The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc Part 5

4 14 PARIAHS: The fate of social outcasts seems to have taken early and strong hold upon De Quincey's mind; one of the _Suspiria_ was to have enlarged upon this theme. Strictly speaking, the Pariahs is that one of the lower castes of Hindoo society of which foreigners have seen most; it is not in all districts the lowest caste, however.

5 6 OBJECTS NOT APPEARING, ETC.: _De non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est lex_, a Roman legal phrase.

5 16 "Sn.o.bS": Apparently sn.o.b originally meant "shoemaker"; then, in university cant, a "townsman" as opposed to a "gownsman." Cf. _Gradus ad Cantabrigiam_ (1824), quoted in _Century Dictionary_: "_Sn.o.bs_.--A term applied indiscriminately to all who have not the honour of being members of the university; but in a more particular manner to the 'profanum vulgus,' the tag-rag and bob-tail, who vegetate on the sedgy banks of Camus." This use is in De Quincey's mind. Later, in the strikes of that time, the workmen who accepted lower wages were called _sn.o.bs_; those who held out for higher, _n.o.bs_.

7 33 FO FO... FI FI: "This paragraph is a caricature of a story told in Staunton's Account of the Earl of Macartney's Emba.s.sy to China in 1792."--Ma.s.sON.

8 4 cA IRA ("This will do," "This is the go"): "a proverb of the French Revolutionists when they were hanging the aristocrats in the streets, &c., and the burden of one of the most popular revolutionary songs, 'ca ira, ca ira, ca ira.'"--Ma.s.sON.

8 18 ALL MORALITY,--ARISTOTLE'S, ZENO'S, CICERO'S: Each of these three has a high place in the history of ethical teaching. Aristotle wrote the so-called _Nicomachean Ethics_. According to his teaching, "ethical virtue is that permanent direction of the will which guards the mean [_to meson_] proper for us... Bravery is the mean between cowardice and temerity; temperance, the mean between inordinate desire and stupid indifference; etc." (Ueberweg, _History of Philosophy_, Vol. I, p. 169).

Zeno, who died about 264 B.C., founded about 308 the Stoic sect, which took its name from the "Painted Porch" (_Stoa poklae_) in the Agora at Athens, where the master taught. The Stoics held that men should be free from pa.s.sion, and undisturbed by joy or grief, submitting themselves uncomplainingly to their fate. Such austere views are, of course, as far as possible removed from those of the Eudaemonist, who sought happiness as the end of life. Cicero was the author of De Officiis, "Of Duties."

9 9 ASTROLOGICAL SHADOWS: misfortunes due to being born under an unlucky star; house of life is also an astrological term.

9 24 VON TROIL'S ICELAND: The Letters on Iceland (Pinkerton's Voyages and Travels, Vol. I, p. 621), containing Observations ... made during a Voyage undertaken in the year 1772, by Uno Von Troil, D.D., of Stockholm, contains no chapter of the kind. Such a chapter had appeared, however, in N. Horrebow's (Danish, 1758) Natural History of Iceland: "Chap. LXXII. Concerning snakes. No snakes of any kind are to be met with throughout the whole island." In Boswell's Johnson, Vol. IV, p.

314, Temple ed., there is a much more correct allusion, which may have been in De Quincey's mind: "Langton said very well to me afterwards, that he could repeat Johnson's conversation before dinner, as Johnson had said that he could repeat a complete chapter of The Natural History of Iceland, from the Danish of Horrebow, the whole of which was exactly thus: 'Chap. LXXII. Concerning Snakes. There are no snakes to be met with throughout the whole island.'"

9 25 A PARLIAMENTARY RAT: one who deserts his own party when it is losing.

10 16 "JAM PROXIMUS," etc.: aeneid, II, lines 311-312: "Now next (to Deiphobus' house) Ucalegon (i.e. his house) blazes!"

11 27 QUARTERINGS: See p. 47, footnote, and note 47 2.

11 32 WITHIN BENEFIT OF CLERGY: Benefit of clergy was, under old English law, the right of clerics, afterward extended to all who could read, to plead exemption from trial before a secular judge. This privilege was first legally recognized in 1274, and was not wholly abolished until 1827.

12 9 QUARTER SESSIONS: This court is held in England in the counties by justices of the peace for the trial of minor criminal offenses and to administer the poor laws, etc.

12 26 FALSE ECHOES OF MARENGO: General Desaix was shot through the heart at the battle of Marengo (June 14, 1800); he died without a word, and his body was found by Rovigo (cf. Memoirs of the Duke of Rovigo, London, 1835, Vol. I, p. 181), "stripped of his clothes, and surrounded by other naked bodies." Napoleon, however, published three different versions of an heroic and devoted message from Desaix to himself, the original version being: "Go, tell the First Consul that I die with this regret,--that I have not done enough for posterity." (Cf. Lanfrey, History of Napoleon the First, 2d ed., London, 1886, Vol. II, p. 39.) Napoleon himself was credited likewise with the words De Quincey adopts.

