Chapter XXIV (6)

Now that the Scottish people know that the Duke of Buccleuch finds time to inquire personally into the condition of the peasantry on his estates, no proprietor, however ancient his lineage and proud his name, will be excused who fails to go and do likewise, or who fails at least to acquaint himself with the condition of the labourers who cultivate his fields. Personal inquiry we would recommend, although it should not lead to the rendering of one cottage more comfortable than it was before. We recommend it for the proprietor’s own behoof. “The most certain softeners of a man’s moral skin, and sweeteners of his blood, are, I am sure, domestic intercourse in a happy marriage, and _intercourse with the poor_,” writes Arnold; and, as if he had felt the virtue flowing out of such intercourse, he repeats the thought thus in another place, “Prayer, and kindly intercourse with the poor, are the two great safeguards of spiritual life.” One-half the world does not know how the other half lives, and one-half of the bitternesses of human life arises from our not understanding one another. Little do the great ones of the earth know how much they lose by avoiding kindly acquaintance with poor and humble neighbours.

We know of no public meeting that has taken place in our time, where the speeches delivered possessed a higher moral value than those that fell from the speakers at the meeting of the 10th January last. The turbulent, disrupted, and gloomy condition of the manufacturing classes, rendered them admirably seasonable. They have shed a benignant influence over the agricultural community. They have awakened hopes that were growing faint, and fine old Scottish feelings that were dying out, and have proved a healing anodyne to a wound that was rankling in many a bosom. The opening speech of the noble chairman we have read more than once, and ever with renewed delight. Many an honest labourer has read it too, with glistening eye and joyful heart, and its perusal has prepared him for fighting more heroically the battle of his life. Some of the sentiments of the noble Duke we cannot withhold from our columns:—

“He thought it would not be disputed that, generally speaking,
throughout Scotland, the habitations of these labourers were very
defective, especially in those accommodations for comfort and
delicacy. In former days the farm-servant was accommodated in the
farmer’s house, where he took his meals, and so was under the moral
control of his employers. But now the farm-labourer was put into a
bothy, generally a most wretched place to live in, and often the worst
building on the farm. He could not blink the question involved in the
subject. They had not come there to bandy compliments to one another,
but to speak the truth. It might be said to him and those who came
there to find fault with the present system: You ought to come with
clean hands, and be able to say that all the bothies on your estate
were such as they ought to be. He confessed with shame that he could
show as bad specimens on his property as could be found in Scotland.
He would not conceal it that the condition of many of the cottages on
his estate was as bad as could be. How this state of things had arisen
it was not difficult to see.... He examined a number of their cottages
himself, and found many of them quite in a falling-down state. In one
of them, when he took a box-bed out of it, down came the roof. Such
things would be found not so very uncommon if these cottages were
looked into. Then what an evil effect such houses had upon the moral
feelings of those who occupied them! Many of the persons who lived in
them were highly educated, and it might well be conceived that a
person of refinement living in a place fit for a pig would be
discontented, as well as unhappy. How could they expect, when they saw
men, women, and children all living and sleeping in one apartment,
that they could be otherwise than demoralised? Could they wonder that
all their delicacy of feeling was destroyed? Mothers had said to him,
how could they bring up their daughters with respectability when there
was not that separation of rooms which there ought to be? Then there
was a great disinclination on the part of the tenantry to the landlord
taking these cottages into his hand. They said they must have every
single thing under their own control. It was all very well for them to
say that as regarded the lodgment of their domestic and special
farm-servants, but it did not follow that it was absolutely necessary
that all the cottages of the agricultural labourers should belong to
the farmer. He did not think that it was right that the farm-labourer
should be bound down to work for one man only. But the person who
really benefited by the landlord taking the cottage into his own hands
was the farm-labourer himself; and he had seen the moral effect
produced by providing better houses for this class of labourers, in a
quarter where thieving and poaching had formerly been the disgrace of
the people; but since their houses were improved, there was a great
and beneficial reformation in these respects. It was really gratifying
to see the change which took place in the feelings of these people
towards their landlord, when they knew he was taking an interest in
their welfare. Here, when he passed, they showed they regarded him as
their friend, and were not filled with unpleasant suspicions about
him.”

The gems in the ducal coronet never emitted a tenderer or more fascinating ray than when its noble owner entered the lowly cottage on his mission of kindness, and since the preceding sentiments were spoken, we believe that from many a Scottish heart the fervent prayer has been sent to heaven’s gate, that “the good Buccleuch” may long be spared to his country.

ALEXANDER SMITH’S POEMS.[7]

Some time ago a volume of poems appeared, over which there arose a great roar of critical battle, like the conflict over the dead Valerius, when “Titus pulled him by the foot, and Aulus by the head.” Many hailed the author as a true poet, and prophesied his coming greatness; others fastened on obvious defects, and moused the book like Snug the joiner tearing Thisbe’s mantle in his character of lion. Now that the hubbub has subsided, our still small voice may be heard.

The poet in question has at once deprecated and defied criticism in a sonnet, (p. 232).

