FOOTNOTES:
[1] De Quincey, Leigh Hunt, and Macaulay all died in that year.
[2] This incident was a complicated contention, concerning the copyright of The Confessions, in which De Quincey had long allowed his rights to lie dormant. It was at last happily settled in an amicable manner.
[3] Objectively and subjectively are terms somewhat too metaphysical; but they are so indispensable to accurate thinking that we are inclined to show them some indulgence; and, the more so, in cases where the mere position and connection of the words are half sufficient to explain their application.
[4] In general usage, 'The antique' is a phrase limited to the expression of art; but improperly so. It is quite as legitimately used to denote the literature of ancient times, in contradistinction to the modern. As to the term classical, though generally employed as equivalent to Greek and Roman, the reader must not forget this is quite a false limitation, contradicting the very reason for applying the word in any sense to literature. For the application arose thus: The social body of Rome being divided into six classes, of which the lowest was the sixth, it followed that the highest was the first. Thence, by a natural process common to most languages, those who belonged to this highest had no number at all assigned to them. The very absence of a number, the calling them classici, implied that they belonged to the class emphatically, or par excellence. The classics meant, therefore, the grandees in social consideration; and thence by analogy in literature. But if this analogy be transferred from Rome to Greece, where it had no corresponding root in civic arrangement—then, by parity of reason, to all nations.
[5] The beauty of this famous epigram lies in the form of the conception. The first had A; the second had B; and when nature, to furnish out a third, should have given him C, she found that A and B had already exhausted her cycle; and that she could distinguish her third great favourite only by giving him both A and B in combination. But the filling up of this outline is imperfect: for the A (loftiness) and the B (majesty) are one and the same quality, under different names.
[6] Because the Latin word sublimis is applied to objects soaring upwards, or floating aloft, or at an aerial altitude, and because the word does sometimes correspond to our idea of the sublime (in which the notion of height is united with the notion of moral grandeur), and because, in the excessive vagueness and lawless latitudinarianism of our common Greek Lexicons, the word ὑψος is translated, inter alia, by το sublime, sublimitas, &c. Hence it has happened that the title of the little essay ascribed to Longinus, Περι ὑψους, is usually rendered into English, Concerning the sublime. But the idea of the Sublime, as defined, circumscribed, and circumstantiated, in English literature—an idea altogether of English growth—the sublime byway of polar antithesis to the Beautiful, had no existence amongst ancient critics; consequently it could have no expression. It is a great thought, a true thought, a demonstrable thought, that the Sublime, as thus ascertained, and in contraposition to the Beautiful, grew up on the basis of sexual distinctions, the Sublime corresponding to the male, the Beautiful, its anti-pole, corresponding to the female. Behold! we show you a mystery.
[7] No word has ever given so much trouble to modern critics as this very word (now under discussion) of the sublime. To those who have little Greek and no Latin, it is necessary in the first place that we should state what are the most obvious elements of the word. According to the noble army of etymologists, they are these two Latin words—sub, under, and limus, mud. Oh! gemini! who would have thought of groping for the sublime in such a situation as that?—unless, indeed, it were that writer cited by Mr. Coleridge, and just now referred to by ourselves, who complains of frivolous modern readers, as not being able to raise and sequester their thoughts to the abstract consideration of dung. Hence it has followed, that most people have quarrelled with the etymology. "Whereupon the late Dr. Parr, of pedantic memory, wrote a huge letter to Mr. Dugald Stewart, but the marrow of which lies in a nutshell, especially being rather hollow within. The learned doctor, in the first folio, grapples with the word sub, which, says he, comes from the Greek—so much is clear—but from what Greek, Bezonian? The thoughtless world, says he, trace it to ὑπο (hypo), sub, i. e. under; but I, Ego, Samuel Parr, the Birmingham doctor, trace it to ὑπερ (hyper), super, i. e. above; between which the difference is not less than between a chestnut horse and a horse-chestnut. To this learned Parrian dissertation on mud, there cannot be much reasonably to object, except its length in the first place; and, secondly, that we ourselves exceedingly doubt the common interpretation of limus. Most unquestionably, if the sublime is to be brought into any relation at all to mud, we shall all be of one mind—that it must be found above. But to us it appears—that when the true modern idea of mud was in view, limus was not the word used. Cicero, for instance, when he wishes to call Piso 'filth, mud,' &c. calls him Cænum: and, in general, limus seems to have involved the notion of something adhesive, and rather to express plaister, or artificially prepared cement, &c., than that of filth or impure depositions. Accordingly, our own definition differs from the Parrian, or Birmingham definition; and may, nevertheless, be a Birmingham definition also. Not having room to defend it, for the present we forbear to state it.
