Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 by Various

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"Ma republique a jamais grande et libre,
Cette terre d'amour et d'egalite,"

no longer seemed to him as lovely as when he composed these verses for
a Fourth-of-July dinner in Paris. He claimed compensation for his
services in Colonel Laurens's mission to France in 1781. For his works
he asked no reward. "All the civilized world knows," he writes, "I have
been of great service to the United States, and have generously given
away talents that would have made me a fortune. The country has been
benefited, and I make myself happy in the knowledge of it. It is,
however, proper for me to add, that the mere independence of America,
were it to have been followed by a system of government modelled after
the corrupt system of the English government, would not have interested
me with the unabated ardor it did." "It will be convenient to me to know
what Congress will decide on, because it will determine me, whether,
after so many years of generous services and that in the most perilous
times, and after seventy years of age, I shall continue in this country,
or offer my services to some other country. It will not be to England,
unless there should be a revolution."

The memorial was referred to the Committee on Claims. When Paine heard
of its fate, he addressed an indignant letter to the Speaker of the
House. "I know not who the Committee on Claims are; but if they were
men of younger standing than 'the times that tried men's souls,' and
consequently too young to know what the condition of the country was
at the time I published 'Common Sense,'--for I do not believe that
independence would have been declared, had it not been for the effect of
that work,--they are not capable of judging of the whole of the services
of Thomas Paine. If my memorial was referred to the Committee on Claims
for the purpose of losing it, it is unmanly policy. After so many years
of service, my heart grows cold towards America."

His heart was soon to grow cold to all the world. In the spring of 1809,
it became evident to Paine's attendants that his end was approaching. As
death drew near, the memories of early youth arose vividly in his
mind. He wished to be buried in the cemetery of the Quakers, in whose
principles his father had educated him. He sent for a leading member
of the sect to ask a resting-place for his body in their ground. The
request was refused.

When the news got abroad that the Arch-Infidel was dying, foolish old
women and kindred clergymen, who "knew no way to bring home a wandering
sheep but by worrying him to death," gathered together about his bed.
Even his physician joined in the hue-and-cry. It was a scene of the
Inquisition adapted to North America,--a Protestant _auto da fe_. The
victim lay helpless before his persecutors; the agonies of disease
supplied the place of rack and fagot. But nothing like a recantation
could be wrung from him. And so his tormentors left him alone to die,
and his freethinking smiths and cobblers rejoiced over his fidelity to
the cause.

He was buried on his farm at New Rochelle, according to his latest
wishes. "Thomas Paine. Author of 'Common Sense,'" the epitaph he had
fixed upon, was carved upon his tomb. A better one exists from an
unknown hand, which tells, in a jesting way, the secret of the sorrows
of his later life:--

"Here lies Tom Paine, who wrote in liberty's defence,
And in his 'Age of Reason' lost his 'Common Sense.'"

Ten years after, William Cobbett, who had left England in a fit of
political disgust and had settled himself on Long Island to raise
hogs and ruta-bagas, resolved to go home again. Cobbett had become an
admirer, almost a disciple of Paine. The "Constitution-grinder" of '96
was now "a truly great man, a truly philosophical politician, a mind as
far superior to Pitt and Burke as the light of a flambeau is superior to
that of a rush-light." Above all, Paine had been Cobbett's teacher on
financial questions. In 1803, Cobbett read his "Decline and Fall of the
English System," and then "saw the whole matter in its true light; and
neither pamphleteers nor speech-makers were after that able to raise a
momentary puzzle in his mind." Perhaps Cobbett thought he might excite a
sensation in England and rally about him the followers of Paine, or it
may be that he wished to repair the gross injustice he had done him by
some open act of adherence; at all events, he exhumed Paine's body and
took the bones home with him in 1819, with the avowed intention of
erecting a magnificent monument to his memory by subscription. In the
same manner, about two thousand two hundred and fifty years ago, the
bones of Theseus, the mythical hero of Democracy, were brought from
Skyros to Athens by some Attic [Greek: Kobbetaes]. The description
of the arrival in England we quote from a Liverpool journal of the
day:--"When his last trunk was opened at the Custom-House, Cobbett
observed to the surrounding spectators, who had assembled in great
numbers,--'Here are the bones of the late Thomas Paine.' This
declaration excited a visible sensation, and the crowd pressed forward
to see the contents of the package. Cobbett remarked,--'Great, indeed,
must that man have been whose very bones attract such attention!' The
officer took up the coffin-plate inscribed, 'Thomas Paine, Aged 72. Died
January 8, 1809,' and, having lifted up several of the bones, replaced
the whole and passed them. They have since been forwarded from this town
to London."

