After a considerable interval, some notices of Shelley have appeared,without, however, throwing much additional light on the wayward heartand pilgrimage of the poet. Mr. C.S. Middleton has published a bookupon Shelley and his writings; Mr. T.J. Hogg has given a sketch ofhis life; and E.J. Trelawny some recollections of him, as well as ofByron. None of these pretends to explain that eccentric nature, orharmonize in any way his acts and his feelings; though a few thingsmay be gathered that tend to make the biography somewhat moredistinct than before, in some particulars. On the subject of hisfirst unfortunate marriage, we are made aware that his wife was aself-willed, ill-taught young woman, who set her own father atdefiance, and threw herself on the protection of such a wanderingoddity as Percy Shelley. She was strong-minded, and brought with herinto her husband’s house her elder sister, also strong-minded, aridiculous and insufferable duenna, whom Shelley hated with allhis heart and soul, and wished dead and buried out of hissight,–finding, no doubt, his unsteady disposition controlled andthwarted by the voice and authority of his sister-in-law, who, knowingthat her father furnished the young couple with their chief means oflivelihood, would be all the more resolute in advising them ordomineering over the migratory household. At last, these women grewtired of the moping and ineffectual youth who still remained poor andunsettled, with a father desperately healthy and inexorable, and allhope of the baronetcy very far off indeed; they grew tired of him andwent away,–the wife, like Lady Byron, refusing to go back to such anaimless, rhapsodizing vagabond. With her natural decision of mind,aided and encouraged, very likely, by her astute relatives, shethought she saw good reasons for breaking and setting aside thecontract which had united them; and no doubt the poor woman must havefelt the hardship of living with such a melancholy outlaw. Havingnothing in common with the devoted Emma, drawn in the ballad of “TheNut-brown Maid,” she must have hated that wandering about from, placeto place, living in lonely country-houses, under perpetual terror ofrobbers in the night, and subsisting for the most part on potatoesand Platonism; and she must have especially hated the Latin Grammar.She naturally thought, that, when she was married, she should havenothing more to say to exercises and lessons; but she found apedagogue in Shelley, and the honeymoon saw her “attacking Latin” forthe purpose of construing the poet Horace. How she must have hatedall poets! She had other ideas,–ideas of ease, respectability,baronetcy; and her disappointment was greater than she could bear.Mr. Hogg says, she had a propensity to strong courses, and would talkof suicide in a speculative way. It is not difficult to discover thetruth of that unfortunate union and disunion. Shelley, betrayed bythe impulses of his enthusiast nature and the ignorant and deplorablecredulity of a bookworm, allowed himself to be imposed upon by adesigning boarding-school girl and her relatives, and everythingfollowed as a matter of course. The unhappy wife recklessly broke thebond which she had as recklessly formed, and which the poet wouldhave honorably and truly respected all his life; and then herpassionate regret reacted fatally on herself,–and on him also, by aNemesis not so very strange or unnatural, as the world goes.[1]
[Footnote 1: Since this article was written, Mr. Peacock, an earlyfriend of Shelley, has published a very different estimate of thecharacter of Harriet Shelley. See _Fraser’s Magazine_ for March,1860.]
The subject of Shelley’s character is a delicate and a difficult one,and Mr. Hogg and Mr. Trelawny, especially, show their inability tounderstand it, by the way in which they put forward and dwell uponthe poet’s peculiarities. Trelawny, a hard-minded, thorough-paced manof the world, publishing garrulously in his old age what he wassilent about in his better period, talks of the poet’s oddity,awkwardness, and want of punctuality,–as if Percy were some clerklyman on ‘Change; and Hogg, hilariously clever, says Shelley was soerratic, fragmentary, and unequal, that his character cannot be shownin any way but as the figures of a magic-lantern are shown on awall,–Mr. Hogg’s own style of description being the wall,–“O wall,O wall, O sweet and lovely wall!” He also tells us, to instance thepoet’s familiarity with the sex, a story of Shelley sitting with oneof his lady friends and being plied with cups of tea by that fairsympathizer,–the poet talking and letting his saucer fall, and thelady wiping his perspiring face with a pocket-handkerchief. Suchscraps of silly gossip are not biography; they may do for tea-tablechit-chat, but show very feebly in the place where one looks forsomething like a philosophical criticism on the mind of soextraordinary a man as Shelley.
Genius alone can do justice to genius; and kindred genius alone willdo it. There have been, no doubt, a great many writers of biographywho had no objection to compensate their feelings for bygone slightsor discourtesies, suffered from some wayward or inattentivesuperiority, some stroke of ridicule or malice. Literary antipathiesdo not die with the dead. The posthumous impression of MargaretFuller Ossoli has been colored by some who sneer at her ways andpretensions, because there was probably something in her manner whichdispleased them in a personal way. She had certainly a very awkwardfashion of blinking her eyes, and also “a mountainous _me_.” It isvery probable poor Edgar Poe has had his faults exaggerated by thosewho suffered from the critical superiority of his intellect; sincesome of those notices of him which tend most to fix his character asa reprobate, and appear in a laggard way in the English periodicals,were probably written by some of his own countrymen. It was a painfulconsciousness of this literary revenge that made H.W. Herbert, in hislast agony, call on his brother-penmen for mercy on his remains, andthat induces many of our public men to bring out their own memoirs orencourage others to do so. It looks like vainglory, but it isnot such. The memoirs show a mortal dread of calumny ormisrepresentation. Mr. Barnum, for instance, was more just to himselfthan anybody else would be. He showed that his doings were only of apiece with those of thousands around him in society; and this notunreasonable extenuation is one that few of his critics are apt tomake use of in commenting on him and his dexterities of living. Asfor Shelley, he might have shunned or slighted or overlooked Mr.Trelawny in some painful or preoccupied moment, or offended therobust man of the world by the mere delicate shyness of his look; hemight also have puzzled and bewildered Mr. Hogg, being, perhaps,puzzled and bewildered himself, by some subtile mentalspeculation,–unconscious that for these things he was yet to be broughtto judgment and turned into ridicule, for the coming generation, bythese familiar men,–these drilled and pipe-clayed familiar men. Hemight have tossed up a paradox or two to keep the muscles of his mindin exercise on a cold day, and his rapid intellect may have run awayfrom his hearer, trampling on the conventions and platitudes in itscourse; but Mr. Hogg does not think he had fixed notions concerninganything. The poet did not nail his colors with a cheer to the mastof any of the great questions of the day, ethical or social, andtherefore suffered the disparagements of those intelligent friends ofhis who have been taught to consider a well-defined rigidity ofconviction and maintenance, in the midst of all these phenomena ofour universe, telluric and uranological, as the test of everythingvaluable in human character and morals. And thus it has come about,that genius, with its native instincts of reason, truth, and commonsense, is doomed to pay the penalty of its preeminence and itsdivergencies, and suffer at the hands of friends and enemies alike,from the show of those false appearances, insincerities,equivocations, which are its natural and proper antipathies.
Since the foregoing observations were written, the writer has seen acertain corroboration of them in the interesting “Memorials ofShelley,” recently edited by Lady Shelley, and published by Ticknorand Fields. For, in the preface of this book, she takes occasion tospeak of the misstatements of all those who have hitherto written onthe subject of the poet, instancing the fallacies of Captain Medwin’sbook, and also, in an especial manner, though vaguely enough, theincorrectness, amounting to caricature, put forth by a laterbiographer, one of Shelley’s oldest friends,–by which she evidentlymeans to indicate Mr. Hogg. At the same time, the nature of herLadyship’s book is, involuntarily, an additional evidence of thedifficulty that seems fated to attend all attempts to set forth orset right the character of Shelley. Indeed, she appears to be in somedegree conscious of this; for she says, apologetically, that she haspublished the “Memorials” for the special purpose of neutralizing themisstatements and spirit of Mr. Hogg’s work, and also lets us knowthat the time is not yet come for the publication of other and moreimportant matter calculated to do justice to the character of PercyBysshe Shelley.
It is only natural to think that Lady Shelley is not the person towrite the biography of the poet, whose relationship to her is such aclose one. She would far more willingly leave the events of histroubled life forever unremembered. Indeed, when we find, that, inher long widowhood of thirty years, Mrs. Shelley shrank from the taskof writing the life of her husband, we can the more easily understandwhy any member of his family, especially a lady, should be the mostunfit to undertake the task. Nobody could expect Lady Shelley toenter into those painful explanations necessary to it. Accordingly,in the work before us, we do not find any light thrown on thoseplaces where a person would be most anxious to see it. Lady Shelleyslurs over the undutiful boyhood of the poet and the terriblesternness of his Mirabeau-father. She merely glances across the firstfoolish marriage and the catastrophe that closed it, as a bird fliesover an abyss. On such subjects she cannot set about contradictinganybody.
But it is an ungrateful task to go on speaking of short-comings in acase like this, where the hardest critic in the world must sympathizewith the feelings of the author, whatever becomes of the book. Andyet the book will be very welcome to every one who regards it as afeminine offering of tender admiration and grief laid upon the graveof departed genius. Though not exactly the sort of personal historyone would wish for from another hand, it is still valuable, asfurnishing very interesting matter for a future biography. We have init several new letters of Shelley’s, some letters of Godwin’s, andothers of Mrs. Shelley’s, together with a number of touching extractsfrom the diary of the latter. There are also two papers from thepoet’s pen: one an “Address to Lord Ellenborough” in defence of a manpunished for having published Paine’s “Age of Reason,” and another an”Essay on Christianity.” In the first, with all a boy’s enthusiasm,he opposes the high abstract logic of truth and toleration to thehard government policy which tries to keep a reckless kind ofsemi-civilization in order, and cannot bring itself to believe, that, asyet, the broad principle of license is the one that can serve thecosmogony best. In the next he rather surprises the reader byexhibiting himself as the eulogist and expounder of JesusChrist,–but not after the manner of Saint Paul. No doubt, the secularand semi-pagan tone of this dissertation will jar against the orthodoxyof a great many readers,–to whom, however, it will be interesting asa literary curiosity. But it is meant to show the character ofShelley in a more amiable light than that in which it is contemplatedby the generality of people.
To explain Percy Bysshe Shelley, by telling us he was inconsequent,absurd, and odd in his manners, is as futile as to explain him bysaying he was a strange, wonderful genius, of the Platonic orPythagorean order, always soaring above the atmosphere of common men.To call a man of genius an inspired idiot or an inspired oddity is aneasy, but false way of interpreting him. The truth of Shelley’scharacter may be found by a more matter-of-fact investigation. He wasnaturally of a feeble constitution from childhood, and not addictedto the amusements of stronger boys; hence he became shy, and, whenbullied or flouted by the others, sensitive and irritable, and givento secret reading and study, instead of play with those “littlefiends that scoffed incessantly.” These habits gave him the name ofan oddity, and what is called a “Miss Molly,” and the persecutionthat followed only made him more recluse and speculative, anddisgusted with the ways and feelings of others. He began to havethoughts beyond his years, and was happy to think he had, in these, acompensation for what he suffered from his schoolfellows. With hishermit habits grew naturally a strong egotistical vanity, which hecould as little repress as the other youths could repress theirmuscular propensities to exercise; and hence his eagerness to setforth the threadbare heretical theories he had found among his books.For supporting these with an insolent show of importunity, he wasturned away from college, and soon left his father’s home, with hisfather’s curse to bear him company. Had the baronet been in the wayof a _lettre de cachet_, like Mirabeau’s father, he would certainlyhave had Percy put into Newgate and kept there.
