RECREATIONS OF A RECLUSE. THE LOGIC OF SMITH THE WEAVER. A Cue from Shakespeare. WHEN Jack Cade, the insurgent leader of "rebellious hinds, the filth and scum of Kent," sought to prove himself rightful heir unto the crown, his genealogical arguments found a powerful backer in Smith the Weaver. Villain, Sir Humphrey Stafford tells Jack, at the émeute on Blackheath, thy father was a plasterer, and thou, thyself, a shearman, art thou not? Jack Cade is not in a position, nor indeed in the mind, to deny either the plaster or the shears. Tacitly he admits the double impeachment. But what of that? Granted the plastering parent, and welcome. Granted, too, his own antecedents in the way of shearing, mowing, hedging, and ditching, or what you will. All that, by Jack's contention, touches not his prerogative, impugns not his pedigree. The Pretender's averment is, that Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, marrying the Duke of Clarence's daughter, had by her two children at VOL. I. 1 one birth-the elder of whom, being put to nurse, was by a beggar-woman stolen away; and, ignorant of his birth and parentage, became a bricklayer, when he came of age. 66 'His son am I," asserts Cade; "deny it if you can." One of Mr. John's enthusiastic followers, known, if not respected, as Dick the Butcher, is prompt forthwith to ratify the allegation of his chief: Dick, Nay, 'tis too true; therefore, he shall be king. Dick the Butcher contents himself with a very gene'ral statement, resulting incontinently in a very triumphant ergo. But Smith the Weaver has a pronounced genius for dialectics. His ergo, his triumphant therefore, shall not depend on so vague a premiss as that of his friend and confederate the Ashford Butcher. Smith the Weaver will leave generals to Dick, and will argue from particulars himself. He will syllogize; and his syllogism shall be satisfactory to the meanest capacity. Mark you, now, the method and the manner of the man. Reverting to the plastering progenitor, Smith the Weaver thus brings his logic to bear upon, and to summarily dispose of, the vexed question: "Sir, he made a chimney in my father's house, and the bricks are alive at this day to testify it; therefore, deny it not." One can fancy something of the complacent effect of Smith's logic upon himself, and the jubilant appreciation of the crowd. When was ergo more convincing? When was ever a therefore more unan swerable? When was ever a Quod Erat Demonstrandum more complete? Surely, if Cade the Shearman was born to kingship, Smith the Weaver was born to better things than mechanical woof and warf, and was meant by nature to weave major pre'miss and minor premiss into sublime conclusions. In his pious work of rebuilding the Cabala, on the precise site of the tabernacle of clouds, Ishmael is said to have been assisted by his father Abrahama miraculous stone serving Abraham for a scaffold, and rising and sinking with him as he built the walls of the sacred edifice: it still remains there, an inestimable relic. Is proof positive needed, on the surface of this stone, for the irrefragable truth of this story? The East has its logicians of the clan Smith; and there being the print of a foot on the stone in question, that footprint is appealed to by true believers as a clear ocular demonstration of the patriarch's feat. The North American Indians say, or used to say, -for they seem pretty well to have had their say, as the saying is,—that the noise of thunder is caused by immense birds fighting in the air, and by the straining efforts of an old man to vomit a fiery flying serpent. Do you ask for proof, physical proof, before you commit yourself to this hypothesis in natural philosophy? The Indians have it ready at hand. They point to trees on which lightning has scorched the figure of a serpent. cette assertion, il vous montrent "En preuve de des arbres où la foudre a tracé l'image d'un serpent." And however it may be with your too sceptical self, such a proof for confirmation is to them an end of all strife. The clergy of Loreto, on one occasion, we learn from Mr. Hutchison, in his quasi Answer, or queer sort of Answer, to Dr. Stanley,-wished to place an old crucifix upon a handsome new altar; but every morning it was found to have been miraculously carried in the night to its former place. In respect to this eminently clerical marvel, as a Saturday Reviewer calls it, we are seriously informed that "the altar, and the place intended for the crucifix, are still pointed out in the church." And this is all that our author has to produce in the way of evidence of the wonderful crucifix.* Plutarch tells us that when Remus was taken prisoner before Numitor, and related to him the story of Romulus and himself, suckled by a shewolf, and, as the worthy Brothers Langhorne render it, "fed by the attentions of a woodpecker," as they, the brothers aforesaid (Romulus and Remus, not Langhorne), lay in a trough by the river-side,—the young man appealed to the still extant trough, as though in triumphant attestation of his tale. "The trough is still preserved, bound about with brass bands, and inscribed with letters partly faded.” The young man's appeal would scarcely hinder *See Saturday Review, vol. xvi. p. 432; the reviewer's moral being, on the whole question of Loreto, "Such is the fabric of Continental supernaturalism, and such the basis of proof on which it professes to rely." |