Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

The History and Adventures of an Atom

London

Printed for Robinson and Roberts

1769

"He knew when to distract its weak brain with a tumult of incongruous and contradictory ideas: he knew when to overwhelm its feeble faculty of thinking, by pouring in a torrent of words without any ideas annexed. These throng in like city-milliners to a Mile-end assembly, while it happens to be under the direction of a conductor without strength and authority. Those that have ideas annexed may be compared to the females provided with partners, which, though they may croud the place, do not absolutely destroy all regulation and decorum. But those that are uncoupled, press in promiscuously with such impetuosity and in such numbers, that the puny master of the ceremonies is unable to withstand the irruption; far less, to distinguish their quality, or accommodate them with partners: thus they fall into the dance without order, and immediately anarchy ensues. "

Such were the propositions orator Taycho undertook to demonstrate; and the success justified his undertaking. After a weak mind has been duly prepared, and turned as it were, by opening a sluice or torrent of high-sounding words, the greater the contradiction proposed the stronger impression it makes, because it increases the puzzle, and lays fast hold on the admiration; depositing the small proportion of reason with which it was before impregnated, like the vitriol acid in the copper-mines of Wicklow, into which if you immerse iron, it immediately quits the copper which it had before dissolved, and unites with the other metal, to which it has a stronger attraction. -- Orator Taycho was not so well skilled in logic as to amuse his audience with definitions of concrete and abstract terms; or expatiate upon the genus and the difference; or state [Page 169] propositions by the subject, the predicate, and the copula; or form syllogisms by mood and figure: but he was perfectly well acquainted with all the equivocal or synonimous words in his own language, and could ring the changes on them with great dexterity. He knew perfectly well how to express the same ideas by words that literally implied opposition:-- for example, a valuable conquest or an invaluable conquest; a shameful rascal or a shameful villain; a hard head or a soft head; a large conscience or no conscience; immensely great or immensely little; damned high or damned low; damned bitter, damned sweet; damned severe, damned insipid; and damned fulsome. He knew how to invert the sense of words by changing the manner of pronunciation; e.g. "You are a very pretty fellow!" to signify, "You are a very dirty scoundrel."-- [Page 170] "You have always spoke respectfully of the higher powers!" to express, "You have often insulted your betters, and even your sovereign!" "You have never turned tail to the principles you professed!" to declare, "You have acted the part of an infamous apostate." He was well aware that words alter their signification according to the circumstances of times, customs, and the difference of opinion. Thus the name of Jack, who used to turn the spit and pull off his master's boots, was transferred to an iron machine and a wooden instrument now substituted for these purposes: thus a stand for the tea-kettle, acquired the name of Footman; and the words Canon and Ordinance, signifying originally a rule or law, was extended to a piece of artillery, which is counted the ultima lex, or ultima ratio regum. --In the same manner the [Page 171] words infidel, heresy, good man, and political orthodoxy, imply very different significations, among different classes of people. A Mussulman is an infidel at Rome, and a Christian is distinguished as an unbeliever at Constantinople. A Papist by Protestantism understands heresy; to a Turk, the same idea is conveyed by the sect of Ali. The term good man, at Edinburgh, implies fanaticism; upon the Exchange of London it signifies cash; and in the general acceptation, benevolence. Political orthodoxy has different, nay opposite definitions, at different places in the same kingdom; at O--- and C--- at the Cocoa-tree in Pall-mall; and at Garraway's in Exchange-alley. Our orator was well acquainted with all the legerdemain of his own language, as well as with the nature of the beast he had to rule. He knew when to distract its [Page 172] weak brain with a tumult of incongruous and contradictory ideas: he knew when to overwhelm its feeble faculty of thinking, by pouring in a torrent of words without any ideas annexed. These throng in like city-milliners to a Mile-end assembly, while it happens to be under the direction of a conductor without strength and authority. Those that have ideas annexed may be compared to the females provided with partners, which, though they may croud the place, do not absolutely destroy all regulation and decorum. But those that are uncoupled, press in promiscuously with such impetuosity and in such numbers, that the puny master of the ceremonies is unable to withstand the irruption; far less, to distinguish their quality, or accommodate them with partners: thus they fall into the dance without order, and immediately anarchy ensues. [Page 173] Taycho having kept the monster's brain on a simmer, until, like the cow-heel in Don Quixote, it seemed to cry, Comenme, comenme; Come, eat me, come, eat me; then told them in plain terms, that it was expedient they should part with their wives and their children, their souls and their bodies, their substance and their senses, their blood and their suet, in order to defend the indefensible farm of Yesso, and to support Brut-an-tiffi, their insupportable ally. --The hydra, rolling itself in the dust, turned up its huge unwieldy paunch and wagged its forky tail; then licked the feet of Taycho, and through all its hoarse discordant throats, began to bray applause. The Dairo rejoiced in his success, the first-fruits of which consisted in their agreeing to maintain an army of twenty thousand Tartar mercenaries, who were reinforced by the flower of [Page 174]the national troops of Japan, sent over to defend the farm of Yesso; and in their consenting to prolong the annual tribute granted to Brut-an-tiffi, who, in return for this condescension, accommodated the Dairo with one of his free-booting captains to command the Yessite army. This new general had seen some service, and was counted a good officer: but it was not so much on account of his military character that he obtained this command, as for his dexterity in prolonging the war; his skill in exercising all the different arts of peculation; and his attachment to Brut-an-tiffi, with whom he had agreed to co-operate in milking the Japonese cow. This plan they executed with such effect, as could not possibly result from address alone, unassisted by the infatuation of those whom they pillaged. Every article of contingent expence for [Page 