If the
whole welkin hang overcast in drizzly dinginess, the feeblest
light-gleam, or speck of blue, cannot pass unheeded.
whole welkin hang overcast in drizzly dinginess, the feeblest
light-gleam, or speck of blue, cannot pass unheeded.
Thomas Carlyle
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? 132
Carlyle's Essays
"Beati pacifici, Happy are the peacemakers," said his
Majesty always. Good Majesty; shining examples of jus-
tice too he is prepared to afford; and has a snarl in him
which can occasionally bite. Of Crichton Lord Sanquhar,
from the pleasant valley of Nith,--how the Fencing-master
accidentally pricked an eye out of him, and he forgave it;
how, much wrought-upon afterwards, he was at last induced
to have the Fencing-master assassinated;--and to have him-
self executed in Palace Yatd in consequence, and his two
assassin servants hanged in Fleet Street; rough Border serv-
ing-men of all work, too unregardful of the gallows: of this
unadmirable Crichton the whole world heard, not without
pity, and can still hear. 1
This of Croydon Races, too, if we read old Osborne with
reflection, will become significant of many things. How the
races were going on, a new delightful invention of that age;
and Croydon Heath was populous with multitudes come to
see; and between James Ramsay of the Dalhousie Ramsays,
and Philip Herbert of the Montgomery Herberts, there rose
sudden strife; sharp passages of wit,--ending in a sharp
stroke of Ramsay's switch over the crown and face of my
Lord Montgomery, the great Earl of Pembroke's brother,
and himself capable to be Earl Pembroke! It is a fact of the
most astonishing description: undeniable,--though the exact
date and circumstances will now never be discovered in this
world. It is all vague as cloud, in old Osborne; lies off or on,
within sight of Prince Henry's Pageant; exact date of it never
to be known. Yet is it well recognisable as distant ill-defined
land, and no cloud; not dream but astonishing fact. Can the
reader sufficiently admire at it? The honourable Philip
Herbert, of the best blood of England, here is he switched over
the crown by an accursed Scotch Ramsay! We hear the
swift-stinging descent of the ignominious horse-switch; we
see the swift-blazing countenances of gods and men.
Instantaneous shriek, as was inevitable, rises near and far:
The Scotch insolence, Scotch pride and hunger, Scotch
damnability! And "a cripple man, with only the use of
three fingers," crooked of shape, hot of temper, rode about
the field with drawn dagger; urging in a shrill manner, that
we should prick every Scotch lown of them home to their own
beggarly country again, or to the Devil,--off Croydon Heath,
1 State Trials.
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? Two Hundred and Fifty Years Ago 133
at least. The name of this shrill individual, with dagger
grasped between two fingers and a thumb, was " John Pinch-
back" or Pinchbeck; and appears here in History, with
something like golden lustre, for one moment and no more.
"Let us breakfast on them at Croydon," cries Pinchbeck, in a
shrill, inspired manner; "and sup on them at London! "
, The hour was really ominous. But Philip Herbert, beautiful
young man, himself of infirm temper and given to strokes,
stood firmly dissuasive: he is in the King's service, how
shall he answer it; he was himself to blame withal. And
young Edward Sackville is, with his young friend Bruce of
Kinloss, firmly dissuasive; it is the Bruce whom we saw at
the chapel-door, stepping-out a new-made knight, now here
with Sackville; dear friends these, not always to be friends!
But for the present they are firmly dissuasive; all considerate
persons are dissuasive. Pinchbeck's dagger brandishes itself
in vain.
Sits the wind so, O Pinchbeck? Sidney's sister, Pembroke's
mother: this is her son, and he stands a switch? --Yes, my
shrill crookbacked friend, to avoid huge riot and calamity, he
does so: and I see a massive nobleness in the man, which
thou, egregious cock of bantam, wilt never in this world
comprehend, but only crow over in thy shrill way. Ramsay
and the Scots, and all persons, rode home unharmed that
night; and my shrill friend gradually composed himself
again. Philip Herbert may expect knighthoods, lordhoods,
court-promotions: neither did his heroic mother " tear her
hair," I think, to any great extent,--except in the imagination
of Osborne, Pinchbeck and suchlike.
This was the scene of Croydon Races; a fact, and signifi-
cant of many facts, that hangs-out for us like a cloud-island,
and is not cloud. 1
No. Ill
SIR THOMAS DUTTON AND SIR HATTON CHEEK
His Majesty, as I perceive in spite of calumnies, was not a
"coward; " see how he behaved in the Gowrie Conspiracy and
elsewhere. But he knew the value, to all persons, and to all
interests of persons, of a whole skin; how unthrifty every-
1 Francis Osborne's Traditional Memorials on the Reign of James the
First (Reprinted in Sir Walter Scott's History of the Court of James I.
Edinburgh, 1811), pp. 220-227.
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? 134 Carlyle's Essays
where is any solution of continuity, if it can be avoided! He
struggled to preside pacifically over an age of some ferocity
much given to wrangling. Peace here, if possible; skins
were not made for mere slitting and slashing! You that are
for war, cannot you go abroad, and fight the Papist Spaniards?
Over in the Netherlands there is always fighting enough.
You that are of ruffling humour, gather your truculent
ruffians together; make yourselves colonels over them; go
to the Netherlands, and fight your bellyful!
Which accordingly many do, earning deathless war-laurels
for the moment; and have done, and will continue doing, in
those generations. Our gallant Veres, Earl of Oxford and the
others, it has long been their way: gallant Cecil, to be called
Earl of Wimbledon; gallant Sir John Burroughs, gallant Sir
Hatton Cheek,--it is still their way. Deathless military
renowns are gathered there in this manner; deathless for the
moment. Did not Ben Jonson, in his young hard days, bear
arms very manfully as a private soldado there? Ben, who
now writes learned plays and court-masks as Poet Laureate,
served manfully with pike and sword there for his groat a day
with rations. And once when a Spanish soldier came strut-
ting forward between the lines, flourishing his weapon, and
defying all persons in general,--Ben stept forth, as I hear;1
fenced that braggart Spaniard, since no other would do it;
and ended by soon slitting him in two, and so silencing him!
Ben's war-tuck, to judge by the flourish of his pen, must have
had a very dangerous stroke in it.
"Swashbuckler age," we said; but the expression was
incorrect, except as a figure. Bucklers went out fifty years
ago, " about the twentieth of Queen Elizabeth;" men do not
now swash with them, or fight in that way. Iron armour
has mostly gone out, except in mere pictures of soldiers:
King James said, It was an excellent invention; you could
get no harm in it, and neither could you do any. Bucklers,
either for horse or foot, are quite gone. Yet old Mr. Stowe,
good chronicler, can recollect when every gentleman had his
buckler: and at length every serving-man and City dandy.
Smithfield,--still a waste field, full of puddles in wet weather,
--was in those days full of buckler-duels, every Sunday and
holiday in the dry season; and was called Ruffian's Rig,
or some such name.
1 Life of Ben Jonson.
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? Two Hundred and Fifty Years Ago 135
A man, in those days, bought his buckler, of gilt leather
and wood, at the haberdasher's; "hung it over his back, by
a strap fastened to the pommel of his sword in front. "
Elegant men showed what taste, or sense of poetic beauty,
was in them, by the fashion of their buckler. With Spanish
beaver, with starched ruff, and elegant Spanish cloak, with
> elegant buckler hanging at his back, a man, if his moustachios
and boots were in good order, stepped forth with some
satisfaction. Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the
pard; a decidedly truculent-looking figure. Jostle him in
the street thoroughfares, accidentally splash his boots as you
pass,--by Heaven, the buckler gets upon his arm, the sword
flashes in his fist, with oaths enough; and you too being
ready, there is a noise! Clink, clank, death and fury; all
'persons gathering round, and new quarrels springing from
this one! And Dogberry comes up with the town-guard?
And the shopkeepers hastily close their shops? Nay, it
is hardly necessary, says Mr. Howe: these buckler-fights
amount only to noise, for most part; the jingle of iron against
tin and painted leather. Ruffling swashers strutting along,
with big oaths and whiskers, delight to pick a quarrel; but
the rule is, you do not thrust, you do not strike below the
waist; and it was oftenest a dry duel--mere noise, as of
working tinsmiths, with profane swearing! Empty vapour-
ing bullyrooks and braggarts, they encumber the thorough-
fares mainly. Dogberry and Verges ought to apprehend
them. I have seen, in Smithfield on a dry holiday, " thirty
of them on a side," fighting and hammering as if for life;
and was not at the pains1 to look at them, the blockheads;
their noise as the mere beating of old kettles to me!
The truth is, serving-men themselves, and City apprentices,
had got bucklers; and the duels, no death following, ceased to
be sublime. About fifty years ago, serious men took to
fighting with rapiers, and the buckler fell away. Holles in
Sherwood, as we saw, fought with rapier, and he soon spoiled
Markham. Rapier and dagger especially; that is a more
silent duel, but a terribly serious one! Perhaps the reader
will like to take a view of one such serious duel in those days,
and therewith close this desultory chapter.
It was at the siege of Juliers, in the Netherlands wars, of
1 Stowe's Chronicle, and Howe's Continuation, 1024, etc.
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? 136 Carlyle's Essays
the year 1610;1 we give the date, for wars are perpetual, or
nearly so, in the Netherlands. At one of the storm-parties of
the siege of Juliers, the gallant Sir Hatton Cheek, above
alluded to, a superior officer of the English force which fights
there under my Lord Cecil, that shall be Wimbledon; the
gallant Sir Hatton, I say, being of hot temper, superior officer,
and the service a storm-party on some bastion or demilune,
speaks sharp word of command to Sir Thomas Dutton, the
officer under him, who also is probably of hot temper in this
hot moment. Sharp word of command to Dutton; and the
movement not proceeding rightly, sharp word of rebuke. To
which Dutton, with kindled voice, answers something sharp;
is answered still more sharply with voice high-flaming;--
whereat Dutton suddenly holds in; says merely, "He is
under military duty here, but perhaps will not always be so;"
and rushing forward, does his order silently, the best he can.
