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Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers, Vol. II.

T >> Thomas De Quincey >> Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers, Vol. II.




Omens of every class were certainly regarded, in ancient Rome, with a
reverence that can hardly be surpassed. But yet, with respect to these
omens derived from names, it is certain that our modern times have more
memorable examples on record. Out of a large number which occur to us,
we will cite two:--The present King of the French bore in his boyish
days a title which he would not have borne, but for an omen of bad
augury attached to his proper title. He was called the Duc de Chartres
before the Revolution, whereas his proper title was Duc de Valois. And
the origin of the change was this:--The Regent's father had been the
sole brother of Louis Quatorze. He married for his first wife our
English princess Henrietta, the sister of Charles II., (and through her
daughter, by the way, it is that the house of Savoy, _i.e._ of
Sardinia, has pretensions to the English throne.) This unhappy lady, it
is too well established, was poisoned. Voltaire, amongst many others,
has affected to doubt the fact; for which in his time there might be
some excuse. But since then better evidences have placed the matter
beyond all question. We now know both the fact, and the how, and the
why. The Duke, who probably was no party to the murder of his young
wife, though otherwise on bad terms with her, married for his second
wife a coarse German princess, homely in every sense, and a singular
contrast to the elegant creature whom he had lost. She was a daughter
of the Bavarian Elector; ill-tempered by her own confession, self-
willed, and a plain speaker to excess; but otherwise a woman of honest
German principles. Unhappy she was through a long life; unhappy through
the monotony as well as the malicious intrigues of the French court;
and so much so, that she did her best (though without effect) to
prevent her Bavarian niece from becoming dauphiness. She acquits her
husband, however, in the memoirs which she left behind, of any
intentional share in her unhappiness; she describes him constantly as a
well-disposed prince. But whether it were, that often walking in the
dusk through the numerous apartments of that vast mansion which her
husband had so much enlarged, naturally she turned her thoughts to the
injured lady who had presided there before herself; or whether it arose
from the inevitable gloom which broods continually over mighty palaces,
so much is known for certain, that one evening, in the twilight, she
met, at a remote quarter of the reception-rooms, something that she
conceived to be a spectre. What she fancied to have passed on that
occasion, was never known except to her nearest friends; and if she
made any explanations in her memoirs, the editor has thought fit to
suppress them. She mentions only, that in consequence of some ominous
circumstances relating to the title of _Valois_, which was the
proper second title of the Orleans family, her son, the Regent, had
assumed in his boyhood that of Duc de Chartres. His elder brother was
dead, so that the superior title was open to him; but, in consequence
of those mysterious omens, whatever they might be, which occasioned
much whispering at the time, the great title of Valois was laid aside
for ever as of bad augury; nor has it ever been resumed through a
century and a half that have followed that mysterious warning; nor will
it be resumed unless the numerous children of the present Orleans
branch should find themselves distressed for ancient titles; which is
not likely, since they enjoy the honors of the elder house, and are now
the _children of France_ in a technical sense.

