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THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 BEING 
 
 A SERIES OF 
 DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD 
 
 BY 
 
 H. D. TRAILL 
 
 NEW EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED 
 
 LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, ld. 
 1900 
 
NOTE 
 
 Of the fifteen Dialogues included in this volume, 
 nine are reprints — with such corrections as have been 
 rendered necessary by lapse of time, and with, in at 
 least one instance, a considerable increment of fresh 
 matter— from the original edition of " The New Lucian," 
 published in 1884. 
 
 The Dialogues severally entitled " Parnell and 
 Butt," and " Wilkes and Lord Sandwich," have 
 appeared respectively in the Fortnightly Review, and 
 in Macmillan's Magazine, to the proprietors of which 
 my thanks are due for permission to republish. 
 
 The remaining four, viz. " Gladstone and Gordon," 
 " Tennyson and Virgil," " Johnson and Coleridge," and 
 " Napoleon, Michelet, and Renan," were written 
 expressly for this volume. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 X 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Johnson and Coleridge 223 
 
 XI 
 
 Beaconsfield and Peel 243 
 
 XII 
 
 Fielding and Richardson 268 
 
 XIII 
 
 Edmund Burke and Edward Horsman 287 
 
 XIV 
 
 Napoleon I., Michelet, and Renan 307 
 
 XV 
 Lucretius, Paley, and Darwin . 322 
 
THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 I 
 
 GLADSTONE AND GORDON 
 
 Glad. At last we meet, General Gordon ! And 
 only now, though I have sought you from the very 
 day of my arrival. Strange that I should have 
 been so long in finding my way to you. 
 
 GoR. Enough that you have succeeded in doing 
 so, Mr. Gladstone. You are at least more fortunate 
 than your expeditions. 
 
 Glad. The comparison is wounding, and the wound 
 is, in my humble judgment, not wholly deserved. 
 Nevertheless, I would not for a moment be understood 
 as alleging the slightest right to complain of it. And 
 I will even add, if I may do so without impertinence, 
 that I admire the magnanimity which could find in 
 such a subject the material for a pleasantry. But 
 you must have guessed, of course, that it is on that 
 very subject that I wish to speak with you. 
 
 GOR. Why should you, then .' The whole affair is 
 I B 
 
2 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 ancient history. I am dead and done with, and so 
 are you. I got my summons from the bullet of a 
 Dervish, one January morning in 1885, on the steps 
 of the Palace at Khartoum ; you, I imagine, have only 
 recently received yours — probably in your bed, at 
 Hawarden, with a sorrowing nation gathered round it ; 
 but with that difference 
 
 Glad. It is just that difference in our fates — that 
 and its causes — which I would fain discuss with you. 
 
 GoR. A difference between two dreams of a dream- 
 like past ! Surely we might be better employed. 
 
 Glad. It is no dream to me that men have charged 
 me with your death. 
 
 GOR. What if they have .' Do I reproach you ? It 
 is true, of course, that, had you managed our joint 
 business — if my rescue was our joint business — a 
 little better, I might probably have looked to outlive 
 you by a few years. As it is, you have outlived 
 me by more than a round dozen. Still, here you 
 are at last. And here am I. What does it matter 
 to either of us now ? 
 
 Glad. To me, much. My action, in your case, has 
 been cruelly, outrageously — it would be straining the 
 obligations of Christian charity, were I to refrain 
 from adding, malignantly — misrepresented ; and even 
 here I cannot repress my desire to vindicate it. 
 
 GOR. To what end ? There is no one here for you 
 to convince. Neither a restive party, nor its puzzled 
 press, nor the uneasy public behind both. And to 
 
GLADSTONE AND GORDON 3 
 
 whom else did you ever think it necessary to justify 
 yourself ? 
 
 Glad. You might have spared me that taunt, 
 General Gordon. I have my own conscience to 
 satisfy — and you ! 
 
 GoR. One of the two must surely have been long 
 satisfied already, while as to the other— well, the 
 other is not worth satisfying. It were a task so easy 
 as to be unworthy of your powers. 
 
 Glad. Easy 1 
 
 GoR. Yes ; what could be easier to you ? I am 
 a mere survival — people have often told me so — 
 from the ages of faith, and you could have no sort 
 of trouble with me. I feel sure that, after listening 
 to you for half an hour, I should be fully convinced 
 that nothing could have been more perfectly planned 
 than the expedition that failed to relieve me, and that 
 it would be the height of injustice to blame any human 
 being for its failure. Its failure, did I say ? I am 
 not at all sure, sir, that if you were to exert your 
 oratorical powers still a little more, you couldn't 
 persuade me that the expedition actually succeeded. 
 
 Glad. To establish the former and less ambitious 
 proposition would fully satisfy my modest wants. I 
 own I should like to convince you that everything 
 was done that was reasonably possible to ensure 
 the success of that ill-starred enterprise. 
 
 GOR. And I, Mr. Gladstone, should like nothing 
 better than to be converted to that belief myself. 
 
4 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Glad. Everything that could possibly be foreseen 
 was provided against. 
 
 GOR. Everything ? Even the danger of delay ? 
 
 Glad. We acted in that matter on the best expert 
 advice. 
 
 GOR. Perhaps ; when you could force yourselves to 
 act at all. But what of the precious months you let 
 pass while you were making up your minds ? Did 
 your expert advisers advise you to let them slip away ? 
 . . . You will not say so, Mr. Gladstone. Wolseley 
 knew Egypt too well to give such advice, and I know 
 Wolseley better than to suspect him of doing so. 
 
 Glad. General Gordon, I will deal plainly with 
 you. If any delay occurred in the commencement 
 of our preparations, you yourself were in a measure 
 responsible for it. For some considerable space of 
 time, in the year 1884, we believed that it was in 
 your power to secure your own personal safety — 
 you do not even now deny that such was the case — 
 by withdrawal from Khartoum ; and I will admit 
 that we waited for a certain period in the hope that 
 you might, at last, see fit to do so. 
 
 GoR. In other words, Mr. Gladstone, you assumed 
 that, to save my own skin, I should, in the last resort, 
 consent to commit an act of treachery and cowardice. 
 Yet what excuse had I ever given you for that assump- 
 tion ? Did I seem to value my life so much that I 
 should have been suspected of being willing to buy 
 it back from fate at so infamous a price ? 
 
GLADSTONE AND GORDON 5 
 
 Glad. I do not recognise the transaction in your 
 account of it. 
 
 GoR. Do you not ? Then let me quote from one 
 of my despatches to Baring, in which I describe it 
 still more plainly. I said that it would be the " climax 
 of meanness if, after having pledged myself to under- 
 take the removal of the garrison and population of 
 Khartoum — if, after having compelled them to submit 
 to sacrifices for the defence of the town, and to 
 expose themselves to the certain vengeance of the 
 Mahdists in the event of its capture," I were to 
 sneak away and leave them to their fate. I added 
 that I felt sure that whatever Baring might be 
 obliged to say officially and diplomatically, " I should 
 have his support — and that of every man professing 
 himself a gentleman — in private." You knew, did you 
 not, Mr. Gladstone, that I had thus expressed my- 
 self to the British agent at Cairo, for communication 
 to Her Majesty's Government .'' 
 
 Glad. I cannot profess to carry all the diplomatic 
 correspondence of that anxious period in my head, 
 but I have no doubt that you did write in that sense 
 to Sir Evelyn Baring. At any rate, let us take it 
 that you did. 
 
 GOR. And yet you thought that I was capable of 
 being false to the standard of conduct I had there 
 set before myself, of violating my pledged word, of 
 covering myself with dishonour ! 
 
 Glad. It is not for me to question your decision 
 
6 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 on such a matter ; but you must permit me to 
 remind you that what you conceived to be your own 
 moral obligations were not necessarily those of the 
 British Government. 
 
 GoR. No! Not when I had been commissioned 
 by that Government to effect the safe removal of 
 the garrisons and civil subjects of the Khedive in the 
 Soudan ? 
 
 Glad. I must invite you to " distinguish," General 
 Gordon. Your right and duty to execute that 
 commission were contingent on certain conditions ; 
 which conditions 
 
 GoR. Well.? 
 
 Glad. Well ? Had they been fulfilled ? 
 
 GoR. Had they failed .? 
 
 Glad. Why, surely, yes. Come, General Gordon, 
 recall the circumstances. Did you not believe, when 
 you started for the Soudan, that your influence over 
 the savage and fanatical followers of the Mahdi 
 
 GoR. You mean "the people rightly struggling to 
 be free " ? 
 
 Glad. — Were so commanding, that you would be 
 able to pacify the country and secure the peaceful 
 evacuation of its military strongholds.? Instead of 
 which you found that it taxed your powers to the 
 utmost to guard your own life. Your influence was 
 confined to Khartoum and its garrison, and even there 
 you found it a hard enough matter to prevent the one 
 from being captured or the other from surrendering. 
 
GLADSTONE AND GORDON 7 
 
 GoR. Suppose me to admit my miscalculation ; 
 and then ? 
 
 Glad. Well, then, General Gordon, it follows — does 
 it not ? — that the original contract between yourself 
 and the Government had become impossible of ful- 
 filment through failure of one of its fundamental con- 
 ditions, and that a new one had to be substituted in 
 conformity with the equities of the case. We had to 
 — but you were about to say something 
 
 GOR. Not I, Mr. Gladstone. I would not interrupt 
 your lucid statement of the case for the world. 
 What a thing it is to have the legal mind — and 
 style ! It is more beautiful even than the diplomatic, 
 though I remember that at Khartoum, while I still 
 had the pleasure of reading diplomatic communica- 
 tions — I mean before I was surrounded — no, I beg 
 pardon, I should have said "hemmed in," not "sur- 
 rounded " — I used to think that nothing could 
 beat one of Egerton's despatches. . . . You were 
 saying ? 
 
 Glad. I was saying, that when the event proved 
 that you had undertaken a commission which you 
 had not the power to execute, the original contract 
 into which we had entered with you lapsed, and it 
 became necessary to frame a new one conformable to 
 the equities of the case. 
 
 GOR. I appreciate the impressiveness of the phrase, 
 sir. It makes it seem almost indecent to object to 
 any contract that could be so described, however 
 
S THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 disastrously it might "pan out," as the gold-washers 
 put it, for one of the contracting parties. 
 
 Glad. Now, what were those equities, General 
 Gordon .'' 
 
 GOR. Ah, what? I suppose they included what 
 lawyers call an "equity of redemption." You 
 regarded me as mortgaged, so to speak, to the 
 Mahdi, and you considered that you retained the 
 right of redeeming me if you liked ; but not other- 
 wise. 
 
 Glad. The analogy is most misleading. Surely I 
 need not say that • 
 
 GOR. Otherwise, of course, you had the option of 
 allowing Mr. Mortgagee Mahommed Achmet to 
 foreclose upon me in Khartoum, which he proceeded 
 to do, most effectually. Unfortunately he was not 
 obliged to give you the usual six months' notice, 
 though, by the way, it might not have helped me 
 much if he had been. As it was, you had full four 
 months' notice of the intended foreclosure before I 
 was surrounded — I should say hemmed in. 
 
 Glad. General Gordon, I entreat you to be 
 serious. You must know very well that we recognised 
 our obligation to you as our emissary — recognised it 
 as clear and absolute. We were bound — we always 
 acknowledged ourselves bound — to use every effort to 
 secure your personal safety. But pardon me if I 
 limit that obligation to yourself Pardon me if I 
 decline to extend it to any other per.sons for whose 
 
GLADSTONE AND GORDON 9 
 
 safe deportation from the Soudan you may have 
 imprudently — I use the word with no offensive intent, 
 but as simply and neutrally descriptive of the circum- 
 stances — pledged yourself. 
 
 GOR. What ! Not if I had pledged your Govern- 
 ment also ? 
 
 Glad. That depends upon your express or implied 
 authority to pledge us. 
 
 GoR. Authority ? Why, it was written large across 
 the face of my commission. The withdrawal of the 
 Soudanese garrison and population was an essential 
 pait of the policy of evacuating the Soudan. And 
 what, pray, was the authority for that policy ? 
 
 Glad. The order of His Highness the Khedive of 
 Egypt. 
 
 GOR. Oh! Not the "advice" of Her Majesty's 
 Government transmitted to His Highness through 
 Her Majesty's Agent and Consul-General at Cairo ? 
 
 Glad. Surely advice is not command. 
 
 GOR. Never ? Ask the Rajah of a protected 
 Indian State, and the British Resident at his court, 
 what they think of that proposition. Advice is 
 command whenever Mentor advises with a pistol at 
 the head of Telemachus. You were in militarj' 
 occupation of Cairo. Tewfik's tottering throne was 
 propped by your bayonets ; the whole civil administra- 
 tion of the country was in your hands. Yet when 
 you suggest to him that he should abandon the 
 whole of his dominions south of Wady Haifa, I am 
 
10 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 to understand that that was the mere expression of 
 a "pious opinion." No, Mr. Gladstone, it would be 
 playing with words, and what is worse, it would be 
 trifling with facts, to maintain so absurd a contention. 
 When you advised — which is to say ordered — the 
 Khedive to abandon the Soudan, you took over the 
 entire responsibilities as its ruler, and you were as 
 much bound as he was to relieve the garrisons 
 planted in the territory he was about to surrender to 
 barbarism. 
 
 Glad. I cannot admit that theory of our responsi- 
 bilities. General Gordon. 
 
 GoR. Of course you can't. I knew you couldn't. 
 That is why I said we might be better employed 
 than in discussing the point ; for I could admit no 
 other theory of your responsibilities, and therefore of 
 mine. I pledged my word — I pledged your word — 
 to act upon it, and I held, and hold, that you were 
 bound in honour and conscience to adopt my engage- 
 ments. 
 
 Glad. My conscience exonerated me of any such 
 obligation. 
 
 GOR. I know it did. Your policy was approved 
 by the only monitor you ever recognised in your 
 public acts. 
 
 Glad. Sustained by the assurances of that 
 voice. 
 
 GOR. That voice ! There were more than fifteen 
 score of them. Three hundred and two "still small 
 
GLADSTONE AND GORDON ii 
 
 voices," a majority of fourteen, sustained you, I am 
 well aware — even after Khartoum had fallen. 
 
 Glad. The sneer is unworthy of you. General 
 Gordon, and I repel it with indignation. You have 
 no right to say that I took the vote of a majority in 
 the House of Commons, or the approval of any other 
 body of fallible human beings, for the voice of my 
 conscience. 
 
 GOR. You are right, Mr. Gladstone, and I ask your 
 pardon. The gibe escaped me unawares — like some 
 others which found their way into my journals, and 
 have since, I fear, given pain to several estimable 
 persons. A man has enough to do to look after his 
 own conscience without busying himself about his 
 neighbour's. 
 
 Glad. I will not disguise from you that it would 
 give me acute pain to be misjudged by you. All 
 the world knows that you were a deeply religious 
 man. 
 
 GOR. Does all the world know that .'' Then it 
 must have solved one of its obscurest problems with 
 extraordinary expedition since my departure. It 
 now apparently knows what religion is, and who they 
 are that may be truly called religious. 
 
 Glad. Surely, General Gordon, there has never 
 been much difference of opinion on the point — at any 
 rate among the wise and virtuous. 
 
 GOR. No } Then the wise and virtuous have 
 excommunicated and burnt one another under a 
 
12 
 
 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 misapprehension. For they must certainly have 
 thought they differed at the time when they were 
 launching the anathema or piling the faggots. 
 
 Glad. These were but the unhappy disputes of 
 rival sects. It is in the cause of dogma and not of 
 true religion that so much blood has been shed. 
 
 GOR. Yes ; but what is dogma ? The belief of 
 somebody else which we ourselves reject. When our 
 own beliefs are in question, we talk of " faith " as of 
 the very essence of religion, and doubt whether it is 
 not indispensable to salvation. If one cannot be 
 religious without dealing in a large stock of affirma- 
 tion of the unknowable, I fear I had no claim to the 
 description. 
 
 Glad. " Pure religion and undefiled is to visit the 
 fatherless children and widows in their affliction, and 
 to keep himself from the world." 
 
 Gor. Nor yet on those grounds either. The world, 
 it is true, had not much chance of spotting me, for 
 I always gave it a wide berth ; but I did not devote 
 my life to works of charity. I just did what my 
 hand found to do, and did it with all my might. 
 
 Glad. I conceive, General Gordon, that the Apostle 
 is not here to be interpreted with strict literality. 
 " Visiting the fatherless and widows in their affliction " 
 is, I think, to be understood as symbolical of the 
 unselfish life — of the life of those who, whether in 
 the private circle or in that larger sphere of usefulness 
 which Providence opens to — a — to some among us. 
 
GLADSTONE AND GORDON 13 
 
 have endeavoured, to the best of their humble ability, 
 to promote the happiness of their fellow-men. 
 
 GOR. Ah, if we could only say that of ourselves, 
 Mr. Gladstone ! But I fear that we should both of 
 us have been described in the language of the old 
 Puritans as " men of blood." 
 
 Glad. General Gordon, you shock me inexpressibly. 
 GOR. By my description of myself or of you > 
 Glad. To you it is no reproach. You were a 
 
 crusading soldier, while I was 
 
 GoR. A great party leader, who never saw a shot 
 fired in anger in your life. Nevertheless, I am of 
 opinion that more men have been cut off by your 
 policy than by my sword. But is that necessarily 
 a reproach .<' It is probably true of most statesmen 
 who have governed great nations. If your conscience 
 
 acquits you of blood-guiltiness as mine acquits me 
 
 Glad. It does ! it does ! 
 
 GoR. Then why trouble about the matter? You 
 have acted according to your lights and your sense 
 of duty, and if many men have suffered from your 
 action many, on the other hand, have profited. 
 Perhaps, on the whole, there is a balance of benefac- 
 tion in your favour. I hope so, as I hope there is 
 in mine. But do not let us deceive ourselves, Mr. 
 Gladstone. Do not let us imagine that we were 
 labouring disinterestedly for humanity when we were 
 simply doing with our whole strength the work which 
 lay nearest to our hand. Well for us if to the joy 
 
14 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 of struggle and success we could add the calming 
 assurance that we were obeying the will and furthering 
 the purposes of God. 
 
 Glad. This sounds too much like fatalism. Religion 
 should be a reasonable service. There is a passage 
 in Bishop Butler which 
 
 GOR. Which I am afraid would not edify me. I 
 have never reasoned out my faith nor sat down to 
 consider, as I understand that many learned doctors 
 have done, how to make the best of both worlds. I 
 was not enough interested in the one I have now 
 left. But if to be religious is to feel everywhere and 
 always that the things that are seen are temporal, 
 and the things that are unseen are eternal ; if it is 
 to have felt your life from manhood upwards hang 
 as loosely about you as an old and outworn garment, 
 and as ready to be cast lightly aside ; if it is, at all 
 times and in all places, but most of all in the desert 
 and at midnight and with death at hand, to be con- 
 scious of the nothingness of the world and of the 
 nearness of God — then I may say, without boast- 
 fulness, that I was a religious man. 
 
 Glad. What you describe, General Gordon, is the 
 religion of mysticism, the religion of trance and 
 ecstasy ; and though I would not for the world be 
 understood to disparage it, I cannot forbear to point 
 out that the human race owes, upon the whole, a 
 larger measure of its happiness to what I may call 
 the more social forms of the religious sentiment. 
 
GLADSTONE AND GORDON 15 
 
 GOR. It may be so ; but that was what my religion 
 meant to me. Nor could I have performed its silent 
 rites in a more solemn temple than you unwitting!}' 
 dedicated to it in that beleaguered stronghold of the 
 African wilderness. Other Governments have sent 
 their emissaries to death, but none before yours — I 
 say it in all seriousness — has ever provided one of 
 them with so purifying a preparation for the world 
 to come. Many a time has that thought occurred to 
 me in my midnight vigils, looking forth over the 
 boundless waste of sands or upwards at the unfathom- 
 able vault of stars. I drew ever nearer to the Eternal 
 as death drew nearer to me. The world of Time 
 and Space, the world of Ministers and Parliaments, 
 of diplomatists and despatches — nay, even of blood- 
 thirsty besiegers and faint-hearted, famine-stricken 
 besieged, had become shadows to me long before the 
 end ; and it was the longed-for light of the Real 
 and the Everlasting that came flooding in upon me 
 with the rifle bullet that pierced my brain. 
 
 Glad. You died the death of a hero and a 
 Christian, General Gordon. Tragic indeed is the 
 thought that you should have died in vain. 
 
 GOR. In vain .? 
 
 Glad. Ay, surely ! though to me, of all men, it is 
 bitter to admit it. Was it not vain, and worse, to 
 have sacrificed so noble a life in a bootless struggle with 
 barbarians, to have left them the body of so renowned 
 a soldier as the perpetual trophy of their conquest .-' 
 
i6 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 GOR. Perpetual! Their conquest! Is it possible, 
 Mr. Gladstone, that you do not know, that you have 
 not heard? Yet why should I be surprised? You 
 would not be in the way of meeting them. 
 
 Glad. Of meeting whom ? 
 
 GOR. The thousands of new-comers — the harvest 
 of a single day of battle — who could have told you 
 that the power of the Dervishes is shattered ; that the 
 Khalifa is a fugitive ; that the British and Egyptian 
 flags are flying over the ruined palace of Khartoum. 
 
 Glad. I cannot believe it ! 
 
 Gor. How strangely apt a commentator is fate ! 
 I wrote of Kitchener in my Journal at Khartoum 
 that he was "one of the very few superior British 
 officers with a cool, good head, a hard constitution, 
 and untiring energy, and that if he would take the 
 place he would be the best man to put in as Governor- 
 General of the Soudan." The Almighty, it seems, 
 was of my opinion, and has given the Soudan into 
 his hands. 
 
 Glad. From whom. General Gordon, have you 
 received this astounding intelligence ? 
 
 GoR. From the Shade of my victorious enemy, as he, 
 in turn, from the thronging spirits of his slaughtered 
 tribesmen who left their bodies on the field of Om- 
 durman. 
 
 Glad. From the Mahdi ? 
 
 Gor. Oh, there is no ill-blood between us here. 
 I have long since forgiven him his maltreatment of 
 
GLADSTONE AND GORDON 17 
 
 my earthly shell. And hardly now could I do other- 
 wise, since the whirligig of time has brought about 
 its revenges, and his own remains have been scattered 
 to the winds. His retinue in Elysium, however, has 
 been swelled by eleven thousand followers. 
 
 Glad. Eleven thousand Dervishes killed ! 
 
 GOR. Yes, it is a heavy bill. Add to it the slain 
 of '84 and '85 — the lives that were laid low by your 
 mandate of evacuation, and my endeavours to execute 
 it, and the total slaughter bulks terribly large. 
 Decidedly, Mr. Gladstone, we were " men of blood." 
 
 Glad. General Gordon, I wash my hands of all 
 responsibility for the bloody fruits of this reversal 
 of my policy. 
 
 GOR. You cannot ; for the pohcy contained the 
 germ of its own reversal, as inevitably bound to 
 spring from it as the flower from the seed. You 
 pronounced the death sentence on those eleven 
 thousand desert-warriors when you ordered the 
 abandonment of the Soudan. But be comforted, Mr. 
 Gladstone. At the same stroke you founded the 
 college which is to rise in my name and to my 
 memory on the ruins of Khartoum. 
 
 Glad. The college ! 
 
 GOR. Yes ; you shall hear more of it hereafter. 
 But, as to that hecatomb of Dervishes of which I 
 have spoken to you, dismiss it from your mind. 
 Appalling as is such a sacrifice of human life, it is 
 yet a far lighter price if measured by its results than 
 
 C 
 
i8 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 you paid in the deaths of my handful of followers 
 and my own. For the fall of Khartoum purchased 
 nothing but the abandonment of the Soudan to years 
 of tyranny and rapine, of barbarism and unrest, while 
 the slaughter of Omdurman will spread peace and 
 light and mercy throughout a land of darkness and 
 cruel habitations. It is the lesser sacrifice which was 
 the crime ; the greater is its atonement. 
 
II 
 
 LORD WESTBURY AND BISHOP 
 WILBERFORCE 
 
 West. I should be sorry, Bishop, to think that you 
 shunned me. We landed here, if you remember, 
 within a day of each other ; our obols must have 
 clinked together in the ferryman's pouch. But 
 though you conversed with me affably enough on 
 our first arrival, it must now be many years, 
 according to earthly reckoning, since we last fell 
 in with each other. 
 
 WiLB. I am sure you will forgive me. Lord West- 
 bury, if I say that I have never sought the society 
 of lawyers. 
 
 West. Nor I. I found them but depressing 
 company on earth ; and, though death could scarcely 
 add to their dulness, it seemed paradoxical to suppose 
 that it would enliven them. 
 
 WiLB. As sarcastic as ever, I observe. 
 
 West. Say as outspoken, my dear Bishop, and 
 add, as little malicious on that very account Malice 
 is a natural exudation in every mind, and it will 
 remain there as a poison if it is not thrown off as 
 
 19 
 
20 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 an excretion. It is only the sarcastic, as they are 
 called, who get rid of it by its proper eliminator — 
 the tongue. 
 
 WiLB. The excretory function was admirably 
 active, then, in your lordship's case ; and your 
 mental health, if that, indeed, will insure it, should 
 have been excellent. 
 
 West. You are good enough to say so. But 
 health is one thing and popularity another. It would 
 have been far better for me, of course, to have only 
 thought what are called ill-natured things of my 
 neighbours than to have said them. Or, if some 
 relief was necessary, I should have committed them 
 only to the discreet guardianship of a diary. But then 
 to do that, one must be a man of discretion ; and 
 that, my dear Bishop, is a quality which, unlike 
 yourself in both respects, I neither inherited nor 
 bequeathed. 
 
 WiLB. Your mind seems secreting very rapidly 
 just now, my lord ; and the activity with which you 
 
 are throwing off its products is rather Well, it 
 
 scarcely tends to enhance the long-deferred pleasure 
 of this interview. 
 
 West. Indeed ! I would not willingly do anything 
 to diminish it. But our subject is, for me, perhaps, 
 a somewhat too stimulating one. Shall we change 
 it for something a little less personal to myself than 
 the mental and moral characteristics of your lordship's 
 very humble servant? Would you discuss with 
 
WESTBURY AND WILBERFORCE 21 
 
 me the position and prospects of the Church of 
 England ? 
 
 WiLB. Wiihj/ouf Impossible! 
 
 West. Why so ? We have more than once 
 exchanged views upon that matter in the House 
 of Lords. 
 
 WiLB. Yes ; as ships exchange broadsides. But I 
 do not care to revive old quarrels in the Shades ; and 
 an amicable, mutually helpful discussion of such a 
 subject with jozi, is, I repeat, impossible. 
 
 West. With me? The emphasis on that word 
 
 is neither complimentary nor altogether But I 
 
 refrain. It is not for me to instruct your lordship in 
 the obligations of charity. 
 
 WiLB. My dear Lord Westbury, it is not a 
 question of charity. We may wish to discuss 
 colours with a blind man, and may most sincerely 
 lament the affliction that keeps our minds apart. 
 But apart they must remain ; and not all the charity 
 in the world would bring them together. 
 
 West. Your lordship's metaphors are dis- 
 couraging. 
 
 WiLB. Literal language would, I fear, be more so. 
 
 West. Not necessarily. I can hardly account it a 
 privilege to be compelled to fit the cap on for myself, 
 especially when the hatter is present, and might 
 relieve me of the task. I should have deemed it 
 more truly polite of you to have said in plain terms 
 that I am spiritually blind. 
 
22 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 WiLB, Well, suppose me to have said so. What 
 then ? 
 
 West. Then I should only have replied that your 
 lordship pays but an ill compliment to the constitu- 
 tion of a State Church in which for several years I 
 filled a high judicial office. 
 
 WiLB. That, alas ! is true. 
 
 West. Alasf Your interjections, Bishop, are as 
 discouraging as your metaphors. For which was your 
 " alas ! " intended ? For the affliction of the judge, or 
 for his infliction on the Church } Or for your own 
 indiscretion in speaking evil of dignities ? 
 
 Wile. You have rebuked me for not dealing 
 plainly with you. Lord Westbury. I trust I shall 
 not now be blamed for the opposite fault. I yielded 
 to no one in admiration for your consummate judicial 
 powers, but I confess I shared the view taken by 
 most good Churchmen of your position with respect 
 to the Church. 
 
 West. Which was . . . >. 
 
 WiLB. Nay, you cannot be ignorant of it. Why 
 this pressure upon me to speak plainly .' 
 
 West. Why this need of pressure after your 
 promise of plain speech ? 
 
 WiLB. Well, then . . . which was that your 
 lordship's presence and influence on the Judicial 
 Committee of Privy Council at a time of sore trial 
 for the Church of England was a misfortune of the 
 first magnitude. 
 
WESTBURY AND WILBERFORCE 23 
 
 West. Because of my "consummate judicial 
 powers " ? 
 
 WiLB. Because of your lordship's known laxity of 
 moral principle and complete indifference, or rather 
 utter insensibility, to religious ideas. 
 
 West. I hesitated just now to remind a bishop of 
 his charity. I am even more loth to recall to him 
 the name of another of the cardinal virtues — that of 
 faith. You surely cannot think that Providence 
 abandoned the cause of the Church to a perverse and 
 ungodly judge ? 
 
 WiLB. God forbid ! I have always believed — it 
 would have been impious to doubt — that you were 
 an instrument in the Divine hand. 
 
 West. I have always believed it myself 
 
 WiLB. I have never doubted that the judgments 
 of the Judicial Committee, during your term of 
 service on it, were overruled for good. 
 
 West. You mean in a theological sense. Techni- 
 cally, of course, they were final. But if our judg- 
 ments were divinely protected from error, why object 
 to me as a judge ? Must I remind your lordship 
 not only of scriptural virtues but of ecclesiastical 
 formularies ? The Twenty-sixth Article declares, if 
 I recollect it rightly, that the efficacy of the sacra- 
 ments is not diminished by the unworthiness of the 
 minister, and surely what is true of an officiating 
 priest in the discharge of his sacred duties must 
 apply d fortiori to that (spiritually speaking) far 
 
24 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 lower minister — a lay Chancellor acting as an ecclesi- 
 astical appellate judge. 
 
 WiLB. The comparison savours somewhat of 
 profanity. But your lordship should have finished 
 the Article: "Nevertheless it appertaineth to the 
 discipline of the Church that inquiry be made of evil 
 ministers, and that they be accused by those that 
 have knowledge of their offences : and finally, being 
 found guilty, by just judgment be deposed." You 
 had forgotten the conclusion of the Article, 
 perhaps ? 
 
 West. Ahem ! . . . No, Bishop, no. We lawyers 
 are not in the habit of quoting a part of a passage 
 without knowing the whole. But, I repeat, I fail to 
 understand the ecclesiastical objection to GalHo, 
 even from the ecclesiastic's own point of view. The 
 ruling of the proconsul of Achaia has always seemed 
 to me a very sound one, and his indifference to 
 religion — if indeed that were predicated of him by 
 the inspired penman, which in fact it is not — would, 
 always assuming his subjection to the Divine 
 guidance, have been immaterial. 
 
 WiLB. There are such things as weak brethren, 
 my lord. Your lordship's authority in matters of 
 faith and ceremonial was a stumbling - block to 
 many. 
 
 West. Yes ; and many a bitter sectary, thirsting 
 for the discomfiture of his opponents, was tripped up 
 by it. The tables are turned now. Bishop, and it is 
 
WESTBURY AND WILBERFORCE 25 
 
 your own party, or the party with whom you are 
 most in sympathy, who are on the defensive. It is 
 against the Ritualists now, and not the Rationalists, 
 that the hunt is up, and that burly huntsman, Sir 
 William Harcourt, hallooing on the pack. Well 
 would it be for them if a Gallio or two of my un- 
 worthy type could return to stand their friend. 
 
 WiLB. I own I should prefer some of your lordship's 
 contemporaries to yourself. But, alas ! they cannot 
 return "to teach the laws of death's untrodden realm." 
 
 West. No, or they would take back more juris- 
 prudence than they brought with them. However, 
 I ought not to say that of one of them ; for of course 
 I guess the men you have in your mind. No doubt 
 you would rather send Lord Selborne back to earth 
 than me. Or what say you to Lord Cairns ? 
 
 WiLB. Lord Cairns! 
 
 West. There is a significance in your lordship's 
 intonation which I cannot affect to misunderstand. 
 We will say no more of Lord Cairns. And he, after 
 all — as, for that matter, his brother ex-Chancellor too 
 — is but one member of the much-maligned court 
 whose deliberation I used once, under Providence, to 
 attempt to guide. Moreover, there were archiepiscopal 
 assessors in Church cases whom you may wish back 
 again. Archbishop Thomson of York 
 
 WiLB. Archbishop Thomson ! 
 
 West. More accentual eloquence ! Let us say no 
 more, then, of Archbishop Thomson. 
 
26 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 WiLB. I dismiss him willingly. Of the two I 
 should prefer Lord Cairns. 
 
 West. Your lordship's leaning towards the lay 
 lawyer is as natural and blameless as mine towards 
 the ecclesiastic. We know the purity of our pre- 
 ferences ; yet there are those, Bishop, who would 
 attribute them to professional jealousy. 
 
 WiLB. You, however, are surely safe against any 
 such imputation, and, for myself, I can afford to 
 despise it. There could be no room for envy in the 
 case ; and for obvious reasons. 
 
 West. Obvious indeed ! For your lordship must 
 mean, of course, that envy between prelates is theo- 
 logically impossible. It was only by Divine permis- 
 sion that Dr. Thomson could ever have risen to the 
 see of York ; and when once your faith had sur- 
 mounted the severe trial of believing that he could 
 have been Divinely permitted to distance you in the 
 race, you must have felt that it bordered on impiety 
 to grudge him such a summons from on high. You 
 may well say, therefore, that there were obvious 
 reasons for not envying him. 
 
 WiLB. The reasons which you mention. Lord 
 Westbury, were not those to which I referred. There 
 is a lamentable lack of reverence in your manner of 
 handling holy things. The appointments of Arch- 
 bishops are indeed, like all other earthly events, of 
 Divine permission, but the inscrutable counsels of 
 Providence may occasionally permit . . . 
 
WESTBURY AND WILBERFORCE 27 
 
 West. The appointment of the second-best candi- 
 date ? 
 
 WiLB. Your interruption is hardly in keeping 
 with your usual courtesy, and it attributes to me 
 language which I have given you no warrant for 
 putting into my mouth. But though I should be 
 guilty of insincerity were I to pretend that I con- 
 sidered myself worthy of no higher preferment than 
 fell to my lot, I repeat that I did not feel, and that 
 I was incapable of feeling, any jealousy of those by 
 whom, as you express it, I was distanced in the race. 
 
 West. You will do me the justice to remember. 
 Bishop, that I entirely acquitted you of any such 
 sentiment. My only offence appears to have been 
 that I credited you with higher motives for your 
 magnanimity than in your apostolic meekness you 
 are willing to ascribe to yourself. I only wish that 
 I could claim the same elevated sanction for my own 
 humble exercise of the same virtue. But lawyers 
 have never been enjoined to regard the success of a 
 rival as a matter of Divine ordinance. 
 
 WiLB. No, indeed ; nor do I see that you, at least, 
 require any such injunction to the practice of mag- 
 nanimity. A lawyer who has held and has distin- 
 guished himself in the highest post in his profession 
 might surely regard his successors in that office 
 without feeling any temptation to envy. 
 
 West. Is it possible, Bishop, that you can imagine 
 me in danger of envying a Lord Chancellor .? I who 
 
28 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 have known so many? I who have measured so 
 many of those feet "whose length is equity" ? Your 
 lordship must be jesting. 
 
 WiLB. You spoke just now of rivals. 
 
 West. Yes ; rivals in the knowledge and interpre- 
 tation of the law, competitors for precedence on the 
 roll of English jurists. That, my dear Bishop, was 
 the rivalry, and the only rivalry, to which I referred. 
 
 WiLB. Distinction as a jurist, then, is not to be 
 presumed from the fact of advancement to the highest 
 place in the legal profession ? 
 
 West. Pardon me, it is to be presumed : but pre- 
 sumptions of law, you know, are open to rebuttal by 
 facts ; and the presumption of a Chancellor's law has 
 sometimes been rebutted by certain facts disclosed in 
 his first judgment. 
 
 WiLB. I cannot but think that you are here indulging 
 your satirical temper to the point of exaggeration. 
 Success in the legal profession may not stamp a man 
 as a great jurist, but I think it may fairly be held 
 to argue adequate capacity for the highest judicial 
 office. 
 
 West. Your lordship has doubtless some reason 
 for coupling professional success with advancement to 
 the highest judicial office ; but I cannot divine what 
 it is. I was not aware that Chancellors either were 
 or could be selected on professional grounds alone. 
 
 WiLB. Not on those grounds alone, perhaps ; but, 
 if they are promoted mainly for political aptitude. 
 
WESTBURY AND WILBERFORCE 29 
 
 they have also to qualify themselves as lawyers for 
 the preferment bestowed upon them. 
 
 West. Qualify themselves! Exactly. An ex- 
 tremely happy phrase ! It quite recalls old university 
 days, does it not, Bishop ? " Satisfecit nobis exami- 
 natoribus." The pushing advocate who goes in for 
 high political honours is always, at least, compelled 
 to produce a testamur in law. The class-man in the 
 Cabinet is at any rate never less than a pass-man in 
 the Court of Chancery. It is an admirable arrange- 
 ment. 
 
 WiLB. I think, however, with submission, that you 
 somewhat overrate the difficulty experienced by 
 others in performing tasks which to you were easy. 
 Most Chancellors, after all, have acquitted themselves 
 creditably as judges, and there is, perhaps, no great 
 rashness in assuming that any man who has excelled 
 his fellows in the exceedingly difficult art of politics 
 must have brains to fill the Woolsack. 
 
 West. As epigrammatic as ever, I see. Bishop, 
 even in the Shades. You are right. I have known 
 no Chancellor, however inferior in capacity, whose 
 brains were not perfectly well adapted to such a use. 
 But have we not wandered somewhat far afield .'' 
 I thought we were discussing Churchmen and not 
 lawyers. 
 
 WiLB. We were discussing both ; and their respec- 
 tive qualifications as ecclesiastical judges. 
 
 West. Ah, true ! I was analysing the composition 
 
30 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 of the Judicial Committee and the extent to which 
 it used to represent the interests of the Church : and 
 you rejected the representative claims of the Arch- 
 bishop of York. Well, if the prelates in that Court 
 were too secularly-minded, you were able, as I have 
 said, to redress the balance with clerical laymen. I 
 have mentioned Lord Selborne already, and now let 
 me remind you of the silver-tongued Lord Coleridge 
 — a Chrysostom in the less precious metal. You 
 found plenty of clericalism in him surely .' 
 
 WiLB. Yes, he was not as destitute of religious 
 instincts as are some distinguished lawyers. 
 
 West. You are a master of ironical adjectives, 
 Bishop ; but I suppose I may take the first half of 
 your sentence as serious. Lord Coleridge had the 
 requisite amount of clericalism — how come by I know 
 not ; but I suppose he felt bound to take to it out of 
 respect for his great-uncle's habit of stupefying him- 
 self with theology as a variation upon opium. How- 
 ever, there was Lord Coleridge — with his clericalism 
 inherited or acquired. And now who else was there ? 
 Let me see. No ; I can think of no others — Lord 
 Coleridge, I imagine, exhausts the list. 
 
 WiLB. He does, completely. You need not pursue 
 your inquiries further. The race of eminent lawyers 
 who are also sound Churchmen is becoming extinct. 
 As for lawyers who, without attaining eminence in 
 their profession, are yet winning their way, by the 
 political road, to the final Court of Appeal in 
 
WESTBURY AND WILBERFORCE 3( 
 
 ecclesiastical causes, what nowadays is to be expected 
 from them ? I shudder to think that some mere 
 unforeseen accident of politics might have raised that 
 — how shall I describe him ? — that sturdy Erastian, 
 Sir William Harcourt, to the woolsack ? 
 
 West. Aha ! I welcome the importation of that 
 name into our colloquy. 
 
 WiLB. Indeed ! The name of Sir William 
 Harcourt ? 
 
 West. No ; of Erastian. Do you know, Bishop, I 
 have been called an Erastian myself .'' 
 
 WiLB. You distress rather than surprise me. The 
 world is very censorious. 
 
 West. I do not fear its censures, but I confess I 
 like to comprehend them. Your lordship will 
 recollect Dr. Johnson's famous triumph in the fish 
 market. Obscurity may lend such a sting to 
 vituperation, as not even the most callous can endure. 
 I have smarted under " Erastian " like the Billings- 
 gate lady under the contumely of "noun-substantive;" 
 and have sought far more patiently for a definition. 
 Am I right in believing that "Erastus" is simply 
 the Graeco-Latinised form of the name of Lieber, a 
 German physician of the sixteenth century who 
 opposed the Calvinistic system of ecclesiastical 
 discipline ? 
 
 WiLB. Yes ; your lordship may so far trust the 
 theological encyclopaedia which you have been 
 evidently studying. 
 
32 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 West. I thank you for the assurance, Bishop, and 
 forgive you the sneer. If theologians would only 
 consult lawyers in the lawyer's art as readily as we 
 consult them in theirs, it would be better for them, 
 and worse, professionally speaking, for us. But I 
 confess a desire to economise the time consumed in 
 such researches. Does your lordship think that in 
 order to form correct ideas of the doctrine of 
 Erastus, it would be absolutely necessary for me to 
 study that series of Theses which he afterwards, I 
 believe, collected into the treatise, " De Excommuni- 
 catione " ? 
 
 WiLB. No ; I think you may spare yourself so 
 distasteful a labour. In the modern political usage 
 of the word, Erastianism need not take long to define. 
 It is the name of a system which is at once a 
 usurpation and a despotism, an encroachment of 
 Caesar upon the kingdom of Christ, and the imposition 
 of a heavier tax upon His people than the hardest of 
 the Caesars ever levied from a conquered race. It is 
 Tiberius exacting the tribute money, only with the 
 souls of the faithful for denarii. 
 
 West. Thanks, Bishop. I admire the rhetorical 
 fervour of your analysis. But I have noticed that 
 the definitions of Churchmen are often as animated 
 as lay invectives. Meanwhile, however, though I 
 now know that my enemies did not mean to 
 compliment me in calling me an Erastian, I am 
 afraid I know little more. 
 
WESTBURY AND WILBERFORCE 33 
 
 WiLB. Perhaps it would be simplest to define an 
 Erastian as one who would degrade the Church into 
 a "Department of the State" — one who holds the 
 State to be not only the creator and arbiter of the 
 temporal rights of the Church, but to have supreme 
 authority over her as regards her spiritual functions 
 also. 
 
 West. Is that an Erastian, Bishop ? " Par ma 
 foi," as M. Jourdain says, " il y a plus de quarante 
 ans que je dis de la prose sans que j'en susse rien." 
 Why, my dear Bishop, that is simply the plain prose 
 of the relations between Church and State as talked 
 by ninety-nine Englishmen out of every hundred, 
 " sans qu'ils en sussent rien." The man you meet 
 in the omnibus has been an Erastian all his life 
 without knowing it. 
 
 WiLB. That is likely enough ; but it is lamentable 
 to find such ignorance in high places. 
 
 West. Enlighten it then. Bishop. Explain these 
 things to the benighted master of Israel who sat so 
 long on the judgment-seat, the victim, in a double 
 sense, of judicial blindness. Delineate, I beg of you, 
 this sharp boundary between the temporal rights and 
 spiritual functions of the Church — this landmark 
 which it is Erastianism to overstep. Is its recognition 
 traceable in the suit instituted by one of your 
 lordship's right reverend brethren against a certain 
 Essayist and Reviewer, and carried on appeal to the 
 Court of which I was an unworthy member .'' Was 
 
 D 
 
34 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 there no Erastianism in the conduct of a bishop who 
 asked us to examine the defendant's doctrines for 
 heresy, and to deprive him of his benefice as a 
 heretic ? Or was the only Erastianism ours for 
 deciding against the episcopal promoter, and, as 
 profane jesters described it, dismissing his formidable 
 client " with costs " ? 
 
 WiLB. The tone of your questions is hardly 
 seemly. Lord Westbury, but I will answer them. 
 It is, doubtless, the function of the State to affirm, 
 through its judges, the doctrines of the Church ; but 
 it is for the Church herself to define them. 
 
 West. Where and when has she done so in- 
 dependently of the State ? In which of the trans- 
 actions or documents of the Reformation was any 
 such claim allowed ? Did the policy of Henry VIII. 
 or of Elizabeth recognise it ? Do even the Articles 
 themselves assert it ? 
 
 WiLB. Unquestionably. "The Church," says the 
 Twentieth Article, "hath power to decree rites or 
 ceremonies, and authority in controversies of faith." 
 
 West. Where, then, does this authority reside ? 
 In Convocation ? Take care. Bishop. It was once 
 my painful duty to rebuke you for an attempted 
 encroachment on tlie ecclesiastical authority of the 
 Crown ; and I am not clear, as a lawyer, that, even 
 /lere, it might not be possible for you to expose 
 yourself to the penalties of a premunire. 
 
 WlLB. I wonder, I must say, at your lordship's 
 
WESTBURY AND WILBERFORCE 35 
 
 recalling the memory of an altercation in which I 
 was generally held to have had the best of it. 
 
 West. It would ill become me, Bishop, to dispute 
 your account of the matter. You undoubtedly had 
 the last word, and that is an advantage which even 
 the House of Lords was able to appreciate. 
 
 WiLB. Surely, Lord Westbury, my reply was more 
 warmly applauded than your attack. 
 
 West. A reply generally is, unless the speaker is 
 too angry to be articulate ; but the reply of an 
 indignant Bishop would, I make bold to say, re- 
 ceive encouragement from any assembly in the 
 world. You must surely have noticed — at least if 
 such scenes are ever witnessed by episcopal eyes — 
 you must surely have noticed how the sympathies of 
 the spectators gather round the lady-combatant in 
 a street encounter between husband and wife. A 
 Bishop at blows with a temporal peer, and still more 
 with a lawyer, makes much the same appeal to the 
 sentiments of the bystanders. 
 
 WiLB. I would rather not discuss our quarrel 
 further. Enough that I was satisfied with the part I 
 played in it. Let us return to the point we were 
 discussing when you revived the recollection of this 
 ancient conflict. It is for the Church, I say, to de- 
 fine her doctrines, though it may be for the State 
 to affirm them through its judges. 
 
 West. The distinction, Bishop, is too subtle for my 
 blunt wits. 
 
2,6 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 WiLB. Then death, Lord Westbury, must have 
 dulled instead of brightening your intellectual part. 
 For I had no difficulty in explaining the distinction 
 to you on earth. 
 
 West. Doubtless, then, it was too unsubstantial 
 to fix itself in my memory. 
 
 WiLB. Not at all. You objected on various 
 grounds to the plan of judicial reform in which I 
 had embodied it, but you never denied that I had 
 effected a true separation of functions between the 
 Church and State, in the determination of ecclesiastical 
 cases. 
 
 West. A judge, Bishop, must not be taken to 
 affirm everything which he does not deny. My 
 objections were probably confined to the various 
 grounds which you mention, because those grounds 
 sufficed to dispose of your scheme. But pray let 
 me hear it once more. I am quite willing to sit in 
 error upon myself 
 
 WiLB. What I proposed was the establishment of a 
 Court of Episcopal referees, not in substitution for, 
 but in addition to, the Judicial Committee of the 
 Privy Council ; and that whenever a question of 
 Divine law was involved in any ecclesiastical pro- 
 ceeding, this Court should be asked — not. How is 
 the Church to decide > but — What is the doctrine of 
 the Church of England on this question .' The fact 
 of the answer would satisfy the Church that her 
 doctrines remained intact under the legal decision, 
 
WESTBURY AND WILBERFORCE 37 
 
 however heterodox the principles of that decision 
 might be. Thus, for instance (I am quoting from re- 
 collection a letter which I once wrote to your lordship), 
 thus, for instance, "in the Gorham case the lawyers 
 would still, it may be, have decided that Mr. Gorham's 
 book did not so categorically contradict the articles 
 and formularies as to subject him to deprivation. 
 But with this would have gone out the ecclesiastical 
 answer that the Church of England taught that every 
 rightly baptised infant was regenerate, and this would 
 have saved us from the great schism under which 
 we have ever since languished." 
 
 West. Proceed, Bishop. I am all attention. 
 
 WiLB. Proceed ? I have nothing to add. My 
 scheme is before you. 
 
 West. Indeed ? Then I certainly recognise 
 nothing which I could ever have 
 
 WiLB. I did not say you approved it. 
 
 West. Your lordship has not anticipated the 
 concluding word of my sentence. I was not going 
 to say " approved " but " understood." The state- 
 ment you have just made reveals to me no project 
 which I can either understand at this moment, or can 
 believe myself to have at any time comprehended. 
 
 WiLB. This is mere perversity. I claim, at any 
 rate, to have demonstrated the practical soundness 
 of my theories. Having laid down the principle 
 that it is for the Church to define her own doctrines, 
 though it is for the State to affirm them through its 
 
38 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 judges, I have proceeded to formulate a plan, in 
 which the doctrinal authority of the Church is at 
 once rendered independent of, and prevented from 
 encroaching upon, the judicial authority of the State. 
 . . . You are silent. Can you deny that I have done 
 this .? 
 
 West. What an interesting passage in ecclesiastical 
 history, Bishop, is the Jansenist controversy ! And 
 how singularly does this proposal of yours recall it! 
 
 WiLB. Only, I suspect, to so learned a theologian as 
 yourself To my own superficial acquaintance with 
 that controversy it suggests no parallel. Will you 
 again give me the benefit of your erudition .? 
 
 West. I seem destined to be your instructor. 
 Bishop, or your butt. I am glad, however, to be of 
 service to you in either capacity. Your proposal, 
 then, recalls the attempt of the Jansenists to evade 
 the censure of Innocent X. The Pope, they declared, 
 was infallible only in matter of doctrine, and liable 
 to human error in matter of fact. The distinction 
 between the droit and the fait appears to have struck 
 your lordship as the key to the problem of ecclesi- 
 astical discipline ; and you accordingly propose to 
 divide jurisdiction between the Bishops and the 
 Judicial Committee of the Privy Council on a 
 similar principle. The Bishops are to lay down 
 the law of the Church, and the Judicial Committee 
 are to decide whether the teaching of an incriminated 
 clerk conforms to or departs from it. 
 
WESTBURY AND WILBERFORCE 39 
 
 WiLB. I did not say " the law of the Church." On 
 the contrary, I carefully refrained from using the 
 expression. I said the Bishops were to declare " the 
 doctrine of the Church." 
 
 West. Which differs from its law in what respect ? 
 . . . Your lordship hesitates. May I ask whether the 
 Judicial Committee is to be bound, under the terms of 
 your scheme, to take the doctrine of the Church to 
 be in every case what the Bishops declare it to be, 
 and, waiving any doubts of their own as to whether 
 it accords with the true interpretation of the articles 
 and formularies, to confine themselves to considering 
 whether the language of an alleged heretic can or 
 cannot be made to square with it "i If so, I should 
 be glad. Bishop, of your assistance in distinguishing 
 the doctrine of the Church from the "law of the 
 Church," the Episcopal referees from a bench of judges, 
 and the Privy Council from a jury-panel. And I 
 should then invite you to explain to me how your 
 scheme can be said not to encroach upon the judicial 
 functions of the existing Court, when you would com- 
 pletely deprive them of all juridical attributions, and 
 simply call upon them to find " Ay " or " No " upon 
 a naked issue of fact. 
 
 WiLB. I was unwilling to interrupt the flow of your 
 exposition, but I will now observe that none of these 
 searching interrogatories can be rightly addressed to 
 me. They are all founded on the assumption — which 
 you did not wait for me to accept — that the Judicial 
 
40 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Committee of the Privy Council would be botmd to 
 take their law from the Bishops, or rather bound to 
 treat as law what the Bishops lay down as doctrine ; 
 and that is an assumption to which my language 
 gave no warrant. 
 
 West. What, Bishop ! You would give your tri- 
 bunal of doctrine a merely consultative voice } You 
 would permit the lay judges to adopt or reject its 
 opinions as they pleased .'' 
 
 WiLB. I have already said that my object is to 
 obtain an authoritative declaration of the true faith 
 of the Church, and this would, under my scheme, be 
 obtained independently of the decision of the Privy 
 Council on the particular case before them. To recur 
 to the instance I cited just now, the Judicial Com- 
 mittee might have decided that Mr. Gorham's book 
 did not so categorically contradict the articles and 
 formularies as to subject him to deprivation, but with 
 this would have gone out the ecclesiastical answer 
 that the Church of England taught that every rightly 
 baptised infant was regenerate. Do you see any 
 anomaly or inconvenience in that ? 
 
 West. No, Bishop, I do not. Artfully concealed 
 as it is under an assumption which you profess to 
 repudiate, it is invisible. You reduce the Judicial 
 Committee to mere judges of fact, and then you 
 rejoice at finding that no anomaly attends the reser- 
 vation of the question of law to the Episcopal referees. 
 But on that hypothesis, the Privy Council would not 
 
WESTBURY AND WILBERFORCE 41 
 
 have exercised the power you pretend to allow them 
 of rejecting the Episcopal statement of doctrine. They 
 would simply have acquitted the defendant of the 
 charge of having contravened it. But if the Judicial 
 Committee are to have the right of declaring the law 
 as well as finding the fact, we must conceive it com- 
 petent to them to have declared in the case supposed 
 that " children are not made regenerate by baptism," 
 and consequently that it was immaterial whether Mr. 
 Gorham had contravened the doctrine of Baptismal 
 Regeneration or not. Suppose them to have so laid 
 down the " law of the Church : " would that become 
 " the doctrine of the Church," in the teeth of the 
 declaration of your Episcopal referees .'' 
 
 WiLB. God forbid ! 
 
 West. Ay, but He must forbid something more if 
 scandal is to be averted. He must forbid the Privy 
 Council to maintain a declared heretic in possession 
 of his benefice. Surely, Bishop, you must perceive your 
 invisible anomaly and inconvenience now. A and B, 
 two beneficed clergymen, are simultaneously prosecuted 
 for heresy, upon two different points of doctrine. The 
 Church, through its Bishops, declares her true doctrine 
 to have been upheld in the teaching of A, and con- 
 troverted in that of B. The Privy Council, however, 
 being of the opposite opinion on both points, deprives 
 A for his orthodoxy, and confirms B in his benefice 
 for his heresy. And that is to bring peace to a 
 distracted Church ! No, Bishop, there is one homely 
 
42 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 lesson which we poor Erastians have mastered, but 
 which the most erudite of Bishops has never yet con- 
 trived to grasp. It is that, if two men ride a-horseback, 
 one must ride behind. You cannot divide the spiritual 
 jurisdiction from the temporal authority of an ecclesi- 
 astical court. They must remain in the same hands, 
 whether those be the hands of the Church or of the 
 State. The days are past when the ecclesiastical 
 tribunal could find a heretic guilty by its sole adjudi- 
 cation, and then hand him over for punishment to the 
 secular arm. Nowadays, if the State is to be execu- 
 tioner, it must also be judge. 
 
 WiLB. What ! Is the rule of the laity, then, to be 
 absolute ? Are we, the representatives of the spiritual 
 element in our communion, to hold our peace alto- 
 gether on matters concerning the most solemn verities 
 of our faith .' 
 
 West. Why not .'' It would be a wholesome dis- 
 cipline for week-days. Besides, there is nothing to 
 prevent you talking as much as you like in Convo- 
 cation ; though whether that is your notion of clear 
 and unanimous utterance, I know not. Nor do I know 
 whether any such is to be found among you. 
 
 WiLB. I told you at the outset. Lord Westbury, 
 that it would be useless for me to discuss the question 
 with you. We Churchmen, at any rate, recognise a 
 " living voice of the Church." 
 
 West. And we laymen. Bishop, can distinguish 
 at least half a dozen. There were nearly as many at 
 
WESTBURY AND WILBERFORCE 43 
 
 the Reformation, and they had all to be listened to. 
 The Church itself is founded on the policy of com- 
 prehension, and that is a policy which only laymen 
 can administer. 
 
 WiLB. Comprehension may be carried too far by 
 those who care not whom they include. 
 
 West. Any distance, Bishop, will seem too far to 
 those who think that the hurdles are being opened at 
 the wrong end of the fold. And " those who care not 
 whom they include " means simply men who show no 
 preference for either end of the fold to the other : a 
 class much more common, and, it may be, much more 
 properly so, among the laity than among the clergy. 
 
