A Budget of Paradoxes Volume II Part 24

To enhance the position in which the satirist placed himself, two things should be remembered. First, the glowing and justifiable terms in which Byron had spoken,--a hundred and odd lines before he found it convenient to say no Cambridge poet could compare with Richards,--of a Cambridge poet who died only three years before Byron wrote, and produced greatly admired works while actually studying in the University. The fame of Kirke White[433] still lives; and future literary critics may perhaps compare his writings and those of Richards, simply by reason of the curious relation in which they are here placed alongside of each other. And it is much to Byron's credit that, in speaking of the deceased Cambridge poet, he forgot his own argument and its exigencies, and proved himself only a paradoxer _pro re nata_.

Secondly, Byron was very unfortunate in another pa.s.sage of the same poem:

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"What varied wonders tempt us as they pa.s.s!

The cow-pox, tractors, galvanism, and gas.

In turns appear, to make the vulgar stare, Till the swoln bubble bursts--and all is air!"

Three of the bubbles have burst to mighty ends. The metallic tractors are disused; but the force which, if anything, they put in action, is at this day, under the name of mesmerism, used, prohibited, respected, scorned, a.s.sailed, defended, a.s.serted, denied, declared utterly obscure, and universally known. It was hard lines to select for candidates for oblivion not one of whom got in. I shall myself, I am a.s.sured, be some day cited for laughing at the great discovery of ----: the blank is left for my reader to fill up in his own way; but I think I shall not be so unlucky in four different ways.

FALSIFIED PREDICTION.

The narration before the fact, as prophecy has been called, sometimes quite as true as the narration after the fact, is very ridiculous when it is wrong. Why, the pre-narrator could not know; the post-narrator might have known. A good collection of unlucky predictions might be made: I hardly know one so fit to go with Byron's as that of the Rev. Daniel Rivers, already quoted, about Johnson's biographers. Peter Pindar[434] may be excused, as personal satire was his object, for addressing Boswell and Mrs.

Piozzi[435] as follows:

"Instead of adding splendor to his name, Your books are downright gibbets to his fame; You never with posterity can thrive, 'Tis by the Rambler's death alone you live."

But Rivers, in prose narrative, was not so excusable. He says:

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"As admirers of the learning and moral excellence of their hero, we glow at almost every page with indignation that his weaknesses and his failings should be disclosed to public view.... Johnson, after the l.u.s.ter he had reflected on the name of Thrale ... was to have his memory tortured and abused by her detested itch for scribbling. More injury, we will venture to affirm, has been done to the fame of Johnson by this Lady and her late biographical helpmate, than his most avowed enemies have been able to effect: and if his character becomes unpopular with some of his successors, it is to those gossiping friends he is indebted for the favor."

Poor dear old Sam! the best known dead man alive! clever, good-hearted, logical, ugly bear! Where would he have been if it had not been for Boswell and Thrale, and their imitators? What would biography have been if Boswell had not shown how to write a life?

Rivers is to be commended for not throwing a single Stone at Mrs. Thrale's second marriage. This poor lady begins to receive a little justice. The literary world seems to have found out that a blue-stocking dame who keeps open house for a set among them has a right, if it so please her, to marry again without taking measures to carry on the cake-shop. I was before my age in this respect: as a boy-reader of Boswell, and a few other things that fell in my way, I came to a clearness that the conduct of society towards Mrs. Piozzi was _blackguard_. She wanted nothing but what was in that day a woman's only efficient protection, a male relation with a brace of pistols, and a competent notion of using them.

BYRON AND WORDSWORTH.

Byron's mistake about Hallam in the Pindar story may be worth placing among absurdities. For elucidation, suppose that some poet were now to speak-- {274}

"Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit Eve gave to Adam in his birthday suit--"

and some critic were to call it nonsense, would that critic be laughing at Milton? Payne Knight,[436] in his _Taste_, translated part of Gray's _Bard_ into Greek. Some of his lines are

[Greek: therma d' ho tengon dakrua stonachais]

[Greek: oulon melos phoberai]

[Greek: eeide phonai.]

Literally thus:

"Wetting warm tears with groans, Continuous chant with fearful Voice he sang."

