APPENDIX III
[Vide ante p. 237.]
APOLOGETIC PREFACE TO 'FIRE, FAMINE,
AND SLAUGHTER'[1097:1]
At the house of a gentleman[1097:2] who by the principles and
corresponding virtues of a sincere Christian consecrates a
cultivated genius and the favourable accidents of birth, opulence,
and splendid connexions, it was my good fortune to meet, in
a dinner-party, with more men of celebrity in science or polite 5
literature than are commonly found collected round the same
table. In the course of conversation, one of the party reminded
an illustrious poet [Scott], then present, of some verses which
he had recited that morning, and which had appeared in
a newspaper under the name of a War-Eclogue, in which Fire, 10
Famine, and Slaughter were introduced as the speakers. The
gentleman so addressed replied, that he was rather surprised
that none of us should have noticed or heard of the poem, as it
had been, at the time, a good deal talked of in Scotland. It
may be easily supposed that my feelings were at this moment 15
not of the most comfortable kind. Of all present, one only [Sir
H. Davy] knew, or suspected me to be the author; a man who
would have established himself in the first rank of England's
living poets[1097:3], if the Genius of our country had not decreed that
he should rather be the first in the first rank of its philosophers [20]
and scientific benefactors. It appeared the general wish to
hear the lines. As my friend chose to remain silent, I chose
to follow his example, and Mr. . . . . . [Scott] recited the poem.
This he could do with the better grace, being known to have
ever been not only a firm and active Anti-Jacobin and 25
Anti-Gallican, but likewise a zealous admirer of Mr. Pitt, both as
a good man and a great statesman. As a poet exclusively, he
had been amused with the Eclogue; as a poet he recited it;
and in a spirit which made it evident that he would have read
and repeated it with the same pleasure had his own name been 30
attached to the imaginary object or agent.
After the recitation our amiable host observed that in his
opinion Mr. . . . . . had over-rated the merits of the poetry;
but had they been tenfold greater, they could not have
compensated for that malignity of heart which could alone have 35
prompted sentiments so atrocious. I perceived that my
illustrious friend became greatly distressed on my account; but
fortunately I was able to preserve fortitude and presence of
mind enough to take up the subject without exciting even
a suspicion how nearly and painfully it interested me. [40]
What follows is the substance of what I then replied, but
dilated and in language less colloquial. It was not my intention,
I said, to justify the publication, whatever its author's feelings
might have been at the time of composing it. That they are
calculated to call forth so severe a reprobation from a good man, 45
is not the worst feature of such poems. Their moral deformity
is aggravated in proportion to the pleasure which they are
capable of affording to vindictive, turbulent, and unprincipled
readers. Could it be supposed, though for a moment, that the
author seriously wished what he had thus wildly imagined, 50
even the attempt to palliate an inhumanity so monstrous would
be an insult to the hearers. But it seemed to me worthy of
consideration, whether the mood of mind and the general state
of sensations in which a poet produces such vivid and fantastic
images, is likely to co-exist, or is even compatible with, that [55]
gloomy and deliberate ferocity which a serious wish to realize
them would pre-suppose. It had been often observed, and all
my experience tended to confirm the observation, that prospects
of pain and evil to others, and in general all deep feelings of
revenge, are commonly expressed in a few words, ironically tame, 60
and mild. The mind under so direful and fiend-like an influence
seems to take a morbid pleasure in contrasting the intensity of
its wishes and feelings with the slightness or levity of the
expressions by which they are hinted; and indeed feelings
so intense and solitary, if they were not precluded (as in almost 65
all cases they would be) by a constitutional activity of fancy
and association, and by the specific joyousness combined with it,
would assuredly themselves preclude such activity. Passion, in
its own quality, is the antagonist of action; though in an
ordinary and natural degree the former alternates with the latter, 70
and thereby revives and strengthens it. But the more intense
and insane the passion is, the fewer and the more fixed are the
correspondent forms and notions. A rooted hatred, an inveterate
thirst of revenge, is a sort of madness, and still eddies round its
favourite object, and exercises as it were a perpetual tautology 75
of mind in thoughts and words which admit of no adequate
substitutes. Like a fish in a globe of glass, it moves restlessly
round and round the scanty circumference, which it cannot
leave without losing its vital element.
