 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Richard Grove. Miscellaneous Essays by Thomas de Quincy Chapter 1 On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth From my boyish days I had always felt a great perplexity on one point in Macbeth. It was this. The knocking at the gate, which succeeds to the murder of Duncan, produced to my feelings an effect for which I never could account. The effect was that it reflected back upon the murder a peculiar awfulness and a depth of solemnity. Yet, however obstinately, I endeavored with my understanding to comprehend this. For many years I never could see why it should produce such an effect. Here I pause for one moment to exhort the reader never to pay any attention to his understanding when it stands in opposition to any other faculty of his mind. The mere understanding, however useful and indispensable, is the meanest faculty of the human mind, and the most to be distrusted. And yet the great majority of people trust to nothing else, which may do for ordinary life, but not for philosophical purposes. Of this out of ten thousand instances that I might produce, I will cite one. Ask of any person whatsoever, who was not previously prepared for the demand by a knowledge of perspective, to draw in the rudest way the commonest appearance, which depends upon the laws of that science, as, for instance, to represent the effect of two walls standing at right angles to each other, or the appearance of the houses on each side of a street as seen by a person looking down the street from one extremity. Now in all cases, unless the person has happened to observe in pictures how it is that artists produce these effects, he will be utterly unable to make the smallest approximation to it. Yet why? For he has actually seen the effect every day of his life. The reason is that he allows his understanding to overrule his eyes. His understanding, which includes no intuitive knowledge of the laws of vision, can furnish him with no reason why a line which is known, and can be proved to be a horizontal line, should not appear a horizontal line. A line that made any angle with the perpendicular less than right angle would seem to him to indicate that his house were all tumbling down together. Accordingly, he makes the line of his houses a horizontal line, and fails, of course, to produce the effect demanded. Here, then, is one instance out of many, in which not only the understanding is allowed to overrule the eyes, but where the understanding is positively allowed to obliterate the eyes as it were. For not only does the man believe the evidence of his understanding in opposition to that of his eyes, but, what is monstrous, the idiot is not even aware that his eyes ever gave such evidence. He does not know that he has seen, and therefore his consciousness has not seen, that which he has seen every day of his life. But to return from this digression. My understanding could produce no reason why the knocking at the gate in Macbeth should produce any effect direct or reflected. In fact, my understanding said positively that it could not produce any effect, but I knew better. I felt that it did, and I waited and clung to the problem until further knowledge should enable me to solve it. At length, in 1812, Mr. Williams made his debut on the stage of Ratcliffe Highway, and executed those unparalleled murders which had procured for him such a brilliant and undying reputation. On which murders, by the way, I must observe, that in one respect they have had an ill effect by making the connoisseur in murder very fastidious in his taste, and dissatisfied by anything that has been since done in that line. All other murders look pale by the deep crimson of his, and as an amateur once said to me in a quarrelous tone, there has been absolutely nothing doing since his time, or nothing that's worth speaking of. But this is wrong, for it is unreasonable to expect all men to be great artists and born with the genius of Mr. Williams. Now it will be remembered that in the first of these murders, that of the Mars, the same incident of a knocking at the door soon after the works of extermination was complete did actually occur, which the genius of Shakespeare has invented, and all good judges in the most eminent de la Tante acknowledge the felicity of Shakespeare's suggestion as soon as it was actually realized. Here, then, was a fresh proof that I was right in relying on my own feelings in opposition to my understanding, and I again set myself to study the problem. At length I solved it to my own satisfaction, and my solution is this. Murder, in ordinary cases, where the sympathy is wholly directed to the case of the murdered person, is an incident of course and vulgar horror. And for this reason, that it flings the interest exclusively upon the natural but ignoble instinct by which we cleaved alive, an instinct which, as being indispensable to the primal law of self-preservation, is the same kind, though different in degree, amongst all living creatures. This instinct, therefore, because it annihilates all distinctions, and degrades the greatest of men to the level of the poor beetle that we tread on, exhibits human nature in its most abject and humiliating attitude. Such an attitude would little suit the purposes of the poet. What, then, must he do? He must throw the interest on the murderer. Our sympathy must be with him. Of course I mean a sympathy of comprehension, a sympathy by which we enter into his feelings and are made to understand them, not a sympathy of pity or approbation. Footnote one. It seems almost ludicrous to guard and explain my use of a word in a situation where it would naturally explain itself, but it has become necessary to do so, in consequence of the unscholar-like use of the word sympathy, at present so general, by which instead of taking it in its proper sense, as the act of reproducing in our minds the feelings of another, whether for hatred, indignation, love, pity, or approbation, it has made a mere synonym of the word pity. And hence, instead of saying sympathy with another, many writers adopt the monstrous barbarism of sympathy for another. In the murdered person, all strife of thought, all flux and reflux of passion and of purpose, are crushed by one overwhelming panic. The fear of instant death smites him with its patrific mace. But in the murderer, such a murderer as a poet will condescend to, there must be raging some great storm of passion, jealousy, ambition, vengeance, hatred, which will create a hell within him, and into this hell we are to look. It seems almost ludicrous to guard and explain my use of a word in a situation where it would naturally explain itself, but it has become necessary to do so, in consequence of the unscholar-like use of the word sympathy, at present so general, by which instead of taking it in its proper sense, as the act of reproducing in our minds the feelings of another, whether for hatred, indignation, love, pity, or approbation, it has made a mere synonym of the word pity. And hence, instead of saying sympathy with another, many writers adopt the monstrous barbarism of sympathy for another. In Macbeth, for the sake of gratifying his own enormous and teeming faculty of creation, Shakespeare has introduced two murderers, and as usual in his hands they are remarkably discriminated. But though in Macbeth the strife of mind is greater than in his wife, the tiger spirit not so awake, and his feelings caught chiefly by contagion from her, yet as both were finally involved in the guilt of the murder, the monstrous mind of necessity is finally to be presumed in both. This was to be expressed, and on its own account, as well as to make it a more proportionable antagonist to the unoffending nature of their victim, the gracious Duncan, and adequately to expound the deep damnation of his taking off, this was to be expressed with peculiar energy. We were made to feel that the human nature, i.e. the divine nature of love and mercy, spread through the hearts of all creatures, and seldom utterly withdrawn from men, was gone, vanished, extinct, and that the fiendish nature had taken its place. And as this effect is marvelously accomplished in the dialogues and soliloquies themselves, so it is finally consummated by the expedient under-consideration, and it is to this that I now solicit the reader's attention. If the reader has ever witnessed a wife, daughter, a sister, and a fainting fit, he may chance to have observed that the most effecting moment in such a spectacle is that in which the sigh and a stirring announced the recommencement of suspended life. Or if the reader has ever been present in a vast metropolis on the day when some great national idol was carried in funeral pomp to his grave, and chanceing to walk near the course through which it passed, has felt powerfully in the silence and desertion of the streets, and in the stagnation of ordinary business, the deep interest which at that moment was possessing the heart of man. If all at once he should