Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise (Volume 4 de 5)

1: I have taken M. Harley into favour again.

2: I will not see him (M. Harley) till he makes amends.... I was deaf to all entreaties, and have desired Lewis to go to him, and let him know that I expected further satisfaction. If we let these great ministers pretend too much, there will be no governing them....

One thing I warned him of, never to appear cold to me, for I would not be treated like a school-boy; that I expected every great minister who honoured me with his acquaintance, if he heard or saw anything to my disadvantage, would let me know in plain words, and not put me in pain to guess by the change or coldness of his countenance or behaviour; for it was what I would hardly bear from a crowned head; and I thought no subject's favour was worth it; and that I designed to let my lord Keeper and M. Harley know the same thing, that they might use me accordingly.

3: Mr secretary told me the duke of Buckingham had been talking much to him about me, and desired my acquaintance. I answered it could not be, for he had not made sufficient advances. Then the duke of Shrewsbury said he thought the duke was not used to make advances. I said I could not help that. For I always expected advances in proportion to men's quality, and more from a duke than from any other man.

I saw lord Halifax at court, and we joined and talked, and the duchess of Shrewsbury came up and reproached me for not dining with her. I said that was not so soon done, for I expected more advances from ladies, especially duchesses. She promised to comply.... Lady Oglethorp brought me and the duchess of Hamilton together to day in the drawing-room, and I have given her some encouragement, but not much. (Journal, 19 mai et 7 octobre.)

4: I generally am acquainted with about thirty in the drawing-room, and am so proud that I make all the lords come up to me. One passes half an hour pleasant enough.

5: I am glad you know your duty; for it has been a known and established rule above twenty years, that the first advances have been constantly made me by ladies who aspired to my acquaintance, and the greater their quality, the greater were their advances.

6: This I resented highly that he should complain of me before he spoke to me. I sent him a peppering letter, and would not summon him by a note as I did the rest. Nor ever will have any thing to say to him till he begs my pardon.

7: Lettre à Bolingbroke.

8: A person of great honour in Ireland (who was pleased to stoop so low as to look into my mind) used to tell me that my mind was like a conjured spirit, that would do mischief, if I would not give it employment.

9: All the whigs were ravished to see me, and would have laid hold on me as a twig, to save them from sinking; and the great men were all making me their clumsy apologies. It is good to see what a lamentable confession the whigs all make of my ill usage.

10: So, my lord lieutenant, this is a glorious exploit that you performed yesterday, in issuing a proclamation against a poor shopkeeper, whose only crime is an honest endeavour to save his country from ruin.

11: Il avait esquissé dès cette époque le Conte du Tonneau.

12: Il dit à la muse:

Wert thou right woman, thou should'st scorn to look
On an abandon'd wretch by hopes forsook,
Forsook by hopes, ill fortune's last relief,
Assign'd for life to unremitting grief,
To thee I owe that fatal bend of mind
Still to unhappy restless thoughts inclined;
To thee what oft I vainly strive to hide,
That scorn of fools, by fools mistook for pride.

13: Don't you remember how I used to be in pain when sir William Temple would look cold and out of humour for three or four days, and I used to suspect a hundred reasons? I have plucked up my spirit since then, faith. He spoiled a fine gentleman.

14:

Poor we! cadets of Heaven, not worth her care,
Take up at best with lumber and the leavings of a fare.

15: Mistress Harris's petition.

16:

You know I honour the cloth; I design to be a parson's wife....
And over and above, that I may have your Excellencies' letter
With an order for the chaplain aforesaid, or instead of him a better.

17: Par le Conte du Tonneau auprès du clergé, et par la Prophétie de Windsor auprès de la reine.

18: Lettres du Drapier, Gulliver, Rhapsodie sur la poésie, Proposition modeste, divers pamphlets sur l'Irlande.

19: I find myself disposed every year or rather every month to be more angry and revengeful; and my rage is so ignoble that it descends even to resent the folly and baseness of the enslaved people among whom I live.

20: If you continue to treat me as you do, you will not be made uneasy by me long.... I am sure I could have born the rack much better than those killing, killing words of yours.... O, that you may have but so much regard for me left, that this complaint may touch your soul with pity!

21: It is time for me to have done with the world.... And so I would,... and not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.

22: I shall be like that tree. I shall die at the top.

23: «L'absence de foi est un inconvénient qu'il faut cacher quand on ne peut le vaincre.—Je me regarde, en qualité de prêtre, comme chargé par la Providence de défendre un poste qu'elle m'a confié, et de faire déserter autant d'ennemis qu'il est possible.» (Pensées sur la religion.)

24: Je ne crois pas, quoi qu'on ait dit, qu'il fût alors de mauvaise foi. On pouvait croire à une escroquerie ministérielle, et Swift plus qu'un autre. Au fond, Swift me paraît honnête homme.

25: Brethren, friends, countrymen, and fellow-subjects, what I intend now to say to you, is, next to your duty to God and the care of your salvation, of the greatest concern to you and your children; your bread and clothing and every common necessary of life depends upon it. Therefore I do most earnestly exhort you, as men, as christians, as parents, and as lovers of your country, to read this paper with the utmost attention, or get it read to you by others; which that you may do at the less expense, I have ordered the printer to sell at it the lowest rate.

26: Your paragraph relates farther that sir Isaac Newton reported an essay taken at the Tower of Wood's metal, by which it appears that Wood had in all respects performed his contract. His contract! With whom? Was it with the Parliament or people of Ireland? Are not they to be purchasers? But they detest, abhor, and reject it as corrupt, fraudulent, mingled with dirt and trash.

27: His first proposal is that he will be content to coin no more (than forty thousand pounds), unless the exigencies of the trade require it, although his patent empowers him to coin a far greater quantity.... To which if I were to answer, it should be thus: let Mr Wood and his crew of founders and tinkers coin on, till there is not an old kettle left in the kingdom; let them coin old leather, tobacco-pipe clay, or the dirt in the street, and call their trumpery by what name they please, from a guinea to a farthing; we are not under any concern to know how he and his tribe of accomplices think fit to employ themselves; but I hope and trust that we are all, to a man, fully determined to have nothing to do with him or his ware.

28: Your newsletter says that an essay was made of the coin. How impudent and insupportable is this! Wood takes care to coin a dozen or two halfpence of good metal, sends them to the Tower, and they are approved; and these must answer all that he has already coined or shall coin for the future. It is true, indeed, that a gentleman often sends to my shop for a pattern of stuff. I cut it fairly off, and if he likes it, he comes or sends and compares the pattern with the whole piece, and probably we come to a bargain. But if I were to buy a hundred sheep, and the grazier should bring me one single wether fat and well fleeced by way of pattern, and expect the same price for the whole hundred, without suffering me to see them before he was paid or giving me good security to restore my money for those that were lean, or shorn or scabby, I would be none of his customers. I have heard of a man who had a mind to sell his house, and therefore carried a piece of brick in his pocket, which he showed as a pattern to encourage the purchasers; and this is directly the case in point with M^r Wood's essay.

29: The common soldier, when he goes to the market or ale house will offer his money; and if it be refused, he perhaps will swagger and hector, and threaten to beat the butcher or alewife, or take the goods by force, and throw them the bad half-pence. In this and the like cases, the shop-keeper or victualler, or any other tradesman, has no more to do than to demand ten times the price of his goods, if it is to be paid in Wood's money; for example twenty pence of that money for a quart of ale, and so in all things, and never part with the goods till he gets the money.

30: Upon this rock the author is perpetually splitting, as often as he ventures out beyond the narrow bounds of his literature. He has a confused remembrance of words since he left the university, but has lost half their meaning, and puts them together with no regard except to their cadence; as I remember a fellow nailed up maps in a gentleman's closet, some sidelong, others upside down, the better to adjust them to the pannels.

Voyez aussi dans l'Examiner le pamphlet sur Malborough, désigné sous le nom de Crassus, et la comparaison de la générosité romaine et de la ladrerie anglaise.

31: I have had the honour of much conversation with his lordship, and am thoroughly convinced how indifferent he is to applause and how insensible of reproach.... He is without the sense of shame or glory, as some men are without the sense of smelling; therefore a good name to him is no more than a precious ointment would be to these. Whoever, for the sake of others, were to describe the nature of a serpent, a wolf, a crocodile or a fox, must be understood to do it without any personal love or hatred for the animals themselves. In the same manner his Excellency is one whom I neither personally love or hate. I see him at court, at his own house, or sometimes at mine, for I have the honour of his visits; and when these papers are public, it is odds but he will tell me, as he once did upon a like occasion, «that he is damnably mauled,» and then with the easiest transition in the world, ask about the weather, or time of the day. So that I enter on the work with more cheerfulness, because I am sure neither to make him angry, nor any way to hurt his reputation; a pitch of happiness and security to which his Excellency has arrived, and which no philosopher before him could reach.—Thomas, Earl of Wharton, lord lieutenant of Ireland, by the force of a wonderful constitution, has some years passed his grand climacterick without any visible effects of old age, either on his body or his mind and in spite of a continual prostitution to those vices which usually wear out both.... Whether he walks or whistles, or swears, or talks bawdy, or calls names, he acquits himself in each beyond a templar of three years standing. With the same grace and in the same style, he will rattle his coachman in the midst of the street, where he is governor of the kingdom; and all this is without consequence, because it is his character, and what every body expects.... The ends he has gained by lying appear to be more owing to the frequency than the art of them, his lies being sometimes detected in an hour, often in a day, and always in a week.... He swears solemnly he loves and will serve you, and your back is no sooner turned, but he tells those about him you are a dog and a rascal. He goes constantly to prayers in the forms of his place, and will talk bawdy and blasphemy at the chapel door. He is a presbyterian in politicks, and an atheist in religion, but he chooses at present to whore with a papist. In his commerce with mankind, his general rule is to endeavour to impose on their understandings, for which he has but a receipt, a composition of lies and oaths.... He bears the gallantries of his lady with the indifference of a stoick, and thinks them well recompensed by a return of children to support his family, without the fatigues of being a father.... He was never known to refuse or to keep a promise, as I remember he told a lady, but with an exception to the promise he then made, which was to get her a pension. Yet he broke even that, and, I confess, deceived us both. But here I desire to distinguish between a promise and a bargain; for he will be sure to keep the latter, when he has the fairest offer.... But here I must desire the reader's pardon, if I cannot digest the following facts in so good a manner as I intended; because it is thought expedient for some reasons, the world should be informed of his Excellency's merits as soon as possible.... As they are, they may serve for hints to any person who may hereafter have a mind to write memoirs of his Excellency's life.

32: Argument contre l'abolition du christianisme. Il s'agit de décrier les whigs, amis des libres penseurs.

