Слике страница
PDF
ePub

You, Titus Lartius,

Must to Corioli back: send us to Rome
The best, with whom we may articulate,
For their own good, and ours.'

This is truly a noble spirit, which scorns to take advantage of the helpless, but Coriolanus goes beyond it, and completely disproves by his words the charge brought against him of being an insolent unfeeling aristocrat. Covered with wounds and gore, he thinks not of himself, but of some undefined purpose for the benefit of another, for which he has tasked his memory in vain during the time that his praises were sounded by Cominius; suddenly it lightens on him.

The gods begin to mock me. I that now

Refused most princely gifts, am bound to beg
Of my lord general.'

Cominius with the most undoubting faith, knowing that Coriolanus can ask nothing unbefitting, replies,

[ocr errors]

Take it; 'tis yours.-What is't?'

I sometime lay, here in Corioli,

At a poor man's house; he used me kindly:
He cried to me; I saw him prisoner;

But then Aufidius was within my view,

And wrath o'erwhelmed my pity: I request you

To give my poor host freedom.'

An aristocrat, such as Wellington or Londonderry, would have

said,

A poor plebeian devil,

Here in Corioli, whose house I honoured

By making it my quarters, has been captured
Amongst the other prisoners. He was civil,
And waited on me most respectfully,
According to my rank, as was befitting;
I galloped o'er him i' the battle charge,
Not liking much to baulk my gallant horse,
And luckily he was not hurt; I pray you
To give the fellow freedom.'

This, however, will only apply to Lord Londonderry. His Grace of Wellington does not ride charges, notwithstanding the tales of his being nineteen hours on his charger's back!'

[ocr errors]

But Coriolanus speaks of his host with the strong feelings of humane sympathy. He used me kindly;' that word marks the link of humanity, and not of sycophancy or patronage. Civility' and kindness' are as opposite as Toryism and humanity. Civility may exist independently of sympathy; kindness cannot. Give my poor host freedom.' In that expression there is respect mingled with kindness. We cannot help feeling that he ought to

have left the chase after Aufidius, to rescue his poor host,' but the temptation was strong, and

The blood more stirs

To rouse a lion than to start a hare.'

When Quentin Durward had hunted the Boar of Ardennes' to bay, and all but vanquished him, he left him and all the advantages attendant on his capture, amongst which successful love was numbered, in order to rescue the shrieking Trudchen from the But hands of her ravishers; and our hearts honour him for it. how beautiful is the reply of Coriolanus, when Titus Lartius asks him the name of his poor host.'

By Jupiter, forgot :

I am weary; yea my memory is tired.—
Have we no wine here?

Reader, did you ever mingle in the din of battle, where human slaughter was rife, and do the work of ten men, while under the influence of excitement, utterly ignorant that edges had cut, and shot torn your flesh, while your hands were skinless from hauling in the ropes used to train the guns to batter down the strong hold of a despot, or the accursed floating castle of a salt-water tyrant? Did you ever awake from your busy trance, with the loud shout of victory ringing in your ears, and then find yourself half choked with a raging thirst, from the gunpowder swallowed in biting off the ends of cartridges, your face and hands blackened with smoke, your wounds smarting, and your body sore and stiff with contusions and straining? Did you ever then strike off the neck of a wine-bottle against a musket barrel, and drain it at a draught, and then sink to sleep in the elysium of a coil of rope? If you have, you may imagine the feelings of Coriolanus in calling for wine, and also the peculiar sensation of a tired memory.' He cared nothing for the name of his poor host;' he cared not whether he were patrician or plebeian. He only knew him as a man who had used him kindly.' Of all else his memory was tired, not his sympathies; they were strong as at the period of receiving the kindness. And equally kind would he have been to the Roman plebeians, had they rightly understood his nature; but they did not, and therefore could but irritate him, and then mistake his irritability for pride, and the love of oppression.

[ocr errors]

Now let those who would fain liken his Grace of Wellington, and such men, to the noble Coriolanus, show wherein consists the parallel betwixt them. Coriolanus fought in person, in a just war, and ran the same risks with his soldiers. Wellington fought by proxy with officers and soldiers, keeping himself as much as possible out of the stroke and flash,' and he fought in an unjust war, to put down an oppressor, it is true, yet not for the benefit of mankind, but only to set up other and more mis

No. 86.

6

L

chievous oppressors in his place. Coriolanus refused a bribe to pay his sword.' Wellington scrupled not to take as much pelf as he could get, whether in the shape of pay, prize-money, or gratuities. Does he not now receive, in round numbers, 50,000l. per annum from the nation, or rather from the misrulers of the nation, as a retiring pension? Let the Editor of the Black Book' speak to those who doubt. And can there be a question, that if the intellect of the nation were polled, a large majority would be found opposed to such a grant? Wellington was not the patriot defender of his country, but only the tool of a greedy and selfish faction, ready to make war upon all mankind, for the furtherance of their own ends. He was not a warrior but a hireling—a soldier-i. e. a stipendiary slaughterer of his fellows; not fighting even for what has been misnamed glory, like the Herberts and Bayards of former days, but simply from the love of pelf and its concomitant, power. He took the Tory bribe to pay his sword,' or rather his brain, for his sword had little to do with it; there are no notches in the blade. Wellington has, it is true, filled a conspicuous station in the march of human events, but the words of Byron on him were no satire.

6

'He did great things, but not being great in mind,
He left undone the greatest--and mankind.'

• Great men have ever scorned great recompenses,
Epaminondas saved his Thebes and died,

Not leaving e'en his funeral expenses.

