"This is weary work. Three days have I been alone; without the sight of any human face but that of the turnkey. How burdensome becomes the weight of thought as each hour goes by! It presses upon the brain as if a heavy stone were laid upon the head. What a terrible thing is solitude, notwithstanding all that Zimmermann has said of it--notwithstanding all that can be done to alleviate it! But this is something more than solitude. Alexander Selkirk on his desert island could change the scene, could vary the occupation every hour. Now, he could go up the Blue Mountain, and gaze afar, 'the monarch of all he surveyed.' Then he could wander down to the sea-shore, and send hope and expectation forth on a voyage of discovery over the green waters before his eyes, to see if ship or boat from the far native land were winging its way like a bird towards his place of exile. Or else memory, like a bark freighted with treasure, would touch the land, and he would see the stores of other days, the joys, the loves, the dreams of youth and manhood spread out upon the beach. He could tame his wild birds or his free goats; he could plant or reap his little field; he could garner or grind his corn. He was no worse in fate than Eve-less Adam; and though it may not be good for man to be alone, yet, when there is variety and occupation, the evil is but small. Here, what is the variety? Four or five short steps from wall to wall; the heavy door on one side; the high grated window on the other. But yet, it might be worse. What a terrible thing solitary confinement must be! Here the jailor comes in and speaks civilly; will stop a minute or two to tell you what is going on without; will press me to walk in the yard, and tell me it is quite airy and cheerful. Cheerful! Good God, what a word in the stony heart of a prison! I declare I should regard the man who could be cheerful in such a place as ten times worse than even his crimes had made him. To be cheerful here would be an aggravation of every offence--and yet, perhaps, I am wrong. Cheerfulness in some men is constitutional.
"Oh! yes, it might be worse. To be condemned to perfect solitude, and silence too, with nothing but thought, thought, thought, rolling one upon the other, like the eternal billows of a dark and gloomy sea: not a sight for the eye, not a sound for the ear, till the one became blind, the other deaf, for want of objects. It is horrible! What monster could devise such a means of starving the senses one by one, till the living death of hopeless idiocy became the wretch's fate? What were the cord, or the axe, or the rack itself to that? Yet, even that might have an aggravation--if there were guilt upon the mind--some dark terrible crime--murder!--the death of a fellow-creature, sent before to be our accuser at God's throne! What awful storms would then move that black ocean of thought, prolonged through the whole of life! What would it be with me, even through three or four short days, when, innocent as I am, the passing of these solitary hours is well nigh intolerable.--Innocent as I am! Who is innocent? Who can lay his hand upon his heart, with God and his own conscience to witness, and say, 'I am innocent; I have done no wrong?'--Who can arraign the decree of the Almighty which strikes him for many a hidden fault, through the instrumentality of the false judgment or iniquitous persecution of his fellow-man? Not I, for one! I raised my hand against Lord Overton unjustly; I shed his blood, though I did not take his life; I was a murderer in intention, if not in act; and now I am accused of--perhaps may suffer for--the death of one whom I would have shed my own blood to defend. The ways of God are strange and wonderful, but very just.
"How curious it is that in solitude all the things we have done amiss in life return upon the mind, distinct and clear--magnified even, if faults can be magnified--when in the pleasures, and the business, and the every-day cares of life, we forget them totally! And yet man was evidently meant for society. Is it that the ever-present consciousness of our errors in this mortal state, would be a burden too heavy to bear, were there not an alleviation in the thoughtful absorption of the world's concerns--a burden which even faith in a Saviour (as far as man's weakness will permit him to have faith) would not be sufficient to relieve, unless his worldly carelessness lightened the load, by deceiving him as to the weight? Perhaps it may be so; and yet, it is strange how often in this life, our weakness is our strength. Since I have been here, how reproachfully acts which I thought before perfectly venial have risen up in judgment against me I how dark have seemed many deeds committed! how sadly ungrateful many an omission has appeared! And shall not the same be the case hereafter? When a few hours of solitude are sufficient to draw back thus far the glittering veil which habit and the world cast over our faults, what will be the terrible sight when that veil is torn away altogether, and the dark array of a whole life's sins and follies stand naked and undisguised before us!--when the voice of conscience, fully awakened, never to sleep again, exclaims, 'Lo your own acts! The children of your mortal life! The witnesses against you for eternity!'"
