One trait of mind especially characterized Clifford, – indulgence to the faults of others! ‘Circumstances make guilt,’ he was wont to say. ‘Let us endeavour to correct the circumstances, before we rail against the guilt!’ His children promised to tread in the same useful and honourable path that he trod himself. Happy was considered that family which had the hope to ally itself with his.
Such was the after-fate of Clifford and Lucy. Who will condemn us for preferring the moral of that fate to the moral which is extorted from the gibbet and the hulks – which makes scarecrows, not beacons; terrifies our weakness, not warms our reason? Who does not allow that it is better to repair than to perish, – better, too, to atone as the citizen than to repent as the hermit? O John Wilkes! Alderman of London, and Drawcansir of Liberty, your life was not an iota too perfect, – your patriotism might have been infinitely purer, – your morals would have admitted indefinite amendment: you are no great favourite with us or with the rest of the world; but you said one excellent thing, for which we look on you with benevolence, nay, almost with respect. We scarcely know whether to smile at its wit, or to sigh at its wisdom. Mark this truth, all ye gentlemen of England, who would make law as the Romans made fasces – a bundle of rods with an axe in the middle; mark it, and remember! Long may it live, allied with hope in ourselves, but with gratitude in our children; – long after the book which it now ‘adorns’ and ‘points’ has gone to its dusty slumber; – long, long after the feverish hand which now writes it down can defend or enforce it no more: – ‘THE VERY WORST USE TO WHICH YOU CAN PUT A MAN IS TO HANG HIM!’
* Meaning, what is of no value now may be precious hereafter.
† Neck.
* Be whipped at the cart’s tail.
* Gallows.
* Shilling.
* Guineas.
* Transported for burglary.
* A celebrated Principal of Eton.
* ‘He appears to me to be, to the fullest extent, a poet, who airily torments my breast, irritates, soothes, fills it with unreal terrors.’
* ‘Popular Fallacies.’
* Brandy.
† Gin.
* Fingers.
* Highway expedition.
* Face or shoulders.
* Money.
† Pickpocket.
* The highway.
† Money.
* ‘Murphy’s face,’ unlearned reader, appeareth, in Irish phrase, to mean ‘pig’s head.’
* A fact, occurring in the month of January, 1830. – See The Morning Herald.
* A very common practice at the Bridewells. The governor at the Coldbath-Fields, apparently a very intelligent and active man, every way fitted for a most arduous undertaking, informed us, in the only conversation we have had the honour to hold with him, that he thought he had nearly, or quite, destroyed in his jurisdiction this illegal method of commerce.
* A phrase applied to a noted defaulter of the public money.
* See Ritson’s North-Country Chorister.
† Ibid.
* Fact.
* We observe in a paragraph from an American paper, copied without comment into the Morning Chronicle, a singular proof of the truth of Tomlinson’s philosophy. ‘Mr Rowland Stephenson’ – so runs the extract – ‘the celebrated English banker, has just purchased a considerable tract of land,’ &c. Most philosophical of paragraphists! ‘Celebrated English banker!’ that sentence is a better illustration of verbal fallacies than all Bentham’s treatises put together. ‘Celebrated!’ O Mercury, what a dexterous epithet!
* Peter: a portmanteau.
* Pickpocket.
* Fighting Attie herein typifies or illustrates the Duke of Wellington’s abrupt dismissal of Mr Huskisson.
* Suckling.
* The moon.
* Quid – a guinea.
† Quod – a prison.
‡ Fogles – handkerchiefs.
* Hold your tongue.
* See Marmontel’s pretty tale of Les Quatres Flacons.
* See Dryden’s poem of Cymon and Iphigenia.
* The moon.
* A noted highwayman.
* Magistrate.
* A word difficult to translate; but the closest interpretation of which is, perhaps, ‘the ill omen.’
* Prison.
* Non-pareils.
* Scotland.
† Hung for uttering forged notes.
* Fact.
* ‘The History of the Lyre,’ by L. E. L.
* He laughs and hates.
* At Cambridge the sons of noblemen, and the eldest sons of baronets, are allowed to wear hats instead of the academical cap.
* Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity.
* Pickpocket.
* Shillings.
* Break into a gentleman’s house.
† Burglar.
‡ Sold the booty.
§ Took our shares.
* ‘And the roar of Rome.’
* See Captain Hall’s late work on America.
Paul Clifford Page 52