“There have been vast displays of critic wit
O’er those who vainly flutter feeble wings,
Nor rise an inch ’bove ground,—weak poetlings!
And on them to the death men’s brows are knit.
Ye men! ye critics! seems’t so very fit
They on a storm of Laughter should be blown
O’er the world’s edge to Limbo? Be it known,
Ye men! ye critics! that beneath the sun
The chiefest woe is this,—when all alone,
And strong as life, a soul’s great currents run
Poesy-ward, like rivers to the sea,
But never reach’t. Critic, let that soul moan
In its own hell, without a kick from thee.
Kind Death, kiss gently, ease this weary one!”

Alexander Smith is partly right and partly wrong. It is true that, throned in his judicial chair, the critic, more intent on displaying his own powers than on doing justice to his subject, is apt to drop the mild and equal scales, and brandish the trenchant glittering sword. He ought to say in his heart, Peradventure there shall be found ten fine lines in this book—I will not destroy it for ten’s sake.

But, on the other hand, there is a class to which forbearance would be misapplied and criminal. It would too much resemble our prison discipline, where Mr William Sykes, after a long course of outrages on humanity, is shut up in a palace, treated like a prodigal son, and presently converted to Christianity. An absurd monomaniac, who, like Joanna Southcote, mistaking a dropsical disorder for the divine afflatus, and demanding worship on no better grounds than the greatness of his own blown conceit, may, by mere force of impudent pretension, induce a host of ignorant followers to have faith in him, ought to be exposed and ridiculed. Not savagely, perhaps, for the first offence; the pantaloons should be loosed with a paternal hand, and the scourge mildly applied. If he still persists in misdoing, it should be laid on till the blood comes.

But Alexander Smith is far from coming under the latter denomination. A writer, especially a young writer, should be judged by his best; and there is enough excellence in the volume to cover many more sins than it contains, though they are numerous. And while it is a mistake to suppose that a fine poetic soul, however sensitive, will “let itself be snuffed out by an article,” yet there have been instances where undue severity has defrauded a writer of his just fame for many a long year; and though the critic, in the end, has been compelled to render up the mesne profits of applause, yet that is small consolation for the sense of wrong, and the deprivation of merited influence and reputation.

While foreign writers sketch us as the most matter-of-fact and pudding-eating of peoples—while we pique ourselves on sturdy John Bullism, and cheerfully accept the portrait of an absurd old gentleman in a black coat, and a broad-brimmed hat and gaiters, with his hands in his well-filled breeches pockets, as a just impersonation of the genius of the nation, it is an obvious fact that a poet never had such a certainty of being appreciated in England as now. Fit audience is no longer few. Let him sound as high a note as he can for the life of him, he will yet find echoes enough to constitute fame. There are homes in England almost as common as hothouses, where fine criticism is nightly conversation—where appreciators, as true as any who review in newspapers, hail a good and great writer as a personal friend. Here may be found all the elements necessary for the recognition of merit and the detection of imposture. Sturdy good sense refuses to believe in gaudy pretension; keen logic exposes emptiness; enthusiastic youth glows at the high thought, the splendid image; and the soft feminine nature responds, with ready tears and unsuppressed sighings, to all legitimate appeals to the heart.

With such tribunals more plentiful than county courts, a man is no longer justified in decrying fame, or appealing for justice to posterity. It must be an untoward accident, indeed, that cheats an author of his due, when so many are eager to exchange praise for his fine gold. The demand for excellence in authorship exceeds the supply; and there are plenty of keen readers who, having traversed the realms of English poesy, yet thirst for fresh fields and pastures new. Therefore, if an ardent spirit finds the world deaf to his utterances, let him search uncomplainingly for the fault in his own mind, and never rashly conclude that for his fondly believed-in powers of thought and expression there is, as yet, no sympathetic public. Especially in poetry is the appetite of the time unsatisfied; mediocrity, which should be inadmissible, is indulgently received, and the poets of established reputation are on every shelf. Editions of Shakespeare appear in perplexing numbers, and the rusty armour in which a champion for his text appears, is contended for as if it were the heaven-forged panoply of Achilles.

Mr Smith leaves his feelings on the subject of fame open to doubt. One might almost fancy him a poet who, having desired fame too ardently in his hot youth, had discovered its emptiness in riper age. A sonnet is devoted to the depreciation of fame; whereas Walter, in the Life-drama, is more than enthusiastic to achieve it. We have no doubt the ardent wishes which Mr Smith expresses through his hero are genuine, and that the philosophy of the sonnet is a philosophy he only fancies he has acquired. Combativeness may inspire the soldier to achievement, rivalry the statesman; both may be, in some measure, indifferent to other fame than the applause of their contemporaries. But it is in vain for the poet to express indifference to the opinion of the world and of posterity. Why has he written, except that thoughts bearing his impress may sound in the ears of the future, and that the echoes they arouse may convey to him, in his silent resting-place, tidings of the cheerful day, assuring him of a tenure in the earth he loved, and a lasting position among the race who were his brothers? What would not man do to secure remembrance after death? For this Erostratus burnt Diana’s temple; for this the Pyramids were built, and built in vain; for this kings have destroyed nations; for this the care-worn money-getter gives his life to the founding of a wealthy name; and if a man may gain it more effectually by the simple publishing of thoughts, whose conception was to him a pleasure, let him be thankful that what all so ardently desire was granted to him on such easy terms, and that he may continue to be a real presence on this earth, when most of his contemporaries are as though they had never been.

