Chapter VIII: Part 8

The security of the Carlist army did not so much depend on the vigilance of outposts and advanced guards, as on the system of transmitting information that was established amongst the village alcaldes, and on the zeal and fidelity of the _confidentes_ or spies. Without reckoning those persons who acted in the latter capacity in the vicinity of their own homes, Zumalacarregui always had about him eighteen or twenty regularly paid spies; and to these, even in the moments of his greatest poverty and difficulty, he showed himself liberal to prodigality. Notwithstanding that it was out of his power to recompense sufficiently the risks they ran, and the important services they rendered, these men performed their arduous duties with admirable fidelity. Zaratiegui relates an anecdote of one of them who, having been guilty of some neglect, received, by order of Zumalacarregui, two hundred blows with a stick, and was then turned out of the camp. The evening of the same day on which this took place, when the general called as usual for his _confidentes_, the man who had been beaten made his appearance with the others. Although Zumalacarregui was acquainted with the characteristic fidelity of these men, he could not help being struck with this instance of it. His natural generosity of character prevented him from hesitating a moment in restoring his confidence to the offender. "Rest yourself to-night," he said to him; "to-morrow you will have to go upon a service of the greatest importance, and which you alone are able to perform." And the man left the room, perfectly consoled for the pain and humiliation of his beating, by these few kind words, addressed to him in presence of his comrades.

Another anecdote will illustrate the affection of the Carlist soldiers for their leader, and their sympathy with his difficulties. The troops all wore _alpargatas_--a species of sandal, of which the sole is of plaited hemp. These are admirably adapted for long marches in dry weather, but the wet destroys them, and they go to pieces directly. Of these sandals, as of every other description of equipment, there was sometimes great difficulty in obtaining a sufficient supply. One day that it rained heavily, Zumalacarregui was going to pass, with several battalions, from the Ulzama to the valley of Ollo. The soil was clay, and there was sure to be a great destruction of the hempen shoes. Zumalacarregui, who at that time had no others wherewith to replace them, rode along the line of march, and spoke to man here and there. "A peseta," said he, (about tenpence sterling,) "for every man who presents himself this evening with a sound pair of alpargatas." The word was passed from mouth to mouth; the soldiers understood the difficulty in which their general was, took off their shoes, and performed a long and toilsome march barefoot. The next day, when Zumalacarregui ordered the promised recompense to be distributed, the commandants of battalions said that it was unnecessary, for that none of the men claimed it.

About this time, Zumalacarregui made an expedition beyond the Ebro, with the view of carrying off a quantity of woollen cloth from the manufactories at Escaray. He was unsuccessful in the immediate object of the expedition; but, at a short distance from Logrono, he fell in with a convoy, escorted by two companies of infantry and three strong squadrons of dragoons. The latter charged the Carlist cavalry, which was of much inferior force, and threw it into complete disorder. Zumalacarregui, who was a short way behind, saw the disgraceful flight of his lancers, set spurs to his horse, came up with the fugitives, and rallied them. As soon as he had got together fifty men, he charged the Christinos, regardless of the great disparity of force. The charge took place on the high-road, where there was no room to form front by troops or squadrons. Six or eight Christino dragoons of gigantic stature, _tiradores_ or pioneers as they were called, occupied the whole width of the road, whilst the convoy made all haste to gain the town. Zumalacarregui, with six of his men, attacked them, and scarcely had their lances crossed the Christino sabres, when the dragoons were all killed or wounded. The Carlists charged onwards; the whole of the Christino cavalry was cut to pieces or forced to run, and the convoy remained in the hands of the conquerors. It consisted of two thousand muskets, and came very opportunely to arm the four new battalions, which had been more than three months in idleness, waiting for weapons.

On the 27th and 28th of October, just one year after Zumalacarregui had taken command of the Carlist army, occurred the two famous actions in the plains of Vittoria, when General O'Doyle and two thousand Christinos fell into the hands of the victors, and nearly as many more were left dead upon the field. O'Doyle and some of the officers taken were shot; but the lives of the men were spared, and soon afterwards, at their own request, their arms were restored to them, and they were incorporated in the Carlist battalions. This, and other disasters, which about this time befell Rodil's army, occasioned his recall by the Queen's government, and the celebrated Mina was appointed in his stead.

The increase of Zumalacarregui's forces, and the advantages he had gained, inspired him with the idea of capturing some of the Christino forts in Navarre and the Basque provinces; the said forts being exceedingly prejudicial to his operations. The great obstacle to his wishes was, the weakness of his artillery. This consisted only of three small field-pieces, such as are carried on the backs of mules, and could be of little service in attacking fortifications. Of shot and shell he had a large supply, which had been taken at the manufactory of Orbaiceta. For seven or eight months these stores had been lying there neglected, none of the Queen's generals having had the foresight to remove them to a place of safety. Zumalacarregui now caused them to be taken away, and concealed in the most intricate recesses of the mountains. But these projectiles were of little use without guns; and to procure the latter the ingenuity of the Carlists was taxed to the very utmost. Zumalacarregui remembered that, upon a sandy spot on the Biscayan coast, an old iron twelve-pounder was lying neglected and forgotten. This he ordered to be brought to Navarre. A rude carriage was constructed, on which it was mounted, and it was then dragged by six pair of oxen over mountains, and through ravines, to the Sierra of Urbasa, where it was buried. Soldiers are very ingenious in inventing appropriate names; and as soon as the Carlist volunteers saw this unwieldy old-fashioned piece of ordnance, full of moss and sand, and covered with rust, they christened it the Abuelo, or the Grandfather, by which appellation it was ever afterwards known. The only artillery officer at that time with Zumalacarregui was Don Tomas Reina, who now, in conjunction with one Balda, a professor of chemistry, began to devise means for founding some guns. In the villages and hamlets within a certain circumference, a requisition was made for all articles composed of copper and brass, such as brasiers, stew-pans, chocolate pots, warming-pans, &c.; but as it was found impossible to get sufficient of these, the three field-pieces were added, and the whole melted together. In the midst of a forest this strange foundery was established, and after numerous failures, occasioned by want of experience and of the proper tools, Reina succeeded in making a couple of howitzers, which, although of uncouth appearance, it was thought might answer the purpose for which they were intended.

