The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. II., No. 8, July, 1836

MESSENGER, VOL. II., NO. 8, JULY, 1836 ***

THE SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER:

DEVOTED TO EVERY DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE AND THE FINE ARTS.

Au gré de nos desirs bien plus qu'au gré des vents. _Crebillon's Electre_.

As _we_ will, and not as the winds will.

RICHMOND: T. W. WHITE, PUBLISHER AND PROPRIETOR. 1835-6.

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SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER.

VOL. II. RICHMOND, JULY, 1836. NO. VIII.

T. W. WHITE, PROPRIETOR. FIVE DOLLARS PER ANNUM.

MSS. OF JOHN RANDOLPH.

[We have obtained, after much difficulty, from a personal friend of the late JOHN RANDOLPH of Roanoke, the MSS. of the annexed _Letters_, and are permitted to publish them in the Messenger. We know our readers will receive them with interest. They throw much novel light on the character of a man whose genius, however great, has been mostly an enigma, and show his views on the most interesting of subjects in the maturity of his life and in the zenith of his reputation.]

LETTER I.

As well as very bad implements and worse eyes will permit me to do it by candlelight, I will endeavor to make some return to your kind letter, which I received, not by Quashee, but the mail. I also got a short note by him, for which I thank you.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

And now, my dear friend, one word in your ear—in the porches of thine ear. With Archimedes I may cry Ἑυρηκα. Why, what have you found—the philosopher's stone? No—something better than that. Gyges' ring? No. A substitute for bank paper? No. The elixir vitæ then? It is; but it is the elixir of eternal life. It is that peace of God which passeth all understanding, and which is no more to be conceived of by the natural heart, than poor St. George[1] can be made to feel and taste the difference between the Italian and German music. It is a miracle, of which the person upon whom it is wrought alone is conscious—as he is conscious of any other feeling—e.g. whether the friendship he professes for A or B be a real sentiment of his heart, or simulated to serve a turn.

[Footnote 1: His nephew, who is deaf and dumb.]

God, my dear friend, hath visited me in my desolation; in the hours of darkness, of sickness, and of sorrow: of that worst of all sickness, sickness of the heart, for which neither wealth nor power can find or afford a cure. May you, my dear friend, find it, where alone it is to be found! in the sacred volume—in the word of God, whose power surpasseth all that human imagination (unassisted by his grace) can conceive. I am now, for the first time in my life, supplied with a motive of action that never can mislead me—the love of God and my neighbor—because I love God. All other motives I feel, by my own sad experience, in my own person, as well as in that of numerous “_friends_,” (so called) to be utterly worthless. God hath at last given me courage to confess him before men. Once I hated mankind—bitterly hated them—but loved (like that wretched man Swift) “John or Thomas.” Now, my regard for individuals is not lessened, but my love for the race exalted almost to a level with that of my _friends_—I am obliged to use the word. I pretend to no sudden conversion, or new or great lights. I have stubbornly held out, for more than a Trojan siege, against the goodness and mercy of my Creator. Yes—Troy town did not so long and so obstinately resist the confederated Greeks. But what is the wrath of the swift-footed Achilles to the wrath of God? and what his speed to the vengeance of Heaven? and what are these even, to the love of Jesus Christ, thou son of David? I had often asked, but it was not with sufficient humility; or, perhaps, like the Canaanitish woman, God saw fit to try me. I sought, but not with sufficient diligence—at last, deserted in my utmost need, (not indeed like Darius, great and good—for I could _command_ service, such as we too often pay to God—lip service and eye service,) desolate and abandoned by all that had given me reason to think they had any respect and affection for me, I knocked with all my might. I asked for the crumbs that otherwise might be swept out to the dogs, and it was opened to me, the full and abundant treasury of his grace. When this happened I cannot tell. It has broken upon me like the dawn I see every morning, insensibly changing darkness into light. My slavish fears of punishment, which I always knew to be sinful, but would not put off, are converted into an humble hope of a seat, even if it be the lowest, in the courts of God. Yes, at last I am happy—as happy as man can be. Should it please God to continue his favor to me, you will see it—not only on my lips, but in my life. Should he withdraw it, as assuredly he will, unless with his assistance I humbly endeavor by prayer and self-denial, and _doing_ of his word as well as hearing it, to obtain its continuance, _mine_ will only be the deeper damnation. Of this danger I am sensible, but not afraid. I mean slavishly afraid. He that hath not quenched the smoking flax, who has snatched me as a brand from the burning, will not, I humbly yet firmly trust, cast me back into the furnace. I now know the meaning of words that before I repeated, but did not comprehend. I am no Burley of Balfour, but I have been, as I thought, on the very verge and brink of his disease; but I prayed to God to save me, and not to suffer me to fall a prey to the arts and wiles of Satan, at the very moment I was seeking his reconcilement.

