Даниэль Дефо
The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campell
Mr. Th. May, in his History, lib. viii. writes, that an old man, like a hermit, second-sighted, took his leave of king James I. when he came into England; he took little notice of Prince Henry, but addressing himself to the Duke of York, since King Charles I., fell a weeping to think what misfortunes he should undergo; and that he should be one of the most miserable and most unhappy princes that ever was.
A Scotch nobleman sent for one of these second-sighted men out of the Highlands, to give his judgment of the then great George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. As soon as ever he saw him; Pish, said he, he will come to nothing, I see a dagger in his breast; and he was stabbed in the breast by Captain Felton, as has been at large recounted in some of the foregoing pages.
Sir James Melvin hath several the like passages in his history.
A certain old man in South Wales, told a great man there of the fortune of his family, and that there should not be a third male generation. It has fallen out accordingly.
Sir William Dugdale with his own mouth informed several gentlemen, that Major-General Middleton (since lord) went into the Highlands of Scotland to endeavour to make a party for King Charles I. An old gentleman, that was second-sighted, came and told him that his endeavour was good, but he would be unsuccessful; and, moreover, that they would put the king to death; and that several other attempts would be made, but all in vain; but that his son would come in, but not reign in a long time; but would at last be restored. This Lord Middleton had a great friendship with the laird Bocconi, and they made an agreement, that the first of them that died should appear to the other in extremity. The Lord Middleton was taken prisoner at Worcester fight, and was prisoner in the Tower of London, under three locks. Lying in his bed, pensive, Bocconi appeared to him; my Lord Middleton asked him if he were dead or alive? He said, Dead; and that he was a ghost; and told him that within three days he should escape, and he did so, in his wife's clothes; when he had done his message, he gave a frisk, and said —
Givanni, Givanni, 'tis very strange,
In the world to see so sudden a change;
and then gathered up and vanished. This account Sir William Dugdale had from the Bishop of Edinburgh; and this account he hath writ in a book of Miscellanies, which is now reposited, with other books of his, in the Museum at Oxford.
Thus the reader sees what great authorities may be produced to prove that wonderful and true predictions have been delivered by many persons gifted with the second-sight. The most learned men in almost all nations, who are not in all likelihood deceived themselves; the most celebrated and authentic historians, and some divines in England, who, it is not to be thought, have combined together and made it their business to obtrude upon us falsehoods; persons of all ranks, from the highest to the lowest, in Scotland, who, it would be even madness to think would join in a confederacy to impose tricks upon us, and to persuade us to the greatest of impostures as solemn truths delivered from their own mouths; all these, I say, have unanimously, and, as it were, with one voice, asserted, repeated, and confirmed to us, that there have been at all times, and in many different nations, and that still there are persons, who, possessed with the gift of a second sight, predict things that wonderfully come to pass; and seem to merit very little less than the name of prophets for their miraculous discoveries. Now, if any man should come, and without giving the least manner of reason for it (for there is no reason to be given against such assertions), declare his disbelief of all these authentic, though strange accounts, can he with reason imagine that his incredulity shall pass for a token of wisdom? Shall his obstinacy confute the learned? Shall his want of faith be thought justly to give the lie to so many persons of the highest honour and quality, and of the most undoubted integrity? In fine, shall his infidelity, by a reverse kind of power to that which is attributed to the philosopher's stone, be able to change the nature of things, turn and transmute truth into falsehood, and make a downright plain matter of fact to be no more than a chimera, or an ens rationis? And shall a manifest experience be so easily exploded?
Taking it, therefore, for granted, that no modest man whatsoever, though never so hard of belief, which is certainly as great a weakness as that of too much credulity, will make bold openly to declare his disbelief of things so well attested; and taking it much more for granted still, that it is impossible for any man of common sense to have the front of declaring his disbelief of them in such a manner as to urge it for an argument and a reason why others should disbelieve them too; taking this, I say, as I think I very well may, for granted, I think there remains nothing farther for me to offer, before I conclude this chapter, except a few remarks as to the similitude there is between those actions which I have related above to have been performed by Mr. Campbell, and these actions which so many learned, ingenious, and noble authors, as I have just now quoted, have asserted to have been performed by persons whom they knew to be gifted with the second-sight.