Taking it for granted, then, that when a young poet publishes a work wherein the hero expresses an ardent desire for fame, the poet is himself speaking through the character, it will be interesting to see how he proposes to achieve it. Mr Smith tells us, through his hero, that his plan for immortalising himself is “to set this age to music.” That, he says, is the great work before the poet now.

To set this age to music!—’tis a phrase we have heard before of late years. Never was an age so intent upon self-glorification as this. Like the American nation, it spends half its time looking in the glass; and, like it, always with the same loudly-expressed approbation of what the mirror reveals. It has long been its habit to talk its own praises, and now they must be sung. When polkas were first introduced, many familiar sounds were parodied, to give character to tunes of the new measure. Among these was the Railway-polka, in which the noise of the wheels and the clatter of machinery were admirably imitated; while a startling reality was given to the whole, by the occasional hoarse scream of the engine. Now, we fear that the effort of a poet to set the age to music would result in something resembling the railway polka—something more creditable as a work of ingenuity than of art, and embodying more appeals to the sense than to the heart or the imagination. To him who stands apart from the rush and roar, the many voices of the age convey a mingled sound that would scarcely seem musical even to the dreaming ear of a poet.

We see the spirit of the middle ages—the spirit of religious intolerance and superstitious faith—of deepest earnestness, and of bigotry springing out of that earnestness—reflected in Dante’s page. Spenser shows us the days of the plume and the spear, when the beams of chivalry yet gilded the earth, when the motto of noble youth was—God and my lady. Another phase of the same era—the era of romantic discovery and adventure, when there were yet fairies on the green, and enchanted isles in the ocean—reappears in the works of Shakespeare. Pope has fixed for ever the time of courtliness, of external polish and artificial graces—the time when woman was no more divine—when Una had degenerated into Chloe—when love had given place to intrigue, devotion to foppery, faith to reasoning; yet a pleasant and graceful time. And it is no wonder that the poet, now, feeling that he too possesses “the vision and the faculty divine,” should long to leave his name, not drifting over space, but anchored firmly on the times he lived in.

But none of these old poets went to work with the deliberate intention of setting his age to music. Where that, so far as we can see the meaning of the phrase, has been done, it is because the poet lived so much among the characteristic men and scenes of his age, that his mind, more impressionable and more true in its impressions than others, was imbued with its spirit, and moulded to its forms; so that, whatever his mind transmitted was coloured by those hues, and swayed by those outlines. The poet did not hunt about for the characteristics of his age, and then deliberately embody them: he chose a congenial theme when it offered itself, and it, unconsciously to him, became a picture of a phase of the time. When our age, too, is set to music, if ever, it will be in this way.

If ever—For ages of the world, as worthy of note perchance as this, and more rich in materials for poetry, have passed away without being set to music. Every great change of society, and of mankind’s opinions, does not necessarily call for a poet to sing it. It may be more suitably reproduced through some other medium than verse—in newspapers, for instance, or in advertising vans. Of course, no man in his senses would say a word against this age of ours; he could expect nothing less than to be immediately bonneted, like an injudicious elector who has hissed the popular candidate; yet we would have liked Alexander Smith to indicate the direction in which he intends to seek his materials. Does he see anything heroic in an ardent desire to secure ease and comfort at the cost of many old and once respectable superstitions, such as honour and duty? Can he throw over the cotton trade “the light that never was on sea or shore?” Or, is popular oratory distinguished by “thoughts that breathe and words that burn?” Will the railway station and the electric telegraph figure picturesquely in the poet’s dream? Yet, when the age is set to music, these chords will be not the most subdued in the composition. Mr Macaulay said about as much as could be said for the spirit of the age, when he drew a contrast in popular prose between the present and the past. Had he tried the subject in poetry, he would have found the task much less congenial than when he sung so manfully “how well Horatius kept the bridge, in the brave days of old.”

Alexander Smith has one characteristic in common with Tennyson, the author of _Festus_, and some other poets of the time. All seem to have great power in the regions of the dreary. Their gaiety is spasmodic; when they smile, ’tis like Patience on a monument, as if Grief were sitting opposite. If this is their way of setting the age to music, ’tis, if most musical, yet most melancholy. Tennyson, who possesses the power of conveying the sentiment of dreariness beyond most poets that ever lived, generally selects some suitable subject for the exercise of it, such as _Mariana in the Moated Grange_; but Mr Smith’s hero, and Festus, are miserable from choice, and revel in their unaccountable woe, like the character in Peacock’s novel, whose notion of making himself agreeable consists in saying, “Let us all be unhappy together.” Not thus, O Alexander! sounds the keynote of the genial soul of a great poet.

Our author’s notion of what constitutes a crushing affliction is altogether peculiar. A particular friend of his hero, after becoming quite blasphemous because he wanted “to let loose some music on the world,” and couldn’t (p. 137), commits suicide on a mountain, though whether by rope, razor, or prussic acid, we are not informed. However, being deranged, he no doubt received Christian burial. And Mr Smith, speaking for himself in the sonnet already quoted, says that—

“Beneath the sun
The chiefest woe is this—When all alone,
And strong as life, a soul’s great currents run
Poesy-ward, like rivers to the sea,
But never reach it.”