 WiLB. Nay, enlarge the fold at the latitudinarian 
 end as much as you please, I say, as a High Church- 
 man : only let it remain a fold — a real inclosure and 
 not a sham one, opening wide over its prostrate 
 hurdles on to the bleak moorland of infidelity. 
 
 West. And enlarge the fold at the High Church 
 end as much as you please, say I as a latitudinarian : 
 only let it remain a sheep fold, not one whose hos- 
 pitable gaps invite everywhere the entrance of 
 the Roman wolf. But metaphorical controversy, my 
 dear Bishop, is an idle game of battledore. The 
 argument is as easily bandied to and fro as a shuttle- 
 cock, and has not much more weight. Shall we 
 discontinue it .'' 
 
 WiLB. As you seem from your choice of metaphor 
 to charge me with Romanizing, most certainly. No 
 
44 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 man has denounced the errors and pretensions of 
 Rome more unreservedly than I have. 
 
 West. And yet, after all, it is the very type of 
 Church government which you most favour. 
 
 WiLB. Most favour ? I ? 
 
 West. To be sure. A Pope who claims to be the 
 vicar of Christ is 
 
 WiLB. Popes hardly bear themselves as His vicars 
 nowadays. 
 
 West. Pardon me. That is exactly how they do 
 bear themselves, it seems to me. A modern Pope 
 behaves as Christ's vicar in the sense in which we 
 speak of an English incumbent as being the vicar of 
 his curate. 
 
 WiLB. The wholesome purpose of that last 
 sarcasm will, I trust, procure forgiveness for its 
 irreverence. 
 
 West. I trust so too. Elijah, you will remember, 
 was permitted the use of irony in testifying against 
 the prophets of Baal. But what, to return to our 
 subject, could afford a more perfect type of spiritual 
 independence than the Church of Rome ? There you 
 have a " living voice of the Church " indeed. 
 
 WiLB, A living voice, but not "of the Church." 
 Hers was hushed for ever in 1869 ; and nothing now 
 is audible through the silence of that vast communion 
 but the voice of a single bishop. 
 
 West. There is much to admire in your lordship's 
 disinterested rejection of so attractive an ideal. And 
 
WESTBURY AND WILBERFORCE 45 
 
 yet I have known English prelates who seemed 
 continually striving to realise it. 
 
 WiLB. The voice of the Church will in future 
 mean the deliverances, ill or well considered, of a 
 solitary Italian Priest. 
 
 West. So much the better, surely, if the Church 
 has agreed to recognise his voice as hers. The solo 
 has natural advantages over the chorus, if only that it 
 leaves less doubt about the tune. 
 
 WiLB. I cannot reply to ribaldry. Lord Westbury. 
 Let it be enough to say that whatever be its merits, 
 the form of spiritual government which prevails in 
 the Church of Rome is by no means to the taste — 
 speaking for myself, at any rate — of English Bishops. 
 
 West. Oh, as for the Bishops themselves, I can 
 well understand that. I thought we were speaking 
 of the discipline of the Church at large. Really to 
 relish a Papacy from the point of view of the ruling 
 ecclesiastical class, one ought to be Pope one's self. 
 What your lordship would doubtless prefer to a 
 spiritual autocracy of that kind would be a sort of 
 right reverend Venetian oligarchy. 
 
 WiLB. I am certainly of opinion that doctrines 
 should be defined not by a single head, but by "the 
 heads " of the Church, after full synodical deliberation. 
 
 West. Impossible. The heads would be by the 
 ears in no time. This sort of episcopal Home Rule 
 that you seem so much to long for. Bishop, would be 
 found as unworkable in the ecclesiastical as in the 
 
46 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 political order, and would lead to just the same 
 disagreeable alternative between resumption of the 
 grant and the total separation of grantor and grantee. 
 And you do not really desire a "Repeal of the 
 Union " between Church and State, I am sure. You 
 are loyal, I am persuaded, to the Establishment 
 which you so conspicuously adorned. 
 
 WiLB. There, in truth, you do me no more than 
 justice. How, indeed, could I be otherwise than 
 loyal to the Church of Hooker and Andrewes, of 
 Ken and Herbert — the Church which has enlisted 
 the fervent devotion of so many saintly hearts, the 
 reasonable service of so many powerful minds ; the 
 one Church of Christendom which has steered 
 successfully the middle course between the despotism 
 of authority and the anarchy of private judgment .' 
 
 West. I must admit that it is pre-eminently the 
 Church of a gentleman, and a man of culture. But 
 I feel sure that it would almost wholly lose its 
 attractions in this respect and become narrow and 
 sectarian if once it were separated from the State. 
 Its Bishops, too, would probably decline in social 
 status, and by consequence in their acceptability to 
 the world of fashion. 
 
 WiLB. Why do you address that argument so 
 pointedly to me 1 
 
 West. I must apologise for addressing an argu- 
 ment of so worldly a nature to your lordship at 
 all ; but you cannot, I know, be insensible to the 
 
WESTBURY AND WILBERFORCE 47 
 
 consideration that high social popularity must greatly 
 enlarge a Bishop's sphere of usefulness, and that 
 there is nothing unworthy of his Apostolic mission in 
 courting it. 
 
 WiLB. I know not, Lord Westbury, whether you 
 say that in good faith or in irony ; but, in any case, 
 I hold it to be true. 
 
 West. Irony, Bishop ! Never, I trust, shall I use 
 that weapon so unskilfully, and I may add so 
 profanely, as to blunt its edge against the informa- 
 tions of Holy Writ. 
 
 WiLB. St. Paul was made all things to all men, 
 that he might by all means save some. 
 
 West. Your lordship has anticipated my quotation. 
 Social success is in this sense a proof of Apostolic 
 succession, and was doubtless sought by you only 
 for such evidential purpose. But be that as it may, 
 the Pauline descent of your lordship's versatility was 
 unmistakable, and it must indeed have been gratify- 
 ing to you to reflect that the display of those 
 accomplishments which so charmed our dinner-tables 
 was indirectly tending to establish the validity of 
 Anglican orders. 
 
Ill 
 
 PARNELL AND BUTT 
 
 Butt. What ! his Uncrowned Majesty among us ! 
 And so soon ! Surely, sir, your conquest of England 
 cannot have been already achieved ? 
 
 Par. Who is it .-' The light is dim here, and 
 my eyes are not yet accustomed to it. . . . Ha ! 
 Mr. Butt. 
 
 Butt. I am flattered. You have the royal memory 
 for faces ; and a generosity more than royal. To 
 recognise rulers whom they have supplanted is the 
 last magnanimity of kings. 
 
 Par. You were supplanted, sir, by a foot more 
 powerful than mine. 
 
 Butt. Really ! How deceptive are appearances ! 
 I should have said that if any man was ever tripped 
 by another, it was I by you. " Political necessity," 
 no doubt. "Irresistible national movement," of 
 course. " Popular forces beyond control ; " oh, I 
 know the jargon well ; I have the whole of it at my 
 fingers' ends. But need we trouble ourselves with it 
 here .' The wrestler who gets his toe behind his 
 
 48 
 
PARNELL AND BUTT 49 
 
 adversary's heel, and with one well-timed jerk, cants 
 him over upon the green, is, I suppose, an instrument 
 of Fate. But it is a truth ill suited to the meditation 
 of the athlete on the broad of his back ; and, I own, 
 I have found it as little consolatory. 
 
 Par. My object, Mr. Butt, was not to console, but 
 to explain. I could never have overthrown you had 
 you not been the man you were, or had the times 
 been other. Nor did I go out of my way to 
 overthrow you at all. 
 
 Butt. Out of your way ? No. I never said so. 
 I was in your path, and your way lay over my 
 body. 
 
 Par. Say rather, sir, that you were an obstacle 
 in the path of advancing Ireland, and that I, as the 
 chosen of the Irish people, swept you aside. 
 
 Butt. No doubt I should have put it so. The 
 patriot who trips his rival is always the "chosen," 
 and the other is "the obstacle." . . . How is Mr. 
 Timothy Healy .' 
 
 Par. You think that a relevant question ? 
 
 Butt. Relevant to what ? I do not understand 
 you. 
 
 Par. You cannot have mistaken me. Come, Mr. 
 Butt, this is unworthy of you and of our common 
 abode. I thought we had left malice behind us, 
 with the other vile passions and viler creatures of the 
 earth. Deal plainly with me. How much do you 
 know ? 
 
 E 
 
50 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Butt. Mr. Parnell, I know nothing save that you 
 were bound to the liberation of Ireland, and — that 
 you are here. 
 
 Par. And you guess that I have not accomplished 
 my work .■' Well, you guess rightly. But what has 
 that to do with the man whose name you mentioned ? 
 
 Butt. I conjectured that you had fallen, and I 
 knew that you had been the patron, the benefactor, 
 the maker of Mr. Healy. I thought, therefore, that 
 
 if any foot had tripped you, it might well be 
 
 I Par. Foot ! he has no feet. His breed has had 
 none since an earlier and a greater Fall. You may 
 stumble over them, but you would hardly say that 
 they "trip" you. Nor, to do them justice, are they 
 ever, in Ireland, at any rate, found crawling openly 
 across any one's path ; or they would not have 
 escaped St. Patrick. So long as you keep your 
 footing, they will keep the hedge. You do not feel 
 their fang till you are prostrate. 
 
 Butt. You speak in riddles, Mr. Parnell. 
 
 Par. The answer would take long to give you, if 
 you know none of it already. Tell me, what have 
 you heard .■' 
 
 Butt. Of late, nothing. But before that, enough 
 to make me wonder at beholding you here. They 
 told me that you had gained absolute control over 
 an English party, and their leader. 
 
 Par. They told you truly. I held them in the 
 hollow of my hand. 
 
PARNELL AND BUTT 51 
 
 Butt. Then you should have closed it on them. 
 Why, / could have done that — I, the despised patron 
 of obsolete parliamentary methods. Fortune never 
 favoured me with the command of a majority in the 
 House of Commons. 
 
 Par. Nor did she so favour me. I wrung it from 
 her by years of patient scheming and unwearied 
 endeavour. In the teeth of hatred and calumny, at 
 the cost of ease and happiness, under penalty of 
 banishment from the order to which I was born, and 
 of condemnation to the society of ruffians whom I \ 
 despised, in peril of my liberty from the Government, 
 ay, and even of my life from the desperadoes at my 
 back — I won it ! The half-dozen rebels who defied 
 your declining authority in '"]&, became at the next 
 election the thirty members of a fully recognised, 
 Irish parliamentary party, and grew at the election 
 after that, into the eighty-six "constitutional spokes- 
 men of the legitimate demands of Ireland." The 
 detested obstructionist, the incendiary agitator of '81, 
 became the "patriot statesman" of '85 ; and, thanks 
 to the blunders of his enemies, the "deeply-injured 
 victim of cruel slander " in '89. I was the same man 
 that I had always been, pursuing the ends which 
 Mr. Gladstone had described for me, by the methods 
 which he had imputed to me. I was "marching" 
 then, as always, "through rapine and plunder to the 
 disintegration of the Empire." But I held the 
 balance of Parliamentary power in my hand ! I 
 
52 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 could make and unmake Ministries ! I could banish 
 party leaders to Opposition and recall them again to 
 office! And so, in a moment, at a single turn of 
 the wheel, at a single spin of the penny, without 
 one act of atonement, without one word of submis- 
 sion, I stepped from the pillory into the triumphal 
 car ! The men who had pelted me with the 
 rotten eggs of their abuse, strewed the flowers of 
 their flattery in my path ; the aged demagogue who 
 had denounced and imprisoned me, followed humbly 
 in my train ! . . . Mr. Butt — you who have always 
 believed in and respected this people — you know how 
 I have always hated them. Can you wonder now 
 that I despise them too } 
 
 Butt. I can hardly help wondering that you should 
 tell me so. Their meanness reduces the value of your 
 conquest. But proceed. Have you wreaked your 
 scorn and hatred on these time-servers .'' Have you 
 trampled them under foot .'' 
 
 Par. Spare me your irony. You know as well as 
 I that Death has been too quick for me. 
 
 Butt. Too quick > Let us understand each other, 
 Mr. Pamell. I had supposed it to be some years since 
 this Triumph of yours set out, with your flower-strew- 
 ing flatterers in front, and that bound and humbled 
 old commander behind your car. How comes it to 
 have been so long upon the road to the Capitol > 
 Can anything have happened to it .'' Is it possible 
 that ? 
 
PARNELL AND BUTT 53 
 
 Par. There ! there ! enough. Your sarcasms show 
 me plainly enough that you know more — or at least 
 that you have guessed more — than you would have 
 had me suppose. You are not ignorant, I see, that 
 the victory has been postponed. 
 
 Butt. What ! till after the Triumph .? That seems 
 strange. The erection of the trophy interrupted by 
 a defeat .' 
 
 Par. You are mistaken. I reject the word. I was 
 not — I have never been, defeated. I am no more 
 defeated now than is the general who is laid low by a 
 lightning stroke, ere he has had time to close • and 
 conquer. 
 
 Butt. It is the question of dates that puzzles me. 
 Only a very timid or a very indolent general would 
 have allowed accident so long to work in — would 
 have left so many years open for the despatch of a 
 thunderbolt. It was wantonly tempting Jupiter ; that 
 is if you were really not defeated. But come, you 
 may be candid with me, especially since, as you say, 
 I have already guessed the truth. You sustained a 
 — how shall we call it .' — a check. In spite of your 
 obedient English Parliamentary majority, you failed 
 to carry the stronghold of the Union at the first 
 assault. Was it not so ? 
 
 Par. It was. Our Bill was lost by a majority of 
 thirty. 
 
 Butt. No more } Has there been a mortality 
 among the Tory peers ? 
 
( 
 
 54 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Par. In a house of over six hundred and fifty. 
 
 Butt. No less? Has the whole peerage taken 
 to attending the debates ? But no ; that is incredible. 
 Yet, on the other hand, you cannot surely be speak- 
 ing of the House of Commons — the home of your 
 obedient majority .' Was it they who threw out the 
 Bill ? 
 
 Par. You would call a pack of hounds obedient, 
 I suppose, even though some four or five couples 
 should run wild. And it was little more than that 
 proportion of the Liberals who refused to answer to 
 the whip. I may fairly enough exult, I think, over 
 the docility of the remainder. Two hundred and 
 twenty-four English politicians turning their two 
 hundred and twenty-four coats at the bidding of a 
 two hundred and twenty-fifth ; eighty per cent, of 
 a great English party recanting the principles they 
 had professed, and repudiating the policy they had 
 supported, for years ! Is that not victory enough to 
 satisfy an Irish leader ? 
 
 Butt. If vanity is his only appetite, yes. But 
 there should be something more solid than that to 
 stay the stomach of his patriotism. And what else 
 was there .'' So far as I understand you, nothing. 
 You did not even capture, or you could not keep, 
 your Home Rule majority in Parliament. And the 
 English constituencies, I conclude, would have none 
 of you. 
 
 Par. They were badly handled. They were 
 
PARNELL AND BUTT 55 
 
 alarmed and mystified, and driven to the ballot- 
 boxes before they had had time to recover. The 
 whole business was execrably bungled ; but what 
 then ? The bungling was none of mine. After all, 
 I was not Prime Minister, to decide when a dissolu- 
 tion should be taken, and how the stupid English 
 electorate might be best approached. If their own 
 prophet and oracle — if the man who had been for 
 twenty years befooling them mistook the way to 
 their slow wits, it was no fault of his Irish partners 
 in the game. 
 
 Butt. No ; but the fault, by whomsoever made, 
 may be irremediable. What assurance have you 
 that the verdict once pronounced against you will 
 ever be reversed ? 
 
 Par. What assurance have I .-' . . . And this man 
 supposed himself capable of winning Home Rule by 
 Parliamentary methods ! A man with so intimate 
 and accurate a knowledge of the English democracy ! 
 
 Butt. I did not catch what you said, sir. 
 
 Par. Mr. Butt, it was not necessary — I will go so 
 far as to say it was not desirable — that you should. 
 You were asking me what assurance I had that the 
 verdict of the English constituencies against Home 
 Rule would ever be reversed. Let me ask you what 
 assurance you have that the barb of a weathercock 
 will ever change places with its feather ? There is 
 no reason why it should, unless the wind changes. 
 And there is no reason that we know of why the 
 
56 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 wind should change, except that it always does ; 
 which assures us that it always will. My assurance, 
 sir, that the English electors would reverse their 
 verdict against Home Rule was mainly of that 
 description. But there were other grounds for it in 
 plenty. Upon one in particular I was relying with 
 confidence the most complete. Nothing but death — 
 not my own, but another's — could have arrested the 
 operation of that cause. 
 
 Butt. Which was > 
 
 Par. You have not forgotten the characteristics 
 of Mr. Gladstone } 
 
 Butt. Surely not. I had many opportunities of 
 studying them. My intercourse with him was always 
 of a pleasant kind, and he was, on more than one 
 occasion, good enough to express high approval of 
 the speech with which I introduced my annual motion. 
 
 Par. Your annual . . . ? You will forgive me, I 
 am sure, Mr. Butt, but I have entirely forgotten its 
 purport. 
 
 Butt. No doubt. Events have travelled fast of 
 late. It was my habit every year to move for the 
 appointment of a Select Committee "To inquire 
 into and report upon the nature, extent, and grounds 
 of the demand made by a large proportion of the 
 Irish people for the restoration to Ireland of an 
 Irish Parliament, with power to control the internal 
 affairs of that country." 
 
 Par. Ah, so strong as that t Mr. Gladstone must, 
 
PARNELL AND BUTT 57 
 
 indeed, have been magnanimous to bestow his praise 
 upon a speech delivered in support of so formidable 
 a motion. 
 
 Butt. He voted against it, however. 
 
 Par. I know. He would. It is to his credit, 
 nevertheless, that he was not too much alarmed by- 
 it to do justice to your eloquence. If the Fates had 
 spared you, Mr. Butt, to go on moving it for another 
 twenty years, he would have met it, I am persuaded, 
 with the same intrepidity, and his praises of the 
 mover would have been equallj' disinterested. But 
 did your intercourse with him reveal no other trait 
 in his character except the singular magnanimity 
 which he thus illustrated ? 
 
 Butt. He was doubtless fond of power. 
 
 Par. Doubtless he was. And should you say or 
 not, that if power were torn from his grasp, he 
 would resent it as a personal affront .'' 
 
 Butt. Perhaps. 
 
 Par. I will go further than your " perhaps." I say 
 that he would regard it as an injury never to be 
 forgotten or forgiven until he had forced atonement 
 from those who had inflicted it. I say that he 
 would take his defeat to bed with him at night and 
 rise with it in the morning ; that it would sit with 
 him at his table and companion him in his 
 walks ; and that if only life and health remained to 
 him, he would never rest until he had not merely 
 recovered the power which he had lost, but had 
 
58 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 compelled his countrymen to restore it to him on 
 the very grounds on which they had wrested it from 
 him, and for the very purposes which they had 
 striven to foil. And now, sir, you know my second 
 ground of assurance that the defeat of 1886 would 
 be retrieved. I had not only myself to rely on, but 
 Mr. Gladstone ; not only my own inflexible de- 
 termination, but his implacable pride. 
 
 Butt. And yet you come among us a dis- 
 appointed man ! Your narrative, Mr.. Parnell, does 
 not grow more intelligible as it proceeds. For you 
 do not say that it was death only that came between 
 you and your final victory. 
 
 Par. No ; you are right. I do not say that. 
 
 Butt. Yet what else was there, in Heaven's 
 name i You say, and you should know, that your 
 own determination was inflexible. You tell me, and 
 you may well be right, that Mr. Gladstone's pride 
 was implacable, and that nothing would satisfy him 
 but to avenge its injuries and to reverse the 
 judgment which inflicted them. You declare, and I 
 am not concerned to deny it, that you had yet 
 another ally in the levity and inconstancy of the 
 English electorate. Yet, fair as was the prospect 
 which you had thus before you, it was overclouded 
 before you quitted the world. Is it not so .•• 
 
 Par. I left it at its darkest ; or, at least, I left it 
 darker than it had ever been since Mr. Gladstone's 
 surrender. 
 
PARNELL AND BUTT 59 
 
 Butt. Ha ! that is strange indeed. By what 
 extraordinary mischance came that about ? 
 
 Par. I was unlucky enough to give occasion to 
 my pohtical enemies and my false political friends 
 by a matter of private scandal 
 
 Butt. Of private scandal ! You to give them 
 such occasion ! 
 
 Par. Come, Mr. Butt, I might as well say, " Yozc 
 to be surprised at that ! " No one should know 
 better than yourself that an Irish leader may suffer 
 that misfortune. 
 
 Butt. You might have spared me the reminder. 
 My surprise was merely a compliment to your 
 reputation for business habits, and to the sound 
 condition of your financial affairs. You, so far as I 
 know, were never in difficulties. I was never out of 
 them. You had not my excuse for mixing in 
 transactions that Parliament had to call in question, 
 and for confounding the legislator with the lawyer 
 in the matter of fees. However, let us hear — wha 
 was the other party in your case ? Another Indian 
 Prince ? 
 
 Par. You mistake the nature of the incident 
 altogether. It had nothing to do with money. 
 
 Butt. No ? Then where did the scandal come 
 in.? 
 
 Par. I was made co-respondent to a petition for 
 divorce, and a decree was pronounced against me. 
 
 Butt. That was unpleasant. Well, what followed ? 
 
€o THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Par. What followed? Why, what should follow? 
 That was the private scandal I spoke of. 
 
 Butt. Yes ; I see the private scandal plain enough. 
 What I do not see is its public interest — "the 
 occasion" which, you say, it gave to your political 
 enemies and false political friends. How, in the 
 name of confusion, did they manage to hook the 
 affair into politics at all ? 
 
 Par. Did you ever hear, Mr. Butt, of the " Non- 
 conformist conscience " ? 
 
 Butt. To be sure ; I remember it well. It used 
 to object to Church-rates ; but they have been 
 abolished. 
 
 Par. Yes ; but the conscience remains, and has 
 found out other things to object to — my leadership 
 amongst them. It declared that it found it impos- 
 sible to co-operate for the attainment of Home Rule 
 with a man who had been guilty of a breach of the 
 Seventh Commandment. 
 
 Butt. Strange ! Yet the Dissenters have been 
 Liberals for generations, and have gone quite steadily 
 under leaders with whom — well, with whom the 
 Seventh Commandment had to take its chance with 
 the others. Indeed, they have been more restive in 
 •the hands of Mr. Gladstone than of anybody. 
 
 Par. They were so — or so he pretends — in the 
 present case. He yielded wholly — or that was his 
 account of the matter — to their overwhelming moral 
 pressure. 
 
PARNELL AND BUTT 6i 
 
 Butt. What ! and to their exquisite reasons also ? 
 Your whole story, Mr. Parnell, is to me so incredible, 
 that you must forgive my suspecting you of having 
 formed an entirely wrong impression of the affair. 
 No man would be more likely to do so than one as 
 deeply concerned in it as yourself. Pray, let me 
 have the whole series of events in strict chronological 
 order. What occurred immediately after the pro- 
 nouncement of the decree i 
 
 Par. Nothing. 
 
 Butt. You mean 
 
 Par. I mean nothing to indicate that it would 
 have, or even that it ought to have, any political 
 consequences whatever. There was a week to pass 
 before Parliament met. During that week not a 
 word fell in speech or writing from Mr. Gladstone, 
 or from any political personage of the slightest 
 importance. My party held a meeting in Dublin, 
 and they unanimously resolved to ignore the incident, 
 and to continue to me their confidence. So little did 
 any of them foresee a future interest in betraying me, 
 that they had made no arrangements for desertion ; 
 but, on the contrary, by the servility of their homage, 
 threw difficulties in its way. The chance of treachery 
 which was about to offer itself would have taken even 
 the readiest of traitors unawares. 
 
 Butt. The Irish race is surely not losing its finer 
 political instincts. What could have been the oppor^ 
 tunity which so escaped their traditional foresight ? 
 
62 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Par. You shall hear. A few days after these 
 ejithusiastic proceedings in Dublin, Parliament met ; 
 and, on the first night of the session, my followers 
 unanimously re-elected me leader. The next morning 
 there appeared a letter from Mr. Gladstone in the 
 London newspapers, proclaiming to all the world that 
 I had become impossible as an ally, that my con- 
 tinuance at the head of the Nationalist party would 
 reduce his own leadership " almost to a nuUity " — you 
 know his turn of phrase — and that he could no longer 
 hope to carry his political adherents with him in the 
 struggle for Irish Independence unless my own 
 followers and my countrymen would consent to cast 
 me off. 
 
 Butt. What! He proclaimed that to the whole 
 world in the London newspapers, and without any 
 previous communication — without even any attempt 
 to communicate — with you ? 
 
 Par. Without an attempt ? Oh no ; he was far 
 too considerate for that. He gave a message to one 
 of his lieutenants, who gave it to one of my lieu- 
 tenants, and as there was no answer from me within 
 the next few hours^well, he wrote and despatched 
 his letter to the newspapers. So prompt was the 
 obedience which had to be rendered to the demands 
 of the Nonconformist conscience. 
 
 Butt. And you are content with that explanation 
 of his precipitancy ? Mr. Parnell, I credited you 
 with more than your real share of acumen. 
 
PARNELL AND BUTT 63 
 
 Par. Say rather with less than my actual taste 
 for irony. Do not deceive yourself, sir. I had 
 not contended with that venerable manoeuvrer for a 
 dozen years without knowing him at least as well as 
 you do. And in this case his precipitancy was just 
 as intelligible to me as his delay. If he held his hand 
 for a week, it was not from disinclination to strike, 
 but from fear lest he should strike too soon. If the 
 blow fell abruptly at last, it was not because he was 
 forced, but because he was eager, to deliver it. He 
 wanted, and he waited for, an out-door agitation as 
 an excuse for striking at all ; but when the Pharisees 
 among his followers had provided him with that, he 
 seized upon it with all the hurry of hate and fear. 
 
 Butt. You must know better than I what his 
 motives were, but even I can see that they must have 
 been self-supplied, and that the theory of " irresistible 
 pressure from without" is inadequate. 
 
 Par. Inadequate, indeed ! Why, for years past he 
 had been the keeper of the conscience that he then 
 pretended to be obeying. Irresistible pressure, forsooth! 
 What pressure from followers or from colleagues did 
 he ever find irresistible — he who had paralysed their 
 judgments, and swayed their wills, and defied their 
 scruples for half a lifetime ; he who had compelled 
 landlords to assist in confiscating rents, and lawyers l 
 to evade Acts of ParHament, and Quakers to bombard 
 towns ? No ! the pretext is too transparent. He ; 
 welcomed the clamours to which he affected to yield 
 
64 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 , with reluctance, and caught greedily at the oppor- 
 j tunity of shaking off a confederate whom he knew 
 that he could neither coerce nor cajole. 
 
 Butt. And you think that he so regarded you ? 
 Par. I know it. And but a few months before 
 he had made tacit admission that what he could 
 not accomplish he would nevertheless be bound to 
 attempt. At an interview under his own roof he had 
 sounded me, after his own fashion, with a view to 
 ascertaining how far he could outwit, and how far 
 intimidate me ; and I left him well persuaded in my 
 own mind that neither experiment had satisfied him. 
 We had looked into each other's eyes like two 
 wrestlers about to close, and he knew what to expect 
 when the struggle came. What wonder that he 
 should have sought to escape that struggle by a 
 stratagem, and to provide himself with an easier 
 antagonist ? You talked but now of tripping, Mr. 
 Butt. If I have been tripped by any one, it is by 
 him. 
 
 Butt. Yet surely it was in no man's power to do 
 that unassisted. The decision rested, after all, with 
 your party and your countrymen. I need not ask 
 you what was the verdict of the former ; I have led 
 an Irish party myself. How many of them — let me 
 take the simpler statistics first — how many of them 
 remained true to you ? 
 
 Par. Between twenty and thirty. 
 
 Butt. Ah! more than a fourth! I congratulate 
 
PARNELL AND BUTT 65 
 
 you. It was always said that you had infused a new 
 spirit into Irish politics, and if nearly thirty per cent. 
 of your followers were able to resist the influence of 
 an English Government, you have nobly justified the 
 boast. With these at your side and the Irish people, 
 of course, behind you, you would have made head, 
 I doubt not, against your enemies if your life had 
 been spared. The Fates have dealt more cruelly 
 with you than I thought. They must have snatched 
 victory from your very grasp. This Parliament, I 
 gather, had well-nigh run its course, and ere many 
 months had passed, an indignant Ireland would have 
 purged your party of its traitors, and you would once 
 more have brought the English hypocrites and their 
 leader to your feet. . . . You are silent. Surely I 
 have read the situation aright ? 
 
 Par. The Irish people have been deceived. 
 
 Butt. Deceived ! Deceived ! You cannot mean 
 that 
 
 Par. For a moment they hesitated to rally round 
 me. 
 
 Butt. For a moment ! Ay, like enough. Or for 
 an hour, a day, a week. That would be no more 
 than pardonable. The shock was sudden, the position 
 novel. The blow was staggering, and it had been 
 delivered by one in whom their own leader had lately 
 taught them to believe. But did they waver for a 
 moment after they heard the sound of your voice ? 
 . . . You do not answer. Did they refuse to listen 
 
 F 
 
66 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 to you ? Or, can it be — but no ! that is impossible 
 — that you shrank from the conflict ? 
 
 Par. I ? I flung back the old man's challenge in 
 his face. I answered repudiation with defiance, and 
 revealed to all the world the plot which had been 
 hatched against me. I told my countrymen the whole 
 truth of the negotiations with Mr. Gladstone, and 
 showed them that he only sought to rid himself of 
 me that he might have them at his mercy. 
 
 Butt. And you took that course without hesita- 
 tion ? 
 
 Par. Ay, and pursued it without rest. Sir, 
 between the morning when I began this battle to 
 the night when I quitted the field for ever, there ran 
 three hundred and fourteen days. My nights I 
 reckon fewer, for I have had to travel much ; but of 
 all those days there has not been one, nay, not a 
 waking hour of one, which I have not given to my 
 enemies and to my revenge. I have faced them 
 everywhere, and with every weapon — in the con- 
 ference-room, in the newspaper-office, in the market- 
 place, at the polling-booth. I passed six days of 
 every week in planning their overthrow, and the 
 seventh in denouncing them to my countrymen. I 
 crossed and recrossed the Irish Sea a score of times, 
 and covered hundreds of miles in journeyings by 
 land. What ? You imagine that it was fear, or 
 doubt, or sloth, that gave them the advantage! I 
 know not the meaning of the words. Fear ! It was 
 
PARNELL AND BUTT dj 
 
 the white-livered deserters themselves who cowered 
 before me ! Doubt ! I never doubted for one instant 
 that, at last, I should drive the rats to their holes. 
 Sloth ! I never rested ; and I never would have 
 rested till I had done it ! 
 
 Butt. Compose yourself, sir. I have imputed to 
 you none of the weaknesses you disclaim. But had 
 they existed, they would have, at least, been explana- 
 tions of what now remains unintelligible. If you 
 neither shrank from your enemies, nor doubted your 
 victory, nor remitted your efforts, how came you to 
 be defeated ? 
 
 Par. Must I again tell you that I was not 
 defeated — that my ultimate triumph was assured — 
 that when Death cut short my struggle I had suffered 
 nothing but a temporary check, a reverse which 
 
 Butt. Which has still to be explained. You were 
 the idol of the Irish people, their king, their hero, 
 the object of their enthusiastic homage. They had 
 followed you for years with blind and unquestioning 
 devotion, with that romantic loyalty which nations 
 indeed cari feel, but which has never existed unal- 
 loyed with baser sentiments in the purest pohtical 
 party that ever took, or broke, an oath. The Irish 
 people had no jealousies to gratify, no rivalries to 
 further, no private ends to serve. They would have 
 laughed, I know, at the outcry which English Puritans 
 had raised, and English intriguers re-echoed, against 
 you ; and they could not have failed to notice that, 
 
68 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 until Mr. Gladstone declared himself, your followers 
 had laughed at it themselves. Yet this people, so 
 devoted to you, so hostile to your enemies, so sensible 
 of the services you had rendered them, so eager for 
 the benefits you had promised them, so conscious of 
 the wisdom of obeying you, so contemptuous of the 
 pretext for displacing you — this people it is who, at 
 a word from an English statesman to whom they 
 owe nothing but what you have wrung from him — 
 have cast you off! It is incredible. 
 
 Par. Incredible it would indeed be were that all 
 there is to tell. But it was not, as you have said, 
 "at a word" from Mr. Gladstone that I was 
 abandoned. It was from a voice much nearer to 
 their ears. 
 
 Butt. The landlord's .? 
 I Par. The priest's. 
 
 Butt. Aha! The secret out at last! I wonder 
 no more. If you have quarrelled with the priest- 
 hood 
 
 Par. Tut ! you are behind the times. Irish leaders 
 court the priesthood no longer. I had whipped them 
 to heel, and they had followed me, every spaniel of 
 them, till then. 
 
 Butt. I should have thought that it was the collie's 
 service, and not the spaniel's, that you wanted of 
 them. 
 
 Par. And I had it ! For years I had it ! I had 
 wrested the crook from the shepherd, and he was 
 
PARNELL AND BUTT 69 
 
 content at last to play sheep-dog to me, lest he should 
 be wholly parted from the flock. He cursed the 
 necessity, but he yielded to it. The Catholic clergy 
 and their prelates stood aloof as long as they dared, 
 but they had to submit at last ; and, to do them 
 justice, they made up for their hesitation by their 
 zeal. All orders of them worked well. Bishops and 
 Archbishops barked industriously round the main 
 body, while parish priests collected the stragglers on 
 the hillside. I could have left the Nationalist flock 
 entirely — I did leave it largely — under their control. 
 
 Butt. And a shrewd trick they have served you, 
 it appears. 
 
 Par. They saw their chance and seized it, but 
 they waited till it was actually in their grasp. Not 
 a word — not a syllable escaped these right reverend 
 persons, on the point of conduct, so long as the 
 question of tactics remained doubtful. It was not 
 till Mr. Gladstone found me politically impossible that 
 it flashed upon them that I was morally reprobate. 
 
 Butt. And then ? 
 
 Par. And then they descended — these black- 
 coated gentry — like a cloud of ravens upon what 
 they mistook for my political corpse, all eagerness 
 for that imagined feast which was to turn out for 
 them the fiercest of frays. They found themselves 
 fighting with the carrion for their own lives ! Ay, 
 and they would have fought for them in vain, had 
 not Death itself turned traitor ! 
 
70 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Butt. You are unjust, Mr. Parnell. You fell by 
 an earlier betrayal than his. 
 
 Par. Ay, by my party's. 
 
 Butt. No, by your country's. From the moment 
 that the priests recovered their hold upon the people 
 you were lost. 
 
 Par. Not so. They were thrice as strong, and 
 their grasp was three times firmer when, ten years 
 earlier, I challenged them and struck them down. 
 Another year, and I would have brought them to 
 their knees again. But now — but now — it is not I, 
 but the cause of Ireland, that is lost ! The priests 
 and the place-hunters will sell the birthright of the 
 nation for a mess of official pottage. Who, indeed, 
 is to prevent them ? There never was but one man 
 who could have arrested that infamous bargain ; and 
 now — ^he is /lere. 
 
 Butt. Ay, but what has brought you here ? By 
 your own showing, it is the people whom you had 
 redeemed in the past, and could alone have saved 
 from foreign guile and native treachery in the future, 
 who have broken your heart ! 
 
 Par. It is too true ! It is too true ! 
 
 Butt. You own it.' And yet you hoped, and 
 were you on earth again you would still hope, to 
 make a nation of them ! Be comforted, sir. Death, 
 whom you chid but now, has spared you a bitter 
 disappointment. The task you set yourself was 
 impossible. If you do not overrate your own services 
 
PARNELL AND BUTT 71 
 
 to the Irish people, nor have incorrectly described 1 
 your recompense, the most formidable enemies of * 
 their freedom are to be found, not in their priests j 
 and place-Hunters, but in themselves. For a race so ■ 
 servile and so thankless must have been born for \ 
 servitude, and your utmost efforts for their liberation 
 would never have done more for them than to change 
 their masters. 
 
IV 
 
 LUCIAN AND PASCAL 
 
 Luc. Confess now, O my friend, if that name 
 offends you not, that you have done me some 
 injustice. 
 
 Pas. You are certainly more reverent in your 
 speech than in your writings, and perhaps in your 
 mind than in your speech. But you may easily 
 forgive me for having thought worse of you than you 
 deserved. Historic tradition has branded you as a 
 wanton mocker at holy things, whose insults to the 
 supernatural were punished even in the upper world. 
 Suidas, you may perhaps have heard, declared that 
 you were devoured by dogs. 
 
 Luc. Suidas himself has been devoured, and by a 
 more voracious than the canine maw. Oblivion, I 
 understand, has left nothing of him but the name — 
 unless, indeed, his surviving scholia may be taken to 
 represent his brains, rejected by indigestion, or spared 
 by malice. But I need not grudge his shadowy im- 
 mortality to this pedant, who hardly lives, even for 
 scholars, save in his spiteful fablings about me. 
 
 72 
 
LUCIAN AND PASCAL 73 
 
 Pas. If letters really humanised, he would have 
 judged you more charitably. A scoffer at the gods 
 you may have been, but I see now that you were 
 something more and better than that. 
 
 Luc. Better? I do not know that I can accept 
 the compliment. I honoured wisdom ; I revered 
 virtue ; I would have kissed the feet of Truth if I 
 could have found my way to her through the crowd 
 of philosophers. But I must rank myself lower as a 
 follower of the good than as a destroyer of the evil. 
 The false and filthy legends of our Pantheon 
 
 Pas. Were the human pollutions of a divine spring 
 — a fountain of living water which from the dawn of 
 man's perceptions has, by God's all-merciful ordinance, 
 welled up perennially in the human heart. The 
 stream, I own, was flowing dull and turbid enough 
 in your day throughout the heathen world : but you 
 did not seek to cleanse it ; you did not help the 
 followers of Him whom you called — may the 
 blasphemy be forgiven you ! — the " Crucified 
 Sophist " to turn its waters into a purer channel. 
 You strove to dam them at their source. 
 
 Luc. Your metaphors mislead you, O excellent one ! 
 you cannot know how utterly vile was our religion. 
 
 Pas. Nay, it is language which misleads yo2i. 
 That which was vile was not religion, but the exterior 
 symbols of the cult. Religion is in the soul, and, 
 implanted there by the Holy One, it is of kin to 
 holiness alone. It touches, it is touched, by nothing 
 
74 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 base or foul. But wheresoever in the world the soul 
 of man has been lifted up in prayer or thanksgiving 
 to an invisible Power, there, in whatever ignoble 
 liturgy of paganism, the true God has been worshipped. 
 It was thus, as our apostle told your philosophers, that 
 " He left Himself not without witness, in that He did 
 good, and sent us rain and fruitful seasons, filling our 
 hearts with food and gladness." I cannot doubt but 
 that many a simple husbandman of Hellas, blessed 
 with an abundant harvest, has in this sense given 
 thanks to the Unknown God, and that while his 
 foolish altar-fumes lingered round the lifeless image 
 of Demeter, the incense of his spirit reached the 
 throne of the Most High. 
 
 Luc. I should be glad to believe it — if only for the 
 assurance that the Supreme Being is not so savage and 
 childish as to need placation by the steam of victims. 
 I should wish to think of Him as one who would be 
 content with the love and gratitude of His creatures, 
 letting the roasted kids go where they might. I have 
 never had anything to say against your grateful hus- 
 bandman of Hellas. His religion has been unassailed 
 by me. 
 
 Pas. Nay, for you destroyed its symbols, and 
 symbolism is the only articulate speech of religion for 
 the ruder tongue. Deprived of symbolism, the religious 
 spirit of the mass of mankind must droop and languish, 
 as thought itself would wither among a community of 
 the dumb. 
 
LUCIAN AND PASCAL 75 
 
 Luc. But surely one may rid a language of a 
 few of its barbarisms, and purge its lexicon of 
 the obscene slang which has too long passed for 
 classical ! 
 
 Pas. Not, O Lucian, as you essayed to do so. 
 Superstition may mar religion, but you cannot, by 
 the method of ridicule, destroy the one and leave the 
 other untouched. Superstition is to religion as the 
 parasite to the oak ; and ridicule is as the axe set to 
 do the work of the pruning-knife. Not in your fashion 
 did that greatest apostle of our religion, whom but 
 now I cited to you, attempt your task. It was with 
 no words of taunt or railing that he, who never feared 
 the face of man in his denunciations, addressed your 
 Athenian sages on the Hill of Mars. The very excesses 
 of their polytheism were turned to the orator's purpose. 
 He praised them for their profound " religious awe ; " 
 for it is this, and not " superstition," that Ssimdaifiovia 
 signifies ; and appealing to the Altar of the ArNQSTOS 
 8E0S as the warrant for his praises, he suddenly 
 assumed the priesthood of that untended shrine. 
 "Whom, therefore, ye unknowingly worship. Him 
 declare I unto you." 
 
 Luc. Yes, I have heard of the speech from those 
 who were among its audience. Its exordium was 
 certainly a master-stroke of rhetorical tact ; and I have 
 always wondered at such graceful urbanity in a Jew. 
 
 Pas. There was grace in it, indeed, O Lucian, but 
 in a higher sense of the word than yours. It was 
 
76 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 the expression of the apostle's inspired sympathy 
 with all forms of the emotion of worship. 
 
 Luc. Maybe ; but it produced all the effect of the 
 most studied and the most undeserved flattery. The 
 Athenians multiplied gods for the sake of multiplying 
 arguments. I doubt whether the Stoic and Epicurean 
 babblers whom Paulos addressed had so much as had 
 experience of the " emotion of worship " in their lives. 
 
 Pas. Surely you wrong them. We know that the 
 apostle made converts from among their number. 
 
 Luc. Your innocence is childlike, O best of men ! 
 The accession of a few philosophers to your religion 
 was of little more significance than that of the women 
 who accompanied them. Vanity, the desire to be talked 
 about, was the probable motive in both cases, unless, 
 indeed, the women changed their religion to disconcert 
 their husbands. 
 
 Pas. How many hearts the preacher may have 
 turned to the true faith is known only to the Searcher 
 of hearts ; how many eyes he may have opened is the 
 secret of the Father of lights. But sure am I that 
 ridicule of their errors would only have hardened and 
 blinded those whose pride and whose vision it was 
 the aim of the apostle to subdue and purge. 
 
 Luc. It may be so ; but it surprises me, O worthiest 
 one, to hear you say so. But sparingly, I think, did 
 you yourself practise that mode of treating error 
 which you applaud in Paulos. Your works belie 
 your doctrines. 
 
LUCIAN AND PASCAL ^^ 
 
 Pas. My works, O Lucian ! What can you know 
 of thenn ? 
 
 Luc. There are those among us, O most subtle of 
 disputants, who have them by heart ; and many a 
 time have I hstened to their recitation with wonder 
 and delight. 
 
 Pas. Truly .' I should not have thought that I had 
 any admirer so devoted as to have studied me thus. 
 
 Luc. Nor have you, at least to my knowledge. Those 
 who have thus intently applied themselves to your 
 writings are not your disciples, but your adversaries. 
 They recite your Letters with protestations of their 
 falsehood, and maledictions of their author. But to me, 
 who care not an obolus whether your charges against 
 this sect were just or unjust, the skill of your attack 
 and the glitter of your weapon afford perpetual 
 pleasure. Plato himself was not a more consummate 
 master of the dialogue ; nor shall you find a keener 
 dialectic, a clearer analysis, an irony more demurely 
 deadly, in the interrogatories of the Platonic Socrates. 
 I have, it is true, no learning in that lore of mysticism 
 which you handle in your earlier disputations. I 
 cannot follow your deliverances on "sufficient grace " 
 and "proximate power." But the ethics of conduct 
 are matter of interest to the philosophers of every age, 
 and wit is the special inheritance of the Greek. I have 
 listened to your recited colloquies with the — how call 
 you him .-• — Jesuit casuist, as I should have listened, 
 had the gods allowed me the opportunity, to the 
 
78 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Socratic elenchus of an Athenian sophist. I have 
 watched the discomfiture of " Father Bauny " as I 
 should have watched the toils a-tightening round the 
 entangled feet of Thrasymachus. With what disarm- 
 ing courtesy do you approach your doomed antagonist ! 
 With what blandly feigned indifference do you pro- 
 pound the questions which are to undo him ! There 
 is the stealth of the serpent in your advance, the 
 fascination of his eye in your grave intentness ; it is 
 with his leisurely cruelty that you press your victim 
 into the corner from which there is no retreat ; and 
 the mortal blow is at last delivered with all the 
 dazzling swiftness of the reptile's darting tongue. . . . 
 But I do not call this dealing tenderly with error. 
 
 Pas. Nor should suck error be tenderly dealt with. 
 You have failed, my friend, to distinguish between 
 the erroneous and the corrupt. Honest superstition 
 must be warily and gently ridded, for it has its root 
 in religion, and draws its vital sap from the same soil ; 
 immoral doctrines of so-called morality cannot with 
 too stern a swiftness be cut away. It is the difference 
 between the parasite and the gangrene, between the 
 natural outgrowth which may kill, but can only slowly 
 kill the parent stock, and the morbid excrescence 
 which is filtering its alien poison at every instant 
 through the ducts of life. 
 
 Luc. I greatly admire your aptitude in com- 
 parisons and contrasts. It seems to be a talent 
 peculiar to the moderns. The disputants of my 
 
LUCIAN AND PASCAL 79 
 
 own time would never have thought of attempting 
 to prove a proposition by drawing a couple of 
 pictures and declaring that their resemblance or 
 difference was an argument. 
 
 Pas. Analogy, however, is no unsafe guide, if 
 wisely used. You said just now that you cared not 
 an obolus whether my charges against the Jesuits 
 were just or unjust ; but you meant, I suppose, that 
 you cared not whether I had truly or falsely 
 imputed to these doctors the teaching which I 
 condemned. Assuming that I imputed it truly (and 
 the accuracy and fairness of my citations from their 
 casuists I have maintained by an unanswered 
 challenge), you will not, I think, dispute the justice 
 of my comparison. Murder, theft, adultery, are 
 surely among the worst diseases of the body social : 
 and what but poison is that doctrine, what but 
 poisoners are those teachers, through which and by 
 whom these loathsome maladies are propagated .' 
 
 Luc. Gently, gently, O best of men ! I may 
 grant you your "poison," perhaps, but "poisoner" 
 begs the question. Administer the antidote with all 
 speed ; purge and sweat the sufferer to your heart's 
 content ; but be not in too great a hurry to crucify 
 the rival physician. Let us first be sure that he 
 mistook not the poison for a wholesome drug. 
 
 Pas. You never knew these men, O Lucian. 
 They were no mistaken theorists ; they were 
 conscious charlatans, treating their patients with 
 
8o THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 sweet, if deadly medicaments, that they might swell 
 the concourse into their consulting-chambers and 
 increase their gains. 
 
 Luc. They were blinded, then, by self-interest, 
 and they may be the more leniently judged on that 
 account. 
 
 Pas. Leniently! the more leniently for having 
 not merely betrayed but trafficked with their trust ! 
 I cannot hope, O Lucian, to find even in the best of 
 pagans the Christian horror of sin : but you, who 
 were a philosopher, you, who loved temperance and 
 justice, and were true, according to your imperfect 
 lights, to the nobler conception of human life, 
 bethink you what it is that such men do. Enrolled 
 like ourselves in the army of virtue, clad in its 
 uniform, bound by its oath, practising its exercises, 
 they move unsuspected in our midst, and, for their 
 own advancement, sell the citadel to the besieging 
 passions. By the code of every nation, by the 
 usage of every army, such men are adjudged to die. 
 
 Luc. It is to be hoped so ; for you have certainly 
 put these men to death. You hurled the traitors from 
 the Capitol — I will not say from the Tarpeian rock, 
 for that place of punishment took its name from the 
 criminal who first suffered there, whereas it is 
 through your Letters alone, they tell me, that these 
 obscure malefactors will be remembered. But I can 
 well conceive how you must have exulted in the 
 execution of their sentence. 
 
LUCIAN AND PASCAL 8i 
 
 Pas. There, my friend, you are in error. I felt 
 no exultation, or at least I willingly indulged none. 
 
 Luc. What ! tenderness again .' I thought that 
 
 to error of this kind no tenderness was to be shown. 
 
 Pas. Nor was it. But sternness in inflicting 
 
 punishment is a different thing from delight in its 
 
 infliction. 
 
 Luc. In the goodness of your heart you mis- 
 understand me. The exercise of skill is delightful 
 in what art soever or upon whatsoever object it be 
 exercised. Even the idle rhetoric to which I gave 
 up my youth was not without its charms. I rejoiced 
 in it as an adept, even after I had learned to despise 
 it as a philosopher. The handicraft of my uncle I 
 hated with all my heart ; I would not have given up 
 an hour of meditation to have carven the Zeus of 
 Phidias. But I have seen a sculptor's chisel strike 
 fire from himself, and his soul leap through his eyes 
 to meet the life which the fool fancied he had 
 breathed into the marble. Rhetorician and statuary 
 in one, your writings must surely have gratified 
 both your sense of power and your love of beauty ; 
 you must have rejoiced alike in your unerring 
 dexterity of workmanship and in the flawless 
 nobility of your work. 
 
 Pas. I am not so self-righteous as to deny it, nor 
 within the limits which our faith prescribes to us, 
 need I scruple to acknowledge it. It is natural for 
 man to find pleasure in the exercise of the faculties 
 
82 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 which God has given him : their Divine Bestower 
 has, in the inscrutable counsels of His providence, so 
 ordained it. 'Tis through the earthly delights which 
 He has provided, through the earthly desires which 
 He has implanted, that He perpetuates the human 
 race itself ; and He has chosen to perfect our powers 
 of mind and body by stimulating us to their practice 
 with the spur of appetite. I could not, therefore, 
 but take pleasure in the actual labour of refuting 
 the Jesuit ethics : but unmixed exultation, whole- 
 hearted pride in the result — that indeed were a 
 temper not to be indulged in, but to be resisted 
 with all my might. My work, O Lucian, was the 
 reproof of sin, and to have exulted with no alloy of 
 sorrow in the doing of it would itself have partaken 
 of the nature of sin. . . . Do I make myself under- 
 stood ? 
 
 Luc. To my shame, O excellent one, you do not. 
 The confession is painful to me, for such is your 
 mastery of exposition that I know the fault must be 
 mine. 
 
 Pas. It is good that sin should be reproved ; but 
 it were better that it did not exist. The necessity 
 and the work of reproving it do but serve to remind 
 us that the heart of man is corrupt in all things, and 
 desperately wicked, and self-abasement will soon 
 cast out vain-glory if we meditate on that. 
 
 Luc. But why, then, meditate upon it ? My wits, 
 by Hermes, must be thicker than I thought. The 
 
LUCIAN AND PASCAL 83 
 
 destruction of a hostile army reminds us that our 
 country has enemies, but we do not throw dust upon 
 our heads on that account : though, perhaps, it were 
 better to be without enemies than to have to hew 
 them in pieces. 
 
 Pas. Alas, my friend ! I would that the simile 
 were a true one! I would that the hosts of dark- 
 ness were thus immiscibly divided from the army of 
 light. But it is not so. Both alike have sinned ; 
 wickedness is their common portion, and it is not 
 fitting that one array of sinners should vaunt them- 
 selves overmuch on a victory over another. 
 
 Luc. An array of sinners reproving sin ? What 
 paradox, I pray you, what confusion of Troies and 
 Danaoi, is this ? To chide the wicked is not indeed 
 righteousness in itself; but it can never be wicked- 
 ness. The admonisher of the sinful, so far as he 
 thus serves the cause of virtue, must surely be 
 virtuous. How, then, can you, and those who, like 
 you, have rebuked sinners, proclaim yourselves of 
 their number ? The enemies of falsehood and fraud, 
 of violence and incontinence, must of necessity be 
 the friends of truth and honesty, of mansuetude and 
 self-control. How, then, can you speak of the soldiers 
 of these two hostile armies as though they were 
 comrades .-' It is true that they are of like passions 
 with each other ; for it is in the temperate indulgence 
 and the due governance of these that virtue indeed 
 consists : but your military metaphor is in no wise 
 
84 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 helped by that. For why should not the army of 
 virtue vaunt itself, and all the more for the temptation 
 which it has resisted, over the army of vice ? It is 
 those soldiers who maintain their discipline at the 
 cost of their sympathies who deserve best of their 
 commander and their country. 
 
 Pas. True, O Lucian, according to the human 
 estimate of desert. But there can be no room for 
 merit here. 
 
 Luc. No room for merit in fidelity under tempta- 
 tion ? In what guise, O worthiest, would you have 
 us conceive of our benignant mistress Wisdom, that 
 you should thus charge her with treating her friends 
 and enemies alike ? 
 
 Pas. You speak — forgive me — as the heathen, and 
 your abstractions are without meaning for the Christian 
 ear. The Christian is not the follower of Wisdom, 
 but the servant of God. 
 
 Luc. Nay, then, of what stuff do you make your 
 God, if faithful service is not to avail with Him, and 
 the good and evil are undistinguished in His sight ? 
 
 Pas. It is only a difference of language, O Lucian, 
 that divides us. The good and the evil of whom you 
 speak are merely the just and the unjust of human 
 estimate, the virtuous and vicious of popular repute, 
 the upright, as men count integrity, the wrong-doer, 
 as they measure wrong. These, indeed, and their 
 actions, are ever visible to the all-seeing eye of God ; 
 and I should mislead you if I said, in your words. 
 
LUCIAN AND PASCAL 85 
 
 that "they are undistinguished in His sight." But 
 equally misleading would it be were I to say that 
 God judges between them with the judgment of 
 men. Nothing binds Him, as men are bound, to 
 punish or to acquit. He may stay His hand from 
 the chastisement of the evil, and in the infinitude of 
 His compassion He may forgive them. But those 
 also whom you call " the good " are as far below the 
 level of His justice, as dependent upon the illimitable 
 stoop of His mercy, as the evil. What are our 
 mountains and our valleys to the star > Mere 
 infinitesimal inequalities of surface. And even so, 
 and less than so, are the petty eminences and 
 depressions of our self-styled merit and demerit to 
 Him who dwelleth above the stars. 
 
 Luc. I see, indeed, that it was a difference of 
 language that divided us ; for you are speaking now 
 in the terms of a new science. I must go to school 
 to you for the very definitions of good and evil. 
 
 Pas. God is good, and good is God : definition, O 
 my friend, can go no further than this. All things, 
 therefore, which are not of God, are of themselves evil. 
 Not so was it in the beginning, but it is so now, and 
 so it will be until the Divine purpose hath been 
 fulfilled. The whole creation, I say, is evil ; for in 
 His inscrutable counsels He has so willed it, even 
 though all things be the work of His hands. 
 
 Luc. Your speech, O marvellous one, abounds in 
 marvels. I had not thought to find such subtlety out 
 
86 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 of Alexandria. Proceed, I pray you : my whole mind 
 is intent upon your words. 
 
 Pas. I do not hope, O Lucian — though it is not in 
 arrogance that I say it — I do not hope to make you 
 comprehend the Christian idea of God. Infinite 
 power and wisdom, infinite beneficence and mercy — 
 these attributes of the Divine Being are, indeed, 
 intelligible to the Christian and to the pagan alike ; 
 but upon the conception of holiness their minds part 
 company. Yet is it upon holiness transcendent, upon 
 the ineiifable power of peace and purity, that the 
 deeper adoration of the Christian heart is fixed. 
 God's power and wisdom, God's beneficence and 
 mercy, are among the tolerable splendours of His 
 throne ; but the light before which the angels veil 
 their faces, and which bows the mortal forehead to 
 the dust, is the light of holiness. No man upon 
 whom the word of truth has come can bare his bosom 
 untrembling to its piercing rays ; none endure 
 unmoved the horrors of the foulness within. Tu 
 Solus, tu Solus, Sanctus ! is the common cry of agony 
 alike from the weakest of neophytes and the holiest 
 of Fathers. Prayer and meditation cannot exorcise 
 the Christian's sense of sin ; fasting and penance 
 cannot wear it out ; even martyrdom will not burn it 
 away. In the cell of Anthony, in the desert of 
 Jerome, on the pillar of Simeon, on the torture-stake 
 of Sebastian, the thoughts of the saints have ever 
 been fixed upon the unutterable holiness of God, the 
 
LUCIAN AND PASCAL 87 
 
 unfathomable vileness of man. I see now how widely 
 we have misled each other by speaking of sin — a 
 word which to you stands either for committed deeds 
 of evil or else for the proneness of man to give way 
 to his temptations. But the sin of the Christian — his 
 " original sin," as our Church has called it — is neither 
 of these ; and his sense of sin — that absorbing, over- 
 awing, overmastering consciousness, proof against the 
 anodynes of repentance and piety, not to be expelled 
 by a life in the monastery or by a death in the arena, 
 is in greater strictness of language a sense of guilt. 
 This it is, all strange as it may seem to you, which 
 the Christian feels. It is not remorse for evil deeds 
 committed that abases him ; for his life may have 
 been blameless as an unweaned babe's. Nor is it in 
 shame for his evil instincts, and the grosser passions 
 of his senses, that he dares not lift his eyes to the 
 footstool of the Holy One ! for his whole life may 
 have been one long victorious struggle against the 
 temptations of the flesh. It is, as I have said, O 
 Lucian, a consciousness of actual guilt which bows 
 his head to the earth — of guilt inherited, guilt trans- 
 mitted from sire to son, like the taint of deadly 
 disease — of guilt by him indelible and irredeemable, 
 beyond the ablution of human tears and the expiation 
 of human sacrifices. 
 
