Note Book of an English Opium-Eater, Thomas de Quincey [the reading list .TXT] 📗

with the comma after _difficult _, but after _thou_; and there is a most effective and grand suspension intended. It is Satan who speaks-- Satan in the wilderness; and he marks, as he wishes to mark, the tremendous opposition of attitude between the two parties to the temptation.

'Not difficult if thou----'

there let the reader pause, as if pulling up suddenly four horses in harness, and throwing them on their haunches--not difficult if thou (in some mysterious sense the son of God); and then, as with a burst of thunder, again giving the reins to your _quadriga_,

'----hearken to me:'

that is, to me, that am the Prince of the Air, and able to perform all my promises for those that hearken to any temptations.

Two lines are cited under the same ban of irreconcilability to our ears, but on a very different plea. The first of these lines is--

'_Launcelot, or Pellias, or Pellinore;_'

The other

_'Quintius, Fabricius, Curius, Regulus._'

The reader will readily suppose that both are objected to as 'roll-calls of proper names.' Now, it is very true that nothing is more offensive to the mind than the practice of mechanically packing into metrical successions, as if packing a portmanteau, names without meaning or significance to the feelings. No man ever carried that atrocity so far as Boileau, a fact of which Mr. Landor is well aware; and slight is the sanction or excuse that can be drawn from _him_. But it must not be forgotten that Virgil, so scrupulous in finish of composition, committed this fault. I remember a passage ending

'----Noemonaque Prytaninque;'

but, having no Virgil within reach, I cannot at this moment quote it accurately. Homer, with more excuse, however, from the rudeness of his age, is a deadly offender in this way. But the cases from Milton are very different. Milton was incapable of the Homeric or Virgilian blemish. The objection to such rolling musketry of names is, that unless interspersed with epithets, or broken into irregular groups by brief circumstances of parentage, country, or romantic incident, they stand audaciously perking up their heads like lots in a catalogue, arrow-headed palisades, or young larches in a nursery ground, all occupying the same space, all drawn up in line, all mere iterations of each other. But in

'_Quintius, Fabricius, Curius, Regulus,_'

though certainly not a good line _when insulated_ (better, however, in its connection with the entire succession of which it forms part), the apology is, that the massy weight of the separate characters enables them to stand like granite pillars or pyramids, proud of their self-supporting independency.

Mr. Landor makes one correction by a simple improvement in the punctuation, which has a very fine effect. Rarely has so large a result been distributed through a sentence by so slight a change. It is in the 'Samson.' Samson says, speaking of himself (as elsewhere) with that profound pathos, which to all hearts invests Milton's own situation in the days of his old age, when he was composing that drama--

'Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him
_Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves._'

Thus it is usually printed; that is, without a comma in the latter line; but, says Landor, 'there ought to be commas after _eyeless_, after _Gaza_, after _mill_.' And why? because thus 'the grief of Samson is aggravated at every member of the sentence.' He (like Milton) was--1. blind; 2. in a city of triumphant enemies; 3. working for daily bread; 4. herding with slaves; Samson literally, and Milton with those whom politically he regarded as such.

Mr. Landor is perfectly wrong, I must take the liberty of saying, when he demurs to the line in Paradise Regained:

'_From that placid aspect and meek regard,_'

on the ground that; '_meek regard_ conveys no new idea to _placid aspect_.' But _aspect_ is the countenance of Christ when passive to the gaze of others: _regard_ is the same countenance in active contemplation of those others whom he loves or pities. The _placid aspect_ expresses, therefore, the divine rest; the _meek regard_ expresses the divine benignity: the one is the self-absorption of the total Godhead, the other the eternal emanation of the Filial Godhead.

'By what ingenuity,' says Landor, 'can we erect into a verse--

"_In the bosom of bliss, and light of light?_'"

Now really it is by my watch exactly three minutes too late for _him_ to make that objection. The court cannot receive it now; for the line just this moment cited, the ink being hardly yet dry, is of the same identical structure. The usual iambic flow is disturbed in both lines by the very same ripple, viz., a trochee in the second foot, _placid_ in the one line, _bosom_ in the other. They are a sort of _snags_, such as lie in the current of the Mississippi. _There_, they do nothing but mischief. Here, when the lines are read in their entire _nexus_, the disturbance stretches forwards and backwards with good effect on the music. Besides, if it did _not_, one is willing to take a _snag_ from Milton, but one does not altogether like being _snagged_ by the Mississippi. One sees no particular reason for bearing it, if one only knew how to be revenged on a river.

