Biographia Literaria
gentleman! Shake hands with me, you dog! Dhere, dhere!--We are all equal
my dear friend! Do I not speak like Socrates, and Plato, and Cato--they
were all philosophers, my dear philosophe! all very great men!--and so
was Homer and Virgil--but they were poets. Yes, yes! I know all about
it!--But what can anybody say more than this? We are all equal, all
Got’s children. I haf ten tousand a year, but I am no more dhan de
meanest man alive. I haf no pride; and yet, my dear friend! I can
say, do! and it is done. Ha! ha! ha! my dear friend! Now dhere is dhat
gentleman (pointing to Nobility) he is a Swedish baron--you shall see.
Ho! (calling to the Swede) get me, will you, a bottle of wine from the
cabin. SWEDE.--Here, Jack! go and get your master a bottle of wine from
the cabin. DANE. No, no, no! do you go now--you go yourself you go now!
SWEDE. Pah!--DANE. Now go! Go, I pray you.” And the Swede went!!
After this the Dane commenced an harangue on religion, and mistaking
me for un philosophe in the continental sense of the word, he talked of
Deity in a declamatory style, very much resembling the devotional rants
of that rude blunderer, Mr. Thomas Paine, in his Age of Reason, and
whispered in my ear, what damned hypocrism all Jesus Christ’s business
was. I dare aver, that few men have less reason to charge themselves
with indulging in persiflage than myself. I should hate it, if it were
only that it is a Frenchman’s vice, and feel a pride in avoiding it,
because our own language is too honest to have a word to express it by.
But in this instance the temptation had been too powerful, and I have
placed it on the list of my offences. Pericles answered one of his
dearest friends, who had solicited him on a case of life and death, to
take an equivocal oath for his preservation: Debeo amicis opitulari, sed
usque ad Deos [75]. Friendship herself must place her last and boldest
step on this side the altar. What Pericles would not do to save a
friend’s life, you may be assured, I would not hazard merely to mill the
chocolate-pot of a drunken fool’s vanity till it frothed over. Assuming
a serious look, I professed myself a believer, and sunk at once an
hundred fathoms in his good graces. He retired to his cabin, and I
wrapped myself up in my great coat, and looked at the water. A beautiful
white cloud of foam at momently intervals coursed by the side of the
vessel with a roar, and little stars of flame danced and sparkled and
went out in it: and every now and then light detachments of this white
cloud-like foam darted off from the vessel’s side, each with its own
small constellation, over the sea, and scoured out of sight like a
Tartar troop over a wilderness.
It was cold, the cabin was at open war with my olfactories, and I found
reason to rejoice in my great coat, a weighty high-caped, respectable
rug, the collar of which turned over, and played the part of a night-cap
very passably. In looking up at two or three bright stars, which
oscillated with the motion of the sails, I fell asleep, but was awakened
at one o’clock, Monday morning, by a shower of rain. I found myself
compelled to go down into the cabin, where I slept very soundly, and
awoke with a very good appetite at breakfast time, my nostrils, the most
placable of all the senses, reconciled to, or indeed insensible of the
mephitis.
Monday, September 17th, I had a long conversation with the Swede, who
spoke with the most poignant contempt of the Dane, whom he described as
a fool, purse-mad; but he confirmed the boasts of the Dane respecting
the largeness of his fortune, which he had acquired in the first
instance as an advocate, and afterwards as a planter. From the Dane and
from himself I collected that he was indeed a Swedish nobleman, who had
squandered a fortune, that was never very large, and had made over his
property to the Dane, on whom he was now utterly dependent. He seemed
to suffer very little pain from the Dane’s insolence. He was in a high
degree humane and attentive to the English lady, who suffered most
fearfully, and for whom he performed many little offices with a
tenderness and delicacy which seemed to prove real goodness of heart.
Indeed his general manners and conversation were not only pleasing,
but even interesting; and I struggled to believe his insensibility
respecting the Dane philosophical fortitude. For though the Dane was
now quite sober, his character oozed out of him at every pore. And after
dinner, when he was again flushed with wine, every quarter of an hour or
perhaps oftener he would shout out to the Swede, “Ho! Nobility, go--do
such a thing! Mr. Nobility!--tell the gentlemen such a story, and
so forth;” with an insolence which must have excited disgust and
detestation, if his vulgar rants on the sacred rights of equality,
joined to his wild havoc of general grammar no less than of the English
language, had not rendered it so irresistibly laughable.
