CHAPTER VII.
A DIALOGUE OF SENTIMENT SUCCEEDED BY THE SKETCH OF A CHARACTER, IN WHOSEEYES SENTIMENT WAS TO WISE MEN WHAT RELIGION IS TO FOOLS; NAMELY, ASUBJECT OF RIDICULE.
ST. JOHN was now in power, and in the full flush of his many ambitiousand restless schemes. I saw as much of him as the high rank he heldin the state, and the consequent business with which he was oppressed,would suffer me,--me, who was prevented by religion from activelyembracing any political party, and who, therefore, though inclined toToryism, associated pretty equally with all. St. John and myself formeda great friendship for each other, a friendship which no after changeor chance could efface, but which exists, strengthened and mellowed bytime, at the very hour in which I write.
One evening he sent to tell me he should be alone, if I would sup withhim; accordingly I repaired to his house. He was walking up and down theroom with uneven and rapid steps, and his countenance was flushedwith an expression of joy and triumph, very rare to the thoughtful andearnest calm which it usually wore. "Congratulate me, Devereux," saidhe, seizing me eagerly by the hand, "congratulate me!"
"For what?"
"Ay, true: you are not yet a politician; you cannot yet tell howdear--how inexpressibly dear to a politician--is a momentary and pettyvictory,--but--if I were Prime Minister of this country, what would yousay?"
"That you could bear the duty better than any man living; but rememberHarley is in the way."
"Ah, there's the rub," said St. John, slowly, and the expression ofhis face again changed from triumph to thoughtfulness; "but this is asubject not to your taste: let us choose another." And flinging himselfinto a chair, this singular man, who prided himself on suiting hisconversation to every one, began conversing with me upon the lightertopics of the day; these we soon exhausted, and at last we settled uponthat of love and women.
"I own," said I, "that, in this respect, pleasure has disappointed aswell as wearied me. I have longed for some better object of worship thanthe trifler of fashion, or the yet more ignoble minion of the senses.I ask a vent for enthusiasm, for devotion, for romance, for a thousandsubtle and secret streams of unuttered and unutterable feeling. I oftenthink that I bear within me the desire and the sentiment of poetry,though I enjoy not its faculty of expression; and that that desire andthat sentiment, denied legitimate egress, centre and shrink into oneabsorbing passion,--which is the want of love. Where am I to satisfythis want? I look round these great circles of gayety which we termthe world; I send forth my heart as a wanderer over their regionsand recesses, and it returns, sated and palled and languid, to myselfagain."
"You express a common want in every less worldly or more morbid nature,"said St. John; "a want which I myself have experienced, and if I hadnever felt it, I should never, perhaps, have turned to ambition toconsole or to engross me. But do not flatter yourself that the want willever be fulfilled. Nature places us alone in this hospitable world, andno heart is cast in a similar mould to that which we bear within us. Wepine for sympathy; we make to ourselves a creation of ideal beauties, inwhich we expect to find it: but the creation has no reality; it is themind's phantasma which the mind adores; and it is because the phantasmacan have no actual being that the mind despairs. Throughout life, fromthe cradle to the grave, it is no real living thing which we demand; itis the realization of the idea we have formed within us, and which, aswe are not gods, we can never call into existence. We are enamoured ofthe statue ourselves have graven; but, unlike the statue of the Cyprian,it kindles not to our homage nor melts to our embraces."
"I believe you," said I; "but it is hard to undeceive ourselves. Theheart is the most credulous of all fanatics, and its ruling passion themost enduring of all superstitions. Oh! what can tear from us, to thelast, the hope, the desire, the yearning for some bosom which, while itmirrors our own, parts not with the reflection! I have read that, in thevery hour and instant of our birth, one exactly similar to ourselves,in spirit and form, is born also, and that a secret and unintelligiblesympathy preserves that likeness, even through the vicissitudes offortune and circumstance, until, in the same point of time, the twobeings are resolved once more into the elements of earth: confess thatthere is something welcome, though unfounded in the fancy, and thatthere are few of the substances of worldly honour which one would notrenounce, to possess, in the closest and fondest of all relations, thisshadow of ourselves!"
