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The Parting Glass

Of all the money e'er I had, I spent it in good company. And all the harm e'er I've done, Alas! it was to none but me. And all I've done for want of wit To mem'ry now I can't recall So fill to me the parting glass Good night and joy be with you all.

If I had money enough to spend, And leisure time to sit awhile, There is a fair maid in this town, That sorely has my heart beguiled. Her rosy cheeks and ruby lips, I own she has my heart in thrall, Then fill to me the parting glass, Good night and joy be with you all.

Oh, all the comrades e'er I had, They're sorry for my going away, And all the sweethearts e'er I had, They'd wish me one more day to stay, But since it falls unto my lot, That I should rise and you should not, I gently rise and softly call, Good night and joy be with you all.

title: The Parting Glass


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 determining events that arose every ten years or so, and that jolted his conservative, habit-forming nature into a new phase, had come. Alone in Melbourne, and not overstocked with money, he thought of going to work. He thought of writing, and he did do some routine newspaper work. And then he considered pictures. Was he an artist? He did not know. But one day, as he wandered along the street irresolute, his eye caught a sign in a newspaper office window:

He did not go in, but went away and prepared some sketches, which he sent to the editor. To his dismay came a reply that the paper had just died.

"The editor wrote me," runs Mr. Bradley's own account, as he told it some years ago, "that since I was not yet the paper's cartoonist, I could not be blamed for its death. He added he was going to start another publication, in which he hoped to use my pictures."

The new venture was named Australian Tidbits. Luther Bradley became its cartoonist, and gave up all thought of going home. He had found a brand new interest in life; the interest that was always afterward to be supreme.

HAT began as a brief visit to Australia expanded into a residence of eleven years. After his service for Tidbits, afterwards Life, Mr. Bradley, then a robust, bearded man of thirty and more, drew cartoons for Melbourne Punch. On this last publication, a weekly, he remained the longest. He wrote dramatic reviews for it. And once, when the editor, Mr. McKinley, took a trip around the world, Luther Bradley was in editorial charge for a year. Meantime he entered joyously into the life of the city, which he found highly congenial, owing to its intelligent and rather leisurely atmosphere, and its passion, almost equal to his, for outdoor sports.

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 He was becoming celebrated. Australia was many sunsets distant from the European capitals, but the mails got there after a while, and whenever an example of Luther Bradley's work reached London, its vigor and humor left their mark. New York, too, heard of him; and such papers and clippings as reached Chicago astonished friends who never had thought of Luther Bradley in this wise. He was at the door of fame, and it might have opened to him in any of the greater cities. But in 1892 Francis Bradley, now more than seventy, became ill. Luther was summoned. And while he was on the ocean the father, who had lived to delight in Luther's cartooning, to feel a pride as great as he had felt when his son was succeeding in real estate, passed away.

It was another of those determining events. Just eleven years since the last one. It was to be only seven to the next, when he was to form his connection with The Chicago Daily News.

His mother needed him now. It was clear that he must remain in Chicago. He did not think he would like it as well as Melbourne. But his duty now lay here, and his chance for a living. He did such art work as he could get, residing, meantime, in the old home in Evanston. It was not quite the same old home. The girls, most of them, had "married away." The city had grown up around the homestead, and the woods, where any were left, were thinner. However, many of his old friends remained: Henry S. Boutell, his companion on many a camping and fishing trip; Towner K. Webster, Frank Elliott, Philip R. Shumway, William H. Harper, and many others. Besides, there were nephews and nieces of whom he was fond. Having considerable leisure now and then, he drew some astonishing pictures for the children of one sister, Mrs. John R. Case, writing verses to explain the pictures. Two of these nonsense books afterwards were published and sold under the titles, "Wonderful Willie; What He and Tommy Did to Spain," and "Our Indians; a Midnight Visit to the Great Somewhere-or-other."

This was a kind of transition period for him. It may be passed over

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 respiratory lamellae, and of other parts, was for the first time described, and in which the new facts discovered were shown uniformly to support the hypothesis that Limulus is an Arachnid. A list of these memoirs is given at the close of this article (2, 3, 4, 5 and 13). The Eurypterines (Gigantostraca) were included in the identification, although at that time they were supposed to possess only five pairs of anterior or prosomatic appendages. They have now been shown to possess six pairs (fig. 47), as do Limulus and Scorpio.

The various comparisons previously made between the structure of Limulus and the Eurypterines on the one hand, and that of a typical Arachnid, such as Scorpio, on the other, had been vitiated by erroneous notions as to the origin of the nerves supplying the anterior appendages of Limulus (which were finally removed by Alphonse Milne-Edwards in his beautiful memoir (6) on the structure of that animal), and secondly by the erroneous identification of the double sternal plates of Limulus, called “chilaria,” by Owen, with a pair of appendages (7). Once the identity of the chilaria with the pentagonal sternal plate of the scorpion is recognized—an identification first insisted on by Lankester—the whole series of segments and appendages in the two animals, Limulus and Scorpio, are seen to correspond most closely, segment for segment, with one another (see figs. 7 and 8). The structure of the prosomatic appendages or legs is also seen to present many significant points of agreement (see figures), but a curious discrepancy existed in the six-jointed structure of the limb in Limulus, which differed from the seven-jointed limb of Scorpio by the defect of one joint. R. I. Pocock of the British Museum has observed that in Limulus a marking exists on the fourth joint, which apparently indicates a previous division of this segment into two, and thus establishes the agreement of Limulus and Scorpio in this small feature of the number of segments in the legs (see fig. 11).

It is not desirable to occupy the limited space of this article by a full description of the limbs and segments of Limulus and Scorpio. The reader is referred to the complete series of figures here given, with their explanatory legends (figs 12, 13, 14, 15). Certain matters, however, require comment and explanation to render the comparison intelligible. The tergites, or chitinized dorsal halves of the body rings, are fused to form a “prosomatic carapace,” or carapace of the prosoma, in both Limulus and Scorpio (see figs. 7 and 8). This region corresponds in both cases to six somites, as indicated by the presence of six pairs of limbs. On the surface of the carapace there are in both animals a pair of central eyes with simple lens and a pair of lateral eye-tracts, which in Limulus consist of closely-aggregated simple eyes, forming a “compound” eye, whilst in Scorpio they present several separate small eyes. The microscopic structure of the central and the lateral eyes has been shown by Lankester and A. G. Bourne (5) to differ; but the lateral eyes of Scorpio were shown by them to be similar in structure to the lateral eyes of Limulus, and the central eyes of Scorpio to be identical in structure with the central eyes of Limulus (see below).

Following the prosoma is a region consisting of six segments (figs. 14 and 15), each carrying a pair of plate-like appendages in both Limulus and Scorpio. This region is called the mesosoma. The tergites of this region and those of the following region, the metasoma, are fused to form a second or posterior carapace in Limulus, whilst remaining free in Scorpio. The first pair of foliaceous appendages in each animal is the genital operculum; beneath it are found the openings of the genital ducts. The second pair of mesosomatic appendages in Scorpio are known as the “pectens.” Each consists of an axis, bearing numerous blunt tooth-like processes arranged in a series. This is represented in Limulus by the first gill-bearing appendage. The leaves (some 150 in number) of the gill-book (see figure) correspond to the tooth-like processes of the pectens of Scorpio. The next four pairs of appendages (completing the mesosomatic series of six) consist, in both Scorpio and Limulus, of a base carrying each 130 to 150 blood-holding, leaf-like plates, lying on one another like the leaves of a book. Their minute structure is closely similar in the two cases; the leaf-like plates receive blood from the great sternal sinus, and serve as respiratory organs. The difference between the gill-books of Limulus and the lung-books of Scorpio depends on the fact that the latter are adapted to aerial respiration, while the former serve for aquatic respiration. The appendage carrying the gill-book stands out on the surface of the body in Limulus, and has other portions developed besides the gill-book and its base; it is fused with its fellow of the opposite side. On the other hand, in Scorpio, the gill-book-bearing appendage has sunk below the surface, forming a recess or chamber for itself, which communicates with the exterior by an oval or circular “stigma” (fig. 10, stg). That this in-sinking has taken place, and that the lung-books or in-sunken gill-books of Scorpio really represent appendages (that is to say, limbs or parapodia) is proved by their developmental history (see

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text: Weird Tales/Volume 36/Issue 2/The Owls

title: Weird Tales/Volume 36/Issue 2/The Owls


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 quickly in favor of the greater period to come, when, following some years of cartoon work on other Chicago newspapers, he joined, in July, 1899, the staff of The Daily News.

HE man who came among us then cannot be forgotten. He was forty-six years old, and might very properly have been gray-haired and sedate. Instead he was one of the most dynamic, quick-spoken and athletic beings ever seen in a newspaper office. His hair was solid dark brown, brushed up in a defiant pompadour. His face was ruddy. He was six feet two inches tall, and his physique almost massive. His whole bearing, even in such a trivial action as striding down a room, was that of a tremendously intense and vigorous man.

