This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world's books discoverable online.
It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.
Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the publisher to a library and finally to you.
Usage guidelines
Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we have taken steps to prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying.
We also ask that you:
+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for personal, non-commercial purposes.
+ Refrain from automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.
+ Maintain attribution The Google "watermark" you see on each file is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.
+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe.
About Google Book Search
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web
at|http : //books . google . com/
■?\%^A
iciMi,,/s7^.
ERASER'S MAGAZINE
NEW SEBIES. VOL. VIL
L05DOXt PRnmCD BT
STOTTISWOOUB AXO 00., KKW-8Ttt«KT fiQUABB
AXD rAnLIAXB5T BTttJeSX
FEASER'S MAGAZINE
EDITED BY
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, MA.
NEW 8ERIE8. VOL VII.
JANUARY TO JUNE 1873
/
I
I
— LONDON LONGMANS, GEEEN, AND CO.
PATEBNOSTEE ROW in>coci.»(in
"?\%«^.\
FRASER'S MAGAZINE
KDITSD BT
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, M.A.
New Skmes. JANUARY 1873. Vol, VII.— No. XXXVII.
CONTENTS.
PAOB
ADDRESS DELIVERED ON NOVEMBER 30, IN THE ASSOCIATION
HALL, NEW YORK.— Bt J. A. Froudb 1
NEW EDITION OF THE PASTON LETTERS.— Bt L. Toulmik Smith... 22
A VlJSrr TO SHAMYL'S country in the autumn of 1870.— By
Edwss RAifsoM, F.R.G.S 27
SOICE curiosities of criticism , 43
THORWALDSEN IN COPENHAGEN AND IN ROME,— By J. B. Aranwow 62
OF ALIENATION.— By A. K. H. B 67
BTtAlfRT.T!BERRrRa 74
SHAFTESBURi^S CHABACTi:RISTIC8.---Bii Lbslib Stkphmn --94
A SKETCH OF M. THIERS "76^
ON PRISONS.— By thb Right Hon. Sib Walter Ceofton, C.B 101
DULWICH COLLEGE 109
HEREDITARY IMPROVEMENT.— By FfiANas Galton, F.R.S 116
LONDON:
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1873.
FRASER'S MAGAZINE for DECEMBER 1872
CONTAINS
EMPIRE OR NO EMPIRE ?— By a Colonist.
WITHOUT A GUIDE.
DEMONOLOGY.— III. IV.— By M. D. Contvay.
SIX WEEKS IN NORTH AND SOUTH TYROL. (With a Map.)— By Wiluam Longman, F.G.S.
THE IRISH BRIGADE IN THE SERVICE OF FRANCE (1698-1791). BRAMBLEBERRIES.
THE TRUE SCHOOL FOR ARCHITECTS.
POSSIBILITIES OF FREE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN SCOTLAND. CONCERNING THE DISADVANTAGES OF LIVING IN A SMALL COM- MUNITY.—By A. K. H. B. DOMESTIC SANITARY ARRANGEMENTS.— By Robert Rawltnson, C.E. O.B. BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE COMMUNE.— By Genihal Cltoehet.
NOTICE TO CORRESPONDENTS.
Correspondents are desired to observe that all Communications must he addressed direct to the Editor.
Bejecied Conirtbutiom carmot he returned.
FRASER'S MAGAZINE,
JANUAKY 1873.
ADDRESS BY J. A. FROUDE, DELlVEilED NOVEMBER 30, IN. THE ASSOCIATION HALL, NEW YORK.
LADIES AND Gentlemen : If my object in coming to this conntrj was to draw attention to the Irish snbject, I may so far be said to have succeeded. I have sncceeded also, beyond my expectation, in eliciting a counter-statement containing the opinions of the Irish people them- selves on their past history, the most complete, the most symmetri- cal, tbe most thoroughgoing which has yet been given to the world.
The successive positions taken by Father Burke have been long fami- liar to me, some in one book and some in another. But nowhere have so many of them been com- bined so artistically, and not till DOW have they been presented in what may be called an authorita- tive form. Father Burke regrets that I shonld have obliged him to reopen wounds which he would have preferred to have left closed. I conceive, on the other hand, that a wound is never healed so long as there is misunderstanding. Eng- land and Ireland can approach each other only on the basis of truth, and so long as Irish children are fed ^ith the story which Father Burke has 80 eloquently told, so long they mast regard England with eyes of utter detestation, until full atone- ment be made for past wrongs. If Father Burke's account is true, let England know it, look it in the face, and acknowledge it. If it be an illusion, or tissue of illusions, then
TOL. VII. — NO. XXXVII. NEV; SERIE3.
it is equally desirable that the Irish should know it, and a bridge of solid fact be laid across the gulf that divides us.
A subject of this kind can only usefully be treated from the plat- form if the audience will bear their share of the burden, if they will test by reference what they hear, compare evidence, and analyse it. You will learn more from the books to which I shall refer you than you can learn from me in the time for which I shall address you. I shall myself venture to indicate the par- ticulars where Father Burke's nar- ration specially needs examination, and refer you to authorities. That an Irishman's view should be dif- ferent from an Englishman's view is natural and inevitable ; but the difference must be limited by facts, which are easily ascertainable. When they are not ascertainable elsewhere, as, for instance, when Father Burke attributes words to me which I never uttered, I shall venture to speak with authority.
I must throw off* with a point of this kind. The Father says I have come to America to ask for the extraordinary verdict that England has been right in the manner in which she has treated Ireland for 700 years. Considering that I have drawn a heavier indictment against England in the course of my lec- tures than she will probably thank me for, considering that I have
B 2
Address in Answer to Father Burke,
[January
described the history of her con- nection with Ireland from the be- ginning as a scandal and reproach to her, I mnst meet this assertion with a simple denial.
No one who knows Ireland now can be satisfied with its present condition. There is an agitation for a separate Irish Parliament, which it was supposed that public sentiment in America generally ap- proved. I think, for myself, that there are certain definite measures for Ireland's good which she could obtain more easily from the United Parliament than she bould obtain them from her own. I wished to show that s]ie had less cause than she supposed for the animosity which she entertained against Eng- land, ill as England had behaved to her ; and I have said what I had to say here in the form of lectures, beicause it was the most likely way to attract attention.
Father Burke goes on to suggest that England is a decaying empire, that her power is broken, her arm grown feeble, the days of Ma- caulay's *New Zealander' not far off, that England is afraid of the growing strength of the Irish in the United States, the eight millions of them who have come from the old country, and the fourteen mil- lions of Irish descent. It is scarcely becoming for two British subjects to be discussing in this country whether Great Britain is in a state of decadence. England is afraid, however, and deeply afraid. She is afraid of being even driven to use again those measures of coercion
against Ireland, which have been the shame of her history. Bat Father Burke's figures, I confess, startled me. Of the forty- two mil- lions of American citizens, twenty- two millions were either Irish bom or of Irish descent. Was this pos- sible ? I referred to the census of 1870, and I was still more con- founded. The entire number of immig^nt foreigners, who were then in the United States, amounted to 5,556,566. Of these, under two millions were Irish. The entire number of children bom of Irish parents was under two millions also.
Add half a milhon for children of the second generation, and from these figures it follows, if Father Burke is correct, that in the two last years there must have come from Ireland no less than 6,000,000 persons, or more than the entire population of the island, and that in the same two years the Irish mothers mnst have produced not fewer than 11,500,000 infants. I knew that their fertility was re- markable, but I was not prepared for such an astounding illustration ofit.»
Still speculating on my motives. Father Burke inclines on the whole to give me credit for patriotism. He thinks I have come to speak for my own country, and he is good enough to praise me for doing so. I am grateful for the compliment, but I cannot accept it. I have come not to speak for my country, but for his. I believe that the present agitation there is likely to avert indefinitely the progress of
* Father Barke probably meant that there were 14 millions of Irish altogether in the United States. Even so, his estimate is wildly exaggerated ; I assume that he was not speaking of the Anglo-Irish or Scotch-Irish, but of the Irish proper. Of these there were in America in 1870, of natives of Ireland, 1,855,779, of children of Irish parents bom in America, 1,389,433.
The children of mixed marriages are not properly Irish, nor are mixed marriages common among the Irish ; but construing the phrase Irish descent widely, and allowing the same proportion to them as to other foreigners, there were in 1870 of children, one of whose parents was Irish, 385,723.
Thus of natives of Ireland and of children in the first generation, there were in all 3)630,935. It is difficult to arrive at the number of Irish children of the second gene-
1873]
Address mi Answer to Father Burke.
improrementy that the best chance for iJie Irish people is to stand by the English people and demand an alteration of the land laws. I wish to see them tnm their energies from the specnlative to the prac- tical.
But Father Burke considers me unfit to speak npon this subject, aod for three reasons :
First, because I despise the Irish people. I despise them, do I ? Then why have I made Ireland mj second home ? Why am I here now? Am I finding my under- taking such a pleasant one ? I say that for yaiious reasons I have a peculiar and exceptional respect and esteem for the Irish people ; I mean for the worthy part of them, the peasantry, and according to my lights I am endeavouring to serve them. I say, the peasantry. For Irish demagoprues and political agi- tators,— well, for them, yes, I confess I do feel contempt from the bottom of my soul. I rejoice that Father Borke has disclaimed all connection with them. Of all the curses which have afflicted Ireland, the dema- gogues have been the greatest.
Bat I am unfit for another reason. I have been convicted, by a citizen of Brooklyn, of inserting words of my own in letters and docaments of State. Ladies and gentlemen, I have not been convicted by the citizen of Brooklyn, but I have given the citizen of Brooklyn an opportunity of convicting me if I am guilty. He has not been pleased to avail himself of it. He calls my proposal, I know not why, falla-
cious. He enquires why I will not reply directly to his own allegations. I answer first, that I cannot, for I am on one side of the Atlantic and my books and papers are on the other. I answer secondly, that if I reply to him I must reply to fifty others. I answer thirdly, that I have found by experience that con- troversies between parties interested in such disputes, lead to no conclu- sion. At this moment I am sup- posed to be calumniating the Irish Catholics. Two or three years ago I was in trouble in England on pre cisely opposite ground. I had dis covered a document which I con- ceived to reKeve the Catholic hier- archy of Ireland of a charge of subserviency to Queen Elizabeth, which had long attached to them. I had discovered another, from which I published extracts, expos- ing an act of extreme cruelty per- petrated in the North of Ireland by- one of Elizabeth's oflBcers. Both these papers I had reason to know were extremely welcome to the Irish Catholic Prelates. They were no less unwelcome to Protestants. I was violently attacked, and I replied. The documents were looked into, up and down, but with- out producing conviction on either side. I, after the most careful con- sideration, was unable to withdraw what I had written. The Tory journals continued, and perhaps continue, to charge me with mis- representation, and speak of me as a person whose good faith is not to be depended on.
I determined that from that time
lation born id the United States. They must be the descendants of those who have be«n saffidently long here to allow their children to be bom, to grow to maturity and become parents. None of the immigrants arriving since 1850 can be included in this c^; the arrival of the native Irish was inconsiderable before 1S47, ^^^ ^^ ^^S^ ^o entile number of Irish who had arrived in the United States amounted only to 908,945. 'Hie modality among the Irish, whether as children or adults, is in advance of any other put of the population.
The most extravagant conjecture will not venture, therefore, to add more than ^,000 for the number of Irish children whose parents were bom in this country. Thoee who have best means of judging, estimate the entire Irish race now in America at hetween four and five millions.
Address in Answer to Father Burke,
[January
I would never place myself in such a position again.
'Tih dangerous, when the baser nature falls Between the pass and fell incensM points Of mighty opposites.
I hope I am not, strictly speak- ing, the baser nature. But it has been my fortune ever since I began to write on these subjects to feel the pricks of the opposing lances, and I shall continue to feel them as long as I toll the truth. My History ofEnglajul has been composed from, perhaps, two hundred thousand documents, nine- tenths of them in difficult MS., and in half-a-dozen languages. I have been unable to trust printed copies, for the MSS. often tell stories which the printed versions leave concealed. I have been unable to trust copyists ; I have read everything myself. I have made my own extracts from papers whichi might never see a second t. me. I have had to condense pages into single sentences, to translate, and to analyse ; and have had after- wards to depend entirely on my own transcripts. Under such con- ditions it is impossible for me to affirm that no reference has been misplaced, and no inverted commas fallen to the wrong words. I have done my best to be exact, and no writer can undertake more. In passing from my notes to my written composition, from my com- position to print, from one edition to another, the utmost care will not prevent mistakes. It often happens that half a letter is in one collection and half in another. There will be two letters from the same person, and the same place, on the same subject and on the same day. One may be among the State Papers, another in the British Museum. I will not say that passages from two such letters may not at times ap- pear in my text as if they were one. A critic looks at the reference, finds part of what I have said and not the other, and jumps to the conclu-
sion that I have invented it. Of course I don't complain of faults of this kind being pointed out. I am obliged to anyone who wiU take the trouble. I do complain, that when I am doing my utmost to tell the truth I should be charged so hastily with fraud. I referred and I refer all such accusers to a com- petent tribunal of impartial persons, accustomed to deal with historical documents, who understand the conditions under which a work like mine can be composed, and will know, when a passage seems to be unsupported, where to look for the evidence, and where to find it. More than this I will never conde- scend to say on the subject of my historical veracity. It is my last word. But I will not allow that I have been convicted, as Father Burke calls it, till I have been pro- perly tried.
Once more. Father Burke says I ■ am unfit to speak of Ireland, be- cause I hate the Catholic Church. I show my hatred, it appears, by holding the Church answerable for the cruelties of the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands, and for the mas- sacre of St. Bartholomew's Day in France.
Here is what the Father says on the first of these matters: * Alva fought in the Netherlands against an uprising against the authority of the State. If the rebels happened to be Protestants, there is no reason to father their blood upon the Ca- tholics.'
I beg you to attend to this pas- sage. This is the way in w^hich modem Catholic history is com- posed; and you may see from it what kind of lessons children will be taught in the national schools if Catholics have the control of the text books. Father Burke himself, perhaps, only repeats what he has been taught. I suppose he never heard of the Edicts of Charles the Fifth. By those Edicts, which were issued at the opening of the
1S73]
Address in Afiswer to Failier Bm-he.
RefoiToation, every man convicted of holding heretical opinions was to lose his head. K he was obstinate and refused to recant, he was to be burned. Women were to be buried alive. Those who concealed here- tics were liable to the same penal- ti^ as the heretics themselves. The execution of the Edicts was com- mitted to the Episcopal Inquisition, and under them, in that one reign, the Prince of Orange, who was alive at the time, and the great Grotius, whose name alone is a gaarantee against a suspicion of exaggeration, declares that not less thaa fifty thousand persons were put to death in cold blood. I have myself expressed a doubt whether these numbers could have been really so large ; but a better judge than I am, a man totally untrou- bled with theological preposses- sions, the historian Gibbon, consi- ders the lai^st estimate to be the nearest to the truth. I don't ask you to believe me. Ladies and Gentlemen — ^read Grotius; read the Prince of Orange's apology; read the pages of your own Mr. Motley.
And then because the Nether- lands, unable to endure those atro- cities, rose in arms to drive the Spaniards out of the country, the Duke of Alva may massacre twenty thousand more of them; they are only rebels. The Church is inno- cent of their blood.
Father Burke, in like manner, dechires the Church to be blameless for the destruction of the French Protestants. * The Te Deums that were gnng at Rome, when the news came, he says, were for the safety of the King, and not for the mas- sacre of the Huguenots. Indeed ! Then why did the infallible Pope iftsne a medal, on which was stamp- ed, Hu^ono^orum strages, slaughter of ihB Huguenots ? Why was the design ou the reverse of the medal an angel with a sword, smiting the Hydra of heresy ? Does Father Burke know — I suppose not— that
the murders in Paris were but the beginning of a scene of havoc, which overspread France, and lasted for nearly two months ? Eighteen or nineteen thousand persons wero killed in Paris on the 24th of August. By the end of September, the list was swollen to seventy thousand. Strangely incautious, infallible Pope, if he was only grate- ful for the safety of Charles the Ninth ! For what must have been the effect of the news of the Pope's approval on the zeal of the ortho- dox executioners ?
Ladies and Gentlemen : — I do not hate the Catholic religion. Some of the best and holiest men I have ever heard of have lived and died in the Catholic faith. But I do hate the spirit which the Church dis- played in the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries, and I hate the spirit which would throw a veil of sophistry over those atrocities in the nineteenth. The history of the il- lustrious men who fought and bled in that long desperate battle for liberty of conscience, that very li- berty to which Catholics now ap- peal, is a sacred treasure left in charge to all succeeding generations. If we allow a legend like this of Father Burke's to overspread and cloud that glorious record, we shall be false to our trust, and through our imbecility and cowardice we may bequeath to future ages the legacy of another struggle.
Father Burke himself is for tole- ration— ^the freest and the widest. I am heartily glad of it. I wish I could feel that he was speaking for his Church as well as himself. But my mind misgives me when I read the Syllabus. In the same number of the New York Tablet from which I take his speech, I find an article condemning the admis- sion of the Jews to the rights of citizens. When I was last in Spain there was no Protestant church allowed in the Peninsula. I used to feel that if I had the fortune to
Address in Answer to Father Burke.
[January
die there, I should be buried in a field like a dog. If all that is now ended, it was not ended by the Pope and the Bishops. It was ended by the Revolution.
Nor is it very hard to be tolerant on Father Burke's terms. In his reading of history the Protestants were the chief criminals. The Ca- tholics were innocent victims. If on those terms he is willing to for- give and forget, I for one am not. Father Burke knows the connection between confession and. absolution. The first is the condition of the second. When the Catholic Church admits frankly her past faults, the world will as frankly forgive them. If she takes refuge in evasion ; if she persists in throwing the blame on others who were guilty of no- thing except resistance to her ty- ranny, the innocent blood that she shed remains upon her hands, and all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten them.
I will assume, then, that I am fit to speak on this Irish subject, and I will at once pass to it. I must be brief. I shall pass from point to point, and leave irrelevant matter on one side.
I said that Ireland was in a state of anarchy before the Norman Con- quest. In other countries I said there were wars, but order was coming out of them. In Ireland I said no such tendency was visible. Father Burke answers that the Danes had caused the trouble, that the Irish had at last driven the Danes out and were settling down to peace and good government. He alludes to the Wars of the Roses, which he says left England utterly demoralised for half a century. Is he serious ? Is he speaking of the Englandwhich Erasmus came to visit — which the Governments of Spain and France courted persistently as the arbiter of Europe, of the country which could adopt for its motto. Cut adhereo Prceest — I hold in my hand the balance of the European
community ? Archbishop Anselm, it seems, wrote to congratulate a king of Munster on the quiet of the country. I beg any of you to turn over the leaves of the A7in(ils of the Four Masters, the most authori- tative record of Irish history. I read in my lectures the entry for the year i i6o, fourteen years before the conquest, when, according to the Father, all things were going so well. In that one year three kings were killed, besides an infinite slaughter of other people. Look for yourselves. See whether that year was exceptionally bad. If there was a few months' breathing time in such a state of things an Archbishop might well write to congratulate.