The chiefest woe!—the chiefest, Alexander! Neither Job nor Jeremiah have enrolled it among human afflictions. Is there no starvation, nor pain, nor death in the world? Is the income-tax repealed? We appeal from Alexander in travail of a sonnet, with small hope of safe delivery, to Alexander in the toothache, and we are confident he will change his opinion. Let him look at Hogarth’s “Distressed Poet,” and see what it is that moves his sympathy there. Not the perplexity of the poor poet himself—that raises only an irreverent smile—but the poor good pretty wife raising her household eyes meekly and wonderingly to the loud milkwoman, their inexorable creditor—the piece of meat that was to form their scanty dinner, abstracted by the felonious starveling of a cur,—these touch on deeper woes than the head-scratching distress of the unproductive poet.

To return to Mr Smith’s idea of setting the age to music. The first requisite clearly is, that the musician shall be pre-eminently a man of the age. It is at once evident that oldfashioned people, with any lingering remnants of the heroic or dark ages about their ideas, would be quite out of place here. None but liberals and progressionists need apply. These are so plentiful that there will be no difficulty in finding a great number who embody the most prominent characteristics of the time. Having got the man of the age, a tremendous difficulty occurs. We are very much afraid there will not only be nothing poetical in the cast of his ideas, but that he will be the embodiment of everything that is prosaic. Call to mind, O Alexander! the qualities essential to a poet—at the same time, picture to yourself a Man of the Age—and then fancy what kind of music you will extract from him. Set the age to music, quotha! Set the Stocks to music.

Having thus signally failed to point out how the thing is to be done, we will tell Alexander how it will not be done. Not by uttering unmeaning complaints against Fate and Heaven, and other names of similar purport which we will not set down here, like a dog baying the moon. Not by uttering profane rant, which, as it would not have been justified by the mad despair of a Lear or an Othello, is horribly nonsensical in the mouth of a young gentleman who ought to have taken a blue pill because his liver was out of order. Not by pouring forth floods of images and conceits which afford no perception of the idea their author would convey. Not by making the moon and the sea appear in such a variety of ridiculous characters that we shall never again stroll by moonlight on the shore without seeing something comical in the aspect of the deep and the heavenly bodies. Not by——But we have just lighted on a passage which proves that Mr Smith knows what is right as well as anybody can tell him:—

“Yet one word more—
Strive for the poet’s crown, but ne’er forget
How poor are fancy’s blooms to thoughtful fruits.”

And again—

“Poet he was not in the larger sense—
He could write pearls, but he could never write
A poem round and perfect as a star.”

That is the point. Not to dismiss images unprotected on the world, like Mr Winkle’s shots—which, we are informed, were “unfortunate foundlings cast loose upon society, and billeted nowhere”—but to mature a worthy leading idea, waiting, watching, fostering it till it is full-grown and symmetrical in its growth; and from which the lesser ideas and images shall spring as naturally, necessarily, and with as excellent effect of adornment, as leaves from the tree.

Whether Alexander can do this, yet remains to be proved. Some of the requisites he possesses in a high degree. Force, picturesqueness of conception, and musical expression, all of which he has displayed, will do great things when giving utterance to a theme well chosen and well designed; but at present they only tell us, like a harp swept by the wind, of the melodies slumbering in the chords. Such is the Æolian character of the Life-drama—fitful, wild, melancholy, often suggestive of something exquisitely sweet and graceful, but faint, fugitive, and incoherent. When our poet sounds a strain worthy of the instrument, our pæans shall accompany and swell the chorus of applause.

The sonnets, as conveying tangible ideas, and such as excite interest and sympathy, have greatly exalted our opinion of the poet’s powers. They have not been much quoted as yet by any of his discerning admirers, perhaps because there is little or nothing in them but what a plain man may understand, and they contain few allusions to the ocean or any of the planets. But here is one showing a fine picture—a picture that appeals to the imagination and the heart. It is at once manly and pathetic, representing a friendless, but independent and aspiring genius:—

“Joy, like a stream, flows through the Christmas streets,
But I am sitting in my silent room—
Sitting all silent in congenial gloom.
To-night, while half the world the other greets
With smiles, and grasping hands, and drinks, and meats,
I sit and muse on my poetic doom.
Like the dim scent within a budded rose,
A joy is folded in my heart; and when
I think on poets nurtured ’mong the throes,
And by the lowly hearths of common men—
Think of their works, some song, some swelling ode
With gorgeous music glowing to a close,
Deep-muffled as the dead-march of a god—
My heart is burning to be one of those.”

As Mercutio says, “Is not this better, now, than groaning? Now art thou sensible—now art thou Romeo.” We hope he will be “one of those,” and think he may. Only he must believe that, however fine and rare the poetic faculties he has evinced, they cannot produce anything for posterity of themselves, but must build on a foundation of thought and art.

