Paul Clifford — Complete
woaho, sir! A nice long night like this is made on purpose for drinking.
Will you, sir? keep still then!”
“Man never is, but always to be blest,” said the moralizing Tomlinson;
“you see you sigh for other scenes even when you have a fine night and
the chance of a God-send before you.”
“Ay, the night is fine enough,” said Ned, who was rather a grumbler,
as, having finished his groom-like operation, he now slowly mounted.
“D---it, Oliver! [The moon] looks out as broadly as if he were going
to blab. For my part, I love a dark night, with a star here and there
winking at us, as much as to say, 'I see you, my boys, but I won't say
a word about it,' and a small, pattering, drizzling, mizzling rain, that
prevents Little John's hoofs being heard, and covers one's retreat, as
it were. Besides, when one is a little wet, it is always necessary to
drink the more, to keep the cold from one's stomach when one gets home.”
“Or in other words,” said Augustus, who loved a maxim from his very
heart, “light wet cherishes heavy wet!”
“Good!” said Ned, yawning. “Hang it, I wish the captain would come. Do
you know what o'clock it is? Not far short of eleven, I suppose?”
“About that! Hist, is that a carriage? No, it is only a sudden rise in
the wind.”
“Very self-sufficient in Mr. Wind to allow himself to be raised without
our help!” said Ned; “by the way, we are of course to go back to the Red
Cave?”
“So Captain Lovett says. Tell me, Ned, what do you think of the new
tenant Lovett has put into the cave?”
“Oh, I have strange doubts there,” answered Ned, shaking the hairy
honours of his head. “I don't half like it; consider the cave is our
stronghold, and ought only to be known--”
“To men of tried virtue,” interrupted Tomlinson. “I agree with you; I
must try and get Lovett to discard his singular protege, as the French
say.”
“'Gad, Augustus, how came you by so much learning? You know all the
poets by heart, to say nothing of Latin and French.”
“Oh, hang it, I was brought up, like the captain, to a literary way of
life.”
“That's what makes you so thick with him, I suppose. He writes (and
sings too) a tolerable song, and is certainly a deuced clever fellow.
What a rise in the world he has made! Do you recollect what a poor sort
of way he was in when you introduced him at Gentleman George's? and now
he's the Captain Crank of the gang.”
“The gang! the company, you mean. Gang, indeed! One would think you were
speaking of a knot of pickpockets. Yes, Lovett is a clever fellow; and,
thanks to me, a very decent philosopher!” It is impossible to convey
to our reader the grave air of importance with which Tomlinson made his
concluding laudation. “Yes,” said he, after a pause, “he has a
bold, plain way of viewing things, and, like Voltaire, he becomes a
philosopher by being a Man of Sense! Hist! see my horse's ears! Some one
is coming, though I don't hear him! Keep watch!”
The robbers grew silent; the sound of distant hoofs was indistinctly
heard, and, as it came nearer, there was a crash of boughs, as if a
hedge had been ridden through. Presently the moon gleamed picturesquely
on the figure of a horseman, approaching through the copse in the rear
of the robbers.
Now he was half seen among the sinuosities of his forest path; now in
full sight, now altogether hid; then his horse neighed impatiently; now
he again came in sight, and in a moment more he had joined the pair!
The new-comer was of a tall and sinewy frame, and in the first bloom
of manhood. A frock of dark green, edged with a narrow silver lace, and
buttoned from the throat to the middle, gave due effect to an upright
mien, a broad chest, and a slender but rounded waist, that stood in no
need of the compression of the tailor. A short riding-cloak, clasped
across the throat with a silver buckle, hung picturesquely over one
shoulder, while his lower limbs were cased in military boots, which,
though they rose above the knee, were evidently neither heavy nor
embarrassing to the vigorous sinews of the horseman. The caparisons of
the steed--the bit, the bridle, the saddle, the holster--were according
to the most approved fashion of the day; and the steed itself was in
the highest condition, and of remarkable beauty. The horseman's air was
erect and bold; a small but coal-black mustachio heightened the resolute
expression of his short, curved lip; and from beneath the large hat
which overhung his brow his long locks escaped, and waved darkly in the
keen night air. Altogether, horseman and horse exhibited a gallant and
even a chivalrous appearance, which the hour and the scene heightened to
a dramatic and romantic effect.
“Ha! Lovett.”
“How are you, my merry men?” were the salutations exchanged.
“What news?” said Ned.
“Brave news! look to it. My lord and his carriage will be by in ten
minutes at most.”
“Have you got anything more out of the parson I frightened so
gloriously?” asked Augustus.
“No; more of that hereafter. Now for our new prey.”
“Are you sure our noble friend will be so soon at hand?” said Tomlinson,
patting his steed, that now pawed in excited hilarity.
“Sure! I saw him change horses; I was in the stable-yard at the time. He
got out for half an hour, to eat, I fancy. Be sure that I played him a
trick in the mean while.”
“What for?” asked Ned.
“Self and servant.”
“The post-boys?”
“Ay, I forgot them. Never mind, you, must frighten them.”
“Forwards!” cried Ned; and his horse sprang from his armed heel.
“One moment,” said Lovett; “I must put on my mask. Soho, Robin, soho!
