Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 404, June, 1849

BULLER

Then the Homily, sir.

NORTH

Ay, the Homily, which, one might say, interprets between Sunday and the Week – fixes the holiness of the Day in precepts, doctrines, reflections, which may be carried home to guide and nourish.

BULLER

Altogether, sir, it seems a meet work of worshippers met in their Christian Land, upon the day of rest and aspiration. The Scottish worship might seem to remember the flame and the sword. The persecuted Iconoclasts of two centuries ago, live in their descendants.

NORTH

But the Ritual of England breathes a divine calm. You think of the People walking through ripening fields on a mild day to their Church door. It is the work of a nation sitting in peace, possessing their land. It is the work of a wealthy nation, that, by dedicating a part of its wealth, consecrates the remainder – that acknowledges the Fountain from which all flows. The prayers are devout, humble, fervent. They are not impassioned. A wonderful temperance and sobriety of discretion; that which, in worldly things, would be called good sense, prevails in them; but you must name it better in things spiritual. The framers evidently bore in mind the continual consciousness of writing for ALL. That is the guiding, tempering, calming spirit that keeps in the Whole one tone – that, and the hallowing, chastening awe which subdues vehemence, even in the asking for the Infinite, by those who have nothing but that which they earnestly ask, and who know that unless they ask infinitely, they ask nothing. In every word, the whole Congregation, the whole Nation prays – not the Individual Minister; the officiating Divine Functionary, not the Man. Nor must it be forgotten that the received Version and the Book of Common Prayer – observe the word Common, expressing exactly what I affirm – are beautiful by the words – that there is no other such English – simple, touching, apt, venerable – hued as the thoughts are – musical – the most English English that is known – of a Hebraic strength and antiquity, yet lucid and gracious as if of and for to-day.

BULLER

I trust that many Presbyterians sympathise with you in these sentiments.

NORTH

Not many – few. Nor do I say I wish they were more.

BULLER

Are you serious, sir?

NORTH

I am. But cannot explain myself now. What are the Three Pillars of the Love of any Church? Innate Religion – Humanity – Imagination. The Scottish worship better satisfies the first Principle – that of England the last; the Roman Catholic still more the last – and are not your Cathedrals Roman Catholic? I think that the Scottish and English, better than the Roman Catholic, satisfy the Middle Principle – Humanity, being truer to the highest requisitions of our Nature, and nourish our faculties better, both of Will and Understanding, into their strength and beauty. Yet what divine-minded Roman Catholics there have been – and are – and will be!

BULLER

Pause for a moment, sir, – here comes Seward.

NORTH

Seward! Is he not with us? Surely he was, all hour or two ago – but I never missed him – your conversation has been so interesting and instructive. Seward! why you are all the world like a drowned rat?

SEWARD

Rat I am none – but a stanch Conservative. Would I had had a Protectionist with me to keep me right on the Navigation Laws.

NORTH

What do you mean? What's the matter?

SEWARD

Why, your description of the Pools in Cladich-Cleugh inspired me with a passion for one of the Naïads.

NORTH

And you have had a ducking!

SEWARD

I have indeed. Plashed souse, head over heels, into one of the prettiest pools, from a slippery ledge some dozen feet above the sleeping beauty – were you both deaf that you did not hear me bawl?

NORTH

I have a faint recollection of hearing something bray, but I suppose I thought it came from the Gipsies' Camp.

BULLER

Are you wet?

SEWARD

Come – come – Buller.

BULLER

Why so dry?

NORTH

Sair drooket.

BULLER

Where's your Tile?

SEWARD

I hate slang.

BULLER

Why, you have lost a shoe – and much delightful conversation.

NORTH

I must say, Seward, that I was hurt by your withdrawing yourself from our Colloquy.

SEWARD

Sir, you were beginning to get so prosy —

BULLER

I insist, Seward, on your making an apology on your knees to our Father for your shocking impiety – I shudder to repeat the word – which you must swallow – P – R – O – S – Y!