 Luc. Pause, pause, I beseech you, O best of men ! 
 Show your Christian mercy to the bewilderment of 
 my untutored pagan mind. Let me, like the slave of 
 
88 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 a lapidary, gather up and assort these strange new 
 stones of learning which I lack the skill to cut and 
 polish. " Inherited guilt ! " Guilt " transmitted from 
 sire to son " ! By Heracles ! but you Christians have 
 a singular taste in heirlooms. Or is it, perchance, a 
 compulsory transmission .-' Is the child accursed 
 because the father sinned ? The saint, you tell me, is 
 a sinner, though his life may have been as innocent 
 as an unweaned babe's. May it be that — but, nay ! 
 it must be by your reasoning, it must follow from 
 your doctrines, that the unweaned babe is itself a 
 sinner. 
 
 Pas. You have collected rightly from the premises. 
 In sin are we conceived and brought forth ; the 
 curse is upon us even from the womb. 
 
 Luc. O .^schylus and Sophocles! into what 
 gigantic house of Pelops have I, then, been born ! 
 Reveal to me, O doctor more terrible than the 
 tragedians, reveal to me the origin, recount to me 
 the legend, of this world-wide ancestral curse. What 
 supper of Thyestes, what ? 
 
 Pas. Peace, peace, O Lucian ! To the gibes which 
 you may well be pardoned for uttering it would be 
 impious in me to listen. There is, indeed, a legend 
 of this ancestral curse more tragic than any Pelopean 
 myth. I would willingly recount it to you, saw I 
 prospect of profit from the recital. But take it not 
 ill, my friend, that I withhold it. 
 
 Luc. What ! Is the family secret to be concealed 
 
LUCIAN AND PASCAL 89 
 
 even from Orestes himself? Is he to be hunted to 
 sanctuary, and ask no questions ? Or is it to be 
 enough for the unhappy fugitive to know that the 
 Eumenides are yeUing in his rear, and when the 
 wretch requests an explanation, is he to be bidden 
 to content his ears with the whistling of the 
 scourges ? 
 
 Pas. Be serious, I pray you, or I can hold converse 
 with you no longer. I will not, I say, recite to you 
 the legend, as you call it, of this ancestral curse. 
 That legend is for the ears of those alone by whom 
 the curse is felt. And you, O Lucian, I may not 
 reckon among the number. 
 
 Luc. You speak as though you pitied me. Do 
 you, then, account it such a privilege to lie consciously 
 under the ban of the gods ? 
 
 Pas. To be unconscious of sin is to know not the 
 mercy and loving-kindness of Him who taketh away 
 sin. Nay, more, it is to feel the misery of man's lot, 
 while lost in ignorance both of its cause and cure. 
 And yet have I sometimes thought that the all- 
 merciful God has vouchsafed some inkling of the 
 Christian sense of sin to the most virtuous among 
 the heathen. Is it not so ? 
 
 Luc. It seems like arrogance in me to answer for 
 the most virtuous ; but to me, at least, the Divine 
 favour has never been shown in that way. 
 
 Pas. Never? 
 
 Luc. No. Your Deity has never rewarded my 
 
90 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 virtue by making me feel wicked. Perhaps I was 
 not virtuous enough to deserve it. 
 
 Pas. Tell me, O Lucian, were you always well 
 pleased with yourself during your life on earth ? 
 
 Luc. You are rallying me, O master of raillery ! 
 Or do I indeed seem to you so vain and self-satisfied 
 a person .'' 
 
 Pas. Nay, I am not charging you with active self- 
 satisfaction in that sense. I was thinking merely of 
 repose or disquietude of conscience. Have you never 
 been troubled by a feeling of unworthiness ? 
 
 Luc. Unworthiness of what ? Of the approval of 
 the virtuous ? of the respect of the multitude .' of the 
 attachment of my friends .' Why, truly, yes. I am 
 indeed acquainted — as who is not ? — with the sense 
 of unworthiness in that kind. 
 
 Pas. But in what way awakened ? 
 
 Luc. Your question, I suspect, must be a Socratic 
 one. You can hardly be in real want of information 
 on such a point. 
 
 Pas. Nevertheless I beg you to answer me. 
 
 Luc. I have felt unworthy, then, of the approval 
 of the virtuous whenever I have exceeded temperance 
 in the indulgence of my appetites ; unworthy of the 
 respect of the multitude when I have stooped from 
 the freedom of philosophy to put myself even for a 
 time under that yoke of the passions which the 
 vulgar wear perpetually ; unworthy of the attachment 
 of my friends when I have failed to assist them in 
 
LUCIAN AND PASCAL 91 
 
 their necessity, or to make them due requital for 
 their services. Whenever I have so borne myself at 
 any time, I have felt uneasy. 
 
 Pas. And not otherwise, or for any other reasons ? 
 
 Luc. I do not think so. I have, of course, 
 remarked that other men were uneasy whenever they 
 had neglected the sacrifices ; but I myself, as you 
 are aware, have always been of opinion that the 
 gods were not greatly interested in that matter. 
 
 Pas. Let us leave the gods out of the question. I 
 may assume — may I not.' — that, except when you 
 failed to observe the outward rule of conduct which 
 your philosophy had laid down for yourself and 
 enjoined upon you in your relations with others, you 
 had absolute peace of mind. 
 
 Luc. I cannot but fear that some snare is being 
 laid for me ; but I will boldly answer your question 
 with a Why not .■' If I had unduly given way to 
 wrath, or lust, or cupidity ; if I had too severely 
 chastised a slave for a trifling fault, or if I had 
 debauched the wife of a friend, or if I had made 
 away with moneys entrusted to my keeping, I should 
 reasonably feel ashamed, and to be ashamed is to 
 be ill at ease. But if I can reproach myself with 
 none of these unworthy acts, and with nothing akin 
 to them, or of a like disgraceful nature, I see not 
 what there is to trouble me. 
 
 Pas. To be ashamed, as you well say, is to be ill 
 at ease. We are drawing nearer to each other now. 
 
92 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 And are you not, then, ashamed of the temptation to 
 commit these acts, however firmly you may resist it ? 
 Luc. I do not understand you. Why should one 
 be ashamed of what is natural ? 
 
 Pas. But how if human nature itself is a shameful 
 thing ? 
 
 Luc. Your question, if I may dare to say so, 
 appears to be a jugglery with words. There can be 
 no such feeling as shame for anything which all men 
 possess in common : it is born of the sense of in- 
 feriority, and where, equality is it cannot exist. 
 Even thieves are not ashamed of their calling among 
 themselves, but only by comparison with the honest. 
 How, then, can man's nature seem to him shameful, 
 when there is no superior nature to which he can 
 compare it .' 
 
 Pas. There, however, is the very point. He can, 
 he must, compare it with a higher, a Divine nature ; 
 though to yoii, indeed, I may not say, "with the 
 nature of the gods." 
 
 Luc. No, indeed you may not. I have always 
 avoided comparing myself with the gods, lest I should 
 grow too proud of my virtue. Zeus the adulterer, 
 and Hermes the pilferer, and Dionysus the tippler, 
 might keep the most profligate of mortals in 
 countenance. 
 
 Pas. I know ; and I speak not of the Divine 
 nature as the barbarous and unclean legends of your 
 religion represented it. But could you form no 
 
LUCIAN AND PASCAL 93 
 
 conception of Deity as something unspeakably higher, 
 purer, holier, than the nature of man ? Could you 
 not imagine it, let me ask you, by idealising human 
 virtues ? Call to mind for a moment the most 
 blameless man whom you have ever known ; and then 
 imagine a being — name him god or man, I care not 
 which — who should as far surpass your friend in ex- 
 cellence as he himself surpassed the vilest of his race. 
 Luc. I have obeyed you. Your monster of inno- 
 cence is in my mind. 
 
 Pas. Then, now bethink yourself that even as he 
 is, whom you are imagining, so might all men be : 
 as noble as the worst of them are base, as perfect 
 as the best of them are imperfect. And do you not 
 feel, then, as if the burden of this reflection must 
 abase you to the dust .'' 
 
 Luc. No, by the Dog, not L I should see no 
 reason to blush for my inches before a live man of 
 six cubits in stature ; and you would have me cast 
 dust on my head because I have merely dreamt of 
 a moral giant. Why should we hanker after the un- 
 attainable in anything, whether it be length of leg or 
 altitude of virtue .? . . . But you look sad. Have I 
 said anything to grieve you .' 
 
 Pas. You have, my friend, but unwittingly. I 
 cannot but feel sad at perceiving how helpless is the 
 condition of humanity unillumined by the Divine 
 Word ... In Thy counsels, O Lord, in Thy counsels 
 was it ordained, that through the perfections of Thy 
 
94 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Son alone should the eyes of man be opened to the 
 depravity of his nature, and the misery of his estate. 
 Give me grace, O Infinite in wisdom, to subdue 
 my 
 
 Luc. I shrink from interrupting your meditations, 
 
 most devout one ; but you seem to be bringing a 
 new term into the discussion. What is this "misery 
 of man's estate " ? Do you mean only that uneasi- 
 ness of conscience of which we have been speaking ? 
 If so, of course I, who know not the uneasiness, can 
 have no share in the misery. But I imagine you to 
 be thinking of something other than that. 
 
 Pas. And you are right. I had but a feeble hope 
 of finding in you a comprehension of the Christian 
 sense of sin : but I had thought that perhaps I might 
 lead you to it by a pagan route. Though you 
 might not feel man's sinfulness, you could not but 
 feel his unhappiness, and it appeared to me to be 
 possible that a mind as enlightened as yours might 
 be already half prepared to associate the two. But 
 
 1 foresee that the expectation would be disappointed. 
 Christianity alone has revealed to man that sin and 
 suffering are but two aspects of the same thing, the 
 obverse and reverse of the coin of life. 
 
 Luc. But stay ! I beseech you. I do not recognise 
 your coinage. I know neither face of your human 
 drachma any better than the other. This "unhappi- 
 ness of man " which you speak of is as much beyond 
 my comprehension as his sinfulness. 
 
LUCIAN AND PASCAL 95 
 
 Pas. And you a philosopher! I cannot beHeve 
 that you are speaking seriously. Who can have 
 contemplated the life of man, and man's ordering of 
 his life, without perceiving both his restless misery 
 and his abiding sense thereof? 
 
 Luc. You are speaking of the vulgar, I suppose, 
 and of the least fortunate even among them. 
 
 Pas. I am speaking of the entire race, of the 
 wealthiest, the highest, and the most powerful, no 
 less than of the needy and the obscure. For do but 
 consider, O Lucian, the common life of man, and 
 you will find the plainest proof of its natural 
 unhappiness in the incessant agitations in which it is 
 now compulsorily, and now voluntarily, spent. One 
 half of it passes perforce in the unconsciousness of 
 sleep ; much of the remainder is claimed from the 
 mass of mankind by necessary toil ; and what does 
 man do with the remnant that is left .' Does he 
 treat it like a blessing or like a curse ? as a treasure 
 to be cherished, or as a burden to be shaken off? 
 Let his habits answer. 
 
 Luc. But whose habits > Those of the idle and 
 frivolous, or those of .' 
 
 Pas. Of all alike : for distraction is the aim of all. 
 It is the end of the pleasure which is made a 
 business, as of the business which takes the place of 
 pleasure ; of war as of the chase, of the intrigues of 
 the courtier as much as the intrigues of the gallant, 
 of the trader's no less than the dicer's gambling. 
 
96 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 " Pastime " is as truly the name of the occupation 
 which calls itself serious as of the sport which claims 
 but to amuse. Both alike are man's refuge from 
 himself, tq. each he hurries to escape from recollection 
 of the past and reflection upon the future. Yes ; 
 man who loves nothing but himself hates nothing so 
 much as being left alone with the object of his 
 affections. Pursuing nothing save for himself, he 
 flies from nothing so persistently as from himself. 
 The din of the mart, the clamours of the senate 
 house, the babble of the banquet-hall, the roar of the 
 battle-field, — any of them, all of them, are more 
 endurable to him than the whisper-haunted chamber 
 of his spirit. 
 
 Luc. I must reject your proposition for all but 
 the most vacuous and unthinking of men. And even 
 by them repose is constantly commended and often 
 eagerly sought. 
 
 Pas. You are right ; but what of it ? True it is 
 that, side by side with that secret instinct, born of the 
 consciousness of their misery, which impels mankind 
 to the everlasting pursuit of distraction, there is 
 another, the relic of their unfallen state, which tells 
 them that the only true happiness is in repose. And 
 from the strife of these contending impulses there 
 arises a confused desire for some unknown goal of 
 rest beyond that endless stadium of agitation which 
 they are ever traversing and never traverse. They 
 amuse themselves with the imagination that when 
 
LUCIAN AND PASCAL 97 
 
 this or that excitement has been exhausted, this 
 difficulty or the other overcome, there will open to 
 them the portals of repose. The trial is made ; the 
 pleasure is tasted, the obstacle is surmounted ; repose 
 is won, and found intolerable. And so runs their life 
 away. Their ceaseless struggles to enjoy it have 
 only availed to make them forget it, and in the 
 alternation between ever-new desire and ever-recur- 
 ring satiety they arrive insensibly at the gate of death. 
 But is that happiness ? If it be, there is no difference 
 between happiness and oblivion, and the cupbearer of 
 your fabled gods might have dipped their goblets for 
 nectar in the waters of Lethe. 
 
 Luc. You have certainly drawn a dismal picture 
 of the unrest and discontent of the vulgar. 
 
 Pas. Of the vulgar } Do you still, then, persist in 
 misunderstanding me, my excellent friend ? The 
 ills which I have described are, as I have told you, 
 the common lot alike of the high and the low, of 
 the indigent and of the wealthy. 
 
 Luc. No doubt : for ignorance and indolence are 
 not confined to either. But it is I who have been 
 misunderstood. By the vulgar, I mean all those 
 who either from choice, as with most of the rich, or 
 by necessity, as with all of the poor, concern them- 
 selves only with the external things of life. 
 
 Pas. You mean all men, in fact, except philosophers. 
 . . . But why do you look thus anxiously around 
 
 you .'' 
 
 H 
 
98 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Luc. For fear we should be overheard. The 
 philosophers have never forgiven me the Atiction of 
 Lives; and if I say anything in praise of them in 
 their hearing, they will only suspect it for irony, and 
 wax yet more embittered against me. Let us there- 
 fore, I pray you, avoid the word " philosophy " — that 
 coin of language which, once so glittering and clean- 
 cut, has been worn down to an unmeaning counter, 
 deviceless and legendless, by the human tongue. 
 In place of "the Philosophers" I would choose rather 
 to speak of " the Wise." It is a title for which there 
 has been by no means so brisk a competition. And I 
 would assign that name to all those who, whether as 
 the disciples of Zeno or of Epicurus, or in the name 
 of neither, have striven to separate the essence of 
 life from its accidents, and to discover and maintain 
 the worthiest attitude of mankind towards it. These 
 let us place on one side, O my friend, and "the 
 vulgar " — by which I mean the men to whom life is an 
 affair of eating and drinking, of sleeping and waking, 
 of marrying and begetting, of the market and the 
 law-courts, of the bath and the playground — let us 
 place upon the other. And I say, then, that it is 
 to the latter alone, and in no wise to the former, 
 that your melancholy words apply. 
 
 Pas. Do you mean that the state of the former 
 is one of unmixed happiness t 
 
 Luc. Happiness, for aught I know, may be, like 
 new wine, all the better for mixing. But I would 
 
LUCIAN AND PASCAL 
 
 99 
 
 rather shun altogether the use of a word which has 
 suffered equal maltreatment from the profligate and 
 the pedant, from the haunters of the bagnios and 
 the dogmatists of the schools, I maintain, however, 
 that the state of these men — of the Wise — is one of 
 content and not of discontent, and that their lives 
 are passed, not in disquietude, but in repose. Nay, 
 I will apply to them your own test. You urge, as 
 a proof of the essential misery of human life, that it 
 is spent by universal choice in continual distractions, 
 and that men shrink from nothing so fearfully as 
 from undisturbed communion with themselves. Now, 
 it is to that very occupation that the life of the wise 
 man is by preference devoted. 
 
 Pas. I marvel, O Lucian, that so acute an under- 
 standing should thus deceive itself with words. The 
 occupation that you speak of is in itself a distraction, 
 and it is only as such that it avails. It is not the 
 object reflected upon, but the employment of the re- 
 flective faculty, which tranquillises. 
 
 Luc. Ah, now, O master of words, you seem to 
 me to be playing with them. In the act of con- 
 templation, as the Wise at least understand it, it is 
 impossible to separate the contemplated object from 
 the contemplating mind. 
 
 Pas. Then, truly, I know not how the Wise 
 do understand that word. Will you tell me that the 
 mind cannot take pleasure in the mere busying of 
 itself with ideas and things which of their own nature 
 
100 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 are not pleasurable at all ? Of such sort assuredly 
 are the ideas of geometry — of its lines, its angles, 
 and its circles. They are ideas in which of them- 
 selves the mind could find neither beauty nor comfort : 
 so that whatever pleasure the geometer derives from 
 considering and comparing them and from investi- 
 gating their properties and relations, must consist 
 wholly in the exercise of his own intellectual faculties. 
 
 Luc. The error into which you have fallen, my 
 friend, is now apparent to me. I agree that in such 
 a case it is the apprehensive energy alone, and not 
 the apprehended object, which gives pleasure. It is 
 the energy alone, I admit, which has been the source 
 of my own satisfaction while engaged in composing 
 a dialogue, or in studying and analysing the tenets of 
 some new philosophy, or in theorising on my own 
 account upon the origin of the universe and the laws 
 which govern it. This, however, is not contemplation, 
 but different from it altogether. 
 
 Pas. I must ask you, then, to explain to me the 
 difference. 
 
 Luc. It is easily done. The state of the mind in 
 those employments which you rightly call distractions 
 is active ; in contemplation it is wholly passive. The 
 men who are seeking refuge from themselves in study, 
 or in the transaction of business, or even in the 
 pursuit of pleasure (since of this also man is said to 
 " make a business "), would be described as busy ; 
 but engaged in contemplation the whole world would 
 
LUCIAN AND PASCAL loi 
 
 call them idle. And seeing that in this so-called 
 idleness I ever found my highest pleasure, I may 
 claim that the mind which received and conveyed 
 it to me was at such moments not machine but 
 mirror, and that it was not in the escape from 
 myself, but in communion with myself, that my joy 
 consisted. 
 
 Pas. You speak with strange elation ! May I ask 
 you how long, without intermission, this delight of 
 yours has ever endured } 
 
 Luc. From daybreak until nightfall again and 
 again. Many a time have I seen King Helios Hype- 
 rion enter his eastern palace-gate, and slowly pace 
 his mighty hall of audience, the journey of a day to 
 traverse, and pass at last into his western sleeping- 
 chamber, nor ever budged from beneath the vine-shade 
 before my door. I have welcomed that god of the 
 Persians with a Persian's reverence, and, indeed, with 
 the same observances : though I trusted to his god- 
 ship not to take it ill that I used milk instead of 
 wine for my libation, and did not waste it upon the 
 ground. The mountain kids made shift to spare me 
 that offering from their mother ; and when my slave 
 had flanked the milk-bowl with a platter of fresh- 
 plucked dates, I had all I needed till the evening. 
 Thus, then, have I sat unstirring, till daylight became 
 darkness— not a fugitive, forsooth, from the sense of 
 being, but its delighted, its willing, its wooing mistress ; 
 no Daphne to the world of things, but a Danae, passive 
 
102 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 in a trance of ecstasy beneath the golden shower of 
 its sights and sounds — ^the sunlight through the vine- 
 leaves, the procession of the clouds, the hum of the 
 insects, the distant murmur of the Euphrates, the 
 song of the husbandman at his toil : until the sense 
 of vision became fused, as it were, with the sense of 
 hearing into that nameless joy of the soul when, 
 purged of the lusts and passions of its fleshly 
 prison, it becomes conscious of its oneness with 
 the All. 
 
 Pas. But what of the next day, my friend .? Scarcely, 
 I should think, could such a mood of rapture be pro- 
 tracted even by the saints themselves. 
 
 Luc. The next day, my friend, I would perhaps 
 betake me to my books again : or at noon I would 
 climb the mountain to where the vine-dresser sat 
 resting at his midday meal, and talk to him of the 
 promise of the vintage and watch his brown-faced 
 children at their play. Another day perchance I 
 would visit my friend the sculptor across the valley ; 
 for I have admired his art like a virtue ever since I 
 ceased in disgust to practise it. Or it may be that I 
 would descend into the town itself, and while away 
 an hour in listening to the chatter of the barber or 
 the gossip of the baths. 
 
 Pas. And are these no distractions, I would ask ? 
 
 Luc. I can scarcely believe, O skilled in dialectic, 
 that I have caught you in a logical error ; but surely 
 you have mistaken my elenchus. I had not to disprove 
 
LUCIAN AND PASCAL 103 
 
 the proposition that the mind requires distraction, 
 but the proposition that only in distraction can it 
 find peace. Could you argue that a certain posture 
 of the body is not restful because to remain in it for 
 ever would give you painful cramps ? You could not. 
 Neither can you say that contemplation is not true 
 happiness because it cannot be unchangingly enjoyed. 
 Enough that I could ever return to it after an inter- 
 mittence with fresh renewal of zest, and find in it the 
 ample satisfaction of my soul. 
 
 Pas. And it was truly so ? You were not visited, 
 even at the moment of your fullest contentment, by a 
 sense of something wanting — a something which the 
 world of sense was unable to yield you, and yet which 
 the soul must have .-' 
 
 Luc. Never : or, if ever, only for that brief moment 
 before I remembered that these are the longings, not 
 of health, but of sickness, and that when the soul is 
 yearning for the unattainable it is a sure sign that the 
 body is in need of the leech. 
 
 Pas. It is enough, O Lucian ; you have convinced 
 me of that which I have sometimes doubted. I am 
 now assured that it was the Gospel itself which first 
 inspired man with the perception of his need of it, and 
 that God did not implant that consciousness in the 
 human bosom in advance. Even the " Repent ye ! " 
 of the Baptist may have made but half-awakened 
 converts, and only the coming of our Master Christ 
 have brought this Divine unrest into the world. 
 
I04 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Luc. Then, if that, in truth, was what He brought 
 with Him, I see not how you can rejoice at His having 
 come. For it seems to me, though I fear, O most 
 devout, lest I should shock you, that not all the bless- 
 ings for which you praise Him can weigh one instant 
 in the balance against that world-wide curse. 
 
V 
 WILKES AND LORD SANDWICH 
 
 Lord S. Well met, Jack! Egad, I am right glad 
 to see you. 
 
 W. Lord Sandwich, your condescension overwhelms- 
 me. 'Tis mighty good of you to recognise me at 
 all ; but that you should be glad to see me is indeed 
 astonishing. 
 
 Lord S. Why so ? What the devil, man ! We 
 have no politics here. 
 
 W. No, my lord, and no liquor either. Yet I 
 never knew you seek any one's society before — at 
 least of our own sex — except either as a political 
 instrument or a pot-companion. 
 
 Lord S. Nay, Jack, there you do me injustice. 
 I was always used to relish your wit, even when 
 there was no burgundy to wash it down with. 
 
 W. It may be so ; but you seldom tried the 
 experiment of taking it alone. 
 
 Lord S. True enough. I don't know that any- 
 thing is the worse for mixing with good liquor. 
 But, wet or dry, you must own that your wit always 
 
io6 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 jumped with mine, and that until it became dangerous 
 to pubhc order, and — ahem ! — offensive to public 
 morality, I never sought to check it. 
 
 W. If public order is to be protected by the 
 official burglary of printing-offices, and pubhc mo- 
 rality vindicated by the suborned larceny of private 
 papers, then your lordship's exertions in these good 
 causes may be applauded. Otherwise you must 
 forgive my asking 
 
 Lord S. My good friend, I would forgive your 
 asking anything if you would only forgive my not 
 replying to it. But people who ask questions are 
 so plaguy unreasonable on that score. 
 
 W. You never gave me an opportunity of properly 
 proving my pertinacity on earth, my lord. If I 
 could only have got you to the bar of the House of 
 Commons 
 
 Lord S. Ha ! still those cursed politics ! I am 
 really surprised that j'ou haven't learnt to forget 
 and forgive, as I have. 
 
 W. As you have ! 
 
 Lord S. Yes, as I have ; and in a devilish 
 scriptural way too, let me tell you. Doesn't some- 
 body in the Gospels say that it may be all very 
 well to forgive those who despitefuUy use us 
 and persecute us, but that 'tis a much harder 
 matter to pardon those whom we ourselves have 
 injured .■' 
 
 W. I do not recall the passage ; but my knowledge 
 
WILKES AND LORD SANDWICH 107 
 
 of Holy Writ is in nowise comparable to your lord- 
 ship's, and I already see the application of the text. 
 You certainly provided yourself in my case with 
 ample opportunity for the display of that highest 
 form of Christian charity which you have mentioned. 
 May you be forgiven as you forgive those against 
 whom you have trespassed ! 
 
 Lord S. Amen, Jack ! Amen ! Come, I am glad 
 to see you in a more rational and religious frame of 
 mind. There is no reason that I know of why we 
 should not become the best friends possible. Indeed, 
 we never ceased to be so until, on my accepting 
 office as Secretary of State, I felt compelled to rebuke 
 your political and moral excesses. 
 
 W. Political, perhaps : but — moral } 
 
 Lord S. Why not.? Hadn't I just "entered the 
 ministry," as the godly say .'' Ha ! ha ! 
 
 W. You certainly had had a call from the only 
 god you recognised. 
 
 Lord S. And I should have been a fool not to 
 have shown due zeal in my master's service. You, 
 Jack, happened to be the Satan of my courtly deity, 
 and it became my duty to tread you under foot. 
 Do you suppose a new-frocked parson would allow 
 his activity to be checked by what I'll be sworn a 
 good many of his cloth are no strangers to — a 
 sneaking kindness for the devil ? 
 
 W. The comparison is hardly exact. The question 
 is whether even Lucifer himself, if converted to piety. 
 
io8 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 would not have blushed to inflict such injuries upon 
 Belial as I had to suffer from you. 
 
 Lord S. Tut, man ! Enough of these complaints I 
 "Why, what the devil ails you ? You were not used 
 to whine in this fashion on earth. And, after all, 
 it was a fair match between us. You played for 
 popularity and I for power, and if we come to 
 reckon up our gains and losses, egad! I think we 
 shall find 'em nearly equal. 
 
 W. I knew you were ill at accounts, my lord, and 
 that even the Duke of Bedford himself would not 
 have had the face to recommend you for Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer: but I never imagined you so 
 wretched a calculator as you now declare yourself. 
 What ! Our gains and losses nearly equal ! Equiva- 
 lence between the things we severally purchased and 
 the prices we severally paid ! What you bargained 
 for we all know, as well as how little (in your own 
 estimation) you gave for it : and do you mean to 
 assert that what you call my popularity stood me 
 as cheaply as you bought your power .'' — that years 
 of exile and persecution were as light a price for me 
 to pay as infamy was for you .-' 
 
 Lord S. If by infamy you mean the outcry of 
 the London rabble, I'll own that 'twas no great 
 matter to have faced that. But you, who loved their 
 sweet voices, or made believe to do so, you must 
 have found ample solace for your sufferings in 
 listening to them. 
 
WILKES AND LORD SANDWICH 109 
 
 W. The cheers of the most enthusiastic populace 
 would scarce repay a man for what I had to endure 
 from your detestable Government. And was it all 
 cheers, my lord, and no hisses ? What of your own 
 brutal mob of followers in the House of Commons 
 — men who pelted me with votes as senseless as the 
 brickbats of the street, and insults fouler than its 
 mud ? Was it nothing, pray, to have been a mark 
 for the slanders of every blinded bigot who confused 
 the politician with the man, and of every brazen 
 hypocrite who feigned incapacity to distinguish them ? 
 A mark for their slanders, did I say ? Ay ! and for 
 something more deadly too. A target for the bullet 
 of every swaggering place-hunter who was minded 
 to play bravo to the minister, and every weasel- 
 gutted Scot who might hope to avenge my sneers at 
 his empty belly by putting an ounce of lead into 
 mine .'' Is it nothing to have fought a battle of that 
 kind for years together ? But had not I to fight it ? 
 and did I ever flinch from it .'' 
 
 Lord S. No, by God, Jack ! You were a 
 thoroughbred cock of the game ! I never denied 
 that. 
 
 W. A handsome tribute, Mr. Secretary, and I 
 thank you for it. You are fortunate in being able 
 to pay such compliments. Facts which stare even 
 you out of countenance must be indisputable indeed. 
 
 Lord S. Oh, for that matter, I never bore them 
 any ill will — out of official hours. But a minister 
 
no THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 is bound to treat truth like a worthy watering-place 
 acquaintance who is a little wanting in manners. 
 One may recognise her at Bath or Tonbridge, but 
 she must not expect a bow in Whitehall. 
 
 W. And no one was more apt than my Lord 
 Sandwich at teaching her to know her place — which 
 was not on the Government benches in either House 
 of Parliament. But that makes your present conde- 
 scension to her the more gracious. You have admitted 
 my wrongs, and I am obliged to you. 
 
 Lord S. Not I ! I admitted your hardihood, 
 that was all. As to wrongs — 'tis a woman's word, 
 and unfit for a man of sense and spirit to use. If 
 what you say of your lot and mine be true — if your 
 popularity were gotten at so much dearer a rate than 
 was my power — why, the greater folly yours for 
 sticking to so bad a bargain. If you regretted it, 
 you should have made timely submission to the 
 Government and the House of Commons. 
 
 W. I never did regret it : and had I made sub- 
 mission, I should have lost that which supported me 
 under the worst of my persecutions — the consciousness 
 of suffering in the cause of the English people. 
 
 Lord S. The consciousness of suffering ! the 
 cause of the English people ! Now, upon my faith 
 and conscience • 
 
 W. As full of strange oaths as ever, I per- 
 ceive. 
 
 Lord S. I say, upon my honour 
 
WILKES AND LORD SANDWICH in 
 
 W. Swear by your office, my lord. The altar 
 before the gift that is thereon. 
 
 Lord S. By the bones of St. Francis — and you 
 remember, Jack, how Dashwood relished them grilled 
 — I vow I never looked to find, either in one world 
 or the other, a more impudent dog than myself: but 
 you beat me. The devil fly away with me — as the 
 Buckinghamshire bumpkins were always expecting 
 he would— but you beat me by a distance. You a 
 sufferer for the English people ! You a martyr in 
 the cause of anybody but Jack Wilkes ! 
 
 W. I am not surprised at your sneer, my lord. In 
 the school in which you and I were trained, neither 
 country nor people counted for much. The only 
 difference between us was that you added to this 
 training the after-experience of the oppressor, and I 
 that of the oppressed. It was in resenting, my own 
 wrongs that I first learned to sympathise with those 
 of my fellow-countrymen. 
 
 Lord S. Hear him ! Hear him ! Lord, Jack, 'tis 
 as good as a play to listen to you ! Pity we cannot 
 run up a hustings here and return you a member for 
 Hades ! After all, you might as well have sat for it 
 as for the place you actually represented. 
 
 W. Ay, indeed ! I might have been returned by a 
 community of shadows for all the respect that your 
 hacks in the House of Commons thought fit to pay 
 to the electors of Middlesex. 
 
 Lord S. What ? that old grievance again ! I 
 
112 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 thought the "years of exile" and the compulsory- 
 pistol practice were the only wrongs that really 
 rankled in your mind. But it seems we are to have 
 up the expulsion quarrel as well, and to hear how 
 mightily aggrieved you were because the House of 
 Commons had no relish for your company. 
 
 W. What right had the House to choose its 
 company } What prerogative of selection among 
 those designated by the free choice of the electors 
 has the Constitution ever conferred upon it ? 
 
 Lord S. The House adjudged you disqualified to 
 sit, and 
 
 W. Adjudged me disqualified ! It is not for the 
 House to adjudge disqualifications for any cause. 
 The law disqualifies, and the law alone. I was 
 neither alien nor felon, nor even peer ; and as to 
 my moral character, I maintain that that rather fitted 
 me, if anything, to be raised to the Upper House 
 than excluded from the Lower. 
 
 Lord S. Oh, as to that, with all my heart ! You 
 don't suspect me of being strait-laced, I suppose ; 
 and I would as lief have had you for a companion 
 at St. Stephen's as at Medmenham. But what would 
 you have, man ? We wanted to drive a dangerous 
 fellow out of Parliament, and your morals made as 
 good a tin kettle to tie to your tail as another. 
 
 W. Not so, my lord ; you could hardly have made 
 choice of a worse. It was the sight of men like 
 yourself and Dashwood engaged in the persecution 
 
WILKES AND LORD SANDWICH 113 
 
 of the companion of your vices which roused the 
 righteous wrath, not only of every foe of tyranny, 
 but of every hater of hypocrisy. It was to you and 
 your like, Lord Sandwich, that I owed my popularity 
 with the English people. 
 
 Lord S. More talk for the pot-wallopers ! When 
 did a demagogue ever see or pretend to see anything 
 in his ragged following but a full-fledged delegation 
 from the people ? 
 
 W. What is a demagogue, my lord ? What is 
 there even in the name that it should be a reproach 
 to own it ? Was Mr. Burke a demagogue ? 
 
 Lord S. He was a dinner-bell. But to what 
 does this stuff tend .'' Do we not well know. Jack, 
 you as well as I, that the whole battle over your 
 expulsion and incapacitation was like every other 
 struggle among parties in Parliament, a contest for 
 place, and that if Mr. Burke attacked the disqualify- 
 ing resolution while young Charles Fox defended it, 
 it was because the first wanted to oust us to make 
 room for his own friends, while the second thought, 
 and proved right in thinking, that he could best 
 edge himself into a place by supporting us. 
 
 W. I should not think of questioning your con- 
 summate insight into motives of that kind, my lord ; 
 but what, pray,' have they to do with the question I 
 put to you .'' Whatever the two sides fought for 
 there must have been a right side and a wrong one. 
 Either ministers and their majority were actually 
 
 I 
 
114 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 violators of the constitutional privileges of electors, 
 or the minority were mere factious agitators putting 
 forward a pretended grievance to veil their lust of 
 power, and attempting to pass off as the outcry of 
 an indignant people what your lordship once 
 
 n described to your peers as the "feeble echoes of a 
 
 • desponding ambition." 
 
 Lord S. Ha ! Did I say that ? I wonder whom I 
 stole it from. It sounds somewhat like a sentence 
 from that sharp-tongued rascal who used to lash his 
 Grace of Grafton at such a rate ? What was his 
 name ? 
 
 W. What, indeed .■' You never knew it, my lord ; 
 your colleagues never knew it. Nobody could ever 
 have doubted that, not even if you had officially 
 asserted it. For no man rotted in a jail, no man 
 was even crushed with ex-officio informations for 
 anything in the famous Letters ; and that alone proves 
 you ignorant of who Junius was. For once the 
 malignity of ministers goes bail for their veracity. But 
 the sentence I quoted came never from the pen of 
 Junius. It is thoroughly in your lordship's style. 
 It fell naturally into its place in your argument that 
 it was not the majority of the people of England 
 which was demanding redress of grievances, because 
 only thirteen out of forty counties had, in fact, 
 petitioned for it. Will you argue that question 
 with me now, my lord } 
 Lord S. What, here? 
 
WILKES AND LORD SANDWICH 115 
 
 W. Why not? 'Tis quieter than the House in 
 which it was argued before, and cooler. 
 
 Lord S. Maybe, but there is nobody to vote, 
 and if you imagine me to have ever regarded a 
 Parliamentary disputation as of any other value than 
 to provide time for the minister to get his majority 
 down to the House, you must have studied my 
 political character to very little purpose. 
 
 W. I never made so innocent a mistake. But I 
 thought it possible that in this blank underworld, 
 where there is neither horseflesh nor womanflesh, 
 nor drink, nor dice-boxes, nor duelling-pistols, your 
 lordship might possibly be glad to take refuge in 
 political discussion. 
 
 Lord S. Indeed ! and seek to relieve the ennui 
 of immortality by what was the most monotonous 
 and interminable of all mortal employments. But 
 go on ! There is a kind of pleasure in seeing you 
 play patriot again as in your old brazen days, and 
 with the same old impudent pleas for overruling 
 what, if your friends had only happened to be in 
 ofifice, you would have called "the voice of the 
 people speaking through its only constitutional organ." 
 
 W. I need not be at the pains to refute a 
 calumny which I doubt not you would have been 
 equally ready to fling at so high-minded a politician 
 and good a Whig as Mr. Burke. 
 
 Lord S. Considering that I have already flung it 
 at him in the course of this colloquy of ours, you 
 
Ii6 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 have certainly a right to your modest confidence on 
 that point. Every one knows what a good Whig 
 means. It means a man who has "the people" in 
 his fob like his watch, and can tell what their will is 
 at any moment as one tells what is the hour. He 
 is a kind of popular Chancellor of his own creation, 
 who keeps the conscience, not of the king, but of all 
 the king's subjects. 
 
 W. I am well aware that your lordship's Whiggery 
 was satisfied with keeping the conscience of the 
 Duke of Bedford. No one had a better eye for a 
 sinecure than yourself. 
 
 Lord S. 'Tis a good jest. Jack, but not your 
 own : and all are not sinecures that look so. A 
 man's conscience is like his health : the less he has 
 of it, the more carefully his attendants have to 
 consult it. No man is really at ease in that regard 
 until, like me, he has been given over by the 
 doctors. But there is malice, I know, in your 
 rallying me with the title of Whig. 
 
 W. You were surely as good a Whig as George 
 Grenville, my lord, except, perhaps, that he believed 
 in his Whiggery. And, moreover, you never dropped 
 the title. 
 
 Lord S. Dropped it! No, egad! There were 
 good reasons for that. Those who nicknamed us 
 "the Bloomsbury gang" could hardly expect us to 
 drop our vizors. But you know I never played the 
 hypocrite with you, or pretended that the names of 
 
WILKES AND LORD SANDWICH 117 
 
 " Whig " and " Tory " were anything but counters in 
 the game for place and power. To get a majority 
 in the House of Commons, and to keep it, was the 
 beginning and end of my politics : and those who 
 feigned devotion to any other principle, like Rocking- 
 ham and his canting crew, were, in my reckoning, 
 but place-hunters of another and less reputable kind. 
 Besides, I held them to be unfair players at the 
 game. It was to be played in Parliament, and not 
 among the mob outside. 
 
 W. Then the opinion of the people 
 
 Lord S. Oh ! " the opinion of the people." 'Twas 
 always a mighty convenient fiction for the good 
 Whig, as you call him. It enables him to say that 
 whenever the House of Commons declares against 
 his own political objects — which is another word for 
 his own political interests — it is false to the com- 
 mission which it has received from the country. 
 
 W. Not so. There must have been a clear 
 usurpation of authority on the part of the House 
 before a sound Whig would take upon himself to 
 say anything of the kind — as clear an usurpation as 
 there was in the disqualifying decision pronounced 
 upon myself. 
 
 Lord S. Tut! Who is to be the judge on that 
 point but the House itself? 
 
 W. What ! define its own authority } 
 Lord S. Why, who else should, or who else can, 
 in the devil's name } 
 
ii8 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 W. The law and the constitution. 
 
 Lord S. Lawyers must declare law, and the 
 lawyers refused to interfere. As to the constitution, 
 'tis the mere nickname of a measuring-wand, which 
 can be as easily lengthened by the minister as it 
 can be shortened by the Opposition. If a majority 
 of the House chooses to say that this or that is the 
 law, and if no court will interfere with it, the law 
 it is. 
 
 W. In my case, then, my lord, you would have 
 imposed two hundred and odd despots on the 
 country which would not brook a single tyrant. 
 
 Lord S. Yes — if a country can be said to 
 tyrannise over itself — I would. Why, what, pray, 
 were your two hundred and odd despots but the 
 country itself.' 
 
 W. They ? the nominees of borough-mongers and 
 the lick-spittles of the Court ! 
 
 Lord S. Oh, your servant, sir ! If you are for a 
 reform of Parliament before you will allow its 
 authority you are likely to have trouble enough in 
 governing the country, as time goes on— at least so 
 long as there is enough of factious acuteness in the 
 world to discover flaws in our representation. 
 
 W. To challenge the constitution of a court is not 
 to question its jurisdiction. 
 
 Lord S. 'Tis much the same thing, however, if 
 the prisoner is to be allowed to persevere with his 
 challenge until he has got a tribunal to find in his 
 
WILKES AND LORD SANDWICH 119 
 
 favour. But that was ever the way of the Whigs. 
 Parliament has always been to them like one of the 
 idols of my namesake islanders — those savages, you 
 remember, to whom Cook made the head of the 
 Admiralty stand sponsor — worshipped to-day and 
 belaboured to-morrow. They banged their wooden 
 deity to their heart's content in 1768-70 ; and in 
 1784, when they wanted their god for the damning 
 of young Pitt, they were on their bellies before it to 
 a man, in pretended adoration. Who heard any- 
 thing against the House of Commons or in favour 
 of " the country " then ? 
 
 W. I am not concerned to excuse their incon- 
 sistencies. I was no more a Whig in the party 
 sense than I was a Wilkite. 
 
 Lord S. Good! Then give up your case. Jack, 
 and own yourself a seditious rogue. Ha ! ha ! For 
 there's no way of defending your rioters and yourself 
 from any one who chooses to pronounce the whole 
 pack of you worthy of the cart's tail, except it be 
 the Whig plea. How dared you stir up commotion 
 against the House of Commons, you dog, unless 
 you had Divine authority for saying that the rabble 
 knew the real mind of the electors, and that the 
 House did not ? And revelation of that kind has 
 never been granted to anybody but a good Whig. 
 
 W. You need not look about, my lord, for the 
 inspiration of that prophecy which the event confirms. 
 The House of 1782 proclaimed the condemnation of 
 
I20 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 the House of 1770. The entry in the records of the 
 latter Parliament remain a perpetual witness to the 
 servile violence of the earlier. 
 
 Lord S. Psha! 'Tis a witness to nothing but a 
 shifting of the political balance. 'Tis no proof at all 
 that the wrongs of Alderman Wilkes, and the noisy- 
 citizens who mobbed their betters in support of him, 
 gave any concern to the electors of the country either 
 in one year or the other. By 1774 both king and 
 people had grown sick of the quarrel, and were glad 
 of any excuse for ending it. 
 
 W. Nay, my lord! Is that any reason why the 
 later House should have gone out of its way to 
 record a censure of its predecessor's action ? For 
 such a step as that there could be no other reason 
 than this — that the Parliament which expunged my 
 sentence felt assured that the Parliament which 
 imposed it was no faithful representative of the 
 people. 
 
 Lord S. And yet each was alike an assembly 
 packed by borough-mongers ! Ha ! ha ! ha ! On my 
 soul, Mr. Wilkes, for a man who was no more a Whig 
 than a Wilkite, you can preach with the one as well 
 as you could shout with the other. How came it 
 about, pray, that so vilely ill-constituted a chamber 
 righted you at last ! 
 
 W. There are some warnings which even the most 
 corrupt of time-servers dare not disregard. But do 
 not imagine, my lord, that I felt any peculiar gratitude 
 
WILKES AND LORD SANDWICH 121 
 
 even to the assembly that reinstated me, or that I 
 thought it needed purging any the less for that. A 
 House of Commons which derived its power, in truth 
 insead of only in name, from the people, would never 
 have dared to expel any member not disqualified by 
 law, who was the free choice of a constituency. 
 
 Lord S. Be not too sure of that. There is nothing 
 so magical in a popular vote as to make all men 
 wise on whom it is conferred. Do you think by 
 mere multiplication of electors to make the repre- 
 sentatives of each constituency more regardful of the 
 right as you call it, of any other constituency to 
 foist upon them a hateful associate .-' Do you believe 
 it impossible in a reformed Parliament for another 
 John Wilkes to make his appearance in the House 
 of Commons, and another excluding resolution to 
 find a place in its journals .'' 
 
 W. I believe that such a scandal 
 
 Lord S. Which, Jack ? I mentioned two. 
 
 W. 'Tis but a poor wit, my lord, that requires the 
 ill manners of an interruption to give it point. I be- 
 lieve, I say, that no such scandal as the vote which 
 expelled me from the House could have been 
 witnessed in a popularly constituted Parliament, and 
 that if it had, it would have been much more speedily 
 and sternly rebuked by the country. 
 
 Lord S. Ay, truly.? Then, egad! I should like 
 to know why. Which of the two scandals, think you, 
 would be the more unlikely to happen — the election of 
 
122 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 a Wilkes or his exclusion ? Or is it that the country 
 would be so little scandalised at the former event as 
 to be doubly shocked at the latter ? 
 
 W. Your lordship's raillery is not very difficult to 
 meet ; for the question which you have just put in 
 irony may be answered quite seriously in the affirma- 
 tive. The country would not be — nay, it never has 
 been — scandalised by the entrance of any duly 
 qualified member freely chosen by a constituency 
 into the House of Commons, whatever the defects of 
 his private character. It would justly deem those 
 defects to be no affair of any one so far as politics 
 are concerned, and would be as justly indignant at 
 the hypocritical tyranny of any House of Commons 
 who should insist on wresting them into a pretext for 
 exclusion. 
 
 Lord S. A nation of philosophers, hey ? 
 
 W. I see nothing in such behaviour but the plainest 
 common sense. 
 
 Lord S. I have heard some tiresome discoursers 
 declare that common sense is the highest philosophy, 
 and I know from my own experience that no man 
 governs himself wholly by its dictates unless he has 
 something of the philosopher about him. What do 
 you suppose will have become of popular prejudice in 
 the days you are looking forward to ? 
 
 W. Of popular prejudice .'' 
 
 Lord S. Ay ! You seem to have imagined to 
 yourself a nation of Camdens, a community of 
 
WILKES AND LORD SANDWICH 123 
 
 cold-blooded constitutional doctors, who will only 
 ask each other what are the candidate's rights as a 
 citizen, and not whether he is a disreputable 
 scoundrel who would only disgrace civil rights by 
 being permitted to enjoy them. Is not that your 
 idea ? 
 
 W. I confess, my lord, that, wondrously elevated 
 as you seem to think such a standard of political 
 enlightenment, I do not regard it as unattainable. 
 I am indeed of opinion, as you know, that it had 
 actually been attained by many more Englishmen in 
 my own time than the king and his ministers were 
 ever willing to believe. My persuasion is that the 
 majority of the English people were not less earnest, 
 if more self-restrained Wilkites, than the crowds 
 who burnt a jack-boot and a petticoat instead of the 
 North Briton in '63 and rolled Charles Fox in the 
 mud in '71. 
 
 Lord S. Never believe it. Out of every hundred 
 tongues which swelled the cry of "Wilkes and 
 Liberty ! " and out of every hundred pair of ears — 
 and I'll throw you in the short ones with the long — 
 that listened to it willingly, there were not a dozen 
 wagging in the jaws or sprouting from the skulls of 
 men who cared one straw for Liberty, or one 
 peppercorn for Wilkes. The London mob were in 
 one of their surliest humours, the people of the 
 country were in the grumbles at a score of things. 
 They were sick of the Scots, disgusted with the 
 
124 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Princess Dowager, disappointed with the young 
 king. Any stick will do to beat a dog with ; you 
 were the stick they caught up. But never suppose 
 for a moment that, had times been quiet, and the 
 people contented, they would have troubled them- 
 selves about the arrest of a scribbler for seditious 
 writing, or his punishment 
 
 W. On another and a trumped-up charge, when 
 the first was found ineffectual ? You think not, my 
 lord ? Be it so. Let us suppose the English people 
 worthy of the men who were ruling them in 1763. 
 Nay, let us suppose, if you please, that but for their 
 own private discontents, they would have been 
 equally indifferent to that malignity of persecution 
 which hunted me from my seat in the House of 
 Commons six years afterwards. I did not so read 
 the character of my countrymen even in my own 
 day ; but I should despair of human nature itself if 
 I thought that the apathy which you ascribe to 
 them under wrong and oppression was inveterate 
 and imperturbable. I do not believe, I say, that 
 even fifty years after my arbitrary expulsion from 
 the House of Commons a like outrage upon the 
 rights of constituencies would have been probable. 
 A hundred years afterwards, and especially assuming 
 a. reform of the representation, I think it would have 
 been impossible. 
 
 Lord S. A " purified " House of Commons would 
 be more ready, you mean, to welcome a dirty associate. 
 
WILKES AND LORD SANDWICH 125 
 
 W. No : but less patient of a foulness more repug- 
 nant than his — the hypocrisy of those who, as a pre- 
 text for excluding him, pretend horror at vices or at 
 opinions which shock them nowhere else but in Par- 
 liament. But such a House as I imagine would be 
 not more disgusted at the hypocrisy of the pretext 
 than contemptuous of its irrelevance. They would 
 put it aside as soon as looked at. They would hold 
 that the sole qualification for a member is that, being 
 legally competent to serve in Parliament, a constitu- 
 ency has lawfully chosen him thus to serve, and were 
 he the most odious of human beings, his fellow- 
 members would conquer their qualms and admit 
 him. 
 
 Lord S. Judges, in fact, are what you expect to 
 find in them : full-bottom-wigged, ermine-tippeted, 
 owl-visaged judges, by the Lord ! 
 
 W. Is that character, then, so unbecoming a " high 
 court " ? 
 
 Lord S. It would be a devihshly inconvenient one 
 for the purposes of a minister. 
 
 W. You reason too exclusively from personal expe- 
 rience, my lord, in assuming that English ministers 
 will always be on the side of injustice. I can imagine 
 circumstances in which a Government would ask 
 nothing better than that the House of Commons 
 should deal with the rights of candidates and constitu- 
 encies in the strict spirit of the judge ? 
 
 Lord S. Can you ? Then 'tis more than I can. I 
 
126 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 should have thought they might always ask something 
 better than what they have no chance of obtaining. 
 Why, sure, if the House of Commons should ever 
 become capable of behaving like so many judges, 
 when it came to a question between the " Ayes " and 
 " Noes," there would be an end on't as a House of 
 Commons. Trust me, Jack, I am sorry to see an old 
 crony of mine, and a good fellow too at the bottom, 
 the victim of such fantastic imaginings. Rest assured, 
 my friend, that even if another question of Parlia- 
 mentary incapacity should arise, the House will never 
 deal with it in any but the old fashion. Rely upon 
 it that it will not be constitutional lecturing, but what 
 you call " prejudice " which will carry the day. 
 
 W. Then the country will bring the House to its 
 senses the day following. 
 
 Lord S. There will be no more prejudices then, 
 you think, in the country than in the House ? 
 
 W. Yes, one more perhaps — a prejudice in favour 
 of fair play. That has always been strong among 
 Englishmen, as none should know better, my lord, 
 than you and your accomplices, who cowered beneath 
 their wrath. They have ever been true to that cause, 
 save only when they have been led astray by their 
 own ignorance or by the falsehood of others. And 
 those are evil influences, which are fast losing their 
 power over men. 
 
 Lord S. You believe that ? 
 
 W. All men believe it but those who have an interest 
 
WILKES AND LORD SANDWICH 127 
 
 in doubting it. I can understand your lordship's 
 incredulity. 
 
 Lord S. Better, I should think, than I can your 
 faith — or could, if I were fool enough to think it sincere. 
 But you are impudence incarnate, Jack, to talk in this 
 fashion to me. An augur who refuses to exchange 
 grins with his brother must be a shameless dog, 
 indeed ; and who could bear to hear one quack doctor 
 bidding another rejoice that colics have disappeared, 
 or that bumpkins no longer believe in bread pills ? 
 Why, man, if there had been no ignorance among the 
 people, or no appetite for the lies we fed it with, what 
 would have become of you and me ? 
 
 W. Well, I might, perhaps, have had to learn a new 
 trade ; but you, my lord, would have starved. It is 
 the bad minister who makes the demagogue : the false- 
 hoods of authority have to be fought with the half- 
 truths of popular leaders ; but the day when the people 
 are enlightened enough to see through the arts of the 
 former, the occupation of the latter will be gone. If 
 a violent majority could ever be found to pervert 
 the plain issue of justice in the case of another John 
 Wilkes, a nation, disposed towards a just judgment 
 by that very enlargement of their liberties which 
 would give them new power of enforcing it, would 
 speedily warn their disloyal House of Representatives 
 to undo its work. 
 
 Lord S. Wonderful ! 'Tis only necessary, then, to 
 enlarge the powers of a tribunal in order to ensure 
 
128 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 the wisdom and justice of its decrees. On this foot, 
 Jack, your liberties would have been safer before a 
 Turkish Bashaw than in the Court of King's Bench. 
 W. The day will come, nay, by this time, I doubt 
 not, it has come, when, if the House of Commons 
 should again usurp authority to reject the choice of a 
 constituency — which I cannot believe possible — the 
 country would, to the first protest of the claimant, 
 respond with a voice as sovereign and silencing as 
 one of the old decrees of royalty : " Let right be 
 done ! " 
 
 Lord S. What .-" If the fellow were unpopular ? 
 
 W. Who could have been more unpopular with 
 
 every saint and sycophant in the kingdom than I ? 
 
 And see how my cause was taken up. But why speak 
 
 of our own times .'' The age, my lord, that tolerated 
 
 you as a minister 
 
 Lord S. Might well have been less liberal, I admit. 
 We both of us owed something to its laxity, for if it 
 made me a minister, it made you a popular hero. 
 Your mob was no more strait-laced than my majority ; 
 and I don't admit that there was any more insincerity 
 in the horror of Parliament at the vices of John 
 Wilkes than there was in the disgust of the populace 
 
 at 
 
 W. The treachery of Jemmy Twitcher ? Ah ! there 
 I differ from you, my lord. 
 
 Lord S. Of course you do. But you won't deny 
 that if ministers relied on the servility of Parliament, 
 
WILKES AND LORD SANDWICH 129 
 
 you owed much of your vogue to popular ignorance. 
 And I see not whence you get your belief, that a 
 more enlightened people, as you call it, would be as 
 free from prejudices of all kinds as those who were 
 too ignorant to have any. I suppose that greater 
 enlightenment means better morals, more religion, if 
 not more loyalty, hey .'' 
 
 W. No doubt. 
 
 Lord S. Then, how the devil, Jack, can you believe 
 that a moral, religious, and loyal people would imitate 
 their godless and seditious forefathers by running at 
 the tail of another such rogue as you .'' 
 
 W. The more of these virtues they possessed, the 
 more deeply they would reverence justice. See here, 
 my lord, I will put a case to you. I will imagine a 
 man who should unite in himself every circumstance 
 of scandal which offended your virtuous ministers and 
 your Parliament in me, and should add yet more 
 offences of his own. He should be accused, as I was, 
 of advocating seditious opinions, and of using language 
 injurious to the Royal House ; but, unlike me, he 
 should have gone the length of recommending repub- 
 lican in place of monarchical government, and should 
 have levelled his insults at Royalty in public speeches 
 to indiscriminate audiences. He should stand charged, 
 like me, with the authorship of writings which outrage 
 public morality ; but, unlike me, he should have pub- 
 lished, as well as written, them, and they should have 
 differed for the worse from mine, as immoral doctrines 
 
 K 
 
I30 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 differ from licentious jests. And lastly, he should 
 lie, as I lay, under the reproach of impiety ; but, 
 unlike me, he should be a deliberate, instead of a 
 careless, blasphemer, and have publicly sought to 
 undermine religious faith, while I only privately 
 ridiculed religious rites. But if, along with all these 
 titles to popular odium, he should be able to put 
 forward the one claim upon the House of Commons 
 and the country, that he had been freely chosen by a 
 constituency to be its representative in Parliament 
 
 Lord S. Well .? 
 
