_ Lecture III. The Dabchicks: VI. Pulla Aquatica. Water-Hen
(_Gallinula Chloropus.--Pennant, Bewick, Gould, and Yarrell._)
119. 'Green-footed little cock, or hen,' that is to say, in English; only observe, if you call the Fringe-foot a Phalarope, you ought in consistency to call the Green-foot a Chlorope. Their feet are not only notable for greenness, but for size: they are very ugly, having the awkward and ill-used look of the feet of Scratchers, while a trace of beginning membrane connects them with the fringe-foots.
Their proper name would be Marsh-cock, which would enough distinguish them from the true Moor-cock or Black-cock. 'Moat-cock' would be prettier, and characteristic; for in the old English days they used to live much in the moats of manor-houses; mine is the name nearest to the familiar one; only note there is no proper feminine of 'pullus,' and I use the adjective 'pulla' to express the dark color.
It is a dark-_brown_ bird, according to the colored pictures--iron _gray_, Buffon says, with white stripes of little order on the bodice, clumsy feet and bill, but makes up for all ungainliness by its gentle and intelligent mind; and seems meant for a useful possession to mankind all over the world, for it lives in Siberia and New Zealand; in Senegal and Jamaica; in Scotland, Switzerland, and Prussia; in Corfu, Crete, and Trebizond; in Canada, and at the Cape. I find no account of its migrations, and one would think that a bird which usually flies "dip, dip, dipping with its toes, and leaving a track along the water like that of a stone at 'ducks and drakes'" (Yarrell), would not willingly adventure itself on the Atlantic. It must have a kind of human facility in adapting itself to climate, as it has human domesticity of temper, with curious fineness of sagacity and sympathies in taste. A family of them, petted by a clergyman's wife, were constantly adding materials to their nest, and "made real havoc in the flower-garden,--for though straw and leaves are their chief ingredients, they seem to have an eye for beauty, and the old hen has been seen surrounded with a brilliant wreath of scarlet anemones." Thus Bishop Stanley, whose account of the bird is full of interesting particulars. This aesthetic water-hen, with her husband, lived at Cheadle, in Staffordshire, in the rectory moat, for several seasons, "always however leaving it in the spring," (for Scotland, supposably?): being constantly fed, the pair became quite tame, built their nest in a thorn-bush covered with ivy which had fallen into the water; and "when the young are a few days old, the old ones bring them up close to the drawing-room window, where they are regularly fed with wheat; and, as the lady of the house pays them the greatest attention, they have learned to look up to her as their natural protectress and friend; so much so, that one bird in particular, which was much persecuted by the rest, would, when attacked, fly to her for refuge; and whenever she calls, the whole flock, as tame as barn-door fowls, quit the water, and assemble round her, to the number of seventeen. (November, 1833.)
120. "They have also made other friends in the dogs belonging to the family, approaching them without fear, though hurrying off with great alarm on the appearance of a strange dog.
"The position of the water, together with the familiarity of these birds, has afforded many interesting particulars respecting their habits.
"They have three broods in a season--the first early in April; and they begin to lay again when the first hatch is about a fortnight old. They lay eight or nine eggs, and sit about three weeks,--the cock alternately with the hen. The nest in the thorn-bush is placed usually so high above the surface of the water, they cannot climb into it again; but, as a substitute, within an hour after they leave the nest, the cock bird builds a larger and more roomy nest for them, with sedges, at the water's edge, which they can enter or retire from at pleasure. For about a month they are fed by the old birds, but soon become very active in taking flies and water-insects. Immediately on the second hatch coming out, the young ones of the first hatch assist the old ones in feeding and hovering over them, leading them out in detached parties, and making additional nests for them, similar to their own, on the brink of the moat.
"But it is not only in their instinctive attachments and habits that they merit notice; the following anecdote proves that they are gifted with a sense of observation approaching to something very like reasoning faculties.
"At a gentleman's house in Staffordshire, the pheasants are fed out of one of those boxes described in page 287, the lid of which rises with the pressure of the pheasant standing on the rail in front of the box. A water-hen observing this, went and stood upon the rail as soon as the pheasant had quitted it; but the weight of the bird being insufficient to raise the lid of the box, so as to enable it to get at the corn, the water-hen kept jumping on the rail to give additional impetus to its weight: this partially succeeded, but not to the satisfaction of the sagacious bird. Accordingly it went off, and soon returning with a bird of its own species, the united weight of the two had the desired effect, and the successful pair enjoyed the benefit of their ingenuity.
"We can vouch for the truth of this singular instance of penetration, on the authority of the owner of the place where it occurred, and who witnessed the fact."