SEWARD

On my knees! Look at them.

NORTH

My dear, dearer, dearest Mr Seward – you are bleeding – I fear a fracture. Let me —

SEWARD

I am not bleeding – only a knap on the knee-pan, sir.

BULLER

Not bleeding! Why you must be drenched in blood, your face is so white.

NORTH

A non sequitur, Buller. But from a knap on the knee-pan I have known a man a lamiter for life.

SEWARD

I lament the loss of my Sketch-Book.

BULLER

It is a judgment on you for that Caricature.

NORTH

What caricature?

BULLER

Since you will force me to tell it, a caricature of – Yourself, sir. I saw him working away at it with a most wicked leer on his face, while you supposed he was taking notes. He held it up to me for a moment – clapped the boards together with the grin of a fiend – and then off to Cladick-Cloock – where he met with Nemesis.

NORTH

Is that a true bill, Mr Seward?

SEWARD

On my honour as a gentleman, and my skill as an artist, it is not. It is a most malignant misrepresentation —

BULLER

It was indeed.

SEWARD

It was no caricature. I promised to Mrs Seward to send her a sketch of the illustrious Mr North; and finding you in one of the happiest of your many-sided attitudes —

NORTH

The act is to be judged by the intention. You are acquitted of the charge.

BULLER

To make a caricature of You, sir, under any circumstances, and for any purpose, would be sufficiently shocking; but HERE AND NOW, and that he might send it to his Wife – so transcends all previous perpetration of crimen læsæ majestatis, that I am beginning to be incredulous of what these eyes beheld – nay, to disbelieve what, if told to any human being, however depraved, would seem to him impossible, even in the mystery of iniquity, and an insane libel on our fallen nature.

SEWARD

I did my best. Nor am I, sir, without hope that my Sketch-Book may be recovered, and then you will judge for yourself, sir, if it be a caricature. A failure, sir, it assuredly was, for what artist has succeeded with YOU?

NORTH

To the Inn, and put on dry clothes.

SEWARD

No. What care I about dry or wet clothes! Here let me lie down and bask in this patch of intenser sunshine at your feet. Don't stir, sir; the Crutch is not the least in the way.

NORTH

We must be all up and doing – the Hour and the Men. The Cavalcade. Hush! Hark! the Bagpipe! The Cavalcade can't be more than a mile off.

SEWARD

Why staring thus like a Goshawk, sir?

BULLER

I hear nothing. Seward, do you?

SEWARD

Nothing. And what can he mean by Cavalcade? Yet I believe he has the Second Sight. I have heard it is in the Family.

NORTH

Hear nothing? Then both of you must be deaf. But I forget – we Mountaineers are Fine-Ears – your sense of hearing has been educated on the Flat. Not now? "The Campbells are coming," – that's the march – that's the go – that's the gathering.

BULLER

A Horn – a Drum, sure enough – and – and – that incomprehensible mixture of groans and yells must be the Bagpipe.

NORTH

See yonder they come, over the hill-top – the ninth mile-stone from Inverary! There's the Van, by the Road-Surveyor lent me for the occasion, drawn by Four Horses. And there's the Waggon, once the property of the lessee of the Swiss Giantess, a noble Unicorn. And there the Six Tent-Carts, Two-steeded; and there the Two Boat-Carriages – horsed I know not how. But don't ye see the bonny Barges aloft in the air? And Men on horseback – count them – there should be Four. You hear the Bagpipe now – surely – "The Campbells are coming." And here is the whole Concern, gentlemen, close at hand, deploying across the Bridge.

BULLER

Has he lost his senses at last?

SEWARD

Have we lost ours? A Cavalcade it is, with a vengeance.

NORTH

One minute past Seven! True to their time within sixty seconds. This way, this way. Here is the Spot, the Centre of the Grove. Bagpipe – Drum and Horn – music all – silence. Silence, I cry, will nobody assist me in crying silence?

