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O thou divine spirit that burnest in every breast, inciting each with the sublime desire to be fine; that stirrest up the great to become little in order to seem greater, and that makest a duchess woo insult for a voucher, thou that delightest in so many shapes, multifarious yet the same; spirit that makest the high despicable, and the lord meaner than his valet; equally great whether thou cheatest a friend or cuttest a father; lacquering all thou touchest with a bright vulgarity that thy votaries imagine to be gold, thou that sendest the few to fashionable balls and the many to fashionable novels; that smitest even Genius as well as Folly, making the favourites of the gods boast an acquaintance they have not with the graces of a mushroom peerage rather than the knowledge they have of the Muses of an eternal Helicon, thou that leavest in the great ocean of our manners no dry spot for the foot of independence; that pallest on the jaded eye with a moving and girdling panorama of daubed vilenesses, and fritterest away the souls of free-born Britons into a powder smaller than the angels which dance in myriads on a pin's point, whether, O spirit! thou callest thyself Fashion or Ton, or Ambition or Vanity or Cringing or Cant or any title equally lofty and sublime, would that from thy wings we could gain but a single plume!
Clem. Lift the dark veil of years! Behind, what waits? A human heart. Vast city, where reside All glories and all vilenesses; while foul, Yet silent, through the roar of passions rolls The river of the Darling Sin, and bears A life and yet a poison on its tide. .............. Clem. Thy wife? Vict. Avaunt! I've changed that word to "scorn"! Clem. Thy child? Vict.
But alas! the broken-hearted are far off from this; they faint; they reckon themselves among the dead; they think God will remember them no more: the thoughts of the greatness of God, and his holiness, and their own sins and vilenesses, will certainly consume them.
O thou divine spirit that burnest in every breast, inciting each with the sublime desire to be fine; that stirrest up the great to become little in order to seem greater, and that makest a duchess woo insult for a voucher, thou that delightest in so many shapes, multifarious yet the same; spirit that makest the high despicable, and the lord meaner than his valet; equally great whether thou cheatest a friend or cuttest a father; lacquering all thou touchest with a bright vulgarity that thy votaries imagine to be gold, thou that sendest the few to fashionable balls and the many to fashionable novels; that smitest even Genius as well as Folly, making the favourites of the gods boast an acquaintance they have not with the graces of a mushroom peerage rather than the knowledge they have of the Muses of an eternal Helicon, thou that leavest in the great ocean of our manners no dry spot for the foot of independence; that pallest on the jaded eye with a moving and girdling panorama of daubed vilenesses, and fritterest away the souls of free-born Britons into a powder smaller than the angels which dance in myriads on a pin's point, whether, O spirit! thou callest thyself Fashion or Ton, or Ambition or Vanity or Cringing or Cant or any title equally lofty and sublime, would that from thy wings we could gain but a single plume!
They arise every time that we unveil the vilenesses, that we expose the gangrenes of our institutions; corrupt magistracy, vicious clergy, rotten army; tottering tripod which holds up that worm-eaten scaffolding which is called social order.
Clem. Lift the dark veil of years! Behind, what waits? A human heart. Vast city, where reside All glories and all vilenesses; while foul, Yet silent, through the roar of passions rolls The river of the Darling Sin, and bears A life and yet a poison on its tide. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Clem. Thy wife? Vict. Avaunt! I've changed that word to "scorn"! Clem. Thy child? Vict.
But when Charles was an actual pensioner of the French King, and James a palpable dependent on the French throne, the force of example may be easily conceived, among the spendthrift and needy officials, one half of whose life was spent at the gaming table. On those vilenesses history looks back with an eye of disgust.
Thus Marcus turns his very bitterest experience to gold, and from the vilenesses of others, which depressed his lonely life, so far from suffering himself to be embittered as well as saddened, he only draws fresh lessons of humanity and love. He says, for instance, "Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial.
The demands of the Popes were so ludicrous in their shamelessness, that when one of them was read to the assembled peers, the peers roared with laughter. We might perhaps forget such episodes as these. We might forget the abominations which at times have steeped the Papacy and the infallible Popes in earth's vilest vilenesses.
Lovelace, I cannot tell. But, wicked as the man is, I am afraid he must be your lord and master. I called him by several very hard names in my last. I had but just heard of some of his vilenesses, when I sat down to write; so my indignation was raised.
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