But, of these metrical skirmishes, though full of importance to the impassioned text of a great poet (for mysterious is the life that connects all modes of passion with rhythmus), let us suppose the casual reader to have had enough. And now at closing for the sake of change, let us treat him to a harlequin trick upon another theme. Did the reader ever happen to see a sheriff's officer arresting an honest gentleman, who was doing no manner of harm to gentle or simple, and immediately afterwards a second sheriff's officer arresting the first--by which means that second officer merits for himself a place in history; for at the same moment he liberates a deserving creature (since an arrested officer cannot possibly bag his prisoner), and he also avenges the insult put upon that worthy man? Perhaps the reader did _not_ ever see such a sight; and, growing personal, he asks _me_, in return, if _I_ ever saw it. To say the truth, I never _did_; except once, in a too-flattering dream; and though I applauded so loudly as even to waken myself, and shouted '_encore_,' yet all went for nothing; and I am still waiting for that splendid exemplification of retributive justice. But why? Why should it be a spectacle so uncommon? For surely those official arresters of men must want arresting at times as well as better people. At least, however, _en attendant_ one may luxuriate in the vision of such a thing; and the reader shall now see such a vision rehearsed. He shall see Mr. Landor arresting Milton--Milton, of all men!-- for a flaw in his Roman erudition; and then he shall see me instantly stepping up, tapping Mr. Landor on the shoulder, and saying, 'Officer, you're wanted;' whilst to Milton I say, touching my hat, 'Now, sir, be off; run for your life, whilst I hold his man in custody, lest he should fasten on you again.'

What Milton had said, speaking of the '_watchful_ cherubim,' was--

'Four faces each Had, _like a double Janus_;'

Upon which Southey--but, of course, Landor, ventriloquizing through Southey--says, 'Better left this to the imagination: double Januses are queer figures.' Not at all. On the contrary, they became so common, that finally there were no other. Rome, in her days of childhood, contented herself with a two-faced Janus; but, about the time of the first or second Caesar, a very ancient statue of Janus was exhumed, which had four faces. Ever afterwards, this sacred resurgent statue became the model for any possible Janus that could show himself in good company. The _quadrifrons Janus_ was now the orthodox Janus; and it would have been as much a sacrilege to rob him of any single face as to rob a king's statue [2] of its horse. One thing may recall this to Mr. Landor's memory. I think it was Nero, but certainly it was one of the first six Caesars, that built, or that finished, a magnificent temple to Janus; and each face was so managed as to point down an avenue leading to a separate market-place. Now, that there were _four_ market-places, I will make oath before any Justice of the Peace. One was called the _Forum Julium_, one the _Forum Augustum_, a third the _Forum Transitorium_: what the fourth was called is best known to itself, for really I forget. But if anybody says that perhaps it was called the _Forum Landorium_, I am not the man to object; for few names have deserved such an honor more, whether from those that then looked forward into futurity with one face, or from our posterity that will look back into the vanishing past with another.


FOOTNOTES

[1] _Squatters_:--They are a sort of self-elected warming-pans. What we in England mean by the political term '_warming-pans_,' are men who occupy, by consent, some official place, or Parliamentary seat, until the proper claimant is old enough in law to assume his rights. When the true man comes to bed, the warming-pan respectfully turns out. But these ultra-marine warming-pans _wouldn't_ turn out. They showed fight, and wouldn't hear of the true man, even as a bed-fellow.

[2] _A king's statue_:--Till very lately the etiquette of Europe was, that none but royal persons could have equestrian statues. Lord Hopetoun, the reader will object, is allowed to have a horse, in St. Andrew's Square, Edinburgh. True, but observe that he is not allowed to mount him. The first person, so far as I remember, that, not being royal, has, in our island, seated himself comfortably in the saddle, is the Duke of Wellington.


FALSIFICATION OF ENGLISH HISTORY.

I am myself, and always have been, a member of the Church of England, and am grieved to hear the many attacks against the Church [frequently most illiberal attacks], which not so much religion as political rancor gives birth to in every third journal that I take up. This I say to acquit myself of all dishonorable feelings, such as I would abhor to co-operate with, in bringing a very heavy charge against that great body in its literary capacity. Whosoever has reflected on the history of the English constitution--must be aware that the most important stage of its development lies within the reign of Charles I. It is true that the judicial execution of that prince has been allowed by many persons to vitiate all that was done by the heroic parliament of November, 1640: and the ordinary histories of England assume as a matter of course that the whole period of parliamentary history through those times is to be regarded as a period of confusion. Our constitution, say they, was formed in 1688-9. Meantime it is evident to any reflecting man that the revolution simply re-affirmed the principles developed in the strife between the two great parties which had arisen in the reign of James I., and had ripened and come to issue with each other in the reign of his son. Our constitution was not a birth of a single instant, as they would represent it, but a gradual growth and development through a long tract of time. In particular the doctrine of the king's vicarious responsibility in the person of his ministers, which first gave a sane and salutary meaning to the