In the battle 'twixt Evil and Good, writes a bard of later date, who has seen what that earlier one longed to see, and which to have seen would have made him glad,

"Heed not what may be gain'd or be lost

In that battle. Whatever the odds,

Fight it out, never counting the cost,

Man's the deed is, the consequence God's."

0

razor.

MALIGNANT MISCHIEF-MAKERS.

Psalm lii. 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 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

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 être des cœurs assez noirs pour se plaire

A faire ainsi du mal pour le plaisir d'en faire ?"

Le Méchant of Gresset is a systematic answer in the affirmative. Lisette paints him to the life :

"Je parle de ce goût de troubler, de détruire,

Du talent de brouiller et du plaisir de nuire :
Semer l'aigreur, la haine et la division,
Faire du mal enfin, voilà votre Cléon."

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 IN 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. Quælibet in quemvis opprobria fingere sævus. 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. Nor 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

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 malice 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
world beings whose nature it is to take a positive and per-
manent 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 BLATANT BEAST.

297

"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. Léon Feugère, 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,

Il sait si fort ses cordillons nouer,

Que, bien qu'on puisse enfin les dénouer,

Restent toujours les marques de l'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 eπixαipeкaкía, 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 Ætna, never hotter than when surrounded by snow." Fancy poisoning a fellow out of envy-as Spagnoletto did!" exclaims Clive Newcome; who can, however, bethink him of some brother artists whose admiration takes that bilious 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.

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"And therein were a thousand tonges empight

Of sundry kindes and sundry quality;

Some were of dogs, that barkèd 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.