121. But although in these sagacities, and teachablenesses, the bird has much in common with land poultry, it seems not a link between these and water-fowl; but to be properly placed by the ornithologists between the rail and the coot: this latter being the largest of the fringefoots, singularly dark in color, and called 'fulica' (sooty), or, with insistence, 'fulica atra' (black sooty), or even 'fulica aterrima' (blackest sooty). 'Coot' is said by Johnson to be Dutch; and that it became 'cotee' in French; but I cannot find cotee in my French dictionary. In the meantime, putting the coot and water-hen aside for future better knowledge, we may be content with the pentagonal group of our dabchicks--passing at each angle into another tribe, thus,--(if people must classify, they at least should also _map_). Take the Ouzel, Allegret, Grebe, Fairy, and Rail, and, only giving the Fairy her Latin name, write their fourpenny-worth of initial letters (groat) round a pentagon set on its base, putting the Ouzel at the top angle,--so. Then, the Ouzels pass up into Blackbirds, the Rails to the left into Woodcocks, the Allegrets to the right into Plovers, the Grebes, down left, into Ducks, and the Titanias, down right, into Gulls. And _there's_ a bit of pentagonal Darwinism for you, if you like it, and learn it, which will be really good for something in the end, or the five ends.
122. And for the bliss of classification pure, with no ends of any sort or any number, referring my reader to the works of ornithologists in general, and for what small portion of them he may afterwards care to consult, to my Appendix, I will end this lecture, and this volume, with the refreshment for us of a piece of perfect English and exquisite wit, falling into verse,--the Chorus of the Birds, in Mr. Courthope's Paradise of them,--a book lovely, and often faultless, in most of its execution, but little skilled or attractive in plan, and too thoughtful to be understood without such notes as a good author will not write on his own work; partly because he has not time, and partly because he always feels that if people won't look for his meaning, they should not be told it. My own special function, on the contrary, is, and always has been, that of the Interpreter only, in the 'Pilgrim's Progress;' and I trust that Mr. Courthope will therefore forgive my arranging his long cadence of continuous line so as to come symmetrically into my own page, (thus also enforcing, for the inattentive, the rhymes which he is too easily proud to insist on,) and my division of the whole chorus into equal strophe and antistrophe of six lines each, in which, counting from the last line of the stanza, the reader can easily catch the word to which my note refers.
123. We wish to declare,
How the birds of the air
All high institutions designed,
And, holding in awe
Art, Science, and Law,
Delivered the same to mankind. 6
To begin with; of old
Man went naked, and cold,
Whenever it pelted or froze,
Till _we_ showed him how feathers
Were proof against weathers,
With that, _he_ bethought him of hose. 12
And next, it was plain,
That he, in the rain,
Was forced to sit dripping and blind,
While the Reed-warbler swung
In a nest, with her young
Deep sheltered, and warm, from the wind. 18
So our homes in the boughs
Made _him_ think of the House;
And the Swallow, to help him invent,
Revealed the best way
To economize clay,
And bricks to combine with cement. 24
The knowledge withal
Of the Carpenter's awl,
Is drawn from the Nuthatch's bill;
And the Sand-Martin's pains
In the hazel-clad lanes
Instructed the Mason to drill. 30
Is there _one_ of the Arts,
More dear to men's hearts?
To the bird's inspiration they owe it;
For the Nightingale first
Sweet music rehearsed,
Prima-Donna, Composer, and Poet. 36
The Owl's dark retreats
Showed sages the sweets
Of brooding, to spin, or unravel
Fine webs in one's brain,
Philosophical--vain;
The Swallows,--the pleasures of travel. 42
Who chirped in such strain
Of Greece, Italy, Spain
And Egypt, that men, when they heard,
Were mad to fly forth,
From their nests in the North,
And follow--the tail of the Bird. 48
Besides, it is true,
To _our_ wisdom is due
The knowledge of Sciences all;
And chiefly, those rare
Metaphysics of Air
Men 'Meteorology' call, 54
And men, in their words,
Acknowledge the Birds'
Erudition in weather and star;
For they say, "'Twill be dry,--
The swallow is high,"
Or, "Rain, for the Chough is afar." 60
'Twas the Rooks who taught men
Vast pamphlets to pen
Upon social compact and law,
And Parliaments hold,
As themselves did of old,
Exclaiming 'Hear, Hear,' for 'Caw, Caw.' 66
And whence arose Love?
Go, ask of the Dove,
Or behold how the Titmouse, unresting,
Still early and late
Ever sings by his mate,
To lighten her labors of nesting. 72
_Their_ bonds never gall,
Though the leaves shoot, and fall,
And the seasons roll round in their course,
For their marriage, each year,
Grows more lovely and dear;
And they know not decrees of Divorce. 78
That these things are truth
We have learned from our youth,
For our hearts to our customs incline,
As the rivers that roll
From the fount of our soul,
Immortal, unchanging, divine. 84
Man, simple and old,
In his ages of gold,
Derived from our teaching true light,
And deemed it his praise
In his ancestors' ways
To govern his footsteps aright. 90
But the fountain of woes,
Philosophy, rose;
And, what between reason and whim,
He has splintered our rules
Into sections and schools,
So the world is made bitter, for _him_. 96
But the birds, since on earth
They discovered the worth
Of their souls, and resolved with a vow
No custom to change,
For a new, or a strange,
Have attained unto Paradise, _now_. 102
Line 9. PELTED, said of _hail_, not rain. Felt by nakedness, in a more severe manner than mere rain.
