RASSELAS, PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA
CHAPTER I - DESCRIPTION OF A PALACE IN A VALLEY.
Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy,
and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect
that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the
deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the
morrow, attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of
Abyssinia.
Rasselas was the fourth son of the mighty Emperor in
whose dominions the father of waters begins his course -
whose bounty pours down the streams of plenty, and scatters
over the world the harvests of Egypt.
According to the custom which has descended from age to
age among the monarchs of the torrid zone, Rasselas was
confined in a private palace, with the other sons and
daughters of Abyssinian royalty, till the order of
succession should call him to the throne.
The place which the wisdom or policy of antiquity had
destined for the residence of the Abyssinian princes was a
spacious valley in the kingdom of Amhara, surrounded on
every side by mountains, of which the summits overhang the
middle part. The only passage by which it could be entered
was a cavern that passed under a rock, of which it had long
been disputed whether it was the work of nature or of human
industry. The outlet of the cavern was concealed by a thick
wood, and the mouth which opened into the valley was closed
with gates of iron, forged by the artificers of ancient
days, so massive that no man, without the help of engines,
could open or shut them.
From the mountains on every side rivulets descended that
filled all the valley with verdure and fertility, and formed
a lake in the middle, inhabited by fish of every species,
and frequented by every fowl whom nature has taught to dip
the wing in water. This lake discharged its superfluities by
a stream, which entered a dark cleft of the mountain on the
northern side, and fell with dreadful noise from precipice
to precipice till it was heard no more.
The sides of the mountains were covered with trees, the
banks of the brooks were diversified with flowers; every
blast shook spices from the rocks, and every month dropped
fruits upon the ground. All animals that bite the grass or
browse the shrubs, whether wild or tame, wandered in this
extensive circuit, secured from beasts of prey by the
mountains which confined them. On one part were flocks and
herds feeding in the pastures, on another all the beasts of
chase frisking in the lawns, the sprightly kid was bounding
on the rocks, the subtle monkey frolicking in the trees, and
the solemn elephant reposing in the shade. All the
diversities of the world were brought together, the
blessings of nature were collected, and its evils extracted
and excluded.
The valley, wide and fruitful, supplied its inhabitants
with all the necessaries of life, and all delights and
superfluities were added at the annual visit which the
Emperor paid his children, when the iron gate was opened to
the sound of music, and during eight days every one that
resided in the valley was required to propose whatever might
contribute to make seclusion pleasant, to fill up the
vacancies of attention, and lessen the tediousness of time.
Every desire was immediately granted. All the artificers of
pleasure were called to gladden the festivity; the musicians
exerted the power of harmony, and the dancers showed their
activity before the princes, in hopes that they should pass
their lives in blissful captivity, to which those only were
admitted whose performance was thought able to add novelty
to luxury. Such was the appearance of security and delight
which this retirement afforded, that they to whom it was new
always desired that it might be perpetual; and as those on
whom the iron gate had once closed were never suffered to
return, the effect of longer experience could not be known.
Thus every year produced new scenes of delight, and new
competitors for imprisonment.
The palace stood on an eminence, raised about thirty
paces above the surface of the lake. It was divided into
many squares or courts, built with greater or less
magnificence according to the rank of those for whom they
were designed. The roofs were turned into arches of massive
stone, joined by a cement that grew harder by time, and the
building stood from century to century, deriding the
solstitial rains and equinoctial hurricanes, without need of
reparation.
This house, which was so large as to be fully known to
none but some ancient officers, who successively inherited
the secrets of the place, was built as if Suspicion herself
had dictated the plan. To every room there was an open and
secret passage; every square had a communication with the
rest, either from the upper storeys by private galleries, or
by subterraneous passages from the lower apartments. Many of
the columns had unsuspected cavities, in which a long race
of monarchs had deposited their treasures. They then closed
up the opening with marble, which was never to be removed
but in the utmost exigences of the kingdom, and recorded
their accumulations in a book, which was itself concealed in
a tower, not entered but by the Emperor, attended by the
prince who stood next in succession.
CHAPTER II - THE DISCONTENT OF RASSELAS IN THE HAPPY
VALLEY.
Here the sons and daughters of Abyssinia lived only to
know the soft vicissitudes of pleasure and repose, attended
by all that were skilful to delight, and gratified with
whatever the senses can enjoy. They wandered in gardens of
fragrance, and slept in the fortresses of security. Every
art was practised to make them pleased with their own
condition. The sages who instructed them told them of
nothing but the miseries of public life, and described all
beyond the mountains as regions of calamity, where discord
was always racing, and where man preyed upon man. To
heighten their opinion of their own felicity, they were
daily entertained with songs, the subject of which was the
Happy Valley. Their appetites were excited by frequent
enumerations of different enjoyments, and revelry and
merriment were the business of every hour, from the dawn of
morning to the close of the evening.
These methods were generally successful; few of the
princes had ever wished to enlarge their bounds, but passed
their lives in full conviction that they had all within
their reach that art or nature could bestow, and pitied
those whom nature had excluded from this seat of
tranquillity as the sport of chance and the slaves of
misery.
Thus they rose in the morning and lay down at night,
pleased with each other and with themselves, all but
Rasselas, who, in the twenty-sixth year of his age, began to
withdraw himself from the pastimes and assemblies, and to
delight in solitary walks and silent meditation. He often
sat before tables covered with luxury, and forgot to taste
the dainties that were placed before him; he rose abruptly
in the midst of the song, and hastily retired beyond the
sound of music. His attendants observed the change, and
endeavoured to renew his love of pleasure. He neglected
their officiousness, repulsed their invitations, and spent
day after day on the banks of rivulets sheltered with trees,
where he sometimes listened to the birds in the branches,
sometimes observed the fish playing in the streams, and anon
cast his eyes upon the pastures and mountains filled with
animals, of which some were biting the herbage, and some
sleeping among the bushes. The singularity of his humour
made him much observed. One of the sages, in whose
conversation he had formerly delighted, followed him
secretly, in hope of discovering the cause of his disquiet.
Rasselas, who knew not that any one was near him, having for
some time fixed his eyes upon the goats that were browsing
among the rocks, began to compare their condition with his
own.
“What,” said he, “makes the difference between man and
all the rest of the animal creation? Every beast that strays
beside me has the same corporal necessities with myself: he
is hungry, and crops the grass; he is thirsty, and drinks
the stream; his thirst and hunger are appeased; he is
satisfied, and sleeps; he rises again, and is hungry; he is
again fed, and is at rest. I am hungry and thirsty, like
him, but when thirst and hunger cease, I am not at rest. I
am, like him, pained with want, but am not, like him,
satisfied with fulness. The intermediate hours are tedious
and gloomy; I long again to be hungry that I may again
quicken the attention. The birds peck the berries or the
corn, and fly away to the groves, where they sit in seeming
happiness on the branches, and waste their lives in tuning
one unvaried series of sounds. I likewise can call the
lutist and the singer; but the sounds that pleased me
yesterday weary me to-day, and will grow yet more wearisome
to-morrow. I can discover in me no power of perception which
is not glutted with its proper pleasure, yet I do not feel
myself delighted. Man surely has some latent sense for which
this place affords no gratification; or he has some desire
distinct from sense, which must be satisfied before he can
be happy.”
After this he lifted up his head, and seeing the moon
rising, walked towards the palace. As he passed through the
fields, and saw the animals around him, “Ye,” said he, “are
happy, and need not envy me that walk thus among you,
burdened with myself; nor do I, ye gentle beings, envy your
felicity; for it is not the felicity of man. I have many
distresses from which you are free; I fear pain when I do
not feel it; I sometimes shrink at evils recollected, and
sometimes start at evils anticipated: surely the equity of
Providence has balanced peculiar sufferings with peculiar
enjoyments.”
With observations like these the Prince amused himself as
he returned, uttering them with a plaintive voice, yet with
a look that discovered him to feel some complacence in his
own perspicacity, and to receive some solace of the miseries
of life from consciousness of the delicacy with which he
felt and the eloquence with which he bewailed them. He
mingled cheerfully in the diversions of the evening, and all
rejoiced to find that his heart was lightened.
CHAPTER III - THE WANTS OF HIM THAT WANTS NOTHING.
On the next day, his old instructor, imagining that he
had now made himself acquainted with his disease of mind,
was in hope of curing it by counsel, and officiously sought
an opportunity of conference, which the Prince, having long
considered him as one whose intellects were exhausted, was
not very willing to afford. “Why,” said he, “does this man
thus intrude upon me? Shall I never be suffered to forget
these lectures, which pleased only while they were new, and
to become new again must be forgotten?” He then walked into
the wood, and composed himself to his usual meditations;
when, before his thoughts had taken any settled form, he
perceived his pursuer at his side, and was at first prompted
by his impatience to go hastily away; but being unwilling to
offend a man whom he had once reverenced and still loved, he
invited him to sit down with him on the bank.
The old man, thus encouraged, began to lament the change
which had been lately observed in the Prince, and to inquire
why he so often retired from the pleasures of the palace to
loneliness and silence. “I fly from pleasure,” said the
Prince, “because pleasure has ceased to please: I am lonely
because I am miserable, and am unwilling to cloud with my
presence the happiness of others.” “You, sir,” said the
sage, “are the first who has complained of misery in the
Happy Valley. I hope to convince you that your complaints
have no real cause. You are here in full possession of all
the Emperor of Abyssinia can bestow; here is neither labour
to be endured nor danger to be dreaded, yet here is all that
labour or danger can procure or purchase. Look round and
tell me which of your wants is without supply: if you want
nothing, how are you unhappy?”
“That I want nothing,” said the Prince, “or that I know
not what I want, is the cause of my complaint: if I had any
known want, I should have a certain wish; that wish would
excite endeavour, and I should not then repine to see the
sun move so slowly towards the western mountains, or to
lament when the day breaks, and sleep will no longer hide me
from myself. When I see the kids and the lambs chasing one
another, I fancy that I should be happy if I had something
to pursue. But, possessing all that I can want, I find one
day and one hour exactly like another, except that the
latter is still more tedious than the former. Let your
experience inform me how the day may now seem as short as in
my childhood, while nature was yet fresh, and every moment
showed me what I never had observed before. I have already
enjoyed too much: give me something to desire.” The old man
was surprised at this new species of affliction, and knew
not what to reply, yet was unwilling to be silent. “Sir,”
said he, “if you had seen the miseries of the world, you
would know how to value your present state.” “Now,” said the
Prince, “you have given me something to desire. I shall long
to see the miseries of the world, since the sight of them is
necessary to happiness.”
CHAPTER IV - THE PRINCE CONTINUES TO GRIEVE AND MUSE.
At this time the sound of music proclaimed the hour of
repast, and the conversation was concluded. The old man went
away sufficiently discontented to find that his reasonings
had produced the only conclusion which they were intended to
prevent. But in the decline of life, shame and grief are of
short duration: whether it be that we bear easily what we
have borne long; or that, finding ourselves in age less
regarded, we less regard others; or that we look with slight
regard upon afflictions to which we know that the hand of
death is about to put an end.
The Prince, whose views were extended to a wider space,
could not speedily quiet his emotions. He had been before
terrified at the length of life which nature promised him,
because he considered that in a long time much must be
endured: he now rejoiced in his youth, because in many years
much might be done. The first beam of hope that had been
ever darted into his mind rekindled youth in his cheeks, and
doubled the lustre of his eyes. He was fired with the desire
of doing something, though he knew not yet, with
distinctness, either end or means. He was now no longer
gloomy and unsocial; but considering himself as master of a
secret stock of happiness, which he could only enjoy by
concealing it, he affected to be busy in all the schemes of
diversion, and endeavoured to make others pleased with the
state of which he himself was weary. But pleasures can never
be so multiplied or continued as not to leave much of life
unemployed; there were many hours, both of the night and
day, which he could spend without suspicion in solitary
thought. The load of life was much lightened; he went
eagerly into the assemblies, because he supposed the
frequency of his presence necessary to the success of his
purposes; he retired gladly to privacy, because he had now a
subject of thought. His chief amusement was to picture to
himself that world which he had never seen, to place himself
in various conditions, to be entangled in imaginary
difficulties, and to be engaged in wild adventures; but, his
benevolence always terminated his projects in the relief of
distress, the detection of fraud, the defeat of oppression,
and the diffusion of happiness.
Thus passed twenty months of the life of Rasselas. He
busied himself so intensely in visionary bustle that he
forgot his real solitude; and amidst hourly preparations for
the various incidents of human affairs, neglected to
consider by what means he should mingle with mankind.
One day, as he was sitting on a bank, he feigned to
himself an orphan virgin robbed of her little portion by a
treacherous lover, and crying after him for restitution. So
strongly was the image impressed upon his mind that he
started up in the maid’s defence, and ran forward to seize
the plunderer with all the eagerness of real pursuit. Fear
naturally quickens the flight of guilt. Rasselas could not
catch the fugitive with his utmost efforts; but, resolving
to weary by perseverance him whom he could not surpass in
speed, he pressed on till the foot of the mountain stopped
his course.
Here he recollected himself, and smiled at his own
useless impetuosity. Then raising his eyes to the mountain,
“This,” said he, “is the fatal obstacle that hinders at once
the enjoyment of pleasure and the exercise of virtue. How
long is it that my hopes and wishes have flown beyond this
boundary of my life, which yet I never have attempted to
surmount?”
Struck with this reflection, he sat down to muse, and
remembered that since he first resolved to escape from his
confinement, the sun had passed twice over him in his annual
course. He now felt a degree of regret with which he had
never been before acquainted. He considered how much might
have been done in the time which had passed, and left
nothing real behind it. He compared twenty months with the
life of man. “In life,” said he, “is not to be counted the
ignorance of infancy or imbecility of age. We are long
before we are able to think, and we soon cease from the
power of acting. The true period of human existence may be
reasonably estimated at forty years, of which I have mused
away the four-and-twentieth part. What I have lost was
certain, for I have certainly possessed it; but of twenty
months to come, who can assure me?”
The consciousness of his own folly pierced him deeply,
and he was long before he could be reconciled to himself.
“The rest of my time,” said he, “has been lost by the crime
or folly of my ancestors, and the absurd institutions of my
country; I remember it with disgust, yet without remorse:
but the months that have passed since new light darted into
my soul, since I formed a scheme of reasonable felicity,
have been squandered by my own fault. I have lost that which
can never be restored; I have seen the sun rise and set for
twenty months, an idle gazer on the light of heaven; in this
time the birds have left the nest of their mother, and
committed themselves to the woods and to the skies; the kid
has forsaken the teat, and learned by degrees to climb the
rocks in quest of independent sustenance. I only have made
no advances, but am still helpless and ignorant. The moon,
by more than twenty changes, admonished me of the flux of
life; the stream that rolled before my feet upbraided my
inactivity. I sat feasting on intellectual luxury,
regardless alike of the examples of the earth and the
instructions of the planets. Twenty months are passed: who
shall restore them?”
These sorrowful meditations fastened upon his mind; he
passed four months in resolving to lose no more time in idle
resolves, and was awakened to more vigorous exertion by
hearing a maid, who had broken a porcelain cup, remark that
what cannot be repaired is not to be regretted.
This was obvious; and Rasselas reproached himself that he
had not discovered it - having not known, or not considered,
how many useful hints are obtained by chance, and how often
the mind, hurried by her own ardour to distant views,
neglects the truths that lie open before her. He for a few
hours regretted his regret, and from that time bent his
whole mind upon the means of escaping from the Valley of
Happiness.
CHAPTER V - THE PRINCE MEDITATES HIS ESCAPE.
He now found that it would be very difficult to effect
that which it was very easy to suppose effected. When he
looked round about him, he saw himself confined by the bars
of nature, which had never yet been broken, and by the gate
through which none that had once passed it were ever able to
return. He was now impatient as an eagle in a grate. He
passed week after week in clambering the mountains to see if
there was any aperture which the bushes might conceal, but
found all the summits inaccessible by their prominence. The
iron gate he despaired to open for it was not only secured
with all the power of art, but was always watched by
successive sentinels, and was, by its position, exposed to
the perpetual observation of all the inhabitants.
He then examined the cavern through which the waters of
the lake were discharged; and, looking down at a time when
the sun shone strongly upon its mouth, he discovered it to
be full of broken rocks, which, though they permitted the
stream to flow through many narrow passages, would stop any
body of solid bulk. He returned discouraged and dejected;
but having now known the blessing of hope, resolved never to
despair.
In these fruitless researches he spent ten months. The
time, however, passed cheerfully away - in the morning he
rose with new hope; in the evening applauded his own
diligence; and in the night slept soundly after his fatigue.
He met a thousand amusements, which beguiled his labour and
diversified his thoughts. He discerned the various instincts
of animals and properties of plants, and found the place
replete with wonders, of which he proposed to solace himself
with the contemplation if he should never be able to
accomplish his flight - rejoicing that his endeavours,
though yet unsuccessful, had supplied him with a source of
inexhaustible inquiry. But his original curiosity was not
yet abated; he resolved to obtain some knowledge of the ways
of men. His wish still continued, but his hope grew less. He
ceased to survey any longer the walls of his prison, and
spared to search by new toils for interstices which he knew
could not be found, yet determined to keep his design always
in view, and lay hold on any expedient that time should
offer.
CHAPTER VI - A DISSERTATION ON THE ART OF FLYING.
Among the artists that had been allured into the Happy
Valley, to labour for the accommodation and pleasure of its
inhabitants, was a man eminent for his knowledge of the
mechanic powers, who had contrived many engines both of use
and recreation. By a wheel which the stream turned he forced
the water into a tower, whence it was distributed to all the
apartments of the palace. He erected a pavilion in the
garden, around which he kept the air always cool by
artificial showers. One of the groves, appropriated to the
ladies, was ventilated by fans, to which the rivulets that
ran through it gave a constant motion; and instruments of
soft music were played at proper distances, of which some
played by the impulse of the wind, and some by the power of
the stream.
This artist was sometimes visited by Rasselas who was
pleased with every kind of knowledge, imagining that the
time would come when all his acquisitions should be of use
to him in the open world. He came one day to amuse himself
in his usual manner, and found the master busy in building a
sailing chariot. He saw that the design was practicable upon
a level surface, and with expressions of great esteem
solicited its completion. The workman was pleased to find
himself so much regarded by the Prince, and resolved to gain
yet higher honours. “Sir,” said he, “you have seen but a
small part of what the mechanic sciences can perform. I have
been long of opinion that, instead of the tardy conveyance
of ships and chariots, man might use the swifter migration
of wings, that the fields of air are open to knowledge, and
that only ignorance and idleness need crawl upon the
ground.”
This hint rekindled the Prince’s desire of passing the
mountains. Having seen what the mechanist had already
performed, he was willing to fancy that he could do more,
yet resolved to inquire further before he suffered hope to
afflict him by disappointment. “I am afraid,” said he to the
artist, “that your imagination prevails over your skill, and
that you now tell me rather what you wish than what you
know. Every animal has his element assigned him; the birds
have the air, and man and beasts the earth.” “So,” replied
the mechanist, “fishes have the water, in which yet beasts
can swim by nature and man by art. He that can swim needs
not despair to fly; to swim is to fly in a grosser fluid,
and to fly is to swim in a subtler. We are only to
proportion our power of resistance to the different density
of matter through which we are to pass. You will be
necessarily up-borne by the air if you can renew any impulse
upon it faster than the air can recede from the pressure.”
“But the exercise of swimming,” said the Prince, “is very
laborious; the strongest limbs are soon wearied. I am afraid
the act of flying will be yet more violent; and wings will
be of no great use unless we can fly further than we can
swim.”
“The labour of rising from the ground,” said the artist,
“will be great, as we see it in the heavier domestic fowls;
but as we mount higher the earth’s attraction and the body’s
gravity will be gradually diminished, till we shall arrive
at a region where the man shall float in the air without any
tendency to fall; no care will then be necessary but to move
forward, which the gentlest impulse will effect. You, sir,
whose curiosity is so extensive, will easily conceive with
what pleasure a philosopher, furnished with wings and
hovering in the sky, would see the earth and all its
inhabitants rolling beneath him, and presenting to him
successively, by its diurnal motion, all the countries
within the same parallel. How must it amuse the pendent
spectator to see the moving scene of land and ocean, cities
and deserts; to survey with equal security the marts of
trade and the fields of battle; mountains infested by
barbarians, and fruitful regions gladdened by plenty and
lulled by peace. How easily shall we then trace the Nile
through all his passages, pass over to distant regions, and
examine the face of nature from one extremity of the earth
to the other.”
“All this,” said the Prince, “is much to be desired, but
I am afraid that no man will be able to breathe in these
regions of speculation and tranquillity. I have been told
that respiration is difficult upon lofty mountains, yet from
these precipices, though so high as to produce great tenuity
of air, it is very easy to fall; therefore I suspect that
from any height where life can be supported, there may be
danger of too quick descent.”
“Nothing,” replied the artist, “will ever be attempted if
all possible objections must be first overcome. If you will
favour my project, I will try the first flight at my own
hazard. I have considered the structure of all volant
animals, and find the folding continuity of the bat’s wings
most easily accommodated to the human form. Upon this model
I shall begin my task to-morrow, and in a year expect to
tower into the air beyond the malice and pursuit of man. But
I will work only on this condition, that the art shall not
be divulged, and that you shall not require me to make wings
for any but ourselves.”