His order done,Dutton straightwaylays down his commission;
packs up, that night, and returns to England.
Sir Hatton Cheek prosecutes his work at the siege of
Juliers; gallantly assists at the taking of Juliers, triumphant
over all the bastions and half-moons there; but hears withal
that Dutton is, at home in England, defaming him as a
choleric tyrant and so forth. Dreadful news; which brings
some biliary attack on the gallant man, and reduces him to
a bed of sickness. Hardly recovered, he despatches message
to Dutton, That he will request to have the pleasure of his
company, with arms and seconds ready, on some neutral
ground,--Calais sands for instance,--at an early day, if con-
venient. Convenient; yes, as dinner to the hungry! answers
Dutton; and time, place and circumstances are rapidly
enough agreed upon.
And so, on Calais sands, in a winter morning of the year
1610, this is what we see, most authentically, through the
1 Siege began in the latter end of July 1610; ended victoriously,
4th September following: principal assaults were, 10th August and
14th August; in one of which this affair of ours must have taken rise.
Siege commanded by Christian of Anhalt, a famed Protestant Captain
of those times. Henri IV. of France was assassinated while setting-out
for this siege; Prince Maurice of Nassau was there; "Dutch troops,
French, English and German" (Brandenburgers and Pfalz-Neu-
burgers chiefly, versus Kaiser Rodolf II. and his unjust seizure of the
Town) "fought with the greatest unity. " Prelude to the Thirty-
Years' War, and one of the principal sources of it, this Controversy
about Juliers. (Carl Friedrich Pauli: Allgemeine Preussische Staats-
Ccschichte, 4to, Halle, 1762, iii. 502-527. )
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? Two Hundred and Fifty Years Ago 137
lapse of dim Time. Two gentlemen stript to the shirt and
waistband; in the two hands of each a rapier and dagger
clutched; their looks sufficiently serious! The seconds,
having stript, equipt, and fairly overhauled and certified
them, are just about retiring from the measured fate-circle,
not without indignation that they are forbidden to fight.
Two gentlemen in this alarming posture; of whom the
Universe knows, has known, and will know nothing, except
that they were of choleric humour, and assisted in the Nether-
lands wars! They are evidently English human creatures, in
the height of silent fury, and measured circuit of fate; whom we
here audibly name once more, Sir Hatton Cheek, Sir Thomas
Dutton, knights both, soldadoes both. Ill-fated English
human creatures, what horrible confusion of the Pit is this?
Dutton, though in suppressed rage, the seconds about to
withdraw, will explain some things if a word were granted.
"No words," says the other; "stand on your guard! " bran-
dishing his rapier, grasping harder his dagger. Dutton, now
silent too, is on his guard. Good Heavens: after some brief
flourishing and flashing,--the gleam of the swift clear steel
playing madly in one's eyes,--they, at the first pass, plunge
, home on one another; home, with beak and claws; home to
the very heart! Cheek's rapier is through Dutton's throat
from before, and his dagger is through it from behind,--the
windpipe miraculously missed; and, in the same instant,
Dutton's rapier is through Cheek's body from before, his
dagger through his back from behind,--lungs and life not
missed; and the seconds have to advance, "pull out the
four bloody weapons," disengage that hell-embrace of theirs.
This is serious enough! Cheek reels, his life fast flowing; but
still rushes rabid on Dutton, who merely parries, skips; till
'Cheek reels down, dead in his rage. "He had a bloody
burial there that morning," says my ancient friend. 1 He will
assist no more in the Netherlands or other wars.
Such scene does History disclose, as in sunbeams, as in
blazing hell-fire, on Calais sands, in the raw winter morning;
then drops the blanket of centuries, of everlasting Night, over
it, and passes on elsewhither. Gallant Sir Hatton Cheek lies
buried there, and Cecil of Wimbledon, son of Burleigh, will
have to seek another superior officer. What became of the
living Dutton afterwards, I have never to this moment had
the least hint.
1 Wilson (in Kennet), ii. 684.
II 704 K
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? CORN-LAW RHYMES1
Smelfungus Redivivus, throwing down his critical assaying
balance some years ago, and taking leave of the Belles-Lettres
function, expressed himself in this abrupt way: "The end
having come, it is fit that we end. Poetry having ceased to
be read, or published, or written, how can it continue to
be reviewed? With your Lake Schools, and Border-Thief
Schools, and Cockney and Satanic Schools, there has been
enough to do; and now, all these Schools having burnt or
smouldered themselves out, and left nothing but a wide-
spread wreck of ashes, dust and cinders,--or perhaps dying
embers, kicked to and fro under the feet of innumerable
women and children in the Magazines, and at best blown here
and there into transient sputters, with vapour enough, so as
to form what you might name a boundless Green-sick, or
New-Sentimental, or Sleep-Awake School,--what remains
but to adjust ourselves to circumstances? Urge me not,"
continues the able Editor, suddenly changing his figure,
"with considerations that Poetry, as the inward voice of
Life, must be perennial, only dead in one form to become
alive in another; that this still abundant deluge of Metre,
seeing there must needs be fractions of Poetry floating scat-
tered in it, ought still to be net-fished, at all events surveyed
and taken note of: the survey of English Metre, at this epoch,
perhaps transcends the human faculties; to hire-out the
reading of it, by estimate, at a remunerative rate per page,
would, in few Quarters, reduce the cash-box of any extant
Review to the verge of insolvency. "
What our distinguished contemporary has said remains
said. Far be it from us to censure or counsel any able
1 Edinburgh Review, No. no. -- I. "Corn-Law Rhymes. " Third
Edition. 8vo. London, 1831.
2. "Love; a Poem. " By the Author of "Corn-Law Rhymes. "
Third Edition. 8vo. London, 1831.
3. "The Village Patriarch; a Poem. " By the Author of " Corn-
Law Rhymes. " i2mo. London, 1831.
138
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? Corn-Law Rhymes
139
Editor; to draw aside the Editorial veil, and, officiously
prying into his interior mysteries, impugn the laws he walks
by! For Editors, as for others, there are times of perplexity,
wherein the cunning of the wisest will scantily suffice his own
wants, to say nothing of his neighbour's.
To us, on our side, meanwhile, it remains clear that Poetry,
, or were it but Metre, should nowise be altogether neglected.
Surely it is the Reviewer's trade to sit watching not only the
tillage, crop-rotation, marketings and good or evil husbandry
of the Economic Earth, but also the weather-symptoms of the
Literary Heaven, on which those former so much depend:
if any promising or threatening meteoric phenomenon make
its appearance, and he proclaim not tidings thereof, it is at
his peril. Farther, be it considered how, in this singular
poetic epoch, a small matter constitutes a novelty.
If the
whole welkin hang overcast in drizzly dinginess, the feeblest
light-gleam, or speck of blue, cannot pass unheeded.
The Works of this Corn-Law Rhymer we might liken rather
to some little fraction of a rainbow: hues of joy and harmony,
painted out of troublous tears. No round full bow, indeed;
gloriously spanning the heavens; shone on by the full sun;
and, with seven-striped, gold-crimson border (as is in some
sort the office of Poetry) dividing Black from Brilliant:
not such; alas, still far from it! Yet, in very truth, a little
prismatic blush, glowing genuine among the wet clouds;
which proceeds, if you will, from a sun cloud-hidden, yet
indicates that a sun does shine, and above those vapours, a
whole azure vault and celestial firmament stretch serene.
Strange as it may seem, it is nevertheless true, that here
we have once more got sight of a Book calling itself Poetry,
yet which actually is a kind of Book, and no empty paste-
board Case, and simulacrum or " ghost-defunct" of a Book,
such as is too often palmed on the world, and handed over
Booksellers' counters, with a demand of real money for it,
as if it too were a reality. The speaker here is of that singular
class who have something to say; whereby, though delivering
, himself in verse, and in these days, he does not deliver him-
self wholly in jargon, but articulately, and with a certain
degree of meaning, that has been believed, and therefore is
again believable.
To some the wonder and interest will be heightened by
another circumstance: that the speaker in question is not
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? 140 Carlyle's Essays
school-learned, or even furnished with pecuniary capital;
is, indeed, a quite unmoneyed, russet-coated speaker; nothing
or little other than a Sheffield worker in brass and iron, who
describes himself as " one of the lower, little removed above
the lowest class. " Be of what class he may, the man is
provided, as we can perceive, with a rational god-created
soul; which too has fashioned itself into some clearness,
some self-subsistence, and can actually see and know with
its own organs; and in rugged substantial English, nay with
tones of poetic melody, utter forth what it has seen.
It used to be said that lions do not paint, that poor men
do not write; but the case is altering now. Here is a voice
coming from the deep Cyclopean forges, where Labour, in
real soot and sweat, beats with his thousand hammers " the
red son of the furnace;" doing personal battle with Necessity,
and her dark brute Powers, to make them reasonable and
serviceable; an intelligible voice from the hitherto Mute and
Irrational, to tell us at first-hand how it is with him, what in
very deed is the theorem of the world and of himself, which
he, in those dim depths of his, in that wearied head of his,
has put together. To which voice, in several respects
significant enough, let good ear be given.