 W. I am firmly persuaded that the House would 
 not dare, nor the country bear, his exclusion from his 
 seat. 
 
 Lord S. You are ? Then I would to Heaven, 
 Jack, that we had something to bet with in this 
 cursed place, for I should like to hold you a heavy 
 wager that, if ever such a case should occur as you 
 have imagined, you would find yourself woefully 
 mistaken. 
 
VI 
 
 TENNYSON AND VIRGIL 
 
 Ten. Sweetest of the world's great poets and 
 greatest of its sweet singers, I salute you. 
 
 ViR. Welcome to a poet is the poet's homage ; 
 but more welcome still was the tribute — for it is 
 known to me — of your noble ode. And most welcome 
 of all in this, that its highest praises were given to 
 my greatest poem. 
 
 Ten. The Georgics, it is true, are, of all your 
 poems, the most dear to me. Yet deem not, O Virgil, 
 that your Roman epic leaves me cold — that I am 
 insensible to the loftiness of its spirit or to the 
 majesty of its strain. How, indeed, could I be so here 
 — here in these pale kingdoms which live for ever 
 for the world of men in your story of ^neas .' 
 Through what stage of my journey hither, from the 
 beach of Styx to the vestibule of Orcus, and the 
 empty realms of Dis, have I not been companioned 
 and haunted by your immortal verse } 
 
 ViR. Does it still speak, then, to the hearts of so 
 distant a generation \ Surely it must be but with a 
 faint and alien voice. 
 
 131 
 
132 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Ten. Non obtusa adeo gestamus pectora. Nay, 
 what a heart must be his in which that wail of 
 infants, flentes in limne prima awakens no echo, and 
 whereon that piteous vision of the bereaved leaves no 
 impression ! — 
 
 Tendebantque manus ripse utterioris amore. 
 
 Ah, poet of the magic phrase ! The soul of man and 
 woman will be dead indeed, and stilled for ever the 
 ache of loss, the anguish of farewell, the "yearning 
 for that further shore " to which our dear ones have 
 departed, ere those five words of yours shall lose their 
 power to unseal the fount of tears. 
 
 ViR. They are well enough ; but it is not by one 
 great passage — no, nor by a score of such, that a 
 whole poem becomes great. 
 
 Ten. I grant it. But how many are required to 
 make it so ? Must a poem, to be great, be always 
 at its greatest, and the poet ever soaring at his 
 nearest to the stars .' 
 
 ViR. That, doubtless, were impossible. Yet I 
 think of my friend Horatius, and of the purpurei 
 panni that he so justly reprehends. 
 
 Ten. Horatius, it is true, sustains himself through- 
 out many of his Odes at his highest level. But why ? 
 Because he never stretched his pinions in the serious 
 lyric save for the shortest of flights. He knew 
 better ; he admits it, indeed, in his warning to the poet 
 who would rashly essay to emulate Pindar. Hora- 
 tius had no mind to share the fate of Icarus, and 
 
TENNYSON AND VIRGIL 133 
 
 though the glory of Augustus and the grandeur of 
 Rome at times inspire him, he takes care to confine 
 his inspiration within the limits of twenty Alcaic 
 stanzas. The ^neid is not all "beauties," nor 
 should it have been. That it is not so is what 
 distinguishes you from the luscious Lucan, and lends 
 to your poetry an unstudied charm in which his 
 is lacking. For yours is, as his is not, the method 
 of Nature herself. The orchard is not all fruit, 
 nor the wayside bank in spring-time all flowers. 
 Nature needs the foil of the simple herbage for her 
 blossoms, and willingly embroiders her most splendid 
 tissues on the homespun of the plain brown earth. 
 Bethink you, too, of the demands of your great work. 
 You had a mighty theme to unfold ; but the process 
 of evolution was a long one, and you had to accustom 
 your reader to accompany you without too frequent 
 and fatiguing appeals to the stronger emotions. In 
 nothing does your mastery of your art more power- 
 fully impress me than in your resolute rejection of 
 irrelevant adornments. 
 
 ViR. As much as that might be said for the prose 
 historian. 
 
 Ten. Not so ; for the high discourse of the poet, 
 the authentic language of poetry, is audible in your 
 simplest line. The ear and the imagination are 
 satisfied with the stately procession of your hexa- 
 meters as they march onward, content with their own 
 unfailing grace and dignity, even when they do not 
 
134 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 rise into the sublime. And how often are they thus 
 uplifted ! Not only in the descent into Hades, but 
 in the fall of Troy, in the love-story and the death- 
 bed scene of Dido, in the prophetic blazonry of the 
 Divine Armourer . . . 
 
 ViR. Forbear, forbear, O my friend, to praise that 
 effort of my Muse. For when I recall the Homeric 
 Shield of Achilles, I marvel that the j^neid, narrowly 
 even as it did so, should have escaped the flames. 
 
 Ten. The Artificer of the shield would himself 
 have refused the offering. Vulcan would never have 
 permitted the consummation of such a sacrilege. 
 
 ViR. I would that you had not turned ray thoughts 
 to Homer. His name is to me a name of despair. 
 Men speak of all poets as " divine ; '' but there are 
 degrees of deity, and I was to Homer as Vulcan to 
 Jove — as the cunning and laborious craftsman to 
 the Wielder of the thunderbolt, and the Compeller of 
 the clouds ! And yet how faulty is the comparison ! 
 For behind the godhead of the sightless seer, and 
 inseparable from it, lay the transcendent skill of the 
 craftsman working by conscious means to a pre- 
 determined end, and shaping the structure, modulating 
 the rhythm, of his verse with unerring mastery, — 
 sculptor and musician in one. It is Zeus condescend- 
 ing to the hammer and anvil of Hephaistos, Apollo 
 putting the pipe of the shepherd-boy to his own 
 immortal lips. But most of all does he abase me when 
 he speaks with one and the same voice to the poet 
 
TENNYSON AND VIRGIL 135 
 
 versed in all the mysteries of songcraft and to the 
 simple man. Gladly would I exchange all the 
 adventures of ^neas, from the landing at Carthage to 
 the slaying of Turnus, for that one scene of the aged 
 Priam kneeling to kiss the hand that slew his son. 
 
 Ten. Fear no idle flattery from me, O Virgil. 
 You are too great not to recognise a greater. 
 Supreme is Homer among the poets of the world : 
 supreme, if not in feeling and imagination — and I 
 know not, nay I doubt, whether that be so — at any 
 rate, in expression. But that is because he belongs 
 to the childhood of the world, and is as much 
 nearer as is the child than the adult to Nature and 
 to God. Therefore let no poet of the after-time 
 essay to imitate the mere manner of his speech ; 
 he who does so will but cover himself with ridicule. 
 Let him rather study the holy simplicity of Homer's 
 genius, even as the Founder of my faith has taught 
 men to school themselves by the innocence of the 
 child. It is because you were no slavish mimic of 
 the Homeric speech, though you had drunk deep 
 of the Homeric spirit — it is because, though in the 
 story of .^neas you chose a subject which Homer 
 might well have taken for his theme, you invented 
 for it a golden style which is stamped for ever with 
 your own individuality — it is for this reason that 
 you are as much the despair of later imitators 
 as he. 
 
 ViR. In one attribution you do me no more than 
 
136 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 justice. I was, indeed, no servile copyist of the 
 divine Ionian : my manner, whatever its imperfec- 
 tions, was my own. Howbeit, similarity of subject 
 will always invite comparison of treatment, and I 
 was more at my ease on that score in the Georgics. 
 For, without boasting, I know that I need not shrink 
 from competition with Father Hesiod. 
 
 Ten. With Homer you do not compete nor 
 attempt it ; and you need fear no more foolish 
 comparisons. The world of scholars has taught a 
 larger world to recognise the purely Latin genius 
 of the poetic speech which you perfected, and to 
 see the ineptitude of setting it side by side with 
 Homer's. As well compare the oratory of Cicero 
 with that of Demosthenes. No ; the only rivalry 
 you have to dread — though truly it is formidable — 
 is that of a fellow-countryman of your own. There 
 are some of modern times who even assign the 
 palm to him ; who hold that Roman poetry has struck 
 a loftier if a ruder note than the Virgilian, and that 
 it sounds through a hexameter less artful perhaps, 
 but more august. Do you know it .-' I see you do. 
 
 ViR. Nay, what Roman of my day knew it not .' It 
 is of the mighty voice of the Epicurean that you speak. 
 The hexameter of Lucretius is like an echo of that 
 stormless thunder which rolls round the brazen dome 
 of heaven on some still and sultry day. Nay, it is 
 the answer as well as the echo : the fearless yet 
 solemn answer of the poet to the voice of those 
 
TENNYSON AND VIRGIL I37 
 
 gods whom he set so far from men. . . . But it is 
 no more human than the thunder itself, and it 
 awakens no feeling in the human breast but that 
 of a shrinking awe. 
 
 Ten. Shall I have your pardon, O poet for 
 whom men have mingled love with awe and reverence, 
 if I say that you are unjust .■' Surely the verse of 
 Lucretius has its moments of stern pathos, of austere 
 tenderness, of grave and lofty pity for the lot of 
 man upon earth. 
 
 ViR. I do not deny it ; but it is the tenderness, 
 the pity, of a philosopher, as remote as his own 
 sequestered gods from those he compassionates. 
 He boasts in one splendid and sonorous line of 
 the exploit of his master, Epicurus, of him who 
 
 Extra 
 Processit longe flammantia moenia mundi. 
 
 Well, the disciple has followed his master beyond 
 those flaming walls. It is there that, in his verse, 
 he habitually abides ; it is thence that he surveys 
 the fortunes of the race of man ; and if for a few 
 brief moments he is conscious of a common humanity 
 with them, they are for the most part no more to 
 him than Atoms concreted from the Void. The 
 toil and rest of the husbandman and the herdsman, 
 the simple joys and sorrows of the tiller of the 
 soil, the daily labour in the furrow, the nightly 
 slumber in the farmstead — tell me, I pray you, what 
 he knows or what he cares for these. 
 
138 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Ten. I meant not to compare him with you in 
 the general estimation of the world. You are nearer, 
 far nearer, to the common heart of man than he. 
 Nor (speaking for myself) would I match his poetic 
 artistry for one moment with yours. He has crudities 
 and roughnesses ; he has even tricks and mannerisms. 
 The alliterations which he uses occasionally with 
 so exquisite an effect are persisted in till they fatigue, 
 I had almost said till they disgust. Not always does 
 he draw such a prize as in his 
 
 Neque nix alta concreta pruina 
 Cana cadens violat. 
 
 Even in his 
 
 Funde petens placidam Romanis, Incluta, pacem 
 
 he begins to ride his hobby rather too hard ; and 
 too often we have some such mechanical jingle as 
 his 
 
 Fortunasque tuas omnes turbare timore 
 and his 
 
 Ferat flammai fulgura rursum 
 and (within three lines of it) his 
 
 Multa munita virum vl. 
 
 In your verse there are no such mannerisms, no such 
 revelations of a too conscious striving after merely 
 local effects. 
 
 ViR. It is true that I laboured to conceal my art ; 
 and true also that I made it my constant endeavour 
 
TENNYSON AND VIRGIL i39 
 
 to add to the flexibility and to vary the cadences 
 of the Lucretian hexameter, in which, great as it was, 
 the defects of a too rigid structure and a too 
 monotonous note were plainly to be discerned. 
 
 Ten. And admirably, O Virgil, did you succeed. 
 The hexameter took its final and faultless shape in 
 your hands and became eternally yours. Never, 
 but for you, should I have described it as the " state- 
 liest measure ever moulded by the lips of man." 
 Yet how much, after all, do you owe to Lucretius ! 
 How large, after all the splendid contribution of 
 your own genius, is that residue of debt to him 
 which you are too generous to repudiate! When 
 you transfigure common things with the magic of 
 poetry you are yourself alone ; but he is with you 
 whenever you aspire. Who can fail to trace his 
 influence in your invocations to the gods ? How 
 deeply must you have felt the grandeur of his 
 
 iEneadum genetrix, hominum divvimque voluptas, 
 Alma Venus, cceli subter labentia signa 
 Qu£e mare navigerum, quse terras frugiferentes 
 Concelebras : per Te, quoniam genus omne animantum 
 Concipitur, visetque exortum lumina SoHs, 
 Te, Dea, te fugiunt venti, te nubila cceli 
 Adventumque tuum ; tibi suaves daedala tellus 
 Summittit flores ; tibi rident aequora ponti 
 Placatumque nitet diffuse lumine ccelum. 
 
 Sometimes his very phrases seem to have run in 
 your head. Your "tereti cervice reflexam" recalls 
 that impassioned description of the captured Mars, 
 " ffiterno devinctus vulnere amoris." 
 
I40 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Atque ita suspiciens tereti cervice reposta 
 Pascit amore avidos inhians in te, Dea, vultus 
 Eque tuo pendet resupini spiritus ore. 
 
 Nay, in describing the very triumph of Lucretius 
 himself over superstitious terrors, you use the self- 
 same phrase that he himself employs in speaking of 
 Epicurus — 
 
 Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas 
 Atqui metus omnes et inexorabile fatum 
 Subjecit pedibus. 
 
 Is not this the " relligio pedibus subjecta " which 
 Lucretius records as the great achievement of his 
 master ? 
 
 ViR. I confess it is ; but I may easily be pardoned. 
 Who could write of that great spirit save in his own 
 words .? But recall the two lines that follow — 
 
 Fortunatus et ille deos qui novit agrestes 
 
 Pauaque, Silvanumque senem, Nymphasque sorores. 
 
 There, indeed, I speak of my own less lofty poetic 
 mission ; and the language in which I speak of it is 
 wholly my own. 
 
 Ten. And your own, as I have said, it will ever be, 
 subject and verse alike. Fortunate were you, of a 
 truth, to have known those woodland gods so well. 
 It is not the least of your claims upon the heart of 
 modern man. How strange, O Virgil, has been your 
 fate! To have been almost deified by mediaeval 
 Christendom as a prophet summoned from among 
 the heathen by the Christian's God, and to live 
 
TENNYSON AND VIRGIL 141 
 
 again for a later age, as the one voice among the 
 ancients which has given utterance to its vague 
 world-sorrow, its pathetic love of Nature, its tender- 
 ness for the brute creation, its yearning sadness " at 
 the doubtful doom of human-kind." But it is the first 
 apotheosis which is the more wonderful. 
 
 ViR. I have heard of it from the shade of the 
 Florentine poet who feigned to have taken me for 
 his Hermes. But I would willingly hear more of it 
 — from you. 
 
 Ten. We have not yet spoken of the Eclogues. 
 ViR. They, indeed, were imitations, if you will. It 
 was no serious fluting match between myself and 
 Theocritus, as between some Thyrsis and Damaetas of 
 his own. In most of my Eclogues I merely turn one 
 of the Sicilian's idylls into such Latin hexameters as 
 Apollo pleased. 
 
 Ten. Then it will not wound you to know, O Virgil, 
 that the modern world prefers the original to the 
 imitation. When Menalcas and Damaetas pipe 
 against each other, it is too apt to send us back with 
 renewed pleasure to their Trinacrian prototypes. 
 The note first heard in the pastures of Sicily awakes 
 but a faint if a sweet echo from your Italian hills. 
 But what of the Pollio ? 
 
 ViR. The Pollio is in another manner. There I 
 parted company with the Sicilian poet, and thought 
 only of doing honour in verse of my own sole 
 imagining to my patron and friend. 
 
142 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Ten. Was it the Sibyl or the Muse by whom you 
 were inspired ? 
 
 ViR. It pleases you to jest with me : it was the 
 Muse. 
 
 Ten. Then the Virgin whose return you prophesy 
 was not the mother of the Christian's God ; nor the 
 Child her Divine Infant. 
 
 ViR. What is this, O immortal Gods ? The 
 "nascens puer" was the baby boy of Asinius 
 Pollio ; the Virgin was Astraea. 
 
 Ten. Then " occidet et Serpens " does not foretell 
 the death of the Evil One ; nor the effacement of 
 the "sceleris vestigia" the redemption of the world. 
 Nor are we to understand " vulgo nascetur amomum " 
 as meaning that the blameless flower of Christianity 
 should overspread the earth. 
 
 ViR. You speak incomprehensible things. 
 
 Ten. Well may you find them so. Yet it was 
 upon these shadowy though gracious fancies that 
 the imagination of the earliest Christian world was 
 fed ; and it was out of wilder, cruder, more grotesque 
 materials that later ages built up their legend of 
 Virgilius the Mage, who lived for the mediaeval 
 vulgar as a wizard and wonder-worker, while the 
 great Dante saw in him the loftiest of poets, and his 
 fittest leader through the kingdom of the Shades. 
 These myths, it is true, have passed away for ever ; 
 yet your glory remains. For there is something, O 
 Virgil, that brings you nearer to us than such 
 
TENNYSON AND VIRGIL i43 
 
 childlike fables of the mediaeval world. Nay, between 
 you and us— though now I speak not of the European 
 nations as a body, but of one of them alone— there 
 is an even closer bond than your love of field and 
 furrow, than your pity for the flitting and shadowy 
 race of mortals, and than all the mystic sadness of 
 your song. 
 ViR. Of what nation do you speak .' 
 Ten. Of the people of that storm-beaten island of 
 the Northern sea, which Rome, under her early Caesars, 
 flung half contemptuously into the wallet of her 
 conquests. I speak of the Britons, divided from 
 you by the entire globe. 
 
 ViR. And what peculiar charm has my verse for 
 them ? 
 
 Ten. You sang the glory of Empire as none has 
 ever sung it before or since ; and you sang it in the 
 ears of a people who are lords of a greater empire 
 than your own. 
 
 ViR. A greater empire .' 
 
 Ten. Yes, a greater. For though the Europe 
 over which you ruled has become its own master, 
 our remote and barbarous Britain has stretched 
 her sway over crowded Asiatic millions, over a 
 mighty Continent in the southern ocean, and, in the 
 North, over a land so vast that its northern confines 
 are lost amid the ice-fields of the Pole. And the Briton 
 rejoices in his dominion as the Roman through your 
 lips rejoiced in his. He grasps the sceptre of his 
 
144 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 power with all the Roman confidence and pride ; as 
 well as the Roman conqueror has he known how to 
 spare the submissive, and to crush the defiant ; and 
 he has imposed his disarming law on much more 
 numerous and not less warlike peoples than were 
 ever reduced to unwilling quiet under the Roman 
 Peace. If the Briton dares not imitate the splendid 
 arrogance of your " Excudent alii spirantia mollius 
 aera" — with its calm disdain of every other art 
 save that of rule — the immortal lines in which you 
 utter it find an echo in his inmost soul. In that 
 great passage there was but one touch wanting to 
 complete the parallel between Rome and Britain ; 
 and that touch has been added by a later poet of 
 your own race and language who, in describing Rome's 
 treatment of the conquered, has also described our 
 own. 
 
 Hsec est in gremium victos quae sola recepit, 
 Humanumque genus communi nominie fovit, 
 Matris non domino ritu, civesque creavit 
 Quor domuit nexuque suo longinqua revinxit. 
 
 You know those lines of Claudian ? 
 
 ViR. His Shade has recited to me the whole poem 
 in which they occur. 
 
 Ten. You would hardly object, I think, to their 
 being fathered upon you, 
 
 ViR. Down to the word "ritu" I would adopt 
 them ; but only on the strict terms of rejecting the 
 rest. What ? " Recepit — fovit — creavit — revinxit." 
 
TENNYSON AND VIRGIL 145 
 
 Sovereign Apollo ! how vile a repetition ! For fou r 
 successive lines ending with four verbs of the same 
 mood, tense, number, and person, you would search 
 the Eclogues, the Georgics, and the ^neid in vain. 
 
 Ten. The lines, however, are much quoted by the 
 Briton of these latter days, for their sentiment. 
 
 ViR. I applaud the sentiment, though I reprehend 
 the verse. But why should the lords of a greater 
 empire than the Roman take any Roman poet for 
 their spokesman .' Have you no poets of your own 
 race to celebrate it .■■ 
 
 Ten. None ; or none at least in so majestic a strain 
 as yours. 
 
 ViR. Yet you yourself, they tell me, were one of 
 the greatest of your country's poets. How came you 
 to leave the glories of its rule unsung } 
 
 Ten. I have not so left them, when occasion offered. 
 But my opportunities were few and late. When my 
 powers were in their prime, my countrymen were 
 indifferent to their Empire ; and when they awoke 
 to its greatness, I was old. 
 
 ViR. And has no poet who has succeeded you 
 been inspired by the theme .-" 
 
 Ten. Yes, many; but only one pre-eminent in 
 power, and to him both grandeur and grace are 
 lacking. His voice is a trumpet-blast and his song 
 a battle-cry, the fitting poetry, doubtless, of a people 
 whose empire, great as it is, is still in the making. 
 Through his strains you hear the fierce delight of 
 
 L 
 
146 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 strife, and even the high elation of victory ; but never, 
 as in yours, the proud consciousness of dominion and 
 the large calm joy of rule. 
 
 ViR. But when your work is accomplished, will 
 not that note of sovereignty be heard ? 
 
 Ten. It may be so ; and perhaps I should rejoice 
 that that time is not yet. For — let me not anger 
 you — the history of your own nation instructs us, 
 that when the poet of a people exchanges the Spartan 
 fife for the lyre, and the untutored call to arms for 
 the cunningly fashioned hymn of empire, it is a sign 
 that they have scaled their predestined heights of 
 conquest, and that their foot is already on the down- 
 ward slope. 
 
VII 
 
 THE COMTE DE CHAMBORD AND 
 PHILIPPE EGALITE. 
 
 Cham. Let me pass, Monseigneur ! Your presence 
 is hateful to me. Shadow as you are, I see you 
 through a deeper shade. There is a mist of blood 
 around your head. 
 
 Phil. Probably an effect of the national razor, 
 Sire. A second aureole of martyrdom conferred 
 upon our family. 
 
 Cham. Assassin of your king and kinsman ! It 
 well becomes you to thrust his title in mockery 
 upon his heir! 
 
 Phil. Phis royaliste que le roi, it seems. The 
 good Louis has long since listened to reason. Do 
 not disconcert him with so ridiculous a spectacle as 
 that of an implacable grand-nephew. 
 
 Cham. The Royal martyr was too faithful a 
 follower of his Divine model not to have forgiven 
 his enemies. But Monarchy does not and cannot 
 pardon its recreant children as a monarch may 
 forgive his treacherous kin : and as the last repre- 
 sentative of the House of France, I can hold no 
 converse with the worst of its enemies. 
 
 147 
 
148 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Phil. Last representative ? Nay, Sire, I cannot 
 allow such a phrase to pass unchallenged. In the 
 name of the Monarchy to which you have yourself 
 appealed, I must protest against such a slight being 
 put upon the family of Orleans. 
 
 Cham. What .'' You appeal to the Monarchy in 
 the name of your descendants ? Such effrontery 
 as that amazes me even in you. The present head 
 of the House of Orleans 
 
 Phil. Is now, with submission, Sire, the heir to 
 the crown of France. Perhaps you will hold sufficient 
 converse with me to acknowledge that. 
 
 Cham. If I prolong this colloquy at all, it is that 
 I may reject that claim with all the disdain which 
 it deserves. The heir to the crown of France, by 
 the renunciation of his father, is Don Carlos of 
 Spain. 
 
 Phil. Your Majesty's chagrin at the extinction of 
 the elder branch in France is intelligible and has 
 my profoundest sympathy. But it betrays you into 
 unfortunate extravagances. The claim of Don Carlos 
 is barred by the Treaty of Utrecht, and I know that 
 you are not of those who hold that a Spanish Royal 
 decree could have revived it. If Spain chose to 
 oust the heir male of Ferdinand VII. tracing from 
 Philip v., by abolishing the Salic law, so much the 
 worse for the heir male. It could not have re- 
 established him in pretensions which his ancestor 
 pledged himself to all Europe to abandon. I know. 
 
DE CHAMBORD AND "EGALITE" 149 
 
 however, that you do not rely upon diplomatic 
 pettifoggeries of that kind. 
 
 Cham. No, indeed ! I no more recognise the 
 possibility of a treaty-made or treaty-marred right 
 divine than I can admit the existence of a "consti- 
 tutional title." The settlement of Utrecht could no 
 more deprive Don Carlos of his God-conferred 
 attribute of royalty than a vote of the French 
 Chamber could confer it upon your son's grandson. 
 
 Phil. No, Sire .' Nor than your own recognition 
 of my son's grandson } 
 
 Cham. Recognition, Monseigneur! I do not 
 understand you. 
 
 Phil. What .' Do you repudiate the arrangement 
 of Frohsdorf ? Would you undo the work of the 
 Fusion .? 
 
 Cham. It is evident, Monseigneur, that you are 
 the victim of some singular delusion. I know of no 
 "arrangement of Frohsdorf," and the incident to 
 which I suppose you to refer as " the Fusion " is 
 strangely misdescribed by that name. I remember, 
 indeed, a visit paid some years ago by certain 
 descendants, lineal and collateral, of a usurping 
 Duke of Orleans, to the heir of their lawful and 
 unlawfully deposed sovereign ; and, in obedience 
 to the Divine command which enjoins clemency 
 especially upon kings, I received them graciously. 
 But I know not why this tardy act of penance for 
 their ancestor's sin, this long-delayed renewal of 
 
ISO THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 their own allegiance, should be called by such un- 
 meaning names. The return of deserters to their 
 flag is not usually styled " fusion," but submission ; 
 not arrangement, but atonement. 
 
 Phil. Do you think, Sire, that the Orleanist 
 branch of the Royalist party so understood the 
 transaction ? 
 
 Cham. I know of no Orleanist branch of the 
 Royalist party. The very phrase is a monstrous 
 abuse of language. An Orleanist Royalist is as 
 much a contradiction in terms as a Monarchical 
 Republican. " Orleanist " is as much the name of a 
 disloyal faction as " Bonapartist." Legitimist and 
 Royalist are convertible terms, and not till an 
 Orleanist discards his name to assume the former 
 title does he acquire the right to use the latter. 
 
 Phil. Names, I fear, have always filled too 
 important a place in your Majesty's mind. How- 
 ever, I quite agree with you that Royalist and 
 Legitimist have now become convertible terms, but 
 they have become so by becoming jointly convertible 
 with Orleanist. Mohammed has come to the 
 mountain instead of the mountain going to Moham- 
 med, voil^ tout! Madame la Comtesse de Cham- 
 bord has obligingly settled the question in the most 
 conclusive manner by bearing you no children. 
 And in this case of widowhood, I imagine, there is 
 no chance of a second enfant du miracle. Divine 
 Providence, indeed, has been sufficiently wasteful of 
 
DE CHAMBORD AND "EGALITE" 151 
 
 its wonders already. It was hardly worth a miracle 
 to prolong an expiring family for a single life. But 
 the prayer of a righteous man, and still more of a 
 righteous woman, availeth much ; and Madame la 
 Duchesse de Berri was in every way irresistible. 
 
 Cham. Your ribaldry, Monseigneur, is out of date. 
 Had you lived a century later, you would have 
 learnt that even the vilest of profligates is nowadays 
 accustomed to render homage to decency in his talk. 
 
 Phil. I humbly submit, Sire, to your Royal 
 rebuke. But I shall never cease to wonder in silence 
 at the singular futility of that latest intervention of 
 Providence in our national affairs. 
 
 Cham. It was the will of God, who brings low 
 the mightiest things of earth, that the direct French 
 line of the Grand Monarqice should end with a 
 prince of such a fate and history as mine. 
 
 Phil. From Augustus to Augustulus — though, he, 
 by the way, died fighting face to face with his foes. 
 But I forgot. Sire, you read nothing but your " Hours." 
 It is as you say. The French line of the Grand 
 Monarqtie becomes extinct with you. But be com- 
 forted. You have the consolation of reflecting that 
 the blood of Henri Quatre is still represented in the 
 person of my own descendants. Forgive me for 
 thinking that the lineage which thus survives is the 
 worthier of the two. 
 
 Cham. I can quite understand that you prefer to 
 trace descent from Henri rather than from Louis. 
 
152 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Phil. You rightly appreciate the disposition of the 
 family. We certainly prefer to have sprung from 
 the statesman who promulgated the Edict of Nantes 
 rather than from the bigot who revoked it. 
 
 Cham. You are at any rate the true heirs of the 
 conqueror who trucked his religion for a crown. You 
 yourself, Monseigneur, had none of that commodity 
 to take to market, but you were eager in the sale 
 of what you had — your duty as a Prince of the blood 
 Royal, your loyalty as a subject. It was from want 
 of skill and not of will that you failed to gain the 
 throne you intrigued for, and which your son by a 
 more expert employment of the paternal tactics con- 
 trived to secure. The unscrupulous statecraft of our 
 B^arnais ancestor unquestionably survived unto the 
 sixth and seventh generation. I doubt not that it 
 will appear in the ninth. 
 
 Phil. I trust so ; but your Majesty is not yourself 
 without some of the qualities of our illustrious 
 common ancestor. You must have been at some 
 pains to conceal your real sentiments towards the 
 Comte de Paris. You were wont, I believe, to speak 
 of him almost affectionately to your friends. 
 
 Cham. Paris had attractive qualities, and it is in 
 my nature to respond to them ; but the Countess 
 judged him more severely than I did ; and, warmly 
 as my heart may have yearned towards him, my 
 understanding too often told me that she was right. 
 Phil. Your Majesty's understanding has always 
 
DE CHAMBORD AND "EGALITE" 153 
 
 needed a spiritual director, and a daughter of the 
 Duke of Modena was especially well qualified for the 
 purpose. But even I, you see, detested as I am, can 
 succeed in detaining you here in converse with one 
 whom you loaded with reproaches, and with whom 
 you vowed you would hold no communion. Such is 
 the fascination which has ever been exercised over 
 you — for monarchs have the truth told to them here 
 —by any stronger will than your own. 
 
 Cham. It is not so. I do not remain in your 
 company under any such compulsion as that. It is 
 because, as a king and as a Christian, I repent of 
 the hasty anger which was kindled within me on my 
 first meeting with so treacherous and deadly an enemy 
 of our House. Yet I know not why I should have 
 felt wroth at the sight of one whose soul I have 
 many and many a time commended — smile not, 
 Monseigneur — to the intercession of our Lady of the 
 Sacred Heart. 
 
 Phil. Whatever be the result of your good offices, 
 Sire, I shall always feel deeply grateful to you for 
 them. 
 
 Cham. Insensible as you still seem to be both to 
 shame and to remorse, I dare not hope that they will 
 be effectual. Ah, Monseigneur! what a heart must 
 have been his who could consent to the death of so 
 affectionate a cousin, so benevolent a prince, so good 
 a man ! And to think that that heart should have 
 throbbed with the blood Royal of France ! 
 
1 54 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Phil. The affectionate cousins of the House of 
 Orleans appear capable only of vertically transmitting 
 their good will ; it has always declined to extend 
 itself in a lateral direction. None of them has ever 
 been able to instil his cousinly sentiments into his 
 wife ; and as the wives are generally as strong as the 
 husbands are weak, the amiable feelings entertained 
 towards us by the latter are not very fruitful in acts. 
 
 Cham. I know that your Queen disliked you, and 
 that you resented the too open manifestations of her 
 repugnance. 
 
 Phil. I should have been foolish and ungrateful 
 to have done any such thing. Nothing was to be 
 feared from that woman, nothing was fatal in her, 
 but her love. She loved her husband, and led him 
 step by step to the guillotine. She loved her 
 children, and condemned them to starvation and 
 exile. She loved the Lamballe, and it was her Royal 
 love transformed into popular hatred that fixed the 
 favourite's head upon the pike. She even loved 
 France, after her fashion ; and you see what she has 
 made of that attachment. 
 
 Cham. Nay, you have no right to reproach her 
 memory with the misfortunes of her country ; it is 
 indeed unworthy of your intelligence. The fate of 
 a great empire is not determined by the levities of 
 a thoughtless woman, however highly placed. 
 
 Phil. It is determined by nothing according to 
 your views. Sire, but the will of God. But I know 
 
DE CHAMBORD AND "EGALITE" 155 
 
 not why that will should deny itself the instrument of 
 feminine spite and vanity more than any other of 
 the trifles with which we are told it works. More- 
 over, I know not how you can regard her influence 
 over her booby husband as an insignificant agent in 
 events. You could not so describe the voices of the 
 false prophets who urged the King of Israel to his 
 doom ; and Marie Antoinette was for ever bidding 
 that ill-starred Louis to go up to Ramoth-Gilead to 
 battle. Like Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah, she 
 made horns for her husband — I am speaking, of 
 course, of the Scriptural " horns of iron " — and assured 
 him that with these should he push the Syrians of 
 the Revolution until they were consumed. 
 
 Cham. As a kinsman, Monseigneur, you might 
 have dissociated the husband from the wilful wife ; 
 and as a subject you might have distinguished 
 between the well-meaning monarch and his rash 
 adviser. 
 
 Phil. I would willingly have done so ; nay, as 
 long as it was possible, I did. 
 
 Cham. How .' You dare to say so .■' You who 
 gave your vote — there is horror in the very speech 
 of it — for the death-sentence of the Convention ! 
 
 Phil. It was then impossible to save him. It was 
 too late. 
 
 Cham. To save him ! Ay, but not to die with 
 him ! It was not too late for that. 
 
 Phil. No, indeed : it was too soon for that. Even 
 
IS6 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 my execution, ten months later, appeared to me to 
 be premature. And had I not voted at the trial 
 like a good citizen of the Republic, I should probably 
 not have secured as much respite as that. 
 
 Cham. Was it worth the price you paid for it, 
 Citizen D'Orleans— eternal infamy ? 
 
 Phil. The question is hardly a fair one. The 
 Republic certainly gave me very short measure for 
 my money ; but I could not know at the time that 
 she would drive so hard a bargain with so devoted 
 a servant. She ought to have reflected that the 
 world had seen no such heroic sacrifice of family 
 affections to the command of a superior since 
 Abraham stacked the faggots for 
 
 Cham. Silence, silence, in the name of human 
 nature itself, even if you are careless of offending 
 Heaven ! 
 
 Phil. I must trust to your Majesty's intercession 
 in that last matter ; but as to human nature, I am 
 not careful to excuse myself for having obeyed its 
 first instinct of self-preservation. 
 
 Cham. Ay, the first instinct of human nature in 
 the savage, but in him alone. In the civilised man 
 it competes with others well-nigh as powerful as 
 itself; in the man of gentle blood it has to wage a 
 still more unequal struggle with the instincts of 
 honour ; in the religious man it cannot strive for 
 a moment against the voice of God. In your own 
 breast, Monseigneur, I know well that it had no 
 
DE CHAMBORD AND "EGALITE" 157 
 
 such adversary as this last to overcome ; but at 
 least it should have found the other two arrayed 
 against it ; and much indeed do I marvel that, 
 dissolute, selfish, godless, as you were, you should 
 not have been saved from complicity in the shedding 
 of that Royal blood upon the scaffold, were it only 
 by some single untainted drop of the blood of Henri 
 Quatre in your veins, some single momentary stir 
 of his chivalry in your soul. 
 
 Phil. You marvel at that, Sire — though, indeed, 
 a secular title of any kind appears ill matched with 
 your saintly simplicity — you marvel at that } Your 
 wonder is characteristic of a Bourbon of the elder 
 branch : as characteristic as your constant appeals 
 to that illustrious prince who in turn attracts you 
 by his genius and shocks you with his religious 
 indifference, and from whom you and your family 
 would have received every one of you the requital 
 of a hearty contempt. Has it ever occurred to you 
 to compare the history of the two races of Bourbons 
 that sprang from the loins of Louis XHL, and to 
 ask yourself whether the doctrine of Divine Right, 
 as illustrated in French history, has reason to have 
 commended itself to the intelligence of the House 
 of Orleans .■' 
 
 Cham. No, Monseigneur ; but I cannot see how, 
 to a believer in God's holy ordinances for the govern- 
 ment of States, the doctrine of Divine Right could 
 possibly be affected by the comparison. 
 
1 58 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Phil. To a believer, Sire, who has completely 
 surrendered his intelligence to his superstitions, 
 perhaps not ; but I should think you would allow 
 that a less robust belief might be severely tried 
 by it. One does not, indeed, expect the Supreme 
 Being to provide for the strict devolution of king- 
 craft as He provides for that of kingdoms — that is 
 to say, according to the law of primogeniture, with 
 limitation to issue male. One would expect that 
 Royalty and capacity should occasionally be separated, 
 — that the elder son should sometimes inherit the 
 father's crown, and the younger his head : but that 
 such separation should be invariable, that priority 
 of birth should never be found in company with 
 preponderance of brains, the tools of sovereignty 
 fall never to him who could handle them — that, I 
 confess, is an arrangement which I find it difficult 
 to regard as Providential. 
 
 Cham. I can understand your difficulty as a matter 
 of theory ; but I find it as difficult on my own part 
 to recall any historical instance in which it can have 
 practically perplexed you. 
 
 Phil. And that. Sire, is a difficulty, which I in 
 turn can understand. In a Bourbon of the elder 
 branch it is thoroughly intelligible. The divorce 
 of capacity from Royalty is never, perhaps, complete 
 in any reigning family until its very existence 
 escapes their detection. But you must excuse the 
 princes of the House of Orleans, if what was 
 
DE CHAMBORD AND "EGALITE" 159 
 
 invisible to you was only too painfully evident to 
 them. 
 
 Cham. I regret, indeed, that the shortcomings 
 of my family should have shaken a faith so graced 
 by humility as yours. 
 
 Phil. They could hardly fail to do so. Consider, 
 Sire : between Louis XIV. and yourself you have 
 had four ancestors on the throne of France ; between 
 his brother Philippe and the Comte de Paris, there 
 have been six Dukes of Orleans. Was it deliberately 
 decreed by the King of kings that, while the French 
 crown was passing from empty head to empty head, 
 and the sceptre from one nerveless hand to another, 
 there should, at every demise of the sovereignty, be 
 seen standing at the side of the new monarch — weak, 
 corrupt, or stupid as his predecessor — a kinsman as 
 conspicuously fitted to mount the throne as his king 
 by Divine Right was fitted only to take his seat 
 upon the footstool } Does your Majesty find nothing 
 bizarre in that Providential scheme ? 
 
 Cham. You must first satisfy me of its fulfilment. 
 Point out to me the personages in whom this 
 remarkable series of contrasts was illustrated. 
 
 Phil. Of which do you require proof. Sire .' Of 
 the vices and imbecilities of your own House, or of 
 the abilities of mine \ 
 
 Cham. I know that some of my ancestors have 
 been censured by foreign Republican and anti- 
 Catholic historians ; but the shining virtues of their 
 
i6o THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 contemporary princes of the House of Orleans have 
 been kept a profound secret from me. 
 
 Phil. With many other things, Sire, which it 
 would have profited you to know. 
 
 Cham. Be that as it may, Monseigneur, my 
 education has not impressed me with your conviction 
 of the vast superiority of your ancestors to mine. 
 
 Phil. Because your Majesty's education was in the 
 hands of the priest and the courtier — the former of 
 whom hates the House of Orleans for its Liberalism, 
 and the latter of whom dared not praise the fore- 
 fathers of Louis Philippe to the ears of the grandson 
 of Charles X. But the startling contrast I have 
 exposed to you is familiar enough to any impartial 
 student of our history. Such an one will tell you, if 
 you ask him, that, from the death of Louis Quatorze 
 to the flight of Charles Dix there has been no French 
 king who was not inferior, and but one who was not 
 contemptibly inferior, to the Duke or Dukes of 
 Orleans who flourished in his time. Nay, he will 
 even tell you that by no process of chronological per- 
 mutation could any one King of France be matched, 
 save at a disadvantage, with any earlier or later 
 representative of the younger branch. For where, I 
 ask you, Sire, will you look among my family for a 
 Duke of Orleans to keep in countenance the swinish 
 Louis Quinze, or his sheepish grandson, or that 
 grandson's mulish brother? Sensuality, imbecility, 
 obstinacy incarnate — these were not the mere vices. 
 
DE CHAMBORD AND " EGALITE." i6i 
 
 nor the mere failings, of the three Royal characters ; 
 they were the characters themselves ? Which among 
 us Bourbons of the tranche cadette will you select for 
 the comparison ? Shall it be Louis, third Duke of 
 Orleans, the scholar and philanthropist ? Shall it be 
 his son, my father, the munificent patron of art and 
 letters ? Shall it even be the Regent himself, a 
 libertine and free-thinker it is true, but an able 
 statesman, a master of the European politics of his 
 time ? Nay, though I ask it in all humility, shall it 
 even be the unworthy cousin who addresses you — a 
 man no doubt of many failings, intellectual and moral, 
 but still, I submit, a thousand times more competent 
 to have coped with the Revolution than that wretched 
 distaff in the hands of a passionate and intriguing 
 woman ? 
 
 Cham. Let the Revolution that swept you away 
 reply. 
 
 Phil. Any man may be washed from the deck 
 when incompetent hands have laid the vessel broad- 
 side to the wind. Had I ever grasped the tiller, 
 your taunt might have been just. I claim, at any 
 rate, to have maintained the inheritance of our 
 superiority, and to have handed it on to my son. He 
 was as much more capable than the deposed Charles 
 as I was more capable than the decapitated Louis. 
 
 Cham. You have omitted all mention, Mon- 
 seigneur, of one Louis who died with his head upon 
 his shoulders. 
 
 M 
 
i62 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Phil. Provence, indeed, deserved to carry it to his 
 grave: for it contained all the brains of the family. 
 Not that the addition of his two brothers' share 
 amounted to much: but it sufficed, as you say, to 
 keep his head on his shoulders, and not only that, 
 but to keep his body in France. The skull so ex- 
 ceptionally favoured in its contents has secured its 
 owner a mortuary residence in the family mansion 
 of St. Denis, which is better than furnished lodgings 
 at Goritz. 
 
 Cham. Or at Claremont. You seem to forget that 
 proof of the ability of your son. 
 
 Phil. No, Sire, I do not. He failed, and he fell : 
 but he fell by a single blunder and in a year of 
 Revolutions. An accident overthew, and an accident 
 might have saved, him. But nothing could have 
 saved the monarchy which preceded his. Its downfall 
 had been invited and insured by a long course of 
 stupid aristocratic and clerical tyranny — the tyranny 
 of a prince who had learnt nothing from the execu- 
 tion of a brother, and forgotten nothing in years of 
 exile, a prince impenetrable alike to the instructions 
 of life and the exhortations of death. For I have 
 heard that Louis Dixhuit, when his last hours were 
 approaching, summoned the Comte d'Artois to his 
 bedside, and, laying his hand upon your infant head, 
 adjured the future sovereign to "do nothing that 
 could endanger that child's inheritance." And I 
 have further heard that his worthy heir found no 
 
DE CHAMBORD AND "EGALITE." 163 
 
 more fitting comment to append to his subsequent 
 description of the scene than that the admonition of 
 his dying king and brother was "in bad taste"! 
 Such was the creature of convention, the thing of 
 courtly proprieties, to whom the fortunes of a great 
 empire were to be committed. 
 
 Cham. Enough, Monseigneur. He was my father's 
 father, and he reared me with more than a father's 
 tenderness. Whatever his failings as a ruler, I shall 
 ever revere his memory. 
 
 Phil. You are right to do so. He was a true 
 Bourbon of the elder branch. But have I said enough, 
 Sire, to justify my judgment on that incapable line } 
 Or shall I follow it to Spain, and from Spain to 
 Italy ? Does it retrieve its character, in that succes- 
 sion of trifler, debauchee, and cuckold which disgraced 
 the throne of Charles V., from Philip of Anjou to the 
 puppet of Godoy, and downward to Isabella of the 
 Holy Rose .' Or in those wretched offshoots from 
 a decrepit stock, the Parmesan dukelings, occupants 
 of a throne as rotten as their namesake cheeses I 
 Or in the Neapolitan Bomba, or in Francis the king 
 of a year, fit companion for the petty princes who, 
 at the first breath of the Revolution, came tumbling 
 so ridiculously out of their thrones from one end of 
 the peninsula to the other ? 
 
 Cham. I cannot defend the tyranny of Ferdinand ; 
 but he was a conscientious ruler, according to his 
 lights. To Francis no day of grace was allowed. 
 
i64 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 The last Duke of Parma was a kindly prince, under 
 whom the inhabitants of the duchy knew the taste of 
 contentment better than they have ever known it 
 under the rule of Piedmont. 
 
 Phil. It may be so ; and the fate of so insignifi- 
 cant a realm is of little interest. I did but instance 
 it to show how universal has been the repudiation of 
 Bourbon rule : great kingdoms and small alike will 
 none of it. And this to be said of a family sprung 
 from the greatest ruler of his age ! Come, Sire, con- 
 fess that I have justified my doubts. Acknowledge 
 that, if it be irreverent, it is also plausible to suspect 
 the Almighty of having settled the qualities of 
 Henri IV. on the wrong line, and that, instead of 
 providing for their descent to the eldest son of Louis 
 XIII. and his descendants, He permitted them to pass 
 entirely to the lineage of the youngest son. The 
 wisdom, the generosity, the energy, the courage, the 
 tolerance, the statesmanship, of Henri have never 
 been reproduced save in the princes of the House of 
 Orleans ; while the Bourbons of the reigning family 
 have inherited only the insatiable egotism, the vanity 
 and voluptuousness, the blind and narrow bigotry of 
 Louis Quatorze. 
 
 Cham. I listen to you, Monseigneur, without 
 resentment, and even with a kind of painful curiosity. 
 I am wondering whether the inheritance of your 
 descendants includes anything else besides those 
 family virtues which you review with such complacency. 
 
DE CHAMBORD AND " EGALITE." 165 
 
 Paris, as I have said, had engaging qualities. He 
 had a frank address, distinguished manners, con- 
 versational charm. Under the ordeal, for such it 
 must have been to any man of ordinary sensibility 
 — under the ordeal of his presentation to me at 
 Frohsdorf, he bore himself irreproachably. In point 
 alike of duteousness and dignity, of respect and self- 
 respect, I had to confess to myself that his demeanour 
 did him credit. Can it really be that beneath that 
 composed and courteous exterior he nourished the 
 tormenting envy, the famished ambition, the pas- 
 sionate scorn, which you would lead me to regard as 
 among the inseparable race-marks of the House of 
 Orleans ? 
 
 Phil. Such envy and such ambition, Sire, could 
 have found nothing to support them in the circum- 
 stances and prospects of the Comte de Paris. 
 As your Majesty's heir, he had no need to envy a 
 position to which he must ultimately succeed : and 
 an ambition which can feed itself upon the conscious- 
 ness of its certain fulfilment is not in danger of 
 becoming famished. As to scorn, . . . well, that 
 is another matter ; but I can scarcely suppose that a 
 man of so tolerant a temper as that of the Comte 
 de Paris would have indulged it to the extent of a 
 passion. 
 
 Cham. I am deeply indebted to him for his for- 
 bearance, and I appreciate, too, the nobility of a 
 mind which ceases to covet the possession or to 
 
i66 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 envy the possessor of what it is assured of acquiring. 
 My cousin's magnanimity becomes the more admirable 
 to me when I consider the conditions of its exercise. 
 He is as satisfied with the position of heir to ray 
 sovereignty as though I were the actual occupant of 
 a throne. One would think that I was de facto as 
 well as dejure King of France. 
 
 Phil. For any man of my great-grandson's ability 
 the succession to your titular rights is enough. He 
 will know how to wed the factum with the jus. 
 
 Cham. You think so, Monseigneur 1 and indis- 
 solubly } 
 
 Phil. Why not 1 
 
 Cham. For the best of reasons, though you, I 
 know, will smile at the mention of it. It is because 
 God has promised to those only whom Himself has 
 joined that no man shall put them asunder. 
 
 Phil. But He will have joined them. What else 
 is the meaning of Divine right \ 
 
 Cham. Alas ! Monseigneur ! I fear it is as much 
 beyond your comprehension as other things Divine. 
 I have already told you that your great-grandson is 
 not, according to the true and Heaven-sanctioned law 
 of royal succession, the rightful heir to the crown of 
 France. But even were that his status, it would not 
 give him leave to ascend the throne of St. Louis, 
 when and how, upon such conditions and with such 
 intentions, as he may choose. So only can his Divine 
 right be exercised as its Founder shall in His Divine 
 
DE CHAMBORD AND "EGALITE." 167 
 
 counsels have appointed ; and the counsels of Provi- 
 dence in that behalf are, I fear, but little likely to 
 square with the policy of a prince of the House of 
 Orleans. 
 
 Phil. We have never pretended, Sire, to be as 
 much in the secrets of the Eternal as our cousins of 
 the elder branch ; but I venture to believe that He 
 will permit His will to be declared to us by the 
 course of French politics. Nor, indeed, do I know by 
 what other means your Majesty proposes to discern 
 the operation of His counsels. If the present rulers 
 of France succeed in accomplishing the object on 
 which they seem to be so intently bent — that, I 
 mean, of disgusting their countrymen with themselves 
 and their works — and if a ministerial culbute and an 
 appeal to the people should result in a summons to 
 my descendant to ascend the vacant throne, why 
 may we not assume that it is Providence which has 
 put it into the heart of a French Government to put 
 it into the heart of France that she has had enough 
 of the Republic and would like to make trial of a 
 Monarchy once more "i Is it not, indeed, by this very 
 disposition of earthly events that their Divine Disposer 
 would in all likelihood have brought about, had He 
 ever seen fit to do so, your own Restoration 1 
 
 Cham. It may be so ; but on what different 
 conditions would the offer to me have been made } 
 Or rather, upon what different conditions must it 
 have been made ere I should have accepted it .' The 
 
i68 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 return of France to her earthly allegiance would then 
 have been stamped with the Divine approval in this — 
 that it would have signified and certified her renewal of 
 homage to her God. I leave it to you, Monseigneur, 
 to say whether a Restoration effected in the person 
 of the Comte de Paris would have any significance 
 of the kind. 
 
 Phil. I must beg your Majesty to be a little more 
 explicit. In what species of significance would it 
 have been wanting ? 
 
 Cham. In the highest and best ; in the only 
 valuable kind, in the one kind which would have 
 distinguished the miraculous conversion of a people 
 from the accidental bouleversement of a political 
 party. France under Henri V. would have been 
 France repentant, France clothed and in her right 
 mind, with the devil of atheism cast out of her. 
 But France under Louis Philippe II. 
 
 Phil. Philippe VII. if your Majesty pleases. 
 
 Cham. Ay .' Good ! it is a sign of grace at any 
 rate, the shame to which that choice of title testifies. 
 . . . France under Philippe VII. would still be the 
 France of the Revolution, still the blasphemous 
 scoffer of the Feast of Reason, still the rebel against 
 God and the declared enemy of His Holy Church. 
 
 Phil. I must demur to the last statement. Sire. 
 Paris is far too shrewd a politician not to come to 
 terms with the priests. 
 
 Cham. He would traffic with them, perhaps, as 
 
DE CHAMBORD AND "EGALITE." 169 
 
 the Corsican did, and add hypocrisy to impiety, with 
 the same worthless results. 
 
 Phil. He would be Gallican, of course, in his 
 leanings ; but I see no impiety in that. There is 
 nothing to show that the Almighty is Ultramontane. 
 
 Cham. What, again, would be the spirit of his 
 rule } Would not its inspiring principle be demo- 
 cratic as its origin ? Would it not be forced to live 
 upon the sufferance of a democracy, to subsist upon 
 perpetual concessions to those " modern ideas " with 
 which our late holy Father, Pius IX., in his ever- 
 memorable encyclical, forbade us to " make terms " .■' 
 
 Phil. It would, I apprehend, be a modern 
 monarchy, and my great-grandson is a man of his 
 time. I think I can resume the whole of your 
 objections to it in a single phrase. It would be a 
 monarchy of the tricolor and not of the fleur- 
 de-lis. 
 
 Cham. I knew it ; and I can see no virtue in a 
 Restoration which, instead of rallying the people to 
 the royal standard, compels the monarch to do 
 homage to the Revolutionary flag. 
 
 Phil. Your Majesty's preferences on that point 
 are well known. The invincible, the sacred scruple 
 — or what was supposed to be such — which prevented 
 you 
 
 Cham. What was supposed to be such .' I should 
 have thought, Monseigneur, that its sincerity was 
 sufficiently attested by the sacrifice which it compelled. 
 
170 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 What other motive could I have had for renouncing 
 my ancestral throne ? 
 
 Phil. Renouncing it, Sire ? By whom was it offered 
 to you ? 
 
 Cham. By my faithful adherents, speaking as they 
 declared, and as I firmly believed, in the name of 
 France. The nation, I am assured, would have 
 welcomed me as king in 1873. But even if resistance 
 awaited me, what but loyalty to my conscience could 
 have prevented me from striking a blow for my 
 rights .'' 
 
 Phil. Shall I tell your Majesty ? To do so I 
 must use a word which is strange to the ears of kings, 
 and which even their cousins — unless, like me, they 
 are made the mark of accursed calumny — were 
 seldom doomed to hear. You were afraid. 
 
 Cham. You he ! 
 
 Phil. Your own conscience flings you back the 
 word ! Henri, Comte de Chambord, king without a 
 crown, and pretender without a sword ! It was not 
 the voice of duty that held you motionless within 
 sight of the goal of your ambition ; it was the whisper 
 of fear ! Scruple was silent until the hour of action 
 struck. It was not till then that the world heard 
 first of the indispensable lilies, and of the white 
 plume — in English "plume" and "feather" are the 
 same — of Henri of Navarre. 
 
 Cham. You dare to 
 
 Phil. I dare to give voice to your own unspoken 
 
DE CHAMBORD AND "EGALITE." 171 
 
 thoughts. Again I say, your conscience is my 
 witness that I speak the truth. 
 
 Cham. May the tongue that has uttered so foul a 
 slander . . . But no, I dare not ! What if it be the 
 truth .' Thou, God, who readest hearts, interpret to 
 me my own ! My conscience — he said well — my 
 conscience — let me hear it, let me obey it . . . even 
 though it speak to me through those polluted 
 lips ! 
 
 Phil. Once more I repeat that. . . . He mutters 
 to himself ! The imbecile is praying ! Dieu de Dieu ! 
 That a head so fit for the biretta should have been 
 born to a crown ! 
 
VIII 
 
 PLATO AND LANDOR 
 
 Pla. Say no more, my friend. I have long forgiven 
 you the affront. 
 
 LAN. Forgiven me ! . . . Zounds ! I must correct 
 him in that. I will submit to no such indignity even 
 in Elysium. . . . You have misunderstood me, O 
 Plato. I asked no forgiveness for anything I have 
 written concerning you. What I have just said was 
 meant but to assure you that, poorly as I think of 
 your dialogues, I bear you no personal ill will. 
 
 Pla. I never provoked the ill will of any one ; and 
 as to my writings, I am indifferent to the opinion of 
 a barbarian. 
 
 LAN. That was well said, and I take no offence at 
 it. As a Greek, you would naturally despise my 
 judgment on such a matter ; and I, as an Englishman 
 should despise you if you pretended to defer to it. 
 I lived my whole life among men who were barbarians 
 to me, and I never stooped to solicit their suffrages. 
 
 Pla. Barbarians to you, a barbarian } You speak 
 in riddles. But stay ! I remember. I have heard 
 men talk of you as a Greek. 
 
 172 
 
PLATO AND LANDOR 173 
 
 LAN. " Born out of due time." An inapt expres- 
 sion, to my thinking, borrowed without much atten- 
 tion to propriety from St. Paul. 
 
 Pla. How is it inapt ? It seems to me appro- 
 priate. 
 
 Lan. The Greek spirit is immortal, and no man's 
 birth into its service can be an anachronism. A Greek 
 cannot be born out of due time ; but he can be born 
 devilishly out of due place, saving your presence : and 
 that was the case with me. 
 
 Pla. You seem, then, to be bringing a charge 
 against your country rather than your times. In 
 what respect, O exile from Hellas, were your 
 countrymen barbarians ? 
 
 Lan. Do not, I entreat you, indulge in satire. It 
 is the one form of intellectual energy to which your 
 genius seems to have been least adapted. Nothing, 
 as I have already told you, can be more frigid than 
 the raillery of your Dialogues. 
 
 Pla. Let me ask you, then, without satire, in what 
 respect were your countrymen more barbarian than 
 yourself t 
 
 Lan. In every element of distinction between 
 barbarism and culture. One-half of them were 
 Persians in everything but the taste for philosophy, 
 the other half Scythians in every habit but that of 
 nomadism. Pleasure was the sole pursuit of the one, 
 and pursuit the only pleasure of the other. 
 
 Pla. Surely, my friend, you are describing them 
 
174 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 — these last, at any rate — in the language of 
 metaphor. 
 
