears.
"Call my \.irlets! call my rogues!" cried Sir Magnus,
wringing his hands and turning away his face.
" Rogues!" said the under-sheritf. "They are gone off,
and in another county, or near upon it ; else would I hang them
all speedily, as I will thee, by God's pleasure. How many
horses hast thou in the stable ? "
r ! good sir ! gentle sir ! patience a little ! Let me think
awhile ! " said the knight.
- Ay, ay, ay ! let thee think forsooth ! " scornfully and
canorously in well-sustained tenor hymned the son of Themis.
This paper hath told me."
Worthy sir ! " said the knight, hear reason ! Hear truth
and righteousness and justification by faith ! Hear a sinner in
tribulation, in the shadow of death ! '
** Faith, sirrah ! thou art very near the substance, if there be
any," interposed the under-sheritf.
44 Nay, nay ! hold, I beseech you ! As I have a soul to be
saved "-
" Pack it up then ! pack it up ! I will give it a lift when it
is ready."
"O sir sheriff, sir sheriff! I am disposed to swear on the
rood, I am not, and never was, Sir Nigel de Arden."
At these words the under-sheriff laughed bitterly, and said,
44 Nor I neither ; " and, going out of the room, ordered a guard to
stand at the door.
Henry then took him by the arm and said softly, " Gildart !
do not be severe with the poor young man below. It is true he
is in the secret, which he swears he will not betray if he dies for
it ; but he promises us UK* three horses without trial or suit or
trouble or delay, and hopes you will allow his master to leave
the kingdom in peace and safety under his conduct, promising
to serve the king, together with us faithfully in his wars."
44 We could not do better," answered the under-sheriff, " if we
were certain the fellow and his gang would not waylay and
murder you on the road."
" Never fear ! " cried Henry. 44 As we shall have other
attendants, and are neither less strong nor (I trust) less courageous
than he we will venture, with your leave and permission."
8o Imaginary Conversations.
This was given in writing. The under-sherifF ordered his
guards to bring down the culprit, who came limping and very slow.
" Pity he cannot feign and counterfeit a little better on the
spur of the occasion ! " said the under-sheriff. " He well answers
the description of fat and lazy : as for drunken, it shall not be to-
day on Cannock ale or Burton beer."
When the knight had descended the stairs, and saw Ralph
Roebuck, he shrieked aloud with surprise and gladness, " O thou
good and faithful servant ! enter into the joy of thy lord ! "
" God's blood ! " cried Ralph. " I must enter then into a thing
narrower than a weasel's or a wasp's hole. To what evil have
you led us ? "
" Now you can speak for me ! " said the knight.
Ralph shook his head and sighed, " It will not do, master ! I
am resolved to keep my promise, which you commanded upon
first setting out, though it may cost me limb or life. Master, one
word in your ear.
" No whisperings ! no connivances ! no plans or projects of
escape ! " cried the guard. They helped Sir Magnus into his
saddle with more than their hands and arms ; which, instead of
ofHciousness, he thought an indignity, though it might be the
practice of those parts. The two De Ardens mounted two of
the richly caparisoned steeds ; the third was led by their servant,
who went homeward with those also which they had ridden for
what was necessary, being ordered to rejoin them at Lichfield.
Ralph Roebuck sat alert on his own sorrel palfrey, a quick and
active one, with open transparent nostrils. He would, as became
him, have kept behind his master, if the knight had not called him
to his side, complaining that the length and roughness of the roads
had shaken his saddle so as to make it uneven and uneasy. Many
and pressing were the offers of Ralph to set it right : Sir Magnus
shook his head, and answered that " man is born to suffering as
the sparks fly upward."
" I could wish, sir," said Ralph, " if it did not interfere with
higher dispensations"
" The very word, Ralph ! the very word ! thou rememberest
it ! I could not bring it nicely to mind. Several Sundays have
passed si^ce we heard it. Well ! what couldst thou wish ? "
' That your worship had under you at this juncture the cushion
Cliaua-r. Boccaccio, and IVtrarca. Si
of our late good Lady Joan, which might serve you now some-
better than it did at the battle of the bulrush." \\\> ,.11 serve
best in our places."
v our lady ! Ralph ! I nem BW , nun so much improved
Jf hls tnn - irt - Wi'it >lull we both be ere we reach
home again : "
R j'; -it^ hi- master how much better it wen- tl
ftp Ad not return too speedily amonn the cravens and re-
rreants who had deserted him, and who probably would be pur-
sued ; and then what a shame and scandal it would be, if such a
powerful knight as Sir Magnus should see them dragged from his
own hall, and from under his own eyes, to prison. If by any
M it could be contrived to prolong the journey a few days, it
wodd be a blessing; and the De Ardens, it might be hoped,
d say nothing of the matter to the sheriff. Sir Magnus felt
that his importance would be lowered by the seizure of his servants,
in his presence and under his roof; and he had other reasons for
ishing to ndc leisurely, in which his more active companions little
participated. On their urging him to push forward, he complained
that his horse had been neglected, and had neither tasted oat nor
ven sweet meadow-hay, at Cannock. His company
expressed the utmost solicitude that this neglect shodd be promptly
remedied, and, grieving that the next stage was still several miles
dirtant, offered, and at the same time exerted, their best services
bnngmg the hungry and loitering steed to a trot. Sir Magnus
now had his shrewd suspicions, he said, that the saddJe had been
I looked to, and doubted whether a nail from behind might not
lomehow have dropped lower. When he wodd have cleared up
his doubts by the agency of his hand, again the whip, applied to
flinching steed, disturbed the elucidation ; and his knuckles,
instead of solving the knotty point, only added to its nodosity.
At last he cried, " Roebuck ! Roebuck ! gently, softly ! If we
go on at this rate, in another half-hour I shall be black and bloody
a* ever rook was that dropped ill-fledged from the rookery."
The Lord hath well speeded our flight," said Ralph relent-
" he hath delivered us from our enemies. What miles and
miles have we travelled, to ail appearance, in a few hours ! "
4 Not many hours indeed," answered the knight, still ponder-
ing. What in yon red spire ? " add.-d hr.
82 Imaginary Conversations.
" The Tower of Babel," replied Ralph composedly.
" I cannot well think it," muttered Sir Magnus in suspense.
" They would never have dared to rebuild it, after God's anger
thereupon."
It was the spire of Lichfield cathedral.
When they entered the city they found there some hundreds
of French prisoners, taken in the late skirmishes, who were
chattering and laughing and boasting of their invincibility.
Their sun-burned faces, their meagre bodies, their loud cries,
and the violence our surly countrymen expressed at not being
understood by them, although as natives of Lichfield they spoke
such good English, removed in part the doubts of Sir Magnus,
even before he heard our host cry, " By God ! a very Babel ! "
Later in the evening came some Welshmen, having passed through
Shropshire and Cheshire with mountain sheep for the fair the
next morning. These two were unintelligible in their language,
and different from the others. They quarrelled with the French
for mocking them, as they thought. Sir Magnus expressed his
wonder that an Englishmen, which the host was, should be found
in such a far country, among the heathen ; albeit some of them
spoke English, not being able for their hearts and souls to do
otherwise, since all the languages in the world were spoken there
as a judgment on the ungodly. He confessed he had always
thought Babel was in another place, though he could not put his
finger upon it exactly. Nothing, he added, so clearly proved the
real fact, as that the sheep themselves were misbegotten and black-
faced, and several of them altogether tawny like a Moor's head
he had seen, he told them, in the chancel-window of Saint Mary's
at Warwick. " Which reminds me," said the pious knight,
" that the hour of Angelus must be at hand ; and, beside the
usual service, I have several forms of thanksgiving to run through
before I break bread again."
It was allowed him to go alone upstairs for his devotions, in
which, ye will have observed, he was very regular. Meanwhile
the landlord and his two daughters, two buxom wenches,
were admitted into the secret ; and it was agreed that at supper
all should speak a jargon, by degrees more and more confused,
and that at last every imaginable mistake should be made in exe-
cuting the orders of the company. The girls entered heartily
r.liauci-r. Boccaccio, and Petrarca. 83
into the device, and the rosy-faced father gave them hints and
directions while the supper was being cooked. Sir Magnus came
down, after a time, co\ercd with sweat. He protested that the
t the clim.ite in these countries was intolerable, particularly
in his bedroom ; that indeed he had felt it before, in the open air,
but only on certain portions of the body which certain stars have
an influence upon, and not at all in the face.
The oven had been heated just under the knight's bed, in order
to supply loaves for the farmers and drovers the following day.
Supper was now served : bread however was wanting. The
knight desired one of the young women to give him some. She
looked at him in astonishment, shrank back, blushed, and hid her
face in her apron. The father came forward furiously, and said
many words, or rather uttered many sounds, which Sir Magnus could
not understand He requested his attendant Ralph to explain.
Ralph made a few attempts at English, and, failing in it, spoke
very fluently another tongue. The father and his daughters
stared one at another, and brought a bucket of hot water, with a
square of soap ; then a goose's wing ; then a sack of gray peas ;
then a blackbird in a cage ; then a mustard pot ; then a handful
of brown paper ; then a pair of white rabbits, hanging by the ears.
Sir Magnus now addressed the other girl. She appeared more
willing to comply, and, making a sign at her father, whose back
was turned in his anxiety to find what was called for, as if she
would be kinder still when he was out of the way, laid her arm
across the neck of the knight, and withdrew it hesitatingly and
timidly. At this instant a great dog entered, allured by the
smell of the meat. The knight's lips quivered, and the first accents
he uttered audibly and distinctly were, "Seeking whom he may
devour." Then falling on his knees, he cried aloud, * O Lord !
thy mercies are manifold ! I am a sinner."
The girl trembled from head to foot, ready to burst with the
laughter she was suppressing, and kissed her father, and appeared to
implore his pardon. He pushed her back and cried, " Away ! I
saw thee ! I saw thee with these very eyes ! " clenching his fist
and striking his brow frantically. " I saw thy shadow upon the
. No wickedness is hidden."
44 The hand-writing ! the hand-writing ! That was upon the
wall, too ! perhaps upon this very one," exclaimed the conscience-
84 Imaginary Conversations.
stricken and aghast Sir Magnus. He fell on his knees, and
praised the Lord for allowing to the host again the use ot his
mother-tongue ; for the salvation of him a sinner ; if indeed it
were not the Lord himself who spake by the lips of his servant
in the words, No wickedness is hidden." After a prayer, he
protested that, although indeed his heart was corrupt, as all hearts
were, the devil had failed to inflame him universally. Not one
knew what he said. Humphrey laughed and nodded assent;
Henry offered him baked apples ; Ralph brushed his doublet-
sleeve.
Before it was light in the morning, the horses were at the
door ; nobody appeared ; no money had been paid or demanded :
nevertheless it seemed an inn. They mounted ; they mused ;
they feared to meet each other's eyes : at last Ralph addressed
one of the De Ardens in a low voice, but so as to be heard by
his master. The two brothers tried each a monosyllable : Ralph
shook his head, and they looked despondently. Attempts were
renewed at intervals for several miles ; when suddenly a distant
bell was heard, probably from the cathedral, and Humphrey
cried, " Matins ! matins ! " At this moment all spoke English
perfectly, and the knight uttered many fervent ejaculations.
The others related their sufferings and visions ; and when they
had ended, Sir Magnus said he seemed to hear throughout the
night the roaring of a fiery furnace, for all the world like King
Nebuchadnezzar's; only that sinful bodies, and not righteous
ones, were moved and shoved backward and forward in it, until
their bones grated like iron, and until his own teeth chattered so
in his head he could hear them no longer.
His conductor was careful to avoid the county of Warwick,
lest any one should recognise the knight, little as was the chance
of it ; for he never had been further from home than at Warwick,
and there but twice, the distance being five good miles. On
his way toward the coast, he wondered to find the stars so very
like those at Charlecote ; and some of them seemed to know him
and wink at him. He thought indeed here were a good many
more of them awake and stirring ; because he had been longer
out of doors than he had ever been before, at night. Slowly as
he would have travelled, if he had been allowed his own way,
on the sixth morning from his adventure at Cannock he had come
Chaucer. IWcuccio. and Pftrarea. 85
within sigh, of the coast. To his questions no other answer was
ted, than that the umes were unquiet; that the roads u,rc
Tested with robbers ; and that the orders of a .sheriff were a. a
the afternoon, the travellers descended the narrow
loway that leads mto the seaport town of Hastings. Ralph
?M T ^' IOrS Wl 'u ^ Ste PP in * into a *? A
Matter ! what do you think of these ? "
: think, Roebuck," answered he, after pondering some
;: * - <- ^V si 1 ?
wer nVyin8 'hr tore, and horses
he ni ( ,h..< ?t -, J whi f el 1 in the o
[ht, S,r knight! do not, for the love of Christ! do
nture wtth tho* two daredevil, any further. Let u
take only a small boat, j large enough to enter the Avon.
a AM cut hereabout, if we could find it. For
of gold we may hire as many sailors to hazard their
. and live, for us, and see us safe at home again."
I, . 5 P '.r" f g ' d '," '^^ Sir Ma g" u very slowly and
**C* : x p,eces of gold, in the K hard times, go well-nigh
to purchase an acre of pasture-land."
True," replied Roebuck, with a hundred of (and and a
bouond of thrown in, a. hoof and dunk to a buttock of
iot t cr t r '
LTd ^5 'ok out for Mme wch investment of
sa.d moneys a to get the indenture, fairly engrowed forth-
"InTe.tment! indenture.! "cried Ralph. "Master! it i.
^11 for tho* who can carry by land and iea such fine learned
It is uncertain whether Sir Magnu. heard him, for he con-
nu,dto utter and repeat the wbstance of hi. reflections.
of d, ^r^ '^M ^ mUW "* in a thou8and *
It water, bemg well looked to ! Rats and otters might
" an^o^tZ' "^ ^ C Uld ealch a " with ' he
foam bobbmg up eerUungly and buffeting their
From - Six " , hundred, " (35 Une.) added in >nd ed.]
86 Imaginary Conversations.
whiskers ; and the poachers must buy lime-kilns, and forests, and
mines of pure poison, if they would make the fish drunk at the
bottom. Furthermore, there never could be a lack of sand at
Charlecote these twenty years to come, for kitchen or scullery or
walk before the hall-windows, or repairs of cow-house or dove-
cot ; and many a cart-load would be lying in store for sale.' 1
" There is great foresight and cleverness in all this," said
Ralph ; " and if your worship had only six gold pieces in the
world, no time ought to be lost in running with 'em seaward.
But to my foolishness, three for life and three for liberty seem
reasonable enough. Pirates, and even fair-fighting enemies,
such as those gentlemen over the way, demand for a knight's
ransom as many hundreds."
The knight drew back and hesitated.
" Well, 5 sir ! " said Ralph, " the business is none of mine. I
have been let go ere now for an old song when 1 had angered my
man : here I have angered nobody. I am safe anywhere, and
welcome in most places."
" I am fain to learn that old song of his," said the knight
inaudibly.
Roebuck continued : l * I have no hall with antlers in it ; I
would rather eat a sucking-pig than a swan, and a griskin than
a heron ; and I can do either with good-will about noon any day
in seven, baiting Friday, and without mounting up three long steps
that run across the room, or resting my feet on a dainty mat of
rushes. A good blazing kitchen-fire is enough for me. 6 I care
neither for bucks nor partridges. As for spiced ale at christenings
and weddings, I may catch a draught of it when it passes. Sack
I have heard of: poor tipple, I doubt, that wants sweetening.
But a horn of home-brewed beer, frothing leisurely, and humming
lowly its contented tune, is suitable to my taste and condition ;
and I envy not the great and glorious who have a goose with a
capon in his belly on the table, or 7 even a peacock, his head as
good as alive, and the proudest of his feathers to crown him."
The knight answered, " Somehow I do not like to part with
[ 5 From Well" to rushes " (12 lines) added in 2nd ed.]
[ First ed. reads : me, said Ralph. I," &c.]
[ 7 From " or " to him " (2 lines) added in 2nd ed.]
;uul
my gold : I never saw any in coinage till last Easter ; * and it
so fresh and sunshiny and pleasant, I would keep it to look
at in ;ther. Pay the varied in gn
Knight ! " replied R-ilph, " do not let them see your store
. hich are very handy, and sundry of these likewise are
new."
"Nobody would pay away new groats that could help it,"
sighed Sir Magnus.
" The gold mu>t go, and nuke room for more," said Roebuck.
\vered nothing ; but turning round, lest anybody
should notice his capacious and well-stored scrip, IK- drew forth
the six pieces, and, after a doubt and a trial with his thumb and
finger, whether by reason of their roughness two peradventure
might not stick together and make seven, he placed them in the
palm of Roebuck, who took them with equal silence and less un-
ity. Great contentment was manifested by the worshipful
knight that the two De Ardens had left him ; and he ate a good
dinner, and drank a glass of Rhenish, which he said was " pure
sour ; " and presently was anxious to go aboard the boat, if it
was ready. Ralph conducted him to it, and helped him in. The
rowers for some time played their parts lustily, and then hoisted
sail. Roebuck asked the oldest of them whether the wind was
fair. " Passably," said he ; " but unless we look sharp we may
be carried into the Low Countries."
" I do not see anywhere that short cut, nor that brook which
runs into the Avon," said Sir Magnus. " As for the Low
Countries, no fear of them : the water rises before us, and we
mount higher and higher every moment, insomuch that I begin to
feel as if I were going up in a swing, like that between the elms."
Presently Old Ocean exacted from him his tribute, which the
powerfullest not of knights only and barons, but of princes and
kings, must pay him in his own dominions, bending their heads
and stretching out their arms and acknowledging his supremacy with
tears and groans. He now fancied he had been poisoned on
shore ; and was confirmed in his belief when Roebuck hummed
a tune without any words to it, prodigal and profuse as he was of
The first gold coined in England came out rather more than a year
before this time, that i< in 1344; the quantity was small, and probably
ulation not rapid nor extensive.
88 Imaginary Conversations.
them on ordinary occasions ; and when neither he nor any of the
sailors would bring him such a trifle as water-gruel sweetened
with clary wine, or camomile flowers picked with the dew upon
them and simmered in fair spring-water and in an earthen pan, or
viperbroth with a spoonful of Venice-treacle in it, stirred with the
tusk of a wild-boar in the first quarter of the moon : the only
things he asked them for. Soon however his pains abated, yet he
complained that his eyesight was so affected he seemed to see
nothing but greenish water, like leek-porridge, albeit by his reckon-
ing they must now be near the brook.
" Methinks," said he, " we are running after that great white
ship yonder."
" Methinks so too," answered Ralph ; crying, " How is this ? "
with apparent anger, to the sailors.
** It cannot be otherwise," said one of them ; ' the boat is the
brig's own daughter : what mortal can keep them asunder !
You might as well hope to hold tight by your teeth a two
months' calf from its dam."
" Why didst not thou see to that, Ralph ? " cried the knight
in the bitterness of his soul. " Always rash and imprudent ! "
Roebuck attempted to console his master with the display of
the honors that would be shown him aboard the brig, when his
quality should be discovered. Then, taking advantage of a shoal
of porpoises, that rolled and darted in every direction round the
boat, he showed them to Sir Magnus, who turned pale at seeing
them so near him. " Never be frightened at a parcel of bots ! "
cried Roebuck.
" Bots ! what, those vast creatures ? "
"Ay, surely," said one of the sailors. "The sea-horses
avoid them by millions in a moment : you may sometimes see a
thousand of them sticking on a single hair of their tails."
" Do those horses come within sight then ? " said Sir Magnus,
tremulously.
" Only when they are itchy," answered the mariner ; and
then they contrive to slip between a boat and a brig, and crack a
couple or three at a time of those troublesome little insects."
Sir Magnus said something to himself about the wonders of
the great deep, and praised God for having kept hitherto such a
breed of bots out of his stables. He began to see clearly how
Chaucer. Boccaccio, and IVirarca. So
fitted emytbiog is to the place it occujm-- ; and how certainly
these creatures were created to tx- killed between brigs and boats.
Meditations mu>t have their end, though they reach to
en.
Great as had been the consternation of Sir Magnus at the
sight of the porpoises, and at the probability that a hair of some
stray marine horse, covered over with them, might lie between
him and the river, greater still was it, if possible, at approaching
the brig, and discerning the two De Ardens. \V .t can they
want with me ? " cried he. " I am resolved not to go home with
Roebuck raised his spirits, by swearing that nothing of the kind
should happen while he had a drop of blood in his \
" Hark ! Sir Knight ! " said he. " Observe how the two young
men are behaving."
Gayly indeed did they accost him, and imperiously cried they
to the crew, " Make way for Sir Magnus Lucy ! "
ehold, sir, your glorious name hath already manifested itself,"
: <lph.
A rope-ladder was let down ; and the brothers knelt, and
inclined their bodies, and offered their hands to aid him in mount-
ing. " Here are honors paid to my master ! " said Roebuck,
exultingly. Sir Magnus himself was highly gratified with his
reception, and retolved to defer his interrogatory on the course
they seemed to be taking. He was startled at dinner-time when
iptain with strange familiarity entitled him, * Sir Mag."
The following words were even more offensive : for when the
ship rolled somewhat, though moderately, the trencher of Sir
Magnus fell into his lap ; and the captain cried " Nay, nay, Sir
Mag ! as much into gullet as gullet will hold, but clap nothing
below the girdl- rotested he had no design to secrete any-
thing. The sailors played and punned, as low men are wont, on his
family name ; and, on his asking what the fellows meant by their
impudence, a scholar from Oxford of whom he inquired it, one
who liked the logic of princes better than that of pedants, told
him they wished to express by their words and gestures that he
was, in the phrase of Horace, ad ungurm fact us.
" 1 do not approve of any phrases," answered he, somewhat
proudly ; "and pray, sir, tell them so."
9<D Imaginary Conversations.
" Sir ! " said Roebuck in his ear, " although you may be some-
what disappointed in the measure of respect paid to you aboard,
you will be compensated on landing."
Sir Magnus thought hereby that his tenants would surely bring
him pullets and chines. As they approached the coast, " I told
you, sir ! " exclaimed he. Look at the bonfire on the very
edge of the sands ! they could not make it nearer you." A
fire was blazing, and there were loud huzzas as the ship entered
the port.
" I would still be incog, if possible," said Sir Magnus, hollow-
ing his cheeks and voice, and recovering to himself a great part
of his own estimation. " Give the good men this money ; and
tell them in future not to burn a serviceable boat for me in
want of brushwood. I will send them a cart-load of it another
time, on due application."
The people were caulking a fishing-smack : they took the
money, hooted at Sir Magnus, and turned again to their labor.
After the service of the day, the King of England was always
pleased to watch the ships coming over, to observe the soldiers
debarking, and to learn the names of the knights and esquires who
successively crossed the channel. He happened to be riding at
no great distance ; and ordered one of his attendants to go and
bring him information of the ship and her passengers, particularly
as he had seen some stout horses put ashore. This knight was
an intimate friend of De Arden the father, and laughed heartily
at the adventure, as related by Humphrey. He repeated it to the
king, word for word as nearly as he could. " Marry ! " said the
king; "three fat horses, with a bean-field (I warrant) in each,
are but an inadequate price for such a name. I doubt whether
we have another among us that was in any degree noble before
the Norman conquest. We ourselves might have afforded three
decent ones in recompense for the dominion and property of nearly
one whole county, and that county the fairest in England. Let
the boys make the knight show his prowess, as some of his family
have done. I observe they ride well, and have the prudence to
exercise their horses on their first debarking, lest they grow stiff
and lose their appetite. Tell them I shall be glad to hear of
them, and then to see them."
Sir Magnus, the moment he set foot on shore, was wel-
Boccaccio, aiul IVtrarca. 91
amu\l to land liy Roebuck. "No, no! rogue Ralph!" >aid
he, nodding. " 1 know the Avon when I see it. Here we
arc. None of your mummery, good people," cried he, somewhat
angrily, when several ragged French men, women, and children
asked him for charity. " We will have no Babel here, by
God's blessing."
Soon came forward two young knights, and told him it was
the king's pleasure he should pitch his tent above Eu, on the
right of this same river Brdf.
* Youngsters ! " cried he arrogantly, ' I shall pitch nothing ;
neither tent (whatever it may be), nor quoit, nor bar. Know ye,
I am Sir Magnus Lucy, of Charlecote.
Th- young knights, unceremoniously as he had treated them,
bowed profoundly and said they bore the king's command, leaving
the execution of it to his discretion.
The king's," repeated he. What have I done ? Has that
skipping squirrel of an under-sheriff been at the king's ear about
me?"
They could w>t understand him ; and, telling him that it would
be unbecoming in them to investigate his secrets, made again their
obeisance, and left him. He then turned toward Ralph, the polar
star in every ambiguity of his courses.
" Honored master, Sir Magnus ! " answered Ralph, " let no
strife be between us, nor ill blood, that alway maketh ill counsels
boil uppermost in the pot."
Roebuck ! " said the knight, surveying him with silent ad-
miration, " now speakest thou soundly and calmly ; for thou hast
taken time in the delivery thereof, and communed with thyself,
before thou didst trust the least trustworthy of thy members.
But I do surmise from thy manner, and from the thing spoken,
that thou hast somewhat within thee which thou wouldst utter
yet."
"Worshipful sir!" subjoined Ralph, "although I do not
boast of my services as who would: yet, truth is truth. I
have saved your noble neck from the gallows : forasmuch as
you took a name, worshipful sir, which neither king nor
ever gave you, and which belongeth to others rightfully.
Now if both the name and the horses had been found at once
upon you, a miracle only could have saved you from that bloody-
92 Imaginary Conversations.
minded under-sheriff. Providential was it for you, Sir JKnight,
that those two young gentlemen, whether in mercy they counter-
feited the letter "
" No, no, no ! the priest's own brother wrote it : the priest
deposed to the handwriting."
" Then," said Ralph, calmly, lifting up the palms of his hands
towards Sir Magnus, "let us praise the Lord ! "
" Hei-day ? Ralph ! why ! art even thou grown devout ?
Verily this is a great mercy ; a great deliverance. I doubt
whether the best part of it (praised be the Lord nevertheless ! )
be not rather for thee, than for such a sinner as I am. For thou
hast lost no horse ; and yet art touched as if thou hadst lost a
stud : thou hast not suffered in the flesh ; and yet thy spirit is
very contrite."
"Master!" said Ralph, "only one thing is quite plain to
me ; which is, that Almighty God decrees we should render
our best services to our country. Your three horses followed
you for idle pomp : vanity prompted you to appear what you
are not."
" Very wrong, Ralph ! "
" And yet, Sir Magnus, if you had not committed this action,
which in your pious and reasonable humility you call very wrong,
perhaps three gallant youths (for Sir Magnus Lucy by God's
grace shall be the third) had remained at home in that sad idle-
ness which leads to an unprivileged and tongue-tied old age.
We are now in France "
" Ralph ! Ralph ! " said Sir Magnus, " be serious still. Faith !
I can hardly tell when thou art and when thou art not, being so
unsteady a creature."
" Sir Magnus, I repeat it, we are now in Normandy or
Picardy, I know not rightly which ; where the king also is, and
where it would be unseemly if any English knight were not.
The eyes of England and of France are fixed upon us. Here
we must all obey, the lofty as well as the humble."
"Obey? ay, to be sure, Ralph ! Thou wilt obey me : thou
art not great enough to obey the king ; therefore set not thy
heart upon it."
Ralph smiled and replied, " I offered my service to the young
De Ardens, which they graciously accepted. As however they
Chaucer. Boccaccio, and Petnirca. 93
have their own servants with 'em, if you, my honored master,
can trust me, who have more than once deceived you, but never
to your injury, I will with their permission continue to serve you,
and that right faithfully. Whatever is wanting to the dignity
of your appearance is readily purchased in this country, from the
many traffickers who follow the camp, and from the great abund-
ance of Normandy. So numerous too are the servants who have
lost their masters, you may find as many as your rank requires,
or your fortune can maintain. There are handier men among
them than id I do not ask of you any place of trust
above my betters. Such as I am, either take me, Sir Magnus,
or leave me with the two brave lads."
" Ralph ! " answered the knight, I cannot do without
thee, since I am here ; as it seems I am ! " and he sighed.
"About those servants that have lost their masters I wish
thou couldst have held thy peace. I would not fain have such
unlucky varlets. But some of these masters, let us hope, may be
found. Thou dost not mean they are dead ; that is, killed ! "
* Missing," said Ralph, consolatorily.
1 thought so : I corrected thee at the time. Now my three
hones, the king being here, if thou speakest truth, I can have
them up by ccrttorari at his Bench."
They would be apt to leap it, I trow," replied Ralph, " with
such riders upon their backs. Master, be easy about them ! "
u Ismael is very powerful : he could carry me anywhere in
reason," said Sir Magnus.
* Do not let the story get wind," answered his counsellor,
u lest we never hear the end of it. I promise you, my worthy
master, you shall have Ismael again after the wars."
" He will have longer teeth, and fewer marks in his mouth,
before that time," said sorrowfully Sir Magnus.
" No bridle can hold him, when he is wilful," replied Ralph ;
" and although peradventure he might carry your worship clean
through the enemy, once or twice, yet Ismael is not the horse
to be pricked and goaded by pikes and arrows, without rearing
and plunging, and kicking oft helmets by the dozen, nine ells
from the ground. Let those Staffordshire lads break him in and
bring him honn."
" Tell them so ! tell them so ! " said Sir Magnus, rubbing
94 Imaginary Conversations.
his hands. " And find me one very strong and fleet, and very
tractable, and that will do anything rather than plunge and rear
at being pricked, if such bloody times should ever come over
again in the world : for, as I never yet gave any man cause to
mock at me, I will do my utmost to make all reverent of me,
now I am near the king." Thus he spoke, being at last well
aware that he was indeed in France ; although he was yet
perplexed in spirit in regard to his having been at Babel.
However, some time afterward he was likewise cured of this
scepticism ; as by degrees men will be on such points, if they
seek the truth in humility of spirit. Conversing one day with
Roebuck on past occurrences, he said, after a pause, " Ralph ! I
have confessed unto thee many things, as thou likewise hast con-
fessed many unto me ; the which manner of living and communing
was very pleasant to the gentle saints, Paul and Timothy. And
now I do indeed own that I have seen men in these parts beyond
sea, and doubt not that there be likewise such in others, who in
sundry matters have more of worldly knowledge than I have,
knowledge, I speak of, not of understanding. In the vanity of
my heart, having at that time seen little, I did imagine and
surmise that Babel lay wider of us ; albeit I could not upon oath
or upon honor say where or whereabout, It pleased the Lord
to enlighten me by signs and tokens, and not to leave me for the
scorn of the heathen and the derision of the ungodly. Had I
minded his word somewhat more, when in my self-sufficiency
I thought I had minded little else and knew it off-hand,, I should
have remembered that we pray every Sabbath for the peace of
Jerusalem, and of Sion, and of Israel ; meaning thereby (as the
priest admonishes the simpler of the congregation) our own
country, albeit other names have been given in these latter days
to divers parts thereof. By the same token I might have ap-
prehended that Babel lay at no vast distance."
Roebuck listened demurely, smacking his lips at intervals like
a carp out of pond, and looking grave and edified. Tired how-
ever with this geographical discursion, burred and briared and
braked with homilies, he reminded his master that no time was to
be lost in looking for a gallant steed, worthy to bear a knight of
distinction. " My father," said he, " made a song for himself,
Chautvr, Boccaccio, aiul Pctrarca.
in readiness at fair or market, when he had a sorry jade to
dispose of:
Who sells a good nag
On his leg* may fag
Until his heart be weary.
Who buys a good nag,
And hath groats in his bag,
May ride the world over full cheery
" Comfortable thoughts, both of 'em ! " said Sir Magnus.
" I never sold my nags : and I have groats enow, if nobody
do touch the same. Not knowing well tin- farms about this
country, and the day being more windy than I could wish it, and
proposing still to remain for awhile incognito, and being some-
what soiled in my apparel by the accidents of the voyage, and
furthermore my eyes having been strained thereby a slight matter,
it would please me, Roebuck, if thou wentest in search of the
charger: the troublesome part of looking at his quarters, and
handling him, and disbursing the moneys, I myself may, by God's
providence, bring unto good issue."
Ralph accepted the commission, and performed it faithfully and
amply. He returned with two powerful chargers, magnificently
caparisoned, and told his master that he would grieve to the day
of his death if he let either of them slip through his fingers. Sir
Magnus first asked the prices, and then the names of them. He
was informed that one was called Rufus, and the other Beauclerc,
after two great English kings. Enquiring of Ralph the history
of these English kings, and whether he had ever heard of them,
and on the confession of Ralph in the negative, he was vexed
and discontented, and told Ralph he knew nothing. The owner
of the horses was very fluent in the history of the two princes,
which nearly lost him his customer; for the knight shook his
head, spying he should be sorry to mount a beast of such an un-
lucky name as Rufus : above all, in a country where arrows were
so rife. As for Beauclerc, he was unexceptionable.
" A horse indeed ! " cried Roebuck ; " in my mind, sir !
Ismael is not fit to hold a candle to him."
" I would not say so much as that," gravely and majestically
replied the knight : "but this Beauclerc has his points, Roebuck."
Sir Magnus purchased the two horses, and acquired into the
bargain the two pages of history appertaining to their names ;
96 Imaginary Conversations.
which, proud as he was of displaying them on all occasions, he
managed less dexterously. Before long he heard on every side
the most exalted praises of Humphrey and Hemy ; and although
he was by no means invidious, he attributed a large portion of the
merit to Ismael, and appealed to Roebuck whether he did not
once hear him say that Jacob too would show himself one day or
other. Stimulated by the glory his horses had acquired, horses
bred upon his own land, and by the notice they had attracted
from our invincible Edward, under two mere striplings of half his
weight, he himself within a week or fortnight was changed in
character. Sloth and inactivity were no longer endurable to him.
He exercised his chargers and himself in every practice necessary
to the military career ; and at last being presented to the king,
Edward said to him that, albeit not being at Westminister, nor
having his chancellor at hand, he could not legally enforce the
payment of the three angels still due (he understood) as part of
the purchase-money of sundry chargers, nevertheless he would
oblige the gallant knight who bought them to present him on due
occasion a pair of spurs for his acquittance.
The ceremony was not performed in the presence of the king,
whose affairs required him elsewhere, but in the presence of his
glorious son, after the battle of Cressy. Here Sir Magnus was
surrounded, and perhaps would have fallen, being still inexpert in
the management of his arms, when suddenly a young soldier,
covered with blood, rushed between him and his antagonist,
whom he levelled with his battle-axe, and fell exhausted. Sir
Magnus had received many bruises through his armor, and
noticed but little the event ; many similar ones, or nearly so,
having occurred in the course of the engagement. Soon however
that quarter of the field began to show its herbage again in larger
spaces ; and at the distant sound of the French trumpets, which
was shrill, fitful, and tuneless, the broken ranks of the enemy near
him waved like a tattered banner in the wind, and melted, and
disappeared. Ralph had fought resolutely at his side and, though
wounded, was little hurt. The knight called him aloud : at his
voice not only Ralph came forward, but the soldier who had pre-
served his life rolled round toward him. Disfigured as he was
, with blood and bruises, Ralph knew him again : it was Peter
Crosby of the bulrush. Sir Magnus did not find immediately the
riuucer. Boccaccio, and Pctnirca. 97
words he wanted to accost him : and indeed, though he had
become much braver, he had not grown much more courteous,
much more generous, or much more humane. He took him
however by the hand, thanked him for having saved his life,
and hoped to assist in doing him the same good turn.
Roebuck in the mean time washed the several wounds of his
former friend and playmate, from a cow's horn containing wine ;
of which, as he had reserved it only against thirst in battle, few
drops were left. Gashes opened from under the gore, which
made him wish that he had left it untouched ; and he drew in
his breath, as if he felt all the pain he awakened.
" Well meant, Ralph ! but prythee give over ! " said Crosby,
patiently. These singings in my head are no merry-makings."
"Master! if you are there I would liefer have lain in
Hampton churchyard among the skittles, or as near th-
might be, so as not to spoil the sport ; and methinks had it been
a score or two of years later, it were none the worse. How-
soever, God's will bt done ! Greater folks have been eaten here
by the dogs. Welladay, and what harm ? Dogs at any time
are better beasts than worms, and should be served first. They
love us, and watch us, and help us while we are living : the
others don't mind us while we are good for anything. There
are chaps, too, and feeding in clover, who think much as they do
upon that matter.
Give me thy hand, Ralph ! Tell my father I have done
my best. If thou findest a slash or two athwart my back and
loins, swear to him, as thou safely mnyest do on all the Gospels,
and on any bone of any martyr, that they closed upon me and
gave them when I was cutting my way through aweary with
what had been done already to lend my last service to our
worthy master."
Now, Messer Francesco, I may call upon you, having seen you
long since throw aside your gravity, and at last spring up alert as
though you would mount for Picardy.
Petrarca. A right indeed have you acquired to call upon me,
Ser Geoff reddo ; but you must accept from me the produce of
our country. Brave men appear among us every age almost ; yet
all of them are apt to look to themselves : none will hazard his
life for another ; none will trust his best friend. Such is our
IT. G
98 Imaginary Conversations.
breed ; such it always was. In affairs of love alone have we as
great a variety as you have, and perhaps a greater. I am by
nature very forgetful of light occurrences, even of those which
much amused me at the time ; and if your greyhound, Messer
Georfreddo, had not been laying his muzzle between my knees,
urging my attention, shivering at the cold of this unmatted marble,
and treading upon my foot in preference, I doubt whether you
would ever have heard from me the story I shall now relate to
you.
It occurred the year before I left Avignon ; the inhabitants of
which city, Messer Giovanni will certify, are more beautiful than
any others in France.
Boccaccio. I have learned it from report, and believe it
readily ; so many Italians have resided there so long, and the
very flower of Italy : amorous poets, stout abbots, indolent
priests, high-fed cardinals, handsome pages, gigantic halberdiers,
and crossbow-men for ever at the mark.
Petrarca. Pish ! pish ! let me find my wy through 'em, and
come to the couple I have before my eyes, and the spaniel that
was the prime mover in the business.
Tenerin de Gisors knew few things in the world ; and, if he
had known all therein, he would have found nothing so valuable,
in his own estimation, as himself. The ladies paid much court
to him, and never seemed so happy as in his presence : this
disquieted him.
Boccaccio. How the deuce ! he must have been a saint then :
which accords but little with his vanity.
Petrarca. You might mistake there, Giovanni ! The ob-
servation does not hold good in all cases, I can assure you.
Boccaccio. Well, go on with him.
Petrarca. I do think, Giovanni, you tell a story a great
deal more naturally ; but I will say plainly what my own eyes
have remarked, and will let the peculiarities of men appear as
they strike me, whether they are in symmetry with our notions of
character, or not.
Chaucer. The man of genius may do this: no other will
attempt it. He will discover the symmetry, the relations, and
the dependencies, of the whole : he will square the strange
problematic circle of the human heart.
Chaucer. Boccaccio, and Petrarca. 99
Pardon my interruption ; and indulge us with the tale of
:in.
Petrarca. He was disquieted, I repeat, by the gayety and
familiarity of the young women, who, truly to speak, betray at
on no rusticity of reserve. Educated in a house where
music and poetry were cultivated, he had been hearing from his
earliest days the ditties of broken hearts and desperation ; and
never had he observed that these invariably were sung under
leering eyes, with smiles that turned every word upside-down,
and were followed by the clinking of glasses, a hearty supper,
and 'what not ! Beside, 8 he was very handsome : men of this
Ithough there are exceptions, are usually cold toward the
women ; and he was more displeased that they should share the
admiration which he thought due to himself exclusively, than
pleased at receiving the larger part of theirs.
At Avignon, as with us, certain houses entertain certain parties.
It is thought unpolite and inconstant ever to go from one into
another, I do not mean in the same evening, but in your lifetime ;
and only the religious can do it without reproach. As bees carry
and deposit the fecundating dust of certain plants, so friars and
priests the exhilarating tales of beauty, and the hardly less ex-
hilarating of frailty, covering it deeply with pity, and praising the
mercy of the Lord in permitting it tor an admonition to others.
There arc two sisters in our city (I forgot myself in calling
Avignon so), of whom among friends I may speak freely, and
may even name them : Cyrilla de la Haye, and Egidia. Cyrilla,
the younger, is said to be extremely beautiful : I never saw her,
and few beside the family have seen her lately. She is spoken of
among her female friends as very lively, very modest, fond of
reading and of music : added to which advantages, she is heiress
to her uncle the Bishop of Carpentras, now invested with the
purple. For her fortune, and for the care bestowed on her
education, she is indebted to her sister, who, having deceived
many respectable young men with hopes of marriage, was herself
at last deceived in them, and bore about her an indication that
deceived no one. During the three years that her father lived
after this too domestic calamity, he confined her in a country-
house, leaving her only the liberty of a garden, fenced with high
[ From " Beside " to their* " (5 lines) added in ind ed.]
ioo Imaginary Conversations.
walls. He died at Paris ; and the mother, who fondly loved
Egidia, went instantly and liberated her, permitting her to return
to Avignon, while she herself hid her grief, it is said, with young
Gasparin de 1'CEuf in the villa. Egidia was resolved to enjoy
the first moments of freedom, and perhaps to show how little she
cared for an unforgiving father. No one however at Avignon,
beyond the family, had yet heard any thing of his decease. The
evening of her liberation she walked along the banks of the
Durance, with her favourite spaniel, which had become fat and
unwieldy by its confinement and by lying all day under the
southern wall of the garden, and, having never been combed nor
washed, exhibited every sign of dirtiness and decrepitude. To
render him smarter, she adorned him again with his rich silver
collar, now fitting him no longer, and hardly by any effort to
be clasped about his voluminous neck. He escaped from her,
dragging after him the scarlet ribbon which she had formed into
a chain, that it might appear the richer with its festoons about it,
and that she might hold the last object of her love the faster.
On the banks of the river he struggled with both paws to dis-
engage the collar, and unhappily one of them passed through a
link of the ribbon. Frightened and half-blind, he ran on his
three legs he knew not whither, and tumbled through some low
willows into the Durance. Egidia caught at the end of the
ribbon ; and, the bank giving way, she fell with him into deep
water. She had, the moment before, looked in vain for assist-
ance to catch her spaniel for her, and had cast a reproachful
glance toward the bridge, about a hundred paces off, on which
Tenerin de Gisors was leaning with his arms folded upon the
battlement.
" Now," said he to himself, " one woman at least would die
for me. She implored my pity before she committed the rash
act, as such acts are called on other occasions."
Without stirring a foot or unfolding an arm, he added pathetic-
ally from Ovid,
Sic, ubi fata vocant, udis abjectus in herbis,
Ad vada Mzandri concinit albus olor.
We will not inquire whether the verses are the more mis-
placed by the poet, or were the more misapplied by the reciter.
Tenerin now stepped forward, both to preserve his conquest
Chaucer. Buccacxio. and Pctrarca. IOI
and add solemnity to his triumph. He lost however the op-
portui ::ig his mistress, and saw her carried to the other
the ri\er by two stout peasants, who had been purchasing
some barrels in readiness for the vintage, and who placed her with
cc down \vard, that the water mi^ht run out or her mouth.
He gave them .t //r/v, on condition th.it they should declare he
alone had saved the lady ; he then quietly walked up to his
neck in the stream, turned back again, and assisted (or rather
followed) the youths in conveying her to the monastery near the
city-gate.
Here he learned, after many vain inquiries, that the lady was
no other than the daughter of Philibeit de la Have. Perpetually
had he heard in every comersation the praises of Cyrilla ;
beauty, her temper, her reserve, her accomplishments; and what
a lucky thing tor her was the false step of her sister, immured
.-, and leaving her in sole expectation of a vast inheritance.
Hastening homeward, he dressed himself in more gallant trim,
and went forthwith to the Bishop of Carpentras, then at Avignon,
to whom he did not find admittance, as his lordship had only
that morning received intelligence of his brother-in-law's decease.
He expressed by letter his gratitude to Divine Providence for
having enabled him to rescue the loveliest of her sex from the
horrors of a watery grave ; announced his rank, his fortune (not
indeed to be mentioned or thought of in comparison with her
merits), and entreated the honor of a union with her, if his lord-
ship could sympathize with him in feeling that such purity ought
never to have been enfolded (might he say it ?) in the arms of
any man who was not destined to be her husband.
" Ah ! " said the bishop when he had perused the letter,
" the young man too well knows what has happened : who does
not ? The Holy Father himself hath shed paternal tears upon
it. Providential this falling into the water : this endangering of
a sinful life ! May it awaken her remorse and repentance, as it
hath awakened his pity and compassion ! His proceeding is
liberal and delicate : he could not speak more passionately and
more guardedly. He was (now I find) one of her early ad-
mirers. No reference to others; no reproaches. True love
wears well. I do not like this matter to grow too public. I
will set out for Carpentras in another hour, first writing a few
IO2 Imaginary Conversations.
lines, directing M. Tenerin to meet me at the palace this evening,
as soon as may be convenient. We must forgive the fault of
Egidia now she has found a good match ; and we may put on
mourning for the father, my worthy brother-in-law, next week.'*
Such were the cogitations and plans of the bishop, and he
carried them at once into execution ; for, knowing what the
frailty of human nature is, as if he knew it from inspiration, he
had by no means unshaken faith in the waters of the Durance as
restorative or conservative of chastity.
Tenerin has been since observed to whistle oftener than to
sing ; and when he begins to warble any of his amatory lays,
which seldom happens, the words do not please him as they used
to do, and he breaks off abruptly. A friend of his said to him
in my presence, " Your ear, Tenerin, has grown fastidious, since
you walked up to it in the water on the first of August."
Boccaccio. Francesco ! the more I reflect on the story you
have related to us, the more plainly do I perceive how natural
it is, and this too in the very peculiarity that appeared to me at
first as being the contrary. Unless we make a selection of
subjects, unless we observe their heights and distances, unless we
give them their angles and shades, we may as well paint with
white-wash. We do not want strange events, so much as those
by which we are admitted into the recesses, or carried on amid
the operations, of the human mind. We are stimulated by its
activity, but we are greatly more pleased at surveying it leisurely
in its quiescent state, uncovered and unsuspicious. Few, how-
ever, are capable of describing, or even of remarking it ; while
strange and unexpected contingencies are the commonest pedlery
of the markets, and the joint patrimony of the tapsters.
I have drawn so largely from my brain for the production of a
hundred stories, many of which I confess are witless and worth-
less, and many just as Ser GeofFreddo saw them, incomplete, that
if my memory did not come to my assistance I should be mis-
trustful of my imagination.
Chaucer. Ungrateful man ! the world never found one like it. 9
Boccaccio. Are Englishmen so Asiatic in the profusion of
compliments ?
[ 9 First ed. reads: "it, and could not promise nor hold another such.
Boccaccio," &c.]
Chaucer, Boccaccio, ami Pitraiva. 103
not, Francesco, whether you may derm tills cathedral
tor narratives of love.
No place is more bcfittin<; ; since, it" the love be
holy, no sentiment is essentially so divine ; and it" unholy, \ve may
pray the iv ,:tly and effectually in such an audience for
the souls of those who harbored it. Beside which, the coolness
of the aisles and their silence, and their solitariness at the ex-
tremity of the city, would check within us any motive or tend-
ency t. i lightness, if the subject should lie that
way, and if your spirits should incautiously follow it, my friend,
nni ; as (pardon my sincerity!) they are somewhat too
propense.
Boccaccio. My scruples are satisfied and removed.
The air of Naples is not so inclement as that of our Arezzo ;
and there are some who will tell us, if we listen to them, that
few places in the world are more favorable and conducive to
amorous inclinations. I often heard it while I resided there; and
the pulpit gave an echo to the public voice. Strange then
it may appear to you, that jealousy should find a place in the
connubial state, and after a year or more of marriage : neverthe-
less, so it happened.
The Prince of Policastro was united to a lady of his own rank ;
and yet he could not be quite so happy as he should have been
with her. She brought him a magnificent dowry ; and I never
saw valets more covered with lace, fringes, knots, and every thing
else that ought to content the lordly heart, than I have seen
behind the chairs of the Prince and Princess of Policastro. Alas !
what are all the blessings of this sublunary world, to the lord
whose lady has thin lips! The princess was very loving; as
much after the first year as the prince was after the first night.
Even this would not content him.
Time, Ser Geoflfreddo, remembering that Love and he in some
other planet flew together, and neither left the other behind, is
angry to be outstripped by him, and challenges him to a trial of
speed every day. The tiresome dotard is always distanced, yet
always calls hoarsely after him ; as if he had ever seen Love
turn back again, any more than Love had seen him. Well, let
them settle the matter between themselves.
Would you believe it? the princess could not make her
IO4 Imaginary Conversations.
husband in the least the fonder of her by all her assiduities ; not
even by watching him while he was awake, more assiduously than
the tenderest mother ever watched her sleeping infant. Although,
to vary her fascinations and enchantments, she called him wretch
and villain, he was afterward as wretched and villanous as if she
never had taken half the pains about him.
She had brought in her train a certain Jacometta, whom she
persuaded to espy .his motions. He was soon aware of it, and
calling her to him, said,
"Discreet and fair Jacometta, the princess, you know very
well, thinks me inattentive to her ; and being unable to fix on
any other object of suspicion, she marks out you, and boasts
among her friends that she has persuaded a foolish girl to follow
and watch me, that she may at last, by the temptation she throws
into our way, rid herself of a beauty who in future might give her
great uneasiness. Certainly, if my heart could wander, its
wanderings would be near home. I do not exactly say I should
prefer you to every woman on earth, for reason and gratitude must
guide my passion ; and, unless where I might expect to find at-
tachment, I shall ever remain indifferent to personal charms.
You may relate to your mistress whatever you think proper of
this conversation. If you believe a person of your own sex can
be more attached and faithful to you than the most circumspect
of ours, then repeat the whole. If on the contrary you imagine
that I can be hereafter of any use to you, and that it is my interest
to keep secret any confidence with which you may honor me, the
princess has now enabled us to avoid being circumvented by her.
It cannot hurt me : you are young, unsettled, incautious, and
unsuspicious."
Jacometta held down her head in confusion : the prince taking
her by the hand, requested her not to think he was offended.
He persuaded her to let him meet her privately, that he might
give her warning if any thing should occur, and that he might
assist her to turn aside the machinations of their enemy. The
first time they met, nothing had occurred : he pressed her hand,
slipped a valuable ring on one of the fingers, and passed. The
second time nothing material, nothing but what might be warded
off: let the worst happen, the friend who gave him information
of the designs laid against her would receive her. The princess
Chaucer. Boccaccio, ami lYtiarcu. 105
aw with wot '.dmi ration the earnestness with which
Jacometta watched tor her. The faithless man coukl hardly
move hand or foot without a motion on the part of her attendant.
She had observed him near the chamber-door of Jacometta,
and laughed in her heart at the beguiled deceiver. " Do you
know, Jacometta, I myself saw him within two paces of your
bedroom! "
" I am quite confident it was he, madam ! " answered Jaco-
nd I do believe in my conscience he comes every night.
! " he wants I cannot imagine. He seems to stop before the
tube-roses and carnations on the balustrade, whether to smell at
them a little, or to catch the fresh breezes from Sorrento. I
fancied at first he might be restless and unhappy (pardon me,
madonna ! ) at your differences."
" No, no," said the princess, with a smile, " I understand what
he wants : never mind, make no inquiries ; he is little aware how
we are planning to catch him. He has seen you look after him ;
lu fancies that you care about him, that you really like him,
absolutely love him, I could almost laugh, that you would
(foolish man! foolish man! genuine Policastro!) listen to hiri.
Do you understand ? "
Jacometta's two ears reddened into transparency; and, clapping
a hand on each, she cried, after a long sigh, " Lord ! c.m he
think of me ? is he mad ? does he take a poor girl for a princess ?
Generally I sleep soundly ; but once or twice he has awakened
roe, perhaps not well knowing the passage. But if, indeed, he is
so very wicked as to design to ruin me, and what if. worse to
deceive the best of ladies, might it not be advisable to fasten in
the centre and in the sides of the corridor five, or six, or seven
sharp swords, with their points toward whoever
" Jacometta ! do nothing violently ; nothing rashly ; nothing
without me."
There was only one thing that Jacometta wished to do with-
out the princess ; and certainly she was disposed to do nothing
violently or rashly, for she was now completely in the interest
(these holy walls forbid me to speak more explicitly) of
Policastro.
" We will be a match for him," said the princess. " You
must leave your room-door open to-night."
f" From What " to princess "(15 line*) added in tnd ed.]
io6 Imaginary Conversations.
Jacometta fell on her knees, and declared she was honest
though poor, an exclamation which I daresay, Messer GeofFreddo,
you have often heard in Italy : it being the preface to every
act of roguery and lubricity, unless from a knight or knight's
lady. The Princess of Policastro was ignorant of this, and so
was Jacometta when she used it. The mistress insisted ; the
attendant deprecated.
"Simple child! no earthly mischief shall befall you. To-night
you shall sleep in my bed, and I in yours, awaiting the false wretch
miscalled my husband."
Satisfied with the ingenuity of her device, the princess was
excessively courteous to the prince at dinner, and indeed through-
out the whole day. He on his part was in transports, he said,
at her affability and sweet amiable temper. Poor Jacometta really
knew not what to do : scarcely for one moment could she speak
to the prince, that he might be on his guard.
" Do it ! do it ! " said he, pressing her hand as she passed
him. " We must submit."
At the proper time he went in his slippers to the bedroom of
th^ princess, and entered the spacious bed ; which, like the
domains of the rich, is never quite spacious enough for them.
Jacometta was persuaded to utter no exclamation in the begin-
ning, and was allowed to employ whatever vehemence she pleased
at a fitter moment. The princess tossed about in Jacometta's
bed, inveighing most furiously against her faithless husband ; her
passionate voice was hardly in any degree suppressed. Jacometta
too tossed about in the princess's bed, and her voice labored
under little less suppression. At last the principal cause of vexa-
tion, with the jealous wife, was the unreasonable time to which
her husband protracted the commission of his infidelity. After
two hours or thereabout, she began to question whether he really
had ever been unfaithful at all ; began to be of the opinion that
there are malicious people in the world, and returned to her own
chamber. She fancied she heard voices within, and listening
attentively, distinguished these outcries :
" No resistance, madam ! An injured husband claims impera-
tively his promised bliss, denied him not through antipathy, not
through hatred, not through any demerits on his part, but through
unjust and barbarous jealousy. Resist ! bite ! beat me ! * Villain '
Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Pctrarca. 107
i>hfi ' am I: am I? im, wronged,
robbed of my happiness, of my sacred conjugal rights, may the
Blessed Virgin never countenance me, never look on me or Mtefl
to me, if this is not the last time I a-k them, or if ever I accept
them though offered."
At which, he rushed indignantly from the bed, threw open the
door, and, pushing aside the princess, cried raving, "Vile,
treacherous girl ! standing there, peeping ! halt-naked ! At your
infantine age dare you thus intrude upon the holy mysteries of the
ige-bed ? "
.ming out these words, hi- ran like one possessed by the
devil into his own room, bolted the door with vehemence, locked
sed it, slipped between the sheets, and slept soundly.
The princess was astonished : she asked herself, Why did not
I do this ? why did not I do that ? The reason was, she had
learned her own part, but not his. Scarcely had she entered her
chamber, when Jacometta fell upon her neck, sobbing aloud, and
declaring that nothing but her providential presence could have
saved her. She had muffled herself up, she said, folding the
bed-clothes about her double and triple, and was several times on
the point of calling up the whole household in her extremity,
strict as was her mistress's charge upon her to be silent. The
princess threw a shower of odoriferous waters over her, and took
every care to restore her spirits and to preserve her from a
hysterical fit, after such exertion and exhaustion. When she
was rather more recovered, she dropped on her knees before
her lady, and entreated and implored that, on the renewal of
her love in its pristine ardor for the prince, she never would tell
him in any moment of tender confidence that it was she who was
in the bed.
The princess was slow to give the promise ; for she was very
conscientious. At last however she gave it, saying, " The prince
my husband has taken a most awful oath never to renew the
moments you apprehend. Our Lady strengthen me to bear my
heavy affliction ! Her divine grace has cured my agonized breast
of its inveterate jealousy."
She paused for some time ; then, drying her tears, for she had
shed several, she invited Jacometta to sit upon the bedside with
her. Jacometta did so; and the princess, taking her hand,
io8 Imaginary Conversations.
continued : " I hardly know what is passing in my mind, Jaco-
metta ! I found it difficult to bear an injury, though an empty
and unreal one ; let me try whether the efforts I make will
enable me to endure a misfortune, on the faith of a woman, my
dear Jacometta, no unreal nor empty one. Policastro is young :
it would be unreasonable in me to desire he should lead the life
of an anchorite, and perhaps not quite reasonable in him to expect
the miracle of my blood congealing."
After this narration, Messer Francesco walked toward the
high altar and made his genuflexion : the same did Messer
Giovanni, and, in the act of it, slapped Ser Geoffreddo on the
shoulder, telling him he might dispense with the ceremony, by
reason of his inflexible boots and the buck-skin paling about his
loins. Ser Geoffreddo did it nevertheless, and with equal
devotion. His two friends then took him between them to
the house of Messer Francesco, where dinner had been some
time waiting.
XV. BARROW AND NEWTON. 1
Newton. I come, sir, before you with fear and trembling, at
the thoughts of my examination to-morrow. If the masters are
too hard upon me, I shall never take my degree. How I passed
P Landor must suppose this Conversation to have taken place in 1668, the
day before Nemlo.n wentup for his master's degree. He was then twenty-
seven years -of age, an<T~h~ad completed the more important part of his
/studies. Barrow was then Lucasian professor of Geometry, He had used
/Newton's skill in the revision of his Lectiones Optics, and had acknowledged
the benefit his book had received from Newton's corrections and additions.
Lip the following year Barrow resigned his professorship to Newton, and
for the rest of his life devoted himself almost entirely to theology. In the
Critical Review^ June 8, 1808, there is an article of Dr Parr's, in which
occurs (p. 1 1 8) an eulogy on Barrow, " Within the grasp of his mighty
and capacious mind were comprehended the broad generalities which are
discussed in science, and the minuter discriminations which are to be
learned only by familiarity with common life. At one moment he
soars aloft to the great, without any exhaustion of his vigour, and in the
next, without any diminution of his dignity, he descended to the little
he drew his materials from the richest treasures of learning, ancient and
modern, sacred and profane he sets before us in solemn and magnificent
array, the testimony of historians, the criticisms of scholars, the arguments
Barrow and Newton. 109
as bachelor I cannot tell : it must surely have been by especial
indulgence.
Barrow. My dear Isaac ! do not be dispirited. The less
intelligent of the examiners will break their beaks against thr
gravel, in trying to cure the indigestions and heartburnings your
plenteousness has given them ; the more intelligent know your
industry, your abilities, and your modesty: they would favor you,
if there were need of favor, but you, without compliment, surpass
them all.
Newton. Oh sir ! forbear, forbear ! I fear I may have for-
gotten a good deal of what you taught me.
Barrow. I wonder at that, I am older than you by many
yean ; I have many occupations and distractions ; my memory is
by nature less retentive : and yet I have not forgotten any thing
you taught ntf.
Newton. Too partial tutor, too benevolent friend ! this
unmerited praise confounds me. I cannot calculate the powers of
my mind, otherwise than by calculating the time I require to
compass any thing.
Barrow. Quickness is among the least of the mind's proper-
ties, and belongs to her in almost her lowest state : nay, it doth
not abandon her when she is driven from her home, when she is
wandering and insane. The mad often retain it ; the liar has it,
the cheat has it; we find it on the race-course and at the
card-table : education does not give it, and reflection takes away
from it.
Newton. I am slow ; and there are many parts of ordinary
learning yet unattained by me.
Barrow. I had an uncle, a sportsman, who said that the light
dog beats over most ground, but the heavier finds the covey.
Newton. Oftentimes indeed have I submitted to you problems
and possibilities
Barrow. And I have made you prove them.
Newton. You were contented with me ; all may not be.
Barrow. All will not be : many would be more so if you
could prove nothing. Men, like dogs and cats, fawn upon you
oi metaphysicians, the description of poet*, the profound remarks of
heathen sages, and the pious reflections of Christian fathers." (Imag.
Convers., v., 1819. Works, i., 1846. Works, iv., 1876.)]
i io Imaginary Conversations.
while you leave them on the ground ; if you lift them up they bite
and scratch ; and if you show them their own features in the glass,
they would fly at your throat and tear your eyes out. This
between ourselves ; for we must not indulge in unfavourable views
of mankind, since by doing it we make bad men believe that they
are no worse than others, and we teach the good that they are
good in vain. Philosophers have taken this side of the question
to show their ingenuity ; but sound philosophers are not ingenious.
If philosophy can render us no better and no happier, away with
it ! There are things that can ; and let us take them.
What dost thou sigh at, Isaac ?
Newton. At my ignorance, in some degree, of their writings.
Barrow. At your ignorance of the ignorant ? No man ever
understood the things that are most admired in Plato and
Aristoteles. In Plato there are incoherencies that fall to pieces
at a touch ; and Aristoteles lost himself in the involutions of his
own web. What must we think of a philosopher, who promised
to teach one pupil that which he withheld from the rest, although
these were more familiar with him and more instructed ? And
what must we think of a pupil, who was indignant that any others
should partake in his sentiments and his knowledge ? Yet such
men have guided the scientific, such men have ruled the world.
Newton. Not such was Bacon.
Barrow. No, indeed. I told you, and I repeat it, I think
the small volume of Essays in your hand contains more wisdom
and more genius than we can find in all the philosophers of
antiquity ; with one exception, Cicero. On which I desired you
to peruse it attentively, and to render me an account of it according
to your opinion.
Newton. Sir, I have been induced to believe, but rather from
the authority of my elders than from my own investigation, that
Bacon is the more profound of the two, although not the more
eloquent.
Barrow. If Bacon had written as easily and harmoniously
as Cicero, he would have lost a portion of his weight with the
generality of the learned, who are apt to conceive that in easy
movement there is a want of solidity and strength. 2 We must
[ 2 First ed. reads : " strength. Take away all Cicero's wit and half his
eloquence, and you leave a Bacon at bottom. Very wise," &c.]
Harrow and Newton. I i i
confess that antiquity has darkened colleges and has distorted
criticism. Very wise men, and very wary and inquisitive, \v.ilk
the earth, and are ignorant not only what minerals lie
h, but what herbs and foliage they are treading. Some
, and probably some distant time, a specimen of
extracted and exhibited; then another; lastly the bearing
and diameter of the vein are observed and measured. Thus
it is with writers who are to have a currency through ages.
In the beginning they are confounded with most others ; soon
they fall into some secondary class; next, into one rather less
obscure and humble ; by degrees they are liberated from the dross
and lumber that hamper them ; and, being once above the heads
of contemporaries, rise slowly and waveringly, then regularly and
creed y, then rapidly and majestically, till the vision strains and
aches as it pursues them in their ethereal elevation.
Neither you nor I have wasted our time in the cultivation of
poetry ; but each of us hath frequently heard it discoursed on
by those who have ; and, if it serves for nothing else, it serves
for an illustration. In my early days, he would have been scoffed
out of countenance who should have compared the Lycidas, or the
dlltgro and Paueruo, of Mr John Milton to the sterling poetry
(as it was called) of Dr John Donne : and yet much may be said
in favor of the younger ; and there are those, and not only under-
graduates, but bachelors and masters, who venture even to prefer
him openly. Who knows but we may see him extolled to the
>f Lucan and Statius, strong as is the sense of the University
against all sorts of supplanters ! There are eyes that cannot see
print when near them ; there are men that cannot see merit. \^
Newton. The Latin secretary may be pardoned for many
l in his poetry, and even for many in his politics, in con-
sideration of the reverence he bore toward the dpocalyptf. I
cannot think him a very irreligious man, . although he does not
attend divine service, we are told, so regularly as we could have
wished.
Barrow. Let us talk no more about him. I opposed his
principles : nevertheless he may have acted conscientiously ; and
even his principles are now coming again into fashion, and among
the sons of those very cavaliers who would have hanged him.
Perhaps the most dangerous of his doctrines, the lawfulness of
1 1 2 Imaginary Conversations.
setting aside God's anointed for misconduct, may soon be the
leading one in the front of our Constitution. Well ! we are not
met for politics : only it would be salutary to consider, if God's
anointed will not be set aside, what must be done, how avoid
the commission of a diabolical act.
Newton. Could we rightly understand the Revelation, I
question not but every difficulty of this nature would be solved.
Barrow. May be : let us trust in God.
Newton. We must have certain data for every thing upon
which we reason : the greater part of reasoners begin without
them.
Barrow. I wish the event may answer your expectations ;
that the Apocalypse, the Argonautic Expedition, and the Siege of
Troy, form the trident which is to push away our difficulties in
navigating through all the rocks and shoals of time, all those of
religion, and all those of history. Happen what may, I doubt
nothing of your surpassing the foremost of your competitors, of
S>ur very soon obtaining a name in the University little below
octor Spry's of Caius, Doctor Brockhouse's of St John's,
Doctor Cockburn's of Emanuel, Doctor Turnbull's of Peter-
house, or Doctor Cruikshank's of Bennet ; nay, a name which,
within a few years, may reach even to Leyden and Paris, as that
of a most studious young man, distinguished alike for application
and invention.
Newton. Although I could not in conscience disclaim the
small merit there may be in application, since I owe it to the
encouragement of my tutor, I surely have no right or title to
invention.
Barrow. You have already given proofs of it beyond any
man I know. Your questions lead to great discoveries ; whether
it please God that you hereafter make them, or some one follow-
ing you, is yet uncertain. We are silly enough to believe that
the quality of invention, as applied to literature, lies in poetry and
romance, mostly or altogether. I dare to speculate on discoveries
in the subjects of your studies, every one far greater, every one
far more wonderful, than all that lie within the range of fiction.
In our days, the historian is the only inventor ; and it is ludicrous
to see how busily and lustily he beats about, with his string
and muzzle upon him. I wish we could drag him for a moment
Burrow and Newton. i 13
into philosophies! life : it would be still more amusing to look at
him, as he runs over this loftier and dryer ground, throwing up
his nose and whimpering at the prickles he must pass throu
men are contented with what is strictly true concerning
the oc of the world : it neither heats nor soothes. The
!!*! f, when it is in perfect health, is averse to a state of rest.
ish our prejudices to be supported, our animosities to be in-
creased ; as those who are inflamed by liquor would add mat
to the inflammation.
Newton. The simple verities, important perhaps in their con-
sequences, which I am exploring, not only abstract me from the
msiness of society, but exempt me from the hatred and perse-
cution to which every other kind of study is exposed. In poetry,
a good pastoral would raise against one as vehement enemies as a
good satire. A great poet in our country, like the great giant in
Sicily, can never move without shaking the whole island ; while
the mathematician and astronomer may pursue their occupations,
and rarely be hissed or pelted from below. You spoke of histor-
ians : it would ill become a person of my small experience to dis-
course on them after you.
Barrow. Let me hear, however, what you have to say, since
at least it will be dispassionate.
Newton. Those who now write history do certainly write it
to gratify a party, and to obtain notoriety and money. The
materials lie in the cabinet of the statesman, whose actions and
their consequences are to be recorded. If you censure them, you
are called ungrateful for the facilities he has afforded you ; and, if
you commend them, venal. No man, both judicious and honest,
will subject himself to either imputation.
Barrow. Not only at the present day, but always, the indul-
gence of animosity, the love of gain, and the desire of favor have
been the inducements of an author to publish in his lifetime the
history of his contemporaries. But there have been, and let us
hope there may be, judicious and virtuous men, so inflamed by the
glory of their country in their days, that, leaving all passions and
prejudices, they follow this sole guide, and are crowned by universal
consent for commemorating her recent exploits.
Newton. Here are reasons enough for me rather to apply my
mind as you direct it, than to the examination of facts which never
IV. H
i 14 Imaginary Conversations.
can be collected by one person ; or to poetry, for which I have
no call ; or to the composition of essays, such as those of Mon-
taigne and Bacon ; or dialogues, such as those of Cicero and Plato,
and, nearer our times, of Erasmus and Galileo. You had furnished
me before with arguments in abundance ; convincing me that, even
if 1 could write as well as they did, the reward of my labors
would be dilatory and posthumous.
Barrow. I should entertain a mean opinion of myself, if all
men or the most-part praised and admired me : it would prove me
to be somewhat like them. Sad and sorrowful is it to stand
near enough to people for them to see us wholly ; for them to
come up to us and walk round us leisurely and idly, and pat us
when they are tired and going off. That lesson which a dunce
can learn at a glance, and likes mightily, must contain little, and
not good. Unless it can be proved that the majority are not
dunces, are not wilful, presumptuous, and precipitate, it is a
folly to care for popularity. There are indeed those who must
found their fortunes upon it ; but not with books in their hands.
After the first start, after a stand among the booths and gauds
and prostitutes of party, how few have lived contentedly, or died
calmly ! One hath fallen the moment when he had reached the
last step of the ladder, having undersawed it for him who went
before, and forgotten that knavish act ; another hath wasted away
more slowly, in the fever of a life externally sedentary, internally
distracted ; a third, unable to fulfil the treason he had stipulated,
and haunted by the terrors of detection, snaps the thread under
the shears of the Fates, and makes even those who frequented him
believe in Providence.
Isaac ! Isaac ! the climbing plants are slender ones. Men
of genius have sometimes been forced away from the service of
society into the service of princes ; but they have soon been driven
out, or have retired. When shall we see again, in the administra-
tion of any country, so accomplished a creature as Wentworth,* the
favorite of Charles ? Only light men recover false steps : his
greatness crushed him. Aptitude for serving princes is no proof
* He far excelled in energy and capacity the other councillors of
Charles ; but there was scarcely a crueller or (with the exception of his
master) a more perfidious man on either side. Added to which, he was
\vantonly oppressive, and sordidly avaricious.
Barrow and Newton. 1 1 5
or signification of genius, nor indeed of any elevated or extensive
knowledge. The interests of many require a multiplicity of
talents to comprehend and accomplish them. Mazarin and
Richelieu were as little able as they were little disposed to
promote the well-being of the community ; both of them had
keen eyes, and kept them on one object, 3 aggrandizement. We
find the most trivial men in the streets pursuing an object through
as many intricacies, and attaining it ; and the schemes of children,
though sooner dropped, are frequently as ingenious and judicious,
No person can see more clearly than you do the mortifications to
which the ambitious are subject ; but some may fall into the
snares of ambition whose nature was ever averse to it, and whose
wisdom would almost reach any thing, and only seems too lofty
to serve them watchfully as a guard. It may thus happen to such
as have been accustomed to study and retirement, and fell un-
expectedly on the political world by means of recommendations.
There are those, I doubt not, who would gladly raise their name
and authority in the State by pushing you forward, as the phrase
is, into Parliament. They seize any young man who has gained
some credit at college, no matter for what, whether for writing
an epigram or construing a passage in Lycophron ; and, if he
succeeds to power, they and their family divide the patronage.
The ambitious heart is liable to burst in the emptiness of its
ion: let yours, which is sounder, lie lower and quieter.
Think how much greater is the glory you may acquire by opening
new paths to science, than by widening old ones to corruption.
I would not whisper a syllable in the ear of faction ; but the
words of the intelligent, in certain times and on certain occasions,
do not vary with parties and systems. The royalist and re-
publican meet: the difference lies merely in the intent, the
direction, and the application. Do not leave the wise for the
unwise, the lofty for the low, the retirement of a college for the
turbulence of a House of Commons. Rise, but let no man lift
you : leave that to the little and to the weak. Think within
yourself, I will not say how impure are the sources of election to
our Parliament, but how inconsiderable a distinction is conferred
on the representative, even where it is not an individual who
nominates, or only a few who appoint him, but where several
[ First ed. read*: the aggrandizement of their master. We," &c.]
i T 6 Imaginary Conversations.
hundreds are the voters. For who are they, and who direct
them ? the roughest bear-guard, the most ferocious bull-baiter,
the most impudent lawyer, the tinker that sings loudest, and the
parson that sits latest at the ale-house, hitting them all by turns
with his tobacco-pipe, calling them all sad dogs, and swearing
till he falls asleep he will hear no more filthy toasts. Show me
the borough where such people as these are not the most efficient
in returning a candidate to Parliament ; and then tell me which
of them is fit to be the associate it would be too ludicrous to
say the patron of a Euclid or an Archimedes ? My dear
Newton ! the best thing is to stand above the world ; the next
is to stand apart from it on any side. You may attain the first ;
in tiying to attain it, you are certain of the second.
Newton. I am not likely to be noticed by the great, nor
favored by the popular. I have no time for visiting : I detest
the strife of tongues ; all noises discompose me.
Barrow. We will then lay aside the supposition. The
haven of philosophy itself is not free at all seasons from its gusts
and swells. Let me admonish you to confide your secrets to
few : I mean the secrets of science. In every great mind there
are some : every deep inquirer hath discovered more than he
thought it prudent to avow, as almost every shallow one throws
out more than he hath well discovered. Among our learned
friends, we may be fully and unreservedly philosophical ; in the
company of others we must remember, first and chiefly, that dis-
cretion is a part of philosophy, and we must let out only some
glimpses of the remainder.
Newton. Surely no harm can befall us from following a
chain of demonstrations in geometry, or any branch of the
mathematics.
Barrow. Let us hope there may be none ; nevertheless we
cannot but recollect how lately Galileo was persecuted and im-
prisoned for his discoveries.
Newton. He lived under a popish government.
Barrow. My friend ! my friend ! all the most eminently
scientific, all the most eminently brave and daring in the
exercise of their intellects, live, and have ever lived, under a
popish government. There are popes in all creeds, in all
countries, in all ages. Political power is jealous of intellectual ;
Harrow and Newton. i i 7
often lot it r\j>o.x- ami mar its plans and projects, and ottener
lest it attract an equal share of celebrity and distinction. When-
the literary man is protected by the political, the incitement
to it is the pride of patronage ; not the advancement of letters,
nor the honor they confer on the cultivator or the country.
Newton. That is rational in England which beyond the Alps
is monstrous. By God's blessing, I firmly believe in the Holy
Scriptures ; yet, under your discretion and guidance, I would be
informed if 4 the sun's rays in Syria could ever be above the
horizon for twenty-four hours, without a material alteration,
without an utter derangement, of our whole mundane system ?*
Barrow. Reserve that question for a future time and a wiser
teacher. At present, I would only remark to you that our mun-
dane system hat been materially altered ; and that its alterations
may have been attributed to other causes than the true, and laid
down by different nations as having taken place at different epochs
and on different occasions, sometimes to gratify their pride,
sometimes to conceal their ignorance.
Newton. I am not quite satisfied.
Barrow. Those who are quite satisfied sit still and do no-
thing ; those who are not quite satisfied are the sole benefactors of
the world.
[ 4 Pint cd. reads : " if the sun could stand stiller at one time than at
another ; and if his rays/' Ac. The footnote refers to the case of Thomas
Aikenhtrad, who was executed in Scotland in the year 1696 for denying
the Trinity. See Macaulay, Hist. Eng., chapter xxii., for the whole dis-
graceful story. Le Clerc received from Loche a letter, written by New-
ton, on two texts in the Greek Testament, the first of which, i John v.,
vii., is the celebrated text about the " three witnesses/' Like every
other scholar of repute Newton denied its authenticity. Le Clerc was to
have published a French translation of the letter, but Newton, hearing of
it, wrote to Loche to stop the publication. Le Clerc at the time.did not
know that Newton was the author, and it was not till some time after that
he discovered this and brought out a version of the letter in a slightly
altered form.]
* Newton was timid and reerved in expressing his opinions, and was
more orthodox (in the Anglican sense of orthodoxy) early in life than
he thought at last is not clear; and perhaps it was well
for him that it was no clearer. Under his eyes, in the reign of William
III., a youth of eighteen was punished with death for expressing such
opinion* as our philosopher hinted to Le Clerc. To remove and consume
the gallows on which such men are liable to suffer is among the principal
aims and intents of these writings.
1 1 g Imaginary Conversations.
Newton. And are driven out of it for their pains.
Barrow. Men seldom have loved their teachers.
Newton. How happens it, then, that you are loved so gener-
ally ; for who is there, capable of instruction, that you have not
taught ? Never, since I have been at the University, have I heard
of any one being your enemy who was not a Calvinist, a sect
wherein good-humored and gracefully-minded men are scanty.
