Since that day not a single one has passed, not to speak of nights,
in which you have not engrossed more of my thoughts than I could have
wished.
in which you have not engrossed more of my thoughts than I could have
wished.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v03 - Bag to Ber
Never-
theless he was now, as ever, in need of money. Atterbom tells that
“One day the King met him on the street, so poorly dressed that
he instinctively exclaimed, My dear Bellman, how poorly you are
clad! The poet answered with a bow, I can nevertheless most
## p. 1765 (#563) ###########################################
CARL MICHAEL BELLMAN
1765
obediently assure your Majesty that I am wearing my entire ward-
robe. ) » His ready wit never left him. “How goes the world with
you ? ” asked the King once when they met; "you don't look to me
as if you could turn a single rhyme to-day. ” The poet bowed and
replied on the spur of the moment:
“No scrip my purse doth hold;
My lyre's unstrung, alas !
But yet upon my glass
Stands Gustaf's name in gold. ”
Another time the King sent his men for him, with the order to
bring him in whatever condition they found him. “He was found
not entirely free from drink, and not very presentable, but was never-
theless carried off, zither and all, to Haga Castle, where he drank
some champagne, sang some songs, drank a little more, and finally
fell asleep. The King left him so to go to his supper; and when he
returned and found his guest still sleeping, he remarked, I wonder
what Bellman would say if I awoke him now and asked him to give
a song. ' The poet sat up, blinked with his eyes, and said,
“Then Bellman would say, — listen;' whereupon he sang to the tune
of Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre':-
me
<<<Oh, so heavily, heavily trailing,
The clouds over Haga are sailing,
And the stars their bright glances are veiling,
While woods in the gloom disappear.
Go, King, thy rest is dear,
Go, King, thy respite taking,
Rest softly, rest softly, then waking,
When dawn through the darkness is breaking,
Thy people with mild rule thou cheer!
Then he fell into his former position again, and was carried home
asleep with a little gift in his hand. ”
The task of collecting, preserving, and publishing his works feil
entirely upon his friends; if it had depended on him, they would
probably never have been collected, much less published.
During the last fifteen years of his life, from 1780 to 1795, his
health grew very poor.
In 1791 he was invited to be present at
the distribution of degrees at Upsala, and at the dinner he returned
a toast with a song born of the moment; but his voice had grown so
weak from lung trouble that only those nearest to him could hear
him. To add to his sufferings, he had to meet the great sorrow of
his King's death at the hand of a murderer, and his poem on the
Death and Memory of the King' was not of a nature to make
friends for him at the new court. Thus it happened that, poor and
## p. 1766 (#564) ###########################################
1766
CARL MICHAEL BELLMAN
broken in health, he was put into the debtor's prison in the very
castle where he had been so happy a guest.
Hallman and Krexel
and others of his best friends, as devoted to him as ever, were
unable to obtain his release; but he was at last bailed out by some
one, who as recompense asked him to sing one of his jolly songs,
and in his poor broken voice he sang Drink out thy glass, see,
Death awaits thee. ) Atterbom remarks about the man in question,
"And maybe he did not find that song so jolly after all. ”
While in prison he sent in a petition to the King, somewhat
different from his first petition to Gustavus III. ,- in which he asked
permission to live in the castle until his death. The following is one
of the verses:-
«Spring commands; the birds are singing,
Bees are swarming, fishes play;
Now and then the zephyrs stray,
Breath of life the poet bringing.
Lift my load of sorrow clinging,
Spare me one small nook, I pray. )
Of his death Atterbom writes as follows:-
“He had been the favorite of the nation and the King, content with the
mere necessities of life, free from every care, not even desiring the immor-
tality of fame; moderate in everything except in enthusiasm, he had enjoyed
to the full what he wanted, — friendship, wine, and music. Now he lived to
see the shadows fall over his life and genius. Feeling that his last hour was
not far off, he sent word to his nearest friends that a meeting with them as
in old times would be dear to him. He came to meet them almost a shadow,
but with his old friendly smile; even in the toasts he took part, however
moderately, and then he announced that he would let them (hear Bellman
once more. The spirit of song took possession of him, more powerfully than
ever, and all the rays of his dying imagination were centred in an impro-
vised good-by song. Throughout an entire night, under continual inspiration,
he sang his happy life, his mild King's glory, his gratitude to Providence, who
let him be born among a noble people in this beautiful Northern country, -
finally he gave his grateful good-by to every one present, in a separate stro-
phe and melody expressing the peculiar individuality of the one addressed
and his relation to the poet. His friends begged him with tears to stop, and
spare his already much weakened lungs; but he replied, Let us die, as we
have lived, in music! )- emptied his last glass of champagne, and began at
dawn the last verse of his song. "
After this he sang no more. A few days later he went to bed,
lingered for ten weeks, and died on the uth of February, 1795, aged
fifty-four years.
He was buried in Clara cemetery.
Bellman's critics have given themselves much trouble about his
personal character. Some have thought him little better than a
## p. 1767 (#565) ###########################################
CARL MICHAEL BELLMAN
1767
coarse drunkard; others again have made him out a cynic who
sneered at the life he depicted; again others have laid the weight
on the note found in “Drink out thy glass,' and have seen only the
underlying sad pathos of his songs. His contemporaries agree that
he was a
man of great consideration for form, and assert that if
there are coarse passages in his songs it is because they only could
express what he depicted. All coarseness was foreign to his nature;
he was reserved and somewhat shy, and only in the company of his
chosen few did he open his heart.
His critics have, moreover, assiduously sought the moral of his
works. If any was intended, it may have been that of fighting senti-
mentality and all false feeling; but it seems more in accordance
with his entire life that he sang out of the fullness of his heart, as
a bird sings, simply because it must sing.
Olga
Glinch
TO ULLA
U"
LLA, mine Ulla, tell me, may I hand thee
Reddest of strawberries in milk or wine?
Or from the pond a lively fish? Command me!
Or, from the well, a bowl of water fine?
Doors are blown open, the wind gets the blaming.
Perfumes exhale from flower and tree.
Clouds fleck the sky and the sun rises flaming,
As you see!
Isn't it heavenly — the fish market? So ?
"Heavenly, oh heavenly! ”
«See the stately trees there, standing row on row,-
Fresh, green leaves show!
And that pretty bay
Sparkling there? " "Ah yes!
«And, seen where sunbeams play,
The meadows' loveliness ?
Are they not heavenly — those bright fields ? — Confess! )
Heavenly!
Heavenly!
## p. 1768 (#566) ###########################################
1768
CARL MICHAEL BELLMAN
Skål and good-noon, fair one in window leaning,
Hark how the city bells their peals prolong!
See how the dust the verdant turf is screening,
Where the calashes and the wagons throng!
Hand from the window – he's drowsy, the speaker,
In my saddle I nod, cousin mine -
Primo a crust, and secundo a beaker,
Hochländer wine!
Isn't it heavenly — the fish-market ? So ?
“Heavenly, oh heavenly! ”
" See the stately trees there, standing row on row,-
Fresh, green leaves show!
And that pretty bay
Sparkling there? ” “Ah yes!
“And, seen where sunbeams play,
The meadows' loveliness?
Are they not heavenly — those bright fields ? — Confess! )
Heavenly!
Heavenly!
Look, Ulla dear! To the stable they're taking
Whinnying prancing, my good steed, I see.
Still in his stall-door he lifts his head, making
Efforts to look up to thee: just to thee!
Nature itself into flames will be bursting:
Keep those bright eyes in control!
Klang! at your casement my heart, too, is thirsting.
Klang! Your Skål!
Isn't it heavenly - the fish-market ? So ?
“Heavenly, oh heavenly ! »
«See the stately trees there, standing row on row,-
Fresh, green leaves show!
And that pretty bay
Sparkling there? ” “Ah yes! )
“And, seen where sunbeams play,
The meadows' loveliness?
Are they not heavenly — those bright fields ? - Confess! ».
Heavenly!
Heavenly!
## p. 1769 (#567) ###########################################
CARL MICHAEL BELLMAN
1769
CRADLE-SONG FOR MY SON CARL
L
ITTLE Carl, sleep soft and sweet:
Thou'lt soon enough be waking;
Soon enough ill days thou'lt meet,
Their bitterness partaking.
Earth's an isle with grief o'ercast;
Breathe our best, death comes at last,
We but dust forsaking.
Once, where flowed a peaceful brook
Through a rye-field's stubble,
Stood a little boy to look
At himself; his double.
Sweet the picture was to see;
All at once it ceased to be;
Vanished like a bubble!
And thus it is with life, my pet,
And thus the years go fying;
Live we wisely, gaily, yet
There's no escape from dying.
Little Carl on this must muse
When the blossoms bright he views
On spring's bosom lying.
Slumber, little friend so wee;
Joy thy joy is bringing.
Clipped from paper thou shalt see
A sleigh, and horses springing;
Then a house of cards so tall
We will build and see it fall,
And little songs be singing.
AMARYLLIS
U”
(P, AMARYLLIS! Darling, awaken!
Through the still bracken
Soft airs swell;
Iris, all dightly,
Vestured so brightly,
Coloreth lightly
Wood and dell.