SEWARD AND BULLER

Silence – silence – silence.

NORTH

Give me the Speaking-Trumpet that I may call Silence.

SEWARD

Stentor may put down the Drum, the Horns, the Fifes, and the Serpent, but the Bagpipe is above him – the Drone is deaf as the sea – the Piper moves in a sphere of his own —

BULLER

I don't hear a syllable you are saying – ah! the storm is dead, and now what a BLESSED CALM.

NORTH

Wheel into line – Prepare to —

Pitch Tents.

Enter the Field of the Sycamore Grove on Horseback – ushered by Archy M'Callum– Harry Seward – Marmaduke Buller – Vallance Volusene – Nepos Woodburn. Van, Waggon, Carriages, and Carts, &c., form a Barricade between the Rear of the Grove and the road to Dalmally.

Adjutant Archy M'Callum! call the Roll of the Troops.

ADJUTANT

Peter of the Lodge, Sewer and Seneschal —Here. Peterson ditto, Comptroller of the Cellars —Here. Kit Peterson, Tiger there —Here. Michael Dods, Cook at that Place —Here. Ben Brawn, Manciple —Here. Roderick M'Crimmon, King of the Pipes —Here. Pym and Stretch, Body-men to the young Englishers —Here, Here. Tom Moody, Huntsman at Under-cliff Hall, North Devon —Here. The Cornwall Clipper, Head Game-keeper at Pendragon —Here. Billy Balmer of Bowness, Windermere, Commodore —Here.

NORTH

Attention! Each man will be held answerable for his subordinates. The roll will be called an hour after sunrise, and an hour before sunset. Men, remember you are under martial law. Camp-master M'Kellar —Here. Let the Mid Peak of Cruachan be your pitching point. Old Dee-side Tent in the centre, right in Front. Dormitories to the east. To the west the Pavilion. Kitchen Range in the Rear. Donald Dhu, late Sergeant in the Black Watch, see to the Barricade. The Impedimenta in your charge. In three hours I command the Encampment to be complete. Admittance to the Field on the Queen's Birth-day. Crowd! disperse. Old Boys! What do you think of this? You have often called me a Wizard – a Warlock – no glamour here – 'tis real all – and all the Work of the Crutch. Sons – your Fathers! Fathers – your Sons. Your hand, Volusene – and, Woodburn, yours.

SEWARD

Hal, how are you?

BULLER

How are you, Marmy?

NORTH

On the Stage – in the Theatre of Fictitious Life – such a Meeting as this would require explanation – but in the Drama of Real Life, on the Banks of Lochawe, it needs none. Friends of my soul! you will come to understand it all in two minutes' talk with your Progeny. Progeny – welcome for your Sires' sakes – and your Lady Mothers' – and your own – to Lochawe-side. I see you are two Trumps. Volusene – Woodburn – from your faces all well at home. Come, my two old Bucks – let us Three, to be out of the bustle, retire to the Inn. Did you ever see Christopher fling the Crutch? There – I knew it would clear the Sycamore Grove.

Scene II. —Interior of the Pavilion

Time —Two P.MNorth – Seward – BullerSEWARD

Still at his Siesta in his Swing-Chair. Few faces bear to be looked on asleep.

BULLER

Men's faces.

SEWARD

His bears it well. Awake, it is sometimes too full of expression. And then, how it fluctuates! Perpetual play and interchange as Thought, Feeling, Fancy, Imagination —

BULLER

The gay, the grave, the sad, the serious, the pathetic, the humorous, the tragic, the whimsical rules the minute —

"'Tis everything by fits, and nothing long."SEWARD

Don't exaggerate. An inapt quotation.

BULLER

I was merely carrying on your eulogium of his wide-awake Face.

SEWARD

The prevalent expression is still – the Benign.

BULLER

A singular mixture of tenderness and truculence.

