Dulse

“ Guilt gave Shame frequent uneasiness, and Shame often betrayed the secret conspiracies of Guilt. After long disagreement, therefore, they at length consented to part for ever. Guilt boldly walked forward alone, to overtake Fate, that went before in the shape of an executioner; but Shame, being naturally timorous, returned back to keep company with Virtue, which in the beginning of their journey they had left behind. Thus, my children, after men have travelled through a few stages in vice, shame forsakes them, and returns back to wait upon the few virtues they have still remaining. ”

“ Had we this fellow at the Tower, a few turns of the rack would tear a confession from his craven soul. But why should we need his word for his own guilt? You have seen, my lords, you have heard! How say you, fair son? Is the man guilty? ”

“ He is a fool who stands at pining gaze!
But for poor Ludolph, he is food for sorrow:
No levelling bluster of my licensed thoughts,
No military swagger of my mind,
Can smother from myself the wrong I've done him,—
Without design, indeed,— yet it is so,—
And opiate for the conscience have I none! ”

“ For yesterday's Glug is the Glug of to-day. And they climb the trees when the thunder rolls, To solemnly salve their shop-worn souls. For they fear the coals That threaten to frizzle their shop-worn souls. They climbed the trees. 'Tis a bootless task To say so over again, or ask The cause of it all, or the reason why They never felt happier up on high. For Joi asked why; and Joi was a fool, And never a Glug of the fine old school With fixed opinions and Sunday clothes, And the habit of looking beyond its nose, And treating foes With the calm contempt of the One Who Knows. ”

“ Or she springs a leak: the water gains upon her; only do nothing, and she will soon sink to the bottom of the sea, and carry with her to destruction her rich freight of souls. So, sinner, is it with you. Do nothing, and your ruin is as certain as it is fearful. Hell gapes for you, and if you turn not, you are lost! ”

“ Any formal discussion of the morality of duelling is, in England at least, happily superfluous. No fashionable vice has been so unanimously condemned both by moralists and divines, and in tracing its history we are reminded of the words of Tacitus, “in civitate nostra et vetabitur semper et retinebitur.” Modern views.Some, however, of the problems, moral and social, which it suggests may be shortly noticed. That duelling flourished so long in England the law is, perhaps, as much to blame as society. ”

“ How do you show your goodness, girls, my ducy, dulcy day?'
'We all do as we're bidden, sir, my ducy, dulcy officer,
We all do as we're bidden, sir, my ducy, dulcy day.'
'Then I bid you stop your game, stop your game, stop your game,
Then I bid you stop your game, my ducy, dulcy day.'
'No, we will not stop for you, stop for you, stop for you,
No, we will not stop for you, my ducy, dulcy day.'
'So, naughty girls, you won't obey, won't obey, won't obey,
So, naughty girls, you won't obey, my ducy, dulcy day? ”

“ I see how the land lies well enough. I’ve been made a fool of all through!”
“You have not been made a fool of,” I said, with equal energy. “It is cruel of you to say that.”
“Cruel? It comes well from you to say that! I dare say you think it doesn’t matter much; but maybe some day, when I’ve gone to the devil, you’ll be sorry.”
He walked to the door, as if to go.{30}
“I am sorry, Willy,” I said, the tears rushing to my eyes. “Don’t go away like that. Oh, why did I ever come to Durrus?” ”

“ The man who had talked still cursed the folly that had made him yield to a woman's nagging, but he did it in silence, automatically as the petition of a prayer-wheel, the curse fluttering in his shallow brain. ”

“ Such a personage can no more see his own folly than he can see his own ears. And the great quality of Dulness is to be unalterably contented with itself. What myriads of souls are there of this admirable sort,—selfish, stingy, ignorant, passionate, brutal; bad sons, mothers, fathers, never known to do kind actions! ”