## p. 1770 (#568) ###########################################
CARL MICHAEL BELLMAN
1770
Amaryllis, thy sweet name pronouncing,
Thee in Neptune's cool embrace announcing,
Slumber's god the while his sway renouncing,
O'er your eyes sighs, and speech yields his spell.
Now comes the fishing! The net we fasten;
This minute hasten!
Follow me!
Don your skirt and jacket
And veil, or you'll lack it;
Pike and trout wait a racket;
Sails flap free.
Waken, Amaryllis, darling, waken!
Let me not by thy smile be forsaken:
Then by dolphins and fair sirens overtaken,
In our gay boat we'll sport in company.
Come now, your rods, lines, and nets with you taking!
The day is breaking;
Hasten thee nigh!
Sweet little treasure,
Think ill in no measure;
For thee 'twere no pleasure
Me to deny.
Let us to the little shallows wander,
Or beside the inlet over yonder,
Where the pledge-knot made our fond love fonder,
O'er which Thyrsis erst was moved to sigh.
Step in the boat, then — both of us singing,
Love his wand swinging
Over our fate.
Æol is moving,
But though wild proving,
In your arms loving
Comfort doth wait.
Blest, on angry waves of ocean riding,
By thee clasped, vain 'twere this dear thought hiding:
Death shall find me in thy pathway biding.
Sirens, sing ye, and my voice imitate!
## p. 1771 (#569) ###########################################
CARL MICHAEL BELLMAN
1771
ART AND POLITICS
"G
Oop servant Mollberg, what's happened to thee,
Whoin without coat and hatless I see?
Bloody thy mouth -- and thou’rt lacking a tooth!
Where have you been, brother ? — tell me the truth. ”
«At Rostock, good sir,
Did the trouble occur.
Over me and my harp
An argument sharp
Arose, touching my playing - pling plingeli plang;
And a bow-legged cobbler coming along
Struck me in the mouth — pling plingeli plang.
«I sat there and played -no carouse could one see —
The Polish Queen's Polka - G-major the key:
The best kind of people were gathered around,
And each drank his schoppen down to the ground. '
I don't know just how
Began freshly the row,
But some one from my head
Knocked my hat, and thus said:
(What is Poland to thee? ! — Pling plingeli plang —
(Play us no polka! Another one sang:
Now silent be! ! — Pling plingeli plang.
« Hear, my Mæcenas, what still came to pass.
As I sat there in quiet, enjoying my glass,
On Poland's condition the silence I broke:
Know ye, good people, aloud thus I spoke,
(That all monarchs I
On this earth do defy
My harp to prevent
From giving song vent
Throughout all this land - pling plingeli plang!
Did only a single string to it hang,
I'd play a polka — pling plingeli plang! )
« There sat in the corner a sergeant old,
Two notaries and a dragoon bold,
Who cried Down with him! The cobbler is right!
Poland earns the meeds of her evil might! !
From behind the stove came
An old squint-eyed dame,
## p. 1772 (#570) ###########################################
CARL MICHAEL BELLMAN
1772
And flung at the harp
Glass broken and sharp;
But the cobbler — pling plingeli plang –
Made a terrible hole in my neck — that long!
There hast thou the story — pling plingeli plang.
“O righteous world! Now I ask of thee
If I suffered not wrongly ? ” «Why, certainly! ”
“Was I not innocent ? » « Bless
you, most sure ! »
“ The harp rent asunder, my nose torn and sore,
Twas hard treatment, I trow!
Now no better I know
Than to go through the land
With my harp in my hand,
Play for Bacchus and Venus — kling klang -
With masters best that e'er played or sang;
Attend me, Apollo! - pling plingeli plang. ”
DRINK OUT THY GLASS
DRI
RINK out thy glass! See, on thy threshold, nightly,
Staying his sword, stands Death, awaiting thee.
Be not alarmed; the grave-door, opened slightly,
Closes again; a full year it may be
Ere thou art dragged, poor sufferer, to the grave.
Pick the octave!
Tune up the strings! Sing of life with glee!
Golden's the hue thy dull, wan cheeks are showing;
Shrunken's thy chest, and flat each shoulder-blade.
Give me thy hand! Each dark vein, larger growing,
Is, to my touch, as if in water laid.
Damp are these hands; stiff are these veins becoming.
Pick now, and strumming,
Empty thy bottle! Sing! drink unafraid.
Skål, then, my boy! Old Bacchus sends last greeting
Freya's farewell receive thou, o'er thy bowl.
Fast in her praise thy thin blood flows, repeating
Its old-time force, as it was wont to roll.
Sing, read, forget; nay, think and weep while thinking.
Art thou for drinking
Another bottle? Thou art dead? No Skål!
## p. 1773 (#571) ###########################################
1773
JEREMY BENTHAM
(1748-1832)
B
ENTHAM, whose name rightly stands sponsor for the utilitarian
theory of morals in legislation, though not its originator,
was a mighty and unique figure in many ways. His child-
hood reminds us of that of his disciple John Stuart Mill in its pre-
cocity; but fortunately for him, life had more juice in it for young
Bentham than it had for Mill. In his maturity and old age he was
widely recognized as a commanding authority, notwithstanding some
startling absurdities.
He was born in London, February 15th,
1747–8; the child of an attorney of ample
means, who was proud of the youth, and
did not hesitate to show him off. In his
fourth year he began the study of Latin,
and a year later was known in his father's
circle as “the philosopher. ” At six or seven
he began the study of French.
He was
then sent to Westminster school, where he
must have had a rather uncomfortable time;
for he was small in body, sensitive and deli-
cate, and not fond of boyish sports. He
had a much happier life at the houses of JEREMY BENTHAM
his grandmothers at Barking and at Brown-
ing Hill, where much of his childhood was spent. His reminiscences
of these days, as related to his biographer, are full of charm. He
was a great reader and a great student; and going to Oxford early,
was only sixteen when he took his degree.
It must be confessed that he did not bear away with him a high
appreciation of the benefits which he owed to his alma mater.
“Mendacity and insincerity — in these I found the effects, the sure
and only sure effects, of an English university education. ” He wrote
a Latin ode on the death of George II. , which was much praised. In
later years he himself said of it, “It was a mediocre performance on
a trumpery subject, written by a miserable child. ”
On taking his degree he entered at Lincoln's Inn, but he never
made a success in the practice of the law. He hated litigation, and
his mind became immediately absorbed in the study and development
of the principles of legislation and jurisprudence, and this became
## p. 1774 (#572) ###########################################
1774
JEREMY BENTHAM
the business of his life. He had an intense antipathy to Blackstone,
under whom he had sat at Oxford; and in 1776 he published anony-
mously a severe criticism of his work, under the title (Fragments on
Government, or a Commentary on the Commentaries, which was at
first attributed to Lord Mansfield, Lord Camden, and others. His
identification as the author of the Fragments) brought him into
relations with Lord Shelburne, who invited him to Bowood, where he
made a long and happy visit, of which bright and gossipy letters tell
the story
Here he worked on his "Introduction to the Principles of
Morals and Legislation, in which he developed his utilitarian theory,
and here he fell in love with a young lady who failed to respond to
his wishes. Writing in 1827, he says:
“I am alive, more than two months advanced in my eightieth year, more
lively than when you presented me in ceremony with a Aower in Green
Lane.
Since that day not a single one has passed, not to speak of nights,
in which you have not engrossed more of my thoughts than I could have
wished. . . Embrace —; though it is for me, as it is by you, she will
not be severe, nor refuse her lips to me as she did her hand, at a time per-
haps not yet forgotten by her, any more than by me. ”
Bentham wrote voluminously on morals, on rewards and punish-
ments, on the poor laws, on education, on law reform, on the codifi-
cation of laws, on special legislative measures, on a vast variety of
subjects. His style, at first simple and direct, became turgid,
involved, and obscure. He was in the habit of beginning the same
work independently many times, and usually drove several horses
abreast. He was
very severe in his strictures upon persons in
authority, and upon current notions; and was constantly being
warned that if he should publish such or such a work he would
surely be prosecuted. Numerous books were therefore not published
until many years after they were written. His literary style became
so prolix and unintelligible that his disciples - Dumont, Mill, and
others - came to his rescue, and disentangled and prepared for the
press his innumerable pamphlets, full of suggestiveness and teeming
with projects of reform more or less completely realized since. His
publications include more than seventy titles, and he left a vast
accumulation of manuscript, much of which has never been read.
He had a wide circle of acquaintances, by whom he was held in
high honor, and his correspondence with the leading men of his
time was constant and important. In his later years he was
pugnacious writer, but he was on intimate and jovial terms with his
friends. In 1814 he removed to Ford Abbey, near Chard, and there
wrote (Chrestomathea,' a collection of papers on the principles of
education, in which he laid stress upon the value of instruction in
a
## p. 1775 (#573) ###########################################
JEREMY BENTHAM
1775
science, as against the excessive predominance of Greek and Latin.
In 1823, in conjunction with James Mill and others, he established
the Westminster Review, but he did not himself contribute largely
to it. He continued, however, to the end of his life to write on his
favorite topics.
