Consolation in the Face of Death (Penguin) Page 2

  The people having set fire to the palace, and buried the whole royal family in its ruins, placed one Mulgo Malvin, who had been secretary to the Man-Mountain, upon the throne of Lilliput. This man new-modelled the form of government, according to the plan which his master had delivered to him and affirmed to be an exact account of the British constitution.

  Our government [continued the Lilliputian] has in some particulars varied from its original. The Clinabs were at first elected every moon, but now continue in office seven moons; to which alteration many attribute the present venality and dependency discovered in their assemblies. They were likewise anciently paid by the people they represented for their attendance on the public business; but of late it is more common for the Clinabs to pay the people for admitting them to attend. Our ancestors, in ancient times, had some regard to the moral character of the person sent to represent them in their national assemblies, and would have shown some degree of resentment, or indignation, had their votes been asked for a murderer, an adulterer, a known oppressor, an hireling evidence, an attorney, a gamester, or a pimp. They demanded likewise in those who stood candidates for the power of making laws some knowledge of the laws already made; but now neither the most flagrant immorality, nor the grossest ignorance, are, amongst some electors, any objections to the character of a man who solicits voices with gold in his hand.

  Such was the answer of the learned Lilliputian which incited Mr Gulliver to pursue his search into their laws, customs, and history; if haply he might discover, since human nature generally operates alike in all parts of the world, by what means the government of Lilliput, which had been once established on so excellent a plan, became so miserably degenerate; while the government of Britain, its original, maintained inviolate the purity and vigour of its primitive constitution.

  As we propose to publish every month such part of Mr Gulliver’s papers as shall seem most proper to bring our readers acquainted with the history and present state of Lilliput, we have chose for this half year’s entertainment the debates of the Lilliputian senate, and shall begin with a very important one upon occasion of the Iberian depredations already mentioned, and the measures to be pursued for redress, which debate, as indeed all others on such high affairs, was carried on with the greatest eloquence and spirit, in the 4th session of the 8th senate (or parliament) of Magna Lilliputia, held at Belfaborac in the 11th moon of the reign of the Emperor Gorgenti the Second.

  On Gay’s Epitaph

  Mr Urban,

  Matters of very small consequence in themselves are often made important by the circumstances that attend them. Little follies and petty weaknesses, of no moment in common life, may, when they enter into the characters of men in high stations, obstruct the happiness of a great part of mankind. A barbarous inscription or disproportioned busto deserves no notice on account of the statuary who carved it or the writer who composed it; they were only private follies in the study or the shop; but erected in a temple, or engraved on a column, they are considered as public works, and censured as a disgrace to a nation. For this reason I have been often offended with the trifling distich upon Mr Gay’s monument in Westminster Abbey:

  Life is a jest, and all things show it;

  I thought so once, but now I know it.

  I never heard when or where this wonderful couplet was composed, or to what happy genius we are indebted for it: the miserable poetry of the first line makes it unlikely that it could be a studied production, unless it were one of the first efforts of a romantic girl, or some dapper school-boy’s imitation of

  [‘All is laughter, all is dust, all is nothingness.’]

  If I might be indulged in making conjectures on a question of such weight, I should conceive it to have been a drunken sally, which was perhaps, after midnight, applauded as a lively epigram, and might have preserved its reputation had it, instead of being engraved on a monument at Westminster, been scribbled in its proper place, the window of a brothel.

  There are very different species of wit appropriated to particular persons and places; the smartness of a shoe-boy would not be extremely agreeable in a chancellor, and a tavern joke sounds but ill in a church, from which it ought to be banished, if for no other reason, at least for that which forbids a drunken man to be introduced into sober company.

  Yet, lest this epigram should have any secret merit which, though it has escaped the observation of negligent and vulgar readers, has entitled it to the place I have found it in possession of, we will consider it with a little more attention than I fear we shall discover it to deserve.

