Unaffectedly I say it—upon the honour of a gentleman, and the reputation of an author, unaffectedly I say it—no words of mine can do justice to the sensations experienced by Lenny Fairfield, as he sate alone in that place of penance. He felt no more the physical pain of his bruises; the anguish of his mind stifled and overbore all corporeal suffering—ananguish as great as the childish breast is capable of holding. For first and deepest of all, and earliest felt, was the burning sense of injustice. He had, it might be with erring judgment, but with all honesty, earnestness, and zeal, executed the commission intrusted to him; he had stood forth manfully in discharge of his duty; he had fought for it, suffered for it, bled for it. This was his reward! Now, in Lenny's mind there was pre-eminently that quality which distinguishes the Anglo-Saxon race—the sense of justice. It was perhaps the strongest principle in his moral constitution; and the principle had never lost its virgin bloom and freshness by any of the minor acts of oppression and iniquity which boys of higher birth often suffer from harsh parents, or in tyrannical schools. So that it was for the first time that that iron entered into his soul, and with it came its attendant feeling—the wrathful galling sense of impotence. He had been wronged, and he had no means to right himself. Then came another sensation, if not so deep, yet more smarting and envenomed for the time—shame! He, the good boy of all good boys—he, the pattern of the school, and the pride of the parson—he, whom the Squire, in sight of all his contemporaries, had often singled out to slap on the back, and the grand Squire's lady to pat on the head, with a smiling gratulation on his young and fair repute—he, who had already learned so dearly to prize the sweets of an honourable name—he, to be made, as it were, in the twinkling of an eye, a mark for opprobrium, a butt of scorn, a jeer, and a byword! The streams of his life were poisoned at the fountain. And then came a tenderer thought of his mother! of the shock this would be to her—she who had already begun to look up to him as her stay and support: he bowed his head, and the tears, long suppressed, rolled down.
Then he wrestled and struggled, and strove to wrench his limbs from that hateful bondage;—for he heard steps approaching. And he began to picture to himself the arrival of all the villagers from church, the sad gaze of the Parson, the bent brow of the Squire, the idle ill-suppressed titter of all the boys, jealous of his unblotted character—character of which the original whiteness could never, never be restored! He would always be the boy who had sate in the Stocks! And the words uttered by the Squire came back on his soul, like the voice of conscience in the ears of some doomed Macbeth. "A sad disgrace, Lenny—you'll never be in such a quandary." "Quandary," the word was unfamiliar to him; it must mean something awfully discreditable. The poor boy could have prayed for the earth to swallow him.
"Kettles and frying-pans! what has us here?" cried the tinker.
This time Mr Sprott was without his donkey; for, it being Sunday, it is to be presumed that the donkey was enjoying his Sabbath on the Common. The tinker was in his Sunday's best, clean and smart, about to take his lounge in the park.
Lenny Fairfield made no answer to the appeal.
"You in the wood, my baby! Well, that's the last sight I should ha' thought to see. But we all lives to larn," added the tinker sententiously. "Who gave you them leggins? Can't you speak, lad?"
"Nick Stirn."
"Nick Stirn! Ay, I'd ha' ta'en my davy on that: and cos vy?"
"'Cause I did as he told me, and fought a boy as was trespassing on these very Stocks; and he beat me—but I don't care for that; and that boy was a young gentleman, and going to visit the Squire; and so Nick Stirn—" Lenny stopped short, choked by rage and humiliation.
"Augh," said the tinker, staring, "you fit with a young gentleman, did you? Sorry to hear you confess that, my lad! Sit there, and be thankful you ha' got off so cheap. 'Tis salt and battery to fit with your betters, and a Lunnon justice o' peace would have given you two months o' thetreadmill. But vy should you fit cos he trespassed on the Stocks? It ben't your natural side for fitting, I takes it."
Lenny murmured something not very distinguishable about serving the Squire, and doing as he was bid.
"Oh, I sees, Lenny," interrupted the tinker, in a tone of great contempt, "you be one o' those who would rayther 'unt with the 'ounds than run with the 'are! You be's the good pattern boy, and would peach agin your own border to curry favour with the grand folks. Fie, lad! you be sarved right: stick by your horder, then you'll be 'spected when you gets into trouble, and not be 'varsally 'espised—as you'll be arter church-time! Vell, I can't be seen 'sorting with you, now you are in this here drogotary fix; it might hurt my cracter, both with them as built the Stocks, and them as wants to pull 'em down. Old kettles to mend! Vy, you makes me forgit the Sabbath. Sarvent, my lad, and wish you well out of it; 'specks to your mother, and say we can deal for the pan and shovel all the same for your misfortin."
The tinker went his way. Lenny's eye followed him with the sullenness of despair. The tinker, like all the tribe of human comforters, had only watered the brambles to invigorate the prick of the thorns. Yes, if Lenny had been caught breaking the Stocks, some at least would have pitied him; but to be incarcerated for defending them, you might as well have expected that the widows and orphans of the Reign of Terror would have pitied Dr Guillotin when he slid through the grooves of his own deadly machine. And even the tinker, itinerant, ragamuffin vagabond as he was, felt ashamed to be found with the pattern boy! Lenny's head sank again on his breast, heavily as if it had been of lead. Some few minutes thus passed, when the unhappy prisoner became aware of the presence of another spectator to his shame: he heard no step, but he saw a shadow thrown over the sward. He held his breath, and would not look up, with some vague idea that if he refused to see he might escape being seen.
"Per Bacco!" said Dr Riccabocca, putting his hand on Lenny's shoulder, and bending down to look into his face—"Per Bacco!my young friend, do you sit here from choice or necessity?"