 LAN. Not at all, I assure you. The English 
 country gentleman does not dwell indeed, in a wheeled 
 house, or drink mare's milk ; but for the destruction 
 of life, or the endurance of fatigue, I would match 
 him against the toughest Scythian hunter that ever 
 cooled his dusty feet in the Tanais. 
 
 Pla. That your countrymen are of a more than 
 Persian luxury I can believe. I have heard as much, 
 indeed, in converse with those of them who have 
 most lately joined us. But they are no longer as 
 tasteless in their profusion as they were wont to be. 
 So, at least, I am informed. 
 
 LAN. Your witnesses must have been fortunate in 
 their experience, then, or you unfortunate in their 
 incompetence. My own inquiries confirm me in a 
 directly contrary belief. 
 
 Pla. Of whom, then, have you inquired ? I have 
 again and again been told that the literature of 
 Athens was never so assiduously studied, nor its 
 art so ardently beloved, as among your countrymen 
 to-day. 
 
 Lan. Pedants and dilettanti we had always with 
 us. We were never to seek in the learning of Greek 
 particles ; and as for our love of Greek art, we proved 
 it long ago by a sincerer flattery than even that of 
 imitation. 
 
 Pla. You mean by 
 
PLATO AND LANDOR 17 S 
 
 LAN. I mean by spoliation. Our passion for 
 Athenian marbles is, at any rate, indisputable. We 
 are collectors of them as Cacus was a collector of 
 oxen. But it is more than ninety years since we 
 did homage to Athene by pillaging the Parthenon, 
 and I may well ask for some newer examples of our 
 Hellenic enthusiasm. 
 
 Pla. You seem to be ill acquainted with the latest 
 changes which the manners of your country have 
 undergone. The language of Athens, they tell me, 
 is no longer the study of the scholar alone, nor the 
 monuments of ancient Greece his exclusive care. An 
 explorer of the vestiges of our earliest history is 
 greatly honoured by your whole people. Not only, 
 again, do they study the Athenian drama, but they 
 endeavour to represent it. Do you not know that 
 both the Agamemnon of ^schylus and the Ajax of 
 Sophocles have been brought by them upon the scene .' 
 
 LAN. I do not know it ; but I doubt whether yoii 
 can have heard of their last piece of masquerading in 
 this kind. You have ? Then what think you of it } 
 Aha ! You are confused. 
 
 Pla. I do not understand you. 
 
 Lan. I suspect you understand me but too readily! 
 Some years ago, my countrymen corrupted the 
 political education of their youth with a scenic re- 
 presentation of Homer. 
 
 Pla. Your merriment is incomprehensible to me. 
 I have nothing to unsay in my teachings. 
 
176 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 LAN. Of course not. What philosopher ever had .-' 
 
 Pla, I think the same of the poetic mythology as 
 I ever did ; but from all I can learn of this people 
 of yours it would be impossible for them to stray 
 further from the paths which I marked out in my 
 Politeia than they do at present. 
 
 LAN. There, by Jove, you are right. Gold, silver, 
 brass ; Rulers, Guardians, Producers, they have all 
 wandered pretty far a-field. But excuse me if I 
 decline a discussion on this subject. I have written 
 enough about it to offend you already. 
 
 Pla. Be it so. But whatever the vices of the 
 Homeric gods and heroes, you will admit, I suppose, 
 that those who represent their doings in the dramatic 
 form intend to do honour to Homer. Or shall we say 
 that . . . 
 
 LAN. No, let us not say so. I know what this 
 style portends, and I beg you will spare yourself the 
 trouble of these elaborate preparations. I am no 
 sophist to need all the dialectical bird-lime you are 
 for spreading in my path. On the contrary, I will 
 walk without ado into any trap you please to set 
 for me. 
 
 Pla. I say, then, that these barbarian choragi seem 
 to be seeking in quite a new fashion to do honour 
 to the poetry of Greece. Neither, as I hear, are they 
 pedants or triflers who distribute the parts and teach 
 the chorus at these shows. It is the pure charm of 
 Greek poetry which must have attracted them. 
 
PLATO AND LANDOR 177 
 
 Lax. Yes, or a sense of the picturesque in Greek 
 costume ; that seems to me motive enough from the 
 artistic point of view. But the women would take 
 care that that element of the matter was not neglected. 
 
 Pla. The women ? 
 
 LAN. Oh, I was forgetting ; you are, perhaps, 
 unprepared for such a scandal. The female parts in 
 these Homeric tableaux are usually performed by 
 women, the wives and daughters of the actors. . . . 
 Compose yourself; I will not pursue the painful 
 subject further. But you may now, perhaps, begin 
 to doubt whether the beauties which the performance 
 was designed to exhibit were those of Homer. 
 
 Pla. The chief beauty of Homer is undraped 
 simplicity. 
 
 Lan. So it is of the Homeric damsels, I am told, 
 at these representations. I can understand the 
 Hellenic enthusiasm of young and pretty women, and 
 their devotion to a cause in which a graceful figure 
 may be so effectively and liberally displayed. Upon 
 them, no doubt, the performance exercises a most 
 improving effect. The drama, however, is meant to 
 educate, not those who act in it, but those who 
 witness it. 
 
 Pla. And are not the benches crowded with 
 applauding spectators ? 
 
 Lan. What if they are .-' You know not the nation 
 of whom you are speaking ; or, rather, you are un- 
 aware that you are not now speaking of any "nation " 
 
178 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 at all: no more than I should speak of Poseidon if 
 I were to say Aphrodite. The ocean of our Demo- 
 cracy is unfathomed, and these idlers are but the 
 foam on its surface. 
 
 Pla. But are not the tastes of your wealthy and 
 cultivated citizens an index to the tendencies of the 
 whole people ? 
 
 LAN. For the sake of your illusions, I hope not ; 
 for if so, the tendency of the whole people is towards 
 a most contemptible levity. 
 
 Pla. Yet the studies of which we have been 
 speaking appear to me to be serious. 
 
 LAN. Serious studies may be pursued in a frivolous 
 spirit ; and they are so when they are taken up as 
 a mere relief from more honest and undisguised 
 frivolities. 
 
 Pla. And is it only thus that your wealthy citizens 
 are studying the poetry and drama of Greece } 
 
 Lan. The poetry and drama of Greece take their 
 turn in our world of fashion with the latest singer, 
 the latest traveller, the latest murderer ; and they 
 will be thrown aside in their turn for some newer 
 novelty of vacuous minds. 
 
 Pla. I am persuaded, my friend, that you think 
 too ill of your country and its manners. You judge 
 of it from your own remembrance of it alone. But 
 do you find no change for the better in those among 
 your countrymen who have the most lately joined 
 us here ? Do you not find them more studious 
 
PLATO AND LANDOR 179 
 
 of the things of the mind than they were wont 
 to be ? 
 
 Lan. Of what things of the mind ? Of those 
 which relate to science or to art ? If to science, 
 yes. But I thought we were speaking of art. 
 
 Pla. We are, and it was art I meant. 
 
 Lan. Then, no ; I cannot say so. I have found 
 it quite otherwise. 
 
 Pla. What ! Do they not send us more poets ? 
 Do they not send us more painters .-' 
 
 Lan. Ay, truly ; they send us any number — and 
 all of them immortal. It is true they are a little 
 difficult to distinguish from each other. The poets 
 seem to have written all their poems with a paint- 
 brush, and the painters were apparently unable to 
 complete their pictures without the pen. But what 
 has this to do with the things of the mind ? 
 
 Pla. Much, surely ; unless poetry and art among 
 you have ceased to be an exercise of the faculties 
 according to a law of right reason. Have they } 
 
 Lan. I would rather let the painters answer for 
 themselves. But as for the poets, I do not feel 
 justified in associating the name of reason with 
 many of their performances ; nor, exceptions ex- 
 cepted, can I even think of them in connection with 
 the idea of " law." 
 
 Pla. Do you mean that they reject the supreme 
 authority of reason as a guide and moderator in 
 their compositions ? 
 
i8o THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 LAN. I mean that they not only reject but insult 
 it. A poem by one of these poets is either a riot 
 of the imagination or a mutiny of the passions ; and 
 Reason would present herself there with as much 
 rashness as an unpopular magistrate at a tumult 
 among the cobblers. They would pelt her from the 
 scene with rotten adjectives. 
 
 Pla. You are, indeed, describing a lawless and 
 licentious class of men. 
 
 LAN. In matters of art they profess to be, as they 
 call it, a "law unto themselves:" a pretension than 
 which none could be more alien from the orderly 
 and reverent spirit of the Greek. 
 
 Pla. No, indeed. And yet your account of these 
 men surprises me ; for I had heard that the chief of 
 your surviving poets has rivalled the greatest of our 
 own poets in the tragic drama. 
 
 LAN. It is true, and of him I would fain say 
 nothing. I had his reverence, and he has my 
 admiration. However widely he may seem to have 
 departed of late, and in some of his compositions, 
 from the antique model, his genius will bring him 
 back again in the end. It is of others — others of 
 a newer and weaker school than he — that I have 
 been speaking. 
 
 Pla. Yet even these express reverence for Greek 
 art and for the Greek spirit, and, I doubt not, feel it. 
 LAN. It is impossible, O Plato, that you can have 
 met any of them, or you would never think so. 
 
PLATO AND LANDOR i8i 
 
 Pla. Nay, I have been in their company more 
 than once. 
 
 Lan. And failed to convict them of imposture ? 
 . . . Perhaps, then, it taas all Socrates. There may 
 be something in the Boswell theory of the Platonic 
 Dialogues after all. 
 
 Pla. I cannot hear what you are saying. 
 Lan. I was merely repeating to myself a passage 
 from one of the Homeric hymns. But let us return 
 to these friends of ours. I shall for ever remember 
 my first encounter with one of the tribe. Shall I 
 relate it to you ? 
 
 Pla. It would greatly interest me to hear it. 
 Lan. He had just landed at the wharf among a 
 boat-load of (apparently) his admirers. Dis and 
 Persephone ! What countenances ! Never can 
 Father Charon have ferried over so woe-begone a 
 crew. I felt sorry for the worthy old man, he 
 seemed so dispirited by his company. But the 
 passengers were nothing to their coruphaios. 
 Pla. What, then, was the aspect of the man .' 
 Lan. It would need the genius of an Aristophanes 
 and his vocabulary — to do justice to it. He was of 
 about the middle height, but reduced below it by a 
 stoop. The length of his hair might have proclaimed 
 him a Spartan, were it not that one saw he could 
 have come of no race which follows the practice 
 of exposing its sickly children. His visage was 
 long even to prolixity ; his mouth semihiant and 
 
i82 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 unalterably sad. He had the eyes of a dolphin and 
 the legs of a Strymonian crane. 
 
 Pla. Apotropaian Apollo! Avert the omen! 
 And you, my friend, refrain from unlucky words ! 
 What should this portent threaten .? 
 
 LAN. Nothing worse than tediousness ; reassure 
 yourself. I approached and greeted the new-comer, 
 mentipning to him my name. He said he had 
 passionately longed to see me; and he looked, 
 indeed, as if he had been passionately longing for 
 something. But he added that he was glad to see 
 me ; and he did not look as if he was glad of any- 
 thing. 
 
 Pla. What was the cause of his melancholy .' 
 
 Lan. He was lamenting that there should be no 
 better bread than can be made with wheat. Ah ! 
 I see you do not know them. These men, O Plato, 
 are perpetually bewailing the shortness of human 
 life, and saying unkind things about death ; protest- 
 ing against that cosmic sadness which they are 
 continually hugging to their hearts, and complaining 
 of the shortness of those pleasures which they seem 
 to enjoy like a stomach-ache. 
 
 Pla. This is a strange condition of mind which 
 you describe. Death, we know, is a terror to the 
 vulgar, and pleasures are unsatisfying to those who 
 pursue nothing else. But the wise man is above 
 both fear of the one and care for the other. 
 
 Lan. The wise man .'' Yes ; but no one ever 
 
PLATO AND LANDOR 183 
 
 thought that these men had any philosophy to 
 support them. But of what use to them is art — art 
 of which the end is joy ? These men to call them- 
 selves Greeks ! Is it Greek to be for ever pulling a 
 long face at Pan, and begging him to leave his piping 
 and answer riddles ? Is it Greek to have no sense 
 of a soul of immortal gladness in all things ? Greek, 
 to whine eternally over human destiny and clamour 
 fretfully to the Powers who have ordained it ? 
 
 Pla. These young men seem, indeed, to have little 
 reverence for the gods. 
 
 LAN. They reverence nothing. They have neither 
 that nor any other quality of those Greeks of whom 
 they prate. Their minds are — but why speak of 
 their minds ? Their art itself exposes them for 
 pretenders. For what were the chief virtues of the 
 art of Athens in its greatest period ? Were they not 
 simplicity, manliness, repose, reserve ? 
 
 Pla. You are right, my friend. I should so 
 enumerate them. 
 
 Lan. Then how stand the writings of our pseudo- 
 Hellenes as regards these qualities ? Let us have 
 done with their poetry. Do you know their prose ? 
 
 Pla. Nay, how should I know it .'' 
 
 Lan. How .' Did you not say that you had 
 conversed with some of these men .' 
 
 Pla. Yes. 
 
 Lan. Then you have heard their prose. You 
 cannot have escaped it. What did you think of it .■■ 
 
l84 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Pla. It certainly seemed to me to be wanting in 
 moderation. 
 
 LAN. Moderation ? Never in the history of 
 literature has there arisen so dissolute a prose. 
 Luxurious excess, a supra-feminine love of softness 
 and splendour, is its inseparable and predominant 
 mark. 
 
 Pla. They claim, however, to show taste and dis- 
 crimination in the adornment of their writings. 
 
 Lan. They do : and I allow their claim. But 
 what then .<• Having discovered new dyes, and 
 having acquired new cunning in the beautiful arrange- 
 ment of colours, they fail to see that an inordinate 
 passion for the kind of pleasure which such arrange- 
 ments give is in itself a sin against the continence of 
 Art. A Persian grandee was probably a beautiful 
 sight enough ; but if a satrap of Xerxes had apparelled 
 himself as these men bedizen their prose, the king 
 would have beheaded him for his effeminacy. 
 
 Pla. You easily dispose, then, of their claim to 
 one of the virtues you have mentioned. They are 
 wanting in manliness. 
 
 Lan. They are ; and in the simplicity which is 
 seldom found apart from it. As for repose, how in 
 the world can a man remain at rest who is for ever 
 longing to draw attention to the grace of his attitude 
 or the lace of his tunic .? 
 
 Pla. There is still the virtue of reserve. 
 
 Lan. Reserve is restraint, and restraint is painful 
 
PLATO AND LANDOR 185 
 
 id pain is intolerable to the self-indulgent. When 
 id one of these men ever deny his senses the 
 ieasure of a glowing epithet, however more 
 jpropriate would have been a colourless and neutral 
 ord ? 
 
 Pla. I cannot, indeed, approve of their manner of 
 iscoursing either upon the painter's or upon the 
 :ulptor's art. 
 
 Lan. Men cannot discourse fitly upon one matter 
 hen they are thinking of another ; and these 
 len compose their dissertations not so much to set 
 )rth their subject as to display themselves. But it 
 1 not from vanity alone that they neglect to casti- 
 ate their style. An over-coloured diction is the 
 atural product of a too sensuous imagery, and with 
 lis they indulge themselves rather for their own 
 ratification than for that of their readers. 
 
 Pla. But do they not understand that in this 
 Ieasure, as in all others, they should observe a rule 
 f temperance } 
 
 Lan. No doubt they do, like all other voluptuaries ; 
 ut they are the least fitted of all men, both in 
 pirit and in training, to resist this species of tempta- 
 on. They may fancy themselves Greeks to their 
 earts' content ; but in truth they can trace no 
 escent from classical antiquity at all. They are the 
 ite-born children of the Renascence, and their only 
 sal affinities are with the thoughts, the passions, 
 nd the foibles of that unreposeful time. Whatever 
 
i86 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 sincerity there is in them displays itself only in their 
 sympathy with its art, its poetry, its ideas. Their 
 Hellenism is a sham product, redolent of that modern 
 and modish suburb in which most of its festivals are 
 held. 
 
 Pla. But was there not formerly among you a 
 more sincere culture study of the poetic models of 
 my language ? I have heard your countrymen speak 
 of certain older poems inscribed Hellenica. 
 
 LAN. Indeed ? Then they are better known in 
 the nether world than upon earth. And what, O 
 Plato, was the report of them .'' 
 
 Pla. That life alone was wanting to their beauty ; 
 but that, lacking life, they could not without a 
 paradox be credited with the promise of immortality. 
 
 LAN. I need not ask you who said that. I could 
 trace the vapid epigram to a hundred flippant 
 tongues. I doubt not that there were coxcombs 
 who pointed the same dull jest at the Zeus of 
 Phidias. None are so ready to award or deny the 
 palm of immortality to others as those whose wits 
 have rotted before their death. And, pray, what 
 more did they say of me .' 
 
 Pla. Of you, my friend ? Was it you, then, who 
 composed the poems of which I spoke? Had I 
 known it, I would have gone more circumspectly. 
 The writings of poets are like children, whose un- 
 comely features are not to be spoken of but with 
 reserve to their parents. 
 
PLATO AND LANDOR 187 
 
 LAN. The simulation of ignorance as a cloak for 
 suit is a modern refinement of malice, and I would 
 ver impute it to the courtesy of a Greek, and still 
 s to the gravity of a philosopher. The poems of 
 lich you spoke, O Plato, were my own. They 
 ly well have been unworthy of your approbation, 
 t, believe me, they were far less so than their 
 isors. 
 
 Pla. You are acquainted, then, it seems, with 
 )se who condemned your poems. 
 LAN. Intimately. Their names were Envy, Igno- 
 ice, and Vulgarity, three closely allied enemies of 
 :ry worthy work and workman in art or letters ; 
 d in a semi-barbarous society like that of England 
 other voices are drowned by theirs. I was well 
 
 are that in my own lifetime But why pursue 
 
 s subject .'' It is repugnant to me to speak of my- 
 f and of my labours ; and especially so when speech 
 ly be mistaken for protest against a judgment 
 ich I never recognised, and appeal from a tribunal 
 'ore which I refused to plead. Let us rather 
 ;ak of the writings of my successors, and of those 
 ong them — for there are some such, I admit — 
 o have striven to preach the Hellenic worship of 
 ■fection to the benighted Scythians and Persians 
 my rudely luxurious land. 
 
 ?LA. Have there, then, been other Hellenica pro- 
 :ed among you 1 
 Lan. Your question proves to me, O Plato, that 
 
i88 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 you mistook the purpose of my poems, and lent, 
 perhaps, too ready an ear on that account to the 
 fribbles who condemned them. A direct and avowed 
 imitation of Greek models in a modern tongue can 
 never be more than an elegant exercise of ingenuity. 
 As such, it may succeed or fail. It may simulate 
 life with more or less of cunning — though it will 
 always seem inanimate to those who must be bawled 
 at before they hear, and pummelled to make them 
 feel. It may catch the happy union of the beautiful 
 with the chaste— though its purity will always seem 
 insipid to those who find in the raddled cheek of 
 the courtesan their only ideal of beauty. But it can 
 never live with the life or thrill with the passion of 
 the present ; and it is not by such exercises of the 
 literary handicraft that the example of Hellas can 
 be made helpful and inspiring to a modern literature. 
 
 Pla. How, then, would you call it to your aid ? 
 
 LAN. A certain priest of our religion has told us 
 that the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. It 
 is by informing the ideas, the imagery, the expres- 
 sion of the moderns with the Hellenic spirit ; it is 
 by cultivating the Hellenic passion for symmetry and 
 balance, the Hellenic pride in continence and self- 
 restraint, the Hellenic delight in pure beauty of 
 form, and the Hellenic contempt for the glare of 
 colour, that the elevation of our literature is to be 
 compassed ; and there was one in pre-eminence by 
 whom this excellent work has been greatly advanced. 
 
PLATO AND LANDOR 189 
 
 Pla. In poetry, or in what other species of 
 uposition ? 
 
 LAN. In poetry for the most part, though he has 
 deavoured with less success to inculcate in his 
 Dse the precepts which he practises in verse. Has 
 y one ever spoken to you of the Strayed Reveller 
 
 of Empedocles on Etna ? 
 
 Pla. I do not recall those titles ; but I have 
 ard many such as a prelude to recitations, together 
 th others far less familiar to me as a Greek than 
 ; name of the Sicilian philosopher. I am indebted, 
 leed, to your poets for having enabled me to make 
 i acquaintance of not a few personages famous, it 
 )uld seem, among the men of your own day, but 
 mpletely unknown in mine. 
 
 LAN. The poet, however, whom I am praising was 
 >t one of those who seek to gain a character for 
 iidition by the choice of obscure subjects. He was 
 dowed, moreover, with that saving gift of humour 
 lich, though it does not indeed save men from 
 nity, yet insures them against its more ridiculous 
 :cesses. 
 
 Pla. But are not these poems of your country- 
 :n direct imitations of Hellenic models .' The 
 le of one of them would lead me to suppose so, 
 d did you not just now speak of such compositions 
 
 profitless exercises of the ingenuity .'' 
 
 LAN. They are not, however, of that description. 
 
 2ither in scheme nor treatment can they be traced 
 
I90 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 to any antique original. For their subject and their 
 scene alone is their author a borrower from the 
 legend or the history of your race ; since the spirit 
 which pervades them is not among those possessions 
 of mankind which can be lent or borrowed. It 
 must be imbibed as of native right, or as the 
 privilege of the naturalised ; and to those only is it 
 vivifying to whom the grace of Apollo has granted 
 the spiritual franchise of your soil. There is no 
 " borrowing of the Greek spirit," as some men 
 loosely phrase it, for any but these adoptive sons of 
 Hellas. As well might one believe that the inspira- 
 tion of Castaly could have been brought down to 
 the dwellers at the foot of Parnassus by any one 
 who chose to dip an amphora in the chance- 
 discovered spring. For those alone were its waters 
 magical whom the god had guided thither up the 
 devious mountain-paths and through the bhnding 
 thickets to bend knees of reverence upon its marge 
 and to touch its sacred surface with prayerful lips. 
 
 Pla. Has the poet of whom you speak been 
 indeed so highly favoured i Does he really sing as 
 one who has drunk of the fountain of the Muses > 
 
 LAN. His poetry is instinct with the grace and 
 soothes us with the repose of your most perfect art ; 
 and though in form it is chastened to the utmost 
 severity of the statuesque, there can be few — and I 
 should despise them — who have ever found it cold. 
 
 Pla. By Zeus, my friend, it would almost seem 
 
PLATO AND LANDOR 191 
 
 if the poets of Hellas might well have gone to 
 lool to the barbarians whom you thus extol. 
 LAN. You are again, O Plato, unhappy in your 
 my. The Greek of antiquity has mastered the 
 :ret of perfection in literary form ; and in one 
 partment of thought — the philosophic — we can add 
 tie or nothing to the work which he has accom- 
 ished. But in all else— in the interpretation of 
 iman affairs, in the ordering and elucidation of the 
 ;ts of nature, and in the deeper analysis of hu'nan 
 eling — the cultivated modern might, indeed, throw 
 len a school to receive him. I would have you to 
 low that in these things the most learned and 
 ghest endowed Greek of antiquity would be a child 
 
 our hands. 
 
 Pla. I cannot restrain my surprise, that a race 
 
 10m you only lately pronounced to be barbarians 
 
 ould produce such a paragon of taste and culture. 
 
 ow comes it that he has not Hellenised his coun- 
 
 ^men ? or has he been so satisfied with the con- 
 
 mplation of his own excellences as never to have 
 
 tempted it .' 
 
 LAN. As a teacher I own he has been less success- 
 
 l. The qualities in which he shone as a poet 
 
 ipeared somewhat to fail him when he descended 
 
 or ascended, one would say with more propriety — 
 
 )m practice to precept. 
 
 Pla. I am now, my friend, in very truth perplexed. 
 
 is, indeed, incomprehensible to me that one of those 
 
192 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 to whom you have bidden me go to school should 
 lack the aptitude for teaching. Such a misfortune 
 as that can rarely have befallen so highly qualified 
 an instructor. 
 
 LAN. The hit is a fair one ; and I allow that there 
 was some want of prudence in my mode of meeting 
 your challenge, or at least in the particular form of 
 words in which I accepted it. But you do not need 
 to be told, of course, that the most accomplished of 
 artists is not always the ablest of teachers ; and the 
 most classic of our poets assuredly gives testimony 
 to that truth. 
 
 Pla. Wherein, then, does he fail as a teacher ? 
 
 LAN. I cannot better answer that question than 
 by recalling your admired reply to the censure of 
 Diogenes. Stamping rudely upon the carpet of 
 Eastern fabric with which the floor of your abode 
 was covered, "Thus," cried the Cynic, "do I tread 
 upon your pride, O Plato." " And with greater pride, 
 O Diogenes ! " was your just and dignified retort. 
 In pronouncing judgment upon the faults of his 
 countrymen, our apostle of culture has too often 
 merited a like rebuke. In his descriptions of him- 
 self as a modest seeker after truth, there is something 
 too much of the pride that apes humility. He praises 
 the noble naivete of the " grand manner " in language 
 which seems a little too conscious of its own elegance ; 
 and he preaches simplicity in a style which is by no 
 means free from affectation. That grace of the nude 
 
PLATO AND LANDOR 193 
 
 vhich distinguishes his imaginative work gives place 
 n his criticism to a picturesque, but too minutely 
 studied, arrangement of drapery ; and while his 
 poetry has always affected me with the charm of 
 Dure English, I often find it hard to tolerate the 
 Gallicisms of his prose. 
 
 Pla. I hope, however, that these defects are not 
 serious enough to reduce him even as a prose-writer 
 to the level of those whom you have been describing. 
 So great an inferiority to himself as a poet would 
 make one doubt whether he had really drunk of the 
 sacred spring. 
 
 LAN. If that is your only doubt, you may dismiss 
 it. Compared with the posture-makers of whom I 
 have spoken, his worst affectations are simplicity 
 itself. He has, as I have assured you, the root of 
 the matter. His Hellenism is a living reality ; theirs, 
 I repeat, is a sham. 
 
 Pla. Why, then, is its falsity not detected .'' Have 
 ^ou no recognised standard of excellence, no immut- 
 able tests of truth in the poet's work, and in all other 
 fcvork ? 
 
 LAN. No ; we have neither these nor the desire for 
 them, nor the belief in them. You called me a bar- 
 barian just now, and I applauded you. Do not 
 imagine from that that I take the Athenian at his 
 Dwn valuation ; it is the calm assurance of its 
 iccuracy, the haughty confidence of Athens in the 
 ibsolute perfection of her models, in the eternal 
 
 O 
 
194 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 sufficiency of her standards, which I admire. Given 
 that confidence, she needed only to place her models 
 and standards under the charge of faithful custodians 
 who protected the one from mutilation and the other 
 from debasement. 
 
 Pla. There, my friend, you are in error. We had 
 no such officers at Athens. The models and standards 
 of which you speak were guarded, even as they 
 were approved and adjusted, by the citizens them- 
 selves. 
 
 Lan. And they, O Plato, were the custodians of 
 whom I spoke. In a small community, favoured alike 
 by nature and institutions, it might well be so. The 
 climate of Attica gave brightness to the mind of the 
 Athenian ; his polity provided him with education, 
 his slaves with leisure. It is little wonder and no 
 mighty credit to him that he should have duly 
 profited by such a concourse of advantages. He did 
 so profit by it, and the invisible canon of excellence 
 in art and letters, found, therefore, as safe a de- 
 pository in the bosom of the citizen as the legal 
 standards of weight in the coffers of the Acropolis. 
 But if the State at large was your tribunal of 
 experts, so much the better for you. At any rate, 
 you let none but the properly qualified ascend the 
 judgment-seat, and the barbarian in mind, if not 
 content with a place on the benches, would have 
 struggled with the ushers in vain. 
 
 Pla. You surprise me. In what other art or 
 
' PLATO AND LANDOR 
 
 195 
 
 handicraft among your people does the worker sub- 
 mit himself to the judgment of the ignorant ? 
 
 Lax. In what art or handicraft does he not ? In 
 the greatest of all arts he certainly does. In politics 
 we have long since shaken off the tyranny of com- 
 petence, and to-day in my country any man is a 
 political expert who has clergy enough to make a 
 cross on a ballot-paper. 
 
 Pla. How, then, does your State subsist .'' 
 
 LAN. By the grace of the gods. The English 
 democracy is the most remarkable in the world. It 
 is at once the strongest and the weakest, the fiercest 
 and the tamest, the least instructed in the learning 
 of books and the most highly trained in the discipline 
 of life. None was ever so studious of liberty yet so 
 submissive to control ; none so angrily intolerant 
 of remediable hardships and yet so sanely and 
 so nobly patient under those which nature has 
 imposed. 
 
 Pla. To what is this happy balance of their 
 tendencies to be referred ? 
 
 LAN. I know not. I know only that it exists, 
 and that the unbroken tranquillity of our countrj' 
 attests it. The subversive impulses of this people 
 are the superficial ones : their conservative instincts 
 lie deeper ; but we know that they must be there. 
 Westward through the Hellespont, and eastward 
 through the Pillars of Heracles, the surface-currents 
 both from the Euxine and from the Atlantic pour 
 
196 THE NEW LUCIAN ^ 
 
 perpetually into the Midland Sea ; but the waters of 
 its basin keep their bounds, and they must needs, 
 therefore, be depleted, through one channel or the 
 other, by the back-set of some deeper-flowing stream. 
 Even so is it with the democracy of England. It is 
 for ever being fed full through the twofold inlet of 
 Teaching and Circumstance ; yet the shores of our 
 society remain unwasted, and the rocks of our Con- 
 stitution still lift their heads above the waves. 
 
 Pla. Among such a people there must be some 
 inbred principle of obedience, and it should be easy 
 to educate them to perceive what is beautiful as well 
 as what is just. 
 
 LAN. The fault is not in the nation, but in its 
 circumstances. It is as docile in its tastes as in its 
 politics, but there are none to direct it in either. 
 Wealth and luxury have debauched one set of guides, 
 as faction and ambition have corrupted the other. 
 
 Pla. Whom, then, do you call their guides in 
 matters concerning the Beautiful .? 
 
 LAN. The rich, the highly placed, and the leisured 
 among their fellow-citizens. 
 
 Pla. But do not these require teaching themselves 
 in order to know what to study and admire .'' 
 
 LAN. They do, and they are unteachable : there is 
 the whole mischief 
 
 Pla. To the former, the wealthy class, you surely 
 do injustice. Their very willingness to be led in 
 this matter of Hellenic studies is a proof that you 
 
PLATO AND LANDOR 197 
 
 do. To show such willingness is to have already 
 gone half-way towards perception of the Beautiful. 
 
 Lan. Let us join them, O Plato, in devoting Ajax 
 the son of Telamon to the Eumenides. For no man 
 ever destroyed so many potential percipients of the 
 Beautiful in a single day. 
 
 Pla. Among the Trojans ? 
 
 Lan. No, among the sheep, who surpass all other 
 animals in willingness to be led. If docility to 
 guidance is to serve for an augury of future taste, it 
 must at least be intelligent. A blind and blatant 
 scurrying in one another's footsteps gives no more 
 promise of capacity in the human than in the ovine 
 species ; and I deem it no matter of boasting for the 
 silly troop that they have been started by the chatter 
 of some coxcomb, instead of by the jingling of a 
 wether's bell. 
 
 Pla. But if, then, my friend, you find your country- 
 men so unteachable in the humane life, would it not 
 be better to abandon the attempt ? Other nations 
 will be found to hand on the torch of Hellas, if 
 yours should lose the honour of the office. 
 
 Lan. Yet it is this office before all others which I 
 have coveted for her ; it is for a service such as this that 
 I would have her remembered by the future world. 
 
 Pla. It is not in the power of all nations to 
 preserve their memory among those that come after 
 them. Many great empires have passed away from 
 the earth without leaving any trace behind. 
 
198 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 LAN. So will not ours. Most widely, O Plato, 
 have you missed my meaning ; except for courtesy, I 
 should smile at your mistake. The name and the 
 works of England will endure as long as those of 
 Hellas and of the conqueror of Hellas, whom, with 
 no unwarranted self-praise, we boast ourselves to 
 resemble. England has given laws to a dominion 
 wider even than that of Rome, and has spread her 
 language and her customs among milHons over whom 
 the Roman eagles never soared. She has "imposed 
 the wont of peace " upon I know not how many 
 savage or divided races, and its arts and virtues have 
 sprung up in a hundred regions heretofore unfriendly 
 to them, under the shadow of her shield. 
 
 Pla. Why, then, are you not content with these 
 titles to the remembrance of mankind .■" 
 
 LAN. Because they are too splendid for any nation 
 to remain content with. Achievements as great as 
 ours have never failed to leave behind them aspira- 
 tions vaster than themselves. Those who have 
 surpassed the work of the Roman may well be fired 
 with the ambition to rival that of the Greek. More- 
 over, you should remember, O Plato, that in pro- 
 portion to our control over the destinies of mankind, 
 is our debt to the human mind and soul. At present, 
 however, we are in no way to discharge it. I own, 
 indeed, that when I measure in imagination the span 
 of our conquests, I am unable to rejoice over the 
 wealth of outward prosperity which they have 
 
PLATO AND LANDOR 199 
 
 conferred ; for I can think only of their tremendous 
 deductions from the aggregate of inward happiness 
 throughout the world. 
 
 Pla. Deductions ! You surely can only mean 
 that they have not increased it. 
 
 LAN. Not so; they have diminished it. Wheresoever 
 in the world a people has passed under the sway of 
 England, their lives, in becoming more abundant, 
 have ceased to satisfy their ideals. We have broken 
 in upon the secular calm of ancient and outworn 
 civilisations, and over minds which once reposed in 
 a passive and incurious contentment we have cast 
 the spell of our own unsatisfied longings. The 
 savage whom we tame unlearns his simple delight 
 in Nature, and gains access only to our coarser and 
 viler pleasures in its stead. We have peopled one 
 whole continent with our lank-jawed kinsmen, and 
 fringed another with the careworn faces of our sons. 
 A full half of the globe's surface is given over to 
 the melancholy Englishman— with his sombre attire, 
 his repellent manners, his gloomy worship, his 
 mechanic habitudes of toil. The human instinct of 
 self-preservation will not long tolerate such a 
 dominion as this ; the human yearning after gladness 
 will rise up in rebellion against it, and we are bound 
 therefore in common prudence to seek the Hellenic 
 spirit and ensue it, reverently striving, if haply it 
 may admit us to its inspiring visions of the beautiful, 
 and yield up to us the secret of its immortal joy. 
 
IX 
 
 PETER THE GREAT AND 
 ALEXANDER II 
 
 Pet. Ho ! Old Charon ! Whom, in the name of 
 the Furies, bringst thou hither ? What woe-begone 
 and terror-stricken wretch wouldst thou pass off upon 
 me for kin of mine ? This the blood of the Roman- 
 offs ! , . . Come, speak thou! Speak for thyself! 
 What is thy name ? 
 
 Alex. Alexander Nicolaevitch. 
 
 Pet. By Peter and Paul, it is he! The son of 
 Nicolas Paulovitch — that right strong Czar and 
 proper man. What a branch from such a tree! 
 Hum ! . . . I doubt ... I doubt. Tell me, thou, 
 for I have forgotten, Who was thy mother .■' 
 
 Alex. The Princess Charlotte of Hohenzollern. 
 
 Pet. Ha ! I know nothing against her — nothing. 
 Yet I would to God I did. It should be the son of 
 some silken chamberlain who comes thus trembling 
 to the Shades. Have the Czars of Russia indeed 
 grown such cowards in the face of death ? 
 
 Alex. No, No ! . . . your pardon ... it is not 
 death . . . not death itself . . . but . . . but . . . the 
 
PETER AND ALEXANDER 201 
 
 manner of it ... So swift, so strange, so terrible ! 
 Have you not heard, my father } 
 
 Pet. Heard ! Not I. It is long since I have 
 sought reports from Russia. They enrage me too 
 much. But one told me yesterday thou wast coming 
 hither, and I came to meet thee. 
 
 Alex. Yesterday ! yesterday ! . . . But it was to- 
 day, this very day that they — that I . . . From 
 whom did you hear this > 
 
 Pet. From one Solovieff, a fellow-countryman of 
 ours. 
 
 Alex. Solovieff! the man I sent before me, two 
 years ago. And /le knew — -/le knew what my accursed 
 police on earth were too blind or slothful to discover. 
 
 Pet. Oh, the fellow wants not for news. Fresh 
 batches of friends from the upper world appear to 
 join him every day. They come by boat-loads at a 
 time. 
 
 Alex. Nihihsts and suspects of Nihilism ! The 
 shipments of Drenteln and Melikoff . . . And to 
 think that with all this they could not save my 
 life! 
 
 Pet. Speak out, mutterer, in the name of all the 
 devils ! What was this swift, and strange, and terrible 
 death of thine ? 
 
 Alex. I was cut off in a moment, and by violence. 
 
 Pet. Hum I ha ! an assassination . . . Swift enough, 
 I doubt not : but — strange you call it ? Then times 
 must have changed in Russia, or else the customs of 
 
202 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 our imperial house. The death thou makest all this 
 coil about was good enough for thy grandfather, and 
 for his father, Peter III. But tell me, what brought 
 thee to the scarf.' 
 
 Alex. To the scarf.? Nay, sir, you are indeed at 
 fault. The Czars of these days die not by the scarf, 
 but by the bombshell. 
 
 Pet. The bombshell ! Thy death, then, was in 
 battle .' Holy St. Vladimir ! that a Czar of Russia 
 should find aught of " strange " or " terrible " in such 
 a fate ! How will my great enemy the Swedish king, 
 he who himself so fell at Friedrichshall, deride me ! 
 A Czar, and afraid to 
 
 Alex. Indeed, sir, your reproaches are unjust. 
 Mine was no death in battle. I fell by the hand of 
 the assassin in the streets of Petersburg. 
 
 Pet. What ! Outside the palace ! Conspiracy 
 grows bold indeed. Who, pray, were the plotters t — 
 Orloffs 1 Galitzins ? Dolgoroukis ? let me hear their 
 names. Was thy son among them ? Had the 
 Czarovitch a hand in it .'' Nay, I'll warrant he had. 
 Ah ! fool, fool ! A Czar who watches not his son 
 deserves his death. 
 
 Alex. You wrong the son no less than the father, 
 and as to our nobles, their plots are no longer those 
 of the palace. 
 
 Pet. What! Neither Czarovitch nor Grand Duke 
 nor noble at the bottom of such a deed as this ? 
 Now the saints grant me patience! Thou wilt not 
 
PETER AND ALEXANDER 203 
 
 tell me that a Czar of All the Russias has been slain 
 by a nobody. 
 
 Alex. Alas ! my father, I would it were so. Better 
 so than that the name of our enemy should be 
 Everybody, and Everywhere his abode. 
 
 Pet. Thy talk is strange, Alexander Nicolaevitch 
 ... I would hear more of this tremendous foe of 
 thine. 
 
 Alex. I know not that there is more to say. It 
 is all that my police could ever succeed in finding 
 out. My secret enemy was everywhere — from the 
 capital of my empire to its remotest confines. No 
 place was so near but that he dared to risk himself 
 in it ; no spot so distant but that he hoped to reach 
 me from it. In the ante-chamber of the courtier, in 
 the hut of the peasant, in the barrack-room of the 
 soldier, in the study of the professor, nay, upon the 
 judgment-seat of the judge, was my enemy to be 
 found. 
 
 Pet. Stay! Is this the new madness that I have 
 heard of now and again from those few with whom 
 I have had the patience to talk of Russia ? Is it . . . 
 is it . . . how call they the frenzy ? Is it Nihilism .-* 
 
 Alex. Even so, my father. It is indeed that 
 fearful scourge of our race and nation whereof you 
 have heard. It was by Nihilists that I was slain. 
 
 Pet. Then, by God, thou art rightly served ; and 
 the fellows did well to blow thee out of the world to 
 make room for a better. 
 
2Q4 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Alex. Rightly served ! 
 
 Pet. Ay ! for the craze is ten years old at the least, 
 and a Czar who cannot teach or unteach his people 
 what he wills in that time, had best hand the crown 
 over to another and go a-hunting. 
 
 Alex. I strove, my father, God knows with what 
 patience, to purge my people of the poison. 
 
 Pet. To purge them ! to purge them ! Ay, that 
 is easily said ; and any quack understands how to 
 do it — -after his fashion. But what purges didst thou 
 use.'' The leaden boluses, I will engage. Thou 
 gavest the poor devils a war. It was thy great- 
 grandmother's recipe, and may serve well enough for 
 some kinds of inflammation, but not this, I doubt, 
 not this. 
 
 Alex. Sir, we are not so un-Christian in these 
 latter days as to make war abroad for reasons of 
 state at home. But . . . but ... it did so befall 
 that a war broke out. Divine Providence ordained 
 that a righteous quarrel should arise between our- 
 selves as the protector of the Holy Church and the 
 Ottoman Porte. 
 
 Pet. Divine Providence befriended Catherine the 
 Great in the same manner ; and rewarded her for her 
 instant obedience to the heavenly summons with the 
 gift of the Crimea. What did you get for your 
 championship of the sacred cause .' 
 
 Alex. Eastern Bessarabia and a strip of Armenia^ 
 
 Pet. Ha ! Is that all ? Either the Czars, then^ 
 
PETER AND ALEXANDER 205 
 
 are less strenuous servants of God than they were 
 wont to be, or the service itself is a worse one. But 
 what of your people at home ? Did the blood-letting 
 pacify them ? 
 
 Alex. Alas ! no, sir. The fever of disaffection 
 became more acute than ever. 
 
 Pet. Did I not tell thee that I doubted the treat- 
 ment .'' But to give it a chance it must be used as 
 thoroughly as Catherine used it. Didst thou take 
 too little blood from the patient, peradventure .'' 
 
 Alex. My father, it was poured out like water, 
 both on the passes of the Balkans and on the slopes 
 of Plevna. Three times did my brother Nicholas 
 hurl the masses of our soldiery against the Turkish 
 intrenchments upon those fatal heights ; and twice 
 did the fierce fanatics of Osman sweep them back 
 again with the hailstorm of their rifle-bullets. 
 
 Pet. Hum ! It sounds like bad generalship, if it 
 was good surgery. But even this, thou sayest, failed 
 to give thee a contented people. I do not greatly 
 wonder at it, after all. 
 
 Alex. There are even those who tell me that the 
 war which we waged against Turkey was actually 
 the means of embittering the discontent of our people. 
 In that province of Bulgaria which we went to hberate 
 from Turkish rule, our soldiers found a peasantry 
 living in far greater comfort than the moujiks whom 
 they had left behind them. The agents of Nihilism 
 in our army were not slow to turn this discovery to 
 
2o6 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 account on their return home ; and, spreading the 
 story everywhere among the struggling inhabitants 
 of our village communes, they prepared the ground 
 but too effectually for their pernicious teachings. 
 
 Pet. The more fools thou and thy counsellors for 
 having given them such a text. Wjis there none 
 among you with brains enough to foresee the risk ? 
 
 Alex. I was deceived as to the state of the 
 Bulgarian, and as to the mind of the Russian 
 people. 
 
 Pet. a Czar of Russia who is capable of being 
 deceived in such a matter as the last, is incapable 
 of rule. 
 
 Alex. You judge me too severely, my father. I 
 was dependent on those about me, and they led me 
 astray. 
 
 Pet. Dependent ! and led astray ! Is it a child in 
 leading-strings that I see before me ? Didst thou 
 think that God gave thee thy empire — my empire — 
 to portion out among a pack of ignorant bailiffs like 
 the lands of a bankrupt boyard > It was for thee to 
 govern, for thee to watch ; and for eveiy hour thou 
 didst spend in sleep, for every day that thou didst 
 give to idleness the while thy people were murmur- 
 ing in unnoticed discontent, be well assured, Alexander 
 Nicolaevitch, that thou wilt have to render an account. 
 
 Alex. I shall not fear, sir, to meet my audit. 
 God knows how few have been my days of idleness 
 from the hour when my father died ; and as for sleep. 
 
PETER AND ALEXANDER 207 
 
 conspiracy, which slept not itself, took care that I 
 should not have too much of that. 
 
 Pet. Then, why the devil didst thou make so poor 
 a use of thy waking hours .'' Thou wilt not tell me 
 that a whole people can go mad before their ruler 
 knows it, unless he is either sot or slumberer, blind 
 or moonstruck. 
 
 Alex. My labours and sacrifices for my people 
 attest my care for their welfare. You cannot have 
 forgotten, sir, the great work by which my name will 
 ever be remembered. Or has it never reached you 
 in the Shades ? 
 
 Pet. What great work, in the name of all that is 
 wonderful ? It will go hard with it to be a greater 
 work than has been wrought upon thee by thy 
 enemies. 
 
 Alex. I liberated the serfs ! O my father, and 
 father of thy people, as to this day they name thee 
 with blessings even in the poorest hovels of the 
 Russian peasantry ! I liberated the serfs. 
 
 Pet. I know it! I know it! Saints in heaven, 
 man, dost think I am ignorant of that ? But what 
 of it .'' Didst thou do no more than free them from 
 their lords ? 
 
 Alex. No more, sir ! Nay, what more should 
 
 Pet. Didst thou fill their pockets with money .-' 
 Didst thou burn down the vodki-shops ? Didst thou 
 hang the money-lenders ? For every one of these 
 things was necessary, as thou shouldst have known. 
 
2o8 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Alex. I set free their hands to work for them- 
 selves, and I secured to them the fruits of their 
 labour. What more should I have done } 
 
 Pet. Thou shouldst have set free their souls, 
 Alexander Nicolaevitch ; and until that emancipation 
 was accomplished thou wast only handing them 
 from one master to another. 
 
 Alex. But how, sir, can the virtues of freedom be 
 ever taught to the slave .'' 
 
 Pet. Thou hast the cant of thy times at thy 
 tongue's end, I see. . . . How ? Why, by holding 
 out freedom to them as their reward. Lads are not 
 taught to ride by clapping them upon unbroken 
 stallions : nor is it only a choice between that and 
 keeping them in the nursery. The horse is the prize 
 for proficiency on the pony. What ailed thee to hoist 
 the moujik out of the cradle into the saddle without 
 practice upon so much as a rocking-horse, and set 
 him riding to the devil .■' 
 
 Alex. I deemed, at any rate, that I might count 
 upon his gratitude. 
 
 Pet. What ! for such a service .-' King Solomon 
 might have taught thee better. When did a father 
 ever earn gratitude from a spoilt child .■' And what 
 of thy serfs' masters, pray ? Didst thou expect their 
 thanks as well .' 
 
 Alex. From the best of them, I did : and for the 
 bad I cared not. 
 
 Pet. Tut! there is neither bad nor good to think 
 
PETER AND ALEXANDER 209 
 
 of when a king is dealing with a great order of his 
 subjects : it is strength and weakness, the useful and 
 the useless, which alone concern him. To free the 
 serf was to destroy the territorial nobility, and to 
 leave the nameless millions of the Russian people 
 face to face with their Czar. Why didst thou kick 
 away thy props without knowing whether thou 
 couldst stand alone ? 
 
 Alex. I obeyed the mandate of my heart and 
 conscience ; and even here, exiled before my time to 
 the land of Shadows, I do not regret it. 
 
 Pet. No : a heart and conscience like thine have 
 sent many a man to Siberia ; and the Czar who has 
 banished them thither leaves them to regret it or 
 not as they think fit. But when thou hadst found 
 thy blessings come back to thee as curses, when thy 
 people had shown that they cared not for the open 
 hand of the benefactor, didst thou not close it the 
 tighter upon the sceptre? 
 
 Alex. The sceptre, my father, was too heavy for 
 my grasp. . . . Nay, sir, be patient : I know not 
 but that its weight would have overtaxed even an 
 arm a^ powerful as your own. 
 
 Pet. I would have brained my enemies with it ere 
 I let it fall. Too heavy ! and for me ! What demon 
 of doubt and cowardice has made thee think so > 
 
 Alex. I will take the risk of angering you, sir, in 
 speaking the truth. 
 
 Pet. I am glad, at any rate, that thou hast 
 
 p 
 
210 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 hardihood enough for that. It is something for thee 
 to face the wrath of a shade. Say on. 
 
 Alex. Know, then, my father, that since the days 
 when you ruled in Russia a power mightier than the 
 Czar's has arisen among men. Her servants are 
 stronger than his soldiers, swifter than his messengers, 
 stealthier than his spies, more hidden than his police. 
 
 Pet. Well, what are her politics .' 
 
 Alex. Her politics .' It was she, I tell you, sir, 
 with whom I was condemned to struggle, and who 
 overthrew me at the last. 
 
 Pet. Then she is a Nihilist. 
 
 Alex. Alas ! yes, my father. 
 
 Pet. How came that about ? 
 
 Alex. How came it! 
 
 Pet. Ay, thou bungler, how came it about ? What 
 ailed thee to fall out with the most powerful subject 
 in thy dominions ? If thou couldst not crush her, 
 thou shouldst have used her. 
 
 Alex. You know her not, sir. She has no more 
 reverence for the Czar than for the meanest peasant. 
 
 Pet. What ! No more reverence for him who can 
 lay an empire at her feet ? If she cannot be bribed, 
 she is no woman. 
 
 Alex. Nor is she, sir. I spoke but in parable. 
 Her name is Science. 
 
 Pet. I guessed it, and there was parable in my 
 answers. Thine enemy was of thy own making. 
 What is there in Science which should make her less 
 
PETER AND ALEXANDER 211 
 
 the instrument of the ruler than the arts of war ? 
 Why else can Czars keep down rebellion save that 
 they have arsenals and armouries, bullets and 
 bayonets, shot and shell, roubles to clothe and feed 
 and drill the soldier, and to buy the skill to lead 
 him if they lack it themselves ? Whereas the trader 
 and the lawyer, the craftsman and the peasant, nay, 
 nowadays even the noble himself, has neither these 
 things nor the wherewithal to provide them, except 
 in desperate disparity with the equipments of his 
 ruler. But if a Czar should see a body of his subjects 
 arming themselves, would he not be beforehand to 
 crush them with his superior strength ? And couldst 
 not thou, with learning and laboratories, and a 
 treasury able to spend a rouble for every copeck of 
 thy enemy's — couldst not thou have won over this 
 Science to thy side and turned her weapons against 
 that Nihilism whom thou didst suffer to wield them 
 against thee ? 
 
 Alex. Again, sir, must I answer you in the same 
 words ; you know her not. She is of the people 
 before everything, and the poorest is well-nigh as 
 much her master as the Czar himself. A single 
 desperate man can blast a palace and its inmates to 
 destruction for scarcely more than a workman's daily 
 wage ; a dozen such men, with brains to conceive a 
 plot, and time to prepare it, and a little money to 
 perfect it, may defy the utmost vigilance of the 
 Czar's police, and pierce every barrier of his guards. 
 
212 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Ah! trust the words, sir, of one who has given the 
 experiment but too terrible a trial. The monarch 
 of these days is unequal to the conflict with the 
 assassin. 
 
 Pet. Never was he otherwise, when the asscissin 
 was reckless of his life. But this, thank God, he 
 seldom has been ; and the conspiracies, therefore, of 
 which thou hast spoken — plots in which the hand is 
 hidden and the regicide goes unavenged — are a new 
 terror to the world. Yet stay! didst thou not tell 
 me that thou wast smitten down in the open streets 
 of Petersburg ? 
 
 Alex. It was so. ... I saw my murderer . . . 
 close. Our eyes met ... for a moment, and then 
 ... he raised his hand . . . and then a flash ! a shock ! 
 a world all blinding light and agony . . . and then 
 cold, bitter cold . . . snow upon my shattered 
 limbs, the ice-cold creeping to my heart . . . and 
 then dim faces round me, and muttered voices in 
 my ears . . . and then sleep . . . sleep. . . . Ah 
 God ! my God ! what a death to die ! 
 
 Pet. Tush ! It is a death like another ! Enough 
 of thy feelings. Didst thou see no more } No more, 
 I mean, before the fellow flung his bomb, or at the 
 moment of his flinging it } Thy guards ! thy guards ! 
 were they as dazed and helpless as thyself.' 
 
 Alex. No, no ! I remember now. I saw them 
 spring forward to seize the assassin ere his lifted 
 hand could let go its missile — too late ! too late ! 
 
PETER AND ALEXANDER 213 
 
 Pet. Too late ! Why ? They must have grasped 
 him the moment after he had flung it. 
 
 Alex. I doubt not that they did. 
 
 Pet. Then where the devil is thy grievance ? It 
 was life for life ; and if thou wert not ready — ay, 
 every day and hour to barter life for life with any 
 traitor bold enough to strike the bargain, thou wast 
 unfit for a throne. There is nothing in that ex- 
 change which a Czar should fear. I took thee to 
 mean that the assassin, armed by Science, could 
 strike in secrecy and safety against his ruler — that 
 Science had made the most cowardly of conspirators 
 a match for the bravest of kings — and that were 
 terrible indeed. 
 
 Alex. And that, sir, is the terrible truth. The 
 manner of my death was what it chanced to be ; a 
 public crime which my successor will publicly avenge. 
 But this is nothing to the attempts which I escaped 
 by a hair's breadth — attempts of which the authors 
 are to this day untraced. My death is nothing to 
 the death-in-life of my closing years — a prisoner in 
 my own palace, cut off by beleaguering treason 
 from the world without. 
 
 Pet. And thou didst submit to that, Alexander 
 Nicolaevitch ? Thou didst submit to that .-' By all 
 the saints in heaven ! I wonder that thou darest to 
 tell me so ! What ! to be cooped up within four 
 walls by plotting subjects, and never to sally from 
 thy stronghold to look thine enemies in the face ! 
 
214 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Alex. Nay, sir, you are again unjust. I made 
 my sortie, and you see what came of it. But you 
 do not, you cannot, know the nature of the struggle 
 I was forced to wage. You have spoken of the 
 armies of the ruler, and of the overwhelming power 
 which he wields through them over a rebellious 
 people. But how if there are traitors in the camp ? 
 How, if the soldier on whom he relies, is in the pay 
 of the enemy ? It was so with me. I could trust 
 no one : neither the sentry in the courtyard, nor the 
 lackey in the ante-chamber, nor the secretary in the 
 closet, nor the valet at the bedside. Treason was in 
 the very air which I breathed. The written menaces 
 of murder found their way to me at every hour and 
 in every place. They stared upon me from placarded 
 walls within my palace precincts ; they lay upon my 
 breakfast-table in the morning ; they lurked beneath 
 the very pillows of my bed. Tell me, sir, oh, tell 
 me, you who have so harshly reproached me with 
 my failure, what in my wretched straits would you 
 yourself have done .'' 
 
 Pet. Done ! I would have swept the palace clear 
 from the cellar to the garret. If my spies failed to 
 track me out the conspirator in my household — and 
 bribes should have won me traitors' traitors by the 
 dozen — I would have sent the whole crew packing. 
 The mines should have received them all — from the 
 minister of state to the stable-boy, from the ladies of 
 the Czarina's bed-chamber to the scullion in the kitchen. 
 
PETER AND ALEXANDER 215 
 
 Alex. And how would you have replaced them ? 
 
 Pet. From the scum of the city, if need were. 
 You had resolved to govern by the people, and 
 made privilege your enemy in so doing. Why did 
 you not throw yourself upon that people whom you 
 trusted ? 
 
 Alex. You have forgotten, sir, the deadliest of 
 my dangers. The people themselves had become 
 estranged. The very traders of the capital, the last 
 to lose their loyalty to a court, were infected with 
 the revolutionary poison. A young Russian girl, of 
 gentle blood and of refined culture, had attempted 
 the life of the chief of my police ; and, arraigned 
 before a jury of the citizens — men of gravity and 
 substance, orderly and of good repute — she was 
 acquitted of the crime. 
 
 Pet. Acquitted ! 
 
 Alex. Ay, and amid the rejoicings of the people. 
 Judge now, sir, what inroads disaffection must have 
 made among the people over whom you ruled. 
 Judge now how changed must be their feelings 
 towards their father the Czar. 
 
 Pet. Changed indeed ! changed indeed ! Ah, 
 Alexander Nicolaevitch, what hast thou done with 
 my children ? 
 
 Alex. It is not for me to answer, sir. It is to 
 fate and history that your question should be 
 addressed. But I must dare to say to you that 
 they found but little work of yours to mar. 
 
2i6 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Pet. How? But little work of mine to mar! 
 Did I not raise the people from barbarism ? Did I 
 not give them an army and a navy, and what they 
 never had before, but only the name of it — a govern- 
 ment ? Did I not teach them arts and industries, 
 and encourage trade with foreign countries, which 
 before was forbidden, and reform their finances, 
 relieving burdens and punishing fraud ? 
 