As to what is said several pages above, concerning Duncan Campbell when a boy at Edinburgh, that he even told his little companions who would have success at their little matches when they played at marbles, and that he informed a great gamester there, whose name I have disguised under that of Count Cog, what times he should choose to play if he would win, as ludicrous as it may have appeared to be, and as much as it may have seemed to my readers to carry with it nothing better than the face of invention and the air of fiction, yet if they will be at the pains of comparing that passage of Duncan Campbell's with the account given in this chapter from the mouth of Sir Norman Macleod, concerning a man, who, though he never played at tables in his life, instructed a skilful gamester, when he was at a stand, to place one of his men right, upon which the whole game depended, which the ignorant fellow, when asked how he came to do it, said he was directed to by the spirit Brownie; whoever, I say, will be at the pains of comparing these passages together, will find they bear a very near resemblance, and that the way we may most reasonably account for Duncan Campbell's prediction when he was a boy, must be, that he was at that time directed by his little genius or familiar spirit, which I described in the precedent pages, as this fellow was by the spirit Brownie, according to Sir Norman Macleod's assertion; which spirit Brownie, as Mr. Martin, a very good and credited writer, assures us, in his History of the Western Islands, dedicated to the late Prince George of Denmark, is a spirit usually seen all over that country.
If the reader recollects, he will remember likewise, that in the little discourse which I mentioned to have been held between me and this Duncan Campbell, when a boy, concerning his little genius, I there say, the boy signified to me that he smelt venison, and was sure that some one would come to his mother's house shortly after; accordingly I came thither that morning from the death of a deer, and ordered a part of it to be brought after me to her house. Now Mr. Martin's twelfth observation about the second-sight, in this chapter, clears it plainly up that this knowledge in the boy proceeded from the gift of second-sight. Not to give the reader too often the trouble of looking back in order to judge of the truth of what I say, I will here repeat that observation, which is as follows: Things are also foretold by smelling sometimes: for example, fish or flesh is frequently smelt in the fire, when, at the same time, neither of the two are in the house, or, in any probability, like to be had in it for some weeks or months. This smell several persons have, who are, endued with the second-sight, and it is always accomplished soon after.
But I will here omit any farther remarks by way of accounting how he compassed his predictions when a boy, either by the intervention of his genius, or the gift of a second-sight; and examine how nearly those things, which I have related to have been done by him in his more advanced years, when he took up the profession of a predictor, in London, correspond with the accounts given us in this chapter about a second-sight, and how near a resemblance the things done by him bear to those things that are so well attested to have been performed by others, through the efficacious power of this wonderful faculty.
First, then, if we have a mind to make a tolerable guess which way Mr. Campbell came acquainted that the death of the beautiful young lady, Miss W – lw – d was so near at hand, and that, though she was so universally admired she would die unmarried, the accounts given of other second-sighted persons in the like cases, will put us in the most probable way of guessing right. This is explained by the seventh observation in this chapter, where it is said from Mr. Martin, that when a shroud is perceived about one, it is a sure prognostic of death; the time is judged according to the height of it, about the person; for if it be not seen above the middle, death is not to be expected for the space of a year or longer, but as it comes nearer to the head it is expected sooner; if to the very head, it is concluded to be at hand within a few days, if not hours. Of this we have an example, of which Mr. Martin was an eye-witness, concerning the death of his own acquaintance; but he did not in the least regard it, till the death of the person, about the time foretold, confirmed to him the certainty of the prediction.
