EXTRACT XV.

Rome.

Mary Magdalen.—Her Story.—Numerous Pictures of her.—Correggio—Guido —Raphael, etc.—Canova's two exquisite Statues.—The Somariva Magdalen. —Chantrey's Admiration of Canova's Works.

No wonder, MARY, that thy story
  Touches all hearts—for there we see thee.
The soul's corruption and its glory,
  Its death and life combine in thee.

From the first moment when we find
  Thy spirit haunted by a swarm
Of dark desires,—like demons shrined
  Unholily in that fair form,—
Till when by touch of Heaven set free,
  Thou camest, with those bright locks of gold
(So oft the gaze of BETHANY),
  And covering in their precious fold
Thy Saviour's feet didst shed such tears
As paid, each drop, the sins of years!—
Thence on thro' all thy course of love
  To Him, thy Heavenly Master,—Him
Whose bitter death-cup from above
  Had yet this cordial round the brim,
That woman's faith and love stood fast
And fearless by Him to the last:—
Till, oh! blest boon for truth like thine!
  Thou wert of all the chosen one,
Before whose eyes that Face Divine
  When risen from the dead first shone;
That thou might'st see how, like a cloud,
Had past away its mortal shroud,
And make that bright revealment known
To hearts less trusting than thy own.
All is affecting, cheering, grand;
  The kindliest record ever given,
Even under God's own kindly hand,
  Of what repentance wins from Heaven!

No wonder, MARY, that thy face,
  In all its touching light of tears,
Should meet us in each holy place,
  Where Man before his God appears,
Hopeless—were he not taught to see
All hope in Him who pardoned thee!
No wonder that the painter's skill
  Should oft have triumpht in the power
Of keeping thee all lovely still
  Even in thy sorrow's bitterest hour;
That soft CORREGGIO should diffuse
  His melting shadows round thy form;
That GUIDO'S pale, unearthly hues
  Should in portraying thee grow warm;
That all—from the ideal, grand,
Inimitable Roman hand,
Down to the small, enameling touch
  Of smooth CARLINO—should delight
In picturing her, "who loved so much,"
  And was, in spite of sin, so bright!

  But MARY, 'mong these bold essays
Of Genius and of Art to raise
A semblance of those weeping eyes—
  A vision worthy of the sphere
Thy faith has earned thee in the skies,
  And in the hearts of all men here,—
None e'er hath matched, in grief or grace,
CANOVA'S day-dream of thy face,
In those bright sculptured forms, more bright
With true expression's breathing light,
Than ever yet beneath the stroke
Of chisel into life awoke.
The one,[1] portraying what thou wert
  In thy first grief,—while yet the flower
Of those young beauties was unhurt
  By sorrow's slow, consuming power;
And mingling earth's seductive grace
  With heaven's subliming thoughts so well,
We doubt, while gazing, in which place
  Such beauty was most formed to dwell!—
The other, as thou look'dst, when years
Of fasting, penitence and tears
Had worn thy frame;—and ne'er did Art
  With half such speaking power express
The ruin which a breaking heart
  Spreads by degrees o'er loveliness.
Those wasting arms, that keep the trace,
Even still, of all their youthful grace,
That loosened hair of which thy brow
Was once so proud,—neglected now!—
Those features even in fading worth
  The freshest bloom to others given,
And those sunk eyes now lost to earth
  But to the last still full of heaven!

Wonderful artist! praise, like mine—
  Tho' springing from a soul that feels
Deep worship of those works divine
  Where Genius all his light reveals—
How weak 'tis to the words that came
From him, thy peer in art and fame,[2]
Whom I have known, by day, by night,
Hang o'er thy marble with delight;
And while his lingering hand would steal
  O'er every grace the taper's rays[3]
Give thee with all the generous zeal
Such master spirits only feel,
  That best of fame, a rival's prize!

[1] This statue is one of the last works of Canova, and was not yet in marble when I left Rome. The other, which seems to prove, in contradiction to very high authority, that expression of the intensest kind is fully within the sphere of sculpture, was executed many years ago, and is in the possession of the Count Somariva at Paris.

[2] Chantrey.

[3] Canova always shows his fine statue, the Venere Vincitrice, by the light of a small candle.

EXTRACT XVI.

Les Charmettes.

A Visit to the house where Rousseau lived with Madame de Warrens.— Their Menage.—Its Grossness.—Claude Anet.—Reverence with which the spot is now visited.—Absurdity of this blind Devotion to Fame.—Feelings excited by the Beauty and Seclusion of the Scene. Disturbed by its Associations with Rousseau's History.—Impostures of Men of Genius.—Their Power of mimicking all the best Feelings, Love, Independence, etc.

Strange power of Genius, that can throw
Round all that's vicious, weak, and low,
Such magic lights, such rainbows dyes
As dazzle even the steadiest eyes.

* * * * *

'Tis worse than weak—'tis wrong, 'tis shame,
This mean prostration before Fame;
This casting down beneath the car
Of Idols, whatsoe'er they are,
Life's purest, holiest decencies,
To be careered o'er as they please.
No—give triumphant Genius all
For which his loftiest wish can call:
If he be worshipt, let it be
  For attributes, his noblest, first;
Not with that base idolatry
  Which sanctifies his last and worst.

