"To be sure we should!" cried Ellis. "To be sure we should! That is my morality exactly."
"Men are men, my dear fellow. A lord is a lord: a bishop is a bishop.
Each in his station. Things could not go on if we did not make allowances. To tell truth would be to overturn all order."
"I am willing to make allowances: for all men are liable to be mistaken."
"I approve that sentiment very much, Mr. Trevor," interrupted Enoch.
"It is prodigious fine. It is my own. All men are liable to be mistaken. I have said it a thousand times. It is prodigious fine!"
"But I cannot conceive," added I, "that to overturn systems which are founded in vice and folly would be to overturn all order. You may call systematic selfishness, systematic hypocrisy, and systematic oppression order: but I a.s.sert they are disorder."
"My dear fellow, nothing is so easy as to a.s.sert. But we will leave this to another time. I dare say that in the main there is no great difference between us. You wish for all the good things you can get; and so do I. One of us may take a more round about way to obtain them than the other: but we both intend to travel to the same goal. I own, when I heard of your _brouillerie_ with my friend Idford, I thought you had missed the road. But I find you have more wit than I supposed: you are now guided by another finger-post. Perhaps it might have been as well not to have changed. The treasury bench is a strong hold, and never was so well fortified. It is become impregnable. It includes the whole power of England, Scotland, and Ireland; both the Indies; countless islands, and boundless continents: with all the grand out-works of lords, spiritual and temporal; governors; generals; admirals; custos rotulorum, and magistracy; bodies corporate, and chartered companies; excise, and taxation; board and bankruptcy commissioners; contractors; agents; jobbers; money-lenders, and spies; with all the gradations of these and many more distinct cla.s.ses: understrappers innumerable; an endless swarm; a monstrous ma.s.s. Can it be conjured away by angry breath? No, no. It is no house of cards: for an individual to attempt to puff it down would be ridiculous insanity."
"A ma.s.s indeed! "Making Ossa like a wart." Yet the rubbish must be removed; and it is mine and every man"s duty to handle the spade and besom. But men want to work miracles; and, because the mountain does not vanish at a word, they rashly conclude it cannot be diminished.
They are mistaken. Political error is a pestilential cloud; dense with mephitic and deadly vapours: but a wind has arisen in the south, that will drive it over states, kingdoms, and empires; till at last it shall be swept from the face of the earth."
"My dear fellow, you have an admirable genius: but you have mistaken its bent. Depend upon it, you are no politician: though you are a very great poet. Fine phrases, grand metaphors, beautiful images, all very admirable! and you have them at command. You are born to be an ornament to your country. You have a very pretty turn. Very pretty indeed! And so, which is the point that I was coming to, concerning this pamphlet. It relates I think to certain letters that appeared, signed Themistocles."
"And to a defence, by my lord the bishop, of the thirty nine articles," added Ellis: eager that he and his patron should not be omitted.
"You, my dear fellow, had some part in both of these publications."
"I do not know what you mean by some part. The substance of them both was my own."
"Ay, ay; you had a share: a considerable share. You and Idford were friends. You conversed together, and communicated your thoughts to each other. Did not you?"
"I grant we did."
"I knew you would grant whatever was true. You are the advocate of truth; and I commend you, Idford mixed with political men, knew the temper of the times, was acquainted with various anecdotes, and gave you every information in his power. I know you are too candid to conceal or disguise the least fact. You would be as ready to condemn yourself as another. You have real dignity of mind. It gives you a certain superiority; a kind of grandeur; of real grandeur. It is your principle."
"It ought to be."
"No doubt. And I am sure you will own that I have stated the case fairly. I told you, Mr. Ellis, that I knew my friend Trevor. He has too much integrity to disown any thing I have said. I dare believe, were he to read the letters of Themistocles over at this instant, he would find it difficult to affirm, of any one sentence, that the thought _might not possibly_ have been suggested in conversation by my friend Idford. I say _might not possibly_: for you both perceive I am very desirous on this occasion to be guarded."
"It certainly is a difficult thing," answered I, "for any man positively to affirm he can trace the origin of any one thought; and recollect the moment when it first entered his mind."
My lips were opening to proceed: but Glibly with great eagerness prevented me.
"I knew, my dear fellow, that your candor was equal to your understanding. Mr. Ellis, who hears all that pa.s.ses, will do me the justice to say that I declared before you came what turn the affair would take."
I was again going to speak, but he was determined I should not, and proceeded with his unconquerable volubility; purposely leading my mind to another train of thought.
"I am very glad indeed that the advertis.e.m.e.nt which appeared was not with your approbation. On recollection, I cannot conceive how I could for a moment suppose it was your own act. A man of the soundest understanding may be surprised into pa.s.sion, and may write in a pa.s.sion: but he will think again and again, and will be careful not to publish in a pa.s.sion. And the delay which has taken place might have proved to me that you had thought; and had determined not to publish.
Your countenance, when you disowned the advertis.e.m.e.nt just now, convinces me that I do you no more than justice, by supposing this of you."
Here the artful orator thought proper to pause for a reply, and I answered, "I own that I wrote in a spirit which I do not at present quite approve."
"I know it. What you have said and what you have allowed have so much of liberality, cool recollection, and dispa.s.sionate honesty, that they are, as I knew they would be, very honourable to you."
"Prodigiously, indeed!" said Enoch.
Glibly continued: "Your behaviour, in this business, entirely confirms my good opinion of you; and I give myself some credit for understanding a man"s true character: especially the character of a man like you. My good friend Ellis and I are entirely satisfied. What has pa.s.sed has removed all doubts, and difficulties. We are with you; and shall report every thing to your advantage."