Here too be it premised, that nowise under the category
of "Uneducated Poets," or in any fashion of dilettante
patronage, can our Sheffield friend be produced. His position
is unsuitable for that: so is ours. Genius, which the French
lady declared to be of no sex, is much more certainly of no
rank; neither when "the spark of Nature's fire" has been
imparted, should Education take high airs in her artificial
light,--which is too often but phosphorescence and putres-
cence. In fact, it now begins to be suspected here and there,
that this same aristocratic recognition, which looks down
with an obliging smile from its throne, of bound Volumes and
gold Ingots, and admits that it is wonderfully well for one of
the uneducated classes, may be getting out of place. There
are unhappy times in the world's history, when he that is the
least educated will chiefly have to say that he is the least per-
verted; and with the multitude of false eye-glasses, convex,
concave, green, even yellow, has not lost the natural use of
his eyes. For a generation that reads Cobbett's Prose, and
Burns's Poetry, it need be no miracle that here also is a man
who can handle both pen and hammer like a man.
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? Corn-Law Rhymes 141
Nevertheless, this serene-highness attitude and temper is
so frequent, perhaps it were good to turn the tables for a
moment, and see what look it has under that reverse aspect.
How were it if we surmised, that for a man gifted with natural
vigour, with a man's character to be developed in him, more
especially if in the way of Literature, as Thinker and Writer,
. it is actually, in these strange days, no special misfortune to
be trained up among the Uneducated classes, and not among
the Educated; but rather of two misfortunes the smaller?
For all men, doubtless, obstructions abound; spiritual
growth must be hampered and stunted, and has to struggle
through with difficulty, if it do not wholly stop. We may
grant, too, that, for a mediocre character, the continual
training and tutoring, from language-masters, dancing-
masters, posture-masters of all sorts, hired and volunteer,
which a high rank in any time and country assures, there
will be produced a certain superiority, or at worst, air of
superiority, over the corresponding mediocre character of
low rank: thus we perceive the vulgar Do-nothing, as con-
trasted with the vulgar Drudge, is in general a much prettier
man; with a wider, perhaps clearer outlook into the distance;
> in innumerable superficial matters, however it may be when
we go deeper, he has a manifest advantage. But with the
man of uncommon character, again, in whom a germ of
irrepressible Force has been implanted, and will unfold itself
into some sort of freedom, altogether the reverse may hold.
For such germs too, there is, undoubtedly enough, a proper
soil where they will grow best, and an improper one where they
will grow worst. True also, where there is a will, there is a
way; where a genius has been given, a possibility, a cer-
. tainty of its growing is also given. Yet often it seems as
if the injudicious gardening and manuring were worse than
none at all; and killed what the inclemencies of blind chance
would have spared. We find accordingly that few Fredericks
or Napoleons, indeed none since the Great Alexander, who
unfortunately drank himself to death too soon for proving
what lay in him, were nursed up with an eye to their vocation:
mostly with an eye quite the other way, in the midst of isola-
> tion and pain, destitution and contradiction. Nay in our
own times, have we not seen two men of genius, a Byron and
a Burns; they both, by mandate of Nature, struggle and
must struggle towards clear Manhood, stormfully enough,
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? 142 Carlylc's Essays
for the space of six-and-thirty years; yet only the gifted
Ploughman can partially prevail therein: the gifted Peer
must toil and strive, and shoot-out in wild efforts, yet die
at last in Boyhood, with the promise of his Manhood still
but announcing itself in the distance. Truly, as was once
written, " it is only the artichoke that will not grow except
in gardens; the acorn is cast carelessly abroad into the
wilderness, yet on the wild soil it nourishes itself, and rises
to be an oak. " All woodmen, moreover, will tell you that
fat manure is the ruin of your oak; likewise that the thinner
and wilder your soil, the tougher, more iron-textured is your
timber,--though unhappily also the smaller. So too with
the spirits of men: they become pure from their errors by
suffering for them; he who has battled, were it only with
Poverty and hard toil, will be found stronger, more expert,
than he who could stay at home from the battle, concealed
among the Provision-waggons, or even not unwatchfully
"abiding by the stuff. " In which sense, an observer, not
without experience of our time, has said: Had I a man of
clearly developed character (clear, sincere within its limits),
of insight, courage and real applicable force of head and of
heart, to search for; and not a man of luxuriously distorted
character, with haughtiness for courage, and for insight
and applicable force, speculation and plausible show of
force,--it were rather among the lower than among the higher
classes that I should look for him.
A hard saying, indeed, seems this same: that he, whose
other wants were all beforehand supplied; to whose capabili-
ties no problem was presented except even this, How to
cultivate them to best advantage, should attain less real
culture than he whose first grand problem and obligation
was nowise spiritual culture, but hard labour for his daily
bread! Sad enough must the perversion be, where prepara-
tions of such magnitude issue in abortion; and so sumptuous
an Art with all its appliances can accomplish nothing, not
so much as necessitous Nature would of herself have sup-
plied! Nevertheless, so pregnant is Life with evil as with
good; to such height in an age rich, plethorically overgrown
with means, can means be accumulated in the wrong place,
and immeasurably aggravate wrong tendencies, instead of
righting them, this sad and strange result may actually turn
out to have been realised.
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? Corn-Law Rhymes 143
But what, after all, is meant by uneducated, in a time when
Books have come into the world; come to be household
furniture in every habitation of the civilised world? In
the poorest cottage are Books; is one Book, wherein for
several thousands of years the spirit of man has found light,
and nourishment, and an interpreting response to whatever
is Deepest in him; wherein still, to this day, for the eye that
will look well, the Mystery of Existence reflects itself, if not
resolved, yet revealed, and prophetically emblemed; if not
to the satisfying of the outward sense, yet to the opening
of the inward sense, which is the far grander result. "In
Books lie the creative phcenix-ashes of the whole Past. " All
that men have devised, discovered, done, felt or imagined, lies
recorded in Books; wherein whoso has learned the mystery of
spelling printed letters may find it, and appropriate it.
Nay, what indeed is all this? As if it were by universities
and libraries and lecture-rooms, that man's Education, what
we can call Education, were accomplished; solely, or mainly,
by instilling the dead letter and record of other men's Force,
that the living Force of a new man were to be awakened,
enkindled and purified into victorious clearness! Foolish
Pedant, that sittest there compassionately descanting on the
Learning of Shakspeare! Shakspeare had penetrated into
innumerable things; far into Nature with her divine Splen-
dours and infernal Terrors, her Ariel Melodies, and mystic
mandragora Moans; far into man's workings with Nature,
into man's Art and Artifice; Shakspeare knew (kenned,
which in those days still partially meant can-ned) innumerable
things; what men are, and what the world is, and how and
what men aim at there, from the Dame Quickly of modern
Eastcheap to the Caesar of ancient Rome, over many countries,
over many centuries: of all this he had the clearest under-
standing and constructive comprehension; all this was his
Learning and Insight; what now is thine? Insight into
none of those things; perhaps, strictly considered, into no
thing whatever: solely into thy own sheepskin diplomas,
fat academic honours, into vocables and alphabetic letters,
and but a little way into these! --The grand result of schooling
is a mind with just vision to discern, with free force to do:
the grand schoolmaster is Practice.
And now, when kenning and can-ning have become two
altogether different words; and this, the first principle of
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? 144 Carlyle's Essays
human culture, the foundation-stone of all but false imaginary
culture, that men must, before every other thing, be trained
to do somewhat, has been, for some generations, laid quietly
on the shelf, with such result as we see,--consider what
advantage those same uneducated Working classes have over
the educated Unworking classes, in one particular; herein,
namely, that they must work. To work! What incalculable
sources of cultivation lie in that process, in that attempt;
how it lays hold of the whole man, not of a small theoretical
calculating fraction of him, but of the whole practical, doing
and daring and enduring man; thereby to awaken dormant
faculties, root-out old errors, at every step! He that has
done nothing has known nothing. Vain is it to sit scheming
and plausibly discoursing: up and be doing! If thy know-
ledge be real, put it forth from thee: grapple with real
Nature; try thy theories there, and see how they hold out.
Do one thing, for the first time in thy life do a thing; a new
light will rise to thee on the doing of all things whatsoever.
Truly, a boundless significance lies in work; whereby the
humblest craftsman comes to attain much, which is of
indispensable use, but which he who is of no craft, were he
never so high, runs the risk of missing. Once turn to
Practice, Error and Truth will no longer consort together:
the result of Error involves you in the square-root of a
negative quantity; try to extract that, to extract any earthly
substance or sustenance from that! The honourable
Member can discover that " there is a reaction," and believe
it, and wearisomely reason on it, in spite of all men, while
he so pleases, for still his wine and his oil will not fail him:
but the sooty Brazier, who discovered that brass was green-
cheese, has to act on his discovery; finds therefore, that,
singular as it may seem, brass cannot be masticated for
dinner, green-cheese will not beat into fire-proof dishes;
that such discovery, therefore, has no legs to stand on, and
must even be let fall. Now, take this principle of difference
through the entire lives of two men, and calculate what it
will amount to! Necessity, moreover, which we here see
as the mother of Accuracy, is well known as the mother of
Invention. He who wants everything must know many
things, do many things, to procure even a few: different
enougli with him, whose indispensable knowledge is this
only, that a finger will pull the bell!
