Читать книгу: «The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 20, No. 561, August 11, 1832», страница 2

Before I close these observations, let me add, that in looking at this question, we must consent to throw off our national prejudices; and in drawing the comparison, not to regard English plays, whether tragic or comic, as the standards of perfection. English Comedy is not only considered inferior to that of most nations, but it is in many respects bad in its tendency, and may almost be looked upon as a school for vanity. To conclude, instead of regarding the drama as it is, I have rather endeavoured to consider it as it should be.

F.

THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

REAL CHARACTER OF LOUIS XIV

Concerning Louis the Fourteenth himself, the world seems at last to have formed a correct judgment. He was not a great general; he was not a great statesman; but he was, in one sense of the words, a great king. Never was there so consummate a master of what our James the First would have called king-craft,—of all those arts which most advantageously display the merits of a prince, and most completely hide his defects. Though his internal administration was bad,—though the military triumphs which gave splendour to the early part of his reign were not achieved by himself,—though his later years were crowded with defeats and humiliations,—though he was so ignorant that he scarcely understood the Latin of his mass-book,—though he fell under the control of a cunning Jesuit and of a more cunning old woman,—he succeeded in passing himself off on his people as a being above humanity. And this is the more extraordinary, because he did not seclude himself from the public gaze like those Oriental despots whose faces are never seen, and whose very names it is a crime to pronounce lightly. It has been said that no man is a hero to his valet;—and all the world saw as much of Louis the Fourteenth as his valet could see. Five hundred people assembled to see him shave and put on his breeches in the morning. He then kneeled down at the side of his bed, and said his prayer, while the whole assembly awaited the end in solemn silence,—the ecclesiastics on their knees, and the laymen with their hats before their faces. He walked about his gardens with a train of two hundred courtiers at his heels. All Versailles came to see him dine and sup. He was put to bed at night in the midst of a crowd as great as that which had met to see him rise in the morning. He took his very emetics in state, and vomited majestically in the presence of all the grandes and petites entrees. Yet though he constantly exposed himself to the public gaze in situations in which it is scarcely possible for any man to preserve much personal dignity, he to the last impressed those who surrounded him with the deepest awe and reverence. The illusion which he produced on his worshippers can be compared only to those illusions to which lovers are proverbially subject during the season of courtship. It was an illusion which affected even the senses. The contemporaries of Louis thought him tall. Voltaire, who might have seen him, and who had lived with some of the most distinguished members of his court, speaks repeatedly of his majestic stature. Yet it is as certain as any fact can be, that he was rather below than above the middle size. He had, it seems, a way of holding himself, a way of walking, a way of swelling his chest and rearing his head, which deceived the eyes of the multitude. Eighty years after his death, the royal cemetery was violated by the revolutionists; his coffin was opened; his body was dragged out; and it appeared that the prince, whose majestic figure had been so long and loudly extolled, was in truth a little man.

His person and his government have had the same fate. He had the art of making both appear grand and august, in spite of the clearest evidence that both were below the ordinary standard. Death and time have exposed both the deceptions. The body of the great King has been measured more justly than it was measured by the courtiers who were afraid to look above his shoe-tie. His public character has been scrutinized by men free from the hopes and fears of Boileau and Molière. In the grave, the most majestic of princes is only five feet eight. In history, the hero and the politician dwindles into a vain and feeble tyrant.—the slave of priests and women,—little in war, little in government,—little in every thing but the art of simulating greatness.

He left to his infant successor a famished and miserable people, a beaten and humbled army, provinces turned into deserts by misgovernment and persecution, factions dividing the court, a schism raging in the church, an immense debt, an empty treasury, immeasurable palaces, an innumerable household, inestimable jewels and furniture. All the sap and nutriment of the state seemed to have been drawn to feed one bloated and unwholesome excrescence. The nation was withered. The court was morbidly flourishing. Yet it does not appear that the associations which attached the people to the monarchy, had lost strength during his reign. He had neglected or sacrificed their dearest interests; but he had struck their imaginations. The very things which ought to have made him most unpopular,—the prodigies of luxury and magnificence with which his person was surrounded, while, beyond the enclosure of his parks, nothing was to be seen but starvation and despair,—seemed to increase the respectful attachment which his subjects felt for him.—Edinburgh Rev. (just published.)