Lenny slightly shuddered, and winced under the touch of one whom he had hitherto regarded with a sort of superstitious abhorrence.
"I fear," resumed Riccabocca, after waiting in vain for an answer to his question, "that, though the situation is charming, you did not select it yourself. What is this?"—and the irony of the tone vanished—"what is this, my poor boy? You have been bleeding, and I see that those tears which you try to cheek come from a deep well. Tell me,povero fanciullo mio, (the sweet Italian vowels, though Lenny did not understand them, sounded softly and soothingly,)—tell me, my child, how all this happened. Perhaps I can help you—we have all erred; we should all help each other."
Lenny's heart, that just before had seemed bound in brass, found itself a way as the Italian spoke thus kindly, and the tears rushed down; but he again stopped them, and gulped out sturdily,—
"I have not done no wrong; it ben't my fault—and 'tis that which kills me!" concluded Lenny, with a burst of energy.
"You have not done wrong? Then," said the philosopher, drawing out his pocket-handkerchief with great composure, and spreading it on the ground—"then I may sit beside you. I could only stoop pityingly over sin, but I can lie down on equal terms with misfortune."
Lenny Fairfield did not quite comprehend the words, but enough of their general meaning was apparent to make him cast a grateful glance on the Italian. Riccabocca resumed, as he adjusted the pocket-handkerchief, "I have a right to your confidence, my child, for I have been afflicted in my day: yet I too say with thee, 'I have not done wrong.'Cospetto!" (and here the Dr seatedhimself deliberately, resting one arm on the side column of the Stocks, in familiar contact with the captive's shoulder, while his eye wandered over the lovely scene around)—"Cospetto!my prison, if they had caught me, would not have had so fair a look-out as this. But, to be sure, it is all one: there are no ugly loves, and no handsome prisons!"
With that sententious maxim, which, indeed, he uttered in his native Italian, Riccabocca turned round and renewed his soothing invitations to confidence. A friend in need is a friend indeed, even if he come in the guise of a Papist and wizard. All Lenny's ancient dislike to the foreigner had gone, and he told him his little tale.
Dr Riccabocca was much too shrewd a man not to see exactly the motives which had induced Mr Stirn to incarcerate his agent, (barring only that of personal grudge, to which Lenny's account gave him no clue.) That a man high in office should make a scape-goat of his own watch-dog for an unlucky snap, or even an indiscreet bark, was nothing strange to the wisdom of the student of Machiavelli. However, he set himself to the task of consolation with equal philosophy and tenderness. He began by reminding, or rather informing, Leonard Fairfield of all the instances of illustrious men afflicted by the injustice of others that occurred to his own excellent memory. He told him how the great Epictetus, when in slavery, had a master whose favourite amusement was pinching his leg, which, as the amusement ended in breaking that limb, was worse than the Stocks. He also told him the anecdote of Lenny's own gallant countryman, Admiral Byng, whose execution gave rise to Voltaire's celebrated witticism, "En Angleterre on tue un amiral pour encourager les autres." ("In England they execute one admiral in order to encourage the others.") Many more illustrations, still more pertinent to the case in point, his erudition supplied from the stores of history. But on seeing that Lenny did not seem in the slightest degree consoled by these memorable examples, he shifted his ground, and, reducing his logic to the strictargumentum ad rem, began to prove, 1st, that there was no disgrace at all in Lenny's present position, that every equitable person would recognise the tyranny of Stirn and the innocence of its victim; 2dly, that if even here he were mistaken, for public opinion was not always righteous, what was public opinion after all?—"A breath—a puff," cried Dr Riccabocca—"a thing without matter—without length, breadth, or substance—a shadow—a goblin of our own creating. A man's own conscience is his sole tribunal, and he should care no more for that phantom 'opinion' than he should fear meeting a ghost if he cross the churchyard at dark."
Now, as Lenny did very much fear meeting a ghost if he crossed the churchyard at dark, the simile spoiled the argument, and he shook his head very mournfully. Dr Riccabocca was about to enter into a third course of reasoning, which, had it come to an end, would doubtless have settled the matter, and reconciled Lenny to sitting in the Stocks till doomsday, when the captive, with the quick ear and eye of terror and calamity, became conscious that church was over, that the congregation in a few seconds more would be flocking thitherwards. He saw visionary hats and bonnets through the trees, which Riccabocca saw not, despite all the excellence of his spectacles—heard phantasmal rustlings and murmurings which Riccabocca heard not, despite all that theoretical experience in plots, stratagems, and treasons, which should have made the Italian's ear as fine as a conspirator's or a mole's. And, with another violent but vain effort at escape, the prisoner exclaimed,—
"Oh, if I could but get out before they come! Let me out—let me out. O, kind sir, have pity—let me out!"
"Diavolo!" said the philosopher, startled, "I wonder that never occurred to me before. After all, I believe he has hit the right nail on the head;" and, looking close, he perceived that though the partition wood had hitched firmly into a sort of spring-clasp, which defied Lenny's unaided struggles, still it was not locked, (for, indeed, the padlock and key were snug in the justice-room of the Squire, who never dreamt that his orders would be executed so literally and summarily as to dispense with allformal appeal to himself.) As soon as Dr Riccabocca made that discovery, it occurred to him that all the wisdom of all the schools that ever existed can't reconcile man or boy to a bad position, the moment there is a fair opportunity of letting him out of it. Accordingly, without more ado, he lifted up the creaking board, and Lenny Fairfield darted forth like a bird from a cage—halted a moment as if for breath, or in joy; and then, taking at once to his heels, fled, fast as a hare to its form—fast to his mother's home.
