Part 2
[The nether sky opens, and Europe is disclosed as a prone and emaciated figure, the Alps shaping like a backbone, and the branching mountain-chains like ribs, the peninsular plateau of Spain forming a head. Broad and lengthy lowlands stretch from the north of France across Russia like a grey-green garment hemmed by the Ural mountains and the glistening Arctic Ocean.
The point of view then sinks downwards through space, and draws near to the surface of the perturbed countries, where the peoples, distressed by events which they did not cause, are seen writhing, crawling, heaving, and vibrating in their various cities and nationalities.]
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS [to the Spirit of the Pities]
As key-scene to the whole, I first lay bare The Will-webs of thy fearful questioning; For know that of my antique privileges This gift to visualize the Mode is one [Though by exhaustive strain and effort only]. See, then, and learn, ere my power pass again.
[A new and penetrating light descends on the spectacle, enduring men and things with a seeming transparency, and exhibiting as one organism the anatomy of life and movement in all humanity and vitalized matter included in the display.]
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
Amid this scene of bodies substantive Strange waves I sight like winds grown visible, Which bear men's forms on their innumerous coils, Twining and serpenting round and through. Also retracting threads like gossamers-- Except in being irresistible-- Which complicate with some, and balance all.
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
These are the Prime Volitions,--fibrils, veins, Will-tissues, nerves, and pulses of the Cause, That heave throughout the Earth's compositure. Their sum is like the lobule of a Brain Evolving always that it wots not of; A Brain whose whole connotes the Everywhere, And whose procedure may but be discerned By phantom eyes like ours; the while unguessed Of those it stirs, who [even as ye do] dream Their motions free, their orderings supreme; Each life apart from each, with power to mete Its own day's measures; balanced, self complete; Though they subsist but atoms of the One Labouring through all, divisible from none; But this no further now. Deem yet man's deeds self-done.
GENERAL CHORUS OF INTELLIGENCES [aerial music]
We'll close up Time, as a bird its van, We'll traverse Space, as spirits can, Link pulses severed by leagues and years, Bring cradles into touch with biers; So that the far-off Consequence appear Prompt at the heel of foregone Cause.-- The PRIME, that willed ere wareness was, Whose Brain perchance is Space, whose Thought its laws, Which we as threads and streams discern, We may but muse on, never learn.
END OF THE FORE SCENE
ACT FIRST
## SCENE I
ENGLAND. A RIDGE IN WESSEX
[The time is a fine day in March 1805. A highway crosses the ridge, which is near the sea, and the south coast is seen bounding the landscape below, the open Channel extending beyond.]
SPIRITS OF THE YEARS
Hark now, and gather how the martial mood Stirs England's humblest hearts. Anon we'll trace Its heavings in the upper coteries there.
SPIRIT SINISTER
Ay; begin small, and so lead up to the greater. It is a sound dramatic principle. I always aim to follow it in my pestilences, fires, famines, and other comedies. And though, to be sure, I did not in my Lisbon earthquake, I did in my French Terror, and my St. Domingo burlesque.
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
THY Lisbon earthquake, THY French Terror. Wait. Thinking thou will'st, thou dost but indicate.
[A stage-coach enters, with passengers outside. Their voices after the foregoing sound small and commonplace, as from another medium.]
FIRST PASSENGER
There seems to be a deal of traffic over Ridgeway, even at this time o' year.
SECOND PASSENGER
Yes. It is because the King and Court are coming down here later on. They wake up this part rarely!... See, now, how the Channel and coast open out like a chart. That patch of mist below us is the town we are bound for. There's the Isle of Slingers beyond, like a floating snail. That wide bay on the right is where the “Abergavenny,” Captain John Wordsworth, was wrecked last month. One can see half across to France up here.
FIRST PASSENGER
Half across. And then another little half, and then all that's behind--the Corsican mischief!
SECOND PASSENGER
Yes. People who live hereabout--I am a native of these parts--feel the nearness of France more than they do inland.
FIRST PASSENGER
That's why we have seen so many of these marching regiments on the road. This year his grandest attempt upon us is to be made, I reckon.
SECOND PASSENGER
May we be ready!
FIRST PASSENGER
Well, we ought to be. We've had alarms enough, God knows.