Robert Dale Owen, in his autobiography, gives the following
description of a visit to Bentham during the philosopher's later
years:
“I preserve a most agreeable recollection of that grand old face, beaming
with benignity and intelligence, and occasionally with a touch of humor
which I did not expect.
I do not remember to have met any one of
his age [seventy-eight] who seemed to have more complete possession of his
faculties, bodily and mental; and this surprised me the more because I knew
that in his childhood he had been a feeble-limbed, frail boy. . . I found
him, having overpassed by nearly a decade the allotted threescore years and
ten, with step as active and eye as bright and conversation as vivacious as
one expects in a hale man of fifty.
«I shall never forget my surprise when we were ushered by the venerable
philosopher into his dining-room. An apartment of good size, it was occupied
by a platform about two feet high, and which filled the whole room, except a
passageway some three or four feet wide, which had been left so that one
could pass all round it. Upon this platform stood the dinner-table and chairs,
with room enough for the servants to wait upon us. Around the head of the
table was a huge screen, to protect the old man, I suppose, against the
draught from the doors.
“When another half-hour had passed, he touched the bell again. This
time his order to the servant startled me:-
« John, my night-cap! '
“I rose to go, and one or two others did the same; Neal sat still. Ah! )
said Bentham, as he drew a black silk night-cap over his spare gray hair,
(you think that's a hint to go. Not a bit of it. Sit down! I'll tell you when
I am tired. I'm going to vibrate a little; that assists digestion, too.
“And with that he descended into the trench-like passage, of which I have
spoken, and commenced walking briskly back and forth, his head nearly on a
level with ours, as we sat. Of course we all turned toward him. For full
half an hour, as he walked, did he continue to pour forth such a witty and
eloquent invective against kings, priests, and their retainers, as I have seldom
listened to. Then he returned to the head of the table and kept up the con-
versation, without flagging, till midnight ere he dismissed us.
“His parting words to me were characteristic: — (God bless you,- if there
be such a being; and at all events, my young friend, take care of yourself. ) )
old age.
His weak childhood had been followed by a healthy and robust
But he wore out at last, and died June 6, 1832, character-
istically leaving his body to be dissected for the benefit of science.
The greater part of his published writings were collected by Sir John
Browning, his executor, and issued in nine large volumes in 1843.
## p. 1776 (#574) ###########################################
1776
JEREMY BENTHAM
OF THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY
From (An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation)
N*
ATURE has placed mankind under the governance of two
sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone
to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine
what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and
wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened
to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in
all we think; every effort we can make to throw off our subjec-
tion will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a
man may pretend to abjure their empire; but in reality he will
remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recog-
nizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that
system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by
the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt to ques-
tion it deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of
reason, in darkness instead of light.
But enough of metaphor and declamation: it is not by such
means that moral science is to be improved.
The principle of utility is the foundation of the present work;
it will be proper, therefore, at the outset to give an explicit and
determinate account of what is meant by it. By the principle
of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves
of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it
appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the
party whose interest is in question; or, what is the same thing
in other words, to promote or to oppose that happiness. I say of
every action whatsoever; and therefore not only of every action
of a private individual, but of every measure of government.
By utility is meant that property in any object whereby it
tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness
(all this in the present case comes to the same thing), or (what
comes again to the same thing) to prevent the happening of
mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose interest
is considered: if that party be the community in general, then
the happiness of the community; if a particular individual, then
the happiness of that individual.
The interest of the community is one of the most general
expressions that can occur in the phraseology of morals: no won-
der that the meaning of it is often lost. When it has a meaning,
## p. 1777 (#575) ###########################################
JEREMY BENTHAM
1777
it is this: The community is a fictitious body, composed of the
individual persons who are considered as constituting, as it were,
its members. The interest of the community, then, is what? The
sum of the interests of the several members who compose it.
It is vain to talk of the interest of the community, without
understanding what is the interest of the individual. A thing is
said to promote the interest, or to be for the interest, of an indi-
vidual, when it tends to add to the sum total of his pleasures:
or, what comes to the same thing, to diminish the sum total of
his pains.
An action, then, may be said to be conformable to the prin-
ciple of utility, or for shortness' sake to utility (meaning with
respect to the community at large), when the tendency it has to
augment the happiness of the community is greater than any it
has to diminish it.
A measure of government (which is but a particular kind of
action, performed by a particular person or persons) may be said
to be conformable to or dictated by the principle of utility, when
in like manner the tendency which it has to augment the hap-
piness of the community is greater than any which it has to
diminish it.
When an action, or in particular a measure of government, is
supposed by a man to be conformable to the principle of utility,
it may be convenient for the purposes of discourse to imagine
a kind of law or dictate called a law or dictate of utility, and to
speak of the action in question as being conformable to such
law or dictate.
A man may be said to be a partisan of the principle of utility,
when the approbation or disapprobation he annexes to any action,
or to any measure, is determined by and proportioned to the
tendency which he conceives it to have to augment or to dimin-
ish the happiness of the community; or in other words, to its
conformity or unconformity to the laws or dictates of utility.
Of an action that is conformable to the principle of utility,
one may always say either that it is one that ought to be done,
or at least that it is not one that ought not to be done. One
may say also that it is right it should be done, at least that it
is not wrong it should be done; that it is a right action, at least
that it is not a wrong action. When thus interpreted, the words
ought, and right and wrong, and others of that stamp, have a
meaning; when otherwise, they have none.
111-112
## p. 1778 (#576) ###########################################
1778
JEREMY BENTHAM
REMINISCENCES OF CHILDHOOD
D
URING my visits to Barking, I used to be my grandmother's
bedfellow. The dinner hour being as early as two o'clock,
she had a regular supper, which was served up in her own
sleeping-room; and immediately after finishing it, she went to
bed. Of her supper I was not permitted to partake, nor was the
privation a matter of much regret. I had what I preferred - a
portion of gooseberry pie; hers was a scrag of mutton, boiled
with parsley and butter. I do not remember any variety.
.
My amusements consisted in building houses with old cards,
and sometimes playing at Beat the knave out of doors with
my grandmother. My time of going to bed was perhaps an
hour before hers; but by way of preparation, I never failed to
receive her blessing. Previous to the ceremony, I underwent a
catechetical examination, of which one of the questions was, “Who
were the children that were saved in the fiery furnace ? ” Answer,
«Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. ” But as the examination
frequently got no farther, the word Abednego got associated in
my mind with very agreeable ideas, and it ran through my ears
like “Shadrach, Meshach, and To-bed-we-go,” in a sort of pleasant
confusion, which is not yet removed. As I grew in years, I
became a fit receptacle for some of my grandmother's communi-
cations, among which the state of her family and the days of her
youth were most prominent.
There hung on the wall, perpetually in view, a sampler, the
produce of the industry and ingenuity of her mother or her
grandmother, of which the subject-matter was the most important
of all theologico-human incidents, the fall of man in Paradise.
There was Adam — there was Eve — and there was the serpent.
In these there was much to interest and amuse me. One thing
alone puzzled me; it was the forbidden fruit. The size was
enormous. It was larger than that species of the genus Oran-
geum which goes by the name of the forbidden fruit » in some
of our West India settlements. Its size was not less than that
of the outer shell of a cocoanut. All the rest of the objects
as usual in plano; this was in alto, indeed in altissimo
rilievo. What to make of it, at a time when my mind was
unable to distinguish fictions from realities, I knew not. The
recollection is strong in me of the mystery it seemed to be. My
grandmother promised me the sampler after her death as a
were
## p. 1779 (#577) ###########################################
JEREMY BENTHAM
1779
legacy, and the promise was no small gratification; but the prom-
ise, with many other promises of jewels and gold coins, was pro-
ductive of nothing but disappointment. Her death took place
when I was at Oxford. My father went down; and without con-
sulting me, or giving the slightest intimation of his intention, let
the house, and sold to the tenant almost everything that was in
it. It was doing as he was wont to do, notwithstanding his
undoubted affection for me. In the same way he sold the estate
he had given to me as a provision on the occasion of his second
marriage. In the mass went some music-books which I had bor-
rowed of Mrs. Browne. Not long after, she desired them to be
returned. I stood before her like a defenseless culprit, conscious
of my inability to make restitution; and at the same time, such
was my state of mental weakness that I knew not what to say
for apology or defense.
My grandmother's mother was a matron, I was told, of high
respectability and corresponding piety; well-informed and strong-
minded. She was distinguished, however; for while other matrons
of her age and quality had seen many a ghost, she had seen
but one.
She was in this particular on a level with the learned
lecturer, afterwards judge, the commentator Blackstone. But she
was heretical, and her belief bordered on Unitarianism. And by
the way, this subject of ghosts has been among the torments of
Even now, when sixty or seventy years have passed
over my head since my boyhood received the impression which
my grandmother gave it, though my judgment is wholly free, my
imagination is not wholly so. My infirmity was not unknown to
the servants. It was a permanent source of amusement to ply
me with horrible phantoms in all imaginable shapes. Under the
pagan dispensation, every object a man could set his eyes on
had been the seat of some pleasant adventure. At Barking, in
the almost solitude of which so large a portion of my life was
passed, every spot that could be made by any means to answer
the purpose was the abode of some spectre or group of spectres.