There is a second character of such imaginary representations 80
as spring from a real and earnest desire of evil to another,
which we often see in real life, and might even anticipate from
the nature of the mind. The images, I mean, that a vindictive
man places before his imagination, will most often be taken
from the realities of life: they will be images of pain and 85
suffering which he has himself seen inflicted on other men, and
which he can fancy himself as inflicting on the object of his
hatred. I will suppose that we had heard at different times
two common sailors, each speaking of some one who had
wronged or offended him: that the first with apparent violence [90]
had devoted every part of his adversary's body and soul to all
the horrid phantoms and fantastic places that ever Quevedo
dreamt of, and this in a rapid flow of those outrageous and wildly
combined execrations, which too often with our lower classes
serve for escape-valves to carry off the excess of their passions, [95]
as so much superfluous steam that would endanger the vessel if
it were retained. The other, on the contrary, with that sort of
calmness of tone which is to the ear what the paleness of anger
is to the eye, shall simply say, 'If I chance to be made
boatswain, as I hope I soon shall, and can but once get that 100
fellow under my hand (and I shall be upon the watch for him),
I'll tickle his pretty skin! I won't hurt him! oh no! I'll only
cut the — — to the liver!' I dare appeal to all present, which
of the two they would regard as the least deceptive symptom
of deliberate malignity? nay, whether it would surprise them [105]
to see the first fellow, an hour or two afterwards, cordially
shaking hands with the very man the fractional parts of whose
body and soul he had been so charitably disposing of; or even
perhaps risking his life for him? What language Shakespeare
considered characteristic of malignant disposition we see in the 110
speech of the good-natured Gratiano, who spoke 'an infinite
deal of nothing more than any man in all Venice';
——Too wild, too rude and bold of voice!
the skipping spirit, whose thoughts and words reciprocally ran
away with each other; [115]
———O be them damn'd, inexorable dog!
And for thy life let justice be accused!
and the wild fancies that follow, contrasted with Shylock's
tranquil 'I stand here for Law'.
Or, to take a case more analogous to the present subject, 120
should we hold it either fair or charitable to believe it to have
been Dante's serious wish that all the persons mentioned by
him (many recently departed, and some even alive at the time,)
should actually suffer the fantastic and horrible punishments to
which he has sentenced them in his Hell and Purgatory? [125]
Or what shall we say of the passages in which Bishop Jeremy
Taylor anticipates the state of those who, vicious themselves,
have been the cause of vice and misery to their fellow-creatures?
Could we endure for a moment to think that a spirit, like
Bishop Taylor's, burning with Christian love; that a man 130
constitutionally overflowing with pleasurable kindliness; who
scarcely even in a casual illustration introduces the image of
woman, child, or bird, but he embalms the thought with so
rich a tenderness, as makes the very words seem beauties and
fragments of poetry from Euripides or Simonides;—can we [135]
endure to think, that a man so natured and so disciplined, did
at the time of composing this horrible picture, attach a sober
feeling of reality to the phrases? or that he would have
described in the same tone of justification, in the same luxuriant
flow of phrases, the tortures about to be inflicted on a living 140
individual by a verdict of the Star-Chamber? or the still more
atrocious sentences executed on the Scotch anti-prelatists and
schismatics, at the command, and in some instances under the
very eye of the Duke of Lauderdale, and of that wretched bigot
who afterwards dishonoured and forfeited the throne of Great 145
Britain? Or do we not rather feel and understand, that these
violent words were mere bubbles, flashes and electrical
apparitions, from the magic cauldron of a fervid and ebullient fancy,
constantly fuelled by an unexampled opulence of language?
