386 Confessions of a Coward. [APRIL, 



and my name/' I am as mysterious as the Man in the Iron Mask, or one 

 of Mrs. Radcliffe's heroes. This, however, I assure you I am not the 

 First Lord of the Admiralty. 



In perfect confidence, then, I proceed to inform you, that courage is 

 to me the most inexplicable phenomenon in the constitution of man. I 

 was born, without doubt, under a pusillanimous planet ; or rather under 

 one of those flying stars, which scamper so fast across the ethereal fields, 

 that there is no way to account for their immediate hurry, but on the 

 hypothesis that there is a comet at their heels. No remark is more 

 common than that Fact is continually outdoing Fiction. The wildest 

 freaks of imagination never bodied forth a Cromwell or a Buonaparte. 

 Nature, as she moulded these giant characters, smiled at the dwarfish 

 creations of romance and poetry, and rebuked the presumption of the 

 Homers, the Dantes, and the Shakspeares. Now it is with cowardice 

 precisely as it is with heroism. Both are natural gifts ; and nature, when 

 she is disposed, can be as munificent of the former as of the latter. In 

 the present instance, she has proved it. I consider myself as created 

 for the special purpose of eclipsing the Ague-cheeks, the Acres, the 

 FalstafFs, and the Bobadils, with every example of recreant knighthood 

 in the chronicles of fiction. Not one of these poetical poltroons appears 

 to me to have possessed the true genius, or, if I may use the expres- 

 sion, the spirit of cowardice. Some actually go into the field; one or 

 two proceed so far as to draw their swords and cock their pistols ; and 

 all seem to be susceptible of at least a momentary thrill of valour ; other- 

 wise, they could not so much as listen to the horrible propositions of 

 their obliging friends, Sir Toby Belch, Sir Lucius O'Trigger, and other 

 personages of the same sanguinary complexion. In short, dastardly as 

 they are in action., they are martial enough in contemplation. They are 

 valiant until the signal is given adamant while the enemy is out 

 of view. As to Sir John Falstaff, I would almost venture to place 

 him amongst the heroes of the English drama. With what propriety he 

 can be called coward, after his terrible encounter with the Douglas, I 

 do not understand. Of this I am sure he had very different ideas from 

 mine on warlike subjects, or he would never have had a fellow with the 

 ominous name of Pistol in attendance on his person. I should as soon 

 have had the devil for my Ancient, as an angel with so sinister a cogno- 

 men. My cowardice I say it without vanity is no vulgar infirmity : 

 indeed it is not so much an infirmity as a principle of my constitution. 

 It is, in fact, the essence of my being. I can never read a vivid descrip- 

 tion of an engagement, but I feel an itching of my heels, and an almost 

 uncontrollable inclination to run away. Such have been my sensations 

 always on coming to the battle-scene in Marmion ; and I experienced 

 the like emotions, about three years ago, at the Louvre, on casting my 

 eyes on a picture of Rosa, where nothing is wanting but the din of con- 

 flict to make you fancy yourself in the middle of the fray. I actually 

 retreated before Salvator's pencil half the length of the gallery, and well 

 nigh overturned the easel of a lady who was copying a landscape of Ver- 

 net. She attributed the shock her apparatus received to accident; 

 could she have divined the secret of the matter, what an entertaining 

 story she would have had of the " Monsieur Anglois qui s'etoit mis en 

 fuitc, a la vue settlement d'un tableau de bataille !" 



So far am I from being capable of taking part in an action, or even a 

 skirmish, that it requires the greatest effort of my imagination to con- 