11. 'WEATHERS,' _i.e., both_ weathers--hail and cold: the _armor_ of the feathers against hail; the down of them against cold. See account of Feather-mail in 'Laws of Fesole,' chap, vi., p. 53, with the first and fifth plates, and figure 15.
15. BLIND. By the beating of the rain in his face. In _hail_, there is real danger and bruising, if the hail be worth calling so, for the whole body; while in rain, if _it_ be rain also worth calling rain, the great plague is the beating and drenching in the face.
16. SWUNG. Opposed to 'sit' in previous line. The human creature, though it sate steady on this unshakable earth, had no house over its head. The bird, that lived on the tremblingest and weakest of bending things, had her _nest_ on it, in which even her infinitely tender brood were _deep_ sheltered and warm, from the _wind_. It is impossible to find a lovelier instance of pure poetical antithesis.
20. HOUSE. Again antithetic to the perfect word 'Home' in the line before. A house is exactly, and only, half-way to a 'home.' Man had not yet got so far as even that! and had lost, the chorus satirically imply, even the power of getting the other half, ever, since his "_She_ gave me of the tree."
24. BRICKS. The first bad inversion permitted, for "to combine bricks with cement." In my Swallow lecture I had no time to go into the question of her building materials; the point is, however, touched upon in the Appendix (pp. 110, 112, and note).
30. 'DRILL,' for 'quarry out,' 'tunnel,' etc., the best general term available.
36. COMPOSER of the music; POET of the meaning.
Compare, and think over, the Bullfinch's nest, etc., Sec. 48 to 61 of 'Eagle's Nest.'
In modern music the _meaning_ is, I believe, by the reputed masters omitted.
39. To SPIN, or _un_ravel. Synthesis and analysis, in the vulgar Greek slang.
46. MAD. Compare Byron of the English in _his_ day. "A parcel of staring boobies who go about gaping and wishing to be at once cheap and magnificent. A man is a fool now, who travels in France or Italy, till that tribe of wretches be swept home again. In two or three years, the first rush will be over, and the Continent will be roomy and agreeable." (Life, vol. ii., p. 319.) For sketches of the English of seventeen years later, at the same _spots_ (Wengern Alp and Interlachen), see, if you _can_ see, in any library, public or private, at Geneva, Topffer's 'Excursions dans les Alpes, 1832.' Douzieme, Treizieme, and Quatorzieme Journee.
48. THE TAIL. Mr. Courthope does not condescend to italicize his pun; but a swallow-tailed and adder-tongued pun like this must be paused upon. Compare Mr. Murray's Tale of the Town of Lucca, to be seen between the arrival of one train and the departure of the next,--nothing there but twelve churches and a cathedral,--mostly of the tenth to thirteenth century.
60. AFAR. I did not know of this weather sign; nor, I suppose, did the Duke of Hamilton's keeper, who shot the last pair of Choughs on Arran in 1863. ('Birds of the West of Scotland,' p. 165.) I trust the climate has wept for them; certainly our Coniston clouds grow heavier, in these last years.
63. SOCIAL. Rightly sung by the Birds in three syllables; but the lagging of the previous line (probably intentional, but not pleasant,) makes the lightness of this one a little dangerous for a clumsy reader. The 'i-al' of 'social' does not fill the line as two full short syllables, else the preceding word should have been written '_on_,' not 'upon.' The five syllables, rightly given, just take the time of two iambs; but there _are_ readers rude enough to accent the 'on' of upon, and take 'social' for two short syllables.
64. HOLD. Short for 'to hold'--but it is a licentious construction, so also, in next line, 'themselves' for 'they themselves.' The stanza is on the whole the worst in the poem, its irony and essential force being much dimmed by obscure expression, and even slightly staggering continuity of thought. The Rooks may be properly supposed to have taught men to dispute, but not to write. The Swallow teaches building, literally, and the Owl moping, literally; but the Rook does not teach pamphleteering literally. And the 'of old' is redundant, for rhyme's sake, since Rooks hold parliaments now as much as ever they did.
76. EACH YEAR. I doubt the fact; and too sadly suspect that birds take different mates. What a question to have to ask at this time of day and year!
82. RIVERS. Read slowly. The 'customs' are rivers that 'go on forever' flowing from the fount of the soul. The Heart drinks of them, as of waterbrooks.