“Why,” said Rasselas, “should you envy others so great an
advantage? All skill ought to be exerted for universal good;
every man has owed much to others, and ought to repay the
kindness that he has received.”
“If men were all virtuous,” returned the artist, “I
should with great alacrity teach them to fly. But what would
be the security of the good if the bad could at pleasure
invade them from the sky? Against an army sailing through
the clouds neither walls, mountains, nor seas could afford
security. A flight of northern savages might hover in the
wind and light with irresistible violence upon the capital
of a fruitful reason. Even this valley, the retreat of
princes, the abode of happiness, might be violated by the
sudden descent of some of the naked nations that swarm on
the coast of the southern sea!”
The Prince promised secrecy, and waited for the
performance, not wholly hopeless of success. He visited the
work from time to time, observed its progress, and remarked
many ingenious contrivances to facilitate motion and unite
levity with strength. The artist was every day more certain
that he should leave vultures and eagles behind him, and the
contagion of his confidence seized upon the Prince. In a
year the wings were finished; and on a morning appointed the
maker appeared, furnished for flight, on a little
promontory; he waved his pinions awhile to gather air, then
leaped from his stand, and in an instant dropped into the
lake. His wings, which were of no use in the air, sustained
him in the water; and the Prince drew him to land half dead
with terror and vexation.
CHAPTER VII - THE PRINCE FINDS A MAN OF LEARNING.
The Prince was not much afflicted by this disaster,
having suffered himself to hope for a happier event only
because he had no other means of escape in view. He still
persisted in his design to leave the Happy Valley by the
first opportunity.
His imagination was now at a stand; he had no prospect of
entering into the world, and, notwithstanding all his
endeavours to support himself, discontent by degrees preyed
upon him, and he began again to lose his thoughts in sadness
when the rainy season, which in these countries is
periodical, made it inconvenient to wander in the woods.
The rain continued longer and with more violence than had
ever been known; the clouds broke on the surrounding
mountains, and the torrents streamed into the plain on every
side, till the cavern was too narrow to discharge the water.
The lake overflowed its banks, and all the level of the
valley was covered with the inundation. The eminence on
which the palace was built, and some other spots of rising
ground, were all that the eye could now discover. The herds
and flocks left the pasture, and both the wild beasts and
the tame retreated to the mountains.
This inundation confined all the princes to domestic
amusements, and the attention of Rasselas was particularly
seized by a poem (which Imlac rehearsed) upon the various
conditions of humanity. He commanded the poet to attend him
in his apartment, and recite his verses a second time; then
entering into familiar talk, he thought himself happy in
having found a man who knew the world so well, and could so
skilfully paint the scenes of life. He asked a thousand
questions about things to which, though common to all other
mortals, his confinement from childhood had kept him a
stranger. The poet pitied his ignorance, and loved his
curiosity, and entertained him from day to day with novelty
and instruction so that the Prince regretted the necessity
of sleep, and longed till the morning should renew his
pleasure.
As they were sitting together, the Prince commanded Imlac
to relate his history, and to tell by what accident he was
forced, or by what motive induced, to close his life in the
Happy Valley. As he was going to begin his narrative,
Rasselas was called to a concert, and obliged to restrain
his curiosity till the evening.
CHAPTER VIII - THE HISTORY OF IMLAC.
The close of the day is, in the regions of the torrid
zone, the only season of diversion and entertainment, and it
was therefore midnight before the music ceased and the
princesses retired. Rasselas then called for his companion,
and required him to begin the story of his life.
“Sir,” said Imlac, “my history will not be long: the life
that is devoted to knowledge passes silently away, and is
very little diversified by events. To talk in public, to
think in solitude, to read and to hear, to inquire and
answer inquiries, is the business of a scholar. He wanders
about the world without pomp or terror, and is neither known
nor valued but by men like himself.
“I was born in the kingdom of Goiama, at no great
distance from the fountain of the Nile. My father was a
wealthy merchant, who traded between the inland countries of
Africa and the ports of the Red Sea. He was honest, frugal,
and diligent, but of mean sentiments and narrow
comprehension; he desired only to be rich, and to conceal
his riches, lest he should be spoiled by the governors of
the province.”
“Surely,” said the Prince, “my father must be negligent
of his charge if any man in his dominions dares take that
which belongs to another. Does he not know that kings are
accountable for injustice permitted as well as done? If I
were Emperor, not the meanest of my subjects should he
oppressed with impunity. My blood boils when I am told that
a merchant durst not enjoy his honest gains for fear of
losing them by the rapacity of power. Name the governor who
robbed the people that I may declare his crimes to the
Emperor!”
“Sir,” said Imlac, “your ardour is the natural effect of
virtue animated by youth. The time will come when you will
acquit your father, and perhaps hear with less impatience of
the governor. Oppression is, in the Abyssinian dominions,
neither frequent nor tolerated; but no form of government
has been yet discovered by which cruelty can be wholly
prevented. Subordination supposes power on one part and
subjection on the other; and if power be in the hands of men
it will sometimes be abused. The vigilance of the supreme
magistrate may do much, but much will still remain undone.
He can never know all the crimes that are committed, and can
seldom punish all that he knows.”
“This,” said the Prince, “I do not understand; but I had
rather hear thee than dispute. Continue thy narration.”
“My father,” proceeded Imlac, “originally intended that I
should have no other education than such as might qualify me
for commerce; and discovering in me great strength of memory
and quickness of apprehension, often declared his hope that
I should be some time the richest man in Abyssinia.”
“Why,” said the Prince, “did thy father desire the
increase of his wealth when it was already greater than he
durst discover or enjoy? I am unwilling to doubt thy
veracity, yet inconsistencies cannot both be true.”
“Inconsistencies,” answered Imlac, “cannot both be right;
but, imputed to man, they may both be true. Yet diversity is
not inconsistency. My father might expect a time of greater
security. However, some desire is necessary to keep life in
motion; and he whose real wants are supplied must admit
those of fancy.”
“This,” said the Prince, “I can in some measure conceive.
I repent that I interrupted thee.”
“With this hope,” proceeded Imlac, “he sent me to school.
But when I had once found the delight of knowledge, and felt
the pleasure of intelligence and the pride of invention, I
began silently to despise riches, and determined to
disappoint the purposes of my father, whose grossness of
conception raised my pity. I was twenty years old before his
tenderness would expose me to the fatigue of travel; in
which time I had been instructed, by successive masters, in
all the literature of my native country. As every hour
taught me something new, I lived in a continual course of
gratification; but as I advanced towards manhood, I lost
much of the reverence with which I had been used to look on
my instructors; because when the lessons were ended I did
not find them wiser or better than common men.
“At length my father resolved to initiate me in commerce;
and, opening one of his subterranean treasuries, counted out
ten thousand pieces of gold. ‘This, young man,’ said he, ‘is
the stock with which you must negotiate. I began with less
than a fifth part, and you see how diligence and parsimony
have increased it. This is your own, to waste or improve. If
you squander it by negligence or caprice, you must wait for
my death before you will be rich; if in four years you
double your stock, we will thenceforward let subordination
cease, and live together as friends and partners, for he
shall be always equal with me who is equally skilled in the
art of growing rich.’
“We laid out our money upon camels, concealed in bales of
cheap goods, and travelled to the shore of the Red Sea. When
I cast my eye on the expanse of waters, my heart bounded
like that of a prisoner escaped. I felt an inextinguishable
curiosity kindle in my mind, and resolved to snatch this
opportunity of seeing the manners of other nations, and of
learning sciences unknown in Abyssinia.
“I remembered that my father had obliged me to the
improvement of my stock, not by a promise, which I ought not
to violate, but by a penalty, which I was at liberty to
incur; and therefore determined to gratify my predominant
desire, and, by drinking at the fountain of knowledge, to
quench the thirst of curiosity.
“As I was supposed to trade without connection with my
father, it was easy for me to become acquainted with the
master of a ship, and procure a passage to some other
country. I had no motives of choice to regulate my voyage.
It was sufficient for me that, wherever I wandered, I should
see a country which I had not seen before. I therefore
entered a ship bound for Surat, having left a letter for my
father declaring my intention.”
CHAPTER IX - THE HISTORY OF IMLAC (continued).
“When I first entered upon the world of waters, and lost
sight of land, I looked round about me in pleasing terror,
and thinking my soul enlarged by the boundless prospect,
imagined that I could gaze around me for ever without
satiety; but in a short time I grew weary of looking on
barren uniformity, where I could only see again what I had
already seen. I then descended into the ship, and doubted
for awhile whether all my future pleasures would not end,
like this, in disgust and disappointment. ‘Yet surely,’ said
I, ‘the ocean and the land are very different. The only
variety of water is rest and motion. But the earth has
mountains and valleys, deserts and cities; it is inhabited
by men of different customs and contrary opinions; and I may
hope to find variety in life, though I should miss it in
nature.’
“With this thought I quieted my mind, and amused myself
during the voyage, sometimes by learning from the sailors
the art of navigation, which I have never practised, and
sometimes by forming schemes for my conduct in different
situations, in not one of which I have been ever placed.
“I was almost weary of my naval amusements when we safely
landed at Surat. I secured my money and, purchasing some
commodities for show, joined myself to a caravan that was
passing into the inland country. My companions, for some
reason or other, conjecturing that I was rich, and, by my
inquiries and admiration, finding that I was ignorant,
considered me as a novice whom they had a right to cheat,
and who was to learn, at the usual expense, the art of
fraud. They exposed me to the theft of servants and the
exaction of officers, and saw me plundered upon false
pretences, without any advantage to themselves but that of
rejoicing in the superiority of their own knowledge.”
“Stop a moment,” said the Prince; “is there such
depravity in man as that he should injure another without
benefit to himself? I can easily conceive that all are
pleased with superiority; but your ignorance was merely
accidental, which, being neither your crime nor your folly,
could afford them no reason to applaud themselves; and the
knowledge which they had, and which you wanted, they might
as effectually have shown by warning as betraying you.”
“Pride,” said Imlac, “is seldom delicate; it will please
itself with very mean advantages, and envy feels not its own
happiness but when it may be compared with the misery of
others. They were my enemies because they grieved to think
me rich, and my oppressors because they delighted to find me
weak.”
“Proceed,” said the Prince; “I doubt not of the facts
which you relate, but imagine that you impute them to
mistaken motives.”
“In this company,” said Imlac, “I arrived at Agra, the
capital of Hindostan, the city in which the Great Mogul
commonly resides. I applied myself to the language of the
country, and in a few months was able to converse with the
learned men; some of whom I found morose and reserved, and
others easy and communicative; some were unwilling to teach
another what they had with difficulty learned themselves;
and some showed that the end of their studies was to gain
the dignity of instructing.
“To the tutor of the young princes I recommended myself
so much that I was presented to the Emperor as a man of
uncommon knowledge. The Emperor asked me many questions
concerning my country and my travels, and though I cannot
now recollect anything that he uttered above the power of a
common man, he dismissed me astonished at his wisdom and
enamoured of his goodness.
“My credit was now so high that the merchants with whom I
had travelled applied to me for recommendations to the
ladies of the Court. I was surprised at their confidence of
solicitation and greatly reproached them with their
practices on the road. They heard me with cold indifference,
and showed no tokens of shame or sorrow.
“They then urged their request with the offer of a bribe,
but what I would not do for kindness I would not do for
money, and refused them, not because they had injured me,
but because I would not enable them to injure others; for I
knew they would have made use of my credit to cheat those
who should buy their wares.
“Having resided at Agra till there was no more to be
learned, I travelled into Persia, where I saw many remains
of ancient magnificence and observed many new accommodations
of life. The Persians are a nation eminently social, and
their assemblies afforded me daily opportunities of
remarking characters and manners, and of tracing human
nature through all its variations.
“From Persia I passed into Arabia, where I saw a nation
pastoral and warlike, who lived without any settled
habitation, whose wealth is their flocks and herds, and who
have carried on through ages an hereditary war with mankind,
though they neither covet nor envy their possessions.”
CHAPTER X - IMLAC’S HISTORY (continued) - A DISSERTATION
UPON POETRY.
“Wherever I went I found that poetry was considered as
the highest learning, and regarded with a veneration
somewhat approaching to that which man would pay to angelic
nature. And yet it fills me with wonder that in almost all
countries the most ancient poets are considered as the best;
whether it be that every other kind of knowledge is an
acquisition greatly attained, and poetry is a gift conferred
at once; or that the first poetry of every nation surprised
them as a novelty, and retained the credit by consent which
it received by accident at first; or whether, as the
province of poetry is to describe nature and passion, which
are always the same, the first writers took possession of
the most striking objects for description and the most
probable occurrences for fiction, and left nothing to those
that followed them but transcription of the same events and
new combinations of the same images. Whatever be the reason,
it is commonly observed that the early writers are in
possession of nature, and their followers of art; that the
first excel in strength and invention, and the latter in
elegance and refinement.
“I was desirous to add my name to this illustrious
fraternity. I read all the poets of Persia and Arabia, and
was able to repeat by memory the volumes that are suspended
in the mosque of Mecca. But I soon found that no man was
ever great by imitations. My desire of excellence impelled
me to transfer my attention to nature and to life. Nature
was to be my subject, and men to be my auditors. I could
never describe what I had not seen. I could not hope to move
those with delight or terror whose interests and opinions I
did not understand.
Being now resolved to be a poet, I saw everything with a
new purpose; my sphere of attention was suddenly magnified;
no kind of knowledge was to be overlooked. I ranged
mountains and deserts for images and resemblances, and
pictured upon my mind every tree of the forest and flower of
the valley. I observed with equal care the crags of the rock
and the pinnacles of the palace. Sometimes I wandered along
the mazes of the rivulet, and sometimes watched the changes
of the summer clouds. To a poet nothing can be useless.
Whatever is beautiful and whatever is dreadful must be
familiar to his imagination; he must be conversant with all
that is awfully vast or elegantly little. The plants of the
garden, the animals of the wood, the minerals of the earth,
and meteors of the sky, must all concur to store his mind
with inexhaustible variety; for every idea is useful for the
enforcement or decoration of moral or religious truth, and
he who knows most will have most power of diversifying his
scenes and of gratifying his reader with remote allusions
and unexpected instruction.
“All the appearances of nature I was therefore careful to
study, and every country which I have surveyed has
contributed something to my poetical powers.”
“In so wide a survey,” said the Prince, “you must surely
have left much unobserved. I have lived till now within the
circuit of the mountains, and yet cannot walk abroad without
the sight of something which I had never beheld before, or
never heeded.”
“This business of a poet,” said Imlac, “is to examine,
not the individual, but the species; to remark general
properties and large appearances. He does not number the
streaks of the tulip, or describe the different shades of
the verdure of the forest. He is to exhibit in his portraits
of nature such prominent and striking features as recall the
original to every mind, and must neglect the minuter
discriminations, which one may have remarked and another
have neglected, for those characteristics which are alike
obvious to vigilance and carelessness.
“But the knowledge of nature is only half the task of a
poet; he must be acquainted likewise with all the modes of
life. His character requires that he estimate the happiness
and misery of every condition, observe the power of all the
passions in all their combinations, and trace the changes of
the human mind, as they are modified by various institutions
and accidental influences of climate or custom, from the
sprightliness of infancy to the despondence of decrepitude.
He must divest himself of the prejudices of his age and
country; he must consider right and wrong in their
abstracted and invariable state; he must disregard present
laws and opinions, and rise to general and transcendental
truths, which will always be the same. He must, therefore,
content himself with the slow progress of his name, contemn
the praise of his own time, and commit his claims to the
justice of posterity. He must write as the interpreter of
nature and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself
as presiding over the thoughts and manners of future
generations, as a being superior to time and place.
“His labour is not yet at an end. He must know many
languages and many sciences, and, that his style may be
worthy of his thoughts, must by incessant practice
familiarise to himself every delicacy of speech and grace of
harmony.”
CHAPTER XI - IMLAC’S NARRATIVE (continued) - A HINT OF
PILGRIMAGE.
Imlac now felt the enthusiastic fit, and was proceeding
to aggrandise his own profession, when then Prince cried
out: “Enough! thou hast convinced me that no human being can
ever be a poet. Proceed with thy narration.”
“To be a poet,” said Imlac, “is indeed very difficult.”
“So difficult,” returned the Prince, “that I will at
present hear no more of his labours. Tell me whither you
went when you had seen Persia.”
“From Persia,” said the poet, “I travelled through Syria,
and for three years resided in Palestine, where I conversed
with great numbers of the northern and western nations of
Europe, the nations which are now in possession of all power
and all knowledge, whose armies are irresistible, and whose
fleets command the remotest parts of the globe. When I
compared these men with the natives of our own kingdom and
those that surround us, they appeared almost another order
of beings. In their countries it is difficult to wish for
anything that may not be obtained; a thousand arts, of which
we never heard, are continually labouring for their
convenience and pleasure, and whatever their own climate has
denied them is supplied by their commerce.”
“By what means,” said the Prince, “are the Europeans thus
powerful? or why, since they can so easily visit Asia and
Africa for trade or conquest, cannot the Asiatics and
Africans invade their coast, plant colonies in their ports,
and give laws to their natural princes? The same wind that
carries them back would bring us thither.”
“They are more powerful, sir, than we,” answered Imlac,
“because they are wiser; knowledge will always predominate
over ignorance, as man governs the other animals. But why
their knowledge is more than ours I know not what reason can
be given but the unsearchable will of the Supreme Being.”
“When,” said the Prince with a sigh, “shall I be able to
visit Palestine, and mingle with this mighty confluence of
nations? Till that happy moment shall arrive, let me fill up
the time with such representations as thou canst give me. I
am not ignorant of the motive that assembles such numbers in
that place, and cannot but consider it as the centre of
wisdom and piety, to which the best and wisest men of every
land must be continually resorting.”
“There are some nations,” said Imlac, “that send few
visitants to Palestine; for many numerous and learned sects
in Europe concur to censure pilgrimage as superstitious, or
deride it as ridiculous.”
“You know,” said the Prince, “how little my life has made
me acquainted with diversity of opinions; it will be too
long to hear the arguments on both sides; you, that have
considered them, tell me the result.”
“Pilgrimage,” said Imlac, “like many other acts of piety,
may be reasonable or superstitious, according to the
principles upon which it is performed. Long journeys in
search of truth are not commanded. Truth, such as is
necessary to the regulation of life, is always found where
it is honestly sought. Change of place is no natural cause
of the increase of piety, for it inevitably produces
dissipation of mind. Yet, since men go every day to view the
fields where great actions have been performed, and return
with stronger impressions of the event, curiosity of the
same kind may naturally dispose us to view that country
whence our religion had its beginning, and I believe no man
surveys those awful scenes without some confirmation of holy
resolutions. That the Supreme Being may be more easily
propitiated in one place than in another is the dream of
idle superstition, but that some places may operate upon our
own minds in an uncommon manner is an opinion which hourly
experience will justify. He who supposes that his vices may
be more successfully combated in Palestine, will perhaps
find himself mistaken; yet he may go thither without folly;
he who thinks they will be more freely pardoned, dishonours
at once his reason and religion.”
“These,” said the Prince, “are European distinctions. I
will consider them another time. What have you found to be
the effect of knowledge? Are those nations happier than we?”
“There is so much infelicity,” said the poet, “in the
world, that scarce any man has leisure from his own
distresses to estimate the comparative happiness of others.
Knowledge is certainly one of the means of pleasure, as is
confessed by the natural desire which every mind feels of
increasing its ideas. Ignorance is mere privation, by which
nothing can be produced; it is a vacuity in which the soul
sits motionless and torpid for want of attraction, and,
without knowing why, we always rejoice when we learn, and
grieve when we forget. I am therefore inclined to conclude
that if nothing counteracts the natural consequence of
learning, we grow more happy as out minds take a wider
range.
“In enumerating the particular comforts of life, we shall
find many advantages on the side of the Europeans. They cure
wounds and diseases with which we languish and perish. We
suffer inclemencies of weather which they can obviate. They
have engines for the despatch of many laborious works, which
we must perform by manual industry. There is such
communication between distant places that one friend can
hardly be said to be absent from another. Their policy
removes all public inconveniences; they have roads cut
through the mountains, and bridges laid over their rivers.
And, if we descend to the privacies of life, their
habitations are more commodious and their possessions are
more secure.”
“They are surely happy,” said the Prince, “who have all
these conveniences, of which I envy none so much as the
facility with which separated friends interchange their
thoughts.”
“The Europeans,” answered Imlac, “are less unhappy than
we, but they are not happy. Human life is everywhere a state
in which much is to be endured and little to be enjoyed.”
CHAPTER XII - THE STORY OF IMLAC (continued).
“I am not willing,” said the Prince, “to suppose that
happiness is so parsimoniously distributed to mortals, nor
can I believe but that, if I had the choice of life, I
should be able to fill every day with pleasure. I would
injure no man, and should provoke no resentments; I would
relieve every distress, and should enjoy the benedictions of
gratitude. I would choose my friends among the wise and my
wife among the virtuous, and therefore should be in no
danger from treachery or unkindness. My children should by
my care be learned and pious, and would repay to my age what
their childhood had received. What would dare to molest him
who might call on every side to thousands enriched by his
bounty or assisted by his power? And why should not life
glide away in the soft reciprocation of protection and
reverence? All this may be done without the help of European
refinements, which appear by their effects to be rather
specious than useful. Let us leave them and pursue our
journey.”