  I may be cold;—may want that glow
Of high romance which bards should know;
That holy homage which is felt
In treading where the great have dwelt;
This reverence, whatsoe'er it be,
  I fear, I feel, I have it not:—
For here at this still hour, to me
  The charms of this delightful spot,
Its calm seclusion from the throng,
  From all the heart would fain forget,
This narrow valley and the song
  Of its small murmuring rivulet,
The flitting to and fro of birds,
Tranquil and tame as they were once
In Eden ere the startling words
  Of man disturbed their orisons,
Those little, shadowy paths that wind
Up the hillside, with fruit-trees lined
And lighted only by the breaks
The gay wind in the foliage makes,
Or vistas here and there that ope
  Thro' weeping willows, like the snatches
Of far-off scenes of light, which Hope
  Even tho' the shade of sadness catches!—
All this, which—could I once but lose
  The memory of those vulgar ties
Whose grossness all the heavenliest hues
  Of Genius can no more disguise
Than the sun's beams can do away
The filth of fens o'er which they play—
This scene which would have filled my heart
  With thoughts of all that happiest is;—
Of Love where self hath only part,
  As echoing back another's bliss;
Of solitude secure and sweet.
Beneath whose shade the Virtues meet.
Which while it shelters never chills
  Our sympathies with human woe,
But keeps them like sequestered rills
Purer and fresher in their flow;
Of happy days that share their beams
  'Twixt quiet mirth and wise employ;
Of tranquil nights that give in dreams
  The moonlight of the morning's joy!—
All this my heart could dwell on here,
But for those gross mementoes near;
Those sullying truths that cross the track
Of each sweet thought and drive them back
Full into all the mire and strife
And vanities of that man's life,
Who more than all that e'er have glowed
  With fancy's flame (and it was his,
In fullest warmth and radiance) showed
  What an impostor Genius is;
How with that strong, mimetic art
  Which forms its life and soul, it takes
All shapes of thought, all hues of heart,
  Nor feels itself one throb it wakes;
How like a gem its light may smile
  O'er the dark path by mortals trod,
Itself as mean a worm the while
  As crawls at midnight o'er the sod;
What gentle words and thoughts may fall
  From its false lip, what zeal to bless,
While home, friends, kindred, country, all,
  Lie waste beneath its selfishness;
How with the pencil hardly dry
  From coloring up such scenes of love
And beauty as make young hearts sigh
  And dream and think thro' heaven they rove,
They who can thus describe and move,
  The very workers of these charms,
Nor seek nor know a joy above
  Some Maman's or Theresa's arms!

How all in short that makes the boast
Of their false tongues they want the most;
And while with freedom on their lips,
  Sounding their timbrels, to set free
This bright world, laboring in the eclipse
  Of priestcraft and of slavery,—
They may themselves be slaves as low
  As ever Lord or Patron made
To blossom in his smile or grow
  Like stunted brushwood in his shade.
Out on the craft!—I'd rather be
  One of those hinds that round me tread,
With just enough of sense to see
  The noonday sun that's o'er his head,
Than thus with high-built genius curst,
  That hath no heart for its foundation,
Be all at once that's brightest, worst,
  Sublimest, meanest in creation!

CORRUPTION,

AND

INTOLERANCE.

TWO POEMS.

ADDRESSED TO AN ENGLISHMAN BY AN IRISHMAN.

PREFACE.

The practice which has been lately introduced into literature, of writing very long notes upon very indifferent verses, appears to me a rather happy invention, as it supplies us with a mode of turning dull poetry to account; and as horses too heavy for the saddle may yet serve well enough to draw lumber, so Poems of this kind make excellent beasts of burden and will bear notes though they may not bear reading. Besides, the comments in such cases are so little under the necessity of paying any servile deference to the text, that they may even adopt that Socratic, "quod supra nos nihil ad nos."

In the first of the two following Poems, I have ventured to speak of the Revolution of 1688, in language which has sometimes been employed by Tory writers and which is therefore neither very new nor popular. But however an Englishman might be reproached with ingratitude for depreciating the merits and results of a measure which he is taught to regard as the source of his liberties—however ungrateful it might appear in Alderman Birch to question for a moment the purity of that glorious era to which he is indebted for the seasoning of so many orations—yet an Irishman who has none of these obligations to acknowledge, to whose country the Revolution brought nothing but injury and insult, and who recollects that the book of Molyneux was burned by order of William's Whig Parliament for daring to extend to unfortunate Ireland those principles on which the Revolution was professedly founded—an Irishman may be allowed to criticise freely the measures of that period without exposing himself either to the imputation of ingratitude or to the suspicion of being influenced by any Popish remains of Jacobitism. No nation, it is true, was ever blessed with a more golden opportunity of establishing and securing its liberties for ever than the conjuncture of Eighty-eight presented to the people of Great Britain. But the disgraceful reigns of Charles and James had weakened and degraded the national character. The bold notions of popular right which had arisen out of the struggles between Charles the First and his Parliament were gradually supplanted by those slavish doctrines for which Lord Hawkesbury eulogizes the churchmen of that period, and as the Reformation had happened too soon for the purity of religion, so the Revolution came too late for the spirit of liberty. Its advantages accordingly were for the most part specious and transitory, while the evils which it entailed are still felt and still increasing. By rendering unnecessary the frequent exercise of Prerogative,—that unwieldy power which cannot move a step without alarm,—it diminished the only interference of the Crown, which is singly and independently exposed before the people, and whose abuses therefore are obvious to their senses and capabilities. Like the myrtle over a celebrated statue in Minerva's temple at Athens, it skilfully veiled from the public eye the only obtrusive feature of royalty. At the same time, however, that the Revolution abridged this unpopular attribute, it amply compensated by the substitution of a new power, as much more potent in its effect as it is more secret in its operations. In the disposal of an immense revenue and the extensive patronage annexed to it, the first foundations of this power of the Crown were laid; the innovation of a standing army at once increased and strengthened it, and the few slight barriers which the Act of Settlement opposed to its progress have all been gradually removed during the Whiggish reigns that succeeded; till at length this spirit of influence has become the vital principle of the state,—an agency, subtle and unseen, which pervades every part of the Constitution, lurks under all its forms and regulates all its movements, and, like the invisible sylph or grace which presides over the motions of beauty,

"illam, quicquid agit, quoquo westigia flectit, componit furlim subsequiturque."