Here we have a great European case of state omens in the eldest of
Christian houses. The next which we shall cite is equally a state case,
and carries its public verification along with itself. In the spring of
1799, when Napoleon was lying before Acre, he became anxious for news
from Upper Egypt, whither he had despatched Dessaix in pursuit of a
distinguished Mameluke leader. This was in the middle of May. Not many
days after, a courier arrived with favorable despatches--favorable in
the main, but reporting one tragical occurrence on a small scale that,
to Napoleon, for a superstitious reason, outweighed the public
prosperity. A _djerme_, or Nile boat of the largest class, having
on board a large party of troops and of wounded men, together with most
of a regimental band, had run ashore at the village of Benouth. No case
could be more hopeless. The neighboring Arabs were of the Yambo tribe--
of all Arabs the most ferocious. These Arabs and the Fellahs (whom, by
the way, many of our countrymen are so ready to represent as friendly
to the French and hostile to ourselves,) had taken the opportunity of
attacking the vessel. The engagement was obstinate; but at length the
inevitable catastrophe could be delayed no longer. The commander, an
Italian named Morandi, was a brave man; any fate appeared better than
that which awaited him from an enemy so malignant. He set fire to the
powder magazine; the vessel blew up; Morandi perished in the Nile; and
all of less nerve, who had previously reached the shore in safety, were
put to death to the very last man, with cruelties the most detestable,
by their inhuman enemies. For all this Napoleon cared little; but one
solitary fact there was in the report which struck him with
consternation. This ill-fated _djerme_--what was it called? It was
called _L'Italie_; and in the name of the vessel Napoleon read an
augury of the fate which had befallen the Italian territory. Considered
as a dependency of France, he felt certain that Italy was lost; and
Napoleon was inconsolable. But what possible connection, it was asked,
can exist between this vessel on the Nile and a remote peninsula of
Southern Europe? 'No matter,' replied Napoleon; 'my presentiments never
deceive me. You will see that all is ruined. I am satisfied that my
Italy, my conquest, is lost to France!' So, indeed, it was. All
European news had long been intercepted by the English cruisers; but
immediately after the battle with the Vizier in July 1799, an English
admiral first informed the French army of Egypt that Massena and others
had lost all that Bonaparte had won in 1796. But it is a strange
illustration of human blindness, that this very subject of Napoleon's
lamentation--this very campaign of 1799--it was, with its blunders and
its long equipage of disasters, that paved the way for his own
elevation to the Consulship, just seven calendar months from the
receipt of that Egyptian despatch; since most certainly, in the
struggle of Brumaire 1799, doubtful and critical through every stage,
it was the pointed contrast between _his_ Italian campaigns and
those of his successors which gave effect to Napoleon's pretensions
with the political combatants, and which procured them a ratification
amongst the people. The loss of Italy was essential to the full effect
of Napoleon's previous conquest. That and the imbecile characters of
Napoleon's chief military opponents were the true keys to the great
revolution of Brumaire. The stone which he rejected became the keystone
of the arch. So that, after all, he valued the omen falsely; though the
very next news from Europe, courteously communicated by his English
enemies, showed that he had interpreted its meaning rightly.

These omens, derived from names, are therefore common to the ancient
and the modern world. But perhaps, in strict logic, they ought to have
been classed as one subdivision or variety under a much larger head,
viz. words generally, no matter whether proper names or appellatives,
as operative powers and agencies, having, that is to say, a charmed
power against some party concerned from the moment that they leave the
lips.

Homer describes prayers as having a separate life, rising buoyantly
upon wings, and making their way upwards to the throne of Jove. Such,
but in a sense gloomy and terrific, is the force ascribed under a
widespread superstition, ancient and modern, to words uttered on
critical occasions; or to words uttered at any time, which point to
critical occasions. Hence the doctrine of _euphaemismos_, the
necessity of abstaining from strong words or direct words in expressing
fatal contingencies. It was shocking, at all times of paganism, to say
of a third person--'If he should die;' or to suppose the case that he
might be murdered. The very word _death_ was consecrated and
forbidden. _Si quiddam humanum passus fuerit_ was the extreme form
to which men advanced in such cases. And this scrupulous feeling,
originally founded on the supposed efficacy of words, prevails to this
day. It is a feeling undoubtedly supported by good taste, which
strongly impresses upon us all the discordant tone of all impassioned
subjects, (death, religion, &c.,) with the common key of ordinary
conversation. But good taste is not in itself sufficient to account for
a scrupulousness so general and so austere. In the lowest classes there
is a shuddering recoil still felt from uttering coarsely and roundly
the anticipation of a person's death. Suppose a child, heir to some
estate, the subject of conversation--the hypothesis of his death is put
cautiously, under such forms as, 'If anything but good should happen;'
'if any change should occur;' 'if any of us should chance to miscarry;'
and so forth. Always a modified expression is sought--always an
indirect one. And this timidity arises under the old superstition still
lingering amongst men, like that ancient awe, alluded to by Wordsworth,
for the sea and its deep secrets--feelings that have not, no, nor ever
will, utterly decay. No excess of nautical skill will ever perfectly
disenchant the great abyss from its terrors--no progressive knowledge
will ever medicine that dread misgiving of a mysterious and pathless
power given to words of a certain import, or uttered in certain
situations, by a parent, to persecuting or insulting children; by the
victim of horrible oppression, when laboring in final agonies; and by
others, whether cursing or blessing, who stand central to great
passions, to great interests, or to great perplexities.