33: It may perhaps be neither safe nor prudent, to argue against the abolishment of christianity, at a juncture, when all parties appear so unanimously determined upon the point.... However I know not how, whether from the affectation of singularity, or the perverseness of human nature, but so it unhappily falls out, that I cannot be entirely of this opinion. Nay, though I were sure an order were issued for my immediate prosecution by the attorney-general, I should still confess, that in the present posture of our affairs, at home or abroad, I do not yet see the absolute necessity of extirpating the christian religion from among us. This perhaps may appear too great a paradox even for our wise and paradoxical age to endure; therefore I shall handle it with all tenderness, and with the utmost deference to that great and profound majority which is of another sentiment.... I hope no reader imagines me so weak as to stand up in the defence of real christianity, such as used in primitive times (if we may believe the authors of those ages), to have an influence upon men's belief and actions. To offer at the restoring of that would indeed be a wild project; it would be to dig up foundations; to destroy at one blow all the wit, and half the learning of the kingdom.... Every candid reader will easily understand my discourse to be intended only in defence of nominal christianity; the other having been for some time wholly laid aside by general consent, as utterly inconsistent with our present schemes of wealth and power.

34: It is likewise urged, that there are by computation in this kingdom above ten thousand parsons, whose revenues, added to those of my lords the bishops, would suffice to maintain at least two hundred young gentlemen of wit and pleasure, and freethinking, enemies to priestcraft, narrow principles, pedantry, and prejudices, who might be an ornament to the court and town.

35: It is likewise proposed as a great advantage to the publick that if we once discard the system of the Gospel, all religion will of course be banished for ever, and consequently along with it, those grievous prejudices of education, which under the names of virtue, conscience, honour, justice, and the like, are so apt to disturb the peace of human minds, and the notions thereof are so hard to be eradicated by right reason, or free-thinking.

36: I am very sensible how much the gentlemen of wit and pleasure are apt to murmur and be shocked at the sight of so many daggle-tail parsons, who happen to fall in their way, and offend their eyes; but at the same time, those wise reformers do not consider what an advantage and felicity it is for great wits to be always provided with objects of scorn and contempt, in order to exercise and improve their talents, and divert their spleen from falling on each other, or on themselves; especially when all this may be done without the least imaginable danger to their persons. And to urge another argument of a parallel nature: if christianity were once abolished, how could the freethinkers, the strong reasoners, and the men of profound learning, be able to find another subject so calculated in all points whereon to display their abilities? What wonderful productions of wit should we be deprived of from those whose genius, by continual practice, hath been wholly turned upon raillery and invectives against religion, and would, therefore, be never able to shine or distinguish themselves on any other subject? We are daily complaining of the great decline of wit among us, and would we take away the greatest, perhaps the only topic we have left?

37: I do very much apprehend that in six months time after the act is passed for the extirpation of the Gospel, the Bank and East-India stock may fall at least one per cent. And since that is fifty more than ever the wisdom of our age thought fit to venture for the preservation of christianity, there is no reason why we should bear so great a loss, merely for the sake of destroying it.

38: La Boucle de cheveux enlevée.

39: Pope, Arbuthnot et Swift y ont travaillé ensemble.

40: My first prediction is but a trifle; yet I will mention it to show how ignorant those sottish pretenders to astrology are in their own concerns. It relates to Partridge the almanack-maker. I have consulted the star of his nativity by my own rules and find he will infallibly die upon the 29^th March next, about eleven at night of a raging fever; therefore I advise him to consider of it, and settle his affairs in time.

41: To call a man a fool and villain, and an impudent fellow, only for differing from him in a point merely speculative, is, in my humble opinion, a very improper style for a person of his education. I will appeal to Mr Partridge himself, whether it be probable I could have been so indiscreet, to begin my prediction, with the only falsehood that ever was pretended to be in them, and this in an affair at home?

42: Letter to a very young lady.

43: That ridiculous passion which has no being but in playbooks and romances.

44: I never yet knew a tolerable woman to be fond of her sex.... your sex employ more thought, memory and application to be fools than would serve to make them wise and useful.... When I reflect on this, I cannot conceive you to be human creatures, but a sort of species hardly a degree above a monkey; who has more diverting tricks than any of you, is an animal less mischievous and expensive, might in time be a tolerable critick in velvet and brocade, and, for aught I know, would equally become them.

45:

His talk was now of tithes and dues;
He smok'd his pipe and read the news....
Against dissenters would repine,
And stood up firm for right divine.

46:

And all their conduct would be try'd
By her, as an unerring guide.
Offending daughters oft would hear
Vanessa's praise rung in their ear.
Miss Betty, when she does a fault,
Lets fall her knife or spills the salt,
Will then by her mother be chid:
«'Tis what Vanessa never did!»

47:

He now could praise, esteem, approve,
But understood not what was love.

48:

Stella, this day is thirty-four
(We sha'n't dispute a year or more).
However, Stella, be not troubled,
Although thy size and years are doubled,
Since first I saw thee at sixteen,
The brightest virgin on the green;
So little is thy form declin'd,
Made up so largely in thy mind.

49:

O, would it please the Gods to split
Thy beauty, size, years and wit!
No age could furnish out a pair
Of nymphes so graceful, wise, and fair.

50: Ovide, Homère, Plutarque.

51:

The parsons for envy are ready to burst;
The servants amazed are scarce ever able
To keep off their eyes, as they wait at the table;
And Molly and I have thrust in our nose
To peep at the captain in all his fine clothes;
Dear madam, be sure he's a fine spoken man,
Do but hear on the clergy how glib his tongue ran;
'And madam,' says he, 'if such dinners you give,
You'll never want parsons as long as you live;
I ne'er knew a parson without a good nose.
But the devil's as welcome wherever he goes;
G—d—me, they bid us reform and repent,
But, z—s, by their looks they never keep lent;
Mister curate, for all your grave looks, I'm afraid
You cast a sheep's eye on her ladyship's maid;
I wish she would lend you her pretty white hand
In mending your cassock, and smoothing your band;
(For the dean was so shabby, and looked like a ninny,
That the captain supposed he was curate to Jenny.)
Whenever you see a cassock and gown,
A hundred to one but it covers a clown;
Observe how a parson comes into a room,
G—d—me, he hobbles as bad as my groom;
A scholar, when just from his college broke loose,
Can hardly tell how to cry bo to a goose;
Your Noveds, and Bluturks, and Omurs, and stuff,
By G—, they don't signify this pinch of snuff;
To give a young gentleman right education,
The army's the only good school of the nation.

52:

How is the dean? he's just alive.
Now the departing prayer is read;
He hardly breathes. The dean is dead.
Before the passing-bell begun,
The news through half the town has run;
Oh! may we all for death prepare!
What has he left? and who's his heir?
I know no more than what the news is;
'Tis all bequeath'd to public uses.
To public uses! there's a whim!
What had the public done for him?
Mere envy, avarice, and pride:
He gave it all—but first he died.
And had the dean in all the nation
No worthy friend, no poor relation?
So ready to do strangers good,
Forgetting his own flesh and blood!
Poor Pope will grieve a month, and Gay
A week, and Arbuthnot a day....
My female friends, whose tender hearts
Have better learned to act their parts,
Receive the news in doleful dumps:
'The dean is dead (pray, what is trumps?)
Then, Lord, have mercy on his soul!
(Ladies, I'll venture for the vole.)
Six deans, they say, must bear the pall.
(I wish I knew what king to call.)
Madam, your husband will attend
The funeral of so good a friend?
No, madam, 'tis a shocking sight;
And he's engaged to-morrow night:
My Lady Club will take it ill,
If he should fail her at quadrille.
He loved the dean—(I lead a heart)
But dearest friends, they say, must part.
His time was come, he ran his race;
We hope he's in a better place.'

53: The ladies dressing-room.

54: Strephon and Chloe.

55: A Love-poem from a Physician.

56: The Progress of Beauty.

57: The Problem. Lire surtout Examination of certain abuses.

58: La vérité chrétienne.

59: Persécutions et combats de l'Église primitive.

60: They held the universe to be a large suit of clothes, which invests every thing: that the earth is invested by the air; the air is invested by the stars, and the stars are invested by the primum mobile.... What is that which some call land, but a fine coat laced with green? Or the sea but a waistcoat of water-tabby?... You will find how curious journeyman nature has been to trim up vegetable beans. Observe how sparkish a periwig adorns the head of the beech, and what a fine doublet of white satin is worn by the birch.... Is not religion a cloak, honesty a pair of shoes worn out in the dirt, self-love a surtout, vanity a shirt, and conscience a pair of breeches, which, though a cover for lewdness as well as nastiness, is easily slipt down for the service of both?... If certain ermines and furs be placed in a certain position, we style them a judge; and so an apt conjunction of lawn and black satin, we entitle a bishop.

61: In this unhappy case they went immediately to consult their father's will, read it over and over, but not a word of a Shoulder-Knot.... After much thought, one of the brothers who happened to be more book-learned than the other two, said he had found an expedient. «It is true, said he, there is nothing in this will, totidem verbis, making mention of Shoulder-Knot; but I dare conjecture we may find them inclusive, or totidem syllabis.—This distinction was immediately approved by all; and so they fell again to examine; but their evil star had so directed the matter that the first syllable was not to be found in the whole writings. Upon which disappointment, he, who found the former evasion, took heart and said: Brothers, there is yet hopes, for though we cannot find them totidem verbis, nor totidem syllabis, I dare engage we shall make them out tertio modo, or totidem litteris. This discovery was also highly commended; upon which they fell once more to the scrutiny, and picked out SHOULDER; when the same planet, enemy to their repose, had wonderfully contrived that a K was not to be found. Here was a weighty difficulty; but the distinguishing brother, now his hand was in, proved by a very good argument that K was a modern illegitimate letter; unknown to the learned ages, nor any where to be found in ancient manuscripts.... Upon which all difficulty vanished; shoulder-knots were made clearly out to be jure paterno, and our three gentlemen swaggered with as large and flaunting ones as the best.

62: Next winter a player hired for the purpose by the corporation of fringe-makers, acted his part in a new comedy all covered with silver fringe, and according to the laudable custom gave rise to that fashion. Upon which the brothers consulting their father's will, to their great astonishment found these words. «Item, I charge and command my said three sons to wear no sort of silver fringe upon or about their said coat.» However, after some pause the brother so often mentioned for his erudition, who was well skilled in criticisms, had found in a certain author, which he said would be nameless, that the same word which in the will is called fringe does also signify a broomstick and doubtless ought to have the same interpretation in this paragraph. This another of the brothers disliked, because of that epithet silver which could not, he humbly conceived, in propriety of speech, be reasonably applied to a broom-stick; but it was replied upon him that this epithet was understood in a mythological and allegorical sense. However, he objected again why their father should forbid them to wear a broom-stick on their coats, a caution that seemed unnatural and impertinent; upon which, he was taken up short, as one that spoke irreverently of a mystery, which doubtless was very useful and significant, but ought not to be over-curiously pried into, or nicely reasoned upon.

63: Allusions aux assemblées des puritains, à leur prononciation nasale, etc.

First, it is generally affirmed or confessed that learning puffeth men up; and secondly they proved it by the following syllogism: words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo learning is nothing but wind.—.... This, when blown up to its perfection, ought not to be covetously hoarded up, stifled, or hid under a bushel, but freely communicated to mankind. Upon these reasons and others of equal weight, the wise æolists affirm the gift of belching to be the noblest act of a rational.... creature.... At certain seasons of the year you might behold the priests among them in vast number.... linked together in a circular chain, with every man a pair of bellows applied to his neighbour's breech, by which they blew each other to the shape and size of a tun; and for that reason with great propriety of speech did usually call their bodies their vessels.... and to render these yet more compleat, because the breath of man's life is in his nostrils, therefore the choicest, most edifying, and most enlivening belches were very wisely conveyed through that vehicle, to give them a tincture as they passed.

