text:
Page:Maid Marian - Peacock (1822).djvu/13

 on the phenomenon, for the foaming steeds swept up to the gate like a whirlwind, and the earl, breathless with speed, and followed by a few of his yeomen, advanced to his smiling bride. It was then no time to ask questions, for the organ was in full peal, and the choristers were in full voice.

The abbot began to intone the ceremony in a style of modulation impressively exalted, his voice issuing most canonically from the roof of his mouth, through the medium of a very musical nose newly tuned for the occasion. But he had not proceeded far enough to exhibit all the variety and compass of this melodious instrument, when a noise was heard at the gate, and a party of armed men entered the chapel. The song of the choristers died away in a shake of demisemiquavers, contrary to all the rules of psalmody. The organ-blower, who was working his musical


text: Page:Poems Blind.djvu/16

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Page:Poems Blind.djvu/16


text:
Page:Maid Marian - Peacock (1822).djvu/14

 air-pump with one hand, and with two fingers and a thumb of the other insinuating a peeping-place through the curtain of the organ-gallery, was struck motionless by the double operation of curiosity and fear; while the organist, intent only on his performance, and spreading all his fingers to strike a swell of magnificent chords, felt his harmonic spirit ready to desert his body on being answered by the ghastly rattle of empty keys, and in the consequent agitato furioso of the internal movements of his feelings, was preparing to restore harmony by the segue subito of an appoggiatura con foco with the corner of a book of anthems on the head of his neglectful assistant, when his hand and his attention together were arrested by the scene below. The voice of the abbot subsided into silence through a descending scale of long-drawn melody, like the sound of the ebbing sea to


text:
Page:Maid Marian - Peacock (1822).djvu/15

 the explorers of a cave. In a few moments all was silence, interrupted only by the iron tread of the armed intruders, as it rang on the marble floor and echoed from the vaulted aisles.

The leader strode up to the altar; and placing himself opposite to the abbot, and between the earl and Matilda, in such a manner that the four together seemed to stand on the four points of a diamond, exclaimed, "In the name of King Henry, I forbid the ceremony, and attach Robert Earl of Huntingdon as a traitor!" and at the same time he held his drawn sword between the lovers, as if to emblem that royal authority which laid its temporal ban upon their contract. The earl drew his own sword instantly, and struck down the interposing weapon; then clasped his left arm round Matilda, who sprang into his embrace, and held his sword before her


text:
Page:Maid Marian - Peacock (1822).djvu/16

 with his right hand. His yeomen ranged themselves at his side, and stood with their swords drawn, still and prepared, like men determined to die in his defence. The soldiers, confident in superiority of numbers, paused. The abbot took advantage of the pause to introduce a word of exhortation. "My children," said he, "if you are going to cut each other's throats, I entreat you, in the name of peace and charity, to do it out of the chapel."

"Sweet Matilda," said the earl, "did you give your love to the Earl of Huntingdon, whose lands touch the Ouse and the Trent, or to Robert Fitz-Ooth, the son of his mother?"

"Neither to the earl nor his earldom," answered Matilda firmly, "but to Robert Fitz-Ooth and his love."

"That I well knew," said the earl; "and


text:
Page:The Sense of the Past (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/69

 one other occasion, in the same conditions. The tenant bequeathed by Mr. Pendrel to his successor had in other words already three times enjoyed the tenancy, and though it was not impossible the agreement might be amicably rescinded it was for this successor to judge whether he preferred to sacrifice so substantial a gain. The gain, Ralph understood, was of a round weekly sum, as to the weight of which in the scale he reserved his decision. He had a general wish not to begin by a failure to oblige, as well, positively quite at first, as an imperfect, almost a deprecatory, sense of possession. It pulled him up a little on the other hand, after he had seen the place, to think of prior possession, so far as he was concerned, insisted on and enjoyed by a parcel of people whose very name was new to him. Mrs. Midmore of Drydown in Hampshire embodied the claim with which he had to reckon, but he knew little of Mrs. Midmore, save that she had, with her address, as his firm of friends called it, rather an old-time imaging sound. It was judiciously remarked by the firm that she was of a family with which Mr. Pendrel's relations appeared, so far as they were traceable, to have been close; and moreover that some such tradition was needed to account for his departure from a custom of indifference to the pecuniary argument so patent in other connections. Except in these instances the house had practically never been 55


text:
Page:Maid Marian - Peacock (1822).djvu/17

 though the ceremony be incomplete, we are not the less married in the eye of my only saint, our Lady, who will yet bring us together. Lord Fitzwater, to your care, for the present, I commit your daughter. Nay, sweet Matilda, part we must for a while; but we will soon meet under brighter skies, and be this the seal of our faith."

He kissed Matilda's lips, and consigned her to the baron, who glowered about him with an expression of countenance that showed he was mortally wroth with somebody; but whatever he thought or felt he kept to himself. The earl, with a sign to his followers, made a sudden charge on the soldiers, with the intention of cutting his way through. The soldiers were prepared for such an occurrence, and a desperate skirmish succeeded. Some of the women screamed, but none of them fainted; for fainting was not so much


text:
Page:The Sense of the Past (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/70

 let—within, as might be said, the modern era. It might be even now, as was hinted to Ralph, offered at a much higher figure than the rental subscribed to by Mrs. Midmore. This last little fact it really was that had in its perverse operation most weight with our young man. Full of scruples and refinements and of the clash of crosslights in which he saw things, he knew the arrangement would have troubled him more had a handsomer bargain been made for him. If he accepted at all the necessity of trafficking in his treasure it was a salve to discomfort that the traffic was poor.

By the time he solemnly entered it had been further mentioned to him that the lady's appreciation of the place—unless its appeal were more especially to her son, or to one or other, if not both, of her two daughters—had been noted as almost extravagant. Signs in short had not been wanting of the length to which such an attachment could go. Poor Ralph at the end of an hour indeed would have understood any length; but it was under this impression precisely that he fell into a train of delays. The immediate effect of his first visit had been the wish to "move in" that afternoon; the next had been a gathering doubt as to whether he had better do so at all. The inner scene spoke to him with a hundred voices, yet not one of these phrased to him quite happily the terms of the single life there. The 56


text:
Page:Maid Marian - Peacock (1822).djvu/18

 the fashion in those days, when the ladies breakfasted on brawn and ale at sunrise, as in our more refined age of green tea and muffins at noon. Matilda seemed disposed to fly again to her lover, but the baron forced her from the chapel. The earl's bowmen at the door sent in among the assailants a volley of arrows, one of which whizzed past the ear of the abbot, who, in mortal fear of being suddenly translated from a ghostly friar into a friarly ghost, began to roll out of the chapel as fast as his bulk and his holy robes would permit, roaring "Sacrilege!" with all his monks at his heels, who were, like himself, more intent to go at once than to stand upon the order of their going. The abbot, thus pressed from behind, and stumbling over his own drapery before, fell suddenly prostrate in the door-way that connected the chapel with the abbey, and was instantaneously buried under a pyra-


text:
Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/35

 WESTERLY PROGRESS IN 1818.

19

fresli occasion to recommence its attacks with renewed vigour.

Early in November tlie cholera broke out in the district of Mirzapore. Towards the middle of the month it was at Rewah ; but previously to this had appeared in the Marquis of Hastings' camp on the banks of the river Scinde, in Bundelcund. The first cases were reported as having occurred on the 7th and 8th of the month ; it then burst out with irre- sistible fury among the troops and camp followers. " The whole camp put on the appearance of an hos- pital ; the dead were left u.nburied ; the natives deserted in flocks, and some of the Governor- General's servants dropped down dead behind his chair, (?) and the Marquis himself was apprehensive of dying here ; so that he gave secret instructions, should the event occur, to be buried in his tent."*

The army was moved from its position on the 19th of November, from which time the disease became less virulent, and speedily disappeared. But it is not to be supposed that this terrible outburst of cholera was confined to the camp of the Governor-Geiferal ; on the contrary, it spread throughout Bundelcund, pursuing a south-westerly direction, and devastating almost every village and town in the province.

During the months of December, January, and February, there was a decided lull in tTie virulence as well as in the advance of the epidemic, but its influence by no means entirely ceased ; for, in the majority of the districts in which it had been generated, we hear of cases of cholera having occurred throughout the cold season.

1832,
 * ' A Treatise on the Epidemic Cholera.' By F. Corbyn. Calcutta,


text:
Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/36

 20

THE ASIATIC EHDEMIC OF 1817-21.

During the year 1818 cholera spread over the greater part of India, invading districts which had previously escaped, and being reproduced in those already de- vastated by it ; so rapidly was it engendered in various directions, that it is somewhat difficult to' describe its progress, so as to give an adequate idea of it. We may probably best consider its advance under the following divisions : —

1st. To the north-east of the Ganges from the district of Tirhoot as far as Bareilly.

2nd. From Central India, north-west, west, and lastly southward into the Deccan.

3rd. From Ganjam, along the eastern seaboard, and a considerable portion of the western shore of the Peninsula.