Everybody knew, when Bradley came, that a new element had entered The Daily News office. What we did not know was that this serious-looking individual of whom most of us never had heard was to do in the seventeen years remaining to him work enough for the average life-time—work so startling in vitality, so luminous with youth, that one could never believe him to be old.

His first cartoon in The Daily News appeared July 5, 1899. Thereafter he furnished one daily, except when illness or vacation kept him away, or when some "big news cut" occupied his place on the front page. (It was part of his modesty and sense of the fitting that he never objected when his cartoon was crowded out.) During those first months he did his pictures at home, and went to the office only occasionally. Later he found he could work to better advantage in close touch with his associates; and when, in 1900, he was made director of the art department, regular office hours of course became still more imperative. He now went to work with the "rush hour" crowds, and returned home when they did. He was a daily toiler, with trains to catch, and not much time for lunch. On the whole, he rather liked it that way.

Although he had efficient help in the routine of the art department,

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 especially from Charles F. Batchelder, his assistant and friend, he was "in charge," and that fact he did not forget. He had a "comic page" to censor, a drove of nimble young artists to shepherd, news pictures sometimes to bother him, an engraving room to reckon with. He liked to have the department telephone on his desk, and to answer it himself. So he encountered a lot of details that he might easily have avoided.

"How do you do it?" he was often asked by people who did not see how he could produce his thoughtful-cartoons next door to an "art room."

He would only smile in reply, with the "what-does-it-matter" look he wore when asked about himself.

The fact was that he had a mind capable of utter absorption in the action of the moment. He could lay aside his drawing and forget it while he was consulted on some matter of the department, or to look at the sketches of a humble stranger, or to tell a mother what to do about her gifted son, aged eight. This done, he would resume his pen, and go to cross-hatching just where he left off. Elevated trains clattered past his window, and a multitude of other noises rose from the street. They could not detach his mind from the big idea of the day. And when the day was over and he had carried that big sheet of cardboard, the completed drawing, to the etchers, he could discard all the excitements and troubles of the last eight hours, and go home free for complete relaxation.

He carried with him from the office neither portfolios nor "atmosphere." He did not dress the artist part, nor try to look it. His work was his work. He never threw a halo around it, nor did he ever imply that because he did that sort of work, he was a being of a higher order. In connection with this absence of "pose" it is worth mentioning that Luther Bradley produced his cartoons without nearly as much academic preparation as they seemed to reveal. He read three weekly periodicals regularly, others desultorily, and he dipped into thoughtful books as they came out. But he did not try to know everything. His real library was the picturesque, laughable, dreadful book of life itself, as disclosed to him in the news of the day.

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text: Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Haddock, Charles Brickett


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"We've no business meddling with the drylanders!" accused brawny Brusul loudly. "Your father the king said we were to scout only as far west as the Dragal Mountains. We've done that f and haven't found any sign of the cursed Bunts in them. Our business is to ride back to Jotan now and report."

"Why, what are you afraid of?" demanded Khal Kan scoffingly. "We're wearing nondescript leather and weapons—we can pass ourselves off to the drylanders as mercenaries from Kaubos."

"Why should we go bothering the damned desert-folk at all?" Brusul demanded violently. "They've got nothing we want."

Little Zoor broke into sniggering laughter. His wizened, frog-like face was creased by wrinkles of mirth. 7


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 "Our prince has heard of that dryland princess—old Bladomir's daughter that they call Golden Wings," he chuckled.

"I'll be damned!" exploded Brusul. "I might have known it was a woman! Well, if you think I'm going to let you endanger our lives and the success of our reconnaissance for a look at some desert wench, you——"

"My sentiments exactly, Brusul!" cried Khal Kan merrily, and spurred forward. His pony galloped crazily down the crimson ridge, and his voice came back to them singing.

"Oh, damn all wenches, here's an end of us because of your fool's madness," groaned Brusul as he caught up. "If those drylanders find us out, we'll make fine sport for them."

Khal Kan grinned at the brawny warrior and the wizened little spy. "We'll not stay long. Just long enough to see what she looks like—this Golden Wings the desert tribes all rave about."

They rode forward over the ocher desert. The huge red orb of the sun was full in their faces as it sank toward the west. Already, the two moons Qui and Quilus were rising like dull pink shields in the east.

Shadows lengthened colossal across the yellow sands. The wind was keen, blowing from the far polar lands of this world of Thar. Behind them rose the vast, dull red shoulders of the Dragal Mountains, that separated the drylands from their own coastal country of Jotanland.

A nomad town rose ahead, scores of flat-topped pavilions of woven black hyrk-hair. Great herds of horses of the black desert strain were under the care of whooping herdsboys. Smoke of fires rose along the streets.

Fierce, swarthy drylanders whose skins were darker than the bronze faces of Khal Kan and his companions, looked at the trio with narrowed eyes as they rode in. Dryland warriors fell in behind them, riding casually after them toward die big pavilion at the camp's center.

"We're nicely in the trap," grunted Brusul. "Now only wit will get us out. Which means we can't depend on you, Khal Kan."

Khal Kan laughed. "A good sword can take a man where wit will stumble. Remember, now, we're from Kaubos."

They dismounted outside the great pavilion and walked into it past cat-eyed dryland sentries.

Torches spilled a red flare over the interior of the big tent. Here along rows, on their mats, sat the chiefs of the desert folk, feasting, drinking and quarreling.

PON a low dais sat old Bladomir, their highest chief. The old desert ruler was a bearded, steel-eyed warrior of sixty whose yellow skin was grizzled by sandstorm and sun. His curved sword leaned against his knee, and he was drinking from a flagon of purple Lurian wine.

Khal Kan's eyes flew to the girl sitting beside the chief. He felt disappointment. Was this the famous Golden Wings, this small, slight, slender dark-haired girl in black leather? Why, she was nothing much—mildly attractive with her smooth black hair and fine, golden-skinned features—but not as pretty by half as many a wench he knew.

The girl looked up. Her eyes met Khal Kan's. The stab of those midnight-black eyes was like the impact of sword-shock. For a moment, the Jotan prince glimpsed? a spirit thrilling as a lightning-flash.

"Why, I see now why they rave about her!" he thought delightedly. "She's a


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xi BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

TO

HOURS OF IDLENESS AND OTHER EARLY POEMS.

were four distinct issues of Byron's Juvenilia. The first collection, entitled Fugitive Pieces, was printed in quarto by S. and J. Ridge of Newark. Two of the poems, "The Tear" and the "Reply to Some Verses of J. M. B. Pigot, Esq.," were signed ";" but the volume itself, which is without a title-page, was anonymous. It numbers sixty-six pages, and consists of thirty-eight distinct pieces. The last piece, "Imitated from Catullus. To Anna," is dated November 16, 1806. The whole of this issue, with the exception of two or three copies, was destroyed. An imperfect copy, lacking pp. 17-20 and pp. 58-66, is preserved at Newstead. A perfect copy, which had been retained by the Rev. J. T. Becher, at whose instance the issue was suppressed, was preserved by his family (see Life, by Karl Elze, 1872, p. 450), and is now in the possession of Mr. H. Buxton Forman, C.B. A facsimile reprint of this unique volume, limited to one hundred copies, was issued, for private circulation only, from the Chiswick Press in 1886.

Of the thirty-eight Fugitive Pieces, two poems, viz. "To Caroline" and "To Mary," together with the last six stanzas of the lines, "To Miss E. P. [To Eliza]," have never been republished in any edition of Byron's Poetical Works.

A second edition, small octavo, of Fugitive Pieces, entitled Poems on Various Occasions, was printed by S. and J. Ridge of Newark, and distributed in January, 1807. This volume was issued anonymously. It numbers 144 pages, and consists of a reproduction of thirty-six Fugitive Pieces, and of twelve hitherto unprinted poems—forty-eight in all. For references to the distribution of this issue—limited, says Moore, to one hundred copies—see letters to Mr. Pigot and the Earl of Clare, dated January 16, February 6, 1807, and


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xii undated letters of the same period to Mr. William Bankes and Mr. Falkner (Life, pp. 41, 42). The annotated copy of Poems on Various Occasions, referred to in the present edition, is in the British Museum.

Early in the summer (June—July) of 1807, a volume, small octavo, named Hours of Idleness—a title henceforth associated with Byron's early poems—was printed and published by S. and J. Ridge of Newark, and was sold by the following London booksellers: Crosby and Co.; Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme; F. and C. Rivington; and J, Mawman. The full title is, Hours of Idleness; a Series of Poems Original and Translated. By George Gordon, Lord Byron, a Minor. It numbers 187 pages, and consists of thirty-nine poems. Of these, nineteen belonged to the original Fugitive Pieces, eight had first appeared in Poems on Various Occasions, and twelve were published for the first time. The "Fragment of a Translation from the 9th Book of Virgil's Ænead" (sic), numbering sixteen lines, reappears as "The Episode of Nisus and Euryalus, A Paraphrase from the Æneid, Lib. 9," numbering 406 lines.