“ The very origin of duelling should make us blush at its permanency,—springing from the darkest eras of barbarism, when scarcely a vestige was left, in the wreck of empires, of ancient glory, and of those arts, sciences, and polite accomplishments that had distinguished preceding ages, and of which the scattered ruins and tradition alone remained, fearful records of the vanity of earthly grandeur and mortal fame. ”

“ Guilt, unpunished in its first crime, rushes onward, and hurrying from one misdeed to another, like the flood-tide, drives all before it! My silence, and his being defeated without reproach, armed him with courage for fresh daring, and he too well succeeded in embittering the future days of my life, as well as those of his own affectionate wife, and his illustrious father-in-law, the virtuous Duc de Penthievre, who was to all a father. ”

“ The winning ways of the girl, no less than Duke’s persistent deprecation of any affectation of proprietorship in her, are my one excuse. A poor one, even then, for how may I cry out on simple-hearted Dolly, when I failed to read the little history of sorrow that was daily before my eyes. It was after events only that interpreted to me the pride that would not let the cripple kneel, a suitor to pity. ”

“ Was it not so?"
"That it was indeed so these scars upon my body will prove; but these were the follies of my youth."
"How can you call them follies? Are they not the means by which honorable advancement may be gained and one's lady exalted?" ”

“ How often, when the abominations of Lupton, its sham energies, its sham morals, its sham enthusiasms, all its battalia of cant surged and beat upon me, have I been sorely tempted to yield, to suffer no more the press of folly, but to steal away by a secret path I knew, to dwell in a secure valley where the foolish could never trouble me. ”

“ On the appearance of an injury or an affront offered to his family or tribe, he kindles into rage, and pursues the author of 4 it with the keenest resentment. He considers it as cowardly to expect redress from any arm but his own, and as infamous to give up to another the right of determining what reparation he should accept, or with what vengeance he should be satisfied.”
Here we find the ground-work of duelling,—and it is to be lamented, that man, even in a progressive state of civilization, differs little from the savage in his thirst for gratifying the degrading indulgence of revenge. ”

“ In the abyss of evil into which I am plunged, I feel the blows reach me, without perceiving the hand by which they are directed or the means it employs. Shame and misfortune seem of themselves to fall upon me. ”

“ No gleam of goodness throughout the whole for the heart to cling to,—no thought of remorseful penitence,—no spark of noble feeling; nothing but vice,—low, grovelling, brutal vice,—from the moment the curtain rises to display the obscene spectacle, to that which sees it fall between the fictitious infamy on one side, and the real impurity left on the other! ”

“ In their perusal we may shudder at the atrocity of the details, and flatter ourselves with the idea that the present times are more civilized, but reflection will convince us that we are in error; the causes and the effects of the evil continue the same,—the one equally frivolous, the other equally disgraceful, and equally criminal. Not only will the history of duelling throw considerable light on the history of the times, but it will materially tend to illustrate the manners and the institutions of society at the different periods of its progression towards a more humanized condition ”

“ This dismal piece of verse effectually cleared the smoking-room, and filled me with a great sorrow, since{271} I had just recollected three or four stories of my own. I now take the liberty of laying these before the ingenuous reader. If he says they are dull, let me tell him (i.) that he has no perception of humour, and (ii.) that occasional dulness is the inalienable privilege of every free-born Briton. Many a spry wight thinks it his duty to be continuously funny and monotonously merry. Let a quiet and demure dulness be the foil of your side-splitting sallies. ”

“ The real foe of Dulness, then, is Truth—not simply wit or genius. The night of mind is all that Dulness labours to produce. Misdirected wit and genius help on this consummation, and therefore deserve her smile—all the more that they are her born enemies, turned traitors to their native cause; and most formidable enemies too, had they remained faithful. Needs must she load them with dignity and emoluments. Trace the thought. The poem begins from the real dull Dunces; and their goddess is Dulness, inevitably: nothing can be gainsaid there. ”

