Complete Works of Thomas Love Peacock

by Thomas Love Peacock

  The Rev. Mr. Portpipe. Man has fallen, certainly, by the fruit of the tree of knowledge: which shows that human learning is vanity and a great evil, and therefore very properly discountenanced by all bishops, priests, and deacons.

  Mr. Fax. The picture which you have drawn of poverty is not very tempting; and you must acknowledge that it is most galling to the most refined feelings. You must not, therefore, wonder that it is peculiarly obnoxious to the practical notions of poets. If the radiance of gold and silver gleam not through the foliage of the Pierian laurel, there is something to be said in their excuse if they carry their chaplet to those who will gild its leaves; and in that case they will find their best customers and patrons among those who are ambitious of acquiring panegyric by a more compendious method than the troublesome practice of the virtues that deserve it.

  Mr. Forester. You have quoted Juvenal, but you should have completed the sentence: ‘ If you see no glimpse of coin in the Pierian shade, you will prefer the name and occupation of a barber or an auctioneer.’ This is most just: if the pursuits of literature, conscientiously conducted, condemn their votary to famine, let him live by more humble, but at least by honest, and therefore honourable occupations: he may still devote his leisure to his favourite pursuits. If he produce but a single volume consecrated to moral truth, its effect must be good as far as it goes; but if he purchase leisure and luxury by the prostitution of talent to the cause of superstition and tyranny, every new exertion of his powers is a new outrage to reason and virtue, and in precise proportion to those powers is he a curse to his country and a traitor to mankind.

  Mr. Feathernest. A barber, sir! — a man of genius turn barber!

  Mr. (O’Scarum. Troth, sir, and I think it is better he should be in the suds himself, than help to bring his country into that situation.

  Mr. Forester. I can perceive, sir, in your exclamation the principle that has caused so enormous a superabundance in the number of bad books over that of good ones. The objects of the majority of men of talent seem to be exclusively two: the first, to convince the world of their transcendent abilities; the second, to convert that conviction into a source of the greatest possible pecuniary benefit to themselves. But there is no class of men more resolutely indifferent to the moral tendency of the means by which their ends are accomplished. Yet this is the most extensively pernicious of all modes of dishonesty; for that of a private man can only injure the pockets of a few individuals (a great evil, certainly, but light in comparison); while that of a public writer, who has previously taught the multitude to respect his talents, perverts what is much more valuable, the mental progress of thousands; misleading, on the one hand, the shallow believers in his sincerity; and on the other, stigmatising the whole literary character in the opinions of all who see through the veil of his venality.

  Mr. Feathernest. All this is no reason, sir, why a man of genius should condescend to be a barber.

  Mr. Forester. He condescends much more in being a sycophant. The poorest barber in the poorest borough in England, who will not sell his vote, is a much more honourable character in the estimate of moral comparison than the most self-satisfied dealer in courtly poetry, whose well-paid eulogiums of licentiousness and corruption were ever re-echoed by the ‘most sweet voices’ of hireling gazetteers and pensioned reviewers.

  The summons to tea and coffee put a stop to the conversation.

  CHAPTER XVII

  MUSIC AND DISCORD

  THE EVENINGS WERE beginning to give symptoms of winter, and a large fire was blazing in the library. Mr. Forester took the opportunity of stigmatising the use of sugar, and had the pleasure of observing that the practice of Anthelia in this respect was the same as his own. He mentioned his intention of giving an anti-saccharine festival at Redrose Abbey, and invited all the party at Melincourt to attend it. He observed that his aunt, Miss Evergreen, who would be there at the time, would send an invitation in due form to the ladies, to remove all scruples on the score of propriety; and added, that if he could hope for the attendance of half as much moral feeling as he was sure there would be of beauty and fashion, he should be satisfied that a great step would be made towards accomplishing the object of the Anti-saccharine Society.