The cause of Liberty and the Revolution are so habitually associated in the minds of Englishmen that probably in objecting to the latter I may be thought hostile or indifferent to the former. But assuredly nothing could be more unjust than such a suspicion. The very object indeed which my humble animadversions would attain is that in the crisis to which I think England is now hastening, and between which and foreign subjugation she may soon be compelled to choose, the errors and omissions of 1688 should be remedied; and, as it was then her fate to experience a Revolution without Reform, so she may now endeavor to accomplish a Reform without Revolution.

In speaking of the parties which have so long agitated England, it will be observed that I lean as little to the Whigs as to their adversaries. Both factions have been equally cruel to Ireland and perhaps equally insincere in their efforts for the liberties of England. There is one name indeed connected with Whiggism, of which I can never think but with veneration and tenderness. As justly, however, might the light of the sun be claimed by any particular nation as the sanction of that name be monopolized by any party whatsoever. Mr. Fox belonged to mankind and they have lost in him their ablest friend.

With respect to the few lines upon Intolerance, which I have subjoined, they are but the imperfect beginning of a long series of Essays with which I here menace my readers upon the same important subject. I shall look to no higher merit in the task than that of giving a new form to claims and remonstrances which have often been much more eloquently urged and which would long ere now have produced their effect, but that the minds of some of our statesmen, like the pupil of the human eye, contract themselves the more, the stronger light is shed upon them.

CORRUPTION,

AN EPISTLE.

Boast on, my friend—tho' stript of all beside,
Thy struggling nation still retains her pride:
That pride which once in genuine glory woke
When Marlborough fought and brilliant St. John spoke;
That pride which still, by time and shame unstung,
Outlives even Whitelocke's sword and Hawkesbury's tongue!
Boast on, my friend, while in this humbled isle[1]
Where Honor mourns and Freedom fears to smile,
Where the bright light of England's fame is known
But by the shadow o'er our fortunes thrown;
Where, doomed ourselves to naught but wrongs and slights,[2]
We hear you boast of Britain's glorious rights,
As wretched slaves that under hatches lie
Hear those on deck extol the sun and sky!
Boast on, while wandering thro' my native haunts,
I coldly listen to thy patriot vaunts;
And feel, tho' close our wedded countries twine,
More sorrow for my own than pride from thine.

  Yet pause a moment—and if truths severe
Can find an inlet to that courtly ear,
Which hears no news but Ward's gazetted lies,
And loves no politics in rhyme but Pye's,—
If aught can please thee but the good old saws
Of "Church and State," and "William's matchless laws,"
And "Acts and Rights of glorious Eighty-eight,"—
Things which tho' now a century out of date
Still serve to ballast with convenient words,
A few crank arguments for speeching lords,—
Turn while I tell how England's freedom found,
Where most she lookt for life, her deadliest wound;
How brave she struggled while her foe was seen,
How faint since Influence lent that foe a screen;
How strong o'er James and Popery she prevailed,
How weakly fell when Whigs and gold assailed.

  While kings were poor and all those schemes unknown
Which drain the people to enrich the throne;
Ere yet a yielding Commons had supplied
Those chains of gold by which themselves are tied,
Then proud Prerogative, untaught to creep
With bribery's silent foot on Freedom's sleep,
Frankly avowed his bold enslaving plan
And claimed a right from God to trample man!
But Luther's schism had too much roused mankind
For Hampden's truths to linger long behind;
Nor then, when king-like popes had fallen so low,
Could pope-like kings escape the levelling blow.[3]
That ponderous sceptre (in whose place we bow
To the light talisman of influence now),
Too gross, too visible to work the spell
Which modern power performs, in fragments fell:
In fragments lay, till, patched and painted o'er
With fleurs-de-lis, it shone and scourged once more.

  'Twas then, my friend, thy kneeling nation quaft
Long, long and deep, the churchman's opiate draught
Of passive, prone obedience—then took flight
All sense of man's true dignity and right;
And Britons slept so sluggish in their chain
That Freedom's watch-voice called almost in vain.
Oh England! England! what a chance was thine,
When the last tyrant of that ill-starred line
Fled from his sullied crown and left thee free
To found thy own eternal liberty!
How nobly high in that propitious hour
Might patriot hands have raised the triple tower[4]
Of British freedom on a rock divine
Which neither force could storm nor treachery mine!
But no—the luminous, the lofty plan,
Like mighty Babel, seemed too bold for man;
The curse of jarring tongues again was given
To thwart a work which raised men nearer heaven.
While Tories marred what Whigs had scarce begun,
While Whigs undid what Whigs themselves had done.
The hour was lost and William with a smile
Saw Freedom weeping o'er the unfinisht pile!

  Hence all the ills you suffer,—hence remain
Such galling fragments of that feudal chain[5]
Whose links, around you by the Norman flung,
Tho' loosed and broke so often, still have clung.
Hence sly Prerogative like Jove of old
Has turned his thunder into showers of gold,
Whose silent courtship wins securer joys,
Taints by degrees, and ruins without noise.
While parliaments, no more those sacred things
Which make and rule the destiny of kings.
Like loaded dice by ministers are thrown,
And each new set of sharpers cog their own.
Hence the rich oil that from the Treasury steals
Drips smooth o'er all the Constitution's wheels,
Giving the old machine such pliant play[6]
That Court and Commons jog one joltless way,
While Wisdom trembles for the crazy car,
So gilt, so rotten, carrying fools so far;
And the duped people, hourly doomed to pay
The sums that bribe their liberties away,[7]—
Like a young eagle who has lent his plume
To fledge the shaft by which he meets his doom,—
See their own feathers pluckt, to wing the dart
Which rank corruption destines for their heart!
But soft! methinks I hear thee proudly say,
"What! shall I listen to the impious lay
"That dares with Tory license to profane
"The bright bequests of William's glorious reign?
"Shall the great wisdom of our patriot sires,
"Whom Hawkesbury quotes and savory Birch admires,
"Be slandered thus? shall honest Steele agree
"With virtuous Rose to call us pure and free,
"Yet fail to prove it? Shall our patent pair
"Of wise state-poets waste their words in air,
"And Pye unheeded breathe his prosperous strain,
"And Canning take the people's sense in vain?"