The malediction of the old man seems to have clung to Shelley’s mindto the end, and made him rebellious against everything bearing thepaternal name. He assailed the Father of the Hebrew theocracy withamazing bitterness, and joined Prometheus in cursing and dethroningZeus, the Olympian usurper. With him, tyrant and father weresynonymous, and he has drawn the old Cenci, in the play of that name,with the same fierce, unfilial pencil, dipped in blood and wormwood.Shelley was by nature, self-instruction, and inexperience of life,impatient and full of impulse; and the sharp and violent measures bywhich they attempted to reclaim him only exasperated him the moreagainst everything respected by his opponents and persecutors. Geniusis by nature aggressive or retaliatory; and the young poet, writhingand laughing hysterically, like Demogorgon, returned the scorn ofsociety with a scorn, the deeper and loftier in the end, that it grewcalm and became the abiding principle of a philosophic life. It wasthe act of his father which drove Shelley into such open rebellionagainst gods and men. Very probably, though he might have lived aninfidel in religious matters, like tens of thousands of his fellows,he would not have written, or, at least, published, such shockingthings, if his father had been more patient with a youth soorganized. But parents have a right to show a terrible anger whenthwarted by their children, and in this case the father too muchresembled the son in wilful impetuosity of temper. Turned out of hisfirst home, Shelley went wandering forth by land and sea,–a reedshaken by the wind, a restless outcast yearning for repose and humansympathy, and in this way encountering the questionable accidents ofhis troubled, unguarded life, and gathering all the feverishinspiration of his melancholy and unfamiliar poetry.
With a sense of physical infirmity or defect which shaped thesequestered philosophy of the Cowpers, the Berangers, and others, themanlier minds of literature, including Byron himself, in somemeasure, Shelley felt he was not fit for the shock and hum of men andthe greater or lesser legerdemain of life, and so turned shyly awayto live and follow his plans and reveries apart, after the law of hisbeing, violating in this way what may be called the common law ofsociety, and meeting the fate of all nonconformists. He was slightedand ridiculed, and even suspected; for people in general, when theysee a man go aside from the highway, maundering and talking tohimself, think there must be a reason for it; they suppose himinsane, or scornful, or meditating a murder,–in any case, one to bevisited with hard thoughts; and thus baffled curiosity will growuneasily into disgust, and into calumny, if not into some species ofoutrage,–and very naturally, after all; for man is, on the whole,made for society, and society has a sovereign right to takecognizance of him, his ways and his movements, as a matter ofnecessary _surveillance_.
The world will class men “in its coarse blacks and whites.” Some markShelley with charcoal, others with chalk,–the former considering hima reprobate, the latter admiring him as a high-souled lover of humanhappiness and human liberty. But he was something of bothtogether,–and would have been nothing without that worst part of him.He ran perversely counter to the lessons of his teachers, and acted indefiance of the regular opinions and habits of the world. He was tooout-spoken, like all genius; whereas the world inculcates the highpractical wisdom of a shut mouth and a secretive mind. Fontenelle,speaking according to the philosophy of the crowd, says, “A wise man,with his fist full of truths, would open only his little finger.”Shelley opened his whole hand, in a fearless, unhappy manner; and wasaccordingly punished for ideas which multitudes entertain in a quietway, saying nothing, and living in the odor of respectable opinion.With a mind that recoiled from anything like falsehood and injustice,he wanted prudence. And as, in the belief of the matter-of-factRomans, no divinity is absent, if _Prudentia_ be present, so it stillseems that everything is wanting to a man, if he wants that. Shelleydenied the commonly received Divinity, as all the world knows,–anAtheist of the most unpardonable stamp,–and has suffered inconsequence; his life being considered a life of folly and vagary,and his punishment still enduring, as we may perceive from the toneand philosophy of his biographers, or rather his critics, who, notbeing able to comprehend such a simple savage, present his characteras an oddity and a wonder,–an _extravaganza_ that cannot beunderstood without some wall of the world’s pattern and plastering toshow it up against.
It is, to be sure, much easier and safer to regard Shelley’s careerin this way than to justify it, since the customs and opinions of thegreat majority must, after all, be the law and rule of the world.Shelley’s apologist would be a bold man. Whether he shall ever haveone is a question. At all events, he has not had a biographer as yet.His widow shrank from the task. Of those familiar friends of his, wecan say that “no man’s thought keeps the roadway better than theirs,”and all to show how futile is the attempt to measure such a man withthe footrule of the conventions. Shelley was a mutineer on boardship, and a deserter from the ranks; and he must, therefore, wait fora biographer, as other denounced and daring geniuses have waited fortheir audience or their epitaph.
CLARIAN’S PICTURE.
A LEGEND OF NASSAU HALL.
“Turbine raptus ingenii.”–Scaliger
[concluded.]
The next morning there was queer talk about Clarian. Mac and I staredat each other when we heard it at breakfast, but still kept our owncounsel in silence. Some late walkers had met him in the moonlight,crossing the campus at full speed, hatless, dripping wet, and flyinglike a ghost.
“I tell you,” said our informant, a good enough fellow, and one notprone to be violently startled, “he scared me, as he flitted past.His eyes were like saucers, his hair wet and streaming behind him,his face white as a chalk-mark on Professor Cosine’s blackboard.Depend on it, that boy’s either going mad or has got into somedesperate scrape.”
“Pshaw!” growled Mac, “you were drunk,–couldn’t see straight.”
“Mr. Innocence was returning from some assignation, I suspect”,remarked Zoile.
“If he had been, _you’d_ have encountered him, Mr. Zoile,” said Mac,curtly.
But I noticed my chum did not like this new feature in the case.
After this, until the time of my receiving the lad’s invitation, Ineither saw nor had communication with Clarian, nor did any others ofus. If he left his room, it was solely at night; he had his mealssent to him, under pretence of illness, and admitted no one, excepthis own servant. This fellow, Dennis, spoke of him as lookingexceedingly feeble and ill; and also remarked that he had apparentlynot been to bed for some days, but was mixing colors, or painting,the whole time. I went to his door several times; but was invariablyrefused admittance, and told, kindly, but firmly, that he would notbe interrupted. Mac also tried to see him, but in vain.
“I caught a glimpse of that boy’s face at his window just now,” saidhe, one day, coming in after recitation. “You may depend upon it,there’s something terribly wrong. My God, I was horrified, Ned! Didyou ever see any one drown? No? Well, I did once,–a woman. She felloverboard from a Chesapeake steamboat in which I was coming up theBay, and sank just before they reached her. I shall never forget herlooks as she came up the last time, turned her white, despairing,death-stricken face towards us, screamed a wild nightmare scream, andwent down. Clarian’s face was just like hers. Depend upon it, there’ssomething wrong. What can we do?”
Nothing, indeed, save what we did,–wait, until that pleasant morningcame round and brought me Clarian’s note. I could scarcely brook theslow laziness with which the day dragged by, as if it knew its ownbeauty, and lingered to enjoy it. At last, however, the night came,the hour also, and punctually with it came Dr. Thorne, a kindlyyoung physician, and a man of much promise, well-read, prompt,clear-headed, resourceful, and enthusiastically attached to his professionMac tucked a volume of Shakspeare under his arm, and we made our wayto Clarian’s room forthwith. Here we found about a dozen students,all known to us intimately. They were seated close to one another,conversing in low tones, and betraying upon their faces quite ananxiety of expectation. The door of the bedroom was closed, thecurtain was lowered, and the only light in the room came from ashaded lamp, which was placed upon a small table in the recess to theright of the picture.
“What is this for?” inquired Dr. Thorne, pointing to a sort of salverresting upon a low tripod directly in front of the picture.
“Where is Clarian?” asked I.
“He looks awful,” someone began in a whisper, when the lad’s feeblevoice called out from the bedroom,–
“Is it Ned and Mac?”
The door was pulled open, and Clarian came towards us.
“I am glad to see you, my friends. Dr. Thorne, you are truly welcome.Pray, be seated. Mac, here is your place, you and your Shakspeare,”said he, indicating the chair and table in the recess.
I had held out my hand to the lad, but he turned away without takingit, and began to adjust the cords that moved the curtain.
“The tripod, Dr. Thorne,” said he, with a sickly smile, “is a–a merefancy of mine,–childish,–but in the salver I shall burn somepyrotechnic preparations, while the picture is being exhibited, byway of substitute for daylight. Excuse me a moment,” added he, as hewent into the bedroom again.
“Blount,” said Dr. Thorne, in my ear, “why have you permitted this?What ails that boy? If he is not cared for soon, he will go crazy.Hush!–here he comes,–keep your eye on him.”
Then, as Clarian came out, and stood in the bedroom doorway, quitenear me, I remarked the terrible change since I had last seen him. Heleaned against the door-frame, as if too weak to support himselferect; and I saw that his knees shook, his hands jerked, and hismouth twitched in a continual nervous unrest. He had on a handsome_robe de chambre_ of maroon velvet, which he seldom wore aboutcollege, though it was very becoming to him, its long skirts fallingnearly to his feet, while its ample folds were gathered about hiswaist, and secured with cord and tassel. His feet were thrust intoneat slippers, and his collar rolled over a flowing black cravat _ala Corsaire_. His long hair, which was just now longer than usual,was evenly parted in the middle, like a girl’s, and, combed outstraight, fell down to his shoulders on either side. All this careand neatness of dress made the contrast of his face stand out themore strikingly. Its pallor was ghastly: no other word conveys theidea of it. His lips kept asunder, as we see them sometimes inpersons prostrated by long illness, and the nether one quiveredincessantly, as did the smaller facial muscles near the mouth. Hiseyes were sunken and surrounded by livid circles, but they themselvesseemed consuming with the dry and thirsty fire of fever: hot, red,staring, they glided ever to and fro with a snake-like motion, asuncertain, wild, and painful, in their unresting search, as those ofa wounded and captive hawk. The same restlessness, approaching inviolence the ceaseless spasmodic habit of a confirmed Chorea,betrayed itself in all his movements, particularly in a way he had ofglancing over his shoulder with a stealthy look of apprehension, andthe frequent starts and shivers that interrupted him when talking.His voice also was changed, and in every way he gave evidence notonly of disease of mind and body, but of a nervous system shatteredalmost beyond hope of reaction and recovery. Trembling for him, Irose and attempted to speak with him aside, but he waived me off,saying, with that sickly smile which I had never before seen himwear,–
“No, Ned,–you must not interrupt me to-night, neither you nor therest,–for I am very weak and nervous and ill, and just now need allmy strength for my picture, which, as it has cost me labor andpain,–much pain,–I wish to show in its best light. Macbeth’sterror–it means more than it did the other night, Ned–but”–
Here he murmured an inarticulate word or two, recovering himselfalmost instantly, however, and resuming in a stronger voice,–
“Macbeth’s doom is my picture. You will wonder I preferred the solidwall to canvas, perhaps,–but so did the genuine old artists. LippoLippi, and Giotto, and–why, Orcagna painted on graveyard walls; andI can almost fancy, sometimes, that this room is a vault, a tomb, adungeon, where they torture people. Turn to the place, good Mac,Shakespeare’s tragedy of ‘Macbeth,’ Act Third, Scene Fourth, and readthe scene to us, as you know how to read; I will manage theaccompaniments.”
As he spoke, he touched the salver with a lighted match, so that ablue alcoholic flame flickered up before the curtain, making the poorlad’s face seem more ghastly than ever.
“You must sit down, Clarian,” cried Dr. Thorne, resolutely.
Clarian smiled again, that dim, uncertain smile, and answered,–
“Nay, Doctor, let me have my own way for an hour, and after that youshall govern me as your learned skill suggests. And do not be uneasyabout my ‘creamfaced’ aspect, as I see Ned is: there is plentifulcause for it, beyond the feebleness of this very present, andto-night is not the first time I have worn these ‘linen cheeks.’ Readon, Mac.”
