Complete Works of Thomas Love Peacock

by Thomas Love Peacock

  MR CYPRESS

  Human love! Love is not an inhabitant of the earth. We worship him as the Athenians did their unknown God: but broken hearts are the martyrs of his faith, and the eye shall never see the form which phantasy paints, and which passion pursues through paths of delusive beauty, among flowers whose odours are agonies, and trees whose gums are poison.

  MR HILARY

  You talk like a Rosicrucian, who will love nothing but a sylph, who does not believe in the existence of a sylph, and who yet quarrels with the whole universe for not containing a sylph.

  MR CYPRESS

  The mind is diseased of its own beauty, and fevers into false creation. The forms which the sculptor’s soul has seized exist only in himself.

  MR FLOSKY

  Permit me to discept. They are the mediums of common forms combined

  and arranged into a common standard. The ideal beauty of the Helen of

  Zeuxis was the combined medium of the real beauty of the virgins of

  Crotona.

  MR HILARY

  But to make ideal beauty the shadow in the water, and, like the dog in the fable, to throw away the substance in catching at the shadow, is scarcely the characteristic of wisdom, whatever it may be of genius. To reconcile man as he is to the world as it is, to preserve and improve all that is good, and destroy or alleviate all that is evil, in physical and moral nature — have been the hope and aim of the greatest teachers and ornaments of our species. I will say, too, that the highest wisdom and the highest genius have been invariably accompanied with cheerfulness. We have sufficient proofs on record that Shakspeare and Socrates were the most festive of companions. But now the little wisdom and genius we have seem to be entering into a conspiracy against cheerfulness.

  MR TOOBAD

  How can we be cheerful with the devil among us!

  THE HONOURABLE MR LISTLESS

  How can we be cheerful when our nerves are shattered?

  MR FLOSKY

  How can we be cheerful when we are surrounded by a reading public, that is growing too wise for its betters?

  SCYTHROP

  How can we be cheerful when our great general designs are crossed every moment by our little particular passions?

  MR CYPRESS

  How can we be cheerful in the midst of disappointment and despair?

  MR GLOWRY

  Let us all be unhappy together.

  MR HILARY

  Let us sing a catch.

  MR GLOWRY

  No: a nice tragical ballad. The Norfolk Tragedy to the tune of the

  Hundredth Psalm.

  MR HILARY

  I say a catch.

  MR GLOWRY

  I say no. A song from Mr Cypress.

  ALL

  A song from Mr Cypress.

  MR CYPRESS sung —

  There is a fever of the spirit,

  The brand of Cain’s unresting doom,

  Which in the lone dark souls that bear it

  Glows like the lamp in Tullia’s tomb:

  Unlike that lamp, its subtle fire

  Burns, blasts, consumes its cell, the heart,

  Till, one by one, hope, joy, desire,

  Like dreams of shadowy smoke depart.

  When hope, love, life itself, are only

  Dust — spectral memories — dead and cold —

  The unfed fire burns bright and lonely,

  Like that undying lamp of old:

  And by that drear illumination,

  Till time its clay-built home has rent,

  Thought broods on feeling’s desolation —

  The soul is its own monument.

  MR GLOWRY

  Admirable. Let us all be unhappy together.

  MR HILARY

  Now, I say again, a catch.

  THE REVEREND MR LARYNX

  I am for you.

  ME HILARY

  ‘Seamen three.’

  THE REVEREND MR LARYNX

  Agreed. I’ll be Harry Gill, with the voice of three. Begin

  MR HILARY AND THE REVEREND MR LARYNX

  Seamen three! I What men be ye?

  Gotham’s three wise men we be.

  Whither in your bowl so free?

  To rake the moon from out the sea.

  The bowl goes trim. The moon doth shine.

  And our ballast is old wine;

  And your ballast is old wine.

  Who art thou, so fast adrift?

  I am he they call Old Care.

  Here on board we will thee lift.

  No: I may not enter there.

  Wherefore so? ’Tis Jove’s decree,

  In a bowl Care may not be;

  In a bowl Care may not be.

