Autobiographic Sketches

7

Cicero, in a well-known passage of his "Ethics", speaks of trade as irredeemably base, if petty, but as not so absolutely felonious if wholesale.

8

It is true that in those days paregoric elixir was occasionally given to children in colds; and in this medicine there is a small proportion of laudanum. But no medicine was ever administered to any member of our nursery except under medical sanction; and this, assuredly, would not have been obtained to the exhibition of laudanum in a case such as mine. For I was then not more that twenty-one months old: at which age the action of opium is capricious, and therefore perilous.

9

"Aureola."—The aureola is the name given in the "Legends of the Christian Saints" to that golden diadem or circlet of supernatural light (that glory, as it is commonly called in English) which, amongst the great masters of painting in Italy, surrounded the heads of Christ and of distinguished saints.

10

"The astonishment of science."—Her medical attendants were Dr. Percival, a well-known literary physician, who had been a correspondent of Condorcet, D'Alembert, &c., and Mr. Charles White, the most distinguished surgeon at that time in the north of England. It was he who pronounced her head to be the finest in its development of any that he had ever seen—an assertion which, to my own knowledge, he repeated in after years, and with enthusiasm. That he had some acquaintance with the subject may be presumed from this, that, at so early a stage of such inquiries, he had published a work on human craniology, supported by measurement of heads selected from all varieties of the human species. Meantime, as it would grieve me that any trait of what might seem vanity should creep into this record, I will admit that my sister died of hydrocephalus; and it has been often supposed that the premature expansion of the intellect in cases of that class is altogether morbid— forced on, in fact, by the mere stimulation of the disease. I would, however, suggest, as a possibility, the very opposite order of relation between the disease and the intellectual manifestations. Not the disease may always have caused the preternatural growth of the intellect; but, inversely, this growth of the intellect coming on spontaneously, and outrunning the capacities of the physical structure, may have caused the disease.

11

  "I stood in unimaginable trance  And agony which cannot be remembered."Speech of Alhadra, in Coleridge's Remorse

12

"The guard."—I know not whether the word is a local one in this sense. What I mean is a sort of fender, four or five feet high, which locks up the fire from too near an approach on the part of children.

13

"Memnonian."—For the sake of many readers, whose hearts may go along earnestly with a record of infant sorrow, but whose course of life has not allowed them much leisure for study, I pause to explain—that the head of Memnon, in the British Museum, that sublime head which wears upon its lips a smile coextensive with all time and all space, an Aeonian smile of gracious love and Pan-like mystery, the most diffusive and pathetically divine that the hand of man has created, is represented, on the authority of ancient traditions, to have uttered at sunrise, or soon after as the sun's rays had accumulated heat enough to rarefy the air within certain cavities in the bust, a solemn and dirge-like series of intonations; the simple explanation being, in its general outline, this— that sonorous currents of air were produced by causing chambers of cold and heavy air to press upon other collections of air, warmed, and therefore rarefied, and therefore yielding readily to the pressure of heavier air. Currents being thus established by artificial arrangements of tubes, a certain succession of notes could be concerted and sustained. Near the Red Sea lies a chain of sand hills, which, by a natural system of grooves inosculating with each other, become vocal under changing circumstances in the position of the sun, &c. I knew a boy who, upon observing steadily, and reflecting upon a phenomenon that met him in his daily experience, viz., that tubes, through which a stream of water was passing, gave out a very different sound according to the varying slenderness or fulness of the current, devised an instrument that yielded a rude hydraulic gamut of sounds; and, indeed, upon this simple phenomenon is founded the use and power of the stethoscope. For exactly as a thin thread of water, trickling through a leaden tube, yields a stridulous and plaintive sound compared with the full volume of sound corresponding to the full volume of water, on parity of principles, nobody will doubt that the current of blood pouring through the tubes of the human frame will utter to the learned ear, when armed with the stethoscope, an elaborate gamut or compass of music recording the ravages of disease, or the glorious plenitudes of health, as faithfully as the cavities within this ancient Memnonian bust reported this mighty event of sunrise to the rejoicing world of light and life; or, again, under the sad passion of the dying day, uttered the sweet requiem that belonged to its departure.