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? Corn-Law Rhymes 145
So that, for all men who live, we may conclude, this Life
of Man is a school, wherein the naturally foolish will continue
foolish though you bray him in a mortar, but the naturally
wise will gather wisdom under every disadvantage. What,
meanwhile, must be the condition of an Era, when the highest
advantages there become perverted into drawbacks; when,
if you take two men of genius, and put the one between the
handles of a plough, and mount the other between the painted
coronets of a coach-and-four, and bid them both move along,
the former shall arrive a Burns, the latter a Byron: two men
of talent, and put the one into a Printer's chapel, full of lamp-
black, tyrannous usage, hard toil, and the other into Oxford
universities, with lexicons and libraries, and hired expositors
and sumptuous endowments, the former shall come out a
Dr. Franklin, the latter a Dr. Parr! --
However, we are not here to write an Essay on Education,
or sing misereres over a " world in its dotage; " but simply to
say that our Corn-Law Rhymer, educated or uneducated as
Nature and Art have made him, asks not the smallest patron-
age or compassion for his rhymes, professes not the smallest
. contrition for them. Nowise in such attitude does he present
himself; not supplicatory, deprecatory, but sturdy, defiant,
almost menacing. Wherefore, indeed, should he supplicate
or deprecate? It is out of the abundance of the heart that he
has spoken: praise or blame cannot make it truer or falser
than it already is. By the grace of God this man is sufficient
for himself; by his skill in metallurgy can beat out a toilsome
but a manful living, go how it may; has arrived too at that
singular audacity of believing what he knows, and acting on it,
or writing on it, or thinking on it, without leave asked of any
one: there shall he stand, and work, with head and with hand,
for himself and the world; blown about by no wind of
doctrine; frightened at no Reviewer's shadow; having, in his
time, looked substances enough in the face, and remained
unflightened.
What is left, therefore, but to take what he brings, and as
he brings it? Let us be thankful, were it only for the day of
small things. Something it is that we have lived to welcome
once more a sweet Singer wearing the likeness of a Man. In
humble guise, it is true, and of stature more or less marred in
its development; yet not without a genial robustness, strength
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? 146 Carlyle's Essays
and valour built on honesty and love; on the whole, a genuine
man, with somewhat of the eye and speech and bearing that
beseems a man. To whom all other genuine men, how
different soever in subordinate particulars, can g'. adly hold
out the right hand of fellowship.
The great excellence of our Rhymer, be it understood, then,
we take to consist even in this, often hinted at already, that
he is genuine. Here is an earnest truth-speaking man; no
theoriser, sentimentaliser, but a practical man of work and
endeavour, man of sufferance and endurance. The thing that
he speaks is not a hearsay, but a thing which he has himself
known, and by experience become assured of. He has used
his eyes for seeing; uses his tongue for declaring what he has
seen. His voice, therefore, among the many noises of our
Planet, will deserve its place better than the most; will be
well worth some attention. Whom else should we attend to
but such? The man who speaks with some half shadow of a
Belief, and supposes, and inclines to think; and considers
not with undivided soul, what is true, but only what is
plausible, and will find audience and recompense: do we not
meet him at every street-turning, on all highways and byways;
is he not stale, unprofitable, ineffectual, wholly grown a
weariness of the flesh? So rare is his opposite in any rank of
Literature or of Life, so very rare, that even in the lowest he
is precious. The authentic insight and experience of any
human soul, were it but insight and experience in hewing of
wood and drawing of water, is real knowledge, a real posses-
sion and acquirement, how small soever: palabra, again, were
it a supreme pontiff's, is wind merely, and nothing, or less
than nothing. To a considerable degree, this man, we say,
has worked himself loose from cant and conjectural halfness,
idle pretences and hallucinations, into a condition of Sincerity.
Wherein, perhaps, as above argued, his hard social environ-
ment, and fortune to be " a workman born," which brought so
many other retardations with it, may have forwarded and
accelerated him.
That a man, Workman or Idleman, encompassed, as in
these days, with persons in a state of willing or unwilling In-
sincerity, and necessitated, as man is, to learn whatever he
does traditionally learn by imitating these, should neverthe-
less shake off Insincerity, and struggle out from that dim
pestiferous marsh - atmosphere, into a clearer and purer
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? Corn-Law Rhymes 147
height,--betokens in him a certain Originality; in which rare
gift, force of all kinds is presupposed. To our Rhymer,
accordingly, as hinted more than once, vision and determina-
tion have not been denied: a rugged, homegrown under-
standing is in him; whereby, in his own way, he has mastered
this and that, and looked into various things, in general
. honestly and to purpose, sometimes deeply, piercingly and
with a Seer's eye. Strong thoughts are not wanting, beauti-
ful thoughts; strong and beautiful expressions of thought.
As traceable, for instance, in this new illustration of an old
argument, the mischief of Commercial Restrictions:
These, O ye quacks, these are your remedies:
Alms for the Rich, a bread-tax for the Poor!
Soul-purchased harvests on the indigent moor! --
Thus the winged victor of a hundred fights,
The warrior Ship, bows low her banner'd head,
When through her planks the seaborn reptile bites
Its deadly way;--and sinks in Ocean's bed,
Vanquish'd by worms. What then? The worms were fed.
Will not God smite thee back, thou whited wall?
Thy life is lawless, and thy law a lie,
Or Nature is a dream unnatural:
Look on the clouds, the streams, the earth, the sky;
^ Lo, all is interchange and harmony!
Where is the gorgeous pomp which, yester morn,
Curtained yon Orb with amber, fold on fold?
Behold it in the blue of Rivelin, borne
To feed the all-feeding sea! The molten gold
Is flowing pale in Loxley's waters cold,
To kindle into beauty tree and flower,
And wake to verdant life hill, vale and plain.
Cloud trades with river, and exchange is power:
But should the clouds, the streams, the winds disdain
Harmonious intercourse, nor dew nor rain
Would forest-crown the mountains: airless day
Would blast on Kinderscout the heathy glow;
No purply green would meeken into gray
O'er Don at eve; no sound of river's flow
Disturb the Sepulchre of all below.
Nature and the doings of men have not passed by this man
unheeded, like the endless cloud-rack in dull weather; or
lightly heeded, like a theatric phantasmagoria; but earnestly
inquired into, like a thing of reality; reverently loved and
worshipped, as a thing with divine significance in its reality,
glimpses of which divineness he has caught and laid to heart.
For his vision, as was said, partakes of the genuinely Poetical;
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? 148 Carlyle's Essays
he is not a Rhymer and Speaker only, but, in some genuine
sense, something of a Poet.
Farther, we must admit him, what indeed is already
herein admitted, to be, if clear-sighted, also brave-hearted.
A troublous element is his; a Life of painfulness, toil,
insecurity, scarcity; yet he fronts it like a man; yields not
to it, tames it into some subjection, some order; its wild
fearful dinning and tumult, as of a devouring Chaos, becomes
a sort of wild war-music for him; wherein too are passages
of beauty, of melodious melting softness, of lightness and
briskness, even of joy. The stout heart is also a warm and
kind one; Affection dwells with Danger, all the holier and
the lovelier for such stern environment. A working man
is this; yet, as we said, a man: in his sort, a courageous,
much-loving, faithfully enduring and endeavouring man.
What such a one, so gifted and so placed, shall say to a
Time like ours; how he will fashion himself into peace, or war,
or armed neutrality, with the world and his fellow-men; and
work out his course in joy and grief, in victory and defeat, is a
question worth asking: which in these three little Volumes
partly receives answer. He has turned, as all thinkers up
to a very high and rare order in these days must do, into
Politics; is a Reformer, at least a stern Complainer, Radical
to the core: his poetic melody takes an elegiaco-tragical
character; much of him is converted into hostility, and grim,
hardly-suppressed indignation, such as right long denied, hope
long deferred, may awaken in the kindliest heart. Not yet
as a rebel against anything does he stand; but as a free man,
and the spokesman of free men, not far from rebelling against
much; with sorrowful appealing dew, yet also with incipient
lightning, in his eyes; whom it were not desirable to provoke
into rebellion. He says in Vulcanic dialect, his feelings have
been hammered till they are cold-short; so they will no longer
bend; " they snap, and fly off,"--in the face of the hammerer.
Not unnatural, though lamentable! Nevertheless, under
all disguises of the Radical, the Poet is still recognisable:
a certain music breathes through all dissonances, as the
prophecy and ground-tone of returning harmony; the man,
as we said, is of a poetical nature.
To his Political Philosophy there is perhaps no great im-
portance attachable. He feels, as all men that live must do,
the disorganisation, and hard-grinding, unequal pressure of
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? Corn-Law Rhymes 149
our Social Affairs; but sees into it only a very little farther
than far inferior men do. The frightful condition of a Time,
when public and private Principle, as the word was once
understood, having gone out of sight, and Self-interest being
left to plot, and struggle, and scramble, as it could and would,
Difficulties had accumulated till they were no longer to be
. borne, and the spirit that should have fronted and conquered
them seemed to have forsaken the world;--when the Rich,
as the utmost they could resolve on, had ceased to govern,
and the Poor, in their fast-accumulating numbers, and ever-
widening complexities, had ceased to be able to do without
governing; and now the plan of " Competition " and " Laissez-
faire" was, on every side, approaching its consummation;
and each, bound-up in the circle of his own wants and
perils, stood grimly distrustful of his neighbour, and the dis-
tracted Common-weal was a Common-woe, and to all men
it became apparent that the end was drawing nigh:--all
this black aspect of Ruin and Decay, visible enough, experi-
mentally known to our Sheffield friend, he calls by the name
of "Corn-Law," and expects to be in good part delivered
from, were the accursed Bread-tax repealed.
In this system of political Doctrine, even as here so em-
phatically set forth, there is not much of novelty. Radicals
we have many; loud enough on this and other grievances;
the removal of which is to be the one thing needful. The
deep, wide flood of bitterness, and hope becoming hopeless,
lies acrid, corrosive in every bosom; and flows fiercely enough
through any orifice Accident may open: through Law-
Reform, Legislative Reform, Poor-Laws, want of Poor-Laws,
Tithes, Game-Laws, or, as we see here, Corn-Laws. Whereby
indeed only this becomes clear, that a deep wide flood of evil
does exist and corrode; from which, in all ways, blindly
and seeingly, men seek deliverance, and cannot rest till they
find it; least of all till they know what part and proportion
of it is to be found.
