“Those who are capable of much wickedness are, if their minds take a right turn, capable of much good; and we must allow that Tom Paine has the knack of writing, or putting his thoughts and words into method. Were he rightly inclined, he could, I doubt not, say ten times as much in favour of the Christian religion as he has advanced against it. And if Lewis ye 17th were set up as King of France, and a sufficient party in his favour, and Paine highly bribed or flattered, he would write more for a monarchical government than he has ever written on the other side.”
Yet orthodoxy alone, unsupported by intellect, had scant charm for this devout Quakeress. She wanted, as she expresses it, thoughts and words put into method. Of a most orthodox and pious little book, which enjoyed the approbation of her contemporaries, she writes as follows: “Read a pamphlet entitled ‘Rewards and Punishments; or Satan’s Kingdom Aristocratical,’ written by John Cox, a Philadelphian, in verse. Not much to the credit of J. C. as a poet, nor to the credit of Philadelphia; tho’ the young man may mean well, and might perhaps have done better in prose.”
“Pilgrim’s Progress,” however, she confesses she has read three times, and finds that, “tho’ little thought of by some,” she likes it better and better with each fresh reading. Lavater she admires as a deep and original thinker, while mistrusting that he has “too good a conceit” of his own theories and abilities; and the “Morals” of Confucius she pronounces “a sweet little piece,” and finer than most things produced by a more enlightened age.
This is not a bad showing for those easy old days, when the higher education of women had not yet dawned as a remote possibility upon any mind; and when, in truth, the education of men had fallen to a lower level than in earlier colonial times. Philadelphia was sinking into a stagnant mediocrity, her college had been robbed of its charter, and the scholarly ambitions (they were never more than ambitions) of Franklin’s time were fading fast away. Even Franklin, while writing admirable prose, had failed to discover any difference between good and bad verse. His own verse is as cheerfully and comprehensively bad as any to be found, and he always maintained that men should practise the art of poetry, only that they might improve their prose. This purely utilitarian view of the poet’s office was not conducive to high thinking or fine criticism; and Elizabeth Drinker was doubtless in a very small minority when she objected to “Satan’s Kingdom Aristocratical,” on the score of its halting measures.
The most striking characteristic of our Quaker diarist is precisely this clear, cold, unbiased judgment, this sanity of a well-ordered mind. What she lacks, what the journal lacks from beginning to end, is some touch of human and ill-repressed emotion, some word of pleasant folly, some weakness left undisguised and unrepented. The attitude maintained throughout is too judicial, the repose of heart and soul too absolute to be endearing. Here is a significant entry, illustrating as well as any other this nicely balanced nature, which gave to all just what was due, and nothing more:—
“There has been a disorder lately among ye cats. Our poor old Puss, who has been for some time past unwell, died this morning, in ye 13th year of her age. Peter dug a grave two feet deep on ye bank in our garden, under ye stable window, where E. S., Peter and I saw her decently interred. I had as good a regard for her as was necessary.”
Was ever affection meted out like this? Was there ever such Quaker-like precision of esteem? For thirteen years that cat had been Elizabeth Drinker’s companion, and she had acquired for her just as good a regard as was necessary, and no more. It was not thus Sir Walter spoke, when Hinse of Hinsdale lay dead beneath the windows of Abbotsford, slain by the great staghound, Nimrod. It was not thus that M. Gautier lamented the consumptive Pierrot. It is not thus that the heart mourns, when a little figure, friendly and familiar, sits no longer by our desolate hearth.
FRENCH LOVE-SONGS
Quand on est coquette, il faut être sage;
L’oiseau de passage