The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 14, No. 392, October 3, 1829
TextTHE VINE—A FRAGMENT
(For the Mirror.)
See o'er the wall, the white-leav'd cluster-vine
Shoots its redundant tendrils; and doth seem,
Like the untam'd enthusiast's glowing heart,
Ready to clasp, with an abundant love,
All nature in its arms!
C. COLE.
THE COSMOPOLITE
ON LIBERTY
"I don't hate the world, but I laugh at it;
for none but fools can be in earnest about a trifle."
So says Gay of the world, in one of his letters to Swift, and we have adapted the quotation to our idea of liberty. True it is that Addison apostrophizes liberty as a
Goddess, heavenly bright!
but we hope our laughter will not be considered as indecorous or profane. Our great essayist has exalted her into a Deity, and invested her with a mythological charm, which makes us doubt her existence; so that to laugh at her can be no more irreverend than to sneer at the belief in apparitions, a joke which is very generally enjoyed in these good days of spick-and-span philosophy. Whether Liberty ever existed or not, is to us a matter of little import, since it is certain that she belongs to the grand hoax which is the whole scheme of life. The extension of liberty into concerns of every-day life is therefore reasonable enough, and to prove that we are happy in possessing this ideal blessing, seems to have been the aim of all who have written on the subject. One, however, if we remember right, sets the matter in a grave light, when he says to man—
Since thy original lapse, true liberty
Is lost.
He who loves to scatter crumbs of comfort in these starving times, will not despair at this sublime truth, but will seek to cherish the love of liberty, or the consolation for the loss of it wherever he goes.
The reader need not be told that we are friends to the spread of liberty: indeed, we think she may "triumph over time, clip his wings, pare his nails, file his teeth, turn back his hour-glass, blunt his scythe, and draw the hobnails out of his shoes;" but to show how this may be done, we must run over a few varieties of liberty for the benefit of such as do not enjoy the inestimable blessings of being free and easy: we quote these words, vulgar as they are; for, of all words in our vernacular tongue, to express comfort and security from ill, commend us to the expletive of free and easy. We had rather not meddle with civil or religious liberty: they are as combustible as the Cotopaxi, or the new governments, of South America; and our attempts at reformation do not extend beyond paper and print, which the unamused reader may burn or not, as he pleases without searing his own conscience or exciting our revenge. To be sure, a few of our examples may border on civil liberty; but we shall not seek to find parallels for the Ptolemaian cages, or the Tower of Famine, in our times; neither shall we feast upon the horrors of the French Revolution, nor the last polite reception of the Russians by headless Turks; notwithstanding all these examples would bear us out in our idea of the love of liberty, and the evils of the loss of it.
Kings often want liberty, even amidst the multitude of their luxuries. They are not unfrequently the veriest slaves at court, and liege and loyal as we are, we seldom hear of a king eating, drinking, and sleeping as other people do, without envying him so happy an interval from the cares of state, and the painted pomp of palaces. This it is that makes the domestic habits of kings so interesting to every one; and many a time have we crossed field after field to catch a glimpse of royalty, in a plain green chariot on the Brighton road, when we would not have put our heads out of window to see a procession to the House of Lords. Some kings have even gone so far in their love of plain life as to drop the king, which is a very pleasant sort of unkingship. Frederick the Great, at one of his literary entertainments adopted this plan to promote free conversation, when he reminded the circle that there was no monarch present, and that every one might think aloud. The conversation soon turned upon the faults of different governments and rulers, and general censures were passing from mouth to mouth pretty freely, when Frederick suddenly stayed the topic, by saying, "Peace, peace, gentlemen, have a care, the king is coming; it may be as well if he does not hear you, lest he should be obliged to be still worse than you." Our Second Charles was very fond of liberty, and of dropping the king, or as some writers say, he never took the office up: this was for another purpose, in times when
License they mean when they cry liberty.
Voluntarily parting with one's liberty is, however, very different to having it taken from us, as in the anecdote of the citizen who never having been out of his native place during his lifetime, was, for some offence, sentenced to stay within the walls a whole year; when he died of grief not long afterwards.
State imprisonment is like a set of silken fetters for kings and other great people. Thus, almost all our palaces have been used as prisons, according to the caprice of the monarch, or the violence of the uppermost faction. Shakspeare, in his historical plays, gives us many pictures of royal and noble suffering from the loss of liberty. One of the latter, with a beautiful antidote, is the address of Gaunt to Bolingbroke, after his banishment by Richard II.:—
All places that the eye of heaven visits,
Are to a wise man ports, and happy havens:
Teach thy necessity to reason thus:
There is no virtue like necessity.
Think not, the king did banish thee;
But thou the king: woe doth heavier sit,
Where it perceives it is but faintly borne.
Go, say—I sent thee forth to purchase honour,
And not—the king exiled thee: or suppose,
Devouring pestilence hangs in our air,
And thou art flying to a fresher clime.
Look, what thy soul holds dear, imagine it
To lie that way thou go'st, not whence thou comest:
Suppose the singing birds musicians;
The grass whereon thou tread'st, the presence strew'd;
The flowers, fair ladies; and thy steps, no more
Than a delightful measure, or a dance;
For gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite
The man that mocks at it, and sets it light.
Even Napoleon, whose wounds were almost green at his death, sought to chase away the recollections of his ill-starred splendour, by rides and walks in the island, and conversation with his suite in his garden; and Louis XVIII. after his restoration to the throne of France, passed few such happy days as his exile at Hartwell, which though only a pleasant seat enough, had more comfort than the gilded saloons of Versailles, or the hurly-burly of the Tuilleries, with treason hatching in the street beneath the windows, and revolution stinking in the very nostrils of the court. Shakspeare might well call a crown a
Polished perturbation! golden care!
and add—
O majesty!
When thou dost pinch thy bearer, thou dost sit
Like a rich armour worn in heat of day,
That scalds with safety.
Goldsmith has somewhat sarcastically lamented that the appetites of the rich do not increase with their wealth; in like manner, it would be a grievous thing could liberty be monopolized or scraped into heaps like wealth; a petty tyrant may persecute and imprison thousands, but he cannot thereby add one hour or inch to his own liberty.
Another and a very common loss of liberty is by pleasure and the love of fame, especially by the slaves of fashion and the lovers of great place;
Whose lives are others' not their own.
Pleasure for the most part, consists in fits of anticipation; since, the extra liberty or license of a debauch must be repaid by the iron fetters of headache, and the heavy hand of ennui on the following day: even the purblind puppy of fashion will tell you, if you make free with your constitution, you must suffer for it; and this by a species of slavery. To dance attendance upon a great man for a small appointment, and to boo your way through the world, belongs to the worst of servitude. Congreve compares a levee at a great man's to a list of duns; and Shenstone still more ill-naturedly says, "a courtier's dependant is a beggar's dog."
Making free, or taking liberties with your fortune, brings about the slavery, if not the sin, of poverty; and to take a liberty with the wealth of another is about as sure a road to slavery as picking pockets is to house-breaking. Debt is another of those odious badges which mark a man as a slave, and let him but go on to recovery, that like a snake in the sunshine, he may be the more effectually scotched and secured. Gay says to Swift, "I hate to be in debt; for I can't bear to pawn five pounds worth of my liberty to a tailor or a butcher. I grant you, this is not having the true spirit of modern nobility; but it is hard to cure the prejudice of education;" and every man will own that a greater slave-master is not to be found at Cape Coast than the law's follower, who says, "I 'rest you;" and then "brings you to all manner of unrest." One of these fellows is even greater than the sultan of an African tribe in till his glory; though he neither bears the insignia of rank nor power—none of the little finery which wins allegiance and honour—yet he constrains you "by virtue," and brings about a compromise and temporary cessation of your liberty.
Taking liberties with the pockets or tables of one's relations and friends, is at best, but a dangerous experiment. It cannot last long before they beg to be excused the liberty, &c., and like the countryman with the golden goose, you get a cold, fireless parlour, or a colder hall reception for your importunity; and, perchance, the silver ore being all gone, you must put up with the French plate. One of the most equivocal, if not dangerous, forms of correspondence is that beginning with "I take the liberty;" for it either portends some well tried "sufferer" as Lord Foppington calls him; a pressing call from a fundless charity; or at best but a note from an advertising tailor to tell you that for several years past you have been paying 50 per cent. too high a price for your clothes; but, like most good news, this comes upon crutches, and the loss is past redemption.
What is called the liberty of the subject we must leave for a dull barrister to explain: in the meantime, if any reader be impatient for the definition, a night's billeting in Covent Garden watchhouse will initiate him into its blessings; he is not so dull as to require to be told how to get there. The liberty of the press is another ticklish subject to handle— like a hedgehog—all points; but we may be allowed to quote, as one of the most harmless specimens of the liberty of the press—the production of THE MIRROR, as we always acknowledge the liberty by reference to the sources whence our borrowed wealth is taken. This is giving credit in one way, and taking credit for our own honesty.
Liberty-boys and brawlers would be new acquaintance for us. We are not old enough to remember "Wilkes and 45;" the cap of liberty is now seldom introduced into our national arms, and this and all such emblems are fast fading away. People who used to spout forth Cowper's line and a half on liberty, have given up the profession, and all men are at liberty to think as they please. Still ours is neither the golden nor the silver age of liberty: it is more like paper and platina liberty, things which have the weight and semblance without their value.
The only odd rencontre we ever had with a liberty advocate was with L'Abbe Gregoire, one of the cabinet advisers of Napoleon, and to judge by his writings, a benevolent man. On visiting him at Paris, we put into our pocket a little work of our leisure, containing upwards of 6,000 quotations on almost every subject. The Abbé, who understands English well, was delighted with the variety, and on calling again in a few days, we found the venerable patriot had been searching for all the passages on liberty, which he had distinguished by registers: what an evidence is this of his ruling passion. At the time we did not recollect that to M. Gregoire is attributed the republican sentiment "the reign of Kings is the martyrology of nations:" his conversation proved him an enthusiast, but we think this liberty rather too strong.
PHILO.