  The people!—ah! that Freedom's form should stay
Where Freedom's spirit long hath past away!
That a false smile should play around the dead
And flush the features when the soul hath fled![8]
When Rome had lost her virtue with her rights,
When her foul tyrant sat on Capreae's heights,[9]
Amid his ruffian spies and doomed to death
Each noble name they blasted with their breath,—
Even then, (in mockery of that golden time,
When the Republic rose revered, sublime,
And her proud sons, diffused from zone to zone,
Gave kings to every nation but their own,)
Even then the senate and the tribunes stood,
Insulting marks, to show how high the flood
Of Freedom flowed, in glory's bygone day,
And how it ebbed,—for ever ebbed away![10]

  Look but around—tho' yet a tyrant's sword
Nor haunts our sleep nor glitters o'er our board,
Tho' blood be better drawn, by modern quacks,
With Treasury leeches than with sword or axe;
Yet say, could even a prostrate tribune's power
Or a mock senate in Rome's servile hour
Insult so much the claims, the rights of man,
As doth that fettered mob, that free divan,
Of noble tools and honorable knaves,
Of pensioned patriots and privileged slaves;—
That party-colored mass which naught can warm
But rank corruption's heat—whose quickened swarm
Spread their light wings in Bribery's golden sky,
Buzz for a period, lay their eggs and die;—
That greedy vampire which from Freedom's tomb
Comes forth with all the mimicry of bloom
Upon its lifeless cheek and sucks and drains
A people's blood to feel its putrid veins!

  Thou start'st, my friend, at picture drawn so dark—
"Is there no light?"—thou ask'st—"no lingering spark
"Of ancient fire to warm us? Lives there none,
"To act a Marvell's part?"[11]—alas! not one.
To place and power all public spirit tends,
In place and power all public spirit ends;
Like hardy plants that love the air and sky,
When out, 'twill thrive—but taken in, 'twill die!

  Not bolder truths of sacred Freedom hung
From Sidney's pen or burned on Fox's tongue,
Than upstart Whigs produce each market-night,
While yet their conscience, as their purse, is light;
While debts at home excite their care for those
Which, dire to tell, their much-loved country owes,
And loud and upright, till their prize be known,
They thwart the King's supplies to raise their own.
But bees on flowers alighting cease their hum—
So, settling upon places, Whigs grow dumb.
And, tho' most base is he who, 'neath the shade
Of Freedom's ensign plies corruption's trade,
And makes the sacred flag he dares to show
His passport to the market of her foe,
Yet, yet, I own, so venerably dear
Are Freedom's grave old anthems to my ear,
That I enjoy them, tho' by traitors sung,
And reverence Scripture even from Satan's tongue.
Nay, when the constitution has expired,
I'll have such men, like Irish wakers, hired
To chant old "Habeas Corpus" by its side,
And ask in purchased ditties why it died?

See yon smooth lord whom nature's plastic pains
Would seem to've fashioned for those Eastern reigns
When eunuchs flourisht, and such nerveless things
As men rejected were the chosen of kings;—[12]
Even he, forsooth, (oh fraud, of all the worst!)
Dared to assume the patriot's name at first—
Thus Pitt began, and thus begin his apes;
Thus devils when first raised take pleasing shapes.
But oh, poor Ireland! if revenge be sweet
For centuries of wrong, for dark deceit
And withering insult—for the Union thrown
Into thy bitter cup when that alone
Of slavery's draught was wanting[13]—if for this
Revenge be sweet, thou hast that daemon's bliss;
For sure 'tis more than hell's revenge to fee
That England trusts the men who've ruined thee:—
That in these awful days when every hour
Creates some new or blasts some ancient power,
When proud Napoleon like the enchanted shield
Whose light compelled each wondering foe to yield,
With baleful lustre blinds the brave and free
And dazzles Europe into slavery,—
That in this hour when patriot zeal should guide,
When Mind should rule and—Fox should not have died,
All that devoted England can oppose
To enemies made fiends and friends made foes,
Is the rank refuse, the despised remains
Of that unpitying power, whose whips and chains
Drove Ireland first to turn with harlot glance
Towards other shores and woo the embrace of France;—
Those hacked and tainted tools, so foully fit
For the grand artisan of mischief, Pitt,
So useless ever but in vile employ,
So weak to save, so vigorous to destroy—
Such are the men that guard thy threatened shore,
Oh England! sinking England! boast no more.

[1] England began very early to feel the effects of cruelty towards her dependencies. "The severity of her government [says Macpherson] contributed more to deprive her of the continental dominions of the family of the Plantagenet than the arms of France."—See his History, vol. i.

[2] "By the total reduction of the kingdom of Ireland in 1691[says Burke], the ruin of the native Irish, and in a great measure, too, of the first races of the English, was completely accomplished. The new English interested was settled with as solid a stability as anything in human affairs can look for. All the penal laws of that unparalleled code of oppression, which were made after the last event, were manifestly the effects of national hatred and scorn towards a conquered people, whom the victors delighted to trample upon, and were not at all afraid to provoke." Yet this is the era to which the wise Common Council of Dublin refer us for "invaluable blessings," etc.

[3] The drivelling correspondence between James I and his "dog Steenie" (the Duke of Buckingham), which we find among the Hardwicke Papers, sufficiently shows, if we wanted any such illustration, into what doting, idiotic brains the plan at arbitrary power may enter.

