Abbot Samson
So then the bells of St. Edmundsbury clang out one and all, and
in church and chapel the organs go: Convent and Town, and all
the west side of Suffolk, are in gala; knights, viscounts,
weavers, spinners, the entire population, male and female, young
and old, the very sockmen with their chubby infants,--out to have
a holiday, and see the Lord Abbot arrive! And there is
'stripping barefoot' of the Lord Abbot at the Gate, and solemn
leading of him in to the High Altar and Shrine; with sudden
'silence of all the bells and organs,' as we kneel in deep prayer
there; and again with outburst of all the bells and organs, and
loud _Te Deum_ from the general human windpipe; and speeches by
the leading viscount, and giving of the kiss of brotherhood; the
whole wound up with popular games, and dinner within doors of
more than a thousand strong, _plus quam mille comedentibus in
gaudio magno._
In such manner is the selfsame Samson once again returning
to us, welcomed on _this_ occasion. He that went away with his
frock-skirts looped over his arm, comes back riding high;
suddenly made one of the dignitaries of this world. Reflective
readers will admit that here was a trial for a man. Yesterday a
poor mendicant, allowed to possess not above two shillings of
money, and without authority to bid a dog run for him, this man
today finds himself a _Dominus Abbas,_ mitred Peer of Parliament,
Lord of manorhouses, farms, manors, and wide lands; a man with
'Fifty Knights under him,' and dependent swiftly obedient
multitudes of men. It is a change greater than Napoleon's; so
sudden withal. As if one of the Chandos daydrudges had, on
awakening some morning, found that he overnight was become Duke!
Let Samson with his clear-beaming eyes see into that, and discern
it if he can. We shall now get the measure of him by a new scale
of inches, considerably more rigorous than the former was. For
if a noble soul is rendered tenfold beautifuller by victory and
prosperity, springing now radiant as into his own due element and
sunthrone; an ignoble one is rendered tenfold and hundredfold
uglier, pitifuller. Whatsoever vices, whatsoever weaknesses were
in the man, the parvenu will shew us them enlarged, as in the
solar microscope, into frightful distortion. Nay, how many mere
seminal principles of vice, hitherto all wholesomely kept latent,
may we now see unfolded, as in the solar hothouse, into growth,
into huge universally-conspicuous luxuriance and development!
But is not this, at any rate, a singular aspect of what political
and social capabilities, nay let us say what depth and opulence
of true social vitality, lay in those old barbarous ages, That
the fit Governor could be met with under such disguises, could be
recognised and laid hold of under such? Here he is discovered
with a maximum of two shillings in his pocket, and a leather
scrip round his neck; trudging along the highway, his frock-
skirts looped over his arm. They think this is he nevertheless,
the true Governor; and he proves to be so. Brethren, have we no
need of discovering true Governors, but will sham ones forever do
for us? These were absurd superstitious blockheads of Monks;
and we are enlightened Tenpound Franchisers, without taxes on
knowledge! Where, I say, are our superior, are our similar or at
all comparable discoveries? We also have eyes, or ought to have;
we have hustings, telescopes; we have lights, link-lights and
rushlights of an enlightened free Press, burning and dancing
everywhere, as in a universal torch-dance; singeing your
whiskers as you traverse the public thoroughfares in town and
country. Great souls, true Governors, go about under all manner
of disguises now as then. Such telescopes, such enlightenment,--
and such discovery! How comes it, I say; how comes it? Is it
not lamentable; is it not even, in some sense, amazing?
Alas, the defect, as we must often urge and again urge, is less a
defect of telescopes than of some eyesight. Those superstitious
blockheads of the Twelfth Century had no telescopes, but they had
still an eye: not ballot-boxes; only reverence for Worth,
abhorrence of Unworth. It is the way with all barbarians. Thus
Mr. Sale informs me, the old Arab Tribes would gather in
liveliest _gaudeamus,_ and sing, and kindle bonfires, and wreathe
crowns of honour, and solemnly thank the gods that, in their
Tribe too, a Poet had shewn himself. As indeed they well might;
for what usefuller, I say not nobler and heavenlier thing could
the gods, doing their very kindest, send to any Tribe or Nation,
in any time or circumstances? I declare to thee, my afflicted
quack-ridden brother, in spite of thy astonishment, it is very
lamentable! We English find a Poet, as brave a man as has been
made for a hundred years or so anywhere under the Sun; and do we
kindle bonfires, thank the gods? Not at all. We, taking due
counsel of it, set the man to gauge ale-barrels in the Burgh of
Dumfries; and pique ourselves on our 'patronage of genius.'
Genius, Poet: do we know what these words mean? An inspired
Soul once more vouchsafed us, direct from Nature's own great
fire-heart, to see the Truth, and speak it, and do it; Nature's
own sacred voice heard once more athwart the dreary boundless
element of hearsaying and canting, of twaddle and poltroonery, in
which the bewildered Earth, nigh perishing, has _lost its way._
Hear once more, ye bewildered benighted mortals; listen once
again to a voice from the inner Light-sea and Flame-sea, Nature's
and Truth's own heart; know the Fact of your Existence what it
is, put away the Cant of it which it is not; and knowing, do,
and let it be well with you!--
George the Third is Defender of something we call 'the Faith' in
those years; George the Third is head charioteer of the
Destinies of England, to guide them through the gulf of French
Revolutions, American Independences; and Robert Burns is Gauger
of ale in Dumfries. It is an Iliad in a nutshell. The
physiognomy of a world now verging towards dissolution, reduced
now to spasms and death-throes, lies pictured in that one fact,--
which astonishes nobody, except at me for being astonished at it.
