Malignant Mischief Makers.
Content
MALIG A T MISCHIEF-MAKERS. BY Francis Jacox, 1825-1897. Psalm Hi. 3-5. OT peculiar to the Psalmist's time is the embodied type of malignant slander, whom he stigmatizes with such scathing words of abhorrent reproach : " Thy tongue imagineth wickedness, and with lies thou cuttest like a sharp razor. . . . Thou hast loved to speak all words that may do hurt, O thou false tongue !" Like the ungodly man in the Book of Proverbs, who diggeth up evil, and in his lips there is as a burning fire ; like the froward man, that soweth strife, and the whisperer, that separateth chief friends. Among the six things denounced as an abomination to the Most High, are the heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, as coupled with feet that be swift in running to mischief; a false witness
294 MALIG A T MISCHIEF-MAKERS. that speaketh lies ; and he that soweth discord among brethren. There is a mischief-making malignity so fertile in its inventions, so remorseless in its efforts to do harm, so ingenious in its devisings to give pain, that the adept in it may almost say of himself and of his victims, in apostolic words, wrenched and wrested utterly from the apostolic meaning, " If I make you sorry, who is he that maketh me glad, but the same which is made sorry by me?" For he loves to speak all words that may do hurt, that may breed mischief, that may engender strife, that may cut like a sharp razor, does this false tongue. ** Peut-il etre des coeurs assez noirs pour se plaire A faire ainsi du mal pour le plaisir d'en faire ?" Le Mechant of Gresset is a systematic answer in the affirmative. Lisette paints him to the life : —
*'Je parle de ce goiit de troubler, de detruire, Du talent de brouiller et du plaisir de nuire : Semer I'aigreur, la haine et la division, Faire du mal enfin, voila votre Cleon." Dr. Thomas Brown is assured that were it within the power of the calumniator to rob his victims of the one thing which happily is not within his power, — the consciousness of their innocence and virtue, he would all too gladly exercise it ; so impossible is it to doubt that he who defames, at the risk of detection, would, if the virtues of others were submitted to his will, prevent all peril of this kind, by tearing from the heart every virtue of which he must now be content with denying the existence, and thus at once consign his victim to ignominy and rob him of its only consolation. So hateful, indeed, to the wicked, — affirms our moral philosopher, — is the very thought of moral excellence, that, if even one of the many slanderers with whom society is filled had this tremendous power, there might not be a single virtue remaining on the earth. A pretty picture is that preserved in the Maloniana, of Bishop Percy's painting, after Samuel Dyer, of no less noteworthy a person than Sir John Hawkins. The blackest colours
MALICE FERTILE I DEVICES. 295: are used, to give the world assurance of " a most detestable fellow," — "a man of the most mischievous, uncharitable, and malignant disposition," instances being alleged of his setting husband against wife, and brother against brother, " fomenting their animosity by anonymous letters." With respect to what Sir J. Hawkins has thrown in, that he " loved Dyer as a brother," this, the bishop said, was inserted from malignancy and art, to make the world suppose that nothing but the gross vices of Dyer could have extorted such a character from him ; while, in truth. Dyer is declared to have been so amiable that he never could possibly have lived in any great degree
of intimacy with the other at any period of his life. It would seem that any little offence, where none was meant, where cause for offence there was and could be none, ** Rankled in him and ruffled all his heart, As the sharp wind that ruffles all day long A little bitter pool about a stone On the bare coast." Perhaps the Don John of Shakspeare is the purest specimen extant of causeless malignity in mischief-making. He is ready to devise cruel calumnies against all comers. Qucelibet in qiiemvis opprobria fingere scbvus. Swift's portraiture of the Marquis de Guiscard has a smack of the Shakspearean Don, in so far as he accredits him with " an early, an undoubted propensity to mischief and villany, but without those fine parts useful in the cabinet ;" " an engine fit for the blackest mischief; ... his aspect gloomy and forbidding, no false indication of the malignancy within. or could the evil in his nature be diverted by benefits." Malice is no doubt a power in the world, says a modern essay- writer on the subject, who describes as the occupation of some persons, the working towards a neighbour's downfall, for the disinterested satisfaction of seeing him fall ; and who goes on to characterize persons guilty of the tragic forms of malice as the highest or the lowest among men ; on the one hand, kings and conquerors, statesmen pitted against one another at a crisis, heads of faction who must crush one another with a plot; on the