Dr Riccabocca dropped the yawning wood into its place, picked up his handkerchief and restored it to his pocket; and then, with some curiosity, began to examine the nature of that place of duress which had caused so much painful emotion to its rescued victim.
"Man is a very irrational animal at best," quoth the sage, soliloquising, "and is frightened by strange bugaboos! 'Tis but a piece of wood! how little it really injures; and, after all, the holes are but rests to the legs, and keep the feet out of the dirt. And this green bank to sit upon—under the shade of the elm-tree—verily the position must be more pleasant than otherwise! I've a great mind—" Here the Doctor looked around, and, seeing the coast still clear, the oddest notion imaginable took possession of him; yet not indeed a notion so odd, considered philosophically—for all philosophy is based on practical experiment—and Dr Riccabocca felt an irresistible desire practically to experience what manner of thing that punishment of the Stocks really was. "I can but try!—only for a moment," said he apologetically to his own expostulating sense of dignity. "I have time to do it, before any one comes." He lifted up the partition again: but Stocks are built on the true principle of English law, and don't easily allow a man to criminate himself—it was hard to get into them without the help of a friend. However, as we before noticed, obstacles only whetted Dr Riccabocca's invention. He looked round and saw a withered bit of stick under the tree—this he inserted in the division of the Stocks, somewhat in the manner in which boys place a stick under a sieve for the purpose of ensnaring sparrows: the fatal wood thus propped, Dr Riccabocca sate gravely down on the bank, and thrust his feet through the apertures.
"Nothing in it!" cried he triumphantly, after a moment's deliberation. "The evil is only in idea. Such is the boasted reason of mortals!" With that reflection, nevertheless, he was about to withdraw his feet from their voluntary dilemma, when the crazy stick suddenly gave way, and the partition fell back into its clasp. Doctor Riccabocca was fairly caught—"Facilis descensus—sed revocare gradum!" True, his hands were at liberty, but his legs were so long that, being thus fixed, they kept the hands from the rescue; and as Dr Riccabocca's form was by no means supple, and the twin parts of the wood stuck together with that firmness of adhesion which things newly painted possess, so, after some vain twists and contortions, in which he succeeded at length (not without a stretch of the sinews that made them crack again) in finding the clasp and breaking his nails thereon, the victim of his own rash experiment resigned himself to his fate. Dr Riccabocca was one of those men who never do things by halves. When I say he resigned himself, I mean not only Christian but philosophical resignation. The position was not quite so pleasant as, theoretically, he had deemed it; but he resolved to make himself as comfortable as he could. And first, as is natural in all troubles to men who have grown familiar with that odoriferous comforter which Sir Walter Raleigh is said first to have bestowed upon the Caucasian races, the Doctor made use of his hands to extract from his pocket his pipe, match-box, and tobacco-pouch. After a few whiffs he would have been quite reconciled to his situation, but for the discovery that the sun had shifted its place in the heavens, and was no longer shaded from his face by the elm-tree. The Doctor again looked round, and perceived that his red silk umbrella, which he had laid aside when he had seated himself by Lenny, was within arm's reach. Possessing himself of this treasure, he soon expanded its friendly folds. And thus doubly fortifiedwithin and without, under shade of the umbrella, and his pipe composedly between his lips, Dr Riccabocca gazed on his own incarcerated legs, even with complacency.
"'He who can despise all things,'" said he, in one of his native proverbs, "'possesses all things!'—if one despises freedom, one is free! This seat is as soft as a sofa! I am not sure," he resumed, soliloquising, after a pause—"I am not sure that there is not something more witty than manly and philosophical in that national proverb of mine which I quoted to thefanciullo, that there are no handsome prisons! Did not the son of that celebrated Frenchman, surnamedBras de Fer, write a book not only to prove that adversities are more necessary than prosperities, but that among all adversities a prison is the most pleasant and profitable?[7]But is not this condition of mine, voluntarily and experimentally incurred, a type of my life? Is it the first time that I have thrust myself into a hobble?—and if in a hobble of mine own choosing, why should I blame the gods?"
Upon this Dr Riccabocca fell into a train of musing so remote from time and place, that in a few minutes he no more remembered that he was in the Parish Stocks, than a lover remembers that flesh is grass, a miser that mammon is perishable, a philosopher that wisdom is vanity.—Dr Riccabocca was in the clouds.