[4] Tacitus has expressed his opinion, in a passage very frequently quoted, that such a distribution of power as the theory of the British constitution exhibits is merely a subject of bright speculation, "a system more easily praised than practised, and which, even could it happen to exist, would certainly not prove permanent;" and, in truth, a review of England's annals would dispose us to agree with the great historian's remark. For we find that at no period whatever has this balance of the three estates existed; that the nobles predominated till the policy of Henry VII, and his successor reduced their weight by breaking up the feudal system of property; that the power of the Crown became then supreme and absolute, till the bold encroachments of the Commons subverted the fabric altogether; that the alternate ascendency of prerogative and privilege distracted the period which followed the Restoration; and that lastly, the Acts of 1688, by laying the foundation of an unbounded court- influence, have secured a preponderance to the Throne, which every succeeding year increases. So that the vaunted British constitution has never perhaps existed but in mere theory.

[5] The last great wound given to the feudal system was the Act of the 12th of Charles II, which abolished the tenure of knight's service in capite, and which Blackstone compares, for its salutary influence upon property, to the boasted provisions of Magna Charta itself. Yet even in this act we see the effects of that counteracting spirit which has contrived to weaken every effort of the English nation towards liberty.

[6] "They drove so fast [says Wellwood of the ministers of Charles I.], that it was no wonder that the wheels and chariot broke."—(Memoirs p. 86.)

[7] Among those auxiliaries which the Revolution of 1688 marshalled on the side of the Throne, the bugbear of Popery has not been the least convenient and serviceable. Those unskilful tyrants, Charles and James, instead of profiting by that useful subserviency which has always distinguished the ministers of our religious establishment, were so infatuated as to plan the ruin of this best bulwark of their power and moreover connected their designs upon the Church so undisguisedly with their attacks upon the Constitution that they identified in the minds of the people the interests of their religion and their liberties. During those times therefore "No Popery" was the watchword of freedom and served to keep the public spirit awake against the invasions of bigotry and prerogative.

[8] "It is a scandal [said Sir Charles Sedley in William's reign] that a government so sick at heart as ours is should look so well in the face."

[9] The senate still continued, during the reign of Tiberius, to manage all the business of the public: the money was then and long after coined by their authority, and every other public affair received their sanction.

[10] There is something very touching in what Tacitus tells us of the hopes that revived in a few patriot bosoms, when the death of Augustus was near approaching, and the fond expectation with which they already began "bona libertatis incassum disserere."

[11] Andrew Marvell, the honest opposer of the court during the reign of Charles the Second, and the last member of parliament who, according to the ancient mode, took wages from his constituents. The Commons have, since then, much changed their pay-masters.

[12] According to Xenophon, the chief circumstance which recommended these creatures to the service of Eastern princes was the ignominious station they held in society, and the probability of their being, upon this account, more devoted to the will and caprice of a master, from whose notice alone they derived consideration, and in whose favor they might seek refuge from the general contempt of mankind.

[13] Among the many measures, which, since the Revolution, have contributed to increase the influence of the Throne, and to feed up this "Aaron's serpent" of the constitution to its present healthy and respectable magnitude, there have been few more nutritive than the Scotch and Irish Unions.

INTOLERANCE,

A SATIRE.

"This clamor which pretends to be raised for the safety of religion has almost worn put the very appearance of it, and rendered us not only the most divided but the most immoral people upon the face of the earth."

ADDISON, Freeholder, No. 37.

Start not, my friend, nor think the Muse will stain
Her classic fingers with the dust profane
Of Bulls, Decrees and all those thundering scrolls
Which took such freedom once with royal souls,[1]
When heaven was yet the pope's exclusive trade,
And kings were damned as fast as now they're made,
No, no—let Duigenan search the papal chair
For fragrant treasures long forgotten there;
And, as the witch of sunless Lapland thinks
That little swarthy gnomes delight in stinks,
Let sallow Perceval snuff up the gale
Which wizard Duigenan's gathered sweets exhale.
Enough for me whose heart has learned to scorn
Bigots alike in Rome or England born,
Who loathe the venom whence-soe'er it springs,
From popes or lawyers,[2] pastrycooks or kings,—
Enough for me to laugh and weep by turns,
As mirth provokes or indignation burns,
As Canning Vapors or as France succeeds,
As Hawkesbury proses, or as Ireland bleeds!

  And thou, my friend, if, in these headlong days,
When bigot Zeal her drunken antics plays
So near a precipice, that men the while
Look breathless on and shudder while they smile—
If in such fearful days thou'lt dare to look
To hapless Ireland, to this rankling nook
Which Heaven hath freed from poisonous things in vain,
While Gifford's tongue and Musgrave's pen remain—
If thou hast yet no golden blinkers got
To shade thine eyes from this devoted spot,
Whose wrongs tho' blazoned o'er the world they be,
Placemen alone are privileged not to see—
Oh! turn awhile, and tho' the shamrock wreathes
My homely harp, yet shall the song it breathes
Of Ireland's slavery and of Ireland's woes
Live when the memory of her tyrant foes
Shall but exist, all future knaves to warn,
Embalmed in hate and canonized by scorn.
When Castlereagh in sleep still more profound
Than his own opiate tongue now deals around,
Shall wait the impeachment of that awful day
Which even his practised hand can't bribe away.