“From Palestine,” said Imlac, “I passed through many
regions of Asia; in the more civilised kingdoms as a trader,
and among the barbarians of the mountains as a pilgrim. At
last I began to long for my native country, that I might
repose after my travels and fatigues in the places where I
had spent my earliest years, and gladden my old companions
with the recital of my adventures. Often did I figure to
myself those with whom I had sported away the gay hours of
dawning life, sitting round me in its evening, wondering at
my tales and listening to my counsels.
“When this thought had taken possession of my mind, I
considered every moment as wasted which did not bring me
nearer to Abyssinia. I hastened into Egypt, and,
notwithstanding my impatience, was detained ten months in
the contemplation of its ancient magnificence and in
inquiries after the remains of its ancient learning. I found
in Cairo a mixture of all nations: some brought thither by
the love of knowledge, some by the hope of gain; many by the
desire of living after their own manner without observation,
and of lying hid in the obscurity of multitudes; for in a
city populous as Cairo it is possible to obtain at the same
time the gratifications of society and the secrecy of
solitude.
“From Cairo I travelled to Suez, and embarked on the Red
Sea, passing along the coast till I arrived at the port from
which I had departed twenty years before. Here I joined
myself to a caravan, and re-entered my native country.
“I now expected the caresses of my kinsmen and the
congratulations of my friends, and was not without hope that
my father, whatever value he had set upon riches, would own
with gladness and pride a son who was able to add to the
felicity and honour of the nation. But I was soon convinced
that my thoughts were vain. My father had been dead fourteen
years, having divided his wealth among my brothers, who were
removed to some other provinces. Of my companions, the
greater part was in the grave; of the rest, some could with
difficulty remember me, and some considered me as one
corrupted by foreign manners.
“A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected. I
forgot, after a time, my disappointment, and endeavoured to
recommend myself to the nobles of the kingdom; they admitted
me to their tables, heard my story, and dismissed me. I
opened a school, and was prohibited to teach. I then
resolved to sit down in the quiet of domestic life, and
addressed a lady that was fond of my conversation, but
rejected my suit because my father was a merchant.
“Wearied at last with solicitation and repulses, I
resolved to hide myself for ever from the world, and depend
no longer on the opinion or caprice of others. I waited for
the time when the gate of the Happy Valley should open, that
I might bid farewell to hope and fear; the day came, my
performance was distinguished with favour, and I resigned
myself with joy to perpetual confinement.”
“Hast thou here found happiness at last?” said Rasselas.
“Tell me, without reserve, art thou content with thy
condition, or dost thou wish to be again wandering and
inquiring? All the inhabitants of this valley celebrate
their lot, and at the annual visit of the Emperor invite
others to partake of their felicity.”
“Great Prince,” said Imlac, “I shall speak the truth. I
know not one of all your attendants who does not lament the
hour when he entered this retreat. I am less unhappy than
the rest, because I have a mind replete with images, which I
can vary and combine at pleasure. I can amuse my solitude by
the renovation of the knowledge which begins to fade from my
memory, and by recollection of the accidents of my past
life. Yet all this ends in the sorrowful consideration that
my acquirements are now useless, and that none of my
pleasures can be again enjoyed. The rest, whose minds have
no impression but of the present moment, are either corroded
by malignant passions or sit stupid in the gloom of
perpetual vacancy.”
“What passions can infest those,” said the Prince, “who
have no rivals? We are in a place where impotence precludes
malice, and where all envy is repressed by community of
enjoyments.”
“There may be community,” said Imlac, “of material
possessions, but there can never be community of love or of
esteem. It must happen that one will please more than
another; he that knows himself despised will always be
envious, and still more envious and malevolent if he is
condemned to live in the presence of those who despise him.
The invitations by which they allure others to a state which
they feel to be wretched, proceed from the natural malignity
of hopeless misery. They are weary of themselves and of each
other, and expect to find relief in new companions. They
envy the liberty which their folly has forfeited, and would
gladly see all mankind imprisoned like themselves.
“From this crime, however, I am wholly free. No man can
say that he is wretched by my persuasion. I look with pity
on the crowds who are annually soliciting admission to
captivity, and wish that it were lawful for me to warn them
of their danger.”
“My dear Imlac,” said the Prince, “I will open to thee my
whole heart. I have long meditated an escape from the Happy
Valley. I have examined the mountain on every side, but find
myself insuperably barred - teach me the way to break my
prison; thou shalt be the companion of my flight, the guide
of my rambles, the partner of my fortune, and my sole
director in the choice of life.
“Sir,” answered the poet, “your escape will be difficult,
and perhaps you may soon repent your curiosity. The world,
which you figure to yourself smooth and quiet as the lake in
the valley, you will find a sea foaming with tempests and
boiling with whirlpools; you will be sometimes overwhelmed
by the waves of violence, and sometimes dashed against the
rocks of treachery. Amidst wrongs and frauds, competitions
and anxieties, you will wish a thousand times for these
seats of quiet, and willingly quit hope to be free from
fear.”
“Do not seek to deter me from my purpose,” said the
Prince. “I am impatient to see what thou hast seen; and
since thou art thyself weary of the valley, it is evident
that thy former state was better than this. Whatever be the
consequence of my experiment, I am resolved to judge with
mine own eyes of the various conditions of men, and then to
make deliberately my choice of life.”
“I am afraid,” said Imlac, “you are hindered by stronger
restraints than my persuasions; yet, if your determination
is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are
impossible to diligence and skill.”
CHAPTER XIII - RASSELAS DISCOVERS THE MEANS OF ESCAPE.
The Prince now dismissed his favourite to rest; but the
narrative of wonders and novelties filled his mind with
perturbation. He revolved all that he had heard, and
prepared innumerable questions for the morning.
Much of his uneasiness was now removed. He had a friend
to whom he could impart his thoughts, and whose experience
could assist him in his designs. His heart was no longer
condemned to swell with silent vexation. He thought that
even the Happy Valley might be endured with such a
companion, and that if they could range the world together
he should have nothing further to desire.
In a few days the water was discharged, and the ground
dried. The Prince and Imlac then walked out together, to
converse without the notice of the rest. The Prince, whose
thoughts were always on the wing, as he passed by the gate
said, with a countenance of sorrow, “Why art thou so strong,
and why is man so weak?”
“Man is not weak,” answered his companion; “knowledge is
more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanics
laughs at strength. I can burst the gate, but cannot do it
secretly. Some other expedient must be tried.”
As they were walking on the side of the mountain they
observed that the coneys, which the rain had driven from
their burrows, had taken shelter among the bushes, and
formed holes behind them tending upwards in an oblique line.
“It has been the opinion of antiquity,” said Imlac, “that
human reason borrowed many arts from the instinct of
animals; let us, therefore, not think ourselves degraded by
learning from the coney. We may escape by piercing the
mountain in the same direction. We will begin where the
summit hangs over the middle part, and labour upward till we
shall issue out beyond the prominence.”
The eyes of the Prince, when he heard this proposal,
sparkled with joy. The execution was easy and the success
certain.
No time was now lost. They hastened early in the morning
to choose a place proper for their mine. They clambered with
great fatigue among crags and brambles, and returned without
having discovered any part that favoured their design. The
second and the third day were spent in the same manner, and
with the same frustration; but on the fourth day they found
a small cavern concealed by a thicket, where they resolved
to make their experiment.
Imlac procured instruments proper to hew stone and remove
earth, and they fell to their work on the next day with more
eagerness than vigour. They were presently exhausted by
their efforts, and sat down to pant upon the grass. The
Prince for a moment appeared to be discouraged. “Sir,” said
his companion, “practice will enable us to continue our
labour for a longer time. Mark, however, how far we have
advanced, and ye will find that our toil will some time have
an end. Great works are performed not by strength, but
perseverance; yonder palace was raised by single stones, yet
you see its height and spaciousness. He that shall walk with
vigour three hours a day, will pass in seven years a space
equal to the circumference of the globe.”
They returned to their work day after day, and in a short
time found a fissure in the rock, which enabled them to pass
far with very little obstruction. This Rasselas considered
as a good omen. “Do not disturb your mind,” said Imlac,
“with other hopes or fears than reason may suggest; if you
are pleased with the prognostics of good, you will be
terrified likewise with tokens of evil, and your whole life
will be a prey to superstition. Whatever facilitates our
work is more than an omen; it is a cause of success. This is
one of those pleasing surprises which often happen to active
resolution. Many things difficult to design prove easy to
performance.”
CHAPTER XIV - RASSELAS AND IMLAC RECEIVE AN UNEXPECTED
VISIT.
They had now wrought their way to the middle, and solaced
their toil with the approach of liberty, when the Prince,
coming down to refresh himself with air, found his sister
Nekayah standing at the mouth of the cavity. He started, and
stood confused, afraid to tell his design, and yet hopeless
to conceal it. A few moments determined him to repose on her
fidelity, and secure her secrecy by a declaration without
reserve.
“Do not imagine,” said the Princess, “that I came hither
as a spy. I had long observed from my window that you and
Imlac directed your walk every day towards the same point,
but I did not suppose you had any better reason for the
preference than a cooler shade or more fragrant bank, nor
followed you with any other design than to partake of your
conversation. Since, then, not suspicion, but fondness, has
detected you, let me not lose the advantage of my discovery.
I am equally weary of confinement with yourself, and not
less desirous of knowing what is done or suffered in the
world. Permit me to fly with you from this tasteless
tranquillity, which will yet grow more loathsome when you
have left me. You may deny me to accompany you, but cannot
hinder me from following.”
The Prince, who loved Nekayah above his other sisters,
had no inclination to refuse her request, and grieved that
he had lost an opportunity of showing his confidence by a
voluntary communication. It was, therefore, agreed that she
should leave the valley with them; and that in the meantime
she should watch, lest any other straggler should, by chance
or curiosity, follow them to the mountain.
At length their labour was at an end. They saw light
beyond the prominence, and, issuing to the top of the
mountain, beheld the Nile, yet a narrow current, wandering
beneath them.
The Prince looked round with rapture, anticipated all the
pleasures of travel, and in thought was already transported
beyond his father’s dominions. Imlac, though very joyful at
his escape, had less expectation of pleasure in the world,
which he had before tried and of which he had been weary.
Rasselas was so much delighted with a wider horizon, that
he could not soon be persuaded to return into the valley. He
informed his sister that the way was now open, and that
nothing now remained but to prepare for their departure.
CHAPTER XV - THE PRINCE AND PRINCESS LEAVE THE VALLEY,
AND SEE MANY WONDERS.
The Prince and Princess had jewels sufficient to make
them rich whenever they came into a place of commerce,
which, by Imlac’s direction, they hid in their clothes, and
on the night of the next full moon all left the valley. The
Princess was followed only by a single favourite, who did
not know whither she was going.
They clambered through the cavity, and began to go down
on the other side. The Princess and her maid turned their
eyes toward every part, and seeing nothing to bound their
prospect, considered themselves in danger of being lost in a
dreary vacuity. They stopped and trembled. “I am almost
afraid,” said the Princess, “to begin a journey of which I
cannot perceive an end, and to venture into this immense
plain where I may be approached on every side by men whom I
never saw.” The Prince felt nearly the same emotions, though
he thought it more manly to conceal them.
Imlac smiled at their terrors, and encouraged them to
proceed. But the Princess continued irresolute till she had
been imperceptibly drawn forward too far to return.
In the morning they found some shepherds in the field,
who set some milk and fruits before them. The Princess
wondered that she did not see a palace ready for her
reception and a table spread with delicacies; but being
faint and hungry, she drank the milk and ate the fruits, and
thought them of a higher flavour than the products of the
valley.
They travelled forward by easy journeys, being all
unaccustomed to toil and difficulty, and knowing that,
though they might be missed, they could not be pursued. In a
few days they came into a more populous region, where Imlac
was diverted with the admiration which his companions
expressed at the diversity of manners, stations, and
employments. Their dress was such as might not bring upon
them the suspicion of having anything to conceal; yet the
Prince, wherever he came, expected to be obeyed, and the
Princess was frighted because those who came into her
presence did not prostrate themselves. Imlac was forced to
observe them with great vigilance, lest they should betray
their rank by their unusual behaviour, and detained them
several weeks in the first village to accustom them to the
sight of common mortals.
By degrees the royal wanderers were taught to understand
that they had for a time laid aside their dignity, and were
to expect only such regard as liberality and courtesy could
procure. And Imlac having by many admonitions prepared them
to endure the tumults of a port and the ruggedness of the
commercial race, brought them down to the sea-coast.
The Prince and his sister, to whom everything was new,
were gratified equally at all places, and therefore remained
for some months at the port without any inclination to pass
further. Imlac was content with their stay, because he did
not think it safe to expose them, unpractised in the world,
to the hazards of a foreign country.
At last he began to fear lest they should be discovered,
and proposed to fix a day for their departure. They had no
pretensions to judge for themselves, and referred the whole
scheme to his direction. He therefore took passage in a ship
to Suez, and, when the time came, with great difficulty
prevailed on the Princess to enter the vessel.
They had a quick and prosperous voyage, and from Suez
travelled by land to Cairo.
CHAPTER XVI - THEY ENTER CAIRO, AND FIND EVERY MAN HAPPY.
As they approached the city, which filled the strangers
with astonishment, “This,” said Imlac to the Prince, “is the
place where travellers and merchants assemble from all
corners of the earth. You will here find men of every
character and every occupation. Commerce is here honourable.
I will act as a merchant, and you shall live as strangers
who have no other end of travel than curiosity; it will soon
be observed that we are rich. Our reputation will procure us
access to all whom we shall desire to know; you shall see
all the conditions of humanity, and enable yourselves at
leisure to make your choice of life.”
They now entered the town, stunned by the noise and
offended by the crowds. Instruction had not yet so prevailed
over habit but that they wondered to see themselves pass
undistinguished along the streets, and met by the lowest of
the people without reverence or notice. The Princess could
not at first bear the thought of being levelled with the
vulgar, and for some time continued in her chamber, where
she was served by her favourite Pekuah, as in the palace of
the valley.
Imlac, who understood traffic, sold part of the jewels
the next day, and hired a house, which he adorned with such
magnificence that he was immediately considered as a
merchant of great wealth. His politeness attracted many
acquaintances, and his generosity made him courted by many
dependants. His companions, not being able to mix in the
conversation, could make no discovery of their ignorance or
surprise, and were gradually initiated in the world as they
gained knowledge of the language.
The Prince had by frequent lectures been taught the use
and nature of money; but the ladies could not for a long
time comprehend what the merchants did with small pieces of
gold and silver, or why things of so little use should be
received as an equivalent to the necessaries of life.
They studied the language two years, while Imlac was
preparing to set before them the various ranks and
conditions of mankind. He grew acquainted with all who had
anything uncommon in their fortune or conduct. He frequented
the voluptuous and the frugal, the idle and the busy, the
merchants and the men of learning.
The Prince now being able to converse with fluency, and
having learned the caution necessary to be observed in his
intercourse with strangers, began to accompany Imlac to
places of resort, and to enter into all assemblies, that he
might make his choice of life.
For some time he thought choice needless, because all
appeared to him really happy. Wherever he went he met gaiety
and kindness, and heard the song of joy or the laugh of
carelessness. He began to believe that the world overflowed
with universal plenty, and that nothing was withheld either
from want or merit; that every hand showered liberality and
every heart melted with benevolence: “And who then,” says
he, “will be suffered to be wretched?”
Imlac permitted the pleasing delusion, and was unwilling
to crush the hope of inexperience: till one day, having sat
awhile silent, “I know not,” said the Prince, “what can be
the reason that I am more unhappy than any of our friends. I
see them perpetually and unalterably cheerful, but feel my
own mind restless and uneasy. I am unsatisfied with those
pleasures which I seem most to court. I live in the crowds
of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself,
and am only loud and merry to conceal my sadness.”
“Every man,” said Imlac, “may by examining his own mind
guess what passes in the minds of others. When you feel that
your own gaiety is counterfeit, it may justly lead you to
suspect that of your companions not to be sincere. Envy is
commonly reciprocal. We are long before we are convinced
that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it
possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it
for himself. In the assembly where you passed the last night
there appeared such sprightliness of air and volatility of
fancy as might have suited beings of a higher order, formed
to inhabit serener regions, inaccessible to care or sorrow;
yet, believe me, Prince, was there not one who did not dread
the moment when solitude should deliver him to the tyranny
of reflection.”
“This,” said the Prince, “may be true of others since it
is true of me; yet, whatever be the general infelicity of
man, one condition is more happy than another, and wisdom
surely directs us to take the least evil in the choice of
life.”
“The causes of good and evil,” answered Imlac, “are so
various and uncertain, so often entangled with each other,
so diversified by various relations, and so much subject to
accidents which cannot be foreseen, that he who would fix
his condition upon incontestable reasons of preference must
live and die inquiring and deliberating.”
“But, surely,” said Rasselas, “the wise men, to whom we
listen with reverence and wonder, chose that mode of life
for themselves which they thought most likely to make them
happy.”
“Very few,” said the poet, “live by choice. Every man is
placed in the present condition by causes which acted
without his foresight, and with which he did not always
willingly co-operate, and therefore you will rarely meet one
who does not think the lot of his neighbour better than his
own.”
“I am pleased to think,” said the Prince, “that my birth
has given me at least one advantage over others by enabling
me to determine for myself. I have here the world before me.
I will review it at leisure: surely happiness is somewhere
to be found.”
CHAPTER XVII - THE PRINCE ASSOCIATES WITH YOUNG MEN OF
SPIRIT AND GAIETY.
Rasselas rose next day, and resolved to begin his
experiments upon life. “Youth,” cried he, “is the time of
gladness: I will join myself to the young men whose only
business is to gratify their desires, and whose time is all
spent in a succession of enjoyments.”
To such societies he was readily admitted, but a few days
brought him back weary and disgusted. Their mirth was
without images, their laughter without motive; their
pleasures were gross and sensual, in which the mind had no
part; their conduct was at once wild and mean - they laughed
at order and at law, but the frown of power dejected and the
eye of wisdom abashed them.
The Prince soon concluded that he should never be happy
in a course of life of which he was ashamed. He thought it
unsuitable to a reasonable being to act without a plan, and
to be sad or cheerful only by chance. “Happiness,” said he,
“must be something solid and permanent, without fear and
without uncertainty.”
But his young companions had gained so much of his regard
by their frankness and courtesy that he could not leave them
without warning and remonstrance. “My friends,” said he, “I
have seriously considered our manners and our prospects, and
find that we have mistaken our own interest. The first years
of man must make provision for the last. He that never
thinks, never can be wise. Perpetual levity must end in
ignorance; and intemperance, though it may fire the spirits
for an hour, will make life short or miserable. Let us
consider that youth is of no long duration, and that in
mature age, when the enchantments of fancy shall cease, and
phantoms of delight dance no more about us, we shall have no
comforts but the esteem of wise men and the means of doing
good. Let us therefore stop while to stop is in our power:
let us live as men who are some time to grow old, and to
whom it will be the most dreadful of all evils to count
their past years by follies, and to be reminded of their
former luxuriance of health only by the maladies which riot
has produced.”
They stared awhile in silence one upon another, and at
last drove him away by a general chorus of continued
laughter.
The consciousness that his sentiments were just and his
intention kind was scarcely sufficient to support him
against the horror of derision. But he recovered his
tranquillity and pursued his search.
CHAPTER XVIII - THE PRINCE FINDS A WISE AND HAPPY MAN.
As he was one day walking in the street he saw a spacious
building which all were by the open doors invited to enter.
He followed the stream of people, and found it a hall or
school of declamation, in which professors read lectures to
their auditory. He fixed his eye upon a sage raised above
the rest, who discoursed with great energy on the government
of the passions. His look was venerable, his action
graceful, his pronunciation clear, and his diction elegant.
He showed with great strength of sentiment and variety of
illustration that human nature is degraded and debased when
the lower faculties predominate over the higher; that when
fancy, the parent of passion, usurps the dominion of the
mind, nothing ensues but the natural effect of unlawful
government, perturbation, and confusion; that she betrays
the fortresses of the intellect to rebels, and excites her
children to sedition against their lawful sovereign. He
compared reason to the sun, of which the light is constant,
uniform, and lasting; and fancy to a meteor, of bright but
transitory lustre, irregular in its motion and delusive in
its direction.
He then communicated the various precepts given from time
to time for the conquest of passion, and displayed the
happiness of those who had obtained the important victory,
after which man is no longer the slave of fear nor the fool
of hope; is no more emaciated by envy, inflamed by anger,
emasculated by tenderness, or depressed by grief; but walks
on calmly through the tumults or privacies of life, as the
sun pursues alike his course through the calm or the stormy
sky.
He enumerated many examples of heroes immovable by pain
or pleasure, who looked with indifference on those modes or
accidents to which the vulgar give the names of good and
evil. He exhorted his hearers to lay aside their prejudices,
and arm themselves against the shafts of malice or
misfortune, by invulnerable patience: concluding that this
state only was happiness, and that this happiness was in
every one’s power.
Rasselas listened to him with the veneration due to the
instructions of a superior being, and waiting for him at the
door, humbly implored the liberty of visiting so great a
master of true wisdom. The lecturer hesitated a moment, when
Rasselas put a purse of gold into his hand, which he
received with a mixture of joy and wonder.