"Alas!" said St. John, "the possession, like all earthly blessings,carries within it its own principle of corruption. The deadliest foe tolove is not change nor misfortune nor jealousy nor wrath, nor anythingthat flows from passion or emanates from fortune; the deadliest foe toit is custom! With custom die away the delusions and the mysteries whichencircle it; leaf after leaf, in the green poetry on which its beautydepends, droops and withers, till nothing but the bare and rude trunkis left. With all passion the soul demands something unexpressed, somevague recess to explore or to marvel upon,--some veil upon the mental aswell as the corporeal deity. Custom leaves nothing to romance, and oftenbut little to respect. The whole character is bared before us likea plain, and the heart's eye grows wearied with the sameness of thesurvey. And to weariness succeeds distaste, and to distaste one of themyriad shapes of the Proteus Aversion; so that the passion we wouldmake the rarest of treasures fritters down to a very instance of thecommonest of proverbs,--and out of familiarity cometh indeed contempt!"
"And are we, then," said I, "forever to forego the most delicious of ourdreams? Are we to consider love as an entire delusion, and to reconcileourselves to an eternal solitude of heart? What, then, shall fill thecrying and unappeasable void of our souls? What shall become of thosemighty sources of tenderness which, refused all channel in the rockysoil of the world, must have an outlet elsewhere or stagnate intotorpor?"
"Our passions," said St. John, "are restless, and will make eachexperiment in their power, though vanity be the result of all.Disappointed in love, they yearn towards ambition; _and the object ofambition, unlike that of love, never being wholly possessed, ambition isthe more durable passion of the two_. But sooner or later even that andall passions are sated at last; and when wearied of too wide a flight welimit our excursions, and looking round us discover the narrow boundsof our proper end, we grow satisfied with the loss of rapture if wecan partake of enjoyment; and the experience which seemed at first sobitterly to betray us becomes our most real benefactor, and ultimatelyleads us to content. For it is the excess and not the nature of ourpassions which is perishable. Like the trees which grew by the tomb ofProtesilaus, the passions flourish till they reach a certain height, butno sooner is that height attained than they wither away."
Before I could reply, our conversation received an abrupt and completeinterruption for the night. The door was thrown open, and a man, pushingaside the servant with a rude and yet a dignified air, entered the roomunannounced, and with the most perfect disregard to ceremony--
"How d'ye do, Mr. St. John," said he,--"how d'ye do?--Pretty sort of aday we've had. Lucky to find you at home,--that is to say if you willgive me some broiled oysters and champagne for supper."
"With all my heart, Doctor," said St. John, changing his manner at oncefrom the pensive to an easy and somewhat brusque familiarity,--"withall my heart; but I am glad to hear you are a convert to champagne: youspent a whole evening last week in endeavouring to dissuade me from thesparkling sin."
"Pish! I had suffered the day before from it; so, like a true Old Baileypenitent, I preached up conversion to others, not from a desire of theirwelfare, but a plaguy sore feeling for my own misfortune. Where did youdine to-day? At home! Oh! the devil! I starved on three courses at theDuke of Ormond's."
"Aha! Honest Matt was there?"
"Yes, to my cost. He borrowed a shilling of me for a chair. Hang thisweather, it costs me seven shillings a day for coach-fare, besides mypaying the fares of all my poor brother parsons, who come over fromIreland to solicit my patronage for a bishopric, and end by borrowinghalf-a-crown in the meanwhile. But Matt
Prior will pay me again, Isuppose, out of the public money?"
"To be sure, if Chloe does not ruin him first."
"Hang the slut: don't talk of her. How Prior rails against his place!*He says the excise spoils his wit, and that the only rhymes he everdreams of now-a-days are 'docket and cocket.'"
* In the Customs.
"Ha, ha! we must do something better for Matt,--make him a bishop or anambassador. But pardon me, Count, I have not yet made known to you themost courted, authoritative, impertinent, clever, independent, haughty,delightful, troublesome parson of the age: do homage to Dr. Swift.Doctor, be merciful to my particular friend, Count Devereux."