1. During the cold season of 1817-18 cholera appears to have been absolutely in abeyance throughout the districts to the north-east of the Ganges, but in April and May, 1818, it burst out with terrible violence in Tirhoot, Chupra, and Goruckpore, extending north- ward into Nepaul, and rapidly invading Oude and Azimgur to 'the west. The disease was in full force at Fyzabad and Lucknow. Towards the end of April "the troops and camp followers in personal attendance upon the Governor- General on his return from the Upper Provinces again fell in with the epidemic at Goruckpore, bilt now its attacks were nearly restricted to such persons as had not been with the central division of the army in the preceding autumn."*

The inhabitants of Benares were under the influence of the epidemic in April, but did not sufier severely from it. Towards the end of March it appeared at Allahabad, destroying 10,000 of its population, but

 * Jameson's ' Report,' p. xxvii.


text:
Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/37

 WESTERLY EXTENSION FROM BUNDELCTJND, 1818. 21

the troops were not attacked by the disease until the middle of July. Nevertheless, theywere in daily and unrestricted intercourse with the townspeople. Not a single case of cholera occurred within the precincts of the Jail, altlhough 700 prisoners were confined within its walls, the convicts working in the streets of the in- fected city during the daytime.* On the 8th of April, Cawnpore, Bithoor, and the adjoining villages were affected, the disease remaining in full force for some fifteen days; it visited Furruckabad in May, but appeared little disposed to extend in that direction. " Bareilly, Moradabad, and almost every other town in the same line enjoyed their wonted health. The town and district of Shajehanpore formed a remarkable ex- ception to the general healthiness of the Province of Bareilly. There the disease appeared in July, and is reported to have killed upwards of 6000 of its in- habitants, "f

2. We may now trace the progress of the epidemic from Bundelcund, in which province it was reproduced in March and April, 1818. In May it had extended in a north-westerly direction to Btwah, visiting only one or two isolated spots in the Dooab. It was at Muttra early in June, and at Agra in July. On the 20th of the month it was generated at Delhi, and on the 28th at Meerut, skipping over all the intermediate towns and villages, but remaining in the above-named localities for a month or so, and then gradually dis- appearing. On the 23rd of July, a body of European and native troops marched from Meerut to Hansi. They were perfectly free from disease, and passed through Delhi on the 29th (the cholera being then at

t Jameson's ' Report.'
 * Tytler " On Cholera,' ' Lancet,' vol. i, p. 112.


text:
Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/38

 22

THE ASIATIC EPIDEMIC OF 1817-21.

its height in the town), encamping outside its walls about a mile to the west. They continued their march to the north-west on the 30th, and on the 31st the epidemic appeared among them. On the 6th of August they joined the force at Hansi, and almost 'immediately afterwards cholera broke out among the entire brigade, and accompanied them to Futtihabad, Rhauncea, and Sirseea. It was the general belief among the medical officers serving with this force that the troops from Delhi had brought the cholera with them, and propa- gated it through the general camp at Hansi.* Another case of a similar nature occurred among the troops composing the central division of this force. The army having crossed the Jumna on the 28th of October, left a body of troops to defend the bridge-of-boats. On the 29th cholera broke out among the men com- posing this guard. Oii the 9th of November the detachment joined the army at Terayt, and immediately afterwards the disease was first observed in camp ; and in further proof of the communicability of the virus, it is affirmed that the previously healthy villages around the camp became infected from the diseased army.f

Mr, Jameson traces the cholera on as far as Seha- runpore, where, he says, the " high ridge of mountains, which in other quarters proved hostile to its propaga- tion, here opposed its further progress, and saved the inhabitants of trhe hilly district from a scourge which, in their circumstances of poverty and nakedness, would probably have proved exceedingly fatal to them." This inference was of course drawn from the information at Mr. Jameson's command when he wrote his report; but it is to be observed that eighteen

t Idem, p. cxl,
 * Jameson's ' Report on Cholera.'


text:
Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/39

 WESTERLY PROGEESS FROM BUNDELCUND, 1818. 23

montlis later (in Maj, 1820), Moorcroft incidentally mentions the existence of cholera of ,a virulent type to tlie north-west of Lahore,* which in all probability was a continuation of the invading cholera we have been tracing fi'om Bundelcund into the north-western provinces of India and the Punjab, for Sir Richard Temple informs us that the Punjab was visited severely by the disease in the year 1820. f

Trom Bundelcund the cholera spread into the districts of Saugui' and JSTagpore during the months of April and May, 1818, and may be traced westward to Bhilsa, Bhopal, and Oujein, which it reached on the 9th of May. In June it appeared at Kotah, but does not appear to have crossed the AravuUi mountains. The epidemic extended from east to west along the vaUey of the JS'erbudda and Tapty rivers. We find it early in April at Mundlah, Hoshungabad, and Mooltae. On the loth of May it was at Nagpore. In this quarter it, as usual, gave evidence of its capricious nature ; " it was not met with beWeen Nagpore and Mooltae, a distance of seventy miles, and Bantool, a large town in the direct road from the river to Mooltae^ was entirely exempt from its visitation."! On the 3rd of July the disease was in full force at Jaulna. " In the province of Candeish, where there is not sufl&cient population, and but little intercourse between the villages, its progress was slow; it appeared in the capital of the district in the middle of July, and at the end of "A-Ugust at Surat." Dr. Kennedy says the disease was im- ported from the former to the latter place by a body of

jab from 1819 to 1825.' By W. Moorcroft. London.
 * ' Travels in the Himalayan Provinces of Hindustan and tlie Pun-

t ' The Localities in India exempt from Cholera,' p. 78. By Surgeon Edward Balfour. Madras, 1856.

X Jameson's ' Report.'


text:
Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/40

 24

THE ASIATIC EPIDEMIC OF 1817-21.

prisoners. " At Punderpoor, to tlie south of Bombay, it happened to break out at the time of the great jatra, and was spread at once in all directions by the pilgrims returning to their homes. The poison would seem to have been more concentrated there from^there being so many sources of production ; the number of deaths in a few days was estimated at 3000, and the patients were described as having been knocked down dead as if by lightning."*

After visiting Aurungabad, Amednuggur, and Nas- sick, it reached Seroor on the 18th of July, and towards the end of the month appeared at Poona, " On the 6th of August it broke out with great violence at Panwell, a considerable village on the main hue of communication between Poona and Bombay, separated from the latter by an arm of the sea, and distant fifteen or twenty miles, but between which a pretty constant communication is kept up by means of boats. On the 9th or 10th of the same month the first case appeared on the Island of Bombay, and' could be traced to a man who had arrived from Panwell the same day ; it also spread north and south along the sea coast from the same place, and was imported into a village in the neighbourhood of Tannah, on the Island of Salsett, distant from Bombay about twenty miles, by a detach- ment of troops that escorted a state prisoner to that garrison from Panwell. The disease did not break out at Maleni on the extremity of the islancj., distant only five or six miles from the principal native town of Bombay, until it had been established in the latter ; it then gradually spread over the Island of Salsett, through which the road from Bombay to Surat and

authority of the Government of Bombay, 1819, p. 151.
 * 'Report on tlie Epidemic Cholera of 1818.' Published under


text:
Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/41

 SPREADS THROUGH THE BOMBAY rEESIDENOY, 1818. 25

the northern countries lies, and by which, during the south-west monsoon, is the principal line of com- munication."*

It will be observed that the cholera had extended itself steadilj from east to west through the presidency of Bombay; and Dr. Jukes remarks in July, 1818 : — " It was hoped here (in Bombay) that as the disease had for some months been moving gradually south- westjborne along, as it were, by the nqrth-east monsoon, that it might be checked by the violent south-west gales which blew on our coast during that season. "f In spite, however, of these opposing storms, the cholera marched forward, and having arrived at the coast, spread through the Concan.

The following is a valuable record as affording us an idea of the mortality and number of cases of cholera which occurred among the civil population of the Island of Bombay during the year 1818 :| —

Abstract of Gases.

1818.

CASES.

DEATHS.

POLICE.

August

4400

256

409

September

4804

287

478

October

2411

146

181

November

824

44

29

December

806

64

72

1819.

January

889

144

125

Februaiy

517

27

•

14,651

938

1254

Proportion of deaths in these cases when medicine was administered, 6*4 per cent. The population of the island may amount to between 200- and 220,000,

 * ' Bombay Cholera Report,' p. 9. •

t Idem, p. 171.

X Idem, p. 13, Appendix.


text:
Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/42

 26

THE ASIATIC EI'IDEMIC OP 1817-21.

say 210,000. The number of ascertained cases, 15,945, wHcli gives the proportion of attacks of the disease for the population at 7| per cent.

We must now return to Nagpore, where, as already observed, cholera had made its appearance among the inhabitants of the city and neighbouring villages in May.

Throughout the early part of the year 1818, a con- siderable body of Bengal and Madras troops had been engaged in the siege of Chundah, a town situated some seventy miles south of Nagpore. The men employed in the arduous operations of this siege escaped the cholera, notwithstanding the excessive heat and many privations they had to undergo. Their work having been accomplished, they were ordered to March to Kagpore, and on the 30th of May arrived at Gaongong, a village nine miles south of the city. " Here they had hardly learnt that the epidemic was raging in the vicinity, when they began themselves to experience its unwelcome visits. As usual, its first assaults were most severe. Many of those attacked, whilst loitering for water in the neighbouring rivulets, were brought in expiring ; <some dead. Of seventy cases admitted during that night and the succeeding day, about twenty died. On the 31st the instances of attack were equally numerous ; but in these the exhaustion was not so sudden, and the subsequent symptoms were less severe. On the 1st of June, the division moved from ISfagpore towards the Cantonments of Hoshunga- bad. The disease then gradually dechned, and almost entu-ely disappeared on the 17th and 18th after some seasonable falls of rain."*

Early in June the cholera had reached Hingumghat, fifty miles to the south of Wagpore, and a few days

 * Jameson's ' Report,' p. xxiii.


text:
Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/43

 SOUTHEELY EXTENSION FROM NAG POKE, 1818. 27

later it spread to Cliundali. Tlie disease first appeared at Jaulna on tlie 3rd of July, and from tkat date until tlie llth of the month it prevailed both among Europeans and Natives, disappearing before the end of July. The Russel Brigade arrived at Jaulna on the 4th, and left for Hyderabad on the 6th of July, without any cases of the disease having appeared among the troops, but a few days afterwards it attacked them, and produced great mortality. A party of gentlemen, with about 1000 followers, arrived at Jaulna on the 4th, and left it in good health on the 6th. Before they arrived at Aurungabad, however, many of their followers were seized with cholera, and it began to prevail at that place soon after their arrival.* " The disease was most prevalent in the vicinity of the place where the first case occurred. Her Majesty's Royal Scots, who were stationed immediately in front of the general market-place, in which the disease raged, and with which they had constant communication, suffered much by it ; while the horse' artillery men, who were a con- siderable way in front, and had less communication with the market-place, and but little intercourse with the Royals, suffered, comparatively, very little. This fact, however, has been ascribed to another cause. The artillery men lived in tents, and the Royals in old uncomfortable barracks. The latter were removed into their tents, and the cases the day in which this removal was effected were only one third of the number that had occurred on the preceding day. The disease continued to decline after that period. When it appeared in a family, several individuals of that family generally suffered an attack."!