“I have found,” said the Prince at his return to Imlac,
“a man who can teach all that is necessary to be known; who,
from the unshaken throne of rational fortitude, looks down
on the scenes of life changing beneath him. He speaks, and
attention watches his lips. He reasons, and conviction
closes his periods. This man shall be my future guide: I
will learn his doctrines and imitate his life.”
“Be not too hasty,” said Imlac, “to trust or to admire
the teachers of morality: they discourse like angels, but
they live like men.”
Rasselas, who could not conceive how any man could reason
so forcibly without feeling the cogency of his own
arguments, paid his visit in a few days, and was denied
admission. He had now learned the power of money, and made
his way by a piece of gold to the inner apartment, where he
found the philosopher in a room half darkened, with his eyes
misty and his face pale. “Sir,” said he, “you are come at a
time when all human friendship is useless; what I suffer
cannot be remedied: what I have lost cannot be supplied. My
daughter, my only daughter, from whose tenderness I expected
all the comforts of my age, died last night of a fever. My
views, my purposes, my hopes, are at an end: I am now a
lonely being, disunited from society.”
“Sir,” said the Prince, “mortality is an event by which a
wise man can never be surprised: we know that death is
always near, and it should therefore always be expected.”
“Young man,” answered the philosopher, “you speak like one
that has never felt the pangs of separation.” “Have you then
forgot the precepts,” said Rasselas, “which you so
powerfully enforced? Has wisdom no strength to arm the heart
against calamity? Consider that external things are
naturally variable, but truth and reason are always the
same.” “What comfort,” said the mourner, “can truth and
reason afford me? Of what effect are they now, but to tell
me that my daughter will not be restored?”
The Prince, whose humanity would not suffer him to insult
misery with reproof, went away, convinced of the emptiness
of rhetorical sounds, and the inefficacy of polished periods
and studied sentences.
CHAPTER XIX - A GLIMPSE OF PASTORAL LIFE.
He was still eager upon the same inquiry; and having
heard of a hermit that lived near the lowest cataract of the
Nile, and filled the whole country with the fame of his
sanctity, resolved to visit his retreat, and inquire whether
that felicity which public life could not afford was to be
found in solitude, and whether a man whose age and virtue
made him venerable could teach any peculiar art of shunning
evils or enduring them.
Imlac and the Princess agreed to accompany him, and after
the necessary preparations, they began their journey. Their
way lay through the fields, where shepherds tended their
flocks and the lambs were playing upon the pasture. “This,”
said the poet, “is the life which has been often celebrated
for its innocence and quiet; let us pass the heat of the day
among the shepherds’ tents, and know whether all our
searches are not to terminate in pastoral simplicity.”
The proposal pleased them; and they induced the
shepherds, by small presents and familiar questions, to tell
the opinion of their own state. They were so rude and
ignorant, so little able to compare the good with the evil
of the occupation, and so indistinct in their narratives and
descriptions, that very little could be learned from them.
But it was evident that their hearts were cankered with
discontent; that they considered themselves as condemned to
labour for the luxury of the rich, and looked up with stupid
malevolence towards those that were placed above them.
The Princess pronounced with vehemence that she would
never suffer these envious savages to be her companions, and
that she should not soon be desirous of seeing any more
specimens of rustic happiness; but could not believe that
all the accounts of primeval pleasures were fabulous, and
was in doubt whether life had anything that could be justly
preferred to the placid gratification of fields and woods.
She hoped that the time would come when, with a few virtuous
and elegant companions, she should gather flowers planted by
her own hands, fondle the lambs of her own ewe, and listen
without care, among brooks and breezes, to one of her
maidens reading in the shade.
CHAPTER XX - THE DANGER OF PROSPERITY.
On the next day they continued their journey till the
heat compelled them to look round for shelter. At a small
distance they saw a thick wood, which they no sooner entered
than they perceived that they were approaching the
habitations of men. The shrubs were diligently cut away to
open walks where the shades ware darkest; the boughs of
opposite trees were artificially interwoven; seats of
flowery turf were raised in vacant spaces; and a rivulet
that wantoned along the side of a winding path had its banks
sometimes opened into small basins, and its stream sometimes
obstructed by little mounds of stone heaped together to
increase its murmurs.
They passed slowly through the wood, delighted with such
unexpected accommodations, and entertained each other with
conjecturing what or who he could be that in those rude and
unfrequented regions had leisure and art for such harmless
luxury.
As they advanced they heard the sound of music, and saw
youths and virgins dancing in the grove; and going still
farther beheld a stately palace built upon a hill surrounded
by woods. The laws of Eastern hospitality allowed them to
enter, and the master welcomed them like a man liberal and
wealthy.
He was skilful enough in appearances soon to discern that
they were no common guests, and spread his table with
magnificence. The eloquence of Imlac caught his attention,
and the lofty courtesy of the Princess excited his respect.
When they offered to depart, he entreated their stay, and
was the next day more unwilling to dismiss them than before.
They were easily persuaded to stop, and civility grew up in
time to freedom and confidence.
The Prince now saw all the domestics cheerful and all the
face of nature smiling round the place, and could not
forbear to hope that he should find here what he was
seeking; but when he was congratulating the master upon his
possessions he answered with a sigh, “My condition has
indeed the appearance of happiness, but appearances are
delusive. My prosperity puts my life in danger; the Bassa of
Egypt is my enemy, incensed only by my wealth and
popularity. I have been hitherto protected against him by
the princes of the country; but as the favour of the great
is uncertain I know not how soon my defenders may be
persuaded to share the plunder with the Bassa. I have sent
my treasures into a distant country, and upon the first
alarm am prepared to follow them. Then will my enemies riot
in my mansion, and enjoy the gardens which I have planted.”
They all joined in lamenting his danger and deprecating
his exile; and the Princess was so much disturbed with the
tumult of grief and indignation that she retired to her
apartment. They continued with their kind inviter a few days
longer, and then went to find the hermit.
CHAPTER XXI - THE HAPPINESS OF SOLITUDE - THE HERMIT’S
HISTORY.
They came on the third day, by the direction of the
peasants, to the hermit’s cell. It was a cavern in the side
of a mountain, overshadowed with palm trees, at such a
distance from the cataract that nothing more was heard than
a gentle uniform murmur, such as composes the mind to
pensive meditation, especially when it was assisted by the
wind whistling among the branches. The first rude essay of
Nature had been so much improved by human labour that the
cave contained several apartments appropriated to different
uses, and often afforded lodging to travellers whom darkness
or tempests happened to overtake.
The hermit sat on a bench at the door, to enjoy the
coolness of the evening. On one side lay a book with pens
and paper; on the other mechanical instruments of various
kinds. As they approached him unregarded, the Princess
observed that he had not the countenance of a man that had
found or could teach the way to happiness.
They saluted him with great respect, which he repaid like
a man not unaccustomed to the forms of Courts. “My
children,” said he, “if you have lost your way, you shall be
willingly supplied with such conveniences for the night as
this cavern will afford. I have all that Nature requires,
and you will not expect delicacies in a hermit’s cell.”
They thanked him; and, entering, were pleased with the
neatness and regularity of the place. The hermit set flesh
and wine before them, though he fed only upon fruits and
water. His discourse was cheerful without levity, and pious
without enthusiasm. He soon gained the esteem of his guests,
and the Princess repented her hasty censure.
At last Imlac began thus: “I do not now wonder that your
reputation is so far extended: we have heard at Cairo of
your wisdom, and came hither to implore your direction for
this young man and maiden in the choice of life.”
“To him that lives well,” answered the hermit, “every
form of life is good; nor can I give any other rule for
choice than to remove all apparent evil.”
“He will most certainly remove from evil,” said the
Prince, “who shall devote himself to that solitude which you
have recommended by your example.”
“I have indeed lived fifteen years in solitude,” said the
hermit, “but have no desire that my example should gain any
imitators. In my youth I professed arms, and was raised by
degrees to the highest military rank. I have traversed wide
countries at the head of my troops, and seen many battles
and sieges. At last, being disgusted by the preferments of a
younger officer, and feeling that my vigour was beginning to
decay, I resolved to close my life in peace, having found
the world full of snares, discord, and misery. I had once
escaped from the pursuit of the enemy by the shelter of this
cavern, and therefore chose it for my final residence. I
employed artificers to form it into chambers, and stored it
with all that I was likely to want.
“For some time after my retreat I rejoiced like a
tempest-beaten sailor at his entrance into the harbour,
being delighted with the sudden change of the noise and
hurry of war to stillness and repose. When the pleasure of
novelty went away, I employed my hours in examining the
plants which grow in the valley, and the minerals which I
collected from the rocks. But that inquiry is now grown
tasteless and irksome. I have been for some time unsettled
and distracted: my mind is disturbed with a thousand
perplexities of doubt and vanities of imagination, which
hourly prevail upon me, because I have no opportunities of
relaxation or diversion. I am sometimes ashamed to think
that I could not secure myself from vice but by retiring
from the exercise of virtue, and begin to suspect that I was
rather impelled by resentment than led by devotion into
solitude. My fancy riots in scenes of folly, and I lament
that I have lost so much, and have gained so little. In
solitude, if I escape the example of bad men, I want
likewise the counsel and conversation of the good. I have
been long comparing the evils with the advantages of
society, and resolve to return into the world to-morrow. The
life of a solitary man will be certainly miserable, but not
certainly devout.”
They heard his resolution with surprise, but after a
short pause offered to conduct him to Cairo. He dug up a
considerable treasure which he had hid among the rocks, and
accompanied them to the city, on which, as he approached it,
he gazed with rapture.
CHAPTER XXII - THE HAPPINESS OF A LIFE LED ACCORDING TO
NATURE.
Rasselas went often to an assembly of learned men, who
met at stated times to unbend their minds and compare their
opinions. Their manners were somewhat coarse, but their
conversation was instructive, and their disputations acute,
though sometimes too violent, and often continued till
neither controvertist remembered upon what question he
began. Some faults were almost general among them: every one
was pleased to hear the genius or knowledge of another
depreciated.
In this assembly Rasselas was relating his interview with
the hermit, and the wonder with which he heard him censure a
course of life which he had so deliberately chosen and so
laudably followed. The sentiments of the hearers were
various. Some were of opinion that the folly of his choice
had been justly punished by condemnation to perpetual
perseverance. One of the youngest among them, with great
vehemence, pronounced him a hypocrite. Some talked of the
right of society to the labour of individuals, and
considered retirement as a desertion of duty. Others readily
allowed that there was a time when the claims of the public
were satisfied, and when a man might properly sequester
himself, to review his life and purify his heart.
One who appeared more affected with the narrative than
the rest thought it likely that the hermit would in a few
years go back to his retreat, and perhaps, if shame did not
restrain or death intercept him, return once more from his
retreat into the world. “For the hope of happiness,” said
he, “is so strongly impressed that the longest experience is
not able to efface it. Of the present state, whatever it be,
we feel and are forced to confess the misery; yet when the
same state is again at a distance, imagination paints it as
desirable. But the time will surely come when desire will no
longer be our torment and no man shall be wretched but by
his own fault.
“This,” said a philosopher who had heard him with tokens
of great impatience, “is the present condition of a wise
man. The time is already come when none are wretched but by
their own fault. Nothing is more idle than to inquire after
happiness which Nature has kindly placed within our reach.
The way to be happy is to live according to Nature, in
obedience to that universal and unalterable law with which
every heart is originally impressed; which is not written on
it by precept, but engraven by destiny; not instilled by
education, but infused at our nativity. He that lives
according to Nature will suffer nothing from the delusions
of hope or importunities of desire; he will receive and
reject with equability of temper; and act or suffer as the
reason of things shall alternately prescribe. Other men may
amuse themselves with subtle definitions or intricate
ratiocination. Let them learn to be wise by easier means:
let them observe the hind of the forest and the linnet of
the grove: let them consider the life of animals, whose
motions are regulated by instinct; they obey their guide,
and are happy. Let us therefore at length cease to dispute,
and learn to live: throw away the encumbrance of precepts,
which they who utter them with so much pride and pomp do not
understand, and carry with us this simple and intelligible
maxim: that deviation from Nature is deviation from
happiness.
When he had spoken he looked round him with a placid air,
and enjoyed the consciousness of his own beneficence.
“Sir,” said the Prince with great modesty, “as I, like
all the rest of mankind, am desirous of felicity, my closest
attention has been fixed upon your discourse: I doubt not
the truth of a position which a man so learned has so
confidently advanced. Let me only know what it is to live
according to Nature.”
“When I find young men so humble and so docile,” said the
philosopher, “I can deny them no information which my
studies have enabled me to afford. To live according to
Nature is to act always with due regard to the fitness
arising from the relations and qualities of causes and
effects; to concur with the great and unchangeable scheme of
universal felicity; to co-operate with the general
disposition and tendency of the present system of things.”
The Prince soon found that this was one of the sages whom
he should understand less as he heard him longer. He
therefore bowed and was silent; and the philosopher,
supposing him satisfied and the rest vanquished, rose up and
departed with the air of a man that had co-operated with the
present system.
CHAPTER XXIII - THE PRINCE AND HIS SISTER DIVIDE BETWEEN
THEM THE WORK OF OBSERVATION.
Rasselas returned home full of reflections, doubting how
to direct his future steps. Of the way to happiness he found
the learned and simple equally ignorant; but as he was yet
young, he flattered himself that he had time remaining for
more experiments and further inquiries. He communicated to
Imlac his observations and his doubts, but was answered by
him with new doubts and remarks that gave him no comfort. He
therefore discoursed more frequently and freely with his
sister, who had yet the same hope with himself, and always
assisted him to give some reason why, though he had been
hitherto frustrated, he might succeed at last.
“We have hitherto,” said she, “known but little of the
world; we have never yet been either great or mean. In our
own country, though we had royalty, we had no power; and in
this we have not yet seen the private recesses of domestic
peace. Imlac favours not our search, lest we should in time
find him mistaken. We will divide the task between us; you
shall try what is to be found in the splendour of Courts,
and I will range the shades of humbler life. Perhaps command
and authority may be the supreme blessings, as they afford
the most opportunities of doing good; or perhaps what this
world can give may be found in the modest habitations of
middle fortune - too low for great designs, and too high for
penury and distress.”
CHAPTER XXIV - THE PRINCE EXAMINES THE HAPPINESS OF HIGH
STATIONS.
Rasselas applauded the design, and appeared next day with
a splendid retinue at the Court of the Bassa. He was soon
distinguished for his magnificence, and admitted, as a
Prince whose curiosity had brought him from distant
countries, to an intimacy with the great officers and
frequent conversation with the Bassa himself.
He was at first inclined to believe that the man must be
pleased with his own condition whom all approached with
reverence and heard with obedience, and who had the power to
extend his edicts to a whole kingdom. “There can be no
pleasure,” said he, “equal to that of feeling at once the
joy of thousands all made happy by wise administration. Yet,
since by the law of subordination this sublime delight can
be in one nation but the lot of one, it is surely reasonable
to think that there is some satisfaction more popular and
accessible, and that millions can hardly be subjected to the
will of a single man, only to fill his particular breast
with incommunicable content.”
These thoughts were often in his mind, and he found no
solution of the difficulty. But as presents and civilities
gained him more familiarity, he found that almost every man
who stood high in his employment hated all the rest and was
hated by them, and that their lives were a continual
succession of plots and detections, stratagems and escapes,
faction and treachery. Many of those who surrounded the
Bassa were sent only to watch and report his conduct: every
tongue was muttering censure, and every eye was searching
for a fault.
At last the letters of revocation arrived: the Bassa was
carried in chains to Constantinople, and his name was
mentioned no more.
“What are we now to think of the prerogatives of power?”
said Rasselas to his sister: “is it without efficacy to
good, or is the subordinate degree only dangerous, and the
supreme safe and glorious? Is the Sultan the only happy man
in his dominions, or is the Sultan himself subject to the
torments of suspicion and the dread of enemies?”
In a short time the second Bassa was deposed. The Sultan
that had advanced him was murdered by the Janissaries, and
his successor had other views or different favourites.
CHAPTER XXV - THE PRINCESS PURSUES HER INQUIRY WITH MORE
DILIGENCE THAN SUCCESS.
The Princess in the meantime insinuated herself into many
families; for there are few doors through which liberality,
joined with good humour, cannot find its way. The daughters
of many houses were airy and cheerful; but Nekayah had been
too long accustomed to the conversation of Imlac and her
brother to be much pleased with childish levity and prattle
which had no meaning. She found their thoughts narrow, their
wishes low, and their merriment often artificial. Their
pleasures, poor as they were, could not be preserved pure,
but were embittered by petty competitions and worthless
emulation. They were always jealous of the beauty of each
other, of a quality to which solicitude can add nothing, and
from which detraction can take nothing away. Many were in
love with triflers like themselves, and many fancied that
they were in love when in truth they were only idle. Their
affection was not fixed on sense or virtue, and therefore
seldom ended but in vexation. Their grief, however, like
their joy, was transient; everything floated in their mind
unconnected with the past or future, so that one desire
easily gave way to another, as a second stone, cast into the
water, effaces and confounds the circles of the first.
With these girls she played as with inoffensive animals,
and found them proud of her countenance and weary of her
company.
But her purpose was to examine more deeply, and her
affability easily persuaded the hearts that were swelling
with sorrow to discharge their secrets in her ear, and those
whom hope flattered or prosperity delighted often courted
her to partake their pleasure.
The Princess and her brother commonly met in the evening
in a private summerhouse on the banks of the Nile, and
related to each other the occurrences of the day. As they
were sitting together the Princess cast her eyes upon the
river that flowed before her. “Answer,” said she, “great
father of waters, thou that rollest thy goods through eighty
nations, to the invocations of the daughter of thy native
king. Tell me if thou waterest through all thy course a
single habitation from which thou dost not hear the murmurs
of complaint.”
“You are then,” said Rasselas, “not more successful in
private houses than I have been in Courts.” “I have, since
the last partition of our provinces,” said the Princess,
“enabled myself to enter familiarly into many families,
where there was the fairest show of prosperity and peace,
and know not one house that is not haunted by some fury that
destroys their quiet.
“I did not seek ease among the poor, because I concluded
that there it could not be found. But I saw many poor whom I
had supposed to live in affluence. Poverty has in large
cities very different appearances. It is often concealed in
splendour and often in extravagance. It is the care of a
very great part of mankind to conceal their indigence from
the rest. They support themselves by temporary expedients,
and every day is lost in contriving for the morrow.
“This, however, was an evil which, though frequent, I saw
with less pain, because I could relieve it. Yet some have
refused my bounties; more offended with my quickness to
detect their wants than pleased with my readiness to succour
them; and others, whose exigencies compelled them to admit
my kindness, have never been able to forgive their
benefactress. Many, however, have been sincerely grateful
without the ostentation of gratitude or the hope of other
favours.”
CHAPTER XXVI - THE PRINCESS CONTINUES HER REMARKS UPON
PRIVATE LIFE.
Nekayah, perceiving her brother’s attention fixed,
proceeded in her narrative.
“In families where there is or is not poverty there is
commonly discord. If a kingdom be, as Imlac tells us, a
great family, a family likewise is a little kingdom, torn
with factions and exposed to revolutions. An unpractised
observer expects the love of parents and children to be
constant and equal. But this kindness seldom continues
beyond the years of infancy; in a short time the children
become rivals to their parents. Benefits are allowed by
reproaches, and gratitude debased by envy.
“Parents and children seldom act in concert; each child
endeavours to appropriate the esteem or the fondness of the
parents; and the parents, with yet less temptation, betray
each other to their children. Thus, some place their
confidence in the father and some in the mother, and by
degrees the house is filled with artifices and feuds.
“The opinions of children and parents, of the young and
the old, are naturally opposite, by the contrary effects of
hope and despondency, of expectation and experience, without
crime or folly on either side. The colours of life in youth
and age appear different, as the face of Nature in spring
and winter. And how can children credit the assertions of
parents which their own eyes show them to be false?
“Few parents act in such a manner as much to enforce
their maxims by the credit of their lives. The old man
trusts wholly to slow contrivance and gradual progression;
the youth expects to force his way by genius, vigour, and
precipitance. The old man pays regard to riches, and the
youth reverences virtue. The old man deifies prudence; the
youth commits himself to magnanimity and chance. The young
man, who intends no ill, believes that none is intended, and
therefore acts with openness and candour; but his father;
having suffered the injuries of fraud, is impelled to
suspect and too often allured to practise it. Age looks with
anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on
the scrupulosity of age. Thus parents and children for the
greatest part live on to love less and less; and if those
whom Nature has thus closely united are the torments of each
other, where shall we look for tenderness and consolations?”
“Surely,” said the Prince, “you must have been
unfortunate in your choice of acquaintance. I am unwilling
to believe that the most tender of all relations is thus
impeded in its effects by natural necessity.”
“Domestic discord,” answered she, “is not inevitably and
fatally necessary, but yet it is not easily avoided. We
seldom see that a whole family is virtuous; the good and the
evil cannot well agree, and the evil can yet less agree with
one another. Even the virtuous fall sometimes to variance,
when their virtues are of different kinds and tending to
extremes. In general, those parents have most reverence who
most deserve it, for he that lives well cannot be despised.