"Why is it not permitted me to weep" is one version (Bussey, _History of Napoleon_, London, 1840, Vol. I, p. 302). Cf. Hazlitt, _Life of Napoleon_, 2d ed., London, 1852, Vol. II, p. 317, footnote.

12 (footnote) THE CRY OF THE FOUNDERING LINE-OF-BATTLE s.h.i.+P "VENGEUR": On the 1st of June, 1794, the English fleet under Lord Howe defeated the French under Villaret-Joyeuse, taking six s.h.i.+ps and sinking a seventh, the _Vengeur_. This s.h.i.+p sank, as a matter of fact, with part of her crew on board, imploring kid which there was not time to give them. Some two hundred and fifty men had been taken off by the English; the rest were lost. On the 9th of July Barrere published a report setting forth "how the _Vengeur_, ... being entirely disabled, ... refused to strike, though sinking; how the enemies fired on her, but she returned their fire, shot aloft all her tricolor streamers, shouted _Vive la Republique_, ... and so, in this mad whirlwind of fire and shouting and invincible despair, went down into the ocean depths; _Vive la Republique_ and a universal volley from the upper deck being the last sounds she made." Cf. Carlyle, _Sinking of the Vengeur_, and _French Revolution, Book_ XVIII, Chap. VI.

12 (footnote) LA GARDE MEURT, ETC.: "This phrase, attributed to Cambronne, who was made prisoner at Waterloo, was vehemently denied by him. It was invented by Rougemont, a prolific author of _mots_, two days after the battle, in the _Independant_."--Fournier's _L'Esprit dans l'Histoire_, trans. Bartlett, _Familiar Quotations_, p. 661.

13 25 BRUMMAGEM: Birmingham became early the chief place of manufacture of cheap wares. Hence the name _Brummagem_, a vulgar p.r.o.nunciation of the name of the city, has become in England a common name for cheap, tawdry jewelry. Cf. also Shakespeare, Richard III, Act I, sc. iv, 1. 55:

False, fleeting, perjured Clarence.

13 27 LUXOR occupies part of the site of ancient Thebes, capital of Egypt; its antiquities are famous.

14 9 BUT ON OUR SIDE... WAS A TOWER OF MORAL STRENGTH, ETC.: Cf.

Shakespeare, _Richard_ III, Act V, sc. in, 11. 12-13:

Besides, the king's name is a tower of strength, Which they upon the adverse party want.

14 20 FELT MY HEART BURN WITHIN ME: Cf. Luke xxiv. 32.

14 32 A VERY FINE STORY FROM ONE OF OUR ELDER DRAMATISTS: The dramatist in question has not been identified. I am indebted indirectly to Professor W. Strunk, Jr., of Cornell University, for reference to Johann Caius' Of English Dogs, translated by A. Fleming, in Arber's English Garner, original edition, Vol. III, p. 253 (new edition, Social England Ill.u.s.trated, pp. 28-29), where, after telling how Henry the Seventh, perceiving that four mastiffs could overcome a lion, ordered the dogs all hanged, the writer continues: "I read an history answerable to this, of the selfsame HENRY, who having a notable and an excellent fair falcon, it fortuned that the King's Falconers, in the presence and hearing of his Grace, highly commended his Majesty's Falcon, saying, that it feared not to intermeddle with an eagle, it was so venturous and so mighty a bird; which when the king heard, he charged that the falcon should be killed without delay: for the selfsame reason, as it may seem, which was rehea.r.s.ed in the conclusion of the former history concerning the same king."

15 l OMRAHS... FROM AGRA AND LAh.o.r.e: There seems to be a reminiscence here of Wordsworth's Prelude, Book X, 11. 18-20:

The Great Mogul, when he Erewhile went forth from Agra or Lah.o.r.e, Rajahs and Omrahs in his train.

Omrah, which is not found in Century Dictionary, is itself really plural of Arabic amir (ameer), a commander, n.o.bleman.

15 23 THE 6TH OF EDWARD LONGSHANKS: a De Quinceyan jest, of course. This wrould refer to a law of the sixth year of Edward I, or 1278, but there are but fifteen chapters in the laws of that year.

16 8 NOT MAGNA LOQUIMUR,... BUT VIVIMUS: not "we speak great things,"

but "we live" them.

17 21 MARLBOROUGH FOREST is twenty-seven miles east of Bath, where De Quincey attended school.

