Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB
[blocks in formation]
[ocr errors]

The most successful advertiser of modern days and, I may add, the days-and, most universal, for I have seen his announcements" in modern Greek in a journal published at Athens— is the proprietor of a quack medicine, who called not long ago on a friend of mine, and, with reference to some proposed application of a portion of his wealth, informed him that he was worth a "million." Now, this man called on me many years ago, and presented an introduction from a person in comparatively humble life, to whom I had rendered some trifling service, and who desired to show his gratitude by recommending to me a "customer." My visitor explained to me that he was the proprietor of a certain specific for all the bodily "ills which flesh is heir to," and produced a pamphlet in praise thereof, which he begged the favour of me to revise. I told him that it was not at all in my way, and that I would rather not have anything to do with it, adding that it was a very simple thing, and that an ordinarily educated man could do it quite as well as I could at a quarter of the sum which I should require for the task. He told me that money was of no object to him; that I had rendered such essential service to his friend who introduced him, that he should feel deeply indebted to me if I would comply with his wishes. I then named a sum which I thought would frighten him away.

But

no; he said he should be but too happy to pay it; so that I was in a

cleft stick, and had no alternative but the acceptance of the uncongenial task, which I accordingly finished in so short a time that I almost felt ashamed to receive the guerdon; but I hoped I had seen the last of him. But no; a week afterwards he requested my services on a like occasion, and "paid for it like a man."

I believe that the success of advertising depends entirely on the length of the purse; and, if that holds out, there is a point at which the tide will turn, and "lead on to fortune," and flow like Pactolus. A publisher once told me that in starting a monthly periodical he spent £2500 in advertising before the first number was printed, when the impression sold was upwards of one hundred thousand!

A GRATEFUL ARCHBISHOP.

There is a Spanish legend, which I have never seen in print, but which was related to me by a member of the Corps Diplomatique. There was a certain canon, in an obscure cathedral town, whose poverty was equalled only by his ambition and his discontent with his lot. In the same town there was a certain physician, who added to his medical profession that of a magician; and to him our canon resorted; and, after he had related to him the circumstances of his condition, and enlisted his sympathy, the necromancer called to his cook, from the head of the stairs, "Jacinta, Jacinta!" "Yes, Señor," was the answer from the kitchen. "What have you got for dinner ?" "A partridge," was the response. "There is a gentleman coming to dine with me to-day; let there be two partridges," continued the doctor. And very soon afterwards, by a series of rapid promotions, our poor canon found himself Archbishop of Toledo. When in the full blaze of his

glory he was surprised by a visit from his old friend the physician, who came to congratulate him on his archiepiscopal honours. His Grace, however, altogether repudiated the acquaintance, on which the doctor proceeded to refresh his memory. Whereupon the archbishop became excessively indignant, declaring that he only remembered him as having practised diabolical arts, and threatened him that if he did not instantly quit his sacred presence he would hand him over to the tender mercies of the Inquisition. The physician, after upbraiding him with his ingratitude, opened the door of the apartment, and, from the top of the stairs, called "Jacinta, Jacinta!" "Yes, Señor," answered the familiar voice. "Let there be only one partridge for dinner to-day," said the doctor. And immediately the palace, like that of Aladdin's, when his wife made that miserable bargain with the lamp, vanished into "thin air," and the ungrateful archbishop found himself reduced to his former condition of a poverty

stricken canon.

HUMORISTS.

The Irish are rich in humour, but it is of another kind from the Scotch; and, if I were asked to define the two distinctively, I should say that you laughed loudest over the Irish, and longest over the Scotch. Sidney Smith was wont to say that it required a surgical operation to get a joke into a Scotchman; and I certainly have met with one or two who were

absolutely impervious to a joke; and, generally, they are not quick at perceiving one, the reason being, I have often thought, that Sandy deals with the statement presented to him as a fact, and turns it round

and round until he gets the right angle, and then he laughs as heartily as anyone. Of English humorists perhaps Hood was the most original-he was quite sui generis; but his humour was often marred by his want of taste and refinement, and he was a thoroughly dyed cockney. A great critic once remarked to me that "Hood seemed to take an oblique view of everything." His story of "Miss Kilmansegg" would have immortalised him if he had written nothing else; while some of his graver poems are unsurpassed in simplicity and pathos.