“Many other evils infest private life. Some are the
slaves of servants whom they have trusted with their
affairs. Some are kept in continual anxiety by the caprice
of rich relations, whom they cannot please and dare not
offend. Some husbands are imperious and some wives perverse,
and, as it is always more easy to do evil than good, though
the wisdom or virtue of one can very rarely make many happy,
the folly or vice of one makes many miserable.”
“If such be the general effect of marriage,” said the
Prince, “I shall for the future think it dangerous to
connect my interest with that of another, lest I should be
unhappy by my partner’s fault.”
“I have met,” said the Princess, “with many who live
single for that reason, but I never found that their
prudence ought to raise envy. They dream away their time
without friendship, without fondness, and are driven to rid
themselves of the day, for which they have no use, by
childish amusements or vicious delights. They act as beings
under the constant sense of some known inferiority that
fills their minds with rancour and their tongues with
censure. They are peevish at home and malevolent abroad,
and, as the outlaws of human nature, make it their business
and their pleasure to disturb that society which debars them
from its privileges. To live without feeling or exciting
sympathy, to be fortunate without adding to the felicity of
others, or afflicted without tasting the balm of pity, is a
state more gloomy than solitude; it is not retreat but
exclusion from mankind. Marriage has many pains, but
celibacy has no pleasures.”
“What then is to be done?” said Rasselas. “The more we
inquire the less we can resolve. Surely he is most likely to
please himself that has no other inclination to regard.”
CHAPTER XXVII - DISQUISITION UPON GREATNESS.
The conversation had a short pause. The Prince, having
considered his sister’s observation, told her that she had
surveyed life with prejudice and supposed misery where she
did not find it. “Your narrative,” says he, “throws yet a
darker gloom upon the prospects of futurity. The predictions
of Imlac were but faint sketches of the evils painted by
Nekayah. I have been lately convinced that quiet is not the
daughter of grandeur or of power; that her presence is not
to be bought by wealth nor enforced by conquest. It is
evident that as any man acts in a wider compass he must be
more exposed to opposition from enmity or miscarriage from
chance. Whoever has many to please or to govern must use the
ministry of many agents, some of whom will be wicked and
some ignorant, by some he will be misled and by others
betrayed. If he gratifies one he will offend another; those
that are not favoured will think themselves injured, and
since favours can be conferred but upon few the greater
number will be always discontented.”
“The discontent,” said the Princess, “which is thus
unreasonable, I hope that I shall always have spirit to
despise and you power to repress.”
“Discontent,” answered Rasselas, “will not always be
without reason under the most just and vigilant
administration of public affairs. None, however attentive,
can always discover that merit which indigence or faction
may happen to obscure, and none, however powerful, can
always reward it. Yet he that sees inferior desert advanced
above him will naturally impute that preference to
partiality or caprice, and indeed it can scarcely be hoped
that any man, however magnanimous by Nature or exalted by
condition, will be able to persist for ever in fixed and
inexorable justice of distribution; he will sometimes
indulge his own affections and sometimes those of his
favourites; he will permit some to please him who can never
serve him; he will discover in those whom he loves qualities
which in reality they do not possess, and to those from whom
he receives pleasure he will in his turn endeavour to give
it. Thus will recommendations sometimes prevail which were
purchased by money or by the more destructive bribery of
flattery and servility.
“He that hath much to do will do something wrong, and of
that wrong must suffer the consequences, and if it were
possible that he should always act rightly, yet, when such
numbers are to judge of his conduct, the bad will censure
and obstruct him by malevolence and the good sometimes by
mistake.
“The highest stations cannot therefore hope to be the
abodes of happiness, which I would willingly believe to have
fled from thrones and palaces to seats of humble privacy and
placid obscurity. For what can hinder the satisfaction or
intercept the expectations of him whose abilities are
adequate to his employments, who sees with his own eyes the
whole circuit of his influence, who chooses by his own
knowledge all whom he trusts, and whom none are tempted to
deceive by hope or fear? Surely he has nothing to do but to
love and to be loved; to be virtuous and to be happy.”
“Whether perfect happiness would be procured by perfect
goodness,” said Nekayah, “this world will never afford an
opportunity of deciding. But this, at least, may be
maintained, that we do not always find visible happiness in
proportion to visible virtue. All natural and almost all
political evils are incident alike to the bad and good; they
are confounded in the misery of a famine, and not much
distinguished in the fury of a faction; they sink together
in a tempest and are driven together from their country by
invaders. All that virtue can afford is quietness of
conscience and a steady prospect of a happier state; this
may enable us to endure calamity with patience, but remember
that patience must oppose pain.”
CHAPTER XXVIII - RASSELAS AND NEKAYAH CONTINUE THEIR
CONVERSATION.
“Dear Princess,” said Rasselas, “you fall into the common
errors of exaggeratory declamation, by producing in a
familiar disquisition examples of national calamities and
scenes of extensive misery which are found in books rather
than in the world, and which, as they are horrid, are
ordained to be rare. Let us not imagine evils which we do
not feel, nor injure life by misrepresentations. I cannot
bear that querulous eloquence which threatens every city
with a siege like that of Jerusalem, that makes famine
attend on every flight of locust, and suspends pestilence on
the wing of every blast that issues from the south.
“On necessary and inevitable evils which overwhelm
kingdoms at once all disputation is vain; when they happen
they must be endured. But it is evident that these bursts of
universal distress are more dreaded than felt; thousands and
tens of thousands flourish in youth and wither in age,
without the knowledge of any other than domestic evils, and
share the same pleasures and vexations, whether their kings
are mild or cruel, whether the armies of their country
pursue their enemies or retreat before them. While Courts
are disturbed with intestine competitions and ambassadors
are negotiating in foreign countries, the smith still plies
his anvil and the husbandman drives his plough forward; the
necessaries of life are required and obtained, and the
successive business of the season continues to make its
wonted revolutions.
“Let us cease to consider what perhaps may never happen,
and what, when it shall happen, will laugh at human
speculation. We will not endeavour to modify the motions of
the elements or to fix the destiny of kingdoms. It is our
business to consider what beings like us may perform, each
labouring for his own happiness by promoting within his
circle, however narrow, the happiness of others.
“Marriage is evidently the dictate of Nature; men and
women were made to be the companions of each other, and
therefore I cannot be persuaded but that marriage is one of
the means of happiness.”
“I know not,” said the Princess, “whether marriage be
more than one of the innumerable modes of human misery. When
I see and reckon the various forms of connubial infelicity,
the unexpected causes of lasting discord, the diversities of
temper, the oppositions of opinion, the rude collisions of
contrary desire where both are urged by violent impulses,
the obstinate contest of disagreeing virtues where both are
supported by consciousness of good intention, I am sometimes
disposed to think, with the severer casuists of most
nations, that marriage is rather permitted than approved,
and that none, but by the instigation of a passion too much
indulged, entangle themselves with indissoluble compact.”
“You seem to forget,” replied Rasselas, “that you have,
even now represented celibacy as less happy than marriage.
Both conditions may be bad, but they cannot both be worse.
Thus it happens, when wrong opinions are entertained, that
they mutually destroy each other and leave the mind open to
truth.”
“I did not expect,” answered, the Princess, “to hear that
imputed to falsehood which is the consequence only of
frailty. To the mind, as to the eye, it is difficult to
compare with exactness objects vast in their extent and
various in their parts. When we see or conceive the whole at
once, we readily note the discriminations and decide the
preference, but of two systems, of which neither can be
surveyed by any human being in its full compass of magnitude
and multiplicity of complication, where is the wonder that,
judging of the whole by parts, I am alternately affected by
one and the other as either presses on my memory or fancy?
We differ from ourselves just as we differ from each other
when we see only part of the question, as in the
multifarious relations of politics and morality, but when we
perceive the whole at once, as in numerical computations,
all agree in one judgment, and none ever varies in his
opinion.”
“Let us not add,” said the Prince, “to the other evils of
life the bitterness of controversy, nor endeavour to vie
with each other in subtilties of argument. We are employed
in a search of which both are equally to enjoy the success
or suffer by the miscarriage; it is therefore fit that we
assist each other. You surely conclude too hastily from the
infelicity of marriage against its institution; will not the
misery of life prove equally that life cannot be the gift of
Heaven? The world must be peopled by marriage or peopled
without it.”
“How the world is to be peopled,” returned Nekayah, “is
not my care and need not be yours. I see no danger that the
present generation should omit to leave successors behind
them; we are not now inquiring for the world, but for
ourselves.”
CHAPTER XXIX - THE DEBATE ON MARRIAGE (continued).
“The good of the whole,” says Rasselas, “is the same with
the good of all its parts. If marriage be best for mankind,
it must be evidently best for individuals; or a permanent
and necessary duty must be the cause of evil, and some must
be inevitably sacrificed to the convenience of others. In
the estimate which you have made of the two states, it
appears that the incommodities of a single life are in a
great measure necessary and certain, but those of the
conjugal state accidental and avoidable. I cannot forbear to
flatter myself that prudence and benevolence will make
marriage happy. The general folly of mankind is the cause of
general complaint. What can be expected but disappointment
and repentance from a choice made in the immaturity of
youth, in the ardour of desire, without judgment, without
foresight, without inquiry after conformity of opinions,
similarity of manners, rectitude of judgment, or purity of
sentiment?
“Such is the common process of marriage. A youth and
maiden, meeting by chance or brought together by artifice,
exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, go home and dream
of one another. Having little to divert attention or
diversify thought, they find themselves uneasy when they are
apart, and therefore conclude that they shall be happy
together. They marry, and discover what nothing but
voluntary blindness before had concealed; they wear out life
in altercations, and charge Nature with cruelty.
“From those early marriages proceeds likewise the rivalry
of parents and children: the son is eager to enjoy the world
before the father is willing to forsake it, and there is
hardly room at once for two generations. The daughter begins
to bloom before the mother can be content to fade, and
neither can forbear to wish for the absence of the other.
“Surely all these evils may be avoided by that
deliberation and delay which prudence prescribes to
irrevocable choice. In the variety and jollity of youthful
pleasures, life may be well enough supported without the
help of a partner. Longer time will increase experience, and
wider views will allow better opportunities of inquiry and
selection; one advantage at least will be certain, the
parents will be visibly older than their children.”
“What reason cannot collect,” and Nekayah, “and what
experiment has not yet taught, can be known only from the
report of others. I have been told that late marriages are
not eminently happy. This is a question too important to be
neglected; and I have often proposed it to those whose
accuracy of remark and comprehensiveness of knowledge made
their suffrages worthy of regard. They have generally
determined that it is dangerous for a man and woman to
suspend their fate upon each other at a time when opinions
are fixed and habits are established, when friendships have
been contracted on both sides, when life has been planned
into method, and the mind has long enjoyed the contemplation
of its own prospects.
“It is scarcely possible that two travelling through the
world under the conduct of chance should have been both
directed to the same path, and it will not often happen that
either will quit the track which custom has made pleasing.
When the desultory levity of youth has settled into
regularity, it is soon succeeded by pride ashamed to yield,
or obstinacy delighting to contend. And even though mutual
esteem produces mutual desire to please, time itself, as it
modifies unchangeably the external mien, determines likewise
the direction of the passions, and gives an inflexible
rigidity to the manners. Long customs are not easily broken;
he that attempts to change the course of his own life very
often labours in vain, and how shall we do that for others
which we are seldom able to do for ourselves?”
“But surely,” interposed the Prince, “you suppose the
chief motive of choice forgotten or neglected. Whenever I
shall seek a wife, it shall be my first question whether she
be willing to be led by reason.”
“Thus it is,” said Nekayah, “that philosophers are
deceived. There are a thousand familiar disputes which
reason never can decide; questions that elude investigation,
and make logic ridiculous; cases where something must be
done, and where little can be said. Consider the state of
mankind, and inquire how few can be supposed to act upon any
occasions, whether small or great, with all the reasons of
action present to their minds. Wretched would be the pair,
above all names of wretchedness, who should be doomed to
adjust by reason every morning all the minute details of a
domestic day.
“Those who marry at an advanced age will probably escape
the encroachments of their children, but in the diminution
of this advantage they will be likely to leave them,
ignorant and helpless, to a guardian’s mercy; or if that
should not happen, they must at least go out of the world
before they see those whom they love best either wise or
great.
“From their children, if they have less to fear, they
have less also to hope; and they lose without equivalent the
joys of early love, and the convenience of uniting with
manners pliant and minds susceptible of new impressions,
which might wear away their dissimilitudes by long
cohabitation, as soft bodies by continual attrition conform
their surfaces to each other.
“I believe it will be found that those who marry late are
best pleased with their children, and those who marry early
with their partners.”
“The union of these two affections,” said Rasselas,
“would produce all that could be wished. Perhaps there is a
time when marriage might unite them - a time neither too
early for the father nor too late for the husband.”
“Every hour,” answered the Princess, “confirms my
prejudice in favour of the position so often uttered by the
mouth of Imlac, that ‘Nature sets her gifts on the right
hand and on the left.’ Those conditions which flatter hope
and attract desire are so constituted that as we approach
one we recede from another. There are goods so opposed that
we cannot seize both, but by too much prudence may pass
between them at too great a distance to reach either. This
is often the fate of long consideration; he does nothing who
endeavours to do more than is allowed to humanity. Flatter
not yourself with contrarieties of pleasure. Of the
blessings set before you make your choice, and be content.
No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting
his scent with the flowers of the spring; no man can at the
same time fill his cup from the source and from the mouth of
the Nile.”
CHAPTER XXX - IMLAC ENTERS, AND CHANGES THE CONVERSATION.
Here Imlac entered, and interrupted them. “Imlac,” said
Rasselas, “I have been taking from the Princess the dismal
history of private life, and am almost discouraged from
further search.”
“It seems to me,” said Imlac, “that while you are making
the choice of life you neglect to live. You wander about a
single city, which, however large and diversified, can now
afford few novelties, and forget that you are in a country
famous among the earliest monarchies for the power and
wisdom of its inhabitants - a country where the sciences
first dawned that illuminate the world, and beyond which the
arts cannot be traced of civil society or domestic life.
“The old Egyptians have left behind them monuments of
industry and power before which all European magnificence is
confessed to fade away. The ruins of their architecture are
the schools of modern builders; and from the wonders which
time has spared we may conjecture, though uncertainly, what
it has destroyed.”
“My curiosity,” said Rasselas, “does not very strongly
lead me to survey piles of stone or mounds of earth. My
business is with man. I came hither not to measure fragments
of temples or trace choked aqueducts, but to look upon the
various scenes of the present world.”
“The things that are now before us,” said the Princess,
“require attention, and deserve it. What have I to do with
the heroes or the monuments of ancient times - with times
which can never return, and heroes whose form of life was
different from all that the present condition of mankind
requires or allows?”
“To know anything,” returned the poet, “we must know its
effects; to see men, we must see their works, that we may
learn what reason has dictated or passion has excited, and
find what are the most powerful motives of action. To judge
rightly of the present, we must oppose it to the past; for
all judgment is comparative, and of the future nothing can
be known. The truth is that no mind is much employed upon
the present; recollection and anticipation fill up almost
all our moments. Our passions are joy and grief, love and
hatred, hope and fear. Of joy and grief, the past is the
object, and the future of hope and fear; even love and
hatred respect the past, for the cause must have been before
the effect.
“The present state of things is the consequence of the
former; and it is natural to inquire what were the sources
of the good that we enjoy, or the evils that we suffer. If
we act only for ourselves, to neglect the study of history
is not prudent. If we are entrusted with the care of others,
it is not just. Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is
criminal; and he may properly be charged with evil who
refused to learn how he might prevent it.
“There is no part of history so generally useful as that
which relates to the progress of the human mind, the gradual
improvement of reason, the successive advances of science,
the vicissitudes of learning and ignorance (which are the
light and darkness of thinking beings), the extinction and
resuscitation of arts, and the revolutions of the
intellectual world. If accounts of battles and invasions are
peculiarly the business of princes, the useful or elegant
arts are not to be neglected; those who have kingdoms to
govern have understandings to cultivate.
“Example is always more efficacious than precept. A
soldier is formed in war, and a painter must copy pictures.
In this, contemplative life has the advantage. Great actions
are seldom seen, but the labours of art are always at hand
for those who desire to know what art has been able to
perform.
“When the eye or the imagination is struck with any
uncommon work, the next transition of an active mind is to
the means by which it was performed. Here begins the true
use of such contemplation. We enlarge our comprehension by
new ideas, and perhaps recover some art lost to mankind, or
learn what is less perfectly known in our own country. At
least we compare our own with former times, and either
rejoice at our improvements, or, what is the first motion
towards good, discover our defects.”
“I am willing,” said the Prince, “to see all that can
deserve my search.”
“And I,” said the Princess, “shall rejoice to learn
something of the manners of antiquity.”
“The most pompous monument of Egyptian greatness, and one
of the most bulky works of manual industry,” said Imlac,
“are the Pyramids: fabrics raised before the time of
history, and of which the earliest narratives afford us only
uncertain traditions. Of these the greatest is still
standing, very little injured by time.”
“Let us visit them to-morrow,” said Nekayah. “I have
often heard of the Pyramids, and shall not rest till I have
seen them, within and without, with my own eyes.”
CHAPTER XXXI - THEY VISIT THE PYRAMIDS.
The resolution being thus taken, they set out the next
day. They laid tents upon their camels, being resolved to
stay among the Pyramids till their curiosity was fully
satisfied. They travelled gently, turned aside to everything
remarkable, stopped from time to time and conversed with the
inhabitants, and observed the various appearances of towns
ruined and inhabited, of wild and cultivated nature.
When they came to the Great Pyramid they were astonished
at the extent of the base and the height of the top. Imlac
explained to them the principles upon which the pyramidal
form was chosen for a fabric intended to co-extend its
duration with that of the world: he showed that its gradual
diminution gave it such stability as defeated all the common
attacks of the elements, and could scarcely be overthrown by
earthquakes themselves, the least resistible of natural
violence. A concussion that should shatter the pyramid would
threaten the dissolution of the continent.
They measured all its dimensions, and pitched their tents
at its foot. Next day they prepared to enter its interior
apartments, and having hired the common guides, climbed up
to the first passage; when the favourite of the Princess,
looking into the cavity, stepped back and trembled.
“Pekuah,” said the Princess, “of what art thou afraid?”
“Of the narrow entrance,” answered the lady, “and of the
dreadful gloom. I dare not enter a place which must surely
be inhabited by unquiet souls. The original possessors of
these dreadful vaults will start up before us, and perhaps
shut us in for ever.” She spoke, and threw her arms round
the neck of her mistress.
“If all your fear be of apparitions,” said the Prince, “I
will promise you safety. There is no danger from the dead:
he that is once buried will be seen no more.”
“That the dead are seen no more,” said Imlac, “I will not
undertake to maintain against the concurrent and unvaried
testimony of all ages and of all nations. There is no
people, rude or learned, among whom apparitions of the dead
are not related and believed. This opinion, which perhaps
prevails as far as human nature is diffused, could become
universal only by its truth: those that never heard of one
another would not have agreed in a tale which nothing but
experience can make credible. That it is doubted by single
cavillers can very little weaken the general evidence, and
some who deny it with their tongues confess it by their
fears.
“Yet I do not mean to add new terrors to those which have
already seized upon Pekuah. There can be no reason why
spectres should haunt the Pyramid more than other places, or
why they should have power or will to hurt innocence and
purity. Our entrance is no violation of their privileges: we
can take nothing from them; how, then, can we offend them?”
“My dear Pekuah,” said the Princess, “I will always go
before you, and Imlac shall follow you. Remember that you
are the companion of the Princess of Abyssinia.”
“If the Princess is pleased that her servant should die,”
returned the lady, “let her command some death less dreadful
than enclosure in this horrid cavern. You know I dare not
disobey you - I must go if you command me; but if I once
enter, I never shall come back.”
The Princess saw that her fear was too strong for
expostulation or reproof, and, embracing her, told her that
she should stay in the tent till their return. Pekuah was
not yet satisfied, but entreated the Princess not to pursue
so dreadful a purpose as that of entering the recesses of
the Pyramids. “Though I cannot teach courage,” said Nekayah,
“I must not learn cowardice, nor leave at last undone what I
came hither only to do.”
CHAPTER XXXII - THEY ENTER THE PYRAMID.
Pekuah descended to the tents, and the rest entered the
Pyramid. They passed through the galleries, surveyed the
vaults of marble, and examined the chest in which the body
of the founder is supposed to have been deposited. They then
sat down in one of the most spacious chambers to rest awhile
before they attempted to return.
“We have now,” said Imlac, “gratified our minds with an
exact view of the greatest work of man, except the wall of
China.
“Of the wall it is very easy to assign the motive. It
secured a wealthy and timorous nation from the incursions of
barbarians, whose unskilfulness in the arts made it easier
for them to supply their wants by rapine than by industry,
and who from time to time poured in upon the inhabitants of
peaceful commerce as vultures descend upon domestic fowl.
Their celerity and fierceness made the wall necessary, and
their ignorance made it efficacious.
“But for the Pyramids, no reason has ever been given
adequate to the cost and labour of the work. The narrowness
of the chambers proves that it could afford no retreat from
enemies, and treasures might have been reposited at far less
expense with equal security. It seems to have been erected
only in compliance with that hunger of imagination which
preys incessantly upon life, and must be always appeased by
some employment. Those who have already all that they can
enjoy must enlarge their desires. He that has built for use
till use is supplied must begin to build for vanity, and
extend his plan to the utmost power of human performance
that he may not be soon reduced to form another wish.
