Various - Blackwood\'s Edinburgh Magazine Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844

V >> Various >> Blackwood\'s Edinburgh Magazine Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844

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BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCXL. FEBRUARY 1844. Vol. LV.

CONTENTS:

THE HERETIC
THRUSH-HUNTING. BY ALEXANDER DUMAS
HIGH LIFE IN THE LAST CENTURY
NEWS FROM AN EXILED CONTRIBUTOR
THE PROPHECY OF THE TWELVE TRIBES
A BEWAILMENT FROM BATH; OR, POOR OLD MAIDS
MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN. PART VIII.
SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND
SITTING FOR A PORTRAIT
MY FRIEND
THE LAND OF SLAVES
THE PRIEST'S BURIAL
PRUDENCE
FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION

* * * * *

EDINBURGH:

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET;
AND 22, PALL-MALL, LONDON.

To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed.

SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS THE UNITED KINGDOM.

* * * * *

PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES, EDINBURGH.

* * * * *

THE HERETIC.[1]

[1] _The Heretic_. Translated from the Russian of Lajetchnikoff. By
T.B. Shaw, B.A. of Cambridge. In three volumes.

It is now about three centuries since Richard Chancellor, pilot-major of
the fleet which, under the command of Sir Hugh Willoughby, and by the
advice of Sebastian Cabot, set out to discover a north-east passage to
China, carried his ship, the Edward Bonaventura, into Archangel. The rest
of the fleet put into a haven on the coast of Lapland, where all their
crews, with the gallant commander, perished miserably of cold and hunger.
Chancellor, accompanied by Master George Killingworthe, found his way to
Moscow, where he was courteously entertained by the Tsar Ivan IV.,
surnamed the Terrible. On his return to England in 1554, he delivered a
friendly letter from the Tsar to King Edward VI., and announced to the
people of England "the discovery of Muscovy." The English adventurers
where mightily astonished by the state and splendour of the Russian
court, and gave a curious account of their intercourse with the tyrant
Ivan, who treated them with great familiarity and kindness, though he was
perhaps the most atrocious monster, not excepting the worst of the Roman
emperors, that ever disgraced a throne. The Tsar "called them to his
table to receive each a cup from his hand to drinke, and took into his
hand Master George Killingworthe's beard, which reached over the table,
and pleasantly delivered it to the metropolitan, who seeming to bless it,
said in Russ, 'This is God's gift;' as indeed at that time it was not
only thicke, broad, and yellow coulered, but in length five foot and two
inches of a size."

Chancellor returned the following year to Moscow, and arranged with the
Tsar the commercial privileges and immunities of a new company of
merchant-adventurers who desired to trade with Muscovy; but in 1556, while
on his way home, accompanied by Osep Neped, the first Russian ambassador
to the court of England, their ship was wrecked on our own coast, at
Pitsligo bay, where Chancellor was drowned, with most of the crew; but
Osep Neped, who escaped, was conducted with much pomp to London, and there
established on a firmer basis the commercial relations between the two
countries, to which Chancellor's discovery had led, and of which he had
laid the foundation. The commerce thus begun has continued uninterrupted,
to the mutual advantage of both nations, up to this time, and thousands of
our countrymen have there gained wealth and distinction, in commerce, in
the arts, in science, and in arms.

But of the twenty-seven millions of men, women, and children who people
Great Britain and Ireland, how many may be presumed to know any thing of
Russian literature, or even to have enquired whether it contains any thing
worth knowing? Are there a dozen literary men or women amongst us who
could read a Russian romance, or understand a Russian drama? Dr Bowring
was regarded as a prodigy of polyglot learning, because he gave us some
very imperfect versions of Russian ballads; and we were thankful even for
that contribution, from which, we doubt not, many worthy and well-informed
people learned for the first time that Russia produced poets as well as
potashes. Russia has lately lost a poet of true genius, of whom his
countrymen are proud, and no doubt have a right to be proud, for his
poetry found its way at once to the heart of the nation: but how few there
are amongst us who know any thing of Poushkin, unless it be his untimely
and melancholy end?

