The Antiquary Part 41

"O, my dear boy, you are only thoughtless and foolish."

"But Juno--she is only thoughtless too, I a.s.sure you--the breaker tells me she has no vice or stubbornness."

"Well, I grant Juno also a free pardon--conditioned, that you will imitate her in avoiding vice and stubbornness, and that henceforward she banish herself forth of Monkbarns parlour."

"Then, uncle," said the soldier, "I should have been very sorry and ashamed to propose to you anything in the way of expiation of my own sins, or those of my follower, that I thought worth your acceptance; but now, as all is forgiven, will you permit the orphan-nephew, to whom you have been a father, to offer you a trifle, which I have been a.s.sured is really curious, and which only the cross accident of my wound has prevented my delivering to you before? I got it from a French savant, to whom I rendered some service after the Alexandria affair."

The captain put a small ring-case into the Antiquary's hands, which, when opened, was found to contain an antique ring of ma.s.sive gold, with a cameo, most beautifully executed, bearing a head of Cleopatra.

The Antiquary broke forth into unrepressed ecstasy, shook his nephew cordially by the hand, thanked him an hundred times, and showed the ring to his sister and niece, the latter of whom had the tact to give it sufficient admiration; but Miss Griselda (though she had the same affection for her nephew) had not address enough to follow the lead.

"It's a bonny thing," she said, "Monkbarns, and, I dare say, a valuable; but it's out o'my way--ye ken I am nae judge o' sic matters."

"There spoke all Fairport in one voice!" exclaimed Oldbuck "it is the very spirit of the borough has infected us all; I think I have smelled the smoke these two days, that the wind has stuck, like a remora, in the north-east--and its prejudices fly farther than its vapours. Believe me, my dear Hector, were I to walk up the High Street of Fairport, displaying this inestimable gem in the eyes of each one I met, no human creature, from the provost to the town-crier, would stop to ask me its history. But if I carried a bale of linen cloth under my arm, I could not penetrate to the Horsemarket ere I should be overwhelmed with queries about its precise texture and price. Oh, one might parody their brutal ignorance in the words of Gray:

Weave the warp and weave the woof, The winding-sheet of wit and sense, Dull garment of defensive proof, 'Gainst all that doth not gather pence."

The most remarkable proof of this peace-offering being quite acceptable was, that while the Antiquary was in full declamation, Juno, who held him in awe, according to the remarkable instinct by which dogs instantly discover those who like or dislike them, had peeped several times into the room, and encountering nothing very forbidding in his aspect, had at length presumed to introduce her full person; and finally, becoming bold by impunity, she actually ate up Mr. Oldbuck's toast, as, looking first at one then at another of his audience, he repeated, with self-complacency,

"Weave the warp and weave the woof,--

"You remember the pa.s.sage in the Fatal Sisters, which, by the way, is not so fine as in the original--But, hey-day! my toast has vanished!--I see which way--Ah, thou type of womankind! no wonder they take offence at thy generic appellation!"--(So saying, he shook his fist at Juno, who scoured out of the parlour.)--"However, as Jupiter, according to Homer, could not rule Juno in heaven, and as Jack Muirhead, according to Hector M'Intyre, has been equally unsuccessful on earth, I suppose she must have her own way." And this mild censure the brother and sister justly accounted a full pardon for Juno's offences, and sate down well pleased to the morning meal.

When breakfast was over, the Antiquary proposed to his nephew to go down with him to attend the funeral. The soldier pleaded the want of a mourning habit.

"O, that does not signify--your presence is all that is requisite. I a.s.sure you, you will see something that will entertain--no, that's an improper phrase--but that will interest you, from the resemblances which I will point out betwixt popular customs on such occasions and those of the ancients."

"Heaven forgive me!" thought M'Intyre;--"I shall certainly misbehave, and lose all the credit I have so lately and accidentally gained."

When they set out, schooled as he was by the warning and entreating looks of his sister, the soldier made his resolution strong to give no offence by evincing inattention or impatience. But our best resolutions are frail, when opposed to our predominant inclinations. Our Antiquary,--to leave nothing unexplained, had commenced with the funeral rites of the ancient Scandinavians, when his nephew interrupted him, in a discussion upon the "age of hills," to remark that a large sea-gull, which flitted around them, had come twice within shot. This error being acknowledged and pardoned, Oldbuck resumed his disquisition.

"These are circ.u.mstances you ought to attend to and be familiar with, my dear Hector; for, in the strange contingencies of the present war which agitates every corner of Europe, there is no knowing where you may be called upon to serve. If in Norway, for example, or Denmark, or any part of the ancient Scania, or Scandinavia, as we term it, what could be more convenient than to have at your fingers' ends the history and antiquities of that ancient country, the officina gentium, the mother of modern Europe, the nursery of those heroes,

Stern to inflict, and stubborn to endure, Who smiled in death?--

How animating, for example, at the conclusion of a weary march, to find yourself in the vicinity of a Runic monument, and discover that you have pitched your tent beside the tomb of a hero!"

"I am afraid, sir, our mess would be better supplied if it chanced to be in the neighbourhood of a good poultry-yard."