64: Petit livre à l'usage des enfants, ainsi que Whittington et son chat, nommé plus loin.

65: The types are so apposite and the applications so necessary and natural, that it is not easy to conceive how any reader of a modern age or taste, could overlook them.... For first: Pausanias is of an opinion that the perfection of writing correct was entirely owing to the institution of criticks; and that he can possibly mean no other than the true critick is, I think, manifest from the following description. He says they were a race of men, who delighted to nibble at the superfluities and excrescencies of books, which the learned at length observing took warning, of their own accord, to lop the luxuriant, the rotten, the dead, the sapless, and the overgrown branches from their works. But now all this he cunningly shades under the following allegory: that the Nauplians in Argos learned the art of pruning their vines, by observing that when an ass had browsed upon one of them, it thrived the better and bore fairer fruits.

66: Herodotus holding the same hieroglyph speaks much plainer and almost in terminis; he has been so bold as to tax the true criticks of ignorance and malice, telling us openly (for I think nothing can be plainer), that in the western part of Libya there were asses with horns.

67: Les descriptions qui suivent sont telles que je n'ose les traduire.

68: Is any student tearing his straw in piece-meal, swearing and blaspheming, biting his grate, foaming at the mouth, and emptying his piss-pot in the spectator's faces? Let the right worshipfull commissioners of inspection give him a regiment of dragoons, and send him into Flanders among the rest.... You will find a third taking gravely the dimensions of his kennel; a person of foresight and insight, though kept quite in the dark.... He walks duly in one pace.... talks much of hard times and taxes and the whore of Babylon, bars up the wooden window of his cell constantly at eight o'clock, dreams of fire.... Now what a figure would all those acquirements make if the owner were sent into the city among his brethren!... Accost the hole of another kennel (first stopping your nose), you will behold a surly, gloomy, nasty, slovenly mortal, raking in his own dung, and dabbling in his urine; the best parts of his diet is the reversion of his own ordure, which, expiring into steams, whirls perpetually about, and at last reinfunds. His complexion is of a dirty yellow, with a thin scattered beard, exactly agreeable to that of his diet upon its first declination; like other insects who having their birth and education in a excrement, from thence borrow their colour and their smell.... Now is it not amazing the society of Warwick-lane should have no more concern for the recovery of so useful a member?... I shall not descend so minutely, as to insist upon the vast number of beaux, fiddlers, poets, and politicians, that the world might recover by such a reformation.... Even I myself, the author of these momentous truths, am a person whose imaginations are hard-mouthed, and exceedingly disposed to run away with his reason, which I have observed from long experience to be a very light rider, and easily shaken off; upon which account my friends will never trust me alone, without a solemn promise to vent my speculations in this or the like manner, for the universal benefit of mankind.

69: When the king has a mind to put any of his nobles to death in a gentle, indulgent manner, he commands the floor to be strewed with a certain brown powder of a deadly composition, which being licked up, infallibly kills him in twenty-four hours. But in justice to this prince's great clemency and the care he has of his subjects' lives (wherein it were much to be wished that the monarchs of Europe would imitate him) it must be mentioned for his honour that strict orders are given to have the infected parts of the floor well washed after every such execution.... I myself heard him give directions that one of his pages should be whipped, whose turn it was to give notice about washing the floor after an execution, but who maliciously had omitted it; by which neglect, a young lord of great hopes coming to an audience, was unfortunately poisoned, although the prince at that time had no design against his life. But this good prince was so gracious as to forgive the poor page his whipping, upon promise that he would do so no more, without special orders.

70: Je suis forcé de supprimer plusieurs traits.

71: At last I beheld several animals in a field, and one or two of the same kind sitting in trees. Their shape was very singular and deformed.... Their heads and breasts were covered with a thick hair, some frizzled, and others lank. They had beards like goats, and a long ridge of hair behind their back, and the forepart of their legs and feet. But the rest of the body was bare so that I might see their skins, which were of a brown buff colour. They had no tails, nor any hair at all on their buttocks, except about the anus.... They climbed high trees as nimbly as a squirrel, for they had strong extended claws before and behind, terminated in sharp points and hooked.... The females had long lank hair on their head but none on their faces, nor any thing more than a sort of down on the rest of their bodies, except about the anus and pudenda. The dugs hung between their forefeet, and often reached almost to the ground as they walked.... Upon the whole I never beheld in all my travels so disagreeable an animal, or one against which I naturally conceived so great an antipathy.

72: In most herds there was a sort of ruling yahoo, who was always more deformed in body and mischievous in disposition than any of the rest; this leader had usually a favourite as like himself as he could get, whose employment was to lick his master's feet and posteriors, and drive the female yahoos to his kennel; for which he was now and then rewarded with a piece of ass flesh.... He usually continues in office till a worse can be found; but the very moment he is discarded, his successor, at the head of all the yahoos in that district, male and female, come in a body and discharge their excrements upon him from head to foot.

73: I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin, that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.

74: «Proposition modeste pour empêcher que les enfants des pauvres en Irlande ne soient une charge à leurs parents ou à leur pays, et pour les rendre utiles au public.» 1729.—Swift devint fou quelques années après.

75: It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin-doors, crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms.... I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of children.... is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom, a very great additional grievance; and therefore, whosoever could find out a fair, cheap and easy method of making these children sound, easy members of the Commonwealth, would deserve so well of the public, as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation.... I shall now, therefore, humbly propose my own thoughts; which I hope will not be liable to the least objection.

76: I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child, well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.

I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that of the hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof one-fourth part to be males.... that the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom; always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for good tables. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.

I have reckoned, upon a medium, that a child just born will weigh twelve pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, will increase to twenty-eight pounds.

I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar's child (in which list I reckon all cottagers, labourers, and four-fifths of the farmers), to be about two shillings per annum, rags included; and I believe no gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat.

Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times require), may flay the carcass: the skin of which, artificially dressed, will make admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen.—As to our city of Dublin, shambles may be appointed for this purpose, in the most convenient parts of it; and butchers we may be assured will not be wanting; although I rather recommend buying the children alive, then dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasted pigs....

I think the advantages by the proposals which I have made are obvious and many, as well as of the highest importance. For first, as I have already observed, it would greatly lessen the number of papists, with whom we are yearly overrun, being the principal breeders of the nation, as well as our most dangerous enemies.... Thirdly, whereas the maintenance of a hundred thousand children, from two years old and upwards, cannot be computed at less than ten shillings a piece per annum, the nation's stock will be thereby increased fifty thousand pounds per annum, beside the profit of a new dish introduced to the tables of all gentlemen of fortune in the kingdom, who have any refinement in taste. And all the money will circulate among ourselves, the goods being entirely of our own growth and manufacture.... Sixthly, this would be a great inducement to marriage, which all wise nations have either encouraged by rewards or enforced by laws and penalties. It would increase the care and tenderness of mothers toward their children, when they were sure of a settlement for life to the poor babes, provided in some sort by the public, to their annual profit or expense.... Many other advantages might be enumerated, for instance, the addition of some thousand carcasses in our exportation of barrelled beef; the propagation of swine's flesh, and improvement in the art of making good bacon.... But this, and many others, I omit, being studious of brevity.

Some persons of desponding spirit are in great concern about that vast number of poor people who are aged, diseased, or maimed; and I have been desired to employ my thoughts, what course may be taken to ease the nation of so grievous an encumbrance. But I am not in the least pain upon that matter, because it is very well known, that they are every day dying and rotting by cold and famine and filth and vermin, as fast as can be reasonably expected. And as to the young labourers, they are now in almost as hopeful a condition; they cannot get work, and consequently pine away for want of nourishment to a degree, that, if at any time they are accidentally hired to common labour, they have not strength to perform it. And thus the country and themselves are happily delivered from the evils to come.

77: I profess in the sincerity of my heart that I have not the least personal interest in endeavouring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good of my country, by advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich. I have no children by which I can propose to get a single penny; the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past child-bearing.

78: He that opposes his own judgment against the current of the times ought to be backed with unanswerable truth, and he that has truth on his side is a fool as well as a coward, if he is afraid to own it, because of the multitude of other men's opinions. 'Tis hard for a man to say, all the world is mistaken, but himself. But if it be so, who can help it?

79: Voyez ses poëmes si plats, entre autres «Jure Divino, a poem in twelve books, in defence of every man's birthright by nature.»

80: The story is told.... to the instruction of others by this example, and to justify and honour the wisdom of Providence. The Editor believes the thing to be a just history of facts; neither is there any appearance of fiction in it.

81: Comparer au Cas de M. Waldemar, par Edgar Poe. L'Américain est un artiste malade, et de Foe un bourgeois sensé.

82: I had the biggest magazine of all kinds now that ever was laid up, I believe, for one man. But I was not satisfied still; for while the ship sat upright in this posture, I thought I ought to get every thing out of her that I could.... I got most of the pieces of the cable ashore, and some of the iron, though with infinite labour; for I was fain to dip for it into the water, a work which fatigued me very much.... I verily believe, had the calm weather held, I should have brought away the whole ship, piece by piece.

83: A very tedious and laborious work. But what need I have to be concerned at the tediousness of any thing I had to do, since I had time enough to do it?... My time or labour was little worth, and so it was as well employed one way as another.

84: I bore with this.... I went through that by dint of hard labour.... Many weary stroke it had cost.... This will testify that I was not idle.... As I had learned not to despair of any thing. I never grudged my labour.

85: By stating and squaring every thing by reason, and by making the most rational judgment of things, every man may be in time master of every mechanic art. I had never handled a tool in my life, and yet in time, by labour, application, and contrivance, I found at last that I wanted nothing but I could have made it, especially if I had had tools.

86: I had every thing so ready to my hand, that it was a great pleasure for me to see all my goods in such order, and especially to find my stock of necessaries so great.

87: I considered that the Devil might have found out abundance of other ways to have terrified me.... that, as I lived quite on the other side of the island, he would never have been so simple to leave a mark in a place where it was ten thousand to one whether I should ever see it or not, and in the sand too, which the first surge of the sea upon a high wind would have defaced entirely. All this seemed inconsistent with the thing itself, and with all notions we usually entertain of the subtlety of the Devil.

88: Nos anciennes éditions françaises suppriment tous ces détails caractéristiques.

89: Immediately it occurred that these words were to me. Why else should they be directed in such a manner, just at the moment when I was mourning over my condition, as one forsaken from God and man?

90: With these reflections, I worked my mind up not only to a resignation to the will of God,... but even to a sincere thankfulness.

91:.... That he (God) could fully make up to me the deficiencies of my solitary state, and the want of human society by his presence and communication of his graces to my soul, supporting, comforting and encouraging me to depend upon his Providence and hope for his eternal presence hereafter.

92: 1709-1711-1713.

93: 1741.

94: To be sure I did think nothing but curt'sy and cry, and was all in confusion at his goodness.