Giraldus, the Welshman, wLo came over soon after to see what Ire- land was like, confirms substantially the account of the Annals, Father Burke calls him fteely a liar, though he quotes him approvingly when he mentions the Irish virtues. If Giraldus is to be believed when he says the Irish were loyal to their chief, I do not know why he is not to be believed when he says they were fierce, licentious, treacherous, false, and cruel. Gii*aldus tells some absurd stories. The Irish books of the age are full of stories much more absurd. In the twelfth century there were extant sixty-six Lives of St. Patrick. Mr. Gibbon says of them that they must have contained at least as many thousand lies. That is a large estimate. Of those which survive, the earliest, which is very beautifal, contains few lies, or, perhaps, none. The latest, that by Jocelyn of Ferns, Avhich has been adopted by the Bollandists, contains probably many more than a thousand lies. It is one of the most ridiculous books I ever looked into. By the side of Jocelyn, Giraldus is a rationalist. I wish you would read Giraldus' account of Ireland. It is trans- lated ; it is short, and carries about
1873]
Address in Answer to Father BurJce,
it, in my opinion, a siamp of con- ceited Teracitj.
I go to the Norman Conquest itself, and Pope Adrian's Bnll, which Father Bnrke still declares to be a forgery. I need hardly say that I attach no consequence to the Bull itself. I suppose the Popes of Rome have no more right over Ire- land than I have over Cuba. The Popes, howcTcr, did at that time represent the general conscience. What a Pope sanctioned was usu- allj what the intelligent part of mankind held to be' right. If the Normans foiled such a sanction to colonr their conquest, they commit- ted a crime which ought to be ex- posed. The naked facts are these : — King Henry, when he conquered Ireland, produced as his authority a Bull said to have been granted twenty years before by Pope Adrian. It is matter of history that from the date of the conquest Peter's Pence was paid regularly to Rome hy Ireland. Ecclesiastical suits were referred to Rome. Continual application was made to Romo for dispensations to marry within the forbidden degrees. There was close and constant communication from that time forward between the Irish people and clergy and the Roman Court. Is it conceivable that, in the course of all this com- munication, the Irish should never have mcntioT^ed this forged Bull at Borne, or that if they did mention it, there should have been no en- quiry and exposure ? To me such a supposition is utterly incon- ceivable.
But the Bull, says Father Burke, is a forgery, on the face of it. The date upon it is T154. Adrian was elected Pope on December 3, 1154. John of Salisbury, by whom the Bull was procured, did not arrive in Rome to ask for it till 1 155. What clearer proof could there be ? Very pkmsible. But forgers would scarcely have committed a blunder 60 simple. Father Burke's criti-
cism comes from handling tools he is imperfectly acquainted with. He is evidently ignorant that the Eng- lish official year began on March 25. A paper dated February, 1154, was in reality written in February, 1155. The Popes did not use this style, but Englishmen did, and a confusion of this kind is the most natural thing in the world in the publication of a document by which England was specially affected.
But we are only at the beginning of the difficulty in which we are involved by the hypothesis of for- gery. I advised Father Burke to look at a letter from a subsequent Pope to King Henry III., published by Dr. Theiner from the Vatican Archives.
I have not Dr. Theiner's book by me to refer to ; I must therefore describe the letter from memory, but I have no doubt that I remem- ber it substantially. The Irish had represented at Rome that the Nor- mans had treated them with harsh- ness and cruelty. They had ap- pealed to the Pope. They had been brought under the Norman yoke, they said, by an act of his prede- cessor, and they begged him to in- terpose. What does the Pope an- swer ? Does he say that he has looked into the Archives and can find no recoi*d of any such act of his predecessor, that it was a mis- take or a fraud ! He does nothing of the kind. He writes to the King of England, laying the complaints of the Irish before him. He re- minds him gently of the tenour of the commission by which Adrian had sanctioned the conquest, and begs him to restrain the violence of his Norman subjects.
Once more we have a letter from Donald O'Neill, calling himself King of Ulster, to the Pope, speak- ing of the Normans much as Father Burke speaks of the English now ; complaining specially of Pope Adrian for having, as an English- man, sacrificed Ireland to his
AddrenH in Ansti-er to Father Bvrke,
[January
CountrymeD. The idea that the grant was fictitious had never oc- curred to him. As little was the faintest suspicion entertained at Rome. The Pope, and the victims who had been sacrificed, were equally the dupes of Norman cun- ning and audacity. Wonderful Normans ! Wonderful infallible Pope !
I must hurry on. I have no oc- casion to defend the Norman rule in Ireland. It was an attempt to plant the feudal system on a soil which did not agree with it, and the feudal system failed as com- pletely as did all our other institu- tions which we have attempted to naturalise there. There is, how- ever, one stereotyped illustration of Norman tyranny on which patriot oi*ators are never weary of dilating, that I mast for a moment pause to notice. Of course Father Burke C9uld not miss it. So atrocious were the Norman laws, he tells us, that the Irish were denied the privileges of human beings. It was declared not to be felony to kill them. So stands the law ; not to be denied or got over ; yet there is something more to be said on that subject. I am not surprised that it did not' occur to Father Burke ; yet, after all, it was not the inhuman barbarism which it appears to be at the first blush.
As the Normans found they could not conquer the entire island, the counties round Dublin, the seaports and municipal towns with the adjoining districts, came to be known as the English Pale : within the Pale they established the Eng- lish common law ; outside the Pale, in the territories of the chiefs, there remained the Brehon or Irish law. Now felony was a word of English law entirely. Under English law, homicide was felony, and was pun- ished by death. Under the Brehon law homicide was not felony : it was an injury for which compensation was to be made by the slayer to the
family of the slain. Every Irish- man living inside the Pale was as much protected by the law as any- one else. To kill him was as much felony as to kill an Englishman. But English law could not protect those who refused to live under it. Questions often rose, what was to be done when hfe was lost in a border scuffle or quarrel; and the Norman Parliament declined to attach more importance to the life of an outside Irishman than his own law attached to it. Father Burke quotes a case triumphantly of an Englishman who had killed an Irishman pleading the Statute, but oflfering in court to make compen- sation according to Brehon custom, and being in consequence acquitted. This exactly illustrates what I have been saying. I admit, however, and I insisted in my own lectures, that the Norman failure had been com- plete— that the result of the con- quest was to leave the country, after three hundred yeai-s* experi- ence, worse than before.
I pass to the modern period. Father Burke opens with an elo- quent denunciation of Henry VIII., and as I have a great deal to say on points of more consequence, I leave Henry to his mercies. I will only pause out of curiosity to ask for more information about three Car- thusian abbots, whom a jury re- fused to find guilty under the Su- premacy Act, till Henry threatened, if they did not comply, to prosecute them for treason. I thought I knew the history of all the treason trials of that reign. I know of several abbots being tried and executed. I remember the story of the prior and monks of the Charterhouse, and touohingly beautiful it is. But I cannot tit on Father Burke's story to any of them. If, as I suppose, he does -mean the prior *nd monks of the Charterhouse, the records of the trial prove conclusively that the story about the jury cannot be true.
1873]
Address in Anstcer to Father Burke,
9
As to Ireland at this period, I cannot make out- Father Burke's position. He possesses odd little pieces of real knowledge set in a framework — since I cannot accnse him of misrepresentation — set in a framework of snch singular unac- quaintance with the general com- plexion of the times, that I have speculated much how he came b^ these bits of knowledge. He quotes from the State Papers. Let me tell you generally what these State Papers are. "When there were no newspapers, ministers depended for their information on their corre- spondents, and you find in these collections letters and reports of all kinds from all sorts of people, con- veying the same kind of infonnation which yon would gajjier out of a newspaper to-day — with the same conflict of opinions. Those relating to Ireland during the reign of Henry VIII. have been printed, and fill two large thick quarto volumes of 800 or 900 pages each. There are also four volumes of Calendars, or abstracts of papers of the reign of Elizabeth, known by the name of tlie Carew Collection of MSS., with long and most interesting extracts. If any of you will read these volumes, and will read at the same time the Beview of the State of Ire- land by the poet Spenser, Baron Finglas's Breviate of Ireland^ and Sir Henry Sidney's Correapoiidencey you will not require either me or Father Burke to tell you what was the real condition of the country vfc are both talking about.
Meanwhile I must say a word or two. Father Burke talks with great vehemence about spoliation of lands and the expulsion of Irishmen from the homes of their fathers. There is a document, the opening document of the * King Henry series,* which he does not seem to have ' studied, but which I wish you would study, for it gives a complete key to 'the real dS^culties of Ireland, and to all the po]i<^ of the succeeding reigns.
This document is dated 1515, and is called a ' Report on the State of Ireland, with a Plan for its Refor- naation . ' Father Burke admits that there was disorder at this time, but he says it was caused by the Anglo- Normans. Now this report explains that the real cause was that the Normans had ceased to be Normans, and had become Irish. They spoke Irish, dressed hke Irish, adopted Irish habits, and laws, and customs. Father Burke cannot be ignorant that to the Geraldines in Munster and Loinster, to the Butlers in Kil- kenny, to his own ancestors, the De Burghs, or Burkes, in the west, the Irish clans looked up with a feeUng of loyal allegiance. As far as there was any order at all in the country, it was in the homage paid by the native race to these four fami- lies. They, and the smaller Nor- man barons who held under them, are spoken of in the State Papers as English in contrast to Irish. They wore as much English as you Americans are English, or as Grat- tan and Wolf Tone were English ; yet Father Burke thinks that ho makes a point when he quotes a passage saying that some of these people were more troublesome than the Irish. Of course they were. Did he never hear the old phrase : Ipsis Hihemis Ilihemiores — more Irish than the Msh themselves ?
I want you to understand the social state of the country as this report delineates it. There were at this time sixty great Irish chiefis and thirty great Norman chiefs — each independent, each ruling by his own sword, each making war at his pleasure, and all living in pre- cisely the 'same manner. Between them they kept in idleness," to do nothing but fight, about 6oyOoo armed men, foot and horse — the en- tire population being about half a million. The chiefs of this enor- mous body of vagabonds were main- tained by an Irish custom called coyn and livery. Father Burke
10
Address in Answer to Father Burke.
[January
boasts tHat there was no slavery in Ireland. No, but there was worse, for the wretched peasantry were obliged to supply idl these people with meat, clothes, and lodging for man and horse. Coyn and livery meant not only that the chiefs* castles were to be kept supplied, but that all their fighting-people, themselves and their horses, were to live at free quarters in the pea- sants' homes.
It was this fighting contingent that was the cause of all the trouble. While they were allowed to plunder the people at pleasure, industry was impossible. Peace was equally im- possible while there were so many men who had no occupation but war.
The problem of the English Government throughout the six- teenth century was to break the system down, to protect the peasant who was cultivating the soil, and, by stopping their enforced supplies, compel the fighting banditti to take to some other employment. Here lies the explanation of Father Burke's mistakes. When he talks of confiscation and spoliation, it was confiscation simply of the rights of robbers to plunder the poor. All sorts of plans were thought of, and ultimately tried : sometimes to use downright force, to send an English army and conquer them ; sometimes to arm the peasantry, and make them protect themselves ; some- times to plant English and Scotch colonies ; sometimes, where the case seemed hopeless, to send the entire race over the Shannon into Con- naught, where, in closer quarters, they would be unable to find the means of supporting the fighting battalions.
I cannot go into ary details here. I ask you only to satisfy yourselves, by a perusal of the report, that this was the real condition to which the country was reduced. You will then see how arduous the problem was, and be better able to form a
just opinion on the conduct which England pursued. Father Burke says nothing of it. I can hardly suppose he knew anything about it. Yet anyone who will look to the index of the State Papers and the Carew Papers, and will refer to the words * Coyn and Livery,' will see that this Insh custom with its con- sequences was the one central enor- mity against which English effort was, however ineffectually, directed.
The Reformation of course com- plicated matters worse, but the social problem then as now was the real one. When I spoke of King Henry's appointment of the Earl of Kildare to the viceroyalty as an experiment of Home Rule, Father Burke asks me why Henry did not call a Parliaijient of the Irish chiefs. This, I admit, would have been a worse form of Home Rule. The peasant grievances would have had even less chance of a hearing then than they would have from a sepa- rate Irish Parliament if it were called to-day.
I am laying down broad outlines. I must reserve my particular criti- cisms for a more pressing part of the story.
I notice, however, firsts what Father Burke says of the Norman Irish, the Earl of Kildare, and the insurrection of Lord Thomas Fitat- gerald. He says Kildare was an Englishman. He was as much an Englishman as Lord Edward Fitz- gerald, his descendant, or Dr. McNevin. That is to say, he was the most Irish nobleman — ^with the exception, perhaps, of his kinsman , the Earl of Desmond — that was to be found in the country. Father Burke says the insurrection was an English insurrection ; the parties to it, with one or two exceptions, all English; that it was an English business altogether, and that the Irish were only sufferers. It was English in the sense that the asso- ciations of the United Irishmen were English, neither less nor more.
1873]
Address in Answer to Father Burlce.
11
I suppose that his words were no more than a rhetorical flourish to gain an immediate point. If not, and if he really indicates the pre- sent views of the Celtic race on their history and their misfortunes, it is a new and extremely significant feature in the progress of the ques- tion. Till this time the Geraldines baye heen the idols of the national tradition. O'Connell used to say that the Duke of Leinster, Kildare's representative, was the natural King of Ireland. Lord Thomas has been one of the most popular Irish heroes. K all this is now to be thrown aside, I will only say here, that it is a bad return for the blood which the Geraldines and the Barons of the Pale risked and lost in the cause of Ireland and the Catholic Church. I trust, for the honour of Irish patriotism, that Father Bnrke is not in this instance a representative of the feelings of his people.
As to the Kildare rebellion itself, Father Burke, as usual, exaggerates. He says it desolated the whole of Munster and a great part of Lein- ster, and ruined half the Irish peo- ple. It scarcely touched Munster at all. It affected severely only half leinster. The chief sufferers were the inhabitants of the Pale, and among them chiefly such of the in- habitants as were loyal to English rule. But I conclude that Father Bnrke is not distinguishing between Ae rebellion of the Kildares under Henry Vlll. and the rebellion of the Desmonds under Elizabeth, and lumps them both together as a con- fused unity.
I will not follow him through the Reformation History. But he asks a question which I will an- swer. I said in my lectures that the private Kves of some of the Ca- tbohc bishops, before the Reforma- tion, were not perfectly regular. I made Hght of it, and I make light of it now. But, when he caUs it *a wild and unsupported asser-
tion,' I must show him that I was not speaking without book.. I was thinking at the moment of Arch- bishop Bodkin, of Tuam, from whom the Galway Bodkins, whom Father Burke must know about, are de- scended. If he requires another instance I must send him back to Dr. Theiner. ♦! wish he would read his Theiner. He need not be afraid ; there is no heresy in it. It comes from Home, from the very fountain of infallibility. If he will look there, he wiU find an account of a most reverend gentleman, which I need not stop to particularise. It will satisfy him, I think, that my asser- tion was less wild than he supposes. Again, about the bishops and the oath of supremacy to King Henry. He admits eight bishops and an archbishop ; when I get home I will give him the names of two or three more. But it is of no importance. He cannot show that those who did not swear made any active or pro- longed opposition. Nor does he deny that the greatest of the Celtic chiefs accepted peerages fromHenry, voted him King of Ireland, helped him to suppress the abbeys, and accepted the abbey-lands for them- selves. But so great, it appears, was the orthodoxy of the Catholic people of Ireland that, although they never before rebelled against their chiefs, on this occasion they did rise and deposed them. Let us take the most important instance. Con O'Neill, the great O'Neill, the descendant of the Irish kings, was made by Henry, Earl of Tyrone. This O'Neill, Father Bnrke says, was taken by his son and clapped into gaol, where he died. A very pious son, no doubt, and moved en- tirely by his zeal for holy Church. The son in question was the cele- brated Shan, a bastard son of Con, but * a broth of a boy,' as they say over there, and the darling of the tribe. By tanistry, or the Irish method of election, Shan would have succeeded to the chieftainship,
12
Address in Aiiswer to Father Burke.
[January
but by the patent of the earldom the successor was not to be Shan, but his legitimate brother. The old Con also preferred the legitimate son. Shan had a certain respect for his father. In one of his letters, of which I have read many, he says, alluding to his own parentage, that his father, like a gentleman as he was, never denied any child that was sworn to him, but Shan was not going to lose his inheritance on that account. He conspired against Con, and, as Father Burke trulysays, shut him up till he died. The legitimate brother was murdered or made away with, and Shan by these means became the O'Neill. A very natural piece of business, but I should not have described it myself as arising from devotion to the Catholic faith.
Once more (Father Burke drags it in here out of its natural place, but I will follow his own arrange- ment), he insists on the religious toleration which was always dis- played by the Irish Catholics. There were no heresy prosecutions in Ireland. These heresy prosecu- tions were judicial processes, and the Irish preferred more rough and ready ways. I have no room to go into this. But Father Burke pro- duces as a proof an act of the Celtic Catholic Irish Parliament, which met in the time of James the Second, on which I must make a short remark.
What, said the Father, was the first law which tliis Catholic Irish Parliament passed ? ' We hereby decree that it is the law of this land of Ireland that neither now, nor ever again, shall any man be prosecuted for his religion.' * Was not this magnificent ? ' he asked, and ho was answered by * tremendous cheers.'
I am very glad that he and his hearers are such complete converts to toleration. But his mind is not yet in the perfectly equitable state which I could desire. The value of the Act is diminished when we
remember that it was accompanied by two other Acts which deprived almost every Protestant in Ireland of every acre of land which he pos- sessed. Let me remind you, ladies and gentlemen, of one or two points in the history of James II. He was meditating the restoration of Popery in England, and ho took np with toleration that he might intro- duce Catholics, under cover of it, into high offices of State, and bribe the Protestant Nonconformists to support him. The Nonconformists knew too well what he was about, and wore not to be so taken in. In like manner the Irish Parliament was throwing out a bait to the Presbyterian farmers and artisans, who had been persecuted by the Bishops of the Establishment. They also were too wary to be tempted. They knew what could happen when the Pope was in his saddle again. They held no land, and the Confiscation Acts did not touch them. But instead of joining Tyr- conuell they closed the gates of Dcrry in his face, and built for themselves an immortal monument in tlie gallery of Protestant heroes. About Elizabeth's conduct in Ire- land there is not much difference of opinion between Father Burke and me. He quotes a passage of mine, some rhetorical nonsense, as I dare say it was, about the Star of Libei-ty, which he calls extremely eloquent, and then proceeds to cut in pieces. Before praising my style in that way I wish he would quote my words accurately. He has lopped and chopped the poor little sen- tence, altered words, spoilt ca- dences, marred the whole effect, and then given it to the world as my idea of fine wnting. I am obliged to him for the compliment, but in the plucked and wretched state in which ho exhibits me, I could well have dispensed with it. The fact, however, to which the passage refers, is of real import- ance. Elizabeth had to fight at
1873]
Address i» Answer to Father Burke,
13
last with the great Catholic powers of Enn>pe in defence of the Refor- mation. She was very unwilling to do it, but at last she was forced to do it, and she won the battle. Father Burke thinks he answers me by pointing to the Act of Uniform- ity passed in Ireland in the second rear of her reign. I had myself mentioned this Act and explained why it was passed. I regretted it and called it unwise, but I added that it was not executed, and I am ohliged to insist to Father Burke that this is true and that the smallest accurate acquaintance with the time will . show anyone thftt it is true. The whole coun- try was a prey to anarchy. The churches like all else went to ruin. But among other causes of this the roost important was perhaps Eliza- beth's determination that the Act of Uniformity should not be en- forced. I speak of what I know. I have studied her correspondence with the viceroys. One of them, Lord Grey, being a strong Puritan, pressed to be allowed to make what he called a Mahometan conquest, to offer the people the Reformation or the sword — his complaint was that she forbade him to do it, for- hade him strictly to meddle with anyone for religion who was not in rebellion against the crown.