And here, by way of parenthesis, we may stop to explain the force of
that expression, so common in Scripture, '_Thou hast said it._' It
is an answer often adopted by our Saviour; and the meaning we hold to
be this: Many forms in eastern idioms, as well as in the Greek
occasionally, though meant _interrogatively_, are of a nature to
convey a direct categorical _affirmation_, unless as their meaning
is modified by the cadence and intonation. _Art thou_, detached
from this vocal and accentual modification, is equivalent to _thou
art_. Nay, even apart from this accident, the popular belief
authorized the notion, that simply to have uttered any great thesis,
though unconsciously--simply to have united verbally any two great
ideas, though for a purpose the most different or even opposite, had
the mysterious power of realizing them in act. An exclamation, though
in the purest spirit of sport, to a boy, '_You shall be our
imperator_,' was many times supposed to be the forerunner and fatal
mandate for the boy's elevation. Such words executed themselves. To
connect, though but for denial or for mockery, the ideas of Jesus and
the Messiah, furnished an augury that eventually they would be found to
coincide, and to have their coincidence admitted. It was an
_argumentum ad hominem_, and drawn from a popular faith.

But a modern reader will object the want of an accompanying design or
serious meaning on the part of him who utters the words--he never meant
his words to be taken seriously--nay, his purpose was the very
opposite. True: and precisely that is the reason why his words are
likely to operate effectually, and why they should be feared. Here lies
the critical point which most of all distinguishes this faith. Words
took effect, not merely in default of a serious use, but exactly in
consequence of that default. It was the chance word, the stray word,
the word uttered in jest, or in trifling, or in scorn, or
unconsciously, which took effect; whilst ten thousand words, uttered
with purpose and deliberation, were sure to prove inert. One case will
illustrate this:--Alexander of Macedon, in the outset of his great
expedition, consulted the oracle at Delphi. For the sake of his army,
had he been even without personal faith, he desired to have his
enterprise consecrated. No persuasions, however, would move the
priestess to enter upon her painful and agitating duties for the sake
of obtaining the regular answer of the god. Wearied with this,
Alexander seized the great lady by the arm, and using as much violence
as was becoming to the two characters--of a great prince acting and a
great priestess suffering--he pushed her gently backwards to the tripod
on which, in her professional character, she was to seat herself. Upon
this, in the hurry and excitement of the moment, the priestess
exclaimed, _O pai, anixaitos ei--O son, thou art irresistible_;
never adverting for an instant to his martial purposes, but simply to
his personal importunities. The person whom she thought of as incapable
of resistance, was herself, and all she meant _consciously_ was--O
son, I can refuse nothing to one so earnest. But mark what followed:
Alexander desisted at once--he asked for no further oracle--he refused
it, and exclaimed joyously:--'Now then, noble priestess, farewell; I
have the oracle--I have your answer, and better than any which you
could deliver from the tripod. I am invincible--so you have declared,
you cannot revoke it. True, you thought not of Persia--you thought only
of my importunity. But that very fact is what ratifies your answer. In
its blindness I recognise its truth. An oracle from a god might be
distorted by political ministers of the god, as in time past too often
has been suspected. The oracle has been said to _Medize_, and in
my own father's time to _Philippize_. But an oracle delivered
unconsciously, indirectly, blindly, that is the oracle which cannot
deceive.' Such was the all-famous oracle which Alexander accepted--such
was the oracle on which he and his army reposing went forth 'conquering
and to conquer.'

Exactly on this principle do the Turks act, in putting so high a value
on the words of idiots. Enlightened Christians have often wondered at
their allowing any weight to people bereft of understanding. But that
is the very reason for allowing them weight: that very defect it is
which makes them capable of being organs for conveying words from
higher intelligences. A fine human intelligence cannot be a passive
instrument--it cannot be a mere tube for conveying the words of
inspiration: such an intelligence will intermingle ideas of its own, or
otherwise modify what is given, and pollute what is sacred.