I am not mad, most noble Festus, but speak the words of truth and soberness. I have thrown myself, reeking with sin, on the mercy of God, through Jesus Christ his blessed Son and our (yes, my friend, _our_) precious Redeemer; and I have assurance as strong as that I now owe nothing to your Bank, that the debt is paid—and now I love God, and with reason. I once hated him, and with reason too, for I knew not Christ. The only cause why I should love God is his goodness and mercy to me _through Christ_. But for this, the lion and the sea-serpent would not be more appalling to my imagination, than a being of tremendous and indefinite power, who made me what I am—who wanted either the will or the ability to prevent the existence of evil, and punishes what is inevitable. This is not a God, but a Devil, and all unbelievers in God tremble and believe in this Devil that they worship—such worship {462} as it is, in his place. I have been looking over some of my marginal pencilled notes on Gibbon, and rubbing them out. I had thought to burn the book, but the Quarterly Review and Professor Porson have furnished the antidote to his poison, whether in the shape of infidelity or obscenity. See Review of Gibbon's posthumous works.

Chains are the portion of revolted man, Stripes and a dungeon: and his body serves The triple purpose. In that sickly, foul, Opprobrious residence he finds them all. _Cowper's Task_.

God hath called me to come out from among them—worshippers of Mammon or of “Moloch-homicide,” or “Chemos, the obscene dread of Moab's son,” “Peor his other name:”

“Lust hard by Hate,”

and I will come, so help me God!

Is it madness to prefer your new house in fee simple, to a clay cottage, of which I am tenant at will, and may be turned out at a moment's warning, and even without it, and out of which _I know_ I must be turned in a few years certainly?

It is now midnight. May God watch over our sleep—over our helpless, naked condition, and protect us as well from the insect that carries death in his sting, as from the more feared but not so obvious dangers with which life is beset; and if he should come this night (as come he will) like a thief, may we be ready to stand in his presence and plead not our merits, but his stripes, by whom we are made whole.

J. R. of R.

P. S. I was not aware of the length to which my sermon would extend. Let me entreat you again to read Milton and Cowper. They prepared me for the “Sampson” (as Rush would say) among the medicines for the soul.

_Roanoke, August 25, 1818_.

LETTER II.

MY GOOD FRIEND—I am sorry that Quashee should intrude upon you unreasonably. The old man, I suppose, knows the pleasure I take in your letters, and therefore feels anxious to procure his master the gratification. I cannot, however, express sorrow, for I do not feel it, at the impression which you tell me my last letter made upon you. May it lead to the same happy consequences that I have experienced, which I now feel in that sunshine of the heart, which the peace of God, that passeth all understanding, alone can bestow.

Your imputing such sentiments to a heated imagination, does not surprise me, who have been bred in the school of Hobbes, and Bayle, and Shaftesbury, and Bolingbroke, and Hume, and Voltaire, and Gibbon; who have cultivated the sceptical philosophy from my vain-glorious boyhood—I might almost say childhood; and who have felt all that unutterable disgust which hypocrisy, and cant, and fanaticism, never fail to excite in men of education and refinement, superadded to our natural repugnance to Christianity. I am not, even now, insensible to this impression; but as the excesses of her friends (real or pretended) can never alienate the votary of liberty from a free form of government, and enlist him under the banners of despotism, so neither can the cant of fanaticism, or hypocrisy, or of both—for so far from being incompatible, they are generally found united in the same character, (may God in his mercy preserve and defend us from both!) disgust the pious with true religion.