  The design of epitaphs is rational and moral, being generally to celebrate the virtues of the dead, and to excite and awaken the reader to the imitation of those excellencies which he sees thus honoured and distinguished, of which kind almost every sepulchral monument affords us an example.

  There is another kind, in which the person departed is represented as delivering some precept to those whom he has left behind him, or uttering some important sentence suitable to his present state, from which the reader is prepared to receive very strong impressions by the silence and solemnity of the place where such inscriptions are generally found, and by the serious and affecting thoughts which naturally arise at the sight of the receptacles of the dead, upon the transitory and uncertain nature of human pleasure, vanity, and greatness. Of this sort the most ancient and the best that I have met with is that ordered (if I forget not) by the great Sesostris to be inscribed on his tomb,

  Let every man who looks upon me learn to be pious.

  On this monument perhaps no man ever looked without being, at least for some time, wiser and better, and doubtless, by so striking an instruction, the libertine has been often checked in the height of his debaucheries, and the oppressor softened in the midst of his tyranny. Perhaps, as long life is often the effect of virtue, the tomb of Sesostris may have more than repaired the ravages of his arms. Of this latter kind is the important distich we are considering. Mr Gay, like the Egyptian king, calls upon us from the habitations of the dead; but in such a manner and for such ends as shows what was anciently believed, that departed souls still preserve the characters they supported on earth, and that the author of the Beggar’s Opera is not yet on the level with Sesostris. I cannot help thinking upon the dialogue on this occasion between Oedipus and his Jocasta:

  Was Laius used to lie?

  Joc. O no! the most sincere, plain, honest man; one that abhorred a lie.

  Oed. Then he has got that quality in hell.

  Dryden

  Mr Gay has returned from the regions of death not much improved in his poetry, and very much corrupted in his morals; for he is come back with a lie in his mouth, Life is a jest.

  Mankind, with regard to their notions of futurity, are divided into two parties: a very small one that believes, or pretends to believe, that the present is the only state of existence; and another, which acknowledges that in some life to come, men will meet rewards or punishments according to their behaviour in this world.

  In one of the classes our poet must be ranked: if he properly belonged to the first, he might indeed think life a jest, and might live as if he thought so; but I must leave it to acuter reasoners to explain how he could in that case know it after death, being for my part inclined to believe that knowledge ceases with existence.

  If he was of the latter opinion, he must think life more than a jest, unless he thought eternity a jest too; and if these were his sentiments, he is by this time most certainly undeceived. These lines, therefore, are impious in the mouth of a Christian, and nonsense in that of an atheist.

  But whether we consider them as ludicrous or wicked, they ought not to stand where they are at present; buffoonery appears with a very ill grace, and impiety with much worse, in temples and on tombs. A childish levity has of late infected our conversation and behaviour, but let it not make its way into our churches. Irreligion has corrupted the present age, but let us not inscribe it on marble, to be the ruin or scorn of anot
her generation. Let us have some regard to our reputation amongst foreigners, who do not hold either fools or atheists in high veneration, and will imagine that they can justify themselves in terming us such from our own monuments. Let us therefore review our public edifices, and, where inscriptions like this appear, spare our posterity the trouble of erasing them.

  PAMPHILUS.

  A Compleat Vindication of the Licensers

  of the Stage,

  FROM THE MALICIOUS AND SCANDALOUS

  ASPERSIONS OF MR BROOKE, AUTHOR OF

  Gustavus Vasa WITH A PROPOSAL FOR MAKING

  THE OFFICE OF LICENSER MORE EXTENSIVE AND

  EFFECTUAL. BY AN IMPARTIAL HAND.

  It is generally agreed by the Writers of all Parties, that few Crimes are equal, in their Degree of Guilt, to that of calumniating a good and gentle, or defending a wicked and oppressive Administration.

  It is therefore with the utmost Satisfaction of Mind, that I reflect how often I have employed my Pen in Vindication of the present Ministry, and their Dependents and Adherents, how often I have detected the specious Fallacies of the Advocates for Independence, how often I have softened the Obstinacy of Patriotism, and how often triumphed over the Clamour of Opposition.