296 MALICE A D SPITE. other hand, the clown pulling up his parson's tulips, or firing his neighbour's stackyard, the operative scarring the pretty girl's face with vitriol, or blowing up the non-unionist's house and household. It is argued that people's attention must be fixed long on a single object, their passions concentrated, their thoughts restricted to a narrow circle, for maHce to achieve its triumphs, just as venom intensifies itself in dark holes
and obscure corners, among ruins and waste places of the earth. But society is shown to find a substitute for malice — "a domestic, creditable, neighbourly form of the great vice " — in spite ; for though we may scruple to call anybody malicious except in history or the newspapers, with spite we are on more familiar terms. The varnish of goodness in society, as one of Balzac's reviewers has observed, and especially in English society, where goodness is universal, either in the reality or the counterfeit, is apt to make us forgetful of the truth that, as there are in the animal world creatures which have venom, and which will bite and sting on the slightest real or imaginary provocation, so there are in the human w^orld beings whose nature it is to take a positive and permanent delight in the misfortunes of others, especially when jealous of their advantages. And "the step from taking pleasures in other people's misfortunes to taking an active share in bringing those misfortunes about, is not very difficult when events and circumstances are favourable." Like as, in Spenser's likeness of unlikes, the gentle heart itself bewrays in doing gentle deeds with frank delight, "Even so the baser mind itselfe displayes In cancred malice and revengefull spight : For to maligne, t' envie, t' use shifting sleight Be arguments of a vile donghill mind ; Which, what it dare not doe by open might, To work by wicked treason wayes doth find, By such discourteous deeds discovering his base mind." In a previous canto the poet had piteously set forth the character of the wounds inflicted by the blatant beast; for that beast's teeth are so exceeding venomous and keen.
THE BLATA T BEAST. ic^-j " made all of rusty yron ranckling sore," that, where they bite, "it booteth not to weene with salve, or antidote, or other mene, it ever to amend." Can the effects of slander
be better represented, asks M. Leon Feugere, than by the old French poet, Gui du Faur de Pibrac, when he says of Calumny, much as Spenser of the blatant beast, — " Quand une fois ce monstre nous attache, II salt si fort ses cordillons nouer, Que, bien qu'on puisse enfin les denouer, Restent toujours les marques de I'attache." Only fling filth enough, and some of it must stick. Dr. South has a discourse on the phenomenon of certain dispositions that do really delight themselves in mischief, and love to see all men about them miserable. He explains it to be what the Greeks call iinxaLpeKaKia^ that vile quality which makes them laugh at a cross accident, and feed their eyes and their thoughts with the sight of any great calamity ; and indeed (morally speaking) they cannot do otherwise. " It is meat and drink to them to see others starve ; and their own clothes seem then to sit warmest upon them, when they behold others ready to perish with nakedness and cold ; like ^tna, never hotter than when surrounded by snow." *' Fancy poisoning a fellow out of envy — as Spagnoletto did !" exclaims Clive ewcome ; who can, however, bethink him of some brother artists whose admiration takes that biHous shape. But let us bestow yet another glance on the blatant beast, who will, as erst at Sir Calidore, open wide his mouth for the occasion, and display to the full his twin ranges of iron teeth, appearing like the mouth of Orcus griesly grim. * ' And therein were a thousand tonges empight Of sundry kindes and sundry quality ; Some were of dogs, that barked day and night ; And some of cats, that wrawling still did cry ; And some of beares, that groynd continually ; And some of tygres, that did seeme to gren And snar at all that ever passed by : But most of them were tonges of mortall men, Which spake reproachfully, not caring where nor when.
