Devereux — Complete

Marie Oswald has lately taken unto himself a noted inn on the North Road, a place eminently calculated for the display of his various talents; he has also taken unto himself a WIFE, of whose tongue and temper he has been known already to complain with no Socratic meekness; and we may therefore opine that his misdeeds have not altogether escaped their fitting share of condemnation.

Succeeding at once, by the death of my poor brother, to the DEVEREUX estates, I am still employed in rebuilding, on a yet more costly scale, my ancestral mansion. So eager and impatient is my desire for the completion of my undertaking that I allow rest neither by night nor day, and half of the work will be done by torchlight. With the success of this project terminates my last scheme of Ambition.

Here, then, at the age of thirty-four, I conclude the history of my life. Whether in the star which, as I now write, shines in upon me, and which a romance, still unsubdued, has often dreamed to be the bright prophet of my fate, something of future adventure, suffering, or excitement is yet predestined to me; or whether life will muse itself away in the solitudes which surround the home of my past childhood and the scene of my present retreat,—creates within me but slight food for anticipation or conjecture. I have exhausted the sources of those feelings which flow, whether through the channels of anxiety or of hope, towards the future; and the restlessness of my manhood, having attained its last object, has done the labour of time, and bequeathed to me the indifference of age.

If love exists for me no longer, I know well that the memory of that which has been is to me far more than a living love is to others; and perhaps there is no passion so full of tender, of soft, and of hallowing associations as the love which is stamped by death. If I have borne much, and my spirit has worked out its earthly end in travail and in tears, yet I would not forego the lessons which my life has bequeathed me, even though they be deeply blended with sadness and regret. No! were I asked what best dignifies the present and consecrates the past; what enables us alone to draw a just moral from the tale of life; what sheds the purest light upon our reason; what gives the firmest strength to our religion; and, whether our remaining years pass in seclusion or in action, is best fitted to soften the heart of man, and to elevate the soul to God,—I would answer, with Lassus, “it is EXPERIENCE!”

notes

1

In his Commentary on the account of China by two Travellers.

2

“O mare, O litus, verum secretumque Movoetov, quam multa dictatis, quam multa invenitis!”—PLINIUS.

3

“But should there chance any occasion or necessity, one may wear better though still decorous garments.”

4

Thank Heaven, for the honour of literature, nous avons change tout cela!—ED.

5

An antiquated word in use for puppet-shows.

6

See “Spectator,” No. 14, for a letter from this unfortunate under-sexton.

7

Whig ladies patched on one side of the cheek, Tories on the other.

8

Lord Bolingbroke tells us that it was the main end of Harley’s administration to marry his son to this lady. Thus is the fate of nations a bundle made up of a thousand little private schemes.

9

In the “Arcadia,” that museum of oddities and beauties.

10

“Tatler.”

11

This seems to corroborate the suspicion entertained of the identity of Colonel Cleland with the Will Honeycomb of the “Spectator.”

12

“The Greek wants an ablative, the Italians a dative, I a nominative.”

13

The Earl of Norwich.

14

Which is possibly the reason why there are so many disciples of Kant at the present moment.—ED.

15

The “Theodicaea.”

16

Whatever pretensions Monsieur Desmarais may have had to originality, this tissue of opinions is as old as philosophy itself.—ED.

17

In the Customs.

18

It has been said that Swift was only coarse in his later years, and, with a curious ignorance both of fact and of character, that Pope was the cause of the Dean’s grossness of taste. There is no doubt that he grew coarser with age; but there is also no doubt that, graceful and dignified as that great genius could be when he pleased, he affected at a period earlier than the one in which he is now introduced, to be coarse both in speech and manner. I seize upon this opportunity, mal a propos as it is, to observe that Swift’s preference of Harley to St. John is by no means so certain as writers have been pleased generally to assert. Warton has already noted a passage in one of Swift’s letters to Bolingbroke, to which I will beg to call the reader’s attention.

“It is you were my hero, but the other (Lord Oxford) never was; yet if he were, it was your own fault, who taught me to love him, and often vindicated him, in the beginning of your ministry, from my accusations. But I granted he had the greatest inequalities of any man alive; and his whole scene was fifty times more a what-d’ye-call-it than yours; for I declare yours was unie, and I wish you would so order it that the world may be as wise as I upon that article.”

I have to apologize for introducing this quotation, which I have done because (and I entreat the reader to remember this) I observe that Count Devereux always speaks of Lord Bolingbroke as he was spoken of by the eminent men of that day,—not as he is now rated by the judgment of posterity.—ED.

19

Magnes.

20

“This privilege of mine, to laugh,—such a nothing as it seems,—I would not barter to thee for an Iliad.”

21

This picture represents the Count in an undress. The face is decidedly, though by no means remarkably, handsome; the nose is aquiline,—the upper lip short and chiselled,—the eyes gray, and the forehead, which is by far the finest feature in the countenance, is peculiarly high, broad, and massive. The mouth has but little beauty; it is severe, caustic, and rather displeasing, from the extreme compression of the lips. The great and prevalent expression of the face is energy. The eye, the brow, the turn of the head, the erect, penetrating aspect,—are all strikingly bold, animated, and even daring. And this expression makes a singular contrast to that in another likeness to the Count, which was taken at a much later period of life. The latter portrait represents him in a foreign uniform, decorated with orders. The peculiar sarcasm of the month is hidden beneath a very long and thick mustachio, of a much darker colour than the hair (for in both portraits, as in Jervas’s picture of Lord Bolingbroke, the hair is left undisguised by the odious fashion of the day). Across one cheek there is a slight scar, as of a sabre cut. The whole character of this portrait is widely different from that in the earlier one. Not a trace of the fire, the animation, which were so striking in the physiognomy of the youth of twenty, is discoverable in the calm, sedate, stately, yet somewhat stern expression, which seems immovably spread over the paler hue and the more prominent features of the man of about four or five and thirty. Yet, upon the whole, the face in the latter portrait is handsomer; and, from its air of dignity and reflection, even more impressive than that in the one I have first described.—ED.

22