CHAPTER XI. FROM THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO TO THE ACCESSION OF QUEEN VICTORIA.—A.D. 1815 to A.D. 1837. "PEACE hath her victories, no less renowned than War," wrote Milton, and many victories remained for peace to win when the war closed in 1815. When the United Kingdom contained fifteen million of people, the produce of taxation was seventy-two million of pounds. In that year, in a time of abundant harvest, our English Parliament set up a Corn Law that closed the ports till wheat rose to the price of eighty shillings. Bread was at famine price in 1816, 1817, and 1818. There were riots, and there were executions. In 1817 the House of Lords threw out a Bill introduced by Sir Samuel Romilly, and passed by the House of Commons, for repealing the Act which made private theft in a shop to the amount of five shillings punishable with death. Juries had generally ceased to convict, but in 1785 ninety-seven persons had been hanged for that offence, and twenty of them at one time. When Sir Samuel Romilly brought in his Bill, there was a child of ten lying in Newgate under sentence of death for that offence. A Committee of the House of Commons, appointed in 1815 to inquire into the state of beggary in London, was told of two thousand miserable people crammed into forty houses in George Yard, Whitechapel. Another Committee found in 1816 that there were 120,000 children in London wholly without means of education, the whole population of London being then not very much over a million. The cost of illadministered poor relief had risen during the war from two millions to seven. Before 1816 there was no such thing as a savings bank in London. In 1816 William Cobbett began publishing his Weekly Register for twopence, and became the political mind of many thousands who felt in their daily lives the wrongs and evils of their time, and had no minds of their own formed to right use of reason. When a knot of vigorous young men, met in Francis Jeffrey's room at Edinburgh, planned The Edinburgh Review which made its first appearance in 1802, there was a resolve that it should battle, with help of the best attainable wit and wisdom, against ills manifest to many educated thinkers. In 1839, when furnishing a preface to his collected essays from The Edinburgh Review, Sydney Smith wrote, "To appreciate the value of The Edinburgh Review, the state of England at the period when that journal began should be had in remembrance. The Catholics were not emancipated the Corporation and Test Acts were unrepealed the Game Laws were horribly oppressive -steel traps and spring guns were set all over the country-prisoners tried for their lives could have no Counsel-Lord Eldon and the Court of Chancery pressed heavily upon mankind-libel was punished by the most cruel and vindictive imprisonment— the principles of Political Economy were little understood the laws of Debt and of Conspiracy were upon the worst possible footing-the enormous wickedness of the Slave Trade was tolerated--a thousand evils were in existence, which the talents of good and able men have since lessened or removed; and these effects have been not a little assisted by the honest boldness of The Edinburgh Review. When The Quarterly Review followed in 1808 there was the needed fellowship of work among minds of equal honesty and culture, but with opposite views of many points of controversy. Free conflict of opinion is not least a fellowship to be warmly welcomed, when it assures that full discussion of unsettled questions by which alone the truth can be made clear, and the slow gains of civilisation become fixed wealth of the future. The newspaper system was slowly making way, against great difficulties, to its place as the representative of free continuous debate of the whole nation on its own affairs, as honestly set forth together with the comments on them representing every form of thought. The monthly magazines began to take their place in the great council after 1815. Blackwood's Magazine began its career of unbroken success in 1817, and drew to itself the vigorous mind of John Wilson so completely that in literature he is nothing if not "Christopher North." The London Magazine, established in 1820, contained in its early numbers Charles Lamb's "Essays of Elia," Thomas Carlyle's "Life of Schiller," Thomas De Quincey's "Confessions of an English Opium Eater." The fifteen volumes of De Quincey's works consist wholly of articles contributed to magazines; and Charles Lamb, till his own story is revealed and has made him known to us as something better than the best that he can write, comes nearest to men's hearts as Elia. John Wilson and Thomas De Quincey were nearly