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be nothing more than a cunning knave and impostor."

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mann: we know that you cannot be in peace. there can be no peace for the wicked. God hath F. Kohlmann here attempted to speak again, said it." Away with you and your God too; when Paine, with a lowering countenance, ordered leave the room instantly," he exclaimed: "all that him instantly to be silent, and trouble him no more. you have uttered are lies-filthy lies; and if I had "I have told you already that I wish to hear noth- a little more time I would prove it, as I did about ing more from you.' your impostor, Jesus Christ." Monster," ex"The Bible, sir," said F. Kohlmann, still at-claimed F. Kohlmann, in a burst of zeal, “you will tempting to speak, "is a sacred and divine book, have no more time. Your hour has arrived. which has stood the test and the criticism of abler Think rather of the awful account you have already pens than yours; which have made at least some to offer, and implore pardon of God; provoke no show of argument, and longer his just indignation upon your head." Paine here ordered us again to retire, in the highest pitch of his voice, and seemed a very maniac with rage and madness. "Let us go," said I to F. Kohlmann, "we have nothing more to be done here. He seems to be entirely abandoned by God; further words are lost upon him."

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Upon this we both withdrew from the room, and left the unfortunate man to his thoughts. I never, before or since, beheld a more hardened wretch.

This, you may rely upon it, is a faithful and correct account of the transaction. I remain your affectionate brother, (Signed,)

† BENEDICT, Bp. of Boston.

COMPASS.

From the Spectator.

"Your Bible," returned Paine, “contains nothing but fables; and I have proved it to a demonstration." All this time I looked on the monster with pity mingled with indignation at his blasphemies. I felt a degree of horror at thinking that in a very short time he would be cited to appear before the tribunal of his God, whom he so shockingly blasphemed, with all his sins upon him. Seeing that F. Kohlmann had completely failed in making any impression upon him, and that Paine would listen to nothing that came from him, nor would even suffer him to speak, I finally concluded to try what effect I might have. I accordingly commenced with observing: "Mr. Paine, you will certainly allow there exists a God, and that this God cannot be indifferent to the conduct and actions of his creatures." "I will allow nothing, sir," he hastily replied; "I shall make no concessions.' Well, sir, if you CAPTAIN JOHNSON ON THE DEVIATIONS OF THE will listen calmly for one moment," said I, “ I will prove to you that there is such a being! and I will demonstrate, from his very nature, that he cannot be an idle spectator of our conduct." "Sir, I wish to hear nothing you have to say; I see your object, gentlemen, is to trouble me; I wish you to leave the room. This he spoke in an exceedingly angry tone, so much so that he foamed at the mouth. "Mr. Paine," I continued, "I assure you our object in coming hither was purely to do you good. We had no other motive." We have been given to understand that you wished to see us, and we are come accordingly, because it is a principle with us never to refuse our services to a dying man asking for them. But for this we should not have come, for we never obtrude upon any individ-compass raised into the air sufficiently above the deck to be entirely beyond the influence of any local attraction. If the ship's head was then due north by compass, that would be her true course, according to the directions of the sailing-charts; but if when lowered to its place the compass became subject to any accidental influence, especially from iron in its vicinity, the point would be drawn

ual."

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THE subject of this quarto, published under the sanction of the lords of the admiralty, is that deviation of the compass from the true magnetic course which arises from accidental causes peculiar to every ship, and generally differing in each. These causes are the presence of iron near the compass, the reciprocal action of compasses upon each other, and, when the deviation is not attended to, the errors occasioned by taking bearings from different parts of a ship. To understand the subject more clearly, let the reader suppose an accurate ship's

Paine, on hearing this, seemed to relax a little; in a milder tone of voice than he had hitherto used, he replied: "You can do me no good now-it is too late. I have tried different physicians, and their remedies have all failed. I have nothing now to expect" (this he spoke with a sigh) but a speedy dissolution. My physicians have, indeed, told me as much." You have misunderstood on one side, so as to indicate an inclination towards me," said I immediately to him. "We are not the north-east or the north-west, according to the come to prescribe any remedies for your bodily side of the compass on which the influence precomplaints; we only come to make you an offer dominated; and in proportion to the accidental of our ministry for the good of your immortal soul. power of attraction would be the extent of the dewhich is in great danger of being forever cast off by viation. It might be slight, it might be several the Almighty, on account of your sins; and especially for the crime of having vilified and rejected his word, and uttered blasphemies against his Son." Paine, on hearing this, was roused into a fury; he gritted his teeth, twisted and turned himself several times in his bed, uttering all the while the bitterest imprecations. I firmly believe such was the rage in which he was at this time, that if he had had a pistol he would have shot one of us; for he conducted more like a madman than a rational creature. Begone," says he, " and trouble me no more.