So dexterous was the invention of those who worked upon my
apprehensions, that they managed to transform a real into a fic.
titious being. His name was Palethorp; and Palethorp, in my
vocabulary, was synonymous with hobgoblin. The origin of
these horrors was this:
My father's house was a short half-mile distant from the prin-
cipal part of the town, from that part where was situated the
my life.
## p. 1780 (#578) ###########################################
1780
JEREMY BENTHAM
mansion of the lord of the manor, Sir Crisp Gascoigne. One
morning the coachman and the footman took a conjunct walk to
a public-house kept by a man of the name Palethorp; they took
me with them: it was before I was breeched. They called for a
pot of beer; took each of them a sip, and handed the pot to me.
On their requisition, I took another; and when about to depart,
the amount was called for. The two servants paid their quota,
and I was called on for mine. Nemo dat quod non habet — this
maxim, to my no small vexation, I was compelled to exemplify.
Mr. Palethorp, the landlord, had a visage harsh and ill-favored,
and he insisted on my discharging my debt. At this very early
age, without having put in for my share of the gifts of fortune,
I found myself in the state of an insolvent debtor. The demand
harassed me so mercilessly that I could hold out no longer: the
door being open, I took to my heels; and as the way was too
plain to be missed, I ran home as fast as they could carry me.
The scene of the terrors of Mr. Palethorp's name and visitation,
in pursuit of me, was the country-house at Barking; but neither
was the town-house free from them; for in those terrors, the
servants possessed an instrument by which it was in their power
at any time to get rid of my presence. Level with the kitchen-
level with the landing-place in which the staircase took its com-
mencement — were the usual offices. When my company became
troublesome, a sure and continually repeated means of exoner-
ating themselves from it was for the footman to repair to the
adjoining subterraneous apartments, invest his shoulders with
some strong covering, and concealing his countenance, stalk in
with a hollow, menacing, and inarticulate tone. Lest that should
not be sufficient, the servants had, stuck by the fireplace, the
portraiture of a hobgoblin, to which they had given the name of
Palethorp. For some years I was in the condition of poor Dr.
Priestley, on whose bodily frame another name, too awful to be
mentioned, used to produce a sensation more than mental.
## p. 1781 (#579) ###########################################
JEREMY BENTHAM
1781
see-
W* common right, for the ladies.
LETTER FROM BOWOOD TO GEORGE WILSON (1781)
SUNDAY, 12 o'clock.
HERE
The first place, by
common right, to the ladies. The ideas I brought with
me respecting the female part of this family are turned
quite topsy-turvy, and unfortunately they are not yet cleared up.
I had expected to find in Lady Shelburne a Lady Louisa Fitz-
patrick, sister of an Earl of Ossory, whom I remember at school;
instead of her, I find a lady who has for her sister a Miss Caro-
line V—i is not this the maid of honor, the sister to Lady
G— ? the lady who was fond of Lord C—, and of whom he
was fond ? and whom he quitted for an heiress and a pair of
horns ? Be they who they may, the one is loveliest of matrons,
the other of virgins: they have both of them more than I could
wish of reserve, but it is a reserve of modesty rather than of
pride.
The quadrupeds, whom you know I love next, consist of a
child of a year old, a tiger, a spaniel formerly attached to Lady
Shelburne - at present to my Lord — besides four plebeian cats
who are taken no notice of, horses, etc. , and a wild boar who is
sent off on a matrimonial expedition to the farm. The four first
I have commenced a friendship with, especially the first of all,
to whom I am body-coachman extraordinary en titre d'office:
Henry, (for that is his name) [the present Lord Lansdowne]
for such an animal, has the most thinking countenance I ever
saw; being very clean, I can keep him without disgust and even
with pleasure, especially after having been rewarded, as I have
just now, for my attention to him, by a pair of the sweetest
smiles imaginable from his mamma and aunt. As Providence
hath ordered it, they both play on the harpsichord and at chess.
I am flattered with the hopes of engaging with them, before
long, either in war or harmony: not to-day — because, whether
you know it or not, it is Sunday; I know it, having been pay-
ing my devotions— our church, the hall — our minister, a sleek
young parson, the curate of the parish — our saints, a naked
Mercury, an Apollo in the same dress, and a Venus de' Medi-
cis - our congregation, the two ladies, Captain Blankett, and
your humble servant, upon the carpet by the minister — below,
the domestics, superioris et inferioris ordinis. Among the former
I was concerned to see poor Mathews, the librarian, who, I could
## p. 1782 (#580) ###########################################
1782
JEREMY BENTHAM
not help thinking, had as good a title to be upon the carpet as
myself.
Of Lord Fitzmaurice I know nothing, but from his bust and
letters: the first bespeaks him a handsome youth, the latter an
ingenious one. He is not sixteen, and already he writes better
than his father. He is under the care of a Mr. Jervis, a dis-
senting minister, who has had charge of him since he was six
years old. He has never been at any public school of education.
He has now for a considerable time been traveling about the
kingdom, that he may know something of his own country before
he goes to others, and be out of the way of adulation.
I am interrupted - adieu! le reste à l'ordinaire prochain.
FRAGMENT OF A LETTER TO LORD LANSDOWNE (1790)
I"
and your
T was using me very ill, that it was, to get upon stilts as you
did, and resolve not to be angry with me, after all the pains
I had taken to make you so.
You have been angry, let me
tell you, with people as little worth it before now;
being so niggardly of it in my instance, may be added to the
account of your injustice. I see you go upon the old Christian
principle of heaping coals of fire upon people's heads, which is
the highest refinement upon vengeance. I see, moreover, that
according to your system of cosmogony, the difference is but
accidental between the race of kings and that of the first Baron
of Lixmore: that ex-lawyers come like other men from Adam,
and ex-ministers from somebody who started up out of the
ground before him, in some more elevated part of the country.
To lower these pretensions, it would be serving you right, if
I were to tell you that I was not half so angry as I appeared
to be; that, therefore, according to the countryman's rule, you
have not so much the advantage over me as you may think you
have: that the real object of what anger I really felt was rather
the situation in which I found myself than you or anybody; but
that, as none but a madman would go to quarrel with a
entity called a situation, it was necessary for me to look out for
somebody who, somehow or other, was connected with it.
non-
## p. 1782 (#581) ###########################################
## p. 1782 (#582) ###########################################
P. J. DE BERANGER.
## p. 1782 (#583) ###########################################
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## p. 1782 (#584) ###########################################
P. J. DE BERANGER.
## p. 1782 (#585) ###########################################
Trine
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## p. 1782 (#586) ###########################################
FANUL
## p. 1783 (#587) ###########################################
1783
JEAN-PIERRE DE BÉRANGER
(1780–1857)
BY ALCÉE FORTIER
B
ÉRANGER, like Hugo, has commemorated the date of his birth,
but their verses
are very different. Hugo's poem is lofty
in style, beginning -
Ce siècle avait deux ans! Rome remplaçait Sparte,
Déjà Napoléon perçait sous Bonaparte,
Et du premier consul déjà, par maint endroit,
Le front de l'empereur brisait le masque étroit. ”
(This century was two years old; Rome displaced Sparta,
Napoleon already was visible in Bonaparte,
And the narrow mask of the First Consul, in many places,
Was already pierced by the forehead of the Emperor. )
Béranger's verses have less force, but are charming in their sim-
plicity:-
«Dans ce Paris plein d'or et de misère,
En l'an du Christ mil sept cent quatre-vingt,
Chez un tailleur, mon pauvre et vieux grand-père,
Moi, nouveau-né, sachais ce qui m'advint. ”
(In this Paris full of gold and misery,
In the year of Christ one thousand seven hundred and eighty,
At the house of a tailor, my grandfather poor and old,
I, a new-born child, knew what happened to me. )
Authors of the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries are more
subjective in their writings than those of the seventeenth, whose
characters can rarely be known from their works. A glance at the
life and surroundings of Béranger will show their influence on his
genius.
Béranger's mother was abandoned by her husband shortly after
her marriage, and her child was born at the house of her father, the
old tailor referred to in the song The Tailor and the Fairy. ' She
troubled herself little about the boy, and he was forsaken in his
childhood. Béranger tells us that he does not know how he learned
to read. In the beginning of the year 1789 he was sent to a school
in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, and there, mounted on the roof of
a house, he saw the capture of the Bastille on the 14th of July.
## p. 1784 (#588) ###########################################
1784
JEAN-PIERRE DE BÉRANGER
This event made a great impression on him, and may have laid
the foundations of his republican principles. When he was nine and
a half his father sent him to one of his sisters, an innkeeper at
Péronne, that town in the north of France famous for the interview
in 1468 between Louis XI. and Charles the Bold, when the fox, put
himself in the power of the lion, as related so vividly in Quentin
Durward.
