Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection
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.