 * ' Bombay Cholera Report,' jj. 144.

t Scott's ' Report on Cholera,' p. Lvv. Madras, 1822.


text:
Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/44

 28

THE ASIATIC EPIDEMIC OP 1817-21.

The cliolera broke out at Hyderabad towards tlie end of July, and^ at Gooty on tlie 6tli of October ; it visited Bellary on tlie Stli of September, and had declined in severity towards the beginning of October. About the 20th of that month it broke out again with, its former violence among the troops and inhabitants of the town, and did not disappear till November. " Of 600 persons in the jail only one was affected, and he recovered. The jail is situated about twelve hundred yards eastward of the fort, where the disease was very prevalent."

The epidemic appeared at Hurryhur and Chittleedroog in the middle of September, and at Bangalore on the 22nd of October. On the 6th of November it broke out at Seringapatam, which being a "sink of nastiness,"* the mortality among its inhabitants was very great indeed.

3. "We may now trace the course of the cholera of 1818, along the seaboard of the Peninsula of India. From quotations already given from the works of D'Orta, Sonnerat, and Fra Bartolomeo, it is evident that cholera was an endemic disease among the inhabitants of the Malabar and Ooromandel coasts when these authors wrote, and in 1818 Dr. MacRae, from personal observation in those parts since 1790, corroborates their accountf (vide Appendix A). In 1818-19 the mortality from cholera was higher than usual, precisely as it had been in 1782, when Fra Bartolomeo informs us that the disease broke out with increased ferocity and destroyed an enormous number of people.

In the district of Ganjam cholera, as usual, sprung up with renewed energy during the months of March

t ' MS. Proceedings of the Bengal Medical Board.'
 * Thornton's ' Gazetteer of India.' London, 1857.


text:
Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/45

 ADVANCE ALONG THE SEA-COAST, 1818.

29

and April ; in May it appeared at Vizagapatara, and in July at Masulipatam. It was generated among tlie northern villages of Nellore early in August, but did not reacli the southern part of the district, a distance of 180 niile», until the 5th of October. Mr. Scott remarks that its progress southward from Ganjam to NeUore, against the south-west monsoons, was much slower than from the latter district to the -remaining southern portion of the coast, after, the wind had set in from the IST. E.*

On the 5th of October cases of cholera were met with in the town of Madras ; " the disease appeared to be commonly more prevalent in all those situations where considerable humidity existed, combined with putrid effluvia, and where the inhabitants, owing to bad clothing and lodging, were consequently much exposed to the influence of the weather. This may probably account for the greater sickness and mortahty at some stations than others, and where the nature of the soil, the alternatioil's of temperature, the degree of moisture and purity of the air, may, I apprehend, be considered as the principal sources from which the increased activity of the primary and essential cause of the epidemic, or greater morbid susceptibility of the human body, may be supposed to originate." The disease was noticed among the inhabitants of N^agore about the 10th of November, and at Madura on the 30th of th£ month.

I have already noticed the fact of cholera having appeared on the western coast at Surat, Bombay, and throughout the Concan during the latter part of August; it was at its height in September and October, and at the same time Cahcut, Quilon, and

 * Scott's ' Report on Cholera,' p. xlvi. Madras, 1824.


text:
Page:The Sense of the Past (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/71

 strangest part of this moreover was that his hesitation—which fairly partook of the nature of a sort of sacred terror—rested not in the least on any vision of what was wanting, but wholly on the consciousness, almost as strong as a shock, of what was impressively, what was tremendously, involved. He tried to put it to himself simply, yet was not sure he put it sincerely, in pronouncing it impossible he should fill out so many rooms. He apprehended at bottom what might be going to happen—his making up his mind on some uncandid basis that temporary lodgings elsewhere were his indicated course. The want of candour would lie in the plea of absurdity—the absurdity of his organising, with so much else to do, such an establishment as would consort with such a setting. It would be swagger, it would be vulgar precipitate eagerness, he on the one side reasoned, to waste time in the pretence of really "running" such a place; and there would be on the other a distinct offence in attempting to inhabit it meanly. He should have time enough to ask himself what would have been his benefactor's idea. The idea would come to him in some way of its own: evidently it had been thrown out in the offered facts themselves; they held it there in reserve and in subtle solution. On its appearing he should know it, and he mustn't before that make a mistake.

This was meanwhile in the interest of all the 57


text: Page:Poems Blind.djvu/17

title: Page:Poems Blind.djvu/17


text: Page:Poems Blind.djvu/18

title: Page:Poems Blind.djvu/18


text:
Page:Poems Blind.djvu/19

Rh

title: Page:Poems Blind.djvu/19


text:
Page:Poems Blind.djvu/20

16

title: Page:Poems Blind.djvu/20


text: Page:Poems Blind.djvu/21

title: Page:Poems Blind.djvu/21


text: Page:Poems Blind.djvu/22

title: Page:Poems Blind.djvu/22


text: Page:Poems Blind.djvu/23

title: Page:Poems Blind.djvu/23


text: Page:Poems Blind.djvu/24

title: Page:Poems Blind.djvu/24


text: Page:Poems Blind.djvu/25

title: Page:Poems Blind.djvu/25


text: Page:Poems Blind.djvu/26

title: Page:Poems Blind.djvu/26


text:
Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/46

 80

THE ASIATIC EPIDEMIC OP 1817-21.

AUeppe suffered ; it spread to Telliclierry in Novem- ber.*

Having tlius completed an outline of tlie course wbich tlie epidemic cliolera of 1817-18 pursued, I may remark that it must not for an instant 'be supposed that the disease was confined in its operations to the towns I have named; these are specified simply as landmarks-, to enable us to comprehend its general bearings, and as a.n index to the time when the cholera appeared in certain well-known localities ; but we have abundant evidence at our command to prove that, between August 1817 and December 1818, almost the entire people of this densely populated country were subjected to the influence of cholera. It is, never- theless, remarkable that certain districts, as, for in- stance, Rohilcund and Bareilly, were exempt from its ravages ; the inhabitants also of some more limited localities, as, for example, those of Moorshedabad and the prisoners in the Alipore Jail, escaped absolutely free from the epidemic which was raging around them ; but these exceptions hardly invalidate the rule, that within a period of sixteen months cholera was gene- rated throughout the length and breadth of Hindu- stan.

During the early months of the year 1820, cholera was still very prevalent among the inhabitants of Calcutta, especially in April; at the same time the disease broke out among the troops composing the Nerbudda field force. Special indents poured in upon the Board for medicine and native doctors, required on account of the re-appearance of cholera in various locahties during the month of May ; as, for instance, from Moradabad, Almora, Meerut, Tipperah, Jessore,

 * Scott's ' Report,' p. xlix.


text:
Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/47

 DECLINE OF CHOLERA IN INDIA IN 1820-21. 31

and Berhampore. From Madras we have similar evidence of reproduced cliolera, more or less severe, over tlie whole Presidency, and here and there it was generated with great virulence.* At the close of the year 1820, we hear of the disease at Mhow,t a station north of the Yindhya Mountains, and well to the west of India.

The history of the cholera of 1821 points distinctly to the fact of its becoming more localised in its in- fluence in India than it had been at any period sub- sequent to 1817 ; it was generated, however, with con- siderable activity throughout its endemic area in Lower Bengal, Ganjam,J Bombay, and, from time to time, at almost every station throughout the Madras Presidency, but the cases were by no means so numerous or severe as in 1820. The Nerbudda field force again suffered severely from cholera, the disease evidently still re- taining much of its former energy in the western part of the peninsula ; for not only do we hear of it at Mhow and along the valley ' of the Nerbudda, but also in Bombay, where, from the 28rd to the 28th of May, 235 deaths occurred from cholera, and, as usual in this part of India, the disease " increased in severity during August and September." §

In the mean time, cholera had extended both south- ward and eastward of India, — Ceylon, Arracan, and the Burmese empire being under its influence in 1819. During the following year the country of Siam was absolutely devastated by cholera; it appeared about the same time in Malacca and Singapore. It broke

 * ' Madras Cholera Report,' p. vii.

t ' MS. rroceeding of the Bengal Medical Board ' for the year 1820, vol. ii.

X ' Madras Cholera Report.' § ' Calcutta Journal ' for 1821.


text:
Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/48

 32

THE ASIATIC EPIDEMIC OP 1817-21.

out with great violence in tlie Phillipine Islands, principally at Manilla.*

We liear of it throughout the years 1820 and 1821 in China, Batavia, and Java, but it is impossible to trace the epidemic over this vast area, the' information I have on the subject being principally derived from the ' Calcutta Journal ' and other local papers of the period'; in these, frequent references are made to the fearful ravages cholera committed in these parts, but, in a scientific point of view, they are often silent on the most important circumstances of the epidemic.

We may now briefly trace the course which the cholera of 1817-18-19-20 followed to the west of India, noticing its appearance in Persia in 1821. I have already shown that we have ample evidence to prove the existence of epidemic cholera on the western border of India throughout the years 1819 and 1820.

Mr. Fraser arrived at Muscat on the 8th of July, 1821, and he remarks that, during a visit the Imaum paid the envoy, "he confirmed a report which had before reached us of the epidemic cholera having visited Muscat, whei^e it had committed considerable ravages. His Highness informed us that he had lost by the disease at least ten thousand of his subjects ; that Muscat had by no means sufiered most, as if had ex- tended over the greater part of Omaun." " It had broken out spontaneously, first at Rooee, a village three or four miles from Muttra, without any known means by which contagion could have been conveyed. A ship with slaves from Zanguebar, which had lost a number on the passage, had, it is true, come to Muscat, but not until after the disease had appeared there."t

 * ' Calcutta Journal ' for 1820.

t ' Narrative of a Journey into Khorasan in 1821 and 1822,' p. 21. By J. B. Fraser. London, 1825.


text:
Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/49

 EXTENSION TO PERSIA AND THE LEVANT. 33

On the 18tli of July Mr. Fraser's party arrived at Kislimee, where epidemic cholera was raging. Many of the inhabitants had fled to Meenab, to find the disease still fiercer in that locality.* The disease had by this time -reached Bunder Abbassee and Bahrein. On the 20th of August it broke out at Bushire ;t and on the 29th was heard of at Cauzeroon (Kazerun) and Sheerauz (Shiraz), in which latter place it first appeared in the Prince's Harem. J The disease was very severe in this locahty, and our author's companion, Mr. Rich, here died of cholera.

