Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales Part 52

"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 rather to encourage my maids than to comply with any appet.i.te 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 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 gra.s.s, the chief of the troop came towards me. I rose up to receive him, and he bowed with great respect. 'Ill.u.s.trious 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 ransome, think yourself in danger of perpetual captivity? The purpose of my incursions is to increase my riches, or, more properly, 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 ransome, give a pa.s.sport 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 pa.s.sion was desire of 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 ingrat.i.tude, if I was used with kindness, and that any ransome, 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 onwards by short journeys. On the fourth day the chief told me, that my ransome 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 conveniencies 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 compa.s.s, and had marked, in his erratick expeditions, such places as are most worthy the notice of a pa.s.senger.

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.

CHAP. x.x.xIX.

THE ADVENTURES OF PEKUAH CONTINUED.

"We wandered about, in this manner, for some weeks, whether, 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 amus.e.m.e.nts 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 terrour, since I found that the Arab ranged the country merely to get riches. Avarice is an uniform and tractable vice: other intellectual distempers are different in different const.i.tutions of mind; that which sooths 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 s.p.a.cious house, built with stone, in an island of the Nile, which lies, as I was told, under the tropick. '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 ransome, they began to vie with each other in obsequiousness and reverence.

"Being again comforted with new a.s.surances 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 terrour, though I knew that 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 instructer, 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 pa.s.sed 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 that 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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 pa.s.sed 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 ideas but of the few things that were within their view, and had hardly names for any thing but their clothes and their food. As I bore a superiour 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 intercepting the tale."

"How," said Ra.s.selas, "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 ign.o.ble 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 grat.i.tude; 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 sometime, 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 awhile, 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 friends.h.i.+p. 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 ransome, 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 Ra.s.selas gave her a hundred ounces of gold, which she presented to the Arab for the fifty that were promised.

CHAP. 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 pa.s.s 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 motions 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 a.s.sistance: '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 topick.

"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 injunctions 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."

CHAP. 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 emersion 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 fort.i.tude. 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 weather, and the distribution of the seasons: the sun has listened to my dictates, and pa.s.sed, from tropick to tropick, 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 mult.i.tudes 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 suns.h.i.+ne. 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!'

CHAP. 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 suns.h.i.+ne. 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.'