"Alas, that you should say so! No wonder the days of Cressy and Agincourt are no more, when respect for ancient valour has died away in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the British soldiery."

"By no means, sir--by no manner of means. I dare say that Edward and Henry, and the rest of these heroes, thought of their dinner, however, before they thought of examining an old tombstone. But I a.s.sure you, we are by no means insensible to the memoir of our fathers' fame; I used often of an evening to get old Rory MAlpin to sing us songs out of Ossian about the battles of Fingal and Lamon Mor, and Magnus and the Spirit of Muirartach."

"And did you believe," asked the aroused Antiquary, "did you absolutely believe that stuff of Macpherson's to be really ancient, you simple boy?"

"Believe it, sir?--how could I but believe it, when I have heard the songs sung from my infancy?"

"But not the same as Macpherson's English Ossian--you're not absurd enough to say that, I hope?" said the Antiquary, his brow darkening with wrath.

But Hector stoutly abode the storm; like many a st.u.r.dy Celt, he imagined the honour of his country and native language connected with the authenticity of these popular poems, and would have fought knee-deep, or forfeited life and land, rather than have given up a line of them.

He therefore undauntedly maintained, that Rory MAlpin could repeat the whole book from one end to another;--and it was only upon cross-examination that he explained an a.s.sertion so general, by adding "At least, if he was allowed whisky enough, he could repeat as long as anybody would hearken to him."

"Ay, ay," said the Antiquary; "and that, I suppose, was not very long."

"Why, we had our duty, sir, to attend to, and could not sit listening all night to a piper."

"But do you recollect, now," said Oldbuck, setting his teeth firmly together, and speaking without opening them, which was his custom when contradicted--"Do you recollect, now, any of these verses you thought so beautiful and interesting--being a capital judge, no doubt, of such things?"

"I don't pretend to much skill, uncle; but it's not very reasonable to be angry with me for admiring the antiquities of my own country more than those of the Harolds, Harf.a.gers, and Hacos you are so fond of."

"Why, these, sir--these mighty and unconquered Goths--were your ancestors!

The bare-breeched Celts whom theysubdued, and suffered only to exist, like a fearful people, in the crevices of the rocks, were but their Mancipia and Serfs!"

Hector's brow now grew red in his turn. "Sir," he said, "I don't understand the meaning of Mancipia and Serfs, but I conceive that such names are very improperly applied to Scotch Highlanders: no man but my mother's brother dared to have used such language in my presence; and I pray you will observe, that I consider it as neither hospitable, handsome, kind, nor generous usage towards your guest and your kinsman.

My ancestors, Mr. Oldbuck"--

"Were great and gallant chiefs, I dare say, Hector; and really I did not mean to give you such immense offence in treating a point of remote antiquity, a subject on which I always am myself cool, deliberate, and unimpa.s.sioned. But you are as hot and hasty, as if you were Hector and Achilles, and Agamemnon to boot."

"I am sorry I expressed myself so hastily, uncle, especially to you, who have been so generous and good. But my ancestors"--

"No more about it, lad; I meant them no affront--none."

"I'm glad of it, sir; for the house of M'Intyre"--

"Peace be with them all, every man of them," said the Antiquary. "But to return to our subject--Do you recollect, I say, any of those poems which afforded you such amus.e.m.e.nt?"

"Very hard this," thought M'Intyre, "that he will speak with such glee of everything which is ancient, excepting my family. "--Then, after some efforts at recollection, he added aloud, "Yes, sir,--I think I do remember some lines; but you do not understand the Gaelic language."

"And will readily excuse hearing it. But you can give me some idea of the sense in our own vernacular idiom?"

"I shall prove a wretched interpreter," said M'Intyre, running over the original, well garnished with aghes, aughs, and oughs, and similar gutterals, and then coughing and hawking as if the translation stuck in his throat. At length, having premised that the poem was a dialogue between the poet Oisin, or Ossian, and Patrick, the tutelar Saint of Ireland, and that it was difficult, if not impossible, to render the exquisite felicity of the first two or three lines, he said the sense was to this purpose:

"Patrick the psalm-singer, Since you will not listen to one of my stories, Though you never heard it before, I am sorry to tell you You are little better than an a.s.s"--

"Good! good!" exclaimed the Antiquary; "but go on. Why, this is, after all, the most admirable fooling--I dare say the poet was very right. What says the Saint?"

"He replies in character," said M'Intyre; "but you should hear MAlpin sing the original. The speeches of Ossian come in upon a strong deep ba.s.s--those of Patrick are upon a tenor key."

"Like MAlpin's drone and small pipes, I suppose," said Oldbuck. "Well?

Pray go on."

"Well then, Patrick replies to Ossian:

Upon my word, son of Fingal, While I am warbling the psalms, The clamour of your old women's tales Disturbs my devotional exercises."

"Excellent!--why, this is better and better. I hope Saint Patrick sung better than Blattergowl's precentor, or it would be hang--choice between the poet and psalmist. But what I admire is the courtesy of these two eminent persons towards each other. It is a pity there should not be a word of this in Macpherson's translation."

"If you are sure of that," said M'Intyre, gravely, "he must have taken very unwarrantable liberties with his original."