Part 29

Franklin. In regard to politics, I am not quite certain whether a politician may not be too far-sighted: but I am quite certain that, if it be a fault, it is one into which few have fallen. The policy of the Romans in the time of the republic, seems to have been prospective. Some of the Dutch also, and of the Venetians, used the telescope. But in monarchies the prince, not the people, is consulted by the minister of the day; and what pleases the weakest supersedes what is approved by the wisest.

Shipley. We have had great statesmen: Burleigh, Cromwell, Marlborough, Somers: and whatever may have been in the eyes of a moralist the vices of Walpole, none ever understood more perfectly, or pursued more steadily, the direct and palpable interests of the country. Since his administration, our affairs have never been managed by men of business; and it was more than could have been expected that, in our war against the French in Canada, the appointment fell on an able commander.

Franklin. Such an anomaly is unlikely to recur. You have in the English Parliament (I speak of both Houses) only two great men; only two considerate and clear-sighted politicians; Chatham and Burke. Three or four can say clever things; several have sonorous voices; many vibrate sharp comminations from the embrasures of portentously slit sleeves; and there are those to be found who deliver their oracles out of wigs as worshipful as the curls of Jupiter, however they may be grumbled at by the flour-mills they have laid under such heavy contribution; yet nearly all of all parties want alike the sagacity to discover that in striking America you shake Europe; that kings will come out of the war either to be victims or to be despots; and that within a quarter of a century they will be hunted down like vermin by the most servile nations, or slain in their palaces by their own courtiers. In a peace of twenty years you might have paid off the greater part of your National Debt, indeed as much of it as it would be expedient to discharge, and you would have left your old enemy France labouring and writhing under the intolerable and increasing weight of hers. This is the only way in which you can ever quite subdue her; and in this you subdue her without a blow, without a menace, and without a wrong. As matters now stand, you are calling her from attending to the corruptions of her court, and inviting her from bankruptcy to glory.

Shipley. I see not how bankruptcy can be averted by the expenditure of war.

Franklin. It cannot. But war and glory are the same thing to France, and she sings as shrilly and as gaily after a beating as before. With a subsidy to a less amount than she has lately been accustomed to squander in six weeks, and with no more troops than would garrison a single fortress, she will enable us to set you at defiance, and to do you a heavier injury in two campaigns than she has been able to do in two centuries, although your king was in her pay against you. She will instantly be our ally, and soon our scholar. Afterward she will sell her crown jewels and her church jewels, which cover the whole kingdom, and will derive unnatural strength from her vices and her profligacy. You ought to have conciliated us as your ally, and to have had no other, excepting Holland and Denmark. England could never have, unless by her own folly, more than one enemy. Only one is near enough to strike her; and that one is down. All her wars for six hundred years have not done this; and the first trumpet will untrance her. You leave your house open to incendiaries while you are running after a refractory child. Had you laid down the rod, the child would have come back. And because he runs away from the rod, you take up the poker. Seriously, what means do you possess of enforcing your unjust claims and insolent authority? Never since the Norman Conquest had you an army so utterly inefficient, or generals so notoriously unskilful: no, not even in the reign of that venal traitor, that French stipendiary, the second Charles. Those were yet living who had fought bravely for his father, and those also who had vanquished him: and Victory still hovered over the mast that had borne the banners of our Commonwealth: ours, ours, my lord! the word is the right word here.

Shipley. I am depressed in spirit, and can sympathize but little in your exultation. All the crimes of Nero and Caligula are less afflicting to humanity, and consequently we may suppose will bring down on the offenders a less severe retribution, than an unnecessary and unjust war. And yet the authors and abettors of this most grievous among our earthly calamities, the enactors and applauders (on how vast a theatre!) of the first and greatest crime committed upon earth, are quiet complacent creatures, jovial at dinner, hearty at breakfast, and refreshed with sleep! Nay, the prime movers in it are called most religious and most gracious; and the hand that signs in cold blood the death-warrant of nations, is kissed by the kind-hearted, and confers distinction upon the brave! The prolongation of a life that shortens so many others, is prayed for by the conscientious and the pious! Learning is inquisitive in the research of phrases to celebrate him who has conferred such blessings, and the eagle of genius holds the thunderbolt by his throne! Philosophy, O my friend, has hitherto done little for the social state; and Religion has nearly all her work to do! She too hath but recently washed her hands from blood, and stands neutrally by, yes, worse than neutrally, while others shed it. I am convinced that no day of my life will be so censured by my own clergy, as this, the day on which the last hopes of peace have abandoned us, and the only true minister of it is pelted from our shores. Farewell, until better times! may the next generation be wiser! and wiser it surely will be, for the lessons of Calamity are far more impressive than those which repudiated Wisdom would have taught.

Franklin. Folly hath often the same results as Wisdom: but Wisdom would not engage in her schoolroom so expensive an assistant as Calamity. There are, however, some noisy and unruly children whom she alone has the method of rendering tame and tractable: perhaps it may be by setting them to their tasks both sore and supperless. The ship is getting under weigh. Adieu once more, my most reverend and noble friend! Before me in imagination do I see America, beautiful as Leda in her infant smiles, when her father Jove first raised her from the earth; and behind me I leave England, hollow, unsubstantial, and broken, as the shell she burst from.

Shipley. O worst of miseries, when it is impiety to pray that our country may be successful. Farewell! may every good attend you! with as little of evil to endure or to inflict, as national sins can expect from the Almighty.

SOUTHEY AND LANDOR

Southey. Of all the beautiful scenery round King's Weston the view from this terrace, and especially from this sundial, is the pleasantest.

Landor. The last time I ever walked hither in company (which, unless with ladies, I 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 Shirehampton, 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 Llanthony 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 pathway 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.

Southey. 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 forbearance! At the very moment when most, beside yourself, catching up half my words, would call and employ against me in its ordinary 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 are readier to converse. There are half-hours when, although in good humour 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 nor sunshine of the 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 contended that public men, public women, and the public press, may be all designated by one and the same trisyllable. He is reported 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!' Enraged 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 seaman, 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 midshipman: '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 consciousness 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 Controller 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 generalities. Radishes and salt are the picnic quota of slim spruce reviewers: 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 sometimes poetical.

Southey. Little do I approve of it in prose on any subject. Demosthenes and Aeschines, Lisias 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 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. There 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.

Landor. 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 another 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.

Landor. 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 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 acknowledge 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 everything 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 anything are unable to confine the displeasure to one spot. We dislike everything a little when we dislike anything 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. 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 establishment 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 can be said more plainly. Not so in poetry: if it were, much of Pindar and Aeschylus, and no little of Dante, would be censurable.