Secondly, as to the ignominious death that Irwin came to, and which he predicted to his mother so long before, when she was in flourishing circumstances, and when there was no appearance that any of her children should be brought to a beggarly condition, and learn among base gangs of company to thieve, and be carried to the gallows; the story told in this chapter of some of the inhabitants of Harris, sailing round the Isle of Skye, and seeing the apparition of two men hanging by the ropes on the mast of their vessel, and when they came to the opposite mainland, finding two criminals just sentenced to death by Sir Donald Macdonald, and seeing their own very mast and ropes made choice of for their execution, clears up the manner how Mr. Campbell might predict this of Irwin likewise, by the force of the second-sight.
Thirdly, as to Mr. Campbell's telling Christallina the belle and chief toast of the court, and Urbana the reigning beauty of the city, that they should shortly be married, and who were to be their husbands, it is a thing he has done almost every day in his life to one woman or other, that comes to consult him about the man she is to be married to; the manner he probably takes in doing this may be likewise explained by the foregoing story in this chapter about the servants, who said they saw three men standing by the left hand of their master's daughter; and that he that was nearest would marry her first, whom they plainly and exactly described, though they had never seen him but in their vision, as appeared afterwards. For within some months after, the very man described did come to the house, and did marry her. Vide the eighth observation of the second-sight.
Fourthly, as to the predictions delivered by Mr. Campbell to the merchant, which are set down at length in the foregoing chapter, I know no better way at guessing the manner how the second-sight operated in him at that time, than by comparing them to these two instances, which I briefly repeat because they are set down at length before, in this chapter. And first it may be asked, how did the second-sight operate in Mr. Campbell, when it gave him to know that the merchant's ships, which repeated intelligences had in appearance confirmed to be lost, were at that time safe, and would return securely home into the harbour designed? The best way of accounting for it, that I know, is by the story that Sir Norman Macleod is above affirmed to have told with his own mouth, concerning a servant of his, who rightly foretold his returning home and landing on the Isle of Bernera one night, where his residence is, when there was very little or no likelihood of it, because of the darkness of the night, and the danger of coming through the rocks that lie round the isle. When Sir Norman examined him about it, he answered that he knew it by a vision of the spirit Brownie; and hence it may be the most probably conjectured that Mr. Campbell's knowledge of the merchant's ships being safe came from a vision of his particular genius, or familiar spirit, which we spoke of before. What I have already instanced in, is, I think, sufficient with regard to the wonderful things which Mr. Campbell has performed, either by the intervention of a genius, or the power of a second-sight. But as he has frequently done a great many amazing performances, which seem to be of such a nature that they can't be well and clearly explained to have been done either by the intervention of his familiar spirit and genius, or by the power of the second-sighted faculty, we must have recourse to the third means by which only such predictions and practises can be compassed, before we expound these new mysteries, which appear like incredible riddles, and enigmas at the first; and this third means which we must have recourse to for expounding these strange acts of his, is a due consideration of the force and power of natural magic, which, together with a narrative of the acts, which he seems magically to bring about, will be the subject of the following chapter.
CHAPTER VIII
But before we proceed to our disquisitions concerning the power and efficacy of natural magic, and examine what mysterious operations may be brought about and compassed by magical practises, and before we take a farther survey of what Mr. Campbell has performed in this kind, that relates to his profession and the public part of his life, which concerns other people as well as himself; I shall here relate some singular adventures that he passed through in his private life, and which regard only his own person. In order to this, I must return back to the year 1702, about which time some unaccountable turns of fortune attended him in his own private capacity, which must be very surprising and entertaining to my readers, when they find a man, whose foresight was always so great a help and assistance to others, who consulted him in their own future affairs, helpless, as it has been an observation concerning all such men in the account of the second-sight, and blind in his own future affairs, tossed up and down by inevitable and spiteful accidents of fortune, and made the may-game of chance and hazard, as if that wayward and inconstant goddess, was resolved to punish him, when she catched him on the blind side, for having such a quick insight and penetrating faculty in other people's matters, and scrutinizing too narrowly into her mysteries, and so sometimes preventing those fatal intentions of hers, into which she would fain lead many mortals hood-winked, and before they knew where they were. In this light, these mighty and famous seers seem to be born for the benefit and felicity of others, but at the same time to be born to unhappiness themselves. And certainly, inasmuch as we consider them as useful and beneficial often, but always satisfactory to persons who are curious in their enquiries about their fortunes, it will be natural to those of us who have the least share of generosity in our minds, to yield our pity and compassion to them, when they are remarkably unfortunate themselves; especially when that calamity seems more particularly to light upon them for their ability, and endeavour to consult the good fortune of other folks.