? 132
Carlyle's Essays
"Beati pacifici, Happy are the peacemakers," said his
Majesty always. Good Majesty; shining examples of jus-
tice too he is prepared to afford; and has a snarl in him
which can occasionally bite. Of Crichton Lord Sanquhar,
from the pleasant valley of Nith,--how the Fencing-master
accidentally pricked an eye out of him, and he forgave it;
how, much wrought-upon afterwards, he was at last induced
to have the Fencing-master assassinated;--and to have him-
self executed in Palace Yatd in consequence, and his two
assassin servants hanged in Fleet Street; rough Border serv-
ing-men of all work, too unregardful of the gallows: of this
unadmirable Crichton the whole world heard, not without
pity, and can still hear. 1
This of Croydon Races, too, if we read old Osborne with
reflection, will become significant of many things. How the
races were going on, a new delightful invention of that age;
and Croydon Heath was populous with multitudes come to
see; and between James Ramsay of the Dalhousie Ramsays,
and Philip Herbert of the Montgomery Herberts, there rose
sudden strife; sharp passages of wit,--ending in a sharp
stroke of Ramsay's switch over the crown and face of my
Lord Montgomery, the great Earl of Pembroke's brother,
and himself capable to be Earl Pembroke! It is a fact of the
most astonishing description: undeniable,--though the exact
date and circumstances will now never be discovered in this
world. It is all vague as cloud, in old Osborne; lies off or on,
within sight of Prince Henry's Pageant; exact date of it never
to be known. Yet is it well recognisable as distant ill-defined
land, and no cloud; not dream but astonishing fact. Can the
reader sufficiently admire at it? The honourable Philip
Herbert, of the best blood of England, here is he switched over
the crown by an accursed Scotch Ramsay! We hear the
swift-stinging descent of the ignominious horse-switch; we
see the swift-blazing countenances of gods and men.
Instantaneous shriek, as was inevitable, rises near and far:
The Scotch insolence, Scotch pride and hunger, Scotch
damnability! And "a cripple man, with only the use of
three fingers," crooked of shape, hot of temper, rode about
the field with drawn dagger; urging in a shrill manner, that
we should prick every Scotch lown of them home to their own
beggarly country again, or to the Devil,--off Croydon Heath,
1 State Trials.
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? Two Hundred and Fifty Years Ago 133
at least. The name of this shrill individual, with dagger
grasped between two fingers and a thumb, was " John Pinch-
back" or Pinchbeck; and appears here in History, with
something like golden lustre, for one moment and no more.
"Let us breakfast on them at Croydon," cries Pinchbeck, in a
shrill, inspired manner; "and sup on them at London! "
, The hour was really ominous. But Philip Herbert, beautiful
young man, himself of infirm temper and given to strokes,
stood firmly dissuasive: he is in the King's service, how
shall he answer it; he was himself to blame withal. And
young Edward Sackville is, with his young friend Bruce of
Kinloss, firmly dissuasive; it is the Bruce whom we saw at
the chapel-door, stepping-out a new-made knight, now here
with Sackville; dear friends these, not always to be friends!
But for the present they are firmly dissuasive; all considerate
persons are dissuasive. Pinchbeck's dagger brandishes itself
in vain.
Sits the wind so, O Pinchbeck? Sidney's sister, Pembroke's
mother: this is her son, and he stands a switch? --Yes, my
shrill crookbacked friend, to avoid huge riot and calamity, he
does so: and I see a massive nobleness in the man, which
thou, egregious cock of bantam, wilt never in this world
comprehend, but only crow over in thy shrill way. Ramsay
and the Scots, and all persons, rode home unharmed that
night; and my shrill friend gradually composed himself
again. Philip Herbert may expect knighthoods, lordhoods,
court-promotions: neither did his heroic mother " tear her
hair," I think, to any great extent,--except in the imagination
of Osborne, Pinchbeck and suchlike.
This was the scene of Croydon Races; a fact, and signifi-
cant of many facts, that hangs-out for us like a cloud-island,
and is not cloud. 1
No. Ill
SIR THOMAS DUTTON AND SIR HATTON CHEEK
His Majesty, as I perceive in spite of calumnies, was not a
"coward; " see how he behaved in the Gowrie Conspiracy and
elsewhere. But he knew the value, to all persons, and to all
interests of persons, of a whole skin; how unthrifty every-
1 Francis Osborne's Traditional Memorials on the Reign of James the
First (Reprinted in Sir Walter Scott's History of the Court of James I.
Edinburgh, 1811), pp. 220-227.
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? 134 Carlyle's Essays
where is any solution of continuity, if it can be avoided! He
struggled to preside pacifically over an age of some ferocity
much given to wrangling. Peace here, if possible; skins
were not made for mere slitting and slashing! You that are
for war, cannot you go abroad, and fight the Papist Spaniards?
Over in the Netherlands there is always fighting enough.
You that are of ruffling humour, gather your truculent
ruffians together; make yourselves colonels over them; go
to the Netherlands, and fight your bellyful!
Which accordingly many do, earning deathless war-laurels
for the moment; and have done, and will continue doing, in
those generations. Our gallant Veres, Earl of Oxford and the
others, it has long been their way: gallant Cecil, to be called
Earl of Wimbledon; gallant Sir John Burroughs, gallant Sir
Hatton Cheek,--it is still their way. Deathless military
renowns are gathered there in this manner; deathless for the
moment. Did not Ben Jonson, in his young hard days, bear
arms very manfully as a private soldado there? Ben, who
now writes learned plays and court-masks as Poet Laureate,
served manfully with pike and sword there for his groat a day
with rations. And once when a Spanish soldier came strut-
ting forward between the lines, flourishing his weapon, and
defying all persons in general,--Ben stept forth, as I hear;1
fenced that braggart Spaniard, since no other would do it;
and ended by soon slitting him in two, and so silencing him!
Ben's war-tuck, to judge by the flourish of his pen, must have
had a very dangerous stroke in it.
"Swashbuckler age," we said; but the expression was
incorrect, except as a figure. Bucklers went out fifty years
ago, " about the twentieth of Queen Elizabeth;" men do not
now swash with them, or fight in that way. Iron armour
has mostly gone out, except in mere pictures of soldiers:
King James said, It was an excellent invention; you could
get no harm in it, and neither could you do any. Bucklers,
either for horse or foot, are quite gone. Yet old Mr. Stowe,
good chronicler, can recollect when every gentleman had his
buckler: and at length every serving-man and City dandy.
Smithfield,--still a waste field, full of puddles in wet weather,
--was in those days full of buckler-duels, every Sunday and
holiday in the dry season; and was called Ruffian's Rig,
or some such name.
1 Life of Ben Jonson.
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? Two Hundred and Fifty Years Ago 135
A man, in those days, bought his buckler, of gilt leather
and wood, at the haberdasher's; "hung it over his back, by
a strap fastened to the pommel of his sword in front. "
Elegant men showed what taste, or sense of poetic beauty,
was in them, by the fashion of their buckler. With Spanish
beaver, with starched ruff, and elegant Spanish cloak, with
> elegant buckler hanging at his back, a man, if his moustachios
and boots were in good order, stepped forth with some
satisfaction. Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the
pard; a decidedly truculent-looking figure. Jostle him in
the street thoroughfares, accidentally splash his boots as you
pass,--by Heaven, the buckler gets upon his arm, the sword
flashes in his fist, with oaths enough; and you too being
ready, there is a noise! Clink, clank, death and fury; all
'persons gathering round, and new quarrels springing from
this one! And Dogberry comes up with the town-guard?
And the shopkeepers hastily close their shops? Nay, it
is hardly necessary, says Mr. Howe: these buckler-fights
amount only to noise, for most part; the jingle of iron against
tin and painted leather. Ruffling swashers strutting along,
with big oaths and whiskers, delight to pick a quarrel; but
the rule is, you do not thrust, you do not strike below the
waist; and it was oftenest a dry duel--mere noise, as of
working tinsmiths, with profane swearing! Empty vapour-
ing bullyrooks and braggarts, they encumber the thorough-
fares mainly. Dogberry and Verges ought to apprehend
them. I have seen, in Smithfield on a dry holiday, " thirty
of them on a side," fighting and hammering as if for life;
and was not at the pains1 to look at them, the blockheads;
their noise as the mere beating of old kettles to me!
The truth is, serving-men themselves, and City apprentices,
had got bucklers; and the duels, no death following, ceased to
be sublime. About fifty years ago, serious men took to
fighting with rapiers, and the buckler fell away. Holles in
Sherwood, as we saw, fought with rapier, and he soon spoiled
Markham. Rapier and dagger especially; that is a more
silent duel, but a terribly serious one! Perhaps the reader
will like to take a view of one such serious duel in those days,
and therewith close this desultory chapter.
It was at the siege of Juliers, in the Netherlands wars, of
1 Stowe's Chronicle, and Howe's Continuation, 1024, etc.
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? 136 Carlyle's Essays
the year 1610;1 we give the date, for wars are perpetual, or
nearly so, in the Netherlands. At one of the storm-parties of
the siege of Juliers, the gallant Sir Hatton Cheek, above
alluded to, a superior officer of the English force which fights
there under my Lord Cecil, that shall be Wimbledon; the
gallant Sir Hatton, I say, being of hot temper, superior officer,
and the service a storm-party on some bastion or demilune,
speaks sharp word of command to Sir Thomas Dutton, the
officer under him, who also is probably of hot temper in this
hot moment. Sharp word of command to Dutton; and the
movement not proceeding rightly, sharp word of rebuke. To
which Dutton, with kindled voice, answers something sharp;
is answered still more sharply with voice high-flaming;--
whereat Dutton suddenly holds in; says merely, "He is
under military duty here, but perhaps will not always be so;"
and rushing forward, does his order silently, the best he can.