  The Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub felt extremely indignant at Mr. Forester’s notion ‘of every real enemy to slavery being bound by the strictest moral duty to practical abstinence from the luxury which slavery acquires’; but when he found that the notion was to be developed in the shape of a festival, he determined to suspend his judgment till he had digested the solid arguments that were to be brought forward on the occasion.

  Mr. O’Scarum was, as usual, very clamorous for music, and was seconded by the unanimous wish of the company, with which Anthelia readily complied, and sang as follows:

  THE FLOWER OF LOVE

  ’Tis said the rose is Love’s own flower,

  Its blush so bright, its thorns so many;

  And winter on its bloom has power,

  But has not on its sweetness any.

  For though young Love’s ethereal rose

  Will droop on Age’s wintry bosom,

  Yet still its faded leaves disclose

  The fragrance of their earliest blossom.

  But ah! the fragrance lingering there

  Is like the sweets that mournful duty

  Bestows with sadly-soothing care,

  To deck the grave of bloom and beauty.

  For when its leaves are shrunk and dry,

  Its blush extinct, to kindle never,

  That fragrance is but Memory’s sigh,

  That breathes of pleasures past for ever.

  Why did not Love the amaranth choose,

  That bears no thorns, and cannot perish?

  Alas! no sweets its flowers diffuse,

  And only sweets Love’s life can cherish.

  But be the rose and amaranth twined,

  And Love, their mingled powers assuming,

  Shall round his brows a chaplet bind,

  For ever sweet, for ever blooming.

  ‘I am afraid,’ said Mr. Derrydown, ‘the flower of modern love is neither the rose nor the amaranth, but the chrysanthemum, or gold-flower. If Miss Danaretta and Mr. O’Scarum will accompany me, we will sing a little harmonised ballad, something in point, and rather more conformable to the truth of things.’ Mr. O’Scarum and Miss Danaretta consented, and they accordingly sang the following: —

  BALLAD TERZETTO — THE LADY, THE KNIGHT,

  AND THE FRIAR

  THE LADY

  O cavalier! what dost thou here,

  Thy tuneful vigils keeping;

  While the northern star looks cold from far,

  And half the world is sleeping?

  THE KNIGHT

  O lady! here, for seven long year,

  Have I been nightly sighing, Without the hope of a single tear

  To pity me were I dying.

  THE LADY

  Should I take thee to have and to hold,

  Who hast nor lands nor money?

  Alas! ’tis only in flowers of gold

  That married bees find honey.

  THE KNIGHT

  O lady fair! to my constant prayer

  Fate proves at last propitious:

  And bags of gold in my hand I bear,

  And parchment scrolls delicious.

  THE LADY

  My maid the door shall open throw,

  For we too long have tarried:

  The friar keeps watch in the cellar below,

  And we will at once be married.

  THE FRIAR

  My children! great is Fortune’s power;

  And plain this truth appears,

  That gold thrives more in a single hour

  Than love in seven long years.

  During this terzetto the Reverend Mr. Portpipe fell asleep, and accompanied the performance with rather a deeper bass than was generally deemed harmonious.

  Sir Telegraph Paxarett took Mr. Forester aside, to consul
t him on the subject of the journey to Onevote.

  ‘I have asked,’ said he, ‘my aunt and cousin, Mrs and Miss Pinmoney, to join the party, and have requested them to exert their influence with Miss Melincourt to induce her to accompany them.’

  ‘That would make it a delightful expedition, indeed,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘if Miss Melincourt could be prevailed on to comply.’

  ‘Nil desperandum,’ said Sir Telegraph.

  The Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney drew Anthelia into a corner, and developed all her eloquence in enforcing the proposition. Miss Danaretta joined in it with great earnestness; and they kept up the fire of their importunity till they extorted from Anthelia a promise that she would consider of it.

  Mr. Forester took down a splendid edition of Tasso, printed by Bodoni at Parma, and found it ornamented with Anthelia’s drawings. In the magic of her pencil the wild and wonderful scenes of Tasso seemed to live under his eyes: he could not forbear expressing to her the delight he experienced from these new proofs of her sensibility and genius, and entered into a conversation with her concerning her favourite poet, in which the congeniality of their tastes and feelings became more and more manifest to each other.