 Alex. All these things you did, sir, except the 
 first. You never raised the people from barbarism, 
 though you taught them some of the arts of civilisa- 
 tion. They are barbarians still. The masses of the 
 people are as dull and brutish as you left them a 
 century and a half ago ; and the classes whom you 
 dragged rather than led into the path of Western 
 progress have followed it to a truly miserable goal. 
 They have breathed the atmosphere of the West, 
 and it has made them mad. 
 
 Pet. You talk in riddles, Alexander Nicolaevitch. 
 
 Alex. Nihilism, then, must serve for the answer. 
 The educated Russian has learnt nothing from the 
 later civilisation of Europe but to babble its phrases 
 and to dream its dreams, to catch its trick of scoff 
 and scepticism, and to share its shadowy ideals. 
 
 Pet. Dost thou dare to tell me that all my labours 
 to enlighten them have had no other effect than this ? 
 
 Alex. You gave them tools, my father, which 
 they could not use ; you opened before them a book 
 which they could not read aright. The former they 
 
PETER AND ALEXANDER 217 
 
 ply like a child who has gotten hold of a knife — for 
 mischief and destruction alone : in the latter they see 
 nothing but its pages of confusion and bloodshed. It 
 is the educated Russian who is the political corrupter 
 of the rude. Nowhere has Nihilism and its doctrines 
 left a deeper impress than on the minds of the pro- 
 fessor and of the student. Better, far better, that 
 you had left them in that darkness of ignorance in 
 which you found them ! Do you not think so, now, 
 my father ? Do you not feel it .' 
 
 Pet. No, by Heaven ! not I. Were it to do again, 
 I would do it. I would not that Russia should hold 
 aloof from the army of progress, even though in 
 advancing she should tread her Czar beneath her feet. 
 
 Alex. Then I would to God, sir, that you had 
 been as immortal in fact as you are in name. You 
 should have lived to our own day, either to preserve 
 your blessings, if blessings they were, to the Russian 
 people, or, if they were curses, to answer for their 
 infliction. Above all, it should have fallen upon you 
 to choose whether now, having put the cry of the 
 conspirators into their mouths, you would answer it 
 by defiance or yield to it. 
 
 Pet. Never once since we began to converse 
 together have you told me what that cry may be. 
 
 Alex. They clamour for a constitution, for govern- 
 ment of the people by themselves. 
 
 Pet. He who says that I put that cry into their 
 mouths has a lie in his own. 
 
2i8 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Alex. You opened their ears, my father, to the 
 voices which came to them from the West. They 
 have imitated the loudest of them, as the mocking- 
 bird mimics the shrillest note he hears : and Httle 
 more than fifty years from the day when you left 
 them the cry of " Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality," 
 was ringing round the world. 
 
 Pet. I know it ; I have heard it even here. Never 
 was there such turmoil in the Shades as there has 
 been since first those words were heard. An endless 
 stream of dead poured down to us day by day, re- 
 joicing to shout it as they came. It was years ere 
 this procession of madmen ceased, and Charon's crews 
 once more came crying " Live the emperor ! " like 
 sane and Christian men. 
 
 Alex. Alas, my father! The one watchword is 
 but the echo of the other, and each alike is the cry 
 of men who uphold the sovereignty of the people. 
 Should a Czar give ear to it .' 
 
 Pet. Give ear to it ! Give ear to it ! Thou hast 
 a wondrous knack of hiding away the meaning. To 
 what murmur from his people, however wild and 
 senseless, should a Czar be deaf.? Should the nurse 
 not listen to the infant's wailings because they must 
 sometimes be answered with the palm of the hand ? 
 
 Alex. I meant not to ask whether a Czar should 
 merely hearken to these clamours of his people. In 
 that, indeed, he has no choice. Their cries for hberty 
 and self-government sound ever in his ears. But 
 
PETER AND ALEXANDER 219 
 
 should they be answered with concession or denial ? 
 That, my father, is the awful problem which the Czar 
 of Russia is condemned to solve. Is the sovereignty 
 of the nation to be at last acknowledged by him, or 
 is it not ? 
 
 Pet. Art thou demented, Alexander Nicolaevitch, 
 or art thou not ? Dost thou mean to ask me whether 
 a Czar should rule, or abdicate ? or what dost thou 
 mean .' 
 
 Alex. The claim of these conspirators, sir, nay — 
 for why deny it .'—the claim of the whole nation, is 
 for representative institutions. They ask that the 
 people shall be empowered to choose a parliament 
 of deputies to make laws for them, to protect their 
 rights, to promote their interests, and to check and 
 limit the authority of their imperial master over their 
 lives and liberties. 
 
 Pet. Ha ! Is that all ? 
 
 Alex. Nay, sir, they demand further that the Czar 
 on his part should grant a constitution, pledging 
 himself to respect and to maintain the powers vested 
 in this body of representatives, and to exercise his 
 own powers only in conformity therewith. 
 
 Pet. Hast thou yet done ? 
 
 Alex. The ordering of the finances, the adminis- 
 tration of justice, the control of the army and the navy, 
 the levying of war, and the conclusion of peace — these 
 are among the matters in which, if these demands 
 were granted, the Czar would share his authority with 
 
220 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 his people. Should they, then, be granted — yes or no ? 
 For myself I have steadily resisted them, and it is 
 my resistance which has brought me here. But there 
 were not wanting men among my counsellors — men 
 of loyalty and wisdom, of experience and caution — 
 who urged me earnestly and even passionately to 
 submit. There were even those who said that had 
 you, my father, worn the crown in my own day, you 
 would have granted a constitution to the people. 
 
 Pet. And what didst thou do to those who said 
 it ? . . . Nothing. I knew it. Nothing. And yet 
 thou pretendest reverence for the memory of thine 
 ancestors. 
 
 Alex. Would you, then, have refused to 
 
 Pet. To fling my crown to the crowd for a foot- 
 ball ? Ay ! Alexander Nicolaevitch, I would ! More, 
 I would have knouted the knave or fool of a coun- 
 sellor who proposed it, and I scorn the degenerate 
 descendant who did not himself repel it with con- 
 tempt. What ! to the people whom thou didst confess 
 but now to be still barbarians — to them, and to the 
 ruin and confusion of their barbarism, thou wouldst 
 surrender thy divine trust — the State ! There have 
 been kings who have in their lifetime handed down 
 a too heavy sceptre to a son ; but never before have 
 I met with one who talked of abdicating in favour 
 of the devil, and yet thought to stand unashamed 
 thereafter before the judgment-seat of God. 
 
 Alex. I shrink, my father, beneath your reproaches. 
 
PETER AND ALEXANDER 221 
 
 for I feel them just. And yet if it were impossible 
 to 
 
 Pet. To what ? It is never impossible to die at 
 thy post, as thou thyself hast proved. Thine own 
 death, and thy son's death, and the death of thy son's 
 son — what were all these that thou shouldst reckon 
 them against the crime and the disgrace of flight ? 
 
 Alex. To die for the nation is of little use. One 
 must learn to govern them, to reconcile them to their 
 Czar, and to teach them happiness under his rule. 
 
 Pet. And what has ever given thee the right to 
 say that that is impossible ? What hast thou ever 
 done to further it .'' Answer me ! . . . Nay, silence ! 
 Answer me not till I have asked thee this. What 
 hast thou done to purge thy country of the worst of 
 its diseases, and the source of full half its miseries 
 and discontent .'' What hast thou done to rid it of 
 the ulcer of corruption — that corroding ulcer which 
 has been eating slowly into the vitals of Russia 
 from my day to thine .■* Does the judge sell justice 
 to the suitor, does the general rob the soldier, does 
 the petitioner have to bribe his way from clerk to 
 clerk up to the bureau of the minister, as in the 
 Russia of thy father's and thy grandfather's day .'* 
 ... I see the truth. It is so. 
 
 Alex. I have striven, my father, believe me, I 
 have striven, to uproot the evil. But . . . but it is 
 ancient, it is deep-set, the official class is powerful . . . 
 administrative efficiency is scarce . . . and — and 
 
222 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Pet. And thou hast given up the work in despair ? 
 No wonder that thy people rise against thee ! No 
 wonder that they cry out for leave to rule themselves, 
 when they see the knaves by whom they are 
 governed ! Away ! let thy son go flush these foul 
 sewers of the State. Let him cleanse his offices and 
 orderly-rooms, his law-courts and his treasury ; and, 
 this done, it will be time enough to talk of the 
 "impossible" in government, and to think of a 
 parliament of barbarians. 
 
 Alex. But hear me, sir 
 
 Pet. No more ! I am weary of talking, and of 
 thee ; and there will be another here anon with 
 whom I would fain have speech. Russian justice 
 is speedy : it is its only virtue. I need delay no 
 longer to go and meet thy murderer. Wilt thou 
 come with me, that I may see thee face to face with 
 him .' . . . Thou wilt not .? Ha ! . . . Farewell, then ! 
 I will go alone. 'Tis a hardy villain, whoever he be ; 
 and I have ever loved to look upon a brave man. 
 
X 
 
 JOHNSON AND COLERIDGE 
 
 Cole. Do not go, Dr. Johnson. There are still 
 many subjects I would fain discuss with you. Or 
 are you wearied by our conversation ? 
 
 John. Why, no, sir. I will not deny that I am 
 wearied ; but it is not by anything which I can 
 reasonably call conversation. For conversation — if 
 any credit is to be given either to usage or to 
 etymology — implies an interchange of ideas. 
 
 Cole. You mean that 
 
 John. Nay, sir, I will not put my meaning any 
 more plainly. You shall not add to my discomfort 
 by forcing me to say something which I should 
 regret. Continue your discourse on the distinction 
 — which at present is to me entirely incomprehensible 
 — between the Reason and the Understanding. 
 
 Cole. I had hoped, Dr. Johnson, that I had fully 
 explained myself on that subject. I have, at any 
 rate, nothing to add. 
 
 John. Nothing to add, sir! Then I must tell 
 you, Mr. Coleridge, at the risk of incivility, that you 
 
 223 
 
224 THE NEW LUC TAN 
 
 have united two feats which might well be deemed 
 incapable of conjunction. You have made me 
 impatient for your conclusion, and you are now 
 leaving me indignant that you have no more to say. 
 
 Cole. I cannot see that any further explanation 
 is necessary. 
 
 John. Sir, you speak without thinking. As well 
 might you say that you see no necessity for a 
 candle when a room is in darkness. Further 
 explanation is always necessary so long as the 
 matter to be explained remains obscure. 
 
 Cole. The phrase I used may have been ill 
 chosen, Dr. Johnson ; but you should excuse a choice 
 which was dictated by politeness. I might have said 
 that no further explanation ought to be necessary. 
 
 John. That, in fact, the room is already lighted, 
 hey ? And that it is only to my blindness that it 
 appears dark. Be it so, sir. That blindness is, at 
 any rate, complete and hopeless, since from the 
 lengthy discourse with which you have favoured me, 
 I have not carried away a single intelligible sentence. 
 
 Cole. Our disappointment, then, is mutual. 
 
 John. Possibly ; but not equal. For you, at least, 
 have had the satisfaction of hearing \'ourself speak. 
 
 Cole. Let us change the subject, Dr. Johnson. 
 
 John. With all my heart, sir. And if we changed 
 the treatment of it also, 'twould be no bad thing. 
 
 Cole. With that which I now propose to discuss, 
 I trust I shall be more fortunate. 
 
JOHNSON AND COLERIDGE 225 
 
 John. You may make yourself easy on that score, 
 sir. I shall not leave the event to the arbitrament 
 of fortune. 
 
 Cole. How so ? 
 
 John. Why, sir, if you are not more intelligible 
 on this occasion, I shall stop you. 
 
 Cole. There will be no need ; for on this occasion 
 I shall be not so much instructor as disciple. 
 
 John. The part is so new to you, sir, and seems 
 so foreign alike to your disposition and to the method 
 of what you describe as your conversation, that I 
 shall await the result with curiosity. 
 
 Cole. May I ask your opinion of the Romantic 
 Movement — the Romantic Revival in English poetry .? 
 
 John. Why, yes, sir, I see not how I can prevent 
 your asking me that question ; indeed, you have 
 already done so. But whether you may ask it with 
 any reasonable expectation of a reply is another 
 matter. 
 
 Cole. Within a very few years after your departure 
 from among us it was already beginning to breathe 
 a new spirit into English song. 
 
 John. Sir, you are now giving a reason why you 
 should expect no answer to your question. Had 
 this "movement," as you call it, begun to move 
 before instead of after my departure, there had been 
 more sense in asking my opinion of it. 
 
 Cole. Nay, sir, all I meant by my reference to 
 dates was to remind you that this new school of 
 
 Q 
 
226 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 poetry was the immediate successor of that to which 
 you belonged. I happen to know that you have 
 been made acquainted with its principles. You have 
 conversed with Mr. Wordsworth. 
 
 John. Well, sir, and what of that .' 
 
 Cole. You cannot fail to have discussed the 
 Romantic Revival with him. 
 
 John. What right have you to assume that, sir .' 
 
 Cole. A right derived, Dr. Johnson, from long 
 intimacy with Mr. Wordsworth on earth, and from a 
 consequent knowledge of what incessantly occupied 
 his thoughts. 
 
 John. Do you mean that he was always thinking 
 of your Romantic Revival .'' 
 
 Cole. No ; but of something very closely con- 
 nected with it — his own poetry. 
 
 John. Why, yes, sir : he has certainly discoursed 
 of that, and he has endeavoured to persuade me 
 that there is no difference between the proper 
 language of poetry and the common speech of the 
 rudest and meanest of mankind. Am I to under- 
 stand, sir, that the object of your Romantic move- 
 ment was to substitute the jargon of Giles and 
 Hodge for the high discourse in which the poet has 
 in all ages sought to express himself.' Was it the 
 notable discovery of the new school that he should 
 aim at a style of diction as much below that of a 
 cultivated reader as he has hitherto striven to rise 
 above it ? 
 
JOHNSON AND COLERIDGE 237 
 
 Cole. Give me leave to explain, Dr. Johnson. 
 The promoters of the Romantic Revival proposed 
 to themselves a twofold aim. They sought at once 
 to reform the language of poetry and to renew its 
 spirit. They not only called on the poet to free 
 himself from the trammels of a frigid and con- 
 ventional vocabulary, but they invited him to come 
 closer to nature, and to view her with his own 
 enkindled eye instead of through the dim and 
 distorting glass which an outworn poetical tradition 
 had too long interposed between the human vision 
 and its objects. . . . Do you follow me, sir ? 
 
 John. I rather precede than follow 3'ou. I have 
 heard all this before. You are merely repeating the 
 nonsense of your friend. 
 
 Cole. It was to the reform of poetic diction that 
 he specially, and perhaps not altogether discreetly, 
 addicted himself I myself was more concerned 
 in the endeavour after a renewal of the spirit of 
 poetry, and its reconciliation with the truth of 
 nature. And I must admit that Mr. Wordsworth 
 carried his theories on the subject of poetic diction 
 to a point at which I was myself compelled to 
 oppose them, and at which, too, they have justly, I 
 think, incurred your reprehension. 
 
 John. Sir, I am much beholden to you for your 
 candour. You have shown a most honourable 
 willingness to admit that it was your friend's part in 
 your common undertaking which was ill done. 
 
228 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Cole. I have not yet, however, completed my 
 account of my own share. So far the movement 
 might be more correctly, as indeed it often is, 
 described by the term Naturalist. The Romantic 
 element in the movement was supplied by myself. 
 Have I your permission to quote from memory a 
 passage from the Biographia Literaria? 
 
 John. To refuse it, sir, would be a breach of our 
 understanding. I say no more. 
 
 Cole. In a conversation with Mr. Wordsworth on 
 the subject of poetry " the thought suggested itself 
 (to which of us I do not recollect) that a series of 
 poems might be composed of two sorts." In the 
 one class " subjects were to be chosen from ordinary 
 life ; the characters and incidents were to be such as 
 will be found in every village and its vicinity where 
 there is a meditative and feeling mind to seek after 
 them, or to notice them when they present them- 
 selves." That class of poetry I left to Mr. Words- 
 worth. But in the other class, which I reserved to 
 myself, " the incidents and agents were to be, in part 
 at least, supernatural ; and the excellence aimed at 
 was to consist in the interesting of the affections by 
 the dramatic truth of such emotions as would 
 naturally accompany such situations, supposing them 
 real." Now, I am of course aware, Dr. Johnson, that 
 your prepossessions in favour of the old theory of 
 poetry, and of its limitations are naturally strong. 
 Still, you may not object, at any rate in principle, 
 
JOHNSON AND COLERIDGE 229 
 
 to such an extension of its sphere as I here 
 suggest. 
 
 John. Sir, I object to no extension of its sphere 
 which does not cause it to transgress the boundaries 
 of common sense. So long as your romantic poet is 
 content to observe those limits, I have nothing 
 against him. But does he — can he do so ? Have 
 you done so yourself, Mr. Coleridge .' 
 
 Cole. I am not quite certain that I know 
 precisely what you mean by common sense in this 
 connection. 
 
 John. Sir, your uncertaint}- does not surprise 
 me. 
 
 Cole. Should you consider me to have respected 
 the restrictions of common sense, if I have realised 
 my own formula just recited to you — if, that is to say, 
 I have in my poetry described with dramatic truth 
 such emotions as would naturally accompany the 
 situations imagined by me, supposing that they had 
 been real .'' 
 
 John. Why, no, sir ; I should require more than 
 that. The situations themselves, although imaginary, 
 must not be fantastic to the point of incredibility. 
 That, indeed, it seems to me, is presupposed in your 
 own canon. For I know not what emotions would 
 " naturally accompany " incredible situations, and we 
 could not, therefore, determine whether you had 
 described them with " dramatic truth." 
 
 Cole. Be it so. Dr. Johnson. I accept your 
 
230 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 enlargement of my formula, and I humbly submit 
 that, as thus enlarged, I have observed it. 
 
 John. What, sir.? in your poem, for instance, of 
 the " Ancient Mariner ? " 
 
 Cole. You know it ? 
 
 John. Almost by heart. You have admirers here 
 who have recited it to me till I am sick of it and 
 of them. But, come, sir, have you ever seriously 
 considered the argument of that poem .'' Have you 
 ever reviewed the concatenation of cause and effect 
 in the adventures of your hero ? 
 
 Cole. Truly, Dr. Johnson, I think I may answer 
 Yes. I do not say that the incidents follow one 
 another by precisely the same law of causation as 
 that which governs the ordinary affairs of men. 
 
 John. Why, no, sir ; you could hardly say that. 
 But you do not seem to see that in refraining from 
 saying it you abandon the claim of your poem to 
 be accounted a rational composition. 
 
 Cole. That I cannot admit. 
 
 John. Sir, we do not require an admission of what 
 is self-evident, either from you or anybody else. 
 There are not two laws of causation, one for the 
 ordinary affairs of men and the other for incidents 
 feigned by poets. One thing is either the cause of 
 another or it is not ; and that truth holds good 
 whether the two things happen in Fleet Street or in 
 the Antarctic Ocean. 
 
 Cole. Surely, sir, you would not deny the poet's 
 
JOHNSON AND COLERIDGE 231 
 
 privilege of imagining the intervention of super- 
 natural agencies ? 
 
 John. Certainly not, sir. Who talks of denying 
 him that privilege ? We may very well imagine the 
 activity of minor supernatural agents, even as we 
 believe in the real existence of a Supreme super- 
 natural Power. But inasmuch as it seems good to that 
 Supreme Power to act by "second causes" only in 
 ordering the course of nature and the affairs of man, 
 so your minor supernatural agents must themselves 
 conform their action to what you call the ordinary 
 law of causation. 
 
 Cole. Why micst they t 
 
 John. Nay, sir, this is trifling. You cannot be 
 putting such a question to me seriously. 
 
 Cole. In all seriousness, I assure you. Why 
 must a supernatural agent employ the ordinary 
 machinery of causation in a poem .■* 
 
 John. Surely, sir, the answer is obvious. It is 
 because poetry is the imitation of nature, and can 
 only please in proportion to the fidelity with which 
 it imitates. We may grant the poet his supernatural 
 agent, because that concession is familiar to us in 
 surveying Nature itself, behind which we are compelled 
 by the constitution of our minds to assume the 
 existence of a directing Power. But, as I have 
 already reminded you, that Power acts not by a 
 series of miracles, but by an orderly succession of 
 phenomena, following one another according to a 
 
232 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 fixed law of cause and effect. And a poet who 
 insists on liberating his supernatural agents from the 
 law, and making them bring about the incidents of 
 his poem not by causal sequence but by a series of 
 miracles, will speedily fatigue, and must ultimately 
 disgust the reader. 
 
 Cole. And do you contend that every incident of 
 the "Ancient Mariner" is brought about by miracle? 
 
 John. Sir, you are captious ; I contend for nothing 
 so absurd. I refer to the main incidents of the fable. 
 There is nothing miraculous in shooting an albatross 
 with a crossbow. 
 
 Cole. And is not that a main incident, Dr. 
 Johnson .'' 
 
 John. Why, no, sir, not in itself, no more than 
 shooting a porpoise or catching a dog-fish over the 
 ship's side. It only becomes a main incident by 
 reason of its supposed consequences. And they are 
 miraculous. 
 
 Cole. But surely 
 
 John. Nay, sir, let us have no more on't. This 
 sort of argument can never be anything but barren. 
 Shall we examine the poem together? Recite it to 
 me ; for of course you have it by heart. . . . You 
 hesitate. Come, my dear sir, be not more backward 
 than your own mariner. You have, at any rate, a less 
 unwilling hearer than his wedding guest. 
 
 Cole. Well, Dr. Johnson, if it will give you pleasure 
 to hear it 
 
JOHNSON AND COLERIDGE 233 
 
 John. Sir, I did not say that. It will give me 
 pleasure to criticise it ; and as you, I doubt not, will 
 find pleasure in reciting it, we shall mutually oblige 
 each other. 
 
 Cole [recites Part I. of the poem) — 
 
 It is an ancient Mariner, 
 
 And he stoppeth one of three, etc. 
 
 " God save thee, ancient Mariner, 
 From the fiends that plague thee thus! — 
 Why look'st thou so ? " — With my crossbow 
 I shot the Albatross. 
 
 John. Yes, sir, all is plain sailing enough so far. 
 But we are not told why the mariner shot the bird ; 
 and an act which led to such momentous conse- 
 quences should at least have been explained. We 
 will assume, however, that it was a mere act of 
 wanton barbarity, not prompted by any considerations 
 even of misconceived expediency. Pray proceed. 
 
 Cole {recites Part II. of the poem)— 
 The Sun now rose upon the sight, etc. 
 
 Ah, well-a-day ! What evil looks 
 Had I from old and young ! 
 Instead of the cross, the Albatross 
 About my neck was hung. 
 
 John. Now, sir, let us see how we stand. The 
 south wind — raised, as I take it, by the albatross — was 
 blowing the vessel northward, when the Mariner shot 
 the bird, thus, as it appears, giving grave umbrage, 
 for some unexplained reason, to the Spirit of the 
 South Pole, who allows the vessel to reach the 
 
234 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 equator, and then proceeds to punish the offence by- 
 becalming her. The crew in the mean time, having 
 wavered between the opinion that the Ancient 
 Mariner is a public enemy for having slain the bird 
 that brought the south wind, and the counter opinion 
 that he is a public benefactor for having rid them of 
 a bird that "brought the fog and mist," settle down 
 at last to the conclusion that he is responsible for 
 their being becalmed, and hang the albatross round 
 his neck in token thereof 
 
 Cole. Hitherto, then, you will admit, sir, that my 
 supernatural agent has operated by the employment 
 of ordinary causes. 
 
 John. Why, yes, sir, almost too ordinary ; for a 
 calm, I believe, is so common in these latitudes that 
 one would never suspect a Polar Spirit of having a 
 hand in bringing it about. But now for Part HI. We 
 are coming, I think, to the phantom ship. You will 
 not think me uncivil, I hope, if I ask you to bring 
 her alongside at once, with the sun shining through 
 her hull. 
 
 Cole. — 
 
 And straight the Sun was flecked with bars 
 (Heaven's mother send us grace !), 
 As if through a dungeon-grate he peered, 
 With broad and burning face. 
 
 Are those her ribs through which the Sun 
 Did peer, as through a grate ? 
 
 John. Well may he ask that question. Probably 
 
JOHNSON AND COLERIDGE 235 
 
 it occurred to him that if the sun could shine through 
 the ribs of a ship, the sea would not be long in 
 making free with her interior. 
 
 Cole. Surely, sir, you can imagine a phantom ship .'' 
 
 John. To be sure I can, sir ; but it must at least 
 be wholly diaphanous. What you ask me to present 
 to my mental vision is a phantom ship with opaque 
 ribs. I cannot do it ; and I will make bold to say, 
 Mr. Coleridge, that you cannot either. 
 
 Cole. It seems to me that 
 
 John. Nay, sir, do not attempt to justify a faulty 
 image by a sophistical defence. It occurred to you 
 that a red sun peering through a ship's ribs, like a 
 slice of tomato on a gridiron, would have a striking 
 effect, and you dashed it into your picture with as 
 little regard for imagination as for actual truth. Go 
 on to the gaming-bout between the two spectres. 
 
 Cole. — 
 
 The naked hulk alongside came. 
 
 And the twain were casting dice ; 
 
 " The game is done ; I've won ! I've won ! " 
 
 Quoth she, and whistles thrice. 
 
 John. My Lady Life-in-Death is an easily contented 
 gamester. She has won the Mariner ; but Death has 
 won all the rest of the ship's company — two hundred 
 strong, as it afterwards appears. 
 
 Cole {contmidng) — 
 
 The Sun's rim dips ; the stars rush out ; 
 At one stride comes the dark, etc. 
 
236 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Till clombe above the eastern bar 
 The horned Moon, with one bright star 
 Within the nether tip. 
 
 John. Hold, sir! This is an impossibility. How- 
 could a star appear " within the nether tip " of another 
 heavenly body, which is only apparently and not 
 really "horned".'' Surely, Mr. Coleridge, you must 
 have forgotten that, though the illuminated segment 
 of the moon may be shaped like a crescent, the moon 
 itself throughout all its phases remains a disc ; and 
 its darkened portion, therefore, must necessarily 
 intercept our view of any star — unless, indeed, it were 
 one nearer to the earth than our satellite, and no 
 such luminary exists. However, if the ribs of a 
 phantom ship may become opaque in order to provide 
 the sun with a grating to look through, I know not 
 why, on the other hand, the opacity of the moon 
 should not become transparent to the rays of a star. 
 But we are coming, I think, to the sudden death of 
 the crew. 
 
 Cole {continuing) — 
 
 Four times fifty living men 
 (And I heard nor sigh nor groan), 
 With heavy thump, a lifeless lump. 
 They dropped down one by one. 
 
 The souls did from their bodies fly,- 
 They fled to bliss or woe ! 
 And every soul it passed me by 
 Like the whizz of my crossbow ! 
 
JOHNSON AND COLERIDGE 237 
 
 John. Your Polar Spirit, sir, seems to have got 
 well away from ordinary processes of causation by 
 this time. After bringing on an unnecessary phantom 
 ship, with impossible ribs and two superfluous spectres 
 gratuitously dicing on its deck, he makes two 
 hundred men drop down dead at the same moment 
 from no known cause ; and, so far as I can see, for 
 no intelligible offence. 
 
 Cole, They had justified the Mariner's act, and 
 had thereby become accessories to it. 
 
 John. True, sir. But the principal escapes. On 
 this reckoning, it is to be accounted a less heinous 
 crime to shoot an albatross than to entertain even 
 for a moment the superstitious belief that it was 
 righteously shot. But we are now at Part IV., I 
 think. 
 
 Cole {i-ecites Part IV. without interruption from 
 his companion doivn to the description of the water- 
 snakes in the closing stanzas) — 
 
 O happy living things ! no tongue 
 
 Their beauty might declare. 
 
 A spring of love gushed from my heart, 
 
 And I blessed them unaware. 
 
 Sure my kind saint took pity on me, 
 
 And I blessed them unaware. 
 
 John. How does one bless water-snakes "un- 
 aware " 1 Is it as one entertains angels ? 
 
 Cole. It is your turn to be captious now, Dr. John- 
 son. " Unaware," of course, means " involuntarily, 
 instinctively." 
 
238 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 John. Be it so, sir. Then, having instinctively 
 blessed these aquatic reptiles, in consideration of 
 the beauty of their skins and their real or apparent 
 enjoyment of life, the Mariner is freed from the 
 burden which has been hanging round his neck. Is 
 this a case of the ordinary law of causation ? 
 
 Cole. No, indeed, sir ; but there is what I may 
 call a symbolical sequence between the two. 
 
 John. Nay, sir, what stuff is this ? The symbolical 
 sequence of the occurrence, if I rightly understand 
 what you mean by the expression, is as fanciful as 
 could be any imaginary physical connection between 
 the two. What you intended to convey, I presume, 
 was that the man's emotions at the sight of these 
 creatures atoned for his previous crime, and earned 
 him the forgiveness symboHsed by the fall of the 
 albatross from his neck. 
 
 Cole. You have rightly apprehended my intention. 
 
 John. Then why, let me ask you, sir, should a 
 man be forgiven for shooting a bird because he 
 happens to admire the beauty of a reptile ? 
 
 Cole. I think, Dr. Johnson, that you will find a 
 sufficient explanation of that in the moral of the poem. 
 
 John. Indeed, sir ! Then let us get to the moral 
 as speedily as may be. I will undertake not to 
 interrupt you again, and that without taking any 
 great credit for my self-restraint. 
 
 Cole {recites Parts V., VI., and VII., repeating the 
 last four stanzas with much emphasis and unction) — 
 
JOHNSON AND COLERIDGE 239 
 
 Farewell, farewell ! but this I tell 
 To thee, thou Wedding-Guest, 
 He prayeth well, who loveth well 
 Both man and bird and beast. 
 
 He prayeth best, who loveth best 
 All things both 'great and small ; 
 For the dear God who loveth us, 
 He made and loveth all. 
 
 The Mariner, whose eye is bright, 
 Whose beard with age is hoar. 
 Is gone ; and now the Wedding-Guest 
 Turned from the bridegroom's door. 
 
 He went like one who had been stunned. 
 And is of sense forlorn ; 
 A sadder and a wiser man. 
 He rose the morrow morn. 
 
 John. Why, yes, sir, sadder, perhaps ; for even 
 a man but moderately addicted to conviviality 
 might well lament the exchange of a wedding-feast 
 for so unsatisfying a regale of words. But how 
 wiser .<" 
 
 Cole. Surely, sir, in this, that 
 
 John. Stay, Mr. Coleridge. I promised not to 
 interrupt your recital of the remainder of your poem, 
 and I have not done so ; but I am under no pledge to 
 refrain from perstringing some of its more obtrusive 
 absurdities. It seems from Part V. that your Polar 
 Spirit — who, as we know, could raise "a good South 
 wind " by a nod of his spiritual head — must needs 
 slide under the keel "nine fathom deep" in order to 
 propel the ship himself Is that your notion, sir, of 
 
240 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 allowing your supernatural being to operate by 
 natural causes ? It further appears, too, that 'he was 
 somewhat precipitate in slaying the whole crew as 
 accessories after the fact to the murder of the 
 albatross, since he has to raise them from the dead in 
 order to navigate the ship ; though why the navigation 
 of a ship which is being propelled by a spirit under 
 her keel should require the resurrection of anybody 
 but the steersman, or why the other mariners '"gan 
 work the ropes" of a vessel with no wind to fill her 
 sails, you have not told us. No, sir, nor why the 
 resuscitated dead should again fall lifeless on the deck 
 — still less why " a man all light, a seraph man," should 
 stand like a link-boy on every corse. Least of all 
 do you condescend to explain the ship's course on 
 her return home. She has been sailing northward 
 through the Pacific, when suddenly the Mariner 
 exclaims — 
 
 " Oh ! dream of joy ! is this indeed 
 The lighthouse top I see ? 
 Is this the hill ? is this the kirk ? 
 Is this mine own countree ? " 
 
 Never was question more justified by circumstances. 
 For if, as I presume him to be, your mariner was 
 an inhabitant of the Eastern and not of the Western 
 Hemisphere, he could only have reached his "own 
 countree " by way of Bering Strait, and by skirting 
 the continent of North America, through the im- 
 penetrable icefields of the Arctic Ocean. 
 
JOHNSON AND COLERIDGE 241 
 
 Cole. Your criticisms, Dr. Johnson, appear to me 
 to insist on a more severe accuracy in romantic 
 poetry than you began by postulating. 
 
 John. How so, sir .-' You inquired whether I was 
 willing to enlarge the sphere of poetry so as to take 
 in what you call the Romantic variety. I signified 
 my willingness to do so, but stipulated, on my own 
 part, that I should not be asked to accompany you 
 as a Romantic poet in any excursion beyond the 
 boundaries of common sense. To these terms I 
 understood you to assent. I ask you, sir, have you 
 adhered to them ? 
 
 Cole. There are conditions under which 
 
 John. Sense and nonsense are one ? It is not 
 so ; I cannot admit the identity. The poet, like all 
 the rest of the world, must choose between one and 
 the other ; and, to speak plainly, Mr. Coleridge, I 
 think the choice which you have made in your 
 " Ancient Mariner " is unmistakable. 
 
 Cole. Will you allow me, Dr. Johnson, to 
 
 John. Nay, sir, to what end .'' You have failed 
 in establishing the thesis with which you set out ; 
 and what would be gained by continuing the dis- 
 cussion .'' Either you would attempt to take up new 
 ground — and that I am not inclined to permit — or 
 you would propose another journey over the ground 
 which we have already traversed ; and in that ex- 
 pedition I am equally indisposed to accompany 
 you. 
 
 R 
 
242 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Cole, My dear sir, you mistake me altogether. 
 I do not wish to re-argue the case of the " Ancient 
 Mariner ; " let it go. What I desire to do is to 
 contest your definition of poetry. 
 
 John. That, sir, you can only do by contending 
 either that sense and nonsense are identical, or that 
 in poetry one is as much in place as the other. The 
 former of these propositions is an insult to the human 
 intelligence, and the latter to the noblest of its 
 products. I cannot consent to discuss either with 
 you. 
 
 Cole. Will you not renew this conversation at 
 some future time ? 
 
 John. Why, no, sir. I should be wanting in 
 respect for Reason, and, I will add, in reverence for 
 the Divine Bestower of that gift upon mankind, if I 
 were to make any such appointment. I am not 
 sure, indeed, that the discussion in which I have 
 already engaged has not been in some degree de- 
 rogatory to both ; and I shall close it, therefore, by 
 bidding you adieu. 
 
XI 
 
 LORD BEACONSFIELD AND 
 SIR ROBERT PEEL 
 
 Lord B. Surely I cannot be mistaken ! Sir Robert 
 Peel. 
 
 Peel. Your countenance seems familiar to me, but 
 I cannot at the moment connect it with a name. 
 
 Lord B. The name, perhaps— that is, the later 
 name — will be less familiar than the face. Disraeli 
 you knew in the flesh : of Lord Beaconsfield you can 
 only have heard. 
 
 Peel. Mr. Disraeli — I beg your pardon, Lord 
 Beaconsfield— you are greatly changed in appear- 
 ance. . . . And not in the least improved. As out- 
 landish-looking as ever. 
 
 Lord B. Age, Sir Robert, has doubtless found more 
 points for attack in my exterior than it could discover 
 in yours. . . . Prim respectability is immortal and 
 unchangeable, or the English would not be the race 
 they are. 
 
 Peel. Time has certainly been busy with you, my 
 lord, since we last met on earth. 
 
 Lord B. He is indeed the most reckless of Radicals, 
 243 
 
244 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 continually destroying without a thought of replace- 
 ment. 
 
 Peel. Yes, and like the Radical, or those who 
 borrow from the Radical, habitually representing 
 destruction as merely change. " Time has greatly 
 altered you," says one man to another, meaning by 
 the euphemism, " He is killing you ; he has visibly 
 broken up your health ; I see death in your face." 
 And just so it is that under the soothing phrase of 
 " constitutional change " we seek to disguise those 
 collapses of political health, or it may be those 
 treacheries of the political physician, which portend 
 the dissolution of States. 
 
 Lord B. Dear me ! These are not the figures 
 with which you were most familiar in the other world. 
 Sir Robert. Forgive me for doubting whether you 
 manipulate them with the same success. Even as 
 metaphors, indeed, I think they overshoot the mark. 
 Surely we need not waste so much admiration on 
 the transforming magic of Time, when we recollect 
 how often he has been outstripped by politicians 
 metamorphosing themselves. He "toiled in vain," 
 for instance, after the illustrious but instantaneous 
 convert from Protection to Free Trade. 
 
 Peel. And he seems to have striven as vainly to 
 correct your audacity, my lord. One would scarcely 
 have expected that last taunt from the opponent of 
 a ^J franchise in 1866, and the creator of household 
 suffrage in 1867. 
 
BEACONSFIELD AND PEEL 245 
 
 Lord B. Why not ? Glass houses ? My dear Sir 
 Robert, pray reflect. The stones have been flying 
 for fifteen years. I have not a single unbroken pane 
 left. 
 
 Peel. You seem to be but little disturbed by it. 
 
 Lord B. Who would be ? What man of sense 
 was ever disturbed by the charge of inconsistency ? 
 What damage did it ever do, or deserve to do ? 
 
 Peel. This is not the language of 1846. 
 
 Lord B. Nor are these the circumstances. You 
 might as well accuse me of inconsistency on that 
 account. It is the business of the politician to adapt 
 himself to circumstances; and the sham virtue of 
 " political consistency " is only another name for the 
 blindness which misses facts, or the stupidity which 
 misinterprets them, or the obstinacy which resists 
 them. I find it hard, I say, to conceive of a states- 
 man of the first class who could be even momentarily 
 moved by the accusation of inconsistency ; while as 
 to suifering torture under it, as to permitting it to 
 prey upon the health and spirits, as to allowing one's 
 days to be darkened, and one's life, perhaps, to be 
 shortened by it — I am sure you will agree with me, 
 Sir Robert, that such weakness as that would be a 
 sure sign of inferiority of character. . . . You are 
 silent. You seem troubled. I hope you do not 
 dissent. 
 
 Peel. No ; I do not dissent. I accept your state- 
 ment as correct, but I must construe its language 
 
246 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 strictly. To dread a charge of mere inconsistency- 
 would be weakness indeed. But dishonesty, but 
 treacherous desertion of political comrades, but sacri- 
 fice of principle to place, — accusations such as these, 
 my lord 
 
 Lord B. Amount to precisely the same thing. I 
 am surprised that so experienced a party politician 
 should make so little allowance for the rhetoric of 
 party. 
 
 Peel. The rhetoric of party ! Of party ! You do 
 yourself injustice. The satiric gift of Mr. Disraeli 
 was never dedicated to such narrow uses. His sar- 
 casms, he no doubt felt, were " meant for mankind ; " 
 and he launched them first, for choice, at those 
 members of the human species who happened to 
 stand in the path of his advancement. The rhetoric 
 of party ! If ever personal motives inspired an attack, 
 if ever pique and vanity, rancour and ambition com- 
 bined to animate invective, it was But enough. 
 
 I have no wish to offend you, and to speak my 
 whole mind on such a matter might possibly give 
 offence. 
 
 Lord B. Not at all. I beg you will continue. I 
 am a new-comer here, you know, and I have a direct 
 interest in ascertaining how long one's animosities 
 may be kept alive. 
 
 Peel. You are mistaken. Lord Beaconsfield, if you 
 suspect me of any such feelings towards you. I am 
 even willing to admit that I may in some things 
 
BEACONSFIELD AND PEEL 247 
 
 have done you injustice. We never understood one 
 another. 
 
 Lord B. " We never understood one another " is 
 usually the self-flattering gloss for " I could not make 
 head or tail of you." Do not think me discourteous 
 if I decline to associate myself with your failure. I 
 can understand that I may have puzzled you ; for 
 there have been others whom a nature of singular 
 simplicity appears to have equally mystified. But I 
 think I may say without presumption that your own 
 character had no secrets for me. 
 
 Peel. I did not desire it to have secrets for any 
 one. But I may question your personal ability to 
 interpret it. I cannot think that our political lives 
 were guided by a common principle of action. 
 
 Lord B. Explain yourself, Sir Robert. I know 
 I need not expect to hear the parrot cry of " Adven- 
 turer ! " from a man of such liberality as yourself 
 You will leave that for the tongues of disappointed 
 dukes. Superior as were some of your advantages 
 to mine, your ascent to the leadership of the aristo- 
 cratic party was, no less than my own, the triumph 
 of a middle-class adventurer. 
 
 Peel. If I were not proud to own it, I should have 
 too much pride to deny it. I should be the last to 
 taunt any man with not having been born to the 
 position which he fills. But honours may be won 
 under different circumstances and by different arts. 
 
 Lord B. The justice of your remark, Sir Robert, 
 
248 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 shall excuse its lack of novelty. You would, how- 
 ever, have put your meaning with more point and 
 precision, if with somewhat less delicacy, had you 
 said that honours may be honourably and dishonour- 
 ably won, and that mine were 
 
 Peel. I do not deal in such unmeasured language ; 
 nor would it become me to apply the word "dis- 
 honourable " to any career which the English people 
 has deliberately selected for honour. But I need not 
 be taken to pass any moral verdict upon it in insisting 
 that it was very differently inspired from my own. 
 How came you, for instance, to take the Conservative 
 side in politics ? 
 
 Lord B. How do most men choose the party to 
 which they attach themselves J 
 
 Peel. The word " choose " is itself not very happily 
 chosen. I do not know that there is, or ought to be, 
 much choice in the matter. 
 
 Lord B. Indeed? Would you, then, exclude all 
 young men from political life with the exception of 
 those who happen to be either the eldest or the 
 dullest of their families .■' For no one can be said 
 to have no choice as to his political party except 
 either him whose opinions have become fixed by 
 mature years, or him in whom they have been deter- 
 mined by family obligations, or him, lastly, who has 
 had too little activity or force of character to do more 
 than acquire them by a process — fraught indeed, with 
 tender associations from another field of human 
 
BEACOxMSFIELD AND PEEL 249 
 
 development, but applied with less propriety to the 
 nutriment of healthy political tissue — the process of 
 imbibition. 
 
 Peel. You misunderstand me. To maintain that 
 a man should have no choice as to his political party 
 is not to say that he should defer entering public life 
 until his opinions are unalterably fixed. 
 
 Lord B. You feel, I perceive, that that would be 
 condemning too many of us to a private life. 
 
 Peel. It would be enough that any man seeking 
 entrance to Parliament should feel compelled by 
 present conviction to range himself on the side of 
 this political party rather than that. 
 
 Lord B. And not upon the side of neither .? You 
 would, then, extinguish the breed of "independent 
 members," who, I own, are a great nuisance. 
 
 Peel. By no means. I have as little liking for 
 the species as you have, but it has a perfect right to 
 exist, and it is the offspring of conviction, not of 
 choice — at least, in the objectionable sense of the 
 word. 
 
 Lord B. What is the objectionable sense of the 
 word .'' For I confess you are puzzling me a little 
 now. You would have every man take his place 
 either as a Conservative, because his own Conser- 
 vatism impels him to do so ; or as a Liberal, because 
 his Liberal faith will not permit him to do otherwise ; 
 or as an independent member, because his conviction 
 that he is wiser than both of them is irresistible. 
 
250 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 But this is surely an exhaustive enumeration of 
 political species. Obscurity was not among your 
 faults of expression, Sir Robert, but, for the life of 
 me — if that ejaculation is still permitted to us here 
 — I cannot guess who they are to whom you object. 
 
 Peel. My obscurity is in this case a tribute to 
 good manners. I find it difficult to express my 
 meaning inoffensively. 
 
 Lord B. Your difficulty itself is not of the most 
 flattering kind for my feehngs. 
 
 Peel, Of that I am fully sensible, and I will at 
 once put the matter plainly. I have no liking, then, 
 for politicians who choose their party as Dugald 
 Dalgetty chose his, that is to say, with an eye to 
 profit and promotion, and in indifference, positive or 
 comparative, to the merits of the espoused cause. 
 
 Lord B. Are there such poHticians t 
 
 Peel. Do you really know of no one answering 
 to the description t 
 
 Lord B. I can hardly suppose you to be thinking 
 of the lawyers. To them, indeed, it applies exactly ; 
 but I have never thought of them as politicians 
 at all, any more than as inventors because they 
 occasionally conduct patent cases, or as physicians 
 because they have sometimes to pick up medicine 
 enough for the cross-examination of a medical expert. 
 They cram politics as they would mechanics or 
 toxicology, and no one ever supposed that they care 
 any more what views they adopt in the one science 
 
BEACONSFIELD AND PEEL 251 
 
 than what theories they uphold in the others. It is 
 perfectly well understood that if the prospects of 
 Conservatism appear most promising at any given 
 moment, or if the Liberal party happen to be over- 
 wigged, the rising barrister will be full of enthusiasm 
 for the throne and the altar ; while if the state of 
 parties is reversed, he will burn with equal ardour 
 in the cause for which Hampden suffered on the 
 field and Sidney on the scaffold. 
 
 Peel. The lawyer is the privileged Swiss of 
 politics, and the man of whom I am thinking was 
 not a lawyer. Come, my lord, we need not fence 
 with one another here, and the aged Earl of 
 Beaconsfield can afford to answer truly for the 
 youthful Benjamin Disraeli. Did you not " choose " 
 your party, as you express it, as a trader chooses 
 the town or the street of the town in which he will 
 carry on his trade ? " Here, and not there, is the better 
 opening ; here, not there, is the greater demand for 
 my services ; in this quarter rather than that shall I 
 be secure against competition." 
 
 Lord B. Do you mean, then, to suggest that my 
 political professions of faith were insincere ? 
 
 Peel. Not all of them, certainly, for you professed 
 and felt the strongest possible behef in yourself, and 
 in that faith I know you never wavered. 
 
 Lord B. But my political theories .' Do you 
 decline to regard them as honestly formed and held ? 
 
 Peel. They were far too vague and uncommitting 
 
252 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 to allow you to plead their sincerity in proof of your 
 own. Any man can boast of fidelity to principles 
 which need not compromise him with anybody ; 
 their very vagueness removes all temptation to 
 disavow them. You borrowed something from the 
 creed of every party, and from out of scraps of the 
 jargon of each you composed a sort of " Abracadabra " 
 of your own. The author of the Revolutionary 
 Epick could always have allied himself without 
 inconsistency with an extreme Revolutionary party, 
 just as the author of Mr. Disraeli's political romances 
 could have found ample warrant in them for throwing 
 in his lot with the Tories. I am willing to grant 
 that you may have had a certain amount of sincere 
 sympathy with both parties, and if your final adhe- 
 rence to the Conservatives had been determined by 
 a preponderance of sympathy on that side, I should 
 have nothing to say. But was it so ? Ask your 
 own conscience. 
 
 Lord B. It is not in the habit of waiting to be 
 asked before replying to a question of that kind. I 
 had no idea. Sir Robert, that you had so grievously 
 mistaken the meaning of my career as to suppose 
 that it was shaped in its beginnings by sympathy 
 with any opinions. Its shaping influence was 
 antagonism — a sincere hatred which I had always 
 felt and consistently expressed, and which my 
 approving conscience assures me to have been my 
 determinant motive at the turning-point of my career. 
 
BEACONSFIELD AND PEEL 253 
 
 Peel. Your conscience is liberal in its approval 
 of motives ; but I allow that a sincere hatred would 
 have explained your action in '46 more worthily 
 than my own reading of it. I cannot credit you, 
 however, with an honest detestation of myself. It 
 was the manifest simulation of your righteous wrath 
 against me which rendered it so odious in my eyes 
 and in those of my sympathisers. 
 
 Lord B. It distresses me to hear you say so. 
 Pray let us get from persons to principles, or, at 
 any rate, to classes. With regard to them, indeed, 
 I may, at any rate, lay claim to consistency. In 
 which of my romances, or in what speech which I 
 have ever delivered, can you find anything but an 
 implacable hostility to the commercial middle class 
 — to the manufacturers and mercantile capitalists who 
 succeeded to the political influence of the territorial 
 aristocracy in 1832 ? For them I had never a good 
 word ; in Sybil, in Coningsby, you shall look for any 
 such word in vain. For them, and for the self-seeking 
 designs with which I believed, and in great measure 
 still believe, them to have taken up the Free Trade 
 cause — for the men with the cry of " Cheap Bread ! " 
 on their lips, and the whisper of " Cheap Labour!" 
 in their hearts — I had the deepest and most dis- 
 interested repugnance. And it was not till you 
 stood forth as their representative that my enmity 
 against them took a form of apparent animosit)' 
 to you. 
 
254 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Peel. Whether apparent or real, Lord Beaconsfield, 
 it was not reciprocated. I say again that I feel no 
 animosity towards you, and never did. You will do 
 me the justice to remember that I showed none, either 
 at the time of our encounter or afterwards. I will 
 leave you to determine why. But in all my personal 
 records of my life you will not find your attacks upon 
 me so much as mentioned. My diaries preserve 
 complete silence on the subject. 
 
 Lord B. An interesting fact, indeed, and your 
 clear recollection of it makes it all the more im- 
 pressive. It shows at once that the silence on which 
 you pride yourself must have been a genuine mani- 
 festation of indifference, and not a forced simulation 
 of disdain. 
 
 Peel. I do not pretend to indifference. I felt 
 your blows acutely, I will not deny. But imputa- 
 tions upon character can be met with dignity in 
 only one of two ways : by instant disproof, or by 
 persistent disregard. It was impossible, from the 
 nature of the case, to refute such charges as yours, 
 and it would, therefore, have been unworthy of me 
 to resent them. I was content to refer the issue 
 between us to the judgment of the good and wise 
 among my countrymen. 
 
 Lord B. It was a stately resolve. Sir Robert, 
 and one eminently befitting a character for which, 
 believe me, I have always entertained a sincere 
 respect. Such appeals to the national justice and 
 
BEACONSFIELD AND PEEL 255 
 
 virtue are most laudable. The appellant in such 
 cases, however, should be careful to do one thing. 
 Peel. And that is ? 
 
 Lord B. To live till the cause comes on for 
 hearing. Appeals of this sort fall, unfortunately, 
 under the lawyer's rule, that Actio personalis moritiir 
 aim persona; and in politics there is no Lord 
 Campbell's Act to mitigate the operation of the 
 maxim. You recollect Lord Campbell, Sir Robert, 
 though not, perhaps, by his title. Yes, you would 
 just remember his rise. A most interesting study, 
 though a Scotchman^perhaps because a Scotchman. 
 Quite the Wedderburn of the nineteenth century. 
 Peel. I recollect ; but you were about to say — - — 
 Lord B. I was about to remind you that you 
 committed the error of dying before your cause 
 came on. In the case of Peel, appellant, versus 
 Disraeli, respondent, judgment went by default 
 in the respondent's favour. 
 
 Peel. It is not so. History will do me right. 
 Lord B. History.' Oh, that is another matter. 
 That is a court in which we can all of us get white- 
 washed. There the advocate disguises himself as a 
 judge, and the worse one's case is, the more eager 
 he is to advance his reputation by taking it up. 
 But I thought your appeal lay to the proper tribunal. 
 What I supposed you to be looking for was a vivd 
 voce recognition, so to speak, of your political 
 integrity and your great public services; not such 
 
256 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 approbation as history whispers in the ear of the 
 student, but such as resounds throughout an empire 
 in the voice of national acclaim. I imagined that it 
 was your ambition to live, not in the dead annals of 
 the chronicler, but in the daily discourse and cogita- 
 tion of living men. 
 
 Peel. Well, and am I so utterly forgotten .' 
 Lord B. By the professors, no ; by the people, 
 yes. No statesman's name is more rarely on their 
 lips than yours. Even the Liberals, who owe so 
 much to you, neglect your memory. Seldom, indeed, 
 did they mention you in my later lifetime, except 
 it was to sharpen some blunt-pointed taunt against 
 me. And since my departure I have superseded 
 you even as a whetstone. It is no longer Peel, but 
 Beaconsfield, who is held up to the political world 
 as the example of wise and statesmanlike Conserva- 
 tism — I, the adventurer, the charlatan, the un- 
 English ! Widely as we differ on many subjects, 
 Sir Robert, we might find a point of contact here. 
 So ludicrous an illustration of the value of the 
 thing called "public opinion" might unite us, 
 merely as men of the world, in the sympathy of 
 contempt. 
 
 Peel. To find your enjoyment in it one must 
 have your cynicism, and I have it not. To me the 
 fact is melancholy and ominous — far more so than 
 what you tell me about my own unremembered 
 name. I had ten times rather that the people 
 
BEACONSFIELD AND PEEL 257 
 
 should have forgotten me than that they should 
 have forgiven you. 
 
 Lord B. Yet why? Both acts have their origin 
 in the same defect of faculty ; and neither deserves 
 more praise or blame than belongs to mere shortness 
 of memory. Amnesty, after all, is only the Greek 
 for forgetfulness. 
 
 Peel. Ay, but there are political sins — if there 
 are not political services — which merit an eternity of 
 remembrance. 
 
 Lord B. No doubt : but they don't get it. 
 Practically there is but one inexpiable sin in politics, 
 and but one way of atoning for the expiable. You 
 blundered. Sir Robert — excuse my freedom — you 
 blundered more than once in your policy ; but the 
 stumble most fatal to your posthumous reputation 
 was that of your horse on Constitution Hill. I, on 
 the other hand, had I committed far more errors 
 than you did, should have atoned for them all by 
 that one consummate stroke of statesmanship — the 
 completion of my seventy-fifth year. Nothing, 
 depend upon it, is more politic than longevity. Its 
 effects may not be so startling and brilliant as are 
 produced by the " early death of promise ; " but they 
 are infinitely more assured and lasting. After all, it 
 sooner or later occurs to people that the young 
 Marcellus might have turned out a failure. But if 
 one is not to die in the first blush of political youth, 
 it is essential to last well into the seventies. Once 
 
 s 
 
258 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 the attractions of adolescence have been lost, one is 
 bound to live until the dignity of old age has been 
 won. The hurried departure of a sexagenarian, in 
 the full freshness, perhaps, of some political reverse, 
 has a touch of the ludicrous about it, like the 
 premature farewell of a middle-aged prima-donna 
 under the discouragement of a bronchial attack. It 
 is wanting alike in discretion and in romance. 
 
 Peel. If statesmanship is to be tested by tena- 
 city of life, you left a greater statesman behind 
 you. 
 
 Lord B. I admit it, with regret. He has sur- 
 passed my political achievements by fourteen years 
 — for the difference in our ages is too slight to 
 matter. But our cases are exceptional. Our antago- 
 nism took so dramatic a form at last, that our 
 reputations reacted upon and supported each other, 
 and the memory of the dead statesman was in a certain 
 sense perpetuated by every characteristic act of his 
 survivor. My own humble merit was to have lived 
 long enough to fix that idea of dramatic antagonism 
 in the public mind — to have established myself as 
 the typical opponent of that form of Radicalism 
 with which Mr. Gladstone's name was associated. 
 
 Peel. That form of Radicalism ! Yes, the 
 expression is a well - chosen one. Radicalism 
 proper, you mean, as distinguished from Tory De- 
 mocracy. 
 
 Lord B. I congratulate you. Sir Robert, on the 
 
BEACONSFIELD AND PEFX 259 
 
 correctness of your vocabulary. Under serious dis- 
 advantage you seem to have kept yourself well 
 abreast of the terminology of the time. 
 
 Peel. You overrate the achievement, my lord. 
 Tory Democracy is not quite the modern affair, even 
 in your hands, that you seem to suggest. Your 
 romances familiarised us with the idea, if not with 
 the name, of the thing, and when the malice of Fate 
 permitted you to dispose of the future of our country, 
 the full drift of your youthful theories was made plain 
 to the dullest mind. Sybil and Coningsby may have 
 shrouded their meaning under rhetorical phrases, but 
 there was no coy concealment about the " Representa- 
 tion of the People Act, 1867." 
 
 Lord B. I did not venture to hope that that 
 legislation would be to your taste. Your own policy 
 was essentially pedestrian. You were not capable — 
 forgive me, we have all of us the defects of our 
 qualities — you were not capable of the statesmanship 
 of the imagination. 
 
 Peel. No, thank God ! 
 
 Lord B. Resignation, perhaps, would be a more 
 becoming mood than gratitude. There is a states- 
 manship of the imagination. 
 
 Peel. I do not dispute that for a moment. I 
 could not, with such a professor before me. 
 