Never were the Christinos more confident of a speedy termination to the war than when Mina took the command. The well-earned reputation of that chief, his peculiar aptitude for mountain warfare, and intimate acquaintance with the country of Navarre, which had been the scene of his triumphs during the war against Napoleon, certainly pointed him out as the most fitting man to oppose to Zumalacarregui. Forgetting that similar hopes had been founded on the skill of Quesada and Rodil, and on the imposing forces they commanded, hopes which had been so signally frustrated, the Queen's partizans now set up a premature song of triumph, soon to be turned into notes of lamentation. The Mina of 1834, old and bed-ridden, with his energies, mental perhaps as well as physical, impaired by long inaction, was a very different man from the Mina of 1810. When fighting against the French, the sympathies of the Navarrese were with him; now they were against him, and in a war of this description, that difference was of immense importance. In spite of the wintry season and of the badness of his health, one of the first things he did on assuming the command was to make an excursion to Puente la Reyna, Maneru, and other places, where, in days gone by, he had had his headquarters, and which he had then never entered without being greeted as a hero and patriot, and welcomed with enthusiastic _vivas_. He flattered himself that this enthusiasm would be again awakened by his appearance; and was so much the more shocked when he found himself received with the utmost coldness and indifference. His illness was aggravated by disappointment, and he returned angry and disgusted to Pampeluna. Thence, incapacitated by his infirmities from exerting himself in the field, he directed from his cabinet the operations of his lieutenants, and issued orders, the cruelty of some of which soon caused his name to be as much execrated in Navarre as it had there once been venerated. At no period of the war was less mercy shown to each other by the contending parties than during Mina's command. Besides shooting all prisoners taken with arms in their hands, he caused the wounded whom he found in the Carlist hospitals to be slain upon their beds, and _garroted_ or strangled a gentleman of Pampeluna, for no reason that could be discovered except that he had two sons with the Carlists. Several forts having about this time being taken or battered by Zumalacarregui, Mina determined to get possession of the guns with which this had been done. He was aware of the difficulty the Carlists had in obtaining artillery; and knowing that it could not easily be transported from one place to another in that rugged and mountainous country, he conjectured that they were in the habit of burying it, which was actually the case. In order to obtain information as to the whereabout of the mortars with which the enemy had been shelling Elizondo, he decimated the male inhabitants of Lecaros, and then burnt the village itself to the ground. Such atrocities as these, far from advancing the cause of Queen Isabel, materially injured it, offering as they did a strong contrast with the conduct of Zumalacarregui, who, at the taking of Los Arcos, Echarri-Eranaz, and other places, had shown mercy, and even great kindness, to the wounded and prisoners he took. At last Mina having ventured out in person with a division of the troops, carried in a litter because he too ill to sit his horse, was signally beaten by Zumalacarregui at a place called Siete Fuentes, or the Seven Fountains, and himself narrowly escaped being taken prisoner. Soon after this disaster he was deprived of the command, having done nothing whilst he held it but lose men and forts, and exasperate the Navarrese peasantry to an unparalleled extent.

An attempt that was made about this time to assassinate Espartero, who then commanded a moveable column in Biscay, is thus narrated by General Zaratiegui:--

"The constant passage of Espartero between Bilboa and Orduna, inspired a peasant, who occupied a farmhouse near Luyando, with the idea of attempting that general's life. It was said that the man had been robbed or ill-treated by the soldiers of Espartero's division; but it is quite as probable that the peasant fancied in his simplicity, that if he could kill the Christino general, the war and the evils it inflicted on his country would be at an end. Taking a large tree trunk, he fashioned it into a sort of cannon, fixed it at a spot where it commanded the high-road, and loaded it to the very mouth. The next time Espartero passed that way, the peasant watched his moment, set fire to the fuse of this singular piece of artillery, and then ran away. The Christino soldiers hurried to the spot whence the explosion had proceeded, and found the wooden cannon burst into fifty pieces. It was evidently the act of an individual; but nevertheless the unlucky village of Luyando, being the nearest to the scene of the event, was immediately set on fire. Out of the sixty houses composing it, more than one half were consumed; and if the others escaped, it was merely because the Christinos happened to want them at the moment for their own occupation."

Valdes was the last Christino general opposed to Zumalacarregui. Being minister of war at the time of Mina's dismissal from the command, he ordered all the troops that could possibly be spared to march to Navarre, and himself followed to direct their operations. Upon his appearance the war assumed a more humane character; and soon afterwards the arrival of the British commissioner, and his successful intervention, put an end to the system of reprisals, although after Zumalacarregui's death it was again more than once resorted to by the most ferocious of the leaders on either side. In honour of Lord Eliot, Zumalacarregui set at liberty the prisoners he had made in the recent action of the Amezcoas, in which Valdes had been roughly handled. Lord Eliot having expressed a wish for an autograph of the Carlist leader, Zumalacarregui took a pen and wrote, in Spanish, as follows:--

"At Asarta, a village of the valley of Berrueza, celebrated for the various combats which have occurred there in the course of the present century, the honour of receiving his Excellency Lord Eliot was enjoyed, on the 25th April 1835, by Tomas Zumalacarregui."