“I consider this mighty structure as a monument of the
insufficiency of human enjoyments. A king whose power is
unlimited, and whose treasures surmount all real and
imaginary wants, is compelled to solace, by the erection of
a pyramid, the satiety of dominion and tastelessness of
pleasures, and to amuse the tediousness of declining life by
seeing thousands labouring without end, and one stone, for
no purpose, laid upon another. Whoever thou art that, not
content with a moderate condition, imaginest happiness in
royal magnificence, and dreamest that command or riches can
feed the appetite of novelty with perpetual gratifications,
survey the Pyramids, and confess thy folly!”
CHAPTER XXXIII - THE PRINCESS MEETS WITH AN UNEXPECTED
MISFORTUNE.
They rose up, and returned through the cavity at which
they had entered; and the Princess prepared for her
favourite a long narrative of dark labyrinths and costly
rooms, and of the different impressions which the varieties
of the way had made upon her. But when they came to their
train, they found every one silent and dejected: the men
discovered shame and fear in their countenances, and the
women were weeping in their tents.
What had happened they did not try to conjecture, but
immediately inquired. “You had scarcely entered into the
Pyramid,” said one of the attendants, “when a troop of Arabs
rushed upon us: we were too few to resist them, and too slow
to escape. They were about to search the tents, set us on
our camels, and drive us along before them, when the
approach of some Turkish horsemen put them to flight: but
they seized the Lady Pekuah with her two maids, and carried
them away: the Turks are now pursuing them by our
instigation, but I fear they will not be able to overtake
them.”
The Princess was overpowered with surprise and grief.
Rasselas, in the first heat of his resentment, ordered his
servants to follow him, and prepared to pursue the robbers
with his sabre in his hand. “Sir,” said Imlac, “what can you
hope from violence or valour? The Arabs are mounted on
horses trained to battle and retreat; we have only beasts of
burden. By leaving our present station we may lose the
Princess, but cannot hope to regain Pekuah.”
In a short time the Turks returned, having not been able
to reach the enemy. The Princess burst out into new
lamentations, and Rasselas could scarcely forbear to
reproach them with cowardice; but Imlac was of opinion that
the escape of the Arabs was no addition to their misfortune,
for perhaps they would have killed their captives rather
than have resigned them.
CHAPTER XXXIV - THEY RETURN TO CAIRO WITHOUT PEKUAH.
There was nothing to be hoped from longer stay. They
returned to Cairo, repenting of their curiosity, censuring
the negligence of the government, lamenting their own
rashness, which had neglected to procure a guard, imagining
many expedients by which the loss of Pekuah might have been
prevented, and resolving to do something for her recovery,
though none could find anything proper to be done.
Nekayah retired to her chamber, where her women attempted
to comfort her by telling her that all had their troubles,
and that Lady Pekuah had enjoyed much happiness in the world
for a long time, and might reasonably expect a change of
fortune. They hoped that some good would befall her
wheresoever she was, and that their mistress would find
another friend who might supply her place.
The Princess made them no answer; and they continued the
form of condolence, not much grieved in their hearts that
the favourite was lost.
Next day the Prince presented to the Bassa a memorial of
the wrong which he had suffered, and a petition for redress.
The Bassa threatened to punish the robbers, but did not
attempt to catch them; nor indeed could any account or
description be given by which he might direct the pursuit.
It soon appeared that nothing would be done by authority.
Governors being accustomed to hear of more crimes than they
can punish, and more wrongs than they can redress, set
themselves at ease by indiscriminate negligence, and
presently forget the request when they lose sight of the
petitioner.
Imlac then endeavoured to gain some intelligence by
private agents. He found many who pretended to an exact
knowledge of all the haunts of the Arabs, and to regular
correspondence with their chiefs, and who readily undertook
the recovery of Pekuah. Of these, some were furnished with
money for their journey, and came back no more; some were
liberally paid for accounts which a few days discovered to
be false. But the Princess would not suffer any means,
however improbable, to be left untried. While she was doing
something, she kept her hope alive. As one expedient failed,
another was suggested; when one messenger returned
unsuccessful, another was despatched to a different quarter.
Two months had now passed, and of Pekuah nothing had been
heard; the hopes which they had endeavoured to raise in each
other grew more languid; and the Princess, when she saw
nothing more to be tried, sunk down inconsolable in hopeless
dejection. A thousand times she reproached herself with the
easy compliance by which she permitted her favourite to stay
behind her. “Had not my fondness,” said she, “lessened my
authority, Pekuah had not dared to talk of her terrors. She
ought to have feared me more than spectres. A severe look
would have overpowered her; a peremptory command would have
compelled obedience. Why did foolish indulgence prevail upon
me? Why did I not speak, and refuse to hear?”
“Great Princess,” said Imlac, “do not reproach yourself
for your virtue, or consider that as blameable by which evil
has accidentally been caused. Your tenderness for the
timidity of Pekuah was generous and kind. When we act
according to our duty, we commit the events to Him by whose
laws our actions are governed, and who will suffer none to
be finally punished for obedience. When, in prospect of some
good, whether natural or moral, we break the rules
prescribed us, we withdraw from the direction of superior
wisdom, and take all consequences upon ourselves. Man cannot
so far know the connection of causes and events as that he
may venture to do wrong in order to do right. When we pursue
our end by lawful means, we may always console our
miscarriage by the hope of future recompense. When we
consult only our own policy, and attempt to find a nearer
way to good by over-leaping the settled boundaries of right
and wrong, we cannot be happy even by success, because we
cannot escape the consciousness of our fault; but if we
miscarry, the disappointment is irremediably embittered. How
comfortless is the sorrow of him who feels at once the pangs
of guilt and the vexation of calamity which guilt has
brought upon him!
“Consider, Princess, what would have been your condition
if the Lady Pekuah had entreated to accompany you, and,
being compelled to stay in the tents, had been carried away;
or how would you have borne the thought if you had forced
her into the Pyramid, and she had died before you in agonies
of terror?”
“Had either happened,” said Nekayah, “I could not have
endured life till now; I should have been tortured to
madness by the remembrance of such cruelty, or must have
pined away in abhorrence of myself.”
“This, at least,” said Imlac, “is the present reward of
virtuous conduct, that no unlucky consequence can oblige us
to repent it.”
CHAPTER XXXV - THE PRINCESS LANGUISHES FOR WANT OF
PEKUAH.
Nekayah, being thus reconciled to herself, found that no
evil is insupportable but that which is accompanied with
consciousness of wrong. She was from that time delivered
from the violence of tempestuous sorrow, and sunk into
silent pensiveness and gloomy tranquillity. She sat from
morning to evening recollecting all that had been done or
said by her Pekuah, treasured up with care every trifle on
which Pekuah had set an accidental value, and which might
recall to mind any little incident or careless conversation.
The sentiments of her whom she now expected to see no more
were treasured in her memory as rules of life, and she
deliberated to no other end than to conjecture on any
occasion what would have been the opinion and counsel of
Pekuah.
The women by whom she was attended knew nothing of her
real condition, and therefore she could not talk to them but
with caution and reserve. She began to remit her curiosity,
having no great desire to collect notions which she had no
convenience of uttering. Rasselas endeavoured first to
comfort and afterwards to divert her; he hired musicians, to
whom she seemed to listen, but did not hear them; and
procured masters to instruct her in various arts, whose
lectures, when they visited her again, were again to be
repeated. She had lost her taste of pleasure and her
ambition of excellence; and her mind, though forced into
short excursions, always recurred to the image of her
friend.
Imlac was every morning earnestly enjoined to renew his
inquiries, and was asked every night whether he had yet
heard of Pekuah; till, not being able to return the Princess
the answer that she desired, he was less and less willing to
come into her presence. She observed his backwardness, and
commanded him to attend her. “You are not,” said she, “to
confound impatience with resentment, or to suppose that I
charge you with negligence because I repine at your
unsuccessfulness. I do not much wonder at your absence. I
know that the unhappy are never pleasing, and that all
naturally avoid the contagion of misery. To hear complaints
is wearisome alike to the wretched and the happy; for who
would cloud by adventitious grief the short gleams of gaiety
which life allows us, or who that is struggling under his
own evils will add to them the miseries of another?
“The time is at hand when none shall be disturbed any
longer by the sighs of Nekayah: my search after happiness is
now at an end. I am resolved to retire from the world, with
all its flatteries and deceits, and will hide myself in
solitude, without any other care than to compose my thoughts
and regulate my hours by a constant succession of innocent
occupations, till, with a mind purified from earthly
desires, I shall enter into that state to which all are
hastening, and in which I hope again to enjoy the friendship
of Pekuah.”
“Do not entangle your mind,” said Imlac, “by irrevocable
determinations, nor increase the burden of life by a
voluntary accumulation of misery. The weariness of
retirement will continue to increase when the loss of Pekuah
is forgot. That you have been deprived of one pleasure is no
very good reason for rejection of the rest.”
“Since Pekuah was taken from me,” said the Princess, “I
have no pleasure to reject or to retain. She that has no one
to love or trust has little to hope. She wants the radical
principle of happiness. We may perhaps allow that what
satisfaction this world can afford must arise from the
conjunction of wealth, knowledge, and goodness. Wealth is
nothing but as it is bestowed, and knowledge nothing but as
it is communicated. They must therefore be imparted to
others, and to whom could I now delight to impart them?
Goodness affords the only comfort which can be enjoyed
without a partner, and goodness may be practised in
retirement.”
“How far solitude may admit goodness or advance it, I
shall not,” replied Imlac, “dispute at present. Remember the
confession of the pious hermit. You will wish to return into
the world when the image of your companion has left your
thoughts.”
“That time,” said Nekayah, “will never come. The generous
frankness, the modest obsequiousness, and the faithful
secrecy of my dear Pekuah will always be more missed as I
shall live longer to see vice and folly.”
“The state of a mind oppressed with a sudden calamity,”
said Imlac, “is like that of the fabulous inhabitants of the
new-created earth, who, when the first night came upon them,
supposed that day would never return. When the clouds of
sorrow gather over us, we see nothing beyond them, nor can
imagine how they will be dispelled; yet a new day succeeded
to the night, and sorrow is never long without a dawn of
ease. But they who restrain themselves from receiving
comfort do as the savages would have done had they put out
their eyes when it was dark. Our minds, like our bodies, are
in continual flux; something is hourly lost, and something
acquired. To lose much at once is inconvenient to either,
but while the vital power remains uninjured, nature will
find the means of reparation. Distance has the same effect
on the mind as on the eye; and while we glide along the
stream of time, whatever we leave behind us is always
lessening, and that which we approach increasing in
magnitude. Do not suffer life to stagnate: it will grow
muddy for want of motion; commit yourself again to the
current of the world; Pekuah will vanish by degrees; you
will meet in your way some other favourite, or learn to
diffuse yourself in general conversation.”
“At least,” said the Prince, “do not despair before all
remedies have been tried. The inquiry after the unfortunate
lady is still continued, and shall be carried on with yet
greater diligence, on condition that you will promise to
wait a year for the event, without any unalterable
resolution.”
Nekayah thought this a reasonable demand, and made the
promise to her brother, who had been obliged by Imlac to
require it. Imlac had, indeed, no great hope of regaining
Pekuah; but he supposed that if he could secure the interval
of a year, the Princess would be then in no danger of a
cloister.
CHAPTER XXXVI - PEKUAH IS STILL REMEMBERED. THE PROGRESS
OF SORROW.
Nekayah, seeing that nothing was omitted for the recovery
of her favourite, and having by her promise set her
intention of retirement at a distance, began imperceptibly
to return to common cares and common pleasures. She rejoiced
without her own consent at the suspension of her sorrows,
and sometimes caught herself with indignation in the act of
turning away her mind from the remembrance of her whom yet
she resolved never to forget.
She then appointed a certain hour of the day for
meditation on the merits and fondness of Pekuah, and for
some weeks retired constantly at the time fixed, and
returned with her eyes swollen and her countenance clouded.
By degrees she grew less scrupulous, and suffered any
important and pressing avocation to delay the tribute of
daily tears. She then yielded to less occasions, and
sometimes forgot what she was indeed afraid to remember, and
at last wholly released herself from the duty of periodical
affliction.
Her real love of Pekuah was not yet diminished. A
thousand occurrences brought her back to memory, and a
thousand wants, which nothing but the confidence of
friendship can supply, made her frequently regretted. She
therefore solicited Imlac never to desist from inquiry, and
to leave no art of intelligence untried, that at least she
might have the comfort of knowing that she did not suffer by
negligence or sluggishness. “Yet what,” said she, “is to be
expected from our pursuit of happiness, when we find the
state of life to be such that happiness itself is the cause
of misery? Why should we endeavour to attain that of which
the possession cannot be secured? I shall henceforward fear
to yield my heart to excellence, however bright, or to
fondness, however tender, lest I should lose again what I
have lost in Pekuah.”
CHAPTER XXXVII - THE PRINCESS HEARS NEWS OF PEKUAH.
In seven mouths one of the messengers who had been sent
away upon the day when the promise was drawn from the
Princess, returned, after many unsuccessful rambles, from
the borders of Nubia, with an account that Pekuah was in the
hands of an Arab chief, who possessed a castle or fortress
on the extremity of Egypt. The Arab, whose revenue was
plunder, was willing to restore her, with her two
attendants, for two hundred ounces of gold.
The price was no subject of debate. The Princess was in
ecstasies when she heard that her favourite was alive, and
might so cheaply be ransomed. She could not think of
delaying for a moment Pekuah’s happiness or her own, but
entreated her brother to send back the messenger with the
sum required. Imlac, being consulted, was not very confident
of the veracity of the relater, and was still more doubtful
of the Arab’s faith, who might, if he were too liberally
trusted, detain at once the money and the captives. He
thought it dangerous to put themselves in the power of the
Arab by going into his district; and could not expect that
the rover would so much expose himself as to come into the
lower country, where he might be seized by the forces of the
Bassa.
It is difficult to negotiate where neither will trust.
But Imlac, after some deliberation, directed the messenger
to propose that Pekuah should be conducted by ten horsemen
to the monastery of St. Anthony, which is situated in the
deserts of Upper Egypt, where she should be met by the same
number, and her ransom should be paid.
That no time might be lost, as they expected that the
proposal would not be refused, they immediately began their
journey to the monastery; and when they arrived, Imlac went
forward with the former messenger to the Arab’s fortress.
Rasselas was desirous to go with them; but neither his
sister nor Imlac would consent. The Arab, according to the
custom of his nation, observed the laws of hospitality with
great exactness to those who put themselves into his power,
and in a few days brought Pekuah, with her maids, by easy
journeys, to the place appointed, where, receiving the
stipulated price, he restored her, with great respect, to
liberty and her friends, and undertook to conduct them back
towards Cairo beyond all danger of robbery or violence.
The Princess and her favourite embraced each other with
transport too violent to be expressed, and went out together
to pour the tears of tenderness in secret, and exchange
professions of kindness and gratitude. After a few hours
they returned into the refectory of the convent, where, in
the presence of the prior and his brethren, the Prince
required of Pekuah the history of her adventures.
CHAPTER XXXVIII - THE ADVENTURES OF THE LADY PEKUAH.
“At what time and in what manner I was forced away,” said
Pekuah, “your servants have told you. The suddenness of the
event struck me with surprise, and I was at first rather
stupefied than agitated with any passion of either fear or
sorrow. My confusion was increased by the speed and tumult
of our flight, while we were followed by the Turks, who, as
it seemed, soon despaired to overtake us, or were afraid of
those whom they made a show of menacing.
“When the Arabs saw themselves out of danger, they
slackened their course; and as I was less harassed by
external violence, I began to feel more uneasiness in my
mind. After some time we stopped near a spring shaded with
trees, in a pleasant meadow, where we were set upon the
ground, and offered such refreshments as our masters were
partaking. I was suffered to sit with my maids apart from
the rest, and none attempted to comfort or insult us. Here I
first began to feel the full weight of my misery. The girls
sat weeping in silence, and from time to time looked on me
for succour. I knew not to what condition we were doomed,
nor could conjecture where would be the place of our
captivity, or whence to draw any hope of deliverance. I was
in the hands of robbers and savages, and had no reason to
suppose that their pity was more than their justice, or that
they would forbear the gratification of any ardour of desire
or caprice of cruelty. I, however, kissed my maids, and
endeavoured to pacify them by remarking that we were yet
treated with decency, and that since we were now carried
beyond pursuit, there was no danger of violence to our
lives.
“When we were to be set again on horseback, my maids
clung round me, and refused to be parted; but I commanded
them not to irritate those who had us in their power. We
travelled the remaining part of the day through an
unfrequented and pathless country, and came by moonlight to
the side of a hill, where the rest of the troop was
stationed. Their tents were pitched and their fires kindled,
and our chief was welcomed as a man much beloved by his
dependents.
“We were received into a large tent, where we found women
who had attended their husbands in the expedition. They set
before us the supper which they had provided, and I ate it
rather to encourage my maids than to comply with any
appetite of my own. When the meat was taken away, they
spread the carpets for repose. I was weary, and hoped to
find in sleep that remission of distress which nature seldom
denies. Ordering myself, therefore, to be undressed, I
observed that the women looked very earnestly upon me, not
expecting, I suppose, to see me so submissively attended.
When my upper vest was taken off, they were apparently
struck with the splendour of my clothes, and one of them
timorously laid her hand upon the embroidery. She then went
out, and in a short time came back with another woman, who
seemed to be of higher rank and greater authority. She did,
at her entrance, the usual act of reverence, and, taking me
by the hand placed me in a smaller tent, spread with finer
carpets, where I spent the night quietly with my maids.
“In the morning, as I was sitting on the grass, the chief
of the troop came towards me. I rose up to receive him, and
he bowed with great respect. ‘Illustrious lady,’ said he,
‘my fortune is better than I had presumed to hope: I am told
by my women that I have a princess in my camp.’ ‘Sir,’
answered I, ‘your women have deceived themselves and you; I
am not a princess, but an unhappy stranger who intended soon
to have left this country, in which I am now to be
imprisoned for ever.’ ‘Whoever or whencesoever you are,’
returned the Arab, ‘your dress and that of your servants
show your rank to be high and your wealth to be great. Why
should you, who can so easily procure your ransom, think
yourself in danger of perpetual captivity? The purpose of my
incursions is to increase my riches, or, more property, to
gather tribute. The sons of Ishmael are the natural and
hereditary lords of this part of the continent, which is
usurped by late invaders and low-born tyrants, from whom we
are compelled to take by the sword what is denied to
justice. The violence of war admits no distinction: the
lance that is lifted at guilt and power will sometimes fall
on innocence and gentleness.’
“‘How little,’ said I, ‘did I expect that yesterday it
should have fallen upon me!’
“’Misfortunes,’ answered the Arab, ‘should always be
expected. If the eye of hostility could learn reverence or
pity, excellence like yours had been exempt from injury. But
the angels of affliction spread their toils alike for the
virtuous and the wicked, for the mighty and the mean. Do not
be disconsolate; I am not one of the lawless and cruel
rovers of the desert; I know the rules of civil life; I will
fix your ransom, give a passport to your messenger, and
perform my stipulation with nice punctuality.’
“You will easily believe that I was pleased with his
courtesy, and finding that his predominant passion was
desire for money, I began now to think my danger less, for I
knew that no sum would be thought too great for the release
of Pekuah. I told him that he should have no reason to
charge me with ingratitude if I was used with kindness, and
that any ransom which could be expected for a maid of common
rank would be paid, but that he must not persist to rate me
as a princess. He said he would consider what he should
demand, and then, smiling, bowed and retired.
“Soon after the women came about me, each contending to
be more officious than the other, and my maids themselves
were served with reverence. We travelled onward by short
journeys. On the fourth day the chief told me that my ransom
must be two hundred ounces of gold, which I not only
promised him, but told him that I would add fifty more if I
and my maids were honourably treated.
“I never knew the power of gold before. From that time I
was the leader of the troop. The march of every day was
longer or shorter as I commanded, and the tents were pitched
where I chose to rest. We now had camels and other
conveniences for travel; my own women were always at my
side, and I amused myself with observing the manners of the
vagrant nations, and with viewing remains of ancient
edifices, with which these deserted countries appear to have
been in some distant age lavishly embellished.
“The chief of the band was a man far from illiterate: he
was able to travel by the stars or the compass, and had
marked in his erratic expeditions such places as are most
worthy the notice of a passenger. He observed to me that
buildings are always best preserved in places little
frequented and difficult of access; for when once a country
declines from its primitive splendour, the more inhabitants
are left, the quicker ruin will be made. Walls supply stones
more easily than quarries; and palaces and temples will be
demolished to make stables of granite and cottages of
porphyry.’”
CHAPTER XXXIX - THE ADVENTURES OF PEKUAH (continued).
“We wandered about in this manner for some weeks, either,
as our chief pretended, for my gratification, or, as I
rather suspected, for some convenience of his own. I
endeavoured to appear contented where sullenness and
resentment would have been of no use, and that endeavour
conduced much to the calmness of my mind; but my heart was
always with Nekayah, and the troubles of the night much
overbalanced the amusements of the day. My women, who threw
all their cares upon their mistress, set their minds at ease
from the time when they saw me treated with respect, and
gave themselves up to the incidental alleviations of our
fatigue without solicitude or sorrow. I was pleased with
their pleasure, and animated with their confidence. My
condition had lost much of its terror, since I found that
the Arab ranged the country merely to get riches. Avarice is
a uniform and tractable vice: other intellectual distempers
are different in different constitutions of mind; that which
soothes the pride of one will offend the pride of another;
but to the favour of the covetous there is a ready way -
bring money, and nothing is denied.