We are afraid, though we have not descended to verbal criticism, but have only indicated essential faults, that Alexander will think we have treated his book in an irreverent spirit; but, nevertheless, it is a truly paternal one. Even in such mood did we deal, of late, with our own beloved first-born, heir of his mother’s charms and his father’s virtues—a fine, clever fellow, in whom his parents take immense pride, though we judiciously conceal it for fear of increasing the conceit which is already somewhat conspicuous in his bearing. We rather think he had been led astray by the example of that young scoundrel, Jones, who threatened to hang himself if his mother didn’t give him five-and-twenty shillings to pay his score at the pastry-cook’s, and so terrified the poor lady into compliance. However that may be, our offspring, George, being denied, of late, some unreasonable requests, straightway went into sulky heroics—spoke of himself as an outcast—stalked about with a gloomy air in dark corners of the shrubbery with his arms folded—smiled about twice a-day, in a withering and savage manner, though his natural disposition is cheerful and inclined to fun—and begged to decline to hold any further intercourse with his relatives. He kept up the brooding and injured character with great consistency (except that he always came regularly to meals, and eat them with his customary appetite, which is a very fine and healthy one), and was encouraged in it by his grandmother, who, between ourselves, reader, is a rather silly old woman, much given in her youth to maudlin sentimentalism, and Werterism, and bad forms of Byronism. She would take him aside, pat his head, kiss his cheek, and call him her poor dear boy, and slip money into his pocket, which he neither thanked her for, nor offered to refuse; and he became more firmly persuaded than ever, that he was one of the most ill-used young heroes that ever existed. This we were sorry to see—like Mrs Quickly, we cannot abide swaggerers—and we bethought ourselves of a remedy. Some parents would have got in a rage and thrashed him—but he is a plucky young fellow, and this would only have caused him to consider himself a martyr; others would have mildly reasoned with him—but this would have given his fault too important and serious an air, so we treated him to a little irony and ridicule—caustic, not contemptuous, and more comical than spiteful. Just before beginning this course of treatment, we happened to overhear him making love, in the library, to Charlotte Jones (sister of the before-mentioned admirer of confectionary), a great, fat, lymphatic girl, who was spending a few days with his sisters, and who has no more sentiment or passion in her than so much calipee. However, he seemed to have quite enough for both, and poured forth his romantic devotion with a fervid fluency which I suspect must be the result of practice—for the young scamp is precocious, and conceived his first passion, at the age of nine, for a fine young woman of four-and-twenty. Charlotte, working away the while at a great cabbage-rose, not unlike herself, which she is embroidering in worsted, listened to his raptures with a lethargic calmness contrasting strongly with the impassioned air of the youth, who was no doubt ready, like Walter, Mr Smith’s hero, for the consideration of a kiss (if the placid object of his affections would have consented to such an impropriety), to “take Death at a flying leap”—which is undoubtedly the most astonishing instance of agility on record since the cow jumped over the moon to the tune of “Hi, diddle, diddle.” Our entrance, just as he had got on his knees, and was going to take her hand, somewhat disconcerted him; and we turned the incident to such advantage, that our very first jest at him in the presence of the family caused him (the boy has a fine sense of humour) to retire precipitately from the room, for fear he should compromise his dignity by exploding in laughter. He strove to preserve his gloomy demeanour for a day or two; but finding it of no effect to maintain a stern scowl on his forehead, while his mouth expanded in an unwilling grin, he gave up the attempt; and now greets any allusion to his former tragedy airs with as hearty a laugh as anybody.

Our impression is very strong that Mr Smith is not himself satisfied with his work, and that the undiscriminating applause he has met with in some quarters will not deceive him. He must know that the ornaments of the Life-drama are out of all proportion to the framework, and that the latter is too loosely put together to float far down the crowded stream of time. He has a strong leaning to mysticism, a common vice of the times, and should therefore exclude carefully all ideas which he cannot render clear to himself, and all expressions which fail to convey his meaning clearly to others. He should remember that, though a fine image may be welcomed for its own sake, yet, as a rule, similes and images are only admissible as illustrations, and if they do not render the parent thought more clear, they render it more cloudy. His great want is a proper root-idea, and intelligible theme which shall command the sympathies of other minds: these obtained, he will shake his faults like dewdrops from his mane; and he will find that his tropes, thus disciplined, will not only obtain double force from their fitness, but will also be intrinsically finer than the random growths of accident. It is true that Mr Smith, through his spokesman, Walter, mentions a plan for a poem, his “loved and chosen theme,” (p. 38). He says,

“I will begin in the oldest—Far in God,
When all the ages, and all suns and worlds,
And souls of men and angels lay in Him,
Like unborn forests in an acorn cup.”

A prospect, the mere sketch of which fills us with concern. If we thought he would listen, we would say—No, Mr Smith; don’t begin in the oldest—leave the “dead eternities” alone, and don’t let your “first chorus,” on any account, be “the shouting of the morning stars.” Rather begin, as you propose to end, with “silence,” than in this melancholy way. Let your thoughts be based on the unalterable emotions of the heart, not on the wild driftings of the fancy. Observe all that strongly appeals to the feelings of others and of yourself—let art assist you to select and to combine—your warm imagination will give life to the conception, and your powers of fancy and language will vividly express it. Don’t set down any odd conceit that may strike you about the relation of the sea and the stars, and the moon; but when you conceive an image which, besides being fine in itself, shall bear essential, not accidental, relation to some part of your theme, put it by till your main subject, in its natural expansion, affords it a fitting place.