hear the death-like stillness broken up by the sound of wheels rattling away from the scene, and making known that the transitory vision was dissolved, he will be aware that at no moment was his sense of the complete suspension and pause in ordinary human concerns so full and affecting, as at that moment when the suspension ceases, and the goings-on of human life are suddenly resumed. All action in any direction is best expounded, measured, and made apprehensible by reaction. Now apply this to the case in Macbeth. Here, as I have said, the retiring the human heart and the entrance of the fiendish heart was to be expressed and made sensible. Another world has stepped in, and the murderers are taken out of the region of human beings, human purposes, human desires. They are transfigured. Lady Macbeth is unsexed. Macbeth has forgot that he was born of woman. Both are conformed to the image of devils, and the world of devils is suddenly revealed. But how is this to be conveyed and made palpable? In order that a new world may step in, this world must for a time disappear. The murderers and the murder must be insulated, cut off by immeasurable gulf from the ordinary tide in succession of human affairs. Locked up and sequestered in some deep recess, we must be made sensible that the world of ordinary life is suddenly arrested. Late asleep, trance, wracked into a dread armistice, time must be annihilated, relation to things without abolished, and all must pass self-withdrawn into a deep syncope and suspension of earthly passion. Hence it is that when the deed is done, when the work of darkness is perfect, then the world of darkness passes away like a pageantry in the clouds. The knocking at the gate is heard, and it makes known audibly that the reaction has commenced, the human has made its reflux upon the fiendish, the pulses of life are beginning to beat again, and the re-establishment of the goings on of the world in which we live first make us profoundly sensible of the awful parenthesis that had suspended them. Almighty poet, thy works are not as those of other men, simply and merely great works of art, but are also like the phenomena of nature, like the sun and the sea, the stars and the flowers, like frost and snow, rain and dew, hailstorm and thunder, which are to be studied with entire submission of our own faculties, and in the perfect faith that in them there can be no too much or too little, nothing useless or inert, but that the further we press in our discoveries, the more we shall see proofs of design and self-supporting arrangement where the careless eye had seen nothing but accident. This is the end of Miscellaneous Essays by Thomas de Quincey, Chapter 1 on the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth. Considered as one of the Fine Arts, Part 1. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by M. L. Cohen, Cleveland, Ohio, June 2007. Miscellaneous Essays by Thomas de Quincey, Section 2. On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts, Part 1. To the Editors of Blackwood's Magazine. Sir. We have all heard of a society for the promotion of vice, of the Hellfire Club, etc. At Brighton, I think it was, that a society was formed for the suppression of virtue. That society was itself suppressed, but I am sorry to say that another exists in London, of a character still more atrocious. In tendency, it may be denominated a society for the encouragement of murder, but according to their own delicate Greek euphemisios, it is styled, The Society of Connoisseurs in Murder. They profess to be curious and homicide, amateurs and dilettante in the various modes of bloodshed. And, in short, murder fanciers. Every fresh atrocity of that class, which the police annals of your bring up, they meet and criticize as they would have picture, statue, or other work of art. But I need not trouble myself with any attempt to describe the spirit of the proceedings. As you will collect that, much better, from one of the monthly lectures read before The Society last year. This has fallen into my hands accidentally, in spite of all the vigilance exercised to keep their transactions from the public eye. The publication of it will alarm them, and my purpose is that it should. For I would much rather put them down quietly, by an appeal to public opinion through you, than by such an exposure of names as would fall on an appeal to Bow Street, which last appeal, however, if this should fail I must positively resort to. For it is scandalous that such things should go on in a Christian land. Even in a heathen land the toleration of murder was felt by a Christian writer to be the most crying reproach of the public morals. This writer was lactantious, and with his words as singularly applicable to the present occasion, I shall conclude, quote, In quotes as he, Ideo severissimis legibilis vidunostra munitor ideobella excribiliusunt. In vanit, Sinbello axin legibi faciat, Ed hoxibi voluptius quat sincid vindicavit. Quotes the interest homicidio scleris conciest et an unfassionore spectator obstricatus et qui admissor. Ergo in his gladiatorium chedeibilis nun mitiocru profunditore qui spectat, Cam il qui facit, Ne poce il immunis sanguin cilvitchit effundae, Ad vidori nun interfaceis, Chi infectore et favit, E proemium post la vid. Quote, Human life, and quotes as he, Quote, Is guarded by laws of the utmost rigor, Yet custom as divide a mode of evading them in behalf of murder, And the demands of taste, Quote, Are now becoming the same as those of abandoning guilt, End quote. Let the society of gentlemen amateurs consider this, And let me call their special attention to the last sentence, Which is so weighty, That I shall attempt to convey it in English, Quote, Now, if merely to be present, At a murder fastens on a man, The character of an accomplice, If barely to be a spectator, Involves us in one common guilt with the perpetrator. It follows of necessity that, In these murders of the amphitheater, The hand which inflicts the fatal blow Is not more deeply imbued in blood Than he who sits and looks on. Neither can he be clear of blood Who has countenance that's shedding, Nor that man seem other than a participator In a murder who gives his applause to the murderer And calls for prizes in his behalf, End quote. Premier post levite, end quote. I have not yet heard charge upon The gentlemen amateurs of London, Though undoubtedly the proceedings tend to that, But the quote, Infotectory favel, end quote, Is implied in the very title of this association, And expressed in every line of the lecture Which I sent you. I am, etc., X, Y, Z. Lecture. Gentlemen, I have had the honour to be appointed by your committee To the trying task of reading the Williams lecture On murder, Considered as one of the fine arts. A task which might be easy enough Three or four centuries ago, When the art was little understood, And few great models had been exhibited. But in this age, When masterpieces of excellence Have been executed by professional men, It must be evident that in the style of criticism Applied to them, The public will look for something Practice and theory must advance, Paripasu. People begin to see that something more goes To the composition of a fine murder Than two blockheads to kill and be killed, A knife, a purse, and a dark lane. Design, gentlemen, Grouping, light and shade, Poetry, sentiment Are now deemed indispensable attempts Of this nature. Mr. Williams has exalted the idea Of murder to us all, And to me, therefore, in particular, Has deepened the arduousness of my task. Like Escalus or Milton in poetry, Like Michelangelo in painting, He has carried his art to a point Of colossal sublimity. And, as Mr. Wardsworth observes, Has in a manner, quote, Created the taste by which he is To be enjoyed, end quote. To sketch the history of the art And to examine its principles critically Now remains as a duty for the connoisseur, And for judges of quite another stamp From His Majesty's judges of Assisi. Before I begin, Let me say a word or two to certain prigs Who affect the speak of our society As if it were in some degree immoral In its tendency. Immoral. God bless my soul, gentlemen. What is it that people mean? I am for morality and always shall be. And for virtue and all that. And I do affirm and always shall. Friends, let what will come of it That murder is an improper line of conduct. Highly improper. And I do not stick to assert That any man who deals in murder Must have very incorrect ways of thinking And truly inaccurate principles. And so far from aiding and abetting him By pointing out his victims' hiding place As a great moralist of Germany declared it To be every good man's duty to do, I would subscribe one shilling In six pence to have him apprehended, Which is more by 18 pence Than the most eminent moralist I would subscribe for that purpose. Footnote. Kant, who carried his demands Of unconditional veracity to so extravagant Length as to affirm that if the man Were to see an innocent person escape From a murderer it would be his