Mr. Eraser makes no further reference to the disease until he arrived at Tabreez in July, 1822. He then observes that it is " difficult to say how, or whence, the epidemic cholera reached Tabreez. It was sup- posed to have travelled fi^om Bagdad along the caravan road, by Hamadan and Sennah'; but no account, to be at all depended on, could be obtained of its gradual progress." § The disease soon afterwards appeared in Grheelan, at Reshd," and in the King's camp at Sultania, "in spite of quarantine." In August, 1821, the epidemic had invaded the Persian arn»y besieging Bagdad. It committed terrible havoc among the in- habitants of Aleppo, and was generated in various other towns of Asia Minor.

In 1828 cholera broke out at Alexandretta, and reappeared in most of the places it had visited during the preceding year, being also generated in several of the seaport towns on the Caspian ; and in September,

By J. B. Fraser. London, 1825. t Idem, p. 57. X Idem, p. 83.
 * 'Narrative of a Journey into Khorasan in 1821 and 1822,' p. 35.

§ ' Travels and Adventiires in Persian Provinces,' p. 316. By J. B. Fraser. London, 1826.


text:
Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/50

 34

THE ASIATIC EPIDEMIC OF 1817-21.

as far north as Astraclian. In June, 1823, cholera showed itself in the neighbourhood of Laodicea and Antioch, and then spread along the borders of the Mediterranean, but entirely disappeared again, both there and on the shores of the Caspian, towards the close of the year ; nor do we hear of its reproduction, or, in fact, of its existence in these localities from this time up ta the autumn of 1829.

It is without doubt most remarkable that cholera should have been hanging about the territories bor- dering on the Levant for three years, with only a nominal quarantine to stop it, and ample means of communication open, through which it might have spread into Turkey and Europe, supposing human intercourse to be the ordinary means by which the disease is propagated.

Special incidents of the epidemic. — Cholera on slii])- hoard. — Before proceeding with the history of cholera from 1821 to 1830, it is advisable to examine any records of interest we may possess bearing upon the circumstances under which the disease appeared among the crews cf English vessels, either at sea or in port, prior to 1820. One of the first cases to attract our attention is to be found in Dr. Girdlestone's work.f He observes that the troops under the command of Sir J. Burgoyne, three days after landing in Madras (October, 1782), in perfect health, were seized with cholera. Dr. Corbyn describes a very jemarkable outbreak of disease on board the ship "Mangles." The vessel had experienced very bad weather in the Bay of Biscay and at the Madeira Islands. He says

 * Graves' ' Clinical Medicine,' p. 299.

t Essays ' On tlie Hepatic and Spasmodic Affections in India.' By J, Girdlestone. London, 1787.


text:
Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/51

 CHOLERA ON SHIP-BOARD.

35

the lascars were fed merely on rice and salt-herrings, with only half a pint of water per diem, and the sani- tary arrangements of that part of the ship in which they lived were fearfully bad. During the month of January 1814', the disease in question commenced, " being sudden in its attacks, and more so in its fatal termination ; there were no premonitory symptoms : it at once began in all its terror and violence, and terminated in from twelve to thirty ho*urs. The finest Malay men were the first to suffer, and generally fell victims to the disease.* It commenced with a swelling and hardness about the epigastric region, with a sense of constrictive pressure of the thorax ; violent vomit- ing; the excretions from the intestinal canal were equally disordered, as exhibited by continual watery stools, coldness of the extremities, with a sense of numbness and cramp in some cases. The feet oede- matous ; pulse low, and sometimes hardly perceptible ; the skin dry and cold, with a sense of burning heat in the bowels and stomach ; 'the countenance soon became melancholy, sad, and fallen, but the most predomi- nant and distressing symptom was general s|)asm ; the extreme spasmodic rigidity of the abdominal muscles, and then of the neck and face, produced the most painful contortion of the mouth; a film seemed to cover the vision, and exhausted nature soon sank under such accumulated and dreadful suffering. During the short period of six weeks, sixty-five bodies were thrown overboard, and five men died four minutes subsequent to each other, just as we had cast anchor m Table Bay." The vessel was cleaned and purified

sion of the Grand Army in the month of November, 1817.' Bv F Corbjn. 1818. '
 * ' Treatise on the late Epidemic as it appeared in the Central Divi-


text:
Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/52

 36

THE ASIATIC EPIDEMIC OF 1817-21.

while at the Cape, and no more cases occurred. Dr. Corbjn had only one opportunity of making a post- mortem examination. He says : — " I found the stomach distended with air, as well as the intestines, but could discover no obstruction, oi" even faeces; the coronary arteries of the stomach were consider- ably distended with congested blood. The stomach, lateral convolutions of the ilium, and the liver had suffered inflammation."* The patient having been taken ill at 6 p.m., died within thirty-six hom^s.

Mr. Scott, in 1824, observes that this outbreak of disease on board the " Mangles " could not have been cholera, the oedema and swelling of the feet being symptoms unknown in this affection; and we cannot overlook the fact that the only detailed account which Dr. Corbyn has left us is contained in a small work, published by him in 1818, upon the epidemic which prevailed in the Governor- General's camp in 1817.. Dr. Corbyn says this outburst of disease " approxi- mated in its features more to the disease of cholera morbus than to any other in the nosology." He then proceeds to point out the difference between cholera and the epidemic which he witnessed in the Marquis of Hastings' camp. It seems to me very clear, there- fore, that if Dr. Corbyn's ideas were in this state of confusion as to the nature of cholera in 1818, it is not unlikely he may have been rnistaken as to the out- break of disease which he witnessed o?i board the " Mangles " four years previously.

Surgeon J. Boyle gives us the following history of

precisely the same remai-ks regarding the appearances of the intestine ; they describe the inflamed state of the parts after death.—' Die Asiatische Cholera in Russland.' Berlin, 1831.
 * The Russian medical officers at Orenburgh, in 1829, make almost


text:
Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/53

 CHOLEEA ON SHIP-BOAED.

37

cholera as it occurred on board a twenty-six gun ship, while she lay in the harbour of Bombay : — Six of her officers went on shore "for a spree;" they remained there a day or two, and " had no sooner returned to the ship than' three of them were seized with cholera;" they all three died.* A few days afterwards a part of the crew were allowed to land ; no less than forty of them were attacked with cholera, and ^.ve died. Mr. Boyle goes on to observe that" in April, 1819, although cholera was in the town of Bombay, the crew of the " Malabar " were healthy. The ship sailed for England, and on the second night after her departure, cholera made its appearance among the sailors, and continued its ravages for five days ; in fact, until the vessel reached Cochin ; during this time some forty or fifty men were attacked, and eleven of them died.

Mr. Boyle relates another interesting case, that of H. M. Ship "Minden." " On the 5th of November, 1819, as she was on her passage to Bombay, between that place and Cochin, in precisely the same track as the former ships, she was visited with chalera, which continued with unrelenting violence to the 12th of the month. A few cases occurred after this period, but generally speaking they were of a mild and tract- able nature ; altogether there were fifty cases on board the " Minden," and of that number nine died. For some months previous to this the crew had* been comparatively healthy, and from the circumstance of having been for some time at sea, had no evident oppor- tunity of predisposing themselves by debauch ; but on interrogating those aff'ected with the complaint, it was

Boyle. London, 1821.
 * ' A Treatise on the Epidemic Cholera of India,' p 31 By J


text:
Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/54

 38

THE ASIATIC EPIDEMIC OF 1817-21.

generally observed that their bowels had been pre- viously in a deranged state."* The value of this history would have been greatly enhanced had we been absolutely certain that no communication had taken place between the crew and the shore at Cochin, prior to the outbreak of cholera.

Cholera occurred among the shipping at Diamond Harbour 'in 1818, in its usual irregular manner ; in fact, the only vessel that entirely escaped was the " General Hewett," " the men not being allowed to go on shore, and otherwise carefully protected from the sun and damp."t

In 1819 the shipping again suffered severely; the instance of the " Carnatic " is somewhat peculiar. This ship anchored in Madras roads on the 5th of August, clean and with a healthy crew. She sailed for Calcutta on the 20th, but in the mean time six men had been seized with cholera ; seven days afterwards one of the crew was re-seized with the disease, and died on the 20th; and within the three following days, six of the crew were attacked with cholera, and five of them died ; subsequently there were six other cases, but they aU recovered. The weather was ex- tremely bad, and the ship close to land, being only fifteen miles from the shore at Ganjam.J " The disease had no appearance of contagion. It occm^red only among the seamen, although between their con- dition and that of the soldiers on board, there was only this difi'erence, that they slept on the gun and the soldiers on the orlop deck. Some were seized

Boyle. London, 1821.
 * 'A Treatise on the Epidemic Cliolcra of India,' p. 33. By J.

t Jameson's ' Report,' p. lO^. + Idem, p. 321.


text:
Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/55

 OUTBREAK IN THE MAURITIUS, 1819.

39

who had no communication with the sick; while others escaped who constantly sat on their hammocks."