At four o’clock I observed a wild duck swimming on the waves, a single
solitary wild duck. It is not easy to conceive, how interesting a thing
it looked in that round objectless desert of waters. I had associated
such a feeling of immensity with the ocean, that I felt exceedingly
disappointed, when I was out of sight of all land, at the narrowness and
nearness, as it were, of the circle of the horizon. So little are images
capable of satisfying the obscure feelings connected with words. In the
evening the sails were lowered, lest we should run foul of the land,
which can be seen only at a small distance. And at four o’clock, on
Tuesday morning, I was awakened by the cry of “land! land!” It was an
ugly island rock at a distance on our left, called Heiligeland, well
known to many passengers from Yarmouth to Hamburg, who have been obliged
by stormy weather to pass weeks and weeks in weary captivity on it,
stripped of all their money by the exorbitant demands of the wretches
who inhabit it. So at least the sailors informed me.--About nine o’clock
we saw the main land, which seemed scarcely able to hold its head above
water, low, flat, and dreary, with lighthouses and land-marks which
seemed to give a character and language to the dreariness. We entered
the mouth of the Elbe, passing Neu-werk; though as yet the right bank
only of the river was visible to us. On this I saw a church, and thanked
God for my safe voyage, not without affectionate thoughts of those I
had left in England. At eleven o’clock on the same morning we arrived
at Cuxhaven, the ship dropped anchor, and the boat was hoisted out, to
carry the Hanoverian and a few others on shore. The captain agreed to
take us, who remained, to Hamburg for ten guineas, to which the Dane
contributed so largely, that the other passengers paid but half a guinea
each. Accordingly we hauled anchor, and passed gently up the river. At
Cuxhaven both sides of the river may be seen in clear weather; we could
now see the right bank only. We passed a multitude of English traders
that had been waiting many weeks for a wind. In a short time both banks
became visible, both flat and evidencing the labour of human hands by
their extreme neatness. On the left bank I saw a church or two in
the distance; on the right bank we passed by steeple and windmill and
cottage, and windmill and single house, windmill and windmill, and neat
single house, and steeple. These were the objects and in the succession.
The shores were very green and planted with trees not inelegantly.
Thirty-five miles from Cuxhaven the night came on us, and, as the
navigation of the Elbe is perilous, we dropped anchor.
Over what place, thought I, does the moon hang to your eye, my dearest
friend? To me it hung over the left bank of the Elbe. Close above the
moon was a huge volume of deep black cloud, while a very thin fillet
crossed the middle of the orb, as narrow and thin and black as a ribbon
of crape. The long trembling road of moonlight, which lay on the water
and reached to the stern of our vessel, glimmered dimly and obscurely.
We saw two or three lights from the right bank, probably from bed-rooms.
I felt the striking contrast between the silence of this majestic
stream, whose banks are populous with men and women and children, and
flocks and herds--between the silence by night of this peopled river,
and the ceaseless noise, and uproar, and loud agitations of the desolate
solitude of the ocean. The passengers below had all retired to their
beds; and I felt the interest of this quiet scene the more deeply from
the circumstance of having just quitted them. For the Prussian had
during the whole of the evening displayed all his talents to captivate
the Dane, who had admitted him into the train of his dependents. The
young Englishman continued to interpret the Prussian’s jokes to me. They
were all without exception profane and abominable, but some sufficiently
witty, and a few incidents, which he related in his own person, were
valuable as illustrating the manners of the countries in which they had
taken place.
Five o’clock on Wednesday morning we hauled the anchor, but were soon
obliged to drop it again in consequence of a thick fog, which our
captain feared would continue the whole day; but about nine it cleared
off, and we sailed slowly along, close by the shore of a very beautiful
island, forty miles from Cuxhaven, the wind continuing slack. This
holm or island is about a mile and a half in length, wedge-shaped,
well wooded, with glades of the liveliest green, and rendered more
interesting by the remarkably neat farm-house on it. It seemed made for
retirement without solitude--a place that would allure one’s friends,
while it precluded the impertinent calls of mere visitors. The shores of
the Elbe now became more beautiful, with rich meadows and trees running
like a low wall along the river’s edge; and peering over them,
neat houses and, (especially on the right bank,) a profusion of
steeple-spires, white, black, or red. An instinctive taste teaches men
to build their churches in flat countries with spire-steeples, which,
as they cannot be referred to any other object, point, as with silent
finger, to the sky and stars, and sometimes, when they reflect the
brazen light of a rich though rainy sun-set, appear like a pyramid of
flame burning heavenward. I remember once, and once only, to have seen
a spire in a narrow valley of a mountainous country. The effect was
not only mean but ludicrous, and reminded me against my will of an
extinguisher; the close neighbourhood of the high mountain, at the foot
of which it stood, had so completely dwarfed it, and deprived it of
all connection with the sky or clouds. Forty-six English miles from
Cuxhaven, and sixteen from Hamburg, the Danish village Veder ornaments
the left bank with its black steeple, and close by it is the wild and
pastoral hamlet of Schulau. Hitherto both the right and left bank, green
to the very brink, and level with the river, resembled the shores of a
park canal. The trees and houses were alike low, sometimes the low trees
over-topping the yet lower houses, sometimes the low houses rising
above the yet lower trees. But at Schulau the left bank rises at once
forty or fifty feet, and stares on the river with its perpendicular
facade of sand, thinly patched with tufts of green. The Elbe continued
to present a more and more lively spectacle from the multitude of
fishing boats and the flocks of sea gulls wheeling round them, the
clamorous rivals and companions of the fishermen; till we came to
Blankaness, a most interesting village scattered amid scattered trees,
over three hills in three divisions. Each of the three hills stares upon
the river, with faces of bare sand, with which the boats with their
bare poles, standing in files along the banks, made a sort of fantastic