The generation that has been so prolific of prose fiction in other parts
of Europe, has not been barren in Russia. She boasts of men to whom she is
grateful for having adorned her young literature with the creations of
their genius, or who have made her history attractive with the allurements
of faithful fiction, giving life, and flesh, and blood to its dry bones;
and yet, gentle reader, learned or fair--or both fair and learned--whether
sombre in small clothes, or brilliant in _bas-bleus_--how many could
you have named a year ago of those names which are the pride and delight
of a great European nation, with which we have had an intimate, friendly,
and beneficial intercourse for three consecutive centuries, and whose
capital has now for some years been easily accessible in ten days from our
own?

Surely it is somewhat strange, that while Russia fills so large a space,
not only on the map, but in the politics of the world--while the influence
of her active mind, and of her powerful muscle, is felt and acknowledged
in Europe, Asia, and America--that we, who come in contact with her
diplomatic skill and her intelligence at every turn and in every quarter,
should never have thought it worth while to take any note of her
literature--of the more attractive movements of her mind.

The history, the ancient mythology, and the early Christian legends of
Russia, are full of interest. We there encounter the same energetic and
warlike people, who, from roving pirates of the Baltic sea, became the
founders of dynasties, and who have furnished much of what is most
romantic in the history of Europe. The Danes, who ravaged our coasts, and
gave a race of princes to England; the Normans, from whom are descended
our line of sovereigns, and many of our noble and ancient families--the
Normans, who established themselves in Sicily and the Warrhag, or
Varangians, who made their leader, Rurik, a sovereign over the ancient
Sclavonic republic of Novgorod, and gave their own distinctive appellation
of Russ to the people and to the country they conquered, were all men of
the same race, the same habits, and the same character. The daring spirit
of maritime adventure, the love of war, and the thirst of plunder, which
brought their barks to the coasts of Britain and of France, was displayed
with even greater boldness in Russia. After the death of Rurik, these
pirates of the Baltic, under the regent Oleg, launching their galleys on
the Borysthenes, forced the descent of the river against hostile tribes,
defeated the armies of Byzantium, exercised their ancient craft on the
Black sea and on the Bosphorus, and, entering Constantinople in triumph,
extorted tribute and a treaty from the Keisar in his palace.

Then, after a time, came the introduction of the Christian religion and of
letters; and the contests which terminated in the triumph of Christianity
over the ancient mythology, in which the milder deities of the Pantheon,
with their attendant spirits of the woods, the streams, and the household
hearth, would seem to have mingled with the fiercer gods of the Valhalla.
Then the frequent contests and varying fortunes of the principalities into
which the country was divided--the invasions of the Tartar hordes, under
the successors of Chenjez Khan, destroying every living thing, and
deliberately making a desert of every populous place, that grass might
more abound for their horses and their flocks--the long and weary
domination of these desolating masters; the gradual relaxation of the iron
gripe with which they crushed the country; the pomp and power of the
Russian church, even in the worst times of Tartar oppression; the first
gathering together of the nation's strength as its spirit revived; the
first great effort to cast off the load under which its loins had been
breaking for more than two centuries, and the desperate valour with which
the Russians fought their first great battle for freedom and their faith,
and shook the Tartar supremacy, under the brave and skilful Dimitri, on
the banks of the Don--the cautious wisdom and foresight with which he
created an aristocracy to support the sovereignty he had made
hereditary--the pertinacity with which, in every change of fortune, his
successors worked out slowly, and more by superior intelligence than by
prowess, the deliverance of their country--the final triumph of this wary
policy, under the warlike, but consummately able and dexterous management
of Ivan the Great--the rapidity and force with which the Muscovite power
expanded, when it had worn out and cast off the Tartar fetters that had
bound it--the cautious and successful attempts of Ivan to take from the
first a high place amongst the sovereigns of Europe--the progress in the
arts of civilized life which was made in his reign--the accession of
weight and authority which the sovereign power received from the prudent
and dignified demeanour of his son and successor--the sanguinary tyranny
with which Ivan IV., in the midst of the most revolting atrocities and
debaucheries, broke down the power of the aristocracy, prostrated the
energies of the nation, and paved the way for successive usurpations--the
skilful and crafty policy, and the unscrupulous means by which Boris
raised himself to the throne, after he had destroyed the last
representatives of the direct line of Rurik, which, in all the
vicissitudes of Russian fortune, had hitherto held the chief place in the
nation--the taint of guilt which poisoned and polluted a mind otherwise
powerful, and not without some virtues, and made him at length a
suspicious and cruel tyrant, who, having alienated the good-will of the
nation, was unable to oppose the pretensions of an impostor, and swallowed
poison to escape the tortures of an upbraiding conscience--the successful
imposture of the monk who personated the Prince Dimitri, one of the
victims of Boris' ambition, and who was slaughtered on the day of his
nuptials at the foot of the throne he had so strangely usurped, by an
infuriated mob; not because he was known to be an impostor, but because he
was accused of a leaning to the Latin church--the season of anarchy that
succeeded and led to fresh impostures, and to the Polish domination--the
servile submission of the Russian nobility to Sigismund, king of Poland,
to whom they sold their country; the revival of patriotic feelings, almost
as soon as the sacrifice had been made--the bold and determined opposition
of the Russian church to the usurpation of a Latin prince, the
persecutions, the hardships, the martyrdom it endured; the ultimate rising
of the Muscovite people at its call--the sanguinary conflict in Moscow;
the expulsion of the Poles; the election of Michael Romanoff, the first
sovereign of his family and of the reigning dynasty--the whole history of
the days of Peter, of Catharine, and of Alexander, and even the less
prominent reigns of intermediate sovereigns--are full of the interest and
the incidents which are usually considered most available to the writers
of historical romance.