The final collection, also in small octavo, bearing the title Poems Original and Translated, by George Gordon, Lord Byron, second edition, was printed and published in 1808 by S. and J. Ridge of Newark, and sold by the same London booksellers as Hours of Idleness. It numbers 174 pages, and consists of seventeen of the original Fugitive Pieces, four of those first published in Poems on Various Occasions, a reprint of the twelve poems first published in Hours of Idleness, and five poems which now appeared for the first time—thirty-eight poems in all. Neither the title nor the contents of this so-called second edition corresponds exactly with the previous issue.

Of the thirty-eight Fugitive Pieces which constitute the suppressed quarto, only seventeen appear in all three subsequent issues. Of the twelve additions to Poems on Various Occasions, four were excluded from Hours of Idleness, and four more from Poems Original and Translated.

The collection of minor poems entitled Hours of Idleness, which has been included in every edition of Byron's Poetical Works issued by John Murray since 1831, consists of seventy pieces, being the aggregate of the poems published in the three issues, Poems on Various Occasions, Hours of Idleness, and Poems Original and Translated, together with five other poems of the same period derived from other sources.

In the present issue a general heading, "Hours of Idleness, and other Early Poems," has been applied to the entire collection of Early Poems, 1802-1809. The quarto has


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Rh been reprinted (excepting the lines "To Mary," which Byron himself deliberately suppressed) in its entirety, and in the original order. The successive additions to the Poems on Various Occasions, Hours of Idleness, and Poems Original and Translated, follow in order of publication. The remainder of the series, viz. poems first published in Moore's Life and Journals of Lord Byron (1830); poems hitherto unpublished; poems first published in the Works of Lord Byron (1832), and poems contributed to J. C. Hobhouse's Imitations and Translations (1809), have been arranged in chronological order. (For an important contribution to the bibliography of the quarto of 1806, and of the other issues of Byron's Juvenilia, see papers by Mr. R. Edgcumbe, Mr. H. Buxton Forman, C.B., and others, in the Athenæum, 1885, vol. ii. pp. 731-733, 769; and 1886, vol. i. p. 101, etc. For a collation of the contents of the four first issues and of certain large-paper copies of Hours of Idleness, etc., see The Bibliography of the Poetical Works of Lord Byron, vol. vii. of the present edition.)


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 He illumined these from the inexhaustible batteries within him. He did not seem to need the artificial light that came from other minds. As the years went by he was relieved more and more of the strain of executive work, although when an emergency arose he always seemed to be on the spot. "I am responsible," he would insist. He carried this feeling of responsibility into all his relations with the art staff. He was their bulwark, stimulus, and companion. More and more he adopted the fatherly role toward his young men. He liked to celebrate their successes, to advise them about vacations, and to hear about their new babies.

With all this—his cartoon, his frequent visits "upstairs" to see what the wires were bringing, his long and eager talks with associates, the correspondence with admirers (and cranks)—his days were full. This made him happy. There were to be no more wanderings. He was satisfied with the privilege, enjoyed every morning, of facing big tasks to be done before evening. And at evening, perhaps remarking, "Well, I 'm afraid to-morrow's cartoon won't set the world on fire," he would put on his undistinguished overcoat and hat and go away into another world.

HIS private world of his had come to be peopled, in his late middle age, with a wife and four children who entirely absorbed him. He hated to be away from them even for an evening; so that he dreaded long journeys without them, and rarely accepted a social engagement.

During his second Evanston residence he had met Miss Agnes Smith, daughter of the Rev. Daniel F. Smith, who founded St. Luke's Episcopal Church, in Evanston. Miss Smith enjoyed outdoor life and many other things that Mr. Bradley liked. She became his friend, then his betrothed, and in October, 1901, they were married. Their first months of married life were passed in a tent on the shore of a lonely bay of Catalina Island, where they reveled in their wild surroundings. One morning, for example, they were awakened by the blowing of whales and rose to see the water of the bay black with the great creatures which were disporting themselves

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 there. Tent life did not end for them until the rattlesnakes came out at the end of winter and insisted on sharing their living quarters and drinking water from the same spring.

On returning to Chicago Mr. and Mrs. Bradley lived in Evanston for some years, but in 1909 they built a home in Wilmette, on the lake shore. There are four children: Francis, John Freeman, Sarah Elizabeth, and Margaret.

In Wilmette were passed what must have been Luther Bradley's most precious years. He was up there on a bluff, where Lake Michigan, perfect semblance of the sea, greeted him morning and night. It received him placidly at bathing time,—and his "season" ended only when his bathing suit fairly froze to the sand. He had a fine, long walk from the railroad station—an excellent bracer in zero weather, just like old times. And he grew a flower garden, and built a summer house, with stairs of rock up the cliff. And he helped the boys to put up a little clubhouse down near the beach. In front of this he laid out a tennis court. And the lake, as though grateful for his tenancy, "made" land for him until his beach was increased eastward by hundreds of feet.

There, after his hair became gray, he revived his boyhood pleasures, and romped with a company of admirers more congenial and outspoken than those who praised his cartoons: the children, both his own and the neighbors. Tennis, swimming, skating, boating, football, campfires on the beach, a thousand "days of real sport."

Of all the tributes he received, give me the one spoken by a little boy, a newcomer thereabouts, who after skating one day with Luther Bradley and a group of shouting sprites, remarked,

"Who was that big gray-haired feller? Say, he's a real feller!"

ARLY in January, 1917, his physique, so remarkably sustained, suddenly seemed to give way. He felt tired, and could not understand why. He would "soon be all right." Several times he had recovered from

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 Works of Lord Byron Poetry Volume 1 facing page xii.jpg


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Cato's Letters/Additional Letter 1

SIR, Man is more selfish than all other creatures; as habit, or imagination, has made more things necessary to his pleasure and convenience, than other animals want for theirs. Lust and hunger are their only appetites; further than these prompt them, they commit no ravages, and they have the plea of necessity for the evils which they do. None of them invade countries for the vanity of a title; nor enslave, plunder, and burn, out of pride. They have no avarice; they do not starve millions to surfeit one, or a few. They have no ambition; they do not destroy for glory. To the disgrace of humanity, and the misfortune of the world, all these mischiefs and abominations come from the impulse of human passions, from a ravenousness and ferocity, worthy only of wild beasts, but practised by men with much more extensive and successful cruelty. The false refinements of reason have taught them to make the earth a wilderness, or a shambles; and to commit oppressions and butcheries, which true reason abhors.

Men are so conceited, that they think they deserve every thing they want, and may do every thing to procure it; and nothing but fear restrains man from dealing with man as nations deal with nations, that is, from devouring one another. There is not a city or country in the world, but, were it let alone, would swallow up all the rest; and cities and countries are compounded of men, and governed by them. And, as every nation is in its own conceit better than another, almost every man in every nation is in his own opinion better than all the rest. Some may ask, whether a poor labourer in a ditch fancies himself as good a man as the lord of the soil? I answer, try him: Offer him the manor, and then see whether, from a mean opinion of his merit, he rejects the offer. Who is it that refuses or resigns greatness, from the inaptness of his talents to sustain it? Titles and honours are only due to merit; but who denies them from a sense of the want of it? On the contrary, are not the weakest and most worthless men the easiest puffed up with the vanity of a gay name; which is so far from giving them any intrinsick advantages, that it really exposes their defects? And do they not make one acquisition, which they merited not, a ground and reason for expecting and demanding, perhaps for extorting, others, which they merit as little? Great men are sometimes supplanted and undone by their creatures; and princes have had the crown taken from their head, and with it their life, by such as they had raised from the dust.

Leave men to take the full reward of their fancied merit, and the world will be thought too little for almost every individual, as Alexander thought it for him. He had the fortune to ravage the world, and from thence believed he had a right to it. Omnia vult, qui omnia potest. Men thus let loose, do no more mischief than they can, nor less. The world is therefore a foot-ball; a great scene of contention, revolutions, and misery: It is full of Alexanders.

For the better illustration of this subject, I will here subjoin a dialogue between Alexander the Great and a Persian.

Alex. I find you a man of understanding; and you shall say with security what you please: But sure you must acknowledge that I have acquired everlasting glory in conquering this great empire.

Pers. You have done many horrible things for this glory; made havock of mankind, all Asia a scene of blood, and the world a theatre of sorrow and violence, to gain it.

Alex. Is not glory thus gained?