[8] There is a difficulty in assigning any term as comprehensive enough to describe the Grecian heroes and their antagonists, who fought at Troy. The seven chieftains against Thebes are described sufficiently as Theban captains; but, to say Trojan chieftains, would express only the heroes of one side; Grecian, again, would be liable to that fault equally, and to another far greater, of being under no limitation as to time. This difficulty must explain and (if it can) justify our collective phrase of the Paladins of the Troad.
[9] 'To his own knowledge'—see, for proof of this, the gloomy serenity of his answer to his dying victim, when, predicting his approaching end:—
'Enough; I know my fate: to die—to see no more
My much-lov'd parents, and my native shore,' &c. &c.
[10] On the memorable inaugural day of the Liverpool railroad, when Mr. Huskisson met with so sad a fate, a snipe or a plover tried a race with Sampson, one of the engines. The race continued neck and neck for about six miles, after which, the snipe finding itself likely to come off second best, found it convenient to wheel off, at a turn of the road, into the solitudes of Chat Moss.
[11] The description of Apollo in wrath as νυκτι εοικω, like night, is a doubtful case. With respect to the shield of Achilles, it cannot be denied that the general conception has, in common with all abstractions (as e. g. the abstractions of dreams, of prophetic visions, such as that in the 6th Æneid, that to Macbeth, that shown by the angel Michael to Adam), something fine and, in its own nature, let the execution be what it may, sublime. But this part of the Iliad, we firmly believe to be an interpolation of times long posterior to that of Homer.
[12] But the Odyssey, at least, it will be said, is not thus limited: no, not by its subject; because it carries us amongst cities and princes in a state of peace; but it is equally limited by the spirit of manners; we are never admitted amongst women, except by accident (Nausicaa)—by necessity (Penelope)—or by romance (Circe).
[13] The other five were Homer, Virgil, Horace, Aristotle, Cicero.
[14] Viz. the supposed dragging of Hector three times round Troy by Achilles—a mere post-Homeric fable. But it is ludicrous to add, that, in after years—nay, when nearly at the end of his translation of the Iliad, in 1718—Pope took part in a discussion upon Homer's reasons for ascribing such conduct to his hero, seriously arguing the pro and con upon a pure fiction.
[15] 'In the steamboat!' Yes, reader, the steamboat. It is clear that there was one in Homer's time. See the art. Phæacian in the Odyssey: if it paid then, à fortiori six hundred years after. The only point unknown about it, is the captain's name and the state-cabin fares.
[16] 'In arts,' we say, because great orators are amongst his heroes; but, after all, it is very questionable whether, simply as orators, Plutarch would have noticed them. They were also statesmen; and Mitford always treats Demosthenes as first lord of the treasury and premier. Plutarch records no poet, no artist, however brilliant.
[17] 'Umbratic.' I have perhaps elsewhere drawn the attention of readers to the peculiar effects of climate, in shaping the modes of our thinking and imaging. A life of inertia, which retreats from the dust and toil of actual experience, we (who represent the idea of effeminacy more naturally by the image of shrinking from cold) call a chimney-corner of a fireside experience; but the Romans, to whom the same effeminacy more easily fell under the idea of shrinking from the heat of the sun, called it an experience won in the shade; and a mere scholastic student, they called an umbraticus doctor.