duty On being questioned by the murderer To tell the truth and point out The retreat of the innocent person Under any certainty of causing murder Lest his doctrine should be supposed To have escaped him in any heat of dispute On being taxed with it by a celebrated French writer He solemnly reaffirmed it And footnote. But what then? Everything in this world has two handles Murder, for instance, may be laid Hold up by its moral handle, prens As it generally is in the pulpit And at the old Bailey and prens And that, I confess, is its weak side Or it may also be treated aesthetically As the Germans call it That is in relation to good taste To illustrate this I will urge the authority of three Eminent persons, that is Mr. Aurel-Arstaudel and Mr. Houship The surgeon. To begin STC One night many years ago I was drinking tea with him In Burners Street. Prens, which by the way For a short street has been Uncommonly fruitful in men of genius Close prens. Others were there beside myself And amid some carnal considerations Of tea and toast, we were all Embibing a dissertation on Platonias From the addict lips of STC The priors of fire, fire Upon which all of us, master and Disciples, Plato and Hori peritone Platona Rushed out eager for the spectacle The fire was in Oxford Street At a Piano Forte Makers And, as it promised to be A conflagration of merit I was sorry that my engagements Forced me away from Mr. Coleridge's Party before matters were Come to a crisis. Some days after, meeting with My platonic host, I reminded That the meeting exhibition had Terminated. Oh, sir, said he. It turned out so ill that we Damned it unanimously. Now, does any man supposed To Mr. Coleridge, who for all He is too fat to be a person Of active virtue, is undoubtedly A worthy Christian, that this Good STC, I say, was an Incendiary or capable of wishing Any ill to the poor man in his Piano Fortes? Many of them doubtless with That I durst staked my life upon it That he would have worked an engine In a case of necessity, although Rather the fattest for such fiery Trials of his virtue. But how stood the case? Virtue was in no request. On the arrival of the fire engines Morally had devolved wholly On the insurance office. This being the case, he had A right to gratify his taste. He had left his tea. Was he to have nothing in return? I contended that the most He was entitled to make a luxury The fire and to hiss it, as he Would any other performance that Raised expectations in the public Mind, which afterwards it Disappointed. Again, decided another great Authority. What says to Stargerite? He, in the fifth book I think It is of his metaphysics, Described what he calls a Perfect thief and, as to Mr. Houseship, in the work on his Own indigestion, he makes no A beautiful ulcer. Now, will any man pretend that Abstractly considered a thief Could appear to Aristotle a perfect Character, or that Mr. Houseship Could be enamored of an ulcer? Aristotle, it is well known, was Himself so very moral a character That, not content with writing His Nicomachean ethics in one Volume octavo, he also wrote Another system called Magnum Oralia, or Big Ethics. Now, it is impossible that a Man who composes any ethics Or little should admire a thief Per se, and, as to Mr. Houseship, it is well known That he makes war upon all ulcers And, without suffering himself To be seduced by their charms And devours to banish them from The country of Middlesex. But the truth is that however Objection will per se, yet Relatively to others of their Class, both a thief and an Ulcer may have infinite degrees Of merit. They are both imperfections That become their perfection. Spartum noctis et hunk exorna A thief like Autolichus Or Mr. Barrington And a grim phage-danic ulcer Superbly defined and running Regularly through all its natural stages May, lo, less justly be regarded As ideals after their kind Than the most faultless Moss-rose amongst flowers In his progress from bud To bright consummate flower Or amongst human flowers As a young female, appareled In the pomp of womanhood. And thus, not only the ideal Of an ink-stand may be imagined As Mr. Collage demonstrated In his celebrated correspondence With Mr. Blackwood In which, by the way, there was Not so much because an ink-stand Is a laudable sort of thing And a valuable member of society But even imperfection itself May have its ideal or perfect state. Really, gentlemen, I beg pardon For so much philosophy at one time When a murder is in the palo post Ferturum tense and rumor of it Comes to our ears by all means Let us treat it morally. But suppose it over and done Suppose the poor murdered man To be out of his pain And the rascal that did it Off like a shot. Nobody knows wither. Suppose, lastly, that we have Done our best by putting out our legs To trip up the fellow in his flight But all to no purpose. What's the use of any more virtue? Enough has been given to morality. Now comes the turn of taste In the fine arts. A sad thing it was, no doubt, very sad But we can't mend it. Therefore, let us make the best Of a bad matter. And, as it is impossible to hammer Anything out of it for moral purposes, Let us treat it aesthetically And see if it will turn to account In that way. Such is the logic of a sensible man We dry up our tears And have the satisfaction, perhaps, To discover a transaction which, Morally considered, was shocking And without a leg to stand upon When tried by the principles of taste Turns out to be a very meritorious Performance. Thus all the world is pleased The old proverb is justified That it is an ill-win which Closed nobody good. The amateur from looking billious And sulky by too close And attention to virtue begins Virtue has had her day And henceforth virtue And connoisseurship have Leaved to provide for themselves. Upon this principle, gentlemen, I propose to guide your studies From Cain to Mr. Thirtle. Through this great gallery Of murder, therefore, together Let us wander hand in hand In delighted admiration While I endeavour to point Your attention to the objects Of profitable criticism. On murder, considered as one Of the fine arts From Miscellaneous Essays By Thomas DeQuincey. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in The public domain. For more information or to volunteer Please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by M.L. Cohen, Cleveland, Ohio June 2007 Miscellaneous Essays By Thomas DeQuincey. Section 3 As one of the fine arts Part 2 The first murder is familiar to you all As the inventor of murder And the father of the art Cain must have been a man Of first-rate genius. All the Canes were men of genius. Tubal Cain invented tubes, I think, Or some such thing. But whatever were the originality And genius of the artist, Every art was then in its infancy And the works must be criticised Even Tubal's work would probably be Little approved of at this day in Sheffield And, therefore, of Cain Cain Sr., I mean It is no disparagement to say That his performance was but so-so. Milton, however, Is supposed to have thought differently By his way of relating the case It should seem to have been Rather a pet murder with him For he retouches it with an apparent anxiety For its picturesque effect Whereat he inwardly raged And as they talked About the stone That beat out life he fell And deadly pale groaned out his soul With gushing blood effused Paradise Lost B. 11 Upon this, Richardson, the painter Who had an eye for effect, Remarks as follows in his notes On Paradise Lost, page 497 It has been thoughts, as he, That Cain beat, as the common saying is, The breath out of his brother's body With a great stone. Richardson gives into this With the addition, however, of a large wound. End quote. In this place it was a judicious addition For the rudeness of the weapon Unless rage and enriched by a warm, Sanguinary coloring Has too much of the naked air Of the savage school As if the dead were perpetrated By a polypheme without science, Premeditation, or anything but a mutton bone. However, I am chiefly pleased With the improvement, as it implies That Milton was an amateur. As his description of the murder Duke of Gloucester and Henry VI Of Duncan's, Banco's, etc., sufficiently proves. The foundation of the art having been once laid, It is pitiful to see how it slumbered Without improvement for ages. In fact, I shall now be obliged To leap over all murders, sacred and profane, As utterly unworthy of notice Until long after the Christian era. Greece, even in the age of Pericles, Produced no murder of the slightest merit And Rome had too little originality of genius In any of the arts to succeed, Where her model failed her. In fact, the Latin language sinks Under the very idea of murder. Quote, the man was murdered. End quote. How will this sound in Latin? Interfectus est. Interemptus est. Which simply expresses a homicide And has the Christian Latinity Of the Middle Ages were obliged To introduce a new word. Such as the feebleness of classic Conceptions never ascended to. Mudratus est. Since the sublime redialect