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points of the compass; which in a narrow channel would suffice to carry a vessel on the very dangers the beacons were erected to avoid, if she followed the deviation of her compass without allowing for it. In a long run, the deviation would take her altogether out of her course, and in foggy weather which her officers were entitled to think she was or at night might carry her upon dangers from

far

away.

was in peace, ," he continued, "till you came. These deviations of the compass from local at"We know better than that," replied F. Kohl-traction were noticed in Captain Sturmy's Mari

Captain Johnson deduced from his experiments on the various vessels. The subject is exhibited in six diagrams, showing the deviation and consequent danger to which many of the vessels would be exposed in making various channels or approaching various coasts. The following supposes the ships to be twenty-four hours' run from the mouth of the channel, for which they are steering: the diagram is necessary to see the course, but the dangers can be understood from the text.

"The correct magnetic or compass course [1846] from the position A, diagram 1, latitude, 48° 0' N., and longitude 11° 0' W., to the mouth of the English Channel, half way between Ushant and the Scilly Islands, is E. S.; consequently, ships in would be, after a run of twenty-four hours only, at which there was no deviation, steering that course, the rate of ten miles per hour, in the fair-way between the French and English coasts; but mark what would inevitably be the result if the vessels named in the table were to be steered the same course, that is, E. S., according to their respective compasses-the Gorgon would be among the rocks off Ushant; the Retribution and Vesuvius would be steering directly for the dangers about the Seven Isles; the Stromboli, Geyser, and Styx, would be advancing upon the Roches Douvres'; while the Terrible, Penelope, Sampson, and Cyclops, would be in a direction for the dangers about Jersey and Guernsey; and the Victoria and Albert, Blazer, Porcupine, Black Eagle, and Alban, from having less deviation upon that particular course, would be nearer to the fair-way; but not one vessel of the fifteen would be in the position which the compass course, uncorrected for deviation, would lead their commanders to suppose themselves in.

ner's Magazine of 1684. The celebrated navigator shown by quoting a few of the illustrations which Dampier observed and commented on them, in 1691-3; Wales, the astronomer who accompanied Cook, also noticed the subject, in 1776-1780; as did Flinders in 1801, besides several other writers. In 1810, Flinders was directed by the admiralty to make a series of experiments at Sheerness; which distinctly established the fact, though he was in error in concluding "that when the ship's head was on the magnetic north or south, no effects arose from local attraction-proving that when the ship was in that position, the attraction of the various masses of iron on board acted in unison with the magnetism of the earth; that when the ship's head was east or west, the effect of local attraction was greatest; and that at the intermediate points the deviation of the needle varied nearly in proportion of the sine of the angle between the hearing of the ship's head and the magnetic meridian to radius." In the night of November, 1812, the Courageux, 74, ran upon a reef near Anholt, and received considerable damage. At the court-martial held upon Captain Wilkinson, it was proved that a stand of arms, which had, for readiness in use, been placed beneath the binnacle under the half-deck, affected the compass a point and three quarters; and upon this evidence the commander was acquitted. In 1817, Mr. Bain published a pamphlet on the subject. Soon afterwards, Professor Barlow undertook a series of experiments; and he, Dr. Young, and several other inquirers, gave considerable attention to the question. The fact of this deviation was known to pilots and other practical men; and they altered their compass course accordingly on the stations they were accustomed to; but, not knowing the principle upon which they proceeded, they were in the dark on a change of station or of vessels, and did not guard sufficiently against accidental influences even in their own ship. There is no doubt in the minds of competent persons, that many inexplicable wrecks have really been owing to this deviation of the compass; and that vessels, especially in the merchant service, are still frequently lost from this cause. However, till Captain Johnson's experiments under the authority of the admiralty, nothing was done to reduce the deviation to anything like a system, and establish regulations upon the subject. To describe the particulars of what he did, would involve matter much too technical for our columns; but an idea may be conveyed of the results. The first thing was to lay down a plan for ascertaining the deviations of compasses, by swinging a ship's head completely round to every point, taking the successive bearings of a distant object from the ship, and correcting them by similar observations made on shore. Captain Johnson afterwards subjected fifteen of her majesty's steam-ships and fifteen men of war of various rates to this experiment, and drew up tables of the results. From these and various collected facts a series of practical rules have been deduced, and published by the admiralty, for the management of the compasses in the navy. How necessary some regulations were, may be