SEWARD

Asleep it is absolutely saint-like.

BULLER

It reminds me of the faces of Chantry's Sleeping Children in Litchfield Cathedral.

SEWARD

Composure is the word. Composure is mute Harmony.

BULLER

It may be so – but you will not deny that his nose is just a minim too long – and his mouth, at this moment, just a minim too open – and the crow-feet —

SEWARD

Enhance the power of those large drooping eyelids, heavy with meditation – of that high broad forehead, with the lines not the wrinkles of age.

BULLER

He is much balder than he was on Deeside.

SEWARD

Or fifty years before. They say that, in youth, the sight of his head of hair once silenced Mirabeau.

BULLER

Why, Mirabeau's was black, and my grandmother told me North's was yellow – or rather green, like a star.

NORTH

Your Grandmother, Buller, was the finest woman of her time.

BULLER

Sleepers hear. Sometimes a single word from without, reaching the spiritual region, changes by its touch the whole current of their dreams.

NORTH

I once told you that, Buller. At present I happen to be awake. But surely a man may sit on a swing-chair with his eyes shut, and his mouth open, without incurring the charge of somnolency. Where have you been?

SEWARD

You told us, sir, not to disturb you till Two —

NORTH

But where have you been?

SEWARD

We have written our despatches – read our London Papers – and had a pull in Gutta Percha to and from Port Sonachan.

NORTH

How does she pull?

BULLER

Like a winner. I have written to the builder – Taylor of Newcastle – to match her against any craft of her keel in the kingdom.

NORTH

Sit down. Where are the Boys.

SEWARD

Off hours ago to Kilchurn. They have just signalised – "Two o'clock. 1 Salmo Ferox, lb. 12-20 Yellow-fins, lb. 15-6 Pike, lb. 36."

NORTH

And not bad sport, either. They know the dinner hour? Seven sharp.

SEWARD

They do – and they are not the lads to disregard orders.

NORTH

Four finer fellows are not in Christendom.

SEWARD

May I presume to ask, sir, what volumes these are lying open on your knees?

NORTH

The Iliad – and Paradise Lost.

SEWARD

I fear, sir, you may not be disposed to enlighten us, at this hour.

NORTH

But I am disposed to be enlightened. Oxonians – and Double First-Class Men – nor truants since – you will find in me a docile pupil rather than a Teacher. I am no great Grecian.

BULLER

But you are, sir; and a fine old Trojan too, methinks! What audacious word has escaped my lips!

NORTH

Epic Poetry! Tell but a Tale, and see Childhood – the harmless, the trustful, the wondering, listen – "all ear;" and so has the wilder and mightier Childhood of Nations, listened, trustful, wondering, "all ear," to Tales lofty, profound —said, or, as Art grew up, sung.

SEWARD

ΕΠΕ, Say or Tell.

BULLER

ΑΕΙΔΕ, Sing.

NORTH

Yes, my lads, these were the received formulas of beseeching with which the Minstrels of Hellas invoked succour of the divine Muse, when their burning tongue would fit well to the Harp transmitted Tales, fraught with old heroic remembrance, with solemn belief, with oracular wisdom. ΕΠΕ, Tell, ΕΠΟΣ, The Tale. And when, step after step, the Harp modelling the Verse, and the Verse charming power and beauty, and splendour and pathos – like a newly-created and newly-creating soul – into its ancestral Tradition – when insensibly the benign Usurper, the Muse, had made the magnificent dream rightly and wholly her own at last. – ΕΠΟΣ, The Sung Tale. Homer, to all following ages the chief Master of Eloquence whether in Verse or in Prose, has yet maintained the simplicity of Telling.

"For he came beside the swift ships of the Achæans,Proposing to release his daughter, and bringing immense ransom;Having in his hand the fillet of the far-shooting Apollo,On the golden rod: and he implored of the Achæans,And the sons of Atreus, most of all, the two Orderers of the People."