[Some companies of infantry are seen ahead, and the coach presently overtakes them.]
SOLDIERS [singing as they walk]
We be the King's men, hale and hearty, Marching to meet one Buonaparty; If he won't sail, lest the wind should blow, We shall have marched for nothing, O! Right fol-lol!
We be the King's men, hale and hearty, Marching to meet one Buonaparty; If he be sea-sick, says “No, no!” We shall have marched for nothing, O! Right fol-lol!
[The soldiers draw aside, and the coach passes on.]
SECOND PASSENGER
Is there truth in it that Bonaparte wrote a letter to the King last month?
FIRST PASSENGER
Yes, sir. A letter in his own hand, in which he expected the King to reply to him in the same manner.
SOLDIERS [continuing, as they are left behind]
We be the King's men, hale and hearty, Marching to meet one Buonaparty; Never mind, mates; we'll be merry, though We may have marched for nothing, O! Right fol-lol!
THIRD PASSENGER
And was Boney's letter friendly?
FIRST PASSENGER
Certainly, sir. He requested peace with the King.
THIRD PASSENGER
And why shouldn't the King reply in the same manner?
FIRST PASSENGER
What! Encourage this man in an act of shameless presumption, and give him the pleasure of considering himself the equal of the King of England--whom he actually calls his brother!
THIRD PASSENGER
He must be taken for what he is, not for what he was; and if he calls King George his brother it doesn't speak badly for his friendliness.
FIRST PASSENGER
Whether or no, the King, rightly enough, did not reply in person, but through Lord Mulgrave our Foreign Minister, to the effect that his Britannic Majesty cannot give a specific answer till he has communicated with the Continental powers.
THIRD PASSENGER
Both the manner and the matter of the reply are British; but a huge mistake.
FIRST PASSENGER
Sir, am I to deem you a friend of Bonaparte, a traitor to your country---
THIRD PASSENGER
Damn my wig, sir, if I'll be called a traitor by you or any Court sycophant at all at all!
[He unpacks a case of pistols.]
SECOND PASSENGER
Gentlemen forbear, forbear! Should such differences be suffered to arise on a spot where we may, in less than three months, be fighting for our very existence? This is foolish, I say. Heaven alone, who reads the secrets of this man's heart, can tell what his meaning and intent may be, and if his letter has been answered wisely or no.
[The coach is stopped to skid the wheel for the descent of the hill, and before it starts again a dusty horseman overtakes it.]
SEVERAL PASSENGERS
A London messenger! [To horseman] Any news, sir? We are from Bristol only.
HORSEMAN
Yes; much. We have declared war against Spain, an error giving vast delight to France. Bonaparte says he will date his next dispatches from London, and the landing of his army may be daily expected.
[Exit horseman.]
THIRD PASSENGER
Sir, I apologize. He's not to be trusted! War is his name, and aggression is with him!
[He repacks the pistols. A silence follows. The coach and passengers move downwards and disappear towards the coast.]
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
Ill chanced it that the English monarch George Did not respond to the said Emperor!
SPIRIT SINISTER
I saw good sport therein, and paean'd the Will To unimpel so stultifying a move! Which would have marred the European broil, And sheathed all swords, and silenced every gun That riddles human flesh.
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
O say no more; If aught could gratify the Absolute 'Twould verily be thy censure, not thy praise!
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
The ruling was that we should witness things And not dispute them. To the drama, then. Emprizes over-Channel are the key To this land's stir and ferment.--Thither we.
[Clouds gather over the scene, and slowly open elsewhere.]
## SCENE II
PARIS. OFFICE OF THE MINISTER OF MARINE
[ADMIRAL DECRES seated at a table. A knock without.]
DECRES
Come in! Good news, I hope!
[An attendant enters.]
ATTENDANT A courier, sir.
DECRES
Show him in straightway.
[The attendant goes out.]
From the Emperor As I expected!
COURIER
Sir, for your own hand And yours alone.
DECRES
Thanks. Be in waiting near.
[The courier withdraws.]