His order done,Dutton straightwaylays down his commission;
packs up, that night, and returns to England.
Sir Hatton Cheek prosecutes his work at the siege of
Juliers; gallantly assists at the taking of Juliers, triumphant
over all the bastions and half-moons there; but hears withal
that Dutton is, at home in England, defaming him as a
choleric tyrant and so forth. Dreadful news; which brings
some biliary attack on the gallant man, and reduces him to
a bed of sickness. Hardly recovered, he despatches message
to Dutton, That he will request to have the pleasure of his
company, with arms and seconds ready, on some neutral
ground,--Calais sands for instance,--at an early day, if con-
venient. Convenient; yes, as dinner to the hungry! answers
Dutton; and time, place and circumstances are rapidly
enough agreed upon.
And so, on Calais sands, in a winter morning of the year
1610, this is what we see, most authentically, through the
1 Siege began in the latter end of July 1610; ended victoriously,
4th September following: principal assaults were, 10th August and
14th August; in one of which this affair of ours must have taken rise.
Siege commanded by Christian of Anhalt, a famed Protestant Captain
of those times. Henri IV. of France was assassinated while setting-out
for this siege; Prince Maurice of Nassau was there; "Dutch troops,
French, English and German" (Brandenburgers and Pfalz-Neu-
burgers chiefly, versus Kaiser Rodolf II. and his unjust seizure of the
Town) "fought with the greatest unity. " Prelude to the Thirty-
Years' War, and one of the principal sources of it, this Controversy
about Juliers. (Carl Friedrich Pauli: Allgemeine Preussische Staats-
Ccschichte, 4to, Halle, 1762, iii. 502-527. )
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? Two Hundred and Fifty Years Ago 137
lapse of dim Time. Two gentlemen stript to the shirt and
waistband; in the two hands of each a rapier and dagger
clutched; their looks sufficiently serious! The seconds,
having stript, equipt, and fairly overhauled and certified
them, are just about retiring from the measured fate-circle,
not without indignation that they are forbidden to fight.
Two gentlemen in this alarming posture; of whom the
Universe knows, has known, and will know nothing, except
that they were of choleric humour, and assisted in the Nether-
lands wars! They are evidently English human creatures, in
the height of silent fury, and measured circuit of fate; whom we
here audibly name once more, Sir Hatton Cheek, Sir Thomas
Dutton, knights both, soldadoes both. Ill-fated English
human creatures, what horrible confusion of the Pit is this?
Dutton, though in suppressed rage, the seconds about to
withdraw, will explain some things if a word were granted.
"No words," says the other; "stand on your guard! " bran-
dishing his rapier, grasping harder his dagger. Dutton, now
silent too, is on his guard. Good Heavens: after some brief
flourishing and flashing,--the gleam of the swift clear steel
playing madly in one's eyes,--they, at the first pass, plunge
, home on one another; home, with beak and claws; home to
the very heart! Cheek's rapier is through Dutton's throat
from before, and his dagger is through it from behind,--the
windpipe miraculously missed; and, in the same instant,
Dutton's rapier is through Cheek's body from before, his
dagger through his back from behind,--lungs and life not
missed; and the seconds have to advance, "pull out the
four bloody weapons," disengage that hell-embrace of theirs.
This is serious enough! Cheek reels, his life fast flowing; but
still rushes rabid on Dutton, who merely parries, skips; till
'Cheek reels down, dead in his rage. "He had a bloody
burial there that morning," says my ancient friend. 1 He will
assist no more in the Netherlands or other wars.
Such scene does History disclose, as in sunbeams, as in
blazing hell-fire, on Calais sands, in the raw winter morning;
then drops the blanket of centuries, of everlasting Night, over
it, and passes on elsewhither. Gallant Sir Hatton Cheek lies
buried there, and Cecil of Wimbledon, son of Burleigh, will
have to seek another superior officer. What became of the
living Dutton afterwards, I have never to this moment had
the least hint.
1 Wilson (in Kennet), ii. 684.
II 704 K
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? CORN-LAW RHYMES1
Smelfungus Redivivus, throwing down his critical assaying
balance some years ago, and taking leave of the Belles-Lettres
function, expressed himself in this abrupt way: "The end
having come, it is fit that we end. Poetry having ceased to
be read, or published, or written, how can it continue to
be reviewed? With your Lake Schools, and Border-Thief
Schools, and Cockney and Satanic Schools, there has been
enough to do; and now, all these Schools having burnt or
smouldered themselves out, and left nothing but a wide-
spread wreck of ashes, dust and cinders,--or perhaps dying
embers, kicked to and fro under the feet of innumerable
women and children in the Magazines, and at best blown here
and there into transient sputters, with vapour enough, so as
to form what you might name a boundless Green-sick, or
New-Sentimental, or Sleep-Awake School,--what remains
but to adjust ourselves to circumstances? Urge me not,"
continues the able Editor, suddenly changing his figure,
"with considerations that Poetry, as the inward voice of
Life, must be perennial, only dead in one form to become
alive in another; that this still abundant deluge of Metre,
seeing there must needs be fractions of Poetry floating scat-
tered in it, ought still to be net-fished, at all events surveyed
and taken note of: the survey of English Metre, at this epoch,
perhaps transcends the human faculties; to hire-out the
reading of it, by estimate, at a remunerative rate per page,
would, in few Quarters, reduce the cash-box of any extant
Review to the verge of insolvency. "
What our distinguished contemporary has said remains
said. Far be it from us to censure or counsel any able
1 Edinburgh Review, No. no. -- I. "Corn-Law Rhymes. " Third
Edition. 8vo. London, 1831.
2. "Love; a Poem. " By the Author of "Corn-Law Rhymes. "
Third Edition. 8vo. London, 1831.
3. "The Village Patriarch; a Poem. " By the Author of " Corn-
Law Rhymes. " i2mo. London, 1831.
138
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? Corn-Law Rhymes
139
Editor; to draw aside the Editorial veil, and, officiously
prying into his interior mysteries, impugn the laws he walks
by! For Editors, as for others, there are times of perplexity,
wherein the cunning of the wisest will scantily suffice his own
wants, to say nothing of his neighbour's.
To us, on our side, meanwhile, it remains clear that Poetry,
, or were it but Metre, should nowise be altogether neglected.
Surely it is the Reviewer's trade to sit watching not only the
tillage, crop-rotation, marketings and good or evil husbandry
of the Economic Earth, but also the weather-symptoms of the
Literary Heaven, on which those former so much depend:
if any promising or threatening meteoric phenomenon make
its appearance, and he proclaim not tidings thereof, it is at
his peril. Farther, be it considered how, in this singular
poetic epoch, a small matter constitutes a novelty.
If the
whole welkin hang overcast in drizzly dinginess, the feeblest
light-gleam, or speck of blue, cannot pass unheeded.
The Works of this Corn-Law Rhymer we might liken rather
to some little fraction of a rainbow: hues of joy and harmony,
painted out of troublous tears. No round full bow, indeed;
gloriously spanning the heavens; shone on by the full sun;
and, with seven-striped, gold-crimson border (as is in some
sort the office of Poetry) dividing Black from Brilliant:
not such; alas, still far from it! Yet, in very truth, a little
prismatic blush, glowing genuine among the wet clouds;
which proceeds, if you will, from a sun cloud-hidden, yet
indicates that a sun does shine, and above those vapours, a
whole azure vault and celestial firmament stretch serene.
Strange as it may seem, it is nevertheless true, that here
we have once more got sight of a Book calling itself Poetry,
yet which actually is a kind of Book, and no empty paste-
board Case, and simulacrum or " ghost-defunct" of a Book,
such as is too often palmed on the world, and handed over
Booksellers' counters, with a demand of real money for it,
as if it too were a reality. The speaker here is of that singular
class who have something to say; whereby, though delivering
, himself in verse, and in these days, he does not deliver him-
self wholly in jargon, but articulately, and with a certain
degree of meaning, that has been believed, and therefore is
again believable.
To some the wonder and interest will be heightened by
another circumstance: that the speaker in question is not
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? 140 Carlyle's Essays
school-learned, or even furnished with pecuniary capital;
is, indeed, a quite unmoneyed, russet-coated speaker; nothing
or little other than a Sheffield worker in brass and iron, who
describes himself as " one of the lower, little removed above
the lowest class. " Be of what class he may, the man is
provided, as we can perceive, with a rational god-created
soul; which too has fashioned itself into some clearness,
some self-subsistence, and can actually see and know with
its own organs; and in rugged substantial English, nay with
tones of poetic melody, utter forth what it has seen.
It used to be said that lions do not paint, that poor men
do not write; but the case is altering now. Here is a voice
coming from the deep Cyclopean forges, where Labour, in
real soot and sweat, beats with his thousand hammers " the
red son of the furnace;" doing personal battle with Necessity,
and her dark brute Powers, to make them reasonable and
serviceable; an intelligible voice from the hitherto Mute and
Irrational, to tell us at first-hand how it is with him, what in
very deed is the theorem of the world and of himself, which
he, in those dim depths of his, in that wearied head of his,
has put together. To which voice, in several respects
significant enough, let good ear be given.