92. PHILOSOPHY. The author should at least have given a note or two to explain the sense in which he uses words so wide as this. The philosophy which begins in pride, and concludes in malice, is indeed _a_ fountain--though not _the_ fountain--of woes, to mankind. But true philosophy such as Fenelon's or Sir Thomas More's, is a well of peace.
98. WORTH. Again, it is not clearly told us what the author means by the worth of a bird's soul, nor how the birds learned it. The reader is left to discern, and collect for himself--with patience such as not one in a thousand now-a-days possesses, the opposition between the "fount of our soul" (line 83) and fountain of philosophy. 124. I could willingly enlarge on these last two stanzas, but think my duty will be better done to the poet if I quote, for conclusion, two lighter pieces of his verse, which will require no comment, and are closer to our present purpose. The first,--the lament of the French Cook in purgatory,--has, for once, a note by the author, giving M. Soyer's authority for the items of the great dish,--"symbol of philanthropy, served at York during the great commemorative banquet after the first exhibition." The commemorative soul of the tormented Chef--always making a dish like it, of which nobody ever eats--sings thus:--
"Do you veesh
To hear before you taste, of de hundred-guinea deesh?
Has it not been sung by every knife and fork,
'L'extravagance culinaire a l'Alderman,' at York?
Vy, ven I came here, eighteen Octobers seence,
I dis deesh was making for your Royal Preence,
Ven half de leeving world, cooking all de others,
Swore an oath hereafter, to be men and brothers.
All de leetle Songsters in de voods dat build,
Hopped into the kitchen asking to be kill'd;
All who in de open furrows find de seeds,
Or de mountain berries, all de farmyard breeds,--
Ha--I see de knife, vile de deesh it shapens,
Vith les petits noix, of four-and-twenty capons,
Dere vere dindons, fatted poulets, fowls in plenty,
Five times nine of partridges, and of pheasants twenty;
Ten grouse, that should have had as many covers,
All in dis one deesh, with six preety plovers,
Forty woodcocks, plump, and heavy in the scales,
Pigeons dree good dozens, six-and-dirty quails,
Ortulans, ma foi, and a century of snipes,
But de preetiest of dem all was twice tree dozen pipes
Of de melodious larks, vich each did clap the ving,
And veeshed de pie vas open, dat dey all might sing!"
125. There are stiff bits of prosody in these verses,--one or two, indeed, quite unmanageable,--but we must remember that French meter will not read into ours. The last piece I will give flows very differently. It is in express imitation of Scott--but no nobler model could be chosen; and how much better for minor poets sometimes to write in another's manner, than always to imitate their own.
This chant is sung by the soul of the Francesca of the Bird-ordained purgatory; whose torment is to be dressed only in falling snow, each flake striking cold to her heart as it falls,--but such lace investiture costing, not a cruel price per yard in souls of women, nor a mortal price in souls of birds.
Her 'snow-mantled shadow' sings:
"Alas, my heart! No grief so great
As thinking on a happy state
In misery. Ah, dear is power
To female hearts! Oh, blissful hour
When Blanche and Flavia, joined with me,
Tri-feminine Directory,
Dispensed in latitudes below
The laws of flounce and furbelow;
And held on bird and beast debate,
What lives should die to serve our state!
We changed our statutes with the moon,
And oft in January or June,
At deep midnight, we would prescribe
Some furry kind, or feathered tribe.
At morn, we sent the mandate forth;
Then rose the hunters of the North:
And all the trappers of the West
Bowed at our feminine behest.
Died every seal that dared to rise
To his round air-hole in the ice;
Died each Siberian fox and hare
And ermine trapt in snow-built snare.
For us the English fowler set
The ambush of his whirling net;
And by green Rother's reedy side
The blue kingfisher flashed and died.
His life for us the seamew gave
High upon Orkney's lonely wave;
Nor was our queenly power unknown
In Iceland or by Amazon;
For where the brown duck stripped her breast
For her dear eggs and windy nest,
Three times her bitter spoil was won
For woman; and when all was done,
She called her snow-white piteous drake,
Who plucked his bosom for our sake."
