Lavengro - George Borrow (nice books to read TXT) 📗

dead and buried there, as everywhere else, till Scott called them out of their graves when the pedants of Oxford hailed both⁠—ay, and the Pope, too, as soon as Scott had made the old fellow fascinating, through particular novels, more especially the Monastery and Abbot. Then the quiet, respectable, honourable Church of England would no longer do for the pedants of Oxford; they must belong to a more genteel Church⁠—they were ashamed at first to be downright Romans⁠—so they would be Lauds. The pale-looking, but exceedingly genteel non-juring clergyman in Waverley was a Laud; but they soon became tired of being Lauds, for Laud’s Church, gew-gawish and idolatrous as it was, was not sufficiently tinselly and idolatrous for them, so they must be Popes, but in a sneaking way, still calling themselves Church of England men, in order to batten on the bounty of the Church which they were betraying, and likewise have opportunities of corrupting such lads as might still resort to Oxford with principles uncontaminated.

So the respectable people, whose opinions are still sound, are, to a certain extent, right when they say that the tide of Popery, which has flowed over the land, has come from Oxford. It did come immediately from Oxford, but how did it get to Oxford? Why, from Scott’s novels. Oh! that sermon which was the first manifestation of Oxford feeling, preached at Oxford some time in the year ’38 by a divine of a weak and confused intellect, in which Popery was mixed up with Jacobitism! The present writer remembers perfectly well, on reading some extracts from it at the time in a newspaper, on the top of a coach, exclaiming⁠—“Why, the simpleton has been pilfering from Walter Scott’s novels!”

O Oxford pedants! Oxford pedants! ye whose politics and religion are both derived from Scott’s novels! what a pity it is that some lad of honest parents, whose mind ye are endeavouring to stultify with your nonsense about “Complines and Claverse,” has not the spirit to start up and cry, “Confound your gibberish! I’ll have none of it. Hurrah for the Church, and the principles of my father!”

VII Same Subject Continued

Now what could have induced Scott to write novels tending to make people Papists and Jacobites, and in love with arbitrary power? Did he think that Christianity was a gaudy mummery? He did not, he could not, for he had read the Bible; yet was he fond of gaudy mummeries, fond of talking about them. Did he believe that the Stuarts were a good family, and fit to govern a country like Britain? He knew that they were a vicious, worthless crew, and that Britain was a degraded country as long as they swayed the sceptre; but for those facts he cared nothing, they governed in a way which he liked, for he had an abstract love of despotism, and an abhorrence of everything savouring of freedom and the rights of man in general. His favourite political picture was a joking, profligate, careless king, nominally absolute⁠—the heads of great houses paying court to, but in reality governing, that king, whilst revelling with him on the plunder of a nation, and a set of crouching, grovelling vassals (the literal meaning of vassal is a wretch), who, after allowing themselves to be horsewhipped, would take a bone if flung to them, and be grateful; so that in love with mummery, though he knew what Christianity was, no wonder he admired such a Church as that of Rome, and that which Laud set up; and by nature formed to be the holder of the candle to ancient worm-eaten and profligate families, no wonder that all his sympathies were with the Stuarts and their dissipated insolent party, and all his hatred directed against those who endeavoured to check them in their proceedings, and to raise the generality of mankind something above a state of vassalage, that is, wretchedness. Those who were born great, were, if he could have had his will, always to remain great, however worthless their characters. Those who were born low, were always to remain so, however great their talents; though, if that rule were carried out, where would he have been himself?

In the book which he called the History of Napoleon Bonaparte, in which he plays the sycophant to all the legitimate crowned heads in Europe, whatever their crimes, vices or miserable imbecilities, he, in his abhorrence of everything low which by its own vigour makes itself illustrious, calls Murat of the sabre the son of a pastry-cook, of a Marseilleise pastry-cook. It is a pity that people who give themselves hoity-toity airs⁠—and the Scotch in general are wonderfully addicted to giving themselves hoity-toity airs, and checking people better than themselves with their birth378 and their country⁠—it is a great pity that such people do not look at home⁠—son of a pastry-cook, of a Marseilleise pastry-cook! Well, and what was Scott himself? Why, son of a pettifogger, of an Edinburgh pettifogger. “Oh, but Scott was descended from the old cow-stealers of Buccleuch, and therefore⁠—” descended from old cow-stealers, was he? Well, had he had nothing to boast of beyond such a pedigree, he would have lived and died the son of a pettifogger, and been forgotten, and deservedly so; but he possessed talents, and by his talents rose like Murat, and like him will be remembered for his talents alone, and deservedly so. “Yes, but Murat was still the son of a pastry-cook, and though he was certainly good at the sabre, and cut his way to a throne, still⁠—” Lord! what fools there are in the world; but as no one can be thought anything of in this world without a pedigree, the writer will now give a pedigree for Murat, of a very different character from the cow-stealing one of Scott, but such a one as the proudest he might not disdain to claim. Scott was descended from the old