"Let us now suppose the distance of this fleet, accompanied by the steam-vessels, to have been double that which was represented in diagram No. 1, or, in other words, forty-eight hours' run instead of twenty-four, (and there is assuredly nothing imof thick weather often to prevail in our humid cliprobable in assuming forty-eight continuous hours mate,) and the result would be, that the course, E. & S., according to their respective compasses, would lead some of the sailing-ships towards the French coast; the Penelope, Styx, Stromboli, Vesuvius, and Retribution, far to the southward of Ushant; the Gorgon to the south part of Hodierna Bay; while the iron steamers, Princess Alice, Bloodhound, and Myrmidon, would be as far south as Quiberon; the Dover as far north as the Scilly Islands-in short, running directly for them; and the Onyx actually passing them, yet further to the north, and steering in a direction for the Bristol Channel.

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from the results ascertained with standard comBe it observed, that the above reasoning obtains passes carefully placed in the midship line of the different vessels, and as far removed as was practicable from iron-work likely to affect their magnetic needles; and it is therefore probable that vessels navigated with binnacle compasses only would have the errors increased by reason of their nearer proximity to the guns and iron-work.”

The subjects we have touched upon are very fully handled in Captain Johnson's volume; especially the fact of the deviation and its consequences, the mode of ascertaining the extent of the deviation

M. "You cram your words into our ears against
The stomach of our sense. 99

in a particular vessel, and constructing a table of | very good hexameters. And as to your general allowances, so as to steer truly under all circum- principle, it appears to me that the sway which stances. Captain Johnson has added to these more fashion exercises over men's love of music, shows directly practical topics a general notice of magnet- very plainly that you may persuade people to think ism, with references to standard works, for those they dislike what they really like, and the rewho wish to pursue the question. Altogether, it verse. is a very useful volume, both in a scientific and a practical point of view; but it would be more useful to mercantile mariners if the pith of the principal subject the deviation of the compass, and the way to guard against it—were packed up into a popular pamphlet. How much some such information is needed by the mercantile marine, is shown by the average annual number of British wrecks, which has been set down at 547; as it may be indicated by one of Captain Johnson's remarks.

At least, our sense of melody.

E. That may be because your stomach is filled with spoilt Greek and Latin hexameters. I can easily conceive, that the way in which we mangle those verses in our utterance of them, may give a nausea for everything which resembles them. But good English hexameters do not resemble these.

man a

"In many merchant-ships the necessary precau- M. It seems to me, my friend, that you are tion of removing iron from the vicinity of the com- somewhat bold in telling us that we spoil and manpasses is by no means sufficiently attended to, and gle the ancient verses, except you could inform us in such vessels the evil is increased by their not be how they ought to be delivered; which I should ing swung and the deviations ascertained; whereas in ships-of-war, by the system now adopted, should hope you are too wise to undertake. But I do any portion of undiscovered iron remain within the not quite understand your doctrine, that English influence of the compasses, the amount of error hexameters are not to be like Latin hexameters. caused thereby is ascertained by the observations E. Not like our delivery of Latin hexameters. made during the process of swinging. And, with regard to my rashness in pronouncing "On inspecting a merchant steam-vessel which our common way of reading such verse as wrong, had been bought into her majesty's service, finding I do so for this simple reason that we do not the compasses were placed in one binnacle so closely together that they could not fail to produce serious errors by their reciprocal action upon each other, I requested the binnacle might be cut in two and the compasses separated. In this operation, it was found that the binnacle itself had been put to gether with iron nails and screws; three quarters of a pound of the same having been extracted, and which are now in my possession; and in one instance the very box of the compass itself, which is placed inside the binnacle, had been repaired with iron nails."

From Fraser's Magazine. DIALOGUE ON ENGLISH HEXAMETERS.

MARCUS, ERNEST.

Marcus. No, my good Ernest, you labor in vain to convince me of the beauty of your friend's English hexameters. You cannot persuade the ear to accept that as music which sounds harsh and dissonant. Every one's natural taste in English verse is against hexameters. No man really likes them.

Ernest. Begging your pardon, my excellent cousin, however sound your general principle may be, your fact is wrong. In Johnsonian phrase, I might say, "Yes, sir, many men, many women, and many children like English hexameters." In truth, I believe everybody likes good English hexameters, except middle-aged literary gentlemen like you, whose taste is formed upon the "classical" English authors, and is become too rigid to expand. At least, I have found all young lovers of poetry, and especially women, very much taken with the best English hexameters. I have known some of these ladies who have caught the rhythm so completely, that they have themselves written

make verse of it to the ear at all.