126. "See 'Hartwig's Polar World' for the manner of taking Eiderdown."--Once more, we have thus much of author's note, but edition and page not specified, which, however, I am fortunately able to supply. Mr. Hartwig's miscellany being a favorite--what can I call it, sand-hill?--of my own, out of which every now and then, in a rasorial manner, I can scratch some savory or useful contents;--one or two, it may be remembered, I collected for the behoof of the Bishop of Manchester, on this very subject, (_Contemporary Review_, Feb. 1880); and some of Mr. Hartwig's half-sandy, half-soppy, political opinions, are offered to the consideration of the British workman in the last extant number of 'Fors.' Touching eider ducks, I find in his fifth chapter--on Iceland--he quotes the following account, by Mr. Shepherd, of the shore of the island of 'Isafjardarjup'--a word which seems to contain in itself an introduction to Icelandic literature:--
127. "The ducks and their nests were everywhere, in a manner that was quite alarming. Great brown ducks sat upon their nests in masses, and at every step started up from under our feet. It was with difficulty that we avoided treading on some of the nests. The island being but three-quarters of a mile in width, the opposite shore was soon reached. On the coast was a wall built of large stones, just above the high-water level, about three feet in height, and of considerable thickness. At the bottom, on both sides of it, alternate stones had been left out, so as to form a series of square compartments for the ducks to make their nests in. Almost every compartment was occupied; and, as we walked along the shore, a long line of ducks flew out one after another. The surface of the water also was perfectly white with drakes, who welcomed their brown wives with loud and clamorous cooing. When we arrived at the farmhouse, we were cordially welcomed by its mistress. The house itself was a great marvel. The earthen wall that surrounded it and the window embrasures were occupied by ducks. On the ground, the house was fringed with ducks. On the turf-slopes of the roof we could see ducks; and a duck sat in the scraper.
"A grassy bank close by had been cut into square patches like a chess-board, (a square of turf of about eighteen inches being removed, and a hollow made,) and all were filled with ducks. A windmill was infested, and so were all the out-houses, mounds, rocks, and crevices. The ducks were everywhere. Many of them were so tame that we could stroke them on their nests; and the good lady told us that there was scarcely a duck on the island which would not allow her to take its eggs without flight or fear."
128. But upon the back of the canvas, as it were, of this pleasant picture--on the back of the leaf, in his book, p. 65,--this description being given in p. 66,--Doctor Hartwig tells us, in his own peculiar soppy and sandy way--half tearful, half Dryasdusty, (or may not we say--it sounds more Icelandic--'Dry-as-sawdusty,') these less cheerful facts. "The eiderdown is easily collected, as the birds are quite tame. The female having laid five or six pale greenish-olive eggs, in a nest thickly lined with her beautiful down, the collectors, after carefully removing the bird, rob the nest of its contents; after which they replace her. She then begins to lay afresh--though this time only three or four eggs,--and again has recourse to the down on her body. But her greedy persecutors once more rifle her nest, and oblige her to line it for the third time. Now, however, her own stock of down is exhausted, and with a plaintive voice she calls her mate to her assistance, who willingly plucks the soft feathers from his breast to supply the deficiency. If the cruel robbery be again repeated, which in former times was frequently the case, the poor eider-duck abandons the spot, never to return, and seeks for a new home where she may indulge her maternal instinct undisturbed by the avarice of man."
129. Now, as I have above told you, these two statements are given on the two sides of the same leaf; and the reader must make what he may of them. Setting the best of my own poor wits at them, it seems to me that the merciless abstraction of down is indeed the usual custom of the inhabitants and visitors; but that the 'good lady,' referred to by Mr. Shepherd, manages things differently; and in consequence we are presently farther told of her, (bottom of p. 65,) that "when she first became possessor of the island, the produce of down from the ducks was not more than fifteen pounds weight in the year; but under her careful nurture of twenty years it had risen to nearly one hundred pounds annually. It requires about one pound and a half to make a coverlet for a single bed, and the down is worth from twelve to fifteen shillings per pound. Most of the eggs are taken and pickled for winter consumption, one or two only being left to hatch."
But here, again, pulverulent Dr. Hartwig leaves us untold who 'consumes' all these pickled eggs of the cooing and downy-breasted creatures; (you observe, in passing, that an eider-duck coos instead of quacking, and must be a sort of Sea-Dove,) or what addition their price makes to the good old lady's feather-nesting income of, as I calculate it, sixty to seventy-five pounds a year,--all her twenty years of skill and humanity and moderate plucking having got no farther than that. And not feeling myself able, on these imperfect data, to offer any recommendations to the Icelandic government touching the duck trade, I must end my present chapter with a rough generalization of results. For a beginning of which, the time having too clearly and sadly come for me, as I have said in my preface, to knit up, as far as I may, the loose threads and straws of my raveled life's work, I reprint in this place the second paragraph of the chapter on Vital Beauty in the second volume of 'Modern Painters,' premising, however, some few necessary words.
130. I intended never to have reprinted the second volume of 'Modern Painters'; first, because it is written in affected imitation of Hooker, and not in my own proper style; and, secondly, yet chiefly, because I did not think the analytic study of which it mainly consists, in the least likely to be intelligible to the general student, or, therefore, profitable to him. But I find now that the 'general student' has plunged himself into such abysses, not of analytic, but of dissolytic,--dialytic--or even diarrhoeic--lies, belonging to the sooty and sensual elements of his London and Paris life, that, however imperfectly or dimly done, the higher analysis of that early work of mine ought at least to be put within his reach; and the fact, somehow, enforced upon him, that there were people before _he_ lived, who knew what 'aesthesis' meant, though they did not think that pigs' flavoring of pigs'-wash was ennobled by giving it that Greek name: and that there were also people before his time who knew what vital beauty meant, though they did not seek it either in the model-room, or the Parc aux Cerfs.
