On Murder (Oxford World's Classics)
Page 32
54 Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano, intro. Michael Schmidt (London, 2000), 140.
55 Vladimir Nabokov, Despair (New York, 1966), 187.
56 Iain Sinclair, Lud Heat and Suicide Bridge (London, 1998), 13, 23.
57 Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor (London, 1985), 116.
1 Kant—who carried his demands of unconditional veracity to so extravagant a length as to affirm, that, if a man were to see an innocent person escape from a murderer, it would be his duty, on being questioned by the murderer, to tell the truth, and to point out the retreat of the innocent person, under any certainty of causing murder. Lest this doctrine should be supposed to have escaped him in any heat of dispute, on being taxed with it by a celebrated French writer, he solemnly reaffirmed it, with his reasons.*
2 An artist told me in this year, 1812, that having accidentally seen a native Devonshire regiment (either volunteers or militia), nine hundred strong, marching past a station at which he had posted himself, he did not observe a dozen men that would not have been described in common parlance as ‘good-looking.’
3 I do not remember, chronologically, the history of gas-lights. But in London, long after Mr Winsor* had shown the value of gas-lighting, and its applicability to street purposes, various districts were prevented, for many years, from resorting to the new system, in consequence of old contracts with oil dealers, subsisting through long terms of years.
4 Let the reader, who is disposed to regard as exaggerated or romantic the pure fiendishness imputed to Williams, recollect that, except for the luxurious purpose of basking and revelling in the anguish of dying despair, he had no motive at all, small or great, for attempting the murder of this young girl. She had seen nothing, heard nothing—was fast asleep, and her door was closed; so that, as a witness against him, he knew that she was as useless as any one of the three corpses. And yet he was making preparations for her murder, when the alarm in the street interrupted him.
5 ‘Revolt of Islam,’ canto xii.*
1 The Germans are not much accustomed to value the probabilities of judicial evidence; and here is a proof of it. Surely an hour and a half were a sufficient allowance for murdering a man and packing him up. And that Christian Hamacher having no collusion with the servants should have fixed upon the only space of an hour and a half which afterwards the servants were unable to swear to as otherwise occupied, is certainly one presumption (be it little or much) in favor of his statement. The German critic represents this part of his confession as deducting something from his general credibility; whereas it adds a positive value to it.
2 The German critic intermingles with the latter part of his remarks a comparison between the German and English modes of criminal process very much to the disadvantage of the latter, and written apparently with a good deal of party warmth. How far he is entitled to an opinion on the English forms of judicature, may be judged from this—that he says the English allow of no plea of guilty; manifestly confounding with this the English rule of law which allows the accused person to refuse answering any question tending to criminate himself, and instructing the magistrate to put him on his guard against such questions.
1 ‘Postern-gate.’ See the legend of Sir Eustace the Crusader, and the good Sir Hubert,* who ‘sounded the horn which he alone could sound’,* as told by Wordsworth.
2 ‘June 1, 1675.—Drinke part of 3 boules of punch, (a liquor very strainge to me,)’ says the Rev. Mr Henry Teonge,* in his Diary lately published. In a note on this passage, a reference is made to Fryer’s Travels to the East Indies, 1672,* who speaks of ‘that enervating liquor called Paunch, (which is Indostan for five,) from five ingredients.’ Made thus, it seems the medical men called it Diapente; if with four only, Diatessaron. No doubt, it was its Evangelical* name that recommended it to the Rev. Mr Teonge.
1 It seems almost ludicrous to guard and explain my use of a word in a situation where it should naturally explain itself. But it has become necessary to do so, in consequence of the unscholarlike use of the word sympathy, at present so general, by which, instead of taking it in its proper sense, as the act of reproducing in our minds the feelings of another, whether for hatred, indignation, love, pity, or approbation, it is made a mere synonyme of the word pity; and hence, instead of saying, ‘sympathy with another,’ many writers adopt the monstrous barbarism of ‘sympathy for another.’
1 ‘Page one thousand four hundred and thirty-one’— literally, good reader, and no joke at all.
1 I am not sure whether Southey held at this time his appointment to the editorship of the ‘Edinburgh Annual Register.’ If he did, no doubt in the domestic section of that chronicle will be found an excellent account of the whole.*