s to
the propagation of defamatory anecdotes, the impulses are so various to
an offence which is not always consciously perceived by those who are
parties to it, that we cannot be too cautious of suffering our hatred of
libel to involve every casual libeller, or of suffering our general
respect for the person of the libeller to exonerate him from the charge
of libelling. Many libels are written in this little world of ours
unconsciously, and under many motives. Perhaps we said that before, but
no matter. Sometimes a gloomy fellow, with a murderous cast of
countenance, sits down doggedly to the task of blackening one whom he
hates worse 'than toad or asp.' For instance, Procopius performs that
'labour of hate' for the Emperor Justinian, pouring oil into his wounds,
but, then (as Coleridge expresses it in a 'neat' sarcasm), oil of
vitriol. Nature must have meant the man for a Spanish Inquisitor, sent
into the world before St. Dominic had provided a trade for him, or any
vent for his malice--so rancorous in his malignity, so horrid and
unrelenting the torture to which he subjects his sovereign and the
beautiful Theodora. In this case, from the withering scowl which
accompanies the libels, we may be assured that they _are_ such in the
most aggravated form--not malicious only, but false. It is commonly
said, indeed, in our courts, that truth it is which aggravates the
libel. And so it is as regards the feelings or the interests of the man
libelled. For is it not insufferable that, if a poor man under common
human infirmity shall have committed some crime and have paid its
penalty, but afterwards reforming or out-growing his own follies, seeks
to gain an honest livelihood for his children in a place which the
knowledge of his past transgression has not reached, then all at once he
is to be ruined by some creature purely malignant who discovers and
publishes the secret tale? In such a case most undoubtedly it is the
truth of the libel which constitutes its sting, since, if it were not
true or could be made questionable, it would do the poor man no
mischief. But, on the other hand, it is the falsehood of the libel which
forms its aggravation as regards the publisher. And certain we are, had
we no other voucher than the instinct of our hatred to Procopius, that
his disloyal tales about his great lord and lady are odiously
overcharged, if not uniformly false. Gibbon, however, chooses to gratify
his taste for the luxury of scandal