"I wish you to report nothing but the truth."
"I know it, my dear fellow. That is what we intend. So, without saying a word more on that subject, we will now consider what is best to be done. I understand that the edition about to be published is pirated; and I suppose you will join us in an application to the Lord Chancellor for an injunction."
"Most eagerly. That was my reason for wishing to see you, so immediately after my arrival in town; imagining that an application from Lord Idford, and the bishop, would be more readily attended to than if it came from a private and unknown individual."
"To be sure it would, Mr. Trevor!" said Enoch. "An application from an earl and a bishop, is not likely to be overlooked. They are privileged persons. They are the higher powers. Every thing that concerns them must be treated with tenderness, and reverence, and humbleness, and every thing of that kind."
The spirit moved me to begin an enquiry into privileges; and the tenderness and humility due to earls and bishops: particularly to such as the n.o.ble and reverend lords in question: but Glibly guessed my thoughts, and took care to prevent me!
"As to those subjects, my dear Ellis," said he, "Trevor thinks and acts on a different system from you and me and the rest of the world.
We must not dispute these points, now; but away, as fast as we can, and put the business for which we met in a train. The publication must be stopped. It would injure all parties; and, as you, my dear friend [Turning to me] justly think at present, would be disgraceful to its author."
After what had been urged by Turl and Wilmot, and the reasoning that had followed in my own mind, I knew not how to deny this a.s.sertion: though it was painfully grating. But the reader will easily perceive that this and other strong affirmations, such as I have related, were designedly made by Glibly. He artfully gabbled on, that he might lead my mind from attending to them too strictly; and that he might afterward, if occasion should require, state them, with the colouring that he should give, as things uttered or allowed by me.
It ought not to be thought strange that I was deceived by Glibly, barefaced as his cunning would have appeared to a man more versed in the arts which over-reaching selfishness daily puts in practice.
He confessedly came in behalf of a party concerned; and, as such, a liberal mind would be prepared to expect a bias from him rather in favour of his client. His face was smiling; his tones were soft and smooth; the words candor, honesty, and integrity, were continually on his tongue. He affected to be a disinterested arbitrator; and allowed that his friend Idford, as he called him, might or rather must be tainted with the vices of his station, and cla.s.s. Could a youth, unhacknied in the world, feeling that treachery was not native to the heart of man, not suspecting on ordinary occasions that it could exist, could such a tyro in hypocrisy be a fit antagonist for such an adept?
Deceit will frequently escape immediate detection: but it seldom leaves the person, upon whom it is practised, with that clearness of thought which communicates calm to the mind; producing unruffled satisfaction, and cheerful good temper.
CHAPTER XII
_A lawyer and his poetical wife and daughters, or the family of the Quisques: Praise may give pain: A babbler may bite: More of the colouring of cunning: A trader"s ideas of honesty, and the small sum for which it may be sold_
We quitted the coffee-house; Glibly in high spirits, and Enoch concluding things had been done as they should be: but, for my own part, I experienced a confusion of intellect that did not suffer me to be so much at my ease. I had an indistinct sense of being as pa.s.sive as a blind man with his dog. Instead of taking the lead, as I was ent.i.tled to have done, I was led: hurried away, like a man down a mountain with a high wind at his back: or traversing dark alleys, holding by the coat-flap of a guide of whose good intentions I was very far from having any certainty.
We proceeded however to the house of a solicitor in chancery; who transacted business for the Earl.
Here Glibly, attentive to the plan he had pursued, began by informing Mr. Quisque, the lawyer, that he had come _at the request_ of his dear friend, Trevor, to entreat his aid in an affair of some moment. "Mr.
Trevor is a young gentleman, my dear Quisque, that you will be proud to be acquainted with; a man of talents; a poet; an orator; an author; a great genius; an excellent scholar; a fine writer; turns a sentence or a rhyme with exquisite neatness; very prettily I a.s.sure you. I mention these circ.u.mstances, my dear Quisque, because I know you have a taste for such things: and so has Mrs. Quisque, and the two Miss Quisques, and all the family. I now and then see very pretty things of their writing in the Lady"s Magazine. An elegy on a robin red-breast.
The drooping violet, a sonnet. And others equally ecstatic. Quite charming! rapturous! elegant! flowery! sentimental! Some of them very smart, and epigrammatic. It is a family, my dear Trevor, that you must become intimate with. Your merit ent.i.tles you to the distinction. You will communicate your mutual productions. You will polish and suggest charming little delicate emendations, to each other, before you favour the world with a sight of them."
The broadest and coa.r.s.est satire was never half so insulting, to the feelings, as the common-place praise of Glibly.
The barren-pated Ellis caught one of the favourite diminutives of Glibly; and finished my panegyric by adding that, "he must say, his friend, Mr. Trevor, was a prodigious pretty genius."
Who but must have been proud of such an introduction to the family of the Quisques; by such orators, such eulogists, and such friends?
Acquainted with Glibly, and accustomed to hear him prate, Mr. Quisque seemed to listen to him without surprise, pleasure, or pain. It was what he expected. It was the man. A machine that had no more meaning than a Dutch clock; repeating cuckoo, as it strikes.
Among Glibly"s acquaintance, or, as he called them, his dear friends, this was a common but a very false conclusion. He had not adopted his customary cant without a motive. The man, who can persuade others that he gabbles in a pleasant but ridiculous and undesigning manner, will lead them to suppose that his actions are equally incongruous, and void of intention. He will pa.s.s upon the world for an agreeable harmless fellow, till his malignities are too numerous to escape notice; and then, where he was before welcomed with the hope of a laugh, he will continue to be admitted from the dread of a bite.