Drawing himself up, with a manner which contrasted his previous onestrongly enough, Dr. Swift saluted me with a dignity which might evenbe called polished, and which certainly showed that however he mightprefer, as his usual demeanour, an air of negligence and semi-rudeness,he had profited sufficiently by his acquaintance with the great to equalthem in the external graces, supposed to be peculiar to their order,whenever it suited his inclination. In person Swift is much above themiddle height, strongly built, and with a remarkably fine outline ofthroat and chest; his front face is certainly displeasing, though farfrom uncomely; but the clear chiselling of the nose, the curved upperlip, the full, round Roman chin, the hanging brow, and the resolutedecision, stamped upon the whole expression of the large forehead, andthe clear blue eye, make his profile one of the most striking I eversaw. He honoured me, to my great surprise, with a fine speech and acompliment; and then, with a look, which menaced to St. John the retortthat ensued, he added: "And I shall always be glad to think that I oweyour acquaintance to Mr. Secretary St. John, who, if he talkedless about operas and singers,--thought less about Alcibiades andPericles,--if he never complained of the load of business not beingsuited to his temper, at the very moment he had been working, likeGumdragon, to get the said load upon his shoulders; and if he persuadedone of his sincerity being as great as his genius,--would appear to alltime as adorned with the choicest gifts that Heaven has yet thought fitto bestow on the children of men. Prithee now, Mr. Sec., when shall wehave the oysters? Will you be merry to-night, Count?"
"Certainly; if one may find absolution for the champagne."
"I'll absolve you, with a vengeance, on condition that you'll walk homewith me, and protect the poor parson from the Mohawks. Faith, they ranyoung Davenant's chair through with a sword, t' other night. I hearthey have sworn to make daylight through my Tory cassock,--all Whigs youknow, Count Devereux, nasty, dangerous animals, how I hate them! theycost me five-and-sixpence a week in chairs to avoid them."
"Never mind, Doctor, I'll send my servants home with you," said St.John.
"Ay, a nice way of mending the matter--that's curing the itch byscratching the skin off. I could not give your tall fellows less than acrown a-piece, and I could buy off the bloodiest Mohawk in the kingdom,if he's a Whig, for half that sum. But, thank Heaven, the supper isready."
And to supper we went. The oysters and champagne seemed to exhilarate,if it did not refine, the Doctor's wit. St. John was unusuallybrilliant. I myself caught the infection of their humour, andcontributed my quota to the common stock of jest and repartee; and thatevening, spent with the two most extraordinary men of the age, had init more of broad and familiar mirth than any I have ever wasted inthe company of the youngest and noisiest disciples of the bowl and itsconcomitants. Even amidst all the coarse ore of Swift's conversation,the diamond perpetually broke out; his vulgarity was never that of avulgar mind. Pity that, while he condemned St. John's over affectationof the grace of life, he never perceived that his own affectation ofcoarseness and brutality was to the full as unworthy of the simplicityof intellect;* and that the aversion to cant, which was the strongestcharacteristic of his mind, led him into the very faults he despised,only through a more displeasing and offensive road. That same aversionto cant is, by the way, the greatest and most prevalent enemy to thereputation of high and of strong minds; and in judging Swift'scharacter in especial, we should always bear it in recollection.This aversion--the very antipodes to hypocrisy--leads men not only todisclaim the virtues they have, but to pretend to the vices theyhave not. Foolish trick of disguised vanity! the world, alas, readilybelieves them! Like Justice Overdo, in the garb of poor Arthur ofBradley, they may deem it a virtue to have assumed the disguise; butthey must not wonder if the sham Arthur is taken for the real, beaten asa vagabond, and set in the stocks as a rogue!
* It has been said that Swift was only coarse in his later years, and,with a curious ignorance both of fact and of character, that Pope wasthe cause of the Dean's grossness of taste. There is no doubt that hegrew coarser with age; but there is also no doubt that, graceful anddignified as that great genius could be when he pleased, he affectedat a period earlier than the one in which he is now introduced, to becoarse both in speech and manner. I seize upon this opportunity, _mala propos_ as it is, to observe that Swift's preference of Harley to St.John is by no means so certain as writers have been pleased generally toassert. Warton has already noted a passage in one of Swift's letters toBolingbroke, to which I will beg to call the reader's attention.
"It is _you were_ my hero, but the other (Lord Oxford) _never was_; yetif he were, it was your own fault, who taught me to love him, and oftenvindicated him, in the beginning of your ministry, from my accusations.But I granted he had the greatest inequalities of any man alive; and hiswhole scene was fifty times more a what-d'ye-call-it than yours; forI declare yours was _unie_, and I wish you would so order it that theworld may be as wise as I upon that article."
I have to apologize for introducing this quotation, which I have donebecause (and I entreat the reader to remember this) I observe that CountDevereux always speaks of Lord Bolingbroke as he was spoken of by theeminent men of that day,--not as he is now rated by the judgment ofposterity.--ED.