[18] Yet this story has been exaggerated; and, I believe, in strict truth, the whole case arose out of some fretful expressions of ill-temper on the part of Burke, and that the name was a retort from a man of wit, who had been personally stung by a sarcasm of the offended orator.
[19] There was another Parliament of this same year 1642, which met in the spring (April, I think), but was summarily dissolved. A small quarto volume, of not unfrequent occurrence, I believe, contains some good specimens of the eloquence then prevalent—it was rich in thought, never wordy—in fact, too parsimonious in words and illustrations; and it breathed a high tone of religious principle as well as of pure-minded patriotism; but, for the reason stated above—its narrow circuit and very limited duration—the general character of the Parliamentary eloquence was ineffective.
[20] Επεα πτεροεντα, literally winged words. To explain the use and origin of this phrase to non-classical readers, it must be understood that, originally, it was used by Homer to express the few, rapid, and significant words which conveyed some hasty order, counsel, or notice, suited to any sudden occasion or emergency: e. g. 'To him flying from the field the hero addressed these winged words—"Stop, coward, or I will transfix thee with my spear."' But by Horne Tooke, the phrase was adopted on the title-page of his Diversions of Purley, as a pleasant symbolic expression for all the non-significant particles, the articuli or joints of language, which in his well-known theory are resolved into abbreviations or compendious forms (and therefore rapid, flying, winged forms), substituted for significant forms of greater length. Thus, if is a non-significant particle, but it is an abbreviated form of an imperative in the second person—substituted for gif, or give, or grant the case—put the case that. All other particles are shown by Horne Tooke to be equally shorthand (or winged) substitutions.
[21] It has been rather too much forgotten, that Africa, from the northern margin of Bilidulgerid and the Great Desert, southwards—everywhere, in short, beyond Egypt, Cyrene, and the modern Barbary States—belongs, as much as America, to the New World—the world unknown to the ancients.
[22] I might have mastered the philosophy of Kant, without waiting for the German language, in which all his capital works are written; for there is a Latin version of the whole, by Born, and a most admirable digest of the cardinal work (admirable for its fidelity and the skill by which that fidelity is attained), in the same language, by Rhiseldek, a Danish professor. But this fact, such was the slight knowledge of all things connected with Kant in England, I did not learn for some years.
[23] Those who look back to the newspapers of 1799 and 1800, will see that considerable discussion went on at that time upon the question, whether the year 1800 was entitled to open the 19th century, or to close the 18th. Mr. Laureate Pye wrote a poem, with a long and argumentative preface on the point.
[24] This is only signed Z in The London Magazine, but is clearly labelled 'De Quincey' in Archdeacon Hessey's marked copy.—H.
[25] Mr. John Stuart Mill in his Principles of Political Economy, Book III chaps, i. and ii., makes some interesting and appreciative remarks on De Quincey's settlement of 'the phraseology of value;' also, concerning his illustrations of 'demand and supply, in their relation to value.'
[26] In a slight article on Mr. Malthus, lately published, I omitted to take any notice of the recent controversy between this gentleman—Mr. Godwin—and Mr. Booth; my reason for which was—that I have not yet found time to read it. But, if Mr. Lowe has rightly represented this principle of Mr. Booth's argument in his late work on the Statistics of England, it is a most erroneous one: for Mr. Booth is there described as alleging against Mr. Malthus that, in his view of the tendencies of the principle of population, he has relied too much on the case of the United States—which Mr. Booth will have to be an extreme case, and not according to the general rule. But of what consequence is this to Mr. Malthus? And how is he interested in relying on the case of America rather than that of the oldest European country? Because he assumes a perpetual nisus in the principle of human increase to pass a certain limit, he does not therefore hold that this limit ever is passed either in the new countries or in old (or only for a moment, and inevitably to be thrown back within it). Let this limit be placed where it may, it can no more be passed in America than in Europe; and America is not at all more favourable to Mr. Malthus's theory than Europe. Births, it must be remembered, are more in excess in Europe than in America: though they do not make so much positive addition to the population.
[27] This was the heading under which correspondence appeared in The London Magazine at that date.—H.