We sat there in the dim light, breathless, awed,–for all of us sawthe boy’s agony, and were the more shocked that we were unable tounderstand it,–until, at last, in a voice made more impressive byits tremor, Mac began to read the terrible text,–to read as I hadnever heard him read before, until a fair chill entered our veins andran back to our shuddering hearts from sympathy. Then, as he read onand painted the king and murderer together, while his voice waxedstronger and fuller, we saw Clarian step forward to the salver andbusy with its lambent flame, till it blazed up with a broad, redlight, that, shedding a weird splendor upon all around, and lending asupernatural effect to the room’s deep shadows, the picture’sfunereal aspect, and the unearthly pallor of the boy’s countenance,startled our eyes like the painful glare of midnight lightning.
“Thou canst not say, I did it! Never shake Thy gory locks at me!”
As the reader thrust the terror of these words upon us, all startedback, for the curtain was plucked suddenly away, and there before us,not in Clarian’s picture, it seemed, but in very truth, stoodMacbeth, conscious of the murdered presence. Even the reader,absorbed as he was in his text, paused short, amazed; and I forgotthat I had seen this picture, only knew that it was a living scene ofterror. Doubtless much of this startling effect was the result ofassociation, the agitation of anxiety, the influence of theimpressive text, the suddenness of the apparition, the unusual light;but in the figure of Macbeth, at which alone we gazed, there was alife, a terrible significance, that outran all these causes. It wasnot in the posture, grand as that was,–not in the sin-stamped brow,rough with wrinkles like a storm-chafed sea,–not in the wiry hair,gray and half rising in haggard locks, like adders that in vain tryto escape the foot that treads them down,–nor in the mouth, for thatwas hid behind the impotent guard of the upraised arm and clenchedfist,–but in those painted eyes, into which, all-fascinated, we evergazed, reading in them all that crouching terror, all the punishmentof that spectral presence, all the poignant consciousness of his fateto whom such things could happen, to whom already his victims riseagain,
“With twenty mortal murders on their crowns And push us from ourstools!”
While I yet gazed, a sickening terror pervading me in the presence ofthese ghastly eyes, there came a voice, as if from afar,–“Readon!”–so consonant with the tone of my emotions, that I looked to seethe figure itself take speech, until Mac, with a gasp, resumed.Still, as he read, the nightmare-spell possessed me, till aconvulsive clutch upon my arm roused me, and instinctively, with thereturning sense, I turned to Clarian.
Not too soon,–for then, in his own person, and in that strangeglare, he was interpreting the picture to us. He stood, not thrownback like Macbeth, but drawn forward, on tiptoe, with neck reachedout, form erect, but lax, one arm extended, and one long diaphanousfinger pointing over our heads at something he saw behind us, buttowards which, in the extremity of our terror, we dared not turn oureyes. _He saw it_,–more than saw it,–we knew, as we noted thescream swelling in his throat, yet dying away into an inarticulatebreath ere it passed the blue and shaken lips,–he saw it, and thoseeyes of his, large enough in their wont, waxed larger still, wilder,madder with desperate affright, till every one of us, save theabsorbed reader, recognized in them the nightmare horror of thepicture,–knew that in Macbeth Clarian had drawn his own portrait!There he stood, drawn on, staring, pointing–
“Stop!” shouted Dr. Thorne, his voice hoarse and strident withemotion; but Mac, absorbed in his text, still read, flinging a fineand subtile emotion of scorn into the words,–
“O proper stuff! This is the very painting of your fear:This”—-
“Triple fool! be silent!” cried Dr. Thorne again, springing to hisfeet,–while we, spell-bound, sat still and waited for the end.”Cease! do you not see?” cried he, seizing Mac.
But there stood Clarian yet, that red light upon his cheek and brow,that fixed stare of a real, unpainted horror in his speechless face,that long finger still pointing and trembling not,–there he stood,fixed, while one might count ten. Then over his blue lips, like aghost from its tomb, stole a low and hissing whisper, that curdledour blood, and peopled all the room with dreadful things,–a lowwhisper that said,–
“Prithee, see there! behold! it comes! it comes!” Now he beckoned inthe air, and called with a shuddering, smothered shriek,–“Come! Idid it! come! Ha!” yelled he, plucking the spell from his limbs likea garment, and springing madly forward towards the door,–“Ha! touchme not! Off, I say, off!” He paused, gazed wildly round, flung hishand to his brow, and, while his eyes rolled till nothing but theirwhites were seen, while the purple veins swelled like mole-tracks inhis forehead, and a bubbling froth began to gather about his lips, hetossed his arms in the air, gave shrieking utterance to the cry,–“OChrist! it is gone! it is gone!” and fell to the floor with a bound.
We sprang to him,–Thorne first of any.
“This is my place, gentlemen,” said he, in quick, nervous tones.Then, taking the prostrate child into his arms, he carried him to hisbed, laid him down, felt his pulse, and placed his head in Mac’sarms. Returning then, he veiled the picture, flung the salver out ofthe window, and dismissed the huddled throng of frightened students,warning them to be silent as to the night’s events. “Very likelyClarian will never see to-morrow; so be careful, lest you soil hismemory.”
“What does it mean, Thorne?” asked Mac, as the Doctor and I cameagain to the bedside. “It is nothing more than an overdose of_cannabis_ or opium upon an excited nervous system, is it?”
Thorne looked at the delicate-limbed child who lay there in Mac’sstrong arms, wiped away the gathering froth from the lips, replacedthe feebly quivering limbs, and, as he lingered over the pulse,replied,–
“He has been taking _hashish_?”
“He _has_ taken it,–I do not say he is under its influence now.”
“No,–he has not touched any stimulant. This is much worse thanthat,–this means epilepsy, Mac, and we may have to choose betweendeath and idiocy.”
He was still examining the boy, and showing Mac how to hold him mostcomfortably.
“If I could only get at the _causes_ of this attack,–those, I mean,which lie deeper than the mere physical disorder,–if I could onlyfind out what it is he has been doing,–and I could, easily, were Inot afraid of directing suspicion towards him, or bringing about someunfortunate embarrassment”–
“What is it you suspect?” thundered Mac.
“Either some cruel trick has been played upon the boy, or he has beenguilty of some act of madness”–
“Impossible!” cried we in a breath; “Clarian is as pure as Heaven.”
“Look at him, Thorne!” said my good chum,–“look at the child’sbaby-face, so frank and earnest!–look at him! You dare not say an impurethought ever awoke in that brain, an impure word ever crossed thoselips.”
Dr. Thorne smiled sadly.
“There is no standard of reason to the enthusiast, my dear Mac; andhere is one, of a surety. However, time will reveal; I wish I knew.Come, Ned, help me to mix some medicines here. Be careful to keep hishead right, Mac, so as to have the circulation as free as possible.”
While we were occupied in the front room, there came a stout doubleknock at the door, and when I opened it, Hullfish, the weather-beatenold constable of the borough, made his hesitating appearance. TheDoctor gave me a quick glance, as if to say, “I told you so,” andthen returned the old man’s bluff salutation. As soon as Hullfish sawhim, he came forward with something like a sigh of relief, andsaid,–
“Ah, Doc, you here? ‘Tar’n’t a hoax, then, though I was mightily’feared it was. Them students is the Devil for chivying of afeller,–beggin’ your pardon, Mr. Blount. Have you got him yonder,Doctor?” said he, his keen eye noticing Mac and Clarian in the backroom.
“What do you mean, Hullfish? Got whom?” asked Thorne, making me asign to be quiet.
“The party, Sir, that was to be copped. I’ve got a blank warranthere, all right, and a pair of bracelets, in case of trouble.”
“What fool’s errand is this, old man?” asked the Doctor, sternly.
“What! you don’t know about it? Lord! p’raps it’s a sell, after all,”said he, quite chopfallen. “But I’ve got my pay, anyhow, and there’sno mistake in a V on the Princeton Bank. And here’s the papers,” saidhe, handing a note to the Doctor. “If that’s slum, I’m done, that’sall.”
The Doctor glanced at the scrap of paper, then handed it to me,asking, “Is that his handwriting?”
It was a note, requiring Mr. Hullfish. to privately arrest a personguilty of a capital offence, until now concealed. If he was notbrought to Hullfish’s house between nine and ten that night, thenHullfish was to proceed to No.–North College, where he would becertain to find the party. The arrest must be made quietly. Thehandwriting was undoubtedly Clarian’s, and I told Thorne as much.
“You see, gentlemen,” said Hullfish, “I wouldn’t ‘a’ taken no noticeof it, ef it hadn’t been for the money; but, thinks I, them studentsa’n’t in the habit of sech costly jokes, and maybe there’ll be somepinching to do, after all. So you mean to say it’s a gam, do you,Doctor? May I be so bold as to inquire what yonder chap’s holding onto ‘tother about?”
“‘Tother’ is dangerously ill,–has a fit, Hullfish. He is the authorof that note,–very probably was out of his mind when he wrote it.”
“So? Pity! Very sick? Mayn’t I see him?”
But, as he stepped forward, Thorne stood in the way and effectuallyintercepted his view. The constable smiled cunningly, as he drewback, and said,–
“You’re sure ‘ta’n’t nothing else, then? Nobody’s been getting rappedon the’ head? Didn’t see no blood, though,–that’s true. Well, Idon’t like to be sold, that’s a fact,–but there’s no help for it.Here’s the young man’s change, Doctor,–warrant sixty-six, my feesone dollar.”
Thorne carelessly asked if there had been any rows lately,–if he hadheard of any one being hurt,–if they had been quiet recently alongthe canal; and being assured that there had been no disturbance ofmoment,–“only a little brush between Arch and Long Tobe, down toGibe’s,”–he handed the money back to Hullfish.
“Keep that yourself,–it is yours by rights. And, look you, mum’s theword in this case, for two reasons: there’s danger that the poorlittle fellow there is going to croak before long, and you’d be sorryto think you’d given trouble to a dead man; and what’s more, if theboys get hold of this, there’ll be no end of their chaffing. There’snot a few of them would like to cook your goose for you,–I needn’ttell you why; so, if you don’t want them to get the flashest kind ofa pull over you, why, you’ll take my advice and keep dark.”
“Nothing like slang, Ned, with the police or the prigging gentry. Itgives them a wonderful respect for your opinion,” said the Doctor,when Hullfish was gone. But his serious, almost stern look returnedimmediately, as he continued,–“Now to solve this mystery, and findout what this wretched boy has been doing. Come, you and Mac, help meto understand him.”
When we had told the Doctor all we knew of the lad, he pondered longover our recital.
“One thing is certain,” said he: “the boy is innocent in intention,whatever he has done, and we must stand by him,–you twoparticularly; for you are to blame, if he has got himself into anypredicament.”
“The boy has done nothing wrong, Thorne,” said Mac, sturdily; “he mayhave been trapped, or got himself involved somehow, but he nevercould have committed any crime capable of superinducing such anattack as this.”
The Doctor shook his head.
“You may be right, my friend,–and I hope you are, for the child’ssake, for it will certainly kill him, if he has. But I never trust anintense imagination when morbidly excited, and I have read of somestrange freaks done by persons under the influence of that infernal_hashish_. However, trust me, I shall find out what is the matterbefore long, and bring the boy round nicely. He is improving fastnow, and all we have to do is to avert another attack.”
Thank Heaven, in a day or two Clarian was pronounced to be out ofdanger, and promising rapid recovery. We had removed him to ourrooms, as soon as the violence of the convulsion left him, in orderto spare him the associations connected with his own abode. Still,the lad continued very weak, and Thorne said he had never seen soslight an attack followed by such extreme prostration. Then it did myheart good to see how my chum transformed himself into the tenderest,the most efficient of nurses. He laid aside entirely his brusquemanner, talked in the softest tones, stole noiselessly about ourrooms, and showed all the tender solicitude, all the quiet”handiness” of a gentle woman. I could see that Clarian loved to havehim at his bedside, and to feel his caressing hand.