These few words of a tongue stately, resplendent, sonorous, and numerous, more than ours – and already the near Scamandrian Field feels, and fears, and trembles. Milton! The world has rolled round, and again round, from the day of that earlier to that of the later Mæonides. All the soul-wealth hoarded in words, which merciful Time held aloft, unsubmerged by the Gothic, by the Ottoman inundation; all the light shrined in the Second, the Intellectual Ark that, divinely built and guided, rode tilting over the tempestuous waste of waters; all the mind, bred and fostered by New Europe, down to within two hundred years of this year that runs: These have put differences between the Iliad and the Paradise Lost, in matter and in style, which to state and illustrate would hold me speaking till sunset.

BULLER

And us listening.

NORTH

The Fall of Hector and of his Troy! The Fall of Adam and of his World!

BULLER

What concise expression! Multum in parvo, indeed, Seward.

NORTH

Men and gods mingled in glittering conflict upon the ground that spreads between Ida's foot and the Hellespont! At the foot of the Omnipotent Throne, archangels and angels distracting their native Heaven with arms, and Heaven disburthening her lap of her self-lost sons for the peopling of Hell!

SEWARD

Hush! Buller – hush!

NORTH

In way of an Episode – yes, an Episode – see the Seventh Book – our Visible Universe willed into being!

SEWARD

Hush! Buller – hush!

NORTH

For a few risings and settings of yon since-bedimmed Sun – Love and celestial Bliss dwelling amidst the shades and flowers of Eden yet sinless – then, from a MORE FATAL APPLE, Discord clashing into and subverting the harmonies of Creation.

"Sin, and her shadow, Death; and Misery,Death's Harbinger."

The Iliad, indeed!

SEWARD

I wish you could be persuaded, sir, to give us an Edition of Milton.

NORTH

No. I must not take it out of the Doctor's hands. Then, as to Milton's style. If the Christian Theologian must be held bold who has dared to mix the Delivered Writings with his own Inventions – bold, too, was he, the heir of the mind that was nursed in the Aristotelian Schools, to unite, as he did, on the other hand, the gait of an understanding accomplished in logic, with the spontaneous and unstudied step of Poetry. The style of Milton, gentlemen, has been praised for simplicity; and it is true that the style of the Paradise Lost has often an austere simplicity; but one sort of it you miss – the proper Epic simplicity – that Homeric simplicity of the Telling.

SEWARD

Perhaps, sir, in such a Poem such simplicity could not be.

NORTH

Perhaps not. Homer adds thought to thought, and so builds up. Milton involves thought with thought, and so constructs. Relation is with him argumentative also, and History both Philosophy and Oratory. This was unavoidable. He brought the mind of the latter age to the Form of Composition produced by the primitive time. Again, the style is fitted to the general intention of a Poem essentially didactic and argumentative. Again, the style is personal to himself. He has learnedly availed himself of all antecedent Art – minutely availed himself, yet he is no imitator. The style is like no other – it is intensely and completely original. It expresses himself. Lofty, capacious, acute, luminous, thoroughly disciplined, ratiocinative powers wonderfully blend their action with an imagination of the most delicate and profound sensibility to the beautiful, and of a sublimity that no theme can excel.

SEWARD

Lord Bacon, sir, I believe, has defined Poetry, Feigned History – has he not?

NORTH

He has – and no wonder that he thought much of "Feigned History" – for he had a view to Epos and Tragedy – the Iliad and Odyssey – the Attic Theatre – the Æneid – Dante – Ariosto – Tasso – the Romances of Chivalry – moreover, the whole Immense Greek Fable, whereof part and parcel remain, but more is perished. Which Fables, you know, existed, and were transmitted in Prose, – that is, by Oral Tradition, in the words of the relator, – long before they came into Homeric Verse – or any verse. He saw, Seward, the Memory of Mankind possessed by two kinds of History, both once alike credited. True History, which remains True History, and Fabulous History, now acknowledged as Poetry only. It is no wonder that other Poetry vanished from importance in his estimation.