“ To know that a stain lies on the man I [195] love, to know that others distrust him, and will forever pass him by on the other side. That is the horror. Dulce, I am ignoble, I fear many things; the future terrifies me; but yet, as I am so wretched, dear, dear Dulce, take me back into your heart! ”

“ Even the Malicious, though they may like the Libel, don’t always believe it. But since the Publication of your last new Dunciad (where you still seem to enjoy your so often repeated Glory of being bright upon my Dulness) my Friends now insist, that it will be thought Dulness indeed, or a plain Confession of my being a Bankrupt in Wit, if I don’t immediately answer those Bills of Discredit you have drawn upon me: For, say they, your dealing with him, like a Gentleman, in your Apology for your own Life, &c. ”

“ Thus the dogma of the fall is not simply the expression of a special and transitory state of human reason and morality: it is the spontaneous confession, in symbolic phrase, of this fact as astonishing as it is indestructible, the culpability, the inclination to evil, of our race. Curse upon me a sinner! cries on every hand and in every tongue the conscience of the human race. ”

“ I neither run nor fight, but do meanly stand, answering each heavy blow of a cruel master with doleful wails and piteous cries. I am galled with irons; but even these are more tolerable than the consciousness, the galling consciousness of cowardice and indecision. ”

“ A heavy, slow tread could be heard now and then, and now and then groans, and now and then words of protest and anger, bitter reproach, tremulous entreaty, fierce invective, and passionate lamentation. ”

“ It is, no doubt, dull, but with the soberminded a large and spacious dulness like that of Hansard's Debates is better than the incongruous chirpings of the new 'humourists.' Besides, its dulness is exaggerated. If a reader cannot extract amusement from it the fault is his, not Hansard's. But, indeed, this perpetual talk of dulness and amusement ought not to pass unchallenged. Since when has it become a crime to be dull? Our fathers were not ashamed to be dull in a good cause. We are ashamed, but without ceasing to be dull. ”

“ I will tell thee, therefore, my crimes, that thou mayst know thy own felicity, lest, ignorant it means nothing but innocence, thou shouldst lose it, unconscious of its value. Listen then to me, and learn what Misery is! Guilt is alone the basis of lasting unhappiness;—Guilt is the basis of mine, and therefore I am a wretch for ever! ”

“ And it is equally clear that we experience every hour the effects of our fall and ruin. What, then, comes to us from all this chaos and wild confusion, in a voice of irresistible conviction, but the irrefragable truth of both those sides of humanity? ”

“ Then Dullhead asked once more for his bride, but the King felt vexed at the idea of a stupid fellow whom people called ‘Dullhead’ carrying off his daughter, and he began to make fresh conditions. He required Dullhead to find a man who could eat a mountain of bread. Dullhead did not wait to consider long but went straight off to the forest, and there on the same spot sat a man who was drawing in a strap as tight as he could round his body, and making a most woeful face the while. ”

“ How dull they were—how dull the world—
Dull even in the pulsing town.
O! worst of punishments, that brings
A blunting of all finer sense,
A loss of feelings keen, intense,
And dulls us to the higher things. ”

“ When roused by indignation or moral enthusiasm, how trenchant are our reflections, how smiting are our words! The whole network of petty scruples and by-considerations which, at ordinary languid times, surrounded the matter like a cobweb, holding back our thought, as Gulliver was pinned to the earth by the myriad Lilliputian threads, are dashed through at a blow, and the subject stands with its essential and vital lines revealed. ”

“ A RULE OF LIFE
‘If you want to annoy an opponent thoroughly, and even to harm him,’ said a crafty old knave to me, ‘you reproach him with the very defect or vice you are conscious of in yourself. Be indignant ... and reproach him!
‘To begin with, it will set others thinking you have not that vice.
‘In the second place, your indignation may well be sincere.... You can turn to account the pricks of your own conscience. ”

“ The intelligent reader must have been, at some time, struck with the mass of contradictions which, in one shape or other, has been offered to the world on the subject of duels; divines and law-givers crying murder ”

“ When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. ”