of Gothic ages. Meantime, the Jewish school of murder Kept alive whatever was yet known to the art And gradually transferred it to the western world. Indeed, the Jewish school was always respectable, Even in the dark ages. As the case a few of Lincoln shows, Which was honored with the approbation of Chaucer. On a count of three years, The Jewish school of murder Which was honored with the approbation of Chaucer. On occasion of another performance From the same school, Which he puts into the mouth Of the Lady Abbas. Recurring, however, for one moment To classical antiquity, I cannot but think that Cadillian Claudius And some of that coterie Would have made first-rate artists. And it is on all accounts to be regretted That the pregism of Cicero robbed his country Of the only chance he had for a distinction In this line. As the subject of a murder, Lord, how he would have howled with panic If he had heard Cithicus under his bed. It would have been truly diverting To have listened to him And satisfied I am, gentlemen, That he would have preferred Utile of creeping into a closet Or even into a cloaca To the only stem of facing the bold artist. To come now to the dark ages By which we that speak with precision Mean par excellence the tenth century And the times immediately before and after. These ages ought naturally To the art of murder As they were to church, architecture, Stained glass, etc. And accordingly about the latter end Of this period there arose a great character In our art. I mean the old man of the mountains. He was a shining light indeed And I did not tell you that the very word Assassin is deduced from him. So keen an amateur was he That on one occasion, when his own life Was attempted by a favored assassin He was so much pleased with the talent Shown that notwithstanding the failure Of the plot, with remainder to the female line And settled a pension on him for three lives. Assassination is a branch of the art Which demands a separate notice And I shall devote an entire lecture to it. Meantime I shall only observe how odd it is That this branch of the art has flourished by fits. It never rains but it pours. Our own age can boast of some fine specimens And about two centuries ago There was a most brilliant constellation Of murders in this class. I shall only say that I elude especially To those five splendid works. The assassination of William I of Orange Of Henry IV of France Of the Duke of Buckingham Which you will find excellently described In the letters by Mr. Ellis of the British Museum Of Gustave Saldalfos and of Wallenstein The King of Sweden's assassination By the by is doubted by many writers Heart amongst the others But they are wrong. He was murdered and I consider his murder Unique in its excellence In a new day and on the field of battle A feature of original conception Which occurs in no other work of art That I remember. Indeed, all of these assassinations May be studied with profit by the advanced connoisseur They are all of them exemplaria Of which one may say Nosierna Versata Manu Versata Darni Especially Nocturna In these assassinations of princes And statement there is nothing to excite Our wonder. The same changes often depend on their deaths And from the eminence on which they stand They are peculiarly exposed to the aim Of every artist who happens to be possessed By the craving for a cynical effect But there is another class of assassinations Which has prevailed from an early period Of the seventeenth century That really does surprise me I mean the assassination of philosophers For gentlemen It is a fact that every philosopher Of eminence for the last two centuries Has either been murdered Or been very near it In so much that if a man calls himself A philosopher and never has his life attempted Rest assured there is nothing in him And against Locke philosophy in particular I think it an unanswerable objection If we needed any That although he carried his throat About with him in this world for seventy-two years No man ever condescended to cut it As these cases of philosophers Are not much known And are generally good and well composed In their circumstances I read an excursus on that subject Chiefly by way of showing my own learning The first great philosopher Of the seventeenth century If we accept Galileo Was Descartes And if ever one could say of a man That he was all but murdered Murdered within an inch One must say it of him The case was this As reported by Baillet And his videum Descartes Tone 1 Page 102-3 But he was touring about as usual For he was as restless as a hyena And coming up to L Be there Gluckstad or Hamburg He took shipping for East Friesland What he could want in East Friesland No man has ever discovered And perhaps he took this into consideration himself For on reaching Emden He resolved to sail instantly for West Friesland And being very impatient Of delay he hired a bark With a few mariners to navigate it No sooner had he got out to see That he made a pleasing discovery He shut himself up in a den of murderers His crew says in Baillet He soon found to be Desclarat Not amateurs gentlemen as we are But professional men The height of whose ambition at the moment Was to cut his throat But the story is too pleasing to be abridged I shall give it therefore accurately From the French of his biographer Quote Emde Cart had no company but that of a servant With whom he was conversing in French The sailors who took him For a foreign merchant rather than a cavite Concluded that he must have money about him Accordingly they came to a resolution By no means advantageous to his purse There is this difference however Between sea robbers and the robbers in forests For the latter may without hazards Spare the lives of their victims Whereas the other cannot put a passenger Onshore in such a case Without running a risk of being apprehended The crew of Emde Cart arranged their measures With the view to evade any danger of that sort They observed that he was a servant Of a stranger from a distance Without acquaintance in the country And that nobody would take any trouble To inquire about him in case he should Never come to hand Friends Quote Think gentlemen of these Friesland dogs Discussing a philosopher as if he were a Puncheon of rum Quote his temper they remarked Was very mild and patient And judging from the gentleness Of his deportment and the courtesy With which he treated themselves That they should have all the easier task In disposing of his life They made no scruple to discuss the whole Matter in his presence As not supposing that he understood Any other language than that In which he conversed with his servant And the amount of their deliberation Was to murder him Then throw him into the sea And divide his spoils End quote Excuse my laughing gentlemen But the fact is I always do laugh When I think of this case As the men of Eton call it In which Descartes must have found himself Upon hearing this regular drama Sketched of his own death Funeral succession And administration to his effects But another thing Which seems to me still more funny About this affair is That if these Friesland hounds Had been game We should have no Cartesian philosophy And how we could have done without that Considering the world of books it has produced I leave to any respectable Despite of his enormous funk Descartes showed fight And by that means all of these Anti-Cartesian rascals Quote finding says Emberley That the matter was no joke Em Descartes leaped upon his feet in a trice A stern discerned continence That these Cravens had never looked for And addressing them in their own language Threatened to run them through on the spot If they dared offer him any insult Certainly gentlemen This would have been an honor Far above the merits of such And therefore I'm glad Em Descartes did not rob the gallows By executing his threat Especially he could not possibly Bought his vessel to port after he had murdered his crew So he must have continued to cruise Forever into Zooterzee And would probably have been mistaken By sailors for the flying Dutchman Homeward bound Quote the spirit which Em Descartes Manifested And quote says biographer Had the effect of magic on these wretches The suddenness of their consternation Invaded him to his destination As peaceably as he could desire End quote Possibly gentlemen You may fancy that on the model of Caesar's address To his poor ferryman César Am Vias et Fortuna Aegis Em Descartes need only to have said Dogs you cannot cut my throat For you carry Descartes and his philosophy And might safely defy them to do their worst A German emperor had the same notion When being cautioned to keep out The way of a cannoning He replied, Tut man, did you overhear of a cannonball That killed an emperor? As to an emperor I cannot say But a less thing has suffered To smash a philosopher And the next great philosopher of Europe Undoubtedly was murdered This was Spinoza I know very well the common opinion About him is that he died in his bed Perhaps he did But he was murdered for all that