It is also on this principle that the whole practice and doctrine of
Sortilegy rest. Let us confine ourselves to that mode of sortilegy
which is conducted by throwing open privileged books at random, leaving
to chance the page and the particular line on which the oracular
functions are thrown. The books used have varied with the caprice or
the error of ages. Once the Hebrew Scriptures had the preference.
Probably they were laid aside, not because the reverence for their
authority decayed, but because it increased. In later times Virgil has
been the favorite. Considering the very limited range of ideas to which
Virgil was tied by his theme--a colonizing expedition in a barbarous
age, no worse book could have been selected: [Footnote: '_No worse
book could have been selected._'--The probable reason for making so
unhappy a choice seems to have been that Virgil, in the middle ages,
had the character of a necromancer, a diviner, &c. This we all know
from Dante. Now, the original reason for this strange translation of
character and functions we hold to have arisen from the circumstance of
his maternal grandfather having borne the name of _Magus_. People
in those ages held that a powerful enchanter, exorciser, &c., must have
a magician amongst his _cognati_; the power must run in the blood,
which on the maternal side could be undeniably ascertained. Under this
preconception, they took Magus not for a proper name, but for a
professional designation. Amongst many illustrations of the magical
character sustained by Virgil in the middle ages, we may mention that a
writer, about the year 1200, or the era of our Robin Hood, published by
Montfaucon, and cited by Gibbon in his last volume, says of Virgil,--
that '_Captus a Romanis invisibiliter exiit, ivitque Neapopolim_.'] so
little indeed does the AEneid exhibit of human life in its
multiformity, that much tampering with the text is required
to bring real cases of human interest and real situations within the
scope of any Virgilian sentence, though aided by the utmost latitude of
accommodation. A king, a soldier, a sailor, &c., might look for
correspondences to their own circumstances; but not many others.
Accordingly, everybody remembers the remarkable answer which Charles I.
received at Oxford from this Virgilian oracle, about the opening of the
Parliamentary war. But from this limitation in the range of ideas it
was that others, and very pious people too, have not thought it profane
to resume the old reliance on the Scriptures. No case, indeed, can try
so severely, or put upon record so conspicuously, this indestructible
propensity for seeking light out of darkness--this thirst for looking
into the future by the aid of dice, real or figurative, as the fact of
men eminent for piety having yielded to the temptation. We give one
instance--the instance of a person who, in _practical_ theology,
has been, perhaps, more popular than any other in any church. Dr.
Doddridge, in his earlier days, was in a dilemma both of conscience and
of taste as to the election he should make between two situations, one
in possession, both at his command. He was settled at Harborough, in
Leicestershire, and was 'pleasing himself with the view of a
continuance' in that situation. True, he had received an invitation to
Northampton; but the reasons against complying seemed so strong, that
nothing was wanting but the civility of going over to Northampton, and
making an apologetic farewell. On the last Sunday in November of the
year 1729, the doctor went and preached a sermon in conformity with
those purposes. 'But,' says he, 'on the morning of that day an incident
happened, which affected me greatly.' On the night previous, it seems,
he had been urged very importunately by his Northampton friends to
undertake the vacant office. Much personal kindness had concurred with
this public importunity: the good doctor was affected; he had prayed
fervently, alleging in his prayer, as the reason which chiefly weighed
with him to reject the offer, that it was far beyond his forces, and
chiefly because he was too young [Footnote: '_Because he was too
young_'--Dr. Doddridge was born in the summer of 1702; consequently
he was at this era of his life about twenty-seven years old, and
consequently not so obviously entitled to the excuse of youth. But he
pleaded his youth, not with a view to the exertions required, but to
the _auctoritas_ and responsibilities of the situation.] and had
no assistant. He goes on thus:--'As soon as ever this address' (meaning
the prayer) 'was ended, I passed through a room of the house in which I
lodged, where a child was reading to his mother, and the only words I
heard distinctly were these, _And as thy days, so shall thy strength
be_.' This singular coincidence between his own difficulty and a
scriptural line caught at random in passing hastily through a room,
(but observe, a line insulated from the context, and placed in high
relief to his ear,) shook his resolution. Accident co-operated; a
promise to be fulfilled at Northampton, in a certain contingency, fell
due at the instant; the doctor was detained, this detention gave time
for further representations; new motives arose, old difficulties were
removed, and finally the doctor saw, in all this succession of steps,
the first of which, however, lay in the _Sortes Biblicæ_, clear
indications of a providential guidance. With that conviction he took up
his abode at Northampton, and remained there for the next thirty-one
years, until he left it for his grave at Lisbon; in fact, he passed at
Northampton the whole of his public life. It must, therefore, be
allowed to stand upon the records of sortilegy, that in the main
direction of his life--not, indeed, as to its spirit, but as to its
form and local connections--a Protestant divine of much merit, and
chiefly in what regards practice, and of the class most opposed to
superstition, took his determining impulse from a variety of the
_Sortes Virgilianæ_.