About the above-mentioned year, 1702, Duncan Campbell grew a little tired of his profession; such a multitude of followers troubled him, several of whom were wild youths, and came to banter him, and many more too inquisitive females to tease him with endless impertinences, and who, the more he told them, had still the more to ask, and whose curiosity was never to be satisfied: and besides this, he was so much envied, and had so many malicious artifices daily practised against him, that he resolved to leave off his profession. He had, I know, followed it pretty closely from the time I first saw him in London, which was, I think, in the beginning of the year 1698, till the year 1702, with very good success; and in those few years he had got together a pretty round sum of money. Our young seer was now at man's estate, and had learned the notion that he was to be his own governor, so far as to be his own counsellor too in what road of life he was to take, and this consideration no doubt worked with a deeper impression on his mind, than it usually does on others that are in the same blossom and pride of manhood, because it might appear more natural for him to believe that he had a sufficient ability to be his own proper adviser, who had given so many others, and some more aged than himself, counsel, with very good success. Now every experienced person knows, that when manhood is yet green, it is still in the same dangerous condition as a young plant, which is liable to be warped by a thousand cross fortuitous accidents, if good measures be not taken to support it against all the contingent shocks it may meet with from the weather or otherwise. Now, it was his misfortune to be made averse to business, which he loved before, by having too much of it, and to be so soured by meeting with numerous perplexities and malicious rubs laid in his way by invidious people, (who are the useless and injurious busy-bodies that always repine at the good of others, and rejoice to do harm to the diligent and assiduous, though they reap no profit by it themselves), that he was disgusted and deterred entirely from the prosecution of a profession by which he got not only a competent but a copious and plentiful subsistence. Nay, indeed, this was another mischief arising to him from his having so much business, that he had got money enough to leave it off, when the perplexities of it had made him willing to do so, and to live very comfortably and handsomely, like a gentleman, without it, for a time; and we know the youngest men are not wont to look the farthest before them, in matters that concern their own welfare. Now, inasmuch as he had thus taken a disgust to business and application, and was surfeited, as I may say, with the perplexities of it, it must be as natural for him, we know, to search for repose in the contrary extreme, viz., recreation and idleness, as it is for a man to seek rest after toil, to sleep after a day's labour, or to sit down after a long and tiresome walk. But there are two very distinct sorts of idleness, and two very different kinds of recreation; there is a shameful idleness which is no better than downright sloth; and there is a splendid kind of indolence, where a man having taken an aversion to the wearisomeness of a business which properly belongs to him, neglects not however to employ his thoughts, when they are vacant from what they ought more chiefly to be about, in other matters not entirely unprofitable in life, the exercise of which he finds he can follow with more abundant ease and satisfaction. There are some sorts of recreations, too, that are mean, sordid, and base; others that are very innocent, though very diverting, and that will give one the very next most valuable qualifications of a gentleman, after those which are obtained by a more serious application of the mind. The idea which I have already given my readers of our Duncan Campbell, will easily make them judge, before I tell them, which way, in these two ways, his genius would naturally lead him; and that, when he grew an idle man, he would rather indulge himself with applying his mind to the shining trifles of life, than be wholly slothful and inactive; and that when he diverted himself he would not do it after a sordid, base manner, as having a better taste and a relish for good company; but that his recreations would still be the recreations of a gentleman. And just, accordingly, as my readers would naturally judge beforehand in his case, so it really happened. The moment he shook off business, and dismissed the thoughts of it, his genius led him to a very gallant way of life; in his lodgings, in his entertainments, in paying and receiving visits, in coffee-houses, in taverns, in fencing-schools, in balls, and other public assemblies, in all ways, in fine, both at home and abroad, Duncan Campbell was a well-comported and civil fine gentleman; he was a man of