I was so confounded at these words, you might have beat me down with a feather.... So, like a fool, I was ready to cry, and went away curt'sying, and blushing, I am sure up to the ears.

95: This gentleman has degraded himself to offer freedoms to his poor servant.

96: It is for you, sir, to say what you please, and for me only to say: God bless your honour!

97: I cannot tell a wilful lie.

98: Lucifer always is ready to promote his own work and workmen.

99: My soul is of equal importance to the soul of a princess, though my quality is inferior to that of the meanest slave.

100: I fear not, sir, the grace of God supporting me, that any acts of kindness would make me forget what I owe to my virtue; but my nature is too frank and open to make me ungrateful; and if I should be taught a lesson I never yet learnt, with what regret should I descend to the grave, to think that I could not hate my undoer; and that at the last great day, I must stand up as an accuser of the poor unhappy soul that I could wish it in my power to save!

101: I had the boldness to kiss his hand.... I made bold to kiss his dear hand.

My heart is so wholly yours that I am afraid of nothing but that I might be forwarder than you wish.

This poor foolish girl must be after twelve o'clock this day as much his wife as if he were to marry a duchess.

102: I clasped my arms about his neck and was not ashamed to kiss him once, and twice, and three times, once for each forgiven person.

103: Voyez déjà dans Paméla les rôles de M. B. et de lady Davers.

104: He told he would break some body's heart.

105: The witty, the prudent, nay the dutiful and pious (so she sneeringly pronounced the word) Clarisse Harlowe should be so strangely fond of a profligate man, that her parents were forced to lock her up, in order to hinder her from running into his arms. «Let me ask you, my dear, said she, how you now keep your account of the disposition of your time? How many hours in the twenty-four do you devote to your needle? How many to your prayers? How many to letter-writing? And how many to love? I doubt, I doubt, my little dear, the latter article is like Aaron's rod, and swallows up the rest.... You must therefore bend or break, that was all, child....

106: «What, not speak yet? Come, my sullen, silent dear, speak one word to me. You must say two very soon to Mr Solmes, I can tell you that.... Well, well (insultingly wiping my averted face with her handkerchief).... Then you think you may be brought to speak the two words.

107: This, Clary, is a pretty pattern enough. But this is quite charming!—And this, were I you, should be my wedding night-gown.—But, Clary, won't you have a velvet suit? It would cut a great figure in a country church, you know. Crimson velvet, I suppose. Such a fine complexion as yours, how it would be set off by this!—And do you sigh, love? Black velvet, so fair as you are, with those charming eyes, gleaming, through a wintry cloud, like an April sun. Does not Lovelace tell you they are charming eyes?

108: Let us go, Madam, let us leave the creature to swell till she bursts with her own poison.

109: Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos... «I love opposition.»

110: Damn me, said Lovelace, if he would marry the first princess on earth, if he but thought she balanced a minute in her choice of him or of an Emperor.

111: I went into mourning for her, though abroad at the time; a distinction I have ever paid to those worthy creatures who died in childbed by me.

112: Mémoires du maréchal de Richelieu.

113: That command of my passions which has been attributed to me as my greatest praise, and, in so young a creature, as my distinction.

114: How I am punished.... for my vanity in hoping to be an example to young persons of my sex! Let me be but a warning and I will now be contented.

115: Entre autres choses voyez son testament.

116: Elle se fait pour elle-même la statistique et la classification des mérites et des défauts de Lovelace, avec divisions et numéros. Voyez cette logique anglaise positiviste et pratique:

That such a husband might unsettle me in all my own principles and hasard my future hopes.

That he has a very immoral character to women.

That knowing this, it is a high degree of impurity to think of joining in wedlock with such a man.

Elle tient ses écritures et garde des Mémorandums, des sommaires, ou analyses de ses propres lettres.

117: Myself one who never looked upon any duty, much less a voluntary vowed one, with indifference.

118: Voyez entre autres p. 196, t. VIII, 49^e lettre.

119: «Swearing is a most unmanly vice, and cursing as poor and low one; since they proclaim the profligate's want of power and his wickedness at the same time; for could such a one punish as he speaks, he would be a fiend.»

120: «I should be inclined to spare her all further trial, were it not for the contention that her vigilance has set on foot, which shall overcome the other.

121: Niceties.

122: C'est tout le contraire pour les héroïnes de George Sand.

123: He received the letters, standing up, bowing; and kissed the papers with an air of gallantry that I thought greatly became him.

124: I am afraid I must borrow of the Sunday some hours on my journey; but visiting the sick is an act of mercy.

125: And now, loveliest and dearest of women, allow me to expect the honour of a line, to let me know how much of the tedious month from last Thursday you will be so good to abate.... My utmost gratitude will ever be engaged by the condescension, whenever you shall distinguish the day of the year, distinguished as it will be to the end of my life that shall give me the greatest blessing of it and confirm me.

For ever yours Charles Grandisson.

126: What, my love! In compliment to the best of parents, resume your usual presence of mind. I else, who shall glory before a thousand witnesses in receiving the honour of your hand, shall be ready to regret I acquiesced so cheerfully with the wishes of those parental friends for a public celebration.

127: Sir Charles seemed to have the office by heart, Harriet in her heart.

128: In a soothing, tender and respectful manner, he put his arm round me and taking my own handkerchief, unresisted, wiped away the tears as they fell on my cheek. «Sweet humanity! Charming sensibility! Check not the kindly gush. Dew-drops of heaven! (wiping away my tears, and kissing the handkerchief), dew-drops of Heaven, from a mind like that Heaven mild and gracious!

129: But could he be otherwise than the best of husbands, who was the most dutiful of sons, who is the most affectionate of brothers, the most faithful of friends, who is good upon principle in every relation of life?

130: Clarisse et Paméla en font beaucoup trop.

131: Il était pourtant fils d'un général et petit-fils d'un comte.

132: Impossible de tout traduire. Liv. VI, ch. 9. Voyez vous-même l'offre remarquable que le squire fait à Jones.

133: It's well for un I could not get at un; I'd a lick'd un, I'd a spoil'd his caterwauling; I'd a taught the son of a whore to meddle with the meat of his master. He shan't ever have a morsel of meat of mine or a varden to buy it. If she will ha un, one smock shall be her portion. I'll sooner gee my estate to the zinking fund, that it may be sent to Hanover, to corrupt our nation with.

134: Puss, terme de chasse, sans équivalent en français.

135: Pox o' your sorrow. It will do me abundance of good, when I have lost my only child, my poor Sophy, that was the joy of my heart, and all the hope and comfort of my age. But I am resolved I will turn her out o' doors; she shall beg and starve and rot in the streets. Not one hapenny, not a hapenny shall she ha o' mine. The son of a bitch was always good at finding a hare sitting and be rotted to'n; I little thought what puss he was looking after. But it shall be the worst he ever vound in his life. She shall be no better than carrion; the skin o'er it is all he shall ha, and zu you may tell un.

136: I am determined upon this match, and ha him you shall, damn me, if shat unt. Damn me, if shat unt, though dost hang thyself the next morning.

137: To her, boy, to her, go to her. That's it, my little honeys, O that's it. Well, what, is it all over? Has she appointed the day, boy? What, shall it be to-morrow, or the next day? It shan't be put off a minute longer than next day, I am resolved.... I tell thee it is all a flimflam. Zoodikers! she'd ha the wedding to night with all her heart. Would'st not, Sophy? Where the devil is Allworthy?... Harkee, Allworthy, I'll bet thee five pounds to a crown, we ha a boy to-morrow nine months. But prithee, tell me what wat ha? Wat ha Burgundy, Champaigne, or what? For please Jupiter, we'll make a night on't.

138: Préface de Joseph Andrews.

139: Jonathan Wild.

140: Amélia est la parfaite épouse anglaise, supérieure en cuisine, dévouée jusqu'à pardonner à son mari ses infidélités accidentelles, toujours grosse. «Dear Billy, though my understanding be much inferior to yours, etc.» Elle est modeste à l'excès, toujours rougissante et tendre. Bagillard lui ayant écrit des lettres d'amour, elle les jette: «I would not have such a letter in my possession for the universe; I thought my eyes contaminated with reading it.»

141: I declared that if I had the world I was ready to lay it at my Amelia's feet. And so, heaven knows, I would ten thousand worlds!

142: The disgraces of Gil Blas are for the most part such as rather excite mirth than compassion. He himself laughs at them, and his transitions from distress to happiness or, at least, ease, are so sudden that neither the reader has time to pity him, nor himself to be acquainted with affliction. This conduct.... prevents that generous indignation which ought to animate the reader against the sordid and vicious disposition of the world. I have attempted to represent modest merit struggling with every difficulty to which a friendless orphan is exposed from his own want of experience as well as from the selfishness, envy, malice, and base indifference of mankind.

143: Go, poor devil, get thee gone, why should I hurt thee? The world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.

144: Sterne, Goldsmith, Burke, Sheridan, Moore ont une nuance propre, qui vient de leur sang, ou de leur parenté proche ou lointaine, la nuance irlandaise. De même Hume, Robertson, Smollett, W. Scott, Burns, Beattie, Reid, D. Stewart, etc., ont la nuance écossaise. Dans la nuance irlandaise ou celte, on démêle un excès de chevalerie, de sensualité, d'expansion, bref un esprit moins bien équilibré, plus sympathique et moins pratique. Au contraire, l'Écossais est un Anglais un peu affiné ou un peu rétréci, parce qu'il a plus pâti et plus jeûné.

145: Nothing could exceed the neatness of my little enclosures, the elms and hedge-rows appearing with inexpressible beauty.... Our little habitation was situated at the foot of a sloping hill, sheltered with a beautiful underwood behind, and a prattling river before; on one side a meadow, on the other a green.... (It) consisted but of one story and was covered with thatch, which gave it an air of great snugness....

The walls on the inside were nicely white-washed. Though the same room served us for parlour and kitchen, that only made it the warmer. Besides as it was kept with the utmost neatness, the dishes, plates and coppers being well scoured and all disposed in bright rows on the shelves, the eye was agreeably relieved, and did not want richer furniture.

146: But let us have one bottle more, Deborah, my life, and Moses, give us a good song. What thanks do we not owe to heaven for thus bestowing tranquillity, health, and competence? I think myself happier now than the greatest monarch upon earth. He has no such fire-side, nor such pleasant faces about it.

147: I have no resentment now, and though he has taken from me what I held dearer than all his treasures, though he has wrung my heart (for I am sick almost to fainting, very sick, my fellow-prisoner), yet that shall never inspire me with vengeance.... If this submission can do him any pleasure, let him know that if I have done him any injury, I am sorry for it.... I should detest my own heart, if I saw either pride or resentment lurking there. On the contrary, as my oppressor has been once my parishioner, I hope one day to present him up an unpolluted soul at the eternal tribunal.

148: Sir, I perceive you are a vile Whig.

149: Il avait eu le malheur de mettre auparavant dans son dictionnaire la définition suivante du mot pension:

"An allowance made to any one without an equivalent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country."

Le lecteur voit d'ici les sarcasmes des adversaires.

