FullReads

Francis was the man. Francis was the wicked butler within, whom Pharaoh ought to have hanged, but whom he clothed in royal apparel, and mounted upon a horse that carried him to a curule chair of honor. So far his burglary prospered. But, as generally happens in such cases, this prosperous crime subsequently avenged itself. By a just retribution, the success of Junius, in two senses so monstrously exaggerated–exaggerated by a romantic over-estimate of its intellectual power through an error of the public, not admitted to the secret–and equally exaggerated as to its political power by the government in the hush-money for its future suppression, became the heaviest curse of the successful criminal. This criminal thirsted for literary distinction above all other distinction, with a childish eagerness, as for the amrecta cup of immortality. And, behold! there the brilliant bauble lay, glittering in the sands of a solitude, unclaimed by any man; disputed with him (if he chose to claim it) by nobody; and yet for his life he durst not touch it. He stood–he knew that he stood–in the situation of a murderer who has dropt an inestimable jewel upon the murdered body in the death-struggle with his victim. The jewel is his! Nobody will deny it. He may have it for asking. But to ask is his death-warrant. ‘Oh yes!’ would be the answer, ‘here’s your jewel, wrapt up safely in tissue paper. But here’s another lot that goes along with it–no bidder can take them apart–viz. a halter, also wrapt up in tissue paper.’ Francis, in relation to Junius, was in that exact predicament. ‘You are Junius? You are that famous man who has been missing since 1772? And you can prove it? God bless me! sir; what a long time you’ve been sleeping: every body’s gone to bed. Well, then, you are an exceedingly clever fellow, that have had the luck to be thought ten times more clever than really you were. And also, you are the greatest scoundrel that at this hour rests in Europe unhanged!’–Francis died, and made no sign. Peace of mind he had parted with for a peacock’s feather, which feather, living or dying, he durst not mount in the plumage of his cap.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Even Pope, with all his natural and reasonable interest in aristocratic society, could not shut his eyes to the fact that a jest in his mouth became twice a jest in a lord’s. But still he failed to perceive what I am here contending for, that if the jest happened to miss fire, through the misfortune of bursting its barrel, the consequences would be far worse for the lord than the commoner. There is, you see, a blind sort of compensation.

[2] Mr. Schlosser, who speaks English, who has read rather too much English for any good that he has turned it to, and who ought to have a keen eye for the English version of his own book, after so much reading and study of it, has, however, overlooked several manifest errors. I do not mean to tax Mr. Davison with, general inaccuracy. On the contrary, he seems wary, and in most cases successful as a dealer with the peculiarities of the German. But several cases of error I detect without needing the original: they tell their own story. And one of these I here notice, not only for its own importance, but out of love to Schlosser, and by way of nailing his guarantee to the counter–not altogether as a bad shilling, but as a light one. At p. 5 of vol. 2, in a foot-note, which is speaking of Kant, we read of his attempt to introduce the notion of negative greatness into Philosophy. Negative greatness! What strange bird may that be? Is it the ornithorynchus paradoxus? Mr. Schlosser was not wide awake there. The reference is evidently to Kant’s essay upon the advantages of introducing into philosophy the algebraic idea of negative quantities. It is one of Kant’s grandest gleams into hidden truth. Were it only for the merits of this most masterly essay in reconstituting the algebraic meaning of a negative quantity [so generally misunderstood as a negation of quantity, and which even Sir Isaac Newton misconstrued as regarded its metaphysics], great would have been the service rendered to logic by Kant. But there is a greater. From this little brochure I am satisfied was derived originally the German regeneration of the Dynamic philosophy, its expansion through the idea of polarity, indifference, etc. Oh, Mr. Schlosser, you had not gepruft p. 5 of vol. 2. You skipped the notes.