pleasure, and nothing of the man of business appeared about him. But a gentleman's life, without a gentleman's estate, however shining and pleasant it may be for a time, will certainly end in sorrow, if not in infamy; and comparing life, as moralists do, to a day, one may safely pronounce this truth to all the splendid idlers I have mentioned, that if they have sunshiny weather till noon, yet the afternoon of their life will be very stormy, rainy and uncomfortable, and perhaps just at the end of their journey, to carry on the metaphor throughout, close in the darkest kind of night. Of this, as I was a man of years and more experienced in the world than he, I took upon me to forewarn Mr. Campbell, as soon as I perceived the first dangerous fit of this elegant idleness had seized him. But when will young men, by so much the more headstrong as they have less of the beard, be guided and brought to learn! and when shall we see that happy age, in which the grey heads of old men shall be clapped upon the shoulders of youth! I told him, that in this one thing he ought to consult me, and acknowledge me to be a true prophet, if I told him the end of the seeming merry steps in life he was now taking, would infallibly bring him to a labyrinth of difficulties, out of which if he extricated himself at all, he would at least find it a laborious piece of work. His taste had been already vitiated with the sweets which lay at the top of the bitter draught of fortune, and my honest rugged counsel came too late to prevail, when his fancy had decoyed and debauched his judgment, and carried it over into another interest. I remember I writ down to him the moral story, where vicious Pleasure and Virtue are pictured by the philosopher to appear before Hercules, to court him into two several paths. I told him more particularly, since he had not an estate to go through with the gentlemanly life, as he called it, that, if he followed the alluring pleasures which endeavoured to tempt Hercules, he would involve himself at last in a whole heap of miseries, out of which it would be more than an Herculean labour for him to disentangle himself again. If he had been a man that could have ever heard with either, I would have told the reader in a very familiar idiom, that he turned the deaf ear to me; for he did not mind one syllable or tittle of the prescriptions I set down for him, no more than if he had never read them; but, varying the phrase a little, I may say at least, when he should have looked upon my counsel with all the eyes he had, he turned the blind side upon it. I was resolved to make use of the revenge natural to a man of years, and therefore applied that reproachful proverb to him, which we ancients delight much in making use of to youths that follow their own false and hot imaginations, and will not heed the cooler dictates of age, experience, and wisdom. Accordingly, I wrote down to him these words, and left him in a seeming passion: I am very well assured, young man, you think me that am old, to be a fool; but I that am old, absolutely know you, who are a young fellow, to be a downright fool, and so I leave you to follow your own ways, till sad and woful experience teaches you to know it your own self, and makes you come to me to own it of your own accord. As I was going away, after this tart admonition and severe reprimand, I had a mind to observe his countenance, and I saw him smile, which I rightly construed to be done in contempt of the advice of age, and in the gaiety and fulness of conceit, which youth entertains of its own fond opinions and hair-brained rash resolves. He was got into the company of a very pretty set of gentlemen, whose fortunes were far superior to his; but he followed the same genteel exercises, as fencing, &c., and made one at all their public entertainments; and so being at an equal expense with those who could well afford to spend what they did out of their estates, he went on very pleasantly for a time, still spending and never getting, without ever considering that it must, by inevitable consequence, fall to his lot at last to be entirely reduced to a state of indigence and want. And what commonly heightens the misfortune of such men, and so of all gentlemen's younger brothers, who live upon the ready money that is given them for their portions, is, that the prosperity they live in for a time gains them credit enough just to bring them in debt, and render them more miserable than those very wretches who never had either any money or credit at all. They run themselves into debt out of shame, and to put off the evil day of appearing ruined men as long as they can, and then, when their tempers are soured by adversity, they grow tired of their own lives; and then, in a quarrel, they or some other gentleman, may be, is run through, or else being hunted by bailiffs, they exercise their swords upon those pursuers. Thus, where gentlemen will