Béranger's aunt was very kind to him. At Péronne he went to
a free primary school founded by Ballue de Bellenglise, where the
students governed themselves, electing their mayor, their judges, and
their justices of the peace. Béranger was president of a republican
club of boys, and was called upon several times to address members
of the Convention who passed through Péronne.
theless he was now, as ever, in need of money. Atterbom tells that
“One day the King met him on the street, so poorly dressed that
he instinctively exclaimed, My dear Bellman, how poorly you are
clad! The poet answered with a bow, I can nevertheless most
## p. 1765 (#563) ###########################################
CARL MICHAEL BELLMAN
1765
obediently assure your Majesty that I am wearing my entire ward-
robe. ) » His ready wit never left him. “How goes the world with
you ? ” asked the King once when they met; "you don't look to me
as if you could turn a single rhyme to-day. ” The poet bowed and
replied on the spur of the moment:
“No scrip my purse doth hold;
My lyre's unstrung, alas !
But yet upon my glass
Stands Gustaf's name in gold. ”
Another time the King sent his men for him, with the order to
bring him in whatever condition they found him. “He was found
not entirely free from drink, and not very presentable, but was never-
theless carried off, zither and all, to Haga Castle, where he drank
some champagne, sang some songs, drank a little more, and finally
fell asleep. The King left him so to go to his supper; and when he
returned and found his guest still sleeping, he remarked, I wonder
what Bellman would say if I awoke him now and asked him to give
a song. ' The poet sat up, blinked with his eyes, and said,
“Then Bellman would say, — listen;' whereupon he sang to the tune
of Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre':-
me
<<<Oh, so heavily, heavily trailing,
The clouds over Haga are sailing,
And the stars their bright glances are veiling,
While woods in the gloom disappear.
Go, King, thy rest is dear,
Go, King, thy respite taking,
Rest softly, rest softly, then waking,
When dawn through the darkness is breaking,
Thy people with mild rule thou cheer!
Then he fell into his former position again, and was carried home
asleep with a little gift in his hand. ”
The task of collecting, preserving, and publishing his works feil
entirely upon his friends; if it had depended on him, they would
probably never have been collected, much less published.
During the last fifteen years of his life, from 1780 to 1795, his
health grew very poor.
In 1791 he was invited to be present at
the distribution of degrees at Upsala, and at the dinner he returned
a toast with a song born of the moment; but his voice had grown so
weak from lung trouble that only those nearest to him could hear
him. To add to his sufferings, he had to meet the great sorrow of
his King's death at the hand of a murderer, and his poem on the
Death and Memory of the King' was not of a nature to make
friends for him at the new court. Thus it happened that, poor and
## p. 1766 (#564) ###########################################
1766
CARL MICHAEL BELLMAN
broken in health, he was put into the debtor's prison in the very
castle where he had been so happy a guest.
Hallman and Krexel
and others of his best friends, as devoted to him as ever, were
unable to obtain his release; but he was at last bailed out by some
one, who as recompense asked him to sing one of his jolly songs,
and in his poor broken voice he sang Drink out thy glass, see,
Death awaits thee. ) Atterbom remarks about the man in question,
"And maybe he did not find that song so jolly after all. ”
While in prison he sent in a petition to the King, somewhat
different from his first petition to Gustavus III. ,- in which he asked
permission to live in the castle until his death. The following is one
of the verses:-
«Spring commands; the birds are singing,
Bees are swarming, fishes play;
Now and then the zephyrs stray,
Breath of life the poet bringing.
Lift my load of sorrow clinging,
Spare me one small nook, I pray. )
Of his death Atterbom writes as follows:-
“He had been the favorite of the nation and the King, content with the
mere necessities of life, free from every care, not even desiring the immor-
tality of fame; moderate in everything except in enthusiasm, he had enjoyed
to the full what he wanted, — friendship, wine, and music. Now he lived to
see the shadows fall over his life and genius. Feeling that his last hour was
not far off, he sent word to his nearest friends that a meeting with them as
in old times would be dear to him. He came to meet them almost a shadow,
but with his old friendly smile; even in the toasts he took part, however
moderately, and then he announced that he would let them (hear Bellman
once more. The spirit of song took possession of him, more powerfully than
ever, and all the rays of his dying imagination were centred in an impro-
vised good-by song. Throughout an entire night, under continual inspiration,
he sang his happy life, his mild King's glory, his gratitude to Providence, who
let him be born among a noble people in this beautiful Northern country, -
finally he gave his grateful good-by to every one present, in a separate stro-
phe and melody expressing the peculiar individuality of the one addressed
and his relation to the poet. His friends begged him with tears to stop, and
spare his already much weakened lungs; but he replied, Let us die, as we
have lived, in music! )- emptied his last glass of champagne, and began at
dawn the last verse of his song. "
After this he sang no more. A few days later he went to bed,
lingered for ten weeks, and died on the uth of February, 1795, aged
fifty-four years.
He was buried in Clara cemetery.
Bellman's critics have given themselves much trouble about his
personal character. Some have thought him little better than a
## p. 1767 (#565) ###########################################
CARL MICHAEL BELLMAN
1767
coarse drunkard; others again have made him out a cynic who
sneered at the life he depicted; again others have laid the weight
on the note found in “Drink out thy glass,' and have seen only the
underlying sad pathos of his songs. His contemporaries agree that
he was a
man of great consideration for form, and assert that if
there are coarse passages in his songs it is because they only could
express what he depicted. All coarseness was foreign to his nature;
he was reserved and somewhat shy, and only in the company of his
chosen few did he open his heart.
His critics have, moreover, assiduously sought the moral of his
works. If any was intended, it may have been that of fighting senti-
mentality and all false feeling; but it seems more in accordance
with his entire life that he sang out of the fullness of his heart, as
a bird sings, simply because it must sing.
Olga
Glinch
TO ULLA
U"
LLA, mine Ulla, tell me, may I hand thee
Reddest of strawberries in milk or wine?
Or from the pond a lively fish? Command me!
Or, from the well, a bowl of water fine?
Doors are blown open, the wind gets the blaming.
Perfumes exhale from flower and tree.
Clouds fleck the sky and the sun rises flaming,
As you see!
Isn't it heavenly — the fish market? So ?
"Heavenly, oh heavenly! ”
«See the stately trees there, standing row on row,-
Fresh, green leaves show!
And that pretty bay
Sparkling there? " "Ah yes!
«And, seen where sunbeams play,
The meadows' loveliness ?
Are they not heavenly — those bright fields ? — Confess! )
Heavenly!
Heavenly!
## p. 1768 (#566) ###########################################
1768
CARL MICHAEL BELLMAN
Skål and good-noon, fair one in window leaning,
Hark how the city bells their peals prolong!
See how the dust the verdant turf is screening,
Where the calashes and the wagons throng!
Hand from the window – he's drowsy, the speaker,
In my saddle I nod, cousin mine -
Primo a crust, and secundo a beaker,
Hochländer wine!
Isn't it heavenly — the fish-market ? So ?
“Heavenly, oh heavenly! ”
" See the stately trees there, standing row on row,-
Fresh, green leaves show!
And that pretty bay
Sparkling there? ” “Ah yes!
“And, seen where sunbeams play,
The meadows' loveliness?
Are they not heavenly — those bright fields ? — Confess! )
Heavenly!
Heavenly!
Look, Ulla dear! To the stable they're taking
Whinnying prancing, my good steed, I see.
Still in his stall-door he lifts his head, making
Efforts to look up to thee: just to thee!
Nature itself into flames will be bursting:
Keep those bright eyes in control!
Klang! at your casement my heart, too, is thirsting.
Klang! Your Skål!
Isn't it heavenly - the fish-market ? So ?
“Heavenly, oh heavenly ! »
«See the stately trees there, standing row on row,-
Fresh, green leaves show!
And that pretty bay
Sparkling there? ” “Ah yes! )
“And, seen where sunbeams play,
The meadows' loveliness?
Are they not heavenly — those bright fields ? - Confess! ».
Heavenly!
Heavenly!
## p. 1769 (#567) ###########################################
CARL MICHAEL BELLMAN
1769
CRADLE-SONG FOR MY SON CARL
L
ITTLE Carl, sleep soft and sweet:
Thou'lt soon enough be waking;
Soon enough ill days thou'lt meet,
Their bitterness partaking.
Earth's an isle with grief o'ercast;
Breathe our best, death comes at last,
We but dust forsaking.
Once, where flowed a peaceful brook
Through a rye-field's stubble,
Stood a little boy to look
At himself; his double.
Sweet the picture was to see;
All at once it ceased to be;
Vanished like a bubble!
And thus it is with life, my pet,
And thus the years go fying;
Live we wisely, gaily, yet
There's no escape from dying.
Little Carl on this must muse
When the blossoms bright he views
On spring's bosom lying.
Slumber, little friend so wee;
Joy thy joy is bringing.
Clipped from paper thou shalt see
A sleigh, and horses springing;
Then a house of cards so tall
We will build and see it fall,
And little songs be singing.
AMARYLLIS
U”
(P, AMARYLLIS! Darling, awaken!
Through the still bracken
Soft airs swell;
Iris, all dightly,
Vestured so brightly,
Coloreth lightly
Wood and dell.