150: I think him (Rousseau) one of the worst of men; a rascal who ought to be hunted out of society, as he has been.... I would sooner sign a sentence for his transportation, than that of any felon who has gone from the Old Bailey these many years. Yes I would like to have him work in the plantations.... It is difficult to settle the proportion of iniquity between them (Rousseau and Voltaire).

151: I'll come no more behind your scenes, David, for the silk stockings and white bosoms of your actresses excite my amorous propensities.

152: Voici une phrase célèbre qui donnera quelque idée de ce style, assez semblable à celui de Thomas:

We were now treading that illustrious island which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge and the blessings of religion. To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible if it were endeavoured, and would be foolish if it were possible. Far from me and my friends be such rigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. The man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force on the plains of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.

153: Rambler, 108, 109, 110, 111.

154: Voir sa biographie par Boswell, 4 vol.

155: When a character is strongly marked in the living face, it may be considered as an index to the mind, to express which with any degree of justness in painting requires the utmost efforts of a great master. (Analysis of Beauty.)

156: Une femme de chambre sous Louis XIV, dit Courier, écrivait mieux que le plus grand écrivain d'aujourd'hui.

157: Mr Walsh used to encourage me much, and used to tell me, that there was one way left of excelling; for though we had several great poets, we never had any one great poet that was correct; and desired me to make that my study and my aim.

158: 1709.

159: Tye-wig.

160: In my politics, I think no further than how to preserve the peace of my life, in any government under which I live; nor in my religion, than to preserve the peace of my conscience in any church with which I communicate. I hope all churches and governments are so far of God as they are rightly understood and rightly administered; and where they are or may be wrong, I leave it to God alone to mend and reform them. (Lettre à Atterbury, 1717.)

161: Vale, unice.

162:

In these lone walls (their days' eternal bound)
These moss-grown domes with spiry turrets crowned,
Where awful arches make a noon-day night,
And the dim windows shed a solemn light.

163:

The wand'ring streams that shine between the hills,
The grots that echo to the tinkling rills,
The dying gales that pant upon the trees,
The lakes that quiver to the curling breeze.

164:

Heaven first taught letters for some wretch's aid,
Some banished lover, or some captive maid;
They live, they speak, they breathe what love inspires,
Warm from the soul, and faithful to its fires,
The virgin's wish without her fears impart,
Excuse the blush, and pour out all the heart,
Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul,
And waft a sigh from Indus to the pole.

165:

How happy is the blameless Vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind,
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
Labour and rest that equal periods keep,
Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep....
Desires compos'd, affections ever e'en,
Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to heav'n.
Grace shines around with serenest beams,
And whisp'ring angels prompt her golden dreams.
For her th' unfading rose of Eden blooms,
And wings of seraphs shed divine perfumes;
For her the spouse prepares the bridal ring,
For her white virgins Hymeneals sing,
To sounds of heav'nly harps she dies away,
And melts in visions of eternal day.

166:

Oh grace serene! Oh virtue heavenly fair!
Divine oblivion of low-thoughted care!
Fresh-blooming hope, gay daughter of the sky!
And faith, our early immortality!
Enter, each mild, each amicable guest:
Receive, and wrap me in eternal rest!

167:

I come, I come! Prepare your roseate bow'rs,
Celestial palms and ever-blooming flow'rs.

168: M. Guillaume Guizot.

169:

170: Voyez son épître sur le caractère des femmes, si dure. À son avis, ce caractère se compose d'amour du plaisir et d'amour du pouvoir.

171:

Or stain her honour or her new brocade,
Forget her pray'rs or miss a masquerade,
Or lose her heart or necklace at a ball.

172:

To love an altar built
Of twelve vast French romances, neatly gilt;
There lay three garters, half a pair of gloves,
And all the trophies of his former loves.
With tender billet doux he lights the pyre,
And breathes three am'rous sighs to rise the fire.

173:

Here sighs a jar, and there a goose-pye talks;
Men prove with child, as pow'rful fancy works,
And maids turn'd bottles call aloud for corks.

174:

First he relates, how sinking to the chin,
Smit with his mien, the Mud-nymphs suck'd him in.
How young Lutetia, softer than the down,
Nigrina black, and Merdamenta brown,
Vy'd for his love in jetty bow'rs below....
Full in the middle way there stood a lake,
Which Curl's Corinna chanc'd that morn to make
(Such was her wont, at early dawn to drop
Her ev'ning cates before his neighbour's shop).
.... And the fresh vomit run for ever green.

175:

See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,
Mountains of casuistry heap'd o'er her head!
Philosophy that lean'd on Heav'n before
Shrinks to her second cause and his no more.
Physic of metaphysic begs defence,
And metaphysic calls for aid on sense....
Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,
And unawares morality expires.
Nor public flame, nor private dares to shine,
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine;
Lo! Thy dread empire, Chaos, is restor'd;
Light dies before thy uncreating word,
Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall
And universal Darkness buries all.

176:

Oft in her glass the musing shepherd spies
The headlong mountains and downward skies
The watr'y landskip of the pendant woods
And absent trees that tremble in the floods.

177:

See, from the brake the whirring pheasant springs
And mounts exulting on triumphant wings.
Alas, what avail his glossy, varying dies,
His purple crest, and scarlet circled eyes,
The vivid green his shining plumes unfold,
His painted wings, and breast that flames with gold?

178:

But now secure the painted vessel glides,
The sun beams trembling on the floating tides;
While melting music steals upon the sky,
And soften'd sounds along the waters die;
Smooth flow the waves, the Zephyrs gently play.
The lucid squadrons round the sails repair:
Soft o'er the shrouds aerial whispers breathe,
That seem'd but Zephyrs to the train beneath.
Some to the sun their insect wings unfold,
Whaft on the breeze, or sink in clouds of gold;
Transparent forms, too fine for mortal sight,
Their fluid bodies half-dissolv'd in light.
Loose to the wind their airy garment flies,
Where light disports in ever-mingling dyes;
Where ev'ry beam new transient colours flings,
Colours that change whene'er they wave their wings.

179:

Behold, four kings in majesty rever'd,
With hoary whiskers, and a forky beard.
And four fair Queens, whose hands sustain a flow'r,
Th' expressive emblem of their softer pow'r.
Four knaves, in garb succinct, a trusty band,
Caps on their heads and halberts in their hand,
And party-coloured troops, a shining train,
Drawn forth to combat on the velvet plain.

180:

Peins-moi légèrement l'amant léger de Flore,
Qu'un doux ruisseau murmure en vers plus doux encore, etc.

181:

In the remotest wood and lonely grot,
Certain to meet that worst of evils, thought.

182:

183: Celui qu'on surnomma le Boucher.

184: Thou wilt not find my shepherdesses idly piping on oaten reeds, but milking the kine, tying up the sheaves, or if the hogs are astray, driving them to their styes. My shepherd.... sleepeth not under myrtle shades, but under hedges; nor does he vigilantly defend his flocks from wolves, because there are none.

185:

Leek to the Welsh, to Dutchmen butter's dear,
Of Irish swains potatoe is the cheer,
Oat for their feasts the Scottish shepherds grind,
Sweet turnips are the food of Blouzelind;
While she loves turnips, butter I'll despise,
Nor leeks, nor oat-meal, nor potatoe, prize.

186: Épître à miss Blount sur la vie de campagne.

187:

188: Voir les Fêtes de la Révolution, par David.

189:

Silence and Darkness! Solemn sisters! Twins
Of ancient night! I to Day's soft-ey'd sister pay my court
(Endymion's rival), and her aid implore
Now first implor'd in succour to the Muse.

190: Robert Burns.

191: Alison, History of Europe;—Porter, Progress of the Nation.

192: Comparez, pour sentir ce contraste, Gil Blas et Ruy Blas, le Paysan parvenu de Marivaux et Julien Sorel de Stendhal.

193: Faust, scène première.

194: This kind of life—the cheerless gloom of a hermit, with the unceasing toil of a galley-slave—brought me to my sixteenth year.

195: After three years' tossing and whirling in the vortex of litigation, my father was just saved from the horrors of a goal by a consumption, which after two years' promises kindly stepped in.

196: I read farming books, I calculated crops; I attended markets, but the first year, from unfortunately buying bad seed, the second, from a late harvest, we lost our crops.

197: Even in the hour of social mirth, my gaiety is the madness of an intoxicated criminal under the hands of the executioner.

198: La plupart de ces détails sont tirés de la Biographie de Burns, par Chambers, en quatre volumes.

199: I had felt early some stirrings of ambition, but they were the blind groping of Homer's Cyclops round the walls of his cave.... The only two openings by which I could enter the temple of Fortune, were the gate of niggardly economy, or the path of little chicaning bargain-making. The first is so contracted an aperture, I could never squeeze myself into it. The last I always hated. There was contamination in the very entrance.

200: My great constituent elements are pride and passion.

201: The collection of songs was my vade-mecum. I pored over them driving my cart, or walking to labour, song by song, verse by verse, carefully noting the true, tender, sublime or fustian.

202: Never did a heart pant more ardently than mine to be distinguished.

203: There is scarcely any earthly object gives me more—I do not know if I should call it pleasure—but something which exalts me, which enraptures me more than to walk in the sheltered side of a wood or high plantation, in a cloudy winter day, and hear the stormy wind howling among the trees and raving over the plain.... I listened to the birds and frequently turned out of my path, lest I should disturb their little songs or frighten them to another station. Even the hoary hawthorn twig that shot across the way, what heart, at such a time, but must have been interested for his welfare?

204: Poor inconnu as I then was, I had pretty nearly as high an idea of myself and of my works as I have at this moment, when the public has decided in their favour.

Il avait le droit de penser ainsi; quand il se mettait à parler le soir dans une auberge, il causait de telle façon que les domestiques allaient réveiller leurs camarades.

205: How it will mortify him to see a fellow, whose abilities would scarcely have made an eight-penny taylor and whose heart is not worth three farthings, meet with attention and notice that are withheld from the son of genius and poverty?

206:

See yonder poor o'erlabour'd wight,
So abject, mean, and vile,
Who begs a brother of the earth
To give himself leave to toil;
And his lordly fellow-worm
The poor petition spurn,
Unmindful, tho' a weeping wife
And helpless offspring mourn.

207:

While winds frae off Ben Lomond blaw,
And bar the doors wi' driving snaw....
I grudge a wee the great folks' gift,
That live so bien an' snug:
I tent less and want less
Their roomy fire-side,
But hanker and canker
To see their cursed pride.
It's hardly in a body's pow'r
To keep at times frae being sour.
To see how things are shar'd;
How best o' chiels are whiles in want,
While coofs on countless thousands rant,
And ken na haw to wair't.

208: A man is a man for a' that.

209:

An', Lord, if ance they pit her till't
Her tartan petticoat she'll kilt,
An' durk an' pistol at her belt,
She'll take the streets,
An' rin her whittle to the hilt
I' th' first she meets!

210:

In politics if thou wouldst mix
And mean thy fortune be,
Bear this in mind, be deaf and blind,
Let great folks hear and see.