not consider their circumstances, their very prosperity is a cause of, and aggravates their misery; their very pride, which was a decent pride at first, in keeping up and maintaining their credit, subjects them too often to the lowest and the meanest acts, and their courage, which was of a laudable kind, turns into a brutish and savage rage; and all the fine, esteemed, flourishing, and happy gentleman ends, and is lost in the contemned, poor and miserable desperado, whose portion at last is confinement and a gaol, and sometimes even worse, and what I shall not so much as name here. Into many of these calamities Mr. Campbell had brought himself before it was long, by his heedlessness, and running, according to the wild dictates of youth, counter to all sound and wholesome advice. He had, it seems, run himself into debt, and one day as he was at a coffee-house, the sign of the Three Crowns, in Great Queen-street, in rushed four bailiffs upon him, who being directed by the creditor's wife, had watched him into that house, and told him they had a warrant against him, and upon his not answering, they being unacquainted with his being deaf and dumb, offered to seize his sword. He startled at their offering of violence, and taking them for ruffians, which he had often met with, repelled the assaulters, and drawing his sword, as one man, more bold than the rest, closed in with him, he shortened his blade, and in the fall pinned the fellow through the shoulder, and himself through the leg, to the floor. After that he stood at bay with all the four officers, when the most mischievous assailant of them all, the creditor's wife, ventured to step into the fray, and very barbarously took hold of that nameless part of the man, for which, as she was a married woman, nature methinks should have taught her to have a greater tenderness, and almost squeezed and crushed those vitals to death. But at last he got free from them all, and was going away as fast as he could, not knowing what consequences might ensue. But the woman who aimed herself at committing murder, in the most savage and inhuman manner, ran out after him, crying out, Murder! murder! as loud as she could, and alarmed the whole street. The bailiffs following the woman, and being bloody from head to foot, by means of the wound he received, gave credit to the outcry. The late Earl Rivers's footmen happening to be at the door, ran immediately to stop the supposed murderer, and they indeed did take him at last, but perceived their mistake, and discovered that instead of being assistants in taking a man whom they thought to be a murderer endeavouring to make his escape from the hands of justice, they had only been tricked in by that false cry to be adjutants to a bailiff in retaking a gentleman, who, by so gallant a defence, had rescued himself from the dangers of a prison; and when they had discovered this their mistake they were mighty sorry for what they had done. The most active and busy among the earl's footmen was a Dutchman, and the earl happening to be in a room next the street, and hearing the outcry of murder, stepped to the window, and seeing his own servants in the midst of the bustle, examined the Dutchman how the matter was, and, being told it, he chid the man for being concerned in stopping a gentleman that was getting free from such troublesome companions. But the Dutchman excused himself, like a Dutchman, by making a very merry blunder for a reply; Sacramente, said he, to his lord, if I had thought they were bailiffs, I would have fought for the poor dumb gentlemen, but then why had he not told me they were bailiffs, my lord?
In short, Duncan Campbell was carried off as their prisoner; but the bailiff that was wounded was led back to the coffee-house, where he pretended the wound was mortal, and that he despaired of living an hour. The proverb, however, was of the fellow's side, and he recovered sooner than other people expected he could. As soon as all danger was over, an action for damages and smart money, as their term is, was brought against Mr. Campbell; the damages were exaggerated and the demand was so extravagant, that Duncan Campbell was neither able, just at that time, nor willing, had he been able, to pay so much, as he thought, in his own wrong, and having no bail, and being ashamed to make his case known to his better sort of friends, who were both able and willing to help him at a dead lift, he was hurried away to gaol by the bailiffs, who showed such a malignant and insolent pleasure, as commonly attends powerful revenge, when they put him into the Marshalsea. There he lay in confinement six weeks, till at last four or five of his chief friends came by mere chance to hear of it; immediately they consulted about his deliverance, and unanimously resolved to contribute for his enlargement, and they accordingly went across the water together, and procured it out of hand.
