Chapter VI: Canto TWENTY: Third

CONTENTS.

ON MARRIAGE.—Marriage being indissoluble the cause of
its being so often unhappy.—Nature’s laws not consulted
in this point.—Civilized nations mistaken.—OTAHEITE:
Happiness of the natives thereof—visited by Captain
Cook, in his Majesty’s Ship _Endeavour_—Character of
Captain Cook.—Address to Circumnavigation.—Description
of His Majesty’s Ship _Endeavour_—Mast, rigging, sea-sickness,
prow, poop, mess-room, surgeon’s mate—History of one.—Episode
concerning naval chirurgery.—Catching a Thunny Fish.—Arrival
at Otaheite—cast anchor—land—Natives
astonished.—Love—Liberty—Moral—Natural—Religious—Contrasted
with European manners.—Strictness—License—Doctor’s
Commons.—Dissolubility of MARRIAGE recommended—Illustrated by a game
at Cards—Whist—Cribbage—Partners changed—Why not the same in
Marriage?—Illustrated by a River.—Love free.—Priests, Kings.—German
Drama.—KOTZEBUE’S “Housekeeper Reformed”.—Moral employments of
Housekeeping described—Hottentots sit and stare at each other—Query,
WHY?—Address to the Hottentots—History of the Cape of Good
Hope.—Resumé of the Arguments against Marriage.—Conclusion.

PROGRESS OF MAN.
EXTRACT.

Hail! beauteous lands[174] that crown the Southern Seas;
Dear happy seats of Liberty and Ease!
Hail! whose green coasts the peaceful ocean laves,
Incessant washing with its watery waves!
Delicious islands! to whose envied shore
Thee, gallant COOK! the ship _Endeavour_[175] bore.

There laughs the sky, there zephyr’s frolic train,
And light-wing’d loves, and blameless pleasures reign:
There, when two souls congenial ties unite,
No hireling _Bonzes_ chant the mystic rite;
Free every thought, each action unconfin’d,
And light those fetters which no rivets bind.

There in each grove, each sloping bank along,
And flow’rs and shrubs and odorous herbs among,
Each shepherd clasp’d, with undisguis’d delight,
His yielding fair one,—in the Captain’s sight;
Each yielding fair, as chance or fancy led,
Preferr’d new lovers to her sylvan bed.[176]

Learn hence, each nymph, whose free aspiring mind
Europe’s cold laws,[177] and colder customs[178] bind—
O! learn, what Nature’s genial laws decree—
What Otaheite[179] is, let Britain be!

· · · · ·

Of WHIST or CRIBBAGE mark th’ amusing game—
The partners _changing_, but the SPORT the _same_.
Else would the gamester’s anxious ardour cool,
Dull every deal, and stagnant every pool.
—Yet must _one_[180] Man, with one unceasing Wife,
Play the LONG RUBBER of connubial life.

Yes! human laws, and laws esteem’d divine,
The generous passion straiten and confine;
And, as a stream, when art constrains its course,
Pours its fierce torrent with augmented force,
So, Passion[181] narrowed to one channel small,
_Unlike_ the former, does not flow at all.
—For Love _then_ only flaps his purple wings,
When uncontroll’d by priestcraft or by kings.

Such the strict rules, that, in these barbarous climes,
Choke youth’s fair flow’rs, and feelings turn to crimes;
And people every walk of polish’d life[182]
With that two-headed monster, MAN and WIFE.

Yet bright examples sometimes we observe,
Which from the general practice seem to swerve;
Such as presented to Germania’s[183] view,
A KOTZEBUE’S bold emphatic pencil drew:
Such as, translated in some future age,
Shall add new glories to the British stage;
—While the moved audience sit in dumb despair,
“Like Hottentots,[184] _and at each other stare_”.