Were I now to have read by myself for the first time the poem 150
in question, my conclusion, I fully believe, would be, that the
writer must have been some man of warm feelings and active
fancy; that he had painted to himself the circumstances that
accompany war in so many vivid and yet fantastic forms, as
proved that neither the images nor the feelings were the result 155
of observation, or in any way derived from realities. I should
judge that they were the product of his own seething imagination,
and therefore impregnated with that pleasurable exultation
which is experienced in all energetic exertion of intellectual
power; that in the same mood he had generalized the causes of 160
the war, and then personified the abstract and christened it by
the name which he had been accustomed to hear most often
associated with its management and measures. I should guess
that the minister was in the author's mind at the moment of
composition as completely ἀπαθὴς, ἀναιμόσαρκος, as Anacreon's 165
grasshopper, and that he had as little notion of a real person of
flesh and blood,
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb,
[Paradise Lost, II. 668.]
as Milton had in the grim and terrible phantom (half person,
half allegory) which he has placed at the gates of Hell. I [170]
concluded by observing, that the poem was not calculated to excite
passion in any mind, or to make any impression except on
poetic readers; and that from the culpable levity betrayed
at the close of the eclogue by the grotesque union of epigrammatic
wit with allegoric personification, in the allusion to the 175
most fearful of thoughts, I should conjecture that the 'rantin'
Bardie', instead of really believing, much less wishing, the fate
spoken of in the last line, in application to any human individual,
would shrink from passing the verdict even on the Devil himself,
and exclaim with poor Burns, 180
But fare ye weel, auld Nickie-ben!
Oh! wad ye tak a thought an' men!
Ye aiblins might—I dinna ken—
Still hae a stake—
I'm wae to think upon yon den, 185
Ev'n for your sake!
I need not say that these thoughts, which are here dilated,
were in such a company only rapidly suggested. Our kind
host smiled, and with a courteous compliment observed, that
the defence was too good for the cause. My voice faltered 190
a little, for I was somewhat agitated; though not so much on
my own account as for the uneasiness that so kind and friendly
a man would feel from the thought that he had been the
occasion of distressing me. At length I brought out these words:
'I must now confess, sir! that I am author of that poem. It [195]
was written some years ago. I do not attempt to justify my
past self, young as I then was; but as little as I would now
write a similar poem, so far was I even then from imagining
that the lines would be taken as more or less than a sport
of fancy. At all events, if I know my own heart, there was [200]
never a moment in my existence in which I should have been
more ready, had Mr. Pitt's person been in hazard, to interpose
my own body, and defend his life at the risk of my own.'
I have prefaced the poem with this anecdote, because to have
printed it without any remark might well have been understood 205
as implying an unconditional approbation on my part, and this
after many years' consideration. But if it be asked why I
republished it at all, I answer, that the poem had been attributed
at different times to different other persons; and what I had
dared beget, I thought it neither manly nor honourable not to [210]
dare father. From the same motives I should have published
perfect copies of two poems, the one entitled The Devil's
Thoughts, and the other, The Two Round Spaces on the
Tombstone, but that the three first stanzas of the former, which
were worth all the rest of the poem, and the best stanza of the 215
remainder, were written by a friend [Southey] of deserved
celebrity; and because there are passages in both which might
have given offence to the religious feelings of certain readers.
I myself indeed see no reason why vulgar superstitions and
absurd conceptions that deform the pure faith of a Christian 220
should possess a greater immunity from ridicule than stories of
witches, or the fables of Greece and Rome. But there are those
who deem it profaneness and irreverence to call an ape an ape,
if it but wear a monk's cowl on its head; and I would rather
reason with this weakness than offend it. 225
The passage from Jeremy Taylor to which I referred is found
in his second Sermon on Christ's Advent to Judgment; which
is likewise the second in his year's course of sermons. Among
many remarkable passages of the same character in those
discourses, I have selected this as the most so. 'But when this 230
Lion of the tribe of Judah shall appear, then Justice shall strike,
and Mercy shall not hold her hands; she shall strike sore strokes,
and Pity shall not break the blow. As there are treasures of
good things, so hath God a treasure of wrath and fury, and
scourges and scorpions; and then shall be produced the shame [235]
of Lust and the malice of Envy, and the groans of the oppressed
and the persecutions of the saints, and the cares of Covetousness
and the troubles of Ambition, and the insolencies of traitors and
the violences of rebels, and the rage of anger and the uneasiness
of impatience, and the restlessness of unlawful desires; and by 240
this time the monsters and diseases will be numerous and
intolerable, when God's heavy hand shall press the sanies and
the intolerableness, the obliquity and the unreasonableness, the
amazement and the disorder, the smart and the sorrow, the
guilt and the punishment, out from all our sins, and pour them 245
into one chalice, and mingle them with an infinite wrath, and
make the wicked drink off all the vengeance, and force it down
their unwilling throats with the violence of devils and accursed
spirits.'