  Mr. Feathernest and Mr. Derrydown got into a hot dispute over Chapman’s Homer and Jeremy Taylor’s Holy Living: Mr. Derrydown maintaining that the ballad metre which Chapman had so judiciously chosen rendered his volume the most divine poem in the world; Mr. Feathernest asserting that Chapman’s verses were mere doggerel: which vile aspersion Mr. Derrydown revenged by depreciating Mr. Feathernest’s favourite Jeremy. Mr. Feathernest said he could expect no better judgment from a man who was mad enough to prefer Chevy Chase to Paradise Lost; and Mr. Derrydown retorted, that it was idle to expect either taste or justice from one who had thought fit to unite in himself two characters so anomalous as those of a poet and a critic, in which duplex capacity he had first deluged the world with torrents of execrable verses, and then written anonymous criticisms to prove them divine. ‘Do you think, sir,’ he continued, ‘that it is possible for the same man to be both Homer and Aristotle? No, sir; but it is very possible to be both Dennis and Colley Cibber, as in the melancholy example before me.’

  At this all the blood of the genus irritabile boiled in Mr. Feathernest’s veins, and uplifting the ponderous folio, he seemed inclined to bury his antagonist under Jeremy’s weight of words, by applying them in a tangible shape; but wisely recollecting that this was not the time and place

  To prove his doctrine orthodox

  By apostolic blows and knocks, he contented himself with a point-blank denial of the charge that he wrote critiques on his own works, protesting that all the articles on his poems were written either by his friend Mr.

  Mystic, of Cimmerian Lodge, or by Mr. Vamp, the amiable editor of the Legitimate Review. ‘Yes,’ said Mr. Derrydown, ‘on the “Tickle me, Mr. Hay ley” principle; by which a miserable cabal of doggerel rhymesters and worn-out paragraph-mongers of bankrupt gazettes ring the eternal changes of panegyric on each other, and on everything else that is either rich enough to buy their praise, or vile enough to deserve it: like a gang in a country steeple, paid for being a public nuisance, and maintaining that noise is melody.’

  Mr. Feathemest on this became perfectly outrageous; and waving Jeremy Taylor in the air, exclaimed, ‘Ok that mine enemy had written a book! Horrible should be the vengeance of the Legitimate Review!’

  Mr. Hippy now deemed it expedient to interpose for the restoration of order, and entreated Anthelia to throw in a little musical harmony as a sedative to the ebullitions of a poetical discord. At the sound of the harp the antagonists turned away, the one flourishing his Chapman and the other his Jeremy with looks of lofty defiance.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  THE STRATAGEM

  THE REVEREND MR. Grovelgrub, who had acquired a great proficiency in the art of hearing without seeming to listen, had overheard Mrs. Pinmoney’s request to Anthelia; and, notwithstanding the young lady’s hesitation, he very much feared she would ultimately comply. He had seen, much against his will, a great congeniality in feelings and opinions between her and Mr. Forester, and had noticed some unconscious external manifestations of the interior mind on both sides, some outward and visible signs of the inward and spiritual sentiment, which convinced him that a more intimate acquaintance with each other would lead them to a conclusion, which, for the reasons we have given in the ninth chapter, he had no wish to see established. After long and mature deliberation, he determined to rouse Lord Anophel to a sense of his danger, and spirit him up to an immediate coup-de-main. He calculated that, as the young Lord was a spoiled child, immoderately vain, passably foolish, and totally unused to contradiction, he should have little difficulty in moulding him to his views. His plan was, that Lord Anophel, with two or three confidential fellows, should lie in ambush for Anthelia in one of her solitary rambles, and convey her to a lonely castle of his Lordship’s on the sea-coast, with a view of keeping her in close custody, till fair means or foul should induce her to regain her liberty in the character of Lady Achthar. This was to be Lord Anophel’s view of the subject; but the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub had in the inner cave of his perceptions a very promising image of a different result. As he would have free access to Anthelia in her confinement, he intended to worm himself into her favour, under the cover of friendship and sympathy, with the most ardent professions of devotion to her cause and promises of endeavours to effect her emancipation, involving the accomplishment of this object in a multitude of imaginary difficulties, which it should be his professed study to vanquish. He deemed it very probable that, by a skilful adoperation of these means, and by moulding Lord Anophel, at the same time, into a system of conduct as disagreeable as possible to Anthelia, he might himself become the lord and master of the lands and castle of Melincourt, when he would edify the country with the example of his truly orthodox life, faring sumptuously every day, raising the rents of his tenants, turning out all who were in arrear, and occasionally treating the rest with discourses on temperance and charity.