M. Why, any good scholar perceives at once whether a verse is correct or not when he hears it read, and winces at a false quantity, as you well know.

Your scholar knows

E. Yes; but this is not a matter of ear, as you well know, for the long and the short syllables are pronounced exactly alike. which is long, and which is short, by recollection, not by ear; and as he reads, he mentally translates his reading, which discloses no such difference, into a reading which puts strong syllables into such places as to mark the rhythm. And this marked rhythmical delivery is used, to the ear as well as to the mind, when people want to make the dactylic rhythm perceptible to others. They then read :—

Tityre tu patula recubāns sub tegmine fagi. Instead of the usual mode of reading, as if it were prose

Tityre tu pátula récubans sub tegmine fagi.

And in like manner they read, when they would mark the verse—

Quid faciat lætās sagetēs quo sidere terram.
And

Arma virumque cano Troja qui primus ab oris.

M. Yes. And in the same way English hexameter writers require us to readTush, tush! said Nature, this is all but a trifle; a man's self

Gives haps or mishaps, ev'n as he ord 'reth his

heart.

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These are Sidney's. More modern attempts, quite as bad, might be quoted.

E. Even so. Those are bad English hexameters; and such as those the national ear rejects very reasonably and rightly. But those are bad, because they are made by classical scholars; or rather, because they are made to conform to Greek and Latin verses pronounced according to the modern habits of classical scholars. I was certainly in the wrong when I said that English hexameters were bad because they were composed by classical scholars; for the best we have, have been written by some of our best classical scholars.

M. I know you will easily be moved to be so bountiful of your treasures as to give me a specimen or two of these.

E. Certainly. I can give you specimens either of ancient or of modern poetry so rendered: Homer, or Schiller; Callimachus, or Göthe. Which will you have?

M. Why, in Homer we shall, at least, have the original familiar to us. But I fear that that circumstance will not be an advantage to your Eng

lish hexameters.

E. You shall judge. The beautiful part of the Iliad, which contains Hector's interview with Andronache, and with Paris, has been translated by two accomplished scholars. I will give you a specimen of each.* Here is one :

"Thus, when Andromache ended, said tall, bright

helmeted Hector

All thy cares, dear wife, are partaken by me;

but above them

Hangs the unbearable thought of the men and the matrons of Troia

Stalking past me in scorn, as a coward that slunk

from the battle.

Well do I know-the presentiment clings to my
soul and my heart-strings-
Fate stands fixed, and a day of destruction for
Ilion holy

Comes, and for Priam the hero, and all that are liegemen to Priam.

Yet less near to my heart is the woe of the Trojans hereafter

Yea, and of Hecuba's self, and of Priam the king and my brothers,

Many and brave, all trodden in dust at the feet of the foemen,

Than the fore-thinking of thine, when some brassclad man of Achaia

Leads thee weeping away, and the hour of thy freedom is ended." "

'Mong the Dardanian host, when they fought for the safety of Ilion!'

So will the stranger say; and thine will be bitterer anguish,

Widow'd of husband so brave, who might have kept off the enslaver.

Oh! may the earth o'erspread first cover me deep in her bosom,

Ere I can hear thy wail, when they drag thee from Troy as a captive!"

quoted, certainly. But they are, in fact, very M. These run more glibly than those which I like our common anapæstic English verse, except Beattie's :that the lines are longer. I mean such strains as

"At the close of the day when the hamlet is still, And mortals the sweets of forgetfulness prove, When nought but the torrent is heard on the hill, And nought but the nightingale's song in the grove."

E. Undoubtedly the rhythm is of the same kind, and very naturally; for how do anapastic and dactylic rhythm differ, except that the latter begins with a strong syllable? It would be easy to convert those verses of Beattie into hexameters, as thus:

:

Oft at the close of the day when the hamlet is still
in the twilight,

And when mortals the sweets of forgetfulness prove
Then when nought but the torrent is heard on the
in their dwellings,
side of the mountain,

Nought but the nightingale's song in the grove with
its girdle of brushwood.

The last phrase is not an unmeaning addition; for the nightingale, as we dwellers in the south well know, does not haunt the tall trees of a grove, but the low, thick bushes. But my business is with the sound, not the sense, of the verses; and I hope you will allow that the rhythm of the long ones is no more forced or un-English than that of the shorter, though I do not suppose that you will think your old friend improved by the appendages

to his dress.