That this Tartarean drench displays the imagination rather [250]
than the discretion of the compounder; that, in short, this
passage and others of the same kind are in a bad taste, few will deny
at the present day. It would, doubtless, have more behoved
the good bishop not to be wise beyond what is written on
a subject in which Eternity is opposed to Time, and a Death [255]
threatened, not the negative, but the positive Opposite of Life;
a subject, therefore, which must of necessity be indescribable
to the human understanding in our present state. But I can
neither find nor believe that it ever occurred to any reader to
ground on such passages a charge against Bishop Taylor's [260]
humanity, or goodness of heart. I was not a little surprised
therefore to find, in the Pursuits of Literature and other works,
so horrible a sentence passed on Milton's moral character, for
a passage in his prose writings, as nearly parallel to this of
Taylor's as two passages can well be conceived to be. All his [265]
merits, as a poet, forsooth—all the glory of having written the
Paradise Lost, are light in the scale, nay, kick the beam,
compared with the atrocious malignity of heart, expressed in the
offensive paragraph. I remembered, in general, that Milton had
concluded one of his works on Reformation, written in the [270]
fervour of his youthful imagination, in a high poetic strain, that
wanted metre only to become a lyrical poem. I remembered
that in the former part he had formed to himself a perfect ideal
of human virtue, a character of heroic, disinterested zeal and
devotion for Truth, Religion, and public Liberty, in act and in [275]
suffering, in the day of triumph and in the hour of martyrdom.
Such spirits, as more excellent than others, he describes as
having a more excellent reward, and as distinguished by a
transcendant glory: and this reward and this glory he displays and
particularizes with an energy and brilliance that announced the 280
Paradise Lost as plainly, as ever the bright purple clouds in the
east announced the coming of the Sun. Milton then passes to
the gloomy contrast, to such men as from motives of selfish
ambition and the lust of personal aggrandizement should, against
their own light, persecute truth and the true religion, and 285
wilfully abuse the powers and gifts entrusted to them, to bring
vice, blindness, misery and slavery, on their native country, on
the very country that had trusted, enriched and honoured them.
Such beings, after that speedy and appropriate removal from
their sphere of mischief which all good and humane men must 290
of course desire, will, he takes for granted by parity of reason,
meet with a punishment, an ignominy, and a retaliation, as
much severer than other wicked men, as their guilt and its
consequences were more enormous. His description of this
imaginary punishment presents more distinct pictures to the [295]
fancy than the extract from Jeremy Taylor; but the thoughts
in the latter are incomparably more exaggerated and horrific.
All this I knew; but I neither remembered, nor by reference
and careful re-perusal could discover, any other meaning, either
in Milton or Taylor, but that good men will be rewarded, and 300
the impenitent wicked, punished, in proportion to their
dispositions and intentional acts in this life; and that if the
punishment of the least wicked be fearful beyond conception, all words
and descriptions must be so far true, that they must fall short
of the punishment that awaits the transcendantly wicked. Had 305
Milton stated either his ideal of virtue, or of depravity, as an
individual or individuals actually existing? Certainly not!
Is this representation worded historically, or only
hypothetically? Assuredly the latter! Does he express it as his own
wish that after death they should suffer these tortures? or as [310]
a general consequence, deduced from reason and revelation, that
such will be their fate? Again, the latter only! His wish is
expressly confined to a speedy stop being put by Providence to
their power of inflicting misery on others! But did he name
or refer to any persons living or dead? No! But the [315]
calumniators of Milton daresay (for what will calumny not dare say?)
that he had Laud and Strafford in his mind, while writing of
remorseless persecution, and the enslavement of a free country
from motives of selfish ambition. Now what if a stern
anti-prelatist should daresay, that in speaking of the insolencies of [320]
traitors and the violences of rebels, Bishop Taylor must have
individualised in his mind Hampden, Hollis, Pym, Fairfax,
Ireton, and Milton? And what if he should take the liberty of
concluding, that, in the after-description, the Bishop was feeding
and feasting his party-hatred, and with those individuals before 325
the eyes of his imagination enjoying, trait by trait, horror after
horror, the picture of their intolerable agonies? Yet this
bigot would have an equal right thus to criminate the one good
and great man, as these men have to criminate the other.