The above is an extract from a journal of Chandos Winslow, kept during his imprisonment. I know that such grave subjects are not palatable to most readers: they call them longueurs; they skip them; they want the story, nothing more. Let them do as they please; the extract was necessary to the depiction of the character. But I must show another side of it also--a somewhat lighter and more cheerful one; but still one which is as likely to be skipped as the other, by the mere novel-reader. For some time Chandos went on in the same strain of gloomy thought; and occasionally dark forebodings would mingle with the text: for the more he reflected upon the course he had determined to pursue, the more difficult, nay, hopeless, seemed to be the attempt to defend himself. At length, however, came the following passage:--
"But I will have no more of such reveries. It is very strange, that for the last four days I have not been able to read. The small space of my brain seems too much crowded with thoughts of my own, to give other people's thoughts admission. I will force myself to read, however; and think of what I read."
Then came another passage, evidently after he had been reading for some time.
"I know not how it is, but none of these Italian poets interest me much--perhaps the most, that mad-cap Ariosto. There is a reckless vigour about him which none of the rest possesses; and their prettinesses tire. Tasso is certainly very sweet and very graceful, but seldom powerful; and Dante, dark, terrible, and stern, wants the relief of beauty. His Inferno is certainly a grand poem, the personification of thousand hates and vengeances; but the Paradise is a poor affair.
"It is very strange how much more difficult men find it to imagine and to paint perfect happiness than exquisite torture. Perhaps it is because in this life we are much more familiar with pain than pleasure. Pain and grief are to human beings, positive; our greatest happiness here below rarely more than negative--at all events, never unmixed. But in none of the Italians do we find the grand march, the sustained majesty of the Greeks and the Romans. I cannot help thinking that Boccaccio had more poetry in his nature than most of his brethren; and there are some fine passages in his great poem, notwithstanding its many wants. Many of his novels, too, are full of poetry. But, after all, ten lines of Homer are worth all the Italian poetry that ever was written. Alfieri seems to have felt this inferiority of the poets of Italy to the ancients, even too much; and the effect has been a stiffness in his writings, produced by aiming at dignity in a language which is not dignified. When the thought itself is grand, its grandeur can only be preserved in so weak a tongue by clothing it in the very simplest words. Dante was not alone aware of this, but was impelled to that course by his own sharp character. He never strove to embellish by mere words, though sometimes, as if to impress the idea upon the reader's mind, he reiterates it in another form, venturing upon pleonasm as a means of force, in which he was probably mistaken; at least, the effect upon my mind is always disagreeable. It would be better if the verses were spoken. I cannot but think--though perhaps it is national partiality--that the poets of England are superior to any that have ever lived since the fall of the Roman empire. The French have no poetry. The Germans have two or three great poets; but their literature may be considered as yet in its infancy. The Spaniards have some beautiful poems, it is true; but in all of them are blemishes which overbalance the perfections. In the English tongue there has been excellent poetry enough written in every different style and manner, to supply the whole world. A crowd of our poets are unknown even to ourselves; and many of the very best are imperfectly known, and that but to a few. The sonnet, indeed, attained its highest point with Petrarch; and yet how beautiful are some of Sir Philip Sidney's!--for instance, the one beginning--
'No more, my dear, no more these councils try,
Oh give my passions leave to run their race.'
I forget the rest. My memory fails me sadly. What a strange thing memory is! It seems as if the brain had a court painter, who sketches rapidly everything presented to the senses; and then the pictures are pushed into the lumber-room of the past, to grow dim and mouldy, with the smoke and damp of years, till they are wanted, when they are taken forth again, and the dust is brushed off, though sometimes not entirely--But who have we here? It is not the turnkey's hour."