  I have, indeed, observed but one Set of Men upon whom all my Arguments have been thrown away, which neither Flattery can draw to Compliance, nor Threats reduce to Submission, and who have, notwithstanding all Expedients that either Invention or Experience could suggest, continued to exert their Abilities in a vigorous and constant Opposition of all our Measures.

  The unaccountable Behaviour of these Men, the enthusiastick Resolution with which, after a hundred successive Defeats, they still renewed their Attacks, the Spirit with which they continued to repeat their Arguments in the Senate, though they found a Majority determined to condemn them, and the Inflexibility with which they rejected all Offers of Places and Preferments at last excited my Curiosity so far that I applied myself to enquire with great Diligence into the real Motives of their Conduct, and to discover what Principle it was that had Force to inspire such unextinguishable Zeal, and to animate such unwearied Efforts.

  For this Reason I attempted to cultivate a nearer Acquaintance with some of the Chiefs of that Party, and imagined that it would be necessary for some Time to dissemble my Sentiments that I might learn theirs.

  Dissimulation to a true Politician is not difficult, and therefore I readily assumed the Character of a Proselyte, but found that their Principle of Action was no other, than that which they make no Scruple of avowing in the most publick Manner, notwithstanding the Contempt and Ridicule to which it every Day exposes them, and the Loss of those Honours and Profits from which it excludes them.

  This wild Passion, or Principle, is a kind of Fanaticism by which they distinguish those of their own Party, and which they look upon as a certain Indication of a great Mind. We have no name for it at Court, but among themselves, they term it by a kind of Cant-phrase, A REGARD FOR POSTERITY.

  This Passion seems to predominate in all their Conduct, to regulate every Action of their Lives, and Sentiment of their Minds; I have heard L— and P—, when they have made a vigorous Opposition, or blasted the Blossom of some ministerial Scheme, cry out, in the Height of their Exultations, This will deserve the Thanks of Posterity!

  And when their Adversaries, as it much more frequently falls out, have out-number’d and overthrown them, they will say with an Air of Revenge, and a kind of gloomy Triumph, Posterity will curse you for this.

  It is common among Men under the Influence of any kind of Frenzy, to believe that all the World has the same odd Notions that disorder their own Imaginations. Did these unhappy Men, these deluded Patriots, know how little we are concerned about Posterity, they would never attempt to fright us with their Curses, or tempt us to a Neglect of our own Interest by a Prospect of their Gratitude.

  But so strong is their Infatuation, that they seem to have forgotten even the primary Law of Self-preservation, for they sacrifice without scruple every flattering Hope, every darling Enjoyment, and every Satisfaction of Life to this ruling Passion, and appear in every Step to consult not so much their own Advantage as that of Posterity.

  Strange Delusion! that can confine all their Thoughts to a Race of Men whom they neither know, nor can know; from whom nothing is to be feared, nor any Thing expected; who cannot even bribe a special Jury, nor have so much as a single Riband to bestow.

  This Fondness for Posterity is a kind of Madness which at Rome was once almost epidemical, and infected even the Women and the Children. It reigned there till the entire Destruction of Carthage, after which it began to be less general, and in a few Years afterwards a Remedy was discovered, by which it was almost entirely extinguished.

  In England it never prevailed in any such Degree; some few of the ancient Barons seem indeed to have been disorder’d by it, but the Contagion has been for the most part timely checked, and our Ladies have been generally free.

  But there has been in every Age a Set of Men much admired and reverenced, who have affected to be always talking of Posterity, and have laid out their Lives upon the Composition of Poems for the Sake of being applauded by this imaginary Generation.

  The present Poets I reckon amongst the most inexorable Enemies of our most excellent Ministry, and much doubt whether any Method will effect the Cure of a Distemper which in this Class of Men may be termed not an accidental Disease, but a Defect in their original Frame and Constitution.