Pers. More is the shame and the pity, that so wicked a thing should have so fine a name. If you had saved us from all the evil, that you have done us, I should have called it glory.

Alex. Great actions are glorious, let the consequences be good or bad.

Pers. Then I perceive there is no difference between good and bad actions; at least great mischief is as good and as glorious for your purpose as great good.

Alex. For the mischiefs that you have suffered, your king must answer: He drew the war upon you.

Pers. How so?

Alex. Xerxes, one of his predecessors, invaded Greece.

Pers. If he did it wantonly, he did wrong, and sacrificed many lives to his pride: But I thought all this had been glory, because you seek glory the same way.

Alex. No, I revenge Greece upon Persia.

Pers. So he did Persia upon Greece, though with less advantage to him, and less detriment to the Grecians. Besides, he is dead, and it is unjust to punish those who hurt you not, for those who hurt your ancestors a great while ago.

Alex. Greece and Persia still subsist.

Pers. They are still called Persia and Greece; but the men of whom you complain no longer subsist.

Alex. Darius, your present Emperor, whom I have so often beaten, still lives, and he oppressed the Greek cities in Asia.

Pers. So he did the Persian cities, and his whole empire; or his governors did it for him. Now if you had come and relieved us, and gone back again, I should not differ with you about the notions of glory: But to invade us, and make us the plunder of armies for another man’s crimes, which we condemn, and could not help, is no glory to us.

Alex. I meant his subjects no harm.

Pers. But you have done it as effectually as if you had.

Alex. I could not come at him, without killing his soldiers, and subduing his people.

Pers. Then you should have let him alone, at least till he had molested you.

Alex. He did; he enthralled my brethren the Asiatick Greeks; which I could not brook.

Pers. Give me leave to say, you have enthralled Greece itself, and Asia, and the world. How comes thraldom from Alexander to be better than thraldom from Darius? or why should it be better brooked?

Alex. I see you are no politician: You do not consider, that when I was about to invade Asia, it would have been madness to have left Greece unsubdued behind me.

Pers. The great Mithra shining yonder over our heads, and witnessing our actions, preserve all sober men from madness; and, for the peace of mankind, restore all madmen to their senses! And so, to revenge Greece upon Asia, which a hundred years before would have subdued Greece, you subdued Greece yourself, in order to subdue us harmless Asiaticks, who never saw any of your faces, till you came sword in hand to kill and oppress us for glory. You have arrived at that glory: And now I hope you will leave us, and return home.

Alex. No: Your King Darius still lives.

Pers. What! would you kill him?

Alex. No.

Pers. Then why do you pursue him?

Alex. To have him in my power.

Pers. And make him a captive and a slave; which is worse than killing him. But when you have him in your power, do you propose to set him up again, or in his room another royal Persian, who has not offended you?

Alex. No: Whom can I set up so worthy as Alexander, over the conquests of Alexander?

Pers. Doubtless none so brave to maintain them. But what right do you claim to the crown of Persia?

Alex. My sword; that sword which has conquered it.

Pers. While that right is in such hands, few will care to dispute it. But were I, who am no conqueror, to drive away my neighbour’s flocks and herds, and make them my own, I doubt you would call it robbery, and impale me alive.

Alex. Doubtless: I conquered the Persian empire; but I will protect the Persians in their lives and property: It is suitable to my generosity and justice.

Pers. In conquering us you have destroyed many lives, and much property, against all justice; and reserve the rest for your own use, whenever and as often as you think fit to take them.

Alex. It is the right of war.

Pers. War is then an unrighteous and inhuman thing, and entitles the next invader (if his sword be longer than yours, and his fortune superior) to drive you out, as you have done Darius.

Alex. Who shall dare to brave Alexander? Who contend with the son of a god?

Pers. Methinks you come not very honourably by that divine pedigree, and carnal divinity; which reflects some disgrace too upon your mother, and her husband Philip, and is not much to the reputation of this god of the desert. But who told you that he was your father?

Alex. His priests.

Pers. They would have told me as much, had I been there at the head of an army in quest of a celestial descent. It is no great credit to be akin to the figure of a ram: It is at least as much honour to be akin to the next palm-tree, or to the next marble-quarry, the elements of such inanimate deities.

Alex. Blaspheme not the gods, if thou wouldest avoid their vengeance: They will punish thee, though I forbear.

Pers. If the son forgive me, I will venture the displeasure of the father. I honour that only god, whose bright image I behold in the skies; nor fear the indignation of a piece of a trunk, or of a rock, however fashioned; unworthy kindred of the great Alexander, the most exalted of men, but subject to pain, misfortunes, and grief, and all the symptoms of mortality: The conqueror of Asia, the avenger of Greece, must die. But first, how is Greece avenged?

Alex. By conquering Persia.

Pers. You have ruined both: But of the two you have rather revenged Persia upon Greece. The lesser follows the greater. You are already monarch of Asia; and Greece, which you have enslaved, will be but a province of Persia: You do the very thing which you were so incensed against our former princes for intending. If your sovereignty continue, Persians will in time be sent governors of Greece; nay, you yourself, who are a Greek, wear already a Persian habit.

Alex. I have made the world my own, and will do with it as I list.

Pers. You do so; but it is more than you would suffer others to do, who thought they had a better right. If you be innocent, how were the Persian monarchs faulty?

Alex. I am Alexander, the son of Jupiter, and conqueror of the world.

Pers. Nay, they had sublime titles too, and heavenly alliances. They were lords of the world, and brothers of the sun; a more illustrious and visible deity than Jupiter the ram.

Alex. Their gods could not protect them; and mine have given me their empire. Once more, I am Alexander; the world is mine, and I will keep it.

Pers. Now this is open and fair dealing, worthy the great spirit of Alexander. You had a mind to the world, and you took it; nor think it enough for you. If you had made this frank declaration at first, I should not have troubled you with so much contradiction. If the great and bold mind of Alexander can stoop to dissemble, we are never to expect that men will own the true motives of their conduct. Their reason is just what their passion pleases. All their plausible and framed pretences are resolvable into some selfish appetite, which, like their conceit, is generally unmeasurable.

G. I am, &c.

title: Cato's Letters/Additional Letter 1


text:
Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 1.djvu/25

 Works of Lord Byron Poetry Volume 1 facing page xii(2).jpg


text: Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 1.djvu/29


text:
Cato's Letters/Additional Letter 2

SIR, There is no human condition but what carries uneasinesses with it; and I believe it will be difficult to know what condition makes men most happy, or happy at all. There is no judging of it by outward appearances. We often envy others for what they find misfortunes; and pity them for things, which are blessings, and either make them happy, or hinder them from being miserable. Nothing can be happiness in this world but gratifying our desires and inclinations; and yet we can seldom gratify them to any degree, but by turning them into misfortunes; yet we must gratify them in some degree, or else we can have no happiness at all.

To have no desires (if that be possible) is a perfect state of stupidity; and our desires must be always to attain what we do not then enjoy, and often what we cannot compass. This produces uneasiness, or in other words, renders us unhappy in some degree. The man therefore who has fewest desires, or desires the least difficult to be accomplished, has the least unhappiness; but wants many agreeable sensations, which men of more lively and active spirits enjoy. So that, upon the whole, if we balance the account, men have little reason to envy or pity one another: But if there be any difference between them, the condition of absolute princes and great men is by far the most miserable. They have little relish of the enjoyments, which they possess; they are always pursuing things difficult to be obtained, and are in as constant fear and danger of losing what they have, as of gaining what they have not; and if they do gain it they are seldom the better, but often plunged into new difficulties by their success.

Great fortune comes attended with great cares, and much greatness has many incumbrances. This is the condition of a despotick prince, who, having much more business than himself can do, be his diligence ever so great, must share the great weight and multiplicity of his affairs amongst many; who will be but too apt, in the administration of their several parts, to attend more to their own greatness and advantages, than to their master’s reputation and security, to justify their ill actions by his authority, and to acquire grandeur and riches to themselves, while they heap obloquy upon him.

This is often the true reason why a good prince is not always popular. People will judge of him by what is done, and not by what he causes to be done; and therefore the publick dislike rarely stops at his servants, who perhaps alone deserve it; but have often the art of involving him in the ill consequences of their own conduct, and of making their crimes complete, by engaging him to support them in their crimes, by persuading him that all their views and actions were for his service, and by frightening him with this false and mischievous maxim, That a prince must never give up his servants: A maxim fatal to many princes, and big with nonsense and with ruin to the people, as it makes all ministers, even the weakest and the worst, perfectly unaccountable!

This is an unnatural maxim: Nor have the most absolute monarchs, though their power be erected upon the violent abasement of human nature, and upon the ruins of all goodness, happiness, and virtue, been ever able to practise it, however they may want it, and in speculation pretend to it. The Great Turk is often forced to give up his servants, who must die for his crimes, as well as for their own; so far is he from sacrificing himself for theirs, as this maxim would direct. Nor is there an arbitrary prince in the world but must give up the best minister that he has, if his army demand it; and where the people have any share of power, no well-advised prince will employ a servant whom they justly hate and suspect.

