HKB
levying a tax upon the relatives of the murdered to purchase forgiveness for the slayer--one of those crooked paths by which, in that barbarous age, men hoped to reach Heaven.
The plan he adopted to reprove his flattering courtiers displayed, at best, much unnecessary show. A man who, by his valour and abilities, had ascended a throne which had been occupied by a long line of kings, and although an open enemy, had compelled a powerful nation to acknowledge him as their sovereign--one who had himself ridden over the stormy sea, and been tossed like a weed from billow to billow, can never be supposed to have entertained the thought for a moment that the angry ocean with its rising tide would obey him, or roll back its restless waves when he commanded. It was the same love of display which caused him to erect the throne in the midst of his army, and step forth in his royal robes, the haughty king, while he assumed the part of the humble penitent for having slain one of his soldiers. The same theatrical display which caused him to order his lumbering throne to be placed beside the sea-shore, and to sit down in all his kingly dignity, robed, crowned, and sceptered--the gilt and tinsel that are so effective beyond the footlights--induced him to adopt this stage effect; for Canute, in the dress of a common man, with his foot in the spray, would not have produced half that impression upon his audience, many of whom, we can readily imagine, must have felt disgusted at such useless parade. In a pompous manner, he is said to have thus addressed his courtiers:--"Confess ye now how frivolous and vain is the might of an earthly king compared to that Great Power who rules the elements, and can say unto the ocean, 'Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther.'" We should not probably err much if, instead of the words uttered by the Danish king, something like the following was the real language of his inward thought, and that, as he looked sternly upon them, he said to himself, "Think not that I believe you such idiots as to suppose that the sea will obey my bidding--a breath of mine would sever the proudest head that now rises above the beach. I alone am king, more powerful than any present, and I only want to prove that there is but One mightier than I am, and that while the waves wash my feet, they would surely drown such common rascals as you all are." In a word, the whole scene is too rich a piece of mockery to be treated seriously. It is as if a man mounted a lofty steeple, and threw down his hat, merely to convince the spectators below that if his head had been in it, it would assuredly have been broken. It is but the old cry of the Mahometan fruit-seller, which ends with, "In the name of the prophet--figs." Another proof of his overbearing vanity is given in his conduct to Thorarin, the Danish bard. The poet had written some verses in praise of Canute. It appears that the king was either engaged or seated at the banquet when the scald intreated of him to listen to the verses which he had written, urging as a reason, what a patron in modern times would most likely have listened to--namely, that they were but short. The Dane, however, true to his character, in a love of display and praise, turned round indignantly upon Thorarin, and in an angry tone exclaimed, "Are you not ashamed to do what none but yourself would dare--to write a short poem upon me? Unless by to-morrow at noon you produce above thirty verses on the same subject, your head shall be forfeited." The poor bard retired, and having whipped his muse into the finest order for lying and flattering, he by the next day produced such a splendid piece of adulation, that the praise-loving monarch rewarded him with fifty marks of silver.