Barrow. Do not attribute the failing to the sect, which hath
many strong texts of Scripture for its support ; but rather think
that the doctrines are such as are most consentaneous to the
malignant and morose. There are acrid plants that attract as
many insects as the sweeter, but insects of another kind. All
substances have their commodities, all opinions their partisans. I
have been happy in my pupils ; but in none of them have I
observed such a spirit of investigation as in you. Keep it, how-
ever, within the precincts of experimental and sure philosophy, which
are spacious enough for the excursions of the most vigorous mind,
and varied enough for the most inconstant and flighty. Never
hate, never dislike men, for difference of religion. Some receive
baleful impressions in it more easily than others, as they do diseases.
We do not hate a child for catching the small-pox, but pity its
sores and blemishes. Let the Calvinist hate us : he represents
his God as a hater, he represents him as capricious. I wish he
would love us, even from caprice ; but he seems to consider this
part of the Divine nature as a weakness.
Come, unroll your paper ; let me hear what you have to say
on Bacon's Essays, a volume I place in the hand of those only
who appear to me destined to be great.
Newton. He says in his Preface,
" I do now publish my Essays, which of all my other 5 works
have been most current."
How can the very thing of which you are speaking be another ?
Barrow. This is a chasm in logic, into which many have
fallen.
Newton. I had scarcely begun the first Essay, when an elderly
gentleman of another college came into the room, took up the
book, and read aloud,
" This same truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not
f 5 Bacon wrote, " of all my works."]
Barrow and Newton. i 19
show the masks and mummeries and triumphs of the world half
so stately and daintily as candle-lights. Truth may, perhaps,
come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day ; but it
will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that showeth
best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure.
Doth any man doubt that, if there were taken out of men's minds
vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one
would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of
men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition,
and unfJtcuing to themsek
"One might well imagine," said he, " unpleasing to themselves,
if full of melancholy and indisposition. But how much of truth
and wisdom is compressed in these few sentences ! Do not you
wonder that a man capable of all this should likewise be 'capable
of such foolery as the following :
*' First he breathed light upon the face of the matter, or chaos ;
then he breathed light into the face of man ; and still he breatheth
imd irupirtth light into the face of his chosen."
I looked with wonder at him, knowing his seriousness and
gravity, his habits and powers of ratiocination, and his blameless
lite. But perhaps I owe to his question the intensity and sedulity
with which I have examined every page of Bacon. He called
the words I have quoted dull and colourless bombast ; he declared
them idle in allusion, and false and impious. I was appalled.
He added, ** I do not know, Mr Newton, whether you have
brothers : if you have, what would you think of your father when
he gave a cherry to one, a whipping to a second, and burned the
fingers of a third against the bars of his kitchen grate, and vouch-
safed no better reason for it than that he had resolved to do so
the very night he begot them? Election in such a case is
partiality ; partiality is injustice. Is God unjust ? "
I could have answered him, by God's help, if he had given
me time ; but he went on, and said : " Bacon had much sagacity,
but no sincerity ; much force, but no firmness. It is painful to
discover in him the reviler of Raleigh, the last relic of heroism in
the dastardly court of James. It is horrible to hear him, upon
another occasion, the apologist of a patron's disgrace and death,
the patron, whose friendly hand had raised him to the first steps
of the highest station."
I2O Imaginary Conversations.
" Sir," answered I, " his political conduct is not the question
before us."
"It may, however," said he, "enlighten us in regard to his
candour, and induce us to ask ourselves whether, in matters of
religion, he delivered his thoughts exactly, and whether he may
not have conformed his expression of them to the opinions of his
master."
Barrow. I hope you dropped the discussion after this.
Newton. No ; I cried resolutely, " Sir, when I am better
prepared for it, I may have something to say with you on your
irreverent expressions."
Barrow. Mr Newton, do not be ruffled. Bacon spoke
figuratively ; so did Moses, to whom the illusion was made. Let
the matter rest, my dear friend.
Newton. I told him plainly he was unfair : he was no friend
to Bacon. He smiled at me and continued: "My good Newton,
I am as ready to be told when I am unfair as you are to have
your watch set right when it goes amiss. You say I am no friend
to Bacon ; and in truth, after the experience he left us in the
Earl of Essex, he is not precisely the man to place one's friend-
ship on. Yet surely no folly is greater than hatred of those we
never saw, and from whom we can have received no injury.
Often do I wonder when I hear violent declamationsjigainst
^eories^and opinions; which declamations""'!' thinTT~are as ill-
directed as they would be against currents of air or watercourses.
We may keep out of their way if we will. I estimate the genius of
Bacon as highly as perhaps you do, and in this Essay I find a single
sentence which I would rather have written than all the volumes
I/of all the Greek philosophers ; let me read it : * Certainly, it is
(heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in
Providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.' "
Barrow. Magnificent as Shakspeare !
Newton. He who wrote tragedies ?
Barrow. The same : I have lately been reading them.
Newton. Sir, should you have marked the truths he demon-
strated, if any, I shall think it no loss of time to run over them,
at my leisure. I have now a question to ask you on the third of
these Essays. We find in it that " Quarrels and divisions about
religion were evils unknown to the heathen : the reason was,
Barrow and NV\\ton. I 2 i
because the religion of the heathen consisted rather in rites and
ceremonies than in constant belief." This is no truer of the old
.ism than of the later in the same country, which however
burns men alive for slight divergencies.
"You iii e," says Bacon, "what kind of faith t
was, when tin- chief doctors and fathers of their church were the
I read this loudly and triumphantly to my friend, who paused
and smiled, and then asked me complacently whether it were
better to imprison, burn, and torture, or to send away the audience
in good humor and good fellowship ; and whether I should
prefer the conversation and conviction of Doctor Bonner and
Doctor Gardiner to those of Doctor Tibullus and Doctor Ovid.
I thought the question too flippant for an answer, which indeed
was not quite at hand. He proceeded : " ' God has this attri-
bute, that he is a jealous God, and therefore his worship and
n will endure no mixture.' His jealousy must be touched
to the quick," said my friend : " for every century there comes
forth some new pretender, with his sect behind him in the dark
passages ; and his spouse was hardly at her own door after the
nuptials, ere she cried out and shrieked against the lllthiness of an
intruder."
I was lifting up my eyes and preparing an ejaculation, when
he interrupted me, and continued : " It is certain that heresies
and schisms are of all others the greatest scandals ; yea, more than
corruption of manners : for, as in the natural body a wound, or
solution of continuity, is worse than a corrupt humor ' "
Here he laid down the volume, and said, " I will ask the
professor of surgery whether a cut in the linger is worse than a
scrofula : I will then go to the professor of divinity, and ask him
whether the best Christian in Cambridge ought to be hanged
to-morrow morning."
I stared at him : whereupon he declared that every church
on earth is heretical and schismatical, if the word of Christ is the
foundation of the true ; and that the fellow who was hanged last
week for corruption of manners had, according to the decision of
Bacon, more Christianity in him than all the heads of colleges.
" When he would follow theologians," said my friend, " he falls
into gross absurdities : he corrects himself, 01 only trips harm-
lessly, when he walks alone."
122 Imaginary Conversations.
I myself was obliged to agree with my disputant, in censur-
ing an exception. Speaking of sanguinary persecutions to force
consciences, the author blames them, "except it be in cases of
overt scandal, blasphemy, &c." Now who shall decide what is
overt scandal, or what is blasphemy ? That which is prodigiously
so in one age and one country is not at all in another. Such
exceptions are the most pernicious things a great author can
sanction.
Barrow. I side with you. We come now, I perceive, to
the Essay On Revenge.
Newton. " There is no man doth a wrong for the wrong's
sake, but thereby to purchase himself profit, or pleasure, or honor,
or the like : therefore why should I be angry with a man for
loving himself better than me ? "
If this be an excuse, why send a rogue to prison ? All the
crimes that men commit are committed because they love them-
selves better than others ; and it is the direction and extent of
this loving, to the detriment of others, that constitutes the magni-
tude of the crime. Cruelty is the highest pleasure to the cruel
man : it is his love. Murder may ensue ; and shall we not be
angry with him for loving himself better than the murdered ?
On Simulation and Dissimulation, we are told, " The best com-
position and temperature 6 is to have a power to feign, if there be
no remedy."
Barrow. In other words, to lie whenever we find it convenient.
The last two decisions you have reported from him as little be-
come the chancellor as the philosopher ; as little the philosopher as
the citizen. Why will you not read on ?
Newton. I am afraid to mention the remark of my visitor on
a sentence in the Essay Upon Goodness.
Barrow. Fear not : what is it ?
Newton. " The desire of knowledge in excess caused man to
fall."
Barrow. This is a sin the most rarely of all committed in
our days. If the earth is to be destroyed by fire, the bottom of a
rushchair will serve to consume all who are guilty of it ; and what
falls from heaven may fall upon other offenders.
[ 6 Bacon wrote : " temperature is to have openness in fame and opinion ;
secrecy in habit ; dissimulation in seasonable use, and a power," &c.]
Barrow and Newton. 123
Newton. " Do you believe/' said my friend, " that God
punished men for wishing to be wiser ? for wishing to follow
him and to learn his pleasure ? for wishing that acquisition
by which beneficence and charity may be the most luminously
and extensively displayed ? No, Newton, no ! The Jews, who
invented this story, were envious of the scientific ; for they were
ignorant of the sciences. Astronomy, among the rest, was odious
to them ; and hence the fables stuck against the Tower of Babel,
the observatory of a better and a wiser people, their enemy, their
conqueror. Take care, or you may be hanged for shooting at tin-
stars. If these fictions are believed and acted on, you must
conceal your telescope and burn your observations."
On my representing to him the effects of divine justice in
casting down to earth the monument of human pride, he said :
"The Observatory of Babylon was constructed of unbaked
bricks, and upon an alluvial soil. Look at the Tower of Pisa ;
look at every tower and steeple in that city : you will find that
they all lean, and all in one direction, that is, toward the river.
Some have fallen ; many will fall. God would not have been so
angry with the Tower of Babel, if it had been built of Portland
stone a few weeks' journey to the westward, and you had been
as importunate as the Babylonians were in their attempt at paying
him a visit."
He expressed his wonder that Bacon, in the reign of James,
should have written, " A 7 king is the servant of his people,
or else he were without a calting" In other words, whenever
he ceases to be the servant of the people^ he forfeits his right to
the throne.
Barrow. Truth sometimes comes unaware upon caution, and
sometimes speaks in public as unconsciously as in a dream.
Newton. Sir, although you desired me rather to investigate
and note the imperfections of my author than what is excellent in
him, as you would rather the opaquer parts of the sun than what
is manifest of his glory to the lowest and most insensible, yet,
[* Landor is here quoting from a spurious essay, entitled, " Of a King."
(See Speddine's Bacon, 1858, vol. vi., p. $95-) The passage reads: "To
conclude, a hee is of the greatest power, o hee is subject to the greatest
cares, nude the servant of his people, or else he were without a calling at
all."]
1 24 Imaginary Conversations.
from the study of your writings, and from the traces of your hand
in others, I am sometimes led to notice the beauties of his style.
It requires the greatest strength to support such a weight of rich-
ness as we sometimes find in him. The florid grows vapid where
the room is not capacious, and where perpetual freshness of
thought does not animate and sustain it. Unhappily, it seems
to have been taken up mostly by such writers as have least
invention.
Barrow. Read to me the sentence or the paragraph that
pleases you.
Newton. J Tis On Envy :
" Lastly, near kinsfolks and fellows in office, and those that
have been bred together, are more apt to envy their equals when
they are raised ; for it doth upbraid unto them their own fortunes,
and pointeth at them, and cometh oftener into their remembrance,
and incurreth likewise more into the note of others ; and envy
ever redoubleth from speech and fame."
Barrow. Very excellent. I wish, before he cast his invec-
tives against Raleigh, he had reflected more on a doctrine in the
next page : " Those that have joined with their honor great
travels, cares, or perils, are less subject to envy : for men think
that they earn their honors hardly, and pity them sometimes ; and
pity ever healeth envy." I am afraid it will be found, on
examination, that Bacon in his morality was too like Seneca ;
not indeed wallowing in wealth and vice and crying out against
them, but hard-hearted and hypocritical ; and I know not with
what countenance he could have said, " By 8 indignities men come
to dignities."
Newton. I have remarked with most satisfaction those
sentences in which he appears to have forgotten both the age and
station wherein he lived, and to have equally overlooked the base
and summit of our ruder institutions. "Power to do good,"
says he, as Euripides or Phocion might have said, and Pericles
might have acted on it, " is the true and lawful end of aspiring ;
for good thoughts, though God accept them, yet towards men
are little better than good dreams except they be put in act ; and
[ 8 This quotation and the three following are from the essay, " Of
Great Place." In the third quotation the correct reading is, " of the
ancient time."]
Burrow and Newton. 125
that cannot lx- without power and place, as the vantage and com-
manding ground."
And again : " Reduce things to the first institution, and observe
wherein and how they have degenerated ! But yet ask counsel
of both times; of the ancienter time what is best y and of the latter
time what is fittest."
Barrow. He spoke unadvisedly ; for, true as these sentences
are, they would lead toward republicanism, if men minded them.
Of th i, there is as little danger as that the servants of
kings should follow the advice he gives afterward :
" Embrace and invite helps and advices touching the execution
of thy place ; and do not drive away such as bring thee int.
tion, as meddlers, but accept of them in good part."
Newton. On Seditions, he says the matter is of " two kinds ;
much poverty and much discontentment." It appears to me that
here is only one kind : for much discontentment may spring, and
usually does, from much poverty.
Barrow. Certainly. He should not have placed cause
and effect as two causes. You must however have remarked his
wonderful sagacity in this brief Essay, which I hesitate not to
declare the finest piece of workmanship that ever was composed
on any part of government. Take Aristoteles and Machiavelli,
and compare the best sections of their works to this, and then you
will be able, in some degree, to calculate the superiority of genius
in Bacon.
Ntwton. I have not analyzed the political works of Aris-
toteles ; but I find in Machiavelli many common thoughts, among
many ingenious, many just, 9 many questionable, and many false
OMfc
Barrow. What are you turning over ? Do not let me lose
any thing you have remarked.
Newton. "Money," says my lord, "is like muck ; not good
except it be spread." I am afraid this truth would subvert, in
the mind of a reflecting man, all that has been urged by the
[* First ed. reads: "jim.and more perverse ones. Let the following
serve for instances : and I hasten the sooner to the exposition of them,
that I may raise no objection against any part of a treatise which you
have commended so unexceptionally. Barrmv. Nay, be candid with me
and bring forward your objection. Nnvto*. Money," &c.J
1 26 Imaginary Conversations.
learned author on the advantages of nobility, and even of royalty ;
for which reason I dare not examine it : only let me, sir, doubt
before you whether " this is to be done by suppressing, or at the
least keeping a straight hand upon, the devouring trades of usury,
engrossing, great pasturages, and the like.
Barrow. I wish he never had used, which he often does,
those silly words, and the like.
Newton. Great pasturages are not trades ; and they must
operate in a way directly opposite to the one designated.
Barrow. I know not whether a manifest fault in reasoning
be not sometimes more acceptable than stale and worm-eaten and
weightless truths. Heaps of these are to be found in almost
every modern writer : Bacon has fewer of them than any.
Nicholas Machiavelli is usually mentioned as the deepest and
acutest of the Italians : a people whose grave manner often makes
one imagine there is more to be found in them than they possess.
Take down that volume : read the examples I have transcribed
at the end :
" The loss of every devotion and every religion draws after it
infinite inconveniences and infinite disorders."
Inconveniences and disorders would follow, sure enough : the
losses, being negatives, draw nothing.
" In a well-constituted government, war, peace, and amity
should be deliberated on, not for the gratification of a few, but
for the common good."
"That war is just which is necessary."
" It is a cruel, inhuman, and impious thing, even in war,
stuprare le donne, viziare le vergim," &c.
" Fraud is detestable in every thing."
These most obvious truths come forward as if he had now dis-
covered them for the first time. He tells us also that, " A prince
ought to take care that the people are not without food." He
says with equal gravity that, " Fraud is detestable in every thing ; "
and that, " A minister ought to be averse from public rapine, and
should augment the public weal."
It would be an easy matter to fill many pages with flat and un-
profitable sentences. I had only this blank one for it ; and there
are many yet, the places of which are marked with only the first
words. Do not lose your time in looking for them : we must
not judge of him from these defects.
Barrow and Newton. 127
Newton. Whenever I have heard him praised, it was tor
vigor of thought.
Barrow. He is strongest where he is most perverse. There
are men who never show their muscles but when they have the
cramp.
Newton. Consistency and firmness are not the characteristics
of the Florentines, nor ever were. Machiavelli wished at one
time to satisfy the man of probity, at another to conciliate the
rogue and robber ; at one time to stand on the alert for the return
of liberty, at another to sit in the portico of the palace, and trim
the new livery of nascent princes. If we consider him as a
writer, he was the acutest that had appeared since the revival of
letters. None had reasoned so profoundly on the political interests
of society, or had written so clearly or so boldly.
Barrow. Nevertheless, the paper of a boy's cracker, when
he has let it off, would be ill-used by writing such stuff upon
it as that which you have been reading. The great merit of
Machiavelli, in style, is the avoiding of superlatives. We can
with difficulty find an Italian prose-writer who is not weak and
inflated by the continual use of them, to give him pomp and energy,
as he imagines.
Newton. Davila, too, is an exception.
Barrow. The little elegance there is among the Italians
is in their historians and poets : the preachers, the theologians,
the ethic writers, the critics, are contemptible in the last degree.
Well ; we will now leave the Istimi nation, and turn home-
ward.
You will find that Bacon, like all men conscious of their
strength, never strains or oversteps. 10 While the Italians are
the same in the church and in the market-place, while the
preacher and policinello are speaking in the same key and
employing almost the same language, while a man's God and his
rotten tooth are treated in the same manner, we find at home
convenience and proportion. Yet the French have taken more
pains than we have done to give their language an edge and
polish ; and, although we have minds in England more massy
[ 10 Pint ed. reads : " overateps, and is frugal in the use of superlatives ;
while the Italians," &c.]
128 Imaginary Conversations.
and more elevated than theirs, they may claim a nearer affinity to
the greater of the ancients.
I have been the less unwilling to make this digression, as we
are now come nigh the place where we must be slow and
circumspect. The subject awes and confounds me. Human
reason is a frail guide in our disquisitions on royalty, which
requires in us some virtue like unto faith. We cannot see into it
clearly with the eyes of the flesh or of philosophy, but must
humble and abase ourselves to be worthy of feeling what it is.
For want whereof, many high and proud spirits have been turned
aside from it by the right hand of God, who would not lead them
into its lights and enjoyments because they came as questioners,
not as seekers ; would have walked when they should have stood,
and would have stood when they should have knelt.
Newton. Sir, I do not know whether you will condescend
to listen with patience to the thoughts excited in me by Bacon's
observations on the character of a king.
Barrow. He shocked me by what he said before on the
fragility of his title : God forbid that common men should talk
like the Lord High Chancellor !
Newton. I was shocked in a contrary direction, and as it
were by a repercussion, at hearing him call a king a mortal God
on earth : n and I do not find anywhere in the Scriptures that
"the living God told him he should die like a man, lest he
should be proud, and flatter himself that God had, with his name,
imparted unto him his nature also."
Surely, sir, God would repent as heartily of having made a
king, as we know he repented of having made a man, if it were
possible his king should have turned out so silly and irrational a
creature. However vain and foolish, he must find about him,
every day, such natural wants and desires as could not appertain
to a God. I made the same remark to my visitor, who said
calmly : " Bacon in the next sentence hath a saving grace ; and
speaketh as wisely and pointedly as ever he did. He says, * Of
all kind of men, God is*the least beholden to them ; for he doth
[ n The quotations in this and the following two paragraphs are from
the Essay " Of a King" (see note 7). The correct reading is, " a mortal
God on earth unto whom the living God hath lent his own name as a
great honor, but withal told him," &c. (Spedding's Bacon, p. 595.)]
Harrow and Ni-wton. 129
for them, and they do ordinarily least for him.' A sentence
vorable to their admission as pastors of the people,
somewhat strong against them as visible heads of the Church.
But, Mr Newton, you will detect at once a deficiency of logic
in the words, That king that holds not religion the best reason
of state is void of all piety and justice, the supporters of a king.'
Supposing a king soundly minded and well educated, a broad
supj>osition, and not easily entering bur preliminaries, may not
he be just, be pious, be religious, without holding his religion as
the best reason of state, or the best guide in it ? Must he be void
of all piety, and all justice, who sometimes thinks other reasons of
state more applicable to his purposes than religion ? Psalm
sack-cloth are admirable things ; but these, the last expedients of
the most contrite religion, will not always keep an enemy from
burning your towns and violating your women, when a few pieces
of cannon, and loftiness of spirit instead of humiliation, will do
He went on, and asserted that the king is not the sole
fountain l - of honor, as he is called in the Essay, and cannot be
more fairly entitled so than the doctors in convocation. He
remarked that the king had not made him master of arts ; which
dignity, he said, requires more merit than the peerage : whereupon
he named several in that order, of whose learning or virtues I never
heard mention, and even of whose tides I thought I never had
until he assured me I must, and expressed his wonder that I had
forgotten them. When he came to the eighth section, " he is
the life of the law," " the law leads a notoriously bad life,"
said he, "and therefore I would exempt his Majesty from the
imputation : and indeed if ' he animateth the dead letter, making it
toward all his subject*,' the parliament and other magistratures
are useless. In the ninth paragraph he makes some accurate obser-
vations, but ends weakly. * He that changeth the fundamental
laws of a kingdom thinketh there is no good title to a crown but
P* See preceding note. The following passages read : " The fountain
of Honor, which should not run a waste-pipe lest the courtiers sell the
waters and then (as Papists say of their Holy WelU) to lose the vertue."
He is the life of the law, not only as he is lex l*jutm himself, but because
he animateth the dead letter, making it active towards all his subjects.'*
(P- 595-)]
IT.
130 Imaginary Conversations.
by conquest.' What ! if he changes them from the despotic to
the liberal ? if, knowing the first possession to have been obtained
by conquest, he convokes the different orders of his people, and
requests their assent to the statutes he presents ? Nothing can be
more pedantic than the whole of the sixteenth section."
Barrow. But there are sound truths in it, and advice too
good to be taken every day.
Newton. On Nobility :
" A great and potent nobility . . . putteth life and spirit into
the people, but press eth their fortune"
" The man must have turned fool," said my friend, " to write
thus. Are life and spirit put into people by the same means as
their fortune is depressed ? "
On Atheism :
" * The fool hath said in his heart there is no God.' It is not
said, ' The fool hath thought in his heart.' "
No, nor is it necessary ; for to say in his heart, is to think
within himself ; to be intimately convinced.
" It appeareth in nothing more, that atheism is rather in the lip
than in the heart of man, than by this, that atheists will ever be
talking of that their opinion as if they fainted in it themselves,
and would be glad to be strengthened by the consent of others :
nay more, you shall have atheists strive to get disciples, as it fareth
with other sects."
So great is my horror at atheists, that I would neither reason
with them nor about them ; but surely they are as liable to conceit
vanity as other men are, and as proud of leading us captive to
r opinions. I could wish the noble author had abstained from
uoting Saint Bernard to prove the priesthood to have been, even
in those days, more immoral than the Jaity ; and I am shocked at
hearing that " learned times" especially with peace and prosperity,
tend toward atheism. Better blind ignorance, better war and
pestilence and famine
Barrow. Gently, gently ! God may forgive his creature for
not knowing him when he meets him ; but less easily for fighting
against him, after talking to him and supping with him ; less
easily for breaking his image, set up by him at every door, and
such is man ; less easily for a series of fratricides, and such is
war.
Harrow and Newton. 131
Newton. I am wrong: and here again let me repeat the
strange paradox of r . rather than h:izard another fault.
In the words about Superstition he agreed that Bacon spoke
:
" It were better to have no opinion of God at all, than such an
opinion as is unworthy of him ; for the one is unbelief, the other
is contumely."
" And here," remarked my visitor, " it is impossible not to
look back with wonder on the errors of some among the wisest
men, following the drift of a distorted education, or resting on
the suggestions of a splenetic disposition. I am no poet, and
therefore am ill qualified to judge the merits of the late Mr
Milton in that capacity ; yet, being of a serious and somewhat of
a religious turn, I was shocked greatly more at his deity than at
his devil. I know not what interest he could have in making
Satan so august a creature, and so ready to share the dangers and
sorrows of the angels he had seduced. I know not, on the other
hand, what could have urged him to make the better ones so
dastardly that, even at the voice of their Creator, not one among
them offered his service to rescue from eternal perdition the last
and weakest of intellectual beings. Even his own Son sat silent,
and undertook the mission but slowly ; although the trouble was
momentary if compared with his everlasting duration, and the
pain small if compared with his anterior and future bliss. Far be
it from me," cried he
Barrow. Did he cry so ? then I doubt whatever he said ;
for those are precisely the words that all your sanctified rogues
begin their lies with. Well, let us hear however what he
asserted.
Newton. " Far be it from me, Mr Newton, to lessen the
merits of our Divine Redeemer. I, on the contrary, am indignant
that poets and theologians should frequently lean toward it."
Barrow. Did he look at all indignant ?
Newton. He looked quite calm.
Barrow. Ha ! I thought so. I doubt your friend's sincerity.
Newton. He is a very sincere man.
Barrow. So much the worse.
Newton. How ?
Barrow. We will discourse another time upon this. I
132 Imaginary Conversations.
meant only, what we may easily elucidate when we meet
again. At present we have three-fourths of the volume to get
through.
Newton. " Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy,
to natural piety, to laws, to reputation : all which may be guides
to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not ; but
superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy
in the minds of men : therefore atheism did never perturb
States."
Again : " We see the times inclined to atheism as the times
of Augustus Caesar were civil times : but superstition hath been
the confusion of many States."
I wish the noble author had kept to himself the preference
he gives atheism over superstition ; for, if it be just, as it
seems to be, it follows that we should be more courteous and
kind toward an atheist than toward a loose Catholic or rigid
sectary.
Barrow. I see no reason why we should not be courteous
and kind toward men of all persuasions, provided we are certain
that neither by their own inclination nor by the instigation of
another they would burn us alive to save our souls, or invade
our conscience for the pleasure of carrying it with them at their
girdles.
Atheism would make men have too little to do with others :
superstition makes them wish to have too much. Atheism would
make some fools : superstition makes many madmen. Atheism
would oftener be in good humor than superstition is out of bad.
I could bring many more and many stronger arguments in support
of Bacon, and the danger would be little in adducing them ; for
the current runs violently in a contrary direction, and will have
covered every thing with slime and sand before atheism can have
her turn against it.
Newton. If atheism did never perturb States, as Bacon asserts,
then nothing is more unjust than to punish it by the arm of the
civil power. It was impolitic in him to remind the world that
it was peaceful and happy for sixty years together, while those
who ruled it were atheists ; when we must acknowledge that it
never has been happy or peaceful for so many days at a time,
under the wisest and most powerful (as they call the present one)
liarruw and Ncxvton. 133
ot the Alost Christian kin^s. For it the observation and the
fact be true, and it it also be true- tluit the nuKst rational aim ot
. haj)pincss, then must it follow that his most rational \vLih,
and, Ix-m^ his most rational, therefore his most innocent and
laudable, 'urn of such tinu^.
Barrow. We will go forward to the Essay On Empire.
Newton. I do not think the writer is correct in saying that
"kings . . . want matter of desire." Wherever there is vacuity
of mind, there must either be flaccidity or craving; and this
vacuity must necessarily be found in the greater part of princes,
from the defects of their education, from the fear of offending
them in its progress by interrogations and admonitions, from the
habit of rendering all things valueless by the facility with which
they are obtained, and transitory by the negligence with which
they are received and holden.
44 Princes many times make themselves desires, and set their
hearts upon toys, sometimes upon a building ; sometimes upon
erecting of an order ; . . . sometimes upon obtaining excellency
in some art or feat of the hand." : .
On which my visitor said, "The latter desire is the] least
common among them. Whenever it does occur, it arises from
idleness, and from the habitude of doing what they ought not.
For, commendable as such exercises are in those who have no
and higher to employ their time in, they are unbecoming
and injurious in kings ; all whose hours, after needful recreation
and the pleasures which all men share alike, should be occupied
in taking heed that those under them perform their dudes."
Borrow. Bacon lived in an age when the wisest men were
chosen, from every rank and condition, for the administration
of affairs. Wonderful is it that one mind on this subject
should have pervaded all the princes in Europe, not except-
ing the Turk ; and that we cannot point out a prime minister of
any nation, at that period, deficient in sagacity or energy.* Yet
There i< a remark in a preceding Essay, which could not be noticed
in the text :
" As for the acquaintance which is to be sought in travel, that which
is most of all profitable is acquaintance with the teeretariet and employed men
of ambassadors ; for so. in travelling in one country, he shall suck the
experience of many."
I'lii-. \\LiTrvvr it may appear to us, was not ludicrous nor sarcastic
134 Imaginary Conversations.
that even the greatest, so much greater than any we have had
since among us, did not come up to the standard he had fixed, is
evident enough.
" The wisdom," says he, " of all these latter times in princes'
affairs, is rather fine deliveries, and shifting of dangers and mischiefs
when they are near, than solid and grounded courses to keep them
aloof: but this is but to try masteries with fortune. And let
men beware how they neglect and suffer matter of trouble to be
prepared ; for no man can forbid the spark, nor tell whence it
may come."
Newton. Sir, it was on this passage that my friend exclaimed,
" The true philosopher is the only true prophet. From the death
of this, the brightest in both capacities, a few years opened the
entire scroll of his awful predictions. Yet age after age will the
same truths be disregarded, even though men of a voice as deep
and a heart less hollow should repeat them. Base men must
raise new families, though the venerable edifice of our Constitu-
tion be taken down for the abutments, and broken fortunes must
be soldered in the flames of war blown up for the occasion."
On this subject he himself is too lax and easy. Among the
reasons for legitimate war he reckons the embracing of trade. He
seems unwilling to speak plainly, yet he means to signify that we
may declare war against a nation for her prosperity ; a prosperity
raised by her industry, by the honesty of her dealings, and by ex-
celling us in the quality of her commodity, in the exactness of
workmanship, in punctuality, and in credit.
Barrow. Hell itself, with all its jealousy and malignity and
falsehood, could not utter a sentence more pernicious to the
interests and improvement of mankind. It is the duty of every
State to provide and watch that not only no other in its vicinity,
but that no other with which it has dealings immediate or re-
moter, do lose an inch of territory or a farthing of wealth by
aggression. Princes fear at their next door rather the example
of good than of bad. Correct your own ill habits, and you need
not dread your rival's. Let him have them, and wear them
every day, if indeed a Christian may propose it, and they will
unfit him for competition with you.
when Bacon wrote it, but might be applied as well to the embassadors
and secretaries of England as of other States.
Barrow and Newton. 135
Newton. I now come to the words On Counsel: " The
doctrine of Italy, and practice of France, in some kings' '
hath introduced cabinet counsels ; a remedy worse than the dis
Cabinet council! It does indeed seem a strange ap]x)sition.
One would sooner have expected cabinet cards and counters,
cabinet miniature pictures > or what not!
Bar ;ac ! it you had conversed, as I have, with
some of those persons who constitute such councils, you would
think the word cabinet quite as applicable to them as to cards or
counters, or miniature pictures, or essences, or pots of pomatum.
Newton. How, then, in the name of wonder, are the great
matters of government carried on ?
Borrow. Great dinners are put upon the table, not by the
entertainer, but by the waiters. There are usually some dexterous
hands accustomed to the business. The same weights are moved
by the same ropes and pulleys. There is no vast address required
in hooking them, and no mighty strength in the hauling.
Newton. I have taken but few notes of some admirable things
in my way to the Essay On Cunning.
Barrow. I may remind you hereafter of some omissions in
other places.
Newton. I find Bacon no despiser of books in men of business,
as people mostly are.
Barrow. Because they know little of them, and fancy they
could manage the whole world by their genius. This is the
commonest of delusions in the shallows of society. Well doth
Bacon say, " There be that can pack the cards and yet cannot
play well ; so there are some that are good in canvasses and
factions that are otherwise weak men."
Fortunate the country that is not the dupe of these intruders and
bustlers, who often rise to the highest posts by their readiness to
lend an arm at every stepping-stone in the dirt, and are found as
convenient in their way as the candle-snuffers in gaming-houses,
who have usually their rouleau at the service of the half-ruined.
Newton. I am sorry to find my Lord High Chancellor
wearing as little the face of an honest man as doth one of these.
Barrow. How so?
Newton. He says, " If a man would cross a business, that
he doubts some other would handsomely and effectually move, let
136 Imaginary Conversations.
him pretend to wish it well, and move it himself in such sort as
may foil it."
What must I think of such counsel ?
Barrow. Bacon, as I observed before, often forgets his
character. Sometimes he speaks the language of truth and
honesty, with more freedom than a better man could do safely ;
again, he teaches a lesson of baseness and roguery to the public,
such as he could intend only for the private ear of some young
statesman, before his rehearsal on the stage of politics. The
words from the prompter's book have crept into the text, and
injure the piece. Bacon might not have liked to cancel the
directions he had given so much to his mind ; instead of which,
he draws himself up and cries austerely, " But these small wares
and petty points of cunning are infinite, and it were a good deed
to make a list of them ; for nothing doth more hurt in a State
than that cunning men pass for wise."
Newton. He has other things about wisdom in another place :
" Of the wisdom for a man's self."
Barrow. I must repeat one noble sentence ; for I fear, if you
begin to read it, I may interrupt you, not being master of my
mind when his comes over it. " Divide with reason between
self-love and society ; and be so true to thyself as thou be not
false to others, especially to thy king and country. It is a poor
centre of a man's actions, himself : it is right earth ; for that only
stands fast upon his own centre ; whereas all things that have
affinity with the heavens move upon the centre of another, which
they benefit."
What an imagination is Bacon's ; what splendid and ardent
language ! In what prose-writer of our country, or of Rome, or
of Greece, is there any thing equal or similar to it !
Newton. On Innovations I find the sentence which I have
heard oftener quoted than any in the volume : "Time is the
greatest innovator.'"
We take the axiom up without examination ; .it is doubtful and
inconsiderate. Does it mean much time or little time ? By a
great innovator we must either signify an innovator in great matters,
or in many at once, or nearly at once. Now time is slow in inno-
vation of any kind ; and all great innovations are violences, as it
were, done to time, crowding into a small space what would in
Barrow and Newton. 137
ordinary cases occupy a larger. Time, without other agents,
wouJd innovate little ; for the portions of time are all the same,
and, being so, their forces must be the same likewise.
Barrow. That satisfies me.
Newton. Truth and falsehood are the two great innovators,
always at work, and sometimes the one uppermost and sometimes
the other.
Barrow. Let us engage ourselves in the service of truth,
where the service is not perilous ; and let us win time to help us,
for without him few cannot stand against many.
Newton. On Friendship there are some things which sit loose
upon the subject. The utility of it seems to be principally in the
view of Bacon. Some positions are questionable:
" Certain it is that whosoever hath his mini! fraught w ith many
thoughts, his wits and understanding do clarify and break up in the
communicating and discoursing with another; he tosseth his
thoughts more easily ; he marshalleth them more orderly ; he seeth
how they look when they are turned into words ; finally, he
waxeth wiser than himself, and that more by an hour's discourse
than by a day's meditation."
This I conceive is applicable to one frame of mind, but not to
another of equal capacity and elasticity. I admire the ingenuity
of the thought, and the wording of it; nevertheless I doubt
whether it suits not better the mind of an acute lawyer than of a
contemplative philosopher. Never h.i\e I met with any one whose
thoughts are marshalled more orderly in conversation than in com-
position ; nor am I acquainted in the University with any gentle-
man of fluent speech, whose ideas are not frequently left dry
upon die bank. Cicero and Demosthenes were laborious in com-
position, and their replies were, I doubt not, as much studied as
their addresses. For it was a part of the orator to foresee the
points of attack to which his oration was exposed, and to prepare
the materials, and the arrangement of them, for defending it.
"It was well said by Themistocles to the king of Persia, that
speech was like cloth of Arras" &c.
Themistocles might as well have spoken of velvet of Genoa
and satin of Lyon; .
On Expense there is much said quite worthy of Bacon's
experience and prudence ; but he lays down one rule which I
think I can demonstrate to be injurious in its tendency :
138 Imaginary Conversations.
" If a man will keep but of even hand, his ordinary expenses
ought to be but to the half of his receipts ; and if he think to
wax rich, but to the third part."
Should all private gentlemen, and others who are not gentle-
men, but whose income is of the same value, spend only the third
part of it, the nation would be more nearly ruined within the
century, than it would be if every one of them mortgaged his
property to half its amount.
A wiser saying comes soon afterward, where he speaks On the
True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates :
" No people overcharged with tribute is fit for empire."
How happy, my dear sir, is our condition, in having been ever
both generous and thrifty, ready at all times to succor the
oppressed, and condescending on this holy occasion to ask the
countenance of none ! How happy, to have marched straight
forward in the line of duty with no policy to thwart, no penury to
enfeeble, and no debt to burthen us ! Although our nobility is
less magnificent than in the reign of the Tudors, I do verily
believe it is as free and independent ; and its hospitality, so con-
ducive (as Bacon says) to martial greatness, is the same as ever,
although the quality of the guests be somewhat changed.
Barrow. Isaac ! are you serious ?
Newton. Dear sir, the subject animates me.
Barrow. What sparkles is hardly more transparent than what
is turbid. Your animation, my friend, perplexed me. I perceive
you are vehemently moved by the glory of our countiy.
Newton. As we derive a great advantage from the nature of
our nobility, so do we derive an equal one from the dispositions
and occupations of the people. How unfortunate would it be for
us, if we had artisans cooped up like tame pigeons in unwholesome
lofts, bending over the loom by tallow-light, and refreshing their
exhausted bodies at daybreak with ardent liquors ! Indeed, in
comparison with this, the use of slaves itself, which Bacon calls
a great advantage, was almost a blessing.
Barrow. Let us not speculate on either of these curses,
which may not be felt as such when they come upon us, for we
shall be stunned and torpified by the greatness of our fall.
What have you next ?
Newton. On Suspicion I find an Italian proverb, which the
Barro\\ and Newton. 139
learned author has misconstrued. " Sospetto licenzia fedc " IK-
tran^ ]>icion givrs .1 passport to Kiith." The meaning
is (my visitor tells me), " Suspicion dismisses fidelity." " Licen-
is, to dismiss a servant. That the person
suspected is no longer bound to fidelity, is the axiom of a nation
in which fidelity is readier to quit a man than suspicion is.
It cost me many hours of inquiry to search into the propriety
of his thoughts Upon Ambition. He says : " It is counted by
some a weakness in princes to have favorites ; but it is of all others
the best remedy :nbitious great ones: for when the way
of pleasuring and displeasuring lieth by the favorite, it is impossible
any other should be overgreat."
I hope, and am willing to believe, that my I <ord Chancellor
Bacon was a true and loyal subject ; yet one would almost be
tempted to think, in reading him, that there must be a curse in
hereditary princes, and that he had set his private mark upon it
when he praises their use of favorites, and supposes them
surrounded by mean persons and ambitious ones, by poisons and
counterpoisons. Sejanus and Tigellinus, our Gavestons and
Mortimers, our Kmpsons and Dudleys, our Wolseys and Buck-
inghams, are like certain fumigations to drive away rats ; which
indeed do drive them out, but also make the house undesirable to
inhabit. He recommends " the continual interchange of favors
and disgraces, whereby they may not know what to expect, and
be, as it were, in a wood."
Barrow. By the effect of this policy, we find the counte-
nances of the statesmen and courtiers who lived in his age, almost
without exception, mean and suspicious. The greatest men look,
in their portraits, as if they were waiting for a box on the ear ;
lowering their heads, raising their shoulders, and half-closing
their eyes, for the reception of it.
Newton. What he says Of Nature in Men seems spoken by
some one who saw through it from above : the same On Custom
and Education. Here he speaks with more verity than consola-
tion, when he says : ' There 13 be not two more fortunate proper-
ties, than to have a little of the fool and not too much of the
honest : therefore extreme lovers of their country were never
["The passage is from the Essay Of Fortune."]
140 Imaginary Conversations.
fortunate; neither can they be; for when a man placeth his
thoughts without himself, he goeth not his own way."
In the Essay On Touth and Age, what can be truer, what can
be more novel or more eloquent, than this sentence :
" Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too
little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the
full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success."
What he says Of Beauty is less considerate.
Barrow. I do not wonder at it : beauty is not stripped in a
Court of Chancery, as fortune is.
Newton. He is inconsequent in his reasoning when he says :
" There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in
the proportion. A man cannot tell whether Apelles or Albert
Durer were the more trifler, whereof the one would make a per-
sonage by geometrical proportions ; the other, by taking the best
parts out of divers faces to make one excellent."
Barrow. Whereof is of which, not of 'whom.
Newton. If " there is no excellent beauty that hath not some
strangeness in the proportion," then Apelles was no trifler in tak-
ing the best parts of divers faces, which would produce some
strangeness in the proportion unless he corrected it.
Barrow. True : Bacon's first remark, however, is perfectly
just and novel. What strikes us in beauty is that which we did
not expect to find from anything we had seen before : a new
arrangement of excellent parts. The same thing may be said of
genius, the other great gift of the Divinity, not always so acceptable
to his creatures ; but which however has this advantage, if you will
allow it to be one, that, whereas beauty has most admirers at its
first appearance, genius has most at its last, and begins to be com-
memorated in the period when the other is forgotten.
Newton. What you said of beauty, as striking us chiefly in
being unexpected from any thing we had seen before, is applicable
no less to ugliness.
Barrow. I am not giving a definition, but recording an 14 ob-
servation, which would be inexact without the remaining words,
" a new arrangement of excellent parts."
Newton. Our author errs more widely than before ; not, as
[ 14 First ed. reads: " recording a fact. Nnvton. One," &c.]
Barrow and Newton. 141
before, in drawing a talse conclusion. " Sucn personages," lie-
continues to remark, " I think would please nobody but the
painter who made them : not but I think a painter may m
better face than e\er was ; but he must do it by a kind of felicity
(as a musician that maketh an excellent air in music) and not by
rule." Nothing of excellent is to be done by felicity.
Barrow. Felicity and excellence rarely meet, and hardly
know one another.
Newton. Certainly no musician ever composed an excellent air
otherwise than by rule : felicity is without it.
Barrow. Beauty does not seem to dazzle but to deaden him.
He reasons that the principal part of beauty lies in decent motion,
and asserts that " no youthy person can be comely but by pardon,
and by considering the youth as to make up the comeliness."
Much of this reflection may have been fashioned and cast by the
age of the observer ; much by the hour of the day : I think it
must have been a rainy morning, when he had eaten unripe fruit
for breakfast!
Newton. Perhaps sour grapes.
On Deformity I have transcribed a long sentence : here he
seems more at home :
" Because there is in man an election touching the frame of
his mind, and a necessity in the frame of his body, the stars of
natural inclination are sometimes obscured by the sun of discipline
and virtue ; therefore it is good to consider of deformity, not as a
si^n which is most dcceivablc, but as a cause which seldom faileth
of the effect."
Nothing can be truer in all its parts, or more magnificent in
the whole.
Barrow. This short Essay is worth many libraries of good
books. Several hundreds of esteemed authors have not in them
the substance and spirit of the sentence you recited.
Newton. On Building he says : " Houses are built to live in,
and not to look on."
Half of this is untrue. Sheds and hovels, the first habitations
(at least the first artificial ones) of men, were built to live in, and
not to look on ; but houses are built for both : otherwise why
give directions for the proportions of porticos, of columns, of inter-
columniations, and of whatever else delights the beholder in
142 Imaginary Conversations.
architecture, and flatters the possessor ? Is the beauty of cities
no honor to the inhabitants, no excitement to the defence ?
External order in visible objects hath relation and intercourse
with internal propriety and decorousness. I doubt not but
the beauty of Athens had much effect on the patriotism, and
some on the genius, of the Athenians. Part of the interest and
animation men receive from Homer lies in their conception of
the magnificence of Troy. Even the little rock of Ithaca rears
up its palaces sustained by pillars ; and pillars are that portion
of an edifice on which the attention rests longest and most com-
placently. For we have no other means of calculating so well the
grandeur of edifices, as by the magnitude of the support they
need ; and it is the only thing about them which we measure in
any way by our own.
" Neither do I reckon it an ill seat only where the air is un-
wholesome, but likewise where the air is unequal : as you shall
see many fine seats set upon a knap of ground, environed with
higher hills round about it, whereby the heat of the sun is pent in,
and the wind gathereth as in troughs," &c.
Now surely this very knap of ground is the very spot to be
chosen for the commodiousness of its situation, its salubrity,
and its beauty. There 'is as little danger of the wind gather-
ing in these troughs as in goat-skins. He must have taken his
idea from some Italian work : the remark is suitable only to a
southern climate.
Barrow. In one so rainy as ours is, it would have been more
judicious, I think, to have warned against building the house upon
clay or marl, which are retentive of moisture, slippery nine months
in the twelve, cracked the other three, of a color offensive to the
sight, of a soil little accommodating to garden-plants, the water
usually unwholesome, and the roads impassable.
Newton. On Negotiating I am sorry to find again our Lord
Chancellor a dissembler and a tutor to lies :
" To deal in person is good when a man's face breedeth regard,
as commonly with inferiors ; or in tender cases, where a man's
eye upon the countenance of him with whom he speaketh may
give him a direction how far to go ; an d generally where a man
will reserve to himself liberty, either to disavow or to expound."
Barrow. Bad enough : but surely he must appear to you any
B.irrow and Newton. 143
thing rather than knave, when he recommends the employment of
froward and absurd men, be the bu.-iiu-^-, \vh.,t it :
i" ton. He recommends them for business 'which doth not
well bear out itself ; and in which, one would think, the wariest
are the most wanted.
Barrow. But, like men who have just tripped, he walks the
firmer and stouter instantly. The remainder of the Essay is
worthy of his perspicac
Newton. In the next, On Followers and Friends, I find the
word espial used by him a second time, for a minister the French
call espton. It appears to me that it should denote, not \hc person
but the action^ as the same termination is used in trial.
Barrow. Right. We want some words in composition as we
want some side-dishes at table, less for necessity than for decora-
tion. On this principle, I should not quarrel with a writer who
had used the verb originate ; on condition however that he used it
as a neuter : none but a sugar-slave would employ it actively. It
may stand opposite to terminate.
Bacon in the preceding sentence used glorious for vain"
glorious ; a Latinism among the many of the age, and among
the few of the author. Our language bears Gallicisms better
than Latinisms; but whoever is resolved to write soberly
must be contented with the number of each that was found
among us in the time of the Reformation. Little is to be re-
jected of what was then in use, and less of any thing new is
henceforward to be admitted. By which prudence and caution
we may in time have writers as elegant as the Italian and the
French, whom already we exceed, as this little volume pro .
vigor and invention.
Newton. He says, further on : It is true that in government
it is good to use men of one rank equally ; for to countenance
some extraordinarily is to make them insolent, and the rest dis-
content, because they may claim a due : but contrariwise in favor,
to use men with much difference and election is good ; for it
maketh the persons preferred more thankful, and the rest more
officious ; because all is of favor."
Here again I am sorry so great an authority should, to use the
words of my visitor, let his conscience run before his judgment,
and his tongue slip in between. " In saying that all is of favor "
144 Imaginary Conversations.
(thus carps my visitor) "he gives a preference to another form of
government over the monarchal ; another form indeed where all
is not of favor ; where something may be attributed to virtue,
something to industry, something to genius ; where something
may accrue to us from the gratitude of our fellow- citizens ; and
not every thing drop and drivel from the frothy pulings of one
swathed up in bandages never changed nor loosened ; of one held
always in the same arms, and with its face turned always in the
same direction."
Barrow. Hold ! hold ! this is as bad as Bacon or Milton :
nay, Cicero and Demosthenes, in the blindness of their hearts,
could scarcely have spoken, to the nations they guided, with more
contemptuous asperity of royal power.
Newton. I venerate it, as coming of God.
Barrow. Hold again ! all things come from him : the hang-
man and the hanged are in the same predicament with the anointer
and the anointed.
Newton. Sir, you remind me of an observation made in my
father's house by the son of a republican, and who indeed was
little better than one himself. My father had upbraided him on
his irreverence to the Lord's anointed : he asked my father why he
allowed his mind to be lime-twigged and ruffled and discomposed
by words ; and whether he would feel the same awe in repeating
the syllables, God's greased, as in repeating the syllables, God V
anointed. If the Esquimaux heard them, said he, they would
think the man no better reared than themselves, and worse dressed,
as dressed by one less in practice.
Barrow. No men are so facetious as those whose minds are
somewhat perverted. Truth enjoys good air and clear light, but
no play-ground. Keep your eyes upon Bacon : we may more
safely look on him than on thrones. How wise is all the
remainder of the Essay !
Newton. He says, On Suitors, and truly, that " Private suits
do putrefy the public good." Soon afterward, " Some embrace
suits which never mean to deal effectually in them." This seems
ordinary and flat; but the words are requisite to a sentence
founded (I fear) on a close observation of human nature, as courts
render it. I noted them as presenting an incorrectness and
indecision of language. Who is proper, not which ; although
Harrow and Newton. 145
'which was used indiscriminately, as we find in the- kenning
of the " Lord's Prayer : " but in that place there could be no
confusion.
row. Among the few crudities and barbarisms that
; 'pressed our language in his learned age, Bacon has
nan were better rue in his suit," Indeed, he uses
-Mere better more than once ; with the simple verb after it, and
without to.
Newton. On Studies he cannot lose his road, having trodden
it so frequently, and having left his mark upon so many objects
all the way. Therefore it is no wonder that his genius points
finger of fire to this subject.
He says, On Faction, that, " Many a man's strength is in
opposition, and when that faileth he groweth out of use." He
must have written from inspiration ; for in his age I find no person
to whom he can have alluded.
Barrow. Perhaps not ; yet the preceding may have furnished
him with examples.
Newton. In the first sentence On Ceremonies and Respects
are the words, "He that is only real had need have exceed-
ing great parts of virtue." This weighty and sorrowful truth
does not prevent me from questioning the expression, had need have.
Barrow. The true words, which all authors write amiss, are,
ha* need of. Ha need sounds like had need, and have sounds like
of, in speaking auickly. Hence the wisest men have written the
words improperly, by writing at once from the ear without an
appeal or reference to grammar.
Newton. On Praise he says ingeniously, but not altogether
truly, "Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and
swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid."
Barrow. This is true only of literary fame ; and the drowned
things are brought to light again, sometimes by the wanner season
and sometimes by the stormier.
He uses suspect for suspicion: we retain aspect, respect, retrospect,
prospect. I know not whether the chancellor's award in favor of
suspect will be repealed or acquiesced in.
Newton. In the next Essay, On Vain-glory, he says : " In
irning the flight will
ostentation." That is hard, if true.
IT,
146 Imaginary Conversations.
Barrow. There must be a good deal of movement and
shuffling before there is any rising from the ground ; and those
who have the longest wings have the most difficulty in the first
mounting. In literature, as at foot-ball, strength and agility are
insufficient of themselves : you must have your side, or you may
run till you are out of breath, and kick till you are out of shoes,
and never win the game. There must be some to keep others
off you, and some to prolong for you the ball's rebound. But
your figures, dear Isaac, will serve as tenterhooks to catch the
fingers of those who would meddle with your letters. Do not
however be ambitious of an early fame : such is apt to shrivel and
to drop under the tree.
Newton. The author continues the same subject in the next
Essay, though under a different title. Of Honor and Reputation
he says, " Discreet followers and servants help much to reputa-
tion." Then he who has no servant, or an indiscreet one, must
be content to be helped to little of it.
Barrow. 1 ^ Seeing that reputation is casual, that the wise
may long want it, that the unwise may soon acquire it, that a
servant may further it, that a spiteful man may obstruct it, that a
passionate man may maim it, and that whole gangs are ready to
waylay it as it mounts the hill, I would not wish greatly to
carry it about me, but rather to place it in some safe spot,
where few could find, and not many will look after it. But
those who discover it will try in their hands its weight and quality,
and take especial care lest they injure it, saying, " It is his and
his only ; leave it to him, and wish him increase in it."
Newton. Where Bacon is occupied, " in the true marshalling
of sovran honor," he gives the third place to liberatores or sal-
vatores. He wishes to speak in Latin ; one of these words
belongs not to the language.
Barrow. His Latin is always void of elegance and grace ;
but he had the generosity to write in it, that he might be useful
the more extensively. We English are far below the Italians,
French, Germans, and Dutch in our Latinity ; yet we have
Latin volumes written by our countrymen, each of which, in its
matter, is fairly worth half theirs. They, like certain fine gentle-
men, seem to found their ideas of elegance on slenderness, and in
[ 15 Barrmv and the following Newton added in 2nd ed ]
Barrow and Newton. 147
twenty or thirty of them we hardly find a thought or remark at
all worthy of preservation. I remember but one sentence ; which
however, it" Cicero had written it, would be recorded among the
best he e\n wrote. " Valuit nimirum maledicentia, gratd,
cunctis, etiam iis qui neque sibi maledici neque maledicere ipsi
alii* velint."
Newton. 16 Permit me to inquire, sir, by whom was this
strong and shrewd and truly Sallusti.m sentence written ?
Burrow. By Vavassor, a Jesuit.
It may he remarked, and perhaps you have done it, that the
tide itself of this Essay, The True Marshalling of sovran Honor,
is incorrect. By marshalling he means tht giving of rates or
degrees ; now what is sovran has no rates or degrees : he should
have said " of titles assumed by sovran princes."
Newton. In the first sentence On Judicature, he uses the
singular and plural in designating the same body : either is ad-
missible, but not both :
Use will it be like the authority claimed by the Church of
Rome, which, under pretext of exposition of Scripture, doth not
stick to add and alter, and to pronounce that which they do not
find, and, by show of antiquity, to introduce novelty."
What gravity and wisdom is there in the remark that, " One
foul sentence doth more hurt than many foul examples : for
these do but corrupt the stream, the other corrupteth the
fountain.*'
The worst, and almost the only bad, sentence in the volume
is the childish antithesis, " There be, saith the Scripture, that
turn judgment into wormwood, and surely there be also that
turn it into vinegar : for injustice maketh it bitter, and delays
make it sour."
On the yieissitudts of Things he observes that " the true religion
is built upon the rock, the rest are tossed upon the waves of
time." My 17 visitor said hereupon : " I doubt whether this
magnificent figure hath truth for its basis. If by true religion is
meant the religion of our Saviour, as practised by his apostles,
[> From " Nru-te* " to " Jesuit " (3 lines) added in 2nd ed. The words
below, " The true marshalling of sovran honor," are not the title of an
Essay, but occur in tht ti-xt of the Essay On, Honors and Dignities."]
[ 17 From My " to * hereupon " added in and ed.]
148 Imaginary Conversations.
they outlived it. They complain that it never took firm posses-
sion even of their own auditors. Saint Peter himself was re-
proved by his master for using his sword too vigorously, after all
he had said against any use of it whatever ; yet, so little good did
the reproof, he fell immediately to betraying the very man he had
thus defended. But if by true religion we mean the Church of
Rome, we come nearer the fact ; for that religion, with patchings
and repairings, with materials purloined from others, with piles
driven under the foundation, and buttresses without that darken
every thing within, surmounted by pinnacles raised above the upper
story, hath lasted long, and will remain while men are persuaded
that wax and stockfish can atone for their vices. The obstacle
to our acceptance of the meaning is that it hath been convicted
of many impostures in its claims and miracles, that it continues to
insist on them, and that it uses violence (which is forbidden by
Christ) against those who stumble or doubt."
Barrow. Deafness is not to be healed by breaking the head,
nor blindness by pulling the eyes out : it is time the doctors
should try new experiments ; if they will not, it is time that the
patients should try new doctors.
Newton. A bad religion may be kept afoot by the same
means as other kinds of bad government ; by corruption and
terror, by spies and torturers. No doubt it will please God to
see all things set to rights ; but we must acknowledge that the
best religion, like the best men, has fared the worst.
Bacon says he " reckons martyrdoms among miracles, because
they seem to exceed the strength of human nature." If they did
seem to exceed the strength of human nature, this is no suffici-
ent reason why they should be ranked with miracles ; for
martyrdoms have appertained to many religions, if we may call
voluntary death to prove a misbeliever's sincerity a martyrdom,
while we know that miracles belong exclusively to the Christian :
and even in this faith there are degrees of latitude and longitude
which they were never known to pass, although, humanly speak-
ing, they were much wanted. The Lithuanians, and other north-
eastern nations, were long before they were reclaimed from
paganism, for want of miracles. God's good time had not
come : and he fell upon different expedients for their conversion.
On the Vicissitudes of Things we find mention of Plato's great
Barroxv and Newton. 149
I think von omv told me, Pl.ito took more from others
than he knew \vhat to iio with.
impjlfying, lu- involve.-, .uid confounds.
Ne<wt>jn. I hope here tt r to study the heavenly bodies with
r accuracy and on other principles than philosophers have
done hitherto. The reasons of Bacon why ' the northern tract
of the world ... is the more martial region " are unworthy of
. ie assigns the stars of the hemisphere ;
then, the greatness of the continent, " whereas the south part is
almost all sea ;" then, the cold of the northern parts, "which is
that which, without aid of discipline, doth make the bodies
hardest and the courage warmest." The stars can have no effect
whatever on the courage or virtues of men, unless we call the sun
one of them, as the poets do. The heat of the sun may produce
effeminacy and sloth in many constitutions, and contrary effects in
many ; but I suspect that dryness and moisture are more efficient
on the human body than heat and cold. Some races, as in do;;s
and horses and cattle of every kind, are better than others, and do
not lose their qualities for many ages, nor, unless others cross
them, without the confluence of many causes. There may be as
much courage in hot climates as in cold. The inhabitants of
Madagascar and Malacca are braver than the Laplanders, and
perhaps not less brave than the Londoners. The fact is this :
people in warm climates are in the full enjoyment of all the
pleasures that animal life affords, and are disinclined to toil after
that which no toil could produce or increase ; while the native of
the north is condemned by climate to a life of labor, which often-
times can procure for him but a scanty portion of what his
vehement and exasperated appetite demands. Therefore he
cuts it short with his sword, and reaps the field sown by the
southern.
Bacon seems to me just in his opinion, if not that ordnance, at
least that inHammable powder and annoyance by its means, perhaps
in rockets, was known among the ancients. He instances the
Oxydraces in India. The remark is, I imagine, equally ap-
plicable to the priests of Delphi, who repelled the Gauls with it
from the temple of Apollo. This 18 is the more remarkable, as
the Persians too encountered the same resistance, ami experienced
f J8 From *Thi " to " exploded " (5 lines) added in 2nd id.]
150 Imaginary Conversations.
the double force of thunderbolts and earthquake. Whence we
may surmise that not only missiles, propelled by the combustion
of powder, were aimed against them, but likewise that mines ex-
ploded. And perhaps other priests, the only people in most
places who formerly had leisure for experiments, were equally
acquainted with it, and used it for their own defence only, and
only in cases of extremity. Etruscan 19 soothsayers were appointed
to blast the army of Alaric with lightning, and the Pope acceded
to the proposal ; but his Holiness, on reflection, was of opinion
that aurum fulminans was more effectual.
I wish the Essay On Fame had been completed : and even
then its chief effect on me, perhaps, would be to excite another
wish ; as gratification usually does. It would have made me
sigh for the recovery of Cicero On Glory, that the two greatest
of philosophers might be compared on the same ground.
Barrow. Let us look up at Fame without a desire or a
repining ; and let us pardon all her falsehoods and delays, in
remembrance that the best verse in Homer, and the best in
Virgil, are on her. Virgil's is indeed but a feather from the
wing of Homer.
Newton. You show a very forgiving mind, sir, and I hope
she will be grateful to you. I do not know what these lines are
worth, as they give me no equations.
Barrow. Nothing should be considered quite independently
of every thing else. We owe reverence to all great writers ; but
our reverence to one would be injustice to another, unless we
collated and compared their merits.
Newton. Some are so dissimilar to others, that I know not
how it can be done.
Barrow. Liquids and solids are dissimilar, yet may be
weighed in the same scales. All things are composed of
portions ; and all things bear proportions relatively, mind to
mind, matter to matter. Archimedes and Homer are suscep-
tible of comparison ; but the process would be long and tedious,
the principles must be sought from afar, nor is t! e man perhaps
at the next door who must be called for the operation. Bacon
and Milton, Bacon and Shakspeare, may be compared with
little difficulty, wide asunder as they appear to stand. How-
[ 19 From " Etruscan " to " effectual " (4 lines) added in 2nd ed.]
Barrow and Newton. 151
e\er, since the cogitative and imaginative parts ot" mind are
exercised by both in broad daylight and in open spaces, the
degrees in which they are exercised are within our calculation.
Until we bring together the weightiest works of genius from
the remotest distances, we shall display no admirable power
of criticism. None such hath been hitherto exhibited in the
world, which stands in relation to criticism as it stood in rela-
tion to metaphysics, until the time or" Aristoteles. He left them
imperfect ; and the-, in little better ever since. The
good sense of Cicero led him to clearer studies and whole-
somer exercise ; and where he could not pluck fruit he would
not pluck brambles. In PI ito \ve find only arbors and grottos,
with moss and shell-work all misplaced. Aristoteles hath
built a solider edifice, but hath built it across our road : we
must throw it down again, and use what we can of the materials
elsewhere.
Newton. Bacon, seen only in his Essays, would have appeared
to me (fresh as I come from the study of the ancients, and
captivated as I confess I am by the graces of their language)
the wisest and most instructive of writers.
Barrow. In calling him the wisest of writers, you must
except those who wrote from inspiration.
Newton. Ha ! that is quite another thing.
Barrow. Henceforward I would advise you to follow the
bent of your genius, in examining those matters principally which
are susceptible of demonstration. Every young mm should have
some proposed end for his studies : let yours be philosophy ;
and principally those parts of it in which die ancients have
done little and the moderns less. And never be dejected,
my dear Isaac, though it should enable you to throw but a
scarcity of light on the Revelation, The Rape of Helen, and
The Golden Fleece.
Newton. I hope by my labors I may find a clew to them in
the process of time. But perhaps my conjectures may turn out
wrong, as those on the book before me have.
Barrow. How ?
Newton. I should always have imagined, if you had not
taught me the contrary, that there is more of genius and philo-
sophy in Bacon's Essays than in all Cicero's works, however
1^2 Imaginary Conversations.
less there be of the scholastic and oratorical. Perhaps I, by
being no estimator of style
Barrow. Peace, peace ! my modest Newton ! Perhaps I,
by being too much an estimator of it, have overvalued the
clearest head and the purest tongue of antiquity. My 20 Lord
Justice Coke, and probably the more learned Selden, would
have ridiculed or reproved us, had we dared entertain in their
presence a doubt of Cicero's superiority over Bacon. No very
great man ever reached the standard of his greatness in the crowd
of his contemporaries. This hath always been reserved for the
secondary. There must either be something of the vulgar, some-
thing in which the commonalty can recognise their own features,
or there must be a laxity, a jealousy, an excitement stimulating
a false appetite. Your brief review of the Essays hath brought
back to my recollection so much of shrewd judgment, so much of
rich imagery, such a profusion of truths so plain, as (without his
manner of exhibiting them) to appear almost unimportant that, in
the various high qualities of the human mind, I must acknowledge
not only Cicero, but every prose-writer among the Greeks, to
stand far below him. Cicero is least valued for his highest merits,
his fulness and his perspicuity. Bad judges (and how few are
not so ! ) desire in composition the concise and the obscure, not
knowing that the one most frequently arises from paucity of
materials, and the other from inability to manage and dispose
them. Have you never observed that, among the ignorant in
painting, dark pictures are usually called the finest in the collec-
tion, and grey-bearded heads, fit only for the garret, are preferred
to the radiance of light and beauty ? Have you yourself never
thought, before you could well measure and calculate, that books
and furniture thrown about a room appeared to be in much greater
quantities than when they were arranged ? At every step we
take to gain the approbation of the wise, we lose something in the
estimation of the vulgar. Look within : cannot we afford it ?
The minds of few can take in the whole of a great author, and
fewer can draw him close enough to another for just commen-
suration. A fine passage may strike us less forcibly than one
beneath it in beauty, from less sensibility in us at the moment ;
whence less enthusiasm, less quickness of perception, less capacity,
[ 20 From " My " to " him " (16 lines) added in 2nd ed.]
Harrow and Ni*\\ton. 153
less hoKi. You have omitted to remark some of t'nc Doblcft things
in BaCOOy often 1 believe because there is QOpOWCrof jadgHKM to
be shown in the >n of admiration, and perhaps too some-
from the rejx-lition and intensity of delight.
Nrwton. Sir, 1 forebore to lift up my hands as a mark of ad-
ordered me to demonstrate, if I could, the defects
of this wonderful man, unnoticed hitherto.
Barrow. You have done it to my satisfaction. Cicero dis-
dained not in the latter days of his life, when he was highest in
tion and dignity, to |x?rform a similar office in regard to
Epicurus : and I wish he had exhibited the same accuracy and
attention, the same moderation and respect, The objections of
your friend and visitor are not altogether frivolous : take
however lest he, by his div ptations, move you from vour faith.
If you hold the faith, the faith will support you ; as, if you make
your bed warm by lying in it, your bed will keep you so : never
mind what the ticking or the wadding may be made of. There
are few things against which I see need to warn you, and not
many on which you want advice. You are not profuse in your
expenditure ; yet as you, like most of the studious, are inattentive
to money-affairs, let me guard you against evils following on this
negligence, worse than the negligence itself. Whenever a young
man is remarked for it, a higher price is fixed on what he pur-
chases ; and dishonest men of every description push themselves
into his service, and often acquire his confidence, not only to the
injury of his fortune, but likewise of his credit and respectability.
Let a gentleman be known to have been cheated of twenty pounds,
and it costs him forty a-year for the remainder of his life. There-
fore, if you detect the cheat, the wisest thing is to conceal it ;
both for fear of the rogues about your sideboard, and of those
more dexterous ones round the green cloth, under the judge, in
your county assize-room.
You will become an author ere long ; and every author must
attend to the means of conveying his information. The plainness
of your style is suitable to your manners and your studies. Avoid,
which many grave men have not done, words taken from sacred
subjects and from elevated poetry : these we have seen vilely pro-
stituted. Avoid too the society of the barbarians who misemploy
them : they are vain, irreverent, and irreclaimable to right feelings.
154 Imaginary Conversations.
The dialogues of Galileo, which you have been studying, are
written with much propriety and precision. I do not urge you
to write in dialogue, although the best writers of every age have
done it ; the best parts of Homer and Milton are speeches and
replies ; the best parts of every great historian are the same : the
wisest men of Athens and of Rome converse together in this
manner, as they are shown to us by Xenophon, by Plato, and by
Cicero. Whether you adopt such a form of composition, which,
if your opinions are new, will protect you in part from the hostility
all novelty (unless it is vicious) excites, or whether you choose
to go along the unbroken surface of the didactic, never look
abroad for any kind of ornament. Apollo, either as the god of
day or the slayer of Python, had nothing about him to obscure
his clearness or to impede his strength. To one of your mild
manners, it would be superfluous to recommend equanimity in com-
petition, and calmness in controversy. How easy is it for the
plainest things to be misinterpreted by men not unwise, which a
calm disquisition sets right ! and how fortunate and opportune is
it to find in ourselves that calmness which almost the wisest have
wanted, on urgent and grave occasions ! If others for a time
are preferred to you, let your heart lie sacredly still ; and you will
hear from it the true and plain oracle, that not for ever will the
magistracy of letters allow the rancid transparencies of coarse
colormen to stand before your propylaea. It is time that Philosophy
should have her share in our literature ; that the combinations and
appearances of matter be scientifically considered and luminously
displayed. Frigid conceits on theological questions, heaps of snow
on barren crags, compoyc at present the greater part of our domain :
volcanoes of politics burst forth from time to time, and vary,
without enlivening, the scene.
Do not fear to be less rich in the productions of your mind at
one season than at another. Marshes are always marshes, and
pools are pools ; but the sea, in those places where we admire it
most, is sometimes sea and sometimes dry land ; sometimes it brings
ships into port, and sometimes it leaves them where they can be
refitted and equipped. The capacious mind neither rises nor sinks,
neither labors nor rests, in vain. Even in those intervals when it
loses the consciousness of its powers, when it swims as it were in
vacuity, and feels not what is external nor internal, it acquires or
Barrow and Newton. 155
recovers strength, as the body does by sleep. Never try to say
things admirably ;-' try only to say them plainly ; for your business
is \vith the considerate philosopher, and not with the polemical
assembly. If a thing can be demonstrated two ways, demonstrate
it in both : one will please this man best, the other that ; and
pleasure, if obvious and unsought, is never to be neglected by those
appointed from above to lead us into knowledge. Many will
readily mount stiles and gates to walk along a footpath in a field,
whom the very sight of a bare public road would disincline and
weary ; and yet the place whereto they travel lies at the end ot
each. Your studies are of a nature unsusceptible of much decora-
tion : otherwise it would be my duty and my care to warn you
against it, not merely as idle and unnecessary, but as obstructing
your intent. The fond of wine are little fond of the sweet or of
the new : the fond of learning are no fonder of its must than of
its dregs. Something of the severe hath always been appertaining
to order and to grace ; and the beauty that is not too liberal is
sought the most ardently and loved the longest. The Graces
have their zones, and Venus her cestus. In the writings of the
philosopher are the frivolities of ornament the most ill-placed ; in
you would they be particularly, who, promising to lay open before
us an infinity of worlds, should turn aside to display the petals of a
double pink.
It is dangerous to have any intercourse or dealing with small
authors. They are as troublesome to handle, as easy to discom-
pose, as difficult to pacify, and leave as unpleasant marks on you,
as small children. Cultivate on the other hand the society and
friendship of the higher ; first, that you may learn to reverence
them, which of itself is both a pleasure and a virtue ; and then, that
on proper occasions you may defend them against the malevolent,
which is a duty. And this duty cannot be well and satisfactorily per-
formed with an imperfect knowledge, or with an inadequate esteem.
Habits of respect to our superiors are among the best we can attain,
if we only remove from our bosom the importunate desire of un-
worthy advantages from them. They belong to the higher depart-
ment of justice, and will procure for us in due time our portion of
it. Beside, O Isaac ! in this affair our humanity is deeply con-
r For " admirably " ist ed. reads " well " ; for " plainly " itt ed. reads
clearly."]
156 Imaginary Conversations.
cerned. Think how gratifying, how consolatory, how all-sufficient,
are the regards and attentions of such wise and worthy men as
you to those whom inferior but more powerful ones, some in
scarlet, some in purple, some (it may be) in ermine, vilify or
neglect ! Many are there to whom we are now indifferent, or
nearly, whom, if we had approached them as we ought to have
done, we should have cherished, loved, and honored. Let not
this reflection, which on rude and unequal minds may fall without
form and features and pass away like the idlest cloud-shadow, be
lost on you. Old literary men, beside age and experience, have
another quality in common with Nestor : they, in the literature
of the country, are praisers of times past, partly from moroseness,
and partly from custom and conviction. The illiterate, on the
contrary, raise higher than the steeples, and dress up in the
gaudiest trim, a maypole of their own, and dance round it while
any rag flutters. So tenacious are Englishmen of their opinions,
that they would rather lose their franchises and almost their lives.
And this tenacity hath not its hold upon letters only, but likewise
upon whatever is public. I have witnessed it in men guilty of
ingratitude, of fraud, of peculation, of prevarication, of treachery
to friends, of insolence to patrons, of misleading of colleagues, of
abandonment of party, of renunciation of principles, of arrogance
to honester men and wiser, of humiliation to strumpets for the
obtainment of place and profit, of every villany in short which
unfits not only for the honors of public, but rejects from the
confidence of private, life. And there have been people so
maddened by faction, that they would almost have erected a
monument to such persons, hoping to spite and irritate their
adversaries, and unconscious or heedless that the inscription must
be their own condemnation. Those who have acted in this
manner will repent of it ; but they will hate you for ever if you
foretell them of their repentance. It is not the fact nor the
consequence, it is the motive, that turns and pinches them ; and
they would think it straightforward and natural to cry out against
you, and a violence and a malady to cry out against themselves.
The praises they have given they will maintain, and more firmly
than if they were due ; as perjurers stick to perjury more hotly
than the veracious to truth. Supposing there should be any day
of your life unoccupied by study, there will not be one without
Barrow and Newton. 157
an argument why pa ry or political, should be avoided.
You are too great to be gregarious ; and were you to attempt it,
the gregarious in a mass would turn their heads against you.
The greater who enter into public lite are disposed at last to quit
it : retirement 'with dignity is their device ; tin- meaning of which
is, retirement with as much of the public property as can be
amassed and carried auay. This race of great people is very
numerous. I want before I die to see one or two ready to
believe, and to act on the belief, that there is as much dignity in
retiring sou . with little as with loads, with quiet minds
and consciences as with ulcerated or discomposed. 1 have
y seen some hundred sectaries of that pugnacious pope, who,
eminded that Christ commanded Peter to put up his sword,
replied, Yes, when he had cut the ear off.'*
To be in right harmony, the soul not only must be never out
of time, but must never lose sight of the theme its Creator's hand
hath noted.
Why are you peeping over your forefinger into those pages
near the beginning of the volume ?
Newton. I have omitted the notice of several Essays.
Borrow. There are many that require no observation for
peculiarities ; though perhaps there is not one that any other man
could have wri-
Newton. I had something more, sir, to say or rather I
had something more, sir, to ask about Friendship.
Barrow. All men, but the studious above all, must beware
in the formation of it. Advice or caution on this subject comes
immaturely and ungracefully from the young, exhibiting a proof
either of temerity or suspicion ; but when you hear it from a man
of my age, who has been singularly fortunate in the past, and
foresees the same felicity in those springing up before him, you
may accept it as the direction of a calm observer, telling you all he
has remarked on the greater part of a road which he has nearly
gone through, and which you have but just entered. Never take
into your confidence, or admit often into your company, any man
who does not know, on some important subject, more than you
do. Be his rank, be his virtues, what they may, he will be
a hindrance to your pursuits, and an obstruction to your greatness.
If indeed the greatness were such as courts can bestow, and such
158 Imaginary Conversations.
as can be laid on the shoulders of a groom and make him look
like the rest of the company, my advice would be misplaced ;
but since all transcendent, all true and genuine greatness must be
of a man's own raising, and only on the foundation that the hand
of God has laid, do not let any touch it : keep them off civilly,
but keep them off. Affect no stoicism ; display no indifference":
let their coin pass current ; but do not you exchange for it the
purer ore you carry, nor think the milling pays for the alloy.
Greatly favored and blessed by Providence will you be, if you
should in your lifetime be known for what you are : the contrary,
if you should be transformed.
Newton. Better and more decorous would it be perhaps, if I
filled up your pause with my reflections : but you always have
permitted me to ask you questions ; and now, unless my gratitude
misleads me, you invite it.
Barrow. Ask me any thing : I will answer it, if I can ; and
I will pardon you, as I have often done, if you puzzle me.
Newton. Is it not a difficult and a painful thing to repulse, or
to receive ungraciously, the advances of friendship ?
Barrow. It withers the heart, if indeed his heart were ever
sound who doth it. Love, serve, run into danger, venture life,
for him who would cherish you : give him every thing but your
time and your glory. Morning recreations, convivial meals,
evening walks, thoughts, questions, wishes, wants, partake with
him. Yes, Isaac ! there are men born for friendship ; men to
whom the cultivation of it is nature, is necessity, as the making of
honey is to bees. Do not let them suffer for the sweets they
would gather ; but do not think to live upon those sweets. Our
corrupted state requires robuster food, or must grow more and
more unsound.
Newton. I would yet say something ; a few words ; on this
subject or one next to it.
Barrow. On Expense then : that is the next. I have given
you some warning about it, and hardly know what else to say.
Cannot you find the place ?
Newton. I had it under my hand. If that is, provided
your time, sir !
Barrow. Speak it out, man ! Are you in a ship of Marcellus
under the mirror of Archimedes, that you fume and redden so ?
Walton, (lot ton, and OKhvays. 159
Cry to him that you are his scholar, ami wont out only to
parley.
Newton. Sir ! in a word ought a studious man to think of
matrimony ?
Barrow. Painters, poets, mathematicians, nc\er ought: other
studious mrn, after u-nVcting for twenty years upon it, may. Had
I a son of your age, I would not leave him in a grazing country.
Many a man hath been safe among cornfields, who falls a victim
on the grass under an elm. There are lightnings very fatal in such
places.
Ntwton. Supposing me no mathematician, I must reflect then
for twenty years !
Barrow. Begin to reflect on it after the twenty ; and continue
to reflect on it all the remainder : I mean at intervals, and quite
leisurely. It will save to you many prayers, and may suggest to
you one thanksgiving.
XVI. WALTON, COTTON, AND OLDWAYS.
Walion. God be with thee and preserve thee, old Ashbournc !
Thou art verily the pleasantest place upon his earth ; I mean
from May-day till Michaelmas. Son Cotton, let us tarry a little
here upon the bridge. Did you ever see greener meadows than
these on either hand ? And what says that fine lofty spire upon
the left, a trowling-line's cast from us? It says methinks,
" Blessed be the Lord for this bounty : come hither and repeat
it beside me." How my jade winces ! I wish the strawberry-
spotted trout, and ash-colored grayling under us, had the bree
that phgues thee so, my merry wench ! Look, my son, at the
great venerable house opposite. You know these parts as well as
P The character of Mr Oldways in this Conversation is imaginary, or
rather his association with Walton and Cotton is. See note on p. 165.
The poems attributed to Donne are, of course, from Lander's own pen,
and Margaret Hayes is equally a creature of fancy. The facts of Domx '-
life are taken from Walton's lift-. Tin- n mU-r of Charles Cotton's poems
may find it hard to believe that he was as ingenuous a youth as Landor
paints him. (Imag. Convert., *., 1819. Works, i., 1846. Works, iv.
160 Imaginary Conversations.
I do, or better ; are you acquainted with the worthy who lives
over there ?
Cotton. I cannot say I am. 2
Walton. You shall be then. He has resided here forty-five
years, and knew intimately our good Doctor Donne, and (I hear)
hath some of his verses, written when he was a stripling or little
better, the which we come after.
Cotton. That, I imagine, must be he! the man in black,
walking above the house.
Walton. Truly said on both counts. Willy Oldways,
sure enough ; and he doth walk above his house-top. The
gardens here, you observe, overhang the streets.
Cotton. Ashbourne, to my mind, is the prettiest town in
England.
Walton. And there is nowhere between Trent and Tweed
a sweeter stream for the trout, I do assure you, than the one our
horses are bestriding. Those, in my opinion, were very wise men
who consecrated certain streams to the Muses : I know not
whether I can say so much of those who added the mountains.
Whenever I am beside a river or rivulet on a sunny day, and think
a little while, and let images warm into life about me, and joyous
sounds increase and multiply in their innocence, the sun looks
brighter and feels warmer, and I am readier to live, and less
unready to die.
Son Cotton ! these light idle brooks,
Peeping into so many nooks,
Yet have not for their idlest wave
The leisure you may think they have :
No, not the little ones that run
And hide behind the first big stone,
When they have squirted in the eye
Of their next neighbor passing by ;
Nor yonder curly sideling fellow
Of tones than Pan's own flute more mellow,
Who learns his tune and tries it over
As girl who fain would please her lover
Something has each of them to say ;
He says it and then runs away,
And says it in another place,
Continuing the unthrifty chase
[First ed. reads : " am tho' he visits my relatives when he rides so far."]
\Viilton, Cotton, and Oldways. 161
We have as many tales to tell,
And look as gay and run as well,
But leave another to pursue
What we had promised we would do ;
Till in the order God has fated,
One after one precipitated,
Whither we tvovU on, or would not on,
Just like these idle waves, son Cotton !
And now I have taken you by surprise, I will have (finished or
unfinished) the verses you snatched out of my hand, and promised
me another time, when you awoke this morning.
Cotton. If 3 you must have them, here they are.
Walton (reads}.
Rocks under Okeover park-paling
Better than Ashbourne suit the grayling.
Reckless of people springs the trout.
Tossing his vacant head about,
And his distinction-stars, as one
Not to be touched but looked upon,
And smirks askance, as who should say
" I'd lay now (it I e'er JiJ lay)
The brightest fly that shines above,
You know not what Tm thinking of;
What you are, I can plainly tell
And so, my gentles, fare ye well ! "
Heigh ! heigh ! what have we here? a 4 double hook with a
bait upon each side. Faith ! son Cotton, if my friend Oldways
had seen these, not the verses I have been reading, but these
others I have run over in silence, he would have reproved me,
in his mild amicable way, for my friendship with one who, at
two-and-twenty, could cither know so much or invent so much
about a girl. He remarked to me, the last time we met, that our
climate was more backward and our youth more forward than
anciently ; and, taking out a newspaper from under the cushion of
his arm-chair, showed me a paragraph, with a cross in red ink, and
seven or eight marks of admiration, some on one side, some on
the other, in which there was mention made of a female servant,
[* From " If" to "(read)" (t lines) added in ind ed.]
[ 4 From " a " to '< side " added in ind ed. One line below, from " not "
to " silence " (i lines) added in 2nd ed.J
1 62 Imaginary Conversations.
who, hardly seventeen years old, charged her master's son, who was
barely two older
Cotton. Nonsense ! nonsense ! impossible !
Walton. Why, he himself seemed to express a doubt ; for
beneath was written, " Qu., if perjured which God forbid !
May all turn out to his glory ! "
Cotton. But really I do not recollect that paper of mine, if
mine it be, which 5 appears to have stuck against the Okeover
paling lines.
Walton. Look ! they are both on the same scrap. Truly,
son, there are girls here and there who might have said as much
as thou, their proctor, hast indicted for them : they have such
froward tongues in their heads, some of them. A breath keeps
them in motion, like a Jew's harp, God knows how long. If
you do not or will not recollect the verses on this endorsement, I
will read them again, and aloud.
Cotton. Pray do not balk your fancy.
Walton (reads).
Where 6 's my apron ? I will gather
Daffodils and kingcups, rather
Than have fifty silly souls,
False as cats and dull as owls,
Looking up into my eyes
And half-blinding me with sighs.
Cats, forsooth ! Owls, and cry you mercy ! Have 7 they no
better words than those for civil people ? Did any young woman
really use the expressions, bating the metre, or can you have
contrived them out of pure likelihood ?
Cotton. I will not gratify your curiosity at present.
[ 5 From "which" to "lines" and "look" to "scrap" added in 2nd
ed. Two lines below, from " as thou " to " them " added in 2nd ed. One
line below, from " God " to (reads) " (5 lines) added in 2nd ed.]
[ 6 First ed. reads :
" In my bosom I would rather
Daffodils and kingcups gather.
Than have fifty sighing souls
False as cats and dull as owls."
Last couplet added in 2nd ed.]
[ 7 From " Have " to " then " (5 lines) added in 2nd ed.]
Walton, Cotton, and Oldways. 163
Walton. Anon, then.
I I ^tretch myself along,
Trll a tali- or 'ing a song,
By my couin Svu- or Bet
And. for dinner here I get
Strawl)t-rrif.. curds, or what 1 please.
With my bread upon my knees;
And, when I have had enough,
Shake, and off to UM-ma*i-buff*
Spoken in the character of a maiden, it seems, who little
knows, in her innocence, that blind-man's-buff is a perilous
game.
[* Pint ed. adds the following four lines:
Which I cannot do if they
Ever come across my way,
They so puzzle me ! . . that tongue
Always makes one cry out wrong I "
A note is appended to these verses in the ist ed. whose application it
is somewhat hard to discover.
I cannot but think that I am indebted to a beautiful little poem of
Redi, for the train of these ideas, though without a consciousness of it
while 1 wa< writing. His sonnet* are among the worst in the language :
there is but one exception. 1 am likely to be a bad translator; and
moreover I must inform the reader that I am designedly an unfaithful one
in the second line, of which the literal and entire version is who pas
thro* Pity-street." I have taken the elegiac measure as more becoming
the subject.
Ye gentle ftouls, ye tenderer of the fair
Who, passing 6y, to Pity's voice incliiu-.
O, stay a while and hear me ! then declare
If there was ever grief that equal'd mine.
" There was a woman to whose hallowed breast
Faith had retired, and Honour fixed his throne
Pride, tho' upheld by Virtue, she repressed,
Ye gentle souls, that woman was my own.
" Her form was filTd with beauty, from her face ;
Grace was in all she did, in all she said,
Grace in her pleasures in her sorrows grace
Ye gentle souls, that gentle soul is fled ! "
From * spoken " to " church " (4 lines) [added in ind ed. First ed
reads : " In the church, to our right, lie the Cockaynes. Whole," See.]
164 Imaginary Conversations.
You are looking, I perceive, from off the streamlet toward the
church. In its chancel lie the first and last of the Cockaynes.
Whole races of men have been exterminated by war and pestil-
ence ; families and names have slipped down and lost themselves
by slow and imperceptible decay : but I doubt whether any breed
of fish, with heron and otter and angler in pursuit of it, hath
been [extinguished since the Heptarchy. They might humble
our pride a whit, methinks, though they hold their tongues.
The people here entertain a strange prejudice against the nine-
eyes.
Cotton. What, in the name of wonder, is that ?
Walton. At your years, do not you know ? It is a tiny kind
of lamprey, a finger long ; it sticketh to the stones by its sucker,
and, if you are not warier and more knowing than folks in general
from the South, you might take it for a weed : it wriggles its
whole body to and fro so regularly, and is of that dark color
which subaqueous weeds are often of, as though they were wet
through ; which they are not any more than land-weeds, if one
may believe young Doctor Plott, who told me so in confidence.
Hold my mare, son Cotton. I will try whether my whip can
reach the window, when I have mounted the bank.
Cotton. Curious ! the middle of a street to be lower than the
side by several feet. People would not believe it in London
or Hull.
Walton. Ho ! lass ! tell the good parson, your master, or
his wife if she be nearer at hand, that two friends would dine
with him : Charles Cotton, kinsman of Mistress Cotton of the
Peak, and his humble servant, Izaak Walton.
Girl. If you are come, gentles, to dine with my master, I
will make another kidney-pudding first, while I am about it, and
then tell him ; not but we have enough and to spare, yet master
and mistress love to see plenty, and to welcome with no such
peacods as words.
Walton. Go, thou hearty jade ; trip it, and tell him.
Cotton. I will answer for it, thy friend is a good soul : 9 I
perceive it in the heartiness and alacrity of the wench. She
glories in his hospitality, and it renders her labor a delight.
[9 First ed. reads : " soul, although I know but little of him and have
not met him for years. Walton. He wants," &c.]
Walton, Cotton, and Okhvays. 165
Walton. He wants nothing, yet he keeps the grammar-
school, and is ready to receive, as private tutor, any young
gentleman in preparation for Oxford or Cambridge ; but only
one. They live like princes, converse like friends, and part like
lovers.*
Cotton. Here he comes : I never saw such a profusion of
snow-white hair.
Walton. Let us go up and meet him.
Qldways. Welcome, my friends ! will you walk back into
the house, or sit awhile in the shade here?
Walton. We will sit down in the grass, on each side of your
arm-chair, good master William. Why, how is this ? here are
tulips and other flowers by the thousand growing out of the turf.
You are all of a piece, my sunny saint : you are always concealing
the best things about you, except your counsel, your raisin-wine,
and your money.
Oldtvays. The garden was once divided by borders. A
young gentleman, my private pupil, was fond of leaping : his
heels ruined my choicest flowers, ten or twenty at a time. I
remonstrated : he patted me on the shoulder, and said, "My dear
Mr Old ways, in these borders if you miss a flower you are uneasy ;
now, if the whole garden were in turf, you would be delighted to
discover one. Turf it then, and leave the flowers to grow or not
to grow, as may happen/' I mentioned it to my wife: "Suppose
we do," said she. It was done ; and the boy's remark, I have
found by experience, is true.
'ton. You have some very nice flies about the trees here,
friend Oldways. Charles, do prythee lay thy hand upon that
green one. He has it ! he has it ! bravely done, upon my life !
I never saw any thing achieved so admirably not a wing nor an
antenna the worse for it. Put him into this box. Thou art
caught, but shah catch others : lie softly.
* I pay this tribute to my worthy old tutor, Mr Langley of Ashbourne,
under whose tuition I passed a year between Rugby and Oxford. He
would take only one private pupil, and never had but me. The kindness
of him and his wife to me was parental. They died nearly together, about
five-and-twenty years ago. Never was a youth blest with three such
indulgent and affectionate private tutors a* I was : before, by the elegant
and generous Doctor John Sleath, at Rugby ; and, after, by the saintly
Benwell, at Oxford. \V
1 66 Imaginary Conversations.
Cotton. The transport of Dad Walton will carry him off (I
would lay a wager) from the object of his ride.
Oldvuays. What was that, sir ?
Cotton. Old Donne, I suspect, is nothing to such a fly.
Walton. All things in their season.
Cotton. Come, I carried the rods in my hand all the way.
Oldvuays. I never could have believed, Master Izaak, that you
would have trusted your tackle out of your own hand.
Walton. Without cogent reason, no, indeed : but let me
whisper.
I told youngster it was because I carried a hunting-whip, and
could not hold that and rod too. But why did I carry it, bethink
you ?
Oldvuays. I cannot guess.
Walton. I must come behind your chair and whisper softlier.
I have that in my pocket which might make the dogs inquisitive
and troublesome, a rare paste, of my own invention. When
son Cotton sees me draw up gill after gill, and he can do nothing,
he will respect me, not that I have to complain of him as yet,
and he shall know the whole at supper, after 10 the first day's
sport.
Cotton. Have you asked ?
Walton. Anon : have patience.
Cotton. Will no reminding do ? Not a rod or line, or
fly of any color, false or true, shall you have, Dad Izaak,
before you have made to our kind host here your intended
application.
Oldways. No ceremony with me, I desire. Speak, and
have.
Walton. Oldways, I think you were curate to Master
Donne ?
Oldvuays. When I was first in holy orders, and n he was
ready for another world.
Walton. I have heard it reported that you have some of his
earlier poetry.
Oldways. I have (I believe) a trifle or two ; but, if he were
living, he would not wish them to see the light.
[ 10 From " after " to " sport " added in 2nd ed.]
[ u From " and " to " world " added in 2nd ed.]
Walton. Cotton, and Old\\. 167
//',//.". Why not? he had nothing to tear: his fame was
established ; and he vet and holy man.
Old-ways. He w.is almost in his boyhood when he wrote
it, being but in his twenty-third year, and subject to fits of
Cotton. This passion, then, cannot have had for its object
the daughter of Sir George More, whom he saw not until
afterward.
OMtuays. No, nor was that worthy lady called Margaret,
as was this ; who scattered so many pearls in his path, he was
wont to say, that he trod uneasily on them, and could never skij>
them.
Walton. Let us look at them in his poetry.
Oldways. I know not whether he would consent thereto, were
he living, the lines running so totally on the amorous.
!ton. Faith and troth ! we mortals are odd fishes. We
can- not how many see us in choler, when we rave and bluster
and make as much noise and bustle as we can ; but if the kindest
and most generous affection comes across us, we suppress every
sign of it, and hide ourselves in nooks and coverts. Out with
the drawer, my dear Old ways : we have seen Donne's sting ; in
justice to him, let us now have a sample of his honey.
Oldwayt. Strange that you never asked me before.
Walton. I am fain to write his life, now one can sit by
Dove-side and hold the paper upon one's knee, without fear
that some unlucky catchpole of a rheumatism dp one upon
the shoulder. I have many things to say in Donne's favor:
let me add to them, by your assistance, that he not only
loved well and truly, as was proved in his marriage, though
like a good angler he changed his fly, and did not at all seasons
cast his rod over the same water, but that his heart opened early
to the genial affections ; that his satire was only the overflowing
of his wit ; that he made it administer to his duties ; that he
ordered it to officiate as he would his curate, and perform half
the service of the church for him.
Cotton. Pray* who was the object of his affections ?
Oldivays. The damsel was Mistress Margaret Hayes.
Cotton. I am curious to know, if you will indulge my
curiosity, what figure of a woman she might be.
1 68 Imaginary Conversations.
Oldvuays. She was of lofty stature, red-haired (which some
folks dislike), but with comely white eyebrows, a very slender
transparent 12 nose, and elegantly thin lips, covering with due
astringency a treasure of pearls beyond price, which, as her lover
would have it, she never ostentatiously displayed. Her chin was
somewhat long, with what I should have simply called a sweet
dimple in it, quite proportionate : but Donne said it was more
than dimple ; that it was peculiar ; that her angelic face could not
have existed without it, nor it without her angelic face, that is,
unless by a new dispensation. He was much taken thereby, and
mused upon it deeply : calling it in moments of joyousness the
cradle of all sweet fancies, and, in hours of suffering from her
sedateness, the vale of death.
Walton. So ingenious are men when the spring torrent
of passion shakes up and carries away their thoughts, covering
(as it were) the green meadow of still homely life with pebbles
and shingle, some colorless and obtuse, some sharp and spark-
ling.
Cotton. I hope he was happy in her at last.
Oldivays. Ha ! 13 ha ! here we have J em. Strong lines !
Happy, no ; he was not happy. He was forced to renounce her,
by what he then called his evil destiny ; and wishing, if not to
forget her, yet to assuage his grief under the impediments to their
union, he made a voyage to Spain and the Azores with the Earl
of Essex. When this passion first blazed out he was in his
twentieth year ; for the physicians do tell us that where the
genius is ardent the passions are precocious. The lady had pro-
fited by many more seasons than he had, and carried with her
manifestly the fruits of circumspection. No benefice falling unto
him, nor indeed there being fit preparation, she submitted to the
will of Providence. Howbeit, he could not bring his mind to
reason until ten years after, when he married the daughter of the
worshipful Sir George More.
Cotton. I do not know whether the arduous step of matri-
mony, on which many a poor fellow has broken his shin, is a
step geometrically calculated for bringing us to reason ; but
[ 12 First ed. reads : " very slender nose, and thin lips. Her chin," &c.]
[ From " Ha ! " to " obtrusively " (30 lines) added in 2nd ed.]
Walton, Cotton, and Oldways. 169
1 have seen passion run up it in a minute, and down it in halt a
one.
Oldways. Young gentleman ! my patron the doctor was none
of the light-hearted and oblivious.
Cotton. Truly I should think it a hard matter to forget such a
beauty as his muse and his chaplain have described ; at least if one
had ever stood upon the brink of matrimony with her. It is
allowable, I hope, to be curious concerning the termination of so
singular an attachment,
Oldways. She would listen to none other.
Cotton. Surely she must have had good ears to have heard one.
Oldways. No pretender had the hardihood to come forward
too obtrusively. Donne had the misfortune, as he then thought
it, to outlive her, after a courtship of about five years, which
enabled him to contemplate her ripening beauties at leisure, and to
bend over the opening flowers of her virtues and accomplishments.
Alas ! they were lost to the world (unless by example) in her
forty-seventh spring.
Cotton. He might then leisurely bend over them, and quite
as easily shake the seed out as smell them. Did she refuse him,
then?
Oldways. He dared not ask her.
Cotton. Why, verily, I should have boggled at that said vale
(I think) myself.
Oldways. Izaak ! our young friend Master Cotton is not
sedate enough yet, I suspect, for a right view and perception of
poetry. I doubt whether these affecting verses on her loss will
move him greatly ; somewhat, yes : there is in the beginning so
much simplicity, in the middle so much reflection, in the close so
much grandeur and sublimity, no scholar can peruse them without
strong emotion. Take, and read them.
Cotton. Come, come ; do not keep them to yourself, dad ! I
have the heart of a man, and will bear the recitation as valiantly
as may be.
Walton. I will read aloud the best stanza only. What strong
language !
Her one hair would hold a dragon,
Her one eye would burn an earth :
Fall, my tears ! fill each your flagon !
Millions fall ! A dearth 1 a dearth 1 "
i 70 Imaginary Conversations.
Cotton. The doctor must have been desperate about the fair
Margaret.
Walton. His verses are fine, indeed : one feels for him, poor
man !
Cotton. And wishes him nearer to Stourbridge, or some other
glass-furnace. He must have been at great charges.
Qldivays. Lord help the youth ! Tell him, Izaak, that is
poetical, and means nothing.
Walton. He has an inkling of it, I misgive me.
Cotton. How could he write so smoothly in his affliction,
when he exhibited nothing of the same knack afterward ?
Walton. I don't know ; unless it may be that men's verses,
like their knees, stiffen by age. 14
Oldiuays. I do like vastly your glib verses ; but you cannot
be at once easy and majestical.
Walton. It is only our noble rivers that enjoy this privilege.
The greatest conqueror in the world never had so many triumphal
arches erected to him as our middlesized brooks have.
Oldways. Now, Master Izaak, by your leave, I do think you
are wrong in calling them triumphal. The ancients would have
it that arches over waters were signs of subjection.
Walton. The ancients may have what they will, excepting
your good company for the evening, which (please God!) we
shall keep to ourselves. They were mighty people for subjection
and subjugation.
Oldiuays. Virgil says, " Pontem indignatus Araxes."
Walton. Araxes was testy enough under it, I dare to aver.
But what have you to say about the matter, son Cotton ?
Cotton. I dare not decide either against my father or mine
host.
Oldnvays. So, we are yet no friends.
Cotton. Under favor, then, I would say that we but acknow-
ledge the power of rivers and runlets in bridging them ; for
without so doing we could not pass. We are obliged to offer
them a crown or diadem as the price of their acquiescence.
Oldivays. Rather do I think that we are feudatory to them
much in the same manner as the dukes of Normandy were to the
[ 14 First ed. reads : " age. Cotton. One would wish the stiffness some-
where else. Oldivays. Ay, truly, I do like," &c.]
\Yulton, Cotton, and Oldways. 17 i
kings of France ; pulling them out of their beds, or making them
lie narrowly and uneasily therein.
Walton. Is that between thy fingers, Will, another piece of
honest old Donne's poetry ?
Qldways. Yes ; these and one other are the only pieces I
have kept : for we often throw away or neglect, in the lifetime of
our friends, those things which in some following age are searched
after through all the libraries in the world. What 15 I am about
to read he composed in the meridian heat of youth and genius.
She was <*> beautiful, had God but died
For her, and none beside,
Reeling with holy joy from east to west
Earth would have sunk down blest ;
And. burning with bright zeal, the buoyant Sun
Cried through his worlds, ' Well done I ' "
He must have had an eye on the Psalmist ; for I would not
asseverate that he was inspired, Master Walton, in the theological
sense of the word ; but I do verily believe I discover here a
thread of the mantle.
Cotton. And with enough of the nap on it to keep him hot
as a muffin when one slips the butter in.
Qldiuays. True. Nobody would dare to speak thus but
from authority. The Greeks and Romans, he remarked, had
neat baskets, but scanty simples ; and did not press them down
so closely as they might have done, and were fonder of nosegays
than of sweet-pots. He told me the rose of Paphos was of one
species, the rose of Sharon of another. Whereat he burst forth
to the purpose,
" Rather give me the lasting rose of Sharon :
But dip it in the oil that oil'd thy beard, O Aaron ! "
Nevertheless, I could perceive that he was of so equal a mind that he
liked them equally in their due season. These majestical verses
Cotton. I am anxious to hear the last of 'em.
Oldways. No wonder : and I will joyfully gratify so laudable
a wish. He wrote this among the earliest :
Juno was proud, Minerva stern,
Venus would rather toy than learn :
What fault is there in Margaret Hayes?
Her high disdain and pointed stays."
[ l5 From What " to " wish " (18 lines) added in znd ed.]
172 Imaginary Conversations.
I do not know whether, it being near our dinner-time, I ought to
enter so deeply as I could into a criticism on it, which the doctor
himself, in a single evening, taught me how to do. Charley is
rather of the youngest ; but I will be circumspect. That Juno
was proud may be learned from Virgil. The following passages
in him and other Latin poets
Cotton. We will examine them all after dinner, my dear
sir.
Oldnvays. The nights are not mighty long ; but we shall find
time, I trust.
" Minerva stern."
Excuse me a moment: my Homer is in the study, and my
memory is less exact than it was formerly.
Cotton. Oh, my good Mr Oldways ! do not let us lose a
single moment of your precious company. Doctor Donne could
require no support from these heathens, when he had the dean
and chapter on his side.
Oldiuays. A few parallel passages. One would wish to
write as other people have written.
Cotton. We must sleep at Uttoxeter.
Oldivays. I hope not.
Walton. We must, indeed ; and, if we once get into your
learning, we shall be carried down the stream without the power
even of wishing to mount it.
Oldivays. Well, I will draw in, then.
"Venus would rather toy than learn."
Now, Master Izaak, does that evince a knowledge of the world,
a knowledge of men and manners, or not? In our days we
have nothing like it : exquisite wisdom ! Reason and meditate
as you ride along, and inform our young friend here how the
beautiful trust in their beauty, and how little they learn from
experience, and how they trifle and toy. Certainly the Venus
here is Venus Urania ; the Doctor would dissertate upon none
other ; yet even she, being a Venus the sex is the sex
ay, Izaak !
"Her high disdain and pointed stays."
Volumes and volumes are under these words. Briefly, he could
Walton, Cotton, and Old ways. 173
find no other faults in his beloved than the defences of her virgin
chastity against his marital and portly ardor. What can be more
delicately or more learnedly expressed !
Walton. This is the poetry to reason upon from morning to
night.
Cotton. By my conscience is it ! He wrongs it greatly who
ventures to talk a word about it, unless after long reflection, or
after the instruction of the profound author.
Old'ways. Izaak, thou hast a son worthy of thee, or about to
become so the son here of thy adoption how grave and
thoughtful !
Walton. These verses are testimonials of a fine fancy in
Donne ; and I like the man the better who admits Love into
his study late and early : for which two reasons I seized the
lines at first with some avidity. On second thoughts, however,
I doubt whether I shall insert them in my biography, or indeed
hint at the origin of them. In the whole story of his marriage
with the daughter of Sir George More there is something so
sacredly romantic, so full of that which bursts from the tenderest
heart and from the purest, that I would admit no other light or
landscape to the portraiture. For if there is aught, precedent
or subsequent, that offends our view of an admirable character,
or intercepts or lessens it, we may surely cast it down and sup-
press it, and neither be called injudicious nor disingenuous. I
think it no more requisite to note every fit of anger or of love,
than to chronicle the returns of a hiccup, or the times a man rubs
between his fingers a sprig of sweet brier to extract its smell.
Let the character be taken in the complex ; and let the more
obvious and best peculiarities be marked plainly and distinctly, or
(if those predominate) the worst. These latter I leave to others,
of whom the school is full, who like anatomy the better because
the subject of their incisions was hanged. When I would sit
upon a bank in my angling, I look for the even turf, and do not
trust myself so willingly to a rotten stump or a sharp one. I am
not among those who, speaking ill of the virtuous, say, " Truth
obliges me to confess the interests of learning and of society
demand from me" and such things; when this truth of theirs
is the elder sister of malevolence, and teaches her half her tricks ;
and when the interests of learning and of society may be found in
174 Imaginary Conversations.
the printer's ledger, under the author's name, by the side of
shillings and pennies.
Oldivays. Friend Izaak, you are indeed exempt from all
suspicion of malignity ; and I never heard you intimate that you
carry in your pocket the letters-patent of society for the manage-
ment of her interests in this world below. Verily do I believe
that both society and learning will pardon you, though you never
talk of pursuing, or exposing, or laying bare, or cutting up ; or
employ any other term in their behalf drawn from the woods and
forests, the chase and butchery. Donne fell into unhappiness
by aiming at espousals with a person of higher condition than
himself.
Walton. His affections happened to alight upon one who was ;
and in most cases I would recommend it rather than the con-
trary, for the advantage of the children in their manners and in
their professions.
Light and worthless men, I have always observed, choose the
society of those who are either much above or much below them ;
and, like dust and loose feathers, are rarely to be found in their
places. Donne was none such : he loved his equals, and would
find them where he could ; when he could not find them, he
could sit alone. This seems an easy matter ; and yet, masters,
there are more people who could run along a rope from yonder
spire to this grass-plot, than can do it.
Oldivays. Come, gentles : the girl raps at the garden-gate. I
hear the ladle against the lock : dinner waits for us.
XVII. MACHIAVELLI AND MICHEL-ANGELO
BUONARROTI.i
Michel-Angela. And how do you like my fortifications,
Messer Niccolo ?
[ x For the details of the history of Florence at the date of this Conver-
sation, see Villari's Life and Times of Machiavelli, vol. iv., chapter xiv.,
seq. Only a short sketch can be given here. Clement VII., one of the
Medici family, was at this time pope, and the Medici were in power at
Florence. Charles V. was on the point of sending into Italy the ex-
Macliiavi'lli and Michel- Angelo. 175
Machiavelli. It will easilv bo taken, Mcsser Michcl-Angelo
because there are other points Bello-squardo, for instance, and
the Poggio above Boboli whence every street and edifice may be
cannonaded.
Michel- Angelo. Surely you do not argue with your wonted
precision, my good friend. Because the enemy may occupy those
positions and cannonade the city, is that a reason why our fort of
Samminiato should so easily be surrendered ?
Machiavelli. There was indeed a time when such an argu-
ment would have been futile ; but that time was when Florence
was ruled by only her own citizens, and when the two factions
that devoured her started up with equal alacrity from their prey,
and fastened on the invader. But, it being known to Charles
that we have neglected to lay in provisions more than sufficient
for one year, he will allow our courageous citizens to pelt and
scratch and bite his men occasionally for that short time ; after
which they must surrender. This policy will leave to him the
houses and furniture in good condition, and whatsoever fines and
taxes may be imposed will be paid the more easily ; while the
Florentines will be able to boast of their courage and perseverance,
the French of their patience and clemency. It will be a good
example for other people to follow, and many historians will
praise both parties : all will praise one.
I have given my answer to your question ; and I now approve
and applaud the skill and solidity with which you construct the
works, regretting only that we have neither time to erect the
others that are necessary, nor to enroll the countrymen who are
equally so for their defence. Charles is a prudent and a patient
conqueror, and he knows the temper and the power of each
pcdition which succeeded in sacking Rome, capturing Florence, and mak-
ing him matter of the whole country. Machiavelli was in the employ-
ment of the Medici in Florence, and was appointed chancellor of the
curators for the fortification of the city. But before he could make any
progress with the work the German army had captured Rome and a
revolution in Florence had expelled the Medici. Machiavelli at this
time was absent from Florence, and on his return he found a new govern-
ment, who regarded him as an adherent of the Medici, and refused to
employ him. A few days after this disappointment he fell ill and died.
Michel- Angelo had already been entrusted with the construction of the
fortification*, but it will be seen that no such Conversation can ever have
taken place. (Works, n., 1846. Works, iv., 1876.)]
176 Imaginary Conversations.
adversary. He will not demolish nor greatly hurt the city.
What he cannot effect by terror, he will effect by time, that
miner whom none can countermine. We have brave men among
our citizens, men sensible of shame and ignominy in enduring
the dictation of a stranger, or the domination of an equal ; but
we have not many of these, nor have they any weight in our
councils. The rest are far different, and altogether dissimilar to
their ancestors. They, whatever was their faction, contended for
liberty, for domestic ties, for personal honour, for public approba-
tion ; we, for pictures, for statues, bronze tripods, and tessellated
tables : these, and the transient smiles of dukes and cardinals, are
deemed of higher value than our heirloom, worm-eaten, creak-
ing, crazy freedom.
Michel-Angela. I never thought them so ; and yet somewhat
of parental love may be supposed to influence me in favour of
the fairer, solider, and sounder portion of the things you set
before me.
Machiavelli. It is a misfortune to possess what can be retained
by servility alone ; and the more precious the possession, the
greater is the misfortune.
Michel- Angela. Dukes and cardinals, popes and emperors,
cannot take away from me the mind and spirit that God has
placed immeasurably high above them. If men are become so
vile and heartless as to sit down quietly and see pincers and
pulleys tear the sinews of their best benefactors, they are not worth
the stones and sand we have been piling up for their protection.
Machiavelli. To rail is indecorous ; to reason is idle and
troublesome. When you seriously intend to lead people back
again to their senses, do not call any man wiser or better than
the rabble ; for this affronts all, and the bad and strong the most.
But tell them calmly that the chief difference between the govern-
ment of a republic and a dukedom is this, in a republic there are
more deaths by day than by night ; in a dukedom, the contrary :
that perhaps we see as many taken to prison in a republic ; cer-
tainly we see more come out.
Michel- Angela. If any man of reflection needs to be shown
the futility and mischief of hereditary power, we Florentines surely
may show it to him in the freshest and most striking of examples.
Lorenzo de Medici united a greater number of high and amiable
Machiavclli and Michel-Angelo. 177
qualities than any other man among his contemporaries ; and yet
Lorenzo lived in an age which must ever be reckoned most fertile
in men of genius and energy. His heart was open to the poor
and afflicted ; his house, his library, his very baths and bed-rooms,
to the philosopher and the poet. ^Vhat days of my youth h;.\e 1
spent in his society ! Fun after he was at the head of the
commonwealth, he had society ; for even then he had fellow-
citizens. What lessons has he himself given me in every thing
relating to my studies! in mythology, in architecture, in sculp-
ture, in painting, in every branch and ramification of eloquence !
Can I ever forget the hour when he led me by the arm, in the
heat of the day, to the eastern 2 door of our baptistery, and said,
" Michel-Angelo, this is the only wonder of the world ! It rose,
like the world itself, out of nothing. Its great maker was with-
out an archetype : he drew from the inherent beauty of his soul.
Venerate here its image.*' It was then I said, " It is worthy to
be the gate of Paradise: " and he replied, "The garden is walled
up ; let us open a space for the portal." He did it, as far as
human ability could do it ; and, if afterward he took a station
which belonged not of right to him, he took it lest it should be
occupied by worse and weaker men. His son succeeded to him :
what a son ! The father thought and told me that no materials
were durable enough for my works. Perhaps he erred ; but how
did Piero correct the error ? He employed me in making statues
of snow in the gardens of Boboli ; statues the emblems at once of
his genius and his authority.
MofhiavtUi. How little foresight have the very wisest of
those who invade the liberties of their country ! how little true
love for their children ! how little foresight for their descendants,
in whose interest they believe they labor ! There neither is nor
ought to be any safety for those who clap upon our shoulders their
heavy pampered children, and make us carry them whether we
will or not. Lorenzo was well versed in history : could he for-
[* The church of San Giovanni has three gates, two of which art- de-
signed by Ghiberti. The one called by Michel-Angelo "the Gate of
Paradise n is the northern gate, in which alone Ghiberti was allowed to
follow his own genius. The eastern gate was also constructed by him,
but he was required to make it after the manner of the southern gate,
which had been designed by Giotto.]
IV. M
Imaginary Conversations.
get, or could he overlook, the dreadful punishments that are the
certain inheritance of whoever reaps the harvest of such misdeeds ?
How many sanguinary deaths by the avenging arm of violated
l aw i how many assassinations from the people ! how many
poisonings and stabbings from domestics, from guards, from kin-
dred! fratricides, parricides; and that horrible crime for which
no language has formed a name, the bloodshed of the son by
the parental hand ! A citizen may perhaps be happier, for the
moment, by so bold and vast a seizure as a principality ; but
his successor, born to the possession of supremacy, can enjoy
nothing of this satisfaction. For him there is neither the charm
of novelty nor the excitement of action, nor is there the glory of
achievement ; no mazes of perplexing difficulty gone safely
through, no summit of hope attained. But there is perpetually
the same fear of losing the acquisition, the same suspicion of
friends, the same certainty of enemies, the same, number of virtues
shut out, and of vices shut in, by his condition. This is the
end obtained, which is usually thought better than the means.
And what are the means, than which this end is better ! They
are such as, we might imagine, no man who had ever spent
a happy hour with his equals would employ, even if his family
were as sure of advantage by employing them as we have shown
that it is sure of detriment. In order that a citizen may become
a prince, the weaker are seduced, and the wiser are corrupted ;
for wisdom on this earth is earthly, and stands not above the
elements of corruption. His successor, finding less tractability,
works with harder and sharper instruments. The revels are
over, the dream is broken ; men rise, bestir themselves, and are
tied down. Their confessors and wives console them, saying,
"You would not have been tied down had you been quiet."
The son is warned not to run into the error of his father, by this
clear demonstration : " Yonder villa was his, with the farms
about it ; he sold it and them to pay the fine."
Michel- Angela. And are these the doctrines our children
must be taught? I will have none, then. I will avoid the
marriage-bed as I would the bed of Procrustes. Oh that, by
any exertion of my art, I could turn the eyes of my countrymen
toward Greece ! I wish to excel in painting or in sculpture,
partly for my glory, partly for my sustenance, being poor ; but
Machiavelli and Michel-Angelo. 179
greatly more to arouse in their breasts the recollection of what
was higher. Then come the questions, Whence was it ?
how was it? Surely, too surely, not by Austrians, French,
and Spaniards, all equally barbarous ; though the Spaniards
were in contiguity with the Moors, and one sword polished the
other.
Machiavelli. The only choice left us was the choice of our
enslaver : we have now lost even that. Our wealthier citizens
make up their old shopkeeping silks into marquis caps, and
tranquilly fall asleep under so soft a coverture. Represent to
them what their grandfathers were, and they shake the head
with this furred foolery upon it, telling us it is time for the world
to go to rest. They preach to us from their new cushions on the
sorrowful state of effervescence in our former jx>pular govern-
ment, and the repose and security to be enjoyed under hereditary
princes chosen from among themselves.
Micbtl-Slngelo. Chosen by whom ? and from what ? our-
schts ? Well might one of such creatures cry, as Atys did,
if like Atys he could recover his senses under a worse and more
shameful eviration,
Ego non quod habuerim ;
Ego Mznas ; ego mei pars ; ego vir sterilis ero.
Jam. jam dolct quod egi 1
Yes, indeed, there was all this effervescence. Men spoke
loud; men would have their own, although they might have
blows with it. And is it a matter of joyance to those wise
and sober personages, that the government which reared and
nurtured them to all their wisdom and sobriety, and much other
more erect and substantial, should be now extinct ? Rivers run
on and pass away ; pools and morasses are at rest for ever. But
shall I build my house upon the pool or the morass because
it lies so still ? or shall I abstain from my recreation by the
river-side because the stream runs on ? Whatever you have
objected to republicanism may, in its substance a little modified,
be objected to royalty, great and small, principalities, and duke-
doms. In republics, high and tranquil minds are liable to
neglect, and, what is worse, to molestation ; but those who
molest them are usually grave men or acute ones, and act openly,
with fair formalities and professed respect. On the contrary, in
180 Imaginary Conversations.
such governments as ours was recently, a young commissaiy of
police orders you to appear before him ; asks you first whether
you know why he called you ; and then, turning over his papers
at his leisure, puts to you as many other idle questions as come
into his head ; remands you ; calls you back at the door ; gives
you a long admonition, partly by order (he tells you) of his
superiors, partly his own ; bids you to be more circumspect
in future, and to await the further discretion of his Excellency
the President of the Buon Governo. O Messer Niccolo ! surely
the rack 3 you suffered is more tolerable, not merely than the
experience, but even than the possibility, of such arrogance and
insult.
Machiavetti. Caesar's head was placed on the neck of the
world, and was large enough for it ; but our necks, Messer
Michel-Angelo, are grasped, wrung, and contracted for the heads
of geese to surmount them. It was not the kick, it was the ass,
that made the sick lion roar and die. Either the state of things
which you have been describing is very near its termination, or
people are growing low enough to accommodate themselves to
their abject fortunes. Some fishes, once of the ocean, lost irre-
trievably, by following up a contracted and tortuous channel, their
pristine form and nature, and became of a size and quality for
dead or shallow waters, which narrow and weedy and slimy banks
confine. There are stages in the manners of principalities, as
there are in human life. Princes at first are kind and affable ;
their successors are condescending and reserved ; the next, in-
different and distant ; the last, repulsive, insolent, and ferocious,
or, what is equally fatal to arbitrary power, voluptuous and slothful.
The cruel have many sympathizers ; the selfish, few. These
wretches bear heavily on the lower classes, and usually fall as
they are signing an edict of famine, or protecting a favorite who
enforces it. By one or other of these diseases dies arbitrary
power ; and much and various purification is necessary to render
the chamber where it has lain salubrious. Democracies may be
longer-lived, although they have enemies in most of the rich, in
more of the timorous, and nearly in all the wise. The former
will pamper them to feed upon them ; the latter will kiss them
[ 3 Machiavelli was suspected of complicity in the conspiracy of Boseoli
and Capponi, against the Medici. See Villari, vol. in., p. 169.]
Machiiivclli and Michel- Angelo. 181
to betray them ; the intermediate will slink off and wish them
well. Those governments alone can be stable, or are worthy of
being so, in which property and intellect keep the machine in right
order and regular operation : each being conscious that it is the
natural ally and reciprocal protector of the other ; that nothing
ought to be above them ; and that what is below them ought to
be as little below as possible ; otherwise it never can consistently,
steadily, and effectually supjiort them. None of these considera-
tions seem to have been ever entertained by men who, with more
circumspection and prudence, might have effected the regeneration
of Italy. The changes they wished to bring about were entirely
for their own personal aggrandizement. Caesar Borgia and Julius
the Second would have expelled all strangers from interference in
our concerns. But the former, although intelligent and acute,
having a mind less capacious than his ambition ; and the latter
more ambition than any mind without more instruments could
manage ; and neither of them the wish or the thought of employ-
ing the only means suitable to the end, their vast, loose projects
crumbled under them.
Michcl-dngelo. Your opinion of Borgia is somewhat high ;
and I fancied you did not despise Pope Julius.
MachiavelR. Some of you artists ought to regard him with
gratitude ; but you yourself must despise the frivolous dotard,
who, while he should have been meditating and accomplishing
the deliverance of Italy, which he could have done, and he only,
was running after you, and breathing at one time caresses, at
another time menaces, to bring you back into the Vatican, after
your affront and flight. Instead of this grand work of liberation
(at least from barbarians) what was he planning ? His whole
anxiety was about his mausoleum ! Now, certainly, Messer
Michel- Angelo, the more costly a man's monument is, the more
manifest, if he himself orders the erection, must be his conscious-
ness that there is much in him which he would wish to be
covered over by it, and much which never was his, and which he is
desirous of appropriating. But no monument is a bed capacious
enough for his froward and restless imbecilities ; and any that is
magnificent only shows one the more of them.
Michel- Angelo. He who deserves a mausoleum is not desirous
1 82 Imaginary Conversations.
even of a grave-stone. He knows his mother earth ; he frets for
no fine cradle, but lies tranquilly and composed at her feet. The
pen will rise above the pyramid ; but those who would build the
pyramid would depress the pen. Julius had as little love of true
glory as of civil liberty, which never ruler more pertinaciously
suppressed. His only passion, if we may call it one, was vanity.
Caesar Borgia had penetration and singleness of aim, the great
constituents of a great man. His birth, which raised him many
favorers in his ascent to power, raised him more enemies in his
highest elevation. He had a greater number of friends than he
could create of fortunes ; and bees, when no hive is vacant, carry
their honey elsewhere.
MachiavellL Borgia 4 was cruel, both by necessity and by
nature : now, no cruel prince can be quite cruel enough ; when
he is tired of striking, he falls. He who is desirous of becoming
a prince should calculate first how many estates can be confiscated.
Pompey learned and wrote fairly out this lesson of arithmetic ;
but Julius Cxsar tore the copy-book from his hand and threw it
among those behind him, who repeated it in his ear until he gave
them the reward of their application.
Michel- Angela. He alone was able and willing to reform the
State. It is well for mankind that human institutions want
revisal and repair. Our bodies and likewise our minds require
both refreshment and motion ; and, unless we attend to the
necessities of both, imbecility and dissolution soon ensue. It was
as easy, in the Middle Ages, for the towns of Italy to form them-
selves into republics, which many did, as it was for the villages of
Switzerland ; and not more difficult to retain their immunities.
We are surely as populous, we are as well armed, we are as strong
and active, we are as docile to discipline, we are as rich and
flourishing : we want only their moral courage, their resolute
perseverance, their public and private virtue, their self-respect and
mutual confidence. These are indeed great and many wants, and
have always been ill-supplied since the extinction of the Gracchi'.
S [ As to the security of a tyrant " all depends whether cruelties are
done or ill. Those are well done, if we may speak so of evil deeds,
which are done suddenly for the sake of establishing a safe position, and
are not continued afterwards. Those are ill done that are long con-
tinued." Prince, chap, viii.]
Machiavelli and Michel- Angelo. 183
The channel that has been dry so many centuries can only be
replenished by a great convulsion. Even now, if ever we rise
again to the dignity of men and citizens, it must be from under
the shield and behind the broadsword of the Switzers.
Machurvelli. Thirty thousand of them, whenever France
resumes her arms against the emperor, might be induced to
establish our independence and secure their own, by engaging them
to oblige the state of Lombardy first, and successively Rome and
Naples, to contribute a subsidy, for a certain number of years, on
the overthrow of their infirm and cumbrous governments. The
beggars, the idle and indigent of those nations, might, beneficially to
themselves, be made provisional serfs to our defenders, who on their
part would have duties as imperative to perform. In the Neapo-
litan and papal territories, there is an immensity of land ill
cultivated, or not cultivated at all, claimed and occupied as the
property of the government, enough for all the paupers of Italy
to till, and all her defenders to possess. Men must use their
hands rightly before they can rightly use their reason : those
usually think well who work well. Beside, I would take especial
care that they never were in want of religion to instruct and com-
fort them : they should enjoy a sprinkling of priests and friars,
with breviaries and mattocks in the midst of them, and the laborer
in good earnest should be worthy of his hire. The feudal
system, which fools cry out against, was supremely wise. The
truckle-bed of valor and freedom is not wadded with floss-silk :
there are gnarls without and knots within ; and hard is the bolster
of these younger Dioscuri. Genoa, on receiving the dominion of
Piedmont, would cede to Tuscany the little she possesses on the
south of the Trebbia ; Venice would retain what she holds ;
Bologna would be the capital of all the country to the eastward
of the Apennines, from the Po to the Ofanto ; Rome, from the
sources of the Nar to the mouth of the Tiber (which still should
be a Tuscan river, excepting what is within the walls), and south-
ward as far as the Vulturous ; Naples would be mistress of the
rest. These seven republics should send each five deputies yearly,
for the first twenty days of March, enjoying the means of living
splendidly in the apartments of the Vatican. For without a high
degree of splendor no magistrate is at all respected in our country,
and slightly anywhere else. The consul, invested with the
184 Imaginary Conversations.
executive power, should be elected out of the body of legates on
the third day of each annual session ; he should proceed daily to
the hall of deliberation, at the Capitol, in state; the trumpet
should sound as he mounts his carriage, drawn by eight horses,
and again as he alights ; no troops should accompany him, except-
ing twelve of the civic guard on each side, twelve before and
twelve behind, on white chargers richly caparisoned, and
appertaining to the consular establishment.
Michd-Angelo. I approve of this ; and I should approve as
heartily of any means whatsoever by which it might be effected.
But it appears to me, Messer Niccolo, that the territories of
Rome and Bologna, although the Bolognese would continue to
the whole extent of the Apennines, would be less populous than
the others.
Machiavelli. Where is the harm of that ? A city may be
angry and discontented if she cannot tear away somewhat from
her neighbors. But, in the system I propose, all enjoy equal
laws ; and, as it cannot be of the slightest advantage to any
town or hamlet to form a portion of a larger State rather than
of a smaller, so neither can the smaller State be liable to a
disadvantage by any town or hamlet lying out of it. Rome has
always been well contented to repose on her ancient glory. She
loses nothing by the chain being snapped that held others to
her ; for it requires no stretch of thought (if it did, I would
not ask it of her) to recollect that it held her as well as them.
Bologna's territory would begin with Ferrara on the north,
and terminate with the Mediterranean on the south ; still,
excepting the Roman, it would be the least. Her position
will not allow her more, and well is it that it will not. For
the priesthood has too long made its holes there, running under-
ground from Rome ; and you know, Messer Michel-Angelo,
the dairy will smell disagreeably where the rats have burrowed
lately.
Michel-Angelo. True enough. Let me now make another
remark. Apparently you would allow no greater number of
legates from the larger States than from the smaller.
Machiai)elli. A small community has need for even more to
protect its interests than a larger. He who has a strong body
has less occasion for a loud voice, and fewer occasions to cry for
Machiiivclli and Michel- Angelo. 185
nee. Five legates from each republic are sufficient in
number, if they are sufficient in energy and information. If they
are not, the fault lies with their constituents. The more debaters
there arc the less business will be done, and the fewer inquiries
brought to an issue. In federal States, all having the same
obligations and essentially the same form of government, hardly
is it possible for any two to quarrel ; and the interest of the
remainder would require, and compel if necessary, a prompt and
a firm reconciliation. No State in Europe, desirous of maintaining
a character for probity, will refuse to another the surrender of a
criminal or debtor who has escaped to avoid that other's laws.
If churches and palaces ought not to be sanctuaries for the
protection of crime, surely whole kingdoms ought not. Our
republics, by avoiding this iniquity, would obviate the most
ordinary and most urgent cause of discord. Mortgaging no little
of what is called the property of the church (subtracted partly
by fraud from ignorance and credulity, and partly torn by violence
from debility and dissension), I would raise the money requisite
to obtain the co-operation of Switzerland and the alliance of
Savoy ; but taking care that our own forces much outnumber
the allies, and, in case of war, keeping all the artillery in our
hands.
Michel- Angela. But what would you do with the pope ?
Macbiavtlli.. A very important consideration. I would
ish him in Venice, where he would enjoy many advantages
which Rome herself does not afford him. First, he would be
successor to Saint Mark as well as to Saint Peter ; secondly, he
would enjoy the exercise of his highest authority more frequently,
by crowning a prince every year in the person of the Doge (for
that title, and every other borne by the chief magistrate of each
city, should continue), and a princess in the person of the Adriatic,
and, moreover, of solemnizing the ceremony of their nuptials ;
thirdly and what is more glorious, he would be within call of the
Bosniacs, who, hearing his paternal voice, would surely renounce their
errors, abandon their vices, and come over and embrace the faith.
The Bull of Indulgences might be a little modified in their favor.
Germans had no objection to the bill of fare, but stamped and
sweated to sec the price of the dishes, which more elegant
men in France and Italy, having tasted them all, thought
1 86 Imaginary Conversations.
reasonable enough. But in Bosnia they must be reduced a
trifle lower; else they will be a stumbling-block to the neo-
phyte, whose infirmer knees yet totter in mounting the Santa
Scala.
Michel- Angela. Do not joke so gravely, Messer Niccolo ; for
it vexes and saddens me.
Machiavetti. If you dislike my reasons, take some others very
different. The nobility and people of Venice have less venera-
tion for the Holy Father than have the rest of us Catholics, and
longer opposed his authority. Beside, as they prefer Saint Mark
to Saint Peter, there would always be a salutary irritation kept
up in the body of Italy, and all the blood would not run into the
head.
Michel- Angela. Its coagulation there has paralyzed her.
Machiavelli. Furthermore, the Venetians would take meas-
ures that Saint Mark should have fair play, and that his part
of the pugilistic ring should be as open and wide as the opposite.
And now, in order to obtain your pardon for joking so infelici-
tously, let me acknowledge it among my many infirmities, that
I cannot laugh heartily. I experience the same sad constriction
as those who cannot bring out a sneeze, or any thing else that
would fain have its way. You, however, have marvellously
well performed the operation ; and now the ripples on lip and
cheek, on beard and whisker, have subsided, let me tell you,
Messer Michel-Angelo, we form our wisest thoughts and pro-
jects on the depth and density of men's ignorance ; our strength
rises from the vast arena of their weaknesses. I know not
when my scheme will be practicable ; but it has been, and it
may be again.
Michel^ Angela. Finally, what is to become of Sicily, Sardinia,
and Corsica ?
Machiavelh. I would place these islands at the emperor's
disposal, to conciliate him.
Michel-Angelo. It would exasperate France.
Machiavelli. Let him look to that: it would be worth
his while. Exasperated or not, France never can rest quiet.
Her activity is only in her pugnacity : trade, commerce, agri-
culture, are equally neglected. Indifferent to the harvests on
Machiavclli and Michel-Angela 187
the earth before her, she springs on the palm-tree for its scanty
fruit.*
Michel- Angela. She would not be pleased at your allusion.
Mach'uroeU'i. I wish she would render it inapplicable. Italy,
in despite of her, would become once more the richest and most
powerful of nations, the least liable to attacks, and the
ed in disturbing her neighbors. Were she one great
kingdom, as some men and all boys desire, she would be per-
petually at variance with Hungary,- Germany, France, and
Spain. 5 The confederacies and alliances of republics are always
conducive to freedom, and never are hurtful to independence ;
those of princes are usually injurious to the liberty of the subject,
and often the origin of wars. Federal republics give sureties for
the maintenance of peace, in their formation and their position :
even those States with which any of them is confederated are as
much interested in impeding it from conquests as from subjection.
In kingdoms, the case is widely different. Many pestilences
grow weaker by length of time and extent of action ; but the
pestilence of kingly power increases in virulence at every stride
and seizure, and expires in the midst of its victims by the
lethargy of repletion. At no period of my life have I ne-
glected to warn my fellow-citizens of the fete impending over
them. Only a few drops of the sultry and suffocating storm
have yet fallen : we stop on the road, instead of pushing on ;
and, whenever we raise our heads, it will be in the midst of the
inundation.
Michel" Angela. I do believe that Lorenzo would have covered
the shame of his parent State, rather than have wantoned with
its inebriety.
* The population of France, at this time, amounted to scarcely four-
teen millions ; Franche-comte, Lorraine, Alsace, and several cities on the
borders of the Netherlands, not being yet annexed. Her incessant wars,
of late generally disastrous, had depopulated her provinces, and there was
less industry than in any other great nation round about her, not except-
ing the Spanish. Italy was supreme in civilization, commerce, and the
fine arts, and was at least a* populous as at present.
J 5 There can be no doubt that Machiavelli desired the unity of Italy,
that this desire of his i one reason for the admiration which he felt
for Czsar Borgia as long as Czsar was successful. The views which
Landor has put in Machiavelli \ mouth he would not have been likely to
express himself.]
1 88 Imaginary Conversations.
Machiavelli. He might, by his example and authority, have
corrected her abuses ; and by his wealth, united to ours, have
given work to the poor and idle in the construction of roads, and
the excavation of canals through the Maremma.
Michel- Angela. It was easier to kill Antaeus than to lift him
from the ground. Lorenzo was unable to raise or keep up
Tuscany : he therefore sought the less glorious triumph of leading
her captive, laden with all his jewels, and escorted by men of
genius in the garb of sycophants and songsters.
Machiavelli. In fact, Messer Michel- Angelo, we had borne
too long and too patiently the petulance and caprices of a
brawling and impudent democracy. We received instructions
from those to whom we should have given them, and we gave
power to those from whom we should have received it. Re-
publican as I have lived, and shall die, I would rather any
other state of social life than naked and rude democracy :
because I have always found it more jealous of merit, more
suspicious of wisdom, more proud of riding on great minds,
more pleased at raising up little ones above them, more fond of
loud talking, more impatient of calm reasoning, more unsteady,
more ungrateful, and more ferocious ; above all, because it leads
to despotism through fraudulence, intemperance, and corruption.
Let democracy live among the mountains, and regulate her
village, and enjoy her chalet ; let her live peacefully and con-
tentedly amid her flocks and herds ; never lay her rough hand
on the balustrade of the council-chamber ; never raise her
boisterous voice among the images of liberators and legislators,
of philosophers and poets.
Michel-Angela. In the course of human things, you cannot
hinder her. All governments run ultimately into the great gulf
of despotism, widen or contract them, straighten or divert them,
as you will. From this gulf, the Providence that rules all nature
liberates them. Again they return, to be again absorbed, at
periods not foreseen or calculable. Every form of government is
urged onward by another and a different one. The great recep-
tacle in which so many have perished casts up the fragments, and
indefatigable man refits them.
Machiavetti. Other forms may take the same direction as
democracy, but along roads less miry, and infested with fewer
thieves.
Machiavelli and Michel- A ngelo. 189
Michel- Angela. Messer Niccolo, you have spoken like a
secretary and a patrician ; I am only a mere mason, as you
see, and (by your appointment) an engineer. You indeed
jreat reason to condemn the levity, the stupidity, and the
ingratitude of the people. But, if they prefer worse men to
better, the fault carries the punishment with it, or draws it after ;
and the graver the fault the severer the punishment. Neither the
populace nor the prince ever chooses the most worthy of all ;
who indeed, if there were any danger of their choosing him,
would avoid the nomination ? for it is only in such days as these
that men really great come spontaneously forward, and move with
the multitude from the front ; stilling the voice of the crier, and
scattering the plumes of the impostor. In ordinary times, less
men are quite sufficient, and arc always ready. In a democracy,
the bad may govern when better are less required ; but, if they
govern injudiciously, the illusion under which they were elected
vanishes, the harm they do is brief, and attended by more peril
to themselves than to their country. Totally the reverse with
hereditary princes : being further from the mass of the community,
they know and care little about us ; they do not want our votes ;
they would be angry if we talked of our esteem for them ; and,
if ever they treat us well, their security, not their sympathy, is the
motive. I agree with you, Messer Niccolo, that never were there
viler slaves than our populace, except our nobles, and those
mongrels and curs intermediate who lean indolently on such sap-
less trunks, and deem it magnificent to stand one palm higher than
the prostrate.
Macburvtlli. A fine picture have you been drawing ! another
Lust Judgment!
Michel^ Angela. Your nobility, founded in great measure on
yourself, is such that you would accept from me no apology
for my remarks on that indiscriminately lavished by our enslavers
among later families. None in Tuscany, few in Europe, can
contend in dignity with yours, which has given to our republic
thirteen chief magistrates. The descendants of a hunter from
an Alpine keep in Switzerland can offer no pretence to any thing
resembling it. Yet these are they who bind and bruise us!
these are they who impose on us as governors men whom we ex-
punge as citizens.
190 Imaginary Conversations.
MachiaveUi. In erecting your fortification, you oppose but a
temporary obstacle to the insult. My proposal, many years ago,
was the institution of national guards ; from which service no
condition whatever, no age, from adolescence to decrepitude,
should be exempt. But Italy must always be in danger of utter
servitude, unless her free States, which are still rich and powerful,
enter into a cordial and strict alliance against all arbitrary rule,
instead of undermining or beating down each other's prosperity.
While one great city holds another great city in subjection, as
Venice does with Padua and Verona, as Florence with Siena and
Pisa, the subdued will always rejoice in the calamities of the
subduer, and empty her cup of bitterness into them when she can,
although without the prospect or hope of recovering her inde-
pendence. For there are more who are sensible to affronts than
there are who are sensible to freedom ; and vindictiveness, in
many breasts the last cherished relic of justice, is in some the only
sign of it.
Michel- Angela. Small confederate republics are the most free,
the most happy, the most productive of emulation, of learning, of
genius, of glory, in every form and aspect. They also, for the
reason you have given, are stronger and more durable than if
united under one principality. This is proved, too, in the history
of ancient Tuscany, which, under her Lucumons, resisted for
many centuries the violent and vast irruptions of the Gauls, and
the systematic encroachments of the wilier Romans. But the
governors of no country possess so much wisdom as shall teach
them to renounce a portion of immediate authority for the future
benefit of those they govern, much less for any advantage to those
who lie beyond their jurisdiction.
Machiavelli. Italy, and Europe in general, would avoid the
most frequent and the worst calamities by manifold and just
federation, to the exclusion of all princes, ecclesiastical and
secular. Spain, in the multitude of her municipalities, is divided
into republics, but jealous and incoherent. Wiser Germany
possesses in many parts the same advantages, and uses them
[ 6 The proposal was carried out. See Villari, vol. ii., p. 256. Machia-
velli's preference for a militia over the mercenaries employed by Italian
States was due to his conviction that the creation of a nation could be
effected only by creating a national army.]
Machiavelli and Michel- Angelo. 191
better; but the dragon's teeth, not sown by herself, shoot up
between her cities. Switzerland rears among her snows little,
fresh, and stout republics. Italy, in particular, is formed for
them : many of her cities being free ; all bearing within them
the memory, most the desire, of freedom. No pontiff, no
despot, can ever be friendly to science ; least of all, to that
best of sciences which teaches us that liberty and peace are the
highest of human blessings. And I wonder that the ministers
of religion (at least all of them who believe in it) do not strenu-
ously insist on this truth, essentially divine, since the founder
of Christianity came on earth on purpose to establish peace ; and
peace cannot exist, and ought not, without liberty. But this
blessing is neither the produce nor the necessity of one soil only.
How different is the condition of the free cities in Germany
from that of territories under the sceptre of princes ! If seven
or eight are thus flourishing, with such obstacles on every side,
why might not the rest without any ? What would they all be
when hindrances were removed, when mutual intercourse, mutual
instruction, mutual advantages of every kind, were unrestricted ?
Why should not all be as free and happy as the few ? They
will be, when learning has made way lor wisdom ; when those
for whom others have thought begin to think for themselves.
The intelligent and the courageous should form associations
everywhere ; and little trust should be reposed on the good-will
of even good men accustomed to authority and dictation. I
venerate the arts almost to the same degree as you do ; for
ignorance is nowhere an obstacle to veneration : but I venerate
them because, above them, I see the light separating from the
darknett.
Mickd- Angela. The arts cannot long exist without the advent
of freedom. From every new excavation whence a statue rises,
there rises simultaneously a bright vision of the age that produced
it ; a strong desire to bring it back again ; a throbbing love, an
inflaming regret, a resolute despair, beautiful as Hope herself; and
Hope comes, too, behind.
Men are not our fellow-creatures because hands and articu-
late voices belong to them in common with us : they are then,
and then only, when they precede us, or accompany us, or follow
us, contemplating one grand luminary, periodically obscured, but
192 Imaginary Conversations.
eternally existent in the highest heaven of the soul, without
which all lesser lights would lose their brightness, their station,
their existence.
If these things should ever come to pass, how bold shall be
the step, how exalted the head, of genius ! Clothed in glorified
bodies of living marble, instructors shall rise out of the earth,
deriders of barbarism, conquerors of time, heirs and coequals
of eternity. Led on by these, again shall man mount the
ladder that touches heaven ; again shall he wrestle with the
angels.
Machiavelli. You want examples of the arts in their perfec-
tion : few models are extant. Apollo, Venus, and three or
four beside, are the only objects of your veneration ; and, al-
though I do not doubt of its sincerity, I much doubt of its
enthusiasm, and the more the oftener I behold them. Perhaps
the earth holds others in her bosom more beautiful than the
Mother of Love, more elevated than the God of Day. Nothing
is existing of Phidias, nothing of Praxiteles, nothing of Seopas.
Their works, collected by Nero, and deposited by him in his
Golden Palace, were broken by the populace, and their fragments
cast into the Tiber.
Michel- Angela. All ? surely not all !
MachuwelR. Every one, too certainly. For such was the
wealth, such the liberality, of this prince, and so solicitous were
all ranks, and especially the higher, to obtain his favor, I enter-
tain no doubt that every work of these consummate masters
was among the thousands in his vast apartments. Defaced and
fragmentary as they are, they still exist under the waters of the
Tiber.
Michel-Angelo. The nose is the part most liable to injury. I
have restored it in many heads, always of marble. But it occurs
to me (at this instant, for the first time) that wax would serve
better, both in leaving no perceptible line, and in similarity of
color. The Tiber, I sadly fear, will not give up its dead until the
last day ; but do you think the luxurious cities of Sibaris and
Croton hide no treasures of art under their ruins ? And there are
others in Southern Italy of Greek origin, and rich (no doubt) in
similar divine creations. Sculpture awaits but the dawn of free-
dom to rise up before new worshippers in the fulness of her glory.
Southey and Landor. 193
Meanwhile I must work incessantly at our fortress here, to protect
my poor clay models from the Germans.
Mih'hiavclli. And from the Italians; although the least fero-
cious in either army would rather destroy a thousand men than
the graven image of one.
XVIII. SOUTHEY AND LANDOR.'
Soutbey. Of all the beautiful scenery round KingVweston the
view from this terrace, and especially from this sun-dial, is the
pleasantest.
Landor. The last time I ever walked hither in company
(which, unless with ladies, 1 rarely have done anywhere) was
with a just, a valiant, and a memorable man, Admiral Nichols,
who usually spent his summer months at the village of Shire-
hampton, just below us. There, whether in the morning or
evening, it was seldom I found him otherwise engaged than in
cultivating his flowers.
Southey. I never had the same dislike to company in my walks
and rambles as you profess to have, but of which I perceived no
sign whatever when I visited you, first at Lantony Abbey, and
afterward on the Lake of Como. Well do I remember our long
conversations in the silent and solitary church of Sant* Abondio
(surely the coolest spot in Italy), and how often I turned back
my head toward the open door, fearing lest some pious passer-by,
or some more distant one in the wood above, pursuing the path-
p The meeting between Landor and Southey, during which this Con-
versation might have taken place, mu-t have been in the winter of 1836,
or the early spring of the next year. Landor was then living at Clifton,
and Southey and he wandered together, revisiting the places Southey had
known in his youth. (Life, 371.) KingVweston lies lower down the
Avon than Clifton, on the hills above Shirehampton, just as Landor
describes it. The two Conversations are taken up with a long criticism
of Milton in which Landor shows himself a more reasonable and accurate
critic than was common with him. A large number of the references
as given in the 1876 edition are incorrect. In the present edition these
have been corrected to correspond with the Globe edition of Milton, and
others have been added. (Woik-. ii.. 1846. Works, iv., 1876.)]
IV N
r 94 Imaginary Conversations.
way that leads to the tower of Luitprand, should hear the roof
echo with your laughter at the stories you had collected about
the brotherhood and sisterhood of the place.
Landor. I have forgotten most of them, and nearly all ; but
I have not forgotten how we speculated on the possibility that
Milton might once have been sitting on the very bench we then
occupied, although we do not hear of his having visited that part
of the country. Presently we discoursed on his poetry ; as we
propose to do again this morning.
S out hey. In that case, it seems we must continue to be seated
on the turf.
Landor. Why so ?
Southey. Because you do not like to walk in company ; it
might disturb and discompose you : and we never lose our temper
without losing at the same time many of our thoughts, which are
loath to come forward without it.
Landor. From my earliest days I have avoided society as
much as I could decorously, for I received more pleasure in the
cultivation and improvement of my own thoughts than in walking
up and down among the thoughts of others. Yet, as you know,
I never have avoided the intercourse of men distinguished by virtue
and genius : of genius, because it warmed and invigorated me by
my trying to keep pace with it ; of virtue, that if I had any of
my own it might be called forth by such vicinity. Among all
men elevated in station who have made a noise in the world
(admirable old expression!), I never saw any in whose presence
I felt inferiority, excepting Kosciusco. But how many in the
lower paths of life have exerted both virtues and abilities which I
never exerted, and never possessed ! what strength and courage
and perseverance in some ; in others what endurance and forbear-
ance ! At the very moment when most, beside yourself, catching
up half my words, would call and employ against me in its ordi-
nary signification what ought to convey the most honorific, the
term self-sufficiency -, I bow my head before the humble, with
greatly more than their humiliation. You are better-tempered
than I am, and readier to converse. There are half-hours when,
although in good-humor and good spirits, I would not be disturbed
by the necessity of talking, to be the possessor of all the rich
marshes we see yonder. In this interval there is neither storm
Southey and Lander. 195
nor sunshine of thr mind, but calm and (as the farmer would call
it) growing weather, in which the blades of thought spring up and
dilate insensibly. Whatever I do, I must do in the open air, or
in the silence of night ; either is sufficient : but I prefer the hours
of exercise, or, what is next to exercise, of field-repose. Did
you happen to know the admiral ?
Southey. Not personally ; but I believe the terms you have
applied to him are well merited. After some experience, he con-
tended that public men, public women, and the public press may
be all designated by one and the same trisyllable. He is re-
ported to have been a strict disciplinarian. In the mutiny at the
Nore he was seized by his crew, and summarily condemned by
them to be hanged. Many taunting questions were asked him,
to which he made no reply. When the rope was fastened round
his neck, the ringleader cried, " Answer this one thing, however,
before you go, sir ! What would you do with any of us, if we
were in your power as you are now in ours ? " The admiral,
then captain, looked sternly and contemptuously, and replied,
" Hang you, by God! " 1 -in raged at this answer, the mutineer
tugged at the rope ; but another on the instant rushed forward,
exclaiming, ** No, captain ! " (for thus he called the fellow) " he
has been cruel to us, flogging here and flogging there ; but before
so brave a man is hanged like a dog, you heave me overboard."
Others among the most violent now interceded ; and an old sea-
man, not saying a single word, came forward with his knife in his
hand, and cut the noose asunder. Nichols did not thank him,
nor notice him, nor speak ; but, looking round at the other ships,
in which there was the like insubordination, he went toward his
cabin slow and silent. Finding it locked, he called to a midship-
man, " Tell that man with a knife to come down and open the
door." After a pause of a few minutes, it was done ; but he was
confined below until the quelling of the mutiny.
Landor. His conduct as controller of the navy was no less
magnanimous and decisive. In this office he presided at the trial
of Lord Melville. His lordship was guilty, we know, of all the
charges brought against him ; but, having more patronage than
ever minister had before, he refused to answer the questions
which (to repeat his own expression) might incriminate him :
and his refusal was given with a smile of indifference, a conscious-
196 Imaginary Conversations.
ness of security. In those days, as indeed in most others, the
main use of power was promotion and protection ; and honest man
was never in any age among the titles of nobility, and has always
been the appellation used toward the feeble and inferior by the
prosperous. Nichols said, on the present occasion, " If this man
is permitted to skulk away under such pretences, trial is here a
mockery." Finding no support, he threw up his office as con-
troller of the navy, and never afterward entered the House of
Commons. Such a person, it appears to me, leads us aptly and
becomingly to that steadfast patriot on whose writings you promised
me your opinion, not incidentally, as before, but turning page
after page. It would ill beseem us to treat Milton with gener-
alities. Radishes and salt are the picnic quota of slim spruce re-
viewers.: let us hope to find somewhat more solid and of better
taste. Desirous to be a listener and a learner when you discourse
on his poetry, I have been more occupied of late in examining the
prose.
Southey. Do you retain your high opinion of it ?
Landor. Experience makes us more sensible of faults than of
beauties. Milton is more correct than Addison, but less correct
than Hooker, whom I wish he had been contented to receive as
a model in style, rather than authors who wrote in another and a
poorer language ; such, I think, you are ready to acknowledge is
the Latin.
Southey. This was always my opinion.
Landor. However, I do not complain that in oratory and
history his diction is somewhat poetical.
Southey. Little do I approve of it in prose on any subject.
Demosthenes and /Eschines, Lysias and Isaeus, and finally Cicero,
avoided it.
Landor. They did : but Chatham and Burke and Grattan
did not ; nor indeed the graver and greater Pericles, of whom
the most memorable sentence on record is pure poetry. On the
fall of the young Athenians in the field of battle, he said, " The
year hath lost its spring." But how little are these men, even
Pericles himself, if you compare them as men of genius with Livy !
In Livy, as in Milton, there are bursts of passion which cannot
by the nature of things be other than poetical, nor (being so)
come forth in other language. If Milton had executed his
Southey and Landor. 197
design of writing a history of England, it would probably have
abounded in such diction, especially in the more turbulent scenes
and in the darker ages.
Southey. Then- are quiet hours and places in which a taper
may be carried steadily, and show the way along the ground ; but
you must stand a-tiptoe and raise a blazing torch above your head,
if you would bring to our vision the obscure and time-worn
figures depicted on the lofty vaults of antiquity. The philosopher
shows everything in one clear light ; the historian loves strong
reflections and deep shadows, but, above all, prominent and moving
characters. We are little pleased with the man who disenchants
us ; but whoever can make us wonder must himself, we think, be
wonderful, and deserve our admiration.
Lamlrjr. Believing no longer in magic and its charms, we
still shudder at the story told by Tacitus, of those which were
discovered in the mournful house of Germanicus.
Southey. Tacitus was also a great poet, and would have
been a greater, had he been more contented with the external
and ordinary appearances of things. Instead of which, he
looked at a part of his pictures through a prism, and at an-
other part through a camera obscura. If the historian were as
profuse of moral as of political axioms, we should tolerate him
less : for in the political we fancy a writer is but meditating ;
in the moral we regard him as declaiming. In history we desire
to be conversant with only the great, according to our notions of
greatness ; we take it as an affront, on such an invitation, to be
conducted into the lecture-room, or to be desired to amuse
ourselves in the study.
Landor. Pray, go on. I am desirous of hearing more.
Southey. Being now alone, with the whole day before us,
and having carried, as we agreed at breakfast, each his Milton in
his pocket, let us collect all the graver faults we can lay our
hands upon, without a too minute and troublesome research ; not
in the spirit of Johnson, but in our own.
Lewr. That is, abasing our eyes in reverence to so great a
man, but without closing them. The beauties of his poetry we
may omit to notice, if we can ; but where the crowd claps the
hands, it will be difficult for us always to refrain. Johnson, I
think, has been charged unjustly with expressing too freely and
198 Imaginary Conversations.
inconsiderately the blemishes of Milton. There are many more
of them than he has noticed.
Southey. If we add any to the number, and the literary
world hears of it, we shall raise an outcry from hundreds
who never could see either his excellences or his defects,
and from several who never have perused the noblest of his
writings.
Landor. It may be boyish and mischievous ; but I acknow-
ledge I have sometimes felt a pleasure in irritating, by the cast of
a pebble, those who stretch forward to the full extent of the
chain their open and frothy mouths against me. I shall seize
upon this conjecture of yours, and say every thing that comes
into my head on the subject. Beside which, if any collateral
thoughts should spring up, I may throw them in also ; as you
perceive I have frequently done in my Imaginary Conversations,
and as we always do in real ones.
Southey. When we adhere to one point, whatever the form,
it should rather be called a disquisition than a conversation. Most
writers of dialogue take but a single stride into questions the most
abstruse, and collect a heap of arguments to be blown away by
the bloated whiffs of some rhetorical charlatan, tricked out in a
multiplicity of ribbons for the occasion.
Before we open the volume of poetry, let me confess to you I
admire his prose less than you do.
Landor. Probably because you dissent more widely from the
opinions it conveys ; for those who are displeased with any thing
are unable to confine the displeasure to one spot. We dislike
every thing a little when we dislike any thing much. It must
indeed be admitted that his prose is often too Latinized and stiff.
But I prefer his heavy-cut velvet, with its ill-placed Roman
fibula, to the spangled gauze and gummed-on flowers and puffy
flounces of our present street- walking literature. So do you, I
am certain.
Southey. Incomparably. But let those who have gone astray
keep astray, rather than bring Milton into disrepute by pushing
themselves into his company and imitating his manner. As
some men conceive that, if their name is engraven in Gothic
letters with several superfluous, it denotes antiquity of family,
so do others that a congestion of words swept together out
Southey and Landor. 199
of a corner, and dry chopped sentences which turn the mouth
awry in reading, make them look like original thinkers. Milton
is none of these : and his language is never a patchwork. We
find daily, in almost every book we open, expressions which
are not English, never were, and never will be : for the
writers are by no means of sufficiently high rank to be masters
of the mint. To arrive at this distinction, it is not enough
to scatter in all directions bold, hazardous, undisciplined thoughts:
there must be lordly and commanding ones, with a full establish-
ment of well-appointed expressions adequate to their maintenance.
Occasionally I have been dissatisfied with Milton, because
in my opinion that is ill said in prose which oen be said more
plainly. Not so in poetry : if it were, much of Pindar and
^Eschylus, and no little of Dante, would be censurable.
Landor. Acknowledge that he whose poetry I am holding in
my hand is free from every false ornament in his prose, unless a
few bosses of Latinity may be called so, and I am ready to
admit the full claims of your favorite South. Acknowledge that,
heading all the forces of our language, he was the great antagonist
of every great monster which infested our country ; and he dis-
dained to trim his lion-skin with lace. No other English writer
has equalled Raleigh, Hooker, and Milton, in the loftier parts of
their works.
Southfy. But Hooker and Milton, you allow, are sometimes
pedantic. In Hooker there is nothing so elevated as there is in
Raleigh.
Landor. Neither he, however, nor any modern, nor any
ancient, has attained to that summit on which the sacred ark of
Milton strikes and rests. Reflections, such as we indulged in on
the borders of the Larius, come over me here again. Perhaps
from the very sod where you are sitting, the poet in his youth sat
looking at the Sabrina he was soon to celebrate. There is pleasure
in the sight of a glebe which never has been broken ; but it de-
lights me particularly in those places where great men have been
before. I do not mean warriors, for extremely few among the
most remarkable of them will a considerate man call great, but
poets and philosophers and philanthropists, the ornaments of society,
the charmers of solitude, the warders of civilization, the watchmen
at the gate which tyranny would batter down, and the healers of
20O Imaginary Conversations.
those wounds which she left festering in the field. And now, to
reduce this demon into its proper toad-shape again, and to lose
sight of it, open your Paradise Lost.
Southey. Shall we begin with it immediately ? or shall we
listen a little while to the woodlark ? He seems to know what
we are about ; for there is a sweetness, a variety, and a gravity in
his cadences, befitting the place and theme. Another time we
might afford the whole hour to him.
Landor. The woodlark, the nightingale, and the ringdove
have made me idle for many, even when I had gone into the fields
on purpose to gather fresh materials for composition. A little
thing turns me from, one idleness to another. More than once,
when I have taken out my pencil to fix an idea on paper, the
smell of the cedar, held by me unconsciously across the nostrils,
hath so absorbed the senses, that what I was about to write down
has vanished, altogether and irrecoverably. This vexed me ; for
although we may improve a first thought, and generally do, yet if
we lose it, we seldom or never can find another so good to replace
it. The lattermath has less substance, succulence, and fragrance
than the summer crop. I dare not trust my memory for a moment
with any thing of my own : it is more faithful in storing up what
is another's. But am I not doing at this instant something like
what I told you about the pencil ? If the loss of my own thoughts
vexed me, how much more will the loss of yours ! Now, pray,
begin in good earnest.
Southey. Before we pursue the details of a poem, it is cus-
tomary to look at it as a whole, and to consider what is the scope
and tendency, or what is usually called the moral. But surely it
is a silly and stupid business to talk mainly about the moral of a
poem, unless it professedly be a fable. A good epic, a good
tragedy, a good comedy, will inculcate several. Homer does not
represent the anger of Achilles as being fatal or disastrous to that
hero, which would be what critics call poetical justice ; but he
demonstrates in the greater part of the Iliad the evil effects of
arbitrary power, in alienating an elevated soul from the cause of
his country. In the Odyssea he shows that every obstacle yields
to constancy and perseverance ; yet he does not propose to show
it : and there are other morals no less obvious. Why should the
machinery of the longest poem be drawn out to establish an
Southey and Landor. 201
obvious truth, which a single \erse would exhibit more plainly,
and impress more memorably? Both in epic and dramatic poetry
it i.s action, and not moral, that is first demanded. The feelings
and exploits of the principal agent should excite the principal in-
The two greatest of human compositions are here de-
fective : I mean the Iliad and Paradise Lost. Agamemnon is
leader of the confederate Greeks before Troy, to avenge the
cause of Menelaus ; yet not only Achilles and Diomed on his
side, but Hector and Sarpedon on the opposite, interest us more
than the " king of men," the avenger, or than his brother, the in-
jured prince, about whom they all are fighting. In the Paradise
Lost no principal character seems to have been intended. There
is neither truth nor wit however in saying that Satan is hero of
the piece, unless, as is usually the case in human life, he is the
ro who gives the widest sway to the worst passions.
Adam who acts and suffers most, and on whom the con-
sequences have most influence. This constitutes him the main
character; although Eve is the more interesting, Satan the more
energetic, and on whom the greater force of poetry is displayed.
The Creator and his angels are quite secondary.
idar. Must we not confess that every epic hitherto has
been defective in plan ; and even that each, until the time of
Tasso, was more so than its predecessors? Such stupendous
genius, so much fancy, so much eloquence, so much vigor of
intellect, never were united as in Paradise Lost. Yet it is neither
so correct nor so varied as the Iliad) nor, however important the
action, so interesting. The moral itself is the reason why it
wearies even those who insist on the necessity of it. Founded
on an event believed by nearly all nations, certainly by all who
read the poem, it lays down a principle which concerns every man's
welfare, and a fact which every man's experience confirms : that
and irremediable misery may arise from apparently small
offences. But will any one say that, in a poetical view, our
certainty of moral truth in this position is an equivalent for the
uncertainty which of the agents is what critics call the hero of
the piece ?
Southey. We are informed in the beginning of the Iliad that
the poet, or the Muse for him, is about to sing the anger of
Achilles, with the disasters it brought down on the Greeks. But
2O2 Imaginary Conversations.
these disasters are of brief continuance, and this anger terminates
most prosperously. Another fit of anger, from another motive,
less ungenerous and less selfish, supervenes ; and Hector falls
because Patroclus had fallen. The son of Peleus, whom the poet
in the beginning proposed for his hero, drops suddenly out of
sight, abandoning a noble cause from an ignoble resentment.
Milton, in regard to the discontinuity of agency, is in the same
predicament as Homer.
Let us now take him more in detail. He soon begins to give
the learned and less obvious signification to English words. In
the sixth line,
That on the secret top, &c.
Here secret is in the same sense as Virgil's
Sccretosque pios, his dantem jura Catonem.
Would it not have been better to omit the fourth and fifth verses,
as encumbrances, and deadeners of the harmony ; and for the
same reason, the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth ?
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
Landor. Certainly much better : for the harmony of the
sentence is complete without them, and they make it gasp for
breath. Supposing the fact to be true, the mention of it is un-
necessary and unpoetical. Little does it become Milton to run
in debt with Ariosto for his
Cose non dette mai ne in prosa o in rima.
Prosaic enough in a rhymed romance, for such is the Orlamlo
with all its spirit and all its beauty, and far beneath the dignity
of the epic.
Southey. Beside, it interrupts the intensity of the poet's
aspiration in the words,
And chiefly thou, O Spirit I
Again : I would rather see omitted the five which follow that
beautiful line,
Dovelike satst brooding on the vast abyss.
Southey and Landor. 203
The car, however accustomed to the rhythm of these
sentences, is relieved of a burden by rejecting them ; and they are
not wanted for any thing they com .
Southey. I am sorry that Milton (v. 34) did not always keep
separate the sublime Satan and "the infernal Serpent." The
thirty-eighth verse is the first hendecasyllabic in the poem. It is
much to be regretted, I think, that he admits this metre into epic
poetry. It is often very efficient in the dramatic, at least in
Shakspeare, but hardly ever in Milton. He indulges in it much
less fluently in the Paradise Lost than in the Paradise Regained.
In the seventy-third verse he tells us that the rebellious angels
are
As far removed from God and light of heaven
As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole.
Not very far for creatures who could have measured all that
distance, and a much greater, by a single act of the will.
V. i 88 ends with the word repair ; 191 with despair.
335. Nor did they not perceive the evil plight
In ivkuk tkty were.
Landor. We are oftener in such evil plight of floundering in
the prosaic slough about your neighborhood than in Bunhill
Fields.
360. And Powers that erst in heaven sat on throne.
Excuse my asking why you, and indeed most poets in most places,
make a monosyllable of heaven ? I observe you treat spirit in the
same manner ; and although not peril, yet perilous. I would not
insist at all times on an iambic foot, neither would I deprive these
words of their right to a participation in it.
Southey. I have seized all fair opportunities of introducing the
tribrachys, and these are the words that most easily afford one.
I have turned over the leaves as far as verse 584, where 1 wish
he had written Damascus (as he does elsewhere) for Damasco,
which never was the English appellation. Beside, he sinks the
last vowel in Merbe in Paradise Regained, which follows ; and
should consistently have done the same in Damasco, following the
204 Imaginary Conversations.
practice of the Italian poets, which certainly is better than leaving
the vowels open and gaping at one another.
549. Anon th'ey move
In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood.
Thousands of years before there were phalanxes, schools of music,
or Dorians.
Landor. Never mind the Dorians, but look at Satan :
571. And now his heart
Distends with pride, and, hardening in his strength,
Glories !
What an admirable pause is here ! I wish he had not ended one
verse with " his heart," and the next with " his strength."
Southey. What think you of
575. That small infantry
Warred on by cranes.
Landor. I think he might easily have turned the flank of that
small infantry. He would have done much better by writing, not
For never since created man
Met such imbodied force as named "with these
Could merit more than that small infantry
Warred on by cranes, though all the giant-brood, &c.,
but leaving behind him also these heavy and unserviceable tumbrils,
it would have been enough to have written,
Never since created man.
Met such imbodied force ; though all the brood
Of Phlegra with the Heroic race were joined.
But where, in poetry or painting, shall we find any thing that
approaches the sublimity of that description, which begins v. 589
and ends in v. 620 ? What an admirable pause at
Tears, such as angels weep, burst forth !
V. 642. But tempted our attempt. Such a play on words
would be unbecoming in the poet's own person, and even on the
Southey and Landor. 205
lightest subject, but is most injudicious and intolerable in the mouth
of Satan, about to assail the almighty.
6 7 Z . Undoubted sign
That in his womb was hid metallic ore.
I know not exactly which of these words induces you to I-.MM*
your eyes above the book and cast them on me : perhaps both.
It was hardly worth his while to display in this place his know-
ledge of mineralogy, or his recollection that Virgil, in the wooden
horse before Troy, had said,
Utfrumqve armato milite complent,
ami that some modern poets had followed him.
Southty.
675. A- when bands
Of pioneers, with spade and pick-axe arnn-.l.
Fore-run the royal camp to trench a field
Or cast a rampart.
Nothing is gained to the celestial host by comparing it with
the terrestrial. Angels are not promoted by brigading with
sappers and miners. Here we are entertained (v. 712) with
DuUet symphonies . . . and voices sweet,
among " pilasters and Doric pillars."
Verse 745 is that noble one on Vulcan, who
Dropt from the zenith like a falling star,
The six following are quite superfluous. Instead
of stopping where the pause is so natural and so necessary, he
carries the words on,
Dropt from the zenith, like a falling star,
On Lemnos, the JEgean isle. Thus they relate,
Erring; for he, with this rebellious rout,
Fell long before ; nor aueht avail'd him now
To have built in heaven nigh towers, nor did he scape
By all his engines, but was headlong sent
With his industrious crew to build in hell.
My good Milton ! why in a passion ? If he was sent to build in
206 Imaginary Conversations.
hell, and did build there, give the Devil his due ; and acknowledge
that on this one occasion he ceased to be rebellious.
Southey. The verses are insufferable stuff, and would be ill
placed anywhere.
Landor. Let me remark that in my copy I find a mark of
elision before the first letter in scape.
Soutbey. The same in mine.
Landor. Scaped is pointed in the same manner at the
beginning of the fourth book. But Milton took the word
directly from the Italian scappare, and committed no mutilation.
We do not always think it necessary to make the sign of an
elision in its relatives, as appears by scape-grace. Inverse 752,
what we write herald he more properly writes barald ; in the
next sovran equally so, following the Italian rather than the
French.
Southey. At verse 768 we come to a series of twenty lines,
which, excepting the metamorphosis of the Evil Angels, would
be delightful in any other situation. The poem is much better
without these. And, in these verses, I think there are two
whole ones and two hemistichs which you would strike out :
As bees
In spring-time, when the sun with Taurus rides,
Pour forth their populous youth about the hive
In clusters : they among fresh dews and flowers
Fly to and fro, or on the smoothened plank,
The suburb of their straw-built citadel,
New rubbed with balm, expatiate and confer
Their state affairs. So thick the aery crowd, &c.
Landor. I should be sorry to destroy the suburb of the
straw-built citadel, or even to remove the smoothened 2 plank,
if I found them in any other place. Neither the harmony of
the sentence, nor the propriety and completeness of the simile,
would suffer by removing all between "/o and fro" and "so
thick" &c. But I wish I had not been called upon to " Behold
a 'wonder."
Southey. (Book II.)
High on a throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous east, &c.
[ 2 Globe ed. reads : " smoothed."]
Southey and Landor. 207
Are not Ormus and Ind within the- gorgeous East? If so,
would not the sense be better if he had written, instead of " Or
where," "There where"?
Landor. Certainly.
Southey. Turn over, if you please, another two or three pages,
and tell me whether in your opinion the I 5Oth verse,
In the wide womb of uncreated night,
might not also have been omitted advantageously.
Landor. The sentence is long enough and full enough with-
out it ; and the omission would cause no visible gap.
Southey.
1*6. Thus Belial, with words clothed in reason's garb,
CounsePd ignoble tote and peaceful sloth,
Not peace.
These words are spoken by the poet in his own person, very
improperly : they would have suited the character of any fallen
angel ; but the reporter of the occurrence ought not to have
such a sentence.
299. Which when Beelzebub perceived (than whom.
Satan except, none higher sat) with grave
Aspect he rose, and in his rising seem'd
A pillar of State. Deep on his front engraven
Deliberation sat and public care ;
And princely counsel in his face yet shone
Majestic, though in ruin: sage he stood,
With Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear
The weight of mightiest monarchies.
Often and often have these verses been quoted, without a sus-
picion how strangely the corporeal is substituted for the moral.
However Atlantean his shoulders might be, the weight of
monarchies could no more be supported by them than by the
shoulders of a grasshopper. The verses are sonorous ; but they
are unserviceable as an incantation to make a stout figure look
like a pillar of State.
Landor. We have seen pillars of State which made no figure
at all, and which are quite as misplaced as Milton's. But,
seriously, the pillar's representative, if any figure but a meta-
208 Imaginary Conversations.
phorical one could represent him, would hardly be brought to
represent the said pillar by rising up ; as,
Beelzebub in his rising seem'd, &c.
His fondness for Latinisms induces him to write,
329. What sit we then projecting peace and war?
For " Why sit we ? " as quid for cur. To my ear, What sit
sounds less pleasingly than Why sit.
I have often wished that Cicero, who so delighted in har-
monious sentences, and was so studious of the closes, could
have heard,
351. So was his will
Pronounced among the Gods, and, by an oath
That shook heaven's whole circumference, confirmed.
Although in the former part of the sentence two cadences are
the same,
So was his will,
And by an oath.
This is unhappy. But at verse 412 bursts forth again such a
torrent of eloquence as there is nowhere else in the regions of
poetry, although strict and thick, in v. 412 sound unpleasantly.
594. The parching wind 3
Burns frore, and cold performs the effect offre !
The latter part of this verse is redundant, and ruinous to the
former.
Southey. Milton, like Dante, has mixed the Greek mythology
with the Oriental. To hinder the damned from tasting a single
drop of the Lethe, they are ferried over :
611. Medusa with Gorgonian terror guards
The ford.
It is strange that until now they never had explored the banks of
the other four infernal rivers.
Landor. It appears to me that his imitation of Shakspeare,
From beds of raging fire to starve in ice,
[3 Globe ed. reads : air."]
Southcy and Landor. 209
is feeble. Never was poet so little made to imitate another.
Whether he imitates a good or a bad one, the offence of his
voluntary degradation is punished in general with ill success.
Shakspeare, on the contrary, touches not even a worthless thing
but he renders it precious.
Southey. To continue the last verse I was reading,
And of itseli the water Hii-
All taste of livine wight, as once it fled '
The lip of Tantalus.
No living wight had ever attempted to taste it ; nor was it this
water that fled the lip of Tantalus at any time ; least of all can
we imagine that it had already fled it. In the description of Sin
and Death, and Satan's interview with them, there is a wonderful
vigor of imagination and of thought, with such sonorous verse as
Milton alone was capable of composing. But there is also much
of what is odious and intolerable. The terrific is then sublime,
and then only, when it fixes you in the midst of all your energies ;
and not when it weakens, nauseates, and repels you.
678. God and his Son except,
Created thing naught valued he.
This is not the only time when he has used such language,
evidently with no other view than to defend it by his scholar-
ship. But no authority can vindicate what is false, and no
ingenuity can explain what is absurd. You have remarked it
already in the Imaginary Conversation* , referring to
Tke fairett of her daughter*, Eve.
There is something not dissimilar in the form of expression,
when we find on a sepulchral stone the most dreadful of
denunciations against any who should violate it :
Ultimus suum moriatur.
Lender. I must now be the reader. It is impossible to
refuse the ear its satisfaction at
1*614.] Thus roving on
In confused march forlorn, the adventurous bands
With shuddering horror pale and eyes aghast,
iv. O
2io Imaginary Conversations.
View'd first their lamentable lot, and found
No rest. Through many a dark and dreary vale
They past, and many a region dolorous ;
O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp,
Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death,
A universe of death.
Now who would not rather have forfeited an estate, than that
Milton should have ended so deplorably ?
Which God by curse
Created evil,yor evil only good,
W 'here all life dies, death lives.
Southey. How Ovidian ! This book would be greatly
improved, not merely by the rejection of a couple such as these,
but by the whole from verse 647 to verse 1007. The number
would still be 705, fewer by only sixty-four than the first
would, be after its reduction.
Verses 1008 and 1009 could be spared. Satan but little
encouraged his followers by reminding them that, if they took the
course he pointed out, they were
So much the nearer danger ;
nor was it necessary to remind them of the obvious fact by
saying,
Havoc and spoil and ruin are my gain. 4
Landor. In the third book the Invocation extends to fifty-
five verses ; of these, however, there are only two which you
would expunge. He says to the Holy Light,
But thou
Revisit'st not these eyes, that toil in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn,
So thick a drop serene hath quencht their orbs,
Or dim suffusion veiled. Yet not the more, &c.
[ 4 This criticism is very much confused. Southey wishes to exclude
the meeting with Sin and Death, and, apparently, the whole of Satan's
journey through chaos. Where he intended to take up the action again
it is difficult to say ; but as he considers verses 1008 and 1009 to be at
the end of Satan's speech to his followers, it is plain that he had no very
clear idea himself. The verses, of course, come at the end of the speech
by Chaos.]
Southey and Landor. 2 1 1
The fantastical Latin expression gutta serena, for amaurosis, was
never received under any form into our language ; and a thick
drop serene would be nonsense in any. I think every reader
would be contented with,
To find thy piercing ray. Yet not the more
Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt, &c.
Southey. Pope is not highly reverent to Milton, or to God
the Father, whom he calls a school-divine. The doctrines, in
thi.s place (v. So) more Scripturally than poetically laid down, are
apostolic. But Pope was unlikely to know it : for, while he was
a papist, he was forbidden to read the Holy Scriptures ; and,
when he ceased to be a papist, he threw them overboard and
clung to nothing. The fixedness of his opinions may be
estimated by his having written at the commencement of his
Essay, first,
A mighty maze, a maze without a plan ;
And then,
A mighty maze, but not without a plan.
the seventy-sixth verse, I wish the poet had abstained from
writing all the rest until we come to 34*; and that after the
38id, from all that precede the 41 8th. Again, all between 462
and 497. This about the Fool's Paradise,
The indulgences, dispenses, pardon*, bulls,
is too much in the manner of Dante, whose poetry, admirable
as it often is, is at all times very far removed from the dramatic
and the epic.
Landor. Verse 586 is among the few inharmonious in this
poem,
Shoots invisible virtue even to the deep.
There has lately sprung up among us a Vulcan-descended body
of splay-foot poets, who, unwilling
Incudi reddere versus,
or unable to hammer them into better shape and more solidity,
tell us how necessary it is to shovel in the dust of a discord now
212 Imaginary Conversations.
and then. But Homer and Sophocles and Virgil could do with-
out it.
What a beautiful expression is there in verse 546, which I do
not remember that any critic has noticed !
Obtains the brow of some high-climbing hill.
Here the hill itself is instinct with life and activity.
Verse 574. " But up or down " in " longitude " are not worth
the parenthesis.
[iv. 109.] Farewell remorse ! all good to me is lost.
Nothing more surprises me in Milton than that his ear should
have endured this verse.
Southey. How admirably contrasted with the malignant spirit
of Satan, in all its intensity, is the scene of Paradise which opens
at verse 131! The change comes naturally and necessarily to
accomplish the order of events.
The fourth book contains several imperfections. The six verses
after 1 8 1 efface the delightful impression we had just received.
At one slight bound high overleapt all bound.
Such a play on words, so grave a pun, is unpardonable : and such
a prodigious leap is ill represented by the feat of a wolf in a sheep-
fold ; and still worse by
A thief bent to unhoard the cash
Of some rich burgher, whose substantial doors,
Cross-barSd and bolted fast, fear no assault,
In at the "window climbs, or o'er the tiles.
Landor. This " in at the window " is very unlike the " bound
high above all bound;" and climbing "o'er the tiles" is the
practice of a more deliberate burglar.
So since into his church lewd hirelings climb.
I must leave the lewd hirelings where I find them : they are
too many for me. I would gladly have seen omitted all between
verses 160 and 205.
Southey.
[252.] Betwixt them lawns or level downs, and flocks
Grazing the tender herb.
Southey and Landor. 2 1 3
There had not yet been time for flocks, or even for one
flock.
Landor. At verse 297 commences a series of verses so har-
monious that my ear is impatient of any other poetry for several
days after I have read them. I mean thote which begin,
For contemplation he and valor formed,
For softness she and sweet attractive grace ;
and ending with,
And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay.
Southey. Here, indeed, is the triumph of our language, and I
should say of our poetry, if, in your preference of Shakspeare,
you could endure my saying it. But, since we seek faults rather
than beauties this morning, tell me whether you are quite con-
tented with,
She, as a veil, down to the slender waist
Her unadorned golden tresses wore,
Dishevel'J, but in wanton ringlets waved
As the vine curls her temliils ; iihuh implied
Subjection, tut rttpiired ivith gentle nvay,
And by her yielded, by him bett received.
Landor. Stopping there, you break the link of harmony just
above the richest jewel that poetry ever wore :
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,
And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay.
I would rather have written these two lines than all the poetry
that has been written since Milton's time in all the regions of the
earth. We shall see again things equal in their way to the best
of them ; but here the sweetest of images and sentiments is seized
and carried far away from all pursuers. Never tell me, what I
think is already on your lips, that the golden tresses in their
wanton ringlets implied nothing like subjection. Take away, if
you will,
And by her yielded, by him best received ;
and all until you come to,
[325.] Under a tuft of shade.
214 Imaginary Conversations.
Southey. In verse 388, I wish he had employed some other
epithet for innocence than harmless.
Verses 620 and 62 i might be spared :
WhHe other animals inactive range,
And of their doings God takes no account.
660. Daughter of God and man, accomplisht Eve !
Surely she was not daughter of man ; and, of all the words that
Milton has used in poetry or prose, this accomplisht is the worst.
In his time it had already begun to be understood in the sense it
bears at present.
Verse 674. " These, then, tho\" harsh sounds so near
together.
700. Mosaic; underfoot the violet,
Crocus, and hyacinth, with rich inlay
Broidered the ground, more colored than with stone
Of costliest emblem.
The broidery and mosaic should not be set quite so closely and
distinctly before our eyes. I think the passage might be much im-
proved by a few defalcations. Let me read it :
The roof
Of thickest covert was inwoven shade,
Laurel and myrtle, and what higher grew
Of firm and fragrant leaf; the violet,
Crocus, and hyacinth.
I dare not handle the embroidery. Is not this sufficiently
verbose ?
Landor. Quite.
Southey. Yet, if you look into your book again, you will find
a gap as wide as the bank on either side of it :
On either side
Acanthus and each odorous bushy shrub
Fenced up the verdant wall ; each beauteous flower,
Iris all hues, roses and jessamin
Reared high \.\\e\v flourished heads between, and wrought
Mosaic.
He had before told us that there was every tree of fragrant
leaf: we wanted not "each odorous shrub." Nor can we imagine
Southey and Landur. 2 i 5
how it fenced up a verdant wall : it constituted one itself; one
\ery unlike any thing else in Paradise, and more resembling the
topiary artifices which had begun to flourish in France. Here is
indeed an exuberance, and "a wanton growth that mocks our
scant manuring."
705. In -hadier bower
More sacred and sequestered, though butftignd,
Pan or Sylvanu*. never slept.
He takes especial heed to guard us against the snares of Paganism,
at the expense of his poetry. In Italian books, as you remember,
where Fate, Fortune, Pan, Apollo, or any mythological personage
is named incidentally, notice is given at the beginning that no
harm is intended thereby to the Holy Catholic-Apostolic religion.
But harm is done on this occasion, where it is intended just as
little.
[719.] On him ivko kaJ ttoU Jove's authentic fire.
This is a very weak and unsatisfactory verse. By one letter it
may be much improved, stolen, which also has the advantage of
rendering it grammatical. The word who coalesces with had.
Of such coalescences the poetry of Milton is full. In five
consecutive lines you find three :
[Hi. 398.] Thee only extolled, Son of thy Father's might
To execute his vengeance on his foes,
Not so on man ; him through their malice fallen,
Father of mercy and grace thou didst not doom
So strictly, but much more to pity inclined.
712. The God that made both sky, air, earth, and heaven.
Both must signify two things or persons, and never can signify
more.
From verse 735 I would willingly see all removed until we
come to,
Hail, wedded love!
After these eight I would reject thirteen.
In verses 773 and 774 there is an unfortunate recurrence of
sound :
216 Imaginary Conversations.
The flowery roof
Showered roses which the morn repaired. Sleep on,
Blest pair !
And somewhat worse in the continuation,
And O yet happiest, if ye seek
No happier state, and knoiv to knotu no more.
Five similar sounds in ten syllables, besides the affectation of
" know to know."
780. To their night watches in warlike parade,
is not only a slippery verse in the place where it stands, but is
really a verse of quite another metre. And I question whether
you are better satisfied with the word parade.
814. As when a spark
Lights on a heap of nitrous powder, laid
Fit for the tun, some magazine to store
Against a rumored war.
Its fitness for the tun and its convenience for the magazine
adapt it none the better to poetry. Would there be any detri-
ment to the harmony or the expression, if we skip over that
verse, reading,
Stored
Against a rumored war?
Landor. No harm to either. The verses 933 and 934, I
perceive, have the same cesura, and precisely that which rhyme
chooses in preference, and Milton in his blank verse admits the
least frequently.
A faithful leader, not to hazard all,
Through ways of danger by himself untried.
Presently, what a flagellation he inflicts on the traitor Monk !
[947.] To say and straight unsay, pretending first
Wise to fly pain, professing next the spy,
Argues no leader, but a liar traced.
When he loses his temper he loses his poetry, in this place and
Southey and Landor. 217
most others. But such coarse hemp and wire were well adapted
to the stripj>ed shoulders they scourged.
Satan ! and couldst thou faithful add ? O name !
O sacred name of faithfulness profaned !
Faithful to whom ? to thy rebellious crew ?
Army of fiends, fit body to fit head,
Was this your discipline and faith engaged ?
Your military obedience, to dissolve
Allegiance to the acknowledged Power suprenu- ''.
And thou. sly hypocrite, who now wouldst -.cert)
Patron of liberty, who more than thou
Once fawned and cringed?
You noticed the rhyme of supreme and seem. Great heed
should be taken against this grievous fault, not only in the
final syllables of blank verse, but also in the cesuras. In our
blank verse, it is less tolerable than in the Latin heroic, where
Ovid and Lucretius, and Virgil himself, are not quite exempt
from it.
Southey. It is very amusing to read Johnson for his
notions of harmony. He quotes these exquisite verses, and
says, "There are two lines in this passage more remarkably
inharmonious."
[710.] This delicious place,
For us too Urge, where thy abundance wants
Partakers, and uncropt/o/b to the ground.
There are few so dull as to be incapable of perceiving the beauty
of the rhythm in the last, Johnson goes out of his way to censure
the best thought and the best verse in Cowley :
And the soft wings of Peace cover kim round.
Certainly, it is not iambic where he wishes it to be. Milton, like
the Italian poets, was rather too fond of this cadence ; but, in the
instances which Johnson has pointed out for reprobation, it produces
a fine effect. So in the verse,
Not Typhon huge, ending in snaky twine.
It does the same in Samson Agonistcs:
Retiring from the popular noise, I seek
This unfrequented place, to find some ease,
Ease to the body some, none to the mind.
Johnson tells- us that the third and seventh are weak syllables,
218 Imaginary Conversations.
and that the period leaves the ear unsatisfied. Milton's ear
happened to be satisfied by these pauses ; and so will any ear
be that is not (or was not intended by nature to be) nine fair
inches long. Johnson is sensible of the harmony which is pro-
duced by the pause on the sixth syllable ; but commends it for no
better reason than because it forms a complete verse of itself.
There can be no better reason against it.
In regard to the pause at the third syllable, it is very singular
and remarkable that Milton never has paused for three lines to-
gether on any other point. In the 327^1, ^,2 8th, and 3 2 9th of
Paradise Lost, are these :
[Bk. i., 326.] His swift pursuers from heaven's gates pursue 5
The advantage, and descending tread us down,
Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts
Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf.
Another, whose name I have forgotten, has censured in like
manner the defection and falling off in the seventh syllable
of that very verse, which I remember your quoting as among
the innumerable proofs of the poet's exquisite sensibility and
judgment,
[ii., 873.] And toward the gate rolling her bestial train,
where another would have written
And rolling toward the gate, &c.
On the same occasion, you praised Thomson very highly for
having once written a most admirable verse where an ordinary
one was obvious :
And tremble every feather with desire.
Pope would certainly have preferred
And every feather trembles with desire.
So would Dryden, probably. Johnson, who censures some of the
most beautiful lines in Milton, praises one in Virgil, with as little
judgment. He says, " We hear the passing arrow,"
Et fugit horrendum strident elapsa sagitta.
Now there never was an arrow in the world that made a horrible
[ 5 Globe ed. reads : "discern."]
Southey and Lander. 2 j 9
stridar in its course. The only sound is a very slight one occa-
sioned by the feather. Homer would never have fallen into such
an incongruity.
How magnificent is the close of this fourth book, from,
[970.] Then when I am thy captive !
Landor. I do not agree to the use of golden scales, not
figurative but real jeweller's gold, for weighing events :
[lOO2.] Bjtlla ami realm*. In thi>e lit- put two -weighty
The -eqik-1 each of parting and of fight ;
The latter q*ifk up-flew and iicitd the beam.
To pass over the slighter objection of quick anil tick as displeasing
to the ear, the vulgarity of tic ting the beam is intolerable. He
might as well, among his angels, and among sights and sounds be-
fitting them, talk of kicking the bucket. Here, again, he pays a
penalty for trespassing.
Southey. I doubt whether (fifth book) there ever was a poet
in a warm or temperate climate, who at some time or other of his
life has not written about the nightingale. But no one rivals or
approaches Milton in his fondness or his success. However, at
the beginning of this book, in a passage full of beauty, there are
two expressions, and the first of them relates to the nightingale,
which I disapprove :
41. Tunes sweetest his love-labored twig .
In love-labored, the ear is gained over by the sweetness of the
sound ; but in the nightingale's song there is neither the reality
nor the appearance of labor.
43. Sett o^the face of things,
is worthier of Addison than of Milton.
100. But know that in the soul, &c.
This philosophy on dreams, expounded by Adam, could
never have U-cn hitherto the fruit of his experience or his
reflection.
Landor.
153. These are thy glorious works, &c.
220 Imaginary Conversations.
Who could imagine that Milton, who translated the Psalms worse
than any man ever translated them before or since, should in this
glorious hymn have made the 148^1 so much better than the
original ? But there is a wide difference between being bound to
the wheels of a chariot and guiding it. He has ennobled that
more noble one,
O all ye works of the Lord, &c.
But in
185. Ye mists and exhalations that now rise
From hill or streaming lake, dusky or gray,
Till the sun faint your fleecy skirts with gold, &c.
Such a verse might be well ejected from any poem whatsoever ;
but here its prettiness is quite insufferable. Adam never knew
any thing either of paint or gold. But, casting out this devil of
a verse, surely so beautiful a psalm or hymn never rose to the
Creator.
Southey. " No fear lest dinner cool " (v. 396) might as well
never have been thought of: it seems a little too jocose. The
speech of Raphael to Adam, on the subject of eating and drinking
and the consequences, is neither angelic nor poetical ; but the Sun
supping with the Ocean is at least Anacreontic, and not very
much debased by Cowley.
[433."! So down they sat
And to their viands^//.
Landor.
711. Meanwhile the eternal eye, whose sight discerns
Abstrusest thoughts, from forth his holy mount
And from within the golden lamps that burn
Nightly before him, saw without their light
Rebellion rising, &c.
And smiling to his only Son thus said, &c.
Bentley, and several such critics of poetry, are sadly puzzled,
perplexed, and irritated at this. One would take refuge with
the first grammar he can lay hold on, and cry pars pro toto ;
another strives hard for another suggestion. But if Milton
by accident had written both Eternal and Eye with a capital
Southey and Landor. 221
letter at the beginning, they would have perceived that he had
used a noble and sublime expression for the Deity. No one is
offended at the words : " It is the will of Providence," or " It is
the will of the Almighty ; " yet Providence is that which sees
before, and will is different from might. True it is that Provi-
dence and Almighty are qualities converted into appellations, and
are well known to signify the Supreme Being ; but if the Eternal
Eye is less well known to signify him, or not known at all, that
is no reason why it should be thought inapplicable. It might be
used injudiciously : for instance, the right hand of the Eternal
Eye would be singularly so ; but smiles not. The Eternal Eye
speaks to his only Son. This is more incomprehensible to the
critics than the preceding. And truly if that eye were like ours,
and the organ of speech like ours also, it might be strange. Yet
the very same good people have often heard without wonder of
a speaking eye in a very ordinary person, and are conversant with
poets who precede an expostulation, or an entreaty for a reply
with " Lux mea." There is a much greater fault, which none
of them has observed, in the beginning of the speech :
[719.] Son ! thou in whom my glory I behold
In full resplendence ! keir of all my might.
Now an heir is the future and not the present possessor ; and he
to whom he is heir must be extinct before he comes into
possession. But this is nothing if you compare it with what
follows, a few lines below :
[7x9.] Let us advise and to this hazard draw
With speed what force is left, and all employ
In our defence, test iaunaret v>e late
Tkit our kigk place, our ituutuary, our hill.
Such expressions of derision are very ill-applied, and derogate
much from the majesty of the Father. We may well imagine
that far different thoughts occupied the Divine mind at the
defection of innumerable angels, and their inevitable and ever-
lasting punishment.
Southey. The critics do not agree on the meaning of the
words,
799. Much lew for tku to be our Lord.
222 Imaginary Conversations.
Nothing, I think, can be clearer, even without the explanation
which is given by Abdiel in verse 813 :
Canst thou with impious obloquy condemn
The just decree of God, pronounced and sworn
That to his only Son, by right endued
With royal sceptre, every soul in heaven
Shall bend the knee ?
V. 869. There are those who cannot understand the plainest
things, yet who can admire every fault that any clever man has
committed before. Thus, beseeching or besieging, spoken by an
angel, is thought proper, and perhaps beautiful, because a quibbler
in a Latin comedy says, amentium haud amantmm. It appears,
then, on record that the first overt crime of the refractory angels
was punning : they fell rapidly after that.
Landor.
870. These tidings carry to the anointed ting.
Whatever anointing the kings of the earth may have undergone,
the King of Heaven had no occasion for it. Who anointed
him ? When did his reign commence ?
874. Through the infinite host.
Although our poet would have made no difficulty of accenting
" infinite " as we do, and as he himself has done in other places,
I am inclined to think that the accent is here on the second
syllable. He does not always accentuate the same word in the
same place. In verse 888, Bentley and the rest are in a bustle
about,
IVell didst thou advise ;
Yet not for thy ad-vice or threats I fly
These -wicked hosts 6 devoted, lest the -wrath, \c.
One suggests one thing, another another ; but nothing is more
simple and easy than the construction, if you put a portion of the
second verse in a parenthesis, thus,
Yet (not for thy advice or threats), &c.
Southey. The archangel Michael is commanded (Book VI.,
[ 6 Globe ed. reads : " tents."]
Southcy and Landor. 223
v. 44) to do what the Almighty, who commands it, gave him
not strength to do, as we find in the sequel, and what was
reserved for the prowess of the Messiah.
Landor. V. 115. " Where faith and realty," &c. Bentley,
more unlucky than ever, here would substitute fealty , as if there
were any difference between fealty and faith : realc and leale are
the same in Italian.
Southey.
160. Before thy fellows, ambitious to win, &"c.
Surely this line is a very feeble one, and where so low a tone is
not requisite for the harmony or effect of the period. But the
battle of Satan and Michael is worth all the battles in all other
poets. I wish, however, I had not found
[331.") A stream of ncctantu humor issuing.
The ichor of Homer has lost its virtue by exposure and
application to ordinary use. Yet even this would have been
better.
[335-] Forthwith on all sides to his aid wot run
By angels.
This Latinism is inadmissible ; there is no loophole in our
language for its reception. He once uses the same form in
his History : " Now was fought eagerly on both sides." 1
here the word if should have preceded, and the phrase would
.still remain a stiff intractable Latinism. In the remainder of
this book there are much graver faults, amid highest beauty.
Surely it was unworthy of Milton to follow Ariosto and
Spenser, and many others, in dragging up his cannon from
hell ; although it is not, as in the Faerie Quetn, represented
to us distinctly,
Ram'J -with bulltti round.
Landor. I wish he had omitted all from verse 483,
Whfch into hollow engines, long and round
Thick ramm'd at the other fore,
down to 523 ; and again from 546, " barbed with fire," to
224 Imaginary Conversations.
verse 628, where the wit, which Milton calls the pleasant vein,
is worthy of newly-made devils who never had heard any before,
and falls as foul on the poetry as on the antagonist.
[656.] Their armour helpt their harm.
Here helpt means increased. A few lines above, we find " Light
as the lightning glimpse." We should have quite enough of this
description if at verse 628 we substituted but for so, and con-
tinued to verse 644, "They pluckt the seated hills," skipping
over all until we reach 654,
Which in the air, &c.
Southey. I think I would go much farther, and make
larger defalcations. I would lop off the whole from " Spirits
of purest light," verse 660 to 831 ; then (for He) reading,
"God on his impious foes," as far as 843, "his ire." Again,
omitting nine verses, to "yet half his strength." The 866th
line is not a verse : it is turned out of an Italian mould, but in a
state too fluid and incohesive to stand in English. This book
should close with,
[874.] Hell at last
Yawning received them whole, and on them clos'd.
Landor. The poem would indeed be much the better for all
the omissions you propose ; if you could anywhere find room for
those verses which begin at the y6oth, "He in celestial panoply,"
and end with that sublime,
He onward came : far off his coming shone.
The remainder, both for the subject and the treatment of it,
may be given up without a regret. The last verse of the book
falls " succiso poplite,"-
Remember ; and fear to transgress.
Beautiful as are many parts of the Invocation at the commence-
ment of the seventh book, I should more gladly have seen it
without the first forty lines, and beginning,
The affable archangel.
Southey and Landor. 225
Southey.
[126.] But knowledge is as food, and needs no less
Her temperance over appetite,
He might have ended here. He goes on thus :
to know
In measure what the mind may well contain.
l r ven this does not satisfy him : he adds,
Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns
Wisdom to folly, as nouriihmtnt to 'wind.
Now, certainly Adam could never yet have known any thing
about the meaning of surfeit ; and we may suspect that the angel
himself must have been just as ignorant on a section of physics
which never had existed in the world below, and must have been
without analogy in the world above.
Landor. His supper with Adam was unlikely to produce a
surfeit.
139. At least our envious foe hath fail'd.
There is no meaning in at least : " at last " would be little better.
I would not be captious nor irreverent ; but surely the words which
Milton gives as spoken by the Father to the Son bear the appear-
ance of boastfulness and absurdity. The Son must already have
known both the potency and will of the Father. How incom-
parably more judicious, after five terrific verses, comes at once,
without any intervention,
[216.] Silence, ye troubled waves! and thou deep, peace!
If we can imagine any thought or expression at all worthy of the
Deity, we find it here. In verse 242 we have another specimen
of Milton's consummate art :
And earth, self-balanced, on her centre hung.
Unhappily, he permitted his learning to render him verbose imme-
diately after :
" Let there be light," said God, and forthwith light
Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure,
Sprung from the deep.
IV. p
226 Imaginary Conversations.
The intermediate verse is useless and injurious ; beside, according
to his own account, light was not " first of things." He repre-
sents it springing from " the deep " after the earth had " hung on
her centre," and long after the waters had been apparent. We do
not want philosophy in the poem : we only want consistency.
Southey. There is no part of Milton's poetry where harmony
is preserved, together with conciseness, so remarkably as in the
verses beginning with 313, and ending at 338 ; but in the midst
of this beautiful description of the young earth, we find
And bush with frizzled hair implicit,
But what poet or painter ever in an equal degree has raised our
admiration of beasts, fowls, and fish ? I know you have objected
to the repetition of shoal in the word scull. [402.]
Landor. Shoal is a corruption of scull, which ought to be
restored, serving the other with an ejectment to another place.
Nor do I like fry. But the birds never looked so beautiful since
they left Paradise. Let me read, however, three or four verses
in order to offer a remark :
[437.] Others, on silver lakes and rivers, bathed
Their downy breast : the swan with arched neck
Between her white wings mantling proudly, rows
Her state with oary feet ; yet oft they quit
The dank, and rising on stiff pennons, tower, &c.
Frequently, as the great poet pauses at the ninth syllable, it is
incredible that he should have done it thrice in the space of five
verses. For which reason, and as nothing is to be lost by it, I
would place the comma after mantling. No word in the whole
compass of our language has been so often ill applied or misunder-
stood by the poet as this.
Southey.
Bk. viii., 38. Speed to describe whose swiftness number fails.
Adam could have had no notion of swiftness in the heavenly
bodies or the earth : it is among the latest and most wonderful of
discoveries.
Landor. Let us rise to Eve, and throw aside our algebra.
The great poet is always greatest at this beatific vision, I wish,
Southey and Landor. 227
however, he had omitted the 46th and 4 yth verses, and also the
6oth, 6 1st, 6zd, and 63d. There is a beautiful irregularity in
the 6id,
And from about her shot darts of desire.
But when he adds, " Into all eyes," as there were but four, we
must except the angel's two : the angel had no occasion for wish-
ing to see what he was seeing.
[76.] He his fabric of the heavens
Hath left to their disputes, ptrhaft to move
His laughter.
I cannot well entertain this opinion of the Creator's risible facul-
ties and propensities. Milton here carries his anthropomorphism
much farther than the poem (which needed a good deal of it)
required.
Southty. I am sorry to find a verse of twelve syllables in 216.
I mean to say where no syllables coalesce ; in which case there
are several which contain that number unobjectionably.
Landor. In my opinion, a greater fault is to be found in the
passage beginning at verse 287 :
There gentle sleep
First found me, and with soft oppression seiz'd
My drowsied sense, untroubled, though I thought
I then was passing to my former state,
Insensible, and forthwith to dissolve.
How could he think he was passing into a state of which, at
that time, he knew nothing ?
[Bk. ix.] 191. Daughter of God and man, immortal Eve!
Magnificent verse, and worthy of Milton in his own person : but
Adam, in calling her thus, is somewhat too poetical, and too pre-
sumptuous ; for what else does he call her, but " daughter of God
and me " ? Now the idea of daughter could never, by any
potability, have yet entered his mind.
318. Affront! us with his foul esteem
Of our integrity : his foul esteem
Sticks no dishonor on our front, but turns
Foul on himself ;
228 Imaginary Conversations.
The word affront is to be taken in its plain English sense, not in
its Italian ; but what a jingle and clash and clumsy play of words !
In verse 353, I find, " But bid her well be ware ; " and be 'ware
is very properly in two words : so should be gone, and can not.
[Bk. viii.] Z99 To the garden of bliss, thy seat prepared.
This verse is too slippery, too Italian.
403. What thinkest thou then of me and this my state?
Seem I to thee sufficiently possest
Of happiness or not, who am alone
From all eternity ? for none I know
Second to me or like, equal much less.
This comes with an ill grace, after the long consultation which
the Father had holden with the Son, equal (we are taught to
believe) in the godhead.
Southey.
411. And through all numbers absolute, though one.
I wish he had had the courage to resist this pedantic, quibbling
Latinism. Our language has never admitted the phrase, and
never will admit it.
Landor. I have struck it out, you see, and torn the paper in
doing so. In verse 576,
Made so adorn, &c.
I regret that we have lost this beautiful adjective, which was well
worth bringing from Italy. Here follows some very bad reasoning
on love, which (being human love) the angel could know nothing
about, and speaks accordingly. He adds,
[588.] In loving thou dost well, in passion not.
Now love, to be perfect, should consist of passion and sentiment,
in parts as nearly equal as possible, with somewhat of the material
to second them.
Southey. We are come to the ninth book, from which I would
cast away the first forty-seven verses.
Landor. Judiciously. In the 8 1 st you will find a verb singular
for two substantives, " the land where flows Ganges and Indus."
The small fry will carp at this, which is often an elegance ; but
Southey and Landor. 229
oftener in Greek than in Latin, in Latin than in French, in
French than in English. Here follow some of the dullest lines in
Milton :
Him, after long debate irresolute
Of thoughts resolved, his final sentence chose
Fit vessel, fittest imp of fraud, in whom
To enter, and his dark suggestion hide
From sharpest sight : for in the wily snake
Whatever sleights, none would suspicious mark,
A* from his wit and native subtilty
Proceeding, which in other beasts observed,
Doubt might beget of diabolic power
Active within, beyond the sense of brute.
Not to insist on the prosaic of the passage, we may inquire who
could be suspicious, or who could know any thing about his wit and
suhtility ? He had been created but a few days ; and probably
no creature (brute, human, or angelic ) had ever taken the least
notice of him, or heard anything of his propensities. " Diabolic
power " had taken no such direction ; and the serpent was so
obscure a brute that the Devil himself knew scarcely where to
find him. When, however, he did find him,
[183.] In labyrinth of many a round self-rolled,
His head the midst, -welt stored -with ttAtilt wi/,
he made the most of him. But why had he hitherto borne
so bad a character ? Who had ever yet been a sufferer by his
wit and subtilty ? In the very next verses, the poet says he
was
Not nocent yet ; but on the grassy herb
Fearless, unfear'd, he slept.
Soutbey. These are the contradictions of a dreamer. Horace
has said of Homer, "aJiquando bonus dormitat" This really
is no napping; it is heavy snoring. But how fresh and
vigorous he rises the next moment ! And we are carried by
him, we know not how, into the presence of Eve, and help
her to hold down the strong and struggling woodbine for the
arbor. I wish Milton had forgotten the manner of Euripides
in his dull reflections, and had not forced into Adam's
mouth,
230 Imaginary Conversations.
[231.] For nothing lovelier can be found
In woman than to study household good,
And good works in her husband to promote.
All this is very true, but very tedious, and very out of place.
Landor. Let us come into the open air again with her. I
wish she had not confessed such a predilection for
581. The smell of sweetest fennel ;
for, although it is said to be very pleasant to serpents, no serpent
had yet communicated any of his tastes to womankind. Again,
I suspect you would wish our good Milton a little farther from
the schools, when he tells Eve that
[267.] The wife, where danger or dishonor lurks,
Safest and seemliest by her husband stays,
Who guards her, or with her the worst endures.
But how fully and nobly he compensates the inappropriate
thought by the most appropriate !
[178.] Just then return'd at shut of evening flowers.
Southey.
625. To whom the wily adder, blithe and glad.
I strongly object to the word adder, which reduces the grand
serpent to very small dimensions. It never is, or has been,
applied to any other species than the little ugly venomous
viper of our country. Of such a reptile, it never could be
said that
[631.] He ... swiftly roll'd
In tangles.
Nor that
Hope elevates, and joy
Brightens his crest.
Here, again, Homer would have run into no such error. But
error is more pardonable than wantonness, such as he commits
in verse 648 :
Fruitless to me, though fruit be here to excess.
Southey and Landor. 231
Landor. You have often, no doubt, repeated in writing a
word you had written just before. Milton has done it inad-
vertently in
674. While each part,
Motion, each act, won audience ere the tongue, &c.
Evidently each should be and. Looking at the tempter in the
shape of an addtr^ as he is last represented to us, there is
something which prepares for a smile on the face of Eve, when
he says,
[687.] Lk o* me,
Me, who have touched and tasted, yet both live
And life more perfect have attained than fate
Meant me,
Now certainly the adder was the most hideous creature that
i-vrr had crossed her path ; and she had no means of knowing,
unless by taking his own word for it, that he was a bit wiser
than the rest, Indeed, she had heard the voices of many long
before she had heard his ; and, as they all excelled him in state-
liness, she might well imagine they were by no means inferior to
him in intellect, and were more likely by their conformation to
have reached and eaten the apple, although they held their tongues.
In verse 781,
She plucked, she rt,
Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her teat, &c.
Surely he never wrote eat for ate ; nor would he admit a rhyme
where he could at least palliate it. But although we met together
for the purpose of plucking out the weeds and briars of this
boundless and most glorious garden, and not of over-lauding the
praises of others, we must admire the wonderful skill of Milton
in this section of his work. He represents Eve as beginning to
be deceitful and audacious ; as ceasing to fear, and almost as ceas-
ing to reverence the Creator ; and shuddering not at extinction
itself, until she thinks
[828.] Of Adam wedded to another Eve.
Southty. We shall lose our dinner, our supper, and our sleep,
232 Imaginary Conversations.
if we expatiate on the innumerable beauties of the volume : we
have scarcely time to note the blemishes. Among these,
[853.] In her face excuse
Came prologue and apology less 7 prompt.
There is a levity and impropriety in thus rushing on the stage.
I think the verses 957, 958, and 959 superfluous, and somewhat
dull ; beside that they are the repetition of verses 9 1 5 and 9 1 6
in his soliloquy.
Landor. I wish that after verse 1 003,
Wept at completing of the mortal sin,
every verse were omitted, until we reach the 1 1 2 1 st.
They sat them down to weep.
A very natural sequence. We should indeed lose some fine
poetry ; in which, however, there are passages which even the
sanctitude of Milton is inadequate to veil decorously. At all
events, we should get fairly rid of " Herculean Samson." V.
1060.
Southey. But you would also lose such a flood of harmony as
never ran on earth beyond that Paradise. I mean,
[1080.] How shall I behold the face
Henceforth of God or angel, erst with joy
And rapture so oft beheld ? Those heavenly shapes
Will dazzle now this earthly with their blaze,
Insufferably bright. Oh ! might I here
In solitude live savage ! in some glade
Obscured, where highest woods, impenetrable
To star or sunlight, spread their umbrage broad
And brown as evening. Cover me, ye pines.
Ye cedars, with innumerable boughs,
Hide me, where I may never see them more.
Landor. Certainly, when we read these verses, the ear is
closed against all others, for the day, or even longer. It some-
times is a matter of amusement to hear the silliness of good men
(7 Globe ed. reads :
"... in her face excuse
Came prologue, and apology to prompt,
Which, with bland words at will, she thus addressed."]
Southey and Landor. 233
conversing on poetry ; but when they lift up some favorite on their
shoulders, and tell us to look at one equal in height to Milton, I
feel strongly inclined to scourge the more prominent fool of the
two, the moment I can discover which it is.
Southey.
1 064. L n g they *** as 'trucken mute.
Stillingfleet says, " This vulgar expression may owe its origin to
the stories in romances of the effect of the magical wand." No-
thing more likely. How many modes of speech are called vulgar,
in a contemptuous sense, which, because of their propriety and
aptitude, strike the senses of all who hear them, and remain in
the memory during the whole existence of the language ! This
is one, and although of daily parlance, it is highly poetical, and
among the few flowers of romance that retain their freshness and
odor.
Landor. ^
Bk. x., T. 5. For what can 'scape the eye, &c.
When we find in Milton such words as 'scape, 'sdain, &c., with
the sign of elision in front of them, we may attribute such a sign
to the wilfulness of the printer, and the indifference of the author
in regard to its correction. He wrote both words without it, from
the Italian scappare and sdegnare. In verse 29,
Made haste to make appear, '
is negligence or worse ; but incomparably worse still is,
95. And usher in
The evening cool, when he from wrath more cool.
Southey. In 1 1 8, he writes revile (a substantive) for rebuke.
In 130 and 131 are two verses of similar pauses in the same
place :
I should conceal, and not expose to blame
By my complaint.
The worst of it is, that the words become a verse, and a less
heavy one, by tagging the two pieces together.
And not expose to blame by my complaint.
I agree with you that, in blank verse, the pause, after the fourth
234 Imaginary Conversations.
syllable, which Pope and Johnson seem to like the best, is
very tiresome if often repeated ; and Milton seldom falls into
it. But he knew where to employ it with effect : for example,
in this sharp reproof, twice over. Verses 1 45 and 1 46 :
Was she thy God, that her thou didst obey
Before his voice ?
In verse 1 5 5 he represents the Almighty using a most unseemly
metaphor :
Which was thy part
And person.
A metaphor taken from the masks of the ancient stage certainly
ill suits " His part and person."
Landor. Here are seven (v. 175) such vile verses, and
forming so vile a sentence, that it appears to me a part of God's
malediction must have fallen on them on their way from Genesis.
In 194, he says,
Children thou shalt bring
In sorrow forth, and to thy husband's will
Thine shall submit : he over thee shall rule.
The Deity had commanded the latter part from the beginning :
it now comes as the completion of the curse.
Verse 1 98 is no verse at all.
Because thou hast harkened to the voice of thy wife.
There are very few who have not done this, bon-gre mal-gre,
and many have thought it curse enough of itself ; poor Milton,
no doubt, among the rest.
Southey. I suspect you will abate a little of your hilarity,
if you continue to read from verse 220 about a dozen : they
are most oppressive.
[z66.] I shall not lag behind, nor err
The way thou leading.
Such is the punctuation ; wrong, I think. I would read,
I shall not lag behind nor err,
The way thou leading.
Landor. He was very fond of this Latinism ; but to err a
Southey and Landor. 235
way is neither Latin idiom nor English. From 293 to 316,
what a series of verses! a structure more magnificent and
wonderful than the terrific bridge itself, the construction of
which required the united work of the two great vanquishers of
all mankind.
Southey. Pity that he could not abstain from a pun at the
bridge-foot, "by wondrous art pontifical" In verse 348 he
recurs to the word pontlfice. A few lines above, I mean verse
3 1 5, there must be a parenthesis. The verses are printed,
Following the track
Of Satan to the self-same place where he
First lighted from his wing and Landed safe
From out of chaos, to the outside bare
Of this round world.
I would place all the words after " Satan," including chaos,
in a parenthesis ; else we must alter the second to for on ; and
it is safer and more reverential to correct the punctuation of
a great poet than the slightest word. Bentley is much addicted
to this impertinence.
Landor. In his emendations, as he calls them, both of
Milton and of Horace, for one happy conjecture he makes at
least twenty wrong, and ten ridiculous. In the Greek poets,
and sometimes in Terence, he, beyond the rest of the pack, was
often brought into the trail by scenting an unsoundness in the
metre. But let me praise him where few think of praising him,
or even of suspecting his superiority. He wrote better English
than his adversary Middleton, and established for his university
that supremacy in classical literature which it still retains.
In verse 369 I find "Thou us empower^/." This is ungram-
matical : it should be empowered/, since it relates to time past.
Had it related to time present, it would still be wrong : it should
then be empower^//. I wonder that Bentley has not remarked
this, for it lay within his competence.
Southty. That is no reason why he omitted to remark it. I
like plain English so much that I cannot refrain from censuring
the phraselogy of verse 345, "With joy and tidings fraught,"
meaning joyful tidings, and defended by Virgil's munera Utitiamque
dei. Phrases are not good, whether in Latin or English, which
do not convey their meaning unbroken and unobstructed. The
236 Imaginary Conversations.
best understanding would with difficulty master such expressions,
of which the signification is traditional from the grammarians, but
beyond the bounds of logic, or even the liberties of speech. You,
who. have ridiculed Virgil's odor attulit auras, and many similar
foolish tricks committed by him, will pardon my animadversion
on a smaller (though no small) fault in Milton.
Landor. Right. Again I go forward to punctuation.
Bentley is puzzled again at verse 368. It is printed with the
following :
Thou hast achieved our liberty, confined
Within hell-gates till now ; thou us empower'd
To fortify thus far, and overlay
With this portentous bridge, the dark abyss.
The punctuation should be,
Thou hast achieved our liberty : confined
Within hell-gates till now, thou us empowerdst, &c.
I wonder that Milton should a second time have committed so
grave a grammatical fault as he does in writing " thou empowera/,"
instead of empoweredr/. Verse 380,
Parted by the empyreal bounds,
His quadrature, from thy orbicular world.
Again the schoolmen, and the crazy philosophers who followed
them. It was believed that the empyrean is a quadrangle,
because in the Revelation the Holy City is square. It is lament-
able that Milton should throw overboard such prodigious stores
of poetry and wisdom, and hug with such pertinacity the ill-tied
bladders of crude learning. But see him here again in all his
glory. I wish indeed he had rejected "the plebeian angel
militant," and that we might read, missing four verses,
[441.] He through the midst unmarked
Ascended his high throne.
What noble verses, fifteen together !
Southey. It is much to be regretted that most of the worst
verses and much of the foulest language are put into the mouth
Southey and Landor. 237
of the Almighty. For instance, verse 630, &c. I am afraid
you will be less tolerant here than you were about the quadrature.
My hell-hounds, to lick up the draff and filth . . .
. . .till crammed and gorged, nigh burst . . .
With suckt and glutted ottal.
We are come
[657.] To the other ti\v.
Their planetary motions and aspects,
In sextile, square, and trine, and opposite
693. Like change on sea and land ; literal blast.
Although he is partial to this scansion, I am inclined to believe
that here he wrote sidereal ; because the same scansion as sideral
recurs in the close of the verse next but one :
Now /row the north.
And, if it is not too presumptuous, I should express a doubt
whether the poet wrote
[795-] Is nis wnt h ilso? Be it : man is not so.
Not so and also, in this position, are disagreeable to the ear;
which might have been avoided by omitting the unnecessary so
at the close.
Landor. You are correct. " Ay me" So I find it spelled
(v. 813), not ah me! as usually. It is wonderful that, of all
things borrowed, we should borrow the expression of grief.
One would naturally think that every nation had its own, and
indeed every man his. Ay me ! is the abime of the Italians.
Abi lasso! is also theirs. Our gadso, less poetical and senti-
mental, comes also from them : we need not look for the root.
Southey. Again I would curtail a long and somewhat foul
excrescence, terminating with coarse invectives against the female
sex, and with reflections more suitable to the character and
experience of Milton than of Adam. I would insert my pruning-
knife at verse 871,
To warn all creatures from thee
and cut clean through, quite to "household peace confound,"
verse 908.
238 Imaginary Conversations.
Landor. The reply of Eve is exquisitely beautiful, espe-
cially,
[930.] Both have sinned, but thou
Against God only, I against God and thee.
At last her voice fails her,
Me, me only, just object of his ire.
Bentley, and thousands more, would read, " Me, only me ! "
But Milton did not write for Bentley, nor for those thousands
more. Similar, in the trepidation of grief, is Virgil's " Me,
me, adsum qui feci," &c.
1003. Why stand we longer shivering under fears,
That show no end but death, and have the power
Of many ways to die the shortest choosing,
Destruction with destruction to destroy.
This punctuation is perhaps the best yet published : but, after
all, it renders the sentence little better than nonsense. Eve,
according to this, talks at once of hesitation and of choice,
"shivering under fears," and both of them "choosing the
shortest way ; " yet she expostulates with Adam why he is
not ready to make the choice. The perplexity would be solved
by writing thus :
Why stand we longer shivering under fears
That show no end but death ? and have the power
Of many ways to die ! the shortest choose
Destruction with destruction to destroy.
If we persist in retaining the participle choosing, instead of
the imperitive choose, grammar, sense, and spirit, all escape us.
1 am convinced that it was an oversight of the transcriber ; and
we know how easily, in our own works, faults to which the
eye and ear are accustomed escape our detection, and we are
surprised when they are first pointed out to us.
Southey. I wish you could mend as easily,
1053. O n me *he curse aslope
Glanced on the ground : with labor I must earn, &c.
Landor. In the very first verse of the eleventh book, Milton
is resolved to display his knowledge of the Italian idiom. We
Southey and Landor. 239
left Adam and Eve prostrate ; and prostrate he means that they
should still appear to us, although he writes,
Thus they, in loneliest plight, repentant flood
Praying.
Stavano pregando would signify they continued praying. The
Spaniards have the same expression : the French, who never
stand still on any occasion, are without it.
Southey. It id piteous that Milton, in all his strength, is
forced to fall back on the old fable of Deucalion and Pyrrha.
And the prayers which the Son of God presents to the Father
in a "golden censer, mixed with incense," had never yet been
offered to the Mediator, and required no such accompaniment
or conveyance. There are some noble lines beginning at verse
72 ; but one of them is prosaic in itself, and its discord is profit-
less to the others. In verse 86,
Of that defended fruit,
I must remark that Milton is not quite exempt from the evil
spirit of saying things for the mere pleasure of defending them.
Chaucer used the word defend as the English of education then
used it, in common with the French. It was obsolete in that
sense when Milton wrote ; so it was even in the age of Spencer,
who is forced to employ it for the rhyme.
Landor. This evil spirit, which you find hanging about
Milton, fell on him from two school-rooms, both of which are
now become much less noisy and somewhat more instructive,
although Phillpots is in the one, and although Brougham is in
the other ; I mean the school-rooms of theology and criticism.
Southey. You will be glad that he accents contrite (v. 90)
on the last syllable, but the gladness will cease at the first of
receptacle, verse 123.
Landor. I question whether he pronounced it so. My
opinion is that he pronounced it receptacle, Latinizing as usual,
and especially in Book VIII., v. 565,
By attributing overmuch to things, &c.
We are strange perverters of Latin accentuations. From
we make "irritate ; from excito, excite. But it must be con-
240 Imaginary Conversations.
ceded that the latter is much for the better, and perhaps the
former also. You will puzzle many good Latin scholars in Eng-
land, and nearly all abroad, if you make them read any sentence
containing irrito or excito in any of their tenses. 1 have often
tried it ; and nearly all, excepting the Italians, have pronounced
both words wrong.
Southey.
[118.] Watchful cherubim, four faces each
Had, like a double Janus.
Better left this to the imagination : double Januses are queer
figures. He continues,
All their shape
Spangled with eyes, more numerous than those
Of Argus.
At the restoration of learning, it was very pardonable to seize
on every remnant of antiquity, and to throw together into one
great storeroom whatever could be collected from all countries,
and from all authors, sacred and profane. Dante has done it,
sometimes rather ludicrously. Milton here copies his Argus.
And, four lines farther on, he brings forward Leticothoc, in her
own person, although she had then no existence.
Landor. Nor indeed had subscriptions, to articles or any
thing else: yet we find "but Fate subscribed not," v. 181.
And within three more lines, "The bird of Jove." Otherwise,
the passage is one of exquisite beauty. Among the angels,
and close at the side of the archangel, " Iris had dipped her
woof." Verse 267, retire is a substantive, from the Italian and
Spanish.
How divinely beautiful is the next passage ! It is impos-
sible not to apply to Milton himself the words he has attributed
to Eve :
[281.] From thee
How shall I part ? and whither wander down
Into a lower world ?
My ear, I confess it, is dissatisfied with every thing, for days and
weeks, after the harmony of Paradise Lost. Leaving this
magnificent temple, I am hardly to be pacified by the fairy-built
Southey and Landor. 241
chambers, the rich cupboards of embossed plate, and the omni-
genous images of Shakspeare.
Southey. I must interrupt your transports.
[385.] His eye might there command where ever stood
City of old or modern fame.
Here are twenty-five lines describing cities to exist long after,
and many which his eye could not have commanded even if they
existed then, because they were situated on the opposite side of
the globe. But some of them, the poet reminds us afterward,
Adam might have seen in spirit. Diffuse as he is, he appears
quite moderate in comparison with Tasso on a similar occasion,
who expatiates not only to the length of five-and-twenty lines,
but to between four and five hundred.
Landor. At verse 480 there begins a catalogue of diseases,
which Milton increased in the second edition of the poem.
He added,
Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy,
And moonstruck madness, pining atrophy,
Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence I
There should be no comma after " melancholy," as there is in
my copy.
Southey. And in mine too. He might have afforded to
strike out the two preceding verses when these noble ones were
presented.
Intestine stone and ulcer, colic pangs,
are better to be understood than to be expressed. His descrip-
tion of old age is somewhat less sorrowful and much less repulsive.
It closes with,
[543.] In thy blood will reign
A melancholy damp of cold and dry.
Nobody could understand this who had not read the strange
notions of physicians, which continued down to the age of
Milton, in which we find such nonsense as " adust humors."
I think you would be unreluctant to expunge verses 624, 625,
626, 627.
IV. o
242 Imaginary Conversations.
Landor. Quite : and there is also much verbiage about the
giants, and very perplexed from verse 688 to 697. But some of
the heaviest verses in the poem are those on Noah, from 717 to
737. In the following, we have "vapour and exhalation" which
signify the same.
749. Sea covered sea,
Sea without shore.
This is very sublime ; and indeed I could never heartily join with
those who condemn in Ovid
Omnia pontus erant ; deerant quoque litora ponto.
It is true, the whole fact is stated in the first hemistich ; but the
mind's eye moves from the centre to the circumference, and the
pleonasm carries it into infinity. If there is any fault in this
passage of Ovid, Milton has avoided it ; but he frequently falls
into one vastly more than Ovidian, and after so awful a pause as
is nowhere else in all the regions of poetry :
How didst thou grieve then, Adam, to behold
The end of all thy offspring ! end so sad !
Depopulation !
Thee another food,
Of tears and sorroiv a food, thee also dr owned)
And sank thee as thy sons,
It is wonderful how little reflection on many occasions, and
how little knowledge on some very obvious ones, is displayed by
Bentley. To pass over his impudence in pretending to correct the
words of Milton (whose handwriting was extant), just as he
would the corroded or corrupt text of any ancient author, here in
verse 895, "To drown the world with man therein, or beast"
he tells us that birds are forgot, and would substitute " With man
or beast or fowl." He might as well have said that fleas are
forgot. Beast means every thing that is not man. It would be
much more sensible to object to such an expression as men and
animals, and to ask, Are not men animals ? and even more so
than the rest, if anlma has with men a more extensive meaning
than with other creatures. . Bentley in many things was very acute ;
but his criticisms on poetry produce the same effect as the water
of a lead mine on plants. He knew no more about it than Hal lam
Southey and Landor. 243
knows, in whom acuteness is certainly not blunted by such a
weight of learning.
Southey. We open the twelfth book : we see land at last.
l.andor. Yes, and dry land too. Happily the twelfth is the
shortest. In a continuation of six hundred and twenty-five flat
verses, we are prepared for our passage over several such deserts
of almost equal extent, and still more frequent, in Paradise Re-
gained. But, at the close of the poem now under our examina-
tion, there is a brief union of the sublime and the pathetic for
about twenty lines, beginning with " All in bright array."
We are comforted by the thought that Providence had not
abandoned our first parents, but was still their guide ; that,
although they had lost Paradise, they were not debarred from
Eden ; that, although the angel had left them solitary and
sorrowing, he left them "yet in peace." The termination is
proper and complete.
In Johnson's estimate I do not perceive the unfairness of which
many have complained. Among his first observations is this:
" Scarcely any recital is wished shorter for the sake of quickening
the main action." This is untrue : were it true, why remark, as
he does subsequently, that the poem is mostly read as a duty, not
as a pleasure. I think it unnecessary to say a word on the moral
or the subject ; for it requires no genius to select a grand one.
The heaviest poems may be appended to the loftiest themes.
Andreini and others, whom Milton turned over and tossed aside,
are evidences. It requires a large stock of patience to travel
through Vida ; and we slacken in our march, although accom-
panied with the livelier sing-song of Sannazar. Let any reader,
who is not by many degrees more pious than poetical, be
asked whether he felt a very great interest in the greatest
actors of Paradise Lost, in what is either said or done by the
angels or the Creator ; and whether the humblest and weakest
does not most attract him. Johnson's remarks on the allegory
of Milton are just and wise ; so are those on the non-materi-
ality or non-immateriality of Satan. These faults might have
been easily avoided ; but Milton, with all his strength, chose
rather to make antiquity his shield-bearer, and to come forward
under a protection which he might proudly have disdained.
Southey. You will not countenance the critic, nor Dryden
244 Imaginary Conversations.
whom he quotes, in saying that Milton " saw Nature through
the spectacles of books."
Landor. Unhappily, both he and Dryden saw Nature from
between the houses of Fleet Street. If ever there was a poet
who knew her well, and described her in all her loveliness, it
was Milton. In the Paradise Lost, how profuse in his descrip-
tions, as became the time and place ! In the Allegro and Penseroso,
how exquisite and select !
Johnson asks, " What Englishman can take delight in tran-
scribing passages, which, if they lessen the reputation of Milton,
diminish in some degree the honor of our country ! " I hope
the honor of our country will always rest on truth and justice.
It is not by concealing what is wrong that any thing right can
be accomplished. There is no pleasure in transcribing such
passages ; but there is great utility. Inferior writers exercise no
interest, attract no notice, and serve no purpose. Johnson has
himself done great good by exposing great faults in great authors.
His criticism on Milton's highest work is the most valuable of
alljhis writings. He seldom is erroneous in his censures; but
he never is sufficiently excited to admiration of what is purest
and highest in poetry. He has this in common with common
minds (from which, however, his own is otherwise far remote),
to be pleased with what is nearly on a level with him, and to
drink as contentedly a heady beverage, with its discolored
froth, as what is of the best vintage. He is morbid, not only
in his weakness, but in his strength. There is much to pardon,
much to pity, much to respect, and no little to admire, in
him.
After I have been reading the Paradise Lost, I can take up
no other poet with satisfaction. I seem to have left the music
of Handel for the music of the streets, or at best for drums
and fifes. Although in Shakspeare there are occasional bursts
of harmony no less sublime ; yet, if there were many such
in continuation, it would be hurtful, not only in comedy, but
also in tragedy. The greater part should be equable and con-
versational. For, if the excitement were the same at the be-
ginning, the middle, and the end ; if, consequently (as must be
the case), the language and versification were equally elevated
throughout, any long poem would be a bad one, and, worst of
Southey and Landor. 245
;ill, a drama. In our English heroic verse, such as Milton has
composed it, there is a much greater variety of feet, of move-
ment, of musical notes and bars, than in the Greek heroic ; and
the final sounds are incomparably more diversified. My predilec-
tion in youth was on the side of Homer ; for I had read the
Iliad twice, and the Odyssea once, before the Paradise Lost.
Averse as I am to every thing relating to theology, and especi-
ally to the view of it thrown open by this poem, I recur to it
incessantly as the noblest specimen in the world of eloquence,
harmony, and genius.
Southey. Learned and sensible men are of opinion that the
Paradise Lost should have ended with the words, " Providence
their guide." It might very well have ended there ; but we are
unwilling to lose sight all at once of our first parents. Only one
more glimpse is allowed us : we are thankful for it. We have
seen the natural tears they dropped ; we have seen that they
wiped them soon. And why was it ? Not because the world
was all before them ; but because there still remained for them,
under the guidance of Providence, not indeed the delights ot
Paradise, now lost for ever, but the genial clime and calm repose
of Eden.
Landor. It has been the practice in late years to supplant
one dynasty by another, political and poetical. Within our
own memory, no man had ever existed who preferred Lucretius
on the whole to Virgil, or Dante to Homer. But the great
Florentine, in these days, is extolled high above the Grecian and
Milton. Few, I believe, have studied him more attentively or
with more delight than I have ; but, beside the prodigious dis-
proportion of the bad to the good, there are fundamental defects
which there are not in either of the other two. In the Divina
Commedia the characters are without any bond of union, any
field of action, any definite aim. There is no central light above
the Bolge ; and we are chilled in Paradise even at the side of
Beatrice.
Southey. Some poetical Perillus must surely have invented
the terza rima. I feel in reading it as a school-boy feels when
he is beaten over the head with a bolster.
Landor. We shall hardly be in time for dinner. What
should we have been if we had repeated with just eulogies all the
noble things in the poem we have been reading ?
246 Imaginary Conversations.
Souihey. They would never have weaned you from the
Mighty Mother who placed her turreted crown on the head of
Shakspeare.
Landor. A rib of Shakspeare would have made a Milton ;
the same portion of Milton, all poets born ever since.
SECOND CONVERSATION. 1
Southey. As we are walking on, and before we open our
Milton again, we may digress a little in the direction of those
poets who have risen up from under him, and of several who seem
to have never had him in sight.
Landor. We will, if you please ; and I hope you may not
find me impatient to attain the object of our walk. However,
let me confess to you, at starting, that I disapprove of models,
even of the most excellent. Faults may be avoided, especially if
they are pointed out to the inexperienced in such bright examples
as Milton ; and teachers in schools and colleges would do well
to bring them forward, instead of inculcating an indiscriminate
admiration. But every man's mind, if there is enough of it, has
its peculiar bent. Milton may be imitated, and has been, where
he is stiff, where he is inverted, where he is pedantic ; and probably
those men we take for mockers were unconscious of their mockery.
But who can teach, or who is to be taught, his richness, or his
tenderness, or his strength ? The closer an inferior poet comes
to a great model, the more disposed am I to sweep him out of
my way.
Southey. Yet you repeat with enthusiasm the Latin poetiy of
Robert Smith, an imitator of Lucretius.
Landor. I do ; for Lucretius himself has nowhere written
such a continuity of admirable poetry. He is the only modern
Latin poet who has composed three sentences together worth
reading ; and, indeed, since Ovid, no ancient has done it. I
ought to bear great ill-will toward him ; for he drove me from
the path of poetry I had chosen, and I crept into a lower. What
p Works, ii., 1846. Works, iv., 1876.]
Southey and Lander. 247
a wonderful thing it is, that the most exuberant and brilliant wit,
and the purest poetry in the course of eighteen centuries, should
have flowed from two brothers !
Southey. We must see through many ages before we see
through our own distinctly. Few among the best judges, and
even among those who desired to judge dispassionately and im-
partially, have beheld their contemporaries in those proportions in
which they appeared a century later. The ancients have greatly
the advantage over us. Scarcely can any man believe that one
whom he has seen in coat and cravat can possibly be so great as
one who wore a chlamys and a toga. Those alone look gigantic
whom Time " multo acre sepsit" or whom childish minds, for the
amusement of other minds more childish, have lifted upon stilts.
Nothing is thought so rash as to mention a modern with an
ancient ; but, when both are ancient, the last-comer often stands
first. The present form one cluster, the past another. We are
petulant if some of the existing have pushed by too near us ; but
we walk up composedly to the past, with all our prejudices
behind us. We compare them leisurely one with another, and
feel a pleasure in contributing to render them a plenary, however
a turdy, justice. In the fervor of our zeal, we often exceed it ;
which we never are found doing with our contemporaries, unless
in malice to one better than the rest. Some of our popular and
most celebrated authors are employed by the booksellers to cry
up the wares on hand or forthcoming, partly for money and
partly for payment in kind. Without such management, the
best literary production is liable to moulder on the shelf.
Landor. A wealthy man builds an ample mansion, well pro-
portioned in all its parts, well stored with the noblest models of
antiquity ; extensive vales and downs and forests stretch away
from it in every direction ; but the stranger must of necessity pass
it by, unless a dependent is stationed at a convenient lodge to ad-
mit and show him in. Such, you have given me to understand,
is become the state of our literature. The bustlers who rise into
notice by playing at leap frog over one another's shoulders will
disappear when the game is over ; and no game is shorter. But
was not Milton himself kept beyond the paling ? Nevertheless,
how many toupees and roquelaures, and other odd things with odd
names, have fluttered among the jays in the cherry orchard, while
248 Imaginary Conversations.
we tremble to touch with the finger's end his grave, close-buttoned
gabardine ! He was called strange and singular long before he
was acknowledged to be great : so, be sure, was Shakspeare ; so,
be sure, was Bacon ; and so were all the rest, in the order of
descent. You are too generous to regret that your liberal praise
of Wordsworth was seized upon with avidity by his admirers, not
only to win others to their party, but also to depress your merits.
Nor will you triumph over their folly in confounding what is piti-
ful with what is admirable in him ; rather will you smile, and,
without a suspicion of malice, find the cleverest of these good
people standing on his low joint-stool with a slender piece of
wavering tape in his hand, measuring him with Milton back to
back. There is as much difference between them as there is
between a celandine and an ilex. The one lies at full length and
full breadth along the ground ; the other rises up, stiff, strong,
lofty, beautiful in the play of its slenderer branches, overshadow-
ing with the infinitude of its grandeur.
Southey. You will be called to account as resentful ; and not
for yourself, which you never have been thought, but for another,
a graver fault in the estimation of most.
Landor. I do not remember that resentment has ever made
me commit an injustice. Instead of acrimony, it usually takes the
form of ridicule ; and the sun absorbs whatever is noxious in the
vapor.
Southey. You think me mild and patient ; yet I have found it
difficult to disengage from my teeth the clammy and bitter heavi-
ness of some rotten nuts with which my Edinburgh hosts have
regaled me ; and you little know how tiresome it is to wheeze
over the chaff and thistle-beards in the chinky manger of
Hallam.2
Landor. We are excellent Protestants in asserting the liberty
of private judgment on all the mysteries of poetry ; denying the
exercise of a decretal to any one man, however intelligent and
[ 2 There are several attacks upon Hallam in this Conversation. Landor
appears to have had two reasons for disliking him. In the first place, he
always ascribed to Hallam an unfavourable review of the Pentameron
which appeared in the Foreign Quarterly; moreover, Landor had met
Hallam at Sir Charles Elton s, and had been snubbed by him. (See
Forster's Life, p. 204.]
Southey and Landor. 249
enlightened, but assuming it for a little party of our own, with
Sf/fin the chair. A journalist who can trip up a slippery minister
fancies himself able to pull down the loftiest poet or the soundest
critic. It is amusing to see the labors of Lilliput.
Southey. I have tasted the contents of every bin, down to the
ginger-beer of Brougham. The balance of criticism is not yet
fixed to any beam in the public warehouses that offer it, but is
held unevenly by intemperate hands, and is swayed about by every
puff of wind.
Landor. Authors should never be seen by authors, and little
by other people. The Dalai Lama is a god to the imagination,
a child to the sight ; and a poet is much the same ; only that the
child excites no vehemence, while the poet is staked and faggoted
by his surrounding brethren, all from pure love, however ; partly
for himself, partly for truth. When it was a matter of wonder
how Keats, who was ignorant of Greek, could have written his
Hyperion, Shelley, whom envy never touched, gave as a reason,
" Because he tvat a Greek. Wordsworth, being asked his
opinion of the same poem, called it, scoffingly, " a pretty piece of
paganism." Yet he himself, in the best verses he ever wrote, and
beautiful ones they are, reverts to the powerful influence of the
pagan creed.
Southey. How many who write fiercely or contemptuously
against us, not knowing us at all, would, if some accident or whim
had never pushed them in the wrong direction, write with as much
satisfaction to themselves a sonnet full of tears and tenderness on
our death ! In the long voyage we both of us may soon expect
to make, the little shell-fish will stick to our keels, and retard us
one knot in the thousand. But while we are here, let us step
aside, and stand close by the walls of the old houses ; making
room for the swell-mob of authors to pass by, with their puffiness
of phraseology, their german-silver ornaments, their bossy and ill-
soldered sentences, their little and light parlor-faggots of trim
philosophy, and their top-heavy baskets of false language, false
criticism, and false morals.
Landor. Our sinews have been scarred and hardened with the
red-hot implements of Byron ; and, by way of refreshment, we
are now standing up to the middle in the marsh. We are told
that the highly-seasoned is unwholesome ; and we have taken in
250 Imaginary Conversations.
good earnest to clammy rye-bread, boiled turnips, and scrag of
mutton. If there is nobody who now can guide as through the
glades in the Forest of Arden, let us hail the first who will con-
duct us safely to the gates of Ludlow Castle. But we have other
reasons left on hand. For going through the Paradise Regained,
how many days' indulgence will you grant me ?
Souihey. There are some beautiful passages, as you know,
although not numerous. As the poem is much shorter than the
other, I will spare you the annoyance of uncovering its nakedness.
I remember to have heard you say that your ear would be better
pleased, and your understanding equally, if there had been a pause
at the close of the fourth verse.
Landor. True ; the three following are useless and heavy. I
would also make another defalcation, of the five after " else mute."
If the deeds he relates are
Above heroic, though in secret done,
it was unnecessary to say that they are
Worthy to have not remained so long unsung.
Southey. Satan, in his speech, seems to have caught hoarse-
ness and rheumatism since we met him last. What a verse is,
[85.] This is my Son beloved, in him, am pleased !
It would not have injured it to have made it English, by writing
" in him I am pleased." It would only have continued a sadly
dull one.
[i 1 8.] Of many a pleasant realm and province wide,
[139.] The Holy Ghost, and the power of the Highest.
But this is hardly more prosaic than, " Oh, 3 what a multitude
of thoughts, at once awakened in me, swarm, while I consider
what within I feel myself, and hear ! " &c. But the passage has
reference to the poet, and soon becomes very interesting on that
account.
[175.] But to vanquish by wisdom hellish wiles.
[ 3 Line 195. Globe ed.]
Southey and Landor. 251
It is difficult so to modulate our English verse as to render this
endurable to the ear. The first line in the Gcrusalemme Liberata
begins with a double trochee, Canto Varme. The word " But "
is too feeble for the trochee to turn on. We come presently to
such verses as we shall never see again out of this poem :
[199.] And he still on was led, but with such thoughts
Accompanied, of things past and to come,
Lodged in hi* breast, as well might recommend
Su^h solitude before choicest society.
[360.] But was driven
With them from bliss to the bottomless deep.
This is dactylic.
With them from | bliss to the bottomless | deep.
412. He before had sat
Among the prime in splendor, now deposed,
Ejected, emptied, gazed, unpitied. shunn'd,
A spectacle of ruin or of scorn, &c.
Or should be am!.
[436.] Which they who ask'd have seldom understood,
And, not well under itood, as good not known.
To avoid the jingle, which perhaps he preferred, he might have
written " at well ; " but how prosaic !
Landor. The only tolerable part of the first book are the six
closing lines ; and these are the more acceptable because they are
the closing ones.
Soutbfy. The second book opens inauspiciously. The Devil
himself was never so unlike the Devil as these verses are unlike
verses :
[7.] Andrew and Simon, famous after known,
With other* though in holy writ not named,
Now missing him, &c.
[17.] Plain fishermen, no greater men them call.
Landor. I do not believe that any thing short of your friend-
ship would induce me to read a third time, during my life, the
Paradise Regained ; and I now feel my misfortune and imprud-
ence in having given to various friends this poem and many
2 5 2
Imaginary Conversations.
others, in which I have marked with a pencil the faults and
beauties. The dead level lay wide and without a finger-post ; the
highest objects appeared, with few exceptions, no higher or orna-
mental than bulrushes. We shall spend but little time in repeat-
ing all the passages where they occur ; and it will be a great
relief to us. Invention, energy, and grandeur of design the
three great requisites to constitute a great poet, and which no
poet since Milton hath united are wanting here. Call the design
a grand one, if you will ; you cannot, however, call it his.
Wherever there are thought, imagination, and energy, grace in-
variably follows; otherwise the colossus would be without its
radiance, and we should sail by with wonder and astonishment,
and gather no roses and gaze at no images on the sunny isle.
Southey. Shakspeare, whom you not only prefer to every
other poet, but think he contains more poetry and more wisdom
than all the rest united, is surely less grand in his designs than
several.
Landor. To the eye. But Othello was loftier than the citadel
of Troy ; and what a Paradise fell before him ! Let us descend ;
for from Othello we must descend, whatever road we take. Let
us look at Julius Casar. No man ever overcame such difficulties,
or produced by his life and death such a change in the world we
inhabit. But that also is a grand design which displays the in-
terior workings of the world within us, and where we see the
imperishable and unalterable passions depicted al fresco on a lofty
dome. Our other dramatists painted only on the shambles, and
represented what they found there, blood and garbage. We
leave them a few paces behind us, and step over the gutter into
the green-market. There are, however, men rising up among us,
endowed with exquisiteness of taste and intensity of thought.
At no time have there been so many who write well in so many
ways.
Southey. Have you taken breath ; and are you ready to go
on with me ?
Landor. More than ready, alert. For we see before us
a longer continuation of good poetry than we shall find again
throughout the whole poem, beginning at verse i 53, and ter-
minating at 224. In these, however, there are some bad verses,
such as,
Southey and Landor. 253
[153.] Among daughters of men the fairest found,
[171.] And made him bow to the gods of his wives.
Verse 180,
Cast wanton eyes on the daughters of men.
is false grammar : " thou cast" for, " them castcdst." I find
the same fault where I am as much surprised to find it, in
Shelley :
Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.
Shelley in his Cenct has overcome the greatest difficulty that ever
was overcome in poetry, although he has not risen to the greatest
elevation. He possesses less vigor than Byron, and less com-
mand of language than Keats ; but I would rather have written
his
" Music, when soft voices die,"
than all that Beaumont and Fletcher ever wrote, together with all
of their contemporaries, excepting Shakspeare.
Southty. It is wonderful that Milton should praise the con-
tinence of Alexander as well as of Scipio. Few conquerors had
leisure for more excesses, or indulged in greater, than Alexander.
He was reserved on one remarkable occasion : we hear of only
one. Scipio, a much better man, and temperate in all things,
would have been detested, even in Rome, if he had committed
that crime from which the forbearance is foolishly celebrated as
hU chief virtue.
You will not refuse your approbation to another long pas-
sage, beginning at verse 260, and ending at 300. But at the
conclusion of them, where the Devil says that ' beauty 4 stands
in the admiration only of weak minds," he savors a little of
the Puritan. Milton was sometimes angry with her ; but never
had she a more devoted or a more discerning admirer. For
these forty good verses, you will pardon,
[143.] After forty days' fasting bad remained.
[ 4 "For beauty stands in the admiration only of weak minds led
captive," is line 110. The passage, at whose conclusion it comes, must
be that praised by Landor above, and not the passage which Southey here
commends. There is some confusion in the passage as it now stands.")
254 Imaginary Conversations.
Landor. Very much like the progress of Milton himself in
this jejunery. I remember your description of the cookery in
Portugal and Spain, which my own experience most bitterly
confirmed; but I never met with a bonito " gris-amber-steamed." 5
This certainly was reserved for the Devil's own cookery. Our
Saviour, I think, might have fasted another forty days before he
could have stomached this dainty ; and the Devil, if he had had
his wits about him, might have known as much.
Southey. I have a verse in readiness which may serve as a
napkin to it :
[405.] And with these words his temptation pursued ;
where it would have been very easy to have rendered it less dis-
agreeable to the ear by a transposition,
And his temptation with these words pursued.
I am afraid you will object to a redundant heaviness in
[427.] Get riches first get -wealth and treasure heap ;
and no authority will reconcile you to roll-calls of proper names,
such as
[361.] Launcelot or Pellias or Pellenore ;
and
[446.] Quintius, Fabricius, Curius, Regulus ;
or, again, to such a verse as
[428.] Not difficult, if thou hearken to me.
Verse 461,
To him who wears the regal diadem,
is quite superfluous, and adds nothing to the harmony. Verses
472-476 have the same cesura. This, I believe, has never been
[ 5 Line 342 (Globe ed.).
" beasts of chase or fowl of game
. In pastry built or from the spit or boiled
Gris-amber steamed."
There is no bonito in Milton.]
Southey and Landor. 255
remarked, and yet is the most remarkable thing in all Milton's
poetry.
It is wonderful that any critic should be so stupid, as a
dozen or two of them have proved themselves to be, in ap-
plying the last verses of this second book to Christina of
Sweden :
To give a kingdom hath been thought
Greater and nobler done, and to lay down
Far more magnanimous than to assume.
Riches are needless then, &c.
Whether he had written this before or after the abdication of
Richard Cromwell, they are equally applicable to him. He
did retire not only from sovereignty but from riches. Christina
took with her to Rome prodigious wealth, and impoverished
Sweden by the pension she exacted.
The last lines are intolerably harsh :
Oftctt better *wV,
It may have been written * often : " a great relief to the ear,
and no detriment to the sense or expression. We never noticed
his care in avoiding such a ruggedness in verse 40 1 ,
Whose pains have earn'd the/ar-fet spoil.
He employed "far-/*-/" instead of " far-fetch *d ; " not only
because the latter is in conversational use, but because no sound
is harsher than "fetch'd" and especially before two sequent
consonants, followed by such words as "with that." It is
curious that he did not prefer " wherewith ; " both because a
verse ending in "that" is followed by one ending in "quite"
and because "that" also begins the next. I doubt whether
you will be satisfied with the first verse I have marked in the
third book,
[117.] From that placid aspe*ct and meek regard.
Landor. The trochee in "placid" is feeble there, and "meek
regard" conveys no new idea to " placid aspect." Presently we
come to
[335*1 Mules after these, camels and dromedaries,
And wagons fraught with utensils of war.
256 Imaginary Conversations.
And here, if you could find any pleasure in a triumph over the
petulance and frowardness of a weak adversary, you might laugh
at poor Hallam, who cites the following as among the noble
passages of Milton :
[337-] Such forces met not, nor so -wide a camp,
When Agrican with all his northern powers
Besieged Albracca, as romances tell,
The city of Gallafron, from whence to win
The fairest of her sex, Angelica.
Southey. How very like Addison when his milk was turned
to whey ! I wish I could believe that the applauders of this
poem were sincere, since it is impossible to think them judicious ;
their quotations, and especially Hallam's, having been selected
from several of the weakest parts when better were close before
them : but we have strong evidence that the opinion was given
in the spirit of contradiction, and from the habit of hostility to
what is eminent. I would be charitable. Hallam may have
hit upon the place by hazard ; he may have been in the situa-
tion of a young candidate for preferment in the church, who
was recommended to the Chancellor Thurlow. After much
contemptuousness and ferocity, the chancellor, throwing open on
the table his Book of Livings, commanded him to choose for
himself. The young man modestly and timidly thanked him
for his goodness, and entreated his lordship to exercise his own
discretion. With a volley of oaths, of which he was at all
times prodigal, but more especially in the presence of a clergy-
man, he cried aloud, " Put this pen, sir, at the side of one
or other." Hesitation was now impossible. The candidate
placed it without looking where : it happened to be at a bene-
fice of small value. Thurlow slapped his hand upon the table,
and roared, " By God ! you were within an ace of the best
living in my gift ! "
Landor. Hear the end :
His daughter, sought by many prowest knights,
Both Paynim and the peers of Charlemagne.
Southey* It would be difficult to extract, even from this
poem, so many schoolboy's verses together. The preceding,
Southey and Landor. 257
which also are verbose, are much more spirited ; and the illus-
tration of one force by the display of another, and which the
poet tells us is less, exhibits but small discrimination in the
critic who extols it. To praise a fault is worse than to com-
mit one. I know not whether any such critic has pointed out
for admiration the "glass of telescope" by which the Tempter
might have shown Rome to our Saviour, verse 42, Book IV.
But we must not pass over lines nearer the commencement,
verse 10 :
But as a man who had been matchless held
In cunning, over-reached where least he thought,
To salve his credit, and for very spite
Still will be tempting him who foils him still.
This is no simile, no illustration ; but exactly what Satan had
been doing.
Landor. The Devil grows very dry in the desert, where he
discourses
[178.] Of Academics old and new, with those
Surname J Peripatetics, and the sect
Epicurean, and the Stoic severe.
Soutbey. It is piteous to find the simplicity of the gospel
overlaid and deformed by the scholastic argumentation of our
Saviour, and by the pleasure he appears to take in holding a long
conversation with the adversary:
Not therefore am I short
Of knowing what I ought. He who receives
Light from above, from the fountain of light.
What a verse, verse 287, &c. ! A dissertation from our Saviour,
delivered to the Devil in the manner our poet has delivered it,
was the only thing wanting to his punishment ; and he catches
it at last. Verse 397 :
Darkness now rote
As daylight sunk, and brought in lowering night,
Her shadowy offspring.
This is equally bad poetry and bad philosophy : the darkness
rising and bringing in the night lowering ; when he adds,
258 Imaginary Conversations.
Unsubstantial both,
Privation mere of light and absent day.
How ? Privation of its absence ! He wipes away with a
single stroke of the brush two veiy . indistinct and ill-drawn
figures.
Landor.
Our Saviour meek and with untroubled mind,
After his airy jaunt, tho' hurried sore.
How " hurried sore," if with untroubled mind ?
Hungry and cold, betook him to his rest.
I should have been quite satisfied with a quarter of this.
Darkness now rose ;
Our Saviour meek betook him to his rest.
Such simplicity would be the more grateful and the more effective
in preceding that part of Paradise Regained which is the most
sublimely pathetic. It would be idle to remark the propriety of
accentuation of concourse, and almost as idle to notice that in
verse 420 is "
Thou only stoodst unshaken ;
and in verse 425,
Thou satst unappalled.
But to stand, as I said before, is to remain, or to be, in Milton,
following the Italian. Never was the eloquence of poetry so
net forth by words and numbers in any language as in this period.
Pardon the infernal and hellish.
Infernal ghosts and hellish furies round
Environ'd thee : some howl'd, some yell'd, some shriekt,
Some bent at thee their fiery darts, while thou
Satst unappalled in calm and sinless peace.
The idea of sitting is in itself more beautiful than of standing
or lying down ; but our Saviour is represented as lying down,
while,
The tempter watcht, and soon with ugly dreams
Disturbed his sleep.
Southey and Landor. 259
He could disturb but not appall him, as he himself says in
487.
Southey. It is thought by Joseph Warton and some others,
that, where the Devil says,
[500.] Then hear, O Son of David, virgin-born,
For Son of God to me is yet in doubt, &c.,
he speaks sarcastically in the word virgin-born. But the
Devil is not so bad a rhetorician as to turn round so suddenly
from the ironical to the serious. He acknowledges the miracle
of the nativity ; he pretends to doubt its divinity.
[541.] So saying he caught him up, and -without
Of hifftgri/j bore through the air sublime.
Satan had given good proof that his wing was more than a
match for a hippogrif's; and, if he had borrowed a hippogrif's
for the occasion, he could have made no use of it, unless he
had borrowed the hippogrif too, and rode before or behind
on him,
Over the wilderness and Vr the plain.
Two better verses follow ; but the temple of Jerusalem could
never have appeared,
Topt with golden tpiret.
[581.] So Satan fell ; and straight a fiery globe
Of angels on full sail of wing flew nigh,
Who on their plumy vans received him toft.
He means our Saviour, not Satan. In any ancient we should
manage a little the duetus fitfrarum, and for the wretched words,
"him soft" propose to substitute their lord. But by what
ingenuity can we erect into a verse verse 597 ?
In the bosom of bliss and light of light.
In verses 613 and 614 we find rhyme.
Landor. The angels seem to have lost their voices since they
left Paradise. Their denunciations against Satan are very angry,
but very weak :
260 Imaginary Conversations.
[629.] Thee and thy legions ; yelling they shall fly
And beg to hide them in a herd of siuine,
Lest he command them down into the deep,
Bound, and to torment sent before their time.
Surely they had been tormented long before.
The close of the poem is extremely languid, however much it
has been commended for its simplicity.
Southey.
He, unobserved,
Home, to his mother's house, private return'd.
Unobserved and private ; home and his " mother's house" are not
very distinctive.
Landor. Milton took but little time in forming the plan of his
Paradise Regained, doubtful and hesitating as he had been in the
construction of Paradise Lost. In composing a poem or any
other work of imagination, although it may be well and proper to
lay down a plan, I doubt whether any author of any durable work
has confined himself to it very strictly. But writers will no more
tell you whether they do or not than they will bring out before
you the foul copies, or than painters will admit you into the secret
of composing or of laying on their colors. I confess to you, that
a few detached thoughts and images have always been the
beginnings of my works. Narrow slips have risen up, more or
fewer, above the surface. These gradually became larger and
more consolidated ; freshness and verdure first covered one part,
then another ; then plants of firmer and of higher growth, how-
ever scantily, took their places, then extended their roots and
branches ; and among them and round about them in a little while
you yourself, and as many more as I desired, found places for
study and for recreation.
Returning to Paradise Regained. If a loop in the netting of
a purse is let down, it loses the money that is in it ; so a poem
by laxity drops the weight of its contents. In the animal body,
not only nerves and juices are necessaiy, but also continuity and
cohesion. Milton is caught sleeping after his exertions in Paradise
Lost, and the lock of his strength is shorn off; but here and there
a prominent muscle swells out from the vast mass of the collapsed.
Southey. The Samson Agonistes, now before us, is less Ian-
Southey and Landor. 261
guid ; but it may be charged with almost the heaviest fault of a
poem, or indeed of any composition, particularly the dramatic,
which is, there is insufficient coherency or dependence of part on
part. Let us not complain that, while we look at Samson and
hear his voice, we are forced to think of Milton, of his blindness,
of his abandonment, with as deep a commiseration. If we lay
open the few faults covered by his transcendent excellences, we
feel confident that none are more willing (or would be more
acceptable were he present) to pay him homage. I retain all my
admiration of his poetry ; you all yours, not only of his poetry,
but of his sentiments on many grave subjects.
Landfjr. I do ; but I should be reluctant to see disturbed the
order and course of things, by alterations at present unnecessary,
or by attempts at what might be impracticable. When an evil
can no longer be borne manfully and honestly and decorously, then
down with it, and put something better in its place. Meanwhile
guard strenuously against such evil. The vigilant will seldom be
constrained to vengeance.
Sou/key. Simple as is the plan of this drama, there are pretti-
nenes in it which would be far from ornamental anywhere. Milton
is much more exuberant in them than Ovid himself, who certainly
would never have been so commended by Quintilian for the
Media, had he written
7. Where I, a prisoner chain'd, scarce freely draw
The air imprisoned also.
But into what sublimity he soon ascends !
[40.] Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him
Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves.
Landor. My copy is printed as you read it ; but there ought
to be commas after eyeless, after Gaza, and after miff. Generally
our printers or writers put three commas where one would do ;
but here the grief of Samson is aggravated at every member of the
sentence. Surely it must have been the resolution of Milton to
render his choruses as inharmonious as he fancied the Greek were,
or would be, without the accompaniments of instruments, accen-
tuation, and chants. Otherwise, how can we account for " aban-
doned, 6 and by htmself given ovtr ; in slavish habit, itt-Jittcd weeds,
[Line no. Globe ed.]
262 Imaginary Conversations.
over-worn and soiled. Or do my eyes misrepresent ? Can this be he,
that heroic, that renowned, irresistible Samson ? ''
Southey. We are soon compensated, regretting only that
the chorus talks of " Chalybean tempered steel " in the beginning,
and then informs us of his exploit with the jaw-bone,
[145.] In Ramath-lehij^woi/j to this day.
It would be strange indeed if such a victory as was never won
before were forgotten in twenty years, or thereabout.
Southey. Passing Milton's oversights, we next notice his
systematic defects. Fondness for Euripides made him too
didactic when action was required. Perhaps the French drama
kept him in countenance, although he seems to have paid little
attention to it, comparatively.
Landor. The French drama contains some of the finest
didactic poetry in the world, and is peculiarly adapted both to
direct the reason and to control the passions. It is a well-lighted
saloon of graceful eloquence, where the sword-knot is appended
by the hand of Beauty, and where the snuff-box is composed of
such brilliants as, after a peace or treaty, kings bestow on
diplomatists. Whenever I read a French Alexdrine, I fancy I
receive a box on the ear in the middle of it, and another at the
end, sufficient, if not to pain, to weary me intolerably, and to
make the book drop out of my hand. Moliere and La Fontaine
can alone by their homoeopathy revive me. Such is the power
of united wit and wisdom in ages the most desperate ! These
men, with Montaigne and Charron, will survive existing customs,
and probably existing creeds. Millions will be captivated by
them, when the eloquence of Bossuet himself shall interest
extremely few. Yet the charms of language are less liable to be
dissipated by time than the sentences of wisdom. While the
incondite volumes of more profound philosophers are no longer in
existence, scarcely one of writers who enjoyed in a high degree
the gift of eloquence is altogether lost. Among the Athenians
there are indeed some ; but in general they were worthless men,
squabbling on worthless matters : we have little to regret, excepting
of Phocion and of Pericles. If we turn to Rome, we retain all
the best of Cicero ; and we patiently and almost indifferently
hear that nothing is to be found of Marcus Antonius or
Southey and Landor.
263
Hortensius ; for the eloquence of the bar is and ought always to
be secondary.
Southey. You were remarking that our poet paid little atten-
tion to the French drama. Indeed, in his preface he takes no
notice of it whatsoever, not even as regards the plot, in which
consists its chief excellence, or perhaps I should say rather its
superiority. He holds the opinion that " A plot, whether
intricate or explicit, is nothing but such economy or disposition
of the fable as may stand best with verisimilitude and decorum."
Surely, the French tragedians have observed this doctrine atten-
tively.
Landor. It has rarely happened that dramatic events have
followed one another in their natural order. The most remark-
able instance of it is in the King (Edipus of Sophocles. But
Racine is in general the most skilful of the tragedians, with little
energy and less invention. I wish Milton had abstained from
calling " ^Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides the three tragic
poets unequalled yet by any ; " because it may leave a suspicion
that he fancied he, essentially undramatic, could equal them, and
had now done it ; and because it exhibits him as a detractor
from Shakspeare. I am as sorry to find him in this condition as
I should have been to find him in a fit of the gout, or treading on
a nail with naked foot in his blindness.
Southey. Unfortunately, it is impossible to exculpate him ;
for you must have remarked where, a few sentences above, are
these expressions: "This is mentioned to vindicate from the
small esteem or rather infamy which in the account of many it
undergoes at this day, with other common interludes ; happening
through the poet's error of intermixing comick stuff with tragick
sadness and gravity, or intermixing trivial and vulgar persons,
which, by all judicious, hath been counted absurd, and brought in
without discretion, corruptly to gratify the people."
Landor. It may be questioned whether the people in the
reign of Elizabeth, or indeed the queen herself, would have been
contented with a drama without a smack of the indecent or the
ludicrous. They had alike been accustomed to scenes of ribaldry
and of bloodshed ; and the palace opened on one wing to the
brothel, on the other to the shambles. The clowns of Shak-
speare are still admired by not the vulgar only.
264 Imaginary Conversations.
Southey. The more the pity. Let them appear in their
proper places. But a picture by Morland or Frank Hals ought
never to break a series of frescoes by the hand of Raphael, or
of senatorial portraits animated by the sun of Titian. There is
much to be regretted in, and (since we are alone I will say it)
a little which might without loss or injury be rejected from, the
treasury of Shakspeare.
Landor. It is difficult to sweep away any thing and not to
sweep away gold-dust with it : but viler dust lies thick in some
places. The grave Milton, too, has cobwebs hanging on his
workshop, which a high broom, in a steady hand, may reach with-
out doing mischief. But let children and short men, and unwary
ones, stand out of the way.
Southey. Necessary warning ! for nothing else occasions so
general satisfaction as the triumph of a weak mind over a stronger.
And this often happens ; for the sutures of a giant's armor are
most penetrable from below. Surely no poet is so deeply pathetic
as the one before us, and nowhere more than in those verses which
begin at the sixtieth and end with the eighty-fifth. There is
much fine poetry after this ; and perhaps the prolixity is very
rational in a man so afflicted, but the composition is the worse for
it. Samson could have known nothing of the interlunar cave;
nor could he ever have thought about the light of the soul, and of
the soul being all in every part.
Landor. Reminiscences of many sad afflictions have already
burst upon the poet ; but, instead of overwhelming him, they have
endued him with redoubled might and majesty. Verses worthier
of a sovereign poet, sentiments worthier of a pure, indomitable,
inflexible republican, never issued from the human heart than these
referring to the army, in the last effort made to rescue the English
nation from disgrace and servitude :
[265.] Had Judah that day joined, or one whole tribe,
They had by this possest the towers of Gath,
And lorded over them whom now they serve.
But what more oft, in nations grown corrupt
And by their vices brought to servitude,
Than to love bondage more than liberty,
Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty,
And to despise or envy or suspect
Whom God hath of his special favor rais'd
Southey and Landor. 265
As their deliverer ? If he aught begin,
How frequent to desert him ! and at last
To heap ingratitude on worthiest deeds !
Southfy. I shall be sorry to damp your enthusiasm, in how-
ever slight a degree, by pursuing our original plan in the detection
of blemishes. Eyes the least clear-sighted could easily perceive
one in
297. For of such doctrine never was there school
But the heart of the fool.
And no man therein doctor but himself.
They could discern here nothing but the quaint conceit ; and it
never occurred to them that the chorus knew nothing of schools
and doctors. A line above, there is an expression not English.
For " who believe not the existence of God,"
195. Who think not God at all.
And is it captious to say that, when Manoah's locks are called
" white as down," whiteness is no characteristic of down ? Per-
haps you will be propitiated by the number of words in our days
equally accented on the first syllable, which in this drama the
great poet, with all his authority, has stamped on the second ;
such as impulse, ed\ct, contrary, prescript, the substantive contest,
instinct, crystalline, pretext.
Landor. I wish we had preserved them all in that good
condition, excepting the substantive contest, which ought to
follow the lead of conquest. But " now we have got to the
worst, let us keep to the worst," is the sound conservative
maxim of the day.
Soutbey. I perceive you adhere to your doctrine in the
termination of Aristo/^/.
Landor. If we were to say Aris/o///, why not Themis/<x7*,
Empedoc/f, and Peritlf ? Here, too, neath has always a mark
of elision before it, quite unnecessarily. From neath comes
nether, which reminds me that it would be better spelled, as it
was formerly, nethe.
But go on : we can do no good yet.
Southfy.
341. That invincible Samson, far renowned.
266 Imaginary Conversations.
Here, unless we place the accent on the third syllable, the verse
assumes another form, and such as is used only in the ludicrous
or light poetry, scanned thus :
That invin | cible Sam | son, &c.
There is great eloquence and pathos in the speech of Manoah ;
but the "scorpion's tail behind" in verse 360, is inapposite. Per-
haps my remark is unworthy of your notice ; but, as you are
reading on, you seem to ponder on something which is worthy.
Landor. How very much would literature have lost, if this
marvellously great and admirable man had omitted the various
references to himself and his contemporaries ! He had grown
calmer at the close of life, and saw in Cromwell as a fault what
he had seen before as a necessity or a virtue. The indignities
offered to the sepulchre and remains of the greatest of English
sovereigns, by the most ignominious, made the tears of Milton
gush from his darkened eyes, and extorted from his generous and
grateful heart this exclamation :
[368.] Alas! methinks when God hath chosen one
To worthiest deeds, if he through frailty err,
He should not so o'erwhelm, and as a thrall
Subject him to so foul indignities,
Be it but for honor's sake of former deeds.
How supremely grand is the close of Samson's speech !
Southey. In verse 439, we know what is meant by
Slewst them many a slain.
But the expression is absurd : he could not slay the slain. We
also may object to
[553.] Use of strongest wines
And strongest drinks,
knowing that wines were the " strongest drinks " in those times :
perhaps they might have been made stronger by the infusion of
herbs and spices. You will again be saddened by the deep har-
mony of those verses in which the poet represents his own con-
dition. Verse 590:
All otherwise to me my thoughts portend, &c.
Southey and Landor. 267
In verses 729 and 731, the words address and addrest are in-
elegant:
And words adJrfit seem into tears dissolved,
Wt-tting the borders of her silken veil ;
But now again she motet addreti to speak.
In verse 734,
Which to have merited, without excuse,
I cannot but acknowledge,
the comma should be expunged after excuse, else the sentence
higuous. And in 745, " what amends is in my power.'*
We have no singular, as the French have, for this word ; although
many use it ignorantly, as Milton does inadvertently.
934. T\\j/air enchanted cup and warbling charms.
Here we are forced by the double allusion to recognise the later
mythos of Circe. The cup alone, or the warbling alone, might
belong to any other enchantress, any of his own or of a preced-
ing age, since we know that in all times certain herbs and certain
incantations were used by sorceresses.
The chorus in this tragedy is not always conciliating and
assuaging. Never was anything more bitter against the female sex
than the verses from i o i o to 1 060. The invectives of Euripides
are never the outpourings of the chorus, and their venom is cold
as hemlock ; those of Milton are hot and corrosive :
It is not virtue, wisdom, valor, wit,
Strength, fomelinett of shaft , or amplett merit,
That woman's love can win or long inherit ;
But what it is, is hard to say,
Harder to hit,
Which way soever men refer it :
Much like thy riddle, Samson, in one day
Or seven, though one thoulJ muting tit.
Never has Milton, in poetry or prose, written worse than this.
The beginning of the second line is untrue ; the conclusion is tauto-
logical. In the third, it is needless to inform us that what is not
to be gained is not to be inherited ; or, in the fourth, that what is
hard to say is hard to hit ; but it really is a new discovery that it
is harder. Where is the distinction in the idea he would present
268 Imaginary Conversations.
of saying and hitting ? However, we will not " musing sit " on
these dry thorns.
[1034.] Whate'er it be to wisest men and best,
Seeming at first all heavenly under virgin veil, &c.
This is a very ugly misshapen Alexandrine. The verse would
be better and more regular by the omission of " seeming " or
" at first," neither of which is necessary.
Landor. The giant Harapha is not expected to talk wisely ;
but he never would have said to Samson,
1081. Thou knowest me now,
Ifthou at all art known ; much I have heard
Of thy prodigious strength.
A pretty clear evidence of his being somewhat known.
[1133.] And black enchantments, some magician's art.
No doubt of that. But what glorious lines from 1 1 67 to 1 1 79 !
I cannot say so much of these :
[1313.] Have they not sword-players and every sort
Of gymnic artists, wrestlers, riders, runners,
Jugglers and dancers, antics, mummers, mimics ?
No, certainly not: the jugglers and the dancers they probably
had, but none of the rest. Mummers are said to derive their
appellation from the word mum. I rather think mum came
corrupted from them. Mummer in reality is mime. We know
how frequently the letter r has obtained an undue place at the
end of words. The English mummers were men who acted,
without speaking, in coarse pantomime. There are many things
which I have marked between this place and verse 1665.
1634. That to the arched roof gave main support.
There were no arches in the time of Samson ; but the mention
of the two pillars in the centre makes it requisite to imagine such
a structure. Verse 1660,
O dearly bought revenge, yet glorious.
It is Milton's practice to make vowels syllabically weak either
Southey and Landor. 269
coalesce with or yield to others. In no place but at the end
of a verse would he protract glorious into a trisyllable. The
structure of his versification was founded on the Italian, in which
to and la in some words are monosyllables in all places but the
last. Verse 1664,
Among thy *-lain
Not willingly, but tangled in the fold
Of dire necessity, whose law in death conjoined
Thee with thy slaughtered foes, in number more
Than all thy life hath slain before.
Milton differs extremely from the Athenian dramatists in
neglecting the beauty of his choruses. Here the third line is
among his usually bad Alexandrines ; and there is not only
a debility of rhythm, but also a redundancy of words. The
verse would be better, and the sense too, without the words
"i/i death" And "slaughtered" is alike unnecessary in the
next. Farther on, the chorus talks about the phoenix. Now
the phoenix, although Oriental, was placed in the Orient by
the Greeks. If the phoenix " no second knows" it is probable
it knows " no third" All this nonsense is prated while Samson
is lying dead before them. But the poem is a noble poem;
and the characters of Samson and Delilah are drawn with pre-
cision and truth. The Athenian dramatists, both tragic and
comic, have always one chief personage, one central light :
Homer has not in the Iliad, nor has Milton in the Paradise
Lost, nor has Shakspeare in several of his best tragedies. We
find it in Racine, in the great Comeille, in the greater Schiller.
In Calderon, and the other dramatists of Spain, it rarely is
wanting ; but their principal delight is in what we call plot
or intrigue, in plainer English (and very like it), intricacy
and trick. Hurd, after saying of the Samson Agonlstes^ that
" it is, as might be expected, a masterpiece," tucks up his lawn
sleeve and displays his slender wrist against Lowth. Nothing
was ever eaual to his cool effrontery when he says, " This critic,
and nil such, are greatly out In their judgments," &c. He might
have profited, both in criticism and in style, by reading Lowth
more attentively and patiently. In which case, he never would
have written out in, nor obliged to such freedoms, nor twenty more
270 Imaginary Conversations.
such strange things. Lowth was against the chorus. Kurd
says, " It will be constantly wanting to rectify the wrong con-
clusions of the audience." Would it not be quite as advisable
to drop carefully a few drops of laudanum on a lump of sugar, to
lull the excitement of the sufferers by the tragedy ? The chorus
in Milton comes well provided with this narcotic. Voltaire
wrote an opera, and intended it for a serious one, on the same
subject. He decorated it with choruses sung to Venus and
Adonis, and represented Samson more gallantly French than
either. He pulled down the temple on the stage, and cried,
J'ai re"pare" ma honte, et j'expire en vainqueurl
And yet Voltaire was often a graceful poet, and sometimes a
judicious critic. It may be vain and useless to propose for
imitation the chief excellences of a great author, such being the
gift of transcendent genius, and not an acquisition to be obtained
by study or labor ; but it is only in great authors that defects are
memorable when pointed out, and unsuspected until they are
distinctly. For which reason, I think it probable that at no
distant time I may publish your remarks, if you consent to it.
Southey. It is well known in what spirit I made them,
and as you have objected to few, if any, I leave them at your
discretion. Let us now pass on to Lyctdas. It appears
to me that Warton is less judicious than usual, in his censure
of
[5.] Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
I find in his note, " The mellowing year could not affect the
leaves of the laurel, the myrtle, and the ivy, which last is charac-
terized before as never sere." The ivy sheds its leaves in the
proper season, though never all at once, and several hang on the
stem longer than a year. In verse 89,
But now my oat proceeds
And listens to the herald of the sea.
Does the oat listen ?
119. Blind mouths that scarce themselves know how to hold
A sheep-hook.
Southey and Landor. 271
Now, although mouths and bellies may designate the possessors
or bearers, yet surely the blind mouth holding a shepherd's crook
is a fitter representation of the shepherd's dog than of the shep-
herd. Verse 145, may he not have written the gloming violet,
not indeed well, but better than glowing ?
154. Ay me ! while thee the shoret and sounding seas
Wash far a
Surely the shores did nou
[176.] And hears the iruxprtssrue nuptial song
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and Icve.
What can be the meaning ?
Landor. It is to be regretted, not so much that Milton has
adopted the language and scenery and mythology of the ancients,
as that he confounds the real simple field-shepherds with the
mitred shepherds of St Paul's Churchyard and Westminster
Abbey, and ties the two-handed sword against the crook. I
have less objection to the luxury spread out before me than to be
treated with goose and mince-pie on the same plate.
No poetry so harmonious had ever been written in our lan-
guage ; but in the same free metre both Tasso and Guarini
had captivated the ear of Italy. In regard to poetry, the Lycidas
will hardly bear a comparison with the Allegro and Penseroso.
Many of the ideas in both are taken from Beaumont and Fletcher,
from Raleigh and Marlowe, and from a poem in the first edition
of Burton's Melancholy. Each of these has many beauties ; but
there are couplets in Milton's worth them all. We must, how-
ever, do what we set about. If we see the faun walk lamely, we
must look at his foot, find the thorn, and extract it.
Southey. There are those who defend in the first verses the
matrimonial, or other less legitimate, alliance of Cerberus and
Midnight ; but I have too much regard for Melancholy to sub-
scribe to the filiation, especially as it might exclude her presently
from the nunnery, whither she is invited as pensive, devout, and^wrr.
The union of Erebus and Night is much spoken of in- poetical
circles, and we have authority for announcing it to the public ;
but Midnight, like Cerberus, is a misnomer. We have occasion-
ally heard, in objurgation, a man called a son of a dog, on the
272 Imaginary Conversations.
mother's side ; but never was there goddess of that parentage.
You are pleased to find Milton writing pincht instead of pinched.
I Candor. Certainly ; for there never existed the word
" pinclW," and never can exist the word " pinc^V." In the
same verse he writes sed for said. We have both of these, and
we should keep them diligently. The pronunciation is always
sed, excepting in rhyme. For the same reason, we should retain
agen as well as again.
What a cloud of absurdities has been whiffed against me, by no
unlearned men, about the Conversation of Tooke and Johnson !
Their own petty conceits rise up between their eyes and the
volume they are negligently reading, and utterly obscure or confound
it irretrievably, One would represent me as attempting to under-
mine our native tongue ; another as modernizing ; a third as
antiquating it. Whereas I am trying to underprop, not to under-
mine : I am trying to stop the man-milliner at his ungainly work
of trimming and flouncing ; I am trying to show how graceful is
our English, not in its stiff decrepitude, not in its riotous luxuriance,
but in its hale mid-life. I would make bad writers follow good
ones, and good writers accord with themselves. If all cannot be
reduced into order, is that any reason why nothing should be done
toward it ? If languages and men too are imperfect, must we
never make an effort to bring them a few steps nearer to what is
preferable ? If we find on the road a man who has fallen from
his horse, and who has three bones dislocated, must we refuse him
our aid because one is quite broken ? It is by people who answer in
the affirmative to these questions, or seem to answer so, it is by
such writers that our language for the last half-century has fallen
more rapidly into corruption and decomposition than any other
ever spoken among men. The worst losses are not always those
which are soonest felt, but those which are felt too late.
Southey. I should have adopted all your suggestions in ortho-
graphy, if I were not certain that my bookseller would protest
against it as ruinous. If you go no farther than to write compell
and foretell, the compositor will correct your oversight ; yet surely
there should be some sign that the last syllable of those verbs
ought to be spelled differently, as they are pronounced differently,
from shrivel and level.
Lander. Let us run back to our plantain. But a bishop
Southey and Landor. 273
stands in the way, a bishop no other than Hurd, who says that
" Milton shows his judgment in celebrating Shakspeare's comedies
rather than his tragedies." Pity he did not live earlier ! he
would have served among the mummers both for bishop and fool.
We now come to the Penseroso, in which title there are
many who doubt the propriety of the spelling. Marsand, an
editor of Petrarca, has defended the poet who used equally
pensiero and ptnscro. The mode is more peculiarly Lombard.
The Milanese and Comascs invariably say penser. Yet it is
wonderful how, at so short a distance, and professing to speak the
same language, they differ in many expressions. The wonder
ceases with those who have resided long in the country, and are
curious about such matters, when they discover that at two gates
of Milan two languages are spoken. The same thing occurs in
Florence itself, where a street is inhabited by the Camaldolese,
whose language is as little understood by learned academicians as
that of Dante himself. Beyond the eastern gates a morning's
walk, you come into Varlunga, a pastoral district, in which the
people speak differently from both. 1 have always found a great
pleasure in collecting the leaves and roots of these phonetic
simples, especially in hill-countries. Nothing so conciliates many,
and particularly the uneducated, as to ask and receive instruction
from them. I have not hesitated to collect it from swineherds
and Fra Diavolo : I should have looked for it in vain among
universities and professors.
Southty. Turning back to the stllcgro, I find an amusing note
conveying the surprising intelligence, all the way from Oxford,
that eglantine means really the dog-rose ; and that both dog-rose
and honeysuckle (for which Milton mistook it) "are often growing
against the sides or watts of a house." Thus says Mr Thomas
Warton. I wish he had also told us in what quarter of the
world a house has sides without walls of some kind or other.
But it really is strange that Milton should have misapplied the
word, at a time when botany was become the favorite study. I
do not recollect whether Cowley had yet written his Latin poems
on the appearances and Qualities of plants. What are you smiling at ?
Landor. Our old held of battle, where Milton
Calls up him who left untold
The story of Cambuscan bold.
IV. S
274 Imaginary Conversations.
Chaucer like Shakspeare, like Homer, like Milton, like
every great poet that ever lived derived from open sources
the slender origin of his immortal works. Imagination is not
a mere workshop of images, great and small, as there are many
who would represent it ; but sometimes thoughts also are im-
agined before they are felt, and descend from the brain into the
bosom. Young poets imagine feelings to which in reality they
are strangers.
Southey. Copy them rather.
Landor. Not entirely. The copybook acts on the im-
agination. Unless they felt the truth or the verisimilitude, it
could not take possession of them. But feelings and images fly
from distant coverts into their little field, without their conscious-
ness whence they come, and rear young ones there which are
properly their"own. Chatterton hath shown as much imagination,
in the Bristoive Tragedie as in that animated allegory which
begins,
When Freedom dreste in blood-stain'd veste.
Keats is the most imaginative of our poets, after Chaucer, Spenser,
Shakspeare, and Milton.
Southey. I am glad you admit my favorite, Spenser.
Landor. He is my favorite too, if you admit the expression
without the signification of precedency. I do not think him
equal to Chaucer even in imagination ; and he appears to me
very inferior to him in all other points, excepting harmony.
Here the miscarriage is in Chaucer's age, not in Chaucer,
many of whose verses are highly beautiful, but never (as in
Spenser) one whole period. I love the geniality of his tempera-
ture, no straining, no effort, no storm, no fury. His vivid
thoughts burst their way to us through the coarsest integuments
of language.
The heart is the creator of the poetical world : only the atmo-
sphere is from the brain. Do I then undervalue imagination ?
No indeed ; but 1 find imagination where others never look for
it, in character multiform yet consistent. Chaucer first united
the two glorious realms of Italy and England. Shakspeare came
after, and subjected the whole universe to his dominion. But
he mounted the highest steps of his throne under those bland
Southey and Landor. 275
skies which had warmed the congenial breasts of Chaucer and
Boccaccio.
The powers of imagination are but slender when it can invent
only shadowy appearances : much greater are requisite to make an
inert and insignificant atom grow up into greatness, to give it
form, life, mobility, and intellect. Spenser hath accomplished
the one ; Shakspeare and Chaucer, the other. Pope and Dryden
have displayed a little of it in their Satires. In passing, let me
express my wish that writers who compare them in generalities,
and who lean mostly toward the stronger, would attempt to trim
the balance by placing Pope among our best critics on poetry,
while Dryden is knee-deep below John Dennis. You do not
like either: I read both with pleasure, so long as they keep to
the couplet. But St Cecilia's music-book is interlined with epi-
grams ; and Alexander'* Feast smells of gin at second-hand, with
true Briton fiddlers full c of native talent in the orchestra.
Southey. Dryden says : " It were an easy matter to produce
some thousands of Chaucer's verses which are lame for want of
half, and sometimes a whole, foot, which no pronunciation can
make otherwise."
Landor. Certainly no pronunciation but the proper one can
do it.
Southey. On the opposite quarter, comparing him with
Boccaccio, he says : " He has refined on the Italian, and has
mended his stories in his way of telling. Our countryman
carries weight, and yet wins the race at disadvantage."
Landor. Certainly our brisk and vigorous poet carries with
him no weight in criticism.
Southey. Vivacity and shrewd sense are Dryden's charac-
teristics, with quickness of perception rather than accuracy of
remark, and consequently a facility rather than a fidelity of
expression.
We are coming to our last days, if, according to the prophet
Joel, "blood and fire and pillars of smoke" are signs of them.
Again to Milton and the Penseroso.
90. What worlds, or what vast regions . . .
Are not vast regions included in world ? In verses 1 1 9, 1 20,
121, 1 22, the same rhymes are repeated.
Thus, night, oft see me in thy pale career,
276 Imaginary Conversations.
is the only verse of ten syllables, and should be reduced to
the ranks. You always have strongly objected to epithets which
designate dresses and decoration ; of which epithets, it must be
acknowledged, both Milton and Shakspeare are unreasonably
fond. Civilsuited, froivnced, kercheft, come close together. I
suspect they will find as little favor in your eyes as embroidered,
trimmed, and gilded.
Landor. I am fond of gilding, not in our poetry, but in our
apartments, where it gives a sunniness greatly wanted by the
climate. Pindar and Virgil are profuse of gold ; but they reject
the gilded.
Southey. I have counted ninety-three lines in Milton where
gold is used, and only four where gilded is. A question is raised
whether pale, in
[156.] To walk the studious cloisters pale,
is substantive or adjective. What is your opinion ?
Landor. That it is an adjective. Milton was very Italian,
as you know, in his custom of adding a second epithet after
the substantive, where one had preceded it. The Wartons
followed him. Yet Thomas Warton would read in this verse
the substantive, giving as his reason that our poet is fond of the
singular. In the present word there is nothing extraordinary in
finding it thus. We commonly say, within the pale of the
church, of the law, &c. But pale is an epithet to which Milton
is very partial. Just before, he has written "pale career" and
we shall presently see the " pale-eyed priest."
Southey.
With antick pillars massy-proof.
The Wartons are fond of repeating in their poetry the word
massy-proof, in my opinion an inelegant one, and, if a com-
pound, compounded badly. It seems more applicable to castles,
whose massiveness gave proof of resistance. Antick was probably
spelled antike by the author, who disdained to follow the fashion
in antique, Pindaricque, &c., affected by Cowley and others, who
had been, or would be thought to have been, domiciliated with
Charles II. in France.
Landor. Whenever I come to the end of these poems, or
Southey and Lander
2/7
either of them, it is always with a sigh of regret. We will pass
by the Arcades, of which the little that is good is copied from
Shakspeare.
Southey. Nevertheless, we may consider it as a nebula, which
was not without its efficiency in forming the star of Comus.
This Mask is modelled on another by George Peele. Two
brothers wander in search of a sister enthralled by a magician.
They call aloud her name, and echo repeats it, as here in Comus.
Much has also been taken from Putcanus, who borrowed at
once the best and the worst of his poem from Philostratus. In
the third verse, I find spirits a dissyllable, which is unusual in
Milton. ^
Landor. I can account for his monosyllabic sound by his
fondness of imitating the Italian spirto. But you yourself are
addicted to these quavers, if you will permit me the use of the
word here ; and I find spirit, peril, &c., occupying no longer a
time than if the second vowel were wanting. I do not approve
of the apposition in
[38.] The nodding horrour of whose shady brows.
Before which I find
[21.] Sea-girt isles
That, like to rich and various gems, inlay
The unadorned bosom of the deep.
How can a bosom be unadorned which already is inlaid with
gems ?
Southey. You will object no less strongly
[115.] Sounds and seas with all their finny drove,
sounds being parts of seas.
Landor. There are yet graver faults. Where did the
young lady ever hear or learn such expressions as " Swilled
insolence?" 7
[ 1 88 .] The grey-hooded Even,
Like a sad votarist in palmers weed,
Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phoebus' wain.
P Line 178, Globe ed.]
278 Imaginary Conversations.
Here is Eve, a manifest female, with her own proper hood upon
her head, taking the other parts of male attire, and rising (by
good luck) from under a wagon-wheel. But nothing in Milton,
and scarcely any thing in Cowley, is viler than
[195.] Else, O thievish night,
Why should'st thou, but for some felonious end,
In thy dark-lantern thus close up the stars.
It must have been a capacious dark-lantern that held them all.
That Nature hung in heaven, and filPd their lamps
With everlasting oil.
Hardly so bad ; but very bad is *-
[221.] Does a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night ?
A greater and more momentous fault is that three soliloquies come
in succession for about 240 lines together.
[291.] What time the labored ox
In his loose traces from the furrow came
And the swinkt hedger at his supper sat.
These are blamed by Warton, but blamed in the wrong place.
The young lady, being in the wood, could have seen nothing of
ox or hedger, and was unlikely to have made any previous obser-
vations on their work-hours. But, in the summer, and this was
in summer, neither the ox nor the hedger are at work. That
the ploughman always quits it at noon, as Warton says he does, is
untrue. When he quits it at noon, it is for his dinner. Gray
says,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way.
He may do that, but certainly not at the season when
The beetle wheels her drony flight.
Nevertheless, the stricture is captious : for the ploughman may
return from the field, although not from ploughing ; and ploughman
may be accepted for any agriculturist. Certainly such must have
been Virgil's meaning when he wrote
Quos durus orator
Observans nido implumes detraxit.
Southey and Lander. 279
For ploughing, in Italy more especially, is never the labor in June,
when the nightingale's young are hatched. Gray's verse is a good
one, which is more than can be said of Virgil's.
[230.] Sweet Echo ! sweetest nymph ! that livest unseen
Within thy airy shell !
The habitation is better adapted to an oyster than to Echo.
We must, however, go on and look after the young gentlemen.
Comus says,
[294.] I saw them under a green mantling vine
Plucking ripe clusters, &c.
It is much to be regretted that the banks of the Severn in our
days present no such facilities. You would find some difficulty
in teaching the readers of poetry to read metrically the exquisite
verses which follow. What would they make of
[301.] And 8 as I | past I | worshipt it !
These are the true times ; and they are quite unintelligible to those
who divide our verses into iambics, with what they call licences.
Southey. We have found the two brothers ; and never were
two young gentlemen in stilfer doublets.
[331.] Unmuffle, ye faint stars, &c.
The elder, although "as smooth as Hebe's his unrazor'd lip,"
talks not only like a man, but like a philosopher of much exper-
ience,
[362.] What need a man forestall his date of grief, &c.
How should he know that
[393.] Beauty, like the fair Hesperian tree,
Laden with blooming gold, had need the guard
Of dragon watch with unenchanted eye
To save her blossoms and defend her fruit, &c. ?
[* Line 301 reads:
"I was awe-strook.
And, as I pas*ed, I worshipped. If those you seek,
It were a journey like the path to Heaven
To
irere a journey liKe tne
help you find them.'']
280 Imaginary Conversations.
Landor. We now come to a place where we have only the
choice of a contradiction or nonsense :
[378.] She plumes her feathers and lets grow her wings.
There is no sense in pluming a plume. Beyond a doubt, Milton
wrote prunes, and subsequently it was printed plumes to avoid what
appeared a contrariety. And a contrariety it would be, if the
word prune were to be taken in no other sense than the gardener's.
We suppose it must mean to cut shorter ; but its real signification
is to trim, which is usually done by that process. Milton here
means to smoothen and put in order : pr'me is better. Among the
strange, unaccountable expressions which within our memory, or a
little earlier, were carried down, like shingles by a sudden torrent,
over our language, can you tell me what writer first wrote " un-
bidden tears " ?
Southey. No indeed. The phrase is certainly a curiosity,
although no rarity. I wish some logician, or (it being beyond the
reach of any) some metaphysician, would attempt to render us an
account of it. Milton has never used unbidden where it really
would be significant, and only once unbid. Can you go forward
with this Elder brother " ?
Landor. Let us try. I wish he would turn off his ** liveried
angels," verse 455, and would say nothing about lust. How
could he have learned that lust
[464.] By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,
But most by lewd and lavish act of sin, &c. ?
Can you tell me what wolves are " stabled wolves," verse 534?
Southey. Not exactly. But here is another verse of the same
construction as you remarked before :
[599.] And earth's base built on stubble. But come, let's on.
This was done by choice, not by necessity. He might have
omitted the But, and have satisfied the herd bovine and porcine.
Just below are two others in which three syllables are included in
the time of two.
[602.] But for that damn'd magician, let him be girt, &c.
605. Harpies and hydras, or all the monstrous forms, &c.
Southey and Landor.
And again
615. And crumble all thy sinews. Why, prithee, shepherd.
Landor. You have crept unsoiled from
28l
[604.]
Under the sooty flag of Acheron.
And you may add many dozens more of similar verses, if you
think it worth your while to go back for them. In verse 610,
I find " yet " redundant :
I love thy courage yt, and bold emprise.
Commentators and critics bogle sadly a little farther on :
[632.] But in another country, as he said,
Bore a bright golden flower ; but not in this soil.
On which hear T. Warton : " Milton, notwithstanding his
singular skill in music, appears to have had a very bad ear."
Warton was celebrated in his time for his great ability in
raising a laugh in the common-room. He has here shown a
capacity more extensive in that faculty. Two or three honest
men have run to Milton's assistance, and have applied a remedy
to his ear : they would help him to mend the verse. In fact, it
is a bad one : he never wrote it so. The word but is useless in
the second line, and comes with the worse grace after the But
in the preceding. They who can discover faults in versification
where there are none but of their own imagining have failed to
notice verse 666 :
Why are you | vext, lady, | why do you | frown ?
Now, this in reality is inadmissible, being of a metre quite
different from the rest. It is dactylic ; and consequently, al-
though the number of syllables is just, the number of feet is
defective. But Milton, in reciting it, would bring it back to
the order he had established. He would read it
Why are you vext ?
And then in a faltering and falling accent, and in the tender
trochee,
Lady | why do you frown ?
282 Imaginary Conversations.
There are some who in a few years can learn all the harmony
of Milton ; there are others who must go into another state of
existence for this felicity.
Southey. I am afraid I am about to check for a moment your
enthusiasm, in bringing you
[707.] To those budge doctors of the Stoic fur,
whom Comus is holding in derision.
Landor. Certainly it is odd enough to find him in such com-
pany. It is the first time either Cynic or Stoic ever put on fur ;
and it must be confessed it little becomes them. We are told
that, verse 727,
And live like Nature's bastards, not her sons,
is taken from the Bible. Whencesoever it may be taken, the
expression is faulty ; for a son may be a bastard, and quite as
surely a bastard may be a son. In verse 732, "the unsought
diamonds " are ill-placed ; and we are told that Doctors War-
burton and Newton called these four lines "exceeding childish."
They are so, for all that. I wonder none of the fraternity had
his fingers at liberty to count the syllables in verse 743 :
If you let | slip time, like a neglected rose, &c.
I wish he had cast away the yet in verse 755.
Think what ; and be advised ; you are but young yet.
Not only is yet an expletive, and makes the verse inharmonious,
but the syllables young and yet coming together would of them-
selves be intolerable anywhere. What a magnificent passage !
How little poetry in any language is comparable to this, which
closes the lady's reply,
792-799. Thou art not fit to hear thyself convinced !
This is worthy of Shakspeare himself in his highest mood, and
is unattained and unattainable by any other poet. What a trans-
port of enthusiasm ; what a burst of harmony ! He who writes
one sentence equal to this will have reached a higher rank in poetry
than any has done since this was written.
Southey and Landor. 283
Soutlxy. I thought it would be difficult to confine you to cen-
sure, as we first proposed. The anger and wit of Comus effervesce
into flatness, one dashed upon the other.
[806.] Come, no more ;
This is mere moral babble, and direct
Against the canon laws of our foundation.
He rolls out from the " cynic tub " to put on cap and gown.
The laughter of Milton soon assumed a wry, puritanical cast.
: while he had the mollt, he wanted the facetum in all its
parts and qualities. It is hard upon Milton, and harder still
upon inferior poets, that every expression of his used by a pre-
decessor should be noted as borrowed or stolen. Here, in verse
.-
Will bathe the drooping spirits in delight
is traced to several, and might be traced to more. Chaucer, in
whose songs it is more beautiful than elsewhere, writes,
His harte bathed in a bath of blisse.
Probably he took the idea from the bath of knights. You could
never have seen Chaucer, nor the rest, when you wrote those verses
at Rugby * on Godiva : you drew them out of the Square Pool, and
assimilated them to the tranquillity of prayer, such a tranquillity,
as is the effect of prayer on the boyish mind, when it has any
effect at all.
Landor. I have expunged many thoughts for their close re-
semblance to what others had written, whose works I never saw
until after. But all thinking men must think, all imaginative men
must imagine, many things in common, although they differ.
Some abhor what others embrace ; but the thought strikes them
equally. With some an idea is productive, with others it lies
inert. I have resigned and abandoned many things because I un-
reasonably doubted my legitimate claim to them, and many more
because I believed I had enough substance in the house without
them, and that the retention might raise a clamor in my court-
yard. I do not look very sharply after the poachers on my pro-
perty. One of your neighbors has broken down a shell in my
[ See the Conversation between Leofric and Godiva, vol. v."|
284 Imaginary Conversations.
grotto, and a town gentleman has lamed a rabbit in my warren :
heartily welcome both. Do not shut your book : we have time
left for the rest.
Southey. Sabrina in person is now before us. Johnson talks
absurdly, not on the long narration, for which he has reasons,
but in saying that " it is of no use, because it is false, and there-
fore unsuitable to a good being." Warton answers this objection
with great propriety. It may be added that things in themselves
very false are very true in poetry, and produce not only delight,
but beneficial moral effects. This is an instance. The part
before us is copied from Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess. The
Spirit, in his thanksgiving to Sabrina for liberating the lady, is
extremely warm in good wishes. After the aspiration,
[934.] May thy lofty head be crown'd
With many a tower and terrace round,
he adds,
And here and there, thy banks uf>on,
With groves of myrrh and cinnamon.
It would have been more reasonable to have said,
And here and there some fine fat geese,
And ducklings waiting for green pease.
The conclusion is admirable, though it must be acknowledged
that the piece is undramatic. Johnson makes an unanswerable
objection to the prologue ; but he must have lost all the senses
that are affected by poetry, when he calls the whole drama
tediously instructive. There is, indeed, here and there prolixity ;
yet refreshing springs burst out profusely in every part of the
wordy wilderness. We are now at the Sonnets. I know your
dislike of this composition.
Landor. In English, not in Italian ; but Milton has
ennobled it in our tongue, and has trivialized it in that. He who
is deficient in readiness of language is half a fool in writing, and
more than half in conversation. Ideas fix themselves about the
tongue, and fall to the ground when they are in want of that
support. Unhappily, Italian poetry in the age of Milton was
almost at its worst, and he imitated what he heard repeated or
praised. It is better to say no more about it, or about his Psalms,
when we come to them.
Sou they and Landor. 285
Soutkty. Among his minor poems several are worthless.
Landor. True ; but, if they had been lost, we should be
glad to have recovered them. Cromwell would not allow
I. ely to omit or diminish a single wart upon his face ; yet there
were many and great ones. If you had found a treasure of gold
and silver, and afterwards in the same excavation an urn in which
only brass coins were contained, would you reject them ? You
will find in his English Sonnets some of a much higher strain than
even the best of Dante's. The great poet is sometimes recum-
bent, but never languid ; often unadorned, I wish I could
honestly say, not often inelegant. But what noble odes (for
such we must consider them) are the eighth, the fifteenth, the
sixteenth, the seventeenth, and, above all, the eighteenth ! There
is a mild and serene sublimity in the nineteenth. In the twentieth
there is the festivity of Horace, with a due observance of his
precept, applicable metaphorically,
Simplici myrto nihil adlabores.
This is among the few English poems which are quite classical,
according to our notions, as the Greeks and Romans have im-
pressed them. It is pleasing to find Milton, in his later days,
thus disposed to cheerfulness and conviviality. There are
climates of the earth, it is said, in which a warm season inter-
venes between autumn and winter. Such a season came to
reanimate, not the earth itself, but what was highest upon it.
A few of Milton's Sonnets are extremely bad : the rest are
excellent. Among all Shakspeare's, not a single one is very
admirable, and few sink very low. They are hot and pothery :
there is much condensation, little delicacy ; like raspberry jam
without cream, without crust, without bread, to break its viscidity.
But I would rather sit down to one of them again than to a
string of such musty sausages as are exposed in our streets at the
present dull season. Let us be reverent; but only where
reverence is due, even in Milton and in Shakspeare. It is a
privilege to be near enough to them to see their faults : never are
we likely to abuse it. Those in high station, who have the folly
and the impudence to look down on us, possess none such. Silks
perish as the silkworms have perished ; kings, as their carpets and
canopies. There are objects too great for these animalcules of
286 Imaginary Conversations.
the palace to see well and wholly. Do you doubt that the
most fatuous of the Georges, whichever it was, thought him-
self Newton's superior ? Or that any minister, any peer of
Parliament, held the philosopher so high as the assayer of the
mint ? Was it not always in a grated hole, among bars and
bullion, that they saw whatever they could see of his dignity ?
Was it ever among the interminable worlds he brought down
for men to contemplate ? Yet Newton stood incalculably more
exalted above the glorious multitude of stars and suns, than
these ignorant and irreclaimable wretches above the multitude
of the street. Let every man hold this faith, and it will teach
him what is lawful and right in veneration ; namely, that there
are divine beings and immortal men on the one side, mortal
men and brute beasts on the other. The two parties stand com-
pact ; each stands separate : the distance is wide, but there is
nothing in the interval.
Will you go on, after a minute or two, for I am inclined
to silence ?
Southey. Next to the Sonnets come the Odes, written much
earlier. One stanza in that On the Morning of the. Nativity
has been often admired. What think you of this stanza, the
fourth ? But the preceding and the following are beautiful too.
Landor. I think it incomparably the noblest piece of lyric
poetry in any modern language I am conversant with ; and I
regret that so much of the remainder throws up the bubbles
and fetid mud of the Italian. In the thirteenth, what a rhyme
is harmony with symphony ! In the eighteenth,
Swinges the scaly horror of his/o/aW tail.
I wish you would unfold the folded tail for me : I do not like to
meddle with it.
Southey. Better to rest on the fourth stanza, and then regard
fresh beauties in the preceding and the following. Beyond
these, very far beyond, are the nineteenth and twentieth. But
why is the priest pale-eyed ?
Landor. Who knows ? I would not delay you with a
remark on the modern spelling of what Milton wrote k'ut,
and what some editors have turned into kiss'd ; a word which
could not exist in its contraction, and never did exist in speech
Southey and Landor. 287
even uncontracted. Yet they make kufd rhyme with whist.
Let me remark again on the word unexpressive, verse 1 16, used
before in Lycidas, verse 176, and defended by the authority
of Shakspeare (As You I Ale It. Act III., 82.),
The fair, the chaste, the uncxprettivc she.
This is quite as wrong as resistless for irresistible, and even more
so. I suspect it was used by Shakspeare, who uses it only
once, merely to turn into ridicule a fantastic euphuism of the
day. Milton, in his youth, was fond of seizing on odd things
wherever he found them.
Southey.
1 30. And let the base of heaven's deep organ blow.
Landor. No, I will not : I am too puritanical in poetry
for that.
Southcy. The twenty-third, " And sullen Moloch," is grand,
until we come to
The brutish gods of Nile, at fast
Isis and Osiris and the dog Anubis, haste.
As fast as what ? We have heard nothing but the ring of
cymbals calling the grisly king. We come to worse in twenty-
six,
So when the sun in bed
Curtain 'd with cloudy reJ,
Pillmvs kit chin, &c.
| x xvii . ] And all about the courtly stable
Brigkt-harnett angels sit ... in order serviceable.
They would be the less scroictablt by being seated, and not the
more so for being harnessed.
The Passion. The five first verses of the sixth stanza are
good, and very acceptable after the "letters where my tears
have tvatht a wanmsh white." The last two verses are guilty
of such an offence as Cowley himself was never indicted for.
The sixth stanza lies between two others full of putrid conceits,
like a large pearl which has exhausted its oyster.
Landor. But can any thing be conceived more exquisite
than
Grove and spring
Would soon unbosom all their echoes mild?
288 Imaginary Conversations.
This totally withdraws us from regarding the strange superfetation
just below.
The Circumcision, verse 6 :
Now mourn ; and if sad share with us to bear.
Death of an Infant. It is never at a time when the feelings
are most acute that the poet expresses them ; but sensibility and
taste shrink alike, on such occasions, from witticisms and
whimsies. Here are too many ; but the last two stanzas are
very beautiful. Look at the note. Here are six verses, four of
them in Shakspeare, containing specimens of the orthography you
recommend :
Sweet Rose ! fair flower, untimely pluckt, soon faded,
Pluckt in the bud and faded in the spring,
Bright Orient pearle, alack too timely shaded !
Fair creature kifd too soon by Death's sharp sting.
Again,
Sweete lovely Rose ! ill pluckt before thy time,
Fair worthy sonne, not conquered, but betraid.
Southey. The spelling of Milton is not always to be copied,
though it is better on the whole than any other writer's. He
continues to write Jift and sixt. In what manner would he write
eighth ? If he omitted the final h, there would be irregularity
and confusion. Beside, how would he continue ? Would he
say the tent for the tenth, and the thir tent, four tent, &c.?
Landor. We have corrected and fixed a few inconsiderate
and random spellings ; but we have as frequently taken the wrong
and rejected the right. No edition of Shakspeare can be valuable
unless it strictly follows the first editors, who knew and observed
his orthography.
Southey.
. . . from thy prefixed seat didst post. St. 9, v. 59.
We find the same expression more than once in Milton, surely
one very unfit for grave subjects in his time as in ours.
Let us, sitting beneath the sundial, look at the poem On
Time :
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping Hours
Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace.
Southey and Landor. 289
Now, although the Hours may be the lazier for the lead about
them, the plummet is the quicker for it.
And glut thyself with what thy womb devours.
It is incredible how many disgusting images Milton indulges in.
Landor. In his age, and a century earlier, it was called
strength. The Graces are absent from this chamber of Ilithyia.
But the poet would have defended his position with the horse of
Virgil,
Uterumque armato milite complent.
Soutkey.
Then long eternity shall greet our bliss
With an individual kiss,
meaning undivided ; and he employs the same word in the same
sense again in the Paradise Lost. How much more properly
than as we are now in the habit of using it, calling men and
women, who never saw one another, individuals, and often
employing it beyond the person : for instance, " a man's indi-
vidual pleasure," although the pleasure is divided with another
or with many. The last part, from " When every thing "
to the end, is magnificent. The word sincerely bears its Latin
signification.
The next is, At a Solemn Music. And I think you will
agree with me that a sequence of rhymes never ran into
such harmony as those at the conclusion, from " That we on
earth."
Landor. Excepting the commencement of Dryden's Religio
Laicij where indeed the poetry is of a much inferior order;
for the head of Dryden does not reach so high as to the loins
of Milton.
Southey. No, nor to the knees. We now come to the
Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester. He has often much
injured this beautiful metre by the prefix of a syllable which
distorts every foot. The entire change in the dllcgro, to welcome
Euphrosyne, is admirably judicious. The flow in the poem
before us is trochaic : he turns it into the iambic, which is
exactly its opposite. The verses beginning
IV.
290 Imaginary Conversations.
The God that sits at marriage-feast,
are infinitely less beautiful than Ovid's. These,
He at their invoking came,
But with a scarce well-lighted flame,
bear a faint resemblance to
Fax quoque quam tenuit lacrimoso stridula fumo
Usque fuit, nullosque invent motibus ignes.
Here the conclusion is ludicrously low,
No marchioness, but now a queen.
l
In Vacation Exercise :
Driving dumb silence from the portal door,
Where he had mutely sat two years before.
What do you think of that ?
Landor. Why, I think it would have been as well if he had
sat there still. In the 2yth verse, he uses the noun substantive
suspect for suspicion ; and why not ? I have already given my
reasons for its propriety. From verse 33 to 44 is again such
a series of couplets as you will vainly look for in any other
poet.
Southey. " On the JEns." Nothing can be more ingenious.
It was in such subjects that the royal James took delight. I
know not what the rivers have to do with the present ; but they
are very refreshing after coming out of the schools.
The Epitaph on Shakspeare is thought unworthy of Milton. I
entertain a very different opinion of it, considering it was the first
poem he ever published. Omit the two lines,
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thyself a live-long monument,
and the remainder is vigorous, direct, and enthusiastic ; after
invention, the greatest qualities of all great poetry.
On the Forces of Conscience. Milton is among the least witty
of mankind. He seldom attempts a witticism unless he is angry;
and then he stifles it by clenching his fist. His unrhymed
translation of Quis multd gracilis is beautiful for four lines only.
Southey and Landor. 291
Plain in thy neatness is almost an equivoke ; neat in thy plainness of
attire would be nearer the mark.
Landor. Simplex mitnditis does not mean that, nor plain in
thy "ornaments," as Waiton thinks; but, without any reference
to ornaments, plain in attire. Mundus muliebris (and from mundus
mundit'uc) means the toilet ; and always will mean it, as long as
the world lasts. We now come upon the Psalms ; so let us
close the book.
Southey. Willingly ; for I am desirous of hearing you say a
little more about the Latin poetry of Milton than you have said
in your Dissertation.
Landor. Johnson gives his opinion more freely than favorably.
It is wonderful that a critic, so severe in his censures on the
absurdities and extravagances of Cowley, should prefer the very
worst of them to the gracefulness and simplicity of Milton. His
gracefulness he seldom loses ; his simplicity he not always retains.
But there is no Latin verse of Cowley worth preservation.
Thomas May, indeed, is an admirable imitator of Lucan ; so
good a one, that, if in Lucan you find little poetry, in May you
find none. But his verses sound well upon the anvil. It is
surprising that Milton, who professedly imitated Ovid, should so
much more rarely have run into conceits than when he had no
such leader. His early English poetry is full of them, and in the
gravest the most. The best of his Latin poems is that addressed to
Christina in the name of Cromwell : it is worthy of the classical and
courtly Bembo. But, in the second verse, lucida stella violates
the metre : stella serena would be more descriptive and applicable.
It now occurs to me, that he who edited the last Ainsworttis
Dictionary calls Cowley poetarum stculi sui facile princcps, and
totally omits all mention of Shakspeare in the obituary of
illustrious men. Among these he has placed not only the most
contemptible critics, who bore indeed some relation to learning,
but even such people as Lord Cornwallis and Lord Thurlow.
Egregious ass ! above all other asses by a good ear's length !
Ought a publication so negligent and injudicious to be admitted
into our public schools, after the world has been enriched by the
erudition of Facciolati and Furlani ? Shall we open the book
again, and, go straight on ?
Southey. If you please. But as you insist on me saying most
292 Imaginary Conversations.
about the English, I expect at your hands a compensation in the
Latin.
Landor. I do not promise you a compensation ; but I will
waste no time in obeying your wishes. Severe and rigid as
the character of Milton has been usually represented to us, it
is impossible to read his Elegies without admiration for his
warmth of friendship and his eloquence in expressing it. His
early love of Ovid, as a master in poetry, is enthusiastic.
[23.] Non tune lonio quidquam cessisset Homero,
Neve foret victo laus tibi prima, Maro !
Neve is often used by the moderns for neque, very improperly.
Although we hear much about the Metamorphoses and the JEneid
being left incomplete, we may reasonably doubt whether the
authors could have much improved them. There is a deficiency
of skill in the composition of both poems ; but every part is
elaborately worked out. Nothing in Latin can excel the beauty
of Virgil's versification. Ovid's at one moment has the fluency,
at another the discontinuance, of mere conversation. Sorrow,
passionate, dignified, and deep, is never seen in the Metamorphoses
as in the JEneid ; nor in the JEneid is any eloquence so sustained,
any spirit so heroic, as in the contest between Ajax and Ulysses.
But Ovid frequently, in other places, wants that gravity and
potency in which Virgil rarely fails : declamation is no substitute
for it. Milton, in his Latin verses, often places words beginning
with sc 9 sty spy &c., before a dactyl, which is inadmissible.
[53.] Ah! quoties dignse stupui miracula formae
Quae possit senium vel reparare Jovis.
No such difficult a matter as he appears to represent it ; for
Jupiter, to the very last, was much given to such reparations.
This elegy, with many slight faults, has great facility and spirit of
its own, and has caught more by running at the side of Ovid and
Tibullus. In the second elegy, alipes is a dactyl ; pes, simple or
compound, is long. This poem is altogether unworthy of its
author. The third is on the death of Launcelot Andrews, Bishop
of Winchester. It is florid, puerile, and altogether deficient in
pathos. The conclusion is curious :
Flebam turbatos Cepheleia pellice somnos ;
Talia contingant somnia s<epe mlhi.
Southey and Landor. 293
Ovid has expressed the same wish in the same words ; but the
aspiration was for somewhat very dissimilar to a Bishop of Win-
chester. The fourth is an epistle to Thomas Young, his preceptor,
a man whose tenets were puritanical, but who encouraged in his
scholar the love of poetry. Much of this piece is imitated from
Ovid. There are several thoughts which -might have been
omitted, and several expressions which might have been improved.
For instance :
[ill.] Namque eris ipse Dei radiante sub fgide tutus,
lllc tibi custos et pugil ille tibi.
All the verses after these are magnificent. The next is on
Spring, very inferior to its predecessors.
[39.] Nam dolus et czdes et vis, cum nocte recessit
Neve giganteum Dii metuert scelus.
How thick the faults lie here ! But the invitation of the Earth
to the Sun is quite Ovidian.
[122.] Semicaperque deus semideusque caper
is too much so. Elegy the sixth is addressed to Deodati.
Mitto tibi sanam non pleno ventre salutem,
Qua tu, distento, forte carere potes.
I have often observed, in modern Latinists of the first order, that
they use indifferently forte and forsan or for sit an. Here is an
example. Forte is, by accident^ without the implication of a
doubt; forsan always implies one. Martial wrote bad Latin
when he wrote ** Si forsan." Runchenius himself writes ques-
tionably to D'Orville, " sed forte res non est tanti." It surely
would be better to have written fortasse. I should have less
wondered to find forte in any modern Italian (excepting Bembo,
who always writes with as much precision as Cicero or Caesar) ;
because ma forsc, their idiom, would prompt sed forte.
[19.] Naso Corallxis mala carmina misit ab agris.
Untrue. He himself was discontented with them because they
had lost their playfulness ; but their only fault lies in their adula-
tion. I doubt whether all the elegiac verses that have been
written in the Latin language ever since are worth the books of
294 Imaginary Conversations.
them he sent from Pontus. Deducting one couplet from Joannes
Secundus, I would strike the bargain.
[79.] Si modo saltern.
The saltern is here redundant and contrary to Latinity.
Southey. This elegy, I think, is equable and pleasing, without
any great fault or great beauty.
Landor. In the seventh, he discloses the first effects of love
on him. Here are two verses which I never have read without
the heart-ache :
[15.] Ut mihi adhuc refugam quaerebant lumina noctem
Nee matutinum sustinuere jubar .
We perceive at one moment the first indication of love and of
blindness. Happy, had the blindness been as unreal as the love.
Cupid is not exalted by a comparison with Paris and Hylas, nor
the frown of Apollo magnified by the Parthian. He writes, as
many did, author for auctor, very improperly. In the sixtieth verse
is again neve for nee ; nor is it the last time. But here come
beautiful verses:
[99.] Deme meos tandem, verum nee deme, furores ;
Nescio cur, miser est suaviter omnis amans.
I wish cur had been qui. Subjoined to this elegy are ten verses
in which he regrets the time he had wasted in love. Probably it
was on the day (for it could not have cost him more) on which
he composed it.
Southey. The series of these compositions exhibits little more
than so many exercises in mythology. You have repeated to me
all that is good in them, and in such a tone of enthusiasm as made
me think better of them than I had ever thought before. The
first of his epigrams, on Leonora Baroni, has little merit ; the
second, which relates to Tasso, has much.
Landor. I wish, however, that in the sixth 10 line he had
substituted ilia for eddem, and not on account of the metre ; for
eadem becomes a spondee, as eodem in Virgil's "uno eodemque
igni." And sibi, which ends the poem, is superfluous ; if there
must be any word, it should be , which the metre rejects. The
[ 10 The tenth line of this poem runs
" Voce eadem poteras composuisse tua."]
Southey and Landor. 295
Scazons against Salmasius arc a miserable copy of Persius's heavy
prologue to his satires ; and, moreover, a copy at second-hand :
for Menage had imitated it in his invective against Mommor,
whom he calls Gargilius. He begins,
Quis expedivit psittaco suo x tu P c -
But Persius's and Menage's at least are metrical, which Milton's
in one instance are not. The fifth foot should be an iambic.
In primatum we have a spondee. The iambics which follow, on
Salmasius again, are just as faulty. They start with a false quan-
tity, and go on stumbling with the same infirmity. The epigram
on More, the defender of Salmasius, is without wit : the pun is
very poor. The next piece, a fable of the Farmer and Master, is
equally vapid. But now comes the Bellipotens Vlrgo^ of which
we often have spoken, but of which no one ever spoke too highly.
Christina was flighty and insane ; but it suited the policy of Crom-
well to flatter a queen almost as vain as Elizabeth, who could still
command the veterans of Gustavus Adolphus. We will pass
over the Greek verses. They are such as no boy of the sixth
form would venture to show up in any of our public schools.
We have only one Alcaic ode in the volume, and a very bad one
it is. The canons of this metre 11 were unknown in Milton's
tinu-. But, versed as he was in mythology, he never should have
written
Nee puppe lustrasses Charontis
Horribiles barathri recessus.
The good Doctor Goslyn was not rowed in that direction, nor
could any such place be discovered from the bark of Charon,
from whom Dr Goslyn had every right, as Vice-Chancellor of
the University, to expect civility and attention.
Southty. We come now to a longer poem, and in heroic verse,
on the Gunpowder Plot. It appears to me to be even more
Ovidian than the Elegies. Monstrosus Typhoeus, Mavortigena
Ouirinus, tru> Pope, and the mendicant friars meet strangely.
However, here they are; and now comes Saint Peter, and
Bromius.
[ Landor i> referring to the faulty form used by Milton in the third
line of the Archaic Atanza. Five out of the twelve are incorrect.]
296 Imaginary Conversations.
Landor.
Hie Dolus intortis semper sedet ater ocellis.
Though ocellus is often used for oculus, being a diminutive, it
is, if not always a word of endearment, yet never applicable
to what is terrific or heroic. In the i6$d verse the Pope is
represented as declaring the Protestant religion to be the true
one.
Et quotquot fidei caluere cupidine verz.
This poem, which ends poorly, is a wonderful work for a boy of
seventeen, although much less so than Chatterton's Bristoive
Tragedie and JElia.
Southey. I suspect you will be less an admirer of the next, on
Ob'ttum Praulis Elienses,
[13.] Qui rex sacrorum ilia fuisti in insula
Qua nomen Anguilla tenet,
where he wishes Death were dead.
[24.] Et imfrecor ned nccem.
Again,
[43.] Sub regna furvi luctuosa Tartari
Sedcique subterraneai.
Landor. He never has descended before to such a bathos
as this, where he runs against the coming blackamoor in the
dark. However, he recovers from the momentary stupefaction ;
and there follow twenty magnificent verses, such as Horace
himself, who excels in this metre, never wrote in it. But the
next, Naturam non pati senium, is still more admirable. I wish
only he had omitted the third verse.
Heu quam perpetuis erroribus acta fatiscit
Avia mens hominum, tenebrisque immersa profundis
CEdipodioniam volvit sub pectore noctem.
Sublime as vohlt sub pectore noctem is, the lumbering and ill-
composed word, (Edipodioniam, spoils it. Beside, the sentence
would go on very well, omitting the whole line. Gray has
much less vigor and animation in the fragment of his philosophi-
cal poem. Robert Smith alone has more, how much more!
Southey and Landor. 297
Enough to rival Lucretius in his noblest passages, and to deter
the most aspiring from an attempt at Latin poetry. The next is
also on a philosophical subject, and entitled, De Idea Platonica
quemadmodum Aristotcles intellex'it. This is obscure. Aristoteles
knew, as others do, that Plato entertained the whimsy of God
working from an archetype ; but he himself was too sound and
solid for the admission of such a notion. The first five verses
are highly poetical ; the sixth is Cowleian. At the close, he
scourges Plato for playing the fool so extravagantly, and tells
him either to recall the poets he has turned out of doors, or
to go out himself. There are people who look up in astonish-
ment at this archetypus gtgas^ frightening God while he works
at him. Milton has invested him with great dignity, and slips
only once into the poetical corruptions of the age.
Southey. Lover as you are of Milton, how highly must you
be gratified by the poem he addresses to his father !
Landor. I am happy, remote as we are, to think of the
pleasure so good a father must have felt on this occasion, and
how clearly he must have seen in prospective the glory of his
son.
In the verses after the forty-second,
Carmina regales epulas ornare solebant,
Cum nondum luxus vastzque immensa vorago
Nota gulz. et modico fumabat cocna Lyzo,
Turn de more sedens feste ad convivia vates, &c.
I wish he had omitted the two intermediate lines, and had
written,
Carmina regales epulas ornare solebant,
Cum, de more, &c.
The four toward the conclusion,
At tibi, chare pater, &c.
must have gratified the father as much almost by the harmony
as the sentiment.
Southey. The scazons to SaJsilli are a just and equitable return
for his quatrain ; for they are full of false quantities, without an
iota of poetry.
Landor. But how gloriously he bursts forth again in all his
298 Imaginary Conversations.
splendor for Manso ! for Manso, who before had enjoyed the
immortal honor of being the friend of Ta sso !
[70.] Diis dilecte senex ! te Jupiter aequus oportet
Nascentem et miti lustrarit lumine Phoebus,
Atlantisque nepos ; neqve enim nisi charus ab ortu,
Diis superis poterit magnofa'visse poet<e.
And the remainder of the poem is highly enthusiastic. What
a glorious verse is,
[84.] Frangam Saxonicas Britonum sub Marte phalanges !
Southey. I have often wondered that our poets, and Milton
more especially, should be the partisans of the Britons rather
than of the Saxons. I do not add the Normans ; for very few
of our poets are Norman by descent. The Britons seem to
have been a barbarous and treacherous race, inclined to drunken-
ness and quarrels. Was the whole nation ever worth this noble
verse of Milton ? It seems to come sounding over the ^Egean
Sea, and not to have been modulated on the low country of the
Tiber.
Landor. In his pastoral on the loss of Diodati, entitled
Epitaphium Damonis, there are many beautiful verses : for
instance,
[66.] Ovium quoque tasdet, at illae
Mcerent, inque suum convertunt ora magistrum.
The pause at marent, and the word also, show the great master.
In Virgil himself it is impossible to find anything more scientific.
Here, as in Lycidas, mythologies are intermixed, and the heroic
bursts forth from the pastoral. Apollo could not for ever be
disguised as the shepherd-boy of Admetus.
[60.] Supra caput imber et Eurus
Triste sonant, fractaque agitato crepuscula
Southey. This is finely expressed ; but he found the idea
not untouched before. Gray and others have worked upon
it since. It may be well to say little on the Presentation of the
poems to the Bodleian Library. Strophes and antistrophes are
here quite out of place ; and on no occasion has any Latin poet
Southey and Landor. 299
so jumbled together the old metres. Many of these are irregular
and imperfect.
[60.] Ion Actea genitus Creusa
is not a verse ; authorum is not Latin.
[78.] Et tutela dabit solers Rottsi
is defective in metre. This Pindaric ode to Rouse, the libra-
rian, is indeed fuller of faults than any other of his Latin compo-
sitions. He tells us himself that he has admitted a spondee
for the third foot in the Phalsecian verse, because Catullus had
done so in the second. He never wrote such bad verses, or
gave such bad reasons, all his life before. But beautifully and
justly has he said,
[86.] Si quid meremur sana posteritas sciet.
Landor. I find traces in Milton of nearly all the best Latin
poets, excepting Lucretius. This is singular; for there is in
both of them a generous warmth and a contemptuous severity.
I admire and love Lucretius. There is about him a simple
majesty, a calm and lofty scorn of every thing pusillanimous and
abject ; and, consistently with this character, his poetry is mascu-
line, plain, concentrated, and energetic. But since invention
was precluded by the subject, and glimpses of imagination could
be admitted through but few and narrow apertures, it is the in-
sanity of enthusiasm to prefer his poetical powers to those of
Virgil, of Catullus, and of Ovid ; in all of whom every part of
what constitutes the true poet is much more largely displayed.
The excellence of Lucretius is, that his ornaments are never out
of place, and are always to be found wherever there is a place
for them. Ovid knows not what to do with his, and is as fond
of accumulation as the frequenter of auction -rooms. He is
playful so out of season, that he reminds me of a young lady I
saw at Sta. Maria Novella, who at one moment crossed herself,
and at the next tickled her companion ; by which process they
were both put upon their speed at their prayers, and made very
good and happy. Small as is the portion of glory which accrues
to Milton from his Latin poetry, there are single sentences in
it, ay, single images, worth all that our island had produced
300 Imaginary Conversations.
before. In all the volume of Buchanan, I doubt whether you
can discover a glimpse of poetry ; and few sparks fly off the
anvil of May.
There is a confidence of better days expressed in this closing
poem. Enough is to be found in his Latin to insure him a high
rank and a lasting name. It is, however, to be regretted that
late in life he ran back to the treasures of his youth, and estimated
them with the fondness of that undiscerning age. No poet ever
was sorry that he abstained from early publication. But Milton
seems to have cherished his first effusions with undue partiality.
Many things written later by him are unworthy of preservation,
especially those which exhibit men who provoked him into
bitterness. Hatred, the most vulgar of vulgarisms, could never
have belonged to his natural character. He must have contracted
the distemper from theologians and critics. The scholar in his
days was half clown and half trooper. College life could leave
but few of its stains and incrustations on a man who had stepped
forward so soon into the amenities of Italy, and had conversed so
familiarly with the most polished gentlemen of the most polished
nation.
Southey. In his attacks on Salmasius, and others more obscure,
he appears to have mistaken his talent in supposing he was witty.
Landor. Is there a man in the world wise enough to know
whether he himself is witty or not, to the extent he aims at ? I
doubt whether any question needs more self-examination. It is
only the fool's heart that is at rest upon it. He never asks how
the matter stands, and feels confident he has only to stoop for it.
Milton's dough, it must be acknowledged, is never the lighter for
the bitter barm he kneads up with it.
Southey. The Sabbath of his mind required no levities, no
excursions or amusements. But he was not ill-tempered. The
worst-tempered men have often the greatest and readiest store of
pleasantries. Milton, on all occasions indignant and wrathful at
injustice, was unwilling to repress the signification of it when it
was directed against himself. However I can hardly think he felt
so much as he expresses ; but he seized on bad models in his
resolution to show his scholarship. Disputants, and critics in
particular, followed one another with invectives ; and he was
thought to have given the most manifest proof of original genius
Southey and Landor. 301
who had invented a new form of reproach. I doubt if Milton
was so contented with his discomfiture of Satan, or even with his
creation of Eve, as with the overthrow of Salmasius under the
loads of fetid brimstone he fulminated against him.
It is fortunate we have been sitting quite alone while we
detected the blemishes of a poet we both venerate. The mali-
cious are always the most ready to bring forward an accusation of
malice ; and we should certainly have been served, before long,
with a writ pushed under the door.
Landor. Are we not somewhat like two little beggar-boys,
who, forgetting that they are in tatters, sit noticing a few stains
and rents in their father's raiment ?
Southey. But they love him.
Let us now walk homeward. We leave behind us the Severn
and the sea and the mountains ; and, if smaller things may be
mentioned so suddenly after greater, we leave behind us the sun-
dial, which marks, as we have been doing in regard to Milton,
the course of the great luminary by a slender line of shadow.
Landor. After witnessing his glorious ascension, we are
destined to lower our foreheads over the dreary hydropathy and
flannelly voices of the swathed and sinewless.
Southey. Do not be over-sure that you are come to the worst,
even there. Unless you sign a certificate of their health and
vigor, your windows and lamps may be broken by the mischievous
rabble below.
Landor. Marauders will cook their greens and bacon, though
they tear down cedar panels for the purpose.
Southey. There is an incessant chatterer 12 who has risen to
the first dignities of State by the same means as nearly all men
rise now by ; namely, opposition to whatever is done or projected
by those invested with authority. He will never allow us to
contemplate greatness at our leisure : he will not allow us indeed
to look at it for a moment. Caesar must be stripped of his laurels
and left bald ; or some reeling soldier, some insolent swaggerer,
some stilted ruffian, thrust before his triumph. If he fights, he
does not know how to use his sword ; if he speaks, he speaks vile
Latin. I wonder that Cromwell fares no better ; for he lived a
hypocrite, and he died a traitor. I should not recall to you this
[* 2 Lord Brougham.]
302 Imaginary Conversations.
ridiculous man, to whom the Lords have given the run of the House,
a man pushed off his chair by every party he joins, and enjoying
all the disgraces he incurs, were it not that he has also, in the
fulness of his impudence, raised his cracked voice and incondite
language against Milton.
Landor. I hope his dapple fellow-creatures in the lanes will
be less noisy and more modest as we pass along them homeward.
Southey. Wretched as he is in composition, superficial as he is
in all things, without a glimmer of genius or a grain of judgment,
yet his abilities and acquirements raise him somewhat high above
those more quiescent and unaspiring ones you call his fellow-
creatures.
Landor. The main difference is, that they are subject to have
their usual burdens laid upon them all their lives, while his of the
woolsack is taken off for ever. The allusion struck me from the
loudness and dissonance of his voice, the wilfulness and perverse-
ness of his disposition, and his habitude of turning round on a
sudden and kicking up behind.
XIX. ANDREW MARVEL AND BISHOP
PARKER.* *
Parker. Most happy am I to encounter you, Mr Marvel.
It is some time, I think, since we met. May I take the liberty
P The Controversy, of which the Rehearsal Transprosed was part, began
with three books written by Dr Parker, "the most sanguine hound of the
clerical pack, who seemed to have a mitre in his eye" (Thompson's
"Life of Marvel," iii., 470). These were Ecclesiastical Polity (1670), A
Defence of Ecclesiastical Polity (1671), and A Preface to a Reprint of Bishop
Brambalfs Vindication of himself and the rest of the Episcopal Clergy from the
charge of Popery (1671). Marvel's book was an attack on all three.
Dr Parker retorted with a Reproof to the Rehearsal Transprosed, which pro-
voked the second part of the Rehearsal Transprosed from which (p. 498,
Thompson ed.) Landor has quoted the passage given in the note below.
He has, however, omitted several words, and^curiously enough, one passage,
* He wrote a work entitled, as Hooker's was, Ecclesiastical Polity, in
which are these words : " It is better to submit to the unreasonable im-
positions of Nero and Caligula than to hazard the dissolution of the
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 303
of inquiring what brought you into such a lonely quarter as Bun-
hillfields ?
Marvel. My lord, I return at this instant from visiting an
in which Marvel denies that he was ever on friendly terms with Parker.
In Captain Thompson's Life (p. 474) an account is given of one conversa-
tion between Marvel and Parker, which was not likely to have led to
another. Parker was not made bishop of Oxford until some years after
Marvel's death. The full text of the passage quoted by Landor is as
follows: "At His Majesty's happy return, J. M. did partake, even as you
if did for all your huffing, of his regal clemency, and has ever since
expiated himself in a retired Alienee. It was after that, I well remember
it, that being one day at his house, I there first met you, and accidentally.
Since that I have been scarce four or five times in your company, but,
whether it were my foresight or my good fortune, I never contracted any
friendship or confidence with you. But then it was, when you, as I told
you, wandered up and down Moorfields, astrologizing upon the duration
of His Majesty's government, that you frequented J. M. incessantly,
and haunted his house day by day. What discourses you there used he
is too generous to remember. But, he never having in the least provoked
you, for you to insult thus over his old age, to traduce him by your tcara
meats, and in your own person, as a schoolmaster, who was born and
hath lived much more ingenuously and liberally than yourself; to have
done all this, and lay at last my simple book to his charge, without ever
taking care to inform yourself better, which you had so easie opportunity
to do ; nay, when you yourself, too, have said, to my knowledge, that you
saw no such great matter in it but that I might be the author : it is in-
humanely and inhospitably done, and will, I nope, be a warning to all
others, as it is to me, to avoid (I will not say such a Judas) but a man
that creeps into all companies to jeer, trepan, and betray them." (Works,
ii., 1846. Works, iv., 1876.)]
State." It is plain enough to what imposition he recommended the duty
of submission ; for, in our fiscal sense of the word, none ever bore more
lightly on the subject than Caligula's and Nero's : even the provinces were
taxed very moderately and fairly by them. He adds, " Princes may with
less danger give liberty to mm'- ^ in - and debaucheries than to their con-
sciences." Marvel answered him in his Reheartal Trantfroted^ in which he
says of Milton: "I well remember that, being one day at his house, I
there first met you, and accidentally. Then it was that you wandered up
and down Moorfields, astrologizing upon the duration of His Majesty's
government. You frequented John Milton incessantly, and haunted his
house day by day. What discourses you there used he is too generous to
remember; but, he never having in the least provoked you, it is in-
humanely and inhospitably done to insult thus over his old age. I hope
it will be a warning to all others, as it is to me, to avoid, I will not say
such a Judas, but a man that creeps into all companies, to jeer, trepan,
and betray them."
304 Imaginary Conversations.
old friend of ours, hard by, in Artillery Walk ; who, you will be
happy to hear, bears his blindness and asthma with truly Christian
courage.
Parker. And pray, who may that old friend be, Mr Marvel ?
Marvel. Honest John Milton.
Parker. The same gentleman whose ingenious poem, on our
first parents, you praised in some elegant verses prefixed to it ?
Marvel. The same who likewise, on many occasions, merited
and obtained your lordship's approbation.
Parker. I am happy to understand that no harsh measures
were taken against him, on the return of our most gracious sove-
reign. And it occurs to me that you, Mr Marvel, were earnest
in his behalf. Indeed, I myself might have stirred upon it, had
Mr Milton solicited me in the hour of need.
Marvel. He is grateful to the friends who consulted at the
same time his dignity and his safety ; but gratitude can never be
expected to grow on a soil hardened by solicitation. Those who
are the most ambitious of power are often the least ambitious of
glory. It requires but little sagacity to foresee that a name will
become invested with eternal brightness by belonging to a bene-
factor of Milton. / might have served him ! is not always the
soliloquy of late compassion or of virtuous repentance : it is fre-
quently the cry of blind and impotent and wounded pride, angry
at itself for having neglected a good bargain, a rich reversion.
Believe me, my lord bishop, there are few whom God has pro-
moted to serve the truly great. They are never to be superseded,
nor are their names to be obliterated in earth or heaven. Were
I to trust my observation rather than my feelings, I should be-
lieve that friendship is only a state of transition to enmity. The
wise, the excellent in honor and integrity, whom it was once our
ambition to converse with, soon appear in our sight no higher than
the ordinary class of our acquaintance ; then become fit objects to
set our own slender wits against, to contend with, to interrogate,
to subject to the arbitration, not of their equals, but of ours ; and,
lastly, what indeed is less injustice and less indignity, to neglect,
abandon, and disown.
Parker. I never have doubted that Mr Milton is a learned
man, indeed, he has proven it; and there are many who,
like yourself, see considerable merit in his poems. I confess
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 305
that I am an indifferent judge in these matters ; and I can only
hope that he has now corrected what is erroneous in his doctrines.
Maruf/. Latterly, he hath never changed a jot, in acting or
thinking.
Parker. Wherein I hold him blamable, well aware as I
am that never to change is thought an indication of rectitude
and wisdom. But if every thing in this world is progressive ;
if every thing is defective ; if our growth, if our faculties, are
obvious and certain signs of it, then surely we should and
must be different in different ages and conditions. Conscious-
ness of error is, to a certain extent, a consciousness of under-
standing ; and correction of error is the plainest proof of energy
and mastery.
Marvel. No proof of the kind is necessary to my friend ;
and it was not always that your lordship looked down on him
so magisterially in reprehension, or delivered a sentence from so
commanding an elevation. I, who indeed am but a humble
man, am apt to question my judgment where it differs from his.
I am appalled by any supercilious glance at him, and disgusted
by any austerity ill assorted with the generosity of his mind.
When I consider what pure delight we have derived from it,
what treasures of wisdom it has conveyed to us, I find him
supremely worthy of my gratitude, love, and veneration ; and the
neglect in which I now discover him leaves me only the more
room for the free effusion of these sentiments. How shallow in
comparison is every thing else around us, trickling and dimpling
in the pleasure-grounds of our literature ! If we are to build
our summer-houses against ruined temples, let us at least abstain
from ruining them for the purpose.
Parker. Nay, nay, Mr Marvel ! so much warmth is uncalled
for.
Marvel. Is there any thing offensive to your lordship in my
expressions ?
Parker. I am not aware that there is. But let us generalize
a little ; for we are prone to be touchy and testy in favor of our
intimates.
Marvel. I believe, my lord, this fault, or sin, or whatso-
ever it may be designated, is among the few that are wearing
fast away.
306 Imaginary Conversations.
Parker. Delighted am I, my dear sir, to join you in your
innocent pleasantry. But, truly and seriously, I have known
even the prudent grow warm and stickle about some close
affinity.
Marvel. Indeed ! so indecorous before your lordship ?
Parker. We may remember when manners were less polite
than they are now ; and not only the seasons of life require an
alteration of habits, but likewise the changes of society.
Marvel. Your lordship acts up to your tenets.
Parker. Perhaps you may blame me, and more severely than
I would blame our worthy friend Mr John Milton, upon finding
a slight variation in my exterior manner, and somewhat more
reserve than formerly ; yet wiser and better men than I presume
to call myself have complied with the situation to which it hath
pleased the Almighty to exalt them.
Marvel. I am slow to censure any one for assuming an
air and demeanor which, he is persuaded, are more becoming
than what he has left off. And I subscribe to the justice of
the observation, that wiser and better men than your lordship
have adapted their language and their looks to elevated station.
But sympathy is charity, or engenders it ; and sympathy requires
proximity, closeness, contact; and at every remove, and more
especially at every gradation of ascent, it grows a little colder.
When we begin to call a man our worthy friend, our friend-
ship is already on the wane. In him who has been raised
above his old companions, there seldom remains more warmth
than what turns every thing about it vapid : familiarity sidles
towards affability, and kindness courtesies into condescension.
Parker. I see, we are hated for rising.
Marvel. Many do really hate others for rising ; but some,
who appear to hate them for it, hate them only for the bad
effects it produces on the character.
Parker. We are odious, I am afraid, sometimes for the
gift, and sometimes for the giver ; and malevolence cools her
throbs by running to the obscurity of neglected merit. We
know whose merit that means.
Marvel. What ! because the servants of a king have stamped
no measure above a certain compass, and such only as the vulgar
are accustomed to handle, must we disbelieve the existence of any
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 307
r in its capacity, or decline the use of it in things lawful
and commendable ? Little men like these have no business at
all with the mensuration of higher minds: gaugers are not
astronomers.
Parker. Really, Mr Marvel, I do not understand metaphors.
Marvel. Leaving out arithmetic and mathematics, and the
sciences appertaining to them, I never opened a page without one :
no, not even a title-page with a dozen words in it. Perhaps I
am unfortunate in my tropes and figures : perhaps they come, by
my want of dexterity, too near your lordship. I would humbly
ask, Is there any criminality in the calculation and casting up of
manifold benefits, or in the employment of those instruments by
which alone they are to be calculated and cast up ?
Parker. Surely none whatever.
Marvel. It has happened to me and my schoolfellows, that,
catching small fish in the shallows and ditches of the Humber,
we called a minnow a perch, and a dace a pike ; because they
pleased us in the catching, and because we really were ignorant of
their quality. In like manner do some older ones act in regard
to men. They who are caught and handled by them are treated
with distinction, because they are so caught and handled, and
because self-love and self-conceit dazzle and delude the senses ;
while those whom they neither can handle nor catch are without
a distinctive name. We are informed by Aristoteles, in his
Treatise on Natural Ifutory, that solid horns are dropped and that
hollow ones are permanent. Now, although we may find solid men
cast on the earth and hollow men exalted, yet never will I believe
in the long duration of the hollow, or in the long abasement of the
solid. Milton, although the generality may be ignorant of it, is
quite as great a genius as Bacon, bating the chancellorship, which
goes for little where a great man is estimated by a wise one.
Parker. Rather enthusiastic ! ay, Mr Marvel ! the one
name having been established for almost a century, the other
but recently brought forward, and but partially acknowledged.
By coming so much later into the world, he cannot be quite so
original in his notions as Lord Verulam.
Marvel. Solomon said that, even in his time, there was
nothing new under the sun : he said it unwisely and untruly.
Parker. Solomon ? untruly ? unwisely ?
308 Imaginary Conversations.
Marvel. The spectacles which, by the start you gave, had so
nearly fallen from the bridge of your'nose, attest it. Had he any ?
It is said, and apparently with more reason than formerly, that
there are no new thoughts. What do the fools mean who say
it ! They might just as well assert that there are no new men,
because other men existed before with eyes, mouth, nostrils,
chin, and many other appurtenances. But as there are myriads
of forms between the forms of Scarron and Hudson * on one side,
and of Mercury and Apollo on the other, so there are myriads of
thoughts, of the same genus, each taking its peculiar conformation.
^Eschylus and Racine, struck by the same idea, would express a
sentiment very differently. Do not imagine that the idea is the
thought : the idea is that which the thought generates, rears up to
maturity, and calls after its own name. Every note in music has
been sounded frequently ; yet a composition of Purcell may be
brilliant by its novelty. There are extremely few roots in a
language ; yet the language may be varied, and novel too, age
after age. Chessboards and numerals are less capable of exhibiting
new combinations than poetry ; and prose likewise is equally
capable of displaying new phases and phenomena in images and
reflections. Good prose, to say nothing of the original thoughts
it conveys, may be infinitely varied in modulation. It is only an
extension of metres, an amplification of harmonies, of which even
the best and most varied poetry admits but few. Comprehending
at once the prose and poetry of Milton, we could prove, before
" fit audience," that he is incomparably the greatest master of
harmony that ever lived.
There may be, even in these late days, more originality of
thought, and flowing in more channels of harmony, more bursts
and breaks and sinuosities, than we have yet discovered. The
admirers of Homer never dreamed that a man more pathetic,
more sublime, more thoughtful, more imaginative, would follow.
Parker. Certainly not.
Marvel. Yet Shakspeare came, in the memory of our
fathers.
Parker. Mr William Shakspeare, of Stratford upon Avon ?
A remarkably clever man : nobody denies it.
Marvel. At first, people did not know very well what to
* A dwarf in that age.
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 309
make of him. He looked odd ; he seemed witty ; he drew
tears. But a grin and a pinch of snuff can do that.
Every great author is a great reformer ; and the reform is
either in thought or language. Milton is zealous and effective
in both.
Parker. Some men conceive that, if their name is engraven
in Gothic letters, it signifies and manifests antiquity of family ;
and others, that a congestion of queer words and dry chopped
sentences, which turn the mouth awry in reading, make them
look like original thinkers. I have seen fantastical folks of this
description who write <wtnd instead of go, and are so ignorant
of grammar as even to put wended for went. I do not say that
Mr Milton is one of them ; but he may have led weak men
into the fault.
Marvel. Not only is he not one of them, but his language is
.1 patchwork of old and new : all is of a piece. Beside,
lie only writer whom it is safe to follow in spelling : others
are inconsistent ; some for want of learning, some for want of
reasoning, some for want of memory, and some for want of care.
But there are certain words which ceased to be spelled properly
just before his time : the substantives chllde and wildc, and the
verbs Jindf and winds, for instance.
Parker. Therein we agree. We ought never to have devi-
ated from those who delivered to us our Litany, of which the
purity is unapproachable and the harmony complete. Our tongue
has been drooping ever since.
Marvel. Until Milton touched it again with fire from
heaven.
Parker. Gentlemen seem now to have delegated the cor-
rection of the press to their valets, and the valets to have de-
volved it on the chambermaids. But I would not advise you
to start a fresh reformation in this quarter ; for the Round-
heads can't spell, and the RoyaJists won't ; and, if you bring
back an ancient form retaining all its beauty, they will come
forward from both sides against you on a charge of coining.
We will now return, if you please, to the poets we were speaking
of. Both Mr Shakspeare and Mr Milton have considerable
merit in their respective ways ; but both, surely, are unequal. Is
it not so, Mr Marvel ?
310 Imaginary Conversations.
Marvel. Under the highest of their immeasurable Alps, all
is not valley and verdure : in some places, there are frothy
cataracts, there are the fruitless beds of noisy torrents, and there
are dull and hollow glaciers. He must be a bad writer, or
however a very indifferent one, in whom there are no inequalities.
The plants of such table-land are diminutive, and never worth
gathering. What would you think of a man's eyes to which
all things appear of the same magnitude and at the same elevation ?
You must think nearly so of a writer who makes as much of
small things as of great. The vigorous mind has mountains
to climb and valleys to repose in. Is there any sea without
its shoals ? On that which the poet navigates, he rises in-
trepidly as the waves rise round him, and sits composedly as
they subside.
Parker. I can listen to this ; but where the authority of
Solomon is questioned and rejected, I must avoid the topic.
Pardon me ; I collect from what you threw out previously, that,
with strange attachments and strange aversions, you cherish
singular ideas about greatness.
Marvel. To pretermit all reference to myself, our evil
humors, and our good ones too, are brought out whimsically.
We are displeased by him who would be similar to us, or who
would be near, unless he consent to walk behind. To-day
we are unfriendly to a man of genius, whom ten days hence
we shall be zealous in extolling, not because we know any
thing more of his works or his character, but because we have
dined in his company and he has desired to be introduced to us.
A flat ceiling seems to compress those animosities which flame
out furiously under the open sky.
Parker. Sad prejudices ! sad infirmities !
Marvel. The sadder are opposite to them. Usually men, in
distributing fame, do as old maids and old misers do : they give
every thing to those who want nothing. In literature, often a
man's solitude, and oftener his magnitude, disinclines us from
helping him if we find him down. We are fonder of warming
our hands at a fire already in a blaze than of blowing one. I
should be glad to see some person as liberal of fame in regard to
Milton as in regard to those literators of the town who speedily
run it out.
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 3 1 1
Parker. 1 have always called him a man of parts. But, Mr
Marvel, we may bestow as injudiciously as we detract.
Marvel. Perhaps as injudiciously, certainly not as injuri-
ously. If indeed we are to be called to account for the mis-
application of our bestowals, a heavy charge will lie against me
for an action I committed in my journey hither from Hull. I
saw an old man working upon the road, who was working upon
the same road, and not far from the same spot, when I was first
elected to represent that city in Parliament. He asked me for
something to make him Jr'tnL ; which, considering the heat of the
weather and the indication his nose exhibited of his propensities,
did appear superfluous. However, I gave him a shilling, in addi-
tion to as many good wishes as he had given me.
Parker. Not reflecting that he would probably get intoxi-
cated with it ?
Marvel. I must confess I had all that reflection, with its
whole depth of shade, upon my conscience ; and I tried as well
as I could to remove the evil. I inquired of him whether he
was made the happier by the shilling. He answered, that, if I
was none the worse for it, he was none. " Then," said I,
" honest friend ! since two are already the happier, prythee try
whether two more may not become so : therefore, drink out of
it at supper with thy two best friends."
Parker. I would rather have advised frugality and laying-by.
Perhaps he might have had a wife and children.
Marvel. He could not then, unless he were a most unlucky
man, be puzzled in searching for his two best friends. My
project gave him more pleasure than my money ; and I was
happy to think that he had many hours for his schemes and
anticipations between him and sunset.
Parker. When I ride or walk, I never carry loose money
about me, lest, through an inconsiderate benevolence, I be tempted
in some such manner to misapply it. To be robbed would give
me as little or less concern.
Marvel. A man's self is often his worst robber. He steals
from his own bosom and heart what God has there deposited,
and he hides it out of his way, as dogs and foxes do with bones.
But the robberies we commit on the body of our superfluities,
and store up in vacant places, in places of poverty and sorrow,
312 Imaginary Conversations.
these, whether in the dark or in the daylight leave us neither in
nakedness nor in fear, are marked by no burning-iron of conscience,
are followed by no scourge of reproach ; they never deflower
prosperity, they never distemper sleep.
Parker. I am ready at all times to award justice to the
generosity of your character, and no man ever doubted its consist-
ency. Believing you to be at heart a loyal subject, I am thrown
back on the painful reflection that all our acquaintance are not
equally so. Mr Milton, for example, was a republican ; yet he
entered into the service of a usurper ; you disdained it.
Marvel. Events proved that my judgment of Cromwell's
designs was correcter than his ; but the warier man is not always
the wiser, nor the more active and industrious in the service of
his country.
Parker. His opinions on religion varied also considerably,
until at last the vane almost wore out the socket, and it could turn
no longer.
Marvel. Is it nothing in the eyes of an Anglican bishop to
have carried the gospel of Christ against the Talmudists of Rome;
the word of God against the traditions of men ; the liberty of
conscience against the conspiracy of tyranny and fraud ? If so,
then the Protector, such was Milton, not of England only,
but of Europe, was nothing.
Parker. You are warm, Mr Marvel.
Marvel. Not by any addition to my cloth, however.
Parker. He hath seceded, I hear, from every form of public
worship ; and doubts are entertained whether he believes any
longer in the co-equality of the Son with the Father, or indeed
in his atonement for our sins. Such being the case, he forfeits
the name and privileges of a Christian.
Marvel. Not with Christians, if they know that he keeps the
ordinances of Christ. Papists, Calvinists, Lutherans, and every
other kind of scoria, exploding in the furnace of zeal, and
cracking off from Christianity, stick alike to the side of this
gloomy, contracted, and unwholesome doctrine. But the steadiest
believer in the divinity of our Lord, and in his atonement for us,
if pride, arrogance, persecution, malice, lust of station, lust of
money, lust of power, inflame him, is incomparably less a Christian
than he who doubteth all that ever was doubted of his genealogy
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 313
and hereditary rights, yet who never swerveth from his command-
ments. A wise man will always he a Christian, because the
perfection of wisdom is to know where lies tranquillity of mind,
and how to attain it, which Christianity teaches ; but men equally
wi>e may differ and diverge on the sufficiency of testimony, and
still fa it her on matters which no testimony can affirm and no
intellect comprehend. To strangle a man because he has a
narrow swallow, shall never be inserted among the "infallible
cures," in my Book of Domestic Remedies.
PtirLcr. We were talking gravely : were it not rather more
>c-t inly to continue in the same strain, Mr Marvel ?
Marvel. I was afraid that my gravity might appear too
specific ; but, with your lordship's permission and exhortation,
1 will proceed in serious reflections, to which indeed, on this
occasion, I am greatly more inclined. Never do I take the
liberty to question or examine any man on his religion, or to look
over his shoulder on his account-book with his God. But I
know that Milton, and every other great poet, must be religious ;
for there is nothing so godlike as a love of order, with a power of
bringing great things into it. This power, unlimited in the one,
limited (but incalculably and inconceivably great) in the other,
belongs to the Deity and the poet.
Parker. I shudder.
Marvel. Wherefore ? at seeing a man what he was designed
to be by his Maker, his Maker's image ? But pardon me, my
lord ! the surprise of such a novelty is enough to shock you.
Reserving to myself for a future time the liberty of defending
my friend on theology, in which alone he shifted his camp, I may
remark what has frequently happened to me. I have walked
much : finding one side of the road miry, I have looked toward
the other and thought it cleaner ; I have then gone over, and
when there I have found it just as bad, although it did not seem
nearly so, until it was tried. This, however, has not induced me
to wish that the overseer would bar it up ; but only to wish that
both sides were mended effectually with smaller and more binding
materials, not with large loose stones, nor with softer stuff, soon
converted into mud.
Parker. Stability, then, and consistency are the qualities most
desirable ; and these I look for in Mr Milton. However fond
314 Imaginary Conversations.
he was of Athenian terms and practices, he rejected them after he
had proved them.
Marvel. It was not in his choice to reject or establish. He
saw the nation first cast down and lacerated by fanaticism, and
then utterly exhausted by that quieter blood-sucker, hypocrisy.
A powerful arm was wanted to drive away such intolerable pests,
and it could not but be a friendly one. Cromwell and the saner
part of the nation were unanimous in beating down Presbyterianism,
which had assumed the authority of the Papacy without its lenity.
Parker. He, and those saner people, had subverted already
the better form of Christianity which they found in the Anglican
church. Your Samson had shaken its pillars by his attack on
prelaty.
Marvel. He saw the prelates, in that reign, standing as ready
there as anywhere to wave the censer before the king, and under
its smoke to hide the people from him. He warned them as an
angel would have done, nay, as our Saviour has done, that the
wealthy and the proud, the flatterer at the palace and the flatterer
at the altar, in short, the man for the world, is not the man for
heaven.
Parker. We must lay gentle constructions and liberal inter-
pretations on the Scriptures.
Marvel. Then let us never open them. If they are true, we
should receive them as they are ; if they are false, we should re-
ject them totally. We cannot pick and choose : we cannot say to
the Omniscient, " We think you right here ; we think you wrong
there ; however, we will meet you halfway, and talk it over with
you." This is such impiety as shocks us even in saying we must
avoid it ; yet our actions tend to its countenance and support.
We clothe the ministers of Christ in the same embroidery as was
worn by the proudest of his persecutors, and they mount into
Pilate's chair. The Reformation has effected little more than
melting down the gold lace of the old wardrobe, to make it enter
the pocket more conveniently.
Parker. Who would have imagined Mr John Milton
should ever have become a seceder and sectarian ? he who,
after the days of adolescence, looked with an eye of fondness
on the idle superstitions of our forefathers, and celebrated them in
his poetry !
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 315
Marvel. When superstitions are only idle, it is wiser to look
on them kindly than unkindly. I have remarked that those
which serve best for poetry have more plumage than talon, and
those which serve best for policy have more talon than plumage.
Milton never countenanced priestcraft, never countenanced fraud
and fallacy.
Parker. The business is no easy one to separate devotion
from practices connected with it. There is much that may
seem useless, retained through ages in an intermixture with
what i.s better; and the better would never have been so
good as it is, if you had cast away the rest. What is chaff
when the grain is threshed was useful to the grain before its
threshing.
Marvel. Since we are come unaware on religion, I would
entreat of your lordship to enlighten me, and thereby some others
of weak minds and tender consciences, in regard to the criminality
of pretence to holiness.
Parker. The Lord abominates, as you know, Mr Marvel,
from the Holy Scriptures, all hypocrisy.
Marvel. If we make ourselves or others who are not holy
seem holy, are we worthy to enter his kingdom ?
Parker. No ; most unworthy.
Marvel. What if we set up, not only for good men, but for
exquisitely religious, such as violate the laws and religion of the
country ?
Parker. Pray, Mr Marvel, no longer waste your time and mine
in such idle disquisitions. We have beheld such men lately, and
abominate them.
Marvel. Happily for the salvation of our souls, as I con-
ceive, we never went so far as to induce, much less to authorize,
much less to command, any one to fall down and worship
them.
Parker. Such insolence and impudence would have brought
about the blessed Restoration much earlier.
Marv:l. We are now come to the point. It seems wonder-
ful to pious and considerate men, unhesitating believers in God's
holy word, that although the Reformation under his guidance
was brought about by the prayers and fasting of the bishops,
and others well deserving the name of saints, chiefly of the
316 Imaginary Conversations.
equestrian order, no place in the calendar hath ever been assigned
to them.
Parker. Perhaps, as there were several, a choice might have
seemed particular and invidious. Perhaps, also, the names of
many as excellent having been removed from the rubric, it was
deemed unadvisable to inaugurate them.
Marvel. Yet, my lord bishop, we have inserted Charles the
Martyr. Now, there have been saints not martyrs, but no martyr
not a saint.
Parker. Do you talk in this manner, you who had the
manliness to praise his courage and constancy to Cromwell's
face ?
Marvel. Cromwell was not a man to undervalue the courage
and constancy of an enemy ; and, had he been, I should have
applauded one in his presence. But how happens it that the
bishops, priests, and deacons throughout England treat Charles as
a saint and martyr, and hold his death-day sacred, who violated
those ecclesiastical ordinances the violation whereof you would
not only reprobate in another, but visit with exemplary punish-
ment ? Charles was present at plays in his palace on the Sabbath.
Was he a saint in his lifetime ; or only after his death ? If in
his lifetime, the single miracle performed by him was to act
against his established church without a diminution of holiness.
If only in his death, he holds his canonization by a different
tenure from any of his blessed predecessors.
It is curious and sorrowful that Charles the Martyr should have
suffered death on the scaffold for renewing the custom of arbitrary
loans and forced benevolences, which the usurper Richard III.
abolished. Charles, to be sure, had the misfortune to add the
practice of torture and mutilation, to which those among the
English who are most exposed to it bear a great dislike. Being
a martyr, he is placed above the saints in dignity : they tortured
only themselves.
Parker. Let me bring to your recollection, that plays were
not prohibited on the Sabbath by our great Reformers.
Marvel. But if it is un-Christianlike now, it was then ; and
a saint must have been aware of it, although it escaped a
reformer.
Parker. You scoff, Mr Marvel ! I never answer the scoffer.
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 3 1 7
Marvel. I will now be serious. Is the canonization of
Charles the effect of a firm conviction that he was holier than
all those ejected from the calendar ; or is it merely an ebullition
of party-spirit, an ostentatious display of triumphant spite against
his enemies ? In this case, and there are too many and too
cogent reasons for believing it, would it not be wiser never to
have exhibited to the scrutinizing Church of Rome a consecration
mtire ivjuvhensibK- than the former desecrations ? Either you
must acknowledge that saints are not always to be followed in
their practices, or you must allow men, women, and children to
dance and frequent the playhouses on Sundays, as our martyr did
before he took to mutilating and maiming ; and he never left off
the custom by his own free-will.
Parker. I think, Mr Marvel, you might safely leave these
considerations to us.
Marvel. Very safely, my lord ! for you are perfectly sure
never to meddle with them : you are sure to leave them as they
are, solely from the pious motive that there may be peace in our
days, according to the Litany. On such a principle, there have
been many, and still perhaps there may be some remaining, who
would not brush the dust from the bench, lest they should raise
the moths and discover the unsoundness and corrosions. But
there is danger lest the people at some future day should be wiser,
braver, more inquisitive, more pertinacious : there is danger lest,
on finding a notorious cheat and perjurer set up by Act of Parlia-
ment among the choice and sterling old saints, they undervalue
not only saints but Parliaments.
Parker. I would rather take my ground where politics are
unmingled with religion ; and I see better reason to question the
wisdom of Mr Milton than the wisdom of our most gracious
King's privy council. We enjoy, thank God ! liberty of con-
science. I must make good my objection on the quarter of
consistency, lest you think me resolute to find fault where there
is none. Your friend continued to serve the Protector when he
had reconstructed a House of Lords, which formerly he called
an abomination.
Marvel. He never served Cromwell but when Cromwell
served his country ; and he would not abandon her defence for
the worst wounds he had received in it. He was offended at the
318 Imaginary Conversations.
renewal of that house, after all the labor and pains he had taken
in its demolition ; and he would have given his life, if one man's
life could have paid for it, to throw down again so unshapely and
darkening an obstruction. From his youth upward, he had felt
the Norman rust entering into our very vitals ; and he now saw
that, if we had received from the bravest of nations a longer
sword, we wore a heavier chain to support it. He began his
History from a love of the Saxon institutions, than which the
most enlightened nations had contrived none better ; nor can we
anywhere discover a worthier object for the meditations of a
philosophical or for the energies of a poetical mind.
Parker. And yet you republicans are discontented even with
this.
Marvel. We are not mere Saxons. A wise English repub-
lican will prefer (as having grown up with him) the Saxon in-
stitutions generally and mainly, both in spirit and practice, to
those of Rome and Athens. But the Saxon institutions, how-
ever excellent, are insufficient. The moss must be rasped off the
bark, and the bark itself must be slit, to let the plant expand.
Nothing is wholesomer than milk from the udder ; but would you
always dine upon it ? The seasons of growth, physical and in-
tellectual, require different modes of preparation, different instru-
ments of tillage, different degrees of warmth and excitement.
Whatever is bad in our Constitution we derive from the Normans,
or from the glosses put against the text under their Welsh and
Scotch successors : the good is thrown back to us out of what
was ours before. Our boasted Magna Charta is only one side of
the old Saxon coat ; and it is the side that has the broken loop-
holes in it. It hangs loose, and at every breeze 'tis a hard matter
to keep it on. In fact, the Magna Charta neither is, nor ever was
long together, of much value to the body of the people. Our
princes could always do what they wished to do, until lately ;
and this palladium was so light a matter that it was easily
taken from the town-hall to the palace. It has been holden
back or missing whenever the people most loudly called for it.
Municipalities in other words, small republics are a nation's
main-stay against aristocratical and regal encroachments.
Parker. If I speak in defence of the peerage, you may think
me interested.
niiivu Mani'l and Bishop Parker. 319
Bring forward what may fairly recommend the in-
stitution, and I shall think you less interested than ingenious.
Parker. Yet surely you, who are well connected, cannot be
insensible of the advantages it offers to persons of family.
Marvel. Is that any proof of its benefit to the public ? And
persons of family ! who are they? Between the tided man of
ancient and the titled man of recent times, the difference, if any
is in favor of the last. Suppose them both raised for merit (here
indeed we do come to theory !), the benefits that society has re-
1 from him are nearer us. It is probable that many in the
poor and abject are of very ancient families, and particularly in
our county, where the contests of the York and Lancaster broke
down, in many places, the high and powerful. Some of us may
look back six or seven centuries, and find a stout ruffian at the
beginning ; but the great ancestor of the pauper, who must be
somewhere, may stand perhaps far beyond.
Parker. If we ascend to the Tower of Babel, and come to the
confusion of tongues, we come also to a confusion of ideas. A
man of family, in all countries, is he whose ancestor attracted by
some merit, real or imputed, the notice of those more eminent,
who promoted him in wealth and station. Now, to say nothing
of the humble, the greater part even of the gentry had no such
progenitors.
Marvel. I look to a person of very old family as I do to any
thing else that is very old ; and I thank him for bringing to me a
page of romance which probably he himself never knew or heard
about. Usually, with all his pride and pretensions, he is much
less conscious of the services his ancestor performed than my
spaniel is of his own when he carries my glove or cane for me.
I would pat them both on the head for it ; and the civiler and
more reasonable of the two would think himself well rewarded.
Parker. The additional name may light your memory to the
national service.
Mantel. We extract this benefit from any ancient peer ; this
phosphorus, from a rotten post.
Parser. I do not complain or wonder that an irreligious man
should be adverse not only to prelaty, but equally to a peerage.
Marvel. Herodotus tells us that among the Egyptians a herald
was a herald because he was a herald's son, and not for the clear-
320 Imaginary Conversations.
ness of his voice. He had told us before that the Egyptians were
worshippers of cats and crocodiles ; but he was too religious a
man to sneer at that. It was an absurdity that the herald should
hold his office for no better reason than because his father held it.
Herodotus might peradventure have smiled within his sleeve at no
other being given for the privileges of the peer ; unless he thought
a loud voice, which many do, more important than information
and discretion.
Parker. You will find your opinions discountenanced by both
our universities.
Marvel. I do not want anybody to corroborate my opinions.
They keep themselves up by their own weight and consistency.
Cambridge on one side and Oxford on the other could lend me
no effectual support ; and my skiff shall never be impeded by the
sedges of Cam, nor grate on the gravel of Isis.
Parker. Mr Marvel, the path of what we fondly call
patriotism is highly perilous. Courts at least are safe.
Marvel. I would rather stand on the ridge of Etna than
lower my head in the Grotto del Cane. By the one I may share
the fate of a philosopher ; by the other I must suffer the death of
a cur.
Parker. We are all of us dust and ashes.
Marvel. True, my lord ; but in some we recognize the dust
of gold and the ashes of the phoenix ; in others, the dust of the
gateway and the ashes of turf and stubble. With the greatest
rulers upon earth, head and crown drop together, and are over-
looked. It is true, we read of them in history ; but we also read
in history of crocodiles and hyaenas. With great writers, whether
in poetry or prose, what falls away is scarcely more or other than
a vesture. The features of the man are imprinted on his works ;
and more lamps burn over them, and more religiously, than are
lighted in temples or churches. Milton, and men like him,
bring their own incense, kindle it with their own fire, and
leave it unconsumed and unconsumable ; and their music, by
day and by night, swells along a vault commensurate with the
vault of heaven.
Parker. Mr Marvel, I am admiring the extremely fine lace
of your cravat.
Marvel. It cost me less than lawn would have done ; and it
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 321
wins me a reflection. Very few can think that man a great man,
whom they have been accustomed to meet, dressed exactly like
themselves ; more especially if they happen to find him, not in
park, forest, or chase, but warming his limbs by the reflected heat
of the bricks in Artillery Walk. In England, a man becomes a
great man by living in the middle of a great field ; in Italy, by
living in a walled city ; in France, by living in a courtyard: no
matter what lives they lead there.
Parker. 1 am afraid, Mr Marvel, there is some slight
bitterness in your observation.
Marvel. Bitterness, it may be, from the bruised laurel of
Milton.
What falsehoods will not men put on, if they can only pad
them with a little piety ! And how few will expose their whole
faces, from a fear of being frost-bitten by poverty ! But Milton
was among the few.
Parker. Already have we had our Deluge: we are now
once more upon dry land again, and we behold the same creation
as rejoiced us formerly. Our late gloomy and turbulent times
are pasted for ever.
Marvel. Perhaps they are, if anything is for ever ; but the
sparing Deluge may peradventure be commuted for unsparing
fare, as we are threatened. The arrogant, the privileged, the
stiff upholders of established wrong, the deaf opponents of
equitable reformation, the lazy consumers of ill-requited in-
dustry, the fraudulent who, unable to stop the course of the sun,
pervert the direction of the gnomon, -all these, peradventure,
may be gradually consumed by the process of silent contempt,
or suddenly scattered by the tempest of popular indignation.
As we see in masquerades the real judge and the real soldier
stopped and mocked by the fictitious, so do we see in the
carnival of to-day the real man of dignity hustled, shoved aside,
and derided by those who are invested with the semblance by
the milliners of the court. The populace is taught to respect
this livery alone, and is proud of being permitted to look
through the grating at such ephemeral frippery. And yet false
gems and false metals have never been valued above real ones.
Until our people alter these notions ; until they estimate the
wise and virtuous above the silly and profligate, the man of
IV. X
322 Imaginary Conversations.
genius above the man of title; until they hold the knave
and cheat of St James's as low as the knave and cheat of
St Giles's, they are fitter for the slave-market than for any
other station.
Parker. You would have no distinctions, I fear.
Marvel. On the contrary, I would have greater than exist
at present. You cannot blot or burn out an ancient name ; you
cannot annihilate past services ; you cannot subtract one single
hour from eternity, nor wither one leaf on his brow who hath
entered into it. Sweep away from before me the soft grubs of
yesterday's formation, generated by the sickliness of the plant
they feed upon ; sweep them away unsparingly, then will you
clearly see distinctions, and easily count the men who have
attained them worthily.
Parker. In a want of respect to established power and
principles, originated most of the calamities we have latterly
undergone.
Marvel. Say rather, in the averseness of that power and
the inadequacy of those principles to resist the encroachment
of injustice ; say rather, on their tendency to distort the poor
creatures swaddled up in them ; add, moreover, the reluctance
of the old women who rock and dandle them to change their
habiliments for fresh and wholesome ones. A man will break
the windows of his own house, that he may not perish by foul
air within ; now, whether is he, or those who bolted the door on
him, to blame for it ? If he is called mad or inconsiderate, it is
only by those who are ignorant of the cause and insensible of the
urgency. I declare I am rejoiced at seeing a gentleman, whose
ancestors have signally served their country, treated with deference
and respect ; because it evinces a sense of justice and of grati-
tude in the people, and because it may incite a few others, whose
ambition would take another course, to desire the same. Different
is my sentence, when he who has not performed the action
claims more honor than he who performed it, and thinks himself
the worthier if twenty are between them than if there be one
or none. Still less accordant is it with my principles, and less
reducible to my comprehension, that they who devised the ruin
of cities and societies should be exhibited as deserving much
higher distinction than they who have corrected the hearts
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 323
and enlarged the intellects, and have performed it not only
without the hope of reward, but almost with the certainty of
persecution.
Parker. Ever too hard upon great men, Mr Marvel !
Marvel. Little men in lofty places, who throw long shadows
because our sun is setting, the men so little and the places
so lofty, that, casting my pebble, I only show where they stand.
They would be less contented with themselves, if they had
obtained their preferment honestly. Luck and dexterity always
give more pleasure than intellect and knowledge ; because they
fill up what they fall on to the brim at once, and people run to
them with acclamations at the splash. Wisdom is reserved and
noiseless, contented with hard earnings, and daily letting go some
early acquisition, to make room for better specimens. But great
is the exultation of a worthless man, when he receives, for the
chips and raspings of his Bridewell logwood, a richer reward than
the best and wisest for extensive tracts of well-cleared truths ;
when he who has sold his country
Parkrr. Forbear, forbear, good Mr Marvel !
Marvel. When such is higher in estimation than, he who
would have saved it; when his emptiness is heard above the
voice that has shaken fanaticism in her central shrine, that hath
bowed down tyrants to the scaffold, that hath raised up nations
from the dust, that alone hath been found worthy to celebrate, as
angels do, creating and redeeming Love, and to precede with its
solitary sound the trumpet that will call us to our doom.
Parser. I am unwilling to feign ignorance of the gentleman
you designate ; but really now you would make a very Homer
of him.
Marvel. It appears to me that Homer is to Milton what
a harp is to an organ, though a harp under the hand of Apollo.
Parker. I have always done him justice : I have always
called him a learned man.
Marvel. Call him henceforward the most glorious one that
ever existed upon earth. If two Bacon and Shakspeare
have equalled him in diversity and intensity of power, did either
of these spring away with such resolution from the sublimest
heights of genius, to liberate and illuminate with patient labor
the manacled human race ? And what is his recompence ? The
324 Imaginary Conversations.
same recompence as all men like him have received, and will
receive for ages. Persecution follows righteousness : the Scorpion
is next in succession to Libra. The fool, however, who ventures
to detract from Milton's genius, in the night which now appears
to close on him, will, when the dawn has opened on his dull
ferocity, be ready to bite off a limb, if he might thereby limp
away from the trap he has prowled into. Among the gentler,
the better, and the wiser, few have entered yet the awful struc-
ture of his mind ; few comprehend, few are willing to contem-
plate, its vastness. Politics now occupy scarcely a closet in it.
We seldom are inclined to converse on them ; and, when we
do, it is jocosely rather than austerely. For even the bitterest
berries grow less acrid when they have been hanging long on the
tree. Beside, it is time to sit with our hats between our legs,
since so many grave men have lately seen their errors, and
so many brave ones have already given proofs enough of their
bravery, and trip aside to lay down their laurels on gilt tables
and velvet cushions. If my friend condemns any one now, it
is Cromwell, and principally for reconstructing a hereditary
house of peers. He perceives that it was done for the purpose
of giving the aristocracy an interest in the perpetuation of power
in his family, of which he discovered the folly just before his
death. He derides the stupidity of those who bandy about the
battered phrase of useful checks and necessary counterpoises. He
would not desire a hindrance on his ste.ward in the receipt of
his rent, if he had any, nor on his attorney in prosecuting his
suit ; he would not recommend any interest in opposition to that
of the people ; he would not allow an honest man to be arrested
and imprisoned for debt, while a dishonest one is privileged to be
exempt from it ; and he calls that nation unwise, and those laws
iniquitous, which tolerate so flagrant an abuse. He would not
allow a tradesman, who lives by his reputation for honesty,
to be calumniated as dishonest, without the means of vindicat-
ing his character unless by an oppressive and dilatory procedure,
while a peer, who perhaps may live by dishonesty, as some are
reported to have done in former reigns, recurs to an immediate
and uncostly remedy against a similar accusation. He would not
see Mother Church lie with a lawyer on the woolsack, nor the
ministry of the apostles devolve on the Crown, sacred and uncon-
taminated as we see it is.
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 325
Parker. No scoffs ' at the Crown, I do beseech you, Mr
M.iru'l! whatever enmity you and Mr Milton may bear against
the peers. He would have none of them, it seems.
Marvel. He would have as many as can prove, by any pre-
cedent or argument, that virtue and abilities are hereditary ; and
I believe he would stint them exactly to that number. In regard
to their services, he made these observations a few days ago :
"Why, in God's name, friend Andrew, do we imagine that a
thing can be made stable by pulling at it perpetually in different
directions ? Where there are contrary and conflicting interests,
one will predominate at one time, another at another. Now, what
interest at any time ought to predominate against the public ? We
hear, indeed, that when the royal power is oppressive to them, the
peers push their horns against the leopards ; but did they so in the
time of James or his son ? And are not the people strong enough
to help and right themselves, if they were but wise enough?
And if they were wise enough, would they whistle for the wolves
to act in concert with the shepherd-dogs ? Our consciences tell
us," added he, " that we should have done some good, had our
intentions been well seconded and supported. Collegians and
barristers and courtiers may despise the poverty of our intellects,
throw a few of their old scraps into our satchels, and send the
beadle to show us the road we ought to take : nevertheless, we
are wilful, and refuse to surrender our old customary parochial
footpath.
Parker. And could not he let alone the poor innocent
collegians ?
Marvel. Nobody ever thought them more innocent than he,
unless when their square caps were fanning the flames round
heretics; and every man is liable to be a heretic in his turn.
Collegians have always been foremost in the cure of the lues of
heresy by sweating and caustic.
Parker. Sir ! they have always been foremost in maintaining
the unity of the faith.
Marvel. So zealously, that whatever was the king's faith was
theirs. And thus it will always be, until their privileges and im-
munities are in jeopardy; then shall you see them the most
desperate incendiaries.
Parker. After so many species of religion, generated in the
326 Imaginary Conversations.
sty of old corruptions, we return to what experience teaches us is
best. If the Independents, or any other sect, had reason on their
side and truly evangelical doctrine, they would not die away and
come to nothing as they have done.
Marvel. Men do not stick very passionately and tenaciously
to a pure religion : there must be honey on the outside of it, and
warmth within, and latitude around, or they make little bellow
and bustle about it. That Milton has been latterly no frequenter
of public worship may be lamented, but is not unaccountable.
He has lived long enough to perceive that all sects are animated
by a spirit of hostility and exclusion, a spirit the very opposite
to the gospel. There is so much malignity, hot-blooded and
cold-blooded, in zealots, that I do not wonder at seeing the
honest man, who is tired of dissension and controversy, wrap him-
self up in his own quiet conscience, and indulge in a tranquillity
somewhat like sleep apart. Nearly all are of opinion that devo-
tion is purer and more ardent in solitude, but declare to you that
they believe it to be their duty to set an example by going to
church. Is not this pride and vanity ? What must they conceive
of their own value and importance, to imagine that others will
necessarily look up to them as guides and models ! A- hint of
such an infirmity arouses all their choler ; and from that moment
we are unworthy of being saved by them. But if they abandon
us to what must appear to them so hopeless a condition, can we
doubt whether they would not abandon a babe floating like Moses
in a basket on a wide and rapid river ? I have always found these
people, whatever may be the sect, self-sufficient, hard-hearted, in-
tolerant, and unjust, in short, the opposite of Milton. What
wonder, then, if he abstains from their society ; particularly in
places of worship, where it must affect a rational and religious
man the most painfully ? He thinks that churches, as now con-
stituted, are to religion what pest-houses are to health, that they
often infect those who ailed nothing, and withhold them from
freedom and exercise. Austerity hath oftener been objected to
him than indifference. That neither of the objections is well-
founded, I think I can demonstrate by an anecdote. Visiting
him last month, I found him hearing read by his daughter the
treatise of Varro On Agriculture ; and I said, laughingly, " We
will walk over your farm together." He smiled, although he
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 327
could not see that I did ; and he answered, " I never wish to
pome DO a farm, because I can enjoy the smell of the hay and of
the hawthorn in a walk to Hampstead, and can drink fresh milk
there." After a pause, he added, " I cannot tell (for nobody is
more ignorant in these matters) in what our agriculture differs
from the ancient ; but I am delighted to be reminded of a custom
which my girl has been recalling to my memory, the custom
of crowning with a garland of sweet herbs, once a year, the
brink of wells. Andrew ! the old moss-grown stones were not
neglected, from under which the father and son, the wife and
daughter, drew the same pure element with the same thankfulness
as their hale progenitors." His piety is infused into all the
moods of his mind : here it was calm and gentle, at other times
it was ardent and enthusiastic. The right application of homely
qualities is of daily and general use. We all want glass for the
window : few want it for the telescope.
Parker. It is very amiable to undertake the defence of a
person who, whatever may be his other talents, certainly has
possessed but in a moderate degree the talent of making or of
retaining friends.
Marvel. He, by the constitution of the human mind, or
rather by its configuration under those spiritual guides who claim
the tutelage of it, must necessarily have more enemies than even
another of the same principles. The great abhor the greater,
who can humble but cannot raise them. The king's servants
hate God's as much (one would fancy) as if he fed them better,
dressed them finelier, and gave them more plumy titles. Poor
Milton has all these against him : what is wanting in weight is
made up by multitude and multiformity. Judges and privy
counsellors throw axes and halters in his path; divines grow
hard and earthy about him; slim, straddling, blotchy writers,
those of quality in particular, feel themselves cramped and stunted
under him ; and people of small worth in every way detract from
his, stamping on it as if they were going to spring over it. What-
they pick up against him, they take pains to circulate ; and
are sorrier at last that the defamation is untrue than that they
helped to propagate it. I wish truth were as prolific as false-
hood, and as many were ready to educate her offspring. But
although we sec the progeny of falsehood shoot up into amazing
328 Imaginary Conversations.
stature, and grow day by day more florid, yet they soon have
reached their maturity, soon lose both teeth and tresses. As
the glory of England is in part identified with Milton's, his
enemies are little less than parricides. If they had any sight
beyond to-day, what would they give, how would they implore
and supplicate, to be forgotten !
Parker. Very conscientious men may surely have reprehended
him, according to the lights that God has lent them,
Marvel. They might have burned God's oil in better inves-
tigations. Your conscientious men are oftener conscientious in
withholding than in bestowing.
Parker. Writers of all ranks and conditions, from the lowest
to the highest, have disputed with Mr Milton on all the topics he
has undertaken.
Marvel. And I am grieved to think that he has noticed
some of them. Salmasius alone was not unworthy sublimi flagello.
But what would your lordship argue from the imprudence and
irreverence of the dwarfs ? The most prominent rocks and head-
lands are most exposed to the violence of the sea ; but those
which can repel the waves are in little danger from the corrosion
of the limpets.
Parker. Mr Milton may reasonably be censured for writing
on subjects whereof his knowledge is imperfect or null : on courts,
for instance. The greater part of those who allow such a license
to their pens, and he among the rest, never were admitted into
them. I am sorry to remark that our English are the foremost
beagles in this cry.
Marvel. If Milton was never admitted within them, he
never was importunate for admittance ; and, if none were
suffered to enter but such as are better and wiser than he,
the gates of Paradise are themselves less glorious, and with
less difficulty thrown open. The great, as we usually call the
fortunate, are only what Solomon says about them, "the
highest part of the dust of the world ; " and this highest part
is the lightest. Do you imagine that all the ministers and kings
under the canopy of heaven are, in the sight of a pure Intelli-
gence, equivalent to him whom this pure Intelligence hath
enabled to penetrate with an unfailing voice the dense array of
distant generations ? Can princes give more than God can ; or
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 329
arc their gifts better ? That they are usually thought so, is no
conclusive proof of the fact. On the contrary, with me at least,
what is usually thought on any subject of importance, and on
many of none, lies under the suspicion of being wrong ; for
surely the number of those who think correctly is smaller than
of those who think incorrectly, even where passions and interests
interfere the least, Of those who appear to love God, and who
sincerely think they do, the greater part must be conscious that
they are not very fond of the men whom he hath shown himself
the most indulgent to, and the most enriched with abilities and
virtues. Among the plants of the field we look out for the
salubrious, and we cultivate and cull them ; to the wholesomer
of our fellow-creatures we exhibit no such partiality : we think
we do enough when we only pass them without treading on
them ; if we leave them to blossom and run to seed, it is
forbearance.
Parker. Mr Milton hath received his reward from his
employers.
Marvel. His services are hardly yet begun ; and no mortal
man, no series of transitory generations, can repay them. God
will not delegate this; no, not even to his angels. I venture
no longer to stand up for him on English ground ; but, since
we both are Englishmen by birth, I may stand up for the
remainder of our countrymen. Your lordship is pleased to
remark that they are the first beagles in the cry against courts.
Now I speak with all the freedom and all the field-know-
ledge of a Yorkshireman, when I declare that your lordship
is a bad sportsman in giving a hound's title to dogs that hunt
vermin.
Parker. Mr Marvel ! a person of your education should
abstain from mentioning thus contemptuously men of the same
rank and condition as yourself.
Marvel. All are of the same rank and condition with me
who have climbed as high, who have stood as firmly, and who
have never yet descended. Neglect of time, subserviency to
fortune, compliance with power and passions, would thrust men
far below me, although they had been exalted higher, to the
uncalculating eye, than mortal ever was exalted. Sardanapalus
had more subjects and more admirers than Cromwell ; whom,
330 Imaginary Conversations.
nevertheless, I venture to denominate the most sagacious and
prudent, the most tolerant and humane, the most firm and
effective, prince in the annals of our country.
Parker. Usurpers should not be thus commended.
Marvel. Usurpers are the natural and imprescriptible succes-
sors of imbecile, unprincipled, and lawless kings. In general,
they too are little better furnished with virtues, and even their
wisdom seems to wear out under the ermine. Ambition makes
them hazardous and rash : these qualities raise the acclama-
tions of the vulgar, to whom meteors are always greater than
stars, and the same qualities which raised them precipitate them
into perdition. Sometimes obstreperous mirth, sometimes gipsy-
like mysteriousness, sometimes the austerity of old republicanism,
and sometimes the stilts of modem monarchy, come into play,
until the crowd hisses the actor off the stage, pelted, broken-
headed, and stumbling over his sword. Cromwell used none of
these grimaces. He wore a mask while it suited him ; but its
features were grave, and he threw it off in the heat of action.
Parker. On the whole, you speak more favorably of a man
who was only your equal than of those whom legitimate power
has raised above you.
Marvel. Never can I do so much good as he did. He
was hypocritical, and, in countermining perfidy, he was perfidious ;
but his wisdom, his valor, and his vigilance saved the nation
at Worcester and Dunbar. He took unlawful and violent
possession of supreme authority ; but he exercised it with mode-
ration and discretion. Even fanaticism had with him an English
cast of countenance. He never indulged her appetite in blood,
nor carried her to hear the music of tortures reverberated by the
arch of a dungeon. He supplied her with no optical glass at the
spectacle of mutilations ; he never thought, as Archbishop Laud
did, he could improve God's image by amputating ears and slitting
noses ; he never drove men into holy madness with incessant
howlings, like the lycanthropic saints of the North.
Having, then, before me not only his arduous achievements,
but likewise his abstinence from those evil practices in which
all our sovereigns, his predecessors, had indulged, I should be
the most insolent and the most absurd of mortals if I supposed
that the Protector of England was only my equal. But I am
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 331
not obliged by the force of truth and duty to admit even to
this position those whom court servility may proclaim to the
populace as my superiors. A gardener may write sweet lupin on
the cover of rape seed ; but the cover will never turn rape-seed
into sweet lupin. Something more than a couple of beasts,
couchant or rampant, blue or blazing, or than a brace of birds
with a claw on a red curtain, is requisite to raise an earl
or a marquis up to me, although lion-king-at-arms and garter-
kings-at-arms equip them with all their harness, and beget them a
grandfather each. I flap down with the border of my glove,
and brush away and blow off these gossamer pretensions ; and
I take for my motto, what the king bears for his, I hope as
a model for all his subjects, ** Dieu et mon droit."
Parker. Mr Marvel ! Mr Marvel ! I did not think you so
proud a man.
Marvel. No, my lord ? not when you know that Milton
is my friend? If you wish to reduce me and others to our
level, pronounce that name, and we find it. The French motto,
merely from its being French, recalls my attention to what I
was about to notice when your lordship so obligingly led me
to cover. I will now undertake to prove that the English
beagles are neither the first nor the best in scenting what lieth
about courts. A French writer, an ecclesiastic, a dignitary, a
bishop, wrote lately,
' Courts are full of ill offices : it is there that all the passions are in an
uproar ; * it is there that hatred and friendship change incessantly for
interest, and nothing is constant but the desire of injuring. Friend,
as Jeremiah says, is fraudulent to friend, brother to brother. The art
of ensnaring has nothing dishonorable in it excepting ill success. In
short, virtue herself, often false, becomes more to be dreaded than vice."
Now, if there were any like place upon earth, would not even
the worst prince, the worst people, insist on its destruction ?
What brothel, what gaming-house, what den of thieves, what
wreck, what conflagration, ought to be surrounded so strictly
by the protectors of property, the guardians of morals, and the
ministers of justice ? Should any such conspirator, any aider or
The original is defective in logic. "C'est la que toutes les passions
se reunissent pour s'entre-chocquer et te detrwre." So much the better,
were it true.
332 Imaginary Conversations.
abettor, any familiar or confidant, of such conspiracy be suffered
to live at large ? Milton, in the mildness of his humanity, would
at once let loose the delinquents, and would only nail up for ever
the foul receptacle.
Parker. The description is exaggerated.
Marvel. It is not a schoolboy's theme, beginning with,
" Nothing is more sure," or, " Nothing is more deplorable ; "
it is not an undergraduate's exercise, drawn from pure fresh
thoughts, where there are only glimpses through the wood before
him, or taken up in reliance on higher men to whom past ages
have bowed in veneration : no, the view is taken on the spot
by one experienced and scientific in it, by the dispassionate,
the disinterested, the clear-sighted, and clear-souled Massillon.
Parker. To show his eloquence, no doubt.
Marvel. No eloquence is perfect, none worth showing, none
becoming a Christian teacher, but that in which the postulates
are just, and the deductions not carried beyond nor cast beside
them, nor strained hard, nor snatched hastily. I quote not
from stern republicans ; I quote not from loose lay people :
but from the interior of the court, from the closet of the palace,
from under the canopy and cope of Episcopacy herself. In
the same spirit, the amiable and modest Penelon speaks thus :
" Alas ! to what calamities are kings exposed ! The wisest of
them are often taken by surprise ; men of artifice, swayed by
self-interest, surround them ; the good retire from them, because
they are neither supplicants nor flatterers, and because they wait
to be inquired for, and princes know not where they are to
be found. Oh how unhappy is a king, to be exposed to the
designs of the wicked ! "
It is impossible to draw any other deduction from this hypo-
thesis than the necessity of abolishing the kingly office, not only
for the good of the people, but likewise of the functionaries.
Why should the wisest and the best among them be subject to so
heavy a calamity, a calamity so easily avoided ? Why should
there be tolerated a focus and point of attraction for wicked
men ? Why should we permit the good to be excluded, whether
by force or shame, from any place which ought to be a post of
honor ? Why do we suffer a block to stand in their way, which
by its nature hath neither eyes to discern them, nor those about it
who would permit the use of the discovery if it had ?
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 333
Parker. Horrible questions ! leading God knows whither !
Marvel. The questions are originally not mine. No person
who reasons on what he reads can ever have read the works of
Fenelon, and not have asked them. If what he says is true,
they follow necessarily ; and the answer is ready for every one of
them. That they are true we may well surmise; for surely
nobody was less likely to express his sentiments with prejudice or
precipitancy or passion. He and Massillon are such witnesses
against courts and royalty as cannot be rejected. They bring
forward their weighty and conclusive evidence, not only without
heat, but without intention, and disclose what they overheard as
they communed with their conscience. There may be malice in
the thoughts, and acrimony in the expressions, of those learned
men who, as you remark, were never admitted into courts ;
although malice and acrimony are quite as little to be expected
in them as in the spectators at a grand amphitheatre, because they
could only be retired and look on, and were precluded from the
arena in the combat of man and beast.
Parker. There may be malice where there is no acrimony :
there may be here.
Marvel. The existence of either is impossible in well-
regulated minds.
Parker. I beg your pardon, Mr Marvel.
Marvel. What, my lord ! do you admit that even in well-
regulated minds the worst passions may be excited by royalty ?
It must, then, be bad indeed ; worse than Milton, worse than
Massillon, worse than F6nelon, represents it. The frugal re-
publican may detest it for its vicious luxury and inordinate expendi-
ture ; the strict religionist, as one of the worst curses an offended
God inflicted on a disobedient and rebellious people ; the man of
calmer and more indulgent piety may grieve at seeing it, with all
its devils, possess the swine, pitying the poor creatures into which
it is permitted to enter, not through their fault, but their infirmity,
not by their will, but their position.
Parker. And do you imagine it is by their will that what is
inrooted is taken away from them ?
Marvel. Certainly not. Another proof of their infirmity.
Did you ever lose a rotten tooth, my lord, without holding up
your hand against it ? Or was there ever one drawn at which
334 Imaginary Conversations.
you did not rejoice when it was done ? All the authorities we
have brought forward may teach us, that the wearer of a crown
is usually the worse for it ; that it collects the most vicious
of every kind about it, as a nocturnal blaze in uncultivated lands
collects poisonous reptiles; and that it renders bad those who, with-
out it, might never have become so. But no authority, before your
lordship, ever went so far as to throw within its noxious .agency
the little that remained uncorrupted : none ever told us, for our
caution, that it can do what nothing else can ; namely, that it can
excite the worst passions in well-regulated minds.
O Royalty ! if this be true, I, with my lord bishop, will detest
and abhor thee as the most sweeping leveller ! Go, go, thou
indivisible in the infernal triad with Sin and Death !
Parker. I must not hear this.
Marvel. I spoke hypothetically, and stood within your own
premises, referring to no actual state of things, and least of all
inclined to touch upon the very glorious one in which we live.
Royalty is in her place, and sits gracefully by the side of our
second Charles.
Parker. Here, Mr Marvel, we have no divergence of opinion.
Marvel. Enjoying this advantage, I am the more anxious
that my friend should partake in it, whose last political conversa-
tion with me was greatly more moderate than the language of the
eloquent French bishop. "We ought," said he, "to remove
any thing by which a single fellow-creature may be deteriorated :
how much rather, then, that which deteriorates many millions,
and brands with the stamp of servitude the brow of the human
race ! "
Parker. Do you call this more moderate ?
Marvel. I call it so, because it is more argumentative. It is
in the temper and style of Milton to avoid the complaining tone
of the one prelate, and the declamatory of the other. His hand
falls on his subject without the softener of cuff or ruffle.
Parker. So much the worse. But better as it is than with
an axe in it ; for God knows where it might fall.
Marvel. He went on saying that the most clear-sighted kings
can see but a little way before them and around them, there being
so many mediums ; and that delegated authority is liable to gross
abuses.
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 335
Parker. Republics, too, must delegate a portion of their
authority to agents at a distance.
Marvel. Every agent in a well-regulated republic is a portion
of itself. Citizen must resemble citizen in all political essentials ;
but what is privileged bears little resemblance to what is unprivi-
leged. In fact, the words privilege and prerogative are manifestoes
of injustice, without one word added.
rker. Yet the people would not have your republic when
they had tried it.
Marvel. Nor would the people have God when they had tried
him. But is this an argument why we should not obey his
ordinances, and serve him with all our strength ?
Parker. Oh, strange comparison ! I am quite shocked, Mr
Man-el !
Marvel. What ! at seeing any work of the Deity at all re-
semble the Maker, at all remind us of him ? May I be often so
shocked, that light thoughts and troublesome wishes and unworthy
resentments may be shaken off me ; and that the Giver of all good
may appear to me and converse with me in the garden he has
planted !
lor. Then walk humbly with him, Mr Marvel.
Marvel. Every day I bend nearer to the dust that is to receive
me ; and, if this were not sufficient to warn me, the sight of my
old friend would. I repress my own aspirations that 1 may con-
tinue to repeat his words, tending to prove the vast difference
between the administration of a kingly government and a common-
wealth, where all offices in contact with the people are municipal,
where the officers are chosen on the spot by such as know them
personally, and by such as have an immediate and paramount in-
terest in giving them the preference. This, he insisted, is the
greatest of all advantages; and this alone (but truly it is not
alone) would give the republican an incontestable superiority over
every other system.
Parker. Supposing it in theory to have its merits, the laws no
longer permit us to recommend it in practice.
Marvel. I am not attempting to make or to reclaim a convert.
The foot that has slipped back is less ready for progress than the
foot that never had advanced.
Parker. Sir ! I know my duty to God and my king.
336 Imaginary Conversations.
Marvel. I also have attempted to learn mine, however un-
successfully.
Parker. There is danger, sir, in holding such discourses.
The cause is no longer to be defended without a violation of the
statutes.
Marvel. I am a republican, and will die one ; but rather, if
the choice is left me, in my own bed ; yet on turf or over the
ladder unreluctantly, if God draws thitherward the cause and con-
science, and strikes upon my heart to waken me. I have been,
I will not say tolerant and indulgent (words applicable to children
only), but friendly and cordial toward many good men whose
reason stood in opposition and almost (if reason can be hostile) in
hostility to mine. When we desire to regulate our watches, we
keep them attentively before us, and touch them carefully, gently,
delicately, with the finest and best-tempered instrument, day after
day. When we would manage the minds of men, finding them
at all different from our own, we thrust them away from us with
blind impetuosity, and throw them down in the dirt to make them
follow us the quicklier. In the turbulence of attack from all
directions, our cause hath been decried by some, not for being
bad in itself, but for being supported by bad men. What ! are
there no pretenders to charity, to friendship, to devotion ? Should
we sit uneasy and shuffling under it, and push our shoulders against
every post to rub it off, merely for the Scotch having worn it in
common with us, and for their having shortened, unstitched, and
sold it ?
Parker. Their history is overrun more rankly than any other,
excepting the French, with blood and treachery.*
Marvel. Half of them are Menteiths.f Even their quietest
and most philosophical spirits are alert and clamorous in defence
of any villany committed by power or compensated by wealth.
In the degeneracy of Greece, in her utter subjugation, was
there one historian or one poet vile enough to represent as
* Undoubtedly such were the sentiments of Milton and Marvel ; and
they were just. But Scotland in our days has produced not only the
calmest and most profound reasoners, she has also given birth to the most
enlightened and energetic patriots.
f Menteith was the betrayer of Wallace, the bravest hero, the hero in
most points, our island has gloried in since Alfred.
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 337
blameless the conduct of Clytemnestra ? Yet what labors of
the press are bestowed on a Queen of Scotland, who com-
mitted the same crime without the same instigation, who had
been educated in the principles of Christianity, who had con-
i from her girlhood with the polite and learned, and who
]>ent only a very few years among the barbarians of the
North!
Parker. Her subjects were angry, not that she was punished,
but that she was unpaid for. They would have sold her cheaper
than they sold her grandson ; and, being so reasonable, they were
outrageous that there were no bidders. Mr Marvel ! the Scotch
ilways been cringing when hungry, always cruel when full :
their avarice is without satiety, their corruption is without shame,
and their ferocity is without remorse.
Marvel. Among such men there may be demagogues, there
t be republicans; there may be lovers of free quarters,
then- cannot be of freedom. Reverencing the bold and the
sincere, and in them the character of our country, we English-
men did not punish those ministers who came forth uncited,
and who avowed in the House of Commons that they had been
the advisers of the Crown in all the misdemeanors against which
we brought the heaviest charges. We bethought us of the in-
gratitude, of the injuries, of the indignities, we had sustained ;
we bethought us of our wealth transferred from the nation to
raise up enemies against it ; we bethought us of patient piety and
of tranquil courage in chains, in dungeons, tortured, maimed,
mangled, for the assertion of truth and of freedom, of religion
and of law.
Parker. Our most gracious king is disposed to allow a con-
siderable latitude, repressing at the same time that obstinate spirit
which prevails across the border. Much of the Scottish charac-
ter may be attributed to the national religion, in which the
damnatory has the upper hand of the absolving.
Marvel. Our judges are merciful to those who profess the
king's reputed and the duke's acknowledged tenets; but let a
man stand up for the Independents, and out pops Mr Attorney-
General, throws him on his back, claps a tongue-scraper into his
mouth, and exercises it resolutely and unsparingly.
Parker. I know nothing of your new-fangled sects ; but
338 Imaginary Conversations.
the doctrines of the Anglican and the Romish church ap-
proximate.
Marvel. The shepherd of the seven hills teaches his sheep
in what tone to bleat before him, just as the Tyrolean teaches
his bullfinch, first by depriving him of sight, and then by
making him repeat a certain series of notes at stated intervals.
Prudent and quiet people will choose their churches as they
choose their ale-houses, partly for the wholesomeness of the
draught, and partly for the moderation of the charges ; but
the host in both places must be civil, and must not damn you,
body and soul, by way of invitation. The wheat-sheaf is a
very good sign for the one, and a very bad one for the other.
Tithes are more ticklish things than tenets, when men's brains
are sound ; and there are more and worse stumbling-blocks at
the barn-door than at the church-porch. I never saw a priest,
Romanist or Anglican, who would tuck up his surplice to
remove them. Whichever does it first will have the most
voices for him : but he must be an Englishman, and serve
only Englishmen ; he must resign the cook's perquisites to the
Spaniard ; he must give up not only the fat, but the blood ;
and he must keep fewer fagots in the kitchen. Since what-
ever the country, whatever the state of civilization, the Church
of Rome remains the same ; since under her influence the
polite Louis at the present day commits as much bloodshed
and perfidy, and commands as many conflagrations and rapes
to her honor and advancement as the most barbarous kings
and prelates in times past, I do hope that no insolence, no
rapacity, no profligacy, no infidelity, in our own lord spiritual
will render us either the passive captives of her insinuating
encroachments, or the indifferent spectators of her triumphal
entrance. We shall be told it was the religion of Alfred,
the religion of the Plantagenets. There may be victory, there
may be glory, there may be good men, under all forms and
fabrics of belief. Titus, Trajan, the two Antonines, the two
Gordians, Probus, Tacitus, rendered their countrymen much
happier than the Plantagenets, or the greater and better Alfred,
could do. Let us receive as brethren our countrymen of every
creed, and reject as Christians those only who refuse to receive
them,
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 339
Parker. Most willingly, if such is the pleasure of the King
and Privy Council. And I am delighted to find you, who are
so steadfast a republican, extolling the emperors.
Marvel. Your idea of emperor is incorrect or inadequate.
Cincinnatus and Cato were emperors in the Roman sense of
the word. The Germans and Turks and Marocchines cut out
theirs upon another model. These Romans, and many more in
the same station, did nothing without the consent, the approba-
tion, the command (for such was the expression), of the senate
and the people. They lived among the wiser and better citizens,
with whom they conversed as equals, and, where it was proper
(for instance, on subjects of literature), as inferiors. From these
they took their wives, and with the sons and daughters of these
they educated their children. In the decline of the Common-
wealth, kings themselves, on the boundaries of the empire, were
daily and hourly conversant with honest and learned men. All
princes in our days are so educated as to detest the un malleable
and unmelting honesty which will receive no impression from
them ; nor do they even let you work for them unless they can
bend you double. We must strip off our own clothes, or they
never will let us be measured for their livery, which has now
become our only protection.
Parker. It behooves us to obey ; otherwise we can expect no
forbearance and no tranquillity.
Marvel. I wish the tranquillity of our country may last
beyond our time, although we should live (which we cannot
expect to do) twenty years.
Parker. God grant we may !
Marvel. Life clings with the pertinacity of an impassioned
mistress to many a man who is willing to abandon it, while he
who too much loves it loses it.
Parker. Twenty years !
Marvel. I have enjoyed but little of it at a time when it
becomes a necessary of life, and I fear I shall leave as little for a
heritage.
Parker. But in regard to living, we are both of us hale
men ; we may hope for many days yet ; we may yet see many
changes.
Marvel. I have lived to see one too many.
340 Imaginary Conversations.
Parker. Whoever goes into political life must be contented
with the same fare as others of the same rank who embark in the
same expedition.
Marvel. Before his cruise is over, he learns to be satisfied
with a very small quantity of fresh provisions. His nutriment
is from what is stale, and his courage from what is heady ; he
looks burly and bold, but a fatal disease is lying at the bottom
of an excited and inflated heart. We think to thrive by sur-
rendering our capacities ; but we can no more live, my lord
bishop, with breathing the breath of other men, than we can
by not breathing our own. Compliancy will serve us poorly and
ineffectually. Men, like columns, are only strong while they are
upright.
Parker. You were speaking of other times ; and you always
speak best among the Greeks and Romans. Continue, pray !
Marvel. Sovereignty, in the heathen world, had sympathies
with humanity ; and power never thought herself contaminated
by touching the hand of wisdom. It was before Andromache
came on the stage, painted and patched and powdered, with a
hogshead-hoop about her haunches and a pack-saddle on her pole,
surmounted with upright hair larded and dredged ; it was before
Orestes was created monseigneur; it was before there strutted
under a triumphal arch of curls, and through a Via Sacra of
plumery, Louis the Fourteenth.
Parker. The ally of His Majesty
Marvel. And something more. A gilded organ-pipe, puffed
from below for those above to play.
Parker. Respect the cousin
Marvel. I know not whose cousin ; but the acknowledged
brat of milliner and furrier, with perruquier for godfather. And
such, forsooth, are the make-believes we must respect ! A nucleus
of powder ! an efflorescence of frill !
Parker. Subject and prince stand now upon another footing
than formerly.
Marvel. Indeed they do. How dignified is the address
of Plutarch to Trajan ! how familiar is Pliny's to Vespasian !
how tender, how paternal, is Fronto's to Antoninus ! how
totally free from adulation and servility is Julius Pollux to the
ungentle Commodus! Letters were not trampled down dis-
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 341
dainfully either in the groves of Antioch or under the colon-
nades of Palmyra. Not pleasure, the gentle enfeebler of the
human intellect ; not tyranny and bigotry, its violent assailants,
crossed the walk of the philosopher, to stand between him and
his speculations. What is more : two ancient religions, the
Grecian and Egyptian, met in perfectly good temper at Alex-
andria, lived and flourished there together for many centuries,
united in honoring whatever was worthy of honor in each com-
munion, and never heard of persecution for matters of opinion
until Christianity came and taught it. Thenceforward, for fifteen
hundred years, blood has been perpetually spouting from under-
neath her footsteps ; and the wretch, clinging exhausted to the
cross, is left naked by the impostor, who pretends to have stripped
him only to heal his wounds.
Parker. Presbyterians, and other sectaries, were lately as cruel
and hypocritical as any in former times.
Marvel. They were certainly not less cruel, and perhaps even
more hypocritical. English hearts were contracted and hardened
by an open exposure to the North : they now are collapsing into
the putridity of the South. We were ashamed of a beggarly dis-
temper, but parasitical and skin-deep ; we are now ostentatious of
a gentlemanly one, eating into the very bones.
Parker. Our children may expect from Lord Clarendon a
fair account of the prime movers in the late disturbances.
Marvel. He knew but one party, and saw it only in its gala
suit. He despises those whom he left on the old litter ; and he
fancies that all who have not risen want the ability to rise. No
doubt, he will speak unfavorably of those whom I most esteem :
be it so ; if their lives and writings do not controvert him, they
are unworthy of my defence. Were I upon terms of intimacy
with him, I would render him a service by sending him the best
translations, from Greek and Latin authors, of maxims left us by
the wisest men, maxims which my friends held longer than their
fortunes, and dearer than their lives. And are the vapors of
such quagmires as Clarendon to overcast the luminaries of man-
kind ? Should a Hyde lift up, I will not say his hand, I will
not say his voice, should he lift up his eyes against a Milton ?
Parkrr. Mr Milton would have benefited the world much
more by coming into its little humors, and by complying with it
cheerfully.
342 Imaginary Conversations.
Marvel. As the needle turns away from the rising sun, from
the meridian, from the Occident, from regions of fragrancy and
gold and gems, and moves with unerring impulse to the frosts and
deserts of the North, so Milton and some few others, in politics,
philosophy, and religion, walk through the busy multitude, wave
aside the importunate trader, and, after a momentary oscillation
from external agency, are found in the twilight and in the storm
pointing with certain index to the pole-star of immutable truth.
Parker. The nation in general thanks him little for what he
has been doing.
Marvel. Men who have been unsparing of their wisdom, like
ladies who have been unfrugal of their favors, are abandoned by
those who owe most to them, and hated or slighted by the rest.
I wish beauty in her lost estate had consolations like genius.
Parker. Fie, fie ! Mr Marvel ! Consolations for frailty !
Marvel. What wants them more ? The reed is cut down,
and seldom does the sickle wound the hand that cuts it. There
it lies ; trampled on, withered, and soon to be blown away.
Parker. We should be careful and circumspect in our pity,
and see that it falls on clean ground. Such a laxity of morals
can be taught only in Mr Milton's school. He composed, I
remember, a Treatise on Divorce, and would have given it great
facilities.
Marvel. He proved by many arguments what requires but
few, that happiness is better than unhappiness ; that, when two
persons cannot agree, it is wiser and more Christianlike that they
should not disagree ; that, when they cease to love each other, it
is something if they be hindered by the gentlest of checks from
running to the extremity of hatred ; and, lastly, how it conduces
to circumspection and forbearance to be aware that the bond of
matrimony is not indissoluble, and that the bleeding heart may be
saved from bursting.
Parker. Monstrous sophistry ! abominable doctrines ! What
more, sir ! what more ?
Marvel. He proceeds to demonstrate that boisterous manners,
captious contradictions, jars, jealousies, suspicions, dissensions, are
juster causes of separation than the only one leading to it through
the laws ; which fault, grievous as it is to morality and religion,
may have occurred but once, and may have been followed by
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 343
immediate and most sorrowful repentance, and by a greater
anxiety to be clear of future offence than before it was com-
mitted ; in itself, it is not so irreconcilable and inconsistent
with gentleness, good-humor, generosity, and even conjugal
affection.
Parker. Palpable perversion !
Marvel. I suppose it to have been committed but once ; and
then there is the fairest inference, the most reasonable as well as
the most charitable supposition, nay, almost the plainest proof,
of the more legitimate attachment.
Parker. Fear, apprehension of exposure, of shame, of
abandonment, may force the vagrant to retrace her steps.
Marvel. God grant, then, the marks of them never may be
discovered !
Parker. Let the laws have their satisfaction.
Marvel. Had ever the Harpies theirs, or the Devil his?
And yet when were they stinted? Are the laws or are we the
better or the milder for this satisfaction ? or is keenness of
appetite a sign of it ?
Parker. Reverence the laws of God, Mr Marvel, if you
contemn those of your country. Even the Parliament, which
you and Mr Milton must respect, since no King was coexistent
with it, discountenanced and chastised such laxity.
Marvel. I dare not look back upon a Parliament which was
without the benefit of a King, and had also lost its spiritual
guides, the barons of your bench; but well do I remember
that our blessed Lord and Saviour was gentler in his rebuke
to the woman who had offended, than he was to Scribes and
Pharisees.
Parker. There is no argument of any hold on men of
slippery morals.
Marvel. My morals have indeed been so slippery that they
have let me down on the ground and left me there. Every year
I have grown poorer ; yet never was I conscious of having spent
my money among the unworthy, until the time came for them to
show it by their ingratitude. My morals have not made me slip
into an Episcopal throne
Parker. Neither have mine me, sir ! and I would have you
to know it, Mr Marvel !
344 Imaginary Conversations.
Marvel. Your lordship has already that satisfaction.
Parker. Pardon my interruption, my dear sir ! and the
appearance of warmth, such as truth and sincerity at times
put on.
Marvel. It belongs to your lordship to grant pardon ; it is
ours, who have offended, to receive it.
Parker. Mr Marvel, I have always admired your fine
gentlemanly manners, and regretted that you never have turned
your wit to good account, in an age when hardly any thing
else is held of value. Sound learning rises indeed, but rises
slowly ; piety, although in estimation with the King, is less
prized by certain persons who have access to his presence ;
wit, Mr Marvel, when properly directed, not too high nor too
low, will sooner or later find a patron. It is well at all times
to avoid asperity and acrimony, and to submit with a willing
mind to God's dispensations, be what they may. Probably a
great part of your friend's misfortunes may be attributed to the
intemperance of his rebukes.
Marvel. Then what you call immoral and impious did him
less harm ?
Parker. I would not say that altogether. To me, indeed,
his treatise on Divorce is most offensive : the treatise on Prelaty
is contemptible.
Marvel. Nevertheless, in the narrow view of my humble
understanding, there is no human eloquence at all comparable
to certain parts of it. And permit me to remind your lordship,
that you continued on the most friendly terms with him long
after its publication.
Parker. I do not give up a friend for a trifle.
Marvel. Your lordship, it appears, must have more than a
trifle for the surrender. I have usually found that those who
make faults of foibles, and crimes of faults, have within themselves
an impulse toward worse, and give ready way to such impulse
whenever they can secretly or safely. There is a gravity which
is not austere nor captious, which belongs not to melancholy, nor
dwells in contraction of heart, but arises from tenderness and
hangs upon reflection.
Parker. Whatsoever may be the gravity of Mr Milton,
I have heard indistinctly that he has not always been the
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 345
kindest of husbands. Being a sagacious and a prudent man,
he ought never to have taken a wife until he had ascertained
IKT character.
Marvel. Pray inform me whether the wisest men have been
the most fortunate, or, if you prefer the expression, the most
provident, in their choice ? Of Solomon's wives (several hun-
dreds) is it recorded that a single one sympathized with him,
loved him, respected him, or esteemed him ? His wisdom and
his poetry flowed alike on barren sand ; his cedar frowned on
him ; his lily drooped and withered before he had raised up
his head from its hard, cold glossiness, or had inhaled its frag-
rance with a second sigh. Disappointments sour most the less
experienced. Young ladies are ready in imagining that marriage
is all cake and kisses ; but very few of them are housewives
long, before they discover that the vinous fermentation may be
followed too soon by the acetous. Rarely do they discover, and
more rarely do they admit, that such is the result of their own
mismanagement. What woman can declare with sincerity that
she never in the calmer days of life has felt surprise and shame
also, if she is virtuous and sensible at recollecting how nearly
the same interest was excited in her by the most frivolous
and least frivolous of her admirers. The downy thistle-seed,
hard to be uprooted, is carried by the lightest breath of air, and
takes an imperceptible hold on what it catches : it falls the more
readily into the more open breast ; but sometimes the less open is
vainly buttoned up against it.
Milton has, I am afraid, imitated too closely the authoritative
voice of the patriarchs, and been somewhat too Oriental (I for-
bear to say Scriptural) in his relations as a husband. But who,
whether among the graver or less grave, is just to woman?
There may be moments when the beloved tells us, and tells
us truly, that we are dearer to her than life. Is not this enough ?
Is it not above all merit ? Yet, if ever the ardor of her en-
thusiasm subsides ; if her love ever loses, later in the day, the
spirit and vivacity of its early dawn ; if between the sigh and the
blush an interval is perceptible ; if the arm mistakes the chair for
the shoulder, what an outcry is there ! what a proclamation of
her injustice and her inconstancy ! what an alternation of shrink-
ing and spurning at the coldness of her heart! Do we ask
346 Imaginary Conversations.
within if our own has retained all its ancient loyalty, all its own
warmth, and all that was poured into it ? Often the true lover
has little of true love compared with what he has undeservedly
received and unreasonably exacts. But let it also be remem-
bered that marriage is the metempsychosis of women, that
it turns them into different creatures from what they were before.
Liveliness in the girl may have been mistaken for good temper ;
the little pervicacity which at first is attractively provoking, at
last provokes without its attractiveness ; negligence of order and
propriety, of duties and civilities, long endured, often deprecated,
ceases to be tolerable, when children grow up and are in danger
of following the example. It often happens that, if a man
unhappy in the married state were to disclose the manifold causes
of his uneasiness, they would be found, by those who were
beyond their influence, to be of such a nature as rather to excite
derision than sympathy. The waters of bitterness do not fall
on his head in a cataract, but through a colander, one, how-
ever, like the vases of the Danaides, perforated only for re-
plenishment. We know scarcely the vestibule of a house of
which we fancy we have penetrated into all the corners. We
know not how grievously a man may have suffered, long before
the calumnies of the world befell him as he reluctantly left his
house-door. There are women from whom incessant tears of
anger swell forth at imaginary wrongs ; but, of contrition for
their own delinquencies, not one.
Milton, in writing his treatise, of which probably the first
idea was suggested from his own residence, was aware that the
laws should provide, not only against our violence and injustice,
but against our levity and inconstancy ; and that a man's capri-
ciousness or satiety should not burst asunder the ties by which
families are united. Do you believe that the crime of adultery
has never been committed to the end of obtaining a divorce ?
Do you believe that murder, that suicide, never has been com-
mitted because a divorce was unattainable ? Thus the most
cruel tortures are terminated by the most frightful crimes.
Milton has made his appeal to the authority of religion : we
lower our eyes from him, and point to the miseries and guilt
on every side before us, caused by the corrosion or the violent
disruption of bonds which humanity would have loosened. He
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 347
would have tried with a patient ear and with a delicate hand the
chord that offended by its harshness ; and, when he could not
reduce it to the proper tone, he would remove it for another.
Parkfr. Mr Marvel ! Mr Marvel ! I cannot follow you
among these fiddlesticks. The age is notoriously irreligious.
Marvel. I believe it ; I know it ; and, without a claim to
extraordinary acuteness, I fancy I can discover by what means,
and by whose agency, it became so. The preachers who exhibit
most vehemence are the very men who support the worst corrup-
tions, corruptions not a portion of our nature, but sticking
o by our slovenly supineness. Of what use is it to rail
against our infirmities, of what use even to pity and bemoan
them, if we help not in removing the evils that rise perpetually
out of them ? Were every man to sweep the mire from before
his house every morning, he would have little cause to complain
of dirty street*. Some dust might be carried into them by the
wind ; the tread of multitudes would make unsound what was
solid, yet, nothing being accumulated, the labor of removing the
obstructions would be light. Another thing has increased the
irreligion and immorality of the people, beside examples in
elevated stations. Whatever is over-constrained will relax or
crack. The age of Milton (for that was his age in which he
was heard and honored) was too religious, if any thing can
be called so. Prelaty now lays a soft and frilled hand upon our
childishness. Forty years ago she stripped up her sleeve, scourged
us heartily, and spat upon us, to remove the smart, no doubt !
This treatment made people run in all directions from her ; not
unlike the primeval man described by Lucretius, fleeing before
the fiercer and stronger animals :
Vivm videns viro sepeliri viscera busto,
At quos ecfugium servarat, corpore adeso
Poetcrius, tremulas super ulcera tetra tenentes
Palmas, horrificis adcibant vocibus orcum.
Parker. Dear me ! what a memory you possess, good Mr
Marvel ! You pronounce Latin verses charmingly. I wish you
would go on to the end of the book.
Marvel. Permit me to go on a shorter distance, to the
conclusion of my remarks. As popery caused the violence
348 Imaginary Conversations.
of the Reformers, so did prelaty (the same thing under an-
other name) the violence of the Presbyterians and Anabaptists.
She treated them inhumanly : she reduced to poverty, she exiled,
she maimed, she mutilated, she stabbed, she shot, she hanged,
those who followed Christ in the narrow and quiet lane, rather
than along the dust of the market-road, and who conversed with
him rather in the cottage than the tollbooth. She would have
nothing pass unless through her hands ; and she imposed a heavy
and intolerable tax on the necessaries both of physical and of
spiritual life. This baronial privilege our Parliament would have
suppressed : the King rose against the suppression, and broke his
knuckles in the cogs of the mill.
Parker. Sad times, Mr Marvel, sad times ! It fills me with
heaviness to hear of them.
Marvel. Low places are foggy first ; days of sadness wet
trie people to the skin ; they hang loosely for some time upon
the ermine, but at last they penetrate it, and cause it to be
thrown off. I do not like to hear a man cry out with pain ;
but I would rather hear one than twenty. Sorrow is the growth
of all seasons : we had much, however, to relieve it. Never
did our England, since she first emerged from the ocean, rise
so high above surrounding nations. The rivalry of Holland,
the pride of Spain, the insolence of France, were thrust back by
one finger each ; yet those countries were then more powerful
than they had ever been. The sword of Cromwell was preceded
by the mace of Milton ; by that mace which, when Oliver had
rendered his account, opened to our contemplation the garden-
gate of Paradise. And there were some around not unworthy to
enter with him. In the compass of sixteen centuries, you will
not number on the whole earth so many wise and admirable men
as you could have found united in that single day, when England
showed her true magnitude and solved the question, Which is
most, one or a million ? There were giants in those days ; but
giants who feared God, and not who fought against him. Less
men, it appears, are braver. They show him a legal writ of
ejectment, seize upon his house, and riotously carouse therein.
But the morning must come ; and heaviness, we know, cometh
in the morning.
Parser. Wide is the difference between carousal and austerity.
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 349
Your friend miscalculated the steps to fortune, in which as we all
arc the architects of our own, if we omit the insertion of one or
two, the rest are useless in furthering our ascent. He was too
passionate, Mr Marvel, he was indeed.
Marvel. Superficial men have no absorbing passion : there are
no whirlpools in a shallow. I have often been amused at thinking
in what estimation the greatest of mankind were holden by their
contemporaries. Not even the most sagacious and prudent one
could discover much of them, or could prognosticate their future
course in the infinity of space ! Men like ourselves are permitted
to stand near, and indeed in the very presence of, Milton. What
do they see ? dark clothes, gray hair, and sightless eyes ! Other
men have better things : other men, therefore, are nobler ! The
stars themselves are only bright by distance ; go close, and all is
earthy. But vapors illuminate these : from the breath and from
the countenance of God comes light on worlds higher than they,
worlds to which he has given the forms and names of Shak-
speare and of Milton.
Parker. After all, I doubt whether much of his doctrine is
remaining in the public mind.
Marvel. Others are not inclined to remember all that we re-
member, and will not attend to us if we propose to tell them half.
Water will take up but a certain quantity of salt, even of the finest
and purest. If the short memories of men are to be quoted against
the excellence of instruction, your lordship would never have cen-
sured them from the pulpit for forgetting what was delivered by
their Saviour. It is much, my lord bishop, that you allow my
friend even the pittance of praise you have bestowed ; for, if you
will permit me to express my sentiments in verse, which I am in
the habit of doing, I would say,
Men like the ancient kalends, nones, and ides,
Are reckoned backward, and the first stand last.
I am confident that Milton is heedless of how little weight he is
held by those who are of none ; and that he never looks toward
those somewhat more eminent, between whom and himself there
have crept the waters of oblivion. As the pearl ripens in the
obscurity of its shell, so ripens in the tomb all the fame that is
truly precious. In fame he will be happier than in friendship.
350 Imaginary Conversations.
Were it possible that one among the faithful of the angels could
have suffered wounds and dissolution in his conflict with the false,
I should scarcely feel greater awe at discovering on some bleak
mountain the bones of this our mighty defender, once shining in
celestial panoply, once glowing at the trumpet-blast of God, but
not proof against the desperate and the damned, than I have felt
at entering the humble abode of Milton, whose spirit already
reaches heaven, yet whose corporeal frame hath no quiet or safe
resting-place here below. And shall not I, who loved him early,
have the lonely and sad privilege to love him still ? Or shall
fidelity to power be a virtue, and fidelity to tribulation an
offence ?
Parker. We may best show our fidelity by our discretion.
It becomes my station, and suits my principles, to defend the Eng-
lish Constitution, both in Church and State.
Marvel. You highly praised the Defence of the English
People: you called it a masterly piece of rhetoric and ratio-
cination.
Parker. I might have admired the subtilty of it, and have
praised the Latinity.
Marvel. Less reasonably. But his godlike mind shines glori-
ously throughout his work ; only perhaps we look the more intently
at it for the cloud it penetrates. Those who think we have enough
of his poetry still regret that we possess too little of his prose, and
wish especially for more of his historical compositions. Davila
and Bacon
Parker. You mean Lord Verulam.
Marvel. That idle title was indeed thrown over his shoulders ;
but the trapping was unlikely to rest long upon a creature of such
proud paces. He and Davila are the only men of high genius
among the modems who have attempted it ; and the greater of
them has failed. He wanted honesty, he perverted facts, he
courted favor : the present in his eyes was larger than the future.
Parker. The Italians, who far excel us in the writing of his-
tory, are farther behind the ancients.
Marvel. True enough. From Guicciardini and Machiavelli,
the most celebrated of them, we acquire a vast quantity of trivial
information. There is about them a sawdust which absorbs much
blood and impurity, and of which the level surface is dry ; but no
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 351
by what agency rose such magnificent cities above the
hovels of France and Germany, none
Ut fortis Etruria crevit,
or, on the contrary, how the mistress of the world sank in the
ordure of her priesthood.
Scilicet et rerum facta est nequissima Roma.
We are captivated by no charms of description, we are detained
by no peculiarities of character : we hear a clamorous scuffle in
the street, and we close the door. How different the historians
of antiquity ! We read Sallust, and always are incited by the
desire of reading on, although we are surrounded by conspirators
and barbarians ; we read Livy, until we imagine we are standing
in an august pantheon, covered with altars and standards, over
which are the four fatal letters that spellbound all mankind.*
We step forth again among the modern Italians : here we find
plenty of rogues, plenty of receipts for making more ; and little
else. In the best passages, we come upon a crowd of dark
reflections, which scarcely a glimmer of glory pierces through ;
and we stare at the tenuity of the spectres, but never at their
altitude.
Give me the poetical mind, the mind poetical in all things ;
give me the poetical heart, the heart of hope and confidence,
beats the more strongly and resolutely under the good
thrown down, and raises up fabric after fabric on the same
foundation.
Parker. At your time of life, Mr Marvel ?
Marvel. At mine, my lord bishop ! I have lived with Milton.
Such creative and redeeming spirits are like kindly and renovat-
ing Nature. Volcano comes after volcano; yet covereth she
with herbage and foliage, with vine and olive, and with what-
else refreshes and gladdens her, the Earth that has been
gasping under the exhaustion of her throes.
Parker. He has given us such a description of Eve's beauty
as appears to me somewhat too pictorial, too luxuriant, too
suggestive, too I know not what.
S. P. Q. R.
352 Imaginary Conversations.
Marvel. The sight of beauty, in her purity and beatitude,
turns us from all unrighteousness, and is death to sin.
Parker. Before we part, my good Mr Marvel, let me assure
you that we part in amity, and that I bear no resentment in my
breast against your friend. I am patient of Mr Milton ; I am
more than patient, I am indulgent, seeing that his influence on
society is past.
Marvel. Past it is, indeed. What a deplorable thing is
it that folly should so constantly have power over wisdom, and
wisdom so intermittently over folly ! But we live morally, as
we used to live politically, under a representative system ; and
the majority (to employ a phrase of people at elections) carries
the day.
Parker. Let us piously hope, Mr Marvel, that God in his
good time may turn Mr Milton from the error of his ways, and
incline his heart to repentance, and that so he may finally be
prepared for death.
Marvel. The wicked can never be prepared for it ; the good
always are. What is the preparation which so many ruffled
wrists point out ? to gabble over prayer and praise and con-
fession and contrition. My lord, heaven is not to be won by
short hard work at the last, as some of us take a degree at the
university, after much irregularity and negligence. I prefer a
steady pace from the outset to the end ; coming in cool, and
dismounting quietly. Instead of which, I have known many old
playfellows of the Devil spring up suddenly from their beds, and
strike at him treacherously; while he, without a cuff, laughed
and made grimaces in the corner of the room.
XX. STEELE AND ADDISON.i
Jlddison. Dick ! I am come to remonstrate with you on
those unlucky habits which have been so detrimental to your
health and fortune.
[ a Mr Aitken, in his erudite " Life of Steele," says, concerning the sub-
ject of this Conversation : " The most trustworthy account is that told by
Benjamin Victor to Garrick in a letter written in 1762. He says that
Steele and Addison. 353
Steele. Many thanks, Mr Addison : but really my fortune is
not much improved by your arresting me for the hundred pounds;
nor is my health, if spirits are an indication of it, on seeing my
furniture sold by auction to raise the money.
Addison. Pooh, pooh, Dick ! what furniture had you about
the house ?
Steele. At least I had the arm-chair, of which you never
before had dispossessed me longer than the evening ; and happy
should I have been to enjoy your company in it again and again,
if you had left it me.
Addison. We will contrive to hire another. I do assure you,
my dear Dick, I have really felt for you.
Steelt. I only wish, my kind friend, you had not put out
your feelers quite so far, nor exactly in this direction ; and
that my poor wife had received an hour's notice : she might
have carried a few trinkets to some neighbor. She wanted her
salts ; and the bailiff thanked her for the bottle that contained
them, telling her the gold head of it was worth pretty nearly
half-a-guinea.
Addison. Lady Steele then wanted her smelling-bottle ?
Dear me ! the weather, I apprehend, is about to change. Have
you any symptoms of your old gout ?
Steele. My health has been long on the decline, you know.
Adduon. Too well I know it, my dear friend, and I hinted
it as delicately as I could. Nothing on earth beside this con-
sideration should have induced me to pursue a measure in appear-
ance so unfriendly. You must grow more temperate, you really
must.
Steele. Mr Addison, you did not speak so gravely and so
he had his relation first from Wilkes, but that afterwards, in 17x5, he
had a full confirmation of it from Steele's own lips. According to
Victor's letter, Steele borrowed 1000 from Addison .... on the house
at Hampton Wick, giving bond and judgment for the repayment of the
money at the end of twelve months. Upon the forfeiture of the bond,
Addison *s attorney proceeded to execution, the house and furniture being
sold, and the surplus sent to Steele with a ' genteel letter ' stating the
friendly reason tor this extraordinary proceeding, viz.: to awaken him,
if possible, from a lethargy that must end in his inevitable ruin." ....
The affair seems to have caused no interruption in the friendship between
Steele and Addison. (Ablett's Literary Hours, 1837. Works, ii., 1846.
Works, v., 1876.)]
354 Imaginary Conversations.
firmly when we used to meet at Will's. You always drank as
much as I did, and often invited and pressed me to continue,
when I was weary, sleepy, and sick.
Addison. You thought so, because you were drunk. Indeed,
at my own house I have sometimes asked you to take another
glass, in compliance with the rules of society and hospitality.
Steele. Once, it is true, you did it at your house, the only
time I ever had an invitation to dine in it. The countess was
never fond of the wit that smells of wine : her husband could
once endure it.
Addison. We could talk more freely, you know, at the
tavern. There we have dined together some hundred times.
Steele. Most days, for many years.
Addison. Ah, Dick ! since we first met there, several of our
friends are gone off the stage.
Steele. And some are still acting.
Addison. Forbear, my dear friend, to joke and smile at
infirmities or vices. Many have departed from us in conse-
quence, I apprehend, of indulging in the bottle. When passions
are excited, when reason is disturbed, when reputation is sullied,
when fortune is squandered, and when health is lost by it, a
retreat is sounded in vain. Some cannot hear it ; others will not
profit by it.
Steele. I must do you the justice to declare, that I never saw
any other effect of hard drinking upon you than to make you
more circumspect and silent.
Addison. If ever I urged you, in the warmth of my heart,
to transgress the bounds of sobriety, I entreat you, as a Christian,
to forgive me.
Steele. Most willingly, most cordially.
Addison. I feel confident that you will think of me, speak
of me, and write of me, as you have ever done, without a
diminution of esteem. We are feeble creatures : we want one
another's aid and assistance, a want ordained by Providence
to show us at once our insufficiency and our strength. We
must not abandon our friends from slight motives, nor let our
passions be our interpreters in their own cause. Consistency is
not more requisite to the sound Christian than to the accom-
plished politician.
Steele and Addison. 355
Stee/f. I am inconsistent in my resolutions of improvement,
no man ever was more so ; but my attachments have a nerve
in them neither to be deadened by ill-treatment nor loosened
by indulgence. A man grievously wounded knows by the acute-
ness of the pain that a spirit of vitality is yet in him : I know
that I retain my friendship for you by what you have made me
suffer.
Adduon. Entirely for your own good, I do protest, if you
could see it.
Stftk. Alas ! all our sufferings are so ; the only mischief is,
that we have no organs for perceiving it.
Addison. You reason well, my worthy sir ; and, relying on
your kindness in my favor (for every man has enemies, and
those mostly who serve their friends best), I say, Dick, on
these considerations, since you never broke your word with me,
and since I am certain you would be sorry it were known that
only fourscore pounds* worth could be found in the house, I
renounce for the present the twenty yet wanting. Do not beat
about for an answer ; say not one word ; farewell !
Stede. Ah ! could not that cold heart,* often and long as
I reposed on it, bring me to my senses? I have indeed been
drunken ; but it is hard to awaken in such heaviness as this
of mine is. I shared his poverty with him : I never aimed to
share his prosperity. Well, well ; I cannot break old habits :
I love my glass ; I love Addison. Each will partake in killing
me. Why cannot I see him again in the arm-chair, his right
hand upon his heart under the fawn-colored waistcoat, his brow
erect and clear as his conscience ; his wig even and composed as
his temper, with measurely curls and antithetical top-knots, like
his style ; the calmest poet, the most quiet patriot : dear Addison !
drunk, deliberate, moral, sentimental, foaming over with truth
and virtue, with tenderness and friendship, and only the worse in
one ruffle for the wine.
* Doubts are now entertained whether the character of Addison is
fcurly represented by Pope and Johnson. It is better to make this state-
ment than to omit a Comtnatum which had appeared elsewhere.
356 lamginary Conversations.
XXI. LA FONTAINE AND DE LA ROCHEFOU-
CAULT.i
La Fontaine. I am truly sensible of the honor I receive,
M. de la Rochefoucault, in a visit from a personage so dis-
tinguished by his birth and by his genius. Pardon my ambition,
if I confess to you that I have long and ardently wished for the
good fortune, which I never could promise myself, of knowing
you personally.
Rochefoucault. My dear M. de la Fontaine !
La Fontaine. Not " de la," not " de la." I am La Fontaine
purely and simply.
Rochefoucault. The whole ; not derivative. You appear, in
the midst of your purity, to have been educated at court, in the
lat) of the ladies. What was the last day (pardon ! ) I had the
misfortune to miss you there ?
La Fontaine. I never go to court. They say one cannot go
without silk stockings ; and I have only thread, plenty of them
indeed, thank God! Yet (would you believe it?) Nanon, in
putting a solette to the bottom of one, last week, sewed it so care-
lessly she made a kind of cord across ; and I verily believe it will
lame me for life, for I walked the whole morning upon it.
Rochefoucault. She ought to be whipped.
La Fontaine. I thought so too, and grew the warmer at
being unable to find a wisp of osier or a roll of packthread in
the house. Barely had I begun with my garter, when in came
the Bishop of Grasse, my old friend Godeau, and another lord,
whose name he mentioned ; and they both interceded for her so
long and so touchingly, that at last I was fain to let her rise up
and go. I never saw men look down on the erring and afflicted
more compassionately. The bishop was quite concerned for me
also. But the other, although he professed to feel even more,
and said that it must surely be the pain of purgatory to me, took
[ l The date of this Conversation, which is strictly " Imaginary," can
be fixed. In 1679 La Fontaine went to Court to present a copy of his
works to the King, and forgot the book. Rochefoucault died in the
year 1680. The Conversation is one of the best. Both the characters
are well kept up, and there is very little Theology. (Works, ii., 1846.
Works, v., 1876.)]
La Fontaine and La Rochefoucault. 357
a pinch of snuff, opened his waistcoat, drew down his ruffles, and
seemed rather more indifferent.
Rochefoucault. Providentially, in such moving scenes, the
worst is soon over. But Godeau's friend was not too sensitive.
La Fontaine. Sensitive ! no more than if he had been
educated at the butcher's or the Sorbonne.
Rochefoucault. I am afraid there are as many hard hearts
under satin waistcoats, as there are ugly visages under the same
material in miniature-cases.
Fontaine. My lord, I could show you a miniature-case
which contains your humble servant, in which the painter has
done what no tailor in his senses would do : he has given me
credit for a coat of violet silk, with silver frogs as large as
tortoises. But I am loath to get up for it while the generous
of this dog (if I mentioned his name, he would jump up)
places such confidence on my knee.
Rochffoucmilt. Pray do not move on any account ; above all,
lest you should disturb that amiable gray cat, fast asleep in his
innocence on your shoulder.
La Fontaine. Ah, rogue ! art thou there ? Why, thou hast
not licked my face this half-hour !
Rochefoucault. And more too, I should imagine. I do not
judge from his somnolency, which if he were president of the
Parliament could not be graver, but from his natural sagacity.
Cats weigh practicabilities. What sort of tongue has he ?
La Fontaine. He has the roughest tongue and the tenderest
heart of any cat in Paris. If you observe the color of his coat,
it is rather blue than grey, a. certain indication of goodness in
these contemplative creatures.
Rochffoucault. We were talking of his tongue alone ; by which
cats, like men, are flatterers.
La Fontaine. Ah ! you gentlemen of the court are much
mistaken in thinking that vices have so extensive a range. There
are some of our vices, like some of our diseases, from which the
quadrupeds are exempt ; and those, both diseases and vices, are
the most discreditable.
Rochefoucault. I do not bear patiently any evil spoken of the
court ; for it must be acknowledged, by the most malicious, that
the court is the purifier of the whole nation.
358 Imaginary Conversations.
La Fontaine. I know little of the court, and less ot the whole
nation ; but how can this be ?
Rochefoucault. It collects all ramblers and gamblers ; all the
market-men and market-women who deal in articles which God
has thrown into their baskets, without any trouble on their part ;
all the seducers, and all who wish to be seduced ; all the duellists
who erase their crimes with their swords, and sweat out their
cowardice with daily practice; all the nobles whose patents of
nobility lie in gold snuff-boxes, or have worn Mechlin ruffles, or
are deposited within the archives of knee-deep waistcoats; all
stock-jobbers and church -jobbers, the black-legged and the red-
legged game, the flower of the justaucorps, the robe, and the
soutane. If these were spread over the surface of France, instead
of close compressure in the court or cabinet, they would corrupt
the whole country in two years. As matters now stand, it will
require a quarter of a century to effect it.
La Fontaine. Am I not right, then, in preferring my beasts
to yours? But if yours were loose, mine (as you prove to me)
would be the last to surfer by it, poor dear creatures ! Speaking
of cats, I would have avoided all personality that might be offen-
sive to them : I would not exactly have said in so many words,
that, by their tongues, they are flatterers, like men. Language
may take a turn advantageously in favor of our friends. True,
we resemble all animals in something. I am quite ashamed and
mortified that your lordship, or anybody, should have had the
start of me in this reflection. When a cat flatters with his tongue,
he is not insincere : you may safely take it for a real kindness.
He is loyal, M. de la Rochefoucault ! my word for him, he is
loyal. Observe, too, if you please, no cat ever licks you when he
wants anything from you ; so that there is nothing of baseness in
such an act of adulation, if we must call it so. For my part, I
am slow to designate by so foul a name that (be it what it may)
which is subsequent to a kindness. Cats ask plainly for what
they want.
Rochefoucault. And, if they cannot get it by protocols, they
get it by invasion and assault.
La Fontaine. No ! no ! usually they go elsewhere, and fondle
those from whom they obtain it. In this I see no resemblance
to invaders and conquerors. I draw no parallels: I would
La Fontaine and La Rochefoucault. 359
excite no heart-burnings between us and them. Let all have
their due.
I do not like to lift this creature off, for it would waken him,
else I could find out, by some subsequent action, the reason why
he has not been on the elert to lick my cheek for so long
a time.
Rochefoucault. Cats are wary and provident. He would not
enter into any contest with you, however friendly. He only licks
your face, I presume, while your beard is but a match for his
tongue.
La Fontaine. Ha ! you remind me. Indeed, I did begin to
think my beard was rather of the roughest ; for yesterday Madame
de Rambouillet sent me a plate of strawberries, the first of the
season, and raised (would you believe it?) under glass. One of
these strawberries was dropping from my lips, and I attempted to
stop it. When I thought it had fallen to the ground, " Look for
it, Nanon ; pick it up and eat it," said I.
Master ! " cried the wench, " your beard has skewered and
spitted it." " Honest girl," I answered, " come cull it from the
bed of its adoption."
d resolved to shave myself this morning ; but our wisest
and best resolutions too often come to nothing, poor mortals !
Rocbefoucault. We often do very well every thing but the only
thing we hope to do best of all ; and our projects often drop
from us by their weight. A little while ago, your friend Moliere
exhibited a remarkable proof of it.
/ / Fontaine. Ah, poor Moliere ! the best man in the
world; but flighty, negligent, thoughtless. He throws him-
self into other men, and does not remember where. The
sight of an eagle, M. de la Rochefoucault, but the memory
of a fly !
Rochefoucault. I will give you an example ; but perhaps it is
already known to you.
La Fontaine. Likely enough. We have each so many
friends, neither of us can trip but the other is invited to the
laugh. Well, I am sure he has no malice, and I hope I have
none ; but who can see his own faults ?
Rocbefoucault. He had brought out a new edition of his
Comedies.
360 Imaginary Conversations.
La Fontaine. There will be fifty ; there will be a hundred :
nothing in our language, or in any, is so delightful, so graceful,
I will add, so clear at once and so profound.
Rochefoucault. You are among the few who, seeing well his
other qualities, see that Molire is also profound. In order to
present the new edition to the Dauphin, he had put on a sky-
blue velvet coat, powdered with fleur-de-lis. He laid the
volume on his library-table ; and, resolving that none of the
courtiers should have an opportunity of ridiculing him for any
thing like absence of mind, he returned to his bed-room, which,
as may often be the case in the economy of poets, is also his
dressing-room. Here he surveyed himself in his mirror, as well
as the creeks and lagoons in it would permit.
La Fontaine. I do assure you, from my own observation,
M. de la Rochefoucault, that his mirror is a splendid one. I
should take it to be nearly three feet high, reckoning the frame
with the Cupid above and the elephant under. I suspected it
was the present of some great lady ; and, indeed, I have since
heard as much.
Rochefoucault. Perhaps, then, the whole story may be quite
as fabulous as the part of it which I have been relating.
La Fontaine. In that case, I may be able to set you right
again.
Rochefoucault. He found his peruke a model of perfection :
tight, yet easy ; not an inch more on one side than on the other.
The black patch on the forehead
La Fontaine. Black patch, too ! I would have given a
fifteen-sous piece to have caught him with that black patch.
Rochefoucault. He found it lovely, marvellous, irresistible.
Those on each cheek
La Fontaine. Do you tell me he had one on each cheek ?
Rochefoucault. Symmetrically. The cravat was of its proper
descent, and with its appropriate charge of the best Strasburg
snuff upon it. The waistcoat, for a moment, puzzled and per-
plexed him. He was not quite sure whether the right number
of buttons were in their holes ; nor how many above nor how
many below it was the fashion of the week to leave without
occupation. Such a piece of ignorance is enough to disgrace any
courtier on earth. He was in the act of striking his forehead
I a Fontaine and La Rochefoucault. 361
with desperation ; but he thought of the patch, fell on his knees,
and thanked Heaven for the intervention.
Fontaine. Just like him ! just like him ! good soul !
Rocbefoucault. The breeches ah ! those require attention :
all proj>er ; every thing in its place, magnificent ! The stockings
rolled up, neither too loosely nor too negligently, a picture !
The buckles in the shoes all but one soon set to rights,
well thought of! And now the sword, ah, that cursed sword !
it will bring at least one man to the ground if it has its own way
much longer. Up with it ! up with it higher ! Allans ! we are
out of danger.
La Fontaine. Delightful ! I have him before my eyes.
What simplicity ! ay, what simplicity !
Rochefoucault. Now for hat. Feather in? Five at least.
Bravo.
He took up hat and plumage, extended his ami to the full
length, raised it a foot above his head, lowered it thereon,
opened his fingers, and let them fall again at his side.
La Fontaine. Something of the comedian in that ; ay, M.
de la Rochefoucault ? But, on the stage or off, all is natural in
Moliere.
Rocbefoucault. Away he went. He reached the palace,
stood before the Dauphin Oh, consternation ! Oh, despair !
" Morbleu ! bdte que je suis," exclaimed the hapless man, " le
livre, oft done est-il ? " You are forcibly struck, I perceive, by
this adventure of your friend.
La Fontaint. Strange coincidence ! quite unaccountable !
There are agents at work in our dreams, M. de la Rochefou-
cault, which we shall never see out of them, on this side the
grave. [To b'tnuelf.] Sky-blue? No. Fleurs de-lis ? Bah!
bah ! Patches ? I never wore one in my life.
Rochefotuault. It well becomes your character for generosity,
M. la Fontaine, to look grave and ponder and ejaculate on
a friend's untoward accident, instead of laughing, as those who
little know you might expect. I beg your pardon for relating
the occurrence.
La Fonta'mt. Right or wrong, I cannot help laughing any
longer. Comical, by my faith ! above the tip-top of comedy.
Excuse my flashes and dashes and rushes of merriment. In-
362 Imaginary Conversations.
controllable ! incontrollable ! Indeed the laughter is immoderate.
And you all the while are sitting as grave as a judge ; I mean a
criminal one, who has nothing to do but to keep up his popularity
by sending his rogues to the gallows. The civil, indeed, have
much weighty matter on their minds: they must displease one
party ; and sometimes a doubt arises whether the fairer hand or
the fuller shall turn the balance.
Rochefoucauh. I congratulate you on the return of your
gravity and composure.
La Fontaine. Seriously now : all my lifetime I have been
the plaything of dreams. Sometimes they have taken such
possession of me, that nobody could persuade me afterward they
were other than real events. Some are very oppressive, very
painful, M. de la Rochefoucauh ! I have never been able, al-
together, to disembarrass my head of the most wonderful vision
that ever took possession of any man's. There are some truly
important differences ; but in many respects this laughable adven-
ture of my innocent, honest friend, Molire, seemed to have befallen
myself. I can only account for it by having heard the tale when
I was half-asleep.
Rochefoucauh. Nothing more probable.
La Fontaine. You absolutely have relieved me from an in-
cubus.
Rochefoucauh. I do not yet see how.
La Fontaine. No longer ago than when you entered this
chamber, I would have sworn that I myself had gone to the
Louvre, that I myself had been commanded to attend the Dau-
phin, that I myself had come into his presence,* had fallen on
my knee, and cried, " Peste ! ou est done le livre ! " Ah, M.
de la Rochefoucault ! permit me to embrace you : this is really
to find a friend at court.
Rochefoucault. My visit is even more auspicious than I could
have ventured to expect : it was chiefly for the purpose of asking
your permission to make another at my return to Paris. I am
forced to go into the country on some family affairs ; but, hear-
ing that you have spoken favorably of my Maxims, I presume to
express my satisfaction and delight at your good opinion.
La Fontaine. Pray, M. de la Rochefoucault, do me the
* This happened.
La Fontaine and La Rochefoucault. 363
favor to continue here a few minutes : I would gladly reason
with you on some of your doctrines.
Rochefoucault. For the pleasure of hearing your sentiments on
the topics I have treated, I will, although it is late, steal a few
minutes from the court, of which I must take my leave on parting
for the province.
La Fontaine. Are you quite certain that all your Maxims
are true, or, what is of greater consequence, that they are all
original ? I have lately read a treatise written by an English-
man, M. Hobbes ; so loyal a man that, while others tell you
kings are appointed by God, he tells you God is appointed by
kings.
Rochefoucault. Ah ! such are precisely the men we want. If
he establishes this verity, the rest will follow.
/.,/ Fontaine. He does not seem to care so much about the
rest. In his treatise I find the ground-plan of your chief
positions.
Rochefoucault. I have indeed looked over his publication ;
and we agree on the natural depravity of man.
La Fontaine. Reconsider your expression. It appears to me
that what is natural is not depraved, that depravity is deflection
from nature. Let it pass : I cannot, however, concede to you
that the generality of men are naturally bad. Badness is acci-
dental, like disease. We find more tempers good than bad, where
proper care is taken in proper time.
Kocbefoucault. Care is not nature.
La Fontaine. Nature is soon inoperative without it ; so soon,
indeed, as to allow no opportunity for experiment or hypothesis.
Life itself reouires care, and more continually than tempers and
morals do. The strongest body ceases to be a body in a few
days without a supply of food. When we speak of men as being
naturally bad or good, we mean susceptible and retentive and
communicative of them. In this case (and there can be no other
true or ostensible one), I believe that the more are good ; and
nearly in the same proportion as there are animals and plants
produced healthy and vigorous than wayward and weakly.
Strange is the opinion of M. Hobbes, that, when God hath
poured so abundantly his benefits on other creatures, the only one
capable of great good should be uniformly disposed to greater evil.
364 Imaginary Conversations.
Rocbefoucauh. Yet Holy Writ, to which Hobbes would
reluctantly appeal, countenances the supposition.
La Fontaine. The Jews, above all nations, were morose and
splenetic. Nothing is holy to me that lessens in my view the
beneficence of my Creator. If you could show him ungentle and
unkind in a single instance, you would render myriads of men so
throughout the whole course of their lives, and those too among
the most religious. The less that people talk about God, the
better. He has left us a design to fill up. He has placed the
canvas, the colors, and the pencils within reach ; his directing
hand is over ours incessantly ; it is our business to follow it, and
neither to turn round and argue with our master, nor to kiss and
fondle him. We must mind our lesson, and not neglect our time:
for the room is closed early, and the lights are suspended in
another, where no one works. If every man would do all the
good he might within an hour's walk from his house, he would
live the happier and the longer ; for nothing is so conducive to
longevity as the union of activity and content. But, like children,
we deviate from the road, however well we know it, and run
into mire and puddles in despite of frown and ferule.
Rochefoucault. Go on, M. la Fontaine ! pray go on. We
are walking in the same labyrinth, always within call, always
within sight of each other. We set out at its two extremities,
and shall meet at last.
La Fontaine. I doubt it. From deficiency of care proceed
many vices, both in men and children, and more still from care
taken improperly. M. Hobbes attributes not only the order and
peace of society, but equity and moderation and every other
virtue, to the coercion and restriction of the laws. The laws, as
now constituted, do. a great deal of good ; they also do a great
deal of mischief. They transfer more property from the right
owner in six months than all the thieves of the kingdom do in
twelve. What the thieves take, they soon desseminate abroad
again ; what the laws take, they hoard. The thief takes a part
of your property ; he who prosecutes the thief for you takes an-
other part ; he who condemns the thief goes to the tax-gatherer
and takes the third. Power has been hitherto occupied in no
employment but in keeping down wisdom. Perhaps the time
may come when wisdom shall exert her energy in repressing the
sallies of power.
La Fontaine and La Rochefoucault. 365
Rochtfoucault. I think it more probable that they will agree ;
that they will call together their servants of all liveries, to collect
what they can lay their hands upon ; and that meanwhile they
will sit together like good housewives, making nets from our
purses to cover the coop for us. If you would be plump and in
rather, pick up your millet and be quiet in your darkness.
Speculate on nothing here below, and I promise you a nosegay in
Paradise.
La Fontamf. Believe me, I shall be most happy to receive it
there at your hands, my lord duke.
The greater number of men, I am inclined to think, with all
the defects of education, all the frauds committed on their
credulity, all the advantages taken of their ignorance and supine-
ness, are disposed, on most occasions, rather to virtue than to vice,
rather to the kindly affections than the unkindly, rather to the
social than the selfish.
RocbefoucauU. Here we differ; and, were my opinion the
same as yours, my book would be little read and less commended.
La Fontainf. Why think so ?
Rocbtfoiuault. For this reason. Every man likes to hear evil
of all men ; every man is delighted to take the air of the common,
though not a soul will consent to stand within his own allotment.
No inclo8ure-act ! no finger-posts ! You may call every creature
under heaven fool and rogue, and your auditor will join with you
heartily : hint to him the slightest of his own defects or foibles,
and he draws the rapier. You and he are the judges of the
world, but not its denizens.
La Fontaine. M. Hobbes has taken advantage of these
weaknesses. In his dissertation, he betrays the timidity and
malice of his character. It must be granted he reasons well,
according to the view he has taken of things ; but he has given
no proof whatever that his view is a correct one. I will believe
that it is, when I am persuaded that sickness is the natural state
of the body, and health the unnatural. If you call him a sound
philosopher, you may call a mummy a sound man. Its darkness,
its hardness, its forced uprightness, and the place in which you
find it, may commend it to you ; give me rather some weakness
and peccability, with vital warmth and human sympathies. A
shrewd reasoner is one thing; a sound philosopher is another.
366 Imaginary Conversations.
I admire your power and precision. Monks will admonish us
how little the author of the Maxims knows of the world ; and
heads of colleges will cry out, " A libel on human nature ! " but
when they hear your titles, and, above all, your credit at court,
they will cast back cowl and peruke, and lick your boots. You
start with great advantages. Throwing off from a dukedom, you
are sure of enjoying, if not the tongue of these puzzlers, the full
cry of the more animating, and will certainly be as long-lived as
the imperfection of our language will allow. I consider your
Maxims as a broken ridge of hills, on the shady side of which
you are fondest of taking your exercise ; but the same ridge hath
also a sunny one. You attribute (let me say it again) all actions
to self-interest. Now a sentiment of interest must be preceded
by calculation, long or brief, right or erroneous. Tell me, then,
in what region lies the origin of that pleasure which a family in
the country feels on the arrival of an unexpected friend. I say
a family in the country ; because the sweetest souls, like the
sweetest flowers, soon canker in cities, and no purity is rarer
there than the purity of delight : if I may judge from the few
examples I have been in a position to see, no earthly one can be
greater. There are pleasures which lie near the surface, and
which are blocked up by artificial ones, or are diverted by some
mechanical scheme, or are confined by some stiff evergreen
vista of low advantage. But these pleasures do occasionally
burst forth in all their brightness ; and, if ever you shall by
chance find one of them, you will sit by it, I hope, complacently
and cheerfully, and turn toward it the kindliest aspect of your
meditations.
Rochefoucault. Many, indeed most people, will differ from
me. Nothing is quite the same to the intellect of any two
men, much less of all. When one says to another, " I am
entirely of your opinion," he uses in general an easy and
indifferent phrase, believing in its accuracy without exami-
nation, without thought. The nearest resemblance in opinions,
if we could trace every line of it, would be found greatly more
divergent than the nearest in the human form or countenance,
and in the same proportion as the varieties of mental qualities
are more numerous and fine than of the bodily. Hence, I do
not expect nor wish that my opinions should in all cases be
L.i Fontaine and La Rochefoucault. 367
similar to those of others ; but in many I shall be gratified if,
by just degrees and after a long survey, those of others approxi-
to mine. Nor does this my sentiment spring from a love
of power, as in many good men quite unconsciously, when they
would make proselytes, since I shall see few and converse with
fewer of them, and profit in no way by their adherence and
favor, but it springs from a natural and a cultivated love of all
truths whatever, and from a certainty that these delivered by me
are conducive to the happiness and dignity of man. You shake
your head.
La Fontaine. Make it out.
Rucbtfoucault. I have pointed out to him at what passes
he hath deviated from his true interest, and where he hath
mistaken selfishness for generosity, coldness for judgment, con-
>n of heart for policy, rank for merit, pomp for dignity,
of all mistakes, the commonest and the greatest. I am accused
of paradox and distortion. On paradox I shall only say that
new moral truth has been called so. Inexperienced and
negligent observers see no difference in the operations of ravelling
and unravelling : they never come close enough ; they despise
plain work.
La Fontaine. The more we simplify things, the better we
descry their substances and qualities. A good writer will not
coil them up and press them into the narrowest possible space,
nor macerate them into such particles that nothing shall be
remaining of their natural contexture. You are accused of this
too, by such as have forgotten your title-page, and^who look for
treatises where maxims only have been promised. Some of them,
perhaps, arc spinning out sermons and dissertations from the
poorest paragraph in the volume.
Rocbtfoucautt. Let them copy and write as they please;
against or for, modestly or impudently. I have hitherto had no
assailant who is not of too slender a make to be detained an hour
in the stocks he has unwarily put his foot into. If you hear of
any, do not tell of them. On the subjects of my remarks, had
others thought as I do, my labor would have been spared me. I
am ready to point out the road where I know it to whosoever
wants it ; but I walk side by side with few or none.
La Fontaint. We usually like those roads which show us the
368 Imaginary Conversations.
fronts of our friends' houses and the pleasure-grounds about them,
and the smooth garden-walks, and the trim espaliers, and look at
them with more satisfaction than at the docks and nettles that are
thrown in heaps behind. The Offices of Cicero are imperfect :
yet who would not rather guide his children by them than by the
line and compass of harder-handed guides ; such as Hobbes, for
instance ?
Rochefoucault. Imperfect as some gentlemen in hoods may call
the Offices, no founder of a philosophical or of a religious sect has
been able to add to them any thing important.
La Fontaine. Pity, that Cicero carried with him no better
authorities than reason and humanity ! He neither could work
miracles, nor damn you for disbelieving them. Had he lived
fourscore years later, who knows but he might have been another
Simon Peter, and have talked Hebrew as fluently as Latin, all at
once ! Who knows but we might have heard of his patrimony !
Who knows but our venerable popes might have claimed
dominion from him, as descendant from the kings of Rome !
Rochefoucault. The hint, some centuries ago, would have
made your fortune, and that saintly cat there would have kittened
in a mitre.
La Fontaine. Alas ! the hint could have done nothing :
Cicero could not have lived later.
Rochefoucault. I warrant him. Nothing is easier to correct
than chronology. There is not a lady in Paris, nor a jockey in
Normandy, that is not eligible to a professor's chair in it. I have
seen a man's ancestor, whom nobody ever saw before, spring back
over twenty generations. Our Vatican Jupiters have as little
respect for old Chronos as the Cretan had : they mutilate him
when and where they think necessary, limp as he may by the
operation.
La Fontaine. When I think, as you make me do, how am-
bitious men are, even those whose teeth are too loose (one would
fancy) for a bite at so hard an apple as the devil of ambition
offers them, I am inclined to believe that we are actuated not so
much by selfishness as you represent it, but under another form,
the love of power. Not to speak of territorial dominion or
political office, and such other things as we usually class under its
appurtenances, do we not desire an exclusive control over what is
L.i Fontaiiu' and La Rochefoucault. 369
beautiful and lovely, the possession of pleasant fields, of well-
situated houses, of cabinets, of images, of pictures, and indeed of
many things pleasant to see but useless to possess ; even of rocks,
of streams, and of fountains ? These things, you will tell me,
their utility. True, but not to the wisher; nor does the
idea of it enter his mind. Do not we wish that the object of our
love should be devoted to us only ; and that our children should
love us better than their brothers and sisters, or even than the
mother who bore them ? Love would be arrayed in the purple
robe of sovereignty, mildly as he may resolve to exercise his power.
Rochefoucault. Many things which appear to be incontro-
vertible are such for their age only, and must yield to others
which, in their age, are equally so. There are only a few points
that arc always above the waves. Plain truths, like plain dishes,
are commended by everybody, and everybody leaves them whole.
It it were not even more impertinent and presumptuous to praise
a great writer in his presence than to censure him in his absence,
I would venture to say that your prose, from the few specimens
you have given of it, is equal to your verse. Yet, even were I
the possessor of such a style as yours, I would never employ it to
support my Maxims. You would think a writer very impudent
and self-sufficient who should quote his own works : to defend
them is doing more. We are the worst auxiliaries in the world
to the opinions we have brought into the field. Our business is
to measure the ground, and to calculate the forces ; then let them
try their strength. If the weak assails me, he thinks me weak ;
if the strong, he thinks me strong. He is more likely to compute
ill his own vigor than mine. At all events, I love inquiry, even
when I myself sit down. And I am not offended in my walks
if my visitor asks me whither does that alley lead ? It proves
that he is ready to go on with me ; that he sees some space before
him ; and that he believes there may be something worth looking
after.
La Fontaine. You have been standing a long time, my lord
duke : I must entreat you to be seated.
Rocbefoucault. Excuse me, my dear M. la Fontaine ; I would
much rather stand.
La Fontaine. Mercy on us ! have you been upon your legs
ever since you rose to leave me ?
2 A
370 Imaginary Conversations.
Rochefoucault. A change of position is agreeable: a friend
always permits it.
La Fontaine. Sad doings ! sad oversight ! The other two
chairs were sent yesterday evening to be scoured and mended.
But that dog is the best-tempered dog, an angel of a dog, I do
assure you: he would have gone down in a moment, at a word.
I am quite ashamed of myself for such inattention. With your
sentiments of friendship for me, why could you not have taken
the liberty to shove him gently off, rather than give me this
uneasiness ?
Rochefoucault. My true and kind friend ! we authors are too
sedentary ; we are heartily glad of standing to converse, whenever
we can do it without any restraint on our acquaintance.
La Fontaine. I must reprove that animal when he uncurls his
body. He seems to be dreaming of Paradise and Houris. Ay,
twitch thy ear, my child ! I wish at my heart there were as
troublesome a fly about the other : God forgive me ! The rogue
covers all my clean linen ! shirt and cravat ! What cares he !
Rochefoucault. Dogs are not very modest.
La Fontaine. Never say that, M. de la Rochefoucault ! The
most modest people upon earth ! Look at a dog's eyes ; and he
half-closes them, or gently turns them away, with a motion of the
lips, which he licks languidly, and of the tail, which he stirs
tremulously, begging your forbearance. I am neither blind nor
indifferent to the defects of these good and generous creatures.
They are subject to many such as men are subject to : among
the rest, they disturb the neighborhood in the discussion of their
private causes ; they quarrel and fight on small motives, such as a
little bad food, or a little vain-glory, or the sex. But it must be
something present or near that excites them ; and they calculate
not the extent of evil they may do or suffer.
Rochefoucault. Certainly not : how should dogs calculate ?
La Fontaine. I know nothing of the process. I am unable
to inform you how they leap over hedges and brooks, with exer-
tion just sufficient, and no more. In regard to honor and a sense
of dignity, let me tell you, a dog accepts the subsidies of his
friends, but never claims them. A dog would not take the field
to obtain power for a son, but would leave the son to obtain it by
his own activity and prowess. He conducts his visitor or inmate
La Fontaine and La Rochefoucault. 371
out a-hunting, and makes a present of the game to him as freely
as an emperor to an elector. Fond as he is of slumber, which
is indeed one of the pleasantcst and best things in the universe,
particularly after dinner, he shakes it off as willingly as he would
a gadfly, in order to defend his master from theft or violence.
Let the robber or assailant speak as courteously as he may, he
waives your diplomr.tical terms, gives his reasons in plain language,
and makes war. I could say many other things to his advantage ;
but I never was malicious, and would rather let both parties plead
for themselves : give me the dog, however.
Rochefoucault. Faith ! I will give you both, and never boast
of my largess in so doing.
La Fontaine. I trust I have removed from you the suspicion
of selfishness in my client, and I feel it quite as easy to make a
properer disposal of another ill attribute, namely, cruelty,
which we vainly try to shuffle off our own shoulders upon others,
by employing the offensive and most unjust term "brutality."
But to convince you of my impartiality, now. I have defended the
dog from the first obloquy, I will defend the man from the last,
hoping to make you think better of each. What you attribute to
cruelty, both while we are children and afterward, may be assigned
for the greater part to curiosity. Cruelty tends to the extinction
of life, the dissolution of matter, the imprisonment and sepulture
of truth ; and, if it were our ruling and chief propensity, the
human race would have been extinguished in a few centuries after
its appearance. Curiosity, in its primary sense, implies care and
consideration.
Rochefoucault. Words often deflect from their primary sense.
We find the most curious men the most idle and silly, the least
observant and conservative.
La Foniainf. So we think, because we see every hour the
idly curious, and not the strenuously ; we see only the persons of
the one set, and only the works of the other.
More is heard of cruelty than of curiosity, because, while
curiosity is silent both in itself and about its object, cruelty
on most occasions is like the wind, boisterous in itself, and
exciting a murmur and bustle in all the things it moves among.
Added to which, many of the higher topics, whereto our curi-
osity would turn, are intercepted from it by the policy of our
372 Imaginary Conversations.
guides and rulers ; while the principal ones on which cruelty is
most active are pointed to by the sceptre and the truncheon,
and wealth and dignity are the rewards of their attainment.
What perversion ! He who brings a bullock into a city for its
sustenance is called a butcher, and nobody has the civility to take
off the hat to him, although knowing him as perfectly as I know
Matthieu le Mince, who served me with those fine kidneys you
must have remarked in passing through the kitchen: on the
contrary, he who reduces the same city to famine is styled
M. le General, or M. le Marechal ; and gentlemen like you,
unprejudiced (as one would think) and upright, make room for
him in the antechamber.
Rochefoucault. He obeys orders, without the degrading influence
of any passion.
La Fontaine. Then he commits a baseness the more, a
cruelty the greater. He goes off at another man's setting, as
ingloriously as a rat-trap : he produces the worst effects of
fury, and feels none, a Cain unirritated by a brother's
incense.
Rochefoucault. I would hide from you this little rapier,
which, 'like the barber's pole, I have often thought too obtrusive
in the streets.
La Fontaine. Never shall I think my countrymen half civi-
lized, while on the dress of a courtier is hung the instrument of
a cut-throat. How deplorably feeble must be that honor which
requires defending at every hour of the day !
Rochefoucault. Ingenious as you are, M. la Fontaine, I do
not believe that, on this subject, you could add any thing to
what you have spoken already ; but, really, I do think one of
the most instructive things in the world would be a dissertation
on dress by you.
La Fontaine. Nothing can be devised more commodious than
the dress in fashion. Perukes have fallen among us by the
peculiar dispensation of Providence. As in all the regions of
the globe the indigenous have given way to stronger creatures,
so have they (partly at least) on the human head. At present
the wren and the squirrel are dominant there. Whenever I have
a mind for a filbert, I have only to shake my foretop. Improve-
ment does not end in that quarter. I might forget to take my
Li Fontaine and La Rochefoucault. 373
pinch of snuff when it would do me good, unless I saw a store
of it on another's cravat. Furthermore, the slit in the coat
behind tells in a moment what it was made for, a thing of
which, in regard to ourselves, the best preachers have to remind
us all our lives. Then the central part of our habiliment has
either its loophole or its portcullis in the opposite direction, still
more demonstrative. All these are for very mundane purposes ;
but religion and humanity have whispered some later utilities.
We pray the more commodiously, and of course the more fre-
quently, for rolling up a royal ell of stocking round about our
knees ; and our high-heeled shoes must surely have been worn
by some angel, to save those insects which the flat-footed would
have crushed to death.
Rochefoucault. Ah ! the good dog has awakened : he saw me
and my rapier, and ran away. Of what breed is he ? for I know
nothing of dogs.
La Fontaine. And write so well !
Rochefoucault. Is he a trufler ?
La Fontaine. No, not he ; but quite as innocent.
Rochefoucault. Something of the shepherd-dog, I suspect ?
La Fontaine. Nor that neither; although he fain would
make you believe it. Indeed, he is very like one : pointed
nose, pointed ears, apparently stiff, but readily yielding ; long
hair, particularly about the neck ; noble tail over his back,
three curls deep, exceedingly pleasant to stroke down again ;
straw-color all above, white all below. He might take it ill if
you looked for it ; but so it is, upon my word, An ermeline
might envy it.
Rochefoucault. What are his pursuits ?
La Fontaine. As to pursuit and occupation, he is good
for nothing. In fact, I like those dogs best, and those
men too.
Rochefoucault. Send Nanon, then, for a pair of silk stockings,
and mount my carriage with me : it stops at the Louvre.
374 Imaginary Conversations.
XXII. MELANCTHON AND CALVIN. 1
Cahin. Are you sure, O Melancthon, that you yourself are
imong the elect ?
Melancthon. My dear brother, so please it God, I would
rather be among the many.
Calvin. Of the damned ?
Melancthon. Alas ! no. But I am inclined to believe that
the many will be saved and will be happy, since Christ came into
the world for the redemption of sinners.
Cahin. Hath not our Saviour said explicitly that many are
called, but few chosen ?
Melancthon. Our Saviour ? hath he said it ?
Cahin. Hath he, forsooth ! Where is your New Testa-
ment?
Melancthon. In my heart.
Calvin. Without this page, however.
Melancthon. When we are wiser and more docile, that is,
when we are above the jars and turmoils and disputations of the
world, our Saviour will vouchsafe to interpret what, through
the fumes of our intemperate vanity, is now indistinct or dark.
He will plead for us before no inexorable judge. He came to
remit the sins of man ; not the sins of a few, but of many ; not
the sins of many, but of all.
Cahin. What! of the benighted heathen too? of the
pagan ? of the idolater ?
Melancthon. I hope so ; but I dare not say it.
Cahin. You would include even the negligent, the indif-
ferent, the sceptic, the unbeliever.
Melancthon. Pitying them for a want of happiness in a want
of faith. They are my brethren ; they are God's children. He
will pardon the presumption of my wishes for their welfare ; my
sorrow that they have fallen, some through their blindness, others
through their deafness, others through their terror, others through
their anger peradventure at the loud denunciations of unforgiving
man. If I would forgive a brother, may not he, who is im-
L 1 Works, ii., 1846. Works, v., 1876.]
Melancthon and Calvin.
375
measurably better and more merciful, have pity on a child ? He
came on earth to take our nature upon him : will he punish, will
he reprehend us, for an attempt to take as much as may be of his
upon oursei
Cafa'in. There is no bearing any such fallacies.
Melancthon. Is it harder to bear these fallacies (as they
appear to you, and perhaps are, for we all are fallible, and many
even of our best thoughts are fallacies), is it harder, O my
friend, to bear these, than to believe in the eternal punishment of
roneous ?
Cahin. Erroneous, indeed ! Have they not the Book of
now at last laid open before them, for their guidance ?
Melancthon. No, indeed ; they have only two or three places,
dog-eared and bedaubed, which they are commanded to look into
and study. These are so uninviting that many close again the
volume of salvation, clasp it tight, and throw it back in our faces.
I would rather show a man green fields than gibbets ; and, if
I called him to enter the service of a plenteous house and power-
ful master, he may not be rendered the more willing to enter it
by my pointing out to him the stocks in the gateway, and telling
him that nine-tenths of the household, however orderly, must
occupy that position. The book of good news, under your in-
terpretation, tells people not only that they may go and be damned,
but that, unless they are lucky, they must inevitably. Again, it
informs another set of inquirers that, if once they have been under
what they feel to be the influence of grace, they never can
relapse. All must go well who have once gone well ; and a
name once written in the list of favorites can never be erased.
Calvin. This is certain.
Melancthon. Let us hope, then, and in holy confidence let
us believe, that the book is large and voluminous ; that it
begins at an early date of man's existence ; and that, amid
the agitation of inquiry, it comprehends the humble and sub-
missive doubter. For doubt itself, between the richest patrimony
and utter destitution, is quite sufficiently painful ; and surely it is
.1 h irdship to be turned over into a criminal court for having lost
in a civil one. But if all who have once gone right can never go
astray, how happens it that so large a part of the angels fell off
from their allegiance ? They were purer and wiser than we are,
376 Imaginary Conversations.
and had the advantage of seeing God face to face. They were the
ministers of his power ; they knew its extent, yet they defied it.
If we err, it is in relying too confidently on his mercies, not in
questioning his omnipotence. If our hopes forsake us, if the
bonds of sin bruise and corrode us, so that we cannot walk up-
right, there is, in the midst of these calamities, no proof that we
are utterly lost. Danger far greater is there in the presumption
of an especial favor, which men incomparably better than ourselves
can never have deserved. Let us pray, O Calvin, that we may
hereafter be happier than our contentions and animosities will
permit us to be at present ; and that our opponents, whether now
in the right or in the wrong, may come at last where all error
ceases.
Calvin. I am uncertain whether such a wish is rational ; and
I doubt more whether it is religious. God hath willed them to
walk in their blindness. To hope against it, seems like repining
at his unalterable decree, a weak indulgence in an unpermitted
desire ; an unholy entreaty of the heart that he will forego his
vengeance, and abrogate the law that was from the beginning. Of
one thing I am certain : we must lop off the unsound.
Melancthon. What a curse hath metaphor been to religion !