“At last we came to the dwelling of our chief; a strong
and spacious house, built with stone in an island of the
Nile, which lies, as I was told, under the tropic. ‘Lady,’
said the Arab, ‘you shall rest after your journey a few
weeks in this place, where you are to consider yourself as
Sovereign. My occupation is war: I have therefore chosen
this obscure residence, from which I can issue unexpected,
and to which I can retire unpursued. You may now repose in
security: here are few pleasures, but here is no danger.’ He
then led me into the inner apartments, and seating me on the
richest couch, bowed to the ground.
“His women, who considered me as a rival, looked on me
with malignity; but being soon informed that I was a great
lady detained only for my ransom, they began to vie with
each other in obsequiousness and reverence.
“Being again comforted with new assurances of speedy
liberty, I was for some days diverted from impatience by the
novelty of the place. The turrets overlooked the country to
a great distance, and afforded a view of many windings of
the stream. In the day I wandered from one place to another,
as the course of the sun varied the splendour of the
prospect, and saw many things which I had never seen before.
The crocodiles and river-horses are common in this unpeopled
region; and I often looked upon them with terror, though I
knew they could not hurt me. For some time I expected to see
mermaids and tritons, which, as Imlac has told me, the
European travellers have stationed in the Nile; but no such
beings ever appeared, and the Arab, when I inquired after
them, laughed at my credulity.
“At night the Arab always attended me to a tower set
apart for celestial observations, where he endeavoured to
teach me the names and courses of the stars. I had no great
inclination to this study; but an appearance of attention
was necessary to please my instructor, who valued himself
for his skill, and in a little while I found some employment
requisite to beguile the tediousness of time, which was to
be passed always amidst the same objects. I was weary of
looking in the morning on things from which I had turned
away weary in the evening: I therefore was at last willing
to observe the stars rather than do nothing, but could not
always compose my thoughts, and was very often thinking on
Nekayah when others imagined me contemplating the sky. Soon
after, the Arab went upon another expedition, and then my
only pleasure was to talk with my maids about the accident
by which we were carried away, and the happiness we should
all enjoy at the end of our captivity.”
“There were women in your Arab’s fortress,” said the
Princess; “why did you not make them your companions, enjoy
their conversation, and partake their diversions? In a place
where they found business or amusement, why should you alone
sit corroded with idle melancholy? or why could not you bear
for a few months that condition to which they were condemned
for life?”
“The diversions of the women,” answered Pekuah, “were
only childish play, by which the mind accustomed to stronger
operations could not be kept busy. I could do all which they
delighted in doing by powers merely sensitive, while my
intellectual faculties were flown to Cairo. They ran from
room to room, as a bird hops from wire to wire in his cage.
They danced for the sake of motion, as lambs frisk in a
meadow. One sometimes pretended to be hurt that the rest
might be alarmed, or hid herself that another might seek
her. Part of their time passed in watching the progress of
light bodies that floated on the river, and part in marking
the various forms into which clouds broke in the sky.
“Their business was only needlework, in which I and my
maids sometimes helped them; but you know that the mind will
easily straggle from the fingers, nor will you suspect that
captivity and absence from Nekayah could receive solace from
silken flowers.
“Nor was much satisfaction to be hoped from their
conversation: for of what could they be expected to talk?
They had seen nothing, for they had lived from early youth
in that narrow spot: of what they had not seen they could
have no knowledge, for they could not read. They had no idea
but of the few things that were within their view, and had
hardly names for anything but their clothes and their food.
As I bore a superior character, I was often called to
terminate their quarrels, which I decided as equitably as I
could. If it could have amused me to hear the complaints of
each against the rest, I might have been often detained by
long stories; but the motives of their animosity were so
small that I could not listen without interrupting the
tale.”
“How,” said Rasselas, “can the Arab, whom you represented
as a man of more than common accomplishments, take any
pleasure in his seraglio, when it is filled only with women
like these? Are they exquisitely beautiful?”
“They do not,” said Pekuah, “want that unaffecting and
ignoble beauty which may subsist without sprightliness or
sublimity, without energy of thought or dignity of virtue.
But to a man like the Arab such beauty was only a flower
casually plucked and carelessly thrown away. Whatever
pleasures he might find among them, they were not those of
friendship or society. When they were playing about him he
looked on them with inattentive superiority; when they vied
for his regard he sometimes turned away disgusted. As they
had no knowledge, their talk could take nothing from the
tediousness of life; as they had no choice, their fondness,
or appearance of fondness, excited in him neither pride nor
gratitude. He was not exalted in his own esteem by the
smiles of a woman who saw no other man, nor was much obliged
by that regard of which he could never know the sincerity,
and which he might often perceive to be exerted not so much
to delight him as to pain a rival. That which he gave, and
they received, as love, was only a careless distribution of
superfluous time, such love as man can bestow upon that
which he despises, such as has neither hope nor fear,
neither joy nor sorrow.”
“You have reason, lady, to think yourself happy,” said
Imlac, “that you have been thus easily dismissed. How could
a mind, hungry for knowledge, be willing, in an intellectual
famine, to lose such a banquet as Pekuah’s conversation?”
“I am inclined to believe,” answered Pekuah, “that he was
for some time in suspense; for, notwithstanding his promise,
whenever I proposed to despatch a messenger to Cairo he
found some excuse for delay. While I was detained in his
house he made many incursions into the neighbouring
countries, and perhaps he would have refused to discharge me
had his plunder been equal to his wishes. He returned always
courteous, related his adventures, delighted to hear my
observations, and endeavoured to advance my acquaintance
with the stars. When I importuned him to send away my
letters, he soothed me with professions of honour and
sincerity; and when I could be no longer decently denied,
put his troop again in motion, and left me to govern in his
absence. I was much afflicted by this studied
procrastination, and was sometimes afraid that I should be
forgotten; that you would leave Cairo, and I must end my
days in an island of the Nile.
“I grew at last hopeless and dejected, and cared so
little to entertain him, that he for a while more frequently
talked with my maids. That he should fall in love with them
or with me, might have been equally fatal, and I was not
much pleased with the growing friendship. My anxiety was not
long, for, as I recovered some degree of cheerfulness, he
returned to me, and I could not forbear to despise my former
uneasiness.
“He still delayed to send for my ransom, and would
perhaps never have determined had not your agent found his
way to him. The gold, which he would not fetch, he could not
reject when it was offered. He hastened to prepare for our
journey hither, like a man delivered from the pain of an
intestine conflict. I took leave of my companions in the
house, who dismissed me with cold indifference.”
Nekayah having heard her favourite’s relation, rose and
embraced her, and Rasselas gave her a hundred ounces of
gold, which she presented to the Arab for the fifty that
were promised.
CHAPTER XL - THE HISTORY OF A MAN OF LEARNING.
They returned to Cairo, and were so well pleased at
finding themselves together that none of them went much
abroad. The Prince began to love learning, and one day
declared to Imlac that he intended to devote himself to
science and pass the rest of his days in literary solitude.
“Before you make your final choice,” answered Imlac, “you
ought to examine its hazards, and converse with some of
those who are grown old in the company of themselves. I have
just left the observatory of one of the most learned
astronomers in the world, who has spent forty years in
unwearied attention to the motion and appearances of the
celestial bodies, and has drawn out his soul in endless
calculations. He admits a few friends once a month to hear
his deductions and enjoy his discoveries. I was introduced
as a man of knowledge worthy of his notice. Men of various
ideas and fluent conversation are commonly welcome to those
whose thoughts have been long fixed upon a single point, and
who find the images of other things stealing away. I
delighted him with my remarks. He smiled at the narrative of
my travels, and was glad to forget the constellations and
descend for a moment into the lower world.
“On the next day of vacation I renewed my visit, and was
so fortunate as to please him again. He relaxed from that
time the severity of his rule, and permitted me to enter at
my own choice. I found him always busy, and always glad to
be relieved. As each knew much which the other was desirous
of learning, we exchanged our notions with great delight. I
perceived that I had every day more of his confidence, and
always found new cause of admiration in the profundity of
his mind. His comprehension is vast, his memory capacious
and retentive, his discourse is methodical, and his
expression clear.
“His integrity and benevolence are equal to his learning.
His deepest researches and most favourite studies are
willingly interrupted for any opportunity of doing good by
his counsel or his riches. To his closest retreat, at his
most busy moments, all are admitted that want his
assistance; ‘For though I exclude idleness and pleasure, I
will never,’ says he, ‘bar my doors against charity. To man
is permitted the contemplation of the skies, but the
practice of virtue is commanded.’”
“Surely,” said the Princess, “this man is happy.”
“I visited him,” said Imlac, “with more and more
frequency, and was every time more enamoured of his
conversation; he was sublime without haughtiness, courteous
without formality, and communicative without ostentation. I
was at first, great Princess, of your opinion, thought him
the happiest of mankind, and often congratulated him on the
blessing that he enjoyed. He seemed to hear nothing with
indifference but the praises of his condition, to which he
always returned a general answer, and diverted the
conversation to some other topic.
“Amidst this willingness to be pleased and labour to
please, I had quickly reason to imagine that some painful
sentiment pressed upon his mind. He often looked up
earnestly towards the sun, and let his voice fall in the
midst of his discourse. He would sometimes, when we were
alone, gaze upon me in silence with the air of a man who
longed to speak what he was yet resolved to suppress. He
would often send for me with vehement injunction of haste,
though when I came to him he had nothing extraordinary to
say; and sometimes, when I was leaving him, would call me
back, pause a few moments, and then dismiss me.”
CHAPTER XLI - THE ASTRONOMER DISCOVERS THE CAUSE OF HIS
UNEASINESS.
“At last the time came when the secret burst his reserve.
We were sitting together last night in the turret of his
house watching the immersion of a satellite of Jupiter. A
sudden tempest clouded the sky and disappointed our
observation. We sat awhile silent in the dark, and then he
addressed himself to me in these words: ‘Imlac, I have long
considered thy friendship as the greatest blessing of my
life. Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and
knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. I
have found in thee all the qualities requisite for trust -
benevolence, experience, and fortitude. I have long
discharged an office which I must soon quit at the call of
Nature, and shall rejoice in the hour of imbecility and pain
to devolve it upon thee.’
“I thought myself honoured by this testimony, and
protested that whatever could conduce to his happiness would
add likewise to mine.
“‘Hear, Imlac, what thou wilt not without difficulty
credit. I have possessed for five years the regulation of
the weather and the distribution of the seasons. The sun has
listened to my dictates, and passed from tropic to tropic by
my direction; the clouds at my call have poured their
waters, and the Nile has overflowed at my command. I have
restrained the rage of the dog-star, and mitigated the
fervours of the crab. The winds alone, of all the elemental
powers, have hitherto refused my authority, and multitudes
have perished by equinoctial tempests which I found myself
unable to prohibit or restrain. I have administered this
great office with exact justice, and made to the different
nations of the earth an impartial dividend of rain and
sunshine. What must have been the misery of half the globe
if I had limited the clouds to particular regions, or
confined the sun to either side of the equator?’”
CHAPTER XLII - THE OPINION OF THE ASTRONOMER IS EXPLAINED
AND JUSTIFIED.
“I suppose he discovered in me, through the obscurity of
the room, some tokens of amazement and doubt, for after a
short pause he proceeded thus:-
“‘Not to be easily credited will neither surprise nor
offend me, for I am probably the first of human beings to
whom this trust has been imparted. Nor do I know whether to
deem this distinction a reward or punishment. Since I have
possessed it I have been far less happy than before, and
nothing but the consciousness of good intention could have
enabled me to support the weariness of unremitted
vigilance.’
“‘How long, sir,’ said I, ‘has this great office been in
your hands?’
“‘About ten years ago,’ said he, ‘my daily observations
of the changes of the sky led me to consider whether, if I
had the power of the seasons, I could confer greater plenty
upon the inhabitants of the earth. This contemplation
fastened on my mind, and I sat days and nights in imaginary
dominion, pouring upon this country and that the showers of
fertility, and seconding every fall of rain with a due
proportion of sunshine. I had yet only the will to do good,
and did not imagine that I should ever have the power.
“‘One day as I was looking on the fields withering with
heat, I felt in my mind a sudden wish that I could send rain
on the southern mountains, and raise the Nile to an
inundation. In the hurry of my imagination I commanded rain
to fall; and by comparing the time of my command with that
of the inundation, I found that the clouds had listened to
my lips.’
“‘Might not some other cause,’ said I, ‘produce this
concurrence? The Nile does not always rise on the same day.’
“‘Do not believe,’ said he, with impatience, ‘that such
objections could escape me. I reasoned long against my own
conviction, and laboured against truth with the utmost
obstinacy. I sometimes suspected myself of madness, and
should not have dared to impart this secret but to a man
like you, capable of distinguishing the wonderful from the
impossible, and the incredible from the false.’
“‘Why, sir,’ said I, ‘do you call that incredible which
you know, or think you know, to be true?’
“‘Because,’ said he, ‘I cannot prove it by any external
evidence; and I know too well the laws of demonstration to
think that my conviction ought to influence another, who
cannot, like me, be conscious of its force. I therefore
shall not attempt to gain credit by disputation. It is
sufficient that I feel this power that I have long
possessed, and every day exerted it. But the life of man is
short; the infirmities of age increase upon me, and the time
will soon come when the regulator of the year must mingle
with the dust. The care of appointing a successor has long
disturbed me; the night and the day have been spent in
comparisons of all the characters which have come to my
knowledge, and I have yet found none so worthy as thyself.’”
CHAPTER XLIII - THE ASTRONOMER LEAVES IMLAC HIS
DIRECTIONS.
“‘Hear, therefore, what I shall impart with attention,
such as the welfare of a world requires. If the task of a
king be considered as difficult, who has the care only of a
few millions, to whom he cannot do much good or harm, what
must be the anxiety of him on whom depends the action of the
elements and the great gifts of light and heat? Hear me,
therefore, with attention.
“‘I have diligently considered the position of the earth
and sun, and formed innumerable schemes, in which I changed
their situation. I have sometimes turned aside the axis of
the earth, and sometimes varied the ecliptic of the sun, but
I have found it impossible to make a disposition by which
the world may be advantaged; what one region gains another
loses by an imaginable alteration, even without considering
the distant parts of the solar system with which we are
acquainted. Do not, therefore, in thy administration of the
year, indulge thy pride by innovation; do not please thyself
with thinking that thou canst make thyself renowned to all
future ages by disordering the seasons. The memory of
mischief is no desirable fame. Much less will it become thee
to let kindness or interest prevail. Never rob other
countries of rain to pour it on thine own. For us the Nile
is sufficient.’
“I promised that when I possessed the power I would use
it with inflexible integrity; and he dismissed me, pressing
my hand. ‘My heart,’ said he, ‘will be now at rest, and my
benevolence will no more destroy my quiet; I have found a
man of wisdom and virtue, to whom I can cheerfully bequeath
the inheritance of the sun.’”
The Prince heard this narration with very serious regard;
but the Princess smiled, and Pekuah convulsed herself with
laughter. “Ladies,” said Imlac, “to mock the heaviest of
human afflictions is neither charitable nor wise. Few can
attain this man’s knowledge and few practise his virtues,
but all may suffer his calamity. Of the uncertainties of our
present state, the most dreadful and alarming is the
uncertain continuance of reason.”
The Princess was recollected, and the favourite was
abashed. Rasselas, more deeply affected, inquired of Imlac
whether he thought such maladies of the mind frequent, and
how they were contracted.
CHAPTER XLIV - THE DANGEROUS PREVALENCE OF IMAGINATION.
“Disorders of intellect,” answered Imlac, “happen much
more often than superficial observers will easily believe.
Perhaps if we speak with rigorous exactness, no human mind
is in its right state. There is no man whose imagination
does not sometimes predominate over his reason who can
regulate his attention wholly by his will, and whose ideas
will come and go at his command. No man will be found in
whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannise, and
force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober
probability. All power of fancy over reason is a degree of
insanity, but while this power is such as we can control and
repress it is not visible to others, nor considered as any
deprivation of the mental faculties; it is not pronounced
madness but when it becomes ungovernable, and apparently
influences speech or action.
“To indulge the power of fiction and send imagination out
upon the wing is often the sport of those who delight too
much in silent speculation. When we are alone we are not
always busy; the labour of excogitation is too violent to
last long; the ardour of inquiry will sometimes give way to
idleness or satiety. He who has nothing external that can
divert him must find pleasure in his own thoughts, and must
conceive himself what he is not; for who is pleased with
what he is? He then expatiates in boundless futurity, and
culls from all imaginable conditions that which for the
present moment he should most desire, amuses his desires
with impossible enjoyments, and confers upon his pride
unattainable dominion. The mind dances from scene to scene,
unites all pleasures in all combinations, and riots in
delights which Nature and fortune, with all their bounty,
cannot bestow.
“In time some particular train of ideas fixes the
attention; all other intellectual gratifications are
rejected; the mind, in weariness or leisure, recurs
constantly to the favourite conception, and feasts on the
luscious falsehood whenever she is offended with the
bitterness of truth. By degrees the reign of fancy is
confirmed; she grows first imperious and in time despotic.
Then fictions begin to operate as realities, false opinions
fasten upon the mind, and life passes in dreams of rapture
or of anguish.
“This, sir, is one of the dangers of solitude, which the
hermit has confessed not always to promote goodness, and the
astronomer’s misery has proved to be not always propitious
to wisdom.”
“I will no more,” said the favourite, “imagine myself the
Queen of Abyssinia. I have often spent the hours which the
Princess gave to my own disposal in adjusting ceremonies and
regulating the Court; I have repressed the pride of the
powerful and granted the petitions of the poor; I have built
new palaces in more happy situations, planted groves upon
the tops of mountains, and have exulted in the beneficence
of royalty, till, when the Princess entered, I had almost
forgotten to bow down before her.”
“And I,” said the Princess, “will not allow myself any
more to play the shepherdess in my waking dreams. I have
often soothed my thoughts with the quiet and innocence of
pastoral employments, till I have in my chamber heard the
winds whistle and the sheep bleat; sometimes freed the lamb
entangled in the thicket, and sometimes with my crook
encountered the wolf. I have a dress like that of the
village maids, which I put on to help my imagination, and a
pipe on which I play softly, and suppose myself followed by
my flocks.”
“I will confess,” said the Prince, “an indulgence of
fantastic delight more dangerous than yours. I have
frequently endeavoured to imagine the possibility of a
perfect government, by which all wrong should be restrained,
all vice reformed, and all the subjects preserved in
tranquillity and innocence. This thought produced
innumerable schemes of reformation, and dictated many useful
regulations and salutary effects. This has been the sport
and sometimes the labour of my solitude, and I start when I
think with how little anguish I once supposed the death of
my father and my brothers.”
“Such,” said Imlac, “are the effects of visionary
schemes. When we first form them, we know them to be absurd,
but familiarise them by degrees, and in time lose sight of
their folly.”
CHAPTER XLV - THEY DISCOURSE WITH AN OLD MAN.
The evening was now far past, and they rose to return
home. As they walked along the banks of the Nile, delighted
with the beams of the moon quivering on the water, they saw
at a small distance an old man whom the Prince had often
heard in the assembly of the sages. “Yonder,” said he, “is
one whose years have calmed his passions, but not clouded
his reason. Let us close the disquisitions of the night by
inquiring what are his sentiments of his own state, that we
may know whether youth alone is to struggle with vexation,
and whether any better hope remains for the latter part of
life.”
Here the sage approached and saluted them. They invited
him to join their walk, and prattled awhile as acquaintance
that had unexpectedly met one another. The old man was
cheerful and talkative, and the way seemed short in his
company. He was pleased to find himself not disregarded,
accompanied them to their house, and, at the Prince’s
request, entered with them. They placed him in the seat of
honour, and set wine and conserves before him.
“Sir,” said the Princess, “an evening walk must give to a
man of learning like you pleasures which ignorance and youth
can hardly conceive. You know the qualities and the causes
of all that you behold - the laws by which the river flows,
the periods in which the planets perform their revolutions.
Everything must supply you with contemplation, and renew the
consciousness of your own dignity.”
“Lady,” answered he, “let the gay and the vigorous expect
pleasure in their excursions: it is enough that age can
attain ease. To me the world has lost its novelty. I look
round, and see what I remember to have seen in happier days.
I rest against a tree, and consider that in the same shade I
once disputed upon the annual overflow of the Nile with a
friend who is now silent in the grave. I cast my eyes
upwards, fix them on the changing moon, and think with pain
on the vicissitudes of life. I have ceased to take much
delight in physical truth; for what have I to do with those
things which I am soon to leave?”
“You may at least recreate yourself,” said Imlac, “with
the recollection of an honourable and useful life, and enjoy
the praise which all agree to give you.”
“Praise,” said the sage with a sigh, “is to an old man an
empty sound. I have neither mother to be delighted with the
reputation of her son, nor wife to partake the honours of
her husband. I have outlived my friends and my rivals.