But such materials abound in the history of every people. Men of genius
for the work find them scattered every where--in the peculiarities of
personal character developed in the contests of petty tribes or turbulent
burghers, as often as in the revolutions of empires. The value of
historical, as well as of other fictions, must be measured by the power
and the skill it displays, rather than by the magnitude of the events it
describes, or the historical importance of the persons it introduces; and
therefore no history can well be exhausted for the higher purposes of
fiction. Of what historical importance are the stories on which Shakspeare
has founded his _Romeo and Juliet_--his _Othello_--his _Hamlet_, or his
_Lear_? Does the chief interest or excellence of _Waverley_, or _Ivanhoe_,
or _Peveril of the Peak_, or _Redgauntlet_, or _Montrose_, depend on the
delineation of historical characters, or the description of historical
events? What space do Balfour of Burleigh, or Rob Roy, or Helen Macgregor,
fill in history? The fact appears to be, that, even in the purest
historical prose fictions, neither the interest nor the excellence
generally depend upon the characters or the incidents most prominent in
history. A man of genius, who calls up princes and heroes from the dust
into which they have crumbled, may delight us with a more admirable
representation than our own minds could have furnished of some one whose
name we have long known, and of whose personal bearing, and habits, and
daily thoughts, we had but a vague and misty idea; and acknowledging the
fidelity of the portrait we may adopt it; and then this historical person
becomes to us what the imagination of genius, not what history, has made
him, and yet the portrait is probably one in which no contemporary could
have recognized any resemblance to the original. But the characters of
which history has preserved the most full and faithful accounts, whose
recorded actions reflect most accurately the frame of their minds, are
precisely those which each man has pictured to himself with most precision,
and therefore those of which he is least likely to appreciate another
man's imaginary portraits. The image in our own minds is disturbed, and we
feel something of the disappointment we experience when we find some one
of whom we have heard much very different from what we had imagined him to
be. The more intimately and generally an historical character is known,
the more unfit must it be for the purposes of fiction.

Then again, in fiction, as in real life, our sympathies are more readily
awakened, and more strongly moved, by the sufferings or the successes of
those with whom we have much in common--of whose life we are, or fancy
that we might have been, a part. The figures that we see in history
elevated above the ordinary attributes of man, are magnified as we see
them through the mist of our own vague perceptions, and dwindle if we
approach too near them. If they are brought down from the lofty pedestal
of rank or fame on which they stood, that they may be within reach of the
warmest sympathies of men who live upon a lower level, the familiarity to
which we are admitted impairs their greatness, on the same principle, that
"no man is a hero to his _valet-de-chambre_."

