Autobiographic Sketches. Томас Де Квинси

Autobiographic Sketches

thus indulged her dislike for them, which she took no pains to conceal; and thus, also, she withdrew them from the notice of strangers. In this way, it happened that I saw them myself but at uncertain intervals. Gradually, however, I came to be aware of their forlorn condition, to pity them, and to love them. The poor twins were undoubtedly plain to the degree which is called, by unfeeling people, ugliness. They were also deaf, as I have said, and they were scrofulous; one of them was disfigured by the small pox; they had glimmering eyes, red, like the eyes of ferrets, and scarcely half open; and they did not walk so much as stumble along. There, you have the worst of them. Now, hear something on the other side. What first won my pity was, their affection for each other, united to their constant sadness; secondly, a notion which had crept into my head, probably derived from something said in my presence by elder people, that they were destined to an early death; and, lastly, the incessant persecutions of their mother. This lady belonged, by birth, to a more elevated rank than that of her husband, and she was remarkably well bred as regarded her manners. But she had probably a weak understanding; she was shrewish in her temper; was a severe economist; a merciless exactor of what she viewed as duty; and, in persecuting her two unhappy daughters, though she yielded blindly to her unconscious dislike of them, as creatures that disgraced her, she was not aware, perhaps, of ever having put forth more expressions of anger and severity than were absolutely required to rouse the constitutional torpor of her daughters' nature; and where disgust has once rooted itself, and been habitually expressed in tones of harshness, the mere sight of the hateful object mechanically calls forth the eternal tones of anger, without distinct consciousness or separate intention in the speaker. Loud speaking, besides, or even shouting, was required by the deafness of the two girls. From anger so constantly discharging its thunders, naturally they did not show open signs of recoiling; but that they felt it deeply, may be presumed from their sensibility to kindness. My own experience showed that; for, as often as I met them, we exchanged kisses; and my wish had always been to beg them, if they really were idiots, not to mind it, since I should not like them the less on that account. This wish of mine never came to utterance; but not the less they were aware, by my manner of salutation, that one person at least, amongst those who might be considered strangers, did not find any thing repulsive about them; and the pleasure they felt was expressed broadly upon their kindling faces.

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1

"Next to the bible in currency."—That is, next in the fifteenth century to the Bible of the nineteenth century. The diffusion of the "De Imitatione Christi" over Christendom (the idea of Christendom, it must be remembered, not then including any part of America) anticipated, in 1453, the diffusion of the Bible in 1853. But why? Through what causes? Elsewhere I have attempted to show that this enormous (and seemingly incredible) popularity of the "De Imitatione Christi" is virtually to be interpreted as a vicarious popularity of the Bible. At that time the Bible itself was a fountain of inspir

1

"Next to the bible in currency."—That is, next in the fifteenth century to the Bible of the nineteenth century. The diffusion of the "De Imitatione Christi" over Christendom (the idea of Christendom, it must be remembered, not then including any part of America) anticipated, in 1453, the diffusion of the Bible in 1853. But why? Through what causes? Elsewhere I have attempted to show that this enormous (and seemingly incredible) popularity of the "De Imitatione Christi" is virtually to be interpreted as a vicarious popularity of the Bible. At that time the Bible itself was a fountain of inspired truth every where sealed up; but a whisper ran through the western nations of Europe that the work of Thomas à Kempis contained some slender rivulets of truth silently stealing away into light from that interdicted fountain. This belief (so at least I read the case) led to the prodigious multiplication of the book, of which not merely the reimpressions, but the separate translations, are past all counting; though bibliographers have undertaken to count them. The book came forward as an answer to the sighing of Christian Europe for light from heaven. I speak of Thomas à Kempis as the author; but his claim was disputed. Gerson was adopted by France as the author; and other local saints by other nations.

2

At the same time it must not be denied, that, if you lose by a journal in the way here described, you also gain by it. The journal gives you the benefit of its own separate audience, that might else never have heard your name. On the other hand, in such a case, the journal secures to you the special enmity of its own peculiar antagonists. These papers, for instance, of mine, not being political, were read possibly in a friendly temper by the regular supporters of the journal that published them. But some of my own political friends regarded me with displeasure for connecting myself at all with a reforming journal. And far more, who would have been liberal enough to disregard that objection, naturally lost sight of me when under occultation to them in a journal which they never saw.

3

The crime of Josephus in relation to Christianity is the same, in fact, as that of Lauder in respect to Milton. It was easy enough to detect plagiarisms in the "Paradise Lost" from Latin passages fathered upon imaginary writers, when these passages had previously been forged by Lauder himself for the purpose of sustaining such a charge.

4

It is a significant fact, that Dr. Strauss, whose sceptical spirit, left to its own disinterested motions, would have looked through and through this monstrous fable of Essenism, coolly adopted it, no questions asked, as soon as he perceived the value of it as an argument against Christianity.

5

"Solitary road."—The reader must remember that, until the seventh century of our era, when Mahometanism arose, there was no collateral history. Why there was none, why no Gothic, why no Parthian history, it is for Rome to explain. We tax ourselves, and are taxed by others, with many an imaginary neglect as regards India; but assuredly we cannot be taxed with that neglect. No part of our Indian empire, or of its adjacencies, but has occupied the researches of our Oriental scholars.

6

As occasions arise in these Sketches, when, merely for the purposes of intelligibility, it becomes requisite to call into notice such personal distinctions in my family as otherwise might be unimportant, I here record the entire list of my brothers and sisters, according to their order of succession; and Miltonically I include myself; having surely as much logical right to count myself in the series of my own brothers as Milton could have to pronounce Adam the goodliest of his own sons. First and last, we counted as eight children, viz., four brothers and four sisters, though never counting more than six living at once, viz., 1. William, older than myself by more than five years; 2. Elizabeth; 3. Jane, who died in her fourth year; 4. Mary; 5. myself, certainly not the goodliest man of men since born my brothers; 6. Richard, known to us all by the household name of Pink, who in his after years tilted up and down what might then be called his Britannic majesty's oceans (viz., the Atlantic and Pacific) in the quality of midshipman, until Waterloo in one day put an extinguisher on that whole generation of midshipmen, by extinguishing all further call for their services; 7. a second Jane; 8. Henry, a posthumous child, who belonged

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