## p. 1770 (#568) ###########################################
CARL MICHAEL BELLMAN
1770
Amaryllis, thy sweet name pronouncing,
Thee in Neptune's cool embrace announcing,
Slumber's god the while his sway renouncing,
O'er your eyes sighs, and speech yields his spell.
Now comes the fishing! The net we fasten;
This minute hasten!
Follow me!
Don your skirt and jacket
And veil, or you'll lack it;
Pike and trout wait a racket;
Sails flap free.
Waken, Amaryllis, darling, waken!
Let me not by thy smile be forsaken:
Then by dolphins and fair sirens overtaken,
In our gay boat we'll sport in company.
Come now, your rods, lines, and nets with you taking!
The day is breaking;
Hasten thee nigh!
Sweet little treasure,
Think ill in no measure;
For thee 'twere no pleasure
Me to deny.
Let us to the little shallows wander,
Or beside the inlet over yonder,
Where the pledge-knot made our fond love fonder,
O'er which Thyrsis erst was moved to sigh.
Step in the boat, then — both of us singing,
Love his wand swinging
Over our fate.
Æol is moving,
But though wild proving,
In your arms loving
Comfort doth wait.
Blest, on angry waves of ocean riding,
By thee clasped, vain 'twere this dear thought hiding:
Death shall find me in thy pathway biding.
Sirens, sing ye, and my voice imitate!
## p. 1771 (#569) ###########################################
CARL MICHAEL BELLMAN
1771
ART AND POLITICS
"G
Oop servant Mollberg, what's happened to thee,
Whoin without coat and hatless I see?
Bloody thy mouth -- and thou’rt lacking a tooth!
Where have you been, brother ? — tell me the truth. ”
«At Rostock, good sir,
Did the trouble occur.
Over me and my harp
An argument sharp
Arose, touching my playing - pling plingeli plang;
And a bow-legged cobbler coming along
Struck me in the mouth — pling plingeli plang.
«I sat there and played -no carouse could one see —
The Polish Queen's Polka - G-major the key:
The best kind of people were gathered around,
And each drank his schoppen down to the ground. '
I don't know just how
Began freshly the row,
But some one from my head
Knocked my hat, and thus said:
(What is Poland to thee? ! — Pling plingeli plang —
(Play us no polka! Another one sang:
Now silent be! ! — Pling plingeli plang.
« Hear, my Mæcenas, what still came to pass.
As I sat there in quiet, enjoying my glass,
On Poland's condition the silence I broke:
Know ye, good people, aloud thus I spoke,
(That all monarchs I
On this earth do defy
My harp to prevent
From giving song vent
Throughout all this land - pling plingeli plang!
Did only a single string to it hang,
I'd play a polka — pling plingeli plang! )
« There sat in the corner a sergeant old,
Two notaries and a dragoon bold,
Who cried Down with him! The cobbler is right!
Poland earns the meeds of her evil might! !
From behind the stove came
An old squint-eyed dame,
## p. 1772 (#570) ###########################################
CARL MICHAEL BELLMAN
1772
And flung at the harp
Glass broken and sharp;
But the cobbler — pling plingeli plang –
Made a terrible hole in my neck — that long!
There hast thou the story — pling plingeli plang.
“O righteous world! Now I ask of thee
If I suffered not wrongly ? ” «Why, certainly! ”
“Was I not innocent ? » « Bless
you, most sure ! »
“ The harp rent asunder, my nose torn and sore,
Twas hard treatment, I trow!
Now no better I know
Than to go through the land
With my harp in my hand,
Play for Bacchus and Venus — kling klang -
With masters best that e'er played or sang;
Attend me, Apollo! - pling plingeli plang. ”
DRINK OUT THY GLASS
DRI
RINK out thy glass! See, on thy threshold, nightly,
Staying his sword, stands Death, awaiting thee.
Be not alarmed; the grave-door, opened slightly,
Closes again; a full year it may be
Ere thou art dragged, poor sufferer, to the grave.
Pick the octave!
Tune up the strings! Sing of life with glee!
Golden's the hue thy dull, wan cheeks are showing;
Shrunken's thy chest, and flat each shoulder-blade.
Give me thy hand! Each dark vein, larger growing,
Is, to my touch, as if in water laid.
Damp are these hands; stiff are these veins becoming.
Pick now, and strumming,
Empty thy bottle! Sing! drink unafraid.
Skål, then, my boy! Old Bacchus sends last greeting
Freya's farewell receive thou, o'er thy bowl.
Fast in her praise thy thin blood flows, repeating
Its old-time force, as it was wont to roll.
Sing, read, forget; nay, think and weep while thinking.
Art thou for drinking
Another bottle? Thou art dead? No Skål!
## p. 1773 (#571) ###########################################
1773
JEREMY BENTHAM
(1748-1832)
B
ENTHAM, whose name rightly stands sponsor for the utilitarian
theory of morals in legislation, though not its originator,
was a mighty and unique figure in many ways. His child-
hood reminds us of that of his disciple John Stuart Mill in its pre-
cocity; but fortunately for him, life had more juice in it for young
Bentham than it had for Mill. In his maturity and old age he was
widely recognized as a commanding authority, notwithstanding some
startling absurdities.
He was born in London, February 15th,
1747–8; the child of an attorney of ample
means, who was proud of the youth, and
did not hesitate to show him off. In his
fourth year he began the study of Latin,
and a year later was known in his father's
circle as “the philosopher. ” At six or seven
he began the study of French.
He was
then sent to Westminster school, where he
must have had a rather uncomfortable time;
for he was small in body, sensitive and deli-
cate, and not fond of boyish sports. He
had a much happier life at the houses of JEREMY BENTHAM
his grandmothers at Barking and at Brown-
ing Hill, where much of his childhood was spent. His reminiscences
of these days, as related to his biographer, are full of charm. He
was a great reader and a great student; and going to Oxford early,
was only sixteen when he took his degree.
It must be confessed that he did not bear away with him a high
appreciation of the benefits which he owed to his alma mater.
“Mendacity and insincerity — in these I found the effects, the sure
and only sure effects, of an English university education. ” He wrote
a Latin ode on the death of George II. , which was much praised. In
later years he himself said of it, “It was a mediocre performance on
a trumpery subject, written by a miserable child. ”
On taking his degree he entered at Lincoln's Inn, but he never
made a success in the practice of the law. He hated litigation, and
his mind became immediately absorbed in the study and development
of the principles of legislation and jurisprudence, and this became
## p. 1774 (#572) ###########################################
1774
JEREMY BENTHAM
the business of his life. He had an intense antipathy to Blackstone,
under whom he had sat at Oxford; and in 1776 he published anony-
mously a severe criticism of his work, under the title (Fragments on
Government, or a Commentary on the Commentaries, which was at
first attributed to Lord Mansfield, Lord Camden, and others. His
identification as the author of the Fragments) brought him into
relations with Lord Shelburne, who invited him to Bowood, where he
made a long and happy visit, of which bright and gossipy letters tell
the story
Here he worked on his "Introduction to the Principles of
Morals and Legislation, in which he developed his utilitarian theory,
and here he fell in love with a young lady who failed to respond to
his wishes. Writing in 1827, he says:
“I am alive, more than two months advanced in my eightieth year, more
lively than when you presented me in ceremony with a Aower in Green
Lane.
Since that day not a single one has passed, not to speak of nights,
in which you have not engrossed more of my thoughts than I could have
wished. . . Embrace —; though it is for me, as it is by you, she will
not be severe, nor refuse her lips to me as she did her hand, at a time per-
haps not yet forgotten by her, any more than by me. ”
Bentham wrote voluminously on morals, on rewards and punish-
ments, on the poor laws, on education, on law reform, on the codifi-
cation of laws, on special legislative measures, on a vast variety of
subjects. His style, at first simple and direct, became turgid,
involved, and obscure. He was in the habit of beginning the same
work independently many times, and usually drove several horses
abreast. He was
very severe in his strictures upon persons in
authority, and upon current notions; and was constantly being
warned that if he should publish such or such a work he would
surely be prosecuted. Numerous books were therefore not published
until many years after they were written. His literary style became
so prolix and unintelligible that his disciples - Dumont, Mill, and
others - came to his rescue, and disentangled and prepared for the
press his innumerable pamphlets, full of suggestiveness and teeming
with projects of reform more or less completely realized since. His
publications include more than seventy titles, and he left a vast
accumulation of manuscript, much of which has never been read.
He had a wide circle of acquaintances, by whom he was held in
high honor, and his correspondence with the leading men of his
time was constant and important. In his later years he was
pugnacious writer, but he was on intimate and jovial terms with his
friends. In 1814 he removed to Ford Abbey, near Chard, and there
wrote (Chrestomathea,' a collection of papers on the principles of
education, in which he laid stress upon the value of instruction in
a
## p. 1775 (#573) ###########################################
JEREMY BENTHAM
1775
science, as against the excessive predominance of Greek and Latin.
In 1823, in conjunction with James Mill and others, he established
the Westminster Review, but he did not himself contribute largely
to it. He continued, however, to the end of his life to write on his
favorite topics.
