However, this state of exalted feeling had a very ludicrous termination. I ceased fighting, I was humble, seeking whom I might serve, reproving no one, but striving hard to love all, giving, assisting, and actually panting for an opportunity of receiving a slap on one side of the face, that I might offer the other for the same infliction. The reader may be sure that I had the Bible almost constantly before me, when not employed in what I conceived some more active office of what I thought sanctification. But though the spirit may be strong, at times, the body will be weak. I believe I dozed for a few minutes over the sacred book, when a wag stole it away, and substituted for it the “renowned and veracious History of the Seven Champions of Christendom.” There was the frontispiece, the gallant Saint George, in gold and green armour, thrusting his spear into the throat of the dragon, in green and gold scales. What a temptation! I ogled the book coyly at first. I asked for my Bible. “Read that, Ralph,” said the purloiner; oh! recreant that I was, I read it.
I was cured in three hours of being a saint, of despising flogging, and of aping Samuel.
Chapter Eighteen.
Ralph receives an infusion of patriotism—Is himself drilled and drills a touch hole—He turns out a monstrous big liar—Somebody comes to see him whom nobody can see, and the mystery ends in another migration.
It is the nature of men and boys to run into extremes. I have carried the reader with me through my desponding and enthusiastic epochs. I now come to the most miserable of all, my mendacious one. An avowed poet is entitled, de jure, to a good latitude of fiction; but I abused this privilege most woefully. I became a confirmed and intrepid liar—and this, too, was the natural course of my education, or the want of it. I began to read all manner of romances. There was a military and chivalrous spirit strong in the school—the mania for volunteering was general, and our numerous school were almost all trained to arms. The government itself supplied us with a half-dozen drill sergeants to complete us in our manual and platoon exercises. We had a very pretty uniform, and our equipments as infantry were complete in all things, save and excepting that all the muskets of the junior boys had no touch-holes. Mine was delivered to me in this innocent state. Oh! that was a great mortification on field-days, when we were allowed to incorporate with the — and — Volunteers, whilst all the big lads actually fired off real powder, in line with real men, to be obliged to snap a wooden flint against a sparkless hammer. A mortification I could not, would not, endure.
There was a regular contention between Mr Root, my musket, and myself; and at last, by giving my sergeant a shilling, I conquered. Every day that our muskets were examined on parade, mine would be found with a touch-hole drilled in it; as certainly as it was found, so certainly was I hoisted. In that fever of patriotism, I, of all the school, though denied powder and shot, was the only one that bled for my country. However, I at length had the supreme felicity of blowing powder in the face of vacancy, in high defiance of Buonaparte and his assembled legions on the coast of Boulogne. Thus I had military ardour added to my other ardencies. Moreover, I had learned to swim in the New River, and, altogether, began to fancy myself a hero.
I began now to appreciate and to avail myself of the mystery of my birth. I did not read romances and novels for nothing. So I began my mendacious career. Oh! the improbable and the impossible lies that I told, and that were retold, and all believed. I was a prince incognito; my father had coined money—and I gave my deluded listeners glimpses at pocket-pieces as proof; if I was doubted I fought. The elder boys shook their heads, and could make nothing of it. The ushers made what inquiries they dared, and found nothing which they could contradict positively, but much upon which to found conjecture.
Still, notwithstanding my success, my life began to grow burthensome. The lies became too manifold, too palpable, and, to me, too onerous. They had been extremely inconsistent—ridicule began to raise her hissing head. Shame became my constant companion—yet I lied on. I think I may safely say, that I would, at the time that I was giving myself out as a future king, have scorned the least violation of the truth, to have saved myself from the most bitter punishment, or to injure, in the least, my worst enemy; my lies were only those of a most inordinate vanity, begun in order to make a grand impression of myself, and persevered in through obstinacy and pride. But I was crushed beneath the stupendous magnificence of my own creations. I had been so circumstantial—described palaces, reviews, battles, my own charges, and now—oh! how sick all these fabrications made me! It was time I left the school, or that life left me, for it had become intolerable. And yet this state of misery, the misery of the convicted, yet obstinately persevering liar, lasted nearly a year. Let me hurry over it; but, at the same time, let me hold it up as a picture to youth, upon the same principle as the Spartans showed drunken slaves to their children. Could the young but conceive a tithe of the misery I endured, they would never after swerve from the truth.