 Lord B. Yes ; and the unimaginative variety 
 stands related to it as astronomy 
 
 Peel. To astrology } 
 
26o THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Lord B. As astronomy of the pre-Newtonian to 
 astronomy of the post-Newtonian era. Imaginative 
 statesmanship is simply another name for statesman- 
 ship armed with the power of scientific prediction. 
 
 In 1867 it was possible to compute the But 
 
 you smile. May I ask to be admitted to the secret 
 of your amusement .■' 
 
 Peel. I was smiling, not at the scientific states- 
 manship of 1867, but at its contrast with that of the 
 previous year. The Newton of politics, whoever he 
 may be, must have arisen, laboured, and departed in 
 the Parliamentary recess of 1866. But surely your 
 " leap in the dark " must have vividly, if not quite 
 pleasantly, recalled the memories of twenty years 
 before. Surely it must have awakened recollections 
 of that performance of my own in 1 846, of which you 
 were the most unsparing critic. 
 
 Lord B. It did, indeed, but by way of contrast 
 
 rather than comparison. Leaps should be taken, 
 
 according at least to the best traditions of the hunt- 
 
 1 ing-field, in company with one's horse. The most 
 
 i conspicuous feature in yours was, if you will excuse 
 
 my saying so, that you left your steed on the other 
 
 I side of the hedge. I, on the other hand, succeeding 
 
 to your seat, on the selfsame animal, contrived 
 
 But why pursue a comparison which must be painful 
 to you .'' 
 
 Peel. Nay, I will complete it myself. You put 
 your horse, you would say, at a still bigger fence 
 
BEACONSFIELD AND PEEL 261 
 
 than the one he had refused, and you "finished the 
 run " on his back. 
 
 Lord B. Exactly. 
 
 Peel. I do not deny it. I never did deny the 
 superiority of your jockeyship. And if that were all, 
 if a statesman owed no other duty to his country and 
 his conscience than to outwit his political opponents ; 
 if the achievement of a party triumph by the shame- 
 less adoption and the reckless extension of an 
 adversary's principles is to 
 
 Lord B. Pardon my interrupting you. Sir Robert ; 
 but your information upon posthumous politics, ex- 
 cellent as it is for the most part, is in this instance 
 at fault. You seem to be confusing the parts in the 
 drama of 1867. The principles which you describe 
 as " shamelessly adopted " and " recklessly extended," 
 were not my adversary's, but my own ; while, on the 
 other hand, the party manoeuvre was not mine, but 
 my chief's. I was not the proselyte of Democratic 
 Toryism, but its missionary— the "educator," as I 
 preferred to call it, of the Conservatives in the doctrine 
 and practice of that faith. It was I — as you flatter 
 me by remembering — I, and not Lord Derby, who 
 was the author of Sybil and Coningsby ; and, on the 
 other hand, it was Lord Derby and not I who sang 
 that historic paean of exultation over the " dishing 
 of the Whigs." 
 
 Peel. Such distinctions between leader and lieu- 
 tenant would hardly have served a rival of yours had 
 
262 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 it suited you once more to head a party revolt. 
 Again we should have heard the sarcasm about the 
 theft of the Whig bathers' clothes. 
 
 Lord B. Excuse me, I was never in the habit of 
 repeating my humble epigrams ; and the repetition 
 in this case would have been singularly inappropriate. 
 The Whig clothes ! Why, the Whigs themselves 
 stood aghast at us in our strange and unrecognised 
 apparel. And well they might, for it was not the 
 stolen attire of Lord Russell or Mr. Gladstone, or 
 even of Mr. Bright, but the cast-off costume of Vivian 
 Grey. Yes, the peers and the plutocrats, the grandees 
 of the shires and the magnates of the City, these it 
 was whom I watched defile before me arrayed in 
 the fantastic habiliments of my youth ; and if there 
 was any humiliation about the business, it was theirs 
 and not mine. 
 
 Peel. I do not defend them ; far from it. They 
 betrayed their trust — a trust committed to them by 
 the country and trafficked away by them for a party 
 victory. You boast of having educated them in your 
 principles ; but you have just recalled to me — and I 
 thank you for the reminder — that it was Lord Derby 
 who talked of " dishing the Whigs." Which teach- 
 ing, think you, had the most influence upon your 
 pupils, — that of the political theorist who talked 
 to them about striking new low-lying strata of Con- 
 servatism, or that of the practical politicians who 
 pointed out to them their opportunity of outbidding 
 
BEACONSFIELD AND PEEL 263 
 
 and outwitting their adversaries, and bade them 
 use it ? 
 
 Lord B. Oh, the schoolmaster had very efficient 
 ushers ; he has never denied that. But surely, Sir 
 Robert, your analysis of the situation is a little unjust. 
 You altogether omit the element of popular agitation, 
 and of the natural, the most proper, the truly patriotic 
 desire of a Conservative party to give peace to the 
 land. 
 
 Peel. Where was there any agitation for household 
 suffrage .' For a measure of reform — yes : though 
 even the demonstrations in that behalf — a few noisy 
 meetings in the provinces, and the levelling of the 
 railings of a London park — were mere child's play 
 to what we both of us remember. I abandoned 
 Protection under pressure of an inpending famine ; I 
 assented to the emancipation of the Catholics before 
 the menace of civil war. But you, my lord, to what 
 did yoti surrender in 1 867 1 What popular demand 
 was there which would not have been satisfied, nay, 
 which would not have been amply satisfied, by a far 
 less revolutionary measure than you proposed and 
 carried .■' 
 
 Lord B. The Opposition were bent on tripping 
 up our heels. Had we stopped short of Household 
 Suffrage, a defeat of Ministers and a dissolution of 
 Parliament would have followed. 
 
 Peel. Yes ; and the Liberals might perhaps have 
 returned from the polls with a still larger majority, 
 
264 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 But what then ? Would it not have been ten times 
 better for the country, ay, and in the long run for 
 the Conservatives, if they had ? Do you, of all men, 
 pretend to so little knowledge of the Liberal party 
 as to think that their zeal for progress is in direct 
 proportion to the strength of their Parliamentary 
 position ? The ratio of variation is inverse. Had 
 they come back strengthened from the elections, the 
 Reform dose would not have been administered to 
 the country out of the ample table-spoon of the 
 Radical ; it would have been doled out from the 
 minim-glass of the Whig. 
 
 Lord B. And how long would the patient have 
 been satisfied with it .-' 
 
 Peel. How long ! A generation, twenty years, ten 
 years : who knows ? But who knows, either, how 
 much might have been gained by even the shortest 
 of these pauses on the Democratic path ? And what 
 kind of Conservatism is that which does not appre- 
 ciate the inestimable advantage of substituting gradual 
 for sudden change .'' 
 
 Lord B. The answer is simple. It is the Con- 
 servatism of practical intelligence as distinguished 
 from the Conservatism of mere sentiment and tradi- 
 tion. Whether gradual or sudden change is best 
 depends upon circumstances. The change from an 
 untenable to a tenable position can never be too 
 sudden. And if new political forces have to be 
 recognised — forces which you must learn to control 
 
BEACONSFIELD AND PEEL 265 
 
 or they will destroy you — how should the recognition 
 of them be gradual ? You cannot learn to control 
 them till you set them free to work, and the sooner 
 you liberate the sooner will you have mastered them. 
 
 Peel. Phrases ! phrases ! Is the position of your 
 party tenable now .-' And can they control, or, for 
 the matter of that, could you control the forces 
 which you called into being ? For a time I know 
 you persuaded your party that you could ; but the 
 dream of 1874 had the awakening of 1880, and in 
 what plight did we find them then ? They were an 
 army without flag or commander, or even plan of 
 campaign. You had untaught them their old 
 methods of warfare, and they could not pick up the 
 trick of the new. The generals of division were without 
 authority ; and a rabble of subalterns, but one of 
 whom had even the excuse of Vivian Grey's youth 
 for crediting himself with that adventurer's genius, 
 fought for your broken baton. They have rallied 
 since, I admit, but to what .'' To a bastard, semi- 
 Socialist Radicalism. What an outlook ! 
 
 Lord B. Sir Robert Peel an alarmist ! 
 
 Peel. Not so. I have faith in a fundamental 
 Conservatism permeating the entire English people ; 
 but you must go deep down to reach it ; and much 
 that we prize may be dug up and shovelled aside 
 before the Radical digger strikes that bed-rock with 
 his spade. As to the middle classes there is not, and 
 never has been, any fear. T/ieir interests, at any rate. 
 
266 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 I always understood ; and I see many worthy expo- 
 nents of them among your own colleagues. Inefficient 
 administrator as you were— and no statesman of your 
 mark was ever so inefficient — you knew how to choose 
 men capable in administration. The chief depart- 
 ments of the State under your Government were all 
 respectably and some admirably filled. Your Chan- 
 cellor of the Exchequer, your First Lord of the 
 Admiralty, your Secretary for War, were men whom 
 I should have chosen myself. But one cannot live 
 by administration alone ; and what mark did you 
 make on national policy ? What tradition of legisla- 
 tion did you leave behind you to strengthen your 
 successors, and to let your countrymen know to whom 
 and to what they might turn when the season of 
 alarm should come .-' You left nothing of the kind. 
 The history of your six years of rule can scarcely be 
 said to form a part of your country's story. It was 
 a mere digression into foreign politics. Your Govern- 
 ment lived upon an episode and died of its conclusion. 
 The nation, wishing at last to return to its own affairs, 
 displaced you ; and when your downfall proved that 
 you had alienated the classes through whom I was 
 wont to govern, without securing more than a fleeting 
 popularity among the masses whom you boasted your 
 ability to lead, I should have thought that not only 
 would your reputation by this time have perished, 
 but that it would have been the indignant hands 
 of your own — I cannot call it our own — party 
 
BEACONSFIELD AND PEEL 267 
 
 which would have laid bare its imposture to the 
 world. 
 
 Lord B. And you would really have thought so, 
 Sir Robert ? How strange, then, is the irony of cir- 
 cumstance ! It was the very hands you speak of, 
 which, instead of unmasking the Minister, unveiled 
 his statue ; and they now load its pedestal, on every 
 anniversary of his death-day, with memorial wreaths. 
 
XII 
 FIELDING AND RICHARDSON 
 
 Rich. Sir! Mr. Fielding! This is mighty ill 
 manners! I would have you to know, sir, that I 
 prefer my own company to yours. 
 
 Field. I cannot believe it. Death does not so 
 change men's natures. Your known conviviality of 
 disposition 
 
 Rich. Again, sir ! You pass all bounds ! 'Tis 
 strange that you should suppose yourself entitled to 
 use this freedom with me. Were we on earth, I 
 should impute your rudeness to an excitement, in 
 which you were said to indulge yourself something 
 too freely. 
 
 Field. I know you would : and as a backbiter 
 you deserve to be pitied for the loss of so useful a 
 tooth. 
 
 Rich. I shall suffer less by my loss, Mr. Fielding, 
 I am well assured, than you will by yours. 
 
 Field. Perhaps so ; but you will suffer in the same 
 way. Tea and tittle-tattle must be almost as bad to 
 do without as a bottle of Burgundy and a rousing 
 
 268 
 
FIELDING AND RICHARDSON 269 
 
 catch ; though I dare swear, by the way, that you 
 manage to get the most favourite of all your drinks 
 even down here. 
 
 Rich. I know not what you would be at, sir. 
 
 Field. There is a beverage which intoxicates more 
 hurtfuUy than wine, and makes a greater fool of the 
 drinker. Ladies' parlours are its taverns and old 
 maids its tapsters. Yotc know its taste, Mr. Richard- 
 son — no man better ; its name is flattery. 
 
 Rich. 'Tis in vain, sir, that you would attempt by 
 ridicule to make me ashamed of having earned the 
 approbation of virtuous women. If that is your 
 object, let me tell you that 
 
 Field. That my object, Mr. Richardson ! You are 
 vastly mistaken. The praises bestowed upon you by 
 virtuous women, so far from exciting my ridicule, 
 inspired me with emulation. I sought to rival you 
 among the other sex, and began the composition of 
 Joseph Andrews in the hope of winning the approba- 
 tion of virtuous men. 
 
 Rich. I marvel, Mr. Fielding, that you should 
 have the hardihood to speak of that offence against 
 morality and good manners. Ah, sir, you have much 
 to answer for in so thoughtless an endeavour — for 
 thoughtless I hope it was — to raise a laugh against 
 chastity. 
 
 Field. The chastity which a laugh could put out 
 of countenance is not worth much. But, for my own 
 part, I see nothing more ridiculous in the manly 
 
2/0 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 continence of Joseph than in the virginal purity of 
 his sister. 
 
 Rich. Then you were unfortunate, sir, in your 
 manner of describing it. The Adventures of Joseph 
 Andrews — I speak from hearsay only, for I confess I 
 never had the patience to read the book — did more 
 to divert than edify the town. 
 
 Field. I am not to answer for the levity of my 
 readers. It is enough to provide them with a serious 
 moral ; the seriousness to profit by it they must find 
 for themselves. Besides, sir, you are setting up a 
 ticklish test of the morality of authors. I have seen 
 an unthinking reader smile over the sufferings of 
 Mrs. Pamela. 
 
 Rich. That is like enough, sir. Your acquaintance 
 lay chiefly among those who would naturally make a 
 jest of virtue. A work of morality, however, is not 
 to be judged by its effects on the rake-hells of Covent 
 Garden. 
 
 Field. No ; nor by its acceptance among the precise 
 spinsters of Fleet Street. If the one be beyond the 
 reach of reform, the others are beyond the need of it. 
 I think we may fairly lay both of them out of the 
 account. 
 
 Rich. Nay, sir ; I may boast, at any rate, of having 
 confirmed the virtuous in their virtue : while you 
 were doing all that lay in your power to cocker the 
 vicious in their vice. 
 
 Field. 'Fore Gad, Mr. Richardson, there is one 
 
FIELDING AND RICHARDSON 271 
 
 virtue to which you do not seem to show much 
 favour ; though the Scripture tells us, I think, that 
 charity is the greatest of them all. 
 
 Rich. Charity, sir ! Charity ! I — I — find nothing 
 
 to But, no ! I was wrong. The warmth of our 
 
 dispute betrayed me into error. I had no right to 
 charge you with any deliberate design of corrupting 
 morals, and I ask your pardon. 
 
 Field. Say no more, Mr. Richardson ! You are 
 an honest little fellow, with all your 
 
 Rich. Sir ! Mr. Fielding ! 
 
 Field. Pray excuse me. A warmth of another 
 kind has betrayed me into error. I should have said, 
 sir, that I did not need this proof of your generosity 
 and Christian spirit. You do me no more than justice, 
 however. I have never knowingly left a hne unblotted 
 which I thought could injure the cause of morality, 
 though, I own, I believed I could serve it better by 
 describing men and women as I saw them rather 
 than as I could have wished them to be. After all, 
 Mr. Richardson, we live among realities. It is among 
 them that virtue has to be practised ; and I doubt 
 whether it is possible to teach it by examples drawn 
 from a wholly ideal world, where the personages live 
 and move as it were in another and diiferent element 
 altogether. As soon might one understand the art of 
 swimming by watching men perform its movements, 
 belly downwards, on a bowling-green. The men and 
 women of my romances may not all of them swim 
 
272 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 like Leander, but they are at least in the water, and 
 worth watching on that account. 
 
 Rich. Your parable, if you mean to apply it to 
 the most ingenious of your romances, is indeed a rash 
 one. Your hero there is assuredly no Leander. 
 
 Field. My hero no Leander ! (I forbear to laugh, 
 you see, though there are few things more diverting 
 than gravity stumbling on a clench.) No, sir ; Tom is 
 certainly no Leander : his head is pretty often under 
 water before he contrives to make his way to the 
 haven of his Sophia's arms. But he gets there, how- 
 ever ; he does not sink ; he swims. 
 
 Rich. Swims ! Mr. Fielding ! Nay, sir, he 
 struggles somehow to land, and that is all. He is 
 a profligate roisterer — I speak from report, sir, for I 
 would not have you to suppose that I have read his 
 adventures — who is altogether unworthy of the beau- 
 tiful and virtuous young gentlewoman (as she is 
 described to me) who rewards him with her hand : 
 and what sort of lesson in morality is that, I would 
 ask } 
 
 Field. No better than life affords us, sir, I grant 
 you that. I never could bring myself to improve 
 upon the instructions which the great Disposer of 
 events vouchsafes to His creatures. 
 
 Rich. I grieve, sir, that you should add impiety 
 to license. Providence does not reward the vicious 
 as you have dared to do. 
 
 Field. What ? Do you mean to tell me that all 
 
FIELDING AND RICHARDSON 273 
 
 the loose fellows are condemned to marry ugly 
 women ? Or is it Sophy's virtue that they have to 
 do without — as indeed they have but too often made 
 shift to do in their wilder days ? 
 
 Rich. Your talk, sir, is becoming something too 
 free for my taste ; but you are only affecting to 
 misunderstand me. The Almighty may well allow 
 vice to prosper in this life, if such be His inscrutable 
 will, seeing that He has the power of rewards and 
 punishments after death : but a writer of romances has 
 but this world to deal with. His judgment-day is in his 
 last chapter, and the good must be rewarded and the 
 evil punished before he pens his " Finis," or not at all. 
 Field. True enough, sir ; but if you believe in the 
 infinite mercy of the Supreme Being — you need not 
 interrupt me ; I see you do, from your manner — you 
 ought not to be so shocked at the leniency of the 
 romancer. He also, if I may say it without irre- 
 verence, is a creator : and none can know so well as 
 he what allowances are to be made for the infirmities 
 of his creatures. 
 
 Rich. I have no patience, sir, with such profane 
 trifling. Do you not encourage youth to believe 
 that recklessness and riotous living, dicing and 
 drinking, chambering and wantonness, are, after all, 
 but venial irregularities, and that if a man be but bold 
 and open-handed, good-natured and good-humoured 
 with it all, he shall come to no great harm ? And 
 is not that corrupting ? 
 
 T 
 
274 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Field. Is it more corrupting than life itself? I 
 protest, sir, that I cannot see it. If good and evil 
 impulses be mixed in all men, and if their fellows 
 see that sometimes the good is allowed in this life 
 to atone for the evil, shall we say that those who 
 are rather emboldened by contemplating the impunity 
 of vice than humbled by observing how lamentably 
 it defaces and chequers virtue, have been corrupted 
 by the world .'' Or that they are self-corrupters .' 
 Unless we give the latter account of them, we must 
 declare, as I said but now, that divine mercy is 
 itself an instrument in the demoralisation of mankind. 
 
 Rich. You seem mighty well content, sir, with 
 that sophism, but it cannot serve you. I must 
 remind you again that you did not stand towards 
 your characters as a man stands towards his fellow, 
 but on another foot. You were, as you said with too 
 little reverence, their creator, and you were also their 
 judge. Why did you shrink, then, from making a 
 wholesome example .'' Why teach young men that 
 vice may escape punishment and even attain to 
 happiness ? How can you tell but that many a 
 youth may have been tempted to intrigue with a 
 Lady Bellaston — if that is the hussy's name — while 
 yet hoping to be rewarded with a Sophia Western 
 at last ? 
 
 Field. Well, Mr. Richardson, and why teach 
 waiting-maids that virtue will always be rewarded by 
 ;^io,ooo a year and a couple of country houses ? 
 
FIELDING AND RICHARDSON 275 
 
 How can you tell but that many an ambitious 
 abigail, disappointed of becoming the wife of her 
 first amorous master, has jumped at the situation of 
 mistress to the second ? 
 
 Rich. Sir, I see no pertinence in your question. 
 
 Field. Do you not ? It seems to me very much 
 to the point. I cannot see that virtue is any better 
 served by feigning a false certainty for its earthly 
 prizes than by teaching men what is strictly true — 
 that it need not despair of its recompense, even 
 though it be mingled with vice. Besides, sir, to 
 come back to my old position, how is it possible for 
 a faithful delineator of human life to do otherwise 
 than as I have done ? Are not good and evil mingled 
 in life, and are not those who look upon life — I 
 speak not now of boarding-school misses, but of 
 men and women of the world — are they not, I say, 
 perpetually conscious of the mixture ? Do they not 
 see too that the tares and wheat — or is it tares and 
 oats .' no ! wheat — tares and wheat are allowed to 
 grow together until the harvest, and that the tares 
 sometimes flourish a plaguy deal better than the 
 wheat ? If they do see all these things in life, they 
 would not recognise the romancer's picture if it 
 omitted them all. 
 
 Rich. I am amazed, sir, at the shallowness of 
 such reasoning. Good and evil are indeed mingled 
 in this life ; but it is not, therefore, for an honest and 
 Christian writer to fling down the things and persons 
 
276 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 of this world chance-medley before his readers, like 
 so much unsorted goods, and leave them to pick 
 out the fair or foul, as best suits their taste. It is 
 his duty, sir, to put them upon contemplating only 
 what is good, and to encourage them to the pursuit 
 of it by showing what advantages it brings. 
 
 Field. Is that his duty ? Then, egad, let him 
 throw aside his pen and quit his closet, clap on a 
 cassock and bands and get him to the pulpit, for 
 that, sir, is the proper place for him. Once there, 
 however, he will do better to drop this life altogether 
 so far as rewards and punishments are concerned, 
 and to seek to fortify the virtuous and alarm the 
 vicious, by dwelling on the comforts of a good 
 conscience and the agonies of an evil one, on the 
 joys of heaven and the terrors of hell. That, Mr. 
 Richardson, is his business — the business of a man 
 whose concern is with the future world, and not like 
 my own, as I conceived it, with the present. 
 
 Rich. I cannot believe it either necessary or right 
 to divide one of these concerns from the other. It 
 was my own endeavour — in which I humbly trust to 
 have succeeded — to write both for a future and for 
 the present world. I was insensible, I hope, to the 
 vanity of authorship, and deemed it by far a higher 
 honour to have been a teacher of morals than an 
 inventor of romances. But I judged, and I think 
 rightly, that I could do more for morality as a 
 delineator of life than as a pulpit homilist. 
 
FIELDING AND RICHARDSON 277 
 
 Field. Why, then, did you make a pulpit homilist 
 of yourself? Plague take it, Mr. Richardson, a 
 pulpit is but a wooden box, and an armchair will 
 serve one's turn as well at a pinch. You preached 
 sitting instead of standing, and hammered out your 
 periods over an escritoire instead of thumping them 
 out on a velvet cushion. But preacher you were 
 always, and delineator of life, never. I doubt, indeed, 
 whether you ever saw more of it than could be seen 
 from your shop door : but whatever you saw of it, you 
 never drew it. 
 
 Rich. Never drew it ! No delineator of life ! Mr. 
 Fielding, you are uncivil. 
 
 Field. Am I ? I thought you set so little store 
 by your fame as an author that you would take it 
 as a compliment to be regarded solely as a preacher 
 of morals. 
 
 Rich. No man takes it as a compliment, sir, to hear 
 that he has failed in anything which he has attempted. 
 However, I need not allow myself to be vexed by 
 your mean opinion of my writings : nor will I. I 
 thank Heaven that a man's reputation is not to be 
 made or marred to all time by the wits of Covent 
 Garden. There are others, sir, besides the coxcombs 
 who were scrambling for the chair of Dryden, to 
 whose judgment 
 
 Field. Mr. Richardson ! Mr. Richardson ! I beg 
 of you to compose yourself. Such earthly trifles as 
 the fame of ingenious authorship are beneath the 
 
278 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 care of a moralist. Besides, as you have well said, 
 there is nothing which need vex you in the expres- 
 sion of my poor opinion. I never laid claim to the 
 chair of glorious John, out of which indeed I should 
 have first had to hoist a heavy 
 
 Rich. You are right there, sir, and I spoke in 
 forgetfulness. The seat of John Dryden was filled, 
 and well filled, at the time when we two entered the 
 court of letters. 
 
 Field. Well filled indeed! amply, tightly filled, 
 Mr. Richardson ; and by a judge, too, as much your 
 friend as he was my enemy. 
 
 Rich. I know not in what sense you can call him 
 your enemy, but I accept with pride the title of his 
 friend. I am prouder indeed of Dr. Johnson's friend- 
 ship than even of his praise. 
 
 Field. The one, maybe, had a good deal to do 
 with the other. If report speaks truly, you were the 
 greater Samuel's banker. 
 
 Rich. I have given no man a right to circulate 
 any such report. 
 
 Field. Of that I am sure. You were as much 
 too magnanimous to speak of your benefactions as 
 the Doctor was too generous to conceal them. I 
 say that in all sincerity, believe me. Your left 
 hand, I dare swear, would never have known what 
 your right hand had done, had he not come between 
 them and let out the secret. But there it is : you 
 were the great censor's friend in need. 
 
FIELDING AND RICHARDSON 279 
 
 Rich. And what if I were, sir ? Would you charge 
 one of the proudest and most upright of men with 
 corrupt motives ? 
 
 Field. Not I, faith ! The old bear was as honest 
 as one of his own hugs. But then his heart was as 
 warm as his skin, and he was full of good will to all 
 who showed him any kindness. You had proved 
 your friendship to him in the most effectual of 
 fashions — by lending him money. With me he had 
 but slight acquaintance, and if we had improved it 
 I should probably have borrowed money of him. 
 What wonder, then, if his critical foot-rule should 
 have meted to you a little fuller, and to me a little 
 shorter, measure than we deserved ? 
 
 Rich. Suppose him, then, to have been somewhat 
 disbalanced by partiality ; he is not the only admired 
 critic who has thought highly of my work. One of 
 the ingenious, though, I lament to say, atheistical, 
 editors of the Encyclopedia has spoken of me in 
 language which too many will regard as that of 
 extravagant laudation. Mr. Diderot has ventured to 
 compare me with our immortal Shakespeare. 
 
 Field. Mr. Diderot had better settle the value of 
 that compliment with his friend Mr. Voltaire. For if 
 I mistake not, he commends you for that very 
 quality of cultivation in which Mr. Voltaire dared to 
 find our illustrious countrymen deficient. But I do 
 not know, after all, that the Frenchman's compliment 
 is inconsistent with my censure. 
 
28o THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Rich. Nay, sir, how can that be ? Was Shakespeare 
 no delineator of life ? 
 
 Field. Not in the humble sense in which I lay- 
 claim to that title for myself. I studied the men 
 and women among whom I moved, and strove to 
 represent their lineaments with fideHty on my canvas. 
 I drew from the life and with my models always 
 before me. Shakespeare had surveyed all life and 
 had his models by heart if he had cared to work in 
 that fashion. But when he sat down to write he 
 looked within and found there the imaginative types 
 of perfect form upon which he worked. I drew my 
 characters as Reynolds painted his portraits, but 
 Shakespeare created his as Phidias modelled his 
 Jove. 
 
 Rich. To what does all this tend, Mr. Fielding.? 
 Am I really to conclude that you are ascribing the 
 superior mode of workmanship to me .? 
 
 Field. You are fluttered, I see, by the mere 
 anticipation ; but it is a correct one. You did not 
 study from the life, though perhaps you thought you 
 did, but you had a certain power of imagining types. 
 It was not, I am sorry to say, till I had roundly 
 ridiculed you that I found it out : but I confessed it 
 when I did. For your Clarissa Harlowe I had a 
 great value, and you will do me the justice to 
 remember that I was not slow to express it. You 
 possessed deep insight, sir, into the female heart, 
 and in one instance you have most powerfully 
 
FIELDING AND RICHARDSON 281 
 
 idealised the wickedness of a man. It matters 
 nothing that neither Clarissa nor Lovelace are re- 
 presentations of any possible human being ; they 
 have a truth of their own. I should like to say the 
 same of Pamela, but I cannot. She is neither an 
 ideal waiting-maid nor a real one. 
 
 Rich. What ! sir ; you profess to find no reality in 
 Pamela .' 
 
 Field. My experience of her is in two respects 
 the reverse of Mr. B.'s. I find her neither of flesh 
 and blood, nor resisting to the touch. Come, Mr. 
 Richardson, is there any truth to nature in the 
 preaching little baggage, or in her sanctified parents 
 — hedgers and ditchers with a longer string of long 
 words in their mouths than they had ever had onions. 
 Is there any reason and probability in her restraint 
 by the wicked Mrs. Jukes i Can we believe in the 
 real inability of so virtuous a maiden to escape from 
 so ill-guarded a prison ? Or in the sudden conversion 
 of so hardened a profligate as her master .'' 
 
 Rich. I see no great violation of probability, sir, 
 in any of these things. I know not why a squire or 
 a waiting-maid should not comport themselves as 
 they do in Pamela. 
 
 Field. Then take the word of a squire who has 
 had some experience of waiting-maids, that they 
 would not. One would have been less pertinacious 
 or the other more approachable. And what do you 
 think of Lovelace .' Do you suppose that the rake-hells 
 
282 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 of Covent Garden, as you call them, numbered 
 any such audacious and triumphant villain among 
 them as he ? 
 
 Rich. The selfishness of long self-indulgence, sir, 
 and the insolence of rank and wealth, and the visita- 
 tion of God upon a godless life, may produce, nay, I 
 think they must produce, a Lovelace. 
 
 Field. Ay, as hatred and suspicion and callous 
 contempt for his kind may produce the undoer of 
 Othello. But for all that, I should not expect to 
 meet with an lago on the Piazza at Venice, and I 
 can assure you that you would meet no Lovelace at 
 its namesake in Covent Garden, The spot is too 
 near Bow Street for that. 
 
 Rich. You mean that 
 
 Field. I meant, sir, to remind you that I had 
 been a magistrate as well as a writer, and that in the 
 former of these characters I should have made short 
 work of the most famous of your personages. One 
 of my runners would have laid "Captain" Love- 
 lace and his lawless lieutenants by the heels in a 
 very short time. What ! to abduct a young lady of 
 quality under pretence of escorting her to the house 
 of a kinswoman, and then to detain her for weeks 
 against , her will, to say nothing of attempting and 
 finally accomplishing yet worse outrages — and all 
 this to go on unchecked under the very noses of 
 his Majesty's commission of the peace ! Upon 
 my conscience, Mr. Richardson, your magistrates 
 
FIELDING AND RICHARDSON 283 
 
 and constabulary vastly needed a call over the 
 coals. 
 
 Rich. On such a matter, sir, you speak with an 
 authority which it does not become me to question. 
 
 Field. Believe, then, on that authority, sir, that 
 no such man as Lovelace was possible in England in 
 the reign of his gracious Majesty George II., and 
 still less so, I suppose, at any time since. Nor do I 
 know whether one could have met with so unredeemed 
 a scoundrel in any country or time. But one may 
 say the same of the blacker villains of Shakespeare ; 
 and it does not prevent Lovelace from possessing 
 what I have already allowed to him — a reality of his 
 own. His is a powerfully conceived and awe-striking 
 figure of the Satanic sort, as Clarissa is a most 
 affecting picture in the angelic order of portraiture, 
 and both of them deserved to live. Have I atoned, 
 Mr. Richardson, for speaking of you as no delineator 
 of life ? 
 
 Rich. You have, at any rate, said some vastly civil 
 things, sir, and I thank you for them. My regret is 
 the greater that I cannot return your civilities in 
 kind. But I could not honestly say anything in 
 praise of Tom Jones, which is — I mean, which I 
 understand to be — your masterpiece ; and I know you 
 would not have me sacrifice conscience to courtesy. 
 
 Field. Not for the world, Mr. Richardson : par- 
 ticularly when I should derive so little pleasure from 
 what would give you so much pain. I will strive to 
 
284 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 do without your good opinion on my writings, con- 
 soling myself as best I may by the imaginative 
 contemplation of my effigy. 
 
 Rich. Hey ? what .■' What say you, Mr. Fielding ? 
 — your effigy .'' 
 
 Field. 'Tis even so, sir. How does your friend, 
 the great Doctor, turn it ? 
 
 See nations slowly wise and meanly just 
 To buried merit raise the tardy bust ; 
 If dreams . . . 
 
 But what ails you, Mr. Richardson ? You seem 
 agitated. 
 
 Rich. 'Tis nothing, sir — nothing. But I confess I 
 had thought that . . . 
 
 Field. You hardly need tell me what. But, 
 plague take it, sir, these empty honours can profit us 
 nothing. 
 
 Rich. True, Mr. Fielding, very true — 
 
 Can storied urn or animated bust 
 
 Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath ? 
 
 Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust ? 
 Or flattery soothe the dull cold ear of death ? 
 
 My venerable friend Dr. Johnson thought meanly of 
 Mr. Gray, I remember, but to me he seemed to have 
 considerable merit. 
 
 Field. He can put unpleasant questions, at any 
 rate, if that be a merit in a poet. 
 
 Rich. A bust is not wanted by any man who lives 
 in the memory of his countrymen. 
 
FIELDING AND RICHARDSON 285 
 
 Field. And useless to any man who does not. 
 
 Rich. I refrained, Mr. Fielding, from adding that. 
 
 Field. Why did you, then .' It is your own con- 
 solation on the want of a statue. You are not mocked, 
 and I am. 
 
 Rich. I do not understand you. 
 
 Field. I will whisper my meaning, so that it may 
 not get abroad ; for you keep your court of admirers 
 here, though I do not. They have raised a statue to 
 me, and for aught I know they may raise one to 
 you ; but they do not read either of us. 
 
 Rich. Great Heaven ! You jest, Mr. Fielding ! 
 
 Field. Not now. I have given it up. I did all 
 my jesting on earth, and I am afraid that my works 
 are suffering for it. 
 
 Rich. Ah ! I perceive how it stands with you, 
 sir. It is as I feared. Your freedoms have excluded 
 you from polite hands. I always somewhat marvelled 
 at the hardihood of gentlewomen in my own day, 
 who could be seen perusing your works. But the 
 neglect of my own romances, which were thought to 
 have done so much for the cause, is both strange and 
 mortifying. 
 
 Field. Nevertheless, it is complete, or so I am 
 assured on the best authority. They tell me that a 
 young woman would be almost as likely to be seen 
 giggling over the temptations of Joseph Andrews as 
 fluttering over the trials of Pamela. As to the men, 
 I am perhaps a little better off than you, for some few 
 
286 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 of them have still a certain acquaintance with me, 
 and the others think it right to pretend it. But for 
 the ladies, Mr. Richardson — well, we must do our 
 best to console each other with the reflection that 
 since they are too straitlaced to relish my romances 
 they may, perhaps, be too virtuous to need your 
 sermons. 
 
XIII 
 
 EDMUND BURKE AND EDWARD 
 
 HORSMAN 
 
 Burke. You have spoken eloquently, sir, in praise 
 of eloquence ; but I confess that the more I consider 
 the subject, the more I wonder that oratory should 
 ever have been regarded as an art worth cultivation 
 by men of affairs. Its forensic successes on the great 
 scale are indeed well known, and those of the minor 
 sort are of everyday occurrence ; but you will look in 
 vain for any record of its achievements in the history 
 of States. What great orator of ancient or modern 
 times has ever saved his political party or triumphed 
 over his political opponents, turned his countrymen 
 from the path of danger, or guided them into the 
 way of wisdom, by his eloquence alone ? Did 
 Demosthenes succeed in rousing the Athenians 
 against Phihp ? Was it Cicero the orator or Csesar 
 the soldier who had his way at Rome ? Did the 
 elder Pitt contrive to save his country from the crime 
 and folly of the American war .? Or was I — if I may 
 
 287 
 
288 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 without immodesty cite myself — was I any happier 
 in the same attempt ? I deny not that Demosthenes 
 and Cicero may have achieved many objects for 
 which they laboured ; the career of Pitt was as a 
 whole transcendently successful ; in more than one 
 of my own humble political efforts I have gained my 
 end. But I am forced to believe that in all such cases, 
 whether at Athens or at Rome, or in England, the 
 politician must have had the circumstances for con- 
 federates : I cannot indeed doubt it, when I see how 
 completely adverse circumstances are removed from 
 his control. I cannot doubt, I say, that the opinions 
 and wishes of his countrymen must always have 
 favoured him from the outset if he is to succeed ; 
 since, whenever the case is reversed, I find him so 
 powerless, even by the utmost exertion of his elo- 
 quence, to bend them to his will. 
 
 HORS. But is it quite fair, sir, to try political 
 oratory by so severe a test .'' Are we bound to 
 assume all conditions adverse to its success before 
 we are entitled to assign any value to it as a political 
 instrument .'' 
 
 Burke. Surely yes. In what other way can we 
 estimate its power .' Nay, to what less severe a test 
 do we subject forensic oratory every day? The 
 success of the advocate is measured by the hostility 
 of the tribunal before whom he pleads — whether that 
 hostility be due to the strength of their prejudices or 
 to the weakness of his case. Nor is it deemed any 
 
BURKE AND HORSMAN 289 
 
 credit to him to win his cause, unless these conditions 
 are first assumed against him. 
 
 HoRS. Still, sir, the advocate's task bears no com- 
 parison in point of difficulty with that of the 
 politician ; the practice of the court to which he 
 appeals is in many cases so vastly in the former's 
 favour. The jury decides after, at the most, a few 
 hours' deliberation ; the country may take months or 
 years to consider its decision. 
 
 Burke. So much the worse, no doubt, for the 
 rhetorician, but so much the better for the reasoner. 
 And yet with all this time allowed for his arguments 
 to win their way to the minds of his countrymen, he 
 fails. 
 
 HORS. I own, sir, that I do not highly rate the 
 influence of reasoning in political matters, and there- 
 fore, that I set no great store by that large allowance 
 of time which is granted to the politician. Most 
 political reasoning is over the heads of the mass of 
 those to whom it is addressed — as, with submission, 
 Mr. Burke, was but too often the case with your 
 own ; while that which is comprehensible to their 
 understandings is either superfluous or futile — super- 
 fluous if it approves itself to their views of their own 
 interests, futile if it does not. 
 
 Burke. When opposed to the true interests of a 
 country, it is not desirable that any arguments should 
 be successful. But it is the function of sound political 
 reasoning to enable men to distinguish between their 
 
 U 
 
290 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 true advantage and its delusive semblance. Are we 
 really to believe that the skilled and upright political 
 orator is incapable of rendering that service to the 
 State ? I have already shown you that I am tempted 
 to accept that view myself; but I feel that to adopt 
 it finally would be to despair of political progress. 
 
 HORS. I do not perceive that consequence, sir, 
 unless, indeed, we are to assume that the people are 
 mistaken as to their true interests more often than 
 not. On the opposite assumption, their inaccessibility 
 to reasonings which (on such an assumption) must of 
 course be more often than not fallacious, would be a 
 proof of political development. May we not say, 
 indeed, that the main result of all political progress 
 is, or should be, to relieve oratory of its functions ? 
 Surely the ideal condition of a community would be 
 that it should perceive its own interests too clearly 
 either to need to be instructed, or to be capable of 
 being misled. 
 
 Burke. An ideal condition, in truth ! Has it yet 
 been reached in England ? 
 
 HORS. No, indeed ! very far from it. We have, in 
 my judgment, receded instead of advancing. 
 
 Burke. May I ask, sir, without impertinence, 
 whether you are a Tory ? 
 
 HORS. You may ask, Mr. Burke, with all my heart ; 
 and I only wish that in the present era of political 
 transition I could answer your question either to your 
 satisfaction or my own. Perhaps I may help myself 
 
BURKE AND HORSMAN 291 
 
 by asking one of you in my turn. May I inquire 
 whether you are a Whig ? 
 
 Burke. Beyond doubt, sir. I was ever the staunch 
 upholder of all the lawful liberties of the people. 
 
 HORS. Do you regard it as one among their lawful 
 liberties, then, to exercise political power without any 
 pretensions to political fitness ? 
 
 Burke. God forbid ! 
 
 HORS. It is too late : He has permitted it. But 
 your ejaculation emboldens me to claim for myself 
 the title of Whig. The classes who possess supreme 
 power in England are at present absolutely unfitted 
 to exercise it 
 
 BURKE. And you tell me at the same time that 
 they are impervious to the reasonings of any who 
 seek to instruct them in the wise employment of their 
 power ? 
 
 HORS. Absolutely impervious : but so, indeed, was 
 the class immediately above them, from whom they 
 received their power — the enfranchised of 1832. 
 
 BURKE. This, sir, is worse and worse : for as I 
 understand you, it is the whole of the English 
 middling classes whom you now include in your 
 censure. Was the oratory of reason so entirely 
 powerless even with them ? 
 
 HORS. I — a — we found it so, Mr. Burke — my 
 friend Mr. Lowe and myself. For two whole years 
 we devoted our whole energies to the endeavour to 
 convince the public of the folly and even the madness 
 
292 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 of extending political privilege to the uneducated 
 masses of the people: but in vain. Mr. Lowe, in 
 orations of memorable eloquence, appealed to the 
 witness of antiquity against democracies, while I, if 
 I may say so, exhausted every contemporary topic 
 of argument to the same effect. The country, how- 
 ever, turned a deaf ear to us. 
 
 Burke. Then I do not fully comprehend how the 
 step which was then taken can be in your view 
 regarded as a downward one. The classes who 
 thereupon succeeded to political power could not, on 
 your own showing, have been more unteachable than 
 those into whose inheritance they had entered. The 
 trees cannot do more than remain motionless when 
 the political orator attempts to play Orpheus to 
 them. 
 
 HORS. Pardon me, Mr. Burke, they can do more 
 and worse. They can dance in the direction of the 
 precipice to the thrummings of another sort of lyre. 
 The English middle-class might be no less deaf to 
 the political counsellor than the mass of the artisan 
 population ; but they were far more proof against 
 the arts of the demagogue. 
 
 Burke. What? Is the demagogue a greater 
 power among the new electors than he was among 
 the old .' Now indeed do you astonish me. I had 
 thought that you agreed with me in regarding 
 political oratory (and the demagogue, I suppose, has 
 nothing but his tongue to rely on) as a useless art. 
 
BURKE AND HORSMAN 293 
 
 HORS. That, Mr. Burke, was only your own 
 contention. Excuse me for reminding you that I 
 never adopted it. I spoke only of the futility of 
 political reasonings : I said nothing as to the power 
 of oratory over men's passions and prejudices ; and 
 in so far as he wields that power, the influence of 
 the political orator in England has, of course, 
 indefinitely increased. 
 
 Burke. You mean, I suppose, that the area of 
 its exercise is wider, and the material on which it 
 works more abundant. 
 
 HoRS. At once more abundant and more plastic. 
 For one man who, in your own time, could be 
 moved to action through his feelings, there are fifty 
 nowadays with whom, beyond the narrow and ill- 
 defined sphere of personal interest, sentiment is the 
 only motive power. For every degree of heat to 
 which popular audiences could be kindled in your 
 days the pocket-thermometer of the contemporary 
 demagogue will register ten times that rise of 
 temperature among his hearers. 
 
 Burke. Such a state of things appears incredible. 
 Among a community so impressionable the English 
 constitution could not, one would think, have 
 survived. By this time it would have given place 
 to the dictatorship of some great orator. 
 
 HORS. It has already done so in all but name. 
 The English people laid themselves not many years 
 ago, I am told, at the feet of one man — for no 
 
294 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 better reason that any impartial observer could 
 perceive than that he passionately entreated them 
 to do so — and there they have remained ever since. 
 
 Burke. By the people you mean 
 
 HoRS. The popular element in the electorate ; for 
 the bulk of the aristocracy, and a large section of the 
 middle class were, always had been, bitterly hostile 
 to him. It was the plebeian vote which lifted him to 
 power : the vote, that is to say, of a class who not 
 very long before had been loudest in their clamours 
 against him and in their applause of his chief 
 adversary. Yet after a few weeks of electoral 
 campaigning — weeks, indeed, of unwearied labour 
 and incessant strife, hundreds of miles of travel and 
 almost as many yards of speech — he contrived to 
 convert all this hostility into enthusiastic support : so 
 that his opponents, who up to the eve of the election 
 had disputed with one another only as to the un- 
 certain extent of a supposedly certain victory, awoke 
 one morning to find themselves overwhelmed by the 
 most disastrous of defeats. 
 
 Burke. That was oratory indeed ! Describe to 
 me the hero of this extraordinary exploit. 
 
 HoRS. He was a man well stricken in years, but 
 restless, passionate, impetuous as a youth ; the most 
 ambitious of all men who ever mistook ambition 
 for public spirit, the vainest while believing himself 
 to be the meekest of men ; capable when at the 
 lowest ebb of circumstances of such gigantic efforts 
 
BURKE AND HORSMAN 295 
 
 to avenge defeat as I have just described to you, 
 and yet not properly to be described as " equal to 
 either fortune," for he was certainly unequal to the 
 worst. Modest and magnanimous in prosperity, he 
 was in adversity imperious and petulant ; accepting 
 success without vain-glory, but resenting failure as a 
 wrong ; indifferent to the enjoyment of power, but 
 unable to endure its loss. 
 
 Burke. The qualities you have enumerated are 
 indeed sufficient for the moral equipment of so 
 unrivalled a demogogue ; but you have told me 
 nothing as yet of his intellectual gifts as an orator 
 — of the qualities of his mind and style. 
 
 HoRS. I shall ask your permission, Mr. Burke, to 
 try an experiment upon you in that matter. I 
 should like you, as an orator yourself, to indicate 
 the qualities of mind and speech which one would 
 expect to find in any great master of the passions of 
 the people. 
 
 Burke. They are easily named. The chief cha- 
 racteristics of such a man's oratory would, I should 
 think, be simpHcity, terseness, and homely vigour, 
 and his mind, of course, should be so constituted as 
 to encourage their development and display. His 
 vision of his subject should be intense, but narrow : 
 for since his business is to influence men who 
 habitually see everything in a single aspect, it will 
 be a source of power to him to perceive but one 
 side of a question himself For the same reason 
 
296 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 his arguments should be few in number ; for the 
 popular mind is bewildered by a multitude of 
 reasons, and is apt to distrust those who employ 
 them. It is only by iteration and reiteration of the 
 same topics, with such variety of illustrative treat- 
 ment as may be, that the convictions of such a 
 tribunal are reached, if reached at all. But the 
 appeal to passion and prejudice, to the natural 
 desires and hatreds of an untaught mob, is always 
 the more powerful instrument of the two ; and what 
 sort of speech this needs is well known. The 
 speaker's words should be plain and few, his manner 
 bluff and honest ; he should be the master of a 
 ready humour, the better if a little coarse ; and he 
 should excel in the mintage of those telling phrases, 
 the embodiments of a truth or a fallacy, which pass 
 into the currency of the market-place and the work- 
 shop, and proclaim the sovereignty of an orator as 
 clearly as royalty is recorded in the image and super- 
 scription of a coin. 
 
 HoRS. My experiment has succeeded to admiration. 
 There is scarcely a quality of mind or of oratory 
 among those you have enumerated which is not re- 
 presented in our great orator by its direct opposite. 
 
 Burke. You cannot mean me to understand you 
 literally .' 
 
 HoRS. Incredible as it appears to you, I do. 
 Simplicity, terseness, homely vigour, are absolutely 
 antipodean to his style. It is a miracle of involution, 
 
BURKE AND HORSMAN 297 
 
 and a portent of verbosity ; and, though far from 
 deficient in vigour, one would no more go to it for 
 "homeliness" than to an Act of Parliament. As to 
 the matter of argumentative parsimony, the contrast 
 between the fact and your preconception is more 
 striking still. No popular speaker was ever so lavish 
 of arguments, good, bad, and indifferent, so profuse 
 in their production, and so diffuse in their elabora- 
 tion. He "iterates and reiterates," it is true, but it 
 is the iteration and reiteration, not of one topic, but 
 of a score ; and hence the inordinate length of his 
 harangues. So far from sparing uneducated hearers 
 the labour and confusion of revolving many different 
 ideas, he seems actually to revel in the bewildering 
 abundance with which he pours them forth. 
 
 Burke. Stay, stay, sir, for one moment, I beg of 
 you. There must surely be some mistake as to the 
 person of whom we are talking. Such a speaker as 
 you describe could never have risen to eminence as 
 an orator at all. I cannot myself believe that he has. 
 
 HORS. What ! Mr. Burke .? Not when I have told 
 you that he converted a whole people by his 
 speeches. 
 
 Burke. HLstory may perpetuate the memory of 
 the conversion, but the manner in which it was 
 wrought will soon fade into legend. These wonder- 
 working speeches were recorded, I suppose, and are 
 preserved. How then, if his oratory were really such 
 as you describe it, will posterity credit his power .-' 
 
298 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 HORS. That question is easily answered. Posterity 
 will not credit it at all. The future student of English 
 letters will gaze in blank amazement upon pages 
 covered by the convolutions of interminable sentences, 
 and will reject as mythical the tradition that their 
 articulate utterance can ever have stirred a human 
 heart. Coil by coil he will unroll the interplicated 
 mass, and, unable to realise the swift and sinuous 
 charm of its living movement, and its wonder of 
 entanglement ever threatening and ever escaped, he 
 will see no more beauty in it than one sees in the 
 body of a dead snake. 
 
 Burke. What ! is the skin then so lustreless ? The 
 hues of many a reptile are as bright in death as in 
 life. Is there no sheen of imagery, no flash of 
 epigram, no gleam of humour, no glow of poetry by 
 which the magic of spoken words may be perpetuated 
 to the eye and mind, when tongue of speaker and 
 ear of hearer have long mouldered into dust .■• 
 
 HORS. None, or almost none. The man was indeed 
 a scholar, with a scholar's feeling for style : and the 
 lighter exercises of his pen have even shown a vein 
 of poetry in his nature. But you shall look in vain 
 for any literary quality in his oratory. He was ex- 
 tremely sparing of metaphor, though that, to my 
 thinking, is no fault ; but it were better to have 
 abjured it altogether than to be remembered by the 
 one common-place image which is alone associated 
 with his rhetoric. The Javan upas tree suggested to 
 
BURKE AND HORSMAN 299 
 
 him — but it is hardly humane, perhaps, to dissect an 
 orator's only metaphor in cold blood. It savours too 
 much of the allegorical brutality imagined in tlie 
 parable of Nathan. Yet stay ! I wrong him. Of late 
 his admirers here have been reciting to me a new 
 flight of his, achieved since I left the earth, and I 
 admit its remarkable merit. He was speaking of the 
 Christian races of Turkey, and he said of them : 
 " They were like a shelving beach which restrained 
 the ocean. That beach, it is true, is beaten by the 
 waves ; it is laid desolate ; it produces nothing ; it 
 becomes perhaps nothing but a mass of shingle, of 
 rock, of almost useless sea-weed ; but it is a fence 
 behind which the cultivated earth can spread and 
 escape the incoming tide ; and such was the resist- 
 ance of Bulgarians, of Servians, and of Greeks. It 
 was that resistance which left Europe to claim the 
 enjoyment of her own religion and to develop her 
 institutions and her laws." There you have it, sir ; 
 it is a picturesque image, I admit, one that you your- 
 self need not have disdained, and it has that highest 
 merit of oratorical metaphor, that it is image and 
 argument in one. But — unless we are to reckon that 
 unfortunate upas tree — it is the ewe-lamb, sir, it is 
 the ewe-lamb. 
 
 BURKE. But what of epigram, humour, and the 
 other gifts I have mentioned .? 
 
 HORS. Epigram, sir, as you must surely see, was 
 entirely foreign to the genius of his diffluent style ; 
 
300 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 and of humour he was singularly destitute. He will 
 not even live in the library in virtue of that phrase- 
 making faculty, that aphoristic gift, which you think 
 all popular orators must necessarily possess. Did you 
 not speak of such an orator as able to embody both 
 truth and fallacy in telling phrases which pass into the 
 currency of the market-place and the workshop .? 
 
 Burke. I did, and I look upon this power, I 
 repeat, as one of the surest tests of his royal rank, 
 proclaiming his sovereignty as clearly as a coin 
 records a reign. 
 
 HORS. Well, then, he is a king without a coinage. 
 No one at least has ever seen or handled it. You 
 did not mean, I know, that the phrase-making gift 
 is an absolute and exclusive appanage of oratorical 
 royalty. Many inferior men have possessed it : many 
 a petty baron has so passed himself off for his 
 suzerain. But though all who have it are not kings, 
 no king before this one has ever been without it. 
 He has minted nothing : no gold, no silver piece in 
 our language is stamped with his image and his 
 name. His words are but the counters of thought, 
 worn smooth and edgeless, before he handled them, 
 by the attrition of a thousand tongues. Roughly it 
 may be, but still with sufficient accuracy should I 
 sum up the matter if I were to say that quantity 
 and not quality is of the essence of his speech. He 
 conquers as the torrent conquers — by volume, by 
 volubility, by incessant and resistless flow. 
 
BURKE AND HORSMAN 301 
 
 Burke. But discourses of that kind must surely 
 perplex rather than persuade the unskilled hearer. 
 
 HORS. It astonishes, which is better than either. 
 I have already told you, Mr. Burke, that power in 
 England has descended to a class whose favour may 
 be more easily reached through the emotions than 
 the understanding ; and the simplest and most 
 primitive of their emotions is the surest to appeal 
 to. It is easier for an orator to open their mouths 
 than their minds ; and he who by dazzling dexterity 
 of tongue shall have excited most of that gaping 
 wonder which is bestowed in the fair-booth on 
 nimbleness of the fingers, possesses the greatest 
 power over them. The bumpkin stares to see the 
 juggler draw yards of tape from his mouth : why 
 not to see him produce an unbroken and interminable 
 string of sentences from the same organ ? The one 
 is not more beyond the spectator's powers than the 
 other. 
 
 Burke. Nay, sir, this is trifling. Such arts as 
 these can gain but a momentary mastery over even 
 the rudest mind. Men may gape at a conjurer for 
 an idle hour or two ; but they would not bestir 
 themselves to vote him into office as a reward for 
 the amusement he has afforded them. 
 
 HORS. I did not profess, sir, to be explaining his 
 political power : I was merely pointing out the 
 secret of his oratorical fame. His political power 
 is a product of several forces of which the merely 
 
302 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 wonder-rousing quality in his oratory is but one. 
 Chief among the others is the curiosity, the interest, 
 and, for the less instructed, the admiration excited 
 by his character and career. 
 
 Burke. But what is it, then — nay, what can it be 
 — that should charm them in such a character, if, 
 indeed, it be reflected in his oratory ? What can 
 they find in such a career as I may suppose that 
 character to have determined } 
 
 HoRS. In the character they find power, and in 
 the career success ; and these are the idols to which 
 human nature, bowing lowest in the lowest, will 
 everywhere bend the knee. The more widely you 
 extend political rights, and the more freely you 
 commit government to the untutored instincts of 
 mankind, the more surely shall you find the dominant 
 influence in politics to be the worship of individual 
 strength. 
 
 Burke. You are of those, then, who hold that 
 Democracy leads necessarily to Dictatorship ? 
 
 HoRS. Our English democracy of ignorance seems 
 to have already led to it. The man of whom we 
 have been speaking was the virtual dictator of his 
 country : and it was from strength that he drew his 
 strength. Potest quia posse videtur. He dominated 
 his colleagues ; he rode roughshod over his own 
 former opinions ; he refused to be constrained 
 even by his own spoken words. But all these 
 characteristics — the imperiousness of his nature, his 
 
BURKE AND HORSMAN 303 
 
 audacity of tergiversation, the astonishing sophistry 
 with which he explained himself away, — all those 
 characteristics which shock and alienate the scrupulous 
 and the reflective, served only to strengthen that 
 essentially un-morsX conception of irresistible power 
 which won him the allegiance of the masses. When 
 he dragged the grandees of Whiggery at the tail of 
 the Radical chariot ; when he compelled an uneasy 
 Legislature to burn what they had adored and adore 
 what they had been wont to burn ; when he stood 
 up unappalled before the crowding ghosts of his 
 former opinions and laid them with a wave of his 
 enchanter's wand — his votaries among the multitude 
 wasted no thought upon the moral aspect of these 
 performances : all they had eyes for was the magni- 
 ficent display of force, and before that idol of the 
 modern world they instinctively bowed down and 
 worshipped. 
 
 Burke. And do you really mean to tell me that 
 the astonishing influence of the man had no root 
 whatever in the moral approval, the moral sympathy, 
 of his countrymen ? 
 
 HORS. Nay, Mr. Burke, I do not say so. It would 
 be at once an unjust and an unintelligent analysis of 
 the elements of his power. I spoke only of the 
 sources of that boundless admiration with which 
 the unthinking populace regarded him. He had yet 
 another order of admirers, whose attachment to him 
 was based even more upon veneration for his character 
 
304 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 than upon wonder at his powers. In a word, he 
 possessed adherents who not only applauded him, but 
 believed in him — followers who followed him in the 
 spirit of true discipleshfp, not merely to gaze upon 
 his miracles, but to hearken reverently to his 
 teachings. Great, indeed, was their faith — great even 
 to the removal of mountains. No paradox of the 
 master's doctrines, no conflict between his utterances, 
 had power to shake for an instant their steadfast 
 belief in his righteousness and truth. They were not 
 staggered by his reconciliatory sophisms, for they 
 saw no need of reconciliations at all. They accepted 
 the self-contradictions of their master as one of the 
 "antinomies" of the reason, which no more require, 
 if they no more admit of, explanation to the feeble 
 human understanding than does the crux of free will 
 coexistent with Divine foreknowledge, or the mystery 
 of God-sanctioned evil. 
 