And this I shall prove by a book By the author of the book The Way of Spinoza By M. John Seuler With many additions from an MS life By one of his friends Spinoza died on the 21st of February 1677 Being then little more than 44 years old This of itself looks suspicious And M. John admits that a certain expression In the MS life of him with warranted conclusion Que se morna pas tu fenatrio Living in a damp country And a stylish country like Holland He may be thought of in dolls To good deal and grog Especially in punch Which was then nearly discovered Footnote June 1, 1675 Drink part of three pools of punch Quote, a liquor very strange to me End quote Said that the revered Mr. Harry Chang In his diary lately published In a note on this passage A reference made to Friars Travels In East Indies 1672 of speaks of Quote, that innervating liquor Called Pounce And men call it Diapente If with fore only Diastron No doubt it was its evangelical name That recommended it to the revered Mr. Chang End footnote Undoubtedly he might have done so But the fact is that he did not M. John calls him Quote Extreme and sober and sombois And then some wild stories were afloat About us using the juice of a Mandragora And opium Yet neither of these articles Living therefore with such sobriety How is it possible that you should die a natural death At forty-four Here is biographers account Quote, Sunday morning of the twenty-first of February Before it was church time Smoze came down the stairs And conversed with the master And mistress of the house End quote At this time therefore Perhaps at an o'clock on Sunday morning You see that Spinoza was alive And pretty well Says the biographer I saw not otherwise point out to notice Than by these two letters LM This LM has directed the people of the house To person an ancient cock And to have him boiled forthwith In order that Spinoza might take some broth about noon Which in fact he did Enate some of the old cock with good appetite After the landlord and his wife Had returned from church Quote In the afternoon LM stayed alone with Spinoza The people of the house having returned to church They learned with much surprise That Spinoza had died about three o'clock In the presence of LM Who took his departure for Amsterdam The same evening by the night boat Without paying the least attention to the deceased No doubt he was the readier To dispense with these duties As he had possessed himself Of a duck of tune and a small quantity of silver Together with a silver-halfed knife And absconded with his pillage End quote Here you see gentlemen The murderer's plane Had ordered Spinoza for his money Poor S was an invalid meager and weak As no blood it was observed LM no doubt threw him down And smothered him with pillows The poor man being already half suffocated By his infernal dinner But who was LM It surely never could be Lindley Murray For I saw him at York in 1835 And besides I do not think he would do such a thing At least not to a brother grammarian For you know gentlemen That Spinoza wrote a very respectable Hebrew grammar But why, or in what principle I never could understand was not murdered This was a capital oversight Of the professional men in the 17th century Because in every light He was a fine subject for murder Except indeed that he was lean and skinny For I can prove that he had money And what is very funny He had no right to make the least resistance For according to himself Irresistible power creates the very highest Species of right So that it is rebellion Of the blackest eye to refuse to be murdered However gentlemen Though he was not murdered I am happy to assure you that by his own account He was three times very near being murdered The first time was in the spring of 1640 When he pretends to have circulated A little manuscript in the king's behalf Against the parliament He never could produce this manuscript by the by But he says that Quote Had not his majesty dissolved the parliament End quote End quote During the parliament however was of no use For in November of the same year The long parliament assembled And Hobbes a second time fearing He should be murdered ran away to France This looks like the madness of John Dennis Who thought that Louis XIV Would never make peace with Queen Anne Unless he were given up to his vengeance And actually ran away from the sea coast In that belief In France Hobbes managed to take care of His throat pretty well for ten years But he had ended the time By way of paying court to Cromwell The old coward now began to funk horribly For the third time He fancied the swords of the Cavaliers Were constantly at his throat Recalling how they had served at parliament Ambassadors and at the Hague in Madrid Turned says he In his dog-laden life of himself To venet in mentum Me doriscent en asham Tanken proscripto ter uber adrat And accordingly he ran home to England Now certainly it is very true that a man Deserving a cuddling for writing Leviathan And two or three cuddlings for writing a pentameter Ending so villainously as Quote Terror uber adrat But no man ever thought him worthy Of anything beyond cuddling And in fact The whole story is a bounce of his own Four And the most abusive letter which he wrote Quote to a learned person Meaning Wallace the mathematician He gives quite another account of the matter And says Pijade He ran home Quote Insinuating that it was likely to be murdered For his religion Which would have been a high-joke indeed Tom's being brought to the stake for religion Bounce and not bounce, however, Certain it is that Hobbes to the end of his life Feared that somebody would murder him This is proved by the story I'm going to tell you It is not from a manuscript But, as Mr. Colleridge said It is good as a manuscript For it comes from a book now entirely forgotten That is, quote In a conference between him And a student of divinity, end quote Published about ten years before Hobbes' death The book is anonymous But it was written by Tennyson The same who, about thirty years after Succeeded to lots in his Archbishop of Canterbury The introductory anecdote is as follows, quote A certain divine, it seems No doubt Tennyson himself Took an annual tour of one month To different parts of the island And one of these excursions, 1670 He visited the peak of Terbyshire Partly in consequence of Hobbes' description of it Being in that neighborhood He could not but pay a visit to Buxton And at the very moment of his arrival He was fortunate enough to find a party of gentlemen Dismounting at the indoor Amongst him was a long, thin fellow Who turned out to be no less a person Than Mr. Hobbes Who probably had ridden over from Chatsworth Meeting so great a line A tourist in search of the picturesque Could own the less than present himself To the poor And luckily for this scheme Two of Mr. Hobbes' companions Were suddenly summoned away by Express So that for the rest of his stay at Buxton He had Leviathan entirely to himself And had the honor of bowzing with him In the evening Hobbes, it seems, at first showed A good deal of stiffness For he was shy of divines But this wore off and he became Very sociable and funny And they agreed to go to the bath together How Tennyson could venture to gamble Out like two dolphins Though Hobbes must have been as old as the hills And, quote, in those intervals Where they abstained from swimming And plunging themselves as diving They discoursed of many things related To the bath of the Ancients And the origin of springs When they had in this manner Passed away an hour They stepped out of the bath And having dried and clothed themselves They set down an expectation of such a supper As the place afforded Designing to refresh themselves In this innocent intention They were interrupted by the disturbance arising From a little quarrel In which some of the rudor people in the house Were for a short time engaged At this Mr. Hobbes he much concerned Though he was at some distance from the persons End, quote And why was he concerned, gentlemen No doubt you fancy From some benign and disinterested love Of peace and harmony Worthy of an old man of philosopher But listen, quote For a while he was not composed Of his own self With a low and careful tone How sexed as rossius was murdered After suppered by the Balny Pilatine Of such general extent Is that remark of Cicero In relation to Epicurus the Atheist Of whom he exerbed That he of all men dreaded Most those things which he contempt Death and the gods, end quote Merely because it was supper time In the neighborhood of a bath Mr. Hobbes must have the fate Of sexed as rossius Of murder Here was Leviathan No longer afraid of the daggers Of Ingus Cavaliers or French clergy But, quote Frightened from his property, end quote By a row in the alehouse Between some honest Claude Hoppers Of Derbyshire Whom his own gaunt, scarecrow Of a person that belonged Quite another century Would have frightened out of their wits Malibrank, it will give you great pleasure To hear it was murdered And not put into a proper