Princes are set in a high place; which, though the most coveted of all, has the least happiness of any other. Those, who have no equals, can hardly have any friends; and a particular friendship and confidence between an arbitrary prince and any of his own subjects, is seldom sincere on either side, especially on theirs; and often fatal to him, sometimes to them. Such princes are most successfully betrayed by their greatest favourites, who are likewise frequently undone for being favourites. Nor can princes, with all their power, raise to the highest place those who are highest in their favour. Interest, or ambition, and sometimes fear, determines their choice; and their first minister is often the man whom they hate most, or dread most, which is the beginning of hatred. Nero hated Seneca and Burrhus; and Lewis XIII hated Cardinal Richelieu; as did King James I towards his latter end, the Duke of Buckingham. Even the crafty, implacable, and diffident Tiberius was forced to continue the traitor Sejanus in his power, places and trust, a good while after he had full proof that he sought his life and empire.

The greatest princes therefore are generally destitute of friends. To purchase friends, they must give them power; and power cancels all friendships. It is the most selfish thing in the world. Those who have it are too frequently faithless to the giver; and when it is taken away, always ungrateful. And this is the reason why they may dislike their ministers, and yet be loth to change them: They know, that to dismiss their servants, is to multiply their enemies. So they are forced to accept faint or false services, to prevent open opposition; which they who have been in their service, and know their affairs and designs, are the best qualified to make.

The opening of one’s heart to a friend, is one of the greatest pleasures and reliefs arising from friendship; and private men can practise it, because where the reputation of keeping a secret is greater than the temptation to reveal it, it will be kept: But to whom can a prince lay open his heart in any great and tender point, when by doing it he puts his safety and reputation in the power of another, who must be paid dear for being faithful; and perhaps at last is not so, because he never thinks himself sufficiently paid!

Hence princes and great men are naturally close and reserved, and keep themselves as far as possible within their own power: They know that the fidelity of men is then only greater than their treachery, when the price is greater. Secrecy is indeed so absolutely necessary in great affairs, that he who wants it is utterly unfit for them; and I have known very little men, who, with this qualification alone, have been thought great men. Sometimes men are dark and cautious from the littleness of their talents; and employments and trust generally make men so.

As to the publick friendships of princes, that is, of princes with princes, it is generally grimace; and there can scarce be any such thing. They are all rivals for power and credit; and all envy, or are envied by, one another. Nor do treaties and alliances allay their jealousies and heart-burnings, but often increase them: They are generally made out of fear, and always imply distrust. Men of power, at least men of equal power, princes or subjects, never agree but from the necessity of their affairs; and they too often seem to be friends, on purpose to execute their malice with the greater certainty. Every particular wants to be master, and to give laws to all the rest; and they often push their mutual diffidence even to ridicule, and fall into violence and quarrels about the ceremonial; which, like some other ceremonies, signifies not a straw to the rest of the world, and yet must be owned to be of considerable consequence to those that deal in it.

Nor are princes more happy in their families. They are unhappy if they have no children, because by it conspiracies are encouraged, as one life is easier destroyed than several. Julius Caesar had no child; and the tyrannicides hoped in him to have destroyed his family. The same consideration was doubtless one motive to the many plots against Queen Elizabeth and King William: If they have children, they are often as unhappy; and there is seldom a good understanding between the incumbent and the next heir; who sometimes takes the throne before it is vacant, and sometimes makes a vacancy: Imperium habere quam expectare mallet. And sometimes the father destroys the son, for fear of being destroyed by him; as did Constantine, the first Christian emperor, and Philip II of Spain. And thus the excellent Germanicus owed his murder to the cruel politicks of Tiberius, his uncle, and his father by adoption. Nor do the children of princes hate one another less, than the eldest or the most ambitious generally does his father. The Great Mogul almost always sees his sons, and his daughters with them, engaged in wars and blood for their father’s empire; and he is their prisoner by turns, as their several parties prevail, and perhaps ends his life in a dungeon. One of David’s sons lay with his sister, and was killed by another son, who defiled his father’s bed, and endeavoured to dethrone him; and Solomon, as soon as his father was dead, put his eldest brother to death.

Princes are likewise subject to higher dangers, and have more and greater enemies, than other men; and their lives and reputations are more exposed. They have no small enemies, but either neighbouring princes and states as powerful or politick as themselves; or great domestick conspirators, often more terrible; or little assassins, the most formidable enemies of all, as they are the most sure and sudden. Besides, the dangers they are sometimes in are not seen or credited till they are past remedy. Domitian therefore said well, Conditionem principum miserrimam, quibus de conjuratione comperta non crederetur, nisi occisis: “It is a miserable lot that of princes, never to be believed as to any conspiracy formed against them till it has had its effect, and they are fallen by it.” Sueton. in Domitian. C. 21.

I shall refer to another paper my further considerations upon the condition of a prince.

G I am,&c.

title: Cato's Letters/Additional Letter 2


text:
Cato's Letters/Additional Letter 3

SIR, I have already sent you a letter about the condition of an arbitrary prince: I here send you another; and what is said in both does in some respects concern all princes, especially all princes who do not make the fixed and standing laws of their country the rules of their government. For though I do not think it possible for any prince, the wisest and most vigilant, and virtuous to avoid all the inconveniences which I have observed usually to attend a crown; yet it is my opinion, that a prince of a legal and limited state, who defends the laws and rights of his people to his people’s advantage, will be defended by his people and the laws; that a righteous administration will be too powerful for unrighteous factions, and make him safe in the love of his subjects, against the leaders and deceivers of parties, and against the intrigues of his own servants, who will be obliged to serve him faithfully in their own defence, and cannot distress him where his people love him. But as this has been the condition of few, very few princes, they have generally reduced themselves to the evils and hardships which I have already mentioned in part, and shall now further set forth.

Such princes are generally poor, notwithstanding their great revenues. Their income is scarce ever well husbanded. The great number of officers necessary to gather it in, must all be paid suitable to the grandeur and bounty of a prince; and it is well if they do not finger more of it, much more than their pay; so that it comes into his coffers with large abatements; and the bulk of his rents is far short of the name, yet by that name his wealth is computed; and hence expectations from him are higher than his ability to answer them.

If his money be wasted in his receipts, it is still more so in his issues. His revenues are distributed, as well as collected, by a great number of officers, with great salaries, who, in the payment of his bills, frequently value their own gain more than their master’s credit, and keep in their hands for their own use the money which they should pay away for his. For this reason he buys almost every thing extremely dear, sometimes at double, nay, treble its value; because they who will sell have large interest for slow and uncertain payment: Neither is it uncommon, that those who buy for him, combine with those who sell to him, and divide the profits of an extravagant bill: Even officers who do not conspire against his purse out of sordidness, frequently do it to oblige their friends; so that he is at least cheated on one side. I have known a piece of ground sold to a king at fifty times its value, and an old house for not much less; and the like enormous prices received for a piece of painting, for a horse, and for a paltry rarity, which, for the benefit of a friend, they who had his ear persuaded him to purchase.

But besides all this, let his revenues be as great as they will, the demands upon them are commonly greater. Every service done him costs him dear; and it is well if he pays not equally dear for disservice and treachery; a price which yet he is obliged sometimes knowingly to pay, to deceive and flatter an enemy, or a false friend, whom he dares not crush. The pretensions too of those who never served him, but fancy that they did, or that they can, are infinite; and they will be too apt to distress him without provocation, if he do not reward them without cause, or beyond their merit. Whatever they do for him, or think they can do, claims a high price, not according to its worth, but according to their own conceit, and to his grandeur; and all his gratuities are expected to be great, how small soever they and their pretensions are who expect them: Others, who think they can hurt him, will make a virtue of not being mischievous; but not a virtue which is to be its own reward, but such a virtue as will seek revenge where it is not rewarded; so that he must pay as well for false services, and for no services, as for real services; his foes for sparing him, and his friends for defending him, and both rather according to the measure of their own selfish value and importance, than suitably to reason, or even to his ability.

And as such princes are, I think without exception, oppressors of their people, they must fear those whom they oppress, and depend for their security either upon a nobility or an army, or upon an army only; two sorts of men equally ambitious and insatiable, who will expect to riot upon the spoils of the prince, as he does upon the spoils of the people, and will turn upon him if he disappoint their avarice and pride, nor spare him if he spare his subjects.