M. But these are not hexameters in the usual sense of the term. They have no spondees in them at least, they have none except those at the beginning of the last three lines, And when, Then when, Nought but. There is not a mixture of dactyls and spondees as the old hexameters show. E. It is true the verses are very dactylic; you

Now take the continuation of this passage in the know very well that some hexameters are more other translation:

"Then for another, perchance, thou 'lt handle the shuttle in Argos, Slave-like, or water bear from Messeïs, or else Hypereä,

Sorely against thy will, for force will weigh heavily on thee. Some one, perchance, will say, while he looks at thee bitterly weeping,

'Lo, this is Hector's wife, who once was first in the battle

*English Hexameters, translated from Schiller, Göthe, Homer, Meleager, and Callinus. Murray, 1847.

dactylic than others; and, undoubtedly, the more
dactylic the structure, the more obvious is the
rhythm. And this obviousness may go to the
extent of making the verse monotonous and vulgar
in this as in other kinds of verse. That is an
To reach

incident which belongs to all verse.
the higher kinds of music, verse requires variety
and modified regularity. This we have in the
hexameter when we introduce dis-syllable feet
We do not lose the manifest rhythm by doing so
If, for instance, I were to alter the two lines

thus:

Oft at the close of the day when the vale is still in the twilight.

And tired men the sweets of forgetfulness prove in their dwellings,

Now this intro

they do not cease to be verses. duction of dissyllable feet ad libitum in the first five places, is precisely what constitutes hexameters. M. But they cannot be true hexameters. There are no spondees in them. Our language does not contain any spondees, and this want must always be fatal to your hexameter attempts.

E. I am afraid you will think me somewhat contentious if I deny all your propositions at once; but the truth is the truth. I am obliged, then, to say, that we have in our language abundance of spondees; I will give you as many as you choose to hear. But I an obliged to say, also, that we must admit them very sparingly into hexameters, or any other verse. They always give a forced turn to the rhythm, and the introduction of them has repeatedly spoilt English hexameters, and, indeed, other kinds of English verse, too.

M. I confess you do seem to me rather paradoxical this morning. But give us your exquisite reasons, or, rather, your instances. Where is your hoard of English spondees, that no one else has been able to discover? Southey's example, Egypt, is surely not one. Amen seems to be the best.

E. I do not profess to give you spondees in single words but what think you of such feet as clear rill, bold man, green tree, hard case? Are not these spondees? You will allow that, if they are, there is no lack of such in the language.

M. Those sound spondaically, certainly. But is rill long?

E. It is strong, which is more to the purpose. It has upon it the stress by which English verse is regulated. Witness Keats' verse

"With the green world they live in, and clear rills,"

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"

She met me stranger upon life's rough way,
And lured me towards sweet death, as night by
day,

Winter by spring, or sorrow by swift hope,
Led into light, life, peace."

The peculiar rhythm of such passages arises, certainly, in part from such endings of lines as rough way, swift hope. The Popian school could have eschewed these endings, and would by that means have made the verses run more smoothly. But I do not dislike such lines occasionally; and why should such spondees spoil your hexameters? Do you pretend to make hexameters which shall be smoother than the lines of Pope?

E. If not smoother, I do not see why they should not be as smooth; and I should wish to have those which are written at present made smooth, till the English ear is more familiar with their form of verse.

M. But are you quite sure that your spondees really make your hexameters harsh?

E. I am quite sure that they give them that peculiar forced rhythm which startles English ears, and is conceived by many readers to be the peculiar mark of English hexameters; whereas it is, in fact, a blemish. Such you have in the older hexametrists, as Sidney:

" But yet well do I find each man most wise in his own case,

Shall such morning dews be an ease to the heat of a love's fire?"

Such have not been avoided by our friends who have written hexameters recently, as they ought to have been. They have written

I should be sorry to stir from my seat to look at their sad case.

Then forced out of the rut to the sloping side of the high road,

Grided the creaking wheel, the huge cart into the ditch went,

Overturned; far cast by the sidewards sway were the men thrown

Into the field with outcry dire.

The forcible conversion of the spondees into trochees, which these verses require, is a disagreeable peculiarity. It is unfortunate for the good cause of hexameters, that such a trick should have been practically connected with them; for it has no real connection with hexameters, more than with other form of verse. any aged their reputation.

It has much dam

M. But, my good friend, is not this a strange doctrine of yours, that what you want in hexameters are trochees, not spondees?

E. I do not know whether the doctrine is but it follows very simply from the strange to you, nature of verse by accent, the only verse of which we have any perception. All verse, to our apprehension, depends on alternation-on an alternation of strong and weak syllables. You may have a strong and two weak ones alternately; that is dactylic rhythm. You may have a strong and a weak one alternately; that is trochaic rhythm.

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