I said and I repeat that Elizabeth meant well to the poor country, though never was the proverb better illustrated, that the road to the wrong place is paved with good intentions.
I come now to the part of the business which ib of present prac- tical consequence.
I begin with the Ulster settle- ment, tibe Protestant colonisation of the North of Ireland under James I. Father Burke says, James I. promised that the Irish should be lefl in possession of their lands, that he kept his promise for four jears and then broke it. The Earls of Tyrconnell and Tyrone fled from
Ireland to escape imprisonment; James then took the whole province of Ulster from the original proprie- tor and handed it over to settlers from England and Scotland. Pro- mises are, I suppose, conditional on good behaviour. Many an oath had Tyrone sworn to be a loyal subject, and many an oath had ho broken. Was he to be allowed to conspire for ever and remain un- punished ! He fled to escape im- prisonment. But why was he to be imprisoned ? Because he was planning another rebellion, and he dared not remain to meet the proofs which were to be brought against him. The English took the whole province of Ulster from the Irish, so says Father Burke, and then stops. He should have gone on to say, but he docs not say it, that of the two million acres of w^hich the six confiscated counties of Ulster consist, a million and a half were given back to the Irish, and half a million only of the acres most fit for cultivation, but which the Insh left uncultivated, were retained for the colonists. It has been half a million acres forthe last two centuries. The acres multiply like Falstaff^s men in buckram as the myth develops.
They brought over Scotch and English Protestants, says Father Burke, and made them swear as they did so, that they would not employ one single Irishman or one single Catholic, nor let them come near them. Has not Father Burke omitted one small but important expression ? Was it true that they were not to employ one single Irish- man ? Or an Irishman who refused to take the oath of allegiance ? I have not examined the Charters in detail under which the separate grants were held. I will not affirm that there was no corporation which was intended to be exclusively Scotch or English. But I do know that the oath of allegiance was the
feneral condition. Let me remind 'ather Burke of an Act of Parlia-
14
Address in Answento Father Burhe.
[January
ment passed at this very time by the very men whom he accuses of this bitter enmity to the Irish. It repeals simply and for ever every law which had made a distinction between the English and Irish in- habitants of the country. It de- clares them aU citizens of a common empire, enjoying equal laws and equal protection. It expresses a hope that thenceforward they would grow into one nation in perfect agreement, with utter oblivion of all former differences. If you doubt me, gentlemen, look into the Irish Statute Book for the reign of James the First and satisfy your-
As a matter of fact it can be proved distinctly that from the date of the settlement the English and Irish did live together on these half million acres, and cultivated their land together. Their houses and fields lay side by side, they helped each other, employed each other, grew into useful social and kindly relations with one another. It was this close intimacy, this seeming friendliness, this adoption by so many of the Irish of the laws and customs of the settlers, which con- stituted the most painful features in the rebellion of 164 1.
I pass on to that rebellion. It is by far the gravest matter with which I have to deal. It is the hinge on which later history re- volves. If Father Burke's version of it is true, then we English robbed the Irish of their lands, tried to rob them of their religion, massacred them when they resisted, slandered them as guilty of a crime which was in reality our own, and took away from them as a punishment all the lands and liberties which they retained. If this be so, we owe them an instant confession of our complicated crimes and an instant reparation, such reparation as we are able to make. If it be not true, then this cause of heartburning ought to be taken away. I cannot
regret with Father Burke that this wound has been re-opened. Bather let it be probed to the bottom. Let the last drop of secreted falsehood be detected and purged out of the history. Again I must divide in two what I have to say. I must notice first, what he says of the ac- count given by me of these things; and next, what he says himself about the facts.
For my part of the business I am obliged to say that he has studied my lectures imaginatively. He has seen there what he wished to see, or thought he saw. Unin- tentionally, I am well aware, but under the influence of vehement and natural emotions, he has mis- understood me in three most im- portant particulars.
He charges me with defending the Irish Administration of the Earl of Strafford — as having come to America to ask a great, free people to endorse Strafford's des- potism as just government. Unless words be taken, not to express thoughts, but to conceal them, I said that Strafford's policy in L»- land was t3rrannous, cruel, and dangerous. He speaks as if the Puritan party in England and Scotland were bent on destroying the Catholics in Ireland. The commission which went from the Irish Parliament to London, to complain of Strafford, was com- posed jointly of Protestants and Catholics. The arraignment of Strafford was conducted by the great Puritan statesman, Pym, and I pointed out in my lectures that his administration of Ireland formed one of the most serious counts on which he was condemned. Does this look as if the complaints of Ire- land could receive no attention from the Long Parliament ? Does this bear out Father Burke in charging me with defending Strafford, and calling his conduct just ?
Again, Father Burke accuses me of having said that the rebellion
1873]
Address m Answer to Father- Burke,
15
began with massacre, as if it was a preconceived intention. In a sam- maiy of the events of the ten years, I said generally that it commenced with massacre, and «o it did, when the period is reviewed as a whole ; but in my account of what actually passed, I said expressly, and in the plainest words, that so far as I conld make out from the contra- dictory evidence,! thought the Irish bad not intended that there should be bloodshed at all.
Lastly, he accuses me of having called the Irish cowards, and he desires me to take the word back. I cannot take back what I never gave. Father Burke says that such words cause bad blood, and that I may one day have cause to remem- ber them. That they cause bad blood I have reason to know al- ready ; but the words are not mine but bis, and he and not I must recall them.
Not once, but again and again, with the loadest emphasis I have spoken of the notorious and splen- did courage of Irishmen. What I said was this, and I will say it over again. I was asking how it was that a race whose courage was above suspicion made so poor a hand of rebellion, and I answered mj question thus; that the Irish would fight only for a cause in which they really believed, and that they were too shrewd to be duped by illusions with which thev allowed themselves to play. I will add that five hundred of the present Irish police, Celts and Catholics, all or most of them, enlisted in the cause of order and good govern- ment, would walk up to and walk through the largest mob which the so-called patriots could collect from the four Provinces of Ireland. If it be to call men cowards that under the severest trials the Irish display the noblest qualities which do honour to hnmanity when they are on the right side, then, and only
veil. Vn. — HO. XXXVII. NEW SERIES.
then, have I questioned the courage of Irishmen.
So much for myself — now for the facts of the rebellion. We are agreed that on the 23rd of October, 1 64 1, there was a universal rising of the Irish race, and an attempt to expel the Protestant colonists from the country. Father Burke says the Puritan Lords Justices in Dub- lin knew that the rising was immi- nent, and deliberately allowed it to break out. I must meet him at once with a distinct denial of this. The secret correspondence of the Lords Justices, before and after the out- break, has been happily preserved, and anything more unlQie the state of their minds than the idea which Father Burke assigns to them can- not be imagined. They had no troops that they could rely upon. The country was patrolled by the fragments of the Catholic army which had been raised by Strafford and afterwards disbanded ; and the Lords Justices were in the utmost terror of them. Situated as they were they would have been simply mad had they foreseen what was to happen, and purposely permitted it.
The Irish, Father Burke says, had good reason to rise. Who denies it? Certainly not I. My own words were that it was the natural penalty for past cruelties. But the Father will not have it to have been a rebellion — because he says Charles the First approved of it, or would have approved of it had he been in a position to express an opinion ; and that Sir Phelim O'Neil, who headed the movement, issued a proclamation that he was acting in the king's name. That Charles had been encouraging some movement in Ireland is perfectly true, but not that of Sir Phelim O'Neil. — Sir Phelim produced a commission purporting to have been given to him by Charles and signed with the Great Seal — ^but
16
Address m Answer to FcUher Burke,
[January
Sir Phelim confessed afterwords that the commission was forged, and that he had taken the Seal from a private deed which lay among his muniments. Of this Father Barke says nothing.
The Irish, Father Burke acknow- ledges, stripped the Protestant set- tlers of their cattle, horses, and property. Under property, I sup- pose, he includes their houses and their clothes, for they were turned out of doora, men, women, and children, literally naked. So far, he thinks the Irish did nothing but what they had a right to do. The property of the setters belonged to the Irish, and they were simply taking l»ck their own. When wild races who do not cultivate the soil come in collision with other races who do cultivate it, disputes ofthis kind continually arise. When the native finds his land, of which he made no use, taken from him under pretexts which he considers unjust, his eagerness to recover it grows greater as he sees it increase in value by the intruder's industry. From this point of view it is natu- ral that he should consider not the land only, but everything that has been raised upon it, to belong to himself. But I never before heard an educated man maintain such a proposition in cool blood. Who- ever may have had a right to the land, it had been bought, occupied, and tilled for thirty-six years by the settlers without a word of ques- tion on their titles. I should have thought any Irishman who has had experience in later years of land- lord evictions would have recog- nised that the right to the property raised on the soil belonged to those who had raised it. It appears, in the Father's opinion, that the set- tlers and their families ought to have accepted their fate and gone &way without resistance.
Father Burke says the first Uood •was shed by the Protestants. I should not be surprised if it was so.
Men assailed by mobs, who mean to turn them naked out of their homes, are apt at times to resist. But this is not what Father Burke means. Tte origin of all the after horrors, he says, was an atrocity committed by the Protestant garrison at Car- rickfergus, who, before any lives had been taken by the Catholics, sallied out and destroyed three thousand Catholic Irish who had crowded together in a place called Island Maghee. This story has been examined into, and bears ex- amination as ill as other parts of the popular version of the massacre — ^but apparently to no purpose. Out it comes, round, confident, and unblushing as ever. Father Burke quotes it from the Protestant his- torian, Leland; therefore he as- sumes it to be true. He pays a compliment to Protestant veracity ; but Protestants are veracious only when they speak on the Catholic side. Dr. Reid, the author of the History of the Presbyterians in Ire* lamdf the very best book, in my opinion, which has ever been writ- ten on these matters, shows how little Leland knew about it ; yet Dr. Reid is not worth the Father's notice.
The legend, for such it is, is due to a misteJce or a misprint in a single short sentence of Lord Clarendon's. The evidence that Clarendon had before him is now in Dublin, and every fibre of this Island Maghee story can be traced. First, the number of the killed is multiplied by a hundred. In revenge for some atrocious murders in the neigh- bourhood, the Carrickfergus garrison did attack Island Maghee, and did kill there, not three thousand per- sons, but thirty persons. Again, the date is wrong, and the date is all in all. 1*0 fit with the theory that it was the beginning of the mischief, it is thrown back to the beginning of November 1 64 1 . The real date was the beginning of January 1642, and in January, and
1S7S]
Address in Answer to FatJier Burke,
17
long before, the cotmtry was in flames from end to end. I wish you who are dissatisfied will at least look at what Dr. Reid says on this mat- ter; yon will find yonrselves in good hands. Colonel AndleyMer- vyn, who was in Ireland at the time, says that, in his own county of Fermanagh, which ho calls one of the best planted counties with English: in the whole island, by January almost all of them had been killed. He made close enquiry, and found that not one in twenty had escaped.
Father Burke, following the usual Irish Catholic tradition, in- sists on a commission issued in December by the Dublin Council, to enquire into the losses of the Scotch and English settlers by plunder. Because it says nothing of massacres, he infers, more Hiber- iiicOf that it denies that there had been any massacre.
Unfortunately for this theory, there is a letter, dated the first of December, from the same Council to the Long Parliament, declaring that at the time when they were writing, there were 40,000 rebels in the field, who were putting to the svord men, women, and children that were Protestants, ill-using th^ women, dashing out the brains of the children before their parents' faces. I avoided before, and I shall avoid now, all details of this dreadful subject. If a tenth part of the sworn eyidence be true, the Irish acted more like fiends than human beings. I will q^ote only a single page firom Sir John Temple, a daa- ttnguished lawyer, who was in Dub- lin all the time, and describes what be saw with his own eyes. Father Burke insists on the cruelties of Sir Charles Gootey in Wicklow. Sir John Temple will show you Sir Charles Coote*B provocation. There is no dispute, I must remind you, about the expulsion of the Pro- testant families from their homes. They were tamed out literally naked in the wild October weftther,
with wisps of straw or rags, to cover them, to find their way to the sea.
Idsten to Sir John Temple.
* That which made the condition more formidable was the daily re- pair of multitudes of English that came up in troops miserably des- poiled out of the North, many of good rank and quality, covered with old rags, and some without any covering but twisted straw; wives came lamenting the murder of their husbands ; mothers of their children barbarously destroyed be- fore their eyes; some sosnrbatedas they came creeping on their knees, others fix)zen with cold, ready to give up the ghost in the streets ; others distracted with their losses, lost also their senses. Thus was the town, within a few days after the breaking out of the rebellion, filled with these lamentable spec- tacles of sorrow, having no place to lay their heads, no clothing to cover their nakedness, no food to stay their hunger. To add to their miseries, the popish inhabitants revised to minister the least com- fort to them. Many lay in the open streets, and others under stacks, and there miserably perish- ed. Those of better quality, who- could not frame themselves to be common beggars, crept into private places, and wasted silently away, and died without noise. I have known some that lay naked, and having clothes sent, laid them by, refusing to put them on: others would not stir to fetch themselves food, though they knew where it stood ready for them ; and so, worn with misery and cruel usage, their spirit spent, their senses failing, the greatest part of the women and children thus barbarously expelled from their habitations, perished in the city of Dublin, leaving their bodies as monuments of the most inhuman cnielties used towards them.'
Do you suppose, ladies and G 2
18
Address in Aiiswer to Father Burke,
[January
gentlemen, that the friends and countrymen of these poor women would have been in a very amiable humour with such sqpnes before them ? Do you suppose that when they knew other English families within reach of the city were ex- posed to the same treatment, they ought to have sat still and allowed the Irish to repeat in Leinster the atrocities which they had perpe- trated in the North? Coote col- lected a body of horse out of the fugitive men who had crowded into Dublin. The Irish were beginning the same work in an adjoining county. Coote rode into the Wicklow hills and gave them a lesson that two parties could play at murder. I do not excuse him. But the question of questions is, who began all those horrors ? and what was the true extent of them ? Father Burke thinks everything, short of murder, which the Irish did to have been perfectly justifi- . able. I do not agree with him — but let that pass. He says a Pro- testant has proved that the Catholics killed only 2,100 people, and there- fore it must be true. Again a com- pliment to a Protestant — but it is a matter on which I will not accept the mere opinion of any one man, even if ho do call himself Protestant. I am sorry to say I have known many Protestants entirely unable to distinguish truth from falsehood. rBir William Petty, a very able, .cool-headed, sceptical sort of man, examined all the evidence, went himself, within ten years of the events, over the scene of the mas- sacre, and concluded, after careful consideration, that the number of Protestants killed in the first six months of the rebellion, amounted to 38,000. Clarendon and Coote give nearly the same numbers. Yotj, who would form an indepen- dent opinion on the matter, I would fidvise to read (whatever else you read) Sir John Temple's history of the Rebellion, and Dr. Borlase^
history of it. Temple was, as I said, an eye-witness. Borlase's book contains in the appendix large selec- tions from the evidence taken on oath before Commissioners at Dublin.
I shall stiU be met with the * thundering English lie ' argument ; and so &r you have but my asser- tion against Father Burke's. In my opinion he treats the Irish massacre precisely as he treats the Alva massacre and the St. Bar- tholomew's massacre. The wolf lays the blame on the lamb. But that, you may fairly say, is only my view of the question. Very well, I have a proposal to make, which I hope you wfll indorse ; and if we work together, and if Father Burke will help, we may arrive at the truth yet.
Ireland and England will never understand each other till this story is cleared up. Now, I am fond of referring disputed questions to in- different tribunals. An enormous body of evidence lies still half ex- amined in Dublin. I should like a competent commission to be ap- pointed to look over the whole matter and report a conclusion. It should con^st of men whose busi- ness is to deal with evidence — i.e. of lawyers. I would have no clergy, Catholic or Protestant. Clergy are generally blind of one eye. I would not have men of letters or historians like myself and Father Burke ; we partake of the clerical infirmities of disposition. By-the-bye, I must beg Father Burke's pardon. As a priest I have put him out of court already. I say I would have a commission of experienced lawyers, men of weight, and responsible to public opinion. Four Irish judges, for instaiice, might be appointed — two Catholic and two Protestant; and to give the Catholics all advan- tage, let Lord O'Hagan, the Catho- lic Irish Chancellor, be chairman. Let these five go through all the survivingmemorials of the Rebellion of 1 64 1, and tell us what it really
1873]-
Address in Atiswer to Father Burke,
19
ma. We sluJl then have sound groiind under na, and we shall know what are and what are not the thnndering lies, of which indis- pntahlj, on one side or the other, an enormons nnmher are now afloat. I can conceive nothing which woold hotter promote a reconciliation of England and Ire- land than the report which such a commission wonld send in. If the heads of the Catholic Church in Ireland wonld combine to ask for it, I conceive that it could not be refused.
For myself I have but touched one point in twenty relating to this business where my evidence contra- dicts Father Burke. But I will pursue it no further. A few words will exhaust what I have to say about Cromwell. About him I cannot hope to bring Father Burke to any approach to an agreement with me. There are a few matters of fact, however, which admit of being established. Father Burke Bays that Cromwell meant to exter- minate the Irish. I distinguish again between the industrious Irish and the idle, fighting Irish. He showed his intentions towards the peasantry a few days after his land- ing, for he hung two of his own troopers for stealing a hen from an old woman. Cromwell, says the Father, wound up the war by tak- ing 80,000 men and shipping them to the sugar plantations in Barba- does. In six years, such was the cruelty, that not twenty of them were left. 80,000 men. Father Burke ! and in six years not twenty left. I have read the Thurloe Papers, where the account will be found of these shipments to Bar- badoes. I can find nothing about 80,000 men there. When were tbey Bent out, and how, and in what ships ? You got these num- bers where you got the millions of Dative Irish in America. Your figures expand and contract like the tent in the fairy tale, which would
either shrink into a walnut-shell or cover 10,000 men as the owner of it liked. Father Burke says that all the Irish Catholic landowners were sent into Connaught. Lord Clarendon says that no one was sent to Connaught who had not forfeited his life by rebellion ; and next, that to send them there was the only way to save them from being killed, for they would not live in peace. If an Englishman strayed a mile from his door he was murdered, and there was such ex- • asperation with these fighting Irish that if they had been left at home the soldiers would have destroyed them all.
Ireland was made a wilderness, says Father Burke, and that is true — but who made it so ? The nine years of civil war made it so— and it could not revive in a day or in a year. If three or four thousand Irish boys and girls were sent as apprentices to the plantations, it was a kindness to send them there in the condition to which Ireland had been reduced; but when I said that fifteen years of industry brought the country to a higher state of prosperity than it had ever attained before, I am not an- swered when I am told that it was miserable when the settlers had been at work only for four years. I will refer Father Burke, and I will refer you, to the Life of Claren- don, if you wish to see what the Cromwellian settlement made of Ireland. Clarendon hated Crom- well and would allow nothing in his favour that he could help. Bead it then and see which is right — Father Burke or I.
Never before had Ireland paid the expenses of its government. It was now able to settle a permanent revenue on Charles II. In 1665, when many estates were restored to Catholic owners, the difficulty was in apportioning the increased value which Puritan industry had given to those estates.
20
Address in Answer to Father Burke.