 Burke. But surely, sir, you must be speaking of 
 a class of person almost as ignorant and superstitious 
 as the populace itself. 
 
 HoRS. By no means. They were mostly men of 
 intelligence : they were all men of high principle and 
 of scrupulous conscience : they were some of them 
 men of deep and unaffected piety. 
 
 Burke. You are merely multiplying incredibilities. 
 How was it possible for such men to be so deluded ? 
 
 HoRS. By means, sir, of that gift of speech which 
 vou. T must sav. so unpratefuUv underrate, and bv 
 
BURKE AND HORSMAN 305 
 
 special virtue of one element therein which, though 
 it has as yet been mentioned by neither of us, is, 
 to my thinking, the real secret of an orator's power. 
 Burke. You mean . . . 
 
 HoRS. I mean the physical element — the strange 
 magic in the mere sound of some voices, the calcu- 
 lated charm of their modulation, the magnetism of 
 eye, of expression, and even of gesture. 
 
 Burke. And did your orator, then, possess these 
 things in such high perfection } 
 
 HoRS. Sir, I can only tell you that, profoundly as I 
 distrusted him, and lightly as, on the whole, I valued 
 the external qualities of his eloquence, I have never 
 listened to him even for a few minutes without 
 ceasing to marvel at his influence over men. That 
 white-hot face, stern as a Covenanter's, yet mobile as 
 a comedian's ; those restless, flashing eyes ; that 
 wondrous voice, whose richness its northern burr 
 enriched as the tang of the wood brings out the 
 mellowness of a rare old wine ; the masterly 
 cadences of his elocution ; the vivid energy of his 
 attitudes ; the fine animation of his gestures ; — sir, 
 when I am assailed through eye and ear by this 
 compacted phalanx of assailants, what wonder that 
 the stormed outposts of the senses should spread the 
 contagion of their own surrender through the main 
 encampment of the mind, and that against my 
 judgment, in contempt of my conscience, nay, in 
 defiance of my very will, I should exclaim, " This is, 
 
 X 
 
3o6 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 indeed, the voice of truth and wisdom. This man is 
 honest and sagacious beyond his fellows. He must 
 be believed ; he must be obeyed " ? And if such were 
 the effect, however temporary, that this remarkable 
 man produced upon me, who distrusted him intellectu- 
 ally and disliked him morally, judge, sir, how power- 
 fully he must have influenced those who brought to 
 him ready sympathies and a confiding mind. 
 
XIV 
 
 NAPOLEON I., MICHELET, AND 
 RENAN 
 
 Ren. Continue, my dear M. Michelet. We are all 
 attention. 
 
 Mich. No ; I have said enough. When once I 
 know that I cannot convince, I cease to contend. 
 
 Ren. But why .■' The desire to make immediate 
 converts is unworthy of a philosopher. Leave all 
 such ambitions to the fanatic. Instruction should be 
 as the sowing of the seed ; we have always to 
 wait for the harvest ; and his is but a vulgar concep- 
 tion of the teacher's aim who will be satisfied with 
 nothing but a sight of the gathered sheaves. For 
 my own part, I should be well content to know that 
 any thoughts of mine were germinating in the hearts 
 of a later generation. 
 
 Mich. I am not speaking to a later generation 
 here. 
 
 Ren. No, dear colleague ; but you did so on 
 earth, and there, doubtless, your thoughts are bearing 
 fruit. To hear your exposition and defence of them 
 
 307 
 
3o8 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 interests me deeply, as I feel sure it has interested 
 your Imperial hearer also — though not perhaps for 
 quite the same reason. 
 
 Mich. I know not whom you mean by my Imperial 
 hearer. To me, General Bonaparte is only the first, 
 and most illustrious citizen and subject of the Republic 
 which he overthrew. 
 
 Nap. In what year were you born, M. Michelet ? 
 
 Mich. In 1798 ; exactly twenty days before your 
 insensate schemes of Eastern conquest were destroyed, 
 with the fleet and the naval power of our country, at 
 the Battle of the Nile. 
 
 Nap. Ha ! Then you were too young to get 
 yourself into trouble under my rule. Had you been 
 a dozen years older, I should assuredly have had to 
 banish or imprison you along with the other vain 
 and mischievous ideologues whose babble you have 
 been repeating. 
 
 Mich. How well, General, did our admirable Paul 
 Louis hit you off. Do you remember the passage in 
 the Riponse aux lettres anonymes f " Wishing to have 
 all the talking to himself, he imposed silence, first on 
 France, then upon Europe at large, and the whole world 
 held its peace. Not a whisper was to be heard ; and 
 no one complained of it, the system having at least 
 this convenience about it, that we all knew where we 
 were." 
 
 Nap. H'm ! M. Courier was a most insubordinate 
 officer. He coolly quitted his military duties to go 
 
NAPOLEON, MICHELET, AND RENAN 309 
 
 hunting after Greek manuscripts. Had I not been 
 too busy at the moment to attend to the matter, I 
 should certainly have had him shot. 
 
 Ren. How providential, sire — I willingly give you 
 that title, since for my part I am a less rigid Republican 
 than my friend here, and I should undoubtedly have 
 rallied to the First Empire — how providential, then, 
 were your preoccupations ! You would have been 
 ordering a firing party for a master of our language. 
 
 Mich. And have illustrated, not for the first time 
 in your own person, that spirit of brutal militarism 
 which has been the curse of our country. Ah ! 
 General Bonaparte, what an opportunity you had, 
 and what a use did you make of it ! How truly did 
 an English poet write of you — I detest the race ; 
 but they have poets who have said many great and 
 wise things about liberty — 
 
 Thou mightst have built thy throne 
 Where it had stood even now. Thou didst prefer 
 A frail and bloody pomp which Time has swept 
 In fragments to oblivion. 
 
 Shelley's testimony against you is the stronger 
 because he goes on in this very sonnet to lament 
 your downfall and to launch his curses at the regime 
 which it brought back — 
 
 I know 
 Too late, since thou and France are in the dust, 
 That Virtue owns a more eternal foe 
 Than Force or Fraud. Old Custom, Legal Crime, 
 And bloody Faith, the foulest birth of Time. 
 
3IO THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Consider, O betrayer of our holy Revolution ! — con- 
 sider to what foes you surrendered France at the 
 Restoration which you made inevitable! To Old 
 Custom, to Legal Crime ? Ay, truly ! to the hoary 
 tyranny and the licensed iniquities of the ancien 
 regime. To bloody Faith ? Again, yes ! To the 
 cruel and crushing yoke of the priest. 
 
 Ren. Is chronology with you there, M. Michelet ? 
 Surely the rule of " bloody Faith," as your poet with 
 foolish violence calls it, had an earlier Restoration 
 than that of the Bourbons. Did not the First Consul 
 re-establish it, or am I mistaken in the date of the 
 Concordat .' 
 
 Nap. Spare your irony, sir. You know well, I 
 doubt not, that I made my peace with the Church 
 while I was still First Consul. I should have been a 
 fool to do other. In every country religion is useful 
 to the ruler who knows how to use it, and it is his 
 business to avail himself of its influence over mankind. 
 I was a Mahommedan in Egypt, a Catholic in France. 
 
 Mich. A Catholic only, General ? You are too 
 modest. You were an Ultramontane. You brought 
 back not only the faith but the domination of Rome- 
 Ah, bluff and sturdy Augereau, the only one of your 
 court who dared to speak the truth to you when 
 ministries and ministers were silent ! Do you remem- 
 ber how he answered you when, after that impious 
 farce to which he and Lannes were unwillingly 
 dragged — the solemn celebration of Mass at Notre 
 
NAPOLEON, MICHELET, AND RENAN 311 
 
 Dame, to commemorate the signature of the Concordat 
 — you asked him if anything had been wanting to the 
 completeness of the ceremony ? " Nothing," replied 
 he, " except the million of men who perished in pulling 
 down what you are setting up ! " 
 
 Nap. Augereau was a bigoted boor, whose opinions 
 on government and politics were not worth a pinch 
 of snuff. I would have as soon sought a judgment on 
 my policy from the first corporal I came across. I 
 meant merely to ask the blockhead what he thought 
 of the only thing he was capable of thinking about — 
 the drill and management of the clerical procession. 
 
 Mich. You speak of your league with the Papacy, 
 and labour to justify it as though it were your only 
 crime. But the cause of the Revolution meant more 
 — much more — than the emancipation of France from 
 sacerdotal tyranny. It was the cause of liberty, 
 equality, and fraternity ; above all, it was the cause 
 of justice. And you — you have thrown it back for 
 more than a hundred years. 
 
 Nap. Your cause was in a flourishing state, then, I 
 suppose, when I came on the scene ? Liberty, frater- 
 nity, equality, forsooth ! Liberty of the doomed 
 wretches cowering under the Terror ; fraternity with 
 the truculent pedant who had climbed to supreme 
 power ; equality of the marquise with the ouvriire 
 under the equating formula of Sanson's axe ! If I 
 had done nothing else worthy of the gratitude of 
 France, she would have owed it me for having stamped 
 
312 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 out your precious " cause " in the bloody mire which 
 its champions had made about its path. 
 
 Ren. Unhappy Galilaeans, whose blood our military 
 Pilate mingled with their sacrifices ! Were they 
 sinners, I wonder, beyond all those of their fellow- 
 citizens who thrust them into the Jacobin priesthood 
 and applauded the hecatombs of French lives which 
 they offered up day by day on the Revolutionary altar ? 
 
 Nap. Sinners ! Who cares ? Does one inquire 
 into the moral character of a raving lunatic before 
 clapping the strait waistcoat on him ? 
 
 Mich. And do you really found your claim to 
 posthumous honour on the suppression of the Jaco- 
 bins ? 
 
 Nap. Not I. It is you who cherish the childish 
 error that my work consisted in restraining the 
 excesses of the Revolution, and that, having brought 
 its forces under control and directed them into their 
 true channels, I ought to have retired, like Cincinnatus, 
 to my farm. Bah ! It was not for curbing the 
 violence and punishing the crimes of the Revolution 
 that France enthroned me, but for crushing the 
 Revolution itself. 
 
 Mich. What ! And its aspirations so dear to the 
 French heart ; its ideals so nobly striven for, and 
 which so many Frenchmen led, and laid down, heroic 
 lives to realise ? 
 
 Nap. Tell me, word-monger, what is the aspiration 
 dearest to the French heart ? 
 
NAPOLEON, MICHELET, AND RENAN 313 
 
 Ren. A whisper of caution, dear M. Michelet, 
 before you answer. It is these generalisations which 
 are the Frenchman's snare. What if a national life be 
 the resultant of conflicting aspirations ? 
 
 Mich. Nay ! why should I hesitate to answer the 
 question ? Have I not watched France in history, 
 toiling through the deserts and morasses of the 
 Middle Ages, with her eyes for ever fixed on the 
 twin peaks of Liberty and Justice, rising calm, 
 august, eternal, on the far horizon ? 
 
 Nap. Ha! On Liberty and Justice! Not on 
 Unity and Strength ! On the philosopher's dream 
 of the Rights of Man, and not on the statesman's 
 conception of the stable and symmetrical State, as 
 a great political organism, in which men and their 
 so-called rights are mere constituent units, of no 
 other value or importance save as parts of a great 
 organic whole ! You think that the typical French- 
 man, then, is an enthusiast for Individualism, and for 
 the anarchy to which it leads .' 
 
 Mich, If I did not think him so, I should despair 
 not only of France, but of humanity itself. 
 
 Ren. Ah ! M. Michelet, let us not be too ready to 
 despair of anything. May it not, I ask you again — 
 may it not be through the interplay of opposing 
 forces that nations grow .■' 
 
 Mich. It was towards its great ideals of Liberty 
 and Justice that France was steadily advancing when 
 you, General Bonaparte, grasped the helm. Nor do 
 
314 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 I blame the violence with which you seized it. 
 History would have forgiven you the i8th Brumaire, 
 if, after sweeping away the fanatics whose bigotry 
 and violence were disgracing the Revolution, you 
 had been content to carry on its work. But for 
 deliberately undoing it, her forgiveness will for ever 
 be denied you. 
 
 Nap. If I want to see history mis-read and mis- 
 interpreted, it is to the historian that I go. So I, 
 then, if you please, was to carry on what you call the 
 work of the Revolution .-' You look upon me as an 
 evangelist of the gospel of Jean Jacques. Blague f 
 I was the heir of the policy of Richelieu. I seized 
 upon power, and I was acclaimed for seizing it, not 
 that I might strive for the realisation of any visionary 
 theory of the Rights of Man, but that I might 
 firmly base and enduringly consolidate the common- 
 wealth of France ; not that I might carry on the 
 work of the Revolution — which was finished, like that 
 of all such convulsive uprisings, with the abuses which 
 it swept away — but that I might resume and complete 
 the work which the old monarchy had carried on 
 until it perished of its own corruptions. And it was 
 the desire of Frenchmen for the realisation of this 
 ideal — a desire far more widely spread among them, 
 and far more deeply rooted in their hearts, than those 
 vague longings for liberty and justice which are all 
 that M. Michelet can find there — this it was that 
 gave me my fifteen years of absolute rule. 
 
NAPOLEON, MICHELET, AND RENAN 315 
 
 Ren. Which, however, you did not devote 
 exclusively, sire, to the work of consolidation. You 
 diversified it, if I remember rightly, by certain military 
 excursions into Austria and Prussia ; and there was 
 also one rather important interlude in your construc- 
 tive labours which ended at Moscow. 
 
 Nap. My conquests were forced upon me by the 
 jealousy of the other Continental States and by the 
 implacable hostility of England. Nevertheless, I 
 laboured assiduously at the task of State-building, 
 and much of my work remains. 
 
 Mich. Remains ! Mon Dieu ! What is the 
 blindness of the historian compared with that ? 
 
 Ren. The Emperor doubtless refers to the Code : a 
 great achievement, I admit, but hardly a political one. 
 
 Mich. What else of your work as a ruler remains .'' 
 It has been as fleeting as your conquests. And, 
 since your departure, what repeated revivals have we 
 seen of the true Revolutionary ideal ! The nation 
 which you think indifferent to liberty and justice has 
 for eighty years foregone all repose in its untiring 
 search for them. If your nephew drugged it into 
 stupor for eighteen years, it was only that it might 
 awaken like a giant refreshed. Who ever made a 
 stronger or more centralised State than he .' No 
 one ; and if that was all that Frenchmen were 
 longing for, they would assuredly have confirmed 
 him and his dynasty in power for a generation to 
 come. But we know — we can all see clearly enough 
 
3i6 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 now, that, ere he fell, the nation had finally rejected 
 him, and that he knew it. It was to escape the 
 ignominy of political overthrow that he rushed upon 
 the suicide of war. To what. General Bonaparte, do 
 you attribute your nephew's downfall .' 
 
 Nap. To the weakness of his will, to the irresolution 
 of his counsels, and to the disorders of his health. 
 
 Mich. It was not so. These things may have 
 contributed to it. But its determining cause was 
 something far stronger, far higher, than they. It was 
 the insatiable hunger of the French people for what 
 I have called the true Revolutionary ideal, and their 
 nobly unalterable refusal to exchange it even for 
 political quietude and national prosperity. It is this 
 which has given over France to her eighty years of 
 agitation and unrest. 
 
 Ren. Yes, this — and her touching conviction that 
 the earthly kingdom of heaven " suffers violence " like 
 the heavenly one, and that the violent can " take it by 
 force." 
 
 Mich. What else could have condemned her to 
 her long martyrdom ? To what else could she ever 
 have looked to, as its palm? France not an 
 enthusiast for liberty! As well might you fling a 
 charge of Atheism at the Christian in the arena ! 
 
 Ren. Justice, however, dear M. Michelet, appears 
 now to have disappeared from her ideal. There are 
 some of us who miss it — the unhappy Captain Dreyfus, 
 perhaps, among the number. 
 
NAPOLEON, MICHELET, AND RENAN 317 
 
 Mich. True, there is the unhappy Captain Dreyfus. 
 That name reminds me that I was wrong in taunting 
 General Bonaparte with the total disappearance of 
 his work. The brutal spirit of militarism which he 
 aroused and fostered appears still as a witness against 
 him. 
 
 Nap. Yes ; it is even now the one thing which 
 unites France. 
 
 Mich. Unites, and not divides her ? 
 
 Ren. Yet we seem to have heard of Dreyfusards 
 as well as anti-Dreyfusards of late, even here. 
 
 Nap. Dreyfusards ! Yes. They are to be found 
 among doctrinaires and visionaries, like M. Michelet 
 here. But the bulk of the nation was on the other 
 side. 
 
 Mich. I doubt it. Nothing but overwhelming 
 popular pressure could have forced the Government 
 to grant a re-trial of the case. 
 
 Nap. Pooh ! what is a French Government of these 
 days that any pressure to which it yields should be 
 deemed overwhelming on that account ? 
 
 Ren. May I ask, sir, if you approved of the pro- 
 ceedings of your general staff? 
 
 Nap. No, I would have cashiered the bunglers to 
 a man ; though not before overhauling their secret 
 service accounts. But, judgment having been pro- 
 nounced against the accused officer, it should have 
 stood, though the heavens fell. 
 
 Ren. Fiat injustitia, ruat calum. 
 
3i8 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Nap. You might find a better whetstone to sharpen 
 your tongue upon than me, M. Renan. Did I ever 
 prefer justice to reason of State? Or did ever any 
 other ruler worthy of the name ? 
 
 Mich. No, General, I admit that your preferences 
 in that regard were well known. A terrible proof of 
 them lay buried till the Restoration under the ram- 
 parts of Vincennes. 
 
 Nap. Enough, sir ; we are talking of another traitor 
 to the State. 
 
 Mich. Captain Dreyfus had a longer trial than the 
 Due d'Enghien, but an even more iniquitous one. 
 And you, General Bonaparte, would have upheld the 
 verdict .'' 
 
 Nap. All, save a noisy and mutinous minority of 
 the French nation were for upholding it. 
 
 Mich. I will never believe it. 
 
 Nap. No man of your stamp will ever believe any- 
 thing that will not fit into his theories. It is true, 
 nevertheless. 
 
 Ren. You hold, then, sire, that oppression and in- 
 justice have become the ideals of the French nation ? 
 
 Nap. No, M. Renan; but I hold that the ideal 
 which has dominated the race throughout their whole 
 history is an ideal of the State as a strong, a 
 centralised, an all-embracing power, and that in 
 presence of any danger which threatens the con- 
 crete embodiment of that ideal, such abstractions as 
 " liberty" and "justice " dwindle into empty words. 
 
NAPOLEON, MICHELET, AND RENAN 319 
 
 Ren. Yet in its concrete embodiment as a French 
 Ministry, the State, sire, does not seem to impress 
 the people as much as one might expect. 
 
 Nap. Who knows the reason better than you ? Is 
 there any one among those shadowy groups which 
 have been fihng feebly past on the stage of French 
 history since my nephew's fall — is there among them 
 any one which has seemed to you to typify the 
 authority of a great and self-sufficing State ? 
 
 Ren. I hesitate to reply. I am certainly unable to 
 recall any ; but, then, I am equally unable to remember 
 them all. Who can say that in so long and rapidly 
 moving a procession, an ideal, or even a capable, 
 French Ministry may not have escaped his eye ? 
 
 Mich. Let us grant you that none such is to be 
 found. Where, then, does this strange monster of 
 your despot's imagination, this Conservative, order- 
 loving, strength-seeking Frenchman find the realisa- 
 tion of his ideal ? 
 
 Nap. In the army. How could it be otherwise .' 
 With Parliamentarism dead and rotting above ground, 
 and government after government perishing of the 
 miasma of its decay, what other source of authority, 
 what other force of cohesion, remains .' To the 
 Frenchman of to-day who looks for facts and cares 
 not for phrases, the power and the prestige of the 
 army seem to sum up all that divides the State 
 from chaos ; and to loose that last bond of civic 
 union would be to reduce the only remaining fasces 
 
320 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 of civic authority to a heap of useless faggots. No 
 wonder " reason of State " has meant more to them in 
 these late distractions than love of justice, and that 
 they have striven to make the former prevail. 
 
 Mich. A nation that strives for anything but the 
 triumph of justice is foredoomed to death. 
 
 Nap. a nation that sets anything above the 
 common weal — and "reason of State" is the expression 
 of the common weal — will taste of hell before it dies. 
 
 Ren. Yours, sire, is indeed a creed of desolation. 
 
 Mich. It is hateful to God and man. 
 
 Ren. And yours, M. Michelet, is a creed of 
 convulsion. But there is surely common ground 
 between you. For with your clearness of vision, sire, 
 you can hardly believe that injustice is a good, 
 permanent foundation on which to build a State. 
 
 Nap. I never said so. I said that the interest of 
 the community at large, which begins and ends with 
 the strength, the dignity, the authority of the State, 
 must take precedence of the rights and liberties, the 
 happiness — ay, and the life, of the individual citizen. 
 There are countries in which you can put the latter 
 aims in the foreground without endangering the 
 former ; but of these countries France is not one. 
 
 Mich. By what right do you say that, who never 
 tried the reverse order of procedure ? 
 
 Nap. By the right, M. Michelet, which he 
 exercises who affirms that a razor should be held 
 by the handle, without having tried the prehminary 
 
NAPOLEON, MICHELET, AND RENAN 321 
 
 experiment of cutting his fingers by taking hold of 
 the blade. 
 
 Ren. Then the way to approach the French nation 
 so as to capture and to rule them, was as self- 
 evident as that illustration implies ? 
 
 Nap. To me, undoubtedly. 
 
 Ren. But not, as we see, to M. Michelet. 
 
 Nap. No, nor to many thousands — perhaps to 
 millions — of M. Michelets. They have failed and 
 fail to govern, or to get government for France, 
 because they did not and do not know the people 
 about whom they prate. I succeeded because I 
 knew France and Frenchmen far better than they 
 knew themselves. 
 
XV 
 LUCRETIUS, PALEY, AND DARWIN 
 
 Luc. It is enough : I would leave you. I go to 
 sit at the feet of my master Epicurus, from whom 
 men first learnt to shake off the chains of superstition, 
 and to see in the universe the frame and fashionings 
 of eternal matter. Why would you detain me ? 
 
 Dar. I would detain you, Lucretius, to question 
 you further upon your doctrine of atoms. 
 
 Pal. And I to learn from you how you reconcile 
 your presence here with your theory of the materiality 
 of the soul. 
 
 Dar. Nay, Dr. Paley ; it is surely rather for us to 
 reconcile those powers of speech which we are now 
 exercising, with the theory of the immateriality of 
 the soul. So long as we retain such powers we must 
 certainly account our nature to be in some sense 
 material. For all that we speak of ourselves as dis- 
 embodied spirits, our life in the Shades can be only 
 a continuation under physical, if highly etherealised, 
 conditions of our life on earth. 
 
 322 
 
LUCRETIUS, PALEY, AND DARWIN 323 
 
 Luc. Thou art right, O greatest of the philosophers ; 
 and it doth in no wise shake the Epicurean argument 
 that we have prolonged our conscious existence for a 
 certain period beyond its terrestrial span. 
 
 Pal. 1 perceive, then, that you are incorrigible in 
 your atheism, and that we must await the time 
 appointed by God for its correction and chastise- 
 ment. Do you, in your impious audacity, accept 
 those terms of maintaining it .'' 
 
 Luc. I could not decline them if I would. 
 
 Pal. Ay, but I mean, do you accept them con- 
 fidently ? Do you accept them without misgiving ? 
 
 Luc. If I have rightly judged of the Divine nature, 
 the gods will concern themselves as little with my 
 atheism as with any other of the affairs of men. If 
 I have judged wrongly of it, I know not what that 
 nature is, and I cannot tell, therefore, whether the 
 gods are any more likely to punish atheism than to 
 reward it. 
 
 Pal. You had no reverence even for the gods 
 whom you believed in ? 
 
 Luc. Had I not ? Yet I thought I spoke of them 
 with awe. I find nothing at least of irreverence in 
 this — 
 
 Omnis enim per se Divom natura necesse est 
 Immortali xvo summa cum pace fruatur, 
 Semota a nostris rebus, sejunctaque longe ; 
 Nam, privata dolore omni, privata peiiclis, 
 Ipsa suis pollens opibus, nihil indiga nostri, 
 Nee bene promeritis capitur, nee tangitur ira. 
 
324 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Nor is this, I think, a contemptuous description of 
 the blessed calm of their abodes — 
 
 Apparet DivOm numen sedesque quietse 
 Quas neque concutiunt venti, neque nubila nimbis 
 Adspergunt neque nix acri concreta pruina 
 Cana cadens violat ; semperque ianubilus sether, 
 Integit at large diffuso lumine ridet. 
 
 Pal. The lines, adapted by-the-by from Homer, 
 are certainly elegant. But I have never denied you 
 the praise of an ingenious poet. Your condemnation, 
 however, will be the heavier on that account. 
 
 Luc. Do the gods, then, hate good verses ? 
 
 Pal. No ; but they love not those who abuse good 
 gifts. Your very skill in composition ('tis the same 
 word " condere '' for the building up both of a poem 
 and of the universe) should have taught you to 
 believe in the Divine Artificer of things. How would 
 you have liked the men of my time to refer your own 
 hexameters to a " fortuitous concourse of dactyls and 
 spondees " ? 
 
 Luc. I should not, at any rate, have punished them 
 for their error ; though I am more concerned about 
 my fame as a poet than the gods seem to be about 
 their reputation as architects. 
 
 Dar. May we not say too. Dr. Paley, that posterity 
 would have thus much less excuse for their scepticism 
 that they are familiar as a matter of experience with 
 the fact that poems originate in human design } 
 
 Pal. Were you a poet yourself, Mr. Darwin .? 
 
LUCRETIUS, PALEY, AND DARWIN 325 
 
 Dar. Not I, indeed. I spent my life in scientific 
 inquiry. 
 
 Pal. There was a namesake of yours whom I 
 remember as the author of some pleasing verse. 
 
 Dar. He was my grandfather, sir ; and I am glad 
 his poetical compositions met with your approval. 
 But why did you mention him ? Were it not that 
 you have praised verse so clear and intelligible as 
 his, I should have feared that you were about to 
 question my theory as to the origin of poetry. 
 
 Pal. Its origin in what ? 
 
 Dar. In human design : for I must own, sir, that 
 I sometimes find a difificulty in tracing modern 
 poetry to any such source. The concourse of the 
 words composing it too often appears, to me, at least, 
 to be purely fortuitous. 
 
 Pal. I should, nevertheless, hesitate for my part 
 to infer from the absence of any marks of human 
 purpose that such poetry is of Divine origin. 
 
 Dar. I exercise a similar caution, Dr. Paley. But 
 let us return to our great poet here — for I think you 
 admit his greatness — and see how your argument has 
 affected him. What says he to it ? 
 
 Luc. That it is trifling with the matter. We have 
 experience of men composing poems, but no one has 
 seen the gods at work upon the universe. 
 
 Pal. What need of that? No one but your 
 acquaintances ever saw you at work on the De Remm 
 Nattird, but no one doubts that it was written by a 
 
326 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 man ; and if you say that they reason from the 
 analogy of other poems which they know in fact to 
 be the work of intelligence, I answer that precisely 
 the same analogy is to be found in the works of 
 creation. 
 
 Luc. If that is your argument, I have misunder- 
 stood your theory. I did not know that you believed 
 the world to be the work of an intelligent man. 
 
 Pal. It is you, Epicurean, who are trifling now. 
 
 Luc. Why, what more does the argument prove ? 
 
 Pal. Much more. The contrivance which we see 
 in nature is like in kind to the ingenuity of an in- 
 telligent man, but infinitely greater in degree ; and 
 hence we infer that the world is the work, not only of 
 a designing mind, but of a mind whose designs are 
 distinguished by superhuman skill and wisdom. 
 There is a perfection in the arrangement of the 
 Cosmos which would have been unattainable by the 
 devices of man. 
 
 Luc. I do not agree with you. 
 
 Pal. What! You are speaking impiously. 
 
 Luc. It cannot be impious to rebuke impiety ; 
 and what impiety could be more daring than to 
 impute imperfect workmanship to the hands of the 
 all-perfect gods ? If the gods had really planned 
 and executed the visible frame of things it could 
 not show so many signs of the artificer's having 
 stumbled in his work. I see nothing of that 
 perfection of arrangements of which you speak ; on 
 
LUCRETIUS, PALEY, AND DARWIN 327 
 
 the contrary, I find many things ordered after a 
 fashion which, so far from denoting cleverness 
 infinitely above the human, appears rather to point 
 to an intelligence somewhat below that standard. 
 
 Pal. I know what you are aiming at now, but 
 your suggested argument from the imperfections of 
 nature can be easily answered. I wish it had been 
 possible for you to read the twenty-sixth chapter of 
 my Natural Theology. 
 
 Luc. I wish it had been. Is the poem in hexa- 
 meters .'' 
 
 Pal. It is not a poem at all, but a prose disserta- 
 tion ; and I have therein proved, to the satisfaction 
 of all who are not blinded by their presumption and 
 the hardness of their hearts, that the world is the 
 work of an infinitely wise and benevolent Being. 
 
 Luc. Was it the wisdom, then, or the benevolence 
 which created the presumptuous and hard-hearted ? 
 
 Pal. Your question only raises the old problem 
 of the existence of evil, which I have very fully 
 dealt with towards the close of my twenty-sixth 
 chapter. I do not believe, however, that the 
 apparent imperfections in nature have ever yet been 
 the cause of atheism, however often they may have 
 been alleged as its excuse. Once convince mankind, 
 as I endeavoured to do, that the world is the work 
 of a Supreme Intelligence, and the immense pre- 
 ponderance of good over evil in its arrangement 
 will speedily persuade them that those of the latter 
 
328 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 character constitute only apparent deviations from 
 an essentially beneficent plan. 
 
 Dar. You rely, in fact, Dr. Paley, on their 
 recognising in the words of the Essay on Man, that 
 " all discord " may be " harmony half-understood, all 
 partial evil universal good." 
 
 Pal. Hum ! I should be loth to adopt every 
 theological statement of Mr. Pope's ; but the lines 
 you quote sufficiently express my meaning. The 
 great matter is to demonstrate the Divine wisdom 
 and power as displayed in the scheme of the 
 universe ; a conviction of the Divine justice and 
 goodness will follow afterwards. Indeed, I would 
 almost go so far as to say that Theism must, in my 
 opinion, stand or fall with the design-argument. 
 
 Dar. Forgive me. Dr. Paley, for questioning the 
 discretion of so famous an apologist ; but surely — 
 surely it is not wise to stake so much upon a single 
 proof 
 
 Pal. I did not expect you to think so, Mr. 
 Darwin. You are in much the same case, I am afraid, 
 as our Epicurean poet here. 
 
 Dar. I do not know that I have any reason to 
 resent that imputation, sir ; but neither do I know 
 what right you have to make it. 
 
 Luc. It is an ascription of wisdom ; for who was 
 ever wiser than the Greek philosopher who first cast 
 out fear 1 
 
 Pal. One who has employed himself, as you have. 
 
LUCRETIUS, PALEY, AND DARWIN 329 
 
 Mr. Darwin, in attempting to destroy the doctrine of 
 
 final causes, must of necessity 
 
 Dar, Excuse my interrupting you, but it would be 
 fairer to describe my work as I myself describe it. I 
 assure you I never conceived any animosity against 
 the doctrine of final causes, and I did not go about to 
 " destroy " either that or anything else. My aim was 
 not destruction, but discovery. 
 
 Pal. 'Tis ever the infidel's plea, sir ; though, if the 
 name offends you, I will ask your pardon for having 
 applied it to you. 
 
 Dar. I do not take offence at names. Dr. Paley, 
 and I should never even repudiate one, however 
 offensive, which I had justly earned in the search 
 after truth. It would be a penalty of my calling 
 which I should be ashamed to shirk. But whether it 
 is a just one or not it is for you to consider. 
 
 Pal. Your tone makes me uneasy, sir ; I trust I 
 have not unwittingly transgressed the law of charity ; 
 but, if so, I am sufficiently rebuked by your dignity 
 and meekness. You were, however, about to describe 
 your own work. 
 
 Dar. It was, as I have said, discovery and not 
 destruction. Perhaps I shall best prevent mistakes 
 in future, as to the aim of my researches, by quoting 
 to you the title-page of my principal work. Its 
 subject is described as The Origin of Species by 
 Natttral Selection ; or, The Preservation of Favoured- 
 Races in the Struggle for Life. In that description, 
 
330 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 sir, you cannot, I think, detect any preconceived 
 hostility to the doctrine of final causes. 
 
 Pal. Nevertheless, your inquiries led you to its 
 overthrow — or to what too many people regard as 
 such ; and I was about to say that any man who 
 himself arrives, and who lands others, at such con- 
 clusions as yours, must needs, I think, regard the 
 Deity, if he admits the existence of such a Being, as 
 the sect of the Epicureans regarded their shadowy 
 gods. 
 
 Luc. So much the better. What more august 
 position could he assign to his Deity ? 
 
 Pal. Say rather, Epicurean, what idler and more 
 futile part in the scheme of things .-'... But you do 
 not answer my question, Mr. Darwin. 
 
 Dar. Let me answer it by another. Suppose, Dr. 
 Paley, that you yourself should see reason to reject 
 the doctrine of final causes, would your own theology 
 at once become Epicurean ? 
 
 Pal, I cannot entertain the supposition upon which 
 your question is founded. The teleological argument, 
 as I believe you now call it, appears to me to be 
 absolutely irrefragable. 
 
 Dar. It is natural that it should, considering the 
 ability and learning which you devoted to its support. 
 But I know how many scientific theories, supposed to 
 be ultimate, have been found to need revision ; and I 
 have always endeavoured to keep my mind open to 
 all attempts at the correction of my own. 
 
LUCRETIUS, PALEY, AND DARWIN 331 
 
 Pal. I applaud your candour, sir, but, considering 
 the nature of your conclusions, you would be gravely 
 culpable if you displayed less. I, on the other hand, 
 as the advocate of opinions which, even if erroneous, 
 would be less dangerous to human welfare (upon an 
 average of happiness in both worlds), do not hold 
 myself bound to the same amount of circumspection. 
 Nevertheless, I have ever been ready, for the satis- 
 faction of my own mind, to consider anything which 
 can fairly be urged against my argument. And if I 
 now dismiss what I understand to be your hypothesis 
 explanatory of the appearance of design in creation, 
 it is merely because I had anticipated and refuted it 
 in my Natural Theology. 
 
 Dar. Indeed, Dr. Paley ? You make me ashamed 
 of the inattention with which I must have read you. 
 
 Pal. I fear that the refutation I speak of has but 
 too generally escaped notice. 
 
 Luc. Was it so, O excellent priest .' Then you 
 had done better to refute him in good poetry. There 
 is some virtue in hexameters, after all. 
 
 Pal. The opposition between our two theories may, 
 I think, be most concisely stated thus. According to 
 mine, the organs in an animal which are adapted to a 
 useful purpose must have been designedly given him 
 in order to enable him to exist ; according to yours, 
 their existence and his are only two aspects of the 
 same fact. While I ask. How should these organs be 
 found in the creature, unless a Creator had specially 
 
332 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 designed him to live ? you, on the other hand, ask, 
 How could this creature be living unless somehow or 
 other he had come to be provided with the organs ? 
 D o you admit that to be a fair account of the differ- 
 ence between us ? 
 
 Dar. Yes, reduced to its lowest terms. 
 Pal. Then mark, if you please, how, in the fourth 
 paragraph of the fifth chapter of my Natural 
 Theology, I have anticipated your theory. " There 
 is another answer (to the argument from design) 
 which has," I say, " the same effect as the resolving 
 things into chance, which answer would persuade us 
 to believe that the eye, the animal to which it belongs, 
 every other animal, every plant, indeed, every orga- 
 nised body which we see, are only so many out of 
 the possible varieties and combinations of being 
 which the lapse of infinite ages has brought into 
 existence ; that the present world is the relic of that 
 variety ; millions of other bodily forms and other 
 species having perished, being" (mark this), "by the 
 defect of their constitution, incapable of preservation 
 or of continuance by generation." There, sir, you 
 have your hypothesis, and here is my reply. I point 
 out that "there is no foundation whatever for this 
 conjecture in anything which we observe in the works 
 of nature ; " that " no such experiments are going on 
 at present, no such energy operates as that which is 
 here supposed, and which should be constantly pushing 
 into existence new varieties of beings." 
 
LUCRETIUS, PALEY, AND DARWIN 333 
 
 Luc. And, wrangling thus over their methods of 
 workmanship as though they were so many potters, 
 you talk of your " reverence " for the gods ! 
 
 Pal. In that passage, which I have just quoted, 
 Mr. Darwin, I anticipated your famous discovery, 
 and showed it, with submission, to be a discovery of 
 something which did not exist. 
 
 Dar. Nay, Dr. Paley, the real fact is that you have 
 misapprehended the nature of my work. I am not 
 at all anxious to arrogate to myself the exclusive 
 credit of the guess — for at such a stage you cannot 
 call it a hypothesis — that existing species may be 
 simply the survivals from a larger number of pre- 
 existing species ; nor do I even claim an inventor's 
 property in the far more fruitful thought, that the 
 surviving races of animals and plants must owe their 
 existence and their peculiar adaptations of structure 
 to a gradually acquired fitness for the conditions by 
 which they are surrounded. The former of these 
 ideas has probably floated vaguely through many in- 
 quiring minds at all periods of the history of science ; 
 the latter in a more or less indefinite form was in the 
 air at the time when I began to write, and took dis- 
 tinct shape in the mind of another naturalist almost 
 simultaneously with its realisation in my own. 
 
 Pal. Then where, pray, sir, is the mighty credit of 
 your achievements .' 
 
 Dar. What services, you mean, have I been able 
 to render to science i Well, just the services, I hope, 
 
334 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 that any fairly intelligent and zealous servant would 
 have been able to render in my place. By actual 
 study of the behaviour of plants and animals under 
 domestication, I strove to satisfy myself not only as 
 to the reality of my hypothetical process of develop- 
 ment, but as to the exact mode in which it operated. 
 
 Pal. But how, sir, could you possibly bring so vast 
 an inquiry within the compass of investigation by 
 experiment ? 
 
 Luc. Did you see your Divine Artificer at 
 work? 
 
 Dar. It is a long story, and I must ask you to 
 take it on trust from me, that my inquiries powerfully 
 confirmed my hypothesis. And that hypothesis, I 
 should tell you, was considerably more definite than 
 the one which you claim to have refuted by anticipa- 
 tion. To conjecture that the organs of animals seem 
 designed for their respective uses because only animals 
 possessing such organs have survived ; or even to add 
 that the cause of the disappearance of all other 
 animals is a " defect of their constitutions, rendering 
 them incapable of preservation or of continuance by 
 generation " — to conjecture thus, I say, is not to offer 
 a scientific hypothesis explanatory of the facts. For 
 how could the truth of so vague a guess be tested .' 
 No scientific hypothesis has been framed until we have 
 assumed the operation of some general law which 
 would tend to protect or redeem certain species from 
 these destructive " defects of constitution," so that 
 
LUCRETIUS, PALEY, AND DARWIN 335 
 
 while other species perished they should be " capable 
 of preservation and continuance by generation." 
 
 Pal. And do you really imagine yourself, Mr. 
 Darwin, to have discovered such a law ? 
 
 Dar. In common, sir, with most other observers 
 of nature, I had remarked the tendency of all species 
 to slight variations from the normal type ; and by 
 experiments designed expressly to that end, I more 
 fully demonstrated, what the less methodical pro- 
 ceedings of breeders had gone some way to prove 
 before, that it is possible, by selecting and propagating 
 examples of these variations, to produce varieties 
 of a single species which shall differ more widely 
 from the parent stock than many distinct species 
 differ from each other. Assume now that any one 
 species were, in the wild state, to develop a variation 
 which should give it a slight advantage over its 
 competitors in the struggle for existence — some 
 peculiarity which should make it better able to find, or 
 gather, or store its vegetable food, to perceive or pur- 
 sue its prey, to descry, to flee, or to conceal itself from, 
 its enemies. In that case the operation of natural 
 causes might be expected to do for such an animal 
 what is done for the domesticated creatures by the 
 designing agency of man — to perpetuate, that is to 
 say, and to develop these useful accidents of struc- 
 ture, until we find a world of creatures abounding 
 in those exquisite adaptations of means to ends 
 which fill my mind, no less, believe me, than they 
 
336 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 filled yours, with abiding emotions of reverential 
 wonder. 
 
 Pal. I am at a loss to understand, sir, how, as you 
 interpret them, they could inspire you with any senti- 
 ments of the kind. I cannot but regard your hypo- 
 thesis, Mr. Darwin, with an invincible repugnance. 
 
 Dar. I am truly sorry to hear it. I can see 
 nothing in it to deserve such a reception even from 
 the most sensitively religious mind. 
 
 Luc. Unhappy disputants! Never, through all 
 eternity, will you agree. See how inevitably spring 
 these vain contentions from your primal error in 
 believing that the Immortals trouble the peace of 
 their immortality by meddling with earthly things. 
 
 Pal. The more I reflect upon your theory, the 
 more convinced I am that it is destructive of the 
 religious instincts. 
 
 Dar. Reflect still further upon it, sir, and you 
 will find those instincts not only revived, but 
 strengthened. 
 
 Pal. Nay, Mr. Darwin, how can that be? It 
 strikes at the root of belief in the providential 
 government of the world. 
 
 Dar. If providential government suggests only 
 the idea of the capricious, arbitrary, and spasmodic 
 authority of an Oriental despot, then I agree with 
 you ; if not, I dissent from you wholly. 
 
 Pal. Why, does not the selection hypothesis 
 cover, from the nature of the case, every conceivable 
 
LUCRETIUS, PALEY, AND DARWIN 337 
 
 instance of what was believed to be the Divine fore- 
 thought, the Divine ingenuity, the Divine benevo- 
 lence ? 
 
 Dar. Add, Dr. Paley, that it also covers those 
 instances in which theologians have been sorely put 
 to it to escape the necessity of ascribing not fore- 
 thought but blindness, not ingenuity but unskilful- 
 ness, not benevolence but malice, to the Supreme 
 Being ; and that surely is no slight advantage to 
 religion. 
 
 Luc. How so, O philosopher .•" Does not religion 
 depend with you, as it depended with us, on a belief 
 in the vindictive malice of your gods ? 
 
 Pal. No, pagan ; you are speaking now of your 
 own relligio, the superstitious and cowardly dread of 
 the terrors of the unseen world. With us " religion " 
 means love and adoration of a Supreme Being. 
 
 Luc. Ha ! Then you have no hell .' 
 
 Pal. . . . The instances to which you refer, Mr. 
 Darwin, are infinitesimally rare. And what I have 
 said of the multitude of others is simply true. Every 
 conceivable example of intelligent design may be 
 represented as an example of automatic selection. 
 Every beautiful and artificial structure, which I say 
 has been expressly bestowed upon an animal by the 
 Deity to enable him to live, you assert him to have 
 fashioned for himself in the effort to prolong his 
 own life. Your theory while it is the exact converse 
 of mine, is absolutely coextensive with it. 
 
 z 
 
33^ THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 Dar. Necessarily so, Dr. Paley; for your hy- 
 pothesis claimed, I presume, to account for all the 
 facts ; and if mine did less than that, it would not 
 be a hypothesis at all. 
 
 Pal. And do you mean to say, sir, that there are 
 no facts which conflict with it .' 
 
 Dar. It would be disingenuous to pretend that 
 there are none which suggest difficulties— none 
 which at present refuse to take their place among the 
 details of the scheme. Still, the facts which confirm 
 the evolution hypothesis, so enormously exceed in 
 number, and for the most part so materially surpass 
 in significance, those which appear to militate against 
 it, that I have always held, and hold at this moment, 
 an unshaken belief in its truth. 
 
 Pal. I cannot but hope that Providence may bring 
 to light some overwhelming refutation of it. To me 
 personally it would be a cruel chagrin to discover 
 that one of the chief labours of my life was lost, and 
 that the edifice of faith which I was at so much pains 
 to construct was founded on an imaginary basis. 
 
 Luc. On what other basis are most philosophies 
 founded? And with what other motive have their 
 authors clung to them, especially in old age, save this 
 —that they too might not lose " the labour of their 
 
 lives".? 
 
 Pal. You, however, Mr. Darwin, will not sus- 
 pect that I am biased by any such personal con- 
 siderations, in believing, as I do firmly believe, 
 
LUCRETIUS, PALEY, AND DARWIN 339 
 
 that your doctrines are fraught with the most 
 mischievous consequences to mankind. 
 
 Dar. Did I believe so myself, I should welcome 
 the destruction of my own life's labours by the over- 
 throw of my theory. But I cannot myself perceive 
 the mischievous consequences which you find in it. 
 
 Pal. What, sir ! does it not abase the dignity of 
 the universe, and extinguish those feelings of awe 
 and admiration which must precede all religion ? 
 
 Dar. Most emphatically must I answer. No. On 
 the contrary, I contend that it exalts rather than 
 abases that dignity. And as to feelings of awe and 
 admiration, I have said, and I repeat, that I find an 
 especial grandeur in that view of life which conceives 
 its several powers as " having been originally breathed 
 by the Creator into a few forms or into one ; and that 
 while this planet has gone cycling on according to 
 the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning 
 endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful 
 have been and are being evolved." 
 
 Luc. You have debated learnedly, O philosophers, 
 and the skill of your arguments is apparent even to 
 me, who hold with neither. The gods, I am convinced, 
 are not the artificers of the world ; but if they have 
 created, they assuredly do not regulate it. 
 
 Pal. You see, Mr. Darwin, that I was not far 
 wrong in confounding you with the Epicureans. This 
 poet's ready acceptance of your hypothesis as the 
 sole condition on which he would consent to qualify 
 
340 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 his blank materialism, will show how narrow is the 
 interval which divides you. 
 
 Luc. Narrow, O priest ! It seems to me that we 
 are not less widely parted than the Poles. 
 
 Dar. And to me also the interval which you call 
 narrow appears well-nigh infinite. For such, I think, 
 is the difference between him who postulates and him 
 who rejects a supernatural origin for the material 
 universe. 
 
 Pal. Theoretically it may be so, but in practice it 
 is quite otherwise. The mass of mankind will never 
 be able to reverence a Creator who has withdrawn 
 Himself from the conduct and control of things from 
 the moment of their creation onwards. How, think 
 you, will they be able to distinguish such a Deity 
 from the Epicurean gods ? Nay, how essentially 
 would He differ from them in fact .-' For one moment 
 only in eternity has He been otherwise, and ever 
 since His existence has been like theirs — 
 
 Semota a nostris rebus, sejunctaque longe. 
 
 Are you sure, Mr. Darwin, that blind mortals who go 
 thus far in negation will not soon learn to add that 
 last despairing line of the Epicurean's creed, and say 
 of Him whom they should regard as the righteous 
 Judge of all their words and actions — 
 
 Nee bene promeritis capitur, nee tangitur ira ? 
 
 Luc. And you think it a nobler faith for "blind 
 
LUCRETIUS, PALEY, AND DARWIN 341 
 
 mortals " to believe in a Creator who can be wheedled 
 or incensed by the creatures of His hand ? 
 
 Dar. We have ceased to hold, Dr. Paley, that the 
 religious beliefs of men are greatly influenced by 
 speculations on the origin and development of life 
 upon the globe. Alike among the most powerful and 
 the most pious minds of my time, the conviction had 
 gained ground that man must look within him for 
 his religion rather than without. 
 
 Pal. 'Tis very well to say so, sir ; but what, pray, 
 will he find within him to reward his search? A 
 conscience ? And if so, by whom implanted, and by 
 what means developed ? Is it in the struggle for 
 existence that men have learnt their duty to their 
 neighbour, and that the virtues of charity and con- 
 tinence, of probity and mercy, have gained their 
 footing in the human soul .' 
 
 Dar. Out of the struggle for existence was born 
 the tribal instinct, and this in turn has been the 
 parent of those self-protecting qualities which are as 
 necessary to the survival of the tribe, as are strength, 
 and cunning, and fleetness to the survival of the 
 isolated individual. And will you not admit, sir, 
 that it is no less easy to believe in, and to adore, a 
 Deity who, out of the blind battle of creation, 
 had ordained the evolution of so noble an organ 
 as the conscience, and the development of so high 
 a function as the moral conduct, than it were to 
 believe in and adore a Creator who had once for 
 
342 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 all implanted His law in a single pair of human 
 hearts ? 
 
 Pal. For the belief in His power and for the 
 adoration of its majesty the one conception may 
 doubtless serve as well as the other. But as bases 
 for man's recognition of Him as a moral Governor 
 who will reward obedience and punish disobedience 
 to His law, the two conceptions are of vastly unequal 
 value. Is the righteous Judge of all the earth to 
 visit the " undeveloped " with punishment for their 
 imperfections ? 
 
 Dar. Why not the " undeveloped " as well as the 
 " unregenerate " ? Nay, come. Dr. Paley, you are 
 beckoning me to a region of mystery where you can 
 walk with no surer foot than mine. 
 
 Pal. Your theory, sir, is fatal to the doctrine of 
 man's free will. 
 
 Dar. a doctrine, however, which some of the 
 greatest of theologians have rejected as inconsistent 
 with the foreknowledge of God. Nay, sir, if a man 
 must needs embrace the sombre creed of the Calvinists, 
 he can reach it by way of your hypothesis as easily as 
 by mine ; while, if his nature impels him to a more 
 hopeful view of the Divine counsels, he will meet with 
 no more obstacles in my hypothesis than in yours. 
 
 Luc. And with fewer in mine than in either. 
 
 Pal. May I, without impertinence, Mr. Darwin, 
 inquire in what sort of estimation you were held 
 among the orthodox Christians of your time ? 
 
LUCRETIUS, PALEY, AND DARWIN 343 
 
 Dar. I hardly know how to answer your question. 
 I enjoyed the friendship of many of them, and incurred, 
 so far as I am aware, the ill will of none. Why should 
 I, indeed ? I never assailed their doctrines. 
 
 Pal. But was not the Christian world alarmed by 
 your speculations } Did it not protest against them ? 
 Had your contemporaries grown wiser than the 
 Apostle, and did they believe that all danger from 
 philosophy falsely so called had passed away ? 
 
 Dar. No ; but they thought, I imagine, that philo- 
 sophy falsely so called could be exposed as false. 
 
 Pal. Indeed ! Then truly they must have been 
 sanguine. The conclusions of the philosophers are 
 adopted by multitudes of men who are quite incapable 
 of following the processes by which they have been 
 reached, and who would therefore be equally unable 
 to comprehend their refutation. And when such 
 conclusions commend themselves to the vulgar as 
 ministering to their love of self-indulgence, or tran- 
 quillising their fears of supernatural authority, they 
 are only too likely to be adopted with eagerness. 
 
 Luc. I did not find it so. It is the vulgar who 
 hug their superstitious fears most closely to their 
 hearts. 
 
 Dar. The consequences which you apprehend from 
 scientific inquiry would be unfortunate, I allow ; but 
 tell me. Dr. Paley, would you seriously counsel the 
 inquirer to desist from his attempts to discover truth 
 
344 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 mischievous result in certain minds ? He is bound to 
 exercise especial caution in drawing his conclusions ; 
 he is bound to weigh the objections to them with 
 especial care. But these obligations once fulfilled, 
 and his judgment satisfied by the evidence, is he 
 not to declare his convictions? 
 
 Pal. You do not state the case completely. The 
 evidence for a Divine government — by which I 
 mean a direct and perpetual superintendence of the 
 world — is of two kinds, material and moral, and you 
 must not allow yourself to reject the former until you 
 have well considered whether its defects, whatever 
 you may suppose them to be, are or are not made 
 good by the latter. The testimony of the creation 
 may fail to convince you that the Deity was the 
 Artificer in detail, and is the ever-present Guide in 
 action of the existing machinery of things, but the 
 inward witness of your own heart may urge upon 
 you with overwhelming force that He is. Are you 
 sure, sir, that you have properly interrogated it ? 
 
 Dar. All thoughtful men interrogate it. Dr. Paley, 
 and at all seasons. But the answer that it returns 
 is not capable of being tested by the understanding. 
 It does not speak in the language of thought, but in 
 that of emotion ; and I cannot believe that the 
 Author of our intellectual faculties could ever have 
 intended us to depose them in favour of impulse 
 and aspiration at the very moment and in respect 
 of the very matters in which it is most important 
 
LUCRETIUS, PALEY, AND DARWIN 345 
 
 that the supremacy of the understanding should be 
 unchallenged. 
 
 Pal. You cannot have seen whither your argument 
 is leading. 
 
 Dar. On the contrary, I have not only reasoned 
 it out to its conclusion, but have acted upon it. It 
 leads to the total separation of the intellectual faculties 
 from the religious instincts. Yet whenever in the 
 intervals of my study I have paused to survey the 
 fruits of my work, the contemplation of them has 
 but served to deepen that feeling of awe which 
 you have rightly described as the chief factor in the 
 devout emotions of the heart. 
 
 Luc. Awe ! Awe of a Deity who once set the ball 
 a-roUing, and has ever since let it roll as it will ! 
 
 Pal. Do you actually, then, lay claim, sir, to the 
 title of a Christian .'' 
 
 Dar. Why not .'' I conformed, and with no feeling 
 of insincerity, to the popular religion, accepting it as 
 the highest and most satisfying form of homage to 
 that all-embracing Mystery which I could no more 
 fathom than the most untutored of the worshippers 
 in the little church of my village. 
 
 Pal. It is not for me, sir, to say that your adora- 
 tion was rejected by the all-merciful Being to the 
 majesty of whose power your speculations — forgive 
 me — have done such sad dishonour. 
 
 Dar. If it is not for you to say so. Dr. Paley, it 
 is for no man. But I must once more protest against 
 
346 THE NEW LUCIAN 
 
 your description of my doctrines. To theorise in this 
 sense or in that on the Creator's mode of operation 
 can never, to my thinking, do His power dishonour. 
 That could only be done by those who deny His 
 energies and His existence altogether — by those who 
 feel no mental necessity for imagining, no moral 
 necessity for adoring, a great First Cause. 
 
 Pal. I perceive, sir, that here, as upon earth, a 
 man will always have atheism to begin where his 
 own opinions end. It is something hard, however, 
 for our friend the follower of Epicurus that you 
 should thus decline to bear him company to the 
 consequences of a common audacity in speculation 
 — that you should leave him alone to face the charge 
 of dishonouring the Divine power, and to submit to 
 its penalties. 
 
 Dar. I know not whether there be any such 
 penalties. Dr. Paley ; nor do I find it easy to believe 
 that a just and merciful Being could punish any one 
 for error incurred in the honest and conscientious 
 employment of faculties which He Himself has both 
 bestowed and limited. 
 
 Luc. And whether it be so or not, O philosophers, 
 be assured that I await the future with composure. 
 I did not unlearn and unteach the fear of hell, in life, 
 that I should submit to it again after death. Allow, 
 too, O my friends, that thus far we have seen neither 
 Cerberus nor Furies, neither vulture of Tityus, nor 
 wheel of Ixion, nor thirst-throes of Tantalus : and 
 
LUCRETIUS, PALEY, AND DARWIN 347 
 
 that I seem confirmed, therefore, in my theory that 
 the more terrible of these dread imaginings do but 
 symbohse the apprehended punishments of the wicked 
 upon earth — are but reflected images of that metus 
 pienariim which 
 
 . . . pro malefactis 
 Est insignibus insignis, scelerisque luela 
 Career, et horribili de saxo jactu' deorsum, 
 Verbera, Carnifices, Robur, Fix, Lamina, Ttedfe. 
 
 On one point, however, in that theory I have, since 
 hearing your disputations, begun to doubt. Sisyphus, 
 I said — 
 
 ... in vita quoque nobis ante oculos est 
 Qui petere a populo fasces SEEvasque secures 
 Imbibit ; et semper victus tristisque recedit. 
 
 But, now that I have seen the elder of you two sages 
 mourning over his stone at the foot of the hill, while 
 the younger at the summit awaits the moment when 
 his own shall descend to join it, I begin to suspect 
 that the earthly antitype of Sisyphus was not the 
 politician, but the philosopher. 
 
 THE END 
 
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