Here too be it premised, that nowise under the category
of "Uneducated Poets," or in any fashion of dilettante
patronage, can our Sheffield friend be produced. His position
is unsuitable for that: so is ours. Genius, which the French
lady declared to be of no sex, is much more certainly of no
rank; neither when "the spark of Nature's fire" has been
imparted, should Education take high airs in her artificial
light,--which is too often but phosphorescence and putres-
cence. In fact, it now begins to be suspected here and there,
that this same aristocratic recognition, which looks down
with an obliging smile from its throne, of bound Volumes and
gold Ingots, and admits that it is wonderfully well for one of
the uneducated classes, may be getting out of place. There
are unhappy times in the world's history, when he that is the
least educated will chiefly have to say that he is the least per-
verted; and with the multitude of false eye-glasses, convex,
concave, green, even yellow, has not lost the natural use of
his eyes. For a generation that reads Cobbett's Prose, and
Burns's Poetry, it need be no miracle that here also is a man
who can handle both pen and hammer like a man.
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? Corn-Law Rhymes 141
Nevertheless, this serene-highness attitude and temper is
so frequent, perhaps it were good to turn the tables for a
moment, and see what look it has under that reverse aspect.
How were it if we surmised, that for a man gifted with natural
vigour, with a man's character to be developed in him, more
especially if in the way of Literature, as Thinker and Writer,
. it is actually, in these strange days, no special misfortune to
be trained up among the Uneducated classes, and not among
the Educated; but rather of two misfortunes the smaller?
For all men, doubtless, obstructions abound; spiritual
growth must be hampered and stunted, and has to struggle
through with difficulty, if it do not wholly stop. We may
grant, too, that, for a mediocre character, the continual
training and tutoring, from language-masters, dancing-
masters, posture-masters of all sorts, hired and volunteer,
which a high rank in any time and country assures, there
will be produced a certain superiority, or at worst, air of
superiority, over the corresponding mediocre character of
low rank: thus we perceive the vulgar Do-nothing, as con-
trasted with the vulgar Drudge, is in general a much prettier
man; with a wider, perhaps clearer outlook into the distance;
> in innumerable superficial matters, however it may be when
we go deeper, he has a manifest advantage. But with the
man of uncommon character, again, in whom a germ of
irrepressible Force has been implanted, and will unfold itself
into some sort of freedom, altogether the reverse may hold.
For such germs too, there is, undoubtedly enough, a proper
soil where they will grow best, and an improper one where they
will grow worst. True also, where there is a will, there is a
way; where a genius has been given, a possibility, a cer-
. tainty of its growing is also given. Yet often it seems as
if the injudicious gardening and manuring were worse than
none at all; and killed what the inclemencies of blind chance
would have spared. We find accordingly that few Fredericks
or Napoleons, indeed none since the Great Alexander, who
unfortunately drank himself to death too soon for proving
what lay in him, were nursed up with an eye to their vocation:
mostly with an eye quite the other way, in the midst of isola-
> tion and pain, destitution and contradiction. Nay in our
own times, have we not seen two men of genius, a Byron and
a Burns; they both, by mandate of Nature, struggle and
must struggle towards clear Manhood, stormfully enough,
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? 142 Carlylc's Essays
for the space of six-and-thirty years; yet only the gifted
Ploughman can partially prevail therein: the gifted Peer
must toil and strive, and shoot-out in wild efforts, yet die
at last in Boyhood, with the promise of his Manhood still
but announcing itself in the distance. Truly, as was once
written, " it is only the artichoke that will not grow except
in gardens; the acorn is cast carelessly abroad into the
wilderness, yet on the wild soil it nourishes itself, and rises
to be an oak. " All woodmen, moreover, will tell you that
fat manure is the ruin of your oak; likewise that the thinner
and wilder your soil, the tougher, more iron-textured is your
timber,--though unhappily also the smaller. So too with
the spirits of men: they become pure from their errors by
suffering for them; he who has battled, were it only with
Poverty and hard toil, will be found stronger, more expert,
than he who could stay at home from the battle, concealed
among the Provision-waggons, or even not unwatchfully
"abiding by the stuff. " In which sense, an observer, not
without experience of our time, has said: Had I a man of
clearly developed character (clear, sincere within its limits),
of insight, courage and real applicable force of head and of
heart, to search for; and not a man of luxuriously distorted
character, with haughtiness for courage, and for insight
and applicable force, speculation and plausible show of
force,--it were rather among the lower than among the higher
classes that I should look for him.
A hard saying, indeed, seems this same: that he, whose
other wants were all beforehand supplied; to whose capabili-
ties no problem was presented except even this, How to
cultivate them to best advantage, should attain less real
culture than he whose first grand problem and obligation
was nowise spiritual culture, but hard labour for his daily
bread! Sad enough must the perversion be, where prepara-
tions of such magnitude issue in abortion; and so sumptuous
an Art with all its appliances can accomplish nothing, not
so much as necessitous Nature would of herself have sup-
plied! Nevertheless, so pregnant is Life with evil as with
good; to such height in an age rich, plethorically overgrown
with means, can means be accumulated in the wrong place,
and immeasurably aggravate wrong tendencies, instead of
righting them, this sad and strange result may actually turn
out to have been realised.
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? Corn-Law Rhymes 143
But what, after all, is meant by uneducated, in a time when
Books have come into the world; come to be household
furniture in every habitation of the civilised world? In
the poorest cottage are Books; is one Book, wherein for
several thousands of years the spirit of man has found light,
and nourishment, and an interpreting response to whatever
is Deepest in him; wherein still, to this day, for the eye that
will look well, the Mystery of Existence reflects itself, if not
resolved, yet revealed, and prophetically emblemed; if not
to the satisfying of the outward sense, yet to the opening
of the inward sense, which is the far grander result. "In
Books lie the creative phcenix-ashes of the whole Past. " All
that men have devised, discovered, done, felt or imagined, lies
recorded in Books; wherein whoso has learned the mystery of
spelling printed letters may find it, and appropriate it.
Nay, what indeed is all this? As if it were by universities
and libraries and lecture-rooms, that man's Education, what
we can call Education, were accomplished; solely, or mainly,
by instilling the dead letter and record of other men's Force,
that the living Force of a new man were to be awakened,
enkindled and purified into victorious clearness! Foolish
Pedant, that sittest there compassionately descanting on the
Learning of Shakspeare! Shakspeare had penetrated into
innumerable things; far into Nature with her divine Splen-
dours and infernal Terrors, her Ariel Melodies, and mystic
mandragora Moans; far into man's workings with Nature,
into man's Art and Artifice; Shakspeare knew (kenned,
which in those days still partially meant can-ned) innumerable
things; what men are, and what the world is, and how and
what men aim at there, from the Dame Quickly of modern
Eastcheap to the Caesar of ancient Rome, over many countries,
over many centuries: of all this he had the clearest under-
standing and constructive comprehension; all this was his
Learning and Insight; what now is thine? Insight into
none of those things; perhaps, strictly considered, into no
thing whatever: solely into thy own sheepskin diplomas,
fat academic honours, into vocables and alphabetic letters,
and but a little way into these! --The grand result of schooling
is a mind with just vision to discern, with free force to do:
the grand schoolmaster is Practice.
And now, when kenning and can-ning have become two
altogether different words; and this, the first principle of
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? 144 Carlyle's Essays
human culture, the foundation-stone of all but false imaginary
culture, that men must, before every other thing, be trained
to do somewhat, has been, for some generations, laid quietly
on the shelf, with such result as we see,--consider what
advantage those same uneducated Working classes have over
the educated Unworking classes, in one particular; herein,
namely, that they must work. To work! What incalculable
sources of cultivation lie in that process, in that attempt;
how it lays hold of the whole man, not of a small theoretical
calculating fraction of him, but of the whole practical, doing
and daring and enduring man; thereby to awaken dormant
faculties, root-out old errors, at every step! He that has
done nothing has known nothing. Vain is it to sit scheming
and plausibly discoursing: up and be doing! If thy know-
ledge be real, put it forth from thee: grapple with real
Nature; try thy theories there, and see how they hold out.
Do one thing, for the first time in thy life do a thing; a new
light will rise to thee on the doing of all things whatsoever.
Truly, a boundless significance lies in work; whereby the
humblest craftsman comes to attain much, which is of
indispensable use, but which he who is of no craft, were he
never so high, runs the risk of missing. Once turn to
Practice, Error and Truth will no longer consort together:
the result of Error involves you in the square-root of a
negative quantity; try to extract that, to extract any earthly
substance or sustenance from that! The honourable
Member can discover that " there is a reaction," and believe
it, and wearisomely reason on it, in spite of all men, while
he so pleases, for still his wine and his oil will not fail him:
but the sooty Brazier, who discovered that brass was green-
cheese, has to act on his discovery; finds therefore, that,
singular as it may seem, brass cannot be masticated for
dinner, green-cheese will not beat into fire-proof dishes;
that such discovery, therefore, has no legs to stand on, and
must even be let fall. Now, take this principle of difference
through the entire lives of two men, and calculate what it
will amount to! Necessity, moreover, which we here see
as the mother of Accuracy, is well known as the mother of
Invention. He who wants everything must know many
things, do many things, to procure even a few: different
enougli with him, whose indispensable knowledge is this
only, that a finger will pull the bell!