[January-
It is true that the priests were ordered by Cromwell to leave the coimtry. Father Burke says that a fine was set on the heads of those that remained. In a sense that too is true ; but in what sense P A thousand went away to Spain — of those that remained and refused to go— of those who passively stayed, and did not conceal themselves, and allowed the Government to know where they were — some were ar- rested and sent to Barbadoes — some were sent to the Irish Islands on the west coast, and a sum of money was allowed them for maintenance. Harsh measures. But Father Burke should be exact in his a<;count. Those who went into the moun- tains and lived with the , outlaws shared the outlaws' fate. They were making themselves the companions of what Bnglishmen call banditti — what the Irish call patriots. I don't think any way they were a good kind of patriots. It is true that a price was set on the heads of those who absolutely refused to submit. It was found too &tally successful a mode of ending with them . Father Burke quotes a passage from Major Morgan, I will quote another: — * The Irish,' he said, * bring in their comrades' heads. Brothers and cousins cut each other's throats.'
Mr. Prendergast, the latest and most accomplished historian of those times, a man of most generous dis- position and passionately Irish in his sentiments, alluding to these words of Major Morgan, makes a comment on them, which tempts me to abandon in despair the hope of understanding the Irish cha« racter.
' No wonder they betrayed each other,' he says, ' because they had no longer any public cause to main- tain.'
I shall notice but one point more.
In speaking of the American re- volution, I said that a more active sympathy was felt at that time for the American cause by the Pro-
testants of the North of Ireland than by the Catholics, and that more active service was done in America by the Anglo-Scotch Irish, who emigrated thither in the eighteenllL century, than by the representatives of the old race. Do not think that I grudge any Irishman of any per- suasion the honour of having struck a blow at their common oppressors when the opportunity offered. I was mentioning, however, what was matter of fact, and I wished to remind Americans that there is a Protestant Ireland as well as a Catholic — ^with which at one time they had intimate relations.
There is distinct proof that dar- ing a great part of the last century there was a continual Protestant emigration from Ireland to this country. Archbishop Boulter speaks earnestly about it in his letters, and states positively that it was an emigration of Protestants only — that it did not affect the Catholics. So grave a matter it was that it formed the subject of long and serious debates in the Irish Parlia- ment. The Catholic emigration meanwhile was to France. A few CathoHc peasants may have come to America after the Whiteboy risings in 1760, but I have seen no notice of it. Likely enough Catholic soldiers deserted from the regiments sent out from Ireland. Likely enough gallant Irish Catholic gentle- men from the French and Spanish armies may have gone over and taken service wikh you. I admire them all the more if they did. But after allowing all this, out of every ten Irishmen in America at the time of the Revolution there must have been nine Protestants. While as to the Catholics in Ireland (I would say no more on this subject if Father Burke had not called on me for an explanation), I can only say that while the correspondence of the viceroy expresses the deepest anxiety at the attitude of the Presbyterians, no hint is dropped
1873]
Address in Answer to Father Burke,
21
of any fear from the rest of the popoIatioB. Father Burke qaes- tions my knowledge of the facts, and quotes &om McNeven that there were 16,000 Irish in the American ranks. I shonld have thought that there had been more — ^but Father Burke in claiming them for the Catholics is playing with the name of Irishman.
I quoted a loyal address to George III. signed in the name of the whole body by the leading Irish Caihohcs. Father Burke says that, though fulsome in its tone, it con- tains no words about America. As he meets me with a contradic- tion, I can but insist that I copied the words which I read to you from the original in the State Paper Office, and I will read one or two sentences of it again. The address declares that the Catholics of Tre- laod abhorred the unnatural rebel- lion against hie Majesty which had broken out among his American subjects, that they laid at his feet two milhon loyal, faithful, and affectionate hearts and hands, ready to exert themselves against his Majesty's enemies in any part of the world, that their loyalty had been always as the dial to the sun, trae though not shone upon.
Father Burke is hasty in telling me that I am speaking of a matter of which I am ignorant, but I will pursue it no further, nor but for his challenge would I have returned to it. Both he and I are now in the rather ridiculous position of contending which of our respec- tive friends were most disloysd to our own Government.
Here I must leave him. I leave untouched a large number of blots which I had marked for criticism, but if I have not done enough to him already, I shall waste my wordg with trying to do more;
and for the future as long as I re- main in America, neither he, if he returns to the charge, nor any other assailant must look for further answer from me.
His own knowledge of his sub- ject is wide and varied ; but I can compare his workmanship to no* thing so well as to one of the lives of his own Irish Saints, in which legend and reality are so strangely blended that the true aspects of things and characters can no longer be discerned.
I believe that I have shown that this is the true state of the case, though from the state of Father Burke's ndnd upon the subject, he may be unaware precisely of what has happened to him.
Any way I hope that we may now part in good humour ; we may differ about the past; about the present, and for practical objects, I believe we are agreed. He loves the Irish peasant, and so do I. I have been accused of having no- thing practical to propose for Ire- land. I have something extremely practical ; I want to see the peasants taken from under the power of their landlords, and made answerable to no authority but the law. It would not be difficult to define for what offence a tenant might legally be deprived of his holding. He ought not to be dependent on the caprice of any individual man. If Father Burke and his friends vnll help in that way, instead of agitating for a separation from Engknd, I would sooner find myself working with him than against him. If he will forget my supposed hatred to his religion, and will accept the hand which I hold out to bun, I can as- sure him that the hatred of which he speaks, like some other things, has no existence except in his own imagination.
22
[January
NEW EDITION OF THE PASTON LETTERS.*
AMONG the many services ren- dered' to English literature by Mr. Arber in prodacing his series of English Reprints, not the least is his issue of the Paston Letters, under the able editorship of Mr. James Grairdner. The literary his- tory of this famous collection is itself a curiosity. Valuable alike to the antiquary, the student of social manners, and to the historian of a period of which there are but few memorials, these Letters, after having lain almost unheeded for three centuries, excited so great an interest on their first appearance to the world in 1787, that the whole edition of the first portion pub- lished was sold within a week. Horace Walpole was delighted with them; and the King having ex- pressed a desire to see the originals, the editor, Mr. Fenn, generously presented them to his Majesty in three volumes (being part only of the whole), for which he received the honour of knighthood. Unfortunate gift! for these three MS. volumes are not now to be found among the Library of Greorge III. in its home in the British Museum, but have disappeared, the tradition being that ' they were last seen in the hands of Queen Charlotte, who it is supposed must have lent them to one of her ladies in attendance.' It is to be hoped, for the honour of womanly curiosity, that this suppo- sition may one day be cleared up.
Fenn published in all four vo- lumes, two in 1787 and two in 1789; and left, on his death in 1 794, a fifth volume ready for the press, which was not, however, printed till 1823, by hisnephew Mr. Serjeant Frere. By that time all the originals, strangely enough, were missing, even those of the fifth volume. But Fenn had (as has been lately shown) done
his work of transcribing and pre- paration throughout with suck mi- nute and painstaking care, that the want of the originals does not seem to have been felt, and historian afler historian has made unquestioning use of the materials thus thrown open, resting on the good faith of the upright editor. And it does not seem that this confidence has been misplaced. In the ForttiigJitly Review for September i, 1865, Mr. Herman Merivale for the first time cast doubts upon the authenticity of the Fasten Letters, questioning whether they are * entirely genuine, without adulteration by modern ^ands,' and making various objec- tions to their value and truth. This not only produced in the following month a reply from Mr. Gairdner, who had made the Letters his spe- cial study, convincingly meeting doubts and objections, and explain- ing difficulties from the volumes as they stood, but led to the discovery shortly afterwards, in Mr. Frere's house, of the originals of Volume V. As the late Mr. J. Bruce describes, 'inclosed in a little paper case, which somehow or other Mr. Ser- jeant overlooked, there were in his possession these hundred and twelve papers, ail arranged in per- fect order, prepared with the g^reat- est care, and marked by Sir J. Fenn with neat pencil memoranda. They were found in a box of Sir J. Fenn's/ together with about two hundred and seventy other papers. The im- portance of setting at rest all doubts being evident, these papers now underwent a strict examination at the hands of a Committee composed of eminent members of the Society of Antiquaries, and a close comparison with Fenn's print of them : the re- sults of which were, on the count of their being really genuine, the
> 7%e Paston Letters. A New Edition. Edited by James Gaiidner, of the Public Becoid Office. VoL I. Henry VI. 1422-61. Arber's Keprinta, London, 1872.
1873]
New Edition of the Paston Letters.
23
strong testimony that 'a minute inspectioii of eveiy one of the mann- Bcripte, without the discoTerjr of any single circnmstance which could create a doubt, has produced in the minds of the members of the Com- mittee the most unhesitating cer- tainty upon this point;' and as regards Fenn's work, *that the errors are very few, and for the most part trivial;' while the charge of interpolation or garbling was in- dignantly repelled by Mr. Bruce. WLen so much can be proved of the posthumous volume, which had not the benefit of correction by the practised eye of its editor, the in- ference is that the earlier volumes will be certainly not less trust- worthy. On the whole, the weight of evidence and argument before the finding of Mr. Frere's manuscripts was in favour of the authenticity of the Paston Letters; it amounted after that discovery to a certainty, which no one at all familiar with the methods of handwriting, Ian- goage, and forms of composition of older English manuscripts can with- stand.'
The story does not end here. The separation of the members of this precbus collection of manuscripts has been so cruel that they, are fonnd in different places; twenty letters are at the Bodleian Library in the Douoe collection, two rough Tolomes of Fastolf and Paston ma- nnscripts are in the great reposi- tory of the late Sir T. Phillipps (now belonging to his daughter), * single letters, which once formed part of it, occasionally turn up at aactions, and some have been sold to foreign purchasers,' while the large number found by Mr. Frere ^ 1865, including the hundred and twelve originals of Volume V., are now safely deposited in the
British Museum. It is much to be wished that the whole of the known relics of the Paston Letters, as well as others that may hereafter be dis- covered, may sooner or later find their fitting home in the National Library.
The difficulties, then, in the way of a conscientious editor, anxious to glean all assistance from a reference to the minutisd of his originals, were great. A careful and comprehen- sive study of the whole of the Letters, together with a rare know- ledge of the politics and the course of history of the fifteenth century, had long ago made it apparent that, while individually &ithful to tihe manuscripts, Fenn had in many in- stances made errors as to their chronology, while the whole of his collection was wanting in unity and harmony of arrangement. The reason of this seems to be, as Mr. Bruce explains, that Fenn selected some letters from each chronolo- gical parcel for his first experimental publication; that for the second, he also made a further selection ; and that finding still some papers of interest remaining in each parcel, he chose out one hundred and twelve of these for a last and fifth volume. Thus it is not to be wondered at if the re- lations of one to another are not always correct. The discovery of the box of letters at Mr. Frere's house seemed to present a good oc- casion for recasting the whole in a new edition, in which errors of date should be rectified, broken links joined, and to which large additions could be made, with the benefit of the increased facilities now at com- mand for the accurate study of ancient documents.
The first volume now brought out accordingly contains nearly two hundred new letters and papers
' Those curious in the details of the histoiy here slightly sketched are referred to the FoHwghtly Esview, Rrst Series— Nos. viii. and xi. ; Mr. Brace's excellent paper, and the Report of the Committee of the Society of Antiquaries, both printed in Archaclogia, ^]' xiL, toeether with the collateral testimony borne by Mr. K. Almack in a letter pnnted in the same volume.
21
New Edition of tlie Paston Letters.
[Januarys
given either in extenso or in short ab- stract, and dovetailed in with those reprinted from Fenn; the whole, amounting to nearly fonr hundred, belong to the reign of Henry VI., A.D. 1422 to 1 46 1. Besides bring- ing his exact histoncal knowledge to bear upon the text and chrono- logy, the editor has prefixed a valu- ble Introduction, in which he gives particulars as to the Paston family, and what he modestly calls 'a political survey' of the reign of Henry VI. from his marriage to the disastrous end.
In the story of the Fastens we see one of those which show that in former times, as well as in modern days, a family could rise from small beginnings, and attain by the industry, individual genius, or force of character of some of its members, to wealth, honour, and position. Known as small gentry before the days of Henry VI., the Pastons soon became of importance in their county, Norfolk, and later, in the service of their coimtry, till having reached the peerage their line ended in 1732, in the person of the second Earl of Yarmouth. And among the family none seems to have con- tributed so much to build up their fortunes as the * Good Judge,* Wil- liam Paston, of the days of Henry VI., who (though we are now taught to call him by his plain title of esquire, instead of that of knight, to which he appears to have had no claim) stood high in trust and in his profession; he bought much property in the county, part of which, Oxnead, in course of time became the principal seat of the family. It adds an interest to his name to find it connected with that of Thomas Chaucer, the son of the poet, from whom he purchased the manor of Gresham. Speculation may curiously wonder whether it was. in his country house here that the chief butler to Henry V. turned over those papers and relics of his immortal father out of which the Cook's Tale is supposed to have
come forth. Another Paston, Cle— ment, was an eminent naval com* mander and soldier in the time orT Henry VIII. and Mary. But to go back to the times of the Letters, the Judge's wife Agnes, who wrote to him the *good tidings of tho coming and the bringing home o£ the gentlewoman' who was to be his daughter-in-law, and who begged him to bring for the young lady * a gown of a goodly blue, or else of a. bright sanguine,' to add to hex- mother's gift of a goodly fur ; that daughter-in-law herself, Marg^et, the brave and devoted wife of John Paston for six-and-twenty years ; John, the trusted adviser of Sir John Fastolf, with his own troubles in the possession of his rights ; his sister Elizabeth, anxious to get married to escape the hard disci- pline of her mother; the able bat thrifty Fastolf; all, though old friends, stand in these pages with fresh life and colour in the linea- ments of portraits somewhat ob- scured by the mists of time.
But it is in their connection with English history, notwithstanding tho assertion that 'no additions whatever to our knowledge of the politics of that most obscure age has been made through ' them, that tho letters and papers of the Pastons and their numerous correspondents possess an importance which in- creases in interest as they are studied. It is true that we gain some highly interesting glimpses into the side- walks of the history of this period from one or two other collections of letters, such as the Stonor Papers ; the ShiUingford correspondence in 1447-8, where the shrewd and energetic Mayor of Exeter shows us how an important suit should be conduoted in high quarters, and admits us to the * ynner chamber ' of the Lord Chan- cellor at Lambeth if we put our- selves *yn presse' with hiim; and the domestic correspondence of the Plumpton family, of Yorkshire, from 1460 to 1 551, for which, however,
1873]
New Edition of the Paston Letters.
25
tbe editor only claims that they * contain much that is of interest to the general I'eader, as leading him to an exact knowledge of the social condition of the English gentry ; ' bnt these groups of p^rs do not approach the Paston Letters in variety and extent, and are confined in their range of view. To appreciate the bearings of these on EbigHsh history the general reader needs a sketch of the political events of the middle of the fifteenth centaiy, into which shall be wrought, together with the great leading cha- racters then Buccessively treading the stage, and the great events bronght about by their actions, the state of feeling among the people, and the influence which this, com- bined with local jealousies, had upon the fortunes of a private family like the P&stons. Such a sketch Mr. Gairdner provides, nor does he for- get now and then to point out the constitutional aspects of questions that have forced themselves on his notice.
The loss of the English possessions in Normandy, the consequent un- popularity of the Duke of Suffolk, and his subsequent murder (for the account of which history is indebted to John Paston's friend Lomner), heavy taxation and general injustice, a^ placed in the sequence of the caoBes which led up to the rebellion of Jack Cade, ' a movement which we must not permit ourselves to look upon as a vulgar outbreak of the rabble,' and which is proved to have been conntenanced by many of good position. The story of this move- ment and <rf its * Captain of Kent,' tod of two successive * Captains ' ^i^herto unnoticed by historians, with evidence of risings in different pwta of the country, indicate the tronbloos times in which two at Ifisst of the letter writers were seriously engaged. We have it put before us in a
connected narrative how the weak-
ness of the Government and the ill- management of the revenues — which ended in the almost total loss in 1451 of the French possessions, and brought back from Ireland, to be ready to take his stand at the helm of afiaird, the able and moderate Duke of York, the only man at this time who seems to have been fit to govern — ^were the cause of much miscarriage of justice in the country, as exemplified in the contest of John Paston with Lord Moleynes and his advisers, Tuddenham and Heydon. The riotous proceedings of Charles Nowell and his gang in Norfolk, too, were then possible, * outrages ' which we are told 'were not the works of lawless brigands,' but * were merely the effects of party spirit.* The controversy between York and Somerset — ^hated for his maladministration in Normandy — in which, though York exhibited his detailed articles of accusation ^ against his opponent, Somerset gained the upper hand for a time, immediately precedes the extra- ordinary blank in our knowledge of internal affairs in 1452-3. But the royal progress which it is known the Kmg made in that year seems to have finished with a visit to the Duke of York at Ludlow ; and Sir John Fastolf, to whom William Wor- cester, alias Botoner, was secretary, is found soon after lending money to York upon the security of some of his jewellery.
Then in August 1453 came the sad illness of the King, and later those two scenes which stand out from the old records with such pathetic interest, of the Queen pre- senting his first-bom babe to the unconscious King, and of the grave deputation from the Lords in their anxious but vain endeavour to ob- tain recognition : ' they could have no answer, word ne sign, and there- fore, with sorrowful hearts, came their way;' scenes only equalled by the touching interviews recorded
* Now first printed, £roia the Cottonian MSS.
26
New Edition of the Paston Letters.
[Janaarj
by Paston's friend Clere, when at CbristanaB 1454 the King recovered his faculties. The' constitutional difficulties created bj the imbecility of the head of the State were great, but the appointment of York as Protector in April 1454 brought something like order into the state of affairs, and a vigour unknown for years. It was soon after this that William Paston, writing to his brother in Norfolk of the intended visit of Fastolf, tells him that * the Duke of Somerset is still in prison, in worse case than he was ; ' whence he was set free on the King's re- storation to health, to be slain in the collision at St. Alban's, May
22, 1455-
We must not linger over the events of this unhappy period, which are worked out with care and minuteness, and upon several obscure points of which fresh light is thrown by the aid of new mate- rials. The whole aspect of the civil war comes before us in the remarks on the claim of York to the throne. * Though the step was undoubtedly a bold one, never perhaps was a high course of action more strongly suggested by the results of past experience. After ten miserable years of fluctuating policy, the attainted Yorkists were now for the fourth time in possession of power; but who could tell that they would not be a fourth time set aside and proclaimed as trai- tors ? For yet a fourth time since the fall of Suffolk, England might be subjected to the odious rule of favourites under a well-intentioned king, whoso word was not to be relied on.' Through the alterna- tions of health and sickness of the King, the dissensions between the great Lords and the Queen, the mis- government of the country at home
and abroad, the wretched days of Ludlow, Bloreheath, and North- ampton, the story winds its way^ telling as it goes along the hopes and fears of the Pastons and their connections. Friar Brackley writes how my Lord of York has been written to, *to ask grace for a sheriff the next year.' Master William Worcester studies French and grumbles at his master's stin- giness, every now and then giving a sly hit at political affairs, while old Sir John Fastolf is preparing to make his peace with Heaven by the foundation of a religious college at Caister after his death. With that event, which took place on the 5th of November, 1459, this volume closes, leaving the hope that the tale may be taken up in like manner with the remaining letters.
We have but space to refer to one constitutional problem touched upon, on which Mr. Gairdner's words may well at the present day be suggestive. Speaking of the re- lative power of the Houses of Lords and Ck)mmons, when it became ne- cessary to form a government in place of the imbecile King, he says, *' The influence which the House of Commons has in later times ac- quired is a thing not directly re- cognised by the Constitution, but only due to the control of the na- tional purse-strings. Strictly speak- ing, the House of Commons is not a legislative body at all, but only an en^e for votmg supplies.' How is it then that (to name no other instances) in 1455 the Commons, having presented a petition or * grievance,' would proceed to no other business till that was com- plied with ? In this presenting of 'petitions' lies the kernel of the matter.