We are inclined to believe that the great attraction of historical prose
fiction is not any facility which it affords for the construction of a
better story--for we think it affords none--nor any superior interest
that attaches to the known and the prominent characters with which it
deals, or to the events it describes; but rather the occasion it gives for
making us familiar with the everyday life of the age and the country in
which the scene is laid. Independent of the merits of the fiction as a
work of imagination, we find another source of pleasure; and, if it be
written faithfully and with knowledge, of instruction in the vivid light
it casts on the characteristics of man's condition, which history does not
deign to record. This kind of excellence may give value to a work which is
defective in the higher essential qualifications of imaginative writing;
as old ballads and tales, which have no other merit, may be valuable
illustrations of the manners of their time, so by carefully collecting and
concentrating scattered rays, a man possessed of talents for the task may
throw a strong light on states of society that were formerly obscure, and
thus greatly enhance the pleasure we derive from any higher merits we may
find in his story.

M. Lajetchnikoff, in the work before us, appears to have aimed at both
these kinds of excellence; and, in the opinion of his countrymen, to have
attained to that of which they are the best or the only good judges. Mr
Shaw, to whom we are indebted for all we yet know of this department of
Russian literature, tells us in his preface that he selected this romance
for translation because--

"It is the work of an author to whom all the critics have adjudged
the praise of a perfect acquaintance with the epoch which he has
chosen for the scene of his drama. Russian critics, some of whom have
reproached M. Lajetchnikoff with certain faults of style, and in
particular with innovations on orthography, have all united in
conceding to him the merit of great historical accuracy--not only as
regards the events and characters of his story, but even in the less
important matters of costume, language, &c.

"This degree of accuracy was not accidental: he prepared himself for
his work by a careful study of all the ancient documents calculated
to throw light upon the period which he desired to recall--a
conscientious correctness however, which may be pushed too far; for
the original work is disfigured by a great number of obsolete words
and expressions, as unintelligible to the modern Russian reader
(unless he happened to be an antiquarian) as they would be to an
Englishman. These the Translator has, as far as possible, got rid of,
and has endeavoured to reduce the explanatory foot-notes--those
'blunder-marks,' as they have been well styled--to as small a number
as is consistent with clearness in the text."

M. Lajetchnikoff takes occasion, while referring to some anachronisms
which will be found in _The Heretic_, to state, in the following terms,
his opinion of the duties of an historical novelist--

"He must follow rather the poetry of history than its chronology. His
business is not to be the slave of dates; he ought to be faithful to
the character of the epoch, and of the _dramatis personae_ which he
has selected for representation. It is not his business to examine
every trifle, to count over with servile minuteness every link in the
chain of this epoch, or of the life of this character; that is the
department of the historian and the biographer. The mission of the
historical novelist is to select from them the most brilliant, the
most interesting events, which are connected with the chief personage
of his story, and to concentrate them into one poetic moment of his
romance. Is it necessary to say that this moment ought to be pervaded
by a leading idea?... Thus I understand the duties of the historical
novelist. Whether I have fulfilled them, is quite another question."

We are not quite sure what is here meant by "a leading idea." If it be
that some abstract idea is to be developed or illustrated, we can neither
subscribe to the canon nor discover the leading idea of this specimen of
the author's productions; but we rather suppose that he only means to say
that there should be a main stream of interest running through the whole
story, to which the others are tributary--and in this sense he has acted
on the rule; for the _heretic_, from his birth to his burial, is never
lost sight of, and almost the whole action, from the beginning to the end,
is either directly or indirectly connected with his fortunes, which
preserve their interest throughout, amidst sovereigns and ambassadors,
officials and nobles, court intrigues and affairs of state, of love, of
war, and of religion. This machinery, though somewhat complicated, is on
the whole very skilfully constructed, and moves on smoothly enough without
jolting or jarring, without tedious stops or disagreeable interruptions,
and without having to turn back every now and then to pick up the
passengers it has dropped by the way. The author, however, appears to have
assumed--and, writing for Russians, was entitled to assume--that his
readers had some previous acquaintance with the history of the country and
the times to which his story belongs. His prologue, which has no connexion
with the body of the work, but which relates a separate incident that
occurred some years after the conclusion of the principal narrative,
introduces us to the death-bed of Ivan III., at whose court the whole of
the subsequent scenes occur; and is calculated from this inversion of time,
and the recurrence of similar names, and even of the same persons, to
create little confusion in the mind of the reader who is ignorant of
Russian history.