At a public dinner given to Cobbett in Liverpool, Paine was toasted as
"the Noble of Nature, the Child of the Lower Orders"; but the monument
was never raised, and no one knows where his bones found their last
resting-place.

Cobbett himself gained nothing by this resurrectionist performance,
except an additional couplet in the party-songs of the day:--

"Let Cobbett of borough-corruption complain,
And go to the De'il with the bones of Tom Paine."

The two were classed together by English Conservatives, as "pestilent
fellows" and "promoters of sedition."

It is now fifty years since Paine died; but the _nil de mortuis_ is no
rule in his case. The evil associations of his later days have pursued
him beyond the grave. A small and threadbare sect of "liberals," as they
call themselves,--men in whom want of skill, industry, and thrift has
produced the usual results,--have erected an altar to Thomas Paine,
and, on the anniversary of his birth, go through with a pointless
celebration, which passes unnoticed, unless in an out-of-the-way corner
of some newspaper. In this class of persons, irreligion is a mere form
of discontent. They have no other reason to give for the faith which
is not in them. They like to ascribe their want of success in life to
something out of joint in the thoughts and customs of society, rather
than to their own shortcomings or incapacity. In France, such persons
would be Socialists and _Rouges_; in this country, where the better
classes only have any reason to rebel, they cannot well conspire against
government, but attack religion instead, and pride themselves on their
exemption from prejudice. The "Age of Reason" is their manual. Its bold,
clear, simple statements they can understand; its shallowness they
are too ignorant to perceive; its coarseness is in unison with their
manners. Thus the author has become the Apostle of Free-thinking
tinkers and the Patron Saint of unwashed Infidelity.

To this generation at large, he is only an indistinct shadow,--a faint
reminiscence of a red nose,--an ill-flavored name, redolent of brandy
and of brimstone, his beverage in life and his well-earned punishment
in eternity, which suggests to the serious mind dirt, drunkenness, and
hopeless damnation. Mere worldlings call him "Tom Paine," in a tone
which combines derision and contempt. A bust of him, by Jarvis, in the
possession of the New York Historical Society, is kept under lock and
key, because it was defaced and defiled by visitors, while a dozen
other plaster worthies that decorate the institution remained intact.
Nevertheless, we suspect that most of our readers, if they cannot date
back to the first decade of the century, will find, when they sift their
information, that they have only a speaking acquaintance with Thomas
Paine, and can give no good reason for their dislike of him.

And it is not easy for the general reader to become intimate with him.
He will find him, of course, in Biographical Dictionaries, Directories
of the City of the Great Dead, which only tell you where men lived, and
what they did to deserve a place in the volume; but as to a life of him,
strictly speaking, there is none. Oldys and Cobbett tried to flay him
alive in pamphlets; Sherwin and Clio Rickman were prejudiced friends and
published only panegyrics. All are out of print and difficult to find.
Cheetham's work is a political libel; and the attempt of Mr. Vail of
the "Beacon" to canonize him in the "Infidel's Calendar," cannot be
recommended to intelligent persons. We might expect to meet with him in
those books of lives so common with us,--collections in which a certain
number of deceased gentlemen are bound up together, so resembling each
other in feature that one might suppose the narratives ground out by
some obituary-machine and labelled afterward to suit purchasers. Even
this "sign-post biography," as the "Quarterly" calls it, Paine has
escaped. He was not a marketable commodity. There was no demand for him
in polite circles. The implacable hand of outraged orthodoxy was against
him. Hence his memory has lain in the gutter. Even his friend Joel
Barlow left him out of the "Columbiad," to the great disgust of Clio
Rickman, who thought his name should have appeared in the Fifth Book
between Washington and Franklin. Surely Barlow might have found room for
him in the following "Epic List of Heroes":--

"Wythe, Mason, Pendleton, with Henry joined,
Rush, Rodney, Langdon, friends of humankind,
Persuasive Dickinson, the farmer's boast,
Recording Thompson, pride of all the host,
Nash, Jay, the Livingstons, in council great,
Rutledge and Laurens, held the rolls of fate."

