Thomas Shelvocke

“ He is very right to assert that which no one can doubt of, when he says Clipperton might have taken Payta as easily as he did; and so might any vessel, sending ashore six armed men, for there’s no such thing as firearms, 186 being a naked village of defenceless Indians. But it is endless for me to set the public right in every fact of Shelvocke’s history; for as the whole is divided into voluntary falshood and plain ignorance, his book may more justly be calld a romantic libel than a journal. ”

“ His occupation alone suggested that––for there are few white men working as sheep-herders who lack a hard luck story, if any one will listen to it. But this Shep Thomas was still young and unbroken, with none of the black marks of dissipation upon his face, 183 and his eyes were as keen and steady as any hunter’s. He was indeed the very type of fighter that Swope had sought, hardy and fearless, and at the same time careful. ”

“ I have observed before, how he abused him for discovering Clipperton’s name on the tree, when we first touchd at Fernandes; and Shelvocke himself explains the jealousy he had of him, when they were there the second time: all which being considerd, I leave those to make inferences, who have been long in the world, and studyd mankind. ”

“ But just as an English House of Commons loves nothing so well as a "personal explanation," so the personalities of literature have a way of attracting us in the direct ratio of their piquancy and severity. Lord Shelburne has quite a gift of killing two birds with one stone in his trenchant criticisms. He cannot crush George III.'s father without demolishing poor Lord Melcombe en passant. ”

“ The ambiguous position he had for some time past occupied in a ministry, from the chief measures of which he was known to differ, could be justified by facts known only to a few persons; while the politicians best acquainted with the wheels within wheels of the recent negotiations, were also those most interested in making the character and conduct of Shelburne appear in an unfavourable light. His sudden rise to very high office when a young man increased the number of his enemies. ”

“ What recompense can Shelvocke make for the indecent censures and cruel reflexions thrown upon the memory of the dead? Certainly Clipperton deserved better from a man to whose wilful mismanagement all his misfortunes are justly imputed: and ’tis no wonder, if he took to drinking, after having miscarryed in three voyages to the South-Seas: the two first by circumvention of the Spaniards, and this last by the treachery of one who should have been his consort and friend: ’tis what we see daily in people undone by the baseness of men and the frowns of fortune. ”

“ Serjeant Glynn and Alderman Townshend, Dunning and Pratt, Francis the translator of Horace, Calcraft and Nugent, George Dempster the future patron of Burns, and Captain Howe, who writing from India, had announced his intention of coming back, "and improving in husbandry under so experienced a farmer as Lord Shelburne must undoubtedly have become, if he cultivated the favourable disposition he so strongly shewed for retirement from the noise of the world." ”

“ Shelburne replied. On his way to London he had had an interview with Pitt at Bath, and consequently spoke animated not only with the consciousness of a good cause, but with the knowledge that he was the mouthpiece of a more powerful statesman than himself, though possibly this was one of the occasions when he felt that the Great Commoner had preferred throwing the responsibility of overt action on others, to taking it on his own shoulders. ”

“ Shelby fluttered his way through the corridors and drawing rooms of the rich, and his later work, if you will notice, always touches upon what is called smart society. We heard that he never mentioned his newspaper days—that he was not a little ashamed of having spent so many months bending over a typewriter in a dingy, cluttered office. ”

“ Under the dark foliage, his eyes on the sunlight, he was the type of all those Englishmen who keep their spirits bright and wear their bodies out in the dark places of hard work. "You can't think," he said, showing his teeth in a smile, "how delightful it is to be at home! You learn to love the old country when you're away from it."
Shelton often thought, afterwards; of this diagnosis of the vagabond, for he was always stumbling on instances of that power of subtle criticism which was the young foreigner's prime claim to be "a most awfully interesting" and perhaps a rather shocking person. ”