L. TouLMiN Smith.
"^5«®|(Siir>
IS7'S]
27
A YlSrr TO SHAMYL'S COUNTRY IN THE AUTUMN OP 1870.^ By Edwin Ransom, F.R.A.S. F.R.G.S.
AFTER making some acquaint- ance with St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Nijni Novgorod, I left the latter port on August i8, 1870, with a through ticket for Petrovsk, on the Caspian. I had the services of a courier who had been twice with English trayellers in Caucasus.
The right bank of the Volga is often picturesque, though never so high, broken, or wooded, as at Nijni Novgorod. The great towns at which the eteamer stopped, thongh of course partaking of the unhemptness of all Russia and the Russians, possess handsome fea- tures, and promise well for the fatnre. Astrakhan — one of the first names one learns in geography — marked so large and alone on the map, is far less in sis^ and in in- terest than some of the river towns. Flat it is and sandy, among vast sand flats, which produce water- melons and cucumbers utterly in- nnmerous for the vegetable-eating
Government may make the moun- tain lines of Caucasus and Ural the boundaries between Asiatic and European provinces, and carto- graphers may colour their maps on a similar rule, but the traveller mast feel himself quite in Asia when he Bees the nomadc Kalmuks with their skin tents on both sides the great river, when he meets their queer, flat, featureless faces on the steamer and in the bazar at Astrak- han, and stiU more when he finds himself immersed in Mahometan- ism in Daghestan, where every feature of life and civilisation is Oriental excepting the Russian sol- dier and the Russian post. Near most of the Caspian ports
the sea is shallow and open, so that anchorage is impossible in windy weather. From Astrakhan all mer- chandise and passengers are con- veyed some 70 miles across the delta between the river steamers and the sea steamers in vessels of lighter draught. Besides this na- tural detriment to Astrakhan as an entrep6t, any bad weather on the Caspian hinders commerce and re- stricts the navigation season, which begins among the ice-floes in May, and ends in autumn through short- ness of water, fogs, or frost. A railway between the two seas from Poti to Tiflis and the good harbour of Baku will be an incalculable help to the commerce between East and West.
Tartars, Armenians, and Per- sians are numerous in Astrakhan. If the former continue successful in effecting a cross with the Georgians, may we not hope for fewer of the tiny eyes and almost imperceptible noses, and more of such high quali- ties as mark the Kazan Tartars in the offices and hotels of St. Peters- burg and Moscow ? Since Persia ruled the countries west of the Caspian, the snivelling Persian mer- chant tracks the steps of trade, and the sturdy Persian labourer finds employ where the less able Russian or the less willing native often grumble and starve.
The voyage from Astrakhan to the sea steamer is most tedious. During the night the fiery tail of sparks from the chimney of the tug steamer leads the way, and the day reveals nothing but boundless swamps with banks of reeds. Peli- cans, cormorants, and other sea- fowl occasionally pass ; an outlying
* In this paper foreign words are spelt nearly a« pronounced ; for the vowels the pnTujing usage of German and Italian pronunciation is intended. The letter ' c ' is not adopted, heing an expletive, and its sound generally uncertain.
28
A Visit to ShaniyVs Country.
[Javmary
island station requires a lengthy call ; and then we steer for a speck on the horizon which in the course of time proves to be the Prince Co7istantine, a good paddle-steamer of perhaps 700 tons, which afler some four hours' work receives her cargo. A glorious night on a gently rolHng sea was followed by a fresh morning. The traveller from Russia looks out for the first sign of moun- tains— at the foot of brown craggy hills lie the white houses, the bar- racks and the pier of Petrovsk. The time of year was recommendable rather for convenience and health than with regard to the aspects of nature. Probably every part of the Russian dominions needs all of 'May' it can get to give it a charm to the Western visitor. I found through- out Southern Russia the steppe and all but the highest uplands alike brown and bare and void of the picturesque ; but on the other hand the weather was for three months never unfriendly, and the roads and rivers never incmivenables, Petrovsk is mostly modem. The new har- bour ought to become very useful, being the only one north of Baku ; but from the style of progress in works and in trade the engineer may well be glad of all the com- pliments he gets. After looking over two neat old forts and a fine new lighthouse,! was anxious to be on the way to Temir-khan-shura, the capi- tal of the district, there to present an introduction to the .governor, and to learn what sort of a journey I could make to Tiflis. (I had utterly failed in seeking information about Daghestan, excepting from Ussher's London to PersepoUs.) A diligence — a sort of omnibus — .was assigned as a favour (instead of the renowned little boat on four wheels — telega — ^the representative vehicle of the Russian post, which figures in every English book on Russia), and the anticipated expe- sience of 'urging the inevitable pwraclodnaia over the interminable
dteppe' was deferred. The hom blew loud, and the four horses abreast galloped off.
For the first stage the route skirted the foot of the hills, their shadows then varied by a finely- clouded sky. To the right wtis a boundless level — the steppe. The driver goes where are the feiwest inequalities in the ground, and where a track is made in the dried herbage. After passing some cnU tivated patches of the ungracious looking soil, Kumkurtale is ap- proached. It is about fourteen miles from Petrovsk, and on a cliff overlooking the stream which flows down from 'Shura. The honses are all of mud — as in many Eastern countries — solid and du- rable as the 'cob' of Devonshire. Some com was being grathered in small stacks by the homes or on their roofs; in another place oxen drawing a chair on nvheels were being urged round the thickly- strewn threshing-floor. With a fresh team a start was soon made, and novelties drew attention on either hand. The road here turned down into the valley, following it right up into the mountain country, stumbling along and across the rugged river bed. Here was a walled vineyard with its * tower' in the comer, there a field of maize, a corn field, or a garden, with the life-giving irrigation, showing the native thrift of the sons of the soil. After an hour's jolting a plateau is reached, which commands striking panoramas of the peaky, rocky hills, and valleys which mark the approach to this * mountain-land * — Dagh-cstan. Sandstone is the pre- vailing formation, and sometimes very picturesque. A village — aul— - is passed every few miles, and one learns often to recognise its pre- sence by the cemetery-hill, with its crowd of rude monuments and high upright stones, which may cfitch the eye long before the flat brown tops of the snugly-set houses. The
1573J
A Visit to ShamyVs Country.
29
countenances and style of the peo- pie are the greatest contrast to either Russian or Kabnnk, recalling one's ideal of a race of mountaineers. One may feel it almost an Honour to be looked at by the grand large eyes of the boys. Long strings of carts are passed on the road, the drivers generally wearing the mas- sive cone of white, black or brown sheepskin — the hat of the Cauca- sians. The last &ul before reaching the town is perhaps as picturesquely placed as any in Daghestan, the old Tartar keep overhanging its village and its gardens ; barest hills around, on which the sun is just setting, and one wonders what an evening was like up in that tower fifty years ago, when the levelling Christian Rnss had not placed his foot on the land, and when feud and fight were the Kfe of the people. Again the horn is blown, and we are impelled at the utmost speed of Russian etiquette, through the fortifications of the Russiazi town, up a street which seems a mixture of tree- trunks, dried mud, and stones. Hero it may b© indeed well to try to make some virtue of the neces- aity of taking things as one finds them. The traveller's position in a diH^ee is really like that of *a pea in a rattle.' He learns to hold m as the victim of the Russian post most do, especially when leaving or nearxng a station.
In the darkness we turn out at the Hotel Giinib ' — ^the chief tavern of the town — ^kept by an Armenian, as is usnal in Caucasian countries ; and the darkness inside renders an en- tiya matter of time. On reach- ing ^ first floor — where are gene- n^y the principal rooms, the cham- bers, bilHard-room and dining-room —we find some little glass petro- leun lamps (the same &at do duty iadoort and oat anywhere within a thooaftDd miles this side of the oil wells of Baku). Presently a waiter «{iena the tall, cpeeky» Rassian-like doors of the bet^r f4pH0urtments ; by
* strong representations * we obtain some leather mattresses to mitigate the boarded bedsteads or couches, which with a few stools are the sole furniture. Earthenware may be borrowed as a favour, though the Russian ablutions are usually done out of doors, the water being poured on the hands Oriental- wise. Thirty miles of very unaccustomed shaking indisposed one to criticise long or severely the circumstances of the new quarters.
The nextmoming was sunny, and I soon turned out to see if there might be anything pleasing orinteresting in the little capital of Northern Dagh- estan. Temir-khan-shura numbers about two thousand souls, and a similar number of soldiers were stationed there under canvas on a hill- side. The residence of Prince George-adzi, the governor, the sum- mer house of Prince Melikov, and the extensive barracks, are stone- built, white-washed, and roofed with the Russian sheet-iron or tiles. Nearly all the other build- ings are entirely wooden (unless the roofs be in some cases thatched), painted white and green, or more often unpainted. The streets are quite unpaved, excepting d la coroUtroy near the town gates, with white lamp posts at the comers, and relieved by rows of Lombardy poplars. My servant ascertained that the governor was on a tour of inspection in his district, but was expected home in two or three days.
This delay was vexing. Though Gtinib — ^the celebrated stronghold of Shamyl — was my proximate ob- ject, I was dependent on Prince Greorge-adzi for information . and letters to help me to make such journey to Tiflis as might promise most of interest. And so neces- sity, added to courtesy, caused a stay of four days before making fuiiher progress towards the great mountams* In one of the chief shops were a few comestibles, doubtless, supposed to be choice
30
A Visit to ShamyVs Country.
[Janaar^
samples of Western civilisation — most prominent being the ubiquitous and representative * Beading Bis- cuits.' The inevitable 'photo- grapher,' here as in almost every other town announced on a large board, was unable to supply any views of landscape or building. Qerman though he generally is in Caucasus, I never, except at Tiflis, could obtain the pictures the tra- veller usually likes to gather en route. Most evenings there was good billiard playing at the hotel be- tween the officers, natives especially.
The country around 'Shura was hilly and broken, brown and tree- less. On the north side of the town the river rushes at the foot of high sandstone cliffs, on the crest of which are some old forts. Not far off is a Russian cemetery, con- taining the damaged tombs of several officers. One evening we spent with a German settler in the valley, where he has a very good orchard and a mill, besides a brewery. From the aspect of things in general, I did not wonder at his expressing a wish to sell out and leave the country, though his motives might be more social than commercial, for he assured us the goodwill of his beer-houses in the town was no trifle. His ale hardly reached the standard of the bright, light, fra- grant * Astrakhanski pivo,' which is the emulation of brewers and drinkers in East Caucasus.
On Saturday, August 15 (O.S.), I witnessed the service of the last day of the Feast of the Assumption. The first day I had spent among the throng of worshippers at the many churches and shrines at *Holy Trinity,' near Moscow. Here, on the outskirts as it were of the Russian Church and the Russian realm, the observances were fully attended. The church is promi- nent, placed in the midst of a square, and is coloured over outside with red ochre. It was crowded, and the memorial and symbolical
adjuncts of the altar were nearly obscured by dense incense. The next morning the market-place in. the native quarter was alive ivitlx peasants of all sorts and ages, dealing chiefly in fruits and com. I bargained for some different kinds of grapes at about a penny a pound, and found them fairly good.
My last evening at 'Shura was spent most profitably with a distin- guished officer stationed there for a short time, I believe, for scientific purposes. He was a Finn — ^had been in Chodsko's expedition in Armenia, and was one of those who mounted Ararat — so apparently felt entitled to speak jauntily of climbers with whom he &ared scientific ob- servations were a secondary matter. He had been colouring maps of a great part of Caucasus, to distinguish the many tribes (some of which are limited to a single village), and the varied dialects and different languages current between the Cas- pian and Black Seas. He was a real philologer — knew English, too, though, like several Russians, espe- cially ladies, he would not talk it, through ignorance of our pronnn- ciation. The governor I found gra- cious, as Russian officers are always represented to be. He did not speak French, so my interpreter- servant from Moscow was required as a medium. He advised the fre- quented route from Gunib to Vladikavkaz and Tiflis, rather than straight over the high mountains by Telav, and gave me letters to all the authorities on the way. He assigned as escort and interpreter as far as Gunib a brave officer of the 1 n ati ve militia — Abdullah — lately high in the service of Shamyl. I went to the post-office and gave a letter to the master — the last I could post before reaching the capital — its address requii^ in Russian as well as English, that it might be read and registered. |
Late in the afternoon we rode out of Temir-khan-shura, and for
1873]
A VM to ShamyVs Country,
31
foQiieen miles rode slowly soatli- warda, mostly in the shades of a serene evening. The roar of grass- hoppers alone disturbed the still- ness. We soon left the Caspian road which leads to Derbem, and on onr way passed some large vil- Iftges ; one of them, they said, more popnlons than the town. The reli- gions exercises of onr leader caused more than one protracted delay. His Mahometanism I may observe WAS Snnni, the Shia forms of the fiuth are nearly confined to the coast and other districts formerly under Persian rule. About nine o'clock ▼e tnmed into the Government house at Jengntai, and the dirty divan in the chief room was assigned for my repose. The journey was resumed by starlight. Passing out of the village a cemetery was on either hand, and in each was a clus- ter of the people awaiting the dawn in ftttitudes of devotion. I was afterwards repeatedly impressed with this practice, and more than once noticed the like observance also with Russians on ship-board.
The country was not poor, the soil being very light and not shallow, and generally cropped with maize and bnckwheat. Villages lined the route at sbortintervals — winding between the houses in these auls was some- times not easy or agreeable. The people and animals weretuming out for the day — the men and women appear generally to share the work —then they were reaping the bar- ley, stacking it, or laying out the bundles on a threshing-floor; in other directions they were to be heard urging the cattle at plough. The road throughout to Gunib was in course of improvement : bridges, little and big, being built, pretty thoroughly t^. The old route of ^gbly.four miles from 'Shura (de- scribed by 2iir. Ussher in his London to PenepoUa in 1863) will be rather shortened. Mine was of some fifty- eight miles, leading through the mountain gorges.
veil. VII.— so. IXXVII. NEW 8EBIES.
We left the road, taking a long steep climb, from the sunmiit of which is a very extensive view of the 'Shura hill country. The south side overlooked a very deep set &6\ — Aimyaki. Forthe descent itwas quite necessaiy to dismount, and my horse, once in the village, soon led the way to a house, which proved to be Abdullah's home. There I was soon occupied in clearing a plate of small raw hen eggs, and was the subject of much regard by child- ren on neighbouring roofs, and by the host's two little ones. Putting my spectacles on the boy, he went off with them to his mother, who was preparing a repast which she and Abdullah produced with the graceful manners characteristic of the Mussulmans of the country. An hour in the quiet and in the dark was afterwards refreshing. I found a 'siesta' was usual after dinner with all classes in Caucasus — Rus- sian and native. This Abdullah received from the late Emperor one of the (re-captured) Russian flags which Shamyl had taken. The great conflict seemed very recent^ and one could hardly imagine the best part of the men we see having been deadly enemies to Russia, and now even acting as showmen in Shamyl's head-quarters.
The mountains here were of chalk and limestone, the strata rising towards the south, as I have heard does Daghestan gene- rally, the steeps being on the sotUh side of the main range, oveiv hanging Kakhetia. The exit from Aimyaki is through a strange^, lofty, jagged * gate.' We followed a brook for perhaps four miles, having often a thousand feet of precipice on each side, and sometimes the space at top as narrow as the river bed along which we made our way. The rock formation, I thought, rendered tho scenery more striking than the simi- lar gorges in Switzerland, Tyrol, andNorth Dovrefield — ^more broken^ rocky, and ridgy. Before reaching
D
32
A Visit to ShamyVs Country,
[January
the main valley of the Kazikoiso, a contretemps caused some diver- sion, the path being covered with water through a miller making extra ' pen.' Where the chffs were four or five yards apart all was water for more than twice that dis- tance. The lad who had charge of the horses wont first, and the * yu- kha' (baggage horse) next — ^that missed footing on the narrow path where the water was not two feet deep, and threatened soon to sub- merge itself. However, Abdullah managed to get it through without my baggage being seriously wet- ted. I went next, and my horse tumbled, but soon scrambled out. The horses revenged themselves in a fashion by treading down the banks of the miller's dam in cross- fined it.
Passingthroughaconsiderable &a\ — Gergebil — ^where maize was grow- ing in great luxuriance, with plenty of trees and crops, we crossed the Elazikoisu by a strong bridge, the river running far below, confined by the rock strata to a precisely straight course for several hundred feet. The valley seemed filled with hills of boulder, covered or tufted with grass. As the road approaches the mountain on the other side the valley, it passes vast piles of this boulder deposit. The latter seems packed along the north side of the mountain, the strata of which rises . vertically from one to two thousand feet above the bed of the Kara- koisu — the Gunib stream. The road through the mighty defile of this river is in a notch perhaps half-way up the cliff". The sides are often too abrupt to allow a view of the water : they vary from fifty feet to a mile in distance from the tower- ing crags opposite. After a broad valley the mountains again close in on the road. The latter ascends considerably to where the stream coming down from Gunib is spanned by a light iron lattice bridge which carries the road to Ehunzakh.
Thence the white house of the go- vernor at Gunib is visible, high on a prominent crag. The main direc- tion of the road is nearly straight, and also level, though the actual distance is nearly trebled by the incessant windings caused by gul- lies and lateral valleys. Au officer en route from St. Petersburg to Gtmib kept company for an hour or two. He had left 'Shnra that morning, and on his way had had a ducking in the mill-stream. His white pony held on its way better than our caravan, at the waddling trot which is liked in this country. Daylight was gone long ere we reached the bridge which introduces to the zigzags of Gunib. Many lights on the mountain side had shown where we were, and gradually we found ourselves among them.
The governor's reception was most cordial, and the apologies profuse for a disarrangement of the establishment caused by the preparations for the visit of the Viceroy, the Grand Duke Michael, then on a progress through Dagh- estan. I found myself violating a maxim of Russian travel — never to be just before or after a great man ; and afterwards on the post road I was two or three times hindered for hours through the horses being requisitioned for the imperial cor- tege, I was soon desired to join a few officers who were invited to sup with a general of engineers. The latter was on a tour of inspec- tion of the barracks and other military works in the district. The party was a pleasant one, for all could speak French or (German, and the engineer had lately been on an expedition to the country east of the Caspian. He had visited the high, bare Balkan hills, and produced his sketch book and notes. The new Russian colonia there, Krasno- vodsk, is costly, for there is very lifcde in the neighbourhood to sup- port it, but it is hoped it will be
1873]
A Visit to ShamyVs Counivy,
33
QseM in the Grovemment system of Western Turkestan. A special steamer maintains the communica* tion irith Baka on the opposite coast.