It is not known what has been the earliest period, after reaching an anchorage, at which cholera has appeared on»board ship, but in the instance of the 41st Regiment, men were attacked on the very morning of their landing, which was the second day of their arrival in the Madras roads.*

Before leaving this part of our sul^ject, we have still to consider a very important case which occurred during the period under review ; I allude to the outbreak of the epidemic in the Mauritius in the year 1819. The cir- cumstances of the case are briefly as follows, taken from the journal of the surgeon in charge of the vessel : — " H.M. Ship ' Topaze' sailed from Trincomalee on the 9th of October, 1819, having fifty-seven men on the sick Hst ; and immediately after leaving, cholera broke out and attacked seventeen men, four of whom died.

" On the arrival of the ship at Mauritius, on the 29th of October, thirty-six men were taken on shore and accommodated in the Military Hospital, Port Louis; six of these men died, four from the sequelis of cholera, with which disease they had been seized on board. Three weeks after the arrival of the ship at Port Louis, the cholera made its appearance among the inhabitants, and continued to carry off from fifty to sixty persons daily, chiefly slaves. It appeared immediately after- wards in Qther quarters of the island with equal fLiry."t Not a single case of cholera occurred on board the " Topaze " after her arrival in the Mauritius, although all the merchant vessels in the harbour were losing men by this disease.

 * Scott's ' Report,' p. xliv.

t ' London Medical Gazette,' vol. ix, p. 226.


text:
Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/56

 40

THE ASIATIC EHDEMIC OF 1817-21.

Such is the unvarnished tale of the " Topaze," upon the consideration of which Sir Gilbert Blane lays down the law absolutely in favour of contagion, and with reference to this case exclaims : " Can there be a doubt in the mind of any rational being that this disease, never before known in the Mauritius, was imported by this vessel?" Sir G. Blane carries on the history of the " Topaze a step further than the surgeon of the vessel has done ; Jie informs us that the Governor of Bourbon, under the strong conviction that the disease was contagious, took measures, by proclamation, to bar all intercourse with the Isle of France ; but in spite of this, a boat from the shore of Bourbon had clandes- tine communication with a small vessel from the Isle of France — probably about the 8th or 9th of January, for she left Port Louis on the 6th ; after the usual interval, the disease showed itself in Bourbon, so as to leave no doubt of an infection traceable to the boat and spreading to one quarter of the town. The governor, with that vigilance ' and energy which was in his character, instantly adopted such measures of police, by cordons of troops, and by conveying the sick to a lazaretto, that the further progress of it was arrested, and in a short time it died away. In the Mauritius, on the contrary, the disease spread to the whole town, and to the rural population, to a cala- mitous degree."*

On the other hand the Commissioners assembled by Major-General Darhng, commanding the Island of Mauritius, at Government House, on the 23rd of November, 1819, assert that they are " unanimous in not supposing it (the disease) contagious, or of foreign

don, IS^e. Second Edition.
 * ' Notes on Epidemic Cholera,' p. 256. Bj R. H. Kennedy. Lon-


text:
Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/57

 KEPOET OF THE ]3ENGAL MEDICAL BOAED, 1819. 41

introduction. From the disease pervading classes who have nothing in common but the air they breathe, it can be believed that the cause may exist in the atmo- sphere."*

" The first well-marked case of the present disease occurred on the 6th of September last, and was treated by Mr. Trebuchet in Port Louis" (the " Topaze " did not reach the island until the 29th of October) ; " it differed in nothing from the cases which have presented them- selves since the 18th and 19th instants, and which appeared to break out so suddenly in all quarters of the town."

We may here pause for an instant to consider the conclusions arrived at by the Bengal Medical Board in 1819 regarding the outbreak of epidemic cholera of 1817-19.

The Board called for reports on the subject from all the medical ofl&cers in this Presidency, and the mass of evidence thus obtained was arranged by Mr. Jame- son, Secretary to the Board, and published under their supervision. Their report will remain as an honorable memorial of the Bengal Medical Service fof many years to come, showing what we were capable of forty years ago ; nevertheless we must admit, to our shame, that this report of 1819 was the first — the last — the only combined effort made by the Service to unravel the mystery which from that time up to the present has surrounded this disease.

Mr. Jameson states that the Medical Board had arrived at the conclusion that the proximate cause of the disease consisted in a pestilential vu-us, which

nor of Mciuritius to Inquire into, and Report upon, the probable Cause of the Outbreak of Cholera in the Island of Mauritius in March, 1856,' p. 143, Port Louis, 1857.
 * ' Report of the Committee appointed by His Excellency the Gover-


text:
Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/58

42

THE ASIATIC EPIDEMIC OP 1817-21. acted primarily upon the stomach and small intestines; and that the depressed state of the circulatory powers and diminished action of the heart were consequent on the severe shock which the system had received in one of its principal organs; these effects being always noticed subsequent to the vomiting and purging. The Board were of opinion that there was no proof of spasm of the extreme vessels; because in the cold fit of ague there was the same retirement of the blood from the surface without the burning heat and general internal tumult of this disorder. On the contrary, it seemed to the Board that there was evidence of atony in the capillary vessels; the clammy skin, suspended secretions, and pale fluid from the bowels pointing to this conclusion. They were of opinion that the hepatic system had nothing to do with cholera.

As to the remote causes of the disease, the Board believed that none of the hypotheses put forward accounted for its phenomena, nor did they consider it profitable to speculate further on the subject.

The notion of cholera depending upon irregularities of the season or upon improper food having been dismissed as untenable, the Board thought the spread of the disease was connected with the east wind; but they hesitated to express an opinion as to whether the wind carried the virus from one place to another, or if its action depended upon the moisture which always accompanies this easterly wind. The disposition of the disease to follow the course of large rivers was explained by these being the natm^al paths of commerce, and therefore in the line of large towns and overcrowded cities. But beyond this they distinctly pointed to the fact that low alluvial soils are the localities in which cholera loves to dwell.


text:
Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/59

 CESSATION OF THE EPIDEMIC IN 1822.

43

The Board were of opinion that cholera was not a contagious disease, and if quarantine laws had been found useful people would naturally have resorted to them. The removal of a camp was often useful, and in fact stayed* the progress of the disease, although the sick and baggage moved with the camp ; the change from one locality to another being often sufficient to stop the disease, which would not have b^en the case had it been contagious.

Cholera in India subsequent to 1821. The Epidemic of 1826 and its extension to Europe in 1831-32. — Resuming now the history of cholera in India after 1821, we find from the ' Proceedings of the Medical Board ' that the year 1822 was marked by almost absolute rest as regards cholera ; in fact, the great epidemic which had arisen in 1817, well nigh covering Asia within the three succeeding years, had now subsided.* The disease was stiU generated according to its regular periods of increase and diminution throughout the year in its endemic area, which We have thus far in our history seen to extend over the whole seaboard of British India, including Chittagong and the Delta of the Ganges, but which, as we shall subsequently discover, is by no means confined even to this enormous area.

A fair criterion of the comparative death-rates from cholera, for the years 1818 and 1822, is supplied by the Returns of the Madras Army. In 1818 this force amounted. to 69,416 men, and among these 896 'casual- ties occurred from cholera; but in 1822, the force having increased to 85,517 men, only 369 deaths are recorded from this disease. In examining these Returns, we are struck with the marked diff'erence which exists between the death-rate from cholera among our

 * Scott's ' Madras Report,' p. xiii.


text:
Page:A treatise on Asiatic cholera.djvu/317

Rh disseminated the material that causes cholera over the globe, it has been and is in her power, as ruling over the endemic area of the disease, to prevent her native subjects from extending this terrible pestilence beyond the confines of British India.

Some of the earliest records we possess upon the subject of cholera refer to the supposed influence of the wind over the disease. Era Bartolomeo in 1796 says, that the natives on the Malabar coast believed that cholera was caused by the cold winds from the Ghauts. In more precise accounts of the disease, as, for instance, that of Dr. MacRae in 1818 (Appendix A), we find great stress laid on the intimate connection between the east wind and cholera. The Bengal Medical Board, in their report on the cholera of 1817-18, confirmed this view, although they hesitated to express an opinion as to the nature of the apparent connection between cholera and the easterly wind; they supposed it might either be the vehicle of the poisonous matter, or act merely "from its superior moisture in the light of a strong exciting cause, eliciting the disorder in places where the virus had previously existed, although it were not yet brought into action." But the Board expressly stated their belief, that of all the predisposing causes to cholera, the one most frequently and unmistakably in operation


text:
Page:The Sense of the Past (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/72

 things for which in his queer position he wanted a free hand. His queer position was that, as he privately panted, everything had dropped on him at once. He saw the face of Aurora Coyne whenever he winced with one of those livelier throbs of the sense of "Europe" which had begun to consume him even before his ship sighted land. He had sniffed the elder world from afar very much as Columbus had caught on his immortal approach the spices of the Western Isles. His consciousness was deep and confused, but "Europe" was for the time and for convenience the sign easiest to know it by. It hovered before him, this sign, in places as to which signs were mainly of another sort; on his dusty Liverpool dock, in his rattling train to Euston, when he called, betimes, on the Clifford Street tailor recommended to him, when he helped himself at his "private hotel" from the inveterate muffin-plate that protected at breakfast the tepidity of his slop-bowl, and when he swayed, aloft, with the movement of the bus that brought him back through historic ways from his prime pilgrimage to the City. It scarce took even the bus to make him sway; he was at the mercy, wherever he found himself and to whatever he clung, of such incalculable gusts. This was what he meant by his almost scared consciousness of the simultaneous and the many. He had first of all his base arrears to make up, after which he could settle with his 58


text:
Page:The Sense of the Past (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/73

 special relation. He gasped on reminding himself as his tenth day dawned that the glimpse accompanied for him with so much ado was yet but a small millionth of the whole. The whole waited, for didn't there hang behind this troublous foreground the vast vagueness which the English themselves spoke of as "abroad"? Ah he was in all conscience already abroad enough!