“ In tranquil moments, all that is foreign to the European blood and Christian sentiments is less perceptible, but in passion the national stamp comes out more strongly marked. All these inimitable niceties the finished art of a great actor can alone properly express. Shylock is a man of information, in his own way, even a thinker, only he has not discovered the region where human feelings dwell; his morality is founded on the disbelief in goodness and magnanimity. The desire to avenge the wrongs and indignities heaped upon his nation is, after avarice, his strongest spring of action. ”

“ This language is the more extraordinary, because the opinion of the world in general, I might say of almost every man in London, is directly the reverse. Either, therefore, Lord Shelburne is (not a dissembler, but) the most abandoned and direct liar upon the face of the earth, or he is deceived himself, too grossly to be imagined, or the whole world besides is deceived. Which of these is the case, time will show, and that only; but I cannot bring myself to imagine that the first is. That he wishes you should believe him secure, I can easily imagine, and that he wishes it very strongly ”

“ With his great physical handicap, the admiration was all the more intense, for the spirit and the grit of the man who was undertaking one of the most dangerous and difficult expeditions of the war. Shelby’s body was subordinated to the beckonings of glory and the splendor of the opportunity which had now come in obedience to his pleadings to serve his State, his cause, his country. Other men, less brave or determined, would have hesitated. Some men, possibly equally chivalrous, would have taken a furlough rather than have sought new dangers and more difficult service. ”

“ Shelton wondered what these ideals had been, but had no answer ready; so he nodded, and again held out his cigarettes, for, like a true Southerner, the little man had thrown the first away, half smoked.
"The greatest pleasure in life," continued the Frenchman, with a bow, "is to talk a little to a being who is capable of understanding you. At present we have no one here, now that that old actor's dead. Ah! there was a man who was rebellion incarnate! He made rebellion as other men make money, 'c'etait son metier'; when he was no longer capable of active revolution, he made it getting drunk. ”

“ Shelby. "I've agreed to sell Tom."
"What! our Tom?—that good, faithful creature!—been your faithful servant from a boy! O, Mr. Shelby!—and you have promised him his freedom, too,—you and I have spoken to him a hundred times of it. Well, I can believe anything now,—I can believe now that you could sell little Harry, poor Eliza's only child!" said Mrs. Shelby, in a tone between grief and indignation.
"Well, since you must know all, it is so. I have agreed to sell Tom and Harry both; and I don't know why I am to be rated, as if I were a monster, for doing what every one does every day." ”

“ Does a man always originate his own actions? Is it not possible, to say the least of it, that, just to give him a taste of what well-doing means, some moment, when selfishness is sick and faint, may be chosen by the power in whom we live and move and have our being to inspire the man with a true impulse? We must think what an unspeakable comfort it must have been to Thomas, in these moments of hopeless degradation of which he felt all the bitterness, suddenly to find around him, as the result of a noble deed into which he had been unaccountably driven, a sympathetic, yes, admiring public. ”

“ Doubtless in private life Shylock was a very honest and well-behaved gentleman, not a mere mountebank as he is sometimes represented on the stage, but a vigorous and energetic man of the world, shrewd, sagacious, and long sighted in business, honored on change, respected by his friends, and a pattern of prudence and morality. ”

“ While driving in the park at Stowe, this once celebrated statesman, "the ignis fatuus of a brighter epoch," [44] was thrown out of a chaise on a heap of bricks, fractured his skull and died. He had once been a leader, but had not a single follower at the moment of his decease, and after throwing away three separate opportunities of ruling the nation, lived to see it forget his existence. Shelburne, who both as a neighbour and a statesman had frequent opportunities of studying his character, has left the following account of the celebrated owner of Stowe. ”

“ No fear! Outside potatoes they know nothing, and what they do not understand they dread and they despise—there are millions of that breed. 'Voila la Societe'! The sole quality these people have shown they have is cowardice. I was educated by the Jesuits," he concluded; "it has given me a way of thinking."
Under ordinary circumstances Shelton would have murmured in a well-bred voice, "Ah! quite so," and taken refuge in the columns of the Daily Telegraph. In place of this, for some reason that he did not understand, he looked at the young foreigner, and asked,
"Why do you say all this to me?" ”