211:

Upon this tree there grows sic fruit
Its virtues a' can tell, man.
It raises man above the brute,
It makes him ken himself, man.
Give once the peasant taste a bit,
He's greater than a Lord, man....
King Louis thought to cut it down,
When it was unco small, man.
For this the watchman crack'd his crown
Cut off his head and all, man.

212: 1780.

213:

Should Hornie as in ancient days,
'Mang sons o' God present him,
The vera sight o' Moodie face
To's ain het hame had sent him
Wi' fright that day.

214:

Hear how he clears the points o' faith
Wi' rattlin' an' wi' thumpin'....
He's stampin' an' he's jumpin!
His lengthen'd chin, his turn'd up snout,
His eldritch squeel and gestures,
Oh! how they fire the heart devout,
Like cantharidian plasters,
On sic a day!

215:

216:

How monie hearts this day converts
O' sinners and o' lasses!
Their hearts o' stane, gin night, are gane,
As saft as ony flesh is.
There's some are fou o' love divine,
There's some are fou o' brandy.

217:

An honest man may like a glass,
An honest man may like a lass,
But mean revenge and malice fausse
He'll still disdain;
And then cry zeal for Gospel laws
Like some we ken....
.... I rather would be
An atheist clean,
Than under Gospel colours hid be
Just for a screen.

218: The Jolly Beggars.

219:

Wi' quaffing and laughing,
They ranted and they sang,
Wi' jumping and thumping
The very girdle rang.

220:

I lastly was with Curtis, among the floating batt'ries,
And there I left for witness an arm and a limb;
Yet let my country need me, with Elliot to head me,
I'd clatter on my stumps at the sound of a drum.

221:

I once was a maid, tho' I cannot tell when,
And still my delight is in proper young men....
Full soon I grew sick of my sanctified sot,
The regiment at large for a husband I got,
From the gilded spontoon to the fife I was ready,
I asked no more but a sodger laddie.

222:

223:

Morality, thou deadly bane,
Thy tens o' thousands thou hast slain;
Vain is his hope whose stay and trust is
In moral mercy, truth and justice.

224:

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live.

225:

Hear me, auld Hangie, for a wee,
An' let poor damned bodies be;
I'm sure sma' pleasure it can gie,
E'en to a deil,
To skelp an' scaud' poor dogs like me
An' hear us squeel....
Then you, ye auld, snec-drawing dog!
Ye came to Paradise incog,
An' play'd on man a cursed brogue,
(Black be your fa'!)
An' gied the infant world a shog,
'Maist ruin'd a'....
But fare you weel, auld Nickie-ben!
O wad ye tak a thought an' men'.
Ye aiblins might—I dinna ken—
Still hae a stake.
I'm wae to think upon yon den,
E'en for your sake!

226: "I have been all along a miserable dupe to Love." He was constantly the victim of some fair enslaver. (Récit de son frère.)

227: In short she, altogether unwittingly to herself, initiated me in that delicious passion, which in spite of acid disappointment, gin-horse prudence, and book-worm philosophy, I hold to be the first of human joys, our dearest blessing here below.

228: Chamber's edition, t. I, p. 93.

229: In the first place, let my pupil, as he tenders his own peace, keep up a regular warm intercourse with the Deity.... You may perhaps think it an extravagant fancy; but it is a sentiment that strikes home to my very soul: though sceptical in some points of our current belief, yet I think I have every evidence for the reality of a life beyond the stinted bourne of our present existence.... O thou great unknown Power, thou Almighty God!

230: My passions, when once lighted up, raged like so many devils, till they got vent in rhyme.

231: Voyez Tam O'Shanter, Address to the Devil, The Jolly Beggars, A man is a man, Green grow the rushes, etc.

232: «O Clarinda, shall we not meet in a state, some yet unknown state of being, where the lavish hand of plenty shall minister to the highest wish of benevolence, and where the chill north-wind of prudence shall never blow over the flowery fields of enjoyment?»

233:

234: I might write you on farming, on building, on marketing. But my poor distracted mind is so torn, so jaded, so racked and bedeviled with the task of the superlatively damned obligation to make one guinea do the business of three, that I detest, abhor, and swoon at the very word business.

235: My worst enemy is moi-même.... There are just two creatures I would envy: a horse in his wild state traversing the forests of Asia, or an oyster on some of the desert shores of Europe. The one has not a wish without enjoyment, the other has neither wish nor fear.

236: What business has a physician to waste his time on me? I am a poor pigeon not worth plucking.... As to my individual self I am tranquil. But Burns' poor widow and half a dozen of his dear little ones, there I am weak as a woman's tear.

237: A rascal of haberdasher taking into his head that I am dying has commenced a process against me, and will infallibly put my emaciated body into jail. Will you be so good as to accommodate me and by return of post with ten pounds? Oh James! did you know the pride of my heart, you would feel doubly for me! Alas, I am not used to beg!

238: Tome II, page 17, Pitt's Speeches.

239: Discours de Pitt, 17 février 1800.

240: Life of William Pitt, by Macaulay.

241: Misdemeanours.

242: Felons. Ces termes légaux n'ont pas d'équivalent en français.

243: The feelings of a man when he arrives at the place of execution are, probably, much as mine were every time I set my foot in the office, which was every day for more than a half year together.

244: In this situation such a fit of passion has sometimes seized me, when alone in my chambers, that I have cried out aloud, and cursed the hour of my birth; lifting up my eyes to heaven not as a suppliant, but in the hellish spirit of rancorous reproach and blasphemy against my Maker.

245: My mind has always a melancholy cast, and is like some pools I have seen, which, though filled with a black and putrid water, will nevertheless in a bright day reflect the sunbeams from their surface.

246: Indeed I wonder that a sportive thought should ever knock at the door of my intellects, and still more that it should gain admittance. It is as if harlequin should intrude himself into the gloomy chamber, where a corpse is deposited in state. His antic gesticulations would be unseasonable at any rate, but more specially so, if they should distort the features of the mournful attendants into laughter. But the mind long wearied with the sameness of a dull, dreary prospect, will gladly fix his eyes on any thing that may make a little variety in its contemplations though it were but a kitten playing with her tail.

247: My device was intended to represent... the heart of a Christian, mourning and yet rejoicing, pierced with thorns, yet wreathed about with roses. I have the thorn without the rose. My brier is a wintry one, the flowers are withered, but the thorn remains.

248:

He comes, the herald of a noisy world,
With spattered boots, strapped waist, and frozen locks,
News from all nations lumbering at his back.
True to his charge, the close-packed load behind,
Yet careless what he brings, his one concern
Is to conduct it to the destined inn,
And, having dropped the expected bag, pass on.
He whistles as he goes, light-hearted wretch!
Cold and yet cheerful: messenger of grief
Perhaps to thousands, and of joy to some.

249:

Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,
And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups,
That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each,
So let us welcome peaceful evening in.

250:

Is India free? And does she wear her plumed
And jewelled turban with a smile of peace?
Or do we grind her still?

251: À cet égard, Crabbe est aussi un des maîtres et des rénovateurs; mais il a le style classique, et on l'a fort bien appelé «a Pope in worsted stockings.»

252:

Here Ouse slow winding through a level plain
Of spacious meads, with cattle sprinkled o'er,
Conducts the eye along his sinuous course
Delighted.

253: 1793-1794.

254: Revue d'Édimbourg, octobre 1802.

255: Voyez the Fudge Family, etc.

256: The Epicurean.

257: Lalla Rookh.

258: Voir The history of the caliph Vathek, roman fantastique et puissant, par W. Beckford, publié d'abord en français, 1784.

259: Voyez les notes de Southey, pires que celles de Chateaubriand dans les Martyrs.

260: Revue d'Édimbourg.

261: Lockhart, p. 220, Life of sir W. Scott.

262: Writer at the signet.

263: Romantic.

264: Lockhart, t. I, p. 29.

265: Lockhart, t. IV, p. 329.

266: Sa bibliothèque et sa collection furent estimées 10000 liv. sterling.

267: Je suis obligé de traduire ici par des équivalents.

268: «Aujourd'hui environ cent cinquante anecdotes!» écrit le capitaine Basil Hall, son hôte.

269: Ivanhoe, page 1. «Such being our chief scene, the date of our story refers to a period towards the end of the reign of Richard I, when his return from his long captivity had become an event rather wished than hoped for by his despairing subjects, who were in the mean time subjected to every species of subordinate oppression.»—Impossible d'écrire plus lourdement.

270: Haud a care, haud a care, Monkbarns; God's sake, haud a care; sir Arthur's drowned already, and an ye fa' over the cleugh too, there will be but a wig left in the parish, and that's the minister's.

271: Circulating libraries. (Je traduis par un équivalent.)

272: Edinburgh Review, juin 1810.

273: Nos jansénistes, les puritains et les méthodistes sont les extrêmes de ce groupe.

274:

To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

275: Préface de la seconde édition des Lyrical Ballads.

276: Peter Bell,—the White doe,—the Kitten and the Falling leaves, etc.

277:

«This dull product of a scoffer's pen,
Impure conceits discharging from a heart
Harden'd by impious pride!»

278:

279:

Whate'er exists hath properties that spread
Beyond itself, communicating good,
A simple blessing or with evil mixed.—
Spirit that knows no insulated spot,
No chasm, no solitude; from link to link
It circulates, the soul of all the worlds.

280:

Where Knowledge, ill begun in cold remarks
On outward things, with formal inference ends,
Or if the mind turn inward, 't is perplexed,
Lost in a gloom of uninspired research....
.... Viewing all objects unremittingly
In disconnexion, dead and spiritless,
And still dividing and dividing still,
Break down all grandeur.

281:

The sun is fixed,
And the infinite magnificence of heaven
Fixed within reach of every human eye.
The sleepless Ocean murmurs for all ears,
The vernal field infuses fresh delight
Into all hearts....
The primal duties shine aloft like stars,
The charities that soothe and heal and bless
Are scattered at the feet of man—like flowers.

282:

Life, I repeat, is energy of Love
Divine or human, exercised in pain,
In strife, in tribulation, and ordained,
If so approved and sanctified, to pass,
Through shades and silent rest, to endless joy.

283: Voir aussi les romans agressifs et socialistes de W. Godwin, surtout Caleb Williams.

284: Il gagna une fois une ophthalmie à visiter des chaumières malsaines.

285: Fag.

286: Queen Mab et notes. À Oxford il avait publié une brochure «sur la nécessité de l'athéisme.»

287: Quelque temps avant sa mort, à vingt-neuf ans, il disait: «Si je mourais maintenant, j'aurais vécu autant que mon père.»

288: Tome IV, page 53, notes de mistress Shelley.—Voyez un excellent article sur Shelley dans la National Review, octobre 1856.

289: Voyez surtout the Witch of Atlas, the Cloud, the Skylark, la fin de l'Islam, Alastor et tout Prométhée.

290:

The sanguine sunrise with his meteor eyes
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning star shines dead....
The orbed maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon,
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn.

291:

292: Wordsworth, the Excursion, page 328.

Our life is turned
Out of her course, whenever man is made
An offering, a sacrifice, a tool,
Or implement, a passive thing employed
As a brute mean.

293: My school-friendships were with me passions (for I was always violent). I never hear the word Clare (Lord Clare) without the beating of the heart, even now.