  Yes, my dear friend, wert thou but near me now,
To see how Spring lights up on Erin's brow
Smiles that shine out unconquerably fair
Even thro' the blood-marks left by Camden there,—[3]
Couldst thou but see what verdure paints the sod
Which none but tyrants and their slaves have trod,
And didst thou know the spirit, kind and brave,
That warms the soul of each insulted slave,
Who tired with struggling sinks beneath his lot
And seems by all but watchful France forgot—[4]
Thy heart would burn—yes, even thy Pittite heart
Would burn to think that such a blooming part
Of the world's garden, rich in nature's charms
And filled with social souls and vigorous arms,
Should be the victim of that canting crew,
So smooth, so godly,—yet so devilish too;
Who, armed at once with prayer-books and with whips,
Blood on their hands and Scripture on their lips,
Tyrants by creed and tortures by text,
Make this life hell in honor of the next!
Your Redesdales, Percevals,—great, glorious Heaven,
If I'm presumptuous, be my tongue forgiven,
When here I swear by my soul's hope of rest,
I'd rather have been born ere man was blest
With the pure dawn of Revelation's light,
Yes,—rather plunge me back in Pagan night,
And take my chance with Socrates for bliss,[5]
Than be the Christian of a faith like this,
Which builds on heavenly cant its earthly sway
And in a convert mourns to lose a prey;
Which, grasping human hearts with double hold,—
Like Danäe's lover mixing god and gold,[6]—
Corrupts both state and church and makes an oath
The knave and atheist's passport into both;
Which, while it dooms dissenting souls to know
Nor bliss above nor liberty below,
Adds the slave's suffering to the sinner's fear,
And lest he 'scape hereafter racks him here!
But no—far other faith, far milder beams
Of heavenly justice warm the Christian's dreams;
His creed is writ on Mercy's page above,
By the pure hands of all-atoning Love;
He weeps to see abused Religion twine
Round Tyranny's coarse brow her wreath divine;
And he, while round him sects and nations raise
To the one God their varying notes of praise,
Blesses each voice, whate'er its tone may be,
That serves to swell the general harmony.[7]

  Such was the spirit, gently, grandly bright,
That filled, oh Fox! thy peaceful soul with light;
While free and spacious as that ambient air
Which folds our planet in its circling care,
The mighty sphere of thy transparent mind
Embraced the world, and breathed for all mankind.
Last of the great, farewell!—yet not the last—
Tho' Britain's sunshine hour with thee be past,
Ierne still one ray of glory gives
And feels but half thy loss while Grattan lives.

[1] The king-deposing doctrine, notwithstanding its many mischievous absurdities, was of no little service to the cause of political liberty, by inculcating the right of resistance to tyrants and asserting the will of the people to be the only true fountain of power.

[2] When Innocent X. was entreated to decide the controversy between the Jesuits and the Jansenists, he answered, that "he had been bred a lawyer, and had therefore nothing to do with divinity." It were to be wished that some of our English pettifoggers knew their own fit element as well as Pope Innocent X.

[3] Not the Camden who speaks thus of Ireland:—"To wind up all, whether we regard the fruitfulness of the soil, the advantage of the sea, with so many commodious havens, or the natives themselves, who are warlike, ingenious, handsome, and well-complexioned, soft-skinned and very nimble, by reason of the pliantness of their muscles, this Island is in many respects so happy, that Giraldus might very well say, 'Nature had regarded with more favorable eyes than ordinary this Kingdom of Zephyr.'"

[4] The example of toleration, which Bonaparte has held forth, will, I fear, produce no other effect than that of determining the British government to persist, from the very spirit of opposition, in their own old system of intolerance and injustice: just as the Siamese blacken their teeth, "because," as they say, "the devil has white ones."

[5] In a singular work, written by one Franciscus Collius, "upon the Souls of the Pagans," the author discusses, with much coolness and erudition, all the probable chances of salvation upon which a heathen philosopher might calculate. Consigning to perdition without much difficulty Plato, Socrates, etc., the only sage at whose fate he seems to hesitate is Pythagoras, in consideration of his golden thigh, and the many miracles which he performed. But having balanced a little his claims and finding reason to father all these miracles on the devil, he at length, in the twenty-fifth chapter, decides upon damning him also.

[6] Mr. Fox, in his Speech on the Repeal of the Test Act (1790), thus condemns the intermixture of religion with the political constitution of a state:—"What purpose [he asks] can it serve, except the baleful purpose of communicating and receiving contamination? Under such an alliance corruption must alight upon the one, and slavery overwhelm the other."

[7] Both Bayle and Locke would have treated the subject of Toleration in a manner much more worthy of themselves and of the cause if they had written in an age less distracted by religious prejudices.

THE SCEPTIC,

A PHILOSOPHICAL SATIRE.

PREFACE.

The Sceptical Philosophy of the Ancients has been no less misrepresented than the Epicurean. Pyrrho may perhaps have carried it to rather an irrational excess;—but we must not believe with Beattie all the absurdities imputed to this philosopher; and it appears to me that the doctrines of the school, as explained by Sextus Empiricus, are far more suited to the wants and infirmities of human reason as well as more conducive to the mild virtues of humility and patience, than any of those systems of philosophy which preceded the introduction of Christianity. The Sceptics may be said to have held a middle path between the Dogmatists and Academicians; the former of whom boasted that they had attained the truth while the latter denied that any attainable truth existed. The Sceptics however, without either asserting or denying its existence, professed to be modestly and anxiously in search of it; or, as St. Augustine expresses it, in his liberal tract against the Manichaeans, "nemo nostrum dicat jam se invenisse veritatem; sic eam quoeramus quasi ab utrisque nesciatur." From this habit of impartial investigation and the necessity which it imposed upon them of studying not only every system of philosophy but every art and science which professed to lay its basis in truth, they necessarily took a wider range of erudition and were far more travelled in the regions of philosophy than those whom conviction or bigotry had domesticated in any particular system. It required all the learning of dogmatism to overthrow the dogmatism of learning; and the Sceptics may be said to resemble in this respect that ancient incendiary who stole from the altar the fire with which he destroyed the temple. This advantage over all the other sects is allowed to them even by Lipsius, whose treatise on the miracles of the Virgo Hallensis will sufficiently save him from all suspicion of scepticism. "labore, ingenio, memoria," he says, "supra omnes pene philosophos fuisse.—quid nonne omnia aliorum secta tenere debuerunt et inquirere, si poterunt refellere? res dicit nonne orationes varias, raras, subtiles inveniri ad tam receptas, claras, certas (ut videbatur) sententias evertendas?" etc.—"Manuduct. ad Philosoph. Stoic." Dissert. 4.