“ On May 18th, Richmond brought forward a series of resolutions condemnatory of the American policy of the Government. [14] The debate which followed was one of the most violent of the time. When speaking on the bill for reversing the adjudications against Wilkes, Shelburne had said that North, by giving Luttrell an appointment under the Crown, in order to enable him to vacate his seat and appear as a candidate for Middlesex, had acted unconstitutionally and ought to be impeached. ”

“ Compared with Marlowe’s Jew, Shylock is a terrible man beside a dreary monster, and, as far as logic and the lex talionis go, has the best of the argument. It is the strength of human nature itself that makes crime strong. Wickedness could have no power of itself: it lives by the perverted powers of good. And so great is Shakspere’s sympathy with Shylock even, in the hard and unjust doom that overtakes him, that he dismisses him with some of the spare sympathies of the more tender-hearted of his spectators. ”

“ Strange as it sounds, although man thought himself hardly treated in respect to freedom, yet, if freedom meant superiority, man was in action much the superior of God, Whose freedom suffered, from Saint Thomas, under restraints that man never would have tolerated. Saint Thomas did not allow God even an undetermined will; He was pure Act, and as such He could not change. Man alone was allowed, in act, to change direction. What was more curious still, man might absolutely prove his freedom by refusing to move at all; ”

“ Shelby, dryly; and, seeking to turn the conversation, he uncorked a bottle of fresh wine, and asked his companion's opinion of it.
"Capital, sir,—first chop!" said the trader; then turning, and slapping his hand familiarly on Shelby's shoulder, he added—
"Come, how will you trade about the gal?—what shall I say for her—what'll you take?"
"Mr. Haley, she is not to be sold," said Shelby. "My wife would not part with her for her weight in gold."
"Ay, ay! women always say such things, cause they ha'nt no sort of calculation. ”

“ Thus Shylock is a type of national sufferings, sympathies, and antipathies. Himself an object of bitter insult and scorn to those about him; surrounded by enemies whom he is too proud to conciliate and too weak to oppose; he can have no life among them but money ”

“ If I were an English preacher my desire would be to prick the heart of your complacency."
Shelton, leaning back, considered this impertinent suggestion.
"Hum!" he said at last, "you'd be unpopular; I don't know that we're any cockier than other nations."
The young foreigner made a sign as though confirming this opinion.
"In effect," said he, "it is a sufficiently widespread disease. Look at these people here"—and with a rapid glance he pointed to the inmates of the carnage,—"very average persons! What have they done to warrant their making a virtuous nose at those who do not walk as they do? ”

“ After, however, making full allowance for the circumstances of his political position, it remains clear from the unanimity of contemporary testimony that certain faults of manner greatly contributed to injure Shelburne's reputation. While no man obtained more general recognition of his abilities in office, or was able to surround himself with a more devoted body of friends, an overstrained affectation of extreme courtesy, and a habit of using unnecessary compliments in conversation, gained him the reputation with the general public of saying more than he really meant. ”

“ During the period of which the political history has been narrated, Lord Shelburne continued to employ his leisure in the management of his estates in England and Ireland. Some of his reflections on the subjects thus brought to his notice and on kindred topics will be found in the following paper: [1] —
England
"Man is made to be dependent in some respects, independent in others. Religion, morality, and necessity, point out his duties to others. Pride, knowledge of life, and reflection, suggest those which he owes to himself, and confirm those he owes to society. ”

“ I can't say that we were envious of Shelby because of his single-blessedness—he was only twenty-two at that time; but it hurt us to know that he didn't really have to work in Herald Square, and that he had neat bachelor quarters down in Gramercy Park, and a respectable club or two, and week-ended almost where he chose. His blond hair was always beautifully plastered over a fine brow, and he would never soil his forehead by wearing a green shade when he bent over his typewriter late at night. ”