294: «Because, if you please,» said Byron holding out his arm, «I would take half.»

295: Moore, t. I, p. 121, année 1807.

296: How very odd that I should have been so utterly, devotedly fond of that girl, at an age when I could neither feel passion, nor know the meaning of the word!... I remember all our caresses,... my restlessness, my sleeplessness. My misery, my love for the girl were so violent, that I sometimes doubt, if I have ever been really attached since.

297: My passion had its usual effects upon me. I could not sleep; I could not eat. I could not rest, and although I had reason to know that she loved me, it was the texture of my life to think of the time which must elapse before we could meet again, being usually about twelve hours of separation. But I was a fool then, and am not much wiser now.

298: Probablement de la gomme de lentisque.

299: I have hardly had a wink of sleep this week past. I have had some curious masking adventures, this carnival.... I will work the mine of my youth to the last vein of the ore, and then.... good night. I have lived and am content.

300: Lockhart, Life of Sir W. Scott, II, 238.

301: If I was born, as the nurses say, with a silver spoon in my mouth, it has stuck in my throat, and spoiled my palate, so that nothing put into it is swallowed with much relish, unless it be Cayenne... I see no such horror in a dreamless sleep, and I have no conception of any existence which duration would not make tiresome.

302: I like Junius, he was a good hater....

I don't understand yielding sensitiveness. What I feel is an immense rage for 48 hours.

303: Présent.

304: «Never mind, M. Roger, you shall not see any signs of it in me.»

305: I like energy,—even animal energy,—of all kinds—and have need of both, mental and corporal.

306: Il l'appelait «son héros de roman.»

307: English Bards and Scottish Reviewers.

308: Childe Harold is, I think, a very clever poem, but gives no good symptom of the writer's heart or morals. Vice ought to be a little more modest, and it must require impudence almost equal to the noble lord's other powers, to claim sympathy gravely for the ennui arising from his being tired of his wassailers and his paramours. There is a monstrous deal of conceit in it too, for it is informing the inferior part of the world, that their little old-fashioned scruples of limitation are not worthy of his regard....

My noble friend is something like my old peacock, who chooses to bivouac apart from his lady, and sits below my bed-room window, to keep me awake with his screeching lamentation. Only I own he is not equal in melody to lord Byron.

309: Il y a ici une citation de Macbeth que je traduis par un équivalent.

310: I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments.

311: 1821.

312: They mean to insurrect here and are to honour me with a call thereupon. I shall not fall back, though I don't think them in force and heart sufficient to make much of it. But onward. What signifies self?... It is not one man nor a million, but the spirit of liberty that must be spread.... The mere selfish calculation ought never to be made on such occasions and, at present, it shall not be computed by me.... I should almost regret that my own affairs went well, when those of nations are in peril.

313: I always wake in actual despair, and despondency, in all respects, even of that which pleased me over night.

In England, five years ago, I had the same kind of hypochondria, but accompanied with so violent a thirst, that I have drunk as many as fifteen bottles of soda-water in one night, after going to bed, and been still thirsty.... striking off the necks of the bottles from mere thirsty impatience.

What I feel most growing upon me are laziness, and a disrelish more powerful than indifference. If I rouse, it is into fury. I presume that I shall end (if not earlier by accident) like Swift «dying at the top.»

Lega came in with a letter about a bill unpaid at Venice which I thought paid months ago. I flew into a paroxysm of rage, which almost made me faint.

I have always had «une âme» which not only tormented itself, but every body else in contact with it, and an «esprit violent,» which has almost left me without any «esprit» at all.

314: I have written from the fulness of my mind, from passion, from impulse, from many motives, but not «for their sweet voices.»

To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all—and publishing also the continuance of the same object, by the action it affords to the mind, which else recoils upon itself.

315: I told you before that I can never recast any thing. I am like the tiger. If I miss the first spring, I go grumbling to my jungle again. But if I do it, it is crushing.

316: I could not write upon any thing without some personal experience and foundation.

317: I am a great reader and admirer of those books (the Bible) and had read them through and through before I was eight years old.—That is to say the Old Testament, for the New struck me as a task, but the other as a pleasure.

318: As to Pope, I have always regarded him as the greatest man in our poetry. Depend upon it. The rest are barbarians. He is a Greek temple, with a gothic cathedral on one hand and a turkish mosque, and all sorts of fantastic pagodas and conventicles about him. You may call Shakspeare and Milton pyramids, but I prefer the temple of Theseus or the Parthenon to a mountain of burnt brick-work.... The grand distinction of the under forms of the new school of poets is their vulgarity. By this I do not mean they are coarse, but shabby genteel.

319: All the styles of the day are bombastic. I don't except my own, no one has done more through negligence to corrupt the language.

320: Voyez le pamphlet qu'il fit contre les lakistes.

321: On vendit du Corsaire 13000 exemplaires en un jour.

322:

And now Childe Harold was sore sick at heart,
And from his fellow bacchanals would flee;
'Tis said, at times the sullen tear would start,
But pride congeal'd the drop within his ee:
Apart he stalk'd in joyless reverie,
And from his native land resolved to go,
And visit scorching climes beyond the sea;
With pleasure drugg'd he almost long'd for woe.

323:

The tender azure of the unruffled deep,
The mountain moss by scorching skies imbrown'd....
The orange tints that gild the greenest bough....

324:

325:

326: Talavera.

327:

328:

329: Par exemple:

As weeping Beauty's cheek at Sorrow's tale.

330: Voici des vers dignes de Pope, très-beaux et très-faux:

And havoc loathes so much the waste of time,
She scarce had left an uncommitted crime.
One hour beheld him since the tide he stemm'd,
Disguised, discover'd, conquering, ta'en, condemn'd,
A chief on land, an outlaw on the deep,
Destroying, saving, prison'd, and asleep!

331:

Who thundering comes on blackest steed,
With slacken'd bit and hoof of speed?
.... Approach, thou craven crouching slave:
Say, is not this Thermopylæ?

332: Moore's Life of lord Byron, III, 438; 1820.

333: I am living here exposed to it (assassination) daily, for I have happened to make a powerful and unprincipled man my enemy, and I never sleep the worse for it, or ride in less solitary places, because precaution is useless and one thinks of it as of a disease which may or may not strike.

334: Galt's Life of lord Byron, 113.

335: «Well, we are all born to die—I shall go with regret, but certainly not with fear.—It is every man's duty to endeavour to preserve the life God has given him; so I advise you all to strip: swimming, indeed, can be of little use in these billows—but as children, when tired with crying, sink placidly to repose—we, when exhausted with struggling, shall die the easier....»

336: «Qu'aurais-je connu et écrit si j'avais été un paisible politique mercantile ou un lord d'antichambre? Un homme doit voyager et se jeter dans le tourbillon, sinon ce n'est pas vivre.» Moore, III, 429.

337:

They coldly laughed,—and laid him there:
The flat and turfless earth above
The being we so much did love;
His empty chain above it leant....
.... He faded............
.......... with all the while a cheek whose bloom
Was as mockery of the tomb,
Whose tints as gently sunk away
As a departing rainbow's ray.....

338:

.... The Earth gave way, the skies roll'd round,
I seem'd to sink upon the ground;
But err'd, for I was fastly bound,
My heart turn'd sick, my brain grew sore,
And throbb'd awhile, then beat no more:
The skies span like a mighty wheel;
I saw the trees like drunkards reel,
And a slight flash sprang o'er my eyes,
Which saw no farther: he who dies
Can die no more than then I died.
.... I felt the blackness come and go
And strove to wake; but could not make
My senses climb up from below:
I felt as on a plank at sea,
When all the waves that dash o'er thee,
At the same time upheave and whelm,
And hurl thee towards a desert realm.

339:

'Tis midnight: on the mountains brown
The cold, round moon shines deeply down;
Blue roll the waters, blue the sky
Spreads like an Ocean hung on high,
Bespangled with those isles of light...
....................................
The waves on either shore lay there
Calm, clear, and azure as the air;
And scarce their foam the pebbles shook,
But murmur'd meekly as the brook.
The winds were pillow'd on the waves;
The banners droop'd along their staves,
And that deep silence was unbroke,
Save where the watch his signal spoke,
Save where the steed neigh'd oft and shrill,
And the wide hum of that wild host
Rustled like leaves from coast to coast....

340:

.... And he saw the lean dogs beneath the wall
Hold o'er the dead their carnival,
Gorging and growling o'er carcass and limb;
They were too busy to bark at him.
From a Tartar's skull they had stripp'd the flesh,
As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh;
And their white tusks crunch'd o'er the whiter skull,
As it slipp'd through their jaws when their edge grew dull,
As they lazily mumbled the bones of the dead,
When they scarce could rise from the spot where they fed;
So well had they broken a lingering fast
With those who had fallen for that night's repast.
And Alp knew, by the turbans that roll'd on the sand,
The foremost of these were the best of his band:
Crimson and green were the shawls of their wear,
And each scalp had a single long tuft of hair,
All the rest was shaven and bare.
The scalps were in the wild dog's maw,
The hair was tangled round his jaw.
But close by the shore, on the edge of the gulf,
There sat a vulture flapping a wolf,
Who had stolen from the hills, but kept away,
Scared by the dogs, from the human prey;
But he seized on his share of a steed that lay,
Pick'd by the birds, on the sands of the bay.

341:

He scarce can speak, but motions him 't is vain,
He clasps the hand that pang which would assuage.
And sadly smiles his thanks to that dark page.
.... His dying tones are in that other tongue,
To which some strange remembrance wildly clung....
.... And once, as Kaled's answering accents ceased,
Rose Lara's hand, and pointed to the East:
Whether (as then the breaking sun from high
Roll'd back the clouds), the morrow caught his eye,
Or that it was chance, or some remember'd scene,
That raised his arm to point where such had been,
Scarce Kaled seem'd to know, but turn'd away,
As if his heart abhorr'd that coming day,
And shrunk his glance before that morning light,
To look on Lara's brow,—where all grew night.
.... But from his visage little could we guess,
So unrepentant, dark, and passionless....
.... But gasping heaved the breath that Lara drew,
And dull the film along his dim eye grew;
His limbs stretch'd fluttering, and his head droop'd o'er.

342:

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day.
.............................
Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour
They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash—and all was black.
............................
And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings—the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gathered round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
.... The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and thence again
With curses cast them down upon the dust
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd,
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food:
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again; a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart,
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails—men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corpse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them; or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food.
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer'd not with a caress—he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar place
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they raked up
And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands.
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other aspects—saw, and shriek'd, and died—
Even of their mutual hideousness they died....

343: L'ange des saintes amours, l'ange de l'Océan, les chœurs des esprits bienheureux. Voyez cela tout au long dans les Martyrs.

344: Magna peccatrix, S. Lucæ VII, 36.—Mulier Samaritana, S. Johannis IV.—Maria Ægyptiaca (Acta Sanctorum), etc.

345:

Wer ruft das Einzelne zur allgemeinen Weihe,
Wo es in herrlichen Accorden schlägt?