The Roman emperors were no longer safe than they were feeding the soldiery with largesses, and sometimes all that they had to bestow was not a sufficient bribe to save their lives. The immense revenue of the whole Roman world was too little for the soldiery alone, though the provinces were ransacked, tortured, and exhausted, to increase it. The emperor was but a name: The soldiers were the state, the governors of the state, and the gentle landlords of Europe, Asia, and Africa; as the Great Turk is at this day but the creature and property of the janizaries, who are the real disposers of the Turkish diadem, and the real governors, or rather emperors, of Turkey. He who has the name, is but the gatherer of their rents; and they hold him in such alarms, that he is scarce secure of his life for a day, and in such necessities, that to satiate them, he is forced to be daily killing and plundering his bashaws, glutted with the plunder of the provinces; which to supply this constant and progressive plunder, are reduced to regions of gloomy solitude and desolation: And all this wealth of so great and so fine a portion of the earth does but end in a fee to a tribe of rogues, renegades, and vagabonds, to save their master’s life.

No prince’s coffers are full enough to answer all demands; and as to the places and bounties which he has to bestow, he may engage by them a number of people in his interest; but he makes a greater number of enemies, because to every such favour there are many pretenders, and all are disgusted but he who gains it; and the boundary between disgust and enmity is so very small in such cases, that it is scarce to be measured, or indeed discerned. Where twenty people aim at the same thing, he can make a friend of but one.

Hence such a prince must be subject to perpetual and painful hypocrisy, by being obliged to soften disappointments with good words, which, perhaps he does not mean; and with fair promises, which he cannot keep. It behoves him to please all that he can please, and to provoke none wilfully; for, in spite of his greatest complaisance, many will be provoked by disappointments which he cannot prevent.

No sort of men are under such great restraints as to liberty of speech princes as are; nor can the greatest power give them this freedom with any safety. For, besides that a loose in mirth and jests affects their dignity, and weakens its awe, their words are all thought to have design in them, and are readily caught up and misapplied, especially where they seem any way to relate to their own power, or to the persons of men. Caesar did at least hasten the conspiracy again him by a miserable pun of his: He said, that Sulla, who had resigned the dictatorship, was a novice in letters; he could not dictate.

From these words of his, perhaps spoken in pure jest, the measure of his ambition was taken, though I think there were much better proofs against him. Galba was murdered by his guards, for an honest unwary speech of his: He declared, he would choose soldiers, and not purchase them: And Cassius Chaerea, captain of the guards to Caligula, put that prince to death, for ral- lying him upon his effeminacy.

All satirical railleries are the more felt, and the least forgiven, the higher they come. A sarcasm from a superior is an insult, because it cannot be returned. No man cares to bear a severe jest, which only serves to shew him how much lower he is than the person who makes it; and therefore no wise or good- natured man will make such jests. Greatness is so naturally apt to be proud, that we generally expect no better from it, and are ready to see pride in great men where they really have none, or shew none; and because we hate pride, we are apt to hate greatness, which we consider as the cause of pride: an imputation which all great men can never be too careful to avoid; and let them be ever so careful and complaisant, they will never wholly avoid it: And therefore stateliness of behaviour, and imperious airs, are signs of great want of sense, and the certain causes of hate.

Great men can never be too well-bred. We are naturally quick-sighted enough to see the difference between us and them, and can only be reconciled to it by their treating us as if there was none; but supercilious pains taken on their side, will surely create distaste and enmity on ours. We think that they owe us a sort of amends for being greater than we; and if they can pay us with affability and condescension, they pay easily, and have no occasion to complain.

Caesar was never forgiven for receiving the Roman magistracy sitting: And some passionate expressions of King Charles I against the Parliament, did him more mischief than all his former encroachments upon the constitution; as these expressions created personal enemies, and a fear and distrust of his spirit and sincerity. His father, still less capable of supporting the dignity of a crown, and of preserving the affections of his people, had such a wild mixture of timidity and pride, and familiarity, that many of them hated him, more despised him, and yet none feared him. He would sacrifice his reputation with his people to the titillation of a poor pun, and manifest his passion for absolute power, rather than smother a wretched witticism, or a quaint conceit, hardly worthy of a country school-master. When a fit of bouncing was upon him, then he was the oldest king in Europe, and, he trowed, the wisest, and would be master of the purses of his subjects; but when the Parliament had put him into a fright, then they had an humble sermon from him, larded with scraps of Latin, upon the duty and restraints of a sovereign; and logick was chopped, and distinctions were made, upon that head.

His private conversation was low and cheap; and when the crown was off, the King was never seen; his tongue never lay still, and his usual themes were far unworthy of royalty: He delighted in sifting metaphysical questions, and in discussing dark points in divinity, and in smutty and familiar jokes; and it was usual with him to fall upon men with rude language and ill breeding: His condescension to others was as full of meannesses, and the obscenities and fulsome style of his letters are below the lowest mechanick. It was impossible to khow him and reverence him. Those who were raised by him, and most obliged to him, treated him with contempt, and hectored him when they could not wheedle him: And it was usual with him to give and take such language, as no gentleman would give or take. He was particularly free of his oaths and his kisses, practices beneath a great or a grave man. He was so ignorant of his character, and so fond of logick, that from a great king he descended to be a disputant on one side in a squabble of divines. His reputation abroad was as low as at home. He talked much of king- craft; but his maxims, which he was always uttering, were poor ones, and foreign princes derided him. In their treaties with one another, they either took no notice of this keeper of the balance of Europe, or always outwitted him. 1n his own negotiations with them, they over-reached and baffled him, even to wantonness; and treated his long letters and his learned labours with small regard: His premoni tion to princes, and his books of divinity, had no influence on the powers of Christendom.

King Charles II had more sense, and more accomplishments: He had the parts and address of a gentleman; but he was too ludicrous for a King. He had many pleasant stories, and told them well: He made very good jests, and diverted his friends over a bottle. But the monarch suffered in the merry companion, and his good-nature was the occasion of many ill-natured railleries. His great familiarities with his subjects made them very familiar with the dignity of the diadem; and he never made so many jests as were made upon him. The freedoms which his own dear friends the wits used with their sovereign, and their sarcasms upon so great a prince, are astonishing.

Scarce any of the words of a prince fall to the ground; they therefore ought to be cautious what words they utter. Whatever he says, and his manner of saying it, will be apt to make impressions either to his advantage or disadvantage. His sayings quickiy fly abroad, and are at the mercy of every interpreter; and when once his words are publick, it depends no longer upon himself what meaning his words shall bear. The publick rarely distinguish the man from the King; but with them in every thing he acts and speaks as a King, and consequently by all his words and actions that come abroad, his royal dignity is affected, though they regard neither.

My next letter shall be upon the same subject.

G I am,&c.

title: Cato's Letters/Additional Letter 3


text: The New International Encyclopædia/Ali, ibn Abu Talib


text:
Cato's Letters/Additional Letter 4

SIR, The actions of a prince are more liable to censure than his words. His words, which can be heard but by a few, may be misrepresented; and this his friends may plead in his defence: But his actions publish themselves; and all men will pretend to judge what all men see, and what concerns all men. Nor must he expect to be judged by the motives, and intention of his conduct, but by the effects. Those motives, however just and necessary, are not always such as he can avow; and if he mean one thing, and pretend another, he cannot with a good grace take it ill that his sincerity is suspected.

Henry III of France dispatched Monsieur Bellievre away to England as his ambassador extraordinary, to interpose his royal credit with Queen Elizabeth, for the life of Mary, Queen of Scots; and great consequences were expected from so much zeal and ostentation. Nor was ever any thing more strong, laboured, and pathetick, than Monsieur Bellievre’s speech upon that occasion. In it all the topicks of mercy, of consanguinity, of charity and forgiveness, of good policy, of the sacredness of the blood of princes, and the ill example of shedding it, were urged and exhausted with great earnestness and art. The French King’s pious concern for his sister-in-law was dressed up in moving colours, and warm arguments were fetched from the safety and reputation of Queen Elizabeth herself. Never was such a dolorous farce! The ambassador had private orders to solicit in his Majesty’s name the execution of Queen Mary, and alleged the same arguments for that execution.

Now the whole of this conduct, so full of contradiction and insincerity, was necessary to his condition. It concerned that prince’s reputation with his people, and with all the Catholicks in Europe, to interest himself in the life of a Catholick queen, his brother’s wife: If he had not, he had furnished the Guises and the League, already too popular and powerful, with a new advantage against him. They had already charged him with heresy, though he had murdered a world of hereticks to demonstrate his Catholick zeal. But it concerned him full as nearly, that that Queen should neither be restored to Scotland, nor succeed Queen Elizabeth in England, and thereby strengthen the hands of the League, and her uncles, the Guises, against him.