The dullest dog that ever wrote a novel (and,entre nous, reader—but let it go no farther—we have a good many dogs among the fraternity that are not Munitos,[8]) might have seen with half an eye that the Parson's discourse had produced a very genial and humanising effect upon his audience. When all was over, and the congregation stood up to let Mr Hazeldean and his family walk first down the aisle, (for that was the custom at Hazeldean,) moistened eyes glanced at the Squire's sun-burned, manly face with a kindness that bespoke revived memory of many a generous benefit and ready service. The head might be wrong now and then—the heart was in the right place after all. And the lady, leaning on his arm, came in for a large share of that gracious good feeling. True, she now and then gave a little offence when the cottages were not so clean as she fancied they ought to be—and poor folks don't like a liberty taken with their houses any more than the rich do; true, that she was not quite so popular with the women as the Squire was, for, if the husband went too often to the alehouse, she always laid the fault on the wife, and said, "No man would go out of doors for his comforts, if he had a smiling face and a clean hearth at his home;" whereas the Squire maintained the more gallant opinion, that "if Gill was a shrew, it was because Jack did not, as in duty bound, stop her mouth with a kiss!" Still, notwithstanding these more obnoxious notions on her part, and a certain awe inspired by the stiff silk gown and the handsome aquiline nose, it was impossible, especially in the softened tempers of that Sunday afternoon, not to associate the honest, comely, beaming countenance of Mrs Hazeldean with comfortable recollections of soups, jellies, and wine in sickness, loaves and blankets in winter, cheering words and ready visits in every little distress, and pretexts afforded by improvement in the grounds and gardens (improvements which, as the Squire, who preferred productive labour, justly complained, "would never finish") for little timely jobs of work to some veteran grandsire, who still liked to earn a penny, or some ruddy urchin in a family that "came too fast." Nor was Frank, as he walked a little behind, in the whitest of trousers and the stiffest of neckcloths—with a look of suppressed roguery in his bright hazel eye, that contrasted his assumed stateliness of mien—without his portionof the silent blessing. Not that he had done anything yet to deserve it; but we all give youth so large a credit in the future. As for Miss Jemima, her trifling foibles only rose from too soft and feminine a susceptibility, too ivy-like a yearning for some masculine oak, whereon to entwine her tendrils; and so little confined to self was the natural lovingness of her disposition, that she had helped many a village lass to find a husband, by the bribe of a marriage gift from her own privy purse; notwithstanding the assurances with which she accompanied the marriage gift,—viz., that "the bridegroom would turn out like the rest of his ungrateful sex; but that it was a comfort to think that it would be all one in the approaching crash." So that she had her warm partisans, especially amongst the young; while the slim Captain, on whose arm she rested her forefinger, was at least a civil-spoken gentleman, who had never done any harm, and who would doubtless do a deal of good if he belonged to the parish. Nay, even the fat footman, who came last with the family Prayerbook, had his due share in the general association of neighbourly kindness between hall and hamlet. Few were there present to whom he had not extended the right-hand of fellowship, with a full horn of October in the clasp of it: and he was a Hazeldean man, too, born and bred, as two-thirds of the Squire's household (now letting themselves out from their large pew under the gallery) were.
On his part, too, you could see that the Squire was 'moved withal,' and a little humbled moreover. Instead of walking erect, and taking bow and curtsey as matter of course, and of no meaning, he hung his head somewhat, and there was a slight blush on his cheek; and as he glanced upward and round him—shyly, as it were—and his eye met those friendly looks, it returned them with an earnestness that had in it something touching as well as cordial—an eye that said, as well as eye could say, "I don't quite deserve it, I fear, neighbours; but I thank you for your goodwill with my whole heart." And so readily was that glance of the eye understood, that I think, if that scene had taken place out of doors instead of in the church, there would have been an hurrah as the Squire passed out of sight.
Scarcely had Mr Hazeldean got well out of the churchyard, ere Mr Stirn was whispering in his ear. As Stirn whispered, the Squire's face grew long, and his colour changed. The congregation, now flocking out of the church, exchanged looks with each other; that ominous conjunction between Squire and man chilled back all the effects of the Parson's sermon. The Squire struck his cane violently into the ground. "I would rather you had told me Black Bess had got the glanders. A young gentleman, coming to visit my son, struck and insulted in Hazeldean; a young gentleman—'sdeath, sir, a relation—his grandmother was a Hazeldean. I do believe Jemima's right, and the world's coming to an end! But Leonard Fairfield in the Stocks! What will the Parson say? and after such a sermon! 'Rich man, respect the poor!' And the good widow too; and poor Mark, who almost died in my arms. Stirn, you have a heart of stone! You confounded, lawless, merciless miscreant, who the deuce gave you the right to imprison man or boy in my parish of Hazeldean without trial, sentence, or warrant? Run and let the boy out before any one sees him: run, or I shall."—The Squire elevated the cane, and his eyes shot fire. Mr Stirn did not run, but he walked off very fast. The Squire drew back a few paces, and again took his wife's arm. "Just wait a bit for the Parson, while I talk to the congregation. I want to stop 'em all, if I can, from going into the village; but how?"
Frank heard, and replied readily—
"Give 'em some beer, sir."
"Beer! on a Sunday! For shame, Frank!" cried Mrs Hazeldean.
"Hold your tongue, Harry. Thank you, Frank," said the Squire, and his brow grew as clear as the blue sky above him. I doubt if Riccabocca could have got him out of his dilemma with the same ease as Frank had done.
"Halt there, my men—lads and lasses too—there, halt a bit. Mrs Fairfield, do you hear?—halt! I think his reverence has given us a capital sermon. Go tip to the Great House allof you, and drink a glass to his health. Frank, go with them; and tell Spruce to tap one of the casks kept for the haymakers. Harry, [this in a whisper,] catch the Parson, and tell him to come to me instantly."
"My dear Hazeldean, what has happened? you are mad."
"Don't bother—do what I tell you."
"But where is the Parson to find you?"
"Where, gad zooks, Mrs H.,—at the Stocks to be sure!"
Dr Riccabocca, awakened out of his reverie by the sound of footsteps—was still so little sensible of the indignity of his position, that he enjoyed exceedingly, and with all the malice of his natural humour, the astonishment and stupor manifested by Stirn, when that functionary beheld the extraordinary substitute which fate and philosophy had found for Lenny Fairfield. Instead of the weeping, crushed, broken-hearted captive whom he had reluctantly come to deliver, he stared, speechless and aghast, upon the grotesque but tranquil figure of the Doctor, enjoying his pipe and cooling himself under his umbrella, with asang-froidthat was truly appalling and diabolical. Indeed, considering that Stirn always suspected the Papisher of having had a hand in the whole of that black and midnight business, in which the Stocks had been broken, bunged up, and consigned to perdition, and that the Papisher had the evil reputation of dabbling in the Black Art, the hocus-pocus way in which the Lenny he had incarcerated was transformed into the Doctor he found, conjoined with the peculiarly strange, eldritch, and Mephistophelean physiognomy and person of Riccabocca, could not but strike a thrill of superstitious dismay into the breast of the parochial tyrant. While to his first confused and stammered exclamations and interrogatories, Riccabocca replied with so tragic an air, such ominous shakes of the head, such mysterious, equivocating, long-worded sentences, that Stirn every moment felt more and more convinced that the boy had sold himself to the Powers of Darkness; and that he himself, prematurely, and in the flesh, stood face to face with the Arch-Enemy.