Following this course, we trust that Alexander will prove worthy of the many illustrious scions of the house of Smith who have distinguished themselves since Adam, and maintain its precedence over the houses of Brown, Jones, and Robinson. Sydney the Reverend—Horace and James of the Rejected Addresses—and William, of the modest and too obscure dramas (noticed by us before), might well become prouder of the patronymic to which they have already lent lustre, when Alexander, mellowed by time, and taught by thought and experience, shall have produced his next and riper work.

THE EPIDEMICS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.[8]

This extremely interesting work of Dr Hecker’s consists of three several treatises, or historical sketches, published at different times, and here collected in a single volume. They are translated and published under the direction of the Sydenham Society—a society which has been the means of introducing to the medical profession, and to the English reader, some of the most eminent works of German physicians and physiologists. It is seldom, indeed, that their publications are of the popular and amusing description of the one we have selected for notice; but, speaking of them as a series, they are of that high philosophic character which must render them acceptable to every man of liberal education. How far they are accessible to the public at large we have not the means of knowing, nor whether the purchase of any single volume is a practicable matter to a non-subscriber; but, at all events, means, we think, ought to be taken to place the whole series on the shelves of every public library.

The great plague of the fourteenth century, called in Germany _The Black Death_, from the dark spots of fatal omen which appeared on the bodies of its victims; the _Dancing Mania_, which afterwards broke out both in Germany and Italy; and the _Sweating Sickness_, which had its origin in England, but extended itself also widely upon the Continent—these form the three subjects of Dr Hecker’s book. The dancing mania, known in Germany as St John’s or St Vitus’s Dance, and in Italy as the poison of the Tarantula or Tarantism, will be most likely to present us with novel and curious facts, and we shall be tempted to linger longest upon this topic. Readers of all kinds, whether of Thucydides, or Boccaccio, or Defoe, are familiar with the phenomena and events which characterise a plague, and which bear a great resemblance to each other in all periods of history. We shall, therefore, refrain from dwelling at any length upon the well-known terrors of the Great Mortality or the Black Death.

Yet the subject is one of undying interest. The Great Plague is, in this respect, like the Great Revolution of France; you may read fifty histories of it, and pronounce it to be a topic thoroughly worn out and exhausted; and yet when the fifty-first history is put into your hands, the chance is that you will be led on, and will read to the very last page with almost undiminished interest. The charm is alike in both cases. It is that our humanity is seen in its moments of great, if not glorious excitement—of _plenary inspiration_ of some kind, though it be of an evil spirit—seen in moments when all its passions, good and bad, and the bad chiefly, stand out revealed in full unfettered strength. And the history, in both cases, is of perpetual value and significance to us. Plagues, as our own generation can testify, are no more eradicated or banished from the cities of mankind than political revolutions. They read a lesson to us which, terrible as it is, we are still slow in learning.

We are often haunted with the dread of over-population. This fear may perhaps be encountered by another of a quite opposite description, when we read that in the fourteenth century one quarter at least of the population of the Old World was swept away in the short space of four years! Such is the calculation which Dr Hecker makes, on the best sources of information within his reach. If such devastating plagues arise, as our author thinks, from great physical causes over which man has no control, from an atmospheric poison not traceable to his ignorance or vice, and which no advancement in science can prevent or expel, there is indeed room for an undefined dread of periodical depopulations, putting to the rout all human calculations and all human forethought. But on this point we have our doubts.

“An inquiry into the causes of the Black Death,” says our author, “will not be without important results in the study of the plagues which have visited the world, although it cannot advance beyond generalisation without entering upon a field hitherto uncultivated, and, to this hour, entirely unknown. Mighty revolutions in the organism of the earth, of which we have credible information, had preceded it. From China to the Atlantic the foundations of the earth were shaken—throughout Asia and Europe the atmosphere was in commotion, and endangered, by its baneful influence, both vegetable and animal life.” When, however, Dr Hecker proceeds to specify the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and other terrific events which shook the foundations of the earth from China to the Atlantic, we do not find that the enumeration at all bears out this general description. A large proportion of such disastrous phenomena as he has been able to collect relate to China; and although the plague should be proved to have travelled from the East, it is not traced, as an identical disease, so far eastward as to China, and therefore is but vaguely connected with the great droughts and violent rains which afflicted that region of the earth. Nearer at home, in Europe, we have mention made of “frequent thunderstorms,” and an eruption of Ætna, but thunderstorms and a volcanic eruption have not, on other occasions, given rise to a plague; not to add, that if the atmosphere of Europe was tainted from causes of this kind, springing from its own soil and its own climate, it would be quite superfluous to trace the disease to the East at all. We should merely say that a similar disease broke out in different countries at the same time, demonstrating some quite cosmical or universal cause. The most important fact which is mentioned here, as proving some wide atmospheric derangement, is the “thick stinking mist seen to advance from the East and spread itself over Italy.” But Dr Hecker himself adds, that at such a time natural occurrences would be transformed or exaggerated into miracles; and we are quite sure that any really extraordinary event, occurring simultaneously with the plague, would, without further inquiry, be described as the cause of it. An unusual mist, just as a comet or any unusual meteor, appearing at the time, would be charged with the calamity.