Now for it,--forwards!”
As the trees rapidly disappeared behind them, the riders entered, at a
hand gallop, on a broad tract of waste land interspersed with dikes and
occasionally fences of hurdles, over which their horses bounded like
quadrupeds well accustomed to such exploits.
Certainly at that moment, what with the fresh air, the fitful moonlight
now breaking broadly out, now lost in a rolling cloud, the exciting
exercise, and that racy and dancing stir of the blood, which all action,
whether evil or noble in its nature, raises in our veins; what with
all this, we cannot but allow the fascination of that lawless life,--a
fascination so great that one of the most noted gentlemen highwaymen of
the day, one too who had received an excellent education and mixed in no
inferior society, is reported to have said, when the rope was about his
neck, and the good Ordinary was exhorting him to repent of his
ill-spent life, “Ill-spent, you dog! 'Gad!” (smacking his lips) “it was
delicious!”
“Fie! fie! Mr. -------, raise your thoughts to Heaven!”
“But a canter across the common--oh!” muttered the criminal; and his
soul cantered off to eternity.
So briskly leaped the heart of the leader of the three that, as they
now came in view of the main road, and the distant wheel of a carriage
whirred on the ear, he threw up his right hand with a joyous gesture,
and burst into a boyish exclamation of hilarity and delight.
“Whist, captain!” said Ned, checking his own spirits with a mock air of
gravity, “let us conduct ourselves like gentlemen; it is only your low
fellows who get into such confoundedly high spirits; men of the world
like us should do everything as if their hearts were broken.”
“Melancholy ever cronies with Sublimity, and Courage is sublime,” said
Augustus, with the pomp of a maxim-maker.
[A maxim which would have pleased Madame de Stael, who thought that
philosophy consisted in fine sentiments. In the “Life of Lord
Byron,” just published by Mr. Moore, the distinguished biographer
makes a similar assertion to that of the sage Augustus: “When did
ever a sublime thought spring up in the soul that melancholy was not
to be found, however latent, in its neighbourhood?” Now, with due
deference to Mr. Moore, this is a very sickly piece of nonsense,
that has not even an atom of truth to stand on. “God said, Let
there be light, and there was light!”--we should like to know where
lies the melancholy of that sublime sentence. “Truth,” says Plato,
“is the body of God, and light is his shadow.” In the name of
common-sense, in what possible corner in the vicinity of that lofty
image lurks the jaundiced face of this eternal bete noir of Mr.
Moore's? Again, in that sublimest passage in the sublimest of the
Latin poets (Lucretius), which bursts forth in honour of Epicurus,
is there anything that speaks to us of sadness? On the contrary, in
the three passages we have referred to, especially in the two first
quoted, there is something splendidly luminous and cheering. Joy is
often a great source of the sublime; the suddenness of its ventings
would alone suffice to make it so. What can be more sublime than
the triumphant Psalms of David, intoxicated as they are with an
almost delirium of transport? Even in the gloomiest passages of the
poets, where we recognize sublimity, we do not often find
melancholy. We are stricken by terror, appalled by awe, but seldom
softened into sadness. In fact, melancholy rather belongs to
another class of feelings than those excited by a sublime passage or
those which engender its composition. On one hand, in the loftiest
flights of Homer, Milton, and Shakspeare, we will challenge a critic
to discover this “green sickness” which Mr. Moore would convert
into the magnificence of the plague. On the other hand, where is
the evidence that melancholy made the habitual temperaments of those
divine men? Of Homer we know nothing; of Shakspeare and Milton, we
have reason to believe the ordinary temperament was constitutionally
cheerful. The latter boasts of it. A thousand instances, in
contradiction to an assertion it were not worth while to contradict,
were it not so generally popular, so highly sanctioned, and so
eminently pernicious to everything that is manly and noble in
literature, rush to our memory. But we think we have already quoted
enough to disprove the sentence, which the illustrious biographer
has himself disproved in more than twenty passages, which, if he is
pleased to forget, we thank Heaven posterity never will. Now we are
on the subject of this Life, so excellent in many respects, we
cannot but observe that we think the whole scope of its philosophy
utterly unworthy of the accomplished mind of the writer; the
philosophy consists of an unpardonable distorting of general truths,
to suit the peculiarities of an individual, noble indeed, but
proverbially morbid and eccentric. A striking instance of this
occurs in the laboured assertion that poets make but sorry domestic
characters. What! because Lord Byron is said to have been a bad
husband, was (to go no further back for examples)--was Walter Scott
a bad husband, or was Campbell, or is Mr. Moore himself? why, in
the name of justice, should it be insinuated that Milton was a bad
husband, when, as far as any one can judge of the matter, it was
Mrs. Milton who was the bad wife? And why, oh! why should we be
told by Mr. Moore,--a man who, to judge by Captain Rock and the
Epicurean, wants neither learning nor diligence,--why are we to be
told, with peculiar emphasis, that Lord Bacon never married, when
Lord Bacon not only married, but his marriage was so advantageous as
to be an absolute epoch in his career? Really, really, one begins
to believe that there is not such a thing as a fact in the world!]
“Now for the hedge!” cried Lovett, unheeding his comrades; and his horse
sprang into the road.