Book I. The Early Youth Of Henry Esmond, Up To The Time Of His LeavingTrinity College, In Cambridge
The actors in the old tragedies, as we read, piped their iambics to atune, speaking from under a mask, and wearing stilts and a greathead-dress. 'Twas thought the dignity of the Tragic Muse required theseappurtenances, and that she was not to move except to a measure andcadence. So Queen Medea slew her children to a slow music: and KingAgamemnon perished in a dying fall (to use Mr. Dryden's words): the Chorusstanding by in a set attitude, and rhythmically and decorously bewailingthe fates of those great crowned persons. The Muse of History hathencumbered herself with ceremony as well as her Sister of the Theatre. Shetoo wears the mask and the cothurnus, and speaks to measure. She too, inour age, busies herself with the affairs only of kings; waiting on themobsequiously and stately, as if she were but a mistress of Courtceremonies, and had nothing to do with the registering of the affairs ofthe common people. I have seen in his very old age and decrepitude the oldFrench King Lewis the Fourteenth, the type and model of kinghood--who nevermoved but to measure, who lived and died according to the laws of hisCourt-marshal, persisting in enacting through life the part of Hero; and,divested of poetry, this was but a little wrinkled old man, pock-marked,and with a great periwig and red heels to make him look tall--a hero for abook if you like, or for a brass statue or a painted ceiling, a god in aRoman shape, but what more than a man for Madame Maintenon, or the barberwho shaved him, or Monsieur Fagon, his surgeon? I wonder shall Historyever pull off her periwig and cease to be court-ridden? Shall we seesomething of France and England besides Versailles and Windsor? I sawQueen Anne at the latter place tearing down the Park slopes after herstaghounds, and driving her one-horse chaise--a hot, red-faced woman, notin the least resembling that statue of her which turns its stone back uponSt. Paul's, and faces the coaches struggling up Ludgate Hill. She wasneither better bred nor wiser than you and me, though we knelt to hand hera letter or a washhand-basin. Why shall History go on kneeling to the endof time? I am for having her rise up off her knees, and take a naturalposture: not to be for ever performing cringes and congees like aCourt-chamberlain, and shuffling backwards out of doors in the presence ofthe sovereign. In a word, I would have History familiar rather thanheroic: and think that Mr. Hogarth and Mr. Fielding will give our childrena much better idea of the manners of the present age in England, than the_Court Gazette_ and the newspapers which we get thence.
There was a German officer of Webb's, with whom we used to joke, and ofwhom a story (whereof I myself was the author) was got to be believed inthe army, that he was eldest son of the Hereditary Grand Bootjack of theEmpire, and heir to that honour of which his ancestors had been veryproud, having been kicked for twenty generations by one imperial foot, asthey drew the boot from the other. I have heard that the old LordCastlewood, of part of whose family these present volumes are a chronicle,though he came of quite as good blood as the Stuarts whom he served (andwho as regards mere lineage are no better than a dozen English andScottish houses I could name), was prouder of his post about the Courtthan of his ancestral honours and valued his dignity (as Lord of theButteries and Groom of the King's Posset) so highly, that he cheerfullyruined himself for the thankless and thriftless race who bestowed it. Hepawned his plate for King Charles the First, mortgaged his property forthe same cause, and lost the greater part of it by fines andsequestration: stood a siege of his castle by Ireton, where his brotherThomas capitulated (afterwards making terms with the Commonwealth, forwhich the elder brother never forgave him), and where his second brotherEdward, who had embraced the ecclesiastical profession, was slain onCastlewood tower, being engaged there both as preacher and artilleryman.This resolute old loyalist, who was with the king whilst his house wasthus being battered down, escaped abroad with his only son, then a boy, toreturn and take a part in Worcester fight. On that fatal field EustaceEsmond was killed, and Castlewood fled from it once more into exile, andhenceforward, and after the Restoration, never was away from the Court ofthe monarch (for whose return we offer thanks in the Prayer-book) who soldhis country and who took bribes of the French king.
What spectacle is more august than that of a great king in exile? Who ismore worthy of respect than a brave man in misfortune? Mr. Addison haspainted such a figure in his noble piece of _Cato_. But suppose fugitiveCato fuddling himself at a tavern with a wench on each knee, a dozenfaithful and tipsy companions of defeat, and a landlord calling out forhis bill; and the dignity of misfortune is straightway lost. TheHistorical Muse turns away shamefaced from the vulgar scene, and closesthe door--on which the exile's unpaid drink is scored up--upon him and hispots and his pipes, and the tavern-chorus which he and his friends aresinging. Such a man as Charles should have had an Ostade or Mieris topaint him. Your Knellers and Le Bruns only deal in clumsy and impossibleallegories: and it hath always seemed to me blasphemy to claim Olympus forsuch a wine-drabbled divinity as that.
About the king's follower the Viscount Castlewood--orphan of his son,ruined by his fidelity, bearing many wounds and marks of bravery, old andin exile, his kinsmen I suppose should be silent; nor if this patriarchfell down in his cups, call fie upon him, and fetch passers-by to laugh athis red face and white hairs. What! does a stream rush out of a mountainfree and pure, to roll through fair pastures, to feed and throw out brighttributaries, and to end in a village gutter? Lives that have noblecommencements have often no better endings; it is not without a kind ofawe and reverence that an observer should speculate upon such careers ashe traces the course of them. I have seen too much of success in life totake off my hat and huzza to it as it passes in its gilt coach: and woulddo my little part with my neighbours on foot, that they should not gapewith too much wonder, nor applaud too loudly. Is it the Lord Mayor goingin state to mince-pies and the Mansion House? Is it poor Jack of Newgate'sprocession, with the sheriff and javelin-men, conducting him on his lastjourney to Tyburn? I look into my heart and think that I am as good as myLord Mayor, and know I am as bad as Tyburn Jack. Give me a chain and redgown and a pudding before me, and I could play the part of alderman verywell, and sentence Jack after dinner. Starve me, keep me from books andhonest people, educate me to love dice, gin, and pleasure, and put me onHounslow Heath, with a purse before me and I will take it. "And I shall bedeservedly hanged," say you, wishing to put an end to this prosing. Idon't say no. I can't but accept the world as I find it, including arope's end, as long as it is in fashion.