Robert Dale Owen, in his autobiography, gives the following
description of a visit to Bentham during the philosopher's later
years:
“I preserve a most agreeable recollection of that grand old face, beaming
with benignity and intelligence, and occasionally with a touch of humor
which I did not expect.
I do not remember to have met any one of
his age [seventy-eight] who seemed to have more complete possession of his
faculties, bodily and mental; and this surprised me the more because I knew
that in his childhood he had been a feeble-limbed, frail boy. . . I found
him, having overpassed by nearly a decade the allotted threescore years and
ten, with step as active and eye as bright and conversation as vivacious as
one expects in a hale man of fifty.
«I shall never forget my surprise when we were ushered by the venerable
philosopher into his dining-room. An apartment of good size, it was occupied
by a platform about two feet high, and which filled the whole room, except a
passageway some three or four feet wide, which had been left so that one
could pass all round it. Upon this platform stood the dinner-table and chairs,
with room enough for the servants to wait upon us. Around the head of the
table was a huge screen, to protect the old man, I suppose, against the
draught from the doors.
“When another half-hour had passed, he touched the bell again. This
time his order to the servant startled me:-
« John, my night-cap! '
“I rose to go, and one or two others did the same; Neal sat still. Ah! )
said Bentham, as he drew a black silk night-cap over his spare gray hair,
(you think that's a hint to go. Not a bit of it. Sit down! I'll tell you when
I am tired. I'm going to vibrate a little; that assists digestion, too.
“And with that he descended into the trench-like passage, of which I have
spoken, and commenced walking briskly back and forth, his head nearly on a
level with ours, as we sat. Of course we all turned toward him. For full
half an hour, as he walked, did he continue to pour forth such a witty and
eloquent invective against kings, priests, and their retainers, as I have seldom
listened to. Then he returned to the head of the table and kept up the con-
versation, without flagging, till midnight ere he dismissed us.
“His parting words to me were characteristic: — (God bless you,- if there
be such a being; and at all events, my young friend, take care of yourself. ) )
old age.
His weak childhood had been followed by a healthy and robust
But he wore out at last, and died June 6, 1832, character-
istically leaving his body to be dissected for the benefit of science.
The greater part of his published writings were collected by Sir John
Browning, his executor, and issued in nine large volumes in 1843.
## p. 1776 (#574) ###########################################
1776
JEREMY BENTHAM
OF THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY
From (An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation)
N*
ATURE has placed mankind under the governance of two
sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone
to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine
what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and
wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened
to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in
all we think; every effort we can make to throw off our subjec-
tion will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a
man may pretend to abjure their empire; but in reality he will
remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recog-
nizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that
system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by
the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt to ques-
tion it deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of
reason, in darkness instead of light.
But enough of metaphor and declamation: it is not by such
means that moral science is to be improved.
The principle of utility is the foundation of the present work;
it will be proper, therefore, at the outset to give an explicit and
determinate account of what is meant by it. By the principle
of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves
of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it
appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the
party whose interest is in question; or, what is the same thing
in other words, to promote or to oppose that happiness. I say of
every action whatsoever; and therefore not only of every action
of a private individual, but of every measure of government.
By utility is meant that property in any object whereby it
tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness
(all this in the present case comes to the same thing), or (what
comes again to the same thing) to prevent the happening of
mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose interest
is considered: if that party be the community in general, then
the happiness of the community; if a particular individual, then
the happiness of that individual.
The interest of the community is one of the most general
expressions that can occur in the phraseology of morals: no won-
der that the meaning of it is often lost. When it has a meaning,
## p. 1777 (#575) ###########################################
JEREMY BENTHAM
1777
it is this: The community is a fictitious body, composed of the
individual persons who are considered as constituting, as it were,
its members. The interest of the community, then, is what? The
sum of the interests of the several members who compose it.
It is vain to talk of the interest of the community, without
understanding what is the interest of the individual. A thing is
said to promote the interest, or to be for the interest, of an indi-
vidual, when it tends to add to the sum total of his pleasures:
or, what comes to the same thing, to diminish the sum total of
his pains.
An action, then, may be said to be conformable to the prin-
ciple of utility, or for shortness' sake to utility (meaning with
respect to the community at large), when the tendency it has to
augment the happiness of the community is greater than any it
has to diminish it.
A measure of government (which is but a particular kind of
action, performed by a particular person or persons) may be said
to be conformable to or dictated by the principle of utility, when
in like manner the tendency which it has to augment the hap-
piness of the community is greater than any which it has to
diminish it.
When an action, or in particular a measure of government, is
supposed by a man to be conformable to the principle of utility,
it may be convenient for the purposes of discourse to imagine
a kind of law or dictate called a law or dictate of utility, and to
speak of the action in question as being conformable to such
law or dictate.
A man may be said to be a partisan of the principle of utility,
when the approbation or disapprobation he annexes to any action,
or to any measure, is determined by and proportioned to the
tendency which he conceives it to have to augment or to dimin-
ish the happiness of the community; or in other words, to its
conformity or unconformity to the laws or dictates of utility.
Of an action that is conformable to the principle of utility,
one may always say either that it is one that ought to be done,
or at least that it is not one that ought not to be done. One
may say also that it is right it should be done, at least that it
is not wrong it should be done; that it is a right action, at least
that it is not a wrong action. When thus interpreted, the words
ought, and right and wrong, and others of that stamp, have a
meaning; when otherwise, they have none.
111-112
## p. 1778 (#576) ###########################################
1778
JEREMY BENTHAM
REMINISCENCES OF CHILDHOOD
D
URING my visits to Barking, I used to be my grandmother's
bedfellow. The dinner hour being as early as two o'clock,
she had a regular supper, which was served up in her own
sleeping-room; and immediately after finishing it, she went to
bed. Of her supper I was not permitted to partake, nor was the
privation a matter of much regret. I had what I preferred - a
portion of gooseberry pie; hers was a scrag of mutton, boiled
with parsley and butter. I do not remember any variety.
.
My amusements consisted in building houses with old cards,
and sometimes playing at Beat the knave out of doors with
my grandmother. My time of going to bed was perhaps an
hour before hers; but by way of preparation, I never failed to
receive her blessing. Previous to the ceremony, I underwent a
catechetical examination, of which one of the questions was, “Who
were the children that were saved in the fiery furnace ? ” Answer,
«Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. ” But as the examination
frequently got no farther, the word Abednego got associated in
my mind with very agreeable ideas, and it ran through my ears
like “Shadrach, Meshach, and To-bed-we-go,” in a sort of pleasant
confusion, which is not yet removed. As I grew in years, I
became a fit receptacle for some of my grandmother's communi-
cations, among which the state of her family and the days of her
youth were most prominent.
There hung on the wall, perpetually in view, a sampler, the
produce of the industry and ingenuity of her mother or her
grandmother, of which the subject-matter was the most important
of all theologico-human incidents, the fall of man in Paradise.
There was Adam — there was Eve — and there was the serpent.
In these there was much to interest and amuse me. One thing
alone puzzled me; it was the forbidden fruit. The size was
enormous. It was larger than that species of the genus Oran-
geum which goes by the name of the forbidden fruit » in some
of our West India settlements. Its size was not less than that
of the outer shell of a cocoanut. All the rest of the objects
as usual in plano; this was in alto, indeed in altissimo
rilievo. What to make of it, at a time when my mind was
unable to distinguish fictions from realities, I knew not. The
recollection is strong in me of the mystery it seemed to be. My
grandmother promised me the sampler after her death as a
were
## p. 1779 (#577) ###########################################
JEREMY BENTHAM
1779
legacy, and the promise was no small gratification; but the prom-
ise, with many other promises of jewels and gold coins, was pro-
ductive of nothing but disappointment. Her death took place
when I was at Oxford. My father went down; and without con-
sulting me, or giving the slightest intimation of his intention, let
the house, and sold to the tenant almost everything that was in
it. It was doing as he was wont to do, notwithstanding his
undoubted affection for me. In the same way he sold the estate
he had given to me as a provision on the occasion of his second
marriage. In the mass went some music-books which I had bor-
rowed of Mrs. Browne. Not long after, she desired them to be
returned. I stood before her like a defenseless culprit, conscious
of my inability to make restitution; and at the same time, such
was my state of mental weakness that I knew not what to say
for apology or defense.
My grandmother's mother was a matron, I was told, of high
respectability and corresponding piety; well-informed and strong-
minded. She was distinguished, however; for while other matrons
of her age and quality had seen many a ghost, she had seen
but one.
She was in this particular on a level with the learned
lecturer, afterwards judge, the commentator Blackstone. But she
was heretical, and her belief bordered on Unitarianism. And by
the way, this subject of ghosts has been among the torments of
Even now, when sixty or seventy years have passed
over my head since my boyhood received the impression which
my grandmother gave it, though my judgment is wholly free, my
imagination is not wholly so. My infirmity was not unknown to
the servants. It was a permanent source of amusement to ply
me with horrible phantoms in all imaginable shapes. Under the
pagan dispensation, every object a man could set his eyes on
had been the seat of some pleasant adventure. At Barking, in
the almost solitude of which so large a portion of my life was
passed, every spot that could be made by any means to answer
the purpose was the abode of some spectre or group of spectres.