Mr Stirn had not yet recovered his wonted intelligence, which, to do him justice, was usually prompt enough—when the Squire, followed hard by the Parson, arrived at the spot. Indeed, Mrs Hazeldean's report of the Squire's urgent message, disturbed manner, and most unparalleled invitation to the parishioners, had given wings to Parson Dale's ordinarily slow and sedate movements. And while the Squire, sharing Stirn's amazement, beheld indeed a great pair of feet projecting from the stocks, and saw behind them the grave face of Doctor Riccabocca, under the majestic shade of the umbrella, but not a vestige of the only being his mind could identify with the tenancy of the Stocks, Mr Dale, catching him by the arm, and panting hard, exclaimed with a petulance he had never before been known to display—except at the whist-table,—
"Mr Hazeldean, Mr Hazeldean, I am scandalised—I am shocked at you. I can bear a great deal from you, sir, as I ought to do; but to ask my whole congregation, the moment after divine service, to go up and guzzle ale at the Hall, and drink my health, as if a clergyman's sermon had been a speech at a cattle-fair! I am ashamed of you, and of the parish! What on earth has come to you all?"
"That's the very question I wish to heaven I could answer," groaned the Squire, quite mildly and pathetically—"What on earth has come to us all! Ask Stirn:" (then bursting out) "Stirn, you infernal rascal, don't you hear?—what on earth has come to us all?"
"The Papisher is at the bottom of it, sir," said Stirn, provoked out of all temper. "I does my duty, but I is but a mortal man, arter all."
"A mortal fiddlestick—where's Leonard Fairfield, I say?"
"Himknows best," answered Stirn, retreating mechanically, for safety's sake, behind the Parson, and pointingto Dr Riccabocca. Hitherto, though both the Squire and Parson had indeed recognised the Italian, they had merely supposed him to be seated on the bank. It never entered into their heads that so respectable and dignified a man could by any possibility be an inmate, compelled or voluntary, of the Parish Stocks. No, not even though, as I before said, the Squire had seen, just under his nose, a very long pair of soles inserted in the apertures—that sight had only confused and bewildered him, unaccompanied as it ought to have been with the trunk and face of Lenny Fairfield. Those soles seemed to him optical delusions, phantoms of the overheated brain; but now, catching hold of Stirn, while the Parson in equal astonishment caught hold of him—the Squire faltered out, "Well, this beats cock-fighting! The man's as mad as a March hare, and has taken Dr Rickey-bockey for little Lenny!"
"Perhaps," said the Doctor, breaking silence, with a bland smile, and attempting an inclination of the head as courteous as his position would permit—"perhaps, if it be quite the same to you, before you proceed to explanations,—you will just help me out of the Stocks."
The Parson, despite his perplexity and anger, could not repress a smile, as he approached his learned friend, and bent down for the purpose of extricating him.
"Lord love your reverence, you'd better not!" cried Mr Stirn. "Don't be tempted—he only wants to get you into his claws. I would not go a-near him for all the—"
The speech was interrupted by Dr Riccabocca himself, who now, thanks to the Parson, had risen into his full height, and half a head taller than all present—even than the tall Squire—approached Mr Stirn, with a gracious wave of the hand. Mr Stirn retreated rapidly towards the hedge, amidst the brambles of which he plunged himself incontinently.
"I guess whom you take me for, Mr Stirn," said the Italian, lifting his hat with his characteristic politeness. "It is certainly a great honour; but you will know better one of these days, when the gentleman in question admits you to a personal interview in another and—a hotter world."
"But how on earth did you get into my new Stocks?" asked the Squire, scratching his head.
"My dear sir, Pliny the elder got into the crater of Mount Etna."
"Did he, and what for?"
"To try what it was like, I suppose," answered Riccabocca.
The Squire burst out a-laughing.
"And so you got into the Stocks to try what it was like. Well, I can't wonder—it is a very handsome pair of Stocks," continued the Squire, with a loving look at the object of his praise. "Nobody need be ashamed of being seen in those Stocks—I should not mind it myself."
"We had better move on," said the Parson drily, "or we shall be having the whole village here presently, gazing on the lord of the manor in the same predicament as that from which we have just extricated the Doctor. Now pray, what is the matter with Lenny Fairfield? I can't understand a word of what has passed. You don't mean to say that good Lenny Fairfield (who was absent from church by the bye) can have done anything to get into disgrace?"
"Yes, he has though," cried the Squire. "Stirn, I say—Stirn." But Stirn had forced his way through the hedge and vanished. Thus left to his own powers of narrative at secondhand, Mr Hazeldean now told all he had to communicate: the assault upon Randal Leslie, and the prompt punishment inflicted by Stirn; his own indignation at the affront to his young kinsman, and his good-natured merciful desire to save the culprit from the addition of public humiliation.
The Parson, mollified towards the rude and hasty invention of the beer-drinking, took the Squire by the hand. "Ah, Mr Hazeldean, forgive me," he said repentantly; "I ought to have known at once that it was only someebullition of your heart that could stifle your sense of decorum. But this is a sad story about Lenny, brawling and fighting on the Sabbath-day. So unlike him, too—I don't know what to make of it."