With look sedate, and staid beyond her years,
In matron weeds a _Housekeeper_ appears.
The jingling keys her comely girdle deck—
Her ’kerchief colour’d, and her apron _check_.
Can that be Adelaide, that “soul of whim,”
_Reform’d_ in practice, and in manner prim?
—On household cares intent,[185] with many a sigh
She turns the pancake, and she moulds the pie;
Melts into sauces rich the savoury ham;
From the crush’d berry strains the lucid jam;
Bids brandied cherries,[186] by infusion slow,
Imbibe new flavour, and their own forego,
Sole cordial of her heart, sole solace of her woe!
While, still responsive to each mournful moan,
The saucepan simmers in a softer tone.

· · · · ·

[The following extracts will give some idea of PAYNE KNIGHT’S poem.

Hail! happy States, that fresh in vigour rise
From Europe’s wrecks beneath Atlantic skies!
Long may ye feel the blessings ye bestow;
Nor e’er your parents’ sickly symptoms know!
But when that parent, crush’d beneath the weight
Of debts and taxes, yields herself to fate;
May you her hapless fugitives receive,
Comfort their sorrows, and their wants relieve!
For come it will—th’ inevitable day,
When Britain must corruption’s forfeit pay,
Beneath a despot’s, or a rabble’s sway.

After a glowing description of the amours of a shepherd and
shepherdess, he thus speaks of _Marriage_:—

Bless’d days of youth, of liberty, and love!
How short, alas! your transient pleasures prove!
Just as we think the sweet delights our own,
We strive to fix them, and we find them flown:—
For fix’d by laws, and limited by rules,
Affection stagnates and love’s fervour cools;
Shrinks like the gather’d flower, which, when possess’d,
Droops in the hand, or withers on the breast:
Feels all its native bloom and fragrance fly,
And death’s pale shadows close its purple dye.
While mutual wishes form love’s only vows,
By mutual interests nursed, the union grows;
Respectful fear its rising power maintains,
And both preserve, when each may break, its chains.
But when in bands indissoluble join’d,
Securely torpid sleeps the sated mind;
No anxious hopes or fears arise, to move
The flagging wings, or stir the fires of love:
Benumb’d, the soul’s best energies repose,
And life in dull unvaried torpor flows;
Or only shakes off lethargy to teaze
Whom once its only pleasure was to please.—ED.]

In illustration of these peculiar doctrines of Love and Marriage,
the authors of the present Parody introduced into the first twenty
lines of the preceding “Extract,” the very free statements on these
subjects which appear in Chapters 8, 12, 14, 16, 17, of the
narrative of Cook’s First Voyage to the Pacific in the “Endeavour,”
in 1768, derived, by the editor, Dr. John Hawkesworth, from the
Diary of Mr. (afterwards Sir Joseph) Banks, who accompanied Captain
Cook.—ED.]

[LORD ERSKINE, after dinner, inveighed bitterly against Marriage;
and smarting, I suppose, under the recollection of his own
unsuccessful choice, concluded by saying that a wife was _a tin
canister tied to a man’s tail_, which very much excited the
indignation of Lady Ann Culling Smith, who was of the party. “Monk”
Lewis took a sheet of paper, and wrote the following neat epigram on
the subject, which he presented to Her Royal Highness [the Duchess
of York]:—

“Lord Erskine at marriage presuming to rail,
Says, _a wife’s a tin canister tied to ones tail_;
And the fair Lady Ann, while the subject he carries on,
Feels hurt at his Lordship’s degrading comparison.
But wherefore degrading? if taken aright,
A tin canister’s useful, and polished, and bright,
And if dirt its original purity hide,
’Tis the fault of the puppy to whom it is tied.”
—_Journal of T. Raikes_, ii.
56.—ED.]

[RICHARD PAYNE KNIGHT, eminent as he was as a classical scholar and
archæologist, was not successful as a poet or moralist, and this is
shown in an amusing manner in a letter from Horace Walpole to the
Rev. W. Mason, dated 22nd March, 1796, in which he declares how much
he is offended and disgusted by Knight’s “_new_ insolent and
self-conceited poem,” alluding to his _Progress of Civil
Society_,—the former one being “_The Landscape_, a didactic poem in
three books,” 4to, pub. 1794, of which mention has already been
made.