  Hear ye not the waves that roll?

  No: in charmed bowl we swim.

  What the charm that floats the bowl?

  Water may not pass the brim.

  The bowl goes trim. The moon doth shine.

  And our ballast is old wine;

  And your ballast is old wine.

  This catch was so well executed by the spirit and science of Mr Hilary, and the deep tri-une voice of the reverend gentleman, that the whole party, in spite of themselves, caught the contagion, and joined in chorus at the conclusion, each raising a bumper to his lips:

  The bowl goes trim: the moon doth shine:

  And our ballast is old wine.

  Mr Cypress, having his ballast on board, stepped, the same evening, into his bowl, or travelling chariot, and departed to rake seas and rivers, lakes and canals, for the moon of ideal beauty.

  * * * * *

  CHAPTER XII

  IT WAS THE custom of the Honourable Mr Listless, on adjourning from the bottle to the ladies, to retire for a few moments to make a second toilette, that he might present himself in becoming taste. Fatout, attending as usual, appeared with a countenance of great dismay, and informed his master that he had just ascertained that the abbey was haunted. Mrs Hilary’s gentlewoman, for whom Fatout had lately conceived a tendresse, had been, as she expressed it, ‘fritted out of her seventeen senses’ the preceding night, as she was retiring to her bedchamber, by a ghastly figure which she had met stalking along one of the galleries, wrapped in a white shroud, with a bloody turban on its head. She had fainted away with fear; and, when she recovered, she found herself in the dark, and the figure was gone. ‘Sacre — cochon — bleu!’ exclaimed Fatout, giving very deliberate emphasis to every portion of his terrible oath— ‘I vould not meet de revenant, de ghost — non — not for all de bowl-de-ponch in de vorld.’

  ‘Fatout,’ said the Honourable Mr Listless, ‘did I ever see a ghost?’

  ‘Jamais, monsieur, never.’

  ‘Then I hope I never shall, for, in the present shattered state of my nerves, I am afraid it would be too much for me. There — loosen the lace of my stays a little, for really this plebeian practice of eating — Not too loose — consider my shape. That will do. And I desire that you bring me no more stories of ghosts; for, though I do not believe in such things, yet, when one is awake in the night, one is apt, if one thinks of them, to have fancies that give one a kind of a chill, particularly if one opens one’s eyes suddenly on one’s dressing gown, hanging in the moonlight, between the bed and the window.’

  The Honourable Mr Listless, though he had prohibited Fatout from bringing him any more stories of ghosts, could not help thinking of that which Fatout had already brought; and, as it was uppermost in his mind, when he descended to the tea and coffee cups, and the rest of the company in the library, he almost involuntarily asked Mr Flosky, whom he looked up to as a most oraculous personage, whether any story of any ghost that had ever appeared to any one, was entitled to any degree of belief?

  MR FLOSKY

  By far the greater number, to a very great degree.

  THE HONOURABLE MR LISTLESS

  Really, that is very alarming!

  MR FLOSKY

  Sunt geminoe somni portoe. There are two gates through which ghosts find their way to
the upper air: fraud and self-delusion. In the latter case, a ghost is a deceptio visûs, an ocular spectrum, an idea with the force of a sensation. I have seen many ghosts myself. I dare say there are few in this company who have not seen a ghost.

  THE HONOURABLE MR LISTLESS

  I am happy to say, I never have, for one.

  THE REVEREND MR LARYNX

  We have such high authority for ghosts, that it is rank scepticism to disbelieve them. Job saw a ghost, which came for the express purpose of asking a question, and did not wait for an answer.

  THE HONOURABLE MR LISTLESS

  Because Job was too frightened to give one.

  THE REVEREND MR LARYNX

  Spectres appeared to the Egyptians during the darkness with which

  Moses covered Egypt. The witch of Endor raised the ghost of Samuel.

  Moses and Elias appeared on Mount Tabor. An evil spirit was sent into

  the army of Sennacherib, and exterminated it in a single night.

  MR TOOBAD

  Saying, The devil is come among you, having great wrath.