Nothing is now of much importance; for I cannot extend my
interest beyond myself. Youth is delighted with applause,
because it is considered as the earnest of some future good,
and because the prospect of life is far extended; but to me,
who am now declining to decrepitude, there is little to be
feared from the malevolence of men, and yet less to be hoped
from their affection or esteem. Something they may yet take
away, but they can give me nothing. Riches would now be
useless, and high employment would be pain. My retrospect of
life recalls to my view many opportunities of good
neglected, much time squandered upon trifles, and more lost
in idleness and vacancy. I leave many great designs
unattempted, and many great attempts unfinished. My mind is
burdened with no heavy crime, and therefore I compose myself
to tranquillity; endeavour to abstract my thoughts from
hopes and cares which, though reason knows them to be vain,
still try to keep their old possession of the heart; expect,
with serene humility, that hour which nature cannot long
delay, and hope to possess in a better state that happiness
which here I could not find, and that virtue which here I
have not attained.”
He arose and went away, leaving his audience not much
elated with the hope of long life. The Prince consoled
himself with remarking that it was not reasonable to be
disappointed by this account; for age had never been
considered as the season of felicity, and if it was possible
to be easy in decline and weakness, it was likely that the
days of vigour and alacrity might be happy; that the noon of
life might be bright, if the evening could be calm.
The Princess suspected that age was querulous and
malignant, and delighted to repress the expectations of
those who had newly entered the world. She had seen the
possessors of estates look with envy on their heirs, and
known many who enjoyed pleasures no longer than they could
confine it to themselves.
Pekuah conjectured that the man was older than he
appeared, and was willing to impute his complaints to
delirious dejection; or else supposed that he had been
unfortunate, and was therefore discontented. “For nothing,”
said she, “is more common than to call our own condition the
condition of life.”
Imlac, who had no desire to see them depressed, smiled at
the comforts which they could so readily procure to
themselves; and remembered that at the same age he was
equally confident of unmingled prosperity, and equally
fertile of consolatory expedients. He forbore to force upon
them unwelcome knowledge, which time itself would too soon
impress. The Princess and her lady retired; the madness of
the astronomer hung upon their minds; and they desired Imlac
to enter upon his office, and delay next morning the rising
of the sun.
CHAPTER XLVI - THE PRINCESS AND PEKUAH VISIT THE
ASTRONOMER.
The Princess and Pekuah, having talked in private of
Imlac’s astronomer, thought his character at once so amiable
and so strange that they could not be satisfied without a
nearer knowledge, and Imlac was requested to find the means
of bringing them together.
This was somewhat difficult. The philosopher had never
received any visits from women, though he lived in a city
that had in it many Europeans, who followed the manners of
their own countries, and many from other parts of the world,
that lived there with European liberty. The ladies would not
be refused, and several schemes were proposed for the
accomplishment of their design. It was proposed to introduce
them as strangers in distress, to whom the sage was always
accessible; but after some deliberation it appeared that by
this artifice no acquaintance could be formed, for their
conversation would be short, and they could not decently
importune him often. “This,” said Rasselas, “is true; but I
have yet a stronger objection against the misrepresentation
of your state. I have always considered it as treason
against the great republic of human nature to make any man’s
virtues the means of deceiving him, whether on great or
little occasions. All imposture weakens confidence and
chills benevolence. When the sage finds that you are not
what you seemed, he will feel the resentment natural to a
man who, conscious of great abilities, discovers that he has
been tricked by understandings meaner than his own, and
perhaps the distrust which he can never afterwards wholly
lay aside may stop the voice of counsel and close the hand
of charity; and where will you find the power of restoring
his benefactions to mankind, or his peace to himself?”
To this no reply was attempted, and Imlac began to hope
that their curiosity would subside; but next day Pekuah told
him she had now found an honest pretence for a visit to the
astronomer, for she would solicit permission to continue
under him the studies in which she had been initiated by the
Arab, and the Princess might go with her, either as a
fellow-student, or because a woman could not decently come
alone. “I am afraid,” said Imlac, “that he will soon be
weary of your company. Men advanced far in knowledge do not
love to repeat the elements of their art, and I am not
certain that even of the elements, as he will deliver them,
connected with inferences and mingled with reflections, you
are a very capable auditress.” “That,” said Pekuah, “must be
my care. I ask of you only to take me thither. My knowledge
is perhaps more than you imagine it, and by concurring
always with his opinions I shall make him think it greater
than it is.”
The astronomer, in pursuance of this resolution, was told
that a foreign lady, travelling in search of knowledge, had
heard of his reputation, and was desirous to become his
scholar. The uncommonness of the proposal raised at once his
surprise and curiosity, and when after a short deliberation
he consented to admit her, he could not stay without
impatience till the next day.
The ladies dressed themselves magnificently, and were
attended by Imlac to the astronomer, who was pleased to see
himself approached with respect by persons of so splendid an
appearance. In the exchange of the first civilities he was
timorous and bashful; but when the talk became regular, he
recollected his powers, and justified the character which
Imlac had given. Inquiring of Pekuah what could have turned
her inclination towards astronomy, he received from her a
history of her adventure at the Pyramid, and of the time
passed in the Arab’s island. She told her tale with ease and
elegance, and her conversation took possession of his heart.
The discourse was then turned to astronomy. Pekuah displayed
what she knew. He looked upon her as a prodigy of genius,
and entreated her not to desist from a study which she had
so happily begun.
They came again and again, and were every time more
welcome than before. The sage endeavoured to amuse them,
that they might prolong their visits, for he found his
thoughts grow brighter in their company; the clouds of
solitude vanished by degrees as he forced himself to
entertain them, and he grieved when he was left, at their
departure, to his old employment of regulating the seasons.
The Princess and her favourite had now watched his lips
for several months, and could not catch a single word from
which they could judge whether he continued or not in the
opinion of his preternatural commission. They often
contrived to bring him to an open declaration; but he easily
eluded all their attacks, and, on which side soever they
pressed him, escaped from them to some other topic.
As their familiarity increased, they invited him often to
the house of Imlac, where they distinguished him by
extraordinary respect. He began gradually to delight in
sublunary pleasures. He came early and departed late;
laboured to recommend himself by assiduity and compliance;
excited their curiosity after new arts, that they might
still want his assistance; and when they made any excursion
of pleasure or inquiry, entreated to attend them.
By long experience of his integrity and wisdom, the
Prince and his sister were convinced that he might be
trusted without danger; and lest he should draw any false
hopes from the civilities which he received, discovered to
him their condition, with the motives of their journey, and
required his opinion on the choice of life.
“Of the various conditions which the world spreads before
you which you shall prefer,” said the sage, “I am not able
to instruct you. I can only tell that I have chosen wrong. I
have passed my time in study without experience - in the
attainment of sciences which can for the most part be but
remotely useful to mankind. I have purchased knowledge at
the expense of all the common comforts of life; I have
missed the endearing elegance of female friendship, and the
happy commerce of domestic tenderness. If I have obtained
any prerogatives above other students, they have been
accompanied with fear, disquiet, and scrupulosity; but even
of these prerogatives, whatever they were, I have, since my
thoughts have been diversified by more intercourse with the
world, begun to question the reality. When I have been for a
few days lost in pleasing dissipation, I am always tempted
to think that my inquiries have ended in error, and that I
have suffered much, and suffered it in vain.”
Imlac was delighted to find that the sage’s understanding
was breaking through its mists, and resolved to detain him
from the planets till he should forget his task of ruling
them, and reason should recover its original influence.
From this time the astronomer was received into familiar
friendship, and partook of all their projects and pleasures;
his respect kept him attentive, and the activity of Rasselas
did not leave much time unengaged. Something was always to
be done; the day was spent in making observations, which
furnished talk for the evening, and the evening was closed
with a scheme for the morrow.
The sage confessed to Imlac that since he had mingled in
the gay tumults of life, and divided his hours by a
succession of amusements, he found the conviction of his
authority over the skies fade gradually from his mind, and
began to trust less to an opinion which he never could prove
to others, and which he now found subject to variation, from
causes in which reason had no part. “If I am accidentally
left alone for a few hours,” said he, “my inveterate
persuasion rushes upon my soul, and my thoughts are chained
down by some irresistible violence; but they are soon
disentangled by the Prince’s conversation, and
instantaneously released at the entrance of Pekuah. I am
like a man habitually afraid of spectres, who is set at ease
by a lamp, and wonders at the dread which harassed him in
the dark; yet, if his lamp be extinguished, feels again the
terrors which he knows that when it is light he shall feel
no more. But I am sometimes afraid, lest I indulge my quiet
by criminal negligence, and voluntarily forget the great
charge with which I am entrusted. If I favour myself in a
known error, or am determined by my own ease in a doubtful
question of this importance, how dreadful is my crime!”
“No disease of the imagination,” answered Imlac, “is so
difficult of cure as that which is complicated with the
dread of guilt; fancy and conscience then act
interchangeably upon us, and so often shift their places,
that the illusions of one are not distinguished from the
dictates of the other. If fancy presents images not moral or
religious, the mind drives them away when they give it pain;
but when melancholy notions take the form of duty, they lay
hold on the faculties without opposition, because we are
afraid to exclude or banish them. For this reason the
superstitious are often melancholy, and the melancholy
almost always superstitious.
“But do not let the suggestions of timidity overpower
your better reason; the danger of neglect can be but as the
probability of the obligation, which, when you consider it
with freedom, you find very little, and that little growing
every day less. Open your heart to the influence of the
light, which from time to time breaks in upon you; when
scruples importune you, which you in your lucid moments know
to be vain, do not stand to parley, but fly to business or
to Pekuah; and keep this thought always prevalent, that you
are only one atom of the mass of humanity, and have neither
such virtue nor vice as that you should be singled out for
supernatural favours or afflictions.”
CHAPTER XLVII - THE PRINCE ENTERS, AND BRINGS A NEW
TOPIC.
“All this,” said the astronomer, “I have often thought;
but my reason has been so long subjugated by an
uncontrollable and overwhelming idea, that it durst not
confide in its own decisions. I now see how fatally I
betrayed my quiet, by suffering chimeras to prey upon me in
secret; but melancholy shrinks from communication, and I
never found a man before to whom I could impart my troubles,
though I had been certain of relief. I rejoice to find my
own sentiments confirmed by yours, who are not easily
deceived, and can have no motive or purpose to deceive. I
hope that time and variety will dissipate the gloom that has
so long surrounded me, and the latter part of my days will
be spent in peace.”
“Your learning and virtue,” said Imlac, “may justly give
you hopes.”
Rasselas then entered, with the Princess and Pekuah, and
inquired whether they had contrived any new diversion for
the next day. “Such,” said Nekayah, “is the state of life,
that none are happy but by the anticipation of change; the
change itself is nothing; when we have made it the next wish
is to change again. The world is not yet exhausted: let me
see something to-morrow which I never saw before.”
“Variety,” said Rasselas, “is so necessary to content,
that even the Happy Valley disgusted me by the recurrence of
its luxuries; yet I could not forbear to reproach myself
with impatience when I saw the monks of St. Anthony support,
without complaint, a life, not of uniform delight, but
uniform hardship.”
“Those men,” answered Imlac, “are less wretched in their
silent convent than the Abyssinian princes in their prison
of pleasure. Whatever is done by the monks is incited by an
adequate and reasonable motive. Their labour supplies them
with necessaries; it therefore cannot be omitted, and is
certainly rewarded. Their devotion prepares them for another
state, and reminds them of its approach while it fits them
for it. Their time is regularly distributed; one duty
succeeds another, so that they are not left open to the
distraction of unguided choice, nor lost in the shades of
listless inactivity. There is a certain task to be performed
at an appropriated hour, and their toils are cheerful,
because they consider them as acts of piety by which they
are always advancing towards endless felicity.”
“Do you think,” said Nekayah, “that the monastic rule is
a more holy and less imperfect state than any other? May not
he equally hope for future happiness who converses openly
with mankind, who succours the distressed by his charity,
instructs the ignorant by his learning, and contributes by
his industry to the general system of life, even though he
should omit some of the mortifications which are practised
in the cloister, and allow himself such harmless delights as
his condition may place within his reach?”
“This,” said Imlac, “is a question which has long divided
the wise and perplexed the good. I am afraid to decide on
either part. He that lives well in the world is better than
he that lives well in a monastery. But perhaps everyone is
not able to stem the temptations of public life, and if he
cannot conquer he may properly retreat. Some have little
power to do good, and have likewise little strength to
resist evil. Many are weary of the conflicts with adversity,
and are willing to eject those passions which have long
busied them in vain. And many are dismissed by age and
diseases from the more laborious duties of society. In
monasteries the weak and timorous may be happily sheltered,
the weary may repose, and the penitent may meditate. Those
retreats of prayer and contemplation have something so
congenial to the mind of man, that perhaps there is scarcely
one that does not purpose to close his life in pious
abstraction, with a few associates serious as himself.”
“Such,” said Pekuah, “has often been my wish, and I have
heard the Princess declare that she should not willingly die
in a crowd.”
“The liberty of using harmless pleasures,” proceeded
Imlac, “will not be disputed, but it is still to be examined
what pleasures are harmless. The evil of any pleasure that
Nekayah can image is not in the act itself but in its
consequences. Pleasure in itself harmless may become
mischievous by endearing to us a state which we know to be
transient and probatory, and withdrawing our thoughts from
that of which every hour brings us nearer to the beginning,
and of which no length of time will bring us to the end.
Mortification is not virtuous in itself, nor has any other
use but that it disengages us from the allurements of sense.
In the state of future perfection to which we all aspire
there will be pleasure without danger and security without
restraint.”
The Princess was silent, and Rasselas, turning to the
astronomer, asked him whether he could not delay her retreat
by showing her something which she had not seen before.
“Your curiosity,” said the sage, “has been so general,
and your pursuit of knowledge so vigorous, that novelties
are not now very easily to be found; but what you can no
longer procure from the living may be given by the dead.
Among the wonders of this country are the catacombs, or the
ancient repositories in which the bodies of the earliest
generations were lodged, and where, by the virtue of the
gums which embalmed them, they yet remain without
corruption.”
“I know not,” said Rasselas, “what pleasure the sight of
the catacombs can afford; but, since nothing else is
offered, I am resolved to view them, and shall place this
with my other things which I have done because I would do
something.”
They hired a guard of horsemen, and the next day visited
the catacombs. When they were about to descend into the
sepulchral caves, “Pekuah,” said the Princess, “we are now
again invading the habitations of the dead; I know that you
will stay behind. Let me find you safe when I return.” “No,
I will not be left,” answered Pekuah, “I will go down
between you and the Prince.”
They then all descended, and roved with wonder through
the labyrinth of subterraneous passages, where the bodies
were laid in rows on either side.
CHAPTER XLVIII - IMLAC DISCOURSES ON THE NATURE OF THE
SOUL.
“What reason,” said the Prince, “can be given why the
Egyptians should thus expensively preserve those carcases
which some nations consume with fire, others lay to mingle
with the earth, and all agree to remove from their sight as
soon as decent rites can be performed?”
“The original of ancient customs,” said Imlac, “is
commonly unknown, for the practice often continues when the
cause has ceased; and concerning superstitious ceremonies it
is vain to conjecture; for what reason did not dictate,
reason cannot explain. I have long believed that the
practice of embalming arose only from tenderness to the
remains of relations or friends; and to this opinion I am
more inclined because it seems impossible that this care
should have been general; had all the dead been embalmed,
their repositories must in time have been more spacious than
the dwellings of the living. I suppose only the rich or
honourable were secured from corruption, and the rest left
to the course of nature.
“But it is commonly supposed that the Egyptians believed
the soul to live as long as the body continued undissolved,
and therefore tried this method of eluding death.”
“Could the wise Egyptians,” said Nekayah, “think so
grossly of the soul? If the soul could once survive its
separation, what could it afterwards receive or suffer from
the body?”
“The Egyptians would doubtless think erroneously,” said
the astronomer, “in the darkness of heathenism and the first
dawn of philosophy. The nature of the soul is still disputed
amidst all our opportunities of clearer knowledge; some yet
say that it may be material, who, nevertheless, believe it
to be immortal.”
“Some,” answered Imlac, “have indeed said that the soul
is material, but I can scarcely believe that any man has
thought it who knew how to think; for all the conclusions of
reason enforce the immateriality of mind, and all the
notices of sense and investigations of science concur to
prove the unconsciousness of matter.
“It was never supposed that cogitation is inherent in
matter, or that every particle is a thinking being. Yet if
any part of matter be devoid of thought, what part can we
suppose to think? Matter can differ from matter only in
form, density, bulk, motion, and direction of motion. To
which of these, however varied or combined, can
consciousness be annexed? To be round or square, to be solid
or fluid, to be great or little, to be moved slowly or
swiftly, one way or another, are modes of material existence
all equally alien from the nature of cogitation. If matter
be once without thought, it can only be made to think by
some new modification; but all the modifications which it
can admit are equally unconnected with cogitative powers.”
“But the materialists,” said the astronomer, “urge that
matter may have qualities with which we are unacquainted.”
“He who will determine,” returned Imlac, “against that
which he knows because there may be something which he knows
not; he that can set hypothetical possibility against
acknowledged certainty, is not to be admitted among
reasonable beings. All that we know of matter is, that
matter is inert, senseless, and lifeless; and if this
conviction cannot he opposed but by referring us to
something that we know not, we have all the evidence that
human intellect can admit. If that which is known may be
overruled by that which is unknown, no being, not
omniscient, can arrive at certainty.”
“Yet let us not,” said the astronomer, “too arrogantly
limit the Creator’s power.”
“It is no limitation of Omnipotence,” replied the poet,
“to suppose that one thing is not consistent with another,
that the same proposition cannot be at once true and false,
that the same number cannot be even and odd, that cogitation
cannot be conferred on that which is created incapable of
cogitation.”
“I know not,” said Nekayah, “any great use of this
question. Does that immateriality, which in my opinion you
have sufficiently proved, necessarily include eternal
duration?”
“Of immateriality,” said Imlac, “our ideas are negative,
and therefore obscure. Immateriality seems to imply a
natural power of perpetual duration as a consequence of
exemption from all causes of decay: whatever perishes is
destroyed by the solution of its contexture and separation
of its parts; nor can we conceive how that which has no
parts, and therefore admits no solution, can be naturally
corrupted or impaired.”
“I know not,” said Rasselas, “how to conceive anything
without extension: what is extended must have parts, and you
allow that whatever has parts may be destroyed.”
“Consider your own conceptions,” replied Imlac, “and the
difficulty will be less. You will find substance without
extension. An ideal form is no less real than material bulk;
yet an ideal form has no extension. It is no less certain,
when you think on a pyramid, that your mind possesses the
idea of a pyramid, than that the pyramid itself is standing.
What space does the idea of a pyramid occupy more than the
idea of a grain of corn? or how can either idea suffer
laceration? As is the effect, such is the cause; as thought,
such is the power that thinks, a power impassive and
indiscerptible.”
“But the Being,” said Nekayah, “whom I fear to name, the
Being which made the soul, can destroy it.”
“He surely can destroy it,” answered Imlac, “since,
however imperishable, it receives from a superior nature its
power of duration. That it will not perish by any inherent
cause of decay or principle of corruption, may be shown by
philosophy; but philosophy can tell no more. That it will
not be annihilated by Him that made it, we must humbly learn
from higher authority.”
The whole assembly stood awhile silent and collected.
“Let us return,” said Rasselas, “from this scene of
mortality. How gloomy would be these mansions of the dead to
him who did not know that he should never die; that what now
acts shall continue its agency, and what now thinks shall
think on for ever. Those that lie here stretched before us,
the wise and the powerful of ancient times, warn us to
remember the shortness of our present state; they were
perhaps snatched away while they were busy, like us, in the
choice of life.”
“To me,” said the Princess, “the choice of life is become
less important; I hope hereafter to think only on the choice
of eternity.”
They then hastened out of the caverns, and under the
protection of their guard returned to Cairo.
CHAPTER XLIX - THE CONCLUSION, IN WHICH NOTHING IS
CONCLUDED.
It was now the time of the inundation of the Nile. A few
days after their visit to the catacombs the river began to
rise.
They were confined to their house. The whole region being
under water, gave them no invitation to any excursions; and
being well supplied with materials for talk, they diverted
themselves with comparisons of the different forms of life
which they had observed, and with various schemes of
happiness which each of them had formed.
Pekuah was never so much charmed with any place as the
Convent of St. Anthony, where the Arab restored her to the
Princess, and wished only to fill it with pious maidens and
to be made prioress of the order. She was weary of
expectation and disgust, and would gladly be fixed in some
unvariable state.
The Princess thought that, of all sublunary things,
knowledge was the best. She desired first to learn all
sciences, and then proposed to found a college of learned
women, in which she would preside, that, by conversing with
the old and educating the young, she might divide her time
between the acquisition and communication of wisdom, and
raise up for the next age models of prudence and patterns of
piety.
The Prince desired a little kingdom in which he might
administer justice in his own person and see all the parts
of government with his own eyes; but he could never fix the
limits of his dominion, and was always adding to the number
of his subjects.
Imlac and the astronomer were contented to be driven
along the stream of life without directing their course to
any particular port.
Of those wishes that they had formed they well knew that
none could be obtained. They deliberated awhile what was to
be done, and resolved, when the inundation should cease, to
return to Abyssinia.