BULLER

I follow you, sir, with some difficulty.

NORTH

You may with ease. Fabulous History holds place, side by side, with True History, as a rival in dignity, credence, and power, and in peopling the Earth with Persons and Events. For, of a verity, the Personages and Events created by Poesy hold place in our Mind – not in our Imagination only, but in our Understanding, along with Events and Personages historically remembered.

SEWARD

An imposing Parallelism!

NORTH

It is – but does it hold good? And if it does – with what limitations?

SEWARD

With what limitations, sir?

NORTH

I wish Lord Bacon were here, that I might ask him to explain. Take Homer and Thucydides – the Iliad and the History of the Peloponnesian War. We thus sever, at the widest, the Telling of Calliope from the Telling of Clio, holding each at the height of honour.

BULLER

At the widest?

NORTH

Yes; for how far from Thucydides is, at once, the Book of the Games! Look through the Iliad, and see how much and minute depicturing of a World with which the Historian had nothing to do! Shall the Historian, in Prose, of the Ten Years' War, stop to describe the Funeral Games of a Patroclus? Yes; if he stop to describe the Burying of every Hero who falls. But the Historian in Prose assumes that a People know their own Manners, and therefore he omits painting their manners to themselves. The Historian in Verse assumes the same thing, and, therefore, strange to say, he paints the manners! See, then, in the Iliad, how much memorising of a whole departed scheme of human existence, with which the Prose Historian had nothing to do, the Historian in regulated Metre has had the inspiration and the skill to inweave in the narrative of his ever-advancing Action.

BULLER

Would his lordship were with us!

NORTH

Give all this to – the Hexameter. Remember always, my dear Seward, the shield of Achilles – itself a world in miniature – a compendium of the world.

SEWARD

Of the universe.

NORTH

Even so; for Sun, and Moon, and Stars are there, Astronomy and all the learned sisterhood!

SEWARD

Then to what species of narrative in prose – to one removed at what interval from the history of the Peloponnesian War, belongs that scene of Helen on the Walls of Troy? That scene at the Scæan gate? In the tent of Achilles, where Achilles sits, and Priam kneels?

NORTH

Good. The general difference is obviously this – Publicity almost solely stamps the Thucydidean story – Privacy, more than in equal part, interfused with Publicity, the Homeric. You must allow Publicity and Privacy to signify, besides that which is done in public and in private, that which proceeds of the Public and of the Private will.

SEWARD

In other words, if I apprehend you aright, the Theme given being some affair of Public moment, Prose tends to gather up the acts of the individual agents, under general aspects, into masses.

NORTH

Just so. Verse, whenever it dare, resolves the mass of action into the individual acts, puts aside the collective doer – the Public, and puts forward individual persons. Glory, I say again, to the Hexameter!

BULLER

Glory to the Hexameter! The Hexameter, like the Queen, has done it all.

NORTH

Or let us return to the Paradise Lost? If the mustering of the Fallen Legions in the First Book – if the Infernal Council held in the Second – if the Angelic Rebellion and Warfare in the Fifth and Sixth – resemble Public History, civil and military, as we commonly speak – if the Seventh Book, relating the Creation by describing the kinds created, be the assumption into Heroic Poetry of Natural History – to what kind of History, I earnestly ask you both, does that scene belong, of Eve's relation of her dream, in the Fifth Book, and Adam's consolation of her uneasiness under its involuntary sin? To what, in the Fourth Book, her own innocent relation of her first impressions upon awaking into Life and Consciousness?

BULLER

Ay! – to what kind of History? More easily asked than answered.

NORTH

And Adam's relation to the Affable Archangel of his own suddenly-dawned morning from the night of non-existence, aptly and happily crowned upon the relation made to him by Raphael in the Seventh Book of his own forming under the Omnipotent Hand?