"The epoch chosen by Lajetchnikoff," says his translator, "is the
fifteenth century; an age most powerfully interesting in the history
of every country, and not less so in that of Russia. It was then that
the spirit of enquiry, the thirst for new facts and investigations in
religious, political, and physical philosophy, was at once stimulated
and gratified by the most important discoveries that man had as yet
made, and extended itself far beyond the limits of what was then
civilized Europe, and spoke, by the powerful voice of Ivan III., even
to Russia, plunged as she then was in ignorance and superstition.
Rude as are the outlines of this great sovereign's historical
portrait, and rough as were the means by which he endeavoured to
ameliorate his country, it is impossible to deny him a place among
those rulers who have won the name of benefactors to their native
land."

When Ivan III., then twenty-two years old, mounted the tributary throne of
Muscovy in 1462, the power of the Tartars, who for nearly two centuries
and a half domineered over Russia, had visibly declined. Tamerlane, at the
head of fresh swarms from the deserts of Asia, had stricken the Golden
Horde which still held Russia in subjection; and having pursued its
sovereign, Ioktamish Khan, into the steppes of Kiptchak and Siberia,
turned back almost from the gates of Moscow, to seek a richer plunder in
Hindostan. Before the Golden Horde could recover from this blow, it was
again attacked, defeated, and plundered, by the khan of the Crimea. Still
the supremacy of the Tartar was undisputed at Moscow. The Muscovite prince
advanced to the outer door of his palace to receive the ambassador of his
master; spread costly furs under his horse's feet; kneeled at his stirrup
to hear the khan's orders read; presented a cup of kimmis to the Tartar
representative, and licked off the drops that fell upon the mane of his
horse.

But during nearly a century and a half, the Muscovite princes had laboured
successfully to consolidate their own authority, and to unite the nation
against its oppressors. The principle of hereditary succession to the
dependent throne had been firmly established in the feelings of the people;
the ties of country, kindred, and language, and still more the bonds of
common religion, had united the discordant principalities into which the
country was still divided, by a sentiment of nationality and of hatred
against the Tartars, which made them capable of combining against their
Mahommedan masters.

Ivan's first acts were acts of submission. They were perhaps intended to
tranquillize the suspicions with which the first movements of a young
prince are certain to be regarded by a jealous superior; and this purpose
they effectually served. Without courage or talent for war, his powerful
and subtle mind sought to accomplish its objects by intellectual
superiority and by craft, rather than by force. Warned by the errors of
his predecessors, he did not dispute the right of the Tartars to the
tribute, but evaded its payment; and yet contrived to preserve the
confidence of the khan by bribing his ministers and his family, and by a
ready performance of the most humiliating acts of personal submission. His
conduct towards all his enemies--that is, towards all his neighbours--was
dictated by a similar policy; he admitted their rights, but he took every
safe opportunity to disregard them. So far did he carry the semblance of
submission, that the Muscovites were for some years disgusted with the
slavish spirit of their prince. His lofty ambition was concealed by rare
prudence and caution, and sustained by remarkable firmness and pertinacity
of purpose. He never took a step in advance from which he was forced to
recede. He had the art to combine with many of his enemies against one,
and thus overthrew them all in succession. It was by such means that he
cast off the Tartar yoke--curbed the power of Poland--humbled that of
Lithuania, subdued Novgorod, Tver, Pskoff, Kazan, and Viatka--reannexed
Veira, Ouglitch, Rezan, and other appanages to the crown, and added nearly
twenty thousand square miles with four millions of subjects to his
dominions. He framed a code of laws--improved the condition of his
army--established a police in every part of his empire--protected and
extended commerce--supported the church, but kept it in subjection to
himself; but was at all times arbitrary, often unjust and cruel, and
throughout his whole life, quite unscrupulous as to the means he employed
to compass his ends.

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