“You see, Ned,” Mac would say, in a deprecatory tone that amused mevastly, “I really pity the poor little devil, and can’t help doingall in my power for him. He’s such a soft little ass,–confoundThorne! he makes me mad with his cursed suspicions!–and then the boyis out of place here in this rough-and-tumble tiltyard. Reminds me ofa delicate wineglass crowded in among a ruck of ale flagons andbattered quart-cups.”
But, though we rejoiced to see that Clarian’s health promised to bebetter than it had been for months, we did not fail to notice withregret and apprehension, that, as he grew physically better andmentally clearer, a darkening cloud settled over his whole being,until he seemed on the point of drowning in the depths of anirremediable dejection and despair. Besides this, he was ever on thepoint of telling us something, which he yet failed of courage to putinto words; and Thorne, noticing this, when, one day, we were allseated round the bed, while the lad fixed his shaded, large, mournfuleyes upon us with a painfully imploring look, said suddenly, hisfingers upon Clarian’s pulse,–
“You have something to say to us,–a confession to make, Clarian.”
The boy flushed and shuddered, but did not falter, as he replied,”Yes.”
“You must withhold it until you are well again. I know what it is.”
Clarian quickly withdrew his hand from the Doctor’s grasp.
“You know it, and yet here, touching me? Impossible! entirelyimpossible!”
“Oh, as to that,” said Thorne, with a cool shrug of the shoulders,”you must remember that _our_ relations are simply those of physicianand patient. Other things have nought to do with it. And, as yourphysician, I require you to withhold the matter until you are wellenough to face the world.”
“No,–I must reap where I have sown. I have no right to impose uponmy friends any longer.”
“Bad news travel fast enough, Clarian, and there is no wisdom inlosing a friend so long as you can retain him.”
“I do not see the force of your reasoning, Dr. Thorne. I have enoughto answer for, without the additional contumely of being called animpostor.”
“For your mother’s sake, Clarian, I command you to wait. Spare _her_what pain you can, at least.”
“My mother! Oh, my God, do not name her! do not name her!”
And he burst into the only tears I ever saw him shed, hiding his facein the bed-clothes, and sobbing piteously.
“What does this mean?” said Mac, as soon as we were where Clariancould not hear us. “What have you found out?”
“Positively nothing more than you know already,” answered Thorne.
“Nothing?” echoed Mac, very indignantly; “you speak very confidentlyfor one having such poor grounds.”
“My dear Mac,” said Thorne, kindly, “do you think I am not as muchconcerned about Clarian as you are? Positively, I would give half Iown to arrive at a satisfactory solution of this mystery. But whatcan we do? The boy believes himself a great criminal. Do you not seeat once, that, if we permit him to confess his crime, he will insistupon taking himself out of our keeping,–commit suicide, get himselfsent to the madhouse, or anyhow lose our care and our soothinginfluence? We cannot relieve him until we restore his strength andcomposure. All we can do now is to watch him, soothe him, and by allmeans stave off this confession until he is stronger. It would killhim to face a charge now. I am inquiring quietly, and, if anythingserious has happened, shall be sure to find out his connection withit.”
Though we rebelled against the Doctor’s conclusions, we could not butsee the prudence of the course he advised, and so we sat down towatch our poor little friend, gnawed with bitter anxiety, and feelinga sad consciousness that the disease itself under which he sufferedwas beyond our skilfullest surgery, and one that inevitablythreatened the saddest consequences. A man has grand powers ofrecovery, so long as his _spirit_ is free; but let him once bepersuaded that his soul is chained down forever in adamantinefetters, and, though, like Prometheus, he may endure with silence,patience, even divinely, he is nevertheless utterly incapable of anypositive effort towards recuperation. His faith becomes, by a subtilelaw of our being, his fact; the mountain is gifted with actualmotion, and rewards the temerity of his zeal by falling upon him andcrushing him forever. Such a person moves on, perchance, like a deep,noble river, in calm and silence, but still moves on, inevitablydestined to lose himself in the common ocean. And this was thepromise of Clarian’s case. Whatever was his hidden woe, howevertrivial its rational results, or baseless its causes, it had beyondremedy seized upon his soul, and we knew, that, unless it could bedone away with at the source, the end was certain: first the fury,then the apathy of madness. He was no longer tortured with a visiblehaunting presence, such as had borne him down on that fatal night,but we saw plainly that he had taken the spectre into his own breast,and nursed it, as a bosom serpent, upon his rapidly exhaustingenergies.
Happily for us,–ere Clarian was quite beyond recovery, while Macstill tore his hair in rage at his own impotence, while the Doctorstill pursued his researches with the sedateness of a philosopher,and I was using what power I had to alleviate my little friend’smisery,–that subtile and mysterious agency, which, in our blindnessand need, we term Chance, interposed its offices, rolled away thecloud from the mystery, and, like a good angel, rescued Clarian, evenas he was tottering upon the very brink of the dismal precipice towhose borders he had innocently strayed.
I shall never forget that pleasant June day. It was the first timethat Clarian had been out since his illness; and I was his singlecompanion, as he strayed slowly along through the college grounds,leaning tremulously upon my arm, dragging his feet languidly over thepebbled walks, and drinking in the warm, fresh, quivering air with amanner that, although apathetic, still spoke of some power ofenjoyment. It was during the hour for the forenoon recitation, andthe elm-shaded campus was entirely free of students. As Clarianwalked along, his eyes bent down, I heard him murmuring thatdelicious verse of George Herbert’s,–
“Sweet day! so cool, so calm, so bright,The bridal of the earth and sky!The dew shall weep thy fall to-night,For thou must die!”
“‘For thou must die,’–so sad! And yet the thought itself of death isnot that which saddens us so, do you think, Ned?” he went on, Ihearing his words without heeding them,–for I was looking just thentowards the outer gate next the President’s house, through which Isaw Dr. Thorne coming rapidly, accompanied by a stout, middle-agedman, having the dress and appearance of a well-to-do farmer,–“Notthe thought, simply, ‘Thou must die,'” repeated Clarian, in hisplaintive murmur, “but the feeling that all this decay and death isof ourselves, and could be averted by ourselves, had we onlyself-control, could we only keep ourselves pure, and so be ever near Godand _of_ Him. _There’s_ cause for a deeper melancholy, poignantertears than ever Jacques shed.”
Dr. Thorne and his companion were now quite near, coming towards uson the same path, when I saw the stranger slap his thighenergetically and catch Thorne by the arm, while he exclaimed intones of boisterous surprise,–
“Why, there’s the very little chap, as I’m alive!”
I had half a glimpse of the Doctor’s seizing his companion andclapping one hand over his mouth, as if to prevent him from sayingmore,–but it was too late. At the sound of the man’s voice I feltClarian bound electrically. He looked up,–over his face began tocome again that terrible anguish of the night of the picture, but themuscles seemed too weak to bring it all back,–he grew limp againstme,–his arms hung inert at his side,–a word that sounded like”Spare me!” gurgled in his throat,–a feeble shudder shook him, and,ere I could interpose my arm, he sank in a heap at my feet, white,and cold, and lifeless. Before I had raised him, Thorne and the mansprang to my aid, and the latter, bending over with eager haste, tookthe thin white hands in his own, half caressing them, half fearing tograsp them, speaking to him the while in tones of frightenedentreaty, that, on any other occasion, would have been ludicrousenough.
“Come, now, my little man,” said he,–“come, don’t be afeard, _don’t_be afeard of me! Dan Buckhurst won’t harm ye, not for the world, poorchild! Come, stand up! ‘Twas all a joke. Come, come!–My God! Doctor,he a’n’t dead, is he?” cried he to Thorne, in horror.
“If he is, you have killed him, you damned old fool, you!” respondedThorne, impetuously, thrusting the man aside with an angry gesture,and bending down to examine the lad’s inert form. “Thank God, Ned,”said he at last, “it is only a swoon this time, and we’ll soon havehim all right. We must get him to bed, though. Here, Buckhurst, youare the strongest; stop whimpering there, you old jackanapes, andbring him along.”
Buckhurst quickly obeyed, lifting Clarian up in his arms as gentlyand tenderly as if he had been an infant, and following Thorne, wholed the way to our rooms. There the lad was placed upon the bed withwhich he had become only too familiar, and the Doctor, by means ofhis restoratives, soon had the satisfaction of recalling breath andmotion. As soon as the boy’s sighs gave evidence of returningvitality, Thorne thrust us all from the room, including Mac, who hadnow come in from class, saying to Buckhurst,–
“Now, Sir, tell them all about it,–and wait here; I shall want youpresently.” With which words he closed the door upon us, and returnedto his patient.
Mr. Buckhurst refused the chair tendered him by Mac, and paced up anddown the room in a state of immense perturbation.
“Well, I never!” said he, “well, I never! It taken me all aback,Sir,” added he, turning to me. “Did you ever see anything like it?Why, he’s jest like a gal! Dang it, Sir! my Molly a’n’t half asnervous as he is. I hope he’ll get well,–I raelly do, now. Iwouldn’t hev had it happen for I dunno what, now, indeed!” And heresumed his walk, repeating to himself, “Well, I never! Who’d ‘a’judged ’twas a child like that?”
“May I beg to know what you refer to, Mr. Buckhurst?” asked Mac, withconsiderable impatience in his tones.
“Eh,–what? He’s mighty delicate, a’n’t he?” said the man, with histhumb indicating the next room.
“Very delicate indeed, Sir,–perhaps you can explain the cause of hispresent attack,” said I, angrily; for I had begun to think, fromBuckhurst’s manner, that he had been guilty of some practical jokeupon Clarian. I saw the fire of a similar suspicion blazing in Mac’seyes; and I fear, had our conclusions been verified, the worthy Mr.Buckhurst would have fared very badly at our hands, spite the laws ofhospitality.
“What! did he never tell you? Of course not, though, being sick eversence, and thinking me dead, too. Well, I’ll tell you: but mind, youmustn’t banter the child about it, for he can’t stand it,–thoughit’s only a joke. Might have been serious, to be sure, but, as thingsturns out, a pretty good joke, to my notion,–though I’m rael sorry_he’s_ been so bad about it.”
Mac rose, removed his coat, and marched deliberately up to our guest.”See here, Sir,” said he in his deepest bass voice, which his darkfrown made still more ominous, “do you mean us to infer that you havebeen making that child Clarian the victim of any of your infernal_jokes_, as you style them?”
Buckhurst stared a moment, and then, seeming to comprehend the driftof Mac’s words, burst into a hearty laugh.
“No, Sir!” he shouted, “the shoe’s on the other foot, thank the Lord!The boy himself played the joke, or trick, whatever it was. Dr.Thorne tells me he was kind of crazy, from drinking laudanum, or somesech pisonous matter. Howsever that was, I’m sure he didn’t do it inairnest,–thought so from the very first,–and now I’ve had a goodlook at his face, I’d swear to it”
“What did he do?” asked Mac, hurriedly.
Buckhurst laughed in that hearty way of his. Said he,–
“I’ll wager you a stack of hay agin them books yander you couldn’tguess in a week now. What d’ye think it was? Ho! ho! Why, why, thelittle rascal shoved me into the canawl!”
“Shoved you into the canal!” echoed I, while Mac, looking first athim, then at me, finally burst into a peal of laughter, shouting thewhile,–
“Bravo! There’s your ‘experience’ philosophy, Ned Blount! Catch meteaching milksops again! Go on, Buckhurst, tell us all about it.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Buckhurst, apparently quite pleased to see that welaughed with him. “It don’t look like it was in the nature of things,somehow, does it? Fact, though, he did indeed. Shoved me right in, soquick I didn’t know what the Devil was the matter, until I sousedkersplash! and see him taking out over the drawbridge like mad.”