18 18 ULYSSES, ETC.: The allusion is, of course, to the slaughter of the suitors of Penelope, his wife, by Ulysses, after his return. Cf.

Odyssey, Books XXI-XXII.

19 3 ABOUT WATERLOO: i.e. about 1815. This phrase is one of many that indicate the deep impression made by this event upon the English mind.

Cf. p. 58.

19 17 "SAY, ALL OUR PRAISES," ETC.: Cf. Pope, Moral Essays: Epistle III, Of the Use of Riches, II. 249-250:

But all our praises why should lords engross, Rise, honest Muse! and sing the Man of Ross.

20 3 TURRETS: "Tourettes fyled rounde" appears in Chaucer's Knight's Tale, 1. 1294, where it means the ring on a dog's collar through which the leash was pa.s.sed. Skeat explains _torets_ as "probably eyes in which rings will turn round, because each eye is a little larger than the thickness of the ring." Cf. Chaucer's _Treatise on the Astrolabe_, Part I, sec. 2, "This ring renneth in a maner turet," "this ring runs in a kind of eye." But Chaucer does not refer to harness.

21 2 MR. WATERTON TELLS ME: Charles Waterton, the naturalist, was born in 1782 and died in 1865. His _Wanderings in South America_ was published in 1825.

23 11 EARTH AND HER CHILDREN: This paragraph is about one fifth of the length of the corresponding paragraph as it appeared in _Blackwood_. For the longer version see Ma.s.son's ed., Vol. XIII, p. 289, note 2.

24 14 THE GENERAL POST-OFFICE: The present office was opened Sept. 23, 1829. St. Martin's-le-Grand is a church within the "city" of London, so named to distinguish it from St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, which faces what is now Trafalgar Square, and is, as the name indicates, outside the "city." The street takes its name from the church.

28 10 BARNET is a Hertfords.h.i.+re village, eleven miles north of London.

29 33 A "COURIER" EVENING PAPER, CONTAINING THE GAZETTE: A gazette was originally one of the three official papers of the kingdom; afterwards any official announcement, as this of a great victory.

30 17 FEY: This is not a Celtic word; it is the Anglo-Saxon _faege_ retained in Lowland Scotch, which is the most northerly English dialect.

The word appears frequently in descriptions of battles, the Anglo-Saxon fatalistic philosophy teaching that, certain warriors entered the conflict _faege_, "doomed." Now the meaning is altered slightly: "You are surely fey," would be said in Scotland, as Professor Ma.s.son remarks, to a person observed to be in extravagantly high spirits, or in any mood surprisingly beyond the bounds of his ordinary temperament,--the notion being that the excitement is supernatural, and a presage of his approaching death, or of some other calamity about to befall him.

31 27 THE INSPIRATION OF G.o.d, ETC.: This is an indication--more interesting than agreeable, perhaps--of the heights to which the martial ardor of De Quincey's toryism rises.

33 13 CaeSAR THE DICTATOR, AT HIS LAST DINNER-PARTY, ETC.: related by Suetonius in his life of Julius Caesar, Chap. Lx.x.xVII: "The day before he died, some discourse occurring at dinner in M. Lepidus' house upon that subject, which was the most agreeable way of dying, he expressed his preference for what is sudden and unexpected" (repentinum inopinatumque praetulerat). The story is told by Plutarch and Appian also.

35 13 _BIATHANATOS_: "De Quincey has evidently taken this from John Donne's treatise: _BIATHANATOS, A Declaration of that Paradoxe or Thesis, That Self-homicide is not so naturally Sin, that it may never be otherwise_, 1644. See his paper on _Suicide, etc._, Ma.s.son's ed., VIII, 398 [Riverside, IX, 209]. But not even Donne's precedent justifies the word formation. The only acknowledged compounds are _biaio-thanasia_, 'violent death,' and _biaio-thanatos_, 'dying a violent death.' Even _bia thanatos_, 'death by violence,' is not cla.s.sical."--HART. But the form _biathanatos_ is older than Donne and is said to be common in MSS.

It should be further remarked that neither of the two compounds cited is cla.s.sical. As to De Quincey's interpretation of Caesar's meaning here, cf. Merivale's _History of the Romans under the Empire_, Chap.

XXI, where he translates Caesar's famous reply: "That which is least expected." Cf. also Shakespeare, _Julius Caesar_, Act II, sc. ii, 1. 33.

37 25 "NATURE, FROM HER SEAT," ETC.: Cf. Milton's _Paradise Lost_, Book IX, 11. 780-784:

So saying, her rash hand in evil hour Forth reaching to the fruit, she pluck'd, she eat: Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe, That all was lost.