Narrative and Miscellaneous Papers eBook

through ages, he had been prompted by his secret genius only to ‘scotch the snake,’ not to crush it.  Afterwards the fatal hour was gone by; and this imperfect augury has since concurred traditionally with the Mahometan prophecies about the Adrianople gate of Constantinople, to depress the ultimate hopes of Islam in the midst of all its insolence.  The very haughtiest of the Mussulmans believe that the gate is already in existence, through which the red Giaours (the Russi) shall pass to the conquest of Stamboul; and that everywhere, in Europe at least, the hat of Frangistan is destined to surmount the turban—­the crescent must go down before the cross.

COLERIDGE AND OPIUM-EATING.

What is the deadest of things earthly?  It is, says the world, ever forward and rash—­’a door-nail!’ But the world is wrong.  There is a thing deader than a door-nail, viz., Gillman’s Coleridge, Vol.  I. Dead, more dead, most dead, is Gillman’s Coleridge, Vol.  I.; and this upon more arguments than one.  The book has clearly not completed its elementary act of respiration; the systole of Vol.  I. is absolutely useless and lost without the diastole of that Vol.  II., which is never to exist.  That is one argument, and perhaps this second argument is stronger.  Gillman’s Coleridge, Vol.  I., deals rashly, unjustly, and almost maliciously, with some of our own particular friends; and yet, until late in this summer, Anno Domini 1844, we—­that is, neither ourselves nor our friends—­ever heard of its existence.  Now a sloth, even without the benefit of Mr. Waterton’s evidence to his character, will travel faster than that.  But malice, which travels fastest of all things, must be dead and cold at starting, when it can thus have lingered in the rear for six years; and therefore, though the world was so far right, that people do say, ‘Dead as a door-nail,’ yet, henceforward, the weakest of these people will see the propriety of saying—­’Dead as Gillman’s Coleridge.’

The reader of experience, on sliding over the surface of this opening paragraph, begins to think there’s mischief singing in the upper air.  ’No, reader, not at all.  We never were cooler in our days.  And this we protest, that, were it not for the excellence of the subject, Coleridge and Opium-Eating, Mr. Gillman would have been dismissed by us unnoticed.  Indeed, we not only forgive Mr. Gillman, but we have a kindness for him; and on this account, that he was good, he was generous, he was most forbearing, through twenty years, to poor Coleridge, when thrown upon his hospitality.  An excellent thing that, Mr. Gillman, till, noticing the theme suggested by this unhappy Vol.  I., we are forced at times to notice its author, Nor is this to be regretted.  We remember a line of Horace never yet properly translated, viz:—­

  ‘Nec scutica dignum horribili sectere flagello.’