It was on the morning of this tenth day that he definitely promised his friends in the City the expression on the morrow of his final view of Mrs. Midmore. He had hung the night before, again postponing re-entrance, in front of the habitation contingently reserved for her, and he had now returned westward with a certain gathered and penitent sharpness on the subject of action. Action would be to drive straight to Mansfield Square, indulge himself with another impression, let this impression settle the case and then wire to the City the result of it. It so befell none the less that he repaired again—and as if mechanically and in the beguiling intensity of this conclusion—to his lodgings, where, instead of taking, after a glance at some letters that had come in, a prompt fresh start, he dropped into a chair and drew it a foot or two nearer the fire that a particularly English April seemed huskily to have prescribed. The day was dark and damp, and it had suddenly occurred to him that not once yet, since the hour, at home, of his sombre station in the Park, had 59


text:
Page:Ivanhoe (1820 Volume 1).pdf/40

Rh tol stones and paste, with which I have endeavoured to imitate them, I am convinced your opinion of the difficulty of the task will reconcile you to the imperfect manner of its execution.

Of my materials I have hut little to say: They may be chiefly found in the singular Anglo-Norman MS., which Sir Arthur Wardour preserves with such jealous care in the third drawer of his oaken cabinet, scarcely allowing anyone to touch it, and being himself not able to read one syllable of its contents. I should never have got his consent, on my visit to Scotland, to read in these precious pages for so many hours, had I not promised to designate it by some emphatic mode of printing, as The Wardour Manuscript; giving it, therefore, an individuality as important as the Bannatyne MS.,the Auchinleck MS., and any other monument

title: Page:Ivanhoe (1820 Volume 1).pdf/40


text:
Page:The Sense of the Past (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/74

 he so much as stopped to think. He had in very fact, as we make out, not stopped thinking, for what had it been but thought that drove him on and kept him going?—the thought of all the use he should have for the abounding fruits of a larger perception, the thought of the really wonderful book, as it would be this time, that he foresaw himself writing. That was as far as he had got with the book, of which the plan still remained sketchy; he prefigured it mainly as a volume that should "count"—which meant for him to be noticed by the half-dozen persons who themselves counted and who would more or less understand. He had already, and even repeatedly, asked himself when he should be able so to detach himself as to think at all straight about his book; detachment and selection, prime aids of the artist, were the sacred sparenesses menaced by a rank growth of material. It was perhaps the better to think that he now put back his head and closed his eyes; he at any rate considered to such purpose that he never moved for two hours. The first, conception his mind had registered was that he was brutally tired. When he woke the day was darker, and on shaking himself for a look from his window he was met by a state of rain. Wet, muddy, ugly, the spring afternoon offered nothing of its own and seemed to mark a general break of the spells it had hitherto helped to work. Number Nine, from beyond its interposing spread 60


text:
Page:The Sense of the Past (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/75

 of splashy crossings, faced him for the first time without its high authority. But this note of the hour soon determined him only the more: if he had in fact let too fresh a fancy run away with him it positively concerned his self-respect that the extravagance should cease. There was a question in a word to clear up—a question sufficiently identical, moreover, with the other and immediate one, the one he must no longer leave open. He signed from where he stood to a passing hansom, and in a few minutes was rolling, with the glass down, toward Mansfield Square. It was an occasion at last on which he could lift with assurance the knocker he hadn't once even yet taken a proprietor's full liberty with—an engine huge, heavy, ancient, brazen, polished, essentially defiant of any trifling, but now resoundingly applied.

It was the merit of the good couple in charge that they at least let him alone, and he had at present more than ever a sense, not unembroidered by fond prejudice, of the figure he made for them, of which it harmlessly amused him to think. It agreed with he knew not what interior ancientry and was truly but part of the deep picture that had already drawn him into a bottomless abyss of "tone" whenever the high door closed behind him and he stood with his sharp special thrill in the wide white hall, which he had from the first noted with rapture as paved in alternate squares 61


text: Page:Poems Blind.djvu/27

title: Page:Poems Blind.djvu/27


text:
Author:Edward Ridley

Works

 * (tr.) The Pharsalia of Lucan (1896), by Marcus Annaeus Lucanus

title: Author:Edward Ridley


text: Page:Poems Blind.djvu/28

title: Page:Poems Blind.djvu/28


text: Page:Poems Blind.djvu/29

title: Page:Poems Blind.djvu/29


text:
Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/130

 various types of nebulæ, some, like the "planetary" and "spiral," having definite forms, others being as shapeless as a puff of vapor. Sometimes a planetary nebula has a star at its center, and again it appears hollow, like "a little smoke ring." It is then called a ring nebula. The most famous of these is the one found in Lyra.

On the 19th and 20th of April swift meteors, known as the Lyrids, radiate from the vicinity of this constellation, although the display is of interest rather than of any particular beauty.

The legend of this celestial harp, which is often hung by map artists around the neck of an eagle, is one of the most popular stories in mythology, and its very appearance in the heavens brings to mind the beautiful lovers, Orpheus and Eurydice. The harp was anciently represented as having been invented by Mercury, who gave it to his half-brother Apollo, the Sun-god, who later presented it to Orpheus, the son of a Muse.

Mercury, as an infant, gave promise of being a most remarkable god, for the very day that he was born, he climbed out of his cradle, wandered out of the lofty cavern of Cyllene and picked up a little tortoise that was crawling past the entrance. Gently pulling off the scoop-shaped shell, he bored neat holes along its edges, stretched dried tendons across its face, and wedged it firmly between two horns. His tiny hands then strayed across the strings, and he danced delightedly as the most delicious music issued from the shell.

Mercury then went in and slept awhile, but when darkness came, he again slipped out of his cavern and ran over to the hillside to see what further adventure awaited him. Here he found the pasture of Apollo's cows, and looking the animals over, separated fifty of the best from the herd, wrapped their hoofs in

title: Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/130


text: Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/131

title: Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/131


text:
Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/132

 branches and drove them backwards into a large cave where he made a fire and sacrificed two of them to the twelve Gods (himself included).

The next day while Apollo was driving his sun-chariot over the slopes in the east, he noticed that a number of his favorite cows were missing. Investigating the matter, he traced the theft to this baby, who stood up in his cradle, looked the Sun-god in the face, and stoutly denied it; he even inquired in a naïve manner what sort of animals cows were. Too amazed for further words, Apollo picked him up, tucked him under his arm, and went straightway up Mount Olympus to Jupiter. Here the infant stood bravely in the midst of the assembly in the great Olympian Hall and with a look of injured innocence upon his face inquired, "How could I, still wrapped in swaddling clothes, drive away Apollo's herd? You well know that I was only born yesterday and have never crossed my mother's threshold." The gods, perfectly aware of his guilt, roared with laughter and loudly applauded. Even Jupiter smiled at the infant's cleverness and, presenting him with a winged silver cap and silver wings for his feet, told him to lead Apollo to the cave where he had driven the cattle. Seeing that further subterfuge was useless, Mercury laughed gleefully and handed Apollo his harp as a peace offering.

Apollo soon played divinely on the little harp and was altogether so pleased with the instrument that he gave Mercury entire charge of his flocks and herds, as he preferred to become famous as the God of Music. The Sun-god later gave the harp to Orpheus, and because a god had played upon it, it responded to the touch of this beautiful youth in tones so pure and joyous that even wild beasts were charmed, while birds swarmed about him in the air and sea-monsters came up to hear him from the bottom of the sea. The power of his music was so great that rushing torrents slacked their rapid course to listen to him, and once,

title: Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/132


text:
Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/196

178 which were received with great favor. Scarcely thirty years old, he became bishop of Throndhjem, but only a few years later he was deposed from his office "on account of his frivolous conduct." The young bishop was fond of a gay life, and, an enemy of the rigid rules prescribed for the clergy, he did not shrink "from beating time to the dance on the drum when he was present on festive occasions, or even from taking part in the dance with the others or singing his own songs to the tunes of the popular ballads without scrupulously weighing his own words;" and as he at the same time did not lack enemies, his position soon became untenable, although he can scarcely be charged with really improper conduct. After some time he was, however, again permitted to enter the priesthood, and he died as a preacher in Vordingborg in Zealand, honored and beloved by his parishioners. Soon after his deposition his translation of the psalms of David was published. It soon became very popular and long continued to be a favorite volume. His great and lasting renown he gained by his celebrated poem "Hexaëmeron," on account of which he was styled "the father of Danish poetry." It is a free imitation of the French poem by Bartas on the creation of the world, but many parts of it are wholly original. There are many passages of genuine poetic beauty, and the author frequently falls unconsciously into the style of the popular ballad, of which he was a perfect master. But Arrebo's greatest merit and that by which he really made himself worthy of his surname, is his effort to introduce into Danish poetry the renaissance which had spread from Italy throughout Europe. Already in his translation of the psalms of David he had made an irresolute attempt at a metrical reform, and in his "Hexaëmeron" he entirely abandoned the old method, which contented itself with a definite number of syllables, and adopted the system set forth by Marten Opitz in his "Prosodia Germanica," according to which the metre depends on the number of accented syllables. The first part of the "Hexaëmeron" is written in hexameters with rhymes


text:
Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/133

 while playing, he watched amazed as a whole forest marched up to a level place on a hill where it made a shade for a large assemblage of wild animals and the multitudes of birds who sat as if enchanted while he played.

This gay and happy musician had a lovely bride named Eurydice, daughter of the Sea-god Nereus, whom he fondly loved. One day while wandering in the fields, Eurydice was fatally bitten by a viper which lay concealed in the long grass. Orpheus filled the groves and valleys with his piteous lamentations and finally, unable to live without her any longer, he boldly walked into the cave that led to Pluto's realm, and braved the horrors of the steep, dark path which led to the lower world. After a difficult journey he arrived among the Shades, and wandered playing and singing among the admiring throng. The ancients claim that the power of his music arrested for a while the torments of the damned, that his "golden tones" seemed so heavenly in these gloomy depths that the stone of Sisyphus remained motionless, the Danaides stopped their wearisome task of pouring water through a sieve, and the Furies withheld their persecutions.