  With these ideas in his head, he went in search of Lord Anophel, and proceeding pedetentim and opening the subject peirastically, he managed so skilfully that his Lordship became himself the proposer of the scheme, with which the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub seemed unwillingly to acquiesce.

  Mr. Forester, Mr. Fax, and Sir Oran Haut-ton took leave of the party at Melincourt Castle; the former having arranged with Sir Telegraph Paxarett that he was to call for them at Redrose Abbey in the course of three days, and reiterated his earnest hopes that Anthelia would be persuaded to accompany Mrs. Pinmoney and her beautiful daughter in the expedition to Onevote.

  Lord Anophel Achthar and the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub also took leave, as a matter of policy, that their disappearance at the same time with Anthelia might not excite surprise. They pretended a pressing temporary engagement in a distant part of the country, and carried off with them Mr. Feathernest the poet, whom, nevertheless, they did not deem it prudent to let into the secret of their scheme.

  The next day Anthelia, still undecided on this subject, wandered alone to the ruined bridge, to contemplate the scene of her former misadventure. As she ascended the hill that bounded the valley of Melincourt, a countryman crossed her path, and touching his hat passed on. She thought there was something peculiar in his look, but had quite forgotten him, when, on looking back as she descended on the other side, she observed him making signs, as if to some one at a distance: she could not, however, consider that they had any relation to her. The day was clear and sunny; and when she entered the pine-grove, the gloom of its tufted foliage, with the sunbeams chequering the dark-red soil, formed a grateful contrast to the naked rocks and heathy mountains that lay around it, in the full blaze of daylight. In many parts of the grove was a luxuriant laurel underwood, glittering like silver in the partial sunbeams that penetrated the interstices of the pines. Few scenes in nature have a more mysterious solemnity than such a scene as this. Ant
helia paused a moment She thought she heard a rustling in the laurels, but all was again still. She proceeded; the rustling was renewed. She felt alarmed, yet she knew not why, and reproached herself for such idle and unaccustomed apprehensions. She paused again to listen; the soft tones of a flute sounded from a distance: these gave her confidence, and she again proceeded. She passed by the tuft of laurels in which she had heard the rustling. Suddenly a mantle was thrown over her. She was wrapped in darkness, and felt that she was forcibly seized by several persons, who carried her rapidly along. She screamed, but the mantle was immediately pressed on her mouth, and she was hurried onward. After a time the party stopped: a tumult ensued: she found herself at liberty, and threw the mantle from her head. She was on a road at the verge of the pine-grove: a chaise-and-four was waiting. Two men were running away in the distance: two others, muffled and masked, were rolling on the ground, and roaring for mercy, while Sir Oran Haut-ton was standing over them with a stick, and treating them as if he were a thresher and they were sheaves of corn. By her side was Mr. Forester, who, taking her hand, assured her that she was in safety, while at the same time he endeavoured to assuage Sir Oran’s wrath, that he might raise and unmask the fallen foes. Sir Oran, however, proceeded in his summary administration of natural justice till he had dispensed what was to his notion a quantum sufficit of the application: then throwing his stick aside, he caught them both up, one under each arm, and climbing with great dexterity a high and precipitous rock, left them perched upon its summit, bringing away their masks in his hand, and making them a profound bow at taking leave.