[28] What other interpretation? An interpretation which makes Mr. Hazlitt's argument coincide with one frequently urged against Mr. Malthus—viz. 'that in fact he himself relies practically upon moral restraint as one great check to Population, though denying that any great revolution in the moral nature of man is practicable.' But so long as Mr. Malthus means, by a great revolution, a revolution in the sense which he imputes to Mr. Godwin—to Condorcet, &c. viz. a revolution amounting to absolute perfection, so long there is no logical error in all this: Mr. Malthus may consistently rely upon moral restraint for getting rid, suppose, of ninety cases out of every hundred which at present tend to produce an excessive population, and yet maintain that even this tenth of the former excess would be sufficient, at a certain stage of population, to reproduce famines, &c., i. e. to reproduce as much misery and vice as had been got rid of. Here there is an absolute increase of moral restraint, but still insufficient for the purpose of preventing misery, &c. For, as soon as the maximum of population is attained, even one single birth in excess (i. e. which does more than replace the existing numbers)—à fortiori, then, one-tenth of the present excess (though implying that the other nine-tenths had been got rid of by moral restraint) would yet be sufficient to prevent the attainment of a state of perfection. And, if Mr. Malthus had so shaped his argument, whether wrong or right—he would not have offended in point of logic: his logical error lies in supposing a state of perfection already existing and yet as brought to nothing by this excess of births: whereas it is clear that such an excess may operate to prevent, but cannot operate to destroy a state of perfection; because in such a state no excess could ever arise; for, though an excess may co-exist with a vast increase of moral restraint, it cannot co-exist with entire and perfect moral restraint; and nothing less than that is involved in the term 'perfection.' A perfect state, which allows the possibility of the excess here spoken of, is already an imperfect state. Now, if Mr. Hazlitt says that this is exactly what he means, I answer that I believe it is; because I can in no other way explain his sixth sentence—from the words 'but it is shifting the question' to the end of that sentence. Yet again the seventh sentence (the last) is so expressed as to be unintelligible to me. And all that precedes the sixth sentence, though very intelligible, yet seems the precise objection which I have stated above, and which I think untenable. Nay, it is still less tenable in Mr. Hazlitt's way of putting it than as usually put: for to represent Mr. Malthus as saying that, 'if reason should ever get the mastery over all our actions, we shall then be governed entirely by our physical appetites' (which are Mr. Hazlitt's words), would be objected to even by an opponent of Mr. Malthus: why 'entirely?' why more than we are at present? The utmost amount of the objection is this:—That, relying so much upon moral restraint practically, Mr. Malthus was bound to have allowed it more weight speculatively, but it is unreasonable to say that in his ideal case of perfection Mr. Malthus has allowed no weight at all to moral restraint: even he, who supposes an increased force to be inconsistent with Mr. Malthus's theory, has no reason to insist upon his meaning a diminished force.
[29] 'Where the error must lie'—i. e. to furnish a sufficient answer ad hominem: otherwise it will be seen that I do not regard either of the two propositions as essential to Mr. Malthus's theory: and therefore to overthrow those propositions is not to answer that theory. But still, if an author will insist on representing something as essential to his theory which is not so, and challenges opposition to it,—it is allowable to meet him on his own ground.
[30] This is attached by the Editor of The London Magazine.—H.
[31] Mr. J. R. McCulloch in his Literature of Political Economy makes the following observations concerning De Quincey's 'Dialogues of Three Templars on Political Economy':—They are unequalled, perhaps, for brevity, pungency, and force. They not only bring the Ricardian theory of value into strong relief, but triumphantly repel, or rather annihilate, the objections urged against it by Malthus, in the pamphlet now referred to and his Political Economy, and by Say, and others. They may, indeed, be said to have exhausted the subject.
