Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

tually amounting to it."-(Sir William Manning, Attorney-General of New SouthWales.)

The circumstances of his death in September last are thus related by the master of the Southern Cross, and his companions on this last sad voyage. Bishop Patteson proceeded in the first instance to Mota, one of the Banks group, with the Rev. J. Atkin and a catechist Stephen; and having made preparations for a tour among the heathen islands, set out for the Santa Cruz group, which lies in lat. 10° S., and long. 165° E., 350 miles north of the NewHebrides:

"During Mr. Atkin's stay at Wonga, he was speaking to the captain of the Emma Bell, who told him he was going to Santa Cruz for labor. This news made the Bishop very uneasy, as he very well knew if a vessel went there mischief would result from it. He made his mind up to go to the Reef Islands, and to ascertain if any vessels had been about. On the 15th of September made Santa Cruz; very light winds. September 20: Light winds off Nukapu. About four miles distant saw five or six canoes coming out. When within a mile or two from the vessel they lay-to. We thought it strange they did not come alongside; on former occasions they would have been alongside and have boarded us six and seven miles off the land. The Bishop had the boat lowered and went to them. [This was the last we saw of him alive.] It being low water, the boat could not go over the reef. The Bishop, as it was usual for him to do, got into a canoe and went on shore, accompanied by the two chiefs, Taula and Motu, the remaining four canoes remaining with the boat. About the time the Bishop would have got on shore the natives in the canoes attacked the boat, firing several arrows at the crew before they could get the boat out of shot. Mr. Atkin was hit in the back of the shoulder; Stephen, a native of Bouro, had six arrows in him, one in the breast; John, a native of Mota, shot in the side. We saw the natives put off in two canoes from shore. One of them they turned adrift, the other went back to the shore. Presently the boat went towards the drifting canoe, and found the dead body of the Bishop in her, rolled up in a native mat. A small branch of the cocoanut palm, with five knots, was stuck in the mat. What the palm with

the knots meant we could not tell. He was stripped of his clothes, his head frightfully smashed, and several wounds in the body.

"It is quite certain some vessel had been here ill-using the natives a very short time previous to our coming, or they never would have killed the Bishop. Every year he called at this place he would give the chiefs and people presents, and remain a considerable part of the day on shore with them."

What then is to be done? It is impossible that these things can be allowed any longer. They have been suffered already too long. With what grace can the English Government, as representing an antislavery people, remonstrate with other nations against Cuban oppressions and Peruvian kidnapping, when its own subjects are guilty of the same crimes. When the seizure of the Charles et George, in 1858, by the Portuguese Government, brought to light the French scheme under which cargoes of negroes were to be secured at Zanzibar and Kilwa for the Bourbon estates, all of whom were to be voluntary emigrants engaged under contracts, why did the English Government successfully oppose the scheme, except on the ground that the ignorant tribes could not understand civilized contracts and terms of service, and that the traffic would certainly degenerate into a practical slavery. It is a precisely similar system which has now been established in Queensland and Fiji, and with almost that result.

The total suppression of the traffic seems to be impracticable. Its total suppression could be secured only on terms which would hamper, if not entirely prevent, all movement of native islanders on English vessels from one part of the Pacific to another. But that is no reason why a strenuous effort should not be made to place the system under strong regulations, and secure due punishment to the men that abuse it. At this moment an extensive system of voluntary emigration is carried on between the Continent of India on the one side, and the West India Colonies, Mauritius, and Bourbon on the other. It is carried on quietly, steadily, with regularity, and with due care for the rights of all concerned. No doubt it is at times abused; no doubt crimps and agents, by glowing pictures and delusive promises, succeed in deceiving men and women, and indu

cing them to go abroad. But there is no violence, the wages are real, and the emigrants are protected in their return. How is this? Because the Government of India insists on taking care of its people. All emigrants must go through the coolie depôts, and be examined by the Government agent who knows their language. All vessels must be licensed; must be examined; must have a surgeon; must guarantee a certain space and scale of provisions. The emigrants are received by Government authorities; they are inspected and watched by those authorities during their time of service; and those authorities insure their safe return at its close. The result is that regular vessels are engaged in the traffic; that certain vessels and captains are favorites; that evils are kept under control; and that large numbers of "coolies" return safely with the wages they have saved. Their rights and their freedom have been in the main secured.