298 SCA DALS FEMALE SCHOLARS. * ' And them amongst were mingled here and there The tongues of serpents, with three-forked stings, That spat out poyson, and gore-bloudy gere, At all that came within his ravenings, . . He either blotted them with infamie, Or bit them with his banefull teeth of injury, " And in spite of Sir Calidore's brilliant success against the monster, it was Spenser's fate to declare the blatant beast still rampant and rampagious, — " barking and biting all that do him bate, albe they worthy blame or clear of crime." Own sister, or something disagreeably like it, to this perennial monster, is the same bard's personification of Slander; and advisedly he fixes on the sex. Of course we understand that slander of her own sex is a woman's privilege, quoth Mr. Roland Landsell, who ironically withdraws, however, his tribute to Lady Gwendoline's talent for scandal, when he professes to find her so mere a novice in that subtle art, as not to distinguish between stories that are bett trovati and those that are not — " their being true or false is not of the least consequence." Ben Jonson's Compass, in The Magfietic Lady, characterizes (or stigmatizes) Goody Polish to her face, as one "That's good at malice, good at mischief, all That can perplex or trouble a business thoroughly." And the next scene opens with this exchange of confidences between Rut and Sir Moth Interest : — *' Rut. 'Tis such a fly, this gossip, with her buzz, She blows on everything, in every place. Sir Moth. A busy woman is a fearful grievance." In a recent lament over the inefficacy of good books and sermons to check the baneful gossip of " female or quasi-female
tongues," the slaughter of characters is said to go on as merrily as it did in the days of Mrs. Candour ; and the existence is recognised of those who seem ordained to feed on scandal, as the scavenger-turkey is ordained to feed on dirt ; who, in taking
THE POISO OF SLA DER. 299 away their neighbours' characters, are only acting after their kind; whose mendacity in so doing is "glorious and picturesque." The spectacle of half-fashionable women whose tongues have made them nearly friendless, but whose pungent tongues retain for them a certain amount of contemptuous lies, going about manufacturing lies which, if they had any effect at all, would poison for ever a maligned life — such a spectacle, "unhappily no rarity," may well be called " one of the most revolting which our artificial state of society can furnish." Every day, complains the Caxton Essayist, we see venerable spinsters who delight in the moral murder of scandal, and guillotine a reputation between every cup of tea, though full of benignant charities to parrots, or dogs, or cats, or monkeys; which inveterate scandal-mongers were, no doubt, once fond-hearted little girls, and, while in their teens, were as much shocked at the idea of assassinating the character of winsome women, and poisoning the honour of unsuspecting hearths, as they now are at the " barbarity of pinching Fidele's delicate paw, or singeing Tabitha's inoffensive whiskers." Mr. Thackeray professes, in a parenthesis, his admiration of the conduct of ladies towards each other, with what smiles and curtsies they stab each other, with what innocent dexterity they can drop the drop of poison into the cup of conversation, hand round the goblet, smiling, to the whole family to drink, and make the dear domestic circle miserable. Does not an apostle call the tongue an unruly evil, full of deadly poison? The deadUest poisons, a commentator on that text remarks, are those for which no test is known ; there are poisons so destructive, that a single drop insinuated into the veins produces death in three seconds, and yet no chemical science can separate that virus from the contaminated blood, and show the metallic particles of poison
glittering palpably, and say, "Behold, it is there!" In the drop of venom which distils from the sting of the smallest insect, or the spikes of the nettle-leaf, there is concentrated the quintessence of a poison so subtle that the microscope cannot distinguish it; and yet so virulent, that it can inflame the blood, irritate the whole constitution, and convert day and
300 ADDER'S POISO U DER LADY'S LIPS. night into restless misery. "In St. James's day,* as now, it would appear that there were idle men and idle women, who went about from house to house, dropping slander as they went ; and yet you could not take up that slander and detect the falsehood there. You could not evaporate the truth in the slow process of the crucible, and then show the residuum of falsehood glittering and visible. You could not fasten upon any word or sentence, and say that it was calumny ; for in order to constitute slander, it is not necessary that the word spoken should be false — half truths are often more calumnious than whole falsehoods.'' It is not even necessary, as Mr. Robertson reminds us, that a word should be distinctly uttered ; a dropped lip, an arched eyebrow, a shrugged shoulder, a significant look, nay, even an emphatic silence, may do the work ; and when the light and trifling thing which has done the mischief has fluttered off, the venom is left, to work and rankle, to inflame hearts, to fever human existence, and to poison human society at the fountain-springs of life. Very emphatically was it said, he adds, by one whose whole being had smarted under such afflictions, "Adder's poison is under their lips.'' The Lady Blast of the Spectator has such a particular malignity in her whisper, that it blights like an easterly wind, and withers every reputation that it breathes upon. The Miss Brabazon of A Strange Story ^ by anonymous letter-writing conveys to innocent ears and sensitive hearts, " in biting words which female malice can make so sharp," poison that, in the case in question, destroys mind though not life : " The heart that took in the venom cast its poison on the brain, and the mind fled before the presence of a thought so deadly to all the ideas
* It is not without interest to observe in those remote times, and under a social system so widely different from the modern, — observes a dissertator of another kind, — the same small causes at M^ork to ruffle and to ruin which operate so commonly at this day; the same inventive jealousy, the same cunning slander, the same crafty and fabricated retailings of petty gossip. Hence the writer pauses to describe the " mechanism of those trivial and household springs of mischief, which we see every day at work in our chambers and at our hearths. It is in these, the lesser intrigues of life, that we mostly find ourselves at home with the past."
STUFFED WITH SPITE TO THE THROAT. 301 which its innocence had heretofore conceived." The Miss Limejuice of a clerical essayist is made the text for a homily on there being something to be said for even the most unamiable and worst of the race; for he takes the case of this sour, backbiting, malicious, wrong-headed, lying old woman, who gives her life to saying disagreeable things and making mischief between friends ; and he pleads on her behalf the unknown degree of physical irritability of nerve and weakness of constitution which the poor creature may have inherited, or the singular twist of mind which she may have got from nature and from bad and unkind treatment in youth. ot only of bitter judgments of men, but of a disposition to sow strife, and in short of emy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, is the remark made, that possibly they come out of a bad heart, but certainly out of a miserable one. The Miss Cynthia Badham of Dr. Holmes's Guardian Angel, is perhaps a compromise of the two ; six of the one, and half-a-dozen of the other. The Lady Penelope Penfeather of St. Ronaiis Well is, to some extent, painted, if not tarred, with the same brush. The Miss
Gussy Marks of Archie Lovell is bitterly spiteful ; her carefullyworded equivocations being dehberate, cold-blooded murders j murders with mahce aforethought: she belongs to the class who whispers about versions, more or less blackened, of other people's vilifications; who supply all missing links in other people's evidence ; and yet, " such an agreeable companion ! such unfailing spirits ! " is the good word strangers have to say of her, until, at least, they cease to be strangers. Spenser's embodiment has no such superficial or transitory grace to qualify her utter loathsomeness : from the first she is — "A foule and loathly creature sure in sight, And in conditions to be loath'd no lesse : For she was stuff 'd with rancour and despight Up to the throat, that oft with bitternesse It forth would breake and gush in great excesse, Pouring out streames of poyson and of gall Gainst all that truth or virtue doe professe ; Whom she with leasings lewdly did miscall And wickedly backbite; her name did Sclaunder call."
1. 68 FREE BOOKS http://www.scribd.com/doc/21800308/Free-Christian-Books
2. ALL WRITI GS http://www.scribd.com/glennpease/documents?page=970
294 MALIG A T MISCHIEF-MAKERS. that speaketh lies ; and he that soweth discord among brethren. There is a mischief-making malignity so fertile in its inventions, so remorseless in its efforts to do harm, so ingenious in its devisings to give pain, that the adept in it may almost say of himself and of his victims, in apostolic words, wrenched and wrested utterly from the apostolic meaning, " If I make you sorry, who is he that maketh me glad, but the same which is made sorry by me?" For he loves to speak all words that may do hurt, that may breed mischief, that may engender strife, that may cut like a sharp razor, does this false tongue. ** Peut-il etre des coeurs assez noirs pour se plaire A faire ainsi du mal pour le plaisir d'en faire ?" Le Mechant of Gresset is a systematic answer in the affirmative. Lisette paints him to the life : —
*'Je parle de ce goiit de troubler, de detruire, Du talent de brouiller et du plaisir de nuire : Semer I'aigreur, la haine et la division, Faire du mal enfin, voila votre Cleon." Dr. Thomas Brown is assured that were it within the power of the calumniator to rob his victims of the one thing which happily is not within his power, — the consciousness of their innocence and virtue, he would all too gladly exercise it ; so impossible is it to doubt that he who defames, at the risk of detection, would, if the virtues of others were submitted to his will, prevent all peril of this kind, by tearing from the heart every virtue of which he must now be content with denying the existence, and thus at once consign his victim to ignominy and rob him of its only consolation. So hateful, indeed, to the wicked, — affirms our moral philosopher, — is the very thought of moral excellence, that, if even one of the many slanderers with whom society is filled had this tremendous power, there might not be a single virtue remaining on the earth. A pretty picture is that preserved in the Maloniana, of Bishop Percy's painting, after Samuel Dyer, of no less noteworthy a person than Sir John Hawkins. The blackest colours
MALICE FERTILE I DEVICES. 295: are used, to give the world assurance of " a most detestable fellow," — "a man of the most mischievous, uncharitable, and malignant disposition," instances being alleged of his setting husband against wife, and brother against brother, " fomenting their animosity by anonymous letters." With respect to what Sir J. Hawkins has thrown in, that he " loved Dyer as a brother," this, the bishop said, was inserted from malignancy and art, to make the world suppose that nothing but the gross vices of Dyer could have extorted such a character from him ; while, in truth. Dyer is declared to have been so amiable that he never could possibly have lived in any great degree
of intimacy with the other at any period of his life. It would seem that any little offence, where none was meant, where cause for offence there was and could be none, ** Rankled in him and ruffled all his heart, As the sharp wind that ruffles all day long A little bitter pool about a stone On the bare coast." Perhaps the Don John of Shakspeare is the purest specimen extant of causeless malignity in mischief-making. He is ready to devise cruel calumnies against all comers. Qucelibet in qiiemvis opprobria fingere scbvus. Swift's portraiture of the Marquis de Guiscard has a smack of the Shakspearean Don, in so far as he accredits him with " an early, an undoubted propensity to mischief and villany, but without those fine parts useful in the cabinet ;" " an engine fit for the blackest mischief; ... his aspect gloomy and forbidding, no false indication of the malignancy within. or could the evil in his nature be diverted by benefits." Malice is no doubt a power in the world, says a modern essay- writer on the subject, who describes as the occupation of some persons, the working towards a neighbour's downfall, for the disinterested satisfaction of seeing him fall ; and who goes on to characterize persons guilty of the tragic forms of malice as the highest or the lowest among men ; on the one hand, kings and conquerors, statesmen pitted against one another at a crisis, heads of faction who must crush one another with a plot; on the
296 MALICE A D SPITE. other hand, the clown pulling up his parson's tulips, or firing his neighbour's stackyard, the operative scarring the pretty girl's face with vitriol, or blowing up the non-unionist's house and household. It is argued that people's attention must be fixed long on a single object, their passions concentrated, their thoughts restricted to a narrow circle, for maHce to achieve its triumphs, just as venom intensifies itself in dark holes
and obscure corners, among ruins and waste places of the earth. But society is shown to find a substitute for malice — "a domestic, creditable, neighbourly form of the great vice " — in spite ; for though we may scruple to call anybody malicious except in history or the newspapers, with spite we are on more familiar terms. The varnish of goodness in society, as one of Balzac's reviewers has observed, and especially in English society, where goodness is universal, either in the reality or the counterfeit, is apt to make us forgetful of the truth that, as there are in the animal world creatures which have venom, and which will bite and sting on the slightest real or imaginary provocation, so there are in the human w^orld beings whose nature it is to take a positive and permanent delight in the misfortunes of others, especially when jealous of their advantages. And "the step from taking pleasures in other people's misfortunes to taking an active share in bringing those misfortunes about, is not very difficult when events and circumstances are favourable." Like as, in Spenser's likeness of unlikes, the gentle heart itself bewrays in doing gentle deeds with frank delight, "Even so the baser mind itselfe displayes In cancred malice and revengefull spight : For to maligne, t' envie, t' use shifting sleight Be arguments of a vile donghill mind ; Which, what it dare not doe by open might, To work by wicked treason wayes doth find, By such discourteous deeds discovering his base mind." In a previous canto the poet had piteously set forth the character of the wounds inflicted by the blatant beast; for that beast's teeth are so exceeding venomous and keen.
THE BLATA T BEAST. ic^-j " made all of rusty yron ranckling sore," that, where they bite, "it booteth not to weene with salve, or antidote, or other mene, it ever to amend." Can the effects of slander
be better represented, asks M. Leon Feugere, than by the old French poet, Gui du Faur de Pibrac, when he says of Calumny, much as Spenser of the blatant beast, — " Quand une fois ce monstre nous attache, II salt si fort ses cordillons nouer, Que, bien qu'on puisse enfin les denouer, Restent toujours les marques de I'attache." Only fling filth enough, and some of it must stick. Dr. South has a discourse on the phenomenon of certain dispositions that do really delight themselves in mischief, and love to see all men about them miserable. He explains it to be what the Greeks call iinxaLpeKaKia^ that vile quality which makes them laugh at a cross accident, and feed their eyes and their thoughts with the sight of any great calamity ; and indeed (morally speaking) they cannot do otherwise. " It is meat and drink to them to see others starve ; and their own clothes seem then to sit warmest upon them, when they behold others ready to perish with nakedness and cold ; like ^tna, never hotter than when surrounded by snow." *' Fancy poisoning a fellow out of envy — as Spagnoletto did !" exclaims Clive ewcome ; who can, however, bethink him of some brother artists whose admiration takes that biHous shape. But let us bestow yet another glance on the blatant beast, who will, as erst at Sir Calidore, open wide his mouth for the occasion, and display to the full his twin ranges of iron teeth, appearing like the mouth of Orcus griesly grim. * ' And therein were a thousand tonges empight Of sundry kindes and sundry quality ; Some were of dogs, that barked day and night ; And some of cats, that wrawling still did cry ; And some of beares, that groynd continually ; And some of tygres, that did seeme to gren And snar at all that ever passed by : But most of them were tonges of mortall men, Which spake reproachfully, not caring where nor when.
298 SCA DALS FEMALE SCHOLARS. * ' And them amongst were mingled here and there The tongues of serpents, with three-forked stings, That spat out poyson, and gore-bloudy gere, At all that came within his ravenings, . . He either blotted them with infamie, Or bit them with his banefull teeth of injury, " And in spite of Sir Calidore's brilliant success against the monster, it was Spenser's fate to declare the blatant beast still rampant and rampagious, — " barking and biting all that do him bate, albe they worthy blame or clear of crime." Own sister, or something disagreeably like it, to this perennial monster, is the same bard's personification of Slander; and advisedly he fixes on the sex. Of course we understand that slander of her own sex is a woman's privilege, quoth Mr. Roland Landsell, who ironically withdraws, however, his tribute to Lady Gwendoline's talent for scandal, when he professes to find her so mere a novice in that subtle art, as not to distinguish between stories that are bett trovati and those that are not — " their being true or false is not of the least consequence." Ben Jonson's Compass, in The Magfietic Lady, characterizes (or stigmatizes) Goody Polish to her face, as one "That's good at malice, good at mischief, all That can perplex or trouble a business thoroughly." And the next scene opens with this exchange of confidences between Rut and Sir Moth Interest : — *' Rut. 'Tis such a fly, this gossip, with her buzz, She blows on everything, in every place. Sir Moth. A busy woman is a fearful grievance." In a recent lament over the inefficacy of good books and sermons to check the baneful gossip of " female or quasi-female
tongues," the slaughter of characters is said to go on as merrily as it did in the days of Mrs. Candour ; and the existence is recognised of those who seem ordained to feed on scandal, as the scavenger-turkey is ordained to feed on dirt ; who, in taking
THE POISO OF SLA DER. 299 away their neighbours' characters, are only acting after their kind; whose mendacity in so doing is "glorious and picturesque." The spectacle of half-fashionable women whose tongues have made them nearly friendless, but whose pungent tongues retain for them a certain amount of contemptuous lies, going about manufacturing lies which, if they had any effect at all, would poison for ever a maligned life — such a spectacle, "unhappily no rarity," may well be called " one of the most revolting which our artificial state of society can furnish." Every day, complains the Caxton Essayist, we see venerable spinsters who delight in the moral murder of scandal, and guillotine a reputation between every cup of tea, though full of benignant charities to parrots, or dogs, or cats, or monkeys; which inveterate scandal-mongers were, no doubt, once fond-hearted little girls, and, while in their teens, were as much shocked at the idea of assassinating the character of winsome women, and poisoning the honour of unsuspecting hearths, as they now are at the " barbarity of pinching Fidele's delicate paw, or singeing Tabitha's inoffensive whiskers." Mr. Thackeray professes, in a parenthesis, his admiration of the conduct of ladies towards each other, with what smiles and curtsies they stab each other, with what innocent dexterity they can drop the drop of poison into the cup of conversation, hand round the goblet, smiling, to the whole family to drink, and make the dear domestic circle miserable. Does not an apostle call the tongue an unruly evil, full of deadly poison? The deadUest poisons, a commentator on that text remarks, are those for which no test is known ; there are poisons so destructive, that a single drop insinuated into the veins produces death in three seconds, and yet no chemical science can separate that virus from the contaminated blood, and show the metallic particles of poison
glittering palpably, and say, "Behold, it is there!" In the drop of venom which distils from the sting of the smallest insect, or the spikes of the nettle-leaf, there is concentrated the quintessence of a poison so subtle that the microscope cannot distinguish it; and yet so virulent, that it can inflame the blood, irritate the whole constitution, and convert day and
300 ADDER'S POISO U DER LADY'S LIPS. night into restless misery. "In St. James's day,* as now, it would appear that there were idle men and idle women, who went about from house to house, dropping slander as they went ; and yet you could not take up that slander and detect the falsehood there. You could not evaporate the truth in the slow process of the crucible, and then show the residuum of falsehood glittering and visible. You could not fasten upon any word or sentence, and say that it was calumny ; for in order to constitute slander, it is not necessary that the word spoken should be false — half truths are often more calumnious than whole falsehoods.'' It is not even necessary, as Mr. Robertson reminds us, that a word should be distinctly uttered ; a dropped lip, an arched eyebrow, a shrugged shoulder, a significant look, nay, even an emphatic silence, may do the work ; and when the light and trifling thing which has done the mischief has fluttered off, the venom is left, to work and rankle, to inflame hearts, to fever human existence, and to poison human society at the fountain-springs of life. Very emphatically was it said, he adds, by one whose whole being had smarted under such afflictions, "Adder's poison is under their lips.'' The Lady Blast of the Spectator has such a particular malignity in her whisper, that it blights like an easterly wind, and withers every reputation that it breathes upon. The Miss Brabazon of A Strange Story ^ by anonymous letter-writing conveys to innocent ears and sensitive hearts, " in biting words which female malice can make so sharp," poison that, in the case in question, destroys mind though not life : " The heart that took in the venom cast its poison on the brain, and the mind fled before the presence of a thought so deadly to all the ideas
* It is not without interest to observe in those remote times, and under a social system so widely different from the modern, — observes a dissertator of another kind, — the same small causes at M^ork to ruffle and to ruin which operate so commonly at this day; the same inventive jealousy, the same cunning slander, the same crafty and fabricated retailings of petty gossip. Hence the writer pauses to describe the " mechanism of those trivial and household springs of mischief, which we see every day at work in our chambers and at our hearths. It is in these, the lesser intrigues of life, that we mostly find ourselves at home with the past."
STUFFED WITH SPITE TO THE THROAT. 301 which its innocence had heretofore conceived." The Miss Limejuice of a clerical essayist is made the text for a homily on there being something to be said for even the most unamiable and worst of the race; for he takes the case of this sour, backbiting, malicious, wrong-headed, lying old woman, who gives her life to saying disagreeable things and making mischief between friends ; and he pleads on her behalf the unknown degree of physical irritability of nerve and weakness of constitution which the poor creature may have inherited, or the singular twist of mind which she may have got from nature and from bad and unkind treatment in youth. ot only of bitter judgments of men, but of a disposition to sow strife, and in short of emy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, is the remark made, that possibly they come out of a bad heart, but certainly out of a miserable one. The Miss Cynthia Badham of Dr. Holmes's Guardian Angel, is perhaps a compromise of the two ; six of the one, and half-a-dozen of the other. The Lady Penelope Penfeather of St. Ronaiis Well is, to some extent, painted, if not tarred, with the same brush. The Miss
Gussy Marks of Archie Lovell is bitterly spiteful ; her carefullyworded equivocations being dehberate, cold-blooded murders j murders with mahce aforethought: she belongs to the class who whispers about versions, more or less blackened, of other people's vilifications; who supply all missing links in other people's evidence ; and yet, " such an agreeable companion ! such unfailing spirits ! " is the good word strangers have to say of her, until, at least, they cease to be strangers. Spenser's embodiment has no such superficial or transitory grace to qualify her utter loathsomeness : from the first she is — "A foule and loathly creature sure in sight, And in conditions to be loath'd no lesse : For she was stuff 'd with rancour and despight Up to the throat, that oft with bitternesse It forth would breake and gush in great excesse, Pouring out streames of poyson and of gall Gainst all that truth or virtue doe professe ; Whom she with leasings lewdly did miscall And wickedly backbite; her name did Sclaunder call."
1. 68 FREE BOOKS http://www.scribd.com/doc/21800308/Free-Christian-Books
2. ALL WRITI GS http://www.scribd.com/glennpease/documents?page=970