Therefore, I will republish (D.V.) the analytic parts of the second volume of 'Modern Painters' as they were written, but with perhaps an additional note or two, and the omission of the passages concerning Evangelical or other religious matters, in which I have found out my mistakes.
131. To be able to hunt for these mistakes, and crow over them, in the original volume, will always give that volume its orthodox value in sale catalogues, so that I shall swindle nobody who has already bought the book by bringing down its price upon them. Nor will the new edition be a cheap one--even if I ever get it out, which is by no means certain. Here, however, at once, is the paragraph above referred to, quite one of the most important in the book. The reader should know, preparatorily, that for what is now called 'aesthesis,' _I_ always used, and still use, the English word 'sensation'--as, for instance, the sensation of cold or heat, and of their differences;--of the flavor of mutton and beef, and their differences;--of a peacock's and a lark's cry, and their differences;--of the redness in a blush, and in rouge, and their differences;--of the whiteness in snow, and in almond-paste, and their differences;--of the blackness and brightness of night and day, or of smoke and gaslight, and their differences, etc., etc. But for the Perception of Beauty, I always used Plato's word, which is the proper word in Greek, and the only possible _single_ word that can be used in any other language by any man who understands the subject,--'Theoria,'--the Germans only having a term parallel to it, 'Anschauung,' assumed to be its equivalent in p. 22 of the old edition of 'Modern Painters,' but which is not its real equivalent, for Anschauung does not (I believe) _include_ bodily sensation, whereas Plato's Theoria does, so far as is necessary; and mine, somewhat more than Plato's. "The first perfection," (then I say, in this so long in coming paragraph) of the theoretic faculty, "is the kindness and unselfish fullness of heart, which receives the utmost amount of pleasure from the happiness of all things. Of which in high degree the heart of man is incapable; neither what intense enjoyment the angels may have in all that they see of things that move and live, and in the part they take in the shedding of God's kindness upon them, can we know or conceive: only in proportion as we draw near to God, and are made in measure like unto Him, can we increase this our possession of charity, of which the entire essence is in God only. But even the ordinary exercise of this faculty implies a condition of the whole moral being in some measure right and healthy, and to the entire exercise of it there is necessary the entire perfection of the Christian character; for he who loves not God, nor his brother, cannot love the grass beneath his feet, and the creatures which live not for his uses, filling those spaces in the universe which he needs not; while, on the other hand, none can love God, nor his human brother, without loving all things which his Father loves; nor without looking upon them, every one, as in that respect his brethren also, and perhaps worthier than he, if, in the under concords they have to fill, their part be touched more truly. It is good to read of that kindness and humbleness of S. Francis of Assisi, who never spoke to bird or cicala, nor even to wolf and beast of prey, but as his brother; and so we find are moved the minds of all good and mighty men, as in the lesson that we have from the mariner of Coleridge, and yet more truly and rightly taught in the Hartleap Well:--
'Never to blend our pleasure, or our pride,
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.'
And again in the White Doe of Rylstone, with the added teaching, that anguish of our own
'Is tempered and allayed by sympathies,
Aloft ascending, and descending deep,
Even to the inferior kinds;'
so that I know not of anything more destructive of the whole theoretic faculty, not to say of the Christian character and human intellect, than those accursed sports, in which man makes of himself, cat, tiger, serpent, chaetodon, and alligator in one; and gathers into one continuance of cruelty, for his amusement, all the devices that brutes sparingly, and at intervals, use against each other for their necessities."
132. So much I had perceived, and said, you observe, good reader, concerning S. Francis of Assisi, and his sermons, when I was only five-and-twenty,--little thinking at that day how, Evangelical-bred as I was, I should ever come to write a lecture for the first School of Art in Oxford in the Sacristan's cell at Assisi,[25] or ever--among such poor treasures as I have of friends' reliquaries--I should fondly keep a little 'pinch' of his cloak.
[25] See 'Ariadne Florentina,' chap. v., Sec. 164; compare 'Fors,' Letter V.
Rough cloak of hair, it is, still at Assisi; concerning which, and the general use of camels' hair, or sackcloth, or briars and thorns, in the Middle Ages, together with seal-skins (not badgers'), and rams' skins dyed gules, by the Jews, and the Crusaders, as compared with the use of the two furs, Ermine and Vair, and their final result in the operations of the Hudson's Bay Company, much casual notice will be found in my former work. And now, this is the sum of it all, so far as I can shortly write it.
