Small, and yet within its sphere Hope, as bright as that which streams When their thrones were seen to melt,— As the spirit when compress'd Yet, tis strange, that she who made And the stork,-should stoop to thee! C. L. THE FAMILY JOURNAL.-NO. VIII. Swift's Mean and Great Figures. THE perusal of Apsley Honeycomb's records of Pope and the other celebrated men of that time, has made me look through their works again with a new zest. Something or other is sure to occasion me this pleasure at little intervals of time. The smallest additional light thrown upon the mind of a favourite author, makes me go over the whole picture afresh, and find something new to be delighted with. Of Pope enough has been said in our last number. I will invite the reader to peruse with me an article of Swift's upon Mean and Great Pigures made by several Persons. The whole of it shall be repeated, because it is small, full of variety, provokes a comment, and I think is very characteristic of the author, without being hackneyed in point of notoriety. It would be desirable to see many lists of this kind from different pens. They would afford good evidence of people's moral and political tastes. VOL. X. No. 55.-1825. 6 "Of those who have made GREAT FIGURES in some particular action or circumstance of their lives." "Alexander the Great, after his victory (at the straits of Mount Taurus) when he entered the tent, where the Queen and the Princesses of Persia fell at his feet."-This was great in one sense of the word, but not in the greatest. It was prodigious, if we consider how Persia had threatened the Greeks, and from what a summit these royal persons fell, at the feet of a young Macedonian. But after all it was royalty against royalty, pride against pride. It is very dramatic and conquering, but inasmuch as Alexander was not Epaminondas, it wants moral grandeur. Socrates, the whole last day of his life, and particularly from the time he took the poison, until the moment he expired.-This is moral grandeur triumphant; triumphant in defeat. Alexander, great as he was, had something in him which could not bear disappointment. Here the very want of success is only victory in another shape. "Cicero, when he was recalled from his banishment, the people through every place he passed meeting him with shouts of joy and congratulation, and all Rome coming out to receive him.”—This ought to have been one of the greatest situations in the world. If I venture to think it somewhat injured in the person of Cicero, my excuse must be that I have lately read the panegyrical life of him by Middleton; an author, who has the art of making his hero unheroical. "Regulus, when he went out of Rome attended by his friends to the gates, and returned to Carthage according to his word of honour— although he knew he must be put to a cruel death, for advising the Romans to pursue their war with that commonwealth.-An old effeminate lord of my acquaintance, who was accounted a great wit in his time, used to say of patriots of this description, "Stubborn dogs! all out of the spirit of perverseness and obstinacy." Thus he would undo, at a jerk, the whole Roman commonwealth. A modern American fared as ill with him. "Scipio the Elder, when he dismissed a beautiful captive lady presented to him after a great victory, turning his head aside to preserve his own virtue."-This is curious from Swift. I confess I do not see so much in it, considering Scipio's education, and that the lady had a lover. But Swift was apt to be common and implicit enough, over his Greek and Latin. "The same Scipio when he and Hannibal met before the battle, if the fact be true."-How time and history exalt even a scene like this! The whole world seem to be looking on. “Cincinnatus, when the messengers sent by the Senate to make him dictator, found him at the plough." "Epaminondas, when the Persian ambassador came to his house, and found him in the midst of poverty."-His whole life was a great action. "The Earl of Strafford the day that he made his own defence at his trial."-What a falling off is here! It was a striking and pathetic situation, inasmuch as Strafford was a proud man fallen, sensible of his fall, and yet behaving himself at once with sorrow and manliness. But he had done villainous things, and deserted a great cause for a king's favour. Strafford behaved himself with capital good sense, and extricated his situation wonderfully well from the awkward and most humi liating part of it: but greatness never accompanied an action of his life. Even the famous letter to the king, according to his friend Hume, was written with a view to its not being acted upon. Much nobler situations might have been selected from both sides of the question. "King Charles the Martyr during his whole trial, and at his death." -His behaviour in the latter instance was dignified, but not great. It required more, both past and present, to make it amount to that. So did his trial. But the epithet of the Martyr shews the spirit in which Swift estimated his conduct. "The Black Prince, when he waited at supper on the King of France, whom he had conquered and taken prisoner the same day."