On which Hallam remarks: "The twelfth line [our first] is nonsense." And so it is, a poet can no more wet his tears with his groans than wet his ale with his whistle. Now this first line is from Pindar, but is only part of the sense; in full it is:

[Greek: therma de tengon dakrua stonachais]

[Greek: horthion phonase.]

Pindar's [Greek: tengon] must be Englished by _shedding_, and he stands alone in this use. He says, "shedding warm tears, he cried out loud, with groans." Byron speaks of

"Cla.s.sic Hallam, much renowned for Greek:"

and represents him as criticising _the Greek_ of all Payne's lines, and not discovering that "the lines" were Pindar's {275} until after publication.

Byron was too much of a scholar to make this blunder himself: he either accepted the facts from report, or else took satirical licence. And why not? If you want to laugh at a person, and he will not give occasion, whose fault is it that you are obliged to make it? Hallam did criticise some of Payne Knight's Greek; but with the caution of his character, he remarked that possibly some of these queer phrases might be "critic-traps" justified by some one use of some one author. I remember well having a Latin essay to write at Cambridge, in which I took care to insert a few monstrous and unusual idioms from Cicero: a person with a Nizolius,[437] and without scruples may get scores of them. So when my tutor raised his voice against these oddities, I was up to him, for I came down upon him with Cicero, chapter and verse, and got round him. And so my own solecisms, many of them, pa.s.sed unchallenged.

Byron had more good in his nature than he was fond of letting out: whether he was a soured misanthrope, or whether his _vein_ lay that way in poetry, and he felt it necessary to fit his demeanor to it, are matters far beyond me. Mr. Crabb Robinson[438] told me the following story more than once. He was at Charles Lamb's chambers in the Temple when Wordsworth came in, with the new _Edinburgh Review_ in his hand, and fume on his countenance. "These reviewers," said he, "put me out of patience! Here is a young man--they say he is a lord--who has written a volume of poetry; and these fellows, just because he is a lord, set upon him, laugh at him, and sneer at his writing.

The young man will do something, if he goes on as he has begun. But these reviewers seem to think {276} that n.o.body may write poetry, unless he lives in a garret." Crabb Robinson told this long after to Lady Byron, who said, "Ah! if Byron had known that, he would never have attacked Wordsworth. He went one day to meet Wordsworth at dinner; when he came home I said, 'Well, how did the young poet get on with the old one?' 'Why, to tell you the truth,' said he, 'I had but one feeling from the beginning of the visit to the end, and that was--_reverence_!'" Lady Byron told my wife that her husband had a very great respect for Wordsworth. I suppose he would have said--as the Archangel said to his Satan--"Our difference is po[li = e]tical."

I suspect that Fielding would, if all were known, be ranked among the unlucky railers at supposed paradox. In his _Miscellanies_ (1742, 8vo) he wrote a satire on the Chrysippus or Guinea, an animal which multiplies itself by division, like the polypus. This he supposes to have been drawn up by Petrus Gualterus, meaning the famous usurer, Peter Walter. He calls it a paper "proper to be read before the R----l Society": and next year, 1743, a quarto reprint was made to resemble a paper in the _Philosophical Transactions_. So far as I can make out, one object is ridicule of what the zoologists said about the polypus: a reprint in the form of the _Transactions_ was certainly satire on the Society, not on Peter Walter and his knack of multiplying guineas.

Old poets have recognized the quadrature of the circle as a well-known difficulty. Dante compares himself, when bewildered, to a geometer who cannot find the principle on which the circle is to be measured:

"Quale e 'l geometra che tutto s' affige Per misurar lo cerchio, e non ritruova, Pensando qual principio ond' egli indige."[439]

{277} And Quarles[440] speaks as follows of the _summum bonum_:

"Or is't a tart idea, to procure An edge, and keep the practic soul in ure, Like that dear chymic dust, or puzzling quadrature?"

The poetic notion of the quadrature must not be forgotten. Aristophanes, in the _Birds_, introduces a geometer who announces his intention to _make a square circle_. Pope, in the _Dunciad_, delivers himself as follows, with a Greek p.r.o.nunciation rather strange in a translator of Homer. Probably Pope recognized, as a general rule, the very common practice of throwing back the accent in defiance of quant.i.ty, seen in o'rator, au'ditor, se'nator, ca'tenary, etc.