DECRES reads:
“I am resolved that no wild dream of Ind, And what we there might win; or of the West, And bold re-conquest there of Surinam And other Dutch retreats along those coasts, Or British islands nigh, shall draw me now From piercing into England through Boulogne As lined in my first plan. If I do strike, I strike effectively; to forge which feat There's but one way--planting a mortal wound In England's heart--the very English land-- Whose insolent and cynical reply To my well-based complaint on breach of faith Concerning Malta, as at Amiens pledged, Has lighted up anew such flames of ire As may involve the world.--Now to the case: Our naval forces can be all assembled Without the foe's foreknowledge or surmise, By these rules following; to whose text I ask Your gravest application; and, when conned, That steadfastly you stand by word and word, Making no question of one jot therein.
“First, then, let Villeneuve wait a favouring wind For process westward swift to Martinique, Coaxing the English after. Join him there Gravina, Missiessy, and Ganteaume; Which junction once effected all our keels-- While the pursuers linger in the West At hopeless fault.--Having hoodwinked them thus, Our boats skim over, disembark the army, And in the twinkling of a patriot's eye All London will be ours.
“In strictest secrecy carve this to shape-- Let never an admiral or captain scent Save Villeneuve and Ganteaume; and pen each charge With your own quill. The surelier to outwit them I start for Italy; and there, as 'twere Engrossed in fetes and Coronation rites, Abide till, at the need, I reach Boulogne, And head the enterprize.--NAPOLEON.”
[DECRES reflects, and turns to write.]
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
He buckles to the work. First to Villeneuve, His onetime companion and his boyhood's friend, Now lingering at Toulon, he jots swift lines, The duly to Ganteaume.--They are sealed forthwith, And superscribed: “Break not till on the main.”
[Boisterous singing is heard in the street.]
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
I hear confused and simmering sounds without, Like those which thrill the hives at evenfall When swarming pends.
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
They but proclaim the crowd, Which sings and shouts its hot enthusiasms For this dead-ripe design on England's shore, Till the persuasion of its own plump words,
## Acting upon mercurial temperaments,
Makes hope as prophecy. “Our Emperor Will show himself [say they] in this exploit Unwavering, keen, and irresistible As is the lightning prong. Our vast flotillas Have been embodied as by sorcery; Soldiers made seamen, and the ports transformed To rocking cities casemented with guns. Against these valiants balance England's means: Raw merchant-fellows from the counting-house, Raw labourers from the fields, who thumb for arms Clumsy untempered pikes forged hurriedly, And cry them full-equipt. Their batteries, Their flying carriages, their catamarans, Shall profit not, and in one summer night We'll find us there!”
RECORDING ANGEL
And is this prophecy true?
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
Occasion will reveal.
SHADE OF EARTH
What boots it, Sire, To down this dynasty, set that one up, Goad panting peoples to the throes thereof, Make wither here my fruit, maintain it there, And hold me travailling through fineless years In vain and objectless monotony, When all such tedious conjuring could be shunned By uncreation? Howsoever wise The governance of these massed mortalities, A juster wisdom his who should have ruled They had not been.
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
Nay, something hidden urged The giving matter motion; and these coils Are, maybe, good as any.
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
But why any?
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
Sprite of Compassions, ask the Immanent! I am but an accessory of Its works, Whom the Ages render conscious; and at most Figure as bounden witness of Its laws.
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES
How ask the aim of unrelaxing Will? Tranced in Its purpose to unknowingness? [If thy words, Ancient Phantom, token true.]
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
Thou answerest well. But cease to ask of me. Meanwhile the mime proceeds.--We turn herefrom, Change our homuncules, and observe forthwith How the High Influence sways the English realm, And how the jacks lip out their reasonings there.
[The Cloud-curtain draws.]
## SCENE III
LONDON. THE OLD HOUSE OF COMMONS
[A long chamber with a gallery on each side supported by thin columns having gilt Ionic capitals. Three round-headed windows are at the further end, above the Speaker's chair, which is backed by a huge pedimented structure in white and gilt, surmounted by the lion and the unicorn. The windows are uncurtained, one being open, through which some boughs are seen waving in the midnight gloom without. Wax candles, burnt low, wave and gutter in a brass chandelier which hangs from the middle of the ceiling, and in branches projecting from the galleries.