Milton has said, and I doubt not but that Taylor with equal 330
truth could have said it, 'that in his whole life he never spake
against a man even that his skin should be grazed.' He asserted
this when one of his opponents (either Bishop Hall or his
nephew) had called upon the women and children in the streets
to take up stones and stone him (Milton). It is known that [335]
Milton repeatedly used his interest to protect the royalists;
but even at a time when all lies would have been meritorious
against him, no charge was made, no story pretended, that he
had ever directly or indirectly engaged or assisted in their
persecution. Oh! methinks there are other and far better feelings 340
which should be acquired by the perusal of our great elder
writers. When I have before me, on the same table, the works
of Hammond and Baxter; when I reflect with what joy and
dearness their blessed spirits are now loving each other; it
seems a mournful thing that their names should be perverted to [345]
an occasion of bitterness among us, who are enjoying that happy
mean which the human too-much on both sides was perhaps
necessary to produce. 'The tangle of delusions which stifled
and distorted the growing tree of our well-being has been torn
away; the parasite-weeds that fed on its very roots have been 350
plucked up with a salutary violence. To us there remain only
quiet duties, the constant care, the gradual improvement, the
cautious unhazardous labours of the industrious though
contented gardener—to prune, to strengthen, to engraft, and one
by one to remove from its leaves and fresh shoots the slug and 355
the caterpillar. But far be it from us to undervalue with light
and senseless detraction the conscientious hardihood of our
predecessors, or even to condemn in them that vehemence, to
which the blessings it won for us leave us now neither
temptation nor pretext. We antedate the feelings, in order to [360]
criminate the authors, of our present liberty, light and
toleration.' (The Friend, No. IV. Sept. 7, 1809.) [1818, i. 105.]
If ever two great men might seem, during their whole lives,
to have moved in direct opposition, though neither of them has
at any time introduced the name of the other, Milton and 365
Jeremy Taylor were they. The former commenced his career
by attacking the Church-Liturgy and all set forms of prayer.
The latter, but far more successfully, by defending both.
Milton's next work was against the Prelacy and the then
existing Church-Government—Taylor's in vindication and [370]
support of them. Milton became more and more a stern republican,
or rather an advocate for that religious and moral aristocracy
which, in his day, was called republicanism, and which, even more
than royalism itself, is the direct antipode of modern jacobinism.
Taylor, as more and more sceptical concerning the fitness of 375
men in general for power, became more and more attached to
the prerogatives of monarchy. From Calvinism, with a still
decreasing respect for Fathers, Councils, and for Church-antiquity
in general, Milton seems to have ended in an indifference,
if not a dislike, to all forms of ecclesiastic government, and to [380]
have retreated wholly into the inward and spiritual church-communion
of his own spirit with the Light that lighteth every
man that cometh into the world. Taylor, with a growing
reverence for authority, an increasing sense of the insufficiency of
the Scriptures without the aids of tradition and the consent of [385]
authorized interpreters, advanced as far in his approaches (not
indeed to Popery, but) to Roman-Catholicism, as a conscientious
minister of the English Church could well venture. Milton
would be and would utter the same to all on all occasions: he
would tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the [390]
truth. Taylor would become all things to all men, if by any
means he might benefit any; hence he availed himself, in his
popular writings, of opinions and representations which stand
often in striking contrast with the doubts and convictions
expressed in his more philosophical works. He appears, indeed, [395]
not too severely to have blamed that management of truth
(istam falsitatem dispensativam) authorized and exemplified by
almost all the fathers: Integrum omnino doctoribus et coetus
Christiani antistitibus esse, ut dolos versent, falsa veris
intermisceant et imprimis religionis hostes fallant, dummodo 400
veritatis commodis et utilitati inserviant.