"Like or unlike," said the Squire, "it has been a gross insult to young Leslie; and looks all the worse because I and Audley are not just the best friends in the world. I can't think what it is," continued Mr Hazeldean, musingly, "but it seems that there must be always some association of fighting connected with that prim half-brother of mine. There was I, son of his own mother—who might have been shot through the lungs, only the ball lodged in the shoulder—and now his wife's kinsman—my kinsman, too—grandmother a Hazeldean—a hard-reading sober lad, as I am given to understand, can't set his foot into the quietest parish in the three kingdoms, but what the mildest boy that ever was seen—makes a rush at him like a mad bull. It isFatality!" cried the Squire solemnly.
"Ancient legend records similar instances of fatality in certain houses," observed Riccabocca. "There was the House of Pelops—and Polynices and Eteocles—the sons of [OE]dipus!"
"Pshaw," said the Parson; "but what's to be done?"
"Done?" said the Squire; "why, reparation must be made to young Leslie. And though I wished to spare Lenny, the young ruffian, a public disgrace—for your sake, Parson Dale, and Mrs Fairfield's;—yet a good caning in private—"
"Stop, sir!" said Riccabocca mildly, "and hear me." The Italian then, with much feeling and considerable tact, pleaded the cause of his poor protégé, and explained how Lenny's error arose only from mistaken zeal for the Squire's service, and in the execution of the orders received from Mr Stirn.
"That alters the matter," said the Squire, softened; "and all that is necessary now will be for him to make a proper apology to my kinsman."
"Yes, that is just," rejoined the Parson; "but I still don't learn how he got out of the Stocks."
Riccabocca then resumed his tale; and, after confessing his own principal share in Lenny's escape, drew a moving picture of the boy's shame and honest mortification. "Let us march against Philip!" cried the Athenians, when they heard Demosthenes—
"Let us go at once and comfort the child!" cried the Parson, before Riccabocca could finish.
With that benevolent intention, all three quickened their pace, and soon arrived at the widow's cottage. But Lenny had caught sight of their approach through the window; and not doubting that, in spite of Riccabocca's intercession, the Parson was come to upbraid, and the Squire to re-imprison, he darted out by the back way, got amongst the woods, and lay thereperduall the evening. Nay, it was not till after dark that his mother—who sate wringing her hands in the little kitchen, and trying in vain to listen to the Parson and Mrs Dale, who (after sending in search of the fugitive) had kindly come to console the mother—heard a timid knock at the door and a nervous fumble at the latch. She started up, opened the door, and Lenny sprang to her bosom, and there buried his face, sobbing loud.
"No harm, my boy," said the Parson tenderly; "you have nothing to fear—all is explained and forgiven."
Lenny looked up, and the veins on his forehead were much swollen. "Sir," said he sturdily, "I don't want to be forgiven—I ain't done no wrong. And—I've been disgraced—and I won't go to school, never no more."
"Hush, Carry!" said the Parson to his wife, who, with the usual liveliness of her little temper, was about to expostulate. "Good night, Mrs Fairfield. I shall come and talk to you to-morrow, Lenny; by that time you will think better of it."
The Parson then conducted his wife home, and went up to the Hall to report Lenny's safe return; for the Squire was very uneasy about him, and had even in person shared the search. As soon as he heard Lenny was safe—"Well," said the Squire, "let him go the first thing in the morning to Rood Hall, to ask Master Leslie's pardon, and all will be right and smooth again."
"A young villain!" cried Frank, with his cheeks the colour of scarlet;"to strike a gentleman and an Etonian, who had just been to call onme! But I wonder Randal let him off so well—any other boy in the sixth form would have killed him!"
"Frank," said the Parson sternly, "if we all had our deserts, what should be done to him who not only lets the sun go down on his own wrath, but strives with uncharitable breath to fan the dying embers of another's?"
The clergyman here turned away from Frank, who bit his lip, and seemed abashed—while even his mother said not a word in his exculpation; for when the Parson did reprove in that stern tone, the majesty of the Hall stood awed before the rebuke of the Church. Catching Riccabocca's inquisitive eye, Mr Dale drew aside the philosopher, and whispered to him his fears that it would be a very hard matter to induce Lenny to beg Randal Leslie's pardon, and that the proud stomach of the pattern-boy would not digest the Stocks with as much ease as a long regimen of philosophy had enabled the sage to do. This conference Miss Jemima soon interrupted by a direct appeal to the Doctor respecting the number of years (even without any previous and more violent incident) that the world could possibly withstand its own wear and tear.
"Ma'am," said the Doctor, reluctantly summoned away, to look at a passage in some prophetic periodical upon that interesting subject—"ma'am, it is very hard that you should make one remember the end of the world, since, in conversing with you, one's natural temptation is to forget its existence."
Miss Jemima blushed scarlet. Certainly that deceitful heartless compliment justified all her contempt for the male sex; and yet—such is human blindness—it went far to redeem all mankind in her credulous and too confiding soul.
"He is about to propose," sighed Miss Jemima.
"Giacomo," said Riccabocca, as he drew on his nightcap, and stepped majestically into the four-posted bed, "I think we shall get that boy for the garden now!"
Thus each spurred his hobby, or drove her car, round the Hazeldean whirligig.
FOOTNOTES:[7]"Entre tout, l'état d'une prison est le plus doux, et le plus profitable!"[8]Munito was the name of a dog famous for his learning (a Porson of a dog) at the date of my childhood. There are no such dogs now-a-days.
[7]"Entre tout, l'état d'une prison est le plus doux, et le plus profitable!"
[7]"Entre tout, l'état d'une prison est le plus doux, et le plus profitable!"