“When was that, Mr. Buckhurst?”
“Jest inside of a month ago, Sir, one night.”
“_Sapperment_, Ned! that was the time of the ‘herb Pantagruelion’!–Well, what were you doing on the canal at that hour?” asked Mac,slyly.
“No, you needn’t, now,–I see you wink at him,–honor bright. I’dbeen up to town, to take a mess o’ clams at Giberson’s, with maybe asprinklin’ of his apple-jack,–nothing else,–and I was on my wayhome,–to Skillman’s tavern at the _depot_, you know,–and I’d jeststopped a piece, and was a-standing there, looking at the moon in thewater, when he tipped me over. I tell you, I was mad when I crawledout wet as a rat; and if I’d ketched him then, you may depend uponit, I’d ‘a’ given his jacket a precious warming. As I said, he runoff, but jest as I turned towards the tavern, I see him a-comingback, kinder wild-like; so I slipped behind a lumber-pile, hoping hemight come over the bridge, so I could lay my fingers on him. Themoon was about its highest, so I could see his face, plain as day,–white,–skim-milk warn’t a circumstance to it,–and his eyes wideopen as they could stretch. I tell you, he was wild! He looked up anddown a bit, mumbled somethin’ I couldn’t make out, and then what doyou think that boy did? Why, he jumped in, clothes and all, bold as alion,–plainly to save me from drowning, and me all the time a-spyin’at him from behind a lumber-pile! He was sarching for me, I knowed,for he swum up and down jest about there for the space maybe of aquarter of an hour. And when he give it up at last, and come out, hekinder sunk down on the tow-path, and I heard him say plain enough,though he only whispered it,–jest like a woman actor I see down toYork oncet, playin’ in Guy something or other,–she was a sort of anold gypsy devil,–says he, ‘I am a murderer, then!’ Thinks I, ‘Sonny,all but the murderer!’ And as he stood up again, he ‘peared to sufferso, his face was so white, and his knees so shaky, that I says tomyself, ‘Dan, you’ve carried the joke far enough.’ So I sings out tohim, and comes out from behind the lumber-stack, but, Lord bless ye!he jest peeped round over his shoulder oncet, gave a kind of chokin’scream like, and put out up the road as if the Devil was after him. Iknowed it warn’t no use to follow him, so I got on a dry shirt andwent to bed. The next day I went home, and I’d mighty near forgot allabout it, only today I came to see Dr. Thorne for somethin’ to do mycold good, and he wantin’ to know how I ketched it brought the wholematter back again.”
“You’re an old brick, Buckhurst!” cried Mac, giving the jovial farmera thundering slap on the back, and a hearty grasp of his hand; “andyou shall drink the boy’s health with Ned and me this day, or I’llknow the reason why. Ned Blount, a’n’t it glorious? Said I not, youill-omened bird, said I not, _’Il y a toujours un Dieu pour lesenfans et pour les ivrognes’_?–So you came down with Thorne to easethe poor little fellow’s mind, did you, Buckhurst? That’s right, andyou shall see the picture, by Jove! And you’ll say, when you see it,that such a picture were cheap at the cost of duckings for a dozenBuckhursts. Now tell me truly, what do you think made him push youin?
“Of course, it was the pison, Sir,–a baby like that wouldn’t harm aflea. I thought maybe, until I see Dr. Thorne, that he done it out ofmischieviousness, as boys will do, you know,–jest as they steal afeller’s apples, and knock his turkeys of’n the roost,–but yander’snot one of them kind; so he must ‘a’ been crazy, and I’m rael sorryhe’s been so bad put to about it,–I am, indeed.”
Here the inner door was opened, and Thorne joined us, with a moistureabout his eyes that he used afterwards to deny most vehemently.
“Buckhurst, he wants to see you; go in there,” said he,–adding, in alower tone, “Now, mind you, the child’s delicate as spun glass; so becareful.”
“Come in, Mr. Buckhurst,” called Clarian.
The worthy farmer looked to right and left, as if he would muchrather have made his escape, but, impelled by a shove from theDoctor, he ran his fingers through his coarse hair, and, with a veryred and “I-wish-I-was-out-of-this” face, went in, closing the doorbehind him.
“Phew!” said Thorne, seating himself somewhat testily, after havingfilled and lighted a pipe,–“Phew! So that’s over, and I a’n’t sorry;it’s as bad as reading the ‘Diary of a Physician.’ The boy will beall right now, and the lesson won’t hurt him, though it has been arough one. But no more metaphysics for him, Ned Blount! And, boys,let this be a warning to you. He’s too brittle a toy to be handled inyour rough fashion.”
“You needn’t tell us that, Thorne,” said Mac, drawing a long breath.”Catch me kicking over children’s baby-houses again, or telling ’emghost-stories in the dark!”
“He vows never again to touch brush, crayon, or pencil; and if he isthe devotee you describe him to be, Ned, I would not advise you tooppose him in his determination. You must keep him here tillvacation, and next term he can exchange his room. Macbeth’s companywill never be very agreeable to him, I should judge; and it will notdo to let him destroy the picture.”
Thorne puffed away vigorously for a minute or two.
“That boy ought to turn preacher, Mac. He touched me nearer just nowthan I have been touched for an age.
“‘His voice was a sweet tremble in mine ear,Made tunable with every saddest grief,Till those sad eyes, so spiritual and clear,’
almost persuaded me to follow the example of divine Achilles and’refresh my soul with tears.’ He has that tear-bringing privilege ofgenius, to a certainty.”
And so it seemed, indeed; for presently the worthy Mr. Buckhurst madehis reappearance in quite a sad state, mopping his red face andswollen eyes most vigorously with a figured cotton handkerchief, andproclaiming, with as much intelligibility as the cold in his head andthe peculiar circumstances of the case would admit of, that he’d “bedagg’d ef he hadd’t raver be chucked idto _two_ cadawls dad ‘ave datiddocedt baby beggid his pardod about de codfouded duckid! Wat dehell did _he_ care about gittid wet, he’d like to kdow?Dodsedse!–‘twad all dud id fud, adyhow!”
—-“And now _you_, my dear, dear friends,” said Clarian, turning hissad, full eyes upon us, and calling us to his side, and to his arms.
But I shall draw a veil over that interview.
That night, after we had talked long and lovingly together, and werenow sitting, each absorbed in his own thoughts, and emulating thequiet that reigned around college, Clarian softly joined us, andplaced an open book in Mac’s hands.
“Will you, dear Mac?” murmured he.
Then Mac, all full of solemn emotion, read through the grand periodsof the Church Litany, and when he had finished, Clarian, with athrilling “Let us pray,” offered up such a thanksgiving as I hadnever heard, praying to the kind Father who had so mercifullyextricated him, that our paths might still be enlightened, and ourwalks made humble and righteous.
“Clarian,” said Mac, after a pause, when we were again on our feet,–he laid his hands on the boy’s shoulders, as he spoke, and lookedinto his eyes,–“Clarian, would it have happened, if you had nottaken that foul drug?”
Clarian shuddered, and covered up his face in his hands.
“Do not ask me, dear Mac! do not ask me! Oh, be sure, my aims, Ithought, were noble, and myself I thought so pure!–but–I cannotsay, Mac, I cannot say.
“‘We are so weak, we know our motives least In their confusedbeginning.'”
“At least, Clarian,” said Mac, after a while, his deep voicewonderfully refined with strong emotion, “at least, the picture wasnot painted in vain. Even as it is in the play, Banquo died that hisissue might reign after him; and this lesson of ours will bear fruitfar mightier than the trifling pains of its parturition. Ay, Clarian,your picture has not been vainly painted.–And now, Ned,” said he,rising, “we must put our baby to bed; for he is to wake earlyto-morrow, and know himself a man!”
SPRING.
Doves on the sunny eaves are cooing,The chip-bird trills from the apple-tree,Blossoms are bursting and leaves renewing,And the crocus darts up the spring to see.
Spring has come with a smile of blessing,Kissing the earth with her soft warm breath,Till it blushes in flowers at her gentle caressing,And wakes from the winter’s dream of death.
Spring has come! The rills, as they glisten,Sing to the pebbles and greening grass;Under the sward the violets listen,And dream of the sky as they hear her pass.
Coyest of roses feel her coming,Swelling their buds with a promise to her,–And the wild bee hears her, around them humming,And booms about with a joyous stir.
Oaks, that the bark of a century covers,Feel ye the spell, as ye groan and sigh?Say,–does her spirit that round you hoversWhisper of youth and love gone by?
Windows are open,–the pensive maidenLeans o’er the sill with a wistful sigh,Her heart with tender longings o’erladen,And a happy sadness, she knows not why.
For we and the trees are brothers in nature;–We feel in our veins the season’s thrillIn hopes that reach to a higher stature,In blind dim longings beyond our will.
Whence dost thou come, O joyous spirit?From realms beyond this human ken,To paint with beauty the earth we inherit,And soften to love the hearts of men?
Dear angel! that blowest with breath of gladnessThe trump to waken the year in its grave,Shall we not hear, after death’s deep sadness,A voice as tender to gladden and save?
Dost thou not sing a constant promiseThat joy shall follow that other voice,–That nothing of good shall be taken from us,But all who hear it shall rise, to rejoice?
RUFUS CHOATE.
Mr. Choate’s mind was so complex, peculiar, and original,–so foreignin temperament and spirit to the more representative traits of NewEngland character,–so large, philosophic, and sagacious in visionand survey of great questions, and so dramatic and vehement in theirexposition and enforcement,–so judicial and conservative in alwaysmaintaining in his arguments the balance and relation ofinterdependent principles, and so often in details marring the mostexquisite poetry with the wildest extravagancies of style,–so freefrom mere vulgar tricks of effect, and so full of imaginativetricksiness and surprises,–so mischievous, subtle, mysterious,elusive, Protean,–that it is no wonder he has been more admired andmore misunderstood than any eminent American of his time. It wasbecause of these unaccustomed qualities of mind that matter-of-factlawyers and judges came slowly but surely to Mr. Webster’sconclusion, that he was “the most accomplished of American lawyers,”whether arguing to courts or juries. In the same way, criticallycorrect but unimaginative scholars, who “can pardon anything but afalse quantity,”–who “see the hair on the rope, but not the rope,”and detect minute errors, but not poetic apprehension,–admitted atlast the fulness and variety of his scholastic attainments. Andperhaps the finest tribute to the power and subtlety of his influencewas, that, to the last, juries, who began cases by steelingthemselves against it, and who ended by giving him their verdicts,maintained that they were not at all influenced by him,–so profound,so complete, and so unconscious had been the spell this man of geniushad woven around them.
When it is remembered that a great lawyer in the United States iscalled upon (as he is not in England) to practise in all our courts,civil and criminal, law, equity, and admiralty, and, in addition toall the complicated questions between parties, involving life,liberty, and property, arising therein, that he is to know anddiscuss our whole scheme of government, from questions under itspatent laws up to questions of jurisdiction and constitutionallaw,–it will be seen what a field there is for the exhibition of thehighest talents, and how few lawyers in the country can becomeeminent in all these various and important departments of mentallabor. In their whole extent Mr. Choate was not only thoroughlyinformed as a student and profound as a reasoner, but his geniusproduced such a fusion of imagination and understanding as to givecreativeness to argumentation and philosophy to treatment of facts.
We propose to try to give some idea of those mental characteristicsand peculiarities in which he differed from other lawyers, and toindicate some salient points of his genius and nature which went tomake up so original and interesting an individuality. Immense laborand talent will no more produce genius or its results, than merenatural genius, without their aid and instrumentality, can reach andmaintain the highest rank in any of the great departments of life orthought. With true genius, imagination is, to be sure, paramount togreat and balanced faculties; but genius is always demonstrating itssuperiority to talent as well by its greater rapidity and certaintyin seizing, arranging, and holding facts, and by the extent of itsacquisitions, as by its superior philosophic and artistic grasp andvision.