14

"Everlasting Jew."—Der ewige Jude—which is the common German expression for "The Wandering Jew," and sublimer even than our own.

15

First Epistle to Corinthians, chap. xv., beginning at ver. 20.

16

This beautiful expression, I am pretty certain, must belong to Mrs. Trollope; I read it, probably, in a tale of hers connected with the backwoods of America, where the absence of such a farewell must unspeakably aggravate the gloom at any rate belonging to a household separation of that eternal character occurring amongst the shadows of those mighty forests.

17

"Galleries."—These, though condemned on some grounds by the restorers of authentic church architecture, have, nevertheless, this one advantage—that, when the height of a church is that dimension which most of all expresses its sacred character, galleries expound and interpret that height.

18

Euripides.

19

"Spectre of the Brocken."—This very striking phenomenon has been continually described by writers, both German and English, for the last fifty years. Many readers, however, will not have met with these descriptions; and on their account I add a few words in explanation, referring them for the best scientific comment on the case to Sir David Brewster's "Natural Magic." The spectre takes the shape of a human figure, or, if the visitors are more than one, then the spectres multiply; they arrange themselves on the blue ground of the sky, or the dark ground of any clouds that may be in the right quarter, or perhaps they are strongly relieved against a curtain of rock, at a distance of some miles, and always exhibiting gigantic proportions. At first, from the distance and the colossal size, every spectator supposes the appearances to be quite independent of himself. But very soon he is surprised to observe his own motions and gestures mimicked, and wakens to the conviction that the phantom is but a dilated reflection of himself. This Titan amongst the apparitions of earth is exceedingly capricious, vanishing abruptly for reasons best known to himself, and more coy in coming forward than the Lady Echo of Ovid. One reason why he is seen so seldom must be ascribed to the concurrence of conditions under which only the phenomenon can be manifested; the sun must be near to the horizon, (which, of itself, implies a time of day inconvenient to a person starting from a station as distant as Elbingerode;) the spectator must have his back to the sun; and the air must contain some vapor, but partially distributed. Coleridge ascended the Brocken on the Whitsunday of 1799, with a party of English students from Goettingen, but failed to see the phantom; afterwards in England (and under the three same conditions) he saw a much rarer phenomenon, which he described in the following lines:—

    "Such thou art as when  The woodman winding westward up the glen  At wintry dawn, when o'er the sheep-track's maze  The viewless snow mist weaves a glistening haze,  Sees full before him, gliding without tread,  An image with a glory round its head;  This shade he worships for its golden hues,And makes (not knowing) that which he pursues."

20

"On Whitsunday."—It is singular, and perhaps owing to the temperature and weather likely to prevail in that early part of summer, that more appearances of the spectre have been witnessed on Whitsunday than on any other day.

21

"The sorcerer's flower," and "The sorcerer's altar."—These are names still clinging to the anemone of the Brocken, and to an altar- shaped fragment of granite near one of the summits; and there is no doubt that they both connect themselves, through links of ancient tradition, with the gloomy realities of paganism, when the whole Hartz and the Brocken formed for a very long time the last asylum to a ferocious but perishing idolatry.

22

"The sorcerer's flower," and "The sorcerer's altar."—These are names still clinging to the anemone of the Brocken, and to an altar- shaped fragment of granite near one of the summits; and there is no doubt that they both connect themselves, through links of ancient tradition, with the gloomy realities of paganism, when the whole Hartz and the Brocken formed for a very long time the last asylum to a ferocious but perishing idolatry.

23

On the Roman coins.

24

"Peculiar."—Viz., as endowed foundations to which those resort who are rich and pay, and those also who, being poor, cannot pay, or cannot pay so much. This most honorable distinction amongst the services of England from ancient times to the interests of education—a service absolutely unapproached by any one nation of Christendom—is amongst the foremost cases of that remarkable class which make England, whilst often the most aristocratic, yet also, for many noble purposes, the most democratic of lands.