[8]Munito was the name of a dog famous for his learning (a Porson of a dog) at the date of my childhood. There are no such dogs now-a-days.
[8]Munito was the name of a dog famous for his learning (a Porson of a dog) at the date of my childhood. There are no such dogs now-a-days.
Although history and biography both relate to the affairs of men, and are employed in the narrative of human events, they are governed by opposite principles, and require, for their successful prosecution, different powers and habits of thought. The main object of history is the tracing out the growth of nations, the great events which lead to their rise or fall, the causes operating on the social body, which at one period conduct to power and greatness, at another induce weakness and decay. Biography is concerned with individual life. Its aim is to trace the annals, not of nations, but of persons; to portray, not the working of general causes on the progress of empires, but the influence of particular characters on their most interesting episodes. The former requires habits of general thought, and the power of tracing one common principle through a great variety of complicated details; the latter, close attention to individual incidents, and a minute examination of the secret springs of human conduct. The first is closely allied to the generalisations of the philosopher; the latter requires the powers of the dramatist. The two branches of composition, however, are nearly allied, and frequently run into each other. History generally finds its most interesting episodes, often its most important subjects, in the narrative of individual greatness; biography is imperfect unless, in addition to tracing the achievements of the individuals it records, it explains their influence upon the society among whom they arose.
What we call the histories of antiquity were, for the most part, only biographies, and they owe their principal interest to that circumstance. TheCyropædiaof Xenophon is a philosophical romance, clothed with the eloquence of an orator; the fragments which remain of Sallust, the rhetorical narrative of Quintus Curtius, are the avowed biographies of individual men. Even the regular histories of classical times owe their chief charm to the simplicity of the subject, in which one state or contest stands prominently forward, and the others are thrown into a shade which only renders the more striking the light thrown on one particular subject, or the efforts of individual greatness. Herodotus has earned his deathless fame by the narrative he has given of the great war between Persia and Greece, on which the destinies of mankind depended; Thucydides by his profound exposition of the strife of aristocracy and democracy in the contest between Lacedæmon and Athens. The long narrative of Livy has survived the floods of Time almost entirely from the charming episodes descriptive of character or manners which he has introduced, and the dramatic power with which he has narrated the exploits of individual men; and what has given Tacitus immortality, is neither any luminous views on the progress of mankind, nor any just appreciation of the causes of greatness in particular states, but the depth to which he has fathomed the real springs of action in particular men, and the terrible truth with which he has unveiled that most appalling of all spectacles—a naked human heart.
The great difficulty of history, as it must be written in modern times, arises from the multitude and complication of the events which have to be recorded. So intimately connected have the States of Europe been since the rise of modern civilisation, that he who writes the annals of one must write the history of all. The progress, internal and external, of all its powers must be brought forward abreast; and such is their number and importance, that not only is the historian oppressed with the variety and complication of his materials, but he finds it next to impossible to produce interest in the reader amidst such a sea of details; and often fails, from the impossibility of attaining that essential requisite in the rousing of human sympathy—unityof emotion. Add to this the infinity of subjects a historian even of an individual state must now embrace, and which almost overwhelm the exploits of particular men by their multitude and complication. Strategy, statistics, trade, navigation, commerce, agriculture, taxation, finance, currency, paper credit, poor laws, agriculture, socialism, chartism, form a few of the topics, any one of which would require volumes for its elucidation, yet none of which can be omitted without exposing the historian to the imputation, from some one or other, of having overlooked the most important part of his subject. So great is this difficulty, so extensive the embarrassment it produces, that it may safely be pronounced to be insurmountable by any effort, how great soever, unless the endeavours of the historian are aided by unity of interest in the subject, or overpowering greatness of influence in the characters with whom he has to deal. But it is, perhaps, only in the wars of the Crusades, of the Succession in Spain, and of the French Revolution, that such unity of interest is to be looked for, or such surpassing grandeur of character is to be found, from the achievements of a Richard Cœur-de-Lion, a Marlborough, or a Napoleon.
From this great difficulty, biography is entirely free, and thence the superior interest with which, when properly treated, works of that description are attended. We are so constituted that we must concentrate our interest; dispersion is fatal to its existence. Every novelist and romance-writer knows this; there must always be a hero and a heroine; but two or three heroes and heroines would prove fatal to the interest. Ariosto tried to divide the interest of the reader among the adventures of a dozen knights-errant; but even his genius proved unequal to the task, and he was obliged to concentrate the whole around the fabulous siege of Paris to restore the broken unity of his power. The great and signal advantage of biography is, that, from its very nature, it possesses that personal interest and individual character which the epic poet and novelist feel to be essential to the moving of the human heart, but which the historian so often finds himself unable to attain, without omitting some important parts of his subject, or giving undue prominence to the characters of individual men.
For this reason it is, that the most popular works which ever have been written have been biographies of illustrious men. No one would think of comparing the intellect of Plutarch to that of Tacitus, his eloquence to that of Cicero's, yet he has made perhaps a greater impression on the imagination of subsequent ages than either of these illustrious men. If we examine the images of the mighty of former days which are engraven on our minds, we shall find that it is not so much the pictured pages of Livy or Quintus Curtius, as the "Lives of Plutarch," which have given them immortality. We complain of his gossip, we lament his superstition, we smile at his credulity, but we devour his pages; and, after the lapse of seventeen hundred years, they remain one of the most generally popular works in existence. It is the same in modern times. No one would think of comparing Boswell, in point of intellect, to Johnson; in point of eloquence to Burke; in point of genius to Gibbon; yet he has produced a work superior in general interest to any of these illustrious men, and which is daily read by thousands, to whom the "Reflections on the French Revolution," the moral essays of the "Rambler," and the "History of the Decline and Fall," will for ever remain unknown.