It is with great satisfaction, therefore, that the proposal of the Colonial Office to deal with the traffic during the present session of Parliament has been observed by those who have loudly protested against its conduct hitherto. The Bill introduced into the House of Commons by Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen proposes to visit with the penalties of felony all British subjects who decoy natives by force or fraud; who ship them without their consent; who make contracts for shipping them; who fit out or man such vessels, or who supply those vessels with goods for the purpose. All offences under the Act may be tried in any Supreme Court in Australia; witnesses may be examined by commission away from the colonies; and native wit

nesses may be brought to the Courts, compensated for their attendance, and sent back again. It is also provided that the testimony of heathen islanders shall be admissible in these courts, and in the cases into which they inquire.

But these things are not enough. It is of the last importance that the entire importation into Fiji, as well as into Queensland, shall be placed in Government hands, shall be carried on in Government vessels, and be watched by a sufficient number of English cruisers. The English settlements in the Fijis must also have an English Court, and the Consul must be empowered to seize offending vessels there.

Stern regulations, enforced by a strong hand, and backed by a healthy public opinion, ought to place the entire system under a firm control. We can be content with nothing less. For many generations the English people have been contending with the system of slavery. There has always been a formidable number of interested men, who sought, by compelling the dark races to labor, to get special benefit at their expense. The early planters in Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas developed the whole system of American slavery out of this desire for gain. The planters in Cuba, Chili, and Peru have sought the coolies of China for the same end. And it is this which has given so powerful a stimulus in the brief period of five years to the kidnapping of South Sea Islanders in Queensland and Fiji. It is the same hydra everywhere. We have not contended with it in vain; and it is time that, at least among Englishmen, the question of its continuance shall be settled once for all.

Blackwood's Magazine. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

It is a very common error in the world, when dealing with persons of genius, and especially with poets, to swamp the man in the writer, and to regard as poet only, an individual probably strong in natural characteristics, and with a most solid and muscular basis of humanity to make a pedestal for his genius. With such poets as those we have already discussed, this idea would be a thoroughly false one, for they were all most distinguishable men apart from their inspired condition, and NEW SERIES.-VOL. XVI., No. 1

[blocks in formation]

tal like ourselves. He is a creature whom, though his sins were not passed over by his contemporaries, we who come after can scarcely think of as bearing any weight of moral obligation at all. He has no responsibilities, no duties, except to be happy when he can, and kind, and to sing. Instinctively we feel that here is the being who ought to be Nature's spoilt child. The sun should always shine for him, and his own west wind blow, and the lark make delicious music. His world ought to be that garden in which the sensitive plant flourished. There should be a river for this favorite of earth to float upon in his boat under the overhanging trees, interrupted by nothing worse than here and there a fragrant copse of waterlilies; or even a delightful mimic sea, a sheltered celestial inlet, in which he could gently dare and safely attain the flowery isles and rosy rocks, with ever a safe piece of silver strand at their feet to beach his fairy vessel. And there should be woods deep and soft, breathing coolness and balmy rest and solitude; and blue mountains, such as are seen only in heaven and Italy. And unseen guardians should wander about, woodland creatures, with penetrating eyes, to charm away all newts and toads, as once they did from Titania's slumbers. To place Wordsworth or Burns in such a scene would be ludicrous; and the puzzled movements of the astonished Titan thus surrounded would move the world to inextinguishable laughter; but with Shelley it would be natural. Those soft shades would caress him like the touch of angels. The dreamy quiet, the soft varieties of bliss, would heal all nis wounds. Not heaven nor earth, but this elysium between the two, would be his natural sphere.

It is one of the triumphs of modern civilization to have placed all the world on the same level before the law; but this rule, though inevitable in public affairs, is, as every body knows, subject to all manner of modifications at the tribunal of private judgment. There are always some people whom, according to the nature of things, we judge more leniently than others; and some upon whom we find it impossible to put any serious moral stigma, though their offences, according to the letter, have been as grievous as those to which in others we allot the deepest condemnation. Even in this point, which would seem the easi

est of all, no such thing as equality is possible between man and man. And Shelley is emphatically one of the exceptions against whom the most inexorable Rhadamanthus could wield no sword of justice. As a man, we should be compelled to say that he discharged very badly all the obligations of life, and was commendable in none of its relationships. He surrounded himself with a youthful bravado of infidelity, which most likely meant very little. He was not particular about truth-telling, nor any of those usually necessary moralities. Such weaknesses render a man very objectionable; but they do not affect a Faun one way or another, or alter our opinion of that beautiful woodland creature; and Shelley was much more a Faun than a man. He was sheer poetry only half embodied at any time-a spirit of an intermediary world-a wandering genienothing more.