But no! Neither author nor authorling liked to have his name seen in
company with Thomas Paine. And when a curious compiler has taken him up,
he has held him at arm's length, and, after eyeing him cautiously, has
dropped him like some unclean and noxious animal.

Sixty years ago, Paine's friends used to say, that, "in spite of some
indiscreet writings on the subject of religion," he deserved the respect
and thanks of Americans for his services. We think that he deserves
something more at the present day than this absolute neglect. There is
stuff enough in him for one volume at least. His career was wonderful,
even for the age of miraculous events he lived in. In America, he was a
Revolutionary hero of the first rank, who carried letters in his pocket
from George Washington, thanking him for his services. And he managed
besides to write his radical name in large letters in the History of
England and of France. As a mere literary workman, his productions
deserve notice. In mechanics, he invented and put up the first iron
bridge of large span in England; the boldness of the attempt still
excites the admiration of engineers. He may urge, too, another claim
to our attention. In the legion of "most remarkable men" these United
States have produced or imported, only three have achieved infamy:
Arnold, Burr, and Paine. What are Paine's titles to belong to this trio
of disreputables? Only these three: he wrote the "Age of Reason"; was a
Democrat, perhaps an unusually dirty one; and drank more brandy than was
good for him. The "Age of Reason" is a shallow deistical essay, in which
the author's opinions are set forth, it is true, in a most offensive and
irreverent style. As Dr. Hopkins wrote of Ethan Allen,--

"One hand was clenched to batter noses,
While t'other scrawled 'gainst Paul and Moses."

But who reads it now? On the other hand, no one who has studied Paine's
career can deny his honesty and his disinterestedness; and every
unprejudiced reader of his works must admit not merely his great ability
in urging his opinions, but that he sincerely believed all he wrote. Let
us, then, try to forget the carbuncled nose, the snuffy waistcoat, the
unorthodox sneer. We should wipe out his later years, cut his life short
at 1796, and take Paine when he wrote "Common Sense," Paine when he
lounged at the White Bear in Piccadilly, talking over with Horne Tooke
the answer to Mr. Burke's "Reflections," and Paine, when, as "foreign
benefactor of the species," he took his seat in the famous French
Convention.

It would repay some capable author to dig him up, wash him, and show him
to the world as he was. A biography of him would embrace the history of
the struggle which established the new theory of politics in government.
He is the representative man of Democracy in both hemispheres,--a good
subject in the hands of a competent artist; and the time has arrived, we
think, when justice may be done him. As a general rule, it is yet too
soon to write the History of the United States since 1784. Half a
century has not been sufficient to wear out the bitter feeling excited
by the long struggle of Democrats and Federalists. Respectable
gentlemen, who, more pious than Aeneas, have undertaken to carry their
grandfathers' remains from the ruins of the past into the present era,
seem to be possessed with the same demon of discord that agitated the
deceased ancestors. The quarrels of the first twenty years of the
Constitution have become chronic ink-feuds in certain families. A
literary _vendetta_ is carried on to this day, and a stab with the steel
pen, or a shot from behind the safe cover of a periodical, is certain
to be received by any one of them who offers to his enemy the glorious
opportunity of a book. Where so much temper exists, impartial history is
out of the question.

Our authors, too, as a general rule, have inherited the political jargon
of the last century, and abound in "destiny of humanity," "inalienable
rights," "virtue of the sovereign people," "base and bloody despots,"
and all that sort of phrase, earnest and real enough once, but little
better than cant and twaddle now. They seem to take it for granted that
the question is settled, the rights of man accurately defined, the true
and only theory of government found,--and that he who doubts is blinded
by aristocratic prejudice or is a fool. We must say, nevertheless, that
Father Time has not yet had years enough to answer the great question of
governing which was proposed to him in 1789. Some of the developments
of our day may well make us doubt whether the last and perfect form,
or even theory, is the one we have chosen. "_Les monarchies absolues
avaient deshonore le despotisme: prenons garde que les republiques
democratiques ne le rehabilitent_." But Paine's part in the history of
this country after 1783 is of so small importance, that in a life of him
all such considerations may be safely waived. The democratic movement of
the last eighty years, be it a "finality," or only a phase of progress
towards a more perfect state, is the grand historical fact of modern
times, and Paine's name is intimately connected with it. One is always
ready to look with lenity on the partiality of a biographer,--whether he
urge the claims of his hero to a niche in the Valhalla of great men, or
act as the _Advocatus Diaboli_ to degrade his memory.