of an age, one born in 1785, the other in 1786. Wilson was the son of a manufacturer at Paisley. De Quincey was the son of a Manchester manufacturer. Both lost their fathers early in life; Wilson inheriting a somewhat large fortune, De Quincey a small one. Both went to Oxford, but their friendship was not formed at the University. In all accidents of person and character they were opposites. John Wilson was tall, vigorous, athletic, warmly social; was excelled by none at Oxford in length of whiskers, length of flat jump, or hearty relish of poetry, English or Greek. Thomas De Quincey was small, sensitive, feeble of frame; a shy recluse at Oxford, paying little heed to the ways or studies of the place, though studying after his own fashion. With his quick nervous temperament he read to such good purpose that before he left school his master had said of him to a friend, "That boy could harangue an Athenian mob, better than you or I could address an English one." Both Wilson and De Quincey went from Oxford to the Lakes, and they first met in the house of Wordsworth. Thereafter they became firm friends. Wilson had money to spend, and spent it freely at Elleray; had as many boats as he pleased on Windermere, roamed over the hills, at night with his mind full of poetry, and by day among the people of the district with a cheery nature ready for all fun. De Quincey had acquired in early life a sense of pleasure in the use of opium. It became a daily habit after 1813, and in 1816 he is said to have been taking as much as eight thousand drops of laudanum a day, but reduced the number to a thousand, when, in that year 1816, he married. John Wilson also married, and paid for his wedding journey with a poem, published in 1812, "The Isle of Palms." About the year 1815 it was John Wilson's fortune to lose all his money. An uncle who had charge of it failed, and all was gone. Wilson pitied the actual misfortune of the older man, uttered no word of complaint, gave up Elleray and his boats, went to Edinburgh, took to law as a profession, and the establishment of Blackwood's Magazine just afterwards gave him an outlet for his energies. He had written moderately JOHN WILSON. From a Portrait by Sir John Watson Gordon, engraved as Frontispiece to his "Noctes Ambrosiana" (1863). good poems, but he wrote now excellent prose, and put his feeling as a poet into many a passage that expressed his deep enjoyment of nature. He and his fellow-contributors to Maga dealt audaciously with the public and with one another, but the breadth of John Wilson's powers of enjoyment, and his sympathetic insight into life and nature, made him. the chief source of the magazine's early prosperity. He could be Christopher North in his shootingjacket, with his whole mind on the moor or by the stream; he could discourse upon the poets, loving books as none can love them who see life only in printer's ink; could tell a Scottish tale with kindly grace, or sport in fancy at Ambrose's Tavern, and put wit, poetry, and eloquence, with some wild nonsense at times, into a dialogue of divers speakers. Among these Christopher North, representative of an editor where editor was none, was as much a creation of fancy as the playful treatment of James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, who, as a poet of nature, was made godfather to a good deal of the poetic SCENE-Ambrose's Hotel, Picardy Place.-Paper Parlour. North. How do you account, my dearest Shepherd, for the steadiness and perseverance of my affection for thee, seeing that I am naturally and artificially the most wayward, fickle, and capricious of all God's creatures? Not a friend but yourself, James, with whom I have not frequently and bit. terly quarrelled, often to the utter extinction of mutual regard -but towards my incomprehensible Brownie my heart ever yearns Shepherd. Haud your leein tongue, ye tyke, you've quarrelled wi' me mony thousan' times, and I've borne at your hands mair ill-usage than I wad hae taen frae ony ither mortal man in his Majesty's dominions. Yet I weel believe that only the shears o' Fate will ever cut the cords o' our friendship. I fancy it's just the same wi' you as wi' me, we maun like ane anither whether we wull or no-and that's the sort o' freendship for me-for it flourishes, like a mountain flower, in all weathers-braid and bricht in the sunshine, and just faulded up a wee in the sleet, sae that it micht maist be thocht dead, but fu' o' life in its cozy bield' ahint the mossy stane, and peering out again in a' its beauty at the sang o' the rising laverock. North. This world's friendships, James Shepherd. Are as cheap as crockery, and as easily broken by a fa'. They seldom can