[32] Not so however, let me say in passing, for three supposed instances of affected doubt; in all of which my doubts were, and are at this moment, very sincere and unaffected; and, in one of them at least, I am assured by those of whom I have since inquired that my reviewer is undoubtedly mistaken. As another point which, if left unnoticed, might affect something more important to myself than the credit of my taste or judgment,—let me inform my reviewer that, when he traces an incident which I have recorded most faithfully about a Malay—to a tale of Mr. Hogg's, he makes me indebted to a book which I never saw. In saying this I mean no disrespect to Mr. Hogg; on the contrary, I am sorry that I have never seen it: for I have a great admiration of Mr. Hogg's genius; and have had the honour of his personal acquaintance for the last ten years.
[33] Plans for the Government and Liberal Instruction of Boys in large Numbers; Drawn from Experience. London: 1822. 8vo.
[34] The distinguishing excellence of the Madras system is not that it lodges in the pupils themselves the functions which on the old systems belong to the masters, and thus at the same blow by which it secures greater accuracy of knowledge gets rid of a great expense in masters: for this, though a great merit, is a derivative merit: the condition of the possibility of this advantage lies in a still greater—viz. in the artificial mechanism of the system by which, when once established, the system works itself, and thus neutralises and sets at defiance all difference of ability in the teachers—which previously determined the whole success of the school. Hence is obtained this prodigious result—that henceforward the blessing of education in its elementary parts is made independent of accident, and as much carried out of the empire of luck as the manufacture of woollens or cottons. That it is mechanic, is no conditional praise (as alleged by the author before us), but the absolute praise of the Madras system: neither is there any just ground of fear, as he and many others have insinuated, that it should injure the freedom of the human intellect.
[35] We have since found that we have not room for it; the case is stated and argued in the Appendix (pp. 220-227); but in our opinion not fairly argued. The appellant's plea was sound, and ought not to have been set aside. [At the end of the Paper I have restored this 'Case of Appeal' from the original work.—H.]
[36] 'Premial marks:' this designation is vicious in point of logic: how is it thus distinguished from the less valuable?
[37] 'Our punishments,' &c. This is inaccurate: by p. 83 'disability to fill certain offices' is one of the punishments.
[38] 'Habits!' habits of what?
[39] 'Performers!' Musical performers, we presume.
[40] Indeed an Etonian must in consistency condemn either the Latin or the Greek grammar of Eton. For, where is the Greek 'Propria quæ maribus'—'Quæ genus'—and 'As in præsenti'? Either the Greek grammar is defective, or the Latin redundant. We are surprised that it has never struck the patrons of these three beautiful Idylls, that all the anomalies of the Greek language are left to be collected from practice.
[41] On this point there is however an exception made, which amuses us not a little. 'In a few instances,' says the Experimentalist, 'it has been found or supposed necessary to resent insolence by a blow: but this may be rather called an assertion of private right, than an official punishment. In these cases a single blow has almost always been found sufficient, even the rarity of the infliction rendering severity unnecessary.' He insists therefore that this punishment (which, we cannot but think, might have been commuted for a long imprisonment) shall not be called a punishment, nor entered on the public records as such: in which case however it becomes a private 'turn-up,' as the boxers call it, between the boy and his tutor.
[42] The details of the system in regard to the penal and premial counters may be found from pp. 23 to 29. We have no room to extract them: one remark only we must make—that we do not see how it is possible to ascribe any peculiar and incommunicable privileges to the premial as opposed to the penal counters, when it appears that they may be exchanged for each other 'at an established rate.'
[43] This was written for The Edinburgh Literary Gazette, of which sixty-one numbers appear to have been issued in 1829-30. The paper is now so scarce, that the American publishers of De Quincey's works photographed their 'copy' from that contained in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh. There is a file in the British Museum. I have not been able to authenticate any other contribution from the pen of De Quincey. This letter deserves attention in various ways, but particularly for the passage on Elleray—Christopher North's home on the banks of Windermere. Mrs. Gordon in the life of her Father, Professor Wilson, remarks:—'For a description of this beautiful spot I gladly avail myself of the striking picture by Mr. De Quincey.'—H.
[44] The usual colloquial corruption of Magdalen in Ox. is Maudlin; but amongst the very lie dupeuple, it is called Mallens.