Mine has been no sudden change of opinion. I can refer to a record showing, on my part, a desire of more than nine years standing to partake of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper; although, for two and twenty years preceding, my feet had never crossed the threshold of the house of prayer. This desire I was restrained from indulging, by the fear of eating and drinking unrighteously; and although that fear hath been cast out by perfect love, I have never yet gone to the altar—neither have I been present at the performance of divine service, unless indeed I may so call my reading the Liturgy of our Church and some chapters of the Bible to my poor negroes on Sundays. Such passages as I think require it, and which I feel competent to explain, I comment upon, enforcing as far as possible, and dwelling upon those texts especially that enjoin the indispensable accompaniment of a good life as the touchstone of the true faith. The sermon from the mount, and the Evangelists generally—the Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians, chap. vi,—the general Epistle of James, and the first Epistle of John—these are my chief texts.

The consummation of my _conversion_—I use the word in its strictest sense—is owing to a variety of causes, but chiefly to the conviction, unwillingly forced upon me, that the very few friends which an unprosperous life (the fruit of an ungovernable temper) had left me, were daily losing their hold upon me in a firmer grasp of ambition, avarice, or sensuality. I am not sure that to complete the anti-climax, avarice should not have been last; for although, in some of its effects, debauchery be more disgusting than avarice, yet as it regards the unhappy victim, this last is more to be dreaded. Dissipation, as well as power or prosperity, hardens the heart, but avarice deadens it to every feeling but the thirst for riches. Avarice alone could have produced the slave trade. Avarice alone can drive, as it does drive, this infernal traffic, and the wretched victims of it, like so many post-horses whipped to death in a mail-coach. Ambition has its cover-sluts, in the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war; but where are the trophies of avarice? The handcuff, the manacle, and the blood-stained cowhide! What man is worse received in society for being a hard master? Who denies the hand of a sister or daughter to such monsters?—nay, they have even appeared in “the abused shape of the vilest of women.” I say nothing of India, or Amboyna—of Cortes, or Pizarro.

When I was last in your town I was inexpressibly shocked, (and perhaps I am partly indebted to the circumstance for accelerating my emancipation,) to hear, on the threshold of the temple of the least erect of all the spirits that fell from heaven, these words spoken:

“I don't want the Holy Ghost (I shudder while I write,) or any other spirit in me. If these doctrines are true, [St. Paul's] there was no need for Wesley and Whitfield to have separated from the church. The Methodists are right, and the Church wrong. I want to see the old church,” &c. &c.—that is, such as this diocese was under Bishop _Terrick_, when wine-bibbing {463} and buck-parsons were sent out to preach “a dry clatter of morality,” and not the word of God, for sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco. When I speak of _morality_, it is not as condemning it. Religion includes it, but much more. Day is now breaking, and I shall extinguish my candles, which are better than no light—or if I do not, in the presence of the powerful king of day they will be noticed only by the dirt and ill-savor that betray all human contrivances—the taint of humanity. Morality is to the Gospel not even as a farthing rush-light to the blessed sun.

By the way, this term Methodist in religion is of vast compass and effect—like _Tory_ in politics—or _Aristocrate_ in Paris, “with the lamp-post for its second,” some five or six and twenty years ago. _Dr. Hoge?_—“a Methodist parson.” _Frank Key?_—“a fanatic,” (I heard him called so not ten days ago,) “a Methodistical whining,” &c. &c. _Wilberforce?_—“a Methodist.” _Mrs. Hannah More?_—“ditto.” It ought never to be forgotten, that real converts to Christianity on opposite sides of the globe, agree at the same moment to the same facts. Thus Dr. Hoge and Mr. Key, although strangers, understand perfectly what each other feels and believes.

If I were to show a MS. in some unknown tongue to half a dozen persons, strangers to each other, and natives of different countries, and they should all give me the same translation, could I doubt their acquaintance with the strange language? On the contrary, can I, who am but a smatterer in Greek, believe an impostor, who pretends to a knowledge of that tongue, and who yet cannot tell the meaning of τυπτο?

I now read with relish and understand St. Paul's Epistles, which not long since I could not comprehend, even with the help of Mr. Locke's Paraphrase. Taking up, a few days ago, at an “Ordinary,” the Life of John Bunyan, which I had never before read, I find an exact coincidence in our feelings on this head, as well as others.

Very early in life I imbibed an absurd prejudice in favor of Mahomedanism and its votaries. The Crescent had a talismanic effect on my imagination, and I rejoiced in all its triumphs over the Cross, (which I despised,) as I mourned over its defeats; and Mahomet the 2d himself did not more exult than I did when the Crescent was planted on the dome of St. Sophia, and the Cathedral of the Constantines was converted into a Turkish Mosque. To this very day I feel the effects of Peter Randolph's Zanga on a temper naturally impatient of injury, but insatiably vindictive under insult.