Colonel Gurwood made the Carlist chief a present of an excellent field glass, which had been used by the Duke of Wellington on some occasion during the Peninsular war. "This telescope was so esteemed by Zumalacarregui," says his biographer, "that as long as he lived he always carried it with him; and at the present day, in spite of its trifling intrinsic value, it is treasured by his family as the most precious heir-loom they possess."

The non-success of Valdes's expedition to the valleys of the Amezcoas, and the fatigues and losses sustained there by his troops, had greatly discouraged the latter. On all sides the Carlists were obtaining advantages, and their adversaries began to entertain a panic terror of Zumalacarregui, who availed himself of this discouragement and temporary inaction of the foe to attack several fortified places. Amongst others, the town of Trevino, situated between Vittoria and the Ebro, and at only three or four hours' march from the cantonments of Valdes's army, fell into the hands of the Carlists. Assembling thirteen battalions at the Venta of Armentia, Zumalacarregui brought up his artillery, consisting of one cannon and one howitzer, with which in two days he forced the place to capitulate. Although Valdes, from where he was, could hear the sound of the guns, he did not venture to show himself till the Carlists had destroyed the fortifications, and effected their retreat with prisoners and artillery.

It was after this successful expedition, and at what may be considered the most fortunate period of Zumalacarregui's career, that Don Carlos conceived the idea of conferring a title on him. He caused this to be intimated to the general, and also that he was only waiting to know what title it would be the most agreeable to him to receive. "We will talk about it," replied Zumalacarregui, "after entering Cadiz. As yet we are not safe even in the Pyrenees, and a title of any kind would be but a step towards the ridiculous." It was not till eleven months after his death that Don Carlos issued a decree, making him grandee of Spain, by the titles of Duke of Victory and Count of Zumalacarregui.

The garrisons of Estella and of various other fortified towns in the interior of Navarre and the Basque provinces, were now withdrawn by order of Valdes; other strong places were taken or capitulated, the garrisons remaining for the most part prisoners of war. Within two months after the Eliot convention, the Carlists had got 300 Christino officers and 2000 rank and file, prisoners in their various depots, without reckoning those who, on being captured, took up arms for Don Carlos. To exchange against these, the Queen's generals had not a single prisoner. About this time Espartero was beaten at Descarga by Eraso; whilst Oraa met the same fate in the valley of the Baztan at the hands of Sagastibelza. Jauregui abandoned Tolosa, leaving behind him a quantity of ammunition and stores, and shut himself up in St Sebastian.

The intrigues and manoeuvres of certain individuals who surrounded Don Carlos, pandered to his weaknesses, and worked upon his superstitious bigotry, began to occasion Zumalacarregui serious annoyance, and to interfere in some instances with his plans. During a short visit to Segura, where the Carlist court then was, he experienced much disgust and vexation. His health, moreover, began to fail him; and a week later, from the town of Vergara, which he had just taken, with its garrison of 2000 men, he sent in his resignation. The following day Don Carlos himself came to Vergara, and had a short conference with Zumalacarregui, after which the latter marched upon Durango and Ochandiano, towns on the Bilboa road, and took the latter, whilst the former was abandoned by its garrison. It was now his wish to attack Vittoria, which was the nearest large town, and the easiest to take; but just at this time, Don Carlos, it appears, had been disappointed of a loan, and his flatterers and advisers had been consoling him for it, by holding out a prospect of taking Bilboa, which opulent commercial city contained, they said, enough riches to get him out of all his difficulties. Zumalacarregui opposed this plan, but his deference for Don Carlos finally caused him to yield; and with a heavy heart, and a train of artillery totally inadequate to the reduction of so strong a town, he sat down before Bilboa. Two twelve-pounders and one six-pounder, two brass fours, two howitzers and a mortar, were all that he had to oppose to the strong defences and forty or fifty guns with which the capital of Biscay was provided. There was also a great lack of certain descriptions of ammunition. For the mortar there were only six-and-thirty shells; and to add to the misfortunes of the attacking party, their two largest guns, the twelve-pounders, burst on the very first day of the siege. During the whole of that day and night, Zumalacarregui neither ate nor slept; and on the morrow, which was the 15th of June, he wrote a letter to the headquarters of Don Carlos, then at Durango, informing the ministers, that owing to the immense disproportion between his means of attack and the enemy's powers of defence, he expected it would be necessary to raise tire siege.

After sending off this despatch, a great weight seemed removed from the mind of Zumalacarregui, and he went down to the batteries. With the view of observing whether the Bilbainos had made any repairs or thrown up works in the course of the night, he ascended to the first floor of a house situated near the sanctuary of Our Lady of Begona, and from the balcony began to examine the enemy's line. Whilst standing there, a bullet struck him on the right leg, about two inches from the knee. Nine days afterwards he was dead--killed, there can be little doubt, less by the wound or its effects than by the gross ignorance of his medical attendants. Three Spanish doctors, a young English surgeon, and a _curandero_, or quack, named Petriquillo, whom Zumalacarregui had known from his youth, and in whose skill he had great confidence, were called in. The Englishman, however, returned after two days to the squadron to which he was attached, giving as his opinion, which agreed with that of Don Carlos's own surgeon, one Gelos, that in a fortnight Zumalacarregui would be on horseback again. Whilst Petriquillo was applying ointments and frictions, and a doctor of medicine cramming the patient with drugs, Gelos and another surgeon kept tormenting the wound with their probes. The wounded man's general health, already affected by the various annoyances he had recently experienced, began to give way; and at last, within three or four hours after the extraction of the ball, an operation that appears to have been performed in the most butcherlike manner, Zumalacarregui breathed his last. He was forty-six years of age, and left a wife and three daughters. All his worldly possessions consisted of three horses and a mule, some arms, the telescope given him by Colonel Gurwood, and fourteen ounces of gold.