Next morning 1 was conducted, bj two handsome officers of the moimted native militia, around Ganib. The town is on the side of the mountain mass which bears the name, and at the onlj point which is not precipitous, and therefore accessible. Above the town are yet more zigzags, and the road is generally supported by walls or arches. The barracks and upper fortifications seemed considerable, for the force stationed there was a battalion ( i , ooo men) . The fastness of Gunib is about 33 miles round, and the objection to it as a fortress is its extent. The interior is much depressed, and a deep gorge carries off the numerous streams towards the town. This rent appears water- worn in places, and at a height which struck me as far above the possible level of any glut which could now be furnished by the sur- roimding slopes. ShamyVs dis- mantled village is in the midst of the uplands. His house is tenanted to keep it up ; it is similar to all other houses in the country, but has a noticeable Jittle wateh tower and stone gateway. Here two stupid, ugly children, dressed in loose blue cloths like the women, took hold of me, and, besides two ugly black sheep with the fat tails, were the only signs of life. From this house Shamyl went down the valley to meet his conqueror. Prince Bar- yatinski, in a birchwood by the road within sight of his home. An open building, its roof supported by eight piUara, and perhaps four yards square, covers the spot where for- mally ended Shamyl's twenty-seven years* war against Russia. A stone on which the Viceroy sat bears the date of the chieftain's submission — 4 PH. Aueust 26, 1859.
We followed for a few miles the
windings of a road, in course of construction, up to a newly made tunnel: a route which materially shortens the J distance from Gunib town to Karadakh, the next gar* risen fort on the west. The Kus- sian soldiers on the work were numerous, digging, stone-breaking, and building. They had extem- porised huts from the haycocks. They were just then at their mid- day chief meal, which was, as else- where, vegetable broth, with coarse bread and a shred of meat. The outer end of the tunnel suddenly reveals one of the wildest and grandest prospects in the country, and overlooks a very deep and precipitous valley, the descent to which is by many zigzags. At the governor's to dinner, besides his wife, a cultivated lady from Goorgia, and her elder chil- dren, were the supper party of the previous evening. Gunib is a * crack * station, but living is costly. I noticed many officers there. It is a sanatorium tor invalided members of the Government services. The rocks are apt to be loose, and the ways in the town are very irregular, and dangerous in the dark ; several soldiers get thrown down or crushed in the course of a year.
The Russian soldiers are always at work, at least in Caucasus. Here they seemed to do everything. Their clothes are well worn and patched ; uniforms are not always worn in Caucasus — sometimes an officer's old white coat is donned instead of the grey — ^but always the cap and long boot, without which a man is hardly a Russian. A plateau in the midst of the town is useful for drill. It was formerly fortified, and a curious collection of field pieces and other artillery, native, Russian, and Persian, is now set out by the church. The latter building is a first and principal consideration with the Russian at home or abroad, and on effecting an occupation the conqueror or colomst has been said
34
A Visit to ShamyVg Country,
[January
to declare, * We never give up con- secrated ground ' 1
The next day I rode and strolled about the long slopes of pasture, and mounted to the crest, which rises almost like the edge of a saucer. The wild flowers were yet more plentiful than before, though I did not recognise any which are not familiar in Bedfordshire. The rainy season here is in the three months which end in July, so the vegetation was fresher than in the same latitude in the Pyrenees. The grasshoppers were countless and noisy, brilliant green, black and red, yellow, and yellow-green. On and off for an hour or two my attention was taken by a kind of broken net- work over the sky — immense flights of cranes coming from the Caspian southward. The panorama from Gunib is very extensive and very impressive. Down below the won- derful precipices on the southern edge were the tiny fields of the fertile valley, the pairs of oxen just dis- cernible drawing their loads. A large part of the main range of East Caucasus was visible, with patches of snow on the higher parts only.' Countless great summits jagged the southern horizon, but neither the extreme right nor left revealed the longed-for peak of Shebulos or Basarajusi. Between was spread a chaos of mountain land, clefb irregularly, and present- ing no marked ridges oropen valleys. The northward prospect from Gunib shows how the country breaks down towards the steppe-— the Tshetshnian forests shading its limits in that direction — forests connected with woeful memories of slaughtered columns of invaders. The commanding heights imme- diately to the east I had hoped to climb, while waiting a few days for an expected good chance of strik- ing across the wild high country straight for Tiflis ; but being taken with a diarrhcBa, I gave a day to rest, and another vainly to laudanum,
then started westward one evening* for Karadakh, vid the tunnel and. the valley below it I had looked into. The country to the south has been little visited, even by Russians. I was told it would be difficult and dangerous to cross it« except in quiet weather, and witH a full supply of food and of cover- ing, there being little population , and the tracks tedious and rocky in the extreme. The charms of the route I afterwards took com- bine varieties of forest and culti- vated vegetation, with crags and steeps probably nearly equal in scale to those of the undescribed districts.
Taking leave of my bountiful en- tertainers, I quitted their mansion and traversed the great mountain of GKinib for the last time, de- scending on the contrary side to the town by the new exit to the deep valley. For several versts we took a doubtful course along a stony little river bed, sometimes nearly grown up with bushes, while the evening shades soon confined the view. It became too dark to dis- tinguish the coal-seams in the clifiT, which the Russians work by adits. We could have no communication with our guide, he, like other na- tives, knowing no speech but that of his congeners; and we found ourselves bitterly deceived by a six hours' ride having been described as consisting of as many miles, the latter being indeed barely the length of the direct line. The moon rising on the left revealed in front a cliff of some 600 or 800 feet, with a narrow rift in the direc- tion of our march. At the bottom of this was the stream, and utter darkness. Some soldiers — Finns — sleeping on huts at the entrance of the passage, recommended us to stay there ; but as they said the fort was but three versts beyond, I went on. My timid courier, whose breeding was of Homburg, Baden, and Paris, abhorred such
1878]
A Visit to ShainyVs Gountry.
35
jonrnejiiig ; and his dislike of my tour was nearly equalled by his dis- like of the taste that chose its pleasare in snch a country. We dismounted, and splashed along the bed of the stream in the dark for nearly a quarter of a mile. The top of the ravine was straighter and narrower than the bottom. The view looking ont at each end was very striking. It was eleven be- fore the Karadagh foH was reached farther down the valley, and I was vexed to be obliged to call np the officer in charge. After some delay he kindly prepared ns lodging and snpper. The host was a devoat old peasant soldier of thirty-five years' service, who had been pro- moted repeatedly in consequence of bravery in the Crimean war. Snch hononr has been unusual in the Russian army, the full flock of nobility being largely dependent on the State for 'relief in the form of appointments. Almost cveiy evening of my journey I could follow in the first f:onversa- tion enquiries as to what we each were, our route, and about the events and probabilities of the war. Now I had to interrupt this, for, not knowing if the remaining thirty versts to Khunzakh might prove ninety, I was determined on rest without delay, and an early start.
The morning rose fresh, bright,
and hot. Forward the valley was
wider and a little cultivated. After
miles of laborious zigzags the road
emerges on a very elevated poor
pasturage, where were pretty little
sheep and goats of all colours. In
a depression lay the large new
fortress, barracks, and village of
Khunzakh. The mountains around
were bare ancl wild: though the
strata were broken, they offered
no striking feature excepting one
fiqnarc solitary mass rising from a
valley on the left, which had caught
nj eje all the morning. The valleys
of this conntry are probably between
five and seven thousand feet above
the sea-level, and the heights not often three thousand feet above them. Many soldiers were at the unfinished works building and banking; several were dousing in the pools and water- falls of a torrent close by.
Here again the governor and his lady proved assiduous and cordial entertainers, and I was glad of rest. The table was supplied by some va- riety of meats, as well as of fruits and vegetables. Besides household deco- rations, I was struck with ornamental cups, plates, and sticks carved from a red root, and bearing designs in imbedded silver points. The long day's journey hence was by a toil- some route, and one on which tra- vellers are occasionally molested. I yras favoured with the company of a young officer, lieutenant to the governor of Botlikh, the next lodg- ing place. He was a Mahometan, belonging to one of the old terri- torial families of this the country of the Avars. He had been in the military academy at St. Petersburg, and his intelligence and polish, in addition to his general appearance, gave one the impression of a culti- vated genial German. I was again and again struck with a superior- ity in the Tartar blood of Kazan, in the few old Tartar families of Poland, and in the Tartar and other stocks in East Caucasus, all of them retaining more or less strictly their ancient £Edth and worship, thanks to the restrictive jealousy which the Russian State so wisely bears to- wards its Church.
We journeyed for some hours on the elevated pasture land, not unfrequently crossing rills and streams which support the herbage for numbers of sheep and horses. The herdsman, whether on foot or on horseback, is a curious object in the Cancasian landscape ; his boarka like a conical roof ob- scuring the man, or perhaps sup- porting his ' chimney-pot ' — the massive upright cylindrical hat of sheepskin. This bourka is his one
96
A Visit to BhamyVa Country.
[January
proteotipn against cold and wet ; a stiff round cloak made of a thicj^ coat of cow's hair, felted on the inner side. It is made similarly to the woollen felt for tents (the kibit- kas of the Tartars), which is a quarter of an inch or more thick, and almost impervious to heat, cold, or damp. The best bourkas are made in this neighbourhood, and the price at a fair is about twenty shillings. I afterwards noticed many loads of them en route for the towns of the steppe.
Curiosity led me to enter a little mill which stood by the way. It was a mud box, perhaps six feet in height and width, the length being rather greater; the water entering on one side, a dashing mill race coming from un- der it on the other, and some dust of the trade marking the doorway. The 'honest miller' was represented by two children — they shovelled bai'ley. into the hollowed tree-stem from which the stones were sup- plied; the meal descended into a similar trough, out of which the sacks were filled, and then put ready for the fiarmer's donkey. The little mill stones were apparently just above the primitive turbine or radial water-wheel, which was un- der the floor, a single shaft sufficing, while the water, conducted down a steep enclosed spout, impelled the spokes of the wheel by its velocity.
The day wore on as we passed the abrupt bare brows which overlook the next large valley. We sought rest in a village below; and un- pinning the door of a good cottage, we found a tidy, shady room. The occupants were away; there were earthen bottles on the floor, and a table, in the drawer of which were a Koran and a Mecca passport, common signs of a Moslem home. We started on down steep chalky crags to the bank of the river — a kara koisu they called it — and a black water it was, opaque ^th the washings of its upper
course. A g^rassy orchard of peacli , apple, and vine was an agreeable and refreshing resting place for the delayed midday meaL After mucli. time was lost in waiting for the needed relay of horses, we fbllowedl a good road up the left bank of the river for many miles. Crowds of natives were passed; many were returning from their meadows with asses loaded with hay, the slight burden being placed in panniers or in a capacious frame which bestrode the little beast like a letter YIT. The sun set behind mountains to the right, and thunder and light* ning threatened in front, deepening* the frowns of a most wild and precipitous defile. The mountains here are very abrupt, and the dangerousness of the road, which hardly finds its broken way» often at a height of loo or 200 feet above the stream, renders the joomey more striking.
Before reaching the village of Tlokh some curious salt works are passed. Saline streams issue from the foot of the mountain, and are caught in earth pans or tanks (for filtration and evapora- tion) just before entering the river. They extend for a quarter of a mile along the side of the road. Wend- ing tnrough the rugged little village we suddenly mounted in single file one of Shamyl's bridges, a fragile structure of fir trees. Each course of logs jutted endwise beyond the preceding one, and, successively overhanging the abyss from either side, slanted upwards towards the apex, where a rather doubtful bond was maintained between the unwill- ing timbers. Soon after this we reached a place where the road had fallen, so had to make a round by a large village (Enkhelli) set on a rocky declivity. The way through the place was under houses and rock, for near 300 yards of dark passages. Emerging, strong moon- light showed the very broad, stony bed of a torrent which was to be
1878]
-4 Vmt to Shamyrs Country,
37
crossed. The Karasa ma last crossed by an EagHsh-made iron bridge near the abandoned fatal fever-stricken fort of Preobrajenski. Some of Sfaamyrs vast monntain wall is here observable. It was constracted of loose stones only, and abont the height of a man ; its iTandering conrse sometimes marked by a little embrasure or nde battery.
We pnlled np at the governor's house at Botlikh by nine o'clock, and received a good supper and quarters. It was sultry. I paced the stone terrace of the mansion for some time waiting for theyukha, which was belated, and watching the lightning playing over the bare mountains in front. As my course was now northvrard toward the steppe, and Tiflis was behind me, 1 wanted to pnsb on and get over the detour. My kind conductor of the previous day started us in the mormug with two old native militia, Jesos and Mahomet. The latter proved chatty — ^not that we knew Russian, but we very often ex- (dianged looks and signs, and some- times sweetmeats. It is interesting to try to convey feelings, ideas, and &cts without using the tongue, and sorely in no part of the world is it so necessary as in this polyglot land, where a native can hardly niake him- self nnderstood when he has crossed amoontainor followed a stream for twenty miles.
Winding and climbing up for
some hours, we left the walnut
trees and cornfields far below.
Before finishing the ascent we
were canght in a heavy rain cloud.
1 took refoge in a haycock; the
escort untied their bourkas from
their saddles, and unfolding them
^vetly awaited the sunshine, which
was flitting over the slopes before
us. We had rich views of valley,
moimtainfi, and clouds. The little
broken plain of Botlikh is very
picturesque, and I should think
▼cry fruitful. The temperature
was much lower at top ; the bright green, grassy, rolling hills, and soon a bright blue lake — the first and almost the only one I saw during my whole tour — were refreshing to mind and body afler bare hill-sides and confined valleys. My watch has been useful in lonely situations to tell the time for midday prayers. This day the halt was with several herdsmen, who were minding their cattle, sheep, or horses. My nag lost a stirrup in rolling on the soft grass, and the search for it prolonged our delay. We again ascended green slopes, and on a ridge perliaps more than 7,000 feet high were for some minutes in biting wind and rain. Getting imder the clouds- another valley opened before us, with fields of com, which our horses were eager to taste, and, beyond, a village of the usual sort, with a large tower in the middle. The latter is generally square in this country, and in height from twenty to fifty feet. A few more verste and we were glad to find comfort in the white tents of the little camp set just above the second Forelno lake^ The name is from the trout (forel)^ which is taken by line. The captain in charge was a Pole, and so we were heartily entertained. Out- side, dismal silent mists alternated with driving rains.
The next day was the last of mountain and horseback in Dag- hestan — no more ascending. The kind Pole and his aide, a cap- tain of engineers, accompanied us for two or three hours along the irregular rooky shore of the lake, which was perhaps as beautiful as it could be without tree or bush ; then on the line of a new road to Viden, which they were constructing. Natives were at work with the soldiers, and the task wa.<i in many parts laborious and tedious. We witnessed one blasting and the echo, and were afterwards several times unplea- santly near to the flying fragments
38
A Visit to ShamyVs Cirunti-y.
[January
from ezplosions fat above. All the proceBsesandstages of road-making (blasting, digging, levelling, and metalling) were witnessed, for all the daj^s jonrnej was along the new route, and often bad enough. Where the work required was slight the way seemed finished, but where the mountain side presented a precipice there was merely a notch, perhaps hardly so wide as the horse's body. On the open uplands people were chopping the berbage, which here included a great variety of not very esculent growths. They were screaming and chanting as though to the eagles, and always ready to talk with the passer-by. Then at last came the view of the distant steppe, and in the foreground of the grand prospect were charming great green slopes, studded with bushes and trees. A long steep descent among mountain ash, acacia, and sycamore, led to a warm wooded valley, which traverses the great forest border of Daghestan, here about twenty-five miles wide. Four miles farther, across meadows, by the side of a rippling stream, lay Viden. This place consists of a strong white wall, enclosing a square of mud, trees, and houses — stagnant ditches surround the dwellings, and after what we had heard of fever in more auspicious places, I did not much relish a night in what appeared, from the recent rains, like an en- closed marsh.
The next day's journey of forty miles, mostly level, was interest- ing for little save as a contrasc with what we had passed before. The mode of travelling was by veritable paraclodnaia, the rudest little waggon with a bit of hay for protection in the jolts. (The vehicle is 'telega,' the mode of travelling, or the * turn-out ' itself.
is termed either 'paraclodnaia,* or if, as usual, drawn by three horses, * troika.') The destination vras Orosnai, a fortified town and Rus- sian settlement on the road between the Caspian Sea and Vladikavkaz. The Yiden valley is clothed throngli- out with foliage, and the windings of the route sometimes lead through a sultry wood, with dense under- g^wth, soon opening again on a prospect enhanced by river and rocks. Each verst is marked by a burnt tree, and there yet remain some of the sentiy stations perched on a scaffold perhaps ten yards high. The forenoon halt for break- fast was at the foot of Arsinoe, where the valley debouches on the plain. Southward some mountain snows gleamed in the sun. Yellow hollyhocks were splendid among the brushwood of the open country. There were filberts and hops, the largest I ever saw, and the wilder- ness was made up of elders and a spiny bush with large yellow berries. A few miles before Grosnai "we heard the roar of water, and found ourselves near an expanse of rocks and stones — the bed of the Argon — an indefinite width, but doubtless oflen covered for half a mile. We crossed with some difficulty ; there were three streams, the last nearly a yard deep. In the deepest part some buffaloes, drawing a heavy cartload with some people a- top, were stubbornly enjoying the water, as, indeed, they are apt to under such circanistances. We crossed the river Sunsha by a larg^ bridge, and after a long drive through the ragged-looking town, found some venr fair quarters in an inn kept by a «few. He was atten- tive, and appeared more to advan- tage on a week day than on Sab- bath,' which was the morrow, and which he observed bv an extra ex-
' Curious that Rutsia is the only Christian country where the Jew finds his designation of the seventh day eurreot. The first day is * Resurrection,' the ^erenth * Sabbath/ the rest of the week numbered.
im]
A Visit to BhawyVs CoufU-ry.
39
hilantion of wodky. We also lefb on that daj, and perhaps be was the less agreeable from objecting on principle to parting with cus- tomers on the day of rest.
Here we really did encounter the stir caused by tbe imperial progress, the Grrand Dnke Micbae], Viceroy of Cancasia, being expected at Grosnai next morning. Tbe first tMng in preparing for a journey by the Russian post is tbe 'padarojnia/ or order for horses, for there is trouble and delay in getting it, excepting in small places. My ser- vant was occupied for hours in Tainly seeking the needed authori- ties; they were away, or inacces- sible. The chief of the governor's staff, a mighty German, was kind, bat hopeless of our getting on even if we found horses for the first 5tj^. He promptly and precisely gaye us the news of Sedan, which (my courier being a German) made US both for the time almost in- different to our difficulties. I re- peatedly found the best news of tbe war from the German officers in the Russian service, who had direct telegrams frequently.
The next morning rose clear and hot. All — ^natives and Russians — were agog, and absorbed with the imminent advent of their ruler. I had walked through part of the dreary town — dreary because, Russian-like, it seemed spread over the greatest possible space — and having passed the northern gate and its draw- bridge, was strolling among the waiting groups and the soldiers, and tbe forty or fifty horses which were brooght in readiness to gallop off with the cortege. Sundry ranks of Cossack cavalry were there to give effect to the reception, arrayed in their full uniform, the long black coats trimmed with red, blue, or white. Soon after the expected time six carriages, each drawn by fi^e or six horses, tore through the town, and pulled up abruptly, fol- V)wed bv the Grosnai staff. The
Grand Duke alighted, and received several papers. Romanov-like, he is large, dignified, and pleasing. He wore then the plain white linen coat and flat cap of the * service.* Many w^ere the salutations, while music added to the rather singular effect of the scene. Horses were soon changed, and all dashed off* into the plain. Through the cour- teous attention of the German offi- cer, padarojnia and horses too were soon at the inn, and early in the afternoon we had succeed- ed in making two stages towards Vladikavkaz. Then we were caught, two other parties being already in the same fix ; and from the clear-' ance of post and other horses which were used or retained along the imperial route for draught and dis- play, it was absurd for travellers to be even impatient.