346:

From my youth upwards
My spirit walk'd not with the souls of men,
Nor look'd upon the earth with human eyes;
The thirst of their ambition was not mine;
The aim of their existence was not mine;
My joys, my griefs, my passions, and my powers,
Made me a stranger; though I wore the form,
I had not sympathy with breathing flesh....
.......................
I could not tame my nature down; for he
Must serve who fain would sway—and soothe—and sue—
And watch all time—and pry into all place—
And be a living lie—who would become
A mighty thing upon the mean, and such
The mass are; I disdain'd to mingle with
A herd, though to be leader—and of wolves....

347:

.... My joy was in the wilderness, to breathe
The difficult air of the iced mountain's top,
Where the birds dare not build, nor insect's wing
Flit o'er the herbless granite; or to plunge
Into the torrent, and to roll along
On the swift whirl of the new breaking wave....
.... To follow through the night the moving moon,
The stars and their development; or catch
The dazzling lightnings till eyes grew dim;
Or to look, list'ning, on the scatter'd leaves,
While Autumn winds were at their evening song,
These were my pastimes, and to be alone;
For if the beings, of whom I was one,
Hating to be so,—cross'd me in my path,
I felt myself degraded back to them,
And was all clay again....

348:

.... My solitude is solitude no more,
But peopled with the Furies:—I have gnash'd
My teeth in darkness till returning morn,
Then cursed myself till sunset; I have pray'd
For madness as a blessing—'tis denied me.
I have affronted death—but in the war
Of elements the waters shrunk from me,
And fatal things pass'd harmless—the cold hand
Of an all-pitiless demon held me back,
Back by a single hair, which would not break.
In fantasy, imagination, all
The affluence of my soul—I plunged deep
But like an ebbing wave, it dash'd me back
Into the gulf of my unfathom'd thought
.... I dwell in my despair
And live, and live for ever.

349:

There's bloom upon her cheek;
But now I see it is not living hue,
But a strange hectic—like the unnatural red
Which Autumn plants upon the perish'd leaf.

350:

.... Hear me, hear me—
Astarte! my beloved! speak to me:
I have so much endured—so much endure—
Look on me! the grave hath not changed thee more
Than I am changed for thee. Thou lovedst me
Too much, as I loved thee: we were not made
To torture thus each other, though it were
The deadliest sin to love as we have loved.
Say that thou loath'st me not, that I do bear
This punishment for both—that thou wilt be
One of the blessed—and that I shall die.
For hitherto all hateful things conspire
To bind me in existence—in a life
Which makes me shrink from immortality—
A future like the past. I cannot rest.
I know not what I ask, nor what I seek:
I feel but what thou art, and what I am;
And I would hear yet once before I perish
The voice which was my music—Speak to me!
For I have call'd on thee in the still night,
Startled the slumbering birds from the hush'd boughs
And woke the mountain wolves, and made the caves
Acquainted with thy vainly echoed name,
Which answer'd me—many things answer'd me—
Spirits and men—but thou wert silent all.
.... Speak to me! I have wander'd o'er the earth,
And never found thy likeness—speak to me!
Look on the fiends around, they feel for me:
I fear them not, and feel for thee alone—
Speak to me! though it be in wrath; but say—
I reck not what—but let me hear thee once—
This once—once more!

351:

.... Yet see, he mastereth himself, and makes
His torture tributary to his will.
Had he been one of us, he would have made
An awful spirit.

352:

.... Thou hast no power upon me, that I feel;
Thou never shalt possess me, that I know:
What I have done is done; I bear within
A torture which could nothing gain from thine:
The mind which is immortal makes itself
Requital for its good or evil thoughts—
Is its own origin of ill and end—
And its own place and time;—its innate sense,
When stripp'd of this mortality, derives
No colour from the fleeting things without;
But is absorb'd in sufferance or in joy,
Born from the knowledge of its own desert.
Thou didst not tempt me, and thou couldst not tempt me.
I have not been thy dupe, nor am thy prey—
But was my own destroyer, and will be
My own hereafter.—Back, ye baffled fiends!
The hand of death is on me—but not yours!

353: Don Juan.

There stands the noble hostess, nor shall sink
With the three thousandth curtsy;
.... Saloon, room, hall, o'erflow beyond their brink,
And long the latest of arrivals halts,
'Midst royal dukes and dames condemn'd to climb,
And gain an inch of staircase at a time....

354: It was as if the house had been divided between your public and understood courtesans. But the intriguantes much outnumbered the regular mercenaries. Now where lay the difference between Pauline and her mamma, and Lady.... and daughter? Except that the two last may enter Carleton and any other house and the two first are limited to the Opera and b—house. How I delight in observing life as it really is—and myself after all the worst of any!

355: Alfred de Musset.

356: Voyez son terrible poëme bouffon The Vision of Judgment contre Southey, George IV, et la parade officielle.

357: Don Juan is a satire on the abuses in the present state of society, and not an eulogy of vice.

358: Stendhal, Mémoires sur lord Byron.

359: Moore's Life of lord Byron, III, 113.

360:

.... I like to see the sun set, sure he'll rise to-morrow,
Not through a misty morning twinkling weak as
A drunken man's dead eye in maudlin sorrow,
But with all heaven t' himself; that day will break as
Beauteous as cloudless, nor be forced to borrow
That sort of farthing candlelight which glimmers
Where reeking London's smoky caldron simmers.

361:

.... I love the language, that soft bastard latin,
Which melts like kisses from a female mouth,
Which sounds as if it should be writ on satin,
With syllables which breathe of the sweet south,
And gentle liquids gliding all so pat in,
That not a single accent seems uncouth,
Like our harsh northern whistling, grunting guttural,
Which we're obliged to hiss, and spit, and sputter all.

362:

I like the women too (forgive my folly),
From the rich peasant cheek of ruddy bronze,
And large black eyes that flash on you a volley
Of rays that say a thousand things at once,
To the high dama's brow, more melancholy
But clear, and with a wild and liquid glance,
Heart on her lips, and soul within her eyes,
Soft as her clime, and sunny as her skies.

363: Voyez Stendhal, Vie de Giacomo Rossini, et Stanley, Vie de Thomas Arnold. Le contraste est complet. Voyez aussi dans Corinne cette opposition très-bien saisie.

364: Journal, février 1821.

365:

She with her flush'd cheek laid on her white arm,
And raven ringlets gather'd in dark crowd
Above her brow, lay dreaming soft and warm;
.... One with her auburn tresses slightly bound,
And fair brows gently drooping, as the fruit
Nods from the tree, was slumbering with soft breath,
And lips apart, which show'd the pearls beneath.
.... A fourth as marble, statue-like and still,
Lay in a breathless, hush'd, and stony sleep;
White, cold and pure........................
.................. a carved lady on a monument.

366:

.... It was like the fawn which, in the lake display'd,
Beholds her own shy, shadowy image pass,
When first she starts, and then returns to peep,
Admiring this new native of the deep.

367:

368:

.... They were alone, but not alone as they
Who shut in chambers think it loneliness;
The silent Ocean, and the starlight bay
The twilight glow, which momently grew less,
The voiceless sands, and drooping caves, that lay
Around them, made them to each other press,
As if there were no life beneath the sky
Save theirs, and that their life could never die.

369:

.... Haidée spoke not of scruples, ask'd no vows,
Nor offered any....
She was all which pure ignorance allows,
And flew to her young mate like a young bird....

370:

Alas! They were so young, so beautiful,
So lonely, loving, helpless, and the hour
Was that in which the heart is always full,
And, having o'er itself no further power,
Prompts deeds eternity cannot annul....

371: «Il y a dix fois plus de vérité, disait Byron, dans Don Juan que dans Childe Harold. C'est pour cela que les femmes n'aiment pas Don Juan.»

372:

373:

.... Sooner shall earth resolve itself to sea,
Than I resign thine image, oh, my fair!
(Here the ship gave a lurch, and he grew sea-sick.)
Oh Julia! what is every other woe?—
(Here he fell sicker)......................
(For God's sake let me have a glass of liquor;
Pedro, Baptista, help me down below.)
Julia, my love! (You rascal, Pedro, quicker)—
Oh, Julia!—(this curst vessel pitches so)
Beloved Julia, hear me still beseeching!
(Here he grew inarticulate with retching.)

374:

.... Love's a capricious power....
Against all noble maladies he's bold;
But vulgar illnesses don't like to meet;
.... Shrinks from the application of hot towels,
And purgatives are dangerous to his reign,
Sea-sickness death....

375:

.... 'Tis melancholy, and a fearful sign
Of human frailty, folly, also crime,
That love and marriage rarely can combine;
Although they both are born in the same clime;
Marriage from love, like vinegar from wine—
A sad, sour, sober beverage.—
.... An honest gentleman, at his return
May not have the good fortune of Ulysses;....
.... The odds are that he finds a handsome urn
To his memory—and two or three young misses
Born to some friend, who holds his wife and riches
And that his Argus bites him by—the breeches.—

376:

.... Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter,
Sermons and soda-water the day after.
Man, being reasonable, must get drunk;
The best of life is but intoxication....

377:

.... And next they thought upon the master's mate,
As fattest; but he saved himself, because,
Besides being much averse from such a fate,
There were some other reasons: the first was,
He had been rather indisposed of late;
And that which chiefly proved his saving clause,
Was a small present made to him at Cadiz,
By general subscription of the ladies.

378: Il avait sous les yeux une douzaine de descriptions authentiques.

379: Chant VII, 6, 7.

Dogs, or men!—for I flatter you in saying
That ye are dogs—Your betters far—Ye may
Read, or read not, what I am now essaying
To show ye what ye are in every way.

380: Voyez Vision of Judgment.

381: Voyez le voyage de Mme d'Aulnay en Espagne, à la fin du dix-septième siècle. Rien de plus frappant que cette révolution, si l'on met en regard les temps qui précèdent Ferdinand le Catholique, c'est-à-dire le règne de Henri IV, la toute-puissance des nobles, et l'indépendance des villes. Voyez sur toute cette histoire, Buckle, History of civilisation, t. II.

382: Buckle, History of civilisation, t. I, 590, 592.

383: Léonce de Lavergne, Économie rurale en Angleterre, passim.

384: «L'économie, disait de Foe en 1704, n'est pas une vertu anglaise. Là où un Anglais gagne vingt shillings par semaine et ne peut que vivre, un Hollandais devient riche et laisse ses enfants dans une très-bonne position. Là où un manœuvre anglais avec ses neuf shillings par semaine vit pauvre et misérablement, un Hollandais vit passablement avec le même salaire.... Il n'y a rien de plus fréquent pour un Anglais que de travailler jusqu'à ce qu'il ait sa poche pleine d'argent, puis de s'en aller et de faire le paresseux, souvent l'ivrogne, jusqu'à ce que tout soit parti, et que parfois il ait fait des dettes.»

385: Dans le langage familier, les fils disent: «My governor.» En France ils diraient: «Le banquier.»

386: M. Bournisien, dans Madame Bovary, est un personnage très-rare en Angleterre.

387: Je prie le lecteur de lire entre cent autres les sermons du docteur Arnold devant ses élèves de Rugby.

388: The wide, wide World, by Elizabeth Wetherell. Voir les romans de miss Yonge et surtout ceux de miss Evans.