[45] I coin this word parvanimity as an adequate antithesis to magnanimity; for the word pusillanimity has received from usage such a confined determination to one single idea, viz. the defect of spirit and courage, that it is wholly unfitted to tie the antipode to the complex idea of magnanimity.
[46] [In July, 1820.]
[47] Everywhere in the world, except in Scotland, by moral philosophy is meant the philosophy of the will, as opposed to the philosophy of the intellect; in Scotland only the word moral is used, by the strongest abuse, as a comprehensive designation of whatsoever is not physical; so that in the cycle of knowledge, undertaken by the Edinburgh Professor of Moral Philosophy, are included logic, metaphysics, ethics, psychology, anthropology,—and, in one word, almost all human knowledge, with the exception of physics and mathematics.
[48] The Northmen in Cumberland and Westmoreland. By Robert Ferguson. Carlisle: Steel & Brother. London: Longmans & Co.
[49] Writing at the moment in Scotland, where Christmas is as little heard of, or popularly understood or regarded, as the Mahometan festival of Beyram or the fast of Ramadan, I ought to explain that, as Christmas Day, by adjournment from Lady Day—namely, March 25—falls uniformly on December 25, it happens necessarily that Twelfth Day (the adoration of the Magi at Bethlehem), which is the ceremonial close of Christmas, falls upon the 5th day of January; seven days in the old, five in the new, year.
'And mighty Fairfield, with its chime
Of echoes, still was keeping time.'
Wordsworth—The Waggoner.
[51] It might seem odd to many people that a child able to run alone should not have been already weaned, a process of early misery that, in modern improved practice, takes place amongst opulent families at the age of six months; and, secondly, it might seem equally odd that, until weaned, any infant could be truly described as 'rosy.' I wish, however, always to be punctiliously accurate; and I can assure my readers that, generally speaking, the wives of labouring men (for more reasons than one) suckle their infants for three years, to the great indignation of medical practitioners, who denounce the practice as six times too long. Secondly, although unweaned infants are ordinarily pale, yet, amongst those approaching their eighteenth or twentieth month, there are often found children as rosy as any one can meet with.
[52] I mean that they included the progressive or outward-bound course, and equally the regressive or homeward-bound course, within the compass of this one word διαυλος. We in England have a phrase which conventionally has been made to supply the want of such an idea, but unfortunately with a limitation to the service of the Post-office. It is the phrase course of post. When a Newcastle man is asked, 'What is the course of post between you and Liverpool?' he understands, and by a legal decision it has been settled that he is under an obligation to understand—What is the diaulos, what is the flux and reflux—the to and the fro—the systole and diastole of the respiration—between you and Liverpool. What is the number of hours and minutes required for the transit of a letter from Newcastle to Liverpool, but coupled with the return transit of the answer? This forward and backward movement constitutes the diaulos: less than this will not satisfy the law as the complex process understood by the course of post. Less than this is only the half section of a diaulos.
[53] History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. By James Anthony Froude, M.A., late Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. Vols. I. and II. London: Parker & Son, West Strand. 1856.
[54] 'Ne forte' is a case of what is learnedly called aposiopesis or reticentia; that is, where (for the sake of effect) some emphatic words are left to be guessed at: as Virgil's Quos ego——(Whom if I catch, I'll——)
[55] 'Camisas:' i. e. chemises; but at one time the word camisa was taken indifferently for shirt or chemise. And hence arose the term camisado for a night-attack, in which the assailants recognised each other in the dark by their white shirt-sleeves, sometimes further distinguished by a tight cincture of broad black riband. The last literal camisado, that I remember, was a nautical one—a cutting-out enterprise somewhere about 1807-8.
[56] Anglo-Indian authorities seem to spell this word in four different ways.—H.
[57] 'A sight to dream of, not to tell.'—Coleridge.
[58] Twenty-three and twenty-eight thousand of these two orders we have in our Bengal army.
[59] 'Loodiana:'—The very last station in Bengal, on going westwards to the Indus. In Runjeet Singh's time this was for many years the station at which we lodged our Affghan pensioner, the Shah Soojah—too happy, had he never left his Loodiana lodgings.