In 1816 he was examined before a Select Committee of the House of
Commons on the proposed purchase by the Government of the Elgin
Marbles; but his estimate of their value as works of the highest art
was much below that of other artistic witnesses, such as Flaxman,
Westmacott, Chantrey, B. West, and others. For these statements he
was severely criticised in vol. 14 of the _Quarterly Review_, and in
a squib, reprinted in the _New Whig Guide_ in 1819. He valued the
collection at £25,000; Gavin Hamilton’s estimate was £60,800, and
Lord Aberdeen’s £35,000; for which latter sum they were obtained by
the Government. He bequeathed his collection of ancient Bronzes,
Greek Coins, &c.—valued at £50,000—to the British Museum.

He represented Ludlow till 1806. He was a supporter of FOX, upon
whom he wrote a Monody. He was never married, and he was succeeded
in his fine property, including Downton Castle, near Ludlow, &c., on
his death in 1824, by his brother, Thomas Andrew Knight, one of the
most scientific of horticulturists, and he in turn was succeeded by
his grandson, Andrew Johnes Rouse Boughton, second son of the late
Sir W. E. Rouse Boughton, Bart., who added by royal license in 1856
the name of Knight to his patronymic.—ED.]

[The drama (here nicknamed _The Reformed Housekeeper_), but entitled
by the author “_Misanthropy and Repentance_,” was produced at Drury
Lane Theatre, Sheridan being then lessee, as “_The Stranger_,” on
the 24th March, 1798. The following was the cast:—_The Stranger_, J.
P. Kemble; _Baron Steinfort_, John Palmer; _Francis_, R. Palmer;
_Peter_, Suett; _Tobias_, J. Aikin; _Solomon_, Wewitzer; _Count
Wintersen_, Barrymore; _Mrs. Haller_, Mrs. Siddons; _Countess
Wintersen_, Mrs. Goodall; _Charlotte_, Miss Stuart. It was
considered by competent authorities as one of Kemble’s finest
efforts, and was performed on twenty-six successive nights. Some of
our most eminent actors and actresses have essayed the principal
parts. Miss O’Neill made her last appearance on the stage in the
character of Mrs. Haller, 13th of July, 1818.

The acting version purported to be altered from the German by Benj.
Thompson (afterwards Count Rumford), but it is likely that all or
most of the alterations came from the skilful hands of Sheridan,
assisted by Kemble. The pathetic song introduced, “_I have a silent
sorrow here_,” was written by the former. Two other versions of the
drama appeared in the year 1798—one by A. Schinck, and the other by
G. Papendick—but neither has been acted.

Kotzebue tells us in his _Autobiography_ that this play of his was
acted at the Imperial Palace of _The Hermitage_, St. Petersburg,
under his superintendence while manager of the Imperial Company of
German Comedians, and excited visible emotion in the Emperor Paul.
He himself saw it acted at Tobolsk during his exile in Siberia. The
vast and splendid palace of _The Hermitage_ is now given up to the
Arts. It contains the enormous collection of Pictures accumulated by
the Russian sovereigns (including the Houghton Gallery formed by Sir
Robert Walpole), together with a Gallery of Sculpture, one of the
finest assortments of Antique Gems in the world, a museum of Grecian
and Etruscan Antiquities, and a library of rare Books and
Manuscripts.

An awful event took place during the performance of this play a
short time after its production. John Palmer, an eminent comedian,
while acting the principal character, at Liverpool, on the 2nd of
August, 1798, expired on the stage. He had recently suffered severe
domestic bereavements, which are supposed to have given a painful
application to some passages in the third act in which he had to
utter the words: “There is another and a better world”. In the first
scene of the fourth act, his agitation increased; he fell into the
arms of the performer of the part of Baron Steinfort, and died
without a groan. A narrative of this shocking event, published
immediately afterwards, by the same performer, disposes of the
generally-received but more emotional tradition that Palmer’s
earthly career was terminated while pronouncing the above words. He
was in his fifty-seventh year.