The village was, like most others on the route, well planted, mostly T^-ith poplar and acacia, and sur- rounded by a quadrangle of mud wall, capped with the common chevaux de frise of thorn bushes pegged down on the inside. I amused myself for the fii-st time with spelling out the entries in the postmaster's journal, which is attached by string and seal to its desk. Afber a wait which seemed less weary to the Russians than to the Englishman, a ' fare * arrived from the westward; and' we succeeded by a little money and a little self-assertiveness in getting the starost, or master of the station, to give us at once the returning vehicle. The post rules do not allow travellers to use a team, ex- cept after it has been a certain time in the stable. As several stages forward were farmed by the same man, we paid in advance, taking a receipt, which amounted to a ' through ticket.' Not the least ad- vantage of this vms the avoidance of the need of carrying change. The currency required in post jour- neys in the Russian dominions being one-rouble notes and copper (even
40
-4 "FwiY to ShamyVs Couninf,
[January
the recent debased small silver being scarce in some districts), the quantity nsed of the latter is great; indeed, I have repeatedly started, in the morning with as mach as a pound's worth of five- kopeck pieces, and before paying the last stage of a long day's travel feared lest I might have to part with a rouble (28. 6c?.) to cover a few odd kopecks in the charge. With three white horses we careered over the dry light soil and the dust- covered weeds. The country was uninteresting, meagrely cultivated, though a stanitza or village of a thousand or two people occurred every four or six miles.
The Sunsha was in the plain to the left, and to the right a low range of hills formed the horizon. The golden 'hunter's' moon rose ex- actly behind us ere the long stage was ended, and when the journey was resumed its disk, then silvery, was just in our faces. The post- master was in that objective mood to which enforced laziness and other ungenial circumstances frequently reduce his ilhterate class. The ten- dering influence of a quarter rouble in acknowledgment for the can- dle and hot water for tea soon brought him to, and also insured horses before dawn. The Russian ' post-house affords rooms with wooden benches or couches. All provisions are carried, but fire and water can generally be had for a gratuity. For the last stage or two zke mountains were in full view, many bold peaks clothed in snow. Afterwards the significant Russian churches rose in the foreground, Vladikavkaz seemed interminable, but passing one rambling street after another, we reached * Gostin- nitza Noitaki ' — an hotel well kept by a Greek named Noitaki. After being really blackened by the prairie dust a wash was not a short busi- ness, and it behoved a stranger to turn out in his * best,' considering the bevies of smart people who were
doing honour to a high day. Tliere .was a muster of troops and mnch music.
This town— the *Key of the Caucasus '-—occupies both banks of the Terek, where it issues from the Dariel pass into the open country- It is at equal distances from theiiwa seas, and has a large share of the traffic pufising from one to the other, as well as of the intercourse be- tween Russia proper and Transcau- casia, the Dariel being in point o£ fact almost the only road between. Europe and Asia. Vladikavkaz is obviously important as a military position, and is the head-quarters of a large force, which, with its offi- cers and other Government attaches, imparts some gaiety and bustle to the place. Parallel with the river is a boulevard a mile long; the Govern- ment buildings in it are handsome, and many other structures of brick are rising, including a theatre. The Terek is often a dangerous neighbour, although its sides are rocky; it has destroyed several bridges, and is spanned now by a good iron one, and by another, a mile lower, of wood. When not in clouds the mountains yield an im- posing view from hence, and tlie river rattling over its stony bed brings a cooler air towards tlie plains.
I was so lucky as to find a Northamptonshire gentleman and his family, from whom I learnt much, chatting in English too as I did not again for many weeks. He is a Government architect, and showed me photographs of baths and other buildings he had erected, both at Piatigorsk and Vladikav- kaz. Among the callers at his house I was struck with the juxtaposition of a true Georgian beauty and a young Polish Mussulman — the very finest eyebrows, nose, and com- plexion, facing the plain, intelligent visage, and small dark features of the Tartar pedigree.
For company and economy my
1873]
A VisU to ^hamj^Vs Countnj.
41
ooDiier sought some one with whom I could agree to share a good tarantas for the hundred and tiurty miles hence to Tiflis. An old colonel was found lodg- iog on the side of the boulevard opposite to Noitaki's who was waiting for some one to join him. He had a carriage, and its wheels were being re-tjred, for they had come direct &om Vologda, and previously from Archangel! His family were at the Caucasian capi- tal, and he was naturally anxious to finish his ride. I was ready to ap- preciate the roomy, easy accommo- dation of the tarantas, afler rough* ing it in the telega of the ordinary traveller. The former is a capacious and hooded body, with room to lie do?ni in, and placed on two long bearers, which are not too thick to allow of some spring. The ends of these rest on the axles. Such is the vehicle of those who travel far, and who can afford to lay out from 30Z. to 60^. at the coDunencement of the journey. By that arrangement bag- gage has not to be changed at the post stations, the small charge at every stage for the use of the tele- ga is avoided, and a private bed is secnredfor that rest which, whether travelling by night or not, to all but the toughest is needAil in a week's journey, and indispensable in a Sibe- riancontinuous post journey of thir- ty days and nights. The charge for lu>rse8 is the same whether supplied to the private tarantas or the telega of the post service, unless, indeed, the stage be hard or hilly, when the postmaster adds to the team, and the owner of a big carriage has to pay extra though the pace, per- haps, he a walking one, and he himself walk too. The private carriage, as in other European countries, bears a charge at the toll-bars, which occur on the better roads.
We trotted out of Vladikavkaz ^ «^ good chaussee, which, with the grand station-houses, was
ohiefly the work of the late Prince Voronaov. The shadows were lengthening and gloom slowly en- wrapped the massive heights as we drew near them. The Terek was on the lefl, and before i^aach- ing the first station we found the road washed away by it, so the horses had to make their way for some distance over the wide waste of stones which the torrent often suddenly includes in its dreaiy domain. Lars, the second station, is closely sur- rounded by the mountains. Wo stayed the night there; the house and the stables were handsome, well built of hewn stone, and spa- cious. Besides the reasonable fit- tings to a room of sound windows and floor, we found chairs and tables and good wooden couches, on which one's rugs and pillows may be appreciated even better than in a tarantas. The style of the route seemed to indicate an approach to the capital (different, indeed, I after- wards found were the three other routes from east, south, and west, to Tiflis). The horses, however, we understood, have been a con- stant exception; overworked and underfed, they were a disgrace to the post. Five were attfushed to the carriage next morning; on whipping them up at starting they fell at once in a heap, and eventu- ally seemed but able to draw the vehicle without us.
The scene grew more grand where the road crosses to the right bank of the river, and rises for once to some height above it. Putting aside the extravagant language of Ker Por- ter, and also of more recent travel- lers, these renowned 'Caucasian gates ' reminded me of the Finster- muntz. Here was the Dariel defile, and the Russian fortress appeared crouching among the mighty piles of mountain, which seemed to close the way both behind and before. The tumbling of the Terek, fresh fr*om glaciers and snovrs, was the only sound. We were nearly five
42
A Visit to ShamyVs Country.
[Jaonaiy
ibonsand feet above the sea, and the nearer heights seemed at a similar distance from ns. Before Kasbek station was in sight, a bril- liant snow-top suddenly caaght the eye through a clefb on the right, the veritable summit which English- men had been the first to reach, and it was from that station that Mr. Freshfield's party had started for their celebrate ascent of the moun- fein two years before.
The better view from the station itself was clouded, and the weather became dull as we passed the Kres- tovya Qora (Cross Mountain), the received boundary between Europe and Asia, and the watershed between the Terek and the Aragva. Trot- ting down a long series of zigzags, we made a sort of Spliigen descent to the Georgian valley. The old local namesy full of consonants, were samples of the hard- to-be-pro- nounced language of the country, and culminated in the perhaps un- surpassed monosyllable Mtskhet, the last station before Tiflis.
More population, mown grass fields, and a large breadth of tillage, were a contrast to rough uplands and their wild people, to half-cultivated «teppe with untidy natives or Eozak colonists. The afternoon's ride was picturesque ; basalt cliffs rose from the liver, and there were neat auls overhung with trees and surrounded with little fresh corn-stacks. The evening shed a golden and then a rosy glow on the wooded slopes which farther on encircled Pasanur. Behind our quarters, there was a specimen of the ancient Georgian for- tress church, with the short conical roof of masonry. In another direction stood a bran new wooden Russian church, its bright colours staring at every comer. A rugged street was lined with cabarets and shanties.
The scenexy of the next day was less interesting, the hills lower, and the country generally brushy.
The ride was stopped at Mtskhet with the news that nineteen post- horse orders (padarojnias) 'were waiting already; so, instead of reaching Tiflis soon after noon, ive dawdled nine hours at the post- house and finished the journey in pitch dark, entering the city at midnight.
At Mtskhet it rained so as to prevent my seeing anything of the curious village (quondam capi- tal of Georgian princes) or of the rather inviting ruins of an ancient castle on the hill which rose from the opposite bank of the Kiir. This stream, descending from the west, passes close by the post-house, near to which it joins ■ the Aragva, then proceeds to Tiflis, and eventually reaches the Caspian. I killed time in watching the travel- lers, their baggage and equipages, and sometimes succeeded in passing a few remarks, many being educated men, officers of a regiment then en route from a camp in the south- east to Vladikavkaz. The drain on the stables of the post was great, and the trains of impedimenta which we had met belonging to this force had almost blocked the road, especially when a wheel was off, that common occurrence in Russia. Later in the evening came the process of shilling the mails from one waggon to another. Well, our turn came at last, sure enough, five horses at a good trot. We could see nothing except that there was nothing particular to be seen. At the end of a long stage we gra- dually found ourselves in a wide Russian street, with petroleum lamps glimmering across it; very long it was, but a short turn at the end of it brought us to the * Hotel Europe.' There was the very best of quarters, bed and boaitl. Host and hostess Barberon made everj- thing satisfactory, though it was after midnight.
1873]
43
SOME CURIOSITIES OP CRITICISM.
MARKHAM.— I was ^ruck by a remark of yours the other day, Benisoxiy as to the irreconcilably vanons opinions held on certain points by men of superior intelli- gence ; and set about in my mind to recollect examples, especially in the department of literary judg- ments, and I have lately spent two wet mornings in the library hunt- ing np some estimates of famous men and famous works, the estima- tors being also of note. Most of these are from diaries, letters, or oonversations, and doubtless ex- press real convictions.
Benison, Will you give us the pleasQie of hearing the result of Tonr researches ? It is a rather interesting subject.
Markhain, I have only taken such examples as lay ready to hand. If Ton and Frank are willing to listen, I will read you some of my notes ; and you must stop me when you have had enough. First I opened onr old friend Pepys. Since his Diary was decyphered from its shorthand and published (as he never dreamed it would be) we think of Samuel as a droll gossippy creature, but he bore a very different aspect in the eyes of his daily associates. Evelyn describes him as *a philosopher of the severest morality.' He was in the best company of his time, loved music and books, and collected a fine library. He was a great frequenter of the theatres and a critical ob- server of dramatic and histrionic art. Well, on the i8tofMarch,i66i, Mr. Pepys suwRomeo and Juliti ^ ^ the first time it was ever acted ' — ^in his time, I suppose—' but it is a play of itself the worst that ever I heard, and the worst acted that ever I saw these people do.' * September 29, 1662— To the King's Theatre, where
we saw Mitlsummer NigliVs Dream^ which I had never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid, ridiculoas play that ever I saw in my life.' * January 6, 1662-3 — To the Duke's House, and there saw Twelfth Night acted well, though it be but a silly play, and not relating at all to the name or day.'
Bemson. Pepys was certainly sensitive to visible beauty, and also to music ; to poetry not at all. Shakespeare's fame seems to have made no sort of impression on him.
Frank, We must remember, how- ever, that most if not all of these that Samuel saw were adaptaiions^ not correct versions.
Markham, He had a somewhat better opinion o£ Macbeth, * Novem- ber 5, 1664 — To the Duke's House to see Macbeth, a pretty good play, but admirably acted.' ' August 20, 1666 — To Deptford by water, reading Othello, Moor of Venice [this, doubtless, was the original], which I ever heretofore esteemed a DMg^^^y good play ; but having bo lately read TJie Advetiturea of Five Uoures, it seems a mean thing. *" The bustling play which Pepys so much admired was translated or imitated from Calderon, by one Sir George Tuke, and is in the twelfth volume of Dodley's Old Plays, April 15, 1667, ^^ B^^ ^^ ^^® King's House * The Change of Croicmes, a play of Ned Howard's, the best that ever I saw at that house, being a great play and serious.' August 15, he was at the same theatre, and saw The Merry Wives of Windsor, ' which did not please me at all, in no part of it.^ ' The Taming of a Shrew hath some very good pieces in it, but i& generally a mean play.' (April 8, 1667.) Later (November i) he
^ Pepyfly S^ edition, 4 toIs. London, 1854.
u
Some Curiosities of Griticism.
[January
calls it * a silly play.' The Tempest lie finds (November 6, 1667) * the most innocent play that ever I saw ; * and adds, * The play has no great wit, but yet good, above ordinary plays.' To do Samuel justice, he was * mightily pleased' with Hamlet (August 31, 1668) ; * but, above all, with Betterton, the best part, I believe, that ever man acted.'
Franl;. It is pleasant to part with our friendly Diarist on good terms. Honv persistently, by the way, Shakespeare held and continues to hold his place on the boards amid all vicissitudes, literary and social. This very year, in rivalry with burlesque, realistic comedy, and opera houffe, he has drawn large audiences in London.
Markham, Whenever an actor appears who is ambitious of the highest things in his art, he must necessarily turn to Shakespeare.
Benison, That double star, called Beaumont and Fletcher, has long ago set from the stage. It is curi- ous to remember that there were hundreds of dramas produced in the age of Elizabeth and James, no few of them equally, or almost equally, successful with Shake- speare's ; many written by men of really remarkable powers ; and that not a single one of all these plays has survived in the modern theatre.
Frank. Might not one except A N&iv Way to Pay Old Debts of Massinger ?
Benison. That is revived, rarely and with long intervals, to give some vehement actor a chance of playing Sir Giles Overreach. The Duchess of Malfy and perhaps one or two other old plays have been mounted in our time for a few nights, but excited no interest save as curio- sities.
MarkJuim. But there have been fluctuatians in taste; in Pepys's time, and not in Pepys's opinion merely, the star of Shakespeare was by no means counted the brightest of the dramatic firma-
ment. I have a note here from Dryden, which comes in pat. In his EsFay on Dramatic Poetry^ b.e says that Beaumont and Fletcher ' had, with the advantage of Shake- speare's wit, which was their pre- cedent, great natural gifts, improved by study; Beaumont, especially, being so accurate a judge of plays that Ben Jon son, while he lived, submitted all his writings to his censure.' *I am apt to believe the English language in them arrived to its highest perfection.' * Their plots were generally more regular than Shakespeare's, especially those that were made before Beaumont's death ; and they understood and imi- tated the conversation of gentlemen much better.' . . . Their plays are now the most pleasant and frequent entertainments of the stage ; two of theirs being acted through the year for one of Shakespeare's or Jon- son's ; the reason is, because there is a certain gaiety in their comedies, and pathos in their more serious plays, which suits generally with all men's humours. Shakespeare's language is likewise a little obso- lete, and Ben Jonson's wit comes short of theirs.'
Frank, It is very comforting, sir, to find the best holding up its head, like an island mountain amid the deluge of nonsense and stupidity, which seems to form public opinion.
B&iiison, The nonsense and stu- pidity are only the scum on the top. It is plain that public opinion , or rather say the general soul of mankind, has, in the long run, proved to be a better judge of the comparative merits of plays than Dryden or Beaumont.
Markliam. I have sometimes thought that old Ben's Silent Woman would still please if well managed, and Tlie Fox, too, perhaps. They have more backbone in them {pace our great critic) than any- thing of Beaumont and Fletcher's. Bat now, with your leave, I'll ^o on a century, and pass from Pepys
1873]
Some Guriosiiies of Oriticisin,
45
to Doctor Johnson and Horace Walpole.
Frank, Who by no means formed a pair.
Markham, Very fer from it. Both, however, are notables in literaiy history, and men of nn- donbtecl acnteness. The Doctor's opinion of Milton's sonnets is pretty well known — ^those * sonl-animat- ing strains, alas ! too few,' as Wordsworth estimated them. Miss Hannah More wondered that Milton could write 'snch poor sonnets.' Johnson said, * Milton, madam, was a genins that conld cnt a colossus &om a rock, but conld not carve heads upon chexry-stones.' *
Take another British classic. 'Swift having been mentioned, , Johnson, as nsnal, treated him with little respect as an author.'* * He attacked Swift, as he used to do upon all occasions. . . . I wondered to hear him say of Qullivei's Travels^ "When once yon have thought of big men and Httle men, it is vexy easy to do all the rest " '*
Gray was also one of the great Doctor's antipathies. * He attacked Gray, calling him " a dull fellow." BoswELL: "I understand he was reserved and might appear dull in company, but surely he was not dull in poetry ? " Johnson : " Sir, he was dull in company, dull in his closet, dull everywhere. He was dall in a new way, and that made many people caU him great. " ' *
Nop did Sterne fare much better. 'It having been observed that there was little hospitality in Lon- don— Johnson : " Nay, sir, any man who has a name, or who has the power of pleasing, will be very gene- rally invited in London. The man Sterne, I am told, has had engage- ments for three months." Gold- siirrH: "And a very dull fellow." JOHUSOK: " Why,no, sir " ' ® [1773]. ^Nothing odd wiUlast long. Tristram
Shandy did not last.' ^ * She (Miss Monckton) insisted that some of Sterne's writings were verypathetic. Johnson bluntly denied it. " I am sure," said she, " they have affected * me." " Why," said Johnson, smil- ing, and rolling himself about, " that is, dearest, because you are a dunce." ' «
His opinion of the Old Ballads, in which Bishop Percy threw open a new region of English poetry, was abundantly contemptuous.
Benison. It must be owned there were a good many blunders to be scored against old Samuel — a pro- fessed critic, too, who might have been expected to hold an evener balance. Speaking of Johnson and poetry, I never can hold the Doctor excused for the collection usually entitled Johtison's Poets.
Frank. He did not select the authors.
Benison. No, but he allowed his name to be attached to the work, and there it remains, giving as much authorisation as it can to a set of volumes including much that is paltry and worthless, and much that is foul. It was one of the books that I ferretted out as a boy from my father's shelves; and many of the included 'poets' would cer- tainly never have found their way thither but for the Doctor's impri' mctur.
Markham. He says liimself, in a memorandum referring to the Lives, * Written, I hope, in such a manner as may tend to the promotion of piety.* ^
Benison. I remember he pooh- pooh'd objections made to some of Prior's poems; but Prior at least was clever. On the whole, he evidently allowed the booksellers to take their own way in the selec- tion of 'Poets,' and did not hold himself responsible for the work as a whole — ^but responsible he was.
^ BoswelTs Life qf Johnson, Dlugtrated library, If. 207. • n. 207. » ii, 21s. • ii. 145. » ii. 287.
• iv. 82.
* it 48. •iv. 31.
46
So^ne GuriosUies of Criticism.
[January
MarJeham. In a measure, cer- tainlj.
Frank. The work as a collection is obsolete, is it not ?
Benison. I believe so, and many of the individual writers would now be utterly and justly forgotten but for Johnson's Lives. But you have some more extracts for us.