On the night that I wrote last to you, I scribbled a pack of nonsense to Rootes, which serves only to show the lightness of my heart. About the same time, in reply to a question from a friend, I made the following remarks, which, as I was weak from long vigilance, I requested him to write down, that I might, when at leisure, copy it into my diary. From it you will gather pretty accurately the state of my mind.

“It is my business to avoid giving offence to the world, especially in all matters merely indifferent. I shall therefore stick to my old uniform, blue and buff, unless God see fit to change it for black. I must be as attentive to my dress and to household affairs, as far as cleanliness and comfort are concerned, as ever—and indeed more so. Let us take care to drive none away from God, by dressing Religion in the garb of Fanaticism. Let us exhibit her as she is, equally removed from superstition and lukewarmness. But we must take care, that while we avoid one extreme, we fall not into the other—no matter which. I was born and baptized in the Church of England. If I attend the Convention at Charlottesville, which I rather doubt, I shall oppose myself then, and always, to every attempt at encroachment on the part of the Church—the Clergy especially—on the rights of conscience. I attribute, in a very great degree, my long estrangement from God, to my abhorrence of Prelatical pride and Puritanical preciseness; to Ecclesiastical tyranny, whether Roman Catholic or Protestant—whether of Harry V, or Harry VIII—of Mary or Elizabeth—of John Knox, or Archbishop Laud—of the Cameronians of Scotland, the Jacobins of France, or the Protestants of Ireland. Should I fail to attend, it will arise from a repugnance to submit the religion, (or church) any more than the liberty of my country, to foreign influence. When I speak of my country, I mean the Commonwealth of Virginia. I was born in allegiance to George III—the Bishop of London (_Terrick!_) was my diocesan. My ancestors threw off the oppressive yoke of the mother country, but they never made me subject to _New_ England in matters spiritual or temporal—neither do I mean to become so, voluntarily.”

I have been up long before day, and write with pain from a sense of duty to you and Mrs. B., in whose welfare I take the most earnest concern. You have my prayers. Give me yours, I pray you. Adieu!

J. R. of R.

P. S. You make no mention of Leigh. I was on the top of the pinnacle of Otter this day fortnight—a little above the Earth, but how far beneath Heaven!

_Roanoke, Sept. 25, 1818_.

LETTER III.

Your obliging promptitude deserved my speedier thanks, but you will excuse me I am sure, my dear sir, when you learn that I have been for several days confined to my chamber by something very like _angina pectoris_. It is the most distressing sensation I ever felt, although not the most painful. It is during a remission of its attack that I take up my pen to put some of my nothings upon paper.

Yesterday was a sore day (as I hear) for the War Department. The official statements from that bureau were exposed in a most mortifying manner, and on the question in committee of the whole to strike out the first section of the obnoxious bill [i.e. to reject it] the court mustered but five or seven affirmatives—and this after the combined exertions of several of the leading members, as they are called, in favor of the motion.

My question to Mrs. B. related to a book that I had lately read with some amusement—Melincourt. It is not new, but I had not happened to meet with it before. I have been trying to read Southey's Life of Wesley for some days. Upon the whole, I find it a heavy work, although there are some very striking passages, and it abounds in curious information. From 279 to 285, inclusive, of the second volume is very fine. Yesterday I was to have dined with Frank Key, but was not well enough to go. He called here the day before, and we {464} had much talk together. He perseveres in pressing on towards the goal, and his whole life is spent in endeavors to do good for his unhappy fellow men. The result is, that he enjoys a tranquillity of mind, a sunshine of the soul, that all the Alexanders of the earth can neither confer nor take away. This is a state to which I can never attain. I have made up my mind to suffer like a man condemned to the wheel or the stake—and, strange as you may think it, I could submit without a murmur to pass the rest of my life “in some high, lonely tower, where I might outwatch the Bear with thrice great Hermes;” and exchange the enjoyments of society for an exemption from the plagues of life. These press me down to the very earth, and to rid myself of them I would gladly purchase an annuity and crawl into some hole, where I might commune with myself and be still.