Pluto was touched to unheard of softness and, as he granted Orpheus' plea that Eurydice be returned to him, "iron tears" rolled down the furrows of his cheeks. "But hold," said the crafty monarch, "there is one condition. If you once glance behind you to see if Eurydice is following, you must lose her again forever." Crashing chords of joyous triumph, Orpheus hurried up the rough pathway that led to the top of the world, but as he was about to pass the extreme limits of Hades and saw beyond him the opening where the sunlight reached in gently through the darkness,

title: Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/133


text:
Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/197

Rh in the middle and at the end of the verse. This necessitates a fixed cæsural pause and thus one of the chief characteristics of the metre, its flexibility and ease, was lost. But in the following parts Arrebo rids himself of these self imposed difficulties, abandons the hexameter and chooses the Alexandrine, which Opitz had recommended as the heroic metre, yet in a form very different from the French metre of the same name, but precisely as it had been preserved in Germany and as it henceforth was used for a long time in Danish epics and dramas.

The greatest of all Danish poets in the period of learning was, born 1634 in the village of Slangerup, in Zealand, where his father, who was of Scotch descent, eked out a miserable living as a weaver. He became pastor in his native village, where in 1674 he published the first part of his devotional songs ("Aandelige Sjungekor.") When the second part appeared in 1681, he was bishop in Fuhnen, where he died in 1703. Some of his hymns are set to tunes borrowed from secular ballads, some of which may have been Scotch popular airs, or they may have been composed by Kingo himself, who was very musical, in which case they may contain reminiscences of impressions made on him by tunes which he heard in the home of his childhood. All his hymns, forty-one in number, are inspired by a deep, intense faith, and by a warm poetical enthusiasm, and hence, wherever the religious sentiment and predisposition is present, they never fail to produce the proper edifying effect, and they touch the hearts of the highly cultured, no less than those of the common people. On their first appearance they were at once greeted with boundless appreciation and admiration, and many of them are still used in the service of the Danish Church, and will continue to be so used as long as the Danish tongue endures. Many of these hymns still remain


text:
Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/198

180 unsurpassed, notwithstanding the fact that Denmark has had many fine psalmists. There is no doubt that Kingo's example has had great influence on the development of the psalm literature in Denmark. Kingo has also written a number of secular poems, varying in style and contents. These were also highly esteemed by his contemporaries, and they procured him many influential patrons, but on the whole they are destitute of value, for they differ in no wise from the other soulless and tasteless metric productions, with which that age was flooded. Only when his poetry is permeated by his strong and intense faith, does it have power fully to spread its wings. For his fame as one of Denmark's greatest poets Kingo is indebted to his hymns alone. He gave a full and vigorous expression to all that which in the earlier Danish psalms had proved only a feeble, stammering utterance. What had before existed merely in the bud, expanded in Kingo into a beautiful and fragrant flower. A feature, which in a high degree contributes to the sonorousness of Kingo's hymns, is his perfect mastery of the spirit of the language, a rare accomplishment in his time. Of this he was perfectly conscious, and he expressed it with elegance in connection with his love for his native language. Complaints in regard to the neglect of the vernacular were not unfrequent in the latter half of the learned period, but no one has shown more effectually than Kingo demonstrated, that this neglect was undeserved, or what grand results might be achieved with that despised native tqngue, when it chanced to fall into the right hands.

(1635-1716), the wife of a Norwegian clergyman, composed many religious and devotional songs, which gained the favor of her contemporaries to such an extent that the name of the "eleventh muse" was bestowed on her. (Sappho was, according to the ideas of that age, regarded as the tenth.) She was also popular as a


text:
Page:How the other half lives.djvu/83

 as tempting bait on every hand. There are half a dozen in the single block, steamship agencies, employment offices, and savings-banks, all in one. So are the toddling youngsters, bow-legged half of them, and so are no end of mothers, present and prospective, some of them scarce yet in their teens. Those who are not in the street are hanging half way out of the windows, shouting at some one below. All "the Bend" must be, if not altogether, at least half out of doors when the sun shines.

In the street, where the city wields the broom, there is at least an effort at cleaning up. There has to be, or it would be swamped in filth overrunning from the courts and alleys where the rag-pickers live. It requires more than ordinary courage to explore these on a hot day. The undertaker has to do it then, the police always. Right here, in this tenement on the east side of the street, they found little Antonia Candia, victim of fiendish cruelty, "covered," says the account found in the records of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, "with sores, and her hair matted with dried blood." Abuse is the normal condition of "the Bend," murder its everyday crop, with the tenants not always the criminals. In this block between Bayard, Park, Mulberry, and Baxter Streets, "the Bend" proper, the late Tenement House Commission counted 155 deaths of children in a specimen year (1882). Their per centage of the total mortality in the block was 68.28, while for the whole city the proportion was only 46.20. The infant mortality in any city or place as compared with the whole number of deaths is justly considered a good barometer of its general sanitary condition.

title: Page:How the other half lives.djvu/83


text:
Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/199

Rh writer of songs for special occasions, such as birthdays, weddings, etc. Her poetry is not, however, of any very high order.

The Norwegian preacher, (1647-1708), like Kingo, of Scotch descent, ranks much higher as a poet. His secular songs surpass in poetic sentiment, in strength and freshness, the religious poems which he composed, but still his reputation as a poet is mainly based on the latter. In his secular songs there also occasionally bursts forth a deep, earnest religious feeling, and although they are not all to be rated at the same value, and while some of them scarcely rise above ordinary prose, still they glow with such warmth of sentiment, and are characterized by a style so graphic, and a humor so bold and bewitching, that it is not surprising to find that Dass has remained to this day the favorite poet of the common mass in Norway, and indeed justly, since all that he has written is marked by a truly national and popular stamp. Prominent among his religious poems are his paraphrase of Luther's little catechism and a volume of biblical poetry, and the best known of his secular songs is "Nordlands Trompet," a description of the north of Norway.

But little more is to be said of the secular poetry in Denmark during the period of learning. There attaches, of course, a certain interest to the manner in which the renaissance introduced by Arrebo was gradually spread. His Hexaëmeron was not printed before twenty years after his death, but long before that a long extract of it had been produced by Hans Mikkelsen Ravn, in his "Eythmologia Danica," and this at once found many imitators. It is only to be regretted that Arrebo's influence did not reach so far as to impart a national color to the new school, for the national element was thrust completely into the background, and the verses presented nothing but hollow forms. 's translation of the romance, "Astrée," by d'Urfi, con-


text:
Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/383

 of Christianity by one of personal passion scarcely to be paralleled save in the decaying republics of ancient Greece. At first glance the Italian towns would seem the veritable home of a drama full of individual characterisation. But excessive individualism is almost as fatal to dramatic progress as a corporate life in which all differences of personality are lost. Innumerable units, raised out of individual littleness by no bond of corporate union, become too ephemeral to attract the analyses of the artist, who will soon prefer to turn to physical nature or to Fate. Individual being, which only comes out distinctly on a great background of social sentiments, could not alone supply the Italian republics with an original drama. Moreover, the similarity of the Italian dialects to Latin turned men's attention to classical models, in which they found a spirit like their own already expressed; and, when the plays of Seneca were supplemented by the recovered masterpieces of Greece, it was clear that any indigenous Italian drama was doomed.

Thus their social conditions and the peculiar nearness of classical associations united to make the Italian drama an imitation of classical models. Such, for example, was the Rosmunda of Rucellai, represented before Leo X. at Florence in 1515—a play which retains the classical chorus, and contains direct imitations of the Antigone; such, also, is the Sophonisba of Trissino, which (though not published till 1524) suggested the former, and is written on the Greek model, being divided, not into acts, but only by choral odes. It is significant that Trissino found his mode; in Euripides, the tragedian of Attic individualism. The declamatory tone, which had been one of the marks of decadence in the Athenian drama, and (as has been pointedly observed) "fixes the attention of the hearer on the person of the actor rather than on his


text:
Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/384

 relation to the scene," soon disclosed itself in the Italian theatres; and even such poets as Ariosto and Tasso failed to create a real and lifelike drama within the shell of the classical form. In half a century the appearance of the Pastoral drama, based on the Theocritean dramatic idyll, and in less than a century that of the Opera, showed how poets were turning (as Agathon and Chæremon had turned) from the dramatist's function—creation of individual character—to physical nature and the embellishments of music.

But though the Italian drama was not destined to do great things in its own country, its influences on other countries were powerful. In England and Spain, indeed, corporate and individual being met and produced dramatic originality as striking as the same conscious conflict had struck out in Athens. Here the development of the drama from the social figures of the early spectacles to subtle displays of individual personality was unbroken. In Shakspere himself the marks of the old spectacles are evident. Beside his many real fictions, which so wonderfully unite the breadth of a general type with the deepest individual personality, we find figures such as Rumour in the Induction to the Second Part of Henry IV., reminding us of many a symbolical character in the Mysteries; the half-mythical, half-divine Hymen in As You Like It stands side by side with characters so carefully individualised as Rosalind and Celia; Shakspere's clowns clearly present a transition from typical personages like the old Vice to such a marked individuality as that of Touchstone; moreover, the allegorical personage Time, who, "as chorus" at the opening of Act IV. in Winter's Tale, apologises for sliding over sixteen years, reminds us that Shakspere's disregard of the "unities," as well as his mixture of tragic with comic scenes, was largely due to


text:
Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/200

182 tributed to the rapid spread of the renaissance, as did also a selection of songs contained therein, and which he published, together with other songs translated by him, under the title of "Asträa Sjungekor," (Asträa songchoir). These songs, written to pleasing melodies, at once became widely circulated, and thus the people soon became accustomed to the new forms.

