This remark of Dr. Johnson on the consolation derived by his hero from the eloquence with which he gave vent to his complaints is perfectly just, but just only in such cases as those of Rasselas. The misery that can be expressed in flowing periods cannot be of more importance than that experienced by the Abyssinian prince enclosed in the Happy Valley. His greatest calamity was no more than that he could not leave a place in which all the luxuries of life were at his command. But, as old Chremes says in the Heautontimorumenos,
"Miserum? quem minus credere 'st? Quid reliqui 'st, quin habeat, quæ quidem in homine dicuntur bona? Parentes, patriam incolumem, amicos, genu', cognatos, divitias: Atque hæc perinde sunt ut illius animus qui ea possidet; Qui uti scit, ei bona; illi, qui non utitur rectè, mala."[97]
On which, as
"Plain truth, dear Bentley, needs no arts of speech,"
I cannot do better than transcribe the commentary of Hickie, or some other grave expositor from whose pages he has transferred it to his own. "'Tis certain that the real enjoyment arising from external advantages depends wholly upon the situation of the mind of him who possesses them; for if he chance to labour under any secret anguish, this destroys all relish; or, if he know not how to use them for valuable purposes, they are so far from being of any service to him, that they often turn to real misfortunes." It is of no consequence that this profound reflection is nothing to the purpose in the place where it appears, because Chremes is not talking of any secret anguish, but of the use or abuse made of advantages according to the disposition of the individual to whom they have been accorded; and the anguish of Clinia was by no means secret. He feared the perpetual displeasure of his father, and knew not whether absence might not have diminished or alienated the affections of the lady on whose account he had abandoned home and country; but the general proposition of the sentence cannot be denied. A "fatal remembrance"—to borrow a phrase from one of the most beautiful of Moore's melodies—may render a life, apparently abounding in prosperity, wretched and unhappy, as the vitiation of a single humour of the eye casts a sickly and unnatural hue over the gladsome meadow, or turns to a lurid light the brilliancy of the sunniest skies.
Rasselas and Jaques have no secret anguish to torment them, no real cares to disturb the even current of their tempers. To get rid of the prince first:—His sorrow is no more than that of the starling in the Sentimental Journey. He cannot get out. He is discontented, because he has not the patience of Wordsworth's nuns, who fret not in their narrow cells; or of Wordsworth's muse, which murmurs not at being cribbed and confined to a sonnet. He wants the philosophy of that most admirable of all jail-ditties,—and will not reflect that
"Every island is a prison, Close surrounded by the sea; Kings and princes, for that reason, Prisoners are as well as we."
And as his calamity is, after all, very tolerable,—as many a sore heart or a wearied mind, buffeting about amid the billows and breakers of the external world, would feel but too happy to exchange conditions with him in his safe haven of rest,—it is no wonder that the weaving of sonorous sentences of easily soothed sorrow should be the extent of the mental afflictions of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.
Who or what Jaques was before he makes his appearance in the forest, Shakspeare does not inform us,—any farther than that he had been a roué of considerable note, as the Duke tells him, when he proposes to
"Cleanse the foul body of the infected world, If they will patiently receive my medicine. Duke. Fie on thee! I can tell what thou wouldst do. Jaques. What, for a counter, would I do but good? Duke. Most mischievous foul sin, in chiding sin; For thou thyself hast been a libertine As sensual as the brutish sting itself; And all the embossed sores and headed evils That thou with licence of free foot hast caught, Wouldst thou disgorge into the general world."