George Washington had thanks, and nought beside
Save the all-cloudless glory which few men's is

To free his country. Pitt too had his pride,
And, as a high-souled minister of state, is

Renowned for ruining Great Britain gratis.'

We can pardon much in Byron, for the sake of his evident appreciation of what is the most truly beautiful in human nature -self-abnegation for the welfare of others.

Coriolanus was no hireling; he was the voluntary and unpaid warrior of his country, fighting to promote his country's welfare, and he possessed sympathy, kindly' sympathy with his fellows. It is not upon record that he kept hounds upon the bread which his soldiers were lacking. Wellington fought not for his country, but for himself, and he has never shown any tokens of sympathy for the community. Coriolanus loved his wife, and his mother, and his boy, and old Menenius Agrippa. Where is the being whom Wellington loves? The pension list gives no token of his love, it merely proclaims the taking up of a commodity' and saddling the expenses on the community. Talleyrand, while his grace was in France, provided this commodity' gratis, and the commodity served him well as a sponge to suck up the contents of his grace's brain. In England, his grace's brain not

[ocr errors]

being the depository of aught important, nobody thought it worth while to provide him with commodity,' therefore the charge was laid on the back of poor John Bull as the last resort.

(To be continued.)

JUNIUS REDIVIVUS.

ADAM THE GARDENER.*

HERE is a new and natural year-book; a daily gardener's guide, and a monthly mirror of the meadows; instructions for rearing tender thoughts and spring lettuces; a journal of education and horticulture; directions for digging, decorated with didactics; physics and metaphysics, for man and boy, from January to December.

• Adam Stock was the eldest son of a gentleman, who, having retired from London to the southern coast of our island, for the improvement of his health, had there purchased an estate, consisting of a house, a large garden, a field, and a poultry-yard. He knew the value of industry, and that, to an independent and contented mind, few things are really necessary to our comfort; he therefore determined to cultivate his own ground; and, as nearly as he could, to do every thing for himself.'

One new-year's day he resolved to associate little Adam in his labours; and the book shows us, in a chapter for each month, how the cultivation of the father's garden and of the son's mind went on at the same time, and how in due season each bore fruit according to its kind.

The groundwork then, of this book, is a horticultural directory. And here we must honestly allow our critical incompetence. We confess entire ignorance and inaptitude. A time there was, when every rood of ground maintained its man.' It must have been a clever and generous rood that would have maintained us. We hope for a little leisure some day, but our otium would be an odium, cum digging-a taty. Like the people who have nothing to do with the laws but to obey them,' we have nothing to do with the radishes but to eat them. Mr. Clarke may be either a Conservative or a Destructive in the vegetable kingdom, with impunity for us. All we can say is, that the instructions are very intelligible; that we observe none of the mysteries and cruelties which have so often perplexed us in horticultural operations, and made us almost weep over the poor trees and things that were cut and twisted about, all for their good,' as the gardener said, speaking in a tone that we thought very like a Tory; --and that, if it does all come round at last, as Mr. Clarke says, and the roses, and ranunculi, and spinach, and poached eggs, be realized in the necessary sequence of cause and effect, why then, Wilson, 1834.

[ocr errors]

* Adam the Gardener. By Charles Cowden Clarke,

finis coronat opus: and we are travelling back towards Paradise Regained.

[ocr errors]

But there is plenty in the book more in our way. It is a natural history of the year. It abounds in descriptions; lively, graphic, and racy. It is in fact a work of education. It touches on various points of moral philosophy. It tells us much, and suggests more. Here we find ourselves at home, this is our field—our garden; and we shall straightway go to work in it. These are such sunny spots as we love to cultivate. The first thing we will do, shall be to dig up this bed under the south wall; to sow in it our peas, beans, radishes, onions, and mustard and cress.' Let little Adam come to us, and we will soon show him, 'how thick it is proper to sow the seed.' MoreÖver we must teach him to sort the articles in Mr. Clarke's intellectual green-grocery; for while some are very good, others are very bad; like Jeremiah's figs.

To give our readers a general notion of this book, we will take a month by way of specimen. And the better to ensure the application of the maxim Ex uno disce omnes, the month shall be selected simply because it is that of our present number, February.

[ocr errors]

The chapter is headed by a motto from Thomson, with whom several other bards, of very different degrees of celebrity, are employed, as priests of Nature, to say grace before the twelve successive feasts which the author serves up from her rich store of provisions for the senses, and, through them, for the soul. This is meet and right.' And pleasant it is to see them, like the priests of old in the temple of Jerusalem, ministering in their courses,' and enhancing the enjoyment of the guests by their gracious presence. They are there in their orders, from Milton, the high-priest of the poetical profession, to Cornelius Webbe, who, if he be only a simple deacon in nature's temple, yet wants not his authentic diploma. Indeed Mr. Clarke is too acute a trier of the spirits to let in any one altogether unworthy of that goodly fellowship; and when, in plain terms, we praise his selection of mottoes for his chapters, we ascribe to him a faculty for giving pleasure which is often not appreciated so highly as it ought to be. Walter Scott set a bad example in his alterations and fabrications of passages for this purpose. The detection of his falsifications was a positive annoyance. The fetching from far, even from the ends of the earth, a quotation which is not only germane to the matter, but which aptly, and poetically, and as it were prophetically, prefigures or shadows forth the beings, action, and scenery, of the coming chapter, is rightly called a felicitous adaptation. The unexpected association; the recollections, not distinct perhaps, but unconsciously-revived sensations, called up, by the words or the mere name of a favourite author; the dim expectancy, as to the external material, and yet the definiteness

« ПретходнаНастави »