Though Mr. Choate was so much more than a mere lawyer, it was incourt that he displayed the full force and variety of his powers._Hic currus et arma_. We shall, however, speak more especially of hisjury-trials, because in them more of his whole nature was broughtinto play, and because of them and of his management of them there isand can be no full record. The arguments and triumphs of the greatadvocate are almost as evanescent and traditionary as theconversation of great talkers like Coleridge. In what we have to saywe cannot be expected to call up the arguments and cases themselves,and we must necessarily be confined to a somewhat general statementof certain mental qualities and characteristics which were of thesecret of his power. We shall be rewarded, if we succeed in giving inmere outline some explanation of the fact, that so much of interestand something of mystery attach themselves throughout the country tohis name and genius.
A jury-trial is in itself dramatic; but mere eloquence is but a smallpart of what is demanded of a great advocate. Luther Martin andJeremiah Mason were the most eminent American examples of the verymany great jury-lawyers who were almost destitute of all that makesup popular eloquence. A jury-lawyer is of course greater with it, buthe can do entirely without it. Almost all great trials appeal to theintellects rather than to the passions of jurors. What an advocateneeds first is thorough knowledge of law, and that adaptiveness andreadiness of faculty which are never surprised into forgetfulness orconfusion, so that he can instantly see, meet, reason upon, and applyhis legal learning to the unexpected as well as the expected pointsof law and evidence as they arise in a case. Secondly, he must havethorough knowledge of human nature: he must not only profoundlydiscuss motives in their relations to the laws of the human mind, andpractically reconcile motives with conduct as they relate to theparties and witnesses in his cases, but he must prepare, present,develop, guide, and finally argue his case, within the rules of law,with strict reference to its effect upon the differing minds oftwelve men. It would be difficult to name any other field of publicmental effort which demands and gives scope for such variety offaculty and accomplishment.
Whatever may have been Mr. Choate’s defects of character or of style,no competent judge ever saw his management of any case in court, fromits opening to its close, without recognizing that he was a man ofgenius. It mattered not whether the amount involved was little orgreat, whether the parties were rich or poor, wise or ignorant,whether the subject-matter was dry or fertile,–such were hisimaginative insight, his knowledge of law and of human nature, hisperfection of arrangement, under which every point was treated fully,but none unduly, his consummate tact and tactics, his command oflanguage in all its richness and delicacy to express the fullestforce and the nicest shades of his meaning, and his haggard beauty ofperson and grace of nature, that every case rose to dramatic dignityand to its largest relations to law, psychology, and poetry; andthus, while giving it artistic unity and completeness, he all themore enforced his arguments and insured his success. How widelydifferent in method and surroundings from the poet’s exercise of thecreative faculty in the calm of thought and retirement, on a selectedtopic and in selected hours of inspiration, was his entering, withlittle notice or preparation, into a case involving complicatedquestions of law and fact, with only a partial knowledge of the caseof his antagonist! met at point after point by unexpected evidenceand rulings of law, often involving such instantaneous decisions asto change his whole combinations and method of attack; examiningwitnesses with unerring skill, whom he was at once too chivalrous andtoo wise to browbeat; arguing to the court unexpected questions oflaw with full and available legal learning; carrying in his mind thecase, and the known or surmised plan of attack of his antagonist, andshaping his own case to meet it; holding an exquisitely sensitivephysical and mental organization in such perfect control as never tobe irritated or disturbed; throwing his whole force on a given point,and rising to a joyousness of power in meeting the great obstacles tohis success; and finally, with little or no respite for preparation,weaving visibly, as it were, before the mental eye, from all theseelicited materials, his closing argument, which, as we have said, wasall the more effective, because profound reasoning and exquisite tactand influence were involved in it as a work of art.
He had the temperament of the great actors,–that of the elder Keanand the elder Booth, not of Kemble and Macready,–and, like them, hadthe power of almost instantly passing into the nature and thought andemotion of another, and of not only absolutely realizing them, but ofrealizing them all the more completely because he had at the sametime perfect self-direction and self-control. The absurd question isoften asked, whether an actor is ever the character he representsthroughout a whole play. He could be so, only if insane. But everygreat actor and orator must be capable of instantaneous abandonmentto his part, and of as instantaneous withdrawal from it,–like theelder Booth, joking one minute at a side-scene and in the next havingthe big tears of a realized Lear running down his cheeks. An eminentcritic says,–“Genius always lights its own fire,”–and this constantdouble process of mind,–one of self-direction and self-control, theother of absolute abandonment and identification,–each the morecomplete for the other,–the dramatic poet, the impassioned orator,and the great interpretative actor, all know, whenever the whole mindand nature are in their highest action. Mr. Choate, therefore, frompure force of mental constitution, threw himself into the life andposition of the parties and witnesses in a jury-case, and theynecessarily became _dramatis personae_, and moved in an atmosphere ofhis own creation. His narrative was the simplest and most artisticexhibition of his case thus seen and presented from the point oftheir lives and natures, and not from the dry facts and points of hiscase; and his argument was all the more perfect, because notexhibited in skeleton nakedness, but incorporated and intertwinedwith the interior and essential life of persons and events. It was inthis way that he effected the acquittal of Tirrell, whom anymatter-of-fact lawyer, however able, would have argued straight to thegallows; and yet we have the highest judicial authority for sayingthat in that case he did his simple technical duty, withoutinterposing his own opinions or convictions. We shall say a word,before we close, of the charge that he surrendered himself toocompletely to his client; but to a great degree the explanation andthe excuse at once lie in this dramatic imagination, which was of theessence of his genius and influence, and through which he lived thelife, shared the views, and identified himself with a great actor’srealization, in _the part_ of his client.
In making real to himself the nature, life, and position of hisclient,–in gathering from him and his witnesses, in the preparationand trial of his case, its main facts and direction, as colored orinflamed by his client’s opinions, passions, and motives,–and inseeking their explanation in the egotism and idiosyncrasy which hisown sympathetic insight penetrated and harmonized into a consistentindividuality,–he, of course, knew his client better than his clientknew himself; he conceived him as an actor conceives character, and,in a great measure, saw with his eyes from his point of view, and, inthe argument of his case, gave clear expression and consistentcharacterization to his nature and to his partisan views in theirrelations to the history of the case. We have seen his clients sitlistening to the story of their own lives and conduct, held off inartistic relief and in dramatic relation, with tears running downcheeks which had not been moistened by the actual events themselves,re-presented by his arguments in such coloring and perspective.
As a part of this power of merging his own individuality in that ofhis client was his absolute freedom from egotism, conceit,self-assertion, and personal pride of opinion. Such an instance is, ofcourse, exceptional. Nearly all the eminent jury-lawyers we haveknown have been, consciously or unconsciously, self-asserting, andtheir individuality rather than that of their clients has beenimpressed upon juries. An advocate with a great jury-reputation hastwo victories to win: the first, to overcome the determination of thejury to steel themselves against his influence; the second, toconvince their judgments. Mr. Choate’s self-surrender was so completethat they soon forgot him, because he forgot himself in his case;nothing personally demonstrative or antagonistic induced obstinacy oropposition, and every door was soon wide open to sympathy andconviction. If an advocate is conceited, or vain, or self-important,or if he thinks of producing effects as well for himself as for hisclient, or if his nature is hard and unadaptive,–great abilitiesdisplay these qualities, instead of hiding them, and they make arefracting medium between a case and the minds of a jury. Mr. Choatewas more completely free from them than any able man we ever knew.Any one of them would have been in complete contradiction to thewhole composition and current of his nature. Though conscious of hispowers, he was thoroughly and lovingly modest. It was because hethought so little of himself and so much of his client that he nevermade personal issues, and was never diverted by them from his strictand full duty. Instead of “greatly finding quarrel in a straw,” wheresome supposed honor was at stake, he would suffer himself rather thanthat his case should suffer. Early in his practice, when a friendtold him he bore too much from opposing counsel without rebukingthem, he said: “Do you suppose I care what those men say? I want toget my client’s case.” Want of pugnacity too often passes for want ofcourage. We have seen him in positions where we wished he could havebeen more personally demonstrative, and (to apply the language of thering to the contests of the court-room) that he could have stoodstill and struck straight from the shoulder; but when we remember howperfectly he saw through and through the faults and foibles of men,how his mischievous and genial irony, when it touched personalcharacter, stamped and characterized it for life, and how keen wasthe edge and how fine the play of every weapon in his full armory ofsarcasm and ridicule, (of which his speech in the Senate in reply toMr. McDuffie’s personalities gives masterly exhibition,) we arethankful that his sensibility was so exquisite and his temper sosweet, that he was a delight instead of a terror, and that he wasloved instead of feared. Delicacy should be commensurate to power,that each may be complete. It would seem almost impossible that alawyer with a practice truly immense, passing a great part of hislife in public and heated contests and in discussing and oftenseverely criticizing the motives and conduct of parties andwitnesses, should not make many enemies; but he was so essentiallymodest, simple, gentlemanly, and tender, so considerate of thefeelings of others, so evidently trying to mitigate the pain which itwas often his duty to inflict, that we never heard of his searchingand subtile examination of witnesses, or his profound and exhaustiveanalysis of character and motive, or his instantaneous andirresistible retorts upon counsel, creating or leaving behind him, inthe bar or out of it, malice or ill-will in a human being. One of themost touching and beautiful things we ever saw in a court-room wouldhave been in other hands purely painful and repulsive. It was hisexamination of the wretched women who were witnesses in the Tirrellcase. His tact in eliciting what was necessary to be known, and whichthey would have concealed, was forgotten and lost in his chivalrousand Christian recognition of their common humanity, and in hisgentlemanly thoughtfulness that even they were still women, withfeelings yet sensitive to eye and word.
In jury-trials it would be foolish to judge style by severe orclassic standards. If an advocate have skill and insight and adequatepowers of expression, his style must yield and vary with thecircumstances of different cases and the minds of different juriesand jurors. When a friend of Erskine asked him, at the close of ajury-argument, why he so unusually and iteratively, and with suchsingular illustration, prolonged one part of his case, he said,–“Ittook me two hours to make that fat man with the buff waistcoat jointhe eleven!”
All men of great powers of practical influence over the minds of menknow how stupid and dull of apprehension the mass of mankind are; andno one knows better than a great jury-lawyer in how many differentways it is often necessary to present arguments, and how they must bepressed, urged, and _hammered_ into most men’s minds. He isendeavoring to persuade and convince twelve men upon a question inwhich they have no direct pecuniary or personal interest, and he mustmore or less know and adapt his reasoning and his style to eachjuror’s mind. He should know no audience but the judge and thesetwelve men. Retainers never seek and should not find counsel whoaddress jurors with classical or formal correctness. Napoleon, at St.Helena, after reading one of his bulletins, which had produced thegreat and exact effect for which he had intended it, exclaimed,–“Andyet they said I couldn’t write!”