So dexterous was the invention of those who worked upon my
apprehensions, that they managed to transform a real into a fic.
titious being. His name was Palethorp; and Palethorp, in my
vocabulary, was synonymous with hobgoblin. The origin of
these horrors was this:
My father's house was a short half-mile distant from the prin-
cipal part of the town, from that part where was situated the
my life.
## p. 1780 (#578) ###########################################
1780
JEREMY BENTHAM
mansion of the lord of the manor, Sir Crisp Gascoigne. One
morning the coachman and the footman took a conjunct walk to
a public-house kept by a man of the name Palethorp; they took
me with them: it was before I was breeched. They called for a
pot of beer; took each of them a sip, and handed the pot to me.
On their requisition, I took another; and when about to depart,
the amount was called for. The two servants paid their quota,
and I was called on for mine. Nemo dat quod non habet — this
maxim, to my no small vexation, I was compelled to exemplify.
Mr. Palethorp, the landlord, had a visage harsh and ill-favored,
and he insisted on my discharging my debt. At this very early
age, without having put in for my share of the gifts of fortune,
I found myself in the state of an insolvent debtor. The demand
harassed me so mercilessly that I could hold out no longer: the
door being open, I took to my heels; and as the way was too
plain to be missed, I ran home as fast as they could carry me.
The scene of the terrors of Mr. Palethorp's name and visitation,
in pursuit of me, was the country-house at Barking; but neither
was the town-house free from them; for in those terrors, the
servants possessed an instrument by which it was in their power
at any time to get rid of my presence. Level with the kitchen-
level with the landing-place in which the staircase took its com-
mencement — were the usual offices. When my company became
troublesome, a sure and continually repeated means of exoner-
ating themselves from it was for the footman to repair to the
adjoining subterraneous apartments, invest his shoulders with
some strong covering, and concealing his countenance, stalk in
with a hollow, menacing, and inarticulate tone. Lest that should
not be sufficient, the servants had, stuck by the fireplace, the
portraiture of a hobgoblin, to which they had given the name of
Palethorp. For some years I was in the condition of poor Dr.
Priestley, on whose bodily frame another name, too awful to be
mentioned, used to produce a sensation more than mental.
## p. 1781 (#579) ###########################################
JEREMY BENTHAM
1781
see-
W* common right, for the ladies.
LETTER FROM BOWOOD TO GEORGE WILSON (1781)
SUNDAY, 12 o'clock.
HERE
The first place, by
common right, to the ladies. The ideas I brought with
me respecting the female part of this family are turned
quite topsy-turvy, and unfortunately they are not yet cleared up.
I had expected to find in Lady Shelburne a Lady Louisa Fitz-
patrick, sister of an Earl of Ossory, whom I remember at school;
instead of her, I find a lady who has for her sister a Miss Caro-
line V—i is not this the maid of honor, the sister to Lady
G— ? the lady who was fond of Lord C—, and of whom he
was fond ? and whom he quitted for an heiress and a pair of
horns ? Be they who they may, the one is loveliest of matrons,
the other of virgins: they have both of them more than I could
wish of reserve, but it is a reserve of modesty rather than of
pride.
The quadrupeds, whom you know I love next, consist of a
child of a year old, a tiger, a spaniel formerly attached to Lady
Shelburne - at present to my Lord — besides four plebeian cats
who are taken no notice of, horses, etc. , and a wild boar who is
sent off on a matrimonial expedition to the farm. The four first
I have commenced a friendship with, especially the first of all,
to whom I am body-coachman extraordinary en titre d'office:
Henry, (for that is his name) [the present Lord Lansdowne]
for such an animal, has the most thinking countenance I ever
saw; being very clean, I can keep him without disgust and even
with pleasure, especially after having been rewarded, as I have
just now, for my attention to him, by a pair of the sweetest
smiles imaginable from his mamma and aunt. As Providence
hath ordered it, they both play on the harpsichord and at chess.
I am flattered with the hopes of engaging with them, before
long, either in war or harmony: not to-day — because, whether
you know it or not, it is Sunday; I know it, having been pay-
ing my devotions— our church, the hall — our minister, a sleek
young parson, the curate of the parish — our saints, a naked
Mercury, an Apollo in the same dress, and a Venus de' Medi-
cis - our congregation, the two ladies, Captain Blankett, and
your humble servant, upon the carpet by the minister — below,
the domestics, superioris et inferioris ordinis. Among the former
I was concerned to see poor Mathews, the librarian, who, I could
## p. 1782 (#580) ###########################################
1782
JEREMY BENTHAM
not help thinking, had as good a title to be upon the carpet as
myself.
Of Lord Fitzmaurice I know nothing, but from his bust and
letters: the first bespeaks him a handsome youth, the latter an
ingenious one. He is not sixteen, and already he writes better
than his father. He is under the care of a Mr. Jervis, a dis-
senting minister, who has had charge of him since he was six
years old. He has never been at any public school of education.
He has now for a considerable time been traveling about the
kingdom, that he may know something of his own country before
he goes to others, and be out of the way of adulation.
I am interrupted - adieu! le reste à l'ordinaire prochain.
FRAGMENT OF A LETTER TO LORD LANSDOWNE (1790)
I"
and your
T was using me very ill, that it was, to get upon stilts as you
did, and resolve not to be angry with me, after all the pains
I had taken to make you so.
You have been angry, let me
tell you, with people as little worth it before now;
being so niggardly of it in my instance, may be added to the
account of your injustice. I see you go upon the old Christian
principle of heaping coals of fire upon people's heads, which is
the highest refinement upon vengeance. I see, moreover, that
according to your system of cosmogony, the difference is but
accidental between the race of kings and that of the first Baron
of Lixmore: that ex-lawyers come like other men from Adam,
and ex-ministers from somebody who started up out of the
ground before him, in some more elevated part of the country.
To lower these pretensions, it would be serving you right, if
I were to tell you that I was not half so angry as I appeared
to be; that, therefore, according to the countryman's rule, you
have not so much the advantage over me as you may think you
have: that the real object of what anger I really felt was rather
the situation in which I found myself than you or anybody; but
that, as none but a madman would go to quarrel with a
entity called a situation, it was necessary for me to look out for
somebody who, somehow or other, was connected with it.
non-
## p. 1782 (#581) ###########################################
## p. 1782 (#582) ###########################################
P. J. DE BERANGER.
## p. 1782 (#583) ###########################################
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## p. 1782 (#584) ###########################################
P. J. DE BERANGER.
## p. 1782 (#585) ###########################################
Trine
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## p. 1782 (#586) ###########################################
FANUL
## p. 1783 (#587) ###########################################
1783
JEAN-PIERRE DE BÉRANGER
(1780–1857)
BY ALCÉE FORTIER
B
ÉRANGER, like Hugo, has commemorated the date of his birth,
but their verses
are very different. Hugo's poem is lofty
in style, beginning -
Ce siècle avait deux ans! Rome remplaçait Sparte,
Déjà Napoléon perçait sous Bonaparte,
Et du premier consul déjà, par maint endroit,
Le front de l'empereur brisait le masque étroit. ”
(This century was two years old; Rome displaced Sparta,
Napoleon already was visible in Bonaparte,
And the narrow mask of the First Consul, in many places,
Was already pierced by the forehead of the Emperor. )
Béranger's verses have less force, but are charming in their sim-
plicity:-
«Dans ce Paris plein d'or et de misère,
En l'an du Christ mil sept cent quatre-vingt,
Chez un tailleur, mon pauvre et vieux grand-père,
Moi, nouveau-né, sachais ce qui m'advint. ”
(In this Paris full of gold and misery,
In the year of Christ one thousand seven hundred and eighty,
At the house of a tailor, my grandfather poor and old,
I, a new-born child, knew what happened to me. )
Authors of the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries are more
subjective in their writings than those of the seventeenth, whose
characters can rarely be known from their works. A glance at the
life and surroundings of Béranger will show their influence on his
genius.
Béranger's mother was abandoned by her husband shortly after
her marriage, and her child was born at the house of her father, the
old tailor referred to in the song The Tailor and the Fairy. ' She
troubled herself little about the boy, and he was forsaken in his
childhood. Béranger tells us that he does not know how he learned
to read. In the beginning of the year 1789 he was sent to a school
in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, and there, mounted on the roof of
a house, he saw the capture of the Bastille on the 14th of July.
## p. 1784 (#588) ###########################################
1784
JEAN-PIERRE DE BÉRANGER
This event made a great impression on him, and may have laid
the foundations of his republican principles. When he was nine and
a half his father sent him to one of his sisters, an innkeeper at
Péronne, that town in the north of France famous for the interview
in 1468 between Louis XI. and Charles the Bold, when the fox, put
himself in the power of the lion, as related so vividly in Quentin
Durward.
Béranger's aunt was very kind to him. At Péronne he went to
a free primary school founded by Ballue de Bellenglise, where the
students governed themselves, electing their mayor, their judges, and
their justices of the peace. Béranger was president of a republican
club of boys, and was called upon several times to address members
of the Convention who passed through Péronne.