25

Five years ago, during the carnival of universal anarchy equally amongst doers and thinkers, a closely-printed pamphlet was published with this title, "A New Revelation, or the Communion of the Incarnate Dead with the Unconscious Living. Important Fact, without trifling Fiction, by HIM." I have not the pleasure of knowing HIM; but certainly I must concede to HIM, that he writes like a man of extreme sobriety upon his extravagant theme. He is angry with Swedenborg, as might be expected, for his chimeras; some of which, however, of late years have signally altered their aspect; but. as to HIM, there is no chance that he should be occupied with chimeras, because (p. 6) "he has met with some who have acknowledged the fact of their having come from the dead"—habes confitentem reum. Few, however, are endowed with so much candor; and in particular, for the honor of literature, it grieves me to find, by p. 10, that the largest number of these shams, and perhaps the most uncandid, are to be looked for amongst "publishers and printers," of whom, it seems, "the great majority" are mere forgeries: a very few speak frankly about the matter, and say they don't care who knows it, which, to my thinking, is impudence, but by far the larger section doggedly deny it, and call a policeman, if you persist in charging them with being shams. Some differences there are between my brother and HIM, but in the great outline of their views they coincide.

26

Charles II., notoriously wrote a book on the possibility of a voyage to the moon, which, in a bishop, would be called a translation to the moon, and perhaps it was his name in combination with his book that suggested the "Adventures of Peter Wilkins." It is unfair, however, to mention him in connection with that single one of his works which announces an extravagant purpose. He was really a scientific man, and already in the time of Cromwell (about 1656) had projected that Royal Society of London which was afterwards realized and presided over by Isaac Barrow and Isaac Newton. He was also a learned man, but still with a veil of romance about him, as may be seen in his most elaborate work— "The Essay towards a Philosophic or Universal Language."

27

"Middy."—I call him so simply to avoid confusion, and by way of anticipation; else he was too young at this time to serve in the navy. Afterwards he did so for many years, and saw every variety of service in every class of ships belonging to our navy. At one time, when yet a boy, he was captured by pirates, and compelled to sail with them; and the end of his adventurous career was, that for many a year he has been lying at the bottom of the Atlantic.

28

"Green_heys_," with slight variation in the spelling, is the name given to that district of which Greenhay formed the original nucleus. Probably it was the solitary situation of the house which (failing any other grounds of denomination) raised it to this privilege.

29

"Factory."—Such was the designation technically at that time. At present, I believe that a building of that class would be called a "mill."

30

This word, however, exists in Jack-a-dandy—a very old English word. But what does that mean?

31

Precisely, however, the same gesture, plebian as it was, by which the English commandant at Heligoland replied to the Danes when civilly inviting him to surrender. Southey it was, on the authority of Lieutenant Southey, his brother, who communicated to me this anecdote.

32

"Bridge of sighs."—Two men of memorable genius, Hood last, and Lord Byron by many years previously, have so appropriated this phrase, and reissued it as English currency, that many readers suppose it to be theirs. But the genealogies of fine expressions should be more carefully preserved. The expression belongs originally to Venice. This jus postliminii becomes of real importance in many cases, but especially in the case of Shakspeare. Could one have believed it possible beforehand? And yet it is a fact that he is made to seem a robber of the lowest order, by mere dint of suffering robbery. Purely through their own jewelly splendor have many hundreds of his phrases forced themselves into usage so general, under the vulgar infirmity of seeking to strengthen weak prose by shreds of poetic quotation, that at length the majority of careless readers come to look upon these phrases as belonging to the language, and traceable to no distinct proprietor any more than proverbs: and thus, on afterwards observing them in Shakspeare, they regard him in the light of one accepting alms (like so many meaner persons) from the common treasury of the universal mind, on which treasury, meantime, he had himself conferred these phrases as original donations of his own. Many expressions in the "Paradise Lost," in "Il Penseroso," and in "L'Allegro," are in the same predicament. And thus the almost incredible case is realized which I have described, viz., that simply by having suffered a robbery through two centuries, (for the first attempt at plundering Milton was made upon his juvenile poems,) have Shakspeare and Milton come to be taxed as robbers. N. B.—In speaking of Hood as having appropriated the phrase Bridge of Sighs, I would not be understood to represent him as by possibility aiming at any concealment. He was as far above such a meanness by his nobility of heart, as he was raised above all need for it by the overflowing opulence of his genius.

