Tales and Novels Volume II Part 49

Mr. Edwards armed himself and the negroes on his plantation, as well as the whites; they were all equally attached to him. He followed Caesar into the recesses of the wood.

They proceeded with all possible rapidity, but in perfect silence, till they reached Esther's habitation: which they surrounded completely, before they were perceived by the conspirators.

Mr. Edwards looked through a hole in the wall; and, by the blue flame of a cauldron, over which the sorceress was stretching her shrivelled hands, he saw Hector and five stout negroes standing, intent upon her incantations. These negroes held their knives in their hands, ready to dip them into the bowl of poison. It was proposed, by one of the whites, to set fire immediately to the hut, and thus to force the rebels to surrender. The advice was followed; but Mr. Edwards charged his people to spare their prisoners. The moment the rebels saw that the thatch of the hut was in flames, they set up the Koromantyn yell of war, and rushed out with frantic desperation.

"Yield! You are pardoned, Hector," cried Mr. Edwards, in a loud voice.

"You are pardoned, my friend!" repeated Caesar.

Hector, incapable at this instant of listening to anything but revenge, sprang forwards, and plunged his knife into the bosom of Caesar. The faithful servant staggered back a few paces: his master caught him in his arms. "I die content," said he. "Bury me with Clara."

He swooned from loss of blood as they were carrying him home; but when his wound was examined, it was found not to be mortal. As he recovered from his swoon, he stared wildly round him, trying to recollect where he was, and what had happened. He thought that he was still in a dream, when he saw his beloved Clara standing beside him. The opiate, which the pretended sorceress had administered to her, had ceased to operate; she wakened from her trance just at the time the Koromantyn yell commenced.

Caesar's joy!--we must leave that to the imagination.

In the mean time, what became of the rebel negroes, and Mr. Edwards?

The taking the chief conspirators prisoners did not prevent the negroes upon Jefferies' plantation from insurrection. The moment they heard the war-whoop, the signal agreed upon, they rose in a body; and, before they could be prevented, either by the whites on the estate, or by Mr.

Edwards' adherents, they had set fire to the overseer's house, and to the canes. The overseer was the princ.i.p.al object of their vengeance--he died in tortures, inflicted by the hands of those who had suffered most by his cruelties. Mr. Edwards, however, quelled the insurgents before rebellion spread to any other estates in the island. The influence of his character, and the effect of his eloquence upon the minds of the people, were astonis.h.i.+ng: nothing but his interference could have prevented the total destruction of Mr. Jefferies and his family, who, as it was computed, lost this night upwards of fifty thousand pounds.

He was never afterwards able to recover his losses, or to shake off his constant fear of a fresh insurrection among his slaves. At length, he and his lady returned to England, where they were obliged to live in obscurity and indigence. They had no consolation in their misfortunes but that of railing at the treachery of the whole race of slaves. Our readers, we hope, will think that at least one exception may be made, in favour of THE GRATEFUL NEGRO. {Empty page}

TO-MORROW

"Oh this detestable _To-morrow!_--a thing always expected, yet never found."--JOHNSON.

CHAPTER I.

It has long been my intention to write my own history, and I am determined to begin it to-day; for half the good intentions of my life have been frustrated by my unfortunate habit of putting things off till to-morrow.

When I was a young man, I used to be told that this was my only fault; I believed it, and my vanity or laziness persuaded me that this fault was but small, and that I should easily cure myself of it in time.

That time, however, has not yet arrived, and at my advanced age I must give up all thoughts of amendment, hoping, however, that sincere repentance may stand instead of reformation.

My father was an eminent London bookseller: he happened to be looking over a new biographical dictionary on the day when I was brought into the world; and at the moment when my birth was announced to him, he had his finger upon the name _Basil_; he read aloud--"_Basil_, canonized bishop of Caesarea, a theological, controversial, and moral writer."

"My boy," continued my father, "shall be named after this great man, and I hope and believe that I shall live to see him either a celebrated theological, controversial, and moral author, or a bishop. I am not so sanguine as to expect that he should be both these good things."

I was christened Basil according to my father's wishes, and his hopes of my future celebrity and fortune were confirmed, during my childhood, by instances of wit and memory, which were not perhaps greater than what could have been found in my little contemporaries, but which appeared to the vanity of parental fondness extraordinary, if not supernatural.

My father declared that it would be a sin not to give me a learned education, and he went even beyond his means to procure for me all the advantages of the best modes of instruction. I was stimulated, even when a boy, by the idea that I should become a great man, and my masters had for some time reason to be satisfied; but what they called the _quickness of my parts_ continually r.e.t.a.r.ded my progress. The facility with which I learned my lessons encouraged me to put off learning them till the last moment; and this habit of procrastinating, which was begun in presumption, ended in disgrace.

When I was sent to a public school, I found among my companions so many temptations to idleness, that notwithstanding the quickness of my parts, I was generally flogged twice a week. As I grew older, my reason might perhaps have taught me to correct myself, but my vanity was excited to persist in idleness by certain imprudent sayings or whisperings of my father.

When I came home from school at the holidays, and when complaints were preferred against me in letters from my school-master, my father, even while he affected to scold me for my negligence, flattered me in the most dangerous manner by adding--_aside_ to some friend of the family--"My Basil is a strange fellow!--can do any thing he pleases--all his masters say so--but he is a sad idle dog--all your men of genius are so--puts off business always to the last moment--all your men of genius do so. For instance, there is ----, whose third edition of odes I have just published--what an idle dog he is! Yet who makes such a noise in the world as he does?--put every thing off till _to-morrow_, like my Basil--but can do more at the last moment than any man in England--that is, if the fit seizes him--for he does nothing but by fits--has no application--none--says it would 'petrify him to a dunce.' I never knew a man of genius who was not an idle dog."