-This never appeared to me to be great or delicate conduct; nor the same prince's behaviour in riding a little horse, while his captive rode a large one. Besides, royalty has an instinct in this sort of behaviour. The Black Prince was a mere soldier, and could behave with great cruelty to whole multitudes of plebeians. See some remarks on his conduct in France, in Mr. Godwin's Life of Chaucer. "Virgil, when, at Rome, the whole audience rose up, out of veneration, as he entered the theatre."-The homage paid to mind, especially by great multitudes, is always unequivocal; and forms a pure glory. "Mahomet the Great, when he cut off his beloved mistress's head on a stage erected for that purpose, to convince his soldiers, who taxed him for preferring his love to his glory."-He was a great ruffian, who neither loved his mistress, nor understood glory. But the fact is doubted. “Cromwell, when he quelled a mutiny in Hyde Park." "Harry the Great, of France, when he entered Paris, and sat at cards the same night with some great ladies, who were his mortal enemies."-A pleasure below so great a man; nor do I believe he felt it; at least not after Swift's fashion. It is pure spite, and tea-table revenge. Bonaparte's position was better, when, as Emperor and Protector of the Rhenish Confederation, or rather as "the child and champion of Jacobinism," he made the old German dowager princess back out of the room, when she took leave curtseying. "Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, at his trial.”—A party flourish. "Cato, of Attica, when he provided for the safety of his friends, and had determined to die." "Sir Thomas More, during his imprisonment, and at his execution." -A jesting death was, perhaps, as good a baulk as could be for such a tyrant as Henry the Eighth; but in itself it is not a great death. "Marius, when the soldier sent to kill him in the dungeon, was struck with so much awe and veneration that his sword fell from his hand." "Douglas, when the ship he commanded was on fire, and he lay down to die in it, because it should not be said, that one of his family ever quitted their post."—He was a captain. Marvel wrote some fine lines on him, which I am sorry I have not by me to quote. One almost imagines, that the spirit of this young hero would remain, visibly sitting and looking on, after the body was consumed. Of those who have made a MEAN CONTEMPTIBLE FIGURE, "Anthony, at Actium, when he fled after Cleopatra."-Swift enters upon the scornful part of his subject with more vigour. The cases are almost all in point, and only fail in one or two instances from being too common. There is no want of ground of contempt. 66 Pompey, when he was killed on the sea-shore in Egypt." "Nero and Vitellius, when they were put to death." "Lepidus, when he was compelled to lay down his share of the Triumvirate."-But Lepidus was always in a poor position. "Cromwell, the day he refused the kingship out of fear."-This is excellent. Cromwell is said to have almost fainted in his coach. "Perseus, King of Macedon, when he was led in triumph." "Richard the Second, of England, after he was deposed." "The late King of Poland, when the King of Sweden forced him to give up his kingdom; and when he took it again, upon the King of Sweden's defeat by the Muscovites."-These Tories, after all, were but novices. What would Swift have thought of the resumption of crowns now-a-days: resumptions by the dozen, and performed with all the delight and dignity imaginable! "King James the Second of England, when the Prince of Orange sent to him at midnight to leave London." "King William the Third of England, when he sent to beg the House of Commons to continue his Dutch guards, and was refused." "The late Queen Anne of England, when she sent Whitworth to Muscovy on an embassy of humiliation, for an insult committed here on that prince's ambassador."—It was not in Cromwell's style; but, as an instance, it wants prominence. These things are thought so little of among princes, where expediency is concerned, that Anne seems ill used in being made an example. "The Lord Chancellor Bacon, when he was convicted of bribery." -An awful record. The world owes so much to this great man, and his case admits of so much apology, that one is inclined to omit the instance against him. Sed magis amica veritas. "The late Duke of Marlborough, when he was forced, after his own disgrace, to carry his duchess's gold key to the queen.”