33

Geometry (it has been said) would not evade disputation, if a man could find his interest in disputing it: such is the spirit of cavil. But I, upon a very opposite ground, assert that there is not one page of prose that could be selected from the best writer in the English language (far less in the German) which, upon a sufficient interest arising, would not furnish matter, simply through its defects in precision, for a suit in Chancery. Chancery suits do not arise, it is true, because the doubtful expressions do not touch any interest of property; but what does arise is this—that something more valuable than a pecuniary interest is continually suffering, viz., the interests of truth.

34

"Of a Stuart sovereign," and by no means of a Stuart only. Queen Anne, the last Stuart who sat on the British throne, was the last of our princes who touched for the king's evil, (as scrofula was generally called until lately;) but the Bourbon houses, on the thrones of France, Spain, and Naples, as well as the house of Savoy, claimed and exercised the same supernatural privilege down to a much later period than the year 1714—the last of Queen Anne: according to their own and the popular faith, they could have cleansed Naaman the Syrian, and Gehazi too.

35

One reason, I believe, why it was held a point of wisdom in ancient days that the metropolis of a warlike state should have a secret name hidden from the world, lay in the pagan practice of evocation, applied to the tutelary deities of such a state. These deities might be lured by certain rites and briberies into a transfer of their favors to the besieging army. But, in order to make such an evocation effectual, it was necessary to know the original and secret name of the beleaguered city; and this, therefore, was religiously concealed.

36

Hamlet, Act v., scene 1.

37

"Hide himself in—light."—The greatest scholar, by far, that this island ever produced, viz., Richard Bentley, published (as is well known) a 4to volume that in some respects is the very worst 4to now extant in the world—viz., a critical edition of the. "Paradise Lost." I observe, in the "Edinburgh Review," (July, 1851, No. 191, p. 15,) that a learned critic supposes Bentley to have meant this edition as a "practical jest." Not at all. Neither could the critic have fancied such a possibility, if he had taken the trouble (which I did many a year back) to examine it. A jest book it certainly is, and the most prosperous of jest books, but undoubtedly never meant for such by the author. A man whose lips are livid with anger does not jest, and does not understand jesting. Still, the Edinburgh Reviewer is right about the proper functions of the book, though wrong about the intentions of the author. The fact is, the man was maniacally in error, and always in error, as regarded the ultimate or poetic truth of Milton; but, as regarded truth reputed and truth apparent, he often had the air of being furiously in the right; an example of which I will cite. Milton, in the First Book of the "Paradise Lost," had said,—

    "That from the secret top  Of Oreb or of Sinai didst inspire;"

upon which Bentley comments in effect thus: "How!—the exposed summit of a mountain secret? Why, it's like Charing Cross—always the least secret place in the whole county." So one might fancy; since the summit of a mountain, like Plinlimmon or Cader Idris in Wales, like Skiddaw or Helvellyn in England, constitutes a central object of attention and gaze for the whole circumjacent district, measured by a radius sometimes of 15 to 20 miles. Upon this consideration, Bentley instructs us to substitute as the true reading—"That on the sacred top," &c. Meantime, an actual experiment will demonstrate that there is no place so absolutely secret and hidden as the exposed summit of a mountain, 3500 feet high, in respect to an eye stationed in the valley immediately below. A whole party of men, women, horses, and even tents, looked at under those circumstances, is absolutely invisible unless by the aid of glasses: and it becomes evident that a murder might be committed on the bare open summit of such a mountain with more assurance of absolute secrecy than any where else in the whole surrounding district.