On so obscure a subject we have no desire to advance any dogmatic opinion. There are facts connected with this and other great epidemics which, to men of cautious research, have seemed to point to some widespreading poison, some subtle, deleterious matter diffused through the air, or some abnormal condition of the atmosphere itself. Such there may be, acting either as immediate or predisposing cause of the disease. But to our apprehension, all plagues and pestilences have been bred from two well-known and sufficient causes—famine and filth. Scanty and unwholesome diet first disorders and debilitates the frame, fevers ensue, the foul atmosphere of crowded unventilated dwellings becomes impregnated by breathings that have passed through putrid lungs; and thus the disease, especially in a hot climate, attains to that malignity that the stricken wretch, move him where you will, becomes the centre of infection to all around him, and from his pestiferous dwelling there creeps a poison which invades even the most salubrious portion of the town; which, stealing through the garden-gate and over the flower-beds, enters even into the very palace itself. Doubtless other causes may co-operate, as unusual rains and fogs; the fact that a murrain amongst cattle sometimes accompanies or precedes a plague, indicates local causes of this description; but the true source of the disease lies in the city man has built, in his improvidence or injustice, his ignorance or his sloth.

It is thus that Dr Hecker speaks of the manner in which the disease may be propagated, so far as the agency of man is concerned:—we do not seem to want any quite cosmical influence.

“Thus much from authentic sources of the nature of the Black Death.
The descriptions which have been communicated contain, with a few
unimportant exceptions, all the symptoms of the Oriental plague, which
have been observed in more modern times. No doubt can obtain on this
point. The facts are placed clearly before our eyes. We must, however,
bear in mind that this violent disease does not always appear in the
same form; and that, while the essence of the poison which it
produces, and which is separated so abundantly from the body of the
patient, remains unchanged, it is proteoform in its varieties, from
the almost imperceptible vesicle, unaccompanied by fever, which exists
for some time before it extends its poison inwardly, and then excites
fevers and buboes, to the fatal form in which carbuncular
inflammations fall upon the most important viscera.

“Such was the form which the plague assumed in the fourteenth century,
for the accompanying chest affection, which appeared in all the
countries whereof we have received any account, cannot, on a
comparison with similar and familiar symptoms, be considered as any
other than the inflammation in the lungs of modern medicine, a disease
which at present only appears sporadically, and owing to a putrid
decomposition of the fluids is probably combined with hemorrhages from
the vessels of the lungs. Now as every carbuncle, whether it be
cutaneous or internal, generates in abundance the matter of contagion
which has given rise to it, so therefore must the breaths of the
affected have been poisonous in this plague, and on this account its
power of contagion wonderfully increased; wherefore the opinion
appears incontrovertible that, owing to the accumulated numbers of the
diseased, not only individual chambers and houses, but whole cities,
were infected; which, moreover, in the middle ages, were, with few
exceptions, _narrowly built, kept in a filthy state, and surrounded
with stagnant ditches_. Flight was in consequence of no avail to the
timid; for some, though they had sedulously avoided all communication
with the diseased and the suspected, yet their clothes were saturated
with the pestifierous atmosphere, and every inspiration imparted to
them the seeds of the destructive malady which, in the greater number
of cases, germinated with but too much fertility. Add to which the
usual propagation of the plague through clothes, beds, and a thousand
other things to which the pestilential poison adheres,—a propagation
which, from want of caution, must have been infinitely multiplied; and
since articles of this kind, removed from the access of air, not only
retain the matter of contagion for an indefinite period, but also
increase its activity, and engender it like a living being, frightful
ill consequences followed for many years after the first fury of the
pestilence was passed.”

It may be worth noticing that Dr Hecker, or his translator, uses the terms contagion and infection indiscriminately; nor is the question entered into whether the disease is capable of being propagated by mere contact, without inhaling the morbific matter, or becoming inoculated with it through some puncture in the skin. Dr Hecker nowhere gives countenance to such a supposition. The poison would hardly penetrate by mere touch through a sound and healthy skin. Such a belief, however, was likely enough to prevail at a time when we are told that “even the eyes of the patient were considered as sources of contagion, which had the power of acting at a distance, whether on account of their unwonted lustre or the distortion which they always suffer in plague, or whether in conformity with an ancient notion, according to which the sight was considered as the bearer of a demoniacal enchantment.”

Avignon is here mentioned as the first city in which the plague broke out in Europe. We have a report of it from a contemporary physician, Guy de Chauliac, a courageous man, it seems, who “vindicated the honour of medicine by bidding defiance to danger, boldly and constantly assisting the affected, and disdaining the excuse of his colleagues, who held the Arabian notion, that medical aid was unavailing, and that the contagion justified flight.” The plague appeared twice in Avignon, first in the year 1348, and twelve years later, in 1360, “when it returned from Germany.” On the first occasion it raged chiefly amongst the poor; on the second more amongst the higher classes, destroying a great many children, whom it had formerly spared, and but few women. We presume that on the second occasion the plague was re-introduced at once amongst the merchant class of the city, and this would account for fewer women falling victims to it, because men of this class could take precautions for the safety of their wives and daughters. But why a greater number of children should have died, when the women were comparatively spared, is what we will make no attempt to explain.