Queen Elizabeth, who was a wise princess, acted the same double part in the same affair. The security of her life and her crown was precarious while the Queen of Scots lived; and yet the life of her royal cousin and sister was so dear to her, that the importunity and repeated addresses and petitions of Parliament, with all the doughty casuistry and logick of her spiritual counsellors, the bishops, could hardly prevail upon her tender conscience to rid herself and her realm of so dangerous an enemy; and after she had submitted her many scruples to the love and fears of the people, and to the holy reasonings of the bishops, she was forced to be surprised into the signing of the death warrant; which, after all, she never meant to have executed, but only kept over the sentenced queen in terrorem. But this her merciful purpose was frustrated by the officious zeal of Secretary Davison; for which the poor man was disgraced.

This was all illusion. No person upon earth wished more passionately for the death of Mary, Queen of Scots; but she did wisely to save appearances. She had good reasons for what she had done; and reasons equally good for not bearing her testimony to the rightfulness of putting a queen to death.

Queen Elizabeth escaped the bloody hand of her sister Mary, by the policy of King Philip her husband, which got the better of his bigotry and natural cruelty. His wife had no children, and the crown must descend either to her sister Elizabeth, who was a Protestant, or to the Queen of Scots, who was a papist, and also Queen of France. He hated Protestants, but loved his interest better; and saved the princess, to prevent so much power from falling into the French scale. This was just policy; but he durst not own it: It would have made him odious to the court of Rome, and to the popish world.

Thus princes themselves become subjects; subjects to the censure of their people: And to please them, or to avoid their displeasure, are often obliged to disguise their actions, often to disown the motives of their best actions, and sometimes the actions themselves. This acting in masquerade is a restraint which most princes, the most haughty and unlimited, must undergo. Not Louis le Grand, nor the Great Turk, durst declare to his people, that he oppressed them to satiate his pride or avarice; that he went to war through ambition, and spilled their blood for fame.

Caesar, the mighty and successful Caesar, had no other deity but false glory! But, with all his power and fortune, he was not powerful enough to declare, that he shed human blood, and enslaved the world, only to make more noise than any man in it; for this great glory of his was no more but noise and mischief. His purpose of war with the Parthians was only to gratify his restless spirit, and to employ the spirits of the Romans, which, by enslaving them, he had incensed; and he was no longer easy and safe, than he was fighting and killing. But this was a secret not fit to be told, and the honour and benefit of the Romans were boldly pretended; that is, the Romans were to have certain losses, and no purchase, for the honour and benefit of the Romans: For, if he had conquered all Parthia, which was no ways probable, Rome would have been never the better, but, on the contrary, must have sacrificed many Romans to the pride and pleasure of Caesar.

Oliver Cromwell sought the Lord upon all occasions, and all that he did was the Lord’s doings; and because many of the saints preached it, numbers believed it. Now, though this was downright impudence, which, to a wise man, is worse than silence, yet it passed with a party. Parties generally act implicitly: Watchword and cant pass with them for reason, and they find great conviction in a few solemn unmeaning sounds. The partisans of Caesar vindicated their purpose of making him a king, by a foolish old prophecy never heard of before, that none but a king could conquer the Parthians. They could not have devised a better argument; it convinced the whole party, and filled their mouths with an answer to the stiff-necked republicans. Had Cromwell been declared King, 1 doubt not but his preachers would have found a revelation for it, and probably the coronation sermon would have abounded with texts that gave him the diadem. 1t would not have been the first nor the last time that the Bible has been made a great courtier, and heaven the voucher of wickedness and falsehood. The last argument of the Spanish clergy for the expulsion of the Moors, was a bell in the church of Vililah, which rung of its own accord; and though it uttered nothing but sound, yet expressly commanded that expulsion, and fully satisfied King Philip’s conscience. It was a miracle; and what should miracles be worked for, but for the confusion of infidels and hereticks? And who should see the design of miracles executed, but those who interpret miracles?

Princes must say something for their best and worst actions; which is a confession, that they are not so unaccountable as some would make them. Their reputation is at the mercy of their people; and when their reputation is lost or lessened, they cannot possess their crowns in much peace, nor indeed in much safety. Hence nothing is so tender as the reputation of a prince, and nothing ought to exercise his thoughts and fears more. He must not measure his publick fame by the fine tales told him by those who are well paid for the tales, and dare not always tell him truth, for fear of losing that pay. It would be more to his advantage to hear the worst things that are said of him; for while he is falsely told that all things go well, he will never think of altering his conduct, how wrong soever he is; and going on in an error for want of honest information, has been the ruin of many princes. They cannot go abroad for truth, and rarely hear it at home; and the evil day has come upon them when they thought themselves most secure; or if they have heard part of the truth, it has come disguised to their ears; and the complaints of the people, forced from them by oppression, have been represented as the clamours of malcontents, and as the voice of faction. And it is very true, that faction often rails without ground; but it is as true, that faction often derives its chief power from complaints that are wellgrounded. Nor is it at all good reasoning to justify every thing which faction condemns.

—Fas est & ab hoste doceri.

Some men, especially great men, would never hear of their faults, were it not for their foes; and princes might often have learned better lessons of government from the satires made upon them, than from their many panegyricks. Their panegyricks consecrate their worst actions, and never find any thing to be mended; but in satire there is always some truth, and often a great deal; and where there is no truth, there is no satire.

It is the interest of a prince, to know what his subjects think of him and his government: 1t is a duty which he owes to himself as well as to them; and though he may hear of many evils and grievances which are fathered upon him, and yet not owing to him, he will probably at the same time hear of many that he has power to remove, or to mitigate. Let him do his best, he will have many enemies; but this is no reason why he should not lessen their number, by lessening the cause all he can.

It is a hard matter for a prince to learn his true character at second-hand: His surest way is to learn it from himself, from the measures which he pursues, and from the effects which they ought to have upon the minds and fortunes of men. His friends will sanctify or palliate his greatest faults; and his foes will make crimes of his greatest virtues. 1f he be a bigot to a reigning superstition, wise men will despise him; and if he despise superstition, the bigots, who are always the majority, will curse him. Nor will the most able and upright administration be of any merit with them, if he do not season his administration with the blood of infidels and hereticks, and exclude the best and soberest part of his subjects, from any share in his protection and paternal mercy; and if he fall in with this religious fury, he destroys or provokes his soberest and best subjects. So that to be a saint one way, he must be a devil on the other; a character very common in the world: And if he do not exercise his rage for enthusiasts, he must expect to feel theirs, and to have his humanity and wisdom exposed and treated as atheism. To butcher, or be butchered, is the lot of a prince who rules over bigots; a sort of madmen, who would father their own frenzy upon the deity, and make him thirst after the coolest human blood to assuage it. The Spanish Inquisition is a priestly slaughter-house, a dreadful tribunal erected against the lives, consciences, and faculties of men; and yet no King of Spain could attempt to suppress it, without expecting to lose his life in the attempt. Nor is it in the power of the Pope to suppress popery. And the Great Turk, absolute and irresistible as he is, were he to turn Christian, could not live half an hour.

Princes are under the same difficulty, when they would cure another mighty evil in their government. Standing armies are standing curses in every country under the sun, where they are more powerful than the people; and yet it is hardly possible for a prince that rules by an army, to part with his army, or to set up any new authority over them. He will find them armed against himself, as well as against his people or his neighbours; and he cannot relieve his subjects, if he would. The Asiatick governments, and all that are like them, are modelled for the destruction of [the] human race; and yet the best and wisest man that ever lived, were he at the head of one of those governments, must act according to its bloody maxims, or quickiy perish. Brutus, in the place of the Great Turk, must have been a Great Turk, and observed all the essential principles of that savage monarchy. Human wisdom cannot give freedom to Turkey; and if the laws of liberty, practised amongst us, were to be followed there, especially in cases of treason, there would be an end of the empire in a month, and every bashaw would be an independent king. Great empires cannot subsist without great armies, and liberty cannot subsist with them. As armies long kept up, and grown part of the government, will soon engross the whole government, and can never be disbanded; so liberty long lost, can never be recovered. Is not this an awful lesson to free states, to be vigilant against a dreadful condition, which has no remedy.

This therefore is the situation of the best arbitrary prince, as to his conduct and popularity. The good that he would do, he cannot do; and the good that he does, he sometimes dares not own. He is often hated for his best deeds, and slandered for his noblest qualities: If he rule by soldiers, he must oppress his people; and if he favour his people, he is in danger from his soldiers. Where there are factions, he is sure of one of them for his foes; and is exposed to the cruelty of the bigots for his mercy to all men. As to limited princes, who have the laws for the rules of their actions, and rule their actions by those laws, and study in all things the happiness of their people, they may be secure from the convulsions which are scarce separable from absolute monarchies; nor are they necessitated to exercise the violence and fraud by which the others subsist, unless they have the misfortune to govern a people mad with enthusiasm and bigotry: And there is no remedy but to overcome the enthusiasm, or to be carried away with it; to comply in some instances with reigning and popular prejudices; to elude their force by seeming to yield to them; and in time, by patience and prudent management, wholly to destroy them.