Between the scepticism of the ancients and the moderns the great difference is that the former doubted for the purpose of investigating, as may be exemplified by the third book of Aristotle's Metaphysics, while the latter investigate for the purpose of doubting, as may be seen through most of the philosophical works of Hume. Indeed the Pyrrhonism of latter days is not only more subtle than that of antiquity, but, it must be confessed, more dangerous in its tendency. The happiness of a Christian depends so essentially upon his belief, that it is but natural he should feel alarm at the progress of doubt, lest it should steal by degrees into that region from which he is most interested in excluding it, and poison at last the very spring of his consolation and hope. Still however the abuses of doubting ought not to deter a philosophical mind from indulging mildly and rationally in its use; and there is nothing surely more consistent with the meek spirit of Christianity than that humble scepticism which professes not to extend its distrust beyond the circle of human pursuits and the pretensions of human knowledge. A follower of this school may be among the readiest to admit the claims of a superintending Intelligence upon his faith and adoration: it is only to the wisdom of this weak world that he refuses or at least delays his assent;—it is only in passing through the shadow of earth that his mind undergoes the eclipse of scepticism. No follower of Pyrrho has ever spoken more strongly against the dogmatists than St. Paul himself, in the First Epistle to the Corinthians; and there are passages in Ecclesiastes and other parts of Scripture, which justify our utmost diffidence in all that human reason originates. Even the Sceptics of antiquity refrained carefully from the mysteries of theology, and in entering the temples of religion laid aside their philosophy at the porch. Sextus Empiricus declares the acquiescence of his sect in the general belief of a divine and foreknowing Power:—In short it appears to me that this rational and well-regulated scepticism is the only daughter of the Schools that can safely be selected as a handmaid for Piety. He who distrusts the light of reason will be the first to follow a more luminous guide; and if with an ardent love for truth he has sought her in vain through the ways of this life, he will but turn with the more hope to that better world where all is simple, true and everlasting: for there is no parallax at the zenith;—it is only near our troubled horizon that objects deceive us into vague and erroneous calculations.

THE SCEPTIC

As the gay tint that decks the vernal rose[1]
Not in the flower but in our vision glows;
As the ripe flavor of Falernian tides
Not in the wine but in our taste resides;
So when with heartfelt tribute we declare
That Marco's honest and that Susan's fair,
'Tis in our minds and not in Susan's eyes
Or Marco's life the worth or beauty lies:
For she in flat-nosed China would appear
As plain a thing as Lady Anne is here;
And one light joke at rich Loretto's dome
Would rank good Marco with the damned at Rome.

  There's no deformity so vile, so base,
That 'tis not somewhere thought a charm, a grace;
No foul reproach that may not steal a beam
From other suns to bleach it to esteem.
Ask who is wise?—you'll find the self-same man
A sage in France, a madman in Japan;
And here some head beneath a mitre swells,
Which there had tingled to a cap and bells:
Nay, there may yet some monstrous region be,
Unknown to Cook and from Napoleon free,
Where Castlereagh would for a patriot pass
And mouthing Musgrave scarce be deemed an ass!

  "List not to reason (Epicurus cries),
"But trust the senses, there conviction lies:"[2]—
Alas! they judge not by a purer light,
Nor keep their fountains more untinged and bright:
Habit so mars them that the Russian swain
Will sigh for train-oil while he sips Champagne;
And health so rules them, that a fever's heat
Would make even Sheridan think water sweet.

  Just as the mind the erring sense[3] believes,
The erring mind in turn the sense deceives;
And cold disgust can find but wrinkles there,
Where passion fancies all that's smooth and fair.
P * * * *, who sees, upon his pillow laid,
A face for which ten thousand pounds were paid,
Can tell how quick before a jury flies
The spell that mockt the warm seducer's eyes.

  Self is the medium thro' which Judgment's ray
Can seldom pass without being turned astray.
The smith of Ephesus[4] thought Dian's shrine,
By which his craft most throve, the most divine;
And even the true faith seems not half so true,
When linkt with one good living as with two.
Had Wolcot first been pensioned by the throne,
Kings would have suffered by his praise alone;
And Paine perhaps, for something snug per ann.,
Had laught like Wellesley at all Rights of Man.

  But 'tis not only individual minds,—
Whole nations too the same delusion blinds.
Thus England, hot from Denmark's smoking meads,
Turns up her eyes at Gallia's guilty deeds;
Thus, self-pleased still, the same dishonoring chain
She binds in Ireland she would break in Spain;
While praised at distance, but at home forbid,
Rebels in Cork are patriots at Madrid.

  If Grotius be thy guide, shut, shut the book,—
In force alone for Laws of Nations look.
Let shipless Danes and whining Yankees dwell
On naval rights, with Grotius and Vattel.
While Cobbet's pirate code alone appears
Sound moral sense to England and Algiers.

  Woe to the Sceptic in these party days
Who wafts to neither shrine his puffs of praise!
For him no pension pours its annual fruits,
No fertile sinecure spontaneous shoots;
Not his the meed that crowned Don Hookham's rhyme,
Nor sees he e'er in dreams of future time
Those shadowy forms of sleek reversions rise,
So dear to Scotchmen's second-sighted eyes.
Yet who that looks to History's damning leaf,
Where Whig and Tory, thief opposed to thief,
On either side in lofty shame are seen,[5]
While Freedom's form lies crucified between—
Who, Burdett, who such rival rogues can see,
But flies from both to Honesty and thee?