38

Which "saying" is sometimes ascribed, I know not how truly, to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

39

It strikes me, upon second thoughts, that the particular idiom, which Lord Monboddo illustrated as regarded the Greek language, merits a momentary notice; and for this reason—that it plays a part not at all less conspicuous or less delicate in the Latin. Here is an instance of its use in Greek, taken from the well-known night scene in the "Iliad:"—

—–gaethaese de poimenos aetor,

And the heart of the shepherd rejoices; where the verb gaethaese is in the indefinite or aorist tense, and is meant to indicate a condition of feeling not limited to any time whatever—past, present, or future. In Latin, the force and elegance of this usage are equally impressive, if not more so. At this moment, I remember two cases of this in Horace:– -

  1. "Rarò antecedentem scelestum     Deseruit pede poena claudo;"  2. "saepe Diespiter     Neglectus incesto addidit integrum."

That is—"oftentimes the supreme ruler, when treated with neglect, confounds or unites (not has united, as the tyro might fancy) the impure man with the upright in one common fate."

Exceedingly common is this usage in Latin poetry, when the object is to generalize a remark—as not connected with one mode of time more than another. In reality, all three modes of time—past, present, future—are used (though not equally used) in all languages for this purpose of generalization. Thus,—

1. The future; as, Sapiens dominabitur astris; 2. The present; as, Fortes fortuna juvat; 3. The past; as in the two cases cited from Horace.

But this practice holds equally in English: as to the future and the present, nobody will doubt it; and here is a case from the past: "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God;" not meaning, that in some past time he has said so, but that generally in all times he does say so, and will say so.

40

"Too obstinate a preconception."—Until the birth of geology, and fossil paleontology, concurring with vast strides ahead in the science of comparative anatomy, it is a well-established fact, that oftentimes the most scientific museum admitted as genuine fragments of the human osteology what in fact belonged to the gigantic brutes of our earth in her earliest stages of development. This mistake would go some way in accounting for the absurd disposition in all generations to view themselves as abridged editions of their forefathers. Added to which, as a separate cause of error, there can be little doubt, that intermingled with the human race there has at most periods of the world been a separate and Titanic race, such as the Anakim amongst the peoples of Palestine, the Cyclopean race diffused over the Mediterranean in the elder ages of Greece, and certain tribes amongst the Alps, known to Evelyn in his youth (about Cromwell's time) by an unpleasant travelling experience. These gigantic races, however, were no arguments for a degeneration amongst the rest of mankind. They were evidently a variety of man, coexistent with the ordinary races, but liable to be absorbed and gradually lost by intermarriage amongst other tribes of the ordinary standard. Occasional exhumations of such Titan skeletons would strengthen the common prejudice. They would be taken, not for a local variety, but for an antediluvian or prehistoric type, from which the present races of man had arisen by gradual degeneration.

These cases of actual but misinterpreted experience, at the same time that they naturally must tend to fortify the popular prejudice, would also, by accounting for it, and ingrafting it upon a reasonable origin, so far tend to take from it the reproach of a prejudice. Though erroneous, it would yet seem to us, in looking back upon it, a rational and even an inevitable opinion, having such plausible grounds to stand upon; plausible, I mean, until science and accurate examination of the several cases had begun to read them into a different construction. Yet, on the other hand, in spite of any colorable excuses that may be pleaded for this prejudice, it is pretty plain that, after all, there is in human nature a deep-laid predisposition to an obstinate craze of this nature. Else why is it that, in every age alike, men have asserted or even assumed the downward tendency of the human race in all that regards moral qualities. For the physical degeneration of man there really were some apparent (though erroneous) arguments; but, for the moral degeneration, no argument at all, small or great. Yet a bigotry of belief in this idle notion has always prevailed amongst moralists, pagan alike and Christian. Horace, for example, informs us that