The House is sitting, the benches, which extend round to the Speaker's elbows, being closely packed, and the galleries likewise full. Among the members present on the Government side are PITT and other ministers with their supporters, including CANNING, CASTLEREAGH, LORD C. SOMERSET, ERSKINE, W. DUNDAS, HUSKISSON, ROSE, BEST, ELLIOT, DALLAS, and the general body of the party. On the opposite side are noticeable FOX, SHERIDAN, WINDHAM, WHITBREAD, GREY, T. GRENVILLE, TIERNEY, EARL TEMPLE, PONSONBY, G. AND H. WALPOLE, DUDLEY NORTH, and TIMOTHY SHELLEY. Speaker ABBOT occupies the Chair.]
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
As prelude to the scene, as means to aid Our younger comrades in its construing, Pray spread your scripture, and rehearse in brief The reasonings here of late--to whose effects Words of to-night form sequence.
[The Recording Angels chant from their books, antiphonally, in a minor recitative.]
ANGEL I [aerial music]
Feeble-framed dull unresolve, unresourcefulness, Sat in the halls of the Kingdom's high Councillors, Whence the grey glooms of a ghost-eyed despondency Wanned as with winter the national mind.
ANGEL II
England stands forth to the sword of Napoleon Nakedly--not an ally in support of her; Men and munitions dispersed inexpediently; Projects of range and scope poorly defined.
ANGEL I
Once more doth Pitt deem the land crying loud to him.-- Frail though and spent, and an-hungered for restfulness Once more responds he, dead fervours to energize, Aims to concentre, slack efforts to bind.
ANGEL II
Ere the first fruit thereof grow audible, Holding as hapless his dream of good guardianship, Jestingly, earnestly, shouting it serviceless, Tardy, inept, and uncouthly designed.
ANGELS I AND II
So now, to-night, in slashing old sentences, Hear them speak,--gravely these, those with gay-heartedness,-- Midst their admonishments little conceiving how Scarlet the scroll that the years will unwind!
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES [to the Spirit of the Years]
Let us put on and suffer for the nonce The feverish fleshings of Humanity, And join the pale debaters here convened. So may thy soul be won to sympathy By donning their poor mould.
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS
I'll humour thee, Though my unpassioned essence could not change Did I incarn in moulds of all mankind!
SPIRIT IRONIC
'Tis enough to make every little dog in England run to mixen to hear this Pitt sung so strenuously! I'll be the third of the incarnate, on the chance of hearing the tune played the other way.
SPIRIT SINISTER
And I the fourth. There's sure to be something in my line toward, where politicians gathered together!
[The four Phantoms enter the Gallery of the House in the disguise of ordinary strangers.]
SHERIDAN [rising]
The Bill I would have leave to introduce Is framed, sir, to repeal last Session's Act, By party-scribes intituled a Provision For England's Proper Guard; but elsewhere known As Mr. Pitt's new Patent Parish Pill. [Laughter.]
The ministerial countenances, I mark, Congeal to dazed surprise at my straight motion-- Why, passes sane conjecture. It may be That, with a haughty and unwavering faith In their own battering-rams of argument, They deemed our buoyance whelmed, and sapped, and sunk To our hope's sheer bottom, whence a miracle Was all could friend and float us; or, maybe, They are amazed at our rude disrespect In making mockery of an English Law Sprung sacred from the King's own Premier's brain! --I hear them snort; but let them wince at will, My duty must be done; shall be done quickly By citing some few facts.
An Act for our defence! It weakens, not defends; and oversea Swoln France's despot and his myrmidons This moment know it, and can scoff thereat. Our people know it too--those who can peer Behind the scenes of this poor painted show Called soldiering!--The Act has failed, must fail, As my right honourable friend well proved When speaking t'other night, whose silencing By his right honourable _vis a vis_ Was of the genuine Governmental sort, And like the catamarans their sapience shaped All fizzle and no harm. [Laughter.] The Act, in brief, Effects this much: that the whole force of England Is strengthened by--eleven thousand men! So sorted that the British infantry Are now eight hundred less than heretofore!
In Ireland, where the glamouring influence Of the right honourable gentleman Prevails with magic might, ELEVEN men Have been amassed. And in the Cinque-Port towns, Where he is held in absolute veneration, His method has so quickened martial fire As to bring in--one man. O would that man Might meet my sight! [Laughter.] A Hercules, no doubt, A god-like emanation from this Act, Who with his single arm will overthrow All Buonaparte's legions ere their keels Have scraped one pebble of our fortless shore!... Such is my motion, sir, and such my mind.