light Barclay when a young man Went to Paris and called on Pierre Malibrank He found him in his cell cooking Cooks have ever been a genus irritable Authors still more so Malibrank was both A dispute arose And the old father warm already became warmer Culinary and metaphysical irritations United to derange his liver He took to his bed and died Such is the common version of the story Quote So the whole year of Denmark is abused End quote The fact is that the matter was hushed up Out of consideration for Barclay Who, as Pope remarked Had quote every virtue under heaven End quote Also was well known that Barclay Feeling himself netled by the waspishness Of the old Frenchman Squared at him A turn up was the consequence Malibrank was floored in the first round The conceit was wholly taken out of him And he would have perhaps been given in Of the occasional causes The vanity of the man was too great for this And he felt a sacrifice to the impetuosity Of Irish youth Combined with his own absurd obstinacy Leibniz Being every way superior to Malibrank One might a fortiori have counted On his being murdered Which however was not the case I believe he was netled that this Neglect and fed himself insulted By the security in which he passed his days In no other way can I explain His conduct at the later end of his life Was faricious and a horde of large sums Of gold which he kept at his own house This was at Vienna where he died And letters are still in existence Describing the immeasurable anxiety Which he entertained for his throat Still his ambition for being Attempted at least was so great That he would not forgo the danger A late English pedagogue Of Birmingham manufacturer That as Dr. Parr took a more selfish Course in the same circumstances He had amassed a considerable quantity Of gold and silver plate Which was for some time deposited In his bedroom at his barge in his house Hatton But growing every day more afraid Of being murdered which he knew That he could not stand And to which indeed he never had The slightest pretension He transferred the whole to the Hatton Blacksmith conceiving no doubt That the murder of a blacksmith Would form more lightly on the Salish Republic than that of a pedagogue But I have heard this greatly As Leibniz though not murdered May be said to have died Partly of the fear that he should be murdered And partly of the vexation that he was not Kant on the other hand who had no ambition In that way had a narrow escape From a murder than any man we read of Except Descartes So absurdly disfortuned through About her favors The case is told I think In an anonymous life of this very great man For health's sake Kant imposed upon himself at one time A walk of six miles every day This fact becoming known to a man Who had his private reasons for committing murder At the third milestone from Königsberg He waited for his quote intended End quote Who came up to time as duly as a male coach But for an accident Kant was a dead man However On considerations of quote morality End quote It happened that the murderer preferred a little child Whom he saw playing in the road To the old transcendentalist This child he murdered Was a German account of the matter But my opinion is That the murderer was an amateur Who felt how little would be gained To the cause of good taste By murdering an old, arid and adjust metaphysician There was no room for display As the man could not possibly look more Like a mummy when dead than he had done alive End On murder considered as one of the fine arts Part two On murder considered as one of the fine arts Part three From miscellaneous essays by Thomas DeQuincey This is the LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer Please visit LibriVox.org On murder considered as one of the fine arts Part three Thus gentlemen I have traced the connection between philosophy And our art Until insensibly I find that I've wandered Into our own era This I shall not take any pains to characterize Apart from that which preceded it For, in fact, they have no distinct character The 17th and 18th centuries Together with so much of the 19th As we have yet seen jointly composed The Augustan Age of Murder The finest work of the 17th century Is unquestionably the murder of Sid Edmund Barry Godfrey Which has my entire approbation At the same time It must be observed that the quantity Of murder was not as great in the century At least amongst our own artists Which, perhaps, is attributable to the want Of enlightened patronage St. Maciana's Don de Rente Flasio Marones Consulting grants Observation on the bills of mortality Fourth edition Oxford 1665 I find that out of 229,250 Who died in London during one period Of 20 years in the 17th century Not more than 86 were murdered That is, about four three-tenths per annum A small number this, gentlemen, To found an academy upon And certainly, where the quantity is so small We have a right to expect that the quality Should be first rate Perhaps it was Yet still I am of the opinion That the best artist in this century Was not equal to the best In that which followed For instance, however praiseworthy The case of Sir Edmund Godfrey may be And nobody can be more sensible Of its merits than I am Still, I cannot consent to place it on a level With that of Mrs. Ruscombe of Bristol Either as to originality of design Or boldness and breadth of style This good lady's murder took place Early in the reign of George III A reign which was notoriously favourable To the arts generally She lived in college green With a single maid servant Neither of them having any pretension To the notice of history I derive from the great artist Whose workmanship I am recording One fine morning When all Bristol was alive and in motion Some suspicion arising The neighbours forced an entrance into the house And found Mrs. Ruscombe murdered in her bedroom And a servant murdered on the stairs This was at noon And not more than two hours before Both mistress and servant hadn't seen alive To the best of my remembrance This was in 1764 Upwards of sixty years And yet the artist is still undiscovered The suspicions of posterity Have settled upon two pretenders A baker and a chimney sweeper But posterity is wrong No unpracticed artist could have conceived So bold an idea as that Of a noonday murder in the heart of a great city It was no obscure baker gentlemen Or anonymous chimney sweeper be assured That executed this work I know who it was Here there was a general buzz Which at length broke out into open applause Upon which the lecturer blushed And went on with much earnestness And friends For heaven's sake gentlemen Do not mistake me It was not I that did it I have not the vanity to think myself equal To any such achievement Be assured that you greatly overrate My poor talents Mrs. Ruscombe's affair Was far beyond my slender abilities But I came to know The gentleman who assisted at his dissection This gentleman had a private museum In the way of his profession One corner of which was occupied By a cast from a man Of remarkably fine proportions That, said the surgeon, Is a cast from the celebrated Lancashire Highlyman Who concealed his profession For some time from his neighbors By drawing woollen stockings Over his horse's legs And in that way muffling the clatter Which must have else made At the time of his execution For highway robbery I was studying under crook shank And the man's figure was so uncommonly fine That no money or exertion was spared To get in possession of him With the least possible delay By the connivance of the under-sheriff He was cut down within the legal time And instantly put into a chase and force So that when he reached crook shanks He was positively not dead Mr. Blank A young student at that time Came to coup de gras And finishing the sentence of law This remarkable anecdote Which seemed to imply that all the gentlemen In the dissecting room were amateurs Of our class struck me a good deal And I was repeating it one day To a Lancashire lady who thereupon informed me That she had herself lived in a neighborhood Of that high woman And well remembered two circumstances Which combined in the opinion of all his neighbors To fix upon him the credit Of Mrs. Ruscomb's affair One was the fact of his absence At the period of that murder The other That within a very little time after The neighborhood of this high woman Was deluged with dollars Now Mrs. Ruscomb was known to have hoarded About two thousand of that coin Be the artist however who he might The affair remains a durable monument Of his genius For such was the impression of awe And the sense of power left behind By the strength of conception manifested In this murder that no tenant As I was told in 1810 That time for Mrs. Ruscomb's house But while I thus eulogize the Ruscombian case Let me not be supposed to overlook The many other specimens of extraordinary Merits spread over the face of this Century. Such cases indeed Is that of Ms. Bland Or of Captain Donalyn And Sir Theophilus Bouton Shall never have any countenance from me Fie on