This is not the only instance of so impressive an end, for a similar
death-stroke overtook Joseph Peterson, an excellent actor, in
October, 1758, while representing _The Duke_ in _Measure for
Measure_. In act 3, sc. 1, in reciting the words—

“—Reason thus with life:
If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art—”

he dropped into the arms of Moody, who personated _Claudio_, and
never spoke more!—ED.]

[“One other noted character we visited—the one who, according to
William Taylor of Norwich, was the greatest of all. This was AUGUST
VON KOTZEBUE, the very popular dramatist, whose singular fate it was
to live at variance with the great poets of his country, while he
was the idol of the mob. He was at one time (about this time (1801)
and a little later) a favourite in all Europe. One of his plays,
_The Stranger_, I have seen acted in German, English, Spanish,
French, and, I believe, also Italian. He was the pensioner of
Prussia, Austria, and Russia. The odium produced by this
circumstance, and the imputation of being a spy, are assigned as the
cause of his assassination by [C. L. Sand] a student of Jena, a few
years after our visit [March 3, 1819]. He was living, like Goethe,
in a large house and in style. I drank tea with him, and found him a
lively little man, with small black eyes. He had the manners of a
_petit-maître_.”—_Crabb Robinson’s Diary_ (1801), i. 115.—ED.]

No. XXII.

April 9, 1798.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN.

SIR,—I saw, with strong approbation, your specimen of ancient Sapphic measure in English, which I think far surpasses all that Abraham Fraunce, Richard Stanyhurst, or Sir Philip Sidney himself, have produced in that style—I mean, of course, your sublime and beautiful _Knife-Grinder_, of which it is not too high an encomium to say, that it even rivals the efforts of the fine-eared democratic poet, Mr. Southey. But you seem not to be aware, that we have a genuine Sapphic measure belonging to our own language, of which I now send you a short specimen.

THE JACOBIN.

I am a hearty Jacobin,
Who own no God, and dread no sin,
Ready to dash through thick and thin
For freedom:

And when the teachers of Chalk-Farm
Gave Ministers so much alarm,
And preach’d that kings did only harm,
I fee’d ’em.

By BEDFORD’S cut I’ve trimm’d my locks,
And coal-black is my knowledge-box,
Callous to all, except hard knocks
Of thumpers;

My eye a noble fierceness boasts,
My voice as hollow as a ghost’s,
My throat oft washed by factious toasts
In bumpers.

Whatever is in France, is right;
Terror and blood are my delight;
Parties with us do not excite
Enough rage.

Our boasted laws I hate and curse,
Bad from the first, by age grown worse,
I pant and sigh for univers-[187]
al suffrage.

WAKEFIELD[188] I love—adore HORNE TOOKE,
With pride on JONES[189] and THELWALL[190] look,
And hope that they, by hook or crook,
Will prosper.

But they deserve the worst of ills,
And all th’ abuse of all our quills,
Who form’d of strong and _gagging Bills_[191]
A cross pair.

Extinct since then each speaker’s fire,
And silent ev’ry daring lyre,[192]
Dum-founded they whom I would hire
To lecture.

Tied up, alas! is ev’ry tongue
On which, conviction nightly hung,[193]
And THELWALL looks, though yet but young,
A spectre.[194]
B. O. B.

No. XXIII.

April 16, 1798.

We cannot better explain to our readers the design of the poem from which the following extracts are taken, than by borrowing the expressions of the author, Mr. HIGGINS, of _St. Mary Axe_, in the letter which accompanied the manuscript.

We must premise, that we had found ourselves called upon to remonstrate with Mr. H. on the freedom of some of the positions laid down in his other didactic poem, the “Progress of Man”; and had in the course of our remonstrance hinted something to the disadvantage of the _new principles_ which are now afloat in the world, and which are, in our opinion, working so much prejudice to the happiness of mankind. To this Mr. H. takes occasion to reply—[195]

“What you call the _new principles_ are, in fact, nothing less than _new_. They are the principles of primeval nature, the system of original and unadulterated man.