  MR FLOSKY

  Saint Macarius interrogated a skull, which was found in the desert, and made it relate, in presence of several witnesses, what was going forward in hell. Saint Martin of Tours, being jealous of a pretended martyr, who was the rival saint of his neighbourhood, called up his ghost, and made him confess that he was damned. Saint Germain, being on his travels, turned out of an inn a large party of ghosts, who had every night taken possession of the table d’hôte, and consumed a copious supper.

  MR HILARY

  Jolly ghosts, and no doubt all friars. A similar party took possession of the cellar of M. Swebach, the painter, in Paris, drank his wine, and threw the empty bottles at his head.

  THE REVEREND MR LARYNX

  An atrocious act.

  MR FLOSKY

  Pausanias relates, that the neighing of horses and the tumult of combatants were heard every night on the field of Marathon: that those who went purposely to hear these sounds suffered severely for their curiosity; but those who heard them by accident passed with impunity.

  THE REVEREND MR LARYNX

  I once saw a ghost myself, in my study, which is the last place where any one but a ghost would look for me. I had not been into it for three months, and was going to consult Tillotson, when, on opening the door, I saw a venerable figure in a flannel dressing gown, sitting in my arm-chair, and reading my Jeremy Taylor. It vanished in a moment, and so did I; and what it was or what it wanted I have never been able to ascertain.

  MR FLOSKY

  It was an idea with the force of a sensation. It is seldom that ghosts appeal to two senses at once; but, when I was in Devonshire, the following story was well attested to me. A young woman, whose lover was at sea, returning one evening over some solitary fields, saw her lover sitting on a stile over which she was to pass. Her first emotions were surprise and joy, but there was a paleness and seriousness in his face that made them give place to alarm. She advanced towards him, and he said to her, in a solemn voice, ‘The eye that hath seen me shall see me no more. Thine eye is upon me, but I am not.’ And with these words he vanished; and on that very day and hour, as it afterwards appeared, he had perished by shipwreck.

  The whole party now drew round in a circle, and each related some ghostly anecdote, heedless of the flight of time, till, in a pause of the conversation, they heard the hollow tongue of midnight sounding twelve.

  MR HILARY

  All these anecdotes admit of solution on psychological principles. It is more easy for a soldier, a philosopher, or even a saint, to be frightened at his own shadow, than for a dead man to come out of his grave. Medical writers cite a thousand singular examples of the force of imagination. Persons of feeble, nervous, melancholy temperament, exhausted by fever, by labour, or by spare diet, will readily conjure up, in the magic ring of their own phantasy, spectres, gorgons, chimaeras, and all the objects of their hatred and their love. We are most of us like Don Quixote, to whom a windmill was a giant, and Dulcinea a magnificent princess: all more or less the dupes of our own imagination, though we do not all go so far as to see ghosts, or to fancy ourselves pipkins and teapots.

  MR FLOSKY

  I can safely say I have seen too many ghosts myself to believe in their external existence. I have seen all kinds of ghosts: black spirits and white, red spirits and grey. Some in the shapes of venerable old men, who have met me in my rambles at noon; some of beautiful young women, who have peeped through my curtains at midnight.

  THE HONOURABLE MR LISTLESS

  And have proved, I doubt not, ‘palpable to feeling as to sight.’

  MR FLOSKY

  By no means, sir. You reflect upon my purity. Myself and my friends, particularly my friend Mr Sackbut, are famous for our purity. No, sir, genuine untangible ghosts. I live in a world of ghosts. I see a ghost at this moment.

  Mr Flosky fixed his eyes on a door at the farther end of the library. The company looked in the same direction. The door silently opened, and a ghastly figure, shrouded in white drapery, with the semblance of a bloody turban on its head, entered and stalked slowly up the apartment. Mr Flosky, familiar as he was with ghosts, was not prepared for this apparition, and made the best of his way out at the opposite door. Mrs Hilary and Marionetta followed, screaming. The Honourable Mr Listless, by two turns of his body, rolled first off the sofa and then under it. The Reverend Mr Larynx leaped up and fled with so much precipitation, that he overturned the table on the foot of Mr Glowry. Mr Glowry roared with pain in the ear of Mr Toobad. Mr Toobad’s alarm so bewildered his senses, that, missing the door, he threw up one of the windows, jumped out in his panic, and plunged over head and ears in the moat. Mr Asterias and his son, who were on the watch for their mermaid, were attracted by the splashing, threw a net over him, and dragged him to land.