these dealers and poisons say I Can they not keep to the old honest Way of cutting throats without Introducing such abominable innovations By the way I consider all these poisoning cases Compared with the legitimate style As no better than waxwork by the side Of sculptor or lithograph print By the side of a fine velipado But dismissing these There remain many excellent works Of art and pure style Such as nobody need be ashamed to own As every candid connoisseur will admit Candid, observe I say For great allowances must be made In these cases The connoisseur of carrying through His own fine preconception Awkward disturbances will arise People will not submit to have Their throats cut quietly They will run, they will kick, they will bite And whilst the portrait painter often Has the complaint of too much torpor in his subject The artist in our line is generally Embarrassed by too much animation At the same time However disagreeable to the artist This tendency and murder to excite And irritate the subject is certainly One of its advantages to the world To overlook, since it favors The development of latent talent Jeremy Taylor notices with admiration The extraordinary leaps which people Will take under the influence of fear There was a striking instance of this In the recent case of the McKeens The boy cleared a height such as he Will never clear again to his dying day Talents also of the most brilliant Description for thumping And indeed for all the gymnastic Exercises have sometimes been developed By the panic which accompanies our artists The silence else buried and hid under A bushel to the possessors as much as To their friends I remember an interesting illustration Of this fact in a case which I learned In Germany Writing one day in the neighborhood Of Munich I overtook a distinguished Amateur of our society whose name I shall conceal This gentleman informed me that Finding himself wearied with the frigid Pleasures as he so often called them Of mere amatureship he had quitted England for the continent For this purpose he resorted to Germany Conceiving that police in that part Of Europe to be more heavy and drowsy Than elsewhere His debut as a practitioner Took place at Mannheim And knowing me to be a brother amateur He freely communicated a whole Of his maiden adventure Quote Opposite to my lodging said he Lived a baker He was somewhat of a miser and lived Quite alone Whether it were his great expanse Heed him And resolved to commence business Upon his throat Which by the way he always carried bare A fashion which is very irritating To my desires Precisely day to clock in the evening I observed that he regularly shut Up his windows One night I watched him when thus Engaged, bolted in after him Locked the door And addressing him with the greatest Swavity acquainted him with the nature Of my errand So saying I drew out my tools And was proceeding to operate But at this spectacle The baker who seemed to have been struck By catalepsy at my first announce Awoke into tremendous agitation I will not be murdered He shrieked aloud What for will I lose my precious throat What for said I If for no other reason For this That you put Alam into your bread But no matter Alam or no Alam I am a virtuoso in the art of murder And desirous of improving myself In its details And am enamored of your vast surface Of throat to which I am determined To be a customer Is it so said he But I'll find you custom in another line And so saying he threw himself Into a boxer attitude The very idea of his boxing Struck me as ludicrous It is true a London baker Had distinguished himself in the ring And became known to fame He was young and unspoiled Whereas this man was a monstrous feather Bed in person Fifty years old and totally out of condition Despite of all this however And contending against me Who am a master in the art He made so desperate a defence That many times I feared he might turn the tables upon me And that I and amateur might be murdered By a rascally baker What a situation Minds of sensibility will sympathize With my anxiety How severe it was In the last rounds the baker had the advantage Round the fourteenth I received a blow on the right eye Which closed it up In the end I believed this was my salvation For the anger at Rouse did me was so great In this and every one of the three following rounds I floored the baker Round eighteenth The baker came up piping And manifestly the worst for wear His geometric exploits in the four last rounds Had done him no good However, he showed some skill Which I was sending to his cadaverous mug And delivering which my foot slipped And I went down Round nineteenth Surveying the baker I became ashamed of having been so much bothered By a shapeless mass of dough And I went in fiercely And admitted some severe punishment A rally took place Both went down Baker under most ten to three on amateur Round twentieth The baker jumped up with surprising agility And thought wonderfully Considering that he was drenched in perspiration But the shine was now taken out of him And his game was the mere effect of panic It was now clear that he could last Not much longer In the course of this round We tried a weaving system In which I had greatly the advantage And hit him repeatedly on the conch My reason for this was That his conch was covered with carbuncles And I thought I should vex him By taking such liberties with this conch The next three rounds The master of the roll staggered about Like a cow on the ice Seeing how matter stood In round twenty-fourth I whispered Something into his ear Which sent him down like a shot It was nothing more than my private opinion Of the value of his throat At an annuity office This little confidential whisper Affected him greatly The very perspiration was frozen on his face And for the next two rounds I had it all my own way On the floor After which said I to the amateur It may be presumed that you accomplished Your purpose You were right, said he mildly I did And a great satisfaction, you know It was to my mind for by this means I killed two birds with one stone Meaning that he had both Thumped the baker and murdered him Now for the life of me I could not see that For on the contrary to my mind It appeared that he had taken First with his fist And then with his tools But no matter for his logic The moral of his story was good For it showed what an astonishing Stimulus to latent talent Is contained in any reasonable prospect To being murdered A pursy, unwieldy, half-cataleptic Baker of Mannheim had absolutely fought Six and twenty rounds with an Accomplished English boxer Merely upon this inspiration So greatly was natural genius Exalted and sublime by the Others of such things as these It becomes a duty Perhaps a little to soften That extremist parody with which Most men speak of murder To hear people talk You would suppose that all the Disadvantages and inconveniences Were on the side of being murdered And that there were none at all And not being murdered But considerate men think otherwise Quote, certainly, said Jeremy Taylor It is a less temporal evil Axe, prens to which he might have Added the ship carpenter's mallet And the crowbar, close prens, A much less affliction than a Stringery. Very true, the bishop talks like A wise man, and an amateur as he Is, and another great philosopher Marcus Aurelius was equally above The vulgar prejudices on this Subject. He declared it to be one of the Quote, noblest functions of reason Does know whether it is time to Walk out of the world or not No sort of knowledge being rarer Than this, surely that man must be A most philanthropic character Who undertakes to instruct people In this branch of knowledge gratis And at no little hazard to himself All this, however, I throw out only In the way of speculation to future Moralists, declaring in the Meantime my own private conviction That very few men commit murder Upon philanthropic or patriotic Principles, and repeating what I've already said once at least Are very incorrect characters. With respect to the Williams Murders, the sublimest and most Entire in their excellence that Ever were committed, I shall now Allow myself to speak incidentally. Nothing less than an entire Lecture, or even an entire course Of lectures would suffice to Expound their merits. But one curious fact connected With his case I shall mention Because it seems to imply that The blaze of his genius absolutely Dazzled the eye of criminal For I doubt not that the instruments Which he executed his first great work The murder of the Mars Were a ship's carpenter's mallet And a knife. Now the mallet belonged to an old Swede, one John Peterson, and bore His initials. This instrument, Williams left behind Him, in Mars House, and it fell Into the hands of the magistrates. Now gentlemen, it is a fact that The publication of this circumstance Of the initials led immediately to The apprehension of Williams The murder of the Williamson's Which took place precisely twelve days after. But the magistrates kept back this Fat from the public for