Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century; Social problems
O reader, I say not who are Belial's elect. This poor amphibious
Pope too gives loaves to the Poor; has in him more good latent
than he is himself aware of. His poor Jesuits, in the late
Italian Cholera, were, with a few German Doctors, the only
creatures whom dastard terror had not driven mad: they descended
fearless into all gulfs and bedlams; watched over the pillow of
the dying, with help, with counsel and hope; shone as luminous
fixed stars, when all else had gone out in chaotic night: honour
to them! This poor Pope,--who knows what good is in him? In a
Time otherwise too prone to forget, he keeps up the mournfulest
ghastly memorial of the Highest, Blessedest, which once was;
which, in new fit forms, will again partly have to be. Is he not
as a perpetual death's-head and cross-bones, with their
_Resurgam,_ on the grave of a Universal Heroism,--grave of a
Christianity? Such Noblenesses, purchased by the world's best
heart's-blood, must not be lost; we cannot afford to lose them,
in what confusions soever. To all of us the day will come, to a
few of us it has already come, when no mortal, with his heart
yearning for a 'Divine Humility,' or other 'Highest form of
Valour,' will need to look for it in death's-heads, but will see
it round him in here and there a beautiful living head.
Besides, there is in this poor Pope, and his practice of the
Scenic Theory of Worship, a frankness which I rather honour. Not
half and half, but with undivided heart does _he_ set about
worshiping by stage-machinery; as if there were now, and could
again be, in Nature no other. He will ask you, What other?
Under this my Gregorian Chant, and beautiful wax-light
Phantasmagory, kindly hidden from you is an Abyss, of black
Doubt, Scepticism, nay Sansculottic Jacobinism; an Orcus that
has no bottom. Think of that. 'Groby Pool _is_ thatched with
pancakes,'--as Jeannie Deans's Innkeeper defied it to be! The
Bottomless of Scepticism, Atheism, Jacobinism, behold, it is
thatched over, hidden from your despair, by stage-properties
judiciously arranged. This stuffed rump of mine saves not me
only from rheumatism, but you also from what other _isms!_ In
this your Life-pilgrimage Nowhither, a fine Squallacci marching-
music, and Gregorian Chant, accompanies you, and the hollow Night
of Orcus is well hid!
Yes truly, few men that worship by the rotatory Calabash of the
Calmucks do it in half so great, frank or effectual a way.
Drury-lane, it is said, and that is saying much, may learn from
him in the dressing of parts, in the arrangement of lights and
shadows. He is the greatest Play-actor that at present draws
salary in this world. Poor Pope; and I am told he is fast
growing bankrupt too; and will, in a measurable term of years (a
great way _within_ the 'three hundred'), not have a penny to make
his pot boil! His old rheumatic back will then get to rest; and
himself and his stage-properties sleep well in Chaos forevermore.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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