If that weak and incapable prince, Don Carlos de Borbon, had allowed Zumalacarregui to follow up his own plans of campaign, instead of dictating to him unfeasible ones, there can be little doubt that in less than another year he would have entered Madrid. The immense importance of the _prestige_ attached to a general is well known. That of Zumalacarregui was fully established, both with his own men and the Queen's troops. The latter trembled at his very name; the former, at his command, were ready to attack ten times their number.

"Are there only two battalions yonder?" enquired Captain Henningsen of a Carlist soldier, pointing to a position which was menaced by a large body of the enemy. "That is all, Senor," was the reply; "but the general is there." The man was as confident of the safety of the position as though there had been twenty battalions instead of two. And such was the feeling throughout the Carlist army.

The only one of the Carlist or Christino leaders who united all the qualities essential to success was Zumalacarregui. Some were honest, a few were perhaps good tacticians, others were not deficient in energy, but none were all three. The Christino generals were generally conspicuous for their indecision, and for their want of zeal for the cause they defended. Many of them would have been sorry to see an end put to a war which gave them occupation, rapid promotion, decorations, titles, and money. When Zumalacarregui began his campaign with a handful of men, no one could catch him; when he got stronger and showed fight, no one could stand against him. As soon as he died, his system of warfare was abandoned, and victory ceased to be faithful to the Carlist standard. The battle of Mendigorria, which occurred within a month after his death, and in which the Carlists were signally defeated by Cordova, taught the former that their previous successes had been owing at least as much to their general's skill as to their own invincibility.

The most salient points in Zumalacarregui's character were his generosity and energy. The former was carried almost to an excess. He could not see persons in want without relieving them; and as his sole income whilst commanding the Carlist army consisted of 2500 reals, or twenty-five pounds sterling, a-month, which he took for his pay, he frequently found himself without a maravedi in his pocket. It is related of him, amongst many other anecdotes of the same kind, that once in winter, the weather being very cold, he had ordered a coat, having only one, and that much worn. The tailor had just brought it home and been paid for it, when Zumalacarregui, happening to look out of the window, saw one of his officers passing in a very ragged condition. He called him up, made him try on his new coat, and finding that it fitted him, sent him away with it, himself remaining in the same state as before.

For the charges of cruelty of disposition which have been brought against Zumalacarregui, we are inclined to believe there was very insufficient ground. He was a severe disciplinarian, shot his own men when they deserved it, and his prisoners when the Christinos set him the example; but if he had not done so he had better have sheathed his sword at once, and left Don Carlos to fight his own battles, in which case they would very soon have been over. His present biographer, who writes coolly and dispassionately, and appears as sparing of indiscriminate praise of his friends as of exaggerated blame of his foes, gives numerous instances of Zumalacarregui's goodness of heart and humane feeling. Of a bilious habit and a hasty temper, he could ill bear contradiction, and at times would say or do things for which he was afterwards sorry. In such cases he was not ashamed to acknowledge, and if possible repair, his fault.

The death of Zumalacarregui was the subject of unbounded exultation to the Christinos; and for long afterwards there might be seen upon the walls of their towns and villages the remains of a proclamation announcing it, and predicting a speedy annihilation of the faction. Although this prophecy was not made good, and the war was protracted for upwards of four years longer, it soon became evident that the loss sustained was irreparable, and that the hopes of Carlism in the Peninsula lay buried in the grave of Tomas Zumalacarregui.

REFERENCE: _Vida y Hechos de Don Tomas Zumalacarregui, Duque de la Victoria, Conde de Zumalacarregui, y Capitan-General del Ejercito de S.M. Don Carlos V., por el General del mismo Ejercito_, DON J.A. ZARATIEGUI.

NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS.

No. VII.

MAC-FLECNOE AND THE DUNCIAD.

The field which we have invaded is one obviously of a vast comprehension. Taking it up, as we have rightly done, from Dryden, more than a century and a half of our literature lies immediately and necessarily within it. For the fountain of criticism once opened and flowing, the criticism of a country continually reflects its literature, as a river the banks which yield it a channel, and through which it winds.

But the image falls short of the thing signified; for criticism is retrospective without limit, as well as contemporaneous. Heaven only knows whether it may not be endowed with a gift of prophecy; and for its horizon--is this narrower than the world? We have undertaken a field which seems limited, only because it stretches beyond sight. Let us hope, however, that we shall find some art of striking our own road through it, without being obliged to study, both in the reflection and in the original, all the books of all nations and ages, criticising, as we go along, both originals and criticisms. Every subject, said Burke--we remember his remark, though not the very words--branches out into infinitude. The point of view draws a horizon--the goal determines a track. "The British Critics" themselves are a host,

"Innumerable as the stars of night,
Or stars of morning; dewdrops which the sun
Impearls on every leaf and every flower."

But discreet conscientious Oblivion has infolded under his loving pinions nine hundred and ninety-nine in every thousand; while we think of concerning ourselves with those only whose names occupy some notable niche, pedestal, or other position, in the august house of the great goddess, Fame. We desire to show the spirit and power of British criticism, to display the characteristic working of the British intellect in this department of intellectual activity. Therefore, among known names, we shall dwell the most upon those writers whose works the mind of the nation has the most frankly, cordially, and unreservedly taken to itself, recognising them, as it were, for its own productions--those writers whose reputation the country has the most distinctly identified with her own renown.

We have taken hold upon two such names, Dryden and Pope. And tens of thousands have experienced with us the pleasures that arise from a renewed or new intimacy with powerful spirits. The acquaintance is not speedily exhausted. It grows and unfolds itself. When you think to have done with them, and lift up your bonnet with a courteous gesture of leave-taking, your host draws your arm within his, and leads you out into his garden, and threading some labyrinthine involution of paths, conducts you to some hidden parterre of his choicest flowers, or to the aerial watch-tower of his most magnificent prospect.

The omnipotent setter of limits, Death, freezes the tuneful tongue, unnerves the critical hand, from which the terrible pen drops into dust. Shakspeare has written his last play--Dryden his last tale. You may dream--if you like--of what projected and unwritten--what unprojected but possible comedies, histories, tragedies, went into the tomb in the church of Stratford upon Avon! In the meanwhile, you will find that what is written is not so soon read. Read for the first time it soon is--not for the last. For what is "to read?" "_Legere_" is "to gather." Shakspeare is not soon gathered--nor is Dryden.

Walk through a splendid region. Do you think that you have seen it? You have begun seeing it. Live in it fifty years, and by degrees you may have come to know something worth telling of Windermere! Our vocation now, gentles all, is not simply the knowing--it is the showing too; and here, too, the same remark holds good. For we think ten times and more, that now surely we have shown poet or critic. But not so. Some other attitude, some other phasis presents itself; and all at once you feel that, without it, your exposition of the power, or your picture of the man, is incomplete.

You have seen how the critics lead us a dance. Dryden and Pope criticise Shakspeare. We have been obliged to criticise Shakspeare, and this criticism of him. Dryden measures himself with Juvenal, Lucretius, and Virgil. We, somewhat violently perhaps--with a gentle violence--construe a translation into a criticism, and prate too of those immortals. Glorious John modernizes Father Geoffrey; and to try what capacity of palate you have for the enjoyment of English poetry some four or five centuries old, we spread our board with a feast of veritable Chaucer. Yet not a word, all the while, of the Wife of Bath's Tale of Chivalry and Faery, which is given with fine spirit by Dryden--nor of the Cock and the Fox, told by the Nun's priest, which is renewed with infinite life and gaiety, and sometimes we are half-inclined to say, with fidelity in the departure, by the same matchless pen. Good old father Chaucer! Can it be true that century rolling after century thickens the dust upon Adam Scrivener's vellum! Can it be true that proceeding time widens the gulf yawning betwixt thee and ourselves, thy compatriots of another day, thy poetical posterity! The supposition is unnatural--un-English--un-Scottish. Thou hast been the one popular poet of England. Shakspeare alone has unseated thee. Thou hast been taken to the heart of Scottish poets, as though there were not even a dialectical shadow of difference distinguishing thine and their languages. A dim time, an eclipsing of light and warmth fell upon the island, and to read thee was a feat of strange scholarship, a study of the more learned. But happier years shall succeed. As Antaeus the giant acquired life and strength by dropping back upon the bosom of his mother earth--she, the universal parent, was, you know, in a more private and domestic meaning his mother--so, giants of our brood, dropping back upon they bosom, O Father Chaucer! shall from that infusive touch renew vitality and vigour, and go forth exultingly to scale, not Olympus, but Parnassus. And now, in illustration of the ruling spirit--known and felt in its full power only by ourselves--of this series--NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS--we invite unexpectedly--(for who can foresee the ensuing segment of our orbit?)--the people of these realms to admire with us the critical genius of Dryden and of Pope, displayed in their matchless satires--MAC-FLECNOE and the DUNCIAD.

In regard to these poems, shall we seek to conciliate our countrymen by admitting, at the outset, that there is something in both to be confessed and forgiven? That there is something about them that places them upon a peculiar footing--that is not quite right? They must be distinguished from the legitimate poems, in which the poet and the servant of the Muses merely exercises his ministry. He then furnishes to the needs of humanity, and is the acknowledged benefactor of his kind. But these are _wilful_ productions. They are from the _personal_ self of the poet. They are arbitrary acts of mighty despots. They kill, because they choose and can. And we, alas!--we are bribed by the idolatry of power to justify the excesses of power. Let not our maligners--our foes--hear of it, for it is one of our vulnerable points.

Yet as long as men and women are weak and mortal, genius will possess a privilege of committing certain peccadilloes that will be winked at and hushed up. We proclaim poetry for an organ of the highest, profoundest truth. But every now and then, when we are in difficulties, we shroud the poet and ourselves under the undeniable fact, that poetry is fiction; and under that pretext, wildly and wickedly would throw off all responsibility from him, and from ourselves, his retainers and abettors; and yet something, after all, is to be conceded to the mask of the poet. All nations and times have agreed in not judging him by the prosaic laws to which we who write and speak prose are amenable. His is a playful part, and he has a knack of slipping from under the hand of serious judgment. He is a Proteus, and feels himself bound to speak the bare truth only when he is reduced to his proper person, not whilst he is exercising his preternatural powers of illusion. He holds in his grasp the rod of the Enchanter, Pleasure, and with a touch he unnerves the joints that would seize and drag him before the seat of an ordinary police. But we must remember that we are now scrawling unprivileged prose; and beware that we do not, like other officious and uncautious partizans, bring down upon our own defenceless heads the sword which the delinquency of them mightier far has roused from the scabbard.

Let us see, then, how stands the case of such satirists.

War enters into the kingdom of the Muses. Rival wits assail one another--Dryden and Shadwell. _Nec dis nec viribus aequis._ This is a duel--_impar congressus Achillei_. But when Pope undertakes to hunt down the vermin of literature, this is no distraction of the Parnassian realm by civil war. This is the lawful magistrate going forth, armed perhaps with extraordinary powers, to clear an infested district of vulgar malefactors and notorious bad characters.

Vile publishers, vile critics, vile scribblers of every denomination, in prose and verse--all those who turn the press, that organ of light for the world, into an engine of darkness--who may blame the poet for clothing them in such curses as shall make them for all time at once loathsome and laughable in Christian lands?

Letters! sent by heaven for accomplishing the gift of speech. The individual thinker, by turning his thoughts into words, advances himself in the art and power of thought--unravels, clears up, and establishes the movements of "the shadowy tribes of mind." And so the federal republic of nations, by turning the spoken word into the written, advance their faculty of thinking, and their acquisition of thought. The thought has gained perpetuity when it is worded--the word has gained perpetuity when it is written. Reason waits her completed triumph from the written work, which converts, and alone can convert, the thought of the individual mind into that of the universal mind; thus constituting the fine act of one aspiring intelligence the common possession of the species, and collecting the produce of all wits into the public treasury of knowledge.

The misusers of letters are therefore the foes of the race. The licentious thinker and writer prejudices the liberty of thinking and writing. Those who excel in letters, and in the right use of letters, are sensitive to their misapplication. Hence arises a species of satire, or, if you will, satirist--THE SCRIBLERO-MASTIX. He must attack individuals. A heavily-resounding lash should scourge the immoral and the profane. Light stripes may suffice for quelling the less nocent dunces. In commonplace prose criticism, whatever form it may take, this can be done without supposed personal ill-will; for the Mastix is then only doing a duty plainly prescribed. The theologian must censure, and trample as mire, the railing assailant of the truths which in his eyes contain salvation. The reviewer must review. But what, it may be asked, moves any follower of the Muses to satirise a scribbler? He seems to go _out of his way_ to do so; for verse has naturally better associations. But the personal aggression on the wit by the dunce, may fairly instigate the wit to flay the dunce. Now he finds the object of his satire _in the way_. The fact is, that Dryden's poem and Pope's were both moved in this way. The grew out of personal quarrels. Are they on that account to be blamed? Not if the dunces, by them "damned to everlasting fame," were the unhappy aggressors.

Dryden's times, and possibly something in his own character, trained his muse to polemics. His pen was active in literary controversies, which were never without a full infusion of personalities. More thoroughly moved at one time against one offender--though the history of the feud is in some parts imperfectly traceable--he compelled the clouds and hurled the lightning, in verse, on the doomed head of Thomas Shadwell. The invention of the poem entitled MAC-FLECNOE is very simple. Richard Flecnoe was a voluminous writer, and exceedingly bad poet--a name of scorn already in the kingdom of letters. Dryden supposes him to be the King of Dulness, who, advanced in years, will abdicate his well-possessed throne. He selects Shadwell from amongst his numerous offspring, all the Dunces, as the son or Dunce the most nearly resembling himself--hence the name of the poem--and appoints him his successor. That is the whole plan. The verse flows unstinted from the full urn of Dryden. The perfect ease, and the tone of mastery characteristic of him, are felt throughout. He amuses himself with laughing at his rival, and the amusement remains to all time; for all who, having felt the pleasure of wit, are the foes of the Dunces. It is not a laboured poem--it is a freak of wit. You cannot imagine him attaching much importance to the scarcely two hundred lines, thrown off in a few gleeful outpourings. To _us_, Shadwell is _nothing_. He is a phantom, an impersonation. His Duncehood is exaggerated, for he was a writer of some talent in one walk; but being selected for the throne, it was imperative to make him Dunce all through. To us, there, he is merely a Type; and we judge the strokes of Dryden in their universality, not asking if they were truly applicable to his victim, but whether they express pointedly and poignantly the repulsion entertained by Wit for Dulness. In this enlarged sense and power we feel it as poetry. When the father, encouraging his heir, says--

"And when false flowers of ret'ric thou wouldst cull, Trust Nature;
do not labour to be dull; But, write they best, and top"----

Nothing can be happier. The quiet assumption of Dulness for the highest point of desirable human attainment--the good-nature and indulgent parental concern of the wish to save the younger emulator of his own glory from spending superfluous pains on a consummation sure to come of itself--the confidence of the veteran Dullard in the blood of the race, and in the tried and undegenerate worth of his successor--the sufficient direction of a life and reign comprehended, summed up, concentrated in the one master-precept--"do not labour to be dull"--are inimitable. You feel the high artist, whom experience has made bold; and you feel your own imagination roused to conceive the universe of Dunces, each yielding to the attraction of his genius, fluttering his pinions with an exquisite grace, and all, without labour or purpose, arriving at the goal predestined by nature and fate.

We know of no good reason why, for the delectation of myriads in their minority, Maga should not give MAC-FLECNOE entire; but lest old and elderly gentlemen should think it too much extract, she gives all she can, and lets you dream the rest.

"Now Empress Fame had publish'd the renown
Of Shadwell's coronation though the Town.
Rouz'd by report of fame, the nations meet,
From near Bunhill, and distant Watling-street.
No Persian carpets spread th' imperial way,
But scatter'd limbs of mangled poets lay;
From dusty shops neglected authors come,
Martyrs of pies, and reliques of the bum.
Much Heywood, Shirley, Ogleby, there lay,
But loads of Shadwell almost chok'd the way.
Bilk'd stationers, for yeomen, stood prepar'd,
And Herringman was captain of the guard.
The hoary prince in majesty appear'd,
High on a throne of his own labours rear'd;
At his right hand our young Ascanius sate,
Rome's other hope, and pillar of the state:
His brows thick fogs, instead of glories, grace,
And lambent Dulness play'd around his face.
As Hannibal did to the altars come,
Sworn by his sire a mortal foe to Rome;
So Shadwell swore, nor should his vow be vain,
That he till death true Dulness would maintain;
And, in his father's right, and realm's defence,
Ne'er to have peace with wit, nor truce with sense.
The king himself the sacred unction made,
As king by office, and as priest by trade.
In his sinister hand, instead of ball,
He plac'd a mighty mug of potent ale;
Love's kingdom to his right he did convey,
At once his sceptre, and his rule of sway;
Whose righteous lore the Prince had practis'd young,
And from whose loins recorded Psyche sprung.
His temples, last, with poppies were o'erspread,
That, nodding, seem'd to consecrate his head.
Just at the point of time, if Fame not lie,
On his left hand twelve rev'rend owls did fly.
So Romulus, 'tis sung by Tiber's brook,
Presage of sway from twice six vultures took.
Th' admiring throng loud acclamations make,
And omens of his future empire take.
The sire then shook the honours of his head,
And, from his brows, damps of oblivion shed,
Full on the filial Dulness: long he stood,
Repelling from his breast the raging god;
At length burst out in the prophetic mood.
'Heav'ns bless my son, from Ireland let him reign
To fair Barbadoes on the western main;
Of his dominion may no end be known,
And greater than his father's be his throne;
Beyond Love's kingdom let him stretch his pen!'
He paus'd, and all the people cry'd, 'Amen.'
Then thus continu'd he: 'My son, advance
Still in new impudence, new ignorance.
Success let others teach; learn thou from me
Pangs without birth, and fruitless industry.
Let virtuosos in five years be writ;--
Yet not one thought accuse thy toil--of wit.
Let gentle George in triumph tread the stage,
Make Dorimant betray, and Loveit rage;
Let Cully, Cockwood, Fopling, charm the pit,
And, in their folly, show the writer's wit:
Yet still thy fools shall stand in thy defence,
And justify their author's want of sense.
Let them be all by thy own model made
Of dulness, and desire no foreign aid;
That they to future ages may be known,
Not copies drawn, but issue of thy own.
Nay, let thy men of wit, too, be the same,
All full of thee, and diff'ring but in name.
But let no alien Sedley interpose,
To lard with wit thy hungry Epsom prose.
And when false flowers of rhet'ric thou wouldst cull,
Trust Nature; do not labour to be dull;
But, write thy best, and top; and, in each line,
Sir Formal's oratory will be thine:
Sir Formal, though unsought, attends thy quill,
And does thy northern dedications fill.
Nor let false friends seduce thy mind to fame,
By arrogating Johnson's hostile name.
Let father Flecnoe fire thy mind with praise,
And uncle Ogleby thy envy raise.
Thou art my blood, where Johnson has no part:
What share have we--in nature or in art?
Where did his wit on learning fix a brand,
And rail at arts he did not understand?
Where made he love in Prince Nicander's vein,
Or swept the dust in Psyche's humble strain?
Where sold he bargains, Whip-stitch, Kiss me ----,
Promis'd a play, and dwindled to a farce?
When did his muse from Fletcher scenes purloin,
As thou whole Eth'rege dost transfuse to thine?
But so transfus'd as oil and waters flow;
His always floats above, thine sinks below.
This is thy province, this thy wondrous way.
New humours to invent for each new play;
This is that bloated bias of thy mind,
By which, one way, to dulness 'tis inclin'd:
Which makes thy writings lean, on one side, still;
And in all changes, _that_ way bends thy will.
Not let thy mountain-belly make pretence
Of likeness; thine's a tympany of sense.
A tun of man in thy large bulk is writ,
But sure thou art but a kilderkin of wit.
Like mine, thy gentle numbers feebly creep;
Thy Tragic Muse gives smiles, thy Comic sleep.
With whate'er gall thou sett'st thyself to write,
Thy inoffensive satires never bite.
In thy felonious heart though venom lies,
It does but touch thy Irish pen, and dies.
Thy genius calls thee not to purchase fame
In keen Iambics, but mild Anagram.
Leave writing Plays, and chuse for thy command
Some peaceful province in Acrostic land:
There thou may'st wings display, and altars raise,
And torture one poor word ten thousand ways:
Or if thou would'st thy diff'rent talents suit,
Set thy own songs, and sing them to thy lute.'
He said; but his last words were scarcely heard; }
For Bruce and Longvil has a trap prepar'd }
And down they sent the yet-declaiming bard. }
Sinking, he left his drugget robe behind,
Borne upwards by a subterranean wing:
The mantle fell to the young prophet's part,
With double portion of his father's art."

The _Mac-Flecnoe_ of Dryden suggested--no more--the _Dunciad_ of Pope. There is nothing of transcript. Flecnoe, who,

"In prose and verse, was own'd without dispute,
THROUGH ALL THE REALMS OF NONSENSE, ABSOLUTE,"

settles the succession of the state on Shadwell. That idea Pope adopts; but the Kingdom of Dulness is re-modelled. It is no longer an aged monarch, who, tired out with years and the toils of empire, gladly transfers the sceptre to younger and more efficient hands, but the GODDESS OF DULNESS who is concerned for her dominion, and elects her new vice-regent on the demise of the Crown. The scale is immeasurably aggrandized--multitudes of dunces are comprehended--the composition is elaborate--the mock-heroic, admirable in Dryden, is carried to perfection, and we have, _sui generis_, a regular epic poem.