bide a clash without fleein intil flinders. O, sir, but maist men's hearts, and women's too, are like toom nits 3-nae kernel, and a splutter o' fushionless dust. I sometimes canna help thinkin that there's nae future state. North. Fie, fie, James, leave all such dark scepticism to a Byron-it is unworthy of the Shepherd. Shepherd. What for should sae mony puir, peevish, selfish, stupid, mean, and malignant creatures no just lie still in the mools among the ither worms, aneath their bits o' inscribed tomb-stones, aiblins railed in, and a' their nettles, wi' painted airn-rails, in a nook o' the kirkyard that's their ain property, and naebody's wushin to tak it frae them-What for, I say, shouldna they lie quate in skeleton for a thousand years, and then crummle, crummle, crummle awa intil the yearth o' which Time is made, and ne'er be reimmatterialeezed into Eternity? North. This is not like your usual gracious and benign philosophy, James; but, believe me, my friend, that within the spirit of the most degraded wretch that ever grovelled earthward from caudle-day to corpse-day, there has been some slumbering spark divine, inextinguishable by the death-damps of the cemetery Shepherd. Gran' words, sir, gran' words, nae doubt, mair especially "cemetery," which I'm fond o' usin mysel, as often's the subject and the verse will alloo. But after a', is't mair poetical than the "Grave"? Deevil a bit. For a wee, short, simple, stiff, stern, dour, and fearsome word, commend me to the "Grave." North. Let us change the channel of our discussion, James, if you please Shepherd. What! You're no feared for death, are you, sir? North. I am. Shepherd. So am I. There, only look at the cawnle expiring-faint, feeble, flickering, and just like ane o' us puir mortal human creatures, sair, sair unwilling to die! Whare's the snuffers, that I may put it out o' pain. I'm tell't that twa folk die every minute, or rather every moment. Isna that fearsome to think o'? North. Ay, James, children have been made orphans, and wives widows, since that wick began to fill the room with its funereal odour. Shepherd. Nae man can manage snuffers richt, unless he hae been accustomed to them when he was young. In the Forest, we a' use our fingers, or blaw the cawnles out wi' our mouths, or chap the brass sticks wi' the stinkin wicks again' the ribs and gin there was a pair o' snuffers in the house, you might hunt for them through a' the closets and presses for a fortnight, without their ever castin up. North. I hear that you intend to light up Mount Benger with gas, James. Is that a true bill? Shepherd. I had thochts o't-but the gasometer, I find comes ower high-so I shall stick to the "Lang Twas." O man, noo that the cawnle's out, isna that fire unco heartsome? Your face, sir, looks just perfeckly ruddy in the bleeze, and it wad tak a pair o' poorfu' specks to spy out a single wrinkle. You'll leeve yet for ither twa hundred Numbers. North. And then, my dear Shepherd, the editorship shall be thine. Shepherd. Na. When you're dead, Maga will be dead. She'll no surveeve you ae single day. Buried shall you be in ae grave, and curst be he that disturbs your banes! Afore you and her cam out, this wasna the same warld it has been sin' syne. Wut and wisdom never used to be seen linkin alang thegither, han'-in-han' as they are noo, frae ae end o' the month to the ither ;-there wasna prented a byuck that garred ye break out at ae page into grief, and at anither into a guffaw;-where could ye forgather wi'1 sic a canty crew o' chiels as ODoherty and the rest, passin themselves aff sometimes for real, and sometimes for fictious characters, till the puzzled public glowered as if they had flung the glamour ower her?—and oh, sir, afore you brak out, beautiful as had been many thousan' thousan' million, billion, trillion and quadrillion nights by firesides in huts or ha's, or out-by in the open air wi' the starry heavens resting on the saft hilltaps, yet a' the time that the heavenly bodies were performing their stated revolutions-there were nae, nae NOCTES AMBROSIANÆE! North. I have not, I would fain hope, my dear James, been altogether useless in my generation-but your partiality exaggerates my merits Shepherd. A man would require an oss magna sonaturum to do that. Suffice it to say, sir, that you are the wisest and wittiest of men. Dinna turn awa your face, or you'll get a crick in your neck. There's no sic a popular man in a' Britain the noo as Christopher North. Oh, sir, you'll dee as rich as Croesus-for every day there's wulls makin by auld leddies and young leddies, leaving you their residiatory legatee, sometimes, I fear, past the heirs, male or female, o' their bodies lawfully begotten. North. No, James, I trust that none of my admirers, since admirers you say the old man hath, will ever prove so unprin cipled as to leave their money away from their own kin. Nothing can justify that-but hopeless and incurable vice in the natural heirs. Shepherd. I wush I was worth just twenty thousan' pounds. I could leeve on that-but no on a farden less. In the first place, I would buy three or four pair o' tap-boots-and I would try to introduce into the Forest buckskin breeks. I would niest, sin' naebody's gien me ane in a present, buy a gold musical snuff-box, that would play tunes on the table. North. Heavens! James-at that rate you would be a ruined man before the coming of Christmas. You would see your name honourably mentioned in the Gazette. Shepherd. Then a gold twisted watch-chain, sax gold seals o' various sizes, frae the bigness o' my nieve amaist, doun to that o' a kitty-wren's egg. North. Which ODoherty would chouse you out of at brag, some night at his own lodgings, after the play. 3 Shepherd. Catch me at the cairds, unless it be a game at Birky; for I'm sick o' Whust itsel, I've sic desperate bad hauns dealt to me noo-no an ace ance in a month, and no that unseldom a haun without a face-caird, made up o' deuces, and trays, and fours, and fives, and be damned to them; so that to tak the verra weakest trick is entirely out o' my power, except it be by main force, harling the cairds to me whether the opposite side wull or no; and then at the close o' the round, threepin that I had twa honours-the knave and anither ane. Sic bad luck hae I in a' chance games, Mr. North, as you ken, that were I to fling dice for my life alang wi' a haill army o' fifty thousand men, I wad be sure to be shot; for I would fling aces after some puir trumlin drummer had flung deuces, and be led out into the middle o' a hollow square for execution. 4 North. James, you are very excursive this evening in your conversation-nobody is thinking of shooting you, James. Shepherd. And I'm sure that I hae nae thochts o' shootin mysel. But ance-it's a lang time syne-I saw a sodger shot -dead, sir, as a door-nail, or a coffin-nail, or ony ither kind o' nail. North. Was it in battle, James? Shepherd. In battle?-Na, na; neither you nor me was ever fond o' being in battles at ony time o' our lives. North. I was Private Secretary to Rodney when he beat Langara, James. Shepherd. Haud your tongue!-What a crowd on the Links that day! But a' wi' fixed whitish faces-nae speakin-no sae muckle as a whisper-a frozen dumbness that nae wecht? could break! North. You mean the spectators, James. Shepherd. Then the airmy appeared in the distance; for there were three haill regiments, a' wi' fixed beggonets; but nae music-nae music for a while, at least, till a' at ance, mercy on us! we heard, like laigh sullen thunder, the soun o' the great muffled drum, aye played on, ye ken, by a black man; in this case, an African neegger, sax feet four; and what bangs he gied the bass-the whites o' his een rowing about as if he was glad, atween every stroke! North. I remember him-the best pugilist then going, for it was long before the days of Richmond and Molineauxand nearer forty than thirty years ago, James. Shepherd. The tread o' the troops was like the step o' ae giant sae perfate was their discippleen-and afore I weel kent that they were a' in the Links, three sides o' a square were formed-and the soun' o' the great drum ceased, as at an inaudible word of command, or wavin o' a haun, or the lowerin o' a banner. It was but ae man that was about to die-but for that ae man, had their awe no hindered them, twenty thousan' folk wad at that moment hae broken out into lamentations and rueful cries-but as yet not a tear was shed -not a sigh was heaved-for had a' that vast crowd been sae 3 Beggar-my-neighbour. Threepin, asserting pertinaciously. First English, "threapian." Off Cape St. Vincent, on the 16th of January, 1780. 6 Links, windings of a river; flat ground by river, sea, or elsewhere. 7 Wecht, weight. mony images, or corpses raised up by cantrip in their deathclaes, they couldna hae been mair motionless than at that minute, nor mair speechless than that multitude o' leevin souls! North. I was myself one of the multitude, James. Shepherd. There, a' at ance, hoo or whare he came frae nane could tell-there, I say, a' at ance stood the mutineer. Some tell't me afterwards that they had seen him marchin along, twa-three yards ahint his coffin, wi' his head just a wee thocht inclined downwards, not in fear o' man or death, but in awe o' God and judgment, keeping time wi' a military step that was natural to him, and no unbecoming a brave man on the way to the grave, and his een fixed on the green that was fadin awa for ever and ever frae aneath his feet; but that was a sicht I saw not-for the first time I beheld him he was standin, a' unlike the ither men, in the middle o' that three-sided square, and there was a shudder through the haill multitude, just as if we had been a' standin haun in haun, and a natural philosopher had gien us a shock o' his electrical machine. "That's him-that's him-puir, puir fallow! Oh! but he's a pretty man!"