The true Yankee is suspicious of eloquence, and “stops a metaphorlike a suspected person in an enemy’s country.” A stranger, wholooked in for a few minutes upon one of Mr. Choate’s jury-arguments,and saw a lawyer with a lithe and elastic figure of about five feetand eleven inches, with a face not merely of a scholarly paleness,but wrinkled all over, and, as it were, scathed with thought and withpast nervous and intellectual struggles, yet still beautiful, withblack hair curling as if from heat and dewy from heightened actionand intensity of thought and feeling, and heard a clear, sympathetic,and varying voice uttering rapidly and unhesitatingly, sometimes withsweet caesural and almost monotonous cadences, and again withstartling and electric shocks, language now exquisitely delicate andpoetic, now vehement in its direct force, and again decorated andwild with Eastern extravagance and fervor of fancy, would havethought him the last man to have been born on New England soil, or toconvince the judgments of twelve Yankee jurors. But those twelve men,if he had opened the case himself, had been quietly, simply, andsympathetically led into a knowledge of its facts in connection withits actors and their motives; they had seen how calmly and with whattact he had examined his witnesses, how ready, graceful, and unheatedhad been his arguments to the court, and how complete throughout hadbeen his self-possession and self-control; they had, moreover,learned and become interested in the case, and were no longer thesame hard and dispassionate men with whom he had begun, and theyknew, as the casual spectator could not know, how systematically hewas arguing while he was also vehemently enforcing his case. _He_,meanwhile, knew his twelve men, and what arguments, appeals, andillustrations were needed to reach the minds of one or all. He didnot care how certain extravagances of style struck the criticalspectator, if they stamped and riveted certain points of his case inthe minds of his jury. With the keenest perception of the ridiculoushimself, he did not hesitate to say things which, disconnected fromhis purpose, might seem ridiculous. One consequence of theseaudacities of expression was, that, when it became necessary for himto be iterative, he was never tedious. They gave full play to hisimaginative humor and irony, and to his poetic unexpectedness andsurprises. A wise observer, hearing him try a case from first tolast, while recognizing those higher qualities of genius which wehave before described, saw, that, for all the purposes of persuasionand argumentation, for conveying his meaning in its full force and inits most delicate distinctions and shadings, for analytic reasoningor for the “clothing upon” of the imagination, for all the essentialobjects and vital uses of language, his style was perfect for hispurpose and for his audience. His excesses came from surplus powerand dramatic intensity, and were pardoned by all imaginative minds tothe real genius with which they were informed.
Every great advocate must, at times, especially in the trial ofcapital cases, be held popularly responsible for the acquittal of menwhom the public has prejudged to be guilty. This unreasoning,impulsive, and irresponsible public never stops to inform itself;never discriminates between legal acumen and pettifogging trickery,between doing one’s full duty to his client and interposing ormisrepresenting his own personal opinions; and never remembers thatthe functions of law and the practice of law are to prevent and topunish crime, to ascertain the truth, and to determine and enforcejustice,–that trial by jury, and the other means and methods throughwhich justice is administered, are founded in the largest wisdom,philanthropy, and experience,–that they cannot work perfectly,because human nature is imperfect, but they constitute the bestpractical system for the application of abstract principles of rightto the complicated affairs of life which the world has yet seen, andwhich steadily improves as our race improves,–and that every greatlawyer is aiding in elucidating truth and in administering justice,when doing his duty to his client under this system. Our trial byjury has its imperfections; but, laying aside its demonstrated valueand necessity in great struggles for freedom, before and since thetime of Erskine, no better scheme can be devised to do its great andindispensable work. The very things which seem to an uninformed manlike rejection or confusion of truth are a part of the sifting bywhich it is to be reached. The admission or rejection of evidenceunder sound rules of law, the presenting of the whole case of eachparty and of the best argument which can be made upon it by hiscounsel, the charge of the judge and the verdict of the jury,–allare necessary parts of the process of reaching truth and justice.Counsel themselves cannot know a whole case until tried to its end;their clients have a right to their best services, within the limitsof personal honor; and lawyers are derelict in duty, not only totheir clients, but to justice itself, if they do not present theircases to the best of their ability, when they are to be followed byopposing counsel, by the judge, and by the jury. The popular judgmentis not only capricious,–it not only assumes that legal precedents,founded in justice for the protection of the honest, are pettytechnicalities or tricks through which the dishonest escape,–it isnot only formed out of the court-room, with no opportunity to seewitnesses and hear testimony, often very different in reality fromwhat they seem in print,–but it visits upon counsel its ignorantprejudices against the theory and practice of the law itself, andforgets that lawyers cannot present to the jury a particle ofevidence except with the sanction of the court under sound rules oflaw, and that the law is to be laid down by the court alone.
A man thoroughly in earnest in any direction is more or less apartisan. Histories are commonly uninfluential or worthless, unlesswritten with views so earnest and decided as to show bias. As thegreater interests of truth are best subserved by those whose zeal iscommensurate to their scope of mind, so it is a part of the scheme ofjury-trials, that, within the limits we have named, counsel shallthrow their whole force into their cases, that thus they may bepresented fully in all lights, and the right results more surelyreached. The scheme of jury-trials itself thus providing for alawyer’s standing in the place of his client and deriving from himhis partisan opinions, and for urging his case in its full forcewithin the limits of sound rules of law, it almost invariablyfollows, that, the greater the talent and zeal of the advocate, andthe more he believes in the views of his client, the more liable heis to be charged with overstating or misstating testimony. Mr. Choatenever conceived that his duty to his client should carry him up tothe line of self-surrender drawn by Lord Brougham; but, recognizinghis client’s full and just claims upon him, entering into hisopinions and nature with the sympathetic and dramatic realization wehave described, he could not faithfully perform the prescribed andadmitted duty of the advocate,–necessarily, with him, involving histhrowing the whole force of his physical and intellectual vitalityinto every case he tried,–without being a vehement partisan, orwithout being sometimes charged with misstating evidence or going toofar for his client. Occasionally this may have been true; but we seethe explanation in the very quality of his genius and temperament,and not in conscious or intentional wrong-doing.
His ability and method in his strictly legal arguments to courts oflaw are substantially indicated in what we have already said. Hismanner, however, was here calm, his general views of his subjectlarge and philosophic, his legal learning full, his reasoning clear,strong, and consequential, his discrimination quick and sure, and hisdetection of a logical fallacy unerring, his style, though sometimesfairly open to the charge of redundancy, graceful and transparent inits exhibition of his argument, and his mind always at home, and inits easiest and most natural exercise, when anything in his case roseinto connection with great principles.
While exhibiting in his jury-trials, as we have shown, this doubleprocess of absolute identification and of perfect supervision andself-control,–of instantaneous imaginative dips into his work, andof as instantaneous withdrawal from it,–of purposely and yetcompletely throwing himself in one sentence into the realization ofan emotion, thus perfectly conveying his meaning while living thethought, and yet coming out of it to see quicker than any one that itmight be made absurd by displacement,–he always had, as it were, anair-drawn, circle of larger thought and superintending relation fararound the immediate question into which he passed so dramatically.Within this outer circle, attached and related to it by everything inthe subject-matter of real poetic or philosophic importance, was hiscase, creatively woven and spread in artistic light and perspective;and between the two (if we do not press our illustration beyond clearlimits) was a heat-lightning-like play of mind, showing itself, atone moment, in unexpected flashes of poetic analogy, at another inPuck-like mischief, and again in imaginative irony or humor.
As he recovered himself from abandonment to some part of his case orargument to guide and mould the whole, so, going into his library, hecould, as completely, for minutes or for hours, banish and forget hisanxieties and dramatic excitements, and pass into the cooling air andloftier and purer stimulations of the great minds of other times andcountries and of the great questions that overhang us all. His mind,capacious, informed, wise, doubting, “looking before and after,” herefound its highest pleasures, and its little, but most loved repose.”The more a man does, the more he can do”; and, notwithstanding hisimmense practice, and that by physical and intellectual constitutionhe couldn’t _half_ do anything, he never allowed a day of his life topass, without reading some, if ever so little, Greek, and it was asurprise to those who knew him well to find that he kept up witheverything important in modern literature. Rising and going to bedearly, taking early morning exercise, having a strong constitution,though he was subject to sudden but quickly overcome nervous andbilious illness, wasting no time, caring nothing for the coarsersocial enjoyments, leading, out of court, a self-withdrawn andsolitary life, though playful, genial, and stimulating in socialintercourse, with a memory as tenacious and ready as his apprehensionwas quick, with high powers of detecting, mastering, arranging, andfusing his acquisitions, and of penetrating to the centre ofhistorical characters and events,–it is not strange, though he maynot have been critically exact and nice in questions of quantity andcollege exercises, that his scholarship was large and available inall its higher aims and uses.
It will naturally be asked, how such qualities as we have describedmanifested themselves in character, and in political and other fieldsof thought and exertion. Fair abilities, zeal, industry, a sanguinetemperament, and some special bent or fitness for the profession ofthe law, will make a good and successful lawyer. Such a man’s mindwill be entirely in and limited by the immediate case in hand, andvirtually his intellectual life will be recorded in his cases. Butwith Mr. Choate, the dramatic genius and large scope and vision whichmade him superior to other great advocates at the same time preventedhis overestimating the value of his work in kind or degree, showedhim how ephemeral are the actual triumphs and how small the realvalue of nearly all the questions he thus vitalized into artisticreality, when compared with the great outlying truths and principlesto which he allied them. Feeling this all through his cases, at thesame time that he was moulding them and giving them dramaticvitality, they took their true position from natural reaction andrebound, with all the more sharpness of contrast, when he came out ofthem. With such a nature, it could be assumed _a priori_ as apsychological certainty, at any rate it was the fact with him, that acertain unreality was at times thrown over life and its objects, thatits projects and ambitions seemed games and mockeries, and “thisbrave o’erhanging firmament a pestilent congregation of vapors,” andthat grave doubts and fears on the great questions of existence wereever on the horizon of his mind. This gave perpetual play to hisirony, and made it a necessity and a relief of mind. Except when inearnest in some larger matter, or closely occupied in accomplishingsome smaller necessary purpose or duty, his imagination loved thetricksy play of exhibiting the petty side of life in contrast to itsrealities, just as in his cases it found its exercise in lifting themup to relations with what is poetic and permanent. But, though ironywas thus the natural language of his mind, it did not pass beyond thelimits of the mischievous and kindly, because there was nothingscoffing or bitter in his nature. It was fresh and natural, neverstudied for effect, and gave his conversation the charm of constantnovelty and surprises. He loved to condense the results of thoughtand study into humorous or grotesque overstatements, which, whilethey amused his hearers, conveyed his exact meaning to every one whofollowed the mercurial movement of his mind. It will readily be seenhow a person with neither insight into his nature nor apprehension ofhis meaning should, without intending it, misinterpret his life andcaricature his opinions,–blundering only the more deeply when tryingto be literally exact in reporting conversations or portrayingcharacter.
It has been shrewdly said, that, “when the Lord wants anything donein this world, he makes a man a little wrong-headed in the rightdirection.” With this goes the disposition to overestimate theimportance of one’s work and to push principles and theories towardsextremes. The saying is true of some individuals at or before certaincrises in affairs; it is not true of the great inevitable historicalmovements, any more than the history of revolutions is the history ofnations. Halifax is called a trimmer. William Wilberforce was areformer. Each did a great work. But it would be simply absurd,except in the estimation of the moral purist, to call Wilberforce asgreat a man or as great an historical and influential person asHalifax. Halifax saw and acted in the clear light and large relationsin which the great historian of our own times wrote the history ofthe Stuarts. Wilberforce was a purer man, who acted moreconscientiously and persistently within his smaller range of life andthought. It would have been inconsistent with Mr. Choate’s nature forhim to have been “wrong-headed” in any direction. Such largeness ofview, such dramatic and interpretative imagination, such volatileplay of thought and fancy, and such perception of the pettiness andhollowness of nearly all the aims and ambitions of daily life wecannot expect to find coexisting with the coarser “blood-sympathies,”the direct passion, and the dogged and tenacious hold of temporaryand smaller objects and issues, which distinguish the Americanpolitician, or with the narrowness of view, the zeal, and the moralpersistency which characterize the practical reformer. There was,therefore, in his nature a certain want of the sturdier, harder, andmore robust elements of character, which, though commonly manifestingthemselves in connection with self-assertion and partisan zeal, areindispensable to the man who, in any large and political way, wouldtake hold of practical circumstances and work a purpose out of them.We admire him for what he was. We do not condemn him for the absenceof qualities not allied to such delicacy and breadth of nature. It issimply just to state the fact.