DINNER AMENITIES.

I was once at an anniversary festival of the Literary Fund, when a clumsy waiter upset a glass of champagne over me, and I sat for some time in an unenviable state of sloppiness, to which Sir F. P who sat next to me, tried to reconcile me by saying, "Never mind, H- ; it has only been administered as a lotion instead of as a draught." At the same dinner a distinguished member of the Bar had a plate of soup discharged upon his head, which a neighbour remarked should have been taken as a matter of course, as it was hare soup. The baronet to whom I have just alluded remarked, in reference to gentlemen who indulge in longwinded speeches at public dinners, that they seemed to think they had the freehold of our ears, instead of only a short lease. On another occasion on which, at a public dinner, a very distinguished writer was replied to by an eloquent prelate, Sir F said to me that the bishop reminded him of the dealing of a boa constrictor with a rabbit; he first oiled his antagonist all over, and then swallowed him at a mouthful.

[blocks in formation]

THE rules for estimating the importance of discrepancies between various historical authorities (and between different passages in the same authority) are exactly parallel to the rules about coincidences. Accuracy in historical details is naturally far more unattainable than in the private affairs which one has to deal with in the witnessbox.

The discrepancy already quoted between Burnet and Clarendon, as to the mode of Argyle's death, is an extreme instance to prove that manifest error on the part of one of two authorities need not detract from the complete general authoritativeness of both. Nor must we expect a writer to be always clearly consistent with himself. In one of St. Bernard's letters to the people of Toulouse he says that many heretics had been detected there, but unfortunately not arrested. His secretary, Godfrey, who probably wrote this letter at his dictation, and certainly knew of it, mentions expressly that the chief heretic, one Henricus, was closely beset and presently captured. Bernard, however, was speaking rhetorically of the heretics as a body; also, Godfrey's expression, "presently," may be extended beyond the date of the letter. We should be wrong, therefore, to class it with the spurious epistles-observe once more the mania for literary

forgery-which were circulated even in the saint's lifetime.

Yet we rely greatly on serious discrepancies to detect ignorance, fiction, or mendacity; and even where they are not conclusive, and might be "neglected" if the event is otherwise quite credible, they are fatal to a very marvellous story. We cannot err in considering the discrepancies between Philip and Godfrey clear indications of inaccuracy where inaccuracy is intolerable, and ignorance that a miracle is something rather hard for instructed men to believe, and so may convict them of unfitness to give evidence on the subject, so long as they treat it ecclesiastically rather than scientifically.

of

It need scarcely be repeated that we tolerate, nay expect, nay hope for, discrepancies in recognised authorities only on the principle Humanum est errare. Divergence in details between narratives substantially agreeing is so common that the lack of it implies consultation and collusion. We prefer, therefore, the minor evil of having to give up knowing the exact truth about the details variously narrated, which is the case unless we can consult a third authority, or show that subsequent facts are accounted for by one story, and not by the other.

Some slight indication of an

author's credibility is to be found in his style. A simple, straightforward, graphic style is very convincing. It may, however, be be counterfeited, as by Defoe in his "Memorials of a Cavalier," which a celebrated English statesman mistook for the genuine composition of a person who had fought for Charles I.; and a candid style is characteristic of nations and individuals while they are in a primitive state of education, which leaves them still very credulous and fond of marvels. Herodotus

has the advantage of Thucydides as to simplicity and naturalness, and he is as honest and candid and painstaking as any historian could be, but he comes nowhere near Thucydides in discrimination. He has the will to tell the truth, but not always the power to be rigidly accurate. More valuable internal evidence of a historian's trustworthiness is to be gained by observing whether he clearly recognises the marked distinction between events that his readers can easily credit, and events, or perhaps minute details (such as the exact words of a conversation), that can only be accepted on very strong evidence. This evidence, in the shape of personal knowledge or access to first-rate authorities, he ought constantly to mention and refer to, unless, indeed, the very nature of the narrative prepares his readers for a succession of marvels-as when Voltaire begins his life of Charles XII. with the assertion that he was, perhaps, the most remarkable man that ever lived on this earth; or, again, for the frequent mention of full particulars, as in "Boswell's Life of Johnson," almost the only work in which the long conversations are due to historical instead of dramatic

effort. For Boswell took down the speaker's exact words at the time; failing which, a writer's only plan (if he is determined to give a conversation) is, of course, that adopted and explained by and explained by Thucydides, namely, to dress up in his own words except a few striking expressions, faithfully rememberedthe "skeleton" which has been preserved; while the reader has to guess how much of what stands before him was said, how much of it may have been said, and how much merely (in the historian's opinion) ought to have been said. Graphic details are perhaps as often the "circumstances of a lie as the signs of familiarity with facts.