It is the wedge that holds asunder the two great portions of the
Christian world. We hear of nothing so commonly as fire and
sword. And here, indeed, what was metaphor is converted into
substance and applied to practice. The unsoundness of doctrine
is not cut off nor cauterised ; the professor is. The head falls on
the scaffold, or fire surrounds the stake, because a doctrine is
bloodless and incombustible. Fierce, outrageous animals, for
want of the man who has escaped them, lacerate and trample his
cloak or bonnet. This, although the work of brutes, is not half
so brutal as the practice of theologians, seizing the man himself,
instead of bonnet or cloak.
Calvin. We must leave such matters to the magistrate.
Melancthon. Let us instruct the magistrate in his duty : this
is ours. Unless we can teach humanity, we may resign the charge
of religion. For fifteen centuries, Christianity has been conveyed
into many houses, in many cities, in many regions, but always
through slender pipes ; and never yet into any great reservoir in
any part of the earth. Its principal ordinances have never been
Mekmcthon and Calvin. 377
observed in the polity of any State whatever. Abstinence from
spoliation, from oppression, from bloodshed, has never been incul-
cated by the chief priests of any. These two facts excite the
doubts of many in regard to a Divine origin and a Divine pro-
tection. Wherefore, it behooves us the more especially to preach
forbearance. If the people are tolerant one toward another in the
same country, they will become tolerant in time toward those
whom rivers or seas have separated from them. For, surely, it is
strange and wonderful that nations which are near enough for
hostility should never be near enough for concord. This arises
from bad government ; and bad government arises from a negligent
choice of counsellors by the prince, usually led or terrified by a
corrupt, ambitious, wealthy (and therefore un-Christian) priest-
hood. While their wealth lay beyond the visible horizon, they
tarried at the cottage, instead of pricking on for the palace.
Cafoin. By the grace and help of God, we will turn them
back again to their quiet and wholesome resting-place, before the
people lay a rough hand upon the silk.
Jiut you evaded my argument on predestination.
Mdancthon. Our blessed Lord himself, in his last hours, ven-
tured to express a wish before his Heavenly Father that the bitter
cup might pass away from him. I humbly dare to implore that a
cup much bitterer may be removed from the great body of man-
kind, a cup containing the poison of eternal punishment, where
agony succeeds to agony, but never death.
Cahin. I come armed with the gospel.
Mekiutbon. Tremendous weapon ! as we have seen it through
many ages, if man wields it against man ; but, like the fabled spear
of old mythology, endued with the faculty of healing the saddest
wound its most violent wielder can inflict. Obscured and rusting
with the blood upon it, let us hasten to take it up again, and apply
it, as best we may, to its appointed uses.
The life of our Saviour is the simplest exposition of his
words. Strife is what he both discountenanced and forbade.
We ourselves are right-minded, each of us all ; and others are
right-minded in proportion as they agree with us, chiefly in
matters which we insist 'are well worthy of our adherence, but
which whosoever refuses to embrace displays a factious and
un-Christian spirit. These for the most part are matters which
378 Imaginary Conversations.
neither they nor we understand, and which, if we did under-
stand them, would little profit us. The weak will be supported
by the strong, if they can ; if they cannot, they are ready to be
supported even by the weaker, and cry out against the strong as
arrogant or negligent, or deaf or blind ; at last, even their strength
is questioned, and the more if, while there is fuiy all around
them, they are quiet.
I remember no discussion on religion in which religion was not
a sufferer by it, if mutual forbearance and belief in another's good
motives and intentions are (as I must always think they are) its
proper and necessary appurtenances.
Calvin. Would you never make inquiries ?
Melancthon. Yes, and as deep as possible : but into my own
heart ; for that belongs to me, and God hath entrusted it most
especially to my own superintendence.
Calvin. We must also keep others from going astray by
showing them the right road, and, if they are obstinate in
resistance, then by coercing and chastising them through the
magistrate.
Melancthon. It is sorrowful to dream that we are scourges
in God's, hand, and that he appoints for us no better work than
lacerating one another. I am no enemy to inquiry where I see
abuses, and where I suspect falsehood. The Romanists, our
great oppressors, think it presumptuous to search into things
abstruse ; and let us do them the justice to acknowledge that,
if it is a fault, it is one which they never commit. But
surely we are kept sufficiently in the dark by the infirmity of
our nature : no need to creep into a corner and put our hands
before our eyes. To throw away or turn aside from God's
best gifts is verily a curious sign of obedience and submission.
He not only hath given us a garden to walk in ; but he hath
planted it also for us, and he wills us to know the nature and
properties of every thing that grows up within it. Unless we
look into them and handle them and register them, how shall we
discover this to be salutary, that to be poisonous ; this annual,
that perennial ?
Calvin. Here we coincide ; and I am pleased to find in
you less apathy than I expected. It becomes us, moreover, to
denounce God's vengeance on a sinful world.
Melaficthon and Calvin. 379
Mrlnncthon. Is it not better and pleasanter to show the
wanderer by what course of life it may be avoided ? Is it not
better and pleasanter to enlarge on God's promises of salvation,
than to insist on his denunciations of wrath ? Is it not better
and pleasanter to lead the wretched up to his mercy-seat, than
to hurl them by thousands under his fiery chariot ?
Calvin. We have no option. By our Heavenly Father
many are called, but few are chosen.
Mdanctbon. There is scarcely a text in the Holy Scriptures
to which there is not an opposite text, written in characters
equally large and legible; and there has usually been a sword
laid upon each. Even the weakest disputant is made so con-
ceited by what he calls religion, as to think himself wiser than
the wisest who thinks differently from him ; and he becomes so
ferocious by what he calls holding it fast, that he appears to me
as if he held it fast much in the same manner as a terrier holds
a rat, and you have about as much trouble in getting it from
between his incisors. When at last it does come out, it is
mangled, distorted, and extinct.
Calvin. M. Melancthon, you have taken a very perverse
view of the subject. Such language as yours would extinguish
that zeal which is to enlighten the nations, and to consume the
tares by which they are overrun.
Melanfthon. The tares and the corn are so intermingled
throughout the wide plain which our God hath given us to
cultivate, that I would rather turn the patient and humble into
it to weed it carefully, than a thresher who would thresh wheat
and tare together before the grain is ripened, or who would
carry fire into the furrows when it is.
Calvin. Yet even the most gentle, and of the gentler sex, are
inflamed with a holy zeal in the propagation of the faith.
Mclanctbon. I do not censure them for their earnestness
in maintaining truth. We not only owe our birth to them,
but also the better part of our education ; and, if we were not
divided after their hrst lesson, we should continue to live in a
widening circle of brothers and sisters all our lives. After our
infancy and removal from home, the use of the rod is the
principal thing we learn of our alien preceptors ; and, catching
their dictatorial language, we soon begin to exercise their instru-
380 Imaginary Conversations.
ment of enforcing it, and swing it right and left, even after we are
paralyzed by age, and until death's hand strikes it out of ours. I
am sorry you have cited the gentler part of the creation to appear
before you, obliged as I am to bear witness that I myself have
known a few specimens of the fair sex become a shade less fair
among the perplexities of religion. Indeed, I am credibly
informed that certain of them have lost their patience, running up
and down in the dust where many roads diverge. This, surely, is
not walking humbly with their God, nor walking with him at all ;
for those who walk with him are always readier to hear his voice
than their own, and to admit that it is more persuasive. But at
last the zealot is so infatuated, by the serious mockeries he imitates
and repeats, that he really takes his own voice for God's. Is it
not wonderful that the words of eternal life should have hitherto
produced only eternal litigation ; and that, in our progress heaven-
ward, we should think it expedient to plant unthrifty thorns over
bitter wells of blood in the wilderness we leave behind us ?
Calvin. It appears to me that you are inclined to tolerate even
the rank idolatry of our persecutors. Shame ! shame !
Melancthon. Greater shame if I tolerated it within my
own dark heart, and waved before it the foul incense of self-
love.
Calvin. I do not understand you. What I do understand is
this, and deny it at your peril, I mean at the peril of your
salvation, that God is a jealous God : he himself declares it.
Melancthon. We are in the habit of considering the God of
Nature as a jealous God, and idolatry as an enormous evil, an
evil which is about to come back into the world, and to subdue
or seduce once more our strongest and most sublime affections.
Why do you lift up your eyes and hands ?
Calvin. An evil about to come back ! about to come ! Do
we not find it in high places ?
Melancthon. We do indeed, and always shall, while there are
any high places upon earth. Thither will men creep, and there
fall prostrate.
Calvin. Against idolatry we still implore the Almighty that
he will incline our hearts to keep his law.
Melancthon. The Jewish law ; the Jewish idolatry : you fear
the approach of this, and do not suspect the presence of a worse.
Melancthon and Calvin.
381
Calvin. A worse than that which the living God hath
denounced ?
Melancthon. Even so.
Calvin. Would it not offend, would it not wound to the
quick, a mere human creature, to be likened to a piece of metal
or stone, a calf or monkey ?
Melancthon. A mere human creature might be angry ; because
his influence among his neighbours arises in great measure from
the light in which he appears to them ; and this light does not
emanate from himself, but may be thrown on him by any hand
that is expert at mischief. Beside, the likeness of such animals to
him could never be suggested by reverence or esteem, nor be
regarded as a type of any virtne. The mere human creature,
such as human creatures for the most part are, would be angry ;
because he has nothing which he can oppose to ridicule but resent-
ment.
Ca/vin. I am in consternation at your lukewarmness. If you
treat idolaters thus lightly, what hope can I entertain of discussing
with you the doctrine of grace and predestination ?
Melancthon. Entertain no such hope at all. Wherever I
find in the Holy Scriptures a disputable doctrine, I interpret it as
judges do, in favor of the culprit ; such is man. The benevolent
judge is God. But, in regard to idolatry, I see more criminals
who are guilty of it than you do. I go beyond the stone-quarry
and the pasture, beyond the graven image and the ox-stall. If
we bow before the distant image of good, while there exists with-
in our reach one solitary object of substantial sorrow, which
sorrow our efforts can remove, we are guilty (I pronounce it) of
idolatry : we prefer the intangible effigy to the living form.
Surely we neglect the service of our Maker, if we neglect his
children. He left us in the chamber with them, to take care of
them, to feed them, to admonish them, and occasionally to amuse
them ; instead of which, after a warning not to run into the fire,
we slam the door behind us in their faces, and run eagerly down-
stairs to dispute and quarrel with our fellows of the household
who are about their business. The wickedness of idolatry does
not consist in any inadequate representation of the Deity ; for,
whether our hands or our hearts represent him, the representation
is almost alike inadequate. Every man does what he hopes and
382 Imaginary Conversations.
believes will be most pleasing to his God ; and God, in his
wisdom and mercy, will not punish gratitude in its error.
Calvin. How do you know that ?
Melancthon. Because I know his loving-kindness, and ex-
perience it daily.
Calvin. If men blindly and wilfully run into error when God
hath shown the right way, be will visit it on their souls.
Melancthon. He will observe from the serenity of heaven
a serenity emanating from his presence that there is scarcely
any work of his creation on earth which hath not excited, in
some people or other, a remembrance, an admiration, a symbol,
of his power. The evil of idolatry is this : Rival nations have
raised up rival deities ; war hath been denounced in the name
of Heaven ; men have been murdered for the love of God ; and
such impiety hath darkened all the regions of the world, that the
Lord of all things hath been invoked by all simultaneously as the
Lord of hosts. This is the only invocation in which men of
every creed are united, an invocation to which Satan, bent on
the perdition of the human race, might have listened from the
fallen angels.
Calvin. We cannot hope to purify men's hearts until we lead
them away from the abomination of Babylon ; nor will they be
led away from it until we reduce the images to dust. So long
as they stand, the eye will hanker after them, and the spirit be
corrupt.
Melancthon. And long afterward, I sadly fear.
We attribute to the weakest of men the appellations and powers
of Deity ; we fall down before them ; we call the impious and
cruel by the title of gracious and most religious : and, even in the
house of God himself, and before his very altar, we split his
Divine Majesty asunder, and offer the largest part to the most
corrupt and most corrupting of his creatures.
Calvin. Not we, M. Melancthon. I will preach, .1 will
exist, in no land of such abomination.
Melancthon. So far, well ; but religion demands more. Our
reformers knock off the head from Jupiter: thunderbolt and
sceptre stand. The attractive, the impressive, the august, they
would annihilate ; leaving men nothing but their sordid fears of
vindictive punishment, and their impious doubts of our Saviour's
promises.
Mekmcihon and Calvin. 383
..'vm. We should teach men to retain for ever the fear
od before their eyes, never to cease from the apprehension
of his wrath, to be well aware that he often afflicts when he is
farthest from wrath, and that such infliction is a benefit bestowed
by him.
Melancthon. What ! if only a few are to be saved when the
infliction is over ?
Calvin. It becometh not us to repine at the number of vessels
which the supremely wise Artificer forms, breaks, and casts away,
or at the paucity it pleaseth him to preserve. The ways of
Providence are inscrutable.
Melancthon. Some of them are, and some of them are not ;
and in these it seems to be his design that we should see and
adore his wisdom. We fancy that all our inflictions are sent us
directly and immediately from above: sometimes we think it in
piety and contrition, but oftener in moroseness and discontent.
It would, however, be well if we attempted to trace the causes of
them. We should probably find their origin in some region of
the heart which we never had well explored, or in which we had
secretly deposited our worst indulgences. The clouds that inter-
cept the heavens from us come not from the heavens, but from
the earth.
Why should we scribble our own devices over the Book of
God, erasing the plainest words, and rendering the Holy Scrip-
tures a worthless palimpsest? Cannot we agree to show the
nations of the world that the whole of Christianity is practicable,
although the better parts never have been practised, no not even
by the priesthood in any single one of them ? Bishops, con-
fessors, saints, martyrs, have never denounced to king or people,
nor ever have attempted to delay or mitigate, the most accursed
of crimes, the crime of Cain, the crime indeed whereof Cain's
was only a germ, the crime of fratricide ; war, war, devastating,
depopulating, soul-slaughtering, heaven-defying war. Alas ! the
gentle call of mercy sounds feebly, and soon dies away, leaving
no trace on the memory : but the swelling cries of vengeance, in
which we believe we imitate the voice of Heaven, run and rever-
berate in loud peals and multiplied echoes along the whole vault
of the brain. All the man is shaken by them ; and he shakes all
the earth.
384 Imaginary Conversations.
Calvin ! I beseech you, do you who guide and govern so
many, do you (whatever others may) spare your brethren.
Doubtful as I am of lighter texts, blown backward and forward
at the opening of opposite windows, I am convinced and certain
of one grand immovable verity. It sounds strange ; it sounds
contradictory.
Calvin. I am curious to hear it.
Melancthon. You shall. This is the tenet : There is nothing
on earth divine beside humanity.
XXIII. GALILEO, MILTON, AND A
DOMINICAN.*
Milton. Friend ! let me pass.
Dominican. Whither ? To whom ?
Milton. Into the prison ; to Galileo Galilei.
Dominican. Prison ! We have no prison.
Milton. No prison here ! What sayest thou ?
Dominican. Son ! For heretical pravity indeed, and some
other less atrocious crimes, we have a seclusion, a confinement, a
penitentiary : we have a locality for softening the obdurate, and
furnishing them copiously with reflection and recollection ; but
prison we have none.
Milton. Open !
Dominican (to himself). What sweetness! what authority!
what a form ! what an attitude ! what a voice !
Milton. Open ! Delay me no longer.
Dominican. In whose name ?
Milton. In the name of humanity and of God.
Dominican. My sight staggers ; the walls shake ; he must be
do angels ever come hither ?
Milton. Be reverent, and stand apart. [To Galileo.'] Pardon
me, sir, an intrusion.
[ At the date of Milton's journey into Italy, Galileo had been for some
time free from actual imprisonment. He was living at Arcetri, near
Florence. His blindness was just bectfme complete. (Works, ii., 1846.
Works, v., 1876.)]
Galileo, Milton, and a Dominican. 385
Galilto. Young man ! if I may judge by your voice and
manner, you are little apt to ask pardon or to want it. I am as
happy at hearing you as you seem unhappy at seeing me. I per-
ceive at once that you are an Englishman.
Milton. I am.
Galileo. Speak, then, freely ; and I will speak freely, too. In
no other man's presence, for these many years, indeed, from my
childhood, have I done it.
Milton. Sad fate for any man ! most sad for one like you !
the follower of truth, the companion of reason in her wanderings
on earth !
ilco. We live among priests and princes and empoisoners.
Your dog, by his growling, seems to be taking up the quarrel
against them.
Milton. We think and feel alike in many things. I have
observed that the horses and dogs of every country bear a resem-
blance in character to the men. We English have a wonderful
variety of both creatures. To begin with the horses : some are
remarkable for strength, others for spirit ; while in France there
is little diversity of race, all are noisy and windy, skittish and
mordacious, prancing and libidinous, fit only for a rope, and fond
only of a ribbon. Where the ribbon is not to be had, the jowl
of a badger will do : any thing but what is native to the creature
is a decoration. In Flanders, you find them slow and safe, tract-
able and substantial. In Italy, there are few good for work, none
for battle ; many for light carriages, for standing at doors, and for
every kind of street-work.
Gattfo. Do let us get among the dogs.
Milton. In France, they are finely combed and pert and
pettish ; ready to bite if hurt, and to fondle if carressed ; without
fear, without animosity, without affection. In Italy, they creep
and shiver and rub their skins against you, and insinuate their
slender beaks into the patronage of your hand, and lick it, and
look up modestly, and whine decorously, and supplicate with
grace. The moment you give them anything, they grow impor-
tunate ; and, the moment you refuse them, they bite. In Spain
and England, the races are similar ; so, indeed, are those of the
men. Spaniards are Englishmen in an ungrafted state, however,
with this great difference, that the English have ever been the
iv. 2 B
386 Imaginary Conversations.
least cruel of nations, excepting the Swedes ; and the Spaniards
the most cruel, excepting the French. Then they were, under
one and the same religion, the most sanguinary and sordid of all
the institutions that ever pressed upon mankind.
Galileo. To the dogs, to the dogs again, be they of what
breed they may !
Milton. The worst of them could never have driven you up
into this corner, merely because he had been dreaming, and you
had disturbed his dream. How long shall this endure . ?
Galileo. I sometimes ask God how long. I should
repine, and almost despair, in putting the question to myself or
another.
Milton. Be strong in him through reason, his great gift.
Galileo. I fail not, and shall not fail. I can fancy that the
heaviest link in my heavy chain has dropped off me since you
entered.
Milton. Let me, then, praise our God for it ! Not those
alone are criminal who placed you here, but those no less who
left unto them the power of doing it. If the learned and
intelligent in all the regions of Europe would unite their learning
and intellect, and would exert their energy*in disseminating the
truth throughout the countries they inhabit, soon must the
ignorant and oppressive, now at the summit of power, resign their
offices ; and the most versatile nations, after this purifying and
perfect revolution, rest for ages. But, bursting from their
collegiate kennels, they range and hunt only for their masters ;
and are content at last to rear up and catch the offal thrown
among them negligently, and often too with scourges on their
cringing spines, as they scramble for it. Do they run through
mire and thorns, do they sweat from their tongues* ends, do they
breathe out blood, for this ? The Dominican is looking in ; not
to interrupt us, I hope, for my idle exclamation.
Galileo. Continue to speak generously, rationally, and in
Latin ; and he will not understand one sentence. The fellow is
the most stupid, the most superstitious, the most hard-hearted, and
the most libidinous in the confraternity. He is usually at my
door, that he may not be at others', where he would be more in
the way of his superiors. You Englishmen are inclined to
melancholy ; but what makes you so very grave, so much graver
than before ?
Galileo, Milton, and a Dominican. 387
Milton. I hardly know which is more afflicting, to hear
the loudest expression of intolerable anguish from the weak who
are sinking under it, or to witness an aged and venerable man
bearing up against his sufferings with unshaken constancy. And,
alas, that blindness should consummate your sufferings !
Galilfo. There are worse evils than blindness, and the best
men suffer most by them. The spirit of liberty, now rising up in
your country, will excite a blind enthusiasm, and leave behind a
hitter disappointment. Vicious men will grow popular, and the
interests of die nation will be entrusted to them ; because
they descend from their station in order, as they say, to serve
you.
Milton. Profligate impostors? We know there are such
among us ; but truth shall prevail against them.
Galileo. In argument, truth always prevails finally ; in politics,
falsehood always : else would never States fall into decay. Even
good men, if indeed good men will ever mix with evil ones for
any purpose, take up the trade of politics, at first intending to deal
honestly ; the calm bower of the conscience is soon converted
into the booth of inebriating popularity; the shouts of the
multitude then grow unexciting, then indifferent, then trouble-
some ; lastly, the riotous supporters of the condescendent fall-
ing half-asleep, he looks agape in their faces, springs upon his
legs again, flings the door behind him, and escapes in the
livery of Power. When Satan would have led our Saviour into
temptation, he did not conduct him where the looser passions
were wandering ; he did not conduct him amid flowers and
herbage, where a fall would have only been a soilure to our frail
human nature : no, he led him up to an exceedingly high mountain,
and showed him places and towers and treasuries, knowing that
it was by those alone that he himself could have been so utterly
lost to rectitude and beatitude. Our Saviour spurned the tempta-
tion, and the greatest of his miracles was accomplished. After
which, even the father of lies never ventured to dispute his divine
nature.
Dominican. I must not suffer you to argue on theology ; you
may pervert the young man.
Milton. In addition to confinement, must this fungus of
vapid folly stain your cell ? If so, let me hope you have re-
388 Imaginary Conversations.
ceived the assurance that the term of your imprisonment will be
short.
Galileo. It may be, or not, as God wills : it is for life.
Milton. For life !
Galileo. Even so. I regret that I cannot go forth ; and my
depression is far below regret when I think that, if ever I should
be able to make a discovery, the world is never to derive the
benefit. I love the fields, and the country air, and the sunny sky,
and the starry ; and I could keep my temper when, in the midst
of my calculations, the girls brought me flowers from lonely
places, and asked me their names, and puzzled me. But now I
fear lest a compulsory solitude should have rendered me a little
moroser. And yet methinks I could bear again a stalk to be
thrown in my face, as a deceiver, for calling the blossom that
had been on it Andromeda ; and could pardon as easily as ever
a slap on the shoulder for my Ursa Major. Pleasant Arcetri !
Milton. I often walk along its quiet lanes, somewhat too full
of the white eglantine in the narrower parts of them. They are
so long and pliant, a little wind is enough to blow them in the
face ; and they scratch as much as their betters.
Galileo. Pleasant Arcetri !
Milton. The sigh that rises at the thought of a friend may be
almost as genial as his voice. 'Tis a breath that seems rather to
come from him than from ourselves.
Galileo. I sighed not at any thought of friendship. How
do I know that any friend is left me ? I was thinking that, in
those unfrequented lanes, the birds that were frightened could fly
away. Pleasant Arcetri ! Well : we (I mean those who are
not blind) can see the stars from all places ; we may know that
there are other worlds, and we may hope that there are happier.
So, then, you often walk to that village?
Milton. Oftener to Fiesole.
Galileo. You like Fiesole better ?
Milton. Must I confess it ? For a walk, I do.
Galileo. So did I, so did I. What friends we are already !
I made some observations from Fiesole.
Milton. I shall remember it on my return, and shall revisit
the scenery with fresh delight. Alas ! is this a promise I can
keep, when I must think of you here ?
Milton, and a Dominican. 389
Gafi/fo. My good, compassionate young man ! I am con-
cerned that my apartment allows you so little space to walk
about.
Mi/ton. Could ever I have been guilty of such disrespect !
sir, far remote, far beyond all others, is that sentiment from
my heart ! It swelled, and put every sinew of every limb into
motion, ;it your indignity. No, no ! Suffer me still to bend in
reverence and humility on this hand, now stricken with years and
with captivity ! on this hand, which science has followed, which
God himself has guided, and before which all the worlds above
us, in all their magnitudes and distances, have been thrown open.
GafiltQ. Ah, my too friendly enthusiast ! may yours do more,
and with' impunity.
Milton. At least, be it instrumental in removing from the
earth a few of her heaviest curses ; a few of her oldest and worst
impediments to liberty and wisdom, mitres, tiaras, crowns, and
the trumpery whereon they rest. I know but two genera of
the annual and the perennial. Those who die down, and
leave behind them no indication of the places whereon they grow,
are cognate with the gross matter about them ; those on the con-
trary, who, ages after their departure, are able to sustain the
lowliest, and to exalt the highest, those are surely the spirits
of God, both when upon earth and when with him. What do
1 see, in letting fall the sleeve ? The scars and lacerations on
your arms show me that you have fought for your country.
Galilfo. I cannot claim that honor. Do not look at them.
My guardian may understand that.
Milton. Great God ! they are the marks of the torture !
Galileo. My guardian may understand that likewise. Let us
converse about something else.
Milton. Italy ! Italy ! Italy ! drive thy poets into exile, into
prison, into madness! spare, spare thy one philosopher! What
track can the mind pursue, in her elevations or her plains or her
recesses, without the dogging and prowling of the priesthood ?
Ga/ilfo. They have not done with me yet. A few days
ago they informed me that I was accused or suspected of
disbelieving the existence of devils. When I protested that in my
opinion there are almost as many devils as there are men, arid that
every wise man is the creator of hundreds at his first appearance,
390 Imaginary Conversations.
they told me with much austerity and scornfulness of rebuke, that
this opinion is as heretical as the other ; and that we have no
authority from Scripture for believing that the complement ex-
ceeded some few legions, several of which were thinned and
broken by beating up their quarters, thanks chiefly to the
Dominicans. I bowed, as became me ; for these are worthy
masters, and their superiors, the successors of Peter, would burn
us for teaching any thing untaught before.
Milton. They would burn you, then, for resembling the great
apostle himself?
Galileo. In what but denying the truth and wearing chains ?
Milton. Educated with such examples before them, literary
societies are scarcely more tolerant to the luminaries of imagina-
tion than theological societies are to the luminaries of science. I
myself, indeed, should hesitate to place Tasso on an equality, or
nearly on an equality, with Ariosto ; yet, since his pen hath been
excelled on the Continent by only two in sixteen centuries, he
might have expected more favor, more forbearance, than he found.
I was shocked at the impudence of his critics in this country :
their ignorance less surprised me.*
Galileo. Of yours I am unable to speak.
Milton. So much the better.
Galileo. Instead of it, you will allow me to express my ad-
miration of what (if I understand any thing) I understand. No
nation has produced any man, except Aristoteles, comparable to
either of the Bacons. The elder was the more wonderful ; the
later in season was the riper and the greater. Neither of them
told all he knew, or half he thought ; and each was alike prodigal
in giving, and prudent in withholding. The learning and genius
* Criticism is still very low in Italy. Tiraboschi has done little for it :
nothing can be less exact than his judgments on the poets. There is not
one remarkable sentence, or one happy expression, in all his volumes.
The same may be said of Abbate Cesarotti, and of the Signor Calsabigi,
who wrote on Alfieri. There is scarcely a glimpse of poetry in Alfieri ;
yet his verses are tight-braced, and his strokes are animating, not, indeed,
to the Signor Calsabigi. The Italians are grown more generous to their
literary men in proportion as they are grown poorer in them. Italy is
the only great division of Europe where there never hath existed a Review
bearing some authority or credit. These things do not greatly serve
literature ; but they rise from it, and show it.
(iulileo, Milton, and a Dominican. 391
of Francis k\l him onward to many things which his nobility and
statelinrss disallowed. Hence was he like the leisurely and rich
agriculturist, who goeth out a-field after dinner, well knowing
where lie the nests and covies ; and in such idle hour throweth
his hat partly over them, and they clutter and run and rise
and escape from him without his heed, to make a louder whirr
thereafter, and a longer flight elsewhere.
Mil ton. I believe I have discovered no few inaccuracies in
his reasoning, voluntary or involuntary. But I apprehend he
committed them designedly, and that he wanted in wisdom but
the highest, the wisdom of honesty. It is comfortable to escape
from him, and return again to Sorrento and Tasso. He should
have been hailed as the worthy successor, not scrutinized as the
presumptuous rival, of the happy Ferrarese. He was ingenious,
he was gentle, he was brave ; and what was the reward ? Did
contend for his residence within them ? Did princes throw
open their palaces at his approach ? Did academies send deputa-
tions to invite and solicit his attendance? Did senators cast
branches of laurel under his horse's hoofs ? Did prelates and
princes hang tapestries from their windows, meet him at the gates,
and conduct him in triumph to the Capitol ? Instead of it, his
genius was derided, his friendship scorned, his love rejected ; he
li\< d despairingly, he died broken-hearted.
Galileo. My friend ! my friend ! you yourself in your language
are almost a poet.
Aft/ton. 1 may be, in time to come.
Gaftleo. What! with such an example before your eyes?
Rather be a philosopher : you may be derided in this too ; but
you will not be broken-hearted. I am ashamed when I reflect
that the worst enemies of Torquato, pushing him rudely against
Ariosto, are to be found in Florence.
Milton. Be the difference what it may between them, youi
academicians ought to be aware that the lowest of the animals are
nearer to the highest of them, than these highest are to the lowest
of those two. For in what greatly more do they beneht the
world than the animals do, or how much longer remain in the
memory of their species ?
Galileo. Little, very little ; and the same thing may be easily
proved of those whom they praise and venerate. My knowledge
392 Imaginary Conversations.
of poetry is narrow ; and, having little enthusiasm, I discover
faults where beauties escape me. I never would venture to say
before our Italians what 1 will confess to you. In reading the
Gerusalemme Liberata, I remarked that among the epithets the
poet is fondest of grande : I had remarked that Virgil is fondest
of altus. Now, we cannot make any thing greater or higher by
clapping these words upon it : where the substructure is not suf-
ficiently broad and solid, they will not stick. The first verses in
the Gerusalemme, for instance, are
Canto le arme pietose e '1 capitano
Che \\gran sepolcro libero di Cristo.
Surely, the poet would rather have had a great captain than a
great cenotaph.
Milton. He might have written, with a modester and less
sonorous exordium,
Canto le arme pietose e '1 capitano,
Lvi che il sepolcro libero di Cristo.
Galileo. It would not have done for our people, either the
unlearned or learned. They must have high, gigantic, immense ;
they must have ebony, gold, azure ; they must have honey,
sugar, cinnamon, as regularly in their places as blue-lettered
jars, full or empty, are found in apothecaries' shops. Dante
and Ariosto, different as they are, equally avoided these sweet
viscidities. I wish you would help me to exonerate Tasso
from the puffy piece of impediment at the beginning of his
march.
Milton. Let us imagine that he considered all Jerusalem as
the sepulchre of Christ.
Galileo. No friend or countryman hath said it for him. We
will accept it, and go on. Our best histories, excepting Giovio's
and Davila's, contain no picture, no character, no passion, no
eloquence ; and Giovio's is partial and faithless. Criticism is
more verbose and less logical here than among the French, the
Germans, and the Dutch.
Milton. Let us return to Ariosto and Tasso, who, whateve
the academicians may gabble in their assemblies, have delighted
the most cultivated minds, and will delight them for incalculable
ages.
Essex and Spenser. 393
Uleo. An academician, a dunghill-cock, and a worm do
indeed form a triangle more nearly equilateral than an academician,
a Lodovico, and a Torquato. The Dominican is listening yet.
Behold, he comes in !
n-minican. Young gentleman, I did not suspect, when you
entered, that you would ever talk about authors whose writings
are prohibited. Ariosto is obscene. I have heard the same of
Tasao, in some part or other.
Milton. Prythee, begone !
Domini fan. We retire together.
Galileo. It would be better to leave me, if he urges it;
otherwise I may never expect again the pleasure I have received
to-day.
Dominican. Signer Galileo, do you talk of pleasure to young
persons ? Most illustrious signorino, the orders of my superior
are to reconduct you.
Mi/ton. Adieu, then, O too great man !
Galileo. For to-day, adieu !
Dominican (out of the door\. In my lowly cell, O signorino
(if your excellency in her inborn gentleness could condescend to
favor her humblest slave with her most desired presence), are
prepared some light refreshments.
Milton. Swallow them, swallow them ; thou seemest thirsty :
I enter but one cell here.
Dominican (aside ^ having bowed respectfully). Devil ! heretic !
never shall thou more !
XXIV. ESSEX AND SPENSER. 1
Essex. Instantly on hearing of thy arrival from Ireland, 1
sent a message to thee, good Edmund, that I might learn, from
one so judicious and dispassionate as thou art, the real state of
n Spenaer had served in Ireland as the Secretary to Lord Grey, the
Deputy, and had been rewarded by a large grant of the Desmond
property. Upon the rebellion of the Earl of Desmond, an attack was
made upon his hou*e, so suddenly, that, though Spenser himself escaped,
394 Imaginary Conversations.
things in that distracted country ; it having pleased the Queen's
Majesty to think of appointing me her deputy, in order to bring
the rebellious to submission.
Spenser. Wisely and well considered ; but more worthily
of her judgment than her affection. May your lordship over-
come, as you have ever done, the difficulties and dangers you
foresee.
Essex. We grow weak by striking at random ; and knowing
that I must strike, and strike heavily, I would fain see exactly
where the stroke shall fall.
Some attribute to the Irish all sorts of excesses ; others tell
us that these are old stories ; that there is not a more inoffensive
race of merry creatures under heaven, and that their crimes are
all hatched for them here in England, by the incubation of
printers' boys, and are brought to market at times of distressing
dearth in news. From all that I myself have seen of them, I
can only say that the civilized (I mean the richer and titled) are
as susceptible of heat as iron, and as impenetrable to light as
granite. The half-barbarous are probably worse ; the utterly
barbarous may be somewhat better. Like game-cocks, they must
spur when they meet. One fights because he fights an English-
man ; another, because the fellow he quarrels with comes from a
distant county ; a third, because the next parish is an eyesore to
him, and his fist-mate is from it. The only thing in which they
all agree as proper law is the tooth-for-tooth act. Luckily, we
have a bishop who is a native, and we call him before the Queen.
He represented to Her Majesty that every thing in Old Ireland
tended to re-produce its kind, crimes among others ; and he
declared frankly that if an honest man is murdered, or, what is
dearer to an honest man, if his honor is wounded in the person of
his wife, it must be expected that he will retaliate. Her Majesty
delivered it as her opinion, that the latter case of vindictiveness
one of his children was left behind and perished in the fire. He himself
returned to England to die soon after, and to the Earl of Essex he owed
his tomb.
(First printed (1834) with "The Citation of William Shakespeare."
Works, ii. 1846; Works, v. 1876. In the first edition there are
certain prefaces and appendices to this Conversation, which are only
intelligible when read with "The Citation;" they are not reprinted
here.)]
Essex and Spenser. 395
was more likely to take effect than the former. But the bishop
replied, that in his conscience he could not answer for either if
the man was up. The dean of the same diocese gave us a more
favorable report. Being a justice of the peace, he averred most
solemnly that no man ever had complained to him of murder,
ting one who had lost so many fore-teeth by a cudgel that
his deposition could not be taken exactly ; added to which, his
head was a little clouded with drunkenness ; furthermore, that
extremely few women had adduced sufficiently clear proofs of
violence, excepting those who were wilful, and resisted with tooth
and nail. In all which cases, it was difficult nay, impossible
to ascertain which violence began first and lasted longest.
There is not a nation upon earth that pretends to be so super-
latively generous and high-minded ; and there is not one (I speak
from experience) so utterly base and venal. I have positive proof
that the nobility, in a mass, are agreed to sell, for a stipulated
11 their rights and privileges, so much per man ; and the
Queen is inclined thereunto. But would our Parliament consent
to pay money for a cargo of rotten pilchards ? And would not
our captains be readier to swamp than to import them ? The
noisiest rogues in that kingdom, if not quieted by a halter, may
be quieted by making them brief-collectors, and by allowing
them, first, to encourage the incendiary ; then, to denounce and
hang him ; and, lastly, to collect all the money they can, running
up and down with the whining ferocity of half-starved hyenas,
under pretence of repairing the damages their exhausted country
hath sustained. Others ask, modestly, a few thousands a year,
and no more, from those whom they represent to us as naked and
famished ; and prove clearly, to every dispassionate man who hath
a single drop of free blood in his veins, that at least this pittance
is due to them for abandoning their liberal and lucrative pro-
fessions, and for endangering their valuable lives on the tempes-
tuous seas, in order that the voice of truth may sound for once
upon the shores of England, and humanity cast her shadow on the
council -chamber.
I gave a dinner to a party of these fellows a few weeks ago.
I know not how many kings and princes were among them, nor
how many poets and prophets and legislators and sages. When
they were half-drunk, they coaxed and threatened ; when they
396 Imaginary Conversations.
had gone somewhat deeper, they joked, and croaked and hic-
coughed, and wept over sweet ] reland ; and, when they could
neither stand nor sit any longer, they fell upon their knees and
their noddles, and swore that limbs, life, liberty, Ireland, and
God himself, were all at the Queen's sen-ice. It was only their
holy religion, the religion of their forefathers, here sobs inter-
rupted some, howls others, execrations more, and the liquor they
had ingulfed the rest. I looked down on them with stupor and
astonishment, seeing faces, forms, dresses, much like ours, and
recollecting their ignorance, levity, and ferocity. My pages drew
them gently by the heels down the steps ; my grooms set them
upright (inasmuch as might be) on their horses ; and the people
in the streets, shouting and pelting, sent forward the beasts to
their straw.
Various plans have been laid before us for civilizing or coercing
them. Among the pacific, it was proposed to make an offer to
five hundred of the richer Jews in the Hanse-towns and in
Poland, who should be raised to the dignity of the Irish peerage,
and endowed with four thousand acres of good forfeited land, on
condition of each paying two thousand pounds, and of keeping up
ten horsemen and twenty foot, Germans or Poles, in readiness for
service.
The Catholics bear nowhere such ill-will toward Jews as
toward Protestants. Brooks make even worse neighbors than
oceans do.
I myself saw no objection to the measure ; but our gracious
Queen declared she had an insuperable one, they stank ! We
all acknowledged the strength of the argument, and took out
our handkerchiefs. Lord Burleigh almost fainted ; and Raleigh
wondered how the Emperor Titus could bring up his men against
Jerusalem.
" Ah ! " said he, looking reverentially at Her Majesty, " the
star of Berenice shone above him ! And what evil influence
could that star not quell ! what malignancy could it not anni-
hilate ! "
Hereupon he touched the earth with his brow, until the Queen
said,
" Sir Walter ! lift me up those laurels."
At which manifestation of princely good-will he was ad-
Essex and Spenser.
397
vancing to kiss Her Majesty's hand ; but she waved it, and said
sharply,
Stand there, dog! "
Now what tale have you for us ?
Spenser. Interrogate me, my lord, that I may answer each
question distinctly, my mind being in sad confusion at what I
have seen and undergone.
Essex. Give me thy account and opinion of these very affairs
as thou leftest them ; for I would rather know one part well than
all imperfectly ; and the violences of which I have heard within
the day surpass belief.
Why weepest thou, my gentle Spenser? Have the rebels
tacked thy house ?
Spenser. They have plundered and utterly destroyed it.
Es/fx. I grieve for thee, and will see thee righted.
Spenser. In this they have little harmed me.
^x. How ! I have heard it reported that thy grounds are
fertile, and thy mansion * large and pleasant.
Sterner. If river and lake and meadow-ground and mountain
could render any place the abode of pleasantness, pleasant was
mine, indeed !
On the lovely banks of Mulla I found deep contentment.
Under the dark aiders did I muse and meditate. Innocent hopes
were my gravest cares, and my playfullest fancy was with kindly
wishes. Ah ! surely of all cruelties the worst is to extinguish
our kindness. Mine is gone : I love the people and the land no
longer. My lord, ask me not about them : I may speak injuri-
ously.
Essex. Think rather, then, of thy happier hours and busier
occupations ; these likewise may instruct me.
Stenser. The first seeds I sowed in the garden, ere the old
castle was made habitable for my lovely bride, were acorns from
Penshurst. I planted a little oak before my mansion at the birth
of each child. My sons, I said to myself, shall often play in the
shade of them when I am gone ; and every year shall they take
the measure of their growth, as fondly as I take theirs.
Essex. Well, well ; but let not this thought make thee weep
so bitterly.
It was purchased by a victualler and banker, the father or grandfather
of Lord Rivt-rsdale.
398 Imaginary Conversations.
Spenser. Poison may ooze from beautiful plants ; deadly grief
from dearest reminiscences.
I must grieve, I must weep : it seems the law of God, and the
only one that men are not disposed to contravene. In the per-
formance of this alone do they effectually aid one another.
Essex. Spenser ! I wish I had at hand any arguments or
persuasions, of force sufficient to remove thy sorrow ; but,
really, I am not in the habit of seeing men grieve at any
thing except the loss of favor at court, or of a hawk, or of
a buck-hound. And were I to swear out my condolences to
a man of thy discernment, in the same round roll-call phrases
we employ with one another upon these occasions, I should
be guilty, not of insincerity, but of insolence. True grief hath
ever something sacred in it ; and, when it visiteth a wise man
and a brave one, is most holy.
Nay, kiss not my hand : he whom God smiteth hath God
with him. In his presence what am I ?
Spenser. Never so great, my lord, as at this hour, when you
see aright who is greater. May he guide your counsels, and
preserve your life and glory !
Essex. Where are thy friends ? Are they with thee ?
Spenser. Ah, where, indeed ! Generous, true-hearted Philip !
where art thou, whose presence was unto me peace and safety ;
whose smile was contentment, and whose praise renown ? My
lord ! I cannot but think of him among still heavier Josses : he
was my earliest friend, and would have taught me wisdom.
Essex. Pastoral poetry, my dear Spenser, doth not require
tears and lamentations. Dry thine eyes ; rebuild thine house :
the Queen and Council, I venture to promise thee, will make
ample amends for every evil thou hast sustained. What ! does
that enforce thee to wail yet louder ?
Spenser. Pardon me, bear with me, most noble heart ! I have
lost what no Council, no Queen, no Essex, can restore.
Essex. We will see that. There are other swords, and other
arms to wield them, beside a Leicester's and a Raleigh's. Others
can crush their enemies, and serve their friends.
Spenser. O my sweet child ! And of many so powerful,
many so wise and so beneficent, was there none to save thee ?
None ! none !
Essex and Spenser. 399
Essex. I now perceive that thou lamentest what almost every
father is destined to lament. Happiness must be bought, although
the payment may be delayed. Consider; the same calamity might
have befallen thee here in London. Neither the houses of am-
bassadors, nor the palaces of kings, nor the altars of God himself,
are asylums against death. How do I know but under this very
roof there may sleep some latent calamity, that in an instant shall
with gloom every inmate of the house, and every far de-
pendent ?
Spenser. God avert it !
Esstx. Every day, every hour of the year, do hundreds mourn
what thou mournest.
Spenser. Oh, no, no, no ! Calamities there are around us ;
calamities there are all over the earth ; calamities there are in all
seasons : but none in any season, none in any place, like mine.
Essex. So say all fathers, so say all husbands. Look at any
old mansion-house, and let the sun shine as gloriously as it may
on the golden vanes, or the arms recently quartered over the gate-
way or the embayed window, and on the happy pair that haply is
toying at it : nevertheless, thou mayest say that of a certainty the
same fabric hath seen much sorrow within its chambers, and heard
many wailings ; and each time this was the heaviest stroke of all.
Funerals have passed along through the stout-hearted knights
upon the wainscot, and amid the laughing nymphs upon the arras.
Old servants have shaken their heads as if somebody had deceived
them, when they found that beauty and nobility could perish.
rnund ! the things that are too true pass by us as if they
were not true at all ; and when they have singled us out, then
only do they strike us. Thou and 1 must go too. Perhaps the
next year may blow us away with its fallen leaves.*
Spenser. For you, my lord, many years (I trust) are waiting:
I never shall sec those fallen leaves. No leaf, no bud, will spring
upon the earth before I rink into her breast for ever.
Essex. Thou, who art wiser than most men, shouldst bear
with patience, equanimity, and courage what is common to all.
Spenser. Enough, enough, enough ! have all men seen their
infant burned to ashes before their eyes ?
Essex. Gracious God ! Merciful Father ! what is this ?
It happened so.
400 Imaginary Conversations.
Spenser. Burned alive ! burned to ashes ! burned to ashes !
The flames dart their serpent tongues through the nursery-window.
I cannot quit thee, my Elizabeth ! I cannot lay down our
Edmund ! Oh, these flames ! They persecute, they enthrall
me ; they curl round my temples ; they hiss upon my brain ;
they taunt me with their fierce, foul voices ; they carp at me, they
wither me, they consume me, throwing back to me a little of life
to roll and suffer in, with their fangs upon me. Ask me, my
lord, the things you wish to know from me : I may answer them ;
I am now composed again. Command me, my gracious lord !
I would yet serve you : soon I shall be unable. You have
stooped to raise me up ; you have borne with me ; you have
pitied me, even like one not powerful. You have brought
comfort, and will leave it with me ; for gratitude is comfort.
Oh ! my memory stands all a tip-toe on one burning point :
when it drops from it, then it perishes. Spare me : ask me
nothing ; let me weep before you in peace, the kindest act of
greatness.
Essex. I should rather have dared to mount into the
midst of the conflagration than I now dare entreat thee not
to weep. The tears that overflow thy heart, my Spenser, will
staunch and heal it in their sacred stream ; but not without hope
in God.
Spenser. My hope in God is that I may soon see again
what he has taken from me. Amid the myriads of angels,
there is not one so beautiful ; and even he (if there be any)
who is appointed my guardian could never love me so. Ah !
these are idle thoughts, vain wanderings, distempered dreams.
If there ever were guardian angels, he who so wanted one
my helpless boy would not have left these arms upon my
knees.
Essex. God help and sustain thee, too gentle Spenser ! I
never will desert thee. But what am I ? Great they have called
me ! Alas, how powerless then and infantile is greatness in the
presence of calamity !
Come, give me thy hand: let us walk up and down the
gallery. Bravely done ! I will envy no more a Sidney or a
leigh.
'ii Hare and Walter Landor. 401
XXV. ARCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER
LANDOR.i
Archdeaton Hare. In some of your later writings, I perceive,
you have not strictly followed the line you formerly laid down
for spelling.
ier 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
struggles and reclamations. At last, nothing is
r 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 parti-
ciples that I have followed you perseveringly. We are rich
in having two for many of our verbs, and unwise in corrupt-
ing the spelling, and thereby rendering the pronunciation dif-
ficult. We pronounce "astonisht ; " we write "astonished " or
"attonish'd, an unnecessary harshness. Never was spoken
drop/r</ or lop^v/ or hop/*J or prop//, but dropt, &c. ; yet,
with the choice before us, we invariably take the wrong. I
do not resign a right to "astonish^/" or "diminish*/." They
may, with many like them, be useful in poetry ; and several
such terminations add dignity and solemnity to what we read
[> The first part of this Conversation is concerned with words and
But the latter and larger part is extremely interesting. It is in
part an answer to De Quincey's rather cpiteful " Notes on Walter Savage
Landor H (Works, viii., ed. 1851), and in part an answer to a reviewer
who had quoted from that book. Landor does not seem to have read
De Quincey's attack. Had he done so, he must have noticed the parallel
drawn between himself and Plato. " Both are unread," says De Quincey,
"both inclined to be voluptuous; both had a hankering after purple
and fine linen ... and both bestowed pains as elaborate upon the secret
art of a dialogue, as a lapidary would upon the cutting of a Sultan's
Had Landor read this, his retort would have been rougher,
though not less contemptuous. Archdeacon Hare is so well known, that
nothing need be said of him here, except that he was a faithful friend
to Landor, believed in him, saw the first editions of the Conversations
through the press, and printed some in the Philological Muteum, a
magazine edited by him at Cambridge. ("Last Fruit," 1853; Works,
2 C
4O2 Imaginary Conversations.
in our church, the sanctuary at once of our faith and of our
language.
Walter Landor. In more essential things than preterites and
participles, 1 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 color in the midst of it. We
are sapped by an influx of putridity.
Archdeacon Hare. Come, come ; again to our spelling-book.
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 consistency. We have dropped it in author,
emperor, ambassador. Here again, for consistency and compli-
ancy, I write " embassador ; " because I write, as all do, " em-
bassy." I write theater, sepulch^r, meter, in their English form
rather than the French. The best authors have done it. All
write "hexameter" 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/f" ?
Archdeacon Hare. Why, then, should grander be left in
solitary state ? The Englishman less easily protrudes his nether
jaw than the Frenchman, 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. Meanwhile, 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 we have memorandums, fac*
Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor. 403
totums, ultimatums, let cur shepherd-dogs bring back to us by the
ear such as have wandered from the flock.
Archeacon Hare. We have " stimuli/ ; " why " stimuli " ?
why " stimuli " ? Why " recipe " ? why " receipt " ? we might
as reasonably write "dece//>/" and "conce//>/." I believe we are
the only people who keep the Dramatis Persona on the stage, or
announce their going off by "exeunt : " "<://" 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. Besides these, there are two expressions either
of which is quite enough to bring down curses and mortality on
the poet. " Stand c onfest " (even if not written "confcr.rV") is
one ; " unbidden tears" the other. I can imagine no such non-
sense 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 who/ for whole. Very unreasonably do
we write wholly with a double / ; wholy and soly might follow
the type of holy. We see printed befal with one /, but never fal;
and yet in the monosyllable we should not be doubtful of the
accentuation. It is but of late that we contro/, reca/, appa/: we
do not yet ro/. Will any one tell me who put such a lazy beast
to our niiffu/fofi-train, and spelled on the front of the carriage
ammunition ? 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
foreigner. We are much in the habit of using the WOrdJKhutier.
Surely, we might let the French take and torture our freebooter.
In our fondness for making verbs out of substantives, we even go
to the excess of flibustering. And now from coarse vulgarity let
us turn our eyes towards 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/' &c.
Walter Landor. Pity they ever found their way back !
Archdeacon Hare. Few even now object to muse and bard.
404 Imaginary Conversations.
Walter I^andor. 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 Cher-
sonese. 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 island, his very words are these : " Whether you
return hither, or stay in another hemisphere." At the com-
mencement 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 consideration 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 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 workmanship.
Walter Landor. The most beautiful tapestry is worked on ex-
tremely coarse canvas. Open a volume of Bayle's Biographical
Dictionary^ and how many just and memorable observations will
you find on people of no " note or likelihood " !
Archdeacon Hare. Unhappily for us, we are insensible of the
corruptions that 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
Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor. 405
of language, caught up the expression from those who were liber-
tines 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 clanger
of contracting their coarseness of language and demeanor.
Archdeacon Hare. Certainly the Romans were logatt 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, although on some
occasions he preferred the Greek, was studious to maintain his
own idiom strong and healthy. When the tongue is paralysed,
the limbs soon follow. No nation hath long survived the de-
crepitude 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
among "giant trees," "monster meetings/' "glorious fruit,"
"splendid cigars, dogs, horses, and bricks," "palmy 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 " eleventh hour" which has been sound-
ing all day long the whole year. They do me a little injustice
who say that such good fortune is attributable to my residence in
Italy. The fact is, I am too cautious and too aged to catch dis-
orders, and I walk fearlessly through these epidemics.
Archdeacon Hare. Simply to open is insufficient: we "open up"
and "open out" A gentleman indues a coat ; it will be difficult
to exue if he tries : he must lie down and sleep in it.
"Foolery" was thought of old sufficiently expressive: nothing
short of tomfoolery 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 honor. We hear people
re-read, and see them re-write; and are invited to a spread,
406 Imaginary Conversations.
where we formerly went to a dinner or collation. We cut down
barracks to a single barrack ; but we leave the " stocks " in good
repair. We are among ambitions and among peoples, until Stern-
hold and Hopkins call 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 exception" " ever and
anon" " many a time and oft" ?
Walter Landor. It is to be regretted that Home Tooke and
Bishop Lowth were placed so far apart, by many impediments and
obstructions, that they never could unite in order to preserve the
finials and pinnacles of our venerable fabric, to stop the innovations
and to diminish the anomalies of our language. Southey, although
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 judgment was as mature at twenty-
five as theirs at fifty. He agreed with me that mind, fad, kind,
blind, behind, should have a final e, in order to signify the sound ;
and that the verb wind should likewise, for the same reason. I
brought Fairfax's Tasso with me, and showed him that Fairfax
had done it, and had spelled many other words better than our
contemporaries, or even than the most part of his own.
Archdeacon hare. There are two expressions of frequent
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
remarked to me that you would just as properly write pillager
for pillager, as messenger for messager. The more excusable
vulgar add to these dainties their sausciger. Have you found any-
thing 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 with perfect propriety dismaid, applte, chefe, hart, wisht,
husht, 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 ridicu-
Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor. 407
lous as the conceit of that antiquarian society which calls itself the
" Roxburgh/ Club ; " e was never added to burgh.
Hoxu-'.l, .1 \i-ry careful writer, an excellent authority, writes
forrtn, frend, Mahomdism, toung, cxtemporal, shipwrack, cole, onely,
sutable, plaid, askt, begger, apparance, brest, yeer, lanch,peect, tresure,
r, incertain, k'mde, perle.
Drayton and Daniel may be associated with Howell. Dray-
ton in his prose wrote red ; and there is no purer or more con-
dderate author. He writes also ransack/, distinguish/, dispers/,
worship/, admonish/, tax/, deck/, wrack/, profes/, extol*/, purchas/.
He writes fained, tucb, ycers, "Jnely, dore.
Thomas More writes lerned, clereness, preste (priest),
sbolde, woldf, leve, yere, harte, mynde, here (hear), herer (hearer),
apptrej spelter^ seke, greoousyfyndc, doute, wherof, seme, dede, nede,
tetlx (teeth), precher, pcplc, senc (seen), eres (ears), toke, therfor,
mete (meat), frend, therin, fere (fear), a we<ver, rede (read). A
host of these words only show that the best authors avoided the
double vowel.
Chaucer, in consecutive verses, writes were (wear) and bere
(bear) and beven zndfoule.
4 Upon her thombe or in her purse to bere."
There is no foule that flieth under heven."
Camden w rites forralne and iland.
It was late before ea was employed in place of the simple vowel
f . Chaucer writes " eny pecock" Shal and w/7, so written by
him, are more proper than shall and will, by avoiding the form of
substantives. Caxton writes, as many of his time, iuerk, not
" work." Tyndal, long after, writes doo for do. Spenser writes
dore instead of door. Sackville writes pearst. Dryden is less
accurate than Cowley and Waller and Sprat. Speaking of
Cowley, he says, " He never could forgive a conceit/' meaning
forevo. In our own age, many (Burke among the rest) say,
By this means." It would be affectation to say, By this
mean," in the singular ; but the proper expression is, By these
Archdeacon Hare. In regard to terminations, it is difficult to
account for the letter e when we say " by and by;." There is
none in accounting for it in Good-^," which is the most com-
408 Imaginary Conversations.
prehensivc 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, " Te 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 controlling the destiny of another. Nothing on earth
can control the destined, whether the term be applied strictly or
laxly. Element is another, meaning only a constituent. Graver
still 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 net be, whence nether. We also prefix the same ' to fore. We
say (at least those who swear do), " ' 'fore God ; " never, " tafore
God." Cause in like manner is a word of itself, no less than
" ^cause." 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
fault. It could not be going far out of our way to bring them
back again, and then cry hault, which we do only with the pen
in hand.
We are in the habitude of writing onwardj, backward/,
towards, afterward/ ; 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 offiaal ; why not influenaal, circumstanr/al, difFerenaal ?
We write entrance the substantive like entrance the verb. Shak-
speare wisely wrote,
" That sounds the fatal entrance of Duncan," &c.
WoncUrous is a finer word than 'wondrous.
It is not every good scholar, or every fair poet, who possesses
Archdeacon ll.uv and Walter Lander. 409
the copiousness and exhibits the discrimination of Shakspearc.
u hen we take the hand he offers us, we are accused of
inno\.:ti;;.;.
Walter L.andor. So far from innovating, the words I propose
are brought to their former and legitimate station. You have
>ned 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 fashion,
a Restoration to a Usurpation. Innovators, and worse than in-
novators, 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 calendar, 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, "We have not ventured to
aJter what we find in use, and why should be?"
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
fixed, how much more desirable is it that its accretion of cor-
ruptions should be now removed ! It may be difficult ; and still
more difficult to restore the authority of the ancient dynasty.
Walter Laiulnr. 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 looked 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 appropriate 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 some-
410 Imaginary Conversations.
times tempted me away from your pictures ; and I have ceased
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 compli-
ment ere it had attained its full growth : however, now it is not
only full-grown but over-grown, let me offer you in return, not a
compliment, but a congratulation, on your courage in using the
plural " compendium.? " where another would 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^ " went away with
Cowley, and died in the same ditch with him ; but " oblique " 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.
" Antique " 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 "rouge" 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 saddle-bag.
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 spelled better than we do ; and not he only,
but his remote successors ?
Archdeacon 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.
Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor. 41 1
':er Landor. Rare quality ! I scarcely know where to find
another who possesses it, or whose anger would not obtain the
conscience at the imputation.
your eyes run down this catalogue. Here are sivete and
svvote, finde, tber, <wel, herken, her k, gilt (guilt), shal, don (done),
(works), tveping, dene, tlefaulte, tber of, speking, erthe,
beretb (beareth), seate, mete (meat), shuld (should), bevy, hevn,
grrvous, grete, bete, yere, fode (food) ; we still say fodder, not
fooder ; ete (cat), lede, throt, iuel, drede, shal, gess (guess), ful,
wberas, trespas, bet'wene, repe, slepe, sbete, frend, dedly, deities,
teres, herlng, clereness, juge, plese, speke, wold (would), ded, tred,
her eve, tbred, peple, dore, dreme, deme, res on, tndede, meke, feble,
wtde, nedf,fele, cese, pece, dedly, deme, resonable, slepe, titel, refrain,
preeste.
Archdeacon Hare. In adding the vowel, he makes it available
for verse. Covetise, how much better than covetiousness >
Among the words which might be brought back again to adorn
our poetical diction is befornc (before). Here is dis temperament
(for inclemency of season) ; for/ft (forgive), another good word ;
so is wanbope (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 Landor. 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, atpere,
speche, wele, beretb, reson, mening, pleasance, stele, coles, mekeness,
reve (bereave) rore, tong, corageousjorbere, kepe, othe (oath), cese,
sbepe, dreme, verse (worse), reken (reckon). Certainly this old
lling is more proper than its substitute. To rcken is to look
*y* *JJL *J
over an account before casting it up. Here are grevancc,lerne,
bete, seke, speke, fre*e (freeze), cbese, dense, tretise, meke. Here 1
find axe (ask, which is now a vulgarism, though we use tax 1(
task. With great propriety he writes persever ; we, with great
impropriety, persevere. He uses the word spiced for overmce,
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, things
412 Imaginary Conversations.
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 spelled 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 vocabu-
lary, 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 of a variety of
birds of all sorts and sizes. If my simile is undignified, let me
go back into the Sistine Chapel, where Michel Angelo displays
the same thing more gravely and grandly in his Last Judgment.
Archdeacon Hare. 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, which was
spoken by Barrere in the Convention. He there called the
English " cette nation boutiquiere.
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
marked with my pencil from time to time ; others are obliterated,
others lost.
There is a very good reason why ravel and travel should be
spelled with a single / .- pronunciation requires it. Equally does
pronunciation require a double / in befell, expell, compell.
We often find kneeled instead of knelt ; yet I do not remember
feeled forfeit. Shaftesbury, and the best writers of his age and
later, wrote cou'd, shou'd, ivou'd : we do not, although in
speaking we never insert the /. Hurd writes, " Under the
circumstances." Circumstances are about us, not above us.
Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor. 4 1 3
* Master of the situation " is the only expression we have
borrowed Lvly of the Spanish, and it is not worth having.
I have observed rent as preterite of rend, improper ; as ment
would be of mend.
" All too well," &c., the world 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, although he was thought a
pedant for it. Many would willingly be thought pedants who
can be ; but they can more cheaply be thought affected, as
would be if they assumed this Latinism. In our English
sense, many a question vexes: none is vexed. The sea is
vfxalum when it is tossed 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 not English. To gather a rose is improper.
To gather two roses would be proper. Better to cult, which
may be said of choosing one out of several ; cull is from the
Italian cogliere, 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
beautiful of Wordsworth's poems :
I lived upon what casual bounty yields,
Now coldly given, now utterly refuted."
The Irish need not cry out for their potatoes, if they can live
upon what they cannot 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.
414 Imaginary Conversations.
What can be sillier than those verses of his which 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 metre
had allowed it,
A maid whom there were none to love,
And very few to praise.
For 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. Readers of poetry
hear the bells, and seldom mind what they are ringing for.
Where there is laxity there is inexactness.
Frequently there are solid knolls in the midst of Wordsworth's
morass ; but never did I expect to find so much animation,
such vigor, 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 wagoner'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 tixuv
(3aai\ixr) of poetry.
I believe there are few, if any, who enjoy more heartily than I
do the best poetry of my contemporaries, or who have commended
them both in private and in public with less parsimony and reserve.
Several of them, as you know, are personally my friends, although
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
glimpses of the Graces, with their zones on, and their zones only.
Amplification and diffuseness are the principal faults of those who
are now standing the most prominent. Dilution does not always
make a thing the clearer : it may even cause turbidity.
Archdeacon Hare. Stiffness is as bad as laxness. Pindar and
Archdeacon Huiv and Walter Landor. 415
r, Milton and Shakspeare, never caught the cramp in
their mountain streams : their movements arc as easy as they are
vigorous.
Walter Landor. The strongest are the least subject to stiffness.
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
basketful after basketful of juiceless fruit, covered with scentless
flowers.
Archdeacon Hare. Many an unlucky one is like the big and
bouncing foot-ball, which is blown up in its cover by unseemly
purling, and serves only for the game of the day. I am half-
inclined to take you to task, my dear friend, feeling confident and
certain that I should do it without offence.
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 ?
Waiter 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 works of criticism :
how few of them have analysed and compared. Without these
two processes, there can be no sound judgment on any production
of genius. We are accustomed to see the beadle limp up into the
judge's chair, to hear him begin with mock gravity, and to find
him soon dropping it for his 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 re-
viewers and magazine-men would analyze, in this manner, to the
extent of their abilities, and would weigh evidence before they
pass sentence. But 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
416 Imaginary Conversations.
i
never can restore. Animosity, or perhaps something more ignoble,
usually stimulates rampant inferiority against high desert.
I have never found you disconcerted by any injustice toward
yourself, not even by the assailants of this our Reformation.
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 still earlier gone into the 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 be of Babylon/' " The annal of Gibbon." " I have
eat" &c. There is a passage in Tacitus on a vain poet, Lu-
terius, remarkably applicable to our lately fashionable one ;
" Studia ilia, ut plena vecordiae, ita inania et fluxa sunt : nee
quidquam grave ac serium ex eo metuas qui, suorum ipse
flagitiorum 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 application of the scourge to the two monsters of
dissimilar configuration 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.
Walter Landor. Either I said, or was about to say, that
Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor. 417
the aspirate, wherever it is written, should be pronounced. If
we say " a house," why not say " a hour ; " if " a horse," why
not "a honor?" Nobody 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 capaciousness in
admitting or rejecting the service of the aspirate was contracted
from the French. The Italians, not wanting it, sent it off, and
called it back merely for a mark discriminatory ; for instance in
the verb Ho t hi'.:.
Archdeacon Hare. You have been accused of phonetic
spelling.
Walter LanJor. Inconsiderately, and with even less foun-
dation than falsehood 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 strenuously on the opposite side, attempting to
recover in our blurred palimpsests what was written there of
old. We have dropped 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
buckskin 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 ? For
a brawl?
Walter Landor. Little are you aware that I have lately
been accused of a graver offence, and one committed in the
dark.
Archdeacon Hare. And in the dark you leave me. Pray
explain.
2 D
4i 8 Imaginary Conversations.
Walter Landor. I am indicted for perpetrating an Epic.
Archdeacon Hare. Indeed ! I am glad to hear the announce-
ment. 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 Geb'ir. The cause and circumstances I have
detailed elsewhere.
Archdeacon Hare. Is this 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 legiti-
mately be decreed.
" Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor
Qui face barbaricos calamoque sequare colonos."
" Surely shall 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.
Archdecaon 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 metre, 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, which Southey
tells us he took for a model, is in blank verse.
Walter Landor. Southey, whom I never had known or cor-
responded with, hailed it loudly in the Critical Review, 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
Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor. 419
may be the defects and deficiences of the poem, must have
attracted at the time some other readers ; yet I believe (though
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 picked up some shards of it, and
stuck them in his shelves. Among them is my Sea-Shell, which
Wordsworth clapped into his pouch. There it became incrusted
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 Wordsworth ; and I never heard you complain, or
notice, that he owed any thing to you.
Walter Landor. Truly he owes me little. My shell may be
among the prettiest on his mantelpiece ; but a trifle it is at best.
I often wish, in his 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 vapor 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 Thalaba, the Curse of Kchama, and Roderic ; nor,
indeed, any poem exhibiting so great a variety of powers.
Southey had abundance of wit and humor, of which Wordsworth,
like greater men, such, for instance, as Goethe and Milton,
was destitute. The present age will easily pardon me for placing
here the German and the Englishman together : the future, I
42O Imaginary Conversations.
sadly fear, would, without some apology, be inexorable. If
Wordsworth wants the diversity and invention of Southey, no
less than the humor, he wants also the same geniality belonging
in the same degree to Cowper, with terseness and succinctness.
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 height.
Archdeacon Hare. Sometimes he may be prosaic.
Walter Landor. He slithers on the soft mud, and cannot stop
himself until he comes down. In his poetry there is as much of
prose 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 hand, poetry sinks and swoons under a moderate weight
of prose ; and neither fan nor burned feather can bring her to
herself again.
It is becoming and decorous that due honors be paid to
Wordsworth ; undue have injured him. Discriminating praise,
mingled with calm censure, is more beneficial than lavish
praise without it. Respect him : reverence him ; abstain from
worshipping him. Remember, no ashes are lighter than those of
incense, and few things burn out sooner.
Archdeacon Hare. It appears that you yourself, of late, have
not suffered materially by the wafting of the thurible.
Walter Landor. Faith ! 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 Gebir, namely, Southey and Mr De Quincey. 1
have mentioned a few others. I might have added Coleridge, to
whom Southey lent it, and who praised it even more enthu-
siastically, 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,
Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor. 421
.used 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 Soother. It is marvellous 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
agree that Gebtr very much resembled the Argonauiics of
ius 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
Statius. Happily, in my school-days I had mastered Lucan and
al.
Archdeacon Hare. They are grandly declamatory ; but decla-
mation overlays and strangles poetry, and disfigures even satire.
Walter l^andor. Reserving the two mentioned, and Martial,
I doubt whether the most speculative magazine-man would
hazard five pounds for the same quantity of English poetry
(rightly called letter-press) as all the other post-Ovidian poets
have left behind. After the banishment of Ovid, hardly a breath
of pure poetry breathed over the Campagna di Roma. Declama-
tion 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 Statius.
Archdeacon Hare. Even for the company of such as these, I
think I would have left the Reeker in Auld Reekie. Flies are
only the more troublesome and importunate for being driven off,
and they will keep up with your horse, however hard you ride,
without any speed or potency of their own.
-.her Landor. True ; but people who sell unsound wares,
and use false scales and measures, ought to be pointed out and put
down, although 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 literary
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.
422 Imaginary Conversations.
Walter Landor. It must be a dog in the distemper that raises
up his spine at me. I have spoken favorably of many an author ;
undeservedly, of none : therefore both at home and abroad I have
received honorary visits from my countrymen and from foreigners.
Archdeacon Hare. Possibly there may be some of them incon-
tinent of the acrimonious humor pricking them in the paroxysm
of wit. I 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 throw-
ing 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 which 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 known you, at any former
time, take much trouble about your literary concerns.
Walter Landor. Never have I descended to repel an attack,
and never will ; but I must defend the understanoUng and con-
sistency 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 culverin 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 intrepid assurance with which small writers attack the greater,
as small birds do, pursuing them the more vociferously the higher
the flight. Milton stooped and struck down two or three of these
Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor. 423
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
affability, 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. Gifford, the translator of Juvenal, who
was often so grave that ordinary people took him for judicious,
thought wit the better part of Shakspeare, 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 Somerville 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 affected for his turgidity : this was not affected ; it was
the most natural part of him. He hated both affectation and
ttmeoeM.
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 kittcnhood 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 looked at
whose 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 harmonious ;
either of which qualities may be of some service in fixing the
attention and enforcing the sentiment. But the proper word in
the proper place seldom leaves any thing to be 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 delight you feel, not only in Milton's immortal verse,
but (although less) in Wordsworth's.
Walter Landor. A Mozart to a Handel ! But who is not
charmed by the melody of Mozart ? Critics have their favontes
424 Imaginary Conversations.
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 Review-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
the place of derision, sarcasm, and arrogant condemnation.
Nothing was wanting to Byron's consistency when he had ex-
pressed 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 ex-
posed 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 withhold the sustenance which is
necessary to the growth, if not the existence, of genius,
sympathy, encouragement, 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, although
there is no oaken crown decreed for it, is among the higher
virtues.
Walter Landor. Many will pass by; many will take the
other side; many will cherish the less deserving: but some
one, considerate and compassionate, will raise up the 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 Rome 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
Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor. 425
this our country, than was written between the Metamorphoses
and the Divina Commcdia. We walk no longer in the cast-off
clothes of the ancients, often ill sewn at first, and now ill-fitting.
\Vc h.ivc pulpier hVsh, stouter limbs ; we take longer walks, ex-
plore wider fields, and surmount more craggy and more lofty
eminences. From these let us take a leisurely look at Fancy
and Imagination. Your friend Wordsworth was induced to
his minor poems under the separate heads of these two,
probably at the suggestion of Coleridge, who persuaded him, as
M 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 ballad belong not to the same age or the same
people. It would have puzzled Coleridge to have drawn a
straight 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 qualities.
Archdeacon Hare. Do you believe 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. Vigorous thought, elevated
sentiment, just expression, development of character, power to
bring man out from the secret haunts of his soul, and to place
him in strong outline against the sky, belong to Imagination.
Fancy is thought to dwell among the Fairies and their congeners ;
and they frequendy lead the weak and ductile poet far astray.
He is fond of playing at tittle-go among them ; and, when he grows
bolder, he acts among the Witches and other such creatures ; but
his hankering after the Fairies still continues. Their tiny rings,
in which the intelligent see only the growth of funguses, are no
arena for action and passion. It was not in these circles that
Homer and jEschylus and Dante strove.
Archdeacon Jferv. But Shakespeare sometimes entered them,
who, with infinitely greater power, moulded his composite and
426 Imaginary Conversations.
consistent man, breathing into him an immortality never to be
forfeited.
Walter Landor. Shakespeare's full strength and activity were
exerted on Macbeth and Othello: he trifled with Ariel and
Titania ; he played with Caliban ; but no other would have
thought of playing with him, any more than of playing with
Cerberus. Shakespeare and Milton and Chaucer have more
imagination than any of those to whom the quality is peculiarly
attributed. It is not inconsistent with vigor and gravity. There
may be a large and effuse light without
" The motes that people the sunbeams."
Imagination follows the steps of Homer throughout the Troad,
from the ships on the strand to Priam and Helen on the city-
wall. Imagination played with the baby Astyanax at the de-
parture of Hector from Andromache ; and was present at the
noblest scene of the Iliad, where, to repeat a verse of Cowper's
on Achilles, more beautiful than Homer's own,
" His hand he placed
On the old man's hand, and pushed h gently aii-ay.
No less potently does Imagination urge -flLschylus 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 freshly
created earth, Imagination strewed the nuptial couch of Eve.
Not Ariel, nor Caliban, nor Witches who ruled the elements,
but Eve and Satan and Prometheus, are the most wondrous and
the most glorious of her works. Imagination takes the weaker
hand of Vigil out of Dante's who grasps it, and guides the
Florentine exile through 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
Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor. 427
towards me somewhat more than civility. The few rudenesses I
over 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.
When 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 sly invidi-
ousness and smouldering malignity, 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 arc 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.
Waiter Landor. The practice of barring out the master is
still continued in the world's great school-room. Our sturdy
boys do not fear a flogging : they fear only a book or a lecture.
Archdeacon Hare. Authors are like cattle going to a fair:
those of the same field can never move on without butting one
another.
Walter Landor. It has been my fortune and felicity, from
my earliest days to have 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 forthcoming Enctma. Poetry was always my
amusement ; prose, my study and business. I have published
five volumes of Imaginary Conversations: cut the worst of them
through the middle, and there will remain in this <lecima
fraction quite enough to satisfy my appetite for fame.
dine late ; but the dining-room 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 Oreek,
Roman like Roman, in poetry or prose. Gentlemen of
have patronized them occasionally,-have taken them under the
arm, have recommended their own tailor, their own perfumer,
428 Imaginary Conversations.
and have lighted a cigar for them from their own at the door of
the Traveller's or Athenaum : 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 inac-
curate remarks on Gelir.
Walter Landor. It is hardly worth 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, pro-
fesses that he imitated your versification ; and the style of his
Colloquies is in some degree modified by yours.
Waller Landor. Little cause had he for preferring any other
to his own.
Perhaps the indicium ore alio is my obscurity. Goethe 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 criticised 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 Shakespeare.
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 turgidity.
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 pottage and puff-paste,
Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor. 429
\vith radishes and water-cresses, with salad and cream-cheese, who
" implentur veteris bacchi pinguisque ferinae."
::r Landor. Encouraged by your commendation, let me
read to you (for I think I placed it this evening in my pocket)
what was transcribed for me as a curiosity, out of the same Article.
Yes j here it is :
Hi* great defect is a certain crudeness of the judgment, implied in the
election 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 pro-
minent modern authors so generally delightful."
Archdeacon Hare. Opinion on most matters, but chiefly on
literary, and, all above, on poetical, seems to me like an empty
eggshell in a duck-pond, turned on its stagnant water by the
slightest breath of air ; at one moment the cracked 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 existence, 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 height and girth before they
are terviceablt or sightly.
Archdeacon Hare. The weakest wines fall soonest into the
acetous fermentation : 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.
.her Londor. 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 ever-
lasting. 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 rolled into
the palace of Pella, dividing Philip and " Philip's godlike son ;
430 Imaginary Conversations.
it followed that insatible youth to the extremities of his conquests,
and even to his sepulchre ; then it broke the invincible phalanx
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 stabbed emperor ; pope poisoned pope,
contending for God's vicegerency. The roll-call 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 you from the
hustings, and, committing no worse mischief, snatches at the
colors in your hatband.
Walter Landor. Others have snatched more. My quarry lies
upon a high common a good way from the public road, and every-
body takes out of it what he pleases " with privy paw, and nothing
said " beyond, A curse on the old fellow! how hard his granite is !
one can never make it jit." This is all I get of quit-rent 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, dressed in new clothes, and worth money.
Archdeacon Hare. Your manors are extensive, comprehending
" Prata, arva, ingentes 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
bum my plantations.
Archdeacon Hare. I regret that your correspondent was
sickened or tired of transcribing.
Walter Landor. Here is another slip from the same crab-
tree. It is objected that most of my poems are occasional.
Archdeacon Hare. In number they may be ; but in quantity
of material 1 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 sit down at a table where a character may be lost at
Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor. 431
a cast : they alone are so courageous who have nothing to be
seized on.
Archdeacon Hare. The gentleman sweeps the cloth with 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, jEschincs, Demosthenes, occasional ? Draw nearer
home: what but occasional were the Letters of Junius?
Materiem svjxrabat opus.
Walter Landor, True. The ministers and their king are
now mould and worms: they were little better when above-
ground ; but the bag-wig and point-lace of Junius are suspended
aloft upon a golden peg, for curiosity and admiration.
ArcLiltacon Hare. Regarding 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
mushrooms ?
Walter Landor. \ stand out a rude rock in the middle of a
, 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 little 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 exhilarating of allj affects my brain but little. Certainly, I
never attempted to snatch " the peculiar graces so generally de-
lightful." My rusticity has at least thus much of modesty in it.
Archdeacon Hare.
"The richest flowers hare not most honey-cells.
You seldom find the bee about the rose.
Oftcner the beetle eating into it.
The tiolet leas attracts the noisy hum
Than the minute and poisonous bloom of box.
Poets know this ; Nature's invited guests
Draw near and note it down and ponder it ;
The Idler sect it, sees unheedingly,
Unheedingly the rifler of the hive."
your critic wiser, more experienced, and of a more poetical
mind than Southey ? Utri horum crtdit'u, Qu'tntes ?
432 Imaginary Conversations.
Vanity and presumption are not always the worst parts of
the man they take possession of, although they are usually
the most prominent. Malignity 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 compassionate 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 demeanor 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 Peven-
sey ; but they ascend not to Beachyhead nor to Hurstmonceaux.
TURNBULL AND SPEARS. PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
PR
4872
126
1891.
Land or, Walter Savage
Imaginary conversations
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