He had too little political ambition to seek his own advancement. Henever could have been a strictly party man. His interest in ourpolitics was a patriotic interest in the country. While he recognizedthe necessity of two great parties, he despised the arts andintrigues of the politician. His modesty, sensibility, large views,and want of political ambition and partisan spirit preventedinterest, as they would have precluded success in party management.Had he spent many years instead of a few in the national Senate, henever could have been a leader in its great party struggles. He hadnot the hardier personal and constitutional qualities of mind andcharacter which lead and control deliberative bodies in great crises.He would not have had that statesmanlike prescience which in the caseof Lord Chatham and others seems separable from great general scopeof thought, and which one is tempted to call a faculty forgovernment. But he must have been influential; for, besides being themost eloquent man in the Senate, his speeches would have beendistinguished for amplitude and judgment in design, and for tact andpersuasiveness in enforcement. They might not have had immediate andcommanding effect, but they would have had permanent value. Hisspeech upon the Ashburton Treaty indicates the powers he would haveshown, with a longer training in the Senate. More than ten years hadpassed between that speech and his two speeches in the MassachusettsConstitutional Convention, upon Representation and the Judiciary, andin that time a great maturing and solidifying work had been going onin his mind. Indeed, it was one sure test of his genius, that hisintellect plainly grew to the day of his death. We would point tothose two speeches as giving some adequate expression of his abilityto treat large subjects simply, profoundly, artistically, andconvincingly. Many of his earlier and some of his later speeches andaddresses, though large in conception and stamped with unmistakablegenius, want solid body of thought, and are, so to speak, too fluidin style. This obviously springs from the qualities of mind and fromthe circumstances we have indicated. In court, the necessities of hiscase and the determination and shaping of all his argument andpersuasion to convincing twelve men, or a court only, on questionsrequiring prompt decision, kept his style free from everythingforeign to his purpose. But, released from these restraints, andcalled upon for a treatment more general and comprehensive than acuteand discriminating, his style often became inflamed and decoratedwith sensibility and fancy. His mind, moreover, was overtasked in hisprofession. His unremitting mental labor in the preparation and trialof so many cases was immense and exhausting. It shortened his life.That his genius might have that free and joyous exercise necessary toits full use and exhibition in literary or political directions, anabandonment of a great part of his professional duties wasindispensable. This was to him neither possible nor desirable. Themental heat and pressure, therefore, under which he wrote hisspeeches and addresses, and the necessity for the exercise ofdifferent methods of thought and treatment from those called intoplay at the bar, explain why (with a few noble exceptions) they donot give a fair or full exhibition of his genius and accomplishments.But in them his judgment never lost its anchorage. Unlike Burke, whowas the god of his political idolatry, his sensibility neverovermastered his reasoning. Through a style sometimes Eastern inflush and fervor, and again tropical in heat and luxuriance, werealways seen the adjusting and attempering habit of thought andargument and the even balance of his mind.
We have said that his interest in politics was a patriotic interestin the nation. He knew her history and her triumphs and reverses onland and sea by heart. Though limited by no narrow love of country,he felt from sentiment and imagination that attachment to everysymbol of patriotism and national power which makes the sailor sufferdeath with joy when he sees his country’s flag floating in the smokeof victory. “The radiant ensign of the Republic” was to him theliving embodiment of her honor and her power. He had for it the prideand passion of the boy, with the prophetic hopes of the patriot. Menof genius are ever revivifying the commonplace expressions andvisible signs of popular enthusiasm with the poetic and historicrealities which gave them birth. He felt the glow and impulse of thegreat sentiments of race and nationality in all their naturalsimplicity and poetic force. It is not now the time to discuss Mr.Choate’s political preferences and opinions. No one who knew him wellcan hesitate to pronounce his motives pure and patriotic. We couldnot come to his conclusions on the policy and duty of our people atthe last Presidential election. Our duties to the Union forced us toregard as paramount what he regarded as subsidiary. Our fear for theUnion sprang from other sources than his. But we believe he actedfrom the highest convictions of duty, and he certainly exposedhimself with unflinching courage to obloquy and misinterpretationwhen silence would have been easy and safe.
In what we have said of him as a lawyer we are sure that in everyessential respect we have not overstated or misstated his powers andcharacteristics as they were known and conceded by lawyers and judgesin Massachusetts. We have confined ourselves mainly to hisjury-trials, because into them he threw the whole force and vitality ofhis nature, and because we could thus more completely indicate thevariety of his accomplishments and the essential characteristics ofhis genius and individuality. A knowledge of them is indispensable toa just estimate of the man, and it must die with him and his hearers,excepting only as it may be preserved by contemporaneous writtencriticism and judgment, and by indeterminate and shadowy tradition.
The labors of so great a lawyer are as much more useful as they areless conspicuous than those of any prominent politician orlegislator, unless he be one of the very few who have highconstructive or creative ability. There is little risk ofoverestimating the value of a life devoted to mastering that complexsystem of jurisprudence, the old, ever-expanding, and ever-improvingcommon law which is interwoven with our whole fabric of government,property, and personal rights, and to applying it profoundly throughtrial by jury and before courts of law, not merely that justice maybe obtained for clients, but that decisions shall be made determiningthe rights and duties of men for generations to come. And when such alife is not only full of immense work and achievement, butis penetrated and informed with genius, sensibility, andloving-kindness, it passes sweetly and untraceably, but influentiallyand immortally, into the life of the nation.
THE REGICIDE COLONELS IN NEW ENGLAND.
Before the restoration of Charles the Second, in 1660, to the throneof his ancestors, he had issued a “Declaration,” promising to allpersons but such as should be excepted by Parliament a pardon ofoffences committed during the late disorderly times. In theParliamentary Act of Indemnity which followed, such as had beendirectly concerned in the death of the late King were excepted frommercy. Colonel Whalley and Colonel Goffe were members of the HighCourt of Justice which convicted and sentenced him. It was known thatthey had fled from England; and one Captain Breedon, lately returnedfrom Boston, reported that he had seen them there. The Ministry sentan order to Endicott, the Governor of Massachusetts, for theirapprehension and transportation to England.
The friendly welcome which had in fact been extended to thedistinguished fugitives cannot be confidently interpreted as anindication of favorable judgment of the act by which their lives werenow endangered. No one of the New-England Colonies had formallyexpressed approval of the execution of King Charles the First, nor isthere any other evidence of its having been generally regarded bythem with favor. It is likely that in New England, as in the parentcountry, the opinions of patriotic men were divided in respect to thecharacter of that measure. In New England, remote as it was from thescene of those crimes which had provoked so extreme a proceeding, itmay be presumed that there was greater difficulty in admitting theforce of the reasons, by which it was vindicated. And the sympathy ofNew England would be more likely to be with Vane, who condemned it,than with Cromwell. But the strangers, however one act of theirsmight be regarded, had been eminent among those who had fought forthe rights of Englishmen, and they brought introductions from menvenerated and beloved by the people among whom a refuge was sought.
Edward Whalley, a younger son of a good family, first cousin of theProtector Oliver, and of John Hampden, distinguished himself at theBattle of Naseby as an officer of cavalry, and was presently promotedby Parliament to the command of a regiment. He commanded at the stormof Banbury, and at the first capture of Worcester. He was intrustedwith the custody of the King’s person at Hampton Court; he sat in theHigh Court of Justice at the trial of Charles, and was one of thesigners of the death-warrant. After the Battle of Dunbar, at which heagain won renown, Cromwell left him in Scotland in command of fourregiments of horse. He was one of the Major-Generals among whom thekingdom was parcelled out by one of the Protector’s lastarrangements, and as such governed the Counties of Lincoln,Nottingham, Derby, Warwick, and Leicester. He sat as a member forNottinghamshire in Cromwell’s Second and Third Parliaments, and wascalled up to “the other House” when that body was constituted.
William Goffe, son of a Puritan clergyman in Sussex, was a member ofParliament, and a colonel of infantry soon after the breaking out ofthe Civil War. He married a daughter of Whalley. Like hisfather-in-law, he was a member of the High Court of Justice for theKing’s trial, a signer of the warrant for his execution, a member of theProtector’s Third and Fourth Parliaments, and then a member of “theother House.” He commanded Cromwell’s regiment at the Battle ofDunbar, and rendered service particularly acceptable to him in thesecond expurgation of Parliament. As one of the ten Major-Generals,he held the government of Hampshire, Berkshire, and Sussex.
When Whalley and Goffe, upon the King’s return, left England toescape what they apprehended might prove the fate of regicides, thepolicy of the Court in respect to persons circumstanced as they werehad not been promulgated. Arriving in Boston, in July, and havingbeen courteously welcomed by the Governor, they proceeded the sameday to Cambridge, which place for the present they made their home.For several months they appeared there freely in public. Theyattended the public religious meetings, and others held at privatehouses, at which latter they prayed, and _prophesied_, or preached.They visited some of the principal towns in the neighborhood, wereoften in Boston, and were received, wherever they went, withdistinguished attention.
At the end of four months, intelligence came to Massachusetts of theAct of Indemnity, and that Whalley and Goffe were among thoseexcepted from it, and marked for vengeance. Three months longer theylived at Cambridge unmolested; but in the mean while affairs had beengrowing critical between Massachusetts and the mother country, and,though some members of the General Court assured them of protection,others thought it more prudent that they should have a hint toprovide for their safety in some way which would not imply an affrontto the royal government on the part of the Colony. The Governorcalled a Court of Assistants, in February, and without secrecy askedtheir advice respecting his obligation to secure the refugees. TheCourt refused to recommend that measure, and four days more passed,at the end of which time–whether induced by the persuasion ofothers, or by their own conviction of the impropriety of involvingtheir generous hosts in further embarrassment, or simply because theyhad been awaiting till then the completion of arrangements for theirreception at New Haven–they set off for that place.
A journey of nine days brought them to the hospitable house of theReverend Mr. Davenport, where again they moved freely in the societyof the ministers and the magistrates. But they had scarcely been atNew Haven three weeks, when tidings came thither of the reception atBoston of a proclamation issued by the King for their arrest. Torelease their host from responsibility, they went to Milford, (as ifon their way to New Netherland,) and there showed themselves inpublic; but returned secretly the same night to New Haven, and wereconcealed in Davenport’s house. This was towards the last of March.
They had been so situated a month, when their friends had informationfrom Boston that the search for them was to be undertaken in earnest.Further accounts of their having been seen in that place had reachedEngland, and the King had sent a peremptory order to the Colonialgovernments for their apprehension. Endicott, to whom it wastransmitted, could do no less than appear to interest himself toexecute it; and this he might do with the less reluctance, because,under the circumstances, there was small likelihood that hisexertions would be effectual. Two young English merchants, ThomasKellond and Thomas Kirk, received from him a commission to prosecutethe search in Massachusetts, and were also furnished with letters ofrecommendation to the Governors of the other Colonies. That they werezealous Royalists, direct from England, would be some evidence to thehome government that the quest would be pursued in good faith. Thatthey were foreigners, unacquainted with the roads and with the habitsof the country, and betraying themselves by their deportment whereverthey should go in New England, would afford comfortable assurance tothe Governor that they would pursue their quest in vain.
From Boston, the pursuivants, early in May, went to Hartford, wherethey were informed by Winthrop, Governor of Connecticut, that “theColonels,” as they were called, had passed thence immediately before,on their way to New Haven. Thither the messengers proceeded, stoppingon the way at Guilford, the residence of Deputy-Governor Leete.