[ocr errors]

We are now prepared to grapple with the great problem of Historical Credibility, the question what kind and amount of evidence is required to establish miracles.

A miracle, in the doctrinal sense of the word, is an act which claims to have been performed by superhuman agency, an event alien to the "constitution and course of nature," such as can only be referred to the special interposition of a superior power.

The temporary presence of a miracle-worker on this earth is analogous to the temporary presence of a human being in a desert island. Relatively to the lower animals, it is as much a miracle that a man should kill a bird at a distance of one hundred yards, as it is, relatively to ourselves, that a man should heal a sick person by what appears to us an instantaneous and magical method.

The existence of at least one superior power may safely be inferred from the existence of this material and mental universe. The power which caused this universe

*See Simon Ockley's preface to his "History of the Saracens," published about 1710.

to exist, and arranged the constitution and course of nature, may evidently be considered a superhuman agent, capable of interfering with the ordinary laws of nature by extraordinary laws, and of bringing into existence or action other superhuman agents, or of endowing human beings with supernatural gifts.

There is no ground, then, for maintaining the antecedent impossibility of miracles. The Deity, as the Creator of something, if only of an infinitesimally small Monad from which the whole universe was to be developed, is a vera causa, a lawful subject of hypothesis. Even on the pantheistic theory; even if the universe, or the universemonad, be self-existent, it is still conceivable that its developments include the phenomena which all agree to call miracles. For, after all, there is no dispute about what a miracle is in the concrete. man is really blind, and another man comes to him and removes his blindness by merely touching his eyes and saying, "Receive thy sight," without any exercise of ordinary medical or surgical art, here is a miracle both in an eccle

If a

siastical and general sense. The only question is whether such a thing has ever happened. That a man's eyes should be suddenly enlightened by the touch of a hand is no more incredible in itself than that a piece of phosphorus should ignite when placed on the surface of water. Or if it be argued that the ignition of phosphorus always takes place in similar circumstances -is due to a Law of Nature-the reply is obvious that whenever a person endued with a miraculous power of healing sets himself to cure a blind man, he does so. And, of course, it is a foolish objection that such persons are rarely met with. Nature's ordinary prodigies are scarce for instance (to an

66

swer

fools according to their folly"), mesmerists, ventriloquists, giants, calculating boys, and persons who can say off by heart a page of the Times' advertisements after reading it through only once. That miracles should be of common occurrence would amount to a contradiction in terms. It may well be a law of Nature that whenever a revelation is required, the revealer's Divine commission is authenticated by miracles.

Having settled that miracles might occur, and belong to the category of extraordinary, not of disorderly events, we may go on to consider what amount and kind of evidence must be demanded before believing that any particular miracle has occurred. Once more the reader may be reminded that the capacity of human beings for representing facts as they really took place varies according to the nature of each class of facts, and cannot be calculated beforehand, but must be ascertained by experience. What then are the phenomena which we have to interpret ? We observe that miraculous narratives, honestly believed by the writers, and by countless readers, abounded everywhere and always, till about three centuries ago, since which time-i.e. since the physical sciences began to flourish-no new miracle has been seriously maintained by educated men, unless we are to take account of the supposed apparition at Parayle-Monial, or are to agree with Mr. Müller of Bristol that the early contributions to his orphanage (the case is worth studying) were miraculously called forth by his private prayers, and by no other means whatever; or unless we forsake the ecclesiastical meaning of the word miracle, and admit the narratives of Mr. Wallace, Mr. Crookes, and Dr. Zoellner. When Queen Elizabeth paid her celebrated visit to Kenil

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »