“Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!”
He would swear he would “cleave them to the harn-pans, if he had but his cran fingers on them;” that he “could pour seething lead down their throats;” that “hell would never be full till they were in it;” and frequently exclaimed that there was nothing he would “like so well as to see their souls girnin’ for a thousand eternities on the red-het brander o’ the de’il!”
Among the traits of his character, there is none reminds us so strongly of the Misanthrope of the tale as this propensity to execration. The same style of discourse, and almost the same terms of imprecation, are common to both. The Mighty Unknown has put expressions into the mouth of this character which, as specimens of the grand and sublime, are altogether unequalled in the whole circle of English poetry—not even excepting the magnificent thunders of Byron’s muse. Now, his prototype is well remembered, by those who have conversed with him, to have frequently used language which, sometimes sinking to delicacy and even elegance, and at others rising to a very tempest of execration and diabolical expression, might have been deemed almost miraculous from his mouth, could it not have been attributed partly to the impassioned inspiration that naturally flowed from his consciousness of deformity, from keen resentment of insult, and from the despairing, loveless sterility of his heart.
The history of his death-bed furnishes us with an anecdote of a beautiful and atoning character.
He had always through life expressed the utmost abhorrence of being buried among what he haughtily termed the “common brush” in the parish churchyard, and pointed out a particular spot, in the neighbourhood of his cottage, where he had been frequently known to lie dreaming or reading for long summer days, as a more agreeable place of interment. It is remarked by a former biographer, that he has displayed no small portion of taste in the selection of this spot. It is the summit of a small rising ground, called the Woodhill, situated nearly in the centre of the parish of Manor, covered with green fern, and embowered on the top by a circle of rowan-trees planted by the Dwarf’s own hand, for the double purpose of serving as a mausoleum or monument to his memory, and keeping away, by the charm of consecration supposed to be vested in their nature, the influence of witchcraft and other unhallowed powers from the grave.
All around this romantic spot the waste features of a mountainous country bound the horizon, presenting a striking contrast to the fertile beauty of the intermediate valley, and withal capable of suggesting to the enthusiastic and imaginative mind of the Solitary, the idea of this scene being a more desirable grave, sacred as it was in the grandeur of Nature, than the merely Christian ground of a country churchyard. “What!” the proud unsocial soul of the misanthrope might perhaps think—
“What! to be decently interred
In a churchyard, and mingle my brave dust
With stinking rogues, that rot in winding-sheets,
Surfeit-slain fools, the common dung o’ th’ soil!”