The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, DECEMBER 26, 1907. MAUDLIN SYMPATHY

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 52, 26 December 1907, Page 21

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, DECEMBER 26, 1907. MAUDLIN SYMPATHY

tN describing the '-qualities and conditions of Panurge ', Rabelais gave his hero a veryspeckled character indeed. • Panurge was ' fine to' gildj like a leaden dagger ' ;, he was ' a notable cheat ' ■; -he ' had three score an,d three tricks to come hy at his need, of which tlie most honorahle and most ordinary was in "manner of thieving, secret purloining, and filching, for- he was a wicked, lewd rogue, a cozener, drinker, roysterer, rover, and a very dissolute and debauched fellow, if there were any in Paris. Otherwise, and in' all matters else, the best and most "virtuous man in the world '. Rabelais made- this paragon Of great 'and petty failings the twin-hero ofhis

roughly humpirous romance. In a somewhat similar spirit, a number of well-meaning but- ill-advised people have of late, been lionising a dangerous criminal, now under detention at Seaclifli as an emotional lunatic. This outbreak 'of hero-worship has no better, foundation than this— that- the offender, who escaped the hangman's ndose by no,ne too wide a margin, shot in cold blood *' at Wellington, some time ago, a harmless and suffering old Chinaman, by way of protest against eyen our restricted and diminishing. Oriental immigration, and against the remote peril of the deterioration of the white stock in New, Zealand by admixture with the hardy and tenacious peoples of tlie distant East. Here the end isi held to justify ( the . means— namely, the -T wholly unprovoked and cruel murder of a sick and' tottering old man. , The hero-worshipping eccentrics have even gone so fax as to appear in- print -in the public press, to describe their new idol as a ' patriot ', a harmless/ refined, and cultivated gentleman, to justify- or palliate his deed of bloo^land', to invite the 'public to join with them, in a memorial 'for -his immediate liberation. -And this, at a time "when the patriot, -the harmless, refined, and cultivated gentleman— who has been three times, at large — had intimated', through the daily press, that he meant, at the first opportunity, to repeat his 'protest' against the. industrious and lawabiding strangers who,_ wbateyer may be the merits or demerits of our alien "immigration policy, are entitled to the fullest protection of our laws .so long as they live under our flag. - - . - • . - - ' • The unthinking, the neurotic, and the emotional clap strange" ' heroes ' and ' patriots ' at times upon pedestals, and dance and sing around them. Even Deeming, - the. murderer of women,- found women not a few who lionised him, as far as they were permitted, while he lay waiting for his wretched life to pass out through the loop' of the hamigman's rope. That is, perhaps, an. extreme case. But even grave and reverend seigniors are sometimes led by their feelings to do, in this matter of hero-worship, what -their intelligence would, in cool moments," entirely disapprove. Archbishops and bishops of the Established Church, for instance, took a prominent part in the extravagant demonstrations in honor of Garibaldi in 1864. Yet the stormy filibusterer had some time before, in the columns of the London ' Times ', glorified in fanatical terms the anti-religious policy of the French Revolution, panegyrised its Goddess of Reason, and deplored the fact that the principles of 1789 had not achieved a more lasting triumph. And, " while in England, the idol of the moment, had lon£ and affectionate interviews with M-azzini, the apostle of* political assassination, hobnobbed with him at a dinner given in Garibaldi's honor by the Russian Revolutionary, Alexander Herzen, and there proposed his 'health in glowing words, and proclaimed' him ' my friend and teacher ' (' il mio amico c maestro '), -But, like Panurge, Garibalfli had one' -qualification which made - him 'at the time, to his English admirers, ' thebest and most virtuous, man .in" , the world '. ; He had fqnght against- Pope Pius IX. Those who placed him)' on the patriotic pedestal -had,- presumably, forgotten' "that ' the hero of Caprera ' had offered himself and bis sword to defend Pope Pius, who could have bought them both. had he chosen to do so. Mazzini himself was no less 1 the 'subject of much idolising by sundry panegyrist® in England. In Trevelyan's ' Garibaldi's Defence of the Roman Republic,! the notorious atheistic conspirator is described • as a saint, the terms of panegyric are-exhausted upon him, and.: his appearance is spoken of in a quoted appreciation" as" ' divine.' And Mr. Bolton King, in his i Maosini, 1 . is' scarcely less extravagant in his praise of the man,-- even though he is compelled to admit extreme quarrelsomeness,-'"' underhand diplomacy,' and -other actions of an' even more dishonorable nature on the part of his hero. Carlyle— himself an incurable hero-worshipper— has bitten hero-worship with rodent sarcasm. There was room and verge enough

for- his -grim humor to work within on suoh . a theme. Still more biting, perhaps, tyas ; the fierce version? which Dean Swift gave of the old proverbial saying which puts a discount on evil-speaking about the dead :— ;„ • . ' De mortuis nil- nisi bonum :" " ' When. knaves are dead let all bemoan them.' We need not go beyond our own country, and -recent to learn that the worthless or criminal li\ihg may, on occasion, be idolised with as great folly . as Swift's knavish dead. .