-Such were the ejacu lations frae thousan's o' women, maist o' them young anes, but some o' them auld, and grey-headed aneath their mutches, and no a few wi' babies sookin or caterwailin at their breasts. North. A pretty girl fainted within half-a-dozen yards of where I stood. Shepherd. His name was Lewis Mackenzie-and as fine a young man he was as ever stepped on heather. The moment before he knelt down on his coffin, he seemed as fu' o' life as if he had stripped aff his jacket for a game at foot-ba', or to fling the hammer. Ay, weel micht the women-folk gaze on him wi red weeping een, for he had lo'ed them but ower weel; and mony a time, it is said, had he let himsel down the Castle-rock at night, God knows hoo, to meet his lemansbut a' that, a' his sins, and a' his crimes acted and only meditated, were at an end noo-puir fallow-and the platoon, wi fixed bezzuneta, were drawn up within ten yards, or less, oʻ where he stood, and he himsel havin tied a handkerchief ower his en. dropped down on his knees on his coffin, wi' faulded han is, and lips moving fast, fast, and white as ashes, in praver: North Carsed be the inexorable justice of military law !— b mint have been parionei. Sugierd. Parkiced! Hadna he disarmed his ain captain of he owed, and ran him through the shouther--in a mating cf which was himel the ringleader? King George on the the or durtna hae pari.ned him-it wad has been as much a bi mes vs worth-fr boo cold King, Kintra, and ir a standing army, in which matiny was not bathr Shepherd. A strang and stately auld man, and ane too that had been a soldier in his youth. Sorrow, not shame, somewhat bowed his head, and ance he reeled as if he were faint on a sudden.-But what the deevil's the use o' me haverin awa this way aboot the shootin o' a sodger, thretty years sin' syne, and mair too-for didna I see that auld silvery-headed father o' the mutineer staggering alang the Grassmarket, the verra next day after the execution, as fou as the Baltic, wi' a heap o' mischievous weans hallooin after him, and him a the while in a dwam o' drink and despair, maunderin about his son Lewis, then lyin a' barken'd wi' blood in his coffin, six feet deep in a fine rich loam. North. That very same afternoon I heard the drums and fifes of a recruiting party, belonging to the same regiment, winding away down towards Holyrood; and the place of Lewis Mackenzie, in the line of bold sergeants with their claymores, was supplied by a corporal, promoted to a triple bar on his sleeve, in consequence of the death of the mutineer. Shepherd. It was an awfu' scene, yon, sir; but there waIS naething humiliating to human nature in it, as in a hanging and it struck a wholesome fear into the souls o' many thousan sodgers. North. The silence and order of the troops, all the while, was sublime. ། ma improvement. Practice and theory must advance pari passu. People begin to see that something more goes to the composition of a fine murder than two blockheads to kill and be killed-a knife-a purse-and a dark lane. Design, gentlemen, grouping, light and shade, poetry, sentiment, are now deemed indispensable to attempts of this nature. Mr. Williams has exalted the ideal of murder to all of us; and to me, therefore, in particular, has deepened the arduousness of my task. Like Eschylus or Milton in poetry, like Michael Angelo in painting, he has carried his art to a point of colossal sublimity; and, as Mr. Wordsworth observes, has in a manner "created the taste by which he is to be enjoyed." To sketch the history of the art, and to examine its principles critically, now remains as a duty for the connoisseur, and for judges of quite another stamp from his Majesty's Judges of Assize. Before I begin, let me say a word or two to certain prigs, who affect to speak of our society as if it were in some degree immoral in its tendency. Immoral! Jupiter protect THOMAS DE QUINCEY. From the Portrait prefixed to his Collected Works (1862). me, gentlemen, what is it that people mean? I am for morality, and always shall be, and for virtue, and all that; and I do affirm, and always shall (let what will come of it), that murder is an improper line of conduct, highly improper; and I do not stick to assert, that