The fruit of long ages of confirmed Valethood, entirely confirmed
as into a Law of Nature; cloth-worship and quack-worship:
entirely _confirmed_ Valethood,--which will have to unconfirm
itself again; God knows, with difficulty enough!--
Abbot Samson had found a Convent all in dilapidation; rain
beating through it, material rain and metaphorical, from all
quarters of the compass. Willelmus Sacrista sits drinking
nightly, and doing mere _tacenda._ Our larders are reduced to
leanness, Jew Harpies and unclean creatures our purveyors; in
our basket is no bread. Old women with their distaffs rush out
on a distressed Cellarer in shrill Chartism. 'You cannot stir
abroad but Jews and Christians pounce upon you with unsettled
bonds;' debts boundless seemingly as the National Debt of
England. For four years our new Lord Abbot never went abroad but
Jew creditors and Christian, and all manner of creditors, were
about him; driving him to very despair. Our Prior is remiss;
our Cellarers, officials are remiss, our monks are remiss: what
man is not remiss? Front this, Samson, thou alone art there to
front it; it is thy task to front and fight this, and to die or
kill it. May the Lord have mercy on thee!
To our antiquarian interest in poor Jocelin and his Convent,
where the whole aspect of existence, the whole dialect, of
thought, of speech, of activity, is so obsolete, strange, long-
vanished, there now superadds itself a mild glow of human
interest for Abbot Samson; a real pleasure, as at sight of man's
work, especially of governing, which is man's highest work, done
_well._ Abbot Samson had no experience in governing; had served
no apprenticeship to the trade of governing,--alas, only the
hardest apprenticeship to that of obeying. He had never in any
court given _vadium_ or _plegium,_ says Jocelin; hardly ever
seen a court, when he was set to preside in one. But it is
astonishing, continues Jocelin, how soon he learned the ways of
business; and, in all sort of affairs, became expert beyond
others. Of the many persons offering him their service 'he
retained one Knight skilled in taking _vadia_ and _plegia;'_ and
within the year was himself well skilled. Nay, by and by, the
Pope appoints him Justiciary in certain causes; the King one of
his new Circuit judges: official Osbert is heard saying, "That
Abbot is one of your shrewd ones, _disputator est;_ if he go on
as he begins, he will cut out every lawyer of us!"
Why not? What is to hinder this Samson from governing? There is
in him what far transcends all apprenticeships; in the man
himself there exists a model of governing, something to govern
by! There exists in him a heart-abhorrence of whatever is
incoherent, pusillanimous, unveracious,--that is to say, chaotic,
_un_governed; of the Devil, not of God. A man of this kind
cannot help governing! He has the living ideal of a governor in
him; and the incessant necessity of struggling to unfold the
same out of him. Not the Devil or Chaos, for any wages, will he
serve; no, this man is the born servant of Another than them.
Alas, how little avail all apprenticeships, when there is in your
governor himself what we may well call _nothing_ to govern by:
nothing;--a general grey twilight, looming with shapes of
expediencies, parliamentary traditions, division-lists, election-
funds, leading-articles; this, with what of vulpine alertness
and adroitness soever, is not much!
But indeed what say we, apprenticeship? Had not this Samson
served, in his way, a right good apprenticeship to governing;
namely, the harshest slave-apprenticeship to obeying! Walk this
world with no friend in it but God and St. Edmund, you will
either fall into the ditch, or learn a good many things. To
learn obeying is the fundamental art of governing. How much
would many a Serene Highness have learned, had he traveled
through the world with water-jug and empty wallet, _sine omni
expensa;_ and, at his victorious return, sat down not to
newspaper-paragraphs and city-illuminations, but at the foot of
St. Edmund's Shrine to shackles and bread and water! He that
cannot be servant of many, will never be master, true guide and
deliverer of many;--that is the meaning of true mastership. Had
not the Monk-life extraordinary 'political capabilities' in it;
if not imitable by us, yet enviable? Heavens, had a Duke of
Logwood, now rolling sumptuously to his place in the Collective
Wisdom, but himself happened to plough daily, at one time, on
seven-and-sixpence a week, with no out-door relief,--what a
light, unquenchable by logic and statistic and arithmetic, would
it have thrown on several things for him!
In all cases, therefore, we will agree with the judicious Mrs.
Glass: 'First catch your hare!' First get your man; all is
got: he can learn to do all things, from making boots, to
decreeing judgments, governing communities; and will do them
like a man. Catch your no-man,--alas, have you not caught the
terriblest Tartar in the world! Perhaps all the terribler, the
quieter and gentler he looks. For the mischief that one
blockhead, that every blockhead does, in a world so feracious,
teeming with endless results as ours, no ciphering will sum up.
The quack bootmaker is considerable; as corn-cutters can
testify, and desperate men reduced to buckskin and list-shoes.
But the quack priest, quack high-priest, the quack king! Why do
not all just citizens rush, half-frantic, to stop him, as they
would a conflagration? Surely a just citizen _is_ admonished by
God and his own Soul, by all silent and articulate voices of this
Universe, to do what in _him_ lies towards relief of this poor
blockhead-quack, and of a world that groans under him. Runs
swiftly; relieve him,--were it even by extinguishing him! For
all things have grown so old, tinder-dry, combustible; and he is
more ruinous than conflagration. Sweep him _down,_ at least;
keep him strictly within the hearth: he will then cease to be
conflagration; he will then become useful, more or less, as
culinary fire. Fire is the best of servants; but what a master!
This poor blockhead too is born for uses: why, elevating him to
mastership, will you make a conflagration, a parish-curse or
world-curse of him?