How fatal it proved at Florence, Boccaccio has recorded. It is from him we learn with certainty that other animals besides man were capable of being infected by the disease—a fact of no little interest in the history of the plague. He mentions that he himself saw two hogs, on the rags of a person who had died of plague, after staggering about for a short time, fall down dead as if they had taken poison. A multitude of dogs, cats, fowls, and other domesticated animals, were, he tells us, fellow-sufferers with man.

In Germany the mortality was not so great as in Italy, but the disease assumed the same character. In France, it is said, many were struck as if by lightning, and died on the spot—and this more frequently among the young and strong than the old. Throughout England the disease spread with great rapidity, men dying in some cases immediately, in others within twelve hours, or at latest in two days. Here, as elsewhere, the inflammatory boils and buboes were recognised at once as prognosticating a fatal issue. It first broke out in the county of Dorset. Few places seem to have escaped; and the mortality was so great that contemporary annalists have reported (with what degree of accuracy we cannot say) that throughout the whole land not more than a tenth part of the inhabitants had survived.

The north of Europe did not escape, nor did all the snows of Russia protect her from this invasion. In Norway the disease broke out in a frightful manner. Nor was the sea a refuge; sailors found no safety in their ships; vessels were seen driving about on the ocean and drifting on the shore, whose crews had perished to the last man.

It is a terrible history, this of a plague. Nevertheless, if we were capable of surveying such events from an elevated position, where past and future were revealed to our view, and the whole scheme of creation unfolded to our knowledge, we should doubtless discover that even plagues and pestilences play their parts for the welfare and advancement of the human race. Nor are we without some glimpses of their utility. Viewing the matter, in the first place, in a quite physiological light, let us suppose that disease has been generated in a great city, that debilitated parents give birth to feeble offspring, that the fever, or whatever it may be, is wasting the strength of whole classes of the population, is it not better that such disease should attain a power and virulence that will enable it to sweep off at once a whole infected generation, men, women, and children, leaving the population to be replaced by the healthier who would survive? would not this be better than to allow the disease to perpetuate itself indefinitely, and thus to continue to multiply from an infected stock? The poison passes on, and searches out other neighbourhoods where the like terrible remedy is needed. Ay, but it passes, you say, into cities and districts where no such curative process, no such restoration of the _breed_, was called for. But it is always thus with the great laws of nature, or of Providence. Thus far, and no farther! is said to the pestilence as well as to the ocean; but the line along the beach is not kept or measured with that petty precision which a land-surveyor would assuredly have suggested. Man’s greatness arises in part from this struggle with an external nature, which threatens from time to time to overwhelm him. There is, according to his measurement of things, a dreadful surplus of power and activity, both in the organic and the inorganic world. Nowhere are the forces of nature exactly graduated to suit his taste or convenience. Happily not. Man would sink into the tameness and insipidity of an Arcadian shepherd, or the sheep he feeds and fondles, if every wind that blew were exactly tempered to his own susceptibility.

But the moral effects of plague and pestilence—what good thing can be said of them? A general dissoluteness, an unblushing villany, for the most part prevails: a few instances of heroic virtue brighten out above the corrupted mass. Well, is it nothing, then, that from time to time our nature should be fully revealed to us in its utmost strength for good or for evil? A very hideous revelation it may sometimes be, but not the less salutary on this account. The mask of hypocrisy is torn off a whole city; in one moment is revealed to a whole people what its morality, what its piety is worth. Of the island of Cyprus, we are told, that an earthquake shook its foundations, and was accompanied by so frightful a hurricane that the inhabitants, _who had slain their Mahometan slaves_ in order that they might not themselves be subjected by them, fled in dismay in all directions. Who had slain their Mahometan slaves! Their Christianity had brought them thus far on the road of moral culture! At Lübeck, the Venice of the North, the wealthy merchants were not, in this extremity, unmindful of the safety of their souls; they spent their last strength in carrying their treasures to monasteries and churches. Useless for all other purposes, their gold would now purchase heaven. To such intelligent views of Christianity had they attained! But the treasure had no longer any charm for the monks; it might be infected; and even with them the thirst for gold was in abeyance. They shut their gates upon it; yet still it was cast to them over the convent walls. “People would not brook an impediment to the last pious work to which they were driven by despair.”

Did all desert their post, or belie their professions? No; far from it. Amongst other instances, take that of the Sisters of Charity at the _Hotel Dieu_. “Though they lost their lives evidently from contagion, and their numbers were several times renewed, there was still no want of fresh candidates, who, strangers to the unchristian fear of death, piously devoted themselves to their holy calling.”

But how cruel had their fears made the base multitude of Christendom! They rose against the Jews. They sought an enemy. The wells were poisoned; the Jews had poisoned them. Sordid natures invariably strive to lose the sense of their own calamity in a vindictive passion against some supposed author of it. For this reason it is, that, whatever the nature of the public distress may be, they always fasten it upon some human antagonist, whom they can have the luxury of hating and reviling. If they cannot cure, they can at least revenge themselves.