There is no possibility of explaining the system of life in this world, on any principle of _conqueringly_ Divine benevolence. That piece of bold impiety, if it be so, I have always asserted in my well-considered books,--I considering it, on the contrary, the only really pious thing to say, namely, that the world is under a curse, which we may, if we will, gradually remove, by doing as we are bid, and believing what we are told; and when we are told, for instance, in the best book we have about our own old history, that "unto Adam also, and to his wife, did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them," we are to accept it as the best thing to be done under the circumstances, and to wear, if we can get them, wolf skin, or cow skin, or beaver's, or ermine's; but not therefore to confuse God with the Hudson's Bay Company, nor to hunt foxes for their brushes instead of their skins, or think the poor little black tails of a Siberian weasel on a judge's shoulders may constitute him therefore a Minos in matters of retributive justice, or an AEacus in distributive, who can at once determine how many millions a Railroad Company are to make the public pay for not granting them their exclusive business by telegraph.
133. And every hour of my life, since that paragraph of 'Modern Painters' was written, has increased, I disdain to say my _feeling_, but say, with fearless decision, my _knowledge_, of the bitterness of the curse, which the habits of hunting and 'la chasse' have brought upon the so-called upper classes of England and France; until, from knights and gentlemen, they have sunk into jockeys, speculators, usurers, butchers by battue; and, the English especially, now, as a political body, into what I have called them in the opening chapter of 'The Bible of Amiens,'--"the scurviest louts that ever fouled God's earth with their carcasses."
The language appears to be violent. It is simply brief, and accurate. But I never meant it to remain without justification, and I will give the justification here at once.
Take your Johnson, and look out the adjective Scurvy, in its higher or figurative sense.
You find the first quotation he gives is from 'Measure for Measure,' spoken of the Duke, in monk's disguise:
"I know him for a man divine and holy;
Not scurvy, nor a temporary meddler."
In which passage, Shakspeare, who never uses words in vain, nor with a grain less than their full weight, opposes the divineness of men, or their walking with God, to the scurviness of men, or their wallowing with swine; and again, he opposes the holiness of men,--in the sense of "Holy--harmless, undefiled," and more than that, helpful or healthful in action--to the harmful and filthy action of temporary meddlers, such as the hanging of seventeen priests before breakfast, and our profitable military successes, in such a prolonged piece of 'temporary meddling' as the Crimean war.
134. But, secondly, if you look down Johnson's column, you will find his last quotation is not in the higher or figurative, but the lower and literal sense, from Swift, to the effect that "it would be convenient to prevent the excess of drink, with that scurvy custom of taking tobacco." And you will also find, if you ever have the sense or courage to look the facts of modern history in the face, that those two itches, for the pot and the pipe, have been the roots of every other demoralization of the filthiest and literally 'scurviest' sort among _all_ classes;--the dirty pack of cards; the church pavement _running_ with human saliva,--(I have seen the spittings in ponds half an inch deep, in the choir of Rouen cathedral); and the entirely infernal atmosphere of the common cafes and gambling-houses of European festivity, infecting every condition of what they call 'aesthesis,' left in the bodies of men, until they cannot be happy with the pines and pansies of the Alps, until they have mixed tobacco smoke with the scent of them; and the whole concluding in the endurance--or even enjoyment--of the most squalid conditions of filth in our capital cities, that have ever been yet recorded, among the disgraces of mankind.
135. But, thirdly, Johnson's central quotation is again from 'Measure for Measure':--
"He spoke _scurvy_ and _provoking_ terms against your honor."
The debates in the English House of Commons, for the last half-century, having consisted virtually of nothing else!
I next take the word 'lout,' of which Johnson gives two derivations for our choice: it is either the past participle of 'to lower, or make low;' a lowed person, (as our House of Lords under the direction of railway companies and public-house keepers); or else--and more strictly I believe in etymology--a form of the German 'leute,' 'common people.' In either case, its proper classical English sense is given by Johnson as "a mean, awkward fellow; a bumpkin, a clown."
Now I surely cannot refer to any general representation of British society more acceptable to, and acknowledged by, that society, than the finished and admirably composed drawings of Du Maurier in _Punch_ which have become every week more and more consistent, keen, and comprehensive, during the issues of the last two years.
I take three of them, as quite trustworthy pictures, and the best our present arts of delineation could produce, of the three Etats, or representative orders, of the British nation of our day.
Of the Working class, take the type given in Lady Clara Robinson's garden tea party, p. 174, vol. 79.
Of the Mercantile class, Mr. Smith, in his drawing-room after dinner, p. 222, vol. 80.
And of the Noblesse, the first five gentlemen on the right (spectator's right) of the line, in the ball at Stilton House, (July 3d, 1880).