an entire twelve days And until that second work was Accomplished. That finished, they published it Apparently feeling that Williams Had now done enough for his fame And that his glory was at length Place beyond the reach of accident. As to Mr. Thirdel's case I know not what to say. Naturally, I have every disposition To think highly of my predecessor In the chair of this society. And I acknowledge that his lectures Were unexceptionable. But, speaking ingenuously, I do Really think that his principle Performance as an artist has been Much overrated. I admit that at first I was Myself carried away by the general Enthusiasm. On the morning when the murder Was made known in London, there Was the fullest meeting of amateurs That I had ever known since the Enduring and complaining Quote that there was nothing doing End quote. Now hobbled down to our clubroom Such hilarity, such benign expression Of general satisfaction I have rarely witnessed. On every side you saw people Shaking hands, congratulating each Other and forming dinner parties For the evening. And nothing was to be heard Beside the triumphant challenges Of, well, will this do? Is this the right thing? Are you satisfied at last? I remember we all grew silent On hearing the old cynical amateur L.S. That laudera temperis acti Stumping along with his wooden leg He entered the room with his usual Scowl, and as he advanced He continued to growl and stutter The whole way. Not an original idea in the whole Piece, mere plagiarism. Base plagiarism from the hints That I threw out. Besides, the style is as hard As Albert Durier, as Courses Thought that this was mere jealousy In general waspishness. But I confess that when the first Globe enthusiasm had subsided I have found the most judicious Critics to agree that there was Something falsetto in the style of Thirtel. The fact is he was a member of our Society, which naturally gave a Friendly bias to our judgments. And his person was universally Familiar to the cockneys, which Gave him, with the whole London Public, a temporary popularity On Deledas' nature of judicial Confirmant. There was, however, an unfinished Design of Thirtel for the murder Of a man with a pair of dumbbells, Which I admired greatly. It was a mere outline that he Never completed, but to my mind It seemed every way superior to His chief work. I remembered that there was Great regret expressed by some Amateurs that this sketch should Have been left in an unfinished State. I had no idea that I would Be able to tell them, which is apt to vanish in the Managements of the details. The case of the McKeens I Consider far beyond the vaunted Performance of Thirtel, indeed Above all praise, and bearing That relation, in fact, to the Immortal works of Williams, which The Aeneid bears to the Iliad. But it is now time that I Should say a few words about The principles of murder, not With a view to regulate your But the mind of sensibility Requires something more. First, then, let us speak of The kind of person who is adapted To the purpose of the murderer. Secondly, of the place where, Thirdly, of the time when, And other little circumstances. As to the person, I suppose Is evident that he ought to be A good man, because if he were Not, he might himself by Possibility be contemplating Murder at the very time, and Though pleasant enough where Nothing better is stirring, are Really not what a critic can Allow himself to call murders. I can mention some people, I Have no names, who have been Murdered by other people in a Dark lane, and so far as all Seem correct enough, but on Looking farther into the matter, The public had become aware That the murdered party was Himself at the moment, planning To rob his murder at the least And possibly to murder him if The art. For the final purpose Of murder, considered as a fine Art, is precisely the same as That of tragedy. In Aristotle's Account of it, quote, to cleanse The heart by means of pity and Terror, end quote. Now, terror There may be, but how can there Be any pity for one tiger Destroyed by another tiger? It is also evident that the Person selected ought not to be A public character. For instance, No judicious artist would have For the case was this. Everybody Read so much about Abraham Newland And so few people ever saw him That there was a fixed belief That he was an abstract idea. And I Remember that once, when I Happened to mention that I had Dined at a coffee-house and Company with Abraham Newland, Everybody looked scornfully at Me, as though I had pretended To have been played billiards Or had an affair of honor with The Pope. And, by the way, the Murder, for he has such a virtual Ubiquity as the father of Christendom, And like Takuku was so often heard But not seen, that I suspect that Most people regard him also as An abstract idea. Where, indeed, a Public character is in the habit Of giving dinners, quote, with Every delicacy of the season, end Quote, the case is very different. Every person is satisfied that he Is no abstract idea, and therefore There can be no impropriety in Murdering him. Only this murder Will fall into a class of Thirdly, the subject chosen ought To be in good health, for it is Absolutely barbarous to murder a Sick person, who is usually Quite unable to bear it. On This principle no cockney ought To be chosen who is above 25, for After that age he is sure to be Dispeptic. Or, at least, if a Man will hunt wouldn't that warn He ought to murder a couple at One time. If the cockney's Chosen should be tailors, he Will, of course, think at his Duty on the oldest established Of sick people, he will observe The usual effect of a fine art to Soften and refine the feelings. The world in general, gentlemen, Are very bloody-minded, and all They want in the murder is a Copious effusion of blood. Gaudy display in this point is Enough for them. But the Enlightened connoisseur is more Refined in his taste, and from Our art, as from all the other Liberal arts when thoroughly Cultivated, the result is to So true it is, that, quote, Injustice, didici, fidelity, arts, Imolio et mores, nixinit, esfellos. A philosophic friend well-known For his philanthropy and general Benignity suggests that the Subject chosen ought also to Have a family of young children Holy dependent on his exertions By way of deepening the pathos. And, undoubtedly, this is a Judicious caution. Yet I Would not insist too keenly To fear good taste unquestionably Demands it, but still, where the Man was otherwise unobjectionable In points of morals and health, I Would not look with too curious a Jealousy to a restriction which Might have the effect of narrowing The artist's sphere, so much for The person. As to the time, the Place, and the tools, I have Many things to say, which at Present I have no room for. The good sense of the Practitioner has usually directed Him to night and privacy. Yet He is not far from with excellent Effect. In respect to time, Mrs. Ruscombe's case is a beautiful Exception, which I have already Noticed. And in respect both to Time and place, there is a fine Exception in the Addams of Edinburgh, year 1805, familiar to Every child in Edinburgh but which Has unaccountably been defrauded Of its due portion of fame among English amateurs. The case I Mean is that of a porter of one Of the banks, who was murdered While scaring a bag of money in The house, and the murderer is to This hour undiscovered. Set Fujit, interior Fujit, in Tamperellis Tempest, single Dumb-captain circumvector Amour. And now gentlemen, in Conclusion, let me again somily Disclaim all pretensions on my Own part to the character of a Professional man. I never Attempted any murder in my life Except in the year 1801 upon The body of a Tomcat, and that Turned out differently from my Intention. My purpose I owned was Downright murder. Semper ergo Auditor tantum, said I, nun Kwame Ruponim. And I went Downstairs in search of Tom at One o'clock on a dark night With the animus, and no doubt With the fiendish looks of a Murderer. But when I found Him, he was the act of Plundering the pantry of bread And other things. Now this Gave a new turn to the Preciousity. When even Christians Were reduced to the use of potato Bread, rice bread, and all sorts Of things, it was downright Treason in a Tomcat to be wasting Good wheat and bread in the way He was doing. It instantly Became a patriotic duty to put Him to death. And as I raised A loft and shook to glittering Steel, I fancied myself rising Like Brutus, a fulgent from a Crowd of patrons. And as I Stabbed him, I, quote, Since then, what wandering Thoughts I may have had of Attempting the life of an ancient You, of a superannuated hen And such small deer are locked Up in the secrets of my own breast. But for the higher departments Of the art, I confess myself To be utterly unfit. My ambition does not rise So high. No, gentlemen, In the words of Horace Fungo's vice, Cotus excotum Ridere erquart ferum vele Exor's ipsa secande. End of on-murder considered As one of the fine arts. From Miscellaneous Essays by Thomas De Quincey.