To render biography, however, thus generally attractive, it is indispensable that its basis should be that first element in the narration of human action—Truth. Without this, it wants the great superiority of the narrative of real event over fictitious creations, how interesting soever they may be—that of recording what has actually occurred in real life. How important an element this is in awakening the sympathies of the human heart, may be seen even in children who, when particularly fascinated by any story they are told, invariably end by asking, "But is it all true?" The value of truth, orrather of what is "vraisemblable," is felt even in imaginary conceptions, which it is well known are never so attractive, or interest so powerfully, as when they most closely resemble the events and characters of actual existence. The real is, and ever must be, the only sure foundation of the ideal. Novels are most delightful when they approach nearest to what we behold around us in real life, while yet containing a sufficient blending of romance and sentiment, of heroism and magnanimity, to satisfy the higher aspirations of our being. Biography is most charming when it depicts with fidelity those characters, and records with truth those events, which approach nearest to that imaginary perfection to which every generous mind aspires, but to which none ever has attained, or ever will.
It has been said with truth, that the events which are suitable for epic poetry are such as are "probable but yet elevating." We are so constituted by our bonds to earth, that our chief interest must ever be derived from the virtues or the vices, the joys or sorrows, of beings like ourselves; but we are so filled with more ennobling thoughts and aspirations, by our destiny in Heaven, that we can be satisfied only by what points to a higher state of existence, and feel the greatest enjoyment by being elevated, either by the conceptions of fancy or the records of reality, to a nearer view of its perfection. If novels depict merely imaginary existences, they may charm for a season, like the knights of Ariosto, or the heroes of Metastasio; but they are too much in the clouds permanently to interest sublunary mortals. If they record merely the adventures of low, or the vulgarity of middle life, they may amuse for a season, like the characters of Smollett; but they will sink ere long, from the want of that indispensable lifeboat in the sea of time, an elevating tendency. It is characters like those of theIliad, of Shakspeare, of Scott, and Schiller, which combine the well-known and oft-observed characteristics of human nature with the oft-imagined but seldom seen traits of heroism and magnanimity which border on the realms of the ideal that for ever fascinate the imagination, and dwell in the heart of man. The reason is, they contain enough of reality to tell us it is of humanity that the story is told, and enough of the ideal to make us proud of our connection with it.
The great and chief charm of biography is to be found in this, that it unites, from its very nature and object, those two indispensable requisites to durable popularity in works of fiction, and combines them with the value and the solid information of truthful narrative. It possesses the value of history, without its tedium—the interest of romance, without its unsubstantiality. It culls the flowers from the records of time, and casts into the shade all the accompanying weeds and briars. If a judicious and discriminating selection of characters were made—if those persons were selected for the narrative who have been most illustrious by their virtues, their genius, or their magnanimity, or, as a contrast, by their vices, and who have made the greatest and most durable impression on human affairs, a work might be produced exceeding any one of history in its utility, any of romance in its popularity. David Hume strongly advised Robertson, eighty years ago, instead of writing theLife of Charles the Fifth, to write a series of biographies, on the plan of Plutarch, for modern times; and it is, perhaps, to be regretted that the advice was not followed. Yet were the abilities of the Scotch Principal, great as they were, not such as peculiarly fitted him for the task. His mind was too philosophical and discursive to give it its chief interest. He wanted the dramatic turn, the ardent soul, the graphic power, the magnanimous disposition, which was essential to its successful accomplishment. A work in three thousand pages, or six volumes, recording the lives of fifty of the greatest and most illustrious men in Europe, from the days of Alfred to those of Napoleon, executed in the right spirit, and by a man of adequate genius, would be the most popular and elevating book that ever appeared in Modern Europe. Many such have been attempted, but never with any success, because they were not set about by the properminds. To do justice to such an undertaking would require a combination of opposite qualities rarely to be met with in real life.
As biography deals with individual characters, and is relieved from the extended and perplexing subjects which overwhelm the general historian, it admits, in return, of an expansion into many topics which, although often in the highest degree amusing, and sometimes not a little interesting, would yet be felt to be misplaced in the annals of the great changes of nations or of the world. As the delineation of character is its avowed object, and the events of individual life its principal subject, it not only admits of but requires a thousand incidents and descriptions, which are essential to a right understanding of those characters, and form, as it were, the still life of the picture in which their features are to be portrayed. Such descriptions are not unsuitable to general history. Mr Macaulay has shown in his History that his observations on that head in theEdinburgh Reviewwere founded on a just appreciation of the object and limits of his art. But they must be sparingly introduced, or they will become tedious and unprofitable: if any one doubts this, let himtryto read Von Hammer'sHistory of the Ottoman Empire, one-half of which is taken up with descriptions of dresses, receptions, and processions. But in biography we readily give admission to—nay, we positively require—such details. If they are not the jewels of history, they are the setting which adds to their lustre. They fill up our conception of past events; they enable us to clothe the characters in which we are interested in the actual habiliments in which they were arrayed; they bring before our eyes the dwellings, the habits, the mode of life, the travelling, the occupations of distant ages, and often give more life and reality to the creatures of our imaginations than could have been attained by the most laboured general descriptions, or the most emphatic assertions of the author.
For this reason, as well as on account of the known influence of individual character, rather than abstract principle, on the fair sex, there is no branch of historical composition so suitable for woman as biography; and Miss Strickland has shown us that there is none which female genius can cultivate with greater success. The general bent of the female mind, impressed upon it for the wisest purposes by its Creator, is to be influenced in its opinions, and swayed in its conduct, by individual men, rather than general ideas. When Milton said of our first parents—