OF BOOKS AND THE READING THEREOF.

BEING A THIRD LETTER FROM PAUL POTTER, OF NEW YORK, IN THE CITY AND
COUNTY OF NEW YORK, ESQ., TO THE DON ROBERTO WAGONERO, OF WASHINGTON,
_olim_, BUT _nunc_ OF NOWHEREINPARTICULAR.

If any person, O my Bobus, had foretold that all these months would go
by before I should again address you, he would have exhibited prescient
talent great enough to establish twenty "mediums" in a flourishing
cabalistic business. Alas! they have been to me months of fathomless
distress, immensurate and immeasurable sorrow, and blank, blind, idiotic
indifference, even to books and friends, which, next to the nearest and
dearest, are the world's most priceless possession. But now that I have
a little thrown off the stupor, now that kindly Time has a little balmed
my cruel wounds, I come back to my books and to you,--to the _animi
remissionem_ of Cicero,--to these gentle sympathizers and faithful
solacements,--to old studies and ancient pursuits. There is a Latin
line, I know not whose, but Swift was fond of quoting it,--

_"Vertiginosus, inops, surdus, male gratus amicis,"_--

which I have whispered to myself, with prophetic lips, in the long, long
watches of my lonesome nights. Do you remember--but who that has read
it does not?--that affecting letter, written upon the death of his
wife, by Sir James Mackintosh to Dr. Parr? "Such was she whom I have
lost; and I have lost her when her excellent natural sense was rapidly
improving, after eight years of struggle and distress had bound us fast
together and moulded our tempers to each other,--when a knowledge of
her worth had refined my youthful love into friendship, before age had
deprived it of much of its original ardor. I lost her, alas! (the choice
of my youth, and the partner of my misfortunes,) at a moment when I had
the prospect of her sharing my better days."

But if I am getting old, although perhaps prematurely, I must be casting
about for the _subsidia senectuti_. Swift wrote to Gay, that these
were "two or three servants about you and a convenient house"; justly
observing, that, "when a man grows hard to please, few people care
whether he be pleased or no"; and adding, sadly enough, "I should hardly
prevail to find one visitor, if I were not able to hire him with a
bottle of wine"; and so the sorrowful epistle concludes with the
sharpest grief of all: "My female friends, who could bear with me very
well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me." It is odd that Montaigne
should have hit upon the wine also as among the _subsidia senectuti_;
although the sage Michael complains, as you will remember, that old men
do not relish their wine, or at least the first glass, because "the
palate is furred with phlegms." But I care little either for the liquor
or the lackeys, and not much, I fear, at present, for "the female
friends." I have, then, nothing left for it but to take violently to
books; for I doubt not I shall find almost any house convenient, and I
am sure of one at last which I can claim by a title not to be disturbed
by all the precedents of Cruise, and in which no mortal shall have a
contingent remainder.

To books, then, I betake myself,--to books, "the immortal children" of
"the understanding, courage, and abilities" of the wise and good,--ay!
and to inane, drivelling, doting books, the bastard progeny of vanity
and ignorance,--books over which one dawdles in an amusing dream and
pleasant spasm of amazement, and which teach us wisdom as tipsy Helots
taught the Spartan boys sobriety. Montaigne "never travelled without
books, either in peace or war"; and as I found them pleasant in happier
days, so I find them pleasant now. Of course, much of this omnivorous
reading is from habit, and, _invita Minerva_, cannot be dignified by
the name of study,--that stiff, steady, persistent, uncompromising
application of the mind, by virtue of which alone the _Pons Asinorum_
can be crossed, and the Forty-Seventh Problem of Euclid--which I
entirely disbelieve--mastered.