This variety was known in early times to the Jews--as early, indeed, as
the era of the Grecian Pericles, if we are to believe the Talmud. It is
known familiarly to this day amongst Polish Jews, and is called
_Bathcol_, or the _daughter of a voice_; the meaning of which
appellation is this:--The _Urim and Thummim_, or oracle in the
breast-plate of the high priest, spoke directly from God. It was,
therefore, the original or mother-voice. But about the time of
Pericles, that is, exactly one hundred years before the time of
Alexander the Great, the light of prophecy was quenched in Malachi or
Haggai; and the oracular jewels in the breast-plate became
simultaneously dim. Henceforwards the mother-voice was heard no longer:
but to this succeeded an imperfect or daughter-voice, (_Bathcol_,)
which lay in the first words happening to arrest the attention at a
moment of perplexity. An illustration, which has been often quoted from
the Talmud, is to the following effect:--Rabbi Tochanan, and Rabbi
Simeon Ben Lachish, were anxious about a friend, Rabbi Samuel, six
hundred miles distant on the Euphrates. Whilst talking earnestly
together on this subject in Palestine, they passed a school; they
paused to listen: it was a child reading the first book of Samuel; and
the words which they caught were these--_And Samuel died_. These
words they received as a _Bath-col_: and the next horseman from
the Euphrates brought word accordingly that Rabbi Samuel had been
gathered to his fathers at some station on the Euphrates.

Here is the very same case, the same _Bath-col_ substantially,
which we have cited from Orton's _Life of Doddridge_. And Du Cange
himself notices, in his Glossary, the relation which this bore to the
Pagan _Sortes_. 'It was,' says he, 'a fantastical way of divination,
invented by the Jews, not unlike the _Sortes Virgilianæ_ of the
heathens. For, as with them the first words they happened to dip into
in the works of that poet were a kind of oracle whereby they predicted
future events,--so, with the Jews, when they appealed to _Bath-col_,
the first words they heard from any one's mouth were looked upon as a
voice from Heaven directing them in the matter they inquired about.'

If the reader imagines that this ancient form of the practical
miraculous is at all gone out of use, even the example of Dr. Doddridge
may satisfy him to the contrary. Such an example was sure to authorize
a large imitation. But, even apart from that, the superstition is
common. The records of conversion amongst felons and other ignorant
persons might be cited by hundreds upon hundreds to prove that no
practice is more common than that of trying the spiritual fate, and
abiding by the import of any passage in the Scriptures which may first
present itself to the eye. Cowper, the poet, has recorded a case of
this sort in his own experience. It is one to which all the unhappy are
prone. But a mode of questioning the oracles of darkness, far more
childish, and, under some shape or other, equally common amongst those
who are prompted by mere vacancy of mind, without that determination to
sacred fountains which is impressed by misery, may be found in the
following extravagant silliness of Rousseau, which we give in his own
words--a case for which he admits that he himself would have _shut
up_ any other man (meaning in a lunatic hospital) whom he had seen
practising the same absurdities:--

'Au milieu de mes études et d'une vie innocente autant qu'on la puisse
mener, et malgré tout ce qu'on m'avoit pu dire, la peur de l'Enfer
m'agitoit encore. Souvent je me demandois--En quel état suis-je? Si je
mourrois à l'instant même, _serois-je damné_? Selon mes Jansénistes,
[he had been reading the books of the Port Royal,] la chose est
indubitable: mais, selon ma conscience, il me paroissoit que
non. Toujours craintif et flottant dans cette cruelle incertitude,
j'avois recours (pour en sortir) aux expédients les plus risibles, et
pour lesquels je ferois volontiers enfermer un homme si je lui en
voyois faire autant. ... Un jour, rêvant à ce triste sujet, je
m'exerçois machinalement à lancer les pierres contre les troncs des
arbres; et cela avec mon addresse ordinaire, c'est-à-dire sans presque
jamais en toucher aucun. Tout au milieu de ce bel exercise, je m'avisai
de faire une espèce de pronostic pour calmer mon inquiétude. Je me dis
--je m'en vais jeter cette pierre contre l'arbre qui est vis-à-vis de
moi: si je le touche, signe de salut: si je le manque, signe de
damnation. Tout en disant ainsi, je jette ma pierre d'une main
tremblante, et avec un horrible battement de coeur, mais si
heureusement qu'elle va frapper au beau-milieu de l'arbre: ce qui
véritablement n'étoit pas difficile: car j'avois eu soin de le choisir
fort gros et fort près. _Depuis lors je n'ai plus doubté de mon
salut._ Je ne sais, en me rappelant ce trait, si je dois rire ou
gémir sur moimême.'--_Les Confessions, Partie I. Livre VI._

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