Not a syllable of such speeches was lost upon me: the idea of a man of genius and of an idle dog were soon so firmly joined together in my imagination, that it was impossible to separate them, either by my own reason or by that of my preceptors. I gloried in the very habits which my tutors laboured to correct; and I never was seriously mortified by the consequences of my own folly till, at a public examination at Eton, I lost a premium by putting off till it was too late the finis.h.i.+ng a copy of verses. The lines which I had written were said by all my young and old friends to be beautiful. The prize was gained by one Johnson, a heavy lad, of no sort of genius, but of great perseverance. His verses were finished, however, at the stated time.

"For dulness ever must be regular!"

My fragment, charming as it was, was useless, except to hand about afterward among my friends, to prove what I might have done if I had thought it worth while.

My father was extremely vexed by my missing an opportunity of distinguis.h.i.+ng myself at this public exhibition, especially as the king had honoured the a.s.sembly with his presence; and as those who had gained premiums were presented to his majesty, it was supposed that their being thus early _marked_ as lads of talents would be highly advantageous to their advancement in life. All this my father felt, and, blaming himself for having encouraged me in _the indolence of genius_, he determined to counteract his former imprudence, and was resolved, he said, to cure me at once of my habit of procrastination. For this purpose he took down from his shelves Young's Night Thoughts; from which he remembered a line, which has become a _stock_ line among writing-masters' copies:

"_Procrastination_ is the thief of time."

He hunted the book for the words _Procrastination, Time, To-day,_ and _To-morrow_, and made an extract of seven long pages on the dangers of delay.

"Now, my dear Basil," said he, "this is what will cure you for life, and this you must get perfectly by heart, before I give you one s.h.i.+lling more pocket-money."

The motive was all powerful, and with pains, iteration, and curses, I fixed the heterogeneous quotations so well in my memory that some of them have remained there to this day. For instance--

"_Time_ destroyed Is _suicide_, where more than blood is spilt.

_Time_ flies, death urges, knells call, Heav'n invites, h.e.l.l threatens.

We push _Time_ from us, and we wish him back.

Man flies from _Time_, and Time from man too soon; In sad divorce this double flight must end; And then where are we?

Be wise _to-day_, 'tis madness to defer, &c.

Next day the fatal precedent will plead, &c.

Lorenzo--O for _yesterdays_ to come!

_To-day_ is _yesterday_ return'd; return'd, Full powered to cancel, expiate, raise, adorn, And reinstate us on the rock of peace.

Let it not share its predecessor's fate, Nor, like its elder sisters, die a fool.

Where shall I find him? Angels! tell me where: _You_ know him; he is near you; point him out; Shall I see glories beaming from his brow?

Or trace his footsteps by the rising flow'rs?

Your golden wings _now_ hov'ring o'er him shed Protection: now are wav'ring in applause To that blest son of foresight! Lord of fate!

That awful independent on _to-morrow!_ Whose _work is done_; who triumphs in the past; Whose _yesterdays_ look backward with a smile."

I spare you the rest of my task, and I earnestly hope, my dear reader, that these citations may have a better effect upon you than they had upon me. With shame I confess, that even with the addition of Shakspeare's eloquent

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow," &c.

which I learnt by heart gratis, not a bit the better was I for all this poetical morality. What I wanted was, not conviction of my folly, but resolution to amend.

When I say that I was not a bit the better for these doc.u.mentings, I must not omit to observe to you that I was very near four hundred pounds a year the better for them.

Being obliged to learn so much of Young's Night Thoughts by rote, I was rather disgusted, and my attention was roused to criticise the lines which had been forced upon my admiration. Afterward, when I went to college, I delighted to maintain, in opposition to some of my companions, who were enthusiastic admirers of Young, that he was no poet. The more I was ridiculed, the more I persisted. I talked my self into notice; I became acquainted with several of the literary men at Cambridge; I wrote in defence of my opinion, or, as some called it, my heresy. I maintained that what all the world had mistaken for sublimity was bombast; that the Night Thoughts were fuller of witty conceits than of poetical images: I drew a parallel between Young and Cowley; and I finished by p.r.o.nouncing Young to be the Cowley of the eighteenth century. To do myself justice, there was much ingenuity and some truth in my essay, but it was the declamation of a partisan, who can think only on one side of a question, and who, in the heat of controversy, says more than he thinks, and more than he originally intended.

It is often the fortune of literary partisans to obtain a share of temporary celebrity far beyond their deserts, especially if they attack any writer of established reputation. The success of my essay exceeded my most sanguine expectations, and I began to think that my father was right; that I was born to be a great genius, and a great man. The notice taken of me by a learned prelate, who piqued himself upon being considered as the patron of young men of talents, confirmed me at once in my self-conceit and my hopes of preferment.

I mentioned to you that my father, in honour of my namesake Basil, bishop of Caesarea, and to verify his own _presentiments_, had educated me for the Church. My present patron, who seemed to like me the better the oftener I dined with him, gave me reason to hope that he would provide for me handsomely. I was not yet ordained, when a living of four hundred per annum fell into his gift: he held it over for some months, as it was thought, on purpose for me.

In the mean time he employed me to write a charity sermon for him, which he was to preach, as it was expected, to a crowded congregation. None but those who are themselves slaves to the habit of procrastination will believe that I could be so foolish as to put off writing this sermon till the Sat.u.r.day evening before it was wanted. Some of my young companions came unexpectedly to sup with me; we sat late: in the vanity of a young author, who glories in the rapidity of composition, I said to myself that I could finish my sermon in an hour's notice. But, alas!