Among those who made themselves masters of the new style was also the above-mentioned linguist,, whose poetical gifts were not of a mean order. He has not unjustly been called the oldest Danish epigrammatist, and the first original Danish bucolic poet. But the man of that age who enjoyed the greatest reputation as a poet was (1619-77). He possessed great skill in versification, and though he now and then indulges in rather capricious freaks, still his poetic talent was not of any very high order. Among other things he published Denmark's first political gazette, "Den danske Mercurius," which appeared once a month, from 1666-77, and was written in rhyme. We must also mention, 1642-93, Kingo's stepson, who wrote such bold satires that they caused him to be sentenced to death, but this sentence was afterwards commuted to banishment for life, and, finally, , the author of the Dannevirke song (a song on Thyra Danebod, who built the Dannevirke fortification), in which the style of the popular ballad is very successfully imitated, and which is still one of the most favorite songs of the Danish people. In the so-called "Kjæmpebog" (hero-book), by an unknown writer, there also occur many reminiscences of the old ballads.


text: History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North/Part 2/Chapter 3


text:
Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/385

 the influence of Mysteries and Moralities. Individualism is indeed the dominant note in Shakspere's drama, but it maintains its profound interest because of the multitude of voices above which it is clearly heard; the secret of the master lies not in his having "incarnated feudalism in literature" (as Walt Whitman says), not in his having championed the cause of the nobles (as Rümelin tells us), but in his combining, as Æschylus and Sophocles before him had combined, the conflicting spirits of corporate and individual life now walking side by side through the streets of Elizabethan London. Here, for a time at least, was no place for classical and Italian restrictions; the remonstrances of Sidney (Defence of Poesie), against "our tragedies and comedies observing rules neither of honest civilitie nor of skilful poetrie," knew not that a more vigorous life than even that of Periclean Athens was producing for itself its own dramatic principles.

But if Elizabethan London did not supply an audience sufficiently polite and erudite to appreciate the classical and Italian restrictions, the courtly centralism of Paris, opposed to strong emotions as breaches of etiquette, easily submitted its theatre to classical imitation. In 1552, only five years after the Parliament of Paris had suppressed the Fraternity of the Passion, Jodelle, father of the regular French drama, exhibited his tragedy of Cléopatre before Henry II. The play is simple, devoid of action and stage effect, full of long speeches, with a chorus at the end of every act; but, as if anticipating the future destroyer of national drama in France, the troop of performers, whose Mysteries had been so lately interdicted, "availed themselves of an exclusive privilege


text:
Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/386

 granted by Charles VI., and, preventing the representation of the Cléopatre by public actors, forced Jodelle to have it performed by his friends." No trade-union of actors, however, could check the growth of classical taste. The Agamemnon of Toutain, taken from Seneca, the dramatist whose rushlight was to be too often preferred by French artists to the full splendour of Attic tragedy, was published in 1557; and in 1580 were published the eight tragedies of Robert Garnier, which closely follow the plots of Seneca or Euripides, contain long speeches, relate events chiefly by messengers, and employ the chorus between every act.

Between the writers of any particular age, says Shelley, in the preface to his Revolt of Islam, "there must be a resemblance which does not depend upon their own will. They cannot escape from subjection to a common influence which arises out of an infinite combination of circumstances belonging to the times in which they live; though each is in a degree the author of the very influence by which his being is thus pervaded." The symmetry of form and analysis of individual character in the plays of Euripides and Sophocles exactly suited the time-spirit of Paris after the Wars of Religion had centralised culture in the courts of Louis XIII. and the "Grand Monarch." It has been said that the famous line of Corneille's Médée (1635)—

was the cogito, ergo sum of French tragedy, and struck its keynote—that of individual character. If such study of character had been extended to all sorts and conditions of men and women in French society, if it had not been fettered by proprieties of Parisian etiquette and classical


text:
Page:Ivanhoe (1820 Volume 1).pdf/41

xxx of the patience of a Gothic scrivener. I have sent, for your private consideration, a list of the contents of this curious piece, which I shall perhaps subjoin, with your approbation, to the third volume of my Tale, in case the printer's devil should become impatient for copy, when the whole of my narrative has been imposed.

Adieu, my dear friend; I have said enough to explain, if not to vindicate, the attempt which I have made, and which, in spite of your doubts, and my own in capacity, I am still willing to believe has not been altogether made in vain.

I hope you are now well recovered from your spring fit of the gout, and shall be happy if the advice of your learned physician should recommend a tour to these parts: Several curiosities have been lately dug up near the wall, as well as at the ancient station of Habitancum. Talk-

title: Page:Ivanhoe (1820 Volume 1).pdf/41


text:
Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/387

 taste, France would have possessed a truly national drama. As it was, however, the Parisian tragedy failed to truthfully reflect even the life of Paris, much less that of France in general. On the one hand, the characters and social life of the classical theatre are Gallicised; in Andromaque the stigmas of slavery are wiped out, in Iphigénie Achilles is gifted with Parisian gallantry, in Phèdre the centre of interest is shifted from the hero of Euripides to a heroine more in accordance with Parisian sentiment. On the other, the Parisian theatre was divorced from the provincial life of France and condemned to rapidly exhaust its narrowly restricted supplies of thought and sentiment; hence even the wit of Molière, confined within a narrow circle of individuality, tends to run into types—Le Misanthrope, Le Grondeur—rather than to create a living personality like that of Falstaff. Macaulay, comparing Bunyan and Shelley as writers who have "given to the abstract the interest of the concrete," observed that "there can be no stronger sign of a mind destitute of the poetical faculty than the tendency so common among writers of the French school to turn images into abstractions, no stronger sign of a mind truly poetical than a disposition to reverse this abstracting process and to make individuals out of generalities." But neither Macaulay nor the French dramatists seem to have known that individuality depends for life and variety on the range of social evolution which the artist has within his ken—a range which may be limited not only by the degree of evolution actually reached in the given group, but also by the proprieties- of an élite circle or the restrictions of classical imitation.

§ 94. For a time it looked as if courtly and classical


text:
Page:Ivanhoe (1820 Volume 1).pdf/42

Rh ing of the latter, I suppose you have long since heard the news, that a sulky churlish boor has destroyed the ancient statue, or rather bas-relief, popularly called Robin of Redesdale. It seems Robin's fame attracted more visitants than was consistent with the growth of the heather, upon a moor worth a shilling an acre. Reverend as you write yourself, be revengeful for once, and pray with me that he may be visited with such a fit of the stone, as if he had all the fragments of poor Robin in that region of his viscera where the disease holds its seat. Tell this not in Gath, lest the Scots rejoice that they have at length found a parallel instance among their neighbours, to that barbarous deed which demolished Arthur's oven. But there is no end to lamentation, when we betake ourselves to such subjects. My respectful compliments attend Miss Dryasdust; I endeavoured to match the spec-

title: Page:Ivanhoe (1820 Volume 1).pdf/42


text:
Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/394

 Cain "Mysteries;" but not only is his intense individualism, reflected in that of Cain as of Manfred, utterly at variance with the impersonal character of the early spectacles, and even fatal to any dramatic capacity by its inability to project sympathy beyond self, but the descriptions of Nature in these so-called "Mysteries" distinguish them alike from the rude drama of allegory and the mature drama of personal character. In the old impersonal drama of England, France, Germany, we have few touches of Nature even so slight as the Gossip's Song—"the flood comes flitting in full fast"—in the Chester Plays. In the personal drama, that of Shakspere himself, for example, we have only splendid glimpses of Nature—the "oak whose antique root peeps out upon the brook that brawls along this wood," or "yon gray lines that fret the clouds are messengers of day"—as if Shakspere felt the open introduction of Nature to be as unsuited to his drama as that of the impersonal "many-headed monster." Byron's lone Japhet among the rocky wilds of the Caucasus lamenting the wave that shall engulf the rugged majesty that looks eternal, Byron's painfully individualised Cain watching with Lucifer the myriad lights of worlds sweep by in the blue wilderness of space as "leaves along the limped streams of Eden," are almost equally removed from the Mysteries and the mature drama. How is it that we find Nature socialised on a vast scale in Faust? How is it that we find the individual and Nature thus darkly face to face in Byron? It is to these questions that we now propose to turn.


text: Comparative Literature/Book 5/Chapter 1

title: Comparative Literature/Book 5/Chapter 1


text: Comparative Literature/Book 5/Chapter 2

title: Comparative Literature/Book 5/Chapter 2


text:
Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/388

 associations were destined to produce a stationary state of national literature throughout Europe, and all inspiration was to be lost by men who had not learned that the form of literature cannot live apart from the spirit; that style consists not in mere arrangement of words, but in the harmony of thought and speech, and that this harmony is fullest where social life is most widely sympathetic, while at the same time individual life is most profoundly deep. In the masterpieces of Dryden and Pope, an age of refined but shallow individualism leaves its marks in character-portraits not to be surpassed for clearness of outline and boldness of touch; but, as Emerson has said, "to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men—that is genius," and for such belief the Paris of Boileau offered as little scope as the London of Johnson. From the middle of the seventeenth to the middle of the eighteenth centuries, personal satire, that witness to weak social sympathies, rules the literatures of London and Paris. Before the belief of which Emerson speaks could become possible a new resurrection of the social spirit had to take place—Boileau and the court had to be replaced by Rousseau and the Revolution. In the towns corporate feelings had been chilled in France and England by the shadow of the individualising central monarchy; but now the manifest disbelief of courtly individualism in itself, as well as new commercial and industrial activities, were arousing sentiments of personal equality and corporate union. It would be clearly impossible within our limits to describe the many causes which contributed to create democratic individualism side by side with industrial socialism—the great conflicting spirits in whom we live and move and have our being. Suffice it to say that in place of monarchical individualism now grown effete, in


text:
Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/201

ROM our description given in the preceding chapters of the beginnings of Danish-Norwegian literature it appears that vigorous efforts to establish a literature had already been made in various directions and important results had been attained, but the really decisive impulse was given to the literary activities of these countries when Ludvig Holberg appeared. He not only cleared the ground and winnowed away a vast amount of rubbish which had hindered the development of intellectual life, but what was of chief importance, the barriers were thrown down which had for centuries separated the people from the learned class, and which the Reformation, with its fresh breath sweeping through the northern lands, had not been able to remove, but which yielded to Holberg's powerful attacks, never to rise again. It is true that all that was to be achieved in this direction could not possibly be done by one single man. There was need of the coöperation of a whole generation, but the first mighty impulse was given by Holberg.

Ludvig Holberg was born in Bergen, Norway, December 3, 1684. His father had risen from a common soldier to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, and Ludvig, who was the youngest of twelve children, was according to the cus-