In the year 1727, amongst the works first given to the public in the Miscellancies of Pope and Swift, was the treatise of Martinus Scriblerus, ~Peri Bathous~, or the _Art of Sinking in Poetry_. The exquisite wit and humour of this piece, which was almost wholly Pope's, enraged the Dunces to madness; and the mongrel pack opened in full cry, with barbarous dissonance, against their supposed whipper-in. Never was there such a senseless yell: for the philosophical treatise "On the Profund" overflows with amenity and good-nature. Pope is all the while at play--diverting himself in innocent recreation; and, of all the satires that ever were indited, it is in spirit the most inoffensive to man, woman, and child. The Dunces, however, swore that its wickedness went beyond the Devil's, and besought the world to pay particular attention to the sixth chapter as supra-Satanic. Therein Martinus ranges "the confined and less copious geniuses under proper classes, and, the better to give their pictures to the reader, under the name of animals." The animals are Flying Fishes, Swallows, Ostriches, Parrots, Didappers, Porpoises, Frogs, Eels, and Tortoises. Each animal is characterized in a few words, that prove Pope to have been a most observant zoologist; and some profundists, classified according to that arrangement, are indicated by the initial letters of their names. The chapter is short, and the style concise--consisting of but four pages. Some of the initial letters had been set down at random; but profundists rose up, with loud vociferation, to claim them for their own; and _gli animali parlanti_, on foot, wing, fin, "or belly prone," peopled the booksellers' shops. C. G., "perplexed in the extreme," was the cause of perplexity to others, figuring now as a flying-fish, and now as a porpoise. While J. W. was not less problematical--now an Eel, and now a Didapper.

"Threats of vengeance," says Roscoe, "resounded from all quarters, and the press groaned under the various attempts at retaliation to which this production gave rise. Before the publication of the _Dunciad_, upwards of sixty different libels, books, papers, and copies of verses, had been published against Pope." The allied forces--_vae victis!_--published _a Popiad_. Threats of personal violence were frequently held out--a story was circulated of his having been whipped naked with rods; and, to extent the ridicule, an advertisement, with his initials, was inserted in the _Daily Post_, giving the lie to the scandal. Were such brutalities to be let pass unpunished? Dr Johnson says that "Pope was by his own confession the aggressor"--and so say Dr Warton and Mr Bowles. The aggressor! Why, the Dunces had been maligning him all their days, long before the treatise on the _Profund_. And that is bad law, indeed, that recognises a natural right in blockheads to be blackguards, and gives unlimited license of brutality towards any man of genius who may have been ironical on the tribe. But then, quoth some hypocritical wiseacre, is not satire wicked? Pope was a Christian; and should have learned to forgive. Stop a bit.

We talk of poets and books, as if we who occupy the tribunal were, during that moment at least, miracles of clear-sighted incorruptible justice, and of all the virtues generally. Conscience reasserts her whole sway in our minds as soon as we sit on other men's merits and demerits; almost the innocence of Eden re-establishes itself in our breasts. Self-delusion! Men we are at the guilty bar--Men on the blameless bench. There is a disorderly spirit in every one of us--a spice of iniquity. Human nature forgives a crime for a jest. Not that crimes and jests are commensurable or approximable; but they are before the same judge. He dislikes, or professes to dislike, the crime. Indubitably, and without a pretence, he likes the jest. Here, then, is an opportunity given of balancing the liking against the disliking; and, under that form, the jest against the crime. If he likes the jest more than he dislikes the crime, the old saw holds good--

"Solvuntur risu tabulae, tu missus abibis."

Well, then, the wit of Dryden and Pope is irresistible. What follows? For having contented our liking, we let them do any thing that they like. Poor Og! poor Shadwell! poor Bayes, poor Cibber! He sprawls and kicks in the gripe of the giant, and we--as if we had sat at bull-fights and the shows of gladiators--when the blood trickles we are tickled, and--oh, shame!--we laugh.

The DUNCIAD suffers under the law of compensations. As the renown of the actor is intense whilst he lives, and languishes with following generations, so is it with poems that embrace with ardour the Present. When the Present has become the Past, they are, or at least their liveliest edge is, past too. No commentary can restore the fiery hates of Dante--nor the repellent scorn of Hudibras--nor the glow of laughter to MAC-FLECNOE and the DUNCIAD. Eternal things are eternal--transitory things are transitory. The transitory have lost their zest--the eternal have their revenge.

Yet, a hundred years and more after the DUNCIAD, a critic may wish that the matter had been a little more diligently moulded, with more consideration of readers to come--that there had been less of mere names--that every Gyas and Cloanthus had somewhat unfolded his own individuality upon the stage--had been his own commentary--had, by a word or two, painted himself to everlasting posterity, in hue, shape, and gesture, as he stood before the contemporary eye. 'Tis an idle speculation! The thing, by its inspiring passion, personal anger and offence, belonged to the day. The poet gives it up to the day. He uses his poetical machinery to grace and point a ridicule that is to tell home to the breasts of living men--that is to be felt tingling by living flesh--that is to tinge living cheeks, if they can still redden, with blushes.

Yet, for all that, the Dunciad still lives; ay, in spite of seeming inconsistency, we declare it to be immortal. For, build with what materials she may, the works of genius that stand in the world of thought survive all time's mutations, cemented by a spirit she alone can interfuse. It must not be said that a poem shelved is dead and buried. Open it at midnight, and the morning is in your chamber.