Such a visionary being, however, unless very specially cared for, is apt to come into dismal contact with the harder entities that fill the world. It requires, indeed, even on the part of father and mother, an extreme clearness of vision to be able to perceive that it is a Faun they have to deal with. Even Love erects itself against such a theory-love which is not of its nature tolerant but rather exacting, demanding excellence, or something which it can believe to be excellence, with a voice which is often imperious in its passion. And college dons and university officials are still less likely to perceive the peculiar mental constitution of an offending undergraduate. Neither would it seem that Shelley in his early days had any friend in the least capable of understanding his character, or treating his peculiarities with wisdom. Therefore, while he was but a boy, his life got astray among all kinds of painful and misleading currents, and the boat which was fit for nothing greater than an encounter with the water-lilies, was forced upon many a rock and down many a rapid. Nothing can be more sad than a premature blight upon a life scarcely yet emerged from the bud, or capable of understanding the miseries which it is precociously capable of inflicting upon itself. Shelley lived but thirty years in this unkindly world. Before twenty of them had passed he had ruined himself in public estimation, estranged himself from his relations, and cut off from

before his own wayward feet all possibility of a worthy career. Sad throughout was the fate of the unfortunate poet. Had he not been a poet, men in general would have made small moan over the misfortunes of the young fool who wrecked himself thus willfully and early. As it is, his life has been the subject of countless comments, attacks, and defences; and as a life, we doubt whether there is much to be said for it one way or another. We give up, accordingly, the vain idea to treat Shelley seriously as a man. Poor wandering soul! he was, after all, little more than a boy when he came to a sudden conclusion in those blue Mediterranean waves which are salt and bitter to some as any Baltic. He was a Poet, a Spirit of the race of Ariel, and him who invoked Sabrina in Milton's stately verse-and it is in this character that we will understand him best.

This exceptional being was born in August, 1792, on the very edge of the great Revolution which did all but overturn the world; of a family not at all remarkable in any way, to which hence. forward he was a mystery and a trouble unceasing, as any fairy child is likely to be in a humdrum modern household. He had a sister Elizabeth, who was very like him in appearance, and who in her early youth dabbled in verse like himself; but probably she was no changeling, and the resemblance and natural attraction between them appears to have faded as life went on. Of his childhood little or nothing is known. He went to school at ten, when, being a very delicate-looking and lovely child-a curled darling fresh from the nursery-he had a hard time of it, as is not unusual. At fifteen he went to Eton, where he became, according to all his biographers, the victim of much cruelty, rudeness, and persecution on the part of his comrades. The Eton of the present day has become so peaceable, well-bred, and gentlemanly, that the story of the tortures inflicted upon young Shelley read, to those who know the school, like one of the feverish dreams of his own over-excited imagination. But times were ruder in the beginning of the century; and though we do not know by what rule we are to distinguish between the grotesque adventures of after-days-in which he himself seems to have believed, but nobody else—and those stories which, there

being no evidence either for or against them, his biographers take for grantedwe are content to believe that the strange spirit which already chafed at all the conditions and restrictions of every-day humanity met with a certain amount of trouble from the ordinary flesh and blood which surrounded him. For one thing, with that curious exaggeration of personal independence which is always to be found in a certain number of boys, he set his face against the fagging system, which probably, like other things, was of a ruder and more disagreeable character than at present. This, which is but an insignificant incident in his career, is a most valuable indication of his character. Shelley was beyond the reach of those ordinary motives which make the wholesome mass of ordinary boys place their necks cheerfully and even with a certain pride under this yoke, which is of the school's own making-prescribed and sanctioned by that truest of republics, and supported by the public opinion of its members. To such sentiments, which in their way are of an elevated and elevating order, and contain the germ of one of the highest of human principles-voluntary subordination to received law-the poet was absolutely impervious. He was apparently incapable even of conceiving what is meant by esprit de corps, the pride of corporate and public being, and the sway of tradition. The whole principle of his life was individuality. Notwithstanding a most generous heart always ready to overflow in the wildest liberality of charity and almsgiving, the higher generosity of obedience was altogether out of his reach. He is like a restive horse that kicks and flings at the very appearance of bit and bridle. To give he is willing-to submit is impossible to him. He is Ariel, but Ariel before either Sycorax or Prosperothe fatal witch or the potent magician— had bound him. The passion of his life, thus developed in its very earliest stage, is resistance. From that instinctive struggle against a school-boy's dearest authority, the law and custom of his school, which he maintained at fifteen, until the time when-alas! not another fifteen years full counted—he had to succumb at last to an adversary no man can successfully resist, the whole scope both of his life and doctrine is vehement opposition-resistanceit does not much matter to what-to God,