  Mr Brooke, a Name I mention with all the Detestation suitable to my Character, could not forbear discovering this Depravity of his Mind in his very Prologue, which is filled with Sentiments so wild, and so much unheard of among those who frequent Levees and Courts, that I much doubt, whether the zealous Licenser proceeded any further in his Examination of his Performance.

  He might easily perceive that a Man,

  Who bade his moral Beam through every Age,

  was too much a Bigot to exploded Notions, to compose a Play which he could license without manifest Hazard of his Office, a Hazard which no Man would incur untainted with the Love of Posterity.

  We cannot therefore wonder that an Author, wholly possessed by this Passion, should vent his Resentment for the Licenser’s just Refusal, in virulent Advertisements, insolent Complaints, and scurrilous Assertions of his Rights and Privileges, and proceed in Defiance of Authority to solicite a Subscription.

  This Temper which I have been describing is almost always complicated with Ideas of the high Prerogatives of human Nature, of a sacred unalienable Birthright, which no Man has conferr’d upon us, and which neither Kings can take, nor Senates give away, which we may justly assert whenever and by whomsoever it is attacked, and which, if ever it should happen to be lost, we may take the first Opportunity to recover.

  The natural Consequence of these Chimeras is Contempt of Authority, and an Irreverence for any Superiority but what is founded upon Merit, and their Notions of Merit are very peculiar, for it is among them no great Proof of Merit to be wealthy and powerful, to wear a Garter or a Star, to command a Regiment or a Senate, to have the Ear of the Minister or of the King, or to possess any of those Virtues and Excellencies which among us entitle a Man to little less than Worship and Prostration.

  We may therefore easily conceive that Mr Brooke thought himself entitled to be importunate for a License, because, in his own Opinion, he deserved one, and to complain thus loudly at the Repulse he met with.

  His Complaints will have, I hope, but little Weight with the Publick, since the Opinions of the Sect in which he is enlisted are exposed and shown to be evidently and demonstrably opposite to that System of Subordination and Dependence to which we are indebted for the present Tranquillity of the Nation, and that Chearfulness and Readiness with which the two Houses concur in all our Designs.

  I shall however, to silence him intirely, or at least to shew those of our Party, that he ought to be silent, consider singly every Instance of Hardship and
Oppression which he has dared to publish in the Papers, and to publish in such a Manner that I hope no Man will condemn me for Want of Candour in becoming an Advocate for the Ministry, if I can consider his Advertisements as nothing less than AN APPEAL TO HIS COUNTRY.

  Let me be forgiven if I cannot speak with Temper of such Insolence as this: Is a Man without Title, Pension, or Place, to suspect the Impartiality or the Judgment of those who are intrusted with the Administration of publick Affairs? Is he, when the Law is not strictly observed in Regard to him, to think himself aggrieved, to tell his Sentiments in Print, assert his Claim to better Usage, and fly for Redress to another Tribunal?

  If such Practices are permitted, I will not venture to foretell the Effects of them, the Ministry may soon be convinced that such Sufferers will find Compassion, and that it is safer not to bear hard upon them than to allow them to complain.

  The Power of Licensing in general, being firmly established by an Act of Parliament, our Poet has not attempted to call in Question, but contents himself with censuring the Manner in which it has been executed, so that I am not now engaged to assert the Licenser’s Authority, but to defend his Conduct.

  The Poet seems to think himself aggrieved, because the Licenser kept his Tragedy in his Hands one and twenty Days, whereas the Law allows him to detain it only fourteen.

  Where will the Insolence of the Malcontents end? Or how are such unreasonable Expectations possibly to be satisfied? Was it ever known that a Man exalted into a high Station dismissed a Suppliant in the Time limited by Law? Ought not Mr Brooke to think himself happy that his Play was not detained longer? If he had been kept a Year in Suspense, what Redress could he have obtained? Let the Poets remember when they appear before the Licenser, or his Deputy, that they stand at the Tribunal from which there is no Appeal permitted, and where nothing will so well become them as Reverence and Submission.