any man who deals in murder, must have very incorrect ways of thinking, and truly inaccurate principles; and so far from aiding and abetting him by pointing out his victim's hiding-place, as a great moralist of Germany declared it to be every good man's duty to do, I would subscribe one shilling and sixpence to have him apprehended, which is more by eighteenpence than the most eminent moralists have hitherto subscribed for that purpose. But what then? Everything in this world has two handles. Murder, for instance, may be laid hold of by its moral handle (as it generally is in the pulpit, and at the Old Bailey), and that, I confess, is its weak side; or it may also be treated aesthetically, as the Germans call it -that is, in relation to good taste. To illustrate this, I will urge the authority of three eminent persons; viz., S. T. Coleridge, Aristotle, and Mr. Howship the surgeon. To begin with S. T. C. One night, many years ago, I was drinking tea with him in Berners Street (which, by the way, for a short street, has been uncommonly fruitful in men of genius). Others were there besides myself; and, amidst some carnal considerations of tea and toast, we were all imbibing a dissertation on Plotinus from the Attic lips of S. T. C. Suddenly a cry arose of, "Fire-fire!" upon which all of us, master and disciples, Plato and οἱ περὶ τον Πλάτωνα, rushed out, eager for the spectacle. The fire was in Oxford Street, at a pianofortemaker's; and, as it promised to be a conflagration of merit, I was sorry that my engagements forced me away from Mr. Coleridge's party, before matters had come to a crisis. Some days after, meeting with my Platonic host, I reminded him of the case, and begged to know how that very promising exhibition had terminated. "Oh, sir," said he, "it turned out so ill that we damned it unanimously." Now, does any man suppose that Mr. Coleridge-who, for all he is too fat to be a person of active virtue, is undoubtedly a worthy Christian-that this good S. T. C., I say, was an incendiary, or capable of wishing any ill to the poor man and his pianofortes (many of them, doubtless, with the additional keys)? On the contrary, I know him to be that sort of man, that I durst stake my life upon it, he would have worked an engine in a case of necessity, although rather of the fattest for such fiery trials of his virtue. But how stood the case? Virtue was in no request. On the arrival of the fire engines, morality had devolved wholly on the insurance office. This being the case, he had a right to gratify his taste. He had left his tea. Was he to have nothing in return? I contend that the most virtuous man, under the premises stated, was entitled to make a luxury of the fire, and to hiss it, as he would any other performance that raised expectations in the public mind which afterwards it disappointed. Again, to cite another great authority, what says the Stagirite? He (in the Fifth Book, I think it is, of his Metaphysics) describes what he calls KλETTY TéλELOV-i.e., a perfect thief; and, as to Mr. Howship, in a work of his on Indigestion, he makes no scruple to talk with admiration of a certain ulcer which he had seen, and which he styles " a beautiful ulcer." Now, will any man pretend, that, abstractedly considered, a thief could appear to Aristotle a perfect character, or that Mr. Howship could be enamoured of an ulcer? Aristotle, it is well known, was himself so very moral a character, that, not content with writing his Nichomachean Ethics, in one volume octavo, he also wrote another system, called Magna Moralia, or Big Ethics. Now, it is impossible that a man who composes any ethics at all, big or little, should admire a thief per se; and as to Mr. Howship, it is well known that he makes war upon all ulcers, and, without suffering himself to be seduced by their charms, endeavours to banish them from the County of Middlesex. But the truth is, that, however objectionable per se, yet, relatively to others of their class, both a thief and an ulcer may have infinite degrees of merit. They are both imperfections, it is true; but, to be imperfect being their essence, the very greatness of their imperfection becomes their perfection. Spartam nactus es, hanc exorna. A thief like Autolycus or the once famous George Barrington, and a grim phagedænic ulcer, superbly defined, and running regularly through all its natural stages, may no less justly be regarded as ideals after their kind, than the most faultless moss-rose amongst flowers, in its progress from bud to "bright consummate flower;" or, amongst human flowers, the most magnificent young female, apparelled 1 Those who were about Plato. 2 You have come into Sparta, be its ornament. |