to man, to law, to authority-whatsoever and whosoever opposed him. Perhaps it is, more almost than its fine poetry, the extraordinary life of this principle, the very essence of his being, which makes his crowning poem, " Prometheus," stand out a great and terrible picture against the pale heavens and the shuddering earth. This was the highest conception he could reach of human superiority. How far it might be the fault of his age, we can not tell-or how far it was peculiar to his wild and lawless spirit; but it is clear that this great yet inevitably inferior ideal took possession of him. He saw no beauty in that loftier and more splendid faculty of submission which is the theory of Christianity; a harmonious movement in concert with all the music of the spheres, with the will of Heaven, and the courtesies and primitive sympathies of earth, was a thing at which his Faun-eyes glittered wildly, blank with incomprehension. But those eyes glowed with terrible and wonderful vision when the old fable of the resisting Titan, indomitable, unconquerable, wakened their depths. This he understood and felt to the very depths of his ghostly nature. Resistance! it was his ideal of all lofty character, and the principle of his life. We have not space to linger upon all the wild traditions of his school-boy life, opposed as it was to every thing that could be called authority. He was fond of Greek and Latin, and would have gladly studied them by his own will; but the fact that it was the will of the masters that he should learn, set him astray at once. He "would not submit to the trammels of the gradus." "Shelley never would obey ;" and in pure perverseness it would seem, because such learning was discouraged, he took to studying chemistry and electricity instead. These scientific studies were prosecuted under the care of a Dr. Lind in Windsor, who is reported to have amused himself and the boy by engaging in bouts of cursing, the King and Shelley's father being the special objects of these extraordinary anathemas. But this is the mythological period of the poet's life, and there seems always to have been ground for hoping that such wild stories, when told only by himself, might be mere imaginations. Perhaps the other eccentri cities of the time-his sallying forth at midnight to call up the devil, his burning of trees, and similar cantrips-were but

imaginations too. Several years later, when he already called himself a man, he informed Godwin in a letter that he had been twice expelled from Eton; but for this statement there does not seem the slightest foundation. According to all likelihood, he left his school much as other boys do whose career there has not been brilliant. He had a quantity of books given him on leaving by his schoolfellows, which some of his biographers take as a mark of their attachment to him-a point as to which old Eton men, knowing the habit of the place, will be less certain. He went to Oxford in the year 1810, before which period he had composed and published two volumes of what we are assured were extremely foolish novels. In Oxford, however, he emerges out of the mythological period in which we can be certain of nothing; and here a prophet and interpreter of Shelley appears to lend us his solid and consequential aid. Mr. Jefferson Hogg, who was the poet's chief and most intimate friend during his brief career at the University, is as strange a biographer as such an eccentric and wayward soul could well have. His jaunty patronage of his young hero, his mingled sense of Shelley's superiority to every body and his own superiority to Shelley, and his delightful confidence that in his own person he is equally interesting to the world, is full of the frankest naïveté; but we believe his book has been accepted as in the main a true record founded upon personal knowledge. Shelley was eighteen at the time when he thus suddenly, as it were, bounds upon the scene, a slim lad with brilliant eyes, stooping shoulders, a voice like a peacock, and the most wonderful "ways" that ever young collegian had. Mr. Hogg saw him first at dinner in the hall of University College, a freshman newly arrived-and, beginning to talk to him, became so absorbed that every body was gone from the hall, and the college servants had come to clear the table, before the two young men came to them. selves. Oddly enough, the discussion which so entranced them was upon the relative merits of German and Italian poetry—a discussion which was characteristically and summarily concluded, when the young disputants had retired to Hogg's rooms, by the mutual admission that neither knew any thing of the literature he had so hotly defended!

« AnteriorContinuar »