“If you mean by my addiction to _new principles_ that the object which I have in view in my larger work [meaning the ‘Progress of Man’] and in the several other _concomitant_ and _subsidiary_ didactic poems which are necessary to complete my plan, is to restore this first, and pure simplicity; to rescue and to recover the interesting nakedness of human nature, by ridding her of the cumbrous establishments which the folly, and pride, and self-interest of the worst part of our species have heaped upon her;—you are right. Such is my object. I do not disavow it. Nor is it mine alone. There are abundance of abler hands at work upon it. _Encyclopedias_, _Treatises_, _Novels_, _Magazines_, _Reviews_, and _New Annual Registers_, have, as you are well aware, done their part with activity and with effect. It remained to bring the _heavy_ artillery of a didactic poem to bear upon the same object.

“If I have selected your paper as the channel for conveying my labours to the public, it was not because I was unaware of the hostility of your principles to mine, of the bigotry of your attachment to ‘things as they are,’ but because, I will fairly own, I found some sort of cover and disguise necessary for securing the favourable reception of my sentiments; the usual pretexts of humanity, and philanthropy, and fine feeling, by which we have for some time obtained a passport to the hearts and understandings of men, being now worn out or exploded. I could not choose but smile at my success in the first instance, in inducing _you_ to adopt my poem as your own.

“But you have called for an explanation of these principles of ours, and you have a right to obtain it. Our first principle is, then—the reverse of the trite and dull maxim of Pope—‘_Whatever is, is right_’. We contend, that ‘_Whatever is, is wrong_’; that institutions, civil and religious, that social order (as it is called in _your_ cant) and regular government, and law, and I know not what other fantastic inventions, are but so many cramps and fetters on the free agency of man’s _natural intellect_ and _moral sensibility_; so many badges of his degradation from the primal purity and excellence of his nature.

“Our second principle is, the ‘_eternal and absolute perfectibility of man_’. We contend, that if, as is demonstrable, we have risen from a level with the _cabbages of the field_ to our present comparatively intelligent and dignified state of existence, by the mere exertion of our own _energies_; we should, if these _energies_ were not repressed and subdued by the operation of prejudice, and folly, by KING-CRAFT and PRIEST-CRAFT, and the other evils incident to what is called civilized society, continue to exert and expand ourselves in a proportion infinitely greater than anything of which we yet have any notion:—in a _ratio_ hardly capable of being calculated by any science of which we are now masters: but which would in time raise man from his present biped state to a rank more worthy of his endowments and aspirations; to a rank in which he would be, as it were, _all_ MIND; would enjoy unclouded perspicacity and perpetual vitality; feed on _oxygene_, and never die, but _by his own consent_.

“But though the poem of the PROGRESS OF MAN alone would be sufficient to teach this system and enforce these doctrines, the whole practical effect of them cannot be expected to be produced, but by the gradual perfecting of each of the sublimer sciences;—at the husk and shell of which we are now nibbling and at the kernel whereof, in our present state, we cannot hope to arrive. These several sciences will be the subjects of the several _auxiliary_ DIDACTIC POEMS which I have now in hand (one of which, entitled THE LOVES OF THE TRIANGLES, I herewith transmit to you), and for the better arrangement and execution of which, I beseech you to direct your bookseller to furnish me with a handsome Chambers’s Dictionary; in order that I may be enabled to go through the several articles alphabetically, beginning with _Abracadabra_, under the first letter, and going down to _Zodiac_, which is to be found under the last.