"Mad _Mathesis_ alone was unconfined, Too mad for mere material chains to bind,-- Now to pure s.p.a.ce lifts her ecstatic stare, Now, running round the circle, finds it square."

The author's note explains that this "regards the wild and fruitless attempts of squaring the circle." The poetic idea seems to be that the geometers try to make a square circle. Disraeli quotes it as "finds _its_ square," but the originals do not support this reading.

DE BECOURT.

I have come in the way of a work, ent.i.tled _The Grave of Human Philosophies_ (1827), translated from the French of R. de Becourt[441] by A. Dalmas. It supports, but I suspect not very accurately, the views of the old Hindu books. {278} That the sun is only 450 miles from us, and only 40 miles in diameter, may be pa.s.sed over; my affair is with the state of mind into which persons of M. Becourt's temperament are brought by a fancy. He fully grants, as certain, four millions of years as the duration of the Hindu race, and 1956 as that of the universe. It must be admitted he is not wholly wrong in saying that our errors about the universe proceed from our ignorance of its origin, antiquity, organization, laws, and final destination. Living in an age of light, he "avails himself of that opportunity" to remove this veil of darkness, etc. The system of the Brahmins is the only true one: he adds that it has never before been attempted, as it could not be obtained except by him. The author requests us first, to lay aside prejudice; next, to read all he says in the order in which he says it: we may then p.r.o.nounce judgment upon a work which begins by taking the Brahmins for granted. All the paradoxers make the same requests. They do not see that compliance would bring thousands of systems before the world every year: we have scores as it is. How is a poor candid inquirer to choose. Fortunately, the mind has its grand jury as well as its little one: and it will not put a book upon its trial without a _prima facie_ case in its favor. And with most of those who really search for themselves, that case is never made out without evidence of knowledge, standing out clear and strong, in the book to be examined.

BEQUEST OF A QUADRATURE.

There is much private history which will never come to light, _caret quia vate sacro_,[442] because no Budgeteer comes across it. Many years ago a man of business, whose life was pa.s.sed in banking, amused his leisure with quadrature, was successful of course, and bequeathed the result in a sealed book, which the legatee was enjoined not to sell {279} under a thousand pounds. The true ratio was 3.1416: I have the anecdote from the legatee's executor, who opened the book. That a banker should square the circle is very credible: but how could a City man come by the notion that a thousand pounds could be got for it? A friend of mine, one of the twins of my zodiac, will spend a thousand pounds, if he have not done it already, in black and white cyclometry: but I will answer for it that he, a man of sound business notions, never entertained the idea of [pi] recouping him, as they now say. I speak of individual success: of course if a company were formed, especially if it were of unlimited lie-ability, the shares would be taken. No offence; there is nothing but what a pun will either sanctify, justify, or nullify:

"It comes o'er the soul like the sweet South That breathes upon a bank of _vile hits_."

The shares would be at a premium of 3-1/8 on the day after issue. If they presented me with the number of shares I deserve, for suggestion and advertis.e.m.e.nt, I should stand up for the Archpriest of St. Vitus[443] and 3-1/5, with a view to a little more gold on the bridge.

I now insert a couple of reviews, one about Cyclopaedias, one about epistolary collections. Should any reader wish for explanation of this insertion, I ask him to reflect a moment, and imagine me set to justify all the additions now before him! In truth these reviews are the repositories of many odds and ends: they were not made to the books; the materials were in my notes, and the books came as to a ready-made clothes shop, and found what would fit them. Many remember Curll's[444] bequest of some very good t.i.tles {280} which only wanted treatises written to them. Well! here were some tolerable reviews--as times go--which only wanted books fitted to them. Accordingly, some tags were made to join on the books; and then as the reader sees.

I should find it hard to explain why the insertion is made in this place rather than another. But again, suppose I were put to make such an explanation throughout the volume. The improver who laid out grounds and always studied what he called _unexpectedness_, was asked what name he gave it for those who walked over his grounds a second time. He was silenced; but I have an answer: It is that which is given by the very procedure of taking up my book a second time.