The same antithesis might be carried on with the elements
of their several intellectual powers. Milton, austere, condensed,
imaginative, supporting his truth by direct enunciation of lofty
moral sentiment and by distinct visual representations, and in 405
the same spirit overwhelming what he deemed falsehood by
moral denunciation and a succession of pictures appalling or
repulsive. In his prose, so many metaphors, so many allegorical
miniatures. Taylor, eminently discursive, accumulative,
and (to use one of his own words) agglomerative; still more [410]
rich in images than Milton himself, but images of fancy, and
presented to the common and passive eye, rather than to the
eye of the imagination. Whether supporting or assailing, he
makes his way either by argument or by appeals to the
affections, unsurpassed even by the schoolmen in subtlety, [415]
agility, and logic wit, and unrivalled by the most rhetorical of
the fathers in the copiousness and vividness of his expressions
and illustrations. Here words that convey feelings, and words
that flash images, and words of abstract notion, flow together,
and whirl and rush onward like a stream, at once rapid and full [420]
of eddies; and yet still interfused here and there we see a tongue
or islet of smooth water, with some picture in it of earth or sky,
landscape or living group of quiet beauty.
Differing then so widely and almost contrariantly, wherein
did these great men agree? wherein did they resemble each 425
other? In genius, in learning, in unfeigned piety, in blameless
purity of life, and in benevolent aspirations and purposes for
the moral and temporal improvement of their fellow-creatures!
Both of them wrote a Latin Accidence, to render education
more easy and less painful to children; both of them composed 430
hymns and psalms proportioned to the capacity of common
congregations; both, nearly at the same time, set the glorious
example of publicly recommending and supporting general
toleration, and the liberty both of the Pulpit and the press!
In the writings of neither shall we find a single sentence, like [435]
those meek deliverances to God's mercy, with which Laud
accompanied his votes for the mutilations and loathsome
dungeoning of Leighton and others!—nowhere such a pious prayer
as we find in Bishop Hall's memoranda of his own life, concerning
the subtle and witty atheist that so grievously perplexed [440]
and gravelled him at Sir Robert Drury's till he prayed to the
Lord to remove him, and behold! his prayers were heard: for
shortly afterward this Philistine-combatant went to London,
and there perished of the plague in great misery! In short,
nowhere shall we find the least approach, in the lives and 445
writings of John Milton or Jeremy Taylor, to that guarded
gentleness, to that sighing reluctance, with which the holy
brethren of the Inquisition deliver over a condemned heretic
to the civil magistrate, recommending him to mercy, and
hoping that the magistrate will treat the erring brother with [450]
all possible mildness!—the magistrate who too well knows what
would be his own fate if he dared offend them by acting on their
recommendation.
The opportunity of diverting the reader from myself to
characters more worthy of his attention, has led me far beyond my 455
first intention; but it is not unimportant to expose the false
zeal which has occasioned these attacks on our elder patriots.
It has been too much the fashion first to personify the Church
of England, and then to speak of different individuals, who in
different ages have been rulers in that church, as if in some [460]
strange way they constituted its personal identity. Why should
a clergyman of the present day feel interested in the defence
of Laud or Sheldon? Surely it is sufficient for the warmest
partisan of our establishment that he can assert with
truth,—when our Church persecuted, it was on mistaken principles [465]
held in common by all Christendom; and at all events, far less
culpable was this intolerance in the Bishops, who were
maintaining the existing laws, than the persecuting spirit afterwards
shewn by their successful opponents, who had no such excuse,
and who should have been taught mercy by their own sufferings, 470
and wisdom by the utter failure of the experiment in their own
case. We can say that our Church, apostolical in its faith,
primitive in its ceremonies, unequalled in its liturgical forms; that
our Church, which has kindled and displayed more bright and
burning lights of genius and learning than all other protestant 475
churches since the reformation, was (with the single exception
of the times of Laud and Sheldon) least intolerant, when all
Christians unhappily deemed a species of intolerance their
religious duty; that Bishops of our church were among the first
that contended against this error; and finally, that since the [480]
reformation, when tolerance became a fashion, the Church of
England in a tolerating age, has shewn herself eminently
tolerant, and far more so, both in spirit and in fact, than
many of her most bitter opponents, who profess to deem
toleration itself an insult on the rights of mankind! As to [485]
myself, who not only know the Church-Establishment to be
tolerant, but who see in it the greatest, if not the sole safe
bulwark of toleration. I feel no necessity of defending or
palliating oppressions under the two Charleses, in order to
exclaim with a full and fervent heart, Esto perpetua! [490]