175] draught-horses, waggons, postage, forage, provision, and secret service, was swelled to such a degree as did violence to common sense as well as to common honesty. The general had a fellow-feeling with all the contractors in the army, who were connected with him in such a manner as seemed to preclude all possibility of detection. In vain some of the Japonese officers endeavoured to pry into this mysterious commerce; in vain inspectors were appointed by the government of Japan. The first were removed on different pretences: the last were encountered by such disgraces and discouragements, as in a little time compelled them to resign the office they had undertaken. In a word, there was not a private mercenary Tartar soldier in this army who did not cost the empire of Japan as much as any subaltern officer of its own; and the annual charge of [Page 176] this continental war, undertaken for the protection of the farm of Yesso, exceeded the whole expence of any former war which Japan had ever maintained on its own account since the beginning of the empire: nay, it was attended with one circumstance which rendered it still more insupportable. The money expended in armaments and operations, equipped and prosecuted on the side of Japan, was all circulated within the empire; so that it still remained useful to the community in general; but no instance could be produced, of a single copan that ever returned from the continent of Tartary; therefore all the sums sent thither, were clear loss to the subjects of Japan. Orator Taycho acted as a faithful ally to Brut-an-tiffi, by stretching the bass-strings of the mobile in such a manner, as to be always in concert with the extravagance [Page 177] of the Tartar's demands, and the absurdity of the Dairo's predilection. Fika-kaka was astonished at these phænomena; while Mura-clami hoped in secret, that the orator's brain was disordered; and that his insanity would soon stand confessed, even to the conviction of the people. --"If, (said he to himself) they are not altogether destitute of human reason, they must, of their own accord, perceive and comprehend this plain proposition: A cask of water that dischargesthree by one pipe, and receives no more than two by another, must infallibly be emptied at the long-run. Japan discharges three millions of obans every year for the defence of that blessed farm, which, were it put up to sale, would not fetch one sixth part of the sum; and the annual ballance of her trade with all the world brings in two millions: ergo, it runs out faster than it runs [Page 178] in, and the vessel at the long-run must be empty." Mura-clami was mistaken. He had studied philosophy only in profile. He had endeavoured to investigate the sense, but he had never fathomed the absurdities of human nature. All that Taycho had done for Yesso, amounted not to one-third of what was required for the annual expence of Japan while it maintained the war against China in different quarters of Asia. A former Cuboy, (rest his soul!) finding it impossible to raise within the year the exorbitant supplies that were required to gratify the avarice and ambition of the Dairo, had contrived the method of funding, which hath been lately adopted with such remarkable success in this kingdom. You know, Peacock, this is no more than borrowing a certain sum on the credit of the nation, and laying a [Page 179] fresh tax upon the public, to defray the interest of every sum thus borrowed; an excellent expedient, when kept within due bounds, for securing the established government, multiplying the dependants of the m---ry, and throwing all the money of the empire into the hands of the administration. But those loans were so often repeated, that the national debt had already swelled to an enormous burthen; such a variety of taxes was laid upon the subject, as grievously inhanced all the necessaries of life; consequently the poor were distressed, and the price of labour was raised to such a degree, that the Japonese manufactures were every-where undersold by the Chinese traders, who employed their workmen at a more moderate expence. Taycho, in this dilemma, was seized with a strange conceit. Alchemy was at that period become [Page 180] a favourite study in Japan. Some bonzas having more learning and avarice than their brethren, applied themselves to the study of certain Chaldean manuscripts, which their ancestors had brought from Assyria; and in these they found the substance of all that is contained in the works of Hermes Trismegistus, Geber, Zosymus, the Panapolite, Olympiodorus, Heliodorus, Agathodæmon, Morienus, Albertus Magnus, and, above all, your countryman Roger Bacon, who adopted Geber's opinion, that mercury is the common basis, and sulphur the cement of all metals. By the bye, this same friar Bacon was well acquainted with the composition of gun-powder, though the reputation arising from the discovery, has been given to Swartz, who lived many years after that monk of Westminster. Whether the Philosopher's stone, [Page 181] otherwise called the Gift Azoth, the fifth Essence, or the Alkahest; which last Van Helmont pilfered from the tenth book of the Archidoxa, that treasure so long deposited in the occiput of the renowned Aureolus, Philippus, Paracelsus, Theophrastus, Bombast, de Hohenheim; was ever really attained by human adept, I am not at liberty to disclose; but certain it is, the philosophers and alchemists of Japan, employed by orator Taycho to transmute baser metals into gold, miscarried in all their experiments. The whole evaporated in smoke, without leaving so much as the scrapings of a crucible for a specific against the itch. Tickets made of a kind of bamboo, had been long used to reinforce the circulation of Japan; but these were of no use in Tartary: the mercenaries and allies of that country would receive nothing but gold [Page 182] and silver, which, indeed, one would imagine they had a particular method of decomposing or annihilating; for, of all the millions transported thither, not one copan was ever known to revisit Japan. "It was a country (as Hamlet says) from whose bourn no travelling copan e'er returned." As the war of Yesso, therefore, engrossed all the specie of Niphon, and some currency was absolutely necessary to the subsistence of the Japonese, the orator contrived a method to save the expence of solid food. He composed a mess that should fill their bellies, and, at the same time, protract the intoxication of their brains, which it was so much his interest to maintain. --He put them upon a diet of yeast; where this did not agree with the stomach, he employed his emissaries to blow up the patients à posteriori, as the dog was blown up by the madman of Seville, recorded by Cervantes.
(pp. 168-82)

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7 entries in the ESTC (1769, 1786, 1795, 1797, 1799).

Tobias Smollett, The History and Adventures of an Atom, 2 vols. (London: Robinson and Roberts, 1769). <Link to ECCO>

06/02/2005