Markham. Yes. The opinions of Horace Walpole, an acute man and fond of books, of his predecessors and contemporaries are often curious enough. Every one of the writers whom we are accustomed to recog- nise as the unquestionable stars of that time he held in more or less contempt. And remember that Horace collected, selected, and most careMly revised and touched up that famous series of Letters of his. There is nothing hasty or uncon- sidered. * What play ' (he writes to Lady Ossory,March27, I773),*makes you laugh very much, and yet is a very wretched comedy? Dr. Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer. Stoopsindeed ! So she does, that is, the Muse. She is draggled up to the knees, and has trud^d, I believe, from Southwark Fair. The whole view of the piece is low humour, and no humour is in it. All the merit is in the situa- tions, which are comic. The hero- ine has no more modesty than Lady Bridget, and the author's wit is as much manquS as the lady's; but some of the characters are well acted, and Woodward speaks a poor prologue, written by Garrick, admirably.' *® Of the same comedy he writes to Mr. Mason : — * It is the lowest of all &rces. . . . But what disgusts me most is, that, though the characters are very low, and aim at low humour, not one of them says a sentence that is na- tural, or marks any character at all.' " He thus notices the author's death: — 'Dr. Goldsmith is dead. . . . The poor soul had some-
times parts, though never commoiL sense.' *'
Dr. Johnson's name always put Walpole into a bad humour. * Ltet Dr. Johnson please this age with the fustian of his stylo and the meanness of his spirit; both are good and great enough for the taste and practice predominant.' ^' ' Leave the Johnsons and Macpher- sons to worry one another for the diversion of a rabble that desires and deserves no better sport.''* 'I have not Dr. Johnson's Litres. I made a conscience of not baying them. . . . criticisms I despise.'** *The tasteless pedant . . . Dr. Johnson has indubitably neither taste nor ear, criterion of judgment, but his old women's prejudices; where they are wanting he has no rule at all. ' ' ^ * Sir Joshua Reynolds has lent me Dr. Johnson's Life cf Pope, ... It is a most trumpery performance, and stuffed with all his crabbed phrases and vulgarisms, and much trash as anecdotes. . . . Was poor good sense ever so un- mercifully overlaid by a babbling old woman ? How was it possible to marshal words so ridiculously? He seems to have read the ancients with no view but of pilfering polysyllables, utterly insensible to the graces of their simplicity, and these are called standards of bio- graphy ! ' ^^ * . . . Yet he [Johnson] has other motives than lucre : pre- judice, and bigotry, and pride, and presumption, and arrogance, and pedantry, are the hags that brew his ink, though wages alone supply him with paper.' " On the Doctor's manners Horry comments thus mildly : — • I have no patience with an unfortunate monster trusting to his helpless deformity for indemnity for any impertinence that his arro- gance suggests, and who thinks that what he has read is an excnse for ever3rthing he says.' i* Of Dr.
"T.453. »» Tu. 508.
» T. 467. " Tiii. la
»vi.73. " yiii. 27.
' Ti. 109. ^Tiii. 150.
' VI. 193. • vL 302.
l87o]
Bonie Ouriosiiies of Criticism.
47
Jahnson's Prayers he writes : — * See Tvhat it is to have fricDds too faocest ! How conid men bo such idiots as to execute soch a trast? One laogba at every pa^e, and then the tears come into one's ejcs when one learns what the poor being saffered who even suspected Lis own madness. One seems to bj reading'' the diarj of an old alms- woman ; and in fact his religion was not a step higher in its kind. John- eon had all the bigotry of a monk, and all the fully and ignorance
t.30."»
* Bosweirs book is the story of a mountebank and his zany.'^i «A jackanapes who has lately made a noise here, one Boswell, by anec- dotes of Dr. Johnson.' ^* * Signora Piozzi's book is not likely to gratify ber expectation of renown. There is a Dr. Walcot, a burlesque bard, who had ridiculed highly and most deservedly another of John- eon's biograpbic zanies, oneBos well; be has already advertised an Eclogue hdiceen Bozzi and Piozzi ; and in- deed there is ample matter. The Signora talks of her Doctor's ex- fa^yded mind, and has contributed ber mite to show that never mind "was narrower. In fact, the poor man is to be pitied ; he was mad, and his disciples did not find it out, bat have unveiled all his defects ; say, have exhibited all his brutali- ties as wit, and his lowest conun- dramsas humonr. . . . What will posterity tbink of us, when it reads what an idol we adored ? ' *3 « She and Boswell and their hero are the joke of the public' ^*
Walpole's chief poets were Dry- den, Pope, Gray, and — the Reverend William Mason, 'a poet if ever tbere was one.' ** He also had a jrreat admiration for Mr. Anstey.** He desires the acquaintance, he says, of the author of the Bath Guide
[Anstey] and the author of the ^erota Epistle [Mason], adding, ' I have no thirst to know the restof my contem- poraries, from the absurd bombast of Dr. Johnson down to the silly Dr. Goldsmith; though the latter changeling has had bright gleams of parts, and the former had sense, till he changed it for words and sold it for a pension.' ^7 ]^Xr. Ma- son's acquaintance he had the privilege of, and kept up a profuse exchange of compliments with that great writer ('Your writings will be standards,'** * Divine lines,'**
* Your immortal fome,' ^® Ac. Ac). Mr. Mason was not only an immortal poet, bat a connoisseur of the first water in the arts of painting and music. Here, by the bye, is his judgment of a certain musical com- poser of that day : 'As to Giardini, look you, if I did not think better of him than I do of Handel, my little shoemaker would not have had the benefit he will have (I hope) from the labour of my brain [Mr. M. had been writing an opera-book, Sapphoj and Giardini, whoever he was, was to famish the music]. Let Handel's music vibrate on the tough drum of royal ears ; I am for none of it.' ^*
* Somebody,* says Walpole, 'I fancy Dr. Percy, has produced a dismal, dull ballad, called Tlie Exe- cution of Sir Charles Bawdin^ and given it for one of the Bristol Poems, called Rowley's, but it is a still worse counterfeit than those that were first sent to me.' '* This was one of Chatterton's productions, but after the boy's miserable death had made a stir, Walpole thought
* poor Chattertou was an astonish- ing genius,' ^ and denied that he hs^ had any hand in discouraging him.
To turn to the stage. We are accustomed to think of Garrick as
*». II. «Mx. 25. "«. 45.
""•375' "ii. 12. ''v. 458.
* Tii. 456. " vii. 26. ■= V, 389.
YOL. YU.— KO. XXXVII. NEW 8EEIES.
" ix. 48. »• vii. 121. •• vi. 447.
•* ix. 49- » vii. 84.
48
Some OuriosUies of Critieism.
[Jamiary
a good actor, bat Walpole loses no opportunity to sneer at him. * He has complained of Mdme. Le Texier for thinking of bringing over Cail- land, the French actor, in the Opera Comique, as a mortal prejudice to his reputation ; and no doubt would be glad of an Act of Parliament that should prohibit there ever being a good actor again in any country or century.' •* Being asked to meet David at a friend's house, Walpole writes, ^Garrick does not tempt me at all. I have no taste for his perpetual buffoonery, and am sick of his endless ex- pectation of flattery.' '* Of Mrs. Siddons he writes (in 1782, after seeing her as Isabella in The Fatal Marriage), * What I really wanted, but did not find, was originality, which announces genius, and with- out both which I am never intrinsi- cally pleased. All Mrs. Siddons did, good sense or good instruction might give. I dare to say that were I one-and-twenty, I should have bought her marvellous, but, alas ! I remember Mrs. Porter and the Dumesnil, and remember every accent of the former in the very same part.' *•
Frank, Johnson, I remember, though always friendly to his old townsfellow and schoolfellow, Davy, said many contemptuous things of him.
Btnismi, Peirhaps rather of the art of acting. He certainly thought Garrick superior to almost all other actors. Johnson was a good deal about the theatres at one period of his life, and, as we know, wrote aplay and several prologues and epilogues, yet he settled into a conviction of the paltriness of acting.
Frank. As Croethe seems to have done.
Benisoti. The Doctor says, for example, that a boy of ten years old could be easily taught to say ^ To be
or not to be ' as well as Garrick:. But pray go on.
Markham. Neither Sterne nor Sheridan pleased Master Walpole a bit. * Tiresome Tristram Shundt/, of which I never could get thron^li three volumes.' ^^ ' I have reaxi Sheridan's CriiiCf but not having seen it, for they say it is admirably acted, it appeared wondrously flat and old, and a poor imitation.' ^^
And now let me lump in some of his notions of more distant literary worthies. •* He was going- to make * a bower ' at his toy- villa of Strawberry Hill, and consulting- authorities. ' I am almost afraid (he says) I must go and read Spenser, and wade through his allegories and drawling stanzas to get at a pic- ture.* *^ Chaucer's Canterbury Talcs are * a lump of mineral from which Dryden extracted all the gold, and converted [it] into beautiful me- dals.' ^^ ' Dante was extravagant, absurd, disgusting : in shorty a Me- thodist parson in Bedlam.' ^' ' Mon- tague's Travels, which I have been reading ; and if I was tired of the Essays, what must one be of these! What signifies what a man thought who never thought of anything but himself? and what signifies what a man did who never did any- thing ? ' *' • There is a new Timo7i of Athens, altered from Shakespeare by Mr. Cumberland, and marvel- lously well done, for he has caught the manners and diction of the ori- ginal so exactly, that I think it is full as bad a play as it was before he corrected it.' **
Frank. It is to bo hoped that neither Dante nor Shakespeare will suffer permanently from the con- tempt of Horace Walpole.
Benisofu Nor Johnson and Gold- smith, for that matter. One moral of the whole subject before us is — not that we are to despise criticism and opinion, but that the
•* vi. 416. ■• vii. 291. « viii- 235.
•* vi. 303- " 18 to 22. " vi. 92.
' viii. 295. • iv. 330. •▼.356.
' v. 91.
1873]
Some Curiosities of Criticism.
49
eiiticxsms and opinions of even very cleyer men are often extremely mistaken. The comfort is, as Frank said, that good things do, somehow, get recognised sooner or later, and are jojfollj treasured as the heritage of the human race.
Frafdc, Take away BoswelVs Johnson — ' the story of a monnte- bank and hia zany' — ^and what a gap were left in English literature ! Markha^m. Do you remember what Byron said of Horace Wal- pole? Here it is, in the preface to Mariiu} Faliero — 'Ho is the tdtimus JKomanorum^ the author of the Mysterious Mother, a tragedy of the highest order, and not a puling love-play. He is the father of the first romance and of the last tragedj in our language ; and surely worthy of a higher place than any living author, be he who he may.'
Frank. A comical judgment, truly, if sincere I
Benison. I believe Byron had a deep insincerity of character, which ran into everything he wrote, said, or did.
Markham. And now listen to Coleridge's opinion on this same * tragedy of the highest order.' ' The Mysterious Mother is the most disgusting, vile, detestable compo- sition that ever came from the hand of man. No one with a spark of true manliness, of which Horace Walpole had none, could have written it.'
Frank. Decided difference of opi- nion 1 By the way, it is Byron's distinction among English poets to have heen in the habit -of speaking slightingly of Shakespeare and of Milton, who (he observed) •have bad their rise, and they will have their decline.' *®
Jdarkham. Let us return to Cole- ridge. Talking of Goethe's Fwilst, after explaining that he himself had long before planned a veiy similar drama (only much better) with
Michael Scott for hero, he praises several of the scenes, but adds, * There is no whole in the poem ; the scenes are mere magic-lantern pictures, and a large part of the work is to me very flat.' More- over, much of it is * vulgar, licen- tious, and blasphemous.'
Frank. By my troth, these be very bitter words !
Markham. Coleridge's estimate of Gibbon's great work is remarkable. After accusing him of ' sacrificing all truth and reality,' he goes on to say: — * Gibbon's style is detest- able, but his style is not the worst thing about him. His history has proved an effectual bar to all real familiarity with the temper and habits of imperial Rome. Few persons read the original authov* ties, even those which are classical . and certainly no distinct know- ledge of the actual state of the empire can be obtained from Gib- bon's rhetorical sketches. He takes notice of nothing but what may produce an effect ; ke skips on from eminence to eminence, withoat ever taking you through the valleys between : in fact, his work is little else but a disgraised collection of all the splendid anecdotes which he could find in any book con- cerning any persons or nations from the Antonines to the capture of Constantinople. When I read a chapter of Gibbon, I seem to be looking through a luminous haze or fog: figures come and go, I know Jiot how or why, all larger than life, or distorted or disco- loured ; nothing is real, vivid, true ; all is scenical, and, as it were, exhibited by candlelight. And then to call it a History of the De- cline and Fall of the Itoiuan Empire ! Was there ever a greater mis- nomer? I protest I do not re- member a single philosophical attempt made throughout the work to fathom the ultimate causes of
** Letter on Bowles's Sixictures, note. Ltfe, ^'C. 1839, p. 696.
50
Some Curiositiea ^of GriHcism,
[Janoary
the decline or fall of that empire.* After some farther strictures, Cole- ridge ends thus : — * The true key to the declension of the Roman Empire — which is not to he foand in all Gihhon's immcDse work- may be stated in two words : the imperial character overlaying, and finally destroying, the nah'owaZ cha- racter. Rome under Trajan was an empire without a nation.'
Frank. Coleridge's two words are not so decisively clear as one could wish. The ' key * sticks in the lock.^ But his criticism on Gibbon cer- tainly gives food for thought.
Benison. Gibbon, however, com- pleted a great book, and has lefl it to the world, to read, criticise, do what they will or can with ; whereas Coleridge dreamed of writing many great books, and wrote none. He is bat a king of shreds and patches.
Markham, Even Hhe Lakers' did not always admire each other. * Coleridge's ballad of The Ancient Mariner (says Southey) is, I think, the clumsiest attempt at German sublimity I ever saw.' And now, if you are not tired out, I will finish with some specimens of criticism on works of the last generation which (whatever differences of opinion may still be afloat concerning them) enjoy at present a wide and high reputation. The articles on Words- worth and Keats are famous in their way, but the ipsissima verba are not generally familiar. Take a few from Jeffrey's review of The Excursion (^Edinburgh BevieWy No- vember 1 8 14).
*This will never do. . . . The case of Mr. Wordsworth, we pre- sume, is now manifestly hopeless; and we give him up as altogether incurable and beyond the power of criticism, ... a tissue of moral and devotional ravings, . . . *' strained raptures and fantastical sublimities " — a puerile ambition of singularity engitifted on an un- lucky predilection for trnisms.'
In the next number, I see, is a review of Scott's Lord of the Isles^
beginning, ' Here is another genuine lay of the great Minstrel.'
Frank. One must own that much of the Excursion is very pro* saic ; but that does not, of course, justify the tone of this review.
MarkJiam. And here is the Qtiarterly Bevima, January 181 9, on The BcvoU of Islam, 'Mr. Shelley, indeed, is an unsparing imitator.' 'As a whole it is in- supportably dull.' * With minds of a certain class, notoriety, in- famy, anything is better than ob- scurity; baffled in a thousand at- tempts after fame, they will make one more at whatever risk, and they end commonly, like an awk- ward chemist who perseveres in tampering with his ingredients, till, in an unlucky moment, they take fire, and he is blown up by the ex- plosion.' * A man like Mr. Shelley may cheat himself . . . finally he sinks like lead to the bottom, and is forgotten. So it is now in part^ so shortly will it be entirely with Mr. Shelley: — ^if we might with- draw the veil of private Ufe, and tell what we now know about him, it would be indeed a disgusting picture that we should exhibit, bat it would be an unanswerable com- ment on our text.'
Now a few flowers of criticism from Mr. Gifford's review of Endy- mion, a poem, in the Quarterly Re- vieWy April 18 18. 'Mr. Keats (if that be bis real name, for we almost doubt that any man in his senses would put his real name to such arhap- Body.' . . . 'The author is a copyist of Mr. Hunt ; but he is more unin* telligible, almost as rugged, twice as diffuse, and ten times more tiresome and absurd than his prototype.' ' At first it appeared to us that Mr. Keats had been amusing himself, and wearing out his readers with an immeasurable game at houls^ rimes ; but, if we recollect rightly, it is an indispensable condition at this play, that the rhymes when filled up shall have a meaning; and our author, as we have
18/3]
Some Curiosities of Orlticism.
51
already hinted, has no meaning.' The reviewer ends thns : * But enongh of Mr. Leigh Hunt and his simple neopb jte. If anyone should be bold enough to purchaso this "Poetic Romance/' and so much more patient than ourselves as to get beyond the first book, and so much more fortunate as to find a meaDiDg, we entreat him to make QS acquainted with his success ; we shall then return to the task which we now abandon in despair, and endeavour to make all duo amends to Mr. Keats and to our readers.'
Benison. You remember Byron's kind remarks on the same subject ? In a letter from Bavenna, October 20, 1820, he writes, * There is such a trash of Keats and the like upon my tables that I am ashamed to look at them.' ' Why don't they review and praise Solomon's Guide to Health? it is better sense, and as much poetry as Jobnny Keats'.' 'No more Keats, I entreat, flay him alive ; if some of you don't, I must skin him myself. There is no bear- ing the drivelling idiotism of the manikin.'
Marhham. The Quarterly in March 1828 had another generous and ap- preciative article beginning — 'Our readers have probably forgotten all abont ^^Bndymion^ a Poem," and the other works of this young man [Mr. John Keats], and the all but universal roar of laughter with which they were received some ten or twelve years ago.'
Bat now enough. Only I should like to read you just one thing more, which is less known, and presents, perhaps, the extreme ex- unple of Uterary misjudgmcnt, bj a man of true literary genius — Thomas De Quincey's elaborate review of Garlyle's translation of WiVydm MeisteTj in the London Magazine for August and September 1824. * Not the basest of Egyptian snperstition, not Titania under en- chantment, not Caliban in drunken- 1N68, ever shaped to themselves an
idol more weak or hollow than modem Germany has set up for its worship in the person of Goethe.' A blow or two from a few vigor- ous understandings will demolish the *puny fabric of babyhouses of Mr. Goethe.' For the style of Goethe *we profess no respect,' but it is much degraded in the trans- lation, on which the reviewer ex- pends many choice epithets of contempt. The work is 'totally without interest as a novel,' and abounds with * overpowering abomi- nations.' * Thus we have made Mr. Von Goeihe's novel speak for itself. And whatever impression it may leave on the reader's mind, let it be charged upon the composer. If that impression is one of entire dis- gust, let it not be forgotten that it belongs exclusively to Mr. Goethe.'
The reviewer is annoyed to think that some discussion may still bo necessary before Mr. Goethe is al- lowed to drop finally into oblivion.
Benison, You have not quoted any of Professor Wilson's trenchant BlackivoodismsBLgeimst * the Cockney School.'
Markh am. It d id not seem worth while. All the bragging and bully- ing has long ceased to have any meaning.
Frank. And * Maga's ' own pet poets, where are they ?
Benison, Let echo answer. You might easily, Markham, bring to- gether some specimens of misap- plied eulogy — of praise loud and lavish, given (and not by foolish or insincere voices) to names and works which proved to have no sort of stability. Meanwhile, many thanks for your Curiosities.
Frank here, whom I half suspect of a tendency to authorship, may take a hint not to care too much for censure or praise, bat do his work well, be it little or great, and, as Schiller says: werfe es schweigend m die 11/nendliche Zeii, — ' cast it silently into everlasting time.'
52
[Jannarj
THORWALDSEN in COPENHAGEN AND IN ROME.
THE writer in a recent art-tonr to the North of Europe promised himself the pleasare of making in Copenhagen a more intimate ac- quaintance with Thorwaldsen than had been practicable in Rome or in any other capital. And yet the works of the