  Scythrop and Mr Hilary meanwhile had hastened to his assistance, and, on arriving at the edge of the moat, followed by several servants with ropes and torches, found Mr Asterias and Aquarius busy in endeavouring to extricate Mr Toobad from the net, who was entangled in the meshes, and floundering with rage. Scythrop was lost in amazement; but Mr Hilary saw, at one view, all the circumstances of the adventure, and burst into an immoderate fit of laughter; on recovering from which, he said to Mr Asterias, ‘You have caught an odd fish, indeed.’ Mr Toobad was highly exasperated at this unseasonable pleasantry; but Mr Hilary softened his anger, by producing a knife, and cutting the Gordian knot of his reticular envelopment. ‘You see,’ said Mr Toobad, ‘you see, gentlemen, in my unfortunate person proof upon proof of the present dominion of the devil in the affairs of this world; and I have no doubt but that the apparition of this night was Apollyon himself in disguise, sent for the express purpose of terrifying me into this complication of misadventures. The devil is come among you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.’

  * * * * *

  CHAPTER XIII

  MR GLOWRY WAS much surprised, on occasionally visiting Scythrop’s tower, to find the door always locked, and to be kept sometimes waiting many minutes for admission: during which he invariably heard a heavy rolling sound like that of a ponderous mangle, or of a waggon on a weighing-bridge, or of theatrical thunder.

  He took little notice of this for some time; at length his curiosity was excited, and, one day, instead of knocking at the door, as usual, the instant he reached it, he applied his ear to the key-hole, and like Bottom, in the Midsummer Night’s Dream, ‘spied a voice,’ which he guessed to be of the feminine gender, and knew to be not Scythrop’s, whose deeper tones he distinguished at intervals. Having attempted in vain to catch a syllable of the discourse, he knocked violently at the door, and roared for immediate admission. The voices ceased, the accustomed rolling sound was heard, the door opened, and Scythrop was discovered alone. Mr Glowry looked round to every corner of the apartment, and then said, ‘Where is the lady?’

  ‘The lady, sir?’ said Scyt
hrop.

  ‘Yes, sir, the lady.’

  ‘Sir, I do not understand you.’

  ‘You don’t, sir?’

  ‘No, indeed, sir. There is no lady here.’

  ‘But, sir, this is not the only apartment in the tower, and I make no doubt there is a lady up stairs.’

  ‘You are welcome to search, sir.’

  ‘Yes, and while I am searching, she will slip out from some lurking place, and make her escape.’

  ‘You may lock this door, sir, and take the key with you.’

  ‘But there is the terrace door: she has escaped by the terrace.’

  ‘The terrace, sir, has no other outlet, and the walls are too high for a lady to jump down.’

  ‘Well, sir, give me the key.’

  Mr Glowry took the key, searched every nook of the tower, and returned.

  ‘You are a fox, Scythrop; you are an exceedingly cunning fox, with that demure visage of yours. What was that lumbering sound I heard before you opened the door?’

  ‘Sound, sir?’

  ‘Yes, sir, sound.’

  ‘My dear sir, I am not aware of any sound, except my great table, which I moved on rising to let you in.’

  ‘The table! — let me see that. No, sir; not a tenth part heavy enough, not a tenth part.’

  ‘But, sir, you do not consider the laws of acoustics: a whisper becomes a peal of thunder in the focus of reverberation. Allow me to explain this: sounds striking on concave surfaces are reflected from them, and, after reflection, converge to points which are the foci of these surfaces. It follows, therefore, that the ear may be so placed in one, as that it shall hear a sound better than when situated nearer to the point of the first impulse: again, in the case of two concave surfaces placed opposite to each other—’