136. Of the manner or state of lout, to which our manufacturing prosperity has reduced its artisan, as represented in the first of these frescoes, I do not think it needful to speak here; neither of the level of sublime temperament and unselfish heroism to which the dangers of commercial enterprise have exalted Mr. Smith. But the five consecutive heads in the third fresco are a very notable piece of English history, representing the polished and more or less lustrous type of lout; which is indeed a kind of rolled shingle of former English noblesse capable of nothing now in the way of resistance to Atlantic liberalism, except of getting itself swept up into ugly harbor bars, and troublesome shoals in the tideway.
And observe also, that of the three types of lout, whose combined chorus and tripudiation leads the present British Constitution its devil's dance, this last and smoothest type is also the dullest. Your operative lout cannot indeed hold his cup of coffee with a grace, or possess himself of a biscuit from Lady Clara's salver without embarrassment; but, in his own mill, he can at least make a needle without an eye, or a nail without a head, or a knife that won't cut, or something of that sort, with dexterity. Also, the middle class, or Smithian lout, at least manages his stockbroking or marketing with decision and cunning; knows something by eye or touch of his wares, and something of the characters of the men he has to deal with. But the Ducal or Marquisian lout has no knowledge of anything under the sun, except what sort of horse's quarters will carry his own, farther weighted with that smooth block or pebble of a pow; and no faculty under the sun of doing anything, except cutting down the trees his fathers planted for him, and selling the lands his fathers won.
137. That is indeed the final result of hunting and horse-racing on the British landlord. Of its result on the British soldier, perhaps the figures of Lord George Sackville at the battle of Minden, and of Lord Raglan at the battle of Alma, (who in the first part of the battle did not know where he was, and in the second plumed himself on being where he had no business to be,) are as illustrative as any I could name; but the darkest of all, to my own thinking, are the various personages, civil and military, who have conducted the Caffre war to its last successes, of blowing women and children to death with dynamite, and harrying the lands of entirely innocent peasantry, because they would not betray their defeated king.
138. Of the due and noble relations between man and his companion creatures, the horse, dog, and falcon, enough has been said in my former writings--unintelligible enough to a chivalry which passes six months of its annual life in Rotten Row, and spends the rents of its Cumberland Hills in building furnaces round Furness Abbey; but which careful students either of past knighthood, or of future Christianity, will find securely and always true. For the relations between man and his beast of burden, whether the burden be himself or his goods, become beautiful and honorable, just in the degree that both creatures are useful to the rest of mankind, whether in war or peace. The Greeks gave the highest symbol of them in the bridling of Pegasus for Bellerophon by Athena; and from that myth you may go down to modern times--understanding, according to your own sense and dignity, what all prophecy, poetry, history, have told you--of the horse whose neck is clothed with thunder, or the ox who treadeth out the corn--of Joseph's chariot, or of Elijah's--of Achilles and Xanthus--Herminius and Black Auster--down to Scott and Brown Adam--or Dandie Dinmont and Dumple. That pastoral one is, of all, the most enduring. I hear the proudest tribe of Arabia Felix is now reduced by poverty and civilization to sell its last well-bred horse; and that we send out our cavalry regiments to repetitions of the charge at Balaclava, without horses at all; those that they can pick up wherever they land being good enough for such military operations. But the cart-horse will remain, when the charger and hunter are no more; and with a wiser master.
"I'll buy him, for the dogs shall never
Set tooth upon a friend so true;
He'll not live long; but I forever
Shall know I gave the beast his due.
Ready as bird to meet the morn
Were all his efforts at the plow;
Then the mill-brook--with hay or corn,
Good creature! how he'd spatter through.
I left him in the shafts behind,
His fellows all unhook'd and gone;
He neigh'd, and deemed the thing unkind;
Then, starting, drew the load alone.
* * * *
Half choked with joy, with love, and pride,
He now with dainty clover fed him;
Now took a short, triumphant ride,
And then again got down, and led him."
139. Where Paris has had to lead _her_ horses, we know; and where London had better lead hers, than let her people die of starvation. But I have not lost my hope that there are yet in England Bewicks and Bloomfields, who may teach their children--and earn for their cattle--better ways of fronting, and of waiting for, Death.
Nor are the uses of the inferior creatures to us less consistent with their happiness. To all that live, Death must come. The manner of it, and the time, are for the human Master of them, and of the earth, to determine--not to his pleasure, but to his duty and his need.
In sacrifice, or for his food, or for his clothing, it is lawful for him to slay animals; but not to delight in slaying any that are helpless. If he choose, for discipline and trial of courage, to leave the boar in Calydon, the wolf in Taurus, the tiger in Bengal, or the wild bull in Aragon, there is forest and mountain wide enough for them: but the inhabited world in sea and land should be one vast unwalled park and treasure lake, in which its flocks of sheep, or deer, or fowl, or fish, should be tended and dealt with, as best may multiply the life of all Love's Meinie, in strength, and use, and peace. _