  If weary of the world's bewildering maze,[6]
Hopeless of finding thro' its weedy ways
One flower of truth, the busy crowd we shun,
And to the shades of tranquil learning run,
How many a doubt pursues! how oft we sigh
When histories charm to think that histories lie!
That all are grave romances, at the best,
And Musgrave's but more clumsy than the rest.
By Tory Hume's seductive page beguiled,
We fancy Charles was just and Strafford mild;[7]
And Fox himself with party pencil draws
Monmouth a hero, "for the good old cause!"

Then rights are wrongs and victories are defeats,
As French or English pride the tale repeats;
And when they tell Corunna's story o'er,
They'll disagree in all but honoring Moore:
Nay, future pens to flatter future courts
May cite perhaps the Park-guns' gay reports,
To prove that England triumphs on the morn
Which found her Junot's jest and Europe's scorn.

  In science too—how many a system, raised
Like Neva's icy domes, awhile hath blazed
With lights of fancy and with forms of pride,
Then, melting, mingled with the oblivious tide!
Now Earth usurps the centre of the sky,
Now Newton puts the paltry planet by;
Now whims revive beneath Descartes's[8] pen,
Which now, assailed by Locke's, expire again.
And when perhaps in pride of chemic powers,
We think the keys of Nature's kingdom ours,
Some Davy's magic touch the dream unsettles,
And turns at once our alkalis to metals.
Or should we roam in metaphysic maze
Thro' fair-built theories of former days,
Some Drummond from the north, more ably skilled,
Like other Goths, to ruin than to build,
Tramples triumphant thro' our fanes o'erthrown,
Nor leaves one grace, one glory of its own.

  Oh! Learning, whatsoe'er thy pomp and boast,
_Un_lettered minds have taught and charmed men most.
The rude, unread Columbus was our guide
To worlds, which learned Lactantius had denied;
And one wild Shakespeare following Nature's lights
Is worth whole planets filled with Stagyrites.

  See grave Theology, when once she strays
From Revelation's path, what tricks she plays;
What various heavens,—all fit for bards to sing,—
Have churchmen dreamed, from Papias,[9] down to King![10]
While hell itself, in India naught but smoke[11]
In Spain's a furnace and in France—a joke.

  Hail! modest Ignorance, thou goal and prize,
Thou last, best knowledge of the simply wise!
Hail! humble Doubt, when error's waves are past,
How sweet to reach thy sheltered port at last,
And there by changing skies nor lured nor awed.
Smile at the battling winds that roar abroad.
There gentle Charity who knows how frail
The bark of Virtue, even in summer's gale,
Sits by the nightly fire whose beacon glows
For all who wander, whether friends or foes.
There Faith retires and keeps her white sail furled,
Till called to spread it for a better world;
While Patience watching on the weedy shore,
And mutely waiting till the storm be o'er,
Oft turns to Hope who still directs her eye
To some blue spot just breaking in the sky!

  Such are the mild, the blest associates given
To him who doubts,—and trusts in naught but Heaven!

[1] "The particular bulk, number, figure, and motion of the parts of fire or snow are really in them, whether any one perceives them or not, and therefore they may be called real qualities because they really exist in those bodies; but light, heat, whiteness or coldness are no more really in them than sickness or pain is in manna. Take away the sensation of them; let not the eye see light or colors, nor the ears hear sounds; let the palate not taste nor the nose smell, and all colors, tastes, odors and sounds, as they are such particular ideas, vanish and cease."—Locke, book ii. chap 8.

[2] This was the creed also of those modern Epicureans, whom Ninon de l'Enclos collected around her in the Rue des Tournelles, and whose object seems to have been to decry the faculty of reason, as tending only to embarrass our wholesome use of pleasures, without enabling us, in any degree, to avoid their abuse. Madame des Houlières, the fair pupil of Des Barreaux in the arts of poetry and gallantry, has devoted most of her verses to this laudable purpose, and is even such a determined foe to reason, that, in one of her pastorals, she congratulates her sheep on the want of it.

[3] Socrates and Plato were the grand sources of ancient scepticism. According to Cicero ("de Orator," lib. iii.), they supplied Arcesilas with the doctrines of the Middle Academy; and how closely these resembled the tenets of the Sceptics, may be seen even in Sextus Empiricus (lib. i. cap. 33), who with all his distinctions can scarcely prove any difference. It appears strange that Epicurus should have been a dogmatist; and his natural temper would most probably have led him to the repose of scepticism had not the Stoics by their violent opposition to his doctrines compelled him to be as obstinate as themselves.

[4] Acts, chap. xix. "For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gain unto the craftsmen."

[5] "Those two thieves," says Ralph, between whom the nation is crucified."—"Use and Abuse of Parliaments."

[6] The agitation of the ship is one of the chief difficulties which impede the discovery of the longitude at sea; and the tumult and hurry of life are equally unfavorable to that calm level of mind which is necessary to an inquirer after truth.

[7] He defends Stafford's conduct as "innocent and even laudable." In the same spirit, speaking of the arbitary sentences of the Star Chamber, he says,—"The severity of the Star Chamber, which was generally ascribed to Laud's passionate disposition, was perhaps in itself somewhat blamable."

[8] Descartes, who is considered as the parent of modern scepticism, says, that there is nothing in the whole range of philosophy which does not admit of two opposite opinions, and which is not involved in doubt and uncertainty. Gassendi is likewise to be added to the list of modern Sceptics, and Wedderkopff, has denounced Erasmus also as a follower of Pyrrho, for his opinions upon the Trinity, and some other subjects. To these if we add the names of Bayle, Malebranche, Dryden, Locke, etc., I think there is no one who need be ashamed of insulting in such company.

[9] Papias lived about the time of the apostles, and is supposed to have given birth to the heresy of the Chiliastae, whose heaven was by no means of a spiritual nature, but rather an anticipation of the Prophet of Hera's elysium.

[10] King, in his "Morsels of Criticisms," vol. i., supposes the sun to be the receptacle of blessed spirits.

[11] The Indians call hell "the House of Smoke."