[60] For the sake of readers totally unacquainted with the subject, it may be as well to make an explanation or two. The East India regiments generally run to pretty high numbers—1000 or 1200. The high commissioned officers, as the captain, lieutenant, &c., are always British; but the non-commissioned officers are always native Hindoos—that is, sepoys. For instance, the naïk, or corporal; the havildar, or serjeant:—even of the commissioned officers, the lowest are unavoidably native, on account of the native private. Note that sepoy, as colloquially it is called, but sipahee, as in books it is often written, does not mean Hindoo or Hindoo soldier, but is simply the Hindoo word for soldier.
[61] 'The laurelled majesty,' &c.:—A flying reference to a grand expression—majestas laurea frontis—which occurs in a Latin supplement to the Pharsalia by May, an English poet, contemporary with the latter days of Shakspere.
[62] This truth, for the sake of making it more impressive, I threw long ago into this antithetic form; and I will not scruple, out of any fear that I may be reproached with repeating myself, to place it once again on record:—'Not that only is strictly a paradox, which, being false, is popularly regarded as true;' but that also, and in a prodigiously greater extent, which, being true, is popularly regarded as false.
[63] Here observe there were 2300 admirable British troops, and about 700 men of the mutineers, who might then have been attacked at a great advantage, whilst dispersed on errands of devastation. Contrast with these proportions the heroic exertions of the noble Havelock—fighting battle after battle, with perhaps never more than 1700 or 1800 British troops; and having scarcely a gun but what he captured from the enemy. And what were the numbers of his enemy? Five thousand in the earlier actions, and 10,000 to 12,000 in the last.
[64] Mr. D. B. Jones comes forward to defend the commandant of Meerut. How? The last sentence only of his letter has any sort of reference to the public accusation; and this sentence replies, but not with any mode of argument (sound or unsound), to a charge perfectly irrelevant, if it had ever existed—namely, an imaginary charge against the little army assembled on May 10 at Meerut. The short and summary answer is, that no such imaginary charge, pure and absolute moonshine, was ever advanced against the gallant force at Meerut.
Secondly, if it had, such a charge could have no bearing whatever upon that charge, loudly preferred against the commander of that district.
Thirdly, the charge has been (I presume) settled as regards its truth, and any grounds of disputation, this way or that, by the Governor-General. The newspapers have told us, and have not been contradicted, that Lord Canning has dismissed this functionary for 'supineness.'
[65] 'To hang them:'—But with a constant notification that, after hanging, the criminals would be decapitated: otherwise the threat loses its sting. It seems to be a superstition universal amongst Southern Asiatics, unless possibly amongst the Malay race, that to suffer any dismemberment of the body operates disastrously upon the fate in the unseen world. And hence, no doubt, it has arisen that the gallows is not viewed in the light of a degrading punishment. Immunity from mutilation compensates any ignominy which might else attend it. Accordingly, we see in China that the innumerable victims of the present rebellion, captured in the vast province of Quantung by the cruel Yeh, were all beheaded by the sword in the blood-reeking privacies of Canton. And two centuries back, when the native dynasty was overthrown by the last Tartar invasion, the reigning emperor (having unlimited freedom of choice) ended his career by a halter: retiring to his orchard, he hanged both himself and his daughter.
[66] This case was entirely misapprehended by a journalist who happened to extract the passage. He understood me to mean that this particular mode of disrespect to their British officers had operated as a cause of evil; whereas I alleged it simply as an evidence and exponent of evil habits criminally tolerated amongst the very lowest orders of our mercenary troops.
[67] And imperfectly as the offer was advertised, it seems to have had considerable effect. Apparently it has extinguished the Nena's power to show himself, and to move about with freedom. He is now distrustful and jealous—often no doubt with very little reason.
[68] This was published in facsimile from the Original MS. in The Archivist and Autograph Review, edited by S. Davey, F.R.S.L.—June, 1888. [H.]