I own to a prodigious respect, entertained since my Sophomore year at
the University, for those collegiate youth whose terribly hard study of
Bourdon and Legendre seems to have such a mollifying effect upon their
heads,--but, as the tradesmen say, that thing is "not in my line." I
would rather have a bundle of bad verses which have been consigned to
the pastry-cook. I suppose--for I have been told so upon good authority
--that, if "equals be taken from equals, the remainders are equal." I do
not see why they should not be, and, as a citizen of the United States
of America, the axiom seems to me to be entitled to respect. When a
youthful person, with a piece of chalk in his hand, before commencing
his artistic and scientific achievements upon the black-board, says:
"Let it be granted that a straight line may be drawn from any one point
to any other point," I invariably answer, "Of course,--by all manner of
means,"--although you know, dear Don, that, if I should put him upon
mathematical proof of the postulate, I might bother him hugely. But
when we come to the Fourteenth Proposition of Euclid's Data,--when I am
required to admit, that, "if a magnitude together with a given magnitude
has a given ratio to another magnitude, the excess of this other
magnitude above a given magnitude has a given ratio to the first
magnitude; and if the excess of a magnitude above a given magnitude has
a given ratio to another magnitude, this other magnitude together with a
given ratio to the first magnitude,"--I own to a slight confusion of
my intellectual faculties, and a perfect contempt for John Buteo and
Ptolemy. Then, there is Butler's "Analogy"; an excellent work it is, I
have been told,--a charming work to master,--quite a bulwark of our
faith; but as, in my growing days, it was explained to me, or rather was
not explained, before breakfast, by a truculent Doctor of Divinity, whom
I knew to be ugly and felt to be great, of course, the good Bishop and I
are not upon the best of terms.

I suppose that for drilling, training, and pipe-claying the human mind
all these things are necessary. I suppose, that, in our callow days, it
is proper that we should be birched and wear fetters upon our little,
bandy, sausage-like legs. But let me, now that I have come to man's
estate, flout my old pedagogues, and, playing truant at my will, dawdle
or labor, walk, skip, or run, go to my middle in quagmires, or climb to
the hill-tops, take liberties with the venerable, snub the respectable,
and keep the company of the disreputable,--dismiss the Archbishop
without reading his homily,--pass by a folio in twenty grenadier volumes
to greet a little black-coated, yellow-faced duodecimo,--speak to the
forlorn and forsaken, who have been doing dusty penance upon cloistered
shelves in silent alcoves for a century, with none so poor to do them
reverence,--read here one little catch which came from lips long ago
as silent as the clod which they are kissing, and there some forgotten
fragment of history, too insignificant to make its way into the world's
magnificent chronologies,--snapping up unconsidered trifles of
anecdote,--tasting some long-interred _bon-mot_ and relishing some
disentombed scandal,--pausing over the symphonic prose of Milton, only
to run, the next moment, to the Silenian ribaldry of Tom Brown the
younger,--and so keeping up a Saturnalia, in which goat-footed sylvans
mix with the maidens of Diana, and the party-colored jester shakes
his truncheon in the face of Plato. Only in this wild and promiscuous
license can we taste the genuine joys of true perusal.

I suppose, my dear friend, that, when you were younger and foolisher
than you now are, you were wont, after the reading of some dismal
work upon diet and health, to take long, constitutional walks. You
"toddled"--pardon the vulgar word!--so many miles out and so many miles
in, at just such a pace, in just the prescribed time, during hours fixed
as the Fates; and you wondered, when you came home to your Graham bread
and cold water, that you did not bring an appetite with you. You had
performed incredible pedestrian achievements, and were not hungry, but
simply weary. It is of small use to try to be good with malice prepense.
Nature is nothing, if not natural. If I am to read to any purpose,
I must read with a relish, and browse at will with the bridle off.
Sometimes I go into a library, the slow accretion of a couple of
centuries, or perhaps the mushroom growth from a rich man's grave, a
great collection magically convoked by the talisman of gold. At the
threshold, as I ardently enter, the flaming sword of regulation is
waving. Between me and the inviting shelves are fences of woven iron;
the bibliographic Cerberus is at his sentryship; when I want a full
draught, I must be content with driblets; and the impatient messengers
are sworn to bring me only a single volume at a time. To read in such a
hampered and limited way is not to read at all; and I go back, after
the first fret and worry are over, to the little collection upon my
garret-shelf, to greet again the old familiar pages. I leave the main
army behind,--"the lordly band of mighty folios," "the well-ordered
ranks of the quartos," "the light octavos," and "humbler duodecimos,"
for

"The last new play, and frittered magazine,"--

for the sutlers and camp-followers, "pioneers and all," of the
grand army,--for the prizes, dirty, but curious, rescued from the
street-stall, or unearthed in a Nassau-Street cellar,--for the books
which I thumbed and dogs-eared in my youth.

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