Loch. Down, soothless insulter! I trust not the tale:
For never shall Albin a destiny meet
So black with dishonor, so foul with retreat.
Though my perishing ranks should be strewed in their gore,
Like ocean weeds heaped on the surf-beaten shore,
Lochiel, untainted by flight or by chains,
While the kindling of life in his bosom remains,
Shall victor exult, or in death be laid low,
With his back to the field and his feet to the foe!
And leaving in battle no blot on his name,
Look proudly to heaven from the deathbed of fame.
NOTES.—Lochiel was a brave and influential Highland chieftain. He espoused the cause of Charles Stuart, called the Pretender, who claimed the British throne. In the preceding piece, he is supposed to be marching with the warriors of his clan to join Charles's army. On his way he is met by a Seer, who having, according to the popular superstition, the gift of second-sight, or prophecy, forewarns him of the disastrous event of the enterprise, and exhorts him to return home and avoid the destruction which certainly awaits him, and which afterward fell upon him at the battle of Culloden, in 1746. In this battle the Highlanders were commanded by Charles in person, and the English by the Duke of Cumberland. The Highlanders wore completely routed, and the Pretender's rebellion brought to a close. He himself shortly afterward made a narrow escape by water from the west of Scotland; hence the reference to the fugitive king.
Albin is the poetic name of Scotland, more particularly the Highlands. The ironbound prisoner refers to Lochiel.
LIV. ON HAPPINESS OF TEMPER. (215)
Oliver Goldsmith, 1728-1774. This eccentric son of genius was an Irishman; his father was a poor curate. Goldsmith received his education at several preparatory schools, at Trinity College, Dublin, at Edinburgh, and at Leyden. He was indolent and unruly as a student, often in disgrace with his teachers; but his generosity, recklessness, and love of athletic sports made him a favorite with his fellow-students. He spent some time in wandering over the continent, often in poverty and want. In 1756 he returned to England, and soon took up his abode in London. Here he made the acquaintance and friendship of several notable men, among whom were Johnson and Sir Joshua Reynolds. "The Traveler" was published in 1764, and was soon followed by the "Vicar of Wakefield." He wrote in nearly all departments of literature, and always with purity, grace, and fluency. His fame as a poet is secured by the "Traveler" and the "Deserted Village;" as a dramatist, by "She Stoops to Conquer;" as a satirist, by the "Citizen of the World;" and as a novelist by the "Vicar of Wakefield." In his later years his writings were the source of a large income, but his gambling, careless generosity, and reckless extravagance always kept him in financial difficulty, and he died heavily in debt. His monument is in Westminster Abbey. ##
Writers of every age have endeavored to show that pleasure is in us, and not in the objects offered for our amusement. If the soul be happily disposed, everything becomes capable of affording entertainment, and distress will almost want a name. Every occurrence passes in review, like the figures of a procession; some may be awkward, others ill-dressed, but none but a fool is on that account enraged with the master of ceremonies.
I remember to have once seen a slave, in a fortification in Flanders, who appeared no way touched with his situation. He was maimed, deformed, and chained; obliged to toil from the appearance of day till nightfall, and condemned to this for life; yet, with all these circumstances of apparent wretchedness, he sang, would have danced, but that he wanted a leg, and appeared the merriest, happiest man of all the garrison. What a practical philosopher was here! A happy constitution supplied philosophy, and though seemingly destitute of wisdom he was really wise. No reading or study had contributed to disenchant the fairyland around him. Everything furnished him with an opportunity of mirth; and though some thought him, from his insensibility, a fool, he was such an idiot as philosophers should wish to imitate.
They who, like that slave, can place themselves all that side of the world in which everything appears in a pleasant light, will find something in every occurrence to excite their good humor. The most calamitous events, either to themselves or others, can bring no new affliction; the world is to them a theater, in which only comedies are acted. All the bustle of heroism, or the aspirations of ambition, seem only to heighten the absurdity of the scene, and make the humor more poignant. They feel, in short, as little anguish at their own distress, or the complaints of others, as the undertaker, though dressed in black, feels sorrow at a funeral. Of all the men I ever read of, the famous Cardinal de Retz possessed this happiness in the highest degree. When fortune wore her angriest look, and he fell into the power of Cardinal Mazarin, his most deadly enemy, (being confined a close prisoner in the castle of Valenciennes,) he never attempted to support his distress by wisdom or philosophy, for he pretended to neither. He only laughed at himself' and his persecutor, and seemed infinitely pleased at his new situation. In this mansion of distress, though denied all amusements, and even the conveniences of life, and entirely cut off from all intercourse with his friends, he still retained his good humor, laughed at the little spite of his enemies, and carried the jest so far as to write the life of his jailer.
All that the wisdom of the proud can teach, is to be stubborn or sullen under misfortunes. The Cardinal's example will teach us to be good- humored in circumstances of the highest affliction. It matters not whether our good humor be construed by others into insensibility or idiotism,—it is happiness to ourselves; and none but a fool could measure his satisfaction by what the world thinks of it.
The happiest fellow I ever knew, was of the number of those good-natured creatures that are said to do no harm to anybody but themselves. Whenever he fell into any misery, he called it "seeing life," If his head was broken by a chairman, or his pocket picked by a sharper, he comforted himself by imitating the Hibernian dialect of the one, or the more fashionable cant of the other. Nothing came amiss to him. His inattention to money matters had concerned his father to such a degree that all intercession of friends was fruitless. The old gentleman was on his deathbed. The whole family (and Dick among the number) gathered around him.