THE GRAND SECRET OF SUCCESS IN LIFE

For all men doubtless obstructions abound; spiritual growth must be hampered and stunted, and has to struggle through with difficulty, if it do not wholly stop. We may grant too that, for a mediocre character, the continual training and tutoring, from language-masters, dancing-masters, posture-masters of all sorts, hired and volunteer, which a high rank in any time and country assures, there will be produced a certain superiority, or at worst, air of superiority, over the corresponding mediocre character of low rank; thus we perceive, the vulgar Do-nothing, as contrasted with the vulgar Drudge, is in general a much prettier man; with a wider perhaps clearer outlook into the distance; in innumerable superficial matters, however it may be when we go deeper, he has a manifest advantage. But with the man of uncommon character, again, in whom a germ of irrepressible Force has been implanted, and will unfold itself into some sort of freedom,—altogether the reverse may hold. For such germs, too, there is, undoubtedly enough, a proper soil where they will grow best, and an improper one where they will grow worst. True also, where there is a will, there is a way; where a genius has been given, a possibility, a certainty of its growing is also given. Yet often it seems as if the injudicious gardening and manuring were worse than none at all; and killed what the inclemencies of blind chance would have spared. We find accordingly that few Fredericks or Napoleons, indeed none since the Great Alexander, who unfortunately drank himself to death too soon for proving what lay in him, were nursed up with an eye to their vocation; mostly with an eye quite the other way, in the midst of isolation and pain, destitution and contradiction. Nay, in our own times, have we not seen two men of genius, a Byron and a Burns: they both, by mandate of Nature, struggle and must struggle towards clear manhood, stormfully enough, for the space of six-and-thirty years; yet only the gifted ploughman can partially prevail therein; the gifted peer must toil, and strive, and shoot out in wild efforts, yet die at last in boyhood, with the promise of his manhood still but announcing itself in the distance. Truly, as was once written, "it is only the artichoke that will not grow except in gardens: the acorn is cast carelessly abroad into the wilderness, yet on the wild soil it nourishes itself, and rises to be an oak." All woodmen, moreover, will tell you that fat manure is the ruin of your oak; likewise that the thinner and wilder your soil, the tougher, more iron-textured is your timber,—though, unhappily, also the smaller. So too with the spirits of men: they become pure from their errors by suffering for them: he who has battled, were it only with poverty and hard toil, will be found stronger, more expert, than he who could stay at home from the battle, concealed among the provision-wagons, or even not unwatchfully "abiding by the stuff." In which sense, an observer, not without experience of our time, has said:—"Had I a man of clearly developed character (clear, sincere within its limits), of insight, courage, and real applicable force of head and of heart, to search for; and not a man of luxuriously distorted character, with haughtiness for courage, and for insight and applicable force, speculation and plausible show of force,—it were rather among the lower than among the higher classes that I should look for him."

A hard saying, indeed, seems this same; that he, whose other wants were all beforehand supplied; to whose capabilities no problem was presented except even this, How to cultivate them to best advantage, should attain less real culture than he whose first grand problem and obligation was nowise spiritual culture, but hard labour for his daily bread! Sad enough must the perversion be, where preparations of such magnitude issue in abortion: and a so sumptuous heart with all its appliances can accomplish nothing, not so much as necessitous nature would of herself have supplied! Nevertheless, so pregnant is life with evil as with good; to such height in an age rich, plethorically overgrown with means, can means be accumulated in the wrong place, and immeasurably aggravate wrong tendencies, instead of righting them, this sad and strange result may actually turn out to have been realized.—Edinburgh Rev. (just published.)

SIR EGERTON BRYDGES.—THE LATE DUKE OF NORFOLK

(From Clavering's Autobiography.)

I saw Sir Egerton Brydges in the streets, was introduced to him, and recalled to his mind our rencontre at Mr. Carter's at Deal, thirty years ago. He walked feebly, was lame, and had been confined to his bed for many months the preceding winter. He was pale, apparently grief-worn, and had a most grave and melancholy countenance, and languid look; but now and then flashed, both with eyes and words. He amused himself with printing privately, and distributing among his friends a variety of fragments. He complained bitterly of some London agents, who had cheated him most enormously, and whom he was bringing before the Court of Chancery. His common acquaintance complained that he was too grave for them, and that he was deficient in wit and point. They said he was "all sober sadness," and that he had romantic views of life, and did not know the human character. I had not sufficient conversation with him to judge of this. He was intimate with d'Invernois, who spoke highly of him. He had certainly none of our Irish vivacity, and fulness of imagery. He was rather querulous and prolix, than piquant, and declaimed rather than said sharp things. I said to him, "Why do you not endeavour, in your writings, to accommodate yourself more to the public taste?" He answered, in despair, "I cannot—I have no turn that way. I know the value of the bon-mot, the sarcasm, and the epigram; but I have no ability that way." And it seemed true; he had no ability that way.

When the old lineal Duke of Norfolk died—I think it was in 1778—the pomp of that mighty house was much abased. His collateral successor, Mr. Howard, of Graystock, was a man of mean and intemperate habits, which were inherited by his son, the late duke, then known by the name of Lord Surry, and who made himself conspicuous as a Whig, and by electioneering contests and intrigues. With this last I was familiar, but soon saw that I could put no trust in him. I wrote many political squibs at his desire—not worth preserving; he was a man of a good deal of spleen, personal as well as political. Charles Fox flattered him, that he might have his aid to the party; but he did not love or respect him. He married an Irishwoman for his first wife. I think his mother's name was Brockholes. It was amusing to see him in contest with the late Lord Abingdon, whose power of speaking in the House (whatever mental eccentricities he might have) was so great, that many preferred his eloquence even to Lord Chatham's. The duke was never at rest: he always had some jobs in hand: by which he often put himself into pecuniary embarrassment. His face was very much like that of Cardinal Howard, Temp. Car. II., of whom there are so many engraved portraits. He prided himself upon a common dress, very much like that of a yeoman, or rather country schoolmaster. It was generally a grey coat, with black buttons, and black waistcoat. I once asked him to use his interest for a relation of mine; he readily promised—but never attempted to perform. He had a personal antipathy to Pitt and Lord Grenville; and one of the constant subjects of his jokes and raillery was the Grenville pedigree. A Mr. Dallaway, a clergyman, was his private secretary, as earl-marshal; with whom I once dined at the duke's table; a large, heavy-looking man, who, I was told, had written several books; but I presume he is deceased, as I have not seen his name announced for a long while.