T I am,&c.

title: Cato's Letters/Additional Letter 4


text:
Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 1.djvu/28

xiv BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

TO

ENGLISH BARDS, AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS.

MS. (MS. M.) of the first draft of Byron's "Satire" (see Letter to Pigot, October 26, 1807) is now in Mr. Murray's possession. It is written on folio sheets paged 6-25, 28-41, and numbers 360 lines. Mutilations on pages 12, 13, 34, 35 account for the absence of ten additional lines.

After the publication of the January number of The Edinburgh Review for 1808 (containing the critique on Hours of Idleness), which was delayed till the end of February, Byron added a beginning and an ending to the original draft. The MSS. of these additions, which number ninety lines, are written on quarto sheets, and have been bound up with the folios. (Lines 1-16 are missing.) The poem, which with these and other additions had run up to 520 lines, was printed in book form (probably by Ridge of Newark), under the title of British Bards, A Satire. "This Poem," writes Byron [''MSS. M.''], "was begun in October, 1807, in London, and at different intervals composed from that period till September, 1808, when it was completed at Newstead Abbey.—B., 1808." A date, 1808, is affixed to the last line. Only one copy is extant, that which was purchased, in 1867, from the executors of R. C. Dallas, by the Trustees of the British Museum. Even this copy has been mutilated. Pages 17, 18, which must have contained the first version of the attack on Jeffrey (see English Bards, p. 332, line 439, note 2), have been torn out, and quarto proof-sheets in smaller type of lines 438-527, "Hail to immortal Jeffrey," etc., together with a quarto proof-sheet, in the same type as British Bards, containing lines 540-559, "Illustrious Holland," etc., have been inserted. Hobhouse's lines (first edition, lines 247-262), which are not in the original draft, are included in British Bards. The insertion of the proofs increased the printed matter to 584 lines. After


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Cato's Letters/Additional Letter 5

SIR, I have considered, in three former letters, some of the many evils that encompass royalty: I shall here consider the condition of great ministers; who are far from being so happy as they appear. Those who view them at a distance, are apt to measure their happiness by their greatness; and, as they do in other things, to take appearances for proofs. They see the elevation of great men, the shew that they make, the numbers that follow them, and the obedience and adoration which are paid them; and from all this infer a suitable degree of felicity. This is wrong reasoning. The world affords not more unhappy men, than those who seem to abound in happiness, by abounding in certain things, which others, who have them not, consider as the means of happiness. The increase of fortune is followed by an increase of cares; and riches and power, so much the aim of all men, as the chief causes of worldly happiness, are no more capable of giving it, than of giving health, strength, or beauty; but often become real misfortunes, and the bitter sources of misery in various shapes. All which will be more manifest from an enquiry into the condition of a great man.

In his pursuit of greatness he will meet with many rough rebukes, and many shocking disappointments. Things, upon which he had set his heart, will often fail him; and the next hopes of his ambition be often frustrated. Little men and small accidents will frequently do him great and essential harm; and the chance of a day destroy the schemes of years. Those who are his equals, will not care to see over their heads one who they think ought to be at their elbow; and when he offers to break out of his rank, will be apt to give him an invidious pull backwards. They will not care to see their companion become their master; and such as are yet greater than he, will not love one who would be as great as they, and when he is as great, would be greater; one, who, having been accustomed to mount above his equals, aims visibly at equalling his superiors or at having none.

Here are the beginnings of numerous conspiracies against him and his ambition; conspiracies that will watch his steps, retard his advancement, blast his views, and perhaps his reputation; and, when he has gained ground, be ready to set him back again: They will often reduce him to difficulties, often to despair, or to painful patience, and make his ascent tedious and tiresome: They will be heavy weights upon him while he rises, and thorns in his side when he is risen; and possibly push him over a precipice at last.

In his state of exaltation he will find new difficulties to encounter, besides most of the old ones increased; and the grandeur which he had so long and so painfully pursued, he will now find to be chiefly pomp and name, the reputation of happiness without happiness: He will meet with a thousand mortifications which a private character is a stranger to, and which but for his elevation he would have never known. He will never be able to oblige all who are able to hurt him, if they be not obliged; nor to terrify all who can distress him, if they be not terrified. By this power he will think himself entitled to honour and submission; and where he misses the same, as certainly he often will, his vexation will be as great as are the notions which he entertains of his worth and power; and those notions being generally sufficiently selfish, that is, extreme, that vexation must likewise be extreme.

Hence a disappointment in small things often gives men great disturbance; not from the value of the thing, but from the value which they put upon themselves; and great men are not apt to value themselves less than other men are, but much more, and, at least, in proportion to their greatness. A private man’s vineyard could not be of much importance to a king; but a king thought it of great importance to be refused, when he had set his heart upon having it. Ahab could not brook this refusal of Naboth; and therefore “Ahab came into his house heavy and displeased; and he laid him down upon his bed, and turned away his face, and would eat no bread.” 1 Kings xxi. 4. Archbishop Laud was equally discontented, and more enraged, by ajest of Archy, the King’s fool, upon the mad and unsuccessful pranks which his Grace was playing with religion in Scotland; so enraged, that though Archy was a professed arid allowed buffoon, and had made many jests equally severe upon the King himself without offence, yet of so fierce and unforgiving a temper was the Archbishop, and so much a greater man than his Majesty, that poor Archy was by a solemn act of council banished the court, for offending his meek Grace of Canterbury.

Such instances shew, that trifles are capable of mortifying the most exalted men, because the most exalted men think that they ought to be balked and ruffled in nothing, and expect to be protected by their exaltation from all contradiction and opposition: Whereas greatness, which must be supported by much action, and by the co-operation of many persons, does, by increasing their necessities and views, increase also their anxieties and disappointments. They will need many helps, and be obliged to embark in many designs; and both the helps and the designs that they relied on will often fail them. And as they will find the cause of that failure in the shortness of their power, it will be natural for them to be trying expedients to enlarge their power: If those expedients miscarry, as they frequently will, their uneasinesses are multiplied by an attempt to cure them: If they succeed, the success will only imbitter their enemies, and probably help to strengthen them, by furnishing them with a popular handle for reproach, and for alarming the publick. And as to their friends, who are only to be made so by giving each his lot in the power which they assist to raise, it is not to be expected that they will raise it so high, as no longer to want their assistance, unless in cases perfectly desperate, when in the last struggle of parties one or other must inevitably swallow all; and then the respect of persons must carry it.

But I speak here of the usual contention for the usual advantages of power, which is not to be acquired without difficulty and struggles, unless where by the maggot of a prince a favourite is raised in a day; as King James I from a stripling, without name or experience, or any fitness for business, made young Villiers his first minister for his handsome face. But, however it may be thus hastily got, or rather given, that minister found that it was not easily kept: for, though he was possessed of his master’s whole authority, and invested, in effect, with royalty; and though that weak timorous king did not at first, and afterwards durst not, refuse him any thing, how absurd, extravagant, and arbitrary soever; and though the civil and military lists were filled with his creatures and family; yet he was not too big to be shaken: His foundation, as strong and broad as it was, felt many terrible convulsions; and if King Charles I who had likewise taken him for his minister, or rather for his master, had not loved him better than he loved the constitution, and parted with the Parliament rather than part with Buckingham, his fall must have been as swift as his rise, as it was afterwards sudden by the hand of an assassin.

Cardinal Richelieu, infinitely more able, and far more powerful, as that monarchy, which he governed with a high hand, was more absolute than ours, was never free from difficulties, dangers, and embarrassments: And though by his great talents and good fortune he overcame them almost as fast as they arose; yet still they arose as fast as he overcame them. The intrigues of the cabinet against him were so many, so powerful, and so constant, that, though he had almost all Europe to contend with, he declared, that one chamber (meaning the cabinet) embarrassed him more than all Europe. The plots against his power were perpetual, and there were frequent plots against his life: Cardinal de Retz (then the Abbot de Retz) owns himself to have been engaged in one, and Monsieur Cinqmars died for another. Cinqmars was the King’s favourite, and the King knew his design, though it does not appear that he approved it; but it is certain that he hated the Cardinal, as did all France.

As his power grew, his crosses and danger grew; so much are they mistaken, who from the growth of power expect equal ease and security. Cardinal Richelieu had the entire power of France in his hands, her armies, her garrisons, and her finances: The King was no more than his pupil; and every thing that obeyed the monarchy, obeyed him. Mazarin, who had the same authority, but seems to me to have been rather a little tricking Italian than a great politician, underwent so many insults, disgraces, dangers, and disappointments, that none but a man mad with ambition and avarice would have held his place upon such miserable terms.

G. I am,&c.

title: Cato's Letters/Additional Letter 5