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? Corn-Law Rhymes 145
So that, for all men who live, we may conclude, this Life
of Man is a school, wherein the naturally foolish will continue
foolish though you bray him in a mortar, but the naturally
wise will gather wisdom under every disadvantage. What,
meanwhile, must be the condition of an Era, when the highest
advantages there become perverted into drawbacks; when,
if you take two men of genius, and put the one between the
handles of a plough, and mount the other between the painted
coronets of a coach-and-four, and bid them both move along,
the former shall arrive a Burns, the latter a Byron: two men
of talent, and put the one into a Printer's chapel, full of lamp-
black, tyrannous usage, hard toil, and the other into Oxford
universities, with lexicons and libraries, and hired expositors
and sumptuous endowments, the former shall come out a
Dr. Franklin, the latter a Dr. Parr! --
However, we are not here to write an Essay on Education,
or sing misereres over a " world in its dotage; " but simply to
say that our Corn-Law Rhymer, educated or uneducated as
Nature and Art have made him, asks not the smallest patron-
age or compassion for his rhymes, professes not the smallest
. contrition for them. Nowise in such attitude does he present
himself; not supplicatory, deprecatory, but sturdy, defiant,
almost menacing. Wherefore, indeed, should he supplicate
or deprecate? It is out of the abundance of the heart that he
has spoken: praise or blame cannot make it truer or falser
than it already is. By the grace of God this man is sufficient
for himself; by his skill in metallurgy can beat out a toilsome
but a manful living, go how it may; has arrived too at that
singular audacity of believing what he knows, and acting on it,
or writing on it, or thinking on it, without leave asked of any
one: there shall he stand, and work, with head and with hand,
for himself and the world; blown about by no wind of
doctrine; frightened at no Reviewer's shadow; having, in his
time, looked substances enough in the face, and remained
unflightened.
What is left, therefore, but to take what he brings, and as
he brings it? Let us be thankful, were it only for the day of
small things. Something it is that we have lived to welcome
once more a sweet Singer wearing the likeness of a Man. In
humble guise, it is true, and of stature more or less marred in
its development; yet not without a genial robustness, strength
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? 146 Carlyle's Essays
and valour built on honesty and love; on the whole, a genuine
man, with somewhat of the eye and speech and bearing that
beseems a man. To whom all other genuine men, how
different soever in subordinate particulars, can g'. adly hold
out the right hand of fellowship.
The great excellence of our Rhymer, be it understood, then,
we take to consist even in this, often hinted at already, that
he is genuine. Here is an earnest truth-speaking man; no
theoriser, sentimentaliser, but a practical man of work and
endeavour, man of sufferance and endurance. The thing that
he speaks is not a hearsay, but a thing which he has himself
known, and by experience become assured of. He has used
his eyes for seeing; uses his tongue for declaring what he has
seen. His voice, therefore, among the many noises of our
Planet, will deserve its place better than the most; will be
well worth some attention. Whom else should we attend to
but such? The man who speaks with some half shadow of a
Belief, and supposes, and inclines to think; and considers
not with undivided soul, what is true, but only what is
plausible, and will find audience and recompense: do we not
meet him at every street-turning, on all highways and byways;
is he not stale, unprofitable, ineffectual, wholly grown a
weariness of the flesh? So rare is his opposite in any rank of
Literature or of Life, so very rare, that even in the lowest he
is precious. The authentic insight and experience of any
human soul, were it but insight and experience in hewing of
wood and drawing of water, is real knowledge, a real posses-
sion and acquirement, how small soever: palabra, again, were
it a supreme pontiff's, is wind merely, and nothing, or less
than nothing. To a considerable degree, this man, we say,
has worked himself loose from cant and conjectural halfness,
idle pretences and hallucinations, into a condition of Sincerity.
Wherein, perhaps, as above argued, his hard social environ-
ment, and fortune to be " a workman born," which brought so
many other retardations with it, may have forwarded and
accelerated him.
That a man, Workman or Idleman, encompassed, as in
these days, with persons in a state of willing or unwilling In-
sincerity, and necessitated, as man is, to learn whatever he
does traditionally learn by imitating these, should neverthe-
less shake off Insincerity, and struggle out from that dim
pestiferous marsh - atmosphere, into a clearer and purer
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? Corn-Law Rhymes 147
height,--betokens in him a certain Originality; in which rare
gift, force of all kinds is presupposed. To our Rhymer,
accordingly, as hinted more than once, vision and determina-
tion have not been denied: a rugged, homegrown under-
standing is in him; whereby, in his own way, he has mastered
this and that, and looked into various things, in general
. honestly and to purpose, sometimes deeply, piercingly and
with a Seer's eye. Strong thoughts are not wanting, beauti-
ful thoughts; strong and beautiful expressions of thought.
As traceable, for instance, in this new illustration of an old
argument, the mischief of Commercial Restrictions:
These, O ye quacks, these are your remedies:
Alms for the Rich, a bread-tax for the Poor!
Soul-purchased harvests on the indigent moor! --
Thus the winged victor of a hundred fights,
The warrior Ship, bows low her banner'd head,
When through her planks the seaborn reptile bites
Its deadly way;--and sinks in Ocean's bed,
Vanquish'd by worms. What then? The worms were fed.
Will not God smite thee back, thou whited wall?
Thy life is lawless, and thy law a lie,
Or Nature is a dream unnatural:
Look on the clouds, the streams, the earth, the sky;
^ Lo, all is interchange and harmony!
Where is the gorgeous pomp which, yester morn,
Curtained yon Orb with amber, fold on fold?
Behold it in the blue of Rivelin, borne
To feed the all-feeding sea! The molten gold
Is flowing pale in Loxley's waters cold,
To kindle into beauty tree and flower,
And wake to verdant life hill, vale and plain.
Cloud trades with river, and exchange is power:
But should the clouds, the streams, the winds disdain
Harmonious intercourse, nor dew nor rain
Would forest-crown the mountains: airless day
Would blast on Kinderscout the heathy glow;
No purply green would meeken into gray
O'er Don at eve; no sound of river's flow
Disturb the Sepulchre of all below.
Nature and the doings of men have not passed by this man
unheeded, like the endless cloud-rack in dull weather; or
lightly heeded, like a theatric phantasmagoria; but earnestly
inquired into, like a thing of reality; reverently loved and
worshipped, as a thing with divine significance in its reality,
glimpses of which divineness he has caught and laid to heart.
For his vision, as was said, partakes of the genuinely Poetical;
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? 148 Carlyle's Essays
he is not a Rhymer and Speaker only, but, in some genuine
sense, something of a Poet.
Farther, we must admit him, what indeed is already
herein admitted, to be, if clear-sighted, also brave-hearted.
A troublous element is his; a Life of painfulness, toil,
insecurity, scarcity; yet he fronts it like a man; yields not
to it, tames it into some subjection, some order; its wild
fearful dinning and tumult, as of a devouring Chaos, becomes
a sort of wild war-music for him; wherein too are passages
of beauty, of melodious melting softness, of lightness and
briskness, even of joy. The stout heart is also a warm and
kind one; Affection dwells with Danger, all the holier and
the lovelier for such stern environment. A working man
is this; yet, as we said, a man: in his sort, a courageous,
much-loving, faithfully enduring and endeavouring man.
What such a one, so gifted and so placed, shall say to a
Time like ours; how he will fashion himself into peace, or war,
or armed neutrality, with the world and his fellow-men; and
work out his course in joy and grief, in victory and defeat, is a
question worth asking: which in these three little Volumes
partly receives answer. He has turned, as all thinkers up
to a very high and rare order in these days must do, into
Politics; is a Reformer, at least a stern Complainer, Radical
to the core: his poetic melody takes an elegiaco-tragical
character; much of him is converted into hostility, and grim,
hardly-suppressed indignation, such as right long denied, hope
long deferred, may awaken in the kindliest heart. Not yet
as a rebel against anything does he stand; but as a free man,
and the spokesman of free men, not far from rebelling against
much; with sorrowful appealing dew, yet also with incipient
lightning, in his eyes; whom it were not desirable to provoke
into rebellion. He says in Vulcanic dialect, his feelings have
been hammered till they are cold-short; so they will no longer
bend; " they snap, and fly off,"--in the face of the hammerer.
Not unnatural, though lamentable! Nevertheless, under
all disguises of the Radical, the Poet is still recognisable:
a certain music breathes through all dissonances, as the
prophecy and ground-tone of returning harmony; the man,
as we said, is of a poetical nature.
To his Political Philosophy there is perhaps no great im-
portance attachable. He feels, as all men that live must do,
the disorganisation, and hard-grinding, unequal pressure of
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? Corn-Law Rhymes 149
our Social Affairs; but sees into it only a very little farther
than far inferior men do. The frightful condition of a Time,
when public and private Principle, as the word was once
understood, having gone out of sight, and Self-interest being
left to plot, and struggle, and scramble, as it could and would,
Difficulties had accumulated till they were no longer to be
. borne, and the spirit that should have fronted and conquered
them seemed to have forsaken the world;--when the Rich,
as the utmost they could resolve on, had ceased to govern,
and the Poor, in their fast-accumulating numbers, and ever-
widening complexities, had ceased to be able to do without
governing; and now the plan of " Competition " and " Laissez-
faire" was, on every side, approaching its consummation;
and each, bound-up in the circle of his own wants and
perils, stood grimly distrustful of his neighbour, and the dis-
tracted Common-weal was a Common-woe, and to all men
it became apparent that the end was drawing nigh:--all
this black aspect of Ruin and Decay, visible enough, experi-
mentally known to our Sheffield friend, he calls by the name
of "Corn-Law," and expects to be in good part delivered
from, were the accursed Bread-tax repealed.
In this system of political Doctrine, even as here so em-
phatically set forth, there is not much of novelty. Radicals
we have many; loud enough on this and other grievances;
the removal of which is to be the one thing needful. The
deep, wide flood of bitterness, and hope becoming hopeless,
lies acrid, corrosive in every bosom; and flows fiercely enough
through any orifice Accident may open: through Law-
Reform, Legislative Reform, Poor-Laws, want of Poor-Laws,
Tithes, Game-Laws, or, as we see here, Corn-Laws. Whereby
indeed only this becomes clear, that a deep wide flood of evil
does exist and corrode; from which, in all ways, blindly
and seeingly, men seek deliverance, and cannot rest till they
find it; least of all till they know what part and proportion
of it is to be found.