—This is not party spite; for Swift was very generous and impartial in his appreciation of the duke. While he disliked his faults, he would have had him employed for his talents. But notwithstanding our author's professions, and the Travels of Gulliver, he had great notions himself of a gold key. Marlborough was a courtier, and had gone through too many mortifications to contract a necessity like this with any thing like the greatness here opposed to it. He was accustomed to mean figures, as well as better ones. That he would feel abject enough, is but too probable. The habitual meannesses to which the "great" submit, and their sensibility nevertheless to a failure in their miserable views of honour, are inconceivable to those who do not know something of them. "The old Earl of Pembroke, when a Scotch lord gave him a lash with a whip at Newmarket, in presence of all the nobility, and he bore it with patience." "King Charles the Second of England, when he entered into the second Dutch war ; and in many other actions during his whole reign." "Philip the Second of Spain, after the defeat of the Armada.”—A mistake: kings, particularly Spanish kings, not being so easily ashamed of themselves. "The Emperor Charles the Fifth, when he resigned his crown, and nobody would believe his reasons.”—This is excellent. Here was a king who had unkinged himself, and found himself liable to shame accordingly. "King Charles the First of England, when, in gallantry to his queen, he thought to surprise her with a present of a diamond buckle, which he pushed into her breast, and tore her flesh with the tongue ; upon which she drew it out, and flung it on the ground."-For Charles's state of subjection to his wife, see Bassompiere. The buckle was a bad business; but the shuttlecock of another sovereign was worse: he knocked it into a lady's bosom, and drew it out with a pair of tongs. "Fairfax, the parliament general at the time of King Charles's trial.”—The nothingness of his position was the worse, inasmuch as his wife, Lady Fairfax, went into court and insulted it with loud words from the gallery. "Julius Cæsar, when Anthony offered to put a diadem on his head, and the people shouted for joy to see him decline it; which he never offered to do, till he saw their dislike in their countenances.”—A savage case! "Coriolanus when he withdrew his army from Rome, at the entreaty of his mother." "Hannibal, at Antiochus's court." "Beau Fielding, at fifty years old, when in a quarrel upon the stage, he was run into his breast, which he opened and shewed to the ladies, that he might move their love and pity; but they all fell a laughing." -This is perfect. [Beau Fielding, a handsome man half crazed with vanity and "bonnes fortunes," was the Orlando the Fair of the Tatler. See No. 50 of that work. He married the Duchess of Cleveland, Charles the Second's mistress; on which he was indicted for bigamy, a former wife being living.] "The Count de Bussy Rabutin, when he was recalled to court after twenty years banishment into the country, and affected to make the same figure he did in his yonth."--This might be contrasted with the conduct of Sully, who, coming out of his retirement in old age to advise with Louis the Thirteenth, and being laughed at by the young courtiers for the antiquity of his dress, said to that prince, "Sir, when your Majesty's father, of illustrious memory, did me the honour to invite me into his presence, he used to send all the coxcombs out of the way." "The Earl of Sunderland, when he turned Papist in the time of King James the Second, and underwent all the forms of a heretic converted." "Pope Clement the Seventh, when he was taken prisoner at Rome, by the Emperor Charles the Fifth's forces." 66 Queen Mary, of Scotland, when she suffered Bothwell to ravish her, and pleaded that as an excuse for marrying him." "King John, of England, when he gave up his kingdom to the Pope, to be held as a fief to the see of Rome." One is tempted to enlarge this gallery of pictures. It would be very easy, and no less edifying. But I fear I have already exceeded my limits. I cannot help giving two, however, before I go. Great Figure.-Dean Swift, during the reward offered for his discovery as author of the Drapier's Letters, when he discharged a man from his service for supposed insolence, who was in the secret. MEAN FIGURE.-The same Swift, during his services to the ministry, the first time that Harley, the Lord Treasurer, called him Jonathan. |