[He sits down amid cheers. The candle-snuffers go round, and Pitt rises. During the momentary pause before he speaks the House assumes an attentive stillness, in which can be heard the rustling of the trees without, a horn from an early coach, and the voice of the watch crying the hour.]
PITT
Not one on this side but appreciates Those mental gems and airy pleasantries Flashed by the honourable gentleman, Who shines in them by birthright. Each device Of drollery he has laboured to outshape, [Or treasured up from others who have shaped it,] Displays that are the conjurings of the moment, [Or mellowed and matured by sleeping on]-- Dry hoardings in his book of commonplace, Stored without stint of toil through days and months-- He heaps into one mass, and light and fans As fuel for his flaming eloquence, Mouthed and maintained without a thought or care If germane to the theme, or not at all.
Now vain indeed it were should I assay To match him in such sort. For, sir, alas, To use imagination as the ground Of chronicle, take myth and merry tale As texts for prophecy, is not my gift Being but a person primed with simple fact, Unprinked by jewelled art.--But to the thing.
The preparations of the enemy, Doggedly bent to desolate our land, Advance with a sustained activity. They are seen, they are known, by you and by us all. But they evince no clear-eyed tentative In furtherance of the threat, whose coming off, Ay, years may yet postpone; whereby the Act Will far outstrip him, and the thousands called Duly to join the ranks by its provisions, In process sure, if slow, will ratch the lines Of English regiments--seasoned, cool, resolved-- To glorious length and firm prepotency. And why, then, should we dream of its repeal Ere profiting by its advantages? Must the House listen to such wilding words As this proposal, at the very hour When the Act's gearing finds its ordered grooves And circles into full utility? The motion of the honourable gentleman Reminds me aptly of a publican Who should, when malting, mixing, mashing's past, Fermenting, barrelling, and spigoting, Quick taste the brew, and shake his sapient head, And cry in acid voice: The ale is new! Brew old, you varlets; cast this slop away! [Cheers.]
But gravely, sir, I would conclude to-night, And, as a serious man on serious things, I now speak here.... I pledge myself to this: Unprecedented and magnificent As were our strivings in the previous war, Our efforts in the present shall transcend them, As men will learn. Such efforts are not sized By this light measuring-rule my critic here Whips from his pocket like a clerk-o'-works!... Tasking and toilsome war's details must be, And toilsome, too, must be their criticism,-- Not in a moment's stroke extemporized.
The strange fatality that haunts the times Wherein our lot is cast, has no example. Times are they fraught with peril, trouble, gloom; We have to mark their lourings, and to face them. Sir, reading thus the full significance Of these big days, large though my lackings be, Can any hold of those who know my past That I, of all men, slight our safeguarding? No: by all honour no!--Were I convinced That such could be the mind of members here, My sorrowing thereat would doubly shade The shade on England now! So I do trust All in the House will take my tendered word, And credit my deliverance here to-night, That in this vital point of watch and ward Against the threatenings from yonder coast We stand prepared; and under Providence Shall fend whatever hid or open stroke A foe may deal.
[He sits down amid loud ministerial cheers, with symptoms of great exhaustion.]
WINDHAM
The question that compels the House to-night Is not of differences in wit and wit, But if for England it be well or no To null the new-fledged Act, as one inept For setting up with speed and hot effect The red machinery of desperate war.-- Whatever it may do, or not, it stands, A statesman' raw experiment. If ill, Shall more experiments and more be tried In stress of jeopardy that stirs demand For sureness of proceeding? Must this House Exchange safe action based on practised lines For yet more ventures into risks unknown To gratify a quaint projector's whim, While enemies hang grinning round our gates To profit by mistake?
My friend who spoke Found comedy in the matter. Comical As it may be in parentage and feature, Most grave and tragic in its consequence This Act may prove. We are moving thoughtlessly, We squander precious, brief, life-saving time On idle guess-games. Fail the measure must, Nay, failed it has already; and should rouse Resolve in its progenitor himself To move for its repeal! [Cheers.]
WHITBREAD