“I am persuaded that there is no science, however abstruse, nay, no trade or manufacture, which may not be taught by a didactic poem. In that before you, an attempt is made (not unsuccessfully, I hope) to _enlist the imagination under the banners of Geometry_. _Botany_ I found done to my hands. And though the more rigid and unbending stiffness of a mathematical subject does not admit of the same appeals to the warmer passions, which naturally arise out of the _sexual_ (or, as I have heard several worthy gentlewomen of my acquaintance, who delight much in the poem to which I allude, term it, by a slight misnomer no way difficult to be accounted for—the _sensual_) system of Linnæus;—yet I trust that the range and variety of illustration with which I have endeavoured to ornament and enlighten the arid truths of Euclid and Algebra, will be found to have smoothed the road of Demonstration, to have softened the rugged features of Elementary Propositions, and, as it were, to have strewed the _Asses’ Bridge_ with flowers.”

Such is the account which Mr. HIGGINS gives of his own undertaking, and of the motives which have led him to it. For our parts, though we have not the same sanguine persuasion of the _absolute perfectibility_ of our species, and are in truth liable to the imputation of being more satisfied with _things as they are_, than Mr. HIGGINS and his associates;—yet, as we are, in at least the same proportion, less convinced of the practical influence of didactic poems, we apprehend little danger to our readers’ morals from laying before them Mr. HIGGINS’S doctrine in its most fascinating shape. The poem abounds, indeed, with beauties of the most striking kind,—various and vivid imagery, bold and unsparing impersonifications; and similitudes and illustrations brought from the most ordinary and the most extraordinary occurrences of nature—from history and fable—appealing equally to the heart and to the understanding, and calculated to make the subject of which the poem professes to treat rather amusing than intelligible. We shall be agreeably surprised to hear that it has assisted any young student at either University in his mathematical studies.

We need hardly add, that the plates illustrative of this poem (the engravings of which would have been too expensive for our publication) are to be found in Euclid’s Elements, and other books of a similar tendency.

LOVES OF THE TRIANGLES.[196]
ARGUMENT OF THE FIRST CANTO.

Warning to the profane not to approach—Nymphs and Deities of
Mathematical Mythology—Cyclois of a pensive turn—Pendulums, on the
contrary, playful—and why?—Sentimental Union of the Naiads and
Hydrostatics—Marriage of Euclid and Algebra.—Pulley the emblem of
Mechanics—Optics of a licentious disposition—distinguished by her
telescope and green spectacles.—Hyde-Park Gate on a Sunday
morning—Cockneys—Coaches.—Didactic Poetry—Nonsensia—Love delights
in Angles or Corners—Theory of Fluxions explained—Trochais, the
Nymph of the Wheel—Smoke-Jack described—Personification of
elementary or culinary Fire.—Little Jack Horner—Story of
Cinderella—Rectangle, a Magician, educated by Plato and
Menecmus—in love with Three Curves at the same time—served by
Gins, or Genii—transforms himself into a Cone—the Three Curves
requite his passion—Description of them—Parabola, Hyperbola, and
Ellipsis—Asymptotes—Conjugated Axes.—Illustrations—Rewbell,
Barras, and Lepaux, the three virtuous Directors—Macbeth and the
Three Witches—the Three Fates—the Three Graces—King Lear and his
Three Daughters—Derby Diligence—Catherine Wheel.—Catastrophe of
Mr. Gingham, with his Wife and Three Daughters overturned in a
One-horse Chaise—Dislocation and Contusion two kindred Fiends—Mail
Coaches—Exhortation to Drivers to be careful—Genius of the
Post-Office—Invention of Letters—Digamma—Double Letters—Remarkable
Direction of one—Hippona the Goddess of Hack-horses—Parameter and
Abscissa unite to overpower the Ordinate, who retreats down the
Axis-Major, and forms himself in a Square—Isosceles, a Giant—Dr.
Rhomboides—Fifth Proposition, or Asses’ Bridge—Bridge of
Lodi—Buonaparte—Raft and Windmills—Exhortation to the recovery of
our Freedom—Conclusion.

THE LOVES OF THE TRIANGLES.
A Mathematical and Philosophical Poem,
INSCRIBED TO DR. DARWIN.